marital status differences in mortality in later life the signifi cance of health-related behaviour ingmar rapp abstract: this article has been withdrawn by the author due to a copyright infringement claim concerning the data on which the article is based. therefore, we kindly ask you not to quote the article any longer. we apologise for any inconvenience caused. the editors of cpos comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 1 (2011) (day of release: 26.05.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-03en5 reviewers of the journal up to and including 2011 comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. / jg. 35, 4 (2010) oliver arránz-becker, chemnitz jens b. asendorpf, berlin can aybek, wiesbaden eva barlösius, hannover helen baykara-krumme, chemnitz miriam beblo, berlin rolf becker, bern joop de beer, den haag lutz bellmann, nürnberg walter bien, münchen francesco billari, mailand baldo blinkert, freiburg christina bohk, rostock john bongaarts, new york michael braun, mannheim josef brüderl, münchen norbert cyrus, hamburg paul demeny, new york martin diewald, bielefeld nico dragano, essen jan eckhard, mainz manfred ehling, wiesbaden josef ehmer, wien heribert engstler, berlin andreas ette, wiesbaden peteke feijten, den haag frerich frerichs, vechta karla gärtner, wiesbaden thomas gautschi, mannheim evelyn grünheid, wiesbaden christian grund, würzburg carl haub, washington werner haug, new york cornelia helfferich, freiburg sabine henning, genf felicitas hillmann, bremen jan hoem, stockholm francois höpfl inger, luzern ben jann, zürich martin kahanec, budapest claudia kaiser, vechta frank kalter, mannheim andreas kapphan, berlin nico keilman, oslo thomas klein, heidelberg bernhard köppen, landau dirk konietzka, braunschweig johannes kopp, chemnitz caroline kramer, karlsruhe øystein kravdal, oslo lars eric kroll, berlin andreas kruse, heidelberg harald künemund, vechta karin kurz, göttingen andrej kveder, den haag josef kytir, wien andreas lange, weingarten wolfgang lauterbach, potsdam karl lenz, dresden thomas leopold, bamberg angela luci, paris detlev lück, wiesbaden helma lutz, frankfurt wolfgang lutz, wien marc luy, wien ralf mai, münchen sarah meier, potsdam gerardo meil, madrid michael meuser, dortmund thomas meyer, siegen tatjana mika, berlin nadja milewski, rostock eva münster, mainz clara mulder, groningen bernhard nauck, chemnitz dörte naumann, berlin mechthild oechsle, bielefeld olga pötzsch, wiesbaden gina potarca, groningen tanja rabl, bayreuth roland rau, rostock arnaud régnier-loilier, paris monika reichert, dortmund darja reuschke, st andrews dorothea rieck, rostock andreas rödder, mainz kerstin ruckdeschel, wiesbaden heiko rüger, wiesbaden anne salles, paris michaela schier, münchen claus schlömer, bonn christian schmitt, berlin klaus schneewind, münchen sven schneider, mannheim pia schober, cambridge christian scholz, saarbrücken benjamin schüz, berlin erika schulz, berlin florian schulz, nürnberg johannes siegrist, düsseldorf bettina sommer, wiesbaden zolt spéder, budapest christian stamov roßnagel, bremen johannes stauder, heidelberg anja steinbach, duisburg-essen imke sturm-martin, köln frank swiaczny, wiesbaden marc szydlik, zürich rainer unger, bremen gil viry, genf gerlinde vogl, oldenburg michael wagner, köln christian wegner, wien eric widmer, genf suzanne d. withers, washington christof wolf, mannheim monika wohlrab-sahr, leipzig guillaume wunsch, louvain the publisher and the editorial team wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable work for cpos! editorial on the special issue “private life choices, employment and health” rainer unger, alexander schulze the health conditions of the german population have been subject to signifi cant changes in the past. within the last forty years, for example, the life expectancy at birth of both men and women reported by the german federal statistical offi ce rose by more than eight years. in recent years, chances of survival in the middle and old ages were responsible for the increase in life expectancy. in this respect – and to an extent never seen before – it is nowadays possible to spend one’s lifetime actively within the family and productively on the labour market. however, in times of a shrinking population, changes of the conditions on the labour market and new arrangements of private life choices, this positive development also presents us with new challenges. thus, the improved health conditions have been accompanied by numerous social changes, which might counteract the benefi ts (e.g. longer working lifetime, erosion of traditional family structures). moreover, up until today not all population groups can benefi t equally from the health progress (health inequalities). therefore, this special issue has its focus on recent developments in the context of the topics private life choices, employment and health and will discuss their interdependencies (family and employment) regarding the development of health inequalities. the fi rst two articles both deal with issues regarding the relationship between employment and health with a particular focus on the aspect of social change. in their article “can we really (all) work longer? trends in healthy life expectancy according to social stratum in germany”, rainer schulze and alexander unger ask the question whether healthy life years have increased along with the increase in life expectancy and whether all population groups (i.e. three different income groups and three different educational backgrounds) equally benefi t from this positive development. as a basis for their empirical analyses, they used the socio-economic panel (soep), as its long observation period allows analyses spanning almost three decades. thus, after a comparison of the years 1989, 1999 and 2009, the authors were able to show that healthy life years have increased in both men and women. however, although all social classes benefi t from this gain in healthy life years, the study also showed that regarding healthy life expectancy, social differences have increased over this period of time. this means that health inequalities between different social classes are rising. with these results of life chances that turn out to be so unequally distributed when looking at social class, the initial idea of a longer working life time for all cannot be followed through. the results rather suggest a more fl exible handling of the standard retirement age. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 541-544 (date of release: 30.09.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-17en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-17en4 • rainer unger, alexander schulze542 the second article by monika jungbauer-gans and gerhard krug “changes in employed people’s health satisfaction” also uses the long observation period of the soep from 1985 to 2009. contrary to the fi rst article, which primarily focused on a description of health conditions over a certain time period and sorted by social class, these two authors examine the causes of changes in health conditions, more precisely whether individual changes in health during this time period can be traced back to changing employment conditions (e.g. fi xed-term contracts, changes in pay, change in working hours, job security, assessment of the economic situation, company size, autonomy in job assignments). in order to determine the impact of the employment situation in explaining the change in health satisfaction, the blinder/ oaxaca decomposition was used. on the one hand, their results indicate that especially in western germany, a signifi cant proportion of the decrease in health satisfaction can be explained by the proportional increase in precarious employment relationships or with an increase in worries about the economical situation. on the other hand, however, the negative correlation between job security and health satisfaction has increased over the examined time period. for future research, it therefore seems worthwhile to investigate how future massive cuts on the labour market will affect subjective health. the next two articles deal with the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on health. are there, for example, favourable constellations of partners living together? the majority of previous research merely differentiated between health behaviour of married versus unmarried couples. the article of thomas klein, ingmar rapp and björn schneider – “the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight” – asks the question whether the changes in couples’ living arrangements might be an explaining factor of the changes in health behaviour of the population. for their analyses, they used the partnermarktsurvey 2009, in which n=2002 individuals aged 16-55 years were retrospectively asked about their relationship biography and their health behaviour. one of their results is that especially in marriages – and only in those where both partners live together – the spouses smoke signifi cantly less often but at the same time have a signifi cantly higher bodymass-index (bmi) than in all other couples’ living arrangements. smoking cessation is also linked to the shared household of married couples, which indicates that the protection effect is based on social control and support. furthermore, there is also evidence of adaptation processes regarding smoking behaviour. thus, smoking cessation is more likely when the partner never smoked or has given up smoking. in addition, however, there is also a tendency to conformity in smoking behaviour at the beginning of a relationship. the weight gain of spouses in the course of marriage, on the contrary, can be attributed to the longer relationship duration of married couples. the article by hilke brockmann – “unhealthy conditions? a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households” – focuses primarily on the question whether the change in private life choices, especially increasing divorce rates, have an impact on the health of younger children. she also uses data from the soep, which has been providing biographical information of mothers and their newborns as well as small children since 2002. by using panel models with private life choices, employment and health • 543 fi xed effects, she controls for possible selection processes, so that a causal explanation becomes possible. some of the results are that the children of non-married individuals have a lower birth weight (even when controlling for additional factors) as well as that a divorce does have long-lasting health-related consequences, as refl ected for example in a deviation of the bmi, whereas sociodemographic characteristics of the household have no infl uence. it could also be shown that the mental constitution of the mother is far more important for the healthy well-being of the child than fi nancial resources. in the fi nal article “the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health“, which was written by christiane gross und peter kriwy, the authors examine the question to what extent causal mechanisms of the the place of residence have an effect on the individual health status. they used the soep data base of the year 2006 and additionally drew on regional information on the basis of the regional units (raumordnungsregionen) of the microcensus 2005, which were then analysed using multilevel models. here, the infl uence of causal mechanisms in the form of inequality and level effects could also be shown when controlling for individual socio-economic infl uences. for example, in educationally disparate regions, members of less-educated groups have particularly low and members of well-educated groups particularly high health chances (especially in women). a high unemployment rate, however, increases the negative effect of individual unemployment on health (especially in men). in summary, it can be stated that the articles have mainly shown that a highly differentiated argumentation is required in order to depict the complex correlations between social characteristics and health. this often puts high requirements on the available data. some of the questions posed, such as the one asking for the change in healthy life expectancy or for the impact of the employment situation on health, use the advantages of the long observation period of the soep. other questions use the innovations such data are affi liated with, as in the article which uses the information of interviewed mothers about their newborns and small children regarding the infl uence of divorce on various health variables. furthermore, these data also offer the possibility to investigate regional aspects, as for example when looking at the infl uence of regional inequality structures on health. other studies, which for example ask for the correlation between couples’ living arrangements and health show that retrospectively collect relationship biographies (as in the case of the partnermarktsurvey 2009) are also suited and offer some advantages, such as when capturing couples living apart. dr. rainer unger ( ). universität bremen, zentrum für sozialpolitik, 28359 bremen, germany. e-mail: r.unger@zes.uni-bremen.de url: http://www.zes.uni-bremen.de/das-zentrum/organisation/mitglieder/rainer-unger/ dr. alexander schulze. johannes gutenberg-universität mainz, institut für soziologie, 55099 mainz, germany. e-mail: schulal@uni-mainz.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-mainz.de/fb02/hradil/118.php © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) paradigm shift in demography? editorial to the special issue “tempo effects in demographic period indicators” marc luy demography mainly defi nes itself – in contrast to other disciplines of the social sciences – through the indicators resulting from its range of methods, like the “number of children per woman”, “divorces per marriage” or “average life expectancy”. derived from the period perspective these indicators are the basis of many studies in the social sciences and also for projecting future trends. until today, theoretical approaches are rare in demography. consequently, demography is still a mainly quantitative discipline, however one with important interdisciplinary character since on the one hand all areas of the social sciences are dependent on demographic indicators and on the other hand demography itself uses the theories and hypotheses of its neighbouring disciplines. in recent years, however, the basic and since many decades well established concept of demographic period estimation has been questioned. shortly before and after the turn of the millennium the demographers john bongaarts and griffi th feeney published two papers in which they showed that age-specifi c period rates – which are the basis of the most commonly used period indicators for fertility (total fertility rate) and mortality (life expectancy) – not only include the relative quantum of the demographic events but also so-called “tempo effects” (bongaarts/feeney 1998, 2002). these effects appear whenever the average age at which the analyzed event occurs changes during the period of observation. since in most applications demographic indicators are supposed to refl ect the currently realized fertility or experienced mortality, according to the authors tempo effects have to be seen as undesired distortions. therefore, bongaarts and feeney suggested to adjust demographic period indicators for tempo effects.1 with this comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 3 (2010): 409-414 (date of release: 15.09.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-10en8 1 in the german version of this issue we translate the terms “tempo adjustment” and “tempo-adjusted indicators” by “tempo-bereinigung” and “tempobereinigte indikatoren”. this is contradictory to my fi rst german publications on tempo effects where i used the term “tempostandardisiert” (luy 2009a, 2009b, 2011). after discussing this issue with several german speaking colleagues i came to the conclusion that the german term “bereinigung” fi ts bongaarts’ and feeney’s idea better than “standardisierung”. • marc luy410 proposal bongaarts and feeney strive for a paradigm shift in demographic analysis. the question is: will this change actually take place? the publications of bongaarts and feeney caused an intensive discussion among demographers which resulted in many workshops and special sessions at the most important international conferences. the papers presented at these events and the corresponding publications were dominated by opponents of the tempo approach. however, this should not be surprising and cannot be used as reason for its rejection since such developments are typical for scientifi c innovations and can be observed in several examples in the history of science. nevertheless, i was also convinced by the arguments of the “tempo opponents” for several years. this changed, however, when i had to prepare a lecture on “special methods in demography” at the university of rostock in 2005, in which i intended to demonstrate the unreasonable concept of tempo adjustment to the students. while modelling some examples for representing the relationships i realized that the tempo approach is not unreasonable at all and that the arguments of the tempo opponents are – according to myself – to some extent based on misunderstandings of bongaarts’ and feeney’s approach. although many methodological issues concerning tempo adjustment are still unsolved and require further intensive research i am by now convinced of the tempo approach. consequently, i apply it in my empirical studies whenever possible or i consider at least the possibility that tempo effects infl uence the level of as well as differentials in conventional period indicators. i expect that similar changes in the thinking of the entire demographic community will occur and that tempo-adjusted measures will become established as key or at least additional period indicators in the future. however, tempo-adjusted indicators are still far from being a demographic standard. but there is increasing evidence that the development proceeds in this direction. especially in fertility research tempo adjustment is spreading increasingly. the discussion on the analysis of mortality, however, is still dominated by the tempo opponents, although a rethinking among demographers seems to begin here as well. the dispute among demographers is not irrelevant: it has been shown for the analysis of both fertility and mortality that tempo adjustment can lead to very different conclusions compared to the use of conventional indicators (see e.g. the analysis of fertility conditions in europe by goldstein et al. 2009 or of mortality differences between western and eastern germany by luy 2006). until today the discourse took more or less exclusively place in the english literature. therefore, i am very grateful to the editors of comparative population studies—zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft for offering me the opportunity to coordinate a special issue on that topic. the bilingual publication of this journal makes it possible to introduce the tempo approach to the german demographic literature. moreover, the papers of this special issue should also provide very important contributions and new thought-provoking impulses to the international discussion. the fi rst paper “tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis” by myself provides a general overview of the basic ideas of bongaarts and feeney and the previous discussion on the tempo approach (luy 2010). it is the product of different lectures and several talks which i gave in recent years on this subject. paradigm shift in demography? • 411 the main aim of the paper is to answer typically arising questions such as “what do tempo-adjusted indicators measure?” or “why and for what purpose should i use them?”. another aim is to dissolve a further confusing aspect of the tempo approach. with regard to tempo effects in fertility and mortality it is often argued that both processes are fundamentally different, and therefore the idea of tempo adjustment could not be simply transferred from one demographic process to the other: every human must die, but some women do not only postpone giving birth, but they do not get any (further) children at all. for the tempo approach, however, it is not of signifi cance when the postponed events occur. likewise it does not matter whether the considered indicator refl ects demographic quantum (e.g. the total fertility rate) or tempo (e.g. life expectancy). i hope that this article (together with the other papers of this issue) help(s) to clarify such questions and allow(s) more demographers and scholars from related subjects to get a better understanding of the tempo approach. the second paper “mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic” by griffi th feeney develops a discrete approach to describing and analyzing distortions in indicators for period mortality caused by tempo effects (feeney 2010). the main aim of this article is to illustrate the idea of bongaarts and feeney with regard to the analysis of mortality – which is for many scholars more diffi cult to follow. christian wegner’s paper “tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates” builds on the thoughts of griffi th feeney and shows that tempo effects emerge in each of the three different variants to calculate age-specifi c death rates as the basis of period life tables (wegner 2010). so far, the existence of tempo effects in mortality has been only demonstrated and discussed regarding one way of calculation, and thus this paper provides an important extension of the respective methodological discussion. the main innovation of this paper, however, is the differentiation between two types of tempo effects which have different impacts on the three calculation variants of the death rate. the two last papers deal with tempo effects and demographic indicators regarding fertility. first, marc luy and olga pötzsch present estimates of the tempoadjusted total fertility rate in western and eastern germany from 1955 to 2008 (luy/ pötzsch 2010). with this paper the authors fi ll a gap in demographic research on fertility in germany since a description of trends in the tempo-adjusted tfr did not exist so far. this is a consequence of the fact that the necessary data was not available in offi cial german population statistics until recently. this changed with the supplement of the population statistics act in 2007, making it possible to calculate the tempo-adjusted tfr for germany with offi cial population data from 2009 on. to estimate the tempo-adjusted tfr for the second half of the 20th and the fi rst years of the 21st century luy and pötzsch used several alternative data sources from which the necessary information was derived. in the fi fth paper entitled “misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr: should we stop using it?” tomáš sobotka and wolfgang lutz discuss several politically relevant questions and come to the conclusion that the conventional tfr is inappropriate for practical application since it frequently leads to incorrect interpretations of period fertility levels and trends (sobotka/lutz 2010). this can result in distorted policy conclusions and, potentially, • marc luy412 in misguided policies. the authors present the tempo-adjusted tfr as a meaningful alternative indicator. altogether this collection of papers provides a broad overview of the idea, the methodological implementation and the practical implications of bongaarts’ and feeney’s tempo approach. empirical examples help to demonstrate the specifi c aspects in a comprehensible manner. this is an important extension of the previous discussion of tempo effects which lacks practically relevant questions in large parts. insiders probably realize that the authors of this special issue are predominantly affi liated to the vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences (vid). this is due to the fact that during the last years, tempo effects became one of the main research topics of the vid, and thus many demographers who work on that subject are associated with this institute. the discussions and seminars held at the vid resulted not only in support, further development and empirical application of tempo-adjustment but also in alternative methodological approaches (e.g. ediev 2011). as a consequence it must be admitted that this special issue mainly refl ects the points of view of supporters of the tempo approach. thus, although all papers went through the standard peer-review process, it cannot be ruled out that they contain some kind of “pro-tempo-bias”. therefore, however, this collection of papers constitutes a fair counterpart of the previous publications which – as already mentioned – were dominated by tempo-opponents (see e.g. van imhoff 2001 and schoen 2004 with regard to fertility and the collection of papers in barbi et al. 2008 with regard to mortality analysis). for each of the articles in this special issue it is important to keep in mind that tempo adjustment exclusively concerns period indicators and is by no means related to the estimation of cohort levels and trends. the differentiation between period and cohort perspective is more diffi cult than it might seem at fi rst glance. mixing up these two perspectives and the wrong assumption that bongaarts and feeney introduced tempo adjustment to estimate cohort conditions are the most common sources for misunderstandings and confusions regarding the tempo approach. with the hope that this remark guides readers to understand the basic idea of bongaarts and feeney better, i wish everyone interested in developments in demography a stimulating reading. references barbi, elisabetta; bongaarts, john; vaupel, james w. (eds.) 2008: how long do we live? demographic models and refl ections on tempo effects. demographic research monographs 5. leipzig: springer. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 1998: on the quantum and tempo of fertility. in: population and development review 24,2: 271-291 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00560.x]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2002: how long do we live? in: population and development review 28,1: 13-29 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2002.00013.x]. ediev, dalkhat m. 2011: life expectancy in developed countries is higher than conventionally estimated. implications from improved measurement of human longevity. in: population ageing 4,1-2: 5-32 [doi: 10.1007/s12062-011-9040-x]. paradigm shift in demography? • 413 feeney, griffi th 2010: mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 483-496 [doi: 10.4232/10. cpos-2010-12en]. goldstein, joshua r.; sobotka, tomáš; jasilioniene, aiva 2009: the end of “lowest-low” fertility? in: population and development review 35,4: 663-699 [doi: 10.1111/j.17284457.2009.00304.x]. luy, marc 2006: mortality tempo-adjustment: an empirical application. in: demographic research 15,21: 561-590 [doi:10.4054/demres.2006.15.21]. luy, marc 2009a: der einfl uss von tempo-effekten auf die ost-west-deutschen unterschiede in der lebenserwartung. in: cassens, insa; luy, marc; scholz, rembrandt d. (eds.): die bevölkerung in ostund westdeutschland. demografi sche, gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche entwicklungen seit der wende. wiesbaden: vs-verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 140-168. luy, marc 2009b: empirische bestandsaufnahme der bevölkerungsentwicklung in ost und westdeutschland. in: schubarth, wilfried; speck, karsten (eds.): regionale abwanderung jugendlicher. theoretische analysen, empirische befunde und politische gegenstrategien. weinheim/munich: juventa, 43-67. luy, marc 2010: tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 415-446 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-11en]. luy, marc 2011: demografi e. in: otto, hans-uwe; thiersch, hans (eds.): handbuch soziale arbeit. munich: reinhardt: 221-227. luy, marc; pötzsch, olga 2010: estimates of the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate in western and eastern germany, 1955-2008. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 605-636 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-201014en]. schoen, robert 2004: timing effects and the interpretation of period fertility. in: demography 41,4: 801-819 [doi: 10.1353/dem.2004.0036]. sobotka, tomáš; lutz, wolfgang 2010: misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr: should we stop using it? in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 637-664 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-15en]. van imhoff, evert 2001: on the impossibility of inferring cohort fertility measures from period fertility measures. in: demographic research 5,2: 23-64 [doi:10.4054/ demres.2001.5.2]: wegner, christian 2010: tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 543-568 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-13en]. dr. marc luy ( ). vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences, wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: mail@marcluy.eu url: http://www.marcluy.eu published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved editorial to the special issue „fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland“ tomas frejka, alexia prskawetz over the past several years, the interest for childbearing issues and trends has increased considerably among politicians, scientists, journalists and the general public in austria, germany and switzerland. low fertility and the prospects of population ageing have triggered the interest. coverage of this topic often focused on concerns to sustain economic growth and the social welfare system. against this background, an interdisciplinary working group of experts was established in 2009 with the aim to prepare a “state of the art”-report on “a future with children – fertility and social development in germany, austria and switzerland”, conducted under the leadership of the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina, funded by the jacobs foundation. contrary to the “defi cit-oriented” viewpoint of having too few children, the aim of the group was to offer a constructive, future-oriented discussion on the causes of low fertility in the three countries, austria, germany and switzerland. four subgroups were established focusing on the following topics: “history and theory of population development”, “demographic analysis of fertility development”, “family development and policy, and medical aspects of fecundity and its relevance for society”. the report, which was fi nalised in autumn 2011, will be published by campus under the title ”zukunft mit kindern. fertilität und gesellschaftliche entwicklung in deutschland, österreich und der schweiz” (stock et al. 2012). the book includes chapters on “fertility in a historical perspective”, “theories of fertility”, “demographic analysis of fertility developments”, “a family policy for children and parents”, “medical and biological aspects of fertility” and summary chapters reviewing myths and legends, main messages, and recommendations. the goal of this cpos volume is to discuss important fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland. results of the research undertaken by the subgroup “demographic analysis of fertility development” are presented. for most of the past century, cohort and period fertility in austria, germany and switzerland were among the lowest in europe, especially compared to other west european countries. this is true notably since the early 1970s. a number of fertility related issues are explored: women’s parity distribution, childlessness, the correlation of fertility and education and the effect of migration on fertility. special attention is devoted to the quality and availability of fertility data, the changing age structure of fertility, the number of children women desire, the effects of low fertility on changes in the comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 251-256 (date of release: 06.09.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-19en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-19en1 • tomas frejka, alexia prskawetz252 population age structure, the spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends and the role of fertility assumptions in population projections. in the fi rst paper, tomáš sobotka performs a thorough demographic analysis of childbearing trends in the three german-speaking countries while focusing on the question posed in the title of the paper: is there a common fertility pattern in these three countries? in general, the answer is positive. but there are also signifi cant differences, especially between eastern and western germany. the relatively low fertility in the three countries is mainly due to high levels of childlessness and low fertility intentions, particularly among better-educated women. over the past four decades, total fertility rates have been around 1.5 births per woman. total cohort fertility rates have been marginally higher than period rates, indicating an ongoing moderate trend of childbearing postponement. cohort parity distribution trends indicate a continuation of the two-child family model. however, in eastern germany, the one-child family model steadily increases. at the same time, childlessness is on the rise in the three countries, reaching levels of above 20 %. sobotka argues that completed fertility is likely to stabilise at the level of approximately 1.6 births per woman. an ongoing retreat of marriages and a shift to cohabitation, non-residential partnerships (lat), single living, and a prolonged stay in the parental home, all inevitably lead to an increasing number of children born out-of-wedlock. in its effect on total fertility, the negative educational gradient is intensifi ed by a declining share of women with no or only elementary education. relatively high childbearing among immigrants has a moderate positive effect on total fertility. in the european context, austria, germany and switzerland have an older population, lower fertility, slower population growth, later childbearing and higher levels of childlessness. these demographic features are linked with historically intrinsic societal structures, such as a strict division of gender roles in childrearing, long withdrawal of mothers from the labour market, perceived diffi culties of combining work and family life, a negative perception of working mothers and childcare during the fi rst three years of a child’s life. the quality and availability of data are discussed in the second paper by michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher and ina jaschinski. a lack of long series of data from registration systems of live births, in particular by biological birth order, as the base for deriving fertility measures, is the main problem in all three countries. reforms to address this issue were implemented in austria in 1984, in switzerland in 1998 and in germany in 2008. other sources of data used for analysing fertility are censuses, micro censuses and surveys. detailed reviews and evaluations are presented for each country. comparing the available data of the three countries, germany stands out with several high quality panel studies. in austria, the quality of population statistics is very good and long-enough series of data for analysis will soon be available due to the reforms of 1984. in switzerland, however, such data only became available as late as 2006, and there is a lack of surveys. the authors suggest that the introduction of population registers containing fertility and migration histories would provide a solid base for fertility investigations. at present, relevant data for all three countries are assembled in the human fertility database fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland • 253 of the max planck institute for demographic research and the vienna institute of demography. in the third paper, tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka and karel neels introduce improved methods for analysing cohort childbearing postponement (fertility decline at young ages) and recuperation (a compensatory fertility increase at older reproductive ages). the analytical methods are then used for developing new projection scenarios. this work deals with two models: the basic benchmark model elaborated by frejka and associates and the relational model developed by lesthaeghe. these new analytical methods focus on the importance of selecting appropriate base cohorts, on the need for separate order-specifi c analyses, and on the correct identifi cation of the age of maximum decline of the cumulated childbearing rates compared to the base cohort. contemporary cohort fertility differences between populations are explained by three key indicators of the postponement transition: the initial fertility level, the absolute fertility decline at younger ages, and the relative degree of fertility recuperation at older ages. in austria, germany and switzerland, the tendency of recuperation, of third and higher order and even of second order, was relatively weak compared to other west and north european populations, which explains much of the low fertility in these countries. it appears that fertility will remain relatively stable in these three countries in the near future. the 1980 completed cohort fertility rate (ccfr) was projected at about 1.6 births per woman for austria and at about 1.55 for switzerland. for germany, comparable data were not available, but it can be assumed that the projected 1980 ccfr is likely to be at a similar level. the measurement of reproductive decisions is discussed in the fourth paper by dimiter philipov and laura bernardi. it focuses on the operationalisation of two measures: fertility ideals and fertility intentions. in distinction to many other analyses of fertility ideals and intentions, the unique contribution of this paper is to offer a discussion on the validation of the concepts. based on various surveys in austria, germany and switzerland, the authors present estimates of ideal and intended fertility and compare it to actual fertility. although several ambiguities may arise in the question on ideals, the authors argue that those questions should not be left out, as recently happened in several other surveys. instead, better formulations of the relevant questions should be designed. the difference between fertility ideals/intentions and actual fertility is often used to promote more active family policies that help to close the gap. however, the fertility gap itself may be wrongly measured, if cohort and period measures are compared. a further ambiguity arises through the ecological fallacy by interpreting a macro-level phenomenon, such as the fertility gap, as a micro-level childbearing “gap”. a theoretical and empirical study of regional fertility differentials is the focus of the fi fth paper by stuart basten, johannes huinink, and sebastian klüsener. the theoretical discussion deals with spatial and compositional contextual factors infl uencing spatial fertility differentials. these include the material and institutional infrastructure, economic conditions and prospects in the local labor market, sociostructural factors in the area of residence, cultural factors which contribute to a localised social climate and embeddedness in local social contexts. the empirical • tomas frejka, alexia prskawetz254 analysis demonstrated that at the macro-regional level the overall fertility trends in austria, (western and eastern) germany and switzerland have been characterised by a process of convergence in recent decades. at the micro-regional level, fertility trends may very well diverge. such was the case in the study conducted in the city of bremen. in the fi nal chapter, joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski and alexia prskawetz review the assumptions for future fertility trends that formed the basis of population projections in austria, germany and switzerland in recent decades. overall, the analytic procedure was to assume the persistence of the present total fertility rate. in general, this is considered reasonable. at the same time, the authors argue and explicitly demonstrate that fertility forecasts were inconsistent regarding assumptions on changes in the mean age of childbearing, the level of fertility and projections of the period total fertility rate. while statistical offi ces project a stagnation in the increase of the mean age at fi rst child birth in the future, this trend was not refl ected in the projected levels of total fertility rates. suggestions of how to improve fertility projections are outlined. on the basis of fertility projections for germany, it is demonstrated how a consistent interrelation of an increase in period fertility and its convergence to cohort fertility can be modeled, when postponement of fertility in older age groups comes to a halt. this volume represents an up-to-date compendium of fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland, including a thorough discussion of measurement issues and an analysis of projection methods. concerning fertility dynamics, the following fundamental observations are highlighted by the expert group: the difference between cohort and period fertility needs to be understood and communicated. when births are being postponed, there are less of them per year, i.e. period fertility is defl ated. this is what has been happening in recent decades. all three countries have experienced a considerable decline of period fertility rates to levels between 1.4 and 1.6 between the mid-1960s through to the mid-1980s; they are among the countries with the lowest fertility in europe. the fertility rate of cohorts born in 1968 was 1.6 in austria, 1.7 in switzerland and 1.5 in germany. fertility differentials between countries have declined, and this convergence was even faster between regions within countries. the effect of immigrant fertility on overall period fertility is lower than generally perceived by the public and is in the order of 0.05 to 0.12 children per woman in most european countries. the postponement of childbearing to higher ages has not been followed by a recuperation of fertility to the same extent as in other european countries. fertility intentions are lower as compared to other countries in europe. however, measurement of fertility intentions and the fertility gap are often imprecise, as they rely on fl awed concepts of fertility intentions and falsely compare cohort levels of fertility with observed period measures of fertility. fertility projections are key ingredients for any population projections. the current practice of fertility projections often lacks a clear distinction between quantum and tempo assumptions on fertility. fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland • 255 acknowledgements this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly established by the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina and is funded by the jacobs foundation. as guest editors of the special issue we are particularly grateful to ina jaschinski for proofreading all papers and assisting in the german translation. reference stock, günter; bertram, hans; fürnkranz-prskawetz, alexia; holzgreve, wolfgang; kohli, martin; staudinger, ursula m. 2012: zukunft mit kindern. fertilität und gesellschaftliche entwicklung in deutschland, österreich und der schweiz. campus. frankfurt. tomas frejka und alexia prskawetz ( ). vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences, wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital and vienna university of technology, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com; alexia.fuernkranz-prskawetz@oeaw.ac.at url: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/staff/staff_alexia_fuernkranz.shtml © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz sybille steinmetz e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) reviewers of the journal in 2012 and 2013 comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. / jg. 38, 4 (2013) sajeda amin, new york viola angelini, groningen oliver arránz becker, mannheim nicoletta balbo, groningen stephan beetz, mittweida caroline berghammer, vienna matthias bernt, erkner axel börsch-supan, munich martina brandt, munich isabella buber-ennser, vienna martin bujard, wiesbaden john cleland, london david coleman, oxford florian coulmas, tokyo marloes de lange, nijmegen gabriele doblhammer, rostock marcel erlinghagen, duisburg-essen anette fasang, berlin paul gans, mannheim martin gasche, munich jacques-antoine gauthier, lausanne rolf gehrmann, frankfurt (oder) birgit glorius, chemnitz sabine gründler, wiesbaden christophe z. guilmoto, paris werner haug, istanbul marina hennig, mainz sara hertog, new york paul hill, aachen felicitas hillmann, berlin heather hofmeister, frankfurt stefan hradil, mainz gavin jones, singapore mathilde kersting, dortmund thomas kistemann, bonn matthias knuth, duisburg-essen dirk konietzka, braunschweig bernhard köppen, landau andrej kvederi, den haag george w. leeson, oxford ursula lehr, berlin ron lesthaeghe, brussels ruth limmer, nuremberg carson mencken, waco (texas) peter meusburger, heidelberg katja möhring, cologne andreas motel-klingebiel, berlin clara mulder, groningen robert naderi, wiesbaden bernhard nauck, chemnitz rosemarie nave-herz, oldenburg claudia neu, mönchengladbach jochen oltmer, osnabrück illona ostner, göttingen notburga ott, bochum hans peeters, leuven heike pethe, amsterdam axel priebs, hanover annette queißer-wahrendorf, mainz jonas radl, madrid helmut rainer, munich ingmar rapp, heidelberg roland rau, rostock phil rees, leeds matthias reitzle, jena harald rost, bamberg claus schlömer, bonn ansgar schmitz-veltin, stuttgart beate schwarz, zurich tomas sobotka, vienna zsolt speder, budapest erhard stölting, potsdam marcel szydlik, zurich ulrich teichler, kassel marcel thum, dresden silke übelmesser, jena michael wagner, cologne andreas weigl, vienna peter wirth, dresden ulrike zartler, vienna hu zhan, shanghai gang zheng, beijing the publisher and the editorial team wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable work for cpos! © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) editorial_1_2010.indd editorial dear reader after 34 volumes of zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft – demographie, the journal will continue under its new name comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (cpos), in a substantially altered form. cpos will maintain its mission as a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary scientifi c journal on demography and population studies. yet, from 2010 it appears online on an open access basis, and all articles are published in english and german. the journal appears four times a year. on average, two special issues per year are expected to be coordinated by guest editors. exclusively unpublished peer-reviewed research papers in demography and related fi elds are published. the papers cover a wide range of topics on demography, as well as on population or family studies with a focus on empirical research, theory, and methods. the journal features articles with a spatial or comparative perspective on regional issues emphasising the german-speaking countries and europe or on population issues on a global scale. the editorial policy is guided by a scientifi c advisory board. we are glad to be able to rely on the expertise and experience of jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden), paul gans (mannheim), johannes huinink (bremen), dirk j. van de kaa (den haag), marc luy (wien), notburga ott (bochum), peter preisendörfer (mainz). all submissions will undergo a double blind review process by two independent reviewers. the review process is supported by a board of reviewers. the journal is thankful for the collaboration of a number of distinct scientists: martin abraham (erlangen), laura bernardi (lausanne), hansjörg bucher (bonn), claudia diehl (göttingen), andreas diekmann (zürich), gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock), henriette engelhardtwölfl er (bamberg), e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld), alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien), beat fux (zürich), joshua goldstein (rostock), karsten hank (mannheim), sonja haug (regensburg), franz-josef kemper (berlin), hanspeter kohler (philadelphia), michaela kreyenfeld (rostock), aart c. liefbroer (den haag), kurt lüscher (konstanz), dimiter philipov (wien), thomáš sobotka (wien), heike trappe (rostock). accepted papers will be published online immediately. the translation service provided by the journal allows bilingual publication. the authors will be granted permission to re-distribute or re-print their articles or parts of it. cpos endeavours to attain widest distribution and acceptance in scientifi c circles and in the political arena. the journal content is indexed; articles are identifi ed by doi and urn locators and deposited for long term storage in the german federal library. generally, libraries are encouraged to subscribe to the online version free of charge. selected libraries will be provided with printed copies as well. for the issues from 2010 oncomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 1 (2010): 3-4 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-01en8 • norbert f. schneider4 wards, contributions in english or german are welcome at all times. guest editors for special issues may apply as well. cpos operates a database with reviewers for which qualifi ed persons can register. we would like to thank all former subscribers of zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft – demographie for their commitment. conditions for scientifi c publishing are changing fast. yet we will continue our efforts to meet the challenge and provide an up to date scientifi c publication and communication platform for authors and readers. we hope to welcome you soon at our new free journal at www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. for the editorial team prof. dr. norbert f. schneider director of the federal institute for population research published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext editorial on the special issue “ageing populations, reversing early retirement and the economic situation of older people in modern societies” sandra buchholz, hans-peter blossfeld this special issue of comparative population studies addresses the economic wellbeing and employment chances of the population aged 50 years and older. one of the major challenges facing modern societies today and in future is a severe demographic ageing. due to low fertility rates as well as rising life expectancy older people become an increasingly important part of the population in most developed countries. from both, the scientifi c as well as the political point of view, it is important to gain a better understanding about the economic situation of the older population as well as their labour market integration. the contributions of this special issue shed light onto these topics from different, complementing perspectives. the fi rst main aspect addressed by this special issue is the employment situation of older people in europe and partly beyond. more and more, the labour markets of modern societies have to be able to integrate older workers more successfully. for several decades, most western societies have relied on quite the opposite, namely on systematically pushing older workers out of employment (kohli et al. 1991; gruber/wise 1999, 2004; börsch-supan 2000; blossfeld et al. 2006; ebbinghaus 2006; blossfeld et al. 2011). the expansion of early retirement schemes was used in modern economies to relieve national labour markets since the early 1970s. yet, the growing generational imbalance and the increasing share of older people have put pension systems of modern societies under pressure. alongside this, the shrinking proportion of young workers will sooner or later result in increasing labour shortages in modern societies making it more and more important for competitive economies to maintain older people in employment instead of sending them into early retirement. indeed, more recently a clear pension policy change can be observed in western societies and governments, especially in european countries, have tried to increase the labour market attachment of older employees by retrenching early retirement options (see, for example, the “eu lisbon agenda 2010” as well as the “europe 2020” targets). the fi rst two contributions of this special issue by ebbinghaus/ hofäcker and buchholz/rinklake/blossfeld dedicate themselves to the question of the effects of these recent policy attempts for reversing early retirement. the article by ebbinhaus/hofäcker adopts an internationally comparative macro perspective on this issue. the authors show that there indeed has been a reversal of early retirement in most modern societies in the past years. however, at the comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 4 (2013): 797-800 (date of release: 31.12.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-25en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-25en8 • sandra buchholz, hans-peter blossfeld798 same time there are signifi cant differences between western countries regarding the reversal of early retirement. ebbinghaus/hofäcker address the question of how these differences in reversing early retirement can be explained. for this purpose, the authors systematically review and discuss the role of diverse institutional factors by comparatively analysing selected european countries, the usa and japan. by doing so, ebbinghaus/hofäcker make an important contribution to the existing literature of early retirement. whilst previous research mainly aimed at discussing cross-national variations in using early retirement, a systematic comparative analysis of the differing success of reversing early retirement has been hardly addressed up to now. in their meta-analysis ebbingshaus/hofäcker identify four central factors which lead to a better understanding as well as a better explanation of the most recent reversal of retirement – namely pull, push, retrenchment, and stay factors. based on their comparative analysis, ebbinghaus/hofäcker conclude that “yet, reversing early retirement does not only require a gradual scaling back or abolishment of these institutional forces (retrenchment of pull factors), but it also depends on active ageing policies that help maintain older workers’ employment.” (p. 834). the second article of this special issue by buchholz/rinklake/blossfeld takes up this point. however, compared to ebbinghaus/hofäcker, this article does not addresses the reversal of early retirement from an international comparative macroperspective but from a micro-level perspective for one country, which is germany. germany is one of the countries which made massive use of early retirement in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. however, as other european countries, germany has applied a signifi cant pension policy change in the recent past by retrenching early retirement pathways and increasing fi nancial penalties for early labour market withdrawal. indeed, germany is one of the countries showing a substantial reversal of early retirement and a comparatively strong increase of old age employment rates on the macro-level. yet, in their longitudinal empirical study, buchholz/rinklake/ blossfeld aim at studying the effects of the recent policy change on the individual micro-level. the authors specifi cally ask if there are parts of the older population that are not able to fulfi l the new policy expectation to maintain longer working lives and they discuss possible consequences for social inequalities in old age. this empirical study is a continuation of the authors’ research within the fl excareer project, funded by a dfg research grant. the fl excareer project aimed at analysing the effects of recent pension policy changes from an international comparative perspective. the detailed results for a total of ten modern societies have been published in an edited book volume in 2011 (blossfeld et al. 2011). though also the micro-level empirical study of buchholz/rinklake/blossfeld shows that younger cohorts of older workers postpone their transition to retirement, it also becomes clear that the postponement of retirement is not accompanied by longer employment lives of the entire population of older people. in fact, especially lower qualifi ed workers of recent cohorts are not able to meet the new expectation to maintain longer working lives, but are stuck in unemployment before reaching retirement. however, compared to previous cohorts of retirees, recent cohorts who become unemployed prior retirement are increasingly fi nancially burdened for their “failure”. hence, these micro-level results of buchholz/rinklake/blossfeld support the ageing populations, reversing early retirement • 799 argument of ebbingshaus/hofäcker that a successful reversal of early retirement should not only rely on abolishing early retirement incentives (i.e. on reducing the “pull factors”), but needs to be accompanied by reforms supporting the employment chances of (all) older people (i.e. by the strengthening of “stay factors”). the third contribution of this special issue by engelhardt/schmidt applies a different view on late labour market participation and labour market exits. whilst international comparative research has broadly addressed the role of national institutions on old age employment rates and early retirement, engelhardt/schmidt aim at understanding the role of other factors (potentially) infl uencing cross-national differences in late careers – namely, country-specifi c demographic, economic and labour-market structures. specifi cally, engelhardt/schmidt ask if and how intragenerational competition, intergenerational substitution, level of education, unemployment rates, the extent of part-time work and the amount of service jobs infl uence late careers. using data of the fi rst two waves of share and merging macro-level indicators from eurostat, engelhardt/schmidt analyse labour market participation and transition to inactivity of older males in eleven european countries. applying a multivariate multi-level framework, the empirical study of engelhardt/schmidt innovatively tries to disentangle and quantify the effect of country-specifi c factors and the relative impact of specifi c socio-demographic and socio-economic factors on international late careers. the results of engelhardt/schmidt indicate that late labour market participation and labour market exits are mainly driven by long-term unemployment and the share of highly educated among the elderly. additionally, engelhardt/schmidt fi nd some evidence that intragenerational competition has an impact on late careers. intergenerational competition, however, does not seem to affect an early labour market exit or late labour market participation. while the fi rst three articles of this special issue address older people’s labour market integration, the fourth and fi nal article by kolb/skopek/blossfeld sheds light onto a different and up to now largely neglected aspect, that is, older people’s situation of wealth. because housing is the core component of wealth among the older population in europe (skopek et al. 2012), in their empirical study kolb/skopek/ blossfeld concentrate on housing inequalities among older people in europe. going beyond the labour market and studying wealth is essential, especially if one aims at understanding the (economic) situation of the older population. current research (jäntti 2006; keister/moeller 2000) has shown that the correlation between wealth and (labour market) income is less strong than expected. in particular for older people, wealth is important, especially once they withdraw from active labour market participation. by studying not only home ownership rates but also housing values, kolb/skopek/blossfeld ask if there are two dimensions of inequalities in housing in europe. using share data, the authors show that housing inequality in europe indeed is a two-dimensional phenomenon. additionally, their study highlights that especially for an appropriate understanding of the economic situation of older people, it is important to not only focus on (labour-market derived) income inequalities but also on their wealth position. especially in times marked by welfare state and public pension retrenchments, accumulated wealth will become more and more important for the economic well-being of the older population. • sandra buchholz, hans-peter blossfeld800 references blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; hofäcker, dirk (eds.) 2006: globalization, uncertainty and late careers in society. london/new york: routledge. blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; kurz, karin (eds.) 2011: aging population, globalization and the labor market. cheltenham. uk/northampton, ma, usa: edward elgar. börsch-supan, axel 2000: incentive effects of social security on labor force participation: evidence in germany and across europe. in: journal of public economics 78: 25-50. ebbinghaus, bernhard 2006: reforming early retirement in europe, japan and the usa. oxford: oxford university press. gruber, jonathan; wise, david 1999: social security and retirement around the world. chicago: university press. gruber, jonathan; wise, david 2004: social security programs and retirement around the world: micro-estimation. chicago: university press. jäntti, markus 2006: trends in the distribution of income and wealth: finland 1987-1998. in: wolff, edward n. (eds.): international perspectives on household wealth. cheltenham, uk/northampton ma, usa: edward elgar: 295-326. keister, lisa a.; moeller, stephanie 2000: wealth inequality in the united states. in: annual review of sociology 26: 63-81. kohli, martin; rein, martin; guillemard, anne-marie; van gunsteren, herman 1991: time for retirement: comparative studies of early exit from the labor force, cambridge/new york: cambridge university press. skopek, nora; kolb, kathrin; buchholz, sandra; blossfeld, hans-peter 2012: einkommensreich – vermögensarm? die zusammensetzung von vermögen und die bedeutung einzelner vermögenskomponenten im europäischen vergleich. in: berliner journal für soziologie 22,2: 163-187. prof. dr. sandra buchholz (), prof. dr. hans-peter blossfeld. university of bamberg, chair of sociology 1. bamberg, germany. e-mail: sandra.buchholz@uni-bamberg.de, hans-peter.blossfeld@uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/soz1/professor-dr-sandra-buchholz/ url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bamberg-graduate-schools/english/bagss/people/ faculty/hans-peter-blossfeld/ © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) editorial_englisch.indd editorial to the special issue “extending the late working life – prerequisites and risks” frank micheel population decline and ageing are the major future demographic trends that most developed countries have in common; these processes are caused by ongoing low fertility and increased longevity over the last four decades. germany is no exception here. this general population trend is also true for the supply side of the labour market. in the long run fewer and fewer young people will enter the labour market whilst a growing number of older workers will depart from the labour force. shrinking and ageing of the working force are expected to speed up between 2020 and 2030, when the large birth cohorts born between the 1950s and 1960s, are expected to withdraw from working (united nations 2010; dorbritz 2008; höhn et al. 2008, fuchs et al. 2011). however, shrinking and ageing of the labour force are by themselves not the main problems of labour markets or social policies when it comes to the fi scal consequences of demographic change. moreover, the combination of increased longevity and falling retirement age is the reason that will force policy makers to take action. according to this age/employment paradox (walker 2006: 79), reforms of the statutory pension system which lengthen the working life span are necessary in order to re-adjust the ratio between working population and retirees and thus stabilise the fi scal balance between contributions and benefi ts. not to mention the fact that reducing unemployment in general or promoting an earlier entry of young people into the labour market will additionally help to achieve fi scal sustainability retirement policies are not restricted to safeguard income in retirement age. they also have effects on governing the supply side of the labour market. the trends of the last forty years with respect to retirement policies and their consequences on the labour force participation of the elderly in germany can be described as a double paradigm shift of retirement policy (bäcker et al. 2009). the 1972 pension reform was the onset of decreasing retirement ages. older workers were now eligible to receive benefi ts from old-age pensions without any deductibles before reaching the age of 65. compared to previous birth cohorts older workers now had the opportunity to choose voluntary pre-retirement and thus extend their remaining years in enjoying retirement. on the other hand, older workers were advised to leave the labour market and were sent into retirement before reaching the legal retirement age in order to make room for younger workers. in this context, older people who had lost their jobs had signifi cantly lower chances to fi nd new jobs than their younger peers and thus often remained in long-term unemployment until reaching retirecomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 4 (2010): 703-708 (date of release: 26.01.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-16en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-16en4 • frank micheel704 ment age. furthermore, enterprises used pre-retirement programmes as a personnel strategy device to achieve juvenile age structures in their companies. a strong manifestation of this trend can be observed in the 1980s and in the early 1990s. to summarise this trend, one can say that early retirement became part of the “normal working biography” in germany refl ecting a social norm (wübbeke 1999; naegele/ krämer 2002; heywood et al. 2010; dietz/walwei 2011; kohli 2000). since the 1990s concerns about fi scal stability of the social security system led the german government to reverse the common practice of early retirement. several pension reforms were undertaken (e.g. long-term lowering of pension levels, or strengthening of occupational and private pension plans) forcing and/or encouraging older workers to stay longer in the workforce (e.g. bäcker et al. 2009). a recent major reform, the act to adjust the standard age limit to demographic developments and to strengthen the financial foundation of statutory pensions insurance (gesetz zur anpassung der regelaltersgrenze an die demografi sche entwicklung und zur stärkung der finanzierungsgrundlagen der gesetzlichen rentenversicherung) with a gradual increase of the legal retirement age for old-age pensions up to 67 years until 2029 seems to be a preliminary climax of this policy shift. this political measure requires an intensive debate how older workers are able and willing to extend their working lives beyond the current legal retirement age. particularly the serious discrepancy between the fact that the elderly still face disadvantages on the labour market and that they are simultaneously obliged to delay retirement has to be considered. against this background, improving working conditions of older workers and the recognition of their individual circumstances deserve a closer look as well in order to resolve this gap. the lion’s share of the german retirement literature deals with pre-retirement issues, whereas research studies about working in an age where most workers are already retired have been carried out rather infrequently (e.g. nilsson et al. 2011). this is quite understandable if we consider that for the majority of older workers in germany the employment situation is still diffi cult. as yet, working until the age of 65, the current legal retirement age for old-age pensions in germany, is more the exception than the rule, although labour participation rates of the elderly have increased in recent years (dietz/walwei 2011; brussig 2011). a strong interest for this topic can be mainly found in a growing body of us-literature on working in retirement age; this phenomenon is called bridge employment and refers to a time span between full engagement in working life and full retirement (von bonsdorff et al. 2009; gobeski/beehr 2009). which consequences do we expect, when we leave the macro-level perspective and focus on micro-level factors, which might explain the extension of working life? in the future, older workers will be more and more often confronted with economic and legal pressures when it comes to the timing of retirement. however, beyond these foreseeable pressures, there seems to be a lack of knowledge of the ability, the plans, the motivation, or the intentions of older workers with regard to an extension of late working life. as barnes-farrell (2003) for example pointed out, health and wealth are of course relevant factors affecting the timing of retirement, and particularly in the case of germany, we also fi nd various institutional factors relating to extending the late working life – prerequisites and risks • 705 transitions into retirement that explain the timing of retirement (radl 2007). beyond these aspects, we therefore seek for further variables that explain the decision to extend the working life, especially of one’s own accord. in this special issue, four papers pick up these aspects and try to shed more light on extending working life at the end of the working career. the fi rst paper „retirement at 67“ – findings on the employment situation of older female workers by barbara zimmer, verena leve, and gerhard naegele deals with consequences of the forthcoming gradual increase of the standard legal retirement age to 67 years especially for older female workers (zimmer et al. 2011). various problems of labour market issues are gender-specifi c. older women are generally more exposed to the risk of unemployment than men. they are more often confronted with age discriminating recruiting strategies than their male counterparts. interruptions of their working lives due to child-rearing or other family responsibilities and subsequent part time jobs are typical of women’s working careers. finally the opportunity structures in organisations regarding promotions, amount of wages, or the achievement of permanent jobs are not equally distributed between men and women. altogether women receive lower pension benefi ts in relation to men mirroring these cumulative disadvantages through their working lives (allmendinger 1994; leve et al. 2009). against this background, the article addresses the current working conditions of female workers and how they can be promoted with respect to their ability to prolong their late working lives. in the second paper activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work by leena maxin and jürgen deller, the authors developed a new concept of individual retirement arrangements in germany: silver work, which means that the individual is in employment while offi cially retired from the working career (maxin/ deller 2010). this concept is closely linked to research work on the concept of bridge employment, which is discussed predominantly in the u.s. literature. compared to the bridge employment concept, silver work can be brought into a broader political context; integrating silver workers into working life is discussed as a contribution to macroeconomic growth potential, and disburden pension systems as a fourth pillar of old age security (deller et al. 2009).1 in the third paper the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ willingness to continue working in retirement age by frank micheel, juliane roloff, and ines wickenheiser, the authors present how the intention to continue work in retirement age is associated with the socio-economic status of older workers. analogous to the notion that actual labour force participation of the elderly shows a u-shaped pattern in connection with their pre-retirement income (radl 2007), the association between socio-economic status and the willingness to extend working life displays a non-linear connection as well (micheel et al. 2011). 1 the fi rst pillar in germany is constituted by a compulsory public pension system run by the state. the second (occupational pension plans) and the third pillar (private savings) are mostly organised by private insurance and capital markets. the fi rst pillar is usually organised as a payas-you-go scheme, whereas the other pillars in general are fully funded schemes. • frank micheel706 in the fourth paper determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers and implications for the desire for continued employment by victoria büsch, dennis a.v. dittrich, and uta lieberum, the authors focus on the connection between aspects of work motivation, work ability and the intention to continue working beyond the retirement age. workers aged between 55 and 64 years were interviewed in this survey. the results show considerable differences between men and women: for men, the intention to continue working after having reached the retirement age shows a signifi cant correlation with the work motivation, whereas for women, the work ability has a signifi cant effect on the intention to continue working beyond the retirement age (büsch et al. 2010). in summary it can be said that this collection of papers will enhance the debates on the extension of working life until or beyond the current legal retirement age in germany. the articles expose relevant problems concerning the consequences of delaying the legal retirement age. furthermore, the papers provide various approaches towards solutions for policy makers and for management related to an ageing and shrinking workforce. retirement decisions – and the decision to delay retirement – are driven by individual preferences as well as occupational, legal, or societal circumstances. hopefully, the featured articles will give some valuable hints, new directions and inspiration for further debates in dealing with the upcoming demographic change and its impact on different areas of social life. references allmendinger, jutta 1994: lebensverlauf und sozialpolitik. die ungleichheit von mann und frau und ihr öffentlicher ertrag. frankfurt am main/new york: campus verlag. bäcker, gerhard et al. 2009: ältere arbeitnehmer. erwerbstätigkeit und soziale sicherheit im alter. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. barnes-farrell, janet l. 2003: beyond health and wealth: attitudinal and other infl uences on retirement decision-making. in: adams, gary a.; beehr, terry a. (eds.): retirement. reasons, processes, and results. new york: springer: 159–187. bonsdorff, monika e. von et al. 2009: the choice between retirement and bridge employment: a continuity theory and life course perspective. in: the international journal of aging and human development 69,2: 79–100 [doi: 10.2190/ag.69.2.a]. brussig, martin 2011: arbeit bis 65 bleibt nach wie vor die ausnahme. in: die bkk 99,8-9: 466–469. büsch, victoria; dittrich, dennis a.v.; lieberum, uta 2010: determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers and implications for the desire for continued employment. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,4: 931-958 [doi:10.4232/10.cpos-2010-20en] deller, jurgen; liedtke, patrick m.; maxin, leena m. 2009: old-age security and silver workers: an empirical survey identifi es challenges for companies, insurers and society. in: the geneva papers on risk and insurance issues and practice 34,1: 137–157 [doi: 10.1057/gpp.2008.44]. dietz, martin; walwei, ulrich 2011: germany – no country for old workers? in: zeitschrift für arbeitsmarktforschung 44,4: 363–376 [doi: 10.1007/s12651-011-0092-4]. extending the late working life – prerequisites and risks • 707 dorbritz, jürgen 2008: germany: family diversity with low actual and desired fertility. in: demographic research 19,17: 557–598 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2008.19.17]. fuchs, johann; söhnlein, doris; weber, brigitte 2011: projektion des arbeitskräfteangebots bis 2050: rückgang und alterung sind nicht mehr aufzuhalten. iab kurzbericht 16/2011. nürnberg [http://doku.iab.de/kurzber/2011/kb1611.pdf]. gobeski, kirsten t.; beehr, terry a. 2009: how retirees work: predictors of different types of bridge employment. in: journal of organizational behavior 30,3: 401–425 [doi: 10.1002/job.547]. heywood, john; jirjahn, uwe; tsertsvardze, georgi 2010: hiring older workers and employing older workers: german evidence. in: journal of population economics 23,2: 595–615 [doi: 10.1007/s00148-008-0214-7]. höhn, charlotte; mai, ralf; micheel, frank 2008: demographic change in germany. in: hamm, ingrid; seitz, helmut; werding, martin (eds.): demographic change in germany: the economic and fiscal consequences. berlin/new york: springer: 9–33. kohli, martin 2000: altersgrenzen als gesellschaftliches regulativ individueller lebensgestaltung: ein anachronismus? in: zeitschrift für gerontologie und geriatrie 33, supplement 1: s015-s023 [doi: 10.1007/s003910070003]. leve, verena; naegele, gerhard; sporket, mirko 2009: „rente mit 67“. voraussetzungen für die weiterarbeitsfähigkeit älterer arbeitnehmerinnen. in: zeitschrift für gerontologie und geriatrie 42,4: 287–291 [doi: 10.1007/s00391-009-0054-4]. maxin, leena m.; deller, jürgen 2010: activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,4: 801-832 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-18en]. micheel, frank; roloff, juliane; wickenheiser, ines 2011: the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ willingness to continue working in retirement age. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,4: 869-902 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-19en]. naegele, gerhard; krämer, katrin 2002: recent developments in the employment and retirement of older workers in germany. in: journal of aging & social policy 13,1: 69–92 [doi: 10.1300/j031v13n01_05]. nilsson, kerstin; hydbom, anna r.; rylander, lars 2011: factors infl uencing the decision to extend working life or retire. in: scandinavian journal of work, environment & health 37,6: 473–480 [doi: 10.5271/sjweh.3181]. radl, jonas 2007: individuelle determinanten des renteneintrittsalters. eine empirische analyse von übergängen in den ruhestand. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 36,1: 43–64. united nations 2010: world population ageing 2009. new york [http://www.un.org/esa/ population/publications/wpa2009/wpa2009-report.pdf]. walker, alan 2006: active ageing in employment: its meaning and potential. in: asiapacifi c review 13,1: 78–93 [doi:10.1080/13439000600697621]. wübbeke, christina 1999: der übergang von sozialversicherungspfl ichtiger beschäftigung in den rentenbezug zwischen sozialpolitischer steuerung und betrieblichen interessen. eine untersuchung der ursachen des frühverrentungstrends in westdeutschland für den zeitraum von 1975 bis 1990 auf der basis der iab-beschäftigtenstichprobe. in: mitteilungen aus der arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung 32,1: 102–117. zimmer, barbara; leve, verena; naegele, gerhard 2011: “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,4: 739-766 [doi: 10.4232/10. cpos-2010-17en]. frank micheel ( ). federal institute for population research, wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: frank.micheel@destatis.de url: www.bib-demografi e.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) kreyenfeld_et_al_englisch.indd order-specifi c fertility rates for germany estimates from perinatal statistics for the period 2001-2008 michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski abstract: until 2008, germany’s vital statistics did not include information on the biological order of each birth. this resulted in a dearth of important demographic indicators, such as the mean age at fi rst birth and the level of childlessness. researchers have tried to fi ll this gap by generating order-specifi c birth rates from survey data, and by combining survey data with vital statistics. this paper takes a different approach by using perinatal statistics to generate birth order-specifi c fertility rates for the period 2001 to 2008. perinatal statistics includes information on births that took place in german hospitals. out-of-hospital births, which account for about 2 % of all births, are not included in the perinatal statistics. in a sensitivity analysis, we show how robust our estimates are to the inclusion of out-of-hospital births. our general assessment is that the perinatal statistics is a valuable source for generating order-specifi c fertility rates, regardless of whether out-of-hospital births are included. keywords: birth order · fertility · germany · eastern and western germany · perinatal statistics 1 introduction across europe, we have witnessed a postponement of fi rst-time motherhood, and an increase in the share of women who remain childless throughout their lives (sobotka 2004). despite the obvious importance of these social changes, it is remarkable to recall that, until very recently, some countries did not provide suffi cient information to document this change in behaviour. important demographic indicators, such as the mean age at fi rst birth or the share of permanently childless women, were not available from vital statistics of countries such as austria, belgium, luxembourg, switzerland, germany, france and the uk, because order-specifi c fertility information were not recorded in these countries. most countries have since comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 2 (2010): 207-224 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-06en8 • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski208 reformed their vital statistics and statistical offi ces have started collecting data on births by biological order. austria did so in 1984; france in the year 1998, while england and wales are expected to ratify a regulation stipulating that order-specifi c data can be collected from 2011 onwards. germany’s statistical offi ce has collected this type of data since 2008, but has not published the data yet as the quality has not been fully checked. order-specifi c birth information will therefore soon be available for almost all european countries. however, we still lack order-specifi c fertility information for the past. researchers have tried to fi ll this gap by drawing on other sources. orderspecifi c fertility information has been generated from survey data (toulemon 2001; smallwood 2002). others have tried to combine survey data with vital statistics (birg et al. 1990; kreyenfeld 2002; handcock et al. 2000). this paper uses perinatal statistics to generate order-specifi c birth rates for the period 2001-2008, a period for which no birth order-specifi c information is available for germany. the perinatal statistics has been monitored by the bundesgeschäftsstelle qualitätssicherung (bqs) (institute for quality and safety). it includes clinical records for all children who were delivered in german hospitals. to our knowledge, it is the only data source that contains information on the biological order of hospital births at a population level for germany. this data has primarily been used in the fi eld of medicine, but some few demographic studies exist that used these data for analysing fertility behaviour (hullen 2003; voigt/hullen 2005; birg/flöthmann 1996). these previous studies, however, were only able to draw on data from selected federal states, while this study uses data from the perinatal statistics for the whole of germany for the period 2001 to 2008. we have structured the paper as follows. in part 2, we give a detailed account of the perinatal statistics provided by the bqs. part 3 explains the method used to generate ageand order-specifi c fertility rates with this data. in addition, we provide some initial results on order-specifi c fertility behaviour in germany. part 4 investigates how robust our estimates are, if we not only use data from the perinatal statistics, which only includes hospital births, but also consider out-of-hospital births. in this section we additionally draw upon data on out-of-hospital births provided by the gesellschaft für die qualität in der außerklinischen geburtshilfe e.v. (quag). part 5 summarises the fi ndings and concludes. 2 data and variables 2.1 general description of the perinatal statistics data for this investigation comes from the bqs, which is an institution that monitors the quality of care in german hospitals. one of its responsibilities is to collect the clinical records of the maternity wards of all german hospitals. this initiative dates back to the münchner perinatalstudie, which was conducted in the period 1975-1977. the main goal of this study was to report on the quality of the maternity wards of all the clinics in the city of munich. the münchner perinatalstudie was the order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 209 fi rst step towards introducing a systematic statistics that contained the characteristics of a clinical birth, i.e., whether it was a stillbirth, whether a caesarean was conducted, and whether other complications occurred during delivery or during pregnancy. this procedure was gradually implemented throughout bavaria and was adopted in the other federal states over the course of the 1980s (bundesgeschäftsstelle qualitätssicherung 2002: 190). after german unifi cation, the eastern german federal states joined the perinatal statistics. while it was initially voluntary, it became compulsory for the hospitals to collect this data in 1995 (bundesgeschäftsstelle qualitätssicherung 2008: 196). at that time, data collection was still organised on a federal level, and no central register had been implemented. finally, in 2001, the bqs was assigned the task of establishing a nationwide registry. since this time, it has been mandatory for all public and private hospitals to document all births (both still and live), and make these records available to the bqs, which stores this information in a data fi le called datensatz geburtshilfe.1 data for the perinatal statistics are collected by the staff of the hospital where the woman delivers the child. the characteristics of a newborn, such as weight, sex and physical condition, are taken from the medical records of the child. information on the medical background of the current and previous pregnancies is copied from the pregnancy record (mutterpass) of the mother (jahn/berle 1996: 132; reime et al. 2008). if this is not available, the mother is asked to provide this information. additional data (such as smoking habits) are gathered by the staff upon admission to the hospital (voigt et al. 2006; schneider et al. 2008). the perinatal statistics provides a rich set of variables for micro-level analysis for medical and demographic research. however, we should also point out some shortcomings of the data. first, the perinatal statistics does not include deliveries that take place at home, in birth centres, or in the offi ces of midwives.2 these births make up for about 2 % of all births (see tab. 5). the fact that these births are not included in the perinatal statistics is a potential problem because women who opt for an out-of-hospital birth differ in several ways from women who choose the “standard” path of delivering their children in a hospital. since women only rarely choose to have their fi rst child at home or in a birth centre, out-of-hospital births are often births to older women who already have at least one child (loytved/wenzlaff 2007, see also fi g. 4). we will turn to this issue again later on in a sensitivity analysis (part 4). 1 when we talk about perinatal statistics, we mean the datensatz geburtshilfe of the bqs. the perinatal statistics were assessed through remote execution by sending spss syntax scripts to the bqs by email. in 2010, responsibilities have shifted and the “aqua-institut” is now monitoring this data (http://www.aqua-institut.de/). 2 if delivery was planned at home or at a birth centre, but the woman was transferred to the hospital during the process of giving birth, the birth was entered into the perinatal statistics. loytved and wenzlaff (2007: 9) show that in roughly 12 percent of all cases in which a birth was intended to occur at home or in a birth centre, the mother was transferred to a hospital. from the perspective of the perinatal statistics, about one percent of all deliveries in hospitals were originally expected to occur at home or in a birth centre (bqs-bundesauswertung 2007: 103). • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski210 another shortcoming of the perinatal statistics is that data quality varies quite substantially between the calendar years. although it is mandatory for all hospitals to provide information on all births since 2001, the perinatal statistics does not cover all hospital births and not all german federal states in the early years. for 2001, hesse, schleswig-holstein and saarland did not provide any data to the central register of the bqs. in the subsequent years, these federal states participated, but some hospitals still failed to provide information. these gaps have closed over the years. since 2004, almost all clinical births have been covered in the perinatal statistics. 2.2 selection of sample for this study, we use the perinatal statistics for the period 2001-2008. since women can have multiple births, different observation units could be employed. hence, it is possible to conduct investigations at the “mother level” or at the “child level”. there are also analyses which used singletons only (krafczyk 2007; voigt et al. 2006). for our investigation, the observation unit is the child. this corresponds to the vital statistics, which mainly counts live-born children (and not births). to improve the fl ow of the paper, we use the word “birth” referring to live-born children. the total number of live-born children in the perinatal statistics for the period 2001 to 2008 is 4,982,707. in a few cases, it was not possible to identify the year of birth, the order of the birth or the age of the mother. these cases were deleted from the analysis. furthermore, births in which the mother was older than age 50 or younger than age 11 were also omitted. this leaves us with 4,978,381 live-born children in the fi nal data set. table 1 displays the number of births in our sample and compares it with data from the vital statistics provided by the statistical offi ce. as can be seen in the table, differences between the vital statistics and the perinatal statistics are particularly large in 2001, but they decline over the years. the difference in coverage in the year 2001 can largely be attributed to the fact that hesse, schleswig-holstein and saarland failed to deliver their data. coverage increases continuously, and in 2004 about 95 % of all births are covered in the perinatal statistics. tab. 1: coverage of births in the perinatal statistics 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 total births in perinatal statistics 452,826 608,122 590,293 671,228 665,718 655,951 667,016 667,227 4,978,381 births in vital statistics 734,475 719,250 706,721 705,622 685,795 672,724 684,862 682,514 5,591,963 perinatal statistics/ vital statistics 0.62 0.85 0.84 0.95 0.97 0.98 0.97 0.98 0.89 source: statistisches bundesamt (2009a), bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates) order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 211 2.3 variables the variables used in our analysis are age, birth order and region. the age of the mother was generated by the bqs, which provided the data. it was generated by subtracting the birth year of the child from the year of birth of the mother. age is used in single age categories. we also distinguish between western germany and eastern germany, the latter one including the city-state of berlin.3 our key variable of interest is the order of birth, which is broken down into the following categories: fi rst-, second-, third-, fourthand higher-order births. the order of the birth was generated by adding a “one” to the number of previously live-born children. one aspect that required special attention concerns the multiple births. for singletons, the birth order can be generated by simply adding a one to the number of previously live-born children. this strategy needed to be modifi ed for multiple births, because the numbers of previously born children do not take into account the current birth. in other words, if a woman gives birth to twins and does not have any prior children, the number of previous live births is zero in the perinatal statistics. if we would apply the same strategy as for singletons, we would assign erroneously both children the birth order one. we corrected this bias by assigning one of the twins the order “one”, the other one the order “two”.4 table 2 tabulates the distribution of births by birth order and calendar year in our fi nal data set. the table shows that about 50 % were fi rst-; 35 % second-; 10 % third-; and 5 % fourthand higher-order children.5 3 the german statistical offi ce usually excludes berlin when it generates fertility rates by eastern and western germany (kreyenfeld/pötzsch/kubisch 2010). it is, however, a problem to exclude berlin from the perinatal statistics. in contrast to the vital statistics, which uses the place of residence of the mother, the perinatal statistics surveys the place of birth of the child. this means that we cannot generate the fertility rates by federal state, because we would have to use a different defi niton of region for the weights and for the base population than in the perinatal statistics. this is particularly true for berlin, because some women who live in the federal state of brandenburg choose a hospital in berlin to deliver their child. 4 we fi rst generated a “master table” that contained the number of all children by order, age and region. furthermore, we generated a “multiple birth table” that contained multiple births by order, age and region. from the master table, we subtracted half of all multiple births of a given order. these children were then added to the next birth order. for simplicity, we assumed that all multiple births are twin births. 5 data by age and region have been made available as a mpidr technical report (http://www. demogr.mpg.de/en/publications/technicalreports.htm). this report also contains a detailed description of the potential of the perinatal statistics. the perinatal statistics provides a rich source for demographic analyses as detailed information on past pregnancies, live and still births, abortions and miscarriages. unfortunately, this data cannot be used to generate exposure rates as pregnancy dates of past pregnancies are not included. • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski212 3 method and fi rst results 3.1 estimating order-specifi c fertility rates from perinatal statistics (method 1) our main goal is to use the perinatal statistics to generate ageand order-specifi c fertility rates for germany. since fertility patterns in eastern and western germany continue to differ (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2007), we will estimate separate fertility rates for eastern germany (including berlin) and western germany (excluding berlin). in order to generate these rates, the number of births and the base population of women are necessary. data on the number of women by age and region (eastern and western germany) comes from german vital statistics. a problem arises when calculating fertility rates because the perinatal statistics does not include all births. in order to calculate birth rates, we weighted the data of the perinatal statistics to match the total number of births in germany. we have constructed a weighting factor that considers age, year and region (eastern and western germany). let bv be the number of births in the vital statistics, bp be the number of births in the perinatal statistics, be our estimated number of births, i be the order of the births, and w be the weighting factor. the weight accounts for age (a), year (t) and region (r). the weighting factor is generated by the ratio of the number of births in the vital statistics and the number of births in the perinatal statistics: tab. 2: number of live-born children by birth order, absolute numbers and column percent 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 total absolute numbers 1st child 220,525 294,635 285,152 324,693 321,622 315,772 324,234 325,759 2412,390 2nd child 156,934 211,359 206,091 233,625 231,540 226,136 228,948 228,698 1723,330 3rd child 51,166 69,566 67,159 77,217 76,703 77,599 77,577 76,900 573,885 4th+ child 24,202 32,563 31,893 35,693 35,854 36,444 36,258 35,870 268,777 total 452,826 608,122 590,293 671,228 665,718 655,951 667,016 667,227 4,978,381 column % 1st child 49% 48% 48% 48% 48% 48% 49% 49% 48% 2nd child 35% 35% 35% 35% 35% 34% 34% 34% 35% 3rd child 11% 11% 11% 12% 12% 12% 12% 12% 12% 4th+ child 5% 5% 5% 5% 5% 6% 5% 5% 5% total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% source: bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates) b̂ )r,t,a(b )r,t,a(b )r,t,a(w p v (1) order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 213 in the next step, the numbers of births for each order i from the perinatal statistics , differentiated into age (a), year (t) and region (r), are multiplied by the weights. this gives the estimated number of births: to generate ageand order-specifi c fertility rates, the estimated births are related to the number of women by age, region and calendar year. 3.2 preliminary results on order-specifi c fertility behaviour in germany it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a comprehensive overview of eastern and western german fertility dynamics. however, we still seek to provide some basic demographic indicators based on our estimated values. table 3 displays the order-specifi c tfr, while table 4 shows the mean ages at childbirth.6 figures 1 and 2 graph these indicators. p ib )r,t,a(w)r,t,a(b)r,t,a(b̂ p ii (2) 6 in the tables and graphs, we have used ages 15-44, because we only had aggregated values on the number of births from the vital statistics for the ages 45 and older and 14 and younger. in order to generate order-specifi c fertility rates for these ages, we would have had to generate a separate weighting factor. tab. 3: order-specifi c tfr (ages 15-44) 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 eastern germany 1st child 0.66 0.66 0.67 0.69 0.67 0.67 0.69 0.71 2nd child 0.38 0.39 0.40 0.42 0.41 0.42 0.45 0.46 3rd child 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.12 0.12 0.13 0.13 0.14 4th+ child 0.06 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.07 0.07 total 1.21 1.21 1.23 1.28 1.26 1.28 1.34 1.38 western germany 1st child 0.69 0.68 0.67 0.67 0.66 0.65 0.67 0.67 2nd child 0.48 0.47 0.48 0.48 0.47 0.46 0.47 0.47 3rd child 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.16 0.15 0.16 0.16 0.16 4th+ child 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 total 1.38 1.37 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.34 1.37 1.38 germany 1st child 0.68 0.67 0.67 0.68 0.66 0.65 0.67 0.68 2nd child 0.46 0.46 0.46 0.47 0.46 0.46 0.47 0.47 3rd child 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.16 4th+ child 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 total 1.35 1.34 1.34 1.36 1.34 1.33 1.37 1.38 source: bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates), statistisches bundesamt (2009a) • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski214 regarding fi gure 2, changes in the age at fi rst birth are most remarkable. in 2001, western german women were, on average, 27.4 years of age at fi rst birth; by 2008, they were 28.7 years old. this fi nding suggests that the trend towards postponing the fi rst birth has not yet halted, despite the fact that west germany was one of the countries where fertility postponement started rather early. ages at second birth have increased to a lesser extent than ages at fi rst birth. for higher-order births, there is basically no change over time in the mean age at childbirth. the results also show that the order-specifi c tfrs did not change much between 2001 and 2008. in eastern germany, there is a stronger increase in the age at fi rst birth than in western germany. we observe an increase in the age at fi rst birth of about 1.5 years between 2001 and 2008. however, eastern german women are in 2008 still one year younger at fi rst birth than their counterparts in the west. east-west differences in the age at second birth are smaller, which suggests that eastern germans space fi rst and second births farther apart than western germans. the most surprising fi nding for eastern germany is the strong increase in the tfr for second births (see fi g. 1). given that second birth rates dropped radically in eastern germany after unifi cation (sackmann 1999; huinink 2005; kreyenfeld 2009), this result could represent a fi rst indication of a recuperation of second birth rates. compared to the pattern in western germany, one still needs to draw attention to the low progression ratios to the third child. during gdr-time, third and higher ortab. 4: mean age at childbirth by birth order (ages 15-44) 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 eastern germany 1st child 26.12 26.35 26.60 26.85 26.97 27.07 27.29 27.47 2nd child 29.32 29.54 29.66 29.86 29.94 30.10 30.45 30.67 3rd child 31.42 31.64 31.62 31.62 31.63 31.83 32.07 32.21 4th+ child 33.15 33.23 33.09 33.00 33.10 33.21 33.08 33.34 all births 27.94 28.14 28.34 28.55 28.68 28.85 29.10 29.30 western germany 1st child 27.43 27.57 27.74 27.95 28.10 28.26 28.49 28.69 2nd child 29.88 30.04 30.15 30.30 30.43 30.57 30.78 30.98 3rd child 31.46 31.57 31.65 31.79 31.87 31.96 32.19 32.35 4th+ child 33.06 33.09 33.19 33.26 33.32 33.41 33.49 33.56 all births 28.99 29.14 29.28 29.46 29.60 29.76 29.97 30.15 germany 1st child 27.14 27.32 27.50 27.73 27.87 28.02 28.25 28.45 2nd child 29.81 29.96 30.08 30.23 30.35 30.49 30.72 30.92 3rd child 31.51 31.58 31.66 31.76 31.83 31.94 32.17 32.33 4th+ child 33.12 33.12 33.19 33.21 33.28 33.37 33.41 33.52 all births 28.80 28.96 29.11 29.29 29.43 29.59 29.80 29.99 notes: mean ages were generated based on age-specifi c fertility rates. source: bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates), statistisches bundesamt (2009a) order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 215 fig. 1: order-specifi c tfr (ages 15-44) 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 first (east) first (west) second (east) second (west) third (east) third (west) year source: bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates), statistisches bundesamt (2009a) fig. 2: mean age at childbirth by birth order (ages 15-44) 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 first (east) first (west) second (east) second (west) third (east) third (west) year notes: mean ages were generated based on age-specifi c fertility rates. source: bqs perinatal statistics (own estimates), statistisches bundesamt (2009a) • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski216 der birth rates were rather low (kreyenfeld 2004) and our investigation based on the perinatal statistics suggests that low progression ratios to the third child are still a characteristic of contemporary eastern german fertility. 4 sensitivity analysis 4.1 statistics on out-of-hospital births (quag statistics) a key question for our analyses is how robust the estimated number of births is given the fact that the perinatal statistics does not include all births. in particular, the question arises of whether the results are biased because home births are not included. until recently, no information on out-of-hospital births has been available, and medical as well as epidemiological studies used only hospital births for their investigations. in 1999, however, the midwives in germany founded the gesellschaft für qualität in der außerklinischen geburtshilfe e.v. (quag). the aim of quag, like the bqs, is to monitor the quality of medical care. a questionnaire similar to the one used in collecting the perinatal statistics is conducted for out-of-hospital births. although participation is voluntary, about 80 % of all out-of-hospital births are covered in this data source, which we refer to as quag statistics in the following (loytved 2009: 6). because the variables available in the quag statistics are almost the same as the ones used in the perinatal statistics, the two sources can be combined in a straightforward manner. an essential measure of quality for the quag statistics is how many of all out-ofhospital births are included in the data set. table 5 compares the number of births in the quag statistics with the calculated total number of out-of-hospital births in germany.7 as can be seen from this table, coverage of the out-of-hospital births in the quag statistics ranges from 68 to 91 %. this is substantially lower than the coverage of the perinatal statistics. however, the sample size is still high enough to give us a reasonable estimate of the age and parity distribution of out-of-hospital births. 4.2 age structure of out-of-hospital births the share of out-of-hospital births is, at 1 to 2 % of all births, rather low (see tab. 5). however, they differ from hospital births systematically by order and age of the mother. this can be discerned from fi gure 3 and fi gure 4 exemplarily for the year 2008. figure 3 plots the age pattern of births in the perinatal statistics and in the 7 unfortunately, there are no offi cial records on the total number of out-of-hospital births in germany. they can neither be generated from the perinatal statistics as this statistics is not complete during the fi rst years after the central register had been established. the data in table 5 therefore comes from the „gesundheitsberichterstattung des bundes“ (statistisches bundesamt 2009b). we should note, however, that this is probably the upper benchmark for the actual amount of out-of-hospital births (loytved 2009: 6). order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 217 quag statistics. the fi gure supports previous fi ndings that out-of-hospital births are mostly births to older women (loytved/wenzlaff 2007). figure 4 plots the distribution of births by birth order in both the perinatal and the quag statistics. this fi gure shows that out-of-hospital births are more likely to be of higher-order births than hospital births. only 17 % of births in the perinatal statistics of 2008 were of order three and higher, compared to 28 % in the quag statistics. 4.3 estimating order-specifi c fertility rates from perinatal statistics and quag statistics (method 2) the differences in the age structure between hospital and out-of-hospital births raise the question of to what extent our previous results (method 1) are affected by the omission of out-of-hospital births. in the following, we address this issue by using additional information on out-of-hospital births. for this purpose, we have constructed a similar weighting factor as before (see part 3). however, instead of just using the births from the perinatal statistics, we also accounted for the births in the quag statistics. let bv be the number of births in the vital statistics, bq be the number of births in the quag statistics, bp be the number of births in the perinatal statistics, i be the order of the births, and w* be the new weighting factor. the weight again accounts for age (a), year (t) and region (r). it is generated by dividing the number of births from the vital statistics by the sum of the number of births in the perinatal and the quag statistics: tab. 5: coverage of births in quag statistics 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 number of births in quag statistics 8,245 8,219 8,561 8,686 8,305 8,315 8,188 8,280 out-of-hospital births in germany* 9,841 11,236 9,415 12,130 12,260 10,859 10,997 9,799 number of births in germany 734,475 719,250 706,721 705,622 685,795 672,724 684,862 682,514 coverage of out-of-hospital births in quag statistics 84% 73% 91% 72% 68% 77% 74% 84% share of out-of-hospital births out of all births in germany 1% 2% 1% 2% 2% 2% 2% 1% * the number of out-of-hospital births was generated as the difference between the number of births in the vital statistics and the number of hospital births taken from the gesundheitsberichterstattung des bundes (statistisches bundesamt 2009b). source: bqs perinatal statistics and quag statistics (own estimates), statistisches bundesamt (2009a/b) )r,t,a(b)r,t,a(b )r,t,a(b )r,t,a(w qp v * (3) • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski218 fig. 3: age pattern of births in perinatal and quag statistics in 2008 (percent of births by single ages out of all births) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 15 20 25 30 35 40 45+ perinatal statistics quag statistics percent age of mothers in years source: bqs perinatal statistics and quag statistics (own estimates) fig. 4: distribution of births by order in perinatal statistics and quag statistics in 2008 0 25 50 75 perinatal statistics quag statistics 5 9 12 19 34 40 49 31 first birth second birth third birth fourth and higher order birth percent note: if percent do not add up to 100, this needs to be attributed to rounding errors. source: bqs perinatal statistics and quag statistics (own estimates) order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 219 in the next step, the number of order-specifi c births a n d by age (a), year (t) and region (r) from the perinatal and the quag statistics are multiplied by the new weights to obtain the estimated number of births: 4.4 comparison of estimates from method 1 and method 2 table 6 compares the tfr from methods 1 and 2. in the fi rst half of the table (under the heading “method 1”), the estimates that we derived from the perinatal statistics are displayed. in the second part of the table (under the heading “method 2”) are the estimates based on the perinatal statistics and the quag statistics. the last part of the table gives the difference between both estimates. the comparison shows that both methods provide similar results. differences in the tfr never exceed the value of 0.002. table 7 displays estimates of the mean age at childbirth by birth order. again, we observe hardly any differences between the two methods. thus, we can conclude that measures of centrality, like the mean age at childbirth or the tfr, are not affected by the fact that the perinatal statistics does not include births that have not occurred in hospitals. finally, fi gure 5 displays how the age pattern of births differs between the two methods in the year 2008. here, we generated a ratio; i.e., we divided the number of births from method 1 by the number of births from method 2 for each age. as can be seen from the fi gure, differences between the two methods increase at higher ages. this is compatible with the idea that method 2, unlike method 1, accounts for out-of-hospital births, which are more prevalent at higher ages. however, the ratio is mostly between 0.99 and 1.01, which indicates that the differences in the estimated number of births between both methods do not exceed 1 %. it is only for the ages below 20 and above 40 that the differences can increase to up to 2 %. from this sensitivity analysis we conclude that it might be suffi cient to just draw on the perinatal statistics to estimate order-specifi c fertility rates in the future. p ib )r,t,a(w)r,t,a(b)r,t,a(b)r,t,a(b̂ *q i p i * i (4) q ib • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski220 tab. 6: tfr by birth order (ages 15-44), comparison of method 1 and method 2 source: quag statistics and perinatal statistics (own estimates) 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 method 1 1st child 0.683 0.675 0.669 0.676 0.663 0.652 0.675 0.680 2nd child 0.456 0.457 0.460 0.467 0.462 0.456 0.469 0.472 3rd child 0.142 0.144 0.144 0.148 0.147 0.152 0.155 0.155 4th+ child 0.065 0.065 0.065 0.065 0.066 0.068 0.070 0.070 method 2 1st child 0.681 0.673 0.667 0.675 0.661 0.651 0.673 0.678 2nd child 0.458 0.458 0.461 0.468 0.462 0.457 0.470 0.473 3rd child 0.143 0.145 0.144 0.149 0.148 0.152 0.155 0.156 4th+ child 0.065 0.065 0.066 0.066 0.066 0.069 0.070 0.071 method 2 method 1 1st child -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 2nd child 0.001 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 3rd child 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 4th+ child 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 tab. 7: mean ages at childbirth by birth order (ages 15-44), comparison of method 1 and method 2 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 method 1 1st child 27.144 27.325 27.502 27.726 27.875 28.017 28.251 28.446 2nd child 29.814 29.960 30.076 30.229 30.348 30.492 30.723 30.919 3rd child 31.505 31.582 31.662 31.764 31.830 31.940 32.169 32.331 4th+ child 33.120 33.115 33.189 33.213 33.280 33.369 33.415 33.519 method 2 1st child 27.128 27.312 27.489 27.714 27.862 28.003 28.237 28.432 2nd child 29.813 29.958 30.074 30.227 30.346 30.492 30.722 30.916 3rd child 31.514 31.592 31.673 31.773 31.840 31.948 32.183 32.346 4th+ child 33.140 33.129 33.201 33.223 33.295 33.387 33.430 33.533 method 2 method 1 1st child -0.016 -0.013 -0.013 -0.011 -0.013 -0.014 -0.014 -0.014 2nd child -0.001 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 0.000 -0.001 -0.003 3rd child 0.009 0.011 0.011 0.009 0.011 0.008 0.013 0.014 4th+ child 0.019 0.014 0.012 0.010 0.015 0.018 0.015 0.014 notes: mean ages were generated based on age-specifi c fertility rates. source: quag statistics and perinatal statistics (own estimates) order-specifi c fertility rates for germany • 221 5 summary and conclusions until recently, german vital statistics has not included order-specifi c fertility data so that important demographic measures, such as the mean age at fi rst birth or the order-specifi c tfrs cannot be generated. the main goal of this paper was to delineate how this dearth of demographic data can be overcome by estimating order-specifi c fertility rates by using perinatal statistics. as perinatal statistics does not include all births in germany, they had to be re-weighted in such a way that they matched the fig. 5: ratio of estimated births from method 2 and method 1 by single ages, germany 2008 97,5 100,0 102,5 15 20 25 30 35 40 method 2 method 1 97,5 100,0 102,5 15 20 25 30 35 40 method 2 method 1 97,5 100,0 102,5 15 20 25 30 35 40 method 2 method 1 97,5 100,0 102,5 15 20 25 30 35 40 method 2 method 1 age of women age of women age of women age of women first birth second birth third birth fourth and higher birth notes: method 1: estimates based on perinatal statistics; method 2: estimates based on combination of perinatal statistics and quag statistics (own estimates) • michaela kreyenfeld, rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski222 offi cial number of births from the vital statistics. based on these estimates and additional data on the population of females, we have generated ageand order-specifi c fertility rates for eastern and western germany, as well as for germany in total. we have also tried to assess the size of the bias created by the fact that out-ofhospital births, which account for about 2 % of all births in germany, are not included in the perinatal statistics. our sensitivity analysis has shown that the inclusion of out-of-hospital births (quag statistics) does not have a noticeable impact on our estimates. in particular, measures of centrality, like the mean age at childbirth or the tfr by order of birth do not change in any substantial manner, if we additionally use data from the quag statistics. apparently, the share of out-of-hospital births is too small to affect our estimates to a signifi cant degree. we have also used this data to give a rough overview on the trends in orderspecifi c fertility behaviour in germany. our estimates show that the age at fi rst birth is continuously increasing in western and eastern germany during the period 2001-2008. if one compares ages at fi rst birth in both parts of the country, strong differences in the age at fi rst-time-parenthood prevail. women in the eastern states are more than one year younger at fi rst birth than their counterparts in the western states in 2008. another remarkable aspect about eastern german fertility is the strong increase in second birth rates in recent years which might suggest that eastern germany has broken the “trend towards the one-child family” (huinink 2005). third birth rates have somewhat increased in eastern germany too, but they are still much lower than in the western states of germany. overall, this fi rst investigation shows persisting differences in order-specifi c differences in behaviour between eastern and western germany. it remains to be seen how these order-specifi c differences develop in the future and whether fertility behaviour in eastern and western germany converges any further. as germany has recently reformed its vital statistics and provided order-specifi c fertility information, it will be possible to merge the time series from the perinatal statistics with the one from the vital statistics to investigate the trend in order-specifi c birth behaviour. we particularly want to thank renate meyer, burkhard fischer and heike schwarze from the bundesgeschäftsstelle qualitätssicherung (bqs) for their valuable comments on the perinatal statistics. furthermore, we are very grateful to anke wiemer, who provided us with data from the gesellschaft für qualität in der außerklinischen geburtshilfe (quag). we would also like to thank our colleagues at the max planck institute for demographic research, in particular joshua goldstein, vladimir shkolnikov and aiva jasilioniene for their valuable comments. many thanks also to tomáš sobotka and tomas freijka for their comments on the paper. for language editing, we would like to thank miriam hils. order-specifi c fertility rates 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(excel sheets provided upon correspondence to statistisches bundesamt (ute bölt)), 30-10-2009 toulemon, laurent, 2001: how many children and how many siblings in france in the last century? in: population & sociétés 374: 1-4 voigt, manfred; hullen, gert, 2005: die paritätsspezifi sche fertilität. demographische analysen der perinatalstatistik. in: der gynäkologe 38,7: 650-654 voigt, manfred; hermanussen, michael; wittwer-backofen, ursula; fusch, christoph; hesse, volker, 2006: sex-specifi c differences in birth weight due to maternal smoking during pregnancy. in: european journal of pediatrics 165: 757-761 a german translation of this authorised original article by the authors is available under the title “ordnungsspezifi sche geburtenraten für deutschland: schätzungen auf basis der perinatalstatistik für die jahre 2001-2008”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-06de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-201006de2, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. michaela kreyenfeld ( ), rembrandt scholz, frederik peters, ines wlosnewski. max planck institute for demographic research, rostock, germany e-mail: kreyenfeld@demogr.mpg.de, scholz@demogr.mpg.de, peters@demogr.mpg.de, ines.wlosnewski@uniklinik-freiburg.de url: www.demogr.mpg.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext the economic lifecycle by gender – results combining monetary and time use estimates the economic lifecycle by gender – results combining monetary and time use estimates fanny a. kluge abstract: in recent decades, we have witnessed profound changes in family size and structure. while marriage rates and the number of children have declined in most industrialised countries, female labour force participation rates have risen signifi cantly. however, while the working hours and wages of women have increased, we continue to observe huge discrepancies in market production by gender in germany. this results in considerable differences in the economic lifecycle of men and women. the differences diminish if we take unpaid household production, consumption, and caring into account. we fi nd that, after applying this comprehensive approach, the female lifecycle resembles male consumption, income, and transfer patterns. these fi ndings are interesting in the light of future demographic changes, as they suggest that the explicit policy aim of increasing female labour force participation could place constraints on the currently observed division of labour in the market and in the household. keywords: economic life cycle · gender differences · time use · household division of labour · germany 1 introduction studies on the differences in patterns of consumption, income, and transfers by age and gender usually focus on monetary estimates. here, we fi nd a considerable gap between female income and consumption; employment rates and wages are lower for women at all ages. although recent societal developments have resulted in more gender-egalitarian living arrangements, we still observe a rather traditional division within the labour market for men and women in germany (male breadwinner model). the monetary approach is certainly important and suitable for many kinds of questions, but it neglects household production and consumption, such as unpaid home services, childcare, and old-age cares. such services are primarily conducted by women, and if taken into consideration the gap between income and comparative population studies vol. 39, 4 (2014): 707-726 (date of release: 10.10.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-13en5 • fanny a. kluge708 consumption for men and women almost vanishes. male and female differences in time devoted to gainful employment or unpaid home production result in considerable transfers of time and money within households. it is, therefore, very important to include both market and non-market engagement in any study that seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of inter-age and inter-gender resource fl ows. for example, an increase in female labour force participation could affect the ability of women to provide care for children and the elderly. in addition, a projection showing that smaller birth cohorts who are currently middle-aged will have an increasing number of dependents to support raises questions about whether the provision of care as it is today will be adequate in future. the current patterns and possible future changes affect family formation, education, labour market choices, time allocation, and the accumulation of wealth. the results of this study may contribute to the political discourse in showing the importance of non-market transfers for economic life cycle considerations. most economic studies that look at heterogeneous agents by gender focus on the public sector in a welfare state (owens 2008; werding 2005), or on differences in labour income from market employment (andersson et al. 2009; antonczyk et al. 2010; oostendorp 2009; polachek/xiang 2009). other studies have acknowledged the link between childbearing and paid work and the importance of the gender perspective (kreyenfeld 2010; lechner/wiehler 2009; lindh et al. 2005). dustmann (2005) provided a review of the key differences between men and women that are often mentioned in the literature, such as educational performance, earnings, and sector employment. the generational accounting approach (auerbach et al. 1999; raffelhüschen 1999) provides gender-specifi c results of future taxes net of transfers received during an individual’s life. this approach does not, however, show the monetary transfers from a prime earner or taxpayer in the household (typically men) to dependent individuals (children or spouses). in addition, there are non-paid housekeeping and caregiving services that the remaining household members offer in return. these services, numerously studied in itself (apps/rees 2000; becker 1965), should be taken into account in any comprehensive study about gender-specifi c differences in consumption, income, and transfer patterns. the time allocation differences between men and women have also been studied extensively (aliaga/ winqvist 2003; biddle/hamermesh 1990). for example, anxo (2002) and anxo et al. (2007) looked at the combined monetary and time use estimates for production (labour income as well as home production) in italy, france, sweden, and the u.s. albanesi and olivetti (2009) also studied gainful employment and housework, and how they relate to the gender wage gap. burda et al. (2012) analysed both gainful employment and housework by gender, and concluded that the overall amount of work done by men and women is quite comparable. this is referred to as the isowork phenomenon, it also implies that there is gender equality in the total amount of leisure time consumed. they offer several theories for why gender-specifi c differences in production occurred, including market-based forces, bargaining, and social norms. another, more comprehensive approach to studying intergenerational transfers of time and money was provided by albertini et al. (2007). they added the economic lifecycle by gender • 709 private channels to the picture, showing comparable intergenerational transfer patterns across europe; they did not, however, distinguish these patterns by sex. this paper adds to the discussion by showing how total income, consumption, and transfer patterns of time and money vary for men and women. the novelty of this study is that it jointly estimates monetary and non-monetary income, consumption, and transfer patterns by combining market estimates and time use estimates to measure the redistribution between different age groups and the sexes in germany. this approach is especially relevant in the light of demographic change and the accompanied ageing of the population. the results become important when considering the demand for change in the “old” gender contract (esping-andersen et al. 2001), as the traditional male breadwinner model will most likely be revisited due to changes in the age structure of the population (esping-andersen et al. 2001). the impact of demographic change on gender systems has attracted little attention so far. a review by mason (1995) offered some indications that demographic change could lead to a less stratifi ed gender system. the effects of ageing on women and on their prospects on the labour market have also been studied to some extent (auth 2004, 2006). some scholars have predicted that there will be a change in female employment patterns over the coming decades (allmendinger/ebner 2006; kistler/hilpert 2001; pack et al. 2000). in addition to providing total production and consumption estimates, our study offers insights into the private intra-household redistribution of time and money. it contributes to the debate on the private pillar of the generational (albertini et al. 2007) and gender contract, which has not attracted much attention so far. results on the monetary lifecycle show that there is a considerable redistribution of resources from men to women. unlike earlier studies, we have taken production, consumption, as well as transfers of time and money into consideration. while men generate an overall lifecycle surplus, women need resources in addition to their labour income to fi nance their consumption at all ages. but after we take unpaid domestic labour into account, we fi nd that male and female lifecycle patterns resemble each other. although the observed gender gap diminishes, we still observe higher fl ows to women. by applying the specialist replacement method in monetising housework and care, the remaining differences can be attributed to the corresponding lower wages. the paper is organised as follows. section 2 provides an overview of the methods and data used to compute the monetary and time use results differentiated by age and gender. in the third section, the results are presented, with the monetary lifecycle shown fi rst, followed by the time-adjusted estimates. section 4 addresses possible consequences of an increase in female labour force participation on the lifecycle for men and women. section 5 presents our conclusions. • fanny a. kluge710 2 methods and data in this analysis, monetary and time use estimates of age-specifi c production, income and transfer patterns are combined to assess the differences in these variables by gender and to show inter-age as well as inter-gender redistribution of resources in greater detail. this allows us to overcome the defi ciencies of a pure market perspective, and to add new insights into work/leisure and consumption/saving decisions within households. the monetary estimates are obtained by following the standard methodology of the national transfer accounts,1 decomposed by gender. the theoretical framework is based on samuelson (1958), diamond (1965), and lee (1994). the nta methodology quantifi es most inter-age redistributions in a cross-sectional setting for a respective year. in order to construct ntas by gender, a micro survey to estimate age utilisation profi les is needed. these age patterns of education, housing, labour income or utilisation of public transfers such as pensions, health care or general public services can be used to assess the importance of the age factor in an economy or to study the impact of population ageing as the most prominent examples. the german income and expenditure survey in 2003 (einkommensund verbrauchsstichprobe, or evs) serves as the basis for the relative age shares. we have chosen to use the national transfer accounts for 2003 because the latest time use estimates available are from 2002; thus, the non-monetary and monetary estimates correspond closely. the evs is based on a representative quota sample of germany’s private households, and covers information on income, consumption, transfers, savings, and assets. for three months, the participating households provide detailed records of their income and expenditures. the evs for 2003 includes around 50,000 households, and is representative of households with a monthly net income of less than 18,000 euros (for a methodological overview, see statistisches bundesamt (2005)). the evs dataset contains most of the variables of interest by household members, the infl ows are reported from an individual perspective. in cases where individual data is not available, as for example for food consumption, an equivalence scale is employed to allocate shares to household members (deaton 1997). to estimate the net transfer of a specifi c age group, the consumption by age (net of taxes) is deducted from the output. as all items are consistent with the national income and product accounts, the compensation of employees including employer’s contributions for social security is used for computation. both, the monetary and the time use estimates employ a synthetic cohort approach. as longitudinal data are not available, we have to rely on a cross-sectional setting. this does not seem to pose too many problems, as results from repeated cross-sectional data expressed relative to mean labour income do not vary considerably over time (kluge 2011). in addition to income and consumption, the evs in1 national transfer accounts measure economic fl ows across age groups consistent with the national income and product accounts. for more detailed information see www.ntaccounts. org. the economic lifecycle by gender • 711 cludes all of the relevant public transfers to households, and it allows for estimations of private intra-familial fl ows and asset income or savings. private asset income consists of capital income plus net property income for households, corporations, and non-profi t institutions serving households (npishs). the allocation of some transfers such as inter-household transfers or child allowances to household members is rather diffi cult. therefore we assume that these transfers are in between or to household heads who then grant an intra-household transfer for consumption. as it is impossible to estimate this more accurately without additional data sources or assumptions we admit this problem. sensitivity analysis showed that the bias in the results is rather small as it is mainly items of lower importance or smaller magnitude that are diffi cult to allocate. to forecast future public benefi ts, we would have to change our approach as child allowances are only paid if you have children. in this case they should be connected to the children and not to the household head. furthermore, population estimates are needed to assess per capita consumption, income, and transfers by age and sex. these are available in one-year age groups, and are provided by the german federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009a). to ensure that they fi t the un system of national accounts and that they are nationally representative, the per capita age profi les are scaled to match at the macroeconomic level. the macro controls obtained from the national accounts of the corresponding year are usually not available by sex. thus, the survey share for the corresponding item is used, and is assumed to hold true at the population level. age-specifi c estimates for in-kind transfers are obtained from offi cial records about health, education, and “other”. age-specifi c expenditures for education are estimated by summing up the unit costs per student per level of school, weighted by the number of students at each level. the utilisation profi le that helps to divide health care costs by age and sex is provided by the costs of diseases (statistisches bundesamt 2007). the “other” category contains the remaining non-age-specifi c costs that have a fl at distribution over the synthetic lifecycle, and do not differ by sex. information about consumption, income, and the age utilisation of public expenditures and revenues is provided in the national transfer accounts database for germany (kluge 2009) having outlined the methodology for obtaining the market lifecycle results for men and women, we now add non-market variables to the picture. to estimate production, consumption, and transfers in the household, the time use survey 2001/02 is employed. the scientifi c use fi les for germany include 5,400 households, 12,600 individuals, and 37,700 diary entries. individuals were asked to fi ll in a calendar for three representative days, reporting all of their activities that require at least 10 minutes of attention. all of the activities satisfying the third-party rule (reid 1934) are identifi ed by age and gender. these are activities that can be outsourced such as childcare, cooking or gardening but not sleeping for example. the time spent per day on cooking, cleaning, or caring for each individual of a respective age group is then monetised using the average wages of the respective occupation (see table 1). the adjustment factor corrects for overestimation of household activities. this is necessary, as the individual in the household is assumed to lack the effi ciency and • fanny a. kluge712 profi ciency of a trained cook or gardener. for other activities, such as those that would otherwise be performed by a nursery school teacher or an eldercare helper, we think that this approach is not appropriate, as the time spent with children or elderly people should be fully accounted for. another approach for assigning a value to, for example, childcare is the concept of opportunity costs. here, we value housework with the respective labour income a woman could earn in the market. while childcare is a service, the skill level of the provider is important, as the care children receive can affect their outcomes over the long term. the fi nding that families play a crucial role in determining the educational attainment of children (ermisch/francesconi 2001) suggests that this is the case. thus, if we were to take into account the opportunity costs for childcare, the gap between men and women could further decrease, as it is typically the woman who stays home and provides care. 3 results the decomposition of production by age and gender usually focuses on market production of men and women. figure 1 (solid lines) shows the hours spent on marketrelated work by men and women. we see the familiar picture: men on average start working a little earlier than women. when they are in their early twenties, the hours spent on market-related work are almost similar for the two sexes. from around age 25 onwards, the working hours of women are lower at slightly above 20 hours per week, and then gradually decline to zero after the age of 50. prime-aged men work almost twice as many hours as women (about 37 hours per week on average), and working hours do not start to decline until around the age of 60. the dashed lines in figure 1 show the total working hours of both sexes. these estimates include housework like cooking and cleaning, as well as childcare and eldercare. the total number of working hours are slightly higher for women under the age of 50. during the following decade, men are working slightly more, mainly until the transition to retirement. from age 65 onwards, women are again working more hours, exclutab. 1: wages and adjustment factors by occupation, germany, 2006 occupation gross hourly wage (in euros) adjustment factor cook 11.28 0.75 caretaker 13.59 0.75 unskilled worker 11.10 0.75 cleaner 10.08 0.75 gardener 13.00 0.75 eldercare helper 13.14 1.00 nursery teacher 15.08 1.00 source: statistisches bundesamt 2009b, nta methodology the economic lifecycle by gender • 713 sively due to household production. overall, it can be argued that the amount of time spent working in any form is comparable for men and women. previous studies have produced similar results for many western countries. sometimes referred to as the iso-work phenomenon, these fi ndings suggest that there is no statistically signifi cant gender difference in the amount of time spent working and not working (burda et al. 2012). the hours spent working in market and household production are refl ected in the results on income, consumption, and transfer patterns by gender. the shortage of labour income is the main driver for the substantial public and private intergender fl ows. figure 2 depicts the monetary lifecycle of both sexes. labour income from market-related work amounts to 40,000 euros annually for a prime-aged man, while women earn about 20,000 euros on average. the early labour market exit of women creates a gap of eight years between men and women. in consumption, only minor differences can be seen at older ages. these almost exclusively result from health care costs above the age of 50 (measured by the costs of illnesses by gender). the fig. 1: working hours by age and gender, germany, 2001/02 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 20 40 60 80 age working hours (market related work), male working hours (market related work), female total working hours (including housework), male total working hours (including housework), female hours per week source: time use survey 2001/02, own calculations • fanny a. kluge714 difference between consumption and income denotes the lifecycle defi cit, or the amount of consumption that is not covered by individual labour income. for men on average, the surplus period lasts from age 27 to age 60, and the surplus is signifi cantly positive. as figure 2 refers to the lifecycle defi cit, positive values indicates a defi cit and negative values indicate a surplus (the same applies to fig. 6). for women, the surplus period is much shorter, only lasting from age 28 to age 52, and the surplus amount is rather small. at the population level, this means that women’s consumption share of 52 percent corresponds to a labour share of only 36 percent. almost 300 billion euros are redistributed to women to fi nance male as well as female consumption. the consumption of an individual in this framework could be fi nanced through labour income, public or private transfers, or asset-based reallocations (savings, capital income or debt). public transfers vary quite substantially between men and women. the transfers to households are decomposed into public pensions, illness and disability benefi ts, unemployment and family benefi ts, housing, and other remaining transfers. public pensions for women amount to 11,000 euros per year, while men receive around 17,000 euros per year (fig. 3). the payments for illness and disability are small when expressed in per capita values (about 1,000 euros fig. 2: lifecycle defi cit by gender, germany, 2003 source: evs 2003, national accounts 2003, own calculations -30,000 -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 0 20 40 60 80 age production, male production, female consumption, male consumption, female lifecycle deficit, male lifecycle deficit, female euros the economic lifecycle by gender • 715 annually). the age profi le shows a pronounced increase in payments around the entry to retirement. thereafter, both profi les drop to lower amounts, with the only signifi cant rises in income stemming from disability payments to women after the age of 80. family benefi ts are received at prime working ages, and the values are higher for men because the methodology assigns family transfers for children to the household head, who then makes an intra-family transfer to the dependent child. in the survey, the household head is more likely to be a man than a woman, but using another assignment method would not alter the picture considerably. child allowances are rather small shares of transfers to households in per capita terms, as all other payments are dwarfed by public pensions. other transfers are comparable for men and women. the overall infl ow profi le of public transfers is very similar for men and women until they reach their early thirties, because education, health, and other transfers are the same for male and female children. the gap widens later in life, and amounts to about 7,000 euros annually for a 70-year-old individual. it is not until the age of 87 that women start to receive slightly higher transfers than men. while the transfer infl ows are similar, we fi nd considerable discrepancies in public transfer outfl ows, which include labour, asset, and income taxes (fig. 4). women pay 37 percent of all collected taxes, but receive 48 percent of public transfers. taxes on labour are reported on an individual basis in the survey. we can only show these public transfer outfl ows for an average individual and do not take into account tax splitting of married couples. in this case, we would have to estimate the results for different household types. in the case of asset taxes, we should note that fig. 3: public benefi ts by gender, germany 2003 source: evs 2003, vgr 2003, own calculations 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 20 40 60 80 age pensions, male pensions, female disability pensions, male disability pensions, female unemployment benefits, male unemployment benefits, female family benefits, male family benefits, female euros • fanny a. kluge716 these fl ows are assigned to the individual defi ned as household head. because the household head is often the male respondent in the survey, the gender division of these fl ows could be overor underestimated. however, using another method in which these fl ows are shared equally among all of the adult household members or according to their household income share does not alter the profi les substantially. this is because most of the tax revenues are generated by taxes on labour income and contributions to social security, both of which are distinguishable by gender. the amounts paid in value-added taxes on consumption are comparable, as men and women consume in the same manner. in total, women have a public net payment shortfall of 124 billion euros (5.6 percent of gdp). for private transfers, we observe very similar patterns for men and women up to age 30. transfers for health or education hardly differ between the sexes. however, at prime working ages we fi nd signifi cant inter-gender fl ows of resources to fi nance all of the family members’ consumption. as the disposable income and public transfer fl ows to men are higher, they are net givers. in total, men transferred 155 billion euros to women in 2003 (or seven percent of gdp). the redistribution within the household is higher than through the public sector. still, these results have to be interpreted with caution. we use the synthetic cohort approach, as longitudinal data fig. 4: public revenues by gender, germany 2003 source: evs 2003, vgr 2003, own calculations 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 0 20 40 60 80 age consumption taxes, male consumption taxes, female labour taxes, male labour taxes, female asset taxes, male asset taxes, female euros the economic lifecycle by gender • 717 are missing for a number of variables. the increasing labour force participation of women and changing gender attitudes could alter the results in the future. still, it is usually women who interrupt their careers to take maternity leave, even among younger cohorts. thus, while these numbers may decrease, we do not expect them to reverse or reach the same level in the coming decades. an interesting decomposition would involve measuring economic fl ows between men and women separately for east and west germany, in order to see how the fl ows alter in the more gender-equal east. but this is not easy to do even for male individuals, as the east is still subsidised signifi cantly by the west. (kluge 2010). summing up our observations about the monetary lifecycle, we can conclude that the resource redistribution to women fl ows through public and private channels. when we look at how women’s monetary lifecycle defi cit of 370 billion euros2 is fi nanced, we fi nd that 34 percent comes from public transfers from men, and 43 percent comes from private channels, mainly in the form of intra-household transfers between the partners. the remaining 22 percent of the defi cit is covered by assets, mainly between the ages of 50 and 70 during the transition to retirement. when we look at the monetary results, we fi nd that the male breadwinner model still prevails. but how do the observed consumption, income, and transfer patterns change if unpaid domestic labour is accounted for? the traditional division of household labour is still prevalent in germany, as has been reported elsewhere (wenger et al. 2009). in figure 5, the time use estimates for both sexes are displayed by age. all household production increases with age for both sexes (except childcare). on average, men only work part-time in the household. for women, the time spent on cooking, cleaning, and childcare is twoto three times higher, expressed in minutes per day. the estimates for shopping are similar, and in the categories of gardening and construction, men show slightly higher values than women. overall, the mean amount of time women spent on unpaid home production across all age groups is around four hours per day, compared to only 2.5 hours for men. focusing on individuals under 50, we can see that the gap is even wider (3.6 hours for women and 1.7 hours for men). in the next step, the time use estimates are valued with representative wages in order to monetise the time spent on unpaid domestic labour. the wages and adjustment factors used have been displayed in the previous section. in general, the mean wage for a given task, such as cooking or cleaning, has been used (specialist replacement method) to estimate home production and consumption. for items that require training or special expertise, wages are adjusted downward to account for the fact that an unskilled person is performing the task who is not necessarily as effi cient as a professional cook or cleaner. the household production by gender can be derived from the time use fi les. overall, we see a reversed picture compared to the one for market production, in which women are shouldering the lion’s share of work. at the peak for both sexes, 2 for comparison, males generate a surplus of 120 billion euros. using the non-gendered national transfer accounts, we fi nd that the lifecycle defi cit amounts to 265 billion euros. • fanny a. kluge718 fig. 5: time use estimates by gender, germany, 2001/02 source: time use survey 2001/02, own calculations 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 age cooking cleaning washing gardening building shopping planning childcare support/eldercare minutes per day time use, males 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 age minutes per day time use, females the economic lifecycle by gender • 719 which occurs around the age of 30, men contribute around 10,000 hours annually to unpaid home production, compared to around 20,000 hours for women. thereafter, the gap starts to narrow, shrinking to about 3,000 hours during retirement. the consumption of unpaid domestic housework does not differ across sexes. we assume that boys and girls receive the same care, and that all of the household members consume the same amount with respect to washing dishes or cooking. the overall household production for cooking and cleaning is thus allocated to all of the individuals equally. childcare or eldercare is allocated to the dependent household members of the respective ages. overall, this means that, through intra-household channels, services worth around 100 billion euros are generated by women and consumed by men. this constitutes around two-thirds of the private monetary streams to women. the main reason why women are not able to entirely equalise the transfers is that wages for unskilled home production are low. when using an opportunity cost approach to value women’s work the transfers would be even higher. monetising the time use estimates allows us to take a closer look at the overall production and consumption patterns and the lifecycle defi cit of men and women (fig. 6). including the time spent in home production reduces the gender gap in source: evs 2003, national accounts 2003, time use survey 2001/02, own calculations fig. 6: time use adjusted lifecycle defi cit by gender, germany, 2003 -30,000 -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 0 20 40 60 80 age production, male production, female consumption, male consumption, female lifecycle deficit, male lifecycle deficit, female euros • fanny a. kluge720 lifecycle defi cits substantially. here it can be seen that women, on average, start working three years earlier than men, and men only start working longer hours than women when they reach their early thirties. at retirement ages, women again work more than men, solely due to unpaid domestic work. overall, we fi nd that while women’s labour accounts for only 35 percent of the total work force on the market, the share of work performed by women rises to 46 percent if housework is also considered. consumption patterns over the lifecycle do not differ between the sexes. here we fi nd differences comparable to those already observed, except for children under the age of 10 whose lifecycle defi cits increase due to the childcare they consume within the household. accounting for unpaid domestic labour substantially decreases the lifecycle defi cit of women. while the monetary estimate showed that consumption exceeded market female production by 17 percent of gdp (or 370 billion euros), the gap now decreases to 11 percent of gdp. a substantial share of the defi cit can be fi nanced through asset-based reallocations. against the background of demographic change the differences between men and women in the amount of time they allocate to market work and housework might be subject to change. demographic change in the labour market context usually refers to the decreasing number of people of working age who will have to support an increasing number of dependents (börsch-supan 2003). figure 7 depicts the total dependency ratios for east and west germany (young (<15) and old (65+) dependency ratio) in the conventional age brackets. the increase is more pronounced in the east, with each worker having to support more than one person. while the total dependency ratio is calculated without accounting for who actually produces and who consumes in a society, the support ratio takes this into account. it shows a more detailed picture, as it takes into account the real dependencies, and is, for example, used to calculate demographic dividends (mason/lee 2006). the support ratio shows that, currently, about 0.7 producers take care of one consumer in the east. in the decades to come, this ratio will also apply to the west. in response to these projections, there are frequent calls for an increase in female labour force participation. the female employment rate in germany was slightly less than 60 percent in the year corresponding to the time horizon of the study. it has since risen to 67 percent, but remains six percentage points lower than the average for germany (oecd labour market statistics). but what does the increase in female labour market participation rates imply for the distribution of total work by gender? as a projection of future overall consumption, income and transfer patterns would have to take into account various interaction effects and a model on behavioural changes, we will just illustrate two short ideas. first, we could keep the isowork amount constant. this would mean that the total number of hours worked by women would not increase. thus, women would perform less unpaid domestic labour. if we assume that the shifts from non-employment to part-time employment, or from part-time to full-time employment, are comparable in all age groups, we fi nd that, at the population level, 47 million hours would need to be redistributed. in this case, the iso-work amount of women would remain constant, and 30,000 individuals working 30 hours per week on average would be needed to close the gap. if we assume that the excess of housework is split between the household members, the economic lifecycle by gender • 721 each individual would have to increase his or her weekly working hours by about 45 minutes. the specialist replacement method of outsourcing housework would mainly apply to cleaning and other easy housework tasks, while care-related tasks are less likely to be outsourced due to attitudes on childcare or old-age care. in the future, smaller birth cohorts who are currently middle-aged will have to provide care for their own offspring, their parents, and, in the case of one-child families, also their parents-in-law. unless more fl exible arrangements are introduced, the health and long-term care insurance systems will face challenges. if a more recent time use survey was available – which, unfortunately, is not the case – we would get a better idea of which solutions households are now choosing. it is, however, clear that the increased demand for female market labour and the increased demand for care will challenge the traditional labour division. 4 discussion and outlook this study shows how market and non-market economic variables are distributed over the life course by gender. the estimates are based on combined monetary and time use estimates, and show gender differences in patterns of total production, consumption, and transfers. the monetary results reveal that there is a substantial redistribution of resources from men to women. the majority of transfers (155 billion source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations fig. 7: support and total dependency ratios, east and west germany, 1950-2050 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050 year support ratio east support ratio west total dependency ratio east total dependency ratio west support and dependency ratio (in percent) • fanny a. kluge722 euros) are made in the private sector, mainly via intra-household transfers between partners. another 124 billion euros result from public transfer redistribution as the taxes paid by women are insuffi cient to fi nance their public transfer utilisation. about 20 percent of the lifecycle defi cit women face is fi nanced by asset-based reallocations mainly during the transition to retirement. this large gap between women’s labour income and their consumption (lifecycle defi cit) is then contrasted with the results from estimates of unpaid home production. when household services such as cooking, cleaning, and caring are added into the equation the gender gap in production and the corresponding lifecycle defi cit decrease dramatically. when the monetary and time use approaches are combined, we see an increase of 11 percentage points in women’s labour contributions (up to 46 percent). the consumption patterns of men and women are roughly the same except for minor items such as health care costs by age and sex. overall, the profi le shows increases among the young and the old, but otherwise remains fairly stable over the synthetic cohort. monetising the time use estimates of housework reduces the lifecycle defi cit of women from about 17 percent to 11 percent of gdp. a considerable share of the lifecycle defi cit can be fi nanced via asset-based reallocations. the main reason why the gap in the analysis cannot be closed is because women earn lower wages for both market and non-market work. women are more likely than men to choose employment that is generally paid poorly (nursing home care, service sector), and even if they perform the same tasks women earn about 22 percent less than men in germany (rubery et al. 2005). in addition, housework was valued using the specialist replacement approach which means that the generally low wages of a cleaner or a cook are employed in the estimations (in contrast to, for example, the opportunity costs approach). still, we fi nd that unpaid housework contributes substantially to closing the gender gap observed for regular market production. in the future, the profi les will change along with increasing female labour force participation rates. it is not unlikely that due to demographic changes female wages will rise (ottaviano/peri 2006) which would mean that a growing number of women will increase the hours they work per week. if that occurs, the division of household labour is expected to change. if the total amount of hours worked by men and women were to remain constant, new employment opportunities would be created for low-skilled workers. unfortunately, the results of this study are obtained employing the synthetic cohort approach as longitudinal data on monetary and time use are not available jointly. thus, we can only speculate on the future of these age profi les as it is hard to distinguish between age and cohort effects. in the future, it would be interesting to investigate differences in the lifecycle by gender between east and west germany. the substantially higher female labour force participation rates and more equal gender attitudes in the east which differ from those in the west for historic reasons could shed light on possible pathways for future lifecycle patterns. the economic lifecycle by gender • 723 acknowledgements the author wishes to thank gretchen donehower, the participants of the european national transfer accounts workshop in stockholm (2012) and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. references albanesi, stefania; olivetti, claudia 2009: home production, market production and the gender wage gap: incentives and expectations. in: review of economic 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krankheitskosten 2002 und 2004 [health care-disease expenses, 2002 and 2004]. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2009a: bevölkerung deutschlands bis 2060. 12. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2009b: verdienste und arbeitskosten – verdienststrukturerhebung 2006, verdienste nach berufen. statistisches bundesamt: wiesbaden. wengler, annelene; trappe, heike; schmitt, christian 2009: alles wie gehabt? zur aufteilung von hausarbeit und elternaufgaben in partnerschaften. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 34,1-2: 57-78 [doi: 10.1007/s12523-010-0033-2]. werding, martin 2005: survivor benefi ts and the gender tax gap in public pension schemes: observations from germany. münchen: cesifo working paper series no. 1596. date of submission: 09.01.2013 date of acceptance: 03.07.2013 dr. fanny a. kluge (), max planck institute for demographic research. rostock. germany. e-mail: kluge@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/fanny_annemarie_ kluge_1808.htm published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries christiane kuptsch abstract: this paper reviews changes in migration policies as a response to the 2008 fi nancial and economic crisis and examines issues of migration governance. countries in europe opted to make new immigration more diffi cult, protected their labour markets for native born workers, encouraged the return of migrant workers and intensifi ed efforts to curb irregular migration. clear patterns or reasons for variation in policy responses are not discernible, but it is safe to say that only countries with a signifi cant recent infl ux of migrants have taken high profi le measures at all. the crisis has led to a shift in perspective of the state and its role in economics which is now seen as useful instead of undesired. previously prevailing neo-liberal thought relegated the state to the “high politics” of sovereignty and security issues. the crisis has highlighted labour market issues, and migrants are now increasingly portrayed as economic agents instead of security threats. this offers room for the state to assert its protective role vis-à-vis migrant workers – a welcome development. the analysis has an international relations/political economy perspective and is largely based on (offi cial) news releases and secondary sources. keywords: european countries · financial and economic crisis · labour migration · crisis response · restrictive policies · migrants as workers · role of the state 1 introduction the global economic crisis that started in 2008 has led to a serious slowdown in world economic growth. enterprises no longer hired new staff; some have resorted to short-time work arrangements (i.e. involuntary part-time employment or unpaid leave); there have been sizeable numbers of lay-offs, oftentimes starting with separations from temporary workers. although by late 2010 globally speaking economic growth had resumed, in advanced economies, employment is expected to return to pre-crisis levels only by 2015 (ilo 2010). migrants tend to be among the workers comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 15-32 (date of release: 10.08.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-17en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-17en5 • christiane kuptsch16 most hit by economic downturns for several reasons. from an economic perspective, migrant labour tends to be used as a cyclical buffer much like other macroeconomic policies aimed at maximising growth and minimising unemployment: migrants are often the last to be hired and the fi rst to be fi red; their employment relationships are frequently non-standard. from a social and political perspective, in times of economic insecurity migrants easily become scapegoats; xenophobic sentiments and discrimination against migrant workers rise. this paper provides insights into the impact of the current fi nancial crisis on labour migration fl ows and on migration policy making. it focuses on affl uent migrant receiving countries in europe, looking at changes in the content of migration policies. what policy changes have occurred since the onset of the crisis? to what extent do the responses of various destination countries converge? what explains variations or similarities? these are some of the questions that will be addressed in the following sections. final sections 6 and 7 refl ect on issues of migration governance and take a more normative perspective. it is suggested that the crisis might have some positive side effects in the area of migration policy making, especially since the crisis has contributed to altering visions of the state and its role in economic policy. 2 job shedding in sectors with large migrant employment in europe as elsewhere, migrant workers are particularly concentrated in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, hotel and catering, and health and care work, including domestic services. some of these sectors are also especially hard hit by the current crisis. certain economic sectors are more sensitive to business cycles than others. the employment elasticity is particularly high in construction, wholesale and hotels and restaurants – most job shedding has taken place here – but less so in health, social work and education. as the oecd notes, the effect of the economic downturn on migrants depends upon the situation in the country of destination and the impact on migrants is more visible in countries where the crisis began earlier, such as in ireland, spain and the united kingdom (oecd 2009: 7). table 1 shows that in these countries, since the onset of the crisis, the unemployment rate for migrant workers has been consistently higher than the rate for the native born labour force. gaps between native and foreign born workers have tended to increase (see table 2 for pre-crisis data). in spain, the unemployment rate of men and women migrant workers combined reached almost 30 % in 2010, and the gap with the native born was more than 10 percentage points following the crisis whereas the gap had been relatively small before. the above data indicate that migrants in european destination countries are clearly hit by the fi nancial and economic crisis. it appears that women migrant workers may suffer somewhat less from the crisis then male migrants because they tend to work in sectors less affected (such as health and domestic care). does this mean that migrants will return to their home countries or seek to fi nd employment elsewhere? and how have host countries dealt with these facts? the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 17 tab. 1: unemployment rates for native and foreign born workers (%), 2009, 2010 country 2009 2010 native born foreign born native born foreign born ireland t 11.2 15.4 13.0 16.3 m 14.4 18.2 16.5 19.2 f 7.2 11.7 8.8 12.6 spain t 16.0 27.2 18.1 29.1 m 15.1 29.8 17.3 31.1 f 17.1 24.1 19.1 26.7 united kingdom t 7.5 8.9 7.8 9.1 m 8.7 8.9 8.8 9.2 f 6.1 8.9 6.6 9.0 t = total; m = male; f = female source: oecd, key statistics on migration in oecd countries, labour market outcomes of immigrants 2008-2010, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/47/48335145.xls tab. 2: comparison of pre-crisis unemployment rates for native and foreign born workers (%) country average 1995-2000 average 2001-2006 native born foreign born native born foreign born ireland t 8.4 10.4 4.1 5.7 m 8.6 10.6 4.5 5.9 f 8.1 10.2 3.7 5.5 spain t 20.1 20.6 10.7 12.9 m 14.2 15.8 7.3 9.9 f 26.3 25.4 14.1 15.9 united kingdom t 6.7 10.0 4.6 7.4 m 7.8 11.3 5.1 7.7 f 5.5 8.8 4.0 7.1 8 4 10 4 4 1 5 7 t = total; m = male; f = female source: oecd, international migration outlook sopemi, 2008 edition, part iv recent changes in migration movements and policies: 251, 279, 287, 289. • christiane kuptsch18 3 options for migrants: return, move on or stay? unemployment of migrant workers does not mean that they will automatically leave their host countries. in fact, a september 2009 report by the migration policy institute fi nds that roughly one year after the beginning of the crisis, “immigrants overwhelmingly are choosing to stay put in their adopted countries rather than return home despite very high unemployment and lack of jobs” (mpi 2009: 5). whether the migrants wish to go back to their home countries or move on to a third country will largely depend on prospects in these countries.1 for example, polish migrants in ireland and the uk have moved back in large numbers with growing opportunities in poland and contractions in the host country economies. sumption and somerville (2009) estimate that some 1.5 million workers from the eight eastern european countries that joined the eu in 2004 (the “a8” countries) came to the uk between may 2004 and september 2009,2 and that almost half of them had gone back by the end of 2008. not only did prospects in poland improve, but past income differentials constituted a clear incentive to migrate and have melted down due to exchange rate adjustments. in 2003, the monthly average wage in poland was £800, whereas in england it was more than double. however, the value of the british currency decreased in relation to the polish zloty, from £1 equal to 7.23 zloty in 2004 to £1 equal to 4.83 zloty in 2008.3 situations where circulation between countries is easy for the migrants represent incentives to return (cassarino 2008). such a situation is given in the case of polish workers in the uk and ireland as these two countries have fully recognised eu freedom of movement provisions so that workers from the 2004 accession countries can work in ireland and the uk without restrictions. in the latter country, all that is required is registration under the workers registration scheme (wrs) but there is no labour market test that gives preference to uk workers, and there are no quotas.4 similarly, eastern european workers with eu passports quit spain knowing that they can come back without problems from 2011 when freedom of movement regulations become effective in all eu-15 member states; and so do some moroccans with permanent resident status in that country. the migrants’ personal characteristics and situations will also determine their options, such as their educational attainment, their reasons for having migrated (e.g. to join a family member), their immigration status and their length of stay in the country of destination. the latter will often determine their eligibility for welfare 1 for a discussion see awad (2009), oecd (2009). 2 sumption and somerville estimate these numbers in taking the total number of approved worker registration scheme (wrs) applications (1,001,475) and multiplying it by 1.49 to account for some 33 % of a8 workers that are estimated not to register with the scheme. this follows a methodology developed by pollard, latorre and sriskandarajah in 2008 (sumption/somerville 2009: 13, footnote 7). 3 home offi ce and poland’s statistic offi ce in alexi mostrous and christine seib “polish plumbers pack their bags as pickings get richer back east”, 16 february 2008, the times. 4 not all a8 workers register with the wrs; it is estimated that about one third of the migrants do not, see above. the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 19 benefi ts in the host country. migrant workers who have long been in a country of destination are also more likely to have established roots and set up networks that help them withstand the effect of job losses in times of crisis. this ability to adjust will be reinforced if the workers enjoy a regular status. many temporary foreign worker schemes do not allow change of employer, while more permanent migrant workers can change their employer and they are also entitled to unemployment and other welfare benefi ts to bridge the job seeking time. migrants in irregular situations can of course not make claims to social benefi ts but their employment opportunities might actually be better than those of migrants under certain temporary schemes – their informal employment is less costly to employers who might hire them, faced as they are with tighter credit and lower revenues. the outcome for the migrants may then be that their conditions of work worsen drastically (wages, working hours, etc.). generally it is assumed that people with higher educational attainment will fi nd it easier to adjust to job losses. in recent years there has been outright competition for global talent, for highly skilled migrant workers, with destination countries facilitating their admission and employment. there was what can be labelled a “human capital mercantilism” with policy makers arguing that having more highly skilled migrants was a rational move to raise the productivity and the competitiveness of the destination countries’ economies (kuptsch/pang 2006). overall it should therefore be safe to say that highly skilled migrants will be less affected by the fi nancial and economic crisis.5 4 host country reactions: restrictive policies in view of rising unemployment numbers among migrant workers and in line with increasingly protectionist attitudes in other areas such as trade, authorities in destination countries around the world rapidly reacted to the crisis by attempting to make new immigration more diffi cult, protect labour markets for native born workers, clamp down on migrants in irregular situations and encourage the return of migrant workers. measures were often taken as a result of public pressures, including in europe. there is consensus in the economic literature that in the longer run new immigrants have very little or no impact on labour market outcomes for the pre-existing population (e.g. in terms of earnings or unemployment). for example, theoretical studies invalidate the replacement postulate, i.e. the frequent assumption that immigrants occupy the jobs of native workers. an economy tends to create jobs in proportion to the number of its residents and consumers, and immigrants eventually help to create a number of jobs in proportion to the size of their community. empirical studies fi nd that the overall economic impact of immigration is small, though 5 this does not mean that they stay unaffected. for a detailed analysis see cerna (2010). • christiane kuptsch20 opinions are mixed regarding whether the impact is small positive, small negative or zero.6 yet, in the political arena these propositions keep being challenged. research in european countries has also shown that different opinions about admitting migrants are impacted more by cultural than by economic cost-benefi t perceptions, i.e. people are more concerned about the effects that migrants may have on changing the neighbourhood than about their impact on wages (card/dustmann/preston 2009). 4.1 reduced infl ows and intensifi ed efforts to curb irregular migration in the united kingdom, a number of changes were made to the relatively new pointsbased system (pbs), adopted in february 2008 for assessing immigration applications. this system re-categorised over 80 different routes to employment and education in the uk to just fi ve tiers: tier 1: highly skilled individuals (previously highly skilled migration programme); tier 2: skilled workers with a job offer to fi ll gaps in the uk labour force; tier 3: low skilled workers to fi ll temporary labour shortages; tier 4: students wanting to come to the uk to study, including student nurses; and tier 5: youth mobility and temporary workers. under the pbs, migrant workers and students must gain points to qualify for each specifi c tier before they can apply for permission to enter, or remain in, the uk. points are awarded, depending on the tier, based on the qualifi cations, experience, age, earnings, maintenance and language competence of the candidate.7 the uk home offi ce strengthened the labour market test for high demand occupations such as civil engineers and nurses. this will affect migrants who seek entry under tier 2 of the uk points-based system (pbs), i.e. non eu-nationals with a confi rmed job offer in a sector of labour market shortage. employers must now advertise jobs to resident workers through the national employment service (jobcentre plus) before being able to recruit a worker from outside of the european union. the uk also tightened the criteria against which highly skilled migrants, eligible for coming to the country under tier 1 of the pbs, are judged. the minimum qualifi cations were raised to a masters degree and the required salary to at least £20,000 (mpi 2009: 57). tier 3 of the pbs, covering low skilled workers to fi ll temporary labour shortages, was in any case suspended. france responded to the crisis by making it harder for migrants to live and work in the country illegally. in september 2009, french authorities dismantled and bulldozed a camp of undocumented migrants outside calais, rounding up almost 300 afghans, pakistanis and others who had gathered there for years in the hope of making clandestine journeys across the channel to britain. earlier in the year, highprofi le worksite raids had taken place in the region (new york times, 22 september 2009, and 21 april 2009). 6 for a detailed analysis see sweetman 2010 (on north america) and domingues dos santos 2010 (on europe). 7 for more information see: http://www.immigrationmatters.co.uk/uk-immigration. the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 21 italy went further in this direction and passed legislation criminalising unlawful presence, increasing the maximum period of detention of migrants in irregular situations and prohibiting access to public services such as emergency medical care and education to unauthorised migrants. in addition, citizen patrols got permission to assist police in responding to immigration violations (mpi 2009: 57). italy also lowered its quota for entries. the 2009 ceiling for entries was capped at 150,000, i.e. 20,000 less than in 2007. entry was essentially limited to domestic work and only taking applications from the backlog with the government arguing that most applicants were already in italy without documents (oecd 2009: 25). in spain, the contingente (the quota for workers to be recruited anonymously from abroad) was set at 901 for 2009 versus 15,731 in 2008. in october 2008, the régimen general (list of diffi cult to cover occupations) contained 32 % fewer occupations than the previous list and the occupations which were taken from the list represented almost all hiring from abroad. mostly specifi c qualifi ed occupations (such as neurosurgeon, dentist, and physiotherapist) remained (oecd 2009: 26). spain therefore is one of the countries where highly skilled migrants might be less affected by the crisis. 4.2 return programmes in response to increasing numbers of migrants applying for social benefi ts, spain also introduced a voluntary return programme for unemployed legally resident migrants (from 20 non-eu countries having social security agreements with spain). it was estimated that between some 90,000 and 140,000 people would re-migrate under this plan8 where unemployed migrant workers who are registered with the public employment service commit to not returning to spain for three years.9 the payment is made in two lump sums, a fi rst one in spain (40 %) and a second in the origin country (60 %).10 less migrants than expected have shown interest.11 in addition, the spanish public employment service has started to work with its romanian counterpart to recruit romanians to return home (oecd 2009: 29). similarly, the czech republic set up a voluntary return programme where applicants must be legal, non-eu residents, holding a valid residence permit. some analysts say that the economic crisis was one of the reasons to limit foreign workers’ presence in the czech republic but that irregular migration, especially from vi8 the economist, “global migration and the downturn” 15/01/2009 cites a number of 87,000; the migration policy institute says “the government estimated that 140,000 unemployed workers would be eligible to participate” (mpi 2009: 67). 9 the migrant worker is supposed to return together with all other family members who do not have an independent residence permit and who have used the family reunion policy to come to spain and obtain a resident permit. 10 http://www.planderetornovoluntario.es/index_uno.html. 11 offi cial fi gures report some 20’000 returns between the launch of the programme and late 2010. see http://www.simplynetworking.es/news-6985-31-the_number_of_immigrants_in_spain_is_ falling_as_migrant_workers_return_home.html. • christiane kuptsch22 etnam and mongolia, had already started to undermine foreign worker admissions before the crisis. therefore, combating the factors leading to irregular migration, such a regulating unscrupulous labour intermediaries, would make sense, in particular since many vietnamese appeared to have well integrated into czech society, having learned the language and occupying posts shunned by locals or being selfemployed (plewa 2009). 4.3 sweden as a deviant case in december 2008, sweden introduced a new immigration law that made it easier for non-eu migrants to work in the country. decisions on the need for foreign workers will now be made by employers, and no longer a central government body. under the new system, once a job vacancy has been advertised nationally and across the eu for two weeks, companies can choose to recruit from elsewhere and need only inform the swedish migration board whose role it will be to ensure that working conditions and terms of employment for migrants are equal to those of swedish employees. previously, unions had to be consulted before workers were hired from abroad and the national employment agency required proof that the skills were not available at home. the new law opens up sweden’s labour market to workers of all skill levels. the rules also allow asylum seekers whose applications have been refused to be granted work permits if they were employed in sweden for six months at least and make it easier for foreign students to get work. immigrants receive work permits for up to four years, after which they qualify for permanent residence. migration minister tobias billström justifi ed the policy changes by referring to the crisis and said: “it’s especially important during a downturn to ensure that businesses capable of expanding their activities are able to do so without being hindered by unnecessary bureaucracy.” (sullivan, the irish times, 12 december 2008) 5 categories of policy changes and assessment the above account has summarised changes in migration policy, introduced after the onset of the crisis, which have “hit the news”. before indicating some of the reasons for states not to take major measures and keep policies stable, an attempt is made in table 3 to categorise the host country reactions described above, according to possible policy changes at different levels. policy changes can come at three broad levels. they can be made by (i) introducing new rules, (ii) adapting existing rules without touching the overall structure of the system, and (iii) applying rules differently. nothing much is known about how countries apply existing rules, therefore the empty spaces in table 3 under point (iii). it could very well be that a different application leads to tighter de facto policies. where only administrative procedures change, these do not always have to be publicly discussed and be fully transparent to the social partners or the population. labour market tests are an example. public authorities exercise a signifi cant degree of discretion in judging the good faith of the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 23 employers in properly advertising their job offers. another example is labour inspection. labour inspection can be used to make sure that migrant workers benefi t from equal treatment with local workers (e.g. concerning their wages and working conditions) but it can also be used to identify migrants in irregular situations for subsequent expulsion. 5.1 policy changes vs. stable policies there is not enough evidence to state that structural or systemic differences such as a different organisation of the welfare state (esping-andersen 1990) explain or have infl uenced the types of crisis responses taken or that there are any other clearly discernible patterns. tab. 3: categories of policy changes level of change examples of policy changes country examples (i) new rules new legislation is introduced, policies are reversed new swedish immigration policy italy’s new legislation on criminalising migrants in irregular situations new programmes are introduced return programmes in the czech republic and spain (ii) adaptation of rules points systems raise the “pass mark” united kingdom: tier 1 of the pbs criteria for labour market tests become tighter united kingdom: tier 2 of the pbs shortage occupation lists are reduced spain: régimen general numerical limits (quotas, targets, caps) are reduced italy: entry quota spain: contingente (iii) application of rules labour market tests are done with more scrutiny labour inspection becomes more frequent / targets sectors and workplaces with a high concentration of migrants french high profile worksite raids rules on service delivery are not applied, e.g. more backlogs are allowed with regard to visa procedures and work permit delivery source: own design • christiane kuptsch24 the countries that most hit the news with their policy changes were also the ones that had lately seen the biggest infl ows of migrant workers and where migrants were having a signifi cant effect on employment growth (the uk and ireland, southern european countries, the czech republic). the migration policy institute reports that nearly seven in ten new workers in the united kingdom were migrant workers for example (mpi 2009: 6). this corroborates the thesis of migrant workers being used as cyclical buffers. european countries that had not opened their doors to the 2004 eu-accession countries and had followed a “welcome-the-skilled and rotate-the-unskilled” policy (kuptsch/martin 2011: 34) kept this in place. in germany, for example, where a new immigration policy favouring highly skilled infl ows had been introduced in 2005, this has not been touched. major changes in comparison to the “old system” include the following. the previous fi ve titles of legal residence were reduced to two, a temporary residence permit (befristete aufenthaltserlaubnis) and a settlement permit (unbefristete niederlassungserlaubnis). while the recruitment stop persists for low and semi-skilled persons, highly qualifi ed migrants have access to a settlement permit from the beginning. the same favourable conditions also exist for people who invest at least eur 1 million or create at least ten jobs. foreign students may stay up to one year after their graduation in germany to fi nd a job; previously, most non eustudents had to leave within 90 days.12 in the recent past, germany has also relied substantially on migrants for seasonal agricultural work and introduced no changes to this programme. indeed, rural employment tends to be relatively stable in affl uent destination countries and seasonal agricultural labour migration programmes therefore unaffected by the crisis. there are certain fl ows of migrants that countries cannot restrict rapidly or cannot restrict at all, as restrictions would imply human rights violations or non-respect of rights that migrants have acquired. humanitarian fl ows and family reunifi cation are cases in point. policy changes are also not always possible because of multilateral and bilateral commitments. where countries have undertaken to accept the free movement of labour within regional integration areas such as the european union for example, they cannot easily step down from their obligations. similarly, a number of european countries have concluded bilateral agreements that fi x (usually annual) quotas for temporary work of migrants in certain sectors of the economy. where such agreements are based on memoranda of understanding (mous) between employment services instead of international treaties they might be more easily dissolved, nonetheless this requires negotiations, and recruitment stops cannot simply be announced unilaterally. germany for example brings in nursing and care personnel from croatia and slovenia based on memoranda of understanding between 12 for more details and the history of the 2005 immigration reform in germany see martin/abella/ kuptsch (2006: 98-102). the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 25 the german employment service and its foreign counterparts.13 austria, france, germany and switzerland all have trainee programmes in place, founded on either mous or bilateral agreements. labour migration policies do not exist in a vacuum and although labour shortages remain the principle reason for today’s temporary foreign worker schemes, foreign policy considerations loom large in several programmes. for example, poland made employment of its workers an issue during negotiations on the recognition of the polish-german border. italy and spain opened legal migration channels to albania and morocco in part to encourage cooperation with these governments in the fi ght against irregular migration. other objectives in setting up migration programmes include the wish to promote cultural exchange or development in the migrants’ countries of origin. migration restrictions could reinforce the crisis in sending countries resulting in increased irregular migration, an extremely undesired outcome for destination countries. trade relations and dependencies on supplies of particular commodities and/or energy from migrant sending countries may also cause receiving countries to refrain from adopting restrictive policies. this shows that there are quite a few reasons for countries not to openly change their policies despite the economic and fi nancial crisis. and what might be the expected life span of those changes that were introduced? 5.2 permanent changes? (short-term and long-term effects of policy changes) shortage lists and numerical limits (so far as the latter are not fi xed in bilateral agreements) can easily be adapted and can have a rapid impact on migration fl ows. points systems can raise pass marks but also quickly bring them back down again. where labour market tests become stricter either via tighter rules or because they are done with more scrutiny, this can also be rapidly reversed. and more or less staff and fi nancial resources can be allocated to visa and work permit delivery, yielding expanded or reduced immediate infl ows. the adaptation of existing rules and their different application tend to be less permanent in nature and more easily to be reversed than new pieces of legislation. therefore, both the new swedish immigration policy and italy’s new legislation on criminalising migrants will be more diffi cult to repeal than the cap on migrants’ infl ows under the spanish contingente. however, are these legislative reforms in italy and sweden really products of the fi nancial and economic crisis or has the crisis only been used to justify changes that would have occurred anyway given political constellations? in italy, the legislative changes are very much in line with pre-crisis policy stands on migrants and immigration taken by the berlusconi government. 13 for the programme rules see zav (2004). • christiane kuptsch26 the swedish reform with its liberal provisions on labour migration and its deferral to employers of immigration decisions, appears to be more the result of a particular political set up than a direct consequence of the crisis. cerna (2009) convincingly explains how immigration policy in sweden is the outcome of coalition building and shifting coalitions over time between native high-skilled labour, native low-skilled labour and capital. in 2006 the government changed with the centreright coalition government presenting a more capital-oriented position, weakening the link between unions and the government (p. 37). assisted voluntary return programmes, such as now implemented in spain and the czech republic, tend to linger on as the historical experience of the netherlands, france and germany shows. european return programmes emerged for the fi rst time after the 1973 oil crisis had led to a recession. all of them had a long life span and were considered unsuccessful. in 1974 the netherlands launched their ‘reintegration of emigrant manpower and promotion of local opportunities for development’ programme which lasted until the mid 1980s and focussed on entrepreneurial ventures. around the time when the dutch programme closed down, the german ‘act to promote the preparedness of foreign workers to return’ was passed, in 1983. the german scheme was discontinued in the early 1990s only, despite a low take up rate. it offered cash payments to returning migrants similarly to the french aide au retour programme of 1977. the latter was aimed at migrants from north and west africa, especially algerians, but was mainly used by portuguese and spanish migrants in france. in the period 1977 – 1981 some 60,000 migrants returned (out of which only 4 % were algerians), not exactly meeting the declared target of 1 million returnees (sward 2009). all in all, it seems fair to conclude that the crisis has not led to major system changes in european countries. it has mainly led to an adaptation of existing rules, and possibly to a different application of rules, which can both be reversed rapidly. 6 the crisis as an opportunity: a new perspective on migration governance? states have the responsibility for protecting migrant workers from abuses and ensuring that they actually enjoy the equal treatment and equal opportunity rights that exist under international law, as for example set out in ilo conventions no. 97 and 143.14 in practice, it is the role of ministries of labour and employment services and 14 ilo convention no. 97, adopted in 1949, in a context of (anticipated) migration fl ows in the aftermath of world war ii is about migration management while protecting workers crossing borders. it aims to ensure equal treatment for them by encouraging countries to sign bilateral agreements. convention no. 143 (1975) was enacted after oil-price hikes led to recessions in european countries that had been importing large numbers of guest workers and stopped recruitment as a response to the economic downturn. c143 deals with clandestine migration (to be expected with legal channels being closed) on the one hand (part i) and with equality of opportunity and treatment and the integration of settled migrants on the other (part ii). the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 27 other institutions supervised by ministries of labour to administer protective programmes and make sure that non-discrimination norms are respected. the crisis may mean an opportunity as it has shifted perspectives and may lead to an expanded role of labour ministries in migration policy making. first, perspectives on the state and state action in general seem to have evolved; and second, as concerns migration policy, the crisis has brought more of a focus on labour policies and less on security issues, as will be argued in the following. since approximately the 1980s (the reagan-thatcher years) neo-liberal thought with its particular vision of the state has dominated economic and social policy making in europe. neo-liberalism is very much a theory about economic arrangements, e.g. against state interference with private property and in market exchanges. the focus is on free markets. “classical” liberalism in contrast is primarily about human freedoms, protecting individuals from unacceptable state incursions on their liberty, and ensuring that all individuals within the polity are able to enjoy these rights. liberalism is also the theory that highlights the equal treatment of all individuals irrespective of their particular characteristics; the universal applicability of liberal rights; and the need to limit state power over the individual (hansen 2011). glivanos (2008) points out that current neo-liberal thought combines two strands of classical theory, especially to explain the function of private property: the austrian tradition views market individualism as maintaining individual freedoms (hayek, ludwig von mises, schumpeter) while neoclassical economists emphasise the importance of markets to achieve effi ciency (chicago school of economics). hajoon chang (2002) views this combination as an “unholy alliance” that results in an unfavourable perception of the state and its role. the state is no longer seen in its benevolent function, as under keynesianism; it has lost its role as impartial arbiter and social guardian. instead, the state is perceived as an organisation catering to self-interested bureaucrats and politicians who work for their client groups and not in the general interest. this vision of the state also goes hand in hand with the thought that there are “high politics” and “low politics”, with sovereignty and security issues fi guring at the high end, in contrast to economic, labour and social policy.15 at most the state should be in charge of “high politics” but preferably not interfere in other issues and leave them to market regulation. indeed, the state’s role in security issues is less contested by neo-liberal thought. labour ministries, on the other hand, have been accused of being “spending ministries” open to group interest pressure. for labour ministries this has meant an erosion of their role: a shrinking of their responsibilities and cutbacks in budget allocations. their human, material and symbolic resources have increasingly paled (minet 2001). one of the areas, in which the role of the labour ministries has been reduced, is migration. at eu level the directorate-general (dg) home (i.e. internal affairs) and to some extent the dg external relations drive much of the migration policy making, 15 these concepts come out of the realist school of thought in international relations theory. for a criticism of this dichotomy, see e.g. ripsman (2004). • christiane kuptsch28 not leaving this to their colleagues in the dg employment, social affairs and inclusion (which would correspond to the labour ministry at the national level). france created a new ministry for immigration, integration and identity in 2007. migration had previously been a responsibility of the labour ministry. in the united kingdom migration issues are dealt with by the home offi ce (the ministry of the interior); it is the uk border agency that publishes approved shortage occupation lists. the current fi nancial and economic crisis is seen by many as the result of too much (neo-liberal) market focus and neglect of (liberal) rights-based approaches. states have been essential in stabilising fi nancial and economic systems, challenging the view that markets are best left alone. as concerns migration, the crisis has highlighted labour market issues. migrant workers made the news as economic agents, not as security threats, criminals or potential terrorists as was often the case before the crisis. the media and certain politicians have not always portrayed migrants as positive economic agents (“they take away our jobs and should be sent home – local workers fi rst”, see e.g. the analysis by castles and vezzoli 2009). nonetheless this type of headlines has shifted the discussion to economic questions. the crisis has also sharply reduced prospects for migrants to fi nd a job in european destination countries without a prior job offer, work permit and other papers. the el dorado image of europe suffered, leading to less people trying to enter without authorisation, at least in the period before the so-called “arab spring” of 2011. research in the united states indicates a strong correlation between the fl ows of unauthorised migrants and economic opportunities in the country (in politically stable times). for example us border patrol apprehensions data show that fl uctuations in migrant apprehension are closely related to labour demand (passel/d’vera 2009). similarly, a post-crisis frontex16 analysis reported a decline in illegal border crossing in the european union: the number of illegal border crossings in the fi rst quarter of 2009 was 16 % lower than one year earlier. for the fi rst time in years, not a single immigrant boat was intercepted off the canary islands in the spring of 2009, according to the spanish interior ministry (mpi 2009: 22-23). border controls are normally the number one rapid reaction by states to stem the fl ow of migrants. if these are less necessary because the border is no longer “threatened”, this could additionally shift attention away from security issues towards labour and employment questions. neo-liberal (market-based) approaches to labour migration tend to look at overall (global) gains from migration and less at distributional effects. they see migrants as rational actors who may be willing to accept unfavourable labour conditions in host countries because these may still be better then what they would fi nd at home or because they are simply faced with extremely limited options. liberal (rights-based) approaches, on the other hand, include the notion that the state has a protective 16 frontex is a eu agency based in warsaw, created as a specialised and independent body tasked to coordinate the operational cooperation between member states in the fi eld of border security. the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 29 function, including also protecting people from themselves and some of their own decisions, e.g. to submit themselves to abuse. with a revival of the state in the economic arena, a renewed view of migrants as workers and more liberal (rights-based) approaches to policy making in general, there should be room for labour ministries to assert their protective role vis-à-vis migrant workers. 7 conclusions and outlook the preceding sections have shown that migration policy reactions to the fi nancial and economic crisis were essentially of four types. countries in europe opted to make new immigration more diffi cult, protect labour markets for native born workers, clamp down on migrants in irregular situations and encourage the return of migrant workers. clear patterns or reasons for variation in policy responses are not discernible, but it is safe to say that only countries with a signifi cant recent infl ux of migrants have taken high profi le measures at all. the trend was for reactions to be in the form of an adaptation and tighter application of existing rules. this is understandable as legislative reforms, especially in an area as sensitive as migration policy, tend to be lengthy processes. they require preparations and negotiations. where they occurred, as in sweden and italy, they can be traced back to pre-crisis developments such as shifting coalitions and particular political constellations. manifold constraints in areas such as trade, development and foreign policy also prevented countries from strong reactions against migrants, as did obligations undertaken in biand multilateral agreements and the existence of migrants’ acquired rights. especially countries with a “welcome the skilled, rotate the unskilled” policy in place prior to the crisis have seen no need for implementing changes that would have led to a wide publicity. migrant workers have contributed to creating wealth and development in their host countries but the crisis has produced a climate of protectionism, an environment where this proposition is being challenged. one needs to devise strategies that reinforce the recognition of the positive role of migrant workers and protect them. it will also be important to look at the longer term, beyond the crisis. for example, voluntary return programmes in response to the crisis will have to be assessed in terms of the messages they convey and whether it makes sense to have migrants return to their home countries who have made efforts to integrate and whose labour force may be needed soon again. to reinforce the respect for rights at all levels will be crucial: national labour legislation, international labour standards, and general human rights law. this will include to closely monitor the application of labour laws to migrant workers (conditions of work, minimum employment standards, etc.); check whether labour laws and labour migration policies correspond to international labour standards; and in efforts to curb irregular migration, strictly observe international human rights law. • christiane kuptsch30 on the positive side, the crisis has led to a shift in perspective about the state and its role in economics which is now seen as useful instead of undesired. previously prevailing neo-liberal thought relegated the state to the “high politics” of sovereignty and security issues. the crisis has highlighted labour market issues, and migrants are now increasingly portrayed as economic agents instead of security threats. this offers room for the state to assert its protective role vis-à-vis migrant workers – a welcome development. references awad, ibrahim 2009: the global economic crisis and migrant workers: impact and response. second edition. geneva: ilo. [http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/ migrant/download/global_crisis2.pdf, 23 july 2012]. card, david; dustmann, christian; preston, ian 2009: immigration, wages, and compositional amenities. cream discussion paper series 0929, centre for research and analysis of migration (cream), department of economics, university college london. url: http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/cdp_29_09.pdf, 23 july 2012. cassarino, jean-pierre 2008: patterns of circular migration in the euro-mediterranean area: implications for policy making. carim analytical and synthetic notes 2008/29. circular migration series. european university institute, robert schuman centre for advanced studies. [http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/8350/carim_ as%26n_2008_29.pdf?sequence=1, 23 july 2012]. castles, stephen; vezzoli, simona 2009: the global economic crisis and migration: temporary interruption or structural change? in: paradigms, 2009, 02. [http://www.gencat. cat/diue/doc/doc_86200114_3.pdf, 23 july 2012]. cerna, lucie 2009: changes in the swedish labour immigration policy: a slight revolution? working paper 2009:10, the stockholm university linnaeus center for integration studies (sulcis). url: http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sulcis/2009_010.html, 23 july 2012. cerna, lucie 2010: policies and practices of highly skilled migration in times of the economic crisis. international migration papers no. 99, geneva: ilo. [http://www.ilo.org/ public/english/protection/migrant/download/imp/imp99.pdf, 23 july 2012]. chang, ha-joon 2002: breaking the mould: an institutionalist political economy alternative to the neoliberal theory of the market and the state. cambridge journal of economics 26, 2002: 540 [doi: 10.1093/cje/26.5.539]. domingues dos santos, manon 2010: immigration and unemployment: a european perspective. in: kuptsch, christiane (ed.): the internationalization of labour markets. geneva: ilo/iils. [http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/interlabour. pdf, 23 july 2012]. esping-andersen, gosta 1990: the three worlds of welfare capitalism. princeton university press. glivanos, ioannis 2008: neoliberal law: unintended consequences of market-friendly law reforms. in: third world quarterly 29,6: 1087-1099 [doi: 10.1080/0143659080 2201055]. hansen, randall 2011: the two faces of liberalism. in: journal of ethic and migration studies 37,6: 881-897 [doi: 10.1080/1369183x.2011.576192]. see also: http://www.tvo. org/theagenda/resources/pdf/liberalism2006.pdf. the economic crisis and labour migration policy in european countries • 31 ilo (international labour offi ce) 2010: world of work report 2010: from one crisis to the next? geneva: ilo. [http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/ wow2010.pdf, 23 july 2012.] kuptsch, christiane; martin, philip 2011: “low-skilled labour migration.” in: betts, alexander (ed.): global migration governance. oxford: oxford university press: 34-59. kuptsch, christiane; pang, eng fong 2006 (ed.): competing for global talent. geneva: ilo/iils. [http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/competing.pdf, 23 july 2012]. martin, philip; abella, manolo; kuptsch, christiane 2006: managing labor migration in the twenty-fi rst century. yale university press: new haven and london. minet, george 2001: presentation at conference ‘social dialogue, economic and social policy’, turin: international training centre ilo. [http://training.itcilo.it/decentwork/ staffconf2001/presentations/kus4-report.doc, 23 july 2012]. mpi (migration policy institute) 2009: migration and the global recession. a report commissioned by the bbc world service. url: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/ hi/pdfs/08_09_09_migration.pdf, 23 july 2012. oecd 2009: international migration and the economic crisis: understanding the links and shaping policy responses. working paper delsa/elsa/wp2(2009)3. url: http:// www.oecd.org/offi cialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=delsa/elsa/ wp2(2009)3&doclanguage=en, 23 july 2012. passel, jeffrey s.; cohn, d’vera 2009: mexican immigrants: how many come? how many leave? washington: pew hispanic center. [http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/07/22/ mexican-immigrants-how-many-come-how-many-leave/, 23 july 2012]. plewa, piotr 2009: the 2008/2009 fi nancial crisis: a false start for czech foreign worker admissions? url: http://www.age-of-migration.com/uk/fi nancialcrisis/updates/1g. pdf, 23 july 2012. ripsman, norrin 2004: false dichotomy: when low politics is high politics. paper presented at the annual meeting of the international studies association, montreal, quebec, canada, 17 march 2004; url: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p73388_index. html, 23 july 2012. sullivan, tom 2008: sweden‘s new immigration rules please employers. in: the irish times, 12 december 2008. [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ world/2008/1222/1229728441692.html / http://www.sullivantom.com/index.htm] sumption, madeleine; somerville, will 2009: the uk’s new europeans. progress and challenges fi ve years after accession. equality and human rights commission, migration policy institute. url: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_fi les/ new_europeans.pdf, 23 july 2012. sward, jon 2009: assisted voluntary return (avr): an opportunity for development? development research centre on migration, globalisation & poverty, briefi ng no. 20. september 2009. url: http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/briefi ng_papers/ bp20.pdf, 23 july 2012. sweetman, arthur 2010: spotlight on the economic effects of immigration – a north american perspective. in: kuptsch, christiane (ed.): the internationalization of labour markets. geneva: ilo/iils. [http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/ interlabour.pdf, 23 july 2012]. • christiane kuptsch32 zav (zentralstelle für arbeitsvermittlung – central placement offi ce, germany) 2004: merkblatt zur vermittlung von krankenpfl egepersonal aus kroatien und slowenien nach deutschland – hinweise für bewerber und arbeitgeber. url: http://www.hzz.hr/ docslike/d-novosti.pdf, 23 july 2012. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “die wirtschaftskrise und arbeitsmigrationspolitik in europa”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-17de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-17de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 31.08.2011 date of acceptance: 14.02.2012 christiane kuptsch* ( ). international migration branch, international labour office, geneva, switzerland. e-mail: kuptsch@ilo.org. url: http://www.ilo.org * senior specialist in migration policy, international labour offi ce (ilo), geneva. the views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily refl ect ilo positions. © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) pötzsch_englisch.indd cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and of the microcensus survey 2008 olga pötzsch abstract: data are available for the fi rst time for the year under report 2008 on the biological number of children of women from the comprehensive microcensus sample. previously, only the ongoing birth statistics provided information on cohort fertility as a total fertility rate of the synthetic female cohorts. since both benchmarks bear different types of insecurity, a comparison is to provide important information on the quality of these indicators. this article shows that the average number of children per woman in the dataset of the microcensus 2008 and the cohort fertility rate in the birth statistics show a highly similar course of cohort fertility. whilst the agreement for the female cohorts in the new länder (former gdr without berlin east) and in germany as a whole is almost complete, the values in the old länder (western germany without berlin west) are further apart. a major cause of this evidently lies in the high proportion of female immigrants in the old länder. some of the women who immigrated into the former territory of federal republic already gave birth to their children before entering germany. these births could not be taken into account in the ongoing birth statistics, whilst the microcensus provided information on all children born, regardless of where they were born. these survey-related deviations can be largely reduced if the comparison with the cohort fertility rate of the birth statistics is based not on the average number of children of all women, but only on the number of children of women who were born in germany or who immigrated below the age of 26. the share of female migrants was low in the new länder and did not impact cohort fertility. all in all, the comparison showed that both sets of statistics provide data with a good degree of concurrence on the fertility of the birth years from 1933 to 1992 for germany as a whole, as well as for the old and the new länder. this makes it possible to carry out detailed analyses of fertility in relation to comprehensive socioeconomic characteristics of the microcensus. keywords: fertility · tfr · number of children · childlessness · microcensus · statistic of births · migration experience comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 1 (2010): 185-204 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-05en2 • olga pötzsch186 introduction the total fertility rate is customarily calculated in offi cial statistics on the basis of the data of the fertility statistics. both the total fertility rates of the calendar years and those of the cohorts are so-called synthetic indicators: the average number of children per woman is calculated by ascertaining the number of births and the number of women independently and then linking them arithmetically per calendar year or per cohort. the second method for recording the births of the women’s cohorts is to survey the women themselves. this makes it possible to ascertain an average number of children per woman in a fully-integrated manner which relates to real cohorts of women who are currently alive and comes from one source of data. in addition to the average number of children, such statistics also reveal the spread of women according to the number of children. the fi rst offi cial survey of women on the number of children born in the unifi ed germany was carried out in 2006 in the framework of the special survey entitled “births in germany”. in addition to the data on the extent of childlessness and on the number of mothers’ children, this study also provided detailed data on the age of the women when their children were born (pötzsch/ sommer 2009). data are now available for the fi rst time from the large microcensus1 sample for the year under report 2008 relating to the number of women’s biological children. a comparison of the total fertility rate of the synthetic women’s cohorts from the ongoing fertility statistics with the average number of children from the microcensus 2008 can provide important information on the quality of both indicators. if agreement is good, or if any deviations present can be reasoned, then both sets of statistics are coherent, they may complement one another and be regarded in conjunction. if the results deviate considerably from one another, the causes of the deviations must be studied. complete agreement between the results cannot be expected because of the conceptual differences between the two sets of statistics: the information from the fertility statistics refl ects the relationship between the number of births and the number of women alive at the time of these births. by contrast, retrospective information concerning the women of the corresponding cohorts living in germany in 2008 is included in the microcensus survey observed here. since the totality of women has changed over the years and decades as a result of mortality and migration, the current “stocktake” may deviate from the values calculated in the fertility statistics. over and above this, the information obtained from a sample on the number of children may contain both random and systematic errors. these too must be taken into account when interpreting the result. the goal of the present article is to compare the available fertility rates from the ongoing fertility statistics (as per 2008) and from the microcensus 2008 with one 1 the microcensus is the most comprehensive european household survey with a sample size of 1 % of the population and varied information on personal data and private households. cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 187 another and to indicate particularities, strengths and weaknesses in the two indicators. subsequently, fi rst of all the data basis, the quality of the data and the territorial structure used will be discussed. then the fertility measures of the women’s cohorts from the fertility statistics on the one hand and from the microcensus survey 2008 on the other hand will be compared with one another. separate information will be provided here on the women’s cohorts in the former territory of federal republic (old länder), in the new länder and in germany as a whole. the results of the fertility statistics will be referred to as cohort fertility rates (or cfr) and the results of the microcensus as the average number of children. 1 sources and quality of the data fertility statistics the fi rst source of data for ascertaining the fertility rates in the fertility statistics are the reports on a birth, which are transmitted by the registry offi ces to the offi cial statistics. there, they are examined and totalled to form a national result. this is an ongoing total survey. the quality of these so-called secondary data on births, which are based on administrative information, is regarded as being high (federal statistical offi ce: qualitätsbericht „fortschreibung“). this also applies with certain restrictions to data on births in the former gdr. secondly, the fertility rates are calculated on the basis of the number of women who are ascertained in the context of the ongoing updates of the size of the population. the annual updates of the population by gender, as well as by birth years, takes place with the aid of the results of the statistics of births and deaths, as well as of the statistics on migration. the population data from 1987 consist of extrapolated fi gures based on the census of 25 may 1987. in the new länder and east berlin population counts rely on updates of an extract from the former central population register from 3rd of october 1990. the last census was accomplished in the gdr in 1981, thus almost thirty years ago. some recalculations were carried out after reunifi cation in october 1990 in the interest of methodical standardisation, including that the average population used to calculate the fertility rates was recalculated (federal statistical offi ce 1996). the population updating has been carried out according to the same rules as in the former territory of federal republic since 1990. the quality of the population updating reduces as the time since the last census increases. the number of women used in the denominator of the formula therefore constitutes an uncertainty factor in calculating the fertility rates. microcensus until the survey that was carried out in 2008, the microcensus exclusively collected information regarding the children living in the household. no distinction was made here between biological and non-biological children, and children living outside the household were not considered. the microcensus act (mikrozensusgesetz) and the • olga pötzsch188 population statistics act (bevölkerungsstatistikgesetz) were reformed in autumn 2007 (federal law gazette [bgbl] 2007 part i no. 55). the characteristic “no. of biological children” was introduced in the programme of the microcensus, which may be surveyed on a voluntary basis every four years. all 15to 75-year-old women were surveyed for the fi rst time in the microcensus survey 2008 as to the number of children born. the next survey will take place as part of the microcensus 2012. the most important results on the spread of women by number of children, on the level of childlessness, as well as on the regional and sociodemographic characteristics of childless women and on mothers, have already been published (federal statistical offi ce 2009; dorbritz 2010). the level of cohort fertility is now observed in this article, emerging from the information provided by the respondents. in order to ascertain fertility standards that are comparable with the cohort numbers from the offi cial fertility statistics on the basis of the data of the microcensus 2008, the following distinctions need to be made in the microcensus dataset: 1) the female population at the main place of residence is observed. 2) the information on biological children is available in the dataset of the microcensus 2008 for women aged from 15 to 75. since the calculation of the average number of children refers to the birth cohorts of women, only the cohorts 1933 to 1992, which were covered in their entirety, can be considered for this who were aged from 16 to 75 in 2008. the quality of the microcensus data obtained from a stratifi ed cluster sample (esser et al. 1989; lotze/breiholz 2002) depends on both sample-related and nonsample-related errors. the precision of the information, which is provided on a voluntary basis, is particularly impaired by the characteristics of the missing responses. there is no obligation to provide information as to the question regarding the birth of children. it was answered by 89 % of 15to 75-year-old women in the 2008 microcensus survey. indications of possible systematic missing responses led to the application of a two-tiered imputation procedure. this made it possible to minimise systematic distortions in the results on maternity and childlessness (federal statistical offi ce 2009). the coincidence-related sampling error cannot be precisely calculated in the microcensus, but its amount can be estimated in quantitative terms. “the standard error is used as an estimated value which is calculated from the individual data of the sample. if the sample is suffi ciently large, one may presume a probability of roughly 68 % that the respective value of the population lies within the range of the simple standard error and a probability of approx. 95 % that it lies within the fi eld of twice the standard error around the extrapolated value.” (federal statistical offi ce: qualitätsbericht “mikrozensus”). cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 189 the error calculation2 carried out for the average number of children at the level of fi ve-year groups indicates a high degree of reliability of the values both for germany as a whole and for the old and the new länder (annex table 1). only in the youngest age group of eastern german women aged from 16 to 19 does the relative standard error exceed 15 %. a heterogeneous image however emerges at the level of the federal länder. in the land-related evaluations, it is hence recommended in particular for the smaller länder to take account of the relative and absolute sampling errors. only valid cases were evaluated in order to calculate the average number of children: these are, fi rstly, women who stated that they had not given birth to a child, and secondly mothers who made a statement regarding the number of children to whom they had given birth. all statements refer to the extrapolated results. territorial structure the cohort fertility rates (cfr) are available for germany as a whole, as well as – up to 2000 – for the former federal territory (including berlin west) and the new länder including berlin east. after the berlin territorial reform which took place in 2001, it is no longer possible to show west and east berlin in the old delimitation. for this reason, berlin is considered as a whole at the earliest from 1990, the year of german unity, and at the latest from the year under report 2001, and, depending on the situation as regards the data and on content-related preferences, is either attributed to one of the two territorial parts or not considered in either of the two territorial parts. since the differences in birth developments between eastern and western germany are most visible when the two territories are regarded without berlin, the earliest possible time was selected in this article for the cfr (annex tab. 3): 1) germany; 2) former territory of federal republic: until the year under report 1989, including berlin west, from the year under report 1990, not including berlin west (= old federal länder not incl. berlin). 3) new länder: until the year under report 1989: former gdr including berlin east, from the year under report 1990: new länder not incl. berlin. the average number of children in the microcensus refers to the following territorial structures: 1) germany 2) old federal länder not incl. berlin. 3) new länder not incl. berlin. 2 calculations: wolf bihler, federal statistical offi ce (wolf.bihler@destatis.de) • olga pötzsch190 2 comparison of the results of the fertility statistics and of the microcensus the results of the microcensus 2008 do not provide any other picture of the development in fertility in germany than the data from the fertility statistics (fig. 1). both the periods of the rapid drop in the fi nal number of children per woman between the cohorts 1933 and 1945, of the ensuing slower fall approximately until the cohort of 1954, and the phase of relative stability until the women’s cohorts which were born at the end of the 1950s, are reproduced in a similar manner by both benchmarks. if one takes a closer look, however, it is possible to distinguish between fi elds in which the deviations are somewhat larger and – even more importantly – in which the result of the microcensus is systematically above or below the cfr. these fi elds are observed separately below for the old and new länder. fig. 1: total fertility rate of cohorts – germany 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 19 33 19 37 19 41 19 45 19 49 19 53 19 57 19 61 19 65 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 microcensus 2008 statistic of births 2008 birth cohort children per woman (average number of children) (cfr) * * until cohort 1959: completed number of children, from cohort 1958: number of children until the respective age. source: federal statistical offi ce cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 191 old federal länder the average number of children in the former territory of federal republic takes a similar course to the cfr (fig. 2). it does however come to notice that the average number of children with cohorts 1938 to 1968 systematically exceeds the cfr of these cohorts. it remains slightly lower with the younger cohorts from 1976 to 1986, by contrast. the deviations with the younger cohorts are of little relevance for the evaluation of the fertility level. one may presume a reliable cfr for these cohorts, given that the quality of the population updating is likely to have been hardly impaired for the relatively young women. imprecise population fi gures would tend to lead to a lower cfr, and not to the opposite, as is observed with the cohorts 1976 to 1986. a slight underestimation in the microcensus cannot be ruled out, by contrast. much greater signifi cance for the proof of cohort fertility is assumed by the stable negative difference between the cfr and the average number of children in the cohorts from 1938 to 1968. these deviations cannot be explained by the sampling error alone. on the one hand, due to shortcomings in the population updating, fig. 2: total fertility rate of cohorts – old federal länder 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 19 33 19 37 19 41 19 45 19 49 19 53 19 57 19 61 19 65 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 birth cohort (average number of children) (cfr) * microcensus 2008 statistic of births 2008 children per woman * until cohort 1959: completed number of children, from cohort 1958: number of children until the respective age. source: federal statistical offi ce • olga pötzsch192 the number of women to which the births are related could be slightly overrated. in this case, however, the cfr would be underestimated. on the other hand, it suggests itself in light of a relatively large share of female migrants in the former federal territory to suppose that some of the children born to women who migrated to germany were not refl ected in the fertility statistics. by contrast, these women stated the full number of children in the microcensus survey. it was possible to verify the latter hypothesis using the microcensus data. the question was explored as to how the average number of children changes in the microcensus 2008 if this does not relate to all women, but only to women who were born in germany or who migrated there in a younger child-bearing age. an iterative procedure was able to determine the delimitation of the female population in the microcensus which facilitates optimum agreement of the average number of children and of the cfr. if women were born in germany, or if they migrated there before the age of 26, the probability is high that their births were covered by the fertility statistics. as emerges from figure 3, the deviations between the average number of children and the cfr of these women are much lower with the cohorts 1938 to 1968. fig. 3: total fertility rate of cohorts – old federal länder 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 19 33 19 37 19 41 19 45 19 49 19 53 19 57 19 61 19 65 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 microcensus 2008: (all women) statistic of births 2008 microcensus 2008: women who were born in germany or immigrated under the age of 26 birth cohort * children per woman * until cohort 1959: completed number of children, from cohort 1958: number of children until the respective age. source: federal statistical offi ce cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 193 the absolute deviations from the cfr fl uctuate if one takes into consideration the entire female population in the microcensus between 0.02 and 0.11 (the upper value occurs once in the 1954 cohort). when considering women born in germany and women who immigrated before reaching the age of 26, the deviations are only -0.03 to +0.06 (fig. 4). a similar effect can be achieved if the highest age at which a woman migrated to germany is selected within the range of 24 and 28. the differences when compared to the maximum age portrayed here as under the age of 26 are negligible. if the maximum age when migration occurred is selected below this range, the average number of children falls too steeply. if the maximum age is set above the range, the deviations to the cfr are similar to those for all women. the delimitation of the population of women by migration experience has no impact on the deviations between the two birth measures among younger women in the cohorts 1976 to 1986. fig. 4: absolute deviation of the average number of children (microcensus 2008) from the cfr (birth statistics) – old federal länder -0,15 -0,10 -0,05 0,00 0,05 0,10 0,15 19 38 19 40 19 42 19 44 19 46 19 48 19 50 19 52 19 54 19 56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 microcensus 2008: all women microcensus 2008: women who were born in germany or immigrated under the age of 26 birth cohort children per woman source: federal statistical offi ce • olga pötzsch194 women by number of children with and without consideration of migration experience in the old federal länder the best approximation of the average number of children in the microcensus to the cohort fertility rate of the fertility statistics can therefore be reached in the old länder if not all valid cases are consulted from the dataset of the microcensus, but only those which refer to women who were born in germany or who immigrated before the age of 26. the question now arises of when and if so how the distribution of women by number of children differ, which underlie the average number of children of the two female populations: are we seeing changes by virtue of the delimitation by migration experience above all in the share of women without a child or in the distribution of mothers by the number of their children as well? we also observed here all valid cases in the old federal länder: these are, fi rstly, women who stated that they had not had children, and secondly mothers stating the number of children which they had had. all statements here refer furthermore to the extrapolated results. the cohorts are collected below into groups of fi ve for a better overview and to make them easier to compare with the results of the microcensus 2008 that have already been published. women who were born in germany or who immigrated before the age of 26 account for a total of 93 % of all women of birth cohorts 1933 to 1992. this share differs depending on the number of children which the women have had: it is 97 % among women with no children, and it is 83 % among women with four or more children. table 1 contains the absolute and relative distributions of women by the number of children. these show that the distributions of the two populations agree very closely. as was expected, comparably large deviations, which however do not exceed 1.4 percentage points, are recorded in the medium age groups with women without a child and with women with four or more children (fig. 5). depending on the goal pursued by an analysis, it must consequently be weighed up whether the slight shifts in the distribution of women by the number of the children can be accepted. the overall statement however remains unaffected by the selection of the deviations observed here. however, in particular with future time comparisons (the next survey on the number of children in the microcensus is planned for 2012) it should be ensured that the delimitation of the female population by migration experience may exert an infl uence on the results and on their interpretation. cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 195 ta b . 1 : w o m en b y nu m b er o f b io lo g ic al c hi ld re n – o ld f ed er al l än de r 20 08 b ir th c o ho rt a ll w o m en * t he re o f: w o m en w ho w er e b o rn in g er m an y o r im m ig ra te d u nd er th e ag e o f 2 6* * (a ge in 2 00 8) w ith o ut ch ild re n w ith 1 c hi ld w ith 2 ch ild re n w ith 3 ch ild re n w ith 4 o r m o re ch ild re n a ll w o m en ** * w ith o ut ch ild re n w ith 1 c hi ld w ith 2 ch ild re n w ith 3 ch ild re n w ith 4 o r m o re ch ild re n a ll w o m en ** * 1 00 0 1 00 0 19 89 -1 99 2 (1 619 ) 1 45 0 13 / / / 1 46 5 1 44 8 1 3 / / / 1 46 3 19 84 -1 98 8 (2 024 ) 1 66 9 13 1 3 2 / / 1 83 7 1 66 4 1 31 3 1 / / 1 83 1 19 79 -1 98 3 (2 529 ) 1 35 8 33 6 1 82 4 0 8 1 92 4 1 33 5 3 28 1 78 3 9 8 1 88 8 19 74 -1 97 8 (3 034 ) 8 06 4 56 4 24 1 21 3 5 1 84 2 7 62 4 18 3 94 1 11 3 2 1 71 7 19 69 -1 97 3 (3 539 ) 6 06 5 25 7 41 2 30 7 2 2 17 4 5 80 4 74 6 82 2 09 6 1 2 00 5 19 64 -1 96 8 (4 044 ) 6 17 5 79 9 31 3 24 1 18 2 57 0 5 90 5 33 8 53 2 91 9 8 2 36 5 19 59 -1 96 3 (4 549 ) 4 78 5 13 9 01 3 00 1 24 2 31 6 4 54 4 58 7 97 2 58 9 9 2 06 5 19 54 -1 95 8 (5 054 ) 3 77 4 77 7 77 2 95 1 13 2 03 9 3 53 4 29 6 84 2 52 8 9 1 80 7 19 49 -1 95 3 (5 559 ) 2 95 4 82 7 22 2 53 1 09 1 86 0 2 74 4 44 6 48 2 21 8 4 1 67 0 19 44 -1 94 8 (6 064 ) 2 11 3 99 6 15 2 24 1 10 1 56 0 2 01 3 73 5 68 2 03 8 6 1 43 1 19 39 -1 94 3 (6 569 ) 2 30 4 39 7 39 3 28 1 85 1 92 3 2 18 4 14 6 95 3 01 1 55 1 78 3 19 33 -1 93 8 (7 075 ) 2 30 4 15 6 95 3 77 2 77 1 99 4 2 17 3 91 6 56 3 52 2 45 1 86 1 in to ta l 8 32 7 4 76 5 6 76 1 2 49 7 1 15 3 23 5 03 8 09 5 4 40 5 6 18 7 2 24 0 9 59 21 8 85 p er ce nt p er ce nt 19 89 -1 99 2 (1 619 ) 99 ,0 0, 9 / / / 10 0, 0 99 ,0 0, 9 / / / 10 0, 0 19 84 -1 98 8 (2 024 ) 90 ,8 7, 1 1, 7 / / 10 0, 0 90 ,9 7, 1 1, 7 / / 10 0, 0 19 79 -1 98 3 (2 529 ) 70 ,6 17 ,5 9, 5 2, 1 0, 4 10 0, 0 70 ,7 17 ,4 9, 4 2, 1 0, 4 10 0, 0 19 74 -1 97 8 (3 034 ) 43 ,8 24 ,7 23 ,0 6, 6 1, 9 10 0, 0 44 ,4 24 ,3 23 ,0 6, 5 1, 9 10 0, 0 19 69 -1 97 3 (3 539 ) 27 ,9 24 ,1 34 ,1 10 ,6 3, 3 10 0, 0 28 ,9 23 ,6 34 ,0 10 ,4 3, 0 10 0, 0 19 64 -1 96 8 (4 044 ) 24 ,0 22 ,5 36 ,2 12 ,6 4, 6 10 0, 0 24 ,9 22 ,5 36 ,1 12 ,3 4, 2 10 0, 0 19 59 -1 96 3 (4 549 ) 20 ,6 22 ,1 38 ,9 12 ,9 5, 4 10 0, 0 22 ,0 22 ,2 38 ,6 12 ,5 4, 8 10 0, 0 19 54 -1 95 8 (5 054 ) 18 ,5 23 ,4 38 ,1 14 ,5 5, 5 10 0, 0 19 ,5 23 ,8 37 ,8 14 ,0 4, 9 10 0, 0 19 49 -1 95 3 (5 559 ) 15 ,8 25 ,9 38 ,8 13 ,6 5, 8 10 0, 0 16 ,4 26 ,6 38 ,8 13 ,2 5, 0 10 0, 0 19 44 -1 94 8 (6 064 ) 13 ,5 25 ,6 39 ,4 14 ,4 7, 1 10 0, 0 14 ,0 26 ,1 39 ,7 14 ,2 6, 0 10 0, 0 19 39 -1 94 3 (6 569 ) 12 ,0 22 ,9 38 ,4 17 ,1 9, 6 10 0, 0 12 ,2 23 ,2 39 ,0 16 ,9 8, 7 10 0, 0 19 33 -1 93 8 (7 075 ) 11 ,5 20 ,8 34 ,9 18 ,9 13 ,9 10 0, 0 11 ,7 21 ,0 35 ,2 18 ,9 13 ,2 10 0, 0 * w it h va lid in fo rm at io n o n th e b ir th o f c hi ld re n. ** w it h va lid in fo rm at io n o n m ig ra tio n ex p er ie n ce . ** * d ev ia tio n s fr o m 1 00 % a re c au se d b y ro un d in g o ff . s o ur ce : fe de ra l s ta ti st ic al o ffi c e • olga pötzsch196 new länder the two fertility measures agree very well for the women’s cohorts in the new länder. with few exceptions, the deviations are lower than +/-0.06. the exceptions are constituted by the cohorts 1967, 1970 and 1983. the average number of children in these cohorts deviates from the cfr by 0.08, 0.10 and -0.08 respectively (fig. 6). the share of women with a migration experience is very low in the new länder, so that the birth conduct is more homogeneous all in all than in the old länder. the visible fl uctuations over the average number of children favour collecting the cohorts into groups of fi ve in the evaluation of the microcensus results for the new länder. germany the average number of children for all women can be used to compare the results of the microcensus and the fertility statistics for germany as a whole. it emerges here that the deviations are slighter than with the cohorts in the old länder. an evaluation of the microcensus results, for instance in relation to the distribution of the women fig. 5: relative share of women by number of children: difference between the shares of all women and the shares of women born in germany or who immigrated before the age of 26 – old federal länder 2008 -1,5 -1,0 -0,5 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 without child with 1child with 2 children with 3 children with 4 or more children 1979-1983 (25-29) 1974-1978 (30-34) 1969-1973 (35-39) 1964-1968 (40-44) 1959-1963 (45-49) 1954-1958 (50-54) 1949-1953 (55-59) 1944-1948 (60-64) 1939-1943 (65-69) 1933-1938 (70-75) percentage points source: federal statistical offi ce cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 197 by the number of children, would therefore not imply any signifi cant deviations from the cfr in the fertility statistics. if the evaluations from the microcensus were related both to germany as a whole and to the territorial areas, the following delimitation of the female population by migration experience would be preferable: only women who were born in germany or who immigrated before reaching the age of 26 would be taken into account with the women’s cohorts in the old länder and in berlin, and all women would be taken into account with the cohorts in the new länder. this would bring about a major, necessary correction of the average number of children among the western german cohorts, as well as a slight improvement in the agreement of the results for germany (fig. 3 and 7). fig. 6: total fertility rate of cohorts – new federal länder 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 19 33 19 37 19 41 19 45 19 49 19 53 19 57 19 61 19 65 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 microcensus 2008 statistic of births 2008 birth cohort (cfr) (average number of children) * children per woman * until cohort 1959: completed number of children, from cohort 1958: number of children until the respective age. source: federal statistical offi ce • olga pötzsch198 conclusions in summing up, it can be stated that the average number of children per woman in the dataset of the microcensus 2008 and the cohort fertility rate (cfr) in the fertility statistics show a very similar course to cohort fertility. both sets of statistics hence provide comparable data for the birth cohorts from 1933 to 1992 which can be analysed in context.3 a few particularities should however be observed when carrying out further evaluations of the microcensus 2008, and when interpreting the results: 1) the average number of children with the younger cohorts in the microcensus is somewhat lower than the cfr in the fertility statistics. these deviations oc3 both the trends in age-specifi c cohort fertility from the fertility statistics and the spread of women by the number of children from the microcensus 2008 was taken into account in the presumptions of future birth developments in the 12th coordinated population forecast (pötzsch 2010). fig. 7: total fertility rate of cohorts – germany 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 19 33 19 37 19 41 19 45 19 49 19 53 19 57 19 61 19 65 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 microcensus 2008: all women microcensus 2008: women who were born in germany or immigrated under age of 26 statistic of births 2008 (cfr) birth cohort * children per woman * until cohort 1959: completed number of children, from cohort 1958: number of children until the respective age. source: federal statistical offi ce cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 199 cur more frequently among the western german cohorts than among women in the new länder. one should presume with these deviations that the cfr for the young women’s cohorts is of a higher quality. because the information on children is provided on a voluntary basis in the microcensus, it is not possible to rule out that a small number of younger women may not be recorded. 2) the average number of children in the cohorts 1938 to 1968 tends to be higher in the old länder than the cfr in the fertility statistics. the main cause of these differences is obviously that a relatively large share of women migrating to the former territory of federal republic of germany had already had children abroad. these births are not included in the fertility statistics, whilst information was provided in the microcensus on all children born, regardless of their place of birth. these survey-related deviations can be largely reduced if, for the comparison with the cfr of the fertility statistics, not the average number of children of all women, but only the number of children of women born in germany or migrating before reaching the age of 26 is used. 3) this delimitation of the western german population of women by their migration experience leads to marginal changes in the distribution of women by the number of children. the share of women without a child is slightly higher among women born in germany or migrating before reaching the age of 26, and the share of mothers with four or more children is slightly lower than the corresponding share among all women. references dorbritz, jürgen, 2010: kinderzahlen und lebensformen im west-ost-vergleich – ergebnisse des mikrozensus 2008. in: bevölkerungsforschung aktuell 31,1. wiesbaden: bib esser, hartmut; grohmann, heinz; müller, walter; schäffer, karl-august, 1989: mikrozensus im wandel. untersuchungen und empfehlungen zur inhaltlichen und methodischen gestaltung. in: statistisches bundeamt (ed.): forum der bundesstatistik. stuttgart bgbl, 2007: gesetz zur änderung des mikrozensusgesetzes 2005 und des bevölkerungsstatistikgesetzes vom 30. oktober 2007, bgbl jahrgang 2007 teil i nr. 55 federal statistical offi ce, 1996: sonderreihe mit beiträgen für das gebiet der ehemaligen ddr 28: 9, 54 federal statistical offi ce, 2009a: imputation von werten bei fehlenden angaben zur mutterschaft und zur zahl der geborenen kinder im mikrozensus 2008 – arbeitsbericht. die unterlage kann angefordert werden unter: mikrozensus@destatis.de federal statistical offi ce, 2009b: mikrozensus 2008 – neue daten zur kinderlosigkeit in deutschland; online: destatis.de > bevölkerung > geburten und sterbefälle > geburten und kinderlosigkeit in deutschland federal statistical offi ce: qualitätsberichte online: destatis.de > publikationen > qualitätsberichte > bevölkerung lotze, sabine; breiholz, holger, 2002: zum neuen erhebungsdesign des mikrozensus. in: wirtschaft und statistik 5. statistisches bundesamt: 359-366 • olga pötzsch200 pötzsch, olga; sommer, bettina, 2009: generatives verhalten der frauenkohorten im langfristigen vergleich – ergebnisse der laufenden statistik der geburten und der erhebung „geburten in deutschland“. in: wirtschaft und statistik 5. statistisches bundesamt: 377-396 pötzsch, olga, 2010: annahmen zur geburtenentwicklung in der 12. koordinierten bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. in: wirtschaft und statistik 1. statistisches bundesamt: 29-40 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the authorised original article in german is available under the title “kohortenfertilität: ein vergleich der ergebnisse der amtlichen geburtenstatistik und der mikrozensuserhebung 2008”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-05de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-05de4, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. olga pötzsch ( ), statistisches bundesamt, gustav-stresemann-ring 11, 65189 wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: olga.poetzsch@destatis.de, url: http://www.destatis.de cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 201 ta b . 1 : r el at iv e st an d ar d e rr o r fo r th e av er ag e nu m b er o f c hi ld re n b y co ho rt g ro up s b ir th c o ho rt (a g e in 2 00 8) 19 89 -1 99 2 (1 619 ) 19 84 -1 98 8 (2 024 ) 19 79 -1 98 3 (2 529 ) 19 74 -1 97 8 (3 034 ) 19 69 -1 97 3 (3 539 ) 19 64 -1 96 8 (4 044 ) 19 59 -1 96 3 (4 549 ) 19 54 -1 95 8 (5 054 ) 19 49 -1 95 3 (5 559 ) 19 44 -1 94 8 (6 064 ) 19 39 -1 94 3 (6 569 ) 19 33 -1 93 8 (7 075 ) p er ce nt b ad en -w ür tt em b er g + / 32 ,8 7, 9 3, 6 2, 1 1, 4 1, 3 1, 3 1, 3 1, 5 1, 5 1, 3 1, 3 b av ar ia + / 25 ,4 6, 2 3, 2 1, 8 1, 3 1, 2 1, 2 1, 2 1, 2 1, 3 1, 2 1, 2 b er lin + / 43 ,3 12 ,0 6, 0 4, 5 3, 2 2, 9 2, 9 3, 1 3, 2 3, 0 2, 8 3, 1 b ra nd en b ur g + / 51 ,0 11 ,5 7, 2 4, 0 2, 6 2, 7 1, 9 1, 9 2, 0 2, 4 2, 3 2, 4 b re m en + / 97 ,1 36 ,2 15 ,6 8, 1 7, 5 6, 8 6, 5 9, 7 6, 6 5, 8 6, 3 5, 9 h am b ur g + / 70 ,4 19 ,2 9, 1 6, 7 4, 6 4, 5 4, 4 4, 6 4, 5 4, 1 5, 2 4, 2 h es se + / 33 ,2 8, 6 4, 3 2, 6 2, 0 1, 8 1, 7 1, 7 1, 9 2, 0 1, 7 1, 6 m ec kl en b ur gw es te rn p o m er an ia + / 59 ,7 14 ,8 6, 8 5, 0 3, 8 3, 0 2, 8 2, 4 2, 3 3, 4 3, 0 2, 7 lo w er s ax o ny + / 23 ,4 9, 3 4, 0 2, 5 1, 9 1, 5 1, 6 1, 6 1, 6 1, 9 1, 5 1, 6 n o rt h r hi ne -w es tp ha lia + / 25 ,4 5, 6 2, 7 1, 7 1, 2 1, 1 1, 1 1, 1 1, 2 1, 3 1, 1 1, 1 r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e + / 26 ,9 11 ,3 5, 9 3, 3 2, 6 2, 2 2, 2 2, 1 2, 3 2, 6 2, 3 2, 0 s aa rl an d + / 70 ,1 22 ,2 12 ,3 7, 2 5, 1 4, 9 4, 2 4, 8 4, 4 4, 4 4, 3 3, 9 s ax o ny + / 27 ,7 8, 9 4, 5 3, 2 2, 2 1, 7 1, 6 1, 7 1, 7 1, 9 1, 7 1, 9 s ax o ny -a nh al t + / 34 ,6 9, 0 6, 0 4, 1 2, 8 2, 4 2, 1 1, 9 1, 9 2, 5 2, 0 2, 5 s ch le sw ig -h o ls te in + / 33 ,9 12 ,7 6, 8 3, 9 3, 0 2, 7 2, 8 2, 7 2, 5 2, 6 2, 4 2, 3 t hu ri ng ia + / 37 ,0 11 ,6 5, 9 3, 8 2, 8 2, 7 1, 9 2, 2 2, 0 2, 4 2, 2 2, 3 o ld fe d er al s ta te s (e xc lu d in g b er lin ) + / 10 ,7 2, 9 1, 4 0, 9 0, 6 0, 5 0, 5 0, 6 0, 6 0, 6 0, 5 0, 5 n ew fe d er al s ta te s (e xc lu d in g b er lin ) + / 16 ,9 4, 8 2, 6 1, 8 1, 2 1, 1 0, 9 0, 9 0, 9 1, 1 1, 0 1, 0 g er m an y + / 9, 1 2, 5 1, 2 0, 8 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 0, 5 s o ur ce : w ol f b ih le r, f ed er al s ta ti st ic al o ffi c e annex • olga pötzsch202 ta b . 2 : 2fo ld a b so lu te s ta nd ar d e rr o r fo r th e av er ag e nu m b er o f c hi ld re n b y co ho rt g ro up s (9 5% c o n fi d en ce in te rv al ) b ir th c o ho rt (a g e in 2 00 8) 19 89 -1 99 2 (1 619 ) 19 84 -1 98 8 (2 024 ) 19 79 -1 98 3 (2 529 ) 19 74 -1 97 8 (3 034 ) 19 69 -1 97 3 (3 539 ) 19 64 -1 96 8 (4 044 ) 19 59 -1 96 3 (4 549 ) 19 54 -1 95 8 (5 054 ) 19 49 -1 95 3 (5 559 ) 19 44 -1 94 8 (6 064 ) 19 39 -1 94 3 (6 569 ) 19 33 -1 93 8 (7 075 ) b ad en -w ür tt em b er g + / 0, 01 0, 02 0, 03 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 0, 05 0, 05 0, 05 0, 06 0, 05 0, 06 b av ar ia + / 0, 01 0, 01 0, 03 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 0, 05 0, 05 0, 05 b er lin + / 0, 02 0, 03 0, 04 0, 07 0, 07 0, 08 0, 08 0, 10 0, 10 0, 10 0, 10 0, 11 b ra nd en b ur g + / 0, 01 0, 03 0, 08 0, 08 0, 07 0, 08 0, 07 0, 07 0, 07 0, 09 0, 09 0, 11 b re m en + / 0, 02 0, 04 0, 11 0, 16 0, 20 0, 17 0, 18 0, 26 0, 19 0, 22 0, 23 0, 25 h am b ur g + / 0, 01 0, 04 0, 06 0, 08 0, 09 0, 12 0, 12 0, 12 0, 13 0, 13 0, 17 0, 14 h es se + / 0, 01 0, 02 0, 04 0, 05 0, 05 0, 05 0, 06 0, 06 0, 07 0, 07 0, 06 0, 07 m ec kl en b ur gw es te rn p o m er an ia + / 0, 01 0, 04 0, 10 0, 11 0, 11 0, 10 0, 10 0, 09 0, 09 0, 14 0, 13 0, 13 lo w er s ax o ny + / 0, 01 0, 02 0, 04 0, 05 0, 05 0, 05 0, 06 0, 06 0, 05 0, 07 0, 06 0, 07 n o rt h r hi ne -w es tp ha lia + / 0, 01 0, 02 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 04 0, 04 0, 05 0, 04 0, 05 r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e + / 0, 01 0, 03 0, 05 0, 07 0, 08 0, 07 0, 07 0, 07 0, 08 0, 09 0, 09 0, 09 s aa rl an d + / 0, 02 0, 06 0, 11 0, 12 0, 12 0, 14 0, 13 0, 16 0, 14 0, 15 0, 17 0, 17 s ax o ny + / 0, 01 0, 02 0, 04 0, 06 0, 06 0, 06 0, 06 0, 06 0, 06 0, 07 0, 06 0, 07 s ax o ny -a nh al t + / 0, 02 0, 04 0, 06 0, 09 0, 08 0, 07 0, 07 0, 07 0, 07 0, 09 0, 08 0, 10 s ch le sw ig -h o ls te in + / 0, 01 0, 03 0, 06 0, 08 0, 08 0, 08 0, 09 0, 09 0, 08 0, 10 0, 10 0, 10 t hu ri ng ia + / 0, 02 0, 03 0, 06 0, 09 0, 08 0, 08 0, 06 0, 08 0, 08 0, 09 0, 08 0, 10 o ld fe d er al s ta te s (e xc lu d in g b er lin ) + / 0, 00 0, 01 0, 01 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 n ew fe d er al s ta te s (e xc lu d in g b er lin ) + / 0, 01 0, 01 0, 03 0, 04 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 03 0, 04 0, 04 0, 04 g er m an y + / 0, 00 0, 01 0, 01 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 0, 02 s o ur ce : w ol f b ih le r, f ed er al s ta ti st ic al o ffi c e cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and ... • 203 tab. 3: average number of children (microcensus) and total fertility rate of female cohorts (birth statistics) 2008 microcensus statistic of births nachrichtlich: birth cohort germany* old federal states * new federal states germany old federal states new federal states old federal states new federal states excluding berlin excluding west berlin/ east berlin from 1990 excluding west berlin/ east berlin from 2001** average number of children per 1000 women live-born children per 1000 women 1933 2.135 2.133 2.221 2.224 2.225 / 2.225 / 1934 2.135 2.166 2.153 2.221 2.240 / 2.240 / 1935 2.132 2.151 2.162 2.167 2.173 / 2.173 / 1936 2.046 2.049 2.113 2.132 2.135 / 2.135 / 1937 2.069 2.107 2.042 2.108 2.108 2.077 2.108 2.077 1938 2.060 2.079 2.057 2.069 2.070 2.038 2.070 2.038 1939 2.009 2.037 1.980 2.026 2.025 2.011 2.025 2.011 1940 1.970 1.983 1.988 1.977 1.971 1.976 1.971 1.976 1941 1.878 1.878 1.896 1.917 1.903 1.945 1.903 1.945 1942 1.843 1.852 1.866 1.864 1.850 1.898 1.850 1.898 1943 1.825 1.821 1.904 1.830 1.810 1.886 1.810 1.886 1944 1.797 1.809 1.810 1.801 1.778 1.871 1.778 1.871 1945 1.755 1.747 1.867 1.795 1.775 1.860 1.775 1.860 1946 1.771 1.775 1.826 1.795 1.780 1.867 1.780 1.867 1947 1.750 1.735 1.850 1.770 1.752 1.840 1.752 1.839 1948 1.721 1.704 1.843 1.750 1.729 1.831 1.729 1.831 1949 1.705 1.701 1.773 1.735 1.715 1.807 1.715 1.806 1950 1.714 1.694 1.804 1.724 1.701 1.796 1.701 1.795 1951 1.675 1.650 1.801 1.693 1.658 1.809 1.658 1.807 1952 1.680 1.674 1.768 1.686 1.646 1.812 1.647 1.810 1953 1.656 1.613 1.850 1.675 1.629 1.815 1.629 1.812 1954 1.697 1.667 1.782 1.657 1.606 1.812 1.606 1.809 1955 1.637 1.600 1.810 1.673 1.622 1.820 1.622 1.816 1956 1.668 1.644 1.797 1.670 1.620 1.817 1.619 1.813 1957 1.655 1.614 1.827 1.659 1.603 1.832 1.603 1.825 1958 1.664 1.636 1.827 1.660 1.607 1.825 1.605 1.821 1959 1.658 1.630 1.808 1.660 1.605 1.828 1.603 1.819 1960 1.615 1.577 1.794 1.657 1.607 1.803 1.603 1.795 1961 1.599 1.569 1.776 1.633 1.585 1.774 1.580 1.762 1962 1.579 1.564 1.683 1.613 1.571 1.738 1.564 1.723 1963 1.590 1.578 1.706 1.587 1.550 1.699 1.542 1.679 1964 1.549 1.544 1.597 1.564 1.534 1.660 1.525 1.637 1965 1.531 1.525 1.600 1.546 1.521 1.624 1.512 1.600 1966 1.505 1.511 1.523 1.515 1.495 1.578 1.486 1.556 1967 1.499 1.485 1.629 1.482 1.461 1.553 1.454 1.535 1968 1.445 1.442 1.531 1.457 1.440 1.508 1.436 1.493 1969 1.418 1.419 1.482 1.437 1.427 1.459 1.424 1.452 1970 1.420 1.416 1.507 1.417 1.414 1.405 1.413 1.405 1971 1.341 1.344 1.390 1.381 1.378 1.365 1.378 1.384 1972 1.332 1.332 1.367 1.342 1.340 1.325 1.340 1.356 1973 1.292 1.300 1.345 1.303 1.305 1.301 1.306 1.313 1974 1.165 1.165 1.224 1.225 1.227 1.242 1.229 1.249 1975 1.129 1.136 1.221 1.131 1.133 1.165 1.135 1.164 1976 976 968 1.106 1.024 1.025 1.066 1.027 1.064 1977 873 878 909 916 922 968 924 966 1978 768 767 845 818 816 866 817 866 1979 655 647 772 708 704 763 706 763 1980 544 522 644 603 596 660 597 661 1981 472 459 597 503 498 547 498 548 1982 359 348 447 409 401 452 401 453 1983 249 245 289 323 314 366 314 366 1984 213 210 / 255 247 285 247 286 1985 159 153 / 196 188 222 188 222 1986 110 98 / 144 136 168 136 168 1987 73 67 / 99 94 117 94 117 1988 / / / 64 60 80 60 80 1989 / / / 37 34 48 34 48 1990 / / / 19 17 28 17 28 1991 / / / 9 8 17 8 17 1992 / / / 3 3 7 3 7 * in the old federal länder and berlin for women born in germany or migrating before reaching the age of 26. ** previously published values. source: federal statistical offi ce published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes abstract: this paper investigates to what extent a pluralisation of living arrangements can be observed in germany up to the present day – both on the household level as well as the individual level. the analyses are based on data from the microcensus and the german general social survey (allbus) from the last decades. on the household level, eight different living arrangements are distinguished depending on the marital status and the number of generations living in the household. the results show that pluralisation mainly occurred between 1972 and 1996. in contrast, the diversity of living arrangements in west germany has remained unchanged during the last 20 years, and it even slightly decreased in east germany. a different picture emerges when separately looking at one-generation and twogeneration households. living arrangements with children have also diversifi ed in recent years, which is mainly the result of less married couples with children. on the individual level, the classifi cation of living arrangements was extended by the characteristic gender-specifi c division of labour, since the changed role of women is seen as the crucial factor for the changes in the familial sector. the results indicate a continuous pluralisation of living arrangements. this pluralisation of the familial sector is mainly caused by the male breadwinner model losing importance. this trend is more pronounced in east germany than in west germany. a cohort analysis reveals a bimodal distribution of diversity on the age-axis: entropy is highest around the ages of 30 and 60, since living arrangements often change at these points. individuals often marry around the age of 30, and the transition to an “empty nest” mostly occurs around the age of 60. the cohort analysis for different age groups shows that the diversity of living arrangements is generally higher amongst younger cohorts than amongst older cohorts. keywords: pluralisation · living arrangements · household · family · entropy comparative population studies vol. 39, 1 (2014): 99-122 (date of release: 20.03.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-03en9 • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes100 1 problem “a great diversity of animals and plants is an important condition for an effective ecosystem and a crucial resource for human life” (statistisches bundesamt 2011: 337; translated by cpos). even if the effect of biodiversity on the stability of the ecosystem is contested, terms such as “species extinction” or “protection of species” express that the preservation of “diversity” is connected to positive outcomes. also in family sociology diversity is a prominent concept. to be more precise, it is the diversity of living arrangements that has been discussed in germany since the 1980s. family sociologists claimed a pluralisation of living arrangements, i.e. an increasing diversity over time (fi rst lüscher 1985; cf. also nave-herz 1988). whereas an ecological diversity is generally desired, the pluralisation of living arrangements is evaluated sceptically by some and positively by other family sociologists. some fear that traditional living arrangements, especially marriage and family, may disappear, others emphasize the increased number of options as new living arrangements have been established. but this diversity of living arrangements is not only constituted by new living arrangements such as cohabitating unmarried couples but also by divorces, widowhoods, and childlessness. the pluralisation of living arrangements in germany has been the subject of many studies (brüderl 2004; diewald/wehner 1996; dorbritz 2010; engstler/teschrömer 2010; franzmann/wagner 1999; höhn/dorbritz 1995; huinink/wagner 1998; marbach 2003; strohmeier 1993; wagner 2008; wagner/franzmann 2000). most of these studies merely fi nd a small increase in diversity, which is attributed to the loss of dominance of the “normal family” that was common in the 1950s and 1960s, whereas households without children – especially single and cohabiting households – gained in importance (höhn/dorbritz 1995; klein 1999; strohmeier 1993; wagner 2008). the aim of this research is to analyse the changes of living arrangements based on data from offi cial statistics (microcensus) and the german general social survey (allbus). it contrasts previous studies in a number of ways: fi rst, existing studies (cf. wagner 2008) are updated to include later trends, so that developments of the last 40 years can be described by the microcensus and developments of the last 30 years by the allbus. second, one-generation and two-generation households are investigated separately, which allows describing the development of diversity of both the familial and the non-familial sector. third, this paper analyses how the diversity of living arrangements varies between cohorts and within cohorts between different age groups for east and west germany separately (cf. brüderl/klein 2003; diewald/wehner 1996; wagner et al. 2001). 2 theoretical considerations and current state of research despite numerous studies on the subject, the pluralisation of living arrangements is insuffi ciently explained. there are many reasons for this situation. first, an increasing diversity of living arrangements can take both a distributive and a structural the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 101 form. in the former case, the population is distributed more equally across existing living arrangements, in the latter, new living arrangements become institutionalised and therefore the number of different types of living arrangements increases (franzmann/wagner 1999; peet 1974). however, a structural increase of diversity is diffi cult to measure, since it is diffi cult to determine unambiguously under which circumstances and when a new type of living arrangement can be defi ned as established. therefore, most research on the pluralisation of living arrangements focuses on distributive diversity, i.e. the distribution of the population over different living arrangements. second, the diversity of living arrangements is a macro-structural or aggregate characteristic resulting from different micro-level processes. with regard to a particular period of time, it would be necessary to explain separately – and quasi-simultaneously – for every living arrangement why a certain share of the population chooses or changes it. such a complex theoretical concept faces multiple demands. a change in the living arrangement can happen in two different ways: a person decides on a different living arrangement, or a person participating in the living arrangement decides on a change. for example, an individual living alone can decide to cohabit. alternatively, an individual who is cohabiting and whose partner decides to terminate the relationship and to move out may change the current living arrangement due to this separation. considering the consequences of widowhood or the moving out of the last child from the parental home, it becomes obvious that only some changes of living arrangements can be attributed to a person’s choice. even a universal theory of living arrangement choices could not cover all the social conditions that are responsible for the diversity of living arrangements in a society. third, the changes in the diversity of living arrangements need to be explained. this also applies to the question which social conditions lead to the emergence of new living arrangements or the decline of traditional living arrangements within a society. this does not only involve the “emergence” of new living arrangements but also the mechanisms of its social diffusion. more generally, one could say that the distribution of living arrangements at a certain point in time are always the result of a complex process, which is not only largely unknown, but whose form and parameters themselves can change. thus, it is not necessarily always the same conditions and factors that are responsible for the diffusion of living arrangements or the distribution of the population over a number of given living arrangements. fourth, it needs to be considered that the diversity of living arrangements is not constituted by individuals in a certain phase of life. it is rather determined by living arrangements and changes between different living arrangements that happen over the whole life course. thus, the signifi cance of new living arrangements such as cohabitation – which mostly occur in the third and fourth decade of life and have diminished or removed the dominance of marriage in this age span – as a determinant of the pluralisation of living arrangements is put into perspective, since, at the same time, marriage may have gained in importance for older age groups. • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes102 2.1 two typical theoretical approaches following, we delineate two typical explanations for the diversity of living arrangements, two theories explaining the spread of unmarried or cohabiting partnerships. these belong to the “newer” living arrangements, which have become very widespread. the fi rst approach builds on the theory of social differentiation, the second on action theory. to put it simply, the theory of social differentiation is a macro-theory that needs to be micro-sociologically substantiated, whereas action theory is a micro-theory that needs macro-sociological complements if it wants to explain the spread of living arrangements. for example, it makes assumptions on how situations crucial for deciding on a living arrangement have altered in the course of social change. both approaches only partly explain the diversity of living arrangements. the theory of social differentiation (cf. schimank 2000) assumes that modern societies can be divided into subsystems with different functions. the family is seen as a social subsystem segregated into numerous single families as well, although this approach has been criticised. “functions” can be understood as the aggregated output or benefi ts that families provide for other social systems (kaufmann 1995: 35; nave-herz 1999). these benefi ts include socialisation and reproduction. naveherz (1999: 44) mentions the creation and preservation of human capital, which means both the reproduction and the psychological and physical regeneration. the diversity of living arrangements can be understood as the result of a differentiation of the social subsystem family. this differentiation can be explained by two different causes (schimank 2000). first, agents can cause differentiation via a “differentiation policy”. for example, legislative amendments lead to a promotion of other living arrangements than marriage. these include the equalising legal status of unmarried and married couples, the improved legal situation of unmarried fathers and the altered rights of custody. these positive incentives make unmarried living arrangements more attractive. a second explanation for the pluralisation is to view it as the result of an evolutionary process (meyer 1993). pluralisation is understood as the adaptation of a social system – e.g. the subsystem family – to changed environmental conditions. this adaptation is facilitated by an increasing complexity of the social system. meyer (1993) defi nes this complexity by stating that the system “privateness” can be divided into three subsystems: the children-oriented type specialising in socialising children, the relationship-oriented type focusing on the relationship, and the individualistic type comprising singles and shared accommodations and thus individuals deliberately choosing autonomy and independence. the differentiation of the system family thus creates new behavioural expectations, i.e. norms, and individual orientations which characterise each subsystem. the environment of the family also includes other social systems, for example the educational system or the employment market, but also cultural trends or political movements. especially the changes in the educational system and the job market have led to higher qualifi cations, longer educational periods and increasthe pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 103 ing labour participation of women.1 this led to a decrease in rates of marriage and childbirth, which, under a constant propensity of forming relationships, promoted cohabitation and – especially in the student milieu – shared accommodation. these processes have also changed the beliefs about gender roles and questioned the traditional gender-specifi c division of labour in middle-class families (amato et al. 2007; beck 1983; crouch 2004; esping-andersen 2009). similarly, kaufmann (1995) assumes that the pluralisation of living arrangements is caused by a change in norms, by a culturally determined increase in options, which was initiated by the criticism of the “middle-class family” and the emancipation movement of the 1960s. these increased options include the uncoupling of sexuality and reproduction, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood, and of biological and social parenthood. this cultural liberalisation leads to a deinstitutionalisation of marriage and an institutionalisation of new living arrangements (kaufmann 1988, 1995; tyrell 1979, 1988; amato et al. 2007). the action-theoretical approach, in explaining the proliferation of unmarried relationships, criticises the differentiation theory for leaving the causes of differentiation unexplained (hill/kopp 1999: 15). it calls for a decision theory that consolidates macro-structural changes. differentiation theorists are further criticised for not having a “stop rule” for the process of pluralisation (hill/kopp 1999: 17). action theory believes that transitions between living arrangements should be modelled as decision-making situations that occur under certain social conditions. the transition of relationships, in which partners live in separate households, to an unmarried but cohabiting relationship is explained by a reduction in transaction costs, which is aspired to once the intensity of interaction between the partners has exceeded a critical threshold. the establishment of a cohabiting household allows a cost-saving division of labour, and the couple gains more time together (hill/kopp 1999: 25). again, changes in the educational and the employment sector, especially regarding the situation of women, contribute to the diffusion of unmarried relationships. for women, marriage often – especially when it accompanies the family formation – implies taking on the role of a housewife, which involves high opportunity costs considering good employment chances. these theoretical considerations and social trends do not allow predicting the diffusion of new living arrangements or changes in the diversity of living arrangements. it cannot be foreseen whether there will be more legal provisions equalising marriages and unmarried relationships (umr) in the future; changes of the economic – especially fi scal – conditions, however, may lead to an increase of cohabitation and thus to a further pluralisation of living arrangements. this would also happen if the number of men and women with a university degree increases – a fairly realistic development (statistisches bundesamt 2011: 59). considering that the percentage of female fi rst-year students has remained more or less constant during the last decade (statistisches bundesamt 2011: 63) and that the rate of female labour force 1 economic factors are also relevant: increasing wealth and changes in both employment and consumption. • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes104 participation has only slightly increased (statistisches bundesamt 2011: 110), these developments are unlikely to lead to a signifi cant increase in living arrangements – with or without children – outside marriage. 2.2 current state of research on the diversity of living arrangements starting with the structural diversity of living arrangements, literature agrees that unmarried relationships are a new type of living arrangement. one indicator for the institutionalisation of a living arrangement is its representation in current law. in west germany, for example, unmarried cohabitation was legally recognised by abolishing the paragraph on procuration in 1974 and by defi ning cohabitation. more recently, the terms living arrangement and same-sex relationships were introduced into offi cial statistics in 2005 (heidenreich/nöthen 2002; nöthen 2005). since other living arrangements were not simultaneously deinstitutionalised, the structural diversity of living arrangements has at least increased. empirical evidence regarding the distributive diversity of living arrangements is limited, because most studies only found a marginal increase in this diversity. using data from offi cial statistics (microcensus) and the german population policy acceptance study (ppas), dorbritz (2004) concludes that an ending of the “normal family” is not to be expected. he states, “the development of the last 30 years does not show an emergence of new living arrangements on a large scale, but rather a new distribution of the population over different well-known living arrangements, in which married couples with children are no longer dominant” (dorbritz 2004: 341, translated by cpos). further, east and west germany still differ, which can be seen in a slightly greater diversity of living arrangements in the new federal states of east germany (dorbritz 2004; huinink/wagner 1998; marbach 2003). based on the microcensus, lengerer (2011: 122-135) fi nds that the number of marriages is declining – stronger and faster in east germany than in west germany – a fact that cannot be compensated by an increase in unmarried relationships. this means that the number of people living without a partner has grown, i.e. a decline of partnerships living in a common household. however, marriage remains the most common living arrangement for people of all ages with the exception of the 16-to30-year olds. lengerer’s fi ndings confi rm earlier results of höhn and dorbritz from 1995, who found a small growth of the non-family sector and a decline in marriages but still an overall percentage of married people of 75 percent in 1988. these results may not be surprising for the year 1988 and yet – considering recent studies – they indicate a continuing dominance of marriage among the various forms of living arrangements. strohmeier (1993: 16) comes to a similar result; he fi nds a “polarised” family sector, since both unmarried relationships and people living alone have become more prevalent while the number of married couples has declined. the attractiveness of “new” living arrangements differs between population groups: the diversity of living arrangements increases with the level of education and decreases with age (lengerer 2011; strohmeier 1993). recently, however, older people as well increasingly prefer new living arrangements such as unmarried relationships (diewald/wehner 1996; dorbritz 2004: 346; dorbritz 2010; engstler/ the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 105 tesch-römer 2010; meyer/schulze 1983; peuckert 2008; zapf et al. 1987). further, the diversity of living arrangements is greater in cities, since there is a stronger social pressure for traditional living arrangements in less urbanised regions (diewald/ wehner 1996: 135; klein 2005: 187). the degree of religiousness also infl uences the choice of a living arrangement, because religious people rather hold traditional norms and values and thus prefer marriage (dorbritz 2004; holzem/weber 2008; huinink/konietzka 2003). using the third wave of the german family survey, brüderl and klein (2003) and brüderl (2004) focus on relationships and analyse living arrangements over the life course of 18-to-55-year olds. they fi nd that the diversity of relationships has increased slightly and that it further increases with the size of the respondent’s place of residence but not with the level of education. especially the time spent living single and the number of times people change their living arrangement have increased. huinink and wagner (1998) analyse the changing fractions as well as the development of different measures of heterogeneity of living arrangements, a study that was later replicated by wagner and franzmann (2000) and wagner (2008). microcensus data from 1972, 1996, and 2000 indicate that living arrangements have diversifi ed slightly: single households increase while the share of married couples with children declines. the identifi ed measures of heterogeneity reveal a signifi cant increase in diversity in west germany during the 1980s and, since then, a constant level of diversity in both east and west germany. a more recent study by engstler and tesch-römer (2010) confi rms these results for older age groups. most research thus indicates a small and by no means dramatic pluralisation of living arrangements. whether this is a continuous trend and whether these changes apply to all age groups in east and west germany is analysed in this paper. first, though, the methods, the selection of variables, the approach of empirical analysis as well as some statistical measures of heterogeneity, which allow specifying the diversity of living arrangements, are introduced. 3 data and methods 3.1 measures of diversity there are a multitude of statistical measures of diversity (or heterogeneity) or qualitative variance (peet 1974). this study uses the measure of entropy, which signals the uncertainty of fi nding a particular person in a certain category (franzmann/wagner 1999: 78-80; wagner/franzmann 2000: 156-158). this measure is especially appropriate for analysing the diversity of living arrangements, since it gives stronger • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes106 weight to less widespread living arrangements by calculating the logarithm of their fractions for the analysis.2 if this value is zero, all people belong to one category and the uncertainty to fi nd a person in another living arrangement is minimal. the measure reaches its maximum value when all individuals are spread approximately equally across the different categories; this is termed the greatest uncertainty possible. the equation for the unstandardised entropy h according to coulter (1989) is where h denotes entropy, p fraction and k the number of categories. in order to compare values with a differing number of categories, a standardisation is suggested: the entropy is divided by the maximum value possible3 and thus lies between zero and one, where zero is the smallest possible diversity. one problem with these measures is that they only take into account the relative proportions of living arrangements, irrespectively of a particular living arrangement. in other words, if a dominant category is replaced by another category, the diversity or heterogeneity measure will not change. thus, it is necessary to consider the particular changes of relative proportions in addition to the measured values of entropy. 3.2 method of data collection the analysis of types of households in east and west germany is conducted using the 2007 microcensus. the microcensus is the “only on-going statistic on households, families and living arrangements of the german population” (lengerer et al. 2007: 187, translated by cpos). while households describe the economic community of individuals, families are defi ned by the traditional concept of parenthood or marriage. since 2005, living arrangements are defi ned as social units within a household that account for the individual constellation of relationships. this includes unmarried and same-sex relationships, which were previously not recorded by the traditional concept of family (lengerer et al. 2007: 188-190). the population of the microcensus consists of all people entitled to live in germany. for this study, only german citizens living in private accommodation are taken into consideration. in order to apply the analysis to the household level, variables were fi ltered for the reference person of the household leading to a number 2 another measure of qualitative variance is the “index of diversity” providing the countervalue of the herfi ndahl-index (lieberson 1969). it measures the probability that two respondents belong to two different categories and emphasises strongly populated living arrangements by squaring the fractions for analysis. the paper highlights points at which diversity and entropy strongly differ. 3 the maximum value of the unstandardised entropy is log2k. this value increases with the number of categories. , the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 107 of 215,503 households.4 the scientifi c use file (suf) that is used is a “factuallyanonymised 70 percent-subsample of the households” of the original microcensus data 2007 (statistisches bundesamt 2010: 5). all data are weighted using the standard extrapolation factor ef952. classifi cation is conducted using criteria like marital status, parenthood, and number of generations in the household, which produces eight different categories. analyses5 are conducted separately for east and west germany, whereby the results from 2007 are compared to the years 1972 (west germany only), 1996, and 2000, which are taken from wagner (2008: 109). in order to be able to compare our study with data from previous years, we cannot classify the data using the concept of living arrangements that was introduced into the microcensus in 2005. instead, the study is based on the reference person of the household. therefore, the terms living arrangement and type of household are subsequently used synonymously. the analysis of the development of living arrangements on the individual level is conducted using the cumulated allbus from 1980-2008 complemented by the survey from 2010. the allbus is a “long-term, multi-thematic series of surveys regarding attitudes, behaviours and social structures of the population in germany” (gesis 2010, translated by cpos), which is conducted every two years and represents a cross section of the german population. due to the long period of time covered by the allbus and its potential of classifying living arrangements in fi ne details, these data are especially suitable for this analysis. the population of the allbus consisted of all west german citizens eligible to vote until 1990. since 1991, it also includes east germans as well as people of foreign nationalities. this paper takes into account the waves in 1980/82 (western germany only), 1991/92, 1998/2000, 2004/06, and 2008/2010, and weights the data using the person transformation weight.6 we distinguish between 26 living arrangements by differentiating not only marital status and parenthood but also gender and gender-specifi c division of employment. the differentiation of gender and employment is conducted assuming that the changing role of women plays an important part in the changing distribution of living arrangements. the defi nition of living arrangements is again based on the household. thus, people are classifi ed as parents when their own or adopted children live in the same household; people whose children have already moved out are defi ned as being childless. both people working part-time and full-time are de4 the corresponding variables of the suf 2007 are ef31 (private households) and ef37 (reference person of the household). 5 variables of the suf 2007 used: ef33 (partner living in the household), ef663 (number of people in the household), ef669 (unmarried child in the household), ef721 (type of relationship), ef722 (number of generations). 6 the most important variables of the cumulated allbus (1980-2008): v722 (marital status), v568 (employment), v808 (employment of the married partner), v917 (employment of the partner), v1083 (relationship to the second person etc.), v1155 (household classifi cation), for the years 1998/2000, 2004/06, and 2008/10: v1325 (person transformation weight east west), for the years 1991/92 and 1980/82: v1323 (person transformation weight). • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes108 fi ned as in employment. the corresponding heterogeneity index is calculated using the equation above.7 this classifi cation has one weakness: it is possible to classify people in the same living arrangement into different categories depending on which person of the household is interviewed. for example, a married, unemployed mother living with her unemployed husband and her adult child would be classifi ed into the category “marriage, children, both unemployed”. however, if her child is interviewed, it would be sorted into the category “adult child, lives with parents, no child”, although both people live in the same household. the results based on the allbus largely confi rm the results based on the microcensus. as expected, the living arrangements that are diffi cult to capture in social scientifi c surveys – such as single person households – are underrepresented compared to offi cial statistics, whereas living arrangements that are easily captured – such as marriage – are slightly overrepresented. however, apart from these slight deviations, the results are in agreement with each other, especially regarding the measures of heterogeneity. thus, the results of the allbus are representative (see table a1 in the appendix). 4 the pluralisation of living arrangements: empirical results 4.1 household-level analysis as described above, the households included in the microcensus are classifi ed by the number of generations living in them. the measures of heterogeneity highlight a clear difference between east and west germany (see table 1). in west germany, entropy increased between 1972 and 1996 and has remained fairly constant afterwards.8 in east germany, in contrast, the originally higher entropy has been decreasing steadily, even in recent years. thus, the diversity in east and west germany is slowly converging. regarding the distribution of households over different living arrangements, a shift towards one-generation-households is noticeable both in east and west germany, but especially in east germany. whereas the distribution between oneand two-generation households was roughly equal in 1972, nowadays approximately 70 percent of all households accommodate only one generation; only 30 percent of all households include children. the largest group of households without children are one-person households, which make up 40 percent of all households. this change occurred between 1972 and 1996 in west germany, whereas it was still increasing after 2000 in east germany. the percentage of married couples without 7 this analysis is a replication of earlier studies by wagner (2008), whereby the data for the earlier years (1980/82, 1991/92, 1998/2000, 2004/06) are re-calculated due to small deviations from earlier results. 8 in contrast, the diversity index remains constant due to the changing dominant groups. the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 109 children has remained fairly constant. thus, single-person households and – on a much lower level – unmarried couples (umr) without children are almost solely responsible for the increase in one-generation households. households with children have lost their signifi cance, especially married couples with children, whereas the percentage of unmarried relationships with children and single parents has slightly increased. especially in east germany, only 17 percent of households consist of this type of family, while the percentage of unmarried parents is comparatively high (4 percent). since the changes of oneand two-generation households are markedly different – which may in sum be the reason for entropy measures remaining fairly constant – it is worth looking at both sectors separately (see table 2). the diversity of west german one-generation households increased between 1972 and 1996 and has remained fairly constant since then. in east germany, their diversity has barely changed, apart from a slight decrease between 2000 and 2007. due to the decline of childless marriages, the distribution of living arrangements has shifted between 1972 and 1996 in west germany, whereas the percentage of married couples without children has declined and the percentage of one-person households have increased in recent years in east germany. however, within the familial sector, diversity has also increased in recent years. this pluralisation becomes obvious in east germany, where entropy rose by 0.2 tab. 1: types of households according to the microcensus in 1972, 1996, 2000, and 2007 (households in %, measure of diversity) west germany east germany type of household 1972 1996 2000 2007 1996 2000 2007 a: one-generation households 50.1 64.9 66.0 68.9 60.1 64.4 71.5 – married couples without children (1) 23.1 24.5 25.0 25.2 25.6 25.8 25.6 – umrs1 without children (2) 0.5 3.7 4.0 4.7 3.3 3.8 4.1 – single-person households (3) 26.4 36.7 37.0 39.0 31.1 34.8 41.8 b: two-generation households 46.5 34.1 33.2 30.6 39.0 34.7 28.1 – married couples with children (4) 39.3 27.1 25.9 22.2 28.6 24.2 16.5 – umrs with children (5) 0.1 0.9 0.8 1.6 3.3 2.2 3.5 – single parents (6) 5.5 5.1 5.6 6.1 6.1 7.3 7.4 – households with married children (7) 1.6 1.0 0.9 0.7 1.0 1.0 0.7 c: threeand more-generation households (8) 3.4 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.9 0.8 0.5 total (a +b + c) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 measure of diversity – entropy. unstandardised (max = 3.00) 2.06 2.13 2.13 2.15 2.24 2.23 2.18 – entropy. standardised 0.69 0.71 0.71 0.72 0.75 0.74 0.73 household types (1) to (8) are used to calculate measures of diversity. ¹ umr = unmarried couple source: engstler (1998: 49), engstler/menning (2003: 216), wagner (2008: 109), and own calculations • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes110 points between 2000 and 2007. this is due to a loss of importance of married families, a small increase in unmarried relationships with children and an increase in importance of single parents. comparing the absolute values of the standardised entropy, it becomes obvious though that the diversity among households with children is lower than among households without children. two-generation households can mainly be found among married couples, whereas especially two different living arrangements – single-person households and marriages – can be found among households without children. 4.2 individual-level analysis the allbus data and, more explicitly, the waves in 1980/82 (west germany only), 1991/92, 1998/2000, 2004/06, and 2008/10 are used for individual-level analysis. table 3 illustrates the changes of the percentages of different living arrangements as tab. 2: one-/two-generation households in 1972, 1996, 2000, and 2007 (households in %, measure of diversity) ¹ umr = unmarried couple source: see table 1, own calculations west germany east germany type of household 1972 1996 2000 2007 1996 2000 2007 one-generation households 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 – married couples without children (1) 46.1 37.8 37.9 36.6 42.6 40.1 35.8 – umrs1 without children (2) 1.0 5.7 6.1 6.8 5.5 5.9 5.7 – single-person households (3) 52.7 56.5 56.1 56.6 51.7 54.0 58.5 measure of diversity – entropy. unstandardised (max = 1.58) 1.07 1.23 1.24 1.26 1.25 1.25 1.22 – entropy. standardised 0.64 0.78 0.79 0.79 0.79 0.79 0.77 two-generation households 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 – married couples with children (4) 84.5 79.5 78.0 72.5 73.3 69.7 58.7 – umr with children (5) 0.2 2.6 2.4 5.2 8.5 6.3 12.5 – single parents (6) 11.8 15.0 16.9 19.9 15.6 21.0 26.3 – households with married children (7) 3.4 2.9 2.7 2.3 2.6 2.9 2.5 measure of diversity – entropy. unstandardised (max = 2.00) 0.75 0.96 0.98 1.14 1.19 1.24 1.45 – entropy. standardised 0.38 0.48 0.49 0.57 0.59 0.62 0.73 the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 111 well as the measures of diversity. entropy is slightly higher in east germany than in west germany and increases over time in both parts of the country.9 investigating the distribution of individuals over different living arrangements, it is observable that the diffusion of the traditional “normal family” – marriage, children, only the man employed – has decreased considerably. the percentage of respondents living in a “normal family” declined from 27 percent in 1980/82 to 12 percent in 2008/10 in west germany, in east germany it declined from a low 12 percent in 1991/92 to only 4 percent. it is only the third largest category in west germany, in east germany it ranks eighth. thus, the traditional model of marriage with a male breadwinner is now outdated in west germany as well. however, despite marriage continuously losing importance, more than half of the (adult) german citizens are still living together as married couples (58 percent in west germany, 54 percent in east germany). the majority are couples not in work that can mostly be classifi ed as pensioners. simultaneously, a new form of relationship has spread, namely unmarried relationships, which have grown from 1 percent in 1980/82 to 7 percent in 2008/10 in west germany. in east germany, 11 percent are living in an unmarried relationship. however, the largest increase can be observed for single-person households, which have grown in both east and west germany since the 1990s. in 2008/10, more than 20 percent of the population lived on their own, many of them older, presumably mostly widowed women. two further changes have occurred regarding the classifi cation criteria parenthood and division of labour: in 1980/82, every second person lived together with a child in west germany. this has declined to about every third person in west germany, and only every fourth person in east germany (27 percent). in both parts of the country, a decreasing number of people is living in arrangements with a traditional division of labour, i.e. relationships with or without children, where only the man is employed (living arrangement no. 1, 5, 9, and 13 in table 3). in east germany, they make up only 9 percent, in west germany 17 percent of the population in 2008/10. in 1991/92, they still made up 18 percent (east) and 29 percent (west), respectively. however, living arrangements in which both partners are employed have increased only slightly in west germany – similarly to living arrangements where the woman is the sole breadwinner – they have even partly decreased in east germany. the association between parenthood and marriage has weakened, but still exists in west germany, since nearly all people who live with children are married. in 1980/82, 48 percent of the respondents were living with children (living arrangements 5-8, 13-16, and 18-21 in table 3) and 91 percent of these were married. in 2008/10, 34 percent of the respondents were living with children and 81 percent of these were married. in east germany, only 27 percent of the respondents were 9 the measure of diversity barely changes over time, and has been stagnating since 1998/2000. this is probably due to the detailed classifi cation used here, which leads to very few groups being strongly populated. as explained above, changes in these groups are weighted heavily when calculating the measure of diversity. • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes112 ta b . 3 : li vi ng a rr an g em en ts , 1 98 020 10 (w it ho u t f o re ig n na tio na ls ), va lu es in % , m ea su re o f d iv er si ty 1 u m r = u nm ar ri ed c o up le s o ur ce : cu m ul at iv e a ll b u s 1 98 020 08 , a ll b u s 2 01 0, o w n ca lc ul at io ns , v al ue s ar e w ei gh te d w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y li vi ng a rr an ge m en ts 19 80 /8 2 19 91 /9 2 19 98 /0 0 20 04 /0 6 20 08 /1 0 19 91 /9 2 19 98 /0 0 20 04 /0 6 20 08 /1 0 1 m ar ri ag e, n o c hi ld re n, o nl y m an e m p lo ye d 7. 3 5. 8 5. 4 4. 0 4. 3 4. 5 4. 4 2. 9 3. 6 2 m ar ri ag e, n o c hi ld re n, o nl y w o m an e m p lo ye d 1. 3 1. 1 2. 2 3. 1 2. 5 3. 0 2. 5 3. 3 3. 5 3 m ar ri ag e, n o c hi ld re n, b o th e m p lo ye d 7. 0 7. 7 8. 0 6. 0 6. 5 6. 7 7. 1 8. 0 9. 2 4 m ar ri ag e, n o c hi ld re n, b o th u ne m p lo ye d 10 .6 11 .2 15 .9 17 .6 16 .7 13 .4 16 .5 18 .5 19 .0 5 m ar ri ag e, c hi ld (r en ), o nl y m an e m p lo ye d 27 .1 22 .2 15 .3 12 .9 11 .6 11 .8 6. 5 4. 6 3. 7 6 m ar ri ag e, c hi ld (r en ), o nl y w o m an e m p lo ye d 0. 9 0. 8 1. 1 1. 6 1. 1 4. 9 2. 6 1. 6 1. 2 7 m ar ri ag e, c hi ld (r en ), b o th e m p lo ye d 12 .3 14 .6 13 .1 12 .7 12 .8 25 .0 20 .1 14 .3 11 .8 8 m ar ri ag e, c hi ld (r en ), b o th u ne m p lo ye d 3. 6 3. 1 2. 4 2. 7 2. 2 3. 8 2. 0 3. 3 1. 8 9 u m r ,1 n o c hi ld re n, o nl y m an e m p lo ye d 0. 1 0. 4 0. 6 0. 6 0. 5 0. 7 0. 6 1. 0 0. 8 10 u m r , n o c hi ld re n, o nl y w o m an e m p lo ye d 0. 1 0. 4 0. 4 0. 3 0. 4 0. 4 0. 5 0. 7 0. 8 11 u m r , n o c hi ld re n, b o th e m p lo ye d 0. 4 2. 6 2. 7 3. 4 3. 3 1. 1 1. 9 2. 1 2. 9 12 u m r , n o c hi ld re n, b o th u ne m p lo ye d 0. 1 0. 3 0. 7 0. 7 1. 0 0. 6 0. 9 1. 2 1. 9 13 u m r , c hi ld (r en ), o nl y m an e m p lo ye d 0. 1 0. 5 0. 3 0. 5 0. 6 1. 1 0. 8 1. 1 1. 0 14 u m r , c hi ld (r en ), o nl y w o m an e m p lo ye d 0. 0 0. 1 0. 0 0. 1 0. 1 0. 6 0. 4 0. 4 0. 2 15 u m r , c hi ld (r en ), b o th e m p lo ye d 0. 3 0. 7 0. 8 1. 0 1. 2 1. 7 1. 5 2. 4 2. 8 16 u m r , c hi ld (r en ) b o th u ne m p lo ye d 0. 0 0. 0 0. 1 0. 1 0. 1 0. 2 0. 7 0. 5 0. 5 17 s ha re d a cc o m m o d at io n 3. 1 1. 4 1. 2 0. 8 1. 1 0. 8 1. 0 0. 7 1. 3 18 s in gl e p ar en t, m an , e m p lo ye d 0. 3 0. 4 0. 3 0. 3 0. 5 0. 2 0. 4 0. 3 0. 3 19 s in gl e p ar en t, m an , u ne m p lo ye d 0. 3 0. 3 0. 1 0. 3 0. 4 0. 2 0. 3 0. 2 0. 5 20 s in gl e p ar en t, w o m an , e m p lo ye d 1. 4 1. 4 1. 6 1. 7 2. 1 2. 0 1. 6 2. 3 1. 9 21 s in gl e p ar en t, w o m an , u ne m p lo ye d 1. 9 2. 0 1. 3 1. 5 1. 4 1. 8 2. 4 2. 1 1. 7 22 o ne -p er so n ho us eh o ld , m an , e m p lo ye d 2. 1 2. 8 3. 9 5. 0 5. 1 1. 1 3. 6 4. 4 4. 2 23 o ne -p er so n ho us eh o ld , m an , u ne m p lo ye d 1. 8 2. 3 2. 9 3. 4 3. 8 1. 6 3. 7 4. 1 5. 6 24 o ne -p er so n ho us eh o ld , w o m an , e m p lo ye d 2. 1 1. 9 2. 9 3. 7 3. 5 1. 1 1. 8 1. 5 2. 7 25 o ne -p er so n ho us eh o ld , w o m an , u ne m p lo ye d 6. 3 4. 9 7. 6 8. 3 8. 8 4. 2 8. 7 9. 4 9. 6 26 a d ul t c hi ld , w ith p ar en ts , n o c hi ld re n 9. 5 11 .1 9. 2 7. 9 8. 4 7. 7 7. 5 9. 1 7. 4 n um b er o f c as es 58 20 36 79 51 93 46 52 46 64 25 46 12 93 11 48 11 24 e nt ro p y, u ns ta nd ar d is ed (m ax = 4 .7 0) 3. 50 3. 66 3. 79 3. 87 3. 90 3. 70 3. 87 3. 94 3. 99 e nt ro p y, s ta nd ar d is ed 0. 74 0. 78 0. 81 0. 82 0. 83 0. 79 0. 82 0. 84 0. 85 the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 113 living with children and only 68 percent of these were married in 2008/10. the percentage of – mostly female – single parents has remained at roughly 4 percent in both east and west germany. it is noteworthy that not every living arrangement is preferred by the same age group. for example, the median age of married living arrangements – especially marriage without children – is signifi cantly higher than for unmarried relationships. especially umrs without children are led by young people whereas most childless married couples with a median age of 60 are presumably pensioners whose children have moved out of the household. other living arrangements, especially oneperson households, have a very wide age span: both young people and the elderly – presumably mostly widowed women – live in one-person households. a cohort analysis conducted separately for east and west germany for the years 1919-21, 1929-31, 1939-41, 1949-51, 1959-61, 1969-71, and 1979-81 reveals that entropy varies for different ages, although the development is similar for the different cohorts (fig. 1): entropy is lowest at an age of 20; most respondents still live with their parents. at 30, entropy rises sharply, then decreases slightly, and increases again at ages 50 and 60. at a high age, between 70 and 80, entropy is lower again. often the level of entropy of younger cohorts is higher than that of older cohorts. however, as this trend does not apply to all age groups, it cannot be concluded that diversity in general increases among subsequent cohorts. the bimodal entropy that the analysis of different cohorts shows is of particular interest, since the maximum values of diversity are connected to each other. most people start their own household between the ages of 20 and 30. this new household can be a shared accommodation, a one-person household or a household with a partner, but also a household with children. the move from the parental home can lead to a change of the parents’ living arrangement to a childless household. it is plausible that the diversity of living arrangements is greatest at these two points of life. a distinctive pattern can be observed for the east germany: the cohort of people born around 1960 shows the lowest entropy at an age of 30. it only increases at ages 40 and 50. this remarkably low diversity of living arrangements at an age that is usually characterised by many changes, new living arrangements and thus a greater diversity can be attributed to a period effect. at the time of the german reunifi cation this cohort had apparently internalised the traditional gdr model of early marriage to such an extent that nearly half of them was leading the living arrangement “marriage, children, both employed” and new living arrangements were rather an exception. the low willingness to change the living arrangement can also be seen in the decline of divorce rates of east german citizens during the german reunifi cation (statistisches bundesamt 2011: 31). other cohorts do not present this reunifi cation effect, since they were either at an age when entropy is low anyway (such as the cohorts of 1970 or 1920) or at an age when a change in the living arrangement cannot be described as voluntary, such as the moving out of the last child or the death of the partner (cohort of 1930). • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes114 fig. 1: diversity of living arrangements in west/east germany, cohorts 1919-21 to 1979-81 source: cumulative allbus 1980-2008, allbus 2010, own calculations. the years used are 1980 (only west germany), 1991, 2000, and 2010. the number of cases from the 1919-21 cohort was too low in 2010. 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 19-22 29-32 39-42 49-52 59-62 69-72 79-82 respondent's age 1919-21 1929-31 1939-41 1949-51 1959-61 1969-71 1979-81 standard. entropy west germany 1970 1980 1950 1930 1960 1950 1940 1940 1930 1920 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 19-22 29-32 39-42 49-52 59-62 69-72 79-82 respondent's age 1919-21 1929-31 1939-41 1949-51 1959-61 1969-71 1979-81 standard. entropy east germany 1970 1980 1960 1950 1930 1920 1940 the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 115 5 summary and discussion the aim of this paper was to determine the degree of pluralisation of living arrangements in east and west germany and to identify possible trends. the pluralisation was analysed applying two methods. first, using the microcensus from 1972, 1996, 2000, and 2007, living arrangements were distinguished on a household-level according to marital status and the number of generations living in a household. second, using the allbus data from 1980/82 to 2008/10, a classifi cation of living arrangements on an individual level was employed that additionally accounts for the employment status of men and women. it needs to be noted that when shifting from the household level to the individual level the percentage of one-person households decreases while multi-person households gain in importance. the key results were: on a household level, the diversity of living arrangements in west germany slightly increased between the 1970s and the 1990s, but has barely changed since then. in the course of this development, the dominant living arrangement of married couples with children was superseded by another living arrangement – one-person households. these make up now nearly 40 percent of all households in west germany. however, when examining the living arrangements with and without children separately, a different picture emerges. although the diversity of one-generation households has hardly increased since the 1990s, the familial sector, i.e. households with children, has become more diverse between 2000 and 2007. this development is also due to the fact that the number of marriages with children has decreased. simultaneously, the proportion of unmarried relationships and single parents has increased. the diversity of living arrangements in east germany has even slightly decreased since the middle of the 1990s. however, different developments can be observed here for living arrangements with and without children as well. whereas the proportion of married couples without children among one-generation households has declined and the proportion of one-person households has increased, which results in a nearly unchanged level of diversity, two-generation households – similar to west germany – have become more diverse. this is caused by fewer married couples with children and an increase of single parents and unmarried relationships with children. married couples with children made up only 17 percent of all households in east germany in 2007, while at the same time they made up 22 percent in west germany. the analysis on an individual level – 26 different living arrangements are distinguished – shows a slow but continuous trend of diversifi cation in both east and west germany. noteworthy is the decline of partnerships and marriages (with and without children), in which the man is the sole breadwinner. especially the proportion of childless marriages, in which both man and woman are not employed, has increased; that is mostly marriages of pensioners. the proportions of unmarried relationships and marriages in which both partners are employed have increased, and so have living arrangements in which only the woman is employed. fewer people live with their children, which is mainly due to a decline of marriages with children in which the man is the sole breadwinner. this decline is not compensated by an • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes116 increase in other living arrangements with children. as the classifi cation of living arrangements on an individual level is very detailed, the percentage of people living in a particular arrangement is often small. there are only three arrangements in which more than 10 percent of the respondents live: childless marriages, in which both partners are not employed, marriages with children and a male breadwinner (only in west germany), and marriages with children with both partners being employed. one-person households of unemployed women are just below the 10 percent-level as well as childless marriages with both partners being employed (only in east germany). all other living arrangements are still relatively uncommon, even though their proportions have increased considerably during the last decades. cohort analyses further show that the heterogeneity of living arrangements is very similar for certain age groups and cohorts in both parts of the country. notable is a bipolar distribution with an especially high entropy for 30and 60-year-olds. this comparatively high heterogeneity is caused by changes in the living arrangement that occur frequently in these age groups: the shift to cohabitation, to a oneperson household, or to marriage for the younger age group, and the moving out of children and thus a shift to an “empty nest” for the older age group. neither in east nor in west germany is the level of entropy of subsequent cohorts continuously rising across all age groups. thus, a trend for a rising diversity in future cannot defi nitely be expected. east germany has a distinctive feature: only the cohort of the1960s displays a reunifi cation effect. at an age, which usually displays the highest entropy, the diversifi cation of living arrangements was very low for this cohort. most of the people in this group were already married and had children, new living arrangements barely existed. the results demonstrate that a decreasing number of people is living in arrangements in which children are socialised. in contrast, relationships without children and one-person households have increased. this does not imply that individuals always “freely” choose a living arrangement. family formation may not occur because an adequate partner is missing. individuals are sometimes also not able to freely choose their living arrangement – as some interpretations of the theory of individualisation and post-materialism suggest – because a change in the living arrangement often occurs due to other members leaving the household (moving out of the parental home, separation, death) or changing (or having to change) their employment status. the results on the pluralisation of living arrangements are very diverse, since they depend on the selected classifi cation of living arrangements. they can further differ depending on whether the household level or the individual level is analysed. the defi nition of living arrangements in this paper is based on the household, whereby relationships outside of the household (such as “living apart together”, which makes up approximately 6 percent of all living arrangements [see schneider/ ruckdeschel 2003: 249], or children not living with one of their parents) are neglected. this is likely to result in an underestimation of the level of diversity. nevertheless, the defi nition of living arrangements on the household level is justifi ed, since the household as an economic unit constitutes a clear framework with a certain the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 117 dependence of each household member on one another, allowing for an unambiguous classifi cation of a living arrangement. another potential problem when interpreting the pluralisation of living arrangements is the fact that the statistical measures of diversity do not indicate the relative proportion of a particular living arrangement. thus, the diversity index may remain constant, although the relative diffusion of particular living arrangements has shifted. on the one hand, further conceptual and methodological research is necessary. on the other hand, the results of this paper add to the pluralisation debate and render it more precisely. earlier research results of wagner et al. (2001) indicating that the diversity of living arrangements tends to increase over time are largely confi rmed. however, a distinction between oneand two-generation households is necessary in order to be able to identify how changes within the familial sector affect the macro level. despite some inconsistent empirical fi ndings regarding the pluralisation of living arrangements, it can be stated that unconventional living arrangements have been continuously spreading until today and that both theories of social differentiation and of the deinstitutionalisation of marriage are justifi ed. although marriage with a male breadwinner has lost its importance, there is no signifi cant increase in living arrangements, in which either both partners are employed or the woman is the sole breadwinner. therefore, changes of female educational and employment opportunities have infl uenced the inclination to marry and the formation of families, but have not led to more people living in a partnership or marriage with an “unconventional” distribution of labour. references amato, paul r. et al. 2007: alone together. how marriage in america is changing. cambridge/london: harvard university press. beck, ulrich 1983: jenseits von klasse und stand? soziale ungleichheit, gesellschaftliche individualisierungsprozesse und die entstehung neuer sozialer formationen und identitäten. in: kreckel, reinhard (ed.): soziale ungleichheiten. göttingen: schwartz: 35-74. brüderl, josef 2004: die pluralisierung partnerschaftlicher lebensformen in westdeutschland und europa. in: aus politik und zeitgeschichte 19: 3-10. brüderl, josef; klein, thomas 2003: die pluralisierung partnerschaftlicher lebensformen in westdeutschland, 1960-2000. in: bien, walter; marbach, jan h. 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(eds.): partnerschaften und familiengründung. ergebnisse der dritten welle des familien-survey. opladen: leske+budrich: 141-187. meyer, thomas 1992: modernisierung der privatheit. differenzierungsund individualisierungsprozesse des familialen zusammenlebens. opladen: westdeutscher verlag. meyer, thomas 1993: der monopolverlust der familie. vom teilsystem familie zum teilsystem privater lebensformen. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 45: 23-40. meyer, sibylle; schulze, eva 1983: nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaften – alternativen zur ehe? eine internationale datenübersicht. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 35: 735-754. nave-herz, rosemarie 1999: die nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaft als beispiel gesellschaftlicher differenzierung. in: klein, thomas; lauterbach, wolfgang (eds.): nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaften. analysen zum wandel partnerschaftlicher lebensformen. opladen: leske+budrich: 37-59. niemeyer, frank; voit, hermann 1995: lebensformen der bevölkerung 1993. wirtschaft und statistik 6: 437-445. nöthen, manuela 2005: von der „traditionellen familie“ zu den „neuen lebensformen“. in: wirtschaft und statistik 1: 25-40. peet, robert k. 1974: the measurement of species diversity. in: annuals review of ecology and systematics 5: 285-307. peuckert, rüdiger 2008: familienformen im sozialen wandel. wiesbaden: vsverlag für sozialwissenschaften. schimank, uwe 2000: theorien gesellschaftlicher differenzierung, 2. aufl age. opladen: leske+budrich. schneider, norbert f.; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2003: partnerschaften mit zwei haushalten: eine moderne lebensform zwischen partnerschaftsideal und berufl ichen erfordernissen. in: bien, walter; marbach, jan h. (eds.): partnerschaft und familiengründung. ergebnisse der dritten welle des familien-survey. opladen: leske+budrich: 245-258. statistisches bundesamt (eds.) 2010: datenhandbuch zum mikrozensus scientifi c use file 2007. bonn. statistisches bundesamt (eds.) 2011: datenreport 2011. ein sozialbericht für die bundesrepublik deutschland. bonn: bundeszentrale für politische bildung. • michael wagner, isabel valdés cifuentes120 strohmeier, klaus peter 1993: pluralisierung und polarisierung der lebensformen in deutschland. in: aus politik und zeitgeschichte 17: 11-22. tyrell, hartmann 1979: familie und gesellschaftliche differenzierung. in: pross, helge (ed.): familie wohin? leistungen, leistungsdefi zite und leistungswandlungen der familien in hochindustrialisierten gesellschaften. reinbek: rowohlt: 13-77. tyrell, hartmann 1988: ehe und familie – institutionalisierung und deinstitutionalisierung. in: lüscher, kurt; schultheis, franz; wehrspaun, michael (eds.): die postmoderne familie. konstanz: universitätsverlag: 145-156. wagner, michael 2008: entwicklung und vielfalt der lebensformen. in: schneider, norbert f. (ed.): lehrbuch moderne familiensoziologie. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich: 99-120. wagner, michael; franzmann, gabriele 2000: die pluralisierung der lebensformen. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 25: 151-173. wagner, michael; franzmann, gabriele; stauder, johannes 2001: neue befunde zur pluralität der lebensformen. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 13: 52-73. zapf, wolfgang et al. 1987: individualisierung und sicherheit. untersuchungen zur lebensqualität in der bundesrepublik deutschland. münchen: beck. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “die pluralisierung der lebensformen – ein fortlaufender trend?”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-03de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-03de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 29.07.2011 date of acceptance: 08.02.2013 prof. dr. michael wagner (). university of cologne, institute for sociology and social psychology. köln, germany. e-mail: mwagner@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: http://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/wagner.html isabel valdés cifuentes. university of hamburg, school of economics and social sciences, department of socio-economics. hamburg, germany. e-mail: isabel.valdescifuentes@wiso.uni-hamburg.de url: http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/professuren/sozialer-wandel/team/ wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/isabel-valdes-cifuentes/ the pluralisation of living arrangements – a continuous trend? • 121 appendix tab. a1: individual-level diversity of living arrangements (west germany) – comparison of allbus and the micro census 1 umr = unmarried couple source: own calculations based on the allbus 1980-2008 and the micro census 2007 living arrangements allbus 2008 microcensus 2007 marriage without children 34.4 33.1 umr1 without children 5.1 5.5 one-person household 22.2 27.0 marriage with children 31.1 28.5 umr with children 2.0 1.9 single parent 5.2 4.0 total 100 100 entropy (max. 2.59) 2.09 2.08 entropy. standardised 0.81 0.80 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved reversing early retirement in germany a longitudinal analysis of the effects of recent pension reforms on the timing of the transition to retirement and on pension incomes sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld abstract: this article investigates the effects and risks of recent pension reforms in germany. while german pension policy systematically supported early retirement for many years in order to relieve the regulated labour market in times of economic stagnation, there has been a substantial change of the pension policy paradigm in the more recent past. latest reforms expect older people to prolong working life. using data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep) and applying microlevel longitudinal research methods, this contribution shows that the recent reversal of early retirement in germany has been at the price of growing social inequalities in old age. keywords: early retirement · reversal of early retirement · social inequality · pension income · longitudinal research 1 introduction for several decades, german pension policies strongly relied on pushing older employees out of the labour market very early. the massive expansion of early retirement programmes since the 1970s had mainly an economic background. early retirement was systematically used to relieve the comparatively regulated german labour market in times of economic stagnation and increasing unemployment rates (see, for example, guillemard 1991; kohli et al. 1991; arnds/bonin 2002; gruber/ wise 1999, 2004, 2005; blossfeld e al. 2006). as a result, the transition out of employment became strongly destandardised in germany and the legal retirement age of 65 was (and still is) in practice meaningless for the timing of the employment exit of most older workers. in east germany, after reunifi cation, the actual age of employment exit was even approximately at the age of55 (i.e. ten years before legal retirement age, see buchholz 2008). this strong emphasis on early retirement in germany also becomes clear by looking at the employment rates of older men in comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 4 (2013): 881-906 (date of release: 19.12.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-23en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-23en6 • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld882 pre-retirement age, which is the age group of 60to 64-year-olds. for many years, only less than one third of the older men in this age group were still working in germany. indeed, in comparison to several other european and northern american societies, the employment rates of older people have been below average in germany for many years (hofäcker/pollnerová 2006; ebbinghaus 2000, 2008; börsch-supan 1992, 2000). yet, for several years now, we can observe a clear policy change. german policy makers increasingly expect older people to prolong their working life. for example, reforms have been introduced increasing the penalties in case of an early withdrawal from employment, various early retirement paths were gradually closed, the share of private pensions was increased,1 and since the beginning of 2012, the legal retirement age has been incrementally increased from the age of 65 to the age of 67. these various reforms are a reaction to the growing fi nancial burdening of the public pension system in times of demographic aging which also creates an increasing imbalance between those persons contributing to the public pension system and those claiming pensions in germany. further, these reforms aim at reducing the growth of non-wage labour costs caused by increasing needs of the social insurance system. for several years now, about 20 percent of the gross wage of a regular dependent employee in germany is spent on the public pension insurance (deutsche rentenversicherung 2012). this article aims at analysing the effects of the profound pension policy change in germany. at the core of our empirical analyses will be the following questions: how successful is the new policy paradigm? are people really able to prolong their working lives, as intended by recent pension reforms or do they still exit early from employment? and, are all older people able to meet the new policy expectation to prolong working life or do specifi c parts of the older population fail in maintaining longer employment careers? finally, what are the risks of recent reforms especially with regard to fi nancial well-being during retirement?2 to answer these questions, we investigate the late working lives and pension incomes of older people of the three birth cohorts 1934-39, 1940-45 and 1946-51. specifi cally, we examine the timing of their transition to retirement, the timing of their transition to non-employment, their risks of old age unemployment as well as the level of their 1 it has to be noted, however, that the share of private pensions is still very low in germany (börsch-supan et al. 2008; börsch-supan/wilke 2003), especially compared to liberal welfare states, such as the united states of america, but also compared to various european societies. 2 this set of questions was also at the core of the international comparative research project fl excareer which was recently completed at the universities of bamberg and göttingen in germany and which was funded by the german research foundation (dfg). the central aim of the fl excareer project was to empirically investigate if, how, and to what extent, the employment and income situation of late-career employees and retirees have developed in nine european societies (that is germany, the netherlands, italy, spain, denmark, sweden, great britain, hungary and estonia) and the united states of america in times of demographic aging. for the detailed results of all country studies and the international comparison, please see blossfeld et al. (2011). reversing early retirement in germany • 883 pension incomes. our longitudinal analyses are based on data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep). the structure of our article is as follows: in the next section, we present an overview of the german pension system paying special attention to the massive expansion of early retirement regulations in the 1970s and 1980s and the profound change german pension policy has undergone since the 1990s. afterwards, we outline our research question and research design. in the succeeding section, we present the results of our empirical micro-level analyses. we conclude with a short summary and discussion of our results. 2 “breaking with traditions” in germany: from a system supporting early retirement to a system increasingly penalizing early exits in germany, the transition to retirement was massively fl exibilised and destandardised since the 1970s. mainly as a reaction to the stagnation of economic growth after the oil price crises in the 1970s, growing unemployment rates and increasing labour market problems, the german government introduced various reforms which allowed fi rms to lay off older workers in a “socially peaceful” manner by sending them into early retirement (kohli et al. 1991; wübbeke 1999; buchholz 2008). since this time, the legal retirement age of 65 became increasingly meaningless (e.g. wübbeke 1999; buchholz 2008; ebbinghaus 2008). the fi rst fl exibilisation of retirement was introduced with the pension reform of 1972 which allowed an early transition to retirement already at the age of 63 for large parts of the workforce (arnds/bonin 2002: 12). although this fi rst reform was actually introduced for reasons of work humanisation, early retirement soon became a common instrument of fi rms to adapt to a more tense economic situation, and sending older employees into early retirement became increasingly popular to relieve the regulated national labour market in times of growing unemployment rates (esping-andersen 1990: 227; gatter/hartmann 1995: 413; wübbeke 1999: 105; buchholz 2008: 105-110). yet, the introduction of the fl exible retirement age of 63 was not the only reform. in the 1980s, various other reforms have been undertaken to allow an even earlier transition to retirement. for example, between 1984 and 1988 a special early retirement scheme (the so-called “vorruhestandsregelung”) was introduced to face growing labour market problems. this special scheme lead to fi rms already “laying off” older employees at the age of 58 while generously fi nancing the period until these former older employees became eligible for public pensions. further, a special programme for partial retirement was introduced which allowed an earlier withdrawal from the labour market. however, one of the most prominent early retirement programmes became the german unemployment insurance which allowed fi rms to “lay off” older workers already at the age of 57 years and 4 months. in the subsequent 32 months (i.e. until the age of 60), these people were eligible for generous unemployment insurance payments replacing about 60 to 67 percent of the former net income. often, these people received additional payments from their former employer. at the age of 60, persons were then able to retire via a special scheme of the ger• sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld884 man pension system which was originally designed to allow long-term unemployed to retire earlier (gatter/hartmann 1995; arnds/bonin 2002; schmid 2002; buchholz 2008). it has to be noted that this unemployment path to retirement was fi nancially highly attractive for both employers and older employees. older employees usually did not face a signifi cant worsening of their fi nancial situation due to subsidy payments by their former employer. for employers, the unemployment scheme allowed to shed older workers already several years before both the legal and fl exible retirement ages, while the vast part of the former payroll costs for the older workers were paid by the german unemployment and pension insurance, and employers only paid about one third of these older workers’ former net wage (buchholz 2008). yet, also for the german government this solution was highly attractive because it allowed to lower the offi cial unemployment statistics3 and to introduce “hidden dismissals” within the highly regulated german labour market. for east germany, the german government even extended this regulation in the fi rst years after reunifi cation allowing older workers to claim unemployment insurance payments not only for 32 months but even for 5 years (so-called “altersübergangsregelung”). as a result of this regulation, older workers in east germany “retired” already at the age of 55 (which is 10 years before the legal retirement age and 8 years before the fl exible retirement age) in the fi rst years after reunifi cation (ernst 1996; buchholz 2008). it has to be noted that these older unemployed in east germany never entered the offi cial german unemployment statistics. offi cially, the share of unemployed persons among those aged 55 or older was less than 5 percent in autumn 1992 although this special unemployment scheme was used by almost one million people in the fi rst two years after german reunifi cation (ernst 1995; buchholz 2008). against the background of this massive expansion of early retirement regulations it is thus not surprising that old age employment rates strongly decreased in germany since the 1970s. figure 14 shows the development of employment rates of 60 to 64 year old men in germany and various other countries. it becomes clear that employment rates of workers in pre-retirement age decreased in all countries since the 1970s. yet, the magnitude of this decline was very different, and germany is one of the countries in which the decline was the strongest (we fi nd a decrease of about 43 percentage points between 1970 and 2000). more detailed micro-level analyses based on longitudinal data (buchholz 2008) have shown that 3 for many years, many of the older unemployed were not presented in offi cial unemployment statistics (engstler/brussig 2006). however, in our empirical study we will be able to capture the share of the older unemployed more realistically because our analyses will be based on data from the german socio-economic panel in which persons interviewed report the labour market status. thus, our analyses will not be (as) biased as the offi cial unemployment statistics in germany. 4 in this fi gure, which is based on cross-sectional data, we only present the employment rates of men in order to avoid confusing the development of early retirement with increasing female employment rates which occurred in the same period. the selection of the countries presented in this fi gure is based on the countries that participated in our international comparative research project fl excareer at the universities of bamberg and göttingen in germany (see footnote 2). reversing early retirement in germany • 885 the use of early retirement was highly selective and took place particularly in fi rms and sectors which faced growing economic uncertainties and a high pressure of rationalisation and restructuring (i.e. huge fi rms of the classical industrial sector). this clearly proves that employers have also been main actors for the expanding use of early retirement in germany. a comparable picture could be drawn for the netherlands, which also belong to the conservative welfare regime, as well as for the southern european5 countries in which early retirement was also massively used to relieve the economy and the regulated national labour markets. fig. 1: employment rates of 60–64 year old men in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 de nl es it se dk us uk hu ee 1970 1980 1990 2000 employment rate notes: nl 1971 instead of 1970, es 1972 instead of 1970, dk 1983 instead of 1980, uk 1984 instead of 1980, hu 1992 instead of 1990; dk 1970 participation instead of employment rate; ee 1980 based on ilo estimates. source: own calculations based on oecd labour force statistics 5 as the retirement age in italy is very low, one would have to extend the analysis to the age group 55 to 59 years to show a development which is comparable to germany, the netherlands and spain (hofäcker/pollnerová 2006). • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld886 still, while in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s supporting the massive use of early retirement seemed to be an appropriate and effective measure to tackle the increasing labour market problems and economic stagnation, this has strongly changed in the more recent past which is marked by debates about the fi nancial sustainability of the national pension system and efforts aiming at unburdening the national welfare state budget. for example, in 2000, public pension expenditures amounted to about 200 billion euros in germany, representing approximately 20 percent of public spending and 12 percent of the gdp (oecd 2001; börsch-supan/wilke 2003). against the background of these fi gures, it is hence not surprising that public debates and political decisions on pension schemes have altered dramatically in germany in the past ten to fi fteen years. actually, the efforts of today’s pension policy aim at setting incentives for maintaining long(er) working lives in order to compensate the increasing fi nancing problems of the public pension system in times of demographic aging (börsch-supan 2003). there have been several reforms which expect people to work longer or, in case they are unable to do so, to “pay the price” for an early employment exit. with the pension reforms of 1992 and 1999, access to early retirement programmes has been increasingly restricted by gradually closing various paths to early retirement, raising the legal retirement age, and increasing pension reductions in cases of early exit from the labour market. the pension reform from 2001 aimed at reducing public pension benefi ts, and additionally strengthened the incentives for private pension savings. further, the so-called “hartz” labour market reforms led to a decrease in early retirement as the opportunities to retire early after a period of unemployment were reduced. although we are not yet able to comprehensively access the effects of this reform, it has to be mentioned that since the beginning of 2012, the legal retirement age is being progressively increased to the age of 67. although the german public pension system can still be described as relatively generous compared to those of other countries (especially those of liberal welfare states such as the u.s. and great britain; börsch-supan et al. 2008; börsch-supan/ wilke 2003), it has to be noted that these reforms caused a fundamental shift in germany’s general pension policy paradigm. in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, the german pension system was also very generous with those who “failed” to work until legal retirement age. actuarially non-neutral early pensions enabled a secure fi nancial situation for large parts of the older population. consequently, germany’s original policy aimed at reducing social inequalities among older people with unequal opportunities on the labour market. however, the most recent reforms fundamentally changed this situation. the german government strongly decreased its efforts to buffer and cushion employment risks in later life. instead, with the latest reforms, labour market risks are increasingly privatised and individualised, and older people are increasingly expected to account for those risks by themselves. generally, these recent reforms in germany (and other european countries) start from the premise that the transition to retirement and the use of early retirement can be explained by micro-economic theory. it is argued that early retirement is a result of rationally acting and maximizing individuals (see, for example, reversing early retirement in germany • 887 börsch-supan 1998; riphahn/schmidt 1997; siddiqui 1997). according to this argument, older people opt for early retirement (and more leisure time) as long as the national pension system offers generous early pensions that are not or only slightly adjusted to the fact that these people leave employment earlier, no longer contribute to the social security system and claim pensions for a longer period. in this theoretical framework of modelling the transition to (early) retirement, the main (and only) actor is the older worker. according to this approach, the different rates of early retirement in various countries can be explained only by the different national (early) retirement systems. it is argued that, in germany, the rate of early retirement is much higher than in the uk, for example, because pensions of early retirees are very generous (börsch-supan 1998; riphahn/schmidt 1997; siddiqui 1997). thus, the so-called “pull factor” of the pension system is much stronger in germany than in the liberal welfare state model of the uk. however, the micro-economic approach is also heavily criticised, especially by sociologists (see, for example, kohli 1991; arnds/bonin 2002; blossfeld et al. 2006; ebbinghaus 2008). these authors state that employers, governments as well as various country-specifi c institutional features also have to be modelled in order to appropriately understand early retirement. further, there is not only a “pull factor” but also a “push factor” that determines early retirement. for example, employers and governments use early retirement to react to growing economic uncertainty, to realise economic restructuring and to relieve the national labour market. thus, it has to be critically examined in our following analyses if reforms solely targeting and reducing the “pull factors” (by increasing pension reductions in case of early retirement) are likely to be successful. further, the actual and potential risks of such reforms with regard to social inequalities among the retired population have to be identifi ed. figure 2 presents the employment rates of 60to 64 year old men in germany and other modern societies for 2000 and 2009.6 as can be seen, we indeed fi nd a substantial growth of the employment rate among the older workforce in germany. within only nine years, the employment rate of 60 to 64 year old men increased by about 20 percentage points. not surprisingly, german policy-makers celebrate this increase in old age employment as a huge success of their latest reforms. 6 again, we will focus on the employment rates of men in order to avoid mixing up early retirement trends with increasing female employment rates across cohorts. the selection of countries is again based on the countries which participated in our international comparative fl excareer project (see footnote 2). • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld888 3 research approach and design necessity for a longitudinal research approach to assess the reversal of early retirement for a variety of reasons it is very risky to assess the success of recent pension reforms on the basis of broad cross-sectional fi gures as they are used in figure 2: • first of all, this simple cross-sectional approach does not allow to control whether the recent increase in old age employment is caused by a changing composition of the older workforce. it is well known that, as a result of educational expansion, the qualifi cation level of today’s cohorts of older workers is signifi cantly higher compared to that of past cohorts. as higher qualifi ed people tend to retire later, we would thus “automatically” fi nd a trend towards longer working lives across time. yet, in that case, the increase of old age employment rates would be the result of the different educational composition of recent cohorts of older workers and not the result of the fig. 2: employment rates of 60-64 year old men in 2000 and 2009 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 de nl es it se dk us uk hu ee 2000 2009 employment rate source: own calculations based on oecd labour force statistics reversing early retirement in germany • 889 recent pension reforms. simple cross-sectional estimations do not allow appropriately controlling for this fact. • second, on the basis of these cross-sectional fi gures, we are not able to understand whether the whole strata of the older workforce benefi tted from increasing employment rates in later life or if only parts of the older workforce (namely, already privileged workers, such as the higher qualifi ed) are able to maintain longer working lives while already disadvantaged and lowly qualifi ed older persons still have to retire early and – compared to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – bear the price of signifi cant pension reductions. • thirdly, with cross-sectional data, it is impossible to causally model and estimate the consequences of the timing of the transition to retirement on individuals’ pension incomes. however, this would be very important in order to understand if recent reforms have been really successful or whether instead, they rather tend to be a hidden pension reduction, maybe even at the price of increasing social inequalities in old age. in fact, a micro-level longitudinal research design is necessary to address all these important questions. our following empirical analyses are thus based on data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep) which provides longitudinal information on individuals and households in germany since 1984. using gsoep data allows us to investigate if there remains a signifi cant effect for the reversal of retirement after controlling for potential changes in the composition of the older workforce across cohorts (especially the increasing level of education across cohorts). additionally, by using a micro-level research design, we are able to assess whether all parts of the older workforce benefi tted from the recent increase of old age employment rates or not. finally, we can carry out causal analyses that allow us to investigate the fi nancial consequences of early retirement and changes therein in the light of latest pension reforms in germany. research design, data used and sample description for our purpose, we use a sub-sample of the gsoep by selecting 50 year old people born between 1934 and 1951 and by following their working lives and their transition to retirement. our empirical analyses are based on gsoep data for the years 1984 till 2007. for the years 1984 to 1989, the gsoep includes information for only western germany; since 1990, it also includes eastern german households. migrants are overrepresented in the gsoep in order to allow detailed analyses of this sub-group of the population. with regards to our research design, we apply the following modelling: as the transition to non-employment and the transition to retirement are not necessarily co-occurring events in germany, it is important to differentiate between direct and indirect transitions to retirement in order to assess the success, risks and effects of the latest pension reforms appropriately. consequently, we will investigate both the indirect and direct transition to retirement by, on the one hand, modelling the point in time of the transition to retirement and, on the other hand, • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld890 the point in time of the transition to non-employment. the transition to retirement captures the time when a person fi rst claims pension benefi ts and is no longer part of the labour market. in contrast, the transition to non-employment indicates the time when persons end working life. for those who make a direct transition from employment to retirement, the time of the transition to non-employment would obviously be identical to the time of the transition to retirement. however, for those making an indirect transition to retirement after a phase of unemployment, we would no longer use the time when persons claim pension benefi ts for the fi rst time (e.g. at the age of 60), but the time when these persons became unemployed (e.g. the age of 57).7 additionally, we model transitions to unemployment.8 this enables us to assess whether the recent reversal of early retirement has also been able to bring the massive use of unemployment as a path to early retirement to a halt or if the reversal of old age unemployment has been less effective. finally, we model the level of pension incomes of the persons in our sample in order to examine if the recent attempts of policy-makers to reverse early retirement have been accompanied by signifi cant pension losses in younger birth cohorts of retirees. our sample for analysing the transition to retirement consists of individuals who were employed or unemployed at the age of 50. following this defi nition, our sample for these analyses consists of 1993 men and 1422 women (55 percent west germans, 21 percent east germans, 24 percent with a migration background). to analyse the transition to non-employment and the risks of old age unemployment, of course, only individuals who were employed at the age of 50 were selected. according to this defi nition, our sample for the unemployment analyses includes on 1853 men and 1255 women (58 percent west germans, 19 percent east germans and 23 percent with a migration background). to estimate developments over time, we compare three different birth cohorts, that is, people born in 1934-39, 1940-45 and 1946-51. while the two older birth cohorts benefi tted from the early generous retirement regulations, the youngest birth cohort 1946-51 is the one most affected by latest pension reforms in germany. this cohort is expected to rather prolong their working life or, in case of failing to do so, to “pay the price” for an earlier employment exit.9 in order to study the causal relationship between older individuals’ success on the labour market, their path to retirement and the resulting effects on their pension incomes, we introduce various 7 obviously, it could be critically argued that a transition to unemployment does not necessarily have to be followed by a transition to retirement but could instead also be followed by a transition back to employment. yet, as an additional sequence analysis with our data has shown, the transition to (fi rst) unemployment after the age of 50 is usually connected with a subsequent transition to retirement. thus, our analyses for transitions to non-employment and unemployment can de facto serve for modelling indirect transitions to retirement. 8 we use the self-reported labour market status of the respondents of the gsoep which is available for all years of the panel study. 9 unfortunately, we are not able to differentiate between more birth cohorts due to the small sample sizes. however, for the reader it is important to know that the youngest birth cohort of our analyses is the one which is most affected by the recent pension policy change in germany. reversing early retirement in germany • 891 covariates, namely the individuals’ level of education and the characteristics of their employer, that is, fi rm size and branch of industry, into our models. methodology for the longitudinal analyses presented in this article, we apply descriptive and multivariate methods of event history analysis. event history analysis models the timedependency and dynamics of the individuals’ transitions and life events (blossfeld/ rohwer 2002). as a descriptive method, we use product-limit estimations which calculate so-called survivor functions (kaplan/meier 1958) that allow us to understand how long it takes until the individuals of our sample experience the event of concern (in our case, for example, the transition to retirement). additionally, we apply logistic regression models (yamaguchi 1991) which permit to include various time-constant and time-varying covariates into our longitudinal analyses. this enables us to estimate if the rate and time of a specifi c event is infl uenced by the characteristics of the respondents (e.g. their educational level or the economic sector they are working in). to estimate the absolute pension income, we fi nally use linear regression models. 4 empirical evidence for the effects of recent reforms the transition to non-employment and to retirement – descriptive fi ndings figure 3 presents the results of product-limit estimations for the transition to nonemployment and the transition to retirement for the three birth cohorts under study (in a fi rst step, for both men and women; in a second step for men only to make our longitudinal results more comparable to the cross-sectional results presented in figures 1 and 2). these product-limit estimations allow us to descriptively investigate the particular time of the transition to retirement and the transition to non-employment as well as changes in these transitions across cohorts. for our youngest cohort, that is the cohort 1946-51, observations end at the age of 61, the time of their last interview in the gsoep data we use. these longitudinal analyses indicate a clear delay of the transition to retirement in germany in recent years. for example, at the age of 60, almost 25 percent of the oldest cohort have retired (among men: 24 percent). in the middle cohort 1940-45, this fi gure reduces to 17 percent (among men: 20 percent) and amounts to only 10 percent in the youngest cohort 1946-51. at the age of 63, which was introduced as the fl exible retirement age in germany in 1972, the majority of the respondents born between 1934 and 1939, namely 68 percent, have retired (among men: 64 percent). in the cohort 1940-45, this was only the case for about 58 percent of the respondents (among men: 50 percent). thus, we fi nd a signifi cant delay in the transition to retirement for younger cohorts. yet, these estimations also highlight that neither the legal retirement age of 65 nor the fl exible retirement age of 63 play an important role for structuring the timing of the retirement transitions in germany. • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld892 fig. 3: transition to retirement vs. transition to non-employment by birth cohorts (survivor percent derived from product-limit-estimations) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 age retirement 1934-39 retirement 1940-45 retirement 1946-51 non-employment 1934-39 non-employment 1940-45 non-employment 1946-51 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 age retirement 1934-39 retirement 1940-45 retirement 1946-51 non-employment 1934-39 non-employment 1940-45 non-employment 1946-51 men and women men only percent percent notes: the analyses for the transition to retirement are based on persons employed or unemployed at the age of 50. for the transition to non-employment, our estimations are based only on persons employed at the age of 50. source: own calculations based on the gsoep (1984-2007). reversing early retirement in germany • 893 however, there is another important fact that can be derived from figure 3. comparing the estimates for the transition to retirement with the estimates for the transition to non-employment (which could be either a transition to retirement or a transition to unemployment) reveals that for a substantial number of older people the transition to retirement indeed takes place only indirectly after a phase of unemployment. although the product-limit estimations for the transition to non-employment also indicate a prolongation of working life across birth cohorts, it has to be stated that in all cohorts of our study people tend to exit employment signifi cantly earlier than they retire. the difference between the direct and indirect transitions to retirement amounts up to remarkable 20 percentage points. for example, in the cohort 1934-39, 24 percent entered retirement at the age of 60 while 42 percent have already left employment. in the cohort 1940-45, 17 percent retired at the age of 60 while 33 percent have already left employment at this age. in the youngest cohort 1946-51, the share of those who retired at the age of 60 amounts to 10 percent while the share of the non-employed is about 25 percent. consequently, there is a considerable gap between these two transitions. this clearly shows that indirect transitions to retirement after a phase of unemployment are widespread in germany. this result already indicates that reforms aiming at reversing early retirement in germany should not only be concerned about changing pension regulations but should also target the employability of older people. transition to retirement in the following, we present the results of our multivariate models for the timing of the transition to retirement and changes therein across cohorts (table 1). this multivariate approach enables us to examine if the delayed transition to retirement across cohorts remains signifi cant after controlling for additional factors, especially the educational level of the individuals which has risen across cohorts. in these more complex models we also fi nd that younger birth cohorts (that is people born between 1940-45 and 1946-51) retire signifi cantly later than the cohort of people born between 1934 and 1939. these effects remain highly signifi cant even if we additionally control for various factors, namely the level of education, branch of industry and fi rm size (models 2, 3 and 4). hence, we fi nd a delay of retirement in germany that is indeed independent of the changing composition of the population of the older workforce. table 1 additionally reveals an infl uence of individuals’ educational level, although this infl uence is weak. only very highly qualifi ed people with a college or university degree retire signifi cantly later. for the remaining people (which is the majority of the workforce), a signifi cant difference cannot be found. yet, it has to be noted that in the same model we control if the respondents experience the transition to retirement after a phase of unemployment or not, and it is likely that especially lower qualifi ed people face a higher risk of retiring only indirectly after a phase of unemployment. our following models on the risks of ending working life in unemployment (see table 2) test if educational differences increase when we look specifi cally at indirect transitions to retirement which have become less favourable for individuals. • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld894 tab. 1: timing of the transition to retirement (logistic regression model) notes: ** effect signifi cant at p < 0.01; * effect signifi cant at p < 0.05; + effect signifi cant at p < 0.10. in our models, we also control for the cumulative experience in unemployment, self-employment, marginal and part-time employment. yet, as we focus on the interpretation of cohort, education, branch of industry and fi rm size and do not interpret the results of these covariates, we decided to not present the effects in this table. more detailed information are provided by rinklake and buchholz (2011). source: own calculations based on the gsoep (1984-2007) 1 2 3 4 constant –4.36** –4.30** –4.18** –4.27** age 50–57 (ref.) –– –– –– –– 58–59 0.66** 0.68** 0.67** 0.65** 60–61 2.91** 2.95** 2.95** 2.96** 62–63 2.52** 2.59** 2.59** 2.61** 64 plus 3.47** 2.58** 3.61** 3.64** population group west german (ref.) –– –– –– –– east german –0.14 –0.06 –0.10 –0.02 migration background –0.28** –0.38** –0.38** –0.39** sex men (ref.) –– –– –– –– women 0.17* 0.12 0.15+ 0.20* birth cohorts 1934–39 (ref.) –– –– –– –– 1940–45 –0.51** –0.46** –0.45** –0.45** 1946–51 –1.09** –1.01** –1.00** –0.97** late career characteristics currently unemployed 0.80** 0.78** 0.78** 0.77** employed at the age of 50 0.44** 0.46** 0.37** 0.28** educational level lower secondary degree without occupational qualification 0.06 0.05 0.02 lower secondary degree with occupational qualification (ref.) –– –– –– upper secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.08 –0.12 –0.16 upper secondary degree with occupational qualification –0.06 –0.07 –0.09 college or university degree –0.65** –0.66** –0.72** branch of industry extractive industry 0.49* 0.55* transformative industry (ref.) –– –– private services –0.12 –0.11 social services 0.03 –0.01 firm size up to 19 employees –0.14 20–199 employees (ref.) –– 200–1,999 employees 0.13 over 2,000 employees 0.50** events 1,131 1,131 1,131 1,131 total persons 3,415 3,415 3,415 3,415 censored persons 2,284 2,284 2,284 2,284 –2*diff (logl) 2,518.92 2,555.92 2,566.48 2,605.23 reversing early retirement in germany • 895 finally, the results in table 1 again display a signifi cant infl uence of the employer’s characteristics on the timing of the transition to retirement. as other empirical studies have already revealed (wübbeke 1999; buchholz 2008), the option of early retirement is especially used in large fi rms. it is argued that especially in huge and tayloristically organised fi rms early retirement is used to realise restructuring and downsizing after the stagnation of the economic miracle in the 1970s. regarding the branch of industry, we fi nd a signifi cant difference between the transformative sector (that is the classical industrial sector) and the so-called extractive sector which includes agriculture, but especially mining and related industries. risks of old age unemployment in the next step of our empirical analyses, we concentrate on the risks of becoming unemployed after the age of 50 and consequently on the risks of making an indirect transition to retirement. our descriptive analyses presented in figure 3 have shown that, as a result of the massive use of the unemployment insurance as a “path to early retirement”, there is a signifi cant gap between the timing of the transition to retirement and the timing of the transition out of employment. therefore, it is important to also analyse the transition to old age unemployment in order to appropriately understand early retirement in germany. the results of our analyses are presented in table 2. firstly, it has to be noted that the risks of unemployment are especially high at the age of 58 and 59. before and after this age, the risks of becoming unemployed are much lower. the reason for this systematic age effect is that, for many years, at this age, the german pension system allowed for a fi nancially secure and early withdrawal from the labour market. thus, the unemployment insurance was used as a welfare state subsystem of the pension system (for more details, see section 2). in the recent past, however, this path to retirement was increasingly penalized. yet, in order to answer our research question the results of the cohort comparison are most important. indeed, our multivariate analyses for old age unemployment display a decreasing signifi cance for younger cohorts. similar to the results for the transition to retirement, this cohort-specifi c change remains highly signifi cant even after controlling for education, fi rm size and branch of industry (models 2, 3 and 4). yet, compared to the trend reversal of early retirement, the measures to reverse the trend of using unemployment as a path to early retirement apparently were far less successful. in our analyses of the transition to retirement (table 1), we fi nd signifi cant effects for both the middle and the youngest cohort. in our models of old age unemployment, however, the middle cohort 1940-45 does not differ signifi cantly from our oldest birth cohort. we only fi nd a signifi cant effect for the youngest cohort 1946-51 and, compared to the cohort-specifi c coeffi cients estimated in our models for retirement (table 1), the size of this coeffi cient is far smaller in the models for unemployment. indeed, additional product-limit estimations show that even in the youngest cohort 1946-51, old-age unemployment is very widespread: 19 percent of this cohort became unemployed before the age of 58 compared to 24 percent in the cohort 1934-39 (rinklake/buchholz 2011). it thus can be concluded • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld896 tab. 2: transition to unemployment (logistic regression model) notes: ** effect signifi cant at p < 0.01; * effect signifi cant at p < 0.05; + effect signifi cant at p < 0.10. in our models, we also control for the cumulative experience in unemployment, self-employment, marginal and part-time employment. yet, as we focus on the interpretation of cohort, education, branch of industry and fi rm size and do not interpret the results of these covariates, we decided not to present the effects in this table. further details are provided by rinklake and buchholz (2011). source: own calculations based on the gsoep (1984-2007) 1 2 3 4 constant –3.51** –3.39** –3.22** –3.08** age 50–57 (ref.) –– –– –– –– 58–59 0.36** 0.39** 0.30** 0.40** 60–61 –0.27 –0.20 –0.20 –0.19 62–63 –0.34 –0.24 –0.21 –0.21 64 plus –0.82 –0.68 –0.70 –0.70 population group west german (ref.) –– –– –– –– east german 0.89** 1.01** 1.03** 0.98** migration background 0.41** 0.31** 0.21* 0.23* sex men (ref.) –– –– –– –– women –0.19* –0.21* –0.06 –0.09* birth cohorts 1934–39 (ref.) –– –– –– –– 1940–45 0.01 0.05 0.07 0.07 1946–51 –0.40** –0.29** –0.29** –0.31** educational level lower secondary degree without occupational qualification 0.01 –0.02 –0.01 lower secondary degree with occupational qualification (ref.) –– –– –– upper secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.18 –0.15 –0.12+ upper secondary degree with occupational qualification –0.28** –0.22** –0.20* college or university degree –0.83** –0.61** –0.59** branch of industry extractive industry –0.16 –0.16 transformative industry (ref.) –– –– private services –0.39** –0.36** social services –0.88** –0.86** firm size up to 19 employees 0.78 20–199 employees (ref.) –– 200–1,999 employees –0.25* over 2,000 employees –0.32** events 670 670 670 670 total persons 3,108 3,108 3,108 3,108 censored persons 2,438 2,438 2,438 2,438 –2*diff (logl) 173.38 228.18 290.27 311.03 reversing early retirement in germany • 897 that the signifi cant increase of retirement ages is not necessarily connected to the fact that all older people were also able to maintain longer working lives. on the basis of the results presented in table 2, it also becomes evident that the transition to unemployment and, thus, the indirect path to retirement, is much more stratifi ed than the timing of the transition to retirement. this applies to both individuals’ characteristics (i.e. educational level) and the characteristics of their employer (i.e. branch of industry or fi rm size). in contrast to the results for the timing of retirement, education is far more important for the transition to unemployment. it is no longer only the highest qualifi ed (namely individuals with college or university education) who differ from older individuals with lower secondary degree and occupational qualifi cation. for the risks of ending working life in unemployment, we fi nd a signifi cant effect for those with upper secondary degree and occupational qualifi cation (models 2, 3 and 4) and even a slight effect for those with upper secondary degree without occupational qualifi cation (model 4). further, with regard to the branch of the industry, we now fi nd a broader variety. the risks of unemployment are especially high for older workers in the transformative and extractive sector.10 both industries have faced a high need for economic restructuring and downsizing in germany since the 1970s, and our results show that employers clearly made use of the unemployment path to retirement to tackle growing economic pressure (buchholz 2008). it is important to highlight these signifi cant branch effects because this clearly shows that the transition to retirement (especially the indirect transition to retirement via unemployment) can obviously not be modelled as a decision solely made by older workers as proposed by the micro-economic pull approach. on the contrary, employers signifi cantly determine the transition to retirement, and this hidden form of employment fl exibility was also publicly supported to relieve the regulated german labour market for a long time. transition to non-employment this section investigates the transition to non-employment, which accounts for direct and indirect transitions at the same time (table 3). as the fi ndings for fi rm size and branch of industry remain the same as in the models for the transition to retirement, we concentrate on the results for the cohorts and the interaction between the cohort and the educational level. in our multivariate analyses for the timing of the transition to non-employment, we fi nd a signifi cant cohort-specifi c change. compared to the oldest cohort 1934– 39, members of the birth cohorts 1940-45 and 1946-51 remain in employment longer and the effects remain signifi cant even after controlling for education, fi rm size and branch of industry. yet, compared to the models for the transition to retirement, 10 these effects remain highly signifi cant even if we control for occupational class in order to account for the fact that the share of manual workers is higher in this sector. additional analyses, in which the extractive sector was used as the reference category, also revealed signifi cant differences to the public and private service sector. • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld898 tab. 3: transition to non-employment (logistic regression model) notes: ** effect signifi cant at p < 0.01; * effect signifi cant at p < 0.05; + effect signifi cant at p < 0.10. in our models, we also control for the cumulative experience in unemployment, self-employment, marginal and part-time employment. yet, as we focus on the interpretation of cohort, education, branch of industry and fi rm size and do not interpret the results of these covariates, we decided not to present the effects in this table. further details are provided by rinklake and buchholz (2011). source: own calculations based on the gsoep (1984-2007) 1 2 3 4 5 constant –3.16** –3.08** –3.10** –3.30** –3.31** age 50–57 (ref.) –– –– –– –– –– 58–59 0.70** 0.72** 0.72** 0.71** 0.72** 60–61 2.37** 2.41** 2.42** 2.42** 2.43** 62–63 2.13** 2.19** 2.19** 2.20** 2.20** 64 plus 2.92** 3.01** 3.01** 3.03** 3.04** population group west german (ref.) –– –– –– –– –– east german –0.41** –0.33** –0.36** –0.29** –0.30** migration background –0.21** –0.29** –0.29** –0.28** –0.27** sex men (ref.) –– –– –– –– –– women 0.31** 0.31** 0.27** 0.31** 0.31** birth cohorts 1934–39 (ref.) –– –– –– –– –– 1940–45 –0.35** –0.31** –0.30** –0.29** –0.24* 1946–51 –0.73** –0.66** –0.66** –0.63** –0.74** educational level lower secondary degree without occupational qualification 0.05 0.04 0.01 0.01 lower secondary degree with occupational qualification (ref.) –– –– –– –– upper secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.06 –0.07 –0.11 –0.18 upper secondary degree with occupational qualification –0.11 –0.10 –0.13 –0.11 college or university degree –0.48** –0.46** –0.51** –0.52* interaction educational level * birth cohort birth cohort 1940–45 lower secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.22 upper secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.06 upper secondary degree with occupational qualification –0.03 college or university degree 0.01 birth cohort 1946–51 lower secondary degree without occupational qualification 0.56** upper secondary degree without occupational qualification 0.46 upper secondary degree with occupational qualification 0.02 college or university degree 0.03 branch of industry extractive industry 0.50** 0.53** 0.54** transformative industry (ref.) –– –– –– private services 0.02 0.01 0.01 social services –0.01 –0.04 –0.04 firm size up to 19 employees 0.02 0.03 20–199 employees (ref.) –– –– 200–1,999 employees 0.16* 0.16* over 2,000 employees 0.48** 0.48** events 1,617 1,617 1,617 1,617 1,617 total persons 3,108 3,108 3,108 3,108 3,108 censored persons 1,419 1,419 1,419 1,419 1,419 –2*diff (logl) 2,128.37 2,161.48 2,169.2 2,215.2 2,229.4 reversing early retirement in germany • 899 the size of the estimated coeffi cients is smaller. this again supports the conclusion, which we have already drawn on the basis of our analyses for unemployment, that the delayed transition to retirement in younger cohorts cannot be fully explained by the fact that all older workers of younger cohorts are also able to maintain longer working lives. indeed, the interaction effects between cohort and educational level indicate that the prolongation of working life has been selective and came at the price of growing social inequalities among the older workforce. especially the lowest qualifi ed older workers, that is those with a lower secondary degree without occupational qualifi cation, are not able to meet the new policy expectation to remain in employment longer. in the youngest cohort 1946-51, these low-qualifi ed workers now signifi cantly differ from those with a medium educational level. this was not the case in the two earlier birth cohorts, in which the length of the working life was more or less the same for the majority of the older people (with the exception of the highest qualifi ed who always maintained longer employment careers, see above). pension income in the last step, we now focus on the respondents’ pension incomes. table 4 presents the results of our analyses on the individual level of pension income after the respondents of our original sample claimed pensions for the fi rst time. with these fi nal empirical analyses we are able to evaluate how the income situation of retirees has developed since the mid-1980s and to what extent recent reforms have led to decreasing pension incomes. at fi rst glance, our results indicate that younger cohorts’ fi nancial situation is signifi cantly better. however, it has to be noted that with our data, we are not able to control for the individuals’ employment income throughout their entire working life although the individual working income strongly determines the level of pension benefi ts persons receive after retirement in germany. however, other authors (e.g. mayer/huinink 1990) report that employment incomes strongly vary between the cohorts of our study as a consequence of the economic boom germany experienced in the 1960s and early 1970s and the specifi c employment opportunities this boom created for the cohorts of our study. mayer and huinink (1990) report that it is especially the middle and the youngest cohort which benefi tted from the economic boom. they entered the labour market at the time of these economically favourable conditions and therefore had better chances to achieve higher incomes. in contrast, people born in the 1930s entered the labour market after world war ii when the general economic situation was less favourable. as a consequence, they started their career at a lower income level, and this had a long-term effect on their entire employment career (mayer/huinink 1990). hence, the fact that the individual working incomes in our empirical study have increased for the younger cohorts, directly affects their level of pensions we observe in our analyses presented in table 4. the absolute pension incomes of the retirees of our younger cohorts are higher compared to those born in the 1930s. indeed, when we include an individual’s last labour • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld900 market income as a proxy measure for the different individual working incomes of our cohorts (model 2), the cohorts no longer differ signifi cantly from each other. yet, the most important question for the purpose of this article is whether those who (have to) use the path to early retirement via unemployment receive lower pensions than those who do not (have to) use it. indeed, in model 1 we fi nd a signifi cant tab. 4: absolute pension income (linear regression model) notes: ** effect signifi cant at p < 0.01; * effect signifi cant at p < 0.05; + effect signifi cant at p < 0.10. public, occupational and private pensions are included; the pension income is adjusted for infl ation. branch of industry and fi rm size did not have any effect on the level of pension income and their inclusion did not improve our estimations. this is not surprising, because public pensions are still the main income source of retirees in germany. due to their lack of signifi cance, the effects of fi rm size and branch of industry are not presented in table 4. source: rinklake and buchholz (2011: 69-70); own calculations based on the gsoep (1984-2007) 1 2 3 4 constant 7.42** 6.93** 7.64** 7.29** age 50–57 (ref.) – – – – 58–59 1.98* 1.07 1.67+ 1.86* 60–61 1.28+ 0.01 1.40* 1.55* 62–63 3.69** 2.03** 3.25** 3.39** 64 plus 4.25** 2.44** 3.47** 3.67** population group west german (ref.) – – – – east german –2.77** –1.42* –3.90** –3.79** migration background –2.54** –2.22** –1.45* –1.47* sex men (ref.) – – – – women –5.01** –4.03** –4.41** –4.48** birth cohorts 1934–39 (ref.) – – – – 1940–45 1.35* 0.34 0.90+ 1.08+ 1946–51 2.95** 1.14 2.57** 3.34** last working income 0.01** educational level lower secondary degree without occupational qualification –1.07+ –1.09+ lower secondary degree with occupational qualification (ref.) – – upper secondary degree without occupational qualification –0.30 –0.14 upper secondary degree with occupational qualification 1.30+ 1.41* college or university degree 7.05** 7.03** late career characteristics employed at the age of 50 1.95* –0.08 0.97 1.05 unemployment path to retirement –1.22+ –0.77 –0.69 0.39 retirement path * birth cohort unemployment path to retirement * cohort 1940–45 –1.26 unemployment path to retirement * cohort 1946–51 –6.65** adjusted r-square 0.14 0.28 0.20 0.21 number of cases 1,206 1,206 1,206 1,206 reversing early retirement in germany • 901 effect indicating that those individuals who have been unemployed receive lower pensions. however, this effect is signifi cant only on a low level in our general model. indeed, the introduction of interaction terms for the path to retirement and cohort into our model (see model 4) reveals that retiring via unemployment has become signifi cantly unfavourable for younger cohorts. in contrast to our two older birth cohorts, the unemployment path to retirement is connected with signifi cant pension losses in our youngest cohort 1946-51. this was not the case in previously born cohorts (model 4) for whom the german pension system still offered strong incentives to make use of this scheme. the profound recent pension reforms, however, put an end to this generous policy. today, older people are expected to either prolong their working lives or accept higher penalties for early retirement. hence, our empirical results clearly indicate that recent pension reforms in germany which aim at reducing early retirement led to growing social inequalities in old age. this is due to specifi c parts of the older workforce, namely the low-qualifi ed (see table 3), are not able to meet the new expectation to remain employed longer. yet, in contrast to the past, these workers have to pay the price for their “failure” in the form of signifi cant pension losses (see table 4). 5 conclusion and outlook the aim of this contribution is to investigate the effects and risks of recent pension reforms in germany. for many years, german pension policy systematically supported early retirement in order to relieve the regulated labour market in times of economic stagnation and growing rates of unemployment. for this purpose, various generous early retirement programmes have been introduced in the 1970s, 1980s and early-1990s. these programmes were systematically used by fi rms and the government to reduce the workforce in a “socially peaceful” manner. not surprisingly, the employment rates in pre-retirement age have been very low in germany for many years. however, in the last ten to fi fteen years, we can observe a clear change in the german pension policy paradigm. latest pension reforms increasingly expect workers to delay the transition to retirement and, in case they fail to maintain longer working lives, individuals have to accept a signifi cant pension reduction. cross-sectional fi gures indeed indicate that employment rates in the pre-retirement age have substantially risen since 2000. however, as we argue, it is very risky to estimate the success of recent pension reforms on the basis of such broad crosssectional fi gures for a variety of reasons: first, these cross-sectional estimates do not account for the fact that the increasing old age employment rates might also be caused by the changing composition of today’s cohorts of older workers (especially with regard to the educational level). second, based on such cross-sectional data, it is impossible to understand whether the whole strata of the older workforce benefi tted from increasing employment rates in later life or if only specifi c parts of the older workforce are able to maintain longer working lives while already disadvantaged and low-qualifi ed older persons still have to retire early – yet, compared to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s at the price of signifi cant pension reductions. and • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld902 fi nally, a simple cross-sectional approach does not allow to causally model the consequences of the timing of the transition to retirement on individuals’ pension incomes. however, such a causal modelling would be necessary in order to estimate if recent reforms have been really successful or instead rather tend to be a hidden pension reduction. to appropriately address these issues, a micro-level longitudinal research approach, as applied in our empirical study, is necessary. this allows us to statistically investigate (1) if there remains a signifi cant effect for the reversal of retirement if it is controlled for potential changes in the composition of the older workforce across cohorts, (2) if all parts of the older workforce benefi tted from the recent increase of old age employment rates, and (3) if the latest pension reforms aiming at delaying the transition to retirement have been a “hidden” pension reduction for some parts of the older population. regarding these matters, the central fi ndings of our longitudinal micro-level study are as follows: (1) there is a signifi cant delay of the transition to retirement and out of employment across cohorts even if we control for the potentially changing composition of the older workforce. thus, our longitudinal results indicate that there has been a signifi cant postponement of the transition out of employment and into retirement across cohorts which is independent of the higher level of education in recent cohorts, for example. however, our results also show that the delayed transition to retirement in younger cohorts is not necessarily connected to the fact that all older people also succeed in maintaining longer employment lives. especially, the trend reversal of old age unemployment was far less successful than the trend reversal of early retirement. (2) our empirical analyses have shown that the changing pension policy paradigm in germany led to growing social inequalities in old age because the prolongation of working life has been socially selective. especially the lowest qualifi ed older workers are not able to meet the new policy expectation to remain in employment longer. in the youngest cohort 1946-51, there is a signifi cant gap between lowly qualifi ed workers and those with medium educational levels for the timing of the employment exit. this is not the case in the two earlier birth cohorts in which the length of working life was more or less the same for the majority of the older people. (3) finally, our results show that the new pension policy paradigm has been a pension reduction for some parts of the older population because they are not able to maintain longer working lives. while early retirement regulations have been fi nancially very generous throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, latest pension reforms in germany aim at punishing early retirement with signifi cant fi nancial cutbacks. indeed, our empirical analyses indicate that it is especially those who still have to use the unemployment path to retirement, which are mostly the low-qualifi ed workers, who are nowadays confronted with signifi cant pension losses while this was not the case for the two older birth cohorts of our study. reversing early retirement in germany • 903 what do these results tell us with regard to our key research interest of evaluating the effects of the changing pension policy paradigm in germany? obviously, the systematic expansion and the massive use of early retirement have come to a halt since 2000. both cross-sectional data as well as our multivariate longitudinal results display a signifi cant prolongation of working life and a substantial postponement of the transition to retirement. however, it is evident that, despite this recent trend reversal, early retirement is still predominant in germany. many older people experience the transition to retirement before both, fl exible and legal retirement age. it also has to be noted that a substantial number of older people still exit from employment early due to the indirect paths to retirement. especially the unemployment path to retirement still play an important role. this clearly suggests that attempts to reverse early retirement should not only concentrate on changing pension regulations but should also address the employability of older workers. additionally, our longitudinal results show that the recent reforms have not been able to target the entire older workforce. to the contrary, especially the already disadvantaged parts of the older workforce, that is the low-qualifi ed individuals of the latest cohort, have not been reached by the latest pension reforms and still (have to) exit employment very early. however, these workers now have to pay the price for their “failure” to meet the new policy expectation to prolong working life by accepting signifi cant pension losses. in the past, on the other hand, their market “failure” was cushioned by more generous early pension regulations. thus, recent pension reforms have caused growing inequalities among the older population. what is the reason for this limited success of germany’s latest (and still ongoing) pension reforms? as we have outlined at the beginning of our contribution, these reforms are based on the assumption that early retirement can be explained by micro-economic theory. this approach suggests that early retirement is the (sole) result of rational acting and maximizing individuals who opt for an early labour market exit as long as pension systems offer incentives for early retirement (so-called pull factors). however, it has been critically stated, that the micro-economic approach fails to model the complexity of early retirement in western societies (see, for example, kohli 1991; wübbeke 1999; arnds/bonin 2002; blossfeld et al. 2006; buchholz 2008; ebbinghaus 2008). according to these authors, it is important to also take “push factors” into account to explain early retirement. these factors contribute to pushing older workers out of the labour market, for example, due to the employers’ interests to carry out rationalisation and restructuring (wübbeke 1999; arnds/bonin 2002; buchholz 2008), due to the governments’ interests to unburden the labour market (kohli 1991; blossfeld et al. 2006; ebbinghaus 2008; blossfeld et al. 2011) or due to the countries’ institutional characteristics, which hinder the employability of older workers (e.g. a lacking infrastructure for lifelong learning and low support of active labour market policies) (blossfeld et al. 2006; ebbinghaus 2008; blossfeld et al. 2011). further, our results clearly show that early retirement is not only caused by “pull factors” but also by “push factors” as we fi nd strong empirical evidence that early retirement takes place especially in fi rms, sectors and jobs, which have been confronted with the high pressure of rationalisation and restructuring. this means that, as long as germany exclusively relies on weakening the “pull factors” of early • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld904 retirement without aiming at minimizing the “push factors” at the same time, the reforms remain unlikely to successfully enable the prolongation of the working life of all older people. these one-sided reforms merely targeting the pull factors may be useful to lower the fi nancial burdening of the public pension insurance. however, as our longitudinal results clearly demonstrate, this policy leads to growing social inequalities in old age. thus, for the weaker parts of the older workforce, these reforms are actually hidden pension reductions. for inducing a more successful trend reversal of early retirement, the social-democratic welfare states of scandinavia can serve as role models. these countries prove the importance and the success of an integrated institutional framework that does not only expect people to work longer but also allows them to remain employed – namely, by offering a well-established infrastructure for lifelong learning and by putting more efforts into active labour market policies (ebbinghaus 2005; blossfeld et al. 2006; blossfeld et al. 2011). references arnds, pascal; bonin, holger 2002: frühverrentung in deutschland: ökonomische anreize und institutionelle strukturen. iza discussion paper no. 666. bonn: institut zur zukunft der arbeit. blossfeld, hans-peter; rohwer, götz 2002: techniques of event history modeling. london: lawrence erlbaum associates. blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; hofäcker dirk (eds.) 2006: globalization, uncertainty and late careers in society, london/new york: routledge. blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; kurz, karin (eds.) 2011: aging populations, globalization and the labor market. comparing late working life and retirement in modern societies. cheltenham, uk/northampton, ma, usa: edward elgar. börsch-supan, axel 1992: population aging, social-security design, and early retirement. in: journal of institutional and theoretical economics – zeitschrift für die gesamte staatswissenschaft 148: 533-557. börsch-supan, axel 1998: incentive effects of social security on labor force participation. evidence in germany and across europe. nber working paper no. 6780. cambridge: national bureau of economic research. börsch-supan, axel 2000: incentive effects of social security on labor force participation: evidence in germany and across europe. journal of puplic economics 78: 25-50. börsch-supan, axel 2003: labor market effects of population aging, review of labour economics and industrial relations 17: 5-44. börsch-supan, axel; wilke, christina 2003: the german public pension system: how it was, how it will be. mea discussion paper 34-03. mannheim: mannheim research institute for the economics of aging. börsch-supan, axel; bucher-koenen, tabea; reil-held, annette; wilke, christina 2008: zum zukünftigen stellenwert der ersten säule im gesamtsystem der alterssicherung. mea discussion paper 08-45, mannheim: mannheim research institute for the economics of aging. buchholz, sandra 2008: die flexibilisierung des erwerbsverlaufs. eine analyse von einstiegsund ausstiegsprozessen in ostund westdeutschland. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. reversing early retirement in germany • 905 deutsche rentenversicherung 2012: entwicklung der beitragssätze. berlin: drv. ebbinghaus, bernhard 2000: when labour and capital collude: the varieties of welfare capitalism and early retirement in europe, japan and the usa. cambridge, ma, usa: cambridge university press. ebbinghaus, bernhard 2005: vom stilllegen von arbeit zum lebenslangen lernen. das überfällige ende der frühverrentung in europa, japan und den usa. in: mplfg yearbook 2003-04: 37-42. ebbinghaus, bernhard 2008: comparative regime analysis: early exit from work in europe, japan, and the usa. in: kenworthy, lane; hicks, alexander (eds.): methods and substance in macro-comparative analysis. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan: 260289. engstler, heribert; brussig, martin 2006: arbeitslosigkeit am ende des erwerbslebens. in: informationsdienst altersfragen 4,33: 2-6. ernst, jochen 1995: frühverrentung in ostdeutschland: ergebnisse einer empirischen erhebung zu den bedingungen und sozialen folgen des vorzeitigen ruhestandes. frankfurt am main: europäischer verlag der wissenschaften. ernst, jochen 1996: alterserwerbstätigkeit und ruhestand in ostdeutschland. in: arbeit 5: 201-222. esping-andersen, gøsta 1990: the three worlds of welfare capitalism. princeton, nj: princeton university press. gatter, jutta; hartmann, brigitte 1995: betriebliche verrentungspraktiken zwischen arbeitsmarktund rentenpolitischen interessen. in: mitteilungen aus der arbeitsmarkt und berufsforschung 28: 412-424. gruber, jonathan; wise, david 1999: social security and retirement around the world. chicago: university press. gruber, jonathan; wise, david 2004: social security programs and retirement around the world. chicago: university press. gruber, jonthan; wise, david 2005: social security programs and retirement around the world: fiscal implications. nber working paper, 11290, cambridge: nber. guillemard, anne-marie 1991: die destandardisierung des lebenslaufs in den europäischen wohlfahrtsstaaten. in: zeitschrift für sozialreform 37,2: 620-639. hofäcker, dirk; pollnerová, stepanka 2006: late careers and career exits: an international comparison of trends and institutional background patterns. in: blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; hofäcker, dirk (eds.): globalization, uncertainty and late careers in society. london/new york: routledge: 25-53. jabsen, annika; buchholz, sandra 2009: increasing uncertainty in old age in germany? the development of social inequality in later life since the mid-1980s. fl excareer working paper. bamberg university. kaplan, edward l.; meier, paul 1958: nonparametric estimation from incomplete observations. in: journal of the american statistical association 53: 457-481. kohli, martin; rein, martin; guillemard, anne-marie; van gunsteren, herman 1991: time for retirement: comparative studies of early exit from the labor force. cambridge/new york: cambridge university press. mayer, karl ulrich; huinink, johannes 1990: alters-, periodenund kohorteneffekte in der analyse von lebensverläufen oder: lexis ade? in: mayer, karl ulrich (eds.): lebensverläufe und sozialer wandel. wiesbaden: westdeutscher verlag: 442-459. • sandra buchholz, annika rinklake, hans-peter blossfeld906 oecd 2001: ageing and income: financial resources and retirement in 9 oecd countries. paris: organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd). rinklake, annika; buchholz, sandra 2011: increasing inequalities in germany: older people’s employment lives and income conditions since the mid-1980s. in: blossfeld, hans-peter; buchholz, sandra; kurz, karin (eds.): aging populations, globalization and the labor market. comparing late working life and retirement in modern societies. cheltenham, uk/northampton, ma, usa: edward elgar: 35-64. riphahn, regina; schmidt, peter 1997: determinanten des rentenzugangs: eine analyse altersspezifi scher verrentungsraten. in: jahrbuch für wirtschaftswissenschaften 48. 113-147. schmid, josef 2002: wohlfahrtsstaaten im internationalen vergleich: soziale sicherung in europa: organisation, finanzierung, leistungen und probleme. opladen: leske + budrich. siddiqui, sikandar 1997: early retirement in west germany: a sequential model of discrete choice. in: zeitschrift für wirtschaftsund sozialwissenschaften 117: 391-415. wübbeke, christina 1999: der übergang von sozialversicherungspfl ichtiger beschäftigung in den rentenbezug zwischen sozialpolitischer steuerung und betrieblichen interessen. in: mitteilungen aus der arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung 32: 103-117. yamaguchi, kazuo 1991: event history analysis, newbury park/london/new delhi: sage. a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “umkehr von frühverrentung in deutschland – eine längsschnittanalyse der auswirkungen der jüngsten rentenreformen auf den zeitpunkt des erwerbsausstiegs und die rentenhöhe”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-23de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-23de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 13.03.2012 date of acceptance: 19.11.2012 prof. dr. sandra buchholz (), prof. dr. hans-peter blossfeld. university of bamberg, chair of sociology 1. bamberg, germany. e-mail: sandra.buchholz@uni-bamberg.de, hans-peter.blossfeld@uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/soz1/professor-dr-sandra-buchholz/ url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bamberg-graduate-schools/english/bagss/people/ faculty/hans-peter-blossfeld/ annika rinklake. staatsinstitut für familienforschung an der universität bamberg (ifb). bamberg, germany. e-mail: annika.rinklake@ifb.uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.ifb.bayern.de/mitarbeiter/rinklake.html © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows in the context of the 1973/74 and 2008/09 economic crises piotr plewa abstract: the article analyses spain’s voluntary return policies, including the programme instituted specifi cally to assist migrants affected by the 2008/09 crisis. voluntary return policies were implemented in europe in the context of the 1973/4 crisis. just like the western european programmes of the 1970s and the 1980s, the current spanish voluntary return policies also only elicited the cooperation of small numbers of migrants and countries of origin. the article recommends four broader policy measures to tackle the emerging trend whereby a considerable proportion of migrants will stay in spain rather than repatriate. keywords: voluntary returns · return migration · spain · development · crisis 1 introduction on 11 november 2008 spain authorised redundant migrant workers to collect their unemployment benefi ts in a lump sum and obtain a free return ticket home, allegedly to shield them from the recession. the objective of this study is to assess under which conditions spain’s voluntary return policies (vrps) have been able to reverse the process of unsustainable, precarious job-based growth while balancing the interests of spain with those of the countries of origin. given the sparse take-up of voluntary return programmes in europe since the mid-1980s, little has been written on this subject over the past two decades. the onset of the 2008/09 crisis has precipitated debates on these policies. this paper aims to inform those debates by reviewing the lessons from the vrp programmes of the 1970s and 1980s and drawing preliminary conclusions from the most recent programme implemented in spain. the study consists of four parts. it starts with a brief review of the most recent literature on return migration in the context of economic fl uctuations. to set the stage for the discussion of the contemporary spanish voluntary return programmes, the second part briefl y sums up various categories of return incentives instituted in the 1970s and 1980s in france, germany, the netherlands and belgium, the four comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 147-176 (date of release: 26.10.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-03en0 • piotr plewa148 countries which instituted voluntary returns as a part of a redefi nition of migration policy in the post 1973/4 crisis. it argues that these policies were most successful when they involved cooperation with the countries of origin, development aid and integration of those migrants who decided to stay on. the third part focuses on the current spanish voluntary return programmes, particularly the programa de abono anticipado de prestación a extranjeros (apre) – the programme created specifi cally to assist migrants in the fi nancial crisis. this part discusses the main assumption underlying the current spanish vrps, namely that foreign workers and their homelands would acquiesce to voluntary return. it argues that the countries characterised by improving economic, political and social conditions (e.g. romania) have been more inclined to readmit their migrants, whilst countries in more dire economic, political and social straits (e.g. morocco) preferred spain to improve migrants’ working and living conditions and encouraged the diaspora to send remittances and invest at home without giving up their residence abroad. when discussing the positions of the countries of origin, this part makes further references to the vrps of the 1970s and 1980s, which were also shaped by the attitudes of migrants and their countries of origin. the fourth part assesses the strengths and weaknesses of spanish vrps. it suggests that while vrps allow migrants to return home in dignity, they cannot address more complex migration policy challenges, particularly: insuffi cient labour and social integration of those who cannot or do not want to leave spain; defi ciencies in migrants’ labour and social integration; persistence of jobs that native populations do not want to perform under the conditions offered; as well as signifi cant economic and social gaps between spain and migrants’ countries of origin. for this reason, when expanding vrps the spanish authorities should not delay the efforts to foster (1) the full labour and social integration of migrants already living in spain; (2) decent working and living conditions for migrants (e.g. through pre-admission rules and post-admission verifi cation); (3) rationalisation, mechanisation, and off-shoring of production in the most labour-intensive sectors; and (4) sustainable development of the countries of origin. current voluntary return programmes from the european union are based on the general eu and specifi c national legislation on return migration. delimiting the scope of contemporary analysis to spain, this article focuses on a study of spanish legislation, particularly the two decrees which regulated the apre programme as of may 2010 (rd 4/2008 and rd 1800/2008). the quantitative results of the programme have been provided by the spanish ministry of labour and by the madrid offi ce of the international organization for migration (iom). the lessons from past programmes in france, germany, the netherlands and belgium are based on a review of the pertinent literature, including the sopemi reports on trends in migration in oecd states. since the goal of the debate on the voluntary return programmes of the 1970s and the 1980s was to identify the key lessons learned rather than provide a full-blown analysis, i limited the analysis of those programmes to a review of the literature and of the data provided in the annual oecd sopemi reports. voluntary returns from spain were co-fi nanced by the spanish ministry of labour and immigration. they were implemented by the iom and a number of non-governthe effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 149 mental organisations, including but not limited to the asociación de cooperación bolivia españa (acobe), asociación comisión católica española de migración (accem), rescate, américa – españa solidaridad y cooperación (aesco), spanishecuadorian association rumiñahui, el movimiento por la paz (mpdl), consorcio de entidades para la acción integral con migrantes (cepaim), and the spanish red cross. to gather data, i conducted telephone interviews with the representatives of the iom offi ce in madrid, reviewed documentation from the ministry of labour, the iom and non-governmental organisations (ngo) concerning vrps, and examined migrants’ opinions as expressed in the polls conducted by the atime migrant organisation and spanish social scientists from colectivo ioe. one limitation to data gathering was the scarcity of data on migrants’ gender, age, civil status, education and employment. some programme application forms do not require migrants to provide such data. in other cases, the migrants themselves do not provide such information. from the programme administrators’ point of view, this data is not as important as the information on the country to which migrants want to return. 2 return migration in the context of economic fl uctuations as of late 2011, a number of authors suggested that return migration in the context of the 2008/09 crisis was not likely to be massive due to migrants being reunited with their families in the host countries (castles 2011; dobson et al. 2009), to the homelands’ dependence on remittances (bastia 2011), and to an uncertain reintegration perspective in the countries of origin, as well as to the homelands’ ambivalent stance on return migration (boccagni/lagomarsino 2011). in an attempt to provide migrants with greater incentives to return, certain voluntary return policies provided migrants with post-return labour market integration assistance (iom 2011). however, even the most comprehensive development-fostering return incentives have produced mixed results in the past (martin 1990). furthermore, there is little conclusive evidence on whether and how migration affects development. jones (1998) and de haas (2005) suggested that migration may exacerbate inequality. black et al. (2005) argued that it is inequality rather than absolute levels of poverty and deprivation that encourage migration. castles (2011) and dobson et al. (2009) have suggested that demand for migrants is likely to persist because of the shortage of adequately-trained native workers or their unwillingness to work in certain jobs. arguing that certain voluntary returns, such as those concerning rejected asylum-seekers, are only nominally voluntary, van houte and davids (2008) argued that voluntary return policies may fail to prevent migrants from re-emigrating to the host countries shortly after leaving them. in order to address the root causes of migration and to render returns sustainable, some scholars and policymakers advocated freer trade, poverty alleviation and other forms of economic aid to the countries of origin. however, de haas (2007) argued that improved economic and social conditions in migrants’ countries of origin are likely to encourage and facilitate migration in the short run. • piotr plewa150 for adepoju et al. migration management should be based on genuinely bilateral or multilateral agreements. throughout the early 2000s, migration agreements still aimed to expatriate irregular migrants without much consideration for migrants’ homelands. the recent growth of development-linked migration agreements is likely to enhance bilateralism and multilateralism. but it is not only the developed, but also the developing states that could contribute towards better migration management by taking a more coordinated and more decisive role on migration issues (adepoju et al. 2010: 68). this paper adds to the literature on voluntary returns explaining why a considerable proportion of migrants, particularly those from the countries characterised by signifi cant economic, social and political gaps, could not be expected to return, at least in the short run, and what could be done to address this challenge. whilst recognising the need for vrps, the paper calls for the integration of those who will settle, as well as a reduction in the push and pull factors contributing towards the accumulation of migrants in the least stable jobs. as the next section suggests, the host countries were already attempting to create better employment opportunities in migrants’ countries of origin in the 1980s, but have gradually learned that some of the migrants would not leave, thereby triggering a need for their integration. 3 western european voluntary return programmes in the aftermath of the 1973/74 crisis voluntary return programmes have been implemented in western europe since 1977 in the context of the economic and social malaise lingering after the 1973/4 oil crisis as well as rising asylum-seeker fl ows. france, germany, netherlands and belgium found it politically and administratively diffi cult to expatriate migrants by force, and therefore decided to make it possible for migrants to depart voluntarily. the programmes differed in their objectives and mechanisms, with some (such as france) offering migrants greater reintegration assistance upon their return home than others (such as belgium). one way in which spain could have learned from those programmes was through the experiences of its own nationals. spanish citizens constituted a signifi cant proportion of the foreign workers within all four countries, particularly in france. france was the fi rst country to authorise vrps, and by 2010 had developed the most complex set of such policies in europe. the french vrp debuted with the 1977 scheme offering 10,000 french francs to any non-ec foreigner who would renounce any claims to french social security and leave the country. the programme did not attract much interest among the citizens of the most impoverished countries of origin because their governments were not prepared to provide returnees with work and housing. thus, the french authorities have attempted since 1980 to support the homelands in the reintegration of returning migrants. as of 2009, both documented and undocumented migrants were entitled to some form of vrp consisting of a free return ticket, departure bonuses of up to € 2,000 per adult and € 1,000 per each child, € 7,000 in labour market reinsertion grants and consultative services. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 151 the german länder have attempted to administer a vrp since 1975, but it was not until 1983 that the federal government authorised immediate repayments of social security and return aid for non-ec migrants willing to depart from germany. the amounts paid to the benefi ciaries of the social security reimbursement programme varied depending on the contributions made by each migrant. additionally, migrants were able to withdraw their government-subsidised savings before maturity and without penalty, as well as receiving severance pay. they had to leave germany and could not return there in subsequent years to take up work. the programme did not stipulate that family members had to accompany departing migrants. the return aid was limited to those migrants who had become unemployed or forced to work short hours. migrants were entitled to dm 10,500 per adult and dm 1,500 per child plus consultative services (oecd 1983: 16; oecd 1984: 35). unlike the benefi ciaries of the social security repayment programme, the benefi ciaries of return aid had to leave germany with their spouses and dependent children, and were not permitted to return to work. the federal government did not renew the two programmes, claiming that it was job creation in the countries of origin that should form the basis for a return policy (oecd 1985: 36). around 306,000 foreigners were reported to have left germany during the repatriation assistance act period from november 1983 to september 1984 (oecd 1988: 7), mostly to turkey. 85 % of applicants for return aid (14,459 out of 16,833) and for the social security refund (120,000 out of 140,000) were turkish (oecd 1985: 36). while their return relieved unemployment pressures in germany, it intensifi ed them in turkey. some 250,000 turks returned from germany and elsewhere in 1984, notably libya where turkish companies were experiencing a 50 % decrease in employment due to falling oil prices (oecd 1986: 22). unemployment in turkey was 16.5 % in 1984. the turkish government took a number of steps to facilitate the reinsertion of returnees, including customs exemptions, business start-up and housing loans, as well as “catch-up courses” for migrants’ children (oecd 1986: 22). the dutch considered paying migrants up to 5,000 guilders for returning as early as in 1974, but the investigators concluded that the dutch ministry of development should promote development in the countries of origin regardless of whether their migrants returned or not. only 10 % of the funds originally destined for voluntary return were allotted for the purpose of voluntary repatriation. even though most of the returnees whom the programme supported were successful, the dutch government terminated the programme in 1984. it was argued that the programme’s results did not justify its high costs and that the emphasis on return contradicted the spirit of the netherland’s new “minorities policy” (rogers 1997: 160). with the introduction of its “minorities policy” in the early 1980s, the dutch government favoured the settlement of labour migrants. the scientifi c council for government policy proposed to structure the policy based on the assumption that most migrants would stay in the netherlands, and that the efforts should be directed at their integration rather than their return. the dutch government nevertheless authorised two new return programmes in 1985. these involved no deadlines but prohibited remigration to the netherlands, which was not well received by migrants and their countries of origin (rogers 1997: 157). • piotr plewa152 the fi rst programme provided migrants with free return tickets and subsistence costs for the fi rst three months in the home country. the second programme enabled migrants aged over 55 (lowered to 50 since october 1987) to return home without losing their unemployment benefi ts. returnees under this programme received unemployment benefi ts corresponding to the cost of living in their homelands until they turned 65 and thus became eligible to receive pensions (rogers 1997: 158). according to the oecd sopemi reports, neither of the two dutch programmes signifi cantly infl uenced the return migration fi gures, particularly among migrants who had reunifi ed with their families in the netherlands. settlement was to a large extent facilitated by the citizenship act of december 19, 1984 which granted dutch nationality to 34,600 persons (oecd 1987: 35), as well as by the poor employment perspectives at home (muus 1988: 7). in 1984, belgium authorised a modest return assistance programme for humanitarian reasons. apart from a free return ticket, participating migrants were offered a small amount of cash as well as fi nancial support to offset moving and travel costs. however, out of approximately 200 persons who participated in it, most were asylum-seekers. the authorities therefore created a new programme on 1 august 1985. the programme was available to non-ec nationals who had been unemployed for at least a year. it paid a bonus equal to 312 times the daily unemployment compensation, plus 50,000 and 15,000 belgian francs to spouses and children, respectively. in exchange for return assistance, migrants had to return with their families, renounce their social and economic rights and privileges in belgium, and they are not allowed to return to work in belgium in the future (oecd 1985: 7). in belgium, like in the netherlands, settled migrants were able to benefi t from reformed naturalisation legislation. the new law was a major reason for the 5.7 % drop in the migrant population in belgium in 1985.it most likely also led to the poor vrp application rate. only 594 people, mostly turks, decided to benefi t from the programme until it was terminated in july 1989 (oecd 1987: 21; oecd 1990: 16). thirty-fi ve years after the authorisation of fi rst vrp in europe, there is no evidence to what extent vrps stimulate returns and to what degree they subsidise the returns of those who were going to return anyway. the numbers of migrants who benefi tted from these schemes were often smaller than expected by the receiving host countries, and larger than considered sustainable by the homelands. as migration fl ows linked receiving countries to increasingly more economically, politically and culturally distant countries of origin, providing migrants with the opportunities for a sustainable return became more diffi cult. one major difference between the contemporary spanish and the four historical western european programmes was that historical programmes were conceived between three and ten years after the peak of the economic crisis, while the contemporary spanish programme was instituted during the recession. the former programmes addressed migrants who had already had time to grasp the new economic reality, whilst the contemporary programme addressed migrants who were not sure what the future would bring. another major difference between the two generations of programmes stemmed from globalisation. transportation costs had become lower by the late 2000s, making it possible for the host states to open the the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 153 programme to a larger number of migrants, but also making it easier for migrants to re-emigrate if they found that the conditions at home were not what they had expected them to be. the availability of cheap communication infrastructures also allowed programme administrators and migrants to gather relatively precise information regarding the conditions awaiting them upon return. last but not least, the programmes of the 2000s benefi tted from the fi nancial support of the european union and the logistical support of the international organization for migration and of plenty of ngos, both in europe and in migrants’ countries of origin. while vrps were a novelty in the context of the 1973/4 crisis, and could be regarded with suspicion in the context of the 2008/09 crisis, they were known, enjoyed a larger fi nancial and administrative infrastructure, and thus had legitimacy. in short, one would expect the vrps of the 2000s to have been much more successful than those of the 1970s and the 1980s. the following sections will attempt to shed more light on whether they have done so or not. 4 spain’s 2009-2010 voluntary return programmes spain was among the fastest-growing immigration countries in europe throughout the 2000s. the immigrant population in spain grew by an average of 500,000 people a year between 1999 and 2008 (ferrero-turrión 2010: 96). at the height of the crisis, in 2009, the foreign-born population constituted 14.3 % of the total population in spain (oecd 2011: 325). however, foreigners were also most affected by the crisis. in the third trimester of 2011 the unemployment rate in spain was 21.52 % (32.72 among foreigners and 19.50 among spanish citizens) (ine 2011: 1-2). moroccans (22.08 %), romanians (15.71 %), ecuadorians (9.93 %) and colombians (6.05 %) constituted over half of all foreign workers drawing unemployment benefi ts (inem 2011: 65). most of them had lost employment in construction, services and agriculture, the three sectors worst affected by the crisis. immigration to spain had been closely tied to these sectors, and to construction in particular. hence their decline translated immediately into heightened unemployment among foreign workers. the spanish government had expected migrants who had not yet come to spain to postpone migration plans and migrants who had already arrived in spain to repatriate. as far as the new fl ows are concerned, the economic crisis marked a decline in migration fl ows across all categories of migrants. between 2008 (690,000) and 2009 (470,000), migration fl ows to spain declined by over 30 %. the infl ows declined across all major categories: the number of new residence visas issued decreased from 290,000 in 2008 to 160,000 in 2009; the number of foreign-born seasonal workers recruited in the countries of origin fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 6,000 in 2009; the number of asylum applicants decreased by one-third to about 3,000; the number of irregular migrants apprehended at spain’s maritime borders decreased from 13,000 in 2008 to only 9,000 in 2009 and less than 200 in 2010 (oecd 2011: 324). the second expectation – concerning the voluntary repatriation of migrants already present in spain – is discussed in detail in the sections that follow. • piotr plewa154 4.1 the three major categories of spain’s vrps since december 2010, migrants in spain have been able to apply to one of three categories of voluntary return programmes: (1) humanitarian-based previe, previcat, previcam, previval;1 (2) unemployment-based (apre); and (3) investmentbased. while co-designed and co-fi nanced by the spanish ministry of labour, the programmes were managed by the iom and approved humanitarian or migrant organisations.2 the humanitarian and investment-based vrps targeted both legal and illegal migrants, as well as unprocessed asylum-seekers. in order to qualify, those applying for the humanitarian programme had to prove that they could no longer support themselves in spain. by contrast, those applying for the investment-based programme had to have a post-return investment plan. the humanitarian and investment-based vrps targeted both european union (eu) and non-eu citizens. the unemployment-based vrp (apre) targeted those legal migrants who wished to collect the lump sum of their unemployment benefi ts immediately. it was opened up to citizens of those non-eu countries which had concluded social security agreements with spain. the benefi ciaries of all programmes were entitled to free transportation home. the families of the benefi ciaries of the humanitarian-based and unemploymentbased programmes had their travel costs covered as well. each programme provided returnees with € 50 in pocket money (per returnee, up to € 400). the humanitarian and investment-based vrps offered € 400 in return grants per person, up to € 1,600 per family or group of investors. apre returnees were excluded from departure bonuses as it was assumed that their unemployment benefi ts would be greater. the investment-based programme additionally granted a project-specifi c development grant of € 1,500, up to € 5,000 for projects implemented by several entrepreneurs. 4.2 apre: the special vrp to boost returns in the context of the 2008/2010 crisis the apre programme was advertised in all of spain’s employment services offi ces, where the applications had to be completed. candidates had to be citizens of a country which: (1) had a social security agreement with spain and (2) was not a member of the eu, the european economic area or switzerland. the fi rst condition aimed to ensure that workers would be able to collect the departure bonuses once 1 the four programmes correspond to the geographical scope of their implementation. previe (programa de retorno voluntario de inmigrantes desde españa) has been implemented in all of spain, previcat (programa de retorno voluntario de inmigrantes desde cataluña) in cataluña, previcam (programa de retorno voluntario de inmigrantes de la comunidad de madrid) in madrid, and previval (programa de retorno voluntario de inmigrantes desde valencia) in valencia. 2 personal communication with paloma sevillano, iom madrid, 18 november 2010. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 155 they returned home. the second condition aimed to prevent workers from returning to spain after having collected the bonus. according to these two principles, the vrp applied to citizens of argentina, andorra, australia, brazil, canada, chile, colombia, the dominican republic, ecuador, the united states, the philippines, morocco, mexico, paraguay, peru, russia, tunisia, ukraine, uruguay and venezuela (mtas 2010). migrants who wished to participate in the apre programme had to be eligible for unemployment benefi ts. migrants could sign up for the programme at any point in time while they were receiving such benefi ts, but the longer they waited the smaller the voluntary return benefi ts they were going to obtain. when unemployed migrants exhaust their unemployment benefi ts, they become illegible for the programme. thus, while the apre vrp was cost-effective, it limited itself to assisting those migrants who were likely to leave spain from the very outset. with the amount of benefi ts decreasing over time, the programme was ill-prepared to attract undecided migrants, not to mention those who regarded repatriation from spain as the last resort. even those migrants who are a priori open to the idea of returning may fi nd it diffi cult to depart right away because of the time involved in paying off loans; selling property and equipment; being released from house rent contracts; as well as fi nding new housing, jobs and schools for children in the country of origin. the single workers with families back home are least constrained by those pre-departure prerequisites, but entire families require both time and assistance to make return decisions, particularly if one spouse continues to work, children are attending school and family members back in the countries of origin cannot help in fi nding jobs and housing. the spanish vrps provided relatively weak return incentives for family members. apart from free transportation, similar schemes operating during the crisis in france paid € 3,500 to a married couple and € 1,000 per child (up to three children and € 500 for any additional child). the czech crisis vrp paid € 500 to the spouse and € 250 per child. the spanish programme provided € 400 per spouse. spanish returnees also received € 50 in pocket money each (up to € 400 for a family) (mtas 2010). even the countries which paid bonuses to returning family members found it challenging to convince migrants to leave. among other things, migrants could have been preoccupied as to the extent to which their return would affect their children’s ability to succeed in future. thus, some migrants just stayed to give their children the opportunity to start their lives from a better position than their parents did. unlike some german länder in the 1970s and 1980s, spain did not prepare the children of migrant workers for their return home. educating migrant children with spanish children was expected to foster their integration, which was considered more important than preparing them for a possible return. in order to provide migrant children with educational opportunities in the countries of origin equivalent to those which were afforded to them in spain, returning migrants would need to send their children to costly private schools. this was not an option in rural areas of most of the countries of origin. according to laura tedesco, an argentinean political sci• piotr plewa156 entist, many ecuadorian migrants to spain originate from rural areas which lack basic services such as free healthcare and education. such services are available to migrants who decide to stay in spain (moffett/house 2010). once migrants committed themselves to voluntary return, they received one way tickets, € 50 per person for travel to the port of departure as well as 40 % of the unclaimed unemployment benefi ts available to them. in exchange, they had to leave spain within 30 days. they could change their mind before receiving the 40 % payment, but not after. once in the country of origin, the returnees must report in person to the spanish embassy or consulate to surrender any documents necessary to live and work in spain (work and residence permits, identity card, social security card, health care card, etc.) to the spanish diplomatic mission abroad in order to receive the remaining 60 % of their unemployment bonus. sending migrants home requires considerable psychological, administrative and fi nancial assistance. since the 1980s, the french government has provided returning migrants with pre-departure counselling, professional training and assistance in selling property. the french encouraged the countries of origin to reduce duties on imported goods and even provided migrants with funds to purchase work tools as well as subsidising their transportation. the spanish authorities did not provide migrants with comprehensive counselling or administrative or fi nancial assistance, thereby making it more diffi cult for migrants to leave and for the countries of origin to receive them. according to the ecuadorian migration offi ce, migrants who were entitled to smaller return benefi ts found it diffi cult to afford to return home because the money spent on transporting belongings decreased the ability of returned migrants to invest at home. to make up for this problem, the ecuadorian migration offi ce authorised duty exemptions for returning migrants. one of the main goals of such exemptions was to allow migrants to bring all the tools necessary to start up in business upon their return (senami 2012a). unemployed migrant workers were eligible for the same retraining packages as unemployed spanish workers. however, the spanish government did not offer specifi c retraining services to migrants participating in apre in their home countries. france has organised labour market reinsertion programmes to the home countries since 1984. at fi rst the programmes aimed to lure migrant workers to depart and accepted almost any post-return projects that migrants proposed. but with time, and perhaps in response to illegal returns to france of those who failed to establish a sustainable business in the countries of origin, the french government began to pay more attention to the quality of preas well as post-departure training so as to maximise the sustainability of migrants’ return. by 2009, france’s migrants were eligible for up to € 7,000 in seed money, project planning and project follow up assistance to become self-employed upon their return to their home countries. it is surprising that the spanish government expected the countries of origin to willingly accept their migrants given that spain herself was reluctant to readmit its own nationals from western europe in the 1980s. a magazine for spaniards abroad published by the spanish government emphasised: “many (emigrants), even if they wish it, cannot return to spain right now, given the economic and social crisis situathe effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 157 tion experienced by the spanish economy” (struckow y gonzalez 1986: 27 in rogers 1997: 158). 4.3 the non-unanimous position of the countries of origin the governments of economically, politically and socially stable countries favoured the permanent return of their migrant workers. by contrast, the governments of the countries which were yet to achieve such stability generally preferred migrants to send remittances and invest at home, while residing abroad (lahlou 2006: 14). these governments would not reject any migrant returning voluntarily. however, they did not actively encourage migrants to return. from the spanish perspective, it was not the citizens of the more highly developed, but rather of the less-developed countries which needed to depart fi rst. romania demonstrated considerable interest in expanding the programme to its citizens because it viewed the eu investment funds as much more valuable than remittances. by contrast, with the exception of some basic return incentives such as exemptions from import duties, morocco did not appear very supportive of the programme. morocco was more interested in the regularisation and integration of its citizens abroad than in their permanent return (lahlou 2006: 13-14; sorensen 2004: 8). experiments with organised permanent return to morocco have not been successful (sorensen 2004: 9). by 2010, 9.3 % of moroccan population resided abroad remitting 6,447 million us dollars annually. with the economic crisis having a minor negative impact on remittance fl ows to morocco (table 1), moroccan authorities would have undercut an important source of income if their emigrants were to come home for extended periods of time. however, moroccan authorities’ interest in using remittances as a tool for the country’s development may enhance returns if these were to be based on diaspora investments rather than extended or permanent returns, as the spanish government had hoped. the benefi ciaries of the apre programme were prohibited from re-entering spain for three years following departure. migrants suspected that the three-year ban aimed to make them settle in their countries of origin because of the high costs of moving back and forth. the lessons from the french 1977 programme revealed that portuguese and spaniards who had left for home on voluntary return bonuses had returned to france illegally prior to the 1982 legalisation (weil 1991: 327). many migrants wished that they could have a trial period to return to spain at any time if the conditions at home were not propitious for resettlement. tab. 1: remittances to morocco, 2003-2010 (in millions of us dollars) year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 remittances 3,614 4,221 4,590 5,451 6,730 6,895 6,271 6,447 source: own calculation, based on ratha/mohapatra/silwal 2011. • piotr plewa158 the ban on returns to spain was one reason why the apre programme did not apply to eu citizens. with no internal controls and the eu right to reside anywhere in the eu, it would be impossible to extend the programme for instance to romanians. the romanian government was nonetheless interested in extending voluntary return to its citizens because emigration had reduced its ability to attract foreign investment and use post-accession eu funds. the romanian government did not have enough funds to motivate its citizens to return, and counted on the support through the spanish vrp. while the romanian government viewed the economic crisis in spain as an opportunity for national development, morocco and ecuador appeared to know the limits of their capacity to integrate returnees. they faced a dilemma between accepting the returnees or acquiescing to their downward labour mobility from yearlong or full-time jobs to seasonal jobs and part-time jobs. since the spanish vrp did not include any training or job-creation provisions, the non-eu countries expected the programme to increase unemployment pressures and interrupt the fl ow of remittances. the non-eu countries of origin were interested in the social and economic wellbeing of their citizens. whilst they supported the spontaneous return of their citizens, and even co-fi nanced it through customs exemptions and other minor postreturn assistance measures, their resources for reception were limited, particularly if migrants were to come home en masse and all at the same time. the ecuadorian president rafael correa acknowledged that ecuador was not able to assist all 50,000 unemployed ecuadorians if they were to return from spain (gallego-díaz/creamer 2009). the onset of the economic crisis further reduced their capacities for reception, not only because they were affected by the crisis too, but also because spain was not the only country which attempted to expatriate their nationals. from the spanish perspective, if all of the moroccan, ecuadorian and colombian workers who were eligible for unemployment benefi ts were to depart, their countries of origin would need to receive around 36,000, 21,000 and 11,000 returnees, respectively. however, from the moroccan, ecuadorian and colombian perspective, the numbers of returnees were signifi cantly larger given the simultaneous voluntary return programme in france as well as spontaneous and forced returns of their diasporas from other countries. the cautious stand on return migration among the countries of origin predated the crisis. had spanish offi cials taken it into consideration, they would have been able to build a policy based on more realistic assumptions. but they had not. hence a perception of uncooperativeness on the part of the countries of origin arose when the programme started. according to the ecuadorian migration offi ce (senami – secretaría nacional del migrante), voluntary return policies should be based on genuine cooperation with the host states, should allow migrants to maintain their residence in spain while strengthening links with ecuador through remittance transfers and investment, should allow them to circulate back and forth between spain and ecuador; and if they decide to settle back in ecuador, they should be offered enough time, fi nancial and professional support to ensure that they would be fi nancially and socially stable enough not to want to re-emigrate to spain (senami 2009). the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 159 despite divergent conceptualisations of vrp, ecuador developed the most comprehensive set of reception policies, as compared to the two other countries with the largest number of migrants eligible to return (morocco and colombia). the ecuadorian “welcome home” policy consisted of duty exemptions on household and professional equipment brought from abroad, housing loans and business start-up funds. ecuadorian migrants who had lived abroad for at least one year could be exempt from duty on household appliances, tools and machinery valued up to $ 4,000. additionally, they could import one car worth up to $ 15,000 (senami 2012a). migrants who were going to return anyway welcomed the duty exemption, but those who were undecided considered it too modest given the high shipping costs and other fees involved. ecuadorian returnees who did not own a house in ecuador could also apply for a housing loan of up to $ 50,000. some migrants would have preferred the loan not to tie them to government-approved construction companies, as some regarded these companies as slow and considered that they sold houses at infl ated costs (migrante ecuatoriano 2009). migrants could apply for a housing loan prior to arrival in ecuador. it remains to be seen whether having secured a loan, migrants would arrive home or would wait until the house was almost complete, as well as whether they would prefer to live in that house or consider it as an additional source of income while continuing to reside in spain. since january 2007, returning migrants who have resided abroad for at least one year have also been able to compete for investment grants. this initiative inspired the greatest optimism among ecuadorian migrants abroad. the grant aimed to help ecuadorians develop a new investment or support an existing one. ideally, investment would concern agriculture, tourism, transportation and services, as well as being innovative and having a multiplier effect. the funds were expected to be complementary, thereby favouring migrants who had returned home with substantial savings (senami 2011). in 2011, the grant amounted to up to $ 15,000 or $ 50,000, depending on whether the project had an individual/family or community character (senami 2011). many projects were used to support farms and grocery stores. given the potential for the “overcrowding” of the same type of business initiative, migrants and the grant selection committee were concerned about the originality and thus the sustainability of the projects. migrants felt that investment-based programmes needed to be coupled with comprehensive project development support both at the project planning and implementation stages (senami 2011). to assist migrants in making a return decision, the ecuadorian government provided its cultural institutes in spain – casas ecuatorianas – with the fi nancial and administrative capacity to keep the diaspora informed about what they could expect in ecuador on their return (senami 2012b). the casas facilitated contact between migrants and potential employers in ecuador, provided information on educational reinsertion of migrant children, and assisted migrant families with some administrative tasks associated with departure. the staff at the casas attempted to offer migrants the most realistic information necessary to make a decision. they did not aim to convince migrants to come back if the conditions for their return (migrants’ post-return plans, preparation, economic conditions in the place of return, etc.) sug• piotr plewa160 gested that they might be worse off in ecuador than in spain. the casas offered migrants a number of social and professional services aimed at maintaining a link between migrants and ecuador, regardless of whether and when they might opt to return. citizens of other countries could also benefi t from the advice necessary to make an objective decision regarding whether to return or stay. these consultation services were usually provided by migrant organisations, ngos, religious leaders and the iom. colombia had attempted to readmit its workers in the past and scrutinised similar efforts made by other latin american countries. in an attempt to enable its citizens to continue their business activities upon their return, colombia had by the 1970s already experimented with duty exemptions incentives similar to those implemented by ecuador after 2008. the duty incentives did not precipitate signifi cant returns to colombia because migrants were more concerned with political and economic stability at home than with the cost of return. the success of return migration to chile after 1973 demonstrated that political stability can spur return migration by itself (rogers 1981: 350). given the lessons of the past, and the awareness of its inability to boost migrants’ confi dence in economic and political stability, colombia both facilitated returns and tried to improve migrants’ living and working conditions in spain. by 2008, the moroccan diaspora abroad was estimated at 3 million. in most cases, moroccan migrants maintained close social, cultural and economic ties with their country of origin (iom 2010c). reliant on remittances, and aware of the high costs associated with effective voluntary return programmes, the moroccan government prioritised the amelioration of migrants’ working and living conditions over permanent returns. rabat held that moroccans should have the right to work and live abroad if it is to help their families in morocco and, if their families joined them abroad, they should have the right to invest in morocco without compromising their legal status in the countries of origin. the preference for gradual, and not necessarily permanent, return stemmed not only from morocco’s own experience, but also from the lessons drawn from the franco-algerian return experience. when the french authorities authorised the 1977 voluntary return programme, the algerian authorities did not look forward to grappling with the secondary labour, social and political integration of its long-term emigrants, who overall had spent more time abroad than in algeria. it feared any returns that were not genuine (miller 1979: 334) or small enough to integrate. many algerians who returned home in the aftermath of the 1973/74 oil crisis did so because they had planned to return anyway. in most cases, the undecided algerians returned only when they were guaranteed jobs and housing (adler 1976: 42 in rogers 1981: 350). similar to algeria, morocco was only able to provide jobs and housing over an extended period of time and to a limited number of returnees. remittances to morocco grew from dhs 20 billion in 1998 to dhs 57 billion in 2007. since 2005 they have represented around 8 % of gdp, 290 % of foreign direct investment, 700 % of development aid and the most important source of foreign currency. they accounted for morocco’s positive balance of payments (maec 2009). until roughly 2005, most moroccans had invested in real estate. however, since the the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 161 moroccan real estate market became saturated, migrants started to purchase real estate in their host countries, particularly in those cases where their spouses had arrived and their children had been born abroad (hamdouch 2005: 71). according to youssef amrani, the director of bilateral relations at the moroccan ministry of foreign affairs, migrants should be able to freely circulate back and forth between morocco and the host country, so as to allow them and morocco seamless re-adaptation in the labour market and society (marrakech info 2008). in this respect, moroccan authorities, just like migrants, opposed the three-year prohibition to return to spain. apart from free transportation and a departure bonus, moroccan migrants returning from spain could only count on the moukawalati project start-up loan provided by the moroccan employment offi ce (anapec). the loan was available to educated moroccans who could cover 90 % of the project costs themselves. it was far less attractive than project start-up grants available to moroccan returnees from france because those returning from france could obtain up to € 7,000 in project start-up grants distributed by the french anaem offi ce. given that the french voluntary return programme did not make eligibility conditional on legal status, and the paucity of spanish-french border controls, spanish moroccans with families in france may be able to increase their return benefi ts by temporarily moving to france so as to return with the assistance of the french rather than spanish vrp. having grappled with the same challenge since 1977, by the early 2000s france began to redefi ne its voluntary return policy to do better justice to the interests of the countries of origin. the current french vrp encourages legal migrants to invest in their countries of origin while maintaining legal status in france with the so-called “circulatory visa” (visa de circulation), so that they could come back to france whenever they wish, or, if they fi nd it more benefi cial, run a business in the country of origin from france (france 2005: 57). regardless of legal status, french migrants were allotted up to € 7,000 in investment start-up funds, and holders of permanent residence permits could apply for an additional € 1,067 to € 1,220 to research the feasibility of the the business plans they intended to carry out upon return. it may be too early to judge to what extent the french vrp would translate into increased departures. however, having attempted to make the programme more bilateral, the french programme seems to have been more popular among migrants, their countries of origin and french society than the unilateral spanish programme. studies of turkish returnees from germany in the 1980s showed that at most 50 % of the respondents in a given sample had created or found employment following their return; some studies found considerably lower proportions (hönekopp 1987 and akcayli/sen 1987 in rogers 1997: 162). the spokespeople for home country governments warned migrants not to make return decisions hastily. migrants were implored to plan their return carefully, to weigh carefully what they were giving up in terms of social benefi ts and entitlements by leaving the host country, and to know precisely whether they could buy into pension schemes in the home countries (rogers 1997: 162). a 1987 report on the second generation in germany and turkey advised migrants not to return: “return incentive policies are against turkey’s interests. return • piotr plewa162 is also against the interests of the returnees. in turkey there are no institutions for reintegration that could assist returns. the bilateral agreements between turkey and the federal republic of germany do not work well. so far no reintegration assistance project has come to fruition. therefore the future of the second generation of turkish migrants … remains in the federal republic” (akcayli 1987: 21 in rogers 1997: 158). 4.4 migrants and employers: scepticism about permanent return ecuadorian (rumiñahui) and moroccan (atime) organisations were sceptical whether the spanish vrp would be able to attract many ecuadorians and moroccans given what it offered and what it expected migrants to give up. they held that the bonus should be larger and that there should not be a prohibition to re-enter spain. they emphasised that the countries of origin were not prepared to offer returning migrants sustainable sources of income and housing. according to dora aguirre, the president of rumiñahui, even those migrants who collected up to € 7,000 in unemployment benefi ts would still fi nd it diffi cult to leave spain (el mundo 2008b). whilst most ecuadorians had originally planned to return home, their attitudes have changed the longer they stayed in spain. in this respect, the post-cold war migrants to spain did not differ much from post-war migrants to france or germany: they underwent what r. böhning (1984: 79-86) described as maturing of migration streams, and required a more complex policy built on the assumption that some would leave whilst others would not; facilitating their reintegration in the homelands as well as their full integration in the host society. in a survey conducted by colectivo ioe prior to the fi nancial crisis, ecuadorian migrants explained the reasons motivating their prolonged stay in spain and their return home (fig. 1 and 2). three-quarters of ecuadorians decided to prolong their stay in spain because they believed that they could secure better working and living conditions there than in their homelands (26 %); because their family members had moved to spain (23 %); because they had taken initial steps towards settlement (16 %); or because they hoped for social and labour mobility in spain (10 %) (fig. 1). by contrast, the three main reasons why the respondents expressed an interest in returning to ecuador were family-related (41 %), homesickness (26 %) and dissatisfaction with their lives in spain (15 %) (fig. 2). despite the ecuadorian government’s efforts to facilitate return migration, ecuadorian migrants appeared to doubt that employment opportunities at home would improve in the near future. even if ecuador could attract foreign investment the way mexico did, it would fi rst occur in areas with decent infrastructure and only after that in the rural and geographically-isolated areas from which many migrants came. even if maquiladoras (foreign capital supported factories) sprung up in ecuador, work on an assembly line would mean downward labour mobility for many ecuadorians who had worked in the spanish service sector. the investment grant constituted an important incentive to return, but it required own capital and careful planning to overcome a whole range of administrative and practical challenges to investment in ecuador’s less developed areas. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 163 fig. 1: rationale behind prolonged stay in spain living and working conditions in spain 26 % family reunification in spain 23 % initial steps made towards settlement 16 % expectation of social and labour mobility 10 % other 25 % source: own design based on data from colectivo ioe 2007: 156. fig. 2: rationale behind return to ecuador family reasons 41 % homesickness 26 % dissatisfaction with life in spain 15 % failed migration project 6 % other reasons 12 % source: own design based on data from colectivo ioe 2007: 157. • piotr plewa164 even when unemployed, some migrants could be better off in spain than in their countries of origin. spanish law provides migrants with services such as free health care, free education for children and re-qualifi cation programmes, regardless of legal and employment status. furthermore, the crisis had a milder effect on the demand for workers in agriculture, services and tourism, and in the informal economy. thus, as long as foreign migrants were willing to accept diffi cult work for low pay, they had an alternative. the longer migrants stayed in spain, the more rights they were afforded. the voluntary return programme promised that after a three-year stay abroad, migrants would be able to claim the period of legal residence in spain to adjust their status and e.g. migrants who had earned permanent status would not be negatively affected. however, to return, migrants would have to apply for new visas (sepe 2012). the minister of labour considered vrp to be consistent with the spanish policy on labour migration, as it enforced the principle that migrant workers should be admitted in view of the ability of the spanish labour market and society to integrate them. the minister explained that the new economic scenario, characterised by signifi cant growth in unemployment, required that the national labour reserve, be it spanish or legally-resident foreign nationals, be given priority in employment. only when these sources are exhausted should employers be permitted to bring workers from outside of spain (mtas 2008b). like migrant organisations, labour unions also feared that immigrants had not earned enough in unemployment benefi ts and that the three-year re-entry ban would discourage even those with the most savings from participating in the vrp. furthermore, those who had saved more substantial amounts should not be encouraged to leave because they had probably integrated well into the spanish economy and society (del barrio 2008). both labour unions and migrant organisations also agreed that the spanish government should encourage investment in migrants’ homelands to provide migrants with durable employment opportunities following their return. alternatively – the labour unions claimed – the spanish government should facilitate migrants’ settlement given how much they had contributed to the spanish economic boom. employers who depended on foreign workers preferred the government not to incentivise migrants to leave or curb new admissions. they claimed that any unexpected decrease in labour supply would penalise spanish businesses without necessarily helping the spanish unemployed. farmers and growers argued that, they continued to fi nd it diffi cult to attract spanish workers despite the economic crisis (el mundo 2008a). 4.5 initial results: weak interest except among latin americans when the ministry of labour launched the apre programme on 12 november 2008, there were over 138 thousand unemployed foreigners in the country who met the programme criteria and could theoretically repatriate. however, the ministry did not take into consideration the attitudes of employers, migrants and the countries of origin. even if those attitudes had been taken into consideration, it would have been the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 165 diffi cult to predict the number of returnees as the attitudes of migrants, employers and the countries of origin have been changing. according to the ministry of labour’s calculations, 2,191 persons (including family members) were subsidised to leave through the humanitarian-based vrps, 2,171 through apre and 99 through the investment-based vrps between january and september 2010. the pace of return appeared to slow down in 2010 as compared to 2009, when 4,022 persons left spain through humanitarian-based vrps and 4,365 through apre (mtas 2010). based on the ministry of labour’s 2009-2010 data, some 90 % of all those who repatriated through the humanitarian vrp returned to latin america, primarily bolivia (24 %, 1,520), argentina (15 %, 941) and brazil (12.6 %, 788). romanians constituted the largest non-american nationality (1.8 %, 115) (mtas 2010). latin americans also accounted for the largest group in the investment and unemployment-based vrps. bolivians accounted for a quarter of all returnees for investment, but none in the apre programme, due to their inability to meet apre’s conditions (legal status and entitlement to unemployment benefi ts). according to the ministry of labour, by 27 may 2010 – nineteen months into the programme – 7,087 persons had applied for apre (table 2). roughly three-quarters were approved and returned home; 1,691 (23 %) were rejected due to incomplete or erroneous applications or awaiting decision. according to the spanish employment services, the medium voluntary return bonus amounted to € 9035, 81 per migrant as of 3 june 2009, indicating that those migrants who used the programme applied soon after becoming unemployed. the ministry of labour’s data shows that no moroccan or other african had benefi ted from the unemployment-based vrp-apre until 27 may 2010. over 99 % of returnees originated from latin america, principally ecuador, which accounted for 45 % of returnees (table 2). it appears that socio-economic and political conditions tab. 2: provisional results of the ministry of labour’s (apre) programme 11 november 2008-27 may 2010 country applications filed applications approved ecuador 3,251 2,509 colombia 1,315 982 argentina 810 609 peru 483 365 brazil 440 325 uruguay 311 251 chile 358 268 other 119 87 total 7,087 5,396 source: personal communication with adela morales del olmo, ministry of labour, 27 may 2010. • piotr plewa166 in the country of origin and the degree of cooperation between the country of origin and spain are among the factors explaining the divergent trend between returns to morocco and ecuador. the onset of political instability in northern africa, coupled with the recovery of the spanish economy by the spring of 2011, made further returns to africa even more unlikely. legal status did not seem to play a signifi cant role because there were more unemployed moroccan workers in spain entitled to unemployment benefi ts than ecuadorians and other latin americans. the numbers of those availing themselves of an iom-managed voluntary return from spain grew rapidly until the onset of the crisis, but appeared to slow down afterwards, as if migrants expected it to be more diffi cult to return to spain in the future. however, the decrease in returns could have also been precipitated by the discontinuation of the iom-managed voluntary returns from madrid and catalonia (table 3) due to budgetary constraints as well as reduced admissions (iom 2010d). the number of migrants who returned home with the assistance of the spanish iom grew over the years until 2008. it declined afterwards due to a lack of funds (table 4). all in all, 5,537 people have benefi ted from iom voluntary return assistance since the programme’s inception in 2003, particularly bolivians who accounted for over a quarter of all returnees. by contrast, no moroccans returned home throughout the entire programme duration. unlike ecuador, bolivia did not implement any special incentives for the migrants to return home and economic conditions in bolivia remained diffi cult, suggesting that those bolivians who returned could have been in genuinely precarious conditions while in spain. high return rates among brazilians and argentineans could be explained by the relatively good economic, social and political conditions at home. when compared with the overall fi gures on migration outfl ows, voluntary returns were relatively modest, this being due to a large extent to departures by migrants who could not or did not want to avail themselves of subsidised return (table 5). over 288,000 departures were registered in spain in 2009. the statistics on migration outfl ows must however be treated with a certain caution as they also include tab. 3: number of iom-assisted returnees, by programme, 2003-june 2010 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 total apre 110 199 142 451 previe 199 393 392 397 531 1,076 591 271 3,850 previcam 60 573 210 0 0 843 previcat 85 142 179 361 169 936 previval 22 17 0 0 39 total 199 393 392 542 1,268 1,592 1,151 582 6,119 source: personal communication with paloma sevillano, iom madrid, 18 november 2010. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 167 those third country nationals who left spain more than once throughout the year. they also included those who were expelled, some 26,000 per year throughout the 2000s (emn 2009: 18). moroccans were the largest group among those who were removed from spain by force (emn 2009: 19). 5 short-term versus long-term policy solutions 5.1 voluntary return policies’ strengths and weaknesses the spanish vrp has its strengths and weaknesses. the major strengths of the spanish vrp have been immediacy, administrative simplicity, budget-friendliness and openness to modifi cation. launched within three months of the major increase in unemployment, the programme provided delay-free return assistance to those tab. 4: the principal ten nationalities of migrants who returned with iom assistance, 2003-2009 (apre, previe, previcam, previcat, previval) country 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 total bolivia 12 54 77 105 466 474 273 1,461 argentina 19 32 43 76 123 216 154 663 brazil 3 15 26 61 164 193 117 579 ecuador 103 153 39 40 37 106 93 571 chile 7 14 36 51 64 76 116 364 uruguay 9 20 50 46 40 90 107 362 colombia 19 36 31 20 37 39 66 248 romania 7 25 15 28 64 73 17 229 honduras 0 4 16 25 88 50 43 226 paraguay 0 10 13 9 37 54 51 174 others 20 30 46 81 148 221 114 660 total 199 393 392 542 1,268 1,592 1,151 5,537 source: personal correspondence with carmen penalba from iom madrid, 26 october 2010. tab. 5: migration outfl ows from spain, 2002-2009 (in thousands) year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 departures 6.9 10 41.9 48.7 120.3 199 232 288.3 source: oecd 2011: 344. • piotr plewa168 migrants who were certain that they wanted to leave spain. if a majority of spanish immigrants decided to depart shortly after being laid off, the programme would be likely to keep unemployment pressures and anti-immigrant sentiments down. the simple design, consisting of verifi cation of eligibility for unemployment benefi ts, favours fast processing of applications. since migrants have earned their departure bonuses through social security payments, the only major cost of the programme concerns the provision of free transportation, part of which could be reimbursed to spain from the eu’s voluntary return fund. the three-year return ban has been the programme’s strength and weakness. it is likely to prevent the return of those who have not been able to integrate themselves into spanish society. however, those few who will be under pressure to reenter spain before the three years elapse will have to do so illegally. given that some of the weaknesses have already emerged, it may not be long before the spanish vrp undergoes modifi cation. even though spain implemented its very fi rst vrp as early as 2003, the policy has never been analysed despite the wealth of information revealed by the western european vrps since the late 1970s and spain’s own experience since 2003. wishing for the vrp to provide an immediate response to the crisis, spanish offi cials have also neglected to consult about the programme with the countries of origin and social actors. both domestic and international actors would most likely have cooperated. however, they would have preferred returns to be spread out in time so as to permit all parties involved to make the necessary adjustments: namely for employers to switch to less labourintensive production; for migrants to sell any property acquired in spain and make post-return employment and housing arrangements; for the countries of origin to prepare labour and housing markets for migrant repatriation. the low-cost character of the spanish vrp was also its weakness. the vrps predating apre run out of funds. linked to the accumulated unemployment insurance benefi ts, apre did not appeal to employed spouses of unemployed migrants, migrant children and those who have not accumulated large unemployment benefi ts. furthermore, it alienated the undecided candidates, as the longer they mused over the departure decision, the smaller the departure bonuses became to which they were entitled. most importantly, the homelands bemoaned the lack of additional funds that would allow migrants to start business at home. when designing the programme, spanish offi cials counted on the immediate departure of entire families, preferably nationals of the most impoverished countries, so as to diminish the likelihood that they would remain to work for substandard wages. however, the current programme design and the response of the countries of origin are likely to attract single returnees from relatively developed countries. 5.2 vrps in the context of a broader migration policy thirty-fi ve years since the fi rst vrps were implemented in europe, it is still uncertain to what extent they can stimulate returns, and to what degree they can subsidise the departures of those who were going to return anyway. having realised this challenge in the 1980s, the french invested considerable funds and efforts to the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 169 increase migrants’ incentives to repatriate. by contrast, the dutch considered that vrps contradicted integration policy and downplayed them. given the low level of effectiveness of vrps in the 1980s in terms of the proportion of migrants who returned, the programmes were phased out until they were advocated anew in the 1990s and 2000s under the assumption that they could help european countries deal with the rising entries of asylum-seekers and with irregular migration. there is a trade-off between vrps’ costs and effectiveness. vrps tend to be particularly costly when they aim to reintegrate migrants abroad since successful reintegration requires adequate economic, social and political stability in migrants’ countries of origin and systematic post-return assistance. however, the stronger the reintegration prospects, the more likely it is that migrants will genuinely want to return home. as implied by their name, voluntary return assistance programmes aim to be voluntary. however, few are implemented in a context in which migrants can choose between voluntary returns and other equally enticing alternatives. in a number of cases, those who avail themselves of vrps are those who are already in an irregular status or about to enter it (e.g. rejected asylum-seekers), and their only alternative is repatriation by force. in those cases, vrps are not genuinely voluntary and migrants are likely to avoid them or re-emigrate following their return home. while vrps can complement other, more complex policy measures, they cannot substitute them because vrps are not designed to address the root causes of migration (the lack of economic, political and social stability in the countries of origin and the demand for cheap manual labour in europe). thus, if the countries which currently strongly promote vrps – such as spain – wish to bring genuine relief to migrants, their policymakers should consider implementing four measures aimed at improving the working and living conditions of those migrants who cannot return immediately. firstly, they should facilitate labour mobility to those migrants who can earn it. secondly, they should clarify employer duties regarding working and living conditions and verify them, to prevent that settled migrants are granted contracts on condition that they accept substandard wages or fl exible schedules, lack of housing, etc. thirdly, they should subsidise the rationalisation, mechanisation and off-shoring of production in labour-intensive sectors so that employers will reduce demand for labour as migrants move to better jobs in two or three years’ time. fourthly, they should strengthen development policies for the countries of origin to reduce emigration pressure. whilst some of these recommendations may be easier to implement than others, they are both politically and logistically feasible as they build on the policies already implemented in most european countries, including spain. since there will always be some migrants who do not want to return and who are diffi cult to repatriate for humanitarian or administrative reasons, they should be offered a channel through which they can earn their way to full integration in the spanish labour market and society. one way of making vrp money more productive would be to grant the settled migrants an option to invest and create jobs in spain. migrant businesses created in spain would be easier to mentor than businesses created in the countries of origin. they could benefi t from much better infrastruc• piotr plewa170 ture and therefore would be more likely to survive. furthermore, policies helping to promote migrants as job-givers rather than job-takers are likely to gain public support and improve migrants’ integration into the spanish society. the countries of origin would probably not oppose giving their nationals the option to invest in spain because of their own limited reception and employment-creation capacities and the need for an uninterrupted fl ow of remittances. one important challenge to successful post-return development funds has been the lack of infrastructure to support investment and economic, political or social instability in the countries of origin. investing in spain would help to overcome these challenges even in the context of the economic crisis. however, special measures would have to be put in place so that migrant businesses do not pave the way for ethnicisation of the labour market and further expansion in the number of precarious jobs. the less entrepreneurial foreign settlers may prefer to seek employer-dependent jobs. the economic crisis has not affected all sectors to the same extent. even in the midst of the crisis, the unaffected sectors may fi nd it diffi cult to attract spanish workers. the spanish government’s authorisation of farmers to bring new foreign workers while repatriating those already in spain, claiming that the repatriated individuals are unable to fi nd jobs, is incoherent. if granted full labour mobility, many of spain’s foreign workers would most likely be willing to move to jobs which spanish workers are not willing to take, e.g. in agriculture or domestic services. instead of allowing those sectors to continue to recruit new workers abroad, the spanish government should encourage them to contract with unemployed foreign workers already in spain. it would be unrealistic to expect foreign workers, who take the most labourintensive jobs in the context of the crisis, to want to perform these diffi cult tasks forever. furthermore, it would also be unrealistic to expect the most labour-intensive jobs to survive in an economy with relatively high labour costs. but as long as migrant workers who cannot repatriate are allowed to take those jobs, they will protect themselves from unemployment and acquire the skills necessary to stay in the sector as it transforms to less-labour intensive production. the transformation to less labour-intensive production should improve working conditions in many jobs that migrants tend to take. during the 1990s, spanish agriculture relied heavily on migrant workers to do the jobs that even migrants themselves were abandoning as soon as opportunities in less strenuous jobs came up. as foreign worker admissions were made more diffi cult in the early 2000s, and as more employers invested in labour-saving production methods, the sector adjusted to more rigorous admission rules and the employed migrants enjoyed better working conditions and incentives to stay and maintain legal status. the spanish government should assist the transformation from more to less labour-intensive production in order to reduce demand for jobs at the bottom of the social scale and to protect migrant workers from falling into illegality. specifi cally, it could provide the fi nancial, legal and technical support necessary for employers to rationalise, mechanise and, where necessary, engage in “offshore” production, so as to reduce demand for labour in jobs that locally-available (native or resident foreign) workers do not want to take up. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 171 while production “off-shoring” may seem like the most controversial and diffi cult to carry out in practice, it deserves consideration given that it is more likely to engage the sending and receiving countries in comprehensive cooperation than was the case with projects aimed to use migrants’ savings for job creation in their homelands in the 1970s and 1980s. for example, turkish returnees from germany found that the sites for the new plants and the technologies to be used were often not optimum and turkish law did not accommodate their projects. the requirement that founding capital be deposited in turkish rather than foreign currency made entrepreneurs susceptible to infl ation. although 223 companies were functioning in the early 1980s, only 28 were operating at more than 69 % capacity. with approximately 15,000 jobs created, most of the 345,000 shareholders could not expect to fi nd employment (rogers 1997: 161). more importantly, the wages paid for those jobs were below what most returning migrants would have found acceptable. only a handful of companies paid dividends. by the end of the 1980s, many shares were being bought up by banks and large companies (rogers 1997: 162). in line with the circular migration agenda, the eu plans to open job centres in the most emigration-prone areas in africa. it has not been clear whether such job centres would recruit workers to europe or help workers to secure better jobs in the countries of origin. the fi nancial crisis has slowed the expansion of foreign worker admissions to europe. given the controversies over whether job centres recruiting people to work in europe would promote development in africa or rather make africa more dependent on jobs in europe; one positive effect of the economic crisis may be that it will favour investment in africa. references adepoju, aderanti; van noorlos, femke; zoomers, annelies 2010: “europe’s migration agreements with migrant-sending countries in the global south: a critical review”. in: international migration 48,3: 42–75 [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00529.x]. adler, stephen 1976: the organization of return migration: a preliminary analysis of the recent experience of france and algeria. document mi/76/3. paris: oecd. akcayli, nurhan 1987: grundsätzliche bemerkungen zu den phänomenen von integration bzw. reintegration. in: akcayli, nurhan; sen, faruk (eds.): berufl iche integration der zweiten türkengeneration in der bundesrepublik deutschland und in der türkei. frankfurt: dagyeli: 16-21. 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de la prestación contributiva por desempleo a trabajadores extranjeros que retornan a su país de origen. madrid: inem [http://www.inem.es/inem/ciudadano/prestaciones/pdf/nota_informativa.pdf]. inem 2010: demandantes de empleo, paro, contratos y prestaciones por desempleo, ministerio de trabajo y asuntos sociales. servicio público de empleo estatal. [http://www.sepe.es/contenido/estadisticas/datos_avance/datos/datos_2011/av_ sispe_1110.pdf]. inem 2011: demandantes de empleo, paro y prestaciones por desempleo. octubre 2011. instituto nacional de empleo: madrid. iom 2008: author’s communication with teresa botella, 16 december 2008. international organization for migration, madrid. iom 2010a: programa de retorno voluntario de inmigratnes desde españa (previe). madrid: iom [http://www.iommadrid.es/index.php/programas-proyectos/retornovoluntario]. iom 2010b: programa de retorno voluntario de inmigrantes desde cataluña (previcat). madrid: iom [http://www.iommadrid.es/index.php/programas-proyectos/retornovoluntario] iom 2010c: morocco [http://www.iom.int/jahia/jahia/pid/406] iom 2010d: phone interview with paloma sevillano from iom madrid, 18 november, 2010. iom 2011: assisted voluntary return and reintegration. annual report of activities 2010. iom geneva. jones, richard 1998: remittances and inequality: a question of migration stage and geographical scale. in: economic geography 74,1: 8–25. lahlou, mehdi 2006: migration de retour au maghreb, florence: european university institute [http://www.mirem.eu/archive/new-analytical-report-return-migration-tomorocco?set_language=en]. martin, philip 1990: an assessment of turkish labor migration to western europe. ilo working paper. geneva: ilo. marrakech info 2008: le maroc appelle les pays européens à ‚abandonner‘ la politique de retour des émigrés [http://www.emarrakech.info/le-maroc-appelle-les-pays-europeens-a-abandonner-la-politique-de-retour-des-emigres_a15257.html]. • piotr plewa174 maec 2009: plan d’action. note synthétique relative à la stratégie de mobilisation en faveur de la communauté marocaine résidant à l’etranger, rabat: ministère des affaires etrangères et de la coopération [http://www.marocainsdumonde.gov.ma/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&itemid=49] migrante ecuatoriano 2009: características del bono. senami 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2011. washington dc: world bank [http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intlac/resources/factbook2011-ebook.pdf] rogers, rosemarie 1981: return migration in comparative perspective. in: kubat, daniel (eds.): the politics of return. international return migration in europe. new york: center for migration studies. the effects of voluntary return programmes on migration flows ... • 175 rogers, rosemarie 1997: migration return policies and the countries of origin. in: hailbronner, kay; martin, david; motomura, hiroshi (eds.): immigration admissions. vol. 3. berghahn books. senami 2009: plan retorno voluntario: digno y sostenible [http://www.senami.gob.ec/ proyectos/bienvenidos-a-casa.html]. senami 2011: programa el cucayo [http://www.migranteecuatoriano.gov.ec/content/ view/1370/211/]. senami 2012a: facilidad para el traslado del menaje de casa y equipo del trabajo [http:// www.migranteecuatoriano.gov.ec/content/view/3018/540/]. senami 2012b: casas ecuatorianas [http://www.migranteecuatoriano.gov.ec/content/ view/422/192/]. sepe 2012: “¿eres extranjera o extranjero no comunitario y quieres regresar a tu país?” [http://www.sepe.es/contenido/prestaciones/ag00d06.html#enlace5]. sorensen, nina 2004: migrant remittances as a development tool: the case of morocco. geneva: iom [http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/migrant_remittances_morocco.pdf]. sturckow y gonzalez, maximo 1986: iglesia y emigracion. in: carta de espana 343: 27. van houte, marieke; davids, tine 2008: development and return migration: from policy panacea to migrant perspective sustainability. in: third world quarterly 29,7: 1411-1429 [doi: 10.1080/01436590802386658]. weil, patrick 1991: la france et ses étrangers. gallimard. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “die auswirkungen von programmen zur freiwilligen rückkehr auf migrationsströme im kontext der wirtschaftskrise 1973/74 und 2008/09”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-03de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-03de2, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 21.08.2011 date of acceptance: 30.04.2012 dr. piotr plewa ( ). international organization for migration. poland. e-mail: pplewa@iom.int © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) transformations over time or sudden change: historical perspectives on mass migrations and human lives dirk hoerder abstract: both migrations and attitudes towards them have deep historical roots. to pronounce the present migration and the economic crisis triggered by derivative bankers in the fall of 2008 as “new without historical precedent” overlooks the impact of patterns of the past on the present and prevents an understanding being reached of continuities and comparisons. it is not migrants who are “uprooted”, as some would have it, but historical memory is deliberately being uprooted. this essay starts by addressing the multiple problems of present-day debates about migration and historicising the perspectives. it critiques the anti-immigrant ascriptions, labels and ideologies. it goes on to present the data and discuss the geographies of migrant trajectories in the context of translocal, transregional, transnational and global connectivity. an integrative transcultural societal studies approach will be proposed. the essay will then deal with migrant agency, that is the actions of migrants, criticising “victimization” approaches and argue that otherness is a resource as well as a framework for exploitation. remittances will serve as an example of the intersection between migrant agency and states’ needs. the conclusion will briefl y place the present in the context of global inequalities, of the economic aspect and of anti-immigrantism, as well as the ideological national-essentialist aspect. keywords: transcultural · transregional · translocal 1 introduction in times of economic crisis, banker-made and deregulation-induced, in the autumn of 2008 migration is said to have posed a problem; multiculturalism is pronounced a failure in europe and the united states, but not for example in canada. politicians and talking heads are in a scramble for scapegoats – targets for popular wrath and fear. statecraft and long-term strategies would address the underlying economic issues and societal consequences. migrations have deep historical roots – the history of humankind, in fact, is a history of migration. those who pronounce the present migrations and the current crisis as “new without historical precedent” overlook the impact of past hucomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 213-228 (date of release: 31.05.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-07en9 • dirk hoerder214 man mobility on the present. europe’s 19th century demography was shaped by mass emigration, whilst its northern economies were typifi ed by massive labour in-migration from its mediterranean segment from the mid-1950s onwards. only comparative approaches facilitate evaluation and interpretation. it is not migrants who are “uprooted”, as public rhetoric and historians have proclaimed, but it is such ideologues who uproot public historical memory to manipulate it by brandishing anti-immigrant clichés. i will start this essay by addressing problems relating to the debate currently underway concerning migration and by historicising perspectives. this involves a critique of anti-immigrant ascriptions, labels and ideologies. i will turn, secondly, to the empirical data on migration and discuss the geographies of migrant trajectories in the context of translocal, transregional, transnational and global connectivity. the recently much cited concept of transnationalism will be critiqued, and an integrative transcultural societal studies approach suggested. thirdly, i will deal with migrant agency and argue that migrants’ “otherness”, a cause for exclusionary demands and for exploitation, is also a resource for insertion into labour markets and societies. i will criticise “victimization” approaches. in order to discuss the intersection of migrant agency and states’ needs, i will discuss migrant remittances. finally, i will briefl y point to global inequalities, the economic aspect, and anti-immigrantism, the nationality-essentialist aspect, concerning present migrations and opposition to it. 2 crosscutting thoughts and questions: europe in the world globalization, happily touted by marshall mcluhan in the early 1960s as all humankind interconnected in a “global village”, was trumpeted by self-styled media “experts” in the 1990s as absolutely new, never seen before – and a threat to the highly-developed west (mcluhan 1962, 1964; mcluhan 1996). scholars agree that “globalisation” emerged fi ve centuries ago with europeans’ new-found capability to cross the atlantic, then the indian ocean, and fi nally the pacifi c ocean (hopkins 2002; iriye/mazlish 2005; mazlish 2006). at the time of columbus’ voyage, european “discovery” in older parlance, to a continent known to others,1 seafarers of the indian ocean and east asian seas had travelled their respective rims for two millennia. and, transcontinentally, the asian-african-european and the separate north-central-south american worlds had both been internally connected by networks of trading routes, whether by wagon, caravan or human portage. migrations by individuals, groups and peoples were as integral to these exchanges as merchant voyaging. medieval europe, often considered as immobile and backward, was in fact characterised by a high level of mobility, cultural exchange and longdistance commerce (borgolte 2009). as long as europeans, “whites” in another categorisation, moved outbound, some 60 million of them in the single century from 1 columbus himself was a skilled labour migrant from the declining mediterranean economies to the expanding iberian ones on the coast of the atlantic. transformations over time or sudden change • 215 the 1840s to the 1940s, migration was constructed as a civilising mission targeting “lesser” peoples, not white in the common colour scheme that looks at the surface, at skin, and not at the internal capabilities, emotionalities, and spiritualities (hoerder 2002; harzig et al. 2009). as long as this globalisation, coloniser-power imposed, remained profi table to whites in the north atlantic world, economic and intellectual elites depicted it as positive. at the turn of the 21st century, with some or many perceiving global interrelatedness as detrimental to economies and peoples in the atlantic world, it is presented as insidious and subversive of the west, with its dominant fi nancial institutions, once industrialised and now service-consuming. many of the present south-north migrants are descendants of ancestors exploited by europe’s north-south migrants and the dependent economic structures they imposed. the 9/11 of the world economy in 2008, when bankers blew up global credit and investment relations, caused millions to leave home in search of sustenance and an income. migrants, recruited from the 1940s (us/mexico) and 1950s (europe) as “guestworkers” rather than as immigrants with access to citizenship, as “arms”/“braceros” or “hands” rather than as men and women with heads and hearts – were a mainstay of the white north atlantic world’s economic development in the late 20th century. they were invited to act as profi t-yielding producers of surplus value. since the repeated economic slowdowns turned into crises, they have been labelled as foreigners who exploit “our” social security systems, arrive without papers – our kind of papers – and are designated illegals, and therefore as criminals. some, or indeed whole groups, of them are also labelled as terrorists. let us remind ourselves that wherever colonising europeans went, they arrived without papers, exploited local resources and were heavily armed with a white, christian supremacy-based ideology that was as destructive of minds as it was destructive of lives using guns. as to terrorising: vasco da gama burnt a ship with muslim pilgrims returning from the hajj to south asia in order to sow fear and extort trading concessions; the spanish, beyond the inadvertent dissemination of eurasian germs, annihilated millions of native men, women and children in the americas through warfare and forced labour; the british acted as the largest drug-pushing power in the world in the “opium war” against china; belgium’s king leopold terrorised the peoples of the congo region. as to destruction of ways of life and of human bodies and souls, infants and children included, western bankers’ present speculation in unsecured derivatives – sanctifi ed by self-interested rating agencies – was more explosive than any conventional weapons. according to ilo data from 2009, the consequences worldwide involve some 18 million men and women losing their jobs and some 200 million in developing countries being pushed into increased vulnerability and extreme poverty (ilo 2009; oxfam 2010). compared to the 9/11 world trade center crisis, which cost the lives of 3,000 men and women, hunger seems to spur only limited security measures – security which would ensure peoples’ basic survival.2 2 the fi rst 9/11, the us-backed bombing of the presidential palace in chile by reactionary army offi cers in 1973, never attracted this level of attention. • dirk hoerder216 today’s migrants may come without papers, which by law is a misdemeanour but not a crime. only a miniscule fanatic-fundamentalist segment is armed. before summarily labelling them as “muslim fundamentalists”, we need to remind ourselves that fundamentalism exists among christians and jews, but that it is then referred to as “orthodoxy”. whilst the vast majority of (heavily) armed europeans heading for the colonised segments of the world wanted to force others to work for them, and the vast majority of criminal bankers feast on bonuses, most of today’s northbound migrants want to work for a living, for food and for the education of their children. this was also the goal of europe’s millions of labour migrants from 1815 to 1914. searching for food and decent lives, for chances to improve one’s place in the world, and for prospects for the future, characterised migrant decisionmaking in the past, and continues to do so in the present. the recent sequence of profound crises, touted as the reason why migrants should no longer be admitted, began in the early 1970s when a mega company, the arabian american oil company (aramco), 100 % us-owned at that time, engineered the oil crisis of 1973 in order to boost profi ts; it involved subsequent other crises; and most recently the near collapse of the world economy caused by banking empires “too big to fail” in systemic terms or, in actor terms, by a few thousand speculators who are illiterate when it comes to understanding their own complex mathematical trading formulae. standard legal procedure would have apprehended the culprits, rather than criminalising and marginalising migrants. today’s fi nancial empires and their global casino capitalism, divorced from the “real economy” even in western countries, surpass the state-built empires of the 19th century in terms of their negative impact. migrants, in contrast, impact only their own lives and the economic sectors in which they create value, as well as the society to which they add their human capital and cultural options. europe’s people have lived over the centuries through a sequence of major elitemade crises: the trans-central european thirty years war, 1618-1648; the trans-european wars, 1792-1815, fought between the reactionary, anti-revolutionary coalition of bloodline dynasties and imperialist napoleonic stratagems; the 1914-1918 war, in which the axis powers relied on forced migrant labourers from eastern central and eastern europe, and the colony-owning allies on forced non-white labour migrants from afar; and – globally – the great depression, 1929-39, and the world war of 1937 to 1945. in the fi rst half of the 20th century, europe’s national elites made the continent the major refugee-generating segment of the globe. this, michael marrus has argued, was a constituent element of constructing in ideological and military terms the monocultural modern nation-states on territories with a pluralist population composition: it “implied not only the naming of certain peoples as enemies of the nation, but also the expulsion [forced migration] of signifi cant groups”. immigrants, recruited or, if coming of their own volition, admitted by dynastic regimes for their economic contributions, were recast as “alien” under the nationalist regime. chauvinist politicians thought it “best to eject unwanted” minorities and reject allegedly alien migrants (marrus 1985: 51; caestaecker/moore 2010). placing 1930s european nation-states in a global context, it is necessary to underline the fact that, when hundreds of thousands were fl eeing fascism in the 1930s, japan’s invasion transformations over time or sudden change • 217 of china in 1937 generated one hundred million refugees in the single year. no refugee-generating crisis or mass dislocation producing war “erupted” (volcano-like) as received parlance has it; all were man-made and gendered, and statesmen and intellectual elites bore responsibility for them. elite-made crises and common peoples’ migrations are closely related. whether as small as a local famine, for example in south-western germany in 1816/17, or in the horn of africa region in 2011, or as large as the great 1930s or the recent “high-class thieves”-engineered depression (taibbi 2010; us time magazine 8 nov. 2010: 32), crises threaten life projects and often reduce family food intake below levels of physical survival. most of the tens of millions of european men and women in the delayed 19th century, 1815-1914, left a stagnant or even disaster zone in which they or their families did not have enough to eat, saw no chances to change their hierarchy-marred societies, and faced continuously low or even deteriorating standards of living. it made no sense to stay where a family’s investment into reproduction of adults’ labour power and upbringing of children was higher than any income that might be gained from waged rural or urban work. migrants, in their own words, moved “to bread” or away from “brotherrschaft” (rule over their bread) (hoerder 1986). such systemic hopelessness is characteristic of segments of many impoverished emigrant-producing societies today. impoverishment, in most cases, stems from global terms of trade and intra-societal inequalities, rather than from a lack of local resources. as today’s “voluntary” south-north migrants, 19th century “voluntary” transatlantic migrants escaped from severely-constrained economic regimes to others with wider perceived options: from “known impossibilities to not yet known possibilities” (nugent 1992). white europeans moving before 1914 had no need of entry documents. a series of entry paper requirements, the “invention of the passport”, was elaborated by nation-states in the north atlantic world only from the 1880s onwards, but mainly from world war one to the 1920s (torpey 2000). these new restrictions created barriers and the new category of the “undocumented” emerged, to be renamed “illegal” in recent exclusionist parlance. people who satisfy the rules but do not fi t within the quotas, or who are too poor to be considered acceptable by the receiving state’s gatekeepers, were excluded at the borders. to these institutional barriers imposed by states, the ideology of nationhood added cultural ones: other-cultured newcomers were categorised as “aliens” and as people with lesser rights.3 furthermore, “entry requirement” could be a proxy for “not of white skin colour”. nation-states demanded cultural assimilation, and their historians inscribed a newly-invented bloodline or genetic continuity into the resident nationals’ collective memory. at the turn of the 20th century, drives for germanisation, austrianisation, russifi cation, and americanisation and, at the 3 in dynastic states, migrants, especially if they arrived in groups, were able to negotiate entry and often aid for re-settling and establishing themselves to become producers and taxpayers. the model case is constituted by the huguenots. once they had accepted the new ruler (usually by oath), they became „subjects“ like other residents and could retain or adjust their culture and language at their own pace. • dirk hoerder218 turn of the 21st century, the hate campaigns waged against cultural pluralism, are products of national exclusiveness and supremacist convictions. the anti-semitism of the past has become the anti-immigrantism of the present. are national belongings so brittle as to be contingent on an external enemy to maintain their internal coherence? 3 geographies of migration: translocal, transregional, transnational and global migrants are characterised in the public debate by state/culture of origin, “turks in germany” or “algerians in france”. this provides collective ascriptions and suggests the role to be played by states in migration, economies that push people out on the departure side and admission barriers on the arrivals side. such language usage, fi rstly, does not permit any refl ection of processes of acculturation: from turkish immigrants in west germany via turkish-german to germans of turkish cultural background. secondly, it unquestioningly assumes migration to take place primarily between states as a whole. data have never supported such constructions. “east indians” in “great britain” are men and women from particular regions and localities of origin, and they migrate to specifi c municipalities in england. people from german-speaking central europe heading for the united states and canada in the 19th century did this too. statewide geographies demand regional differentiation; state borders, on close analysis, appear as permeable and as borderlands rather the clear-cutting borderlines (hillmann 2007). to escape from the “nation to ethnic enclave” approach of both culturallyconservative political restrictions and traditional migration studies, the concept of “transnationalism” was “introduced” in the early 1990s and quickly became a catchword. the concept, again a historicisation is called for, has an almost century-long history (patel 2004) and one renowned migration historian has asked somewhat exasperatedly, “what’s new about transnationalism?” (foner 1997: 371). however, most migration historians have described the transborder cultural continuities without conceptualising transnationalism, but have restricted their analyses to bordered ethnic enclaves. the authors of the 1990s concept, who were anthropologists, studied us-bound migrants from the philippines and refugees from us-supported dictatorships in latin america. they assumed that “transnational” connections were new and that cultures extended stateor nationwide. they overlooked the many languages spoken in the philippine regions, islands, cities and hinterlands and the exclusion in central american states of many native peoples from status as “nationals” (glick schiller et al. 1992). steven vertovec (1999) has commented on the term’s “conceptual muddling”. a sophisticated version has been explicated by social scientists such as thomas faist and canadian scholars lloyd wong and victor roudometof (faist 2000: 195-241; wong 2002). empirical accuracy and conceptual clarity indicate that, rather than trans-national trajectories, trans-state border crossings occur. this distinction is central to an analysis, since “nation” is a cultural category and “state” is one of political institransformations over time or sudden change • 219 tutions. the two concepts are not only not congruent but, to some degree, even contradictory: democratic states – in theory – treat each and every person as equal before the law, regardless of culture, gender, class or age, while nations accord privileges to cultural majorities over cultural minorities – the latter term being a 19th century invention by the gatekeepers of the nation (hoerder 2011). research, without exception, shows that migrants move between localities and regions rather than between whole states and societies. around 1900, 94 % of usbound migrants from europe’s many regional cultures headed for friends and kin according to the declarations they made at ellis island. so did southern chinese migrants moving to the southeast asian diaspora, and so do today’s african migrants to france or britain. they come from a particular location of socialisation in a specifi c regional economy and arrive in a delimited social space where trusted acquaintances know that jobs are available that are commensurate to their skills or lack of them. they migrate to options allowing them to earn a living on local labour markets, and may also appreciate a more open state and societal institutional setup. such specifi c connections between surplus and scarcity of labour are embedded in regions whose economic context and migratory practices socialise young people, i.e. potential migrants. aggregate data generated by nation-states have not only hidden these specifi cs, they have also eliminated women from the data by labelling them as dependents without any agency of their own, and thus mere “associational migrants” (bilsborrow/zlotnik 1992; boyd/grieco 2003; morokvasic 1984; harzig 2001). empirically and analytically, migration researchers study translocal and transregional movements in the context of nation-state legal frameworks. such contexts were only established by states towards the end of the 19th century. nation-state narratives are often no more than the respective state’s elite-produced stories – gatekeeper versions with a profound impact on the acceptance or rejection of migrants and on their cultural expressiveness. we need to remind ourselves that “barbarians” were – and seemingly still are – those of another language, unable to communicate with the hegemonic culture. those who were socialised within the hegemonic culture usually do not bother to learn migrants’ languages. at least “facilitators”, whether in fi rms’ personnel departments or in social work and admission bureaucracies, could help migrants to come to terms with institutions and cultural practices by being bilingual. resident-migrant interaction in the streets, on shopfl oors, and at other meeting places may reinforce or challenge national histories and their exclusionary or inclusionary practices. to combine the empirically-sound translocal and transregional with the – often frame-setting – transnational or transstate, the over-arching concept of “transcultural” designates the range of options at different levels of social spaces. a “transcultural societal studies” approach combines empirical data with interpretive theorisations. culture is a complex system acquired in the process of childhood socialisation that includes tools, spoken and body language, arts and beliefs, created in gendered, classand age-specifi c versions by human beings who must provide for their material, emotional and intellectual needs in order to survive. transcultural capability denotes the ability to live in two or more cultures and create • dirk hoerder220 border-crossing cultural spaces. strategic transcultural competence involves conceptualisations of life projects in more than one society and choice between options. transculturation is a process through which individuals and societies change themselves in contact zones by negotiating diverse ways of life into a dynamic, plural new whole which, transitory like all societies, will be changed by means of subsequent interactions and input by new migrants.4 people, be they resident or migrant, male or female, proact according to lifeplans, act out their life projects or, at a minimum, react to circumstances on a day-to-day basis. non-migrants do so within the limits of their monocultural capabilities circumscribed by stationary lives, whilst migrants do so by virtue of multiple capabilities acquired through their mobility between several locations. such societal cultural spaces are located within structures and institutions of a polity – the fi xed, if evolving, aspect. when crossing an interstate border, people move into another society with dynamic norms, discourses and practices. when problems occur – fundamentalist impositions, constraining job markets, or explosive racism – the structural faultlines and the hitches in transculturation projects need to be addressed. any imposition of limitations, of barriers and borders, by exclusion, labelling or confi ning slows down interaction and acculturation. politicking creates problems that strategic policy-making might avoid. scholarly analysis requires that attention be paid both to complex cultural and institutional settings and to whole lives. ideal-type transcultural societal studies integrate the study of society and its patterns and institutions (“social sciences”), all types of its representations (“discursive sciences” or humanities), and the actual practices (“way of life or habitus sciences”) in the context of legal, religious and ethical norms (“normative sciences”), the somatic-psychic-emotional-spiritualintellectual characteristics of individual men and women (“life sciences”) and the physical-geographical context (“environmental sciences”). they analyse “becoming”, the historical dimension, “being” in the present and aspirations for the future – and thus include not only a gendered but also an intergenerational approach. they study processes rather than constructions labelled as unchanged from times immemorial, and development rather than the fi xed or the stagnant (hoerder 2010). as non-eurocentric world-system approaches have made clear, the local and regional need to be connected to global economic and political hierarchies and networks. since decolonisation the coloniser-colonised division of the world has been replaced by a colour-coded global apartheid in which the wealthier, whiter populations live off underpaid labour in poorer countries with workers of coloursof-skin other than white (richmond 1994). such working men and women assess the known structural impossibilities at the location of work and evaluate options at those locations where the products of their labour are sold. what does an exploited 4 the concept of transculturation emerged from work done by latin american and canadian scholars from the 1930s to the 1950, but in scholarship of the hegemonic core of knowledge production and interpretive discourses concepts of assimilation to national cultures (chicago men’s school of sociology) by “uprooted” migrants (oscar handlin, harvard) remained dominant. transformations over time or sudden change • 221 woman, sewing clothes for consumers in wealthier “western” societies in a factory at the thailand-myanmar border, think or envision while calculating how to dress herself and feed her children from her meagre wages? most research into migrations past and present failed to focus on gender. however, the implicit association of the term “migrant” with men, especially in labels like “transatlantic proletarian mass” or plantation belt “coolie” migrations, is and always has been wrong. past migrations involved men and women, the “proletarian” transatlantic ones in a gender ratio of 60 to 40 to the 1920s and 50 to 50 since the 1930s. today’s so-called “feminisation” of migration refl ects the shift from industrial to service economies in the wealthier segments of the world, not a sudden new presence of women. it also refl ects the demise of male-centred views and research. the designation “feminisation” also refl ects that (1) women increasingly account for more than half of the total of migrants, and that (2) in the framework of family economies as well as individual life projects more women leave fi rst given the structure of labour markets and job options at potential destinations. they refl ect (3) that childcare and emotional work in the families of origin need to be redistributed – more to female kin than to men, fathers included. studies of present-day domestics and caregiver migrations have become legion since the 1990s – most written by women scholars while men continue to work more intensively on industrial, allegedly male migrations (hoerder/kaur, to appear in 2013). 4 transcultural migrant agency in a global perspective: options, otherness, gender while, in the 19th century, assumedly male migrants have been said to go in search of “unlimited opportunities” – the billboard slogan of us manifest destiny ideologues –, today’s migrant women are often considered as victims, and numerous studies have substantiated exploitation and harassment (anderson 2000). however, this victimisation paradigm ascribes passivity to women. african slaves, who defi nitely were victimised, still built vibrant cultures in brazil and the caribbean, albeit under extremely constraining circumstances. if all filipina domestics and caregivers were victims of a capitalist service economy imposed by rich societies, how could they create social spaces of their own in hong kong, rome or elsewhere? to capture migrant agency, scholars need to focus on individuals. ruptures, with mothers leaving children behind to support them from afar, are experienced individually and in families. individual actions and strategies include a migration habitus and supportive translocal networks in many societal contexts. the recent global fi nancial crisis has exacerbated the constraints imposed on lifeplans. as christiane harzig has argued, migrant strategies in the context of constraining structural and racial-ethnic-gender ascriptions may be analysed in terms of “otherness as a cultural resource”. just as whiteness is a resource (harris 1993), “otherness is one of the most substantial and tangible aspects of socio-cultural capital” for migrant domestic and caregiving workers. in a dialectical relationship, being different facilitates both access to a segment of a foreign country’s labour market – which is • dirk hoerder222 the migrants’ goal – and their exploitation – which is a consequence to be avoided wherever possible. migrants sought and continue to seek entry to receiving societies’ specifi c, limiting labour market segments as a pathway to a society as a whole which will provide better options than the society of birth at a point in the future when they have established a base through hard work. female service workers, excluded from standard immigration entryways, seek (perhaps degrading) jobs as a stepping stone to improved lives for themselves and their families. they “are hired precisely because they carry a different cultural baggage”.5 the migrant’s interest in entering a society with wider options matches the employer’s interest in fi nding a worker from another culture to carry out tasks which native men or women refuse to undertake under the conditions offered. for receiving societies, the otherness hides the intra-societal hierarchy of class. in contrast, a migrant woman’s cultural difference permits her “to situate herself outside … [the receiving society] which inevitably places her at the bottom. she may take recourse to the knowledge about her own social position at home and to her being essential [through remittances] to the family’s survival. she may also have a strong sense about her own culture’s superior food habits and child rearing practices.” women need such resilience because: “the race-class-gender systems of ‘importing’ cultures (north america, europe, middle east) provide for ready access to stereotypes in order to structure and organise historical ‘knowledge’ and present ‘experience’. cultural markers are attached to the women” (harzig 2006). in italy, for example, women from the philippines are considered suitable for caretaking and more highlyskilled household work since they are catholic and speak spanish or english (in addition to tagalog), while somali women (being black and coming from italy’s former colony) are considered inferior (chell 1997). employers were and are aware of women’s resilience and often label them as too independent or unruly.6 migrants move to labour market segments – nowhere are all jobs open to them – in most of which they do not compete with native-born workers because the latter shun their country’s 3-d sector (dirty, dangerous and often degrading work), or because the receiving country’s education and training systems cannot meet demand (software programmers and nurses, for example). their otherness facilitates access to segments in which they are highly skilled – though a male-societal categorisation labels all domestic work as “unskilled”. in this classifi cation scheme, the laying of bricks – masonry – is skilled work, whilst raising a child and managing a household is unskilled. from their income migrant women support the part of their families staying behind. are they sending money “home”? home, too, is a highly debatable ideological construct: home may not only be an uninteresting place, it may also 5 industrial employers sometimes bore the cost of recruitment and travel to obtain a reliable labour force; domestic workers often receive help from sympathetic employing women in negotiating bureaucracies and in language acquisition. 6 migrant women‘s position is often extremely diffi cult in the cultures of the eastern mediterranean, lebanon and egypt, and of the gulf states because of multiple discriminations due to gender ascription, religion, skin colour, language and cultural background to name only a few (jureidini 2008). transformations over time or sudden change • 223 be unsafe, unfair and unjust – characterised by discrimination and violence against women. one female migrant whose “home” was a tradition-reinforcing religious community once tersely noted that there were “no bars or visible exits” (toews 2004: 53). those who depart and send remittances permit their economically marginal family to stay – they help brothers, sisters and parents to avoid having to migrate. ideally, remittances even help consolidate family status and thus reduce migratory potential in marginal economies or economic sectors – the very goal of exclusionists in receiving societies. nationalists have decried the sending of remittances as being detrimental to the economy of the host – or increasingly host-ile – society in which the migrants live. such dead-end thoughts never mention the other side of the economics of migration: each and every migrant, man or woman, arriving in working age, transfers his or her human capital to the receiving society and creates social capital. since the society and family of birth invested in their upbringing and education, the host/hostile society receives this capital infusion for free and, in addition, receives taxes from the newcomers on whom it never spent a cent for education and training. in economic terms, migration is development aid from lesser developed to more highly-developed societies and economies. migrant labour and taxes are integral to the economies of receiving societies across the globe, remittances – in addition to the individual and family function – help avoid the collapse of whole sending states’ economies: were remittances to cease to arrive in mexico, the philippines and bangladesh, this would lead to state bankruptcies which, in turn, would lead to a skyrocketing propensity to migrate. agency of migrants has been central in and for states unable or unwilling to provide options for sustainable lives. europe’s states of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and many decolonised african, asian and latin american states in the present, are neither citizen-based (“sovereignty of the people”) nor protective of citizens (human rights principles). they have been and they remain labour-exporting states, setting target levels for annual departures in the present or, like great britain in the past, exporting people considered costly by state bureaucrats: unmarried women, orphaned children and disabled former soldiers. the receiving states, too, do not live up to the fundamental tenet of an equal citizenry: labour migrants and internally disadvantaged people, with few exceptions, are classifi ed bureaucratically as persons enjoying fewer rights, or even as being of lesser value. 5 conclusion crises may slow down actual migration: those even further impoverished lack the ability to pay the transaction costs for the move, whilst those who still can move may wait for better conditions on the labour market. in the transatlantic migrations, each downswing in the us economy was followed by a decline of in-migration from europe. crises may also accelerate migrations – those with no jobs or even daily sustenance may see no other option but to struggle to reach societies “richer” than their own, i.e. those which (seem to) provide more job options. if only some of the • dirk hoerder224 200 million poor, made even more precarious by the recent crisis, see on a television screen the amounts of food and luxury in the “fi rst world”, it does make sense to join those societies, diffi culties along the route or lack of entry papers notwithstanding. western investors migrate to china because they expect better returns on their investment capital; common people migrate in search of better job opportunities in europe or north america, or in cities closer to their societies of birth, to achieve better returns on their human capital. though much of the present anti-immigrantism has been spurred by the crisis of 2008, a comprehensive transcultural, historically-informed analysis is able to identify an ongoing, deepening global crisis: the gap between the wealthiest and poorest countries of the globe had doubled by 1995 when compared to 1960: the richest 20 % of the world’s population were almost 60 times better off than the poorest 20 %. this chasm continues to grow (hoerder 2002: 516). the colour barrier in migrant admission, abolished in north america in 1962 (canada) and 1965 (us), and breached in europe by reverse colonial/post-colonial migrations since the 1960s, has been re-established as “global apartheid” through global terms of trade (richmond 1994). many post-decolonisation, independent states have failed to create conditions that permit sustainable lives. global racialisation strategies of restricting access to worldwide natural resources, or to specifi c countries’ social resources, cannot be countered by building a new “iron curtain” along the us southern border or a fortress europe with barriers along the mediterranean and its eastern borders. two million men and women or more – sometimes with their children – migrate internationally every year, but not always south-tonorth, to countries offering wider perceived options. in many migrant-receiving societies – and, take note of connotations: these are migrant-needing societies – discourses of fear of the other are instrumentalised to detract from analysing and relieving the root causes of migration. in the decades which have passed since the end of the second world war, unequal terms of trade have been imposed by globalised western capital on less developed, poorer countries. the decades-long antagonistic spectre of the “free west” and the communist bloc is gone and thus, in view of the emerging economies of brazil-russia-india-china (bric) another “clash of civilizations”, an external enemy, is being invented by intellectual gatekeepers, too monocultural to deal with diversity and multiple options. islam is being targeted, and bernard lewis (1990) and samuel huntington (1997) among many others engage in politics of identity: “who are we”? is western – german, french, us american – identity so brittle, so vague, or so undefi nable that a devilish alien other – once witches, now multiculturalism, gypsies, mexicans – is needed to keep it from falling apart? is an outer wall rather than internal achievement – human rights and social security for example – the glue or the straight-jacket that holds societies 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passport. surveillance, citizenship and the state. cambridge: cambridge univ. press. vertovec, steven 1999: conceiving and researching transnationalism. in ethnic and racial studies 22,2: 447-62. transformations over time or sudden change • 227 prof. dr. dirk hoerder ( ). arizona state university, north american center for borderland studies and dept. of history, usa. e-mail: dhoerder@asu.edu url: http://www.asu.edu wong, lloyd l. 2002: home away from home? transnationalism and the canadian citizenship regime. in: roudometof, victor; kennedy, paul (eds.): communities across borders: new immigrants and transnational cultures. london: routledge: 169-81. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “allmähliche transformation oder plötzlicher wandel: historische betrachtungen zu massenmigrationen und menschenleben”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-07de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-07de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 19.08.2011 date of acceptance: 11.01.2012 © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) demografisches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011: noch keine trendwende in sicht demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011: noch keine trendwende in sicht olga pötzsch zusammenfassung: die bevölkerungsvorausberechnungen des statistischen bundesamtes zeigen einen voraussichtlichen rückgang der geborenenzahl in den 2020er jahren. zu dieser entwicklung wird eine tendenziell rückläufi ge anzahl der potenziellen mütter in kombination mit einer angenommenen weiterhin niedrigen geburtenrate führen. angesichts der vor dem zensus 2011 vorliegenden empirischen befunde gab es keine hinweise darauf, dass eine im nächsten jahrzehnt eventuell deutlich steigende geburtenhäufi gkeit die sinkende anzahl potenzieller mütter kompensieren würde. der zensus 2011 hat aber zu korrekturen in der bevölkerungsgröße, in der altersstruktur und folglich in den relativen maßzahlen der fertilität wie z.b. der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer und der endgültigen kinderzahl je frau geführt. ziel dieses beitrags ist es, die auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die maßzahlen der fertilität zu quantifi zieren und bisherige befunde zu den fertilitätstrends auf der zensusjustierten datengrundlage auf ihre gültigkeit zu prüfen. ein besonderes augenmerk liegt auf den analysen zur kohortenfertilität und den folgen der immer späteren familiengründung für die endgültige kinderzahl und die paritätsverteilung. anhand von zahlreichen befunden wird gezeigt, dass ein kontinuierlicher wiederanstieg der endgültigen kinderzahl je frau in den kommenden zwei jahrzehnten ohne trendwende im geburtenverhalten nicht realisierbar ist. allein um den zunehmenden rückgang der fertilität im alter unter 30 jahren ab jahrgang 1974 zu kompensieren und dadurch eine stabilisierung der endgültigen kinderzahl auf dem relativ niedrigen niveau zwischen 1,5 und 1,6 kindern je frau zu erreichen, wäre eine verstärkte zunahme der fertilität im alter ab 30 jahren erforderlich. ein anstieg und eine anschließende stabilisierung der endgültigen kinderzahl auf dem niveau von mindestens 1,6 kindern je frau würde darüber hinaus eine trendumkehr in der entwicklung der kinderlosenquote und deutliche veränderungen im geburtentiming voraussetzen. schlagwörter: aufschub und nachholen von geburten · geburtenentwicklung · geburtenrate · kohortenfertilität · kinderlosigkeit · zensus federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-02de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-02de4 comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 41 (2016): 67-100 (erstveröffentlichung: 22.08.2017) • olga pötzsch68 1 einleitung nach dem zensus 2011, der erstmalig nach fast einem viertel jahrhundert eine justierung der laufenden fortschreibung des bevölkerungsbestands ermöglichte, gehören auch demografi sche maßzahlen auf den prüfstand. dies betrifft unter anderem die relativen fertilitätskennzahlen, die neben der absoluten geborenenzahl die geburtenentwicklung beschreiben. sie zeigen die relation zwischen der anzahl der geborenen kinder und der anzahl der potenziellen mütter, d.h. der frauen im gebärfähigen alter (hier: zwischen 15 und 49 jahren). korrigierte bevölkerungszahlen wirken sich somit über die weibliche bevölkerung auf die höhe der geburtenraten aus (makrodatenebene). andererseits stellen sie die grundgesamtheit für die hochrechnung des mikrozensus dar und beeinfl ussen dadurch seine gewichteten stichprobenergebnisse (mikrodatenebene). diese größte stichprobenbefragung der privaten haushalte in deutschland liefert seit 2008 alle vier jahre angaben der frauen zur anzahl der geborenen kinder. darauf beruhen befunde zur struktur der frauenjahrgänge nach parität und insbesondere zur entwicklung der kinderlosigkeit. der vorliegende beitrag widmet sich der überprüfung der geburtentrends unter berücksichtigung der auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die wichtigsten maßzahlen der fertilität. der fokus liegt hier auf den maßgeblichen aspekten des geburtenverhaltens, welche aus heutiger sicht auch für die künftige fertilitätsentwicklung bedeutsam sein können. die diese aspekte charakterisierenden befunde werden hier analysiert und zu einem bild der fertilität zusammengefügt. nach der vorstellung der zugrunde liegenden datenquellen und methoden im zweiten abschnitt des beitrags werden im dritten abschnitt auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die fertilitätsmessung beschrieben. die auswahl der indikatoren, auf die dabei eingegangen wird, orientiert sich auf die international üblichen und vielfältig verwendeten kennziffern der fertilität. dazu gehören die periodenbezogenen maßzahlen, wie die frauenzahl in den kohorten, die potenzielle mütter stellen und damit zur risikobevölkerung gehören, sowie die altersspezifi schen und zusammengefassten geburtenziffern. in der kohortenperspektive handelt es sich vor allem um die endgültige oder bis zum jeweiligen alter erreichte durchschnittliche kinderzahl sowie um die paritätsverteilung in den frauenjahrgängen. die momentaufnahme des geburtenniveaus im jahr 2011 vor und nach dem zensus ist der ausgangspunkt für die justierung der fertilitätstrends und der annahmen zu bevölkerungsprojektionen. daran knüpft der vierte abschnitt an, in dem gegenwärtige geburtentrends und überlegungen zur künftigen fertilitätsentwicklung auf der neuen datenbasis nach dem zensus erörtert werden. während sich die zahl der potenziellen mütter in den kommenden zwei jahrzehnten weitgehend aus der bisherigen demografi schen entwicklung ergibt, muss die künftige geburtenhäufi gkeit auf grundlage von befunden zum geburtenverhalten geschätzt werden. ein hierfür gewählter ansatz beruht auf untersuchungen der kohortenfertilität. zentrale frage ist dabei die entwicklung der endgültigen kinderzahl je frau unter dem einfl uss der immer späteren familiengründung. die folgenden analysen knüpfen an die untersuchungen zum aufschub und nachholen der geburten an (frejka/calot 2001; frejka/sobotka 2008; sobotdemografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 69 ka et al. 2011; frejka 2012; pötzsch 2013), zur interaktion zwischen den paritäten und ihrer auswirkung auf die endgültige kinderzahl (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013; sobotka 2011; bujard/lück 2015a) sowie zur entwicklung der kinderlosigkeit (dorbritz/ruckdeschel 2007; sobotka 2011; konizka/kreyenfeld 2013, statistisches bundesamt 2013, 2015a; beier et al. 2012; te velde et al. 2012). die bisher veröffentlichten vorausschätzungen der endgültigen kinderzahl reichen bis zu den mitte beziehungsweise ende der 1970er geborenen jahrgängen (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; pötzsch 2010a, 2013; myrskylä et al. 2013; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). dabei wird nicht in frage gestellt, dass der rückläufi ge trend bei den ende der 1960er jahre geborenen frauen erst einmal endet und durch einen geringfügigen anstieg der endgültigen kinderzahl bis zur kohorte 1973 abgelöst wird. danach scheint die kohortenfertilität in westdeutschland zu stagnieren, während sie in ostdeutschland noch weiter steigen dürfte (vgl. pötzsch 2013: 95-97; myrskylä et al. 2013, table 2 und appendix figure 1). im folgenden werden die gesamtdeutschen fertilitätstrends auf grundlage der zensusjustierten ergebnisse überprüft und perspektiven der fertilitätsentwicklung bis zum jahrgang 1984 erörtert. 2 daten und methoden die relativen maßzahlen der fertilität beziehen sich in der regel auf die jahresdurchschnittliche bevölkerung (weiter auch durchschnittliche bevölkerung genannt). im unterschied zur stichtagsbevölkerung berücksichtigt diese unterjährige schwankungen der bevölkerungszahl, die in der regel vor allem aufgrund von wanderungen entstehen. die durchschnittliche bevölkerung bietet damit eine bessere annäherung an die sogenannte risikobevölkerung als bezugsgröße für fertilitätsmaßzahlen. die risikobevölkerung ist dabei eine schätzung der „personenjahre“ oder der lebenszeit einer population, in der diese population „dem risiko einer geburt“ ausgesetzt war (luy 2016: 123-125). für die berechnung der altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern wird zudem die durchschnittliche bevölkerung nach einzelnen altersjahren benötigt. die amtliche statistik verwendet hierfür zwei berechnungsmethoden: nach altersund nach geburtsjahren. in diesem beitrag wird die bevölkerung nach geburtsjahren (oder kohorten) verwendet, da dies eine langzeitbetrachtung ermöglicht. die ergebnisse der geburtenstatistik nach dem vollendeten alter liegen dagegen erst seit 2000 vor. um das verständnis der weiteren ausführungen zu erleichtern, sei kurz daran erinnert, dass unter kohortenfertilität in der regel die endgültige zahl der kinder verstanden wird, die ein frauenjahrgang im durchschnitt zur welt gebracht hat. die endgültige durchschnittliche kinderzahl der frauenkohorten (cohort total fertility rate, ctfr) wird berechnet als summe der altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern eines frauenjahrgangs, die in den kalenderjahren nachgewiesen wurden, in denen der entsprechende jahrgang die altersstufen von 15 bis zu 49 jahren durchlief. die altersspezifi sche geburtenziffer zeigt dabei die in einem kalenderjahr nachgewiesene relation zwischen der zahl der geborenen von müttern einer kohorte c im jeweils • olga pötzsch70 erreichten alter, bc(x), und der zahl aller frauen dieser kohorten im gleichen alter, pc(x): der additive charakter der ctfr erlaubt es, diese nach altersspannen zu unterteilen, die parameter α und β werden dabei variiert. in diesem beitrag wird diese eigenschaft genutzt, um die unterschiedlichen altersspezifi schen trends im jeweils jüngeren und höheren fertilen alter sowie die interaktion zwischen dem aufschub und dem nachholen der geburten abzubilden. dabei werden z.b. einerseits die altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern der frauenkohorten im alter von 15 bis 29 jahren und andererseits im alter von 30 bis 49 jahren addiert. die summe der beiden ergebnisse ergibt die durchschnittliche endgültige kinderzahl: die analyse der kohortenfertilität in abschnitt 4.1 ist an einen ansatz von frejka und calot (2001) und seine weiterentwicklung von sobotka et al. (2011) angelehnt. dieser ansatz zur berechnung des index der nachgeholten geburten (recuperation index) wurde hier vereinfacht und leicht modifi ziert mit dem ziel, die entwicklung vom aufschub und nachholen der fertilität möglichst anschaulich darzustellen. die beiden prozesse werden dabei separat betrachtet und miteinander verglichen. im vorfeld werden die abweichungen zwischen den kumulierten altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern der betrachteten kohorte und der als referenz gewählten kohorte für jedes altersjahr gemessen. die größte abweichung markiert den „tiefpunkt“, in dem sich die kumulierte fertilität der betrachteten kohorte am stärksten von der referenzkohorte unterscheidet. nachdem der tiefpunkt überschritten ist, beginnt die nachholphase. werden die aufgeschobenen geburten nicht vollständig nachgeholt, bleibt auch am ende der reproduktiven phase eine „restabweichung“ zwischen den endgültigen kinderzahlen. wenn die abweichung im tiefpunkt durch das nachholen im höheren alter kompensiert oder überkompensiert wird, dann wird die endgültige kinderzahl der betrachteten kohorte im vergleich zur abgeschlossenen fertilität der referenzkohorte jeweils gleich oder höher sein. (mehr zum basisbezugsmodel und anwendungsbeispiel für deutschland s. bei sobotka et al. 2011, abschnitt 3.2 sowie pötzsch 2013). die endgültige kinderzahl der frauenkohorten kann theoretisch auch auf basis der mikrodaten, d.h. der angaben der befragten im mikrozensus zur zahl der geborenen kinder, ermittelt werden. dabei wird die gesamtzahl der von frauen eines jahrgangs geborenen kinder durch die zahl der frauen dieses jahrgangs dividiert. diese durchschnittliche kinderzahl ist jedoch nur bedingt mit der ctfr vergleichbar. einerseits beziehen sich diese beiden indikatoren auf unterschiedliche populationen (pötzsch 2010b: 171-172; kreyenfeld et al. 2012: 394). zum beispiel war die zusammensetzung des frauenjahrgangs 1950 zum zeitpunkt der mikrozensusbefragung im jahr 2012 aufgrund von wanderungen und sterbefällen mit )x(p )x(b )x(fctfr c c c 1 2ctfr)x(f)x(f)x(f 49 15 c 29 15 49 30 cc demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 71 hoher wahrscheinlichkeit eine andere als in den jahren 1965 bis 1999, aus denen die 35 altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern dieses jahrgangs (zwischen seinem 16. und 50. lebensjahr) stammen. andererseits sind die mikrozensusergebnisse mit einem stichprobenfehler behaftet und können aufgrund von antwortausfällen verzerrt sein. um systematische verzerrungen aufgrund von antwortausfällen zu minimieren, wird ein imputationsverfahren angewendet (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013). trotzdem bleibt ein teil der fälle unbekannt. im mikrozensus 2012 betrifft das vor allem die verteilung der mütter nach zahl der geborenen kinder. bei der berechnung von durchschnittlichen kinderzahlen müsste darauf besonders geachtet werden. wenn nur bekannte fälle einbezogen werden, wird die anzahl der mütter ohne angabe zur kinderzahl proportional auf alle paritäten einschließlich der parität 0, d.h. ohne kind verteilt. bei so einem durchschnittswert ist das gewicht der kinderlosen – methodisch bedingt – erhöht. zudem variiert der prozentuale anteil der fehlenden angaben zur zahl der geborenen kinder je nach jahrgang z.b. im mikrozensus 2012 zwischen 1 % und 8 %, was die vergleichbarkeit der ergebnisse zwischen den kohorten zusätzlich einschränkt. trotz dieser einschränkungen ist der mikrozensus die wichtigste datenquelle für die bestimmung des kinderlosenanteils und die verteilung der mütter nach kinderzahl. auch für die einschätzung der auswirkungen der zensusbedingten korrektur der bevölkerung auf die kohortenfertilität wird hier der mikrozensus herangezogen. dabei werden die resultate der befragung im jahr 2012 auf grundlage der hochrechnung vor und nach dem zensus miteinander verglichen. da sich die zu vergleichenden ergebnisse auf dieselben jahrgänge beziehen und auf den gleichen stichprobenangaben beruhen, kann auf dieser grundlage auch die durchschnittliche kinderzahl je kohorte vor und nach dem zensus verglichen werden. dabei geht es weniger um die höhe der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl je frau, sondern um das ausmaß der verschiebungen infolge der neuen hochrechnung. für viele indikatoren ist es nach wie vor sinnvoll, die entwicklung nicht nur für deutschland insgesamt, sondern auch für westund ostdeutschland abzubilden. trotz annährungstendenzen sind unterschiede im geburtenverhalten der frauen immer noch deutlich (statistisches bundesamt 2013). dabei wird berlin, obwohl es geografi sch im osten deutschlands liegt, nicht zu den ostdeutschen ländern gerechnet. ursächlich dafür ist, dass für berlin ein eher westliches fertilitätsmuster charakteristisch ist. das einbeziehen von berlin in die ergebnisse für ostdeutschland würde aufgrund seines großen gewichts die ostdeutschen geburtentrends verwässern und den vergleich mit den westlichen bundesländern verzerren. in den ergebnissen für deutschland ist berlin enthalten. • olga pötzsch72 3 auswirkungen des zensus auf die wichtigsten fertilitätsmaße 3.1 weibliche bevölkerung als bezugsgröße für die geburtenraten die gesamtzahl der potenziellen mütter im jahr 2011 – d.h. frauen, die im alter zwischen 15 und 49 jahren waren – sank in der zensusjustierten bevölkerung um 321.000 oder 1,8 % (tab. 1). in westdeutschland war die korrektur mit lediglich -1,5 % geringer als in den neuen ländern: -2,0 %. während die anzahl der frauen mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit fast unverändert blieb, bestand bei den frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit ein verhältnismäßig hoher korrekturbedarf. die anzahl der ausländerinnen im alter zwischen 15 und 49 jahren wurde in deutschland insgesamt um -11,4 %, im früheren bundesgebiet um -10,3 % und in den neuen ländern um -19,0 % korrigiert. dies führte zum sinken des anteils der ausländerinnen an allen frauen im gebärfähigen alter von 12,4 % auf 11,1 %. für die altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern sind veränderungen in den einzelnen geburtskohorten innerhalb der gebärfähigen phase relevant. deutschlandweit ergibt sich ein relativ klares muster (abb. 1). überdurchschnittlich ist die korrektur der anzahl der frauen im alter zwischen 19 und 27 jahren ausgefallen (bis -2,5 %). wie aus dem unteren segment in abb. 1 ersichtlich, gehen diese änderungen vor allem auf die korrekturen bei den frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit zurück. bei den frauen mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit sind dagegen die abweichungen gebiet jahresdurchschnittliche bevölkerung 2011 veränderung nach dem zensus vor zensus nach zensus absolut relativ 1.000 personen % frauen insgesamt deutschland 18.209 17.888 -321 -1,8 früheres bundesgebiet1 14.810 14.589 -221 -1,5 neue länder1 2.554 2.504 -50 -2,0 deutsche frauen deutschland 15.959 15.895 -64 -0,4 früheres bundesgebiet1 12.811 12.797 -14 -0,1 neue länder1 2.461 2.429 -32 -1,3 ausländerinnen deutschland 2.250 1.993 -257 -11,4 früheres bundesgebiet1 1.999 1.792 -207 -10,3 neue länder1 92 75 -18 -19,0 tab. 1: frauen zwischen 15 und 49 jahren – korrekturbedarf nach dem zensus 2011 1 ohne berlin-west bzw. ohne berlin-ost. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, bevölkerungsfortschreibung. eigene berechnungen demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 73 abb. 1: frauen zwischen 15 und 49 jahren1 – relative veränderung der jahresdurchschnittlichen bevölkerung 2011 nach dem zensus -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 alter deutschland früheres bundesgebiet* neue länder* in prozent -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 alter deutsche ausländerinnen in prozent 1 im jahr 2011 erreichtes alter. * ohne berlin-west bzw. ohne berlin-ost. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, bevölkerungsfortschreibung. eigene berechnungen und darstellung • olga pötzsch74 vernachlässigbar gering. in den neuen ländern ergab sich zudem ein etwas größerer korrekturbedarf für die anzahl der frauen im alter von anfang bis mitte 40. da aber die geburtenhäufi gkeit in diesem alter gering ist, dürfte diese änderung die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer 2011 nur leicht beeinfl ussen. zugleich ist das möglicherweise ein indiz dafür, dass in der bestandsfortschreibung direkt nach der deutschen vereinigung die fortzüge der damals 20bis 25-jägrigen wegen fehlender abmeldungen nicht vollständig berücksichtigt wurden und die frauenzahl in den entsprechenden kohorten etwas zu hoch ausgewiesen wurde. für die maßzahlen der kohorten, wie z.b. endgültige kinderzahl je frau, ist darüber hinaus von interesse, wie die korrekturen für die älteren frauenjahrgänge ausgefallen sind. die bereinigungen bei den jahrgängen 1930 bis 1961 – für diese geburtskohorten liegen geburtenziffern vor – waren mit durchschnittlich -0,9 % deutlich geringer als bei den jüngeren frauen. wir können nicht ausschließen, dass die unsicherheiten in den einzelnen jahren zwischen den zensen, als die frauen dieser kohorten im gebärfähigen und zugleich mobilen alter waren, teilweise gröberlin hamburg n-württemberg sachsen thüringen saarland sachsen-anhalt niedersachsen mecklenburg-v. nrw brandenburg bayern hessen leswig-holstein bremen rheinland-pfalz -5,9 -4,3 -2,6 -2,4 -2 -1,9 -1,9 -1,7 -1,7 -1,5 -1,5 -0,9 -0,9 -0,7 -0,6 0,3 berlin hamburg baden-württemberg sachsen thüringen saarland sachsen-anhalt niedersachsen mecklenburg-v. nrw brandenburg bayern hessen schleswig-holstein bremen rheinland-pfalz deutschland -1,8 1 im jahr 2011 erreichtes alter. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, bevölkerungsfortschreibung. eigene berechnungen und darstellung abb. 2: frauen zwischen 15 und 49 jahren1 – relative veränderungen in der jahresdurchschnittlichen bevölkerung 2011 nach dem zensus nach bundesländern demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 75 ßer waren. trotzdem ist die geringe abweichung zum zeitpunkt des zensus 2011 ein wichtiger hinweis darauf, dass die kohortenspezifi schen geburtenziffern offenbar keine großen verzerrungen enthalten. in den einzelnen bundesländern war der korrekturbedarf unterschiedlich groß und variierte zwischen +0,3 % in rheinland-pfalz bis zu -5,9 % in berlin (abb. 2). die stadtstaaten berlin und hamburg verzeichneten die größten abweichungen zwischen dem zensusergebnis und der bevölkerungsfortschreibung. 3.2 auswirkungen des zensus auf fertilitätsmaßzahlen des jahres 2011 bei der berechnung der geburtenziffern verändert sich durch die zensusjustierung nur die bezugsgröße – die weibliche bevölkerung – im nenner der formel (1). die zahl der geborenen im zähler bleibt dagegen unverändert. die zensuskorrektur wirkt sich deshalb auf die relativen geburtenkennzahlen in einem vergleichbaren verhältnis zur korrektur der frauenzahl aus, nur mit umgekehrtem vorzeichen. besonderes interesse gilt dabei aus demografi scher sicht den altersspezifi schen und aggregierten geburtenziffern, wie z.b. der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer (aus der periodensicht) und der endgültigen beziehungsweise bis zum jeweiligen alter erreichen kinderzahl je frau (aus der kohortenperspektive). die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer betrug in deutschland 2011 unter berücksichtigung der zensuskorrektur 1,39 kinder je frau (tab. 2). dieser wert war um 2,0 % höher als vor dem zensus: 1,36 kinder je frau. im früheren bundesgebiet betrug die veränderung 1,8 % (von 1,36 auf 1,38 kinder je frau) und in den neuen ländern 2,0 % (von 1,43 auf 1,46 kinder je frau). für frauen mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit waren die auswirkungen der bevölkerungskorrekturen auf die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer mit durchschnittlich 0,3 % kaum spürbar. bei frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit stieg diese dagegen von 1,58 auf 1,82 kinder je frau um 15 %. in den einzelnen bundesländern betrugen die korrekturen der geburtenrate von 0,5 % in rheinland-pfalz bis 6,3 % in berlin. zu den bundesländern mit einem besonders großen anpassungsbedarf gehörte neben berlin auch hamburg (4,6 %). ursächlich dafür war u.a. der hohe anteil der ausländerinnen an der weiblichen bevölkerung in beiden stadtstaaten (bei frauen im alter zwischen 15 und 49 jahren jeweils rund 16 %). da die ausländische bevölkerung nach dem zensus deutlich reduziert wurde, stiegen die geburtenraten in den stadtstaaten überdurchschnittlich stark. die altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern für frauen insgesamt haben sich nur geringfügig verändert. die verteilung der geburtenhäufi gkeiten nach dem alter der mutter blieb deshalb nahezu konstant. das durchschnittliche gebäralter in deutschland betrug auch nach der zensuskorrektur 30,5 jahre, der median lag bei 31 jahren. allerdings stieg die höchste fertilitätsrate, die der 31-jährigen, von ursprünglich 98 auf 100 kinder je 1000 frauen. im früheren bundesgebiet und in den neuen ländern war ebenfalls nur eine leichte zunahme der maximalen häufi gkeit zu verzeichnen. die altersspezifi schen veränderungen bei den frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit entfi elen insbesondere auf das alter um mitte zwanzig (abb. 3). dies • olga pötzsch76 tab. 2: zusammengefasste geburtenziffer 2011 – korrekturbedarf nach dem zensus 2011 gebiet/staatsangehörigkeit vor zensus nach zensus veränderung absolut relativ kinder je frau % frauen insgesamt deutschland 1,36 1,39 0,03 2,0 früheres bundesgebiet1 1,36 1,38 0,02 1,8 neue länder1 1,43 1,46 0,03 2,0 deutsche frauen deutschland 1,33 1,34 0,00 0,3 früheres bundesgebiet1 1,32 1,32 0,00 0,1 neue länder1 1,43 1,45 0,02 1,2 ausländerinnen deutschland 1,58 1,82 0,24 15,0 früheres bundesgebiet1 1,60 1,81 0,22 13,5 neue länder1 1,48 1,82 0,34 22,8 nach bundesländern baden-württemberg 1,36 1,39 0,04 2,8 bayern 1,34 1,36 0,01 1,0 berlin 1,31 1,40 0,08 6,3 brandenburg 1,41 1,44 0,02 1,6 bremen 1,27 1,29 0,01 1,1 hamburg 1,26 1,32 0,06 4,6 hessen 1,39 1,40 0,01 0,6 mecklenburg-vorpommern 1,42 1,44 0,02 1,5 niedersachsen 1,39 1,42 0,04 2,6 nordrhein-westfalen 1,36 1,39 0,02 1,8 rheinland-pfalz 1,37 1,37 0,01 0,5 saarland 1,28 1,31 0,04 2,8 sachsen 1,48 1,51 0,04 2,5 sachsen-anhalt 1,40 1,43 0,03 2,0 schleswig-holstein 1,38 1,40 0,02 1,5 thüringen 1,41 1,44 0,03 1,9 1 ohne berlin-west bzw. ohne berlin-ost. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 77 führte zu einer leichten absenkung des durchschnittlichen gebäralters um 0,3 jahre auf 29,3 jahre und des medians um 0,4 jahre auf 29,6 jahre. die maximale geburtenhäufi gkeit (im alter von 29 jahren) stieg gleichzeitig von 99 auf 113 kinder je 1000 frauen. für die fertilität aller frauen insgesamt haben diese veränderungen jedoch keine relevanten auswirkungen. abbildung 3(a) veranschaulicht deutlich, dass sie lediglich zu einer marginalen verschiebung im verlauf der altersspezifi schen geburtenraten führen. 3.3 auswirkungen des zensus auf die zeitreihen der periodenfertilität für die langfristige entwicklung der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer ergibt sich durch die zensusbedingte justierung keine spürbare niveauverschiebung. die in abbildung 4 dargestellten kurven enthalten für das jahr 2011 sowohl die werte vor als auch nach der berücksichtigung der zensusergebnisse. die neuen korrigierten werte fügen sich in die verläufe ohne deutliche sprünge ein. auch beim vergleich der jährlichen veränderungen in der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer wird deutlich, dass der „zensus-effekt“ kaum stärker ausgefallen ist als die üblichen jährlichen schwankungen. bei frauen mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit ist der „zensus-effekt“ auf die entwicklung der tfr vernachlässigbar gering, diese bleibt auf dem niedrigen niveau: 1,34 kinder je frau statt 1,33 kinder je frau vor dem zensus (abb. 5). bei frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit führte dagegen die zensusjustierung zu einer sichtbaren niveauverschiebung in der tfr des jahres 2011 von 1,58 auf 1,82 kinder je frau. dadurch ergibt sich die notwendigkeit einer trendkorrektur und die these über eine schnelle annährung der geburtenrate der ausländerinnen an die der deutschen muss relativiert werden. der rückgang der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer der ausländerinnen zwischen 1991 und 2011 ist nach den neuen erkenntnissen mit 11 % nur halb so stark ausgefallen, wie ursprünglich angenommen abb. 3: altersspezifi sche geburtenziffern 2011– korrekturbedarf nach dem zensus 2011 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 alter vor zensus nach zensus a) kinder je 1.000 frauen alle frauen 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 alter vor zensus nach zensus b) kinder je 1.000 frauen frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen und darstellung • olga pötzsch78 abb. 4: zusammengefasste geburtenziffer 1990 bis 2013 mit „zensus-effekt“ im jahr 2011 * ohne berlin-west bzw. ohne berlin-ost. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen und darstellung abb. 5: zusammengefasste geburtenziffer nach staatsangehörigkeit der frauen 1991 bis 2013 mit „zensus-effekt“ im jahr 2011 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 2,0 2,2 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 jahr deutsche ausländerinnen kinder je frau 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 jahr deutschland früheres bundesgebiet* neue länder* kinder je frau demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 79 a b b . 6 : z u sa m m en g ef as st e g eb ur te nz if fe r un te rt ei lt na ch a lte rs g ru p p en d er f ra ue n 19 91 -2 01 3 m it „z en su se ff ek t“ im ja hr 2 01 1 * o hn e b er lin -w es t b zw . o hn e b er lin -o st . q ue lle : s ta tis tis ch es b un d es am t, g eb ur te ns ta tis tik . e ig en e b er ec hn un ge n un d d ar st el lu ng 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 ja hr 15 b is 29 30 b is 49 d eu ts ch la nd 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 ja hr 15 b is 29 30 b is 49 fr üh er es b un d es ge b ie t* 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 ja hr 15 b is 29 30 b is 49 n eu e lä nd er * 6a )a lle fr au en 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 1. 20 0 1. 50 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 ja hr 15 b is 29 30 b is 49 6b )f ra ue n m it au sl än d is ch er s ta at sa ng eh ö ri gk ei t k in d er je 1. 00 0 fr au en k in d er je 1. 00 0 fr au en k in d er je 1. 00 0 fr au en k in d er je 1. 00 0 fr au en • olga pötzsch80 (22 %). in den jahren 2012 und 2013 stagnierte die geburtenrate der ausländerinnen weiterhin auf dem niveau von rund 1,80 kindern je frau. der anteil der geborenen der ausländischen mütter an allen geborenen kindern betrug seit 1996 stabil zwischen 17 % und 18 %. für die entwicklung der zusammengefassten geburtenziffer sind die langfristigen altersspezifi schen trends ausschlaggebend. diese können im wesentlichen anhand von nur zwei altersgruppen dargestellt werden. wie abbildung 6a zeigt, geht die geburtenhäufi gkeit der frauen unter 30 jahren zurück, während die fertilität der 30bis 49-jährigen steigt. für die jüngere altersgruppe ergibt sich für das jahr 2011 nach dem zensus eine leichte korrektur. allerdings liegt auch die korrigierte tfr 2011 unter dem wert für das jahr 2010. damit bleibt der trend in der geburtenhäufi gkeit der 15bis 29-jährigen auch nach dem zensus rückläufi g. die justierte geburtenziffer bei der älteren altersgruppe fügt sich in die bisherige entwicklung nahtlos ein und stört den verlauf nicht. dies gilt ebenso für westdeutschland und – mit kleiner variation der verläufe – für die neuen länder. bei den frauen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit hat die zensusbedingte korrektur zu einem sprung im verlauf der geburtenhäufi gkeit der jüngeren frauen geführt (abb. 6b). die kumulierte geburtenziffer der 15bis 29-jährigen im jahr 2011 stieg um 20 %. die abnehmende tendenz bleibt jedoch offenbar weiterhin bestehen. bei der altersgruppe der 30bis 49-jährigen sind die korrekturen mit +9 % vergleichsweise gering. die hauptursache für den zu stark eingeschätzten rückgang der geburtenrate der ausländerinnen liegt somit vor allem bei den geburtenziffern der 20bis 29-jährigen. die scheinbar systematische überzeichnung der ausländerinnenzahl insbesondere in dieser wanderungsaktiven altersgruppe führte dazu, dass diese zu niedrig ausgewiesen wurden. 3.4 auswirkungen des zensus auf die kohortenfertilität die kohortenspezifi sche durchschnittliche kinderzahl je frau ist in deutschland für die jahrgänge ab 1930 verfügbar.1 für die korrektur der altersspezifi schen kohortenziffern nach dem zensus 2011 wäre eine jahrgangsweise rückrechnung erforderlich. allerdings hat sich die anzahl der frauen in den jahrgängen bis anfang der 1960er jahre durch den zensus nur wenig verändert (durchschnittlich -0,9 %), sodass von einer marginalen verzerrung der kohortenwerte ausgegangen werden kann und eine aufwändige und mit großen unsicherheiten behaftete rückrechnung nicht angemessen wäre. bei den jahrgängen im gebärfähigen alter, vor allem bei den 1980er und 1990er kohorten, haben sich die besetzungszahlen nach dem zen1 die kohortenfertilität wird hier nur in bezug auf alle frauen betrachtet. eine separate analyse für deutsche und ausländische frauen erscheint vor allem deshalb nicht sinnvoll, weil sich die ausländische bevölkerung durch wanderungsbewegungen fortwährend verändert und ihre kohorten schwer kontrollierbaren exogenen einfl üssen unterworfen sind. für deutsche frauen wäre eine kohortenspezifi sche betrachtung mit einschränkung möglich. da sich diese aber nach dem zensus kaum verändert hat, würde eine solche betrachtung keinen informationsgewinn im hinblick auf die kohortenfertilität der deutschen bringen. demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 81 sus etwas stärker reduziert als bei den älteren kohorten. aber auch hier sind die veränderungen in den einzelnen altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern insgesamt gering, wie in abschnitt 3.2 bereits gezeigt wurde. die kumulierten kohortenziffern der frauen im fertilen alter veränderten sich deshalb nach dem zensus nur leicht. eine weitere möglichkeit, die zensuseinfl üsse auf die kohortenfertilität zu überprüfen, bietet der mikrozensus (statistisches bundesamt 2013). die zwei fragen nach den geborenen kindern werden im mikrozensus alle vier jahre gestellt. die letzte befragung fand im jahr 2012 statt. die bisher veröffentlichten ergebnisse des mikrozensus 2012 beruhten auf der alten hochrechnung, welche die zensuskorrekturen noch nicht berücksichtigte. die ergebnisse aus der neuen zensusjustierten hochrechnung liegen nun ebenfalls vor und ermöglichen einen vergleich mit den resultaten aus der alten hochrechnung. im folgenden werden diese für die durchschnittliche kinderzahl je frau (siehe abschnitt 2) und für die verteilung der frauenjahrgänge nach zahl der geborenen kinder (parität) gegenübergestellt. die entwicklung der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl je frau ist in abbildung 7 dargestellt. für die jahrgänge 1963 und älter ist diese endgültig, für die jüngeren kohorten ist die bis zum jahr 2012 erreichte kinderzahl abgebildet. die unterschiede zwischen den ergebnissen nach der alten (gepunktete linie) und nach der neuen (durchgezogene linie) hochrechnung sind optisch kaum wahrnehmbar. die absoluten differenzen sind, wie aus abbildung 8 ersichtlich, gering. am höchsten sind die abweichungen mit knapp 30 kindern je 1000 frauen in den kohorten 1976 bis 1981. bei den westdeutschen frauenkohorten sind die differenzen ähnlich wie für frauen in deutschland insgesamt. in den neuen ländern ist die durchschnittliche kinderzahl bei den jungen kohorten nach dem zensus etwas stärker gestiegen. in den jahrgängen 1976 bis 1983 betragen die abweichungen 40 bis 60 kinder je 1000 frauen. allerdings sind diese unterschiede kleiner als der zweifache absolute standardfehler und befi nden sich somit innerhalb des 95 %-igen konfi denzintervalls (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 66). bei den älteren kohorten ab 1964 sind dagegen die abweichungen bei den ostdeutschen frauen vernachlässigbar gering. hinter der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl steht die struktur der frauen eines jahrgangs nach der zahl der geborenen kinder, die sogenannte paritätsverteilung. die interaktion zwischen den paritäten beeinfl usst die endgültige durchschnittliche kinderzahl. durch die neue hochrechnung unter berücksichtigung der zensusergebnisse hat sich die paritätsverteilung nur geringfügig verändert. tabelle 3 zeigt im oberen teil die prozentuale paritätsverteilung der kohortengruppen nach der neuen hochrechnung unter berücksichtigung der zensusjustierten bevölkerung. im unteren teil der tabelle sind die differenzen zu den ergebnissen der „alten“ hochrechnung dargestellt. diese zeigen tendenziell einen etwas kleineren kinderlosenanteil und etwas höhere anteile der mütter mit einem und zwei kindern. die einzelnen differenzen sind allerdings sehr gering und verändern nur unwesentlich die bisherigen erkenntnisse über die paritätsverteilung der frauenkohorten. • olga pötzsch82 abb. 8: absolute differenzen in der endgültigen bzw. erreichten kinderzahl je frau nach geburtskohorten zwischen den ergebnissen des mikrozensus 2012 nach der neuen (nach zensus) und nach der alten (vor zensus) hochrechnung -0,02 0,00 0,02 0,04 -0,02 0,00 0,02 0,04 199519901985198019751970196519601955195019451940 jahrgang quelle: statistisches bundesamt, mikrozensus 2012. eigene berechnungen und darstellung abb. 7: endgültige bzw. erreichte kinderzahl je frau nach geburtskohorten – ergebnissen des mikrozensus 2012 nach der neuen (nach zensus) und nach der alten (vor zensus) hochrechnung 0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00 0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00 199519901985198019751970196519601955195019451940 jahrgang vor zensus nach zensus endgültige kinderzahl bis 2012 erreichte kinderzahl quelle: statistisches bundesamt, mikrozensus 2012. eigene berechnungen und darstellung demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 83 ta b . 3 : s tr uk tu r d er f ra ue nj ah rg än g e na ch z ah l d er g eb o re n en k in d er – e rg eb ni ss e d es m ik ro ze n su s 20 12 u nd k o rr ek tu rb ed ar f n ac h d er z en su sj u st ie rt en h o ch re ch nu ng g eb ur ts ja hr g än g e in sg es am t fr au en o hn e m ü tt er n ac h z ah l d er g eb o re n en k in d er (im j ah r 20 12 e rr ei ch te s a lt er ) k in d 1 k in d 2 k in d er 3 k in d er 4 o d er m eh r k in d er o hn e a ng ab e e rg eb ni s d er z en su sj u st ie rt en h o ch re ch nu ng , % 19 93 -1 99 6 (1 619 ) 10 0 99 1 / / / 0 19 88 -1 99 2 (2 024 ) 10 0 91 7 2 / / 0 19 83 -1 98 7 (2 529 ) 10 0 71 18 8 2 1 0 19 78 -1 98 2 (3 034 ) 10 0 44 27 22 5 2 0 19 73 -1 97 7 (3 539 ) 10 0 27 25 34 10 3 1 19 68 -1 97 2 (4 044 ) 10 0 22 23 35 11 4 5 19 63 -1 96 7 (4 549 ) 10 0 20 23 35 11 4 6 19 58 -1 96 2 (5 054 ) 10 0 18 23 38 12 5 4 19 53 -1 95 7 (5 559 ) 10 0 16 24 39 12 5 3 19 48 -1 95 2 (6 064 ) 10 0 14 27 39 13 5 2 19 43 -1 94 7 (6 569 ) 10 0 12 26 40 14 6 1 19 37 -1 94 2 (7 075 ) 10 0 11 23 37 17 10 1 d if fe re n z zu d en e rg eb ni ss en d er h o ch re ch nu ng v o r d em z en su s 20 11 , p ro ze n tp un kt e 19 93 -1 99 6 (1 619 ) 0, 0 0, 0 / / / 0, 0 19 88 -1 99 2 (2 024 ) -0 ,3 0, 2 0, 1 / / 0, 0 19 83 -1 98 7 (2 529 ) -1 ,1 0, 6 0, 4 0, 1 0, 0 0, 0 19 78 -1 98 2 (3 034 ) -1 ,4 0, 4 0, 7 0, 2 0, 1 0, 0 19 73 -1 97 7 (3 539 ) -1 ,0 0, 1 0, 7 0, 2 0, 0 0, 0 19 68 -1 97 2 (4 044 ) -0 ,6 0, 0 0, 4 0, 1 0, 0 0, 0 19 63 -1 96 7 (4 549 ) -0 ,1 0, 0 0, 1 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 19 58 -1 96 2 (5 054 ) 0, 1 0, 0 0, 0 -0 ,1 0, 0 0, 0 19 53 -1 95 7 (5 559 ) 0, 1 0, 1 0, 0 -0 ,1 -0 ,1 0, 0 19 48 -1 95 2 (6 064 ) 0, 1 0, 1 0, 0 -0 ,1 -0 ,2 0, 0 19 43 -1 94 7 (6 569 ) 0, 1 0, 1 0, 1 -0 ,1 -0 ,1 0, 0 19 37 -1 94 2 (7 075 ) 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 q ue lle : s ta tis tis ch es b un d es am t, m ik ro ze ns us 2 01 2. e ig en e b er ec hn un ge n • olga pötzsch84 3.5 zwischenfazit der zensus 2011 ergab eine um 321.000 geringere weibliche bevölkerung im gebärfähigen alter als die laufende bevölkerungsfortschreibung. dadurch haben sich die geburtenmaßzahlen, die sich auf die anzahl der frauen beziehen oder auf den hochgerechneten stichprobenergebnissen des mikrozensus 2012 beruhen, insgesamt nur leicht verändert. die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer des jahres 2011 nahm von 1,36 auf 1,39 kinder je frau um rund 2 % zu. bei den langfristigen altersspezifi schen trends lag die zensusbedingte korrektur im bereich der durchschnittlichen jährlichen schwankungen. auch die auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die kohortenfertilität waren gering. auf die geburtenziffern nach der staatsangehörigkeit der frau hat sich die zensusbedingte justierung unterschiedlich ausgewirkt. während die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer der frauen mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit mit 1,34 kindern je frau beinahe unverändert blieb, stieg sie bei den ausländischen frauen von 1,58 auf 1,82 kinder je frau deutlich. diese korrektur erfordert eine überprüfung der bisherigen befunde zur fertilität der ausländischen frauen. auf die fertilitätstrends insgesamt war aber der einfl uss der ausländerinnen bisher eher gering. 4 entwicklung der kohortenfertilität in deutschland der vergleich der wichtigsten indikatoren hat gezeigt, dass das demografi sche bild der geburtenentwicklung nach dem zensus 2011 im wesentlichen erhalten geblieben ist. die untersuchungen der fertilität können damit ohne große zäsuren fortgeführt werden. was macht aber dieses bild im kern aus? im folgenden versuchen wir uns dieser frage zu nähern, indem wir die analyseergebnisse auf basis der daten der laufenden geburtenstatistik durch die ergebnisse des mikrozensus 2012 ergänzen. in einen zusammenhang gestellt erlauben diese befunde einen einblick in die wesentlichen züge des geburtenverhaltens und einen ausblick auf die künftige fertilitätsentwicklung. 4.1 dauerhafter anstieg der kohortenfertilität derzeit nicht absehbar die in den 1930er jahren geborenen frauen – zum großteil die mütter der babyboom-generation – haben durchschnittlich mehr als zwei kinder geboren (abb. 9). ihre familiengründungsphase fi el in die zeit des wirtschaftlichen aufschwungs der 1950er und 1960er jahre. bereits innerhalb der 1930er jahrgänge zeichnete sich jedoch ab, dass die endgültige kinderzahl kontinuierlich abnimmt. besonders schnell sank sie aufgrund des rückgangs bei höheren paritäten – 4 oder mehr kindern – zwischen den kohorten 1934 und 1944 (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013). anschließend hat sich die paritätsverteilung der mütter weitgehend stabilisiert, die kinderlosigkeit nahm aber kontinuierlich zu. dies führt bis heute zu einem weniger rasanten, jedoch beständigen rückgang der kohortenfertilität. der jüngste jahrgang, der das demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 85 fünfzigste lebensjahr erreichte und dessen kumulierte geburtenziffer statistisch als endgültig gilt, ist der jahrgang 1964 mit insgesamt 1,57 kindern je frau. es ist bereits absehbar, dass die endgültige kinderzahl der späten 1960er jahrgänge weiter auf circa 1,49 kinder je frau sinken wird. danach ist eine leichte erholung der abgeschlossenen kohortenfertilität zu erwarten (pötzsch 2010a; goldstein/ kreyenfeld 2011; sobotka 2011). zu dieser erholung trägt einerseits bei, dass sich die kumulierte kohortenfertilität bis zum alter von 29 jahren bei den jahrgängen 1969 bis 1973 stabilisierte. andererseits stieg aber die geburtenhäufi gkeit dieser kohorten im alter ab 30 jahren kontinuierlich weiter. zusammen haben diese beiden effekte für eine günstige konstellation gesorgt, die sich jedoch ab dem jahrgang 1974 nicht mehr fortsetzt. zwischen den jahrgängen 1974 und 1984 nahm die kumulierte fertilität bis zum alter von 29 jahren wieder kontinuierlich ab. wie sie sich im höheren alter entwickeln wird, ist zwar noch offen, da diese jahrgänge derzeit das ende der gebärfähigen phase noch nicht erreicht haben. einige hinweise darauf können allerdings aus der analyse des aufschubs und des nachholens der geburten, des abb. 9: endgültige sowie bis zum alter von 29 erreichte durchschnittliche kinderzahl nach frauenkohorten 0,0 0,4 0,8 1,2 1,6 2,0 2,4 1934 1944 1954 1964 1974 1984 geborene je frau im alter von 30 bis 49 jahren* im alter von 15 bis 29 jahren endgültige kinderzahl* * für die jahrgänge 1965 bis 1974 geschätzte werte. quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2013, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen und darstellung • olga pötzsch86 sogenannten postponement & recuperation-prozesses (p&r-prozess), gewonnen werden (frejka/calot 2001; sobotka et al. 2011; frejka 2012; pötzsch 2013). der ausgangspunkt der p&r-analyse ist das verständnis der kohortenfertilität als ein prozess, bei dem die frühere fertilitätsbiografi e der frauen ihre künftigen fertilitätsentscheidungen maßgeblich beeinfl usst. jede frauenkohorte hat ihr eigenes geburtentiming, das sich aus dem für sie typischen geburtenverhalten ergibt. bekommen z.b. die meisten frauen eines jahrgangs kinder tendenziell in der jüngeren gebärfähigen phase, nimmt die kumulierte durchschnittliche kinderzahl schnell zu, erreicht dann relativ bald ihren höhepunkt und bleibt anschließend beinahe konstant (abb. 10: jahrgang 1944). entscheiden sich frauen eines jahrgangs dagegen mehrheitlich später für kinder, steigt die kumulierte geburtenzahl langsamer (jahrgang 1962). ob die endgültige kinderzahl dann schließlich kleiner ausfällt als bei den kohorten mit einem relativ „jungen“ geburtentiming, hängt davon ab, ob im jungen alter nicht realisierte geburten später im vollen umfang nachgeholt werden. in deutschland hat das verschieben des timings auf das höhere alter bisher tendenziell eine niedrigere endgültige kinderzahl nach sich gezogen (pötzsch 2013). in relation zum jahrgang 1944 hat die kohorte 19622 ihre geburten später realisiert. der größte abstand in der kumulierten fertilität wurde im alter von ende abb. 10: kumulierte altersspezifi sche geburtenziffern der ausgewählten frauenkohorten 0 400 800 1.200 1.600 2.000 0 400 800 1.200 1.600 2.000 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 alter im jahr 2013 1944 1962 1973 1983 1988 geborene je 1000 frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen und darstellung 2 die kohorte 1962 wird für weitere vergleiche als referenz herangezogen, da dies der vorübergehend letzte abgeschlossene jahrgang mit der endgültigen kinderzahl von gut 1,6 ist, danach wird die endgültige kinderzahl aller voraussicht nach unter 1,6 sinken. demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 87 zwanzig erreicht. anschließend hat sich der abstand zwischen beiden kurven zwar reduziert, der nachholumfang hat aber nicht ausgereicht, um den rückgang der fertilität im jungen alter zu kompensieren, und die ctfr fi el um 0,2 kleiner aus. die 1973 geborenen frauen haben bis zum alter von 28 jahren durchschnittlich noch weniger kinder geboren als die frauen der kohorte 1962 mit einer endgültigen kinderzahl je frau von 1,61. ab dem alter von 29 jahren holen sie nun die „aufgeschobenen“ geburten auf. der abstand zwischen den beiden kurven hat sich bis zum alter von 40 jahren um drei viertel reduziert und betrug 70 geburten je 1000 frauen. diese lücke wird im alter ab 41 jahre voraussichtlich nicht vollständig geschlossen werden können, sie wird sich aber beträchtlich reduzieren (kumulierte kohortenfertilität im alter von 41 bis 49 jahren beträgt derzeit ca. 35 geburten je 1000 frauen). die endgültige kinderzahl je frau der kohorte 1973 wird schätzungsweise 1,57 betragen. die noch jüngeren jahrgänge 1983 und 1988 repräsentieren die aktuellen tendenzen in der kohortenfertilität. es wird dabei deutlich, dass immer weniger geburten in der jüngeren fertilen phase realisiert werden. um auswirkungen des jüngsten geburtenaufschubs auf die endgültige kinderzahl bewerten zu können, versuchen wir das künftige nachholpotenzial mit hilfe einer grafi schen darstellung einzuschätzen (abb. 11). für diesen zweck defi nieren wir die kohorte 1962 mit der ctfr von 1,61 als eine referenzkohorte. für jede weitere kohorte wird eine differenz zwischen den kumulierten cfr dieser kohorte und der referenzkohorte 1962 gebildet. da die geburtenhäufi gkeit von kohorte zu kohorte abnimmt, sind diese abweichungen negativ. sie verstärken sich in der regel bis zum alter von 29 jahren, welches den sogenannten „tiefpunkt“ darstellt, und vermindern sich anschließend, wie bereits am beispiel der kohorten 1962 und 1973 in abbildung 10 gezeigt wurde. die phase bis zum tiefpunkt entspricht dem geburtenaufschub; nach dem tiefpunkt beginnt das nachholen der geburten. um den aufschub der geburten mit dem nachholumfang zu vergleichen, werden je kohorte die altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern jeweils in der aufschubund in der nachholphase addiert. die aufschubphase erstreckt sich von 15 bis 29 jahren. für die nachholphase werden mehrere altersgrenzen gewählt, damit auch für die noch relativ jungen jahrgänge aussagen getroffen werden können: von 30 bis 35, von 30 bis 37 sowie von 30 bis 40 jahren. für diese phasen betrachten wir die abweichungen in den jeweiligen kumulierten geburtenziffern der kohorten 1963 bis 1984 von der referenzkohorte 1962 (abb. 11 oben). erwartungsgemäß sind die abweichungen in der aufschubphase bis zum alter von 29 jahren negativ, während sie in der nachholphase positiv sind, da die kohortenfertilität der jüngeren jahrgänge im alter ab 30 jahre zunimmt. hier fi nden sich die bereits beschriebenen entwicklungen in einer neuen darstellungsform wieder: der rückgang der kohortenfertilität im jungen fertilen alter war bei den 1960er jahrgängen besonders stark. trotz zunehmender fertilität im alter ab 30 jahre kann er bis zum ende der fertilen phase kaum noch kompensiert werden. vielmehr hat sich die restabweichung im alter 40 jahre bis zum jahrgang 1968 vergrößert, was auf ein absehbares sinken der endgültigen kinderzahl hinweist (abb. 11 unten). für die jahrgänge 1969 und 1973 verdeutlicht diese darstellung die bereits beschriebene günstige konstellation aus der verstetigung der kumulierten cfr im al• olga pötzsch88 abb. 11: absolute veränderung der altersspezifi schen kohortenfertilität (cohort fertility rate, cfr) in der aufschubund nachholphase im vergleich zur kohorte 1962 (ctfr‘1962 = 1,61 kinder je frau) restabweichung im alter 40 jahre. ab jahrgang 1974 hypothetische werte bei formaler fortschreibung des nachholtrends -200 -100 0 -200 -100 0 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 -50 -133 -73 -62 -39 anmerkungen: die cfr x bis (x+n) jahre ist hier die summe der altersspezifi schen geburtenziffern einer kohorte in den entsprechenden altersjahren. die absolute veränderung wurde als differenz zwischen der crf einer kohorte c und der cfr der kohorte 1962 für die jeweilige altersspanne berechnet. die gepunktete linie bildet den linearen trend ab. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnungen und darstellung -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 geborene je 1000 frauen cfr 30 bis 40 jahre cfr 30 bis 37 jahre cfr 30 bis 35 jahre cfr 15 bis 29 jahre nachholen aufschub demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 89 ter unter 30 jahren einerseits und des verstärkten nachholens im alter zwischen 30 und 40 jahren andererseits. dadurch wird die endgültige kinderzahl leicht steigen. ab der kohorte 1974 sinkt die fertilität im alter unter 30 jahren kontinuierlich, was eine erneute zunahme des geburtenaufschubs bedeutet. wie würde sich dieser rückgang auf die endgültige kinderzahl auswirken? mit hilfe von abbildung 11 (oben) kann nachvollzogen werden, welcher nachholumfang in einzelnen altersstufen erforderlich wäre, um den fertilitätsrückgang im alter unter 30 jahren zu kompensieren und mittelfristig die endgültige kinderzahl von 1,6 zu erreichen. dieses ziel würde dann frühestens ab der kohorte 1980 annähernd erreicht werden können, wenn sich die nachholtrends der letzten 16 jahre linear fortsetzen würden (vgl. gestrichelte trendlinien). dieses szenario scheint auf den ersten blick nicht unrealistisch. bei näherer betrachtung wird jedoch deutlich, dass dies eine größere herausforderung darstellt. zum einen zeichnet sich insbesondere in westdeutschland ab, dass das nachholen bis zum alter von 35 jahren zur stagnation neigt. die hier vorgenommene ungebremste trendextrapolation ist somit bereits eine optimistische annahme. zum anderen würde eine solche verlagerung der kohortenfertilität ins höhere gebärfähige alter bedeuten, dass die fertilität im alter von 36 bis 40 jahren zwischen den kohorten 1962 und 1984 um 250 % steigen und das nachholen im alter ab 36 jahre im gleichen umfang stattfi nden müsste, wie in der starken fertilen phase zwischen 30 und 35 jahren. damit wäre allein für die mittelfristige stabilisierung der endgültigen kinderzahl auf dem relativ niedrigen niveau zwischen 1,5 und 1,6 kindern je frau erforderlich, dass die geburtenhäufi gkeit der späten 1970er und 1980er kohorten im alter ab 30 jahre kontinuierlich steigt. im hinblick auf die parität bedeutet dies sowohl mehr erste geburten im höheren fertilen alter als auch eine stabile verteilung der mütter nach zahl der kinder trotz späterer familiengründung. denn die endgültige kinderzahl von 1,6 kindern je frau kommt nur dann zustande, wenn circa 80 % der frauen eines jahrgangs im durchschnitt 2 kinder zur welt bringen würden. im folgenden eruieren wir, inwieweit diese voraussetzungen erfüllt werden können. 4.2 stabilität der kinderzahl je mutter ist fragil die durchschnittliche kinderzahl je mutter nahm zwischen den 1930er und 1940er jahrgängen von 2,3 auf 2,0 ab und stabilisierte sich anschließend auf diesem niveau. während der rückgangsphase hat sich der anteil der mütter mit vier oder mehr kindern von 12 % auf 6 % halbiert. zwischen den späten 1940er und frühen 1970er jahrgängen wies die paritätsverteilung der mütter nur geringe schwankungen auf. die 45 bis 49 jahre alten mütter hatten 2012 zu 31 % „nur“ ein kind, zu 48 % zwei kinder, zu 15 % drei kinder und zu 6 % vier oder mehr kinder. im durchschnitt bekamen die mütter im laufe ihres lebens 2 kinder (statistisches bundesamt 2015c). die stabilität der paritätsverteilung der mütter ist allerdings bei den jüngeren jahrgängen angesichts des langfristigen trends zum höheren erstgeburtsalter gefährdet. das liegt vor allem daran, dass die gruppe der mütter, die vor ihrem 30. geburtstag eine familie gründen, immer kleiner wird. gerade diese mütter stellten • olga pötzsch90 aber bisher das potenzial für kinderreiche. für die frauen der 1960er und 1970er kohorten zeigten die mikrozensusergebnisse, dass je mehr kinder eine frau im laufe ihres lebens zur welt gebracht hat, desto jünger war sie bei der geburt ihres ersten kindes (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 30). die mütter von einzelkindern bekamen ihr kind durchschnittlich im alter von 30 jahren. die mütter von zwei kindern waren mit 27 jahren bei der familiengründung bereits drei jahre jünger. familien mit drei oder mehr kindern wurden im durchschnitt von frauen bis zum alter von 25 jahren gegründet.3 eine künftig stabile paritätsverteilung setzt also voraus, dass sich das geburtenverhalten im höheren fertilen alter ändert und der anteil der mütter zunimmt, die eine familie in ihren dreißigern gründen und anschließend trotzdem noch drei oder mehr kinder bekommen. da das biologische fenster begrenzt ist, müssten sich dabei auch die abstände zwischen den geburten einer mutter zunehmend verringern. dies bestätigen auch die ergebnisse des mikrozensus: umso älter eine mutter mit mindestens drei kindern zum zeitpunkt der ersten geburt war, desto kürzer waren die abstände zwischen ihren geburten. bei frauen, die im alter von 20 jahren erstmals mutter geworden sind, betrug das intervall zwischen dem ersten und dritten kind knapp 10 jahre (abb. 12). bei frauen, die ihr erstes kind erst im alter von 33 jahren bekommen haben, war dieses intervall mit 5 jahren nur halb so groß. im durchschnitt vergingen zwischen der ersten und dritten geburt 7,4 jahre. da immer mehr frauen erst mit anfang 30 erstmals mutter werden und bei geburt von mehreren kindern folglich kürzere geburtenabstände haben, müssten sich tendenziell auch die mittleren intervalle verkürzen. jedoch liefert dazu die statistik der geburtenabstände zum vorangegangenen kind der mutter bei der zweiten, dritten oder weiteren geburt bisher keinen empirischen beleg. die seit 2009 verfügbaren angaben über die vollständige geburtenfolge der mutter zeigen vielmehr, dass die mittleren abstände zwischen den geburten von 2009 bis 2014 trotz des sich fortsetzenden aufschubs der familiengründung unverändert geblieben sind. „in 50 % der fälle kommt ein zweites kind innerhalb von 3,3 jahren nach dem erstgeborenen zur welt. die anderen 50 % der zweitgeborenen kinder haben einen größeren abstand zum älteren geschwisterkind. die dritten kinder folgen in der regel mit einem noch größeren zeitlichen intervall nach der geburt des zweiten kindes. die hälfte aller dritten geburten ereignet sich innerhalb von 3,9 jahren, die andere hälfte erfolgt noch später.“ (statistisches bundesamt 2014). diese ergebnisse bestätigen zudem den befund aus dem mikrozensus 2012, dass das intervall zwischen der ersten und dritten geburt im mittel gut 7 jahre beträgt. daraus folgt, dass die mütter der dritten und weiteren kinder nach wie vor überwiegend zu sogenannten „frühen familiengründerinnen“ gehören. der anteil derjenigen frauen, die relativ spät ihr erstes kind bekommen haben, ist unter den müttern beim dritten und weite3 diese mikrozensusergebnisse beziehen sich auf mütter, die zum zeitpunkt der mikrozensusbefragung im jahr 2012 im alter von 35 bis 44 jahren waren und mit ihren kindern in einem haushalt lebten. das so ermittelte durchschnittliche erstgeburtsalter dürfte tendenziell etwas überhöht sein, da in einigen fällen das älteste kind im haushalt der mutter bereits fehlen könnte (quelle: mikrozensus 2012, eigene berechnungen). demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 91 ren kind offenbar relativ gering. deshalb wird die verteilung der geburtenabstände zum vorangegangenen kind von den kürzeren intervallen zwischen ihren geburten kaum beeinfl usst. die entwicklung der intervalle zwischen den geburten ist ein wichtiger frühindikator dafür, ob nicht nur die ersten und zweiten, sondern auch weitere geburten „nachgeholt“ werden. wie aus abb. 13 ersichtlich, betrug der anteil der zweiten bzw. dritten kinder, die innerhalb von 2 jahren nach dem vorangegangenen kind der mutter zur welt gekommen sind, im zeitraum 2009 bis 2013 stabil etwa 16 % bis 18 %. mit einem abstand bis unter 3 jahren wurden etwa 44 % der zweiten bzw. ca. 36 % der dritten kinder geboren. es ist außerdem bemerkenswert, dass der anteil der zweiten kinder mit einem abstand zum erstgeborenen von 2 bis unter 3 jahren fast genau so groß war wie der anteil der zweiten kinder, die erst nach einer pause von fünf und mehr jahren zur welt gekommen waren. bis zur dritten geburt waren die abstände tendenziell noch größer: 37 % der dritten kinder waren im jahr 2013 mindestens um fünf jahre jünger als das vorangegangene geschwisterkind. für das aktuelle geburtenverhalten ist eine konstellation aus dem trend zu immer späterer familiengründung, den langen geburtenabständen sowie dem negativen zusammenhang zwischen dem zeitpunkt der ersten geburt einerseits und der gesamtzahl der geborenen kinder andererseits charakteristisch. sollte sich diese abb. 12: durchschnittliches intervall zwischen der ersten und der dritten geburt nach dem alter der mutter beim ersten kind,* in jahren 0 3 6 9 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34-40 alter der mutter beim 1. kind 9.9 7.6 5.7 5.0 * einbezogen sind 35bis 44-jährige mütter mit mindestens drei kindern, die zusammen in einem haushalt leben. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, mikrozensus 2012 (zensusjustierte hochrechnung). eigene berechnungen und darstellung • olga pötzsch92 konstellation in näherer zukunft nicht ändern, würde es zum rückgang des mütteranteils mit drei oder mehr kindern kommen. 4.3 trend zu höherer kinderlosigkeit setzt sich fort der anstieg der kinderlosigkeit hat insbesondere in westdeutschland die kohortenfertilität der letzten gut zwanzig jahre stark beeinfl usst (statistisches bundesamt 2013). nach den berechnungen von sobotka würde die endgültige kinderzahl des jahrgangs 1965 statt 1,5 kinder je frau 1,7 betragen, wenn die kinderlosigkeit auf dem niveau der kohorte 1940 geblieben wäre (sobotka 2011: 273). auch in den neuen ländern, wo die kinderlosigkeit bis in die 1960er jahrgänge lediglich 11 % betrug und damit nur halb so hoch war wie in westdeutschland, steigt der kinderlosenanteil. die kinderlosenquote ändert sich bereits ab dem alter von 41 jahren kaum noch. die zahl der über 40-jährigen, die ein zweites oder weiteres kind zur welt bringen, nimmt zwar zu, ihr erstes kind bekommen frauen im alter von über 40 jahre jedoch nach wie vor sehr selten. lediglich 3 % der ersten kinder wurden 2013 von frauen im alter zwischen 40 und 49 jahren geboren, ab dem alter von 42 jahren war es lediglich 1 %. auch ein vergleich des kinderlosenanteils an den jeweiligen frauenkohorten zwischen den mikrozensusbefragungen 2008 und 2012 zeigt nur marginale veränderungen bereits ab dem alter von 39 jahren. eine ausnahme stellen allerdings frauen mit hochschulabschlüssen dar, deren familiengründungsphase länger dauern kann (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 22 und 36). abb. 13: anteil der geburten, die nach einem entsprechenden abstand zum geburtstag des vorangegangenen kindes erfolgten* (in prozent) 0 25 50 75 100 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 18 27 18 11 26 17 27 18 11 26 17 27 19 11 26 18 27 19 12 25 17 27 19 12 25 unter 2 jahren von 2 bis unter 3 jahren von 3 bis unter 4 jahren von 4 bis unter 5 jahren mehr als 5 jahre zweite geburt 0 25 50 75 100 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 17 20 15 11 37 16 20 15 11 37 16 19 15 11 38 17 19 15 12 37 16 20 16 12 37 dritte geburt * bei den geburten von zwillingen und weiteren mehrlingen wurde nur eines der kinder berücksichtigt. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, geburtenstatistik. eigene berechnung und darstellung demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 93 in der kohorte 1971, die im jahr 2012 das alter von 41 jahren erreicht hat, sind 22 % der frauen kinderlos geblieben. die kinderlosenquote war damit um 10 prozentpunkte höher als in den kohorten 1940 bis 1946 (12 %). zwischen den jahrgängen 1946 und 1971 nahm die kinderlosenquote, abgesehen von einzelnen kleinen schwankungen, fast linear zu (abb. 14). inwieweit und wie lange die endgültige kinderlosenquote in zukunft steigen wird, ist noch offen. einerseits gibt es positive impulse, wie zum beispiel bei den westdeutschen frauen mit akademischen bildungsabschlüssen. ihre endgültige kinderlosenquote hat sich zuletzt bei 29 % (nach der zensusjustierten hochrechnung) stabilisiert und wird in den nächsten jahren voraussichtlich sogar leicht sinken (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 37; statistisches bundesamt 2015c). andererseits deuten einige befunde darauf hin, dass das maximum der kinderlosigkeit noch nicht erreicht ist. dazu gehört u.a. der steigende anteil der frauen mit hochschulbildung, die eine überdurchschnittlich hohe kinderlosigkeit aufweisen. in den neuen ländern sowie bei westdeutschen frauen ohne akademische bildung wird die kinderlosenquote in den kommenden jahren voraussichtlich weiter zunehmen. dadurch würde auch das gesamtniveau der kinderlosigkeit weiter steigen. sozioökonomische, biomedizinische und kulturelle faktoren sprechen ebenfalls eher für eine trendfortsetzung als für eine trendwende in der kinderlosigkeit. durch die einführung des elterngelds und den ausbau der kinderbetreuung wurden familienpolitische schritte unternommen, die diesem trend entgegen wirken könnabb. 14: anteil der frauen ohne kind an allen frauen der geburtsjahrgänge, die im jahr 2012 zwischen 41* und 69 jahren alt waren (in prozent) 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 1971196619611956195119461941 * ab dem alter von 41 jahren verändert sich die kinderlosenquote nur marginal. quelle: statistisches bundesamt, mikrozensus 2012 (zensusjustierte hochrechnung). eigene berechnungen und darstellung • olga pötzsch94 ten (bonin et al. 2013). allerdings ist das problem der vereinbarkeit zwischen beruf und familie damit noch lange nicht gelöst (bujard/lück 2015a). das immer weitere aufschieben der erstgeburt führt außerdem auch aus biomedizinischen gründen dazu, dass nicht alle auf später aufgeschobenen wünsche für mindestens ein kind realisiert werden können (beier et al. 2012; te velde et al. 2012). zugleich zeigt die jüngste forschung zu familienleitbildern, dass die lebenslange kinderlosigkeit zu einem attraktiven lebensentwurf geworden ist und „kaum noch als defi zit wahrgenommen“ wird (dorbritz/diabaté 2015: 131). 5 schussfolgerungen und diskussion der vergleich der wichtigsten indikatoren hat gezeigt, dass das demografi sche bild der geburtenentwicklung nach dem zensus 2011 im wesentlichen erhalten geblieben ist. die bisherigen fertilitätstrends bieten deshalb eine verlässliche ausgangsbasis für die überlegungen zur weiteren entwicklung der fertilität. diese überlegungen sind nicht nur forschungsrelevant, die höhe der künftigen jährlichen geburtenziffer hat auch eine ganz reale auswirkung auf die geburtenzahl und damit auf die bevölkerungsentwicklung. bei einer zusammengefassten geburtenziffer von etwa 1,4 kindern je frau ist ein deutlicher rückgang der geborenenzahl in naher zukunft allein aufgrund der aktuellen altersstruktur der weiblichen bevölkerung vorgezeichnet (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 11-14). bereits ab dem jahr 2017 werden die immer kleiner werdenden jahrgänge 1991 und jünger in das alter mit höchster fertilität von mitte 20 bis mitte 30 kommen. durch die nettozuwanderung würde die rückläufi ge zahl der potenziellen mütter voraussichtlich nur teilweise kompensiert werden können.4 ein relativ stabiles geburtenniveau könnte – ausgehend von den ergebnissen der 13. koordinierten bevölkerungsvorausberechnung – nur dann erreicht werden, wenn zusätzlich zu einer höheren nettozuwanderung die jährliche zusammengefasste geburtenziffer mittelfristig auf mindestens 1,6 kinder je frau steigen würde (statistisches bundesamt 2015a: variante 6 „relativ junge bevölkerung“). die voraussetzung dafür wäre, dass die endgültige kinderzahl je frau auf mindestens 1,6 steigen und sich anschließend stabilisieren würde. die bisherigen projektionen der kohortenfertilität zeigten eine voraussichtliche stabilisierung der endgültigen kinderzahl bei den kohorten der späten 1970er jahre auf dem niveau leicht unterhalb 1,6 kindern je frau (myrskylä et al. 2013; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). um einschätzen zu können, wie wahrscheinlich ein weiterer anstieg der ko4 die differenz zwischen der anzahl der 30-jährigen und der 10-jährigen betrug im jahr 2013 gut 150.000. bei einem positiven wanderungssaldo und einer geringen sterblichkeit wird die zahl der heute 10-jährigen mädchen in den nächsten 20 jahren zunehmen. allerdings würde sie auch bei der hohen wanderungsannahme der 13. koordinierten bevölkerungsvorausberechnung um maximal 60.000 steigen. damit wäre die zahl der 30-jährigen potenziellen mütter im jahr 2033 immer noch um 90.000 kleiner als im jahr 2013 (statistisches bundesamt. 13. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung). demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 95 hortenfertilität wäre, untersuchten wir die trends im geburtenverhalten der frauenkohorten. im fokus standen dabei die auswirkungen der immer späteren familiengründung auf die kohortenfertilität. „in the latter part of the 20th century and early in the 21st century, the most prominent demographic mechanism determining fertility trends has been the extent to which childbearing postponement has been counterbalanced by birth recuperation.” (frejka/sobotka 2008: 30). die erfahrungen von frankreich oder schweden haben beispielsweise gezeigt, dass ein steigendes erstgeburtsalter nicht zwangsläufi g zu sinkender abgeschlossener fertilität führen muss. in deutschland verliefen dagegen diese entwicklungen parallel und waren offensichtlich auch die folge eines einstellungswandelns in bezug auf familie (ehmer et al. 2012). während sich das durchschnittliche alter beim ersten kind bei den kohorten ab 1947 erhöhte (pötzsch/sommer 2009), sank die endgültige kinderzahl je frau von 1,80 (jahrgang 1946) auf 1,57 (jahrgang 1964). das aufschieben der familiengründung ging dabei mit einer schnell steigenden kinderlosigkeit (von 12 % auf 20 %) und einem sinkenden anteil der frauen mit 3 oder mehr kindern von 21 % auf 17 % einher (bujard/lück 2015b: tabelle1). damit die endgültige kinderzahl trotz des aufschubs der familiengründung auf ein höheres alter nicht sinkt, müsste der rückgang der fertilität im jüngeren alter durch das spätere nachholen der geburten kompensiert oder überkompensiert werden. mit hilfe der analyse des aufschubs und des nachholens der geburten haben wir einen einblick in die interaktionseffekte der altersspezifi schen fertilität der jüngeren jahrgänge bis 1984 gewinnen können. dabei lässt sich zum einen die voraussichtliche leichte erholung der endgültigen kinderzahl bei den jahrgängen 1969 bis 1973 erklären. diese ist einer besonderen konstellation zu verdanken: die geburtenhäufi gkeit dieser jahrgänge hat sich im jüngeren alter unter 30 jahren stabilisiert, während sie im alter ab 30 jahre weiter anstieg. zum anderen wird offenkundig, dass die fertilität im alter unter 30 jahren ab der kohorte 1974 wieder kontinuierlich sinkt, was eine erneute verstärkung des geburtenaufschubs bedeutet. dieser fertilitätsrückgang im jüngeren alter kann nur dann kompensiert werden, wenn sich die nachholtrends der letzten sechzehn jahre linear fortsetzen würden. neben einer deutlichen geburtenzunahme im alter zwischen 30 und 35 jahren, die folgerichtig und realisierbar erscheint, bedeutet dies aber auch, dass die fertilität im alter ab 36 um das vielfache steigen müsste. aus heutiger sicht ist dies eine sehr optimistische annahme. es gibt zwar noch „reserven“ bei der fertilität im höheren gebärfähigen alter. so ist die geburtenhäufi gkeit der ab 36-jährigen in deutschland insgesamt um 26 % geringer als zum beispiel in hamburg (statistisches bundesamt 2015d) und um etwa 12 % geringer als in schweden, dem land mit dem derzeit höchsten durchschnittlichen gebäralter in europa (eurostat 2015: http://ec.europa. eu/eurostat/de/data/database). darüber hinaus weisen goldstein et al. auf verbesserte familienpolitische rahmenbedingungen, höhere akzeptanz der frauenerwerbstätigkeit und gestiegene familienorientierung der jüngeren geburtsjahrgänge als faktoren hin, die eine trendwende herbeiführen könnten (goldstein et al. 2012). obwohl diese faktoren offenbar eine positive wirkung auf die fertilitätsentwicklung im höheren gebärfähigen alter haben, wirken sich zugleich andere befunde auf das ausmaß der kompensationseffekte im alter ab 36 jahre einschränkend aus. • olga pötzsch96 insbesondere ist der übergang zum ersten kind im letzten drittel der gebärfähigen phase derzeit noch keine selbstverständlichkeit. der optimale zeitpunkt für die erste schwangerschaft einer frau ist nach beier et al. – biologisch gesehen – nach wie vor zwischen dem 18. und 30. lebensjahr (beier et al. 2012: 303). danach sinkt die wahrscheinlichkeit der ersten schwangerschaft allmählich. es bleibt abzuwarten, wie sich künftig ein weiterer medizinischer fortschritt in den altersspezifi schen werten zur ersten geburt niederschlagen wird. im hinblick auf familienzuwachs kommen neyer et al. zur folgenden schlussfolgerung: „in bezug auf dritte geburten ergibt sich ein relativ einheitliches bild: in allen nordischen ländern sinkt mit steigendem alter die neigung von müttern mit zwei kindern, ein drittes zu haben […]. […] das relative risiko einer zweiten geburt fällt erst für mütter ab mitte 30 deutlich ab. bei diesen müttern kann davon ausgegangen werden, dass zumindest ein teil von ihnen aufgrund abnehmender fruchtbarkeit kein weiteres kind mehr bekam, obwohl sie sich noch ein kind wünschten.“ (neyer et al. 2006). zudem zeigen die vorgelegten ergebnisse, dass die mütter mit mehreren kindern eine besondere gruppe darstellen. für sie ist bisher charakteristisch, ihr erstes kind bis mitte zwanzig zu bekommen und relativ große abstände zwischen den einzelnen geburten zu haben. damit der anteil der mütter mit drei oder mehr kindern auch zukünftig stabil bleibt, müssten sich diese muster im geburtenverhalten ändern. nur wenn mehr frauen, die erst im alter ab 30 jahre familie gegründet haben, dritte und weitere kinder bekommen würden und/oder das alter bei der familiengründung nicht mehr steigen würde, wären die voraussetzungen dafür geschaffen. empirisch lassen sich diese veränderungen noch nicht nachweisen. ein weiteres hindernis stellt die immer noch steigende kinderlosigkeit dar. um die endgültige kinderzahl je frau von mindestens 1,6 – bei der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl je mutter von 2,0 – zu erreichen und aufrechtzuhalten, dürfte die kinderlosigkeit 20 % nicht übersteigen. im jahr 2012 betrug die kinderlosenquote jedoch bereits 22 % und ihr maximum ist voraussichtlich noch nicht erreicht. trotz einzelner positiver impulse, wie z.b. eine verfestigung der kinderlosenquote bei frauen mit hochschulabschuss auf hohem niveau, gibt es derzeit keine hinweise auf eine umkehr des trends zu höherer kinderlosigkeit. zusammenfassend kann festgehalten werden: allein die mittelfristige stabilisierung der endgültigen kinderzahl auf dem relativ niedrigen niveau zwischen 1,5 und 1,6 kinder je frau setzt voraus, dass der anstieg der geburtenhäufi gkeit der 1970er und 1980er kohorten im alter ab 30 jahre ausreichend stark sein muss, um den zunehmenden rückgang der fertilität im alter unter 30 jahren zu kompensieren. dafür müsste sich das geburtenverhalten der frauen sowohl beim übergang zum ersten kind als auch im hinblick auf den familienzuwachs verändern. die positiven impulse in der geburtenentwicklung der letzten jahre sind insofern folgerichtig und zeigen, dass sich der nachholprozess intensiviert hat. für einen anstieg und anschließende stabilisierung der kohortenfertilität auf dem niveau von mindestens 1,6 kindern je frau wäre jedoch darüber hinaus erforderlich, dass sich die geburtenhäufi gkeit im alter unter 30 jahren stabilisiert und die kinderlosenquote sinkt. demografi sches bild der fertilität in deutschland vor und nach dem zensus 2011 • 97 danksagung die autorin bedankt sich bei felix zur nieden, bettina sommer, martin bujard, norbert f. schneider und bei zwei anonymen gutachtern für wichtige hinweise zu früheren versionen dieses artikels. literatur beier, henning m. et al. 2012: medizinische und biologische aspekte der fertilität. in: stock günter et al. 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(hrsg.) 2012: zukunft mit kindern: fertilität und gesellschaftliche entwicklung in deutschland, österreich und der schweiz. frankfurt 2012. te velde, egbert et al. 2012: the effect of postponement of fi rst motherhood on permanent involuntary childlessness and total fertility rate in six european countries since the 1970s. in: human reproduction 27, 4: 1179-1183 [doi: 10.1093/humrep/der455]. wood, jonas; neels, karel; kil, tine 2014: the educational gradient of childlessness and cohort parity progression in 14 low fertility countries. in: demographic research 31,46: 1365-1416 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2014.31.46]. • olga pötzsch100 eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und von der autorin autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census: still no trend reversal in sight“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2016-02en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-02en2, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 15.10.2015 angenommen am: 29.01.2016 olga pötzsch (). statistisches bundesamt. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: olga.poetzsch@destatis.de url: http://www.destatis.de published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider abstract: this article examines the infl uence of intimate relationships on smoking habits and body weight. we differentiated between couples living apart together, cohabitating couples and married couples. the data basis is the partnermarktsurvey, a german representative telephone survey of 2,002 people aged between 16 and 55 years. the results show that living in a relationship promotes smoking cessation, however only when the partners live together. this indicates that the positive protection effect of relationships on smoking habits is based on the mechanism of social control and social support, which is linked to the context of a shared household. in addition, we observed the homogamy in smoking habits of partners that arises as early as mate selection and is intensifi ed through assimilation processes during the relationship. with regard to body weight, the study shows a weight gain over the course of a relationship which is, however, not greater among married and cohabitating couples than among couples living apart together. keywords: relationship living arrangements · body mass index · smoking · partnermarktsurvey · health behaviour 1 introduction recent decades have been marked by a widespread change in couples’ living arrangements. over the course of decreasing marriage rates and increasing divorce rates, married couples have become less common while single living, living apart together and cohabitating couples have become more frequent (cf. brüderl 2004; huinink/konietzka 2007: 75; klein 1999b). for example, the percentage of long-term single people in western germany has risen from only about 5 percent among women and men born in the year 1930 to almost 20 percent among women born in 1960 and to nearly 30 percent among men born in 1960 (engstler/menning 2003: 68). parallel to this phenomenon, the health behaviour of the population has changed. body weight, which is a good indicator of eating and physical activity behaviours, comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 673-694 (date of release: 02.09.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-13en0 • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider674 has risen sharply on average (e.g. mensink et al. 2005; robert koch-institut 2009). for example, the average body mass index (bmi) of the adult population rose from 24.3 to 26.3 between 1978 and 2009 (statistisches bundesamt 2010).1 smoking habits have also undergone a change, but less uniform in nature. in recent years the smoking rate among men has dropped steadily. that of women, by contrast, is not in decline, yet remains lower than that of men (statistisches bundesamt 2006). both excess body weight and smoking are frequent causes of chronic illnesses and signifi cantly infl uence the health and mortality of the population (ezzati/lopez 2003; hauner 1996). with regard to the better health of married people (brockmann 2008; gove 1973; wilson/oswald 2005), the question arises of whether the change in couples’ living arrangements perhaps contributes to explaining changes in health behaviour in the population. very little can be asserted about this aspect since only very little is known about the health effects of relationship types outside of marriage. in this article, to examine the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on health we look at two of the most important health aspects or indicators of health-relevant behaviour – the body mass index, which represents body weight in relation to height, and smoking habits. a consideration of smoking and body weight or bmi is also of interest because for both aspects of health behaviour different correlations are observed with relationship status. unlike many earlier studies on the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on health behaviour, which differentiate only between married and unmarried people, in this article we differentiate between married couples, cohabitating couples, couples living apart together (lat) and singles. 2 empirical fi ndings, explanatory approaches and hypotheses first, we will portray existing fi ndings on the correlation between couple’s living arrangements and smoking habits as well as body weight. research has focussed on marriage in this respect. we will then discuss competing explanatory patterns and generate empirically testable hypotheses. the results for germany consistently report that married people smoke less than non-married people (helmert et al. 2001; lampert/burger 2005; mons 2007; schulze/lampert 2006). also, there is a correlation between smoking habits of partners (sutton 1980; venters et al. 1984; vink et al. 2003). the empirical results on the correlation between body weight and couples’ living arrangements are, by contrast, inconsistent. some studies show an on average higher bmi of married people compared to unmarried ones (heineck 2006; statistisches bundesamt 2006; ross/mirowsky 1983). other studies are unable to identify any differences (kittel et al. 1978; register/williams 1990) or ascertain higher weights among unmarried people than married ones (noppa/bengtsson 1980; sund 1 the bmi value for the year 1978 is based on the 1978 german microcensus and was provided to us courtesy of the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2010). the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 675 et al. 2010). other fi ndings indicate that even the transition to cohabitation is accompanied by a rise in the bmi (averett et al. 2008; the/gordon-larsen 2009). finally, existing studies show a similarity in the body weight of partners (falba/sindelar 2008; knuiman et al. 1996a; knuiman et al. 1996b). four approaches can be considered which might explain these results. on the one hand, we must differentiate between causal effects of living arrangements on health behaviour and selection processes on the dating market. in the fi rst case, couples’ living arrangements cause a change in health behaviour (cf. the following chapter 2.1-2.4). in the second case the causal direction is reversed, in that health behaviour infl uences the probability of fi nding a partner (chapter 2.5). on the other hand, we must differentiate between assimilation processes of the partners and assortative matching (i.e., individuals with similar characteristics start a relationship more often), whereby similarities in the health behaviour of each partner can be explained. for example, the partners’ health behaviour may become aligned fi rst during the relationship (chapter 2.6) or similarity can already determine mate selection and therefore already exist at the beginning of the relationship (chapter 2.7). 2.1 social control and social support an effect of couples’ living arrangements on health behaviour is anticipated mainly based on social control and social support by the partner (cf. umberson 1987; umberson 1992). from the rational-choice perspective, we are all interested in a partner who behaves in a health-conscious way, regardless of our own health behaviour (duncan et al. 2006: 692), since health is a form of human capital (cf. becker 1993), which is the basis, for example, for achieving educational returns on the employment market (cf. gross/groß 2008: 253). therefore, the benefi t of a relationship for an individual also depends on the health behaviour of the partner. if the partner has health problems or illness, this leads to losses or costs (e.g. through loss of income or expenses for medical care), which could have been avoided through early healthful behaviour. for this reason, partners invest time and energy in supporting and controlling their partner, which enables health motivating behavioural changes. in addition to this direct infl uence of social control and social support by the partner (known as the main effect hypothesis), there is also a possible indirect effect on health behaviour (known as the buffering hypothesis). social support in a relationship can buffer stress (e.g. cohen/wills 1985), which may otherwise be reacted to with suboptimal coping strategies or with health-detrimental behaviour such as greater nicotine consumption (cf. ikard et al. 1969; stein et al. 2008; wills/shiffman 1985), a high-calorie or high-fat diet (cf. laitinen et al. 2002; ng/jeffery 2003) or possibly also with lessened physical activity (cf. klein 2009; steptoe et al. 1996). these stress reactions can partly be considered dysfunctional coping behaviours, which reduce stress for the short term (subjectively) (cf. on smoking parrott 1994). according to this hypothesis, the protection effect of a relationship arises only indirectly in the context of external stress factors. the protection infl uences of social support and social control in the relationship are illustrated in table 1 by plus signs. • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider676 as for differences between couples’ living arrangements, we anticipate an effect on health behaviour primarily among married and cohabitating couples, since living together in one household improves opportunities for social support and social control and reduces its costs (cf. duncan et al. 2006: 692). by contrast, we anticipate no or only a minor protection effect of living apart together. these hypotheses concerning the differences in the protection effect of couples’ living arrangements are illustrated in table 1 by symbols (less than, greater than, equal). 2.2 living in a relationship unlike other health indicators, protection from excess weight is contested in various ways. as for caloric intake, a relationship is accompanied by more frequent food intake (craig/truswell 1988; davis et al. 1985; jeffery/rick 2002; macpherson 1983), and meals eaten in company tend to be more rich (de castro/de castro 1989; jeffery/rick 2002). this negative protection effect is possibly intensifi ed by the fact that regular shared meals are among relationship role obligations (averett et al. 2008; sobal et al. 1992: 916). but also with regard to caloric consumption, protection effects are negative if a relationship is accompanied by a less active lifestyle (klein 2009; sobal et al. 1992: 920). the existence of a mutual household appears decisive for the listed negative protection effects. ultimately, regular shared meals largely depend on whether the tab. 1: hypotheses on the infl uence of the type of relationship on smoking habits and body weight explanatory approach protection effect on smoking1 protection effect on body weight1 differences in the protection effects between couples' living arrangements3 alternative hypothesis3 social control and social support + + m = co > lat > s living in a relationship 0 – m = co < lat = s social norms + 0 m > co = lat = s release from the dating market 0 – m < co < lat < s relationship selection + + m = co = lat > s m > co > lat > s adverse selection – – m = co = lat < s m < co < lat < s assimilation +/–2 +/–2 m = co > lat resp. m = co < lat assortative matching + + m = co = lat 1 + positive protection effect; 0 no effect; – negative protection effect 2 effect in relation to smoking or diet and exercise behaviour of partner 3 m – married; co – cohabitating; lat – living apart together; s – single source: own design the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 677 partners live together. among people living apart together, by contrast, no negative protection effect on the bmi is anticipated in this regard (see table 1). 2.3 social norms various relationship types are possibly linked to social norms that infl uence health behaviour. this is based on the view that health-detrimental behaviour, which is linked to the “wilder” life of singles, contradicts a lifestyle in a relationship (duncan et al. 2006: 692). one example is that of mothers who smoke. the relationship dependence of normative models affect drug consumption in particular (including smoking), but less so nutritional and exercise behaviour. therefore, on this basis protection effects are anticipated only for smoking, but not for body weight (see table 1). the greatest degree of union formation in the living arrangements of couples is to be seen in marriage and it also has the greatest and therefore deepest roots of concrete social norms in society. other relationship types, by contrast, have only become more widespread in recent decades and are accompanied by less distinct normative ideals (duncan et al. 2006: 692). we therefore assume that normative protection effects are effective primarily among married couples (see table 1). 2.4 release from the dating market a fourth explanatory approach for the relationship effect on health behaviour refers to dating market processes. while searching for a partner, one makes efforts to behave in ways that increase one’s own attractiveness and these include healthful behaviours. when entering a relationship, people are released from direct competition on the dating market, possibly combined with a decline in health awareness (cf. averett et al. 2008). this has been empirically confi rmed with regard to body weight (klein 2011). with regard to smoking, however, the dating market argument is hardly of quantitative relevance since most people begin smoking before the age of about 20 years (cf. statistisches bundesamt 2006: 63-64), but stabile relationships are increasingly not begun until later ages. since the stability of couple relationships increases with an increasing degree of union formation, married people are most likely to expect a lasting release from the dating market and people in living apart together relationships are the least likely. we therefore anticipate correspondingly tiered negative protection (see table 1). 2.5 relationship selection contrary to the above explanatory approaches, the selection hypothesis assumes that it is not the relationship that affects health, but conversely that those in better health have better chances of fi nding a partner (e.g. goldman 1993; unger 2008). while the relevance of health selection on the dating market is fi ercely debated (also with regard to the fact that the effects of behaviour on the health of young adults, who focuss on the choice of a life mate, are hardly visible), selection according to • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider678 physical attractiveness, which also depends on the body weight, is empirically well substantiated (carmalt et al. 2008; kurzban/weeden 2005; sobal 1999). there are also initial empirical indications of differentiation of dating market chances according to smoking status for the reason that non-smokers tend to be more attractive partners due to better health and the costs of tobacco products (cf. klein/rüffer 2001: 174). since both body weight and smoking habits are obvious, we can assume that selection is initiated during mate selection and no longer plays much of a role once a couple moves in together or marries (see table 1). alternatively, however, we cannot exclude that the long term during which the health behaviour examined here affects health also contributes to selection in the transition to a more stabile type of relationship. as a consequence of this tiered selection, married couples would have the lowest smoker quota and the lowest body weight, followed by cohabitating couples and then by couples living apart together (see table 1). finally, we must also consider adverse selection. this is based on the idea that people with poor health behaviour enter into marriage and cohabitation precisely due to their protection effects and show a lesser separation rate. a higher tendency to marry is empirically confi rmed for men in poor health (lillard/panis 1996) and for smokers between the ages of 16 and 23 years (cheung/sloggett 1998). but high body weight is also an incentive to stabilise a relationship through cohabitation and marriage due to the lesser chances of fi nding a new partner after separation. based on tiered adverse selection we anticipate the lowest smoking rate and lowest body weight among singles, followed by couples living apart together, cohabitating couples and fi nally by married couples (see table 1). 2.6 relationship assimilation processes one scarcely investigated extension of the established protection hypothesis raises the question to what extent relationship infl uences on health differ depending on the characteristics of the partner because an assimilation might occur in the health behaviours of partners. we differentiate between three assimilation processes (klein 2011): (1) the standardisation of health-relevant living conditions, in particular the level of prosperity and associated possibilities for a healthy lifestyle and medical care. (2) an assimilation in the lifestyles of the partners has a direct effect on health-relevant behaviour. (3) in addition to this direct behavioural infl uence there are different mutual normative guidelines and demands depending on the confi guration of the partners. the relevance of assimilation processes for health behaviour has hardly been analysed. with regard to smoking, at the latest starting at an age range in the midtwenties only cessation behaviour is quantitatively signifi cant, i.e. an assimilation of smokers to a non-smoking partner. indeed empirical studies indicate that people are more likely to quit smoking if the partner is a non-smoker (dollar et al. 2009; mcbride et al. 1998; mons 2007). with regard to body weight, the close links between caloric intake and calorie consumption with the shared lifestyle make it likely that lifestyle assimilation processes are more decisive for body weight than for other the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 679 aspects of health behaviour. in a current study (klein 2011), no indication was found of partners’ weights adapting to one another – this study, however, does not differentiate according to types of relationships. as for the question of whether assimilation to the health behaviour of the partner differs depending on the type of relationship, only few results presently exist. it was shown that assimilation in obesity between the partners arose as a result of cohabitation (cf. the/gordon-larsen 2009). 2.7 assortative matching assortative matching is an alternative explanation for the similarity in the health behaviours of partners. according to this, not only people with healthful behaviour would fi nd it easier to fi nd a partner (relationship selection), but also people with similar health behaviour would tend to enter into relationships with one another. assortative matching may be based on a principle of homogamy in mate selection, according to which potential partners with similar characteristics – e.g. similar bmi or smoking habits – are perceived as more attractive. on the other hand, homogamy can arise based on the principle of maximisation (i.e., the search for the most attractive partner). in this case, the competition for attractive partners also leads to homogamous relationships, when each person rejects a relationship with someone who is less attractive than they are (cf. klein 2000). since weight and smoking habits are obvious characteristics of a potential partner, assortative matching takes effect during mate selection, whereas we expect hardly any differences in similarity between relationship types. this assumption is also confi rmed by fi ndings which show that with regard to other obvious traits such as education and religion, homogamy occurs during mate selection and not only later upon entry into marriage (blackwell/lichter 2004; klein 1999a). there are studies which confi rm this for smoking habits (agrawal et al. 2006; clark/etilé 2006). 3 data and methods this analysis is based on the data of the partnermarktsurvey (see klein et al. 2010: 203-204), a representative telephone survey of 2,002 german heterosexuals aged between 16 and 55 years. they were recruited using random telephone numbers between january and august 2009. the respondent rate was 40 percent. it was a cross-sectional survey that was supplemented with retrospective questions on the current relationship and on health behaviour. such quasi-longitudinal data on relationship biographies can be considered suffi ciently reliable despite the associated problems with retrospective questions (cf. klein/fischer-kerli 2000). one of the advantages of the data is that couples living apart together are also included, and not only cohabiting and married couples. another is that the data also contain the partner’s smoking habits and body mass index. it is also unique in that it provides information on health behaviour precisely at the beginning of the • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider680 relationship (not just, for example, during the year the relationship began), making it possible to analyse changes during the relationship. smoking status (smokers vs. non-smokers) and body mass index (bmi) are analysed as dependent variables at the time of the interview. the bmi depicts the ratio of weight and height and is calculated as follows: bmi = weight in kg / (height in m)². the information on body weight and height, as well as all other information, is based on self-reporting.2 other dependent variables included in the analysis are changes in smoking habits and changes in body weight since the beginning of the relationship. we investigated whether people ceased smoking since the beginning of the relationship. this information is the result of two questions: one on the current smoking status as well as one on the smoking status at the beginning of the relationship. the relevant analyses refer only to people who were smokers at the beginning of their current relationship.3 we also examine whether people have gained considerable weight since the beginning of the relationship. this is included via the following question: “when you entered into your relationship with [name of the partner], did you weigh about the same as you do now?” with the response categories: “yes, about exactly the same,” “no, far less” and “no, far more.”4 the partner’s smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship are analysed as another dependent variable. the independent variables with regard to the current relationship status differ between not in a relationship, lat relationship, cohabitation and marriage.5 the partner’s smoking habits and the changes to this during the relationship are asked similarly to that of the respondent. the control variables used are gender, age, educational level (in years) and relationship duration (in years). to calculate the years of education, the certifi cates of the german school types were converted as follows (cf. jöckel et al. 1997): no certifi cate (including those still in school) = 8 years; volksschule or hauptschule = 9 years; realschule or polytechnische oberschule 10th grade (before 1965: 8th grade) = 10 years; fachhochschulreife or certifi cate from a fachoberschule = 12 years and hochschulreife = 13 years. 2 comparative calculations with the 1998 bundesgesundheitssurvey (cf. thefeld et al. 1999) not shown here show that the self-reported body weight in the telephone survey of the partnermarktsurvey is slightly lower than actual measurements on the scale. however, we do not assume that structural differences are also affected by this. this would only be the case if the underassessment, e.g. for married people, were greater or lesser than for cohabiting people. as for the self-reported smoking behaviour, similarly, we must take account for an underassessment of smoking prevalence, but not that this affects differences between groups. 3 we do not analyse smoking that begins during relationships, since this is very rare and the relevant case number of 35 people is too small. 4 weight loss in relationships is not analysed since considerable weight loss during relationships is rare due to the known age-weight curve and because the relevant case number of 64 people is too small. 5 all married people are included in the “married” category regardless of whether they currently live with their spouse or not. the latter is the case for 17 people. the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 681 tab. 2: shares and mean values of the dependent and independent variables and number of missing values shares/ mean value number of cases dependent variables current smoking status smoker 0.31 619 non-smoker 0.69 1378 missing value 3 bmi 24.37 1946 missing value 54 quit smoking during current relationship no 0.54 378 yes 0.46 316 missing value/not applicable 1306 gained weight during current relationship no 0.55 804 yes 0.45 656 missing value/not applicable 540 smoking status at the beginning of current relationship smoker 0.52 767 non-smoker 0.48 695 missing value/not applicable 538 independent variables gender male 0.40 806 female 0.60 1194 age 39.08 2000 current relationship status not in relationship 0.27 537 living apart together 0.14 279 cohabitating 0.10 196 married 0.49 988 duration of relationship in years 16.09 1450 missing value/not applicable 550 changes in smoking behaviour of partner during the relationship partner did not smoke during relationship or quit smoking 0.70 1017 partner began smoking during relationship 0.02 30 partner has always been a smoker 0.28 412 missing value/not applicable 541 partner's smoking behaviour at the beginning of the relationship smoker 0,50 725 non-smoker 0.50 735 missing value/not applicable 540 source: partnermarktsurvey, own calculations • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider682 the relationship duration was fi rst calculated to the exact day based on the information provided at the time of the interview and at the beginning of the relationship. since for the beginning of the relationship only the year and month are known, the middle of the month (the 16th day of the month) was assumed as the beginning of the relationship. if only the year was cited for the beginning of the relationship, it was set on 1 july of the respective year. in four cases in which the relationship began during the month of the survey, the beginning of the relationship was set at the midpoint between the beginning of the month and the date of the interview. to convert this to precise year information the exact day calculation of the relationship duration was divided by 365.25. of the 2,002 cases in the partnermarktsurvey, two cases were excluded from the analyses because the current relationship status was not known. other exclusions resulted from missing values for the respective dependent variable. also cases with missing values for other independent variables besides relationship status were excluded in the affected analyses. table 2 shows the number of missing values for all dependent and independent variables. after exclusion of all cases with missing values (on smoking status or other variables included in the analyses), 1,964 people are available for the analyses of current smoking status. in addition, 1,914 people are available for the analyses of the current bmi, 673 people for the analyses of smoking cessation during the relationship, 1,425 people for the analyses of a considerable weight gain during the relationship as well as 1,424 people for the analyses of smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship. table 2 also shows the mean values and shares of the dependent and independent variables. ols regression (ordinary least squares) was used to analyse the relationship effects on the bmi. the analyses of all other dependent variables are based on logit regression models. 4 results table 3 fi rst compares the smoking habits and the bmi based on the couples’ living arrangements (including those without a partner).6 the reference group includes those who are in a relationship but do not live together. the choice of this reference group also reveals any differences between the living arrangements with partners that do not differ through initial relationship selection (because the living arrangements of all those in a relationship might have gone through a possible initial selection). 6 the infl uences of age, gender and educational level are kept statistically constant. this is important because smoking rates diverge considerably according to age, gender and education (cf. for an overview statistisches bundesamt 2006; schulze/lampert 2006). the inclusion of the squared age takes the non-linear correlation between age and smoking or bmi into account. the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 683 as illustrated by the left column of table 3, only married people smoke signifi cantly less and therefore profi t from a protection effect. the low, statistically insignifi cant difference in smoking habits between those with partners living apart together (lat) and those without partners contradicts the hypothesis of initial selection – i.e. preference given to non-smokers on the dating market.7 the results for body weight (right column of table 3) are similar. here, too, only marriage shows a signifi cant effect. married people have a higher bmi than those with partners living apart together. there is no statistically signifi cant bmi difference between people without a partner, those in lat relationships and cohabiting people (table 3). the statistically insignifi cant difference between people without a partner and those with partners living apart together contradicts the hypothesis of initial relationship selection of people with a lower bmi. then again we cannot exclude that the initial selection of slimmer people in relationships is not neutralised by a negative protection effect through release from the dating market. while table 3 illustrates the current smoking habits and current bmi, the following analyses use the longitudinal information of the data and examine changes in smoking habits and body weight over the course of the respondents’ current relationship. only those are included who are in a relationship. the respective results are shown in the left columns of tables 4 and 5 (model 1). table 4 looks at the tab. 3: relationship effects on smoking status (logit regression, logit coeffi cients) and on bmi (ols regression) influencing factor smoking bmi man1 0.34** 1.85*** age 0.12*** 0.41*** age*age -0.001*** -0.004*** years of education -0.17*** -0.36*** without a partner2 0.07 0.35 cohabiting2 -0.12 0.40 married2 -0.61*** 0.64* constant -0.91 18.37*** mcfadden r² (smoking) or corrected r² (bmi) 0.03 0.16 number of cases 1964 1914 signifi cance levels: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; + p < 0.10 1 reference category: woman 2 reference category: living apart together source: partnermarktsurvey, own calculations 7 cf. however the ensuing analyses in table 4 for restrictions. • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider684 determinants of smoking cessation among those who smoked at the beginning of the relationship.8 our analysis revealed that smoking cessation during relationships is more frequent both among cohabiting couples and married people than couples living apart together (which form the reference group). in addition, the protection effect is the greatest among married people. with regard to a considerable weight gain during the relationship (model 1 in table 5) only married people have a greater chance than couples living apart together. tab. 4: determinants of smoking cessation during the relationship – the infl uence of relationship status, relationship duration and the partner’s smoking habits (logit regression, logit coeffi cients)1 influencing factor model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 man2 -0.44** -0.37* -0.51** -0.51** age -0.08 -0.01 -0.02 -0.03 age*age 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 years of education 0.10+ 0.09+ 0.07 0.07 cohabiting3 0.95** 0.69+ 0.88* 0.84 married3 1.52*** 0.78* 0.72* 1.01+ duration of relationship 0.06*** 0.05*** 0.05*** partner did not smoke during relationship or quit smoking4 1.29*** 1.56** partner began smoking during relationship4 -0.14 -0.17 cohabitating3*partner did not smoke during relationship or quit smoking4 0.22 marriage3*partner did not smoke during relationship or quit smoking4 -0.41 constant -1.36 -2.18 -2.41+ -2.45+ mcfadden r² 0.08 0.10 0.15 0.15 number of cases 673 673 673 673 signifi cance levels: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; + p < 0.10 1 the analyses only refer to people in relationships (i.e. not singles) as well as to people who smoked at the beginning of the relationship. 2 reference category: woman 3 reference category: living apart together 4 reference category: partner always smoked source: partnermarktsurvey, own calculations 8 the onset of smoking among non-smoking adults is quantitatively insignifi cant and is not examined here due to the low number of cases (see point 3 above). the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 685 nevertheless, a problem posed by model 1 (as well as by table 3) is that the three couples’ living arrangements exhibit very different relationship durations. while relationships of people who do not share a household usually are comparatively short-lived, on average married people have the longest relationship durations. we must therefore clarify whether (and to what extent) the differences in the protection effect (smoking cessation) or negative protection (weight gain) truly correlate with the type of relationship or rather can be explained by the different relationship duration: since a longer relationship duration is accompanied per se with a greater probability of behavioural change during the relationship due to the longer period of time involved. model 2 of tables 4 and 5 therefore also includes the relationship duration and thus is kept constant. as shown in tables 4 and 5 (model 2), the differences between the couples’ living arrangements shrink greatly with the given relationship duration.9 nonetheless even after controlling for relationship duration (table 4, model 2) there is a greater chance of smoking cessation in relationships for married and cotab. 5: determinants of considerable weight gain during the relationship – the infl uence of relationship status and relationship duration (logit regression, logit coeffi cients)1 influencing factor model 1 model 2 man2 -0.16 -0.06 age 0.06 0.14** age*age -0.0004 -0.0018** years of education -0.17*** -0.16*** cohabiting3 0.32 0.04 married3 0.99*** 0.13 duration of relationship 0.06*** constant -0.90 -1.93* mcfadden r² 0.08 0.11 number of cases 1425 1425 signifi cance levels: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; + p < 0.10 1 the analyses only refer to people in relationships (i.e. not singles). 2 reference category: woman 3 reference category: living apart together 4 reference category: partner did not gain weight during relationship or lost weight source: partnermarktsurvey, own calculations 9 analyses not shown here reveal that the effect of the duration of a relationship on considerable weight gain during the relationship is signifi cantly greater among men than women. • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider686 habitating people compared to people in lat relationships. the difference between cohabiting people and people in lat relationships are, however, only of weak statistical signifi cance. the similarity in the effects for married and cohabiting couples supports our hypothesis that social control and social support are decisive for the infl uence of the type of relationship on smoking habits, since living together in one household improves opportunities for control as well as support. by contrast, social norms, which promised protection effects mainly for married couples, appeared to have merely minor signifi cance. tiered relationship selection is a possible alternative explanation, however, in which smoking cessation increases the probability of moving in together and marrying. with regard to considerable weight gain during the relationship, there are no differences revealed between the three types of couples’ living arrangements after controlling for relationship duration (table 5, model 2). the greater chance of married people to exhibit weight gain during the relationship compared to people in lat relationships (model 1) can be explained by the far longer average relationship durations of married couples. the probability of weight gain during the relationship increases trivially with a longer relationship duration. model 3 of table 4 additionally examines the assimilation hypothesis for smoking habits, for which information is also available (unlike the bmi) for the beginning of the relationship. for this purpose the model includes two additional variables (in addition to model 2 of table 4) that show the smoking habits of the partner at the beginning of the relationship and changes during the relationship. the fi rst variable measures whether the partner of the respondent was always a non-smoker during the relationship or gave up smoking over the course of the relationship. the second variable measures whether the partner began smoking during the relationship.10 the reference group are those whose partners always smoked. it reveals that smoking cessation in the relationship is favoured when the partner never smoked or quit smoking during the relationship. this implies an assimilation of the partners with regard to their smoking status. model 4 of table 4 includes additional interaction terms with the couples’ living arrangements in order to examine whether assimilation processes differ according to couples’ living arrangements. as a result, no signifi cant interaction effects were found. contrary to our expectations (cf. table 1) assimilation of partners to one another is not greater in cohabiting couples and in married couples than in couples living apart together. finally, table 6 investigates the hypothesis of assortative matching. the question is pursued of whether not only assimilation occurs with regard to smoking habits over the course of the relationship, but also whether there was homogamy in smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship. for this purpose table 6 compares the partners’ smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship. controlling for gender, age at the beginning of the relationship and educational level, we ascertain a strong positive effect of the partner’s smoking habits at the beginning of 10 since this is very rare, (29 cases) we did not interpret the effect. the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 687 the relationship on the respondent’s smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship. this implies that the partners’ homogamy in smoking habits results not only (but also, see modell 3 of table 4) from assimilation processes over the course of the relationship, but that it is already a consequence of mate selection. 5 summary and discussion the article examines the effects of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight using data from the partnermarktsurvey. the advantage of this data is that it provides information about changes in smoking status and body weight since the beginning of a relationship and that this information is available for both partners, even if the partners do not live together. the results of this study reveal at fi rst that fewer married people tend to smoke and that they have a higher bmi than people in a lat relationship. by contrast there are no signifi cant differences between people who do not cohabitate with their mate and people without partners. this indicates that relationship selection is not a decisive reason for the differences in the smoking habits and body weight between couples with different types of living arrangements. further results of this study refer to the probability of smoking cessation and considerable weight gain in relationships. these fi ndings show that the chances for smoking cessation during a relationship are greater both among cohabiting couples as well as married couples than among couples living apart together. this indicates that the positive protection effect of relationships on smoking habits is based on tab. 6: smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship according to smoking habits of the partner at the beginning of the relationship (logit regression, logit coeffi cients)1 influencing factor man2 0.45*** age at beginning of relationship 0.01 years of education -0.15*** partner was smoker at beginning of relationship3 1.14*** constant 0.70+ mcfadden r² 0.07 number of cases 1424 signifi cance levels: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; + p < 0.10 1 the analyses only refer to people in relationships (i.e. not singles) 2 reference category: woman 3 reference category: partner non-smoker at beginning of relationship source: partnermarktsurvey, own calculations • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider688 the mechanism of social control and social support, which is linked to the context of sharing a household. other results of this study are that the chance of giving up smoking is greater in a relationship if the partner did not smoke or quit smoking since the beginning of the relationship. this implies assimilation by the partner with regard to smoking habits, which occurs among couples living apart together, cohabiting couples as well as married couples. in addition, there is a tendency that partners will have the same smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship, i.e. there is assortative matching with regard to smoking habits in the context of mate selection. with regard to considerable weight gain during a relationship, there are no differences according to the type of relationship. neither the hypothesis that weight gain is greatest among married couples because the release from dating market competition is most certain, nor the hypothesis that weight gain is greatest in cohabiting relationships, for instance because of taking meals together, are confi rmed. the results of this study, which indicate a protection effect of marriage on smoking habits, harmonise with results from earlier studies. it enhances the previous state of research by showing that protection can also be assumed for cohabiting couples. unlike earlier studies that ascribe similarities of mates’ smoking habits primarily to assortative matching at the beginning of a relationship (agrawal et al. 2006; clark/etilé 2006), this study reveals both initial relationship selection and assimilation processes. this assimilation in smoking habits during a relationship, which was previously only observed among married couples (dollar et al. 2009; mcbride et al. 1998; mons 2007), is found among all relationship types. the results for weight gain during relationships, which reveal no differences according to couples’ living arrangements, do not concur with existing studies that observe a rise in body weight following commencement of cohabitation (the/gordon-larsen 2009). a number of limitations must be taken into consideration when interpreting the results. for example, this study was unable to clarify the extent to which selection contributes to the observed correlations in the transition to more institutionalised relationship types. we must also consider that people who quit smoking during their relationship are more likely to move in with or marry their partner (tiered selection), or that people who gain considerable weight during their relationship are more likely to marry (adverse tiered selection). another limitation is that the information about bmi and smoking habits are selfreported and can therefore be biased due to social desirability. the information on weight gain during the relationship, smoking cessation during the relationship and smoking habits at the beginning of the relationship, which are based on retrospective information, can also be biased by errors in memory. however, in both cases we do not assume that the extent of the bias depends on the couples’ living arrangements and therefore that differences between couples’ living arrangements should not be affected by this. due to the lack of suitable longitudinal information neither the known interaction between smoking and body weight nor the birth of children could be taken into consideration in the analyses. we must consider, for example, that the higher body weight of married people may also be due to their lower smoking prevalence. the the infl uence of couples’ living arrangements on smoking habits and body weight • 689 results of this study, according to which marriage both promotes smoking cessation and favours considerable weight gain, concur with this. as for children, whether or to what extent the favourable effect of marriage and cohabitation on smoking cessation as well as the unfavourable effect of marriage on weight gain during a relationship is caused by the existence of children remains an unanswered question. as for the question of the signifi cance of the changes in couples’ living arrangements for the health behaviour of the population, we can conclude that the decline in marriage and the related increase in cohabitation will not result in any negative effects on smoking habits in germany. a protection effect for smoking was found for both married couples and cohabiting couples. we also do not anticipate any negative effects on body weight caused by the changes in couples’ living arrangements since we observed no correlation between the couples’ living arrangements and weight gain during relationships. references agrawal, arpana et al. 2006: assortative mating for cigarette smoking and for alcohol consumption in female australian 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substance use. orlando: academic press: 3-24. wilson, chris; oswald, andrew j. 2005: how does marriage affect physical and psychological health? a survey of the longitudinal evidence. 2005 [http://econpapers.repec. org/repec:iza:izadps:dp1619, 23.08.2013]. • thomas klein, ingmar rapp, björn schneider694 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “der einfl uss der partnerschaftlichen lebensform auf rauchverhalten und körpergewicht”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-13de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-13de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 06.09.2011 date of acceptance: 30.11.2012 prof. dr. thomas klein ( ), dr. ingmar rapp, björn schneider. max-weber-institut für soziologie, universität heidelberg, 69115 heidelberg, germany. e-mail: thomas.klein@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de, ingmar.rapp@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de, bjoern.schneider@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de url: http://www.soz.uni-heidelberg.de © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ willingness to continue working in retirement age frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser abstract: this article explores whether and to what degree information on the socioeconomic status – measured by professional status and disposable household income – allows making reliable statements on the willingness to remain in work in retirement age. these observations are controlled for professional and individual characteristics. the data basis is constituted by the study entitled “continuing in employment in pensionable age” with n = 1,500 dependent employees aged from 55 to under 65. logistic regressions show that the socioeconomic status makes a statistically-signifi cant contribution towards explaining the willingness to continue in employment: in comparison to employees with a lower or medium professional status, those individuals who have a high professional status tended to be signifi cantly more willing to remain in working life for longer. there is a negative connection between the disposable household income and the willingness to remain in employment in retirement age. the signifi cant effects that were found are however restricted to the women in the study. keywords: demographic ageing · retirement age · labour market · extended working life · socioeconomic status · role theory · continuity theory · life course perspective 1 introduction the future demographic changes within the population in germany will gradually infl uence the supply side on the labour markets. as a result of the decades of low fertility levels, there will be a long-term decline in the size of the potential working population as fewer and fewer young people advance into working life, whilst at the same time an expanding group of older workers leaves the labour market. the dynamics of this shift will probably be most pronounced in the period between 2020 and 2030, when the high-fertility cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called baby-boomers, successively retire (höhn et al. 2008; börsch-supan/wilke 2009). comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 4 (2010): 869-902 (date of release: 22.12.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-19en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-19en6 • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser870 the predictable ageing of society has for example consequences for pay-as-you-go pension systems in the sense that the relation between younger and older people will develop for the benefi t of the older and, as can presently be seen, greater burdens will be imposed on the young working-age population. a variety of pension reforms aim to adjust the ratio between contributors and benefi ciaries. the legal amendments to the statutory retirement age, together with alterations in labour law, should be particularly emphasised here. whilst a trend towards early retirement was promoted between the 1970s and the 1990s in order to “make space” for the coming generations in the working world, a reversal in this trend has been developing since the 1990s (backes/clemens 2003: 43; wübbeke 2005: 9-29; bäcker et al. 2009: 46-50; deutscher bundestag 2006: 84-86). the fact that the opportunity is (still) being taken to retire before reaching the regular age limit is proven by taking a look at the retirement statistics. in 2007, almost half of the respective pension cohort, which is a considerable share of recently-retired individuals, had retired with fi nancial reductions (brussig 2010b). the act to adjust the standard age limit to demographic developments and to strengthen the financial foundation of statutory pensions insurance (gesetz zur anpassung der regelaltersgrenze an die demografi sche entwicklung und zur stärkung der finanzierungsgrundlagen der gesetzlichen rentenversicherung), also known as “retirement at 67”, points to the future in that such an early departure from working life, if possible at all, will entail considerable long term fi nancial burdens. therefore, there will be growing legal and economic pressure on the future working population to work longer. there has been little discussion in europe, and particularly in germany, on the future extension of the working phase beyond the age of 65 (komp et al. 2010). this is understandable in the sense that these considerations will only become more signifi cant in connection with “retirement at 67”. considerations to date have tended to focus on how early retirement could be achieved in social, political or economic terms (e.g. bäcker et al. 2009). also, the current fi gures on earning conduct, differentiated by age, show that employment rates fall markedly from the age of 55, and that the fall becomes more dynamic from the age of 60 (fig. 1). in the context of “challenges and perspectives in an ageing society”, one of the main research areas of the federal institute for population research, it should be explored with regard to the potential of older people to be available on the labour markets whether in addition to the mentioned legal constraints and resultant economic ones, persons would also be willing to work beyond the age of 65 (the current retirement age for receiving an unreduced old-age pension) on a voluntary basis. as a part of “active” or “productive” ageing (künemund 2006), voluntary willingness to continue in employment after offi cially withdrawing from the working world is likely to become still more signifi cant for the future. this is justifi ed not lastly by the fact that today’s elderly differ considerably from yesterday’s with regard to their state of health, living conditions or fi nancial security. hence, today’s elderly on average already have many more resources available which they can use for active, prothe impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 871 ductive ageing1 (künemund 2006: 292-296; deutscher bundestag 2006). moreover, further improvements in the resources available, as well as in living conditions, are anticipated for “tomorrow’s elderly” (mai 2003: 233-240). the demographic and pension law developments – increasing life expectancy and earlier retirement – have so far interacted to help many older people in germany to have an average time phase of almost 20 years to dispose of freely, based on the average retirement age. the greater part of this gained time is spent in good health (kruse/lehr 1990: 81-82; klein/unger 2002; deutscher bundestag 2006: 48-49; deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2009: 137). the increased active time constitutes a potential that is relevant to society. taking advantage of this potential would considerably benefi t not only society, but also the individuals themselves if they fig. 1: employment rates of 55-year-olds and older by age, 2008 source: statistisches bundesamt, own calculations 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 >75 age total men women percentage legal retirement age 1 the term “productive ageing” should be defi ned more broadly in this connection than the economic point of view of productivity. productive activities in old age encompass in general terms all activities which society considers to be worthwhile (e.g. volunteering or informal long-term care services provided within the family), albeit the limits between individual concrete activities are disputed (o‘reilly/caro 1995: 40-42; caro 2008: 76-78). it is for instance disputed whether an activity which serves to maintain individual independence is referred to as productive (tews 1996; lehr 2000). • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser872 age actively, in good health and with a high level of satisfaction with life.2 in view of the demographic development, the group of “young old” individuals – a group of people who have (largely) concluded their professional careers, but whose lives are lived in an independent manner in which they take responsibility for themselves (moen 2003: 270) – will be much larger in the coming years, and indeed will actually become the largest group in the population, when the baby-boomers (birth cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s) advance into this age (statistisches bundesamt 2009). this article explores whether a fundamental willingness exists among the older working population to remain employed in retirement age and what reasons can be stated for this willingness. to answer these questions, fi rst of all the current state of knowledge is refl ected and the theoretical approaches will be discussed (sections 2 and 3). on this basis, the hypotheses presented will be empirically examined after the data basis and the initial descriptive fi ndings have been presented (sections 4 and 5). the fi nal section provides a critical discussion of the fi ndings (section 6). 2 state of research and determinants of continuing in employment after retirement in connection with the extension of the active working phase, the phenomenon of bridge employment is illustrated in a growing number of surveys, largely in the us literature (e.g. feldman 1994; gobeski/beehr 2009; pengcharoen/shultz 2010). the term “bridge employment” is understood as taking up/re-entering a paid activity after the person has offi cially withdrawn from working life. this may be either the continuation of the previous career-related occupation in the same or another organisation, or an activity in another professional fi eld. the person can work as an employee or self-employed person irrespective of receiving a partial or full pension. this is hence a phase between the professional career and complete withdrawal from working life on grounds of age (doeringer 1990; feldman 1994: 286). this phenomenon has been discussed in a growing body of literature in the usa since the 1990s, given that the transition from working life to complete retirement constitutes more the exception than the rule and the paths from the world of work into retirement have become increasingly varied and complex (e.g. ruhm 1990; szinovacz 2003 for the usa and engstler 2006; radl 2007 for germany). this phenomenon and the underlying mechanisms are not directly transferable to germany since the labour market and pension law provisions in germany are very different from those in the us. the question of whether a similar trend will emerge for the labour markets in germany remains open at present. nevertheless, a slight increase in employment in pensionable age has been observed in recent years. initial analyses of microcensus 2 this statement requires however a differentiated consideration. empirical investigations indicate that older people who continue to be active in retirement tend to be healthier (e.g. zhan et al. 2009; one fi nding of the study was that continuing in employment when retired has a positive impact on the state of health). this should however be viewed cautiously when it comes to deriving causalities from these statistical correlations. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 873 data indicate that a person’s profession plays a major role in this respect. particularly in low-skill service occupations, continuing in employment beyond the age of 65 seems to be predominant (brussig 2010a/c). the lion’s share of the investigations of the factors infl uencing the willingness to continue to work in pensionable age deals with the actual retirement conduct (for a comprehensive overview see wang/shultz 2010). retroactively, it was possible to deduce motives and intentions regarding retirement conduct from the actual conduct. research on the intentions or a general willingness to continue working in old age, when most other people are already retired, have been relatively rare so far (shacklock et al. 2009: 80). the idea of analysing the intentions of continuing in employment in retirement age dates back to the work of beehr (1986), who stresses that the analysis of the retirement process should not be restricted to actual retirement, but should start before that. retirement is said not to be understood as a one-off, discrete event, but as a sequence of different phases (from tendency towards retirement via deciding for retirement, through to actual implementation), depending on personal and contextual factors. the consideration of the whole process seems especially relevant since e.g. rather the fundamental preference towards retirement than the actual act enhances the explanation (beehr 1986: 46). in addition to old age, the fi nancial situation and the state of health are generally regarded as constituting the most important determinants of the transition into retirement. a good state of health or an adequate disposable income enables individuals to retain control of their decisions with regard to the time of retirement (e.g. moen 2003: 276; taylor/doverspike 2003: 62-65). by contrast, a poor state of health may entail the decision to discontinue working. a low income can constitute a motive for the individual to delay retirement, for instance for fear of poverty in old age which might be caused because of a career interruption or of below-average lifetime earnings. but what might the decision with regard to exercising a vocational activity look like if the state of health were to be good, or at least adequate? what preferences do persons in employment with a higher income have with regard to the time of retirement? what signifi cance attaches in this context to the characteristics of the enterprise or to regulations applying within the pension system? the possible determinants of willingness to remain in working life for longer can be sub-divided into three levels: the political-social, the company, and the individual levels (komp et al. 2010). this article focuses on the latter two levels, whilst the political level is only to be briefl y outlined in the next section. 2.1 the development of the institutional framework and its consequences for retirement preferences the intention, the desire, or the willingness of employees to extend the active working phase beyond the statutory retirement age when approaching retirement is placed at the beginning of the retirement process. there may however also be a reciprocal relationship between the desire for and the realisation of employment in pensionable age. the practice of retiring older employees caused by the introduc• frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser874 tion of fl exible age limits in the context of the pension reform in 1972, and hence the desire to retire earlier than previously provided by pension law, appeared to be a kind of societal consensus. early retirement was not merely tacitly tolerated, but indeed widely accepted by the players affected on the labour markets, employers and employees as well as their representatives, especially since this practice was promoted by the government, either by measures under the labour market law or by the pensions policy (bäcker et al. 2009: 46-50; deutscher bundestag 2006: 79-81). this general trend can however be socially differentiated, so that one may not speak of the desire to retire: “we can now presume that two different cultures have formed at the end of a working life: workers who can express themselves in their work and still have the requisite skills, energy and health would like to work for a long time, frequently longer than until pensionable age. others who have little control and who suffer from health problems would prefer to invest their remaining energy in the new freedoms offered by leaving work early.” (deutscher bundestag 2006: 80). this alleged polarisation can however be explained if the remaining life expectancy is taken into account. anyone whose health is restricted will tend to fi nd themselves in the latter group and enjoy their relatively short remaining lives in retirement, whilst the fi rst group sees a possibility to still realise themselves in working life (deutscher bundestag 2006). this article links to the aspects put forward here, and investigates the degree to which the intentions to remain in employment in retirement are infl uenced by the company or individual framework. 2.2 vocational and organisational characteristics vocational and organisational frameworks exert a strong infl uence on the decision on the time of retirement, since many aspects are beyond the control of the individual. a recent survey of the intensions of elderly employees to remain in working life for longer comes from shacklock et al. (2009). the analyses especially discussed the potential infl uences exerted by vocational characteristics on the intention to remain in work for longer: perceived autonomy, personal relationships at work, working environment, fl exibility as well as commitment to the job. the target group of the questionnaire was employees aged 50 or older who worked in a major australian public organisation. it was possible to ascertain that the characteristics “relative signifi cance of work”, “fl exibility” and “interests outside work” exerted a statistically-signifi cant infl uence on the intention to remain employed for longer. there were major differences here between the genders. the intentions of the male respondents were infl uenced by the characteristics “relative signifi cance of work” and “interests outside work”. the characteristics “personal relationships”, “perceived autonomy”, “fl exibility” and “interests outside work” played a major role for the female respondents. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 875 further fi ndings come from an empirical study carried out in the netherlands (van dam et al. 2009). the authors found that the respondents tended to want to retire later if they perceived their working environment as challenging and pleasant. strenuous working conditions such as stress, hard physical or repetitive activities, or shift work, can have a major impact on the state of health, and hence markedly restrict latitude for decision-making with regard to leaving work. empirical surveys indicate that early retirement is frequently related to high workplace burdens and resultant health complaints. especially age-related complaints emerge from the cumulative strains of a person’s previous working life (wübbeke 2005: 44-49). in the discussion on health strains, it is necessary to distinguish by occupations or levels of skill, while selection effects on the labour markets are not being ruled out. the tendency is for the (health-relevant) work strains not to be so pronounced in highly-skilled occupations, whilst activities requiring a lower level of skill frequently entail signifi cant physical strains (bäcker et al. 2009: 218-220; blekesaune/solem 2005: 6-11). the importance of the perceived quality of work and of the job itself for the decision on retirement is shown by the survey carried out by siegrist et al. (2007). on the basis of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), the authors fi nd that a poor psychological quality of work has a signifi cant connection with the intention to withdraw from the labour market earlier.3 comparable results are reached by blekesaune and solem (2005), but they were able to fi nd genderspecifi c differences in their analyses. men in occupations with restricted autonomy retired earlier than women in comparable occupational positions. potential explanations given by the authors were that, fi rstly, men in general might have a stronger preference towards autonomy than women. furthermore, also in this occupational segment, the working biographies of men were much less frequently characterised by interruptions than those of women, so that men in these positions were in a better fi nancial position to afford to exit working life than women were. finally, connections between a low occupational status and poor health might also be vital when deciding to retire sooner. this presumption could be derived from the fact that men in lower occupational positions are more frequently in a poor state of health than men at the higher levels within a company, and hence tend to receive disability pension benefi ts (blekesaune/solem 2005: 19-20.). in addition to work characteristics as a factor potentially infl uencing retirement, organisational characteristics also exert an infl uence on elderly workers’ retirement conduct. the decision whether to replace an older employee with a younger one is fundamentally subject to economic cost-benefi t calculations. this calculation has become distorted in company practice by the subsidies which are provided for retiring the elderly (wübbeke 2005: 61-69). the size of the enterprise might play a relevant role in this context. this characteristic frequently appears to be connected with age discrimination, something which appears to be more common in larger 3 indicators of a low psychological quality of work were: jobs with relatively taxing requirements, combined with low levels of control, as well as an imbalance between a high level of performance and a relatively low level of rewarding (siegrist et al. 2007: 63). • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser876 companies than in small and medium-sized ones. placing older workers at a disadvantage manifests itself for instance in an ageist recruitment policy or in poorer prospects for promotion within the organisation. older, mostly less well qualifi ed employees are also at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their younger colleagues when it comes to in-company further and advanced training (deutscher bundestag 2006: 78, 105-107.). equally, more comprehensive staff adjustments took place in larger enterprises in the 1980s/90s which were induced by tougher international competition or through the dying out of industrial manufacturing sectors. in the context of a general company strategy which aimed to reduce existing staff levels, older employees had much poorer prospects to remain in the enterprise in comparison to their younger colleagues (bäcker et al. 2009: 169 and 179; deutscher bundestag 2006: 78; feldman 1994). the following connection can be presumed to exist when considering the average weekly working hours: the lower the number of weekly working hours, the less strenuous is the work, and the more likely older employees are to be willing to continue to work in retirement. surveys using the data of the socio-economic panel (soep) appear to support this connection: larger numbers of hours worked per year were also connected to higher rates of people leaving work (bäcker et al. 2009: 190 and 197). previous unemployment means for the individual not only an interruption in income, but also a loss of pension entitlements and thus also lower pension payments to be anticipated. anyone experiencing an interruption in their working careers may hence see themselves as being forced by economic constraints to continue to work beyond the previous statutory retirement age. the length of time in the company might also infl uence the willingness to continue in employment in retirement age. this aspect can be explained in connection with age-specifi c regulations on industrial safety and the situation of older workers on the labour market. older employees have usually worked in the company for longer times than younger ones and thus enjoy better protection against dismissal. if, however, they lose their jobs, their prospects of fi nding a new job are much less favourable than those of their younger competitors (deutscher bundestag 2006: 64). together with the higher labour market risk of older employees and a shorter job tenure one may therefore presume that such employees feel greater pressure to extend their working lives, and hence would show greater willingness. a further argument in favour of the presumed connection is that because of the wide spread of seniority-based payment in germany, wages and salaries increase as people remain in a company for longer, and persons in employment who have not yet been in the company for so long will be more committed in order to receive these increases in income. these deferred compensations are to be understood as parts of an incentive scheme to stay in a company for longer since the employer implicitly offers a secure job to the employee. (franz 2003: 58-59; lazear 1979). the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 877 2.3 individual characteristics results from the empirical research on remaining employed in retirement permit one to presume the existence of a basic pattern: people who are still in work generally have the following characteristics: they are male, healthy, have a higher level of education and more assets, and are younger than retirees who are no longer in work (summed up in pleau 2010: 270-272). in relation to the characteristic of age, we presume a negative infl uence exerted on the willingness to continue in employment: the higher the age, the closer one is to the phase of retirement, and hence the lesser the willingness to continue in employment when retired (e.g. von bonsdorff et al. 2009). older employees observe the fall in their physical energy, as well as in cognitive skills, with the consequence that they tend to opt less to continue in employment in pensionable age (wang/shultz 2010: 185). furthermore, age is positively related to claims on the pension system (under the condition that the individual indeed acquired entitlements through employment). further, old age expresses a social norm which states that the status of “retiree” is reserved for the elderly (adams et al. 2002: 128). there are however also surveys which weaken the above argument. for instance, ekerdt et al. (2000: 5) critically state that old age is only a rough indicator to describe closeness to retirement. hence, the perceived proximity to retirement would be included as a more suitable variable. this can be derived from the difference between biological age and anticipated retirement. on the other hand, empirical studies by atchley and robinson (1982) show no signifi cant infl uence exerted by the time distance to retirement on attitudes towards retirement. in this respect, these results – even if they were not to refl ect actual retirement conduct – would lead to a certain doubt as to the objection of ekerdt et al. (2000: 5). the connection between retirement conduct and gender, which was already described in section 2.2, is also a relevant question. central aspects are the attribution of social roles, as well as the resultant consequences for the different career biographies. according to the traditional perception of roles of women and men (male breadwinner model), there would be unambiguous differences between the genders with regard to the transition into retirement. this is specifi cally caused by the gender-specifi c biographies. in the understanding of the “normal biography”, men leave full-time employment when entering working life early, with small or only brief interruptions and a normal age-related departure from the working environment, however “normal” is defi ned. in contrast, women show more frequent interruptions in their career biographies, indicating a later start of employment, interruptions caused by child-raising or care-taking, as well as considerable phases of part-time work. furthermore, it is largely women in the midst of life who carry out long-term care of their parents or parents-in-law, causing further diffi culties when it comes to labour market integration issues. as a consequence of these aspects, considerable fi nancial disadvantages can be anticipated vis-à-vis men when it comes to safeguarding a livelihood in the life phase after retirement (allmendinger 1994; clemens 2006). this leads in turn to a situation in which older female employees may fi nd themselves forced to remain in the earning process for longer than men • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser878 of the same age for economic reasons. it should also be taken into consideration that a connection may be presumed to exist between retirement conduct and the time of relevant family events (in this case having children). in empirical analyses carried out by hank (2004), two theoretically possible variants were compared and tested: firstly, because of their cumulated work disadvantages it is conceivable that mothers tend to delay their retirement to later in life in order to catch up on pension entitlements. it is however also possible that mothers retire earlier if they only had a weak bond with their careers. this variant is linked to the “male bread winner” role model and that fi nancial security is provided by the male spouse. on the basis of the data of the soep, it has been shown (for western german women) that having children tended to postpone rather than bring forward the transition into retirement. this connection is amplifi ed if the fi rst child is born later or if mothers work during the fi rst years of child-raising (hank 2004). however, gender-specifi c views of the individual signifi cance of work may also be relevant for the desire to continue in employment. men may attach signifi cance to aspects such as power, the concept of performance, fi nancial aspects or independence. women, by contrast, appear to concentrate more on social connectivity (talaga/beehr 1995: 16-17; mor-barak 1995: 328-329). depending on the framework which they encounter in their working world, the active working phase may be longer or shorter. when taking a look at the state of health, it should be observed that the inclination towards work falls considerably with a poor state of health or with a low level of satisfaction with the state of health. a poor state of health is generally associated with a fall in ability to work. one may presume that the willingness to continue in employment in pensionable age falls if the persons in employment are in a poor state of health or are dissatisfi ed with their state of health. anyone who no longer feels able to work for health reasons will take up the next available opportunity to retire early (summaries of the relevant literature can be found for instance in von bonsdorff et al. 2009: 84; bäcker et al. 2009: 190-191 and 222-232). a good state of health is likely to be a necessary, but not a suffi cient condition for extending one’s life working time. a good state of health does make it possible to continue one’s professional career until the offi cial retirement age; it is however also conceivable that the individual opts to cease working as early as possible in order to enjoy retirement as long as possible in good health and with a good fi nancial security (ekerdt 2009: 475). whether an individual plans to retire or to work on does not however always depend solely on his/her own preference when it comes to retirement, but is frequently to be understood in an interplay with the career biography of the spouse. in this respect, willingness to continue to work at retirement age also needs to be observed in connection with partnership status. this aspect took on signifi cance (and is highly likely to continue to gain signifi cance) in view of the past increases in the employment of married women: two incomes from employment, two pension incomes and two states of health more and more frequently have to be taken into account when determining the time of retirement (e.g. drobnič/schneider 2000; pienta/hayward 2002). empirical studies using the data from the soep support the the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 879 presumption that there is a tendency towards retiring together. this study differentiated according to whether both partners are working, or only one of the two (blau/ riphahn 1999). married women appear to basically orientate their retirement time towards that of their husbands rather than vice versa (drobnič/schneider 2000). in a study by van dam et al. (2009) among older dutch workers (aged 50 or more), the question of intensions to retire early were explored. it emerged that persons intention to retire early indeed relates to their partners intentions regarding retirement who felt a pressure from their partners to leave work earlier indeed intended to retire early. beyond partnership status, it is therefore important to learn how high the quality of the partnership is and how high the probability is to synchronise the respective careers. the age difference between the partners also plays a major role in this context. men who are much older than their wives tend to delay their retirement (drobnič/schneider 2000). empirical studies on retirement in connection with socioeconomic characteristics tend to focus on the characteristics of income, education and last vocational status prior to retirement. it emerges in a comprehensive literature analysis by brown and colleagues (1996) that no uniform picture prevails with regard to connections between social status and retirement conduct. this may be the case because the surveys which were consulted used different operationalisations of social status. despite the different results that were found, however, it was also possible to fi nd common features. it was thus shown that retirement conduct is clearly connected to the previous occupational status. leaving work later appears to be linked to greater satisfaction with the current occupation (brown et al. 1996: 181-182). these fi ndings were also revealed in other surveys. in a survey by flynn (2010), the author uses various factors to carry out a typologisation, and distinguishes employees who are approaching pensionable age into “haves” and “have-nots”. the fi rst group is characterised by a high degree of autonomy in work and a secure pension income. this group is therefore able to decide relatively freely when they retire. by contrast, the latter group does not have such options. they are pushed into or out of the work process depending on the situation on the labour market. the author goes on to state that the group which is able to decide freely on leaving work tends to delay retirement more than those older workers who do not have any options (flynn 2010: 317). supported by empirical fi ndings, a negative connection can be expected to exist between the amount of disposable income and willingness to continue in employment when retired (beehr et al. 2000: 207-208). households with a higher disposable income are fi nancially better prepared for retirement, and hence enjoy greater freedom than those with a lower income when determining the time of retirement. also, reductions which can be anticipated when it comes to retiring earlier than provided for by law are likely not to exert too strong an infl uence on those persons’ decisions, whilst the resulting economic burden on low-income households is more ponderous (e.g. feldman 1994). these fi ndings relate to the usa in most cases. there is however uncertainty with regard to the retirement age in relation to the fi nancial circumstances for the situation in germany. radl (2007: 47) refers to empirical surveys by drobnič and schneider (2000), as well as by wübbeke (2005), in which it was shown that there is no linear relationship between the statistical risk • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser880 of early retirement and the amount of income, but that an inverse u-shape one does exist. this means that the retirement risk fi rst of all increases with the amount of income, but then falls once more. this pattern has also shown itself, inversely, but following the same logic in us studies that were related to employment in retirement. the interpretation of this u shape leads to the conclusion that on the one hand there are people who would like to voluntarily continue to work in retirement and on the other people who have to work for fi nancial reasons (pleau 2010: 271). in germany especially the investigations on various retirement paths carried out by radl (2007) and by himmelreicher et al. (2009) should be mentioned which deal with retirement conduct in relation to the level of education. according to the literature which they inspected the latter group of authors found that (highly) qualifi ed employees in germany retire much later than those with fewer skills (himmelreicher et al. 2009: 438). a major fi nding of their study was that persons with a low level of education in employment tend to leave working life between 60 and 63, whilst those who have received more training tend to leave the labour market between the ages of 63 and 65, indicating better labour market prospects for those with a higher level of skills. one interesting aspect here was that comparing the retirement conduct of women from the old and the new federal länder showed a variety of patterns. the conduct of women in the old länder was very similar to that of men; the peaks of retirement were recognisable at age levels of 60 (primarily skilled and low-skilled women) and 65 (highly-skilled women in the majority). the transition to retirement in eastern germany was mostly completed at the age of 63. highly-skilled women tended to retire at 65 (himmelreicher et al. 2009). radl (2007) made it clear using the retirement data for 2004 that the pension insurance status has proven to be a suitable indicator with regard to the attribution of various social groups: “especially employees with a higher level of education and a good income frequently even prefer to continue to work until the conventional age limit of 65. with their tendency to retire late, they show themselves to be partly resistant to fi nancial incentives to retire early. in view of the fi ndings, one may presume that the loss of prestige in the case of retirement is higher for academics than for those with fewer skills.” (radl 2007: 59-60.) the connection between socioeconomic status and the extension of life working time should be examined separately for women and men, given that “the effect of ses [socio-economic status] on a person’s workforce participation depends on gender roles” (komp et al. 2010: 47; authors’ notes). women for instance show a lower workforce participation, which is caused to a considerable degree by the problems occurring in reconciling work and family obligations. these problems also play a larger role among women than among men if they decide to stay in working life for longer (clemens 2006; komp et al 2010). multivariate analyses of plaeu (2010) regarding employment conduct in retirement also show that statistically-signifi cant effects occur only for women in connection with specifi c sociodemographic characteristics (marital status, income and assets). the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 881 3 theoretical considerations to explain willingness to continue in employment various theoretical approaches are used to explain retirement and continuation in employment in retirement age. the term retirement relates here both to the transition from working life to retirement and to the individual’s adjustment process in the retirement phase. this article studies the phase prior to retirement in order to identify the degree to which dependent employees have any willingness at all to remain in working life for longer, and what reasons speak for or against this, the focus remaining on the socioeconomic characteristics. retirement literature very frequently refers to the role theory, the life course perspective and the continuity theory (e.g. wang 2007; kim/moen 2002 or restricted to the continuity theory and life course perspective in bonsdorff et al. 2009, as well as smith 2004 in relation to voluntary commitment in retirement). the objective is to briefl y illustrate these theoretical approaches, but not to compare them, especially since there are major interfaces between these approaches. rather, they are used as a supplement when forming the hypotheses leading the research. 3.1 role theory when it comes to the role theory, particular interest attaches to role gains and losses, as well as to the relative shifts in the roles within a bundle of roles. in order to obtain a better understanding of possibly continuing in employment when retired, it is relevant to learn how the individuals perceive their future role changes (losing the “productive worker role” and gaining the role of the “inactive retiree”) in their remaining working life. the individual is a holder of various roles, some of which compete with one another. the vocational roles are compared with a variety of roles outside working life, such as the role as a partner, as a member of the family or as a member of a specifi c community. with regard to approaching the end of working life, it is above all a matter of how persons in employment who are becoming older are able to perceive and evaluate the future shifts and rearrangements between their roles (for instance a strengthening of family-related roles and a weakening of the role as a working person). it is known from social science surveys that the tie to a specifi c role depends amongst other things on how central the role is to the identity of the individual. if the work-related role is a central element of identity, it is conceivable that transition to retirement is regarded as a critical event for the individual. this would express itself in that the loss of the role causes fear and depression and less well-being is anticipated in retirement. this may apply primarily to those individuals who have invested a particularly large amount of time and energy in their professional careers. the loss of the role as a manager (or as an employee with highly-skilled activities) may entail considerable diffi culties in this context when it comes to adjusting, and this may result in a loss of perceived quality of life. conversely, one may presume that persons who are highly engaged in other non-professional roles opt to leave working life earlier, as do those individuals in employment who fi nd their jobs un• frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser882 happy or unpleasant and are glad to be able to shed their work-related role. the loss of the role should hence be less grievous for persons who are in employment in the medium and/or lower levels of the company hierarchy than for persons in employment at the higher levels (ashforth 2001; barnes-farrell 2003: 162-163; kim/moen 2002: 212-213; carter/cook 1995; wang 2007: 456; smith 2004: 58). we therefore presume that there is a positive connection between willingness to continue in employment in retirement age and the professional position within the organisation. 3.2 life course perspective this approach observes events and sequences which are dependent on age and life phase over a lifetime and their consequences for the individual and his/her social environment (elder 1995). the transition to retirement marks a major transformation in the triple-division of the cultural and institutional view of a “normal” predefi ned life-course regime – preparatory, active and retirement phases –, albeit because of the increasing pluralisation of careers the calendar age can only be used as a rough indicator to draw a line between these phases (kohli 1985; wang 2007; mayer 2001: 453). on the basis of various interdependent relationships between the life domains – in particular between the domains of work and of the family – the time of retirement is infl uenced by events from the earlier work and family life, as well as from the earlier training. hank (2004), for instance, compares the retirement conduct of mothers with childless women in western germany. with data from the socio-economic panel, he fi nds that retirement tended to be delayed more often by mothers than by childless women. this applies particularly if the fi rst child was born relatively late. furthermore, it is known from life course studies that the professional careers of women in comparison to men are more frequently characterised by family-related interruptions in work and poorer reintegration opportunities on the labour market. mothers have fewer entitlements on the public old-age pension system as a result of these interruptions (e.g. allmendinger 1994; hank 2004). this circumstance might induce a catch-up process, i.e. the gaps from the earlier career biography are fi lled by taking up employment, whilst men tend to prepare for their retirement. it can hence be presumed that because of the gender-typical career biographies prevalent in (western) germany, differences exist between women and men with regard to willingness to continue in employment. if one distinguishes in the life course perspective between socioeconomic characteristics, it can be found that (especially) in western germany in the course of the expansion in education the tendency to generally extend the education phase can be observed (schmidt/schmitt 2005: 309). the number of university graduates almost doubled between 1970 and 1990 (dostal 2005: 481). after a comparatively longer training phase, individuals with academic titles have entered work later than those with a relatively low level of qualifi cation. in section 2.3 empirical studies on retirement differentiates by education have also shown that a higher level of education has a delaying effect on retirement. one may hence presume for our research question that persons with a higher occupational status within the organisation the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 883 (which as a rule is closely connected to the level of education) will leave working life later, and hence tend to be more willing to continue in employment in pensionable age. 3.3 continuity theory this approach suggests that people essentially remain the same over their lives in psychological terms: they retain by and large the same preferences, the same conduct patterns or the same social environments (atchley 1989). these patterns constitute a major element of personal identity and of a feeling of self-esteem. this means that individuals prefer to retain these patterns despite pronounced changes in their personal environments (be it over their lifetimes, in the ageing process or in social change). retaining the stability of certain patterns from the medium to the higher age steps forms an important adjustment strategy for the individual in the sense of successful ageing (backes/clemens 2003).4 if an individual is very active in middle age, it is highly likely that this level of activity will be retained, on condition that the corresponding state of health makes this possible. the continuation of earlier activities in retirement which were already carried out during the working phase would hence be a possibility. this can take the shape of a paid activity in the old job, but taking on other jobs would also be quite conceivable. furthermore, the option can also be used to work on an honorary basis if this can be interpreted as “continuing” the former activity. the hypothesis of continuity is favoured for instance by the results of wang (2007: 465). the author was able to fi nd empirically that the lion’s share of retirees (between 69 and 75 %) carry out the same activities as prior to their retirement. the patterns which have been ascertained can be sub-divided into internal and external structures. the preservation of internal structures/patterns relates primarily to the cognitive skills, whilst the preservation of external contact relates to the contextual conditions. according to atchley, there is internal pressure towards continuity since a fundamental need for stability was said to be fi rmly anchored in the individual. pressure on the external structures arises because of changes in contextual conditions and the concomitant expectations as to the role played by the individual (cf. atchley 1989: 183; backes/clemens 2003: 133). this article focuses on the external structures by taking a closer look at the indicators to describe socioeconomic status. as far as socioeconomic characteristics are concerned, one may presume that a higher professional status of the individual is linked to more attractive behaviour and orientation patterns (greater individual scope and greater infl uence on the overall company result, as well as management of staff or responsibility for more mate4 successful ageing is generally associated with a high level of satisfaction with life, with good social integration and with a good state of health. the term “successful ageing” is taken up differently in social sciences despite many efforts to establish a uniform defi nition (for a critical discussion cf. hank 2011: 230). • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser884 rial and fi nancial resources). as a consequence, it can be presumed that particularly older employees in the higher organisational levels feel greater pressure towards continuity, and are hence more likely to be willing to continue working in retirement (analogously to actual employment in retirement – bridge employment – cf. gobeski/beehr 2009: 403; feldman 1994: 296-297). 3.4 hypotheses building on the theoretical information and the empirical fi ndings, a positive connection can be presumed to exist between professional status in the organisation/ enterprise and the intention to be employed in retirement age. the hypothesis to be examined here is as follows: 1. willingness to continue in employment in retirement age increases with a higher position in the company hierarchy. as to household income, by contrast, a negative connection is indicated. in line with the empirical fi ndings which have been portrayed (section 2.3), the following hypothesis can be derived: 2. willingness to continue in employment in retirement age falls as the disposable household income rises. the analyses are carried out separately for men and women. it is to be examined here whether the links actually prove to be gender-specifi c – as is shown in other empirical investigations. two additional hypotheses can be formulated for this postulated interaction effect with gender: 3. the position within the company hierarchy plays a more important role for men’s willingness to continue in employment because of their more pronounced preference towards autonomy (cf. section 2.2). 4. by contrast, income plays a more important role among women for willingness to continue in employment – as a result of the economic disadvantages caused by interrupted career biographies or by the comparably worse income situation over the life course (cf. sections 2.2 and 2.3). 4 empirical investigation 4.1 data basis and method the data basis is formed by the study entitled “continuing in employment in pensionable age”, which was carried out by infratest in 2008 on behalf of the federal institute for population research. this survey aimed to investigate the willingness of older employees to engage (continue) in employment in retirement age and the concomitant conditions. for this purpose, a representative survey of dependent employees (this relates to blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and civil servants, persons in minor employment or employees in job creation or structural adthe impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 885 justment schemes). all in all, 1,500 men and women aged from 55 to under 65 were surveyed. self-employed persons or persons who were not in employment at the time of the survey (such as unemployed persons who were already in retirement or who were in the non-working phase of the old-age part-time working scheme) were not surveyed. the questionnaire was drawn up by the federal institute for population research in cooperation with the srh university of applied sciences berlin (former ota university of applied sciences). the analyses below were carried out using the spss statistics program (windows spss version 13.0). 4.2 constructs and operationalisation 4.2.1 willingness to continue in employment in retirement age the study entitled “continuing in employment in pensionable age” covers the intention to continue in employment, but not the respective actual conduct. the intention of a person need not necessarily concur with their conduct, but, as described in section 2, should be taken into account as a major starting point for retirement conduct. if the reasons for specifi c conduct are collected retrospectively, distortions in memory may occur. by contrast, prospective recording can help to investigate which individuals express any willingness at all and under what conditions. hence, important information is obtained as to which values exist relating to continuing in employment, but also which obstacles stand in the way. the study is hence used as a preliminary survey in which initial information on this so far little-researched topic is to be obtained. subsequent investigations are to examine whether intention and conduct concur and to draw corresponding conclusions from any deviations. the willingness of older workers to remain in working life for longer was measured by the following question: “please let us ask a few more questions on the wishes and possibilities to continue in employment in retirement age. do you wish to remain in employment after your retirement, for instance in minor employment”. the possible answers “yes” and “probably” and “probably not” and “no” were summed up to form a dichotomous variable, the characteristics ‘1’ standing for persons who wish to continue in employment after retirement and ‘0’ for those who do not wish to do so. 4.2.2 socioeconomic characteristics two indicators of socioeconomic status are used to explain the differences with regard to willingness to extend working lifetimes: professional status in the sense of a position in the company hierarchy and monthly household net equivalence income.5 5 a third central indicator of socioeconomic status, namely the highest professional training qualifi cation, was deliberately done without since there is a highly-pronounced correlation between the indicators, in particular between professional training qualifi cation and the professional status. to examine the robustness of the results, all the analyses were carried out with the professional training qualifi cation. this however only marginally changes the results. • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser886 the professional status of the person was defi ned as a position within the professional hierarchy, deriving from the isco classifi cation of occupations.6 a dichotomous variable was formed here. characteristic 1 constitutes the higher status level of the professional hierarchy: master craftsperson, salaried employee with a highly-skilled activity or with managerial tasks and civil servants in the administrative service. by contrast, the characteristic 0 includes the so-called medium (specialist workers, salaried workers with skilled activities and the higher intermediate service) and the lower status level (unskilled and self-taught workers, salaried employees with simple activities and civil servants in the ordinary or intermediate service). the monthly net household income of elderly employees was weighted using an equivalence scale according to household size (the square root of the number of household members was used as an equivalent weight since the dataset does not contain any information regarding the age of the household members; cf. on this motel-klingebiel 2006) and summarised in three categories: up to euro 1,500, euro 1,500 to less than 2,000 and euro 2,000 or more. 4.2.3 job-related characteristics in addition to status-related characteristics of older employees, empirical studies have shown that willingness to remain in employment beyond retirement age is infl uenced by a number of job-related characteristics (cf. section 2.2). this article takes account of a total of fi ve job-related characteristics: the size of the enterprise, length with the individual enterprise, the average weekly working hours, the working conditions and past unemployment. according to the defi nition of the european union microenterprises, small, medium-sized, and large enterprises are differentiated according to the following three criteria: number of employees, amount of turnover and balance sheet total in a period. since the present dataset only contains information on the number of employees in the enterprise or institution in which the person was employed at the time of the survey, it was only possible to classify the size of the enterprise using this information. for this reason, the delimitation remains uncertain to some degree. a total of four categories were formed: micro enterprises (fewer than 10 employees), small enterprises (10 to under 50 employees), medium-sized enterprises (50 to under 250 employees) and large enterprises (250 or more employees). affi liation with an enterprise in years was coded as a dichotomous variable. characteristic 1 stands for a duration of affi liation with the enterprise of fewer than ten years and characteristic 0 for a duration of ten years and more. the selection of this threshold tallies with the observation that persons in employment in germany on average remain in their enterprise for roughly ten years (rhein 2010). 6 it was not possible with this dataset to group the professions according to the isco classifi cation or to attribute the respondents according to the isced classifi cation since information was only available on the highest educational qualifi cation, but not on the highest general school qualifi cation. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 887 when it comes to the average weekly working hours, a distinction is made between the following three categories: less than 15 hours, 15 to under 35 hours, and 35 or more hours per week. the numbers of hours here relate to the actual hours worked (including overtime) by older workers in a normal week at the time of the survey. the three selected classes hence roughly correspond to the employment relationships “minor employment”, “part-time employment” and “full-time employment”. unemployment is inserted into the study as a dichotomous variable (person had already been unemployed at the time of the survey, person was not unemployed). the working conditions of older employees were included in the analyses as the last job-related characteristic. these were included with a total of eleven items, each of which relates to the description of a concrete working condition (environmental infl uences such as noise or temperature, as well as psychological strains). respondents are asked to state here to what degree these conditions relate to their work. it was possible for the respondents to grade their responses with the aid of a fi xed set of response items (from “absolutely correct to “not at all correct”). an additive index was formed on the basis of an explorative factor analysis which ultimately comprises the following seven items: “my work requires a high working pace.”, “my work is strenuous.”, “my work is physically diffi cult.”, “my work is hazardous to my health.”, “i am exhausted after work.”, “i feel under constant pressure at work.” and “i fi nd it diffi cult to switch off after work.”. the index formed hence serves as an indicator of the extent of strenuous, physical and mentally-taxing working conditions, and covers a value range of 0 to 28 (items were recoded for this to 0-4), higher values standing for worse working conditions. the median value of the scale is 14.6. 4.2.4 demographic characteristics the selection of the demographic control variables relates to the empirical fi ndings presented at section 2.3 concerning the determinants of employment in retirement. in addition to gender (1 “male” and 0 “female”) and age (metric), the marital status (1 “married” and 0 “unmarried”), as well as the subjective state of health (1 “very good” and “rather good” and 0 “satisfactory”, “rather poor” and “very poor”) of older employees was taken into account in the analyses. 5 results 5.1 descriptive analysis in the sample surveyed, 47.2 % of respondents aged from 55 to 64, that is almost half, consider the possibility of continuing in employment beyond their retirement age. the respondents are willing to continue to work for an average of 4.1 years after retirement, working hours averaging 15.1 per week. the majority of them prefer individual, fl exible design possibilities: if the elderly can imagine continuing in employment, they would mostly like to decide for themselves when and how often • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser888 they do so, and as a rule they no longer want to work every day. some respondents can also imagine working on a standby basis when they are needed. a large share of the individuals would furthermore like a change with regard to their workplace (e.g. an activity which can also be carried out from home or a change of job). according to this initial view of the data structure, the question now arises as to whether there are differences between those who can imagine continuing in employment and those who cannot imagine doing so. to this end, table 2 presents the spread of 55to 64-year-olds as to willingness to continue in employment. within the sample surveyed, it is possible to recognise statistically-signifi cant differences among the demographic characteristics with regard to age and marital status. it is therefore shown that those individuals who are willing to continue in employment are on average older than those who are not. married people are much less willing in comparison to the unmarried. the differences by gender and subjective state of health, by contrast, are slight and are not statistically signifi cant. when it comes to the job-related characteristics, by contrast, pronounced and statistically-signifi cant differences can be recognised between the elderly, who (tend to) show a willingness to continue in employment, and those who refuse to remain in employment in retirement. thus, agreement tends to be higher among respondents working for smaller enterprises. respondents who have been employed by their current employer for fewer than ten years are more likely to be willing to remain in employment after retirement than respondents who have been employed by their current employers for more than ten years. as to the respondents’ average weekly working hours, a negative connection is also shown: with falling weekly working hours, the share of the elderly who wish to continue in employment intab. 1: conditions for continuing in employment older employees willing to continue in employment in % willingness to continue in employment 47.2 desired frequency of continued daily. 5.5 employment in retirement on 3-4 days per week. 18.0 on 1-2 days per week. 24.2 on several days per month. 3.5 on standby when i am needed. 12.1 i would like to be able to decide freely. 36.7 desired workplace to continue in my previous job. 36.0 in employment when retired at home. 9.4 both. 21.6 in another job. 33.0 n = 699 (1.480) source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 889 tab. 2: the spread of plans to continue in employment in retirement age (percent and median values) continue in employment in retirement age? yes/probably no/probably not sig.¹ total 47.2 52.8 demographic characteristics gender male 47.1 52.9 n.s. female 47.4 52.6 average age (in years) 58.5 58.1 ** subjective state of health very good/rather good 48.0 52.0 n.s. very/rather poor or satisfactory 46.2 53.8 marital status married 43.6 56.4 *** not married 53.4 46.6 job-related characteristics size of company (no. employees) less than 10 62.1 37.9 *** 10 to less than 50 50.3 49.7 50 to less than 250 49.0 51.0 250 or more 37.0 63.0 affiliation to the enterprise less than 10 years 59.1 40.9 *** 10 years and more 43.9 56.1 average weekly working hours fewer than15 hours 66.2 33.8 ** 15 to 34 hours 49.2 50.8 35 hours or more 45.5 54.5 previous unemployment yes 55.4 44.6 *** no 43.3 56.7 working conditions (median value) 14.8 14.5 n.s. n = 1.480 1 sig. = signifi cance level, * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 (chi-square test and t test, two-sided)) source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser890 creases. as to unemployment, it can be recognised that willingness tends to be higher among those who had experienced past unemployment at the time of the questionnaire than among those who had so far been spared unemployment. finally, as the last job-related characteristic, the working conditions of the employment exercised by the older employees were observed. this index can be interpreted as an indicator of the degree of physically and mentally strenuous working conditions, in which higher values stand for less favourable working conditions. the median values for both categories of willingness to continue in employment were calculated and compared. surprisingly, only slight differences which are statistically insignifi cant emerge here between those who are willing to continue in employment when retired and those who are not. one might very much rather expect individuals with poor, strenuous working conditions to be less willing, and by contrast those with very good working conditions to be more willing to continue in employment beyond retirement. in the next step the connection between plans to continue in employment and central socioeconomic characteristics of the respondent are analysed. are respondents with a higher socioeconomic status more willing to continue in employment beyond retirement? what is the situation when it comes to the willingness to continue in employment of those on a higher income in comparison with those who earn less? the spread of the plans to continue in employment is portrayed in figures 2 and 3 according to professional status and income. when it comes to professional status, a positive correlation is indicated corresponding to hypothesis 1 – willingness to continue in employment increases with fig. 2: the spread of plans to continue in employment in retirement age by professional status (answer yes/probably in percent) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 44,7 56,1 47,2 47,2 45,7 50,4 all male female percent medium or lower professional position high professional position source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 891 a higher professional position – but this is only signifi cant at the 10 % level. pronounced statistically-signifi cant differences are shown, by contrast, when it comes to income. in the sense of hypothesis 2, in this case willingness to continue in employment falls in line with socioeconomic status: willingness to continue in employment in pensionable age is greater the lower the monthly net household income of the person is. this fi nding indicates in particular an economic incentive to continue in employment in retirement age. is this correlation between the indicators of socioeconomic status the same among women and men, or do the data reveal signs of an interaction effect? whilst no major differences in willingness to continue in employment between women and men are shown with regard to household income the picture is different when it comes to professional status. if men and women are regarded separately, there are no differences among men between those who had a high professional status at the time of the survey and those with a medium or lower professional status. the share of those who could imagine continuing in employment beyond retirement age is equally large in both groups. among women, by contrast, pronounced, statistically-signifi cant differences are shown. a much larger share of women with a high professional status state that they wish to remain in employment after the transition to retirement, compared with women who had a medium or lower professional status. the fi nding that it is only after considering gender that the socioeconomic differences found prove to be statistically signifi cant corresponds with the analyses of pleau (2010) on the employment conduct of retirees. fig. 3: the spread of plans to continue in employment in retirement age by net household income (answer yes/probably in percent) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 53,3 47,2 38,8 56,0 46,8 42,8 54,3 47,0 41,2 all male female percent below € 1,500 € 1,500 to less than 2,000€ € 2,000 or more monthly net household income source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser892 5.2 multivariate analysis this section examines whether the correlations that have been ascertained also remain once various interfering variables have been statistically controlled for. with binary logistic regression models we attempt to fi nd an answer to the question of which variables produce these differences and how they infl uence the extent and direction of the correlation. three binary logistic regression models were calculated (general information on the methods can be found for instance in tabachnick/fidell 2007: 437-505), in which the model variables were inserted stepwise (tab. 3). the fi rst model only contains the central explanatory variables: the professional status and the income of the respondent. the second model was expanded to include the job-related characteristics of the person, of which it is presumed that they also exert an infl uence on continuing in employment. the last model additionally contains the individual control variables. a statistically-signifi cant correlation is shown between the socioeconomic characteristics and willingness to continue in employment which is maintained over all three models. when controlling for the other covariates, the likelihood of being willing to continue in employment is greater among those who had a high professional status at the time of the questionnaire than among those with a medium or low professional status. by contrast, the probability of continuing in employment is lower the higher the monthly net household income. the results hence confi rm the descriptive fi ndings. the size of the enterprise as a central job-related characteristic of the respondent also makes a signifi cant contribution towards explaining the differences in willingness to continue in employment. the smaller the enterprise (in terms of numbers of employees) in which the persons are employed at the time of the interview, the more likely they are to be willing to continue in employment after retirement age. and a positive correlation is also shown in case of unemployment: willingness to continue in employment is signifi cantly higher among those who stated that they had already been unemployed in their previous working life than among those who had not previously been unemployed. respondents who have been employed by the same employer for ten years and more show a lesser chance to be willing to continue in employment in comparison to those respondents who have been employed for a shorter time. neither job-related characteristic, that is average weekly working hours and working conditions, by contrast, makes a contribution of its own towards explaining the differences. in addition, the age or subjective state of health of the person do not make any contribution towards an explanation. having said that, signifi cant correlations exist between willingness to continue in employment and gender. for instance, in comparison to women, men show a statistically-signifi cant greater likelihood if one keeps the other covariates constant. a signifi cant negative correlation is shown as to marital status: the likelihood to be willing to continue in employment is higher among married people than among those who are not married. as was already the case in the descriptive analysis, in the last step the correlation is separated once more by gender (tab. 4). the fi ndings already presented the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 893 tab. 3: binary logistic regression models for plans to continue in employment in retirement age model 1 model 2 model 3 beta p beta p beta p socioeconomic characteristics professional status (0=medium or low professional position, 1=high professional position) .419 *** .524 *** .490 *** monthly net household income below € 1,500 .715 *** .520 *** .465 ** €1,500 to less than 2,000 .346 ** .276 * .282 * € 2,000 and moreª job-related characteristics size of enterprise under 10 employees .894 *** .972 *** 10 to under 50 employees .354 * .384 ** 50 to under 250 employees .351 * .378 ** 250 employees and moreª time in enterprise (0=10 years and longer, 1=under 10 years) .330 * .300 * average weekly working hours 0 to 14 hours per week .398 n.s. .510 n.s. 15 to 34 hours per week -.028 n.s. .134 n.s. 35 hours per week and moreª unemployment (0=never been unemployed, 1=been unemployed) .285 * .305 * scale working conditions .011 n.s. .016 n.s. demographic characteristics gender (0=female, 1=male) .295 * age .295 n.s. subjective state of health (0=satisfactory or worse, 1=very good or good) .106 n.s. marital status (0=not married, 1=married) -.402 *** constant -.591 *** -1.188 *** -1.220 *** pseudo-r² .03 .08 .09 ª reference category. regression coefficients and p values. significance levels: * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. • frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser894 are confi rmed here. if one takes a look solely at men, the correlations between the two indicators of socioeconomic status and willingness to continue in employment become insignifi cant, whilst they are much more marked among women and also highly signifi cant. these fi ndings indicate that it is especially women in high professional positions and women with a low household income who show a greater chance of being willing to continue in employment. let us briefl y summarise the results against the background of the hypotheses put forward in section 3.4. both hypotheses (willingness to continue in employment in pensionable age increases with a higher position within an organisation, and falls with a higher household income) are supported by the fi ndings. on principle, the direction of the presumptions can be recognised in the data; the connections ascertained are however only statistically signifi cant among women according to the gender-differentiated analysis. for instance, it is possible to confi rm the fourth hypothesis, but not the third one. this means that both household income and professional status appear to play a more important role for women. tab. 4: group-differentiated analysis: binary logistic regression models for plans to continue in employment in retirement age, separated for gender total men women beta p beta p beta p socioeconomic characteristics professional status (0=medium or low professional position, 1=high professional position) .490 *** .235 n.s. .813 *** monthly net household income below € 1,500 .465 ** .335 n.s. .662 ** € 1,500 to to less than 2,000 .282 * .057 n.s. .487 * € 2,000 and moreª constant -1.220 *** -.759 * -1.500 *** pseudo-r² .09 .11 .10 ª reference category. regression coeffi cients and p-values. signifi cance levels: * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 source: weiterbeschäftigungssurvey 2008, bib. unweighted data. own calculations. controlled for size of enterprise, affi liation to enterprise, weekly working hours, unemployment, working conditions, gender, age, subjective state of health and partnership status. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 895 6 discussion and methodical restrictions this article aimed to explore the intentions of older employees to remain in working life for longer and their reasons for that intention. this question is particularly relevant since the future demographic and pension law framework requires people to remain in the working world for longer. legal and economic implications of the increase in the statutory retirement age are only one possibility on offer to benefi t from the economic potential of baby-boomers who are getting older. however, are people not in fact willing to work beyond 65 voluntarily, and if they are, under what conditions? using the dataset “continuation in employment in pensionable age”, it is fi rst of all possible to examine intentions related to a possible extension of working lives. hence, a fi rst step was taken towards explaining the retirement process. this says nothing fi nal about the decision itself as to whether or not to leave the labour market the descriptive investigation of the dataset already provides central fi ndings which make a major contribution regarding the question, which has very recently been at the heart of political and public awareness, as to the workforce potential of older people. for instance, some frameworks can be named within which continuing in employment when retired appears more attractive from the point of view of older employees: greater autonomy and more fl exibility through reduced, fl exible working hours and days or through a free choice of workplace, for instance through working at home. also a change towards physically less strenuous and demanding work should be taken into account. in the future it will therefore be necessary for policy-makers and industry to facilitate a fl exible progression into retirement and to establish a fl exible framework. the multivariate analyses indicate that professional status as an indicator of socioeconomic status also exerts a positive infl uence on willingness to remain in employment after the transition into retirement. having said that, this connection appears to be gender-specifi c. hence, in particular for women professional status can be considered to be a motivating factor to continue in employment. it is however not possible to confi rm this positive connection between socioeconomic status and willingness to continue in employment for the second indicator. rather, income emerges as a major negative infl uencing factor. here too, however, the connection appears to differ on a gender-specifi c basis. although all three models (and the explanatory variables observed) make signifi cant contributions towards explaining the variance in the dependent variable, it should however be pointed out that this contribution towards an explanation, measured against the standards of the quality of the model (pseudo r² between 0.03 and 0.09), is relatively small. this leads to the conclusion that further characteristics which have not yet been taken into account explain the wish to continue in employment in retirement age, are still to be examined and should be taken into account in further investigations. with regard to the survey, some weaknesses should be mentioned which may impair the explanatory power of the results. firstly, typical selection effects cannot be ruled out for the labour markets as to the characteristics of health or educa• frank micheel, juliane roloff, ines wickenheiser896 tional qualifi cation. since individuals who are not in employment (any more) for e.g. health reasons were not surveyed, an important group is not considered. for this reason, the relatively positive evaluations of working conditions and the relatively pronounced positive evaluation of the state of health (also among employees whose work is physically diffi cult) should not come as too much of a surprise. also with regard to education, one has to anticipate a positive bias. individuals with low educational qualifi cations have much poorer prospects on the labour markets than those with high levels of qualifi cation. these discrepancies even increase with age (e.g. fuchs 2006). in addition, the self-employed, who constitute a separate group with regard to the transition to retirement, are not included in this survey. the results and the implications of our survey therefore relate only to a selective section of the ageing working population, namely older dependent employees, who tend to be more healthy and more highly educated. future research should hence also take account of the intentions to continue in employment in retirement age of older persons who are not in employment and who are confronted with the known diffi culties in germany of reintegration into the labour market (heywood et al. 2010), or who are self-employed. with regard to the political implications, the survey showed that the previous presumption of normality regarding the transition to retirement (cf. also radl 2007: 46-47), that is time-related retirement at 65, is becoming further diluted and that the debates on leaving working life should be orientated more closely towards socioeconomic aspects. the observations listed in the fifth national social report on the situation of the elderly in germany (fünfter bericht zur lage der älteren generation in der bundesrepublik deutschland) that different cultures have formed with regard to the desire to retire (cf. section 2.1) make it clear that the possibilities to leave working life should both permit early retirement for the health-impaired working population, and encourage the older working population who indicate a willingness to continue in employment in retirement age to remain in work beyond 65. furthermore, it should be taken into account when drafting policy on the aged which persons would like to work on and who have to. this also matches the results of flynn (2010), who concluded in his investigation that there was no “one-size-fi tsall” approach for political decision-makers. it is hence important to take account of the entire range of older employees in terms of their individual characteristics and preferences in relation to workplace design in the event of an extension of working lifetime. if, therefore, one refl ects on the opening up of potentials offered by the elderly in the working world a socio-economically differentiated, gender-specifi c view would be recommended. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on older employees’ • 897 references adams, gary a.; beehr, terry a.; prescher, julie; lepisto, lawrence 2002: applying work-role attachment theory to retirement decisions. in: international journal of aging and human development 54,2: 125–137. allmendinger, jutta 1994: lebensverlauf und sozialpolitik. die ungleichheit von mann und frau und ihr öffentlicher ertrag. frankfurt am main/new york: campus verlag. ashforth, blake e. 2001: role transitions in organizational life. an 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anhangband. beiträge zur arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung 290. nürnberg. zhan, yujie; wang, mo; liu, songqi; shultz, kenneth s. 2009: bridge employment and retirees’ health: a longitudinal investigation. in: journal of occupational health psychology 14,4: 374–389 [doi:10.1037/a0015285]. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “die bereitschaft zur weiterbeschäftigung im ruhestandsalter im zusammenhang mit sozioökonomischen merkmalen”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-19de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-19de6, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 22.03.2011 date of acceptance: 01.08.2011 frank micheel ( ), ines wickenheiser. federal institute for population research, wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: frank.micheel@destatis.de, ines.wickenheiser@destatis.de url: www.bib-demografi e.de dr. juliane roloff. e-mail: juliane.roloff@gmx.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions implementation in austria, germany and switzerland dimiter philipov, laura bernardi abstract: recently the difference between actual and hypothetical fertility (fertility gap) has served as an indication to enforce family policies with the purpose to increase births. this paper examines the relevance of hypothetical fertility measured with fertility ideals and intentions, to the estimation of the gap. based on a literature review we discuss the meaning of these concepts and their operationalisation with empirical observations in three german-speaking countries (austria, germany, and switzerland). although the concept of societal ideal fertility is ambiguous it can be useful for understanding reproductive decisions when measured scrupulously. operationalisation of short-term and long-term fertility intentions is discussed, along with their realisation. analyses of intentions should rest on a theoretical background, such as the miller-pasta framework and the socio-psychological theory of planned behaviour. the latter is implemented in austria and germany using ggs data. the paper concludes that the fertility gap can be misleading both because the indicator of actual fertility as well as indicators of intended fertility can be imprecise. useful policy-relevant information can be received by a specifi c form of the gap, when realisation of individual short-term intentions is considered. keywords: reproductive decision-making · ideal number of children · fertility intentions · theory of planned behaviour · fertility gap 1 introduction the fertility decline observed during the recent decades in the european countries raised concerns among policy-makers and other stakeholders with respect to the reproductive decisions of contemporary citizens. these concerns were addressed in a series of documents issued by international bodies such as the european commission and the european parliament, where the expression that “europeans want more children than they actually have” is included either in this or a similar form. for example, the green paper from 2005 (ec 2005: 5) states that “surveys have recomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 495-530 (date of release: 14.06.2012) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-14en7 • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi496 vealed the gap which exists between the number of children europeans would like (2.3) and the number they actually have (1.5).” (philipov et al. 2009 and sobotka/lutz 2010, give several additional citations.) the difference is understood as a result of negative obstacles, which prevent people from fulfi lling their fertility preferences. thus the gap is seen as a “latent demand for family policies” (chesnais 2000). a range of european governments introduced expansions in the family policies aiming to support better parenthood and thus indirectly contribute to an increase in fertility levels. recently, the measurement of the gap between actual and hypothetical fertility (in brief: the fertility gap) raised interest among scholars. lutz (2007) introduced the use of the adjusted total fertility rate (tfr) as a measure of actual fertility instead of the conventional tfr. sobotka and lutz (2010) discuss in detail the measurement of actual fertility and the use of completed cohort fertility. the gap is intriguing also for another reason: the way hypothetical fertility should be measured. this is usually done with the ideal number of children, as is the case in the statement above (2.3) or, alternatively, with the intended number of children. no contemporary research has addressed in detail the meaning and measurement of ideal or intended fertility and whether they are appropriate for the estimation of the fertility gap. hence a series of crucial governmental decisions lies on inferences that might be ambiguous. the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the better understanding of hypothetical fertility and its relevance to the measurement of the gap. we analyse defi nitions and measurement in surveys (the term operationalisation is used instead, to avoid confusion with quantitative measurement) of the key concepts which are used for the estimation of hypothetical fertility: ideal family size and fertility intentions; also key concepts in reproductive decisions. the fi ndings indicate inconsistencies and ambiguities in the measurement of hypothetical fertility for the purposes of the estimation of the gap. the ideal number of children is ambiguous because the concept of “ideal” is unspecifi ed: it may refer either to the best number of children, or to the best conditions of life. the personal ideal, when operationalised to refer to best conditions of life, measures fertility desires as defi ned in socio-psychological theories. we recommend proper formulations of questions to avoid these ambiguities. fertility intentions are a useful concept in demography; yet the use of intended family size as an indicator of the level of hypothetical fertility may bring to misleading interpretations. short-term intentions can be compared with their realisation and the difference is informative about the impact of current conditions; this approach suits for the measurement of a specifi c “fertility intentions” gap although it does not refer to the total number of wanted children. the argumentation in this paper is based on reviews of the existing literature. while contemporary analyses of ideals and intentions are abundant, there is virtually no discussion on the validation of the concepts, whether in the three countries of interest or elsewhere. the paper relies mainly on earlier publications and reminds about concerns that cannot be rejected today. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 497 2 fertility ideals in 1936 george gallup included in a poll a question formulated as follows: “what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have?”.1 the question was constructed in the framework of the innovative at the time approach to examine americans’ attitudes to the societal situation after the 1929-1933 great depression. the concept “ideal number of children” was designed to measure attitudes towards fertility and, particularly, towards population growth (girard/roussel 1982: 337). since 1936 the question, in various forms, was systematically included in an increasing number of surveys. comprehensive discussions emerged as of the 1950s and the 1960s on what is measured with the question and what is the meaning of this concept. 2.1 interpretations of the concept the concept of “ideal” as used in demography is not based on a theoretical ground. the “ideal” is a fundamental concept in philosophy, ethics, and social psychology. its demographic implementation has never been referred to these disciplines. apparently demographers use it in the common meaning of the word, and interpret it in accordance with the empirical fi ndings. during the baby-boom in the u.s.a. at the end of the 1950s, the average ideal number of children did not differ signifi cantly from actual fertility measured with period indicators such as the tfr. the concept was interpreted as a measure of expected fertility that could be informative for the construction of population projections. this interpretation was soon abandoned because actual fertility started declining and deviated increasingly from the ideal number of children. the introduction of new questions that referred directly to fertility desires, expectations, and intentions deprived the concept of similar interpretations. the interpretation as an attitude towards population growth also faded with the increasing rigorousness with which the concept of “attitude” was specifi ed during the development of socio-psychological theories. another interpretation of the ideal number of children emerged during the 1960s: an expression of family-size norms (see gustavus/nam 1970 for a brief discussion, also trent 1980). accumulated poll results during the 1950s and the 1960s in the u.s. revealed that respondents strongly prefer answers for 2 or 3 children, fewer respondents would favour a higher number of children, and very few (less than 5 %) prefer 0 or 1 child. this narrow range of answers and the grouping towards 2 or 3 children was interpreted as a refl ection of a societal norm about the number of children in a family. in particular, the empirical observations were considered to indicate a non-acceptance by society of childlessness or having only one child; it is a normative requirement to families to have more than one child. understanding 1 url: http://www.gallup.com/poll/9091/desire-children-alive-well-america.aspx, 23.04.2012. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi498 the concept as a social norm thus rests on empirical observations, which precede a relevant theoretical background. to the best of our knowledge, trent (1980) provides the only rigorous examination of the interpretation of ideals as a normative concept. he states: “ideal family size is now appropriately regarded as a measure of a societal pronatalist norm” (trent 1980: 309) (pronatalism defi ned as orientation towards large families). girard and roussel (1982: 337) posted a slightly different defi nition: “the ideal size is a collective image that corresponds to a precise standard of the desirable for all the members of a community at a certain time and in a given context.” the ideal size as an image of a “standard of the desirable” helps families in their orientation towards their own family size without the imposition of normative restrictions. this understanding differs from the one as a social norm insofar as norms act restrictively while a standard supports a personal orientation in a decision-making. the “societal norm” interpretation of the ideal rested on three empirical observations: (i) the average ideal number of children, when measured for an average american family is above replacement-level fertility. it comes in agreement with the assumption that people will not approve a long-run population decline and hence will not approve low-size families. this inference is underlined by trent (1980) in the accentuation on the pronatalist-norms view on the ideal. (ii) very few respondents indicate that the ideal number of children is 0 or 1. in the light of the previous observation this one indicates that having 0 or 1 child is deviant behaviour. (iii) the question does not ask for the respondent’s personal but for his/her impersonalised preferences. the literature is rich in critiques of the concept of ideal number of children, particularly where its straightforward meaning is considered (hagewen/morgan 2005 in recent years). in her overview of survey data over a period of 25 years, judith blake (1966: 160) states: “clearly any question regarding ‘ideal’ family size which specifi es no conditions or points of reference for the respondent to take into account leaves him free to answer whatever terms seem relevant to him. but are these terms similar to all respondents? or, rather, is one respondent thinking of an ‘ideal’ number of children who will appear under ‘ideal’ conditions, whereas another is thinking of the best number under the stress of realistic limitations? equally, are some respondents answering in personal terms and others in terms of hypothetical ‘average man’? there are no satisfying and elegant answers to such queries [...] since typically only one general question was asked.”2 in early studies no difference is made between “ideal number of children” and “ideal family size”. the latter term is usually used understanding that a family includes a mother, father, and children. the two concepts are not distinguished in this paper and for short they are referred to as “ideals”. blake’s text highlights several fl aws in the interpretation of the meaning of “ideal”. one primary interpretation is that it refl ects the number of children a family 2 blake (1974) also notes that respondents might understand the “ideal” as referring to the number of ideal children rather than to the ideal number of children. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 499 would wish to have under “ideal” living conditions. usually “ideal” conditions do not include the effect of factors that may go against having children, such as limited economic resources, time availability, housing conditions, intimate life and the quality of the relations with a partner. another interpretation is that the “ideal” number of children is the most appropriate number that people might have under the prevalent conditions of life. this understanding is evident also in the citation of girard and roussel cited above, where they consider a “given context”. the latter understanding was considered in the ess surveys (rotating module, round 3, 2006/7) which included questions on an ideal age for certain demographic events; an instruction for interviewers explains that “ideal age” means “a most appropriate age”. ryder and westoff (1971) note that the concept does not have face validity, i.e. it is not clear to the respondents what it exactly measures. in a two-week test-retest reliability test they found that the ideal number of children had a low reliability ratio of 0.63, while intended family size scored 0.86. this short review shows that the ideal number of children gained different interpretations which did not stand scientifi c scrutiny. an invalidation of the concept would be however premature. although ryder and westoff (1971) note that it does not have face validity, trent (1980) found evidence on its construct validity, with validation of the ideal as a societal pronatalistic norm. recent literature on this topic is scanty. hagewen and morgan (2005) criticise the concept when measured with the original gallup question and, based on empirical observations conditionally accept its interpretation as a societal fertility norm in the u.s. however in this country the gap between ideal and actual fertility and hence the deviance of a social norm from actual behaviour is not large. in countries where fertility is well below replacement level it is awkward to interpret the ideal as a societal norm because it is signifi cantly higher than actual fertility. for this reason the term “societal ideal” (used for example by testa 2006) is preferable. it can be interpreted as a socially desirable level of fertility in similarity to the “standard of desirable fertility” discussed by girard and roussel (1982). 2.2 issues of operationalisation attempts to clarify the concept of ideal family size (or ideal fertility in short, excluding ideal timing of having children and other childbearing-related ideals) were directed towards its precise operationalisation, starting from the initial gallup formulation. a diversity of survey questions refl ects such attempts. one type of operationalisation addressed the normative aspect involved in the concept, developing questions on family size norms. blake (1974) examined questions on respondents’ assessment of what family size is too large or too small. in the same line, gustavus and nam (1970) discuss questions asking how many children are too few, or too many. a second and major line of research to improve the operationalisation of the concept focused on the need to specify a point of reference for respondents while thinking about an ideal number of children. in particular, the new questions anchored the number of children to a specifi c societal group under specifi ed conditions of life. an early example is the slight modifi cation of the initial question with reference to • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi500 an average family. the detroit area study from the beginning of the 1950s included the following question: “people have different ideas about children and families. as things are now, what do you think is the ideal number of children for the average american family?” (cited after freedman/sharp 1954: 35). the expression “as things are now” serves to clarify that the ideal does not refer to ideal conditions of life but to the most appropriate number of children. ined surveys during the 1970s and later included a question with which the respondent is anchored to his/her own societal and economic environment: “among persons in the same class as you and with the same material resources, what would be the ideal number of children in a family?” (girard/roussel 1982). another important reference point is auto-referential where questions asked the ideal number of children for the self. a typical formulation reads as follows “for you personally, what is the ideal number of children that you would like to have?” similar questions have been included in u.s. surveys since the 1960s (gustavus/nam 1970). since a personal ideal refers to the self and not to a hypothetical family, it anchors the respondent to his or her specifi c family situation. a personal ideal is contrasted with a societal ideal where the reference point is the (average) family. although a variety of operational instruments have become available, the original gallup question, anchored to society or to the self, dominated fertility surveys. other variations or extensions have remained less familiar. next follow examples of how the ideal number of children has been measured in austrian, german, and swiss surveys. the fertility and family surveys (ffs) carried out during the 1990s included • in the standard questionnaire the following question: “how many children do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have in this country?” respondents had to answer either with an exact number or with two numbers, such as “2 or 3”, “3 or 4”. the latter option is helpful to respondents who have an approximate but no exact answer. the option “don’t know” was also available.3 although the standard generations and gender surveys (ggs) question-• naire did not include questions on ideals, the austrian team included two questions for the measurement of impersonal and personal ideals: “what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family in austria?” and “and for you personally, what is the ideal number of children which you would like to have or would like to have had?” respondents answered with an exact number. the question on the societal ideal included an additional option: “there is no such ideal”. it is of particular interest in case ideals measure a family size norm or a desired standard: respondents with this choice actually state explicitly that there is no norm for a family size or a desired standard. 3 since the option “don’t know” is included in all questions we do not mention it further. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 501 a recent survey in germany: “panel study on relationship and family dy-• namics in germany” (pairfam) includes the following question: “assuming ideal circumstances: how many children would you like to have altogether?” the respondent is asked to consider the children he or she already has. the question asks for a mixture of two components: actual achieved fertility and hypothetical ideal fertility. respondents answer with an exact number. being a mixture of a real and a hypothetical situation the question does not measure personal ideal as discussed above. some respondents might think of a personal ideal that is lower than the actual number of children they already have, while infertile respondents might see an ideal situation fi t their specifi c status (nearly 15 % of the infertile respondents stated their ideal is 0 children). the • institut für demoskopie allensbach applies the original gallop question as of 1950 in yearly interviews in germany. the swiss household panel survey (shp) included the question: “• what would you say is the ideal number of children for a family living in switzerland?” the interviewer is advised to make sure that the respondent considers the number of children in general, not speaking for their own. the question was included in the shp waves from 2002 to 2005, and removed from the subsequent waves. table 1 illustrates the results of observations from the 2005 wave (7th) only since the proportions did not change signifi cantly during the 4-year period. the • eurobarometer surveys include regularly questions on ideals. the surveys from 2001 and 2006, for example, include the following two questions: “generally speaking, what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family?“ and “and for you personally, what would be the ideal number of children you would like to have or would have liked to have had?” respondents give an exact number or “don’t know”, or the option “there is no ideal” as in the austrian ggs. the second question is problematic because it sets two conditions: “would like to have” and “would like to have had”. it is unclear whether the respondent considers only one of these conditions, or both of them. for example, a respondent aged 30 might answer only to the fi rst condition which assumes the ideal number of children as of age 30, or only to the second condition which assumes an ideal only by age 30, or to both conditions when the respondent considers the whole reproductive age span. the world values surveys included a question on ideals formulated usually • as follows: “what do you think is the ideal size of a family – how many children, if any?” respondents answer with an exact number or “don’t know”. the european values surveys included the same question in the master questionnaire in the 1990 round and in the later rounds the question was excluded. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi502 the international social survey programme (issp) included in earlier rounds • the question “all in all, what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have?” the question was excluded in survey waves carried out during the 2000s. notably the question has been removed from several recent international surveys, such as the generations and gender surveys (ggs), recent waves from the world and european values surveys (wevs) and the issp. eurobarometer remained the only international survey which included the question during the 2000’s. in all the above-mentioned surveys, except the pairfam, the question on societal ideal is similar to the original gallup formulation. an important aspect of measurement is the age span of respondents. usually it is age at reproduction, say 18-49, although a span of ages above 49 is also feasible. another aspect is the marital status of the respondents. in earlier surveys the questions were asked to married persons, while in recent surveys marital status is not used as a fi lter. 2.3 empirical illustration table 1 includes data for the three german-speaking countries from surveys which included a question related to ideal fertility. the discussion aims to show that the concept of ideal can be used for the derivation of important inferences; no analysis of ideals in the three countries of interest is attempted. it is assumed that the concept is consistent all throughout and it denotes either only the number of children under ideal conditions of life, or only the best number of children under the prevalence of the real conditions of life. with the exception of the • eurobarometer surveys,4 more than 60 % of the respondents indicate two children as an ideal number. the 1958 survey in western germany is also an exception and it is the only one where half of the respondents indicate that the ideal number of children is 3 or more. this survey is incompatible with the others because fertility was considerably higher at the time when it was performed and it is logical to observe that societal ideals were higher. next preferred number of children is three, with some exceptions in the • eurobarometer and the german ffs. about 60 to 90 % of all respondents indicate two or three children as an ideal. 4 the eurobarometer surveys frequently constitute an exception probably because of small sample sizes; moreover the 2006 wave yielded incredible results for austria and for this reason they are not displayed in the table. for example 0 % of the male respondents aged below 25 indicate zero children as a social ideal, while 23 % of the males aged 25-39 indicated it as the ideal number (testa 2006). the unusually high proportion of 23 % can be due to the small number of observations (152) or other data-related inadequacies. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 503 tab. 1: ideal number of children measured in austria, germany, and switzerland, in percent, respondents in reproductive age (18-45) ideal number of children there is don’t n resp. mean tfr 0 1 2 3 4+ no ideal know obs.* austria societal ideal 1988, issp 2.2 1.2 65.1 27.3 4.2 972 2.31 1.45 1990, wevs 2 7 61 25 5 653 2.3 1.46 1994, issp 0.5 5.4 70.4 20.6 3.2 977 2.21 1.47 1996, ffs 2 7 68 21 2 4,640 2.2 1.42 2001, eurobarometer 6.8 12.1 46.1 9.7 2.7 18.5 4.1 486 1.88 1.33 2009, ggs 0.5 3.9 64.6 17.8 1.6 11.5 0.2 5,000 2.2 1.39 personal ideal 2001, eurobarometer 11.5 15.4 46.7 9.6 2.8 14.1 469 1.75 1.33 2009, ggs 3.0 10.6 59.2 20.5 6.3 0.3 5,000 2.2 1.39 germany societal ideal 1958, friedman et al. (1959), west 1 3 46 38 12 1,811 2.6 2.4 1988, issp, west 1.3 8.8 65.6 20.1 4.2 2,994 2.18 1.451 1990, wevs 2 16 63 15 4 1,650 2.0 1.45 1992, ffs, west 2 19 64 13 2 10 4,532 2.0 1.40 1992, ffs, east 3 29 60 8 1 4 4,690 1.7 0.83 1994, issp, west 0.8 5.2 69.5 19.8 4.7 2,324 2.24 1.35 1994, issp, east 0.6 10.1 77.7 10.7 0.9 1,097 2.01 0.77 1997, wevs 3 8 70 14 5 1,031 2.2 1.37 2001, eurobarometer, west 7.2 8.3 50.9 10.0 1.8 15.7 6.0 432 1.89 1.38 2001, eurobarometer, east 7.9 21.6 51.0 6.0 2.1 6.5 4.9 431 1.71 1.23 2003, ifd allensbach (ifd 2004) 3 13 57 13 2 12 1,257 2 2006, eurobarometer, west 2 6 56 15 5 14 1 506 2.2 1.34 2006, eurobarometer, east 3 9 59 13 3 12 1 201 2.04 1.30 personal ideal 1958, friedman et al. (1959), west 1 6 43 29 20 1,781 2.7 2.4 2001, eurobarometer, west 16.0 16.3 45.8 8.7 2.4 10.9 424 1.61 1.38 2001, eurobarometer, east 11.7 28.4 44.9 6.9 3.1 5.0 419 1.60 1.23 2006, eurobarometer, west 7 11 52 14 6 8 2 465 2.03 1.34 2006, eurobarometer, east 5 14 56 10 5 6 3 201 1.96 1.30 2008, pairfam2, personal ideal 6.6 7.8 51.4 21.6 9.6 2.8 8,064 2.3 1.38 switzerland societal ideal 1989, wevs3 0 2 62 23 13 663 2.5 1.56 1994-1995, ffs4 1 3 63 30 3 4 4,905 2.3 1.48 1996, wevs 2 4 66 20 8 606 2.3 1.50 2005, shp wawe 7 1.4 2.7 65.7 21.5 4.3 = 4.4 2,716 2.3 1.42 1 in 1990. 2 age range in completed years: 15-17, 25-27, 35-37. 3 an unlikely large number of respondents indicating 9 or more children excluded. 4 the number of respondents aged 20-24 is considerably lower than that at higher ages. * comparisons between the average societal ideal and observed fertility are more preferable when the adjusted tfr is used (see text). its estimation for germany and switzerland and in austria before 1986 is tricky because of the lack of adequate data; for this reason it is not included in the table. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi504 only few respondents, usually less than 3 %, indicate a societal ideal of zero • children (again eurobarometer data are exceptional). one child as an ideal is also rarely preferred, except for germany during the turbulent years after the unifi cation. hagewen and morgan (2005) note that childlessness is not desirable at a societal level because it would lead to extinguishing of the population in one generation; non-zero proportions of childlessness they explain with erroneous understanding of the question by some respondents who might have thought of their personal ideal instead of a societal ideal. personal ideals have an apparently larger variance than the societal ideal due • to the combined effect of the larger proportion of respondents who indicate 0 or 1 child and the larger proportion of those who select a number of children higher than 2. the societal ideal is persistently stable across time and a trend of decline • seems to be very slow if there is any at all. comparisons with observed fertility• deserve a special attention. the average societal ideal is measured as the number of children per family which is a measure attributable to completed cohort fertility. on the other side the average ideal is observed over all ages and hence is a cross-sectional (period) measure across cohorts. the average ideal is therefore a two-dimensional measure: one is cross-sectional and the other is cohort. hence it is more convenient to compare it with a period measure of observed fertility which is as close as possible to cohort fertility than with conventional measures of cohort or of period fertility. this is for example the adjusted tfr (bongaarts/ feeney 1998) which controls for the tempo effect related to the postponement of childbearing. the latter is estimated using data specifi ed by birth order which are not available in the three countries (except for austria since 1986). sobotka et al. give more details (2011, in cpos 36,2-3). else, a comparison with completed cohort fertility will satisfy the requirement for equal measures on both indicators but it is disturbed by differences in the time of measurement: the ideal is measured during the time of interview which is usually one calendar year and conditions of life prevalent during this year, while completed fertility is measured over a sequence of years, i.e. under the prevalence of a diversity of conditions of life. a comparison with the observed tfr which is a pure period measure bears the inverse advantage and defi ciency: both the ideal and the tfr are measured under the prevalence of one and the same conditions of life but the conventional tfr is not a measure of the number of children per woman (this interpretation is common but it is well known not to be true). when the adjusted tfr are not readily available the observed tfr can be • used with a caution to the incompatibility of the measurement units. the data in table 1 show that there is a discrepancy between observed and ideal concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 505 fertility. were adjusted tfr available they would have indicated a smaller difference because during the years under consideration there has been a signifi cant postponement of fertility in all three countries (sobotka et al. 2011 in cpos 36,2-3). the ideal family size has been analysed for diverse population structures such as age, sex, education, marital status. we analysed the ffs data to compare ideals by sex and found that women have slightly higher ideals than men in the three countries, although differences were not statistically signifi cant. differences by age are more pervasive and more indicative. younger generations indicate lower ideal sizes. this observation has been discussed by goldstein et al. (2003) and by testa and grilli (2006). since fertility declined during recent decades, younger generations form their ideals in a context of lower fertility. goldstein et al. termed this “cultural lag”. heiland et al. (2008) made similar inferences in their analysis of the desired family size in germany. both societal and personal ideals are considerably higher than observed fertility, with the exception of the early 1958 survey in western germany. we return to this observation in the discussion on the fertility gap. the distribution of actual fertility by parity also signifi cantly deviates from that for ideal fertility. table 2 illustrates the parity distribution of cohort 1956 whose fertility is completed. actual fertility is considerably lower because of the high proportion of respondents who remained childless or had only 1 child. hence ideal fertility is signifi cantly higher than actual fertility both with respect to level and parity distribution. an important observation by goldstein et al. (2003) is that the german-speaking countries are unique with societal ideals below replacement level for the age group 25-39. hence, according to their hypothesis about the cultural lag it can be expected that ideals would remain below replacement, as low fertility levels have been also persistent. the austrian ggs, eurobarometer 2006 data for germany, and pairfam tab. 2: completed actual fertility of the cohort born in 1956 parity 0 1 2 3+ completed fertility austria 15.3 23.4 37.8 23.5 1.80 eastern germany 7.0 27.0 50.1 15.9 1.82 western germany 17.4 23.7 38.6 20.3 1.62 switzerland 17.7 18.8 41.9 21.6 1.76 notes: the data for austria are based on 2001 census data. the data for germany are based on the micro-census of 2008 and refer to fi ve-year cohort groups. the data for switzerland are based on the census 2000 (the calculation was made without consideration of women with an unknown number of children). source: statistisches bundesamt (2009); statistik austria (2005); human fertility database (2011); as well as data for switzerland, by courtesy of marion burkimsher. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi506 however indicate that ideals during the second half of the 2000s were above replacement level. i.e. there was an upward change in fertility ideals in the two countries during the 2000s. the survey carried out by the ifd allensbach in germany also supports this observation. the cultural lag hypothesis needs a re-examination with more detailed data. below replacement ideals were observed in germany in 1992 with especially low levels in the eastern provinces as a result of the aftermath of the re-unifi cation when fertility declined drastically. below replacement ideal fertility was observed in austria and germany in 2001; however the unlikely high levels of societal childlessness cast doubt in data quality, as societal childlessness means that the population would extinguish in one generation. 2.4 fertility ideals: to use or not to use? the concept of an ideal number of children has been criticised for its ambiguity when operationalised with the original question: the concept does not have a theoretical justifi cation, and the use of one single word “ideal” without any additional explanations raises doubts whether respondents ascribe to it one and the same meaning. ambiguity is expressed in three different ways of understanding the concept and the whole question: (1) the concept of “ideal” refers to the conditions of life that respondents keep in mind while they answer the question; in this case respondents are expected to hypothesize ideal circumstances for having children; (2) alternatively, “ideal” refers to the “appropriate” number of children under the current conditions of life; (3) respondents can imagine any kind of a family whose ideal number of children is considered: an average family for the country, a family typical for their social class, or their own family even if the question is not formulated for the latter. the fi rst ambiguity can be relaxed by extending the question to indicate what kind of life conditions are considered, as has been done in the german pairfam survey where “ideal circumstances” of life are indicated. the last ambiguity for a societal ideal can be relaxed by indicating an average family, or a family like the one of the respondent. as we noted earlier the decision “not to use the question” has come to prevail during the last decade, as no question on ideal fertility was included in recent waves of the issp, wevs, shp, and ggs. although no published explanations are available, it is likely that ambiguity of the concept played a major role in its abandonment. yet, the data in table 1 and their brief description show that the concept can bring valuable information about societal fertility, particularly when the concept is expressed to measure social fertility norms. it is undesirable to reject such information provided the concept of ideal fertility is rigorously measured. it is much more promising to direct further research towards a better formulation of the relconcepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 507 evant question. this direction has a large potential: experiments might include for example a replacement of the phrase “ideal number of children” with more clear expressions like “the most appropriate number of children” or “the best number of children”. it is strange not to see experiments with batteries of questions that can disentangle different ambiguities into separate lines of information. a notable exception in this direction, beyond the preferable formulation of the question in pairfam, is an on-going research reported by goldstein et al. (2010). recent qualitative analyses examined what individuals think of when answering questions about their childbearing plans. these analyses provide valuable information which can be used to improve the formulations of questions on fertility ideals and fertility intentions (bernardi et al. in print; bernardi/cavalli/mynarska 2010). a fi nal note is due to the concept of a personal ideal number of children. when it is defi ned with respect to ideal circumstances in life the concept measures childbearing desires. more details are given below. 3 fertility intentions the fi rst national fertility survey in the u.s.a. from 1955 was designed to gather information for the improvement of population forecasts (westoff/ryder 1977). respondents who were in the reproductive age were asked whether they intended to have more children and if so, how many; intended fertility was expected to indicate plausible future level of fertility in population projection scenarios. since then fertility intentions have been regularly studied in diverse surveys throughout the world. research on intentions is much larger than that of ideals, and its review is outside the scope of this paper; the accent here is on contemporary theories and operationalisation of the concept. cumulated work (for example westoff/ryder 1977; hendershot/placek 1980) soon showed that fertility levels indicated by intentions deviate from actual fertility and hence forecasts based on intentions were inaccurate; morgan (2001) provides a recent literature review of this issue. however, research also indicated that fertility intentions, as antecedent of childbearing, are valuably informative about fertility behaviour. also, deviation of intentions from actual fertility was found to be useful in the search of explanations on why people fail to reach their fertility plans. initial uses of intentions referred to family size, i.e. respondents were asked how many children they intend to have. these intentions are known as “intended family size”, or “life-time intentions”. we refer to them as synonymous, along with the term “intended number of children”. they inform about intended completed fertility. later researchers increased their interest in intentions to have a child during a short time period such as 2-3 years. these are short-term intentions, which inform about timing of childbearing. thus two main types of fertility intentions are being studied: life-time intentions and short-term intentions. analysts distinguish the concepts of intentions, expectations and desires. theoretically (miller/pasta 1993, 1994, 1995) childbearing desires infl uence the formation of expectations and the latter infl uence the formation of intentions. desires are sup• dimiter philipov, laura bernardi508 posed to refl ect a preferred number of children when obstacles to childbearing, such as subfecundity, housing or fi nancial shortage, confl ict in time-use, are neglected. so a desired and a personal ideal number of children are two different expressions for the same concept. desires are operationalised with questions that ask about a “wanted” number of children. heiland et al. (2008) discuss fertility desires in germany. expectations refl ect the number of children that an individual thinks might be achieved under the restriction of prevalent conditions but independently of whether the children were intended or not. hence desires and expectations should refl ect a larger number of children than intentions as the latter are supposed to refl ect the existence of a plan of action. however both early (westoff/ryder 1977) and recent empirical fi ndings (hagewen/morgan 2005) indicate that respondents do not distinguish the three concepts. empirically the concepts are similar and refl ect about the same fertility levels. a detailed analysis is necessary to distinguish the reasons for this similarity and in particular whether their measurement might be improved; this analysis is beyond the scope of our paper. 3.1 theoretical approaches traditionally demographers analyse intentions using micro-econometric models where a variable which measures intentions is considered dependent on a number of predictors. the latter are defi ned usually following theories on fertility. miller (1994) and miller and pasta (1993, 1994, 1995) noted that an intention is a concept rigorously defi ned in social psychology and demographers can benefi t from using relevant psychological theories. in a series of publications they developed their theoretical approach which, regrettably, remained out of the scope of fertility research in europe. recently the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) has gained considerable attention among demographers. it has been measured in the ggs and a few other surveys so it can be empirically used for analyses of intentions.5 nauck (2010) applied a psychological approach in combination with the theory of the value of children to the analyses of ideal and intended fertility and its realisation, in contrast and as complement to traditional socio-economic theories on fertility. his analysis supports the stand that hypothetical fertility can be considered as a psychological construct. the miller-pasta theoretical approach the miller-pasta theory rests on a defi nition of a psychological and behavioural sequence related to childbearing. at the most general level, and furthest away from a decision to have a child are the childbearing motivations, attitudes, and beliefs. they have an effect on the building of childbearing desires defi ned as wishes that do not necessarily relate to action. desires infl uence the construction of childbear5 specifi cally, the tpb was applied in pairfam, see http://www.pairfam.uni-bremen.de/de/studie/inhaltl-schwerpunkte/elternschaftsentscheidungen/ausfuehrlichere-informationen.html concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 509 ing intentions, which are a commitment to act and thus form the reproductive behaviour. individual’s attributes such as age, education, employment status etc., and macro-level factors if included in a study, have a role in the formulation of the components of the sequence. this scheme involves three types of childbearing desires and intentions: childbearing, child-number and child-timing desires and intentions. childbearing intentions refer to the intention to have another child or not; child-number intentions refer to the number of children wanted, and child-timing refers to the proper time when the next child is wanted. the miller-pasta theory therefore includes both longterm and short-term intentions in its framework. an important feature of this theory is the rigorous defi nition of behaviour. while by tradition demographers defi ne the behaviour subsequent to a childbearing intention as a birth or its non-occurrence, the theory considers components of behaviour such as proceptive behaviour and conception. proceptive behaviour is the action directed to the achievement of pregnancy such as stopping use of contraceptives. miller (1986) fi rst introduced the concept. achievement of a pregnancy is the outcome of the intention to have a child. the theory thus described refers to an intention to have a biological child but it can be rephrased for an adoption of a child. miller and pasta note another important issue in the formation of intentions. childbearing involves two persons, while intentions are individual. relations between the two partners have an important role in the formation of intentions. miller and pasta note that partners usually form a consensus as a result of living together and continuous exchange of opinions. when couples disagree on intentions, the outcome is diffi cult to predict because each one of the partners may dominate in the couple’s decision-taking, depending on culture or strength of personal motivation. for example in “patriarchal” decision-making the husband’s opinion prevails. voas (2003) notes that where gender equality is achieved, when partners disagree the most likely outcome is that the decision will be not to have a child, independently of the sex of this partner who did not intend to have a child; thomson and hoem (1998) report they did not fi nd the pattern of couple’s decision-making to depend on gender arrangements and ideals (see also thomson 1995). theory of planned behaviour the theory of reasoned action became known during the 1970s through several publications of fischbein and ajzen (fischbein/ajzen 1975). an extension of this theory introduced later by ajzen (ajzen 1985, 1991) became known as the theory of planned behaviour (tpb), whose application is discussed in this paper. billary et al. (2009) applied the theory for the study of fertility. appendix 1 gives a short description of the theory. the key proposition in the tpb is that intentions are a contiguous antecedent of behaviour, and attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control are proximate antecedents of intentions. the theory requires rigorous defi nitions of its basic concepts, and in particular of intentions and the intended behaviour. usually demographers operationalise fertility intentions with • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi510 reference to having a child. however, this intention is not specifi ed well because it is not clear to what behaviour it refers; “having a child” is an outcome of behaviour, not proper behaviour. a convenient behaviour is the proceptive one, as specifi ed by miller-pasta which refers to actions such as stopping use of contraceptives and having regular sexual intercourse with the purpose to achieve pregnancy; other relevant actions may refer to decrease infecundity. a proper defi nition of behaviour and the related intention requires an in-depth analysis which goes beyond the scope of this paper. family-size intentions and an intention to have a child within the next 2-3 years differ signifi cantly with respect to the time horizon of their realisation. the fi rst one is defi ned in the long-term, which makes it problematic for the application of the tpb, because a rigorous defi nition of behaviour in the long run is unlikely to be realistic. to our understanding the tpb can be applied successfully to short-term intentions while long-term intentions can serve as a background factor (appendix 1). 3.2 intended number of children – use and operationalisation as mentioned above this concept entered demographic research with the purpose to inform construction of fertility forecasts. yet comparisons of the intended number of children with actual fertility indicated considerable deviations at the micro level, while at the macro level the deviations are smaller. liefbroer (2009) studied a sequence of waves of a dutch panel survey to show that some respondents do not meet their initially targeted intentions while others have more babies than they intended to have; at the macro level both deviations cancel each other out to a large extent. morgan and rackin (2010) reached analogous inferences for the u.s, refi ning earlier fi ndings by quesnel-vallée and morgan (2003). iacovou and tavares (2011) made the same inference for great britain. similar analyses based on panel data are not available in the german-speaking countries. sobotka (2009) presents a detailed analysis of life-time intentions in austria using microcensus surveys taken during the period 1986-2001. the sequence of surveys is used to construct family-size intentions of cohorts, sex and education. he fi nds that trends in fertility intentions reveal persistent preferences towards belowreplacement fertility levels. bernardi, le goff and ryser are currently carrying out a similar research for switzerland. operationalisation of intended number of children is usually done using al least two questions: “do you intend to have another child sometime?” and if the answer is “yes”, the second question is asked: “how many more children do you intend to have?” in the ggs the questions are combined with the measurement of short-term intentions (the basic questions are 6.22 to 6.26 in the standard questionnaire, see united nations 2005). in the ffs the term “intend” in the above mentioned questions is replaced by “want” and thus relates to the measurement of fertility desires (standard ffs country reports refer to expectations) rather than intentions; no specifi c questions for intentions were included. the concept of life-long intentions is linked with uncertainty: at the time of interview the respondent might be uncertain about having children at all or about the concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 511 number of intended children, if any. this uncertainty can be revealed by appropriate answers to the questions about intentions. in some surveys in the u.s. an answer to the fi rst question placed in the preceding paragraph is selected on an ordinal scale from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, where on the one end of the scale is the choice “certainly yes” and on the other “certainly no”. another option traditionally used is to use a nominal scale, for example a choice among “yes”, “uncertain” and “no”. it was applied for example in the austrian microcensus analysed by sobotka (2009) and in the ffs. findings show that a signifi cant number of respondents select the option “uncertain” which raises problems with the estimation of the intended number of children. how should “uncertain” be classifi ed for the purposes of this estimation? researchers used to exclude from their analyses these answers; morgan (1982) noted that they bring important information for understanding intentions and measuring intended number of children and hence should not be excluded. the ffs standard country reports included analyses of means of expected number of children estimated on the assumption that uncertain expectations are very likely to remain unrealised and therefore they were added to the answers “no”. another option is to divide them, say half as if having said “yes” and the other half “no”. sobotka (2009) used several variants and thus analysed a range of possible numbers of children. during the last decade the 3-category scale for answers related to uncertainty was replaced by a 4-level scale: certainly-yes, probably-yes, probably-no, and certainly-no. it has been applied in the ggs and in pairfam. this option was found to work well in surveys. the second question about the intended number of children is not asked to those respondents who chose the option “certainly no” on the fi rst question. in the ffs, uncertainty with respect to the number of intended children is considered by the possibility to give responses in an interval, such as “2 or 3 children”. in recent surveys (ggs, shp, pairfam) the answer can be only an exact number of children (again skipping conventional options such as “don’t know” or “does not wish to answer”). uncertainty related to the realisation of an intended number of children has been discussed extensively in the literature. lee (1980) noted that life-long intentions will tab. 3: intended number of children in the three countries year of survey personal ideal number of children intended number of children tfr at year of adjusted tfr* males females males females survey austria (ggs) 2009 2.15 2.22 2.02 2.10 1.42 1.66 germany (pairfam1) 2008-09 2.18 2.24 1.93 2.03 1.38 1.62 switzerland (shp) 2005 2.31 2.31 2.19 2.21 1.42 1.60 * adjusted tfr are for the period 2005-2007; source: european demographic datasheet 2010, vienna institute of demography 1 age range in completed years: 15-17, 25-27, 35-37 • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi512 hardly get realised and hence cannot be considered as a “fi xed target”: under the pervasiveness of changing conditions of life people revise their intentions and thus they refl ect a “moving target”. the observation of this type of uncertainty requires the use of panel surveys (liefbroer 2009; iacovou/tavares 2011). the intended number of children presented in table 3 includes the number of actual children which the respondent has towards the interview and the number of expected children. as expected, the intended number of children is lower than the ideal number of children in a family. in austria and germany women tend to have slightly higher ideals and intentions than men, while in switzerland the difference is insignifi cant. actual fertility at year of survey is considerably lower than intended fertility. the latter comparison can be useful insofar as it might indicate how actual fertility relates to the formation of hypothetical life-time fertility. the adjusted tfr is not subject to a tempo effect and is preferable to the conventional tfr for comparisons of indicators measured in terms of the number of children. it is higher than the tfr but still considerably lower than the intended number of children. 3.3 short-term intentions: operationalisation and empirical illustration short-term intentions refer to having a child within a short time-period such as 2 or 3 years. over a short period the respondent is expected to be familiar with his or her personal situation in life and with the obstacles which might frustrate the intention to have a child. for example the respondent is aware of her family situation and her partner’s fertility preferences; she is aware of her housing situation, employment situation, income etc. an advantage of these intentions is that it is easier to trace the effect of relatively unchanged current conditions of life on their realisation; a disadvantage is that they do not inform about the intended number of children. short-term intentions can be operationalised with a variety of questions as to the timing of the next expected birth. a question used in the ffs for the measurement of desires (which can be used for intentions as well, insofar as respondents do not distinguish between the two concepts) asked about the age at which the respondent would like to have her/his next (or fi rst) child. in the ggs the question was formulated with respect to a fi xed period: within the next three years. the ggs data can be used to estimate the tpb antecedents to fertility intentions in austria and germany applying the procedure described by billari et al. (2009); appendix 2 lists the ggs questions used for the estimates. table 4 displays the fi ndings. negative attitudes are the strongest factor that determines fertility intentions for a fi rst child in austria and in germany, both among males and females. that is, people restrain of having children because of expected negative consequences. in austria positive attitudes are as effective as subjective norms, while in germany norms have a stronger effect than positive attitudes among women. perceived behavioural control is found insignifi cant except for austrian men for whom the pvalue of 0.066 might be considered as indicative of signifi cance. we note that the measurement of this variable in the ggs is not optimal and it may only partially refl ect perceived control. intentions to have a second child in austria are mostly concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 513 affected by negative attitudes, while in germany negative attitudes submit to the stronger effect of both positive attitudes and subjective norms. this illustrative analysis can be extended to encompass the impact of diverse components of attitudes, subjective norms or perceived behavioural control, as well as of the background factors. 3.4 contemporary issues in operationalisation the preceding discussion referred to conventional survey instruments and tools. yet recent fi ndings suggest that intentions are not adequately defi ned and operationalised. types of uncertainty qualitative research shows that respondents who are uncertain whether to have a child or not may belong to two different categories: (a) conditional uncertainty: individuals who have a strong desire for a child but they do not know whether or when to have one because their choice is conditional on contingent factors like employment or housing conditions; (b) fundamental uncertainty: individuals who do not express any strong desire to have a child, but do not rule out this possibility. the latter may have never thought about becoming parents or having another child; they are uncertain about the time frame they would prefer and they want to maintain an open and non-committing attitude towards the possibility of childbearing. this tab. 4: logistic coeffi cients of tpb variables on intentions to have a fi rst or a second child; estimates based on ggs data intentions to have a first child intentions to have a second child men women men women austria negative attitudes -1.4 -1.3 -1.2 -1.4 positive attitudes 0.8 0.8 1.1 0.8 subjective norms 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.0 perceived control 0.1* -0.04 (ns) 0.4 0.2 (ns) germany negative attitudes -0.9 -0.7 -0.8 -0.5 positive attitudes 0.5 0.3 1.4 0.6 subjective norms 0.6 1.0 1.0 0.8 perceived control -0.1 (ns) -0.1 (ns) -0.2 (ns) 0.2 (ns) all coeffi cients are statistically signifi cant at a level of p<0.05, except for (*) p=0.066; ns=not signifi cant the „intention” as a dependent variable is operationalised by a binary expression. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi514 distinction between two types of uncertainty is important since the second type refers to individuals whose childbearing behaviour is unpredictable (bernardi et al. 2010). there is yet a third type of uncertainty where individuals are just indifferent as to whether they wish or do not wish to have a child. during qualitative interviews these individuals do not express a clear “yes” or “no” when asked about their intention to have a child in the short term. they are observed as being ambivalent because they wave from an expression of desire to have a child to its opposite. their contrasting intentions are not justifi ed with reference to material conditions, life course situations or biographical age. rather, waving is related to individuals’ alternating between more or less defi ned fears of the responsibility of childrearing or to perceived personal immaturity on the one hand, and the foreseen satisfactions of having a child on the other hand (bernardi et al. 2010). with reference to the tpb intentional ambivalence is better understood in terms of competing goals than in terms of lacking behavioural control (barber 2001). in order to improve predictability of uncertain intentions it is necessary to distinguish the various components of this rather heterogeneous group. in large-scale surveys where an initial question on intentions is included, and additional follow-up question could be added in case of answers like “probably yes, probably not” which would ask what the uncertainty depends on. explorative qualitative data may be used as a base to create a list of possible closed answers to such a question. another possibility for improvement is to add an indicator telling how certain respondents are of their attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control items when measuring predictors of intentions. this way we could better weight the strength of the intentions indicator and consequently better predict possible changes in intentions and behavioural outcomes. intention to have a child or not to have a child? the miller-pasta theory and the tpb explicitly alert that intentions should be properly defi ned. in particular, questions on intentions have to be carefully specifi ed to encompass all kinds of intentions relevant to the behaviour of interest. thus in practice a negative answer to the conventional question “do you intend to have a/ another child?” is interpreted as an indication that the respondent intends not to have a child, while the negation actually means that the respondent does not intend to have a child. the subtle issue here is that some respondents may intend neither to have nor not to have another child. these respondents leave it to “whatever happens”. this issue is under analysis by barber et al. (2010) who used an extended measurement of desires to become pregnant or to avoid pregnancy. they identifi ed four groups of respondents: those who want to become pregnant, those who do not want to become pregnant, those who express indifference to any outcome (neither want nor do not want), and those who wave from wanting to be pregnant to not wanting (ambivalent). the group of indifferent respondents is of the same kind as the third type of uncertainty revealed with qualitative surveys, and the group of concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 515 ambivalent respondents is similar to the second group of uncertainty (those who wave during the process of interview). respondents from either the second or from the third group will give a negative answer to the conventional question on intentions and hence the two groups cannot be identifi ed. in order to disentangle them the measurement of intentions has to be changed. in fact the issue is not new. miller (1994, also miller/pasta 1994, 1995) suggested a sequence of questions out of which we give only one as an example: the question “do you intend to have a/another child?” and the answer is a choice of one of the following fi ve items: 1. i fully intend to have a/another child. 2. i mostly intend to have a/another child. 3. i am not sure whether or not i intend to have a/another child 4. i mostly intend not to have a/another child. 5. i fully intend not to have a/another child. monnier (1989) discussed a similar scale used in a french longitudinal survey, except that the second and fourth options were skipped. contemporary surveys like those we discussed in the previous sections do not include this detailed measurement and the group of indifferent respondents cannot be separated from those who intend not to have a child. 3.5 realisation of intentions realisation of short-term intentions one powerful application of short-term fertility intentions is linked with a follow-up of their realisation or frustration at the individual level. apparently panel data are necessary for relevant research which can supply useful information on the barriers which people meet towards their attempts to realise intentions to have a child. findings due to spéder and kapitány, reported in the project “repro” in the 7th framework program of the eu (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/repro/), serve as an illustration. 75 % of the respondents in the netherlands who declared they want a child within the next three years realised this intention; in switzerland this holds for 55 % of the respondents and in hungary for 40 % (fi ndings for hungary analysed by spéder and kapitány 2009). most of the respondents who did not realise their intention declared they intend to have a child during the subsequent three years (15, 27, and 42 % correspondingly) and the rest (11, 18, and 18 %) declared they did not want to have a child. the analysis focuses on the individual level to distinguish factors that lead to fulfi lment, postponement, or rejection of an initial intention to have a child as well as on an international comparison among the three countries. apparently similar analyses can provide important policy implications. they become feasible with the use of the ggs data when the second wave becomes available in germany and after its running in austria, presumably in 2012. the pairfam survey is also designed as • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi516 a panel and will provide appropriate data. the above cited data for switzerland were derived using the shp waves. realisation of long-term fertility intentions: do they have a predictive validity? morgan (2001) outlined three strategies that have been used for the construction of fertility forecasts based on life-time intentions. the fi rst one is – from a contemporary point of view – a crude use of completed intended fertility as an indication of future fertility levels. this approach assumes that intentions will not change in the future and will get realised. these assumptions are incorrect; lee (1980) for example noted that intentions do not constitute a fi xed target under the prevalence of changing circumstances and emphasised a moving-target approach where intentions change with time. the second one is based on an examination of stated intentions using additional information: for example, downsizing young people’s intentions which can be considered too optimistic, or downsizing overly high intentions at advanced reproductive ages where subfecundity and infecundity increase. the third strategy is to apply a “moving target“ approach, i.e. identify trends in change of fertility intentions with age using panel data. morgan (2001) suggests ultimately examining the predictive value of fertility intentions by subgroups of respondents, identifi ed by cohorts, parity, ethnicity and other important factors that can play a substantive role in the formation of intentions. patterns of postponement of fertility by cohorts and parity should also be incorporated. thus heterogeneity effects will be decreased and the predictive value improved. the use of a sequence of crosssectional data is also feasible (beer 1991), although morgan (2001) is critical of this approach. as mentioned above, recent studies for the netherlands (liefbroer 2009), the u.s. (morgan/rackin 2010), and iacovou and tavares (2011) show that on the aggregate, intended fertility does not deviate much from actual fertility although it is a result of compensating diversities at the individual level. it is risky to transfer these country-specifi c fi ndings to other countries. the fi ndings do not constitute a predictive value because the match of predicted and actual fertility is coincidental. the shp can be applied for a study of the predictive validity of life-time fertility intentions in switzerland, although its time span is still too short (some 10 years). pairfam and ggs panels have been started too shortly and can be informative only for cohorts close to the end of the reproductive age. an important topic relevant to the analyses of realisation of intentions, only mentioned here, is the separation of intended from unintended births. 4 the fertility gap the concept originated during the 1950s and the 1960s when accumulated observations showed that the ideal number of children exceeds actual fertility. during the subsequent decades the expected or the intended number of children was used concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 517 as an alternative to ideal fertility in the measurement of hypothetical fertility. the difference between hypothetical and actual fertility is considered as indicating the need for policies. the validity of this idea strongly depends on the way hypothetical and actual fertility are measured. traditionally the fertility gap is measured as the difference between an ideal or intended family size, and the tfr. one line of critique to this measurement is directed towards the improper comparison of an average number of children, which is a cohort measure, with a period indicator of fertility like the tfr whose interpretation as the number of children per woman is distorted (sobotka/lutz 2010). lutz (2007) suggested the use of the adjusted tfr which clears the tempo effect and thus refl ects a level of fertility that would have been observed if births were not postponed to later years of life, or advanced to earlier years. table 3 shows a large difference between life-time intentions and the tfr for the three countries of interest in this paper. when the adjusted tfr is considered the difference will decrease with about 0.2 for each country but remains signifi cant. were ideal fertility is considered, the difference would be larger. sobotka and lutz (2010) give a detailed discussion of this issue; they show that when a cohort’s intended number of children is compared with the actual completed fertility of the same cohort the fertility gap is smaller. for example the intended number of children of austrian cohorts born in 1956-1960 or 1966-1970 was less than 0.2 lower than their completed fertility (sobotka 2009). another line of critique refers to the interpretation of hypothetical fertility as a period indicator. respondents answer questions about intentions (or ideals) under the prevalence of diverse individual, structural and institutional circumstances at the time of survey. intentions reveal fertility preferences formed under these fi xed circumstances, and changes in the latter during subsequent years impute intentions different from those already stated. a comparison of intended fertility and cohort completed fertility therefore compares a value observed under one fi xed set of circumstances with a value observed under the prevalence of a diversity of circumstances. this mismatch perplexes policy-related inferences, unless it is assumed that circumstances did not change. understanding intended family size not only in a cohort but also in a period perspective is rarely discussed in scientifi c research. monnier (1989) briefl y notes: “the notion of intended family size may be regarded as a fi xed intention which will cover the couple’s total reproductive lifespan [...] or it may be viewed as an attitude which depends on circumstances at the time and be modifi ed by population policies ...” although his analysis focuses on the fi rst alternative only. westoff and ryder (1977: 449) note that respondents build their intentions under the invalid assumption “that the future will resemble the past” and conclude that “... reproductive intentions are tailored at conditions at time of interview and, thus, share the same possibilities for misinterpretation as other period indices.” these indications that intended fertility bears a period perspective have not been used for the examination of the fertility gap. a rigorous measurement of the gap thus needs to consider two crucial conditions depending on the purposes of the analysis: (i) consistency of living conditions, and (ii) consistency of the indicators of its two components (hypothetical and • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi518 actual fertility). under the cohort perspective, actual fertility is measured with the observed completed number of children, but in this case living conditions are not consistent. under the period perspective, the tfr and the adjusted tfr can be compared with the hypothetical fertility, under one and the same set of living conditions. this comparison gives information in two ways. first, the tfr is used only for a comparison with the adjusted tfr to derive information on how conditions infl uence postponement of births. next, the adjusted tfr and hypothetical fertility indicators are compared to derive an estimate of the gap measured under the same living conditions with consistent indicators which denote the mean number of children per woman (insofar as the adjusted tfr can be interpreted as the number of children per woman). an important inaccuracy in the measurement of hypothetical fertility may arise when respondents construct their fertility preferences under the prevalence of limited or biased information. additionally optimism may prevail, particularly among young adults (weinstein 1980). preferences stated at an interview can also depend on the population discourse: recently mass media widely discuss low fertility and its negative consequences which can infl uence individual towards reporting higher values than actually planned. since these effects cannot be removed their presence may invalidate the use of the fertility gap. philipov (2009) proposed an entirely different approach for defi ning and measuring the gap at the micro-level, based on the information that can be derived from the realisation of short-term intentions. individuals are supposed to be aware in the short run of their situation and of the obstacles they may experience for having a baby. therefore their short-term intentions are expected to be realised at a much higher extent than the long-term ones. analysts get information about obstacles that frustrated these intentions. this approach has the advantage of avoiding the ecological fallacy which can be observed in the measurement of the gap with macro-level measures such as the observed and the intended number of children. the latter might be approximately equal, and then the gap would not indicate any need of policies. however, it might have happened that some people have ultimately had less while others more than the intended number of children, and these two deviations cancel each other. at the micro-level this will not be observed. 5 conclusions recently the observed fertility gap measured with conventional indicators has permeated high-level international and governmental policy-related texts. still the measurement of the gap can be misleading: fi rst, because key concepts are not operationalised rigorously; second, because the concepts have a period and a cohort interpretation that may provide different magnitudes of the gap; third, because the conventional macro-level measurement can constitute an ecological fallacy. the fi rst issue: unclear concepts, refers mainly to the ideal number of children. early research literature has warned that the concept is ambiguous as it is based on one single word “ideal” which can be understood differently by respondents. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 519 moreover the concept does not lie on a theoretical ground; it is interpreted on the bases of empirical observations and in relation to actual fertility. since its values slightly higher than 2.1 children per woman prevail over countries and time, it has been interpreted as a social norm. the brief review of diverse observations of the ideal number of children in the german-speaking countries shows that the concept can bring valuable information about the reproductive decision-process, where its operationalisation reliable. instead of dismissing the concept as has been done in recent international surveys it is preferable to improve its operationalisation with the purpose to avoid ambiguity. below follow two suggestions for a reshape of the initial gallup formulation, that can be useful in the search of a precise statement of the concept in survey instruments: when the ideal number of children denotes the best, or the most appropri-• ate, number of children the societal ideal can be operationalised as: “under the present conditions of life, what is the most appropriate number of children for an average family to have?” for the personal ideal the formulation is similar: “under the present conditions of life, how many children would you like to have altogether?” when the ideal is understood as ideal conditions of life, the questions can • be formulated following the formulation in the pairfam survey which fi ts for the personal ideal (see section 2.2) conditional on a precise formulation with respect to past and future number of children. for example two questions can be used instead of one: “assuming ideal circumstances: how many children would you have liked to have by now?”, and “assuming ideal circumstances, how many children would you like to have in the future?” for a societal ideal the following rephrase is suitable: “assuming ideal circumstances of life, what is the most appropriate number of children for an average family to have?” an important outcome of the discussion in this paper is that the personal ideal when referred to ideal circumstances of life, measures fertility desires as the latter are defi ned in socio-psychological theories. another crucial concept related to hypothetical fertility is the childbearing intention. its operationalisation might need an improvement to capture a specifi c group of persons who neither intend, nor do not intend to have a child. these persons differ from those who are uncertain in their intentions to have a child (barber et al. 2010). the “neither-nor” category may refer to people who are uninterested in the outcome of their sexual behaviour, leave it to whatever happens, or leave it to god to decide whether they should have a child. the size of this group is unknown, although it can be expected to be very small to an extent that would make the additional operationalisation redundant. the second issue: period or cohort measurement of the gap was discussed in the preceding section. the cohort perspective might be applied when information about future fertility is needed, while the application of the period perspective is preferable for the inference of policy-relevant implications because both components of the gap are measured under one and the same living conditions. • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi520 the third issue: ecological fallacy, may arise when a macro-level observation of the gap is considered to be valid at the micro-level. in practice macro-level values of the gap have been used to infer that where the gap is large, there is a need of policies, and where it is small, there is no need of policies. this inference can be misleading which becomes evident in the following example. iacovou and tavares (2011: 104, table 3) showed that among the women aged 25-29, 22 % revised down and 15 % revised up their fertility expectations in a period of 5-6 years, i.e. 37 % changed their intentions. at the macro-level however 15 % cancel out and only 7 % remain as having changed their intentions. the ecological fallacy can be alleviated with detailed studies like the one done by iacovou and tavares (2011). as noted in the preceding section it is convenient to consider the match between short-term intentions and their subsequent realisation as informative about policy-relevant obstacles that lead to the frustration of childbearing intentions. this approach is promising but requires considerable deliberation until reliable policy implications can be drawn. the inferences in this paper by and large relied on literature published two decades ago or earlier. we failed to fi nd recent research on the validity of fundamental demographic concepts such as intentions and ideals. similar research is highly desirable, for example by using test-retest interviews and other tools that can help understand better how respondents understand the concepts under contemporary conditions of life. acknowledgement this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly established by the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina and is funded by the jacobs foundation references ajzen, icek 1985: from intentions to actions: a theory of planned behavior. in: kuhl, julius; beckman, jurgen (eds.): action-control: from cognition to behavior. heidelberg: springer: 11-39. ajzen, icek 1991: the theory of planned behavior. in: organizational behavior and human decision processes 50,2: 179–211. ajzen, icek; fishbein, martin 2005: the infl uence of attitudes on behavior. in: albarracı́ n, dolores; johnson, blair t.; zanna, mark p. 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(2009) who provide an extensive discussion. (a) behaviour behaviour is “... an action directed at a target, performed in a given context, at a certain point in time” (ajzen/fischbein 2005: 182). in the case of fertility it is what miller (1986) termed a proceptive behaviour. in demographic studies behaviour is frequently approximated by the date of start of a pregnancy or the birth of a child. this approximation can be biased, because the latter events include unintended pregnancies. unwanted pregnancies and births are out of the scope of the tpb when it is applied to the study of childbearing intentions because they are the outcome of unreasoned action. (b) intentions the tpb sets rigid requirements to the defi nition of intentions. one is temporal stability. it is based on observations that the longer the period between an intention fig. 1: a schematic presentation of the theory of planned behaviour intention behaviour attitude subjective norms perceived behavioural control actual behavioural control background factors: values, general attitudes, age, sex, income, education, religion, etc. source: ajzen/fishbein 2005: 194 • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi526 and the corresponding behaviour, the less likely it is that intentions will be fulfi lled, because the social environment around the individual may change with a corresponding impact on behaviour. hence intentions are defi ned better over a short time period. miller and pasta (1995) brought forward the importance of focusing on a reference time window when collecting data on intentions (see also schoen et al. 1999; philipov et al. 2006). another important aspect of intentions is their certainty at the time of measurement: the more certain the expressed intention, the more likely is its realisation (miller/pasta 1995; thomson/brandreth 1995). another important specifi cation of fertility intentions is their parity (e.g. morgan 2001). intentions to have a fi rst child refer to becoming a parent which is a crucial transition in one’s life course. intentions to have a second or a third child are constructed on different grounds because the person has experienced parenthood previously. the tpb is specifi ed for individual intentions and does not deal directly with couple’s intentions. (c) attitudes towards behaviour in the tpb, attitudes relate to the likely consequences of the behaviour in interest and thus associate closely with behavioural beliefs (beliefs that the behaviour will bring about certain desirable or non-desirable consequences). the tpb postulates that attitudes should refer strictly to the behaviour in question and should be explicitly personalised. in the case of childbearing this means that a person’s attitudes should refer towards this person having or not having a child within a specifi ed time period. general, impersonalised attitudes even if referring to the behaviour in question are not expected to be precise determinants of intentions. attitudes and the underlying beliefs should be compatible with the behaviour and the relevant intentions. in the case of childbearing this means that attitudes should refer to the same time period for which intentions are considered, for the same parity, and for the same conditions under which intentions were measured. specifi cally when intentions refer to having a child within a period of two years say, attitudes should refer towards consequences of having a child within two years. (d) subjective norms subjective norms, normative pressure, social infl uence: all these concepts apply to the tpb and we consider them as synonyms in this short description. normative pressure can be detected within an individual’s network of relevant others, and more specifi cally it is the perception of social infl uence that is supposed to have an impact on reproductive behaviour (bernardi 2003). the impact of social infl uence is refl ected in the tpb by the infl uence of important members of one’s social network (frequently referred to as “important others”). this infl uence is exercised through their approval or disapproval of the person having a child within the specifi ed time period for which the intentions are measured. the higher the approval, the higher will be this person’s certainty in his/her intenconcepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 527 tion and the more likely it is that the person will intend to have a child. normative pressure measured in this way is personalised, refers directly to the behaviour in question, and refers to the same time period for which the intentions are measured. the infl uence of important others is exercised also through the way they act with respect to the behaviour in question. in the case of fertility, this means that the number of children they have will infl uence one’s intentions to have or not to have a child. (e) perceived and actual behavioural control actual behavioural control is related to the importance of resources and constraints on the specifi c type of behaviour and on the opportunities to be able to overcome these constraints. most of the literature that focuses on childbearing decisions is concerned with studying the impact of these constraints, for instance the importance of income and wealth, labour force situations, education, housing and health. in the spirit of the tpb, these constraints and the ability to overcome them infl uence the decision to perform the behaviour. according to the scheme presented in fi gure 1, actual behavioural control moderates the impact of intentions on behaviour; as mentioned earlier this directional link is out of the scope of the present discussion. actual behavioural control infl uences the perceived one, and it is the latter that is signifi cant for the construction of intentions. typically, perceived behavioural control refers to those constraints over the behaviour, which an individual assumes that can be modifi ed to a certain extent, e.g., level of income or housing conditions. in past analyses of the determinants of childbearing intentions, perceived behavioural control has not been considered as a potential factor explaining intentions besides objective measures of control such as actual level of income (which could be considered as measures of actual behavioural control). perceived control is regarded also as a proxy for the actual control. this approximation can be of importance in a study of realisation of intentions, as exemplifi ed on fi gure 1 by the dotted arrow leading towards the line that unites intentions with behaviour. (f) background factors the background factors infl uence the construction of beliefs related to attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control over the behaviour. their infl uence is depicted with dotted lines because the selection of factors depends on theories that lie outside the tpb. ajzen and fischbein (2005) view three groups of background factors. the fi rst group: individual factors, they exemplify with personality, mood, emotion, intelligence, values, stereotypes, general attitudes, experience. they see the second group, social factors, as including education, age, gender, income, religion, race, ethnicity, and culture. knowledge, media, and intervention constitute the group of information factors. conventional demographic studies of childbearing intentions and behaviour include many of the constituents of the three factor groups in models where the fac• dimiter philipov, laura bernardi528 tors have a direct impact on intentions or childbearing. demographers chose the factors based on specifi ed theories and approaches, such as the economic theory of the family, ideational changes, etc. demographic variables, such as age and gender, are hardly ever missed. therefore the choice of background factors in the application of the tpb for the study of childbearing intentions can conveniently rest upon these familiar theories and approaches. concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions • 529 appendix 2 application of the theory of planned behaviour in the generations and gender survey – standard questionnaire (http://live.unece.org/pau/pub/ggp_survey_instruments.html or united nations 2005): questions used in the estimation of table 4. intentions: 6.22 do you intend to have a/another child during the next three years? 1 – defi nitely not 2 – probably not 3 – probably yes 4 – defi nitely yes attitudes: 6.27 now, suppose that during the next 3 years you were to have a/another child. i would like you to tell me what effect you think this would have on various aspects of your life. please choose your answers from the card. subjective norms: 6.29 although you may feel that the decision to have a/another child is yours (and your partner’s/spouse’s) alone, it is likely that others have opinions about what you should do. i’m going to read out some statements about what other people might think about you having a/another child during the next three years. please tell me to what extent you agree or disagree with these statements, choosing your answer from the card. if you were to have a/another child during the next three years, would it be better or worse for… much better better neither better nor worse worse much worse not applicable a. the possibility to do what you want 1 2 3 4 5 99 b. your employment opportunities 1 2 3 4 5 99 c. your financial situation 1 2 3 4 5 99 d. your sexual life 1 2 3 4 5 99 e. what people around you think of you 1 2 3 4 5 99 f. the joy and satisfaction you get from life 1 2 3 4 5 99 g. the closeness between you and your partner/spouse 1 2 3 4 5 99 h. your partner’s/spouse’s employment opportunities 1 2 3 4 5 99 i. the care and security you may get in old age 1 2 3 4 5 99 j. certainty in your life 1 2 3 4 5 99 k. the closeness between you and your parents 1 2 3 4 5 99 • dimiter philipov, laura bernardi530 perceived behavioural control: 6.28 how much would the decision on whether to have or not to have a/another child during the next three years depend on the following? 7.19 how much control do you feel you will have over the following areas of your life in the next three years? much better better neither better nor worse worse much worse not applicable a. most of your friends think that you should have a/another child 1 2 3 4 5 99 b. your parents think that you should have a/another child 1 2 3 4 5 99 c. most of your relatives think that you should have a/another child 1 2 3 4 5 99 not at all a little quite a lot a great deal not applicable a. your financial situation 1 2 3 4 99 b. your work 1 2 3 4 99 c. your housing conditions 1 2 3 4 99 d. your health 1 2 3 4 99 (…five more items) not at all a little quite a lot a great deal not applicable a. your financial situation 1 2 3 4 99 b. your work 1 2 3 4 99 c. your housing conditions 1 2 3 4 99 d. your health 1 2 3 4 99 (e. your family life) © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? the demographic responsiveness of education demand and supply at different levels of the education system* walter bartl abstract: will foreseeable demographic change lead to savings in the education sector? this question is investigated in a retrospective perspective based on data from saxony-anhalt, the german state with the largest population decline since reunifi cation. results show that we can observe economisation strategies in the face of lower cohort sizes in most subsectors of the education system. these strategies are, however, not always (directly) attributable to demographic decline. moreover, there is considerable variation in the demographic responsiveness of education demand and supply. important intervening factors in this respect are several dimensions of educational governance and the economic conditions in a given region. keywords: demographic decline · education migration · education planning · demographic responsiveness · economisation · commodifi cation 1 introduction demographic change is usually perceived as a challenge for modern societies because inherited social structures tend to become inadequate for populations changing signifi cantly in size or age composition. almost all developed countries face ageing populations and many european and asian countries are seeing declining populations as well. these population trends are expected to raise public expenditure for pensions, health, and care whereas demand for education expenditure and unemployment benefi ts might decline (european commission/economic policy committee 2009: 26). lower expenditure in education could contribute to offsetting higher costs in other policy fi elds, or funds saved could be reinvested in imcomparative population studies vol. 39, 2 (2014): 371-408 (date of release: 28.11.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-19en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-19en0 * this article has supplementary fi gures in an online appendix: doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-20en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/130/153. • walter bartl372 proving the quality of educational services (cedefop 2009). however, budgetary projections based on demographic data assume, fi rst, that total enrolments decline with smaller birth cohorts and, second, that education expenditure can and will be adjusted quite fl exibly to total enrolment numbers. but are these two assumptions true? how responsive are different levels of the education system to demographic decline? contrary to simplistic projective approaches based mainly on the mathematically accurate extrapolation of demographic trends, this article aims to shed light on the role played by the specifi c institutional makeup of particular levels of the education system and political decisions in response to demographic changes. expectations of a high demographic responsiveness of educational demand make sense if certain conditions are met. under the assumption of a comprehensive and territorially limited education system with stable participation rates, declining population numbers will lead to less demand for education services (responsiveness-of-demand hypothesis). in germany, primary schools come closest to meeting this condition: primary schools include virtually all members of a birth cohort in a given territorial unit (except those schooled in special needs schools) as schooling is compulsory and mobility across territorial borders is rather limited since attending schools outside the respective school district is more or less restricted. consequently, participation rates are constantly high. at other stages of the education system, additional factors such as individual participation decisions limit the infl uence of demographic change on enrolment. on the supply side, the education infrastructure established by the welfare state is spread out geographically in order to provide equal opportunities of education. the spatial pattern of this network is more decentralised at lower levels of the education system and more centralised at the higher levels. education capacities at each level are geared towards certain (sub)population sizes, balancing paedagogical, political, and economic concerns to a certain degree. the spatial pattern and the overall capacity of the education system as well as its organisational structure are subject to continuous political debate. under the assumption of political and administrative regard for economies of scale, it is hypothesised that demographic decline creates pressure to economise on oversized education infrastructures (economisation-of-supply hypothesis). nevertheless, retrenchment strategies always have to face politically competing claims of providing equal access to the education system for all. especially in early childhood and primary education, decentralised service provision is often regarded as a crucial feature of the quality of education services. hence, it is an empirical question how demographically responsive demand and supply are at particular levels of the education system. the responsiveness of the education system towards demographic decline shall be investigated on a regional scale. on this relatively small scale, demographic changes are far more pronounced than on the larger national scale. a demographically shrinking region is defi ned as a subnational territorial unit with declining population numbers on average over at least fi ve years. according to this criterion, east german regions are very interesting cases for closer examination as they have lost considerable amounts of their population since reunifi cation due to lowest-low fertility rates during the 1990s (kohler et al. 2002; lechner 2001) and outmigration economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 373 mainly to west germany (mai 2004). since in germany the responsibility for legislation on education rests with the german states, the analysis concentrates on the state level rather than on some smaller scale (e.g., the county level). furthermore, this article focuses on comparing the various levels of the education system rather than spatial differences, which is a more common and of course equally important object of research. saxony-anhalt is the german state with the largest population decline during the last twenty years (minus 17.3 percent from 1991 to 2010).1 the following analysis will therefore be based on offi cial data from the statistical offi ce of saxony-anhalt. the paper is structured as follows. the second section will give an overview of related research on demographic change and the education system. against this background, the particular approach pursued in the present article will be elaborated. section three analyses descriptive statistical data on the different levels of the education system in saxony-anhalt and draws a comparison across the education levels analysed using bivariate regressions. the article ends with a discussion of the fi ndings and limitations of the chosen approach. 2 the demographic responsiveness of the education system 2.1 previous research although demography supplies us with teeming bookshelves of work on causes of demographic change, research on possible consequences for society or particular social fi elds is mostly done in other disciplines. the most extensive body of literature on the consequences of demographic change for the education system counts as economic research. in various specifi cations of panel regression models, it investigates changes in public education spending in response to demographic ageing. in this context, two arguments have to be distinguished: the fi rst postulates a socalled demand effect; the second assumes a generational confl ict between young and old (preston 1984). the “demand”2 effect arises from varying cohort sizes of the population in young age groups and the specifi c conditions of service production in the public sector. due to budget restrictions on the one hand and a high amount of fi xed costs for teaching staff and capital on the other, total education spending cannot be adjusted in the short term to demographically induced changes in enrolment. hence, in situations of rising cohort sizes, the growth of total expenditure is 1 in other east german states, population decline was signifi cantly lower: e.g., in mecklenburgwestern pomerania minus 13.2 percent and in thuringia minus 13.1 percent (my own calculations, based on statistisches bundesamt 2012). 2 note that “demand“ in the education sector is a highly complex phenomenon and follows directly from demographic cohort sizes only under very specifi c conditions. however, in previous research this has not been suffi ciently refl ected (for a discussion, see seitz 2008). one aim of this article is to clarify some aspects of the relationship between the size of birth cohorts and educational enrolment. • walter bartl374 kept to a minimum, whereas during phases of declining cohort sizes expenditure per student is augmented. from this point of view, it is individually benefi cial to be part of a small birth cohort. the second argument of generational confl ict treats age groups as interest groups and assumes that they have political preferences for maximising their own utility. as the electorate grows older, the interests of the median voter change and politicians tend to allocate more public resources to policy areas addressing older age groups instead of education. empirically, the production effect of changing cohort sizes among the young is larger and somewhat more stable than the generational confl ict effect of the elderly via political decision making. apart from a few international comparisons (schultz 1988; busemeyer 2007), most studies are based on statistical data on school expenditures from the united states (poterba 1997; fernandez/rogerson 2001; ladd/murray 2001; harris et al. 2001; figlio/fletcher 2012), but some are also based on data from european (borge/rattsø 1995; baum/seitz 2003; grob/wolter 2005; borge/ rattsø 2008; kempkes 2009; rattsø/sørensen 2010) and east asian (ohtake/sano 2010) countries. this is a bit surprising since europe and east asia are far more affected by declining population numbers than the united states is. furthermore, only few studies include those education sectors with voluntary (instead of compulsory) participation such as early childhood (borge/rattsø 2008; rattsø/sørensen 2010) or higher education (oberndorfer/steiner 2006). overall the studies fi nd little elasticity of total school expenditure in response to changes in the size of young age groups, signifying a robust and strong negative effect on expenditure per student. the only study that departs from this overall picture shows that total expenditure on primary schools in east germany was adjusted considerably in response to the rapid drop in fertility rates after reunifi cation (kempkes 2009). the argument claiming increasing generational confl ict over public budgets is more controversial at the theoretical level (e.g., gradstein/kaganovich 2004) than the cohort size effect. one important argument against generational confl ict (in the us) is that the elderly might also be inclined to support expenditure on education because they expect rising real estate values from good-quality schools. empirical evidence for negative effects of a growing elderly population on education expenditure is weaker than for the demand effect. studies from the united states found negative effects at the state level (poterba 1997; fernandez/rogerson 2001) but to a lesser degree at the county or school district level (ladd/murray 2001; harris et al. 2001). a study based on budgetary data of the school system in the west german states from 1975 to 1999 found only weak evidence for a redistributive confl ict between the young and old (baum/seitz 2003). however, a study on public expenditure for higher education in the west german states between 1985 and 2002 found a negative effect of demographic ageing when a rather broad defi nition of the elderly population was chosen (oberndorfer/steiner 2006). some studies based on survey data seem to confi rm that there is a certain potential for generational confl ict (cattaneo/wolter 2007; busemeyer et al. 2008; rattsø/sørensen 2010), whereas other studies do not (clark et al. 2009). despite the somewhat controversial evidence for generational confl ict, we have to bear in mind that redistributive pressure – if it execonomisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 375 ists – comes on top of the well-documented effect of rising costs per student from declining cohort sizes (grob/wolter 2005: 15). as a conclusion from these studies, it can be said that most of them provide only weak support for expectations of considerable savings in times of declining cohort sizes (the only exception being kempkes 2009). however, the studies also have notable limitations. first, on the demand side, they tend to focus on compulsory education while regarding demand effects resulting from education choices as a disturbance rather than as a variable to be included in the analysis. this leads to the impression of an institutionally homogeneous education system while it conceals systematic differences in inclusiveness across different levels of education. second, on the supply side, (in)elasticity of expenditure with respect to cohort size is only rarely compared across levels of education in order to identify implicit redistribution between educational sectors (an exception being weishaupt/weiß 1988). apart from the demographic responsiveness of education spending, changes in the organisation of education in response to demographic decline have been researched so far. in this context, an important distinction has been made between personnel and infrastructure policies (kempkes 2009). while the fi rst type alters student/teacher ratios, the latter changes the spatial distribution of the education infrastructure. the remaining part of the literature review focuses on the demographic responsiveness of education infrastructure since the availability of such an infrastructure is likely to alter individual opportunities of access in due course. in a spatial perspective, concentration of education infrastructure, on the one hand, and maintenance of decentralised education services, on the other, are considered to be the main policy options in response to declining cohort sizes (kramer/nutz 2006). the feasibility of these two alternatives depends on the size distribution of organisational units, and they both have opposite consequences for this distribution. despite sustained academic controversies about intended and unintended (economic) effects of size in educational organisations (barker/gump 1964; döring 1977; fickermann et al. 2000; andrews et al. 2002), school district mergers and school closures have been a major phenomenon, especially during the second half of the 20th century. between 1950 and 1980, the number of school districts declined from 83,642 to 15,987 in the united states of america (kenny/schmidt 1994). in austria, 20 percent of the traditional primary schools (volksschulen) were closed between 1964 and 1976 (meusburger 1998: 394-398); in germany primary schools were closed predominantly between the mid-1960s and late 1970s (derenbach/gatzweiler 1988: 412); in czechoslovakia, small primary schools in rural areas decreased between 1961 and 1990 by around 70 percent, with the most dynamic phase being in the 1970s when a system of central places (in the sense of christaller) was installed by the communist regime (kučerová/kučera 2012: 9-10). more recently, for example, nearly 200 schools were closed in ontario, canada between 1999 and 2002 (basu 2007), and between 1994 and 2003 many primary and secondary schools were closed in east germany (weishaupt 2006). furthermore, rural areas are said to be especially prone to school closures, as their settlement structure does not allow for economies of size (åberg-bengtsson 2009). however, low enrolment and high unit costs are not always the main reasons • walter bartl376 for closure decisions. in fact, (professional) ideas guiding education policy (kramer 1997; frank 2011), issues of social inequality (billger 2010) and student achievement (engberg et al. 2012), and political resistance by the communities affected often prove to be more important than purely economic reasoning (e.g., stinchcombe 1984; bondi 1987, 1989; post/stambach 1999; kearns 2011). moreover, economic reasoning seems to apply differently across levels of education: high expenditure per student does not increase the probability of closure for primary schools in the us but does so for high schools (billger 2010). many case studies associate school closures and mergers with negative impacts on the social environment, especially in peripheral areas (sell et al. 1997; witten et al. 2003; bathgate 2007; nitta et al. 2010) when the last school is closed (meusburger 2005). of the 700 municipalities affected by primary school closures in east germany between 1994 and 2003, 453 lost their last school (weishaupt 2006: 34). contrary to the observed pattern of school concentration, it is worth noting that small (primary) schools seem to have been rehabilitated to some degree since the 1970s, especially in rural areas (sher 1981; harrison/busher 1995; meusburger 1998: 398; kramer 1997; kalaoja/pietarinen 2009; åberg-bengtsson 2009; for an opposing view on this topic, see rakhkochkine 2007). this is partially refl ected in the fact that administrative minimum thresholds for school size were adapted to the smaller number of pupils in west germany in response to the decline in fertility in the 1970s (trotha 1981). however, compared to other countries in europe, small primary schools with mixed age classes are not a widespread phenomenon in germany (fickermann et al. 1998). taking these studies together, concentration of education infrastructure is a widely observed phenomenon, possibly contributing to cost savings for public budgets. however, as it is politically contentious and involves a variety of determinants, no unequivocal conclusion can be drawn about the likelihood of concentration in response to demographic decline. when we reiterate the main fi ndings from economic studies, it seems to be rather improbable that regional education systems show a high demographic responsiveness. nevertheless, previous studies on east germany contradict this overall picture. against this background, the following section aims to systematise possible effects of demographic change on demand for and supply of education infrastructure while taking intervening factors into account. 2.2 demographic responsiveness of education demand and supply according to previous research, an economisation of the education system in the face of demographic decline does not seem very probable. this view is basically rooted in the traditional self-description of modern welfare states as providers of equal access to education. on the demand side, the (political) defi nition of new target groups might offset the impact of regional population decline on enrolment. on the supply side, providing access to education is regarded as a public good, which is politically protected by all (or most) political parties. furthermore, education infrastructure serves as an asset in the competition among localities and regions. economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 377 from this point of view, developing or maintaining a high supply of education infrastructure for political reasons seems to be probable even in the face of high unit costs. but is there no regard for economic reasoning in education policy? theoretically, the relevance of smaller birth cohorts entering the (mostly) consecutive levels of the education system over the course of their lives is highly dependent on the educational governance regime at the particular level in question. for the purpose of the present article, three dimensions of governance are relevant: inclusiveness, internal differentiation, and the degree of commodifi cation (a brief discussion of other conceptions can be found in windzio et al. 2005: 4-6). these dimensions are partially related to each other and might be further specifi ed into subdimensions. the inclusiveness of an education sector depends on the normative basis for participation in education, on the one hand, and on actual participation rates in education, on the other. the normative basis for participation in education is often symbolised by a guiding idea legitimising an institutionalised order (lepsius 1995). the normative idea of educational inclusiveness can be formally codifi ed, as in compulsory schooling, or become manifest informally in participation patterns in optional education programmes. both forms of institutionalisation refl ect normative expectations towards standards of welfare provision. theoretically, educational levels requiring compulsory participation are more susceptible to declining cohort sizes than are levels with voluntary participation because the former are supposed to include all members of certain age groups. educational levels based on voluntary participation might nevertheless come close to universal participation, in which case they are similarly sensitive to demographic change. while primary school attendance has been established as part of compulsory education in most parts of the world, especially after world war ii (meyer et al. 1992), participation in (upper) secondary education is still voluntary in many countries worldwide (world bank 2006: 70), as is attendance of early childhood and higher education in most cases. although true for the most part, certain countries, such as japan, for example, have reached universal inclusion in higher education, making demand for services highly responsive to demographic decline (yonezawa/kim 2008; vincent-lancrin 2008). furthermore, the internal differentiation of an education sector determines if the whole sector is affected evenly by demographic decline or if some parts are more vulnerable than others. in hierarchically differentiated education sectors, the lower tiers should be more responsive to demographic decline than the higher tiers. in the latter case, growing demand for university entrance credentials can offset declining cohort sizes. in germany, for example, primary education is the only (almost) comprehensive level of schooling, whereas the several tiers of secondary schooling are hierarchically differentiated according to the social value of the credentials particular school types offer. moreover, a high level of horizontal differentiation (e.g., specialisation by subject) requires relatively large organisational units, more centralised service provision, and higher mobility of target groups. this is quite obvious when, for example, primary and higher education are compared. corresponding to the age and age-related capacities of the target groups, horizontal differentiation is more pronounced in higher education than at lower levels of the education system. • walter bartl378 however, resulting student mobility might have an impact on the responsiveness of demand for education services to changes in the size of birth cohorts. having specifi ed the responsiveness-of-demand hypothesis, we must also discuss how changes in demand could affect the provision of education and, hence, public expenditure. the assumption of a demographic responsiveness of education supply is only plausible if there is an institutionalised mechanism ensuring the adaption of education facilities to (possibly) changing demand. in this respect, the third dimension of educational governance treated here, the degree of commodifi cation of education services, becomes relevant. the division of labour between community, state, and market in funding education services is refl ected by the degree to which education is commodifi ed. commodifi cation describes a “process by which a service or item is transformed into a tradable good, where a provider of this service or good increasingly acts in a profi t-oriented way” (sackmann 2007: 157). following this perspective, three types of education providers can be distinguished: • decommodifi ed public providers, acting according to ideological aims, • not-for-profi t private providers (npos), seeking to maintain their resource base by operating in a cost-covering manner, and • private for-profi t providers (ibid.). recently, with the spread of new public management ideas (pollitt/bouckaert 2011), political concern for monetary resources has become more prominent even within the decommodifi ed public sector. growing concern in fi scal matters among public providers and commodifi cation are two dimensions of a more general concept of economisation (schimank/volkmann 2012). as education (in germany) is mostly provided by public and not-for-profi t private organisations, ideologically motivated and cost-neutral responses to demographic decline should prevail. due to the in-kind calculation of public services (usually public goods per head [bartl 2011a]) during planning and evaluation processes and related funding mechanisms, demographic decline might lead to fi nancial pressure on education services. if, in the face of demographic decline, public authorities exert fi nancial pressure on decommodifi ed public providers or outsource service provision to not-for-profi t private entities, which have to operate in a cost-covering manner, this will nourish the economisation of education (economisation-of-supply hypothesis). however, not all units at a particular educational level are subject to the same pressure, as exposure to such pressure varies by the size of education establishments. smaller establishments can be expected to face greater fi nancial pressure than larger ones. the following empirical part of this article is arranged according to the sequence in which birth cohorts enter the levels of the education system during the course of their lives. it starts with an analysis of early childhood education and care, followed by primary, secondary, and vocational school education, and fi nally the higher education sector. economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 379 3 demographic responsiveness of the education system in saxonyanhalt the demographic responsiveness of each level of the education system is analysed based on the cohort size of the targeted age group, on the one hand, and on enrolment numbers and the number of infrastructure facilities or amount of staff employed, on the other. 3.1 early childhood education and care early childhood education and care is the fi rst level of the education system affected by low fertility rates. as participation at this level is voluntary in most countries, the extent of that impact varies with the rate of participation in institutional services. the provision of early childhood education and care is very well developed in east germany due to its traditional dual-earner model from state-socialist times (hering 2009). in the german democratic republic (gdr), there was universal access to childcare institutions. during the later years of the gdr, 80 percent of children younger than 3 years and 95 percent of children aged 3 to 6 were in institutional childcare (roloff 2007: 136; lower values are reported in hank et al. 2001). after reunifi cation, these institutions were transferred from the central state to local selfgovernment. despite voluntary participation, such a high saturation of the “market” makes childcare institutions highly vulnerable to demographic decline. assuming that children younger than 6 years are the main target group of childcare institutions, figure 1 depicts the population sizes of this age group for the years 1991 to 2010 and numbers of children in childcare centres for the years 1994 to 2010.3 due to missing values for the very fi rst years of the transformation, signifi cant changes in enrolment are not captured. the population younger than 6 years old decreased by 51 percent from 1991 to 1997 (from 192,000 to 94,000 children). after this drop, the size of this age group did not vary much anymore. on the face of it, the curve of the total number of children in childcare institutions shows quite a surprising development: from 1994 to 1998, it follows the trend, if not the proportion, of the population decline. thereafter, it becomes completely decoupled from the demographic development. the absolute number of children in childcare institutions even surpassed the population size of the under-6-years-olds by around 20,000 children every year. this puzzle is solved by splitting the total number of children in institutional childcare into two age groups (fig. 1). the number of children younger than 6 years old enrolled in childcare decreased roughly proportionately to the total number of children in the respective age group in saxony-anhalt. this development could be expected from the initial assumption about the relevance 3 from 1994-2002 offi cial statistics were recorded only every four years. furthermore the statistics counted only available places, not actual children in institutions in this period. enrolled children have been counted from 2006 onwards. the years mentioned in this article always refer to the beginning of a school year: e.g., 1991 refers to the school year 1991/92. • walter bartl380 of institutional participation rates as intervening factors in the relationship of cohort size and absolute enrolment numbers. high participation rates in voluntary education sectors make them highly sensitive to demographic decline. while this holds true for the age group under 6, total childcare enrolment becomes decoupled from the declining demographic trend through – at fi rst glance somewhat surprising – additional enrolments of children in after-school care. in the period analysed, after-school care was transferred from primary schools to early childcare centres. the number of children from 6 to 10 years in after-school care increased from 1,000 in 1994 to 52,000 in 2010. with respect to the transformation years after 1994, this increase even overcompensated for the losses in the younger age group. this is quite a typical development for east germany. therefore the available places in fig. 1: population under 6 years and participation in childcare in saxonyanhalt (1991/1994-2010) source: statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt, statistisches bundesamt, own calculations economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 381 after-school care in east germany rose between 1990 and 2002 from 22 to 41 percent (statistisches bundesamt 2004: 36).4 on the supply side, the number of childcare centres in saxony-anhalt decreased from around 2,000 to 1,700 between 1994 and 1998 (fig. 6 in the appendix).5 during the following years, the number of institutions remained fairly stable at about 1,700 due to the compensating demand effect of rising enrolment in after-school care. nevertheless, the remarkable stability of the total number of childcare centres in the later period of analysis (1998-2010)6 conceals economising strategies in the early childhood education system. first, the transfer of public childcare centres to not-for-profi t providers reduces public costs. ngos do not receive full coverage of their wage bill from public funds, and employees usually earn less than in the public sector (bartl 2011b: 205-206). the number of public childcare centres was reduced from 1,800 to 1,000 and the number of private not-for-profi t childcare centres increased from 200 to 700 between 1994 and 2010. this economising strategy becomes even more evident when relative changes are considered (fig. 7 in the appendix). second, the state of saxony-anhalt reduced the parental entitlement to childcare in terms of daily hours for the unemployed to 5 hours per day in 2003 (landtag sachsen-anhalt 2004). at the local level, highly differentiated childcare units targeting quite narrow age groups (nursery, kindergarten, after-school clubs) were often reorganised into multifunctional childcare organisations for broader age groups in order to gain organisational fl exibility in the face of declining demand. due to economies of scale in childcare (bönisch/tagge 2012), this frequently meant the closure of small units. the number of units with fewer than 20 children (the minimum threshold for childcare centres stated by law [landtag sachsen-anhalt 18 july 1996: 227]) declined from 90 to 23 between 1994 and 2002 and subsequently rose again to about 50 small childcare centres, a number that remained fairly stable for the rest of the period analysed. moreover, from expert interviews it becomes clear that there were numerous closures of childcare centres before 1994 (bartl 2011b) that are not refl ected in the statistical data presented here. overall, the distribution of childcare centres across the rural-urban divide remained fairly stable: between 1994 and 2010 the share of childcare units located outside of the three urban centres of saxony-anhalt (magdeburg, halle, and dessau-roßlau) increased slightly from 80.8 to 82.2 percent. 4 other authors report a more constant participation rate for after-school care of around 30 percent between 1990 and 1999 based on data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep). note, however, that only small variations in the classifi cation of age groups can lead to considerable changes in values (hank et al. 2001: 17; 9). we can nevertheless not rule out that the observed increase in available places between 1994 and 2002 might be somewhat artifi cial as responsibility for after-school care originally rested with primary school providers (municipalities) and personnel was employed by the state (as in schools). the transfer of service provision to a npo was only possible if accompanied by a transfer of public staff (landtag sachsen-anhalt 31 august 1993). such a transfer might have been a precondition for being counted statistically. however, whatever the case may be, the data from 2006 to 2010 validates the overall rising trend. 5 data on the supply side is available from 1994 to 2010. 6 the discussion on data validity in footnote 3 might apply here as well. • walter bartl382 in concluding this section, it can be stated that demographic decline affects early childhood education and childcare enrolments signifi cantly when participation rates are high. given low participation rates, such as in west germany or in poland, the vulnerability of the early childhood education system to demographic change is also considerably lower (bartl 2011b). however, compensatory coping strategies might serve to expand the target group of institutional childcare beyond the traditional age groups. the potential for compensatory coping strategies based on recruiting children from other territorial units is very limited at this educational level. parents commuting from a suburb to the city are the only group potentially interested in such arrangements. on the supply side, the most notable economising strategies analysed here are the closure of units and the privatisation of childcare centres from public to private not-for-profi t ownership. 3.2 primary and secondary general schools the high demographic sensitivity of primary and secondary schools is rooted in the compulsory nature of participation in education. in saxony-anhalt the compulsory education period ends after 12 years of schooling (landtag sachsen-anhalt 12 august 2005: § 40). in germany, enrolment numbers in the school system are nevertheless not completely congruent to population numbers in the corresponding age group due to the internal differentiation of primary and secondary education and the limited inclusiveness of upper secondary education. congruence of enrolment numbers with the total population in the respective age group is greatest for primary schools, which theoretically educate all members of a birth cohort, except for the ones that have been attested as having special education needs. in saxony-anhalt these pupils are assigned to special needs schools, an institution with a strong tradition in germany (powell 2011).7 hence, primary school enrolments are likely to be affected almost proportionately by demographic change. contrary to the internationally hegemonic model of schooling, germany has no comprehensive school system (wiborg 2010). after four years of schooling at the primary level, pupils transfer to secondary school. this is a selective process in that pupils are assigned to different tracks of education according to their perceived abilities.8 the traditional structure of the west german secondary school system consists of the basic-track school (hauptschule), intermediate-track school (realschule) and advanced-track school (gymnasium). instruction at a basic-track school 7 special educational needs might be due to a diversity of reasons, which are catered to by a differentiated system of specialized schools staffed and equipped in order to provide more individualized learning than mainstream schools. the following school types for special education needs are distinguished in saxony-anhalt: learning diffi culties, cognitive development, emotional and social development, language, hearing, visual impairment, physical development (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2010: 33). 8 the school system in saxony-anhalt – similar to the national german school system – corresponds to a regime of sponsored mobility norms in the sense of ralph turner (1960). economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 383 is the academically least demanding programme and is geared towards entering vocational training upon graduation – usually after 9 years of overall schooling. the intermediate-track school has traditionally educated students who aspire to enter subordinate white-collar professions but has also become a prerequisite for the more attractive and academically more demanding programmes of vocational education and training (vet). this credential also increasingly functions as a key to alternative routes into higher education. the advanced-track school prepares students for higher education, even though not all of its graduates will proceed to tertiary education. since the early 1970s, plans to restructure the german secondary school system have concentrated on introducing comprehensive schools (gesamtschulen) for all children in a given school district while offering three different credentials. these reforms became politicised, with the result that only states governed by the social democrats introduced comprehensive schools as one of four types of regular secondary schooling (lehmann 1994). in east germany, where there had been a 10-year comprehensive school, the west german structures were creatively adapted after reunifi cation (sackmann 2010: 179). one innovation consisted of the creation of schools that integrate basic and intermediate tracks within a common framework. this school type is labelled differently in every state; in saxony-anhalt it is called the sekundarschule. hence, in secondary general education in saxonyanhalt, there is in fact a two-tier school system, including said integrated schools with two internal tracks (sekundarschule), on the one hand, and advanced-track schools (gymnasium), on the other. the enrolment share of comprehensive schools is marginal. since 2011, the decision about the school career is ultimately left up to the pupils’ parents. previously, the recommendation of a certain track of secondary education issued by the primary schools was of a more binding nature for parents in saxony-anhalt (füssel et al. 2010: 101). according to the ongoing trend towards greater proportions of enrolled students aspiring toward higher educational credentials, it is likely that enrolment in sekundarschule will be more affected by demographic decline than enrolment in gymnasium. figure 2 shows that at the beginning of the period analysed, the number of children aged 6 to 19 slightly increased to a maximum of 471,000 in 1995. after this peak, their number decreased continuously to 208,000 in 2009, which amounts to a drop in the target group of general education schools by 56 percent. the demographic decline does not affect all school types in the same way and at the same time, however. the wavelike development of birth cohorts affects primary and secondary education sequentially. primary schools, as expected, mostly followed the demographic trend and displayed proportionate changes in enrolments. with the number of enrolments dropping by 61 percent from 1991 to 2002, with a maximum of 147,000 and a minimum of 58,000 during this period, the decrease was even slightly stronger than the one observed among the age group in the total population. the integrated schools with several tracks of secondary education (sekundarschule) recorded increasing enrolments until 1998, which then declined continuously from 151,000 to 43,000 in 2009. with a drop in enrolment of 72 percent, they lost the largest share among the education levels and school types considered in this article. enrolment in advanced-track schools was lower as well but by far did • walter bartl384 not nearly decline as dramatically as in the other afore-mentioned types of schools. the advanced-track schools lost 52 percent of their enrolment from an absolute maximum of 91,000 in 1994 to a minimum of 44,000 in 2009. the number of special education enrolments decreased from 21,000 pupils, its maximum in 1997, to 13,000 in 2009, which represents a drop of 38 percent and hence a fairly stable development by comparison. this relative stability was due to an increasing participation rate in special education, which rose from 4.8 percent in 1992 to 8.6 percent in 2008 (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2010: 33). the somewhat discontinuous development of enrolment in secondary schools was the product of political reforms (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2010: 28). first, the temporary introduction of a comprehensive orientation stage in sekundarschule in 1997 delayed the decision on the track of secondary education a pupil is to pursue from the fourth to the sixth grade. this reform was abolished again in 2003, which benefi ted total enrolment numbers in gymnasium at the expense of sekundarschule. second, nine instead of eight years of schooling in gymnasium were introduced in 2001 and abolished again in 2007. the reform of the reform resulted in slightly lower total enrolment numbers in this school type. the overall negative trend in enrolment numbers has had consequences for the provision of school infrastructure. the total number of primary and secondary schools decreased from 1,745 in 1991 to 949 in 2009, hence by minus 46 percent, fig. 2: size of school-age population and enrolment in general education schools in saxony-anhalt source: statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt, own calculation economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 385 which is only slightly lower than the decline in the targeted age group by 56 percent. breaking these fi gures down by school type gives the following picture. while integrated secondary schools (sekundarschulen) were closed at an above-average frequency (minus 70 percent), advanced-track schools (minus 44 percent), primary schools (minus 35 percent), and particularly special education schools (minus 12 percent) were able to resist the overall trend to some degree. the comparative stability of the number of special education schools is particularly striking. primary schools show a disproportionately low demographic responsiveness (fig. 8 in the appendix). the number of primary schools dropped signifi cantly during the years of rapid demographic decline (1997-2002) and continued to diminish at a lesser rate during the following years of growing population numbers in the respective age group (2002-2006) while the trend stopped thereafter. this relative stability of primary schools can be explained by a guiding idea in education policy to maintain primary schools in as many locations as possible, according to the slogan “short legs, short distances” (kurze beine, kurze wege), well known among german education planners. at the local level, this principle is further strengthened by the fact that schools – especially in rural areas (haartsen/van wissen 2012) – are seen to be part of the essential infrastructure that municipalities must provide in order to be attractive in the regional competition for residents. contrary to common expectations about negative effects of school closures, however, there is also evidence that such concerns might be unwarranted at least in terms of triggering outmigration (hyll/schneider 2012). recently, 75 public primary schools with fewer than 60 pupils (the offi cial minimum threshold) were counted in saxony-anhalt (staatskanzlei sachsen-anhalt february 12, 2013), indicating that rural areas have been relatively more resilient to closures than urban ones. however, plans have been announced to close these small primary schools in the years to come. special education schools show the lowest demographic responsiveness (fig. 9 in the appendix). while enrolments followed a wavelike pattern of growth and decline that overcompensated for demographic decline, the number of schools remained almost constant during the period analysed: between 1991 and 2009 it decreased by only 12 percent. while special education needs admittedly had generally been growing in germany during this period (dietze 2011), the share of these schools in total enrolment was nevertheless particularly high compared to other german states. a possible explanation for the growing enrolment rate in this segment could be that socially selective outmigration had increased the share of pupils in saxony-anhalt labelled as “problematic.” however, this did not lead to any particular increase in the number of pupils falling into the “softer” special needs categories (such as learning diffi culties, language, and emotional and social development) intended to absorb such “problematic” pupils. rather a quantitative shift away from the most numerous category (learning diffi culties) to the less-populated categories took place, including to the more “objective” ones (visual impairment, hearing, and physical development). the share of pupils classifi ed as having learning diffi culties among all pupils with special needs, for example, was down from 72.5 percent in 1992 to 54.3 percent in 2008 (my own calculations, based on kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2010: 33). this is a general trend in germany (dietze • walter bartl386 2011). an alternative explanation could therefore be that special schools catering to the numerically smaller categories are politically in greater need of “demand” in order to legitimise their existence, and professional discretion in the diagnostic process is used accordingly. yet a more thorough explanation of the stability of special education demand and supply under conditions of demographic decline remains to be elaborated. in contrast to these developments, general secondary schools were highly responsive to demographic decline (fig. 10 in the appendix). this is probably attributable to the fact that school infrastructure undergoes a holistic planning and administration process in which the overall cost of the system is considered. in this context, general secondary schools seem to offset the relative stability of the primary and special education school infrastructure. among the secondary schools, advanced-track schools (gymnasien) were less responsive to demographic decline than integrated secondary schools (sekundarschulen), which were subject to a disproportionately high number of school closures. on the one hand, the differences in the development of integrated secondary and advanced-track schools refl ect the general trend towards higher school degrees in germany and other parts of the world. on the other hand, educational reforms and numerous exceptions from the state school law stating that a gymnasium should have at least three classes in each grade (landtag sachsen-anhalt 12 august 2005) politically favoured it over the integrated secondary schools. as an upshot of this, it can be stated that schools have slightly more time to adapt to changes in fertility rates than early childhood education and care do. nevertheless, compulsory schooling makes general education schools highly vulnerable to demographic decline. among the general schools, secondary schools are more affected by school closures in the face of demographic decline than primary and special education schools. among the secondary schools, advanced-track schools are less affected by demographic decline because of educational expansion. last but not least, these differences among school types refl ect political decisions at the local and the state level in the process of adapting to demographic change. these decisions seem to take territorial cohesion into account as well. it is probably not a coincidence that the share of general schools located outside of the three urban centres in saxony-anhalt did not change considerably between 1991 and 2009: it rose minimally from 81.3 to 81.6 percent. however, closures of public schools also open up space for private providers: their share in school infrastructure rose from practically zero to 8.3 percent between 1991 and 2009. in 2009, their share was slightly larger in cities than in rural areas. 3.3 vocational schools demographic change affects vocational education schools similar to general education schools because of compulsory schooling in upper secondary education. adolescents who leave a general education school after the lower secondary grades are still obliged to attend some programme leading to an offi cially recognised vocational education until the age of 18. trainees in the dual vocational training system economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 387 are subject to compulsory schooling until they complete vet even if they are older than 18 (hippach-schneider et al. 2012: 42). the german system of vocational education is rather complicated (thelen/busemeyer 2012). the internationally well-known and most common type in germany is the so-called dual system (duales system). it is co-fi nanced and organised by fi rms and the state. in this programme, instruction takes place in part-time vocational schools (teilzeit berufsschule) “cater[ing] to apprentices who, in addition to the practical training gained within their fi rms, receive both theoretical instruction in their trade and also some additional general education (…). instruction may take place regularly for one or two days per week or, alternatively, for blocks of several weeks” (lehmann 1994: 2475). the fi nal certifi cate can be used to enter more ambitious programmes in the education system. another type of programme is organised at full-time vocational schools (berufsfachschule), which are mostly state-fi nanced but sometimes also privately (especially in the health sector). full-time vocational schools offer professional training without apprenticeship schemes (e.g., for early childcare) or in fi elds with too few openings for apprentices. similar to the dual system, the fi nal certifi cate is an offi cially recognised professional qualifi cation and also qualifi es for admission to more ambitious education programmes. an important third type of programme comprises different variants of the socalled transition system (übergangssystem).9 these programmes are designed to help young people disadvantaged in the labour market to cross the fi rst threshold from general education to vocational training. programmes for such transition management are sometimes offered by regular public vocational schools and sometimes by private organisations receiving public funding. a look at vocational students across all school types reveals that their average age is above the typical age of 18, when compulsory schooling is theoretically supposed to end. in saxony, a neighboring state of saxony-anhalt, the average age was, for example, 19.7 years in 2006 (statistisches landesamt sn 2006). eightyfi ve percent of the students there were between 15 and 21 years old. this age group is therefore defi ned as the typical one for vocational schools in the present article. the very small birth cohorts of 1993 and 1994 in east germany thus reached vocational education, on average, only at the end of the period under study in 2008 and 2009, and will leave it in 2014 and 2015. based on figure 3, we can describe the development of the population aged 15 to 21 in four stages. after stagnation during the fi rst two years of the period considered, their number grew during the second stage from 215,000 in 1993 to 252,000 in 1999. subsequently, the fi gure decreased, initially slowly, and from 2005 on more sharply to 151,000 in 2009. the decrease between 1999 and 2009 equals minus 40 percent. in contrast, the number of vocational students declined to a far lesser degree. the number of students enrolled in vocational schools at the end of the 9 further types of vocational schools do exist, but they comprise only a small number of students (hippach-schneider et al. 2012). for the sake of clarity, they are neglected here. • walter bartl388 period analysed was almost the same as it was at the beginning of the 1990s. from less than 64,000 in 1992, the curve rises to a maximum of 89,000 in 1999 before it drops back down, in a slightly discontinuous pattern, to 63,000 in 2009, a reduction of 29 percent. how can we explain the overall stability of vocational student numbers? the reason can be found in the development of enrolments in full-time vocational schools. enrolment rose rapidly from only 3,000 in 1992 to almost 15,000 in 1999 and after a few years of discontinuity to a maximum of 17,000 in 2005. then student numbers dropped to a slightly lower level again. the relative strength of the full-time vocational schools in saxony-anhalt is part of the larger picture in east germany where this branch of vocational education is more common than in west germany (bmbf 2011: 11). in the wake of deindustrialisation and administrative downsizing in east germany (hannemann 2004), a lack of regular apprenticeship openings within the dual system led to bottlenecks at the fi rst threshold from general education to labourvocational training and consequently to a postponement of vocational education within the life course of individuals (sackmann 2000). the age of vocational students rose during the transformation process accordingly. in order to compensate for the insuffi cient number of vacancies in the dual vet system due to the weak economy in east germany, state and federal authorities have agreed to expand full-time vocational schools targeting disadvantaged adolescents (grünert 2010). a further explanation for the relative stable fig. 3: population size in the relevant age group and enrolment in vet schools in saxony-anhalt (1992-2009) source: statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt, own calculations economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 389 development of vocational school enrolment from 1992 to 2009 compared to the population decline in that age group is that student numbers were fairly low in the early years of the east german transformation. in 1989 the german democratic republic had still recorded 136,000 new apprenticeship contracts, whereas by 1991 their number had fallen to 82,000 (grünert 2010: 240). the development in enrolment did not leave the supply structures of vocational schools in saxony-anhalt unaffected. their number dropped from 72 to 66 between 1992 and 2009. however, this apparent stability masks that the number of public vocational schools offering a high diversity of vocational programmes dwindled from 68 to 31. the fact that there was an increase in private vocational schools from 4 to 35 offset this loss only on the surface since they offer only a very restricted spectrum of vocational programmes. hence, this shift from public to private service providers to a certain degree refl ects a commodifi cation process of vocational education. furthermore, the spatial distribution of vocational schools also decreased signifi cantly during this period. they became increasingly concentrated in the three largest cities in saxony-anhalt. beyond the privatisation of vocational education facilities, demographic decline also catalysed further economisation strategies. during the periods of growth in enrolment, full-time vocational schools and prevocational schools expanded to a lesser degree than student numbers (fig. 11 in the appendix), and part-time vocational schools were partially closed down in spite of temporarily rising enrolment numbers. to conclude this section, we can hold that, theoretically, vocational education is affected by demographic decline due to vet-compulsory schooling after students leave lower secondary general education. yet we see few signs of this constitutive vulnerability during the period considered. the process of economic and political transformation decouples enrolment in the vocational school system to a much greater extent from demographic trends than in the case of general education. a compensatory effect originates from the postponement of vocational education to a later point in the life course due to the relative scarcity of apprenticeship openings within the dual system after reunifi cation. the targeted age group for vocational education thus broadens. in this context, the newly established full-time vocational schools in east germany assume the traditional compensatory role of the transition system in west germany. the structural difference in the fulfi llment of this compensatory function, however, is signifi cant. full-time vocational schools offer offi cially recognised certifi cates of vocational education, whereas the transition system is more or less an institutional “waiting room.” in spite of the factors decoupling enrolment in vocational education from demographic trends, considerable concentration processes occurred on the supply side. they are probably attributable to the fact that the highly differentiated curricula of vocational schools depend more on large organisational units in order to reach certain thresholds of minimum class sizes than general education schools do. hence, in addition to a broadening of the targeted age group, vocational education schools partially offset demographic decline through an enlargement of their catchment areas. the commodifi cation of vocational education increased slightly through the structural shift from public to private vocational schools. • walter bartl390 3.4 higher education higher education differs signifi cantly from the other education levels considered so far in this article because of the relatively low participation rates at the beginning of the period analysed and greater internal differentiation (between and within organisations) than any of the other levels of the education system. these differences allow for a substantial decoupling of higher education from demographic trends. in contrast to general and vocational schools, there is no obligation to participate in higher education. furthermore, international comparisons show that germany still has quite a low participation rate in higher education (oecd 2011: 308). due to the very strong system of dual vocational training, this is a traditional feature of the german regime of skill formation (nikolai/ebner 2012). below a certain saturation point of universal access, the participation of the regional population entitled and inclined to enter higher education should be decisive for the absolute number of enrolled students (mayer 2008). we also need to take student mobility as a potential intervening factor into account since higher education is highly differentiated and the provision of education at this level fairly centralised compared to lower levels of the education system. the typical age group for higher education from 19 to 29 has reached a stage in life when it is (legally) possible to live on one’s own. this opens up opportunities of spatial mobility to realise one’s personal educational aspirations. hence, the constituency of tertiary education institutions is theoretically less limited to their immediate regional context than that of kindergartens and schools, for example. a central prerequisite on the supply side to enlarge the catchment area of higher education organisations is attractive educational programmes and substantial academic quality. figure 4 reveals that the population aged 19 to 29 in saxony-anhalt declined continuously from 375,000 to 293,000 between 1991 and 2001; subsequently it developed more discontinuously, but the changes were on a smaller scale. the population decline in the relevant age group for higher education was 22 percent during the 1990s. by contrast, the number of students rose continuously from 22,000 to 52,000 between 1992 and 2004 – an increase of 136 percent – and then stagnated at this level in the following years. while universities and art schools doubled their enrolment during the period considered here, applied universities quadrupled their student numbers. the faster growth of (the less expensive) applied universities is a universal phenomenon in germany (autorengruppe bildungsberichterstattung 2010: 121). in the case of higher education, it becomes clear that rising participation rates contribute to a decoupling of enrolment from demographic trends. this decoupling admittedly depends on initially low participation rates. the overall expansion of enrolment in higher education in saxony-anhalt is partly attributable to the general process of expanding higher education observed worldwide (schofer/meyer 2005). the spread of ideas about the benefi ts of higher education leads policymakers to invest in human capital. however, the especially steep rise in enrolment in saxonyanhalt is also rooted in the transformation process after german reunifi cation. socialist states started to limit access to higher education from the late 1970s onward, economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 391 thereby suppressing individual aspirations to pursue tertiary education. during the transformation process, there was therefore a signifi cant catch-up in demand for access to higher education (baker et al. 2007; reisz/stock 2007), partly offsetting the effects of the prior institutional closure – at least with regard to the younger age groups. the relative stagnation of enrolment between 2005 and 2007 was probably due to the introduction of consecutive study programmes (bachelor’s and master’s degree) in accordance with the bologna process (on the latter, see winter 2011). enrolment numbers stagnated during the fi rst years of reform because the new study programmes shortened the average time of study. initially they comprised only the relatively short bachelor programmes and even later not all bachelor students proceeded to the master’s level. furthermore, with the introduction of the new programme structure, higher education institutions received more autonomy in calculating teaching capacities and determining enrolment numbers. several political aims were to be met at the same time. the teacher/student ratio was to be improved while fi nancial resources stagnated simultaneously – partly in anticipation of demographic decline (witte/stuckrad 2007: 2-3). consequently, higher education institutions limited their enrolment numbers. after 2007, the overall number of students slightly increased again. in order to improve access to higher education in east germany and to relieve west german universities from abundant demand, fig. 4: population aged 19 to 29 and enrolment in higher education in saxonyanhalt (1991/1992-2010) source: statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt, own calculations • walter bartl392 authorities at the federal level and the 16 german states agreed on an initiative to promote national student mobility. in the so-called hochschulpakt 2020 (alliance for higher education), which became effective in 2007, the east german states committed themselves to maintaining study capacities at the level of 2005. they received subsidies for each additional higher education entrant in exchange. the hochschulpakt 2020 was accompanied by a marketing campaign for east german higher education institutions that attempted to motivate eligible west german students to head east. this campaign for educational migration has been remarkably successful (gemeinsame wissenschaftskonferenz 2012), building on a sound academic quality of higher education in east germany. in figure 4, this success is refl ected in the growing number of students originating from outside saxony-anhalt. the increase in enrolment was not accompanied by similar growth in staff between 1992 and 2009 (fig. 12 in the appendix). rather, the number of personnel stagnated at around 16,000 employees until 2007 and only later rose to over 17,000 (plus 10 percent). however, this relatively low increase masks the fact that the administrative staff of higher education institutions decreased signifi cantly during the period considered. scientifi c personnel increased from 5,500 persons employed in 1992 to 8,300 in 2009 (plus 50 percent). by contrast, administrative personnel were reduced by 10 percent during this time. the observed growth in academic staff was partially driven by temporary teaching contracts (lehraufträge). furthermore, the number of higher education institutions in saxony-anhalt was reduced from 16 to 12 and the number of local branches of these institutions from 21 to 17 (bartl 2012a). in other words, the expansion of higher education places was partly enabled through an economisation of the regional higher education system in terms of staff and infrastructure. this section allows some conclusions. higher education is by far the level least affected by demographic change in the regional education system. this decoupling is due to the general trend of rising educational aspirations, which brings new segments of the regional population to higher education. furthermore, higher education can count on spatial mobility much more than the educational institutions with younger participants. it is even considered a sign of high academic quality in university rankings if a higher education institution has a high ratio of students from outside the region or abroad. in the data analysed, there is no evidence for any expansion of the range of typical age groups (a potential compensation strategy to which some authors point, e.g., vincent-lancrin 2008). 3.5 comparison across the levels of the education system the last empirical section of this paper takes its comparative approach across different levels of the education system a step further by applying bivariate regression analysis. as the analysis is based on aggregate time series with only a limited number of observations, multivariate regression models are not viable. both the number of education facilities and staff in higher education are regressed on changing demographic cohort sizes (table 1). as these variables enter the regression models after logarithmic transformation, the coeffi cients obtained can be read economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 393 as elasticities: they express the percentage by which the dependent variable (supply) is predicted to change if the independent variable (size of targeted age group) changes by 1 percent. hence, the relative demographic responsiveness of supply structures can be compared numerically across different subsectors of the education system. the regression coeffi cients in table 1 bear some striking results. the fi rst model on the responsiveness of childcare centres surprisingly reveals an elasticity of 0.64 even though total enrolment in this fi eld was completely decoupled from demographic decline. expressed differently, a decline in the size of the population younger than 6 years old by 1 percent is predicted to result in a decrease in the number of childcare centres by 0.64 percent – despite the compensatory effect of increasing enrolment in after-school care. apparently, the concentration process in childcare provision is strategic so as to increase organisational fl exibility and economies of scale: formerly separated units were merged and reorganised in order to form multifunctional units providing childcare and education no longer for narrow but now for broader age groups. at this level, the increasingly high level of commodifi cation (in the sense of not-for-profi t providers) could have contributed to this remarkable demographic elasticity of supply. the next four models depict the demographic responsiveness of general schools. compared to the high responsiveness of enrolment in primary schools, the education infrastructure in this fi eld of education responds far less elastically to demographic decline. the number of primary schools decreases only by 0.41 percent if the population aged 6 to 10 years drops by 1 percent. this relatively low responsivetab. 1: demographic elasticity of supply of education facilities (bivariate regressions) population age childcare centres primary schools integrated secondary schools advanced track schools special education schools vocational schools staff in higher education 0 – 6 0.64*** 6 – 10 0.41*** 10 – 15 1.10*** 10 – 19 0.68*** 6 – 19 0.13*** 15 – 21 0.24*** 19 – 29 -0.56** n 8 19 19 19 19 18 19 r2 0.89 0.82 0.95 0.92 0.87 0.28 0.66 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, dependent and independent variables are logarithmised source: statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt • walter bartl394 ness can be attributed to the guiding idea in education planning that “short legs” should be provided with “short distances” in the education system. integrated secondary schools show a disproportionately high demographic elasticity: a 1 percent drop in the population aged 10 to 15 years old comes with a 1.1 percent decline in the number of facilities in this fi eld. this school type obviously is a victim of educational expansion within the framework of a hierarchically differentiated secondary school system: advanced-track schools leading to higher valued credentials display an elasticity of only 0.68 percent. finally, special education schools are the demographically least elastic school type among general education schools. the latter seems to be due to inherited professional standards of how to deal with special education needs. viewing general education schools as a subsystem of the regional education system, one could argue that the highly elastic general school types offset part of the fi xed costs that the less elastic parts of the subsystem generate. with an elasticity of 0.24 percent, the total number of vocational schools does not seem to respond very strongly to demographic decline. but considering only the overall number of vocational schools conceals a remarkable process of privatisation: horizontally differentiated public schools were closed while narrowly specialised private schools opened. furthermore, there were divergent developments in different tiers of the vocational school system. the descriptive analyses showed that part-time vocational schools (and pre-vocational schools) were affected more by the demographic shrinking process than full-time vocational schools. the guiding idea behind public subsidies for full-time vocational schools was to offset the impact of the deindustrialisation process on vocational training opportunities in east germany after reunifi cation. however, improved labour market opportunities for young people in east germany and the termination of public subsidies have triggered reductions in this segment of vocational education as well (grünert et al. 2006; bmbf 2011: 21). last but not least, the fi nal model displayed in table 1 suggests that staff numbers in higher education would respond negatively to demographic decline. but this is probably a spurious relationship. there is no obvious reason to believe that declining cohort sizes might contribute to rising staff numbers in higher education. more profound analyses at the micro-level of single institutions for higher education show that this relationship is statistically not signifi cant (bartl 2012a). in reality, there is a positive relationship with enrolment and a negative relationship with economic development, supporting the oft-mentioned hypothesis of a third mission of higher education institutions in a regional context. as they provide public employment, higher education institutions in saxony-anhalt seem to be part of policies aimed at mitigating regional economic hardships. these policies attempt to meet the principle of equivalent living conditions in all parts of germany codifi ed in german basic law. in spite of this “third mission,” there were signifi cant reductions in administrative staff during the period analysed, and current discussions in saxonyanhalt nurture expectations of further cutbacks to come – despite rising enrolment in higher education (ziegele/berthold 2013)! in this respect, saxony-anhalt’s weak economy, partially a consequence of the transformation process (sackmann 2010), and the anticipated termination of transformation-related public transfers in 2019 economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 395 seem to exert fi nancial pressure on the higher education system. at this point, politicians attempt to use demography as a legitimising frame for unpopular cutbacks (ziegele/berthold 2013). overall, the seven educational fi elds compared in this section display an average demographic responsiveness of 0.38. closest to this value is the regression coeffi cient of primary schools. on the one hand, within the framework of hierarchical differentiation, integrated secondary schools are weakened by political decisions and individual preferences for higher levels of education. this makes them overly responsive to demographic decline. advanced-track schools and childcare centres respond to an above-average extent to demographic decline but still not proportionally. while the concentration of childcare centres is probably driven by strategic choices on the part of municipal and private providers, closure of advanced-track schools would have been even higher if state school law were implemented literally. on the other hand, higher education institutions are the ones most independent of demographic decline. however, there have been economisation strategies at this level as well among different categories of personnel. special education schools also prove to be relatively independent of demographic decline, especially when compared to the other general school types. this is partially due to growing participation rates in special education and the redirection of enrolment from a relatively large number of schools catering to learning diffi culties to schools targeting less frequent categories of special needs education. finally, the relative independence of vocational schools indicated in the regression coeffi cient is rather deceptive as it masks a process of concentration among public vocational schools that is only numerically compensated by specialised private ones. 4 equal access to education and economisation of infrastructure the education infrastructure in saxony-anhalt was substantially restructured during the period of analysis. results show that the extent of demographic responsiveness of the regional education system in saxony-anhalt varies in and across educational levels. this variance points not only to constitutive institutional differences between educational levels but also to political discretion in coping with demographic changes. hence, the observed variance in education infrastructure in response to demographic decline dampens simple expectations of declining expenditure in times of declining cohort sizes. at most levels, adaptation of supply was less fl exible than the volatility of demographic decline and changes in enrolment. to reiterate the second assumption on the possible liberation of resources through demographic change (economisation-of-supply hypothesis), it must be said that this is only partly the case. additionally, it is well known that school closures often externalise costs to other public realms such as school transportation (frank 2011). more detailed data (e.g., including data on the size distribution of education establishments) probably would have revealed even more variance in the economisation of supply. usually decisions about the closure (or not) of schools and childcare centres are made based on certain administrative thresholds. the variability in the demographic re• walter bartl396 sponsiveness of supply across educational levels points towards the normative nature of political decision making on education infrastructure: cost reductions have to be weighed against the pretension of welfare states to provide (territorially) equal access to education. all the more striking is that there are economisation processes that cannot be attributed directly to demographic decline, such as in those cases with growing enrolment numbers (early childhood and higher education). theoretically, it is possible that demographic decline exerts an indirect fi nancial pressure on public budgets for education services. financial scarcity in east germany, however, results not from demographic decline in the fi rst place but from the monetary union with west germany and deindustrialisation during the transformation process (sackmann 2010). hence, the intervening variables proposed above based on theoretical considerations (inclusiveness, internal differentiation, and commodifi cation) have to be reconsidered with respect to results from other studies. inclusiveness: while in saxony-anhalt the number of childcare centres was vulnerable to demographic decline because of a high participation rate, participation in childcare was signifi cantly lower in poland and west germany (bartl 2011b). participation rates can be interpreted as informal expressions of normative expectations about standards of welfare services. hence, despite low participation rates, the familialistic welfare regime in poland, emphasising the role of the family in childcare, made it normatively easier for municipalities to close existing childcare centres during the fi rst phase of transformation, especially in rural areas. it can be assumed that retrenchment strategies of this type contributed to the relatively low level of indebtedness of shrinking municipalities in poland (rademacher 2007; sackmann 2010). later, in the posttransformation period, low numbers of children were offset by the introduction of a compulsory year of pre-schooling, and the system of general schools was even expanded (kopycka 2013). in west germany, attempts at the federal state level to modernise the traditionally conservative german welfare regime have recently led to extending childcare to children younger than 3, thus offsetting the effect of lower numbers of children aged 3 to 6 years in the general population (bartl 2011b). hence, low inclusiveness makes it less probable that fertility decline results in overcapacities only if normative aspirations rise at the same time – thus offsetting decline through rising participation rates. this is why in shrinking west german rural areas the level of childcare infrastructure is perceived as satisfactory while their east german counterparts interpret a similar situation as a deterioration of service provision (steinführer et al. 2012). in higher education, rising participation rates can be interpreted as coming closer to the ideal of universal higher education. an unintended consequence of this politically desirable outcome will be that higher education will become more responsive to demographic change. demographic decline is already a serious challenge for (private) higher education institutions in countries such as japan or south korea (yonezawa/kim 2008). there, internationalisation is discussed as the primary strategy for coping with decline. if we consider that such a strategy theoretically requires quite a high level of commodifi cation (sackmann 2007), normative questions about tuition fees could become more prominent. economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? • 397 internal (hierarchical and horizontal) differentiation loosens the connection between demographic trends and education supply. the present article shows that integrated secondary schools were more affected by demographic decline than advanced-track schools. this uneven demographic responsiveness points to the hierarchical differentiation of secondary schools in germany. similarly, demographic decline has led the structurally more fragmented general school system in west germany to come under pressure toward dedifferentiation from the lower end of this hierarchy (bartl 2012b). in the 1980s, when the 1970s decline in fertility in west germany reached the education system, this demographic pressure on enrolment was temporarily relieved through immigration, on the one hand, and through a loosening of administrative thresholds for minimum school size, on the other (trotha 1981). today, integrative types of schools are increasingly emerging as a solution to declining enrolment (bartl 2012b). as far as horizontal differentiation is concerned, low differentiation such as in primary schools allows for fairly decentralised service provision. however, this low differentiation usually means fairly small infrastructure units, which makes them prone to closure (for accordant expectations about the future in the netherlands, see haartsen/van wissen 2012). whereas special education schools have a similar number of pupils to primary schools, they have proved to be highly resilient in the face of demographic decline. their relatively stable number points to an increased participation rate, which is especially high in saxony-anhalt compared to other german states. hence, both school types raise normative questions in times of demographic decline. shall these small schools remain open? in a comparison of the 16 german states, only one (thuringia) had higher expenditures per pupil than saxony-anhalt (statistisches bundesamt 2010: 47). recently, the government of saxony-anhalt announced the anticipated closure of 75 small primary schools that do not currently reach the administrative minimum threshold of pupils for this school type (staatskanzlei sachsen-anhalt 12.02.2013). and yet, it could be argued that the fairly decentralised structure of primary schools perhaps contributed to the good results that pupils from saxony-anhalt achieved in a comparative study across the german states (stanat 2012). in contrast to the apparently good results of primary schools, the relatively high expense of instructing pupils with special needs in separate schools (preuss-lausitz 2009) does not seem to pay off socially. in saxony-anhalt, 10.7 percent of total enrolment dropped out of school without a degree in 2009. around three-quarters of those dropouts originated from special education schools. only the state of mecklenburg-western pomerania had a higher dropout rate in 2009 (12.4 percent) – and a similar participation rate in special education schools (my own calculations based on [kmk n.d.: 332-333]). in light of current discussions about a more inclusive and more effi cient school system, the relative stability of the fairly expensive segregated schooling of children and youths with special needs in the face of demographic decline is an ambivalent success story. in larger organisational units declining cohort sizes exert pressure towards internal horizontal dedifferentiation. recently, for example, vocational schools in saxony-anhalt began to experiment with mixed classes for apprentices of different vocations (laag 2010). • walter bartl398 the level of commodifi cation in the east german educational landscape was lower in the early 1990s than it is today. the share of private not-for-profi t providers of educational infrastructure increased remarkably in early childhood, vocational, and general education. while quite a high involvement of private actors in early childhood and vocational education is common in west germany, the same cannot be said of general education schools. despite privatisation being still at a relatively low level in germany, it is noteworthy that increases in private (primary) schools have been preceded by closures of public schools due to demographic decline, as other studies show (kühne/kann 2012). beyond that, demographic decline seems to reinforce traditional means of rationalisation in the public sector such as calculation in kind (bartl 2011a), retrenchment measures, and fl exible working contracts (especially in higher education). this corresponds to a reform pattern of the public sector, identifi ed mainly in continental europe, in which the state remains a key actor in society, normatively and empirically, and marketisation plays a rather limited role (pollitt/bouckaert 2011). to sum up the analytical results of this empirical study, the following revised set of variables seems to be important for systematically investigating the demographic responsiveness of the education system (fig. 5). demographic decline calls for an economisation of education infrastructure; yet migration (for education reasons) might alleviate part of this pressure. the guiding ideas of education policy, whether rooted in political or in professional reasoning, usually work against an economisation of education infrastructure. furthermore, the demographic responsiveness of supply structures is less pronounced at education levels that display a greater degree of hierarchical or horizontal differentiation (e.g., secondary schools) compared to more inclusive sectors of the education system (e.g., primary schools). another intervening effect seems to be related to the size of educational establishments: larger units have more potential for fl exible responses to declining demand; however, this variable was not investigated systematically enough in the present paper. on the other hand, highly inclusive and highly commodifi ed levels of education are more responsive to demographic decline than those levels with low participation and completely decommodifi ed public supply structures. however, independent of demographic change and educational governance structures, pressure to economise the regional education system might originate in poor economic conditions in a given region. the latter becomes especially obvious when the current discussion in saxony-anhalt about cutbacks in higher education is considered. here demography is used as a legitimising frame for unpopular (and maybe unwise [ziegele/berthold 2013]) political decisions. hence, the demographic responsiveness of the education system is codetermined by other variables, above all by educational governance structures and the economic conditions in the region. some of these variables hamper and others enhance economisation tendencies in education due to demographic decline. economisation of the education system in shrinking regions? 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educational restructuring from a community viewpoint: a case study of school closure from invercargill, new zealand. in: environment and planning c: government and policy 21,2: 203-223 [doi: 10.1068/c05r]. world bank 2006: world development report 2007. washington, d.c.: world bank publications. yonezawa, akiyoshi; kim, terri 2008: the future of higher education in the context of a shrinking student population. policy challenges for japan and korea. in: oecd (eds.): higher education to 2030. volume 1: demography. paris: oecd publishing: 199-220. ziegele, frank; berthold, christian 2013: bildungschancen junger menschen realisieren und in den innovationsstandort sachsen-anhalt investieren: hochschulsystem stärken und nicht durch kürzungen ausbremsen! che (centrum für hochschulentwicklung). gütersloh [http://www.che.de/downloads/stellungnahme_sachsen_anhalt_1541.pdf, 27.02.2013]. • walter bartl408 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “ökonomisierung des bildungssystems in schrumpfenden regionen? demografi sche reagibilität von bildungsnachfrage und -angebot auf verschiedenen stufen des bildungssystems”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-19de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-19de8, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 16.10.2012 date of acceptance: 21.05.2013 dr. walter bartl (). martin-luther-universität halle-wittenberg, institut für soziologie. halle (saale) germany. e-mail: walter.bartl@soziologie.uni-halle.de, url: http://www.soziologie.uni-halle.de/sozialstruktur/bartl/ published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe are high home ownership rates an indicator of low housing values? kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld abstract: exploring inequalities in home ownership as an important component of household wealth contributes to the understanding of social stratifi cation in modern societies. we argue that inequalities in housing are not only manifested by differential access to home ownership, but also by differences in housing values, a somewhat neglected aspect in research hitherto. applying data from the “survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe” (share),1 we compare home ownership rates and housing values between 13 european countries. our results suggest that housing inequality is indeed a two-dimensional phenomenon. most surprisingly, migration status has a negative impact on the probability of home ownership in european countries, but not on the mean housing value. in addition, we exploratively study the relationship between these two dimensions of housing inequality. our analyses show a negative though not signifi cant relationship between home ownership rates and housing values. keywords: housing · wealth · social inequality · europe · share comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 4 (2013): 1009-1040 (date of release: 17.12.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-22en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-22en0 1 this paper uses data from share release 2.5.0, as of may 24th, 2011. the share data collection has been primarily funded by the european commission through the 5th framework programme (project qlk6-ct-200100360 in the thematic programme quality of life), through the 6th framework programme (projects share-i3, rii-ct2006-062193, compare, cit5ct-2005-028857, and sharelife, cit4-ct-2006-028812) and through the 7th framework programme (share-prep, 211909 and share-leap, 227822). additional funding from the u.s. national institute on aging (u01 ag09740-13s2, p01 ag005842, p01 ag08291, p30 ag12815, y1-ag-4553-01 and ogha 04-064, iag bsr06-11, r21 ag025169) as well as from various national sources is gratefully acknowledged (see http://www.share-project.org for a full list of funding institutions). • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1010 1 introduction studying home ownership2 is of major sociological importance, as social inequalities are not only defi ned by educational, occupational or income inequalities, but also in terms of real property (kurz/blossfeld 2004; lewin-epstein et al. 1997). home ownership is an important purpose in life for many people. frequently mentioned reasons for the desire to purchase residential property are independence from the landlord, capital investment, the possession of a house as a long-lasting value which can also be transferred to the children, the house as a kind of secure old-age provision3 as well as long-term protection against infl ation and a home of one’s own as a means to achieve a higher quality of life (faller et al. 2001; lbs research 2004). home ownership can also serve as a symbol of status and success (cf. constant et al. 2007). various studies have revealed that residential property is an essential factor for wealth accumulation (see brandolini et al. 2004; grabka/frick 2007; skopek et al. 2012; sierminska et al. 2007). yet there are major differences in home ownership rates in europe, these varying between 35 percent in switzerland and 83 percent in spain (euroconstruct/ifo 2009). the distribution of home ownership in general, but also the analyses of socio-economic determinants that affect the probability of becoming a homeowner, have received the attention of a number of researchers (e.g. kurz/blossfeld 2004; wagner/mulder 2000). we argue that the differentiation between owners and non-owners is only one dimension of social inequality in housing. being a homeowner does not necessarily imply that a household is wealthy, as the value of a house heavily depends on the location, the social environment (neighbourhood) as well as the quality of the residential property (e.g. besley/ mueller 2012; li/brown 1980). all these factors are refl ected in the housing value. thus, in order to capture social inequality patterns in home ownership in their entity, it is unavoidable to also take into account the real estate value, which has been a somewhat neglected aspect in research on housing in the social sciences so far (exceptions: krivo/kaufman 2004; lewin-epstein et al. 1997). in our paper, we will account for both of the above-mentioned dimensions of social stratifi cation in housing by analysing whether various socio-economic household characteristics differently affect 1) the probability of being a homeowner and 2) the value of housing within different european countries. in addition to that, we are 3) interested in the relationship between these two dimensions of social stratifi cation in housing. our contribution is thus twofold: firstly, we provide a broad international comparison of home ownership rates and housing values, and secondly we explore the relationship between those two dimensions of housing (inequality). 2 the paper is interested in studying owner-occupied home ownership. the expressions “residential property”, ”home ownership” and “own homes” are used synonymously. the same applies to the expressions “housing value”, “real estate value” and “value of residential property”. 3 some authors (castles 1998; kemeny 1981) also argue that there might be a trade-off between the expansion of home ownership and the generosity of old-age pensions within countries. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1011 the population on which we focus is elderly europeans because it is at this stage of life that residential property is particularly common in all european societies (sierminska et al. 2007). as the elderly are generally confronted with a considerable fall in their income when they retire, their socio-economic position can only be adequately determined if one additionally takes wealth into account (e.g. spilermann 2000). the fi nancial position of homeowners whose housing is free from debts is strengthened by the fact that they do not need to invest money to rent a house or fl at, so that they can spend these resources on consumption or savings (wolff et al. 2005: 1076). considering the ageing of industrialised societies and the growing importance of private pension provision, we assume that wealth and owner-occupied housing as an important part of it will even become more important in future. however, purchasing an apartment or a house can also have negative aspects, especially among the very old (75 years and above). high fi nancial burdens, mobility restrictions and high (transaction) costs when selling residential property are often associated with home ownership (bourdieu 1998; häußermann/petrowsky 1990; häußermann/siebel 2000; sierminska et al. 2007). moreover, in many cases housing is the only noteworthy wealth component of elderly households. as housing wealth is illiquid wealth, it cannot be directly used for consumption. therefore, elderly homeowners are sometimes described as housing rich, but cash poor (angelini et al. 2009; venti/wise 2000). in the following section, we will give an overview of the current research on socio-economic variables affecting the probability of home ownership and housing values. for our statistical analyses, we use the second wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) that was conducted in 13 countries:4 austria, belgium, the czech republic, denmark, france, germany, greece, italy, the netherlands, poland, spain, sweden and switzerland. we apply logistic regressions to analyse household characteristics affecting the chance of being a homeowner, and linear regressions to analyse household characteristics that infl uence the value of housing among homeowners. we make use of a multi-level model to fi nd out about the relationship between home ownership rates and housing values. considering housing inequality as a twofold process and analysing it over a broad range of countries will enable us to obtain a better, multidimensional understanding of social inequalities in housing (see fig. 1). 4 ireland also took part in the second wave of share. however, as imputations are not available for ireland, we decided to leave it out. • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1012 2 current research and expectations the impact of socio-economic characteristics on home ownership rates and housing values housing is likely to be affected by various individual and household characteristics, such as age, household size, children, family status, education, occupation, income, inheritances, migration status and urbanisation (e.g. krivo/kaufman 2004; kurz/blossfeld 2004; lewin-epstein et al. 1997). the impact of these socio-economic characteristics does not necessarily need to be the same for the two dimensions of housing inequality – home ownership rates and housing values. in addition, the national institutional settings, characterised by a country’s welfare regime, should exert a major infl uence on its housing situation (see kurz/ blossfeld 2004). welfare regimes can be expected to affect the individual chances and incentives to acquire property (e.g. through taxation, housing allowances). differences in social security systems, especially retirement systems, may affect the need to own a home as a part of private old-age provision (see dewilde/raeymaeckers 2008). whereas northern welfare states are known for high state-provided social security also for the elderly, home ownership plays a crucial role for old-age provisions in southern europe because there is almost no serious state-providfig. 1: the two dimensions of social stratifi cation in housing source: own design population low value high value owners non-owners the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1013 ed pension scheme. as a result, in southern european welfare states residential property is the main if not the only wealth component, while in northern europe fi nancial assets are of greater importance (sierminska et al. 2007). in order to capture country-specifi c differences in home ownership rates and values in our analyses, we will distinguish between northern, central and southern europe as well as post-socialist countries, following the welfare state typology of esping-andersen (esping-andersen 1990). finally, welfare regimes can also infl uence the patterns and intensities of social inequalities in housing arising from the above-named socioeconomic characteristics. the lifecycle hypothesis (modigliani/brumberg 1954) states that wealth grows with advancing age, as people accumulate increasing amounts of wealth throughout their working lives by saving parts of their income in order to keep their consumption level stable over their life course. when entering retirement, they then start “dissaving” (consuming their wealth). we assume that home ownership rates follow a similar pattern (artle/varaiya 1978). however, different studies have shown that the probability of being a homeowner only starts to decrease signifi cantly from the age of 70 onwards (tatsiramos 2006; venti/wise 2000). the reasons for this decrease are that the elderly put their homes in their children’s names (e.g. for fi scal reasons) or sell them in case of the loss of the partner through death (chiuri/jappelli 2010) or to fi nance the move into an old people’s home or into a smaller (rented) fl at (häußermann/siebel 2000; mulder/wagner 1998). it is nonetheless remarkable that many elderly retain their homes, which means that they have a high stock of illiquid capital that cannot be used directly for consumption (angelini et al. 2009; attanasio et al. 2011). regarding our sample of elderly households, the home ownership rate should already be at its peak (c.f. scanlon/whitehead 2004), and should only slightly start to decrease with age. given the current (market) value of residential property, we do not see any reason to expect differences over age in our sample. however, processes like “ageing in place” (which might result in age-homogenous residential areas) may result in decreasing housing values as people age. as this most often takes place in suburban areas (frey 2011; swiaczny et al. 2012), we argue that we can control for this effect by differentiating between urban and sub-urban areas in our analysis.5 the literature unanimously reports that household composition is crucial for the home ownership situation. couples and families with children in particular live in their own homes more often compared to singles (davidov/weick 2011; lewinepstein/semyonov 2000; mulder 2006; wagner/mulder 2000). in general, the probability of living in one’s own home increases with a growing number of people living in the household, as residential property is often associated with a family-friendly residential area and comfortable living accommodation (häußermann/siebel 2000; mulder/wagner 1998). the value of residential property is also found to be posi5 another phenomenon that might lead to decreasing housing values over age is the process of “asset meltdown”. yet, so far there is no empirical evidence that this process is actually taking place (see for example börsch-supan et al., 2003). • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1014 tively infl uenced by the number of household members (lewin-epstein et al. 1997). when it comes to the property value, we assume that having a partner also has a positive effect, while we have no clear assumptions for parenthood and household size.6 finally, we expect family-related characteristics to be especially important in southern european welfare states where families have a central infl uence on the standard of living and therefore also on the home ownership situation (espingandersen 1990). previous studies have emphasized the signifi cant infl uence of an individual’s educational and occupational status7 on the transition to home ownership (kurz/blossfeld 2004; wagner/mulder 2000). additionally, the chance of receiving bequests or inheritances increases with higher educational and occupational status, as these individuals often originate from higher-status families (blau/duncan 1967; buchholz 2008; szydlik/schupp 2004). regarding the impact of different welfare state regimes, kurz and blossfeld (2004) were able to show for example that occupational status has a greater impact on the transition to home ownership in liberal welfare states compared to social-democratic regimes. we likewise expect educational attainment levels and income to increase the probability of home ownership as well as the value of residential property. the educational level should be particularly important in countries with a highly standardised, stratifi ed education system and a strong vocational specifi city (like germany and switzerland), as the impact of formal qualifi cations on the employment career, and therefore on the potential of wealth accumulation, is especially strong in these countries (müller/shavit 1998). in addition to that, it we expect that households that received fi nancial gifts or inheritances have a higher probability of being homeowners. furthermore, if they own a dwelling it might be of higher value as intergenerational transfers enhance the household’s wealth position. in the u.s., people of african-american and latin-american origin are less likely to own residential property, and if they realise home ownership, their houses are often of low value (krivo/kaufman 2004; lewin-epstein et al. 1997; parcel 1982). although a higher educational background and growing income weaken the negative impact of a migration background on home ownership, different studies show clear evidence that even when controlling for these variables, discrimination on the housing market can still be observed for migrants (chiteji/stafford 1999; horton/thomas 1998; krivo/kaufman 2004). possible explanations of these fi ndings are migrants’ disadvantaged labour market position, the fact that migrants less often receive bequests and inheritances, migrants’ information defi cit on the local housing market, as well as discrimination against migrants in the credit approval process (charles/ 6 this is because more living space is needed with an increasing number of people living in a household, and at least in multigenerational households more people can help fi nance the property. however, more people and having children cause higher costs that reduce the fi nancial resources available to purchase residential property, which could have a diminishing effect on the residential property value as well. 7 occupational status is not included in our analyses as many people in our sample are already retired and their (former) occupational status is then unknown. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1015 hurst 2002; conley 2003; krivo/kaufman 2004; szydlik/schupp 2004). so far, the question of whether this holds true for european countries as well is however unresolved. due to the high real estate prices, greater fi nancial resources are needed in cities in order to gain access to home ownership, thus reducing the probability of owning residential property (kurz/blossfeld 2004). however, if owner-occupied housing has been realised successfully, it should consequently be of higher value in urban communities. linking home ownership rates to housing values in addition to the socio-economic factors that have an impact on home ownership rates and housing values, we are also interested in the relationship between these two dimensions. more precisely, we want to fi nd out if high home ownership rates correlate with high housing values (positive relationship) or if they can only be realized at the cost of low housing values (negative relationship)? as far as we know, this research question has not yet been adequately addressed in social inequality research. we will exploratively approach this question in our study. theoretically, both relationships (positive and negative) are possible. firstly, the socio-economic composition of the group of homeowners may lead to a negative relationship. it might be the case in countries with low ownership rates but high housing values that only a very selective group of better-off households achieves home ownership (poggio 2006). those would be households, which can also afford high-value housing. if this is the case, the homogeneous composition of this group could explain the high mean housing values in these countries. likewise, in countries with high home ownership rates, homeowners might be a rather heterogeneous group (everybody has access to housing), which should lead to low mean housing values on the aggregate level, given that a large share of those homeowners cannot afford high-value housing. if we fi nd a negative relationship between home ownership rates and housing values in our analysis, homeowners’ socio-economic composition might be a possible explanation for this relationship. secondly, the scenario of a positive relationship is also possible. if a country’s rental market can be classifi ed as unattractive compared to the home ownership market (e.g. low quality of rented housing or small rental sector), being a homeowner might become an interesting, desirable alternative. if demand for home ownership is high, housing prices are likely to increase. this however might still not deter individuals from buying residential property, thus pushing up housing prices further. so if we fi nd a positive relationship between home ownership rates and housing values, an unattractive renting market might be a possible explanation. in general, housing is considered as an important component of asset-based social security. that is why most welfare states implemented certain housing policies (like interest subsidies and housing allowances) to support and provide social security via home ownership (elsinga et al. 2007). by running multi-level regressions, we are testing statistically whether country-level variables can explain the variation in individual housing values. • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1016 3 data and methods data in our analysis, we make use of the second wave of the share data. this survey is an international, representative panel study of the population aged 50 years and older, it is currently in its fourth wave. the main advantage of the share data is that it provides detailed, internationally comparable information on the fi nancial and housing situation (in waves one, two and four). as the fi rst release of the wave-four data does not yet contain all the variables that are relevant to our analyses, and as waves one and two were conducted in a rather narrow period of time (2004 to 2007), we decided to work with the second wave only, which covers a broader range of countries. the observation that becoming a homeowner in the life course is a slow process with few events confi rms our decision (venti/wise 1989). in the second wave, conducted in 2006/2007, 33,281 people in 22,721 households from 13 eu member states (listed above) participated in the survey. after eliminating households with missing or implausible values as well as households where none of the people interviewed were aged 50+ (148 households), our fi nal dataset contains 20,9458 households. a typical problem of questions addressing fi nancial aspects is a high rate of item non-response (riphahn/serfl ing 2005). the share team is tackling this problem by applying a multiple imputation strategy for fi lling in missing values (for further information on multiple imputation see rubin 1987). five values were estimated for every missing value.9 a more detailed description of the imputation method used in the share can be found in christelis (2011). all the analyses reported below were run across the fi ve. moreover, all fi nancial values are adjusted for differences in the purchasing power of money across countries and over time using the exchange rates provided by the share team (see mannheim research institute for economics of aging 2010 for further information). we use cross-sectional calibrated weights that “are calibrated to precisely refl ect each country’s age and gender proportions” (börsch-supan et al. 2005: 21) for our descriptive analyses. these weights compensate for problems of unit non-response and sample attrition (cf. mannheim research institute for economics of aging 2010). table 1 illustrates the sample size per country (weighted). 8 for our analyses, we eliminated households with missing or implausible values in the following variables: owner (n=334), family status (n=3), migration status (n=88), educational level (n=60), retirement status (n=266), fi nancial transfers/inheritances (n=260) and residential area (n=1,462). 9 for total household income over all countries in about 60 percent of the households, at least one component (item) of total household income has been imputed. income is a generated variable consisting of a battery of different items (see footnote 13). the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1017 variables10 • homeowner is the dependent variable in our fi rst analysis. it differentiates between households owning residential property (=owners) and households not owning residential property (=non-owners). • financial value of residential property is the dependent variable in our second analysis.11 financial value stands for the subjective market value estimated by the fi nancial respondent.12 it ranges between €013 and €27,950,000 (ppp-adjusted). as the distribution of this variable is very much skewed to the right, we use the variable’s log value in our analyses. tab. 1: overview of the dataset source: share wave 2, release 2.5.0, weighted data, own calculations country total percent cum. in % at – austria 897 4.29 4.34 be – belgium 2,009 9.60 13.89 ch – switzerland 967 4.62 18.51 cz – czech republic 1,721 8.23 26.74 de – germany 1,548 7.40 34.14 dk – denmark 1,662 7.94 42.08 es – spain 1,278 6.11 48.19 fr – france 1,884 8.81 57.00 gr – greece 2,083 9.96 66.96 it – italy 1,786 8.54 75.50 nl – netherlands 1,709 8.17 83.67 pl – poland 1,697 8.11 91.78 se – sweden 1,723 8.22 100.00 total 22,924 100.00 10 all the variables mentioned in this section refer to the current state of the household. unfortunately, we have no information on these variables at the time when the household bought or acquired the residential property. 11 as we are interested in the actual value of residential property and not in households’ level of indebtedness, we do not take into account the net but the gross value (market value). the fact that it is likely that the households are in different stages of their repayment and that the method of fi nancing home ownership varies widely between countries makes it even more plausible for us to make use of the gross housing value. 12 the exact question in the share questionnaire was: “in your opinion, how much would you receive if you sold your property today?” 13 20 households were assigned a housing value of zero. we kept them in our sample but for the analysis if the housing value, we added €1 to those households in order to calculate the logarithm of those housing values. • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1018 • age corresponds to the mean age of all household members surveyed. age ranges between 34 (for households with people aged above and below 50 years) and 104 years. we also calculated age square to test the assumption that the rate of home ownership fi rst increases with age and then starts to decrease. • household size controls for the number of people living in a household. it ranges between 1 and 14 people. • family status informs us whether the main respondent is living together with a spouse (family status=1) or as a single person (family status=0). • children controls for parenthood of the main respondent and his/her spouse, irrespective of whether the child still lives in the parental household. • migration status informs us whether the main respondent and/or his/her spouse were born abroad (migrations status=1). • educational level (7 categories, isced-coded) equals the highest educational attainment level of the main respondent and his/her spouse. it ranges between 0 (pre-primary education) and 6 (second stage of tertiary education). • net equivalent income14 is measured as yearly total household net income divided by the root of the number of people living in this household. it ranges from €0 to €727,000 (ppp-adjusted). • retirement status differentiates between households where the main respondent and/or his/her spouse are already retired vs. households where none of them is retired yet. as a large proportion of household members in our dataset are already retired, we use this variable for control reasons. • gifts and inheritances15 controls for whether a household has ever received a fi nancial gift, inherited money, goods or property (of at least €5,000). • residential area informs us whether a household is located in a big city or in the suburbs or outskirts of a big city (residential area=1) or in a small town or a rural area or village (residential area=0). methods in order to account for socio-economic factors that have an effect on the probability of being a homeowner, we will apply binary logistic regression models. subsequently, trying to fi nd socio-economic factors that affect the fi nancial value of residential property, we use linear regression models. to fi nd out about the relationship between home ownership rates and housing values, we fi nally run linear regression models once more, but this time in a multi-level framework. our unit of analysis is the household. the binary logistic model that we use aims at estimating the probability of belonging to the group of homeowners (y=1): 14 see paccagnella and weber (2005: 357) for the exact defi nition of income in the share. 15 we pooled information from waves one and two to obtain this information. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1019 we estimate a separate model for each country. for more details on the binary logistic model see long (1997). to analyse the effect of different socio-economic attributes on the fi nancial value of residential property, we apply a linear regression model, fi rstly in a single-level framework and secondly in a two-level framework, with households nested in countries: where yij is the dependent variable (housing value) for households i clustered in countries j. xij are predictors on the household level and εij is the household-level error term. βo+uj is the random intercept that varies across countries. for more details on multilevel regressions, consider for example hox (2010) or rabe-hesketh and skrondal (2008). note that there are only 13 cases on level 2 (countries). although there is no consensus in the literature regarding the minimum number of cases for upper levels in multilevel analyses, 13 cases is without doubt very small. simulation studies on two-level linear models claim that standard errors and variance components tend to be underestimated when the number of cases on the second level is smaller than 30 (bell et al. 2008; hox 2010; maas/hox 2005), which is the case in our study. hence, the statistical power of our country-level effects might be rather small. to account for that, we additionally ran an alternative single-level regression with robust and cluster-adjusted standard errors. the results were largely the same. finally, for substantive reasons, we opted for the multilevel estimation approach, which allows an explicit modeling of variance across countries. housing values can logically only be observed for the group of homeowners. for the analysis of housing values, the most obvious strategy would therefore be to drop non-owners out of the sample. this strategy was applied until the late 1990s (e.g. horton/thomas 1998; myers/chung 1996; parcel 1982). the 1997 article by lewin-epstein et al. was one of the fi rst to state that restricting the analysis to homeowners can lead to biased estimations, as the sample of homeowners might be a self-selective one. to avoid selection bias, the authors applied tobit regression models (also called censored regression models, see tobin 1958) instead of linear regressions. krivo and kaufman (2004) applied the same strategy. however, neither of the two articles comprehensibly explains that a sample selection problem indeed exists. we argue instead that one cannot diagnose a bias in the analysis due to restricting the sample on homeowners. in fact, in our case, the selection process (the decision to become a homeowner) creates a necessary precondition for our outcome (the housing value) (cf. rohwer 2012). when applying the tobit regression, lewin-epstein et al. (1997) as well as krivo and kaufman (2004) are thus modelling a • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1020 very specifi c and very hypothetical choice situation:16 the choice for a certain housing value by an individual who has not yet purchased a house. however, in our paper we are explicitly not interested in this hypothetical decision at all. we are rather interested in the realised distribution of housing values of households that actually own a home. thus, when analysing the housing value we will restrict our sample to homeowners. more precisely, we will carry out a two-part model. firstly, we regress on the chance of being a homeowner among all households, and secondly we regress on the value of housing among those households that own a home. 4 results descriptive overview table 2 shows the distribution of socio-economic household characteristics among homeowners in comparison to the overall population in our sample. about 70 percent of the households live in their own real property. country differences in home ownership rates are also illustrated in figure 2: especially in southern european countries like spain, greece and italy, home ownership is a widespread phenomenon, which is in line with current research. also in some western european countries such as belgium and france, there are many elderly households who live in owner-occupied property. in contrast, it is, as expected, relatively common not to own residential property in austria, the czech republic, sweden, germany and switzerland. we compared our fi ndings with data collected by euroconstruct/ifo on the whole adult population. as expected, the rate of homeowners is higher among the elderly.17 yet the ranking remains similar for all countries except for marginal shifts. going back to table 2, we can see that the average value of residential property among homeowners is €260,530; the median is €194,960 (right-skewed distribution). the highest mean housing values can be found in switzerland (€487,650) and the lowest in the czech republic (€105,800).18 these fi ndings are illustrated in figure 3. looking at the median value of residential property reveals unambiguous country-specifi c patterns. in continental europe, the median is generally very high (greater than €194,000),19 with switzerland again on the top (€306,210). the median 16 the same holds true for the heckman selection model often used as an alternative to the tobit regression (heckman 1979). 17 the czech republic and sweden are the only cases where home ownership for the overall population is higher than for the elderly. 18 the term “housing value” is used in the article as a synonym for the gross housing value (market value). in general, the share of households with a mortgage on their real property is low due to the age structure of the sample (with the exception of denmark, the netherlands, sweden and switzerland). 19 with the exception of austria: 153,440 euros. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1021 ta b . 2 : s o ci o -e co no m ic h o u se ho ld c ha ra ct er is tic b y p o p ul at io n g ro up a cr o ss c o un tr ie s a ll c o un tr ie s n o rt he rn e ur op e c o nt in en ta l e ur o p e d k s e a t b e c h d e a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r o w ne r = y es (% ) 70 .3 0 66 .6 7 57 .5 0 59 .9 0 80 .4 0 57 .4 0 58 .2 6 a ge ( ) 65 .9 4 65 .4 4 65 .1 1 63 .0 0 66 .3 4 64 .5 1 67 .1 6 65 .2 8 66 .2 2 65 .7 2 65 .8 5 63 .8 8 65 .7 2 65 .1 8 h o us eh o ld s iz e ( ) 2. 21 2. 30 1. 80 1. 98 1. 90 2. 11 1. 90 2. 08 2. 01 2. 09 1. 99 2. 18 1. 98 2. 11 m ar ri ed = y es (% ) 65 .7 8 72 .3 8 62 .4 6 76 .3 1 67 .5 3 82 .8 6 57 .3 8 67 .3 3 67 .9 2 74 .0 2 66 .3 3 78 .5 5 67 .7 9 75 .1 3 c hi ld (r en ) = y es (% ) 88 .4 6 89 .3 3 89 .9 4 91 .0 2 91 .0 5 93 .7 5 87 .0 8 88 .7 7 88 .6 3 88 .8 3 85 .1 9 88 .0 2 87 .5 8 88 .1 9 m ig ra nt = y es (% ) 10 .6 4 7. 88 4. 94 4. 40 10 .9 9 9. 73 8. 91 7. 06 9. 86 8. 64 18 .3 8 14 .5 4 20 .9 7 16 .4 6 e d uc at io n (is c e d ) ( ) 2. 50 2. 52 3. 32 3. 51 2. 71 2. 80 2. 89 3. 00 2. 76 2. 86 2. 84 2. 98 3. 34 3. 46 r et ir ed = y es (% ) 60 .0 4 60 .2 6 53 .4 3 47 .9 6 59 .2 1 54 .1 2 70 .8 4 67 .1 7 59 .8 8 59 .8 3 49 .9 3 44 .2 3 59 .9 9 58 .8 2 n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* ( ) 20 .2 3 21 .6 6 22 .1 6 24 .6 5 22 .8 3 24 .7 4 19 .4 4 20 .8 8 22 .2 8 23 .2 7 30 .1 0 34 .1 6 24 .1 3 27 .5 5 n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* m ed ia n 14 .6 8 15 .5 9 19 .1 0 22 .2 8 19 .5 6 21 .8 8 16 .9 9 18 .0 1 15 .9 9 16 .8 3 23 .6 2 26 .9 5 18 .1 2 20 .9 6 t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es (% ) 25 .3 8 29 .5 1 43 .3 3 49 .7 3 46 .0 5 51 .2 9 20 .9 8 25 .9 2 45 .0 3 49 .5 0 41 .1 4 49 .2 0 28 .1 6 36 .3 8 u rb an a re a = y es (% ) 44 .5 1 39 .2 3 52 .2 9 44 .3 2 64 .5 0 51 .9 0 38 .1 6 26 .4 7 40 .9 5 36 .3 1 30 .7 5 17 .9 1 42 .1 7 33 .3 8 h o us in g va lu e* ( ) 26 0. 53 26 1. 56 22 1. 02 20 5. 65 23 1. 24 48 7. 65 23 2. 67 h o us in g va lu e* m ed ia n 19 4. 96 17 7. 21 14 1. 40 15 3. 44 19 4. 66 30 6. 21 19 6. 90 n 20 ,9 24 14 ,8 13 1, 66 2 1, 11 3 1, 72 3 1, 02 2 89 7 52 8 2, 00 9 1, 59 8 96 7 55 2 1, 54 8 93 1 • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1022 ta b . 2 : co nt in ua tio n c o nt in en ta l e ur o p e s o ut he rn e ur op e e as te rn e ur o pe fr n l e s g r it c z p l a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r a ll o w ne r o w ne r = y es (% ) 74 .6 2 61 .7 2 89 .8 7 86 .1 4 78 .7 7 59 .3 4 64 .1 3 a ge ( ) 65 .9 9 65 .4 4 64 .9 5 62 .2 0 66 .9 4 66 .7 0 65 .8 7 65 .6 0 66 .7 0 66 .5 4 64 .8 0 64 .0 0 64 .4 4 64 .2 7 h o us eh o ld s iz e ( ) 2. 02 2. 06 1. 98 2. 17 2. 49 2. 50 2. 23 2. 24 2. 44 2. 48 2. 08 2. 17 2. 88 2. 91 m ar ri ed = y es (% ) 64 .4 5 71 .9 7 67 .9 4 79 .6 1 66 .7 5 70 .2 7 64 .2 2 66 .8 7 68 .5 0 73 .2 3 62 .7 1 68 .3 7 59 .0 0 64 .8 7 c hi ld (r en )= y es (% ) 88 .6 6 89 .7 8 88 .4 6 89 .7 4 87 .7 6 89 .3 3 88 .1 1 88 .2 1 87 .3 8 88 .0 9 93 .7 2 93 .5 5 91 .8 3 92 .2 5 m ig ra nt = y es (% ) 16 .5 5 13 .1 9 6. 97 4. 72 2. 94 2. 14 2. 65 2. 44 1. 95 1. 71 6. 23 4. 87 3. 00 2. 61 e d uc at io n (is c e d ) ( ) 2. 40 2. 56 2. 78 3. 12 1. 64 1. 63 1. 98 2. 00 1. 85 1. 92 2. 54 2. 55 2. 24 2. 29 r et ir ed = y es (% ) 63 .0 1 64 .3 8 44 .0 3 39 .1 9 15 .7 4 15 .9 0 14 .2 5 14 .4 9 15 .8 5 16 .4 0 11 .2 0 11 .6 5 7. 21 7. 60 n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* ( ) 27 .2 0 29 .9 2 29 .3 8 33 .4 4 10 .1 3 10 .1 8 10 .6 4 10 .7 0 12 .5 5 13 .0 6 9. 10 9. 21 5. 33 5. 75 n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* m ed ia n 19 .8 7 22 .1 8 20 .9 0 23 .9 1 52 .3 4 53 .1 2 52 .6 6 53 .5 0 63 .7 2 66 .8 9 69 .9 9 67 .4 9 65 .0 4 67 .5 0 t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es (% ) 25 .2 0 29 .5 3 28 .1 7 36 .5 0 22 .1 2 23 .3 6 24 .5 7 25 .8 4 20 .2 5 22 .5 1 22 .9 5 25 .4 6 14 .0 2 18 .3 5 u rb an a re a = y es (% ) 43 .1 3 38 .2 0 67 .5 1 63 .0 9 55 .6 7 54 .5 4 75 .1 0 73 .9 0 25 .6 0 22 .8 1 65 .2 2 59 .1 3 46 .3 8 39 .4 6 h o us in g va lu e* ( ) 33 6. 40 36 6. 90 33 8. 52 14 5. 13 24 8. 29 10 5. 80 11 1. 09 h o us in g va lu e* m ed ia n 22 1. 03 26 7. 97 20 4. 46 12 0. 57 19 5. 90 84 .9 7 48 .4 3 n 1, 84 4 1, 34 9 1, 70 9 1, 08 7 1, 27 8 1, 15 3 2, 08 3 1, 79 2 1, 78 6 1, 43 7 1, 72 1 1, 13 0 1, 69 7 1, 12 1 * v al ue s in 1 ,0 00 e ur o s, p p p -a d ju st ed , b as ed o n 5 se ts o f i m p ut at io ns s o ur ce : s h a r e w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .5 .0 .), d at a w ei gh te d , o w n ca lc ul at io ns the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1023 value of owner-occupied housing (at less than €85,000) is lowest in the post-socialist countries poland and the czech republic. when it comes to age, our fi ndings show that households owning a home are slightly younger on average than the overall population. in line with our expectations, compared to the overall population, owners more often live in a steady partnership (72.4 percent vs. 65.8 percent), as well as in larger households (2.30 vs. 2.21 people). with respect to parenthood, there are only minor differences between the two groups. among homeowners, 7.9 percent of the households have a migration background, in contrast to 10.6 percent of the total population. the overall share of migrants is comparably low in southern europe and poland, while it is remarkably high in france, germany and switzerland. as expected, owners have a higher level of education than the overall population. the mean educational level is particularly low in southern europe. the average net equivalent income of homeowners, at €21,660, is also higher than in the group of the overall population (€20,230). again, fig. 2: percentage of homeowners in european comparison 0 20 40 60 80 100 spain greece belgium italy france denmark poland netherlands austria czech republic germany switzerland sweden 83% 80% 67% 72% 58% 58% 54% 54% 52% 71% 43% 35% 61% 90% 86% 80% 79% 75% 67% 64% 62% 60% 59% 58% 57% 58% age 50+ age 18+ home ownership rate in % source: euroconstruct/ifo (2009) and share wave 2 (release 2.5.0), weighted share data, own calculations • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1024 notable country differences exist within the total population: mean income is comparatively low in eastern and southern europe, while it is rather high in france, the netherlands and switzerland. retirement status does not differ between owners and the overall population. overall, homeowners appear to benefi t more often from fi nancial gifts or inheritances compared to the total population (29.5 percent vs. 25.4 percent). finally, homeowners live less often in urban areas compared to the total population (39.2 percent vs. 44.5 percent). which socio-economic variables can predict home ownership? table 3 contains the logistic regression models (more detailed models can be found in the appendix). the likelihood of owning a home rises signifi cantly with age in the fig. 3: mean and median values of houses 0,00 50,00 100,00 150,00 200,00 250,00 300,00 350,00 400,00 450,00 500,00 ch nl es fr dk it de be se at gr pl cz mean median housing value (in 1,000 euros) values ppp-adjusted, based on 5 sets of imputations source: share wave 2 (release 2.5.0), weighted data, own calculations the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1025 ta b . 3 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n (w it h ro b u st s ta n d ar d e rr o rs ) o n th e ch an ce o f b ei ng a h o m eo w n er n o rt he rn e ur o p e c o nt in en ta l e ur o p e s o ut he rn e ur op e e as te rn e ur o p e d k s e a t b e c h d e fr n l e s g r it c z p l a ge (+ ) (+ ) () () + + (+ ) () + () + + (+ ) a ge ² (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) 0 0 (0 ) (0 ) 0 (0 ) (0 ) 0 (0 ) h o us eh o ld s iz e (+ ) + (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) () () (+ ) (+ ) () p ar tn er sh ip = y es + + (+ ) + + + + + + + + 0 + c hi ld (r en ) = y es () (+ ) () () + () () (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) () () m ig ra nt = y es () () () () e d uc at io n (is c e d )* + (+ ) + + + + + + (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) + n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) + + + (+ ) (0 ) (+ ) (0 ) (+ ) (+ ) r et ir em en t = y es (+ ) () () (+ ) () () (+ ) () (+ ) (+ ) + () (+ ) t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es + + + + + + + + + + + + + u rb an c o m m un ity = y es c o ns ta nt () (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) () (+ ) () p se ud o r ² 0. 21 0. 19 0. 15 0. 15 0. 18 0. 35 0. 15 0. 20 0. 12 0. 05 0. 10 0. 05 0. 07 n 1, 66 3 1, 72 5 89 7 2, 02 2 96 7 1, 55 0 1, 84 4 1, 71 0 1, 27 9 2, 08 3 1, 78 6 1, 72 2 1, 69 7 * v al ue s ar e b as ed o n 5 se ts o f i m p ut at io ns + p o si tiv e ef fe ct (p 0 .0 5) ; ne ga tiv e ef fe ct (p 0 .0 5) ; (+ )/ () n o t s ig ni fi c an t s o ur ce : s h a r e w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .5 .0 ), un w ei gh te d d at a, o w n ca lc ul at io ns • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1026 czech republic, germany, italy, spain and switzerland. the quadratic age term has no effect on the probability of home ownership in our sample, i.e. in the countries analysed, home ownership rates do not appear to decline as people become older, thus contradicting the life-cycle hypothesis (modigliani/brumberg 1954). parenthood only signifi cantly affects the likelihood of belonging to the group of homeowners in switzerland. one explanation for this fi nding might be that childlessness is a rather rare phenomenon in the population studied (dorbritz 2005), as already indicated in table 2. as expected, households that are experiencing a steady partnership have a signifi cantly higher chance of belonging to the group of homeowners compared to single households (except for austria and the czech republic). in germany and sweden, household size has a positive impact on the probability of being a homeowner. however, there is not much variation in household sizes across countries. looking at the migration status, we fi nd a negative impact on the probability of being a homeowner in all countries analysed, though the effect is not signifi cant in the northern countries, greece and poland. thus, the u.s. fi ndings also apply to europe. as expected, education has a positive impact on the probability of being a homeowner in all countries studied, though it is not signifi cant. moreover, our fi ndings highlight the strong infl uence of education in central europe, which is in line with previous research. income has a strong impact on the probability of being a homeowner, particularly in continental europe. the control variable “retirement status” does not have a signifi cant effect on the likelihood of home ownership in most countries. this could be because the decision to acquire a home is mostly made before entering retirement. it is only in italy that being retired positively affects the likelihood of home ownership. financial gifts and inheritances have a signifi cantly positive effect in all countries. as expected, owner-occupied home ownership is less probable in urban areas. summing up, the results of the logistic model for the probability of being a homeowner are basically consistent with our expectations presented above. which socio-economic factors can predict the housing value? table 4 contains the results of the regression analyses on the impact of socio-economic household characteristics on the value of housing. the impact of age is positive in almost all countries studied. again, the quadratic term has no infl uence on our dependent variable. our analyses demonstrate – as expected – that household size and partnership status have a positive impact on the housing value. household size has a signifi cant positive effect in the southern and eastern european countries as well as in germany. the infl uence of parenthood is only signifi cant (positive) in italy and the czech republic. a very interesting and somewhat astonishing fi nding is that migration status has no signifi cant effect on the value of housing in all countries except for austria. this contradicts the fi ndings from previous studies, mostly conducted in traditional immigration countries like the usa and israel. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1027 ta b . 4 : li n ea r r eg re ss io n o n lo g (h o u si ng v al ue ) n o rt he rn e ur o p e c o nt in en ta l e ur o p e s o ut he rn e ur op e e as te rn e ur o p e d k s e a t b e c h d e fr n l e s g r it c z p l a ge () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) a ge ² (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) 0 (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) (0 ) h o us eh o ld s iz e (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) (+ ) + + (+ ) + + p ar tn er sh ip = y es (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) (0 ) (+ ) + (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) c hi ld (r en ) = y es () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) () (+ ) () + + (+ ) m ig ra nt = y es (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) () (+ ) (+ ) () (0 ) () e d uc at io n (is c e d )* + + + + + (+ ) + + + + + + + n et e q ui va le nt in co m e* + + + (0 ) + 0 0 0 0 0 + (0 ) (+ ) r et ir em en t = y es () () () () (+ ) () (+ ) (+ ) () () t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es (+ ) + (+ ) + (+ ) + (+ ) + () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + u rb an c o m m un ity = y es + + () (+ ) (+ ) (+ ) + + + () (+ ) c o ns ta nt + (+ ) (+ ) + (+ ) (+ ) + + + + + + (+ ) r ² 0. 18 0. 17 0. 12 0. 14 0. 09 0. 11 0. 11 0. 12 0. 14 0. 19 0. 16 0. 08 0. 11 n 1, 11 4 1, 02 4 52 8 1, 60 8 55 2 93 2 1, 34 9 1, 08 7 1, 15 3 1, 79 2 1, 43 7 1, 13 0 1, 12 1 * v al ue s ar e b as ed o n 5 se ts o f i m p ut at io ns + p o si tiv e ef fe ct (p 0 .0 5) ; ne ga tiv e ef fe ct (p 0 .0 5) ; (+ )/ () n o t s ig ni fi c an t s o ur ce : s h a r e w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .5 .0 ), un w ei gh te d d at a, o w n ca lc ul at io ns • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1028 education is not only important for the probability of home ownership, but also for the value of residential property. higher education (except for germany) as well as higher income signifi cantly increase the housing value in all countries studied. retirement status has no impact on the property value in most countries. transfers and bequests contribute to an increase in the value of residential property. especially in belgium, germany, poland, the netherlands and sweden, inheritances and fi nancial gifts are important for the probability of being a homeowner as well as for the value of housing. consistent with our expectations, living in an urban area has a positive effect on the housing value, particularly in southern and northern europe. a result that needs to be explored in more detail is that living in an urban area has a signifi cant negative impact on the housing value in belgium and the netherlands. is there a relationship between home ownership rates and housing values? to explore the relationship between home ownership rates and housing values on the country level, in a fi rst step, we plotted all countries in a two-dimensional coordinate system (fig. 4). no clear relationship however becomes evident in the emerging picture. two lines divide the coordinate system in figure 4: the mean housing rate over all countries (70.3 percent) divides the y-axis, and the mean housing value (€260,530) divides the x-axis. what we can see is that countries are evenly distributed across all four quadrants. there are as many countries showing a negative relationship between home ownership rates and housing values (gr, be, it, dk, nl, ch), as countries showing a positive relation (pl, cz, at, se, de, fr, es). thus, in a next step we will carry out a multilevel regression to statistically test whether, controlling for individual characteristics of homeowners, the country context has a discrete impact on the housing value. the results are presented in table 5. model 0 (m0) shows that we have an intra-class correlation of 0.23, meaning that the households within countries are not independent from one another. the multilevel framework thus seems to be appropriate. the variance between countries is 0.23; the variance between households is 0.77. if we introduce the home ownership rate into the model (m1), we can see that it has a negative but not signifi cant20 impact on individual housing values. the variance between countries does not change at all from m0 to m1. in model 2, we further include the country clusters. we can see that this explains a large share of the variance between countries. the northern and eastern european countries show signifi cantly lower mean housing values compared to continental countries. finally, we include our household-level factors (the demographic and socio-economic household characteristics) into model 3. this model is able to explain part of the variance between households. overall, home ownership rates and housing values are negatively related to one another, also if one controls for the socio-economic composition of homeowners. whereas 20 the small number of cases and thus the low number of degrees of freedom on the context level (countries) might explain why this effect does not become statistically signifi cant. the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1029 the home ownership rate itself cannot help to explain the differences in housing values, homeowners’ socio-economic composition contributes to explaining them, as does the welfare state context to a considerable degree. in our theoretical part, we argued that if we fi nd a negative relationship between home ownership rates and housing values the mechanism behind that relationship might be that homeowners are a selective group compared to the overall population in countries with low home ownership rates (like in switzerland, germany and sweden) and vice versa in countries with a high homeownership rate (like in belgium, greece and spain). to test for the validity of this argument, we carried out a heckman selection test (heckman 1979). the detailed results of this analysis are available from the authors upon request. we found the group of homeowners to differ signifi cantly in their composition from the overall population (including homeowners, non-homeowners and owners of houses that are rented out) in seven countries; four of them with comparatively low home ownership rates – denmark, germany, sweden and poland – but three of them with rather high rates – belgium, greece and spain. overall, the composition of the group of homeowners does not seem to be a helpful explanation for the negative though not signifi cant relationship between home ownership rates and housing values. summing up, the relationship between home ownership rates and housing values is far from being clear-cut. fig. 4: home ownership rates and housing values at de se nl es it fr dk gr ch be cz pl 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0,00 50,00 100,00 150,00 200,00 250,00 300,00 350,00 400,00 450,00 500,00 h om e on w er sh ip ra te (i n % ) housing value (in 1,000 euros) ii iii i iv values in 1,000 euros, ppp-adjusted, based on 5 sets of imputations source: share wave 2 (release 2.5.0), weighted data, own calculations • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1030 5 conclusion and discussion in times of demographic ageing and less generous public pensions, home ownership will probably gain in importance for the fi nancial well-being of the elderly. to determine the socio-economic position of households, it is therefore important to consider not only income, but also the stock of wealth (and especially home ownertab. 5: multilevel regression on log (housing value) with households (level 1) clustered in countries (level 2), robust standard errors m0 m1 m2 m3 constant 5.07 5.18 5.53 3.49 level 1 variables age + age² 0 household size + partnership = yes + child(ren) = yes + migrant = yes (+) education (isced)* + net equivalent income* + retirement = yes (-) transfer/bequest = yes + urban community = yes + level 2 variables home ownership rate (-) (-) (+) continental ref. ref. north south (-) (-) east n (level 1) 14,827 14,827 14,827 14,827 n (level 2) 13 13 13 13 icc 0.23 0.23 0.07 0.21 variance components variance between households 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.70 variance between countries 0.23 0.23 0.05 0.20 * values are based on 5 sets of imputations + positive effect (p0.05); negative effect (p0.05); (+)/(-) not signifi cant source: share wave 2 (release 2.5.0), unweighted data, own calculations the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1031 ship as a central wealth component), as wealth is especially important for retirees’ socio-economic position (modigliani/brumberg 1954). previous international comparative studies mainly focused on the distribution of home ownership across countries, while neglecting its value. the value of housing, however, signifi cantly determines the wealth position of households and therefore patterns of social inequality. thus, we emphasized the importance of going beyond the approach of considering only access to home ownership by including the analysis of the value of residential property as we assume that housing inequality is a two-dimensional phenomenon. our analyses were indeed able to show that the infl uence of socio-economic factors on the probability of being a homeowner, on the one hand, and the value of housing, on the other, can differ considerably within a country. for example, the effect of education and income is signifi cant for both dimensions in most countries, whereas the infl uence of family-related characteristics varies: having a partner seems to be especially important for being a homeowner, while household size mainly affects the value of housing. especially the results on migration status are astonishing: the main obstacle for migrants appears to be access to home ownership. once they obtained residential property, no difference in the housing value could be found between migrants and the total population of homeowners. thus, in contrast to the usa and israel, migration status only affects the fi rst dimension of housing inequality among elderly europeans. in the second part of our work, we focused on the link between these two dimensions of social inequality in housing. in our theoretical considerations, we were able to fi nd arguments for both situations: a negative and a positive relationship between home ownership rates and housing values. while our descriptive analysis did not show any clear-cut relationship between these two measures, the results of the multi-level regression revealed a negative though not signifi cant relationship between home ownership rates and individual housing values. we assumed the composition of homeowners to be a possible mechanism behind the negative relationship. our further analyses did not confi rm this assumption, however. in addition to the infl uence of socio-economic household characteristics, many other factors, such as the overall demographic and economic situation or cultural attitudes or patterns of behaviour towards home ownership, also play an important role in determining a country’s home ownership situation. due to the diversity and complexity of the country-specifi c jurisdictions, considering these factors would have gone beyond the scope of this article. especially for countries like spain and france, whose real estate markets were hit by the fi nancial crisis in 2008 (ball 2010), further analysis of the housing value before and after the fi nancial crisis would also be interesting to look at. one restriction of our study was that we had no retrospective information on socio-economic household characteristics at the time of the transition to home ownership. retrospective, longitudinal data would be necessary to trace back developments and analyse complex processes of property acquisition (kurz/blossfeld 2004). nevertheless, a study carried out with longitudinal data for western germany by davidov and weick (2011) supports our central fi ndings on the infl uence of socio-economic factors on the probability of owning a home. considering the impact of the country context on home ownership rates and housing values, • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1032 it would be necessary to replicate our analyses with a larger number of 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http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 18.01.2012 date of acceptance: 17.10.2012 dr. kathrin kolb (). nora skopek, prof. dr. hans-peter blossfeld. bamberg university, department of sociology, chair of sociology i. bamberg, germany. e-mail: kathrin.kolb@uni-bamberg.de, nora.skopek@uni-bamberg.de, hans-peter.blossfeld@uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1037 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: lo g is tic r eg re ss io n (w it h ro b u st s ta n d ar d e rr o rs ) o n th e ch an ce o f b ei ng a h o m eo w n er n o rt he rn e ur o p e c o nt in en ta l e ur o pe d k s e a t b e c h d e fr n l a ge 0. 05 0. 15 -0 .0 3 -0 .0 3 0. 26 ** 0. 19 * 0. 05 -0 .0 7 a ge ² 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 ** 0. 00 * 0. 00 0. 00 h o us eh o ld s iz e 0. 22 0. 28 * 0. 26 0. 09 0. 21 0. 26 * -0 .2 1* 0. 00 p ar tn er sh ip = y es 1. 20 ** * 1. 16 ** * 0. 22 1. 28 ** * 0. 71 ** * 0. 56 ** 1. 31 ** * 1. 08 ** * c hi ld (r en ) = y es -0 .2 8 0. 11 -0 .0 7 -0 .2 4 0. 42 * -0 .1 7 -0 .0 1 0. 19 m ig ra nt = y es -0 .5 2 -0 .3 4 -0 .5 7* -0 .4 9* * -0 .6 1* * -0 .5 4* ** -0 .5 9* ** -0 .9 0* ** e d uc at io n (is c e d ) 0. 20 ** * 0. 04 0. 21 ** 0. 16 ** * 0. 19 ** 0. 19 ** 0. 21 ** * 0. 45 ** * n et e q ui va le nt in co m e 0. 02 0. 01 0. 02 ** 0. 01 0. 01 * 0. 02 * 0. 01 ** 0. 01 r et ir em en t = y es 0. 24 -0 .0 7 -0 .0 1 0. 02 -0 .0 6 -0 .2 1 0. 21 -0 .1 9 t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es 0. 61 ** * 0. 24 * 0. 76 ** * 0. 80 ** * 0. 65 ** * 0. 92 ** * 0. 83 ** * 1. 00 ** * u rb an c o m m un ity = y es -1 .1 2* ** -1 .6 9* ** -1 .5 0* ** -0 .8 6* ** -1 .3 6* ** -0 .9 6* ** -0 .7 9* ** -0 .6 7* ** c o ns ta nt -1 .9 7 -4 .7 2 1. 53 1. 12 -9 .9 8* * -7 .9 6* * -1 .8 0 2. 12 p se ud o -r ² 0. 21 0. 19 0. 15 0. 15 0. 18 0. 13 0. 15 0. 20 w al d c hi ² 30 8. 44 32 7. 07 13 8. 40 24 8. 68 18 8. 24 20 2. 56 23 3. 59 31 3. 23 n 1, 66 3 1, 72 5 89 7 2, 02 2 96 7 1, 55 0 1, 84 4 1, 71 0 • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1038 ta b . a 1: co nt in ua tio n s o ut he rn e ur o p e e as te rn e ur o pe e s g r it c z p l a ge 0. 19 * 0. 01 0. 17 * 0. 25 ** 0. 13 a ge ² 0. 00 * 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 ** 0. 00 h o us eh o ld s iz e -0 .1 4 -0 .1 5 0. 09 0. 06 -0 .0 4 p ar tn er sh ip = y es 1. 40 ** * 0. 76 ** * 0. 83 ** * 0. 45 ** * 0. 66 ** * c hi ld (r en )= y es 0. 55 -0 .0 2 0. 05 0. 00 -0 .0 7 m ig ra nt = y es -1 .7 6* ** -0 .5 7 -0 .7 8* -0 .6 7* * -0 .5 1 e d uc at io n (is c e d ) 0. 05 0. 06 0. 33 ** * 0. 01 0. 14 ** n et e q ui va le nt in co m e 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 0. 01 0. 01 r et ir em en t = y es 0. 01 0. 25 0. 49 ** -0 .2 9 0. 24 t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es 0. 68 * 0. 64 ** * 0. 67 ** * 0. 54 ** * 0. 95 ** * u rb an c o m m un ity = y es -0 .4 4* -0 .4 5* * -0 .8 9* ** -0 .5 7* ** -0 .9 0* ** c o ns ta nt -5 .2 4 2. 78 -6 .4 8* -7 .3 7* * -4 .1 0 p se ud o -r ² 0. 12 0. 05 0. 10 0. 05 0. 07 w al d c hi ² 94 .7 4 77 .3 6 16 2. 58 10 4. 07 11 9. 36 n 1, 27 9 2, 08 3 1, 78 6 1, 72 2 1, 69 7 a ll an al ys es b as ed o n 5 se ts o f i m p ut at io ns *p 0 .0 5, * *p 0 .0 1, ** *p 0 .0 01 . n = 20 ,9 45 s o ur ce : s h a r e w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .5 .0 ), un w ei gh te d d at a, o w n ca lc ul at io ns the two dimensions of housing inequality in europe • 1039 ta b . a 2: li n ea r re g re ss io n (w it h ro b u st s ta n d ar d e rr o rs ) o n lo g( ho u si ng v al ue ) n o rt he rn e ur o p e c o nt in en ta l e ur o pe d k s e a t b e c h d e fr n l a ge -0 .0 1 0. 10 0. 09 0. 03 0. 09 0. 16 ** * 0. 04 0. 07 a ge r² 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 ** * 0. 00 0. 00 h o us eh o ld s iz e 0. 09 0. 07 0. 02 0. 01 0. 05 0. 10 ** * 0. 07 0. 01 p ar tn er sh ip = y es 0. 15 * 0. 10 0. 04 0. 18 ** * 0. 07 0. 00 0. 05 0. 25 ** * c hi ld (r en ) = y es -0 .1 0 0. 02 0. 09 0. 07 0. 12 -0 .0 4 0. 07 -0 .0 7 m ig ra nt = y es 0. 10 0. 06 -0 .2 6* -0 .0 4 0. 05 0. 02 0. 09 -0 .0 5 e d uc at io n (is c e d ) 0. 14 ** * 0. 14 ** * 0. 13 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 07 * 0. 06 0. 10 ** * 0. 07 ** * n et e q ui va le nt in co m e 0. 01 ** * 0. 01 * 0. 01 ** * 0. 00 0. 00 ** 0. 00 ** 0. 00 ** 0. 00 * r et ir em en t = y es -0 .0 2 -0 .1 7* -0 .0 8 -0 .1 0* * -0 .0 5 -0 .0 4 0. 08 -0 .1 1* t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es 0. 01 0. 22 ** 0. 00 0. 13 ** * 0. 10 0. 26 ** * 0. 09 0. 10 * u rb an c o m m un ity = y es 0. 21 ** * 0. 33 ** * -0 .1 0 -0 .0 9* * 0. 13 0. 03 0. 04 -0 .1 7* ** c o ns ta nt 4. 43 ** * 0. 39 1. 52 3. 71 ** * 2. 38 -0 .5 5 3. 36 * 2. 90 ** * r ² 0. 15 0. 13 0. 12 0. 14 0. 09 0. 09 0. 09 0. 07 n 1, 11 4 1, 02 4 52 8 1, 60 8 55 2 93 2 1, 34 9 1, 08 7 • kathrin kolb, nora skopek, hans-peter blossfeld1040 ta b . a 2: co nt in ua tio n s o ut he rn e ur o p e e as te rn e ur o pe e s g r it c z p l a ge -0 .0 4 0. 02 0. 02 0. 01 0. 02 a ge ² 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 h o us eh o ld s iz e 0. 07 * 0. 11 ** * 0. 04 0. 05 * 0. 08 ** * p ar tn er sh ip = y es 0. 04 0. 01 -0 .0 6 0. 19 ** 0. 13 c hi ld (r en ) = y es 0. 03 -0 .0 1 0. 20 ** 0. 24 ** 0. 19 m ig ra nt = y es 0. 18 0. 17 -0 .1 5 0. 00 -0 .0 4 e d uc at io n (is c e d ) 0. 11 ** * 0. 12 ** * 0. 13 ** 0. 10 ** 0. 13 ** * n et e q ui va le nt in co m e 0. 00 ** 0. 00 ** * 0. 01 ** * 0. 00 0. 01 r et ir em en t = y es -0 .0 2 0. 02 0. 09 -0 .0 2 -0 .0 6 t ra ns fe r/ b eq ue st = y es -0 .0 8 0. 05 0. 06 0. 07 0. 22 ** u rb an c o m m un ity = y es 0. 39 ** * 0. 23 ** * 0. 28 ** * -0 .0 7 0. 04 c o ns ta nt 6. 18 ** * 3. 59 ** * 4. 05 ** 3. 59 ** 2. 43 r ² 0. 08 0. 19 0. 07 0. 08 0. 11 n 1, 15 3 1, 79 2 1, 43 7 1, 13 0 1, 12 1 a ll an al ys es b as ed o n 5 se ts o f i m p ut at io ns *p 0 .0 5, * *p 0 .0 1, ** *p 0 .0 01 . n = 14 ,8 27 s o ur ce : s h a r e w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .5 .0 ) u nw ei gh te d d at a, o w n ca lc ul at io ns © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) effects of generational competition and substitution on late labour participation and labour market exit from a multilevel perspective* henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt abstract: in this paper, we investigate the effects of demographic, economic and labour market structures on labour market participation and on the transition to inactivity (exit) for older males in eleven european countries. theoretically, our analysis is guided by considerations of intragenerational competition and intergenerational substitution. following easterlin’s hypothesis that intragenerational competition rises with cohort size, we assume a negative effect of cohort size on labour market participation and a positive effect on early exit from the labour market. taking into account that different cohorts are substitutes at least to a certain extent, we assume that the probability of an early exit will be reduced by a high intergenerational exchange ratio in favour of older workers. thus, labour market participation is infl uenced by the populations’ age structure both when entering the labour force and during the career. moreover, low shares of graduates in older cohorts are expected to reduce older workers’ chances of labour market participation. in addition to demographic structures, general economic conditions, such as per capita gdp and its development over time, act both to further and to hamper the employment of older workers. additionally, labour market structures, such as unemployment rates, the extent of part-time work or the amount of service jobs infl uence individual participation and the transition to inactivity. to test these hypotheses, we use merged data from the fi rst two waves of share and macro-level indicators from eurostat. we estimate a two-level random-intercept logit model which allows us to determine the share of variance in international late careers that can be attributed to countryspecifi c factors and can quantify the relative impact of specifi c socio-demographic and socio-economic backgrounds. our results imply that cross-national variance in labour market participation is mainly driven by the instance of long-term unemployment and the share of highly-educated older men. while our analyses reveal some evidence of intragenerational competition, we do not fi nd evidence of intergenerational competition forcing early exit or decreasing participation. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 4 (2013): 937-970 (date of release: 13.12.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-21en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-21en4 * see engelhardt and schmidt (2011) for an earlier version of this paper. • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt938 keywords: older workers · labour market participation · early labour market exit · relative cohort size · multi-level modelling · retirement 1 introduction european labour markets are characterised by high rates of unemployment among older workers and early retirement. sustained demographic change in europe is however calling for “unused capacity” to engage in active work (börsch-supan et al. 2009). therefore, many countries have introduced institutional reforms, such as by increasing the mandatory retirement age, in order to increase the labour supply among the aged (eichhorst 2011). although the labour force participation of older workers has increased in most european countries over the last years, the shares of older men who are employed or have at least not retired differ markedly across europe (fig. 1). participation rates vary from 85 percent in switzerland and 82 percent in sweden, to 60 percent in belgium and france in 2009. employment rates vary to a somewhat greater extent between countries and over time, but reveal mainly similar patterns. from a theoretical point of view, numerous determinants are linked to crossnational variance in labour force participation rates. demand-side driven arguments consider participation rates as a result of economic constraints depending on business cycles (auer/fortuny 2000; dorn/souza-posa 2010). supply-side oriented literature focuses on the individual choice to withdraw from the labour market. individual decisions in this framework are made on the basis of individual and institutional factors (buchholz et al. 2006; hofäcker 2010; engelhardt 2011). on the aggregated level, these individual choices add up to different participation rates across countries. by focussing on institutional settings and statutory provisions, structural effects are mostly disregarded in explaining internationally varying labour force participation. different age structures and cohorts’ educational attainment infl uence labour participation in addition to labour market structures and economic conditions (bloom et al. 1987; garloff et al. 2010; stenberg/wikström 2004; zimmermann 1991). our analysis tries to shed some light on the potential effects exerted by different factors on labour market participation and exit, other than institutional arrangements such as the statutory retirement age or employment protection. so we entirely exclude institutions and fi nancial incentives from our analysis. nevertheless, we appreciate that institutional arrangements are crucial to internationally varying career patterns. our key hypothesis, however, says that there are yet other national characteristics which correlate with labour market participation and exit. based on this hypothesis, we try to fi gure out which country characteristics offer the greatest potential when it comes to explaining national-level variance. ideas on the possible effects of the population’s age structure on individual careers go back to easterlin’s hypothesis, which suggests that the relative size of a cohort is positively associated with the level of intragenerational competition (easteffects of generational competition ... • 939 erlin 1980). rising competition operates as a relative disadvantage for members of large birth cohorts when they enter the labour market and fi nally results in lower participation rates. this relationship should additionally be shaped by cohort succession: the size of younger cohorts should be negatively related to the labour force participation of older workers as they might be substituted (macunovich 2009). drawing on these ideas, we assume that demographic and socio-economic structures infl uence current labour force participation and transitions to retirement. they act as starting conditions in times of labour market entry and as current conditions due to changes throughout careers. in particular, we analyse the effects of age distributions, educational compositions as well as of labour market and economic conditions on late careers in europe using data from the fi rst two waves of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), complemented by aggregate data from eurostat. our empirical framework is based on comparing a single cohort across different countries. therefore, variance is country specifi c and not cohort specifi c, and age-period cohort interdependence does not need to be disentangled. in the following section, we discuss theoretical effects of demographic, economic, and labour market structures on micro-level behaviour; in addition, this section provides related work from the literature. the subsequent section contains descriptions of the data, variables and methods we used. in the fourth section, we present and interpret the results of our empirical analysis. the paper concludes with a sumfig. 1: labour force participation and employment rates of males aged 50 to 64, 1983-2009 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 1983 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2009 at be ch dk de es fr gr it nl se 1983 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2009 male participation rate, 50-64 male employment rate, 50-64 source: eurostat online database (2010), selected countries • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt940 mary and an outlook on further research which may deepen the understanding of the relationship between social structure and individual behaviour. 2 theoretical framework effects of demographic, economic and labour market structures on late careers it is well-established that labour force participation and transitions to retirement vary with country-specifi c characteristics, in particular with countries’ economic and institutional features, such as business cycles (e.g. bils 1985; bosworth/burtless 2010; bover et al. 2002; darby et al. 2001; dereveux 2000; elsby et al. 2010), pension systems and welfare arrangements (e.g. debrand/sirven 2009; börsch-supan et al. 2009; engelhardt 2011), employment relation systems, educational systems and employment-sustaining active labour market policies (e.g. eichhorst 2006; buchholz et al. 2006; hofäcker 2010; engelhardt 2011). less attention has been paid to the international variance of late careers by demographic, labour market and long-term economic structures. as easterlin (1980: 29-34) pointed out, relative cohort size affects individual chances throughout the whole lifecycle. belonging to a comparatively large birth cohort negatively infl uences one’s chance of successfully entering the labour market as well as the chance to remain in it. easterlin argues that rising relative cohort size leads to greater competition within a cohort. consequently, members of large cohorts share a higher risk of unemployment when they enter the labour market (bloom et al. 1987). this effect is also called “cohort crowding”, and mainly refers to consequences for educational attainment, unemployment and wages at the beginning of working life (e.g. bound/turner 2007; keister/deeb-sossa 2001; korenman/ neumark 2000; welch 1979). in line with easterlin, we assume that this effect of intragenerational competition lasts over the whole career. thus, relative cohort size when entering the labour market has a negative impact on labour force participation rates in older ages. therefore, cross-national variance in labour force participation and exit should be explained – at least to some extent – by different relative cohort sizes. moreover, there is some empirical evidence suggesting that the older generation is crowded out by the younger generation: performing time-series analysis with co-integration techniques on age-specifi c unemployment rates from 1967 to 1988, zimmermann (1991) fi nds a positive impact of relative cohort size (number of 15 to 34 year olds divided by the number of 35 to 54 year olds) and relative cohort age (the mean age of young cohort divided by the mean age of old cohort) on unemployment of the older generation both in the short and in the long run for western germany. analysing cross-state differences in the united states from 1978 to 1996, shimer (2001) uncovers a negative effect of the youth share within the working-age population (number of 16 to 24 year olds divided by the number of 16 to 64 year olds) on age-specifi c unemployment and a positive effect on age-specifi c participaeffects of generational competition ... • 941 tion and employment rates. shimer’s theoretical argument for this quite surprising effect on unemployment is based on young workers creating fl uid labour markets due to increased mobility and thereby stimulating vacancy creation. this argument however does not go far enough towards explaining cross-national differences in labour force participation and retirement. we assume that countries with a high prevalence of on-the-job training and less institutionalised careers produce higher rates of turnover of workers. following shimer, more jobs should be offered in local labour markets with an above-average percentage of young employees which eases labour force participation and labour maintenance of the aged. on national level, though, we suppose intergenerational competition to be the driving force. if large cohorts enter the labour market, competition increases between cohorts and labour force participation by the elderly should shrink, whereas exit rates should rise. the correlation between the relative cohort size of the young and the labour force participation by the aged only holds true under the assumption that younger and older workers can substitute one another at least to some extent. for so called “bridge jobs” (ruhm 1990), which are predominantly widespread in the united states, this assumption is well established (e.g. macunovic 2009). however, there is little or no evidence that younger and older workers are completely interchangeable (card/lemieux 2001; hamermesh 1993; kalwij et al. 2009). they differ concerning their skill levels as job requirements and occupational structure altered from cohort to cohort in line with technological change (acemoglu 2002; blossfeld 1987, 1989; diprete et al. 1997). therefore, different education and training of young and old workers stands in the way of their interchangeability. they may therefore only be substitutes for unskilled jobs. assuming this to be the case, an increasing share of the highly qualifi ed among the aged (i.e. with tertiary education) should result in an enhanced probability of labour force participation for workers of all educational levels among the elderly. this macro-micro relationship differs from the individual-level effect of education, which states that high educational attainment correlates with a lower risk of unemployment and better chances of (re)employment (buchholz et al. 2006; chan/ stevens 2001; hairault et al. 2010). if older workers only compete with younger ones for unskilled jobs, older workers with a tertiary education are out of the contest. assuming a constant supply of low-skilled jobs, a large share of older workers with high levels of education will then reduce the competition. a limited number of competitors increase the individual probability of being hired for less skilled older workers. next to age structure and cohorts’ educational attainment, current labour market conditions infl uence participation and exit rates. reduced working hours at higher ages are considered as an instrument to postpone the age of retirement and therefore enhance labour force participation among the elderly (bosch/schief 2007; delsen 1996). the availability of part-time jobs for older workers should affect individual labour force participation positively and accordingly also the transition to inactivity negatively. additionally, employment in the service sector is also regarded as a factor which enhances chances of late employment because of less economic restructuring due to globalisation in this sector (blossfeld et al. 2006). hence, we assume • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt942 that the share of older employees working in service jobs is positively correlated with the probability of labour force participation and negatively with labour market exits. unemployment is another important aspect of the current labour market situation. in some countries, such as germany, long-term unemployment is widespread among the aged (oecd 2005), and unemployment is often used as a pathway into retirement (brussig/wübbecke 2009). thus, higher levels of long-term unemployment of older people indicate poor employment opportunities as well as a prevalent bridge strategy, leading to different effects on individual labour force participation. on the one hand, we expect a negative effect of long-term unemployment, if unemployment is completely involuntary and exits into retirement are realised as soon as possible. on the other hand, we assume a non-negative effect on individual labour force participation if as long-term unemployment is at least to some extent voluntary and provides a commonly used pathway into retirement. therefore, long-term unemployment should not be correlated with an increased risk of exit or the chance of labour force participation. all socio-demographic and labour market-related factors discussed so far result in an oversupply of labour. mainly economic research shows that business cycles infl uence job opportunities by shaping the demand for labour. according to okun’s law, there is a negative relationship between unemployment and economic strength (lee 2000; okun 1962). economic expansion affects the timing of retirement through two channels: fi rstly, a healthier job market and, secondly, gains in individual wealth. the two phenomena have opposite effects. in a stronger economy, employers hire more actively and there are fewer redundancies, so that people retire later than they otherwise might. prosperity increases the individual resources for realising a preference for leisure and leaving the workforce. economic recession affects the timing of retirement in both channels in the opposite direction (bosworth/burtless 2010). albeit most research deals with the short-term consequences of economic development (e.g. bils 1985; bosworth/burtless 2010; bover et al. 2002; darby et al. 2001; dereveux 2000; elsby et al. 2010), recent empirical studies reveal evidence that the economic conditions prevailing at the time of entering the labour market infl uence not only initial job opportunities and wages, but also late careers (e.g. brunner/kuhn 2010; kahn 2010; kwon et al. 2010; oreopoulos et al. 2008). in accordance with easterlin’s hypothesis on relative cohort size, economic conditions at labour market entry are assumed to shape future opportunities. episodes of booms or busts facilitate recruitment of staff respectively necessitate redundancy. therefore, the careers of young workers might be tracked through a demand surplus, or conversely a defi cit (brunner/kuhn 2010). per capita gdp at labour market entry should therefore explain country-specifi c variance, and it should be negatively related to labour market exits. effects of generational competition ... • 943 effects of the work context and individual characteristics on late careers country-level variance is refl ected in individual-level as well as occupational or industrial-level variance (engelhardt 2011). therefore, we have to control for individual characteristics and the work context in order to estimate the labour force participation and early exits of older employees. far-reaching changes in the labour market due to globalisation and the “crisis of mass production” (castells 2000) encourage fi rms to react by readjusting staff levels. especially classical industries like manufacturing are hit by a need for restructuring as they shrink all over europe. older employees in such sectors should show a higher probability of entering early retirement than employees in growing economic sectors such as the service sector (buchholz et al. 2006). even fi rm size affects the probability of retirement positively. economic changes force larger fi rms to adjust their organisational structures via downsizing and outsourcing (hofäcker 2010). these measures of reorganisation particularly affect older employees. their wages are often higher due to deferred compensation and seniority wages (hutchens 1986; lazear 1979) and the returns of training are smaller due to shorter periods of employment remaining (prskawetz/lindh 2006). additionally, larger fi rms are better placed to offer early retirement incentives. occupational pension schemes and severance payments add up to “offers that one does not refuse” (bellmann/janik 2007). under these circumstances, the probability of early retirement is assumed to be higher in large fi rms (buchholz et al. 2006). given that occupational structure changes and whole industries can go into decline, human capital, occupation and qualifi cation become pivotal for late careers. high qualifi cation protects people from several labour market risks (blossfeld et al. 2006). a low level of education should generally reduce labour force participation and increase the risk of early retirement. in addition to these “push factors” (schils 2008) of employment, labour force status itself is important. self-employment implies individual pension plans and a high commitment to work. early retirement is often impossible or at least not wanted for these reasons. self-employment decreases the probability to retire early (blöndal/ scarpetta 1998). moreover, empirical work shows that good health and especially the absence of severe disability increase the probability to participate in the labour market (currie/madrian 1999; börsch-supan et al. 2009). finally, determinants of household composition and characteristics of the partner need to be considered. labour force participation and labour market exit depend on the number of household members and the employment status of a potential partner. drobnič (2002) for example studied “coupled retirement”, and concluded that individual retirement transitions are timed with the spouse. therefore, a spouse who is still working might reduce the probability to exit the labour market early. household size may be decisive, as large households tend to have more problems to retain their standard of living with pensions that are lower than wages (blöndal/ scarpetta 1998). • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt944 3 data and methods individual data our empirical analysis is based on the fi rst two waves of the survey of health, ageing, and retirement in europe (share), which collects individual data on employment, health and various socio-economic variables for persons aged 50+ across 14 european countries (börsch-supan/jürges 2005).1 the data from eleven countries that participated in both waves (austria, belgium, denmark, france, germany, greece, italy, the netherlands, spain, sweden and switzerland) permit the identifi cation of labour force participation in 2004, transitions from work to inactivity (exit) between 2004 and 2006, and the individual factors motivating these transitions (cf. engelhardt 2011). for our analyses of labour force participation we restrict our sample to individuals aged 50 to 64 at the time of the fi rst wave and estimate the probability of being a member of the labour force (being employed, self-employed or unemployed) in 2004. for the analysis of transition to inactivity (synonymic labour market exit), we focus on persons who were 50 to 61 years old and had been members of the labour force in 2004, and estimate their probability to leave the labour force (as retired, permanently sick, disabled or homemaker) before the second wave. instead of looking at potentially temporary job losses, this analysis allows to investigate whether individuals effectively withdraw from the labour force. the age range ensures not including persons being 65 years old at the second wave (which is the mandatory retirement age in most share countries, cf. engelhardt 2011). as the eleven countries show very different labour force participation rates for older women, creating sample-size problems in conservative and in southern european countries, we restrict our analysis to male late-career patterns. the selected sample restricts the analyses of labour participation to 4,557 and the analyses of transition to inactivity to 2,739 observations. the number of cases is further reduced in the multivariate analyses due to missing observations on relevant covariates (engelhardt 2011). as control variables we include a set of individual and household characteristics both in the labour force participation and the labour market exit model (cf. engelhardt 2011). as individual characteristics we include dummy variables for age (threeyear intervals), subjective health (less than good health) and highest educational 1 this paper uses data from sharelife release 1, as of november 24th 2010 or share release 2.5.0, as of may 24th 2011. the share data collection has been primarily funded by the european commission through the 5th framework programme (project qlk6-ct-2001 00360 in the thematic programme quality of life), through the 6th framework programme (projects share-i3, rii-ct2006-062193, compare, cit5-ct-2005-028857, and sharelife, cit4-ct-2006-028812) and through the 7th framework programme (share-prep, 211909 and share-leap, 227822). additional funding from the u.s. national institute on aging (u01 ag09740-13s2, p01 ag005842, p01 ag08291, p30 ag12815, y1-ag-4553-01 and ogha 04-064, iag bsr06-11, r21 ag025169) as well as from various national sources is gratefully acknowledged (see http://www.share-project.org for a full list of funding institutions). effects of generational competition ... • 945 level (primary, secondary, tertiary level). the means of these variables are displayed in table 1. as household characteristics we include imputed total gross household income divided by purchasing power parity (i.e. nominal gross income) in logarithms, which is especially appropriate for comparisons of countries with different levels tab. 1: means of variables used in the analysis of labour force participation and labour market exit labour force participation labour market exit participants non total in the out of total participants labour the labour market market individual characteristics age 50-52 0.268 0.048*** 0.193 0.333 0.085 *** 0.293 age 53-55 0.267 0.082*** 0.204 0.309 0.209 *** 0.293 age 56-58 0.234 0.183*** 0.217 0.240 0.338 *** 0.256 age 59-61 0.147 0.302*** 0.199 0.119 0.368 *** 0.159 age 62-64 0.084 0.386*** 0.187 primary education 0.332 0.460*** 0.375 0.316 0.368 * 0.324 secondary education 0.375 0.336** 0.362 0.383 0.372 0.381 tertiary education 0.293 0.205*** 0.263 0.301 0.260 + 0.294 less than good health 0.126 0.297*** 0.184 0.114 0.200 *** 0.128 household characteristics log (hh gross income) 10.694 10.280*** 10.553 10.727 10.572 ** 10.702 log (household size) 0.877 0.771*** 0.840 0.906 0.829 *** 0.894 partner employed 0.473 0.066*** 0.334 0.499 0.405 *** 0.484 no partner 0.144 0.149 0.146 0.148 0.110 * 0.142 characteristics of (last) job self-employed 0.223 0.115 *** 0.206 unemployed 0.071 0.170 *** 0.087 tertiary sector 0.549 0.524 0.545 public sector 0.279 0.310 0.284 1-24 employees 0.560 0.554 0.559 25-199 employees 0.272 0.251 0.269 200+ employees 0.168 0.195 0.173 satisfied with job 0.863 0.740 *** 0.843 observations 2,961 1,532 4,493 2,265 435 2,700 notes: means and observations refer to the full model where all observations with missing values are dropped; differences between the two groups signifi cant at + p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: share, version 2.5.0; own calculations • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt946 of income.2 to avoid assumptions about an equivalence scale, we follow schwarze (2003) by additionally considering household size in logarithms. moreover, the presence of a partner in the household and her employment are captured with two dummy variables. in the analyses of transition to inactivity, we additionally control for job characteristics. information on the size of the fi rm is classifi ed (200+ employees, 25199 employees, fewer than 25 employees). to account for the fact that fi rm size has only been collected for private sector employees, we additionally introduce a dummy variable differentiating between public and private sector as well as selfemployment. moreover, we control for the sector (tertiary, non-tertiary) and for job satisfaction. aggregate data macro-level data on demographic structures as well as the economic and labour market structures are taken from eurostat and refer to the time of the fi rst wave of share, if not stated otherwise. figure 2 provides an overview of the relationship between the socio-economic variables and the labour force participation rate of men aged 50 to 64 for the share countries in 2004 on the macro level. the indicator for testing easterlin’s hypothesis on the relative cohort size is the share of men aged 15 to 29 years within all males aged 15 to 64 years in 1970. we refer to 1970 because 50 to 64 year old men in 2004 are aged 15 to 29 years in 1970. figure 2 (fi rst graph, top left) shows a weak correlation between the share of young men in 1970 and the labour force participation of men aged 50 to 64 in 2004. contrary to easterlin’s hypothesis, we fi nd a positive relation on the aggregated level. comparatively large entry cohorts in 1970 participate to an exceedingly high degree in the labour market, compared to the average. there is no evidence of intragenerational competition from a macro-level perspective. in order to test the hypothesis on intergenerational competition between young and old workers, we were not able to refer to relative cohort size of young and old in 2004: measuring both relative cohort sizes would cause endogeneity. following macunovich (2009), the size of the younger cohort is operationalised by a time lag using the mean total fertility rate in the fi rst half of the 1980s. if fertility was high in these times, there are more young potential competitors in 2004. empirically, there is a weak positive relation between fertility and male labour force participation (cf. fig. 2). therefore, we cannot support the competition hypothesis on intergenerational competition for our share countries. educational attainment is measured by the share of older men who completed tertiary education. figure 2 shows the positive relationship which we assumed in the theoretical part. 2 for more information on the imputation methods used in share see christelis (2011). effects of generational competition ... • 947 fig. 2: participation rates of men aged 50-64 in 2004 and selected indicators of socio-economic macro-level conditions in selected european countries 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 share of men aged 15-29 among men aged 15-64 in 1970 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 1,4 1,5 1,6 1,7 1,8 1,9 tfr in early 1980s 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 8 13 18 23 28 33 share of graduates among men aged 50-64 r²=0,10 r²=0,15 r²=0,05 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 share of long-term unemployed among men aged 50-64 r²=0,62 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 55 60 65 70 75 share of workers in the service sector among men aged 50-64 r²=0,01 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 0 5 10 15 20 25 share of part-time workers among men aged 50-64 r²=0,01 ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch gr dees dk nl se it be at fr ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch gr dees dk nl se it be at fr male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt948 concerning unemployment, we tested the percentage long-term unemployed men among all aged men, who are unemployed. in line with our hypothesis, high shares of long-term unemployed correlate – at least on the macro level – with low participation rates. however, the portion of older men working part-time and the share of 50to 64-year-old men working in service jobs are not related to labour force participation on the macro level. in order to quantify economic concomitants, we use per capita gdp (adjusted for purchasing power parity) in us dollars in 1970 to measure economic conditions in times of labour market entry. the change in per capita gdp between 1970 and 2004 measures long-term economic development. the mean annual growth rate of per capita gdp between 1995 and 2000 in percent controls for short-term variation at the time of planning labour market exit. gdp in 1970 shows the positive relationship assumed to exist with labour force participation. economic growth, measured as the difference in gdp between 1970 and 2004, is however not related to labour force participation. a weak positive relationship with labour force participation is found for short-term variation in the late 1990s. fig. 2: continuation 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 2.500 3.500 4.500 5.500 6.500 gdp in 1970 r²=0,20 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 21.000 23.000 25.000 27.000 29.000 gdp in change 1970-2004 r²=0,01 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 0,01 0,02 0,03 0,04 0,05 0,06 0,07 annual growth rate gdp 1995-2000 r²=0,09 ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch gr de es dk nl se it be at fr ch grde es dk nl se itbe at fr male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 male participation rate, 50-64 source: share, version 2.5.0 and eurostat; own calculations, r² based on countrylevel bivariate linear regression models; data weighted according to population size. effects of generational competition ... • 949 method in order to estimate the effects of the determinants of labour force participation and transition to inactivity, we apply multilevel modelling. ignoring the hierarchical structure of the data (persons nested in countries) can result in biases in parameter as well as biases in their standard errors (guo/zhao 2000; rabe-hesketh/skrondal 2005). in order to allow for the interdependence between members of the same country, we allow for country-specifi c random effects. following engelhardt (2011), the probability of labour force participation and of transition to inactivity pij may be written as: here, i denotes subjects, j countries, and k the number of observed individual or country-level explanatory variables xij. the random part consists of the countryspecifi c error term uj, and the error term specifi c to the individual vij. the random country effect uj may be interpreted as the effect of any country-specifi c predictors that have not been controlled for (including shared environmental factors, social contexts and norms). similarly, the residual term for subjects within countries vij may be interpreted as the effect of characteristics specifi c to the individual, plus measurement errors (engelhardt 2011). both error terms are assumed to be independently distributed, with zero means and constant within-country variance (σ↓v↑2) and between-country variance ( ). adding the explanatory variables at both country and individual level will reduce the variance of the error terms. therefore, the variance of the error terms tells us about the importance of the countrylevel variables when it comes to explaining the variance in the outcome variable. an alternative in assessing the importance of country level variables is given by the residual intra-class correlation ρ , the residual intra-class correlation (icc) represents the ratio of random effect variance u to the total variance, and can thus be interpreted as the proportion of observed variance in the dependent variable that is accounted for by the country level. its value decreases if the part of variance explained by the individual component increases. the percentage of variance attributable to individual-level characteristics is easily calculated by 1 – ρ. as in the logit model, within-country variance is fi xed to (cf. snijders/ bosker 1999: 213-215), changes in icc and cross-model comparisons might be misleading as they include substantial and artifi cial parts (hox 2010: 136-138). therefore we introduce median odds ratios (mor) as an alternative measure of cross-na. . • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt950 tional variance (larsen et al. 2000; larsen/merlo 2005; merlo et al. 2006; merlo et al. 2009). the median odds ratio (mor) quantifi es level-two variance on the commonly used odds ratio scale, and is calculated as follows: where (0.75) is the value of the 75th percentile of the cumulative normal distribution with zero mean and variance one. the mor ranges from one, which means no level-two variance, to infi nity. measured level-two variance on the odds ratio scale denotes the median odds ratio between two randomly chosen persons from different clusters with the same set of covariates. this means that if a person theoretically moves to a country with a higher prevalence of being in the labour market or of resigning from it, the person’s risk will (as a median) increase by the factor of mor. interpreting the signifi cance levels of the estimated coeffi cients and variance parameters is a pitfall in most multilevel models, as the power of those tests depends on sample size. one has to bear in mind that when testing a level-two coeffi cient only level-two sample size matters (snijders 2005). as our data only include eleven countries, the power of the test that a level-two effect is statistically different from zero is limited. an alternative measure to assess the importance of different country-level indicators is the interval odds ratio ior (larsen et al. 2000; larsen/merlo 2005; merlo et al. 2006; merlo et al. 2009). the ior covers an arbitrarily-selected interval centred on the median of the odds ratios’ distribution for all possible pairs with identical covariates except for residence. the 80 percent interval is commonly used. bounds are calculated as:3 with β being the regression coeffi cient of the particular country-level indicator and x1 respectively x2 being the contrasting values of this indicator. the lower bound is set to the 10th percentile of the cumulative normal distribution in case of ior80. therefore the upper bound refers to the 90th percentile. although ior is not a confi dence interval, it is important to see whether the interval contains the value one. the effect of a country-level indicator is large in comparison to the residual 3 theoretical derivations of the formulas for calculating mor and ior are described in the appendix of larsen and merlo (2005). , , effects of generational competition ... • 951 level-two variance if it does not contain the value one. ior otherwise suggests a weak impact of the indicator mentioned. such a result is mostly in line with a comparatively wide range covered by the ior, which denotes large residual variance on the country level. 4 results the starting point of the multilevel analysis is a model including only individuallevel covariates. this benchmark model allows us to assess the explanatory power of country-level covariates as we add them progressively. in order to compare the impact of different variables, we use standardised beta coeffi cients. we present the estimated variances of the country-specifi c error term, the icc and the mor for each model specifi cation. estimated variances give us an idea of the extent to which inter-country differences are explained by macro-level variables. additionally, we calculate the ior in order to assess the importance of individual indicators. the icc coeffi cient shows the remaining variance at the country level as against the individual level. mor tells us about the residual effect of moving theoretically to a country with higher values on the respective indicator. the icc and mor fall in most cases if one adds the macro variables that explain country differences. labour force participation model m1-0 in table 2 shows the results from the multilevel logistic regression analysis of men’s labour force participation without any covariates on the national level. the intra-class correlation coeffi cient icc measures the share of variance in the dependent variable attributable to unobserved country-level characteristics. the icc amounts to 0.079 if one controls for individual-level covariates. thus, 7.9 percent of the variance in the propensity of labour force participation in europe can be attributed to unobserved country-specifi c factors, if we control for cross-national sample composition with respect to our individual-level covariates. at fi rst sight, the small share of variance, which is due to the country level, seems insuffi cient to justify multilevel methods. if one however allows for the fact that the countries under investigation are quite similar when it comes to their welfare state arrangements, we argue that this remaining share needs to be explained. the estimated residual between-country variance is about 0.28. the mor expresses this residual variance on the odds ratio scale, and amounts to 1.66. if a person coming from a country with a low propensity for labour market participation moves to a country with a higher propensity, his probability of labour participation will increase 1.66 • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt952 ta b . 2 : s o ci o -s tr uc tu ra l d et er m in an ts o f l ab o ur fo rc e p ar tic ip at io n o f m al es a g ed 5 064 in w av e 1 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er ). c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er ) io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 10 0. 28 3* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 1 38 26 .1 (2 .7 25 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 11 s ha re o f m en a ge d 1 529 a m o ng th e m en a ge d 0. 10 5 0. 45 7 3. 12 1 0. 28 1* * 0. 07 9 1. 65 8 0. 00 7 38 34 .4 15 -6 4 in 1 97 0 (0 .2 84 ) (2 .7 40 ) m 12 t fr in e ar ly 1 98 0s -0 .0 44 0. 35 8 2. 45 3 0. 28 2* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 0 0. 00 2 38 34 .5 (0 .1 29 ) (2 .7 28 ) m 13 s ha re o f g ra du at es a m o ng m en a ge d 5 064 0. 49 3 0. 98 3 5. 24 6 0. 22 4* ** 0. 06 4 1. 57 1 0. 20 7 38 32 .1 (1 .7 01 ) (3 .1 80 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 14 s ha re o f m en a ge d 1 529 a m o ng th e m en a ge d -0 .1 99 0. 31 4 1. 62 4 15 -6 4 in 1 97 0 (0 .5 17 ) t fr in e ar ly 1 98 0s -0 .2 25 0. 31 5 1. 62 9 (0 .6 91 ) s ha re o f g ra du at es a m o ng m en a ge d 5 064 0. 66 7 + 1. 29 8 6. 71 0 (1 .9 04 ) 0. 20 5 (3 .3 46 ) ** * 0. 05 9 1. 54 1 0. 27 4 38 48 .0 effects of generational competition ... • 953 times in the median. as we add certain country level variables (tables 2 to 4), we see a reduction in both icc and mor.4 on the national level, the fi rst indicator considering social structure is introduced in model m1-1. the effect of the share of males aged 15 to 29 in 1970, however, is not signifi cantly different from zero. the same applies to the mean fertility rate in the early 1980s, which is presented in model m1-2. ior-80 contains one for both indicators. iccs and mors remain virtually unchanged, and residual variance is not reduced by adding these indicators to the model. in contrast, the effect of educational attainment indicates that the chance to participate in the labour market increases signifi cantly with the share of male graduates in the population (model m1-3). although t-statistic is only 1.7, ior-80 contains the value one just slightly and confi rms the importance of this indicator. icc, mor and the explained country-level variance reinforce this result. more than 20 percent of level-two variance can be attributed to the educational level of older workers. the mor drops from 1.68 to 1.57. if a person coming from a country with a low propensity for labour market participation moves to a country with a higher propensity, but with the same educational attainment among the elderly, his own probability to be in the labour market will increase only 1.57 times in the median. model m1-4 brings the indicators of social structure together. but results do not change remarkably, with the exception that the effect of educational attainment among the elderly is signifi cant at the 10 percent level. accordingly, we have to conclude that labour market participation only varies with the share of older workers with at least tertiary education across the national sample. there is statistical evidence neither for easterlin nor for the substitution hypothesis concerning labour market participation, although both indicators point to the assumed directions. the lack of statistical evidence might be due to the low number of cases at national level. altogether, indicators of social structure explain 27.4 percent of cross-national variance and they reduce the mor to 1.54. table 3 contains models in which we control for the indicators of national labour market structures. again, model m1-0 serves as a benchmark with reference to cross-national variance and the impact of level-2 indicators. model m1-5 reveals that labour force participation decreases signifi cantly with an increasing share of older males being long-term unemployed. the ior is narrow and smaller than one. residual between-country variance is clearly reduced to 0.185, which results in a residual icc of 5.3 percent. therefore, the incidence of long-term unemployment among the unemployed elderly explains more than 4 concerning the covariates at the individual level, the estimated standardised coeffi cients show the expected effects and remain consistent with regard to content for different model specifi cations, also in cases where the country-level variables are added. as predicted, the likelihood of being part of the active labour force decreases signifi cantly with age, whilst it increases with higher education and is reduced where health is sub-optimal. moreover, the probability of labour force participation is increased for high income households and in larger households. with an employed partner, labour force participation is signifi cantly increased, this is also applying when no partner is present. see the appendix for the coeffi cients on the individual level. • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt954 ta b . 3 : la b o ur -m ar ke t r el at ed d et er m in an ts o f l ab o ur fo rc e p ar tic ip at io n o f m al es a g ed 5 064 in w av e 1 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns , co nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er ). c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er ) io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 10 0. 28 3* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 1 38 26 .1 (2 .7 25 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 15 s ha re o f l o ng -t er m u ne m pl o ye d a m o ng m en -0 .6 60 * 0. 17 0 0. 80 9 0. 18 5* ** 0. 05 3 1. 50 8 0. 34 4 38 30 .4 ag ed 5 064 (2 .2 42 ) (3 .4 71 ) m 16 s ha re o f p ar ttim e w o rk er s am o ng m en a ge d 0. 03 9 0. 40 8 2. 79 9 0. 28 2* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 0 0. 00 1 38 34 .5 50 -6 4 (0 .1 08 ) (2 .7 27 ) m 17 s ha re o f w o rk er s in th e se rv ic e se ct o r am on g m en 0. 03 1 0. 40 0 2. 74 6 0. 28 3* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 1 0. 00 0 38 34 .5 ag ed 5 064 (0 .0 85 ) (2 .7 26 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 18 s ha re o f l o ng -t er m u ne m pl o ye d a m o ng m en -0 .7 00 * 0. 16 2 0. 75 0 ag ed 5 064 (2 .3 58 ) s ha re o f p ar ttim e w o rk er s am o ng m en a ge d 0. 24 2 0. 70 1 3. 23 8 50 -6 4 (0 .6 06 ) s ha re o f w o rk er s in th e se rv ic e se ct o r am on g m en -0 .1 76 0. 35 8 1. 65 6 ag ed 5 064 (0 .4 36 ) 0. 17 8 (3 .5 30 ) ** * 0. 05 1 1. 49 6 0. 36 9 38 46 .9 effects of generational competition ... • 955 34 percent of cross-national variance. residual mor is reduced to 1.508. long-term unemployment obviously explains cross-national variance to a greater extent than all indicators of social structure taken together. the share of male part-time workers aged 50 years and older and the share of older males employed in the service sector, however, have no effect signifi cantly different from zero (m1-6 and m1-7). therefore, icc remains at 7.9 percent and the iors cover comparatively broad ranges both including 1. these results do not change even if we estimate the effects controlling for all labour market-related determinants (m1-8). icc, mor and the proportion of explained country variance approximately equal those of the incidence of long-term unemployment. hence, we do not fi nd any evidence of our hypotheses concerning part-time work and service jobs facilitating older men’s labour market participation. long-term unemployment, however, seems to be a predominantly involuntary status, and exits into retirement are realised as soon as possible. therefore, living in a country with a high level of long-term unemployment among older unemployed men decreases the chance to participate in the labour force in 2004. table 4 presents the results with regard to economic determinants of labour force participation. in comparison to the benchmark model m1-0, model m1-9 includes economic conditions at times of labour market entry of today’s older workers. the effect of economic entry conditions is positive, but not signifi cant. nevertheless, the ior hardly includes the value one which indicates at least some importance of per capita gdp at labour market entry. additionally, icc is reduced to 7 percent, which results in an explained proportion of cross-national variance of 11.9 percent. in contrast, long-term and short-term variations in economic growth do not show the expected association to the propensity of labour force participation (m1-10 and m1-11). their estimated effects are not statistically signifi cant although they point in the anticipated directions. however, controlling for economic entry conditions alters this result to some extent. entry conditions themselves become signifi cant (m1-12). though long-term growth measured as the change in per capita gdp from 1970 to 2004 is still not signifi cant, the ior includes such a change to a comparatively slight degree. this indicates at least some importance attaching to economic long-term economic growth for cross-national differences in propensity to participate in the labour force. short-term variation in economic growth measured as the mean annual growth rate of gdp between 1995 and 2000, however, is not related to international variance in labour market participation. taking all economic determinants into account explains 29.0 percent of betweencountry variance. entering the labour market under comparatively favourable conditions increases the chance to participate in the labour force even at higher ages, which is in line with our hypothesis. on the other hand, stronger long-term economic growth decreases the likelihood. hence we have to assume that long-term economic growth increases wealth and enables people to leave the labour force. if anything, short-term growth rather keeps people in the labour market. nevertheless, economic concomitants explain the smallest share of cross-national variance concerning labour market participation. • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt956 ta b . 4 : e co no m ic d et er m in an ts o f l ab o ur fo rc e p ar tic ip at io n o f m al es a g ed 5 064 in w av e 1 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er ). c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er ) io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 10 0. 28 3* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 1 38 26 .1 (2 .7 25 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 19 g d p in 1 97 0 0. 32 5 0. 88 9 5. 42 4 0. 24 9* * 0. 07 0 1. 61 0 0. 11 9 38 33 .1 (1 .2 16 ) (2 .9 98 ) m 110 c ha ng e in g d p 1 97 0 to 2 00 4 -0 .0 25 0. 36 8 2. 52 5 0. 28 2* * 0. 07 9 1. 66 0 0. 00 1 38 34 .5 (0 .0 68 ) (2 .7 25 ) m 111 a nn ua l g ro w th o f g d p in % 1 99 5 to 2 00 0 0. 13 9 0. 47 1 3. 17 3 0. 27 7* * 0. 07 8 1. 65 2 0. 02 0 38 34 .3 (0 .4 06 ) (2 .7 54 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 112 g d p in 1 97 0 0. 66 1 * 2. 19 9 11 .1 53 (1 .9 83 ) c ha ng e in g d p 1 97 0 to 2 00 4 -0 .4 67 0. 22 1 1. 12 3 (1 .1 00 ) a nn ua l g ro w th o f g d p in % 1 99 5 to 2 00 0 0. 27 9 0. 66 4 3. 36 9 (0 .8 46 ) 0. 20 1 (3 .4 08 ) ** * 0. 05 7 1. 53 3 0. 29 0 38 47 .7 effects of generational competition ... • 957 it is not surprising that the effects of the economy are interdependent, as entry conditions provide the initial state of economic growth. thus, explained cross-national variance should increase anyway. we tested each combination of these indicators by introducing interaction terms in separated models to rule out disturbed main effects. interaction terms did not improve our models, and are omitted from table 4. transition to inactivity table 5 to 7 present results from the multilevel logistic regression analysis of men’s transition into inactivity. as most voluntary exits from the labour market take place well before formal retirement ages, we restrict our analyses to men between the ages of 50 and 61 in the fi rst wave of the data. as model m2-0 shows, about 9.2 percent of the variance in the transition to inactivity in europe can be explained by country-specifi c factors. thus, about 91 percent of the observed variance in the dependent variable can be attributed to individual-level characteristics. mor nevertheless indicates the country level as a decisive factor of early exit from the labour market. if a person moves to a country with a theoretically higher propensity of early exit, his own risk increases by more than 1.73 times in the median. we can therefore conclude that the country level is more important for the early transition to inactivity than it is for explaining participation in the labour market until the age of 64.5 looking at model m2-1 in table 5, we see that controlling for the relative cohort size of today’s older workers reduces level-2 variance from 0.331 to 0.270. icc and mor decrease to 7.6 percent respectively 1.64 which is in accordance with a variance reduction of 18.5 percent at the country level. notwithstanding, the estimated effect in model m2-1 is not signifi cantly different than zero. additionally, the ior includes the value one. nevertheless, this effect is considerably large compared to the effects of the tfr in the early 1980s and of the educational attainment of older workers (m2-2 and m2-3). those indicators do not show any remarkable reduction in variance with reference to early labour market exit. the impact of relative cohort size at labour market entry is furthermore highlighted in model m2-4. the positive effect becomes statistically signifi cant if we control for social structure collectively. this result confi rms the easterlin hypothesis. the individual risk of early exit increases in a country in which today’s older workers 5 the individual-level variables largely show the expected effects. in the countries under study, the likelihood of leaving the active labour force predictably increases signifi cantly with age and where health is sub-optimal, and is signifi cantly reduced in case of tertiary education compared to lower-than-secondary education. as to the household, the probability of labour market exit is signifi cantly decreased for respondents belonging to high income households. with an employed partner or when no partner is present, the probability of respondents’ transition to inactivity is signifi cantly reduced. concerning job characteristics, employment exit is signifi cantly less likely for self-employed men and for men who are satisfi ed with their jobs. no signifi cant effects are found to result from fi rm size, the public sector and the tertiary sector, albeit the signs of the sector effects are in line with our expectations. see the appendix for the coeffi cients on the individual level. • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt958 ta b . 5 : s o ci al s tr uc tu re -r el at ed d et er m in an ts o f t h e la b o ur m ar ke t e xi t o f m al es a g ed 5 061 b et w ee n w av e 1 an d w av e 2 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er , e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s, s ec to r, jo b s at is fa ct io n) . c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er ) io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 20 0. 33 1* 0. 09 2 1. 73 2 21 23 .8 (2 .2 03 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 21 s ha re o f m en a ge d 1 529 a m o ng th e m en a ge d 0. 65 7 0. 90 9 5. 98 4 0. 27 0* 0. 07 6 1. 64 2 0. 18 5 21 30 .1 15 -6 4 in 1 97 0 (1 .3 32 ) (2 .4 79 ) m 22 t fr in e ar ly 1 98 0s 0. 01 8 0. 35 9 2. 89 7 0. 33 1* 0. 09 2 1. 73 2 0. 00 0 21 31 .7 (0 .0 36 ) (2 .2 03 ) m 23 s ha re o f g ra du at es a m o ng m en a ge d 5 060 -0 .2 43 0. 26 0 2. 05 8 0. 32 5* 0. 09 0 1. 72 3 0. 01 9 21 31 .4 (0 .5 14 ) (2 .2 48 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 24 s ha re o f m en a ge d 1 529 a m o ng th e m en a ge d 1. 10 9 * 1. 81 2 9. 63 6 15 -6 4 in 1 97 0 (2 .0 85 ) t fr in e ar ly 1 98 0s -0 .0 86 0. 39 3 2. 08 8 (0 .1 94 ) s ha re o f g ra du at es a m o ng m en a ge d 5 060 -0 .7 11 0. 17 4 0. 92 4 (1 .5 02 ) 0. 21 3 (2 .8 50 ) ** 0. 06 1 1. 55 2 0. 35 9 21 43 .6 effects of generational competition ... • 959 are part of a large entry cohort compared to other countries. although the other indicators of social structure remain insignifi cant with a large ior containing the value one, explained variance increases to 35.9 percent. residual mor is reduced to 1.55, which almost equals the value of mor concerning labour force participation. as mor is comparable across different models, this indicates the exceeded impact of social structure for early exit, on the one hand, and the stable fraction of unexplained variance, on the other. table 6 contains the results for labour market-related determinants. introducing these indicators does not change the effects of individual-level characteristics. labour market structure, in particular the incidence of long-term unemployment, explains almost 37 percent of variance concerning labour force participation (table 3, model m1-8). long-term unemployment among the elderly reduces residual mor to 1.50 by itself (table 3, model m1-5). in contrast, labour market structures explain just about 20 percent with regard to early labour market exit (m2-8). the residual mor in respect of labour market exits remains at about 1.66 after controlling for long-term unemployment (m2-5). although this equates to a proportional reduction of variance, reaching more than 15 percent, we do not fi nd any evidence of a meaningful relationship with early exit on an individual level. the effect is statistically insignifi cant, and the broad ior obviously contains the value one. as for the share of older part-time workers and males in service jobs (m2-6 and m2-7), there is no statistical evidence of a systematic relationship with the individual risk of early exit. this result even remains constant in model m2-8, where we control for labour market structures simultaneously. table 7 shows the estimation results for economic determinants of early labour market exit. in model m2-9, we see that gdp in times of labour market entry is negatively related to early labour market exit, this being in line with our hypothesis. although the effect is not signifi cantly different for zero, ior slightly contains the value one. this indicates some importance at least. we nonetheless have to assume that the economic situation in times of labour market entry marginally infl uences individual exit probability, as icc and mor are reduced only fractionally. the same holds true for long-term economic growth measured as the change in gdp between 1970 and 2004 and short-term growth measured as the mean annual growth rate of gdp between 1995 and 2000 (m2-10 and m2-11). these indicators actually explain 8 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively, of cross-national variance and their ior clearly includes the value one. looking at model m2-12, which controls for all indicators simultaneously, we fi nd different results. the estimated directions of economic concomitants remain stable, but the starting conditions and long-term growth are signifi cantly different than zero, with iors clearly excluding the value one. icc decreases to 4.1 percent equivalent to a reduction of variance of 57.8 percent. residual mor declines to 1.43, which is the smallest value measured across all models. as we have already stated, these indicators are interdependent, although they do not interact. these results remain stable if we skip the annual growth rate between 1995 and 2000 in m2-12 (not shown here). • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt960 ta b . 6 : la b o ur -m ar ke t r el at ed d et er m in an ts o f l ab o ur m ar ke t e xi t o f m al es a g ed 5 061 b et w ee n w av e 1 an d w av e 2 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er , e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s, s ec to r, jo b s at is fa ct io n) . c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 20 0. 33 1* 0. 09 2 1. 73 2 21 23 .8 (2 .2 03 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 25 s ha re o f l o ng -t er m u ne m pl o ye d a m o ng m en 0. 63 0 0. 78 4 5. 34 2 0. 28 0* 0. 07 8 1. 65 7 0. 15 5 21 30 .1 ag ed 5 064 (1 .3 01 ) (2 .4 83 ) m 26 s ha re o f p ar ttim e w o rk er s am o ng m en a ge d 0. 28 3 0. 52 0 4. 01 4 0. 31 8* 0. 08 8 1. 71 3 0. 04 0 21 31 .4 50 -6 4 (0 .5 50 ) (2 .2 55 ) m 27 s ha re o f w o rk er s in th e se rv ic e se ct o r am on g m en 0. 28 0 0. 48 8 3. 79 1 0. 32 0* 0. 08 9 1. 71 5 0. 03 5 21 31 .4 ag ed 5 064 (0 .5 08 ) (2 .2 48 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 28 s ha re o f l o ng -t er m u ne m pl o ye d a m o ng m en a ge d 0. 64 6 0. 82 1 5. 29 3 50 -6 4 (1 .3 30 ) s ha re o f p ar ttim e w o rk er s am o ng m en a ge d 0. 00 7 0. 39 8 2. 56 4 50 -6 4 (0 .0 12 ) s ha re o f w o rk er s in th e se rv ic e se ct o r am on g m en 0. 32 4 0. 56 2 3. 62 5 ag ed 5 064 (0 .4 77 ) 0. 26 4 (2 .5 47 ) * 0. 07 4 1. 63 3 0. 20 2 21 45 .5 effects of generational competition ... • 961 ta b . 7 : e co no m ic d et er m in an ts o f l ab o ur m ar ke t e xi t o f m al es a g ed 5 061 b et w ee n w av e 1 an d w av e 2 n o te s: s ta nd ar d is ed b et a co ef fi c ie nt s; a b so lu te tst at is tic s in p ar en th es es ; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : s h a r e , v er si o n 2. 5. 0 an d e ur o st at ; o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o nt ro lli ng f o r in d iv id ua l ch ar ac te ri st ic s (a ge , ed uc at io n, i nc o m e, ho us eh o ld s iz e, b ei ng s in gl e, e m p lo ym en t o f p ar tn er , e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s, s ec to r, jo b s at is fa ct io n) . c o un tr yle ve l i nd ic at o r io r -8 0 (lo w er ) io r -8 0 (u p p er ) b et w ee n co un tr y va ri an ce ic c m o r e xp la in ed co un tr y va ri an ce b ic m 20 0. 33 1* 0. 09 2 1. 73 2 21 23 .8 (2 .2 03 ) a ll in di ca to rs s ep ar at ed m 29 g d p in 1 97 0 -0 .5 21 0. 14 9 1. 05 7 0. 29 3* 0. 08 2 1. 67 6 0. 11 6 21 30 .2 (1 .2 30 ) (2 .4 60 ) m 210 c ha ng e in g d p 1 97 0 to 2 00 4 0. 42 8 0. 59 6 4. 41 4 0. 30 5* 0. 08 5 1. 69 4 0. 08 0 21 31 .0 (0 .8 25 ) (2 .3 20 ) m 211 a nn ua l g ro w th o f g d p in % 1 99 5 to 2 00 0 -0 .1 93 0. 28 7 2. 25 7 0. 32 4* 0. 09 0 1. 72 1 0. 02 2 21 31 .5 (0 .3 93 ) (2 .2 31 ) a ll in di ca to rs c om bi ne d m 212 g d p in 1 97 0 -1 .4 27 * * 0. 04 0 0. 15 6 (3 .1 21 ) c ha ng e in g d p 1 97 0 to 2 00 4 1. 45 1 ** 2. 62 3 10 .1 69 (2 .7 75 ) a nn ua l g ro w th o f g d p in % 1 99 5 to 2 00 0 -0 .2 71 0. 37 4 1. 45 1 (0 .7 09 ) 0. 14 0 (3 .5 22 ) ** * 0. 04 1 1. 42 8 0. 57 8 21 39 .1 • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt962 a comparatively good economic situation when entering the labour market facilitates career opportunities. as a consequence, the probability of early labour market exit is lower in countries where gdp was comparatively high when today’s older workers entered the labour market. this long-term effect is offset by the change in gdp between 1970 and 2004. the more gdp increased over time, the higher are today’s country-specifi c early exit probabilities. these fi ndings suggest that economically favourable circumstances at labour-market entry diminish early exit probability by stabilising careers, whereas economic upswing enhances wealth and therefore increases the likelihood of early exit. again, the negative effect of short-term growth between 1995 and 2000, although not signifi cant, suggests that favourable economic conditions at the threshold to late career retain the elderly in the labour market. 5 conclusion this article investigates the labour force participation and transition to inactivity of older men in eleven european countries using the fi rst two waves of share merged with country-level variables from eurostat. the macro data focus on the age structures as well as on indicators of the labour market and the economy in the countries under investigation. we use multilevel methods in order to estimate the proportion of variance in labour participation and labour exit linked to country-specifi c characteristics. using the same analytical framework as engelhardt (2011) allows us to quantify the relative impact of different structural indicators. to sum up, cross-national variance is comparatively small concerning labour market participation and transition to inactivity among the countries of share (7.9 percent and 9.2 percent). if one however takes a closer look at the countries participating in the fi rst two waves, it must be admitted that the absence of liberal and post-socialist countries entails relative homogeneity in our sample of countries. our analysis nonetheless demonstrates that the labour force participation and transition to inactivity of older men varies with country-specifi c characteristics, most notably other than institutional arrangements. cross-national differences in individual labour force participation correlate with the prevalence of country-specifi c long-term unemployment and the educational level of the elderly. a large share of long-term unemployed decreases the probability of individual labour force participation. obviously long-term unemployment is mainly involuntary and an exit from the labour market is realised as soon as possible. accordingly, long-term unemployment is positively related to early exit, although this effect is not signifi cant in our analysis. in contrast, a large share of highly-educated older men increases the individual probability to participate in the labour market. this result is clearly in line with our hypothesis. it confi rms the argument that a large share of tertiary-educated men among the elderly reduces competition for low-skilled jobs where young and old workers are actual substitutes. thus, it is hardly surprising that our hypotheses of intraand intergenerational competition are only supported if one controls for the educational attainment of older men. although effects are not signifi cantly different effects of generational competition ... • 963 than zero, the relative cohort size and the size of subsequent cohorts decrease individual participation probability as competition increases, if we control for the share of tertiary-educated aged workers. alternatively, varying country-specifi c educational levels conceal these differences. in contrast to our hypotheses, economic concomitants play an only minor role when it comes to explaining cross-national differences in labour force participation. this might be explained by generous welfare state arrangements in which unemployment benefi ts keep jobless people in the labour market. in contrast, economic concomitants play a major role when it comes to explaining cross-national differences in transition to inactivity. in line with our hypothesis, gdp at labour-market entry is negatively related to early exit. workers in countries with a high gdp at labour market entry show a comparably low probability to exit early. the development of per capita gdp between 1970 and 2004, however, stimulates a withdrawal from working life. workers show a higher probability to exit early in countries in which gdp had grown considerably. therefore, we might argue that economic expansion over these 35 years induced wealth in prospering countries. this might encourage workers to realise a preference for leisure or induce governments to expand old-age benefi ts. if at all, short-term variation in economic growth seems to keep the elderly in the labour-market. besides economic concomitants, early exit probabilities vary considerably with social structure. especially intragenerational competition crystallises as a meaningful predictor of cross-national variance, as the individual probability of an early exit increases with the relative size of one’s own entry cohort. summing up, our analysis demonstrates that socio-economic structures explain cross-national differences in labour force participation and transition to inactivity to a fairly large extent. a fi nal appreciation of the effects requires additional control of institutional factors. long-term unemployment, for example, is linked to employment protection legislation. so the question whether the estimated effect is due to the institutional regulation or to its social consequence cannot be answered so far. this result should be kept in mind even if institutional effects are under investigation. there is a well-established theoretical primacy of institutional explanations of cross-national differences in late careers. as our results show, there are other factors infl uencing cross-national differences. as far as we are aware, no study 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(eds.): encyclopedia of statistics in behavioral science. volume 3. chicester: wiley: 1570-1573 [doi: 10.1002/0470013192.bsa492]. stenberg, anders; wikström, magnus 2004: higher education and the determination of aggregate male employment by age. in: education economics 12,1: 87-101 [doi: 10.1080/0964529042000193961]. welch, finis 1979: effects of cohort size on earnings: the baby boom babies’ financial bust. in: journal of political economy 87,4: 65-98. zimmermann, klaus f. 1991: ageing and the labour market. age structure, cohort size, and unemployment. in: journal of population economics 4: 177-200. • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt968 a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “auswirkungen des generationenwettbewerbs und -austausches auf die späte erwerbsbeteiligung und den erwerbsausstieg aus einer mehrebenenperspektive”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-21de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-201321de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 18.01.2012 date of acceptance:22.11.2012 prof. dr. henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt ().bamberg university, germany. e-mail: henriette.engelhardt-woelfl er@uni-bamberg.de, christopher.schmidt@uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/bamberg-graduate-schools/english/bagss/people/ faculty/henriette-engelhardt-woelfl er/ url: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/bamberg-graduate-schools/english/bagss/people/ doctoral-students/associate-members/christopher-schmidt/ effects of generational competition ... • 969 appendix labour market participation of males aged 50-64 in wave 1 labour market exit of males aged 50-61 between wave 1 and wave 2 age 53-55 -0.264+ 1.079*** (1.828) (4.200) age 56-58 -1.111*** 1.996*** (8.173) (8.368) age 59-61 -1.889*** 2.641*** (14.230) (12.496) age 62-64 -2.530*** -- (18.618) secondary education 0.219* -0.209 (2.104) (1.072) tertiary education 0.310** -0.321 (2.875) (1.540) less than good health -0.907*** 0.326* (10.608) (2.268) log of ppp-adjusted household income 0.447*** -0.335+ (4.682) (1.774) log of household size 0.288* -0.615** (2.233) (2.580) partner employed 2.251*** -0.407* (18.547) (2.298) no partner 0.648*** -1.072*** (5.526) (4.469) self-employed -0.767*** (3.463) unemployed -0.010 (0.054) tertiary sector -0.181 (1.025) public sector 0.275 (1.471) 25-199 199 employees -0.106 (0.556) 200+ 199 employees 0.247 (1.379) satisfied with job -0.555** (2.965) • henriette engelhardt, christopher schmidt970 continuation appendix labour market participation of males aged 50-64 in wave 1 labour market exit of males aged 50-61 between wave 1 and wave 2 between-country-variance 0.283** 0.331* (2.725) (2.203) intra-class correlation (icc) 0.079 0.092 median odds ratio (mor) 1.661 1.732 bic 3,826.1 2,123.8 observations 4,493 2,700 notes: standardised beta coeffi cients; absolute t-statistics in parentheses; + p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: share, version 2.5.0; own calculations © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) changes in employed people’s health satisfaction monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug abstract: the article examines for germany whether the subjective satisfaction with health has changed over the course of time. it is analysed whether a drop in health satisfaction can be observed and whether this can be explained by changing employment circumstances. labour market research has documented a change in the employment situation in detail, which can be subsumed under the keyword of precarisation. in the theoretical section we will portray the current state of research concerning the development of the employment situation and emphasize the signifi cance of gainful employment for health. the empirical analyses of the article are based on data of employed people in the german socio-economic panel study (soep) of the years 1985, 1996 and 2009. the data show a signifi cantly declining health satisfaction between 1985 and 2009 in western germany and no noteworthy change in eastern germany between 1996 and 2009. the blinder/oaxaca decomposition is used in the analyses to better differentiate the effect of the changed employment situation on the drop in health satisfaction. the analyses indeed reveal changing effects of the employment situation. in western germany, a signifi cant percentage of the lesser health satisfaction can be attributed to an increasing number of workers in precarious employment situations. workplace security is of primary signifi cance for explaining the declining health satisfaction in western germany. keywords: satisfaction with health · precarious employment · change 1 introduction the profound changes that have arisen in the course of modernisation processes and social development have led to a variety of economic, technological and medical advances, which resulted in an improvement of living conditions and hygiene and thus to a prolonged life expectancy. in a continuation of this long-term trend, life expectancy at birth in the eu states rose from 1990 until 2006 from an average 73.1 years to 75.6 years (who 2010). a study of life expectancy in germany shows that comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 617-648 (date of release: 11.09.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-14en6 • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug618 rising levels of education are accompanied by a drop in the risk of disease incidence (unger 2003). the mortality trend in germany in the past century is particularly characterised by an extreme decline in infant mortality to only 1 percent of the risk of the year 1871, while the higher age cohorts show a more moderate decline which decreases steadily with increasing age (dinkel 2002). in country comparisons, the national income and the productivity of the health system – measured via health costs – have been identifi ed as central infl uencing factors on health and life expectancy. the example of the cis states, with a considerable decline in life expectancy in the early 1990s, indicates that the socio-economic conditions and the health behaviour (in this case alcohol consumption in particular) have a considerable importance for health and life expectancy. a prolonged life expectancy is accompanied by a shift in the disease spectrum towards a greater prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular-diseases (maaz et al. 2007). while total life expectancy increases, it is debated whether the shift in the diseases spectrum to chronic diseases has also increased the so-called “active” life expectancy, or the duration without any serious restrictions to health. in an international comparison, unger (2003) shows that in germany the years of inactivity also decrease along with an increasing life expectancy, while in the usa growing life expectancy is accompanied by a rise in the number of inactive years. since today we must focus more strongly on mortality in the middle and higher ages than on infant mortality for the continued prolongation of life expectancy, social determinants of health are gaining signifi cance (klein 2001). the health developments can also be examined under a life-course perspective: what mechanisms are at work over the life course and during various life phases? do burdens accumulate to cause a rise in social differences in health? one study investigating the question of whether social differences in health increase, remain constant or lessen over the life course concludes that for most observed health indicators, a divergence is apparent between people with low and high levels of education. with increasing age, constant educational differences are only found in assessments of subjective health, the number of chronic diseases and in memory ability, and even decreasing educational differences in the rate of speaking (leopold/ engelhardt 2011). the authors explain the predominantly divergent patterns with the accumulation theory after which early advantages grow systematically. this article focuses on the development of subjective satisfaction with health. a number of studies show that self-assessed health satisfaction has high predictive validity for the mortality forecast regardless of the objective state of health (cf. idler/benyamini 1997; ferraro/farmer 1999). the demographic change of the population of germany is characterised by a drop in the numbers of younger and a rise in the numbers of older people. the analyses of health satisfaction in this article are restricted to employed people between the ages of 20 and 65 years; therefore, this demographic effect on health satisfaction is only of signifi cance to the extent in which the ratios of age cohorts shift among the over-20 and under-65-year-old employed people. processes that can result in a changed age structure among employed people include a later entry into the job market among younger people due to higher levels of educational attainment, decreasing age cohorts among younger changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 619 people over the course of time due to dropping birth rates, changing employment behaviour or re-entry in the labour market (primarily by women during and after raising a family) or a lengthening of the actual working lifetime of older people due to later retirement. the characteristics of the work situation are relevant for the subjective health of employed people. the changes in employment structures coined as tertiarisation lead to changing work-related stress. as a result of technological developments and successful occupational safety measures, activities that are a physical strain and harm caused by hazardous substances at the workplace are in decline, while stress and time pressure are at a rise. moreover, the composition of groups of people affected by occupational stress is changing. additionally, labour market sociologists are discussing the increasing insecurity of employment relationships resulting from fi xed-term and temporary agency work as well as (the threat of) unemployment. yet analyses also reveal that health disparity within countries is greater than that between countries (who 2010). differences can mainly be identifi ed along socioeconomic indicators such as relative poverty, unemployment and migration backgrounds. in this article we examine the following questions: (1) how does the subjective health satisfaction of employed people change over the course of time? existing sociological health studies that examine the change of subjective health or health risk factors in general use age-standardised data (e.g. kroll 2010). however, age standardisation masks the picture from the perspective of an organisation in which the workforce changes successively. we therefore examine the non-age-standardised development in the descriptive section. (2) what contribution do changes in the occupational composition make to the development of subjective health satisfaction? (3) are there changes in the signifi cance of social determinants of health satisfaction? the latter two aspects can be differentiated using a decomposition analysis according to blinder (1973) and oaxaca (1973), which separates the infl uence of structural changes over time from other effects that refl ect the infl uence of different determinants (as well as that of unobserved heterogeneity). data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep) is used for the analyses. they are then conducted separately for western and eastern germany as both the development of health (cf. rki 2009) and of the labour market differentiate considerably in east and west.1 hence, this article pursues a macro-structural question of clarifying whether long-term changes in the health satisfaction of the population are the result of structural changes in working life or of a changing signifi cance in work-related determinants of health over time. the blinder/oaxaca decomposition offers the major advantage of separating these two aspects. 1 a detailed report by the robert koch institute (rki 2009) of the development of health in the east and west over the course of 20 years following the fall of the wall comes to the conclusion that the health situations in eastern and western germany have largely approximated, hence no considerable differences exist today. regional differences arise rather along the dividing lines of wealth and poverty. for children and young people, educational opportunities and social circumstances in particular are of signifi cance for health. • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug620 2 current state of research in the empirical section of the article, we examine in which way structural changes on the labour market contribute to the development of health satisfaction in germany. we will therefore give an overview of the current state of research from relevant scientifi c fi ndings concerning the change of employment in this section. we will then go into the connection between precarious employment conditions and health. change in the employment situation in past years, labour market sociologists have discussed whether precarious employment is on the rise (struck et al. 2007), seeing it as a result of changes in the ratio of supply and demand on the labour market, the transnationalisation of the economy, the increase in locationand time-independent services, changed legal and institutional circumstances (protection against dismissal) and changed employment interests by employees. the study by struck et al. (2007) comes to the conclusion that lessened employment stability can be empirically confi rmed, which is explained primarily by the relative growth of the service sector. since the probability of direct company transfer is high, in spite of greater fl uctuation this does not lead to any strikingly greater employment uncertainty. from the perspective of employee representatives these developments are also discussed critically under the headings of “erosion of the standard employment relationship” (hoffmann/walwei 1998) or “fl exibilisation of the labour market.” a “standard employment relationship” is understood as indefi nite, full-time dependent employment with regular daytime, weekday working hours. empirical studies have examined whether so-called “atypical” jobs have increased. these include fi xed-term work, temporary agency work, part-time work, irregular or unusual working hours and self-employment. studies that quantify the ratio of standard employment to other jobs ascertain that the percentage of standard employment relationships dropped from 68 percent in 1995 to 62 percent in 2005, but that they continue to predominate (giesecke 2006; cf. also eichhorst et al. 2010). only a small amount of dependent employees are subjected to fi xed-term contracts. the rate rose from 1996 to 2010 from approx. 5 percent to 9 percent and is higher for women than for men. this is a projected 1.3 million to 2.5 million employees in germany (gundert/hohendanner 2011). people with medium skill levels are found less often in fi xed-term employment (giesecke 2006). in the public sector an above-average number of employment relationships are fi xed-term. contrary to expectations, the percentage of fi xed-term employment contracts is therefore relatively independent of economic developments (hohendanner 2010). from 1996 until 2010, the percentage of fi xed-term and temporary agency workers rose from 0.6 percent to 2.9 percent (gundert/hohendanner 2011). if we look at the age structure of temporary agency workers, we see that the number of 20 to 30-year-olds is disproportionately high (jahn/rudolph 2002). the relative decline in standard employment relationships is mainly the result of increasing parttime work. part-time work is distributed unequally among economic sectors. while changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 621 standard employment relationships are typical in industry, there are fewer permanent full-time positions in the services sector (eichhorst et al. 2010). part-time work is a domain of women. from the age of 35 years, approximately half of all employed women are part-time employees, but only 5 percent of the men (kock 2008). in the year 2009, 24 percent of employees worked on saturdays and 12 percent on sundays in germany, which is repeatedly put to discussion by certain social groups and is relatively high in an international comparison (eichhorst et al. 2010). roughly 18 percent of employed people work in shifts, 26 percent in evening shifts and 10 percent in night shifts. another form of “atypical” work is freelance work, particularly when it is carried out in fi elds that are commonly occupied by salaried staff. these types of work are also categorised among disguised employment if they are bound by instructions and carried out within the organization of the employer. since 1999 the disguised employment act (scheinselbständigkeitsgesetz) (article 7 sgb iv) aims to prevent this. the self-employed with no employed staff of their own are described as “solo self-employed people.” more than half of all self-employed people and therefore 5.4 percent of all employed people or 2.3 million individuals are included in this category (kock 2008). in summary, we can state that “atypical” employment has increased to a moderate degree. although it cannot be clarifi ed conclusively whether these employment relationships do not also meet employee interests – this is more likely in the case of part-time work – we can assume that they are rather disadvantageous for employees (giesecke 2006). employees in atypical employment relationships are subjected to a greater risk of precariousness in particular with regard to wages; part-time and marginal employees have lesser opportunities to take part in advanced training (brehmer/seifert 2008). the example of disguised employment reveals that employers increasingly pass on the risks of employment such as illness or bad order situation to the employed people and save expenses for employer contributions to social security. in particular teenagers and young adults are affected by tendencies to precarisation during their transition from training to employment (kock 2008). what signifi cance does the employment situation have for health? the employment situation has effects on health both because of the material circumstances linked to it and the typical burdens and resources of the specifi c vocational fi eld. the employment situation is a primary source of the material situation of a family and can therefore lead to individual deprivation, which contributes to higher exposition to stress factors in the family and living environment. siegrist and theorell (2006) emphasize the signifi cance of mental stress caused by work situations. not merely physically stressful working conditions such as physical and toxic stress, long or irregular working hours, akinesic work or health-damaging physical positions affect health. particularly, the uncertainty resulting from precarious employment situations such as informal work that is not legally secured lead to mental stress (mannila 2012). the demand-control model (karasek 1979; karasek/theorell 1990) and the effort-reward-imbalance model (siegrist et al. 1986; • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug622 siegrist 1996) describe how mental stress arises from the employment situation. the demand-control model assumes that jobs characterised by high demands, low control possibilities and a lack of social support give rise to particularly high stress levels, while the effort-reward-imbalance model is based on reciprocity expectations. it argues that rewards such as income, appreciation, career opportunities and employment security must be in a proper balance with performance if they are not to lead to mental burdens or stress. in occupations with a higher level of psychosocial stress, there is a higher risk of early retirement caused by illness (dragano 2007). a review of prospective empirical studies and physiological and biochemical studies (siegrist/theorell 2006) shows that such stressful work situations correlate with poor health, in particular cardiovascular-diseases (cf. also peter 2006). the summary of available prospective and experimental studies on the effects of these disparities reveals a considerably increased risk of coronary and cardiovascular diseases as well as symptoms of depression (siegrist/dragano 2008). since the health behaviour of people of lower socio-economic status is less health-oriented, their occupational situation also affects their health via this mechanism (siegrist 1989; nocon et al. 2007; helmert/schorb 2009). it has been proven that the work situation itself, in the form of shift work, high risk exposition and physical stress also correlates with health behaviour, in particular with smoking and lack of exercise or alcohol abuse, while autonomy in the job promotes physical activity (johansson et al. 1991; yang et al. 2001; cf. also lampert et al. 2005). the availability of material, personal and social coping resources correlates with the employment and income situation. health-relevant defi ciencies occur mainly among those affected by poverty or threatened circumstances (lampert 2011). however, personal resources such as health-related knowledge (reibling/wendt 2010), control convictions (janßen et al. 2000) or a sense of coherence (wydler et al. 2006), which might be infl uenced by occupational and social situations, also play a major role. finally, the occupational situation can, in some cases, also be linked to poorer health care because people of lower social strata tend to make more morbidity-induced and lesser preventive use of medical services. a greater social distance between medical staff and patients can lead to communication problems or fears to seek doctors out (summarised in jungbauer-gans 2002). moreover, we can assume that a regional context can generate burdens through low resources (low prosperity level of the immediate environment) and high stress (e.g. higher crime rate, environmental burdens from pollution) or through a high degree of social disparities and hence a more salient structure of inequality or more extensive relative deprivation (cf. wilkinson 1996; wilkinson/marmot 2003; wilkinson/pickett 2006). while these factors imply the infl uence of the social situation on health, another delimited thesis presumes selection processes as a result of the state of health: social advancement among the healthy or social descent among the ill explain the social gradients of health (cf. in summary richter/hurrelmann 2006). the research that attempts to quantify this reversed causal effect comes to the conclusion that health-related social descent is less relevant than the reversed mechanism (mackenbach 2006; lahelma 2006). the question of the direction of a causal infl uence has changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 623 also long been the basis of research of the reciprocal effects between the experience of unemployment and health.2 while some of the research has been able to confi rm a causal effect of the experience of unemployment on health, there is also evidence of a reversed selection effect, which cites a greater unemployment risk among ill or disabled people (e.g. böckerman/ilmakunnas 2009, who use finnish panel data and matching methods; cf. in summary hollederer 2008, 2011). an american longitudinal study that examines the effects of involuntary unemployment on health after controlling for health-related selection and other third variables comes to the conclusion that unemployment following a life-threatening illness leads to very negative effects on subjective health and an increase in symptoms of depression (burgard et al. 2007). unemployment for other reasons has far lesser effects on symptoms of depression as well as on subjective health. in order to exclude the effect of unemployment selectivity, some studies investigate whether unemployment resulting from shutdowns also leads to poorer health (browning et al. 2006; salm 2009; schmitz 2010). they come to the conclusion that unemployment following an exogenously related loss of work has no negative consequences on health. the numbers of employees in precarious jobs is rising due to structural changes on the labour market described above. precarious employment situations can result in increased health burdens. a worldwide report for the who states, “social inequalities due to employment relations represent an enormous social and public health burden” (benach et al. 2007). since discontinuities in employment biographies, social descent and reduced control over living situations are frequent consequences of precarious employment, the employment situation can lead to intensifi ed mental stress (siegrist/dragano 2008). in a research overview, oppolzer (2010) shows how prolonged working hours, frequent interruptions by phone calls and emails, night shifts, shift work, as well as precarious jobs such as temporary agency work, fi xed-term jobs or disguised employment can result in increased stress and chronic fatigue. employed people with irregular working hours and on shift work are more frequently ill or have accidents (lampert et al. 2005). health insurance data reveal that the mortality rate is determined by a people’s relative position in the labour market (cf. in summary lampert et al. 2005). individual studies examine specifi c forms of precarious employment or specifi c employment fi elds, showing that the subjective feeling of social participation is far lower in cases of temporary agency work and even lower in unemployment (gundert/hohendanner 2011). precarious jobs, i.e. catering services provided without a permanent employment contract, marked by a shift between long and short working hours, a situation which cannot be infl uenced by the employees, lead to familial and health problems such as sleep disorders, fatigue and irregular diets and exercise (bohle et al. 2004). yet another study that investigates work in call centres and in software development found that work on weekends, taking work home as well as working overtime correlate with stress and feelings of exhaustion (hyman 2 cf. the overview of research concerning the correlation between unemployment and health in the anthology edited by kieselbach and mannila (2012). • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug624 et al. 2003). if fi nancial concerns are linked to the employment situation, this leads to poorer mental health (cf. the study on women in precarious jobs in great britain by o’campo et al. 2004). a spanish study showed that the type of work organisation explains the correlation between social class and subjective health assessment (borrell et al. 2004). this study provided evidence that precarious employment and high job insecurity are highly associated with physical and psychosocial stress at the workplace. one phenomenon of organisational structural change is the reduction of the workforce (downsizing) due to the removal of production sites or rationalisation. downsizing increases demands on and time pressure of the employees remaining with the company. in particular in combination with work-related stress resulting from a disparity between effort and reward (“effort-reward imbalance”), the number of reported disease symptoms such as depression, anger, resignation or obsessions is higher (dragano et al. 2005; dragano/siegrist 2012; otsuka et al. 2012). the lower the social strata, the greater employed people are affected by psychosocial stress at the workplace, which has negative effects on subjective health and correlates with the occurrence of depression (siegrist et al. 2009). this study furthermore shows that the institutional context is also of signifi cance: under the basic circumstances of southern european and conservative welfare states, psychosocial stress occurs more often than in scandinavian countries with social-democratic welfare systems. nolte and mckee (2004) deal with the infl uence of growing income disparity in western and eastern germany on subjective health. using soep data they reach the conclusion that income disparity has increased in both regions. while in the west the infl uence of income on health has risen, the coeffi cients lost signifi cance in the east, where education is a more important determinant of subjective health. in summary, we can state that studies have already used microdata to examine the correlation between employment conditions and health. in some of these studies the changing signifi cance of the health determinants were investigated by comparing coeffi cients in regression models. however, none of the work has looked at the signifi cance of characteristics of the work situation in relation to socio-demographic and non-observed variables. this article intends to close this research gap. in the next section, we will describe the data and methods used to separate the signifi cance of structural changes of the labour market for the change in health satisfaction. 3 data and methods the german socio-economic panel study (soep) is the data basis of our analysis. the soep is an annual, representative tracking survey. the survey was begun in 1984 in western germany, covering the german population as well as households of foreigners residing in germany. since 1990 the soep has been supplemented by a survey in eastern germany. the purpose of later sample supplements that were independent of the original samples was to take the change in the population, for instance through immigration, into consideration. in this analysis, we use all partial changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 625 samples of the soep.3 we limit our analysis to gainfully employed people between the ages of 20 and 65. the explanandum of the presented analysis are changes in the state of health of employed people over the course of time. we employ health satisfaction (“how satisfi ed are you with your health?”) as the indicator for the state of health, which is measured on a likert scale of 11. health satisfaction was surveyed in all previous waves of the soep. we basically have access to information on the employment situation in western germany from 1984 until 2009 and in eastern germany from 1991 until 2009. in order to determine the contribution of the employment situation to explaining the change in health satisfaction, we use a decomposition method according to blinder (1973) and oaxaca (1973). originally developed to analyse the gender-pay gap, decomposition methods can also be used to explain changes between two points in time (schnabel/wagner 2007). although many speak of explanation in the context of decomposition, it is a purely descriptive method that allows for no secure causal conclusions. on principle, the analysis should cover as long a period of time as possible. however, unlike the dependent variable “health satisfaction,” the independent variables on the employment situation, which were of interest, were not always surveyed in each of the waves of the soep. the fi rst survey wave of 1985 already provides us with complete information for western germany, so we can basically conduct a decomposition of the development from 1985 to 2009. however, we divide the analysis into two periods, from 1985 to 1996 and from 1996 to 2009. the year 1996 was chosen because it lies roughly at the middle of the period under observation and thus provides an impression of the course of time beyond the pure comparison of the time from 1985 to 2009. in addition, it is the fi rst year for which all of the variables relevant for us are available for eastern germany at once. at the time of the analysis, the year 2009 was the most recent wave of the soep.4 the development of health over time is represented by the difference ∆ of mean health satisfaction in the two years t=0 (before) and t=1 (after): using the blinder/oaxaca decomposition, can be broken down into two components. we fi rst assume that the satisfaction with health in both periods is a linear function of the employment situation, represented by the vector x‘t. the infl u3 since the oaxaca-blinder decomposition is based on cross-sectional analyses, we employ the corresponding cross-sectional weighting factors (dtc version 8.0 – desktop companion to the german socio-economic panel) for our analyses. 4 usually, the sensitivity of the results with regard to the chosen comparison points can be tested by varying them slightly (e.g. instead of 2009, the year 2008). unfortunately, this is not possible in this case, since then important variables would also be lacking in the analysis. however, if we look at the figures 1 and 2 further below, it becomes apparent that the points in time observed by us either have a similar level as the times before and after them or are rather conservative (this means that the development over time does not have a great infl uence). (1) • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug626 ence of these variables on health is shown by the coeffi cient vector βt. the subscript t indicates that both, the variables and the coeffi cients, can be subject to a change over time. under the assumption e(εt)=0 the following equation holds: inserted in (1) then, after some transformations, we reach the following decomposition in the literature, the fi rst component ∆w is often referred to as the “explained component.” it is the percentage of the difference over time, that is due to the fact that the employment situation differs between the observed points in time (e.g. 1985 and 1996). ∆u, by contrast, is the percentage of the difference over time resulting from the different effect of one and the same employment situation over the course of time. in empirical analyses, however, ∆u additionally includes those variables that are not represented in x‘t, but which correlate with it and at the same time are relevant to health. this leads to ∆u not being distinctly attributable, and it is therefore often called the “unexplained component.” in the following analysis we attempt to solve this problem by including various socio-demographic variables of the employees as control variables. in addition to the aggregated decomposition, the coeffi cient effects and the structural effects can basically also be identifi ed for each variable individually. however, this is only possible for the coeffi cient effects if all observed variables have an absolute zero, which is not the case in this analysis. if not from their relative explanatory importance, using a wald test on the basis of a seemingly unrelated regression it is at least possible to get an impression of the change in the coeffi cients (cf. tables 2 and a1). it has to be noted here that for categorical variables the results of the decomposition are dependent on the reference category; therefore we use the stata ado oaxaca (jann 2008) and the transformation implemented there (jann 2008: 9-10). control variables were incorporated to take into account that there may be other reasons for a possible drop in the course of health satisfaction besides the changed employment situation. age plays a role here in two ways. for one, due to the panel structure of the data the people automatically age. secondly, also the labour participation of older people changes in the period under observation. the more distinct change in the labour participation of women is measured via a dummy variable for the sex of those surveyed, while another dummy variable also measures changes regarding the german nationality of the employed people. finally, the level of education is included using the variable “years of education.” the years of education are taken into consideration to illustrate structural effects of educational expansion (2) (3) changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 627 on the composition of the employed people. since we do not assume that there are differential effects of individual certifi cates, but that levels of education have a human capital effect on labour participation, we use years of education rather than dummies for each of the educational certifi cates. in this analysis, the levels of education of those surveyed are merely a control variable, so that for the sake of clarity we also do not need to include education dummies. with regard to the employment situation, we aimed to cover as broad a spectrum as possible of the above structural changes. a number of variables serve to record a precarious employment situation. a dummy variable takes into account whether the observed people are in fi xed-term jobs. we also record whether people work full or part-time or are in marginal employment.5 since current developments such as temporary agency work, one-euro jobs,6 etc. could naturally only be taken into account in later waves,7 they could not be included in the time comparison conducted here. instead, the subjective assessment of job security was used as an indicator for precarious (or perceived precarious) employment. in addition, a dummy variable was integrated in the model that records whether the current economy worries the person surveyed. the infl uence of exceedingly long working hours is recorded through the actual (not the contractual) working hours. the variable indicates by how many percent the actual working hours exceed those set down in the employment contract. other factors are the accumulated duration of previous unemployment and the existence of relative poverty in spite of employment (measured by the equivalent household income). poor in spite of employment is defi ned here as those whose household income is less than 60 percent of the average equivalent income (needs weighted according to the new oecd scale). the average incomes were calculated separately for east and west. we decided to use the household income rather than individual wages since the subject is poverty, which is usually measured in the household context (and not, for example, low wages, which can be supplemented by the income of partners). further circumstances of employment are indicated using a dummy for employment in the public sector, changes with regard to the size of enterprises using the classifi ed enterprise size and changes with regard to occupational autonomy action with an ordinal variable formed in the soep for this purpose. the geographical context can only be recorded very roughly, i.e. by taking into account the länder (federal states) of residence. 5 translator’s note: according to german social security law, marginal employment (geringfügige beschäftigung, also called “mini-jobs” or “400-euro jobs”) is an employment relationship with a low absolute level of earnings (slightly salaried employment), or employment relationship of short duration (short-term employment). in germany such employment is exempt from social security. 6 one-euro jobs are job opportunities without social insurance contributions monitored by job centers for which unemployeds receive some additional payment (usually one or two euros per hour) onto their unemployment benefi t. 7 e.g. job creation schemes starting in 1992 (with the exception of the year 1996) and temporary agency work starting in 2001. • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug628 all in all, using the german socio-economic panel study we can map structural changes with a variety of variables. it must be taken into account that some of the indicators used here conceptually measure very similar aspects, e.g. subjective workplace security and fi xed-term employment, or correlate empirically very highly with one another, e.g. years of education and previous duration of unemployment. this must be taken into consideration when interpreting the effects of the individual variables. however, their simultaneous use ensures a better measurement of the employment situation. this is unproblematic for interpreting the variables “en bloc” (table 3), but when observing the explanatory power of individual variables (table a2), this circumstance needs to be taken into account. 4 results as a starting point of the analysis, the soep data was used to examine whether a chronological trend regarding health could be ascertained. then, in the fi rst step, changes in the employment situation were identifi ed in the observed years that may explain the potential changes in health. in the second step then we examined whether the impact of the employment situation on health was also subject to changes over time. finally, in the third step the blinder/oaxaca decomposition was used to investigate what relative explanations both the changed employment situation and the changed impact of the employment situation had on health over the course of time. health over the course of time figures 1 and 2 show the extent to which a specifi c chronological development in health can be empirically observed, separately for western and eastern germany.8 it must be noted here that these descriptive values have not been age adjusted (as otherwise is common in sociological health studies). in western germany a drop in the trend of health satisfaction is observed among the employed between 20 and 65 years of age. while the average satisfaction was 7.2 points in 1984, in 2009 it was 6.8 points on the scale of satisfaction, which ranges from 0 to 10. as the confi dence bands in figure 1 indicate, this difference is statistically signifi cant. in eastern germany we also observe an initial declining trend in health satisfaction of the employed. however, this is entirely determined by the fi rst two years of 8 the development of subjective health was also analysed with data from the different health surveys conducted by the robert koch institute (rki 2009). the results of these analyses differentiated by east and west and according to three age groups show improvements in the subjective health assessment over the course of time, unlike the trend appearing here. nonetheless, these results are not directly comparable with the results presented in this study, since the health surveys use a fi ve-point scale to measure subjective health rather than an 11-point scale of health satisfaction and secondly because the ages were standardised through group classifi cations. changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 629 the survey 1991 and 1992. then, from 1993 no signifi cant change is observed in average health. for both, western and eastern germany, the description of the course of health satisfaction should not be over-interpreted due to the panel structure of the soep data. for example, the age demographic change among the employed may perhaps be overestimated, since the people who are surveyed repeatedly in the soep over the course of time naturally age and this tends to impair their state of health. the advantage of our use of the blinder/oaxaca decomposition below is that it removes the infl uence of a changed age composition (or other control variables) of those surveyed (cf. table 3, the line “of which control variables”). however, this should be countered by the entry into employment of younger household members as well as partially through the weighting and the refresher samples. since this analysis is not interested, however, in the infl uence of age composition itself on health satisfaction, it is suffi cient to control for the age effect. whether the changed age composition is fig. 1: change of health in western germany, 1984-2009 5.00 5.50 6.00 6.50 7.00 7.50 8.00 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 satisfaction with health (west) upper 95%-confidenceinterval lower 95%-confidenceinterval linear (satisfaction with health (west)) scale value [0; 10] source: own calculations, soep data • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug630 a consequence of the characteristics of the soep or of changed labour participation does not infl uence the results of the analysis. as mentioned above, the state of research indicates two probable infl uencing mechanisms of the employment situation over the course of time on health. for one, the health of the employed can be infl uenced by a change in the employment situation that occurs over the course of time. also, even an employment situation that remains constant can have different effects on health than it did earlier due to changed conditions on the labour market. an example of the fi rst mechanism is when the number of precarious employment relationships increases over the course of time. an example of the second mechanism is when the negative infl uence of precarious employment on the state of health increases over the course of time. fig. 2: change of health in eastern germany, 1991-2009 5.00 5.50 6.00 6.50 7.00 7.50 8.00 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 satisfaction with health (east) upper 95%-confidenceinterval lower 95%-confidenceinterval linear (satisfaction with health (east)) scale value [0; 10] source: own calculations, soep data changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 631 change in the employment situation table 1 shows the changes of the average employment situation of those surveyed over the course of time. it contains the means for the control and structural variables we observed in each of the observed years. at fi rst, we see the above-mentioned changes in the structure of the employed people with regard to their socio-demographic composition. both for eastern and western germany, the increased average age is clearly visible; in western germany from 39 years in 1985 to a little over 44 years in the year 2009 and similarly in eastern germany from almost 41 years in 1996 to over 44 years in 2009. as mentioned above, a part of this change can be due to the ageing of the sample. the increased labour participation of women in western germany in particular, but also in the east, is refl ected. the percentage of non-german nationals among the employed drops from 25 percent to 6 percent, which could be due to both naturalisation processes as well as a higher risk of unemployment of foreigners. while for western germany the anticipated rise in years of education due to educational expansion is demonstrated, this number is, as anticipated, higher in eastern germany than in the west, but only rises slightly over the course of time. all in all, the results indicate that the relevant variables were necessary as control variables in the analysis. if we look at changes in the employment situation of employees, changes in conditions on the labour market are refl ected in the increased average accumulated duration of previous experience of unemployment. while the duration of previous unemployment in the employment biographies of western german employees in the year 1985 was relatively low at approx. 2.9 months (=0.24 years), by 1996 it rose to 4.8 months (=0.4 years) and by 2009 to 5.6 months (=0.47 years). in eastern germany, the rise of 3.8 months in the year 1996 to approx. 1 year (or 11.8 months) in 2009 is even more drastic. the percentage of employed people living in relative poverty measured on household income fl uctuates in western germany at about 10 percent, and is at a lower level in eastern germany.9 the percentage of people employed in the public sector remains constant in the west at approx. 25 percent and drops considerably in eastern germany from an initial 34 percent to 29 percent. the enterprise size structures are also relatively constant, whereas here, too, the regions differ: in western germany a somewhat higher percentage of employed people work in large enterprises with over 2,000 employees, while in eastern germany higher percentages are employed by smaller enterprises (less than 200 employees). the exceeding of contractually agreed working hours by the actual working hours rose in western germany from an initial average of 6 percent in the year 1985 to over 8 percent in the year 1996 to 9 percent in the year 2009. in eastern germany, the contractual working hours are exceeded on average by 11 percent. this value remains constant for the observed points in time. 9 note that the average equivalent incomes on which the poverty rates are based are calculated separately for east and west and they are lower in the east. • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug632 tab. 1: employment situation 1985, 1996 and 2009 in western and eastern germany 1985 west 1996 west 2009 west 1996 east 2009 east mean (standard deviation) mean (standard deviation) mean (standard deviation) mean (standard deviation) mean (standard deviation) control variables age (years) 39.13 (10.9) 39.00 (0.7) 44.10 (10.5) 40.64 (9.8) 44.20 (10.5) sex (1, if female) 0.35 (0.48) 0.41 (0.49) 0.48 (0.50) 0.46 (0.50) 0.51 (0.50) nationality: non-german (1, if yes) 0.25 (0.43) 0.19 (0.40) 0.06 (0.25) years of education 11.00 (2.45) 11.52 (2.57) 12.74 (2.78) 12.70 (2.41) 13.28 (2.63) structural variables previous experience with unemployment (in years) 0.24 (1.02) 0.40 (1.08) 0.47 (1.27) 0.32 (0.71) 0.99 (2.14) relative poverty (1, if yes) 0.09 (0.29) 0.11 (0.32) 0.08 (0.27) 0.05 (0.22) 0.07 (0.25) public sector (1, if yes) 0.25 (0.43) 0.24 (0.43) 0.26 (0.44) 0.34 (0.47) 0.29 (0.45) enterprise size less than 200 employees (dummy) 0.47 (0.50) 0.51 (0.50) 0.54 (0.50) 0.61 (0.49) 0.61 (0.49) 200 to 2,000 employees (dummy) 0.25 (0.43) 0.24 (0.43) 0.22 (0.41) 0.21 (0.41) 0.20 (0.40) more than 2,000 employees (dummy) 0.28 (0.45) 0.25 (0.43) 0.24 (0.43) 0.18 (0.39) 0.19 (0.40) exceeding actual working hours in % over contractual working hours 0.06 (0.14) 0.08 (0.13) 0.09 (0.16) 0.11 (0.16) 0.11 (0.17) job security (1, if no) 0.44 (0.50) 0.62 (0.48) 0.59 (0.49) 0.81 (0.39) 0.75 (0.43) worried about economic situation (1, if yes) 0.16 (0.37) 0.16 (0.36) 0.20 (0.40) 0.23 (0.42) 0.25 (0.43) occupational autonomy very low (dummy) 0.27 (0.45) 0.22 (0.41) 0.12 (0.33) 0.11 (0.32) 0.11 (0.32) low (dummy) 0.27 (0.45) 0.28 (0.45) 0.23 (0.42) 0.35 (0.48) 0.28 (0.45) medium (dummy) 0.26 (0.44) 0.28 (0.45) 0.33 (0.47) 0.29 (0.45) 0.32 (0.46) high (dummy) 0.16 (0.37) 0.20 (0.40) 0.25 (0.43) 0.23 (0.42) 0.25 (0.43) very high (dummy) 0.03 (0.17) 0.03 (0.17) 0.06 (0.24) 0.02 (0.13) 0.04 (0.19) employment status full-time (dummy) 0.88 (0.33) 0.82 (0.39) 0.72 (0.45) 0.90 (0.30) 0.79 (0.41) part-time (dummy) 0.11 (0.31) 0.15 (0.36) 0.21 (0.41) 0.09 (0.29) 0.16 (0.37) marginal employment (dummy)* 0.01 (0.12) 0.03 (0.16) 0.07 (0.26) 0.01 (0.09) 0.05 (0.22) fixed-term (1, if yes) 0.05 (0.22) 0.05 (0.22) 0.07 (0.25) 0.07 (0.26) 0.10 (0.30) n 2207 2059 3167 865 1098 note: in eastern germany, employees of non-german nationality were not included since the low cell numbers led to estimation problems in the regressions. * marginal employment is employment below a minimum salary (in 2013: 450 euros per month) with only fl atrate social insurance contributions by employers and optional additional contributions by employee. source: own calculations, soep data changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 633 one of the most striking developments, at least in western germany, is seen in subjective job security. the percentage of western germans who consider their job as insecure rose from 44 percent in the year 1985 to almost 60 percent in the year 2009. in eastern germany the amount is considerably higher, but dropped from 1996 to 2009 from about 80 percent to 75 percent. similar observations can be seen when looking at those who are worried about the economy. in eastern germany the percentage of those who worry remains at a constant high level (approx. 25 percent), in western germany it rises form 16 to 20 percent. the development of occupational autonomy changes only slightly over the course of time. in western germany there is a slight shift towards high occupational autonomy and in eastern germany from low to medium autonomy. by contrast, the development in employment status is more distinct. both in the east and west the percentage of full-time employees drops and the percentage of part-time employees as well as that of marginal employees rises constantly. also, the percentage of the fi xed-term employees rose constantly, if only slightly. in 2009 it was 7 percent in the west and 10 percent in the east of germany. hence, for the fi rst step of the analysis we can summarise that the above-described changes in the employment situation are also refl ected to a great part in the data of the german socio-economic panel study. in the next section we will now look at the extent to which the signifi cance of the employment situation has changed for health. change in the correlations of employment situation and health table 2 shows the linear ordinary least square (ols) regression for health satisfaction on the control and structural variables for the years also included in the decomposition. although the dependent variable “health satisfaction” is measured on an ordinal scale, the assumption made here of interval scaling for this type of variable is usually unproblematic (cf. e.g. hamermesh 2001) and the variants of decomposition for non-linear regressions are often less robust with regard to omitted variables (cf. krug et al. 2008: 13-14). however, it should be noted that the primary goal of the analyses is not to identify the coeffi cients of the individual variables. therefore, the model also contains some variables – although not multicollinear – that correlate highly in content. nevertheless, by comparing the regression models we can read the extent to which the correlation with health of specifi c employment conditions, represented by the coeffi cients, changed over the course of time. any two pairwise regressions were carried out as seemingly unrelated regressions. this ensures a more valid comparison of the coeffi cients when conducting the wald tests (cf. table a1 in the appendix). for example, this can statistically test whether the coeffi cient of sex in the year 1985 (-0.034) differs from the coeffi cients in 1996 (0.105) – not merely seemingly, but also with statistical signifi cance.10 however, the 10 as table a1 shows, this is not the case;, the two coeffi cients are not statistically signifi cantly different from one another, the p value of the test is 0.53. • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug634 tab. 2: determinants of health, 1985, 1996 and 2009 in western and eastern germany (ols regression of health satisfaction) 1985 west 1996 west 2009 west 1996 east 2009 east coefficients coefficients coefficients coefficients coefficients (standard error) (standard error) (standard error) ((standard error) (standard error) control variables age (years) -0.046 *** -0.050*** -0.040*** -0.049*** -0.038*** (0.005) (0.006) (0.005) (0.008) (0.008) sex (1, if female) -0.034 0.105 0.067 -0.101 0.045 (0.132) (0.143) (0.127) (0.186) (0.210) nationality: non-german (1, if yes) 0.188 -0.081 0.506** (0.181) (0.213) (0.227) years of education 0.066 ** 0.031 0.067*** 0.041 -0.014 (0.026) (0.028) (0.025) (0.039) (0.057) structural variables previous experience with -0.111 ** -0.122** 0.001 0.274* -0.094** unemployment (in years) (0.053) (0.061) (0.047) (0.142) (0.041) relative poverty (1, if yes) -0.011 0.057 -0.336 0.315 0.380 (0.203) (0.211) (0.239) (0.329) (0.313) public sector (1, if yes) 0.135 -0.117 -0.190 0.190 -0.108 (0.125) (0.154) (0.132) (0.177) (0.194) enterprise size (reference: less than 200 employees) 200 to 2,000 employees -0.068 0.042 -0.172 0.178 0.336 (0.131) (0.149) (0.144) (0.215) (0.216) more than 2,000 employees -0.066 0.036 -0.006 -0.535** 0.306 (0.127) (0.145) (0.127) (0.218) (0.232) actual working hours -0.203 0.297 -0.919** 0.145 -1.538*** (0.422) (0.402) (0.360) (0.515) (0.546) job security (1, if no) -0.090 -0.355*** -0.694*** -0.015 -0.289 (0.110) (0.125) (0.111) (0.177) (0.183) worried about economic situation -0.445 *** -0.718*** -0.578*** -0.778*** -0.508** (1, if yes) (0.155) (0.186) (0.142) (0.203) (0.208) occupational autonomy (reference: very low) low 0.098 0.063 0.113 0.541* -0.745** (0.167) (0.211) (0.200) (0.311) (0.294) medium 0.055 0.094 0.263 0.630* -0.545* (0.173) (0.211) (0.195) (0.362) (0.307) high -0.002 0.408* 0.250 0.425 0.097 (0.209) (0.228) (0.236) (0.339) (0.399) very high 0.324 0.260 0.505* 0.350 -0.641 (0.358) (0.328) (0.284) (0.905) (0.649) employment status (reference: full-time) part-time 0.004 0.191 -0.036 -0.694** 0.204 (0.192) (0.177) (0.157) (0.352) (0.293) marginal employment* -0.125 0.138 -0.223 -1.448*** 0.254 (0.379) (0.415) (0.248) (0.546) (0.317) fixed-term (reference: permanent 0.052 -0.071 0.358* 0.187 0.401 employment contract fixed-term) (0.232) (0.347) (0.195) (0.344) (0.287) constant 8.284 *** 8.686*** 8.178*** 7.773*** 9.191*** (0.390) (0.452) (0.443) (0.659) (0.573) r² 0.075 *** 0.103*** 0.110*** 0.138*** 0.145*** n 2207 2059 3167 865 1098 note: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01. in the regression estimations for eastern germany, employees of non-german nationality were not included since the low cell numbers led to estimation problems. * marginal employment is employment below a minimum salary (in 2013: 450 euros per month) with only fl atrate social insurance contributions by employers and optional additional contributions by employee. source: own calculations, soep data changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 635 procedure apparently leads to rather conservative tests, i.e. to rather high p values, which must be taken into consideration when interpreting the results. we therefore also consider variables where the p value somewhat exceeds the limit of 0.1. beginning with western germany, it is striking that the regression results for the years 1985 and 1996 are quite similar, which means that the effect of the employment situation does not change much over the years. in a wald test for the equality of the models, the null hypothesis is not rejected with a p value of 0.85. as for the individual coeffi cients, here, too, there are no signifi cant differences. with p values around 0.13 in the wald tests, however, the change in the variable of job security is notable. hence, it seems that the impact of subjective job insecurity has changed over the course of time, from a slightly negative insignifi cant effect in 1985 to a considerably negative and signifi cant effect on health in 1996. this suggests that a negative effect of a precarious employment situation on health does not arise per se, but only developed over the course of time. the impact of employment in the public sector also changed (p value of 0.21). while at fi rst positive, it develops in a negative direction, although the two coeffi cients are not signifi cant. for the comparison of the whole 1996 and 2009 regression models there is also no statistically signifi cant difference, however, at 0.11 the p value is remarkably low. correspondingly, individual coeffi cients also show signifi cant differences. first of all, the distinctly positive effect of non-german nationality in the year 2009 compared with 1996 is of interest. one explanation for this could be that at the two points in time different groups of foreigners are aggregated under the dummy “nongerman nationality.” conversely, in 2009 there is a distinct and negative effect of additional working hours, which did not yet exist as such in 1996. but the negative impact of a lack of job security also intensifi ed (p-value for comparison of the coeffi cients in 1996 and 2009: 0.03). the 1996 and 2009 regression models for eastern germany show more distinct differences than for western germany and these differences are statistically highly signifi cant with a p value of 0.002. with regard to the individual variables there are signifi cant differences in the impact of occupational autonomy and enterprise size. it is interesting that the negative effect of part-time work and marginal employment observed in 1996 is positive in the year 2009, although not signifi cantly.11 relative explanatory importance of changed employment conditions for the decline in health over the course of time in the third and fi nal step, we now present the results of the blinder/oaxaca decomposition, which indicates the relative explanatory importance of the changes presented in tables 1 and 2. table 3 summarises the results, while table a2 in the appendix shows the relative explanatory importance differentiated for all observed control variables and indicators of structural change. 11 this rather counterintuitive development is related to the above-mentioned correlation of the variables. • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug636 let us fi rst look at the development in western germany. there, satisfaction with health in the fi rst time interval from 1985 until 1996 dropped from an average 7.126 to 6.902 points. this corresponds to a decline by approx. 0.224. the blinder/oaxaca decomposition shows that with 0.126 points roughly 56 percent of this lessened health satisfaction correlates with a changed impact of employment conditions on health (or with unobserved variables). by contrast, 0.098 points or 44 percent of the decline is caused by the composition of the employed people. if we account for the infl uence of the control variables (age, education, etc.), then only 0.050 points or 22 percent remain that are explainable by changes in the employment situation itself. at fi rst the second time interval, from 1996 until 2009, appears similar; the downward trend continues and health satisfaction drops from 6.902 points by another 0.082 points to 6.820 points. the decomposition reveals, however, that the conditab. 3: blinder/oaxaca decomposition of health satisfaction (0-10 points), 1985/1996 and 1996/2009, in western and eastern germany 1985/1996 west 1996/2009 west 1996/2009 east mean before 7.126*** 6.902*** 6.553*** (0.053) (0.062) (0.084) mean after 6.902*** 6.820*** 6.618*** (0.062) (0.058) (0.100) difference -0.224*** -0.082 0.065 (0.077) (0.083) (0.128) decomposition of the difference absolute % absolute % absolute % total -0.098** 44 -0.095** 116 -0.084 -129 (0.038) (0.040) (0.068) of which control -0.047* 21 -0.024 29 -0.066** -102 variables (0.026) (0.033) (0.033) of which structural -0.050 22 -0.070** 85 -0.018 -28 effects (0.031) (0.030) (0.061) unexplained -0.126 56 0.013 -16 0.149 229 (coefficient effects) (0.081) (0.084) (0.126) number of cases 4266 5226 1963 note: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01; robust standard errors in brackets, percentages do not sum up to 100 percent due to rounding errors example calculation: source: own calculations, soep data changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 637 tions of the changes have altered. during the second time interval merely a negligibly small part is explained by the coeffi cient effects and the unobserved variables. with 0.013 points or -16 percent, unobserved changes have a slightly positive infl uence on satisfaction with health. this is, however, canceled out by the far greater changes in the composition of the employed people and the employment situation. yet, the control variables lose explanatory power with -0.024 or 29 percent compared with the previous period, mainly due to the fact that the negative effect of aging is balanced out by a positive effect of the higher levels of education (cf. table a2). if we exclude the infl uence of the control variables, then structural changes still explain 0.070 points or 85 percent of the negative change in health satisfaction. if we now turn to eastern germany, we notice that in the observation interval from 1996 until 2009 a slight improvement in health occurred. however, the decomposition reveals that also in eastern germany, due to changes in the sociodemographic control variables, primarily age, a decline in health satisfaction would have occurred. changes in the employment situation, by contrast, have hardly any infl uence or the negative infl uence is eliminated by a number of changes in the employment situation with positive effects on health, as is the case with an increased percentage of the population with long experiences with unemployment (cf. table a2). the decline that is due to the changed age composition is now balanced out by coeffi cient effects or unobserved changes, which then leads ultimately to an improvement in health. the available data cannot explain what development is responsible for this. 5 summary and discussion in this article, we investigated the question of whether the structural changes in gainful employment documented in labour market and occupational sociology, which can be described as an increasing precarisation of employment, have a diminishing effect on subjective health satisfaction or whether it is developing positively, similar to the long-term trend in life expectancy. many of the mechanisms that explain the social gradient of health outcomes can ultimately be linked to the employment situation and its material and immaterial resources and stress. using data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep), we fi rst examined how the subjective health satisfaction of employed people has developed over the past two decades in germany. it is common in socio-epidemiological studies to carry out age standardisation when examining chronological trends. such standardisation was not done in this case because a changed demographic composition of personnel can have impacts on organisations, such as requirements for age-based design of workplaces, which would be masked by standardisation. age standardised analyses of the soep in the context of the federal government’s health report (gesundheitsberichterstattung des bundes 2006) reveal relatively constant values in the subjective health satisfaction for the average of all population groups, while our descriptive values show a constant to slightly rising satisfaction among employed people in eastern germany, but declining values in western germany. in the second • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug638 step, we looked at the effect of structural variables of the employment situation and other demographic control variables on subjective health in the cross section of the years 1985, 1996 and 2009 selected due to the data situation (in eastern germany only for the last time interval), in order to check whether the employment situation is of actual signifi cance. we moreover aimed to investigate what particular effects changed their signifi cance over the course of time. why could this be the case? we try to illustrate this social mechanism using the example of subjective employment security. contextual effects could play a role here. during a period characterised by low unemployment rates the insecurity of one’s own employment relationship need not necessarily cause stress. if there is high demand for workers, one has a good chance of quickly fi nding another job. in a situation dominated by high unemployment, job insecurity will presumably be subjectively perceived as more stressful. of course, how well the social safety net functions in the case of unemployment also plays a role. the better the coverage the less stressful job insecurity may be. in the third step of our analysis, we carried out a blinder/oaxaca decomposition to clarify whether the structural changes on the labour market or the development of control and unobserved variables could be deemed responsible for the change in subjective health. the advantage of this method is that we can differentiate the extent to which changes can be explained by the altered socio-demographic composition of the employed or by the changed number of people in work situations that are potentially harmful to health. we can also differentiate what percentage of a change over time is due to a changed effect of these infl uencing factors (sociodemographic variables and work situation). using the soep data for employed people in germany, from 1985 until 2009 there is a signifi cantly declining health satisfaction for western germany, and for eastern germany from 1996 until 2009 a positive, but statistically insignifi cant change in health satisfaction. if we exclude the infl uence of a change in the composition of employed people with regard to age, levels of education, sex and nationality, all in all on the macro level for eastern and for western germany, there are hardly any greater correlations between declining health and the changed employment situation.12 it does, however, become apparent for western germany that a signifi cant share of the decline in health satisfaction since 1985 can be explained by the rising numbers of employees in insecure employment relationships or with concerns about the economy. as the analyses in tables 2 and table a1 show, not only the percentage of those affected by this has risen, but also their negative impact on (or the negative correlation with) health, at least with regard to job security. while in 1985 there was hardly any correlation between job security and health, in 1996 it was distinctly negative and then almost doubled between 1996 and 2009. in addition, 12 this does not, however, mean that such correlations do not exist at the individual level. at the individual level, “poverty in spite of employment” can nonetheless have negative effects on health satisfaction, even if the number of people living in poverty in spite of being in employment has no explanatory signifi cance for a changed average health of the entire employed population. changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 639 it is apparent that the increased number of employed people who assess their job situation as insecure or who worry about economic developments have signifi cant and substantial explanatory importance for the decline in health satisfaction over the course of time. in eastern germany, by contrast, we observe neither relative explanatory importance related to this insecurity nor a decline in health satisfaction. nonetheless the level of job insecurity and the number of employed people who worry is far higher than in western germany. nevertheless, using the available data it is not possible to fi nally clarify whether increased insecurity leads to a decline in health or, conversely, whether a decline in health results in employed people worrying more about their jobs and the economy. yet, based on the changes in employment situations described earlier it appears quite plausible that the growing employment insecurity linked with this change has a causal and negative effect on health. all in all, the changes examined in subjective health satisfaction are not very grave. therefore, it would be interesting for future studies to examine how major cuts in the labour market, for example through far-reaching transformation processes, affect subjective health satisfaction. unfortunately, such situations can rarely be documented in a suitable data 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and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “wandel der gesundheitszufriedenheit von erwerbstätigen”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-14de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-14de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 08.09.2011 date of acceptance: 23.05.2012 prof. dr. monika jungbauer-gans ( ). lehrstuhl für empirische wirtschaftssoziologie, universität erlangen-nürnberg, nürnberg, germany. e-mail: monika.jungbauer-gans@wiso.uni-erlangen.de url: http://www.sozialforschung.rw.uni-erlangen.de/lehrstuhlteam/lehrstuhlinhaberin. shtml dr. gerhard krug. lehrstuhl für empirische wirtschaftssoziologie, universität erlangennürnberg, nürnberg, germany. e-mail: gerhard.krug@wiso.uni-erlangen.de url: http://www.sozialforschung.rw.uni-erlangen.de/lehrstuhlteam/mitarbeiterinnen/ gerhard-krug.shtml institut für arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung, nürnberg, germany. e-mail: gerhard.krug@iab.de url: http://www.iab.de/123/section.aspx/mitarbeiter/207 changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 645 tab. a1: model comparisons using wald test, 1985/1996, 1996/2009, in western and eastern germany 1985/1996 west 1996/2009 west 1996/2009 east coefficient comparison for the variable … p value p value p value age (years) 0.735 0.247 0.231 sex (1, if female) 0.531 0.788 0.675 nationality: non-german (1, if yes) 0.338 0.045 years of education 0.377 0.415 0.628 previous experience with unemployment (in years) 0.950 0.161 0.235 relative poverty (1, if yes) 0.827 0.200 0.824 public sector (1, if yes) 0.213 0.709 0.274 enterprise size 200 to 2,000 employees 0.609 0.299 0.522 enterprise size more than 2,000 employees 0.659 0.857 0.006 actual working hours 0.370 0.018 0.063 job security (1, if no) 0.134 0.032 0.618 worried about economic situation 0.296 0.712 0.160 autonomy low 0.942 0.929 0.021 autonomy medium 0.826 0.615 0.060 autonomy high 0.220 0.778 0.461 autonomy very high 0.889 0.721 0.691 part-time 0.452 0.382 0.087 marginal employment* 0.691 0.536 0.003 fixed-term employed 0.753 0.249 0.930 total 0.845 0.113 0.002 null hypothesis: equality of the coeffi cients in both years * marginal employment is employment below a minimum salary (in 2013: 450 euros per month) with only fl atrate social insurance contributions by employers and optional additional contributions by employee. source: own calculations, soep data appendix • monika jungbauer-gans, gerhard krug646 tab. a2: blinder/oaxaca decomposition of health satisfaction over the course of time 1985/1996, 1996/2009, in western and eastern germany (details; absolute: coeffi cient effects; standard errors in brackets) 1985/1996 west 1996/2009 west 1996/2009 east mean before 7.126*** 6.902*** 6.553*** (0.053) (0.062) (0.084) mean after 6.902*** 6.820*** 6.618*** (0.062) (0.058) (0.100) difference -0.224*** -0.082 0.065 (0.077) (0.083) (0.128) decomposition of difference absolute absolute absolute total explained -0.098** -0.095** -0.084 (0.038) (0.040) (0.068) control variables age(years) -0.062*** -0.082*** -0.065** (0.021) (0.021) (0.031) sex (1, if female) 0.003 0.006 0.003 (0.005) (0.011) (0.013) nationality: non-german (1, if yes) -0.002 (0.005) (0.006) years of education 0.013 0.052** -0.004 (0.012) (0.020) (0.015) structural variables previous experience with unemployment -0.022* 0.000 -0.069** (in years) (0.012) (0.005) (0.031) relative poverty (1, if yes) 0.001 -0.005 0.018 (0.003) (0.006) (0.017) public sector (1, if yes) 0.002 0.008 0.008 (0.003) (0.007) (0.014) enterprise size less than 200 employees -0.000 0.002 -0.005 (0.001) (0.003) (0.007) 200 to 2,000 employees 0.000 0.002 -0.001 (0.000) (0.002) (0.003) more than 2,000 employees -0.000 -0.001 -0.001 (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) actual working hours 0.005 -0.009 0.004 (0.007) (0.006) (0.015) job security (1, if no) -0.064*** -0.021 0.016 (0.023) (0.014) (0.013) worried about economic situation 0.007 -0.048*** -0.031 (0.009) (0.015) (0.019) changes in employed people’s health satisfaction • 647 continuation tab. a2 1985/1996 west 1996/2009 west 1996/2009 east occupational autonomy very low 0.003 0.003 0.000 (0.003) (0.004) (0.008) low 0.004 -0.001 0.020 (0.005) (0.002) (0.014) medium -0.001 -0.000 -0.010 (0.002) (0.001) (0.013) high 0.009 0.000 -0.008 (0.005) (0.002) (0.012) very high 0.000 0.002 -0.004 (0.001) (0.002) (0.007) employment status full-time 0.005 -0.008 0.019 (0.008) (0.010) (0.019) part-time 0.003 0.002 0.004 (0.006) (0.004) (0.017) marginal employment 0.000 -0.007 0.005 (0.003) (0.009) (0.011) fixed-term employed -0.000 0.011 0.017 (0.001) (0.007) (0.015) unexplained (coefficient effects) -0.126 0.013 0.149 (0.081) (0.084) (0.126) number of cases 4266 5226 1963 note: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01. in the regression estimations that served as the basis for the decomposition, in eastern germany employees of non-german nationality were not included since the low cell numbers led to estimation problems. source: own calculations, soep data © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) schulze_englisch.indd changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany between 1985 and 2004 alexander schulze abstract: while the course and the determinants of fertility behaviour have been investigated intensively, the monetary consequences of birth have hardly been considered empirically to date. therefore, this paper focuses on the short-term (equivalent) household income changes around the time of births in a longitudinal perspective and examines them for their causes. for the analyses of the longitudinal data (gsoep-data 1984-2005), fi xed effects panel regression models were computed. the results show that the short-term socioeconomic consequences of birth have clearly increased in the last two decades and fi rst births in particular are associated with disproportionately severe socioeconomic consequences, while further births are rarely accompanied by negative changes in the households’ socioeconomic situations. furthermore, household income losses attributable to births only arise in double income households and increase gradually in line with a rising level of household income before birth. hence, the analyses suggest the need for more adequate state assistance with respect to family support. beside the provision of adequate infrastructural conditions which allow mothers to be employed, also the payments to compensate for child-related costs (“kindergeld”) should be – in contrast to the present practice in germany – increased and re-adjusted with respect to the child’s position in the birth sequence. keywords: children · household income · germany · births · longitudinal · fi xedeffect 1 introduction the birth of a child is connected with numerous processes that have a remarkable impact on the household’s socioeconomic situation. one major effect is that households potentially suffer from losing an income (income effect). also, additional expenditure is incurred due to the child’s living costs (need effect). hence, many studies based on cross-sectional data show with regard to the equivalent household comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 1 (2010): 65-84 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-03en0 • alexander schulze66 income (a measure that adjusts the disposable household income for a household’s size and age composition) that families with children are disadvantaged in comparison to childless households (u.s. census bureau 2006; statistisches bundesamt 2007). in 2005, for example, two-parent households in germany with one child had, on average, a 1,200 euros equivalent household income available per month, while for two-child families this decreased to 1,108 euros, and the fi gure for threechild families was only 994 euros (schulze 2009). in contrast, the average monthly equivalent household income of a childless couple was 1,354 euros. overall, crosssectional data clearly shows that children are an important socioeconomic risk for the households in which they live, and especially families with several children run the risk of blundering into materially precarious situations (bäcker 2003). however, on the basis of cross-sectional data, comparing average household incomes of families with differing numbers of children is problematic if the respective income differences between the households are to serve as proof of ‘costs’ connected with children. period data only considers the household income situations from different households at one point sometime after birth. this means that, fi rstly, families who are in different phases of the family cycle (i.e. families with children of different ages) are compared. secondly, there is no information about the households’ socioeconomic situations before the birth of children. however, without detailed information about the families’ pre-birth socioeconomic situations, it is hardly possible to draw conclusions about socioeconomic effects of the births (kalwij 2005; klein 1987). cross-sectional fi ndings raise the question of whether the income differences after childbirth between households with a different number of children are directly caused by the differing number of children or whether the (poorer) families with more children were already in an economically worse position before the birth of the child (e.g. due to selection effects of fertility).1 with crosssectional data it is possible to depict the socioeconomic situations of households at one time. however, the causes of and reasons for the changes in household income over time and the income differences between different households cannot be established. in order to avoid the above-mentioned methodological problems, this study focuses on household income processes in families in a longitudinal perspective. hence, household income changes induced by birth can be directly determined (including all monetary infl ows and deductions) by comparing the household’s income one year before and one year after birth. the purpose of the present article is to identify the short-term socioeconomic risks following birth and to determine their extent in relation to (a) the child’s position in the birth sequence, (b) the year of birth, (c) the parents’ pre-birth occupational profi les and (d) the household’s economic status before birth. 1 international fi ndings consistently suggest that women who are highly educated and/or are gainfully employed are less likely to have (further) children than other women (schröder/brüderl 2008; budig 2003). changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 67 in order to answer the questions outlined above, fi rstly, the changes in german family state aid in the last few decades are emphasised (section 2) and explanatory factors for socioeconomic consequences of births are discussed (section 3). further, the methods and statistical procedures applied are clarifi ed (section 4), and the results of the analyses are shown, presenting fi xed effects panel regression models on the basis of the german socio-economic panel 1984-2005 (section 5). finally, conclusions are drawn and discussed with respect to the consequences for german family policy (section 6). 2 german family state aid in the last few decades given the low birth rates in germany from an international perspective (u.s. census bureau 2004), and the relatively low employment rates of mothers (statistisches bundesamt 2005) as well as the relatively low economic positions of households with children (schulze 2009), in germany, all areas of family policy currently receive high political attention. while family state aid has been so far mainly focused on monetary compensation for the socioeconomic consequences of having children, new (infrastructural) measures of family policy have recently been introduced. these new measures are geared towards promoting equal rights between the sexes and improving the compatibility of occupation and family (e.g. extended coverage of crèches and kindergartens). however, despite the well-known defi cits in the infrastructure for successfully combining occupation and family in germany, the monetary instruments of state aid still play a decisive role in family politics. particularly for families with a newborn child, the monetary compensation for the socioeconomic consequences of fertility is of signifi cance, since 90 % of all parents (mothers) wish to care for their child themselves in the fi rst twelve months even if public childcare facilities for this age group exist (bien et al. 2007). therefore, an improvement in the infrastructural conditions allowing young mothers to remain gainfully employed during the fi rst year after birth will only be of limited effect in terms of avoiding the short-term negative fi nancial consequences of fertility. thus, monetary benefi ts are of particular importance for compensating the short-term socioeconomic consequences of births, at least during the period immediately after birth. since the following analyses exclusively examine the above-mentioned shortterm consequences of fertility, only the relevant german family state aid will be considered here. this includes child allowance, child-raising allowance and the parental allowance that was introduced in 2007. child allowance (‘kindergeld’): child allowance, the key instrument of german family state aid for compensating the living costs of a child, was paid for the fi rst time in 1955 but only for third and further children. later, also second children (1961) and fi nally fi rst children (1975) were considered and now child allowance is paid for • alexander schulze68 each child.2 the amount of child allowance depends solely on the number of the child in the birth order, i.e. the child benefi t is a payment to households with children unrelated to age or income (hohnerlein 2000). the current child allowance is 184 euros per month for the fi rst and second child, increasing to 190 euros for the third child and 215 euros for the fourth and further children. thus, the child allowance for the fourth child is now about three times as high as it was in 1975, and for the fi rst child it is six times as high (see fi g. 1). despite the disproportionately high increase in the child allowance payments for fi rst children, a review of the development of child allowance over time highlights the fact that families with several children have always been in the centre of the political interest, i.e. the lowest amount for compensating the child’s living costs was paid for fi rst children. this disadvantage for fi rst children has diminished now, but even today third children are still more highly ‘subsidised’ than second or fi rstborn children. since child allowance is paid explicitly as compensation for children’s individual needs, this payment practice is implicitly based on the assumption that children’s needs increase with the number of children in the birth order. fig. 1: the development of child allowance in germany from 1975 26 26 26 26 26 26 26 36 102 112 128 138 154 164 184 36 41 41 51 61 51 66 66 102 112 128 138 154 164 184 61 77 102 102 123 112 112 112 154 154 154 154 154 170 190 61 77 102 102 123 123 123 123 179 179 179 179 195 215 179 0 € 100 € 200 € 300 € 400 € 500 € 600 € 700 € 800 € 1/ 19 75 – 1 2/ 19 77 1/ 19 78 – 1 2/ 19 78 1/ 19 79 – 0 6/ 19 79 7/ 19 79 – 0 1/ 19 81 2/ 19 81 – 1 2/ 19 81 1/ 19 82 – 0 6/ 19 90 7/ 19 90 – 1 2/ 19 91 1/ 19 92 – 1 2/ 19 95 1/ 19 96 – 1 2/ 19 96 1/ 19 97 – 1 2/ 19 98 1/ 19 99 – 1 2/ 19 99 1/ 20 00 – 1 2/ 20 01 1/ 20 02 1 2/ 20 08 1/ 20 09 1 2/ 20 09 1/ 20 10 t o d ay ch ild a llo w an ce 1st child 2nd child 3rd child 4th child source: composition of various volumes of the statistical paperback of the federal ministry of labour and social affairs 2 about 90 % of german households with children receive child allowance. the other 10 %make use of the advantages resulting from their high household incomes in the form of an alternative tax exemption for dependent children. changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 69 child-raising allowance (‘erziehungsgeld’): in addition to child allowance, childraising allowance was also paid to families with children who were born before 2007. unlike child allowance, child-raising allowance was an income-dependent family benefi t. anyone who is not full-time employed, i.e. not employed for more than 30 hours per week, and whose household income is below defi ned income limits3 (e.g. € 30,000 per annum for couples and € 23,000 per annum for single parents with one child) could receive child-raising allowance. the entitlement period for receiving child-raising allowance was extended over time from ten months originally to 24 months subsequently. however, the amount of child-raising allowance (300 euros per month for a period of 24 months) and the household income limits were not raised after the allowance was introduced. however, as of 2001, it was possible to receive child-raising allowance for twelve months only, but with increased monthly payments amounting to a maximum of 450 euros. parental allowance (‘elterngeld’): in 2007, parental allowance replaced childraising allowance, with the objective of compensating income losses resulting from a temporary interruption of employment better than the relatively low payments of the child-raising allowance. the parental allowance amounts to 67 % of the net earnings of the parent applying to receive this benefi t, averaged over twelve months before the child’s birth, up to a maximum of 1,800 euros per month. a minimum amount of 300 euros (basic rate of the pre-existing child-raising allowance) is granted independently of previous gainful employment. if both parents are employed before birth, the designated partner who is caring for the child can receive parental allowance for a period of up to twelve months. two further months are added if the other parent also reduces her/his hours of work to less than 30 hours per week for two months. german politicians have adopted a clause derived from the scandinavian system which allows both parents to exercise their right to take time off with their newborn child. thus, parental allowance compensates the short-term monetary consequences of birth better than the previously paid child-raising allowance and, moreover, for the fi rst time, high-income households explicitly benefi t from family state aid to a considerable extent (deutsches institut für wirtschaftsforschung 2006). 3 specifi cation of hypotheses a positive or negative change in household income over time may be due to many factors (berntsen 1989). however, the majority of these can be categorised into four types: a changed participation in the labour market (e.g. due to retirement); a changed level of earned income (e.g. due to further training); changed payments of social benefi ts (e.g. due to unemployment) and a changed household size (e.g. due 3 if the household income of the fi rst six months after childbirth was above the income limits, there was no entitlement to child-raising allowance. starting from the seventh month, the childraising allowance was gradually reduced if the household income was above the income limits. • alexander schulze70 to divorce), which makes it necessary to reallocate existing monetary resources within the household. obviously, a birth is relevant with respect to all of these situations. first, children have a considerable effect on parents’ (mainly women’s) capacity to be employed (schröder/brüderl 2008; kenjoh 2005). second, there is ample research documenting that mothers experience a wage penalty due to the birth of a child, since a birth-related temporary interruption of employment is frequently associated with subsequent lower incomes after returning to work (kunze/ejrnaes 2004; budig/england 2001). conversely, fathers receive a family premium since the birth of a child is associated, on average, with an increase in men’s time spent at work and an increase in men’s hourly wages (kaufman/uhlenberg 2000). third, with the birth of a child, households become eligible for family benefi ts (e.g. child allowance and child-raising allowance). and fourth, birth implies an increase in the household size and thus an increase in the household’s needs. accordingly, the socioeconomic consequences of childbirth are connected with (a) a changed level and composition of the disposable household income (re-allocation of altered incomes to the household) and (b) the child’s costs of living (new distribution of total income within the household). the important question is which family characteristics are associated with the above-mentioned factors. pre-birth occupational status: it is a well-known fact that the time requirements of parenthood are one of the most important aspects of the monetary consequences of birth. neoclassical theories of fertility in particular (becker 1981) stress that childcare and employment both demand signifi cant amounts of time and therefore both areas of life compete strongly for one parent’s time. hence, the opportunity costs of fertility result from the potential earned income forgone due to the parent’s (usually the mother’s) time spent on childcare. in germany there are few possibilities (in particular for parents of infants younger than one year) to externalise the opportunity costs of time used for childcare (e.g. by making use of public childcare facilities) and/or most mothers do not want external childcare for their baby within the fi rst twelve months after birth (bien et al. 2007). therefore, short-term income losses from at least a temporary interruption of gainful employment are diffi cult to avoid. however, neoclassical economic theories do not account for the fact that the compatibility of occupation and family is not an individual but a household problem, as birth decisions are made within a relationship. employment-related income losses following birth are therefore not the result of an individual time confl ict (mostly the mother’s) but rather the result of a time confl ict at household level (ott 1989). such a household-related time confl ict exists, however, only if both parents were gainfully employed before birth. thus, if at least one parent was unemployed before the birth of a child, there are no household-related opportunity costs of childcare at household-level, since the employed partner does not have to give up her/his occupation in favour of childcare. in other words, if at least one parent lacks a regular earned income before birth, the household will not have to dispense an income due to birth. therefore, it can be hypothesised: changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 71 (h1) negative effects of a child’s birth on the household income are limited to families where both parents were employed before birth (because otherwise there would be no household-related time confl ict between occupation and childcare). calendar year of birth: considering the parents’ pre-birth occupational status, it must also be borne in mind that as a consequence of the modernisation of society (as a result of improved educational opportunities, for example) nowadays both partners are more frequently gainfully employed before the birth of their child. in addition, today women have, on average, higher incomes due to higher levels of education. both factors cause increasing household-related opportunity costs over time and thus lead to (on average) higher fi nancial burdens resulting from the birth of a child. furthermore, in the course of the modernisation of society, there has been a considerable increase in mothers’ ages when they give birth (engstler/ menning 2003; kreyenfeld 2002). this delay of births has followed from both women spending more years in education and a longer phase of gainful employment. this age effect has also increased the opportunity costs of birth over time due to income-relevant seniority effects (e.g. work experience). furthermore, the above-mentioned increase in income risks related to birth was not adequately compensated by german family state aid since the monetary benefi ts for families (child-allowance and child-raising allowance) and the infrastructure for successfully combining occupation and childcare were not adequately adjusted to the changed conditions of fertility in the last few decades. all in all, the mentioned cohort and age effects would cumulate in different income losses due to birth across the calendar years of birth. (h2) the loss of household income attributable to birth increases with the calendar year of birth (this is, fi rstly, due to an increase of household-related opportunity costs over time resulting from women’s higher level of education and their increased age when giving birth; and, secondly, family state aid was not adequately adapted to the changed conditions of fertility in the last few decades). number of the child in the birth sequence: in addition to the relations addressed so far, a further topic is the link between the monetary consequences of a birth with the child’s number in the birth order. two factors are of interest here: fi rstly, the different needs of fi rst, second and third children, and, secondly, the different prebirth occupational profi les of parents with a different number of children living in the household before another birth. theoretical arguments concerning the division of household labour (becker 1981) serve as a basis for the second area of focus. according to becker, childless couples frequently have not made a fi nal decision about the division of household labour and both partners are gainfully employed before the fi rst birth. however, starting with the fi rst birth, a bargaining process on the division of labour takes place between the partners, enforced by the household-related time confl ict between occupation and childcare (ott 1989). as a result of the bargaining process, a relatively stable division of labour between the partners is established (schulz/ • alexander schulze72 blossfeld 2006), i.e. one partner (mainly the father) is gainfully employed after the fi rst birth, whilst the other partner (usually the mother) cares for the children (malebreadwinner model). this transformation from a dualto a single-earner household induced by the fi rst birth leads to considerably lower household-related opportunity costs of second and further births, since one partner is already economically inactive before these births initiated by the fi rst birth. this is mainly due to the (empirically proven) fact that parents who wish to have more than one child normally plan to have their children in short succession (birg et al. 1990; kreyenfeld 2002) to fi t the birth of second and further children into the phase of one partner’s unemployment initiated by the fi rst child (schmitt 2007). accordingly, fi rst children in particular are associated with occupational restrictions and thus birth-related income losses (schulz/blossfeld 2006), whereas the household-related opportunity costs of birth are decreased with further children. moreover, the number of the child in the birth sequence is also of importance with respect to the child’s costs of living. it is widely accepted that fi rst children cause higher direct costs than second and subsequent children. this assumption is based on the microeconomic household theory which states that there are savings associated with each further household member (klein 1987). the direct costs for the fi rst child are higher because the birth of second and further children causes cost advantages resulting from the distribution of fi xed costs (economies of scale), e.g. costs of electricity and heating. besides, there are also savings from the further use by younger brothers and sisters of furniture, clothes and toys which had already been purchased for the fi rst child. thus, the extra costs of living for children decrease as the number of the child in the birth sequence rises. finally, it also has to be taken into consideration that, in germany, some family benefi ts are paid based on the child’s place in the birth sequence. as described above (see section 2), child allowance (‘kindergeld’) increases in line with the number of the child in the birth order. thus, the needs of a child are compensated better the later the child is in the birth sequence. (h3) socioeconomic consequences of birth decrease with a higher number of the child in the birth sequence (because of decreasing household-related opportunity costs with each child, a decline of direct costs in line with the number of the child in the birth sequence and partly higher state benefi ts for further children). pre-birth socioeconomic status: as well as the factors already discussed, the economic consequences of birth also depend on the household income before birth. it may usually be assumed that the higher the pre-birth household income, the higher the income losses, since there is more money to lose. however, it is also plausible that the relation between pre-birth household income levels and the income consequences of childbirths may not be linear, but inversely u-shaped, i.e. the loss of household income is fi rst increased with high pre-child household income, but then decreases in the highest income groups. the starting point for such an argument is the fact that as mentioned above, low-income households rarely have household-related opportunity costs at all, changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 73 since at least one parent is frequently not employed before the birth and, thus, can take over the childcare after the birth. additionally, potential income losses in low-income households may be absorbed by public aid benefi ts from the welfare state that guarantee a certain minimum income, which lifts up poor families to their previous (low) socioeconomic level. conversely, in middle-income households the incomes are too high to be eligible for such social benefi ts, and, both parents are more frequently employed, meaning that opportunity costs must be accepted. in principle, this is true for high-income households. however, they have a greater chance of externalising the potential wage losses since their relative costs of using external childcare options are lower compared to middle-income households. the latter argument follows a thesis by leibenstein (1974: 467), stating that opportunity costs do not result from (the mother’s) lost wages but rather from relative costs of childcare services during the mother’s (continued) employment (leibenstein 1974). in this respect, the possibility of externalising the potential wage losses (opportunity costs of fertility) is considerably increased in line with the pre-birth household income since the relative costs of external childcare, for example, employing a babysitter, are lower the higher the household income is. this means, before a highincome employment is given up, a specifi c proportion of the pre-birth earnings are used to free up time resources for the parents’ (continued) employment by purchasing childcare assistance (huinink/konietzka 2007). thus, the possibility of avoiding employment-related income losses is highest in high-income households. all in all, this can be summarised as follows: (h4) the socioeconomic consequences of births are highest in middle-income households (because unlike low-income households they have higher opportunity costs and unlike high-income households they have higher relative costs of externalising the opportunity costs). 4 data and methods most of the knowledge on the monetary consequences of childbirth is based on cross-sectional analyses which depict the post-birth socioeconomic situations of households with a different number of children in comparison to the socioeconomic situations of households that did not experience a birth. however, since some women and men are systematically less likely to have children than others (schröder/ brüderl 2008; budig 2003), such ex-post comparisons raise the problem that potential selection effects of fertility cannot be taken into account. for example, the unfavourable socioeconomic situation of families with many children compared to childless couples, measured with cross-sectional data, might not be caused by a birth but probably by the fact that couples, who have a large number of children, may have already been in a precarious situation before birth. in order to avoid this selection bias, it is necessary to control for household income levels before the birth in order to estimate the causal birth effect. therefore, this study focuses on a before-after design. the analyses focus on household income processes in families • alexander schulze74 in a longitudinal perspective to determine the short-term economic consequences of a birth (up to about twelve months after the birth event). all analyses are based on the german socio-economic panel 1984-2005, an annual longitudinal household survey of the non-institutionalised population living in germany (wagner et al. 2007). the focus is exclusively on two-parent households. single-parent households are not analysed (due to a small number of cases) although economic consequences of birth are a particular problem in such households. since the following calculations compare the household incomes of the year before the birth of a child with those of the year after the birth,4 the population examined is limited to households in which at least one birth took place between 1985 and 2004. furthermore, to allow the income and need effects of births to be clearly identifi ed, the households considered were only those in which the household size changed between the year before and after birth solely due to the birth event itself (e.g. an increase from two to three persons due to the birth of the fi rst child in a couple household). neither households in which more than one child was born (twin births) nor households in which sequential births followed each other at annual intervals were included in the analyses. within the limits imposed by these restrictions, 2,225 births (890 births of fi rst children, 982 of second and 353 of third children) were identifi ed, for which household income data was available for the year before and after birth. a central variable in determining births’ socioeconomic consequences is the monthly disposable household income. a separate calculation of the disposable household income resulting from the single net incomes of the household members was not necessary, since respondents were asked directly to state their monthly household income: “if you take a look at the total income from all members of the household: how high is the monthly household income today? please include regular income such as pensions, child allowance, etc.” these household incomes were adjusted for infl ation in line with the price index of the federal statistical offi ce of germany (statistisches bundesamt 2006). subsequently, the monthly equivalent household income was calculated as a function of the household disposable income divided by the sum of the individual need weights of the persons living in the household, whereas the need weights depend on the selected equivalence scale. the weights of the selected equivalence scale refl ect certain assumptions about the household members’ age-specifi c needs and about savings resulting from cost advantages of households with a large number of persons due to the distribution of fi xed costs (economies of scale). the choice of a specifi c equivalence scale, however, has been a matter of a consider4 therefore, births which took place at the time of the interviews between 1985 and 2004 are standardised on the event time t, irrespective of the actual year of birth. checking for possible period effects is nevertheless easy to do by controlling for the year of birth. changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 75 able debate, and a wide variety of scales have been advocated.5 the basis taken for computing the equivalent household income in this study is the modifi ed oecd scale, which evaluates the fi rst adult with a factor of 1.0, further persons from 15 years upwards with a factor of 0.5, and children under 15 years with a value of 0.3 (oecd 2005). both the disposable household income and the equivalence income are used as dependent variables. both dependent variables were logarithmised in order to make the interpretation of relative income changes possible, besides the wellknown methodological advantages. additionally, calendar year dummies were included into the models to control for period effects. several household characteristics are taken into account in order to determine the socioeconomic consequences of birth. information about the child’s position in the birth sequence (fi rst to third birth) can be directly derived from the variables available in the gsoep. by considering the year of birth, (a) the parents’ pre-birth occupational status (either both parents are employed or only one parent is employed or both parents are unemployed/economically inactive) and (b) the parents’ pre-birth working hours (either part-time or full-time) are derived. those who work at least one hour per week are considered to be gainfully employed (ilo defi nition). part-time employment is considered to be no more than 30 hours of occupational activity per week. in order to analyse the relation between the level of the pre-birth household income and the income consequences following a birth, the household’s affi liation to an income quartile based on the disposable household incomes before birth are calculated.6 for the analyses of the longitudinal data, fi xed effects panel regression models (fe models) were computed (wooldridge 2006; halaby 2004; allison 1994), since the use of standard regression models (e.g. pooled ols) usually results in biased regression estimates due to an endogeneity bias (i.e. the independent variables and the error term are correlated). a standard regression model would have calculated the effects of births on household income correctly only if there was no heterogeneity of the relevant characteristics in an (a) intra-personal and (b) inter-individual perspective. since neither of the mechanisms mentioned above can be appropriately controlled in standard models, at least regarding unobserved heterogeneity, the results are systematically biased (heckman/hotz 1989). with an fe model these 5 the choice of a specifi c equivalence scale is crucial since the extent of the different estimated individual needs of the different scales has a signifi cant impact on the results derived, i.e. depending on the chosen equivalence scale, very different equivalent household incomes may result (cowell/mercader-prats 1999). for example, the modifi ed oecd equivalence scale usually applied at european level implies a stronger accent on poverty in single-person households, while the use of the higher need weights of the ‘old’ oecd scale places more emphasis on the poverty in families with a large number of children (hauser 2002: 258). 6 the quartile-values are: q.25=1,022 euros in 1985 and q.25=1,553 euros in 2004; q.5o=1,329 euros in 1985 and q.5o=2,350 euros in 2004; q.75=1,789 euros in 1985 and q.75=3,400 euros in 2004. • alexander schulze76 problems are solved to a considerable extent, since time-constant independent factors are excluded from the statistical model. thus, time-constant heterogeneity is no longer a problem. admittedly, the problem arises that effects of time-constant covariates cannot be directly estimated with fe regressions. differences in the economic consequences of births concerning time-constant variables may only be revealed by computing different models for subgroups of the sample, e.g. separate models for each household income quartile (for details, see wooldridge 2006; halaby 2004; allison 1994). results of an alternative possible random-effects regression model (re model), which allows us to directly estimate the effects of time constant characteristics, are not reported since the hausman test (see hausman 1978) suggested that the results of the re model are biased. the statistics from the test show highly signifi cant differences between the fe and re estimators, indicating that the fe model is appropriate. the software package sas.v8.1 was used for all the analyses. 5 results prefacing the main results of the fe models, fi gure 2 provides information about the families whose socioeconomic situation worsened or improved between the year before and the year after the birth event. in terms of the disposable household incomes, it becomes clear that about 56 % of the households’ situations deteriorated fig. 2: birth-related changes in the household’s socio-economic situation in relation to the child’s position in the birth order 16% 34% 42% 56% 26% 22% 79% 50% 40% 60% 31% 65% 18% 16% 6% 14% 14% 13% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 1st child 2nd child 3rd child 1st child 2nd child 3rd child disposable household income change equivalent household income change s ha re o f h o us eh o ld s positive change no change negative change source: soep (1984-2005), own calculations changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 77 after the birth of the fi rst child, whereas this happened to only about every fourth household following the second or third birth (26 and 22 % respectively). thus, while losses result from initially starting a family (i.e. the birth of the fi rst child), many households face no household income losses, or even see income increases during the phase of family extension (i.e. the birth of second and third children). for example, the disposable household income in 60 % of the families with second or third births is higher one year after the birth than it was in the year before these births. in contrast to the changes in the disposable household income, the changes in the equivalent household income show that much more families experience losses from births (due to the additional needs of each newborn child and the associated re-distribution of the disposable household income after birth). accordingly, more households are affected by a reduction of their equivalent household incomes: about 79 % of the households experienced a fi nancial cut following the fi rst birth, 50 % as a result of the second birth, and 40 % of the households following the third birth. despite the evidence that many families suffer negative equivalent income changes with the birth of a child, fi gure 2 also shows that, with a rising number of children, some families actually improved their equivalent incomes with the birth of a child. thus, for 16 % of households with the fi rst birth, 34 % with the second birth and 42 % with the third birth, not only did the disposable household income improve but also the equivalent income. therefore, not every birth – as is frequently implicitly assumed – is connected with a deterioration of the household’s socioeconomic situation. according to the data, it cannot even be assumed that negative consequences of the birth of a child are the dominant pattern. this raises the question of what the determinants of an improved or decreased socioeconomic situation attributable to birth are. table 1 shows, as an initial result of the multivariate analyses, the average effect of a birth on the household’s socioeconomic situation in relation to the child’s position in the birth order. the left-hand side of the table shows the relative effects of a birth on the disposable household income log(y), while the right-hand side indicates the relative effects on the equivalent household income log(y). it can be seen that fi rst births are connected with, on average, a loss in disposable household income of 6.6 %. conversely, second births are accompanied by increases in the disposable household incomes of 8.8 %, and third births by increases of 10.8 %. considering the children’s need effects (i.e. the equivalent household income), fi rst births, on average, lead to losses of 25.1 %, second births to losses of 6.5 % and third births to losses of 2.7 %. (the relatively small negative change connected with third births does not reach a level of statistical signifi cance). this shows that considerable negative socioeconomic consequences result mainly from the family’s formation (i.e. from the birth of the fi rst child), while further births are accompanied only by moderate to marginal negative or even by positive socioeconomic conse• alexander schulze78 tab. 1: determinants of relative income changes following a birth (fixedeffects models) log disposable household income (y) log equivalent household income (y) o v e r a l l 1) 1st child -0.066*** -0.251*** 2nd child 0.088*** -0.065*** 3rd child 0.108*** -0.027*** n 4450 4450 r2 0.157 0.138 c a l e n d a r y e a r o f t h e b i r t h e v e n t 1985-89 1990-94 1995-99 2000-04 1985-89 1990-94 1995-99 2000-04 1st child -0.029*** -0.044*** -0.071*** -0.148*** -0.197*** -0.228*** -0.253*** -0.329*** 2nd child 0.131*** 0.102*** 0.103*** -0.010*** 0.010*** -0.052*** -0.050+ -0.163*** 3rd child 0.145*** 0.086+ 0.102*** 0.058*** 0.046*** -0.051*** -0.034*** -0.083*** n2) 870 1032 1182 1366 870 1032 1182 1366 r2 0.146 0.206 0.155 0.145 0.126 0.180 0.135 0.132 h o u s e h o l d i n c o m e l e v e l b e f o r e t h e b i r t h e v e n t 1) ,2) 1. quartile 2. quartile 3. quartile 4. quartile 1. quartile 2. quartile 3. quartile 4. quartile 1st child 0.289*** -0.058*** -0.148*** -0.241*** 0.103*** -0.242*** -0.332*** -0.425*** 2nd child 0.279*** 0.084*** 0.026*** -0.148*** 0.127*** -0.069*** -0.127*** -0.299*** 3rd child 0.241*** 0.107*** 0.046+ 0.110*** -0.031*** -0.090*** n 936 1446 1284 784 936 1446 1284 784 r2 0.252 0.361 0.330 0.198 0.270 0.294 0.220 0.164 n u m b e r o f p a r e n t s i n e m p l o y m e n t b e f o r e t h e b i r t h e v e n t 1) none one botha) bothb) none one botha) bothb) 1st child 0.218*** 0.155*** -0.030*** -0.155*** 0.049*** -0.033*** -0.212*** -0.339*** 2nd child 0.342*** 0.147*** -0.022*** -0.113*** 0.201*** -0.007*** -0.174*** -0.262*** 3rd child 0.239*** 0.137*** -0.012*** 0.122*** -0.003*** -0.159*** n 176 2000 616 1332 176 2000 616 1332 r2 0.179 0.152 0.124 0.152 0.194 0.164 0.118 0.119 ***p<0.001; **p<0.01; *p<0.05; +p<0.1 1) checked for the calendar year of the birth. 2) the quartile lies at: q.25=1,022 euros in 1985 and q.25=1,553 euros in 2004; q.5o=1,329 euros in 1985 and q.5o=2,350 euros in 2004; q.75=1,789 euros in 1985 and q.75=3,400 euros in 2004. a) one parent is employed full-time and one part-time. b) both parents are employed full-time. source: gsoep (1984-2005) changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 79 quences.7 thus, the results support the hypothesis that the negative socioeconomic consequences resulting from birth decrease in line with the child’s position in the birth order. regarding the disposable household income and the calendar year of birth, the results in table 1 indicate that the income consequences of the birth of a child have clearly increased over the last two decades. between the years of 1985 and 1989, for example, the birth of the fi rst child was connected with a non-signifi cant income decrease of -2.9 %, while fi rst births between 2000 and 2004 were linked with a signifi cant income loss of -14.8 %. this means that the fi nancial consequences of fi rst births in 2004 were almost fi ve times as high as fi fteen to twenty years earlier (potentially as a result of women’s increasing educational and occupational participation, women’s increased age when giving birth and/or the relative stagnation of the monetary state aid). a corresponding picture is also observable in terms of the equivalent household income changes following a birth. for example, while second and third births, on average, had no negative consequences for households at the end of the 1980s, corresponding births between 2000 and 2004 reduced the equivalence incomes by -16.3 % (for second births) and by -8.3 % (for third births). in a similar way, the already high income losses of -19.7 % brought about by the birth of the fi rst child in the period 1985-1989 increased to -32.9 % in the period 2000-2004. another hypothesis of this paper focuses on the dependence of the socioeconomic consequences of the birth of a child on the households’ pre-birth income levels. in this respect, the results show that negative fi nancial consequences increase in line with the level of household income reached before a birth event (based on the affi liation to income quartiles). in the lowest (fi rst) income quartile, for example, the birth of the fi rst child implies an average disposable household income increase of 28.9 %. hence, low-income households benefi t from childbirths. in contrast, in households belonging to the second income quartile, the birth of the fi rst child causes a disposable household income loss of -5.8 %. in households belonging to the third quartile, this loss amounts to -14.8 %, and in the fourth income quartile, fi rst births lead to a loss of -24.1 %. changes in the equivalent household income show similar patterns. the fi gure referring to the economic consequences of fi rst births in the fourth income quartile is particularly remarkable. households belonging to the highest income quartile before the birth of the fi rst child lost, on average, -42.5 % of their equivalent household income due to the birth. 7 since the employment patterns of women differ considerably between east and west germany, the socioeconomic consequences of births were also calculated separately for each region. the respective (non-documented) results revealed that disposable and equivalent household income losses following birth clearly increased in eastern germany. for example, fi rst births are connected with, on average, a loss in disposable household incomes of 16.4 % in eastern germany, compared to 5.5 % in western germany. the fi gures for second (and third) births are -9.6 % (+1.0 %) in eastern germany and +9.8 % (+10.9 %) in western germany. • alexander schulze80 finally, the results in table 1 indicate that negative household income changes occurred only in two-parent households where both parents were employed before birth. if one parent was employed full-time and the other parent part-time, the income losses amounted to 3.0 % for the fi rst birth, 2.2 % for the second and 1.2 % for the third birth. if both parents were employed full-time, the income losses clearly increased to approximately 10 % with every birth. if only one parent was employed before birth, disposable household incomes increased: in households with only one employed parent, we see a rise of about 15.5 % at the fi rst birth, 14.7 % at the second birth and 13.7 % at the third birth. if both parents were not employed before birth, the income increases were even higher. 6 concluding remarks the purpose of this study was to clarify the impact of birth events on the socioeconomic status of german two-parent families one year after birth. changes in the disposable and equivalent household income around childbirths in relation to the children’s position in the birth sequence, the parents’ pre-birth occupational profi les, the household income positions before birth and the year of birth were of particular interest. to this end, longitudinal data of the gsoep 1984-2005 was analysed by estimating fi xed effects panel regression models. thus, the results obtained are, in contrast to the fi ndings of cross-sectional studies to date, in fact attributable to the birth events. nevertheless, it is to be noted that the fi ndings might be biased on the one hand, for parents choosing to have a child because they expect an income increase in the near future, which only appears in the estimates postpartum and on the other hand, for parents which forego job opportunities within twelve months before birth due to the projected childbirth. the results presented here, fi rstly, have shown that a household’s loss in disposable and equivalent income related to the childbirth is inversely proportional to the child’s number in the birth order. this means that couples suffer the greatest economic losses as a result of starting a family, not as a result of adding to it. in addition to the effects of the children’s position in the birth sequence, the paper has focused on the couples’ employment status before birth and related effects on subsequent earnings up to one year after the birth event. the respective analysis shows that losses in the disposable household incomes only occurred where both parents had been employed before birth. where only one or neither of the parents had been employed in the year preceding the birth event, the household income in the year following the birth was higher than before. these fi ndings suggest that the current conditions are economically most benefi cial for households that had a traditional division of labour before the birth event (male breadwinner households). in cases where both parents were employed beforehand, a situation seen almost exclusively before the birth of the fi rst child, state-granted supplements were not suffi cient to compensate for the short-term losses induced by one parent’s temporary interruption of gainful employment. changes in family income around the time of birth of children in germany • 81 the third focus of the article was the issue of differences in birth-related socioeconomic consequences depending on the households’ pre-birth income levels. the analyses presented have shown that household income losses due to birth dramatically increased in line with the level of the pre-birth household income. while birth-related income increases were seen in the lowest income group, households in the upper income classes suffered income losses, some losing over 40 % of their equivalent household incomes. furthermore, the results indicate that the negative household income consequences of fertility have grown with the year of birth, and that today, they are almost fi ve times as high as at the end of the 1980s. this result highlights the fact that the state payments to families have not been suffi ciently adapted to the changed conditions of fertility (e.g. to the increased participation of women in the labour market and the increased age of mothers when they give birth). the analyses, seen as a whole, suggest the need for more specifi c state aid in family support, as the reduction of income inequalities between childless households and families is a priority objective of german family policy. additionally, the proven fi nancial effects of starting a family also draw attention to the obstacles that currently still deter a considerable number of potential parents. according to the results presented, the german family policy should be more focused on the barriers to starting a family.8 therefore, beside the further improvement of adequate infrastructural conditions which allow mothers to be employed, also the payments aiming at compensating for child-related costs (‘child allowance’) should be adjusted. in contrast to the present practice, they should be asymmetrically distributed, i.e. higher child benefi t payments should be paid for the fi rst children than for second and further children. references allison, paul d., 1994: using panel data to estimate the effect of events. in: sociological methods & research 23: 174-199 bäcker, gerhard, 2003: child and family poverty in germany. in: krause, peter; bäcker, gerhard; hanesch, walter (hrsg.): combating poverty in europe: the german welfare regime in practice. ashgate: aldershot: 289-304 becker, gary s., 1981: a treatise on the family. cambridge: harvard university press 8 it is a well-known fact that the overall fertility rate in germany has clearly decreased over the last few decades. however, this is mainly due to an increase in the number of childless women and not to a lack in mothers’ willingness to extend their family. respective studies show that the 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suhrkamp kenjoh, eiko, 2005: new mothers´ employment and public policy in the uk, germany, the netherlands, sweden, and japan. in: labour 19: 5-49 klein, thomas, 1987: sozialer abstieg und verarmung von familien durch arbeitslosigkeit. eine mikroanalytische untersuchung für die bundesrepublik deutschland. frankfurt am main: campus klein, thomas, 2003: die geburt von kindern in paarbezogener perspektive. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 32: 506-527 kreyenfeld, michaela, 2002: parity specifi c birth rates for west germany: an attempt to combine survey data and vital statistics. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 27,3: 327-357 kunze, astrid; ejrnaes, mette, 2004: wage dips and drops around fi rst birth. discussion paper 1011. bonn: forschungsinstitut zur zukunft der arbeit (iza) leibenstein, harvey, 1974: an interpretation of the economic theory of fertility: promising path or blind alley? in: journal of economic literature 12: 457-479 oecd, 2005: what are equivalence scales? oecd 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[url: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/52/35411111.pdf] ott, notburga, 1989: familienbildung und familiale entscheidungsfi ndung aus verhandlungstheoretischer sicht. in: wagner, gert; ott, notburga; hoffmann-nowotny, hansjoachim (hrsg.): familienbildung und erwerbstätigkeit im demographischen wandel. berlin: springer: 97-116 schmitt, christian, 2007: familiengründung und erwerbstätigkeit im lebenslauf. in: aus politik und zeitgeschichte 2007,7: 3-8 schröder, jette; brüderl, josef, 2008: der effekt der erwerbstätigkeit von frauen auf die fertilität: kausalität oder selbstselektion. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 37: 117-136 schulz, florian; blossfeld, hans-peter, 2006: wie verändert sich die häusliche arbeitsteilung im eheverlauf? eine längsschnittstudie der ersten 14 ehejahre in westdeutschland. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 58: 23-49 schulze, alexander, 2009: sozioökonomische konsequenzen der fertilität. folgen der geburt von kindern für den wohlstand von paarhaushalten. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften statistisches bundesamt, 2005: leben und arbeiten in deutschland. ergebnisse des mikrozensus 2004. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt statistisches bundesamt, 2006: preise. verbraucherpreisindizes für deutschland. lange reihen ab 1948. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt statistisches bundesamt, 2007: datenreport 2006. zahlen und fakten über die bundesrepublik deutschland. berlin: bundeszentrale für politische bildung • alexander schulze84 u.s. census bureau, 2006: current population reports: income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the united states: 2005. washington dc.: u.s. government printing offi ce u.s. census bureau, 2004: global population profi le: 2002. international population reports. washington, dc.: u.s. government printing offi ce: wagner, gert g.; frick, joachim r.; schupp, jürgen, 2007: the german socio-economic panel study (soep) – scope, evolution and enhancements. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127: 139-169 wooldridge, jeffrey m., 2006: introductory econometrics. a modern approach. mason: thomson a german translation of this authorised original article by the author is available under the title “einkommensveränderungen von familien rund um die geburt von kindern in deutschland zwischen 1985 und 2004”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-03de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-201003de8, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. alexander schulze ( ), universität mainz, institut für soziologie colonel-kleinmann weg 2, d-55099 mainz. e-mail: schulal@uni-mainz.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility in the uk* peteke feijten, maarten van ham abstract: union dissolution is well known to have a disruptive effect on the housing situation of those involved, and often leads to downward moves on the “housing ladder”. much less is known about the geographies of residential mobility after union dissolution. there are, however, reasons to expect that those who experienced a union dissolution have a different likelihood of moving over longer distances than those who stay in a union, because of different moving motives. this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the occurrences of moves, distances moved and the destinations of moves after union dissolution. the paper also contributes to the literature by investigating the effect on mobility not only of divorce, but also of splitting up and repartnering. using longitudinal data from the british household panel survey (bhps), and logistic regression models, we found that union dissolution has a signifi cant effect on the occurrence of moves and on moving distances. keywords: union dissolution · splitting up · divorce · housing career · spatial mobility · longitudinal data · bhps · united kingdom 1 introduction since the 1960s, there has been a large increase in divorce rates in most of the western world. the annual number of divorces in the united kingdom increased from 25,000 in 1960 to almost 150,000 in 1980. the number has stayed around this level ever since. as a consequence of the rise in divorce rates, an increasing proportion of all marriages now includes at least one previously-divorced partner. of all comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 405-432 (date of release: 29.05.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-10en2 * an earlier version of this paper was published as an iza working paper (no. 5628) under the title “the impact of union dissolution on moving distances and destinations in the uk” (feijten/van ham 2011). • peteke feijten, maarten van ham406 men who married in the uk in 2007, 27 percent were previously divorced, against 22 percent in 1980 and 9 percent in 1970 (ons 2007a). divorce has thus become a common life event for a signifi cant percentage of the population. in this study, we take a broad view on union dissolution, and include both divorce and the dissolution of non-marital unions, to which we will refer as “splitting up”. unmarried cohabitation has become a precursor to marriage for many people. the majority of cohabitees whose cohabitation is successful will eventually proceed to marriage. a smaller group remains unmarried, and these cohabitations are more permanent and have the same durable character as a marriage (kiernan/estaugh 1993). no offi cial statistics are available on the number of cohabiting unions and subsequent split ups (because cohabitation is an unregistered living arrangement in the uk). we do, however, know from survey research that the number of unmarried cohabiters has increased considerably in recent decades. a commonly used indicator of this trend is the sharp rise in live births to unmarried mothers as a percentage of all live births (bumpass/lu 2000), from about 6 percent in 1960 to more than 41 percent in 2005 (ons 2007b). unmarried cohabitation has now partly replaced marriage as a durable form of living together. in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the high divorce rates became consolidated, a number of studies investigated the effects of divorce on housing careers (sullivan 1986; schouw/dieleman 1987; clapham et al. 1993; jackson 1990; murphy 1990; symon 1990; wasoff/dobash 1990; watchman 1990; mccarthy/simpson 1991; van noortwijk et al. 1992). these studies showed that divorce has a disruptive effect on the housing careers of those involved, often leading to downward moves on the housing ladder (feijten 2005a/b): moves from large to smaller and lower quality dwellings, moves from owner-occupation into rented housing and from single-family dwellings into multi-family dwellings (see feijten/van ham 2010 for a recent study using uk data). similar effects were found for the split up of non-marital unions, although the effects were less severe than for the divorced (feijten 2005a/b). an aspect of post-divorce and post-split up housing careers that received much less attention is the spatial mobility of those involved in union dissolution (recent exceptions are flowerdew and al-hamad 2004 for the uk; and feijten and van ham 2007 for the netherlands). there are good conceptual reasons to believe that union dissolution has an effect on the occurrence of moves, distances moved and the moving destinations of those involved because moves triggered by divorce are deviant compared to moves triggered by other life events. for people who have children from a previous relationship, there is an extra element that might infl uence spatial behaviour: they are likely to have a desire to stay in close proximity to the home of their ex-partner for the sake of (contact with) their children. this seriously limits their spatial mobility choices. repartnering can lead to even more complicated spatial arrangements and constraints when both partners in a household have children from previous unions. such situations may seriously reduce the willingness of people to move over longer distances (beyond the usual factors for lowering long distance moves in this life course phase, such as having a secure job, and increasing age). on the macro level, this may reduce workers’ spatial fl exibility. the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 407 this paper will contribute in three ways to the existing literature on the effects of union dissolution on housing careers (the term “career” having a neutral meaning denoting sequences of events over the life course). firstly, it will focus solely on spatial aspects of housing careers, including the occurrence of moves, distances moved, and the destinations of moves after union dissolution. secondly, we will take into account the rise in cohabitation and study the effect of both splitting up and divorce on spatial mobility. thirdly, we will look at the effect of repartnering on spatial careers. 2 background union dissolution, housing and mobility the effects of divorce on housing careers are well documented. clapham and col-and colleagues leagues (1993) found that, after separation and divorce, men were more successful in staying in owner-occupation than women (50 versus 44 percent, see also symon 1990). helderman (2007) showed that for the netherlands over the period 1981-2002, the most common reason for moving from owner-occupation into rented housing was divorce/separation, especially for women. twice as many moving divorcees reported a decrease in the number of rooms than reported an increase (wasoff/dobash 1990). lack of amenities was twice as common among divorced women compared to married women (murphy 1990); those divorced women were often childless, and the lack of amenities was frequently associated with living in the private rented sector. divorced people were also reported to live less often in single family dwellings than married families, even when the presence of dependent children was controlled for (sullivan 1986; murphy 1990). a recent study using data from the british household panel survey (bhps) confi rmed that union dissolutions have severe implications for housing careers in the uk (feijten/van ham 2010). the opposite has been studied as well: whether married or cohabiting people who often move are more likely to break up (boyle et al. 2008). using a method for jointly estimating the events of union dissolution and moving, their model allowed for both directions of causality, and it was found that moving (especially long-distance moving) has an effect on the risk of union dissolution. in this paper, however, we look particularly at moving behaviour in the period after union dissolution, which, because of the chronological sequence, can only indicate an effect of union dissolution on mobility. several studies have shown that it takes a series of moves before divorced people once more live in housing they see as suitable (mccarthy/simpson 1991; watchman 1990; jackson 1990). mccarthy and simpson (1991) found that 20 percent of their sample of 1,122 people made more than two moves in the period after separation (up to three years after divorce). divorcees with dependent children made fewer moves (a maximum of fi ve) than those without dependent children (some of whom made more than eight moves). wasoff and dobash (1990) found different effects of union dissolution on housing at the moment of separation, the period between separation and divorce, the moment of divorce, and the post-divorce period. • peteke feijten, maarten van ham408 the initial separation was found to lead to a move by one of the partners, and in some cases by both. in the period between separation and the divorce settlement, the majority of people moved house at least once, and often more than once. a limited number of studies has also investigated the spatial aspects of housing careers after union dissolution. feijten and van ham (2007) showed for the netherlands that, directly after a union dissolution, people move more often than people in other living arrangements. although their mobility rate decreased over time, it remained higher than that of their married counterparts for several years after the event. a study by south and crowder (1998) used data from the us to show that children in post-divorce families moved to signifi cantly poorer neighbourhoods than children in intact two-parent families. these were often moves from suburbs to city centres (which in the american context often equates to moving to poorer areas). this was mainly attributable to differences in economic resources between these types of families. a study by feijten et al. (2008) showed for the netherlands that those who were divorced, or who had split up, were more likely to move to the cities than people with other marital statuses, and less likely to move to rural areas. an older study for germany (kemper 1985) also found that divorced men and women were more likely to move to city centres than others. feijten and van ham (2007) found for the netherlands that people moved over shorter distances after a union dissolution than others, especially shortly after the break up. they also found that people were more likely to move into the cities after a union dissolution, and to stay in cities once they lived there, than married people (feijten/van ham 2007). why divorce and splitting up can be expected to affect spatial mobility there is a close relationship between household and housing careers in the life course. life events such as getting married and having children often coincide with upward moves on the housing ladder (rossi 1955; brown/moore 1970; michelson 1977; mulder/hooimeijer 1999; feijten 2005b). the split up of unmarried couples or the divorce of married couples inevitably results in major changes in the household confi guration and subsequently in changing requirements with regard to the dwelling and the location of the dwelling. there are several reasons why splitting up and divorce can be expected to have implications for the housing career. this is because moves triggered by union dissolution are deviant compared to those triggered by other life events. moves triggered by union dissolution are: 1) urgent, 2) fi nancially restricted, and 3) spatially restricted (feijten/van ham 2007; see also feijten/van ham, 2010). because those involved in a decision to split up or to have a divorce usually want to put that decision into effect as soon as possible, subsequent moves are urgent. as a result, most people simply have to accept the fi rst available housing option, which is often suboptimal. it can then take several moves before they are able to fi nd accommodation which they see as suitable. moves triggered by union dissolution are also fi nancially restricted because they often coincide with a decline in resources, especially when personal income is lower than the previous household income (jarvis/jenkins 1999; poortman/fokkema 2001; aassve et the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 409 al. 2006). this leads us to expect that divorced and split up people move more often than married and cohabiting people (hypothesis 1). moves triggered by union dissolution can also be expected to be spatially restricted (feijten/van ham 2007). a study by symon (1990) reported that after a union dissolution, some people were intentionally looking for accommodation in a different area, to make a fresh start, to move back to the area where family and (old) friends live, to avoid contact with the ex-spouse and/or his/her family, or to move away from a place fi lled with bad memories (see also jackson 1990; watchman 1990). anthony (1997), on the other hand, found that some people desperately wanted to stay in their matrimonial home because they said it was fi lled with memories of better times. others prefer to stay close to the former matrimonial home for employment reasons and nearness to friends and family. location-specifi c capital (davanzo 1981) can be a lifeline for people who are suddenly on their own after a union dissolution, and feelings of attachment to a place (feldman 1990; winstanley et al. 2002) may be particularly strong after a divorce. when a couple has (young) children, and both parents are committed to taking shared responsibility for the upbringing, moves after a union dissolution are severely spatially restricted. custody of the children is usually granted to one of the partners (mostly the mother), and some meeting arrangement is agreed for the other parent. for the sake of the children, the couple often decides that the partner who gets custody stays in the matrimonial home, but if that is not possible, the preference to stay close to the matrimonial home is often very strong in order to change as little as possible in the children’s daily life. for non-custody parents, living close to where the children live can be essential for maintaining a close bond with them. it has been found in danish data that non-custody fathers live at a signifi cantly closer distance to their children than childless men live to the home of their ex-partner (gram-hanssen 2006). it was found in a study for the netherlands that the mean distance moved by divorced people is shorter than that of people who have never married and people in a fi rst relationship. in particular divorced men with children were found to move over short distances (feijten/van ham 2007). a recent quantitative study from sweden found that many divorcees whose children live with the other parent continue to live close to their children. of all non-residential fathers, 84 percent lived within 50 kilometres from their children (stjernström 2009a). an accompanying qualitative study (stjernström 2009b) showed that parents of young children often found it important to live at a very close distance (walking distance). feelings of guilt towards the child(ren) were a major motivation behind this, together with a longing to maintain a very close bond with the child(ren). evidence from norway (barlindhaug/skjørten 2007) suggests that joint custody arrangements (where the children live one half of the week with their mother and the other half of the week with their father) lead to ex-partners living close together, where in 50 percent of the cases they live within walking distance (and within a maximum travel time of half an hour in 96 percent of cases). this seriously limits the residential choice set for jointcustody parents, and even more so for those who have repartnered with someone who also has children from a previous relationship (barlindhaug/skjørten 2007). although we have presented arguments predicting greater moving distances as • peteke feijten, maarten van ham410 well as arguments predicting shorter moving distances after union dissolution, we expect overall that divorced and split up people move over shorter distances than married and cohabiting people; this is expected to be especially true for divorced/ split up parents (hypothesis 2). many married couples, especially those with children, live in suburban neighbourhoods with a mono-residential function, where attributes such as a large-sized home and garden space, easy access to schools and convenience shops, and a short driving distance to motorways, are important. these elements may become less important after a divorce. elements such as the availability of affordable (smaller, rented) housing, a lively and anonymous living environment, closeness to a large supply of jobs and a large pool of potential new partners may become more important. urban environments offer these attributes, and thus cities can be expected to attract divorcees, in favour of suburbs and rural areas. thus we expect that divorced and split up people move to cities more often than married and cohabiting people (hypothesis 3). lastly, entering a new household type after union dissolution may generate a shift in preferences concerning the residential environment. when people fi nd a new partner after splitting up or divorce, their circumstances, desires and needs may change again. repartnering often leads to an increase in household resources, especially for women (dewilde/uunk 2008; coleman et al. 2000). residential preferences may change due to an increased household size, and partly due to lifestyle changes. this leads us to expect that the location choices of those who repartner after union dissolution will resemble those of married people, but that their spatial behaviour will be restricted if there are children from the previous relationship. the above leads us to expect that people in a new relationship move less often, over longer distances, and move less frequently into cities than the divorced/separated (hypothesis 4). 3 data and method data the data analysed are from the british household panel survey (bhps), which is a nationally representative stratifi ed sample of 5,500 households (10,300 interviewed individuals) drawn from 250 areas of great britain in 1991. additional booster samples for scotland, wales and northern ireland were added later, but we only use the original 1991 sample for this study. the same individuals have been re-interviewed on a large number of topics in each successive year since 1991. we have used a panel of 14 years for our analyses, and we have only used respondents who were the head of the household or the partner of the head of the household. we excluded person-years over age 70 (because the elderly have a different moving pattern altogether), person-years of widowhood (because they constitute a different category of marital status which is beyond the scope of this paper), and person-years when people were in full-time education (because they usually have not yet started the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 411 their independent housing careers). lastly, we excluded respondents on whom too much background information was missing (such as income and housing tenure), or whose move status was unknown.1 the remaining sample contains 74,711 personyears representing 8,800 respondents. the number of years in which respondents in our sample are observed ranges from one year (9.7 percent of respondents) to 13 years (34.1 percent of respondents). in the fi rst few waves of the bhps, people were interviewed about their life histories until the start of the panel, such as their fertility and relationship history. this allowed us to calculate the duration of the marital status that they had in the fi rst wave (and adjust this timevaryingly in the successive panel years). the retrospective information also allowed us to determine whether people in the 1st wave who had never married had cohabited in the past, and therefore had to be categorised as “split up” in wave 1. and whether married people were in a higher order marriage in the 1st wave, and therefore had to be categorised as “in a new relationship” in wave 1. completed fertility histories meant that we could identify parents whose children do not live in their household (mostly non-custody fathers and a few noncustody mothers). a potential problem when studying mobility with panel data is that those who move are more likely to leave the panel compared to those who stay. buck (2000) has shown that although this problem is present in the bhps, its effect on the study of residential mobility and migration is limited because only a small percentage of movers disappear without leaving any information. however, there is a risk that those who disappear from the panel are disproportionately people who recently separated/divorced or split up. this would lead to an undercounting of divorcees/split-up people, but it does not necessarily bias the results because there is no obvious reason to think that divorcees who leave the panel behave differently than divorcees who stay in the panel. variables the table in appendix 1 lists all the variables used in the analyses and gives selected summary statistics. a few of these variables need some additional explanation. the living arrangement variable was created by using marital status and comparing this in each wave with the relationship history (including relationship history before the start of the panel – see previous section). this allowed us to determine dissolutions of cohabiting unions and of married unions. it also allowed us to determine when people entered a new union, either right upon split up or divorce, or after a spell of being single after a union dissolution. this resulted in six living arrangement categories: 1. married (in a fi rst marriage); 1 because mover status is derived by comparing the current place of residence and the previous place of residence (one year ago), move status was unknown for everyone in the fi rst year of the panel. all observations from 1991 were discarded as a result of this. • peteke feijten, maarten van ham412 2. never married (lives alone and has not been married or cohabited, also not before the start of the panel); 3. cohabiting (in a fi rst cohabiting relationship with an unmarried partner); 4. divorced (lives alone after separation or divorce from the marriage partner); 5. split up (lives alone after splitting up from an unmarried partner); 6. new relationship (lives in cohabiting or married union and has previously been in a union (either cohabiting or married), either before or during the panel). for those who were in a union at the time of the fi rst wave, the relationship duration was calculated using the reported start year of the marital status. if people changed marital status during the panel, the duration count started again at zero. for the people who were not in a union in the 1st wave, it was not possible to calculate a duration. to solve this problem statistically, we created a dummy indicating a missing value on duration, and we substituted the actual missing duration score for the mean duration of all other cases (cohen/cohen 1975). we used the same technique for the handful of people who did not report the starting date of their current marital status. the lowest geographical level that can be analysed using the bhps without a special licence are the 434 local authority districts (lads). for reasons of data confi dentiality, lads were aggregated if their population was below 120,000, which resulted in 277 lad areas that can be analysed in the bhps. we labelled each lad as “urban” or “rural”, based on a multiple-item area classifi cation developed by the offi ce of national statistics. we also attached the variable “distance moved” to our data. distance was calculated by the bhps team using distances between centroids of wards (low spatial level units (n=8855), each comprising on average 600 people), and is expressed in kilometres. method we study the following aspects of housing and mobility after union dissolution: occurrence of moving (how often do people in certain living arrangements move?); and for those who move the distance moved and the likelihood of moving to a city. for each aspect, we fi rst analyse the association with living arrangement in a base model, which does not control for other factors. we then add duration of living arrangement and then control for the usual individual and household background variables. the risk of moving is analysed in a logistic panel model because panel models are apt to capture the time dimension of being at risk from experiencing a move. once we know the risk structure of moving for people in different living arrangements, we subsequently analyse movers only. distance moved is analysed using ols regression. moving distance is not normally distributed as many people move very short distances and few people move long distances. the use of ols with a dependent variable which is right skewed is suboptimal. the residuals of the ols model more closely approach a normal the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 413 distribution, but are also right skewed. this suggests that the model is less capable of predicting long distances than short distances. we still prefer to use ols as the alternatives are also suboptimal. one such alternative is to use a transformation of the dependent variable (distance) using a log function. the log of distance more closely approaches a normal distribution, but has a major disadvantage, namely that the tail on the right-hand side of the distribution is reduced, narrowing the spread of values. modelling moving distance using the log of distance is therefore less suitable for our purposes in our opinion, as we are interested in long-distance moves as well. it is important to note that the outcomes of models using the log of distance are globally robust compared to the ols models without transformation. another alternative is to dichotomise the dependent variable distance. this however reduces the amount of information available and does not do justice to the phenomenon being researched. we therefore rejected this option. a fi nal alternative is to use a different model distribution function such as poisson. however, poisson is suitable for phenomena with low counts and low means, but unsuitable for data with a large number of counts and with a larger mean, as in our case. the use of ols is preferable in these cases (macdonald/lattimore 2010). the event of moving to a city (for those living in non-urban local authority districts) is analysed using a logistic regression model. because of the possibility of several moves per person in the sample, the standard errors in our models are corrected for non-independent observations using the huber-white estimator (huber 1967). 4 results moving occurrence we expected that divorced people would move more often than their married counterparts, and that people who split up would move more often than their cohabiting counterparts (hypothesis 1). the results from model 1 in table 1 support the fi rst part of the hypothesis, but not the second. those who have split up are as likely to move as those who cohabit. once we control for duration of the living arrangement in model 2, the main effects become less pronounced, but remain positive and signifi cant. duration of living arrangement has a negative effect on the probability of moving: the longer one is in a certain living arrangement, the lower is the likelihood of moving. after controlling for durations in model 2, divorced people are still 1.5 times more likely to move than married people (exp(0.42)). to check whether the effect of duration on the probability of moving works out differently for people in different living arrangements, we interacted living arrangement with duration (see model 3 in table 1). this model also controls for a range of variables known to affect the probability of moving. all the effects of these control variables are as expected based on the relevant residential mobility literature. the main effects and interaction effects of living arrangement and duration are plotted in figure 1 as relative risks. as in table 1, the married are the reference category, • peteke feijten, maarten van ham414 ta b . 1 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n o f t he a nn ua l p ro b ab ili ty o f m o vi ng (r ef = n o t m o vi ng ) ( n = 7 4, 71 1) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e .a c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . li vi ng a rr an ge m en t (r ef = m ar ri ed ) si ng le (n ev er m ar ri ed /n ev er c o ha b ite d ) 1. 87 ** * 0. 05 1. 96 ** * 0. 05 0. 38 0. 43 co ha b iti ng (f o r th e fir st ti m e) 2. 08 ** * 0. 05 1. 29 ** * 0. 05 0. 51 ** * 0. 05 no p ar tn er , d iv o rc ed 1. 05 ** * 0. 06 0. 42 ** * 0. 06 0. 78 ** * 0. 07 no p ar tn er , s p lit u p 2. 07 ** * 0. 09 1. 17 ** * 0. 09 0. 82 ** * 0. 11 ne w r el at io ns hi p (a ft er s ep ar at io n o r d iv o rc e) 1. 43 ** * 0. 06 0. 58 ** * 0. 06 1. 10 ** * 0. 08 d ur at io n of li vi ng a rr an g em en t -0 .0 6* ** 0. 00 -0 .0 2 * ** 0. 00 in te ra ct io n li vi ng a rr an g em en t w ith d ur at io n si ng le (n ev er m ar ri ed /n ev er c o ha b ite d ) -0 .0 3 0. 02 co ha b iti ng (f o r th e fir st ti m e) 0. 02 ** * 0. 00 no p ar tn er , d iv o rc ed -0 .0 5 * ** 0. 01 no p ar tn er , s p lit u p -0 .3 3 * ** 0. 05 ne w r el at io ns hi p (a ft er s ep ar at io n o r d iv o rc e) -0 .1 5 * ** 0. 02 d um m y m is si ng d ur at io n (r ef = n ot m is si ng ) m is si ng 0. 22 ** * 0. 06 a ge -0 .0 8 * ** 0. 00 s ex (r ef . = m an ) w o m an -0 .1 3 * ** 0. 03 in co m e qu ar til e (r ef = lo w es t) 2nd -0 .2 0 0. 04 3rd -0 .1 6 * ** 0. 04 hi gh es t -0 .0 9 * 0. 05 le ve l o f e du ca tio n (r ef = n o qu al ifi ca tio ns ) se co nd ar y o r vo ca tio na l 0. 17 ** * 0. 05 p ro fe ss io na l o r hi gh er 0. 36 ** * 0. 05 o th er a nd u nk no w n -0 .1 7 * 0. 09 the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 415 *= p < 0. 10 ; ** = p < 0. 05 ; ** *= p < 0. 01 a s .e . = s ta nd ar d e rr o r s o ur ce : b h p s , o w n ca lc ul at io ns c o n tin ua tio n ta b . 1 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . b ir th c oh or t (r ef = b ef or e 19 30 ) 19 30 -1 93 9 -0 .1 4 0. 14 19 40 -1 94 9 -0 .5 1 * ** 0. 15 19 50 -1 95 9 -0 .8 7 * ** 0. 16 19 60 -1 96 9 -0 .9 7 * ** 0. 18 19 70 o r la te r -0 .6 5 * ** 0. 20 w or k st at us (r ef = n ot w or ki ng ) w o rk in g -0 .2 3 * ** 0. 04 p re se nc e of c hi ld re n in t he h ou se ho ld (r ef = n ot p re se nt ) pr es en t -0 .5 1 * ** 0. 03 te nu re (r ef = o w ne roc cu pi ed ) so ci al r en te d 0. 36 ** * 0. 04 p ri va te r en te d 1. 52 ** * 0. 04 u rb an ity o f p la ce o f r es id en ce (r ef = u rb an ) no nur b an 0. 26 ** * 0. 05 in te rc ep t -3 .1 8* ** 0. 03 -2 .0 8* ** 0. 04 1. 65 ** * 0. 28 n 74 ,7 11 74 ,7 11 74 ,4 28 w al d c hi 2 ( d f) 2, 77 5. 24 (5 ) 3, 41 4. 78 (6 ) 7, 06 4. 66 (3 0) r ho (s e ) 0. 24 8( 0. 00 8) 0. 21 2( 0. 00 8) 0. 07 7 ( 0. 00 7) • peteke feijten, maarten van ham416 and thus their relative risk of moving is 1 in the start year. it can be seen that the pace at which moving probability decreases with duration is very different for the fi ve relationship types. the split up and divorced people start off higher than those who are cohabiting and married, but the probability of moving decreases quickly with duration,2 especially for those who split up. the probability of moving for the divorced decreases much slower, and as a result it is one of the highest at durations over three years. only cohabiters have a higher moving probability, and one which is remarkably stable over time, and much higher than for those who split up. the fi ndings lend support to our hypothesis that many people enter a period of frequent mobility after divorce. even eight years after the divorce, the estimated moving probability for the divorced is still higher than for the married. re-partnering after divorce lowers the probability of moving, albeit not immediately: the probability fig 1: estimated annual risk of moving, by relationship type and duration (based on model 3 of table 1) (n=3,242) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 married (in a first marriage) cohabiting no partner, divorced no partner, split up new relationship (after separation or divorce) duration of relationship situation in years source: bhps, own calculations 2 the lines plotted for durations are based on estimates for people who have continuously been in a particular living arrangement for that duration. the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 417 of moving is very high at the start for those in a “new relationship”, and only drops below that of divorcees after four years, reaching the same level as married people after almost eight years. distance moved we hypothesised that divorced/split up people move over shorter distances than married/cohabiting people (hypothesis 2). model 1 in table 2 shows that, on average, divorced people move approximately 15 km less far than their married counterparts. hypothesis 2 is not confi rmed for split up people in comparison to cohabiters. on the contrary, split up people move longer distances than cohabiters. we had particular expectations about the distance moved by divorced or split up parents with children. figure 2 shows the mean moving distances by living arrangement for four parental statuses: not a parent; custody parent (parent of resident children); non-custody parent (parent of non-resident children); and step-parent (not a parent, but living with partner’s children in the household). firstly, we compared bars between the categories “married” and “divorced”. this comparison confi rms that divorced parents with children move much shorter distances than their married fig 2: mean moving distance in kilometres per parental status; by living arrangement (n = 6,921) 0 10 20 30 40 50 married (in a first marriage) no partner, divorced cohabiting no partner, split up new relationship (after separation or divorce) not a parent custody parent non-custody parent stepparent source: bhps, own calculations • peteke feijten, maarten van ham418 ta b . 2 : o ls r eg re ss io n o f d is ta n ce m o ve d in k ilo m et re s; m o ve rs o nl y (n = 6 ,9 45 ) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e .a c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . li vi ng a rr an ge m en t (r ef = m ar ri ed ) si ng le (n ev er m ar ri ed /n ev er c o ha b ite d ) 18 .7 6* ** 3. 31 14 .6 6* ** 3. 36 -2 6. 02 ** * 5. 13 co ha b iti ng (f o r th e fir st ti m e) -1 0. 68 ** * 2. 99 -1 2. 96 ** * 3. 08 -1 1. 98 * 7. 24 no p ar tn er , d iv o rc ed -1 4. 55 ** * 3. 11 -1 4. 74 ** * 3. 20 -1 7. 05 ** * 5. 47 no p ar tn er , s p lit u p -3 .7 6 5. 17 -6 .6 2 5. 15 -2 0. 97 ** * 8. 07 ne w r el at io ns hi p (a ft er s ep ar at io n o r d iv o rc e) -1 7. 37 ** * 2. 95 -1 7. 34 ** * 3. 00 -1 3. 23 ** * 5. 23 p ar en ta l s ta tu s (r ef = c us to dy p ar en t) no t a p ar en t 9. 54 ** * 2. 55 2. 73 4. 03 no ncu st o d y p ar en t 1. 36 4. 34 -2 .4 3 10 .8 2 st ep -p ar en t 2. 59 4. 28 13 .0 0 8. 73 in te ra ct io n liv in g ar ra ng em en t * pa re nt al s ta tu s ne ve r m ar ri ed , n o t a p ar en t 40 .3 4* ** 6. 12 ne ve r m ar ri ed , n o ncu st o d y p ar en t 1. 60 12 .4 1 ne ve r m ar ri ed , s te p -p ar en t 3. 93 11 .9 9 co ha b iti ng , n o t a p ar en t 0. 92 8. 03 co ha b iti ng , n o ncu st o d y p ar en t 1. 37 15 .5 6 co ha b iti ng , s te p -p ar en t -9 .3 6 12 .2 9 d iv o rc ed , n o t a p ar en t 7. 06 7. 06 d iv o rc ed , n o ncu st o d y p ar en t 2. 16 12 .5 7 d iv o rc ed , s te p p ar en t -8 .2 7 12 .3 3 sp lit u p , n o t a p ar en t 18 .2 2* 10 .1 5 sp lit u p , n o ncu st o d y p ar en t 25 .9 1 25 .3 2 sp lit u p , s te p p ar en t -2 .3 4 15 .3 1 ne w r el at io ns hi p , n o t a p ar en t -3 .3 2 6. 61 ne w r el at io ns hi p , n o ncu st o d y p ar en t 5. 84 12 .7 4 ne w r el at io ns hi p , s te p -p ar en t -1 1. 50 10 .6 7 a ge -0 .9 9* ** 0. 28 s ex (r ef = m an ) w o m an -1 .3 7 2. 27 the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 419 m o d el 1 m o d el 3 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . in co m e qu ar til e (r ef = lo w es t) 2n d -3 .0 2 2. 68 3r d 6. 46 * 3. 34 hi gh es t 9. 52 ** * 3. 70 le ve l o f e du ca tio n (r ef = n o qu al ifi ca tio ns ) se co nd ar y o r vo ca tio na l 9. 49 ** * 3. 14 p ro fe ss io na l o r hi gh er 23 .8 6* ** 3. 46 o th er a nd u nk no w n 12 .0 2 8. 59 b ir th c oh or t (r ef = b ef or e 19 30 ) 19 30 -1 93 9 9. 53 9. 68 19 40 -1 94 9 -6 .8 4 9. 55 19 50 -1 95 9 -1 8. 73 * 11 .2 7 19 60 -1 96 9 -3 2. 43 ** * 13 .2 5 19 70 o r la te r -3 6. 69 ** * 14 .7 1 w or k st at us (r ef = n ot w or ki n g) w o rk in g -1 7. 83 ** * 2. 73 te nu re (r ef = o w ne roc cu pi ed ) so ci al r en te d -3 .3 4 3. 13 p ri va te r en te d 14 .5 9 * ** 2. 88 u rb an ity o f p la ce o f r es id en ce (r ef = u rb an ) no nur b an 21 .2 2 * ** 3. 62 in te rc ep t 35 .9 7* ** 2. 05 31 .3 9* ** 2. 53 87 .1 5* ** 22 .3 2 n 6, 94 5 6, 94 5 6, 92 1 r 2 0. 02 0. 06 0. 06 c o n tin ua tio n ta b . 2 *= p < 0. 10 ; ** = p < 0. 05 ; ** *= p < 0. 01 a s .e . = s ta nd ar d e rr o r s o ur ce : b h p s , o w n ca lc ul at io ns • peteke feijten, maarten van ham420 counterparts. this is true for both custody and non-custody parents. divorced custody and non-custody parents also move over shorter distances than their divorced counterparts who are not parents. when we look at the distance moved of split-up custody parents compared to cohabiting custody parents, we see that the former move shorter distances, which confi rms our hypothesis. but the hypothesis is not confi rmed for non-custody parents. they are apparently not restricted in their moving distance by their non-custody parenthood. the question is whether the results found in figure 2 are caused by living arrangements and parental statuses, or whether there are other underlying causes. in model 3 in table 2 we included an interaction effect between living arrangement and parental status, and we controlled for a range of background variables. to make the total regression effects easier to interpret, we plotted them in figure 3 (distances are all compared to the moving distance of married parents living with their children, whose distance is set at 0 km). the fi gure shows that divorced parents, whether or not they live with their children, are estimated to move over much fig 3: estimated moving distance in kilometres per parental status by living arrangement (based on model 3 of table 2) (all distances relative to the base category “married, custody parent”) (n=6,921) -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 married divorced cohabiting split up new relationship not a parent custody parent non-custody parent stepparent source: bhps, own calculations the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 421 smaller distances than their married counterparts. as in the bivariate result, this does not hold for cohabiting versus split-up non-custody parents, but it does hold for custody parents. thus, the effects of living arrangement and parental status on moving distance are fairly robust. people in a new relationship also move over relatively short distances. in model 1 of table 2, they were actually found to move over the shortest distances of all living arrangements, on average 17 kilometres shorter than the average moving distance of married people. when we control for the interaction between living arrangement and parental status, and for background variables (model 3 of table 2), the main effect of living in a new relationship decreases, but the moving distances remain relatively short for all parent statuses (fig. 3). this may mean that either they move only a short distance to the new partner, and/or that any subsequent moves together with the new partner are over short distances. this may partly be due to one or both of the new partners having local ties to children from a previous relationship (or other local ties such as work). direction of moves we expected people who split up or divorce to move to cities more often than those who cohabit or are married (hypothesis 3). table 3 shows the results of an analysis of the moving direction for movers who lived in non-urban local authority districts (lads) before union dissolution. the coeffi cients express the probability of moving to an urban lad (called “city” hereafter) compared to moving within the same or to another non-urban lad. model 1 shows that compared to the married, the probability of moving to a city rather than within the non-urban area is signifi cantly higher for all groups. controlling for duration of living arrangement in model 2 shows that with increasing duration, the probability of moving to a city decreases, and that only cohabiters are more likely than the married to move to a city. in model 3 we also controlled for background variables and we introduced interaction terms between duration and living arrangement. this reduces the main effects of living arrangement even further and all are now insignifi cant. of the interaction effects only the effect of splitting up and duration is signifi cant, indicating that for those who split up, the probability that they move to a city increases over time. overall, we have to conclude that living arrangement is a poor predictor of moving to a city (or, alternatively, that our operationalisation of “city” is poor). the control variables show that the probability of moving to a city is strongly infl uenced by other factors: level of education and housing tenure (home ownership, private rent, social rent) of the destination dwelling. these two effects support two elements of our explanation for why cities may be attractive to people after union dissolution. the effect of a high level of education is probably due to the concentration of highskill jobs in cities, and to the urban lifestyle often appreciated by those with a higher level of education. the strong effect of housing tenure is probably due to the ample supply of affordable (rented) housing that cities offer. in short, hypothesis 3, which states that divorce and separation lead to an increased probability of moving to a city, is only confi rmed in the model where we do • peteke feijten, maarten van ham422 ta b . 3 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n o f p ro b ab ili ty o f m o vi ng t o t he c it y (r ef = m o vi ng w it hi n th e no n -u rb an a re a) ; m o ve rs li vi ng o u ts id e th e ci ty o nl y (n = 3 ,3 40 ) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e .a c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . li vi ng a rr an ge m en t (r ef = m ar ri ed ) co ha b iti ng (f o r th e fir st ti m e) 0. 84 ** * 0. 22 0. 56 ** 0. 26 0. 19 0. 32 no p ar tn er , d iv o rc ed 0. 54 ** 0. 26 0. 31 0. 28 -0 .1 1 0. 38 no p ar tn er , s p lit u p 0. 82 ** * 0. 31 0. 51 0. 35 -0 .5 5 0. 46 ne w r el at io ns hi p (a ft er s ep ar at io n o r d iv o rc e) 0. 76 ** * 0. 25 0. 47 0. 29 0. 40 0. 33 d ur at io n of li vi ng a rr an g em en t -0 .0 2* * 0. 01 -0 .0 4* 0. 02 in te ra ct io n li vi ng a rr an g em en t w ith d ur at io n co ha b iti ng (f o r th e fir st ti m e) 0. 04 0. 05 no p ar tn er , d iv o rc ed 0. 01 0. 04 no p ar tn er , s p lit u p 0. 43 ** * 0. 12 ne w r el at io ns hi p (a ft er s ep ar at io n o r d iv o rc e) -0 .0 6 0. 13 d um m y m is si ng d ur at io n (r ef = n ot m is si ng ) m is si ng 0. 29 0. 43 a ge -0 .0 2 0. 03 s ex (r ef = m an ) w o m an 0. 10 0. 18 in co m e qu ar til e (r ef = lo w es t) 2n d -0 .0 3 0. 25 3r d -0 .3 4 0. 29 hi gh es t 0. 11 0. 28 le ve l o f e du ca tio n (r ef = n o qu al ifi ca tio ns ) se co nd ar y o r vo ca tio na l 0. 85 ** 0. 38 p ro fe ss io na l o r hi gh er 1. 04 ** * 0. 37 o th er a nd u nk no w n the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 423 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . c o ef . s .e . b ir th c oh or t (r ef = b ef or e 19 30 ) 19 30 -1 93 9 -0 .5 1 1. 13 19 40 -1 94 9 -0 .3 1 1. 07 19 50 -1 95 9 -0 .4 1 1. 15 19 60 -1 96 9 -0 .9 6 1. 30 19 70 o r la te r -0 .9 8 1. 41 w or k st at us (r ef = n ot w or ki n g) w o rk in g -0 .3 0 0. 23 p re se nc e of c hi ld re n in t he h ou se h ol d (r ef = n ot p re se nt ) p re se nt -0 .3 3* 0. 20 te nu re (r ef = o w ne roc cu pi ed ) so ci al r en te d 0. 48 * 0. 26 p ri va te r en te d 0. 56 ** * 0. 21 in te rc ep t -3 .4 9* ** 0. 15 -3 .1 6* ** 0. 21 -2 .3 9 1. 93 n 3, 34 0 3, 34 0 3, 26 4 w al d c hi 2 ( d f) 18 .5 8( 4) 22 .2 5( 5) 66 .2 (2 6) c o n tin ua tio n ta b . 3 *= p < 0. 10 ; ** = p < 0. 05 ; ** *= p < 0. 01 a s .e . = s ta nd ar d e rr o r s o ur ce : b h p s , o w n ca lc ul at io ns • peteke feijten, maarten van ham424 not control for background variables. the only effect that remained after controlling for background variables was that for “split up”. after splitting up, former cohabiters are effectively single again, and it is well known that this group is concentrated in cities (hall/ogden 2003). people who form a new relationship after divorce or splitting up are also more likely to move to a city than married people (model 1 in table 3). in models 2 and 3, when duration of the living arrangement is added, it can be seen that the main effect of “new relationship” becomes insignifi cant, and that the duration effects (main and interaction) are negative. this indicates that re-partnered people have a higher chance of moving to a city than married people, especially at the beginning of a new relationship, but not after some time. it seems that the move made to join the new partner is often into a city, but that this does not apply to subsequent moves. we also modelled the probability of moving out of the city, but the effects differed little between living arrangements. 5 conclusion and discussion we know from previous research that divorce has a disruptive effect on the housing careers of those involved, often leading to downward moves on the housing ladder (feijten 2005a/b). much less is known about the geographies of residential mobility after union dissolution. this paper aimed to fi ll that gap and focussed on three issues: the spatial aspects of housing careers, including the occurrence of moves, distances moved, and the destinations of moves after union dissolution; the effects of union dissolution for both the married and those cohabiting; and the effect on spatial careers of re-partnering after union dissolution. we showed that union dissolution has a signifi cant effect on the mobility rate and the moving distance of those involved. a period of frequent moving begins for many at the moment of divorce or split up. the move out of the communal home is the fi rst move, but frequently not the last. for many, the fi rst move is into temporary accommodation, which means that one or more follow-up moves have to be made before fi nding suitable, more permanent housing. a (sharp) decrease in resources, a change in housing preferences, and the disappearance of economies of scale all contribute to the need to make adjustment moves before a new satisfactory housing situation is attained. those who split up are also very mobile, but so are those who cohabitate, and therefore the gap between these two categories is smaller than between divorcees and married people. the spatial behaviour of divorced movers differs distinctly from that of married movers. firstly, the average moving distance is shorter for divorcees than for married people. we attributed this to a preference to stay in the same area, as this causes the least disruption of daily life in a time that is already stressful, and allows people to keep most of their location-specifi c capital. divorced parents with children (both custody and non-custody parents) were estimated to move over the shortest distances, both when background characteristics were controlled for, and when they were not. parents have a strong incentive to stay close to where they the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 425 lived before the break-up, probably to expose the children to as little change in their daily lives as possible. also, if both parents wish to maintain close contact with their children, physical proximity is essential, and this is refl ected in the short moving distance that we found for this group. a short moving distance was also found for custody parents after splitting up from cohabitation. interestingly, non-custody parents move over much longer distances after splitting up, and these are comparable to the distances moved by childless married couples. a possible explanation is a lower level of commitments among unmarried non-custody parents, allowing them to move more freely. as expected, moves to the city were found to be made more often by divorced people than by married people, although this was largely attributable to composition effects in terms of education and tenure. the probability of moving to a city remained high among separated cohabiters, but this was also the case for cohabiters. distinguishing between marriages and cohabitations, and the dissolution of these two types of unions, led to some interesting results. firstly, divorcees behaved very differently than their married counterparts. the divorced move often, but only over short distances. the married move very little, but if they do, they do so over much longer distances. although we have no information on motivations for moving, it is likely that many such moves are for job-related reasons (as long-distance moves often are; see for example clark/dieleman 1996 or mulder/hooimeijer 1999). secondly, those who split up from their cohabitation partner did not differ much in their mobility behaviour from those who cohabited. both cohabitation and splitting up signal a highly-mobile life phase (even after controlling for age), where people are exploring their possibilities and shaping their identity in terms of housing and residential location. it seems that breaking up is not so much a disruption of the housing career, but merely one event in a series of life events that opens up new opportunities. because the commitment made to a cohabiting partner is on average weaker than to a married partner, the consequences of splitting up are less severe in many respects, and our analysis confi rms this for the spatial career. a unique contribution of this study was the inclusion of those who started a new relationship after a split up or divorce. we found that their mobility remains quite high (compared to when they were divorced or split-up). but with increasing duration of the new relationship, the mobility rate decreases rapidly, starting to resemble that of people married for the fi rst time. this corresponds to our expectations. concerning the distance moved, the results showed that the average moving distance of those who are in a new relationship is among the shortest of all types of living arrangements. perhaps new partners are often found locally, which takes away the necessity to move over a longer distance in order to move in with the new partner. also, once the new relationship is formed, long moving distances are rare. this may be because divorced and split up people who form a new relationship still have local ties, especially when there are children from a previous relationship. when the new partner is also divorced/split up, the new couple is even more restricted in where they can move because they both have local ties (see also stjernström 2009a/b). concerning moving direction, it was found that at the start of the new relationship, moves to a city are made more frequently than by people in a fi rst marriage, but • peteke feijten, maarten van ham426 the likelihood of moving to a city quickly drops, gradually approaching the level of people married for the fi rst time. the differences between living arrangements disappear when we control for background variables. our hypothesis is thus partly confi rmed. the results of this study have wider implications for our understanding of residential mobility and migration on the level of households and society. people who are going through a divorce are more mobile than those who are married. a high level of divorce in a society therefore results in higher levels of residential mobility among the divorced population compared to the married population, and increased demand for housing. most of those in a union dissolution process are less likely to move over longer distances because of local ties, especially when there are children from a previous marriage. these local ties are likely to restrict workers’ willingness to accept jobs over longer distances, potentially hampering occupational mobility. for society as a whole, a high level of divorce, and a large number of people who have experienced divorce, is likely to reduce the spatial fl exibility of the labour force. our fi ndings also have consequences for future mobility and family research. they show that standard categorisations of households, which do not include whether people have been previously married/have previously cohabited, might bias the outcomes of mobility studies. future work should distinguish between marriage and cohabitation, and take people’s relationship histories into account. our results also suggest that future research needs to take more note of whether there are children in the household from previous relationships (of both partners) or whether there are children living outside the 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residential mobility. in: housing studies 17: 813-832 [doi: 10.1080/02673030216000]. a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “die auswirkungen von scheidung und trennung auf die räumliche mobilität in großbritannien”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-10de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-10de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 04.04.2011 date of acceptance: 31.10.2012 peteke feijten. the netherlands institute for social research. the hague, the netherlands. e-mail: p.feijten@scp.nl url: http://www.scp.nl/ maarten van ham ( ). otb research institute for the built environment, delft university of technology, 2600 ga delft, the netherlands. university of st andrews, uk. iza bonn, germany. e-mail: m.vanham@tudelft.nl url: http://www.maartenvanham.nl/ • peteke feijten, maarten van ham430 appendix tab. a1: descriptive variables and statistics (total n = 74,711) n % move out of owner-occupation not at risk 18,570 24.9% at risk 52,806 70.7% move from owner-occupation to rent 2,572 3.4% person-years after moving out of owner-occupation 763 1.0% move status no move 66,439 88.9% move 8,272 11.1% move to city status previous place of residence unknown 5,143 6.9% not at risk 20,174 27.0% no move 45,476 60.9% move to city 3,655 4.9% move within countryside 263 0.4% living arrangement single (never married) 8,410 11.3% married 49,479 66.2% cohabiting 5,716 7.7% divorce/separation from marital partner 6,237 8.3% separation from cohabitation partner 1,213 1.6% new relationship 3,656 4.9% sex male 35,013 46.9% female 39,698 53.1% income quartiles (disposable annual household income) lowest (< £14,000) 19,003 25.4% 2nd (£14,000 £22,999) 18,646 25.0% 3rd (£23,000 £33,999) 18,020 24.1% highest (>= £34,000) 19,042 25.5% highest completed level of education below secondary / no education 15,469 20.7% secondary or vocational 27,847 37.3% professional or higher 28,637 38.3% other or unknown 2,758 3.7% the consequences of divorce and splitting up for spatial mobility • 431 continuation tab. a1 n % birth cohort before 1930 2,891 3.9% 1930-1939 9,773 13.1% 1940-1949 16,770 22.4% 1950-1959 17,667 23.6% 1960-1969 18,034 24.1% 1970 or later 9,576 12.8% labour market status not working 22,025 29.5% working 52,686 70.5% parent and child-in-household status no children in household, not parent 43,808 58.6% no children in household, parent 2,360 3.2% children in household, not parent 5,018 6.7% children in household, parent 23,525 31.5% tenure owner-occupied 57,084 76.4% social rented 12,155 16.3% private rented or other 5,472 7.3% urban indicator urban 20,437 27.4% non-urban 49,131 65.8% unknown 5,143 6.9% mean s.d.a distance (in kilometres, for movers only) 35.4 83.1 living arrangement duration (in years) 17.0 14.6 age (in years) 43.7 13.3 a s.d. = standard deviation source: bhps, own calculations © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) unhealthy conditions? a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households hilke brockmann abstract: families produce health, but changes in familial structures are made responsible for many negative health trends in the population. how does the health of younger children today in germany develop when comparing whether the parents live together or separately? using data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep), we are able to show that children in traditional marriages are not generally healthier than children in other families. for example, the risk of suffering health problems is even signifi cantly lower among younger children of single mothers than among children of married mothers. nevertheless, children of married mothers have a higher birth weight and a body mass index (bmi) that deviates less from the norm than the children of divorced mothers. longitudinally and under control of possible selection effects, there is evidence that the separation and divorce of parents has negative health effects. especially the mental and intellectual state of the mother, rather than her material situation, can help to cushion the negative consequences of a separation on her children’s health. against the background of increasing numbers of single mothers, we will discuss the current and future signifi cance of these fi ndings. keyword: health · children · single mothers · longitudinal analysis · germany 1 introduction the seventh family report emphasises the importance of the family as the “producer of common goods” and as a “private social network of special quality” (bundestag 2006: 6, translated by cpos). familial networks produce health. for almost 200 years and apparently regardless of a constantly growing professionalised health system, demographers have repeatedly proven that married people live longer than unmarried people (brockmann/klein 2004). children and older people also profi t in a number of ways from familial support (amato 2000; beets et al. 2010; hammons/ fiese 2011; hudson/payne 2011; james/lessen 2009; wolff/roter 2011). comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 719-740 (date of release: 30.09.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-16en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-16en8 • hilke brockmann720 at the same time, however, studies also make familial structures partly responsible for the dramatically rising number of obese children (ebbeling et al. 2002; gundersen et al. 2011), for the increasing physical and psychological developmental disorders of adolescents (bradley/corwyn 2002; collishaw et al. 2004; klocke/ becker 2003) and their poor medical care and prevention (horstkotte/zimmermann 2008). the major familial changes of the past decades were often seen as the trigger of these negative trends. figure 1 illustrates these changes in german families. many studies confi rm that high divorce rates, an increasing number of unmarried parents and a continuously growing group of single parents produce less healthy conditions than the biological cohabiting two-parent family (kelleher et al. 2000; schmeer 2011; sigle-rushtonet al. 2005; troxel/matthews 2004). however, there are also contrary fi ndings. more recent longitudinal studies in particular show that the traditional family is by no means directly and exclusively superior to other family models. for example, artis (2007) proves that loneliness and sadness among children at preschool age can be completely explained by the availability of economic resources, the depression of the mother and by parental fig. 1: new family types in germany 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year marriages divorces live births single parents source: statistisches bundesamt 2011 a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 721 child-raising practices. walper and beckh (2006) use german longitudinal data to show that it is not necessarily the familial structure, but the temporary transition that leads to symptoms of depression among young people (9-19 years of age). this analysis attempts to break down these contradicting results more precisely by testing the range and the explanatory content of the assumptions about singleparent households and the health of their children more exhaustively. precisely: can the fi ndings on the impact of familial changes, most of which are based on north american, often non-representative data, also hold out in a representative german longitudinal sample? and how strong is their impact on the health of younger children? to answer these research questions, we use the representative german socio-economic panel study. these are reliable, up-to-date longitudinal data that allow us to purposefully link information about mothers, households and children at preschool age in order to better understand complex health processes in families over time. as there are no informative data on twins and adopted children, we statistically exclude genetic infl uences in panel analyses. the article is structured as follows: after the introduction, we provide an overview of the research background from which we derive three hypotheses. in the third section, we describe the methodological procedure and the data set. this is followed by a portrayal of the fi ndings and a concluding discussion of the results against the background of previous research. 2 research background 2.1 marital status and health – an adult perspective regardless of the institutional changes in marriage, even today data prove that married men and women live signifi cantly longer than unmarried people (gove 1973; hu/goldman 1990; manzoli et al. 2007; sorlie et al. 1995). from longitudinal studies we also know that divorce and the death of a partner can greatly impair one’s health for a certain time (johnson et al. 2000; wade/pevalin 2004). these robust fi ndings are often explained by the loss of the protective factor of a life-long relationship. married couples usually possess more material prosperity. they are able to help one another and care for one another in times of illness. moreover, married couples have a less risky, healthier lifestyle (waldron et al. 1996; wyke/ford 1992). in addition to this protective effect of marriage, longitudinal data also show evidence of selection effects. healthier people have better chances of fi nding a spouse and of staying married (brockmann/klein 2004; joung et al. 1998; lillard/panis 1996). it is unclear how robust these causal and selective effects are over the course of familial change. • hilke brockmann722 2.2 marital status of mothers and their children’s health 2.2.1 causal infl uences it is well substantiated that children profi t from their parents’ marriage (amato 2001; amato/sobolewski 2001). both in the liberal us welfare state as well as in socialdemocratic sweden, infant mortality is signifi cantly lower when mothers are married (arntzen et al. 1996; balayla et al. 2011; bennett 1992). disparate health prerequisites also remain through the course of a lifetime. children of married parents are healthier throughout their entire childhood and into adulthood (angel/worobey 1988; hayward/gorman 2004). divorces are a special test case for studying the causality between marital status and child health. cause and effect can be chronologically differentiated. hence, the study of the consequences of divorce for children has always taken up a great deal of space in the literature as well (amato 1993). current longitudinal studies often confi rm the negative effects of divorce ascertained in the cross-section. children of divorced parents are disadvantaged in a number of aspects; also their physical and psychological health is affected (amato 2010). using a representative canadian sample, strohschein (2005) was able to show that children suffer signifi cantly more often from depression, anxiety and anti-social behavioural problems, both directly prior to their parents’ divorce and over the course of the process. tucker et al. (1997) use the data from the termen life cycle study (1921-1991) to ascertain the long-term effects of a divorce. childhood experience of divorce actually breeds more risky and negligent behaviour in adulthood (smoking, education) and a shorter life expectancy. researchers explain the negative health effects experienced by children of divorced parents with a stress theory that places the strenuous and costly adjustments to separation by one parent in the focus. the frequent loss of parental support, the often insuffi cient contact to the father, continued confl icts between mother and father, economic losses and other stress-related events correlated with divorce force children to undergo a re-orientation, which, in the least favourable case, involves a short-term crisis and can – but not must – in the long term become a chronic burden (amato 2000: 1271). moderator variables – variables that contribute to the effect of separation risks on the health of children – reveal more in-depth insights. the infl uence of individual, interpersonal and structural resources has been indicated many times in the literature. studies show that household income, the mental stability of the parents, but also the household’s social involvement are infl uential (carlson/corcoran 2001; cavanagh 2008; fabricius/luecken 2007). the quality of the marriage and the openly conducted confl icts during separation also prove to be important moderator variables. the more destructive the confl icts between the parents are experienced, the signifi cantly higher is the probability that children will suffer from a mental disorder (booth/amato 2001; schick 2002; troxel/matthews 2004; walper/beckh 2006). it is not yet thoroughly researched, but plausible, whether and the extent to which the time of the divorce in relation to the age of the children, the time passed since the a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 723 divorce and the historical context are also important infl uence parameters (rattay et al. 2012; schick 2002). 2.2.2 selective infl uences the causal explanation of health-damaging divorce consequences confl icts with selection effects. the health differences between the children of divorced and nondivorced parents could be infl uenced by factors that already existed before the marriage. studies of twins and siblings refer to genetic self-selection in broken homes (cleveland et al. 2000; mcgue/lykken 1992). more recent studies use fi ndings from molecular biology for the fi rst time to directly show that specifi c genetic polymorphisms cause risky and health-endangering behaviours that interact with social and also with familial processes (guo et al. 2008). it is also possible that genetically inherited diseases restrict the options of choosing a suitable partner, thus leading to higher separation and divorce rates. these and other possible infl uences that already affected the health of children prior to a divorce can be statistically controlled using longitudinal data, for instance through panel models with fi xed effects. these models exclusively take changes since the divorce into consideration and mask time-constant effects. fixed effects serve to best control for genetically related health problems in children. an interaction of genetic dispositions and environmental infl uences, however, that fi rst have an effect following the separation of families, such as a genetically inherited propensity to risky, health-endangering behaviour, cannot be taken into account in these designs. nevertheless, the fi ndings of existing panel analyses are contradictory. some studies continue to confi rm a causal correlation between divorce and health disadvantages, while others do not. for example, independent of selection effects, cherlin, chase-lansdale, and mcrae (1998) ascertain that young british adults with divorced parents have greater psychological problems. gruber (2004) shows that although the elimination of the principle of fault in american divorce law lowers the threshold for divorce and thus (negative) selection in a divorce, the new divorce law nonetheless leads to a higher suicide rate. by contrast, in the longitudinal data of the us birth cohorts of 1957-64 (nlsy79), aughinbaugh, pierret and rothstein (2005) discover no statistically signifi cant correlation between divorce and child behavioural problems. therefore, research still needs to be done. neither the choice of health variables, nor of moderators, nor variables that have major impacts on divorce effects are standardised in studies. it has in no way been clarifi ed whether differing, objective and subjective health indicators or rather strongly correlated, chronologically changing, objective socio-economic or subjective psychological moderators are not responsible for these inconsistent fi ndings. it is also unclear whether all moderators are equally effective at all times and in all national contexts. we therefore test the stress theory of divorce effects based on various health variables. we also examine the importance of the cited objective infl uencing factors simultaneously in a model. we then use the current and representative german • hilke brockmann724 panel data to ascertain the causal effect of the mothers’ marital status on the health of their children. thus, the following hypotheses guide our analysis: h1: any form of dissolution of a familial unit causes negative stress and therefore has a disadvantageous effect on the health of dependent children. h2: objective and subjective parental resources can frequently compensate for the negative infl uence of missing parents. h3: the health of the children has a selective infl uence on the failure of couple relationships. the infl uence of parental resources (h2) is falsely assessed when the selective infl uence of the health of children on the failure of couple relationships (h3) is not taken into account. 3 data and methodology the analysis is based on data from the german socio-economic panel study, which is conducted annually by the german institute for economic research (diw). it starts with the biographical data of mothers and their newborn and small children surveyed since 2002. the study includes 1,825 children of 1,420 mothers. information about the health and social circumstances both directly after birth and at the ages of 2 to 3 years are available for 1,035 children. another survey at the ages of 5 to 6 years was completed among 445 children, whereby 355 of the children had then already taken part in the survey for the third time. according to the defi nition by the who (1948/2006),1 health is a multi-dimensional construct. we measure health using objective and subjective, curative and preventive indicators. birth weight and also later deviations from the usual standard indicators such as the body mass index (bmi) are often used and are meaningful measurements of physiological fi tness to assess the health of children. another important characteristic of children’s health are infantile disorders, which were surveyed in a very general way. in addition to these objective physical measurements, we also take the subjective assessment of mothers on the health of their children into consideration. and, fi nally, preventive and curative medical measures that may be refl ected in suffi cient medical care are particularly important for the long-term health of children. we therefore also incorporate demands for medical services. information can be obtained about the earlier, present and later life and health situation of the mothers through access to various survey waves of the soep. table 1 shows further characteristics of the familial network and additional control variables used in the study in more detail. 1 exact wording of the defi nition of health by the who: „health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infi rmity.“ (1948/2006: 1) a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 725 tab. 1: descriptive distributions in the soep data set (2002-2009) n (%) mean (sd) children in total 1825 with 2 measurements 1035 with 3 measurements 355 age (in years) 2.1 (1.8) girls 800 marital status married living together 2326 (73.5) married living separately 58 (1.8) single 608 (19.2) divorced 160 (5.1) widowed 13 (0.4) changes in marital status in total 146 separations of married couples & divorces & widowhood 58 birth weight (in grams) 3332 (628) weight at 2-3 years (in kilograms) 14.1 (2.5) weight at 5-6 years (in kilograms) 21.3 (4.0) bmi 0-1 year 12.7 (1.65) 2-3 years 15.94 (3.3) 5-6 years 15.7 (2.8) number of visits to the doctor in the first/last 3 months 0-1 year-olds 1.4 (2.8) 5-6 year-olds 1.6 (2.0) duration of hospital stays in the first/last 3 months (in days) 0-1 year-olds 1.7 (8.1) 2-3 year-olds 0.7 (5.4) 5-6 year-olds 0.4 (1.9) no physical disorders identified (%) 0-1 year (%) 1522 (94) 2-3 years (%) 76 (58) 5-6 years (%) 31 (49) worried about the health of the child 0-1 year to a large extent (%) 69 (4.0) to a moderate extent 156 (8.9) 2-3 years to a large extent 55 (4.8) to a moderate extent 96 (8.4) mothers in total 1420 age (in years) 32.7 (5.9) life satisfactiona 7.5 (1.6) years of education 12.7 (2.7) • hilke brockmann726 we evaluate the data in various regression analyses. regressions with chronologically summarised data (pooled ordinary least square regressions)2 determine the relative signifi cance of familial and individual infl uencing factors on the child’s health. robust variance estimators provide for autocorrelation of the measurements. in fi xed-effects panel models, we then narrow the analytical view of changes (wooldridge 2010). divorce and other forms of familial dissolution are included in the models as discrete events. their infl uence on changes in the health of the children is estimated. the individual heterogeneity and selectivity of the children and mothers is controlled for to ensure largely causal attributions. we thereby understand causality not exclusively as a result of a manipulative experiment, but further and in conformity with other social scientists as a generative, mechanical process that links an earlier cause to a later result (blossfeld et al. 2009). n (%) mean (sd) subjective health very good and good 1003 (73) not so good and poor 82 (6) sf12 short-form health surveyb physiological health 54.5 (6.7) mental health 48.6 (9.7) satisfaction with own health 0 completely dissatisfied 10 completely satisfied 7.6 (1.8) nationality (%) german 1250 (90) turkish 47 (4) household in total 1258 net income (in euro) 2376 (1433) number of persons living in the household 3.6 (1.1) number of children living in the household 1.9 (1.0) continuation tab. 1 a measured with: “taking all things together, how satisfi ed are you with your life?” 0 means “completely dissatisfi ed” 10 means “completely satisfi ed” b ware et al. 1996 source: german socio-economic panel, own calculations 2 ols regressions are based on the estimation method of the smallest squared deviations. depending on the prefi xes, the designated coeffi cients indicate a positive or negative infl uence of a determinant on the dependent variable. this (partial) infl uence is measured as a modifi cation of the dependent variables such as a rise on a health scale through an increase in the independent variables by one measurement unit, such as a rise of 1,000 euros income. the other infl uences are constant or controlled in this case. the overall effect results fi nally from the addition of all partial infl uences. a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 727 4 results the analysis of the range of our hypotheses portrayed below in detail indicates no persistent disadvantages to children of single mothers. in the cross section, familial separations play a subordinated role. they often correlate with specifi c socio-economic variables. the panel model does, however, indicate negative consequences on the health of children following their parents’ divorce. 4.1 the weight of children in various family structures a breakdown of children’s health according to the marital status of the mothers shows – in conformity with hypothesis 1 – that the children of single mothers have a signifi cantly lower birth weight than those of married mothers. the difference to single but still married or formerly married mothers is, however, only of minor signifi cance due to the large dispersion within these groups. a more precise breakdown reveals though that children of widowed mothers weigh signifi cantly less than the children of married mothers by an average of 413 grams (not shown). but this difference in weight does not last. the bmi of children of single mothers until the age of six no longer deviates signifi cantly from those of mothers of other marital statuses. therefore, hypothesis 1 is only partially confi rmed. specifi c socio-economic circumstances are often linked to the actual familial situation. multivariate models break down these correlations statistically and examine whether existing differences or analogies endure (hypothesis 2). the models shown in tables 2, 3 and 4 are based on the measurements from all three of the survey waves. table 2 shows that an unmarried status still has a negative effect when also controlled for other weight-relevant infl uences such as the week of gestation at birth and socio-economic variables, which all have no signifi cant infl uence on the birth weight. the highly correlating health and socio-economic variables are also not moderator variables that suddenly reveal a hidden correlation of body mass index and marital status. with regard to the birth weight and deviations from the bmi, the german data therefore do not confi rm hypothesis 2. 4.2 objective health disorders and subjective worries physical and mental disorders can lastingly endanger the healthy development of children. the german socio-economic panel study contains a number of surveyed disorders, which can only be used as a dichotomous variable (yes or no) here due to the low number of cases. the coeffi cients illustrated in the fi rst column of table 3 are odds ratios.3 3 an odds ratio indicates the probability relative to value 1 with which an independent variable alters the (dichotomous) characteristics of the dependent variables. • hilke brockmann728 contrary to the expectation expressed in hypothesis 1, disorders are ascertained signifi cantly less often (41 percent) among children of families broken up by separation, divorce or the death of a parent than among children of married mothers. children of single mothers, on the other hand, have a 76 percent higher risk of suffering health disorders than children of the married reference group. nonetheless, single mothers worry signifi cantly less about the health of their children than all other mothers. the infl uence of a mother’s marital status on the objective and subjectively assessed health of her child fades when we also take the age of the child, the mental health of the mother and the household socio-economic situation into consideration. in concrete terms, with every year of age of the child, the probability that he or she will suffer from a disorder drops by 12-13 percent annually until the sixth year of age. the rise in the psychological well-being of mothers is accompanied by a reduction in the probability that their children suffer health disorders. the case numbers tab. 2: infl uence on the health of young children birth weight (in grams) deviations from median bmi /t (sd) constant 3375*** -2966*** -2749*** 2.8*** 15.2*** 13.8*** (20) (571) (484) (0.05) (1.4) (1.0) family breakup ns -106.5+ -113.2+ ns ns ns (separation, divorce, death) (64.1) (68.2) single -89.9* -139.9** -134.3** ns ns ns ref.: married (36.9) (46.2) (45.9) weeks of gestation 149.8*** 153.7*** -0.25*** -0.26*** (10) (12.2) (0.03) (0.02) age of the child ns -0.05*** -0.04*** (0.01) (0.01) health of the mother age ns -0.02+ (0.01) household characteristics number of children in the 74+ -0.21* household (41.9) (0.1) r2 0.5 34.8 36 0.00 18.4 16.8 n 1591 1087 1057 1796 692 1635 *** p <0.001 ** p <0.01 * p<0.05 + p<0.1 note: pooled ols models with robust variance estimations for auto-correlated data clusters. standard errors in brackets. subjective health, deviation from norm bmi, sf12, satisfaction with health as well as education and unemployment of the mother and the net household income are controlled for and not signifi cant. source: soep (1984) 2002-2009 a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 729 are, however, too low to longitudinally identify whether the mental well-being of the mother causes a disorder in the child or vice versa the childhood disorder negatively impairs the mental health of the mother. contrary to our expectations, the household income signifi cantly increases the probability of a disorder diagnosis. a rise in income from 1,000 to 10,000 euros tritab. 3: infl uence on the objective and subjective health of young children health disorders worries about health of the child yes/no 1= to a large extent – 4=not at all or/z (sd) ß/t (sd) constant 3.42*** 1.69* 1.68*** 2.83*** (0.02) (0.85) (0.49) (0.59) family breakup (separation, divorce, 0.59* ns ns ns ns ns ns death) (0.14) single ref.: married 1.76* ns ns 0.12** ns ns ns (0.44) (0.05) weeks of gestation ns ns age of the child 0.88*** 0.87*** ns (0.01) (0.01) health disorders motoric 0.48*** (0.08) neurological -0.97* (0.42) chronic illness -1.72*** (0.16) physical disability 0.57*** ref.: no disorder in the 1st year (0.14) visits to the doctor 0.07** (0.02) days in hospital -0.02* (0.01) health of the mother age ns ns subjective health ns ns absolute deviation from bmi norm ns 0.02* 0.015* ns (0.007) (0.007) sf12 short-form health surveya physiological health ns 0.01+ 0.01* ns (0.006) (0.005) mental health 0.95* 0.96* 0.01** 0.01*** ns (0.02) (0.02) (0.003) (0.003) satisfaction with health ns ns education of mother ns -0.01+ ns (0.007) unemployment ns ns household characteristics net household income (log) 3.1* ns (1.67) persons in household ns ns number of children in household ns ns log pseudo ll -601.5 -100.3 -120.8 (pseudo) r2 0.4 54 53 0.4 4 5 19.4 n 2968 1090 1133 2582 938 949 220 *** p <0.001 ** p <0.01 * p<0.05 + p<0.1 a ware et al. 1996 note: the models are based on pooled logit and ols regressions with robust variance estimations for auto-correlated data clusters. source: soep (1984) 2002-2009 • hilke brockmann730 ples the risk that a health disorder is diagnosed in the child. one explanation for this counterintuitive fi nding is that the income-independent insurance status motivated doctors to use more costly diagnostic measures. for the income effect is lost when we control for the type of health insurance (private/statutory). if we take this into consideration without the household income, the children of mothers with private health insurance have health disorders signifi cantly more frequently (not shown). based on the data, however, we cannot entirely eliminate the possibility that lower income groups are less sensitive to disorders or deviations or that they perhaps do not admit to negative diagnoses due to their social undesirability. the subjective assessment of the child’s health is quite different. the mother’s income does not come into play; instead her own health is decisive. mothers whose weight deviates from the bmi norm and with lower physical and mental well-being worry signifi cantly more about the health of their children. the variance explanation of this model (r2), meaning the quality of the statistical explanation, is however unsatisfactorily low at 5 percent. we therefore calculate another model in which variables on the objective health of the child are also incorporated. these absorb all of the effects of the mother, which shows that mother and child health correlate highly. we will attempt to identify the causal correlations more precisely with a longitudinal analysis. however, with almost 20 percent (r2), we achieve acceptable model quality for a sociological fi eld study. for these analyses, it is also important that the individual fi ndings are comparable. 4.3 doctor and hospital visits parents control their children’s demand for medical care. the mother’s marital status plays a signifi cant role in the number of health check-ups and hospital stays. all of the models in table 4 prove that the children of single mothers spend more time in hospital than the children of married mothers. the value fl uctuates by one-third of a day and increases if we additionally control for health infl uencing factors and socio-economic determinants. in these more complex calculations, the duration of hospital stays of children of divorced, separated or widowed mothers also differ from that of single mothers. they are signifi cantly shorter (not shown). socio-economic infl uences, by contrast, play no role in the hospital care of children in germany. this is a good fi nding, although it partially disproves our second hypothesis with regard to hospital care. regardless of the socio-economic situation of the household, mothers take advantage of the free outpatient screening examinations during their children’s fi rst year. the fi nding that separated mothers take advantage of this offer signifi cantly less often is, however, eliminated by the educational variables. in addition, the number of visits to the doctor with small children is hardly related to the socio-economic circumstances of the mother. solely household income and tentatively the number of children in the household have effects. contra-intuitively and apparently inconsistent with hypothesis 2, a higher net household income lowers the number a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 731 ta b . 4 : in fl u en ce o n fa m ili al li vi n g ar ra n g em en ts a n d t h e d em an d f o r ch ild re n ’s m ed ic al c ar e la st s cr ee ni ng e xa m in at io n n um b er o f v is its to th e d o ct o r in th e la st 3 m o nt hs n um b er o f n ig ht s sp en t i n ho sp ita l i n th e p as t ye ar 0= no ne 6 = u 6 (l og ) (l og ) /t (s d ) c o ns ta nt 4. 08 ** * 4. 30 ** * 2. 54 ** * 0. 97 ** * 2. 18 * 2. 12 ** * 2. 62 ** * 0. 50 ** * 7. 13 ** * 5. 71 ** * 7. 6* ** (0 .0 4) (0 .6 7) (0 .4 0) (0 .0 3) (0 .7 7) (0 .4 4) (0 .4 6) (0 .0 4) (1 .2 1) (1 .3 ) (1 .6 ) fa m ily b re ak up -0 .3 0* -0 .5 5* * ns ns ns ns ns ns ns ns ns (s ep ar at io n, d iv o rc e, d ea th ) (0 .1 3) (0 .2 0) s in gl e ns ns ns ns ns ns ns 0. 29 ** 0. 38 ** 0. 37 ** 0. 44 * r ef .: m ar ri ed (0 .1 ) (0 .1 3) (0 .1 4) (0 .1 9) w ee ks o f g es ta tio n ns ns -0 .1 2* ** -0 .1 1* ** -0 .1 2* ** (0 .0 2) (0 .0 2) (0 .0 3) a ge o f t he c hi ld -0 .0 1* * 0. 02 ** * -0 .0 05 ** * -0 .0 06 ** * -0 .0 1* ** -0 .0 1* ** -0 .0 1* ** -0 .0 2* ** (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 01 ) (0 .0 01 ) (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 01 ) (0 .0 03 ) h ea lth d is o rd er s n eu ro lo gi ca l 0. 60 ** -0 .3 3* (0 .2 1) (0 .1 5) r eg ul at o ry 0. 99 ** (0 .3 5) p hy si ca l d is ab ili ty 0. 27 * -0 .3 5* (0 .1 2) (0 .1 6) m ul tip le d is ab ili tie s 0. 25 ** * r ef n o di so rd er in t he 1 st y ea r (0 .0 7) w o rr ie s ab o ut c hi ld ’s h ea lth -0 .1 6* ** -0 .2 6* ** (0 .0 3) (0 .0 7) h ea lth o f t he m o th er s f1 2 m en ta l h ea lth ns ns -0 .0 1* -0 .0 1* * -0 .0 1* (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 06 ) y ea rs o f e d uc at io n 0. 02 * (0 .0 1) h o us eh o ld c ha ra ct er is tic s n et h o us eh o ld in co m e ns -0 .1 3* -0 .1 1+ ns ns (0 .0 07 ) (0 .0 6) p er so ns in th e ho us eh o ld ns ns ns ns ns n um b er o f c hi ld re n in th e ns ns 0. 11 + -0 .1 8+ ns ho us eh o ld (0 .0 6) (0 .1 ) r 2 % 0. 2 2 4 0. 0 6 7 12 .6 1 24 .9 25 .7 34 .6 n 26 46 90 5 22 07 96 6 41 6 91 2 70 2 12 70 50 1 48 3 33 9 ** * p < 0. 00 1 ** p < 0. 01 * p < 0. 05 + p < 0. 1 n o te : t he m o d el s ar e b as ed o n p o o le d o ls r eg re ss io ns w ith r o b us t v ar ia nc e es tim at io ns fo r au to -c o rr el at ed d at a cl us te rs . a ge , s ub je ct iv e he al th , d ev ia tio n fr o m n o rm b m i, s f1 2 p hy si ca l h ea lth , s at is fa ct io n w ith o w n he al th , e d uc at io n an d u ne m p lo ym en t o f t he m o th er a re c o nt ro lle d fo r an d n o t si gn ifi ca nt . s o ur ce : s o e p (1 98 4) 2 00 220 09 • hilke brockmann732 of visits to the doctor. at second glance, however, this fi nding can actually be explained in conformity with our expectations, because higher income is benefi cial to health and therefore visits to the doctor ought to be needed less often. 4.4 divorce or selection effects only a panel analysis enables us to separate causality and selection effects and thus reliably estimate their respective infl uences on health. the fi xed-effects panel models in table 5 control for the individual heterogeneity of children and parents, even – and this is decisive for our analysis – for their health prior to possible divorces, separations or deaths in the family. now, only changes in child health caused by changed familial constellations and by the other cited time-changeable variables are explained. constant (health) variables, such as birth weight and the number of screening examinations, cannot be taken into consideration. unlike cross-sectional analyses of the compiled data and consistent with hypothesis 3, the panel analysis reveals that the divorce of parents has quite lasting health-relevant consequences. when parents divorce, the child’s bmi deviates signifi cantly from the age-adequate norm by over 3 units. this fi nding is also robust when taking further moderator variables into account and confi rms a causal effect that was hidden by a positive selection, i.e. that an above-average number of mothers of healthy children take the step of divorce, which is why the effect is not visible in the cross section. table 5 also shows that with the exception of the time of birth in weeks of gestation and the age of the child at the survey, neither the household income, mother’s education nor other infl uencing variables not shown here like the mother’s employment status, her health status or her subjective satisfaction with her health, the household size or number of children in the household are statistically signifi cant. the number of visits to the doctor also drops signifi cantly when parents divorce. but this effect fades when the age of the child, the net household income, the subjective worries about the health of the child and health disorders are statistically controlled. moreover, the longitudinal analysis confi rms the correlation of increasing household income and decreasing number of visits to the doctor. against the background of the international discussion – primarily in the united states – about access to medical services, this fi nding appears odd. in the german context, it indicates the disparate behaviours in utilisation and the unequal health status of persons who have statutory and private health insurance (hullegie/klein 2010). finally, unlike the initial models, separation from a married partner compared to the traditional cohabiting two-parent family proves to be a signifi cant infl uencing factor on the subjective assessment of the child’s health if we also control for the educational level of the mother. other signifi cant effects that became apparent in a cross-sectional analysis, in particular comparing single and married mothers, are not identifi ed in a longitudinal analysis, but are identifi ed indirectly as health-relevant selection effects in the marriage that are controlled for by the panel model. a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 733 5 discussion it has long been recognised that families generate health, but disciplinary boundaries between health and family research impede the systematic exchange of results. in this paper, we link fi ndings from international family research concerning familial change with pertinent, preclinical measurements of health. we test the infl uence of familial structures and the infl uence of their changes on the health of children using little-researched representative german data. our analysis shows that children living in traditional marriages in germany are not generally healthier than children in other families. differentiated reasoning is needed; more differentiated than often employed in us studies (waite/gallagher 2000). children of married mothers have a higher birth weight, which is an indicator of less stress (torche 2011). their bmi also deviates less from the norm than that of children of divorced mothers. but there is no difference in the bmi of children of single and widowed mothers. in addition and contrary to general expectations, the risk that children of separated mothers suffer from health disorders is signifi cantly lower. tab. 5: familial changes and child health *** p <0.001 ** p <0.01 * p<0.05 + p<0.1 note: the models are based on fi xed-effects panel regressions. all signifi cant moderator variables from previous models are controlled. source: soep (1984) 2002-2009 deviations from mean worries visits to the doctor hospital nights bmi (log) (log) /t (sd) change into the status … single ns ns ns ns 0.27+ ns ns ns (0.16) married living separately ns ns ns -2.01* ns ns ns ns (0.9) divorced 3.43 ** 3.18 * ns ns -0.55** ns ns ns (1.3) (1.46) (0.20) widowed ns ns ns ns ns ns ns ns reference: married weeks of gestation -0.31 *** -0.26*** (0.08) (0.04) age of the child -0.05 *** -0.01*** -0.02*** (0.01) (0.002) (0.006) health disorders 0.98** ns (yes/no) (0.35) worries about health of child -0.11* -0.08+ (0.06) (0.04) age of the mother 0.20** (0.07) education of the mother 0.8* (0.39) household characteristics net household income -0.41** (log) (0.16) r2 % (within) 2.9 21.3 0.2 13.4 3.8 21 0.8 28.7 n 1187 1107 1864 312 859 643 1116 754 • hilke brockmann734 the marital status also correlates with unequal socio-structural realities. the often cited better fi nancial situation of the cohabiting two-parent family is not necessarily benefi cial to health in the german context. the income of the parents has no impact on most of the health variables examined here. the fact that a higher net household income correlates with the probability of children suffering a health disorder instead indicates unintentional, supply-induced demand effects of the health system (brockmann et al. 2006; jürges 2007). privately insured children of higherearning parents pay higher treatment fees, and it is therefore possible that they are over-treated. a more explicit test of this argument would, however, require more extensive data than those underlying this study and therefore must be conducted elsewhere. the mental and intellectual condition of mothers, who fi lter the effects of familial changes, is more decisive for the health and well-being of children than are material resources. from the literature, we know that married people are happier and better educated on average than unmarried people (coombs 1991; lucas et al. 2003; stack/eshleman 1998; torr 2011). yet, we are also aware that relationships differ quite considerably in quality (bradbury et al. 2000). people, and women in particular who still fi le for the most divorces, may perceive the disentanglement from an unsatisfactory relationship more as a happy gain than as a stressful loss (amato/ booth 2001; andress/brockel 2007; umberson/montez 2010). caring for a gravely ill spouse can also be a burden (christakis/iwashyna 2003; horowitz et al. 1996), especially when children in the household also require care. the loss of these burdens may explain why separations, divorces and even the death of a partner often do not impair the health of the child. but positive selection effects are also indirectly verifi able: when we control for the individual heterogeneity in the panel model and only incorporate the direct effect of observed divorces and other family separations on the health of children, then we see negative health consequences that were hidden in the pooled longitudinal data. for instance, children of divorced mothers have a signifi cantly deviating bmi and separated mothers worry more about the health of their children. nonetheless, divorced mothers consult doctors signifi cantly less and separated mothers do not go to the doctor more frequently than married or single mothers, who worry less about the health of their children. the data as such do not provide any information about the type of selection, and the panel results are chronologically limited to a maximum of 5 years following a divorce/separation. but for this time period, the fi ndings confi rm that the transitional experience of a separation or divorce are certainly unsettling and strenuous for all involved. the new life circumstances directly impair eating and athletic behaviours of children and the demand for health services. however, changes in marital status do not trigger alarming clinical effects, which can be identifi ed through lengthy hospital stays. the data set does not allow for further breakdown of the development of health following a divorce. the sample for the longitudinal analysis of infantile health disorders is too small. in addition, health disorders were only surveyed quite generally. we can also not claim to have made an exhaustive choice of health indicators. we a longitudinal analysis of the health of children in oneand two-parent households • 735 also must suppress long-term health consequences. and fi nally, simultaneous data on the relationship quality – that could more precisely record the signifi cance of familial structures and their changes – as well as genetic information are lacking. in spite of these limitations, the differentiated fi ndings provide important insights within the german context and offer further components for international research on families and health. we confi rm that families that do not fi t into the conventional model of the cohabiting two-parent family also promote the health of their children in germany. yet, we also see that particularly children of single mothers are disadvantaged in many cases. these disadvantages are partly the result of negative selection processes, for the prevalent causal infl uencing factors do not entirely grasp the distinctiveness of the single-parent status. in addition to genetic factors, early maternal illnesses are also possible. a direct test would require genetic data and/ or a twin design. in future however, we cannot expect that the rising number of single mothers will be accompanied by a parallel rise in health problems in these families. along with familial change, the status of a single mother will be increasingly less negatively selected, because ever more women voluntarily choose to remain unmarried when they have children. the concrete burdens on single parents in everyday life will, however, remain or may even worsen. they by all means deserve more scientifi c and social attention. one additional enlightening aspect of our study is the fact that in germany a lack of material resources does not acutely infl uence the health of children. this is a very major difference to many international and primarily american fi ndings and an affi rmation of the german public health system. however, the german health system ought to react with more sensitivity to the mental problems of mothers and of ongoing divorce and separation crises, for they have negative effects on the acute and preventive health care of children. future studies should more precisely examine this correlation, for it has lasting epidemiological and economic consequences. 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visits. in: social science & medicine 72,6: 823-831 [doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.01.015]. wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. cambridge, ma: mit press. wyke, sally; ford, graeme 1992: competing explanations for associations between marital status and health. in: social science & medicine 34,5: 523-532 [doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(92)90208-8]. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “ungesunde verhältnisse? eine längsschnittanalyse zur gesundheit von kindern in zusammen und getrenntlebenden familien”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-16de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos2013-16de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 20.10.2011 date of acceptance: 18.09.2012 prof. dr. hilke brockmann ( ). jacobs university bremen, 28725 bremen, germany. e-mail: h.brockmann@jacobs-university.de url: https://www.jacobs-university.de/shss/hbrockmann © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) reuschke_englisch.indd job-induced commuting between two residences – characteristics of a multilocational living arrangement in the late modernity darja reuschke abstract: against the background of the ongoing fl exibilisation of labour markets and a rising labour force participation of (highly) qualifi ed women, job-related commuting between a main and secondary residence has become more important in western capitalist countries as is the case in contemporary germany. the limited number of recent empirical studies on this kind of multilocational living arrangement almost entirely focuses on commuters in couple/family households. the main objective of this article is, fi rstly, to provide data about the characteristics and formation contexts of job-related multilocational household organisations as a whole, in order to make a contribution to the discussion of the forms and causes of this currently important phenomenon. secondly, by means of comparison analyses, the multilocational form of living is compared to the group of long-distance movers, in order to provide insights into who prefers commuting to migration with the complete household under which circumstances. the article draws on data of a fi eld research study, which have been obtained from an individual based random sample from offi cial registers of inhabitants of four metropolises in germany. the sample was restricted to individuals with specifi c characteristics (in-movers, age 25 to 59). the fully structured postal interviews were complemented by qualitative telephone interviews with selected commuters. the results show that commuters are a heterogeneous group. living in a partnership and the social connections established thereby play a prominent role for multilocational household organisations. among male commuters, one can distinguish between those who are young, never married and predominantly childless, on the one hand, and a group of older married commuters with children in the household, on the other. the vast majority of female commuters, however, live childless. as men commute between two residences even if they live with a family, they signifi cantly more often have a job-related secondary residence than women. late modern characteristics of job-related multilocational living arrangements are dual earner households for male commuters and high occupational positions for female commuters. the commuting between two accommodations is strongly connected to the career entry, on the one hand, and is also important in a later occupational career phase as a partly longer-lasting pecomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 1 (2010): 107-134 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-04en6 • darja reuschke108 riod, on the other hand. it may be suggested that the rise of fi x-term employment will further increase the importance of multilocational living arrangements in late modernity. keywords: secondary residence · commuters · circular migration · job-related geographical mobility · long-distance migration · multivariate comparison group analyses 1 introduction in recent years, advanced capitalist countries have witnessed dramatic social and economic changes that have been brought about by the transformation from an industrial society to a service/knowledge society. among the key labour market trends are the decline of full-time uninterrupted working careers, the fl exibilisation of working times and labour contracts, and the reorganisation of work by means of projectoriented work. besides such changes in the working world, which contributed to an overall increase of job insecurity, radical demographic and social changes occurred, including declining fertility rates, growing numbers of oneand two-person-households, and (in the case of west-germany and other western capitalist countries) a decreasing importance of the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model which is accompanied by a rising female labour force. as a consequence, working and social lives have changed profoundly in societies in western countries. current literature refers to this phenomenon as late modernity. under the conditions of progressing societal modernisation and labour market fl exibilisation, some individualisation theorists have been postulating a rapid increase of spatial mobility and the development towards a ‘mobile single society’ with ‘hypermobile multinationals playing workers’ (sennett 2000, beck 1986, 1999, peck 1996, bonß et al. 2004). however, due to the continuous rise of the employment rate among women in the western part of germany and other western capitalist countries, the proportion of dual earner households has been growing (blossfeld/ drobnič 2001). this stands in opposition to an increasing migration rate of couple and family households (van ommeren et al. 1998, wagner 1989, kalter 1998, jürges 2006). considering these fi ndings of migration research, it comes as no surprise that the scope of annual interregional migration in germany – measured by the changes of residence between the federal states – has been on a low, even slightly decreasing level over the last years: in 2000, the rate of moves between the federal states was 1.5 per cent of the total population and slightly dropped to 1.3 per cent in 2007 (statistisches bundesamt 2002, 2009). as recent studies on job-related geographical mobility show, this ambivalence between mobility theories in late modernity, on the one hand, and empirical evidence on interregional migration, on the other, is due to the variety of contemporary job-related geographical mobility that cannot be captured suffi ciently by offi cial job-induced commuting between two residences • 109 statistics on interregional migration (schneider et al. 2002, schneider/meil 2008, reuschke 2010). hence, the commuting statistics of the german microcensus documents a clear increase in job-induced commuting between two residences: in the federal republic 357,000 persons with a job-related secondary residence (including trainees) were registered in 2004. this corresponds to an increase of 12 per cent compared to 1996 (statistisches bundesamt 2005: 61). upon this circular form of job-related mobility much public attention has been paid during the last years (see, for example, clorius 2006 and fröhlich/detering 2010 in the german weekly journal die zeit). circular migration is also widely discussed in research on developing countries in which context conditions and mobility patterns of multilocational household structures are different from those in advanced capitalist countries. this article focuses only on job-related multilocational household organisations in western capitalist countries, i.e. late modern societies, drawing on germany as an example. the limited number of empirical studies on job-induced commuting between two residences that have been conducted so far, focuses almost exclusively on commuters in a couple or family household (‘commuting partnerships’). this relates to the assumption that multilocational household organisations are an alternative geographical arrangement to migration (with all household members) for couple/ family households due to their complex mobility decisions in late modernity (van der klis 2008, van der klis/mulder 2008, green et al. 1999). moreover, recent studies predominantly apply qualitative research designs and thus are based on (small) non-random samples, so that conclusions can be drawn only for single cases and specifi c couples respectively (e.g. academic couples, dual career couples). taken together, only little is known about who has job-related secondary residences in general and whether and to what extent this form of circular mobility is relevant for workers in living arrangements other than couple/family households. previous empirical research that compare commuting partnerships with interregional migrants and/or non-migrants provide insights into contemporary migration decisions of specifi c household types (schneider/meil 2008, schneider et al. 2002). however, further research that provides more general empirical evidence on who decides for commuting, migration or spatial immobility and why is necessary in order to improve our knowledge of contemporary job-related geographical mobility patterns and to understand the migration behaviour of persons in different living arrangements and household compositions. with the focus on the determining factors for and contextual conditions of job-induced multilocational household organisations, this article tries to make a contribution to fi ll this research gap by comparing commuters with a job-used secondary residence with interregional migrants. the main research questions addressed are: which socio-structural features are characteristic of persons with a job-related secondary residence? what distinguishes persons with a job-related secondary residence from persons with a long-distance move with the whole household? which personal motives and formation contexts are relevant for the circular form of migration? is it a short-term or long-term arrangement? • darja reuschke110 the following section further elaborates on previous research and migration theory. on this basis research-guiding hypotheses will be formulated. after the description of the sample design and preliminary methodological remarks (section 3) empirical results will be presented in section 4. finally, the results will be summarised and perspectives for future research highlighted. 2 previous research, theory and hypotheses although the appearance of commuters with job-used secondary residences has attracted attention in social sciences particularly in the last couple of years, this multilocational way of living is not a new phenomenon of late modern societies (see limmer/schneider 2008: 13-15). in the fi eld of geography, weekly commuting of untrained workers in the construction industry has repeatedly been subject to regional-economic studies in rural, economically weak regions since the 1960s (lutz/kreuz 1968, breyer 1970, junker 1992, hackl 1992). these case studies make quite clear that the everyday life practices of commuters deviate from the collective patterns of life in industrial societies (wood 2008), but are – due to low job qualifi cations and traditional gender relations (male breadwinner model) – still tightly linked to the first modernity and the fordistic era. the modern manifestation of weekly commuting from small villages and towns in economically weak regions to labour market centres like munich or vienna was shown to go in hand with a strong emotional place attachment and owner-occupied housing in case studies in eastern bavaria and austria, conducted by junker (1992), hackl (1992) and vielhaber (1987). a more recent family-sociological research strand addresses job-induced multilocational household organisations within the context of social change and points to the formation of a “new choreography of working and family lives” due to changing gender roles, and the increase in the number of women in employment in general and in highly-qualifi ed positions in particular (green et al. 1999: 50). here, the focus is on partnerships and families, whereas the emphasis of the studies has especially been on dual career couples in which both partners pursue highly-qualifi ed occupations with their own professional career ambitions (gross 1980, gerstel/gross 1984, winfi eld 1985, bunker et al. 1992, anderson/spruill 1993, green 1995). following gross (1980), research on dual career couples distinguishes between two types of multilocational households: the “adjusting” type involves young and mostly childless couples. the commuting between different locations serves the initiation and advancement of the commuters’ professional career. older couples, on the other hand, who have lived together for many years and mostly have children who have left the family home constitute the “established type”. at least one partner – usually the husband/male partner – is professionally established. thus, decisions on spatial mobility often emanate from the wife/female partner, who wants to continue her professional career after child rearing. consequently, the fi ndings of previous studies on dual career commuting partnerships suggest that it is predominantly the occupational advancement of both partners – instead of structural strains that stem from unemployment, fi rm relocation and the like – that leads to multilocational livjob-induced commuting between two residences • 111 ing arrangements (hardill 2002). however, these fi ndings are most likely infl uenced by the research design that means only couples in which both partners work in high positions are investigated (cf. van der klis/mulder 2008: 3). in contrast, some empirical studies in france and germany that do not focus on dual career partnerships point to the relevance of structural strains for the formation of multilocational household organisations of couples and families (bonnet et al. 2006, schneider et al. 2002). judging from the dominance of recent research on dual career couples, almost all samples of persons with a job-related secondary residence comprise social groups with high professional positions. samples of other empirical studies on multilocational household organisations which are not confi ned to dual career couples (schneider et al. 2002, green et al. 1999) are also characterised by a clear overrepresentation of highly-qualifi ed employees among the commuters. this fi nding is in accordance with empirical evidence on interregional migration. migration studies show that the educational level is a prominent determinant of migration and persons with a high professional training are characterised by a higher propensity to migrate (wagner 1989, jürges 1998b). information on the partners’ occupational positions, however, is not provided by investigations that are not confi ned to dual career couples. in light of the priority given to questions related to partnership and family in almost all of the more recent studies on job-induced commuting between two residences (e.g. weiske et al. 2009, schneider/limmer 2008, van der klis 2008, van der klis/mulder 2008, green et al. 1999; the study by gräbe/ott 2003 is an exception in this respect), one can make the assumption that partners in a shared household are a crucial characteristic of such multilocational ways of living. the always noticeable proportion of married persons and households with children points to a high relevance of married couples with children among commuters. this view is supported by the high proportion of subjects in the samples between their early 40s and their late 50s (schneider et al. 2002, green et al. 1999). this currently dominating research interest on job-motivated multilocational living arrangements of shared households can be explained in terms of microeconomic migration theory. accordingly, a household moves if the benefi ts from moving outweighs the sum of the costs. several migration studies reveal that migration costs originate not only from monetary costs like moving expenses or higher rent/costs for owning a home in the destination area, but also include non-monetary costs that are provoked by the loss of, for example, familial/social relations, the owned home, and location-specifi c capital like the knowledge of the area (sjaastad 1962: 84-85, davanzo 1981: 47). the cost-benefi t-calculation appears to be clearly laid out for single households but becomes signifi cantly more complex for households with two and more persons as all household members’ benefi ts and costs need to be balanced (mincer 1978). the fi ndings from several migration studies show that it is the local attachment of children that signifi cantly hinders family migration (e.g. mulder/hooimeijer 1999, mulder 1993, wagner 1989). the unequal allocation of migration benefi ts and costs among household members bring about the tied partner phenomenon in couple/family households. that is • darja reuschke112 the appearance of partners who do not move although they would have benefi ted from moving on an individual base (tied stayer). however, there are partners who move as the net benefi t of moving is greater or equal to zero for the household as a whole although they experience individual losses from the move (tied mover). most empirical research shows that mostly women are the tied partner (bielby/ bielby 1992, büchel 2000, smits 2001, inter alia). gender-role theory reveals that the gender-specifi c tied partner phenomenon cannot be explained only by means of economic measurement (higher income of male partners and the like) and points to the importance of gender-related asymmetric decision making structures in households (bielby/bielby 1992, jürges 1998b). some fi rst empirical evidence for changes in typical gender-specifi c migration roles in late modern societies are provided by smits, mulder and hooimeijer (2003) for the netherlands. if both partners have larger individual gains compared to the gains resulting from staying together at the same location, the household will split up according to mincer’s microeconomic model of family migration. considering family migration and gender-role theory, one might suggest that the rise of multilocational household organisations in late modern societies relates to the decreasing willingness of women to be the tied partner. multilocational household organisations could be an alternative option to migration and spatial immobility for couple/family households with an unbalanced cost-benefi t-calculation on the level of the individual. despite societal modernisation, job-induced commuting between two residences is, however, a rather male phenomenon in late modern societies as it is manifested by the microcensus in the case of germany (statistisches bundesamt 2005) and suggested by investigations in great britain, france and south-korea (hogarth/ daniel 1988, green et al. 1999, bonnet et al. 2006, bertaux-wiame 2006, vignal 2006, song-chul 2001). with the focus being on multilocational household organisations of couple households and families, the french studies mentioned above link reasons for such developments to the „contrat social du couple“ and „la limitation des engagements professionnels féminins dès lors qu’il y a d’enfants“1 (bertauxwiame/tripier 2006). summing up, the review of migration theory and empirical work in the fi eld of residential multilocality leads to the assumption that women and men with a jobrelated secondary residence nowadays commute less because of high migration costs that stem from home-ownership. on the contrary, living in dual earner and dual career households and thus the job-related place attachment of the partner are expected to be the major force for the commuting between two residences. in this regard, highly-qualifi ed work is expected to be characteristic for commuters as are (highly) qualifi ed positions for the (female) non-mobile partners. 1 „social contract of the couple“ and „ the reduction of the labour market participation of women as soon as they have children“ [d.r.]. job-induced commuting between two residences • 113 3 sample design and methodological-analytical remarks in order to investigate characteristics of job-induced multilocational household organisations, a random sample of people with a secondary residence was drawn from offi cial registers of inhabitants. since in germany registration is decentrally organised and registration data are normally kept track of by communal registry offi ces, it was necessary to select particular areas for investigation. however, it has to be noted that offi cial registers do not provide information on reasons why persons register secondary residences. according to the german microcensus 2004 the number of job-related secondary residences is highest in the federal states of bavaria, baden-wuerttemberg and north rhine-westphalia (statistisches bundesamt 2005: 61), so that the economically strong state capitals munich, stuttgart und dusseldorf were chosen as study areas. berlin was chosen as another study area, since on the basis of available data on commuter fl ows with non-neighbouring states (behnen/ott 2006, bogai et al. 2006) and the relocation of governmental and administrative institutions into the capital, a certain importance of job-related secondary residences could be assumed. the population to be investigated considered all those who at the time of the drawing of the sample were aged 25 to 59, and who had moved to the study areas during the last fi ve years. since only people who moved are integrated in the sample a comparison of commuters and spatially immobile persons cannot be conducted on the basis of this sample. with regard to the research design which is focused on comparison group analyses of different mobile living arrangements, and to ensure that enough addresses of in-movers with a secondary residence are drawn, two sub-samples with a priori defi ned samples sizes were selected: one of in-movers who had registered their secondary residence in the study areas and another of in-movers who had registered their main residence there (800 and 1,200 people respectively in munich as well dusseldorf). in stuttgart, however, it was not possible to divide recent movers into main and secondary residences, so that a random sample of 4,000 people had to be compiled of those who either had a main or a secondary residence. furthermore, only 68 people who had moved to berlin had a secondary residence there at the time of the sampling; this is probably due to the municipal secondary residence tax which does not exist in the prosperous cities of dusseldorf and stuttgart and was fi rst raised in munich at the beginning of 2006. altogether, about 10,500 persons were contacted, about 1,700 of them at their secondary residence. the data were collected by means of a fully structured questionnaire that was sent out by mail. the fi eld work period ran from january until march 2006. a total of 2,007 valid questionnaires were returned (response rate = 21.5 per cent), one quarter of whom has a secondary residence (n = 483). out of these about half as many (n = 226) could be classifi ed as commuters who commute between two accommodations for work (“commuters”). extended semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 20 commuters in spring 2009, eleven of whom were still commuting between two residences at the time of the extended interview, three of whom had moved to another city either with the secondary or the main household. altogether, • darja reuschke114 seven respondents have multiple multilocational living experience, thus, changes concerning the perception and everyday practices in a multilocational way of living could be captured in these cases. half of the respondents with secondary residences out of the postal sample have two residences for reasons that do not relate to paid work. in short, the largest group is studying or takes part in vocational trainings in the study areas while keeping their parental home as main or secondary residence. others moved to the respective metropolis for their career entry and keep their parental home due to family attachment. finally, for a small group the multilocational household organisation exists only ‘pro forma’ in order to save motor vehicle tax or to keep a permanent address at the parental home after moving several times. all respondents that do not have a job-used secondary residence are not subject of the present research. in addition to persons with secondary residences for job-related/job-unrelated reasons, the sample contains other mobile living arrangements: persons who moved to the study areas with their whole household over long distance (migration) or short distance (residential mobility), some of whom live with his/her partner in separated households, i.e. without a common residence, either in close proximity or at greater distance. in the literature the kind of partnership arrangement that involves commuting between two separate households is often labelled as living apart together (lat). lat-partnerships are another multilocational form of living that has attracted much attention in social sciences in the last couple of years (see, for example, levin 2004, schneider et al. 2002, reuschke 2010). however, as will be presented in the following section, a clear distinction between commuters and lats (including long distance lats who commute between the separate residences over long distance) is not applicable to mobile living practices of individuals. furthermore, the present sub-samples of commuters and long distance lats are too small for comparison group analyses. in order to investigate for whom commuting between two residences is an alternative to migration and for whom not, people were chosen for the comparison group who moved over a greater distance of at least 50 km into the study area and did not have a secondary residence. furthermore, as respondents with a job-related secondary residence are defi ned as employed, only employed people are selected for the comparison group. the comparison group (”long distance movers“) includes 837 respondents. a threshold of 50 km (or 60 minutes) is applied in the respective migration literature in order to distinguish residential mobility and long distance moves and thus more job-related moves respectively (jürges 1998a, wagner 1989, schneider/meil 2008). accordingly, respondents in the present sample who moved from peri-urban areas to the respective metropolis with their whole household did so predominantly for personal/familial reasons, whereas two thirds of those interviewed employed long distance movers reported job-related reasons. women are more often the tied mover (see section 2) and thus they reported signifi cantly more frequently family related and personal reasons for their long distance move to the respective study area than men (although they might have changed their job subsequently to the move too). that is why the comparison group was not restricted job-induced commuting between two residences • 115 to employed long distance movers who reported job-related reasons as principal motive for their move. due to the comparative research design, the presented empirical data on commuters with a job-used secondary residence are “relational” to some extent. however, i argue that only by means of comparison group analyses conclusions on specialities and formation contexts of the multilocational living arrangement can be drawn. moreover, it has to be noted that the sample design might have consequences for the data interpretation as follows: due to the sampling via the offi cial register, only those persons could be • addressed who had registered a residence in the researched areas. persons working in these areas without an offi cial secondary residence (e.g. during probation periods, short-term assignments) are not included in the sample. only core cities of metropolitan regions were selected as the greatest num-• bers of job-used secondary residences and job-related in-moves could be assumed to dwell exactly here. consequently, smaller cities and towns as well as peri-urban areas of the selected cities were not considered. commuters in the excluded areas might differ from metropolitan commuters as far as socio-structural characteristics and commuting behaviour are concerned. since only people who moved to the study area during the past fi ve years • were defi ned as population, commuters who have been living in job-used secondary residences in the respective study areas for six years and more are not included in the sample. these commuters might have specifi c characteristics that are not captured by the present study. the personal and household-related data refer to the respondents’ present • situation at the time of the standardised interview. this might differ from the personal/household situation at the time of moving to the respective city, which could date back a maximum of fi ve years. the data do not capture changes of personal/familial circumstances between the two points in time. concerning long distance movers, the data need to be interpreted as characteristics of persons who recently moved to the study areas over greater distance. low status groups are generally underrepresented in postal questionnaires. • thus, the social profi le of the investigated groups might be partly affected by the research design. 4 empirical results 4.1 characteristics of commuters with a job-related secondary residence socio-demographic characteristics of commuters and long distance movers are categorised by sex in table 1. to what extent socio-structural features of commuters and long-distance movers differ is shown in table 2. for this purpose, logistic regression analyses are employed, in which selected model parameters are estimated by means of group specifi c models (commuters vs. long-distance movers). in order to represent gender-specifi c differences, separate regressions are computed for • darja reuschke116 men and women (model 3 and 4). in the regression table the odds ratios are displayed, which indicate the number by which one would multiply the odds of being a commuter (group 1) for each one-unit increase in the independent variable (e.g. the variable ‚highly-qualifi ed position’ changes from no = 0 to yes = 1). consequently, in table 2 odds ratios greater than 1 indicate a greater probability and odds ratios smaller than 1 signify a lower probability of being a commuter compared to a long distance mover (menard 2002: 56). as can be taken from the total model 1 in table 2, among respondents with a jobrelated secondary residence there tend to be statistically signifi cantly more men tab. 1: socio-demographic characteristics of commuters and employed longdistance movers by sex 1 not all categories are shown and therefore the sum does not add up to 100 per cent. 2 low qualifi ed = civil servants of lower rank and employees with simple jobs (e.g. sales assistants), blue-collar workers with low skills; qualifi ed = civil servants of middle rank and employees with qualifi ed jobs (e.g. accounting clerks); highly-qualifi ed = civil servants of higher rank and employees with higher qualifi ed jobs (e.g. engineers, research assistants, department chiefs), employees with executive functions (e.g. executive directors); self-employed, freelancer, trainees were appointed to the categories according to their higher education level. source: author’s calculations commuters long distance movers men women men women men’s/women’s share 60.6 % 39.4 % 50.8 % 49.2 % age (mean, standard deviation in brackets) 38.6 (9.7) 34.5 (8.3) 35.6 (7.9) 34.3 (7.8) marital status1 married 41.2 % 31.5 % 40.9 % 27.1 % never married 52.2 % 65.2 % 52.3 % 61.3 % household type1 couple household with children 30.7 % 12.4 % 23.8 % 13.0 % couple household without children 35.8 % 42.7 % 36.8 % 42.8 % single household 31.4 % 43.8 % 38.0 % 37.7 % partnership status living in partnership 82.5 % 77.5 % 74.4 % 72.3 % living apart together partnership (lat) 16.0 % 22.5 % 14.1 % 16.5 % no stable partnership 17.5 % 22.5 % 26.3 % 28.1 % children in the household no child 67.2 % 87.6 % 75.3 % 81.5 % youngest child < 6 years 9.5 % 5.6 % 17.7 % 10.6 % youngest child 6 years 23.4 % 6.7 % 7.0 % 7.9 % university/advanced technical college degree 71.1 % 79.5 % 72.3 % 68.0 % occupational position2 low 4.7 % 5.6 % 10.0 % 10.7 % qualified 20.9 % 28.1 % 20.8 % 41.8 % high 74.4 % 66.3 % 69.2 % 47.4 % n 137 89 430 416 job-induced commuting between two residences • 117 than in the comparison sample. this corresponds to the overrepresentation of male commuters reported in the german microcensus 2004 (see section 2). moreover, with a mean age of 39 years, male commuters are signifi cantly older than female commuters, their mean age being 35 years − an observation that does not apply to the sample of employed long-distance movers (compare tab. 1). for women, multilocational household organisations are most often found among younger birth cohorts between 1980 and 1971. men with job-related secondary residences are more strongly represented in older birth cohorts between 1960 and 1951. concerning the average age, commuters are not distinct from long-distance movers holding other infl uencing factors constant (see tab. 2). all in all, living in a partnership is found more frequently among commuters than in the comparison group (see total model 1 and 2 in tab. 2). in separate regressions for men and women (model 3 and 4) this effect cannot be corroborated, yet, the odds ratios point at a lower probability of men and women with a job-related secondary residence not living in a permanent partnership. this result thus justifi es tab. 2: logistic regressions on socio-structural characteristics of commuters (group 1) compared to employed long-distance movers (group 0), odds ratios all respondents men women model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 sex (women) 0.737* 0.869 age (years) 1.010 1.007 1.007 1.009 partnership status (ref: partner, separate household) partner, shared household 0.772 0.859 0.763 0.844 no partner 0.537** 0.542** 0.566 0.536 children in the household (ref: no child) youngest child < 6 years 0.309*** 0.354*** 0.383** 0.248** youngest child 6 years 1.115 2.257** 2.089* 0.345* highly qualified position (ref: low or qualified position) 1.486** 1.434* 1.204 1.674* number of interregional moves (during the last 10 years) 1.071 1.070 0.980 1.173* per capita income (stand.) 0.894 0.921 0.956 0.837 home-ownership (ref: renter, sublessee) 1 9.640*** 9.906*** 8.645*** 12.089*** interaction term: sex*youngest child 6 years 0.187*** n 1021 1021 540 481 model quality chi-square (df) 189.68(10) 197.26(11) 111.60(9) 362.62(9) -2 log-likelihood 848.016 840.437 472.746 362.623 mc faddens r2 0.224 0.235 0.236 0.237 coeffi cients are signifi cant: ***p≤0.01, **p≤0.05, *p≤0.1 1 tenure status of commuters refers to the main residence. source: author’s calculations • darja reuschke118 the focusing of previous research on multilocational households on couples. on the other hand, the fi ndings clearly show that not only couples in a shared household, but also couples with a separated household are involved. it is, after all, every sixth man and almost every fourth woman who live in a latpartnership and thus in a very complex living arrangement with regard to the spatial arrangement of the residences and the everyday life practices. this especially applies to a very small group of eleven commuters who live in a long-distance lat-relationship and who commute between all three locations, i.e. their own households and the residence of their partner, over longer distances of at least 50 km. thus, jobinduced commuting between two residences revealed to be a much more complex way of living than could have been expected from previous research. reasons for the surprisingly signifi cant number of commuters in lat-partnerships cannot be examined in greater detail on the basis of the present sample, however, evidence from the extended interviews suggests that particularly young commuters who are at the beginning of their occupational career live with their partner in separated households in close proximity at their main residence due to lifestyle reasons (e.g. either partner/both partners appreciate to live at the parental home, the partners have not known each other long enough). instead, for commuters in long-distance lat-relationships fi x-term contracts are noticeable according to which the re-migration to the main residence is planned so that the multilocational household organisation is of temporary duration or the complex living arrangement is a temporary solution until the partners will fi nd (again) jobs in one area. further prominent distinctive features of commuters and long-distance movers are accounted for by the existence of children in the household and the age of the youngest child. almost one third of the men with a job-related secondary residence live in households with children. for women, however, commuting between two residences for job-reasons is to a high degree a childless way of living. only every eighth lives in a family household. compared to female long-distance movers, female commuters more often live in a childless household. by contrast, among men the chance/risk that the youngest child living in the household is older than six years is twice as high for male commuters as for long-distance movers in the conditional logit model. at the same time, the existence of older children in the household is an essential feature which distinguishes women from men with a job-related secondary residence as compared to long distance movers, which can be deduced from the interaction term in table 2. taken into account the limitations of the sample (see section 3), the fi ndings indicate that job-induced commuting between two residences is a male-dominated way of living, because men also commute in a couple household with (older) children. the fi ndings of numerous migration studies (see section 2), according to which children exert an inhibiting infl uence on the migration behaviour of households, can only partly be confi rmed: children – no matter of what age – in a household immensely reduce the chance/risk of women to commute, for men, however, the chance to commute is increased by older (school-age) children. according to age, marital status and type of household, two groups of men can be defi ned for which job-related secondary residences are relevant: on the one job-induced commuting between two residences • 119 hand, these are young, never married and mostly childless men, on the other these are older, married men in a family household. for women, such a distinctive grouping cannot be observed. married commuters in a post-parental stage, which were analysed by gerstel and gross (1984) as a specifi c type of dual career couples in the us, are hardly represented both among men and women in the sample. the higher age which was observed in previous studies for persons with a job-related secondary residence is probably related to the fact that due to the confi nement of research perspectives to couples and family households the group of married and thus older men was overrepresented among the respondents. the vast majority of men and women with a job-related secondary residence have a university or advanced technical college/uas degree (see tab. 1). in this respect, commuters do not differ from long-distance movers, among whom, as expected, high professional qualifi cations are predominating, too. thus, both mobile groups are highly selective in terms of their social profi le compared to the population average. moreover, the majority of respondents with a job-related secondary residence work in high professional positions. a quarter of all men and every third woman have a less qualifi ed position. no sex differences are displayed within the group of commuters with regard to occupational positions, while the comparison sample refl ects the well-known pattern of gender-specifi c vertical segregation of the labour market (see among others fassmann/meusburger 1997: 200-212, albrecht 2005, wimbauer 1999): having the same educational status, male long-distance movers work in signifi cantly higher qualifi ed positions than women with a long-distance move. consequently, the chance of a highly-qualifi ed employment of women with a job-related secondary residence is 1.7 times higher in the conditional logit model than of female long-distance movers. the stability of such a group-specifi c effect is confi rmed, if determinants of a highly-qualifi ed occupation of long-distance movers and commuters are analysed together (not shown in tab. 2). thus, the multilocational living arrangement correlates with high professional positions for women. it also becomes apparent that both men with a job-related secondary residence and male long distance movers predominantly work in higher positions and that male commuters do not constitute a group with a yet higher professional qualifi cation. corresponding to the higher qualifi ed employment, women with a job-related secondary residence − compared to female long-distance movers − tend to display a higher interregional mobility, as measured by the number of interregional moves during the last ten years. 4.2 personal motives and context conditions asked for the main reason for a job-related secondary residence, most respondents name own occupational reasons (see tab. 3). corresponding to the younger age of the female commuters is the fact that starting professional life has a greater importance for the establishment of a secondary residence for women than for men (not shown in tab. 3). more than every third woman has moved to the investigated areas because of her career entries. male commuters are, due to the signifi cant group of older commuters in a family household, at the beginning of their professional ca• darja reuschke120 reers less frequently than female commuters, and thus have registered a secondary residence in the respective investigated areas mainly due to changing their employers (41 per cent). in general, the establishment of another dwelling is only infrequently related to the acceptance of a job after unemployment, which for ten per cent of the men and nine per cent of the women was the primary motive for a move-in to the job-related secondary residence in the investigated areas. six respondents established a secondary residence because of a probation period. this low percentage, however, is most likely due to the sample design (see section 3) as only few commuters might register a secondary residence for the short period of probation (generally 3-6 months). the questionnaire also contains retrospective questions about a former job-used secondary. among respondents that once had a secondary residence for job reasons during the past ten years (n = 107) a respectable percentage of one fourth reported the unsecure phase at the beginning of a new job as principal reason for the commuting between two residences at that time. this speaks for the importance of multilocational household organisations as transitional solutions and “springboard for migration” (hunt 2006) at career entry or in the case of employer change. the duration of the living arrangement will be further elaborated in section 4.3. atypical employment and commuting the career entries of female commuters frequently coincide with fi x-term employment. taken together, 26 per cent of women and 18 per cent of the male commuters have a fi x-term contract. after controlling for age, commuters do not signifi cantly tab. 3: principal reason for a job-related secondary residence by sex and household type (in rounded column percentages) male commuters female commuters all couple/ family household single household all couple/ family household single household own job reasons 46 46 45 57 47 67 reasons of partner 28 35 * 19 35 thereof: job reasons of partner 21 27 * 11 20 family reasons (child/parents) 13 13 14 10 * 13 place/social attachment 15 9 27 16 10 23 other reasons (home-ownership etc.) 8 8 * * * * n 135 91 44 88 49 39 it was only asked for the main reason for having a job-used secondary residence, however, multiple answers were counted in 17 cases. * number of cases is four or less and is therefore not reported. source: author’s calculations job-induced commuting between two residences • 121 more often have a fi x-term contract than long-distance movers, of whom 18 per cent of the men and 20 per cent of the women have a fi x-term employment. if, however, the fi x-term employment rate in germany (involving all dependent employees) is considered, which, in 2008, was 8.9 per cent (grau 2010), the fi ndings indicate that the rising importance of fi x-term employment impact contemporary migration patterns. the generally high importance of fi x-term contracts in both groups of inmigrants relates to age, occupational qualifi cation and spatial structures: employed migrants are generally younger than all persons employed, the proportion of young professionals in the sample is high, and the portion of the service sector is above average in the selected metropolises (cf. grau 2010; albrecht 2005). commuters with a fi x-term contract are almost exclusively employed in highlyqualifi ed positions. among women, too, fi x-term employment is frequently related to part-time work. altogether, every fi fth female commuter has two households because of (or despite) part-time work. male commuters, however, like long-distance movers, are rarely employed in part-time jobs, which correspond to the genderspecifi c fl exibilisation of working time in germany in general (holst/schupp 2008: 123). female part-time employed commuters predominantly work in various positions in health care and social services or as highly-qualifi ed employees in research and science. in their social profi le, they deviate from the “typical” female part-time employment in that they are most often single women at the beginning of their professional careers, and not women returning to work, living in a partnership and having children (sacher 1998, albrecht 2006). the signifi cant number of highly-qualifi ed commuters in atypical forms of employment (fi x-term contracts and/or part-time employment) suggests that the ambivalence of social upward mobility and insecure employment conditions speak in favour of a temporary multilocational household organisation. in some branches like research and sciences, art and culture, and automobile industries respondents are confronted with sequences of fi x-term contracts or short-term assignments in various cities and therefore decide to maintain the primary residence (“the place where one wants to live”) and subsequently move on to varying working places if the (material and immaterial) commuting costs in terms of commuting distance/time, expenses for travelling and housing, and length of stay at the primary residence are not too high. concerning part-time employment, commuting distance has a strong impact on the mobility decisions of female commuters: part-time employed women commute between both residences over signifi cantly shorter distances than fulltime employed female commuters (median commuting distance 107 km vs. 283 km, p ≤ 0.05). this suggests that women with a part-time job offer either opt for migration or spatial immobility (i.e. refusing job offer) if the commuting distance is evaluated as too great, which often means a maximum of 100-150 km. commuting partnerships and families as shown in table 3, for more than every third in a couple household (with or without children), motives of the partner are decisive for the choice of a secondary resi• darja reuschke122 dence. here, the occupation of the partner plays a particular role. at least more than every fourth man and every fi fth woman in a couple household (with or without children) name occupational reasons of the partner as a main motive for the establishment of a secondary residence. these data clearly demonstrate the modernisation of traditional gender-specifi c migration roles in couple households and suggest that the multilocational household organisation was chosen in order to avoid tied partner confl icts that would have occurred in the case of migration or spatial immobility. however, this mobile living arrangement might be preferred in couple/family households as long as the (material and immaterial) commuting costs do not exceed the migration costs. the fi ndings show that the possibility to prolong the time spent at the main residence beyond the weekend until monday mornings is an important precondition for the commuting. further it can be suggested that especially men with above-average weekly work hours opt for migrating with the whole household to establishing a job-used secondary residence the higher the commuting distance between both accommodations is and thus the less time can be spend at the family residence. for example, an executive manager with more than 50 work hours had been commuting weekly between the fi rm’s headquarter in munich and stuttgart (ca. 220 km) for four years. the multilocational household organisation was feasible for him and his family since the moderate travel distance, which he often covered by car at night in order to reduce travel time, in combination with fl exible appointments at the fi rm’s headquarter, allowed for longer-lasting stays at the family household. however, when he was dislocated to dusseldorf and thus the commuting distance increased to about 500 km, he and his wife, who pursues her own career as a surgeon, now decided to move their main residence to dusseldorf. spatial immobility – i.e. the refusal of the job offer – is not an option in this particular case as clear career steps, which are related to interregional and international dislocation, are given in his working fi eld that is focused on organisational careers, i.e. job promotion within one organisation/employer (for a classifi cation of career strategies see savage 1988). as indicated by the great importance of job reasons of the female partner for the establishment of a secondary residence by men in a couple/family household, the late modern manifestation of job-induced commuting between two accommodations for male commuters shows on the basis of the employment arrangement in households. compared to employed long-distance movers, male commuters more frequently live in a dual earner household (see tab. 4). with respect to the occupational position of female partners the employment arrangements of male commuters in partnerships are, however, far less modernised (see tab. 4). although they more often live in a household in which both partners are employed than long-distance movers, their female partners for the most part “only” work in qualifi ed positions. almost half of the male commuters with an employed partner are employed in positions of a higher qualifi cation than those of their partners. compared to long-distance movers in couple/family households, the percentage of dual career households in which both partners are employed in highly-qualifi ed positions is thus somewhat lower for male commuters (23 % vs. 26 %). the job-induced commuting between two residences • 123 disparity in the employment arrangement of households of male commuters and male long-distance movers presumably relates to the location of the couple’s/family’s main residence in rural/structurally weak areas (including eastern germany) and thus in regions where lower qualifi ed jobs are dominating and possibilities for job promotion in situ are limited. accordingly, fromhold-eisebith and schrattenecker (2006) note a rising concentration of highly-qualifi ed jobs in core cities in metropolitan areas particularly in western germany and thus in areas where the interviewed male long-distance movers are living with their partners/families. the result might also be partly due to the research design since the household situation applies to the time of the interview and not to the point in time when the respondents moved to the respective city (see section 3). that is, long-distance movers could have been living in single households when they moved to the study areas. the employment arrangement of households of women with a job-related secondary residence resembles that of female employed long-distance movers to a great degree (see tab. 4). the partners are most often employed in highly-qualifi ed positions, female commuters who share a household with the partner most often live with a partner of the same professional qualifi cation or in almost half of the cases even as dual career couple (see operationalisation in footnote 1 in tab. 4). tab. 4: employment arrangements by mobile living form and sex (in rounded column percentages) commuters employed long distance movers men women men women a) all respondents dual earner household 60 67 48 64 dual career household 1 15 26 15 21 n 134 89 424 409 b) respondents in couple/family households dual earner household 73 86 62 88 dual career household 1 23 47 26 39 n 88 49 255 228 c) respondents in couple/family households with an employed partner occupational position of the partner low 5 7 13 8 qualified 57 17 39 23 high 38 76 48 69 respondent’s occupational position compared to the one of the partner. his/her rank is … lower 9 24 7 27 equal 46 64 64 63 higher 46 12 29 10 n 59 42 150 195 1 both partners work in highly-qualifi ed positions. source: author’s calculations • darja reuschke124 the gender-specifi c differences in the employment arrangements in couple/family households within the group of commuters are all the more clear: under control for age, of all respondents being in a couples household with or without children signifi cantly more women than men live in a household in which both partners are employed in highly-qualifi ed positions. accordingly, compared to male commuters, women with two accommodations for job reasons more frequently commute between cities with 100,000 inhabitants and more (50 % vs. 31 %, adjusted p ≤ 0.05)2 and thus between areas where highly-qualifi ed jobs are concentrated. co-location problems of highly-qualifi ed couples thus seem to be an important context condition for a multilocational household organisation of women. commuters in single households apart from job reasons, commuters in single households name attachment with the place or region, social contacts and friends as well as family reasons (in particular parents) as primary reasons for maintaining two households more frequently than other commuters (see tab. 3). especially for single women, the care for parents including assistance with the owned home, and the attachment to the family house and the attached garden reveal to be of special importance in this respect. in fact, more than every fourth female commuter in a single household lives in the proprietaries of her parents/one parent at the main residence and presumably most likely also lives there with her parents or one parent. this living situation applies less frequently to male commuters (15 %). this corresponds to the remarkable differences between men and women with job-used secondary residences with regard to their stage of household/family life cycle (see tab. 1 and 2). demographic and gerontological research shows that it is most frequently women that take care for their elderly parents (see for germany amongst others bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend 1998). against the background of the rapid aging of late modern societies one might therefore suggest that multilocational household organisations of women in single households will not be a marginal phenomenon in the future. concerning partnership, it can be noted that both women and men living in homes owned by their parents frequently live in a lat-partnership at the main residence close to the partner’s residence. on the one hand, this might speak in favour of multilocational household organisations being a temporary living arrangement in a pre-family stage that will be terminated either by re-migration to the main residence or by complete migration to the secondary residence in the case of a stabilised partnership status. on the other hand, it can be observed that the living apart together was terminated during commuting between two accommodations by moving in together with the partner at the main residence. in this particular case the multilocational way of living has become a long-term solution due to the part2 control variables: age (in years), number of persons in the household, fi x-term contract, homeownership at the main residence. job-induced commuting between two residences • 125 ner’s place attachment (family, social relations/engagement, preferences for nature/ countryside) and his professional career strategies. commuters and home-ownership altogether, a good half of the women and men own their homes at their main residence (including homes owned by the parents/one parent). however, despite the high proportion of residential properties at the main residence, attachment due to home-ownership is named only in a few cases as the primary reason for a secondary residence. since the main reason for secondary residences was asked for, it must be assumed that home-ownership is much more of secondary importance for the establishment of a job-related secondary residence, which is subordinated to familial and emotional bonds: as is shown in table 2, housing tenure has a signifi cant infl uence on decisions related to mobility (commuting vs. migrating). this fi nding is additionally confi rmed by the analysis of the subjective attitudes towards establishing a job-related secondary residence in the total sample (i.e. all respondents in the study areas). of all interviewed employees (n = 1688), the statement: “being offered a job in another city/region i would decide for a secondary dwelling/accommodation at the new place of work and maintain my main residence”, was signifi cantly more often agreed on by home-owners than by renters (adjusted p ≤ 0.01).3 from this it follows that owning the home is also a relevant infl uential factor on the decision to prefer commuting to migration with the complete household and that multilocational household organisations are a frequently practiced option to combine job-related geographical mobility demands with the (material and emotional) attachment to the owned home. 4.3 duration of the living arrangement as it was noticed earlier, commuting between two accommodations for job reasons is frequently of temporary duration due to fi x-term contracts, short-assignments, and probation periods. moreover, correlations between the duration of the living arrangement and socio-demographic characteristics of commuters are relevant. according to the commuters’ evaluation of the duration of their current multilocational living arrangement − measured in a standardised way by using four items: permanent, long-lasting but not permanent, temporally limited, no statement possible − the multilocational household organisation is rather a temporally limited living arrangement for the group of younger men in a childless couple household. if a (school-aged) child lives in the household, the multilocational way of life of men is partly a long-term arrangement. for some of those the commuting will be an al3 control variables: age (in years), shared household with the partner, children in the household, highly-qualifi ed position. • darja reuschke126 ternative way of living at least until the children will have fi nished high school and left home or until both partners will have retired. the place attachment due to older children thus does not only affect men’s propensity to commute, but also the permanence of the form of living. as for women, the commuting is not an alternative to migration for men with young (pre-school) children. thus, it can be observed that male commuters try to terminate the multilocational household organisation if they and their partners are expecting a child. women in a couple/family household predominantly try to limit the multilocational way of life to a particular period, here, especially for married women commuting is only a temporary solution. both for women and men it can be noticed that the younger commuters are the shorter is the period of time they are planning to practice a multilocational household organisation for job reasons. for young commuters, the multilocational way of living is due to the career entry and to the fi rst steps in building an occupational career whereas a short-term commuting period is intended right at the beginning. taken together, the investigated commuters have been leading a multilocational life for a median time of 3 years.4 every fi fth has lived in a multilocational household for less than a year. another quarter of all respondents has been living as a commuter for at least 5 years. it has to be noticed, however, that the duration of the multilocational household organisation is infl uenced by the sample design, as was already discussed in section 3. 5 summary and conclusion the fi ndings clearly show that commuters with two accommodations for job reasons are a heterogeneous group. as could be expected from previous research, living in a partnership is of high importance. however, considering the household and partnership situation, various types apply to commuters: shared households without children,• family households,• living alone as single,• living alone in separated households with the partner (i.e. without a shared • residence) at close proximity or at greater distances (long-distance lat-partnership), living as single or lat in the owned home of the parents or one parent at the • main residence. this variety in individual living circumstances indicates that future research on multilocational household organisations for job reasons should not only focus on couple households (with or without children), but also consider more complex mul4 n = 219, standard deviation = 3.17. job-induced commuting between two residences • 127 tilocational forms and the living arrangement and commuting behaviour of singles and persons living alone. given the progressing pluralisation of living arrangements and aging of our society, one might expect a rising importance of ‘non-traditional’ household and partnership compositions of commuters in late modern societies. the results show that for a proper investigation of multilocational household organisations for job reasons gender-specifi c differences must be taken into consideration. the crucial differences can be traced back to the household/family life cycle, i.e. age, marital status, and children. the younger, most often single and childless women and men with a job-related secondary residence are comparable to gross’ “adjusted” type of commuting (gross 1980). however, these are not only women and men who live together with their partners in a household, but couples who live together apart in separate households are also concerned. the older commuters, who mostly live in a family household, most closely correspond to gross’ “established” type of commuting. this form of commuting is strongly associated with male commuters. the higher proportion of men among commuters – also compared to interregional moves with the whole household – can thus be traced back to this group of commuters. for young commuters it can be noticed that the multilocational living arrangement often refers to the career entry, which frequently goes hand in hand with atypical employment (fi x-term jobs, part-time employment). the fl exibilisation of post-industrial labour markets therefore does not only result in an increasing fi rst job instability for young men and women (booth et al. 1999; buchholz/kurz 2008) but also contributes to changes in the mobility behaviour of young employed. the constraints on in-moves to the place of work and the abandonment of the main household will be too high due to such insecure employment conditions. insecure employment conditions together with the high importance that is attached to the time spent with the partner explain why a multilocational household organisation is most frequently of temporary duration for young commuters. it is to be expected that with an increasing fl exibilisation of labour markets multilocational household organisations will gain further importance in the future. for older (‘established’) commuters, commuting between two accommodation is – compared to young commuters – a partly longer-lasting period due to the place attachment of the partner and/or the children and, mostly subordinated, because of the (material and immaterial) obstacles of selling the owned home. consequently, commuting between two accommodation is an option to migration and spatial immobility especially for men in a family household with older (school-aged) children. in contrast, the fi nding that female commuters predominantly live in childless households suggests that for women with children – regardless the children’s age – commuting between two residences is less suited for combining career and family and is therefore less frequently considered as an alternative form of living in case of job-induced geographical mobility demands. the comparison analyses indicate that both men and women with younger (pre-school) children prefer migration with the complete household to the establishment of a job-used secondary residence. • darja reuschke128 the majority of male and female commuters in the sample work, as hypothesised, in high occupational positions. the hypotheses that dual earner households and the place attachment of working partners are crucial factors for the commuting between two residences can also be confi rmed. however, dual career households in which both partners are employed in highly-qualifi ed positions generally apply only to a minority of commuters. owning the home has become a subordinated motive for commuting but is still a relevant infl uencing factor on the decision to prefer commuting to migration. to conclude, late modern characteristics of job-induced multilocational living arrangements are living in dual earner households for male and for female commuters. on the other hand, the fact that in a family household men commute more frequently than women must be taken as an indicator of a conventionalised genderspecifi c division of labour in the domain of child-rearing that again reveal traditional gender-specifi c mobility decisions. this is supported by the circumstance that men with a job-related secondary residence live in a dual career household less frequently than female commuters. in section 3, notes concerning the sample design of the present study were discussed critically. given the progressing suburbanisation and the tight housing markets in munich and stuttgart, future research on multilocational household organisations for job reasons should be extended to metropolitan areas as especially in regions that have experienced long-lasting suburbanisation processes commuters could select the peri-urban areas – directly or on a “detour” via the core city – as the location of a job-related secondary residence. furthermore, the applied comparative approach proved to be helpful in order to investigate specifi c characteristics of commuters with a job-used secondary residence in relation to long-distance movers. thus, assumptions on who prefers commuting to migrating with the complete household could be concluded in the context of the present study. since only inmovers in selected cities were included in the sample, only some hypothetical answers could be given in the present research to the question who prefers spatial immobility to commuting under which circumstances. however, spatial immobility could be an option alongside commuting or migration especially for dual earner families if the negative effects of tied migration or the commuting costs would be too high (bailey/blake/coke 2004). future research that investigates mobility decisions in a wider context including spatially immobility, migration (with the whole household) and commuting between two residences may prove valuable for explaining the low migration rate of dual earner households. a random sample survey that aims to provide more useful insights into contemporary mobile living arrangements therefore should draw a sub-sample of spatially immobile residents (who have lived, for example, ten years and longer in the selected area) in addition to the selected spatially mobile groups of the present study. i would like to thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. the postal survey was funded by the ministry of innovation, sciences, 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(manuscript) a german translation of this authorised original article by the author is available under the title “berufsbedingtes pendeln zwischen zwei wohnsitzen – merkmale einer multilokalen lebensform in der spätmoderne”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-04de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-04de6, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. darja reuschke( ), university of trier, institute of geography & geosciences, department of human and regional geography, 54286 trier. e-mail: reuschke@uni-trier.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies a paradigm shift to overcome push and pull factors bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker abstract: recent reform efforts of advanced welfare states have attempted to reverse trends in early retirement and increase the statutory retirement age. this paradigm shift often occurred against the protest of unions, fi rms and their employees. as a consequence of expanding welfare states and as response to economic challenges since the 1970s early exit from work has become a widespread practice. early retirement has been part of continental europe’s welfare without work problem, while the scandinavian welfare states, the anglophone liberal economies and the japanese welfare society were able to maintain higher levels of employment for older workers. since the 1990s, an international consensus to reverse early exit from work emerged among international organisations and national policy experts. based on a comparative historical analysis of selected oecd countries, this study analyses the cross-national variations in the institutionalisation of early exit regimes and its recent reversal using macro-indictors on early exit trends and stylised information on institutional arrangements. comparing the interaction of social policy and economic institutions, it reviews the cross-national differences in welfare state “pull” and economic “push” factors that have contributed to early exit from work and discusses the likely impact of welfare retrenchment and assesses the importance of “retention” factors such as activation policies for decreasing early exit from work. keywords: early retirement · activation · reforms · labour market policy · welfare state · pension · retirement · social policy 1 introduction although living longer, workers tend to retire earlier than in the past. today’s welfare states are facing the dual challenges of ageing societies and early retirement. both trends have boosted public expenditure on old-age and disability pensions as well as other passive employment policies. the post-war expansion of pension systems in advanced economies has led to the institutionalisation of retirement as comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 4 (2013): 807-840 (date of release: 31.12.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-24en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-24en2 • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker808 full exit from work at a statutory pension age, a major transition in the tripartite life course (kohli 1987). since the fi rst oil shock in the early 1970s, early exit from work has become a widespread practice in most advanced economies in europe and overseas (ebbinghaus 2006). from an economic point of view, it has been argued that the welfare state provides disincentives to continue working beyond the earliest possible retirement age, and favourable pre-retirement arrangements have provided a “pull” on early exit from work (gruber/wise 1999). there have been multiple “pathways” to retirement via pre-retirement, disability or unemployment benefi ts as well as company policies (kohli 1987). moreover, early retirement was also a reaction to economic “push” factors, in particular mass unemployment and economic restructuring. politicians, employers and unions sought early retirement as passive labour market policies and as a socially acceptable strategy to alleviate the labour market and to externalise restructuring costs on public social protection (naschold/de vroom 1994). however, the alleged solution subsequently became criticised as the “welfare without work” problem (esping-andersen 1996) or “continental dilemma” (scharpf 2001): shedding labour via early exit from work in response to unemployment increased passive social expenditure, this in turn increased labour costs and thus pushed even more employees out of work. following the activation paradigm shift, not least as a consequence of the oecd’s job study in 1994 as well as the eu’s 2010 lisbon strategy and the revised “europe 2020” targets, politicians now seek measures to increase employment among older workers and delay the exit from work. in our macro-comparative study, we seek to provide a long-term analysis of the scope of early exit from work and the more recent reversal of early retirement across several welfare states in europe, usa and japan. our main two dependent variables are (1) the level of early exit from work for men and women, and (2) the change in early exit over the last decades since its previous peak. based on these two indicators we discuss the ranking of different early exit regimes in an “ordinal comparison” (ebbinghaus 2008; mahoney 2003), comparing crossand intra-regime differences. to explain the observable cross-national variations of early exit from work and its reversal trend, we focus on macro-level institutional variations and structural differences in nation-specifi c welfare state arrangements and market regulations. although the decision to retire or to continue working is the result of an individual decision, it is nevertheless taken under given institutional opportunities (e.g. a preretirement pension for older unemployed) and structural constraints (e.g. economic pressures on a company to downsize in a socially acceptable way). there are different research strategies to study this phenomenon. some empirical analyses seek to combine both the institutional and the individual level in a multi-level model to determine the contingent decision process. however, such a systematic, crossnational comparison of macroand micro-data across time remains very diffi cult due to the lack of comparable national surveys with a suffi cient number of countries and a long time horizon that includes the most recent fi gures available. since our interest here is to explore cross-national variations and long-term trends toward early retirement and recent reversal of early exit from work, we have to rely on macro-level aggregated data in order to compare a larger number of countries from reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 809 the “heydays” of early retirement to the most recent development under the “paradigmatic shift” towards “active ageing”. even the frequently used share (survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe) survey does not include data on noneuropean “late exit” countries (such as the us and japan), and even within the european context, countries following a “liberal” institutional approach are underrepresented. furthermore, it is diffi cult to reconstruct retirement transitions since the origins of the early retirement trend because the survey initiative started only after the turn of the millennium. in our analysis, we thus restrict ourselves to an exploratory overview of the relevant nation-specifi c economic and institutional contextual factors that shape (but not causally determine) the opportunities and constraints for individual retirement decisions, highlighting variations across countries and over time. these macro-contextual conditions may themselves serve as background for more detailed assessments of late career transitions by future survey research (see also the other contributions to this special issue, cpos 38,4). in the following, we will fi rst describe the differences in early exit from work, both in relative level and relative rate of decline. following the main explanatory approaches in the literature (ebbinghaus 2006; hofäcker 2010) we discuss the impact of welfare-related “pull” and economic “push” factors, though our macro-analysis conceives these as opportunities and constraints as shaped by institutional and structural differences across countries. however, we will not test their impact on individual retirement behaviour or company labour shedding strategies but – in line with earlier literature – assume that these factors increase incentives to exit from work earlier than otherwise. the “pull” factors comprise the social protection-related incentives and the availability of multiple pathways for an early exit from work of specifi c welfare state regimes. we also describe the cut backs (retrenchment) of these welfare programmes, aiming to control expenditure and lower incentives to early retirement. the “pull” factors include the economic factors such as the unemployment level, labour market rigidity and employment tenure. finally, we discuss “retention” factors, in particular active labour market policies and continued training policies which aim at reintegrating or retaining older people in work. by way of conclusion, we map the different factors contributing to the overall level of and the reversal in early exit patterns. from an institutional perspective, we consider both the pull as well as the push factors that shape the cross-national differences in early exit regimes. at the same time, we argue that we also need to investigate the contribution of welfare policy retrenchment and retention factors to the success or failure of reversing early exit from work in recent years. it is indeed the interaction between the factors that matters. 2 early exit from work in cross-national comparison previous comparative studies have mapped cross-national similarities and differences in the development of early retirement in the late twentieth century (see for example ebbinghaus 2006; hofäcker/pollnerová 2006; kohli et al. 1991; oecd 2006). a major advancement have been micro-level studies that use event history data • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker810 to understand the individual level factors in explaining early or late exit from work (blossfeld et al. 2006; blossfeld et al. 2011), though they do not cover the most recent period due to survey availability issues. until today there have been only few comparative studies that analyse the recent gradual reversal of early exit with the help of age-group specifi c employment fi gures (ebbinghaus 2008; eichhorst 2011; hofäcker/pollnerová 2006; zaidi/fuchs 2006). to illustrate most recent trends in early retirement and its reversal, we provide a stylised comparison of employment trends among older workers in advanced economies. the european union set the lisbon 2010 target to achieve employment rates above 50 percent among older workers (55-64). in a fi rst step, we map agespecifi c employment rates, i.e. the share of those gainfully working (employed or self-employed) within a given age group. in order to describe the decline in gainful employment among the older workforce and its growing reliance on transfers, we use employment rates as the appropriate measure. the alternative measure of labour force participation rates includes the unemployed, which makes comparisons across welfare states diffi cult (see ebbinghaus 2006; hofäcker/pollnerová 2006): while in some countries, early retirement pensions or disability benefi ts were introduced to reduce unemployment among the elderly, other countries (e.g. denmark, germany, the netherlands) have used long-term unemployment benefi ts as pathways into pre-retirement. since by the late-1960s, most oecd countries have institutionalized the age of 65 (if not earlier) as the normal statutory pension age (kohli et al. 1991), we count any working person leaving employment before the age of 65 as having exited from work prematurely, even if a statutory pension can be drawn earlier in a particular country. this approach follows the international common practice (oecd, eu) and current political discourse, such as the eu 2010 target of raising the employment level of older workers aged between 55 and 64. this benchmark allows us to compare early exit from work before age 65 across countries and irrespective of cultural or institutional practices. figure 1 thus compares the employment rates at age 60-64 – i.e. directly prior to the benchmark retirement age of 65 – for the years 2000 and 2010. as female employment rates combine the contradictory trends of increasing labour force participation across cohorts and the early exit from work, only male employment rates are presented here to illustrate the economically most important impact of early retirement on employment patterns. figure 1 indicates remarkable cross-national variations in employment rates of older workers aged 60-64, ranging from a minimum of around 10 percent (in france and hungary) to a high of around 80 percent in iceland, while the rest of the oecd countries almost equally spread out between these extreme points. moreover, employment rates of older workers have risen in the majority of countries over the last decade (indicated by cases left of the dotted line in fig. 1). for our subsequent analysis, we will investigate these cross-national differences in early exit from work and the varying success in reversing it. for practical reasons, we restrict our analysis to a theoretically selected set of cases (marked by boxes in fig. 1), which represent typical examples of different institutional confi gurations regarding welfare state policies and labour market regulations (see esping-andersen reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 811 1990; ebbinghaus 2006; blossfeld et al. 2006). the united states and the united kingdom, but also switzerland and japan, represent the liberal or residual welfare regime; germany and the netherlands are included as typical cases of the continental conservative regime; denmark and sweden represent the universalist socialdemocratic regime; france, italy and spain are examples of the latin regime; and fi nally, despite limited data availability (not least due to their late entry into the eu) we also include three central and eastern european (cee) countries: hungary, the czech republic and estonia. these 14 countries cover nearly the whole spectrum of variation between “early” and late “exit regimes”. notably, the fi nal sample of fig. 1: employment rates of men aged 60-64 in oecd countries, 2000 (vertical axis) vs. 2010 (horizontal axis) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2000 2010 is mx jp cn nz kr us no se il ie pt tr ukau ca gr ee ch es dk ru it pl de nl fi cz belu at sk fr hu increase 2000 --> 2010 decrease 2000 --> 2010 notes: countries in frames are those selected for further analysis country labels: at = austria, au= australia, be = belgium, ca= canada, ch= switzerland, cz= czech republic, de = germany, dk= denmark, es= spain, ee = estonia, fr = france, fi = finland , gr= greece, hu = hungary, il= israel, ie = ireland, is = iceland, jp = japan, kr = korea, lu = luxembourg, mx = mexico, nl= netherlands, no = norway, nz = new zealand, pt = portugal, pl = poland, cn = china, se= sweden, sk= slovakia, tr = turkey, uk = united kingdom, usa= united states. source: oecd (2011a) • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker812 countries includes none of the rare cases where employment rates among older workers have declined throughout the previous decade. however, these countries have predominantly been economies from different institutional origin that have suffered from declines throughout the economic and fi nancial crises since 2008, but had previously been following the dominant trend towards later exit among older workers. we thus assume that the omission of these countries does not lead to a systematic bias regarding the underlying institutional characteristics. a major aim will be to investigate in how far these regime classifi cations, mostly established throughout the “heydays” of early retirement, can be upheld even under present conditions of postponed retirement or whether signifi cant departures from regimespecifi c pathways have taken place throughout recent years. our analysis for these selected countries focuses in particular on cohort-adjusted rates of early exit from work, that is, the decline in the employment rate for the two older age groups (60-64 or 55-59) compared to their employment fi ve years earlier (i.e. age group 55-59 or 50-54 respectively).1 this cohort adjustment is necessary when employment rates are changing across cohorts, which is particularly the case for women. although the participation of women increased across generations, cohort-adjusted early exit rates show to what extent a given cohort’s employment rate has declined compared to its employment fi ve years earlier. by using the relative decline in employment rates we also consider the group of unemployed to have de facto exited from work since unemployment benefi ts are one of several pathways to early retirement (kohli et al. 1991). figure 2 con trasts the exit rates in 2010 with the respective peak values of early exit.2 this allows us not only to consider the level of exit rates but also the recent reversal since the heydays of early exit. early exit is more frequent after age 60 than age 55 for both men and women. furthermore, there have been declines in exit rates compared to the initial peak level, though their magnitude varies considerably across the 14 selected countries. in order to map the main exit regimes in more detail, we juxtapose the current level (represented by the 2010 exit rate) and its relative decline (i.e. percentage) as compared to the respective peak value for the main age group prone to early retirement since 1985 (or fi rst available year thereafter) in table 1. we use the relative exit rates here since absolute rates do not take into account that it is far more diffi cult for countries with a low peak to achieve a decline. we compare those aged 60 to 64 to those aged 55 to 59 (the latter age group is considered to also capture very early exit practices). following table 1, fi ve different ideal “exit regimes” may be differentiated. 1 for an explanation and the formula of cohort-adjusted relative exit rates see ebbinghaus (2006: 103, 278). 2 although there is some country-specifi c variation in peak exit levels, for most countries considered here, peak values were reached in the early/mid-1990s.for eastern european countries, comparable oecd data are often not available before the mid-1990s in which exit rates can be assumed to have been the highest due to the immediate “transformation shock” and early statutory retirement rules. peak values for these countries thus may be slightly underestimated. reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 813 fig. 2: exit rates for men and women (aged 60-64 and 55-59) in oecd countries, peak level vs. 2010 100 80 60 40 20 0 france italy spain czech republic hungary estonia germany netherlands denmark sweden switzerland united kingdom united states japan 55-59: peak 55-59: 2010 60-64: peak 60-64: 2010 e. liberal countries d. central europe b. eastern europe c. northern europe a. southern europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 a) men b) women source: own calculations based on (oecd 2011a). • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker814 • early exit is most pronounced in europe’s latin welfare states: particularly in france, traditionally also in italy, and to a lesser degree in spain. from a comparative perspective, these countries take an extreme position as (persistent) early exit regimes. in france and italy, half of all employees exit work between age 55 and 65, though among italian women, early exit rates have declined considerably. especially france shows very early exits even before age 60, while this is less common in italy. given spain’s late democratic development since 1975, early retirement often occurred later and less frequently, particularly the small group of working women tend to retention longer. both men and women show rather stable exit rates at around 35-40 percent in their late-50s and 20-25 percent in their early-50s (including those in temporary unemployment). • following their transition to a market economy after 1989, early exit was very acute in eastern europe, particularly in hungary and the czech republic. in these transition economies, half of all working people left employment between age 55 and 65. especially czech men and hungarian older people show a very high exit rate and in hungary also a tendency to exit very early (see fig. 2). unlike these countries, estonia already succeeded in reducing early retirement in the late-1990s and continues to maintain an intermediate position between “early” and “late” exit despite the recent fi nancial crisis. • for along time, germany and the netherlands represented traditional “early exit regimes”; yet, over the last two decades employment rates among older workers have improved considerably. early retirement rates among people in their late-50s and early-60s have almost halved, for those in their early-50s they were reduced to relative low levels (although the situation is less favourable in eastern germany). while these countries have long been seen as stuck in the “welfare without work” dilemma (esping-andersen 1996), they can now be considered as successful cases of early exit reversal. • the classical example of a very late exit country is provided by sweden where only a minority of employees leave work earlier than at the age of 65. only during the recession of the early-1990s, early retirement had briefl y turned into a mass phenomenon, but early exit rates have almost continuously declined ever since. early exit patterns in denmark appear to be more gendered: while early exit of men is similar to other late-exit countries, danish women predominantly leave work in their late-50s without signifi cant changes in recent years. • among the liberal or residual welfare regimes, the united states, japan and switzerland show exit rates (almost) as low as sweden. in contrast to scandinavia, these low exit levels are less caused by an improvement in older workers’ employment rates but rather by continuously low levels of early retirement. exit rates never signifi cantly exceeded peak values of around a third of those in their late-50s (with the exception of swiss women) and 20 percent of those in their early-50s. these countries are thus traditional late exit regimes. the exception is the united kingdom, where women can alreversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 815 ready retire at the age of 60. british men had only somewhat higher exit rates during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. both exit levels and their development show signifi cant variations both across and within the described clusters. while the explanation of cross-national variations in exit levels has been widely discussed in previous research, the particular conditions for success of recent policy reversal have been hardly studied thus far. adopting the ordinal comparative method (mahoney 2003), we compare countries from high to low exit patterns, searching for institutional and structural explanations for the observable ranking in the early exit level and the degree of change. using our indicators, we fi nd three main clusters of countries in respect to their ability to reverse early exit from work with few exceptions (see table 1). one group of entrenched early exit countries has not been able to reverse its high level of early exit (france and hungary) or have made only partial progress: (italy (particularly for women) as well as the czech republic (particularly for men)). a second group has maintained a medium level of early exit: denmark (particularly for men) and the united states (particularly for men), and spain or made partial progress as the united kingdom (particularly for women). finally those with relative low levels, japan and switzerland, have experienced some decline. the countries with a remarkable tab. 1: early exit from work and its reversal early exit decline (relative to peak) level 2010 low medium high high (>50%) france italy* ** hungary ** ** czech republic ** denmark ** italy* ** czech republic ** medium denmark ** spain united kingdom united states estonia *** united kingdom estonia germany** netherlands** low (<30%) united states japan switzerland ** sweden e a c d b notes: level: exit rate 60-64 in 2010; decline: decline of exit rate 60-64 (percent peak level) between peak year and 2010; ♂ men; ♀ women; * also high very early retirement (age 55-59); ** more signifi cant decline in age group 55-59; *** less signifi cant decline in age group 55-59; clusters: a) south, b) east, c) centre, d) nordic, e) liberal; countries with consistent gender pattern or those for men only in bold; cluster outliers in italics. source: own calculations based on oecd labour force statistics (raw data available on demand). • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker816 reversal are germany and the netherlands (leaving the high-medium rank), but also estonia (with more relative decline for women than men) and sweden (maintaining a decline from an already medium-low level). in our subsequent analysis, we will focus particularly on explaining the last group of successful reversal. 3 protection-related pull-factors in previous comparative studies, early exit from work prior to the recent turnaround has been frequently explained by protection-related “pull” factors, that is, through welfare state policies that provide opportunities for individual workers to leave work early (ebbinghaus 2006: chap. 5; hofäcker 2010: chap. 2). economists have argued that pension schemes or other public benefi ts often provide an implicit tax on continuing to work (gruber/wise 1999). in particular, old-age pension systems that offer a pre-retirement option without or with only small actuarial reduction provide a major incentive to rational individuals to stop working since the expected income stream from benefi ts and utility from leisure outweighs the gains from continued working and receiving a pension later. from a life course perspective, sociological approaches focus on how welfare regimes shape the retirement age and how they structure the transition from work to retirement through multiple “pathways” through old-age pensions, special schemes, disability income support and unemployment benefi ts (kohli et al. 1991). comparative studies using micro-level data show that welfare regimes provide very different opportunity structures for individual retirement decisions (blossfeld et al. 2006; blossfeld et al. 2011). sociological studies also stress social norms on retirement timing (radl 2012) and even “exit cultures” (maltby et al. 2004) in societies with a high level of early retirement. these societal expectations make a reversal very diffi cult since early retirement is seen as an acquired social right, not least because pay-as-you-go pensions are underwritten by an implicit social contract between generations (myles/pierson 2001). among the main pathways to early exit from work are old-age pensions and special pre-retirement schemes (ebbinghaus 2006; kohli et al. 1991). many pension schemes allow retirement before age 65 (and sometimes an even earlier age for women) for those with long contribution records (“seniority pensions”), for workers in hazardous industries, and for the long-term unemployed. following the last decades of pension reforms as response to the challenges of ageing societies (immergut et al. 2007), a reversal of early retirement has increasingly attempted to be achieved by closing down special schemes and phasing-out early exit options in the pension systems (ebbinghaus 2006: chap. 7). in addition, welfare retrenchment makes pension benefi ts less generous and strengthens the actuarial principle, thereby decreasing the incentives to retire early. international organisations, in particular the oecd and eu commission, recommended increasing the retirement age (or contribution years), not least in order to harmonise women’s retirement age with that of men as required by eu law. moreover, the shift towards a multi-pillar pension system and thus an increased share of privately funded pensions has increased the actuarial incentives to retire reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 817 later, particularly in the case of defi ned contribution schemes (ebbinghaus 2011). in addition, disability pensions have been criticised for providing pathways into early exit from work. disability pensions vary considerably across countries (prinz 2003), they have often been the last resort for early exit for those that were unable to fi nd a job due to their age and thus gain particular importance during economic crisis (ebbinghaus 2006). unemployment benefi ts, particularly in countries with longterm benefi ts, provided a “bridge” (guillemard/van gunsteren 1991) to retirement for older workers, and often a pre-retirement option is granted for unemployed older people. however, considerable reform efforts in recent years shifted emphasis from passive to active labour market policies as advocated by oecd and the eu (weishaupt 2011). focusing fi rst on protection-related “pull”, we will seek to provide an explanation of the cross-national variations in early retirement by welfare state differences in pathways to early retirement. does the existence of a high early exit pattern correspond to the availability of generous multiple pathways, while lower exit levels can be related to fewer available opportunities? the very early exit in southern and eastern europe can indeed be related to a traditionally low pension age which has been granted since the onset of early retirement (ebbinghaus 2006: chap. 5). in italy’s “pensioner state”, men could retire at age 60 with relatively generous pensions and those with 35 contribution years (20 years in the public sector) even from age 55 onwards, while women could draw pensions even 5 years earlier. in france in 1983, retirement age was lowered from 65 to 60 years for those with suffi cient contributions in order to reduce old-age unemployment, while those with insuffi cient pensions, particularly women, tend to postpone exit until 65. an exception is spain’s medium-level early retirement pattern and the late exit age of the – rather small – group of older women still working; this is due to a statutory pension age at 65 for both men and women with few exceptions.3 the cee countries traditionally maintained an early pension age during the transition to market democracies in the 1990s (blossfeld et al. 2006): czech and hungarian men could retire at age 60, czech women at age 57 (if not earlier, depending on the number of children) and hungarian women at age 55. the disability pension pathway has also been very widespread in both countries. moreover, special schemes granted even earlier exit options to (mainly male) senior workers with long contribution records (czech republic: 3, hungary: 5 years). whereas estonia granted an early pension age of 63 years to men and 58 years to women in the 1990s, the gross pension replacement rate was so low (35 percent) that many continued working. thus in all three cee countries, we fi nd a high early exit rate during the transition years since older people were strongly affected by the market-liberalisation shock. 3 in spain, earlier retirement was available for contributors under the pre-1967 system, older unemployed (age 61, previously 60) could receive an anticipated but reduced pension, and those without work could receive means-tested assistance from age 52 onwards. • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker818 the continental european countries are well known for using early retirement as a peaceful labour shedding strategy (esping-andersen 1996). although normal retirement age was set at 65 years in the post-war federal republic of germany, since the 1970s early retirement increased due to a new seniority pension at age 63 (with 35 contribution years), a special pre-retirement scheme during the 1980s, and special pensions at age 60 for the long-term unemployed, severely disabled and ex-housewives (with few contribution years). in the netherlands, early exit from work was not possible through public basic pension, only granted at age 65, but was achieved through long-term unemployment benefi ts, negotiated pre-retirement pensions and particularly generous disability pensions. these passive labour market policies became known as the “dutch disease” (aarts et al. 1996). while in these early exit countries, early non-working benefi ts granted senior workers and partly women early pensions with little or no actuarial reduction, the scandinavian welfare states, the anglophone liberal market economies, switzerland and japan experienced much lower early exit, partly due to more strict public welfare systems (ebbinghaus 2006: chap. 5). scandinavian countries had initially high retirement ages: old-age pension was only granted at age 67 in denmark until 2004 (but danish single women could retire at 62 until 1984) and sweden’s pension age was lowered from 67 to 65 as early as 1976. special temporary benefi ts for older unemployed existed in denmark (phased out after 1996) and an early pension age was available for the unemployed in sweden (until 1991), while disability pensions also provided early exit pathways (particularly for danish women), often based on the labour market situation and social criteria. in the united kingdom, the beveridge-type public pension was granted at age 65 for men and 60 for women. the us social security system included a statutory pension at age 65 but since the late-1960s fl exible pensions with actuarial reductions have been possible from age 62 onwards. the japanese national pension is only granted at age 65 but the earnings-related supplementary pension at age 60 (for women 5 years earlier). disability pensions also played some role in the uk and us (much less in japan), while unemployment benefi ts were too short to build a bridge into retirement (though a special job release scheme had been applied in the uk until 1989). in these low exit countries, public pension benefi ts were either not available or only at actuarially reduced rates, while disability pensions and sometimes unemployment schemes were partly used as alternative pathways, particularly during recessions. in switzerland, the post-war public pension was provided for men at age 65 but for women already at age 62, while occupational pensions (mandatory since 1985) allowed early withdrawal, though with actuarial reduction. hence, the liberal/residual multi-pillar pension systems of the united states, switzerland and japan provided the least opportunities to early exit; this was also the case for sweden before the 1990s, but to a lesser degree for denmark and the united kingdom as early exit was more frequent there (particularly among women). adopting an ordinal comparison of the early retirement pathways prior to recent reforms (see table 2), we can detect that the early exit level strongly relates to our index that measures the availability of multiple pathways provided by pension systems, unemployment schemes and disability benefi ts (based on country informareversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 819 tion in ebbinghaus 2006 and blossfeld et al. 2011). the early-cum-high-exit cluster of italy, france, hungary and the czech republic has the highest score (8 or more), it is particularly characterised by a low statutory retirement age and early seniority pensions. at a high-medium level, germany and the netherlands also show notable levels of early exit from work with a medium index score, followed by the “outliers” estonia, spain and denmark. the least generous protection systems, providing only few early exit options, are the remaining countries of liberal/residual welfare states (uk, us, switzerland, japan) and scandinavian universalism (sweden). the ordinal comparison thus indicates that the availability of pathways and the overall exit pattern conform in the expected way as assumed by the pull thesis. 4 welfare retrenchment given the entrenched pathways to early exit from work due to its high popularity, reversing this course has been a major societal challenge in all welfare states (ebbinghaus 2006). several governments have attempted to reverse the early exit trend by scaling down existing “pull” incentives, particularly through raising the statutory age of retirement and restricting if not abolishing previously attractive early pathways. surprisingly, such efforts were discussed much earlier in the anglophone as well as japan’s residual welfare state with internationally rather low early exit levels, while the generous welfare states of central and southern europe that suffered from high levels of early exit took action much later (ebbinghaus 2006). the european and other oecd-countries differ in their statutory old-age pension schemes, thus in some pension systems normal retirement was granted before age 65 for everybody or for women only, while several pension reforms have been gradually increasing these limits over the last two decades (oecd 2011b, see table 2). the fi rst plan to increase retirement age dates back to the us social security reform of 1983, though it was a long-term phasing-in plan. retirement age for full benefi ts is slowly being raised from 65 to 67 between 2002 and 2027 (starting with those born 1938), while early retirement at age 62 remains possible, but with greater actuarial reduction. the united kingdom decided early on to phase out the job release scheme by 1989, and paid tribute to eu equality rules by phasing in retirement age for women from 60 to 65 only since 2010 until 2020. a major reform of the disability pension also occurred during new labour, though incapacity benefi ts remain a pathway to early exit. given its rapid ageing, japan raised the basic pension to 65 years in the mid1980s (though earlier drawing is possible with actuarial reductions), while for the second (earnings-related) pension the age is raised for men from 60 to 65 by 2025 and for women from 55 to 60 by 2000 and to 65 years by 2030. note that post-career jobs have become less subsidised by the gradual in-work benefi ts, while employers fi nd it increasingly diffi cult to fulfi l their promise to fi nd such re-employment for their career workers. in switzerland, the national pension age for women was raised from 62 to 63 in 2001 and to 64 in 2005, whereas it remained at 65 years for men • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker820 tab. 2: index of pathways ranked by exit opportunities pension age 1993 / 2010 old-age pension flexi pension special scheme unemployment disability index of pathways exit pattern a france 60 60,5 *** *** ** * 9 early, high italy 55 59 *** ** ** ** * {**} 10 {12} early, high spain 65 = 65 * ** ** 5 moderate b czech 60 61 ** * {**} * ** 8 early, republic 57 58.7 *** 9 high hungary 60 = 60 *** * ** * **{*} 9 {10} early, 55 59 high estonia 60 63 ** * * ** 6 moderate 55 60.5 *** 7 c germany 63 65 * ** {**} ** ** 7 {9} high 60 65 ** 8 netherlands 65 = 65 **{*} ** **{*} 8 {6} high d denmark 67 65 * **{***} ** 5 {6} : mod. { *} *** 6 {8} : high sweden 65 = 65 * * * {**} 3 {5} moderate e switzerland 65 = 65 * * 2 low, 62 63 ** 4 moderate uk 65 = 65 ** { **} * 3{5} : mod. 60 = 60 *** 6 : high usa 65 66 ** * 3 moderate 65 66 japan 65 = 65 ** * 3 low 61 65 notes: opportunities for early exit (see ebbinghaus 2006: table 5.5 for details): disability: with labour market consideration; index of pathways: *** major pathway (3 points); ** conditional pathway (dismissal, unemployment, disability); (2 points); * limited pathway (means-tested, medical-test only, partial pension, actuarial reduction) (1 point); exit trend for men (♂) and women (♀) (see ebbinghaus 2006: table 4.8). for additional information for the czech republic see bednárik/škorpík (2007), for estonia, hungary and switzerland see blossfeld et al. (2011), and for statutory old-age pension scheme in 1993 and 2010 see oecd (2011b). source: ebbinghaus 2006 and own updates reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 821 (earlier drawing will lead to reductions), despite increased unemployment since the 1990s. following the unemployment crisis of the early 1990s, sweden abolished the pension at age 60 for long-term unemployed in 1991 and the gradual partial pensions have been phased out. a major reform of the two-tier pension system was decided in 1994, replacing the universal basic pension by means-tested supplements and the earnings-related pension into an ndc system plus a partially funded individual pension, while fl exible pensions are only available with actuarial reductions. since its peak of high unemployment in the mid-1990s, danish labour market policy shifted from passive to active measures. although the statutory pension age was lowered from 67 to 65 by the 1999 reform (but it will increase again as of 2024), there were increased incentives for those who deferred retirement, not least due to increased importance of funded occupational pensions. likewise the continental european countries turned away from passive labour market policies. when the netherlands suffered from the “dutch disease” that was epitomised by a million people on disability pensions, a sequence of reforms sought to limit the disability pathway in the late-1980s and early-1990s (aarts/de jong 1996). the social partners were also turning away from negotiating generous early exit options, particularly after a tripartite agreement in 1997. the fi rst major reform in germany was passed when the berlin wall came down, since 1992 it phased out most of the early retirement pathways (early pension for women, senior workers, and unemployed). further steps were taken in 1996 by the conservative-liberal government but these were repealed again by the subsequent red-green government, which however introduced voluntary pensions and public pension cuts in 2001 and 2003 (ebbinghaus 2011). in 2007, the grand coalition decided to increase the pension age from 65 to 67 by 2029. the dutch government decided to increase public pensions from 65 to 67 years by 2023. thus, both the netherlands and germany experienced major turnarounds from passive to active policies; indeed both countries met the eu 2010 target of a 50 percent employment rate for older workers (aged 55-64) on time. starting in the 1990s, a policy shift also occurred in the southern and eastern european countries, which was, however, only more or less successful. this was not only due to the long-term fi nancial sustainability of pay-as-you-go public pensions caused by rapidly ageing societies and widespread early retirement, but the maastricht criteria of the eu monetary union for france and italy as well as the accession perspective and imf conditions for the cee countries added urgency. after major political confl icts, the italian government and trade unions agreed in 1995 to phase-in an increase of retirement ages for men and women, long-term gender equalisation, as well as similar conditions for both the public and private sector. further – partly contradictory – steps were taken by subsequent governments in order to speed up or slow down the retirement age increase, and most recently an increase beyond 65 years has been discussed. in france, raising the pension age has remained politically impossible, but the necessary contribution period for full pensions has been extended for the private sector (1993), while the conservative government raised the age by two years for both seniority and normal pensions, but • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker822 the reforms will be partly reversed by the socialist government that came to power in 2012. all three cee countries increased the retirement age in the late-1990s. the czech republic raises male and female pension ages to 63 by 2016 and 2019 respectively, though there remain child credits for women. hungary increased the pension age to 62 for men by 2000 and for women by 2009, thus equalising the fi ve year difference, while an increase to 65 years is also planned for 2022. estonia has also increased the pension age to 63 for both men (previously 60) and women (previously 55). all three countries will eventually reach a retirement age of 65, though this will be achieved faster in estonia and hungary than in the czech republic. compared to the peak of the early retirement period, there has been some remarkable path departure but also much path dependent development in reforming early retirement. the reversal of early exit policies has been most pronounced in the formerly traditional early exit countries germany and the netherlands, through phasing out unemployment, preretirement and disability pensions and focusing on the activation of older workers. the swedish reforms of the 1990s also reversed the short wave of early exit, while denmark was later and less severe in its reforms. the liberal/residual welfare states further increased the retirement age while providing few opportunities for early exit. although italy has been more reform-prone in increasing its early statutory retirement age and spain had less of a problem, france was more hesitant in its reversal policies which remained highly politically contentious. the reforms to increase retirement ages in cee countries precede also rather slowly, particularly the czech republic remains behind estonia and hungary. 5 economic push factors we will now consider the role of different push factors for explaining cross-national variations in early retirement and its reversal. while pull factors primarily affect the decision of older workers to retire or to continue working, push factors assume that structural labour market conditions are crowding out older workers from employment. although pull and push factors – are typically conceptualised as opposing forces, they have often represented two sides of the same coin in establishing early retirement within modern societies: in denmark, for example, generous pension incentives and early exit pathways, which are “pull” factors, were specifi cally introduced in response to persistent labour market diffi culties for older workers throughout skyrocketing unemployment in the mid-1990s, that is, “push” factors (blossfeld et al. 2006). in a similar way, existing transfer schemes such as the german unemployment insurance and dutch or swedish disability benefi ts were inadvertently used for other purposes to facilitate early exit. the cutback of such social policies may have lowered the incentives to exit, but if push factors remain strong, unemployment or poverty in old age would be high. thus we also need to look at the economic push factors and the policies that foster reintegration of unemployed and retain older workers in employment. reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 823 business cycle shifts and economic restructuring most obviously, push effects can be attributed to changes in the business cycle, especially economic downturns that put pressure on national labour markets. under these unfavourable conditions, older workers are more likely to accept the alternative roles as pensioners than younger workers would accept being unemployed. early retirement as a socially accepted form of downsizing has been preferred by unions and works councils. during economic downturns older workers were frequently disproportionately pushed into (voluntary) unemployment or offered early exit opportunities, in both cases leading to declining employment rates. the “major surge” of early exit indeed occurred throughout recessions (ebbinghaus 2006: 178).4 in liberal economies (such as the uk and the us) or small and open economies (such as denmark), early retirement mirrored the economic cycle: immediate increases in times of economic recessions and declines in times of economic boom (hofäcker 2010). furthermore, the recent reversal of early retirement has been facilitated by the overall economic recovery during the last decade.5 however, a closer look reveals that the relationship between business cycle and early retirement is less straightforward. historically, it was often not large-scale economic crises that initiated early exit waves. for instance, germany’s fi rst preretirement programmes were already introduced before the 1970s, they were intended as a targeted measure for specifi c groups and not as a general labour market strategy (jacobs et al. 1991b: 182; naschold et al. 1994: 450). instead of causing it, economic crises often rather amplifi ed existing early exit trends by using available instruments in order to relieve national labour markets. furthermore, early retirement trends in continental as well as southern european countries often outlived economic crises and persisted throughout subsequent periods of economic recovery, thus “decoupling” early exits from the business cycle and turning them into “institutionalised early exit” regimes (hofäcker 2010; hofäcker/unt 2013). another frequent argument has been that the processes of deindustrialisation and economic restructuring – i.e. the gradual move from an industrial to a service economy and the downsizing of the public sector following welfare state retrenchment – may have specifi cally affected older workers who are disproportionately represented in declining sectors. scattered evidence indeed suggests a relationship between downsizing in the above mentioned sectors and early retirement. however, these explanations merely hold for the initial phase of early retirement, and less for its long-term development. in many countries, early retirement was extended to larger parts of national economies (jacobs et al. 1991a) and effectively developed into a general pathway far beyond individual sectors (ebbinghaus 2006). by these 4 examples are the declines of older workers’ employment in cee countries following the oil crisis (hofäcker/pollnerová 2006) or the increase of old-age unemployment from nearly zero to more than 10 percent during the swedish recession of the early 1990s (sjögren lindquist 2006). 5 while on average, total unemployment (25-64 years) in the eu-21 declined from around 9 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2008, the employment rate of senior workers increased from 36.5 percent to 45.6 percent in the same countries and time span (oecd 2011a). • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker824 means, early retirement became institutionalised as an acquired social right across larger parts of society. although variations in the business cycle and deindustrialisation may play a role in explaining the emergence of early exit from work, these accounts of economic processes largely fail to adequately explain cross-national variations in the long-term early retirement development (ebbinghaus 2008). similar claims as for deindustrialisation are frequently made with regard to accompanying changes in occupational structures, arguing that shifts in industrial structures together with rapid technological advances in a globalising economy have transformed skill requirements (blossfeld et al. 2006). older workers’ qualifi cations have usually been acquired early in their careers and they often have not adequately been updated. they thus run a higher risk of becoming redundant. the renewal of their qualifi cations comes at a high cost, particularly if they can easily be replaced by younger, better qualifi ed employees. for the initial early exit wave, this argument about lower qualifi cation replacement is a useful explanation. however, it can be assumed that as early retirement continued, workers with redundant qualifi cations were selectively shed (ebbinghaus 2006: 175-176). at the same time, the process of educational expansion gradually replaces older by younger cohorts that possess better qualifi cations, allowing them to remain in employment longer (bernardi/garrido 2006). some recent fi ndings indicate that it is no longer an individual’s occupational status that is decisive for exit (henkens/kalmijn 2006; hofäcker 2010). thus one could argue that the explanatory power of occupational changes as a main driver of early exit has been weakened. production regimes and labour market institutions some recent approaches shifted the attention to the role of nation-specifi c labour market institutions in mediating the employment prospects of older workers. most prominently, the varieties of capitalism approach (hall/soskice 2001) claims two ideal representations of market economies with different types of production regimes, skill formation and employment relations, which also have consequences for older workers (see ebbinghaus 2006 for an overview). on the one hand, there are liberal market economies (lmes) with largely fordist mass production, an unregulated labour market, high staff turnover and little employment protection. this fl exible labour market is supplemented by an unstandardised educational and occupational training system with a strong emphasis on general skills and the acquisition of company-specifi c qualifi cations via on-the-jobtraining (blossfeld/stockmann 1999). due to short-termism in fi nancial and corporate governance, such companies are forced to react to downturns by downsizing, that is, via numerical staff fl exibility. employees in lmes thus are at a high risk of being dismissed, while the fl exible labour market provides more ample opportunities for them to re-enter employment. older workers make frequent use of this fl exibility, not least because low public pensions and actuarial private pensions necessitate postponing retirement. only for higher qualifi ed staff with company-specifi c knowledge, employers are willing to invest into long-term maintenance of their staff by granting specifi c fringe benefi ts, such as occupational pension plans. in times of reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 825 economic downturns, these schemes could be (and in fact were frequently) used to promote early exit via “golden handshakes”. on the other hand, in coordinated market economies (cmes), production is based on quality products, which require more specifi c skills that are acquired in standardised (vocational) training and education. due to the higher importance of long-term trust between employers and employees, labour relations in cmes are more institutionalised (hall/soskice 2001). moreover, more regulated forms of employment protection are common. maintenance of a qualifi ed workforce in such companies is supported by higher wages’ and dismissal protection depending on tenure. however, earlier studies have pointed to the ambivalent nature of such regulations (see, for example, blossfeld et al. 2006). although such rules seem to promote employment security for older workers, they simultaneously create comparative labour market disadvantages compared to younger workers: in recent decades, following an increasing availability of high-skilled younger workers with more fl exible working contracts and lower starting wages (blossfeld et al. 2005), older workers in cmes are more and more regarded as a costly workforce with insuffi cient qualifi cations and are thus frequently shed into early retirement, occasionally with the “help” of occupational benefi ts. this allowed for a socially peaceful solution to labour market imbalances, while at the same time companies were able to maintain their tenure employment relationships. table 3 illustrates these institutional characteristics using established stylised indicators and contrasts key labour market characteristics of the 14 countries under study. the index of employment protection legislation (epl), a summary indicator provided by the oecd, allows for a general assessment of the overall strength of labour market regulation on a yearly basis since the late 1980s.6 however, since this index does not capture age-specifi c regulations, we supplement it with two further measures to illustrate labour market consequences of existing regulations for older workers. first, for employees aged 55 years and older, we report average tenure within the company as well as the percentage of those with tenure of more than 10 years. high tenure rates indicate a strong regulation of employment as a result of well-developed internal labour markets and seniority rights. second, we report the share of long-term unemployment (as a percentage of total unemployment) to refl ect labour market rigidities and re-entry barriers for those who lost their jobs. in fl exible labour markets, their re-entry chances (indicated by low rates of long-term unemployment) will probably be more favourable, whereas in coordinated market economies, redundant workers will fi nd it much harder to re-enter these internal labour markets. the synthesis of indicators in table 3 indeed confi rms the clusters outlined above (similar patterns for women are not shown here). in the countries of continental (germany, the netherlands) and latin europe (france, italy and spain) older workers 6 the oecd epl index combines measures of (i) job protection for workers with regular contracts, (ii) for those with temporary work and (iii) regulations for collective dismissal. for further details see oecd (2004). • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker826 occupy a safe “insider” position in internal labour markets with high employment protections and long tenure. but the high share of long-term unemployment indicates that those older workers out of work are at a high risk of becoming permanent “outsiders”. this simultaneity may have fostered the consensual implementation of rather generous early exit solutions. in the long run, this mutual understanding promoted the emergence of complementary “early retirement expectations” among both employers (schröder et al. 2009) and employees (frommert et al. 2009), thus creating a self-reinforcing “early retirement deadlock” that may have promoted the broad spread of early retirement respectively and long-term persistence and decoupling from the business cycle. quite in contrast, the united states combines a highly fl exible labour market with only minimal employment protection and low tenure (warner/hofmeister 2006). lower and more similar shares of long-term unemployment among older and midcareer workers indicate that redundant workers of virtually any age group can return to work. patterns in denmark and – to a lesser extent – in switzerland approximate this classic fl exible labour market. the absence of employment protection and internal labour markets combined with little re-entry barriers for those out of work has tab. 3: overview of selected institutional push factors, 2000-2010 average tenure (in years) tenure 10+ years (% overall) epl-index (version 1) long-term unemployed (1 year and longer) as % of total unemployment, by age group age group: 55-64 55-64 all 55+ 25-54 55+ 25-54 year 2000 2009 2000 2009 2000 2008 2000 2000 2010 2010 a france 21.8 22.7 77.2 75.1 2.98 3.05 67.7 42.8 56.3 41.8 italy 23.6 23.9 82.4 78.3 2.51 1.89 63.1 62.7 59.2 49.0 spain 22.4 23.0 78.1 76.2 2.93 2.98 61.8 50.9 62.2 45.2 b czech republic 16.9 16.5 54.6 63.6 1.90 1.96 45.6 53.3 40.8 46.4 hungary 16.6 15.6 56.0 57.8 1.27 1.65 57.9 52.6 55.7 52.3 estonia — — — — — *2.39 50.9 51.9 43.0 48.5 c germany 21.7 21.9 74.9 74.5 2.34 2.12 69.1 51.0 62.3 48.4 netherlands 22.2 23.0 75.6 75.3 2.12 1.95 63.0 **30.0 52.0 30.5 d denmark 18.5 17.7 65.3 65.4 1.50 1.50 47.5 21.6 35.1 22.4 sweden 21.0 20.2 75.7 — 2.24 1.87 49.3 26.6 29.7 21.2 e switzerland 20.6 20.2 74.6 70.6 1.14 1.14 *** *** *** *** united kingdom 15.3 16.1 56.5 55.5 0.68 0.75 42.1 33.2 42.9 37.0 united states — — — — 0.21 0.21 11.9 6.6 38.1 31.5 japan — — — — 1.43 1.43 36.0 22.5 40.5 38.7 notes: *: epl index, version 2; **: data from 2002; ***: no data available source: oecd (2011a) reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 827 contributed signifi cantly to the persistently low exit rates among older workers and their higher sensitivity to changes in the business cycle. there, however, remain some ambiguous cases. according to table 3, the rather weak push factors in eastern european countries are apparently at odds with the simultaneous prevalence of high early exit rates. one possible explanation is that the standardised indicators may not be fully capable of capturing the highly dynamic transition processes of post-communist labour markets. furthermore, evidence from case studies suggests that especially throughout the early transition years, many governments used early retirement schemes to cope with the dramatic “push” exerted through initially skyrocketing unemployment and the inability of then still rigid labour markets with high rates of over-employment to accommodate the crisis (e.g. hamplová/pollnerová 2006). at fi rst glance, the favourable employment performance of older japanese workers also appears surprising since japan is seen as a cme with regulated employment relations, high tenure as well as well-developed seniority regulations (oecd 2004), thus suggesting a high prevalence of push factors. however, especially in larger companies, these employment relations have been partly fl exibilised through the opportunity of mandatory retirement from career jobs at age 60 and a subsequent re-employment in supplier fi rms or secondary labour markets (ebbinghaus 2006). thus large japanese companies dismiss career workers early but they fi nd them secondary jobs elsewhere, while occupational pensions are used to partially subsidise earning losses. finally, sweden stands out as a clear exception with a low early exit rate but simultaneously rather regulated labour markets thanks to strong unions. sweden complements the public guarantee of employment security with employmentsupporting measures that bring about more favourable employment outcomes for older workers. while there thus is some explanatory power of institutional push factors regarding the emergence and development of early exit until the 1990s, their value in accounting for the recent reversal is more limited. in some cases, such as italy or sweden, recent declines in older workers’ exit rates were accompanied by a decline in the strength of push factors (i.e. a move towards lower employment protection and higher labour market fl exibility). however, the general picture concerning institutional push factors is one of relative stability. as rather long-lasting institutions, they apparently only contribute little to the explanation of the recent, sometimes remarkable increase in older workers’ employment. we will therefore need to turn to further institutional factors that explain the ability to reintegrate and retain older workers in employment better. 6 retention factors in addition to reducing early exit incentives and existing barriers to re-employment, societies can also actively foster older workers’ labour force participation through targeted, state-funded programmes. by means of active labour market policies, wel• bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker828 fare states may support job search through a wide range of activities, ranging from direct job creation to targeted counselling. in addition, through institutionalised opportunities for lifelong learning, public policies (together with companies and social partners) may enhance individual qualifi cations and thus improve older workers’ employability. in contrast to pull and push factors, such “retention” policies, that have been implemented for the explicit purpose of reversing early exit are a rather new phenomenon whose importance has only risen under the more recent paradigmatic turn towards “active ageing” (jepsen et al. 2002). in other words, they do not just represent a “scaling back” of previous pull or push factors, but an own set of unique programmes. adding to previous literature, we thus treat them as a separate analytical category of our explanation of the more recent early exit reversal. tab. 4: overview of selected institutional retention factors, 1985-2010 almp expenditure, in % gdp plmp expenditure, in % gdp training in last four weeks, 55-64 years 1985-99 2000-09 1985-99 2000-09 1992-99 2000-10 a france 0.95 1.00 0.52 1.46 0.2 1.7 italy — 0.51 0.93 0.77 0.7 1.6 spain 0.58 0.77 2.50 1.63 0.4 2.9 b czech republic 0.16 0.22 0.18 0.27 — 2.2 hungary 0.48 0.32 1.10 0.39 0.3 0.4 estonia — 0.09 — 0.30 2.3 4.5 c germany 1.04 1.03 1.82 1.82 0.8 2.3 netherlands 1.32 1.32 2.77 1.24 4.7 7.5 d denmark 1.41 1.65 4.09 2.10 6.0 17.8 sweden 2.25 1.32 1.61 0.97 14.6 12.9 e switzerland 0.39 0.63 0.73 0.76 17.5 19.8 united kingdom 0.39 0.34 0.88 0.23 5.7 15.3 usa 0.21 0.15 0.40 0.45 — — japan 0.31 0.29 0.35 0.45 — — source: for expenditure: oecd (2011a), training: eurostat (2011) reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 829 in order to compare the relative importance of passive (plmp) and active (almp) labour market policies, we analyse oecd indicators (available since 1985) for expenditure on both types of policies (as percentage of the gdp) in table 4.7 notably, such expenditure data refers to expenditure for the labour market as a whole, and thus inhibits the identifi cation of expenditure specifi cally targeted at older workers.8 cross-national differences thus can only be regarded as approximations of a country’s general political commitment towards either a labour-maintaining “active strategy” or a labour-shedding “passive” strategy. table 4 contrasts average expenditure for two periods: the heydays of early exit from 1985 to 1999 and the decade of the 2000s in which its reversal has been on the political agenda. in addition, we analyse participation rates of older workers (aged 55-64) in continued training within a time span of four weeks as indicator of lifelong learning. we assume that the more often older workers are given continued education opportunities, the less likely they will suffer from qualifi cation disadvantages compared to younger workers and will therefore be more likely to remain in employment. again, average values are compared for the early exit period (1992-99) and its more recent reversal (2000-10). scandinavian countries display high levels of engagement in both areas (see table 4). especially sweden stands out as the only country in which almp exceeds plmp expenditure. only throughout sweden’s economic crisis in the 1990s, passive expenditure signifi cantly increased, but this was largely reversed during economic recovery. for a long time, denmark deviated with plmp exceeding almp expenditure more than three times in the 1990s as a consequence of introducing various pathways into early retirement during the 1980s recessions. however, a turnaround happened with danish activation policies in the mid-1990s, when almp and plmp converged, thus moving denmark closer to the swedish model. with a strong public engagement in promoting lifelong learning, both countries display high participation rates in continued education and training. in both countries, the actively-oriented labour market policy as well as the high commitment to lifelong learning played an important role in the prevention of massive early exits and helped to reduce exit rates during recent years. quite in sharp contrast, both eastern and latin european countries have continued to follow residual labour market policies with low expenditure for both almp and plmp. moreover, participation in lifelong learning is low and has only marginally 7 almp are primarily aimed at helping the unemployed back into work and include, for example, employment services, training, hiring subsidies, direct job creation in the public sector, supported employment and rehabilitation and start-up incentives (oecd 2011a). plmp, in contrast, aim more at maintaining the living standard of those who have become unemployed, and encompass unemployment benefi ts and preretirement programmes (but not early old-age pensions or disability benefi ts). 8 even when older workers are considered separately – as for example in the share of expenditures on early retirement for labour market reasons as reported by the oecd – data are incomplete and only focus on explicit early retirement programmes through the national pension system and do not take alternative pathways from employment to retirement into account, e.g. through unemployment or disability insurance. • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker830 improved in recent years (only estonia shows a greater increase in recent years). these countries thus continue to rely on “front-loaded” education systems that train workers in the early parts of their career but provide little skill renewal thereafter (dieckhoff et al. 2007). the mere absence of active employment and educational policies for older workers may be one reason why it has remained diffi cult for these countries to lower their high exit rates during the last decade. although labour market policy expenditure is similarly low in the late exit regimes of liberal welfare states, active state policies in these countries are not considered necessary to enable (older) workers to continue their employment since fl exible labour markets pose little re-entry barriers. furthermore, training rates within these fl exible labour markets are still high, probably because of high job turnover and reliance on on-the-job training.9 a similar picture can be observed for japan, where the welfare state takes a rather residual stance in labour market policies, as employeremployee relations are strong and training is extensively provided by companies (oecd 2004). despite little active state engagement, both liberal market economies and japan thus are able to maintain a similarly favourable labour market performance as scandinavia. the central european countries, germany and the netherlands stand out given their recent reversal in early exit. since the 1990s, the netherlands has promoted active policies for older workers, refl ected in a more balanced ratio between almp and plmp (see table 4). in addition to cutting back on previously attractive pathways into retirement, more emphasis had been placed on extending lifelong learning also to older workers. in germany, however, trends in active policies appear to be more cautious, though national evidence suggests that training for older workers has been enhanced (kuwan et al. 2006). thus other factors (such as reforms in pension incentives) may have been more decisive in promoting the recent reversal than retention factors. overall, there appears to be some (though no perfect) correspondence between the extent and development in retention policies and the level of early exit and its reversal. countries in which older workers’ employment is being supported through either active labour market policies or lifelong learning are frequently among those that are doing relatively well in terms of reversing early exit. 7 comparing macro-confi gurations in a meta-analysis we now compare our results on early retirement and its institutional and structural determinants by mapping the main confi gurations by regime and country (see table 5). in our analysis we fi rst described the evolution of early exit and its development over time in the 14 selected advanced economies. we 9 since the training indicator in table 4 is based on the european labour force surveys, there is no data available for the united states and japan, but both countries come close to the other lifelong learning regime. reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 831 were generally able to identify a ranking of early exit patterns. both liberal-residual welfare states and scandinavian countries can be regarded as “late exit” regimes with traditionally low levels of early retirement, though this was interrupted by a brief early exit boom in sweden during the 1990s recession, whereas denmark has generally shown a higher level of early retirement among women and until the mid1990s also among men. in contrast, latin and cee countries are marked by strong and persistent early exit trends that are facilitated by strong pull and push factors, although spain and estonia provide fewer preretirement incentives for older workers. while the above clusters are largely stable over time and broadly refl ect previous classifi cations of “early” and “late exit regimes” (ebbinghaus 2006; blossfeld et al. 2006), germany and the netherlands are a notable exception, moving from an early exit regime towards a late retirement model over the last two decades. in our meta-analysis we use comparative indicators to provide an institutional and structural explanation for these long-term exit patterns and their reversals (see table 5): pull factors (differentiated into characteristics of mandatory pension systems, additional early exit pathways), the reform efforts leading to a retrenchment of such welfare arrangements; push factors (differentiated into unemployment and regulation of national labour markets) and retention factors (differentiated into almp and lifelong learning). the combination of these factors refl ects the “cornerstones” of the swedish “late exit” model and its further development. during the 1970s and 1980s, sweden only exhibited a low level of early exit due to both pull and push factors: a rather stringent pension system with high retirement ages and little early exit opportunities, while unemployment was historically low and high employment across all agegroups on formally regulated labour markets was fostered by active labour market policies and lifelong learning. it was only in the economic crisis of the early 1990s when long-term unemployment and early exit from work became widespread, though these push and pull factors were soon reversed as the economy recovered and early exit declined almost to its pre-crisis level. denmark initially followed the swedish model, but due to persistent unemployment, early retirement pathways were increasingly used since the 1980s, thus moving denmark into an intermediate position between early and late exit countries. only since the mid-1990s, activation policies were strengthened and the most generous early exit pathways were closed. nonetheless, the only modest declines in exit rates suggest that further cutbacks in pull incentives (such as phasing out preretirement pathways) will be required to further improve older workers’ employment. as our analysis indicates, similarly high employment levels among older workers in liberal welfare states rest on an alternative institutional combination. these welfare states only invest little in social protection and labour market policies. instead, high employment rates of older workers are maintained by a fl exible, weakly regulated labour market (with little statutory employment protection) – i.e. weak “push” forces – combined with a residual and largely privatised pension system that simultaneously provides little “pull” incentives for early exit. an unregulated educational system strongly relying on on-the-job training fosters life-long learning and • bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker832 s o ur ce : o w n co m p ila tio n b as ed o n ta b le s 14 an d p as si m . w he n co nfi g ur at io n fo r w o m en d iff er s th en m ar ke d in it al ic s. c o nfi g ur atio na l c o nd iti o ns f ul ly in li ne w ith t he si s (p ul l a nd p us h fo r le ve l, re tr en ch m en t an d r et en tio n fa ct o rs f o r re ve rs al ) ar e un d er lin ed . ta b . 5 : c o m p ar at iv e m et aa na ly si s o f m ac ro -c o n fi g ur at io n s r eg im e e ar ly e xi t p ul l r et re nc hm en t p us h r et en tio n p ea k le ve l r ev er sa l r et ir em en t ag e ea rl y ex it in ce nt iv es r ef or m in te ns ity u ne m pl oy m en t la bo ur m ar ke t re gu la tio n la bo ur m ar ke t po lic y li fe lo ng le ar ni ng n o rd ic s e lo w h ig h h ig h m ed iu m h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m h ig h h ig h d k m ed iu m / h ig h lo w h ig h m ed iu m h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m h ig h h ig h li b er al u k m ed iu m m ed iu m h ig h lo w m ed iu m lo w lo w lo w h ig h h ig h lo w m ed iu m m ed iu m u s lo w lo w h ig h lo w m ed iu m lo w lo w lo w h ig h c h jp lo w lo w m ed iu m , b ut re -e m p lo ym en t lo w m ed iu m lo w m ed iu m lo w h ig h c en tr al d e h ig h h ig h m ed iu m h ig h h ig h m ed iu m , n l: m ed iu m m ed iu m n l: m ed iu m n l st ru ct ur al d : h ig h d : lo w la tin fr (v er y) h ig h lo w lo w h ig h lo w m ed iu m , h ig h lo w lo w it st ru ct ur al es m ed iu m m ed iu m m ed iu m m ed iu m lo w h ig h, m ed iu m lo w lo w st ru ct ur al e as t h u h ig h lo w lo w h ig h lo w h ig h, m ed iu m lo w lo w c z st ru ct ur al ee m ed iu m m ed iu m m ed iu m m ed iu m m ed iu m h ig h, m ed iu m lo w lo w , h ig h st ru ct ur al in cr ea si ng reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 833 prevents the obsolescence of older workers’ skills. in contrast to the scandinavian focus on explicit retention policies, it is the mere absence of institutional pull and push factors that explains the high employment among older workers. apart from some recent increases in statutory retirement ages, these institutional patterns have largely remained stable since the millennium switch which is a possible explanation of the equally stable employment rates of older workers in the last decade. japan shows some similarities with the liberal strategy, with a largely residual role of the welfare state, but the regulation of employment relations is bound by strong employer-employee ties in larger japanese companies. this is refl ected in the promise of lifelong employment tenure until mandatory retirement when having a career job, and the company’s commitment to secondary re-employment thereafter. as a consequence, employment careers have been stable and long-lasting, and a high level of employment could be achieved among older workers. only recently, this model has been modifi ed as companies found it increasingly diffi cult to maintain their social responsibilities and as the japanese government increased statutory retirement ages to prepare for demographic ageing (ebbinghaus 2008: 284). nevertheless, japan has been able to maintain its status as a late retirement country among the oecd countries. in contrast to these low exit regimes, central european countries have virtually displayed all institutional characteristics of an “early exit regime” for a long time. high “push” forces, refl ected in rigid labour markets combined with persistent structural unemployment since the late 1970s, have promoted the introduction of strong “pull” incentives for an early exit, either through public seniority pensions (germany), occupational pensions (netherlands) or additional welfare state programmes (unemployment insurance in germany, disability insurance in the netherlands). labour market policy largely focussed on maintaining the living standard of those unemployed, while only moderate employment support was provided to older workers. given the signifi cance of both pull and push factors and the mere absence of effective retention policies, it is not surprising that exit rates of older workers remained high until the mid-1990s. however, various institutional reforms paved the way for an effective “recalibration” (pierson 2001: 425) and thus laid the foundation for a subsequent “early exit” reversal. most importantly, pull incentives have been reduced in both countries, while active retention policies for older workers have been strengthened, particularly in the netherlands. up until the mid-1990s, the early exit regimes of cee and latin european countries shared some relevant conditions with the continental european countries. strong early exit incentives were introduced as a means to overcome high unemployment and structural economic changes (such as the transition into market economies in spain and eastern europe). while these polices became institutionalised, labour market policies remained marginal and – if at all – were oriented at fi nancially supporting employment exits. yet, in contrast to germany and the netherlands, recent institutional reforms have been far less pervasive. though some countries have implemented higher pension ages, they have done so with rather long periods of phasing-in. at the same time, generous early retirement pathways have largely been maintained (for italy see barbieri/scherer 2011). strong internal labour mar• bernhard ebbinghaus, dirk hofäcker834 kets and the high signifi cance of seniority regulations led to disadvantages for reemployment chances of older jobless people, while little active measures promoted older workers’ employment. only cautious reforms of pull and push factors as well as largely residual labour market policies are reasons for the, so far, only modest reversal of early exit. spain and estonia, however, appear to deviate from the regional regime pattern by either showing historically lower early exit rates (spain) or exhibiting a recent early exit reversal (estonia). unlike the early exit regimes, both countries maintained (spain) or promoted (estonia) a higher formal retirement age and reduced early exit pathways. at the same time, the increased engagement in active policies may have contributed to the countries’ more favourable performance compared to their counterparts. 8 outlook our comparative analysis shows that early exit trends and their most recent reversal can be understood better when refl ecting it as a combined effect of pull, push, retrenchment and retention factors. these four different explanatory approaches are no suffi cient accounts by themselves, but represent complementary explanations that need to be considered simultaneously in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of early exit and its reversal. push and pull factors have played a more central role in establishing and maintaining the early retirement trend. as the examples of early exit countries show, generous pull-incentives were often implemented or utilised by employers, unions and governments to mediate pressures through different types of economic push, either due to structural economic changes or rigid labour markets. over time, these measures often became institutionalised in both national regulations as well as expectations of employers and employees. yet, reversing early retirement does not only require a gradual scaling back or abolishment of these institutional forces (retrenchment of pull factors), but it also depends on active ageing policies that help maintain older workers’ employment. together with welfare reforms, these retention policies have developed into a vital element in overcoming entrenched early exit routines during the last two decades. the institutional patterns studied here are themselves embedded in a respective “cultural” setting, which could further enhance the understanding of exit transitions over time (see hofäcker/unt 2013). a vivid example for the mutual interplay between the nation-specifi c policies and such “exit cultures” (guillemard/argoud 2004) or “retirement age norms” (radl 2012) is france, where the socialist government introduced a formal retirement age of 60 years for those with long contribution records in 1983 to curb the already widespread societal practice to retire early via long-term unemployment insurances. thereafter, changes to this “early exit culture” remained diffi cult for french politicians. due to limited survey data, the infl uence of cultural contexts could not be controlled systematically for all selected countries. especially for the recent reversal of the early retirement trend it can, however, be assumed that cultural norms did not change as fast as public policy efforts, which means that they may even have “slowed down” the pace of reversal. either a case study design for reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 835 cultural specifi cities or longitudinal survey analysis would be required to ascertain these complex relationships over time. the post-2008 fi nancial and economic crisis has made the future of successful reversal of early exit a more contingent but also a more pressing policy issue. it may be too early to judge whether the recent crisis will again lead to a new wave of early retirement among older workers due to higher unemployment or whether the fi scal need for further welfare state recalibration will be intensifi ed due to the current sovereign debt crisis. in any case, future policies to further reduce early exit from work would be well-advised not to rely solely on singular strategies, such as a scaling back of pension incentives. as long as structural labour market rigidities or inadequate qualifi cations do not allow older workers to 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fuchs, michael 2006: transition from work to retirement in eu25. in: vienna centre policy brief [http:www.euro.centre.org/data/1164874912_40611.pdf]. reversing early retirement in advanced welfare economies • 839 prof. dr. bernhard ebbinghaus (). school of social sciences and mannheim centre for european social research (mzes), university of mannheim, germany. e-mail: ebbinghaus@uni-mannheim.de, url: http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/d7/en/profi les/bernhard-ebbinghaus dr. dirk hofäcker. university of duisburg-essen and mannheim centre for european social research (mzes), university of mannheim, germany. e-mail: dirk.hofaecker@mzes.uni-mannheim.de, url: http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/d7/en/profi les/dirk-hofacker a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “trendwende bei der frühverrentung in modernen wohlfahrtsstaaten. paradigmenwechsel zur überwindung von pushund pull-faktoren”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-24de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-24de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 18.01.2012 date of acceptance: 05.03.2013 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) fertility and commuting behaviour in germany johannes huinink, michael feldhaus abstract: fertility behaviour is closely related to other dimensions of the individual life course, which are strongly interrelated themselves. regarding the impact of job-related spatial mobility, empirical fi ndings show a negative correlation between having children and commuting, particularly for women. up to now, fertility intentions have not been thoroughly investigated in this respect. longitudinal studies are lacking, too. in this paper, the effects of commuting arrangements of men and women on the intention of having a child within the next two years as well as the probability of realising this intention are addressed. the assumption is, that after accounting for other important factors (employment status, level of qualifi cation, type of consensual union, number of children, residential mobility), mediumand long-distance commuting is negatively related to the fertility intention of women and its realisation. for men, effects are assumed to be nonexistent or even slightly positive. longitudinal data from the fi rst three waves of the german “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam) are used to test the hypotheses. firstly, a cross-sectional, multivariate probit-regression (with correlated errors) on the intention to have a child within two years, on being childless and on medium and longdistance commuting is applied. the model shows no signifi cant correlation between commuting and the intention to have a child; it does however show a correlation between mediumand long distance commuting and the probability of women to be childless. secondly, a longitudinal difference model on changing fertility intentions between panel wave 1 and wave 3 is estimated. for women, a positive effect can be found of interrupting mediumand long-distance commuting or, surprisingly, continuing mediumand long-distance commuting on the intention to have a child within two years. thirdly, for men and women who reported a fertility intention in the fi rst wave, a longitudinal heckman-selection probit-regression on the probability of having a child between wave 1 and wave 3 is estimated. it shows negative effects of mediumand long-distance commuting on having a child. taken together, these fi ndings support the assumption that commuting plays a characteristically different role in different phases of the fertility-related decision process. keywords: spatial mobility · commuting · fertility intentions comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 491-516 (date of release: 06.12.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-05en2 • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus492 1 introduction job-related spatial mobility is an important dimension of the life course and is interrelated with other life domains, such as family and work. in general, job-related mobility can be the result of or the reason for other aspects of social mobility, i.e. all kind of biographical transitions in the individual life course. in regard to spatial mobility, two different types can be distinguished: residential and circular mobility (schneider 2005). residential mobility means a change of residence within a town, a move within a country or to another country. circular mobility encompasses all kinds of transient spatial mobility. this includes daily commuting as well as other types of circular mobility, such as overnighting outside the own household for job reasons (schneider/meil 2008). both types of spatial mobility, residential and circular, are interdependently linked with decisions and transitions in other life domains. they can also be interlinked with each other. for example, a move leads to a change of the distance to the workplace, if the job remains the same. or, if the workplace changes, the question comes up whether to commute or to move (kalter 1994). spatial mobility is an important factor in individualand relationship-related life plans (courgeau 1990). in particular, job-related mobility can be of major relevance for family development and at the same time be infl uenced by family planning. for example, it seems plausible to assume that job-related commuting over a long distance affects the desire to have another child and the timing of childbirth (meil 2010a). conversely, adapting mobility arrangements of a couple to the needs of family life can lead to a move or a change of the working place (kulu/milewski 2007). residential mobility can be a consequence or part of the process of family formation, when young parents realise that the housing situation is not an appropriate environment for their child. this again can bring about – under otherwise constant conditions – a change in job-related commuting. therefore, spatial mobility helps to combine relationshipor family-related goals with goals in other life domains. commuting can be an option to lower couple’s decision problems and to coordinate interests of both partners (abraham/auspurg/hinz 2010). in this paper, we analyse some aspects of this complex relation between spatial mobility and family formation, respectively family extension. we analyse (1) whether even the intention of having a child within the next two years is correlated with the extent of commuting behaviour; (2) whether changes in the commuting behaviour come along with changes in regard to fertility intentions; and fi nally, (3) whether these have an impact on the probability of the realisation of an intended pregnancy. the empirical basis of our study are data from the panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam), hereafter called the german family panel (huinink et al. 2011). in this panel project, which analyses couple and family dynamics, information on spatial mobility, fertility intentions as well as other important biographical characteristics (employment, relationship) is gathered. after presenting some relevant fi ndings from previous research, the theoretical discussion and the deduction of the hypothesis, we will introduce the operationalifertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 493 sation of included variables and the methods applied in our analysis. in the context of empirical analyses, we will investigate the correlation between commuting behaviour and the intention of having a child for women and men with the help of a cross sectional multiple equation model. in the second and third step, using data from the fi rst and third wave of pairfam, the impact of changes in the commuting behaviour on the fertility intention and on the realisation of a pregnancy are analysed. in a résumé, we will summarise the fi ndings and discuss some limitations and future research. 2 previous research empirical research on the relationship between fertility behaviour and spatial mobility is quite new and focuses in particular on the correlation between residential mobility and family formation (huinink/wagner 1989; kulu/milewski 2007). although our research focus is commuting behaviour, and residential mobility is just seen as a control variable, we will take a short look at previous research about the infl uence of residential mobility on family formation, because both types of mobility are strongly interrelated. after the fi rst ground-breaking works by rossi (1955), only a few papers regarding the relationship between family formation, local opportunity structures, and residential mobility were published in the 1980s and 1990s (comp. hervitz 1985; courgeau 1985, 1990; huinink/wagner 1989; strohmeier 1989; wagner 1989). in these studies, some hypotheses were developed, which are being picked up again in current research (clark/davies wizers 2007; kulu 2005; 2006; kulu/vikat/andersen 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu/boyle/andersen 2009). according to these hypotheses, residential mobility brings about crucial changes in general circumstances of life, which drive plans on family formation or family extension into the background and lead to a postponement of childbearing or a decrease in fertility. in turn, having children may lead to a residential move, particular of short distance, provided that this change of residence leads to an improvement of the conditions in which to raise the fi rst child or additional children (kulu 2008; rabe/taylor 2010). just the intention to have another child can also already trigger a move (feijten/mulder 2002). this is in line with previous research, showing that home ownership, particularly in combination with a marriage, coincides with the realisation of a fertility intention (davies wizers 1998; mulder/wagner 2001; kulu/vikat 2007). thus, it can be stated that there are interdependencies between residential mobility and fertility behaviour. mobility does not only take place after the birth of a child, but often precedes an intended child birth. one can also assume – although this has not been empirically verifi ed up to now – that residential mobility is connected to fertility intentions or a realised birth, because parents want to cut back on the burden of time-consuming commuting and not only, because they wish to improve their living environment or would like to own a house. therefore, in order to analyse the relationship between circular mobility and fertility intentions, residential • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus494 mobility has to be considered, too. it is important to account for residential mobility in the analysis of the relationship between commuting behaviour and fertility. in comparison to research on the relationship between fertility behaviour and residential mobility, studies dealing with the connection between family development and commuting behaviour are considerably less frequent. provision of adequate comprehensive and representative data is restricted. data on commuting behaviour are made available by the german micro census every four years (grau 2009). the german socio economic panel (gsoep) provides information on the commuting distance and frequency of commuting (wagner 1989; stutzer/frey 2007). huinink and kley (kley 2010) collected information in a three wave panel study on the commuting behaviour of residents in the cities of magdeburg and freiburg. another study offers information on commuting behaviour in the berlin-brandenburg region (wiethölter et al. 2009). the fi rst larger study, which stressed the effects of circular mobility on family dynamics in germany was conducted by norbert schneider (schneider et al. 2002). this was continued in the comparative, international project „job mobilities and family lives in europe“ (jobmob) (schneider/meil 2008). schneider et al. (2002) suggested a typology of circular mobility, which has proven useful in empirical research. besides residential mobility in regard to circular mobility, it differentiates between the amount of time needed to commute to the work place and whether people have to spend nights outside their home for job reasons. one distinguishes between: non-mobiles (persons who are either not employed, working at home, or are employed and commute in less than 60 minutes) and long-distance commuters (ldcs; persons commuting for more than 60 minutes one way). in order to get a more fi ne-graded differentiation, it was suggested to distinguish the group of persons commuting in 30 to 60 minutes from the non-mobiles (rüger et al. 2011). we call them medium-distance commuters (mdcs). persons that have to spend more than 60 nights a year outside their home are called varimobiles. shuttlers are people who have a second household near the workplace. long-distance relationships (ldrs), in which both partners have their own household for job-related reasons, are also considered (schneider et al. 2002; limmer/ schneider 2008). empirical fi ndings from cross-sectional analyses using fi rst wave data from the jobmob project give fi rst empirical evidence of a correlation between commuting behaviour and parenthood for men and women. if there are children in the household, then women ś commuting behaviour is signifi cantly restricted. this is not the case for men (schneider/meil 2008). similar fi ndings are reported by kley (2010: 8): fathers do not commute less often than childless men. however, mothers with young children in the household are more often non-mobile than other women. meil (2010a/b) analysed the relationship between fertility and job-related spatial mobility with jobmob-data using different indicators. here, the subjective perception whether current childlessness is due to job-related demands was enquired. particular mobile women (ldcs, vari-mobiles, shuttlers) agreed with this item more often than non-mobile women (39 % to 29 %; men: 29 % to 22 %). furthermore, mobile women emphasised more often that they were postponing the birth of a (next) child (23 % to 7 %; men: 11 % to 7 %). the differences between mobile and fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 495 non-mobile men are considerably lower. these results are confi rmed by analysing the number of actually realised children: women and men who were faced with higher demands of job-related mobility were childless at a signifi cantly higher rate and had fewer children. these differences were much stronger for women compared to men. this correlation between long-distance commuting and women’s fertility behaviour had already been assumed by courgeau (1990). these empirical fi ndings are replicated with data of the german family panel (pairfam). this study used the main concepts of the jobmob-project (rüger et al. 2011). these data also show a signifi cant interaction effect between gender and circular mobility on the probability of being childless. women who commute mediumor long-distance are signifi cantly more often childless (rüger et al. 2011). the connection between circular mobility and postponing fertility in women is also supported by non-standardised interviews (schneider et al. 2002). schneider et al. (2002) mention that for childless mobile women, circular mobility has the function to achieve a good fi nancial and occupational position. these women intend to realise their desire for a child, if it is possible to reduce the exhausting long-distance commuting which is hindering parenthood. this is particular true for long-distance relationships and shuttlers. given the fact that mothers still are more responsible for childcare and take on more of the burden of domestic work, they can meet the higher requirements of circular mobility less well. in some interviews, mothers report that they are not willing to move for job-related reasons, consider long-distance commuting or become a shuttler. some mothers mention explicitly that they would refuse an attractive job offer, because this would undermine the interplay between family and work of both partners (schneider et al. 2002). thus, circular mobility is not a choice at all costs. the diffi cult relationship between (full-time) employment and motherhood is complemented by another important aspect: the question of how demanding a job is due to circular mobility and how compatible it is with parenthood. in this paper, we do not primarily focus on the question of the realisation of the desire for a child, but concentrate on the connection between commuting and the intention of having a child. fertility intention here means the wish of individuals to have a child within the next two years. findings from motivation research show that having an intention on the one hand and realising it on the other are two interrelated, subsequent processes, which are infl uenced by similar but also different factors (heckhausen 2003; brandtstädter 2001; ajzen/fishbein 2005). therefore, one has to assume that the effect of commuting on the fertility intention and its realisation is different. meanwhile, there are quite a considerable number of studies analysing the factors infl uencing fertility intentions. they show that the expected benefi t and cost of a fi rst or an additional child have a signifi cant impact on the intention to have children (billari et al. 2009; philipov et al. 2006; dommermuth et al. 2011). internalised norms and attitudes of signifi cant others are also relevant. the expected support provided by parents, friends or other relatives is helpful, too (bernardi et al. 2007; dommermuth et al. 2011). maul et al. (2010) show that the fertility intention, measured with the intention to have a child within the next two years, depends on the • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus496 salience (relevance/priority) of this life goal compared to other goals in other life domains. it is also relevant whether individuals believe that important prerequisites for parenthood are fulfi lled (e.g. secure employment, solid relationship, adequate fi nancial resources, childcare facilities). similar fi ndings were retrieved through analyses by buhr et al. (2011): for east german women, suffi cient fi nancial resources and fl exible childcare arrangements are particular predictive for the intention to have a child within the next two years. in west germany, the compatibility of job and family is also important. using data from the generationsand gender survey, pailhé (2009) fi nds that an insecure employment situation has a negative effect on the fertility intention of women. however, this effect disappears, if a woman already has a fi rst child. moreover, she reports a positive effect on the fertility intention, if the employer offers fl exible working hours and childcare. however, as mentioned before, the intention may not be seen on the same level as the realisation of a child. this is particular true for the general desire for a child, which again, has to be distinguished from the intention. findings from quesnelvallée/morgan (2003) show, for example, that people who wish to have more than two children, overestimate the number of realised children, while those who want to have less than two children, underestimate it. this supports the assumption that the number of desired children and fertility intentions are not stable over time and that intentions must not be realised by all means. in the next section, we will try to answer the question of the role commuting behaviour plays in this context. 3 theoretical considerations and hypotheses from a life course perspective, spatial mobility, employment and family development are dimensions of a highly interdependent process of individual welfare production. this process can be described as a more or less coherent sequence of individual action and biographical transitions, which are infl uenced by subjective evaluations, aspirations, expectations, and individual motives to act in different domains of the life course. subjectively anticipated material and non-material costs and benefi ts are assessed. this assessment process is infl uenced by the actor’s subjective view on social, economical, and institutional circumstances in the short and long run, the available resources, biographical experiences, and personal traits. it comes to a decision to pursue such goals or related sub-goals, the achievement of which promises to improve or maintain the subjective well-being most effi ciently (lindenberg/frey 1993; huinink/schröder 2008). spatial mobility, employment and raising children are different goals of the welfare production over the life course. considering not only respective events and activities but also the decision-making process preceding them, the question of the determinants for generating goal-related intentions arises. this is the starting point of our analysis. the hypotheses, which we want to develop theoretically and test empirically, concentrate on the connection between commuting behaviour and the intention to have a child as well as the realisation of a child. further factors which are important in the analysis of the decision in favour of parenthood and the realisafertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 497 tion of parenthood over the life course – such as the level of education, residential mobility, employment history – are included in our empirical analysis as control variables, but not discussed in detail. in our account of previous research, we reported that individuals with a higher demand for mobility are more often childless. this is particularly true for women. now, the question arises whether this correlation can already be found in the fertility-related decision process, more precisely, whether the correlation already arises when looking at the fertility intention or whether it is only correlated with its realisation. at least two main strands of arguments can be distinguished. the fi rst strand of argument supports what we call the resource argument. according to fi ndings in the context of a qualitative analysis in an earlier study conducted by schneider et al. (2002), for women, commuting is one way to achieve the pursued occupational and fi nancial basis, which allows her to realise a given desire for a child. this would mean that women with more demanding commuting arrangements more often show an intention to have child than those who do not commute or whose commuting time is short. the burden of more demanding commuting is taken on in order to fulfi l the prerequisites (fi nancial and occupational security) for becoming a parent. the mobility arrangement, which might be intended as temporary, would be an instrumental sub-goal for attaining family-related subjective well-being. mobility can be perceived as an indicator for occupational success, which in turn should be supportive of a fertility intention and its realisation (buhr et al. 2011). to achieve both, occupational success as well as family formation and family life, people rather commute for longer distances than taking a second residence for job reasons. the second line of argument addresses the compatibility argument. it is argued that a high demand for job-related mobility hinders the compatibility of family and work. even without commuting, combining family and work can already be a diffi cult task. thus, costly mobility arrangements should correlate negatively with the opportunities of organising parental tasks. this should be in particular true for those individuals who are responsible for childcare, which still applies more for women than for men (geisler/kreyenfeld 2006; wengler/trappe/schmitt 2008). therefore, one can assume that particularly women who commute longer distances postpone the realisation of a family. these women do not only have less children or stay childless, but also do not even have the intention (at least in the short-run). we expect that an intention or plan to have children only occurs when they reduce the burden of mobility. particularly for women who need to work for fi nancial reasons, who have got limited alternatives regarding the kind of job they are employed in, or who have problems returning to their workplace after childbirth, for those, problems in combining family and work can be an obstacle to plan a pregnancy in the short-run. the life goals of an occupational career and family are competitive. while spatial mobility can be a crucial requirement for achieving a job-related goal, it simultaneously can be detrimental for the realisation of a fertility intention. this is often postponed, until a reduction of commuting occurs. only if commuting is given up, it comes to an intention and to a realisation of a pregnancy. • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus498 it is diffi cult to say which argument has more weight. previous fi ndings show that the question of compatibility of family and work is more relevant than the resource-related argument, when it comes to the realisation of a fertility intention. especially women with more demanding mobility arrangements (such as medium or long-distance commuting) should have weaker fertility intentions compared to those with less demanding arrangements, due to problems with the compatibility of work and family. this expected effect could be less pronounced regarding the intention than regarding the realisation of a pregnancy. whereas a fertility intention can go along with an intention to change the mobility arrangement fi rst, in order to achieve the requirements of compatibility, the latter intention might not be realised and childbirth will be postponed unintendedly. for men, we assume no or even small positive effects of commuting on family formation, i.e. we assume that the resource argument should be more relevant. in addition to the resourceand the compatibility argument, effects of self-selection have to be considered. those individuals who do not want to have any children are more willing to take on higher job-related mobility. this results in a negative correlation between fertility intentions and more demanding commuting, which is based on plans for life formed earlier in the life course (schröder/brüderl 2008). in order to handle this problem, it is necessary to use panel data, which allow accounting for such selection effects. according to our previous arguments, we have formulated the fi rst two hypothesis, hereby differentiating between a cross sectional and a longitudinal perspective: 1. in a cross sectional analysis, time-consuming commuting of women is negatively correlated with the probability of the intention to have children and the realisation of a pregnancy. this effect does not appear among men, or should even be positive. 2. in the longitudinal perspective, reducing commuting distances increases the probability of the fertility intention among women and vice versa. for men, this is not the case, or the other way around. having an intention to achieve a certain goal does not guarantee that the goal is actually achieved (ajzen/fishbein 2005). unexpected factors as well as a wrong perception of the life situation can be hindering or supportive for a pursuit of a goal. the overestimation of the behavioural control or self-effi cacy can cause a discrepancy between intention and behaviour. in our discussion of previous research, we showed that this could also be true in the case of fertility intentions (meil 2010a/b). there is also empirical evidence that demanding commuting arrangements produce stress and health problems, which might have negative effects on the fertility intention, too (schneider et al. 2002). therefore, we assume that a demanding commuting arrangement is one of the factors, which might be perceived as a strong obstacle for transition to parenthood, only when couples want to realise their intention, and that it leads to a postponement of a planned child. this brings us to our third hypothesis: fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 499 3. in the longitudinal perspective, the probability of realising a pregnancy by women who intend to have a child is negatively correlated with commuting distances. for men, no or moderately positive effects should be found. 4 data and operationalisation 4.1 data in the following analyses we use data from the „panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics“ (pairfam). this is a representative, interdisciplinary, longitudinal study of intimate relationships and familial living arrangements in germany, which collects data every year (huinink et al. 2011; nauck 2012). in our analysis, we include the respondents (anchors), who were between 25 and 27 or 35 and 37 years old at the time of the fi rst panel wave in 2008/09. in the fi rst and third wave of pairfam, important information on job-related spatial mobility was collected in order to get the best possible picture of the couples’ and families’ organisation of everyday life. therefore, pairfam also allows analysing job-related spatial mobility as such as well as its circumstances and consequences using a prospective cohort design. because of the huge level of information being gathered in this panel and restricted survey time, detailed data on mobility are only collected in every second wave. in the other waves, a reduced number of questions are asked every year. as we use data from the fi rst and third wave of the pairfampanel, we are able to analyse effects of spatial mobility and its changes between these waves on childbirth and on the change of fertility intentions. pairfam provides the opportunity to distinguish between living arrangements and mobility as well as multi-locality patterns in greater detail. in addition, information on couples’ dynamics and intentions, such as the intention to have a fi rst child, can be retrieved over a long period of time. besides relevant cross sectional data from the fi rst wave changes in the activity status, the number of children, the place of residence and the mobility patterns are of particular interest for the longitudinal analysis. 4.2 operationalisation of the variables and strategy of the data analysis commuting behaviour for the defi nition and classifi cation of types of job-related commuting and multilocality, we differentiate between the various patterns following the work of schneider et al. (schneider et al. 2002; schneider/meil 2008; limmer/schneider 2008; rüger et al. 2011): we distinguish between mediumand long-distance commuters • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus500 on the one hand and short-distance commuters (reference category) on the other.1 the short-distance commuters need less than 30 minutes (one way), the mediumdistance commuters need at least 30 minutes but less than 60 minutes, and longdistance commuters travel 60 minutes and more. fertility intention the fertility intention is measured with the question, whether the respondent intended to have a child within the next two years. the variable used to measure the intention is coded dichotomously, even though there are four options for the answer. when respondents answered „do not know“ or „have not thought about it yet“ we assume that they do not intend to have a child within the next two years. if respondents had stated earlier in the interview that they did not expect to have more children or did not think about having children, this question was not asked. in these cases, we also assumed no intention. the question did not apply to pregnant respondents, either. they were excluded from the analysis. in the fi rst wave of pairfam, this question was not asked if respondents reported that they or their partner was not able to have children or that they were homosexual. these cases were also excluded from the analysis, even though we are aware of the fact that many homosexual respondents may want to have children. conception not the birth of the child but the conception is our indicator for the realisation of a fertility intention. in this way, we avoid interpreting a change in the commuting behaviour occurring after conception as a causal reason for childbirth. the time of conception is reconstructed by using the information about the date of birth of a child or about the fact that a respondent (or his partner) is pregnant at the time of the interview in the third wave. in the fi rst case, we subtract 9 months from the date of birth. therefore, pregnancies, which were not successful, are not considered. in the second case, we assume that conception took place approximately 4 months before the date of the interview of the third wave. control variables we have included a number of control variables. these are an indicator of the respective respondent’s age group (25-27 or 35-37 years); a dichotomous indicator of the level of qualifi cation, i.e. whether the respondent has graduated from a (technical) university or not; and information on the labour force participation. regarding the latter, we distinguish between full-time employment or self-employment, part1 the so-called „vari-mobiles“ are assigned to the respective commuter-categories. „shuttlers“ with a job-related second household were excluded from the analysis, because the sample size was too small. fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 501 time employment and nonor unemployment. as to the partner, we included an indicator of occupational status, i.e. whether the partner is an entrepreneur with employees or working as professional, in upper level service sector positions or in leading managerial positions in the private sector. to characterise the relationship constellation, we distinguish whether the couples lived in one common household or not. we also considered the number of children and include an indicator of the salience of a (or another) child. it is a measure of the importance, which at the time of interview a respondent attributed to a fi rst or another child compared to the commitment in work and education, leisure and hobbies, friends or a relationship (maul/huinink/schröder 2010; brüderl et al. 2010). as we assume that mobility is correlated with the size of the city the respondents lived in, we included one more indicator. it indicates whether the respondents live in a place with up to 5000 inhabitants (small town) or in a big city with 500.000 inhabitants and more, places with a size in-between being the reference category. finally, we included the information whether the respondents live in east or west germany at the date of the fi rst wave’s interview. models and methods of analysis in addition to some descriptive information, we analysed the proposed interdependencies in three steps applying probit-regressions for men and women separately. in a fi rst step, we estimated a multivariate probit regression model with correlated errors in a cross-sectional analysis (hypothesis 1) using the data of the fi rst wave of the panel. it allowed us to obtain unbiased estimates of the correlation between commuting behaviour and the fertility intention respective to childlessness (cappellari/jenkins 2003). the dependent variables are the fertility intention, reported childlessness and mediumand long-distance commuting of the respondents. the latter two dependent variables are also predictors of the fi rst one, and the indicator of mediumand long-distance commuting is modelled as a predictor of childlessness. effects of common unobserved sources of a correlation between fertility intention, reported childlessness and commuting behaviour are accounted for in the multivariate model. the equations with fertility intention and childlessness as dependent variables allowed us to test for the expectation of different effects of commuting on intention and realisation of fertility. because of technical reasons in our cross-sectional analysis, we included only respondents who were employed at the time of the interview of the fi rst wave. if we had included the non-employed respondents, the third equation of the model could not be identifi ed because, by defi nition, nonor unemployed persons do no commute for job reasons. we also included only those respondents who had a partner not in education and not pregnant at the time. in table 1, the sample size and information on the distribution of the variables, which have been included in the fi rst model, are displayed. in the second step, we estimated the effect of a change in the commuting scheme on a change in the fertility intention between the fi rst and the third wave in a difference-model (allison 2009). here, the dependent variable is an indicator expressing • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus502 what kind of change in the intention between the two waves was observed. one can see a switch from a reported intention in the fi rst wave to no intention in the second wave and vice versa. the difference-model controls for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity of the respondents. in addition, information about changes or events in other life domains is included in the model: the occurrence of a pregnancy, a change in the employment status, short-distance residential mobility (distance of less than 50 km) and long-distance residential mobility (distance of 50 km and more). mediumand long-distance commuters were assembled into one category as the size of the sample used in this model is small. it can be assumed that this is not a problem, because in the crosssectional models we found that their effects go in the same direction. in the model, we distinguished between respondents who did not commute these distances over the whole period of time (reference group), those who did commute mediumand long-distance over the whole period of time, and those who changed their commuting behaviour in one direction or the other. we also included time-constant variables (e.g. age group, living in west germany), the coeffi cients of which express whether the effect of these variables on the fertility intention changed between wave 1 and 3. in the difference model, all cases were excluded that did not experience a change in the fertility intention between wave 1 and 3. again, we restricted our sample by including only those respondents who had a partner not in education and not pregtab. 1: distribution of the dependent and independent variables in the crosssectional multi-equation model; men and women (percentages) men women n=1572 n= 1679 fertility intention reported 34.5 33.0 childless 37.7 38.9 one child 23.5 24.2 long-distance commuter 9.3 5.5 medium-distance commuter 23.7 20.4 (technical) university degree 22.9 23.8 full-time or self-employment 95.6 51.2 high occupational status of partner 8.0 25.0 cohabiting 86.1 83.1 older age group 64.8 58.5 living in west germany 81.2 80.0 living in a small town 17.8 17.3 living in a big city 9.1 9.1 salience of childbirth (mean) 1.76 1.65 source: pairfam wave1; own calculations fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 503 nant at wave 1. additionally, we considered only those respondents who lived with the same partner during the whole observation period. in this case, we allowed nonand unemployment in the fi rst wave in order to keep those persons in the analysis who started commuting after they had gotten a job. to account for effects of changes in the employment status, indicators of those changes between wave 1 and 3 were included in the model. in table 2, the descriptives of the variables considered in the difference-model are shown. in the third step of analysis, we estimated the probability of a pregnancy (until wave 3) among respondents who in the fi rst wave reported an intention to have a child within the next two years. here, we included all respondents independently from their employment status but living with the same partner over the time period between wave 1 and 3. in order to control the sample selection, we applied a probitregression with a heckman correction (dubin/rivers 1990). predictors are – similar tab. 2: distribution of the dependent and independent variables included in the difference-model; men and women (percentages) men women n= 209 n= 260 time dependent variables (changes between wave 1 and 3) fertility intention: switch from no to yes 34.5 32.3 switch from yes to no 65.5 67.7 commencement of medium-/long-distance commuting 8.6 8.5 constantly commuting medium-/long-distance 22.5 11.2 medium-/long-distance commuting ended 9.1 8.9 switch from full-time to non-employment 4.3 11.9 switch from full-time to part-time employment 0.5 3.1 part-time employment unchanged or switch from nonto part-time employment 2.4 20.4 constantly non-employed or switch from part-time to nonemployment 6.2 33.5 short-distance move (< 50 km) 24.4 25.4 long-distance move ( 50 km) 2.9 4.2 moved in with partner 11.5 11.5 occurring pregnancy between w1 und w3 37.3 43.5 time-constant variables at wave 1 high occupational status of partner 11.5 24.2 living in west germany 81.3 81.9 older age group 55.0 35.4 salience of childbirth (mean) 2.35 2.63 source: pairfam waves 1 and 3; own calculations • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus504 to the difference model – changes in the commuting arrangements and the employment status as well as residential mobility taking place before a potential pregnancy or the date of the interview in wave 3.2 because of the small sample size, we put all men with the employment status full-time or self-employed over the whole period of time into one category and those who were not (i.e. who left full-time or part-time employment, who worked in part-time employment over the whole period of time or had been constantly nonor unemployed) into another category. in table 3 descriptives of the variables are displayed. tab. 3: distribution of the variables included in the model of the realisation of a pregnancy; for men and women (percentages) men women n= 303 n=376 time-dependent variables (changes between wave 1 and 3) became pregnant 36.6 38.0 commencement of medium-/long-distance commuting 6.6 10.1 constantly commuting medium-/long-distance 23.4 12.5 medium-/long-distance commuting ended 6.9 7.5 switch from full-time to non-employment 1.0 1.9 switch from full-time to part-time employment 0.7 3.7 part-time employment unchanged or switch from non-to part-time employment 1.7 26.3 constantly non-employed or switch from part-time to non-employment 3.0 18.4 short-distance move (< 50 km) 12.9 14.1 long-distance move ( 50 km) 2.3 2.9 time-constant variables at wave 1 childless 51.8 47.9 having got one child 33.7 35.9 (technical) university degree 27.1 29.8 cohabiting 86.8 86.7 high occupational status of partner 8.3 27.9 older age group 60.1 37.2 living in west germany 80.9 80.6 salience of childbirth (mean) 2.85 2.86 source: pairfam waves 1 and 3; own calculations 2 one could also estimate an event history regression model with time dependent covariates. it should provide similar results. fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 505 5 findings we will now present the empirical fi ndings following the three steps of analysis and test the hypotheses we formulated in chapter 3. first hypothesis in the fi rst hypothesis, we proposed a negative relationship between the fertility intention and extensive commuting for women, not so for men. we analysed in the fi rst cross-sectional regression model whether this correlation can be found after accounting for other factors, which might be predictive for a fertility intention. we estimated a recursive, multivariate probit-regression with correlated errors, for women and men separately. negative (positive) coeffi cients mean a negative (positive) correlation of the independent variable with the probability of the considered status in one of the dependent variables. included are men and women of the age groups 25-27 and 35-37, who or whose partner was not pregnant, had a partner and had fi nished education at the time of the survey. we fi rst estimated the same model for men and women separately. in a second model, we additionally included an interaction effect between employment status and the kind of commuting on the fertility intention. as this has shown not signifi cant for men, it is only displayed for women. results are displayed in table 4. the most important fi nding for men and women in model 1 is that commuting distance does not play a considerable role for the fertility intention. in regard to women, this was not expected. the fi nding seems to show that the question of compatibility is less crucial than assumed. in the model including the interaction of the employment status (full-time/self-employed) with commuting behaviour, it can be seen that women working part-time and commuting long distances show a signifi cantly lower probability of the intention to have a child within the next two years than full-time employed women (comp. the main effect of long-distance commuting in model 2). if the main effects and the interaction effect of long-distance commuting and full-time employment are considered, it becomes apparent that longdistance commuting and full-time employed women do not differ from full-time employment women who commute short-distance. descriptive analyses support the assumption that the household of part-time employed women are less well-off economically than their full-time employed counterparts. for them, the economic pre-conditions for having a child are possibly not fulfi lled suffi ciently. this supports the assumption that the resource-argument is of some relevance. the coeffi cients of the control variables in the equation of the fertility intention are mainly as one would expect. men without children or with one child, who cohabit, and who show a high salience of having a(nother) child, have high fertility intentions. for women, the level of education ((technical) university degree) is positively signifi cant, which can be interpreted as supporting the resource argument. furthermore, women with no or one child and women with a high salience for (further) fertility intend to have a(nother) child within the next two years with a signifi cantly • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus506 tab. 4: mulitvariate probit-regression on the probability of a fertility intention, childlessness and medium-/long-distance commuting (recursive multivariate model with correlated errors) men women model 1 model 2 coeff. sig.-lev. coeff. sig.-lev. coeff. sig.-lev. dv: fertility intention long-distance commuting (ldc) 0.05 0.83 -0.25 0.29 -0.96 0.02** medium-distance commuting (mdc) -0.17 0.37 -0.20 0.33 -0.24 0.31 (ref.: short distance) no child 1.12 0.00*** 1.00 0.00*** 1.01 0.00*** one child 0.97 0.00*** 0.73 0.00*** 0.73 0.00*** (ref.: more than one child) (technical) university degree 0.14 0.12 0.19 0.04** 0.19 0.04** cohabiting 0.24 0.08* 0.14 0.20 0.13 0.20 high occupational status of partner -0.10 0.51 0.13 0.14 0.13 0.13 full-time/self-employed (fs) 0.33 0.07* 0.19 0.16 0.14 0.34 (ref.: part-time employed) older age group -0.05 0.65 -0.46 0.00*** -0.45 0.00*** living in west germany 0.06 0.51 -0.04 0.72 -0.05 0.68 interaction lds * fs 0.88 0.03** interaction mdc * fs 0.05 0.80 salience of childbirth 0.31 0.00*** 0.29 0.00*** 0.29 0.00*** constant -2.16 0.00*** -0.69 0.09* -0.68 0.09* dv: childless comp. women, model long-distance commuting (ldc) -0.07 0.75 0.56 0.02** medium-distance commuting (mdc) -0.19 0.31 0.48 0.01*** (ref.: short distance or no commuting) (technical) university degree 0.05 0.61 0.41 0.00*** cohabiting -1.39 0.00*** -0.67 0.00*** high occupational status of partner 1.21 0.00*** 0.01 0.90 full-time/self-employed (fs) 0.15 0.41 1.51 0.00*** (ref.: part-time employed) older age group -1.15 0.00*** -1.48 0.00*** living in west germany 0.25 0.01*** 0.73 0.00*** constant 3.50 0.00*** 2.33 0.00*** dv: medium-/long-distance commuting comp. women, model (technical) university degree 0.13 0.11 0.28 0.00*** cohabiting 0.01 0.91 0.03 0.73 high occupational status of partner -0.16 0.19 0.04 0.61 full-time/self-employed (fs) 0.20 0.24 0.18 0.01*** (ref.: part-time employed) older age group 0.05 0.50 -0.18 0.01*** living in west germany -0.09 0.32 -0.17 0.04** living in a small town 0.01 0.94 -0.11 0.25 living in a big city 0.48 0.00*** 0.49 0.00*** (ref.: .: living in medium size city) constant -0.77 0.00*** -0.28 0.21 number of cases 1.572 1.679 1.679 lr chi2(27) 783.41 1070.64 0.00 1076.59 0.00 test of rho21 = rho31 = rho32 = 0 chi2(3); sig. 1.35 0.72 2.27 0.52 2.41 0.49 *** sig. at level 0,01; ** sig. at level 0,05; * sig. at level 0,10 source: pairfam, wave 1 fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 507 higher probability. we see a negative age effect, meaning that the fertility intention is weaker in the older age group. the fi ndings in the equations estimating the probability of childlessness and medium-/long-distance commuting are also in accordance to what one would expect. however, with one exception, we will not comment on them in detail. commuting behaviour is a strong predictor of the probability of childlessness for women. as we found virtually no correlation between timeconsuming commuting and the fertility intention, childlessness is strongly and negatively correlated with it. this reinforces fi ndings of previous research. all models seem to be well-specifi ed and the effects of endogeneity seem to be small because the errors of the equations are not correlated signifi cantly with each other. second hypothesis the second hypothesis proposes that a change in the commuting arrangement should induce a change of the fertility intention – even though we cannot rule out that there is also an effect in the reverse direction. the commencement of medium or long-distance commuting should trigger giving up such an intention and terminating commuting should foster it. as additional events, we consider changes in the employment status, residential mobility, and a change in regard to the cohabitation with a partner. in the difference model, the dependent variable expresses whether a respondent gives up a fertility intention or develops it between wave 1 and wave 3. the reference category in our model is giving up the intention. as cases with a constant intention are excluded from the analysis, we do not analyse whether a change or no change in the commuting arrangement have effects on the stability of the fertility intention.3 mainly, in this analysis, we consider the independent variables of the previous model, but focus on time dependent attributes. because of small sample size, we put mediumand long-distance commuters into one category, as their effects show the same direction anyway. the results are displayed in table 5. it is not surprising that we did not fi nd a negative effect of the commencement of time-consuming commuting on the fertility intention of women. this is in accordance with the results of the fi rst analysis. if women gave up mediumor long-distance commuting between wave 1 and wave 3, however, they reported an intention in the third wave more frequently compared to those who were constantly immobile or short-distance commuters. the coeffi cient is nearly signifi cant at the 10 per cent level. this can be interpreted differently. either it could mean that giving up commuting leads to a consideration of having a child, as we assumed. however, it could also mean that the intention to have a child triggers a discontinuation of time-consuming commuting. as we do not have empirical information on the chronological order of these changes, we cannot decide which version is correct. 3 to do this in separate models, for respondents with or without a fertility intention at wave 1, we can estimate the probability of a change and control for sample selection using the heckmancorrection. • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus508 at fi rst sight, the signifi cant positive effect of continuous commuting between the wave 1 and 3 might be surprising. it means that in this group, compared to the reference category, the intention to have a child becomes more important as time goes by, after having been delayed before. this is another indication that the resource argument might have a relevance for the commencement of the consideration to have a child. for men, no noteworthy effects of commuting were found. a change in the employment status showed no additional effects on the fertility intention, neither for men not for women. residential mobility between wave 1 and wave 3 is positively correlated with the development of the intention to have a child. for women, these effects are not signifi cant. again, the question of causality arises. tab. 5: probit-regression on the probability of developing or giving up a fertility intention between wave 1 and 3 (difference-model) men women coeff. sig.-lev. coeff. sig.-lev. time-dependent variables commencement of medium-/long-distance commuting -0.14 0.76 0.11 0.75 constantly commuting medium-/long-distance 0.03 0.90 0.79 0.01*** medium-/long-distance commuting ended -0.56 0.21 0.51 0.14 (ref.: continuously short distance) switch from full-time to non-employment 0.25 0.61 0.47 0.37 switch from full-time to part-time employment -0.20 0.61 part-time employment unchanged or switch from nonto part-time employment 0.71 0.32 0.08 0.76 constantly non-employed or switch from parttime to non-employment 0.33 0.44 -0.17 0.51 (ref.: switch to or continuously full-time/selfemployed) short-distance move (< 50 km) 0.37 0.15 0.12 0.59 long-distance move ( 50 km) 1.45 0.03** 0.30 0.52 moved in with partner 0.96 0.01*** 0.19 0.54 occurring pregnancy between wave 1 and 3 -1.26 0.00*** -1.21 0.00*** time-constant variables high occupational status of partner 1.10 0.00*** -0.34 0.16 living in west germany 0.21 0.50 0.60 0.02** older age group -0.93 0.00*** -0.67 0.00*** salience of childbirth in wave 1 -0.14 0.03** -0.18 0.00*** constant 2.07 0.00*** 1.39 0.01*** number of cases 209.00 260.00 lr chi2(14) 92.38 91.45 pseudo r2 0.34 0.28 *** sig. at level 0,01; ** sig. at level 0,05; * sig. at level 0,10 source: pairfam, waves 1 and 3 fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 509 does an intention motivate residential mobility, or is it the other way round? an answer to this question needs a more precise modelling of the relationship, which has not been pursued in this study. finally, a pregnancy which occurred between the two waves encourages the dismissal of further fertility intentions, as the desired child has already been realised in the meantime. the coeffi cients of the time-constant variables in this model are to be interpreted as interaction effects with time. a high occupational status of partners of male respondents results in a higher fertility intention in the third wave. this can be interpreted as a delaying effect. the same is true for the west-effect in women, which is considerably smaller for men. for men and women, the effects of age and the salience to have a child on the fertility intention become smaller in the third wave. the latter is comprehensible, as the salience could have changed between the waves for various reasons. the negative effect of being a member of the older age group means that the giving up of a fertility intention among these respondents becomes more and more probable as time goes by. descriptive analyses support this. the discrepancy between the two age groups increases over time. third hypotheses finally, we analysed the interrelationship between commuting behaviour and the realisation of a fertility intention, which was stated in wave 1, between wave 1 and 3. we argued that the probability of the realisation should be negatively correlated with the time used for commuting. commuting behaviour, the employment status – again including non-employment – and residential mobility were included in the model as time-dependent covariates. the model estimates are presented in table 6. in contrast to the model of changes in the fertility intention (table 5), we found signifi cant negative correlations between time-consuming mobility arrangements (commencement of or continuous medium-/long-distance commuting) and the probability of becoming pregnant. only when women discontinue medium-/longdistance commuting, one obtains a positive coeffi cient, which is not signifi cant, however. this means that women who commute over these distances and who had intended to have a child within the next two years in the fi rst wave postponed the realisation, at least for the time being. in contrast to the intention, the realisation of a pregnancy is strongly hindered by the demands of commuting. interestingly enough, we found a similar effect for the commencement of medium-/long-distance commuting among men. the coeffi cient is signifi cant. however, we will come back to that later. when full-time or self-employment is interrupted or not existent at all, it has a negative effect on the realisation of a pregnancy (of the partner), but this is only found to be signifi cant for men. hence, it reinforces the well-known fi nding in fertility research that the economic or fi nancial security is perceived as a prerequisite for having a(nother) child. we can also replicate evidence from the literature that a short-distance move is positively correlated with the realisation of a pregnancy – the • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus510 tab. 6: probit-regression on the probability of a pregnancy between wave 1 and 3 (heckman-selection model) men women coeff. sig.-lev. coeff. sig.-lev. dv: respondent/partner of respondent becoming pregnant time dependent variables commencement of medium-/long-distance commuting -1.63 0.00*** -1.38 0.00*** constantly commuting medium-/long-distance -0.16 0.17 -0.63 0.02** medium-/long-distance commuting ended -0.13 0.55 0.11 0.67 (ref.: continuously short distance) switch from full-time to non-employment -0.81 0.18 switch from full-time to part-time employment -0.95 0.00*** -0.42 0.31 part-time employment unchanged or switch from non-to part-time employment -0.02 0.90 constantly non-employed or switch from part-time to non-employment -0.03 0.88 (ref.: switch to or continuously full-time/self employed) short-distance move (< 50 km) 0.41 0.08* 0.36 0.09* long-distance move ( 50 km) 0.72 0.22 0.41 0.30 time-constant variables no child in wave 1 -0.65 0.29 0.37 0.59 one child in wave 1 -0.37 0.48 0.53 0.25 (ref.: more than one child) (technical) university degree 0.09 0.62 0.06 0.70 cohabiting -0.31 0.22 0.73 0.00*** high occupational status of partner -0.08 0.79 0.34 0.06* older age group -0.05 0.77 -0.45 0.12 living in west germany -0.08 0.66 0.06 0.72 salience of childbirth 0.04 0.74 0.04 0.78 constant 0.65 0.64 -0.68 0.51 av: intention yes in wave 1 no child in wave 1 1.25 0.00*** 1.10 0.00*** one child in wave 1 0.95 0.00*** 0.71 0.00*** (ref:. more than one child) high occupational status of partner -0.31 0.08* -025 0.01*** older age group -0.13 0.23 -0.57 0.00*** cohabiting 0.22 0.14 0.06 0.64 salience of childbirth 0.32 0.00*** 0.25 0.00*** constant -1.60 0.00*** -0.31 0.27 number of cases 303 376 lr chi2(14/16) 27.04 0.01 56.67 0.00 lr test of rho21 = 0 chi2(1) 0.03 0.86 0.11 0.74 *** sig. at level 0,01; ** sig. at level 0,05; * sig. at level 0,10 source: pairfam, waves 1 and 3 fertility and commuting behaviour in germany • 511 direction of causality is unclear, though. cohabiting and a high occupational status of the partner also show signifi cant coeffi cients in the case of female respondents. as mentioned already, we estimated a heckman-selection model, because only men and women who reported a fertility intention in the fi rst wave were included in the analysis. in the selection equation, we considered independent variables, which were relevant for the estimation of the fertility intention in the fi rst model displayed in table 4. these factors show the effects already known. the error terms of the main and the selection equation do not correlate signifi cantly with each other, though. 6 summary and conclusions the relationship between commuting behaviour and processes of family formation as well as extension has not been extensively analysed in previous research so far. especially two defi cits can be identifi ed. firstly, prospective longitudinal studies are missing, which would allow analysing fertility intentions as they depend on time-dependent covariates. secondly, a distinction between fertility intention and its realisation has rarely been made before. the aim of this article is to tackle these two points and thus add considerably to the current state of research. we focused on three research questions: how are fertility intentions correlated with commuting behaviour? do changes in commuting behaviour lead to a change in fertility intentions? do they also have an effect on the probability of the realisation of intended fertility? our analyses provide evidence that commuting behaviour is only very weakly related to fertility intentions. however, the negative correlation between childlessness and commuting distance known from the literature can be replicated for women. therefore, a remarkable difference between intention and realisation becomes apparent. in the cross-sectional model, contrary to our expectations, we did not fi nd a negative correlation between commuting distance and the intention to have a child within the next two years, neither for men nor for women. the question of the compatibility of work and motherhood might not be as relevant at this point in the fertility-related decision process as we had assumed. and the resource argument could to be given more weight as least at the point of the commencement of an intention. in addition, the negative effect of commuting distance on childlessness could have been overestimated in the model, because in the cross-sectional analysis we could not control the effect of childlessness on commuting behaviour. in the difference model, we found that women who continuously commute show a shift towards a fertility intention with a signifi cantly higher probability. no effects could be found among men. more clearly than the cross-sectional analysis, the results of this model support the idea that intentions might be affected by economic resources to a higher degree than we expected. in the last model, the relevance of commuting for the realisation of a fertility intention was analysed. for women, high commuting demands considerably affect the probability of a pregnancy. in contrast to previous evidence, a similar effect • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus512 shows up among men who started mediumor long-distance commuting. might this be a biographical transition, in which at least for a certain period of time men consider the additional duty of fatherhood as not reasonable? however, one should assume that this is just a short-term effect and not a matter of a compatibility problem for men, because continuous commuting between wave 1 and 3 does not have any notable effect. from the substantive point of view, the article emphasises the importance of a more detailed modelling of decision processes and the separate consideration of intentions and behaviour. in regard to fertility, we have been able to show interesting and systematic differences in the effects of other behavioural 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in: zeitschrift für soziologie 37: 117-136. statistisches bundesamt 2005: leben und arbeiten in deutschland. wiesbaden. stutzer, alois; frey, bruno s. 2007: commuting and life satisfaction in germany. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 2/3: 179-189. strohmeier, klaus p. 1989: „movers“ and „stayers“. räumliche mobilität und familienentwicklung. in: herlth, alois; strohmeier, klaus p. (eds.): lebenslauf und familienentwicklung. opladen: leske+budrich: 165-188. wagner, michael 1989: räumliche mobilität im lebensverlauf: eine empirische untersuchung sozialer bedingungen der migration. stuttgart: enke verlag. wengler, annelene; trappe, heike; schmitt, christian 2008: partnerschaftliche arbeitsteilung und elternschaft. analysen zur aufteilung von hausarbeit und elternaufgaben auf basis des generations and gender survey. materialien zur bevölkerungswissenschaft 127. bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. wiesbaden. wiethölter, doris; bogai, dieter; carstensen, janette 2009: pendlerbericht berlinbrandenburg 2009. in: iab-regional 3/2010. • johannes huinink, michael feldhaus516 translated from the original text by the authors, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “fertilität und pendelmobilität in deutschland”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-05de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-05de8, at http:// www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 25.10.2011 date of acceptance: 22.02.2012 prof. dr. johannes huinink ( ), dr. michael feldhaus. universität bremen, institut für empirische und angewandte soziologie (empas), bremen, germany. e-mail: huinink@empas.uni-bremen.de, feldhaus@empas.uni-bremen.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-bremen.de © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) the german generations and gender survey: some critical refl ections on the validity of fertility histories michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch abstract: this paper validates the fertility histories of the german generations and gender survey (ggs). focusing on the cohorts 1930-69 of west german women, the total number of children, the parity distribution and the parity progression ratios are compared to external sources. one major result from this validation is that the german ggs understates the fertility for the older cohorts and overstates it for the younger ones. we presume that two mechanisms are responsible for this pattern in the german ggs: on the one hand, children who have left parental home are underreported in the retrospective fertility histories. on the other hand, women with small children are easier to reach by the interviewer. these two mechanisms taken together produce too low numbers of children for the older and too high ones for the younger cohorts. extending the validation to marital histories has revealed a similar bias. our general conclusion from this investigation is that the german ggs may not be used for statistical analyses of cohort fertility and marriage trends. for subsequent surveys, we suggest integrating simple control questions in questionnaires with complex retrospective fertility and union histories. keywords: fertility · fertility history · union history · marriage · data validation · germany · west germany · generations and gender survey · ggs · mikrozensus 1 introduction in recent years, fertility and family researchers have greatly profi ted from a growing availability of large-scale data sets. this is particularly true for germany. with the generations and gender survey (ggs), the panel study of intimate relationships (pairfam), the german socio-economic panel (soep) and the national educational panel study (neps), germany will soon have four large panel data sets that can be used for the study of fertility and family dynamics. with growing data availability, comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 1 (2013): 3-28 (date of release: 10.01.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-02en8 • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch4 it will also become easier to compare fi ndings across the different surveys and to validate the quality of the survey data, i.e. by studying how stable empirical fi ndings are across surveys. this paper is mainly concerned with the validation of fertility histories. birth histories are commonly regarded as hard facts that can be collected retrospectively without much decrement in the data quality. even though children of unmarried men might be underreported (rendall et al. 1999), the overwhelming majority of respondents will be happy to report whether they are mother or father of a child. furthermore, the collection of fertility histories should not be subject to substantial recall errors which make the collection of employment or residential careers a cumbersome venture (beckett et al. 2001). however, previous research has shown that fertility information derived from survey data might nevertheless be subject to various types of distortions (swicegood et al. 1984; festy/prioux 2002; murphy 2009; burkimsher 2009; pötzsch 2010; neels et al. 2011; kreyenfeld et al. 2012; ní bhrolcháin et al. 2011). unit nonresponse is a particular issue for fertility researchers given that, in standard surveys, childless respondents are more diffi cult to reach than families with children (festy/prioux 2002: 23). item nonresponse is a source of additional bias if certain subgroups of the population are reluctant to answer certain questions in a survey. for older cohorts, selection on survival might also create a problem. if fertility histories are not equally well collected across cohorts, surveys will not be able to refl ect cohort change in behaviour in a satisfying manner. since long-term behavioural changes are central themes to social science researchers, it seems, however, fundamental to answer the question how well standard surveys depict cohort changes in fertility behaviour. this contribution tries to fi ll parts of this gap by validating fertility histories of the fi rst wave of the german generations and gender survey (ggs). the paper is structured as follows. part 2 discusses possible sources of bias in cohort fertility estimates that are derived from retrospective surveys. next follows the validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs (part 3). the following chapter speculates about possible sources of bias (part 4). in addition, results from the validation of union histories are displayed in this section to see if some possible bias in the union histories runs in a similar direction as in the fertility histories. part 5 concludes our investigation. 2 sources of bias in retrospective surveys there are several merits in collecting retrospective data on fertility and union histories in social science surveys. with a retrospective survey that covers a suffi ciently large age range, one is able to depict long-term historical changes in behaviour. a prospective survey would not only be more expensive, but would also suffer from serious attrition bias if a long historical time period was to be covered. moreover, the fact that retrospective data is “ready to use” relatively quickly after the survey, while it takes many years to build up a panel study, speaks for this type of data collection (beckett et al. 2001: 594). for some research questions, a retvalidation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 5 rospective survey is furthermore the only tool to learn about long-term behavioural changes because, for previous decades, information on a specifi c behaviour (such as cohabitation patterns) cannot be generated based on other data sources. taken these arguments together, it seems worthwhile to collect retrospective fertility and union histories not only for recent cohorts, but also for the older ones (cleland/ verma 1989: 762). in this spirit, the generations and gender survey (ggs) has been designed to survey detailed fertility and union histories retrospectively and to cover the age range 18-79 years that enables researchers to depict changes in the demographic behaviour since the 1930s cohorts (unece 2005: 5). however, the collection of retrospective histories may be subject to various kinds of distortions. in the ggs, the fertility and union histories of respondents who have given birth or started their unions 50 or more years prior to the survey are recorded. if events that are located in the distant past are not collected with the same precision as earlier events, the analyses will produce a misleading pattern on long-term demographic changes (murphy 2009). there are several reasons why such a bias may exist: one of the major concerns in this context is recall bias (gaskell et al. 2000; beckett et al. 2001: 594). respondents may forget events that occurred in the distant past or they might give faulty reports because events may have been redefi ned based on the present circumstances. for biographical events, a source of error also occurs because respondents are unable to locate the event accurately in time. past events may either be recalled as being closer to the date of interview than would be accurate, a phenomenon described as “telescoping”, or they might be set further into the past by the respondent, such a case being labeled as “time expansion” (gaskell et al. 2000; dex 1995). the degree to which the collection of retrospective histories suffers from a recall bias depends on the type of history that is being collected. union histories may suffer from recall bias because unions may be erased from the memory if the union had ended in separation (mitchell 2010). cohabitation histories may be diffi cult to collect because memory has dimmed the dates when one had moved in with a partner. respondents might also deliberately report wrong dates if, for example, they are concerned that cohabitation before childbirth is considered as a socially undesirable event (teitler et al. 2006: 469). more “salient” and socially acceptable events like marriage might be easier to collect retrospectively. correctness of dates might be easier to achieve when the dates of the event are “rehearsed” because anniversaries are celebrated or dates need to be reported in the offi cial registration system (beckett et al. 2001: 595). fertility histories may neither suffer from great recall bias given that the birth of a child is an event that should remain “salient” in the memory of the respondent as its date is regularly brought into memory. however, in an evaluation of the fertility histories of the british general household survey (ghs), murphy (2009: 130) still speculates that children might be “forgotten” in surveys. reduced social contact and intra-family confl ict might be reasons for estrangement of mothers and their children resulting in some wrong declaration of the number of children. if estranged, deceased or emigrated children are not reported by elderly respondents, this may muddle the analyses of long-term demographic patterns (ní bhrolcháin et al. 2011). • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch6 nonresponse is another classical source of bias in surveys (groves et al. 2009). respondents may not be reached by the interviewer or may object to participating in a survey (unit nonresponse). even if they participate, respondents may still refuse to answer particular questions (item nonresponse). the latter has been shown to be the case for the german mikrozensus. respondents are requested by law to participate in this study, but the answer to the question on the number of children integrated in the 2008 version of the survey was not obligatory. this resulted into an unusually high share of 12 % item nonresponse on the fertility question. evaluations against information on the number of children from the household grid showed that it had been childless respondents in particular who had refused to provide information on the number of their children (pötzsch 2010). item nonresponse is a critical issue for compulsory surveys like the german mikrozensus as long as they also include non-obligatory questions. but social science surveys are rather known to suffer from unit nonresponse as certain subgroups of the population, such as young childless men, are diffi cult to catch in surveys, while others, such as mothers with their small children, are overrepresented (rendall et al. 1999; groves et al. 2009: 210). an evaluation of the fertility and family surveys shows unusually high fertility rates for the younger cohorts, which has been explained by a “family bias”, i.e. the fact that women who have young children are easier to reach by the interviewers (festy/prioux 2002). the particular topic of surveys creates an additional bias as respondents with children are more inclined to participate in family studies than their childless counterparts. weighting should in principle cure the distortion caused by such selective unit nonresponse. however, it has been shown that weighting is rarely a remedy to the problem because, in general, fertility information is not accounted for when sample weights are designed (kreyenfeld et al. 2012). bias is also related to the wording of the questions in the survey (schuman/ presser 1996). soft indicators, such as attitudes and opinions, are widely believed to be more sensitive to the design of the question than this is the case with factual information. furthermore, for some demographic events, it may be diffi cult to fi nd valid operational defi nitions because, like it is the case for cohabitation, the date when a partner moves in may be rather fl uid in some instances (manning/smock 2005; teitler et al. 2006). however, there is consensus that the birth of a child is a hard fact in a person’s life so that the wording and phrasing of the question should not affect the answering pattern of the respondent.1 the placement of the question constitutes another, more serious issue. fertility histories may be fully recorded at “one shot”. for example, this strategy had been chosen for the fertility and family survey (ffs) where the respondents were asked to give the dates of birth of all children in the fertility section of the questionnaire. another approach is to survey information on all children who co-reside with the respondent in a household grid. then, in a later section of the questionnaire, in1 the defi nition of still and live births may create a problem in social science surveys. however, this aspect should be more important for the collection of fertility histories in countries with higher rates of infant mortality and a high prevalence of still births (cleland/verma 1989: 763). validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 7 formation on non-resident children is gathered. the advantage of this procedure is that more specifi c questions concerning either the resident or the non-resident children can be grouped around each of the two “types of children”. but it also leads to the disadvantage that surveying the information independently from each other may give room to incomplete reporting. this is especially a critical issue for cohort analyses of fertility, as the children of the older cohorts have mostly left parental home and will only be collected in later parts of the questionnaire where respondents’ attentiveness may have declined. in a similar vein, ní bhrolcháin et al. (2011: 314) concluded in their evaluation of the fertility histories of the british general household survey (ghs) that “respondent fatigue combined with a learning effect” produced considerable bias. respondents had learnt that a “no” to the fi lter question about own children shortened the interview and avoided further longer parts requiring detailed information on a multitude of questions. moreover, it was shown that misreporting of childlessness was much more frequent among the respondents who used computer-assisted selfinterviewing (casi). a fi rst suspicion that, mainly for the older respondents, some lack of computer literacy was the source of error, however, could be refuted as the quality of response of other parts of the survey like the partnership histories was not affected to the same extent. adding up to the argument about respondent’s fatigue in the british case are the facts that the number of questions before the part on the fertility history had increased considerably in the ghs in the course of the 1990s and that the fertility histories had been placed at the end of the “family information” section. consequently, the respondents might have developed the strategy to shorten the interview via incorrect answers (ní bhrolcháin et al. 2011: 314-315). another source of distortion in a retrospective survey derives from the fact that, generally, only the resident population is included into a survey. if one tries to reconstruct the fertility and unions histories based on a retrospective survey, one ultimately suffers from the fact that the study population has changed over time due to migration and mortality. this aspect is rarely discussed in the methodological literature, probably because the cause of distortion is more of demographic than of methodological nature. in a recent study by burkimsher (2011) on switzerland, it is, however, shown that fertility estimates from census data differ from estimates based on vital registration data, what the author largely attributes to migration fl ows. taken together, recall bias, nonresponse, question placement as well as selective migration and mortality infl uence the quality of fertility information obtained from retrospective surveys. since older cohorts may be affected overproportionally by these aspects, a key question is whether retrospective surveys are able to adequately depict long-term demographic changes. in the following, the fertility histories of the german generations and gender survey are evaluated, focusing on the question which factors may have biased the results on long-term fertility change in germany. • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch8 3 data and method 3.1 data the german generations and gender survey was conducted as part of the generations and gender programme (ggp) that has been conceptualised by a consortium of institutions coordinated by the population unit of the united nations economic commission for europe (unece). the ggp is currently coordinated by the netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi). the data collection was directed at the demographic and social behaviour in developed countries and mainly in europe (vikat et al. 2007). the aim of the project was to initiate analyses on the developments and the determinants of the diverse demographic and social phenomena related to family formation processes, demographic change, intergenerational relationships and relationships between partners. one of the main focuses within the fi rst wave was to capture the complete fertility and partnership histories of the respondents in a detailed way.2 our investigation is based on the german ggs.3 the fi rst wave of the german ggs was carried out between february and may 2005. respondents aged 18-79 were included in the survey. the survey agency tns infratest sozialforschung conducted the survey applying a random route design to draw the sample. a pre-test with 115 respondents had been conducted which apparently did not show any peculiarities. in the fi nal study, 10,017 valid interviews were carried out. a response rate of 55.3 % has been reported which seems to be in the usual range of social science surveys (diekmann 2002: 189). interviews were realised using computerassisted personal interviewing (capi). sampling weights, which account for the fact that certain subpopulations are underrepresented in the ggs, were provided by the survey agency.4 for our validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs, we limit the analysis to women born between 1930 and 1969. these cohorts are generally past their reproductive ages so that the estimates refl ect completed fertility. however, the youngest cohort category (cohorts 1965-69) is still of childbearing age in 2005 and the results from these cohorts may be carefully interpreted. the investigation is furthermore limited to the western states of germany (excluding berlin). we do not consider the eastern states of germany because the demographic situation in eastern germany is still very different from the one in the western areas. respondents are defi ned as west germans depending on the region they live in at the time of interview.5 obviously, this classifi cation does not account for the migration of east 2 http://www.ggp-i.org/. 3 un-version labeled ‘ggs_wave1_germany_v.3.0.dta’ (downloaded february, 2nd 2012). 4 documentation of the german ggs is available in german (ruckdeschel et al. 2006) as well as in english (ruckdeschel et al. n.d.). 5 in the following text, we use the expressions “west german” and “west germany” when referring to both, the former west germany before the unifi cation in 1990 or the western parts of germany after 1990. validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 9 germans to west germany (and vice versa). despite these limitations, we still fi nd it appropriate enough to use this sample selection for our investigation of fertility behaviour in west germany. after selecting women of the cohorts 1930-69 who are resident in the western regions of germany, the sample size is reduced from the total 10,017 to 2,851 respondents. deleting 66 cases with missing fertility information from the sample leaves us with a total of 2,785 cases for our investigation. 3.2 variables of interest and method within the ggs questionnaire, the fertility histories of the respondents are recorded in two different sections. in a fi rst section, the respondent is asked to give information on all persons living in her or his household, such as year and month of birth of the household members and the relationship of the household members to the respondent. for the children in the household, a distinction between biological children with the current partner, biological children with a former partner, stepchildren, adopted children and foster children is made. from this information, one can derive the number of biological and non-biological children who still live in the same household unit as the respondent. in a second section of the questionnaire, the respondent is asked to provide the name of any biological or adopted children who do not live in the same household (see fig. 1). a question on whether all children are alive follows, as well as another one that asks the respondent to report all dead children. in the subsequent questions, the respondent has to provide the following information for each child: the sex, whether it is a biological, adopted or a foster child, the dates when the child moved in, whether the child is the biological child of the partner and, for deceased children, the dates of death. for children below age 14, questions on parental leave and childcare follow. for older children, the dates of leaving parental home and the distance between the places of residence of the children and the respondent are recorded. the section fi nally concludes with a question on the relationship quality of the child and the respondent. the subsequent section of the questionnaire addresses then non-resident stepchildren. in order to generate the total number of children, we have summed up the number of biological resident and non-resident children of the female respondent (see stata-code in the appendix for details). there were several subtleties to be considered when we generated the total number of children. firstly, a decision needed to be taken how to treat step-, foster and adopted children. as we mostly validate our data against vital statistics (see section 3.3), we only considered biological children. women with non-biological children stay in the sample, but only the biological children are used to generate the total number of children. if, for example, a woman reports to have a biological and an adopted child, we only take her biological child into consideration. secondly, a decision needed to be made how to treat missing information. we identifi ed three sources of nonresponse. respondents may have given incomplete information in the household grid. this applies to 5 cases in our sample of west • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch10 german women of the cohorts 1930-69.6 furthermore, the respondent may have refused to report if she has non-resident children.7 this applies to another 4 cases. finally, there are further 57 cases for which the respondent has reported that she has non-resident children, but failed to provide any further information on the children. altogether, there are 66 cases with incomplete information on the number of children. these cases have been deleted from the analysis. by applying this procedure, some respondents with children have obviously been omitted from the analysis, as 57 of the deleted 66 cases reported having non-resident children, but did not provide further information on these children. to what extent this aspect affects the results will also be addressed in the subsequent investigation. 3.3 data for external validation for the validation of the data against external data sources, we generate three types of indicators: (1) the total number of children, (2) the parity distribution and (3) the fig. 1: flow chart on how children are surveyed in the german generations and gender survey (ggs) source: own design 6 ahg3_$ had been set to either “.a” (no response/not applicable) or “.c” (does not know). 7 a209 had been set to either “.a” (no response/not applicable) or “.c” (does not know). household grid (ahg3_$) respondent does not have any children in household: any biological or adopted non-resident children? (a209) give names of all children all children alive? (a211a) which child dead? (a211b_$) sex of child (a212_$) date when child moved in (a214m_$, a214y_$) biological child of partner? a215_$) dates of birth of children (a216m_$, a216y_$) etc. respondent has children who live in household: any further biological or adopted children who are non-resident? (a209) status of the child (biological, adopted, foster child) (a213_$) validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 11 parity progression ratios by birth cohorts of women. for all three measures, we have generated 95-percent confi dence intervals around the estimates. in order to guarantee suffi ciently large sample sizes per cohort group of women, we have grouped the different cohorts into fi ve-year intervals. in a fi rst step, the cohort fertility estimates generated from german vital statistics are used to check the total number of children (hfd 2011). it should be noted that the cohort data from the vital statistics are generated from period data that are “stacked together” in a way that they build a real cohort. this has some implications for the defi nition of the individual’s regional affi liation. while, in the ggs data, a west german is a person living in west germany at the time of interview, the data from the vital statistics give the fertility pattern of a “synthetic person” who has lived his or her whole life in west germany. moreover, it is a bit cumbersome to match cohorts precisely across these two types of data. for the ggs, it is necessary to group several cohorts into one category to assure a suffi ciently large sample size. in contrast, for the vital statistics, we only have the average number of children for single cohorts at our disposal. in order to make both data sources comparable, we have used the cohort from the vital statistics which falls in the middle of the cohort grouping of the ggs. in general, these aspects need to be kept in mind, but in principle, vital statistics should be a reliable source for external validation of the fertility estimates from the ggs. unfortunately, it is not possible to validate the parity distribution against vital statistics data. to realise this validation, we have drawn on data from the german mikrozensus that was conducted in 2008 and was the fi rst mikrozensus that surveyed the number of biological children per woman. the mikrozensus data suffers from high item nonresponse for the question that measures the number of children and it thus seems questionable to use the data as a reliable external source. however, the german statistical offi ce has developed an imputation scheme to correct for the selective item nonresponse (statistisches bundesamt 2009). we are unable to fully verify if the imputed mikrozensus data provide reliable estimates on the parity distribution. yet, validation against vital statistics data has shown that the imputation scheme provides reasonable results for the total number of children. furthermore, estimates on childlessness from the imputed mikrozensus data are in line with estimates from other social science surveys (kreyenfeld et al. 2012). judged from this evidence, the parity distributions from the mikrozensus 2008 are probably the most reliable ones that currently exist for germany. 3.4 validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs 3.4.1 total number of children figure 2 displays the comparison of the total number of children as it was generated from the ggs data and from the german vital statistics. as can be depicted from the fi gure, the german vital statistics suggest that the total number of children has • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch12 been falling in west germany since the 1930s cohorts. there is no reversal of this downward trend until the most recent cohorts. the ggs data, however, give a different impression of the cohort trend in total fertility. according to the ggs, fertility has been declining from the 1935-39 to the 1945-49 cohorts, but has been increasing thereafter. in essence, the ggs data reveal a biased picture of the overall cohort trends in west germany. panel 2 in figure 2 compares the weighted ggs estimates with the estimates from the vital statistics. weighting should cure a bias that is caused by unit nonresponse. however, it seems that the weighting factor does not fully work, because it does not correct the overall misleading trend. possibly, this may be explained by the way that the weights have been constructed. the german ggs was drawn by a random route procedure based on adm design (ruckdeschel et al. n.d.). the criteria for selecting the sample points were: federal land, administrative district and municipality type (bik). in a second selection step, the household addresses were picked by random route selection. the respondents in each household were then chosen by kish selection grid. in order to generate a weight for this sample, a stepwise procedure was applied. in a fi rst step, the design weight was generated by accounting for the federal land, municipality type (bik) fig. 2: average number of children of west german women born 1930-69. ggs 2005 and vital statistics 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 ggs (unweighted) 95%-confidence interval vital statistics 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval vital statistics note: a) the values from the vital statistics refer to the class middle. e.g. the value 2.2 for the cohorts 1930-34 represents the cohort 1932. b) in the cohort fertility estimates from the vital statistics, west germany is defi ned as west germany including west berlin until 1989. for the time after 1989, west germany is defi ned as west germany excluding west berlin. source: generations and gender survey 2005, hfd (2011), statistisches bundesamt (2001: 198). panel 1: unweighted results panel 2: weighted results validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 13 and household size. in a next step, the weight was adjusted so that it corrected for the fact that only one person per household had been contacted. finally, the weight was refi ned by accounting for “known” socio-demographic distributions. for this purpose, the distributions of the population by federal land, age and sex as given by the offi cial population statistics (“bevölkerungsfortschreibung”) were used. in addition, information on education, region and age from the mikrozensus 2004 was integrated (see ruckdeschel et al. 2006). on the whole, this complex procedure means that the weights consider standard characteristics, such as household size, age, sex and education. but they do not account for the number of children or the marital status of the respondent. 3.4.2 parity distribution figure 3 graphs the parity distribution by birth cohorts of women. here the ggs data are compared to the mikrozensus 2008. panel 1 provides estimates on the share of childlessness. according to the mikrozensus, the share of lifelong childless women has been increasing since the 1940s cohorts without any sign of a trend reversal. this fi nding matches prior research on this topic based on social science surveys (kreyenfeld/konietzka 2007: 28). the ggs results stand in strong contrast to this fi nding as, according to the ggs estimates, childlessness has been declining considerably since the 1945-49 cohorts. the overall ggs trend runs counter to the trend given by the mikrozensus. only for the cohorts 1950-54, the mikrozensus estimates are captured by the confi dence bounds of the estimates from the ggs. for the other cohorts, one must conclude that the two samples stem from different populations. panels 2-4 of figure 3 present the estimates for the share of women with one, two and three or more children. the estimates are more in line with the estimates derived from the mikrozensus. these results may suggest that the bias is strongest for childless women while the estimates for other parities seem to be reliable. however, this is a misleading interpretation, as the family size distribution as a whole must be distorted when childless women are overrepresented in a sample. a more suitable approach to detect how higher-order fertility is captured in the ggs is to generate parity progression ratios (ppr), which are displayed in figure 4. panel 1 of figure 4 displays the ppr for the transition of women to motherhood. this transition corresponds to the share of childless women that has been discussed above. it shows that the cohort estimates from the ggs and the vital statistics run in opposite directions. there seems to be a better match for the transitions to the second and to the third child (panel 2 and 3). however, it is still disturbing to see that the ggs suggests that second and third birth rates have recently been increasing, while the mikrozensus shows no major changes in the overall progression to the second and third child since the 1950s cohorts. for higher-order births the pattern is very uneven (panel 4). however, one needs to consider that the sample size gets very small in the ggs since higher-order births are not very common in west germany. • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch14 fig. 3: parity distribution of west german women born 1930-69. ggs 2005 and mikrozensus 2008* 0 10 20 30 40 50 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent 0 10 20 30 40 50 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent 0 10 20 30 40 50 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent 0 10 20 30 40 50 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent * we did not provide any confi dence bounds for the mikrozensus as the large sample size leads to very narrow confi dence intervals. note: estimates for the cohorts 1930-34 are not available from the mikrozensus. source: generations and gender survey 2005, research data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the mikrozensus 2008 (own calculations). panel 1: childless women panel 2: women with one child panel 3: women with two children panel 4: women with three or more children validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 15 fig. 4: parity progression ratio (ppr) of several fertility transitions for west german women born 1930-69. ggs 2005 and mikrozensus 2008 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval note: estimates for the cohorts 1930-34 are not available from the mikrozensus. source: generations and gender survey 2005, research data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the mikrozensus 2008 (own calculations). panel 1: ppr 0 —> 1 panel 2: ppr 1 —> 2 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval panel 3: ppr 2 —> 3 panel 4: ppr 3 —> 4 • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch16 4 possible sources of bias our investigation so far suggests that there is an overreporting of births for the younger cohorts and an underreporting of births for the older ones. our fi rst suspicion has been that migration might distort the cohort trends in west german fertility. in particular, young east-to-west migrants who have higher fi rst birth rates than west germans might produce an unusually high fertility of the younger west german cohorts. unfortunately, the fi rst wave of the ggs does not contain migration histories nor does it include information on the region of birth. this makes it diffi cult to test this hypothesis. however, there are several arguments that speak against this idea. firstly, it is unlikely that east-to-west migrants are able to strongly infl uence west german fertility patterns due to their relatively small number (vatterrott 2011). another aspect that refutes this hypothesis is that other surveys, which have reported an increase in the share of childlessness over the cohorts, such as the german mikrozensus, also use information on the place of residence at the time of survey to distinguish east and west germans. a fi nal reason objecting to this hypothesis is that, also for east germany, we found a decline in childlessness for the most recent cohorts in the ggs. for east germany, there is no reason to believe that west-to-east migrants may bias the level of childlessness in the eastern german federal states. there is neither any evidence that east german women of the 1960s cohorts have had extraordinary low levels of childlessness. if it is not migration, what may have caused the peculiar fertility pattern in the data? our best guess is that two counteracting mechanisms are at play. on the one hand, the ggs includes too few childless respondents due to the fact that this group is diffi cult to reach in standard surveys, in particular in the surveys that are based on a random route design like the german ggs (koch 1998; festy/prioux 2002: 23). on the other hand, we suspect that children who have left parental home have not been adequately reported by all respondents. this kind of bias should particularly affect the older cohorts whose children have more often left parental home. these two mechanisms taken together could produce a pattern that gives too few births for the older and too many births for the younger cohorts. in order to buttress our suspicion, we discuss several possible aspects that may support this reasoning. 4.1 the socio-demographic composition of the ggs if our assumption is right that the retrospective module created a problem in the ggs, there should not be any similar distortions for other socio-demographic characteristics. prior investigations by ruckdeschel et al. (2006) have shown that highly educated people are overand foreigners are underrepresented in the german ggs. after weighting the data, the estimates can, however, be brought in line with the mikrozensus estimates. since our main concern is not the overall pattern, but the cohort-specifi c pattern, we display standard socio-demographic indicators by birth cohorts in figure 5. for this part of the analysis, we used the entire sample of the ggs (10,017 respondents). in order to compare our results to the source for our external validation (here the mikrozensus 2005 of the same year like the ggs), we validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 17 required the original german educational classifi cation. since the harmonised un version of the ggs only contains the isced information, we had to go back to the data from the “original” ggs that was made available by the federal institute for population research. the results show that the unweighted estimates are somewhat biased and that the bias also shows a cohort-specifi c pattern. women are particularly overrepresented in the younger cohorts, but underrepresented in the older ones. in addition, university graduates are underrepresented in the older cohorts. this bias disappears, however, after weighting the data. in essence, we do not detect a very systematic bias in these socio-demographic variables. this raises the question whether it is mainly the fertility histories that create a problem in the ggs. 4.2 is there any systematic underreporting of non-resident children in the german ggs? up to this point, the analysis has suggested that the bias exists concerning the number of children, but not concerning other socio-demographic variables. this supports our idea that the module where information on non-resident children was collected might have created a problem to respondents or interviewers in the german ggs. to further assess this assumption, we have compared the ggs results with another german survey, the dji family survey 2000, which contains information on resident and non-resident children. the difference in the survey year might distort the results. however, for the moment we do not have any more recent survey for this kind of analysis at our disposal.8 table 1 presents the share of women whose children no longer live in the household (out of all women). if our assumption is correct and children who have left parental home are not adequately reported, then the share of non-resident children should be lower in the ggs than in the other survey. this assumption is partially supported by the results from the table. for the older respondents (45 years and older), the share of respondents with non-resident children in the ggs is substantially lower than in the dji family survey. what is peculiar, however, is that the bias only seems to occur for the older respondents, but not for the younger ones. 4.3 wording, technicalities and system missings the investigation so far suggests that there may be problems in the collection of retrospective histories in the german ggs. this might have been caused by the misleading wording of the question. the retrospective module about non-resident children begins with two “fi lter questions”. for persons who have resident children, the question is “we already talked about those children who currently live in your 8 the data set aid:a of the german youth institute would provide more recent estimates, but the data were not available for scientifi c usage at the time this paper was written. the allbus 2006 would also provide more recent evidence, but its case numbers are too small to provide reliable estimates. • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch18 fig. 5: socio-demographics by cohorts in the german ggs 2005 and mikrozensus 2005 source: generations and gender survey 2005, research data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the mikrozensus 2005 (own calculations). panel 1: share of female respondents panel 2: share of east germans panel 3: share of university graduates panel 4: share of foreign nationals 0 25 50 75 100 1930-1934 1935-1939 1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964 1965-1969 mikrozensus ggs (unweighted) ggs (weighted) in per cent 0 25 50 75 100 1930-1934 1935-1939 1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964 1965-1969 mikrozensus ggs (unweighted) ggs (weighted) in per cent 0 25 50 75 100 1930-1934 1935-1939 1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964 1965-1969 mikrozensus ggs (unweighted) ggs (weighted) in per cent 0 25 50 75 100 1930-1934 1935-1939 1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964 1965-1969 mikrozensus ggs (unweighted) ggs (weighted) in per cent validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 19 household. in addition to them, have you given birth to/fathered any other children or have you ever adopted any other children?” (german original: “wir haben schon über die kinder gesprochen, die gegenwärtig in ihrem haushalt leben. haben sie außerdem noch andere leibliche kinder oder haben sie jemals ein kind adoptiert?”) for persons without co-residing children, the question is: “have you given birth to/ fathered any children or have you ever adopted any children?”) (german original: “haben sie jemals leibliche kinder gehabt oder adoptiert?”). since in the german original question “adopted” is the last word mentioned, a hasty interviewer or respondent may have believed that the following section only referred to adopted children. in this context, it may also be possible that the older respondents have not reported deceased children adequately. in the questionnaire respondents are asked to report if they have “given birth to/fathered any other children”. in the german original, the formulation presented to the respondents is whether they have any other children or in case they do not have resident children whether they have ever had biological children. at this point, it is not specifi ed if the children should still be alive. another possibility may be a fi lter problem directing respondents to the wrong question. it is not possible to check this aspect in the un version of the ggs because there is only one variable available that indicates if a person has any non-resident children despite the fact that respondents with and without resident children were directed to two different questions. in the original version of the ggs, which we obtained from the federal institute for population research, the two variables are separate. based on this data, we checked if the respondents had been directed to the right questions, but could not detect any peculiarities. a striking aspect we found is, however, that there are quite a few cases that report having non-resident children without providing any further information on these children (57 out of 2,851 cases in our sample of west german women – cf. see section 3.2; 9 were missing for other reasons). we have omitted these cases from the investigation. omitting these cases may, however, distort the results. these reage at interview ggs 2005 dji family survey 2000 30-34 2.2 2.5 35-39 4.8 4.8 40-44 11.7 10.6 45-49 28.2 36.3 50-54 53.4 61.4 55-59 63.6 83.5 tab. 1: share of west german women with non-resident children (in per cent) note: west germany comprises west germany without west berlin. source: generations and gender survey 2005 (weighted estimates), dji family survey 2000 (weighted estimates). • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch20 spondents have children, but we do not know how many. therefore, we are simply unable to consider these children in the estimates on the total number of children. however, we may consider them when generating the share of childlessness. panel 1 in figure 6 displays the share of childless respondents based on this imputation scheme, i.e. respondents who reported that they had non-resident children, but did not report any further information on these children have been coded as respondents with children. as can be depicted from the fi gure, the estimates are slightly more in line with the results from the mikrozensus. however, there is still no suffi cient match. panel 2 in figure 6 shows results from an imputation scheme that treats the missing cases as childless respondents. obviously, this imputation scheme is an unrealistic one as we know that these missings are respondents with children (provided that the answer to the prior question on non-resident children was correct). we still display the results here, because it is not unlikely that other users of the ggs will treat these cases as childless respondents. 4.4 marital histories in the ggs question wording, question placement and technical problems do not seem to be the major sources of error leading to the bias in the fertility histories. it might rather fig. 6: share of childless west german women by birth cohorts. ggs 2005 and mikrozensus 2008 0 10 20 30 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) ggs (weighted & imputed) in per cent 0 10 20 30 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) ggs (weighted & imputed) in per cent note: fertility estimates for the cohorts 1930-34 are not available from the mikrozensus. source: generations and gender survey 2005, research data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the mikrozensus 2008 (own calculations). panel 1: missing=not childless panel 2: missing=childless validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 21 be that respondents (or interviewers) provided negative answers to the number of non-resident children in order to shorten the interview (ní bhrolcháin et al. 2011). older respondents mostly provide their fertility information in the section of the questionnaire which surveys the children who have left the parental home. this section is rather long asking the respondents to provide many details on each child (see fig. 1). the respondents do not know the questionnaire, so that, at this point, they cannot be aware that a lot of further detailed questions on each of the children follow. however, the interviewer knows and he or she may have recorded a “no” to the answer on the number of non-resident children to shorten the interview. if interviewers have made a strategic choice to shorten the interview, a similar problem should have occurred for other events that have been surveyed in a similarly complex fashion. partnership histories have been surveyed according to a similar logic as fertility histories. if our hypothesis is correct that the retrospective part collecting information on non-resident children created a problem for interviewers or respondents, it should also have failed for the partnership histories. against this background, figure 7 displays estimates of the proportion of ever married women by cohort based on the ggs. these are compared to estimates from the mikrozensus of the year 2005. contrary to fertility estimates, which basically give estimates of completed fertility, fi gure 7 gives the share of persons who have been married until the date of the interview which is in 2005 for both data sets. as marriage has been postponed for recent cohorts and the share of never married persons has increased (e.g. blossfeld/jaenichen 1992: 308; huinink 1995: 227), one would expect that the share of married persons declined for the younger cohorts. this is the pattern that one also fi nds in the mikrozensus data. for the german ggs, one gets the striking result that the share of ever-married respondents has increased since the 1930s cohorts. in sum, the marriage history shows a similar bias as the fertility histories. as both, marriage and fertility histories, show the same peculiar pattern, it seems that the nature in which this demographic information has been collected may be the source of error.9 5 conclusion the aim of this paper was to validate fertility histories from the german generations and gender survey. the mean number of children, the parity distribution as well as the parity progression ratios by female birth cohorts have been generated. we compared the ggs results to vital statistics data and to the mikrozensus. we fi nd 9 we also speculated that married respondents of the older cohorts have not been adequately caught by the sampling frame of the ggs. this would have resulted into a bias in the fertility and marital histories alike. to check this presumption, we also generated the total number of children for married respondents only which we compared to estimates from the mikrozensus 2008. as the bias runs in the same direction as the prior analyses had already shown, we refuted this hypothesis. • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch22 that fertility is too low for the older ggs cohorts, while it is too high for the younger ones. weighting the data did not cure the bias. we investigated possible reasons for the odd fertility patterns that we fi nd in the ggs. we followed the idea that the bias might be caused by two counteracting mechanisms. on the one hand, the ggs includes too many young mothers with children, because this group is easy to reach in social science surveys, particularly in those that are based on a random route design like the german ggs. on the other hand, we suspect that children who have left the parental home have not been adequately reported by all respondents due to the complex nature of how nonresident children are surveyed in the ggs. these two mechanisms taken together have produced a pattern that gives numbers of children, which are too low for the older and too high for the younger cohorts. there are two aspects that support this idea. firstly, we fi nd a similar bias for the marital histories of the german ggs. our comparison with the data from the mikrozensus reveals unreasonably low shares of married women for the older cohorts (especially, for the ones born 1930-39). since the partnership histories are surveyed in a similarly complex fashion as the fertility histories, the source of bias might also be similar. moreover, comparison with other data gives some support for the idea that vital events are underreported in the german ggs due to the fact that the retrospective module did not capture the non-resident children in a satisfying manner. fig. 7: share of ever-married west german women by cohorts. ggs 2005 and mikrozensus 2005 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (unweighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 mikrozensus ggs (weighted) 95%-confidence interval in per cent source: generations and gender survey 2005, research data centres of the federal staresearch data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the tistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder, scientifi c use fi le of the mikrozensus 2005 (own calculations).mikrozensus 2005 (own calculations). panel 1: unweighted results panel 2: weighted results validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 23 this is only a best guess of what the source of bias in the ggs could be. we can, however, back up our reasoning with reference to a paper by sauer et al. (2012), which supports our notion that the complexity of the retrospective histories created a particular problem in the collection of the data for germany. it was very diffi cult for us to assess the quality of the fertility information from the german ggs, particularly because item nonresponse was very diffi cult to track. furthermore, we desired a simple question asking respondents how many children in total they had born/fathered over their life course. unlike its predecessor, the fertility and family survey (ffs), the ggs did not contain such a simple question anymore. the same can be said for partnership or marriage. here, one dearly missed a simple question that would have surveyed the marital status at the time of the interview. such a simple general question would have been highly valuable to check the quality of the partnership information given in the retrospective partnership histories. finally, it should be underlined that a lot of aspects remain unresolved. in particular, it remains unclear why this pattern evolved only for germany. as far as we know, such a bias has not emerged for other ggs countries that used similar questionnaires (neels et al. 2011). furthermore, it remains unclear how to cure this bias. for other ggs countries, special weights have been designed to resolve it (buber 2010). a similar strategy has been followed by the german family panel (pairfam), where special weights have been designed that also draw on the parity distribution generated from the mikrozensus 2008 (brüderl et al. 2012: 45). however, for the german ggs, such a weighting factor would only be an unsatisfactory remedy to the problem as weighting should usually address unit nonresponse. if faulty information in the retrospective module is the source of error, weighting may not be the preferable solution to the bias. one may rather conclude that the german ggs is simply unable to depict the cohort changes in partnership formation and fertility and should thus not be used for such kind of analyses. acknowledgements we thank kerstin ruckdeschel, robert naderi and norbert schneider from the federal institute for population research (bib) for their constructive comments and discussion. we are grateful to siegfried gabler (gesis) for valuable comments on data weighting. we thank ina jaschinski (statistics austria) for her contribution to an earlier version of this paper. the bib was very helpful in providing us with the “original” german ggs data. a great thanks goes to the reviewers of this paper for supporting our investigation with many good suggestions on how to improve our argumentation. • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch24 references beckett, megan et al. 2001: the quality of retrospective data. an examination of long-term recall in a developing country. in: the journal of human resources 36,3: 593-625. blossfeld, hans-peter; jaenichen, ursula 1992: educational expansion and changes in women’s entry into marriage and motherhood in 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materialien zur bevölkerungswissenschaft, heft 121a. wiesbaden: bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung [http://www.bib-demografi e.de/cln_090/nn_750526/shareddocs/ publikationen/de/download/materialienbaende/121a,templateid=raw,property=publ icationfile.pdf/121a.pdf]. sauer, lenore; ruckdeschel, kerstin; naderi, robert 2012: reliability of retrospective event histories within the german generations and gender survey. bib working paper 1/2012 [http://www.bib-demografi e.de/cln_099/nn_2295088/shareddocs/ publikationen/de/download/bib__working__paper/ggs,templateid=raw,property= publicationfile.pdf/ggs.pdf]. schuman, howard; presser, stanley 1996: questions and answers in attitude surveys: experiments on question form, wording, and context. thousand oaks, ca/london/ new delhi: sage publications. statistisches bundesamt 2001: bevölkerung und erwerbstätigkeit. gebiet und bevölkerung, fachserie 1. reihe 1. reutlingen: metzler poeschel. statistisches bundesamt 2009: imputation von werten bei fehlenden angaben zur mutterschaft und zur zahl der geborenen kinder im mikrozensus 2008. internes dokument des statistischen bundesamts (zur verfügung gestellt durch julia weinmann). • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch26 swicegood, c. gray; morgan, s. philip; rindfuss, ronald r. 1984: measurement and replication: evaluating the consistency of eight us fertility surveys. in: demography 21,1: 19-33. teitler, julien o.; reichman, nancy e.; koball, heather 2006: contemporaneous versus retrospective reports of cohabitation in the fragile families survey. in: journal of marriage and family 68,2: 469-477. unece 2005: generations & gender programme. survey instruments. new york/ geneva: united nations [http://www.unece.org/fi leadmin/dam/pau/_docs/ggp/2005/ ggp_2005_publ.pdf]. vatterrott, anja 2011: the fertility behaviour of east to west german migrants. in: mpidr working paper wp-2011-013 [http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/ wp-2011-013.pdf]. vikat, andres et al. 2007: generations and gender survey: concept and design. in: unece (eds.): generations and gender programme. concepts and guidelines. new york, geneva: united nations: 1-32 [http://www.unece.org/pau/pub/ggp_concepts_ guidelines.html]. a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the authors is available under the title “das deutsche generations and gender survey: einige kritische betrachtungen zur validität der fertilitätsverläufe”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-02de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos2013-02de2, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 30.11.2010 date of acceptance: 18.07.2012 michaela kreyenfeld ( ), anne hornung, karolin kubisch. max planck institute for demographic research, rostock, germany. e-mail: kreyenfeld@demogr.mpg.de, hornung@demogr.mpg.de, kubisch@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de validation of the fertility histories of the german ggs • 27 appendix stata code for generating fertility information from the german ggs use $source\ggs_wave1_germany_v.3.0.dta, clear * correction of mistakes in household grid replace ahg3_2=1 if arid==31941 replace ahg3_2=1 if arid==366 replace ahg3_4=1 if arid==42455 replace ahg3_2=1 if arid==44983 replace ahg3_2=1 if arid==33108 replace ahg3_2=1 if arid==44931 replace ahg3_3=2 if arid==40393 replace ahg3_4=2 if arid==40393 replace ahg3_5=2 if arid==40393 * number of children in household (bio_in) g bio_in=0 local i=0 while `i'<10 { local default1 =̀ i'+1 replace bio_in=bio_in+1 if ahg3_`default1'==2 | ahg3_`default1'==3 local i=̀ i'+1 } local i=0 while `i'<10 { local default1 =̀ i'+1 replace bio_in=-1 if ahg3_`default1'==.a | ahg3_`default1'==.c local i=̀ i'+1 } * number of biological children not in household (bio_out) g bio_out=0 replace bio_out=-1 if a209==.a | a209==.c | a209==. local i=0 while `i'<9 { local default1 =̀ i'+1 replace bio_out=bio_out+1 if a213_`default1'==1 local i=̀ i'+1 } local i=0 while `i'<9 { local default1 =̀ i'+1 • michaela kreyenfeld, anne hornung, karolin kubisch28 replace bio_out=-2 if (a213_`default1'==.a | a213_`default1'==.c) local i=̀ i'+1 } g test=. local i=0 while `i'<9 { local default1 =̀ i'+1 replace test=1 if (a213_`default1'==1 | a213_`default1'==2| a213_`default1'==3) local i=̀ i'+1 } replace bio_out=-3 if test==. & a209==1 lab def bio_out -1 “no information on ‘fi lter-question’ (a209)” lab def bio_out -2 “resp has non-r kids, but unclear if bio (a213b=.a/.c)”, add lab def bio_out -3 “resp has non-res kids, but unclear if bio (a213b=.)”, add lab val bio_out bio_out * total number of children (unikid) g unikid=bio_in+bio_out replace unikid=-1 if bio_in<0 | bio_out<0 * selection keep if aplace>=140010 & aplace<= 140100 keep if ahg4_1==2 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) adapt and cope: strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz abstract: this article examines the adaptation and coping strategies that are in place to safeguard the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region. in particular, it is investigated which resources are available to local policy-makers and the older population in order to pursue this goal. following an introduction to the debate of regional science about demographic change and its consequences, we introduce a theoretical differentiation between adaptation and coping. adaptation strategies refer to the decision-makers who provide or are involved in organising public service facilities. coping strategies and capacities refer to the customers and users affected by the changes. the population is not only passively affected by changes in public services, but also actively grapples with changed levels of infrastructure and takes up measures to safeguard their own quality of life. empirically, we employ the results of semi-structured interviews with local and regional key persons and group interviews with elderly inhabitants of two small towns in the harz region. the region under study is among the most ageing rural areas in germany. its demographic characteristics are based on many years of selective out-migration and partially age-selective in-migration. the research results reveal many measures and strategies which have been developed and employed by the different actor groups when faced with tangible problems. however, they have not been planned with a long term perspective. the availability of economic and social resources (human resources and investment funds on the part of administrations, fi nancial resources and social networks on the part of the older population) is the chief differentiating and often limiting factor for the success of these measures and strategies. this article comes to the conclusion that adaptation and coping will remain processes for safeguarding the quality of life in shrinking ageing regions for the longer term. in addition to the targeted effects, the unintended consequences of today’s adaptation strategies will also infl uence the level and the design of future public services. keywords: ageing · decline in population · local level · adaptation · coping · german harz region comparative population studies vol. 39, 2 (2014): 345-370 (date of release: 30.06.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-07en3 • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz346 1 introduction since the late 1990s, the debate about demographic change and its socio-geographic consequences on various scales has been revived in germany, in particular in the fi elds of social geography, planning and urban sociology (hannemann 2000; hutter 2003; gans/schmitz-veltin 2006). following an initial phase of academic debate primarily focused on the housing market and cities, increasing attention is paid to the safeguarding of public services in structurally weak and/or peripheral rural regions. intensifi ed by the precarious situation in the public budgets, infrastructure facilities in these regions are at risk of closure or service restrictions under the conditions of population decline and ageing. yet, in past years, the provision of these services, for example in the form of mobile or web-based services, has also changed and some services have been enhanced. further, there are now regions, which have faced a decades-long shrinking process and related ageing. we can therefore assume that, on the one hand, there are a number of established strategies in affected regions to adapt local development in general and public service institutions in particular to the changed conditions and to cope with related changes. on the other hand, demographic shrinkage combined with ageing leads to the depletion of social, economic and cultural capital (bourdieu 1983), and thus to a decrease of resources needed for successful adaptation and coping. such contradictory assumptions can only be broken down by means of empirical research. in this article, on the basis of a case study conducted in 2010-2012 in the harz region, a demographically exceptionally aged region in the middle of germany, we examine which adaptation and coping strategies different actors employ when dealing with local ageing and shrinkage and their consequences and which resources they make use of. the article is structured as follows: section 2 carves out the “problematic” character of the possible consequences of ageing and shrinking from a spatial and regional-science perspective and with a focus on rural areas. section 3 introduces the heuristic differentiation between adaptation and coping. section 4 depicts the methods and the geographic context as well as the key demographic data of the region under study. section 5 presents and discusses local strategies for adaptation to demographic change and selected sectors of the public services. section 6 looks at the coping strategies and resources of the elderly population. section 7 concludes the article with a summary. 2 the “problem” of demographic change in the perspective of spatial research and regional science the discourse held in west germany in the 1970s and 1980s about “shrinkage” (göb 1977; häußermann/siebel 1987) lost academic and political relevance with the changed migration and fertility behaviours in the course of german reunifi cation. yet the increasing visibility of vacancies in buildings and neighbourhoods in the out-migration regions of eastern germany brought the topic back into urban studies strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 347 and regional science after the year 2000 (hannemann 2003). largely independently of the dominant discourse on urban restructuring (stadtumbau) (kabisch et al. 2004; bernt 2006), a regional science debate developed concerning safeguarding institutions and provision of public services in rural regions (e.g. einig 2008; neu 2009; reichert-schick 2010). this discussion also had a precursor in the 1970s and 1980s, which at that time focused not only on out-migration but primarily discussed the declining birth numbers in rural areas (van deenen et al. 1974: 62-69, 372; arl 1983). today, also western german regions are again affected by the population decline (bbr 2006; spellerberg 2007; herfert/osterhage 2011), and the debate is also echoed internationally (com 2008: 9-12). the revived scientifi c debate, which has been enhanced by new aspects such as urban restructuring, is a discourse over crisis in which demography functions as an auxiliary science (mackensen 2000: 414). usually, only partial aspects of the demographic change are of interest since it is examined mainly through the two dimensions of “population decline” and “ageing.” in contrast, questions of changed household structures or internationalisation are rarely examined in this context. yet, neither the decline nor the ageing of the population are crises as such. at fi rst instance, they are socio-demographic structural indicators of a modern society, and, in the case of ageing, actually the success story of a modern, hygienic welfare state that has been largely freed of heavy manual labour. using the example of the predominant framing of shrinkage in demographics, as early as 2000, rainer mackensen complained that, “in this school of thought ‘the population’ stands for itself and any changes to it are already viewed as a threat. this model is based on an implied idea that the least possible change (with regard to size and demographic structure) is desirable in a population; why this should be the case remains unsubstantiated” (mackensen 2000: 401; translated by cpos). some of the “shrinkage” discourse in urban studies and regional science also refl ects a tendency in the public and academic examination of social change that eva barlösius called the “demographisation of the social” (barlösius 2007, translated by cpos), in which demographic data and projections – and not economic, social, political or cultural factors – are used as indicators for future social viability. according to barlösius, discourses about population and demographic change regularly replace debates about society and social change. at the same time, demographic change is often considered as something that is inevitable, inescapable and only to a limited extent modifi able. the increased scientifi c and political interest in demographics is thus based on a specifi c and primarily crisis-ridden understanding of population change processes. however, the problems are not regional and local shrinking or ageing that has rarely been studied systematically in regional science (cf. phillipson/scharf 2005; mai et al. 2007; peter 2009; sternberg 2010), but instead their socio-spatial consequences. the examination of these consequences is the target of this article. while at the beginning, the negative assessment was accompanied by a few voices who also highlighted positive facets of the decline in populations such as ecological aspects (“less is more” (translated by cpos); stiftung bauhaus dessau 2001), this euphoria has been replaced by disillusionment: “less is less” (bernt 2006: 118; translated by cpos). in many regions, the limited scope to control and plan the • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz348 complex interdependent processes of demographic and economic shrinkage, the indebtedness of many municipalities accompanied by rising costs, diffi culties of town planning and the housing market, infrastructure and technical problems as well as social problems contribute rather to an overlapping of multiple problems that are often described as a downward spiral (beer/urbane projekte schmitz 2001: 25, here citing hannemann 2003: 20; cf. the circulus vitiosus as early as van deenen et al. 1974: 373). out-migration from rural areas is characterised by its selectivity. since presently a greater number of better-qualifi ed and younger people as well as more women than men tend to out-migrate (maretzke 2011), the remaining population becomes segregated. demographic change is then mostly a profound social transformation process that has different effects on inand out-migration regions. in many areas declining numbers of people lead to a drop in the demand for public services. however – and this is what makes local efforts to adapt complicated – shrinking rarely leads to a complete lapse in demand. instead, the demand density lessens, which puts the economic viability of many institutions at risk and leads to a reduction in public and private services (tietz 2006: 159). this socio-demographic homogenisation in out-migration regions is accompanied by a collective ageing process, which further intensifi es the overall local process of ageing. for the demand for services and goods this has partly opposite consequences compared to those described above, for in the sectors of medical care and nursing services demand rises. older people in rural regions are particularly disadvantaged if they have health restrictions or do not have cars (scheiner 2006: 138) for their action space becomes more and more limited “with age, everyday life means ‘everyday life at home’” (peter 2009: 85, translated by cpos). the reduction of nearby public services puts mainly the highly aged at risk of being excluded from the use of infrastructure facilities and thus from an important segment of social life. ultimately the consequences of these two partial processes overlap. the decline in the population changes settlement structures. it has impacts on the social and technical infrastructure and diminishes social support networks. when younger family members and friends move away, this breaks off family networks and neighbourhood contacts (peter 2009: 215-216; sternberg 2010: 409). elderly people in these regions are thus affected by multiple consequences of demographic and social change. the conditions sketched out here of shrinking ageing regions with the reciprocal effects of economic, demographic and social processes, which we can only describe here rudimentally, put the safeguarding of local quality of life into question. we must take into account that the lack of public funds in most cities and municipalities in shrinking regions also intensifi es the lack of fi nancial and human resources within the public administrations. we cannot duly treat this aspect in the following, but it must always be considered a central infl uencing factor on the ability of local decision-makers to act. specifi cally, this article aims to answer the following questions: which public services can the responsible stakeholders maintain and infl uence? which strategies and resources are used by older people to cope with their everyday lives in shrinkstrategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 349 ing ageing regions? before we explore these questions empirically, we will present the theoretical design of the study. 3 strategies and actors: a heuristic model local provision of basic facilities of the social and technical infrastructure as well as the provision of essential goods and services are chief indicators of the quality of life in any actual location. relevant stakeholders in this fi eld of public services, described in german discourse as “daseinsvorsorge” – literally “provision of subsistence” – (neu 2009) include both their providers, i.e. organisations in the public, civil society, non-profi t and private sectors, and the customers or users of these facilities and services. public institutions play a special role in the variety of stakeholders. municipalities, counties, states, or federal state governments act at least as regulatory or co-funding authorities, even if services are provided by private institutions. this is frequently referred to as “public provision of subsistence” (e.g. einig 2008). in the following, the term “public services” will be used. under the conditions of social and demographic change, providers and facilitators1 endeavour to secure and, if necessary, to reconfi gure public services according to demand, the legal framework and the funds available. the consumers are interested primarily in the short and medium-term assurance of their quality of life, for which the type, quality and accessibility of public service facilities play a crucial role. this article employs a theoretical differentiation between adaptation (of facilities) and coping (with change). hence, we speak of adaptation strategies for stakeholders who provide public service facilities or take part in their design and we speak of coping strategies and capacities when referring to the users and potential consumers affected by the changes. based on wiechmann (2008), we understand strategy as emergent-adaptive action that is recognisable in hindsight in the decision patterns of the actors. thus, a strategy does not have to be based on an intentional, consistent plan (incremental model of strategy). this heuristic differentiation is chiefl y meant to illustrate that the population not only passively adapts to changes in public services but also has an infl uence itself (albeit not always with the intended consequences) on the design, the discontinuation or the changes of public service facilities. both groups of actors are seen as active actors who take tangible measures to safeguard or improve the local or their personal quality of life. in contrast, previous studies focussed on the adaptive reactions, primarily of public decision-makers such as administrations, government or regional planning (e.g. küpper 2011). 1 facilitators are, in particular, mayors of towns and villages or administrators or representatives of the district and municipal administrations to whom the consumers of public services turn and from whom they expect activities that secure or improve the supply. yet these stakeholders also act on their own as facilitators to seek possible solutions together with the actual service providers. • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz350 there are a variety of previous studies for the systematisation of possible alternatives for adaptation and coping, most of which originate in organisational research where there has been a lengthy discussion about shrinking organisations and their adaptation strategies (whetten 1987; bartl 2011: 71-80). in particular, they examine enterprises that have to react to a decreasing resource basis and are thus existentially at risk. boyne (2004: 97-100) identifi es three typical strategies which can be employed by decision-makers of endangered organisations and have empirically proven to be successful for the private sector. the strategy of retrenchment encompasses measures that reduce enterprise size, divest unprofi table business divisions or make the provision of services more effi cient. repositioning attempts to develop new markets or improve the market position by means of quality improvement, product innovations or diversifi cation. finally, the reorganisation of structures aims to change internal management. this includes the replacement of managers, the introduction of new management methods or the decentralisation of decision-making structures. boyne (2004: 100-102) transfers this “3rs” model to public service organisations, which can also provide their services more effi ciently, outsource services or transfer tasks to the citizens (retrenchment). in addition, they can introduce new services, improve their image or make them more attractive in order to gain new user groups (repositioning). finally, reorganisation is also possible, for example, by replacing the management, introducing instruments of performance-oriented payment, establishing a new organisational culture which focusses on the customer or applying modifi ed methods of planning and decision-making. these strategies can also be combined, as is often the case in enterprises. for example, it is often observed that a change in management is necessary as a reorganisational measure to assert cuts in spending or innovations. empirically, most measures for adapting public services are allotted to the fi rst type of strategy (thrun 2003; einig 2008: 32). retrenchment is used in the form of reduction of services (dismantling or closure of facilities, adaptation of opening hours and the product range), downsizing of facilities, replacing stationary with mobile services as well as the geographical concentration of school or offi ce sites. this strategy also includes the decentralisation of technical infrastructures, transferring public responsibilities to voluntary and private bodies (e.g. privatisation of water and power companies or of day-care facilities). by contrast, repositioning by means of new (e.g. multifunctional facilities, fl exible public transport) or improved services (e.g. tailoring programmes to specifi c target groups) is rarely discussed (cf. however muschwitz et al. 2002: 35). reorganisation is partly combined with the demand for inter-municipal cooperation or local government reorganisation (kersting 2006: 38). this third type of strategy also includes new planning instruments such as integrated concepts or monitoring systems with a demographic reference as well as the appointment of senior citizens representatives. unlike the provider reactions, there are far fewer studies about existing coping strategies among the population when faced with a change in public services (also born 2009: 134-135). the typology of responses to the dissatisfaction of actors (using the example of the customers of a company) developed by hirschman (1970) is strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 351 a possible conceptual link. he differentiated between three strategies: exit refers to out-migration (in his case, the company loses the dissatisfi ed customers), voice encompasses all individual and collective attempts to change the situation on site (e.g. by means of letters of complaint or initiation of a product boycott), loyalty refers to customers who remain loyal to the company, adapting their needs and purchasing the altered product anyway. since then, in urban studies and regional science research, this typology has frequently been applied to residential location decisions (franz 1989; kecskes 1994; steinführer 2004). yet, it can also be transferred to strategies for coping with a change in the quality and quantity of public services. in this case, the fi rst strategy is out-migration (exit 1) and daily mobility (exit 2) in order to eliminate shortfalls of supply. however, only in rare cases out-migration is caused solely by a poor supply situation, for decisions about mobility usually have a variety of both internal and external household causes. by contrast, in rural regions, everyday mobility is usually necessary in order to secure a supply in a location other than the place of residence. nevertheless, under conditions of demographic change, we are faced with questions about how this can be maintained in old age, which resources are available (coping capacities) – i.e. chiefl y the existence and capabilities of social networks, but also institutionalised support (such as senior citizens representatives) – as well as whether the accessibility of facilities is suffi cient. the second strategy, voice, refers to all active attempts to change the situation that is subjectively perceived as dissatisfactory. these can be both individual initiatives (e.g. self-suffi ciency; born 2009: 143-144) and collective activities such as the establishment of a booster club for the preservation of the local primary school or for setting up a village shop. many of these options are currently subject to the vivid scientifi c and political debate on civic engagement (neu 2011). finally, the remaining category, loyalty, includes numerous reactions ranging from adaptation of needs to passiveness and resignation to self-restriction (franz 1989: 143-159). there hardly exist any empirical fi ndings about this strategy. the supply of and the demand for public facilities and services not only change due to demographically or fi nancially induced processes or adaptations already put in place; rather both sides are constantly changing. over time, the consumers’ needs and demands for services near their homes change due to key life events (e.g. the birth of children, older parents in need of care). societal and technological developments also infl uence subjective needs. some services – such as nationwide supplies of water and power – are taken for granted nowadays. by contrast, the telecommunications sector has undergone a rapid change over recent years. while at fi rst, the access to the internet was signifi cant, today digit rates play the key role. however, other rather more gradual societal developments, such as gender relations and labour participation by women, must also be taken into consideration. for example, the demand for childcare facilities has grown steeply in western germany since the 1990s (rauschenbach 2011), while legislators have also guaranteed new rights for the users. hence, as the responsible bodies, the municipalities are faced with the need to expand these services. adapting and coping, therefore, constantly • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz352 interact and are the reaction of the involved actors infl uenced by distinct societal processes, of which demographic change is only one amongst others. 4 case studies in the shrinking ageing region of the harz: key data and methodology among germany’s rural regions, at the end of 2008 western harz was the region with the highest percentage of people of advanced age: 12.1 percent of the population of the county of osterode am harz and 11.8 percent of the county of goslar were at that time 75 years or older (national average across all counties and independent cities: 8.6 percent). these two counties in lower saxony also shared the top ranking of over-65-year-olds with the counties of görlitz and vogtlandkreis (26.1 percent and 26.0 percent respectively compared with 20.4 percent nationwide; bbsr 2010). also in the county of harz2 in the state of saxony-anhalt, these percentages – 10.1 percent (75+) and 24.4 percent (65+) – were far above the national average. table 1 shows that a higher percentage of older people had already lived in the county of osterode am harz in the 1980s. today’s level of average age in the part of harz which lies in saxony-anhalt is, however, a result of the selective out-migration of younger age groups as well as the birth defi cit since 1990. tab. 1: age groups 65+ and 75+ in selected years as well as projections for 2025 in the harz region (in percent) age groups 1980* 1990 2000 2010 projections for 2025 county osterode am harz 65+ 20 20 22 27 32 75+ 8 9 10 13 17 bad sachsa 65+ 27 27 27 31 – 75+ 11 14 14 16 – county harz 65+ 15 15 18 25 33 75+ 6 7 8 11 15 harzgerode 65+ 15 14 18 27 – 75+ 6 6 7 11 – * harzgerode and county harz (today’s territory): 1981 source: own calculations based on data provided by lskn (lskn 2012) and the regional statistical offi ce of lower saxony (personal communication in 2012) 2 harz does not only stand for the region named after the mountains, it also stands for a county which only ranges over a small part of this whole region. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 353 the pronounced ageing in the harz region was the motivation for the case study this article is based on. for the empirical case study, it concentrated on two municipalities – small towns, each with a local centre (principal town) and a number of incorporated villages – in the counties of osterode am harz (bad sachsa; approx. 7,700 inhabitants at the end of 2010) and harz (harzgerode; 8,600 inhabitants) (cf. in more detail steinführer et al. 2012: 25-30). harzgerode in the eastern harz has a similar age structure as the county – the percentages of age groups 65+ and 75+ have nearly doubled since 1990 due to the negative balance of migrations and natural population development. bad sachsa also has a selective in-migration of mostly 55 to 65-year-olds. therefore, the percentage of generations over 65 years is again distinctly higher than in the county (table 1) since bad sachsa has been a popular retirement location for decades. and yet this in-migration only attenuates the trend of population decline through negative natural development – 1964 was the last year that the town had more births than deaths. bad sachsa’s population decreased by 11 percent between 1990 and 2010, harzgerode’s by 27 percent. figure 1 shows the population development of the region under study between 1981 and 2010. with the exception of the fi rst half of the 1990s, which was characterised by opposite developments in migrations (in-migration in the western harz versus out-migration in the eastern harz), during this period, decline in population is the dominant pattern. in the county of harz, it dropped more distinctly with 22 perfig. 1: population development of the counties and towns under study, 19812010 (1981=100) 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 bad sachsa harzgerode lk osterode (county west harz) lk harz (county east harz) percent source: own calculations based on data provided by lskn (lskn 2012) and the regional statistical offi ce of lower saxony (personal communication in 2012); territory as of 1.1.2011 • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz354 cent (18 percent since 1990) than in the county osterode am harz (15 percent and 14 percent respectively). the local extreme cases are st. andreasberg with 39 percent shrinkage (since 1990) in the western harz, and thale and harzgerode with 27 percent each in the eastern harz. regionalised population projections, which are, however, not directly comparable due to differing model assumptions, anticipate similar future trends until 2025. a population change of -18 percent (base year 2009) is assumed for the county of osterode am harz and -20 percent (base year 2008) for the harz county (lskn 2012; stala 2011). we deliberately chose a western german and an eastern german town for our study of adapting and coping strategies in order to examine whether the eastern harz, with its comparatively more dynamic history of shrinkage, has a head start of experience in dealing with the consequences of socio-demographic change in line with the hypothesis by hannemann et al. (2002: 259) of “preceding phenomena.” in 2011/12, 38 semi-structured interviews were held with 48 decision-makers (key persons) from administrations, infrastructure facilities and associations in the two towns and the counties (quoted as s1-s38).* these interviews focused on the question of how public services were adapted. the number of interviews was not set beforehand; empirical saturation was the main criterion. in 2011, additionally fi ve group interviews with 57 inhabitants (48 women, nine men) between 55 and 98 years were conducted within local senior groups (g1-g5) that were also semi-structured but implemented with less standardisation. we chose this type of interview in order to test its applicability for future studies of ageing in rural regions. in addition, the interaction effects that inevitably result from group interviews were intended to obtain a discursive image of the quality of life of older people in a shrinking ageing region. the results of these group interviews are not representative for the total population or for the older population of the region. however, this was also not our intention. instead, these interviews served to supplement and refl ect the fi ndings from the interviews with the key persons. moreover they aimed at gaining knowledge about coping strategies and the available and used resources for dealing with changes in public services by way of an exploratory study. approximately 1,000 pages of textual material were gleaned from the interviews (mostly full transcripts). we conducted a qualitative content analysis to evaluate the two different types of text. the material was systematically assessed for descriptive and evaluative statements with regard to the fi elds of the public services of interest as well as past and present actions referring to them. categories were employed that were both formed deductively and inductively when they proved relevant during the course of the evaluation. the identifi ed text passages were paraphrased and successively assigned to the categories. during the fi nal stage of evaluation, the research team discursively created main categories (strategies) for the actions (measures) that referred to safeguarding public services. * all quotations have been translated by cpos. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 355 5 demographic change and public services: adaptation strategies due to the conceptual design of the study, demographic change was addressed in each key person interview (“that’s the top issue right now,” s14) and mainly expounded on: “that’s demographic change and it’s really hitting us hard here” (s34). in the county of osterode am harz, the demographic developments were described by a number of key persons as a “concern.” the constant out-migration of younger people and the decline in population are the problems most often mentioned. “shrinkage” in particular is being experienced as a new phenomenon: “the fact that the number of inhabitants is dropping so tremendously is, of course, one thing we didn’t have before; so it has intensifi ed [...]. last time, we elected two more councilmen than we are this time” (s13). one interviewee called the osterode am harz region a “model county [...]: the way it looks here today, that’s what nearly all of the rural regions in the federal republic will look like in 15 years. that’s what they’re predicting” (s15). causes for the demographic development include the specifi c structure of the regional labour market (with a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial sector and greatly declining importance of tourism since the early 1990s) combined with the unique history and geopolitical location of the region: “today, although we are in the western part and always enjoyed the advantages of the federal republic, today not even the pigeons bother to stop here. the economic power is in the eastern states. we are being bled dry here. thuringia is only one or two kilometres away” (s25). the reference to the neighbouring federal state (bundesland) stands for a long-standing gap in funding alongside a discontinuation of their subsidisation in the form of government aid to border regions, the out-migration of companies in the 1990s as well as continued lower wage costs in the eastern states. therefore, the structural disadvantages are chiefl y interpreted as the consequences of german reunifi cation and not so much as a result of the peripheral location that existed even before 1990. the interpretations and assessments heard in the harz county do not differ fundamentally from those in lower saxony. the interviewees chiefl y addressed outmigration and its economic conditionality, in particular the east-west pay gap as a pull factor, which fi rst promotes out-migration for vocational training and makes a later return unappealing. in addition to the decline in population, there are concerns about formidable ageing: “all in all, the towns are over-aged” (s28). after twenty years of germany’s unifi cation, which was an incisive change for both eastern and western harz, the interviewees chiefl y expounded the problems of the continuing selectivity of out-migration, i.e. the loss “of the creative and the dynamic people. [...]. the people that are important for advancing a region, we’ve lost them” (s11). another example is observed by an interviewee in his village: “the young women are all gone. the men running around here, they’re all staying bachelors. that is a devastating development” (s17). one possible long-term consequence of these changes is the lack of young people in a variety of sectors. in the harz county, a number of interviewed key persons addressed this issue of the lack of qualifi ed employees. already existing apprenticeship training positions cannot always be fi lled (“vacancies with a capital v”; s11). • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz356 the majority of the interviewees in the entire region and in both of the towns under study assumed that population decline and ageing will continue in a more or less linear fashion (“we’re going to continue to have a problem with the population”; s2), in spite of all the uncertainties that some observe in the available projections: “sometimes it’s a good thing not to know what’s going to happen” (s10). demographic change in its various facets is the source or reference point of a number of measures and individual projects in the two towns under study and the case study region.3 based on the interviews these can be summarised in six strategies (table 2). “demographic change” is most obvious in the form of awareness raising and networks at the administrative level (strategy 1) as well as of awareness raising with regard to the population and enabling everyday support (strategy 2). yet, generally speaking that the subject is only weakly institutionalised in spite of the decades-long experience as a region in the throes of demographic upheaval both west and east of the former inner-german border. although there are many projects and measures (cf. columns 2 and 3 in table 2), so far, there is no recognisable long-term and coordinated management of the demographic changes either in the western or eastern harz – with the exception of strategy 3, which deliberately aims at attracting not only families but also older inhabitants. population development is, for instance in regional development programmes, only considered as one matter amongst many others (cf. for example ilek 2006 and 2007). strategy 4 is, however, not directed towards demographic change but rather seeks to improve the local quality of life. this conceptual neglect of the issue may have different causes. earlier studies and other regions have shown that demographic change, when manifested as “shrinkage” and ageing, is an issue that is preferably skirted by decisionmakers in public and has negative connotations (cf. various articles in weiske et al. 2005). yet, the comprehensive character of demographic change, which requires the expertise and cooperation of different authorities and agencies, is a factor that impedes an integrated approach. consolidation of resources and the attempt to make use of funds provided externally (strategies 5 and 6) are the logical consequences. however, in this context the interviews refer to insuffi cient resources at the disposal of the administrations, whose staff numbers are also shrinking but not their workloads. the “let things slide” strategy that also results from this problem is not contained in table 2. three briefl y described examples illustrate the defi ciencies of the strategies we came across. first, the administration of the harz county took some measures to raise awareness and network in connection with ageing and the declining population (strategy 1) by organising events, installing a senior advisory committee, conducting a cross-departmental social monitoring as well as developing and implementing an integrated rural development scheme. however, none of these efforts have yet led to a consistent strategy within the administration. thus, for example, a limit to in-patient care is being pursued in plans for assistance for the elderly – 3 detailed explanations and more examples are documented in the fi nal project report (steinführer et al. 2012). strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 357 fostering assisted accommodation, while the county development planners, on the other hand, are demanding investments in new nursing capacities in the scope of rural development which aims at quite the contrary. this example reveals the diffi culties in an integrated approach when confl icting objectives, such as priority to at-home over in-patient care versus the creation of jobs, are pursued from the respective sector’s reasoning. strategy 3 is manifested, for example, through the orientation of the municipal building site policy to specifi c target groups, which proved a learning process in tab. 2: strategies, measures and concrete examples to deal with demographic change in the harz region strategy measure example within the harz region 1. awareness raising and networks at the administrative level making use of demographic data awareness raising with regard to the topic institutionalisation of the topic instructing external/making own population projections taking into account demographic aspects when making investment decisions demography workshops task force demographic change (in regional management) committee for the interests of senior citizens oha, bad sachsa oha lk harz oha lk harz 2. awareness raising within the population and enabling everyday support institutionalisation of contact personnel service bureau for senior citizens representative for senior citizens service bureau for children representative for children and families committee for the interests of senior citizens oha bad sachsa oha oha lk harz 3. attracting special target groups financial incentives subsidies for the purchase of real estate (for families and elderly) bad sachsa 4. investing in local public services demography-sensitive decisions concerning public service facilities structural measures conscious preservation of certain facilities (e.g. day-care centres, youth clubs) establishment of facilities that create a sense of identity lowering of kerbs in public roads harzgerode bad sachsa bad sachsa 5. consolidation of resources reassignment of territorial classifications cooperation of local authorities establishment of unified municipalities dialogue on consolidation of neighbouring municipalities cofinancing of regional management harzgerode bad sachsa oha 6. making use of external resources make use of funds participation in public tendering, partly with own cofinancing oha, lk harz oha = county of osterode am harz, lk harz = county harz source: own design based on interviews with key persons within the harz region • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz358 bad sachsa. the town initially reacted to the declining population in the traditional way by offering reduced prices for building sites to families. they then ascertained that this instrument had hardly any effects due to a lack of demand. rather, most inquiries came from senior citizens, leading to a change in strategy aimed at this target group and setting bad sachsa apart from the neighbouring towns. thereby, the town had to learn that seniors have different demands than families as they prefer smaller parcels with gentle slope and close access to local amenities over large plots located in a quiet and beautiful landscape. consolidation of resources (strategy 5) is often anticipated as the result of local government reorganisation. the present municipality of harzgerode was formed by the association of administrations that existed until 2010 with incentives and pressure from the state government. in 2011, the town of bad sachsa held merger talks with the neighbouring town hoping for debt relief by the state government. at the time, the negotiations were unsuccessful as the two highly indebted municipalities were unable to agree on the required cutbacks, which would presumably have hit the less densely populated neighbouring town far harder than the larger and better-equipped town of bad sachsa.4 a few years after the completion of local government reorganisation, the problems in harzgerode become apparent. the local decision-makers dispute the effects of economisation since the administration was already centralised previously and the lengthier decision-making processes require additional bureaucracy. moreover, the confl icts of distribution have intensifi ed since the budgets of the merged municipalities were very different and the fi nancially better-equipped parts of the town now claim to balance out the disadvantages caused by local government reorganisation. more than forty years after the last merger of municipalities, similar problems still play a role in bad sachsa and are addressed in the arguments of associated village representatives. population decline and ageing lead not only to closures and a declined supply in the public services. strategy 4 in table 2 refers to deliberate investments in facilities for specifi c age groups such as children (in particular in the town in eastern harz) or seniors (in particular in the case in lower saxony). yet, because of municipal over-indebtedness, such measures are always subject to funding restrictions, so the room to manoeuvre remains limited. in the following, we will look at which adaptation strategies are actually employed for the public services for medical care with general practitioners and specialists, elder care and nursing, local public transport and local amenities since these were the areas that were also mentioned in the group interviews by the elderly.5 therefore, we examine both public services and services from private and non-profi t organisations. 4 in 2013 and 2014, merger talks of the two towns continued (however, without a result by the time of the publication of this article). 5 the study also examined the sectors of childcare, schooling, internet connectivity, school transit as well as fi re and emergency services (steinführer et al. 2012). strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 359 table 3 shows an overview of measures recorded from the content analysis of the key persons’ interviews as well as the adaptation strategies that were derived in the second stage of analysis. as expected, geographical concentration and a reduction of services or cost cutting – except in elder care and nursing – were strategies we encountered everywhere. yet, we also discovered opposing strategies, for example, in medical care. on the one hand, in some villages of eastern harz, there are branch practices of physicians from the small town under study and a larger medium-sized town. on the other, the hiring activities of practice successors lead to the relocation of practices, thus thinning out the density of physicians in rural areas. the strategies and measures in local public transport have similarly contradictory effects. service reductions (for example , lessening the frequency and disconnecting very small villages) take place while at the same time the fares for specifi c passenger groups are reduced and investments are made, for instance to make the bus stops barrier-free. for the town in western harz a transport infrastructure that is designed to be age-appropriate is less an active strategy for adapting to demographic change, but rather served to solidify its spa-town status and included construction measures that would have been done to improve the townscape anyway. the sector of elder care and nursing is a growth sector characterised by expansion, differentiation and specialisation where the public sector (as described above) partly attempts to counteract developments perceived as undesirable (such as the expansion of the in-patient sector). further, local amenities are not only reduced, for example, by the closure of branch offi ces or job cuts. this is accompanied by measures that geographically concentrate certain services (e.g. postal services) at points of sale within other facilities, which also means that these shops become multifunctional and expand their offers (table 3). at any rate, we must revise the conception that ageing and population decline solely lead to a reduction in public services in rural regions. in fact, decision-makers tab. 3: adaptation strategies in selected public services medical care elder care and nursing local public transport local amenities 1. geographical concentration of services 1. establishment of new capacities 1. reduction of services 1. cost cutting 2. decentralisation of services 2. differentiation of services 2. search for new passenger groups 2. improvement of supply in order to win over and tie consumers 3. cooperation between cities, national association of statutory health insurance physicians and healthcare centres in order to recruit new physicians 3. response to capacity problems in the in-patient sector 3. reorganisation in order to enhance efficiency 3. mobile and temporary supply 4. own initiatives of physicians 4. specialisation in retirement homes and subsidies for moving in 4. public subsidies 4. restructuring into multifunctional service facilities 5. consultation source: own design based on interviews with key persons within the harz region • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz360 (whether private providers or the municipalities and counties as stakeholders responsible for or moderating provision) employ a variety of strategies to adapt the public services not only to quantitative and qualitative changes in the population structure, but also to new demands or other societal circumstances. economic viability problems are countered in the private sector with concentration, centralisation and closures. yet, they also attempt to improve their attractiveness. public funders and coordinating agencies take up advisory, mediating and steering functions, but are limited in their actions by staff reductions and a lack of capital resources. in spite of all the variety of measures and strategies identifi ed as well as the great dedication of the involved decision-makers, we ascertain that also in public services adaptation to demographic change still chiefl y occurs ad hoc, problem-driven and without any long-term planning perspective. with regard to the settlement structure, these changes are accompanied by a strengthening of the centre function of the historic small towns at the expense of the incorporated villages. on the one hand, this is a long term process (in bad sachsa for example it has been in progress for decades and intensifi ed since the formation of the unifi ed municipality in 1972). on the other hand, it can be seen as the result of recent administrative legal decisions (like in harzgerode in the course of the local government reorganisation of 2009/2010). in reference to the organisational schemes introduced above, we ascertained that in adaptive practice all of the theory’s known strategies (retrenchment, repositioning, reorganisation) are in place both as individual and as mixed strategies. thus, programme cuts (retrenchment) can be accompanied by organisational changes (reorganisation), and the closure of facilities in one place can go hand in hand with marketing campaigns (repositioning) in another place. the outcome of the research project this article is based upon, however, reveals that the value of this typology is limited to the public services debate since each of these fi elds is very distinct. they are public or privately provided goods which are subject to a specifi c adaptive reasoning due to different relevant stakeholders with differing scopes of infl uence. thus, the identifi ed strategies differ respectively, even if they may be summarised, for example, under the heading of reorganisation. hence, public services are not static, but constantly changing. the measures and strategies taken now will also contribute to continued differentiation of the services in the principal towns and the incorporated villages. the decision-makers have long recognised that there are few patent remedies and that they will have to fi nd specifi c solutions for their towns and facilities. it is therefore not contradictory if both concentration and decentralisation efforts are reported or if the reduction of services is accompanied by quality improvements. under the conditions of demographic, economic, technological, legal and social changes, public services will remain a fi eld in transformation. not all of the measures taken today will still be suitable tomorrow nor will they necessarily have consequences that are later deemed undesired. therefore today’s changed organisations will need to be re-adapted again. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 361 6 changed public services and quality of life: coping strategies and resources based on the group interviews we conducted, it is possible to differentiate between three coping strategies among the older population: caring for themselves independently, falling back on social networks to manage everyday life and coping by adapting their needs. the seniors and key persons interviewed agree in their prior concern of being able to care for themselves: “the children have moved away, the parents are still living in their big house, have a big garden, and there’s no way to get them out of there, that’s for sure, they want to keep on living in this house for as long as possible” (s15). preserving personal mobility for as long as possible is therefore the most frequently observed coping strategy among the seniors. having a car is the precondition for this so that basic supplies can be obtained within a larger action space (cf. steinführer et al. 2012: 130). however, the fragility of this state of independence – especially from the viewpoint of elderly women who often have no driving license, especially in eastern harz – is recognised and possible future problems are anticipated: “so far, we’re satisfi ed with errands and so on; we can still get around on our own. my husband still drives and let’s hope it stays that way a while longer” (g2). managing everyday tasks without the mobility of an automobile is considered problematic, particularly in the incorporated villages. because of the dispersed and spatially extensive settlement structure of harzgerode (compared with the relative compactness of the town of bad sachsa), these problems are greater in the eastern harz and are reported in particular with reference to medical care and local amenities. age-related health and physical restrictions are additional strains on everyday coping. when a person’s mobility is restricted due to the lack of a car and the provision of supplies nearby is insuffi cient, seniors make use of social networks. these can consist of relatives, acquaintances and neighbours whose aid is often available without any costs or is relatively inexpensive. when younger family members move away, family networks break off and coping strategies are restricted. yet, even if the children live nearby they may, due to their employment, only be able to care for the elderly to a limited extent. the interviewees mentioned this problem of dependence on these social networks: “i can’t always be asking my grandchildren ‘you have to get me this or you have to do this for me.’ that won’t do [...], they have families, they work [...], they’re on shifts” (g1). to circumvent this, they also make use of local public transport. busses are then the primary means of transport for seniors, yet they criticize the existing connections. the links from the villages to the principal town and from there to the closest regional centres is assessed as particularly poor in both municipalities. their coupling to school transit is also problematic during school holidays. in addition to personal networks, professional, cost-related car services are used as an alternative. these may be taxis to supply facilities or (in the case of bad sachsa) telephone home delivery services offered by the supermarkets. if the seniors are restricted in their mobility and if they make use of social networks to satisfy basic needs, such as shopping or doctor consultations, this is refl ected in • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz362 a relatively small action space that comprises only their own village, the principal town and a few other nearby towns (cf. steinführer et al. 2012: 131). when home delivery and paid services are required, low pensions restrict other needs. the strategy sometimes to be found in the literature of supplementing reduced local amenity supply by cultivating food (born 2009) was only mentioned in one group interview in the form of self-supply of fruit from the garden. in fact – depending on their social status and family situation – we noted a degree of selfdenial. in extreme cases, coping can go beyond the adaptation of needs to temporary or lasting non-utilisation. institutional assistance supplements these personal strategies and resources – whether they are material or social in nature (cf. also table 1 above). for instance, there is a service bureau for senior citizens of the county in osterode am harz that provides a variety of counselling services to the older population. such services are seen less often at the local level. in addition to personal coping strategies, there are also private initiatives (such as mobile food deliveries and banking services) as well as informal assistance (e.g. when letter carriers pick up postal items). according to the interviewees the mobile food supplies are, however, insuffi cient. they complain that they are limited to specifi c products, to “bread and meat. but what about anything else? there is still a lot missing” (g5). these services are also considered expensive and are used, where possible, only as a supplement. in the opinion of some of the key persons interviewed, regional centres offer advantages in the everyday lives of the elderly. nonetheless, they experience that people rarely move away because of the reduction in public service facilities: “anyone who grew up in the village stays in the village and isn’t going to, just because they grew old, move to the next biggest town, but as long as they can, the people are going to stay here where they’ve lived all their lives” (s15). some key persons expressed a desire for more discussion at the local level of the topic of everyday coping among senior citizens under the conditions of personal and structural ageing. instead, however, one interviewee said the discussion about public services focuses “more on optimising supply structures” and less on how the “social space [can be] restructured in the medium term to suit the elderly” (s20). in summary, we can state that supply problems in the context of changing public services is not a phenomenon of ageing, but something that occurs over and over again throughout the life course. restricting one’s own self-reliance and rely on others instead, however, means new challenges for coping with everyday life in old age. under conditions of lesser fi nancial resources, shrinking social networks and health restrictions, we can speak of a doubled experience of loss. on the one hand, in earlier phases of life, the now elderly people were better able to cope with everyday life. on the other hand, the loss of personal mobility today is accompanied by a reduction in or geographical centralisation of public services. this leads to social disadvantages for less mobile seniors, who assess the provision of public services more negatively than mobile interviewees who are able to depend on social networks or professional services. this is also the case when the distances to the service facilities are smaller, which is mainly the case in the local centres. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 363 in shrinking ageing regions, coping with the infrastructural consequences of socio-demographic change is the routine and the necessity. spatial mobility (according to the typology in section 3: exit 2) is a self-evident element of the provision of goods and services. in old age, it reaches new limits when faced with health restrictions, the loss of a partner or the diminishment of social networks. for the interviewed population group, moving away because of perceived supply defi ciencies (exit 1) is not an option for the short term – although those who have already moved away are systematically excluded due to the study design. we did not encounter collective coping strategies (in terms of hirschman’s voice strategy) in the fi elds discussed here (however e.g. for schools; steinführer et al. 2012: 64-68, 148-149). personal strategies going beyond mobility are also exceptional. adapting and restricting needs (hirschman’s residual category of loyalty) are elements of a long-term personal coping process. in future, it will continue to be diffi cult for the older population of rural out-migration regions to cope with supply defi ciencies on their own. when it is not possible to bring the provisions to the people, seniors who do not own cars and who have health restrictions will be even more disadvantaged by the elimination of public service facilities that can be reached on foot. they will have to rely more on social networks – whether informal or professional and with costs. yet, due to resource limitations, this strategy is also precarious in ageing and shrinking regions. 7 conclusions local public services change in the course of economic shrinkage processes, demographic and social change, public budget defi cits that accrued over the long term and technological changes. this article examined the consequences of regional ageing processes and population decline for the quality of life in small rural towns as well as the related adaptation and coping strategies. our fi rst research question, namely to what extent public services can be maintained and infl uenced by the responsible stakeholders, was answered by using the selected fi elds as examples (medical care, nursing and elder care, local public transport and local supply) with reference to a number of identifi ed adaptation measures and strategies. reduction and centralisation are chief characteristics of this process, yet in regions like those which have been studied here – which are not extreme cases of peripheralization and shrinkage in an economic and demographic respect – there are potentials that the relevant actors employ within their scope of infl uence. in larger unifi ed municipalities the principal towns are strengthened at the expense of incorporated villages. policy-makers at the local and regional levels are important co-creators and facilitators of the adaptation processes, yet shrinkage also has economic effects (on public funding) and personnel effects (on administrations) and thus restricts the actual action space. the second question we examined addressed the strategies and resources of older people for coping with their everyday lives. the population actively grapples with the new levels of infrastructure and takes measures to safeguard their own • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz364 quality of life. in shrinking ageing regions, this is exacerbated by the fact that effects of structural and personal ageing overlap – socio-demographic homogenisation is accompanied by the diminishment of social networks, which take up major supportive and compensating functions. financial resources and social networks of relatives, neighbours and acquaintances are the main determining factors for infrastructural participation. generalisations with regard to the assessment of public services and thus the personal and local quality of life by senior residents cannot be made here on the basis of the data generated and used here. but the population is not – as some of the previous public service debate would make us believe – merely passively affected by change, but buffers (e.g. by mobilising economic and social resources) and promotes it (e.g. through exit strategies). the heuristic dichotomy of suppliers and users or of adaptation and coping used here is, however, by far not as distinct in its role allocation as it was suggested in the fi rst part of this paper. the population is not restricted to its role as consumers, but, especially in rural regions, traditionally also provides public services, in particular in the fi eld of arts and culture or fi re service (steinführer et al. 2012: 108118, 143-149). in most cases, the policy-makers live on site and must also deal with the consequences of changed public services in their own lives. this leads to more research questions, for example on the role of civic engagement, which is not portrayed in depth here, and its importance for the present and future design of public services in shrinking ageing regions. further, the question of local and individual quality of life, for which there can be no absolute measurement, in comparison to other regions remains signifi cant for future research. the reduction and centralisation of public services have already become the drivers of a regional dimension of social inequality. the comparison of two local case studies in the eastern and the western harz led to a mostly reciprocal confi rmation, “preceding phenomena” in the east (hannemann et al. 2002: 259) were not ascertainable in the fi elds of public services portrayed here. on the one hand, the experience of loss was more dynamic and comprehensive in eastern harz (and not only restricted to public services), on the other hand, the outlying villages often still have a larger availability of various facilities. when the circumstances are similar, fi nancial latitudes and minimum standards contribute to different adaptation strategies of the responsible stakeholders and thus also to different infrastructure levels. further, local negotiations, normative presettings, the willingness of administrations to moderate and self-initiative contribute as well. from the population’s perspective, the continuous dealing with changed public services (coping) must be stressed as part of the model of living and residing in rural regions. however this is exacerbated in old age by decreasing mobility and shrinking social networks. a certain degree of self-denial is observed in small rural towns and even more so in the incorporated villages – people do not expect levels of infrastructure like those in big cities. the provision of public services, as one of the interviewed key persons said, is “the w herewithal that can be expected” (s18). this “wherewithal” will continue to be the object of future subjective attributions and negotiation processes on the local level as well as of the principal town and the incorporated villages. there will be no 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in: zeitschrift für soziologie 23,2: 129-144. kersting, norbert 2006: interkommunale kooperation oder wettbewerb? in: aus politik und zeitgeschichte 21-22: 32-38. küpper, patrick 2011: regionale reaktionen auf den demographischen wandel in dünn besiedelten, peripheren räumen. iör-schriften 53. berlin: rhombos. lskn (landesbetrieb für statistik und kommunikationstechnologie niedersachsen) 2012: [http://www1.nls.niedersachsen.de/statistik/, 23.8.2012]. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 367 mackensen, rainer 2000: vergangenheit und zukunft der demographie als wissenschaft. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 25,3-4: 399-429. mai, ralf; roloff, juliane; micheel, frank 2007: regionale alterung in deutschland unter besonderer berücksichtigung der binnenwanderungen. materialien zur bevölkerungswissenschaft 120. wiesbaden: bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. maretzke, steffen 2011: die demografi schen herausforderungen deutschlands konzentrieren sich auf die ostdeutschen regionen. in: maretzke, steffen (ed.): demografi sche spuren des ostdeutschen transformationsprozesses. 20 jahre deutsche einheit. bbsr-online-publikation 03/2011. bonn: bbsr: 12-27. muschwitz, christian; schuler, dieter; monheim, heiner 2002: forschungsexpertise infrastrukturanpassung bei bevölkerungsrückgängen. unter mitwirkung von martina wolff und holger pansch. abschlußbericht an das bundesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung. trier: trierer arbeitsgemeinschaft für umwelt-, regionalund strukturforschung (taurus-diskussionspapier; 7). neu, claudia 2009: daseinsvorsorge – eine einführung. in: neu, claudia (ed.): daseinsvorsorge. eine gesellschaftswissenschaftliche annäherung. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 9-19. neu, claudia 2011: daseinsvorsorge und bürgerpartizipation. in: geographische rundschau 2: 44-49. peter, andreas 2009: stadtquartiere auf zeit. lebensqualität im alter in schrumpfenden städten. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. phillipson, chris; scharf, thomas 2005: rural and urban perspectives on growing old: developing a new research agenda. in: european journal of ageing 2,1: 67-75 [doi: 10.1007/s10433-005-0024-7]. rauschenbach, thomas 2011: betreute kindheit. zur entgrenzung öffentlicher erziehung. in: wittmann, svendy; rauschenbach, thomas; leu, hans r. (eds.): kinder in deutschland. eine bilanz empirischer studien. weinheim/münchen: beltz juventa: 160-172. reichert-schick, anja 2010: auswirkungen des demographischen wandel in regionaler differenzierung: gemeinsamkeiten und gegensätze ländlichperipherer entleerungsregionen in deutschland – die beispiele vorpommern und westeifel. in: raumforschung und raumordnung 68,3: 153-168 [doi: 10.1007/s13147-010-0027-5]. scheiner, joachim 2006: auswirkungen des demographischen wandels auf den verkehr. in: gans, paul; schmitz-veltin, ansgar (eds.): demographische trends in deutschland – folgen für städte und regionen. räumliche konsequenzen des demographischen wandels teil 6. arbeitsund sitzungsberichte der arl 384. hannover: arl: 131-153. selle, klaus 2012: stadtentwicklung als gemeinschaftsaufgabe? integriert denken, kooperativ handeln – zum stand der kunst. vortrag auf der tagung „kleine städte in peripheren regionen. prozesse, teilhabe und handlungsbefähigung, integriertes stadtentwicklungsmanagement“, 9.–10. mai 2012 in duderstadt. spellerberg, annette 2007: wahrnehmungen und soziale auswirkungen des demographischen wandels in den saarländischen städten und gemeinden. in: horn, michael; köppen, bernhard (eds.): demographischer wandel in deutschland – die lokale und regionale perspektive. berlin: logos: 61-71. stala (statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt) 2011: 5. regionalisierte bevölkerungsprognose 2008 bis 2025 [http://www.statistik.sachsen-anhalt.de/bevoelkerung/prognose/index.html; 23.3.2013]. • annett steinführer, patrick küpper, alexandra tautz368 steinführer, annett 2004: wohnstandortentscheidungen und städtische transformation. vergleichende fallstudien in ostdeutschland und tschechien. stadtforschung aktuell 99. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. steinführer, annett; küpper, patrick; tautz, alexandra 2012: gestaltung der daseinsvorsorge in alternden und schrumpfenden gemeinden – anpassungsund bewältigungsstrategien im harz. landbauforschung sonderheft 367. braunschweig: johann heinrich von thünen-institut. sternberg, mechthild 2010: alter(n) in ländlichen räumen und demographischer wandel. eine analyse in vier deutschen gemeinden. studien zur demographie und bevölkerungsentwicklung 3. hamburg: dr. kovač. stiftung bauhaus dessau mit philipp oswalt und klaus overmeyer 2001: weniger ist mehr: experimenteller stadtumbau in ostdeutschland. studie. dessau: stiftung bauhaus dessau. thrun, thomas 2003: handlungsansätze für ländliche regionen mit starkem bevölkerungsrückgang. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 12: 709-717. tietz, hans-peter 2006: auswirkungen des demographischen wandels auf die netzinfrastruktur. in: gans, paul; schmitz-veltin, ansgar (eds.): demographische trends in deutschland – folgen für städte und regionen. räumliche konsequenzen des demographischen wandels teil 6. arbeitsund sitzungsberichte der arl 384. hannover: arl: 154-171. van deenen, bernd et al. 1974 (eds.): lebensverhältnisse in kleinbäuerlichen dörfern 1952 und 1972. schriftenreihe 230. bonn: forschungsgesellschaft für agrarpolitik und agrarsoziologie. weiske, christine; kabisch, sigrun; hannemann, christine (eds.) 2005: kommunikative steuerung des stadtumbaus. interessengegensätze, koalitionen und entscheidungsstrukturen in schrumpfenden städten. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. whetten, david a. 1987: organizational growth and decline processes. in: annual review of sociology 13: 335-358. wiechmann, thorsten 2008: planung und adaption. strategieentwicklung in regionen, organisationen und netzwerken. dortmund: rohn. strategies for safeguarding the quality of life in a shrinking ageing region • 369 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “anpassen und bewältigen: strategien zur sicherung von lebensqualität in einer schrumpfenden alterungsregion”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-07de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-07de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 15.10.2012 date of acceptance: 08.04.2013 dr. annett steinführer (). dr. patrick küpper. institut für ländliche räume, johann heinrich von thünen-institut. braunschweig, germany. e-mail: annett.steinfuehrer@ti.bund.de, patrick.kuepper@ti.bund.de url: http://www.ti.bund.de/no_cache/de/startseite/institute/lr/personal/ wissenschaftliches-personal/annett-steinfuehrer.html http://www.ti.bund.de/no_cache/de/startseite/institute/lr/personal/wissenschaftlichespersonal/patrick-kuepper.html alexandra tautz. regionale planungsgemeinschaft uckermark-barnim, regionale planungsstelle. eberswalde, germany. e-mail: regionalplanung@uckermark-barnim.de url: http://www.uckermark-barnim.de/kontakt/kontakt-ansprechpartner.html published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved circular job-related spatial mobility in germany: comparative analyses of two representative surveys on the forms, prevalence and relevance in the context of partnership and family development heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel abstract: over the past few decades, employees have had to come to terms with increased demands of the labour market requiring greater fl exibility and mobility. at the same time, increasingly versatile and complex forms of job-related spatial mobility are emerging. consequently, the correlation between job mobility patterns and family-related processes is attracting more and more attention in the fi eld of mobility and family research. however, to date there has rarely been a standard by which to systematically record and analyse job mobility. “job mobilities and family lives in europe” (jobmob), a comparative european survey, and the “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam) constitute two sets of representative data for germany, which provide largely comparable operationalisations for several forms of circular job mobility, thus allowing us to systematically perform comparative analyses. for the fi rst time ever in this fi eld of research, it is now possible to subject fi ndings to a direct reciprocal validation process and to check whether general rules and correlations can be derived from them. in this regard, the present article aims at achieving three essential objectives. first, we will introduce a common indicator for circular job mobility patterns found in the two surveys. on the basis of this common indicator, we will comparatively analyse the prevalence of different mobility forms and their composition according to key socio-demographic characteristics. in addition, we will use multivariate analyses to illustrate the relevance of job mobility for partnership and family development. results suggest mobility patterns to be an important individual context factor when explaining processes relevant to partnerships and family. in particular, women who exhibit some degree of job mobility are less often married and rarely have children. keywords: circular job-related spatial mobility · job commuting · business travel · institutionalisation of relationships · childlessness comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 1 (2011): 221-248 (date of release: 26.01.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-05en7 • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel222 1 introduction there is a long tradition of research on job mobility in the fi eld of sociology and in life course research. classic examples include the early biographical study of thomas and znaniecki (1918-1920) on the immigration of polish peasants to european countries and america. especially in the past, labour migration has been the subject matter of a variety of studies. on the one hand, empirical data shows that the prevalence of residential mobility (international and internal migration) is relatively low; at least it is lower than analysts of the current globalisation processes have assumed or than it could be expected on the basis of commonly expressed statements by members of this increasingly “mobile” society (sennett 1998; castells 2003; urry 2007). however, circular forms of job mobility – such as long-distance or weekend commuting or frequent business trips – have gained empirical relevance in recent decades (schneider et al. 2002a/b; schneider et al. 2008; schneider et al. 2009; haas/hamann 2008; ruppenthal/lück 2009). in thus far, the theory advanced by zelinsky as in the early 1970s has been confi rmed. his theory holds that in the late modern stages of mobility, more complex forms of mobility will emerge, and that, as a consequence, “circulatory movements” will gain signifi cance (zelinsky 1971: 245). recent research has more strongly focused on this development; with the help of recent surveys, the amount of available data has improved signifi cantly (lück/schneider 2010; schneider et al. 2002a; schneider/meil 2008; schneider/collet 2010; statistisches bundesamt 2005). in the context of quantitative life course research that focuses on partnership and family development processes, the two surveys “job mobilities and family lives in europe” (jobmob) (schneider/meil 2008) and the “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam) (huinink et al. 2011) are particularly noteworthy. job mobility, and even circular job mobility, may in fact exert a crucial infl uence on a couple’s or a family’s everyday life. overall, its scale, the amount of time required for it, the fi nancial expense involved (e.g. rüger/ruppenthal 2010) and the psychological and physical consequences that may result from circular job mobility (e.g. schneider et al. 2009b; limmer/rüger 2010) potentially constitute relevant parameters of the opportunity structure affecting partnerships and families (schneider 2005; limmer/schneider 2008; huinink/feldhaus 2008). even though research in this area is intensifying, the potential of existing studies has not been fully exhausted. due to the fact that the two mentioned studies on spatial job mobility have been guided by an infl uential study by schneider et al. (2002a/b), they can operationalise a wide range of different forms of mobility in the same systematic way. for the fi rst time in germany, it is now possible to conduct comparative analyses on the topic of mobility and family research on the basis of two representative surveys. by taking advantage of reciprocal validation, one’s ability to generalise the fi ndings in this fi eld of research will take a major step forward (e.g. raithel 2008). in this regard, the present article aims at achieving three essential objectives. first, we will present a common indicator for the circular job mobility patterns found circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 223 in the two surveys. on the basis of this common indicator, we will conduct a comparative analysis of the prevalence of a variety of forms of mobility and their composition according to key socio-demographic characteristics for both samplings. due to the fact that both studies focus on issues relating to partnerships and family structures, we will use multivariate analyses to illustrate the relevance of circular job mobility for the development of relationship as well as family structures. 2 data and operationalisations 2.1 data recording circular job-related spatial mobility in germany as concerns job mobility patterns, a key differentiation is made between residential and circular forms of mobility (e.g. limmer/schneider 2008). while mobility research in the past on the processes affecting partnership and family has concentrated on analysing residential forms of mobility, such as internal and international migration (e.g. wagner 1989; huinink/wagner 1989; kley 2009; kulu 2005), this article focuses exclusively on circular forms of mobility, such as business travel, weekend commuting, and other mobile forms of working. for the purpose of investigating the correlation between circular job mobility and related processes that are relevant to life course research, such as partnership and family developments and lifestyle choices, the study conducted by norbert f. schneider and his colleagues was ground-breaking for germany (schneider et al. 2002a/b). it also constituted an essential fi rst step for the european study entitled ”job mobilities and family lives in europe” (schneider/meil 2008). even though several other studies address the commuting behaviour of the working population,1 for instance, those studies did not gather any data on partnership and family dynamics. oftentimes, they are more likely to focus on socio-professional, health-related, geographic or infrastructure-related aspects. in addition, over recent years one research line has emerged that addresses the issue of “multilocality” of the people involved as well as their families (weichhart 2009). studies that concentrate on this topic are oftentimes geared towards one specifi c segment of circular mobility, such as weekend commuting or long-distance relationships (collmer 2005; schier 2009; reuschke 2010). 1 every four years, commuting behaviour is studied in the microcensus (mikrozensus). these studies concentrate on information such as distance between the residence and the workplace, the amount of time required for a commute and the most commonly used means of transportation (grau 2009). in the surveys of income and consumption (einkommensund verbrauchsstichprobe, evs), information is gathered relating to second residences (statistisches bundesamt 2005). the socio-economic panel (sozio-oekonomisches panel, soep) also includes a segment on commuting. the survey looks into how often an employee commutes between his/ her main place of residence and the workplace as well as the distance between the workplace and the place of residence (wagner 1989; stutzer/frey 2008). in their panel study, huinink and kley (kley 2009) look into not only migration behaviour in general, but also into commuting mobility in the cities of freiburg and magdeburg; in their commuter report, wiethölter et al. (2009) focus on the berlin-brandenburg region. • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel224 the “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam) is another representative study, which resembles the study by schneider and his colleagues with respect to its methods of recording circular mobility, and which focuses on the impact it has on developments relevant to partnerships and family. provided in the section below is a brief introduction to the two studies. job mobilities and family lives in europe (jobmob)2 in a representative survey conducted in germany in 2007, 1,495 individuals between the ages of 25 and 54 were randomly selected and interviewed about their experience with job mobility, with the help of a standard survey instrument via landline telephone (cati).3 in a second step, a random screening procedure was implemented to survey another 168 professionally mobile individuals (oversampling) in order to allow for differentiated analyses based on a wider empirical basis.4 thus, a total of 1,663 respondents were interviewed in the german random survey (for more details on this, see schneider et al. 2008; huynen et al. 2008, 2010).5 in terms of its content, the study focused on the following three main aspects (limmer/schneider 2008): (1) what are the prevalence and variety patterns of spatial job mobility in europe? (2) what are the causes and circumstances of their emergence? (3) what are the consequences of job mobility for one’s partnership, family, subjective well-being, career, social relationships and social networks? 2 the research project “job mobilities and family lives in europe” was fi nanced by the european commission from funds made available through the sixth framework programme, priority “citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society.” 3 in addition to the survey conducted in germany, the survey was also conducted in fi ve other european countries (spain, france, belgium, switzerland and poland). a total of 7,220 people were interviewed in this survey; of these 2,432 were mobile. 4 randomly selected individuals were surveyed in short interviews (screenings) about their mobility behaviour and if these persons met a set of predefi ned criteria, they were also included in the sample (oversampling). 5 the data were subjected to a design and an adjustment weighting. in a fi rst step, a design weight was calculated, which a) adjusts the imbalance of the probability of individuals from small and large households to be included in the sampling and b) adjusts the disproportionate number of professionally mobile persons interviewed in the representative part of the sampling. based on the results, the bias that was calculated in the selective non-response was corrected. five criteria were taken into account: age, gender, education, marital status and region (east/west). offi cial statistics from 2007 were used as a reference. number of cases prior to weighting: n (total) =1,663 and n (employed persons) =1,359. a detailed description can be found in huynen et al. (2008). circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 225 in 2010, a second interview phase was conducted in germany. as a result, additional information will be made available for future longitudinal analyses.6 panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam)7 the “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics“ (pairfam) project is a representative, interdisciplinary longitudinal study that aims at researching different life styles of people living in families or relationships in the federal republic of germany. this 14-year long-term project aims at interviewing a group of randomly selected individuals once a year. at the time of the fi rst survey in 2008/2009, these individuals were categorised into representative groups between the ages of 15 to 17, 25 to 27, and 35 to 37 (cohort sequential design; n=12,402).8 every year, the partner of the representative respondent (anchor person), if applicable, and/or from the second wave on their parents or step-parents and one children living in the household are also interviewed (multi-actor-design). the intended purpose of the pairfam project is to fi nd answers to the following questions: (1) what course do relationships take from the moment they are entered into until the couple potentially divorces or separates? what are the consequences for the respective partners and their children (if there are any)? (2) what are the determining factors when founding and expanding one’s family? (3) what are inter-generational relationships and the parent-child relationships like? (4) what infl uence do the surrounding social networks have on the dynamics of a family or relationship? in addition, the modulated survey design that was used offers a number of different options in analysing the recorded data (cf. huinink/feldhaus 2008; huinink et al. 2011). in the present paper, however, these will not be discussed further. despite the fact that the analyses of job mobility patterns are not the major point of focus in the set of tools used in the pairfam survey, it does record central modules of job mobility in order to grasp its opportunity structure that is relevant for people living in relationships and families. its approach to recording the data is similar to that of the fi rst schneider et al. (2002a,/b) study. as a panel study, pairfam thus makes it 6 the scientifi c use fi le of the dataset from the interview phase 2007 (1st wave) is available from gesis – leibniz-institut für sozialwissenschaften (http://www.gesis.org) with the study number za5065. you can fi nd more information about the european comparative research project at http://www.jobmob-and-famlives.eu. 7 the “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam) was funded by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft, dfg) as a long-term project. 8 two weighting variables were formed in the pairfam study: a design weighting that controls for the different cohort sizes (dweight) and an additional factor (psweight), which – on the basis of the microcensus – adjusts for the factors age, gender, marital status, and whether or not there are any children. for more information, refer to brüderl et al. (2010). • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel226 possible to acquire data and analyse job mobility, its prerequisites, and the potential consequences that result from it with the help of a prospective cohort study design. due to the comprehensive interview programme and the limited amount of time available for the interviews, detailed information on the subject of mobility is only available in every other study wave. pairfam will thus be able to provide a comprehensive set of longitudinal data that can be used in mobility and family research in the future.9 2.2 operationalisation of circular job-related spatial mobility as we mentioned before, whereas the jobmob survey had specifi cally been designed to acquire data about job-related mobility patterns, job mobility was neither the main point of focus of the theoretical design, nor the focus of the pairfam survey. yet, since the two surveys are largely based on the earlier study by schneider and colleagues (schneider et al. 2002a/b), many forms of circular job mobility can be operationalised in a more or less identical way. the conceptualisation of job mobility and the underlying categorisations are aimed at two things: fi rstly, capturing the existing types of job mobility as exhaustively as possible, and secondly, distinguishing between the various requirements that might arise for the opportunity structure of social relationships (cf. sect. 1). the following is an overview of the operationalisation categories that were used. in this context, the criteria used in the jobmob study serve as the starting point. the term mobile for job-related reasons refers to individuals who, a) commute long distances, i.e. for each journey to or from work require at least one hour and commute at least three times a week; or b) have had to spend at least 60 nights away from home for job reasons in the past year. this category also includes weekend commuters or such persons who, for job-related reasons, are in a long-distance relationship with at least one hour travel distance each way between their places of residence, or c) people who have relocated to a location at least 50 km away from their former residence at some point during the last three years. individuals who are mobile in more than just one of these ways are referred to as ”multi-mobile“ (limmer/schneider 2008). since this article focuses on circular mobility, we will only discuss points a) and b). in this context, we have defi ned two distinct concepts of job mobility, which are not mutually exclusive: job-related commuting and job-related overnight stays outside of a person’s place of residence. job-related commuting job-related commuting is the result of an individual’s workplace being outside of their own place of residence, requiring them to travel to their workplace. in this article, we differentiate between three types of job-related commuters: (1) short9 the datasets from the pairfam study can be requested from their subscriber service at http:// www.pairfam.de as a scientifi c use fi le. the website also provides additional information about the project. circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 227 distance commuters: their commute (one way) takes between 1 and 29 minutes; (2) medium-distance commuters: their commute (one way) takes between 30 and 59 minutes; and (3) long-distance commuters: the time required for their commute (one way) is at least 60 minutes. up until now, there has been no differentiation into shortand medium-distance commuters within the scope of the jobmob study. in that study, the persons concerned were not actually considered to be ”mobile” since their commute took comparatively little time.10 in this article, we have defi ned these different categories in order to be able to distinguish more clearly between the different commuters on the basis of their commute, and to be able to better contrast individuals with long commutes (long-distance commuters) with those who have shorter ways to work (shortand medium-distance commuters). in addition, the empirical question that to date still remains unanswered is whether there are any differences within the group of individuals with shorter commutes. in both studies it is possible to implement these categorisations of the different types of commuters. the amount of time needed for a one-way commute to work is recorded in minutes.11 job-related overnight travel we have created the category of the so-called “overnighters” to refer to individuals who frequently need to stay overnight outside of their place of residence for work reasons. any individual who has spent at least 60 nights away from their primary place of residence for work reasons over the past 12 months can be referred to as an overnighter. individuals who fall into this category may either stay at varying work locations (varimobiles) or in a second place of residence (shuttlers). in both studies, the study respondents were asked to provide this information. hence, two additional forms of circular mobility have been identifi ed: (4) varimobiles: individuals who have spent at least 60 nights away from home for job-related reasons over the last 12 months (e.g. in hotels, boarding houses or company housing) and (5) shuttlers: individuals who have a secondary residence close to their work location (especially weekend commuters). in order to operationalise shuttlers, we assume the existence of the following basic criteria: (a) the existence of housing (e.g. secondary place of residence) close 10 since there were no established guidelines pertaining to the criteria of commuting time for short-distance commuters and for medium-distance commuters, these were defi ned by the authors in this case. as approximation the timespan has been divided in half. 11 one criterion was also that the person commuted at least three days each week. in the jobmob study, the frequency of a person’s commute was only recorded for the group of long-distance commuters, whereas in the pairfam study, each and every respondent was queried consistently for all forms of commuting, whether they commuted on a daily basis or at least several times a week. on this issue, the pairfam study differentiates even further between whether the commute takes place from the fi rst or the second place of residence. we do not make this distinction in our analyses, however. • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel228 to the workplace that is considered the starting point of the commute to work,12 and (b) the number of times an individual spends the night at a place other than their primary place of residence/their base,13 and (c) for most of the time, the individual concerned must have worked at the same location, which constitutes another difference to varimobiles. for the latter, varying work locations are a defi ning characteristic. this can happen in the context of ”mobile professions,” such as professional drivers, pilots, or installation mechanics. the combined mobility indicator in the jobmob and pairfam studies the ultimate design of the mobility indicators follows a strict systematic hierarchy. scenarios involving multi-mobility, that is, in which an individual deals with at least two forms of mobility (cf. e.g. limmer/schneider 2008), are not explicitly indicated as such. instead, the individuals concerned were assigned to a category on the basis of the following list of priorities: 1. shuttlers, 2. varimobiles, 3. long-distance commuters, 4. medium-distance commuters, 5. short-distance commuters. whenever two forms of mobility applied, we selected the one that was expected to have a stronger impact on the opportunity structure of a family or relationship, that is, the one that placed higher demands on a person’s mobility. for example, shuttlers are expected to live up to higher mobility demands than, for example, short-distance commuters. in addition, there is another category of non-mobile individuals. included in this category are those individuals who are gainfully employed at their place of residence (e.g. farmers, teleworkers). the category of “other commuters” includes individuals whose commuting habits are unsystematic or irregular, so that they cannot be categorised on the basis of the criteria we provided. due to the specifi c questionnaire used in the project, this group was only explicitly identifi ed in the jobmob study. it will not be treated as a specifi c category in any of the multivariate statistical analyses so as to ensure that study results remain comparable.14 12 in jobmob, the criterion was that this was kept due to the large distance between the workplace and the main place of residence; in pairfam, the number of times a person commuted to the workplace was assessed as seen from the secondary place of residence, which needed to have taken place at least once a week or at irregular intervals. 13 in jobmob, at least 60 nights over the last 12 months; in pairfam, data stating that the person had spent the night in a secondary place of residence at least once or twice a week and did not live there with a partner or with his/her parents. 14 moreover, there are yet additional forms of mobility that can also be examined in the two studies. in addition to residential mobility, which is not the subject matter of this article, but which was also surveyed in the second wave of pairfam (the acquisition of a relocation biography in retrospect will be implemented in that study in a third wave), jobmob allows to analyse jobrelated long-distance relationships. the latter is not possible in pairfam. in that study, there can merely be a differentiation as to whether couples are living together or not, without providing any reasons as to why they may be living together or not. circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 229 3 results 3.1 descriptive analyses: the prevalence of circular job mobility and its correlation to socio-demographic characteristics in a fi rst step, we will present the prevalence of circular job mobility in germany on the basis of the two studies (cf. tab. 1 and 2). in a second step, the composition of the different types of mobility will be examined based on key socio-economic criteria (cf. tab. 3 and 4). we assume that despite the different populations and objectives used, the essential trends will become apparent in both studies, and that it will be possible to paint a complete picture of the phenomenon of circular job mobility in germany. guided by these assumptions, we will focus on a comparison between the two studies. for the pairfam study, only the age groups of 25 to 27-year-olds and 35 to 37-year-olds were selected, because for the 15 to 17-year-olds, job mobility is not (yet) relevant to the same degree. in the jobmob study, all respondents (between the ages of 25 and 54) were taken into account. the analyses were each calculated using the relevant adjustment weightings.15 illustrated in table 1 is the distribution of different types of mobility according to the two studies. in this regard, we differentiate between two groups: in order to provide a complete overview of the mobility patterns represented in the population sample of each study, we list all the information on the sampling as a whole (based on the ”overall population“ in each age group). in order to demonstrate the prevalence of the different types of mobility among the various kinds of gainfully employed persons, we provide numbers for each of these different groups individually as well. despite differences between the two studies as concerns the age composition (pairfam: from the ages of 25 to 27 and 35 to 37; jobmob: between the ages of 25 to 54) there are, in part, strong correlations between the distribution patterns. first of all, the percentage of overall job mobility – defi ned here as short-distance, medium-distance and long-distance commuting, varimobility, and weekend commuting (shuttlers) – is higher in the jobmob study (75 %) than the 65 % that can be found in the pairfam study. as a result of the specifi c age groups chosen for the pairfam study (ages 25 to 27 and 35 to 37), there are signifi cantly more individuals who still had not fi nished their education or who were on parental leave, which is why the percentage of not gainfully employed persons is so much higher in that study. in contrast, when looking at the group of gainfully employed persons, the difference in overall mobility is but a minor one. the same applies if one takes a closer look at only those types of mobility for which increased mobility demands can be assumed, such as long-distance commuters, varimobiles, and shuttlers: of all the respondents, they make up 11.7 % (jobmob) and 11.9 % (pairfam), respectively; among gainfully employed persons, those categories make up 14.0 % and 15 in jobmob, the weight ”w_nation“ was used, in pairfam, unless defi ned otherwise, the calculation was based on a combination of ”dweight“ and ”psweight“ (cf. sect. 2.1). • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel230 16.4 %, respectively. these fi ndings clearly show the relevance of circular mobility arrangements, which can thus certainly not be considered to be only a marginal phenomenon in society. however, differences with regard to the percentage of short-distance commuters become apparent. in the jobmob study, short-distance commuters total 46.9 % of all the respondents (as compared to 36.8 % in pairfam). in contrast, though, if tab. 1: circular job mobility data from the jobmob and pairfam studies jobmob1 pairfam all respondents gainfully employed persons2 all respondents gainfully employed persons n % n % n % n % short-distance commuters 701 46.9 701 57.3 2611 36.8 2611 51.0 medium-distance commuters 241 16.1 241 19.7 1155 16.3 1155 22.5 long-distance commuters 97 6.5 97 8.0 364 5.1 364 7.1 varimobiles 68 4.5 65 5.3 448 6.3 448 8.7 shuttlers 11 0.7 9 0.7 33 0.5 33 0.6 non-mobiles3 59 3.9 59 4.8 512 7.2 512 10.0 other commuters4 51 3.4 51 4.2 not gainfully employed5 267 17.9 1964 27.7 total 1,495 100 1,223 100 7,087 100 5,123 100 1 the number of cases for the forms of mobility “varimobile” and “shuttlers” may deviate slightly within the group of all respondents and the working population, because they were queried in retrospect with regard to spending the night away from home for job-related reasons for the last 12 months. 2 gainfully employed persons are such persons who are either employed full-time, are self-employed, employed part-time or are occasionally employed, those who are in training or are taking part in an internship programme, or who perform any other activity in return for compensation. 3 included in the category of “non-mobile” persons are also those who make their living from home (e.g. farmers, teleworkers). 4 included in the category “other commuters” are also those persons with commuting behaviour described as extremely unsystematic or irregular, so that they cannot be grouped based on the criteria used. because of the relevant questionnaire, this group can only be identifi ed in the jobmob study. 5 included in the group of “not gainfully employed” are those persons currently on parental leave, unemployed, homemakers or those in early retirement. source: job mobilities and family lives 2007; pairfam (wave 1, 2008/2009); own calculations; weighted data circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 231 we concentrate on the group of gainfully employed persons, these differences are already signifi cantly lower. any remaining differences can probably be attributed to the fact that individuals exhibiting typical criteria of short-distance commuters, such as part-time employees and women, and also, though less often, persons who live in major cities (cf. tab. 3 and 4), were represented in higher numbers in the jobmob study than they were in pairfam. in both studies, the group of short-distance commuters is the largest one, followed by medium-distance commuters (16.1 % in jobmob and 16.3 % in pairfam as related to the total number of respondents). the numbers of long-distance commuters in both studies were almost the same, although the group of varimobiles was slightly larger in the pairfam study. this is particularly true when referring only to the group of gainfully employed persons. however, overall, the picture was fairly homogenous as concerns the prevalence of individual types of circular mobility. to allow for a direct comparison, the population sample in the jobmob study was adjusted to correspond to the age groups (ages 25-27 and 35-37) used in the pairfam study (cf. tab. 2). as a result of the differences in the study design, the numbers of respondents in both studies differ signifi cantly. for this specifi c age group, there are signifi cantly fewer cases available for analysis in the jobmob study. except for the age group of 25 to 27-year-olds in the jobmob study, the results from both studies are fairly similar. moreover, the differences between the age groups in the pairfam study are minor. this result is surprising at fi rst, because different mobility patterns were in fact expected for each age group. for example, we know from earlier studies that mobility decreases with age, especially when taking into tab. 2: circular mobility in jobmob and in pairfam among gainfully employed persons, by age groups jobmob pairfam1 age 25-27 age 35-37 age 25-27 age 35-37 n % n % n % n % short-distance commuters 41 55.1 74 56.1 1,376 52.9 1,584 49.6 medium-distance commuters 11 15.1 22 22.0 584 22.5 722 22.6 long-distance commuters 12 16.3 8 5.8 182 7.0 229 7.2 varimobiles 7 9.5 7 5.0 223 8.6 284 8.9 shuttlers 0 0 2 1.7 20 0.8 17 0.5 1 since the groups are listed separately here, instead of the design weighting, only selection weighting (psweight) is used. this is why the (weighted) number of cases differs from what is shown in table 1. source: job mobilities and family lives 2007; pairfam (wave 1, 2008/2009); own calculations; weighted data • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel232 account residential types of mobility (e.g. schneider et al. 2008; wagner 1989). consequently, the minor differences between the age groups in the pairfam study do indicate fewer age differences in circular mobility patterns. in the following, we will conduct a comparative analysis of the correlation between mobility patterns and the different socio-demographic, regional, and partnershipas well as family-related criteria in both studies with the help of common consolidated indicators (cf. tab. 3 and 4).16 considering the low number of shuttlers, these have been included in the group of varimobiles. both of these groups combined constitute the category of overnighters (cf. sect. 2.2).17 from previous studies, which were mostly based on the data found in the jobmob study, we know that the various socio-demographic groups do, in part, exhibit signifi cant differences in mobility behaviour. for example, gainfully employed women are signifi cantly less likely to travel as long-distance commuters or overnighters than is the case with men, presumably because more women dedicate themselves to housework and parenting than men do (e.g. schneider et al 2002a/b; meil 2010a/b). furthermore, there are also indications that some forms of job mobility do correlate with an individual’s education, the form of employment (part-time or full-time), and the individual’s occupational prestige (e.g. schneider et al. 2008; ruppenthal/lück 2009; lück/ruppenthal 2010). by using comparative indicators, we will analyse in the following whether these correlations can be reproduced in a similar fashion in the pairfam study. moreover, we will analyse information relating to the geographic context. due to differences relating to the labour market and infrastructure, we should be able to fi nd differences in the distribution structures between the different groups in eastern and western germany (higher mobility demands apply in eastern germany) as well as between groups in major cities and in rural areas/small towns. we will fi nally examine whether mobility arrangements differ, depending on partnershipand familyrelated criteria. for example, the assumption could be made that persons who need to deal with higher mobility demands are more limited in their ability to fi nd a partner (rüger/ruppenthal 2010). at the same time, however, the fact that a person is in a relationship is often the reason for a specifi c mobility arrangement, for example, as a way to reconcile two professional careers (rüger/becker 2011). therefore, the question that arises is whether there are differences between the different types of mobility in terms of a person’s relationship status. moreover, one could also argue that persons who give in to higher mobility demands might be less strongly tied to relationship or family (sennett 1998), and therefore less likely to be in a committed relationship, i.e. be married. relationships that are subjected to higher mobility demands may be more selective, meaning that individuals who have to deal with higher mobility demands show a tendency to have shorter relationships. conse16 the category of „other commuters“ is not taken into account because there is no way to compare the two studies in this analysis (cf. sect. 2.2). 17 because the group of „overnighters“ includes signifi cantly more varimobile persons than shuttlers, the relevant fi ndings are more strongly considered for the fi rst group. circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 233 quently, they may not yet have contemplated the possibility of entering into a more institutionalised relationship (such as marriage). by the same token, a person may fi rst want to meet certain basic conditions before deepening their relationship with another, such as having more time to spend together for planning their future. self-imposed prerequisites of this kind, however, might be thwarted because of the couple’s current mobility patterns. similar arguments might apply to family development. as far as that is concerned, the jobmob data shows a correlation between an individual’s mobility patterns and childlessness (e.g. meil 2010a/b; rüger/becker 2011). we will fi rst conduct a bivariate analysis to fi nd an answer to the question of whether these and other tendencies could also be confi rmed in the pairfam study results. in the next section, these assumptions will be examined based on criteria relevant to partnerships and family by applying multivariate analyses. an assessment based on the age criteria is not directly comparable in the two studies. however, in both studies the relationship between the different mobility arrangements and the age groups (v=0.084 and v=0.049) is minimal. based on the jobmob study, a trend can be identifi ed (cf. tab. 3), whereby job-related commuting with longer commute times (long-distance commuting) is disproportionately high both among younger individuals (ages 25-34) and in the group of older respondents (ages 45-54). however, according to the jobmob study, middle-aged respondents (ages 35-44) are overrepresented in the category of overnighters (varimobiles and shuttlers). as concerns the correlation between mobility and gender, both studies offer very similar results. the longer the commuting time, the higher the proportion of men in the respective group of people, or rather the more likely it is for the proportion of women to decrease. these results match the fi ndings shown in the microcensus of 2004 (statistisches bundesamt 2005). in both studies, long-distance commuters and overnighters are clearly more often men. thus, the general fi nding according to which job mobility is usually a ”male phenomenon“ (e.g. schneider et al. 2008) could be confi rmed. these results were somewhat more pronounced in the jobmob study than the pairfam study. one explanation for the specifi c gender differences can be found in the different lifestyles and working conditions of men and women. despite the growing signifi cance of women in the labour market, women in germany are still more often the partner responsible for housework and childcare (e.g. peuckert 2008). part-time positions, which often make it easier to balance family life and career, and which require job mobility far less often than full-time positions do (e.g. rüger/becker 2011), are consequently more often held by women than by men. furthermore, a disproportionately higher number of men work in ”mobile professions”. regarding formal educational status, both studies show some similar correlations. in both studies, individuals with an elementary school or secondary school education are represented slightly more often among the group of short-distance commuters. in addition, individuals with higher levels of education can mainly be found among those with a medium-distance commute. particularly individuals with a university degree are more likely to be found in those groups with higher mobility demands compared to the group of short-distance commuters. all in all, due to • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel234 tab. 3: forms of circular mobility in the jobmob study, composition according to key socio-demographic characteristics (in %) total nonmobiles shortdistance commuters mediumdistance comm. longdistance commuters overnighters v (p value)1 age 25-34 24.1 14.3 23.6 25.3 30.5 23.3 35-44 40.6 37.5 41.8 37.8 30.5 53.4 45-54 35.3 48.2 34.5 36.9 38.9 23.3 0.084 (0.035) gender male 55.8 57.6 50.9 57.7 63.9 83.8 female 44.2 42.4 49.1 42.3 36.1 16.2 0.169 (<0.001) education elementary school 22.1 20.7 23.8 14.7 20.9 18.9 secondary school 47.0 44.8 48.7 43.5 51.6 37.8 upper secondary school 13.5 12.1 12.9 16.8 9.9 14.9 university 18.3 22.4 14.5 25.0 17.6 28.4 0.092 (0.005) employment status full-time 78.7 79.2 75.5 79.2 87.4 95.7 part-time 21.3 20.8 24.5 20.8 12.6 4.3 0.134 (<0.001) occupational prestige isei (16-40) 43.6 28.1 49.0 32.2 39.8 46.2 isei (41-65) 38.5 45.6 33.3 50.6 46.2 32.3 isei (66-90) 17.9 26.3 17.6 17.2 14.0 21.5 0.125 (<0.001) geographic factors west 85.8 89.7 89.0 77.9 83.0 82.2 east 14.2 10.3 11.0 22.1 17.0 17.8 0.131 (0.001) population 100,000 or more 34.5 28.1 29.4 51.3 30.7 37.5 population 20,-100,000 26.4 42.1 29.0 18.9 20.4 19.4 population up to 20,000 39.2 29.8 41.5 29.7 48.8 43.1 0.148 (<0.001) relationshipand family-related factors partner 79.6 74.6 79.7 79.7 81.4 80.6 0.032 (0.883) married 54.1 64.4 55.2 51.0 52.1 48.6 0.064 (0.307) childless 32.8 17.2 31.8 35.7 38.1 38.9 0.093 (0.040) 1 calculation based on chi-square and cramer’s v tests. source: job mobilities and family lives 2007; own calculations; weighted data; weighted n≥1,122 circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 235 tab. 4: forms of circular mobility in the pairfam study, composition according to key socio-demographic characteristics (in %) source: pairfam (wave 1, 2008/2009); own calculations; weighted data; weighted n=5,123, (the analyses refer to both age groups, which is why the combined weight dxpsweight was used here, see brüderl et al. 2010). total nonmobiles shortdistance commuters mediumdistance comm. longdistance commuters overnighters v (p value) age 25-27 42.0 34.6 43.6 41.8 41.5 41.9 35-37 58.0 65.4 56.4 58.2 58.5 58.1 0.053 (0.006) gender male 55.6 55.8 50.7 56.6 60.2 76.3 female 44.4 44.2 49.3 43.4 39.8 23.7 0.148 (<0.001) education elementary school 18.4 19,8 20,7 14,5 17,9 14,5 secondary school 36,5 32,6 38,9 33,7 33,8 36,7 upper secondary degree 19,6 22,0 18,3 21,6 19,6 19,1 university 25,4 25,5 22,1 30,2 28,8 29,8 0.065 (<0.001) employment status full-time 79.6 74.1 76.4 80.5 86.5 95.6 part-time 20.3 25.9 23.6 19.5 13.2 4.4 0.169 (<0.001) occupational prestige isei (16-40) 46.8 49.5 49.3 41.8 37.7 48.7 isei (41-65) 36.7 40.7 36.6 36.5 41.6 29.7 isei (66-90) 16.6 9.8 14.1 21.7 20.8 21.5 0.126 (<0.001) geographic factors west 83.2 85.5 85.2 82.3 78.8 75.5 east 16.8 14.5 14.8 17.7 21.2 24.5 0.084 (<0.001) population 100,000 or more 67.1 70.3 65.2 72.0 70.5 59.1 population 20,-100,000 20.9 18.9 22.3 17.4 16.0 27.3 population up to 20,000 12.0 10.7 12.5 10.6 13.5 13.6 0.062 (<0.001) relationshipand family-related factors partner 76.2 73.4 77.6 74.0 75.6 76.9 0.041 (0.077) married 53.8 58.1 54.6 53.2 50.2 48.8 0.047 (0.073) childless 57.4 51.4 55.4 62.5 61.2 60.1 0.073 (<0.001) • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel236 the modestly strong correlations among the two samplings, it seems that groups organised by educational background obviously exhibit fewer differences in terms of their circular mobility behaviour than with regard to their residential mobility patterns (see e.g. schneider/meil 2008; schneider/collet 2010). as concerns the employment status (part-time or full-time), both studies show very similar fi ndings. the higher the mobility demands, the lower the proportion of persons working in part-time employment. whereas especially among the group of short-distance commuters, of which close to a quarter are part-time employees, this number is still slightly disproportionate, the percentage decreases all the way down to 4 % in the group of overnighters. there are also some very clear patterns concerning occupational prestige. since there is a positive correlation between commuting distances and level of income (statistisches bundesamt 2005), the number of short-distance commuters was expected to be higher among respondents with a very low professional status as compared to the medium-distance and long-distance commuters. however, it is remarkable that both studies show a slight overrepresentation of individuals with the lowest but also with a higher professional standing in the group of overnighters. included here are occupations such as lorry drivers and assembly workers, who, despite their lower occupational status, must accept the fact that they are overnighters by job. this observation points to a certain amount of heterogeneity within this form of mobility; this assumption had already been made by other studies (e.g. schneider et al. 2009b; nolle 2005). when looking at regional differences between eastern and western germany, it seems obvious that the hypothesis expressed above can be confi rmed by both studies: while mobility requirements are less pronounced in the west of germany, in the east long-distance commuters and overnighters are more common. this might result from different infrastructural systems as well as settlement patterns. in some cases, however, an increased ”pressure to be mobile“ on the labour market is the reason. this was further confi rmed by previous fi ndings, according to which (in eastern germany especially), there are very few people who rejected the mobility requirement (schneider et al. 2008). with regard to the correlation between certain mobility types and the number of inhabitants of a town or city, there are signifi cant differences in marginal distribution: in the pairfam study, the largest group (67 %) lives in major cities with a population of 100,000 and more (in contrast to only 35 % in the jobmob study). in the jobmob study, the largest group of respondents lives in locations with population sizes of up to 20,000; this group in turn only made up 12 % in the pairfam study. despite these differences in marginal totals which are caused by different populations, there are in part similar tendencies within the different regions by population size. in major cities, those people with shorter commuting times are underrepresented because of the characteristic inner-city traffi c conditions, whereas the percentage of those with medium-long commuting times is higher as compared to the overall distribution. even though in both studies respondents from smaller cities (20,000-100,000 people) were represented less often in the group of long-distance commuters, the jobmob study showed that a comparatively high share of respondents from small towns or rural areas are longdistance commuters. the majority of these individuals are most likely persons ages circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 237 40 and up who live ”in the country“ with their children and are willing to accept long commutes. however, the number of individuals who spend the night away from home varies between the studies; in the pairfam study, the majority of these live in medium-sized cities. in the jobmob study, results were exactly the opposite. one explanation for these fi ndings could be that different, age-specifi c professions are represented in the group of overnighters, which rather correlate with geographic/ regional factors. when looking at partnershipand family-related characteristics, it seems that the share of individuals in relationships is about the same in both studies. people’s partnership status seems to have only a minor infl uence on the type of mobility they represent. as far as an individual’s marital status is concerned, there were only minor differences between mobility types in the two studies, as well; the only conclusion that can be derived, if any, is that in comparison to the overall population, persons with higher mobility demands, such as long-distance commuters and overnighters, are less likely to be married. differences in childlessness were much more pronounced: there was a positive correlation between long commutes/high mobility requirements and childlessness. as can be expected, there are large differences between the studies in the number of people that were childless. in this regard, the pairfam study exhibits signifi cantly higher numbers of childlessness due to its focus on younger age groups. the potential relevance of circular job mobility for partnershipand family-related aspects will be examined more closely in the following section by conducting multivariate analyses. 3.2 multivariate analyses: the ability to explain aspects of partnership and family development based on circular job-related spatial mobility in addition to the descriptive analyses, which are merely able to supply an initial point of reference, comparative multivariate analyses will be conducted. from these analyses we expect to obtain differentiated results on a number of different issues. the objective is to examine whether different mobility arrangements have an effect on an individual’s relationship status, the institutionalisation of a relationship, and family development in general. in particular, we will examine the correlation between different types of mobility and the likelihood of being in a committed relationship, being married, and having at least one child in the current relationship. the focus here is not to fi nd any extensive explanation for an individual’s relationship or family status. rather, we want to fi nd out by means of comparative analyses whether an individual’s mobility patterns are correlated with the stated variables. can the fi ndings of the descriptive analyses be upheld if we control for key covariates that are linked to mobility patterns? it is absolutely possible, for instance, that the descriptive results shown may in fact be the result of correlations with other criteria rather than with the mobility status. thus, in order to make our models more specifi c, it is crucial to include such covariates that are linked to circular mobility behaviour. that way, we will be able to gauge the effects of the various forms • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel238 of mobility as precisely as possible. another objective is to fi nd a simple way to structure the models so that they can be properly compared. accordingly, we must incorporate those socio-demographic as well as spatial-structural factors that have already been shown as relevant in our descriptive analyses (cf. sect. 3.1). moreover, we will model the interaction between mobility patterns and gender, in order to be able to illustrate any gender-related differences. studies conducted in the past have repeatedly shown that mobility may involve different conditions and consequences for men and women, respectively (e.g. schneider et al. 2002a/b; meil 2010a/b; feldhaus/schlegel 2011; rüger/becker 2011). this aspect will be examined with regard to the target variables under study in this paper. the basic sample population for all three issues under review constitute gainfully employed persons. when analysing the relationship status of participants, all respondents will be included in the survey (n=1,297 in the jobmob study; n=5,686 in the pairfam study). as far as the jobmob study is concerned, the category of ”other commuters“ will be excluded from the analyses, so that it can be compared to the pairfam study (cf. sect. 2.2). for reasons of homogeneity, we will only take into account individuals who are currently cohabiting with their partner (n=971 or 841 for jobmob; n=4,390 for pairfam) when analysing the respondents’ family development (childless or not) and the degree to which partnerships are institutionalised (marital status). since their number is small, we will include the shuttlers in the overnighters group together with varimobile individuals (cf. sect. 2.2). target variables are dichotomous details about whether the participant in question is in a relationship, whether the respondent is married, or whether the individual has children with their current partner (codes: no=0/1=yes).18 we will calculate binarylogistic regression models. the reference category relating to the other mobility forms is made up of the group of short-distance commuters in each case. the odds ratios (eb) are shown in the tables.19 relationship status with regard to the relationship status, the multivariate analyses do initially confi rm the descriptive fi ndings. neither in the jobmob nor in the pairfam study has it become apparent that different types of mobility have any signifi cant effect on the likelihood of having a partner (cf. tab. 5 and 6, model 1). in contrast, however, when including the interaction term into the analyses (cf. tab. 5 and 6, model 2), some signifi cant effects become apparent, albeit weak ones. when comparing women 18 for pairfam, the attribution of whether children exist is provided as an exact variable, in jobmob, any children born after the current relationship began are attributed to this relationship. 19 as to the interpretation: a value above 1 shows a positive infl uence of the variables incorporated, a value below 1 indicates a negative infl uence (for categorical characteristics each as compared to the selected reference category). a value of 1.5 means, for example, that if an independent variable in the measuring unit the comparison is based on increases by one unit, the relative odds that the focused events might in fact occur is increased by a multiplier of 1.5 (backhaus et al. 2003; jaccard 2001). circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 239 who are medium-distance commuters, long-distance commuters or varimobiles to women who are short-distance commuters, the odds of them living in a committed relationship are lower as compared to the same comparison amongst men; this can be understood to mean that women with higher mobility arrangements are less likely to live with a partner as compared to women with lower mobility demands, or men. furthermore, in the jobmob study, the observation has been made that men who commute long distances are more likely to live with a partner than men who commute short distances. considering the coeffi cient for the gender effect (while at the same time accounting for the interaction term based on gender times mobility), it expresses the ratio between women and men (provided that the mobility variable equals zero, i.e. in this case both are short-distance commuters). the pairfam study illustrates a positive correlation between women commuting short distances and the likelihood of them having a partner, whereas this correlation is not as pronounced for male short-distance commuters (tab. 6, models 2 and 3). marital status when looking at an individual’s marital status and its correlation to their mobility behaviour, the two studies show similar results. model 4 (tab. 5 and 6) illustrates a positive correlation between non-mobile individuals and their marital status, as compared to short-distance commuters. in addition, in both studies there is a signifi cant negative correlation between overnighters and married persons; moreover, the correlations between any other types of mobility and the marital status, as compared to the reference category of short-distance commuting, are negative. if the interaction effect is included (cf. tab. 5 and 6, model 5), what is apparent, especially with regard to the pairfam data, is the gender-specifi c correlation that was assumed. whereas the mobility patterns among men do not have an impact on the likelihood of whether or not they are married, women with more demanding mobility arrangements are married less frequently, both when comparing them to men in the same constellation and when comparing them to women who commute short distances. if we check further for any additional factors of relevance, at least the effect for women within the group of non-mobile persons as well as in the group of overnighters remains unchanged (cf. tab. 6, model 6). in the jobmob study, the tendencies and the degree to which these tendencies manifest themselves are almost the same as those above. due to the lower number of cases, however, they are not statistically signifi cant. childlessness in current relationships for the criterion of being childless (in the current relationship), the multivariate analyses confi rm the descriptive results, even when checking for additional key factors of infl uence. in both studies, we fi nd that effects are greater for more extensive mobility arrangements than for the reference group of short-distance commuters. in contrast, non-mobile individuals are signifi cantly less likely to be without children, as could be expected. when also accounting for the interaction term (cf. tab. 5 and • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel240 ta b . 5 : c ir cu la r jo b m o b ili ty a nd t he c o rr el at io n to a n in d iv id ua l’s r el at io n sh ip s ta tu s, m ar it al s ta tu s (w he n liv in g w it h a p ar tn er ), an d c hi ld le ss n es s (w he n liv in g w it h a p ar tn er ) a m o ng g ai n fu lly e m p lo ye d p er so n s (o d d s ra tio s) – jo b m o b d at a s o ur ce : j o b m o b ili tie s an d f am ily l iv es 2 00 7; u nw ei gh te d d at a; o w n ca lc ul at io ns ; b in ar y lo gi st ic re gr es si o ns ; + = p < 0. 10 ; * = p < 0. 05 ; ** = p < 0. 01 ; ** *= p < 0. 00 1; ( a) c o -e ffi ci en t ca nn o t b e d et er m in ed b ec au se t he t ar ge t va lu e is a c o ns ta nt ( i.e . a ll no nm o b ile w o m en a re m ar ri ed o r ar e m o th er s) r el at io ns hi p (0 /1 ) m ar ri ed (0 /1 ) c hi ld le ss (0 /1 ) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 m o d el 8 m o d el 9 n o nm o b ile (r ef .: s ho rt di st an ce c om m ut er s) .7 81 .5 22 + .5 34 2. 36 8* .8 04 .6 52 .2 78 ** .5 13 .5 88 m ed iu m -d is ta nc e co m m . ( r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s) .9 53 1. 03 0 .9 95 .8 99 1. 03 8 1. 34 1 1. 21 1 .8 81 .7 46 lo ng -d is ta nc e co m m . ( r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s ) 1. 19 7 1. 90 1+ 1. 94 1+ .7 24 1. 01 5 1. 03 5 1. 74 5* .9 77 1. 00 8 o ve rn ig ht er s (r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s) 1. 01 7 1. 42 2 1. 30 1 .5 57 * .6 83 .9 07 1. 59 0+ .9 80 .7 83 n on -m ob ile *w om en 2. 62 6 2. 17 0 (a ) (a ) .1 93 (a ) m ed iu m -d is ta nc e co m m .* w om en .8 79 .9 50 .7 76 .7 27 1. 74 7 1. 67 2 lo ng -d is ta nc e co m m .* w om en .4 46 + .4 78 .5 11 .6 51 3. 14 5* 3. 34 9+ o ve rn ig ht er *w om en .3 79 + .5 35 .4 63 .5 87 4. 44 0* 3. 98 0+ w o m en (r ef .: m en ) .9 12 1. 03 2 .8 96 .9 68 1. 07 6 .7 87 1. 07 1 .7 66 1. 50 2 a ge 3 544 (r ef .: 2 534 ) 1. 62 6* * 5. 51 1* ** .0 85 ** * a ge 4 554 (r ef .: 2 534 ) 1. 63 6* * 9. 25 7* ** .0 49 ** * c o m p le te d s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l ( r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) .6 70 .8 07 1. 76 5 u p p er s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l ( r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) .9 05 .5 51 + 3. 33 6* * u ni ve rs ity d eg re e (r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) 1. 03 4 .6 84 3. 79 9* * is e i ( 41 -6 5) (r ef .: is ei 1 640 ) 1. 01 1 1. 12 2 .7 92 is e i ( 66 -9 0) (r ef .: is ei 1 640 ) 1. 06 8 .9 95 .7 99 w es t (r ef .: e as t) 1. 10 7 1. 16 1 5. 22 3* ** fu lltim e (r ef .: p ar ttim e) 2. 18 5* ** 2. 77 5* ** .1 46 ** * n ag el ke rk e r 2 0. 00 3 0. 01 4 0. 05 7 0. 02 0 0. 04 7 0. 28 7 0. 03 1 0. 05 5 0. 48 0 circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 241 ta b . 6 : c ir cu la r jo b m o b ili ty a nd t he c o rr el at io n to r el at io n sh ip s ta tu s, m ar it al s ta tu s (w he n liv in g w it h a p ar tn er ) a nd ch ild le ss n es s (w he n liv in g w it h a p ar tn er ) a m o ng g ai n fu lly e m p lo ye d p er so n s (o d d s ra tio s) – p ai rf am d at a (a g e g ro up s 25 -2 7; 3 537 ) r el at io ns hi p (0 /1 ) m ar ri ed (0 /1 ) c hi ld le ss (0 /1 ) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 m o d el 8 m o d el 9 n o nm o b ile (r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s) .8 99 .8 53 .7 96 1. 30 1* 1. 07 0 .8 74 .6 93 ** .8 59 1. 07 8 m ed iu m -d is ta nc e co m m . ( r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s) .8 33 * .9 73 .9 14 .9 83 1. 21 7+ 1. 18 4 1. 25 7* * .8 93 .9 14 lo ng -d is ta nc e co m m . ( r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta nc e co m m ut er s) .9 18 1. 09 4 1. 00 4 .8 09 + 1. 12 0 1. 06 4 1. 34 0* .8 11 .8 19 o ve rn ig ht er s (r ef .: s ho rt -d is ta n ce c om m ut er s) .9 70 1. 05 2 1. 02 8 .7 96 * 1. 07 2 1. 14 6 1. 44 5* * .9 66 .9 77 n on -m ob ile *w om en 1. 14 2 1. 14 7 1. 50 3+ 1. 74 3* .6 20 * .4 11 ** m ed iu m -d is ta nc e co m m .* w om en .7 04 * .7 73 .6 49 ** .8 28 2. 00 4* ** 1. 91 8* * lo ng -d is ta nc e co m m .* w om en .6 46 + .7 56 .4 66 ** .6 91 3. 24 9* ** 2. 62 0* * o ve rn ig ht er *w om en .7 85 .8 88 .3 60 ** * .4 21 ** 3. 72 6* ** 2. 70 1* * w o m en (r ef .: m en ) 1. 33 3* ** 1. 49 6* ** 1. 37 1* * .9 83 1. 17 5* .9 56 .7 31 ** * 1. 21 3+ a ge 3 537 (r ef .: a ge 2 527 ) 2. 08 2* ** 7. 24 5* ** .0 91 ** * c o m p le te d s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l ( r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) 1. 18 5+ .6 80 ** * 1. 60 3* ** u pp er s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l ( r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) 1. 00 4 .5 64 ** * 2. 83 0* ** u ni ve rs ity d eg re e (r ef .: e le m en ta ry ) 1. 32 4* .6 12 ** * 2. 63 7* ** is e i ( 41 -6 5) (r ef .: is ei 1 640 ) 1. 07 9 .9 16 1. 46 4* ** is e i ( 66 -9 0) (r ef .: is ei 1 640 ) 1. 28 6* .9 25 1. 22 6 w es t ( r ef .: e as t) 1. 16 1+ 1. 85 1* ** 1. 97 8* ** fu lltim e (r ef .: p ar ttim e) .8 98 .4 76 ** * 6. 55 1* ** n ag el ke rk e r 2 0. 00 7 0. 00 9 0. 05 5 0. 00 5 0. 01 5 0. 30 1 0. 01 2 0. 03 2 0. 43 9 s o ur ce : p ai rf am ( w av e 1, 2 00 8/ 20 09 ); u nw ei gh te d d at a; o w n ca lc ul at io ns ; b in ar y lo gi st ic r eg re ss io ns ; + = p < 0. 10 ; *= p < 0. 05 ; ** = p < 0. 01 ; ** *= p < 0. 00 1 • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel242 6, model 8), it can be stated that especially women exhibit the following correlation: women (as compared to men) with more demanding forms of mobility are represented much more often among the group of persons who are childless. these effects of being childless remain unchanged even if reviewed based on additional covariates that also show extremely signifi cant effects. these analyses confi rm existing fi ndings that indicate that the mobility status of men is not to the same extent correlated to having or not having children. in contrast, highly mobile women show higher ratios of current childlessness when compared to the group of non-mobile women (schneider et al. 2002b: 256; limmer 2005; schneider et al. 2008; schneider et al. 2009b; meil 2010a/b). the analyses presented here can be used to clearly illustrate that circular job mobility can represent a relevant factor within the scope of relationship and family developments – especially inasmuch as women are concerned. in it, we have identifi ed substantial effects for long-distance commuters and particularly for overnighters: while the effect on the partnership status is only minor, the likelihood of a person being married or being childless varies considerably depending on the mobility status. highly mobile women, who often spend nights away from home for work reasons, are less likely to live in a highly institutionalised partnership (marriage) and to be mothers. when controlling for additional relevant factors, these effects decrease, yet they remain signifi cant especially in the pairfam study that included a larger sampling size. the fi ndings, according to which circular job mobility appears to more strongly infl uence whether an individual plans to start a family than whether he or she lives with a partner or is married, may possibly indicate cumulative effects. what is known is that in western germany especially, highly institutionalised relationships are often seen as a prerequisite for a couple’s decision to have children. in addition, the (absent) fi ndings pertaining to a person’s relationship status might also point to the opposite effect, that is, it could be found that an existing relationship might be a reason why individuals are more mobile (e.g. schneider et al. 2008; rüger/becker 2011). conversely, mobility may often be a reason for individuals to (unintentionally) remain single (rüger/ruppenthal 2010). 4 discussion this article examined three central objectives. in a fi rst step, we developed a common indicator for circular job mobility patterns to be used in the two representative surveys ”job mobilities and family lives in europe“ (jobmob) and ”panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics“ (pairfam). based on this common indicator, we were able to analyse the prevalence of a variety of mobility forms and their composition according to key socio-demographic criteria for both studies by means of a comparative analysis. in addition, we analysed correlations between the various forms of circular job mobility and partnership as well as family development. whereas a large number of analyses have been conducted in the fi eld of mobility and family research in response to the european comparative jobmob study, this is circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 243 not yet the case with regard to the data from the pairfam study. one particular feature of this article was its comparative approach, with the advantage being that the research results from the two studies have directly reinforced each other. in terms of the non-standardised constructs in social sciences, the opportunities available for comparison only exist to a minimal extent in different studies. only very rarely are consolidated, comparative indicators used. however, comparative analyses are helpful as a means to review constructs in terms of their reliability and their generalisation potential. one important objective of this article was to ensure reliability and to make generalisations about the concept of circular job mobility. as concerns the prevalence of individual forms of circular job mobility, overall there were only minor differences. about one out of two gainfully employed individuals in germany commutes short distances and almost one in fi ve commutes medium distances. one out of seven gainfully employed individuals have to deal with even more extensive mobility arrangements, such as long-distance commuting or the need to frequently spend nights away from their permanent place of residence. this proves that the prevalence of more comprehensive forms of circular mobility is by no means a marginal phenomenon in our society. the correlations between mobility patterns and socio-demographic criteria in both studies are quite similar as well. for example, we have found a gender-specifi c distribution among the different forms of mobility and a correlation with education: persons with a lower level of education were more frequently short-distance commuters, whereas individuals with a higher level of education exhibited longer commuting times and faced higher mobility demands. regional and structural criteria played a role with regard to differences between eastern and western germany. in the west, lower mobility demands were more common. by contrast, the labour market places higher mobility demands on employees in the east. these differences are most likely the result of infrastructural differences and differing levels of ”mobility pressure“ on the labour market. finally, on the basis of multivariate comparative analyses we were able to show that circular job mobility can have an impact on partnership and family development. substantial effects were apparent in particular for the group of long-distance commuters and overnighters. however, this applies to a lesser extent to the likelihood of a person living with a partner. the assumption that singles especially are among those who deal with mobility issues to a greater extent could not be confi rmed in either of the studies. however, both studies produced comparative fi ndings indicating that the transition to marriage or to the process of starting a family within existing partnerships does strongly correlate with circular job mobility. therefore, we have successfully confi rmed that mobility plays an especially signifi cant role once the partnership-related opportunity structure increases in importance. this, in turn, may affect the opportunities available in the day-to-day structuring of the relationship, the couple’s closeness of interaction, the amount of time they can spend together, and factors that can be assumed to be irreconcilable with high mobility requirements, such as the birth of a child. this is particularly the case when more extensive forms of organising become necessary, for example a couple’s ability to care for their children. to date, women are still more strongly affected by this than • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel244 men. therefore, the empirical fi ndings can also be summed up as follows: if circular mobility plays a role in the context of personal relationships and family, then this is particularly the case for women. it should be emphasised that the comparative analyses presented here are cross-sectional. as a result, any causal explanations will clearly be limited. therefore, future studies conducted on the basis of longitudinal designs seem promising. for example, when do changes arise within a person’s life with regard to his or her mobility behaviour? what causal infl uence do the different forms of circular mobility have on the processes of institutionalising intimate relationships? how do intentions (e.g. with regard to starting a family) and decisions relating to the dynamics of the relationship change when mobility patterns change? these research questions, which should be conducted with the help of longitudinal study designs, may in fact play a role in decrypting the specifi c adaptation and selection processes relating to an individual’s mobility behaviour and the associated steps and strategies a person takes to deal with partnerships and family-relevant aspects. concerning the question of how relationships are formed and institutionalised, the use of this longitudinal data may allow us to pose the question much more clearly than ever before with regard to the correlation between the processes that determine the choice of a partner and the steps leading to institutionalising the relationship. is mobility more often a barrier to partnerships or can it in fact be useful for a person’s efforts to deal with certain demands that only arise within a relationship, such as the ability to synchronise two professional careers? as concerns the correlation between mobility and the processes involved in starting a family, preliminary longitudinal analyses show that when a person stops commuting medium or long distances, it indicates that there is an increased likelihood that the person intends to start a family. in the future, a greater amount of attention should be paid to these kinds of longitudinal analyses. both studies now offer the relevant empirical foundation. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments 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(zeitschrift für familienforschung sonderheft 6). opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich publishers: 111-136. circular job-related spatial mobility in germany • 247 schneider, norbert f.; rüger, heiko; münster, eva 2009b: berufsbedingte räumliche mobilität in deutschland. formen, verbreitung und folgen für gesundheit, wohlbefi nden und familienleben. in: arbeitsmedizin sozialmedizin umweltmedizin 44,7: 400-409. schneider, norbert f.; meil, gerardo (eds.) 2008: mobile living across europe i. relevance and diversity of job-related spatial mobility in six european countries. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich publishers. schneider, norbert f. et al. 2008: germany – a country of locally attached but highly mobile people. in: schneider, norbert f.; meil, gerardo (eds.): mobile living across europe i. relevance and diversity of job-related spatial mobility in six european countries. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich publishers: 105-147. schneider, norbert f.; limmer, ruth; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2002a: mobil, fl exibel, gebunden. familie und beruf in der mobilen gesellschaft. frankfurt am main/new york: campus verlag. schneider norbert f.; limmer ruth; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2002b: berufsmobilität und lebensform. schriftenreihe des bundesministeriums für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend 208. stuttgart: kohlhammer. sennett, richard 1998: der fl exible mensch. die kultur des neuen kapitalismus. berlin: berliner taschenbuch verlag. statistisches bundesamt 2005: leben und arbeiten in deutschland. mikrozensus 2004. wiesbaden. stutzer, alois; frey, bruno s. 2008: stress that doesn’t pay. the commuting paradox. in: the scandinavian journal of economics 110,2: 339-366 [doi: 10.1111/j.14679442.2008.00542.x]. thomas, william; znaniecki, florian 1996 [1918-1920]: the polish peasant in europe and america: a classic work in immigration history. o.o.: university of illinois press. urry, john 2007: mobilities. cambridge/malden: polity press. wagner, michael 1989: räumliche mobilität im lebensverlauf. eine empirische untersuchung sozialer bedingungen der migration. stuttgart: ferdinand enke verlag. weichhart, peter 2009: multilokalität – konzepte, theoriebezüge und forschungsfragen. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 1-2/2009: 1-14. wiethölter, doris; bogai, dieter; carstensen, janette 2009: pendlerbericht berlin-brandenburg 2009. in: iab-regional 3/2010. zelinsky, wilbur 1971: the hypothesis of the mobility transition. in: geographical review 61,2: 219–249. • heiko rüger, michael feldhaus, katharina s. becker, monika schlegel248 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “zirkuläre berufsbezogene mobilität in deutschland: vergleichende analysen mit zwei repräsentativen surveys zu formen, verbreitung und relevanz im kontext der partnerschaftsund familienentwicklung”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-05de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-05de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 06.06.2011 date of acceptance: 21.11.2011 heiko rüger ( ), katharina s. becker. federal institute for population research, wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: heiko.rueger@destatis.de, katharina.becker@destatis.de url: www.bib-demografi e.de dr. michael feldhaus. universität bremen, institut für empirische und angewandte soziologie (empas), bremen, germany. e-mail: feldhaus@empas.uni-bremen.de url: www.empas.uni-bremen.de dr. monika schlegel. university of vechta, institute for social work, education and sport sciences, vechta, germany. e-mail: monika.schlegel@uni-vechta.de url: www.uni-vechta.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) more power, less sympathy the response of igos in western europe to unwanted migration during economic crises compared irial glynn abstract: this article chronicles the infl uence of intergovernmental organisations (igos) over unwanted migration in western europe since the 1930s. it pays particular attention to what occurred during times of economic crisis, especially the great depression in the 1930s, the recession-hit 1970s and early 1980s, and the current global fi nancial diffi culties. the igos under consideration are the league of nations during the 1930s and the european commission from the 1970s onwards. the european commission’s ability to infl uence west european states’ policies on unwanted migration has grown considerably since the league of nations’ unsuccessful attempts in the 1930s, especially in the lead-up to the current economic crisis. this increase in power has been offset, however, by a decrease in the european commission’s sympathy as brussels increasingly regards unwanted migration as a security and justice issue rather than as a social and cultural one in a move that bears close resemblance to the stance of west european states. keywords: great depression · unwanted migration · west europe · economic crisis · igos 1 introduction the aim of this paper is to sketch the role of igos in migrant affairs during various periods of economic crisis in europe. the article summarises the key developments in various western european countries from a pan-european perspective and does not attempt to specify the tendencies of one single country. the three periods compared here are 1930s, the 1970 and the current crises. during the crisis decade of the 1930s, the league of nations’ high commissioner for german refugees unsuccessfully called for european countries to treat refugees with hospitality in the face of increasing hostility. during the stagnant 1970s, and continuing into the early 1980s, the european commission similarly urged eucomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 99-120 (date of release: 23.08.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-18en1 • irial glynn100 ropean member states to treat its non-european migrants in a more sympathetic fashion. despite these calls, neither the high commissioner in the 1930s nor the european commission during the so called oil price crises of the 1970s held considerable sway in challenging states’ migrant policies. more recently, the european commission’s ability to affect member states’ policies has increased dramatically ever since migration became a shared responsibility in the 1990s. by charting how igos reacted to states’ migration policies in western europe since the 1930s, and particularly during times of economic crisis, this paper will argue that the european commission currently responsible for migration generally takes a less benevolent view of the rights of unwanted migrants than their commission precursors in the 1970s and early 1980s and the league of nations’ high commissioner for german refugees in the 1930s. despite the inherent diffi culties that arise from analysing different socio-economic and political settings, examining the role of igos over time can lead to intriguing fi ndings; as peter kolchin notes, comparing cases “can create an awareness of alternatives, showing developments to be signifi cant that without a comparative perspective might not appear so” (kolchin 1982: 64-5). to expound and substantiate the argument put forward, the fi rst part of the article will concentrate on the international reaction in western europe to unwanted migration during the great depression in the 1930s. subsequently, the paper will discuss how the european commission responded to states’ treatment of unwanted migrants during the time of the oil price crises in 1973 and 1979. thereafter, the rise in infl uence of the european commission on migration-related issues will be illustrated, as will the repercussions for unwanted migrants in the current crisis. as will become apparent in this paper, west european governments often introduced additional measures to prevent the arrival or stay of certain migrants during economic depressions and recessions. these migrants can be, as will be demonstrated below, refugees, economic migrants or asylum seekers. they are all “unwanted” by governments during times of economic crisis; hence the use of the term “unwanted migrants” throughout to describe those migrants who received special treatment from governments during times of economic diffi culty in western europe. various contemporary (e.g., simpson 1939; thompson 1938) and later accounts (e.g., arendt 2004; caron 1999; marrus 1985; skran 1995; beck 1999; hathaway 2005; heim 2010) have been written about the league of nations’ efforts to support unwanted migrants during the 1930s. similarly, certain experts have considered the reaction of the european commission to states’ attempts to enforce additional measures on unwanted migrants during the oil price crises of the 1970s (e.g. simmonds 1988; berlinghoff 2009). rarely, however, have scholars compared and contrasted the treatment of unwanted migrants in western europe during different economic crises to discover whether any similarities and differences exist between them. the extensive and extended nature of the current global fi nancial crisis has resulted in the publication of numerous economic surveys that have reanalysed in some detail the response to past slumps and downturns with the aim of demonstrating whether the world can learn anything from previous experiences (e.g. reinhart/rogoff 2009; bierman jr 2010). by analysing previously understudied primary sources from igos in past decades and by drawing on certain recent studies written on the eras in more power, less sympathy • 101 question, this article similarly intends to chronicle the diachronic development of international protection in western europe for unwanted migrants since the 1930s. by doing so, it will highlight some past trends in the treatment of unwanted migrants in western europe during periods of economic instability that may reoccur during the present crisis. 2 tightening the borders: the 1930s improved transportation and a more globalised world heralded in a notable increase in movement during the so-called “age of mass migration” between 1850 and 1914, especially from europe, india and china (hatton/williamson 1998; lucassen/lucassen 2009: 374; mckeown 2004: 166). restrictive measures linked to the rise of ethnic nationalism did begin to arise sporadically in various jurisdictions across europe from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, notably in prussia in the 1880s and 1890s (reinecke 2008: 66-70) and in england in the early twentieth century (collyer 2005: 289). instead of lifting their bellicose measures following the end of the first world war, some west european countries reinforced them (torpey 2003: 84). signifi cantly, the united states, which had accepted approximately one million immigrants annually up until 1914, was one of the countries to initiate measures to stem migration after the first world war. following john dillingham’s negative reports on immigration, the american congress superseded president woodrow wilson to implement legislation in 1917, leading to the insertion of various immigration restrictions in 1921 and 1924 (hatton/williamson 2004a; timmer/williamson 1998). west european states, which had actually relaxed their immigration policies following the end of the first world war – although the security measures brought in during the war did not all disappear – began instigating more restrictive policies during the recession-hit 1930s (caestecker/moore 2010: 314-5). previously, these unwanted migrants might have found a home across the atlantic, as had occurred during former economic crises in the nineteenth century. this time, however, western european countries had to adapt to the extra burden that the disappearance of america as an emigration destination placed upon them. hobsbawm (1992) has termed the interwar years the “apogee of nationalism”, as new approaches to nationalism perceived that a named human population shared a common history, territory and language. anyone considered ineligible from sharing these traits, such as ethnic minorities or migrants, became conspicuous in the eyes of the public and governments. to amplify this even further, the post-wwi development in many western european countries of modern systems of social organisation – the so-called “welfare state” – led to an even greater distinction between citizens and non-citizens (hathaway 2005: 83). the consequences of increases in passport control, as well as the popular support for the ethnic state all over europe meant that entry – and stay – became more diffi cult to attain for refugees and economic migrants alike. the 1930s saw a noticeable decrease in the number of people trying to migrate compared to the 1920s, when over one million russian refugees had fl ed to various • irial glynn102 european countries (jaeger 1999: 1). nevertheless, the worsening economic conditions that followed the 1929 great wall street crash and the growth in power of the middle and working classes, who voiced their concern about the perceived threat from foreign labour, resulted in most migrants in the 1930s receiving considerably more hostile treatment than their 1920s’ counterparts. states strengthened their enforcement mechanisms to restrict and expel unwanted migrants as the 1930s progressed. german jews fl eeing nazism often received the most rancorous reception. due to increasing stipulations barring newcomers from taking up employment during the 1930s fi nancial depression, it fell to jewish refugee aid committees in western europe to reassure governments that they would provide the fi nancial support necessary to ensure that german jews would not place an undue burden on receiving states. despite this initially resulting in relatively sympathetic western european policies towards german jews in 1933, when the exodus began, these same aid committees quickly saw their funds deplete as a result of the size of the infl ux (caestecker/moore 2010: 219). signifi cantly, as german jews continued to arrive in western europe, national governments preferred to designate them as temporary refugees rather than as political refugees because of the fear that this would entitle those same migrants to certain benefi ts associated with liberal traditions of political asylum (caestecker/moore 2010: 317). events in 1938 made it impossible for west european states to deny that german and austrian jews were anything other than political refugees; as a result they stepped up their efforts to strengthen their external controls, through strict visa policies and improved border controls, to try to stem the fl ow (caestecker/moore 2010: 238). the international reaction to the german refugee crisis derived principally from the league of nations’ efforts to fi nd some kind of a solution. to aid those fl eeing nazi germany, the intergovernmental league appointed a high commissioner responsible for german refugees, with the american james mcdonald taking up the post in october 1933. mcdonald noted in 1935 that ‘the daily grace in the high commissioner’s offi ce was “thank god for palestine”’ (marrus 1985: 163), on account of its absorption of jewish refugees. but the arab revolt of 1936 made the british wary of the potential effect continuing jewish emigration could have on its rule over palestine. thereafter, the british government repeatedly decreased the amount of jewish immigrants entitled to enter palestine and took away the special benefi ts they had previously bestowed upon german jews just at the time when the situation facing those same people steadily worsened (halamish 2010: 142) similarly, the united states, britain and france began to frown upon jewish emigration to shanghai at the behest of some of their wealthy citizens living in the open city, which required no documents to land and which received approximately 14,000 jewish refugees between 1938 and the summer of 1939; it would have closed off its territory sooner albeit for japanese resistance to western governments’ pressure (hochstadt 2010: 114-117). following just over two years as high commissioner for german refugees, mcdonald resigned from his post in 1935. mcdonald’s replacement as high commissioner, the briton sir neill malcolm, inherited an even less powerful role than his predecessor (heim 2010: 29). nonetheless, malcolm still managed to bring together more power, less sympathy • 103 representatives from fi fteen countries in late 1936 for a conference focused on the german refugee question. states, although publicly supportive of potential measures to alleviate the suffering of german refugees within their territories, remained particularly hesitant to commit to helping potential future arrivals from germany. romania noted that it had already reached its capacity for receiving refugees, apart from those travelling through the country.1 the netherlands wanted to retain its power to allow or disallow refugees from entering its territory. switzerland repeatedly drew attention to the problem of clandestine refugees and underlined the diffi culties caused by their continued entry at a time of economic depression, stating its preference to “aid the refugee coming from germany to settle elsewhere” rather than allow them settle in its territory.2 resembling recent asylum debates, belgium thought countries should be allowed to ask refugees to return to the country in which they found fi rst asylum.3 nevertheless, in addition to the uk, france, norway and denmark, all of the countries named above, except romania, adopted a provisional 1936 non-binding arrangement set out in the conference with various amendments that bestowed refugee status upon germans who had arrived in those countries between 1933 and 1936. further efforts by the high commissioner for german refugees to attain states’ acquiescence to more authoritative rules defi ning their treatment of german refugees proved mostly futile, however. only two countries, the uk and belgium, ratifi ed the later convention concerning the status of refugees coming from germany, completed in february 1938 as restrictive measures against rising numbers of refugees from germany and austria became more widespread (see robinson 1953: 3).4 despite their lack of international representation, pro-migrant groups did succeed in mitigating the severity of restrictive migration policies in some countries. in france, for example, substantial sections of the communist and socialist parties, the league of rights of man and citizen, the catholic left and several jewish bodies continued to promote more generous policies, resulting in the popular front’s slackening of immigration restrictions in 1936 (caron 1999: 141). in the united kingdom, pro-asylum opinion in the wake of the november pogroms in 1938 caused the british government to repeal its restrictive policies brought in after the ”anschluss” in march of the same year (marfl eet 2006: 136). public protests in belgium also caused the national government to halt expulsions of jewish refugees (caestecker/ moore 2010: 260). in the united states, pro-migrant actors focused enough pressure on the government for president franklin d. roosevelt to convene a conference in evian in july 1938. indeed, in the months leading up to evian, several prominent 1 “inter-governmental conference on the legal status of refugee coming from germany”, second meeting, 2 july 1936, s.r.a./1st session/p.v.2., league of nations archives. 2 ibid. 3 inter-governmental conference on the legal status of refugee coming from germany’, fourth meeting, 3 july 1936, s.r.a./1st session/p.v.4, league of nations archives. 4 france also ratifi ed the convention but this came in 1945. • irial glynn104 jewish voluntary groups – and christian voluntary groups, to a lesser extent – came together for a conference to discuss the refugee issue. almost simultaneously, two prominent jewish politicians, emanuel celler and samuel dickstein, publicly raised the subject in the american congress (sjoberg 1991: 113). dorothy thompson’s article in the april 1938 edition of foreign affairs gave further vent to the consternation amongst certain organisations surrounding america’s failure to try to help fi nd a solution to the european refugee crisis (thompson 1938; see also sjoberg 1991: 70-1 and 116). in july 1938, twenty-nine governments came together in a small french town to discuss the problem of refugees fl eeing nazism. roosevelt’s defi ned terms for discussion at the evian conference, which ensured that existing immigration laws remained in place, meant that the conference produced little by way of feasible results to help refugees (sjoberg 1991: 124). instead, most of the focus concentrated on how the jewish exodus had “become so great that it renders racial and religious problems more acute, increases international unrests [sic], and may hinder seriously the process of appeasement in international relations.”5 the resolution adapted at evian also recorded that: “[t]he involuntary emigration of large numbers of people, of different creeds, economic conditions, professions and trades [...] is disturbing to the general economy, since these persons are obliged to seek refuge, either temporarily or permanently, in other countries at a time when there is serious unemployment.”6 the resolution’s negligible recommendations – the highlight involved setting up the intergovernmental committee on refugees, which held few formal competences and reacted cautiously – clearly demonstrated states’ reservations in helping refugees escape nazi persecution. the silent understanding between the americans and the uk to refrain from raising the subject of migration to palestine merely confi rmed this (halamish 2010: 131). thirty-nine private voluntary organisations (pvos) [similar to modern-day ngos], including twenty-one jewish groups, had attended the conference in an unoffi cial capacity. four different opinions resonated amongst pvos: (i) to encourage jews to emigrate to palestine by lifting the contemporary quotas; (ii) to integrate refugees in their present environment; (iii) to settle jewish refugees in an as yet uninhabited location; and (iv) to guarantee jews minority rights in their new countries of asylum.7 the disjointed tactics of pvos meant that their voice remained weak and disjointed. in michael marrus’s (1985: 170-2) words, “evian simply underscored the unwillingness of the western countries to receive 5 resolution adopted by the intergovernmental committee (evian) on july 14th, 1938. published in league of nations offi cial journal, vol. 19, 1938: 676-677. 6 ibid. 7 “report for the sub-committee for the reception of organisations concerned with the relief of political refugees coming from germany including austria”, 13 july 1938, s543, league of nations archives. more power, less sympathy • 105 unwanted jewish refugees” with “one delegate after another read[ing] statements into the record, justifying existing restrictive policies and congratulating themselves on how much had already been accomplished for refugees.” as caestecker and moore (2010: 319) have demonstrated, immigration remained a domestic rather than an international issue in the wake of evian. soon after the conference, hungary and yugoslavia closed their frontiers, italy announced its 1938 anti-jewish decrees, and holland, belgium and switzerland reinforced their borders to restrict the entry of refugees (marrus 1985: 169). events in austria and germany from march to november 1938 turned, in the words of claudena skran (1995: 53), “a manageable refugee fl ow into an uncontrollable fl ood”. despite an outcry in west european public and media opinion, most governments intensifi ed their external controls through visa issuing facilities and border controls (caestecker/moore 2010: 274 and 277). this partly resulted from the 1938 nazi laws forbidding jews fl eeing from taking their belongings and savings. previously, jews brought certain economic advantages to host states because they managed to arrive with some of their resources from germany but from 1938 onwards jews frequently arrived penniless at a time of continuing economic depression. between early 1936 and mid 1938, private organisations and individuals drew the high commissioner’s attention to approximately 5,000 cases where german refugees received expulsion orders from countries of asylum, leading to the high commissioner’s intervention to halt “unauthorised measures of expulsion taken by the police or minor offi cials”.8 but the cessation of the high commissioner’s offi ce on 1 january 1939 closed this avenue off despite the marked augmentation of refugees fl eeing nazism and by then fascist spain. by the outbreak of war in september 1939, the number of people who escaped nazism since 1933 had increased to 400,000.9 more would have left except for the increasingly restrictive immigration policies of european countries caused by anti-semitism, labour shortages and refugees’ destitution in the crisis-hit 1930s. 2.1 migration management during post-war crises the end of the second world war instigated several crucial developments. countries vowed to make sure the newly formed united nations would serve the world better than the league of nations. the charter of the united nations, signed in 1945, insured, cemented and enhanced the role of private voluntary organisations; these organisations then became known as non-governmental organisations 8 neill malcolm, “refugees coming from germany”, 22 aug 1938, a.25.1938.xii, league of nations archives. 9 league of nations, “international assistance to refugees: supplementary report to the twentieth assembly by sir herbert emerson” (20 oct. 1939), p. 2. contained in fonds unhcr 5, “personal papers of gustave g. kullmann, box 6. its report recorded that 225,000 jews fl ed from germany, 134,000 jews from austria and bohemia-moravia, and 40,000 non-jews from both. see also skran 1995: 54. • irial glynn106 (ngos) to distinguish them from the various un bodies. by stipulating that the un could “make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organisations which are concerned with matters within its competence” they ensured the presence of ngos in signifi cant political discussions – a development that has had consequences for more recent migration debates, as will be outlined towards the end of this article.10 exclusive measures towards immigrants could not be maintained in the wake of the second world war because of the incredible population loss that the carnage had infl icted – approximately 36.5 million people died on the continent from war-related causes (judt 2005: 17). furthermore, western europe needed to rebuild since approximately 40 % of german housing, 30 % of british housing and 20 % of french housing had been destroyed during the war (judt 2005: 82). western europe needed labour, especially when the european economy began to take off once again in the 1950s. here the european countries took different approaches in shaping the emerging migration regimes. those regimes were deeply rooted in the history of each single country: while countries with strong colonial ties mixed their minority policies with their migrant policies, countries such as germany and austria developed a new system that enabled the recruitment and rotation of workers from abroad. other countries, such as the netherlands and belgium, adopted mixed forms of migration regulations. millions of people, who came predominantly from rural backgrounds, migrated from countries located on the periphery of western european to the core of western europe to help the post-war expansion. seven million left italy between 1945 and 1970, a quarter of greece’s population of working age departed between 1950 and 1970, and 1.5 million portuguese migrated between 1961 and 1974 (judt 2005: 334). west germany, switzerland, the benelux countries and france were the main receivers, with the uk also welcoming approximately half a million irish migrants from 1945 to 1961 (keogh 1994: 164 and 215). nevertheless, this failed to meet labour demands in the host states, which began instead to look beyond western europe for migrant labour. the united kingdom, france, the netherlands and belgium received large numbers of migrants from their colonies, while western germany recruited signifi cant numbers of turks and yugoslavs, as well as other nationalities from southern european and northern-african states, under the gastarbeiter scheme. national and local administrative bodies in many western european countries continued to believe migrants were temporary and would depart if work opportunities decreased. for that same reason, they saw no need to invest in infrastructure such as social housing, schools and medical care for their enlarged populations (berlinghoff 2009: 185). when the number of immigrants began to place substantial pressures on social services and the economy of western european countries in the early 1970s began to stagnate, demands for foreign labour slowed. in 1972 denmark declared a recruitment ban for all non eec and scandinavian countries. in 1973 the uk implemented its immigration act and western germany stopped any further 10 section 71, charter of the united nations 1945. more power, less sympathy • 107 recruitment. the following year, both belgium and the netherlands tightened their immigration policies and france declared a halt to immigration (berlinghoff 2009: 189; see also hansen 2003: 27). at around the same time, 1973 oil price shock resulted in serious economic recession throughout western europe. by then, west germany had approximately 2.8 million foreign workers, france held 2.3 million immigrant workers, and great britain contained almost 2 million immigrants from the commonwealth (judt 2005: 335-6). 2.2 1970s-1980s: european commission vs. european states during the 1950s and 1960s, western europe reached almost full employment (judt 2005: 332). labour relations problems in western europe and a notable rise in commodity prices did, however, result in accelerated infl ation in the late 1960s and early 1970s (mazower 1998: 334). following the demise of the bretton woods system in 1971, partly as a result of the u.s. government’s need to fi nance its role in the vietnam war, and the 1973 oil price shock, a recession-hit western europe saw unemployment rise considerably throughout the 1970s. france’s unemployment rate went from 2.6 % in 1971 to 7 % by the end of the decade. the uk rate rose from 3.6 % to 9 % in the same period. although german unemployment failed to reach such scales, it too suffered a notable rise (judt 2005: 456-7; see also cameron 2001: 8-9). despite attempts by many western european countries to limit the in-fl ow of migrant workers from the early 1970s onwards, the reunifi cation of families with those already in situ meant that unwanted migration continued at a steady pace. many countries’ constitutions formed after the second world had extended rights to nationals and non-nationals alike, which led to a noticeable increase in cases involving immigrants brought before the courts challenging restrictive changes in the 1970s (guiraudon 1997: 234). as joppke (1998: 271) has convincingly argued, the growth of inherently liberal principles in many western states throughout the second half of the twentieth century made it increasingly diffi cult for western european governments to exercise complete control over unwanted migration. developments at the european commission stemmed government actions even further. the 1957 treaty of rome stated that “freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the community” and that this would “entail the abolition of any state discrimination based on nationality between workers of the member states as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment”.11 although this only applied to european member citizens (cf. oliver 1985: 62), the european commission began to take a further interest in conditions facing all immigrants – from member states and elsewhere – from the early 1970s onwards because of the obvious social issues emerging as a result of the sizeable immigrant communities in many member states. soon after the 1973 oil shock, the european commission published its social action programme. one objective was to achieve 11 article 48 (1) and 48 (2), treaty of rome. • irial glynn108 “an equality in living and working conditions” for “all migrant workers and their families, whether they come from the countries of the community” or “whether legally admitted from third countries” (commission of the european communities 1974: 23). the commission felt that: “the migration population live and work in conditions substantially inferior to those of the indigenous population. discrimination against migrant workers exists in various forms throughout the community, in such matters as social security, housing and rights to participate at different levels of decision making (ibid).” in the commission’s opinion, there was “an urgent need for the community to assume its overall human responsibilities towards the whole migrant population, irrespective of its country of origin”. it felt that this could only be achieved by developing “an overall approach to coordinate different aspects” (ibid). later that same year, it proposed an action programme in favour of migrant workers and their families. in it, the commission criticised member states’ treatment of third country migrants even more explicitly and voiced its aim to “move towards concertation of immigration policies”. while migrants coming from other member states acquired many of the same rights as those of indigenous workers under community legislation, third country migrants: “[...] do not have the right to freely enter the territory of the host country for the exercise of employment; they are required to possess a work permit and are subject to administrative controls [ …] third country migrants are liable to deportation, too often at the discretion of the host country authorities.” (commission of the european communities 1976: 14) again, the commission’s suggestion to tackle this problem revolved around the aim of “adopting a common strategy to meet the problem (ibid).” when western european states, acting through the forum of the european council, took note of the commission’s proposals in its resolution of 9 february 1976, they failed to outline whether or not member states should consult each other over the issue of providing rights for third country migrants. by contrast, when the council discussed the subject of clandestine immigration, it considered it “important to strengthen cooperation between member states in the campaign against illegal immigration of workers who are nationals of third countries”. the council also sought to “undertake appropriate consultations on migration policies vis à vis third countries” (council of the european communities 1976: 8). this split in inclination of european member states to confer with one another over matters of prohibition, whilst avoiding consultation with regard to the treatment of immigrants within member states, was a sign of things to come. despite attempts by west european countries to stem immigration, migration continued to grow, mainly due to family reunifi cation. the late 1970s saw parties variously labelled “extreme right-wing”, “populist” and “anti-immigrant” parties in europe start to become increasingly prominent (agnazi 1995; gibson 2002). halting immigration became one of the most central tenets of many of these parties’ more power, less sympathy • 109 manifestos. the large increases in the number of people migrating to europe and governments’ perceived weaknesses in adapting their policies to cope with this upsurge served to bestow anti-immigrant political parties with a seemingly legitimate target to communicate their message. with immigrants sometimes entitled to welfare provisions and housing at a time of increasing fi nancial insecurity, political, media and public hostility towards immigrants rose. as a consequence, these parties’ anti-immigrant stance began to fi nd resonance with voters, coinciding as it did with a decline in traditional political parties’ ability to address the needs of some of their electorate (mair 2006). serious cleavages began to develop amongst more traditional political parties. indeed, one of the factors that made immigration and asylum so diffi cult to analyse was that voters from sometimes very different political backgrounds could change parties because of their strong stances on such issues. as paul sniderman et al. (2000: 13) recorded, when issues relating to immigration moved to the centre of political argument, “the animating values of the right resonate[d] not only with its own adherents but also with a very large portion of the adherents of the left”. in an attempt to allay this trend, established political parties in western europe reacted in a number of ways; with varying degrees of success. in some countries, they attempted to retain, or attract back, their traditional voters by adapting and reshaping many of the ideas put forward by these anti-immigration parties and selling them as their own. in the run-up to the 1979 general election in the uk, for instance, margaret thatcher’s conservative party successfully adopted some of the increasingly popular british national front’s policies to stem the fl ow of voters (messina 1987: 419-420). conversely, in some countries conventional political parties attempted to ignore or isolate these anti-immigration parties. this met with mixed results in states such as belgium and west germany (schain/zolberg/hossay 2002). if the established parties ignored or cut off anti-immigrant parties, they risked enabling those same parties to attain a foothold in the political system by gaining the protest votes of people frustrated with the more regular parties. with the acquisition of a certain number of representative seats, anti-immigrant parties had the potential to expand their vote because of the high-profi le nature of their new positions in society and the structural benefi ts that came their way on obtaining offi ce. reacting to the notable rise in racism in europe throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the european commission and the european parliament made various calls to act on immigration, including the 1977 joint declaration on fundamental rights, which affi rmed respect for the 1950 european convention on human rights. but andrew geddes (2000: 54) fi ttingly commented that “as with many eu denunciations of racism and xenophobia, the declaration was essentially symbolic and not backed by attribution of competence to act”. by the mid 1980s, the commission felt that a community migration policy had become all the more necessary and consequently put forward a set of guidelines for such a policy in which it highlighted some of the problems associated with immigration: “a number of member states had to face similar problems: inadequate social education infrastructure and housing shortages as migrant families • irial glynn110 were increasingly reunited, diffi culties in cultural assimilation, uneasy relationships between the national and foreign communities, and potential competition on the labour market.” (european commission 1985: 6) many of the recommendations contained foresight and appeared to include a genuine wish to help migrants to enjoy a better standard of living in society. for example, the commission aimed to “provide members of their [migrants’] families residing in the community with the same protection in the fi eld of social security as community nationals” because “workers in the same objective situation cannot be treated differently on the sole basis of nationality” (ibid: 14). in july 1985, the council endorsed these proposals but when the commission attempted to go further by setting up a prior communication procedure on migration policies, west germany, france, the netherlands, denmark and the uk opposed such developments. the commission had asked the member states to provide it with “draft measures they inten[ded] to take with regard to third country workers and members of their families, in the areas of entry, residence and employment”, along with “the texts of provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action already in force, and also the texts of agreements made with third countries” (ibid: 19-20). brussels wanted to “facilitate the adoption of a common position … particularly as regards international instruments relating to migration”. for many western european governments, it was a step too far: the commission had exceeded its strictures. west germany, france, the netherlands, denmark and the uk proceeded to make submissions to the european court of justice against the commission, arguing that the treaty of rome had made no provision for a common policy in the social fi eld and that the commission’s role was designated to exclusively deal with nonbinding instruments (simmonds 1988: 182-3). at the oral procedure stage of the court hearing, the commission communicated its past problems with the member states regarding a common migration policy (simmonds 1988: 197). the european court of justice annulled certain parts of the commission’s policy initiative, with the overall effect of fudging the issue. what the case did show, however, was the intent of many west european states to keep the commission, which had shown itself to be in favour of integrating unwanted migrants into european societies, away from an issue that they saw as something for states alone to contemplate. various governments considered the commission’s attempt to dictate member states’ social policies as an attack on their sovereignty. in response, european justice and interior ministers created an ad hoc group on immigration (ahi) in 1986. critically, this was an intergovernmental body set up on an intergovernmental initiative with little commission involvement. another almost simultaneous inter-governmental initiative, the schengen agreement, also had a signifi cant affect on immigration policy in western europe. the aim of the fi rst schengen agreement, signed in june 1985 by the benelux countries, france and germany, aimed to gradually decrease controls on community citizens crossing internal borders having originated as a reaction to roadblocks set up by truck drivers irritated by the long delays they experienced when passing between the franco-german borders (lahav 2004: 42). the intention of the second schengen agreement, signed in 1990, bore little resemblance to the fi rst. as sandra lavenex more power, less sympathy • 111 (2001: 95) explained, “the biggest consensus among the contracting parties was manifested in questions relating to the fi ght against illegal immigration and the intake of asylum seekers, which was in fact where the most detailed and far-reaching provisions were adopted – although the question of asylum seekers and refugees was not even mentioned in schengen i.” with these changes, schengen came to signify for many critics “fortress europe” due to the inclusion of a number of measures relating to the harmonisation of regulations concerning checks at external frontiers, the improvement of international co-operation at the level of the police and judiciary and the harmonization of visa and immigration policies. julian schutte (1991: 550) has pointed out that “the most spectacular novelty” was the creation of a set of common automated data relating to wanted persons called the schengen information system “to help with the maintenance of public order and security, and the enforcement of the laws on the control of aliens” (schutte 1991: 559). the 1987 single european act (sea) and the 1992 maastricht treaty confi rmed these objectives and it became clear that western european countries had to create a more common strategy for migration. just as european countries appeared to gain a grip on achieving a consensus to control economic migrants attempting to gain access to the eu, another phenomenon emerged. between 1985 and 1994, over 3.4 million people (eurostat: 1996) made asylum applications in the eu as a result of increasing international confl icts (the break-up of yugoslavia, in particular), the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the soviet regime. as economic migrants found it more diffi cult to enter western europe, some potential migrants also looked to asylum as a way of facilitating entry to the eu. in an attempt to regulate this in-fl ow, european immigration ministers adopted the dublin convention in 1990 to eradicate so-called “asylum-shopping” by ensuring that an asylum seeker could only make an application in his/her country of arrival. 3 the international community’s attitude to migration during the present crisis in the 1990s, european member states’ tendency to remove the possibility of commission tinkering with national immigration and asylum policies for non-eu citizens continued, with immigration and asylum too politically explosive for most countries’ governments to give up national competency (hatton/williamson 2004b: 25, 32). instead, inter-governmental working groups, comprised of ministers from various member states with responsibility for immigration, brought forward several initiatives. virginie guiraudon (2000: 251) acutely surmised the idea behind these moves: “building upon pre-existing policy settings and developing new policy frames, governments have circumvented national constraints on migration control by creating transnational co-operation mechanisms dominated by law and order offi cials, with eu institutions playing a minor role. european trans-governmental working groups have avoided judicial scrutiny, elimi• irial glynn112 nating other national adversaries and enlisted the help of transnational actors such as transit countries and carriers.” although intra-national discussions on migration in europe began in the 1980s and continued to gather apace throughout the 1990s, the 2000s marked the reintegration of asylum and third country migration policies into the domain of the european commission. the 1999 european council meeting at tampere signalled the beginning of the end of the differences between the commission and the member states concerning asylum and migration policy. signifi cantly, member states allowed migration to return to the european commission domain only after it had become fi rmly established under the responsibility of the eu’s third pillar, which represented security and justice affairs, rather than under the directorate-general representing employment, social affairs and equal opportunities (guiraudon 2000; costello 2003). this meant that notions of security continually tended to supersede notions of migrants’ rights. as a result, the european commission had lost its long battle to moderate west european countries’ asylum and immigrant policies, with the member states’ more restrictionist views fi rmly winning out. to defend their immigration policies throughout the 2000s, west european states fashioned arguments based on principles relating to european sovereignty, the integrity of welfare regimes and public security. in contrast to european commission efforts to counter member states’ more parsimonious measures in the 1970s and 1980s, the european commission in the 2000s facilitated west european states’ policies by joining together with the european council to help externalise and securitize european asylum and migration policies – particularly after 9-11 – in an attempt to stem the fl ow of unwanted migrants (lavenex 2006: 334; cf neal 2009). this became more obvious throughout the 2000s. in 2004, for instance, italy began returning thousands of migrants to libya that it had intercepted en route to its territory (paoletti 2011: 275). pro-migrant ngos, such as medicins sans frontieres, and the unhcr, denounced italy’s move, pointing out that the state had repatriated migrants without offering them clear access to proper asylum procedures. they also highlighted libya’s continuing failure to sign the un refugee convention (corriere della serra 2004; la stampa 2004b). the italian government countered these criticisms by maintaining that its actions corresponded to all national and international norms. crucially, the european commission – in contrast to the european parliament and the council of europe – mutely supported the italian government’s measures (la stampa 2004a). the model of lightly regulated fi nancial capitalism that emerged over the past three decades resulted, in 2008, in the worst international economic downturn since the 1930s. the consequences of the global fi nancial crisis, variously referred to by leading economists as the great recession (e,g, stiglitz 2010: xi) and the lesser depression (krugman 2011), have largely continued to affect western europe unabated since then, with the ongoing euro crisis not yet showing any signs of ending. a past european commission (1997: 1) survey on racism and xenophobia concluded that people dissatisfi ed with their life circumstances, who feared unemployment, remained insecure about their futures and held little confi dence in public authorities were most likely to support xenophobic views. amid rising unemployment, mountmore power, less sympathy • 113 ing public dissatisfaction with governments, and unsustainable state debts causing uncertainty about what the future holds, the conditions outlined in the european commission survey are growing throughout western europe, particularly along the western (ireland and the uk), southern (greece, portugal, italy and spain) and northern (denmark and finland) periphery. this has led many west european states to discuss enforcing their residence laws more strictly, improving their border management and boosting their return programmes (frontex 2009: 4). as the iom (2010: 4) has noted, the situation facing migrants, and especially non-eu migrants, has deteriorated more rapidly than that of natives during the crisis. migrants employed in low-skilled sectors especially affected by the economic recession, such as the construction industry and the services sector, have been particularly badly hit by unemployment since 2008 (beets/willekens 2009). somewhat predictably, many migrants previously required by west european countries to help drive their economies forward have now become unwanted – just as occurred during the 1970s with guest worker migrants. as the 1970s and early 1980s demonstrated, however, migrants do not always leave countries after the onset of economic problems, despite offi cial desires for them to do so. the same is true for the current crisis, especially with regard to non-eu migrants, who may desist leaving for fear that they will face barriers in the future if they want to return (iom 2010: 4). it is still too soon to know whether public opinion about immigration in western europe is uniformly turning more hostile as different national situations have so far led to different results (iom 2010: 5-6). nonetheless, an analysis of attitudes in western europe to immigrants and minorities during past crises provides some unpleasant indicators of what can happen during times of severe economic diffi culty. de bromhead, eichengreen and o’rourke (2012: 5), in their analysis of right-wing political extremism during the great depression, have highlighted how economic hard times can boost such ideologies in countries containing sizeable immigrant populations. crucially for the study of the current crisis, they found that it was only when a contraction persisted for a number of years that noticeable trends arose. they argued that political polarization during the late 1920s and 1930s occurred in countries that had relatively recent histories of democracy, that had existing rightwing extremist parties, and that had electoral systems with low barriers for new parties to overcome to achieve parliamentary representation. most signifi cantly, however, they considered that the rise of right-wing political extremism during the depression was most profound where depressed economic conditions were allowed to persist (de bromhead/eichengreen/o’rourke 2012: 25). in relation to the 1970s and beyond, an empirical analysis of voting attitudes from 1970 to 2002 in oecd countries argued that a one-percentage-point decline in per capita gdp growth led to a one-percentage-point increase in the vote share for right-wing or nationalist parties (brückner/grüner 2010). interestingly, the same authors found that extreme left-wing and communist parties did not tend to benefi t as much from economic downturns as their right-wing counterparts. whilst some of the southern peripheral west european countries most affected by the current crisis have had chequered histories of democracy until the 1970s, they have all since established progressive, liberal democracies that show no sign, • irial glynn114 as yet, of falling apart. despite generally low thresholds for new parties aiming to emerge on the political scene, these same states do not yet host well-established extreme right-wing anti-immigrant political parties (apart from italy). as art (2011: 3) notes, the radical right in western europe has experienced almost as much failure establishing itself as success. it is diffi cult at this stage, therefore, to see how these types of organisations could come to national prominence in the west european countries currently most affected by the crisis although recent developments in greece look ominous. perhaps former communist countries in central and eastern europe, such as hungary today, will provide extreme right-wing parties with more viable options for success in the future; although these countries’ lack of exposure to extensive immigration may offset the build-up of explicitly anti-immigrant parties. for those west european countries where right-wing anti-immigration parties are already well established, such as france, belgium, the netherlands, finland, denmark, italy and austria, the economic diffi culties may enable these parties to further increase their popularity. as fukuyama (2012: 53) records, populism in the aftermath of the fi nancial crisis has taken a distinctly right-wing form rather than a left-wing form, an occurrence he explains away by highlighting the current dearth of intellectual ideas on the left. the repercussions of the economic crisis have already seen some politicians in western europe target migrants and minorities to demonstrate their resoluteness on rules and regulations. unfortunately, migrants and minorities today cannot rely on the european commission to challenge states’ hard-line positions or actions because its own rules often facilitate states’ moves. when italian authorities began fi ngerprinting roma living in camps throughout the country in 2008 the european commission, in contrast to vocal criticism from the european parliament, quietly endorsed italy’s plans, as the actions acceded to the commission’s own rules on security (times 2008). the european commissioner, viviane redding, appeared to counter this trend when she vocally and scathingly criticised france’s deportation of romanian and bulgarian roma in the summer of 2010. she had to later refrain from taking legal action against france, however, when it became clear that the country had acted within the legal parameters afforded by the eu’s own 2004 directive on free movement of eu citizens, which had allowed france to deport the roma on security grounds (parker 2012). in many ways, this symbolised the european commission’s torn role; although it wanted to continue to act in its traditional role of safeguarding migrants’ rights against european states’ actions, it found itself increasingly hamstrung by the new, more restrictive parameters it had to work within. 4 conclusion this paper has highlighted how the infl uence of igos in migrant affairs in western europe has increased substantially since the 1930s. nonetheless, as has been outlined, this change has come at a signifi cant price. the european commission, currently the most powerful international broker in affecting migration policies in more power, less sympathy • 115 western europe, has had to adopt a much less critical role of states’ restrictive practices during the present crisis than its predecessors in brussels in the 1970s and the league of nations high commissioner for refugees in the 1930s. the european commission today has to promote migration policies that often complement rather than challenge member states’ unsympathetic practices. nonetheless, unwanted migrants in western european states today are, despite this change, still likely to receive access to a host of rights that their forerunners, especially in the 1930s, had to do without. this has derived as a result of the “liberalness of liberal states” (joppke 1998: 292) and pro-migrant actors’ increased success in offering support and advocacy for such people. in the 1930s, national and international voluntary organisations sympathetic to the plight of unwanted migrants objected to governments’ increasingly discriminatory practices. but these voluntary organisations had no avenues to seriously challenge governments’ actions and frequently campaigned for diverging goals (at evian, for instance, private organisations sought four markedly different solutions, as outlined above). the additional political space opened up by the end of the cold war and the major un impetus to include civil society from the early 1990s onwards allowed ngos to engage in political debate about issues such as migration; a development the explosion in global communications further enabled (welch 2001: 3). moreover, networking between different migrant organisations ensured increased power (kjaerum 2003: 207). by referencing humanitarian ideals, national commitments to human rights and the rule of law (epp 1998), promigrant actors have managed to seriously hinder and obstruct western european governments’ moves against unwanted migrants, resulting in a large gap remaining between policies formed and policies implemented. as a result, western european states have so far failed to extol the same control over unwanted migrants who have managed to reach their countries as occurred in the 1930s. references agnazi, piero 1995: the re-emergence of extreme right-wing parties in europe. wien: institut für höhere 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[doi: 10.1080/01402380500512684]. lucassen, jan; lucassen, leo 2009: the mobility transition revisited, 1500-1900: what the case of europe can offer to global history. in: the journal of global history 4,3: 347-377. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s174002280999012x]. mair, peter 2006: polity-scepticism, party failings, and the challenge to european democracy. wassenaar: nias. marfl eet, philip 2006: refugees in a global era. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. marrus, michael 1985: the unwanted. european refugees in the twentieth century. oxford & new york: oxford university press. mazower, mark 1998: dark continent. europe’s twentieth century. london: allen lane. mckeown, adam 2004: global migration, 1846-1940. in: journal of world history 15,2: 155-189. [doi: 10.1353/jwh.2004.0026]. messina, anthony 1987: postwar protest movements in britain: a challenge to parties. in: the review of politics 49,3: 410-428. neal, andrew 2009: securitization and risk at the eu border: the origins of frontex. in: journal of common market studies 47,2: 333-356. [doi: 10.1111/j.14685965.2009.00807.x]. oliver, peter 1985: non-community nationals and the treaty of rome. in: yearbook of european law 5,1: 57-92. paoletti, emanuela 2011: power relations and international migration: the case of italy and libya. in: political studies 59: 269-289. [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00849.x]. more power, less sympathy • 119 parker, owen 2012: roma and the politics of eu citizenship in france: everyday security and resistance. in: journal of common market studies 50,3: 475-491. [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5965.2011.02238.x]. reinecke, christiane 2008: policing foreign men and women: gendered patterns of expulsion and migration control in germany, 1880-1914. in: schrover, marlou; van der leun, joanne; lucassen, leo; quispel, chris (eds.): illegal migration and gender in a global and historical perspective. amsterdam: imiscoe press: 57-82. reinhart, carmen; rogoff, kenneth 2009: this time is different: eight centuries of fi nancial folly. princeton, nj: princeton university press. robinson, neremiah 1953: convention relating to the status of refugees. its history, contents and interpretation. new york: institute of jewish affairs. schain, martin; zolberg, aristide; hossay, patrick 2002: the development of radical right parties in western europe. in: schain, martin; zolberg, aristide; hossay, patrick (eds.): shadows over europe: the development and impact of the extreme right in western europe. new york: palgrave: 3-17. schutte, julian 1991: schengen: its meaning for the free movement of persons in europe. in: common market law review 28,5: 49-570. shapiro, martin; stone, alec 1994: the new constitutional politics of europe. in: comparative political studies 26,4: 397-420. simmonds, kenneth r. 1988: the concertation of community migration policy. in: common market law review 25,1: 177-200. simpson, sir john hope 1939: the refugee problem. report of a survey. london: oxford university press. sjoberg, tommie 1991: the powers and the persecuted. the refugee problem and the intergovernmental committee on refugees. lund: lund university press. skran, claudena 1995: refugees in inter-war europe. oxford: clarendon press. sniderman, paul; peri, pierangelo; de figueiredo, rui; piazza, thomas 2000: the outsiders: prejudice and politics in italy. princeton: princeton university press. stiglitz, joseph 2010: freefall. free markets and the sinking of the global economy. london: penguin. thompson, dorothy 1938: refugees: a world problem. in: foreign affairs 16,3: 375-387. times 2008: eu clears berlusconi over roma gypsies, 04.09.2008. timmer, ashley; williamson, jeffrey 1998: immigration policy prior to the 1930s: labor markets, policy interactions, and globalization backlash. in: population and development review 24,4: 739-771. torpey, john 2003: passports and the development of immigration controls in the north atlantic world during the long nineteenth century. in: fahrmeir, andreas; faron, olivier; weil, patrick (eds.): migration control in the north atlantic world. new york: bergahn books: 73-91. welch, claude 2001: introduction. in: welch, claude (eds.): ngos and human rights: promises and performance. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press: 1-22. • irial glynn120 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “stärkerer einfl uss, weniger wohlwollen. reaktion zwischenstaatlicher organisationen in westeuropa auf die unerwünschte migration in wirtschaftlichen krisenzeiten im vergleich”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-18de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-18de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 20.09.2011 date of acceptance: 10.05.2012 dr. irial glynn ( ). school of history and archives, university college dublin. dublin, ireland. e-mail: irial.glynn@ucd.ie. url: https://sites.google.com/site/irialglynn/home © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) editorial on the special issue “geographical mobilities and family lives” eric d. widmer this special issue of comparative population studies on geographical mobilities and family lives is drawn from a selection of papers presented at the interim meeting of the research network on family and intimate lives of the european sociological association, which took place in wiesbaden in the fall of 2011. although the fi ve papers included in the special issue focus on distinct national contexts, concern dissimilar issues and use different methodologies, they all contribute to the advancement of the understanding of spatial dimensions of family life. this understanding has been made easier by recent changes in family sociology, which has rejected the assumption that family units are always and above all constituted by domestic households. this challenge to the parsonian view of families, which sees them as nuclear, has enabled researchers to emphasise the importance of spatial localisations of family members for understanding family processes. to some extent, all families are multi-local: individuals have always had signifi cant family members living elsewhere. the forms of family multi-localism, however, change according to the historical and social contexts. the multi-localism of contemporary families is exemplifi ed by the study of isengard (in this special issue), which deals with the distance between the residence of individuals and their adult children. typically, this distance becomes of central concern when one considers family ties beyond the household unit as functionally important. the study of isengard, based on data collected for 14 countries by the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) shows that a variety of factors stemming from the macro-contexts as well as from the social status of respondents infl uences the localisation of parents and their adult children. the position of individuals in the family life cycle as well as their socio-economic situation have an impact on the living distance between parents and children. the analysis also revealed that in the south of europe, parents and their adult children live far closer than in the northern parts, a likely consequence of distinct social policies and other structural constraints. the fi ndings of the study are important, as residential distance has a whole series of consequences for exchanges between family generations. family multilocalism has one of its roots in migration practices, which are obviously linked with work and job demands. therefore, an interest for the link between job-mobility and family life has developed during the last decade, which eventually lead to the funding by the eu of the job mobility and family life research project, comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 229-232 (date of release: 25.06.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-12en4 • eric d. widmer230 which made it possible for research teams from six european countries to work together (schneider/collet 2010). considering the impact of job-mobility on partnerships and parent-child relationships is a novel way of addressing the crucial issue of work-family balance. indeed, the globalisation of the market economy has considerable consequences for the organisation of families. the study by feldhaus and schlegel (in this special issue) extends beyond this work by considering the infl uence of different types of spatial mobility on partnership quality. job-related mobility has a negative effect on partnership quality only for women and mothers. for men, there are actually positive effects. therefore, job-mobility to some extent contributes to increasing gender inequalities. however, the results of that study also show that the mechanisms linking mobility and family interactions are fare from linear. indeed, spatial mobility does not reduce mutual relatedness in partnerships nor increases confl ict behaviour signifi cantly. in fact, much depends on the type of job-mobility. job-mobility also has very different meanings and consequences depending on the larger social context. in the case of portugal, as ramos and colleagues show (in this special issue), the lack of job opportunities and the impoverishment of rural areas impelled many individuals to migrate, with non-linear consequences for their family trajectories. both work and family trajectories depend on work opportunities found by portuguese people in their birth place, in other areas of portugal or overseas. therefore, it is necessary to include information about the social context and its evolution over time in order to understand how family trajectories and work opportunities intermingle. migration helps individuals to accumulate savings necessary to start a family. we may add that many individuals migrate with this exact purpose in mind. therefore, family and professional decisions made in the life course are infl uenced by the localisation of work opportunities and family members. job-mobility is certainly a strong causal factor for understanding family trajectories and family relationships. the inverse causality, however, is also relevant: family transitions and family events are likely to create a spatial reorganisation of family ties. for instance, divorce as a family event in many cases triggers a large number of moves, intertwined in the constraints associated with family life and paid work trajectories. according to the research of van ham and feijten (in this special issue), divorcees more often change places of residence than married persons, but move shorter distances. residential decisions after a divorce have a family meaning. it is therefore meaningless to analyse them without considering the family context from which they stem. indeed, in the circumstances of divorce, relocating means facing the risk of severing one’s ties with non-coresiding children, whose custody parent is not likely to relocate as well. divorce therefore is not a liberating factor in terms of spatiality, but rather imposes new constraints on parents and children. as bonizzoni’s and leonini’s research shows (in this special issue), the migration of mothers from third world countries to more wealthy contexts triggers a series of changes in family confi gurations which are often unintended and have consequences for a large number of family relationships. many women have to leave their children in their countries of origin. this in turn has consequences for the childrens’ fathers, but also for their grandparents, uncles and aunts or pseudo-kinship ties, which are encouraged to participate in or to fully take over the education of the geographical mobilities and family lives • 231 children. the understanding of the impact of spatial mobility on family life should therefore not be limited to the conjugal or the parent-child ties. indeed, family confi gurations beyond ties of the nuclear family are affected by the spatial distancing of family members created by transnational migration. the way in which children and the members of their family confi gurations interpret and adjust to these changes depends on the care givers, who took over childcare when the mothers left the country. thus, a large set of family relationships are involved for children to adapt to the effects of the transnational migration of their mothers. from the various results drawn from the papers collected in this special issue, i personally gather four general ideas, which may be important for future research: first, family practices and the spatial dispersion of family members are highly interconnected realities. geographic mobility does matter for family relationships, and not always in a negative sense. but family events and transitions also have effects on the spatial strategies of individuals, including their spatial mobility options. therefore, researchers should try to understand the systemic linkage existing between space, work and family life, without necessarily trying to set a priori which are the causes and which are the effects. second, the results presented in this special issue suggest that a majority of individuals currently have to deal with spatially distant relationships in their family life. to some extent, all families are multi-local, as all individuals have signifi cant family members not living in their household. there is however a great variability of spatial localisations in family confi gurations that goes beyond the nuclear family (widmer 2010). therefore, when addressing the link between geographical mobility and family life, one should go beyond the ties between spouses, partners, or parent-child relationships, by considering larger family confi gurations of ties. third, the understanding of living arrangements is much increased, when the life course is included as a variable in the research design. in other words, it is unlikely that one could understand a spatial arrangement without knowing how it has emerged throughout the involved persons’ life trajectories. the spatial dimension is entrenched within central issues for family research. it is also entrenched in job constraints. thus, one gets back to the idea of systemic linkages between the life trajectories of family and work (sapin et al. 2006), with spatial moves being a consequence of the interaction between the two spheres. at last, the systemic link existing between geographical mobility and key dimensions of family life are accounted for by several mechanisms that need additional research to be fully understood. it seems worth to invest research funds and time in this endeavour if we believe that the globalisation of the world economy is going to continue, and with it, the continuous spread of family ties across space. • eric d. widmer232 references sapin, marlène; spini, dario.; widmer, eric d. 2006: les parcours de vie: de l’adolescence au grand âge. lausanne: presse polytechniques et universitaires romandes. schneider, norbert f.; collet, beate 2010: mobile living across europe ii: causes and consequences of job-related spatial mobility in cross-national comparison. mobile living across europe. opladen/farmington hills: b. budrich. widmer, eric d. 2010: family confi gurations: a structural approach to family diversity. ashgate: london. prof. dr. eric d. widmer ( ). department of sociology, university of geneva. 1211 geneva, switzerland. e-mail: eric.widmer@unige.ch url: http://www.edwidmer.org/ © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness – divergent approaches and the integrating potential of the frame selection theory jan eckhard abstract: in order to explain the increasing childlessness in numerous european countries since the 1960s, research points to sociocultural changes on the one hand and rising costs of family formation on the other hand. yet, there is no comprehensive theory capable of integrating both causes and their interaction. this paper discusses the possibilities of an integrative model which is based on frame selection theory. the model refers to decisions in relationships and discusses the interaction between sociocultural orientations and structural incentives. the resulting hypothesis that the effects of incentives on family formation depend on the situational compatibility of a family-framed relationship perception is subsequently empirically tested using the german family survey panel (familiensurvey). keywords: fertility · declining birth rates · demographic change · relationship · family survey 1 introduction due to the far-reaching consequences of demographic changes, the increase in childlessness since 1965 is one of the currently most-discussed aspects of social development in germany.1 scientifi c literature points to a number of causes (for a recent overview see peuckert 2008: 114-122) that seem relevant to explain both the increasing postponement of family formation and the increasing childlessness. however, a mere list of causes does not lead to a consistent explanation (peuckert comparative population studies vol. 39, 1 (2014): 49-72 (date of release: 20.02.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-01en7 1 life course research points out that the increasing postponement of childbirth to a higher age plays an important role. however, even when referring to birth rates of different birth cohorts, an increasing childlessness – especially in west germany – is evident (dorbritz/ruckdeschel 2007; pötzsch 2012). • jan eckhard 50 2008: 114); a theoretical approach that is able to integrate the relevant factors into a consistent model is needed. this is problematic insofar, as, on the one hand, sociocultural as well as economic-structural changes are considered relevant (cf. kaufmann 2005: 122-158; burkart 2008: 41-49; peuckert 2008: 114-122; kreyenfeld/konietzka 2008) and, on the other hand, established theories refer to either sociocultural changes or economic-structural changes. to achieve a consistent explanation, it is necessary to either rule out one of the dimensions as irrelevant or formulate a theoretical model that is able to integrate both dimensions and relate them to each other. such a model needs to account for the interaction between cultural-institutional factors and economic-structural factors. it has to connect institution-led (or normsled) and utility-maximising behaviour. frame selection theory (fst) claims to be an integrative behavioural theory encompassing different types of behaviour and explaining which conditions infl uence the selection of one of these types (esser 1996, 2001; kroneberg 2005). this article examines whether fst can live up to its claim in terms of explaining increasing childlessness. section 2 focusses on the core arguments of the divergent sociological approaches in order to show their disparities. in section 3, the divergent arguments are integrated into a single theoretical model based on frame selection theory. the contribution of this paper is considered to be mainly theoretical; nevertheless, the resulting hypotheses are empirically tested in section 4. first empirical results are presented, however, due to various data limitations these need to be considered provisional and preliminary until further research can validate them. the data are limited, as the method of data collection was not developed to operationalise the mechanisms this paper is interested in. hence, the validity of the data is restricted. second, the dynamics of the assumed processes cannot be tested. 2 divergent explanations: demonopolisation theory and opportunity cost theory whereas explanations based on rational choice theory (hereafter rct) emphasize the effect of changing structural-economic conditions on family-related behaviour (for an overview cf. hill/kopp 2006: 102-146, 194-206), different macro-sociological theoretical traditions view family as a transforming social institution and thus focus on the effects of sociocultural-institutional processes (for an overview cf. huinink/ konietzka 2007: 101-125). these theoretical divergences also concern the increasing renunciation (or postponement) of family formation, as the demonopolisation theory and the opportunity cost theory illustrate. 2.1 demonopolisation theory the assumption that there is a demonopolisation of the sociocultural pattern for leading a familial and private life – simply labelled demonopolisation theory – can be identifi ed as the common idea of different institution-centred explanations of family-demographic change. the concept of an institutional transformation of the family theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 51 is quite common; however, a substantial, falsifi able theory can only be developed by precisely describing these institutions and their changes. still noteworthy therefore is the idea of a deinstitutionalisation of the family by tyrell (1988) that refers to the civic family model described in historical family research (rosenbaum 1982: 251-380) and its development during the second half of the 20th century. elements of this sociocultural model – which developed under specifi c social conditions – are the emotional basis of family relationships, the separation of employment and family life, the family as a safe haven, a gender-specifi c division of labour and an emphasis of the responsibility of parents for their children.2 the theory assumes that this civic family model, which is continuously institutionalised throughout modern times until the second half of the 20th century, loses its monopoly as the one predominant sociocultural model of private life from the 1960s onwards (tyrell 1988: 150-151).3 marriage, for example, was indispensable for approximately 90 percent of west german people in the 1960s (köcher 1985). in 1988, only 66 percent agree to the statement that a couple should marry if they are in love, and, in the year 2000, only 55 percent believe that marriage is necessary, if they have children (own calculations based on the family survey). at the same time, there is a rising share of people who can imagine living without children (institut für demoskopie allensbach 1993). the traditional family model losing its monopoly position also involves the loss of legitimations and sanctions manifested e.g. in the amendments of family laws and the increasing acceptance of divorces and alternative ways of living. for example, the share of people agreeing to the statement that “a divorce should be made as easy as possible” more than doubled in west germany between 1950 and 1980 (köcher 1985, translated by cpos). in the course of this development, “basic matters of course are removed” (tyrell 1988: 154, translated by cpos). the formerly cognitively linked elements – love relationship, marriage, sexuality, parenthood – do not belong together unquestioningly anymore. consequently, the range of sociocultural established concepts of private life increases. in this sense, the idea of deinstitutionalisation is also represented in the sociological concept of individualisation. individualisation – understood as a growing independence of individual behaviour from sociocultural norms and orientations (beck/beck-gernsheim 1994: 11-12) – implies a decreasing effect of the traditional model of private life and an increase of alternative options. such an increase is also implied by the demographic concept of the second demographic transition, which interprets increasing childlessness as a sign of “increasing manifestations of individual autonomy” (lesthaeghe 1992: 313, translated by cpos). the idea that this development leads to an unlimited number of options needs to be clarifi ed, though. deinstitutionalisation does not imply the traditional family model to be eliminated from the range of cultural orientations; it merely assumes a weakened “in the sense of reduced (but not eliminated) institutional quality” (tyrell 1988: 145, 2 for a detailed description of this model see the respective work by rosenbaum (1982). 3 note that the family model is seen not only as a model for family life, but also as a model for private life in general. • jan eckhard 52 translated by cpos). thus, the traditional family model is demonopolised, but it is not forgotten (hoffmann-nowotny 1996: 120). this is also posited by (more recent) system theoretical family sociology, which considers new patterns of private life to be functional differentiations of private institutions (meyer 1993). thus, the traditional family model, which has gone through a semantic change towards a primarily “child-focused” institution (nave-herz 1989: 217-218; meyer 1993: 27-28) competes with new institutionalised models of private life differentiating themselves from the familyor child-focused model by being “couple-focused” or being designed for individual needs (meyer 1993: 28-32). in conclusion, deinstitutionalisation theory, individualisation theory, and system theoretical family sociology conjointly attribute the changes in family formation to the demonopolisation of the traditional family model. 2.2 opportunity cost theory a common feature of different rct-explanations of increasing childlessness is the impact of changed incentives on behaviour, fi rst of all the increasing opportunity costs of parenthood (here simply labelled opportunity cost theory). whereas the utility function of fertility behaviour provides plausible explanations especially for the long-term decline in birth rates (leibenstein 1957), the cost function is relevant for the more recent decline in birth rates in the second half of the 20th century, which is primarily caused by an increase in childlessness.4 the importance of the costs of a family were pointed out by new home economics (becker 1960). based on this theoretical tradition and given the educational expansion during the 1960s, the impact of greater educational and employment opportunities for women were emphasised in diverse studies (e.g. klein 1989). in the context of “a structural ruthlessness towards the family” (kaufmann 1990, translated by cpos), educational and earnings-related opportunity costs of family formation increase with the access to higher education and the income potential of women. opportunity cost theory can base its fi ndings on numerous empirical studies fi nding an impact of education level on family formation. many studies show a reduced birth rate of women in education (e.g. blossfeld/huinink 1989; kurz 2005; schröder/brüderl 2008). further, a “level effect” (brüderl/klein 1991, translated by cpos) of female education can be observed in west germany. women with a higher level of education remain childless more often (e.g. klein 2003; kreyenfeld/konietzka 2008). opportunity cost theory states that this education effect only infl uences the rate of fi rst-born children but not of 4 whereas the percentage of childless women born in west germany in 1933-38 was only 11 percent, this value increased to 19 percent in 2008 for 45-49 year-old women who had largely completed their fertility biography (birth cohort 1959-64) (pötzsch 2012). despite decreasing rates of family formation in both parts of germany, considerably lower rates of childlessness (even for younger age groups) can be found in the states of former east germany (pötzsch 2012). analyses of fertility that include the number of children for men point to an even higher childlessness of men for all age groups (klein 2003). the decline of birth rates in west germany since the 1960s is mainly caused by an increase in childlessness and furthermore by a decrease in the number of third and fourth children (birg et al. 1990: 28) theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 53 further births, which is also confi rmed by empirical fi ndings (kohlmann/kopp 1997). nevertheless, all these results cannot rule out that sociocultural change does also infl uence decreasing rates of family formation.5 however, a stringent rct-model cannot include sociocultural change processes without substantial modifi cations or amendments of basic theoretical assumptions (elster 1989; münch 1998). accordingly, the decision to (temporarily) renounce family formation is understood as “a rational response to the different sociocultural opportunities and life chances” (kopp 2002: 98, translated by cpos), and the development of birth rates is “not a result of values, simple cultural conditions or purely traditional behaviours” (kopp 2002: 98-99, translated by cpos). 3 the integrating potential of frame selection theory on the one hand, deinstitutionalisation theory, individualisation theory, and differentiation theory state that behaviours changed due to the demonopolisation of the traditional family while not being able to explain the empirically proven impact of education on behaviour. on the other hand, rct views behavioural changes as an adaptation to changed incentive structures, consciously avoiding the infl uence of cultural-institutional processes. in order to achieve a consistent explanation, the relevance of cultural-institutional conditions needs to be negated. alternatively, a theoretical model needs to be found that describes the effects of both institutional role models and changed incentives and accounts for their interaction. while rctcentred approaches strive to achieve the former solution, fst is appropriate for the latter, given that it aims to integrate theories of norms-led or institution-led behaviour and utility-maximising behaviour. 3.1 frame selection theory fst is based on the assumption that any behaviour is preceded by a situational interpretation, which is based on cultural, institutionalised models and thus frames behaviour (esser 2001: 259). whether and how utility and/or cost criteria infl uence behaviour depends on the constellation of different determinants. the (subsequently relevant) version of fst by kroneberg (2005) proposes three “model selections”: the selection of a frame, a script (a program for behaviour), and a specifi c behaviour option. usually, the selection of a particular frame leads to the selection of a specifi c script, which again leads to the selection of a particular behaviour option (kroneberg 2005: 351-353). crucial for selecting a model is the match, i.e. the strength of a spontaneous activation of a cognitive model (frame, script, behaviour). the match (mi) of a frame (fi) is determined by the mental anchoring (ai) of the frame, 5 controlling for education effects, generational effects on the rate of family formation do not disappear (cf. klein 2003: 518). generational differences refl ecting the increase of childlessness can therefore be partly, but not completely, explained by different levels of education. • jan eckhard 54 the clarity of relevant situational features (oi), and the strength of the symbolic link between situational features and the cognitive model in the individual’s mind (vi). the selection weighting (g) of the frame is defi ned as g(fi) = mi = ai * oi * vi (kroneberg 2005: 351).6 generally, model selections can be rationally reconsidered and revised if necessary. the according “mode-selections” decide whether the model is followed automatically-spontaneous (as-mode) or whether it is rationally reconsidered (rc-mode). the match of the according frame also shapes mode-selection. the weaker the match, the more likely a spontaneously expected deliberation gain initiates a transition to rc-mode. on the other hand, this transition will not occur if the match is very strong, even in the case of large expected gains. the condition for the transition to rc-mode is defi ned by p(1-mi)(urc+cf) > c (kroneberg 2005: 355): in rc-mode, a certain gain is calculated by weighting the expectation p(1-mi), which is strongly infl uenced by the match mi this gain is determined by the expected utility of an alternative interpretation (urc) and the avoidance of misinterpretations (cf). 7 if this gain is greater than the deliberation costs, the transition to rc-mode, i.e. to utility-maximising behaviour, occurs. in this case, the situation is assessed rationally. whether the according frame is kept or not is determined by utility criteria. 3.2 applying fst to the decision on parenthood following esser’s (2002) theoretical concept of the “framing of marriage”, an fstbased approach on family formation can refer to the framing of couple relationships. relevant is thus the situational context of (yet childless) couple relationships and the existing sociocultural options of interpretation. first, the framing of the relationship needs to be clarifi ed. terms such as “liaison”, “affair”, “temporary companion”, “open relationship” etc. demonstrate that relationships can have different interpretations. thus, there are many possibilities to frame relationships. depending on the character of the relationship, it can be interpreted, for example, as a stable and reliable or rather a non-committal, loose partnership. put together, these characteristics determine whether both partners interpret their relationship as a “family to be”, i.e. a relationship that is developing towards family formation. in this case, the relationship is framed with a reference to family. the various options of framing a relationship imply different expectations and demands (of oneself). in the case of a family framing, this applies to, among others, lasting solidarity and reliability, high interaction, and the goal of family formation. in the case of alternative relationship framings, other expectations are emphasised instead – e.g. regarding sexuality or shared experiences.8 6 for the selection of the script and the behaviour option see kroneberg 2005: 351-353. 7 the utility urc needs to be interpreted as a vague “existence hypothesis” (esser 1996: 22), which can only be based on internalised experiences. purc can therefore be interpreted as a spontaneously expected deliberation gain. 8 this does not imply that a family framing rules out such expectations. expectations regarding shared experiences or sexuality are not emphasised as much, though, as in the case of an alternative relationship framing. theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 55 fst can theoretically determine what conditions lead to the selection of a family framing; the equations in table 1 relate to these conditions. the subscript “fam” indicates a family framing. for simplifi cation purposes only one alternative framing is considered. the subscript “alt” refers to the most promising framing out of all the alternatives. whether the family frame is selected depends on the simultaneous selection of model and mode. for the model selection (1), the match of the family frame needs to be stronger than the match of a competing frame. within mode selection (2), it is determined whether the behaviour of the script is adopted without refl ection or whether a transition to the deliberate mode occurs. the upper part of table 1 illustrates the conditions that do not lead to a transition to the deliberate mode. this transition happens when deliberation costs (c) are not too high and individuals assume that deliberation will lead to an increased utility (urc) or an avoidance of misinterpretations (cf). however, a strong match of the family frame (mfam) modifi es this expectation. if the relevant situational and relationship features are clear, a family framing in as-mode also occurs when family formation includes high opportunity costs. this is a case of spontaneous family framing. the implied demands (of oneself), expectations and the according behaviour are independent from utility and costs. in case of a weaker match, the transition to rational deliberation occurs (3). however, the family frame and its script are not yet renounced. mode selection is initially only led by the vague assumption that there may be a “better” model for the situation. if rational deliberation occurs, an alternative is not automatically adopted, but subjected to another, now deliberate-rational selection process. now the instrumental utility u of each interpretation and its subjective expected probability p become relevant (kroneberg 2007: 218). since the fi t between the interpretation and tab. 1: selection criteria of a family framing (1) model selection (2) mode selection mfam > malt p(1-mfam)(urc+cf) < c spontaneous selection of the family frame if p(1-mfam)(urc+cf) > c (3) rational deliberation pfamufam > palt’ualt utility-maximising selection the family frame mfam: match of the family frame malt : match of an alternative frame urc: expected utility of a rational deliberation (deliberation gain) p(1-mfam): expected probability of a deliberation gain cf: costs of a misinterpretation c: deliberation costs ufam: instrumental utility of the family frame ualt: instrumental utility of an alternative frame source: own design • jan eckhard 56 the situational features indicates the probability of reaching the utility of an interpretation, p corresponds to the match m. if the alternative interpretation is consistent with the situational features (so that malt or palt take on a high value) and the alternative interpretation leads to a comparatively high expected utility (ualt)), this supports a renunciation of the family frame and the corresponding behaviour. however, if deliberation leads to the expectation that the family frame is more gainful (as pfam, mfam, or ufam take on a high value), this leads to a utility-maximising family framing of the relationship. these considerations lead to the hypothesis of an interaction effect of partnership situation and incentive structures on relationship behaviour. a transition to rational deliberation only occurs in the case of a weak match. only under these conditions do incentive structures infl uence behaviour. hypothesis 1 (interaction hypothesis): the better a family framing of the relationship matches the situation, the less relationship behaviour – including the decision of parenthood – is guided by utility/cost criteria. note that simultaneously with selecting a certain frame a certain behavioural programme is activated. the script of the family frame, which is still shaped by the historical model of the civil-modern family, prescribes not only “if” but also “how” a family is formed. after all, the traditional model does not postulate family formation “at any cost”, but a “responsible parenthood” (kaufmann 2005: 314, translated by cpos). cultural-historically this can be justifi ed by the western european principle of neo-local family formation described by hajnal (1965). system-theoretical family research further postulates that the signifi cance of parental responsibility in the family frame has increased in recent decades (meyer 1993; nave-herz 1989). how the script of responsible parenthood is implemented is decided on the level of behavioural selection, which is subject to rational criteria. thus, the timing of family formation within the family frame follows rational considerations. it can be expected that the pattern of couples postponing fi rst births until their education has been completed (cf. e.g. blossfeld/huinink 1989; kurz 2005) can also be observed for relationships with a family framing: hypothesis 2 (script hypothesis): a family-framed relationship implies a script for responsible parenthood. thus, family formation is an imperative, yet the timing is deliberately chosen. 3.3 the increase of childlessness represented by the fst model these considerations can be related to historical changes and the respective explanations of demonopolisation and opportunity cost theory. it is crucial that the fi t between frame and situation depends on the extent to which interpretations are socioculturally present. on the micro-level of the explanation this concerns mental anchoring of frames (a) and the symbolic link between situational features and the cognitive model in the individual’s mind (v). in this regard, demonopolisation of the traditional model means that partnership situations, which were previously exclusively linked with the family frame (due to its monopoly), have become compatible with other framing options in the course of social change. in times when the famtheoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 57 ily frame had a monopoly, “romantic love ‘urges’ for marriage, marriage ‘naturally’ implies cohabitation and sexuality, and thus suggests ‘having children’ and consequently family formation” (tyrell 1988: 154, translated by cpos). whereas previously a relationship could only be (and therefore was) associated with the family frame, demonopolisation has made individuals aware of other frames that can be associated with relationships. the following explanation of the historical change of birth rates takes these considerations and assumptions into account. it is based on framing theory and integrates the divergent explanations for this development mentioned above into a comprehensive and interrelated model. this model implies that due to a continuous sociocultural demonopolisation of the traditional family model, alternative interpretations of relationships emerge. according to fst, a family framing needs to fulfi l certain conditions: a clear fi t of the partnership situation becomes the core criterion for a (spontaneous) family framing of the relationship. if this condition is not fulfi lled, a family framing can still occur employing utility maximisation, however low (opportunity) costs of parenthood are then a necessary precondition – one that is fulfi lled less and less frequently in the course of social change. the postulated increasing importance of the partnership situation follows from the match (m) being dependent on the clarity of relevant situational features (o) in order to select a particular frame from various framing options. the broader the spectrum of eligible frames the clearer situational features must point to a certain frame for a spontaneous framing to succeed. otherwise, a transition to rc-mode is likely. in this case, utility criteria and opportunity cost theory become relevant (interaction hypothesis). the fst based approach interprets changed incentives and opportunity costs as changes in utility attribution (u-parameters) to the frames. lower incentives of parenthood lead to lower u-values of the family frame, increased opportunity costs are refl ected in higher u-values of competing frames. thus, the process of demonopolisation attenuates the match of a family framing (mfam). moreover, greater educational and employment opportunities for women decrease the utility attributed to the family frame (ufam) and increases the utility attributed to alternative frames (ualt)). it is important to not simply list the different causal factors but to relate them to each other. thus, the fst approach emphasizes: only after breaking the monopoly of the family frame for partnerships, increased opportunity costs can become relevant for mass behaviour, since only after weakening mfam the relation between ufam and ualt) becomes relevant. it needs to be added that, according to the script hypothesis, timing decisions are made using rational criteria, even in the case of a family-framed relationship. as expected, the pattern of couples postponing fi rst births until their education has been completed is not an outcome of the demonopolisation of the traditional family model, but can be observed in the past as well as today. the relation between longer periods of education in the course of educational expansion and the trend of delaying family formation is thus independent from changed constellations of sociocultural models. nevertheless, the process of sociocultural demonopolisation contributes to couples intending not to start a family so that the question of the “right” time for family formation does not even arise. • jan eckhard 58 note that the recommended theory here does not simply claim an impact of values (or attitudes or preferences). it says that an increased spectrum of life and partnership concepts makes a family framing less likely by making it conditional on clear relationship features or low (opportunity) costs. this is completely irrespective of values. there is a great difference between framing and values. one interprets a situation (does a certain behaviour fi t?), the other evaluates a situation (is a certain behaviour desirable?). one is concerned with a “model of reality”, the other with a “model for reality” (schluchter 2000: 98, translated by cpos).9 a low regard for parenthood or “hedonism” does not prevent the initiation of family framing by certain contextual features of a partnership situation. conversely, other features of a couple relationship might not allow a family framing, even if the individual desires a family with children. due to this mechanism, a lack of interest in a family or hedonistic preferences have not prevented that the relations described by tyrell (1988: 154, see section 2.1) came into effect and nearly every functioning couple relationship led to a family in the past days of the monopoly of the family frame. the considered explanation for the historically increasing childlessness is based less on a change of values but rather on the assumption of fading matters of course. 4 empirical results current controversies surrounding fst concern the question of falsifi cation (etzrodt 2007). it has been stated that fst generally assumes a specifi c interaction between the weighting of spontaneous model activation and the infl uence of incentive structures (kroneberg 2008: 268-270). a strong match between situation and frame leads to a lower effectiveness of the utility, costs and opportunity costs of a behaviour. accordingly, it was hypothesised that there is an interaction between the match of the family frame (which is demonopolised, but still available as a cognitive model) and the opportunity costs (interaction hypothesis). the effects of the education level of women on the rate of family formation are commonly interpreted as an expression of higher opportunity costs (klein 1989; brüderl/klein 1991; hill/kopp 2006: 213-214). in order to test the assumed interaction of the fst model, it can be analysed whether the effects of education on the rate of family formation depend on the match between situation and family framing. these hypotheses can be investigated employing the german family survey panel. panel data ensure that documented perceptions precede behaviour. however, the available data does not allow empirically testing the interpretation of historical changes of childbirth behaviour that follows from the theoretical considerations (sub-section 3.3). there are no panel data both covering the relevant period of time 9 according to the assumptions of the fst-based approach, values can have an infl uence as factors of the utility parameters ufam (utility of the family frame) and ualt (utility of an alternative frame); however, the utility parameters only infl uence decision-making if a spontaneous family framing does not occur due to a weak match. theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 59 and containing adequate indicators of the relationship situation. the analysed hypotheses (interaction and script hypothesis) are related to the decision on parenthood under increased options of relationship framing. thus, they apply to the time period covered by the panel, i.e. the period after demonopolisation. 4.1 data and method the german family survey panel comprises 4,997 cases, of which 2,002 were surveyed three times. it contains information on 4,375 relationships (and marriages) that existed in 1988. for the following analyses, only 1,040 relationships, in which both partners were childless at that time, are relevant. the data of the family survey panel refer to west germany, including west berlin. the initial survey from 1988 (10,043 interviews) is representative of the west german population aged 18 to 55 at that time. however, the survey was designed without the theoretical considerations that are of interest to this paper and focused on other research interests than interpretations of relationships. the following analyses can therefore only serve as a preliminary test of the theoretical model. analyses based on more valid, framing-related survey data still need to be conducted. moreover, the available data cannot describe situational interpretations dynamically, i.e. their changeability. thus, the indicators used here (see table 2) only represent the relationship framing at a certain point in time (the time of the fi rst wave of the family survey), but not the changes of framing during the survey period. since, according to theory, the match is determined by the subjectively perceived situational features, the indicators used to identify the match between relationship situation and family frame are the subjective perceptions of respondents regarding their relationship situation, which are collected by the survey. three variables are selected, which seem relevant for a match of a family-framed relationship: fi rst, the perception of the partnership as a “functioning relationship”; second, the feeling of an emotional bond; and third – as a distinction from primarily couple-centred relationships –a rather moderate importance of sexuality. precise operationalisations of these variables are illustrated in table 2. the match of the family frame (mfam) is defi ned by these three perception criteria. it is important that these variables are not so much indicators of attitudes but rather neutral situational perceptions. they indicate a fi t between situation and frame, not an evaluation of the frame. in contrast, the appreciation of family is a factor, which, according to the theoretical considerations above, is independent from the framing effect.10 it is therefore only used as a control variable in subsequent analyses (operationalised as the opinion that children make life more fulfi lled). opportunity costs are operationalised via educational success as this is decisive for employment opportunities. an operationalisation via income or employment 10 the role of values in the framing process is controversial (cf. stachura 2006 and etzrodt 2008). • jan eckhard 60 would ignore the issue of women voluntarily forgoing employment to start a family (schröder/brüderl 2008). in order to account for the script hypothesis posed above, the infl uence of the education level and the duration of education need to be distinguished. whereas it is assumed that the effect of the education level on the rate of family formation is dependent on the match of the family frame, the script hypothesis postulates that the reduced rate of family formation during education is independent of this match. the values of the independent variables are collected from the fi rst wave of the german family survey in 1988; information on family formation behaviour is gathered from subsequent panel waves in 1994 and 2000. thus, for relationships that were surveyed twice, it can be reconstructed whether a child was born in the 6 years between the fi rst and the second wave. for relationships surveyed three times, this is possible for a period of 12 years. the effects are analysed using the following hazard model: ln hi(t) logarithm of the rate of family formation = α1 constant + α2*t + α3*ln(t) (logarithm of the) duration of the relationship + α4*afrau + α5*ln(afrau) (logarithm of the) age of the woman (-18) + α6*amann + α7*ln(amann) (logarithm of the) age of the man (-18) + α8*(j-1988) calendar year -1988 + σβj aij(t1988, 1994) further variables updated in 1994 + σγkbik further time-invariant variables the event-analytical models concern the transition to having a common fi rst-born child (family formation of a relationship). the hazard model assumes a non-linear infl uence of the duration of the relationship (t) and the age (a) of the partners on the tab. 2: indicators of relationship perception variables indicators (family survey 1988 and panel) perception of the relationship a : functioning relationship response to the question “[…] which problems occurred in your life during the last 12 months […] – problems with the partner” (translated by cpos), values: occurred = 0; not occurred = 1 b : emotional bond response to the question “to whom do you feel a close emotional bond?” (translated by cpos), values: partner mentioned = 1; partner not mentioned = 0 c : moderate importance of sexuality response to the question “whether the statements apply to you or not. – sexuality plays an important role in our relationship”, values: “fully agree” = 0; other statements = 1 (translated by cpos) mfam = a * b * c source: own design theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 61 rate of family formation. this is implemented by using both t and ln(t) and, respectively, both a and ln(a). the hazard model can thus be understood as a modifi cation or an extension of the sickle-model (diekmann/mitter 1984; more extensively klein 2003) and accounts for the sickle-shaped (fi rst rising sharply, then declining) develtab. 3: descriptive statistics of the panel sample, childless relationships (n=1,040) total (n=1,040) subsample (n=293)a parameters (1988) mean % mean % duration of the relationship (years) 6.1 9.7 woman’s age (years) 28.0 34.2 man’s age 30.8 37.2 married 34.3 69.3 cohabiting 47.4 85.7 woman’s education: – lower school leaving certificate/no certificate 27.8 34.1 – general school leaving certificate 32.8 33.1 – a-level 24.0 25.6 – unknown 15.4 6.8 man’s education: – lower school leaving certificate/no certificate 35.4 40.6 – general school leaving certificate 21.5 21.2 – a-level 27.0 31.4 – unknown 16.1 6.8 woman in education/training 13.5 2.7 man in education/training 12.6 3.8 appreciation of family1 0.8 0.8 perception of the relationship:2 – functioning 73.2 72.0 – functioning and emotional 68.8 67.9 – functioning, emotional and moderate sexual (mfam=1) 57.0 58.7 female respondent 50.3 51.9 male respondent 49.7 48.1 surveyed in 1988 and 1994 66.2 40.3 surveyed in 1988, 1994 and 2000 33.8 59.7 a subsample for the analysis of permanent childlessness: relationships with women aged between 38 and 45 during the survey period 1 agreement to the statement “children make life more intense and fulfi lled”. “fully agree” = 1; “agree” = 0.66; “disagree” = 0.33; “fully disagree” = 0 2 see table 2 for the operationalisation source: german family survey panel 1988-2000, childless relationships (in 1988); own calculations • jan eckhard 62 opment of birth rates of fi rst-born children with regards to both the course of life and the development of relationships. besides the variables of interest (education, duration of training or education, match indicator), marital status, the existence of a common household, and an indicator for the appreciation of family (approval of the statement “children make life more intense and fulfi lled”, translated by cpos) are used as control variables. with the exception of the match indicator, which is only collected in the fi rst wave, all variables are updated during the second wave (1994). shorter observation periods of respondents who were only interviewed twice are accounted for by truncating the data in 1994. the data were further truncated for women at the age of 45. provided that the relationship started after the partner fi nished school, the education level of the partner can also be accounted for besides the education level of the respondent. to allow this, relationships that started during the school days of the partner are not included in the analyses. thus, the number of cases is reduced to 1,040 relationships. an additional analysis focusing explicitly on effects for continuous childlessness is based on a sample of 293 relationships. both partners in the relationships of this sample were childless during the fi rst wave of data collection and the respective women reached an age between 38 and 45 during the survey period. in these cases, not starting a family can be interpreted as a permanent renunciation of parenthood. table 3 illustrates the distribution of the variables in both samples. 4.2 results as the odds ratios regarding female education in column (1) of table 4 show, the data clearly refl ect the well-known effects of education on the rate of family formation. this also counts for the low rate of family formation while men and women are in education or training. column (2) analyses the infl uence of the perceived relationship. independent of education, duration of the relationship, and other control variables, a positive effect of perceived relationship on the rate of family formation can be observed. relationships that perceive a strong match with a family frame lead to a family signifi cantly more often than relationships not perceiving this match. column (3) analyses the interaction between the match effect and the impact of education-specifi c opportunity costs that the fst approach assumes. as hypothesised, a signifi cant interaction effect can be observed for relationships of women with an a-level education. if a strong match of the family frame is present, an alevel education does not have a negative effect on the rate of family formation. in the case of a clear fi t of the family frame, opportunity costs become behaviourally irrelevant. adding up the effects for relationships of women with an a-level education and a strong fi t of the family frame, the odds ratio of family formation is (0.454 * 2.372 =) 1.077. thus, when the family frame fi ts the situational features, a difference between relationships of women with an a-level education and relationships of women with lower levels of education cannot be found. this effect of the interaction between the match of the family frame and education only applies to completed education, but not to current training courses. as the comparatively small and statistically insignifi cant interaction effects in column (3) theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 63 tab. 4: effects of education, perception of the couple relationship and other factors on the rate of family formation (hazard model, relative risksodds ratios) °, *, **, *** level of signifi cance max. 10 percent, 5 percent, 1 percent, 0.1 percent 1 time-variant variables, which are updated from 1994 onwards; all other variables refer to the base year 1988 2 see table 2 for the operationalisation 3 no update in 1994 4 agreement to the statement “children make life more intense and fulfi lled”. “fully agree” = 1; “agree” = 0.66; “disagree” = 0.33; “fully disagree” = 0 source: german family survey panel 1988-2000; childless relationships (in 1988); own calculations (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) woman’s education:1 – maximum lower school leaving certificate 1 1 1 1 1 – general school leaving certificate 0.766* 0.747* 0.613* 0.547° 0.757* – a-level 0.727* 0.721* 0.454** 0.600° 0.438* – unknown 0.595° 0.608° 0.585° 0.589° 0.604° man’s education:1 – maximum lower school leaving certificate 1 1 1 1 1 – general school leaving certificate 0.925 0.925 0.89 1.012 0.901 – a-level 1.007 0.998 0.984 0.929 0.99 – unknown 0.886 0.914 0.896 0.893 0.879 woman in education1 0.59* 0.59* 0.636 0.990 0.577* man in education1 0.67° 0.67° 0.606 1.292 0.665* mfam 2, 3 1.24* 0.89 1.515 mfam * woman’s general school leaving certificate 1.434 mfam * woman’s a-level 2.372* 3.44* mfam * woman in education 0.636 mfam * man in education 1.144 w = appreciation of family4 2.827*** 2.899*** 2.855*** 2.524* 2.876*** w * woman’s general school leaving certificate 1.476 w * woman’s a-level 1.384 w * woman in education 0.517 w * man in education 0.448 afrau * mfam 0.967 afrau * woman’s a-level 1.011 afrau * mfam * woman’s a-level 0.957 control variables: relationship duration1 0.878** 0.877*** 0.874*** 0.878** 0.874*** ln (relationship duration) 3.15*** 3.122*** 3.16*** 3.140*** 3.171*** afrau = woman’s age 181 0.738*** 0.741*** 0.733*** 0.737*** 0.744*** ln (afrau) 19.971*** 18.898*** 21.642*** 20.12*** 19.023*** amann = man’s age – 181 0.904° 0.905° 0.916 0.904° 0.909° ln (amann) 2.363 2.329 2.009 2.390 2.204 year (-1988)1 0.971 0.976 0.978 0.972 0.978 married1 1.681*** 1.688*** 1.679*** 1.683*** 1.679*** cohabiting1 1.196 1.21 1.207 1.196 1.215 base rate 8.937*** 9.2*** 7.383*** 9.027*** 9.014*** log-likelihood -1072.586 -1071.008 -1067.266 -1071.837 -1067.239 spells/family formations 5553/304 5553/304 5553/304 5553/304 5553/304 • jan eckhard 64 illustrate, the main effect of periods of education is not moderated by the framing of the relationship. thus, periods of education have a negative impact on the rate of family formation, even if there is a strong fi t between the perceived relationship situation and the family frame. that a family is generally only started after completing professional training or education is independent from the perceived relationship. this also corresponds to the script hypothesis posed above. thus, the results in column (3) confi rm both the interaction and the script hypothesis. column (4) indicates that similar relations cannot be shown for the variable indicating the appreciation of family (approval of the statement “children make life more intense and fulfi lled”, translated by cpos). in contrast to the match of the family frame, the appreciation of family does not moderate the effect of education. accordingly, the behavioural relevance of opportunity costs for family formation depends on whether the situation and the frame match – i.e. the compatibility of a family framing – and not simply on the preferences or the values of the individuals. regarding the interaction hypothesis – i.e. the moderating role of relationship perception on the effect of opportunity costs – it is worth investigating whether this relation depends on the age of the partners. if it is restricted to younger age groups, this would indicate that relationship framing and its impact on the relevance of opportunity costs only applies to postponing family formation. in this case, the process of changed conditions of relationship framing theoretically outlined above would merely be a factor of an increasing postponement of fi rst births to a later stage in life. on the other hand, if this relation also applies to partners reaching the end of their fertility, this would imply that the effects do not only lead to a postponement of family formation but also to permanent childlessness. column (5) of table 4 contains a second-order interaction effect indicating whether the interaction between relationship framing and (female) education is moderated by the age (of the woman). as the fi gures show, no such interaction can be demonstrated. neither the impact of relationship framing nor the moderation of the effect of education through relationship framing is dependent on the age of the woman.11 the logistic regression analysis in table 5 confi rms that the described connections are not only relevant for the postponement of parenthood, but also for permanent childlessness. it analyses the effects of education, perceived relationship and other factors on the probability that a relationship of a woman between 38 and 45 remains childless. this analysis is based on the subsample of 293 couples described in table 3 which were childless during the fi rst wave of the panel and in which the woman had reached the respective age during the survey period. the odds ratios show that a higher level of education of the woman is positively correlated with childlessness even at an advanced age. the signifi cant interaction effects further indicate that this relation is highly dependent on the match of the family 11 an alternative analysis (not displayed) calculated the second-order interaction effect using categorical age variables taking on the value 1 if the woman is aged between 39 and 45 and thus indicating that she has reached the end of her fertility. this analysis confi rms that the infl uence of relationship framing (moderation of the effect of education) can be found for older as well as for younger female age groups. theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 65 tab. 5: effects of education, perception of the couple relationship and other factors on the childlessness of women aged 38 to 45 (logistic regression, odds ratios) woman’s education: – maximum lower school leaving certificate 1 – general school leaving certificate 5.051* – a-level 6.021* – unknown 4.734 man’s education: – maximum lower school leaving certificate 1 – general school leaving certificate 0.812 – a-level 1.195 – unknown 1.842 woman in education 1.041 man in education 0.967 mfam * woman’s general school leaving certificate 0.133* mfam * woman’s a-level 0.153* control variables: relationship duration1 1.213° ln (relationship duration) 0.366° afrau = woman’s age – 181 1.512 ln (afrau) 0.138 amann = man’s age – 181 1.042 ln (amann) 0.356 married 0.452° appreciation of family4 0.200*** constant (log-linear) 2.410 log-likelihood 110.254*** relationships 293 °, *, **, *** level of signifi cance max. 10 percent, 5 percent, 1 percent, 0.1 percent 1 time-variant variables, which are updated from 1994 onwards; all other variables refer to the base year 1988 2 see table 2 for the operationalisation 3 no update in 1994 4 agreement to the statement “children make life more intense and fulfi lled”. “fully agree” = 1; “agree” = 0.66; “disagree” = 0.33; “fully disagree” = 0 source: german family survey panel 1988-2000; childless relationships of women aged 38 to 45 during the period of the survey; own calculations • jan eckhard 66 frame. the odds ratio of permanent childlessness for women with a general school leaving certifi cate is 5.051 times higher and for women with a-level 6.021 times higher than for women with a lower school leaving certifi cate. in case of a strong match these effects are reduced by the factor 0.133 and 0.153, respectively. thus, the reduced effects are quite similar to an odds ratio of 1. hence, an effect of education or opportunity costs cannot be found, if a relationship fi ts the family frame, even with regard to permanent childlessness. overall, the results of the family survey panel confi rm the theoretically assumed interdependencies. they confi rm the hypothesis based on fst that opportunity cost effects are dependent on the framing of the couple relationship. it is not investigated, though, whether the fst model can empirically explain the historical decline in birth rates. in order to do this, it would be necessary to attribute rates of family formation in different decades to varying relationship framings. available data, however, only allows for an analysis of subjective perceptions of relationship and their signifi cance for birth rates in recent times. as far as a test of the fst model’s assumptions is possible considering available data, these assumptions are supported. 5 summary and outlook as the previous discussion has shown, fst can be the basis for hypotheses on the changed family formation behaviour that include the infl uence of both cultural-institutional conditions and economic-structural incentive structures and account for their theoretical interrelation. a preliminary analysis is able to prove the assumed interrelation, even if more well-founded analyses based on more valid indicators for perceived relationship frames are still to be carried out. especially investigations based on more valid indicators and dynamic models of the framing process would be valuable. however, the empirical results indicate that the fst is a suitable theoretical basis for a consistent and differentiated explanation of increased childlessness. instead of listing seemingly relevant causes, based on fst, explicit hypotheses regarding the type of interaction between the different factors can be proposed. this was illustrated using the theories of demonopolisation and opportunity costs: if the behavioural relevance of opportunity costs depends on the family framing, the demonopolisation process leads to a greater infl uence of opportunity costs on relationship-related and family-related decisions. at the same time, couple relationship context becomes more important. stable relationships are more than a structural precondition of family planning. relationship quality and stability determine the extent to which an aspired common parenthood is self-evident. this explains why the rate of family formation is not declining for enduring and stable relationships (klein 2003) and that the desire to have children is often only generated or substantiated on the grounds of a functioning relationship (cf. matthias-bleck 1996; helfferich 2002: 180-181; helfferich et al. 2006: 184, 188; eckhard 2006, 2010: 39-42, 67-71; eckhard/klein 2006; 2007: 280-281; 2012). it can theoretical explanations of increasing childlessness • 67 further be concluded that a missing desire to have children should not necessarily be interpreted as an expression of hedonism or low regard for family. according to the presented theoretical considerations, a missing desire to have children is based rather on doubting the appropriateness of becoming a parent in the respective private circumstances, a doubt that has increased due to sociocultural changes. however, the model is able to provide explanations that go beyond the theories of demonopolisation and opportunity costs. according to the presented considerations, the birth-reducing infl uence of other factors such as disadvantages of parenthood concerning the standard of living and leisure time (see dorbritz/ruckdeschel 2007), “commitment costs” (birg et al. 1991, translated by cpos), or risen demands on the role of a parent (cf. peuckert 2008: 120-121) increased during the institutional change. the determinants of frame selection concerning “whether” to start a family and the determinants of behaviour selection concerning “how” and “when” to start a family need to be distinguished. decision processes regarding the timing of family formation can be assigned to behaviour selection. however, this selection is shaped by frame-inherent script specifi cations. if a family-framed couple relationship follows the script, which calls for “responsible family planning” and hence for rational birth timing decision, rct-based models coordinating different goals in life can be used. for example, the concept of reference utility (huinink/schröder 2008; schröder 2007) can model “whether unfavourable circumstances lead to a postponement of a planned parenthood or a reduction in the number of children, or whether goals are realised in spite of unfavourable circumstances” (schröder 2007: 372, translated by cpos). besides longer periods of education, another factor to be considered especially regarding “when” – and less “whether” – a family is started is the increasing employment insecurity (kreyendfeld 2008; tölke 2005). an fst-based model of fertility development can also be used and generalised for intercultural comparisons (cf. nauck 2007). especially when differences between countries or regions cannot be attributed to divergent economic-structural conditions alone, the question arises whether relevant role models have divergent implications. considering the persistently different patterns of family formation and family growth in east and west germany and given the contrasting family policies in the former frg and gdr this question also applies to the german domestic comparison (huinink 2006: 223, 239-240). in each case, an fst-based approach emphasizes the dependence of incentives on the specifi c constellations of the sociocultural and situational context. acknowledgements i am grateful to clemens kroneberg and daniel wiese for valuable comments and suggestions. • jan eckhard 68 references beck, ulrich; beck-gernsheim, elisabeth (eds.) 1994: riskante freiheiten. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. becker, gary s. 1960: an economic analysis of fertility. in: national bureau of economic research (eds.): economic change in developed 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schluchter, wolfgang 2000: verantwortungsethik und vielfalt. weilerswist: vellbrück. schröder, jette; brüderl, josef 2008: der effekt der erwerbstätigkeit von frauen auf die fertilität: kausalität oder selbstselektion? in: zeitschrift für soziologie 37,2 :117-136. schröder, thorsten 2007: geplante kinderlosigkeit? ein lebensverlaufstheoretisches entscheidungsmodell. in: konietzka, dirk; kreyenfeld, michaela (eds.): kinderlosigkeit in deutschland. wiesbaden: verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 337-400. stachura, mateusz 2006: logik der situationsdefi nition und logik der handlungsselektion. der fall des wertrationalen handelns. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 58,3: 433-452 [doi: 10.1007/s11575-006-0104-8]. tölke, angelika 2005: die bedeutung von herkunftsfamilie, berufsbiographie und partnerschaften für den übergang zu ehe und vaterschaft. in: tölke, angelika; hank, karsten (eds.): das ‚vernachlässigte‘ geschlecht in der familienforschung. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 101-130. tyrell, hartmann 1988: ehe und familie – institutionalisierung und deinstitutionalisierung. in: lüscher, karl; schultheis, franz; wehrspann, michael (eds.): die ‚postmoderne‘ familie. konstanz: universitätsverlag: 145-156. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “theoretische erklärungen der zunehmenden kinderlosigkeit – divergierende ansätze und das integrationspotenzial der frame-selektions-theorie”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-01de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-01de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 22.03.2012 date of acceptance: 08.01.2013 dr. jan eckhard (). universität heidelberg, max-weber-institut für soziologie, d-69115 heidelberg, germany. e-mail: jan.eckhard@soziologie.uni-heidelberg.de, url: http://www.soz.uni-heidelberg.de/dr_jan_eckhard/820,541,0,0,1.html published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility: austria, germany and switzerland in a european context* tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels abstract: across developed countries, cohorts of women born after world war ii have seen a shift of childbearing towards later ages and a concomitant decline in fertility level. we study this shift using the notions of fertility postponement (fertility decline at younger ages) and subsequent recuperation (a compensatory fertility increase at higher reproductive ages). we apply order-specifi c data and extend and elaborate on two broad approaches to this process: 1) a basic benchmark model extensively used by tomas frejka and his colleagues and 2) a relational model proposed by ron lesthaeghe (2001). our work focuses especially on three predominantly german-speaking countries, austria, germany and switzerland, and compares them with selected european countries and the united states. we illustrate the usefulness of these two approaches for constructing projection scenarios of completed cohort fertility among women of reproductive age. using three key indicators of the postponement transition – initial fertility level, absolute fertility decline at younger ages, and the relative degree of fertility “recuperation” at older ages – we demonstrate that each of these components is salient for explaining contemporary cross-country differences in cohort fertility. recuperation is especially important, but is also clearly patterned by birth order: whereas all the countries analysed have experienced a vigorous recovery of delayed fi rst births, pronounced differentials are observed with regard to the recuperation of second and particularly of third and later births. in line with the differentials observed, projected values of completed fertility in fi ve european countries vary widely for the cohorts born in the early 1980s, ranging from 1.3 in the lowest scenario for spain to over 1.8 in the highest scenario for the czech republic. keywords: fertility · fertility postponement · fertility recuperation · cohort fertility · fertility projections · germany · austria · switzerland comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 417-452 (date of release: 06.09.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-10en3 * this article contains supplementary materials in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2011-16en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/86/87. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels418 1 introduction 1.1 period and cohort analyses of the “postponement” process since the 1970s, fertility trends in europe, the united states and other developed countries have been dominated by the shift in childbearing to ever later ages. this shift, often described as [fertility] postponement, constitutes a potential complication when studying period fertility change because the intensity with which births are being shifted to later ages has a temporary depressing effect on period fertility rates, thus exacerbating the general trend of declining fertility characteristic in most developed countries in the 1970s-1990s. consequently, it is not easy to distinguish in a period perspective between a “real” decline in fertility (i.e. the change in fertility level or fertility quantum) and a temporary depressing effect of the shifting timing of childbearing (tempo effect). considerable debate ensued around the methods that were proposed to estimate these two components and about period fertility measurement in general (e.g. bongaarts/feeney 1998; lesthaeghe/willems 1999; schoen 2004; sobotka 2004; ní bhrolcháin 2011; sobotka/lutz 2011; bongaarts/sobotka 2012). a systematic analysis of a recent shift in period fertility timing has been provided fi rst by kohler et al. (2002) and billari and ortega (2002), who coined the term postponement transition. this concept was subsequently elaborated by goldstein et al. (2009). period fertility analysis provides one perspective on fertility change over time. we argue that a cohort perspective, which is often neglected, provides an equally valuable contribution, and that looking at only one of these two dimensions can lead to partial, distorted conclusions. in contrast to period fertility trends, the measurement of the quantum and tempo changes in cohort fertility is straightforward. the cohort approach does not need to take recourse to statistical constructs such as a synthetic cohort, and consequently it does not have to cope with the avalanche of problems related to it. whilst each birth cohort can shift births to younger or older ages, its completed fertility rate (ctfr), conventionally measured at age 50, gives an unbiased measure of the cohort fertility level. changes in both the cohort fertility level and timing can be analysed from data observed on age-specifi c cohort fertility rates and cumulated fertility rates at selected ages. considering the time and effort that period analysts have spent on correcting tempo distortions in period indicators, the obvious layman’s question would be why they have often abandoned the real cohort view to start with. the main obstacle in analysing cohort fertility obviously lies in the long “waiting time” until the cohort completes its reproductive history. while age 40 is frequently used as a safe threshold for making assessments about the cohort ctfr, there are still many years left before an almost complete fertility history of each cohort currently of reproductive age can be observed. for instance, the completed fertility of the cohort of 1982, which is in its prime reproductive age as of 2012, can be measured reliably only after 2020. however, cohort analysis is well-suited for studying long-term changes in fertility tempo and quantum, and the ongoing postponement transition constitutes such a case. this process has been initiated in many western countries by women born during the years 1945-1950, postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 419 who are now well past their reproductive ages and whose fertility trajectories can be compared with those of the younger cohorts. two key terms are frequently used to characterise the process of fertility ageing across age and time: postponement refers to a stage of life in which fertility rates are declining and recuperation (recovery, also termed catching-up) refers to subsequent ages when fertility rates are increasing. however, this terminology is also subjective and ambiguous, since at the time when postponement begins, it is unclear whether any recovery will eventually take place and, if so, what portion of presumably postponed births will be recovered (see ní bhrolcháin/toulemon 2005 for a critical assessment). similarly, analysts are divided between those who argue that period-driven changes, induced by social, cultural, or economic trends, are the main driving force of the observed fertility developments (a “period paramount” view advocated by ní bhrolcháin 1992) and those who believe that cohort effects are at least as important when it comes to driving observed fertility trends (lesthaeghe 2001). one reason underpinning the cohort view is that changes in family formation at later stages of the reproductive span are also conditioned by ideational factors that, in tandem with education, tend to follow cohort dynamics (lesthaeghe/surkyn 1988). a cohort approach has the major advantage of following life events as they unfold sequentially over time and occurring to the same group of people amalgamated on the basis of a relevant criterion. in contrast to a classic markov chain, where probabilities of transitions at any time t are totally independent of the transitions that occurred earlier, and are only conditioned by period-specifi c events, the cohort view studies such transitions as if they were interconnected. period approaches in demography are best suited for studying single transitions and trend reversals in response to exogenous shocks (economic crisis, inventions, legal and political changes and upheavals, etc.), but they rarely interconnect sequential transitions over a lifetime. as ryder (1951:117) noted, “regardless of the level of specifi city for which fertility is studied from period to period, the interdependency of the reproductive experience […] of the same cohort of people in successive periods” must be respected. in other words, the cohort approach respects life course history, whereas the period mode does not. because the current “postponement transition” has evolved over long time periods of up to four decades and across many cohorts, it is particularly useful to analyse the cohort dynamics of this process. for our purpose, it is essential to link younger-age fertility decline, or postponement (by country, age and birth order) with the subsequent progression of fertility recuperation. we therefore study postponement and recuperation as aggregate (macro) concepts that disregard individual motivation and “reasons” for the shifting age at childbearing. what is often perceived as a postponement when analysing aggregate data, may in fact be motivated by many individual considerations that are often detached from any conscious effort to “postpone” having children (ní bhrolcháin/toulemon 2005). in the cohort view, postponement and recuperation are interconnected and embedded in the complex unfolding of the life cycle. they are both subject to period effects, but these period impulses may not explain the entire picture. in other words, • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels420 it remains both wise and prudent not to cut up individuals’ life histories a priori into unrelated vertical “period slices”. since cohort analyses in demography use the same data arrays as cross-sectional analyses with fi ctitious or synthetic cohorts, there is no additional data problem: our exercise can also be seen as an analytical, descriptive framework that would be equally valid even if the change in fertility observed were entirely period-driven. therefore, we do not argue about causality or supremacy of the cohort analysis in this study. 1.2 overlapping cohorts and period fertility change the rapid changes in fertility level and tempo during the last four decades have often been described primarily from a period perspective. however, they can be equally well captured through the lenses of transforming cohort fertility patterns, which may in turn be translated to the observed period fertility shifts. because cohorts with very different childbearing trajectories overlap at the same period of time, period fertility ups and downs may also be seen as an outcome of different stages of cohort fertility transformations.1 this process has been analysed in detail by tomas frejka (2011) and further illustrated by sobotka et al. (2011, section 2); here we briefl y outline its dynamics and refer for more details to these two studies. consider a rapid change in cohort timing, when the very low fertility at younger ages among the younger cohort may overlap with very low fertility in later ages among the older cohort that previously displayed an early pattern of childbearing. assuming that this shift occurs along cohort lines, recuperation among the older group begins with a time lag after postponement among younger women starts. such a shift may temporarily produce an extreme low level of period fertility. frejka (2011) provides an empirical investigation of this process across all developed countries with available data a generalizing model in his paper depicts two important aspects. firstly, there is usually only a brief period when the period tfr bottoms out, without staying at these record-low levels for a protracted period. secondly, the late stage of fertility postponement is often characterised by a prolonged period with relatively stable fertility rates. however, there are many exceptions and idiosyncratic trends to this general pattern which are described in detail in frejka’s (2011) study. 1.3 concepts and terminology, goals of this study the cohort analysis of the postponement transition, using rich graphical documentation, has been pioneered in numerous studies conducted by tomas frejka and his colleagues (see especially frejka and sardon 2004), by bosveld (1996) and, from a 1 however, we are not attempting to test whether the changes observed were periodor cohortdriven. rather than making causal statements about recent fertility trends, we focus on describing fertility dynamics from a cohort perspective during the “postponement transition”. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 421 different perspective, by lesthaeghe (2001).2 in a cohort fertility analysis, the concept of fertility postponement (or, more precisely, younger-age fertility decline) and recuperation has a different meaning than in the period approach. both postponement and recuperation can be measured for any cohort of interest, which is compared with an older reference cohort (benchmark cohort, labelled here as b). usually, postponement is measured by cumulating absolute or relative fertility decline across all ages when fertility has fallen, while recuperation is measured by cumulating absolute or relative fertility gains across all ages when fertility has increased relative to the reference cohort. this is illustrated using hypothetical cohorts b and c in figure 1. this approach, labelled here as the basic benchmark model, can be effectively employed only when the process of long-term fertility change during the postponement transition indeed follows a regular pattern, marked by continuous fertility declines at younger ages and subsequent compensatory increases at older ages. as in the period analysis, a large portion of what is labelled as a postponement may actually represent a decline in fertility level that has not been offset later in life. but, unlike in the period analysis, the cohort approach allows a precise delineation of what part of fertility decline at younger ages (termed as fertility defi cit in the analysis by frejka and calot 2001 and frejka and sardon (2004) and denoted as pc in fig. 1) has eventually been recuperated later in life (fertility surplus in frejka and sardon’s terminology, denoted as rc in fig. 1) and what part of that decline turned out to be permanent. from a different perspective, lesthaeghe (2001) focuses on the dynamics in cohort postponement and recuperation using a simple relational model based on the trajectories of the fi rst three fi ve-year cohorts that delayed childbearing (see section 3.3). this approach also allows projecting completed fertility in cohorts with incomplete trajectories, which was the author’s original aim. however, the method does not lend itself so well to cross-national comparisons since the national schedules of deviations between cohorts in fertility by age (national standard deviation schedules) differ from country to country, and the initial levels of fertility among the benchmark cohorts further complicate the interpretation of results. while the graphical and statistical analysis of cohort fertility postponement and recuperation has been employed in a variety of studies, there has been surprisingly little effort to further advance or elaborate this methodology. simple graphical representations have been extended in some studies (e.g. tu/zhang 2004; neels 2006; caltabiano 2008; frejka et al. 2010); also a more elaborate statistical analysis of the cycle of postponement and recuperation has been pursued (neels 2010; sánchezbarricarte et al. 2007). however, only a few studies discussed the premises, methods and terminology of these approaches or attempted to add other dimensions, such as education, to the study of cohort fertility change during the postponement transition (neels/de wachter 2010). in addition, caltabiano et al. (2009) used lesthaeghe’s 2 here and elsewhere, our contribution focuses on birth cohorts, defi ned by the year of birth. however, many concepts discussed can also be applied to other cohorts, such as parity cohorts, marriage cohorts, education cohorts, etc. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels422 model to analyse fertility recuperation in three broad regions of italy and to draw some international comparisons. billari and kohler (2004) have criticised the graphical analyses employed by frejka and calot (2001) on two counts: first, with respect to terminology, they perceive the notion of fertility defi cit and fertility surplus as “unfortunate since it tends to imply that the reference cohort refl ects a ‘correct’ or ‘desirable’ fertility pattern” (p. 166). their second and more important critique pertains to the choice of the reference cohorts, which may have widely different fertility levels and timing patterns in the analysed countries, thus obscuring the results of cross-country comparisons. in a different vein, ní bhrolcháin and toulemon (2005) criticise the notion of postponement, and argue that the declines in fertility rates at younger ages may be unrelated to the parallel increases in fertility rates at older ages. finally, most of the initial analyses studied cohort fertility for all birth orders combined, ignoring the huge variability in parity-specifi c patterns of the recuperation process. despite these criticisms, we consider the existing methods useful for describing the ongoing cohort change in the developed world, but also see a need for their further development. this contribution, which is a condensed and reworked version of a more detailed study (sobotka et al. 2011) elaborates on both approaches fig. 1: a simplifi ed scheme of cohort postponement and recuperation source: own design. -0.80 -0.70 -0.60 -0.50 -0.40 -0.30 -0.20 -0.10 0.00 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age benchmark cohort b postponement recuperation final difference: fd = p + r = -0.07c c c cohort c p (cum.c fertility decline until trough age) = -0.59 r (abs.c recuperation between trough age and the end of reproductive life) = +0.52 trough (minimum) at age m = 25 absolute change in cumulative fertility postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 423 discussed above. building upon the work of tomas frejka, gérard calot, and jeanpaul sardon, we propose an extended analysis of cohort postponement and recuperation, based on a set of simple rules, expanded graphical representations and selected summary indicators. given the importance of relating changes in cohort fertility to the reference (or benchmark) cohort, we label this approach the basic benchmark model. subsequently, we discuss cohort projection scenarios based on three key indicators of the postponement and recuperation process. we also experiment with the relational model proposed by ron lesthaeghe and critically examine its usefulness for fertility projections. following these methodological parts, we analyse transformations in selected countries of europe, and in the united states, paying particular attention to austria, germany and switzerland. twenty years after german unifi cation, eastern and western germany have retained distinct fertility patterns and developments (mayer /schulze 2009; see also sobotka 2011, in cpos 36,2-3); therefore, we often analyse data for these two regions separately. we highlight the role of increasing education and the diversity in the trends of fertility recuperation, which has become a critical determinant for fertility trends in europe, and which has been relatively weak in the three countries analysed. 2 data we use detailed cohort fertility data by age of mother and birth order, collected from different sources and databases. data for the czech republic, the netherlands, sweden and the united states originate from the human fertility database (www. humanfertility.org, accessed in july 2010), which also provides detailed data documentation. data for spain were computed by combining cohort order-specifi c fertility rates by age realised until 1997 that were formerly available in eurostat new cronos database (2003) with the period fertility data on births by birth order and age of mother and female population by age, downloaded from eurostat database (2010). the statistics of births by birth order in spain were not entirely reliable in some years (devolder/ortiz 2010), but such irregularities should not have a large impact on our computations. cohort fertility data for austria were assembled by combining two datasets: 1) vital statistics data in 1984-2009, provided by statistics austria (and also displayed in the human fertility database) and 2) estimates of age-specifi c fertility rates by birth order in 1952-1983, compiled by anna šťastná and tomáš sobotka (unpublished dataset, 2008). this latter dataset was mostly based on a retrospective distribution of births, using the question on the dates of birth of the fi rst four live-born children that was asked to all resident women aged 15+ in the austrian census of 1981 (statistics austria 1989). data for switzerland were estimated by marion burkimsher from the vital statistics data published by the swiss federal statistical offi ce (see also kreyenfeld et al., in cpos 36,2-3). cohort fertility histories by birth order and age of mother for • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels424 women born since 1950 were reconstructed by m. burkimsher by estimating data on live births by biological birth order and age of mother in the period 1969-1997 from the dataset on birth order within marriage and the subsequent data on biological birth order in 1998-2008. in addition, a portion of data with unknown birth order in 1998-2004 had to be redistributed as well.3 because of these estimations and redistributions, swiss data should be treated as “best estimates” that may contain some inaccuracies in order-specifi c indicators. data for germany, distinguishing between eastern germany (former gdr) and western germany (former frg), were assembled by kreyenfeld et al. (2010) from hospital birth records and later included in the human fertility database. because of administrative changes, the data pertaining to the period after 2001 exclude the territory of berlin. for the period through 2001, data for east berlin were included in the dataset for eastern germany, and the data for west berlin were part of the western german dataset (see more details in kreyenfeld et al. 2010). 3 elaborating the analysis of cohort postponement and recuperation 3.1 the basic benchmark model: layers of analysis and main organising principles relatively simple graphical illustrations can provide key insights into cohort fertility changes during the process of the postponement transition, and serve for a comparison of its trajectory across different countries, cohorts and birth orders. however, this type of analysis depends critically on the choice of the reference cohort (billari/ kohler 2004), and also on order-specifi c fertility trends, as the process of cohort recuperation is hugely differentiated by birth order. to lend more precision to the basic benchmark model, we propose an expanded set of graphical illustrations and analytical indexes and demonstrate their application for selected countries. this analysis is based on a simple set of organising rules that aim to be fl exible enough to capture subtle trends in the ongoing transformation of cohort fertility patterns. we refer readers to the expanded version of our study (sobotka et al. 2011) for detailed illustrations. as in the case of period fertility, the design of cohort fertility analysis should refl ect analysts’ purposes and aims (ní bhrolcháin 2011). to overcome some defi ciencies in the existing approaches to cohort fertility, we have formulated the following organising principles, which are particularly suitable for studying the cohort “postponement transition”. 3 these order-specifi c data for the period since 1998 have also recently been included in the human fertility database. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 425 1) the choice of a benchmark cohort should refl ect aims of the analysis the choice of a reference cohort infl uences the outcome of the analysis. since our focus is on the dynamics of fertility postponement and recuperation, we anchor our study in the cohorts that have initiated this trend. we choose one of the cohorts that fi rst experienced an onset of the increase in the mean age at fi rst birth that spanned over at least fi ve consecutive cohorts. therefore, the reference cohorts are allowed to vary by country. although this fl exible defi nition does not completely eliminate differences in the initial ctfr levels, we see this as a more objective criterion than using the same benchmark cohort for all countries (sobotka et al. 2011, section 4.1). 2) focus on order-specifi c differences many countries experience pronounced differentials in cohort fertility trends by birth order. ignoring these differentials may lead to an erroneous reading of the overall trend for all birth orders combined. whenever data allow, we advocate performing an order-specifi c analysis. we expect that most of the presumably postponed fi rst births and many second births will be recuperated, while the decline in third and higher-order births is often likely to become permanent (frejka/sardon 2007). this expected trend of declining higher-order births stems in part from the long-term decline of larger-family preferences that characterised the fi rst demographic transition and in part from the postponement-quantum interaction (kohler et al. 2002), whereby a pronounced postponement of fi rst births makes it almost impossible for many women to achieve a larger family size. 3) correct identifi cation of the age at maximum decline most of the past studies used a fi xed age delineating the postponement and recuperation phases of fertility. frejka and sardon (2004 and other studies) repeatedly used age 27, whereas lesthaeghe, working with fi ve-year age groups, chose age 30 as a boundary. rather than using a fi xed age category, we specify the age of the maximum cumulative fertility decline separately for each cohort and birth order. these relatively simple analytical “rules” can be elaborated further. the dynamics of the postponement transition by age can be analysed using a set of fl exible benchmark cohorts, rather than one fi xed reference cohort (sobotka et al. 2011, section 4.2). another potentially useful extension involves shifting the benchmark to a “target” value of completed fertility, such as the population replacement level (around 2.07 in today’s europe). while these methods are well suited for descriptive analyses, they do not provide a parameterization of the effect of potentially relevant explanatory factors, such as increasing education, trends in the business cycle or changes in family policies. to move beyond sophisticated descriptions and projections of cohort fertility change, we outline a model estimating the effect of expanding educational attainment on fi rst birth hazards during the stages of postponement and recuperation, which is presented in a supplementary online appendix. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels426 3.2 the expanded basic benchmark model in a nutshell: summary graphs and indicators to summarise a potentially vast amount of analysis, we propose using a set of graphs specifi ed by birth order (1, 2, and 3+), which track major indicators of cohort fertility change during the postponement transition. specifi cally, we aim to identify and show the following indicators side by side, starting with some of the cohorts immediately preceding the onset of the postponement: b• : benchmark cohort – the fi rst cohort that experienced an increase in the mean age at fi rst birth that continued for at least fi ve cohorts. for practical purposes, the nearest quinquennial cohort (i.e. a cohort ending with 0 or 5) is chosen as the benchmark. thus, when the postponement trend is initiated by a cohort born in 1948 or 1951, the cohort of 1950 is selected as the benchmark. f• c(y) is the cumulated fertility rate (number of births per woman) born up to age y in any cohort c: • where • fc(x) is the age-specifi c fertility rate of cohort c at age x. m• is the age at which the gap between the cumulated fertility rate of the benchmark cohort and of the observed cohort reaches a maximum. we refer to it as the “trough age” (see fig. 1). f• c(m) is the cumulated fertility in cohort c up to age m of the trough. p• c: decline in cumulated cohort fertility of cohort c compared to that of the benchmark cohort b at the trough age m. pc thus measures the maximum difference in cumulated fertility between the benchmark and the observed cohort, and is usually negative. it measures the “depth” of the trough, and can be labelled as the postponement measure of cohort c (hence, pc): r• c: recuperation measure or the absolute increase in cohort fertility, as compared to the benchmark cohort b, between age m (the trough age) and the end of the reproductive period: here we often use age 40 as a simplifi ed endpoint for our cohort fertility analysis. fd• c: final difference: permanent difference, usually decline, in fertility between the benchmark cohort and the cohort of interest, computed as fdc = pc + rc; 1 12 y x cc )x(f)y(f )m(f)m(f)]x(f)x(f[p bc m x bcc 1 12 (1) cbc mx bcc pctfrctfr)]x(f)x(f[r 50 (2) , postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 427 ri• c: recuperation index,4 measuring the degree of recuperation relative to the decline at younger ages: ric = (rc / – pc) ric = (rc / – pc). it can also be expressed as a percentage, ranging from 0 (no recuperation) to 100 % (full recuperation) or even above (“over-compensation”). each of these indicators can be specifi ed by birth order. the recuperation index is a relative indicator that needs to be studied in conjunction with the initial fertility level of the benchmark cohort and the absolute value of fertility decline at the trough, pc. figure 2 shows all the essential indicators of the postponement transition for fi rst births in austria, starting with the benchmark cohort of 1950, and featuring each single birth cohort through 1983. it shows the absolute recuperation r and the recuperation index ri by age 42, as well as the absolute degree of recuperation at age 36, which gives an early assessment of the progressing recuperation among the cohorts of higher reproductive ages. the graph depicts a continuous fall in fertility at younger ages before the trough was reached (which occurred at ages 22-23 for the 1950s and 1960s cohorts and at age 25 for the early 1980s cohorts) and then a steady pattern of recuperation, with the ri hovering around 80 % for the mid-1960s cohorts.5 the postponement transition still continued among the youngest women analysed, born in the early 1980s. recuperation is slightly less vigorous for second births and almost non-existent for third and later births (no graphs provided here). it is also useful to compare different indicators by birth order, as we illustrate in an extended study (sobotka et al. 2011). the indicators for the fertility decline at younger ages, p, and permanent decline, fd, for all birth orders combined, often differ from a simple summation of order-specifi c indicators pi and fdi because of diverse age-specifi c trajectories of declines and increases and different trough ages mi in order-specifi c indicators. thus, two sets of indicators for total birth orders can be derived: one, based on the data observed for total birth orders, and the other, derived from the order-specifi c indicators, either by summation (e.g., ) or, in the case of the recuperation index ri, by weighting order-specifi c results with the completed fertility rate by birth order, . (3) 4 the recuperation index was fi rst employed by frejka et al. (2010). a similar index, referred to as dr (degree of recuperation) was introduced in the study on fertility in hong kong and taiwan by tu and zhang (2004). 5 note, however, that the ongoing decline in fertility at younger ages implies gradually declining completed fertility when combined with the stable recuperation index. i i cc pp ctfr i c • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels428 3.3 lesthaeghe’s (2001) relational model and its extensions lesthaeghe’s model of cohort fertility postponement and recuperation was fi rst formulated in a 2001 working paper for an iussp seminar (lesthaeghe 2001), but since it has not been widely circulated, we fi rst summarise its main ideas. the paper proposed a relational model of cohort cumulative fertility deviations relative to the schedule of a benchmark cohort, using two variables to manipulate a standard schedule of deviations at ages 30 and 50. the benchmark cohort is chosen as the one at the very beginning of the postponement trend, which in lesthaeghe’s examples for western european countries were cohorts born around 1942-48. the analysis proceeds with the differences dc(x) in cumulative fertility fc(x) between the observed cohort c and the benchmark cohort b (i.e., fc(x) – fb(x)). the schedule of these differences by age was referred to as the “defi cit function” of values of dc(x) for each cohort c. subsequently, a national standard schedule of deviations is chofig. 2: graphical summary of the postponement and recuperation process: fi rst births in austria among women born since 1950 source: see section 2. 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 p: abs. decline at 'though' age m abs. recup by age 36 r: abs. recup by age 42 recuperation index ri (%) fd: permanent decline recuperation index ri (in %)cumulative fertility change since the 1950 cohort (abs.) postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 429 sen for each country, namely dn(x), which is taken to be representative of the underlying age pattern of cumulative defi cits from the fertility schedule of the benchmark cohort in subsequent cohorts, dc(x). the observed dc(x) and the national standard dn(x) schedules are related to each other by two parameters only. the postponement ratio prc manipulates (accelerates or decelerates) the degree of postponement as defi ned in the national standard dn for age 30, and the recuperation ratio, rrc, determines the degree of fertility defi cit reduction (i.e. “recuperation”) at age 50. the model is a very parsimonious one, but crucially hinges on the stability of the shape of the national standard defi cit function dn(x). if that condition is met, the model can be used profi tably for completing cumulative fertility schedules of cohorts between ages 30 and 50. the original formulation was conditioned by data limitations, and could only make use of fertility rates by fi ve-year age groups. the availability of single-year data obviously offers several opportunities for improvement. the other major limitation of the original was the lack of parity specifi city, but the philosophy of the relational model can be readily applied to parity-specifi c schedules as well. finally, we extended the model to compute postponement ratios at all ages, to have the age at a maximum deviation, m, variable and not fi xed at age 30, and to compute recuperation ratios at all ages x ≥ m. we shall demonstrate the improved relational model below. figure 3 illustrates two trajectories of cumulated fertility by age as related to the benchmark cohort b.6 one trajectory depicts the national schedule of deviations, dn, which is defi ned in our study as an average value over two cohorts: 1) the youngest cohort that reached the age of 40 at the time when most recent data were available (typically, this is a cohort born in 1968 or 1969) and 2) the cohort born fi ve years earlier.7 age-specifi c fertility rates fn(x) of the “national standard schedule” can simply be derived as an average of the two cohorts used for its computation: then, the “national standard schedule of deviations” is computed as a difference between cumulated fertility of the national standard schedule n and benchmark cohort b: 2 )x(f)x(f )x(f 2n1n n or 2 )x(f)x(f )x(f 2n1n n (4) 6 the benchmark cohort is defi ned in the same way as in the descriptive approach introduced above, namely as a cohort experiencing the onset of fi rst birth postponement (rounded to the nearest cohort ending with 0 or 5). 7 alternatively, only one recent cohort could be used to defi ne the national schedule of deviations. while the results are likely to be similar in most cases, we expect that choosing two cohorts to defi ne this standard schedule gives more stable results of the projections. )y(f)y(f)]x(f)x(f[)y(d bn y x bnn 1 12 (5) • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels430 analogously, for any cohort younger than the benchmark cohort b, its deviations from the fertility schedule of the benchmark cohort can be computed as follows: by defi nition, the deviations of the benchmark cohort b at any age x are nil: the trough age m is defi ned as an age when the absolute value of the defi cit dn(x) in the national standard schedule reaches the maximum.8 this does not necessarily mean that dc(x) for other cohorts also reaches a maximum at that age. however, in contrast to the basic benchmark model presented above, in the relational model we use single age m for all cohorts and always depict it as m. for ages x ≥ m the absolute value of recuperation (i.e. fertility increase after age m), as compared to the benchmark cohort, can be computed for any cohort c>b: rc(x) = dc(x) – dc(m) analogously, the absolute recuperation can also be derived for the national standard schedule: rn(x) = dn(x) – dn(m) by defi nition, recuperation is nil at age m: rn(m) = 0; rc(m) = 0 two key indicators that show progression in the pace of postponement and recuperation at different ages across cohorts are called the “postponement ratio” prc and the “recuperation ratio” rrc. both are measured relative to the national standard schedule dn(x). for x > m: for x > m: by defi nition, both these ratios equal 0 in the benchmark cohort and are equal to 1 in the national standard schedule: prn(x) = 1; prb(x) = 0; rrn(x) = 1; rrb(x) = 0. it should be noted that the prc(x) and rrc(x) ratios are relative indices that are valid for a specifi c population, and should only be used as aids in projecting or completing cohort fertility schedules (see section 4.2). since both the benchmark )y(f)y(f)]x(f)x(f[)y(d bc y x bcc 1 12 (6) .0)x(db (7) (8) )x(d )x(d )x(pr n c c (9); )x(r )x(r )x(rr n c c (10) 8 the trough age can however not be identifi ed in the absence of any recuperation at older ages. such a pure quantum decline, without any subsequent compensatory increase, usually occurs at higher birth orders, e.g. among spanish women having third or higher-order birth (fig. 5a in sobotka et al. 2011). postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 431 schedule and the standard schedule of deviations are population-specifi c, these ratios are not tools for comparisons between different populations. empirical illustrations showing the analytical usefulness of this model on the example of fi rst births in austria are provided in our detailed study (sobotka et al. 2011, section 5.2). 3.4 adding explanatory dimensions the descriptive methods introduced in the preceding sections can be complemented by adding additional dimensions. ageand order-specifi c fertility rates can be further stratifi ed, including other covariates considered relevant (ní bhrolcháin 1992). however, the effect of important factors such as the level of education often cannot be assessed with population-level data, as they do not usually provide the required detail to standardize fertility rates for additional covariates.9 alternatively, hazard models based on surveys or census data allow estimating the impact of substantive predictors on trends of postponement and recuperation over subsequent birth cohorts. fig. 3: graphical illustration of the cohort postponement and recuperation as conceptualised in the relational model based on lesthaeghe (2001) source: own design based on lesthaeghe (2001). 9 in some countries, census data containing reproductive histories can be used to reconstruct past fertility rates and decompose order-specifi c fertility by selected covariates (e.g. region, education, labour force participation). such decomposition allows an assessment of the impact of changes in these covariates on fertility changes over time and across cohorts (see neels 2006 and neels and de wachter 2010 for an analysis of belgian census data). • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels432 however, it is important to note that terminology and concepts often differ between the studies anchored at an aggregate-level and those focused on individuallevel data. hazard-based “micro” models have a great advantage of controlling simultaneously for a number of important determinants, the effects of which cannot be isolated in a purely “macro” analysis. at the same time, hazard models – even when they use large-scale surveys with suffi cient sample size and covering the entire reproductive span – often focus on slicing reproductive life courses into distinct age categories, thus making it diffi cult to estimate the cumulative effect of specifi c covariates on fertility postponement and recuperation as well as on completed fertility. for instance, rising hazard rates at ages above 30 give a clear signal about the ongoing recuperation, but do not allow a direct assessment about the share of previously postponed births being “recuperated”. to make inferences about the degree of recuperation, the results of the hazard models have to be translated back into cumulative proportions of women having a fi rst birth at specifi c ages. alternatively, simulations might be used to assess changes across cohorts in their timing of childbearing and the infl uence of changing education, employment, partnership histories and other relevant factors on parity-specifi c transitions. ideally, macro and micro perspectives should be combined to obtain an overall picture of the progression of postponement and recuperation across cohorts, but also to gain an understanding of the most relevant factors behind these observed aggregate trends. the scope of our paper does not allow us to elaborate on this option. instead, we provide an illustration of the insights gained by considering the infl uence of changing educational attainment over time in a supplementary online appendix. 4 projecting completed cohort fertility using the postponementrecuperation framework the real cohort view avoids the synthetic cohort distortions, but it faces the issue of incomplete schedules of cohorts that have not reached the end of their reproductive period. this induces analysts to explicitly formulate hypotheses and methods for forecasting cohort completion schedules. in other words, cohort analysis forces forecasters to be very explicit about the futures of each incomplete longitudinal set of life cycles. we address this issue by proposing projection scenarios based on the two broader analytical approaches to cohort fertility discussed above. projecting period rates only often leads to odd and even impossible outcomes when translated into the cohort format. 4.1 approach 1: projections using the basic benchmark model the key indicators of the postponement transition, discussed in section 3.2, can be readily used for formulating cohort projection scenarios when the process of the postponement transition is underway. for any cohort of women, which has already reached the point of the maximum fertility decline relative to the benchmark cohort, postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 433 the completed fertility rate ctfr at a given birth order i can be projected as follows (p stands for the projected values): where b represents the benchmark cohort, ri the recuperation index and p denotes maximum decline in cumulated fertility relative to the benchmark cohort. in this simple form only the values of ric need to be projected, ideally at the end of reproductive life, which puts the projection horizon at each birth order analysed to the last cohort that has reached the trough age. the projected completed fertility for all birth orders combined can either be obtained by a direct computation of the pctfr using formula [11] above, or, preferably, by summing up the results of order-specifi c projections: we argue that considering birth order improves the projection and its reliability by taking into account differential trajectories of postponement and recuperation. these order-specifi c trajectories may be hidden in the overall analysis for total birth orders when the parity distribution of births is changing across cohorts. further extensions and elaborations to this projection framework can be considered. first, there are different possibilities of projecting the ri, starting from “freezing” the last observed values, through trend projections, up to the scenarios assuming various trajectories of recuperation. such alternative scenarios may also give an assessment of the impact of different degrees of recuperation on completed fertility rates. second, the projection horizon can be extended by projecting the values of pc for the cohorts that have not yet reached the trough age. obviously, more assumptions are then needed, resulting in higher uncertainty about the projected values. this projection framework, illustrated extensively in our expanded study (sobotka et al. 2011) has some drawbacks that should be taken into account, particularly when used for situations for which it was not designed. when based on the observed values of p and projected values of ri, the projection will not extend into the young birth cohorts of women in their earlyto mid-20s, and may not even capture women in their early 30s for the higher-order births (depending on the observed age at trough). the projection is designed for the countries that are still undergoing the postponement transition, and will not work well for the countries not undergoing long-standing, systematic shifts in the cohort timing of births. it also does not perform well in the early stages of the postponement shift, where none of the analysed cohorts have reached higher reproductive ages and hence the recuperation index ri cannot yet be computed. finally, the order-specifi c projection is highly sensitive to data quality: problems with proper birth order reporting or its changes over time may strongly affect the computation of the main projection parameters and of the projection itself. )pri1.(pctfrpctfr i c i c i b i c (11) 3 c 2 c 1 cc pctfrpctfrpctfrpctfr . • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels434 4.2 approach 2: using the relational model for projecting cohort fertility schedules the projection approach analysed above only yields fi nal values of completed fertility, and does not allow the whole schedule of cohort age-specifi c fertility rates to be computed. this task can be accomplished by using the relational model of cohort postponement and recuperation, introduced in section 3.3. the idea is to project either the postponement ratio at age 40 pprc(40) or the recuperation ratio at that age prrc(40), and then use these projected ratios to recalculate age-specifi c fertility rates and cumulated fertility at age 40 (see sobotka et al. 2011). the indicators derived at age 40 can be used for rough estimates of the completed fertility rate, but we advise adjusting the data for fertility rates that occur after that age. because there are two different projection frameworks for employing the relational model – one relying on the postponement ratios only and the other combining postponement ratios and recuperation ratios – and various possibilities of how to project these ratios, our expanded study (sobotka et al. 2011, sections 6.3 and 6.4) discusses three different methods derived from the relational model and compares them to two simpler projection scenarios based on the recuperation index. here we outline one projection method, denoted method 3 in sobotka et al. (2011), which uses the postponement ratios (pr) only, and which provides more stable results than the other two methods. the use of both postponement and recuperation ratios in methods 1 and 2 made it more complicated to project an entire schedule of age-specifi c fertility rates, especially when the trough age moves across cohorts. our method of choice uses the postponement ratios prc across the whole reproductive age range (we apply it up until age 40 only to make use of a longer series of observed cohort data). we use linear regression to predict the prs for the unknown (future) part of the fertility schedule. initially, we simply regressed prs across age x as dependent on the cohort birth year c, but this approach gave implausible results. using the postponement ratio in the preceding age pr(x–1) as an explanatory variable turned out to be considerably more promising with respect to stability and plausibility of results. for example, when we have fertility data up to the year 2010, we may compute fertility rates for the cohort of 1985 up to age 25. the postponement ratio for the next age pr1985(26) is then predicted using the relation between the known data series at ages 25 and 26 for the cohorts observed since the onset of the birth postponement. if suffi ciently long cohort data series have accumulated after the benchmark cohort, we can use this approach to predict on a step-by-step basis the postponement ratio for each cohort and for each age (up to age 40, depending on the national schedule of deviations), using the following equation: this approach thus ignores the theoretically useful distinction between the postponement and recuperation phases of the ongoing cohort change. at the same time, this theoretical disadvantage is outweighed by a higher stability of the projection. )1x(pr)x(ppr cc (12) postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 435 5 diversity in the trajectories of postponement and recuperation building on the previous sections, we apply our methodological tools to analyse cohort postponement and recuperation in three predominantly german-speaking countries of europe, austria, germany and switzerland, which experienced low fertility rates for several decades (see sobotka 2011, in cpos 36,2-3). we compare them with four countries representing broader european regions (the czech republic for post-communist central europe, the netherlands for western europe, spain for southern europe and sweden for northern europe) as well as with the united states. owing to a lack of detailed order-specifi c cohort fertility data for germany, and partly also switzerland, and to save space, we focus particularly on the results for all birth orders combined. first we compare cohort trajectories of fertility decline at younger ages from the onset of the postponement transition, as measured by the size of cumulated fertility decline pc at the trough age m. figure 4 shows particularly rapid transitions in the czech republic and spain, as well as in eastern germany (former gdr). in contrast, birth postponement progressed in a more gradual and also regular fashion in austria and switzerland, whereas in western germany and sweden it stalled for about fi ve cohorts before picking up again, rapidly in sweden and gradually in western fig. 4: absolute fertility decline at younger ages from the onset of fertility postponement (pc) 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 austria western germany eastern germany switzerland czech republic the netherlands spain sweden united states abs. fertility decline (birth per woman) at younger ages (p )c birth cohort source: see section 2. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels436 germany. the pattern is very different in the united states, where this indicator suggests that the concept of the “postponement transition” does not conform to the observed fertility trend: the fall in fertility at younger ages was relatively minor and mostly confi ned to the 1950s cohorts, with a reversal occurring among the late 1960s cohorts. to fi nd out what portion of the presumably postponed births has eventually been “made up” at later ages, figure 5 plots the recuperation index ric for all birth orders for the cohorts born until the late 1960s. it depicts vast differences between countries, with sweden constituting an example of a complete recuperation with the ri exceeding unity, the netherlands registering a strong recuperation at around 70 %, while spain, eastern germany and austria lag behind with fewer than onefig. 5: recuperation index, ric (total birth orders), cohorts born through the late 1960s 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 birth cohort austria western germany eastern germany switzerland czech republic the netherlands spain sweden united states recuperation index ric note: observed and projected recuperation index for the czech republic is computed at age 38. source: see section 2. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 437 half of the early fertility decline being compensated at higher ages (only around 37 % in spain). whatever minor postponement there had been in the united states, it was subsequently “overcompensated” at higher ages, with the recuperation index surpassing 1 for the cohorts born after 1962. most other countries experienced stagnation or a minor rise in the recuperation index among the late 1960s cohorts. the examples of sweden and the more recent cohorts in the united states show that the shift to a later timing of childbearing, and the concomitant fall in fertility at younger reproductive ages, does not necessarily have a lasting negative effect on completed fertility. table 1 summarises key indicators of the postponement transition in the countries analysed. there is little variation in fertility levels among the benchmark cohort, ranging from values around 1.8 in austria, germany and switzerland up to values close to 2 in the netherlands and the united states. the postponement indicator, pc, shows massive declines in early fertility in all the analysed countries except the united states, with the cohort of 1978 having fewer births by 0.6-0.9 when reaching the trough age than the benchmark cohort. some of the early fertility decline remained permanent in all the countries, except in the united states, with the ultimate decline (measured at age 40) being largest in spain (-0.4), austria and germany (both east and west, around -0.3). as expected, huge birth order differences exist with respect to the share of “recuperated” fertility: in the cohort of 1968, analysed in table 1, the recuperation surpasses 70 % for fi rst births among the countries with available data except switzerland. for second births, it reaches low values in spain and moderate levels around 65 % in austria, the czech republic, the netherlands and switzerland. the tab. 1: selected indicators of the postponement and recuperation process country benchmark cumul. observed pc observed ric, cohort 1968 final cohort fert., fb kohorten 1968 or most recent decline (age 40) und 1978 fd c1968 c1978 bo1 bo2 bo3+ total (c1968) austria 1950 1.84 -0.47 -0.65 0.76 0.64 0.02 0.41 -0.28 germany 1945 1.78 -0.64 -0.72 0.48 -0.33 germany, eastern 1960 1.78 -0.54 -0.87 0.49 -0.33 germany, western 1945 1.76 -0.64 -0.67 0.48 -0.28 switzerland 1950 1.77 -0.44 -0.61 0.68 0.64 0.25 0.57 -0.19 czech republic 1965 1.90 -0.11 -0.83 0.77 0.64 0.41 0.63 -0.15 the netherlands 1945 1.98 -0.84 -0.86 0.83 0.68 0.46 0.69 -0.23 spain 1955 1.87 -0.66 -0.90 0.75 0.48 0.00 0.39 -0.40 sweden 1945 (1955)1 1.95 -0.41 -0.72 0.941 0.881 0.081 0.92 -0.03 united states 1950 1.99 -0.18 -0.18 1.10 1.08 3.29 1.30 0.05 notes: 1 for sweden, order-specifi c results are computed using the 1955 cohort as a benchmark, since the complete set of age and order-specifi c fertility rates is not available for the older cohorts. swiss data estimated and kindly provided by m. burkimsher. the recuperation indexes ric in sweden are shown for the 1967 cohort and in the united states for the 1968 cohort, as more recent data are not available. for the czech republic, we show ric for the cohort of 1972, at age 38. source: see section 2. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels438 largest differences exist in the extent of recuperation in higher order births, where no measurable recovery of cohort fertility took place in austria or spain, there was a very modest one in switzerland and a large “overcompensation”, with an ri index surpassing 2, occurred in the us cohort of 1965. while there are many similarities in the postponement transition between austria, germany and switzerland, subtle differences are revealed in detailed graphs charting its progression in these three countries (fig. 6). the exceptionally rapid pace of the postponement transition in eastern germany stands out. in the course of fi fteen cohorts, 1960-1975, eastern german women reduced their fertility at younger ages by a larger magnitude – over 0.8 in absolute terms – than their counterparts in austria, western germany and switzerland over more than thirty cohorts. in addition, fertility decline at younger ages has ceased in the mid-1970s cohorts in eastern germany, suggesting that the postponement transition has paused there, while it still continues in austria, switzerland, and, at a low intensity, in western germany. also the trajectories of the recuperation index show some differences: the ri increased in the mid-1960s cohorts in two regions, gradually in austria, and more rapidly in eastern germany (but from a very low initial base) and it has generally stagnated or slightly declined in western germany and switzerland. despite these differences, these regions fall within a broadly similar range of the ri around 50 % in the late 1960s cohorts. differences in completed fertility across countries during the postponement transition may be related to the differences in three key components of the recuperation process: (1) fertility level among the benchmark cohort (ctfrb), (2) absolute fertility decline at younger ages (pc), and (3) relative fertility recuperation, as captured by the ric index. a simple decomposition may explain the difference between the cumulated fertility rate at age 40 in sweden, which has had a pattern of an almost complete recuperation and retains stable fertility close to two births per woman, and the cumulated fertility at that age in the other countries analysed. swedish cumulated fertility amounted to 1.95 in the 1967 cohort. the decomposition, described in detail in appendix 2 in our expanded study (sobotka et al. 2011), leads to one clear-cut conclusion: in the six regions analysed, each of the three components – a lower fertility in the benchmark cohort, a steeper decline in trough and a less vigorous recuperation – played a role in explaining lower fertility in the 1967 cohort when compared with sweden (fig. 7). the only exception was the higher level of benchmark cohort fertility in the netherlands. this portrait of absolute differences can be complemented with a picture of the relative distribution of the overall difference between sweden and other countries analysed (see fig. 20 in sobotka et al. 2011). two factors clearly dominate in the predominantly germanspeaking countries: the lower initial fertility level in the benchmark cohort, and a low degree of recuperation of the presumably “postponed” fertility, are responsible for a large share (86 %-93 %, except in western germany) of the differences in completed fertility observed between sweden, on one side, and austria, germany and switzerland on the other. only in western germany did the large magnitude of fertility decline at younger ages have an additional strong infl uence on this difference in completed fertility. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 439 fig. 6: graphical summary of the postponement and recuperation process: total birth orders in austria, germany and switzerland since the onset of fertility postponement 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 austria; benchmark c 1950, total birth orders (ctfr=1.86) recuperation index ri (in %)cum. fertility change from the benchmark cohort r: abs. recup. at age 40 permanent decline fd recup. index ri (right axis) p: cum. decline in 'trough' age m 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 switzerland; benchmark c 1950, total birth orders (ctfr=1.80) recuperation index ri (in %)cum. fertility change from the benchmark cohort r: abs. recup. at age 40 permanent decline fd recup. index ri (right axis) p: cum. decline in 'trough' age m • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels440 source: see section 2. 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 recuperation index ri (in %)cum. fertility change from the benchmark cohort r: abs. recup. at age 40 permanent decline fd recup. index ri (right axis) p: cum. decline in 'trough' age m eastern germany; benchmark c 1960, total birth orders (ctfr=1.8) 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 western germany; benchmark c 1945, total birth orders (ctfr=1.77) recuperation index ri (in %)cum. fertility change from the benchmark cohort r: abs. recup. at age 40 permanent decline fd recup. index ri (right axis) p: cum. decline in 'trough' age m postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 441 6 projection scenarios for fi ve countries using data and models introduced above, we formulate projection scenarios of completed fertility in fi ve countries with a different history of the cohort postponement process: austria, the czech republic, the netherlands, spain and switzerland. we compute two distinct sets of projections: one based on the basic benchmark approach, using key parameters of the postponement process with projected values of the recuperation index (see section 4.1), and another that relies on the relational model of fertility, summarised in section 4.2. we compute these projections for age 40, rather than for ages 45 or 50, in order to obtain time series of projection parameters for somewhat younger cohorts. at the same time, we recognize a rising importance of late fertility after age 40 for the completed fertility rate (billari et al. 2007), and are aware that a small portion of the recuperation is being shifted beyond age 40, and is thus not captured by our recuperation indexes and projection scenarios. therefore, in some of our analyses we also perform a separate trend projection of cohort fertility rates by birth order at ages 40+. the projected completed fertility is then computed, combining the projection scenarios for age 40 with a separate fertility projection for ages 40+. for instance, projections of completed fertility based on extrapolating the recuperation index are computed as follows: fig. 7: absolute contribution of three components of the postponement transition to the differences in cumulated cohort fertility at age 40 between sweden and selected countries of europe. women born in 1967 -0.50 -0.40 -0.30 -0.20 -0.10 0.00 0.10 0.20 austria western germany eastern german switzerland netherlands spain benchmark cohort postponement (pc) recuperation (ri) abs. difference in completed fertility due to ... source: see section 2. )(pf))(pri.(p)(ctfrpctfr i c i c i c i b i c 4040140 (13) • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels442 where p stands for projected indicators and pfi(40+) represents projected fertility rates at order i at ages 40 and above. we compute two baseline scenarios: the fi rst simply keeps the most recent observed recuperation index constant and the second extrapolates the ri trends observed among the cohorts recently reaching age 40, using linear extrapolation. depending on individual country trajectories and analysts’ needs, other extrapolation methods can be used as well. for each of these two baseline scenarios, we obtain two sub-scenarios of the completed ctfr, the fi rst based on a direct computation for total birth orders and the second – which we prefer – based on adding order-specifi c projection results. table 2 provides a fi rst glimpse of the projection results, concentrating on the 1980 cohort that was approaching age 30 at the start of the projection (2009 or 2010). the two approaches derived from order-specifi c recuperation indexes give identical results for austria, the netherlands and switzerland. they differ somewhat in the case of spain, which has a low projected completed fertility rate of 1.45 and 1.41, respectively. for the czech republic, the difference is considerable. similar scenarios can be computed without using order-specifi c data (see sobotka et al. 2011), but we expect that the parity-specifi c analysis is likely to improve projection accuracy and reliability. we compare these results with a simple projection scenario combining cohort fertility rates observed up to 2008 or 2009 with constant age-specifi c fertility rates in that year. this scenario does not allow any additional recuperation during the projection period, and thus is likely to underestimate completed fertility. for two countries, austria and the czech republic, it shows considerably lower values than the scenarios based on the postponement-recuperation framework. we also show projections of childlessness based on the stable ri and the trend ri scenarios (fig. 8). these two scenarios differ considerably for the czech republic, the netherlands as well as spain: in the netherlands, the trend scenario leads to a steady fall in childlessness, whereas in spain it indicates its rapid increase to tab. 2: projected completed fertility rates among women born in 1980 based on different scenarios derived from orderkeeping the 2008 specific scenarios age-specific stable ri trend ri fertility constant austria 1.60 1.61 1.48 czech republic 1.68 1.82 1.56 the netherlands 1.77 1.77 1.76 spain 1.45 1.41 1.39 switzerland 1.56 1.55 1.52 note: in each scenario, the observed cohort fertility rates by age until 2008-2009 are combined with the projected values thereafter. source: see section 2. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 443 the levels above 25 % in the early 1980s cohorts. such differences nicely illustrate considerable uncertainty in childlessness projections among the women who had not yet reached the “recuperation” stage at the start of the projection period. such projections can be further complemented with purely hypothetical “no recuperation” and “full recuperation” scenarios. these can be seen as exercises in sensitivity analysis, demonstrating the importance of the recuperation process for the projected completed fertility, but also showing how narrow or wide the spread of the projected scenarios is within the hypothetical limits given by the “full recuperation” vs. “no recuperation”. for instance, in austria and in the czech republic a complete absence of fertility recovery at ages after the trough would eventually push completed fertility close to 1 in the mid-1980s cohorts, as contrasted to 1.9 in the “full recuperation” scenario and to the actually projected values of 1.6 in austria and around 1.7-1.8 in the czech republic (see figure a4 in the appendix to sobotka et al. 2011). the projections based on the relational model give similar insights and broadly comparable trends of the future cohort fertility as the scenarios based on the refig. 8: observed and projected childlessness (in %) among women born during the years 1955-1985. stable and trend scenarios 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 birth cohort austria stable ri the netherlands stable ri spain stable ri austria trend ri the netherlands trend ri spain trend ri czech republic stable ri czech republic trend ri observed and projected childlessness (in%) source: see section 2. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels444 cuperation indexes. in figure 9, we compare three order-specifi c scenarios of completed fertility, two based on projecting the recuperation index (trend ri and stable ri scenarios) and the other based on projecting the postponement ratios prc in the relational model (see section 4.2 above). hypothetical simplistic scenarios combining the most recent cumulated cohort fertility by age and birth order with the most recent set of age-specifi c fertility rates, which are subsequently kept constant, are also depicted. for austria and switzerland the fi gure also provides a comparison with the offi cial projections (fig. 9b and 9c), specifi cally, with the completed cohort fertility implied by the projection scenarios of period fertility rates by age, published by statistics austria and the swiss federal statistical offi ce (see goldstein et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3 for an overview and a critical assessment). the projection indicates considerable heterogeneity in cohort fertility in the fi ve countries analysed. for austria and the netherlands, stabilization is projected for women born after 1980, at a higher level in the netherlands (just below 1.8 children per woman) than in austria (around 1.6). the main factor behind their different projected fertility is the lower “starting” ctfr level of the benchmark cohort in austria, combined with a complete absence of recuperation at third and higher-order births. in austria, these projections are close to (relational model) or moderately above (projections based on the ri) the main scenario of the recent offi cial fertility projection, suggesting that the continuous fall implied by its low scenario is very unlikely to materialise. for switzerland, the three projection scenarios shown envision a gradual decline in fertility towards a similar level of 1.55 in the 1980 cohort. these scenarios also come remarkably close to the offi cial medium scenario among the youngest cohorts analysed. the results are less stable and less reliable for the czech republic and spain due to a later start of the postponement process and dynamic changes in fertility since the late 1990s. therefore, the scenarios of completed fertility illustrate considerable uncertainty with regard to the completed fertility among the early 1980s cohorts, with spain falling into a low-fertility range of 1.35-1.51 (or 1.57 if the scenarios for all birth orders combined were considered (not included in figure 9a)) and the czech republic depicting a wide, but relatively high range of 1.6-1.8 (or 1.9 if the scenarios for total birth orders were included). the results for the czech republic contrast strongly with a hypothetical (and unlikely) scenario assuming no further changes in fertility after 2009, which implies a rapid fall in completed fertility below 1.5 in the mid-1980s cohorts. it is important to emphasise limitations of our projection approaches. the projections are sensitive to the specifi cation of the trend scenario, which strongly depends on the type of extrapolation selected and the reference period on which the extrapolation is based. moreover, parity-specifi c projections are sensitive to the quality of birth statistics by birth order. we recommend that the analysts perform sensitivity analysis when using this approach, modelling different possible trends in the recuperation index at each birth order analysed. postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 445 fig. 9: completed cohort fertility rate, projected by different methods for the cohorts born through 1985 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0 2.1 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 birth cohort czech rep. fixed ri czech republik trend ri czech republic relational model czech republic stable asfr spain fixed ri spain trend ri spain relational model netherlands fixed ri & trend ri netherlands relational model projected completed fertility rate 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 1.80 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 austria fixed ri austria trend ri austria relational model statistik austria low statistik austria main statistik austria high constant period asfrs projected completed fertility rate austria b and c. austria and switzerland: also shown are cohort fertility scenarios implied by the recent offi cial projections and the scenario based on the “constant rates” scenario a. czech republic, the netherlands, and spain • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels446 7 conclusions our study has revisited the analysis of cohort fertility postponement and recuperation, focusing on a range of european countries, as well as on the united states. whereas period fertility rates became considerably distorted by this shift in the timing of childbearing, and thus also less useful for a range of analytical and projection purposes, the cohort approach allows for a much neater, tidier view of the recent fertility transformations. these transformations may be partly or largely driven by period factors, such as economic ups and downs or sudden changes in the labour market and government policies. nevertheless, our analytical tools would remain useful for descriptive, analytical and projection purposes, even if the observed fertility transformations were mostly driven by such period infl uences. we have discussed a range of extensions, elaborations and improvements in the methods used to date, focusing both on analysing the actual progression of the postponement and recuperation process and projecting completed fertility among the cohorts of women of reproductive age. whenever data allow, dissecting the overall trends in fertility into order-specifi c components clearly provides an added value to the analysis, and greater reliability to the projections. the postponement transition can be illustrated by several key order-specifi c indicators that capture its progression, specifi cally, the fertility level of the benchmark cohort, the size of younger-age fertility decline, and the degree of “recuperation” at older ages, measured by the recuperation index (ric). these three indicators can also serve as the main inputs of completed cohort fertility projections. alternatively, a full set of age 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 1.80 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 switzerland fixed ri switzerland trend ri switzerland relational model sfso low sfso main sfso high constant period asfrs projected completed fertility rate switzerland note: offi cial scenarios are computed from the offi cial period fertility projections transformed into cohort fertility rates (see goldstein et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3). source: own design based on sources listed in section 2; sfso fertility projection based on goldstein et al. (2011) postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 447 and order-specifi c cohort fertility rates can be projected using the relational model of cohort fertility, fi rst proposed by lesthaeghe (2001) and further elaborated here. our illustrations and cross-country analyses, focusing on austria, germany and switzerland, as well as four european countries representing broader regions (czech republic, the netherlands, spain and sweden), and the united states, contribute a number of important observations: the initial fertility level in the ”reference cohort” matters. some of the re cent cohort fertility differences between countries can be traced back to the initial differences before the onset of the postponement transition. countries which currently have low fertility levels, including austria, germany and switzerland, in most cases already had rather low fertility at the onset of the fi rst birth postponement. the recuperation process is paramount for understanding the differences in fertility observed. typically, countries with low cohort fertility in the order of 1.4-1.6 births per woman in the late 1960s cohorts, including germany and spain, show much weaker recuperation than the countries with comparatively higher completed fertility rates around 1.8-2.0, such as the netherlands and sweden. fertility recuperation differs widely by birth order. all the countries ana lysed show a strong recuperation in fi rst birth rates, whereas the recuperation index in the third and higher-order births varies between null in spain and austria through 0.4-0.5 in the czech republic and the netherlands to an “over-compensation” (above 1) in the united states (see also below). fertility postponement, as measured by the cumulated absolute fertility decline at younger ages, pc, has come to an end, at least temporarily, in many developed countries starting in the earlyto mid-1970s cohorts. this also holds for three countries in our analyses the netherlands, spain, and sweden, as well as for eastern germany. projection scenarios of completed fertility suggest relatively stable fertil ity levels in the countries that have progressed furthest in the postponement process, while for the countries where childbearing postponement started relatively late, the scenarios often diverge, capturing considerable uncertainty in the unfolding recuperation. among the countries analysed, the scenarios studied indicate a broad stabilisation in the completed fertility among the women born after 1975 in the netherlands (close to 1.8), austria (at 1.6), and among women born after 1980 in switzerland (at 1.55), while a rather broad range of fertility levels was projected for the czech republic and spain, with the former potentially retaining a higher fertility of up to 1.9 and the latter experiencing a fall in completed fertility to 1.35 in the lowest scenario presented. projections elaborated here often show considerably higher completed fer tility than the simplistic method that keeps the most recent age-specifi c fertility rates constant. accounting for the likely future recuperation thus helps the projection-makers to avoid scenarios with unrealistically rapid fertility declines and unlikely low completed fertility rates. • tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, ron lesthaeghe, tomas frejka, karel neels448 as the projected fertility and childlessness levels differ considerably across countries, the cross-country differences in low fertility observed are here to stay. the completed fertility of the early 1980s cohorts in individual countries is likely to range between the threshold of lowest-low cohort fertility of 1.3 births per woman and the replacement fertility levels of 2.1 births per woman. among the countries analysed, the united states clearly stand out for their persistently high fertility among teenage women and young adults, and therefore a limited extent of birth postponement combined with an “overcompensation” of the postponed fertility during the recuperation stage. this unique pattern brings a slight increase in completed fertility among the cohorts experiencing fertility postponement, resulting in the completed fertility of around 2.1 in the late 1960s cohorts. high fertility rates among the hispanic population and some religious groups (mormons, evangelical protestants) have repeatedly been noted as the main reason for the relatively high and early fertility pattern in the u.s. (cherlin 2010; westoff/marshall 2010). adding education into the analysis explains a considerable part of the postponement process. rising educational attainment among women has strongly contributed to declining fi rst birth rates at younger ages in the post-1950 cohorts in fi ve out of the nine countries studied in the supplementary online appendix. based on our fi ndings, austria, germany and switzerland share a number of common features in their postponement transition: the low cohort fertility level prior to its onset, its relatively even pace over time, but also the low or almost no recuperation at higher birth orders. unlike some countries of western and northern europe, a gradual fertility postponement in these three countries, as indicated by declining fertility at younger childbearing ages, gradually continues to date. eastern germany, where fertility postponement started late but progressed very rapidly in the cohorts born after 1960, is an important exception to these fi ndings. the approaches elaborated in this study are not without caveats. first, these methods are suited solely for analysing and projecting cohort fertility changes when a long-lasting process of changing timing pattern of childbearing, be it either postponement or advancement of births, sets in. second, as ever more births occur at advanced reproductive ages, projections of the completed cohort fertility of women who are currently in the middle of their reproductive span have become more uncertain. third, projection methods based on the relational approach need further testing, comparisons with the more established methods, and further elaboration. these limitations and possible extensions notwithstanding, the research presented here has a broad relevance and usefulness. graphical representations and the indicators of postponement and recuperation can be employed in a variety of contemporary settings, leading to more rigorous analyses of cohort fertility transformations. these approaches are potentially suitable for studying cohort postponement transitions outside of europe, for instance, in east asia (frejka et al. 2010) postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility • 449 as well as in less affl uent societies, especially in latin america (rosero-bixby et al. 2009). modelling the postponement transition, using selected social, economic and cultural variables alongside the key indicators of the postponement process constitutes another promising extension. the factors driving fertility recuperation have not been adequately studied to date, although several, including education level, gender equality, family policy regimes, and an acceptance of fertility outside marriage have been repeatedly suggested as important (sánchez-barricarte/fernández-carro 2007; sobotka 2008; lesthaeghe 2010; bratti/tatsiramos 2012). six decades after ryder’s (1951) seminal work on the subject, cohort fertility analysis has become ripe with new research potential. it is set to benefi t from fresh, critical looks, new methodological developments, and new research directions. acknowledgements we greatly appreciate the assistance of marion burkimsher, who has kindly provided us with her extensive collection and estimates of detailed period and cohort fertility data for switzerland. this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly established by the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina and is funded by the jacobs foundation. references billari, francesco c.; kohler, hans-peter 2004: patterns of low and lowest-low fertility in europe. in: population studies 58,2: 161-176 [doi:10.1080/0032472042000213695]. billari, francesco c. et al. 2007: approaching the limit: long-term trends in late and very late fertility. in: population and development review 33,1: 149-170 [doi: 10.1111/j.17284457.2007.00162.x]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 1998: on the quantum and tempo of fertility. in: population and development review 24,2: 271-291 [doi:10.2307/2807974]. bongaarts, john; sobotka, tomáš 2012: demographic explanations for the recent rise in european fertility. in: population and development review 38,1: 83-120 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00473.x]. bosveld, willy 1996: the ageing of fertility in europe. a comparative demographic-analytic study. doctoral dissertation. pdod publications. amsterdam: thesis publishers. bratti, massimiliano; tatsiramos, konstantinos 2012: the effect of delaying motherhood on second childbirth in europe. in: journal of population economics 25,1: 291-321 [doi:10.1007/s00148-010-0341-9]. caltabiano, marcantonio 2008: has the fertility decline come to an end in the different regions of italy? 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fertility threaten the future of european populations? in: surkyn, johan; deboosere, patrick; van bavel, jan (eds.): demographic challenges for the 21st century. a state of art in demography. brussels: vubpress: 27-89. sobotka, tomáš 2011: fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 36,2-3 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-11en]. sobotka, tomáš; lutz, wolfgang 2011: misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr: should we stop using it? in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 637-664 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-15en]. sobotka, tomáš et al. 2011: postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility: new analytical and projection methods and their application. in. european demographic research papers 2-2011. vienna: vienna institute of demography. statistics austria 1989: volkszählung 1981. eheschließungsund geburtenstatistik. vienna: österreichisches statistisches zentralamt. tu, edward jow ching; zhang, xia 2004: patterns of low fertility in hong kong and taiwan. unpublished paper. kowloon: hong kong university of science and technology, social science division. westoff, charles; marshall, emily 2010: hispanic fertility, religion, and religiousness in the u.s. in: population research and policy review 29,4: 441-452 [doi:10.1007/ s11113-009-9156-3]. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “aufschieben und nachholen von geburten aus der kohortenperspektive: deutschland, österreich, und die schweiz im europäischen kontext”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-10de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-10de9, at http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 11.01.2011 date of acceptance: 05.03.2012 dr. tomáš sobotka ( ). dr. kryštof zeman. vienna institute of demography, austrian academy of sciences and wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital. vienna, austria. e-mail: tomas.sobotka@oeaw.ac.at; krystof.zeman@oeaw.ac.at. url: http://www.oeaw.ac.at dr. ron lesthaeghe. em. prof. vrije universiteit brussel (vub) and visiting research associate, center for demographic studies, universitat autonoma of barcelona (uab). e-mail: rlesthaeghe@yahoo.com dr. tomas frejka. independent consultant, sanibel, florida, usa. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com prof. dr. karel neels. sociology department, university of antwerp. belgium. e-mail: karel.neels@ua.ac.be. url: http://www.ua.ac.be © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan abstract: this article argues that the interplay of changing environmental conditions in the wake of climate change and dynamic migration systems will lead to even more clearly articulated new regional formations. the way regions perceive the risks of climate change, how they cope with and adapt to these risks and their constitution as resilient entities determines the way migration and mobility take place. we focus on the regional dimensions of climate change and broader related developmental trends such as urbanisation and will highlight this nexus for coastal regions. we present two regional case studies, keta in ghana and semarang in indonesia. both cities have experienced fl oods and related environmental risks throughout their histories. the contrasting analysis of the two cases illustrates that similar environmental challenges may have very different effects on the migratory patterns. keywords: migration · environmental change · region · development · diaspora 1 introduction in the past years, a notable increase in research on the relationship between climate change and population redistribution, i.e. migration, has occurred. the academic debate is multifaceted, it links to two mega trends: fi rst, the exacerbation of environmental degradation through climate change; and second, population dynamics and migratory movements. the two debates cover somewhat different fi elds of knowledge: while the analysis of and the argumentation on environmental change is mainly tied to the natural sciences and mostly relies on quantitative data, the analysis of population dynamics and migration is deeply embedded in the social sciences and makes use of both quantitative and qualitative data. currently, these two fi elds show similar diffi culties when it comes to defi nitions concerning the dimensions of the phenomenon (how many people? how much environmental degradation?) and its temporalities (permanent or temporary movements? rapid or slow environmental change?). the key concepts are generally employed in an imprecise comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 25-54 (date of release: 23.06.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-06en1 • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan26 manner. global observations are taken into account at times, sometimes quoting estimates of how much migration will be caused by various degrees of sea-level rise. there is also a large body of literature using case studies to illustrate specifi c local situations. many regions experience environmental degradation, but show very different capacities to cope with the changes. migration is among the most relevant adaptation strategies and is thus in the core of our analysis. this article frames environmental change and processes of population mobility in a dynamic perspective by emphasizing the importance of the existing regional settings and trends. rather than viewing climate change as a global phenomenon resulting in a variety of local consequences including population mobility, we argue for a perspective that interprets migration and environmental change as two separate processes that intersect under certain circumstances and at certain points in time. we favour a regional analysis that accentuates the man-made dimension of environmental change by linking ongoing socio-economic transformation processes such as rapid urbanisation to longstanding population dynamics. as this article shows, rapid-onset events such as frequent fl ooding may result in migration in some places, but not in others. except for resettlement due to acute crises, migration propensity and patterns are fi rmly tied to the regional economic and sociocultural context. this article focuses on the situation in coastal regions, which are generally among the most vulnerable to climate change. coastlines are also known to be conducive to highly dynamic population movement and economic development, both due to linking the hinterland to the coast and as an access point for international socio-economic circuits. this article uses a comparative perspective. it contrasts two cities that experienced fl ooding for many years. the empirical data presented in this article is drawn from a larger research project carried out between 2014 and 2016 (see footnotes 1, 4 and 9 for more detail on methodology).1 in the fi rst section, this article presents an overview of the state of the debate on climate change and migration by summarising its pitfalls. the second section offers a short regionalisation of environmental change connected to climate change. to empirically substantiate the theoretical argument, the third section focuses on two coastal areas that have experienced environmental change for a long time: (a) keta, which is located on the gulf of guinea in ghana and (b) semarang, situated on the northern coastline of java in indonesia. here, we fi rst point out the main national features concerning the history of population dynamics, the speed and form 1 the project „new regional formations: environmental change and migration in coastal areas in ghana and indonesia” (2014-2016) was generously funded by the volkswagen-stiftung (germany). it was a joint project between the university of bremen, leibniz-institute for research on society and space erkner, zmt bremen and kwi essen. the empirical results presented here are the outcome of as well quantitative (use of existing demographic data and own survey and data) and qualitative research (including expert interviews, interviews with migrants, focusgroup discussions and observation, scrutinising of local reports and media) in the two regions as gathered by subproject 3 on “migrant trajectories”. also, the authors wish to thank usha ziegelmayer and two anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable comments on a former version of this manuscript. on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 27 of urbanisation, the socio-economic setting and development policies. in a second step, the two regional examples are analysed by interpreting the collected data. the conclusions argue that a detailed regional analysis reveals results that contradict common assumptions of a neat causality between climate change and population mobility. 2 state of the art: the role of climate change in population studies early migration literature such as ravenstein (1885) mentioned climate as one factor infl uencing migration behaviour. petersen (1958) assumed that “primitive migration” was the result of an ecological push: a movement related to man’s inability to cope with natural forces. from the 1960s onwards, this perspective received little attention, with rare exceptions such as richmond (quoted in hugo 1996: 110). mainstream migration studies after world war ii basically concentrated on economic circumstances, operating with the analytical tool of push and pull factors such as income differentials and employment opportunities while disregarding regional circumstances (todaro 1976). meanwhile, neo-marxist macro-theory emphasized political-economic factors and paid little attention to environmental infl uences. the bulk of migration literature considered the issues of migrant assimilation in urban areas at arrival, employing a predominantly culturalist approach (which ethnic groups adapts best?). apparently, the economic boom in the industrialised world left little space for the investigation of the eventual impact of environmental change on migration in these years (1960-1980). furthermore, the social sciences developed quantitative analysis systems that rarely considered the relevance of the geographical setting and its ecological dimensions. from the late 1970s onwards, with the beginning debate on sustainability, the production of knowledge in the fi eld of environmental change and migration took a new turn. the report of the club of rome (1972), among the fi rst voices to introduce ecological concerns into the development debate, identifi ed fi ve fi elds threatening economic growth: population increase, unbalanced food production, industrialisation, pollution, and the depletion of natural resources. a literature review identifi ed a total of 39 publications covering the nexus of climate change and migration in the 1980s. in the 1990s, 104 publications could be found, and between 2000 and 2008 179 publications were counted (hillmann/kronauer 2010). today, the relationship between climate change and migration is at centre stage on the global political agenda. the debate on a possible causality between climate change and migratory movements took off in the mid-1980s, when el-hinnawi (1985) and other experts labelled certain migrants as “environmental refugees” in an unep report – pointing out that in the near future “the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions will be displaced.“ (as cited in piguet et al. 2011: 4). the debate intended to raise public awareness about environmental issues. when myers (1983) published the fi rst estimates and prognoses about the quantitative dimension of this category of migrants, the discussion took a new twist, as environmental degradation was now interpreted as a major cause of migration. in the ensuing years, the • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan28 debate became increasingly alarmist. in 1995, a publication entitled “environmental exodus, an emergent crisis in the global arena” published by the climate institute (washington, dc) obtained much attention (myers/kent 1995). the authors claimed that up to the year 2015, between 200 million to one billion people would be on the move due to environmental change. in 2006, the term “climate refugee” replaced the original “environmental refugee.” the un and several ngos started to think about establishing a global humanitarian action plan, building upon the heated climate change debate of the day. from the outset of the debate, this position – understanding environmental degradation as a direct cause of large-scale displacement – was referred to as the “maximalist position” (suhrke 1994: 20). the opposing position was fi rst taken by richard black in his book “refugees, environment and development” (black 1998). he claimed that the overall concept of environmental refugees was misleading and far too politicised, creating “horror scenarios,” as steven castles (2002) put it. etienne piguet (2010) contends that, in addition to the weak empirical base of much of the work on environmental refugees, the suggested linear relationship is highly debatable. this latter position, mainly found among migration experts, was called the “minimalist position.” in an early stage of the debate, graeme hugo pointed to environmental degradation (e.g. deforestation and pollution) in developing countries, but argued that many of the environmental changes were the results of all sorts of crises – including the refugee crisis itself. additionally, the overexploitation of natural resources led to environmental degradation (hugo 1996: 123). today, a wide range of studies on climate change exist, many of which have been funded by global organisations such as the ipcc, the world bank, united nations university, the oecd, as well as foundations such as the german marshall fund, the macarthur foundation, or ngos such as the german advisory council on global change (wbgu) (2007). the each-for-project (environmental change and forced migration scenarios), run in 2006 under the 6th framework programme of the european commission, was highly relevant for the empirical endorsement of the debate. the study was conceived in a multi-disciplinary manner, combining desk studies with case study research in almost two dozen locations. it incorporated parts of europe into its design, but emphasized understanding the processes in developing countries. up to 2010, the focus of research was mostly on countries in the developing world, which were considered most vulnerable for climate change. from the outset, there was a regional emphasis on africa (33 studies, with nine on ghana) and asia (36, with nine on bangladesh) in empirical studies (hillmann/kronauer 2010). most of the studies were designed as case studies, based on a short time frame and a limited number of study participants. interdisciplinary and longitudinal research was lacking from the outset (knomad 2015). this bias points towards western fears concerning mass migration rather than indicating actual empirical trends (piguet et al. 2011: 15), but also shows the political interests fuelling the debate from the side of the affected countries. political representatives from states such as bangladesh repeatedly expressed their concern about the effect of sea level rise on vulnerable coastal populations, contributing to the global awareness of a frightening development (findlay/geddes 2011: 138-139). increasingly, migration on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 29 was promoted as a top national concern in industrialised countries (afi fi /warner 2008: 20). some researchers also claim that there is a “climate divide” within most countries, whereby data and projections on climate change are available only for the economically thriving and politically infl uential parts of the country, even if other regions are more affected by climate change (glaeser/glaser 2010: 143). existing institutional linkages between ngos and established local partners in the developing world might be one factor that reinforced this regional selectivity. in addition to this empirical bias, sudden environmental events such as cyclones, fl oods or volcanic eruptions have been at the centre of public debate because they require quick and reliable relocation and resettlement on the spot. therefore, these events easily attract media and ngo attention. longer-term effects of climate change that risk increased fl ooding (i.e. sea level rise and glacier melt) will potentially make coastlines uninhabitable in the future, but are diffi cult to foresee. similarly, the increased frequency and magnitude of weather-related acute natural hazards are complex to grasp (knomad 2015). furthermore, root causes such as environmental degradation and resource loss due to large-scale infrastructure projects (tsikata 2006; bleibaum 2010), urbanisation, commercial farming practices, export-led development policies, and land tenures practices (rogers/wang 2006), all of which impact local livelihoods, are diffi cult to isolate. this means that they generally receive less attention compared to migration. however, tacoli (2011: 1314) examines cycles of intensifi ed environmental degradation and their devastating consequences on the livelihoods of people in bolivia and senegal occurring in conjunction with major economic and social upheaval. recent phenomena, such as land-grabbing for producing biofuels instead of food crops, as well as the construction of infrastructure for mitigation itself (e.g. dams and water reservoirs or coastal sea defences), scarcely receive attention in the literature. migration then constitutes only one adaptation strategy among others, linking migratory events more strongly to local adaptation strategies, dependent upon the vulnerability and resilience of households. intraregional migration is one such possible adaptation pattern, differing for women and men (mcleman/hunter 2010; laczko/aghazarm 2009: 75). anthropological literature explores whether the affected population can opt for other localised coping strategies, such as altered consumption patterns, changed cropping patterns, seasonal migration and income diversifi cation. some researchers also mention possible local solutions to coping with environmental change, such as adaption in situ (e.g. heightening fl oors of houses, economic diversifi cation or short-distance mobility and shifts in crop production) (handayani et al. 2015). finally, questions of risk perception and the willingness to consider migration and other mobility as an option per se need to be taken into account by academic research (see van der velde/naerssen 2015 on the mental thresholds of migration). three analytical pitfalls can be identifi ed for the current debate: a high degree of politicisation, the use of blurred terminologies, and the mixing and confl ating of scales (e.g. local and global) (hillmann et al. 2015). interestingly, literature stemming from the affected countries themselves is likely to call for a multi-disciplinary approach for explaining migration realistically and for taking historical migration pat• felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan30 terns into account (awumbila/ardayfi o-schandorf 2008; laczko/aghazarm 2009: 29; muhidin 2014). 3 population dynamics and environmental change – a regionalisation in this article, “climate change” is used as the overarching term for global warming and, in consequence, sea level rise. in contrast, “environmental change” is understood more broadly as including a vast array of degradations of the natural environment, very often man-made. geographers in migration research (e.g. richard black) acknowledge the problems of sea level rise, desertifi cation, deforestation, lack of water, salinisation and biodiversity depletion, but tend to interpret migration as an integrated part of the social and economic structure of the region in question. similarly, graeme hugo stresses the impact of regional realities and acknowledges that morphology has an impact on the effects of climate change (hugo 2013). he identifi es four main terrains in which climate change is anticipated to have a negative impact when combined with population growth: • coastal areas: inundation, storm surges, and sea level rise • river valleys and deltas: increased riparian fl ooding • low lying island states: sea level rise, surface warming, and extreme weather events • semi-arid and low humidity areas: water shortages of course, other morphological regions such as the high mountain regions, areas characterised by permafrost (e.g. parts of russia), or the melting of the ice shields at the poles also undergo strong environmental change. in addition, the severity of the impact on the various types of areas is contingent on the type of human economic activities in the area. generally, the ipcc sees coastal areas in developing countries as highly vulnerable due to their comparatively low adaptive capacity – counting south, southeast and east asia and africa as most vulnerable (ipcc 2014). in the case of africa, it is expected that the low-lying coastal zones will experience high rates of population growth and urbanisation for decades to come, especially in western and eastern africa (neumann et al. 2015). in asia, almost three-quarters of total population live in vulnerable low lying coastal zones (macgranahan et al. 2007). the degradation of coastal and river delta ecosystems has detrimental impacts on the livelihoods of populations in these areas and is projected by the ipcc to lead to major population displacements, increasing pressure on scarce resources in destination areas. poorer populations living in vulnerable coastal areas bear the brunt of environmental hazards. their exposure leads to a higher risk in morbidity, property damage and livelihood loss, and subsequently could increase their propensity for migration. therefore, this article concentrates on the analysis of coastal areas. on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 31 4 regional examples of population dynamics and environmental change in ghana and indonesia this article uses the two examples of keta (ghana) and semarang (indonesia) to investigate how local realities that have long been prone to rapid environmental change make use of migration as one possible adaptation strategy. methodologically, the comparison aims to contrast two regional realities, not compare the two cases to one other. this approach allows for fl exibility in the research design because it gives the researcher the possibility to refl ect on one case in light of the other. the new regional formations project, which we refer to here (cf. footnote 1), aimed at identifying the emergence of “new regional formations”, new constellations of a variety of actors that reconnect local realities to greater development dynamics and that increasingly (re)position themselves on the regional level using the discourse on climate change as a vehicle for their policies (herbeck 2015). such new spatial and political confi gurations infl uence existing power symmetries within the nationstate, generate supranational governance structures, and are likely to become more powerful in the near future (soja 2015: 373-374). the following section fi rst summarises the common features of the two countries and then gives an introduction into the developmental, environmental and demographic characteristics of these national settings. next, the two regional realities are presented separately. here, the main fi ndings of the survey and qualitative research will be presented. 4.1 common features of the two chosen examples the two regions chosen for empirical research are parts of larger national structures, which are themselves parts of supranational regional organisations (ecowas in western africa and asean in southeast asia). ghana and indonesia are tightly linked to the global economy, and they show signifi cant international migration fl ows. by hdi, both countries are classifi ed as countries with “medium human development”, hosting a growing middle class population. ghana and indonesia have a predominantly young population, both countries face high poverty rates, inequality and situations of vulnerability among the major part of the population. the annual average population growth is around 2,5 percent in ghana and 1,5 percent in indonesia – each showing a slow but steady decrease of this rate since 1985. life expectancy is about 60 years in ghana and 70 years in indonesia. both countries are diverse in ethnicity and religion. equally, the urban and rural populations are fairly balanced, showing an overall share of urbanisation of 53 percent for indonesia and ghana alike; the average rate of change of the share of urbanisation for 2010-15 is 1.3 percent (ghana) and 1.5 percent (indonesia) (united nations 2014). both ghana and indonesia were colonies until the 1950s, under british and dutch administration, respectively. the two countries are part of larger migratory systems – the west african and the asia pacifi c regimes – and have extensive diasporas. the net migration rates for the period 2010-15 are -0.8 (-100,000 migrants) and -0.6 (-700.000) for ghana and indonesia respectively (united nations 2013b). in the 1960s and 1970s, ghana was • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan32 an important country of immigration, mainly attracting migrants from neighbouring countries to work on the plantations and in the timber industry. the mass expulsion in 1969 of a quarter of a million immigrants originating from niger, nigeria, togo, and burkina faso marked the start of a decade of economic recession. cocoa production slumped due to labour shortages, and, coupled with hyperinfl ation and droughts, caused severe economic recession. from then on, ghana experienced a transition from an immigration to an emigration country, especially after oil was discovered in nigeria. many ghanaians went to work in the oil industry, but the ivory coast and togo were also countries of destination. in 1983 and 1985, there were mass forced expulsions from nigeria, which included more than a million ghanaians who were forced to return to ghana, replacing many burkinabé immigrants who (forcefully) returned home (spaan/van moppes 2006; tankwanchi 2012). in recent decades, growing labour forces with bleak employment prospects, coupled with economic stagnation, have increasingly led to emigration. as in other west and east african countries in particular, the emigration of highly skilled workers, such as doctors, nurses, and architects, caused a brain-drain situation which has further exacerbated economic problems (anyangwe/mtonga 2007; teye et al. 2014; tankwanchi 2012). in contrast, indonesia shows a low net migration rate, although in absolute numbers international migration is signifi cant, given indonesia’s population of almost 250 million. traditionally, indonesian labour migrants are low skilled workers, temporarily working abroad in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing, with the bulk of women working as domestic workers and caregivers. a large proportion of international labour migration is undocumented, particularly to neighbouring malaysia and singapore. the main destinations of indonesian labour migrants are the middle east (saudi arabia, kuwait, the uae, qatar, and jordan) and countries in southeast and east asia, such as malaysia, singapore, hong kong sar, the republic of korea, and taiwan. the indonesian diaspora is estimated at 2–6 million and beyond the countries listed above can be found in europe (netherlands, united kingdom, germany, italy, sweden), japan, bangladesh, papua new guinea, mauritius, surinam, australia and the americas (muhidin/utomo 2013). there are considerable regional differences in population growth and urbanisation rates in both countries. greater accra, ashanti and central regions in ghana and the provinces of banten, west-java, riau and east kalimantan in indonesia have the highest rates in their respective countries. internal migration fl ows contribute to urban population growth in both countries. the general direction of migration in ghana and indonesia – from the north to coastal cities in the south in the case of ghana, and from the outer islands to the coastal urban centres on java in indonesia – puts increasing pressure on the urban infrastructure and environment in the coastal regions of their countries. environmental change is a component of broad development problems. deforestation is a major concern: between 1990 and 2011, forest area declined by 20.9 percent in indonesia and 35.2 percent in ghana (undp 2014). although part of deforestation is caused by smallholder slash-and-burn agriculture and charcoal production, a major determining factor is a political economy favouring economic profi t on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 33 over conservation, backed by powerful interest groups including political elites and multinationals such as palm oil producers and mining companies (hansen et al. 2009; indrarto et al. 2012; arnold 2014). both countries are faced by severe environmental issues in cities and coastal areas due to virtually non-existent recycling and waste processing. further major environmental risks include sea level rise, fl oods, salinisation, mangrove forest depletion, pollution, and droughts. both countries have implemented resettlement programs due to environmental problems, including those related to large infrastructural projects such as the erection of hydroelectric power plants and dams. both coastlines either have a sea defence (ghana) or will in the future (indonesia) in 2017. in ghana, the development of an estate economy during colonial rule fostered historical patterns of in-migration from the country’s north and from neighbouring countries. the main pattern of migration in ghana has thus been from north to south, with a steadily increasing rate except for 1970–85, a period of economic decline. most low-skilled migrants hailing from the north moved to the cities of kumasi in central ghana and to coastal cities such as accra, cape coast and tema. furthermore, many migrated to work in agriculture in the country’s middle belt and cocoa farming in the southwest (van der geest 2011). from 2000-10, the highest population growth rates were recorded for greater accra and central regions (3.1 percent), with lower rates for northern region (2.9 percent), ashanti (2.7 percent) and volta (2.5 percent). the poorest regions – upper east (1.2 percent) and upper west (1.9 percent) – recorded lowest rates (ghana statistical service 2012). although it is often suggested that environmental degradation, exacerbated by changing climatic conditions (e.g. rising temperatures; erratic rainfall) is a main driver for out-migration, research in ghana has shown that structural environmental scarcity and limited non-farm employment opportunities underlie population mobility patterns. researchers have argued that poverty, the scarcity of arable land, and political factors ultimately weigh more heavily than environmental stress (van der geest 2011). decentralisation and growth-pole strategies are drivers of mobility and urbanisation in ghana (yaro et al. 2011), and internal movement in ghana is more prominent than in indonesia (though smaller in absolute numbers). ghana’s fi veyear crude migration intensity (between 3.5-6 percent in 2000, measured in 10 and 110 regional units) is higher than that of indonesia (between 0.8-4 percent in 2000, for 7 and 314 regions). lifetime crude migration intensity in ghana is 17.8-27.8 percent (2000, 10 and 110 regions), four times higher than in indonesia (4.1-8.4 percent in 2000, for 7 and 26 regions) (united nations 2013a: 8, 12).2 indonesia is an island nation with over 240 million inhabitants (2010), half of whom live on the island of java. up to 65 percent of java’s population of around 138 million live in coastal regions (kementerian negara lingkungan hidup 2007) and is 2 crude migration intensity (cmi) is calculated for a number of levels of spatial disaggregation, and computed by expressing the total number of internal migrants (m) in a given time period as a percentage of the population at risk (p) such that cmi = 100m/p. • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan34 therefore particular exposed to environmental change. the sheer size of the indonesian archipelago (2 million km2 with over 18,000 islands) and its enormous diversity in terms of morphological, cultural and socio-economic characteristics translates into highly diverse patterns of population movement. its history of large-scale migration within the country, both voluntary and regulated, is varied in terms of skill levels, destination and temporality. the various regional migration systems centre on the island of java, but also focus on other growth poles such as the sijori triangle (a transnational development region, including the indonesian riau archipelago, johor in malaysia and singapore), and north sumatra and southeast kalimantan. an analysis of interprovincial movement shows major population movements between the peripheral islands and java and bali. still, there are also other signifi cant population movements, both circular and more permanent, at the regional. for example, there is longstanding migration from java, north and south sumatra, and east kalimantan linked to the estate economy and extractive industries (spaan 1999). these regions also function as a transition corridor for international migration to malaysia, singapore, and further afi eld. in fact, analysis of recent migration patterns shows that migration levels at the inter-district level are higher in comparison to inter-island and inter-provincial levels for all age groups (muhidin 2014: 326). although it is hard ascertain common patterns of population mobility, the environment, agro-ecological zones, and related economic activities are interrelated. generally, the direction of migration is from the uplands and poorer islands in eastern indonesia, areas which are generally arid, less fertile and lacking resources, towards the lower coastal areas and the islands of java and bali, with intensive farming and agro-industry. the bulk of industrial, public services, health, tourism, and education is located in urban agglomerations, many of which are situated along the coastline. the rapidly changing indonesian workforce contributes to the urbanisation trend: as the proportion of primary school graduates in the workforce declines, over 50 percent of the total increase in 2002-2012 are secondary and tertiary graduates (due to successful educational policies in recent years). while agriculture still forms the bulk of labour demand (almost 40 percent in 2012), formal and informal non-farm employment account for around one third each (manning/purnagunawan 2014: 346). the major migration destination on the island of java is the urban agglomeration around jakarta (jabodetabek).3 although indonesia has a long history of government migration policies aimed at population redistribution to relieve pressure on java and bali (e.g. the transmigration program), data on interprovincial migration for the years between 1930 and 2000 indicates that economic factors were far more important than the resettlement programs (van lottum/marks 2012). the following sections introduce the two regional examples of keta and semarang. first, the respective socio-economic structure and the adopted development policies in the two regions will be highlighted. next, the ongoing environmental 3 jabodetabek is the acronym for the urban agglomeration around the capital, comprising jakarta, bogor, depok, tangerang and bekasi with an estimated population of 30 million. on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 35 changes will be discussed. finally, the results of the empirical study concerning the demographic structure and migration pattern will be analysed in light of these changes. a case study: keta, ghana4 the fi rst case study concerns a coastal area in the lower volta region in southeastern ghana. keta town is located close to the mouth of the volta river on the gulf of guinea. it lies on a sandspit between the atlantic and keta lagoon (see fig 1). the agro-ecological zone is coastal savannah, characterised by poor soils, mangrove swamps and a bimodal rainfall pattern (approx. 700-800 mm/annum) (u.s. forest service 2011). historically, the region was an important port of call for the trade in slaves, spices and gold, and important for fi sh processing (akyeampong 2001). the population of keta mainly lives off farming, fi shing, salt and copra production and trade. the poverty incidence rate of the keta region was between 40-50 percent in 2000 (coulombe/wodon 2007) and remains high. the keta lagoon thus forms an important natural resource for food security, and is designated as a critical habitat for migratory birds and endangered marine turtles (u.s. forest service 2011). keta is part of the anlo-ewe region, which has distinctive environmental, cultural and linguistic traits that stretch into the neighbouring togo. keta suffers from coastal erosion, loss of housing and declining lagoon fi sh stocks. the prominence of the market and trading function of keta has faded and shifted to the city of anloga in the same municipality, only 15 km southwest along the coast. ghanaian livelihoods, particularly of the poor in rural areas, are highly dependent on natural resources, which are currently under threat both by climate change and by non-sustainable human exploitation, resulting in erosion, deforestation, pollution and declining soil fertility and marine resources (u.s. forest service 2011). for the volta river basin, a report warns that due to climate change impacts (i.e. higher temperatures and less, more erratic rainfall), river fl ow will decrease signifi cantly, jeopardising food production, animal husbandry and hydro-power production in the volta river watershed. in particular, the predicted greater variance in water availabil4 a total of 274 households were included into the sample, for a total of 1.345 people. the interviews were conducted in selected villages and towns suffering ongoing rapid environmental change. households within these villages were selected by random sampling supported by gis techniques: afi adenyigba (n=49), anloga (n=49), blekusu (n=24), genui (n=24), kedzi (n=25), keta town (n=48), tegbi (n=50), n.n. (n=5). six ewe-speaking interviewers conducted the survey in early 2015. keta had 58 percent male-headed and 42 percent female-headed households, and a 47 percent male and 53 percent female population overall. additionally, 95 experts, key informants, and migrants were interviewed. for the purpose of this study, we defi ned “migrants” as persons who leave their household for more than three consecutive months in order to live in another sub-district or community of keta. the respondents were the household heads, who were asked about all household members who once used to live in the household and then moved away for more than three consecutive months. the qualitative data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with migrant households from keta in accra and togo, two destinations of migration from keta. further key informant interviews with traditional and state authorities in keta added to our knowledge base. • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan36 ity and lower groundwater recharge will have a detrimental impact on the rain-fed and irrigated agriculture common in the area. in keta district, erosion, fl oods, tidal waves and wind storms have been reported in recent years. the coast has seriously eroded and the many houses that are permanently inundated pose great obstacles to (traditional) seine fi shing. the following anthropogenic environmental hazards in the volta basin including keta coastal area have occurred: bush fi res, depletion of fi sh stocks and clam beds (torvikey 2014), groundwater pollution and silting of lagoon and rivers due to farming activity and deleterious fi shing practices (e.g. use of agro-chemicals and tnt). furthermore, groundwater depletion due to groundwater extraction for the salt-winning industry is common, in turn ruining local coconut groves. regional development policies emphasized industrialisation and large-scale infrastructure projects. in the 1960s, a hydroelectric power dam at akosombo in the upper volta region was constructed, followed by the smaller kpong dam downstream, completed in 1982. in 2013, the bui dam came into operation. the development of hydro-electric dams has both positive and negative consequences. power generation, industrial output (e.g. aluminium) and growth of economically vibrant urban centres such as tema and akosombo, and employment growth in the form of lakeside fi shing count among the positives. the construction also lead to decreases in diseases such as river blindness and sleeping sickness due to the fl ooding of the breeding grounds of disease vectors, i.e. black fl ies and tsetse fl ies (tsikata 2006). fig. 1: the location of the case-study, keta (ghana) source: kartenwerkstatt tu berlin, 2017 on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 37 the downside is the inundation of villages, farms, burial and religious sites, forced resettlement and social disruption.5 the dams have contributed to the loss of forest, drastic changes in fi sh stocks downstream due to changes in water temperature and turbidity, coastal erosion and a silting of the estuary (akyeampong 2001). the lower water levels due to dam construction upriver have resulted in the drying up of creeks, droughts and the emergence of pests (e.g. cape st. paul wilt disease), negatively affecting downstream fl ora and copra production. the process of beach sedimentation along the coast has been disrupted due to dam construction, threatening the habitat of locals.6 livelihoods are seriously affected by the loss of arable land, forest resources and the disappearance of creek and clam fi shing, the latter traditionally being a major activity for local women. moreover, an increase in the incidence of bilharzia and malaria has occurred due to slowing down of the river and through cross-infection via migrating ewe and ada fi shermen and -women from endemic areas in lower volta (akyeampong 2001; tsikata 2006). although ghana has signed various conventions on environment, wildlife conservation, and climate change, and formulated policies on sustainable development, there is no specifi c policy on the coastal zone (amlalo 2006; boateng 2006). the failures and political diffi culties involved in addressing the longstanding environmental problems of the anlo-ewe region including keta are well documented (akyeampong 2001). locals have expressed their discontent with the fact that development efforts were mainly aimed towards the regions west of the volta, as exemplifi ed by the construction of the harbour and industries at tema, giving a fi nal blow to keta’s former harbour function. despite the serious damage to keta’s housing and infrastructure caused by erosion throughout the years, and after several failed coastline protection attempts since 1960, it was only in 1998 that the large-scale keta sea defense started being planned (see fig. 2). the project involved the construction of a sea wall, beach stabilisation (e.g. groynes; concrete block revetment), causeways, land reclamation and fl ood control structures. the $90 million project is justifi ed by the government not only as a means of protection for ghanaian citizens, but also as securing local industry, fi shery, commerce and promoting (eco-) tourism.7 however, sea defense measures have failed in some cases due to inadequate design and construction (coastal research center 2013). secondary effects such as downstream erosion had initially not been considered, but have emerged are a result of the sea defense construction works, according to local experts. local inhabitants had to be resettled to newly built communities near kedzi to the east of keta town. 5 the akosombo dam alone led to the inundation of an estimated 4 percent (3275 sq. miles) of ghana‘s land mass (jopp 1965) and the resettlement of 80,000 people from 739 villages (yaro et al. 2011). 6 climate change threatens ghana‘s coast. al jazeera, 28 dec 2013, at: http://www.aljazeera. com/indepth/features/2013/12/climate-change-threatens-ghana-coast-2013129114224783683. html. 7 in ada foah, along the volta southwest of keta, another 160 million euro sea defense project is built, with the aims of shoreline stabilisation, fl ood control, and increasing tourism potential (a sea turtle breeding site). • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan38 more recently, the discovery of oil deposits around the keta lagoon is expected to have a signifi cant impact on local economic activities, as it would affect offshore fi sheries and the natural environment. local development plans include petrochemical and cement plants, for which government land reclamation around the lagoon has taken place. moreover, a canal is planned to be dredged between keta lagoon and the volta river estuary to facilitate transport, trade, and tourism. these activities are expected to boost the economy and employment, but they could also be detrimental to the environment and local fi shery industry. the population of keta has shrunk since 1960, but increased slightly between 2000 and 2010. whereas the population stood at 16,719 in 1960, it declined to 14,446 in 1970 (-14 percent), 12,595 in 1984 (-13 percent) and 8,101 in 2000 (-36 percent) (yaro et al. 2011: 37-38; based on population census data). despite the declining economic importance of keta, there is still limited (seasonal) in-migration from neighbouring regions for education and work in fi shing, trade and construction. nevertheless, the keta area is mainly an area of out-migration, as our respondents stated. in large part, migration consists of seasonal movements, varying from several months to a few years, e.g. for fi shing or trade, whereby people move upstream and to other coastal cities. many also venture abroad to destinations in west africa, mainly ivory coast (abidjan) and togo (lomé). local fi shermen temporarily fig. 2: the sea defence in keta town source: photo by f. hillmann, 2014 on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 39 move along the coast as far away as sierra leone and even angola: “you see the fi shermen migrating with the fi sh” (interview partner). interviews with fi shermen and local experts made it clear that this mobility was necessitated by diminishing catches along the coastline due to overfi shing by european and chinese trawlers and because of the insuffi cient meshes used by many local fi shermen. women, who traditionally sell the fi sh at the market, complain that the changes in keta started a vicious cycle of downgrading, producing out-migration. as one of our interview partners states “in the event that men do not get fi sh, it implies that they were not going to get money to fend for the family. it is this same fi sh that we women also buy to smoke and sell, so we are also not able to raise money even if we get the fi shes to smoke and there is no one to buy them. when the fi shes are not sold, we are as well unable to pay the men and thus the situation affects almost anybody”. (interview 26, market woman) the notion of mobility is deeply rooted in the regional tradition of the anlo-ewe. a migration saga, related to the ewe-anlo fi shermen, is kept alive and is still recited by the local population (kumassah 2009). today, the hogbetsoso festival, which commemorates the exodus of the anlos from notisie in the republic of togo, is celebrated annually. the saga exemplifi es the mobility that was vital to the life of the anlo people over the centuries. indeed, our survey revealed a highly mobile population. a quarter of all households reported to have one or two circular migrants (mostly moving to accra) staying away less than half a year. only a tiny share of households, 5 percent, reported to have members that stayed away for more than two years. circular migration was directed mainly, 68 percent, towards (greater) accra and the keta lagoon. return migrants, defi ned as persons who lived away for more than three consecutive months during the past fi ve years, lived in 27 percent of the interviewed households. when asked about the professional status of the household-heads, 21 percent said to own a business, 16 percent were artisans, another 16 percent fi shermen and 15 percent were retired. the majority, 56 percent, owned the land on which they lived. the results of the survey point out that out-migration was mainly directed towards accra, in 71 percent of all cases, while some, 8 percent, ventured to neighbouring african countries such as benin, nigeria and togo. very few also migrated to europe and the us via accra. half of the interviewed migrants said to have received assistance for their migration, mostly money from other householdmembers. no agencies – as often the case in international migration – were used to facilitate the migration. for many households having a member abroad meant an additional source of income and thus a net reduction in risk. about one third (30 percent) of all interviewed households said that they received remittances from migrated household members, generally between 100 to 499 cedi8 per year (contributing to an average income of around 4.000 cedi per year). about 7 percent of 8 100 ghanaian cedi are equivalent to $31 (january 2015). fisherman earn around 2 cedi a day, the minimum wage is 5 or 6 cedis a day (interview 21, 2014). • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan40 these migrants provided food for the household. out of the 583 migrants in the sample, men made up 53 percent. most migrated at the ages of 10-29, elder people moved only rarely. 58 percent of the migrants stated that they went away for work. much of the migration, 24 percent, was due to educational aspirations, a tenth to family reasons. indeed, apart from secondary schools, the region offers very few tertiary institutions, and none of them offer training for local employment. as one of our interviewees claims: ”what you are trained with, you cannot be employed here, you can only be employed outside. that is why many of us who are literate must go elsewhere for employment […] so, everybody who wants to further their education must move out […]”. environmental change had an impact on livelihoods. only a small share of our respondents (0,7 percent) said that they moved due to environmental reasons, despite the fact that 167 households out of 288, 60 percent, said to have experienced damage to the personal property or health through extreme environmental events. according to our data, migrants could count on support for their migration from other household members, relatives and migrated relatives. priests and local chiefs had a limited say in the decision to migrate for most of our respondents. our sample showed a rather positive attitude towards migration: 59 percent of all respondents said that migrants could come back even if they fail in making a living elsewhere, 64 percent thought that households with a migrant are better off than those without, 53 percent of respondents said that they were in favour of going away. family ties turned out to play an important role for migration decisions, as half of all interviewees stated that children should ask their parents before moving away. there is clearly a cultural obligation to take care of one’s parents. in keta, as in some other places in the volta region, out-migration has produced a relatively new phenomenon of socio-economic organisation. in addition to the common way of choosing chiefs from specifi c families or clans, a second category of chiefs is now selected on the basis of their resources to help develop the region, resulting in a new group of “development chiefs”. a local chief points out: “but now for prestige’s sake, fi rst of all the chief can be anybody whether educated or not, but now they want an educated chief, especially when the person is rich and they think he/she can help in terms of development. so, these chiefs are called development chiefs”. traditionally elected chiefs might also reside outside keta and still be involved in local policies and development. a main goal is to secure connections to ngos and to increase the contact with ministers to elicit help. diaspora associations such as the council of ewe associations of north america (ceana) also engage in local politics. a member of the association explains this process as follows: “and currently we help a school, also in the volta region. some of our colleagues went to ghana and went to the school and saw how the condition was and they came and did a presentation and the association on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 41 decided to help out. they decided to do some fundraising, some books and coins, and then we started also with fellowships for pupils”. this help was widely accepted by the resident population and was also mentioned by the diaspora interview partners. the outcome of our research on the articulation of migration and population dynamics in the local setting of keta (which is repeatedly fl ooded) points to migration as having emerged as part of an increase in urbanisation, rather than due to the challenges of environmental change themselves. the local population is well aware of the dangers of environmental change, but the overexploitation of resources (fi shing), the downgrading of the market and trading functions, and the better education opportunities in the urban centres have a far greater impact on their lives. most mobility is still internal, but migration to the urban hubs, to neighbouring countries, and to europe and the us is a well-known form of mobility. overall, migrants abroad and the long-term diaspora contribute to local development. b case-study: semarang regency and city, indonesia9 the second example presented here is the town of semarang (kota semarang), a regency (kabupaten) on the north coast of central java, indonesia. the total population of central java was 32.6 million in 2012, up from 31.2 million in 2000 (bps 2014). the region is already highly urbanised, and increasingly so: the urbanisation rate was 40.4 percent in 2000, 56.2 percent in 2010 and is projected to grow to 73.8 percent in 2025 (indonesian statistical bureau, 31 may 2010). central java is traditionally a region of out-migration. the semarang metropolitan area (sma), also called “kedung sepur,” is designated as one of indonesia’s national strategic growth areas (mp3ei 2011), and consists of the cities of semarang, salatiga and purwodadi and four adjacent districts (kendal, demak, ungaran, grobogan), with a population of around 5.4 million people (in 2010). semarang city proper, as a major sea port, transportation hub, and important industrial, service, and manufacturing centre with aquaculture 9 a total of 334 households has been included into the sample, portraying a total of 1.417 people, 265 outmigrants and 129 inmigrants. the interviews were done in selected kecamatan sub-districts)which suffer ongoing rapid environmental change, especially fl ooding, in semarang (in tugu, semarang berat, semarang utara, semarang timur, genuk, semarang tengah, tembalang), households have been selected by random sampling and have been supported by gis-techniques. the sample was carried out in the months november/december 2014. the respondents were composed as follows: 82 percent male-headed, 18 percent female-headed households representing 1,417 household members (48 percent male, 52 percent female). for the purpose of this study we defi ned “migrants” as persons who leave their household for more than three consecutive months in order to live in another place, at least another sub-district (ind.: kecamatan)of semarang city or another municipality respectively or further away. the respondents in the survey were the household heads who were asked about all household members who once used to live in the household and then moved away for more than three consecutive months. additionally, 92 experts, key-informants and migrants were interviewed. in semarang the qualitative interviews consisted of key informant interviews with heads of villages and sub-districts in semarang municipality. • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan42 (fi sh, shrimp farms) and agro-industry, forms the core of the kedungsepur regional growth pole, linking the city with the urban and rural economies in the hinterland, including timber, textiles and foodstuff production. in the late 1990s, semarang port added a container wharf to be able to handle the rapidly increasing volume of container cargo. in the past years, the regional distinction between rural and urban is becoming blurred, as semarang is becoming increasingly linked to yogyakarta on the southern coast of central java via an urban corridor. semarang city itself had a population of 1.5 million in 2011 (bappeda bps kota semarang 2012), with a population density of 23,000 people per km2 (mulyana et al. 2013) stretching over approx. 374 km² (see fig. 3). semarang’s population includes a signifi cant proportion of ethnic chinese and arabs (suryadinata et al. 2003), a refl ection of the city’s history as a major port and international trading centre, with strong linkages to the outer islands and abroad. the territory is divided into three morphologically distinct zones: a lowland area (zero to 3.5 metres above sea level) in the north, a plain zone with higher elevation (3.5-90 metres) and a highland area (90-348 metres) (hadipuro 2012). although the largest part of the city is located on higher ground, the highest population concentrations are in the low-lying alluvial zone along the coast. about 30.000 people live in the coastal area of which many depend on agriculture (fi shermen and farmers). fig. 3: the location of the case-study, semarang (indonesia) source: kartenwerkstatt tu berlin on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 43 due to its location on the northern littoral, the population of semarang is prone to environmental hazards.10 beyond the low elevation along the coast, mangrove depletion, tidal processes, excessive groundwater extraction, and construction load, tidal inundation, erosion and water pollution are the main causes for land subsidence (marfai et al. 2008; marfai 2011; hadipuro 2012). land subsidence in semarang is nurtured by rapid urbanisation and the conversion of land into industrial and residential areas, a process that has been ongoing for decades. however, problems of soil erosion, downstream sedimentation and fl ooding in the lower watersheds are also the result of forest management policies in the highlands (logging; conversion of teak forests to pine production forests; paripurno 2006). furthermore, semarang is experiencing changes in average surface temperatures and precipitation patterns, shifts in wet and dry seasons, and increased frequencies of extreme weather events such as droughts and intense rainfall (ccrom, cited in mulyana et al. 2013). the city also suffers from rain fl oods. this fl ooding is exacerbated by sand mining and housing development in the highlands, as well as the poor sewerage and waste management systems in the city (hadipuro 2012). semarang was included in the rockefeller foundation’s “100 resilient cities” program, and has undergone a variety of adaptation and mitigation measures.11 among the most conspicuous adaptation strategies are the introduction of an early warning system in 2012, and the now widely acknowledged initiatives to replant mangroves near fi shponds (yuniartanti et al. 2016 ). to prevent fl ooding caused by sea-level rise, the erection of a “giant sea wall” on the northern coast is planned for 2017 – meaning that fi shermen no longer would be able to fi sh in the shallow waters along the coastline. the above-mentioned mixture of environmental conditions has signifi cant detrimental consequences for local livelihoods, the community’s social fabric, and population health. populations in coastal areas and slum dwellers without well-built housing and proper sanitation facilities are particularly vulnerable. however, mulyana (mulyana et al. 2013) indicates that high-risk areas do not necessarily house poor residents with impermanent housing. it is the level of vulnerability and capacity to successfully employ coping mechanisms that counts rather than income level per se (mulyana et al. 2013).12 10 mulyana et al. (2013: 13ff.) identify the following areas as particularly vulnerable in the face of environmental change: the lowland regions, which are exposed to coastal fl ooding and sea level rise; settlement areas located in riverbeds, which are exposed to tidal and fl ash fl ooding; hilly areas, which are exposed to high winds; and areas that are exposed to land movement and landslides. 11 the adaptation strategies promoted throughout the resilient cities program included a coastal area climate information system with the purpose to increase resilience. further, community groups in coastal semarang replanted mangroves to stabilise the fi shponds and strengthen the seaboard. new forms of ecotourism (often addressing high schools) were initiated next to fi sh cultivation (milkfi sh and shrimp). fish-cracker (krupuk) production by women‘s groups were set-up as part of resilience measures. 12 the authors measure vulnerability with indices of hazard exposure, population indicators (e.g. population density, dependency ratios) and household indicators (e.g. secure tenure index, quality of housing amenities). • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan44 one might expect that these precarious circumstances would lead to high(er) rates of out-migration in frequently fl ooded areas. however,, the semarang agglomeration is an area of in-migration. of the six major kota (municipalities) in central java (magelang, pekalongan, surakarta, salatiga, semarang and tegal), only semarang recorded positive net lifetime migration (261.183) in the 2010 census; recent migration was also only positive in semarang (59.333) (bps 2012). semarang regency, however, had a negative net migration (-274.229). semarang remains an important pole of attraction for people from all over indonesia seeking education and employment in the metro area. the population of the city of semarang is gradually increasing due to natural population growth and in-migration. the net migration rate of semarang was 2.24 in 2011; with the in-migration rate being 28.44 and the out-migration rate 26.21 (bps 2014). authors such as handayani et al. (2015) point to a substantial share of undocumented in-migration. sub-districts that have net out-migration rates in 2011 are candisari, gayamsari, semarang selatan, timur, utara, tengah and barat. these areas within the low-elevation coastal zone have high population densities and some suffer from environmental hazards such as fl ooding (mulyana et al. 2013; bps 2014). how to explain the in-migration into the fl ooded areas? our survey reveals a rather stable population in these districts. indicators for this stability include the low share of return migrants, mainly spending time somewhere else in java for 2-3 months, which was reported by only 6 percent of the respondents. also, most in-migrants (54.3 percent) came to semarang for family reasons, usually marriage. nearly one third (30.7 percent) was seeking a job, and 10,2 percent said to have come for educational reasons. generally, migrants are more vulnerable as they are more likely to end up in areas with poorer housing and amenities. they often lack social support networks, making them less resilient to environmental hazards. however, our research in the low-income high-risk areas showed that the local population opted for local adaptation measures such as the strengthening and raising of houses, rather than moving away. almost half (46 percent) of our interview partners had already heightened their house, by about 1-2 meters every fi ve years, on average (see fig. 4). furthermore, these areas turned out to be the destination for in-migrants, to which the inhabitants sometimes sub-rent. poorer households either lacked the fi nancial means for housing improvements and for fi nancing migration. they are therefore locked down and completely dependent on local employment opportunities in manufacturing, (informal) services, trade and fi shing. 75 percent of our survey respondents owned the house in which they lived, while only 5.4 percent rented the house they lived in. some of the interviewees listed “attachment to place” as a reason for staying. others alluded to the distrust in the government when it comes to questions of compensation in case of resettlement. informally, the relocation of population has been attempted in the past years, as the interviewed experts reported. in total, our sample portrayed a stable population in the different keluharan, most having lived there for more than a generation. immobility is nearly synonymous with missing opportunities, and as an expert puts it, “the lights of the city shine brighter than the fl ooding”. on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 45 here, resilience is the strategy of the poor who have no other place to go: “people who stay in the coastal area are not wealthy people, they are used to the conditions of fl ooding, and they accept this living condition (…) we’re poor so we have to enjoy this, if we don’t want to experience this, we will have to wait until we are rich”. (interview nr.49, undip 29.07.2015) interestingly, 85 percent of all households interviewed see the environment as a major risk (compared to 25 percent mentioning disputes, confl icts and crime, and 7 percent mentioning their health). 40 percent have experienced fl oods (including tidal fl oods), and about 20 percent suffered damage to their houses. however, most respondents foresaw no threat of environmental change to their households in the coming year. migration patterns mainly cover adjacent rural areas, with only under 2 percent of the semarang population having lived outside central java within the past fi ve years. next to long-term migration to semarang city from nearby regencies such as grobogan, demak, kendal, there is signifi cant lifetime migration from other urban centres in central java, e.g. surakarta and salatiga. the recent migrants to semafig. 4: the difference between the heightened house and the “sinking” house is evident, the community road has been renewed source: morodemak in demak, neighboring semarang, photo by f. hillmann • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan46 rang city are mainly young and single people, most of whom fi nd employment in the service industry (80 percent) and manufacturing (19 percent), the latter mostly women (bps 2012). our survey confi rms this pattern: the usual origin of the in-migrants was java, which was also the most common destination of the out-migrants. recent migrants in kabupaten semarang are mainly employed in manufacturing, young women often work in the textile industries. semarang has lower wages then jakarta, which has brought manufacturing to the town. living conditions in the neighbouring rural areas are harsh and do not guarantee a stable income. this is what a fi sherman had to say about his motivation to move away from morodemak, an eastern fi shing village: “the difference here [compared to the city] is that people just work in the sea. so if we can’t go fi shing [because of extreme weather events], we get no money. in the city it is different. you can go every day to work and get money every day. that’s why people from here migrate. the work in the sea is hard! with rain, wind and waves”. (gerstenberg 2015: 64) one important aspect of migration trajectories are the narratives on migration. in semarang, the perceptions of migration by the respondents are rather ambiguous: 49 percent perceived migration as negative and stated that “you should never leave your place of origin.” less than a half of our sample, 45 percent, see no further benefi ts for the household in the migration of household members. this hints to the fact that the migration of one household member is not seen as a major strategy to improve the situation of the entire household. however, 60 percent agreed that migration brings benefi ts for the community. our data clearly shows respondents prefer domestic migration to leaving the country, with 68 percent of respondents answering that it would be “better to migrate within indonesia than to go abroad.” in our sample from kota semarang, we found only a tiny share of international migrants – even though semarang is an international and ethnically diverse city and a longstanding trading tradition. only one-tenth of all households received remittances: 1-20 million idr per year on average in 2015 (the average household income was 500.000 ind per month13). in more than half of all cases, the out-migrants did not contribute to the household income or they only contributed on a monthly basis. telephone and sms (texting) are the main tools of communication, email and skype are uncommon, and social media such as facebook are used only sparsely. the perception of migration was fairly negative: again, 49 percent of our sample agreed with the statement that „you should never leave your place of origin.“ about half of the households in our sample did not think a household benefi ts from migrated family members. on the contrary, 52 percent believed that migration causes inequality and confl ict within the community. 13 1 million indonesian rupiah equal to around 65 € (march 2016). on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 47 so, considering that the living conditions in rural areas tend to deteriorate and given that the city still offers a range of opportunities, semarang remains attractive for in-migrants, despite its environmental challenges. 5 conclusion two of the current contentious issues among academics, policymakers and the general public are climate change and the related trends in migration. jointly, the two phenomena have led to heated debates and produced alarmist images of large population displacements due to natural disasters and severe environmental degradation. however, causality is not straightforward and the meagre evidence is still rather mixed as to how climate change infl uences human mobility. thus, as we argue that the multi-dimensional character of migration must be acknowledged and that more in-depth analysis must consider other, perhaps more important, drivers of migration; including socio-cultural aspects, economic development, and historical migration patterns as well as related narratives and belief systems. research on these linkages would benefi t from analysis employing a regional focus which takes into account the specifi cities of regionally rooted socio-economic confi gurations, demographic developments, livelihoods, and governance structures. focusing on two coastal regions in ghana and indonesia which the ipcc considers highly vulnerable to climate change impacts and the ensuing population mobility, our contribution serves to illustrate the regional embeddedness of migration patterns, but also that changes in local climate and environment – although signifi cant – do not necessarily cause large scale and international migration. although our two case studies are from very different regions, they do show some commonalities in terms of environmental problems, human mobility, and historical development patterns. in both regions, anthropogenic environmental problems are prominent and a result of unsustainable economic development policies, such as the destruction of mangroves in favour of setting up fi shponds, large scale infrastructural and industrial development along the coast, deforestation, and the building of hydro-electric power plants in the hinterland. longstanding technical adaptation measures such as drainage systems (semarang), the construction of wave breakers and moles (keta and semarang), and even dams (keta) have changed the sedimentary structure and make it diffi cult to differentiate between man-made and “natural” environmental change today. in the case of semarang, rapid urbanisation is the main driver for land subsidence and consequently the sinking of houses. despite severe environmental problems, the two case studies clearly show diverse migration patterns, both to and from the region. these mobility patterns are mainly driven by economic opportunities and educational possibilities, rather than by climate change. semarang and keta were prominent port cities in the past, but have seen their economic position decline as other major coastal cities emerge (tema in ghana; jakarta and surabaya on java), partly due to their countries’ development policies. mobility in both case study regions is mainly within-country and largely to and from adjacent regions. whereas keta in ghana has out-migration, • felicitas hillmann, ernst spaan48 fuelled by local environmental degradation, economic decline, and rapid economic development along the accra-tema corridor in ghana, it also attracts some migrants from volta and adjacent regions, for reasons of trade and education. international migration fl ows are relatively small, but include some traditional mobility along the coast by local ewe fi shermen and –women, traders from ghana and neighbouring togo, and outbound and return migration by higher educated workers venturing to europe, the usa, and other developed countries. furthermore, narratives such as the anlo-ewe migration saga are part of local traditions and are kept alive through festivals and an active diaspora through the sharing of local knowledge by chiefs and sub-chiefs. our survey shows a population that is inclined to migrate and that actively fosters a culture of migration. in comparison, semarang city has attracted migrants for decades. the city remains an important administrative centre, major transportation hub, industrial and manufacturing centre, and boasts vital educational and health facilities and other public services. thus, semarang attracts many migrants, the bulk of whom come from adjacent rural areas seeking employment in local industry and the informal sector. international migration from semarang is limited. the population in the fl ood-prone coastal areas is stable and adapts with in situ solutions such as the heightening of houses. most respondents did not perceive migration as a privileged way of adaptation, but rather stressed that “attachment to place” is a virtue. living conditions in the neighbouring districts such as demak were even harsher than in the city and put additional pressure on the resident population. as for detrimental environmental change and its impact on migration, the case studies show that migration patterns nowadays appear to be path-dependent and thus tend to be stable over time. also, increasing education opportunities and economic growth, as well as urbanisation, seem to impact migration more than ongoing environmental change does. concatenated crises, a cumulation of diverse shocks and disturbances, (biggs et al. 2011) seem to be at core of the new mobility patterns. climate change was addressed by policy-makers in both cases and became part of the cultural narrative, but was in fact not seen as a major threat by the local population. in semarang, although some movement away from the low-lying coastal areas prone to land subsidence and fl ooding is underway, a large proportion of the population adapts to these environmental threats and continues seeking a livelihood in situ. the case of semarang shows that vulnerability exists precisely because of the immobility of the resident population. many are poor and cannot afford to leave, as they lack resources and seek job security with the local employment opportunities. both local governmental development policies and environmental policies are rather technical, emphasizing large scale coastal protection measures, and both sustain the sedentarism of local populations. we conclude that although the environmental phenomena in question – fl ooding and erosion – may seem similar, they can have very different effects on population mobility as is evident from the contrasting case studies presented here. only an analysis rooted in the regional setting allows for the identifi cation of socio-economic, cultural, environmental and historical legacies that determine migration and population dynamics. further, argumentation that refers on assumptions that are on the regional rootedness of population mobility and environmental change • 49 based on global data and trends, will remain blind for what can be done to ease the situation for the many people that are confronted with a changing environment on the local level. population movements occur mostly on the regional scale and thus the needed innovative approaches to tackle the situation are likely to be of integrative nature – combining social, economic, ecological and migration-related action. references afi fi , tamer; 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waskitaningsih, novida 2016: monitoring and evaluation effectiveness in fl ood early warning system project in semarang city. in: international journal of society systems science 8,1: 49-77 [doi: 10.1504/ ijsss.2016.076004]. date of submission: 23.03.2016 date of acceptance: 31.03.2017 prof. dr. felicitas hillmann (). leibniz-institute for research on society and space, irs erkner/tu berlin. berlin, germany. e-mail: felicitas.hillmann@leibniz-irs.de url: https://leibniz-irs.de/en/people-careers/staff/person/felicitas-hillmann-0227/ ernst spaan. radboud institute for health sciences, radboud university. nijmegen, the netherlands. e-mail: ejaspaan@xmsnet.nl url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/ernst_spaan published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) relations between grandparents and grandchildren in the context of the family system oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach abstract: the demographic change which has taken place in recent decades, and in particular the considerable increase in life expectancy, has resulted in intergenerational relationships that are lasting much longer. despite the increase in people’s median age at fi rst child birth, members of different generations now have the opportunity to live together for periods that are unparalleled in human history. especially the medical and technical progress has led to grandparents being increasingly capable in both health and cognitive terms at an advanced age that they provide active support for their children and grandchildren in many ways. this article addresses the question to what extent the relationship potentials also against the background of modernisation processes within society (e.g. increasing demands as to mobility, problems in reconciling family and work) are transformed into actual support by grandparents for the grandchildren’s generation. the analyses are based on data from the parents of the primary respondents (“anchor persons”) in the german family panel (beziehungsund familienpanel pairfam, 2nd wave 2009/2010, parents’ questionnaire) with a grandchild aged between 8 and 15. the signifi cance of various factors infl uencing the strength of relationships between grandparents and their grandchildren is empirically examined. firstly, social-structural characteristics and family-related attitudes on the part of the members of the various generations are considered, and secondly, various family members’ personal and social resources. all in all, it is revealed that grandparent-grandchild relationships are largely independent from personal resources such as employment status, but that they are associated with social resources, that is the relationships between grandparents and parents, as well as with grandparents’ partnership status. moreover, there are pronounced regional differences (i.e., stronger grandparent-grandchild relations in eastern germany) and a positive impact of familialism. keywords: relationships between generations · grandparents · grandchildren · intergenerational support · pairfam comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 543-566 (date of release: 13.12.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-06en8 • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach544 1 introduction grandparent-grandchild relationships form a major part of the solidarity and relationship structure within families; this was already documented by initial research work roughly fi fty years ago (neugarten/weinstein 1964). most studies have found that grandparents see their role positively. furthermore, a positive identity as a grandparent, as well as close ties between grandparents and grandchildren, promote well-being (kaufman/elder 2003) and mental health (e.g. a greater self esteem and a less pronounced tendency towards depression) among grandparents (kivnick 1982; reitzes/mutran 2004) and grandchildren (ruiz/silverstein 2007). the fact that, nonetheless, relatively little research into grandparent-grandchild relationships had been carried out until only a few years ago (uhlendorff 2003) is due in part to the fact that a prolonged phase of life as a grandparent is a relatively recent phenomenon in historical terms. using data from the german socio-economic panel, lauterbach (2002) is able to show that it is only since the mid-20th century that the lifetime shared by grandparents and grandchildren could generally be expected to range between two and three decades. prior to that time, independent and reciprocal grandparent-grandchild relationships that were separate from the middle generation (cf. robertson 1975) tended to be the exception. this demographic increase in the signifi cance of grandparent-grandchild relationships (cf. grünheid/scharein 2011) has not been compensated for by the postponement of births in the life course or by the age gap between the generations which the latter has caused (höpfl inger/ hummel 2007). research in this fi eld has been subdivided into several sections: whilst the early work initially dealt with describing behavioural expectations towards grandparents, and thus with grandparents’ roles (neugarten/weinstein 1964; robertson 1977), more recent work increasingly focuses on the specifi c nature of these roles in the sense of interactions and mutual perceptions of grandchildren and their grandparents (werner/lowenstein/katz 1998), so that a dyadic perspective is opened up for the fi rst time (szinovacz 1998). thereby, the recent literature connects to work on the dynamics of family relationships (e.g. the framework model of intergenerational solidarity, cf. bengtson 2001), in which various aspects of intergenerational relationships between adults are examined. current studies, fi nally, take up a familysystemic perspective in which several dyads per family (e.g. grandparent-parent and grandparent-grandchild relationships) and their interdependencies are simultaneously observed (e.g. monserud 2008). thereby, a real multi-level perspective is introduced in which relational, individual and family-related infl uences on intergenerational relationships can be modelled (szinovacz 1998). this article adds to this by investigating the ways in which grandparent-grandchild relationships are embedded into the social family context. in addition to the infl uence of individual determinants, it is to be clarifi ed what role further (intergenerational and lateral) relationships within the family system play for the cohesion between grandparents and their grandchildren. relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 545 2 infl uences on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren: a theoretical systematisation this article deals with the structure of intergenerational relationships between grandparents (g1) and their grandchildren (g3) of child and juvenile age. to describe the content of the relationship, reference is made to the works of the work group led by vern l. bengtson (bengtson 2001; bengtson/olander/haddad 1976; bengtson/ roberts 1991). the starting point of the considerations of bengtson and his colleagues was the question of how intergenerational cohesion is achieved against the background of societal and social changes in modern industrial societies (e.g. increasing ageing, increasing demands on work-related fl exibility). the model of intergenerational solidarity distinguishes between six (later seven) aspects and dimensions: (1) associative solidarity, which especially relates to the extent and the nature of contacts; (2) affective solidarity, i.e. the perception of emotional closeness; (3) functional solidarity, which includes mutual support; (4) structural solidarity, that is the (family) structural opportunities; (5) normative solidarity, i.e. the affi rmation of family values; (6) consensual solidarity, that is the level of agreement between the generations when it comes to attitudes and values, as well as (7) confl icts between the generations (giarrusso et al. 2005). the fi rst three dimensions are especially relevant to this article, and are also regarded as being central in the relevant literature (cf. szydlik 2000: 38; bengtson/roberts 1991; rossi/rossi 1990: 266-296). since, however, there is no consensus as to the causal order of these three aspects (steinbach 2010: 224), they are treated below as one construct. like all social relationships, grandparent-grandchild relationships are also subject to specifi c social conditions which both promote and limit action. thus, in his heuristic model of intergenerational familial solidarity szydlik (2000: 43) distinguishes between opportunity structures, need structures, family structures and culturalcontextual structures. since opportunities and needs vitally depend on the individual resources available (szydlik 2000: 44), it is useful to consider resources in the systematisation of the determinants of grandparent-grandchild relationships. as a distinction vis-à-vis szydlik’s model, we therefore distinguish between personal and social resources. personal resources include time, but also health and human capital factors (income or education), which can be contributed to, or “invested” in, the grandparent-grandchild relationship. social resources relate to the potential and actual support within the family network. if these are not available (for instance if ties between the grandparents’ and parents’ generation are weak), this may impinge upon grandparent-grandchild relationships. there are now many research fi ndings available on the impact of personal resources, but the effects of social resources have been largely unexplored so far. in addition to the available resources, normative infl uences in the shape of familial values and attitudes, as well as social structural determinants (e.g. gender, regional affi liation) should also be taken into account. whilst the resources are linked to the need and opportunity structures in szydlik’s model, the social structural and normative factors mentioned correspond to the familial and cultural-contextual structures (cf. szydlik 2000: 43-52). • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach546 the theoretical mechanisms and empirical fi ndings on these groups of infl uencing factors will be discussed below, in each case the state of research on the individual factors will be dealt with briefl y. 2.1 personal resources when analysing family dyads or interaction systems, effects of personal resources of all persons involved (at least of the provider and recipient of support) are relevant in theoretical terms. as to the provider of support (in this article primarily the grandparents), one may initially expect personal resources to lead to a strengthening of intergenerational solidarity, all other things being equal. if one takes a closer look, however, the theoretical mechanisms are more complex: it is possible to presume, fi rstly, that the availability of resources (for instance money) generally facilitates grandparent-grandchild relationships (e.g. they can afford to undertake activities together). insofar as the acquisition of resources (for instance through employment) uses time resources, however, one may presume the existence of a substitutional relationship of different types of resources (cf. friedman/hechter/kreager 2008: 45). this may lead to antagonistic effects which can only be separated from one another when using multivariate analyses. the outlined reasoning, albeit implicitly, stems from the perspective of intergenerational solidarity, which stresses the social integrative and pacifying nature of intergenerational relationships as “hidden connections” (bengtson/harootyan 1994) within society. as a contrast to this, friedman, hechter and kreager (2008) pursue a rational choice (rc) perspective when arguing consistently that individuals maximise their benefi t, which leads to some opposing predictions (for a comparison between the two theoretical perspectives cf. fertig 2005). because of their advanced age, it is presumed that grandparents increasingly face the problem of how to reduce their welfare-related uncertainty at the end of their lives. against this background, grandparents’ commitment towards their grandchildren appears to be a rational decision concerning “differential investment in grandchildren” (friedman/ hechter/kreager 2008: 32). unlike in the parent-child relationship, which – already for biological reasons – is typifi ed by a strong physical and affective closeness (bowlby 1975), it is presumed that grandparents tend to allocate their resources more strategically in order to maximise their own welfare in old age. this also means that grandparents’ commitment is primarily intended to ensure the loyalty of their own children: “through their investments in their grandchildren, we contend that grandparents primarily seek to affect their relationships with their children, rather than their grandchildren” (friedman/hechter/kreager 2008: 33). these considerations imply that grandparents may in fact invest less in their relationship with their grandchildren the more personal resources they possess. all in all, according to this approach, there is a compensatory relationship between various “intermediate goods” in the family-related social production function (cf. huinink 2005): personal resources can partially substitute for social resources, i.e. the latter are mobilised especially when the former are not available to an adequate degree. one problem resulting from the approach is that no clear distinction is made between different relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 547 basic needs (friedman/hechter/kreager 2008: 40). personal resources may indeed make it possible to cover basic physical needs in old age, but tend at the same time to promote self-suffi ciency rather than social approval and personal affection from others. possibly also because of this fuzziness, previous research has only partly been able to confi rm the predictions derived from this approach (cf. for an overview friedman/hechter/kreager 2008): thus, studies fi nd only sporadic, small positive effects exerted by education on the support provided to grandchildren by grandparents (mueller/wilhelm/elder 2002; mueller/elder 2003; uhlenberg/hammill 1998), whilst other authors report insignifi cant (cherlin/furstenberg 1986; fingerman 2004) or dimension-specifi c positive effects (e.g. on joint activities and child-care, cf. silverstein/marenco 2001). inconsistent fi ndings have also been made in the context of income: minor positive effects in individual studies (elder/conger 2000; mueller/wilhelm/elder 2002; silverstein/marenco 2001) compete with insignifi cant effects in others (cherlin/furstenberg 1986; fingerman 2004). controlling for income, mueller and elder (2003) fi nd a weak u-shaped trend in the effect of employment on the chance of not belonging to the “detached grandparents” type. in a model with a different specifi cation, no effect can be shown to exist using the same data (mueller/wilhelm/elder 2002), so that the fi ndings on the extent of gainful employment as a whole do not show a clear picture (cf. also silverstein/marenco 2001). the fi ndings are less ambiguous with regard to grandparents’ state of health, the latter strengthening the cohesion of the grandparent-grandchild relationship (hank/buber 2009; höpfl inger/hummel/hugentobler 2006). in the present article, we expect slightly positive effects of personal resources as a whole, particularly for grandparents’ health. the age of the grandparents should hence affect relationships with grandchildren because it is related to life-course variations in opportunities. hence, entering retirement age is likely to entail an increase in time resources, which can be used for joint activities with grandchildren. at the same time, advanced age is likely to entail a gradual immobilisation, for instance because of an increase in age-related illnesses infl uencing grandparent-grandchild relationships. previous empirical fi ndings are however ambiguous. some studies do show an infl uence of the grandparents’ age (e.g. a positive effect of age on the co-residence rate between grandparents, parents and grandchildren, caputo 2001), but other studies do not report any signifi cant associations (cf. for an overview sheehan/petrovic 2008: 107) or indeed show a negative infl uence (aldous 1995). additionally, the surveys to date, which were largely cross-sectional in nature, were unable to make out any age and cohort effects (cf. höpfl inger/hummel/hugentobler 2006). when it comes to the age of the grandchildren, no unambiguous effect is anticipated in this study because the age range is less relevant in terms of family cycles (e.g. no transitions take place to school or working life) and , for design-related reasons, there is relatively little age variance (cf. method part). on the part of the support recipient, personal resources also play a role, since they indicate the need for support. here too, the two theoretical framework models make different predictions: according to the solidarity paradigm (bengtson 2001), solidarity should (also) include those relationships in which the recipient of support is marked by a considerable need (i.e. relatively few available resources). accord• oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach548 ing to the approach of selective investment, grandparents try, by contrast, to invest scarce resources primarily in those grandchildren who (or whose parents) have the best prospects to pay back (i.e. who have comparatively large amounts of resources). in empirical terms, some studies have found positive effects of the education of the grandchildren (crosnoe/elder 2002; geurts et al. 2009). it can however only be decided with careful longitudinal analyses to what degree the resources of the support recipient are the cause or the outcome of solidarity. the personal resources of the grandchildren included in the present sample (aged from 8 to 15) are presumably less relevant, and furthermore are diffi cult to measure and vary only little (e.g. education). the theoretical arguments can however be easily applied to the middle generation, the parents, since one may presume that the grandparents’ reciprocity expectations frequently focus more closely on their children (g2) than on the grandchildren (g3). in the perspective of differential investment by grandparents, this means that grandparents invest the more in the relationship with their grandchildren the more resources are available in the middle generation. according to the solidarity paradigm, grandparents should become particularly committed when the need is great – as a result of time or other restrictions in the middle generation (for instance working mothers cf. goh 2006). previous fi ndings support the latter prediction (hank/buber 2009). most studies however do not take the characteristics of the middle generation into account. 2.2 social resources as already indicated in the last section, it is virtually impossible to meaningfully separate grandparent-grandchild relationships from the middle parents’ generation (g2) – because the grandparents’ reciprocity expectations may be directed at the middle generation (friedman/hechter/kreager 2008). particularly in the case of the younger grandchildren considered in this article, the parents act as “intermediaries” in most cases, because of their coresidence and the resulting parental social control (herlyn/lehmann 1998; robertson 1975). in line with this are fi ndings according to which the grandparent-grandchild relationships are closer the stronger the parents (g2) favour the contact between grandparents and grandchildren (mueller/ elder 2003). although one may presume that grandparent-grandchild relationships become more independent as the grandchildren become older (sprey/matthews 1982), from a theoretical point of view the closeness of the grandparent-parent relationship is associated with the characteristics of positive grandparent-grandchild relationships. goh (2006) regards a good cooperation between grandparents and parents as a necessary prerequisite for well-functioning grandparent-grandchild relationships. as was already mentioned at the outset, this question is only addressed by recent international studies, and has still been largely disregarded in germany. in general terms, positive connections have been reported between the cohesion of grandparent-parent relationships and the frequency of child-care provided for grandchildren by grandparents (fergusson/maughan/goldin 2008), as well as the strength of the grandparent-grandchild relationship among older grandchildren (brown 2003; crosnoe/elder 2002; hodgson 1992; monserud 2008). this positive relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 549 impact of a harmonious grandparent-parent relationship on the grandparent-grandchild relationship is more pronounced within the own lineage (brown 2003), and appears to be enhanced in the event of a divorce in the middle generation (bridges et al. 2007). however, it was not possible to replicate it in a study regarding grandparents’ investment of time and money (michalski/shackelford 2005). on the basis of the theoretical arguments and of the previous fi ndings, a clear positive impact of the cohesion between grandparents and parents on the strength of the grandparentgrandchild relationships are expected in the present study. in addition to the intergenerational grandparent-parent relationship lateral relationships (e.g. the existence of a partner) are also potentially relevant.1 the direction of the correlation is however ambiguous: on the one hand, a partner might reduce time resources in the grandparents’ generation and attract attention away from the grandchild, which should result in a negative impact on grandparent-grandchild relationships (“compensation”, cf. friedman/hechter/kreager 2008). on the other hand, grandparents with a well functioning relationship might have a stronger family orientation and a greater motivation towards engaging in joint activities with grandchildren, which should lead to a positive effect (“congruence” between horizontal and vertical relationships). current research largely supports the congruence hypothesis, i.e. the cohesion of the grandparent-grandchild relationship is less pronounced among grandparents without a partner (hank/buber 2009) or divorced ones (king/elder 1998; king et al. 2003; sheehan/petrovic 2008). as to the existence of a partner in the middle generation, the predictions are also ambiguous: despite a potential reduction in burdens and a more intensive family orientation among partnered parents (g2), one might also presume that unpartnered parents (e.g. after separation or divorce) are keen to have a closer relationship with the grandparents. in the middle generation, unlike the positive partner effect in the grandparents’ generation, positive effects are reported both of lack of a partner (hank/buber 2009) as well as of a divorce (fergusson/maughan/goldin 2008; johnson 1988; kennedy/ kennedy 1993). from the point of view of the attachment theory, the latter can be interpreted as a refl ex to “move closer together” in a time of crisis. individual studies however also show negative effects of divorce in the middle generation, e.g. on the contact frequency between grandparents and grandchildren (geurts et al. 2009; sheehan/petrovic 2008), so that in sum the predictions are unclear. 2.3 normative and social structural infl uences by simply looking at resources (or restrictions), cultural-normative infl uences are neglected, which promotes theoretical monocultures in which rational determinants of human action might be overestimated (esser 1996; kroneberg 2005). as to internalised norms, it can be presumed that, for instance, strong familialism cog1 because personal resources impact both the institutionalisation (arránz becker/lois 2010) and the stability of partnerships (for an overview: arránz becker 2008), a multivariate view is also needed here. • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach550 nitively “frames” relationships with relatives and hence, regardless of situational incentives, leads to a closer grandparent-grandchild relationship. the same applies to denominational ties and religiousness, which should also be linked with greater generativity (brose 2006) and solidarity between the generations. a similar argument may explain fi ndings of regional differences between eastern and western germany: the particular historical signifi cance of the family (schneider 1994), as well as the tendency towards a stronger family orientation in eastern germany (arránz becker/lois 2010), especially in the older generation, could make grandparenthood more signifi cant and increase cohesion between grandparents and grandchildren in eastern compared to western germany (herlyn/lehmann 1998). whilst fi ndings already exist of a stronger cohesion in relationships between parents and (adult) children in eastern germany (cf. steinbach/kopp 2010; szydlik 1995, 1996), east-west differences as to grandparent-grandchild relationships have hardly been studied so far. in concurrence with the latter studies on parent-child relationships, a qualitative study fi nds that: “eastern german grandmothers seek to be closer to their children and more frequently wish to help them, which is expressed in their more frequent caregiving for grandchildren” (herlyn/lehmann 1998: 40; translated by cpos), which from the point of view of the authors makes clear “the particular family orientation of eastern german grandmothers” (herlyn/lehmann 1998: 40; translated by cpos). a social category which is also associated with differential familial orientations is the gender and the grandparents’ lineage. women have the role of the kin keeper in many societies, and are more involved in shaping kin relationships than men (hagestad 1986). sociobiological approaches on the basis of evolutionary presumptions also predict that, because of their lower degree of uncertainty in comparison to grandfathers regarding their genetic similarity with their grandchildren, grandmothers should invest more in bringing up and caring for grandchildren than grandfathers (dubas 2001; friedman/hechter/kreager 2008). this permits to draw the additional conclusion that maternal grandparents (i.e. with a daughter in the middle generation) are generally more committed to their relationships with grandchildren than paternal grandparents. this hypothesis has been confi rmed in various studies (pollet/nettle/nelissen 2007; sheehan/petrovic 2008; silverstein/marenco 2001), albeit this effect may vary across urban vs. rural regions (king et al. 2003). in contrast, no strong theoretical presumptions exist regarding the infl uence exerted by the gender of the grandchildren on the relationship with their grandparents. current studies show either closer relationships with granddaughters than with grandsons (with regard to frequency of contact: geurts et al. 2009; on love and care, contact: silverstein/long 1998) or fi nd no clear effects of the gender of the grandchildren (höpfl inger/hummel 2006). relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 551 3 dataset, analytical basis and operationalisation 3.1 dataset and analytical basis: the german family panel (pairfam) the dataset for the following analyses of the shaping of grandparent-grandchild relationships refers to the parents’ survey of the german family panel, pairfam2 (huinink et al. 2011). in addition to the anchor persons, (step) fathers and (step) mothers were also surveyed via written questionnaires in the second survey wave of pairfam (2009/2010, release 2.0). overall, 5,037 (step) parents of the 9,069 anchor persons took part in the survey (suckow/schneekloth/wich 2010: 45). the parents’ questionnaire included a section on the topic of grandchildren, with questions targeting a specifi c grandchild, that is, the child living in the household of the anchor person (daughter or son of the respondent) who is between 8 and 15 years old and took part in the second wave of the children’s survey (cf. for the design of the pairfam survey huinink et al. 2011). because of this design, the analyses in this article are restricted to a specifi c age range of the grandchildren, in which contact is (still) largely initiated by the grandparents (and via the parents), but in which supervision and care of the grandchildren is gradually decreasing in favour of an increase in joint activities. by linking data from the anchor persons’ survey, from the parents’ questionnaire and from the children’s questionnaire detailed information is not only obtained regarding social structural characteristics but also on relationships between the grandparents (g1), parents (g2) and grandchildren (g3) (cf. fig. 1). as one can see in figure 1, the grandparents (participants in the parents’ questionnaire), the parents (participants in the anchor persons’ questionnaire) and the grandchildren (participants in the children’s questionnaire) of a family were surveyed in the second wave of pairfam. the basis for the analysis carried out below consists of a dataset of 219 grandparent-grandchild dyadic relationships, which belong to a total of 149 families. the analyses rely on information provided by the grandparents on their relationships with grandchildren (g1-g3) and parents (g1-g2) (cf. emboldened lines in fig. 1). relationships between parents and grandchildren (g2-g3) were not taken into account in the fi nal analyses since they were covered in the parenting questionnaire, and hence information is not available for all grandchildren on whom grandparents provided information. the same applies to the information from the grandchildren on the parents (g3-g2), which was not included. a test with reduced case numbers however does not show any infl uence exerted by the relationship between the parents (g2) and the grandchildren (g3) on the relationship between the grandparents (g1) and the grandchildren (g3). moreover, grandchildren’s assessments were not taken into account since only assessments from two parents of the anchor persons (that is grandparents of the grandchildren) are available here, whilst up to three grandparents were included in the parents’ sur2 this article uses data from the german family panel (pairfam), which is coordinated by josef brüderl, johannes huinink, bernhard nauck and sabine walper. the study is funded as a longterm project by the german research foundation (dfg). • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach552 vey, which prevents the unambiguous linkage of the datasets for grandparents and grandchildren. the analyses furthermore do not consider parents’ assessments on the grandparents (g2-g1), since correlational analyses generally do not reveal any major differences between different perspectives (aquilino 1999; kopp/steinbach 2009). information on the parents (from the anchor dataset of waves 1 and 2) was added to this dyad dataset, so that in addition to information on the grandparent-grandchild relationships there is also information on the grandparent-parent relationships, as well as characteristics of the three generations (for a description of the variables used cf. table 1), which were all included in the analyses. 3.2 dependent variable: the strength of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren since the observations in this article focus on grandparent-grandchild relationship processes, we did not only rely on one aspect, but studied three central aspects of intergenerational relationships: associative, affective and functional solidarity (cf. szydlik 2000: 38; bengtson/roberts 1991; rossi/rossi 1990: 266-296). the dependent variable “strength of the grandparent-grandchild relationship” was formed as a mean score of grandparents’ assessments on the following three variables, which all load on the same factor (cronbachs alpha: .57): (1) activities with the grandchild in the last 12 months which he/she likes, such as sport, playing games or going to the cinema; (2) emotional ties in terms of speaking about the grandchild’s problems in the last 12 months and (3) supporting the grandchild through larger presents of money or items (more than € 100 per present) in the last 12 months. the response fig. 1: assessments of relationships between various generations in pairfam (wave 2) generation 1 (g1) generation 2 (g2) generation 3 (g3) grandchild (participant in the children’s survey) grandparent (participant in the parents’ survey) parent (participant in the anchor persons’ survey) source: own design relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 553 scales of the three variables each ranged from 1 “never” to 5 “very often”. the mean of the index regarding the strength of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, at a value of 2.5, is somewhat below the centre of the scale (cf. table 1); concerning the individual variables of which the index is comprised, joint activities (mean value = 2.9) occur more frequently than larger monetary or other presents (mean value = 1.9). in terms of the frequency, speaking about the grandchild’s problems lies between activities and support (mean value = 2.6). since the study of the variables mentioned (activities, speaking about problems and support) does not depend on a general subjective attitude towards the grandchild, but aims at actual interactions and investments, this strength index is particularly well suited to investigate the degree to which the quality of the relationship between the grandparents and the grandchildren depends on the available social resources such as the relationships between the grandparents and the parents, on personal resources such as the state of health, or on social structural and normative characteristics. however, before the results of the multivariate analyses are presented, something needs to be said about the operationalisation and distribution of the respective covariates. 3.3 the operationalisation of the covariates on the one hand, social and personal resources can be identifi ed as determinants of the quality of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. the social resources which are of special interest for this article include the relations between other family members who act as intermediaries on the grandparent-grandchild relationship, such as the relationship between grandparents (g1) and parents (g2) or the existence of a partnership. the personal resources which may infl uence the intensity of grandparent-grandchild relationships include employment status or state of health. on the other hand, however, there are social structural factors, such as the gender of the grandparents, parents and grandchildren, as well as normative determinants, such as general attitudes towards the family, which may have an impact on the grandparent-grandchild relationship. the operationalisations and the distributions of the various independent variables which have been integrated into the fi nal analyses for this article will be described below (cf. table 1). social resources. the quality of the relationship between grandparents and parents (g1-g2) as a social resource is represented by three aspects of intergenerational relationships: the associative, affective and structural solidarity dimensions (cf. bengtson 2001), which were taken from the information provided by the grandparents (parents’ questionnaire w2). (1) associative solidarity was measured via contact frequency (visits, letters, telephone calls and the like) on a seven-level scale with the following values: 1 “daily”, 2 “several times per week”, 3 “once per week”, 4 “1 to 3 times per month”, 5 “several times per year”, 6 “more rarely” and 7 “never”. the members of the grandparents’ and the parents’ generations are in contact several times per week on average. (2) affective solidarity was measured via two items of the “network of relationship inventory” (furman/buhrmester 1985), which refl ects the degree of intimacy and the emotional closeness between two individuals. the • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach554 exact formulations of the two items read as follows: a) how often do you tell your son/daughter what you are thinking about? and b) how often do you share your secrets and innermost feelings with your son/daughter? the response scale ranged from 1 “never” to 5 “always”. the two items were averaged to form a mean index (cronbachs alpha: .77). as in all surveys on intergenerational relationships in which emotional closeness, intimacy or satisfaction with the relationship was considered (cf. for an overview steinbach/kopp 2010), the degree of emotional closeness was also extremely high between the observed generations of the pairfam study: the average value is 4.4, so the affective bond between grandparents and parents typically ranges between close and very close. (3) structural solidarity between grandparents and parents was measured via the distance between the homes, and more precisely by the time required by the grandparent to reach the parent in question. the response scale was as follows: 0 “we live in the same household”, 1 “we live in the same building”, 2 “less than ten minutes”, 3 “between ten and 30 minutes”, 4 “between 30 minutes and one hour”, 5 “between one and three hours” and 6 “three hours and more”. grandparents and parents live an average of roughly ten to 30 minutes apart. the partnership status was identifi ed as a further social resource in tab. 1: description of the sample (means and percentages) factor groups variables grandparents (g1) (n=219) parents (g2) (n=149) grandchildr (g3) (n=149) relationship g1-g3 relationship strength index ( ) (1-never to 5-very often) 2.5 (0.7) social resources contact frequency g1-g2 ( ) (1-never to 5-very often) 2.1 (1.1) closeness index g1-g2 ( ) (1-never to 5-very often) 2.9 (0.9) distance between homes g1-g2 ( ) (0-in the same household to 6-3 hours travelling distance and longer) 3.1 (1.7) partnership: yes (%) 81.1 91.8 personal resources employment: yes (%) 26.3 66.7 health ( ) (1-poor to 5-very good) 3.3 (0.9) 3.6 (1.0) age ( ) cohort 3: 1971-73 (%) 64.2 (6.2) 92.2 10.6 (2.0) gender: female (%) 61.2 70.8 49.3 place of residence: west (%) 73.3 social structural and normative characteristics familialism index ( ) (1-not at all to 5-completely) 3.0 (0.8) 3.0 (0.8) source: pairfam wave 2 (release 2.0), own calculations, n=219 (standard deviations from the means in brackets). relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 555 the analyses, both for the grandparents’ and for the parents’ generations. although the information available in the pairfam’ questionnaire (parents’ questionnaire w2 and anchor persons’ questionnaire w2) would permit highly-differentiated classifi cations of the partnerships and living arrangements, a dummy variable – person lives in a partnership or not – was included into the analyses since more fi ne-grained categories would have led to problems with small case numbers given the limited size of the analysis sample. when it comes to grandparents, 81.1 % of respondents live in a partnership, compared to 91.8 % of the parents. personal resources. the employment status of grandparents and parents as a personal resource was included into the analysis in form of a dummy variable (employed: yes or no): 26.3 % of the grandparents are employed in one form or another, as are 66.7 % of parents. since the state of health of the individuals concerned plays a major role for intergenerational relationships, this variable was also included into the analyses as a personal resource: the grandparents (parents’ questionnaire w2) and the parents (anchor persons’ questionnaire w2) were asked to estimate how good their general state of health had been in the last year using a fi ve-level selfassessment ranging from 1 “very bad” to 5 “very good”. the mean value of the responses is at 3.3 with the grandparents and thus slightly lower than the estimation of the parents, which is at 3.6. as a further social structural variable, the age of the members of the three generations was also included, as a consequence of the design of the survey: for instance, the range of the age of the grandchildren, from 8 to 15, is an eligibility criterion for participation in the children’s survey. the average age of the grandchildren is then 10.6 years. since, therefore, the children had to be at least eight at the time of the interview, it is also clear that no parents (anchor persons) in this specifi c sample belong to the fi rst birth cohort (1991-1993). it comes as no surprise that the members of the second birth cohort (1981-1983) are also represented in the analysis sample with a total of only 7.7 %. a clear majority of the parents, at 92.2 %, belongs to the third birth cohort (1971-1973). hence, the birth cohort of the parents (g2) is not controlled for in the multivariate analyses. the age of the grandparents in the sample ranges from 43 to 82, with an average of 64.2 years. social structural and normative infl uencing variables. the gender of the members of the three generations was included as an important social structural variable which can be expected to exert an infl uence on the characteristics of relationships within the intergenerational structure. the sample (table 1) reveals that both genders are represented unequally with regard to grandparents and parents: grandmothers accounted for 61.2 % of the sample and mothers for 70.8 %. more parents of mothers evidently took part in the study, including more grandmothers than grandfathers. granddaughters and grandsons are represented in the sample in roughly equal shares of 49.3 % and 50.7 %. regional differences were included as the last social structural infl uencing variable: in form of a dichotomous variable western vs. eastern germany; this information is based on the parents’ place of residence (anchor persons w1). 73.3 % of the parents lived in the old federal states (länder) at the time of the survey. agreement with family norms of mutual intergenerational support was recorded both in the grandparents’ generation (parents’ • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach556 questionnaire w2) and in the parents’ generation (anchor persons’ questionnaire w2) using a scale in which the respondents were to state how much they agreed on six different items on mutual family support (e.g. “parents should fi nancially support their adult children if necessary”). the response scale ranged from 1 “not at all” to 5 “completely”. the items of the scale which all loaded on one factor were averaged to form a mean index (cronbachs alpha = .66). with a mean of 3.0, the members of both generations are in each case right in the middle of the theoretically possible range, with an almost normal distribution. 4 the results the results of a multi-level model are used below in order to answer the question of the degree to which the quality of grandparent-grandchild relationships is infl uenced by social and personal resources, as well as by social structural and normative characteristics. the index described above, which consists of the three variables on interaction, closeness and support between grandparents and grandchildren, and is to refl ect the strength of the relationship, is used as dependent variable. because of the survey design (cf. method part), the assessments come from more than one grandparent in the majority of the cases, resulting in a hierarchical data structure. in this case it is necessary to estimate a random-intercept two-level regression (cf. luke 2004 for an introduction) since the ratio of the “between” variance to the overall variance of the dependent variables, approaching two-thirds (baseline model: icc=0,65; in the baseline model the variances at both levels are signifi cant at p<.01), is relatively large. this indicates a strong clustering of the families included in the analysis, meaning that the differences between families are predominant, whilst a relatively large degree of homogeneity is prevalent within families. the multilevel analysis makes it possible to determine which part of the variance within and between families can be explained by the inclusion of the covariates which partly represent relationship characteristics and grandparents’ characteristics (level 1), and partly characteristics of parents and grandchildren (level 2). a combined model for grandfathers and grandmothers is reported below since the effects of almost all modelled infl uences proves to be invariant vis-à-vis the gender of the grandparents. this approach was further supported by the fact that separate models would have once more considerably reduced the power of the statistical tests which is already limited in the initial sample. in order to test whether the effects of the modelled infl uences signifi cantly differs between grandmothers and grandfathers, separate models were calculated including interaction effects between the individual covariates and the gender of the grandparents (results not shown). however, only a gender-specifi c effect of the health of the grandparent emerged here, which was included in the model. table 2 shows both, the results of bivariate “gross models”, in which only the corresponding independent variable was controlled for, and the results of a multivariate net model, in which all covariates were simultaneously included in the analysis. relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 557 the results of the multi-level models explaining the strength of the grandparent-grandchild relationship in table 2 show that both the contact frequency and emotional closeness between grandparents and parents as social resources have a positive impact on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. the effect coeffi cients slightly decrease in the net model,3 but even after controlling for various social structural characteristics of the members of the three generations, as well as their resources and attitudes, the relationship between grandparents and tab. 2: results of a multilevel model to explain the strength of the grandparentgrandchild relationship (unstandardised coeffi cients) factor groups variables gross models net model social resources contact frequency g1-g2 .15 *** .09 * emotional closeness g1-g2 .19 *** .10 * distance between homes g1-g2 -.03 .01 partnership g1 .31 ** .39 *** partnership g2 -.17 -.16 personal resources employment g1 -.02 -.00 employment g2 .06 .04 state of health g1 .12 ** .18 *** state of health g2 .04 .00 age g1 -.00 .01 age g3 -.01 -.02 gender g1 (grandfather) -.14 ** -.13 * social structural and normative characteristics gender g2 (father) -.12 -.12 gender g3 (grandson) .14 .10 west g2 -.34 *** -.32 ** familialism g1 .13 ** .11 * familialism g2 .11 .04 interaction effects health g1*grandfather – -.17 ** model information r2 level 1 – .18 r2 level 2 – .08 n 195 signifi cance level: *** p ≤ .01, ** p ≤ .05, * p ≤ .10 source: pairfam wave 2 (release 2.0), own calculations 3 more detailed analyses (not presented in the table) show that the effects of contact frequency and of emotional closeness (g1-g2) are partly caused by systematic differences between grandmothers and grandfathers: after controlling for the gender of the grandparent, the coeffi cients remain signifi cant (p < .05), but tend to become smaller (to b = .12 or b = .14). • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach558 parents exerts a signifi cant positive infl uence on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren: the more frequently grandparents and parents are in touch with one another, and the stronger their emotional closeness, the stronger is also the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. these results conform to the research (cf. e.g. monserud 2008) and to the hypotheses on the intermediary nature of relationships between grandparents and parents. however, the distance between places of residence – as a structural condition of intergenerational relationships – does not clearly affect the strengths of the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. furthermore, the existence of a partnership in the grandparents’ generation plays a major role as a social resource. if the grandparent has a partner, the strength of the relationship with the grandchild is much greater than if there is no partnership. the effect increases further if one controls for other covariates (net model). it is evident that the integrating resource effect of a partnership is predominant, as was also found in other surveys (e.g. hank/buber 2009). if the grandparents live in a partnership, both the grandfather and the grandmother act as a part of the family relationship system. one may presume that a partnership operates as a catalyst in the grandparents’ generation because, for instance, one grandparent benefi ts if contacts are initiated by the other grandparent. the same can also be presumed to apply to the other characteristics of the relationship. for instance, in an existing partnership, the available fi nancial resources are also likely to be greater, which has a positive impact on fi nancial transfers from grandparents to grandchildren. with regard to the personal resources of the grandparents’ and parents’ generations, it is surprising that the employment status does not infl uence the quality of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. additionally, further multivariate models were calculated in which, instead of the employment status, working hours, as well as the level of education and income, were controlled for. in these analyses, which are not presented here in detail, no effects of resources were found in the grandparents’ and parents’ generations. equally, there were no effects of the number of children (g2) and grandchildren (g3). the state of health, on the contrary, exerted a positive infl uence (cf. the fi ndings for instance of hank/buber 2009). in the model shown here, the strength of the effect of the state of health however depends on the gender of the respective grandparent: the positive main effect of the grandparent’s health (b = .18) is to be interpreted conditionally because of the interaction effect, and relates to the reference category of grandmothers. the signifi cant interaction effect health*grandfather (b = -.17) shows that health exerts virtually no infl uence with grandfathers (total of main and interaction effect: b = .18 + (-.17) = .01). healthy grandmothers in particular evidently manage to establish and maintain a markedly strong relationship with their grandchildren. the age of the grandparents and the grandchildren, by contrast, does not have any effect at all, either as a linear or as a quadratic term. regarding the social structural characteristics of family members, a gender effect is shown in the grandparents’ generation: grandmothers have a stronger relarelations between grandparents and grandchildren • 559 tionship with their grandchildren than grandfathers do.4 this once more confi rms the “kin keeper” hypothesis, which states that relationships between generations run via the female line, in other words that the women in the family hold the generations together through interaction, emotional ties and a fl ow of resources (cf. dubas 2001; hagestad 1986; rossi 1993). the gender of the members of the parents’ and grandchildren’s generation, by contrast, makes no difference regarding the quality of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. interestingly, a strong east-west difference can be identifi ed, both in bivariate terms and after controlling for the various covariates: relationships between grandparents and grandchildren who live in the new federal länder are stronger than those with grandchildren in the old federal länder (regarding the greater closeness of the relationships between generations in eastern germany cf. also the results of steinbach and kopp 2010 as well as szydlik 1995, 1996). no effects of religious affi liation or of religiosity were found in additional analyses which are not shown here. a greater degree of grandparents’ affi rmation of norms of mutual intergenerational support exerts a positive impact on the strength of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. the familialism of the parents, by contrast, does not affect the grandparent-grandchild relationship. finally, one should mention the model information at the end of table 1, which shows that greater variance in the grandparent-grandchild relationships can be identifi ed within families by including the covariates (r2 level 1 = .18) than between families (r2 level 2 = .08). the variances on both levels however also remain signifi cant in the net model (in each case p < .01). 5 conclusion this article studied various types of infl uence on the cohesion of grandparentgrandchild relationships – measured via aspects of associative, affective and functional solidarity. a special focus here was on embedding grandparent-grandchild relationships in the further family relationship system, which is composed of various lateral (e.g. affi nal) and vertical (intergenerational) relationships. virtually no studies have been carried out so far in the german-language area, particularly regarding the latter aspect. with its multi-actor design, the german family panel (pairfam) offers a comprehensive data basis for this specifi c question. the analyses demonstrate that grandparent-grandchild relationships should be looked at less as a pure individual or dyadic phenomenon, but more as being embedded in the further family interaction context. summing up, it can be stated that social resources signifi cantly infl uence grandparent-grandchild relationships, which 4 this effect is also to be interpreted conditionally because of the interaction effect contained in the model (frazier/tix/barron 2004), and relates to the value 0 of the state of health. since prior to the analysis the health variable was centred around 0 by subtracting the median value, the value 0 hence represents the sample mean. • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach560 has frequently been neglected in previous research. as was expected, the middle generation takes up a kind of intermediary position (robertson 1975), in which their relationship with the grandparents is positively associated with the cohesion of the grandparent-grandchild relationships. additionally, the existence of a partner in the grandparents’ generation also has a positive impact. all in all, hence, a pattern emerges according to which the relationships within a family system show a certain tendency towards congruency: one might presume that there are various family “relationship regimes” regarding to which (multigenerational) families clearly differ (cf. on this also the interfamilial variance share of the dependent variables of almost two-thirds). further research is needed in order to clarify whether and under which circumstances individual family members (e.g. the grandparents) are able to compensate for dysfunctional relationships. moreover, it was not possible with the available data to examine how grandparent-grandchild relationships develop as the grandchildren become older and – for instance through starting their own family – become less dependent on their families of origin (cf. silverstein/long 1998). with regard to personal resources, it was surprisingly clearly revealed that the quality of the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren is virtually not infl uenced by the socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals (in different operationalisation variants). this also implies that the challenges of modern societies – such as reconciliation of work and family life, as well as increasing requirements as to mobility – do not necessarily have the anticipated negative impact on solidarity between the generations. rather, the grandparents’ commitment appears to depend primarily on health-related resources (and restrictions). the gender-specifi c nature of the positive health effect, which was shown among grandmothers, but not among grandfathers, is particularly informative. in combination with the fi nding that grandmothers are more closely involved in the relationship with the grandchildren, this demonstrates that gender norms (“kin keeper” hypothesis, cf. hagestad 1986) continue to play a major role in structuring relationships between generations. this is also shown in the fi nding that the gender of the grandparent mediates the effect of familialist norms – grandmothers are more family orientated and are more committed to their relationships with their grandchildren. overall, the pattern of fi ndings suggests that normative infl uences are crucial for the strength of grandparent-grandchild relationships. this is confi rmed by the pronounced east-west difference, which can be interpreted as an empirical substrate of a major signifi cance of the family in eastern germany which has developed as a result of historic events (cf. arránz becker/lois 2010; schneider 1994). these fi ndings are compatible with the results of earlier studies on intergenerational relationships between adults in eastern and western germany (szydlik 1995, 1996), according to which solidarity between the generations is particularly strong in eastern germany. only the insignifi cant effect of religion does not completely fi t the otherwise coherent picture. finally, some restrictions of the analyses which were carried out have to be named. firstly, we should mention the rather small case number in relation to the initial sample, which results from combining multi actor data. consequently, simplifi cations had to be carried out in some places. for instance, it was not possible to include the g2-g3 relationship between parents and grandchildren in the analyses relations between grandparents and grandchildren • 561 although this would have been a desirable contribution to the content. the same applies to the distinction between intact and separated families with regard to the middle generation, as well as between step grandparents and biological grandparents, which could have led to more differentiated fi ndings. moreover, the survey design did not allow a direct comparison of the maternal and paternal grandparents’ lineages. these restrictions demonstrate the special problems and challenges of multi actor datasets. however, systemic questions can be investigated here for the fi rst time which, as the analyses have shown, are extremely relevant to the study of family relationships. particularly, interaction and value-related assessments of the various family members cannot be validly reconstrued via proxy variables, so that there is probably no alternative to multi actor designs. a fi nal point relates to the causality of the links that have been found. because of the cross-sectional perspective, the time dynamic of the development of family systems remains unclear. it is hence possible that grandparent-parent relationships change as a result of interactions between grandparents and grandchildren and not (only) the other way around. similar uncertainty remains regarding the direction of the effects of some further determinants. as to the development of family relationships, later waves of the german family panel can be used as a comprehensive basis for analysis. it can be summed up that the fi ndings support the intergenerational solidarity model (bengtson 2001), according to which relationships between generations are based on solidarity, that is they are not directly orientated towards maximising one’s own benefi t. this becomes particularly clear in the result that no effects could be found for the personal human capital of family members (that is of the grandparents’ and the parents’ generations). approaches more strongly orientated towards (individualistic) rational choice arguments (friedman/hechter/kreager 2008) make different predictions here, none of which could however be confi rmed. more detailed analyses also did not show an effect of the number of children and grandchildren; the hypothesis of differential investment in grandchildren, as postulated by friedman and colleagues, cannot however be directly tested with the available data since only relationships with a single grandchild per family were assessed. despite these restrictions, the analyses presented offer a lot of important fi ndings. future studies should relate to these by taking more comprehensive account of the social system character of the family relationship structure. references aldous, joan 1995: new views of grandparents in intergenerational context. in: journal of family issues 16,1: 104-122 [doi: 10.1177/019251395016001006]. aquilino, william s. 1999: two views of one relationship: 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(eds.): handbook on grandparenthood. westport: greendwood press: 257-288. szydlik, marc 1995: die enge der beziehung zwischen erwachsenen kindern und ihren eltern – und umgekehrt. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 24,2: 75-94. szydlik, marc 1996: parent-child relations in east and west germany shortly after the fall of the wall. in: international journal of sociology and social policy 16,12: 63-87 [doi: 10.1108/eb013286]. szydlik, marc 2000: lebenslange solidarität? generationenbeziehungen zwischen erwachsenen kindern und eltern. opladen: leske + budrich. • oliver arránz becker, anja steinbach566 uhlenberg, peter; hammill, bradley g. 1998: frequency of grandparent contact with grandchild sets: six factors that make a difference. in: the gerontologist 38,3: 276-285 [doi: 10.1093/geront/38.3.276]. uhlendorff, harald 2003: großeltern und enkelkinder: sozialwissenschaftliche perspektiven und forschungsergebnisse hinsichtlich einer selten untersuchten beziehung. in: psychologie in erziehung und unterricht 50,2: 111-128. werner, perla; lowenstein, ariela; katz, ruth 1998: the meaning of grandparenthood: a critical review and research agenda. in: aging: clinical and experimental research 10,6: 431-439. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “beziehungen zwischen großeltern und enkelkindern im kontext des familialen beziehungssystems”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-06de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-06de6, at http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 25.10.2011 date of acceptance: 11.04.2012 dr. oliver arránz becker ( ). technische universität chemnitz, institut für soziologie, 09107 chemnitz, germany. e-mail: oliver.arranz-becker@soziologie.tu-chemnitz.de url: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/hsw/soziologie/institut/profi l/oliver-arranz-becker, prof. dr. anja steinbach. universität duisburg-essen, institut für soziologie, lotharstraße 63, 47057 duisburg, germany. e-mail: anja.steinbach@uni-due.de url: http://www.uni-due.de/soziologie/steinbach.php © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic: impeding and inhibiting factors for staying marketa rulikova abstract: this paper considers the impact of the most recent global economic crisis on immigration in the czech republic. developments during this economically troubled period suggest that the “immigration-inexperienced” czech republic, which has attracted signifi cant numbers of people seeking economic opportunities in the past decade for the fi rst time, has repeated historical mistakes made by western european countries during the 1970s oil crisis. initially, promising economic growth at the beginning of the decade allowed the czech government to ignore issues of immigration, including controlling infl ow and immigrants’ integration into the majority of society. the sudden reality of jobs disappearing in late 2008, irrespective of the fact that many employers in the economic sectors are dependent on foreign guest workers, caught the country unprepared. in an effort to level the unemployment rate and dampen societal unrest, the czech republic offered fi nancial assistance to immigrants who opted to depart voluntarily, but offi cials overestimated the willingness of foreign labourers to return home, even if gainful work vanished. this paper is based on research conducted among participants of the government-assisted voluntary return programme and a follow-up ethnographic study in the vietnamese, ukrainian and mongolian communities in prague. it can be shown that most immigrants decided to stay despite extreme declines in their living conditions. while the motivations of immigrants to leave or stay are multifaceted, this paper offers an alternative to the “pull-push” model that takes into consideration economic as well as cultural factors, which both impede and inhibit migrants from returning “home”. keywords: global economic crisis · immigration policy · voluntary return programme · return migration · the czech republic comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 247-270 (date of release: 11.10.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-02en4 • marketa rulikova248 1 introduction the present article examines how immigration to the czech republic has been affected by the recent global economic crisis, which effectively hit the country in the autumn of 2008. this inquiry is particularly pertinent, since this post-socialist country is relatively inexperienced with immigration, and until the recent crisis, the infl ow of guest workers was accompanied by a substantial economic boom in the country. the paper opens with a brief overview of the state’s immigration policies of the past twenty years since the collapse of the communist regime. it further discusses how the czech government attempted to solve the mounting crisis-related threat of massive unemployment among immigrants living in the country and especially among guest workers who only recently arrived (most often) from distant countries. soon after the outburst of the economic crisis, it became clear that foreign guest workers would be adversely affected to a disproportionate degree compared to the domestic labour force, since the former constitute a signifi cant percentage among manual workers in the depressed export-oriented manufacturing sector. this partly resulted from the fact that it was legally easier for employers to dismiss temporary workers and foreigners. one of the immediate interventions of the czech government was the introduction of the voluntary return programme (vrp), a practice that was reminiscent of western european reactions to the 1974-5 oil crisis, where several countries tried to reduce the size of their “temporary-but-not-so-much” immigrant population.1 in many respects, the czech republic followed the historical trend of destination countries ridding themselves of previously welcomed immigrants and guest workers when economic opportunities in their domestic labour market disappeared (see for example, beets/willekens 2009; penninx 1986; balderrama/rodriguez 2006; ngai 2005). as could be seen both in recent years and in the past, most immigrants opted to stay in the czech republic regardless of their severely deteriorated living and working conditions and the government’s attempt to assist them with their return. earlier studies on the impact of the current global economic recession on migration patterns have suggested that population mobility worldwide, at least temporarily, slowed down in 2008 and 2009 and simultaneously no signifi cant returns of immigrants have been noted in any region (papademetriou/terrazas 2009; wilson 2009). stagnation in population movement in any direction is also reminiscent of developments in the times of previous economic turmoil, e.g. during the economic crisis of the great depression in 1930’s, the oil crisis of 1974-5 or the two world wars (castles/miller 2003). in this light, the fi ndings presented below continue to develop research questions related to migratory trends during periods of worldwide economic recession. they also attempt to put in context the newly achieved status of the czech republic among countries that receive immigration rather than being a country of population outfl ow. 1 the netherlands introduced its version of a voluntary return programme in 1974, france in 1977, and germany in 1983 (sward 2009). responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 249 in the second part of the paper, the reasons behind immigrants’ decisions to stay in the czech republic despite job losses, exploitation by employers and work agencies and the threat of potential deportation accompanied by a long-term ban on re-entry are examined. by focusing on this issue, the paper contributes to the extensive literature on migrants´ decision-making processes about whether to stay in a host country or return. various theoretical approaches have attempted to explicate what is behind migrants’ decisions to settle, return or continue their lives as sojourners circulating between origin and destination countries (morawska 1991; cassarino 2004). the richness of this literature, which has dramatically expanded since the 1980s, refl ects a diversifi cation in types of migrants. researchers of return migration draw on major migration theories in order to explain reverse movements. whereas neoclassical economists, who emphasize personal economic and social advancement behind migration, view returns as evidence of failure to succeed in the destination country, structuralists argue that returns are correlated with improved economic or political conditions in the home country (cassarino 2004). the globally interrelated economy thus explains the relatively weak (even if not insignifi cant) trend of return migration. balaz and his team (2004) contend that the decision to settle is highly correlated with the variable of the immigrant’s country of origin, whether an individual comes from a developed or less developed country. thus, while most migrants from developed countries travel or migrate temporarily for lifeor professional experience and tend to ultimately return home; migrants from less developed countries see their “opportunity differential” – to use the terminology of papademetriou/terrazas (2009) – differently. in contradiction to neoclassical economics, the new economic approach argues that remigration can be attributed to the success story when migrants meet their initially identifi ed goals (of earning money, attaining education) and return home. other researchers draw attention to non-economic motivations behind migrants’ returns. personal reasons might include “nostalgia for home” or disenchantment with the fact that the destination country has not lived up to the image the migrant had before departure (brettell 1979; stark/taylor 1989; gmelch 1992; aranda 2006, etc.). a growing volume of research also demonstrates that the ever-stronger transnational ties, which migrants cultivate with their home country, facilitate (and prepare better for) returns (portes 1999; morawska 1991; foner 2005). the current paper expands the idea of return migration by contextualizing migrants’ decision-making when experiencing extreme shifts in overall circumstances: from the structuralist point of view, times of economic recession disrupt migrants’ “opportunity differential” in a way that both sending and receiving countries seem to be pushing out migrants. 2 method this paper draws on research conducted in a variety of settings. while trying to gauge the effect of the economic crisis, that began in 2008, on immigrants in the czech republic, i decided to focus part of my research on the czech government’s voluntary return programme. the backstage preparations for this programme, not • marketa rulikova250 only its drafting and execution, but also problems encountered in its implementation, were revealed to me by several offi cials from the czech ministry of the interior in the process of in-depth and follow-up interviews. during the intensive period of data collection (february – june 2009), i regularly visited the departure centre in velké přílepy, a former asylum-seekers facility strategically located close to the prague airport at ruzyně. there, i conducted semi-structured open-question interviews with twenty-one departing migrants. these interviews took on average twenty minutes, but individual interviews ranged from 12 to 45 minutes in length, depending on the attitude of informants towards research objectives, and perhaps also the amount of trust that i gained from some persons. all interviews were recorded. i also participated in several organisational sessions, where departing immigrants were informed about details of their journey, their legal rights and obligations under the voluntary return programme. at the centre, i had the opportunity to talk to employees, return organisers from the international organisation for migration (iom), who offi cially partnered with the czech government, and native speaking interpreters, who provided me with priceless cultural cues to otherwise incomprehensible attitudes and behaviours of the migrants who were the subjects of my research. i took part in one trip to ruzyně airport and followed a group of mongolian migrants up to their plane. while i had this immediate exposure to people who decided to return, i also heard from them about friends, family members and acquaintances who decided to stay in the czech republic, even if it often meant moving into the sphere of illegality as their legal work disappeared. interesting but insuffi cient information about those who decided to stay eventually brought me into communities of vietnamese and mongolians in prague. for information on (the most numerous) ukrainian and other post-soviet national communities, i relied on my informants from these groups and on less systematic but continuous and frequent encounters with representatives of these ethnic groups. i had an opportunity to interview representatives of vietnamese and mongolian communities and participate in several of their events. i confi rmed my observations with colleagues who study the respective cultures. in spring and summer 2010, i also conducted interviews with social workers and other professionals from the international organization for immigration, charita, inbaze and klub hanoi2 who provide assistance to immigrants and were in the position to refl ect on their experiences from the past two years of severe economic downfall and its consequences for immigrants. 2 charita is a non-governmental organization managed by the roman catholic church, which has been providing social and medical services in the czech republic for more than a hundred years. inbaze berkat is a civic association established in 2006 and aimed at aiding immigrants in need. klub hanoi is a civic platform promoting cultural contacts between the vietnamese community and the majority czech population. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 251 3 czech immigration policies in the past twenty years it has only been within the last decade that the czech republic shifted from being a country of population emigration to being a transitory land for foreigners heading westwards and fi nally to becoming a destination for various foreigners seeking improved economic opportunities. however, this rapid transformation, inspired by promising economic developments in this post-socialist country since the advent of the new millennium, caught the czech government (as well as the ethnically homogeneous czech society) unprepared. they were unsure how to deal with foreign newcomers, many of whom, as it turned out over time, have settled in the country with the intention of staying permanently.3 until the mid-1990s, immigration policies did not constitute a high government priority. the laissez-faire approach, that held sway immediately following the collapse of the socialist government and that allowed almost anyone to enter the territory, might have refl ected “the libertarian spirit of the (post) revolutionary era,” as baršová/barša propose (2005: 221), but the fragmented and short-sighted scope of this policy also gives testimony to the lack of vision in this sphere of policy-making. a more coherent immigration and asylum framework was set up in the czech republic as part of the process of preparation for eu membership, since the country had to abide by the eu regulations as defi ned in acquis communautaire, i.e. in the area of visa and the “schengen” system. yet, time pressure for legal implementation of acquis, along with the fact that the post-communist countries seeking eu membership were left with little space for formulating their individual needs in the area of immigration, resulted in an environment of inertia, where migration policies were somewhat “created by themselves” (drbohlav in baršová/barša 2005). more complex and farsighted immigration and integration policies, which would be coordinated across particular ministries, remain mostly underdeveloped or fail to address the actual needs of both immigrants and the majority society (baršová/barša 2005; poradna pro občanství [citizen advice bureau] 2007). a resolute and consistent stance on which immigrants, in what numbers, and under what conditions should be admitted into the country in order to sustain a stable labour market and create a smooth-functioning multicultural society has been missing. consequently, the decisions of successive governments have only refl ected the immediate situation (and mostly the immediate needs of the labour market) and not a far-ranging set of policy considerations. thus, the favourable economic environment, enhanced by the country’s successful attraction of foreign direct investments in the late 1990s, most of which concentrated on the manufacturing and assembling industries, which offered semi or non-skilled low paid jobs that are generally unattractive to the local labour force, compelled the government to develop more or less structured attempts to seek 3 the commentary here is based on the numbers of permanent residence permits that have been issued. it is reasonable to assume that foreigners who attempted to change their status from long-term residence permit (renewable every year) to permanent residence have the intention to stay in the country. • marketa rulikova252 “guest workers” from abroad. while the government attempted some active recruitment activities abroad,4 it was largely private worker recruitment agencies that effectively managed to draw thousands of foreigners to czech companies, along with the natural process of informal recruitment through chain migration. for sure, the exact impact of work agencies is hard to state with certainty. for example, rákoczyová et al. (2007) found in their extensive survey among companies employing foreigners that three quarters of these companies have never used services provided by such agencies. however, their study does not reveal the actual number of foreign guest workers who found employment in the remaining quarter of companies through mediation by a work agency. leaving aside the quantitative impact of work agencies, there is a consensus among academics, governmental offi cials and ngo personnel about the huge negative role of these agencies in the current unfortunate plight of many cheated guest workers (drbohlav/lachmanová 2008; pechová 2007; saková/martínková 2009). their pseudo-feudal, so-called “client“ structure, where job, accommodation and “security” are exchanged for high fees and often accompanied by limitations on freedoms and other forms of explotation, have been extensively described (černík 2006; čermáková 2008). the liberal admission of (the most vulnerable) foreign workers, accelerated by the persistence of under-regulated, profi t-seeking private work agencies (saková/ martínková 2009) and by the corrupt behaviour among czech police offi cials and czech consulates abroad (drbohlav/lachmanová 2008; nožina 2010), eventually outstretched the needs of the labour market. this unsustainable trend became especially apparent with the onset of the global economic crisis of 2008/2009. the labour bubble, crowded with foreigners who had come to live the “czech dream”, collapsed in a matter of months. naturally, the slowdown in manufacturing due to shrinking exports since november 2008 hit immigrant workers hard. although these guest workers hold (or held) permission for residence and work, job opportunities disappeared. in an attempt to help these victims of the short-sighted immigration system, the czech government resolved to launch a pioneering and in central europe unprecedented programme of assisted voluntary return, while also suspending the issuance of work permits. 4 starting in the mid-1990s, some bilateral agreements were signed with traditional labour supplying countries, including the post-soviet successor states, and also vietnam, mongolia and bulgaria (malynovska 2008; kocourek 2008; mošňjaga/lupták 2008; janeba/jelinkova, unpublished). in 2003, the government expanded its effort to attract more foreign labour by starting the “project for active selection of skilled foreign workers”. in 2008, it introduced a system of green cards, a fast-track for distributing long-term work and residence permits for citizens of selected countries who would be directly channeled into the sectors of the economy with the highest demand. these government-initiated recruitment endeavours have brought only moderate success. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 253 4 the czech response to the crisis: the voluntary return programme (vrp) in reaction to the worsening of the situation on the job market, which predominantly affected foreign guest workers, the czech republic launched its government-assisted programme of voluntary return in february 2009. the offi cial justifi cation for establishing the programme (and thus spending tax money in a particularly sensitive time of economic insecurity) focused on security concerns. the government allocated czk 111 million (approx. 4.5 million €) to cover immigrants’ repatriation costs and grant them a “motivation fee” to encourage their departure. the initial sum of € 500 per adult person and € 250 per child, which was later reduced to € 300 and € 150 respectively, was said to have been allocated to help the returnees re-establish their lives back home. participants in the programme could benefi t from this offer in exchange for turning in their authorised residence and work permits. in a country with almost 438,000 immigrants,5 it was safe to assume that tens of thousands were in a vulnerable situation.6 the programme was initially designed for only 2,000 legal immigrants, with a conditional assumption that the programme would be expanded in case of a positive response. this promise was fulfi lled in july 2009, when the programme was extended to another 4,000 immigrants and was accompanied by a programme of benevolent repatriations of unauthorised immigrants. arguably, this eligibility of modifi cation represented a signifi cant move towards addressing the most vulnerable immigrants: those who had already lost their legal path to employment. it is hard to assess the number of those who actually resolved to return to their home country among all economically affected immigrants. there are no reliable statistics that would indicate the number of those who have actually left the territory of the czech republic. estimating departures is further distorted by the fact that a signifi cant part of the most numerous ethnic group of immigrants in the czech republic – the ukrainians – practices pendulum migration. thus, it is expected that these workers, who come to the czech republic with tourist visas and fi nd employment mostly in the informal economic sector during their stay, will adjust the length and frequency of their “tourist trips” based on job availability. it is inconclusive, though, whether informal jobs disappear during an economic crisis in the same way 5 the offi cial data as of december 31, 2008 (last offi cial data collection before the vrp was launched) registered by the czech statistical offi ce (which is informed by the directory of czech alien police) was 437,565 persons, out of which 405,631 possessed residence permits for 12 months or more. these numbers, however, do not take into account the number of unauthorised immigrants, which is extremely hard to estimate (czech statistical offi ce 2009). the most extreme accounts estimate an additional 300,000 foreigners living in the czech republic (drbohlav 2008). 6 the czech ministry of the interior indicated that the visas of 68,000 immigrants expired in august 2009 (pecina 2009). many of these immigrants would not have had their work contracts extended. not all of these visa holders will get into serious economic problems, but it was reasonable to assume that a substantial number could encounter diffi culties surviving under current conditions. • marketa rulikova254 and with the same frequency as jobs in the formal sector. just the opposite might be the case. they might actually be on the rise, given that employers might perceive the commitment to legally well-protected workers too binding and risky. yet, a brief look into the data on authorised foreigners residing in the czech republic does not reveal any dramatic declines in immigrant numbers (among offi cially registered immigrants) in the past two years (see fig. 1). additionally, the statistics of the vrp suggest that the programme designers overestimated interest among immigrants in assisted returns. the fi rst phase of voluntary return, prepared for 2,000 persons, concluded with 1,781 registered applicants and 1,744 realised repatriations. in the second phase, programme participation dropped enormously: only 218 documented and 169 undocumented foreigners had registered for the next phase of the programme (ministry of the interior 2009; for more comprehensive statistics, see table 1). consequently, the total number of voluntary return participants proved to be much lower than the number of those immigrants who decided to stay despite the fact that many had gotten into serious economic diffi culties due to unemployment during the recession. while talking to informants who had decided to take up the unexpected and “generous” (as many perceived) governmental offer, it became clear that they could be roughly divided into two types of cases. the fi rst group included those who encountered serious problems in the czech republic, even if not as appalling as cases brought up in the media and other studies, but could not fi gure any possible remedy. in my sample, practically everybody arrived in the czech republic and received a job through an agency. the typical fee for such services ranged between $ fig. 1: trend in the number of foreigners – monthly data; 2008/09-2009/10 source: czech statistical offi ce 2010. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 255 700 – 2,000 (€ 500 – 1500, including plane tickets). only one informant indicated that he had paid $ 12,000 (€ 9,000) for job mediation. this informant was an untypical case in many respects, as he came from india, a country that generally does not provide labour to the czech republic. he came to the czech republic through england, where he was recruited by a ukrainian middleman. while these are signifi cant sums for most economic migrants, they are relatively low compared to the often quoted recruitment fees of $ 10,000 – 13,000 (€ 7,500 – 10,000) found among vietnamese immigrant guest workers (pechová 2007; komárek 2009; krebs 2010). several of my informants developed major medical problems in physically demanding jobs. typically, the participants had relatively minimal social ties and only a little or no support group in the czech republic. or alternatively, their entire group was isolated from the majority society, did not have language skills, and seemed to be unable to orient themselves in the host society, its job market and its legal environment. based on the accounts of several of my informants, these isolated groups of mutually interdependent guest workers (many from mongolia) who faced similar diffi culties departed in large numbers, hundreds participated in the vrp. the second group of programme benefi ciaries, which was smaller in my sample (6 out of 21 informants), included people who were similarly disillusioned, but who wanted to leave the czech republic anyway. typically, they had somewhat clear plans what to do next. in quite a few cases, this plan included another move in search of employment – most commonly to russia, where (in their words) it was easier to get a job without formal permission. another popular destination for job migration that became apparent during my interviews was the republic of korea. informants were aware, though, of work permit quotas and diffi culties to realise their trip. thus, participation in the vrp for this second group was a “rational” use of a public allowance, and as such, an unexpected but pleasant “gift”. in one or two cases, the eligibility of my informants in the project was highly problematic. for example, one informant from moldova admitted that s/he was leaving with € 2,000 in savings, which was against the rules of eligibility. another middle-aged woman, who came to the czech republic from ukraine, admitted that she arrived only after the programme had already been implemented and that participation in the vrp was a backup plan, which was also against the initial idea of the assistance programme: initially, i applied for the visa together with my husband. i received it and he didn’t…i didn’t want to go anywhere…i cried. you know, i never did anything without my husband in my entire life...but the whole family insisted on me going. they told me that the visa cost so much money that i have to take advantage of it...that i shouldn’t be worried about anything that i will be living with my cousins. and after all, i can always come back through the programme… when i couldn’t fi nd a job after three months, i decided to take up on the opportunity to return through this programme… when asked about whether they would come back if the labour market situation improved, a third of my informants (7 out of 21) indicated that they would. some of them added the qualifi cation that they would never come via an agency again. during their stay in the czech republic they had come into contact with employers • marketa rulikova256 or other acquaintances that they could take advantage of when planning a return trip to the country after the crisis is over. so, an identifi able portion of those departing represented well-connected, independent, entrepreneurial workers who could contribute constructively to the czech economy. in a sense, this would seem to indicate that the self-selection effect of migration, which has been acknowledged in the migration literature (borjas 1987; morawska 1991; chiswick 2000), works in reverse here, by sending home some of the most desirable labourers. such an observation also suggests that resourcefulness enhances further mobility. this impression then leads to the question whether this generalisation is valid for the entire population of departing immigrants. if so, it would suggest that the host society has to face the harshest consequences of job losses among immigrants because they loose at least a portion of the rather productive immigrants while retaining some of the least productive and most dependent ones. 5 consequences of the economic crisis for immigrants in the host country and their coping strategies offi cially, 53,842 foreigners lost their job in the course of 2009, which means that every eighth foreigner, including professionals and permanent residents of foreign origin (ministry of labour and social affairs 2009), became unemployed. if one only takes into account guest workers, it appears that between a third and a fourth of those in this category of foreigners lost his or her job. as narratives of informants in velké přílepy suggested and some later studies confi rmed (krebs 2010), signifi cant numbers of recently arrived guest workers were personally hit to a greater or lesser extent by the distorted economic environment in the czech republic in 2008-2010. luckier ones were relocated to jobs with different fi rms, which were accompanied by lower pay and/or reduction in contract terms (e.g. part-time contracts, short term contracts without benefi ts, etc.). these practices were known before, but their extent escalated during the period of crisis. domestic companies became reluctant to commit to costly employment contracts. in addition, work agencies and middlemen reacted to reduced profi ts from importing foreign labour due to government’s decision to freeze work visas by coming up with ways to charge extra or otherwise cheat those guest workers who were already in the country. (one such method was demanding higher charges for assistance with visa adjustments as will become clear below). jobless temporary immigrants have to face multiple challenges, some of which are shared by all unemployed individuals, but some of which are specifi cally attributed to (and complicated by) their uncertain legal status. most fundamentally, they have to preserve as much of their income as possible in order to survive in the host country, where they typically do not have family to lean on, neither fi nancially nor psychologically. oftentimes, this coincides with the need to send money back home to support the family (or follow through on investment plans that have been made) and, in case of debts incurred, to pay instalments. the situation is particularly strained, if the debt was advanced from private creditors, who do not hesitate responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 257 to threaten the indebted family with severe penalties or even physical harm if their usurious terms are not met. overall, frequent changes of employers and reduced, deferred or never-paid salaries have become a common reality for most guest workers in the czech republic in 2009-2010. in some cases, this situation has placed guest workers in a position of near vassal-like dependency on their employers and middlemen. the following narrative seems to represent a very common story among those who recently arrived in the czech republic: ...then they stopped paying me... actually they gave us a deposit of czk 2000 a month for food...then i started using my savings...and now i have nothing left...that’s why i am leaving. but i will try to get this money back from those bastards, even at the cost of going to the police...they promised to send the money to me in kazakhstan or to leave it with my brother who came here with me [and is staying] but i am not trusting them...but i will get the money back... (a middle-aged kazakh man) during this period of “accepted exploitation”, immigrants, mostly mongolians, moldovans, uzbeks and citizens of other cis countries, exhausted their savings, which represented several years of hard work for many of them. these trapped migrants could not even apply for vrp assistance because formally they were not unemployed and thus did not qualify for participation. (in a few cases, informants in velké přílepy revealed that the foreign police offi cials were fl exible and responsive to their plight and incorporated them into the vrp despite formally lacking a termination of employment.) unemployment among guest workers is precarious due to the fact that, unless they are permanent residents, temporary immigrants do not qualify for unemployment benefi ts, despite paying taxes. while many immigrants “found” themselves in dependency as a result of deteriorating relations to employers and middlemen, some others “voluntarily” accepted this status when their previous employment disappeared. in his study of vietnamese guest workers, krebs (2010) discovered that some immigrants agreed to work only for food and shelter. while such terms might be intended and interpreted by the employers as generous assistance to fellow countrymen, it is diffi cult to see it as anything other than labour exploitation. cases of straightforward human exploitation, i.e. involuntary enforcement of labour, have been recorded as well. in addition to economic diffi culties, guest workers who have opted to remain in the country need to make an additional effort to maintain their legal residence status in order to preserve their chances for re-employment and to avoid deportation. in terms of long-term planning, for some it is crucial to maintain the legal residency in order to be able to apply for permanent residency in the future, which is the basis for an eventual family reunion. in order to retain legal residence permits (which are tied to existing work), jobless guest workers often adjust their status from “employees” to “self-employed entrepreneurs”, “members of a limited partnership” or “members of a co-op”, even if their actual working position remains dependent or they engage in no gainful activity at all. this practice of legal adjustment is an expensive busi• marketa rulikova258 ness, since these business-type visas require additional administration fees (e.g. for obtaining a trade license), more expensive commercial health insurance7 and the fi ling of independent tax returns. most of these conditions are unfamiliar to the immigrants – which leaves them at the mercy of legal and fi nancial experts. these need to be addressed by middlemen, often foreigners themselves, who profi t from their knowledge of the czech legal system, personal connections and linguistic skills. similar conditions and practices are valid for student visas. all additional and repetitive costs of “independent” statuses constitute a permanent fi nancial burden, especially given the fact that any work, business and student visas need to be renewed every year. the expression “feeding the papers” has been tailored to those immigrants who are forced to spend a signifi cant proportion or all of their income to assure their continued legal status in the country (krebs 2010). 6 state of “stuckness”: impeding and inhibiting factors to returns as mentioned above, available demographic information indicates that the vast majority of immigrants – including semi-settled immigrants and guest workers who recently arrived – have opted to stay in the czech republic despite their shrinking prospects of decent earnings and an improved quality of life in the czech republic. data from the vrp, offi cial statistics on foreign populations, as well as my own inquiries of individual ethnic groups suggest that the degree of remigration is unequally distributed among these separate groups of migrants (see table 1). while proportionately large numbers of mongolians and uzbeks were leaving, vietnamese and ukrainians were much more reluctant to depart, which can be drawn from a combined statistics showing the total numbers of a given ethnic group and its participants in the vrp. the most salient variables, which explain the different degrees of readiness to stay or return among different ethnic groups, are addressed below, based on the accounts of informants. they can generally be divided into two categories, namely impeding and inhibiting variables. impeding factors are usually objective or circumstantial factors that prevent or make it diffi cult for a migrant to leave, such as the existence or the lack of a supportive community or costs of return (combined with costs of re-entry), debts incurred etc. inhibiting factors are usually subjective factors, often culturally conditioned, that infl uence the migrant’s willingness to return, such as shame of one’s failure to succeed abroad. situational, often economic variables are more tangible and obvious, and thus dominate the migration literature as major factors of mobility (usually referred to as “pull-push factors”). but the inhibiting, more nuanced and subjectively experienced, culturally-based patterns al7 foreigners on business visas without permanent residency are not allowed to take part in the public system of health care insurance. they have an option to insure themselves privately. this insurance, however, costs more and also does not provide care to the same extent as the public system does (hnilicová et al. 2010). responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 259 low explaining seemingly irrational decisions of migrants to remain in a country, where opportunities have disappeared (and thus they also help us to fi ll a gap in understanding migrants’ motives). the research of immigrants indicated that the most salient factors affecting the decision of immigrants whether or not to take advantage of the vrp were the existence of major debt, the existence or the lack of a supportive community and the less tangible factor of signifi cance of migration in particular cultures. 7 incurred debt despite the presumption that the poorest immigrants might want to leave (and thus would need to be assisted), data suggest an alternative and somewhat complex scenario: it appears that the worse the situation of the migrant, the less likely he or she seems to seek a solution in returning, even when the host government offers fi nancial and logistic assistance for such a return. this is especially the case for heavily indebted guest workers (mostly from vietnam), as well as for immigrants who are still hoping for salaries to be paid. the decision to stay cannot necessarily be interpreted as a sign of passivity and resignation. many “captives” of the client system get stuck, because they try to get their salaries which are due and do not want to lose the opportunity to obtain these funds. in my research, this “seeking of justice” seemed to particularly preoccupy immigrants from the cis countries. this was also the case for people who have borrowed money from their families to pay for their trips, or those who have pledged their savings and houses as security to a tab. 1: voluntary return programme foreigners in the czech republic (december 31, 2008) temporary and long-term permits + visas for more than 90 days (december 31, 2008) participation in vrp (december 15, 2009) vrp participants as % of temporary permit and visa holders (rounded) total 437,565 265,374 2,089 100% ukraine 131,921 91,291 60 0.07% vietnam 60,255 25,463 283 1% moldova 10,636 8,522 17 0.2% mongolia 8,569 7,104 1,342 19% uzbekistan 2,307 2,191 314 14% russia 27,086 15,308 8 0.05% source: personal calculations based on data from the czech statistical offi ce, 2008 and 2009, and the czech ministry of the interior, 2009. • marketa rulikova260 private creditor or a bank. for those groups, there is no alternative to return home without suffi cient resources to pay off their debts. consequently, for people from countries like vietnam, where one has to live on several tens of dollars a month,8 a fi ve hundred euro bill and a plane ticket would do little to provide relief from the debt trap that they would have to face once they have returned home. caught between two inauspicious sets of conditions, these guest workers opt for staying in the host country, hoping that the economic situation will eventually revert and that they will be able to stick to the planned schedule on their way to prosperity. in his study of vietnamese guest workers, krebs (2010) discovered some cases where indebted families in the home country sent money to support their family members in the czech republic. these “converse remittances” are absent in migration literature. they refl ect the degree of despair of migrant households in times when sending as well as receiving countries push migrants out. despair then forces many of these immigrants into illegal employment, slavery-like work environments, and sometimes areas of organised crime (nožina 2010). 8 role of the community and of social networks an additional factor that appeared to play a signifi cant role in decision-making among crisis-affected immigrants, whether they should return or stay, was the availability of an ethnic community (or a network) in the host country. a “community” is characterised as an ethnic group whose members share a common cultural and historic heritage. they reside or gather in a specifi c location, i.e. an urban neighbourhood and organise their social life. a “network” is characterised by a more loose association of individuals – who may or may not know other members of the network – who share some characteristics and interests and who provide each other with emotional support, mutual assistance and information. while their contacts may or may not be intensive, the members of a network do not typically inhabit the same locality, at least not the majority of the members. it can be assumed that the more geographically, logistically or fi nancially distant the home country, the more important become such communities and networks. it has been well documented that through a variety of institutional means, the community helps its members with fi nding employment and often provides alternative job opportunities within its own immigrant-supplying (third) sector (light 1972; bonacich 1973; massey et al. 1998). portes and bach called the latter ethnic enclave economies (1985). the authors defi ne these as “strong communities” which are not only numerically signifi cant but also include a class of entrepreneurs who create job opportunities for the others (ibid). an ethnic community is also a source of social capital to a migrant: its members share information about legal and social rules and 8 data on average monthly salary in vietnam vary. while the usual estimates range between $ 30-100 (€ 22 and 75), the offi cial source, vietnamese department of labor, indicates that in early 2010, an average vietnamese worker earned 150 dollars (€ 113) a month. http://www. presscenter.org.vn/en/content/view/1915/89/ retrieved: february 7, 2010. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 261 habits in the host country, and they also offer moral support and other forms of altruistic help to those in need. in the czech context, the vietnamese in particular constitute such a tightly organised and active immigrant community. the most tangible proof of this vibrant vietnamese community is its business centre, known as sapa, on the outskirts of prague. initially serving as a storage and wholesale site for goods arriving from asia, sapa has developed into a thriving market place over the years, which is mainly frequented by the growing asian population. with the advent of the economic recession of 2008/2009, jobless vietnamese workers from prague and elsewhere received free food and shelter at sapa. charity was organised around the local temple. according to mrs. vu thi thu, a buddhist spiritual leader at sapa, half a dozen of the members of the local temple prepared over 300 meals every day in may 2009 for their impoverished fellow vietnamese. mr. a. dat, a local entrepreneur, reported that a group of businessmen decided to turn one of their storage spaces into a temporary dormitory for the most desperate homeless vietnamese. krebs (2010) estimate that 7,000 unemployed vietnamese immigrants found haven in sapa over the most critical winter of 2008/2009. ukrainians, who constitute the most numerous ethnic group among immigrants in the czech republic and who started arriving in the czech republic in the 1990’s, have not created a community as tightly linked and physically close as the vietnamese. their tendency toward looser social connections and less visible ukrainian communal life can be explained by a shorter duration and the pendulum character of ukrainian migration. moreover, the absence of racial distinctiveness in relation to the czech host population and the linguistic closeness of the czech and ukrainian languages enable the ukrainians to better integrate into the czech society. while ukrainian workers tend to share the accommodation with their ethnic compatriots, they do not concentrate in certain urban neighbourhoods.9 ukrainians in the czech republic thus tend to rely more on networks than on a locally defi ned community. for a ukrainian, a cell phone or an internet connection represents a link to his or her community instead of a specifi c part of the city. the occasional expressions of communal life are organised on an appointment basis in popular cafés, restaurants and bars. while the vietnamese community and the ukrainian networks assist their temporarily unemployed countrymen to stay in the czech republic, the absence of an “own” solid cultural and ethnic community seems to have led to increased returns among mongolians or uzbeks. the mongolians, in particular, represent a largely detached ethnic group without much social capital, which leaves them with very few opportunities to carry on after they have lost their job. additionally, their linguistic distinctiveness (relatively few mongolian guest workers speak russian, not to men9 one of the reasons for the absence of residential communities is the existing regulated housing market in the czech republic which limits spatial stratifi cation (lux et al. 2002). a clear advantage of these policies is a reduced spatial segregation of czech cities. • marketa rulikova262 tion the czech language) does not facilitate using the infrastructure of other ethnic communities nor seeking jobs in czech businesses on their own. it needs to be emphasized, though, that the “retaining” effect of ethnic communities may have a negative effect as well. while an ethnic community or a network is commonly viewed as a favourable source of social capital that can serve as safety net in uncertain times, this community assistance is not always offered without reserve (grzymala-kazlowska 2005; nazario 2007; pai 2008; white/ryan 2008, etc.). even if gratuitous patronage for fellow migrants, who often come from the same village, extended family or group of friends, is commonplace, there is also evidence of job mediators or employers who exploit their countrymen. in the czech republic, ukrainian work agents are known for cheating their countrymen and other immigrants and for coercing vulnerable immigrants into paying them money in exchange for promises of employment, visas, accommodation and “security”. mafi a-like vietnamese middleman agencies – so called dich vu – have also been noted (burčíková 2006; martínková 2007; pechová 2007; nožina 2010; krebs 2010). vietnamese entrepreneurs often pay extremely low salaries to their predominantly vietnamese employees and do not compensate for working under often harsh outdoor conditions. an hourly wage for street trading (in a street kiosk, for example) can be as low as 30-40 czk ($ 2). an anecdotal case of exploitation of countrymen was also recorded in the course of the vrp processing, when a mongolian interpreter assisted her fellow countrymen with programme applications, but misled them about the size of the allowance and retained the difference. the vast majority of the interviewees in velké přílepy have encountered malfeasance while staying in the czech republic; regardless of their country of origin. most of them reported that ukrainians had been their “clients”, a term applied to individuals by foreigners who would usually be referred to as “middlemen”. “the czechs are all right, they are civil; it’s our own people who create problems for us”, commented a 45-year-old uzbek, while his fellow countryman of similar age, whom he met in the camp, nodded. by “our people”, both men referred to ukrainian clients who deprived them of their salaries. “our” thus did not strictly relate to their fellow countrymen, but to citizens of ukraine who used to share the common space and culture of the soviet union. “europe is civilised. i like it here. but that post-communist mentality, it is unfortunate”, he complained. according to its offi cials, the ministry of the interior is aware of these mafi a-like structures. however, within the current czech legal framework, police cannot initiate an investigation without receiving an offi cial complaint, and most immigrants remain silent. they are sometimes unaware of their rights, but – based on what i heard from the departing migrants – they commonly do not trust the objectiveness or effectiveness of the czech investigatory and judiciary systems, or they are afraid of revenge. the affl icted immigrants often do not want to report against “clients” out of fear that they will imperil their fellow immigrants who opt to stay. thus, even though one of the major sources of foreign labour exploitation is registered, very little is actually done to overcome this unfortunate situation. it also appears that the ukrainian client system operates internationally: for example, an indian informant responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 263 came to the czech republic through a ukrainian “middle-woman”, who also provides jobs in the uk where she resides. 9 cultural meaning of foreign migration just like the term “the american dream” is associated with immigrants’ success, today many vietnamese, ukrainians, uzbeks and mongolians see europe as a land of opportunity. they are ready to leave their families and go into debt in order to obtain legal employment there or get smuggled in. it did not take long after the accession to the eu that the czech republic began to attract serious foreign direct investments and thus became one of these new dream countries. in vietnam, rumours spread about việt kiều millionaires from the czech republic spending their holidays in vietnam. people living in the former soviet union vaguely recall that quality products originated in the communist czechoslovakia, at a time when soviet goods were uniformly poor in quality. many of those who decide to seize their chances in the czech republic hardly know where it is located on a map. and many who actually arrive know little or nothing about common practices or the economic conditions in that distant country. nevertheless, they have the goal of working in the host country for several years, remitting their earnings back home, in order to pay back the debts they have incurred. by building a house or investing in a small business, they want to improve the wellbeing of their families before eventually returning. depending on the status of the economy in a sending country, families expect the remittance of cash in order to pay back the debt associated with sending the immigrant abroad, to purchase basic necessities, to invest in housing construction or simply – and as numerous studies confi rm (massey et al. 1998) – to engage in ever more sophisticated and expensive consumption. the expectations of families who have been left behind are enormously high. it is well-documented how hard immigrants try to live up to these expectations, sometimes living at the edge of subsistence in order to be able to help their families back home (ehrenreich/hochschild 2004; nazario 2007; pai 2008, etc.). similar stories are told by all immigrants from different countries who come to the czech republic. similarly, most of the informants have been sending money home. some informants revealed that they were trying to fi nance their children’s studies, but in the vast majority of cases, money was spent on everyday consumption (nguyen 2010). in order to be able to remit money home, they were prepared to reduce their living conditions in the czech republic. many live in overcrowded apartments and others in simple dormitories, of which some are located beyond the limits of the city and require long commutes. sometimes, shoplifting is a method to send a little present home, when cash is scarce. a migrant often feels frustrated and ashamed, when he or she fails to contribute the expected fi nancial support. the inability to support their relatives back home and to live up to their expectations is a factor that forces the migrant to stay on and to minimise his or her own expenses. in case of a job loss, desperate migrants are forced to accept any job, even if they are obviously exploited or if the job is illegal. this, on the other hand could get them into trouble with the authorities. women, • marketa rulikova264 often single-mothers, who engage in prostitution do so, despite the fact that their reputation back home is at risk, should people discover the nature of their employment (for example from other parts of the world, see ehrenreich/hochschild 2007 or pai 2008). at the same time, it should be recognised that the meaning of migration varies between different cultures, translating into different “philosophies of life”. while exploring this issue among foreigners in the czech republic, it was suggested to me that in more sedentary societies, migration represents huge social and economic costs and thus needs to be compensated by tangible gains. in traditionally nomadic societies, migration is treated more routinely, if not fatalistically. such an argumentation can be supported by the following comment, which was made by a forty-year-old mongolian returnee who works as computer science professor at ulaanbaatar university and who took a year off to come and earn some extra money in the czech republic: “we should be grateful for having been born in such a beautiful country to return to... and the lost money?... well...what can you do?... you live on....” this could explain why contemporary mongolians – whose cultural norms and traditional social structures are organised on the basis of nomadism – treat spatial mobility and travel in pursuit of job opportunities more easily and experimentally, and accept the risks more readily. it seems to be their slogan that just as opportunities come and go, people must pursue them. this admittedly oversimplifi ed picture of mongolian mentality might, however, represent an additional reason why mongolians have disproportionately frequently applied for the vrp and why, generally, disproportionately many of them left the country. 10 conclusion the case study of immigrants in the czech republic during the global economic crisis in 2008/2009 confi rmed already existing trends in other parts of the world: namely that immigrants opt to stay in the destination country during hard economic times, because many of them have already resolved to settle down. in this respect, the country seems to resemble other migration receiving states and thus can expect to encounter similar (positive as well as negative) effects associated with the presence of large migrant populations on its territory in the future. while stagnancy rather than decline of the immigrant population could have been expected in 2008/2010, the czech government attempted to send the most unfortunate crisisaffected guest workers back home by means of the voluntary return programme. while the government justifi ed implementing such measures on the basis of security concerns, the word “return” really seemed to constitute an euphemism for “disposal”, since the government essentially hoped to get rid of guest workers who had ceased to fulfi l the useful function of cheap labour. the wording “return” also conveys that the place where migrants belong is where they came from and not the place where they currently reside, regardless of the opinion, aspiration or loyalty of the migrants themselves. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 265 as occurred in western europe several decades ago, the czech vrp despite some initial interest eventually failed. it did not only fail to fi ll assigned spots for voluntary returnees, but my research found that it also did not attract and assist the departures of the most needy immigrants. ironically, the most impoverished immigrants were reluctant to accept the one-way plane ticket and a € 500 motivation fee. the puzzle of this seemingly irrational decision has at least partly been disentangled, when we examined some structural circumstances of these people’s lives (the impeding factors). the world of poverty, which originally pushed them to the czech republic, has been replaced by the world of debt, which is even more debilitating. multi-thousand-dollar debts accompanied with threats to the wellbeing of family members back home, who are vulnerable to creditors, makes a fi ve-hundred-euro banknote seem like irrelevant pocket money. in addition, inhibiting factors such as the feeling of shame for failing to provide for the family that had put expectation and hope into their journeys, constitute additional reasons why guest workers resist all efforts of encouragement to return home. despair, increased by impeding and inhibiting factors, forces these migrants to stay, often getting caught in a situation of “stuckness”, in which they are neither here nor there, taking up any job or “activity” which promises income or at least survival. while the humanitarian aspect of the vrp for those who participated largely appears to be beyond question, resources could have arguably been allocated more wisely. opening the state’s safety net to all categories of migrants is one example for a possible policy, which could have been more fair and productive. it is unfair and ultimately unwise to exclude temporary immigrants from unemployment benefi ts or self-employed foreigners from participating in the public system of health care, while, at the same time, demanding that they pay taxes. the state should further utilise means to eradicate organised crime and corruption practices associated with migration, and the society as a whole needs to realise that immigrants are a permanent phenomenon. therefore, once admitted to the country, immigrants should benefi t from the same rights and obligations as every domestic worker and citizen. if the state had managed the infl ow of immigrants and their legal and social integration into the majority society in a better way, the need would have been avoided to instrumentally dispense of people who had become unemployed and thus superfl uous. even if the global recession severely depressed the booming czech economy, i argue that the current disconsolate situation of most recent immigrants in the country has been accentuated and accelerated, rather than caused by the global recession. in other words, the glut on the guest-worker labour market was likely to cause a “burst” of the bubble anyway. acknowledgements while there were many people who enabled this study, there are two people i would like to thank in particular. aliaksandr sudliankou helped me with translations from/ into russian, ukrainian and belarusian. he was also a priceless resource in translating many of the cultural cues that would otherwise not have attracted my attention. for numerous insights into mongolian culture and practices, i am also indebted • marketa rulikova266 to otgonerdene erdenebat, a student who provides social assistance services to other mongolians living in the czech republic through several non-governmental organisations. references 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[http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/briefi ng_papers/bp20.pdf]. white, anne; ryan, louise 2008: polish ‚temporary‘ migration. the formation and signifi cance of social networks. in: europe-asia studies 60,9: 1467-1509. wilson, tamar diane 2009: economic crisis and the decline of remittances to mexico. social thought and commentary. in: anthropological quarterly 82,2: 587-597. responses to the economic crisis among immigrants in the czech republic • 269 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “reaktionen unter zuwanderern in der tschechischen republik auf die wirtschaftskrise: hinderungsund hemmfaktoren für die rückkehr in die heimat”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-02de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-02de4, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 11.01.2011 date of acceptance: 19.01.2012 dr. marketa rulikova ( ). williams college, ma 01267 usa. e-mail: marketa.rulikova@ williams.edu. url: http://international.williams.edu © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area: a stochastic population forecast on the basis of functional data analysis philipp deschermeier abstract: stochastic population forecasts are gaining popularity in these times of demographic change, as compared with the scenario technique frequently used for projections, they provide important additional information: the forecasted population lies within a prediction interval to which a probability of occurrence can be allocated. however, this approach requires long time-series and detailed information about the determinants of population development (fertility, mortality and net migration), which are frequently not available in suffi cient depth at the regional level, but are generally subsumed into age groups. stochastic population forecasts are therefore usually limited to the national level. nonetheless, methods of functional data analysis enable us to disaggregate the required demographic variables into years of age and to use them as the data basis of a stochastic model, also at the regional level. this essay presents this approach and models based on it using the example of the population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area in germany. keywords: rhine-neckar metropolitan area · stochastic population forecasts · functional data analysis 1 introduction demographic change is dramatically transforming the german society: the ratio of young to old and of the gainfully employed to pensioners is shifting in favour of older persons. both public debate and academic research in europe are largely focused on the socio-political consequences of demographic change. in particular, the focus is on the problem of fi nancing the statutory pension insurance, which led to the negative sound of the term “aging population”. frequently, the positive aspect of demographic change is forgotten: people have a higher life expectancy and a longer active lifespan (schnabel et al. 2005: 3). comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 4 (2011): 769-806 (date of release: 01.11.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-21en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-21en4 • philipp deschermeier770 rising life expectancy, particularly the above-average drop in the mortality of older people, along with continuous low fertility, brings about far-reaching changes in the age structure. although at the national level, only a slight decrease of the population is forecasted in the coming 20 years (from 81 million to approx. 77 to 79 million inhabitants), the number of people of working age will drop considerably (statistisches bundesamt 2009; fuchs/dörfl er 2005a/b; börsch-supan/wilke 2009). hence, in the coming decades, society will be faced with a substantial macro-economic structural transformation affecting all of the important markets: the labour market will lack young workers, the product markets will have to adjust to structurally changed consumer demands and on the capital market, savings behaviour and the demand for productive investments will be changing (börsch-supan 2007). at the regional level, numbers and structure of future population development diverge to a high degree due to different economic conditions, so that the consequences for demand of goods, the housing market and the supply of workers deviating from region to region will result in a growing need for regional population forecasts as quantitative decision-making bases for regional planning. in particular, stochastic models using methods from time series analysis are becoming increasingly popular. however, these approaches require very long time series for various demographic variables, such as mortality and information on age and gender-differentiated structure, which are frequently not available at the regional level. therefore, stochastic models can usually only be conducted at the national level. furthermore, the data required for a population forecast are frequently processed differently by the different statistical offi ces of the federal states. for instance, the structure of age-specifi c variables of the federal states deviates, making population development diffi cult to model, especially for polycentric metropolitan areas which are located across federal state borders. this article provides a stochastic forecast of the population of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area broken down by years of age (up to 90+ years) and gender from 2010 until 2030. this region is situated at the intersection of the three federal states of baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate and is a growing economic region. on the one hand, its socio-cultural connections reach far back into the past, when the region formed a territorial unit called the “electoral palatinate”. on the other hand, since the 1970s economic ties have developed across federal state borders, which are associated with the initiative of the “rhine-neckar triangle” (lowack 2007: 132). the three centrally located regional metropolises of mannheim, heidelberg and ludwigshafen shape the polycentric structure of the region, which, with about 2.4 million inhabitants, is germany’s seventh-largest economic region. the area stretches across 15 rural and urban districts. metropolitan areas are considered “engines of economic development” (translated by cpos, bundesamt für bauwesen, raumordnung und städtebau 1995), from which stimuli should emanate to structurally weaker regions. however, due to the future decline in population, they compete with one another, particularly for highly skilled workers (klein 2008: 44). this “war for talent” (translated by cpos, chambers et al. 1998: 1) illustrates the signifi cance of regional population forecasts that help to identify future bottlenecks early and enable a suitable response, for example through educational and population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 771 advanced training programmes (gans et al. 2009: 118). the rhine-neckar metropolitan area is integrating the future challenges in the regional strategy “demographic change” via a network of regional decision makers, the “lenkungskreis demographie” (translated by cpos, metropolregion rhein-neckar 2011: 26). the population forecast presented in the following paper uses functional data for an in-depth analysis of the demographic development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area. this approach is based on the idea that the secondary statistical data basis of the demographic variables individually aggregated to age groups follows a measurable functional context. the objective of this study is to estimate these and utilise them for forecasts. in this way, the differently structured and broken down data sets of the detailed demographic variables of the statistical offi ces of the federal states of baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate can be smoothed to one study region and aggregated to a total region. time series models are based on functional data analysis (chapter 3), which reproduce the uncertainty of demographic development through confi dence intervals more precisely than the frequently used scenario technique. chapter 4 illustrates the advantages of this approach with the example of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area, and chapter 5 concludes with an outlook. 2 population forecasts it is diffi cult to foresee the demographic future of a region, as there are very many possible courses it could take. the literature differentiates two methodological approaches for dealing with this challenge. the traditional approaches are deterministic, and although they are frequently used by offi cial statisticians, they portray the development of the population without precise information about the uncertainty of future developments (lipps/betz 2004: 1). one possibility for this is the use of mathematical extrapolation methods, which analyse the trends of the past and update them using growth functions. the use of growth rates might be suitable for largescale projections such as that of the global population (o’neill et al. 2001: 207). it is, however, less suitable for modelling at the regional level, where development is marked by a greater dynamic, particularly through migration movements. in order to take these aspects into consideration, conventional deterministic methods use the basic demographic equation as a basis (bähr et al. 1992: 327): bt = bt-1 + gt-1,t st-1,t + mt-1,t whereby bt = population at point in time t; bt-1 = population at point in time t-1; gt-1,t = births, between t-1 and t; st-1,t = deaths, between t-1 and t, as well as mt-1,t = net migration between t-1 and t. • philipp deschermeier772 a possible course of the future population is calculated from an initial population and assumptions about the demographic determinants (fertility, mortality and net migration) (statistisches bundesamt 2009: 9). the basic demographic equation differentiates various points in time, but views the population only in the aggregation. in order to make the diverse changes in demographic change visible, the basic equation must be differentiated according to age (x = 0, 1, 2, …, k-1, k) and gender (m=men and f=women) of the population. the births and deaths of the individual age groups result from the product of the underlying demographic rates with the population of the previous year. the demographic development of a region is therefore determined by fi ve components: the fertility rate, the male and female mortality rate as well as the gender-differentiated net migration. the cohort component method formalises female population development (index “f”) into a matrix model (lee/tuljapurkar 1994: 1178): respectively (pfl aumer 1988: 136): the (female) population of a particular year of age x of the ensuing period t+1 is calculated from the sum product of a line of matrix ω (mortality rate mx,t or fertility rates fx,t) with the column vector of the population at point in time t. parameter v quantifi es the percentage of newborn females and αx,t the probability of survival, defi ned as (1-mx,t). this product supplies a vector for natural population development. the number of newborns is calculated from the sum of women of childbearing age multiplied with the fertility rates. this value is distributed over the two genders and then multiplied by the probability of surviving the fi rst six months of life (α*,t). the population at time t+1 is the result of adding the vector for natural population development to the vector of net migration. since the cohort component method examines the individual components of the basic demographic equation separately and differentiates cohorts (usually years of age), it can precisely indicate those infl uences that affect only certain age ranges. this approach was used as early as the 1920s by whelpton (1928) to forecast the population of the united states from 1925 until 1975 (bähr et al. 1992: 500). today, this is the standard method for models of population development and is used by the statistical offi ces (for example, statistisches bundesamt 2009). in order to take . , population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 773 the uncertainty of the demographic future into account, different progressions are calculated using different assumptions about the demographic rates. these scenarios (lutz et al. 1998a: 140) usually include an optimistic, a neutral and a pessimistic trend. when interpreting these scenarios, a frequent error is to interpret the range of variation between the pessimistic and optimistic progression as a measure of uncertainty (keyfi tz 1972: 353). combining different assumptions for regional forecasts seems unsuitable, since future migration movements in particular have a major impact on the population structure, yet are affl icted with very great uncertainty.1 although the offi cial bodies have been using the deterministic approach for years, it is not unproblematic (lee 1999; lipps/betz 2003; keilman et al. 2002). with the exception of the range of possible developments, the deterministic approach cannot say anything about the occurrence of the different scenarios. stochastic approaches, by contrast, enable forecasts that cite the probability with which the result lies within a certain range of variation. this is valuable additional information, for example for policy consulting. regional planners would like to know, for instance, which of the scenarios is most likely to occur, in order to avoid “unpleasant surprises” and to draw up more concrete plans. furthermore, the assumption of fi xed demographic components contradicts the use of scenarios. for example, the number of live births of a woman is frequently set at 1.4 in germany, whereby the future values are completely determined by the previous periods. lipps and betz (2003: 4-5) use a simple arithmetic example to show that the development of a demographic component assumed as fi xed (perfect autocorrelation) with a time frame of 20 years deviates considerably from a forecast based on time series models, in spite of marginal differences in the individual periods. furthermore, perfect autocorrelation between the demographic variables also results from the combination of the assumptions made. a possible scenario of “high population growth” arises from the combination of high fertility and low mortality or high life expectancy. in this scenario, a high birth rate implies high life expectancy (keilman et al. 2002: 410). this autocorrelation between the demographic variables produces inconsistencies, as extreme assumptions about one variable need not necessarily result in extreme assumptions about another variable. a population forecast should therefore always demonstrate two components (keilman et al. 2002: 410): 1. a range of possible development and 2. an a probability of occurrence for this range. in addition, a forecast should be able to take four types of correlation into account: over time, between the different age groups, between the genders and between the demographic components.2 however, a possible correlation between 1 in addition, interested readers can fi nd a detailed portrayal and discussion of various approaches for regional population forecasts in rogers (1985). 2 keilman et al. (2002: 412-414) contains a detailed discussion of the different types of correlation. • philipp deschermeier774 the different demographic rates plays merely a minor role in developed countries (keilman et al. 2002: 412). only the stochastic approach can fulfi l these demands on a forecast, because the future values lie within a confi dence interval that serves as the measure of the anticipated precision. three approaches can be distinguished (lipps/betz 2003: 5): analysis of historical forecasting errors• assumptions by expert groups• time series models• it was keyfi tz (1981) and stoto (1983) who began analysing historical forecasting errors. by comparing earlier forecasts with actual developments, forecasting errors can be derived, from which a forecast interval can be determined for the future (keilman et al. 2002: 415). however, this approach only supplies viable results, if the future deviations of demographic rates are similar to previous ones and if misinterpretations also apply to the future (lipps/betz 2003: 5). in addition, frequently only a few periods are available from which the error and the construction of the forecast intervals can be derived, which is why the quality of the approaches appears questionable. furthermore, early forecasts are based on methods that frequently are no longer state of the art and therefore must be classifi ed as less precise than forecasts made using more recent methods. at the regional level, this approach is usually not implementable or diffi cult to implement due to the lack of forecasts. lutz et al. (1996, 1998a/b) use the assumptions of expert groups to project the demographic rates and their uncertainty (lutz et al. 1996). an expert group agrees both on a point estimate and on a confi dence interval. in the next step, a projection of population development with a range of variation is calculated using a simulation under a distribution assumption for the demographic rates and assumptions about their correlation. keilman et al. (2002: 415) speak against the use of this approach citing that even experts cannot reliably differentiate between a 95 % and a 99 % confi dence interval. in addition, the risk of a serial correlation is high, which leads to inconsistent confi dence intervals. lee (1999: 172) discusses that there is no objective way to derive the uncertainty about future demographic developments from expert opinions. furthermore, suitable expert groups may not be available at the regional level, which may lead to this approach being impossible. time series models are based on the assumption that the demographic developments of the past can be explained by using a statistical model and that this context will also be valid in future. probably, the most well known time series model is that of lee and carter (1992) designed for modelling mortality. the fi rst step of this two-step approach for estimating future trends of age and gender-specifi c mortality rates matches the model to the time series of mortality rates and then, in a second step, transfers their development into the future. since the approach is easy to implement and has proven fl exible, it has been frequently adapted and developed further (booth 2006). hyndman and booth (2008: 324) provide an overview of other approaches for modelling demographic rates. time series models are suitable only for short and medium-term forecasts (keilman et al. 2002: 414). a time span population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 775 that is too long, results in unrealistic forecasts and very broad confi dence intervals (sanderson 1995: 274). the main advantages of time series models over the two stochastic alternatives for a regional stochastic population forecast are that the uncertainty can be illustrated consistently and requires neither earlier forecasts nor expert groups. since a lot of data are frequently only available for aggregated age groups at the regional level, the paradigm of functional data and models based on them appear helpful for a regional population forecast.3 this approach enables an effective disaggregation of secondary data. based on this, the models by hyndman and ullah (2007) as well as hyndman et al. (2011) demonstrate smaller forecast intervals than alternative approaches (hyndman/ullah 2007: 4953; hyndman et al. 2011: 25). therefore, these models are the basis for the stochastic population forecast of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area. 3 the paradigm of functional data 3.1 basic idea an in-depth analysis of the impacts of demographic change on the population structure requires demographic variables broken down by years of age. when the data situation is not optimal, the use of functional data proves quite helpful, as particularly at the regional level, secondary data are frequently only available differentiated by age groups. the analysis of functional data (“functional data analysis,” subsequently referred to as fda) is an approach for using statistical series, which joins a curve of single data points that represent a connected series (ramsay/silverman 2001: 5822). the objective of the fda is to estimate this function and use it as a basis for forecasts. in doing so, each secondary statistical observation yt(x) of a demographic component serves as a knot for a smooth function st(x). hence, for a horizon of n points in time, there are n curves. each observation is subject to a measurement error εt(x) resulting in the following model (ramsay 2008: 5): yt(x) = st(x)+εt(x) in order to acquire the necessary information about the smooth functions st(x) for the fda, the individual demographic parameters must be disaggregated with their information for age groups to years of age. statistical smoothing is an approach that attempts to estimate considerable but unavailable patterns of a data set and thereby eliminate any possible noise. according to wood (1994: 27), cubic spline functions deliver the best results for demographic data. the medians of the individual age groups form the supporting points or nodes, of which the fi rst is located at the beginning of the fi rst age group (age=0), the next node at the median 3 interested readers can fi nd a detailed discussion of the various methodological approaches in o’neill et al. (2001: 210-222). • philipp deschermeier776 of the second group and so forth. the fi nal node is located at the end of the upper age group. the years of age comprising an age group form a section. the smoothing method joins the nodes through different cubic polynomials for the individual sections to a curve, which is always differentiable for all points. the course of the spline functions allows us to read a value for the modelled demographic component for each year of age. figure 1 illustrates the procedure using the example of a fertility rate: the median values of the individual age groups form the nodes (squares), between which cubic splines run, which compose the smoothed curve. functional data, or the individual smooth functions for the n points in time, underlie two variations: amplitude variation and phase variation (ramsay 2008: 3). amplitude variation is a vertical variation of the functions over time. hence, the “amount” of the function values is not constant. phase variation indicates the horizontal variation that, for example, the age-specifi c characteristics of the demographic parameters show a specifi c trend over n points in time. for instance, in the past decades the age of women who reached the maximum of the age-specifi c birth rate rose continuously. these variations in the curves complicate modelling with time series models, as by smoothing data to years of age, models with very fig. 1: smoothing secondary data using the example of the age-specifi c fertility rates of one year 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age smoothed curve secondary data fertility rate per 1,000 women in the respective age group source: own design population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 777 many parameters would be needed to portray all of the developments in age and time adequately. for this reason, the fda uses the so-called “time-warping” approach to illustrate the characteristic variables of a function with a low number of parameters and to minimise their variation through amplitude variation and phase variation (ramsay/silverman 2001: 5823): a linear combination of basis functions φk (k=1, …, k) corrects the biases: the basis functions contain information about the age and time-specifi c developments of the smooth function. the more basis functions are used, the more fl exible a time series model becomes. the big challenge is keeping the function simple and the number of parameters used low. for the more basis functions are used in calculating the smooth function, the more sensitively the function reacts to measurement errors. this approach is widespread, since the basis functions can be simply estimated by using a principal component analysis, which describes the development of all of the main variables of the curves over the course of time. this alignment of functions over the time frame, also called registration, facilitates further assessments and improves comparability between different points in time. the remaining variation of the curves is merely a result of pure amplitude variation. 3.2 models hyndman and ullah (2007) use functional data to develop a model that can reliably indicate different demographic parameters. for instance, yt(x) describes the value of a demographic rate for age x at time t. based on the basic idea of fda, the model is based on a smooth function st(x), which is observed with one error to a discrete point in time depending on the age. for the (secondary statistical) data points {xi, yt(xi)}, whereby t = 1, …, n and i = 1, …, “highest age group”, therefore: yt(x) = st(x)+ σt(x)εt(x). the error terms εt,x are independently and identically distributed and weighted by the term σt depending on the age. this is advisable, because for small function values in certain age ranges, for example the fertility rate for women under 15 and over 45 years of age, the measurement errors are also correspondingly small. not weighting them could lead to the impression that the model in these sections indicates the data better than in other age ranges. the modelling aims to forecast yt(x) for the range of h points in time (t = n+1, …, n+h) and all defi ned age groups. this approach is based on functional data and attempts to identify and record the amplitude variation and the phase variation as sources of measurement errors: 1. for a population forecast, data are desirable that are broken down by years of age, for this is the only way, for example, to make the diverse effects of demographic change on the age structure of the population visible. however, secondary statistical data are frequently aggregated to age groups. in this case, . • philipp deschermeier778 the age structure is smoothed using non-parametric smoothing methods for each available point in time, in order to be able to estimate the function that yt is based upon. a separate function is estimated for each point in time. 2. modelling all main characteristic attributes of a demographic variable requires a number of parameters. the lengthy time series data needed are rarely available, particularly at the regional level, due to regional reforms and other circumstances. instead, basis functions break down the functions estimated in step one into individual elements containing all of the main variables, which, however, have to do with a lesser number of parameters: whereby μ(x) is the mean of st(x) over all observed years, {φk(x)} is a set of basis functions and et(x) is a normally distributed error term with mean 0 and variance var(x). the basis functions are the result of a principle component analysis. the mean shows the essential structure of the modelled demographic variable, while the developments deviating in age and time from the mean through the amplitude and phase variation are contained in the basis functions. 3. a univariate time series model is estimated for every coeffi cient βt,k with k = 1, …, k. hyndman and booth (2008: 327) show that the method reacts insensitively to the choice of k, if based on a suffi ciently high value. for this reason, it is advisable to form as many basis functions as possible. however, this increases the duration of the model calculation, and the basis functions with a low explanatory content are in some cases diffi cult or impossible to interpret. 4. the variation caused by the amplitude and phase variation is subject to chronological deviations. the parameter βt,k indicates these developments and is forecasted for a time frame of h points in time: whereby marks the estimator at time n+h for . 5. the estimated and forecasted values are the basis for the calculation of future values of st(x) from step two, as the forecasts for all age groups are calculated from the point estimators multiplied by the estimated basis functions. 6. the forecast intervals are calculated from the estimated and forecasted variances of the error terms (step two). these confi dence intervals are valuable additional information compared with deterministic approaches, as rather than indicating the range of variation of possible developments simply through a variation of scenarios with different assumptions, this approach is based upon statistical methods and distributions. the advantage of this approach is that it allows for smooth functions, is robust against structural breaks, such as crises, wars or disasters, and supplies a model , , population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 779 framework that enables restrictions,4 yet is simultaneously useable for different (demographic) models. for instance, erbas et al. (2007) forecast the risk of breast cancer in australian women. the model is a generalisation of the groundbreaking lee-carter model (lee/carter 1992) for estimating and forecasting mortality rates, which in many enhancements can also be used for other demographic variables, for example fertility data (lee 1993). the basic idea of the lee-carter model is also refl ected in the fda models, however it differs in some points, for example in that lee and carter did not require any smooth functions (hyndman/ullah 2007: 326). the approach by hyndman and ullah (2007) estimates the subpopulations of the modelled demographic variable (frequently broken down by male and female) independently of one another. in this case, the forecasted development of both fi gures can diverge in a lengthy time frame. however, this effect can usually not be explained or founded, or only with diffi culty. wilson (2001: 167) observes a global convergence for the mortality rates both between different countries and between the sexes. approaches that take up and explicitly model this aspect are called “coherent models” (li/lee 2005: 581) in the literature. forecasts based on this way of thinking should demonstrate a certain structural correlation. for mortality rates, this was implemented through methodological enhancements of the classical leecarter approach, for example by lee and nault (1993), lee (2000) as well as li and lee (2005). hyndman et al. (2011) used functional data and enhance the approach of hyndman and ullah (2007) in order to avoid a diverged development as the result of imprecise estimations. since differentiation is made in the stochastic population forecast only according to gender, the following remarks are limited to the case of two subpopulations. the approach also proves very fl exible and can be expanded to a larger number of subpopulations. the secondary statistical values yt,f(x) of a demographic component are based on a smooth function st,f(x), which is observed with an error. among two subpopulations, the following applies to the women (subscript f): whereby xi is the mean of the age group i (i = 1, …, p), εt(xi) is an independent and identically distributed random variable and σt,f is a term through which the measurement errors vary in age. with the exception of the logarithmic formulation, this approach corresponds to the described approach by hyndman and ullah (2007). the smooth function is observed for both men and women. modelling a coherent development requires the following two terms: the geometric average (pt for product 4 the approach allows for qualitative restrictions; for example the assumption that the probability of death rises monotonically from a certain age can be integrated. the restrictions employed for this study are contained in chapter 4.2. , • philipp deschermeier780 model) and the square root from the ratio (rt for ratio model), each for the smoothed fi gures of a demographic component st,f / m(x): the product model describes the age-specifi c progression of a demographic variable, while the ratio model adapts the gender-specifi c variation. there are hardly any corrections at values close to one of rt, while values deviating from one indicate gender-specifi c deviations in a specifi c age range. the advantage of this approach is that through the logarithmic formulation, the product in pt becomes a sum or a difference from the ratio in rt. tukey (1977) showed that both are practically uncorrelated. the product model and the ratio model also underlie variations through the amplitude variation and the phase variation. to prevent a diverged development of the demographic rate and also indicate its age and gender-specifi c change, pt and rt are portrayed by the basis functions model for functional data by hyndman and ullah (2007): the basis functions φk(x) and ψl(x) contain the variables of pt or rt deviating from the mean (μp and μr). the change of the basis functions over time is shown by the coeffi cients βt,k and γt,l. the model errors measure the error terms et(x) and wt(x). to ensure that the estimators for the forecast are coherent, or do not diverge, the coeffi cients of the basis functions {βt,k} and {γt,l} for the time series models used must be stationary processes. the forecasted estimators are multiplied by the basis functions. the results are forecasts until time n+h for future pt(x) and rt(x) from which the future gender-specifi c values for the modelled demographic component result: the forecast of βn,k,h and γn,l,h for point in time n+h for the individual genders (subscript j marks “male” or “female”) is determined by:5 . . . 5 the exact procedure for forecasting the individual coeffi cients is found in hyndman et al. (2011: 6-7). . population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 781 the presented models based on functional data are suitable for shortand medium-term forecasts of approx. 20 years (hyndman/booth 2008: 339). for a longer time frame, the accuracy decreases and the width of the confi dence intervals increases. the forecasts of the demographic variables are based on information about the development in the past, which is why they cannot indicate a future trend reversal. however, both are basically true for the use of time series models with no infl uence on the choice of model for the forecast of the population. in a direct comparison to alternative specifi cations, both approaches show greater accuracy (cf. hyndman/ ullah 2007: 4953 and hyndman et al. 2011: 17). the gender-differentiated demographic variables (net migration and mortality) are modelled using the approach by hyndman et al. (2011), while the model by hyndman and ullah (2007) is assumed for the fertility rate. both approaches are particularly suitable for regional population forecasts, as through the use of basis functions the results are very robust against outliers and structural breaks. this is an advantage since at the regional level, for example because of regional reforms, long time series are frequently not available. in addition, social developments such as the possible trend reversal from suburbanisation to reurbanisation can be indicated at a correspondingly lower aggregation level through the basis functions. furthermore, many variables offered by the statistical offi ces of the federal states are only broken down by age groups. using the ideas of the paradigm of functional data, this information can be disaggregated to single years of age. the basis functions also allow us to model demographic trends and structural breaks, which are manifested in the form of phase variation or amplitude variation in the time series. whether their content can be interpreted or serve merely to correct statistical effects depends on their explanatory content. 4 the population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area 4.1 algorithm five demographic components infl uence population development: the fertility rate, the gender-specifi c mortality rates as well as male and female net migration. the cohort component method formalises this correlation to a system of equations, however, without precisely specifying the processes within one year. this population forecast is based on the algorithm by hyndman and booth (2008: 340), which is diagrammatically portrayed below (fig. 2). it begins with the population on 31 december of the previous year. the migration movements do not occur completely at one fi xed point in time, but distributed throughout the year. during this time, immigrants can theoretically have children or die. the algorithm takes this aspect into consideration by distributing the number of simulated age-specifi c net migration changes, half at 1 january and half at 31 december of one year. the population on 30 june of a year corresponds to the population on 31 december of the previous year plus the fi rst half of the net migration. the deaths are calculated from the population on 30 june multiplied by the mortality rates. the number of live births is calculated along these lines, corrected by the infant mortality rate. the newborns • philipp deschermeier782 are distributed to the genders on the basis of the moving average of the past fi ve years. the female population at time t+1 is calculated: the population at the end of the year (31 december) is determined through the sum of the population on 30 june of a year, the deaths, the adjusted live births and the second half of the net migration. this population is then used as the starting point for calculating the subsequent year, for which the algorithm is passed through from the beginning. unlike deterministic models, which project a single population development per scenario each, due to the uncertainty about future development, stochastic approaches require more complicated simulations, since each of the forecasted values are dispersed about one mean each. on the basis of the assumed distributions for the individual demographic rates, a predetermined number of possible trajectories of the future population are simulated and stored in a database. the confi dence interval, in which the future population lies, ranges here from (100-α) / 2nd percentile to (100+α) / 2nd percentile (keilman et al. 2002: 416). separate simulations of the models from section 3.2 for the fertility rate, the male and female mortality rates as well as the gender-specifi c net migration for each year from 2010 until 2030 form the basis for the population forecast. the fertility and mortality rates refer to the population on 30 june (cf. fig. 2). the births and deaths follow the assumption of the poisson distribution and are calculated by random drawing from the distribution and summation of these values over the relevant age range. hyndman and booth (2008: 328) provide a detailed overview of the generation of the respective trajectories and their integration into the population forecast. . fig. 2: algorithm for the cohort component method source: own design according to hyndman and booth (2008) population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 783 all of the following calculations were carried out using the statistical program “r” (version 2.12.0). this free statistical software is available on all prevalent platforms, and the add-on package “demography” also contains the described approaches for functional data as well as the presented algorithm for the cohort component method. the forecasts require the “forecast” package. a total of 1,000 progressions of population development were simulated and then exported into an excel database to calculate the forecast intervals from “r.” 4.2 data: sources and preparation the data used for the population forecast were provided by the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. all of the aggregated values for the metropolitan area arise from the sum of the individual values from the 15 rural and urban districts. calculation of the fertility rate requires the number of live births according to age groups of the mothers {10-14, 15-19, …, 40-44, 45-49}. since the data do not differentiate between the genders of the live births, we assume that per 100 females born there are 105 males born. the mortality rate is calculated from the number of gender-specifi c deaths per age group {<1, 1-4, 5-9, …, 70-74, 75 and older} to the number of men or women in the corresponding cohort. both variables are available for the years 1981 to 2009. these variables are referenced to the population data of the corresponding time period, broken down by age groups {<3, 3-5, 6-9, 10-14, 15-17, 18-19, 20-24, 25-29, …, 70-74, 75 and older} and gender in order to calculate the rates. calculating mortality rates for boys and girls under 10 years of age proved problematic, since the age groups of the deaths and risk population diverged. for this reason, the population data of a group were distributed evenly over the individual years of age and aggregated to the age groups of the deaths. the data on net migration for the years 2002 to 2009 are differentiated according to gender and divided into the age groups {<18, 18-24, 25-29, 30-49, 50-64, 65 and older}. the author’s analyses based on the residual method presented above supplement these series by the years 1995 until 2001. however, these data sets do not fulfi l the demands of the models presented here. an analysis of functional data requires smooth (age) functions to base the secondary data upon. therefore, the median is formed for each age group of the individual demographic rates and used as a node between the smoothed demographic rates. the mortality rates should rise monotonically from a certain threshold (for example years of age greater than 50) (hyndman/ullah 2007: 4945), because the older a person is, the higher their probability of death. this qualitative restriction can be integrated into the smoothing of the data with weighted penalised regression splines according to wood (1994). this procedure reduces biases in the estimated curves of the upper age cohorts. for the same reason, the data sets of the fertility rates are assumed as concave and prepared with weighted b regression splines according to the method by he and ng (1999). net migration is not a relative value and can be both positive and negative. a weighted locally quadratic regression is carried out (moore et al. 1997) as the smoothing method. these three smoothing methods are contained in the “demography” package for “r.” • philipp deschermeier784 figure 3 shows the chronological development of the age-specifi c fertility rate for the time range between 1981 and 2009 based on the curves for 1981, 1990, 2000 and 2009. the shift of the maximum of the age-specifi c rates refl ects the rise in the median age of mothers at births of 26.9 years (1981) to 29.6 years (2009). this development reveals the advantage of modelling based on functional data, as the empirical curves for a specifi c demographic parameter deviate over the range of n points in time from the mean of this parameter. the development corresponds to a phase variation taken into consideration while modelling the time series through the basis functions of the fda model. the trend observed in many developed countries and regions with a constantly rising life expectancy is also observed in the mortality rates of the men and women in the rhine-neckar metropolitan area (fig. 4). women across all years of age have a higher life expectancy and lower mortality rates than men. between 1981 and 2009, the fi gures drop equally for both. the main difference is found in the male mortality rates between 35 and 65 years, which run almost linear, while the curves for women show a rather concave progression. the mortality rates between the genders differ the most in this interval. in the higher age groups, the gender-specifi c curves converge. for all people over 75 years, the (logarithmised) fi gures could not be smoothed due to the data situation and therefore had to be linearly interpolated. the target values for the age group “90+ years” of the individual years were takfig. 3: smooth age-specifi c fertility rate per 1,000 women for 1981, 1990, 2000 and 2009 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age 1981 1990 2000 2009 fertility rate per 1,000 women source: author’s calculation of the functional data using b regression splines according to the method by he and ng (1999) and on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhinelandpalatinate. population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 785 en from the mortality tables of the german federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2010: 59). the population in the age from 90 years is contained in the upper age group “90 and older.” net migration underlies a variety of infl uences, which are effective both in the respective regions of origin and destination and which lead to considerably greater chronological fl uctuations than in the fertility and mortality rates (fig. 5). after the infl uxes and outfl uxes connected to german reunifi cation in the early 1990s ebbed, the series stabilised noticeably. and since about the middle of the 1990s, the migration surpluses of women are higher than that of men in the metropolitan area (fig. 5). the data show that particularly young men and women of the ages between 18 and 25 years migrate into the metropolitan area (fig. 6), which underscores its signifi cance as an educational and university location. slight migration losses occur only in the upper age groups. source: author’s calculation of the functional data using weighted penalised regression splines according to wood (1994) and on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. -4.5 -4.0 -3.5 -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 age men 1981 men 2009 women 1981 women 2009 logarithmized mortality rates fig. 4: smoothed and logarithmised mortality rates for men and women for 1981 and 2009 • philipp deschermeier786 fig. 6: gender differentiated net migration according to years of age for 2009 -800 -400 0 400 800 1,200 1,600 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 age women 2009 men 2009 net migration source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. fig. 5: development of net migration (1975-2009) source: author’s calculation of the functional data using weighted “locally quadratic regression” according to moore et al. (1997) and on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. -10,000 -5,000 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 1975 1985 1995 2005 women men net migration time population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 787 4.3 the demographic components: model and forecast the smoothed data of the fertility rate consist of 29 curves for the years 1981 to 2009. a model with k=6 basis functions was estimated for this period. hyndman and booth (2008: 327) showed that the results of the method are independent of the number of basis functions and k=6 is suffi ciently large. the basis functions encompass 82.7 %, 11.3 %, 3.3 %, 1.9 %, 0.6 % and 0.1 % or 99.9 % of the variation deviating from the mean. the coeffi cient of the fi rst basis function (fig. 7) shows the drop in the fertility rate (βt.1 falls within the period of observation), which is strongest among women between 20 and 25 years (highest positive function values of the basis function φ1). the negative values of the basis function for ages between 35 and 40 years show that births increase in this range: the fi rst basis function thus describes the social trend of shifting births to a later point in time. the remaining basis functions as a whole comprise an insuffi cient share of the variance of the smoothed function to portray the age-specifi c fertility rates for the period from 1981 until 2009 and are therefore not suitable for contextual interpretation.6 they counteract systematic statistical biases, which are caused by amplitude variation and phase variation. the forecast of the fertility rate was conducted for the years 2010 until 2030 (fig. 8). the maximums of the age-specifi c fertility rates rise over the entire period, and the individual curves shift over the course of time into higher age groups. the average age of mothers rises from 29.85 (2009) to 31.36 years (2030) and lies within the 80 % forecast interval [31.06; 31.65]. the total fertility rate (tfr) increases con6 all basis functions of the models for fertility, mortality and net migration are illustrated in the appendix. fig. 7: the fi rst basis function of the fertility model including the forecast of the coeffi cients βt.1 for 2010 until 2030 and the 80 % forecast interval (dotted lines) source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. -0.30 -0.20 -0.10 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age basis function (x) -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 1981 1988 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 coefficient t, time • philipp deschermeier788 sistently over the forecast range. figure 9 contains the point estimators and the 80 % forecast intervals. the mean tfr therefore corresponds with expectations of the development of the national tfr with 1.4 births per woman (statistisches bundesamt, 2009: 27). heckman and walker (1990) cite a high correlation between the childbearing behaviour and the income of women as the reason for the shift of births to later in life. this economic interpretation is, however not comprehensive enough. ott et al. (2006) sketch out a three-phase model that takes children into account in life planning only after reaching certain vocational objectives. gustaffson (2001) bases the shift on disadvantages of motherhood on the career of potential mothers. börschsupan and wilke (2009) assume that the emerging decrease of people of working age will lead to a growth in female employment, and they will thus approximate the employment behaviour of men. since the postponement of births is, however, biologically limited, births must be increasingly made up for in later years of age. these effects are refl ected in the forecast: the births shift chronologically, the average age of mothers at childbirth rises and the fertility rates of the higher age groups fig. 8: forecast of the fertility rate per 1,000 women for 2010 (black) and 2030 (grey) with the 80 % forecast intervals (dotted lines) source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age 2030 80 % forecast interval 2030 2010 80 % forecast interval 2010 fertility rate per 1,000 women population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 789 rise considerably. in future, women in the high age groups will contribute most to the modelled tfr (fig. 9). to prevent the mortality rates from diverging in the forecast, the model is based on the coherent model of functional data, which contains six basis functions both for the models of the product and for the ratio. the basis functions of the geometric mean of both genders comprise 96.6 %, 1.5 %, 1.0 %, 0.5 %, 0.2 % and 0.1 % of the variation of the smooth functions on which the mortality rates are based. the coeffi cient βt.1 of the dominant fi rst basis function (fig. 10) shows a drop in mortality rates, which is refl ected the most in infant mortality (< 1 year) and lessens with age. the basis functions of the ratio model comprise 60.2 %, 17.6 %, 10.2 %, 6.8 %, 3.0 % and 1.8 % of the variation. the fi rst basis function shows that the greatest deviations in the mortality rates between men and women are at about 20 years. this variation is, however, subject to strong fl uctuations over time. the mortality forecast indicates the trend of consistently declining fi gures, which slows down, however, over the course of time (fig. 11). the life expectancy (fig. 12) of women rises until 2030 to 80.55 years and lies within the 80 % forecast interval [80.26; 80.82], while that of the men rises to 78.75 years with the 80 % forecast interval [78.47; 79.06]. carnes and olshansky (2007: 377) cite the obesity of children and young people as well as new infectious diseases as sources that could possibly weaken or even reverse this trend. these possible future infl uences cannot, however, be included in a forecast based on time series models. fig. 9: development of tfr per 1,000 women for 1981-2030 with the 80 % forecast interval 1,000 1,100 1,200 1,300 1,400 1,500 1,600 1981 1988 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 tfr 80 % forecast interval tfr per 1,000 women time source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. • philipp deschermeier790 the aggregated net migration (fig. 5) shows that the values for the two genders run similarly, which justifi es modelling using the coherent model. the time series prior to 1995 is subject to great dynamics, which had a negative effect on the model and the subsequent forecast. for this reason, only the values between 1995 and 2009 are included in the model. the high male and female net migration between 18 and 25 years is the dominant effect in the model. the fi rst of the six basis functions of the product model indicate the change over the course of time (fig. 13) and records 81.6 % of the variation from the mean, the remainder by contrast only 10.5 %, 5.2 %, 1.4 %, 0.7 % and 0.4 %. the fi rst basis function of the ratio model illustrates the gender-specifi c differences of educational migrants (variance percentage 53.9 %). the coeffi cient shows that male net migration between 2000 and 2003 was higher but that the trend weakened and even reversed in ensuing years. this fig. 10: the fi rst basis functions of the mortality model including the forecast of the coeffi cients βt.1 and γt.1 for 2010 until 2030 and the 80 % forecast interval (dotted lines) -0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 basis function (x) age -12 -8 -4 0 4 1981 1988 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 coefficient t, time -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 basis function (x) age -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1981 1988 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 coefficient t, time source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 791 fig. 11: age and gender-specifi c mortality rates for 2009 (black) and the forecast for 2030 (grey) with the 80 % forecast intervals (dotted lines) -4.5 -4.0 -3.5 -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 age logarithmized mortality rate women 2009 forecast for 2030 80 % forecast interval -4.5 -4.0 -3.5 -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 age 2009 forecast for 2030 80 % forecast interval logarithmized mortality rate men source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. fig. 12: development of the life expectancy of men (black) and women (grey) for 1981-2030 and the 80 % forecast intervals (dotted lines) 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 1981 1988 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 time women 80 % forecast interval men 80 % forecast interval life expectancy source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. • philipp deschermeier792 development continues in the forecast, as in 2030 (fig. 14) compared to 2009 (fig. 6) the values of the women in the age range between 18 and 25 years is considerably higher than that of the men (fig. 14). in the model, the rhine-neckar metropolitan area remains an attractive education or study location for young people. nonetheless, due to the wide forecast intervals for people under 50 years of age, the forecasts of net migration are the greatest source of uncertainty about future population development. fig. 13: the fi rst basis functions of the migration model including the forecast of the coeffi cients βt.1 and γt.1 until 2030 and the 80 % forecast interval (dotted lines) 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 basis function (x) age -400 -200 0 200 400 600 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 coefficient t, time -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 basis function (x) age -400 -200 0 200 400 600 1995 2002 2009 2016 2023 2030 coefficient 1(x) time source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 793 4.4 the population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area since the 1990s, the male and female population of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area has been growing steadily due to migration gains caused by the political developments in germany (reunifi cation) and europe (immigration of repatriates of german origin) (gans/schmitz-veltin 2006: 316). population development for the years 2010 until 2030 is calculated using the algorithm described in section 4.1 on the basis of the cohort component method and the recorded births, deaths and migrants from the demographic components. the male population will rise slightly until 2022 (fig. 15) and then drop measured on the median of the simulation by fig. 14: forecast of age distribution of net migration of men and women for 2030 with the 80% forecast intervals (dotted lines) -300 -100 100 300 500 700 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 net migration 80 % forecast interval net migration women age -300 -100 100 300 500 700 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 net migration 80 % forecast interval net migration men age source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. fig. 15: development of the male and female populations between 2010 and 2030 with the 80 % forecast intervals (dotted lines) 960,000 980,000 1,000,000 1,020,000 1,040,000 1,060,000 1,080,000 1,100,000 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 population development 80 % forecast interval population women time source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. 960,000 980,000 1,000,000 1,020,000 1,040,000 1,060,000 1,080,000 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 population development 80 % forecast interval population men time • philipp deschermeier794 2030 to 1.0349 million inhabitants, which corresponds to a decrease of 2.31 % for the forecast range, and lies within the 80 % forecast interval [1.0292; 1.0403]. the number of women will drop by 2030 by 4.45 percent to 1.0280 million inhabitants (80 % forecast interval [1.0234; 1.0327]). according to this, the female population will decrease somewhat more strongly than the male. the population pyramid in figure 16 shows the anticipated age structure for the year 2009 as the last year of the time series data and the forecast for 2030 with the 80 % forecast intervals. the largest percentage of the total population in 2009 was the age groups between 20 fig. 16: male and female population according to years of age 2009 (grey) and the 0.5 quantile of the simulation for 2030 (black) with the 80 % forecast intervals (dotted lines) source: author’s calculation on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federal states baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate. 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 age population population 2009 forecast for 2030 80 % forecast interval men women population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 795 and 30 years. the fertility rates lie considerably below the level for maintaining the population and even the positive net migration is not suffi cient to balance out the mortality surpluses. this makes a distinct decrease in the number of people under 30 years of age apparent. the number of people of working age under 30 years decreases enormously, while the group of the 30 to under 65 year olds will remain at about the level of 2009. this effect arises mainly from the shift of the largest age groups from 2009 to the older age groups in 2030. the forecast interval is greatest in the age range of under 20 years, since the number of these people come from the fertility forecast; while in the year 2030 the people in the age range of over 20 years had already been born by the fi rst forecast year (2010) and therefore are no longer a source of additional uncertainty. the width of the confi dence intervals additionally is determined by the variation of net migration, which will distinctly stabilise from 50 years (cf. fig. 14), whereby the population from 50 years of age can be forecasted with greater accuracy. 5 conclusions the demographic future of a region is uncertain. the deterministic models frequently used by the offi cial statistical offi ces for forecasts are of the “if ..., then ...” character, whereby the demographic determinants develop in different scenarios across predetermined assumptions. these should indicate the breadth of possible developments, however without making statements about their incidence probabilities. the stochastic approach, which uses time series models to calculate both the future population as well as a forecast interval for the demographic parameters, proves more problem-oriented. this approach, however, requires long time series and data broken down by years of age over all of the components of the basic demographic equation. at the regional level, though, such data are frequently not at all available, or only in rough age groups or with insuffi cient structure. furthermore, the various statistical offi ces of the federal states compile the variables in different age groups; aggregation to a cross-regional area such as the rhine-neckar metropolitan area, which consists of urban and rural districts in baden-wuerttemberg, hesse and rhineland-palatinate, on such a basis is in actuality impossible. the use of functional data proves exceedingly helpful for these problems, as per assumption age-grouped secondary data follow a functional context that can be estimated with the presented fda models. in this way, data sets are created broken down by years of age that can therefore be aggregated to cross-border functional regions. hence the paradigm of functional data and the models based on it close data gaps in secondary statistics, particularly at the regional level, and allow for more reliable statements about demographic development than the use of deterministic approaches. without the approaches from chapter 3, stochastic models are not implementable at the regional level. moreover, the use of forecast intervals on the basis of the time series models provide more valuable additional information for regional planners than deterministic forecasts. at the regional level in particular, there is a great need for information about population development to serve as the basis for estimat• philipp deschermeier796 ing the consequences of demographic change, for example on the labour supply and particularly on the number of the working population. furthermore, regional population forecasts serve as the basis for estimating the future demand for living space. the application of the models for functional data on the rhine-neckar metropolitan area illustrates the consequences of demographic change for the seventhlargest economic area in germany and is a possibility for realizing stochastic population forecasts at the regional level. although the population will only decrease slightly by 2030, a considerable drop in the number of young people of working age under 30 years will be contrasted by a notable rise in people in the upper age groups and particularly in retirement age. this shortage can be alleviated by immigration. the basic prerequisite for this is to recognise the strengths of the region and to create incentives for young people to move to the region and also to remain there following their studies or training. the impacts of demographic change will be particularly noticeable in the 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bundesrepublik deutschland. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. stoto, michael 1983: the accuracy of population projections. in: journal of the american statistical association 78: 13–20. tukey, john wilder 1977: exploratory data analysis. london: addison-wesley. whelpton, pascal 1928: population of the united states, 1925 to 1975. in: american journal of sociology 34: 253-270. wilson, chris 2001: on the scale of global demographic convergence 1950-2000. in: population and development review 27,1: 155-171 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2001.00155.x]. wood, simon 1994: obtaining birth and mortality patterns from structured population trajectories. in: ecological monographs 64,1: 23-44 [doi: 10.2307/2937054]. • philipp deschermeier800 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “die bevölkerungsentwicklung der metropolregion rhein-neckar. eine stochastische bevölkerungsprognose auf basis des paradigmas funktionaler daten”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-21de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-21de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 29.08.2011 date of acceptance: 25.04.2012 philipp deschermeier ( ). universität mannheim, lehrstuhl für wirtschaftsgeographie, fakultät für rechtswissenschaft und volkswirtschaftslehre. mannheim, germany. e-mail: philipp.deschermeier@uni-mannheim.de url: http://gans.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/1465.0.html population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 801 fi g . a 1: t he s ix b as is f un ct io n s o f t he fe rt ili ty m o d el s 0 10 30 50 0510 m ai n ef fe ct s a ge mean 0 10 30 50 -0.20.00.10.2 a ge basis function 1 in te ra ct io n ti m e coefficient 1 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -6-20246 0 10 30 50 -0.050.050.150.25 a ge basis function 2 ti m e coefficient 2 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -2024 0 10 30 50 -0.10.00.10.2 a ge basis function 3 ti m e coefficient 3 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -2-101 0 10 30 50 -0.10.00.10.20.3 a ge basis function 4 ti m e coefficient 4 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -1012 0 10 30 50 -0.20.00.20.4 a ge basis function 5 ti m e coefficient 5 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -1.00.00.51.0 0 10 30 50 -0.20.00.2 a ge basis function 6 ti m e coefficient 6 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.20.20.40.6 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n o n th e b as is o f t he d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al o ffi ce s o f t he fe d er al s ta te s b ad en -w ue rt te m b er g, h es se a nd r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e. a p p en d ix • philipp deschermeier802 fi g . a 2: t he s ix b as is f un ct io n s o f t he p ro d uc t m o d el o n m o rt al it y 0 20 40 60 80 -8-6-4-20 m ai n ef fe ct s a ge mean 0 20 40 60 80 0.000.100.20 a ge basis function 1 in te ra ct io n ti m e coefficient 1 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -202 0 20 40 60 80 -0.3-0.2-0.10.00.1 a ge basis function 2 ti m e coefficient 2 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.40.00.4 0 20 40 60 80 -0.10.00.10.2 a ge basis function 3 ti m e coefficient 3 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.6-0.20.20.4 0 20 40 60 80 -0.5-0.3-0.10.1 a ge basis function 4 ti m e coefficient 4 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.20.00.20.4 0 20 40 60 80 -0.20-0.100.000.10 a ge basis function 5 ti m e coefficient 5 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.10.00.10.2 0 20 40 60 80 -0.10.10.3 a ge basis function 6 ti m e coefficient 6 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.15-0.050.05 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n o n th e b as is o f t he d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al o ffi ce s o f t he fe d er al s ta te s b ad en -w ue rt te m b er g, h es se a nd r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e. population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 803 fi g . a 3: t he s ix b as is f un ct io n s o f t he r at io m o d el o n m o rt al it y 0 20 40 60 80 0.00.20.4 m ai n ef fe ct s a ge mean 0 20 40 60 80 -0.050.050.15 a ge basis function 1 in te ra ct io n ti m e coefficient 1 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.6-0.20.20.6 0 20 40 60 80 0.050.150.25 a ge basis function 2 ti m e coefficient 2 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.4-0.20.00.2 0 20 40 60 80 -0.3-0.10.1 a ge basis function 3 ti m e coefficient 3 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.3-0.10.10.3 0 20 40 60 80 -0.20.00.1 a ge basis function 4 ti m e coefficient 4 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.20.00.10.2 0 20 40 60 80 -0.10.00.10.2 a ge basis function 5 ti m e coefficient 5 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.15-0.050.050.15 0 20 40 60 80 -0.8-0.40.0 a ge basis function 6 ti m e coefficient 6 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 -0.100.000.10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n o n th e b as is o f t he d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al o ffi ce s o f t he fe d er al s ta te s b ad en -w ue rt te m b er g, h es se a nd r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e. • philipp deschermeier804 fi g . a 4: t he s ix b as is f un ct io n s o f t he p ro d uc t m o d el o n m ig ra tio n 0 20 40 60 80 050150250 m ai n ef fe ct s a ge mean 0 20 40 60 80 0.000.100.20 a ge basis function 1 in te ra ct io n ti m e coefficient 1 19 96 20 02 20 08 -2000200400 0 20 40 60 80 -0.20.00.10.2 a ge basis function 2 ti m e coefficient 2 19 96 20 02 20 08 -1000100200 0 20 40 60 80 -0.3-0.10.00.1 a ge basis function 3 ti m e coefficient 3 19 96 20 02 20 08 -100050100 0 20 40 60 80 -0.4-0.20.0 a ge basis function 4 ti m e coefficient 4 19 96 20 02 20 08 -40-20020 0 20 40 60 80 -0.10.00.10.2 a ge basis function 5 ti m e coefficient 5 19 96 20 02 20 08 -20-1001020 0 20 40 60 80 -0.10.00.10.20.3 a ge basis function 6 ti m e coefficient 6 19 96 20 02 20 08 -2001020 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n o n th e b as is o f t he d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al o ffi ce s o f t he fe d er al s ta te s b ad en -w ue rt te m b er g, h es se a nd r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e. population development of the rhine-neckar metropolitan area • 805 fi g . a 5: t he s ix b as is f un ct io n s o f t he r at io m o d el o n m ig ra tio n 0 20 40 60 80 -80-400 m ai n ef fe ct s a ge mean 0 20 40 60 80 0.000.100.200.30 a ge basis function 1 in te ra ct io n ti m e coefficient 1 19 96 20 02 20 08 -100050 0 20 40 60 80 -0.050.050.15 a ge basis function 2 ti m e coefficient 2 19 96 20 02 20 08 -100-50050 0 20 40 60 80 -0.4-0.20.00.2 a ge basis function 3 ti m e coefficient 3 19 96 20 02 20 08 -80-40020 0 20 40 60 80 0.000.100.20 a ge basis function 4 ti m e coefficient 4 19 96 20 02 20 08 -101030 0 20 40 60 80 -0.25-0.100.05 a ge basis function 5 ti m e coefficient 5 19 96 20 02 20 08 -15-5515 0 20 40 60 80 -0.3-0.10.1 a ge basis function 6 ti m e coefficient 6 19 96 20 02 20 08 -6-20246 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n o n th e b as is o f t he d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al o ffi ce s o f t he fe d er al s ta te s b ad en -w ue rt te m b er g, h es se a nd r hi ne la nd -p al at in at e. © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation in shaping period fertility trends tomas frejka abstract: this paper outlines a method that analyses how cohort and period childbearing postponement and recuperation (p&r) are refl ected in total period fertility rate (tpfr) trends in low-fertility populations in recent decades. the method is rooted in the trailblazing ideas developed by ryder (1951 and 1964), namely that childbearing p&r occurs in the life of individual women and can be summarised in the lifetime experiences of birth cohorts. cohort childbearing age patterns are then translated into period childbearing age patterns and the effects of the p&r process on the tpfrs are revealed by summarising period asfrs of young women and of older women and analysing their interaction over time in 36 low-fertility populations. the method is complementary to methods pioneered by bongaarts and feeney (1998) which estimate tempo-adjusted tpfrs. these demonstrate the degree to which tpfrs are distorted. the method described in this paper reveals the internal mechanism generating tpfr trends; it exposes the demographic structural causes generating tpfr trends and demonstrates why tpfrs are moving in a certain direction. the following fi ndings stand out: 1. all low-fertility populations have experienced tpfr troughs at some point during the past four decades. the troughs occurred because low fertility among young women of young cohorts starting to postpone childbearing overlaps with low fertility among older women of older cohorts who had not postponed births. the troughs occurred in western countries mostly during the early 1980s and in central and eastern europe around 2000. 2. the structural causes of the increase in tpfrs in the late 1990s and early in the 21st century were different in western countries compared to central and eastern europe. the former were experiencing the concluding phases of the p&r process. in contrast, in central and eastern europe populations were experiencing the initial phases of childbearing p&r. it was a historical coincidence that tpfrs were increasing in most low-fertility populations almost simultaneously around the beginning of the 21st century. 3. these tpfr increases were predominantly the consequence of changes in cohort childbearing age patterns, i.e. changes in the timing of fertility. they were not generated by fertility quantum increases. during this period in almost all the low-fertility countries tpfrs were rising while corresponding total cohort fertility rates were declining. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 4 (2011): 927-958 (date of release: 27.09.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-20en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-20en8 • tomas frejka928 keywords: cohort childbearing age patterns · childbearing postponement and recuperation · effects on total period fertility rates · low-fertility populations 1 introduction trends of total period fertility rates (tpfrs) refl ect two processes: quantum fertility trends and evolving changes in childbearing age patterns. this paper focuses primarily on analysing the latter in low-fertility populations over the past half century. it reports on empirical research which investigates how tpfrs trends are shaped by changing age patterns of fertility, more specifi cally, by the interaction of childbearing postponement and recuperation (p&r)1 because that is the overriding mode of change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. this research is based on ryder’s fi ndings in his pioneering opus (1951: 63-96) on how cohort age patterns of childbearing can be translated into period fertility age patterns, it explores the demographic internal structural mechanism shaping tpfrs. it provides additional insights which have not been revealed heretofore by other methods exploring the timing of fertility, namely those initiated by bongaarts and feeney (1998) estimating tempo-adjusted period total fertility rates. in principle, these period fertility adjustment methods illustrate the extent to which tpfrs are distorted, whether these are infl ated or defl ated, i.e. whether tpfrs would be lower or higher if the timing distortions were removed. the analysis of the effects of changing cohort childbearing age patterns over time and the resulting interaction of childbearing advancement or postponement among young women and childbearing loss or recuperation among older women reveal the formal demographic structural reasons for particular tpfr trends, i.e. why tpfrs are declining, stable or increasing. the paper begins with a section discussing issues that are relevant with respect to understanding the research project. the next section outlines the employed method. it continues with an analysis of the ways in which changing cohort and period childbearing patterns modify tpfr declines and troughs as well as increases in 36 low-fertility countries. the paper subsequently deals with a few corollary issues before ending with a summary and conclusions. 2 antecedents in a path-breaking paper hajnal (1947) reviewed issues of measuring fertility applied at the time, examined their inadequacies and proposed methods of analysis that facilitate an improved understanding of childbearing levels and trends. hajnal demonstrated that the increase in fertility rates – crude birth rates as well as net 1 concept defi nitions, complexities and qualifi cations will be discussed below. the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 929 and gross reproduction rates – in the mid-1940s in a number of western countries and the rapid rise in fertility in the 1930s in germany was “due to the making up of postponed births.” hajnal demonstrated theoretically and empirically the apparent dilemma of period rates increasing (or declining) considerably at the same time as cohort rates remained stable. in a similar vein, the goal of this study is two-fold: 1. to devise a method that follows the process of cohort and period childbearing postponement and recuperation and its refl ection in total period fertility levels and trends in low-fertility populations during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. 2. the method is then applied to explore actual developments in 36 low-fertility societies during the second half of the 20th century and the fi rst years of the 21st century, to explore the interaction of childbearing postponement and recuperation trends on tpfrs in these populations. typically during the past several decades age patterns of childbearing in lowfertility populations have been aging. on the one hand, age-specifi c fertility rates of young women have been declining in comparison to previous generations and this has been denoted as childbearing postponement (delay).2 on the other, increases in asfrs of older women compared to their predecessors were considered as childbearing recuperation (recovery or catching-up). as long as one deals with statistical measures, the analysis is relatively straightforward, although not necessarily simple. the terms, however, are ambiguous (frejka/sardon 2004: 17-18; ní bhrolcháin/toulemon 2005: 87-88; sobotka et al., 2011: 3-4). linguistically, the term “postponement” means that what is being postponed will take place in the future. in reality frequently there is not a good match between the magnitude in the fall in childbearing when women are young and the size of the subsequent rise in fertility. the numbers of “recuperated” births may be smaller or larger than those of the “postponed” ones. another complexity arises when attempting to decipher the behavioural underpinnings of childbearing postponement. a number of questions arise when attempting to establish whether women and/or couples have specifi c intentions to have a/another birth later in life. the present exploration does not deal with these issues. for the purposes of this project any decline in fertility of young women is considered a childbearing postponement, and analogously a fertility increase of older women is considered a childbearing recuperation. 2 the term “postponement” was used already in the middle of the 20th century. ryder (1951: 67) citing hajnal (1950) and sauvy (1948) notes: “in the explanation of the course of fertility rates in the western world in the past twenty years, the term ‘postponement’ has been widely used.” ryder defi nes “postponement” “as the action of couples who ….. do not bear their children when they would ordinarily have been expected to bear them, but rather defer these births to a later more favourable time.” the “past twenty years” in the citation include the period of the 1930s when one half of europe’s populations reached below replacement period fertility rates (kirk 1946: 54-57). for instance, in 1933-34 the net reproduction rate in austria was 0.66 and in 1933 in germany it was 0.70. • tomas frejka930 the massive postponement and recuperation of childbearing in low-fertility societies have been important sociological and demographic developments during the past half century. changing childbearing age patterns have been integral components in the evolution of family formation, the diversity of marriage and cohabitation forms and trends, and the “second demographic transition” (billari 2008; billari/kohler 2004; bongaarts/feeney 1998; frejka et al. (eds.) 2008; frejka et al. 2010; frejka/sardon 2004; goldstein et al. 2009; jones et al. 2009; kohler at al. 2002; lesthaeghe 1995 and 2001; lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986; sobotka 2004a/b; sobotka/toulemon 2008). concurrently also changes in the level of childbearing, i.e. mainly declines in fertility quantum, have been occurring during the past half century. these trends are discussed in innumerable publications (for instance, bongaarts 2001 and 2002; bourgeois-pichat 1987; calot/blayo 1982; chasteland/chesnais 1997; chesnais 1998; frejka/ross 2001; frejka/sardon 2004 and 2009; hobcraft 1996; lesthaeghe 2001; ryder 1986; sardon 2004; teitelbaum/winter 1985; westoff 1983). when depicting fertility trends with completed cohort fertility rates a clear picture of quantum changes over time is communicated.3 because such a portrayal has the unavoidable shortcoming that this can be done only after the youngest birth cohorts have completed their childbearing and thus it fails to provide up-to-date information, fertility trends are frequently depicted by employing total period fertility rates (tpfrs).4 the latter approach has the less obvious shortcoming that tpfrs contain and refl ect not only quantum fertility changes but also changes in the timing of childbearing. increasingly, over a period of several decades demographers have demonstrated that changes in the timing of births “distort” tpfrs (see, for instance, hajnal 1947; ryder 1951 and 1964, bongaarts/feeney 1998). when births are being postponed there are less of them per year, i.e. tpfrs are defl ated, and vice versa, when births are advanced there are more of them per year, i.e. tpfrs are infl ated. bongaarts and feeney (1998) initiated efforts to devise methods of developing tempo-adjusted total fertility rates that remove temporary effects of changes in childbearing timing. these endeavours have been thoroughly discussed in the literature. some researchers pointed out shortcomings in the bongaarts-feeney adjustment (for instance, schoen 2004, and van imhoff 2001). others have strived to further advance and improve these methods (for instance, bongaarts/feeney 2006; bongaarts/sobotka 2010; goldstein et al. 2009; kohler et al. 2002; lesthaeghe 2001; lesthaeghe/willems 1999; ortega/kohler 2002; philipov/kohler 2001; schoen 2004; sobotka 2003 and 2004a/b; sobotka/lutz 2009). various forms of the adjusted total fertility rates have been widely used during the past decade. 3 the average total cohort fertility rate in the low fertility countries has declined from 2.48 births per woman in the 1932 birth cohort to 2.10, 1.97 and 1.80 in the 1946, 1960 and among the latest cohorts for which data were available, i.e. the 1966 to 1971 cohorts, respectively (author’s calculations). 4 the average total period fertility rate in the low fertility countries has changed from 3.15 births per woman in 1950 to 1.90, 1.53 and 1.55 in 1980, 2000 and 2006-2008, respectively (author’s calculations). the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 931 the present paper explores a complementary approach to explaining and understanding total period fertility rate levels and trends. it is a combined cohort and period perspective based on the fact that during the postponement and recuperation process successive birth cohorts with changing age patterns of childbearing overlap. these overlapping age patterns of cohort childbearing can be translated into period fertility trends of young women postponing childbearing which interact with fertility trends of older women who are recuperating births and their interplay is refl ected in levels and trends of tpfrs. thus far the repercussions of the overlay of childbearing age patterns of successive cohorts as well as the duration of the postponement and recuperation process on trends of total period fertility rates in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have rarely been analysed, demonstrated and documented.5 research reported on in this paper explores the detailed age-specifi c mechanism, the interaction of fertility trends of young and older women of overlapping birth cohorts, which underlie trends in total period fertility rates in 36 low-fertility countries. in the present context the term “mechanism” is not meant to imply any substantive causation. it is used to describe the dynamics of tpfr trends resulting from the interaction of changing childbearing trends of young and older women that were translated from changing fertility age patterns of overlapping cohorts. thus the analysis starts with childbearing behaviour of cohorts which has been shaped by their life course history that includes period effects. in other words, this investigation recognizes the coinciding importance and validity of both cohort and period effects. the present time is suitable and favourable for a detailed empirical investigation of the postponement and recuperation process in low-fertility countries. this process has been in progress in many of these countries over the past 40 to 50 years and data to conduct the research are now available. the availability of suffi ciently long series of detailed single-year age-specifi c fertility rates in the data banks of the observatoire démographique europeén6 and of the human fertility database7 make it possible to analyse the fertility postponement and recuperation process.8 5 frejka (2008: 157) appears to be an exception. 6 jean-paul sardon, director (odeurope@wanadoo.fr). 7 the human fertility database (http://www.humanfertility.org/cgi-bin/main.php) is located at the max planck institute for demographic research. 8 the data bank of the observatoire démographique europeén will gradually be replaced by the human fertility database (hfd). work on the hfd began in 2007 as a collaborative project involving research teams at the max planck institute for demographic research (mpidr) in rostock (germany) and the vienna institute of demography (vid) in vienna (austria). the hfd is directed by j. r. goldstein, v. shkolnikov and t. sobotka. • tomas frejka932 3 the method following the reasoning outlined by ryder (1951: 63-96), childbearing postponement and recuperation occurs in the life of individual women and can be summarised in the lifetime experiences of birth cohorts. almost invariably cohort childbearing age patterns change from one year to the next. because each total period fertility rate (tpfr, sy) consists of individual age-specifi c fertility rates (asfr, fc,y(x)) of the respective birth cohorts (c) in a particular year (y), tpfrs (sy) are a crosssection of individual asfrs (fc,y(x)) selected from the respective cohorts. thus an array of asfrs from corresponding cohorts constitutes asfrs of specifi c years. in the demographic literature this is commonly referred to as “demographic translation” (e.g., ryder 1951 and 1964). 49 sy =∑ fc-x+15,y(x) = fc,y(15) + fc-1,y(16)+…..+ fc-34,y(49) x=15 as depicted in figure 1 the 1980 tpfr, for example, consists of asfrs from birth cohort 1965, age 15, to that of the 1931 cohort, age 49. because fertility trends of younger women on the one hand, and older ones, on the other, tend to go almost exclusively in similar directions, the respective period asfrs can be cumulated for young (fa) as well as for older women (fb). sy = fa + fb 28 where fa = ∑ fc-x+15,y (x) = fc,y (15) + fc-1,y(16)+…..+ fc-13,y(28) x=15 49 fb = ∑ fc-x+15,y (x) = fc-14,y (29) + fc-15,y(30)+…..+ fc-34,y(49) x=29 the effects of the fertility postponement and recuperation process on the tpfrs, sy, are revealed by analysing the interaction of the cumulated asfrs of young women, fa, with the cumulated asfrs of older women, fb, over time.9 in sum, the method investigates the effects of changing cohort childbearing age patterns translated into corresponding period childbearing age patterns on levels and trends of total period fertility rates. this rather complicated process will now be discussed in detail. (1) (2) (3) (4) 9 note that this procedure includes the childbearing behaviour of all cohorts, including those that have not yet concluded their reproductive periods, and is thus up-to-date. the 2000 tpfr, for instance, consists of asfrs from birth cohorts 1951 to those of the 1985 cohort (fig. 1), which in 2010 is still in the midst of its childbearing period. the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 933 3.1 fertility dynamics: individual birth cohorts the process of postponement and recuperation can be defi ned as women of a specifi c birth cohort bearing children at a later age compared to an older, base (or reference) cohort. typically during this process age-specifi c fertility rates (asfrs) while women are in their teens and early as well as mid-twenties are lower in the younger birth cohort, whereas when these women reach their late twenties, thirties and forties, the asfrs are higher than in the base cohort. this process can be depicted and measured by comparing the age-specifi c childbearing pattern of the cohort in question with the age-specifi c childbearing pattern of a base cohort in various ways (fig. 2, panels a & b). in figure 2 the 1957 age-specifi c childbearing pattern of denmark’s population is compared with the 1947 asfrs. the latter is selected because it is approximately fig. 1: schematic relationship between cohort age-specifi c fertility rates (diagonals, 1920-1990) and total period fertility rates (columns, 1965-2010) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 age year older women 29-49 young women 15-28 source: author’s illustration of equations • tomas frejka934 the birth cohort after which childbearing postponement and recuperation started during the late 1960s in denmark. this is a typical example of the beginning of the p&r process in western countries. in figure 2, panel a the two age-specifi c childbearing patterns are juxtaposed. the 1957 curve is lower to the right of the 1947 curve up to age 28 illustrating the degree of postponement. starting with age 29 the curve of the 1957 birth cohort is higher than the 1947 curve illustrating the extent of recuperation. the cumulative value of lesser childbearing of the 1957 cohort up to age 28 included was minus 0.41 births per woman and the cumulated value of excess childbearing of the 1957 cohort above age 28 was plus 0.27 births per woman. the difference between these two values, minus 0.14 births per woman, is also the difference between the total cohort fertility rates of the two birth cohorts, 2.00 (1947) and 1.86 (1957), which is the quantum change between the two cohorts. in figure 2, panel b the base cumulated age-specifi c values of the 1947 cohort are defi ned as equal to zero and the cumulated values of the 1957 cohort are compared to this base. the downward slope of the 1957 curve up to a trough at age 28 depicts the postponement phase of childbearing. the trough of the 1957 curve at age 28 has the familiar value of minus 0.41 births per woman. following the trough the 1957 curve slopes upward depicting the recuperation phase. the fi nal value of the curve at age 49 is minus 0.14 births per woman, which is the fi nal outcome of the postponement and recuperation process in the 1957 compared to the 1947 cohort. another way to demonstrate that the postponement and recuperation process has begun is to compare the proportions of childbearing of the respective cohorts prior to and after the trough age. in denmark in the 1947 birth cohort 74 % of births fig. 2: age-specifi c fertility rates, denmark, birth cohorts 1947 and 1957 a. age patterns of fertility, birth cohorts 1947 and 1957 b. differences in cumulative age-specifi c cohort fertility rates between 1947 and 1957 birth cohorts 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 1947 1957 births per woman age -0.50 -0.40 -0.30 -0.20 -0.10 0.00 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 1947 1957 difference (births per woman) age postponement = -0.41 recuperation = +0.27 -0.14 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 935 were born up to and including age 28 compared to only 57 % of all births of the 1957 cohort up to the same age. 3.2 fertility dynamics: changing cohort childbearing age patterns and translation to period rates once the process of childbearing postponement and recuperation gets under way, it tends to progress from one birth cohort to the next quite systematically, although not necessarily at an even pace. in figure 2 the difference between the childbearing age patterns of two birth cohorts ten years apart are specifi ed and compared. figure 3 illustrates how the childbearing patterns changed from one cohort to the next over time, in this case between the 1947 and the 1957 birth cohorts, as well as before and afterwards. this process viewed from a period perspective reveals a principal observation which is at the core of the analysis presented in this paper. the 1983 total period fertility rate (1.38 births per woman) in denmark was relatively low because of the specifi c overlay of cohort childbearing age patterns of different birth cohorts. in 1983 childbearing was low among older women born during the 1940s and early 1950s, because most of their children were born when they were young, they had a young childbearing age pattern. at the same time, women born in the late 1950s and the 1960s had few births when they were young; they “postponed” their births. as will be demonstrated below, this particular combination of low fertility at older ages of older cohorts combined with low fertility of younger cohorts when young was experienced by all low-fertility populations at some point between the mid 1970s and the mid-2000s. why did the tpfr decline by as much as 0.54 births per woman, i.e. by 28 %, in the ten years between 1973 and 1983? the main structural reason was that the respective tpfrs consisted of cross-sections of asfrs from rapidly changing cohort childbearing age patterns. in addition, the danish population was also experiencing some fertility quantum decline at the same time. the quantum decline between the roughly corresponding 1947 and the 1957 tcfrs, the two cohorts, who experienced their peak childbearing ages around 1973 and 1983, respectively, was 0.14 births per woman, i.e. seven percent. the difference between the two values was the approximate contribution of changing childbearing age patterns to the tpfr decline between 1973 and 1983: 0.54 minus 0.14 equals 0.40 births per woman, i.e. about three-quarters of the tpfr change between 1973 and 1983 was due to changing cohort childbearing patterns. this is one particular case of the interrelationship between changing cohort childbearing age patterns and a tpfr trend. in order to be able to analyse the impact of the changing cohort childbearing patterns on long-term tpfr trends, cohort asfrs have to be translated into period asfrs. these are shown in figure 4 for denmark’s population for the period 1970 to 1990, separately for young women up to age 28 in panel a and for older women aged 29 to 39 in panel b. they depict in detail the postponement and recuperation process from a period perspective at individual ages. • tomas frejka936 the trends in the shaded areas illustrate the initial stage of postponement between 1973 and 1983 (fig. 4). the asfrs of young women declined at all ages substantially (fig. 4, panel a). more specifi cally, for example, the period asfr for age 18 was lower by 35 % in 1983 compared to 1973, at age 21 by 56 %, and at age 24 by about 65 %. there was some decline even among older women presumably refl ecting the overall fertility quantum decline (fig. 4, panel b). starting approximately in 1983 the curves for all asfrs above ages 26-27 turned upward. many of the young women who did not bear children between 1973 and 1983, i.e. who were then “postponing” their childbearing, were catching up on their childbearing, they were recuperating a proportion of the births they did not have earlier, after 1983. for instance, period asfrs in 1990 were higher than in 1983 by 44, 61 and 78 % for ages 30, 33 and 36, respectively (fig. 4, panel b). fig. 3: age-specifi c fertility rates, denmark, birth cohorts 1927 to 1977 during the period 1960-2006 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1927 1932 1937 1942 1947/tcfr =2.00 1952 1957/tcfr =1.86 1962 1967 1972 1977 1973 1983 births per woman year the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 937 3.3 fertility dynamics: changing cohort childbearing age patterns and their role in shaping total period fertility rates the next step is to devise a procedure to explain and analyse the interrelations between childbearing postponement and recuperation, and trends of total period fertility rates. it is a matter of course that childbearing postponement occurs among young women and recuperation among older women. the period asfrs which have been translated from cohort asfrs of young women as well as those of older women can be cumulated. the cumulated measures hardly ever contain offsetting asfr trends of individual ages (see fig. 4). these cumulated measures express childbearing trends of young and of older women. a decline in the cumulated fertility rate of young women illustrates a trend of postponement. stability or even an increase means that postponement has ceased. and vice versa for older women, an increase in the cumulated fertility rate illustrates the trend of recuperation. stability or even a decline means that recuperation has ceased. by defi nition the sum of the cumulated period asfrs for young and for older women for each year equals the total period fertility rate. the clincher is to identify the age which is the best approximation dividing young women from the older ones. this age varies slightly over time in a particular population and varies between populations, albeit within a narrow range. it is usually in the mid to late twenties, i.e. between the ages of 24 to 30. in western populations it is around age 28 (see, e.g., fig. 2, panel b), but it can be lower (e.g., in central and eastern europe) or higher (e.g., in southern europe). for purposes of long-term analyses it is acceptable to select one age for all cohorts which divides young women from fig. 4: period age-specifi c fertility rates, denmark, 1970-1990, ages 18, 21, 24 and 27 (panel a), 30, 33, 36 and 39 (panel b) a. period asfrs, ages 15 to 28 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 18 21 24 27 births per woman year 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 30 33 36 39 births per woman year source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. period asfrs, ages 29 to 39 • tomas frejka938 older ones, even though it might be changing over time and off by a few years for some individual cohorts. to identify and then use the real dividing age for each birth cohort when investigating 40 to 50 cohorts in a longitudinal analysis of a country and doing so in over 30 populations would make the investigation cumbersome. in this project the decision was made to use the age group 15-28 to defi ne young women and 29-49 for older women for all countries and all cohorts. admittedly, the use of these age groups causes some inaccuracies. 3.4 fertility dynamics: a postponement and recuperation model based on the experience of those populations that have completed, or have gone through a considerable part of the path towards the end of the p&r process, a model10 has been built.11 in the model (fig. 5) the cumulated fertility rates of young women interact with the cumulated fertility rates of older women. it is important to constantly keep in mind that changing cohort fertility age patterns underlie the trends of the cumulated period fertility rates of the respective age groups; for instance, as cohorts age, the bulk of the young women of the mid-1970s constitute the bulk of the older women in the mid-1980s (see sections 3.2 and 3.3 above). the trend of the total period fertility rate equals the sum of the cumulated fertility rates of the two age groups in each year, and tpfr values in individual countries equal offi cially published data. the model is used as a standard for comparison for all populations (fig. 5). a real period of years is used in the model with the p&r process starting in the mid 1970s, i.e. at a time when the total period and the total cohort fertility rates were approximately equal in a number of western countries. the beginning of the postponement and recuperation process is preceded by the end of a substantial quantum fertility decline when childbearing of both young and older women was decreasing during the end of the “baby-boom” (fig. 5). the model consists of four phases based on the experience of populations that were in the advanced stages of the postponement and recuperation process in the mid 2000s:12 1. declining tpfr (phase 1): childbearing is being postponed among young women for about 10 years, thus their fertility is declining. these women tend to manifest a considerable propensity to limit their childbearing. the fertility trend of older women remains stable because these are the women of the older cohorts that do not yet have births to recuperate, however, towards the end of this phase there may be an incipient childbearing recuperation. at 10 in the present context the concept “model” is used to depict a generalised description of the completed postponement and recuperation process against which specifi c developments in any population can be compared. 11 the principal countries used for constructing the model were denmark, norway, belgium, the netherlands and new zealand. 12 the societal environment in which childbearing behaviour takes place is not discussed in this paper. important literature on this topic is noted in section 2. antecedents above. the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 939 the end of this phase the tpfr is at its lowest level with its largest degree of distortion which is also the largest distance from the “corresponding” tcfr lagged by the average age of childbearing. this lowest point represents a tpfr trough which is generated at the end of phase 1 and beginning of phase 2 when the extent of fertility decline due to childbearing postponement of young women is offset by the emerging extent of recuperation of older women. the trough often lasts only one year, occasionally it lasts several years. 2. initial tpfr increase (phase 2): the usual sequence of interaction between fertility trends of young and of older women in this phase is as follows: childbearing postponement of young women continues, possibly at a slower rate. older women are recuperating births they had postponed when they were younger and their fertility rate is rising. these women manifest a considerable propensity to bear more children at an advanced age to compensate for the earlier postponed births. the absolute extent of childbearing recuperation exceeds that of the continuing childbearing postponement of young women at that time. the interplay of continuing childbearing postponement and strong recuperation is refl ected in a tpfr increase. in reality it might happen that for a limited or lengthy period of time the recuperation of childbearfig. 5: model depicting phases of childbearing postponement and recuperation, total cohort fertility rate lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulated period fertility rate ages 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and cumulated period fertility rate ages 29-49 (cpfr 29-49) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 fertility rate (births per woman) year phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 phase 4 quelle: own design • tomas frejka940 ing of older women is offset by an approximately similar extent of continued childbearing postponement resulting in a relatively stable tpfr. in sum, the tpfr is usually increasing in phase 2, but there can be periods during which the tpfr trend may be more or less stable. 3. final tpfr increase (phase 3): young women have stopped postponing births and their fertility trend is stable. older women are continuing to recuperate births they had postponed when they were younger and their fertility rate is rising. thus the tpfr is increasing. 4. stabilised tpfr (phase 4): childbearing recuperation has come to an end and there is no childbearing postponement among young women. the total period and cohort fertility rates settle at roughly the same level. this model provides a standard for assessing the status of the postponement and recuperation process in individual populations (fig. 5). as will be demonstrated, many western countries have passed through most of the fi rst three phases of the model. some have gone through the entire progression. a majority of populations has not completed the cycle by the 2000s and is at a certain point in the progression of events. an approximation of phase 4 appears to be the endpoint for the foreseeable future, but new patterns may emerge. in reality the way in which populations pass through the phases differs from one country to another. furthermore, some populations do not pass through all the phases, but may skip a phase; in some cases the designation of the phases can be ambiguous. to construct the model and for purposes of international comparison two simplifying assumptions were adopted. these are inherent in the model and they are applied when following childbearing postponement and recuperation in individual populations. (a) total cohort fertility rates are lagged by 30 years, which is a generalisation based on the fact that the mean age of childbearing is increasing in almost all low-fertility populations, and in some has reached the age of 30.13 (b) the end of age 28 is taken as the dividing point between young women postponing their births and older women recuperating births. this division might not apply in some populations, however in all of them birth postponement or recuperation tend to be relatively moderate around that age so that any distortions are likely to be minimal. in the model the trends start at the tail end of the “baby boom” in western countries presumably in the early 1970s and with the birth cohorts of the early to mid 1940s. at that point overall fertility is still declining and there is a continued decline in childbearing in the 15-28 age group as well as in the 29-49 age group of women. it was during the 1970s when in the western countries the average age of child13 for evidence on levels and trends in cohort and period average ages of childbearing in the respective populations see frejka and sardon (2004) table co-12 on pp. 366-367 and graphs on pp. 50, 84, 116, 146, 176, 238-239, 308-309. the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 941 bearing started to increase14 that the postponement of fertility commenced. that is expressed in the continuing decline of fertility among the 15-28 years old women. during the late 1970s and early 1980s childbearing among women 29-49 years old levels off. this implies the lack of any fertility recuperation. once childbearing postponement has been in progress for some time, birth recuperation gets under way in the mid 1980s. the structural mechanism shaping the trend of total period fertility rates is the interaction between childbearing postponement of younger cohorts and childbearing recuperation of older cohorts. consequently, the overlay of changing childbearing patterns of relevant birth cohorts at a time when fertility is being delayed and recuperated is refl ected in the tpfr trends in low-fertility countries since the early 1970s. each of the 36 low-fertility populations for which suffi cient data are available has been analysed. the populations have been classifi ed into four groups, two of them with sub-groups, which share similar basic features in the p&r process. the main criteria for this classifi cation were (i) the birth cohorts in which childbearing postponement started and the period when this occurred; and (ii) closely correlated to this tends to be the year of the tpfr trough. the groups largely overlap with geographical regions and sub-regions. to a large extent the kindred basic features in the p&r process are due to the fact that in most of the regions and sub-regions countries have common economic, political, social, and frequently also shared linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and other characteristics. the classifi cation is not perfect and the titles of some regions might seem awkward. some regions are more homogeneous than other. these are as follows:15 a. western countries a. nordic countries: denmark, finland, norway, sweden. b. western europe: belgium, england & wales, france, netherlands. c. west central europe: austria, west germany, switzerland. d. non-european countries (english-speaking): australia, canada, new zealand, united states. b. southern europe: greece, italy, portugal, spain. c. central and eastern europe a. east central europe: czech republic, east germany, hungary, poland, slovak republic. b. eastern europe: bulgaria, romania, russian federation. c. west balkan region: bosnia & herzegovina, croatia, macedonia, slovenia, yugoslavia (including montenegro and kosovo). d. east asia: hong kong, japan, south korea, taiwan. 14 see footnote 13. 15 this classifi cation is similar to the one applied in frejka and sardon (2004: 21-22). • tomas frejka942 4 illustrations and analysis for each country an assessment has been made of the main features of the childbearing postponement and recuperation process taking the model as the standard. illustrations for selected countries are depicted and discussed on the following pages. 4.1 western countries as a rule, childbearing postponement in the western countries started among the birth cohorts of the 1940s, usually during the 1970s. the tpfr troughs occurred in a range between 1976 and 1987, mostly in the early to mid 1980s. interestingly, in several populations troughs were close to the limits of “lowest-low” fertility: 1.38 in denmark, 1.47 in the netherlands – both in 1983 – and two years later 1.52 in switzerland and as low as 1.28 in west germany. the experience of the nordic countries, especially denmark (fig. 6, panel a), was reasonably close to the model. among the countries of western europe, the netherlands closely resembled the standard four phases of the model (fig. 6, panel b). this population is the only one that has concluded the entire p&r cycle conclusively. the tpfr and the tcfr have converged at the same level around the year 2000 (fig. 6, panel b). the german-speaking populations of west central europe, austria, west germany and switzerland, present a totally different picture (fig. 7, panel a). tpfrs in these countries were relatively stable after reaching the trough. childbearing postponement which was still continuing in the mid 2000s was being offset by steady but slow recuperation. fig. 6: total cohort fertility rate (lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulative period fertility rates 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and 29-49 (cpfr 29-49), denmark and netherlands, 1970-2006 a. denmark 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.38 phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.47 phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 phase 4 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. netherlands the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 943 the childbearing postponement and recuperation process and how it unfolded in period measures in the united states’ population has been exceptional in several ways (fig. 7, panel b). (i) the us population has been a precursor. childbearing delays started in the us as the fi rst among western countries during the 1960s and proceeded at a rapid pace during the early 1970s. (ii) childbearing postponement came to an abrupt halt in the mid 1970s refl ected in an indistinct tpfr trough of 1.74 births per woman in 1976. thereafter fertility of young women remained stable at a comparatively high level of 1.2 births per woman through the late 1980s. recuperation started its modest stable long-term increase in the mid 1970s. this combination resulted in a very slow tpfr increase to 1.83 in 1985-86. (iii) an unusual childbearing advancement, i.e. an increase in fertility mainly of teenage women occurred between about 1986 and 1990. this fertility increase of young women was combined with a continuing modest childbearing recuperation, a fertility increase, among older women and it thus led to a peak in the tpfr of 2.06 births per woman in 1990. such a “phase” of tpfr increase engendered by a temporary childbearing advancement was a unique episode in the p&r process in low-fertility countries. (iv) from 1992 through 2006 childbearing postponement proceeded at a moderate pace as did recuperation. their respective trends roughly offset each other. thus the tpfr was quite stable around 2.0 births per woman throughout most of the 1990s and 2000s. in sum, the big picture of the p&r process in the united states is one of modest childbearing postponement and moderate recuperation. this might be due to the multi-ethnic composition of the us population and possible offsetting trends befig. 7: total cohort fertility rate (lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulative period fertility rates 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and 29-49 (cpfr 29-49), switzerland and united states, 1970-2007 a. switzerland 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.51 phase 1 phase 2 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.74 phase 1 phase 2 phase 2advancement quelle: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. united states • tomas frejka944 tween the major ethnic groups having different childbearing patterns. each of the ethnic groups (whites, african americans, hispanic americans and those of asian descent) would require separate analyses to determine the differences in the childbearing postponement and recuperation process between these ethnic groups, but thus far data were not available for such a detailed exploration. 4.2 southern europe the main developments in south european populations were a considerable childbearing postponement among young women combined with nonexistent or modest recuperation during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. the outcome was very low, “lowest-low”, period fertility in spain (tpfr=1.16 in 1996), italy (tpfr=1.19 in 1995), and greece (tpfr=1.24 in 1999), and low fertility in portugal (tpfr=1.41 in 1995), i.e. troughs in the mid to late 1990s (fig. 8, panel a).16 the p&r process had not been concluded in the south european countries by the mid 2000s even though fertility of young women was already very low, especially in italy and spain. apparently childbearing postponement among young women was reaching its fl oor during the mid to late 2000s. recuperation among older women was still under way and 16 the greek trends constitute one of those cases where the designation of phases is ambiguous. the lowest tpfr value, 1.24, was reached in 1999, and therefore that is the year in which, according to the way in which the phases are distinguished, phase 1 ends. in reality postponement and recuperation trends were offsetting each other since about 1990, but the tpfr in 1990 equaled 1.39 which was higher than in 1999. if one were to apply the latter interpretation, phase 1 would have ended in 1990. fig. 8: total cohort fertility rate (lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulative period fertility rates 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and 29-49 (cpfr 29-49), greece 1970-2004, and czech republic 1970-2006 a. greece 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.24 phase 1 phase 2 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.13 phase 1 phase 2 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. czech republic the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 945 is likely to continue for some years to come, which will be refl ected in a continued tpfr increase. 4.3 central and eastern europe there was a great deal of variation between sub-regions and populations in the large region of central and eastern europe. no matter when postponement started, for the most part around 1990, it was considerable and proceeded at a rapid pace from one birth cohort to the next. in almost all countries of central and eastern europe tpfrs declined to unusually low levels labelled as “lowest-low” fertility (kohler et al. 2002). the rapid childbearing postponement was refl ected in the tpfrs troughs of the countries of east central europe around the year 2000: 1.13 in 1999 in the czech republic, 1.18 in 2002 in slovakia, 1.22 in 2003 in poland, and 1.27 also in 2003 in hungary. a detailed analysis of the underlying changes in cohort childbearing patterns and their overlap using data from the czech republic (fig. 8, panel b) will demonstrate why tpfrs declined at an unprecedented rapid pace during phase one and why they reached such low levels. 1. during the mid to late 1990s, women of the cohorts born in the late 1950s and early 1960s had very low fertility when they were in their thirties and forties because they had borne most of their children when they were young (fig. 9, panels a and b). typically their lifetime childbearing age patterns were young, usually peaking around the ages of 21 and 22 with a high concentration of childbearing in their late teens and early to mid twenties. 2. a gradual decline in fertility started among the late 1950s and early 1960s birth cohorts, even though these were hardly postponing any of their births. 3. the shift of childbearing into higher ages started among the late 1960s and early 1970s birth cohorts and then accelerated among the mid-1970s cohorts. note the considerable difference in the slope of the 1958 and the 1978 cohorts up to age 21 (fig. 9, panels a and b). fertility was declining rapidly among young women of successive cohorts of the early to mid 1970s and this was refl ected in rapid declines of period fertility among young women between the ages 15 and 28 (cpfr 15-28) during the 1990s and in the rapid decline of the tpfr (fig. 8, panel b). in sum, the overlay of the low fertility of older women of the late 1950s-early 1960s birth cohorts with the rapidly declining and relatively low fertility of young women of the mid to late 1970s birth cohorts resulted in the period fertility trough of a tpfr equal to 1.13 in 1999 in the czech republic (fig. 8 [panel b] and 9 [panel b]). it was the rapid pace of the childbearing age pattern shifts that were an important factor in generating the period fertility trough. while the total cohort fertility rates (tcfr (-30)) of the corresponding birth cohorts were declining only moderately (fig. 8, panel b), the rapid fertility decline among young women due to the fast pace of postponement was driving the rapid rate of tpfr decline in the years prior to 1999. compared to most western countries childbearing postponement in central east european countries started about two decades later, i.e. around 1990 • tomas frejka946 rather than in the 1970s, and proceeded at a much faster pace. “lowest-low” tpfr troughs close to 1.2 births per woman were reached around the year 2000, down from about 2.0 in 1990. the basic nature of the beginning of the postponement and the recuperation process was similar in eastern europe. during the 1990s fertility declined rapidly among young women which was refl ected in a fast tpfr decline. “lowest-low” tpfr troughs of 1.1 to 1.3 births per woman were reached in the mid to late 1990s. fig. 9: cohort age-specifi c fertility rates, czech republic, birth cohorts 1958-1982 a. childbearing shifts into higher ages 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 1958 1964 1970 1972 1978 births per woman age age 21 age 21 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 1975 1985 1995 2005 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 tpfr = 1.13 age 21 births per woman year age 21 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. succession of birth cohorts fig. 10: total cohort fertility rate (lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulative period fertility rates 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and 29-49 (cpfr 29-49), russian federation and croatia, 1970-2006 a. russian federation 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.16 phase 3phase 1 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.39 phase 1 phase 2 source: human fertility database; observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. croatia the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 947 at the same time, russia’s period fertility trends were infl uenced by a number of policy interventions since the 1980s (zakharov 2008). the effect of the 1980s soviet pronatalist policies and their aftermath make it diffi cult to pinpoint when childbearing postponement started, most probably around 1990. the end of phase one – a rapid fertility decline among young women during the 1990s and stable fertility among older women through the late 1990s – was reached in 1999 with a tpfr trough of 1.16 births per woman (fig. 10, panel a). in 2008, however, the tpfr was at 1.49 births per woman, an increase of 28 % over the 1999 trough. in part that was infl uenced by another policy intervention, the putin childbearing incentives of 2006, which had a positive impact on fertility at all ages, even in 2009 (frejka 2009). wars affected demographic trends signifi cantly in the west balkan region, particularly in bosnia & herzegovina, croatia and yugoslavia, less so in slovenia and macedonia. the decline of fertility among croatia’s young women was relatively moderate between the mid 1980s and 1992. after the 1992 trough of 1.39 fertility trends were interrupted by a “post-war mini baby boom.” except for this increase in fertility during the late 1990s, the postponement trend was offset by a recuperation trend (fig. 10, panel b). 4.4 east asia the long-term demographic history of japan is very different than that of hong kong, south korea, singapore and taiwan. at the time when japan reached replacement fertility in the mid-1950s, the other countries of east asia still had tpfrs of fi ve to seven births per woman. during the following decades fertility declined rapidly in hong kong, south korea, singapore and taiwan reaching replacement fertility in the 1980s. the fertility decline in all fi ve populations continued and by the mid to late 2000s period fertility rates in these countries were among the lowest in the world, termed “ultra-low fertility” by jones, straughan, and chan (2009). in 2005 the tpfr was 0.97 in hong kong, 1.11 in taiwan, 1.12 in south korea, 1.25 in singapore, and 1.23 in japan (frejka et al. 2010). since the mid 1970s the basic feature of the childbearing p&r process has been reasonably uniform in these four populations. childbearing delays had been continuing at least for over two decades prior to the mid to late 2000s and childbearing recuperation was considerably weaker than birth postponement. in japan the combination of steadily declining fertility of young women and stable fertility of older women resulted in a continuously declining tpfr, especially following the brief upswing of childbearing recovery in the mid 1980s (fig. 11, panel a). the robust propensity to delay births throughout the late 20th and persisting in the early 21st century is characteristic of the other populations in this region, hong kong, taiwan and south korea (fig. 11, panel b). in the mid 2000s young women had a fertility rate of 0.5 births per woman or less in all countries of the region. the tpfr trough around 1.0 occurred in hong kong in 2005, in south korea in 2003 and had not even been reached by the mid 2000s in taiwan. • tomas frejka948 4.5 the structural background of tpfr trends the above exposition illustrates the utility of analysing the structural background of tpfr trends. tpfr trends which on the surface might appear similar may have different underlying mechanisms, i.e. different levels and trends of interaction between childbearing postponement and recuperation that resulted in the respective tpfr trends. for example, the dutch population between 1996 and 2000 (fig. 6, panel b), and the czech population between 2001 and 2006 (fig. 8, panel b), both experienced a tpfr increase of approximately 0.2 births per woman, but the underlying mechanisms were different. in the netherlands the tpfr increase occurred towards the end of the childbearing p&r cycle. postponement had already run its course and had come to a standstill. recuperation was winding down. the tpfr was coming close to the respective tcfr level (fig. 6, panel b). in contrast, in the czech republic the tpfr was in an early stage of the p&r process; it had only just passed the tpfr trough. childbearing postponement was still on a downward slope and poised to continue. childbearing recuperation had only just started; it was on an upward slope and also poised to continue (fig. 8, panel b). this example illustrates that the increases of the tpfrs in the late 1990s and the 2000s had different structural backgrounds in different countries. these developments illustrate that it was a historical coincidence that tpfrs were increasing in most low-fertility countries almost simultaneously in the late 1990s and early 2000s. the tpfrs in many low-fertility countries increased roughly at the same time, however for different structural demographic reasons in the western countries in contrast to the central and east european countries. fig. 11: total cohort fertility rate (lagged by 30 years tcfr (-30)), total period fertility rate (tpfr), cumulative period fertility rates 15-28 (cpfr 15-28) and 29-49 (cpfr 29-49), japan and south korea, 1970-2007 a. japan 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.23 phase 1 phase 3? 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 tcfr (-30) tpfr cpfr 15-28 cpfr 29-49 births per woman year tpfr = 1.12 phase 3phase 1 source: observatoire démographique européen 2010 b. south korea the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 949 moreover, it is important to note that in both cases the tpfr increase was almost exclusively a result of changes in the cohort childbearing age patterns, i.e. changes in fertility timing, and not generated by a quantum fertility increase. the evidence is obvious in the dutch case. while the tpfr was increasing during the late 1990s, the corresponding tcfrs were declining modestly (fig. 6, panel b). in the czech case thus far the evidence is circumstantial and preliminary. tpfrs were increasing during the early to mid 2000s, and, judging from the tcfr trend of the 1960s birth cohorts it can be assumed that corresponding tcfrs of the 1970s birth cohorts might continue to decline or stabilise (fig. 8, panel b). 4.6 applying the method of this paper to possibly re-evaluate some previous studies on causes of fertility trends there are numerous factors that have triggered and sustained the childbearing p&r process. with considerable success these factors have been analysed, discussed and clarifi ed in the literature (see references in section 2). the research elaborated in this study demonstrates that the structural mechanism of the childbearing postponement and the recuperation process is refl ected in tpfr trends. by extension, familiarity with the factors driving the childbearing p&r process is essential to understanding tpfr trends. taking this into consideration, the question can be posed whether it might be profi table to revisit some of the research that investigated the causes of period fertility trends which would also utilise the method developed in this study. a comprehensive investigation into the compatibility of the effects of the childbearing p&r process on period fertility, on the one hand, with research that has analysed the effects of behavioural, socio-economic and policy factors on (period) fertility trends is beyond the scope of this paper. it might, however, be useful to explore, for instance, how the research on the appearance and disappearance of lowest-low fertility due to socio-economic and policy factors (goldstein et al. 2009; kohler et al. 2002) can be developed further utilising the method of the present study. also, an investigation of whether some of the fi ndings assigning fertility increases early in the 21st century either to changed behavioural attitudes of women and couples, or to social and population policies, or to changing economic conditions (goldstein et al. 2009; kocourková 2009; kohler et al. 2002; myrskylä et al. 2009) might also benefi t by applying the method of this paper. once the method used in the present research is applied and incorporated in the research of these authors their fi ndings might need to be modifi ed. total period fertility rate changes tend to be mainly the result of changes in the timing of childbearing rather than the consequence of changes in particular socioeconomic circumstances. for instance, the tpfr increases in populations in the early 21st century appeared to have been predominantly due to changes in cohort fertility timing and due to certain overlaps of cohort childbearing patterns and not due to direct effects of specifi ed socio-economic factors. the same applies to the appearance and disappearance of tpfr troughs. the effects of socio-economic circumstances on tpfr trends might be operating via the effects on cohort fertility • tomas frejka950 timing and not directly on tpfr trends. the infl uence of these factors might have been different than presumed. 5 summary and conclusions a method that analyses how the process of cohort and period childbearing postponement and recuperation is refl ected in total period fertility levels and trends in low-fertility populations during recent decades is outlined in this paper. the method is rooted in the path breaking ideas developed by ryder (1951 and 1964). the logic forming the foundation of the method is that in reality childbearing postponement and recuperation occurs in the life of individual women and can be summarised in the lifetime experiences of birth cohorts. to analyse the effects of the cohort p&r process on total period fertility rates, cohort childbearing age patterns are translated into period childbearing age patterns. the effects of the p&r process on the tpfrs are revealed by summarising period age-specifi c fertility rates of young women and of older women and analysing their interaction over time. the method is complementary to methods pioneered by bongaarts and feeney (1998) which estimate tempo-adjusted period total fertility rates. the b & f method and its variations demonstrate the degree to which total period fertility rates are distorted, i.e. the extent to which tpfrs would be different if there would be no changes in the timing of childbearing. the method described in this paper can be characterised as revealing the internal mechanism generating tpfr trends; it exposes the demographic structural causes generating tpfr trends and demonstrates why tpfrs are moving in a certain direction based on the trends in childbearing behaviour of young and older women. the analysis of the process of cohort and period childbearing postponement and recuperation in low-fertility populations during the past half century yields the following fi ndings. 1. total period fertility rates always descend in the initial years of the childbearing postponement and recuperation process. these tpfr declines occur because in the initial years of the childbearing p&r process fertility decreases among young women whereas initially there are no or only minor offsetting increases in the fertility of older women in overlaying birth cohorts. any childbearing recuperation takes place only after the respective cohorts have aged, i.e. fertility increases of older women come to pass with a time delay. therefore any increase in fertility of older women offsetting fertility declines of younger women usually occurs only several years after the commencement of childbearing postponement. the initial tpfr descent occurs because the size of the fertility decline among young women outweighs any possible initial increase in fertility among older women. 2. tpfr troughs appear at the end of the initial phase of the childbearing p&r process. the troughs occur because low fertility among young women of the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 951 young cohorts postponing childbearing overlaps with low fertility among older women of older cohorts who had not postponed births. the structural reason for a tpfr trough to take place is a relatively low fertility among young women of the overlapping younger cohorts because their childbearing already started to descend. fertility is also relatively low among the older women in the overlapping older cohorts because these experienced young childbearing age patterns, i.e. they had borne most of their children when they were young. hence the combination which results in a tpfr trough. this state was labelled as “lowest-low fertility” in south, east and central europe. the troughs occurred earlier also in western countries where they were not noticed and not considered noteworthy and unusual at the time. 3. total period fertility rates were increasing in almost all low-fertility countries in the late 1990s and in the early 21st century, however, the structural causes of this increase were different in western countries compared to those in central and eastern europe. in western countries populations were experiencing the concluding phases of the p&r process, i.e. postponement had ceased and recuperation was still ongoing. tpfrs were coming very close to the levels of corresponding total cohort fertility rates. in contrast, in central and eastern europe populations were experiencing the initial phases of childbearing p&r, i.e. postponement was still ongoing and recuperation had only just started. there was still a gap between the tpfrs and the corresponding tcfrs. it was a historical coincidence that tpfrs were increasing in most low-fertility countries almost simultaneously in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 4. the increases in total period fertility rates in the late 1990s and in the early 21st century were predominantly the result of changing childbearing age patterns, i.e. changes in timing, and were not due to increased fertility quanta. essentially, during this period in almost all the low-fertility countries tpfrs were rising while corresponding total cohort fertility rates were declining. 5. as expected on theoretical grounds, contemporary historical experience confi rms that after the cessation in childbearing postponement and once recuperation works its way through the main periods of the childbearing ages, total period fertility rates resemble total cohort fertility rates. any further fertility trends depend on overall quantum trends. this happened early in the 21st century in the netherlands. new waves of fertility postponement or advancement may occur in the future. for the time being, the childbearing postponement and recuperation process of the last decades of the 20th century and of the early 21st century is ending, although in several countries the cessation of the p&r process might still take many years. 6. all low-fertility populations were experiencing the p&r process in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but there was a great deal of variation. some countries were experiencing a considerable childbearing recuperation and • tomas frejka952 their tpfrs came close to replacement. in other countries recuperation was minimal and their tpfrs were very low around 50 % below replacement. 7. imprecise regional patterns of the p&r progression have emerged. there were differences in the specifi c paths of the childbearing postponement and recuperation processes between country populations, nonetheless some basic features tended to be common within regions. the above processes started in western countries predominantly during the 1970s and continued during the next four decades. in central and eastern europe they started predominantly during the 1990s and were ongoing in the 2000s. the typical cycle in western countries consisted of a tpfr decline in the 1970s and early 1980s, a trough in the early to mid 1980s, a tpfr increase in the late 1980s, and nearing conclusion in the 2000s. in central and eastern europe typically a rapid tpfr decline occurred during the 1990s, the period fertility trough appeared in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and a tpfr increase tended to occur in the 2000s. the populations of southern europe and east asia experienced long periods of childbearing postponement usually starting in the 1980s combined with weak or almost nonexistent fertility recuperation. consequently tpfrs were at best stable, but more often declining for many years. in some populations in the 2000s, such as italy and especially spain, childbearing postponement approached a fl oor and a moderate fertility recuperation resulted in tpfr increases. 8. findings of some studies investigating the effect of societal factors on the tpfr level and trends should be re-examined. it might be useful to explore whether the fi ndings on how changing childbearing age patterns of overlapping birth cohorts which are refl ected in period fertility declines, troughs and subsequent tpfr increases, on the one hand, can be reconciled with research fi ndings attributing the appearance and disappearance of lowestlow fertility as well as increases in period fertility in the 21st century directly to social, economic and other causes. 9. given that fertility trends of young people tend to be different from those of older people, it appears prudent to investigate childbearing motivations and societal environments in which childbearing decisions are made separately for each group. often this is done subconsciously, it should however be done consciously and explicitly, when appropriate. within a specifi c period of time the general societal environment is common for young and older people, however, different age and social groups are likely to perceive, or be subject to, varying sets of childbearing incentives and disincentives. the method outlined and discussed in this paper has several limitations. motivations for the respective childbearing behaviour are not specifi ed nor is the economic, social, political, policy, historical, in short the societal environment in which childbearing behaviour takes place, depicted. for that the reader has to consult the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 953 other literature. furthermore, in the country analyses the same age dividing young women from older ones has been applied in all populations. in fact, this age differs between populations and within populations over time. inaccuracies are introduced by applying an identical dividing age in all populations. to ascertain the actual dividing age for each population throughout the respective time span and to apply it in the analysis would have grossly complicated the project and the results would not have been much different. also, total cohort fertility rates were lagged by 30 years in all populations and over time. actually, tcfrs should be lagged by the average age of childbearing for each cohort. comparisons of the tpfrs and the tcfrs in the country graphs would then be slightly more theoretically correct, but the differences would be minor. finally, a technical note: the analysis is a conceptually simple procedure, but it requires detailed statistical data, and consists of several indispensable steps, which have to be performed to reach useful results. notwithstanding these limitations, the research presented here has signifi cant relevance and use. the following are among the more meaningful advancements of this research: it elucidates the structural demographic causes of tpfr trends, in general, • and the causes for the tpfr troughs and of the tpfr increases during the late 1990s and in the early 21st century, in particular. by exposing the structural demographic causes of tpfr trends, this research provides a base or background for analysing social, economic, political, cultural, ethnic, normative and other causes of change in tpfr trends in recent decades. it provides a base for analysing the variation in tpfr trends between coun-• tries and regions. it provides the logic for analysing causes of tpfr trends separately for young • and for older women even when they are exposed to the same societal environment. researchers and policy makers in individual countries can get an idea of the • stage in which their population fi nds itself in the postponement and recuperation process, and provides a feeling of what may lie ahead, albeit uncertain. it is advisable to conduct these analyses in 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toulemon, laurent (eds.): childbearing trends and policies in europe. max planck institute for demographic research: 907-972 [doi:10.4054/demres.2008.19.24] [http://www.demographic-research.org/special/7]. the role of contemporary childbearing postponement and recuperation • 957 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “die auswirkung des aktuellen aufschubs und nachholens von geburten auf die ausprägung der periodenfertilitätstrends”, doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2011-20de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-20de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 12.09.2011 date of acceptance: 01.03.2012 dr. tomas frejka ( ). independent consultant, sanibel, florida, usa. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states igor ryabov abstract: the present article addresses the question of whether there is a link between the spatial patterns of human development and period fertility in the united states at the county level. using cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between total fertility rate (tfr) and an array of human development indicators (pertaining to three components of the human development index (hdi) – wealth, health, and education), this study sheds light on the relationship between fertility and human development. the analyses were conducted separately for urban, suburban and rural counties. according to the multivariate results, a negative association between selected human development indicators and tfr exists in suburban and rural counties, as well as in the united states as a whole. however, this is not the case for urban counties, where the results were inconclusive. some indicators (e.g., median income per capita) were found to be positively, and some (e.g., the share of adults with at least bachelor’s degree) negatively, associated with tfr in urban counties. all in all, our results provide evidence of a negative relationship between human development indicators and period fertility in the united states at the county level, a fi nding which is consistent with the basic tenets of classic demographic transition theory. keywords: period fertility · development · fertility-development relationship · united states · second demographic transition 1 introduction recent research (e.g., myrskylä et al. 2009) suggests that the negative relationship between human development and fertility in industrialized countries reverses when the human development index (hdi) progresses beyond the threshold of 0.85-0.9. the present study seeks to further explore this relationship on the example of the united states. some scholars (lesthaeghe/neidert 2006) regard the united states as an exception to the second demographic transition (sdt) which is characterized by sub-replacement fertility, rising cohabitation and, more generally, the disconneccomparative population studies vol. 40, 4 (2015): 465-488 (date of release: 11.11.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-13en9 • igor ryabov466 tion of marriage and procreation (e.g., lesthaeghe 2010; lesthaeghe/surkyn 1988; van de kaa 1987; van de kaa 1994). using cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between period total fertility rate (tfr) and selected human development indicators (life expectancy at birth for males and females, median income per capita, the share of population below the poverty line, the shares of adults without a high school diploma and with bachelor’s degree or higher), the present study explores the link between human fertility and development in the u.s. our choice of human development indicators is based on an exploratory factor analysis which allowed us to identify the most relevant predictors of period fertility at the county level. each human development indicator corresponds to one of the three dimensions of the human development index: wealth, health (longevity), and education (knowledge). hdi is generally the most commonly used index for human development (anand/sen 1994; noorbakhsh 1998). not only has it been widely used for monitoring the relative development among all nations of the world, but it has also been applied to regions within countries (acayaba/oliveira 2013). particularly, hdi has been used to quantify the regional differences in human development in the united states at the state and county levels (burd-sharps et al. 2008). this article examines the relationship between tfr and human development indicators by type (urban, suburban and rural) of county and county-equivalent administrative entities in the united states. the urban-suburban-rural classifi cation of counties used in the present study is based on the national centre for health statistics (nchs) classifi cation scheme, which is fundamentally a delineation of geographical areas by urbanicity-rurality (ingram/franco 2012). our classifi cation allows delineating urban, suburban and rural counties following the simplifi ed nchs scheme (see section 6 for details). this article is organized as follows. the next two sections comprise a review of theoretical and empirical research devoted to the issue of socio-economic development and fertility. more specifi cally, the fi rst of these sections discusses fertility regimes in advanced societies. a recent study by myrskylä et al. 2009 is given special attention. the subsequent section addresses the applications of the second demographic transition to the study of fertility regimes at the sub-national level, particularly in the united states. next, we outline the rationale for the current study and the research hypotheses. a methodology section followsin which we describe data and variables employed in our empirical approach. in the results section which follows, we report descriptive statistics as well as multivariate analyses that model tfr as a function of human development indicators and racial-ethnic composition across the three types of u.s. counties (urban, suburban and rural). 2 human development and fertility: recent evidence research examining the relationship between human development and fertility has a long history (luci/thévenon 2010). starting with malthus (2013[1798]), according to whom fertility increases lead to the pauperization and moral degradation of large sectors of population due to the fi nite nature of natural resources, the weight of on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 467 early scholarly opinion made a formulaic “truth” out of the negative relationship between fertility and development (myrskylä et al. 2009). while there exist a number of respectable theories predicting cyclical variations of fertility as a result of economic growth or decline (of which malthusianism is a classical example), much scholarly attention has been dedicated to the demographic transition theory (dtt). originally the theory was set to imply that in countries undergoing modernization, long-term economic growth should lead to a transition from high to low birth and death rates (davis 1945; notestein 1945). however, ddt was later expanded to predict ever-decreasing fertility rates with economic growth in various kinds of contexts (caldwell 1976, 1982; kirk 1996; lee 2003). although in the second half of the 20th century dtt clearly dominated theoretical discussions related to fertility and development (mason 1997), a more revisionist stance toward the issue was developed by the late 20th century. an infl uential report of the u.s. national research council (1989) presented a view that departed, in important respects, from the classical interpretation of the fertility-development relationship offered by ddt. first, the report pointed out that population decline in and of itself can thwart economic growth. secondly, and more importantly, it stressed that the correlation between slower population growth and decreased poverty does not imply causation. it is worth noting that when the report was published, the world’s tfr was approximately 3.4 children per woman (in contrast to today’s 2.3) and sub-replacement fertility was rare and limited to one region of the world – europe (united nations 2013). although fertility below replacement level (defi ned as tfr<2.1) was a rarity 30 years ago, today it is widespread in europe, asia and the americas. fertility rates in some european countries has plummeted within the last decade, thus creating the phenomenon of “lowest-low fertility”, defi ned as a total fertility below 1.3 (kohler et al. 2002). as of today, the lowest fertility levels are found in the eastern european and mediterranean countries (billari/kohler 2004; kohler et al. 2002). at the same time, in highly developed countries, either the centuries-long fertility decline has stalled or an opposite trend has been observed simultaneously with continuing socio-economic development (balbo et al. 2013; bongaarts/sobotka 2012; goldstein et al. 2009). in north-western european countries (e.g., denmark, netherlands, and united kingdom), where below-replacement fertility persisted at least for the length of one generation, there has been a fertility rebound since the late 1990s. whereas contemplating the fact that fertility cannot decline ad infi nitum is quite compatible with dtt, explanations of the reversal of the fertility trend are not (mason 1997). it is worth mentioning that one of the most prominent contemporary theories of post-transitional fertility, the second demographic transition (reviewed in more detail below), predicts indefi nitely lower fertility in the context of industrialized countries as women obtain higher education and higher wages (lesthaeghe/ surkyn 1988). paradoxically, however, fertility now appears to be rebounding in those countries which have progressed farthest on the path of the second demographic transition (goldstein et al. 2009). moreover, these very countries are also the world’s leaders in gender equity – women’s labour market participation and tertiary education rates are the world’s highest, and still rising. overall, we can sum• igor ryabov468 marize that this brief overview of dominant theoretical approaches to reproductive behaviour shows shortcomings in explaining why long-term socio-economic development does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with a decline in period fertility rate. it has to be noted that, despite the long history of research on these questions, the fi eld has still not reached a consensus on the relative importance of different components of human development for fertility change (bryant 2007; lee 2003; mcdonald 2000). traditionally, in human geography and across social sciences, much emphasis has been placed on economic determinants of fertility in the industrialized world (bryant 2007). there are signs, however, that scholarly interest has begun to shift toward the social, non-economic components of human development (education, health, gender equity) as predictors of trends in period and cohort fertility among developed countries (see, for example, studies of goldstein et al. 2009; mcdonald 2000; myrskylä et al. 2012). a widely cited, and much discussed study by myrskylä et al. (2009) empirically tested the hypothesis of an impact of the overall level of human development, proxied by the human development index (hdi),1 on fertility, using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the oecd area spanning from 1975 to 2005. in confronting cross-country data, the researchers contended that the development-fertility relationship is negative when hdi levels are below the range of 0.85-0.9. however, when at the turn of the 21 century some countries reached an hdi above 0.9, the hdifertility association reverses to positive. hence, by designating a clear turning point in the relationship between human development and fertility, myrskylä et al. (2009) fi nd that human development is likely to induce a fertility rebound. it is reasonable to assume that the theoretical framework put forward by myrskylä and colleagues can be used not only to explain cross-country variations in hdi-fertility association, but also to examine the effect of human development indicators on fertility within a particular country. the clear drawback of myrskylä et al.’s (2009) work is that the effect of human development was represented by one integrated parameter, while its components (wealth, longevity and education) were not modelled as separate effects. subsequent research (furuoka 2009) argued that clarifying the effect of each component of the human development process is important for identifying the causal structure of the relationship between human development and fertility. 3 the second demographic transition in the united states as mentioned above, the sdt is one of the dominant theories for explaining family formation and reproduction in the industrialized countries. inspired by the rise of post-materialism (inglehart 1971), the theory views marriage and reproduction as independent spheres and predicts the end of the predominance of the nuclear family as the only legitimate family type in the modern era (van de kaa 1987; van 1 the human development index is a composite number that values between 0 and 1. a greater value of the hdi indicates a higher human development. on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 469 de kaa 1994). the key argument of the theory is that individuals in contemporary industrialized societies assign stronger importance to their own self-realization than to their family and children. according to this causal framework, the value shift toward individualism and self-realization is taken as an explanation for the delay of union formation and parenthood, an increased frequency of having several partners before the fi rst child, and a rise in cohabitation, which has been associated with a later age at entry marriage, if not a retreat from marriage. ultimately, all these behavioural changes lead to fertility decline (lesthaeghe/surkyn 1988). according to lesthaeghe (2010), the new transition fi rst began in the benelux countries in the 1970s and began to spread across western europe, canada and australia. north-western european countries have been among the fi rst to embrace a new family model by delaying childbearing and, simultaneously, a new economic model by investing in the educational and workplace opportunities of both men and women (lesthaeghe 2010; van de kaa 1994). furthermore, recent studies framed within the sdt theory argue that the second demographic transition would not remain a regional idiosyncrasy, but would spread to the united states, southern, central, and eastern europe and industrialized asian states (lesthaeghe 2010; raley 2001). regardless of past demographic regimes in these countries, the sdt theory predicts the same demographic outcomes – the rise of divorce, cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing – and most importantly – fertility decline. of more direct relevance to this study is a paper by lesthaeghe and neidert (2006) which is devoted to the geographical pattern of the sdt in the united states. examining geographical variations in the age at marriage, cohabitation rates and extramarital fertility as correlates of the sdt, the authors found that the “blue states,” that is, the states that traditionally vote democratic, exhibit an idiosyncratic pattern of the sdt, whereas the “red states,” that is, the states that traditionally vote republican, exhibit traditional patterns of union formation. in other words, the conservative “red states” generally stick to the “breadwinner” model of the family that celebrates marriage as the institution ordained to promote the unity of sex, procreation and childrearing. in contrast, the “blue states” have moved toward the sdt by delaying childbearing and embracing a more liberal view of family. the authors conclude that the political divide in the u.s follows the same geographic pattern as does the sdt. there is one apparent weakness of lesthaeghe and neidert’s (2006) study – all analyses are conducted at the state level. although many demographic policies are endorsed at the state level, it is worth mentioning that counties generally are the primary political units of local government and have programmatic importance at the federal and state levels. it is also worth mentioning that many socio-demographic indicators vary signifi cantly at the county level. for example, tfr varies from 0.5 to 3.6. the percentage of adults holding bachelor’s or a higher educational degree varies from 4 to 70 percent at the county level, while the corresponding minimal and maximal values for the share of non-hispanic whites are 1 and 100 percent. • igor ryabov470 4 urban-rural divide and the issue of geographic scale changing geographic scale (the size of geographic units) can dramatically change estimated parameters. the united states is not only a vast country, but it is also known for its remarkable geographic fractionalization of demographic outcomes (frey 1996; massey and denton 1988; zelinsky 2011). measuring american fractionalization calls for geographically precise data. for example, as our preliminary analyses indicate (not shown for parsimony), geographic clustering of fertility patterns rarely follows state lines. this is because prior waves of fertility change that had swept through the country produced over time a remarkable geographical pedigree of fertility regimes (lesthaeghe and neidert 2006). the “blue states” (e.g., california, new york) in lesthaeghe and neidert’s (2006) study contain, in addition to some of the largest urban areas in the country, a number of less urbanized and even rural areas that demographically are not distinguishable from similar areas of the neighbouring “red states”. in other words, examining geographic patterns of fertility behaviour at the level of u.s. states does not capture variations in fertility within states. no less important than the problem of geographic scale to this project is the issue of urban-rural disparities in fertility. according to lesthaeghe and neidert’s (2006), the tfr is higher in those states which are “more rural than metropolitan.” (p. 27). this fi nding points to the familiar pattern, by no means exclusive to the united states, of a rural “surplus” of fertility. indeed, numerous studies across the globe (including the u.s.) demonstrate that, on average, urbanites tend to have less children than rural residents (caldwell 1982; gallup et al. 1999; glenn/hill 1977; sharlin 1986). moreover, considering human development indicators and fertility together, it becomes evident that there is an overlap between spatial patterns of human development and fertility. unfortunately, much of what we know about urban-rural dimension in the relationship between human development and fertility is based on a small number of studies. however, there is an ample body of research documenting the relationship between urbanization and development. incorporating empirical evidence from around the world, socioeconomic status (ses) is shown to be positively correlated with urbanicity, with lower poverty and higher education and income levels found in urban than rural areas (bradshaw 1987; cochrane 1983; london/smith 1988; sicular et al. 2007). cities have higher concentrations of human capital – skilled workers are paid higher wages, and this tendency has been rising over time (glaeser/redlick 2009; rauch 1993). a recent study by singh and siahpush (2014) also shows that there are noticeable health differences across urbanization levels in the u.s., with the life expectancy at birth being 2.0 years higher in urban than in rural areas. on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 471 5 study’s rationale unfortunately, there have been no empirical studies devoted to the developmentfertility relationship in the context of the united states. to cover this gap, this paper investigates the impact of selected human development indicators on tfr by county type (urban, suburban and rural) in the united states. the conceptual basis for this study draws from the empirical evidence that the relationship between human development and fertility in advanced industrialized societies is not necessarily negative, as is the case in developing nations (goldstein et al. 2009; myrskylä et al. 2009). particularly, it has been argued that there could exist a threshold after which period fertility does not decline with increasing levels of socio-economic development (myrskylä et al. 2009). among the industrialized countries, the united states is characterized not only by relatively high human development, but also by high period fertility, especially in contrast to the sub-replacement fertility patterns of europe (see table 1). however, recent research confi rms that there are strong regional differences in correlates of sdt, with some states advancing further toward sdt and some not (lesthaeghe/ neidert 2006). the states that exhibit fertility and family change patterns which are more characteristic of sdt are usually more urbanized (lesthaeghe/neidert 2006). it has to be noted at the outset that the theories (i.e., ddt and sdt) that underlie this research have been constructed at the macro level for the entire world, and for regions to reveal the general trajectory of reproductive regimes. however, this investigation is based on the analyses conducted at the county level within one country. thus, the general objective of the present paper is to test these theories at the county level. particularly, this study will assess whether the relationship between human development and fertility at the u.s. county level is indeed positive, as has been predicted by myrskylä et al. (2009) for the industrialized countries. it is important to mention that the sdt theory predicts the opposite of what we expect to fi nd in this study (lesthaeghe/neidert 2006). our main hypothesis is that each tab. 1: tfr and hdi of selected industrialized countries source: cdc, eurostat, undp country usa france germany uk tfr hdi tfr hdi tfr hdi tfr hdi 1980 1.8 0.825 2.0 0.722 1.6 0.739 1.9 0.735 1985 1.8 0.839 1.8 0.741 1.4 0.752 1.8 0.747 1990 2.1 0.858 1.8 0.779 1.5 0.782 1.9 0.768 1995 2.0 … 1.7 … 1.3 … 1.7 … 2000 2.1 0.883 1.9 0.848 1.4 0.854 1.6 0.863 2005 2.1 0.897 1.9 0.867 1.3 0.887 1.8 0.888 2010 1.9 0.908 2.0 0.879 1.4 0.904 1.9 0.895 • igor ryabov472 and every human development indicator has a positive impact on fertility. thus, per each component of human development (wealth, health, and education), we expect that more affl uent, healthier and better educated u.s. counties will have higher fertility. we also predict that the urban-rural divide will have a moderating effect on the relationship between human development and fertility. specifi cally, consistent with the premises of the sdt theory (e.g., lesthaeghe/neidert 2006; van de kaa 1994), period fertility is expected to be lower in urban counties than in rural counties, while suburban counties will occupy the middle ground between the two. this prediction is derived from the fact that urbanites were at the forefront of the sdt (buzar et al. 2007). according lesthaeghe and neels (2002), urbanicity is one of the main structural predictors of the sdt. 6 methodology the study sample is drawn from several sources. the information on all independent variables, except health, was obtained from the american community survey (acs), arguably the most recent and complete source of offi cial statistics at the county level. the fertility data – age specifi c fertility rates (asfr) by county – were obtained from the national centre for health statistics (nchs). the nchs data cover the period of fi ve years (2007-2012) which allows aggregating the irregular and fragmented natality data from less populated counties. the dependent variable is total period fertility rate (tfr), perhaps the most commonly used fertility indicator. age specifi c fertility rates (asfr) were calculated from the county-level nchs natality data (vital statistics) averaged over the period of 2007-2012, while the data on female population by age were obtained from the acs. tfr is averaged over the period of 5 years to adjust for relatively small numbers of births in certain age groups in less populated rural counties. in order to identify the most important human development indicators at the county level, we carried out several explorative analyses (not shown for parsimony). specifi cally, per each component of the human development index (wealth, health and education), we identifi ed between four and six theoretically relevant human development indicators obtained from the u.s. census or vital statistics (via acs and nchs) and conducted an exploratory factor analysis. per each indicator we selected two variables that loaded highly on one factor. to account for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation, indicators that were highly correlated with other indicators were excluded, as were indicators for which there was little or no variation across counties. thus, we obtained three factors that were interpreted by us as wealth, health and education. the variables that scored highly on health were (1) male and (2) female life expectancies at birth. the selected wealth indicators were (3) median income per capita and (4) the percentage of households with income below the poverty line. finally, the two indicators that loaded highly on education were (5) the percentages of adults 25 years and older with less than a high school education and (6) with bachelor’s degree or higher. importantly, we included an indicator that controls for the racial-ethnic composition of population – percentage of non-hispanic on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 473 whites – because fertility differs widely between racial-ethnic groups. it is also important to note that racial-ethnic minorities score signifi cantly lower on some, if not all, human development indicators in the u.s. (oliver/shapiro 2006; olshansky et al. 2012; shapiro et al. 2013). specifi cally, race gaps in longevity and education are a well-established fact (guralnik et al. 1993; olshansky et al. 2012; ryabov 2011; singh/siahpush 2014). thus, given the fi ndings of these studies, we reasoned that not controlling for racial-ethnic population composition would signifi cantly eschew our results. the distinction between urban, suburban and rural counties is based on the nchs urban-rural classifi cation scheme, which was developed for monitoring the health of urban and rural residents (for details see ingram/franco 2012). the nchs groups u.s. counties and county-equivalent entities into six urbanization levels (four metropolitan and two nonmetropolitan), on a continuum ranging from most urban to most rural. in short, counties are classifi ed as “large central metro” if they contain a metropolitan statistical area (msa) with 1 million or more inhabitants and satisfy at least one of three conditions: they (1) contain the entire population of the largest principal city of the msa, or (2) have their entire population contained in the largest principal city of the msa, or (3) contain at least 250,000 inhabitants of any principal city of the msa. according to the nchs classifi cation, the next group – “large fringe metro” – includes those urban counties that belong to msas of 1 million or more inhabitants that did not qualify as “large central metro” counties. the next two types, “medium metro” and “small metro” counties, are differentiated by population size. “medium metro” contains msas of populations from 250,000 to 999,999 and “small metro” msas have less than 250,000 inhabitants. nonmetropolitan categories are “micropolitan”, that is counties located in micropolitan statistical areas, and “noncore” – rural counties that did not qualify as “micropolitan.” the detailed description of the nchs classifi cation scheme can be found elsewhere (see ingram/ tab. 2: types of the u.s. counties by urbanicity urbanicity description nchs classifi cation urban counties in msas* with 1 million or more residents large central metro, large fringe metro suburban counties in msas* of populations of less than 1 million medium metro, small metro rural counties containing no msas* micropolitan,* noncore * in the united states, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (metro and micro areas) are geographic entities delineated by the offi ce of management and budget (omb) for use by federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing federal statistics. a metro area contains a core urban area of 50,000 or more population, and a micro area contains an urban core of at least 10,000 (but less than 50,000) population. each metro or micro area consists of one or more counties and includes the counties containing the core urban area, as well as any adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration with the urban core. source: based on nchs classifi cation • igor ryabov474 franco 2012). we simplifi ed the nchs scheme by creating three urbanization levels (see table 2). our defi nition of urban counties includes “large central metro” and “large fringe metro.” the u.s. counties classifi ed in the nchs scheme as “medium metro” and “small metro” are identifi ed by us as suburban. finally, our defi nition of rural counties encompasses nchs nonmetropolitan categories – “micropolitan” and “noncore.” 7 results table 3 gives the tfr values across the upper quartile, median, and lower quartile of each parameter (6 human development indicators plus the percentage of nonhispanic whites) for a sample of 3,145 countries during the period 2007-2012. the bivariate analyses are also presented in the graphical form in fig. 1-7. as shown in table 3, academic achievement of latino adolescents is associated with school ses and minority composition. as expected, academic achievement in schools increases with average school ses and decreases with the percentage of minority enrollment. as evident from table 3 and figures 1-7, an association between the selected human development indicators and tfr is likely, but the magnitude of the association varies depending on the variable in question. for example, the bivariate analyses indicate that a stronger association is likely between tfr and the percentage of non-hispanic whites than between tfr and life expectancy at birth (for both tab. 3: average tfr across three levels (high, medium and low)* of human development indicators in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) human development indicators low median high wealth median income (dollars in 2010) 2.15 2.05 1.92 poverty rate (% below poverty threshold) 2.13 2.04 1.93 health male life expectancy at birth (years) 2.07 2.04 2.00 female life expectancy at birth (years) 2.10 2.05 2.00 education less than high school (%) 2.11 2.04 1.96 at least bachelor’s degree (%) 2.13 2.05 1.94 population composition non-hispanic white population (%) 2.19 2.05 1.89 * high, medium and low levels correspond to upper quartile, median and lower quartile of the variable distribution. source: acs, nchs on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 475 fig. 1: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between median income in 2010 and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 20072012) $0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr median income fig. 2: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between poverty rate and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) poverty rate (% below federal poverty threshold) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr source: acs, nchs • igor ryabov476 fig. 3: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between male life expectancy at birth and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr male life expectancy (years) fig. 4: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between female life expectancy at birth and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) female life expectancy (years) 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr source: acs, nchs on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 477 fig. 5: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between percentage of adults with less than high school and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr fig. 6: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between percentage of adults with at least bachelor’s degree and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) at least bachelor’s degree (%) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr source: acs, nchs less than high school (%) • igor ryabov478 women and men). compared to tfr at the lowest quartile of male and female life expectancy (2.07 and 2.09, respectively), tfr corresponding to the lowest quartile of the distribution of percent non-hispanic white is 2.19. generally, the interquartile range in tfr is higher by at least a factor of two for the percentage of non-hispanic whites and wealth indicators than for longevity indicators. another noteworthy fact is that higher wealth, longevity and education correspond to lower levels of tfr, thus suggesting a pattern consistent with the dtt. the means of all variables by county type are shown in table 4. the comparison of means between urban, suburban and rural counties reveals that there are quite a few urban-rural disparities in fertility and human development indicators. the fi rst noteworthy feature is that tfr is signifi cantly higher (p<0.01) in suburban and rural counties than in urban counties. compared to suburban and rural counties, urban counties are characterized by signifi cantly higher incomes, lower poverty rates, higher female life expectancy, lower shares of adults without a high school degree and higher shares of adults with a college degree (bachelor’s or above). it is important to note that we also found signifi cant differences between suburban and rural counties in income and educational attainment. additionally, urbanites tend to be more racially diverse than residents of suburban and rural counties. the share of non-hispanic white population was 74.5 percent in rural counties, as compared to 53.7% in urban counties. suburban counties occupied an intermediate position with respect to this parameter (64.0 percent). fig. 7: scatter plot and exponential trend line of the association between percentage of non-hispanic white population and tfr in the u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 tfr white not latino population (%) source: acs, nchs on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 479 multivariate results are presented in tables 5 and 6. table 5 models tfr as a function of seven predictors – median income per capita, population living in poverty (%), male life expectancy, female life expectancy, adult population with less than high school education (%), adult population with bachelor’s degree or higher (%) and non-hispanic population (%) – in urban, suburban and rural counties, correspondingly. each column in table 5 shows the same regression model run on urban, suburban and rural counties. in contrast to table 5, which shows the analyses conducted on three groups of counties, table 6 presents an aggregate picture, predicting tfr in all u.s. counties. multivariate regression model 1 in table 6 is the same as the models in table 5. model 2 of table 6 is the expansion of model 1. in addition to the aforementioned predictors, it includes the urbanicity level (reference: rural). turning to table 5 fi rst, observe that only one of the two effects monitoring wealth – income – is consistently signifi cant in all table 5 models. income is found to be conducive to higher fertility in urban counties (at p<0.01). at the same time, the association between income and tfr is negative in suburban and rural counties (at p<0.05). the effect for male longevity is negative and highly signifi cant, but only in rural counties. a negative association is also observed between life expectancy for females and period fertility in suburban and rural counties. however, longevity, regardless of gender differences, does not seem to matter when predicting variations tab. 4: means of study variables by u.s. county type (n=3,145; 2007-2012) study variables u.s. counties urban suburban rural all (n=436) (n=731) (n=1,976) (n=3,143) outcome variables total fertility rate 1.87ac 2.08a 2.15c 2.05 independent variables wealth median income (2010 dollars) $34,974ac $28,980ab $25,383bc $29,103 poverty rate (% below poverty threshold) 14.6ac 15.4a 16.8c 15.4 health male life expectancy at birth (years) 75.3 75.0 74.6 74.9 female life expectancy at birth (years) 81.8ac 80.3a 79.7c 80.1 education less than high school (%) 12.2ac 14.3ab 16.8bc 14.5 at least bachelor’s degree (%) 33.3ac 28.4ab 23.8bc 28.0 population composition non-hispanic white population (%) 53.7ac 64.0ab 74.5bc 64.6 note: bonferroni method of comparing multiple means was used in the analysis. a difference in the means signifi cant at p < 0.05 between urban and suburban counties. b difference in the means signifi cant at p < 0.05 between suburban and rural counties. c difference in the means signifi cant at p < 0.05 between urban and rural counties. source: acs, nchs • igor ryabov480 in period fertility among urban counties. on educational attainment measures, u.s. counties seem to be split along the suburban/rural line. only in rural counties is the percentage of adults who have not fi nished high school positively related to tfr. in urban and suburban counties, the other indicator of educational level is signifi cant – that of highest level of attainment. urban and suburban counties with lower percentages of adults with college degrees are predicted to have lower fertility. all in all, populations of those urban and suburban counties that are better educated are more likely to have lower period fertility. the effect of the share of non-hispanic white population is uniformly negative across u.s. counties, regardless of their urbanity level. thus, u.s. counties with signifi cant shares of minority populations are likely to have higher fertility. considered together, the fi ndings presented in table 5 show that in rural and suburban counties, wealth, health and education are inversely study variables urban suburban rural counties counties counties (n=436) (n=731) (n=1,976) wealth median income 0.16*** -0.12** -0.12*** (0.06) (0.05) (0.03) poverty rate -0.06 0.08 0.04 (0.05) (0.04) (0.03) health male life expectancy at birth 0.07 0.05 -0.12*** (0.06) (0.04) (0.03) female life expectancy at birth 0.07 -0.11* -0.07* (0.05) (0.05) (0.03) education less than high school 0.06 0.08 0.11*** (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) at least bachelor’s degree -0.12*** -0.10* -0.05 (0.05) (0.05) (0.04) population composition non-hispanic white population -0.15*** -0.23*** -0.14*** (0.05) (0.07) (0.04) pearson’s r2 0.169 0.156 0.170 tab. 5: unstandardized regression coeffi cients and their standard errors (in parenthesis) in ols regression models predicting total fertility rate in, suburban and rural counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01 source: acs, nchs on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 481 related to tfr. whether this holds true for all u.s. counties or county equivalents is further investigated below (see table 6). in model 1 of table 6, there are four signifi cant (p<0.05) effects. per capita income, female life expectancy at birth, percentage of college-educated, and percentage of non-hispanic whites are all negatively associated with tfr. finally, the full model adds two dummies for urbanicity – urban and suburban (rural is the reference category). while the effect for suburban is not signifi cant, the effect for urban counties is signifi cant and negative. consistent with earlier studies (e.g., glenn/ hill 1977; lesthaeghe/neidert 2006; westoff 1954), this fi nding suggests that urban tab. 6: unstandardized regression coeffi cients and their standard errors (in parenthesis) in ols regression models predicting total fertility rate in all u.s. counties (n=3,145; 2007-2012) study variables model 1 model 2 wealth median income -0.12** -0.12** (0.04) (0.04) poverty rate 0.08 0.08 (0.03) (0.03) health male life expectancy at birth 0.05 0.05 (0.03) (0.03) female life expectancy at birth -0.11* -0.11* (0.03) (0.03) education less than high school 0.08 0.08 (0.03) (0.03) at least bachelor’s degree -0.12** -0.14*** (0.03) (0.03) population composition non-hispanic white population -0.18*** -0.15*** (0.04) (0.04) urbanicity (reference: rural) urban -0.12*** (0.05) suburban 0.08 (0.04) pearson’s r2 0.171 0.174 *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01 source: acs, nchs • igor ryabov482 populations tend to have lower fertility. all in all, the results presented in table 6 are quite similar to those presented in table 5. controlling for population racial-ethnic composition, the relationship between human development indicators and fertility is likely to be negative across suburban and rural counties as well as in the unites states as a whole. 8 discussion the determinants of fertility in industrialized societies are a recurrent topic in public policy debates on demographic policy (balbo et al. 2013). one largely unsettled issue concerns the impact of human development on fertility in these countries. although conventional wisdom posited a negative and resistant correlation between human development and fertility, recent evidence seems to contradict this assertion (goldstein et al. 2009; myrskylä et al. 2009). myrskylä et al. (2009) argue that in advanced industrialized countries, further development halts the declining fertility rates. another issue, often overlooked, is the impact of the place of residence on reproductive behaviour (sharlin 1986). urban–rural differences both in human development and fertility have long been recognized (bradshaw 1987; glenn/hill 1977; london/smith 1988). specifi cally, it is largely assumed that urbanites tend to have smaller families than rural residents (caldwell 1982; glenn/hill 1977; sharlin 1986). in the context of the united states, strong regional contrasts have been found with respect to fertility and family formation patterns between more and less urbanized areas (glenn/hill 1977; lesthaeghe/neidert 2006). in the present paper, we addressed the question of whether there is an association between the spatial pattern of human development and period fertility in the united states at the county level. in order to address this question, we simultaneously engaged with the issues of geographic scale, urbanicity-rurality and a choice of socio-economic factors that defi ne the concept of human development. six human development indicators – male life expectancy, female life expectancy, median income per capita, the share of population below poverty line, the shares of adults without high school diploma and with bachelor’s degree or higher – were selected as the ones representing the three domains of human development (wealth, health and education) and were regressed on tfr. the analyses were conducted separately for urban, suburban and rural counties. following myrskylä et al. 2009, we hypothesized that, holding all else constant, counties with elevated levels of human development would have higher levels of period fertility as well. in other words, we expected to fi nd a positive association between human development indicators and tfr. on the basis of literature documenting various degrees of association between spatial patterns of urbanicity-rurality and fertility (e.g., cochrane 1983; glenn/hill 1977; lesthaeghe/neidert 2006; sharlin 1986), we also expected that tfr should be lower in urban rather than rural counties. our results reveal a pattern somewhat consistent across suburban and rural counties of a negative association between wealth, health and education, on the one hand, and period fertility, on the other. hence, all things considered, our research on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 483 hypothesis derived from myrskylä et al. (2009) did not hold in the case of suburban and rural u.s. counties. rather, our fi ndings provide evidence of support for the dtt and sdt theoretical models. the analyses carried out on all counties also showed that, as predicted at the outset, urban counties tend to have lower fertility. urban setting is also unique in that only one human development indicator – the share of adults with at least bachelor’s degree – was found to have a negative effect on tfr in urban counties. moreover, income in urban counties is found to be positively associated with the outcome variable. in other words, the effects of wealth and education on period fertility in the urban united states seem to be in different directions. apart from this, the effect of the ethnic composition of the population seems to be quite relevant in urban as well as rural settings. u.s. counties with lower percentage of non-hispanic whites tend to have lower period fertility, ceteris paribus. this result confi rms that there are clear differences in period fertility between the major racial-ethnic groups in the u.s. and these differences exist not only at the individual but also at the regional (county) level. it must be mentioned here that fertility differentials along racial and ethnic lines have existed in the united states for a long time and there have been identifi ed a number of analytical hypotheses concerning fertility differentials (lichter et al. 2012; parrado 2011). although a full discussion of these hypotheses lies beyond the scope of the present study, we have to mention that racial and ethnic group differences in the distribution of social and economic resources are often credited as the main factor responsible for the persistent racial and ethnic fertility differentials in the u.s. (parrado/flippen 2012; sweeney/raley 2014). while we must be careful not to overstate the importance of these fi ndings given the limited explanatory power of our statistical models, it is worth noting that in u.s. urban areas the relationship between human development and fertility is not negative, as is likely to be the case in suburban and rural areas. it is also reasonable to assume that the trend toward low fertility in urban areas is not irreversible. theoretically, further increases in economic development could bring about a fertility rebound in u.s. urban areas. however, a growing share of college graduates can offset this rebound. it is also possible that, due to high costs of living in urban areas, only high-income families can afford to stay in urban areas while their families are growing, while families of lesser means allocate to suburban areas. that would also explain why in urban areas the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree correlates with lower tfr while income does not. all in all, the analyses carried out in urban setting lend as much support to the sdt theory (e.g., lesthaeghe/ neidert 2006) as to the thesis put forward by myrskylä et al. (2009). this research has limitations. to begin with, human development and fertility variations are highly interconnected. although the present study assumes that period fertility is determined by socio-economic development, there are arguments in the literature concerning the ways in which fertility impacts socio-economic outcomes (e.g., reher 2011). secondly, period fertility measures like tfr are known to suffer from “tempo distortion” (bongaarts/feeney 1998; bongaarts/sobotka 2012). although we do acknowledge that there is a discrepancy between period fertility measures and cohort experiences, we also need to point out the fact that intra• igor ryabov484 regional differences in fertility are stable over time (jones/tertilt 2008; pratt et al. 1984). for example, urban-rural differences in period fertility in the u.s. have been noted since the 1950s (jones/tertilt 2008; westoff 1954).thirdly, we did not account for the fact that some women can change residence during their pregnancy. many rural areas do not have high-quality health personnel or facilities and, therefore, quite a few women residing in rural areas would prefer to travel to another, usually, suburban county for delivery and even for post-partum care (starfi eld/shi 2004). although proximity to clinics that offer high-quality care is an important factor for pregnant women, anonymity is also an issue that is usually taken into consideration by adolescent mothers. some women prefer to travel to more distant health care centres in order to ensure that their identity will not be revealed (parkes et al. 2004). therefore, it is possible that some births are registered in a county where the mother did not reside. fourthly, we did not account for the modifi able areal unit problem (maup), a bias resulting from the arbitrariness of the geographical partition used. the essence of the maup is that there are many ways to draw boundaries to demarcate space into discrete units, such as the u.s. counties, and the way boundaries are drawn conditions the choice of statistical approaches. finally, we used only a few measures that are meant to capture the concept of “human development”. we cannot rule out the possibility that the results could have been different, had we used different human development indicators. from the perspective of future research, it is advisable to focus on contextual factors of regional differences in human development and fertility. clarifying the contextual factors of the human development process is crucial for the investigation of the geographic patterns of development and fertility. this applies no less to empirical investigation than to theoretical analysis. further investigation is also warranted to assess spatial dependence and spatial autocorrelation in human development and fertility. according to our preliminary analyses (not shown), period fertility levels in nearby counties are more similar to each other than those in distant counties, regardless of urbanicity. geographic information system (gis) models can address this problem by modeling spatial dependency. references acayaba, cíntia; oliveira, mariana 2013: municipal hdi of brazil grows 47,5% in 20 years, appoints undp (in portuguese). brasília, g1, globo; july 29, 2013 [url: http:// g1.globo.com/brasil/noticia/2013/07/idh-municipal-do-brasil-cresce-475-em-20-anosaponta-pnud.html]. anand, sudhir; sen, amartya 1994: human development index: methodology and measurement. no. hdocpa-1994-02. human development report offi ce (hdro), united nations development programme (undp). balbo, nicoletta; billari, francesco c.; mills, melinda 2013: fertility in advanced societies: a review of research. in: european journal of population 29: 1-38 [doi: 10.1007/ s10680-012-9277-y]. on the relationship between development and fertility: the case of the united states • 485 becker, gary s.; murphy, kevin m.; tamura, robert 1994: human capital, fertility, and economic growth. in: becker, gary s. 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(eds): population and family in the low countries, 1993: late fertility and other current issues, nidi, cbgs. amsterdam: swets and zeitlinger: 81-126. westoff, clyde f. 1954: differential fertility in the united states: 1900 to 1952. in: american sociological review 19,5: 549-561. williams, david r.; collins, chiquita 1995: u.s. socioeconomic and racial differences in health: patterns and explanations. in: annual review of sociology 21: 349-386. zelinsky, wilbur 2011: not yet a placeless land: tracking an evolving american geography. amherst, ma: university of massachusetts press. date of submission: 11.02.2015 date of acceptance: 08.07.2015 dr. igor ryabov (). the university of texas – pan american department of sociology. edinburg. usa. e-mail: ryabovi@utpa.edu url: http://portal.utpa.edu/utpa_main/daa_home/cosbs_home/sociology_home/ faculty_staff published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants: a comparison between germany and spain during the economic crisis dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu abstract: since the start of the global economic downturn, germany and spain have experienced highly-divergent impacts of the crisis on the labour market in general and on immigrant workers in particular. this can be mainly explained by looking at the economic growth patterns prior to the crisis. spain’s higher, more labour-intensive growth was enabled by growth in the labour supply that was fuelled by immigration and fostered by a de facto permissive immigration policy, while restrictive migration policy prevented growth in labour supply in germany and encouraged more capital-intensive growth in which both germans with a low level of skills, and immigrants in particular, found it diffi cult to integrate. we therefore argue that institutional features of the labour market promoted these patterns. the high level of importance of the temporary and informal labour market segments in spain which were hit hardest by the crisis placed immigrant workers and young workers in a vulnerable position. the economic crisis has made parts of the population more sceptical about immigration in both countries. however, there appear to be no links between the severity of the crisis and public debates on migration. although spain was defi nitely hit harder by the crisis than germany, and immigrants were affected more severely, public debates on migration and integration issues seem to be at least as fi erce in germany as in spain. the legacy of past migrations and migration policies exerts a more signifi cant infl uence on the public perception of migration as a risk than economic factors do. keywords: immigration · labour market · economic crisis · germany · spain 1 introduction the global economic crisis affected countries all over the world, and particularly impacted european states with regard to their immigrant populations. however, the effects differed from one country to another – spain is among those economies which comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 55-76 (date of release: 14.06.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-13en1 • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu56 were affected more severely, and germany is among those leading the recovery. in 2010, two years after the outbreak of the global economic crisis in the autumn of 2008, germany is showing a relatively favourable employment situation, with only 7 % unemployment, while spain’s unemployment rate tops 20 %. the difference is even more marked with regard to foreign nationals: germany registers decreasing numbers of unemployed foreign nationals, while in spain these numbers have multiplied. at the same time, a heated debate about integration issues is going on in germany. economic meltdown in spain seems to have swept immigration topics out of the media, and the debate on integration issues is only an emerging topic in the public domain. in this paper, we sketch the differing effects of the economic crisis on the labour markets in spain and germany and explore how it affects immigrant labour market integration and the discussion on immigrants in public debates, referring to eurostat data and published studies. labour market developments are conceptualized as the interplay between labour supply and labour demand as infl uenced by institutional structures, with labour supply being infl uenced among other things by immigration which is enabled by migration policies, and labour demand being infl uenced by global and domestic demand for products and services. we show, fi rstly, how production and employment developed during the last decade, which encompassed a boom period and a decline period (section 2), before we highlight the impact of restrictive policies on migration (section 3). we then sketch relevant institutional and sectoral features of the labour market comparatively (section 4) in order to explain the general patterns and in particular the differential impact of the economic crisis on the labour market integration of foreign nationals (section 5). lastly, we question the existence of a close relationship between economic crisis and public debates on immigration (section 6). 2 development of growth and employment levels for years, the german economy had lower growth rates than the eu average, and considerably lower growth rates than the spanish economy. growth rates converged from the last quarter of 2008 onwards (which we consider as the beginning of the global economic crisis). declines in gross domestic product (gdp) of around 4 % were observed on average in the european union, germany and spain in 2009. estimates for 2010 indicate a quicker recovery in germany than in spain, and eurostat forecasts that this trend will persist (see fig. 1). behind the growth rates, there are widely-diverging growth patterns in terms of employment and productivity. prior to the crisis, the spanish economy grew almost exclusively through expanding employment (annual average of 5.3 % during 1998-2007), creating 6.5 million additional jobs between 1998 and 2007, while real labour productivity per hour worked expanded by an average of only 0.9 % (godenau 2010: 6-10). germany’s gdp growth added 2.7 million jobs during the same period (0.8 %), but with a much greater increase in productivity (1.6 %). the crisis reduced real labour productivity in germany due to lower hours worked by the averlabour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 57 age employee. measured productivity in spain grew as the destruction of employment was more intense than the reduction in output. the different patterns of growth can be partly attributed to different sectoral growth patterns. table 1 shows the sectoral distribution of employment growth (see table 1). the economic sectors contributed differently towards growth at the beginning of the millennium, and they have been affected differently by the international crisis. construction and real estate activities in spain lost nearly a quarter of their total employment between 2008 and 2009. prices and production in these sectors had been infl ated, creating a ‘bubble’. the bursting of the bubble marked the start of the crisis. agriculture, manufacturing and ‘other services’ are among the sectors that shed large numbers of workers in germany. in general, sectors with the most considerable employment growth before the crisis lost most employment during the crisis in both countries. fig. 1: growth rates of gdp volume in germany and spain (percentage yearon-year change) -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 (e ) 20 11 (e ) eu (27 countries) germany spain percent note: (e) – 2010 and 2011 estimates source: eurostat national accounts • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu58 tab. 1: employment shares and growth rates in germany and spain* share 2007 growth 1998-2007 sectors (nace 1)1 germany spain germany spain total – all nace 1 activities 100.0 100.0 7.5 47.4 agriculture, forestry and fishing 2.2 4.5 -13.1 -13.0 industry (except construction) 23.2 16.0 -2.4 14.6 construction 6.6 13.3 -19.4 97.0 services 67.9 66.2 16.3 57.8 wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods 14.0 15.4 4.8 37.4 hotels and restaurants 3.8 7.1 27.5 72.1 transport, storage and communication 5.6 5.8 12.3 43.1 financial intermediation 3.4 2.5 3.9 44.4 real estate, renting and business activities 10.3 9.9 52.8 119.8 public administration and defence; compulsory social security 7.6 6.1 -5.0 42.1 education; health; other service activities; activities of households; extra-territorial organizations 23.3 19.5 21.7 61.1 education 5.9 5.5 14.4 34.8 health and social work 11.4 6.0 28.2 65.1 other community, social and personal service activities 5.4 4.2 15.4 65.1 activities of households 0.5 3.8 55.5 106.9 share 2009 growth 2008-2009 sectors (nace 2) germany spain germany spain total – all nace 2 activities 100.0 100.0 -0.2 -6.8 agriculture, forestry and fishing 1.7 4.2 -6.0 -4.0 industry (except construction) 22.1 14.7 -2.6 -13.3 construction 6.6 10.0 0.1 -23.0 wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles 13.5 15.7 -0.5 -7.1 transportation and storage 4.7 4.8 -1.2 -5.6 accommodation and food service activities 3.9 7.5 2.1 -2.2 information and communication 3.2 2.7 -0.4 -7.8 financial and insurance activities 3.5 2.5 0.6 -6.6 real estate activities 0.7 0.5 23.4 -23.2 professional, scientific and technical activities 4.9 4.5 3.3 -2.7 administrative and support service activities 5.0 4.7 4.5 -3.1 public administration and defence; compulsory social security 7.2 7.2 0.2 7.1 education 6.2 6.1 1.3 1.0 human health and social work activities 11.8 7.0 3.6 4.9 arts, entertainment and recreation 1.4 1.6 0.6 -1.7 other service activities 3.0 2.2 -13.6 -1.6 activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goodsand services-producing activities of households for own use 0.5 3.8 -6.0 -3.6 * comparison of employment of all persons age 15 years and older as measured by eurostat in labour force surveys 1 different classifi cations due to changes in statistical classifi cation of economic activities in the eu (nace 1 —> nace 2) source: own calculation based on eurostat labour force surveys labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 59 3 development of migration under the infl uence of migration policies both germany and spain are characterized by a progressively ageing work force. spain still has a slightly younger population, but fertility reduction has been profound, and has placed spain among the countries with the lowest fertility rate in the world (less than 1.2 children per woman 1995-2000), despite a small rise observed in 2006 (1.35 children per woman) (roig vila/castro martín 2007: 351). educational levels are high and continue to grow among the younger population in both countries, conditioning rising wage and employment expectations according to educational level. both countries continuously had a large number of unemployed persons, but encountered considerable diffi culties when it came to organising the labour market integration of these spare workers. in such a context, the exceptional spanish employment growth at the beginning of the millennium would not have been possible without immigration, which was enabled by a de facto permissive immigration policy. new legal immigration opportunities for gaining access to the labour market were opened up by the immigration law of 2004 through the introduction of annual quotas for labour immigration. during the extraordinary regularisation campaign of 2005, about 692,000 irregular migrants were regularized. in spite of somewhat increasing efforts to combat the shadow economy, the informal sector is still relatively large, offering employment opportunities for irregular migrants. spanish policies towards irregular residents are characterized by focusing on preventing new entries over the borders and securing migrants’ basic rights such as healthcare and schooling for minors already in the country. during the crisis, the spanish government introduced ‘pay-to-go’ programmes targeting third-country nationals, thereby subsidizing the return of unemployed immigrants and promising them favourable return options after fi ve years, but programme take-up was limited to a small number of individuals.1 recruitment of new foreign workers has been reduced by cutting the quota in the immigration law and suspending the bilateral hiring agreements with countries of origin (ferrero-turrión/ lópez-sala 2010: 174). in contrast, german migration policies did not allow for growth in the labour supply through immigration in the past. the 2005 immigration act (‘zuwanderungsgesetz’) provided a more consistent, simplifi ed framework for immigration, but it basically consolidated the previous restrictive policies with regard to labour market access for regular migrants. new opportunities were opened up only for highlyskilled immigrants with job offers involving high earnings and for foreign graduates of german universities. the labour migration control act (‘arbeitsmigrationssteuerungsgesetz’) of 2009 demonstrates the government’s efforts in calling for 1 1,821 immigrants participated in the voluntary return programme for immigrants in socially precarious situations (previe) in 2008, and the number increased to 3,297 in 2009. the programme for the early payment of unemployment benefi ts to foreigners (apre) was taken up by 8,724 applicants in 2009, plus 1,581 relatives who accompanied these people back home (ferrero-turrión/lópez-sala 2010: 172). • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu60 action to make sure that the ‘best brains’ are brought into the german labour market. according to this legal amendment, access to the labour market was facilitated both for highly-skilled workers from the new member states (eu-12), which were still subject to transitional restrictions, and also for specifi ed classes of third-country nationals (koehler et al. 2010: 29). efforts to combat employment in the shadow economy were consolidated. in 2004, labour market control was integrated in the ‘finanzkontrolle schwarzarbeit’ (directly translated as financial control of illicit employment), when civil inspection units became part of the police-like inspection units of the customs offi ce. being already quite restrictive, migration policies did not change during the crisis.2 the two countries implemented different policies with regard to intra-eu labour migration for the new member states of the european union. germany made full use of transitional periods for seven years, restricting access to the labour market fig. 2: net immigration in germany and spain, 1998 to 2008 -100,000 0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 germany spain people source: eurostat international migration and asylum statistics 2 for german and spanish reactions to the crisis, see also the “ad-hoc query on the actions/ policy measures taken in migration management as the reaction to global crisis” of 22 july 2009 http://emn.sarenet.es/downloads/prepareshowfiles.do?entrytitle=4.%20emn%20adhoc%20queries labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 61 for immigrants from the new eu member states in the enlargement waves of 2004 (eight out of ten new member states) and 2007 (romania and bulgaria). spain used a two-year transitional period in both cases, and has thus created unrestricted access to the labour market for citizens from the new eu member states since 2009, but has since reversed its position. as a consequence of these different migration policies, immigration has taken on distinctly divergent features in the recent past. immigration grew strongly in spain during the economic boom, and particularly between 2000 and 2007, while germany’s net immigration was exceptionally low, in comparison both to spain and to earlier periods of germany’s post-war migration history (see fig. 2). the percentage of the foreign population in spain has been higher than that in germany since 2006 due to the recent massive infl ux (see fig. 3). germany has experienced peak immigration on various occasions in the past, and has consolidated a permanent presence of foreign nationals (loeffelholz 2002). it should be noted that the spanish fi gures also include a large share of the irregular resident population. municipal registration is possible regardless of migration status, and enables access to be had to basic healthcare services, and may serve as a proof of residence in case of a regularisation campaign (gonzález-enríquez 2009). in germany, municipal registration is only possible for regular migrants (cyrus fig. 3: percentage of the foreign population in germany and spain, 2000-2009 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 germany spain percent source: own calculation based on eurostat international migration and asylum statistics • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu62 2009: 9). however, estimates indicate low numbers and a declining trend for the irregular resident population in germany. if we recalculate the percentage of foreign nationals in germany for 2009 to include the maximum estimate of irregular migrants of 330,000 by vogel and gelbrich (2010), the percentage of foreign nationals in the population increases only slightly, from 8.8 to 9.1 %. the immigration profi les of the two countries are different. spain’s immigration is dominated by labour motives and migrants of non-european origin (with romania forming the most relevant exception). the settlement duration of most immigrants is still short; activity rates are high and education levels relatively low (at least in terms of recognized qualifi cations). among non-european origins, the latin american countries have been dominant, and language barriers are low in most of these cases. in germany’s immigrant population, most foreign nationals have been residents for a longer time and come from non-german-speaking countries. former immigration peaks in the 1960s (migration from turkey) and the late 1980s to the early 1990s (migration from eastern europe) constitute the principal factors infl uencing the current population of foreign citizenship. while both countries’ immigration consists of infl ows mainly triggered by labour demand, family reunifi cation, educational purposes and asylum-seeking, it is in spain that labour demand has played and continues to play a more important role (see table 2). 4 institutional structures of the labour market labour market outcomes are a result of the interplay between supply and demand in a market that is heavily infl uenced by the institutional features of the labour market.3 3 the institutional settings of national labour markets can introduce signifi cant differences in terms of how supply and demand will interact and produce market outcomes (bassanini/duval 2006; furceri/mourougane 2009). the most relevant aspects are unemployment benefi ts, tax wedges, wage bargaining systems, active labour market programmes, minimum wage fl oors and short-time working schemes (jean/jiménez 2007). labour market outcomes for migrants are also infl uenced by these general institutional aspects (jean et al. 2007). tab. 2: valid permits by reason in germany and spain, 2009 (%) reason germany spain total 100.0 100.0 family reasons 36.7 19.7 educational reasons 3.2 1.4 remunerated activities reasons 1.8 29.8 other reasons 58.3 49.1 source: own calculation based on eurostat international migration and asylum statistics labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 63 the state infl uences conditions by legislating minimum conditions and providing (or not providing) effective institutions for the enforcement of such conditions, as well as by providing unemployment benefi t schemes and active labour market policies. in addition, the strength and organisational structures of trade unions shape the wage-setting process and infl uence whether employees can fi nd help in case their employment rights have been violated. the combined effect of such factors is crucial for labour market outcomes, although it is debatable as to which features in the complex interaction are most important. the oecd developed a summary indicator of employment protection strictness, including 21 basic items which can be classifi ed in three main areas: (i) protection of regular workers against individual dismissal; (ii) regulation of temporary forms of employment; and (iii) specifi c requirements for collective dismissals. the information refers to employment protection provided through legislation and as a result of enforcement processes. both germany and spain reduced their levels of protection strictness during the nineties, but still differ from less highly-regulated economies such as the united states. the united states show the lowest value in this indicator among oecd countries in 2008 (0.85), while spain (3.11) has a slightly higher level of protection than germany (2.63). this latter difference is due to stricter regulation of temporary forms of employment in spain than in germany, and not to the protection of permanent workers against (individual) dismissal or specifi c requirements for collective dismissal. although temporary workers may be protected effectively during their contracts, this does not protect workers from unemployment when their contract runs out in a period of employment reduction. this has major implications for understanding the different effects had by the crisis in the german and the spanish labour markets respectively.4 to explain such differences, we propose to conceptualise the labour market as consisting of three segments,5 with considerably higher entry barriers between segments than within segments: the • permanent segment, characterized by permanent contracts. this is dominated by a high proportion of relatively well-skilled, well-paid jobs, many of which are in manufacturing and the public service. older employees dominate, either because they acquired permanent contracts before the liberalisation of the labour market, or because temporary entry-level jobs lead to permanent employment. 4 as bentolila et al. (2010: 322) point out, “there are good reasons for suspecting that this eps index, based as it is on legal norms and not on usual application, is misleading in the spanish case. the de facto employment protection strictness in temporary employment is much lower in spain than in france, while the opposite applies to eps in permanent employment” [translation by the authors]. they add (p. 323) that in spain “there are no restrictions de facto: the authorities hardly supervise whether fi rms comply with established conditions for temporary contracts” [translation by the authors]. 5 the degree of segmentation is often referred to in discussions about these issues as ‘dualism’, given that only two segments are differentiated (jean et al. 2007: 22). we prefer to speak of labour market segmentation rather than of dualism. • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu64 the • temporary segment, characterized by fi xed-term contracts. this includes entry-level jobs in all sectors, and is specifi cally important in sectors such as the services, construction and agriculture, where wage and labour conditions are generally less favourable than in manufacturing and the public service. as new entrants to the labour market, younger employees and migrants are overrepresented. the • informal segment, characterized by the absence of formal contracts. this is dominated by low-paid jobs requiring low skill levels, mainly in construction, agriculture and services, with a considerable proportion of domestic work in private households, virtually all of which is part of the informal economy. spain and germany differ considerably with regard to the importance of these labour market segments. the size of the informal economy is diffi cult to measure, but there are some indications that it is bigger in spain than that in germany.6 temporary employment in spain was more than twice that in germany in 2006 (34.1 as against 14.5 % of all employees). the percentage declined sharply in spain to about 25 %, indicating that net job losses were much more pronounced in the temporary segment. the percentage remained constant in germany, this possibly being explained by the fact that job losses in the temporary sector balanced with employers’ reluctance to commit themselves to new permanent contracts due to the crisis (see fig. 4). job losses in the permanent segment in germany were mitigated by short-time working schemes. such programmes give incentives to employers to adjust to temporarily lower production levels by cutting the numbers of hours worked instead of cutting the numbers of persons employed (oecd 2010). such programmes are highly effective when it comes to their mitigating effects when lower production levels are really temporary as expected, but they may also delay the impact of the crisis and make it more persistent (duval et al. 2007: 25). as export production soon recovered in the crisis, short-time work subsidy schemes are considered to have worked well in this crisis in germany (myunghee kim 2010: 93). while 1.5 million workers were in short-time working schemes by may 2009, their number decreased to 0.8 million by december the same year (statistisches bundesamt 2010). labour market segmentation also indicates that the economic recession affected the gender composition of the migrant workforce differently. researchers pointed out in a recent iom report (koehler et al. 2010) that male-dominated sectors such as construction (in the temporary or informal segment) have seen a rising unemployment rate, while more female-dominated sectors such as healthcare (in the permanent segment) still demand continuing infl ows of labour. as a consequence, more women than men immigrated to eu countries during the economic crisis. the 6 there are different indicators of the share accounted for by the informal economy. unfortunately, there are reliability problems with all the indicators, and many indicators are available for either spain or germany, but not for both. see andrews et al. for a discussion of measurement issues and the available indicators (2011). labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 65 percentage of female foreign workers among the total foreign workforce rose in spain from 49 % to 53 % between 2007 and 2009 (koehler et al. 2010: 21), while in germany the high growth rates of unemployment are in those traditionally strong german industries (such as electrical and automobile manufacturing) in the permanent segment which are dominated by a native male workforce. consequently, the german government subsidized a job protection programme targeting this group (koehler et al. 2010). meanwhile, it is also suggested that migrant workers adjust to the worsening employment situation by switching to other labour market segments. migrant construction workers were believed to seek employment in the self-employed informal segment in spain, which led to a 15 % increase in the labour force in agriculture and services in 2009 compared to that of 2008 (koehler et al. 2010: 21). immigrant integration policies in the labour market, defi ned as specifi c policies promoting labour market integration (for example courses for occupational skill adjustment), have not been analysed in detail for this article. although the arguments that have been put forward indicate the strong presence of other factors than integration policies, integration policies may play a signifi cant role in the aftermath of the crisis. economic restructuring takes place more rapidly during an economic crisis, and immigrants who came to fi ll job vacancies with lower skill requirements fig. 4: temporary employees as a percentage of the total number of employees in germany and spain, 1998-2009 (%) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 germany spain percent source: eurostat labour force surveys • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu66 may fi nd it diffi cult to adjust to changing labour markets. in addition, new immigrants continue to arrive during the crisis for reasons such as family unifi cation. experts warn that the timing of such immigration causes a lasting ‘scarring effect’ as skills deteriorate if new immigrants do not fi nd immediate access to the labour market (papademetriou et al. 2010: 16). for them, integration programmes are of major importance. as a consequence of the fi scal consolidation born out of the crisis, many public services and also integration programmes are reduced. the spanish government cut the national budget dedicated to integration policies by 50 % between 2009 and 2010 (ferrero-turrión/lópez-sala 2010: 179). 5 labour market integration of immigrants labour market integration implies economic convergence between the native and foreign populations. only employment and unemployment are used as indicators in this brief overview. foreigners are usually harder struck in times of economic recession than natives. among migrants, recent entrants to the labour market are usually more strongly affected by economic downturns, and this is more the case if recent entrants are only offered temporary jobs. this is the case in spain, where many recently arrived migrants were offered temporary jobs and lost them during the crisis because a large share of the employment adjustments operated through the temporary segment of the market. figure 5 shows in comparative terms how employment of own nationals and foreign nationals (including eu citizens) has developed in germany and spain since the late 1990s. the fi gure shows that employment growth was positive in both countries from 1998 to 2007, with a higher intensity in spain. while only 14 % of employment growth in germany went to foreigners, this proportion was 39 % in spain. the offi cial estimation of the spanish government (ofi cina económica del presidente de gobierno 2006) shows that immigration was responsible for 40 % of gdp growth between 2001 and 2005, and also contributed to employment growth among nationals. the crisis reduced the employment of nationals in spain to 2004 levels, while in germany employment of nationals started to grow from 2004 onwards. the differences during the last phase of the crisis are striking, and are featured separately in figure 6. the economic crisis reduced employment in both countries, at a lower intensity in germany when compared to the extensive job destruction that took place in spain. the spanish economy shed 9.5 % of total employment between 2008 and 2010 (second quarter), while germany created 0.4 % of additional employment (eu-27 average: -2.2 %). employment destruction in spain affected foreigners with a particular ferocity (-13.3 %). in germany, on the other hand, foreign employment grew by 2.4 % in these two years and national employment by only 0.3 %. labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 67 differences in unemployment rates between foreigners and nationals are positive and substantial in both countries (see fig. 7). these gaps have been persistent over the last ten years in germany, while in spain foreign nationals had similar unemployment rates as own citizens until the crisis and unemployment rocketed from 2007 onwards. meanwhile, the unemployment rate for foreign nationals reached almost 30 % in spain in 2009, while, the unemployment rate for foreigners in germany was about 15 %. one reason is that migrant-concentrated economic sectors (such as construction) accounted for a large proportion of unemployment in spain, while in germany “foreign workers were under-represented in the industries that were hardest hit by the economic crisis” (such as metal production or car manufacturing) (koehler et al. 2010: 19-20). it is noted moreover that unemployment also increased rapidly among spanish people, reaching about 16 %. immigrants in spain were more severely affected by the crisis, but the difference between nativeborn and foreign nationals is still more pronounced in germany, when measured in fig. 5: employment by nationality in germany and spain, 1998-2009 (thousands) 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 nationals germany nationals spain foreigners total germany foreigners total spain source: own calculation based on eurostat labour force surveys • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu68 relative terms.7 the “wild ride” (bentolila et al. 2009: 1) of labour market outcomes in spain is not limited to foreign workers. it is a common attribute and affects all workers in the extensive temporary segment of the market. the strictness of employment protection in the permanent segment is partially compensated for by the fl exibility provided by the temporary segment. fig. 6: employment growth by nationality in germany and spain (%, 2nd quarters 2008-2010) -16.0 -14.0 -12.0 -10.0 -8.0 -6.0 -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 eu 27 germany spain eu 27 germany spain nationals foreigners source: own calculation based on eurostat labour force surveys 7 if measured in absolute terms (differences in percentage points between foreign and own nationals), the employment gap widened most strongly in spain (papademetriou et al. 2010: 10). labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 69 6 the public discourse on migration it is commonly assumed that migrants may easily become scapegoats in times of economic crisis because of the increasingly fi erce job competition between foreigners and nationals. the increasing popularity of the british national party and the outbreak of wildcat strikes ‘british jobs for british workers’ in the uk in february 2009 show the severe impact of the economic crisis on the public discourse on migrants. given the differentials in economic development in spain and germany, one expects negative public attitudes towards, more heated debates about and more grave concerns over migration in spain than in germany. however, evidence suggests that public attitudes towards migration did not change dramatically in the course of the economic recession. the current economic crisis has amplifi ed the voices of those who have always been sceptical of the benefi ts of immigration, as a panel of experts concludes after analysing developments in several countries including germany and spain (papademetriou et al. 2010: 15). people who considered immigration more of a problem than an opportunity increased by between 4 and 9 percentage points between 2008 fig. 7: unemployment rates by nationality in germany and spain, 1998-2009 (%) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 nationals germany nationals spain foreigners total germany foreigners total spain percent source: eurostat labour force surveys • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu70 and 2009 in several european countries (german marshall fund of the united states et al. 2009: 6). this number increased by fi ve percentage points in germany, reaching 44 % of the survey participants – an increase but not really a striking change. spain was not included in the survey until 2009, and revealed that 58 % of respondents saw immigration as rather problematic. however, the same survey indicates that immigration does not really score high among most respondents’ current concerns.8 what is strikingly different is the opinion of the government’s capacity to manage migration: 71 % of respondents in germany thought that their government was doing a good or fair job, while only 33 of the spanish sample had a positive opinion of their governments’ management capacities (german marshall fund of the united states et al. 2009: 23). to a certain degree, the economic recession even replaced migration as a focus of concern in the public discourse in some countries where migration was an issue of high salience in the pre-crisis period (such as spain and the uk) (koehler et al. 2010: 23). right-wing parties have so far not successfully mobilised along xenophobic lines in spain. issues of restricting migration and blaming migrants have come up during electoral campaigns, but right-wing parties have received less than 1 % of votes in recent elections. media debates peaked in 2006, when the number of boat people arriving rapidly increased, without taking on major momentum since the economic crisis (see fig. 8). major political debates in the eu member states are sketched in the yearly reports of the national contact point of the european migration network.9 there are no reports of major debates having been triggered by the economic crisis in germany and spain, in 2008 and 2009, but rather by ongoing legislative and institutional debates (e.g. on the spanish act on immigration in 2008 and 2009) and extraordinary news events (e.g. following the killing of a german by young men of foreign origin in 2008 in germany). the media’s framing of migration-related issues is regarded as a contributing factor to the negative public attitudes towards migration. for example, a recent study of the media coverage of british muslims between 2000 and 2008 reveals that 36 % of media stories about british muslims were related to terrorism, and that migrants (especially muslim migrants) are therefore perceived in the media discourse as being associated with threat and danger (moore et al. 2008). there were coinciding debates in both spain and germany on integration problems of immigrants with a muslim background in 2010, with debates on relaxing restrictions for the immigration of highly-skilled labour migrants in germany. the debate on the integration of muslim immigrants evolved around the book deut8 one-third of german and two-thirds of spanish respondents named the economy as the most important problem facing the country today, with immigration being indicated by only 7 % as a key issue after some other topics such as education. at the same time, similar percentages indicate that they are worried about legal migration (germany: 29 %; spain: 22 %) or illegal migration (germany: 63 %; spain: 71 %). 9 http://emn.sarenet.es/downloads/prepareshowfiles.do?entrytitle=1.%20annual%20policy%20reports labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 71 schland schafft sich ab (germany abandons itself) penned by the former socialdemocratic national bank leader thilo sarrazin (2010). the presentation as ‘taboo breaking’ was welcomed by considerable parts of the population, while researchers and immigrant organisations criticized the book for its mixture of one-sided presentation of evidence, hostility towards immigrants and xenophobia rooted in popular prejudice. for example, the expert council of german foundations on integration and migration characterized the debate as being detached from the facts and partly xenophobic, while indicating that their survey on integration showed a more pragmatic, relaxed attitude among large sections of the population (svr 2011: 28). however, the german debates are more heavily dominated by a theme of socio-cultural integration than by economic considerations (habermas 2010; pfaff 2010). the main topic of public and political debates in spain focuses on irregular migrants, and easily mixes labour market integration with cultural issues (e.g. moroccans). 6 conclusions germany and spain have experienced highly-divergent impacts of the crisis on the labour market in general, and on immigrant workers in particular. this can be mainly explained by looking at the economic growth patterns prior to the crisis. spain’s higher, more labour-intensive growth was enabled by growth in the labour supply fig. 8: evolution of public opinion on immigration as a personal or general problem for spain source: ferrero-turrión/lópez-sala 2010: 178 • dirk godenau, dita vogel, vesela kovacheva, yan wu72 that was fuelled by immigration, and fostered by an immigration policy that was de facto permissive, while restrictive migration policy prevented labour supply growth in germany and encouraged more capital-intensive growth in which low-skilled nationals, and particularly immigrants, found it diffi cult to integrate. we therefore conclude that institutional features of the labour market promoted these patterns. the high importance of the temporary and informal labour market segments in spain, which were hardest hit by the crisis, led to the vulnerable position of immigrant and young workers. the economic crisis has made parts of the population more sceptical about immigration. however, there appear to be no links between the severity of the crisis and public debates on migration. although spain was defi nitely harder hit by the crisis than germany, and immigrants were more severely affected, public debates on migration and integration issues seem to be at least as fi erce in germany as in spain. in the german case, one can expect that due to the low impact of the crisis on labour market outcomes public debates do not push migration and integration issues to the fore. as a result of the crisis, migration policies have been changed in the spanish case, and these legislative endeavours have drawn public attention. however, the legacy of past migrations and migration policies has a more signifi cant impact on the public perception of migration as a risk than economic factors do. references andrews, dan; caldera sánchez, aida; johansson, åsa 2011: towards a better understanding of the informal economy. in: oecd economics department working papers 873. oecd publishing. 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[url: http://irregular-migration.hwwi.de/ typo3_upload/groups/31/4.background_information/4.5.update_reports/update_report_germany_2010.pdf, 9.11.2011]. labour market integration and public perceptions of immigrants • 75 a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “arbeitsmarktintegration und öffentliche wahrnehmung von migranten: ein vergleich zwischen deutschland und spanien während der wirtschaftskrise”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-13de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-13de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 21.07.2011 date of acceptance: 19.01.2012 dr. dirk godenau ( ). universidad de la laguna, tenerife, spanien. e-mail: dgodenau@ull.es. url: www.ull.es dr. dita vogel. hamburgisches weltwirtschaftsinstitut, hamburg, deutschland. e-mail: vogel@hwwi.org. url: http://www.hwwi.org vesela kovacheva. hamburgisches weltwirtschaftsinstitut, hamburg, deutschland. e-mail: kovacheva@hwwi.org. url: http://www.hwwi.org dr. yan wu. swansea university, swansea, wales, uk. e-mail: y.wu@swansea.ac.uk url: http://www.swansea.ac.uk © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) new city = new friends? the restructuring of social resources after relocation natascha nisic, sören petermann abstract: despite the signifi cance of spatially proximate social contacts, there is little evidence about the effects of residential mobility on the social capital available to an individual. based on theoretical considerations of the accumulation process of social capital after relocation, we derive hypotheses about the consequences of residential mobility on social capital. firstly, we expect a partial devaluation of social capital in the origin region after the move and compensatory investments in social capital at the new location. secondly, we assume that social capital increases with the length of residence and distinguish accumulation and consolidation phases. multivariate analysis based on survey data yields the expected consequences of mobility. movers and native residents possess an equal amount of social capital; however, the composition of social capital differs between the two groups. additionally, we decompose the length of residence into several time intervals to provide evidence for both the constituting and consolidating phases in the creation of social capital. keywords: social capital · residential mobility · length of residence 1 introduction in this article, we analyse the impact of residential moves on the social capital of individuals. the background is the long-standing and controversial debate in sociology about the consequences of residential mobility on social integration. especially contributions within urban sociology and the classical “community studies” (kasarda/janowitz 1974; sampson 1988, 1991; wirth 1938) have emphasized a negative correlation. social disintegration at the collective level (characterised, for example, by a lack of solidarity, anomy, little social engagement, low interpersonal trust and high crime rates) is viewed as a consequence of heightened geographical mobility and population turnover (e.g., wirth 1938; kasarda/janowitz 1974; sampson 1988, 1991; wellman 1996; wellman et al. 1997; lai/siu 2006; putnam 2002; cf. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 1 (2013): 199-226 (date of release: 29.05.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-08en4 • natascha nisic, sören petermann 200 on anomy and disintegration durkheim 1893, 1897). these fi ndings are contrasted by more recent studies that indicate positive effects of geographical mobility on social integration. from this perspective, spatial mobility helps to replace socially predetermined social ties with voluntary relationships based on choice. these relationships enable the establishment of supportive networks that are more oriented toward actual needs, thereby opening new life chances and scopes of action and contributing to collective social and economic welfare (amato 1993; höllinger/ haller 1990; lai/siu 2006). underlying this debate over the collective social consequences of increased population movements is the association between residential mobility and availability of social capital at the individual level, which is the focus of the current article.1 it is relatively beyond dispute that residential mobility is accompanied by a restructuring of individual relationships. this results from the signifi cance of spatial proximity for access to social resources through personal ties. along with the altered geographical distance between the members of a relationship, e.g., following a residential move, the appeal of the relationship and the transaction costs of the resource exchange change. congruent with this rationale, empirical studies fi nd that personal ties are often transformed after a move (e.g., belot/ermisch 2006; levy/ wadycki 1973; lubbers et al. 2010). although theoretical arguments and empirical fi ndings consistently suggest the signifi cance of geographical proximity of personal contacts for access to social resources, the long-term transformation processes of social capital induced by residential mobility have only rarely been systematically investigated (cf. david et al. 2008; fischer 1982; mok/wellman 2007). in the present contribution, we emphasize three aspects that have not been suffi ciently considered in studies on residential mobility and social capital. the fi rst aspect relies on the notion that, analytically, social capital can be divided into structural and instrumental components. although studies have analysed migration-related changes in individual relationships and social networks (structural component) (e.g., lubbers et al. 2010), changes to the potentially available social resources (instrumental component) from these individual relationships have not yet received much attention. this presents a severe shortcoming because in the case of geographical mobility, social networks and access to resources from these relationships might fall apart (kaufmann 2002: 22; larsen et al. 2006; kan 2007). although modern transportation and communication allow the maintenance of these social relationships even across large distances, the actual support from these contacts may be limited due to the geographical distance. for example, in an emergency or coping with everyday demands, geographical proximity may be essential for gaining support. hence, for the study of the consequences of geographical mobility, 1 in mobility research, social networks mainly play a role as determinants of migration decisions (boyd 1989; bührer 1996; haug 2007; haug/pointner 2007; huinink/kley 2008; kalter 2003; kley 2009; palloni et al. 2001). in addition to other factors, local capital (davanzo 1980) and the social contacts at the places of origin and destination are identifi ed as particularly signifi cant for the mobility decision (kalter 1997: 164-166). moreover, it is shown that the effects of social contacts have specifi c impacts in different phases of life (kley 2009). new city = new friends? • 201 the focus shifts from personal networks to the practical everyday consequences of altered social embeddedness. secondly, most studies focus on a relatively short period of time, covering only a few years after the residential move. however, we consider the long-term effects on social capital and develop a phase model of the restructuring of social resources after a move. thirdly, the low total number of studies on the effects of residential mobility on social capital is mainly a consequence of the survey effort and the poor data on social resources from personal networks, especially with respect to their geographical and temporal dynamics (belot/ermisch 2006). the present study hopes to contribute to closing this gap by applying a new indicator of social capital. the so-called resource generator was developed in the netherlands (flap et al. 2003) and has not yet been employed in a german-speaking context. the current article focuses on the mobility-related accumulation and destruction processes of social capital and the agency of the actors. for this purpose, in section 2, we develop a process model of social capital formation following relocation and derive hypotheses about the restructuring processes among migrants and natives. this includes both a comparison of the social capital of migrants and natives and a dynamic perspective on the process of building and rebuilding social resources among migrants. further effects on social capital are briefl y discussed in section 3. section 4 provides a description of the data used, whereby the measurement of social capital based on the new indicator is explained in greater detail. the hypotheses-testing analyses are presented in section 5. we discuss the multivariate results on selectivity of migrants and the differences in social capital between natives and migrants. we also take into account the social capital available by network type and over time. the fi nal section presents the conclusions and a discussion of the results. 2 effects of residential mobility on social capital 2.1 social resources as social capital the social capital of individual actors consists of a structural component of personal ties and social networks, which is relatively constant and independent of exchangeable resources, and of an instrumental component of social resources, which is exchanged between the actors in social networks. personal relationships can be understood as a permanent manifestation of a series of social exchange interactions between relationship partners. social resources are only available to an individual on the basis of his network of individual connections and yield present or future returns (bourdieu 1983: 191; coleman 1990: 302; flap 1999: 7; lin 2001: 29). thus, our perspective shifts from individual relationships to potentially available resources and hence to the instrumental value of social capital that has been neglected in previous research. such resources refer to a number of material and symbolic goods, benefi ts and traits, such as information, support, assistance, infl uence and social recognition (cf. lin 2001: 43). • natascha nisic, sören petermann 202 the signifi cance of social capital especially lies in the enabling and encouragement of individuals to act. for a defi nition of social capital, we refer to lin (2001: 43): “we defi ne social resources, or social capital, as those resources accessible through social connections. social capital contains resources (e.g., wealth, power, and reputation, as well as social networks) of other individual actors to whom an individual actor can gain access through direct and indirect social ties. they are resources embedded in the ties of one’s network.” through social capital, resources are available that enhance the actors’ scope of action and contribute to the achievement of individual objectives. there is substantial evidence in the literature of the signifi cance of social capital for the socio-economic success of individual actors, e.g., for job search and labour market position (granovetter 1995; lin 2001; for an overview cf. ioannides/loury 2004), educational success of young people (furstenberg/hughes 1995), and social recognition, personal satisfaction and health (borgonovi 2010). social capital is essential for coping with everyday life and providing security (wellman/wortley 1990). because social capital is linked to benefi cial economic and social returns, rational actors have incentives to invest in social capital (kan 2007; lin 2001). investments in social capital result in an accumulation of a capital stock (glaeser et al. 2002). in addition, constant re-investments are necessary to maintain social capital or balance out the loss in value: “like human capital and physical capital, social capital depreciates if it is not renewed. social relationships die out if not maintained; expectations and obligations wither over time; and norms depend on regular communication (coleman 1990: 321).” the accumulation and the maintenance of social capital are viewed as the results of personal capacity and purposeful agency (cook/weigel 1983; freeman/ruan 1997; höllinger/haller 1990; wellman/wortley 1990). at the same time, investments in social capital generate costs in terms of time, energy and money. consequently, investments in personal relationships are particularly worthwhile if the tie is suffi ciently stable and trustable, if transaction costs are low and if they are likely to render potential future benefi ts. 2.2 comparison of social capital of natives and immigrants a residential move is a signifi cant life event that severely affects an individual’s social capital. to analyse the effects of residential mobility on the social capital of individuals, we must focus on the basic mechanism of (re-)investment decisions and their dependence on the geographical distance between the relationship members. thereby, the geographical distance between the relationship partners has considerable effects both on the investment costs and on the expected returns. in general, geographical proximity reduces the costs associated with maintaining face-to-face contacts. in addition, specifi c resources and support are often not locally transferable and bound to the physical presence of the relationship partners; this is especially true for the exchange of services (e.g., babysitting, mutual leisure activities). actors can therefore expect greater profi ts from personal relationships that are local. investments in social capital are thus less likely to occur if transaction costs increase with growing geographical distance (cf. glaeser et al. 2002). new city = new friends? • 203 because residential mobility alters the distance-related transaction costs of existing personal ties, we can assume that in the aftermath of relocation, a restructuring process is initiated. as the distance-related transaction costs increase, which is true for most personal relationships following relocation, the actor has various options for decreasing the investment costs of existing relationships. for instance, the actors might change the contact mode by replacing personal face-to-face interaction with modern communication technology (e.g., telephone, internet-based transmission of texts, speech and images) (mok et al. 2010). moreover, the investment costs decrease if the overall contact frequency is reduced. finally, personal relationships can be entirely broken off if further investments are no longer profi table. however, this makes room for investments in new personal ties at comparatively low transaction costs at the new location. distance-related transaction costs might decrease after relocation, for example, if personal relationships already exist at the new place of residence (bührer 1996; kalter 1997, 2003). such contacts can be expected to intensify after the residential move due to the low transaction costs. however, at this point, it is important to mention that distance-related transaction costs are only one of several components underlying the investment decisions of social capital. these components include shared social contexts, which play a major role in investments in social capital (feld 1981). for example, it is argued that modernisation processes foster the further division of work, private life, kinship and leisure. this generates multiplex social networks, which are not locally confi ned but are functionally diversifi ed, geographically scattered and dynamic from the outset (larner 1990; wellman et al. 1997). this is supported by evidence that suggests that local contacts in general only comprise a small share of active relationships. empirically, there is no evidence for the dominance of the local neighbourhood or for an unlimited spatial dispersion of personal relationships (petermann 2002: 153-154). residential mobility thus does not cause a transformation of the entire social network but only alters singular contacts (larner 1990; wellman et al. 1997; magdol 2000; lubbers et al. 2010). the transaction cost argument of the decision to invest in social capital provides a plausible explanation for the assumption that residential mobility leads to a restructuring of certain parts of the network of personal ties. the mobility-induced restructuring process aims to maintain the general support potential embedded in social ties after relocation and adapt it to the new situation. the decline of social capital caused by disinvestments in specifi c personal relationships is compensated for by building new social capital driven by the need to secure social resources. although the decline is mobility-induced, the build-up process is resource-oriented, i.e., investments are not directed at re-establishing similar personal relationships but at maintaining similar resource levels. moreover, relocation may serve to overcome geographical restrictions in the access to social resources and enable actors to establish heterogeneous social networks that provide social capital at a similar level (lai/siu 2006; wellman/wortley 1990). if the restructuring process initiated by altered distance-related transaction costs is oriented toward resource access, then relocation should not lead to incisive changes to the available social capital. evidence for this is limited to only a few studies, which discover few differences in • natascha nisic, sören petermann 204 the availability of support between mobile and immobile individuals (cook/weigel 1983; höllinger/haller 1990). therefore, we hypothesize that migrants do not differ from natives with regard to the amount of available social capital (mobility hypothesis h1). the restructuring of social capital after a change of residence also depends on the type of relationship. we differentiate between the following three types of social relations: family/kinship, friendship and acquaintanceship. family and kin relations are characterised by close normative and genealogical ties, whereas friendships and acquaintances are contacts based on personal choice, whereby friends present stronger ties than rather loose acquaintances. by social defi nition, family and kin relations are uncallable and are therefore relatively stable (wellman et al. 1997; wellman/wortley 1990; mok/wellman 2007). after a change of residence, these relationships may lose their high contact frequency but their strength, trustworthiness and normative force can counterbalance the larger geographical distance. if family members and relatives live far away, contact is often maintained using modern means of transportation and communication (craven/ wellman 1973; fischer 1982; larsen et al. 2006; offner 2000; wellman 1979; wellman/leighton 1979; wellman/wortley 1990). even if family and kin ties are at a lower risk of decline, the social capital mobilised through these relationships are limited to resources that are less dependent on face-to-face contact and constant geographical presence, such as emotional support in crises or fi nancial assistance (höllinger/ haller 1990; korte 1980; wellman/wortley 1990). mobility-related investment decisions in social capital through family and kin relations aim to maintain these relationships, whereby increased distance-related transaction costs are offset against a reduced resource potential. due to higher expectations of reciprocity, i.e., a greater frequency of response behaviour, in non-kin relationships, we expect a greater effect of distance-related transaction costs on relations with friends and acquaintances. in other words, the existing self-selected social ties are at a greater risk of dissolution than family and kin relationships. however, the disinvestments in existing friendships and acquaintances release resources that make investments in new personal relationships with lower distance-related transaction costs possible. additionally, through a change of residence, people can release themselves from potentially constricting familial and kin ties and replace these with self-selected friendships and acquaintanceships (amato 1993; höllinger/haller 1990; lai/siu 2006). this aspect is repeatedly emphasized in the context of individualisation theory (beck 1986), as it enables the establishment of heterogeneous social networks that can provide even more social capital (lai/siu 2006; wellman/wortley 1990): “(...) modern life allows people to build more personally rewarding relations than are attainable in the local community and to create social worlds almost entirely free from artifi cial limits of place, to create ‘community without propinquity’ and this kind of community is ultimately the most fulfi lling” (fischer 1982: 158). investments in new self-selected, non-kin relationships are resource-oriented. therefore, after a change of residence, even more social resources might be available via friends and acquaintances. new city = new friends? • 205 the restructuring process especially refers to weak social ties with acquaintances, which greatly depend on geographical proximity such as neighbourhood contacts or relationships with colleagues (wellman 1996). such ties are based on the high interaction frequency caused by their geographical proximity; they are associated with the exchange of smaller services at a low degree of intimacy (wellman 1992, 1996; wellman et al. 1997). although such acquaintanceships react quite sensitively to changes in distance-related transaction costs, these “weak ties” can be quickly broken down and built up (wellman 1979). these assumptions lead to our mobility hypothesis (h2): compared with natives, immigrants have less social capital from their family and kin and more social capital from their friends and acquaintances. 2.3 the restructuring of social capital after a change of residence over time the restructuring of social capital after a residential move does not only refer to similarities and differences between natives and migrants but also to the dynamic process that is triggered by residential mobility. the restructuring of the migrants’ social capital is a process that takes place over time through repeated interactions and investments in relationships. it can be assumed that the development of social capital following relocation is a long-term process that is basically never accomplished. the positive association between length of residence and social capital is a well-known phenomenon. longer durations of residence in the community lead to stronger neighbourly interaction, close-knit networks of local social ties and the accumulation of local capital (davanzo 1980; lai/siu 2006; logan/spitze 1994; sampson 1988). persons with longer durations of residence engage in local social activities to a greater degree and have stronger community ties (sampson 1988). the underlying social mechanism is also related to the investment efforts for creating social capital. however, in this case, it is not a deliberate mobilisation of social capital (lin 2001), but an incidental by-product of everyday interactions (coleman 1988, 1990: 317; portes 1998). the key determinant here is the time spent at the place of residence, during which relationships arise and can evolve (sampson 1988). loose contacts and encounters become more stable and acquaintances become more solidifi ed with longer residence tenure. with an increasing length of residence, transaction costs, shared social contexts and resource orientation form aligned social conditions, which ease the building of social capital. from this rationale, our length of residence hypothesis (h3) can be derived: the total social capital increases for migrants with an increasing length of residence in the new location. due to active restructuring, this continuous long-term process exhibits two consecutive, but discontinuous dynamic phases for immigrants during the initial years after a move. first, residential mobility triggers an intensive phase of investment during the fi rst several years followed by a consolidation phase lasting also for many years. the intensive investment phase is characterised by the accumulation of even more social capital than the migrant had at the time of the move. although there • natascha nisic, sören petermann 206 is a dearth of empirical studies that focus on access to social resources, the fi ndings presented by belot and ermisch (2006) indicate that local friendships are more intensively re-established after relocation such that the number of friendships at the place of residence considerably rises over 5 to 6 years after a move and the contact frequency increases. during the investment phase, migrants attempt to overcompensate for the upcoming or already suffered loss of existing social capital through a variety of investment activities. there are a number of reasons for these excessive investments. firstly, in the fi rst years following residential mobility, there is an increased need for resources to settle in the new location (larner 1990). the medium-term need for increased resources leads to additional investments, as the decisions to invest in social capital are resource-oriented. secondly, personal relationships must prove themselves over time, i.e., migrants must be confi dent that resources from the newly formed personal ties will be available when needed. because migrants can only learn to assess the trustworthiness and helpfulness of the relationship partner during the course of the relation, it is rational for migrants to fi rst invest in a number of contacts and then later select the reliable relationships from this contact pool. therefore, in the fi rst years after a move, actors more strongly and actively invest in building new contacts, until saturation is achieved or until resource constraints (often a lack of time) limit additional investments. the ensuing years consist of a consolidation phase, during which proven contacts are selected and the investments in self-selected ties and, consequently, social resources begin to decrease again (belot/ermisch 2006; larner 1990). further investments into the relationship are made only if the investments and inputs yield returns at some point, i.e., if social resources become available through these contacts. thus, the selection of proven relationships during the consolidation phase is driven by resource-oriented investment decisions in social capital. hence, although an increase in total social capital is expected with a longer duration of residence (cf. h3), it should be possible to identify different phases due to the chronology of the restructuring of social capital following a move. this leads us to the length of residence hypothesis (h4): with increasing length of residence at the new place, an increase in migrants’ total social capital during an initial investment phase should be observed followed by a decrease during a consolidation phase. 3 other effects on social capital although the current study focuses on the effects of residential mobility, an individual’s social capital is also infl uenced by other factors. one signifi cant determinant that must be considered with respect to length of residence is age. similar to length of residence, age is a temporal component of social capital. however, age has a negative effect on social capital and, thus, stands in contrast to the length of residence. empirical studies of social capital research show negative or curvilinear (reverse u-shaped) age effects (wöhler/hinz 2007). specifi cally, at a higher age, social relationships shrink to inner-familial relationships. investments in social capital new city = new friends? • 207 decrease with age because the time interval for anticipated returns is shorter (glaeser et al. 2002). education yields a stable positive effect because those who are highly educated have more opportunities to make social contacts and engage in social relationships due to their qualifi cations and occupations (bourdieu 1983; lin 2001; völker et al. 2007; magdol 2000). we can also expect a positive effect of income because it is a necessary prerequisite for investments in social capital (andreß et al. 1995). employment and student status also play a signifi cant role, as the place of work or education offer opportunities for social encounters. therefore, employed individuals and students should have more social capital at their disposal (diewald 2007). with regard to students, we assume that interaction patterns resemble those of juveniles because of the extension of adolescence during college studies. moreover, institutions of higher education offer many opportunities for making and maintaining contacts with comparatively little effort (bidart/lavenu 2005). with respect to gender, fi ndings indicate that women tend to have more social ties with neighbours and relatives, whereas men have more work-based relationships. however, these differences have no effect on social capital. controlling for socio-economic characteristics, there are no or only sporadic gender differences in the access to social capital (lai 2008; van der gaag/snijders 2005). furthermore, we can expect that social capital increases with household size (erickson 2004). in large households, emotionally supportive social capital is available at negligible investment costs. however, in households with children, we can assume the opposite effect. although children increase social capital through contacts (for instance, with other families at the kindergarten and school), the time spent raising and caring for children decreases the possibility for social contacts. however, the number of children present in a household is irrelevant to our analysis. 4 data and operationalisation to test the hypotheses, we use data from a survey conducted in 2005 in a large eastern german city (halle citizen survey; cf. petermann/täfl er 2006). a total of 3,471 persons (59 percent response rate) participated in the postal survey. the respondents were aged between 17 and 75 years, and all had their principal residence in halle. the advantage of this survey is that it contains not only indicators of the access to social resources but also information about the respondents’ residential mobility and length of residence in the city. we construct the dependent variable social capital using the information on the access to a variety of resources (cf. haug 1997; franzen/pointner 2007 for an overview of measuring social capital). the survey is one of the fi rst in a german-speaking context to use the resource generator developed by dutch researchers (flap et al. 2003; van der gaag/snijders 2005). this generator measures hypothetical resource transfers. the disadvantage of measuring hypothetically accessible resources is that they can fail in the case of actual need, i.e., if no helper can be found. we measure persons’ expectations that they will receive social resources in a given situation. • natascha nisic, sören petermann 208 alternatively, one could measure actual resource transfers rather than hypothetically accessible resources. the problem here is that they might be confounded with the need for social resources. persons with higher need for social support report more supportive behaviour than do others. this does not suggest, however, that the others possess less social capital. moreover, the aim of the present study is to identify the total support potential for a large spectrum of social resources. however, using actually mobilised resource transfers as an indicator would lead to an extremely complex measuring instrument. the resource generator was constructed in such a way that it measures the potential access to the resources available through an individual’s direct informal social ties. one can potentially request a resource from a number of persons in a network; however, in terms of the actual accessibility of social capital, it is only important whether at least one person of the individual’s social environment provides support, information, assistance, etc. (flap et al. 2003; snijders 1999). the reason for this is that the marginal utility of additional resource-mobilising network persons is quickly reached in most situations (snijders 1999: 34). for our defi nition of social capital, the number of individuals who provide the respective resource is not important; rather, the focus is on whether the resource is accessible through at least one individual. therefore, the survey questions did not cover how many persons allow access to a resource, but merely whether the resources can be accessed. yet, this also means that the accessible resources via individuals cannot be localised. thus, assumptions about the geographical proximity or distance of the requested accessible resources are rather speculative. nonetheless, as outlined above, the assumption that resources that are related to high transaction costs correlate with geographical proximity seems plausible. the resource generator includes 17 items. the individual nominations are of less interest than the total amount of potentially accessible social capital, as the potential mobilisation of resources of the individual’s social environment is of main interest. the choice of resource items follows different goals of action, such as the pursuit of material wealth (e.g., borrowing a large sum of money) or social recognition (e.g., discussing personal concerns), and different situations, such as everyday activities (e.g., providing advice and information) or special emergency situations (e.g., offering accommodation when one’s own residence is temporarily uninhabitable). resources are not only understood as material goods or possessive attributes but also as actions such as the exchange of favours by friends (e.g., mending household devices) or the provision of information (e.g., medical or legal advice). another distinction refers to the specifi c use of the resource. some resources can only be used in specifi c situations (e.g., shopping during an illness), whereas other resources can be used in various situations (e.g., the cultural capital of the contact indicated by his/ her university degree or joint theatre and museum visits). this spectrum of resources is summarised in an index of these 17 items. the more items an individual cites, the greater his or her amount of social capital, i.e., the more support he/she can expect when necessary. yet, the number of accessible resources summarises the social capital only if we assume that all resources are comparable on a scale of values and that the evaluation of all resources is the new city = new friends? • 209 same. even if these assumptions are unrealistic, they should be maintained.2 in the absence of an assessment of the resources, each item of the sum score is weighted equally. in fact, the index does not measure the amount of social capital, but the variety of or variation in accessible resources. empirically, the social capital index varies between 0 and 17 accessible resources among the 3,416 respondents (fig. 1). the mean value is 10.3 accessible resources. we employ two indicators of spatial mobility as central independent variables in the analyses. to test the mobility hypotheses (h1 and h2), the dichotomous variable migrants is provided. we categorise the groups of migrants and natives according to the question of whether the respondent has lived in the current place of residence since birth. the defi nition of the native group was then adjusted to also include persons who moved to the current place of residence during their childhood and youth 2 a reliability analysis of the 17 items results in a satisfactorily high cronbach’s alpha of 0.81. this value only minimally deviates between 0.79 and 0.80 if any item is removed from the scale. a principal component analysis produced three factors with an eigenvalue greater than 1. these dimensions of social capital can be interpreted fi rst as material social support (e.g. care during illness), second as immaterial or informative social support (e.g. pc advice) and third as social leverage (e.g. media contacts) (on the social capital dimensions of social support and social leverage cf. kleinhans et al. 2007). source: own calculations fig. 1: distribution of social capital 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 3 6 9 12 15 18 social capital (number of accesses to resources) percent • natascha nisic, sören petermann 210 until the age of 14 years. the reason for this extension is that the main processes of social integration outside of the parental home begins at the end of the school phase (bronfenbrenner 1981). therefore, natives are individuals who have lived at the current place of residence from birth or from the age of 14 at the latest without interruption until the time of the survey. migrants are those who moved to the current place of residence after their 14th birthday and have since lived there without interruption until the time of the survey. the group of natives comprised 59 percent of the respondents. among them, 48 percent were born in the location and 11 percent moved to the location in their childhood and youth. therefore, the group of migrants covers 41 percent.3 the length of residence hypotheses (h3 and h4) are tested using the metric variable length of residence. the length of residence of immigrants is, on average, 22 years. as figure 2 depicts, the distribution of residence tenure among migrants and natives is bimodal. one of the peaks ranges from 0 to 4 years and should mainly refer to the student migrants. at the same time, the age distribution of migrants refig. 2: distribution of the length of residence 0 2 4 6 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 percent length of residence in years source: own calculations 3 the dataset contains no information about the place where the migrants previously resided. new city = new friends? • 211 tab. 1: univariate statistics a these variables were centred in the analyses. source: own calculations variables mean value standard deviation min max n social capital number of accessible resources 10.346 3.574 0 17 3,416 natives 10.331 3.430 0 17 1,981 migrants 10.407 3.759 0 17 1,408 mobility migrants (1=yes) 0.415 0.493 0 1 3,440 length of residence in yearsa 21.927 15.603 0 69 1,410 control variables education in yearsa 14.150 2.712 8 21 3,444 natives 13.758 2.483 8 21 2,002 migrants 14.746 2.898 8 21 1,413 household income in thousand eurosa 1.738 0.918 0.200 3.500 3,249 natives 1.740 0.919 0.200 3.500 1,869 migrants 1.743 0.918 0.200 3.500 1,355 living space per person in m²a 36.776 17.993 4 343 3,315 natives 36.552 18.418 4 343 1,928 migrants 37.139 17.422 6.667 156 1,365 student (1=yes) 0.102 0.303 0 1 3,405 natives 0.093 0.291 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.116 0.320 0 1 1,398 full time employed (1=yes) 0.349 0.477 0 1 3,405 natives 0.355 0.479 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.346 0.476 0 1 1,398 not yet employed (1=yes) 0.140 0.347 0 1 3,405 natives 0.143 0.350 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.134 0.341 0 1 1,398 employed (1=yes) 0.439 0.496 0 1 3,405 natives 0.444 0.497 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.436 0.496 0 1 1,398 not employed (1=yes) 0.176 0.381 0 1 3,405 natives 0.190 0.393 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.154 0.361 0 1 1,398 no longer employed (1=yes) 0.245 0.430 0 1 3,405 natives 0.222 0.416 0 1 1,980 migrants 0.276 0.447 0 1 1,398 age in yearsa 45.630 16.539 17 76 3,428 natives 43.628 16.632 17 76 1,992 migrants 48.448 15.933 17 75 1,407 gender (1=female) 0.544 0.498 0 1 3,440 natives 0.535 0.499 0 1 1,997 migrants 0.558 0.497 0 1 1,414 household sizea 2.373 1.052 1 9 3,410 natives 2.429 1.082 1 9 1,983 migrants 2.296 1.002 1 7 1,403 children in household (1=yes) 0.235 0.424 0 1 3,463 natives 0.267 0.442 0 1 2,009 migrants 0.193 0.394 0 1 1,423 • natascha nisic, sören petermann 212 mained similar over the past 20 years, suggesting that predominantly 20to 30-yearolds move to the city. in addition to the independent variables measuring mobility, the following variables are taken into account to control for statistical effects: education in years,4 net household income,5 living space per person, employment status, age, gender, household size and the presence of children in the household (table 1). 5 results 5.1 migrant selectivity the migrant and native populations signifi cantly differ in important social structural characteristics, as bivariate tests demonstrate (results not shown here). the residential movers have higher educational levels or longer qualifi cation periods; their employment status differs from that of the native population, showing a slightly higher percentage of students, a lower percentage of unemployed and a higher percentage of retirees. it is surprising that migrants are distinctly older than the natives; the difference is almost 5 years. especially the percentage of 17to 30-year-olds is smaller among the migrants than among the natives. the household composition also differs. on average, migrants live in smaller households. the percentage of households with underage children is 7 percentage points lower than that of the natives. the migrants seem to be a selective group, whose characteristics reveal more favourable dispositions for building and maintaining social capital. this is in line with fi ndings in mobility research that show that the characteristics of mobile persons systematically differ from those of settled persons (antel 1980; davanzo/ hosek 1981). to ensure that existing differences in the characteristics of migrants and natives are not confounded with effects of residential mobility, the selectivity of the migrants was especially taken into account in the tests of the mobility hypotheses by including appropriate control variables. 5.2 comparing the social capital of natives and migrants the bivariate correlation between moving and social capital as a test of the mobility hypothesis (h1) confi rms our assumptions (table 2). natives and migrants have an almost equal amount of social capital. this is also a consequence of the selectivity of the migrants. controlling for age reveals that the younger migrants possess the most social capital. they also have far more social capital than natives of the same 4 education in years was measured using the highest school diploma and professional qualifi cation; the different diplomas from the educational systems in west and east germany were taken into consideration. 5 the net household income was measured using 24 income categories. a metric income variable was calculated from the mean values of the categories. the mean value cited is the result of these variables. new city = new friends? • 213 age. however, with increasing age, social capital decreases and the values of the natives and migrants greatly approximate. because the younger cohorts among the migrants are relatively small, the mean differences in social capital between natives (10.3) and migrants (10.4) are only minimal. due to the selectivity of the migrants, a reliable test of the mobility hypothesis can only be conducted by controlling for further characteristics that capture differences in the social composition of the groups. to test the mobility hypothesis (h1), an ols regression model was estimated. in addition to the mobility variable migrants, this model contains a number of control variables that capture general life opportunities and are, thus, relevant for the analysis of mobility and social capital (table 3, model 1). in accordance with the assumption of the mobility hypothesis (h1), migrants and natives do not differ in their total social capital, even when a number of variables are controlled. although the mobility effect appears to be insignifi cant, we do not interpret this result as proof of the irrelevance of residential mobility for the accumulation of social capital. as described in the theoretical section, this result may also refl ect the balance of opposed effects of disinvestments in existing social capital and of investments in new social capital after the move. in the following two sections, we present further analyses that support our argumentation regarding the restructuring process of social capital after a change of residence. the control variables education, household income, living space per person, age and gender reveal strong and highly signifi cant effects and largely contribute to the explained variance. student status and household size are somewhat less infl uential. it is notable that the effects of socio-economic status and of age confi rm existtab. 2: mean values of the social capital of migrants and natives according to age cohorts all 17-30 years 31-45 years 46-60 years > 60 years total social capital migrants 10.407 12.610 *** 11.674** 9.935 8.549 natives 10.331 11.628 10.990 9.808 8.541 kin migrants 7.058* 8.669 7.566 6.778 5.993 natives 7.349 8.403 7.818 6.892 6.023 friendships migrants 4.920 7.803 *** 6.740*** 4.120 2.542 natives 4.853 6.949 5.653 3.830 2.388 acquaintances migrants 3.214* 3.814 3.908* 3.253** 2.230 + natives 2.950 3.656 3.333 2.706 1.906 two-sided t-tests: *** p ≤ 0.001, ** p ≤ 0.01, * p ≤ 0.05, + p ≤ 0.1 source: own calculations • natascha nisic, sören petermann 214 tab. 3: regressions of social capital (number of accessible resources) non-standardised coeffi cients with standard errors in brackets. *** p ≤ 0.001, ** p ≤ 0.01, * p ≤ 0.05, + p ≤ 0.1 model 1: total social capital (an ols regression that excludes the two extreme values [0 and 17] results in only minimal changes in the effects of the mobility and control variables. a logit regression with denominators [cf. rabe-hesketh/skrondal 2005: 182] shows almost the same correlations) model 2: social capital from kin model 3. social capital from friendships model 4: social capital from acquaintances source: own calculations variables model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 constant 9.044*** 5.068*** 2.920*** 2.831*** (0.749) (0.782) (0.824) (0.721) mobility migrants 0.101 -0.228+ 0.151 0.170 (0.112) (0.116) (0.123) (0.107) control variables education 0.313*** 0.186*** 0.353*** 0.200*** (0.023) (0.024) (0.025) (0.022) household income 0.659*** 0.899*** 0.368*** 0.178* (0.079) (0.082) (0.086) (0.076) living space per person 0.023*** 0.008* 0.023*** 0.016*** (0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.003) not yet employed 0.494 0.339 -0.107 0.772* (0.373) (0.389) (0.410) (0.359) student 0.885 ** 0.582+ 1.216*** 0.127 (0.332) (0.346) (0.365) (0.319) full time employed 0.293 0.160 0.105 0.444* (0.204) (0.213) (0.224) (0.197) not employed -0.291 -0.051 -0.499* -0.032 (0.226) (0.236) (0.248) (0.217) no longer employed -0.169 0.129 -0.428 -0.131 (0.281) (0.293) (0.309) (0.271) age -0.109*** -0.123*** -0.182*** -0.034 (0.029) (0.030) (0.032) (0.028) age² 0.000 0.001* 0.001* 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) gender (1=female) 0.452*** 0.687*** 0.301* -0.269** (0.108) (0.113) (0.119) (0.104) household size 0.159 * 0.165* -0.018 0.129+ (0.079) (0.083) (0.087) (0.076) children in household -0.054 -0.028 -0.023 0.027 (0.165) (0.173) (0.182) (0.159) r² 0.308 0.206 0.345 0.127 adjusted r² 0.305 0.203 0.342 0.123 n 3,024 3,024 3,024 3,024 new city = new friends? • 215 ing empirical fi ndings. for instance, higher levels of education, a higher household income and higher living spaces per person contribute to more social capital. in addition, younger people exhibit a greater amount of social capital than do older people. in contrast to earlier fi ndings in research on social capital, a pronounced gender effect emerges, whereby men possess less social capital than women. in accordance with other empirical studies, inhabitants of larger households and students have better access to social resources. beyond the student effect, however, the employment status has no signifi cant effect on social capital. migrants’ better access to social capital can be explained by their generally better disposition for building social capital. although the model controls for a number of variables that are also highly correlated with mobility, we can assume that even beyond the controlled characteristics, mobile people are a positively selected group with regard to their disposition for the accumulation of social capital. 5.3 comparing social capital with respect to relationship type the access to social resources can be differentiated according to family, friendships and acquaintanceships. first, it becomes apparent that access to social resources through these three relationship types is graded (table 2). for instance, on average, more than seven accessible resources are enabled through kin, approximately fi ve through friendships and three through acquaintances. however, there are some striking differences between natives and migrants. migrants anticipate signifi cantly less social resources from kin relations. this, however, only applies to the middle age groups between 30 and 60 years. throughout all age groups, only moderate losses of accessible resources from kin relations are recorded after a change of residence. a different story emerges for accessible resources from friendships and acquaintances. these chosen relationships offer more social resources for migrants than for natives. migrants receive more accessible resources through both friendships and acquaintances than do natives across all age groups. the differences between natives and migrants are of practical relevance. for the younger age groups, differences between the native and migrant group emerges mostly among friendship ties. by contrast, for the middle and older age groups, the differences lie in the acquaintanceships. the results point in the expected direction, i.e. accessible resources from kin relations are mostly maintained due to normative ties and only moderately lose signifi cance compared to the group of natives. yet, this moderate loss can be compensated through accessible resources from voluntary relationships with friends and acquaintances. these fi ndings do not support the assumptions about an extensive restructuring of personal relationship networks. rather, at least with regard to accessible resources, they emphasize the stability of kin contacts and simultaneous investments in new friendships and acquaintances. for a multivariate test of mobility hypothesis h2, we calculated three further regressions for the social capital from family, friendship and acquaintanceship contacts (table 3, models 2 to 4). controlling for a number of social-structural variables, there are no relevant differences between migrants and natives. although migrants • natascha nisic, sören petermann 216 have signifi cantly less social capital from family and kin relations than do natives, they obtain more social capital from friendships and acquaintances; however, this difference is not signifi cant. compared to the social capital of natives, migrants have 4.5 percent less social capital from kin relations, 5.2 percent more social capital from friendships and 6.0 percent more social capital from acquaintances. nonetheless, as these differences are not signifi cant when controlling for confounding variables, the mobility hypothesis h2 is not confi rmed. 5.4 immigrant social capital over time to test the length of residence hypotheses h3 and h4, we only used the data of the migrants. this restriction is both necessary and sensible because the restructuring process only applies to migrants and because for natives, the length of residence corresponds to their age. controlling for confounding variables, there is a positive, but relatively weak length of residence effect (table 4). this result is in line with the length of residence hypothesis h3. in addition to the positive net effect of residence tenure, we identify a negative and much stronger net age effect. for the migrants, the age equals the age when moving plus the length of residence; therefore, this also results in a negative effect of the age at the time of a move on social capital. this means that persons who are older and those who were older at the time of relocation have less social capital. the temporal relocation effect on social capital may also be interpreted as a cohort effect. however, the migration cohorts do not differ in social capital. nonetheless, a greater social capital of one additional resource access only occurs after 44 years of residence. this relatively long period of time indicates that the length of residence effect is comparatively weak. this might be because the length of residence effect is not constant, but comprises an investment and a consolidation phase in the fi rst years after the change of residence (length of residence hypothesis 4). to prove such temporal dynamics, longitudinal data are needed. however, panel studies are hardly available and accessible longitudinal surveys such as the german socio-economic panel study (soep) do not contain the necessary time-varying variables on social capital and social networks that are required for our research question.6 the advantage of the dataset used here is that it not only recorded the change of residence and accessible resources but also the respondents’ length of residence. moreover, under certain conditions that we will discuss in greater detail below, it is also possible to picture the temporal development of social capital based on a cross-section when comparing social capital at different lengths of residence. to test the non-linear effect of the residence tenure on social capital, a spline regression was calculated (table 4 and fig. 3). splines are arbitrarily specifi ed, linear intervals of a metric variable. the length of residence was divided into four time 6 although the soep contains a (quite restricted) network indicator for waves 2006 and 2011, this is not suffi cient for conducting panel analyses of the research topic presented here. new city = new friends? • 217 tab. 4: regressions of the social capital of immigrants non-standardised coeffi cients with standard errors in brackets. *** p ≤ 0.001, ** p ≤ 0.01, * p ≤ 0.05, + p ≤ 0.1 source: own calculations variables model 1 model 2 constant 7.312*** 6.028*** (1.266) (1.589) mobility length of residence 0.023* (0.010) length of residence 0-4 years 0.289* (0.130) length of residence 5-10 years -0.088 (0.072) length of residence 11-40 years 0.031 * (0.015) length of residence over 40 years 0.019 (0.040) control variables education 0.277*** 0.275*** (0.034) (0.034) household income 0.836*** 0.839*** (0.133) (0.133) living space per person 0.031*** 0.031*** (0.006) (0.006) not yet employed 1.427+ 1.497* (0.738) (0.741) student 0.343 0.226 (0.682) (0.683) full time employed 0.432 0.445 (0.324) (0.324) not employed 0.181 0.198 (0.372) (0.372) no longer employed -0.014 -0.006 (0.433) (0.434) age -0.208*** -0.206*** (0.050) (0.059) age² 0.001* 0.001+ (0.001) (0.001) gender (1=female) 0.503** 0.489** (0.176) (0.176) household size 0.308* 0.302* (0.127) (0.127) children in household 0.080 0.131 (0.282) (0.288) r² 0.344 0.346 adjusted r² 0.337 0.337 n 1,243 1,243 • natascha nisic, sören petermann 218 intervals of varying lengths. this division into intervals enables different slopes of the regression lines. social capital mainly increases during the fi rst four years of residence. after this, a phase of consolidation begins, which lasts until year ten after relocation. finally, from the eleventh year forward, the social capital slightly increases again, yet at a far slower growth rate than during the fi rst phase. after 40 years, even this minor growth weakens again, making it practically irrelevant. however, it is important to note that modelling temporal dynamics based on a cross-sectional observation of lengths of residence may lead to false conclusions if the different length-of-residence groups represent different subsamples of the population with specifi c characteristics that also infl uence the social capital. thus, the selectivity problem discussed above can also be expanded to the association between length of residence and social capital accumulation. for instance, one can assume that students are socially more active and have many social contacts, but are also overrepresented within the group with shorter lengths of residence because they typically only relocate to take up their studies. in this case, the rise in social capital would be an artifact produced through the different compositions of the groups within the length-of-residence intervals. in this study, however, we counter this problem by including numerous control variables that reproduce the relevant group characteristics. in addition, we conducted separate regressions for fig. 3: social capital of migrants according to length of residence intervals source: predicted values from model 2 in table 4 for a full-time employed man with childless household otherwise average values 6 7 8 9 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 length of residence (years) social capital (number of accessible resources) new city = new friends? • 219 different subgroups with the length-of-residence intervals specifi ed in table 4, e.g., for students, individuals not yet employed, full-time employed and young people. the results were consistent throughout and confi rmed the pattern found in table 4. there is no evidence that the distribution is mainly caused by a certain group of the population. a phase of increased accumulation of social capital is followed by a period of decrease and consolidation, which confi rms the length of residence hypothesis h4. this fi nding also confi rms the study by belot and ermisch (2006), who report a similar trajectory of build-up and reduction of social capital as a result of residential mobility. it is also congruent with results of other studies that fi nd enhanced social activity directly following the relocation (cf. larner 1990). this is associated with an increased need for resources caused by the requirement to adapt to the new situation and re-establish a functioning social network after relocation (larner 1990; wellman et. al. 1997). in particular, the consolidation phase between the fourth and the tenth year after a residential move results in an only moderate positive linear effect. in addition, the other length-of-residence intervals appear not to be uniformly strong. figure 3 illustrates this correlation based on the predications derived from the regression model (table 4). in particular, a phase of greater investments in social capital arises immediately following the relocation, during which we assume that social capital is built up in the new place of residence. this trajectory also illustrates that the correlation is age-independent only for shorter lengths of residence. from ten years on, controlling for age, residential tenure again renders positive effects. the moderate growth following ten years of residence is, by contrast, an effect of becoming rooted in and familiar with the new place of residence. 6 summary and outlook an individual’s social capital is the result of personal relationships, the embeddedness into a network and the resources that can be attained through these ties. social capital is thus part of a person’s social integration. incisive life events, such as residential mobility, extensively and permanently restructure social capital. our theoretical argument is based on the notion that after relocation in particular, existing voluntarily chosen relationships fade or break off entirely due to altered distance-related transaction costs, and new personal relationships with lower transaction costs are established to cover the potential resource requirement. this should also become visible in relationship-specifi c accesses to resources, as migrants have rather less access to resources via kin relations and tend to have more resources through acquaintances and friendships. nonetheless, this restructuring process requires time. social capital is built only with increasing length of residence at the new place, and phases of a discontinuous process can be identifi ed. this study not only provides insights into the effects of residential mobility on the social capital of individuals but also sheds light on the dynamics of the restructuring of social capital and associated strategic capacities of individuals. even after • natascha nisic, sören petermann 220 controlling for numerous socio-economic and socio-demographic variables that take into account that migrants are a positively selected group, we observe that they do not have more accessible resources than natives. this initially surprising result can be explained by oppositional, balancing effects of disinvestment in existing social capital and investment in new social capital. the investments are enhanced by the fact that mobile persons are a positively selected group with regard to dispositions for building social capital. this fi nding corresponds with results of other studies on the restructuring hypothesis, which also did not fi nd any effects of residential mobility on the structure of personal networks (larner 1990; lubbers et al. 2010; magdol 2000; wellman et al. 1997) or the accessibility of support (cook/weigel 1983; höllinger/haller 1990). we can refute a theoretically assumed and frequently expressed negative association between residential mobility and social integration for individual social capital. at the same time, we must acknowledge that the restructuring of social capital from kin relations to friendships and acquaintances does not prove as strong as expected. this contradicts a number of studies that demonstrated that restructuring processes take place (amato 1993; höllinger/ haller 1990; lai/siu 2006; lubbers et al. 2010). however, this does not prove that the restructuring is necessarily wrong, as the relationship types examined are possibly not appropriate for measuring the restructuring of social capital. these results also have implications for the assessment of geographical population movements at the community level. we can conclude that large migration fl ows do not inherently generate negative effects on social integration. on the one hand, we cannot fi nd any deprivation with regard to the level of social capital after the relocation at the individual level; on the other hand, migrants also seem to activate local contacts (e.g., acquaintances, neighbours) in the new location. this implies that observable social phenomena such as low participation in community and political activities, high crime rates or low general trust (cf. kasarda/janowitz 1974; putnam 2002; sampson 1988) are not necessarily and not directly the consequence of large numbers of assumedly socially isolated migrants. in addition to this overall insight into the impact of residential mobility on social capital, in further analyses, we trace the temporal change in social capital. the modelled restructuring and the temporal dynamics of social capital triggered by a residential move is refl ected empirically in the data. the models yield a weak positive effect of the length of residence on social capital; capital roughly grows per ten years of residence by one-fourth of an additional resource. this growth, however, is not linear. social capital greatly increases in the fi rst four years, but it begins to consolidate between the fourth and tenth year. this is followed by another phase of growth, whereas the annual growth rate only reaches one-tenth of the growth rate in the fi rst four years. the non-linear trajectory of social capital accumulation implicitly refers to the interaction between regional opportunities and active efforts of social actors and is a starting point for further analyses based on suitable data. although the current results demonstrate the signifi cance of the geographical dimension of social capital, we cannot explicitly test this component because the data do not allow for any geographical differentiation of the social capital. we implicitly assume that the exchange of at least some important social resources, in particular new city = new friends? • 221 for dealing with challenges of everyday life (e.g., borrowing something), requires geographical proximity, which considerably decreases the transaction costs. thus, this part of social capital requires restructuring after a change of residence. in the future, it will be necessary to separate local (i.e., geographically bound) social resources or resources associated with high transaction costs from geographically independent resources and to locate the accessible resources as such, i.e., measure the distances between providers and users of social resources to determine the transaction costs. one should also be aware that it is not the residential mobility per se, but the distance between the place of origin and destination region that mainly determines the transaction costs. future analyses should take these distances into account. of note, the selectivity problem does not present a serious diffi culty for the analysis and the derived (causal) conclusions as long as the group classifi cations can be reproduced by taking relevant variables into account. we attempted to achieve this by controlling for numerous variables. nevertheless, if the selectivity of the groups is based on characteristics that cannot be observed in the data, conclusions cannot be made about the causal effect of residential mobility (belot/ermisch 2006). this also pertains to the assumption that anticipated regional mobility decreases local social capital investments a priori, and social capital investments that have already been made can deter regional mobility (skrobanek/jobst 2006; on the simultaneity problem see david et al. 2008; durlauf/fafchamps 2005; glaeser et al. 2002). to statistically control for these forms of unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity would, however, require the use of longitudinal data, which are not available. although temporal effects of the length of residence are confi rmed, they are based on cross-sectional data and, thus, on cross-sectional comparisons of different groups of people. rather than comparing migrants and natives – two groups with different dispositions – or the migrant population differentiated according to different lengths of residence, panel data would be better suited to analyse the actual course of mobility-related restructuring of social capital for one individual. future studies should consider the geographical dimension and the dynamics of the restructuring of social capital in greater detail to examine the underlying mechanisms. this, however, reveals the necessity of collecting appropriate data. finally, we discuss the operationalisation of social capital. the total index of accessible resources requires that all resources are equally comparable. it is obvious that this strong assumption is unrealistic. rather than constructing a general index, one might consider an indicator that refl ects different spheres of social capital. within these spheres, resources must be homogeneous and comparable. the current data allow the identifi cation of such distinct spheres, for instance, a sphere of specifi c material 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nazer, nancy 1997: a decade of network change: turnover, persistance and stability in personal communities. in: social networks 19: 27-50. wellman, barry; wortley, scott 1990: different strokes from different folks: community ties and social support. in: american journal of sociology 96: 558-588. wirth, louis 1938: urbanism as a way of life. in: american journal of sociology 44: 1-24. wöhler, thomas; hinz, thomas 2007: egozentrierte diskussionsnetzwerke in den usa und deutschland. in: franzen, axel; freitag, markus (eds.): soziales kapital. grundlagen und anwendungen. sonderheft 47 der kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie. wiesbaden: vs verlag: 91-112. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “neue stadt = neue freunde? die restrukturierung sozialer ressourcen nach einem wohnortwechsel”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-08de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-08de0, at http:// www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 05.08.2010 date of acceptance: 10.09.2012 jun.-prof. dr. natascha nisic. universitaet hamburg, school of business, economics and social sciences. hamburg, germany. e-mail: natascha.nisic@wiso.uni-hamburg.de url: http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/professuren/soziologie-wirtschaftlichen-handelns/ startseite/ dr. sören petermann ( ). max planck institute for the study of religious and ethnic diversity, department of socio-cultural diversity. göttingen, germany. e-mail: petermann@mmg.mpg.de, url: http://www.mmg.mpg.de/de/abteilungen/soziokulturelle-vielfalt/wissenschaftlichemitarbeiterinnen/pd-dr-soeren-petermann/ authors appear in alphabetical order. © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) editorial on the special issue “empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam)” johannes huinink 1 introduction the articles in this special issue present empirical analyses based on the data from the german family panel (pairfam). the study uses the acronym “pairfam” referring to its english title “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics.” the articles provide example insights into the possibilities offered by empirical analyses using data of the fi rst pairfam waves. they are thus not simple overviews, but deal with specifi c research issues referring to three of four focal themes of the pairfam panel which are of special interest for demographic research: intimate relationships, fertility and intergenerational relationships. in addition, a methodological article presents an analysis of high relevance for the design of the survey addressing factors that infl uence the willingness of third parties to participate in the survey – in this case the partners and parents of the anchors. the articles originate from the contexts of various disciplines in demographics, psychology and sociology. the long-term design of the german family panel aims to contribute to improving the empirical basis of german and international research on dynamics of intimate relationships and family histories. it is funded by the german research foundation (dfg) as a long-term research project in the humanities and social sciences. the fi rst panel wave was launched in 2008. since then, the anchors from the pairfam sample are surveyed annually along with their partners, parents and children. to prepare the methodological concept and contents, during the four years prior to the launch of the panel, special research questions dealing with intimate relationships and family dynamics have been investigated in nineteen research projects which were all part of a dfg priority programme. this programme also included a self-managed “mini panel” consisting of three waves, which served as the methodological test run for the pairfam study (feldhaus/huinink 2008). a number of notable scholars of relationship and family research from various disciplines participated in this initiative of socio-scientifi c family research, which was unique in its magnitude at the time. without this broad-ranging cooperation, pairfam would probably never have materialised. in may 2010, the data from the fi rst wave of the german family panel were made available to the academic public for analyses. since then, three panel waves have comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 313-326 (date of release: 07.03.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-09en0 • johannes huinink314 been published and documented.1 therefore, meanwhile extensive data is available also enabling longitudinal analyses. the fourth wave of the panel will be delivered in 2013 and the fi fth wave of pairfam is in the fi eld at the moment (the end of 2012). a total of 14 panel waves are planned until the year 2022 in the context of the dfg funding scheme. therefore, a long-term observation of relationship and family histories will be realised. for a more detailed introduction to the design and data of the german family panel we refer to existing publications and documentation. the theoretical foundation, the research background and the details of the sample design are presented in huinink et al. (2011). extensive information is also accessible on the website of the project at www.pairfam.de. among others, technical paper no. 1 can be found there, which documents the design, the fi eld profi le of the fi rst three waves and important facts on the samples of the waves, including the response rates (arránz becker et al. 2012). in addition, a documentation of the questionnaires and variables of each wave, which are also part of the data releases, can be downloaded. first, this editorial briefl y introduces the study themes and the design of the german family panel. some thoughts relevant to demographic research concerning challenges to relationship and family research, which the elaborate undertaking of pairfam aims to meet (cf. huinink/feldhaus 2009), follow. the editorial closes with a brief summary of the fi ve articles of this special issue. 2 the focal themes and the methodological design of the german family panel (pairfam) the german family panel was devised to provide data for studies concerning intimate relationship and family histories that go beyond traditional demographic analyses of the incidence and timing of biographical events that are related to intimate relationships or families and intergenerational relationships. apart from relevant structural facts of couple and family dynamics it is intended to offer additional longitudinal information on subjective attitudes, situation assessments and intentions on which these events and social relationships are based. the survey programme of the panel has an interdisciplinary design. it combines theoretical as well as empirical research questions from socio-scientifi c and psychological family research. although the survey programme aims to cover as many aspects of individual life courses as possible in the context of which relationship and family dynamics develop, the survey focuses on four themes. these will be briefl y introduced with example references to the respective survey modules and selected studies published nationally and internationally over the past three years. 1 nauck, bernhard, josef brüderl, johannes huinink, and sabine walper. 2012: beziehungsund familienpanel (pairfam). gesis datenarchiv, köln. za5678 datenfi le version 3.0.0, doi:10.4232/ pairfam.5678.3.0.0. empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 315 beforehand, two edited volumes with papers presented on pairfam user conferences concerning all four study themes shall be mentioned: walper/wendt (2010) and brüderl et al. (2011). 1. development and stability of intimate relationships information is collected on the previous relationship history, on partner search and the circumstances of beginning a partnership, on subjectively expected costs and benefi ts of an intimate relationship, on possible steps taken to institutionalise an intimate relationship, on couples’ arrangements in everyday life and interaction of the partners, on the assessment of the relationship quality as well as on causes and consequences of separation. pairfam data has been used so far for studies in this research area dealing with the partner market and fi nding partners, the social interaction between partners, relationship quality and satisfaction, the development and stability of non-marital unions, the interrelation between couple dynamics and geographical mobility of the partners and with sexuality (cf. e.g. arránz becker 2012; diener/feldhaus 2011, kopp et al. 2010, lois 2012, lois/lois 2012, rainer/smith 2012, perelli-harris et al. 2012, schmitz et al. 2011, smith 2012, articles from the edited volumes cited above that are not listed individually, chapters of an edited volume on the comparison of partnerships in eastand west germany in huinink et al. 2012). the fi rst two articles in this special issue also deal with research questions concerning intimate relationships. the article by franziska schmal and sabine walper contributes new fi ndings on the determinants of relationship quality making use of special characteristics of the pairfam design, while jürgen dorbritz and robert naderi investigate the development and stability of noncohabitating couple relationships in detail. 2. fertility intentions and reproductive behaviour information is collected, for example, on the previous family history, the expected costs and benefi ts of parenthood and children, on fecundity and contraceptive behaviour, on the desire to have children and intentions to start or to extend a family, on factors infl uencing reproductive decisions and their implementation (timing and spacing of births), on effects of family-policy measures and on how people deal with anticipated consequences of parenthood. the main issues studied with pairfam data in this area of research are the explanation of fertility intentions and its realisation in different living arrangements, the analysis of couples’ decision making on fertility, the signifi cance of infl uences of the social network and potential effects of family-policy measures on fertility, the description of the diversity and change of familial living arrangements as well as life-course specifi c analyses of the development of different types of families. (cf. e.g.: bauer/kneipp 2012, buhr/huinink 2012, feldhaus/huinink 2011, huttemann et al. 2012, kotte/ludwig 2011, lois/kopp 2011, nauck/tabuchi 2012, perelli-harris et al. 2010, rüger et al. 2011, articles in the edited volumes cited above and in huinink et al. 2012). • johannes huinink316 the third article in this volume ties in with this research by examining the relationship between geographical mobility and family planning as well as starting a family, what has not been possible using previous data sets. 3. intergenerational relationships here information has been surveyed on the expected costs and benefi ts of parent-child relationships, on the perceived quality of the relationship between children and parents or stepparents, on the kind and intensity of social interaction between them, on the extent of material and non-material support exchanged as well as various dimensions of transmission processes between generations. not only the (step-) parents of the respondents, but also their grandparents are included. regarding this focal theme, analyses of typical constellations of intergenerational relationships are investigated, but also relationships that have not yet been in the focus of socio-scientifi c research have been addressed: relationships between stepchildren and stepparents, intergenerational relationships among individuals with migration background and behaviour-related, intergenerational transmission effects (cf. e.g. baykara-krumme et al. 2011, klaus et al. 2012, kotte/ludwig 2011, chapters from the edited volumes cited above that are not listed individually). the fourth article in this special issue is also dedicated to one type of intergenerational relationships that has not yet been studied in this detail before: the social relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents. 4 . parenting and child development with regard to this focal theme information is surveyed, for example, on parenting objectives and the child-raising skills of parents, on parenting behaviour from the perspective of the parents and their children, on childcare provisions as well as on factors infl uencing child development processes. among other aspects, these data enable the observation of the chronological development of parent-child relationships over a long period of time and the investigation of effects of different conditions of everyday life and family relationships on the socialisation of the child in detail (cf. the articles by reichle et al. and the editors in walper/wendt 2010). in addition to data concerning these four focal themes, retrospective and present information is gathered on childhood experiences of the respondents, on their education and employment and on their geographical mobility. further survey modules provide data, for example, on the household composition and living situation, on recreational behaviour, on additional social relationships (siblings, kin, social network), on the economic situation of the households of the respondents and their parents, on values (gender roles, family norms), the physical and psychological well-being (stress, depression, health, etc.) as well as selected personality traits (the “big fi ve,” etc.). empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 317 the sample of the german family panel follows a cohort design. in the fi rst wave, 12,401 male and female “anchors” from three birth cohorts have been surveyed. they were born in the years 1971-73, 1981-83 or 1991-93. the sample was drawn randomly from the population of members of these three cohorts living in germany (registry offi ce sample). it also contains people with foreign nationalities; however, participation in the survey requires that the anchors have suffi cient german language skills to follow the interview. the high number of cases and the cohort design are intended to ensure that suffi cient cases are available for more differentiated and age-sensitive longitudinal analyses. specifi cally for comparative analyses between eastern and western germany, it is possible to enhance the numbers of cases of the eastern german sample with data from the panel survey “demodiff”. three waves were conducted by the max planck institute of demographic research and it has been integrated from the fi fth wave on into the sample of the german family panel (kreyenfeld et al. 2012). the panel surveys are conducted annually. the anchors are surveyed using a computer-aided personal interview (capi). a core set of questions is repeated each year. in addition, more detailed information concerning the focal themes are gathered every two years (follow-up modules) and some variables, such as personality traits, are surveyed at even greater intervals. this staggering ensures that with an interview length of one hour on average, the extent of the information gathered is considerable and there is additional space for selective follow-up modules. another design element of pairfam is the multi-actor approach. information concerning relevant aspects is surveyed directly from important family members if the anchor approves. from the fi rst survey wave on, the partners of the anchors are surveyed (written questionnaire), regardless of whether they live together in one household with the anchor or not. in this wave, a total of 3,743 partners took part in the survey. from the second wave on the (step-) parents are surveyed via a written questionnaire and the children of the anchors living in their household between the ages of 8 and 15 years orally. in the second wave, 5,015 parents and 862 children participated in the survey. when the anchors’ children exceed the age of 15, they are treated as new anchors. the german family panel is already internationally well established today. the data, as the quoted literature shows, has already been used a number of times for international comparisons (cf. perelli-harris et al. 2010, 2012, nauck/tabuchi 2012). the aim is to intensify these international collaborations by producing equivalence fi les for data users in future in which data from different countries are matched with pairfam data. 3 challenges for demographic research of intimate relationships and family dynamics one justifi cation for the establishment of the german family panel has been that from a contextual and methodological perspective such an extensive and costly data survey is necessary to make signifi cant progress in empirical research on in• johannes huinink318 timate relationships and family dynamics. in the overview article on the pairfam project cited above, after an appraisal of the enormous progress achieved with longitudinal, life-course research in demographics, sociology, economics and psychology, it is posited: “yet, the complexity of linkages across the domains of family life and levels of analysis is not fully understood. the need for interdisciplinary cooperation has been increasingly recognised as a powerful tool to understand the complexity of family development and family dynamics in social, legal, economic, and cultural contexts and to shed light on the interplay between individual experiences, dispositions, behaviours, and well-being as they mutually infl uence each other in the context of family. ... the study [pairfam, jh] is based on the notion that progress in family research strongly depends on sharing and conjoining expertise developed in the various disciplines, developing integrative theoretical perspectives, and employing longitudinal approaches with a large, representative data base and a broad array of information.” (huinink et al. 2011: 78). socio-demographic or psychological statistical analyses of the interdependence between family demographic events as well as their relation to the objective circumstances of individuals’ lives have enormously improved our understanding of the dynamics of intimate and family relationships. however, their portrayal of personal motivations and decision processes on which the observed occurrences are based are inadequate. in order to prevent false conclusions and to examine relevant mechanisms more precisely and directly, this defi cit, which has long been recognised, needs to be eliminated. in germany there are already numerous examples of research in family demography that focus on subjective attitudes, values and orientations. these include the dji family survey (bien/marbach 2003), the population policy acceptance study (höhn et al. 2008) and the generations and gender survey (naderi et al. 2009). other examples could be mentioned. the studies are, however, not or only rudimentarily devised as panel surveys. they mainly allow descriptions or the analysis of correlative structures. if we want to more precisely examine demographic processes related to intimate relationships and families as well as the personal decision processes they are based on and better identify causal effects, we have to conduct well set up panel surveys with as small intervals between the panel waves as possible. the methodological advantages of panel data for encountering problems of latent heterogeneity, for instance by using fi xed effects or hybrid models, are only mentioned. these analysis methods are methodological standard today, which must be pursued in many cases in order to obtain coeffi cients as unbiased as possible in panel regressions. regarding the substantive research questions, these methodological aids are not very helpful, since they contribute only very little to elucidating the actual mechanisms. that is why thematically focussed, very detailed panel studies are needed to fi ll the gap. only prospectively designed panel surveys allow us to gather not only retrospective or current information on structural circumstances and events, but also unbiased data on assessments regarding the current life situation and the mental state empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 319 of the respondents. purely retrospective surveys, which have undoubtedly had a major share in bringing forward demographic longitudinal research, do not hit the mark in this case. a retrospective survey of situation assessments, motivations and intentions is very error-prone, as psychological research shows (schwarz/sudman 1994). therefore, the interest in a better understanding of the dynamics of intimate relationships and families as part of individually shaped if not always consciously steered life courses and methodological necessities suggest an intensifi cation as well as a methodical realignment of panel analytic research. this is increasingly taken into account in existing panel surveys, such as the german socio-economic panel study (soep). the german family panel, though, intends to take this issue into account in a more specifi c and extensive way (huinink et al. 2011). it begins with the fact that, better than ever before, the pairfam data enable a more adequate description of the development of intimate relationships and familial living arrangements, of the everyday life in intimate relationships and families, and the interconnectedness of relationship and family developments with other spheres of life, such as employment or geographical mobility, over time. this includes in particular also a description of relationship and family relevant assessments, appraisals and motivations by the involved individuals that can change with time. the pairfam-based research, which was briefl y mentioned in chapter 2, shows that the data can fulfi l this task. as we will see, the analyses in this special issue also make use of them. a second circumstance, of which examples are also present in this special issue, refers to the consideration of intentions in the analysis of family demographic processes. one can examine how an intention in one sphere of life – for example, the plan to start a family – is infl uenced by personal circumstances and not only the behaviour itself. longitudinally, we can identify incongruities between intention and behaviour in one sphere of life and we can analyse what causes it. we can also ask to which extent intentions in one sphere of life become relevant for intentions and activities in other spheres of life even before their possible realisation in order to change relevant conditions in the desired way. in this way, reciprocal effects between spheres of life are not only examined considering manifest actions like demographic transitions, for instance, but with regard to intentions. therefore, the mechanisms on which this interdependency is based can be registered more precisely. a third aspect that has to be stressed – and that plays a major role in previous analyses with the pairfam data and also in this special issue – is that of the advantages of the multi-actor design. this approach enables us to dispense with proxy information from the anchor. proxy information is possibly considerably biased with regard to attitudes and assessments of other persons (partners, children, parents). the multi-actor design, which is continued in the panel in each wave, enables us to conduct dyadic analyses of couples or to examine the development of parent-child relationships during the child raising phase or later, when the children are older and have left home, from the respective perspective of parents and children. a fourth issue that has not yet been approached extensively in previous analyses is also highly relevant in substantive and methodological terms. the cohort design • johannes huinink320 of pairfam enables us to better identify (self-)selection effects of demographic behaviour and thus to trace important causal effects. self-selection is a typical element of life-course processes. it is based on the fact that earlier experiences and circumstances in people’s lives have an impact on current and future behaviour. therefore, path dependencies have to be considered. subjective preferences or intentions are primary candidates for explanatory factors in such self-selective processes since they infl uence the decisions of individuals and thereby possibly solidify further. an interesting example is what we called the “longitudinal third variable problem” (huinink/feldhaus 2009). later behaviour in the life course, for example, the way women combine parenthood and employment, may be formed early on due to ideals of a good family life – like a traditional image of motherhood. in this case, it would be less the consequence of the current structural problems with regard to the reconciliation of work and family. this circumstance can only be empirically examined if we have the needed behaviourand attitude-related information on this aspect of the person’s life course over a suffi ciently long period of time and from a suffi ciently young age on. in a few years, the pairfam data allow to pursue these questions. of course, it also cannot be excluded but is rather probable that orientations and attitudes change as the result of life events. they are adapted to attained circumstances before the dispositions in turn can again selectively infl uence ensuing actions. according to the dissonance theory, one should expect such processes. sequences of selection and adaption processes in certain periods of time can also only be studied using suitable panel data. it is now already possible to study them using the data of the german family panel, but there are not yet any publications on this. 4 introduction to the articles of the special issue the fi rst four articles in this special issue deal with aspects of the quality and development of intimate relationships, with the interrelationship between the intention to start a family, its realisation and geographical mobility and with the social relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren as a special type of intergenerational relationships that has received little attention in germany in the past. in one way or another, they make specifi c use of the unique characteristics of the pairfam study design. the fi fth article deals with one of these methodical characteristics by examining selectivity effects on the willingness of the partners and parents of anchors to take part in the survey in the context of the multi-actor design. in their article, the psychologists franziska schmal and sabine walper look at determinants of successful intimate relationships and their consolidation. they focus on the question of whether the degree to which the two partners are able to satisfy their personal needs for autonomy and relatedness in their intimate relationship plays a role. for their empirical analyses they employ data from the fi rst two pairfam waves, which were collected from the anchors and their partners. they restrict their study to the cohorts of those born between 1971-73 and 1981-83. using a cluster analysis, they identify four typical groups of persons among the respondents and empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 321 their partners who are characterised by different degrees of need fulfi lment with regard to these two dimensions. the likelihood to belong to one of these types depends on the gender or the educational level. for example, men report more often of a lack of autonomy, while women more frequently consider both their needs for autonomy and for relatedness as fulfi lled in the intimate relationship. the differences between the partners in an intimate relationship are also considerable, although the probability that partners belong to the same type is higher than expected if no correlation was assumed. in dyadic analyses, the authors estimate effects of autonomy and relatedness in the intimate relationship reported at the time of the fi rst survey on the perceived relationship quality and future orientation in the second wave as well as on the probability of a consolidation of the intimate relationship between the two waves. accordingly, the simultaneous fulfi lment of both dimensions of needs on the part of the respondents contributes to a more positive assessment of the relationship quality and makes further institutionalisation of the intimate relationship more probable. it is also positive if the partners of the respondents report of greater autonomy and relatedness in the intimate relationship. however, the partner effects appear to be greater among women than among men. in their article, the authors jürgen dorbritz and robert naderi deal with a specifi c type of relationships from a different perspective. they examine the development or stability of – as the authors call it – bilocal relationships in which the two partners live in two separate households. by making use of the possibilities of a detailed description of conjugal living arrangements, the authors pursue the question of what factors and circumstances infl uence the further develpoment of these relationships, which in the literature often also are called living-apart-together relationships. the authors, too, use data for the birth cohorts from 1971-73 and 1981-83 from the fi rst two panel waves of pairfam. in an extensive description, using relevant indicators, they compare the lat relationships with other types of conjugal living arrangements. according to them, non-cohabitating couples prove to be a quite heterogeneous group whose characteristics highly depend on the age group of the partners. among the older age group, they differ more strongly from more institutionalised intimate relationships (cohabitating couples, marriages) than among the younger age group. the fi ndings, as anticipated, indicate that partners living in relationships with separate households are more independent. analyses of determinant factors of the future development (separation or starting to cohabit between the fi rst two survey waves) confi rm this assumption. in summary, the authors conclude from the results that a bilocal relationship in the older cohort can be considered a deliberately chosen living arrangement and that in their case it has less of a transitional character than among the younger cohort. effects of the commuting of women and men on their fertility intention and realisation are the subject of the article written by the sociologists johannes huinink and michael feldhaus. the authors use data from the fi rst three waves of the german family panel. their empirical analyses show how important it is to differentiate between intention and behaviour in the study of family development. for example, time-consuming commuting surprisingly does not adversely affect an intention of either men or women to have a child within the next two years (data from the fi rst • johannes huinink322 pairfam wave). in accordance with previous fi ndings, however, its postponing effect on realising a planned birth can be proven. not only in the cross-section, but also longitudinally it is demonstrated that the probability of having implemented a fertility intention that was expressed at the fi rst panel wave two years later is considerably lower among women who commute for long distances than among women with no or only little commuting time. to start time-consuming commuting also appears to impede men’s start into a family at least for the short term. the article written by the sociologists oliver arránz-becker and anja steinbach deals with the social relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren. based on the model of intergenerational solidarity, the authors examine the factors which infl uence the strength of this relationship. they employ the multi-actor design by using data from the second panel wave, which was surveyed among the anchors, their parents and one of their children (child at an age of between 8 and 15 years). in the analysis, the authors form grandparent-grandchild dyads, for which comprehensive information is available. the authors demonstrate that not only the quality of the social relationship between grandparents and parents is important for the relationship to the grandchild (mediating position of the parents), but also the fact whether the grandparent lives in an intimate relationship or not. grandmothers are more involved than grandfathers. for the former, however, health also plays a pivotal role. another interesting fi nding is that the strength of the social relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is far greater in east than in west germany. this indicates closer relatedness in the generational structure in east germany. this fi nding conforms to the also proven relevance of familial value orientations of grandparents. the fi nal article, written by the sociologists jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl and ulrich krieger, deals with a methodical question that plays an important role in the multi-actor design. does the relationship quality of the anchor to a third person, in this case the partner or the parents, have an effect on the participation of this person in the survey? if such effects exist, the subsample with cases where a partner or parent interview has been realised is selective. the analyses use the data from the fi rst and second panel wave of pairfam, whereby the youngest cohort is again excluded. with regard to the partner interview, surprisingly no signifi cant effects of the indicators of the relationship quality on the participation probability could be ascertained. however, the degree of the institutionalisation of the intimate relationship, which was also taken into account, was of great relevance. participation by parents of the anchors appears to be more strongly selectively biased. one of the indicators of the relationship quality, i.e. confl ict frequency, is correlated with a lower participation probability. the perceived appreciation of the anchor by the parent as well as the contact frequency leads to a greater participation probability by the parent. other effects could also be ascertained in both analyses. in the discussion of the results, the authors refer to the fact that the selectivity identifi ed in the analyses can lead to biased results in other analyses, which can, however, be methodically countered in various ways. empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 323 references arránz becker, oliver 2012: effects of similarity in life goals, values, and personality on relationship satisfaction and stability: findings from a two-wave panel study. in: personal relationships [doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2012.01417.x]. arránz becker, oliver et al. 2012: the german family panel: study design and cumulated field report (waves 1 to 3). pairfam technical paper no. 1. chemnitz. bauer, gerrit; kneip thorsten 2012: fertility from a couple perspective: a test of competing decision rules on proceptive behaviour. in: european sociological revie [doi: 10.1093/esr/jcr095]. baykara-krumme, helen; klaus, daniela; steinbach, anja 2011: eltern-kind-beziehungen in 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(eds.): pluralisierung der elternschaft und kindschaft. zeitschrift für familienforschung, sonderheft 8. leverkusen: verlag barbara budrich: 77-104. höhn, charlotte; avramov, dragana; kotowska, irena (eds.) 2008: people, population change and policies. lessons from the population policy acceptance study. volume 1: family change. dordrecht: springer. huinink, johannes; feldhaus, michael 2009: family research from the life course perspective. in: international sociology 24: 299-324. huinink, johannes et al. 2011: panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam): framework and design. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 23: 77-101. huinink, johannes; kreyenfeld; michaela; trappe, heike (eds.) 2012: familie und partnerschaft in ostund westdeutschland: ähnlich und doch immer noch anders. zeitschrift für familienforschung, sonderheft 9. leverkusen: verlag barbara budrich. hutteman, roos; bleidorn, wiebke; penke, lars; denissen, jaap j. a. 2012: it takes two: a longitudinal dyadic study on predictors of fertility outcomes. in: journal of personality [doi: 10.1111/jopy.12006]. klaus, daniela; nauck, bernhard; steinbach, anja 2012: relationships to stepfathers and biological fathers in adulthood: complementary, substitutional, or neglected? in: advances in life course research 17: 156-167. • johannes huinink324 kopp, johannes; lois, daniel; kunz, christina; arránz becker, oliver 2010: verliebt, verlobt, verheiratet. institutionalisierungsprozesse in partnerschaften. wiesbaden: vsverlag für sozialwissenschaften. kotte, markus; ludwig, volker 2011: intergenerational transmission of fertility intentions and behaviour in germany: the role of contagion. in: vienna yearbook of population research 9: 207-226. kreyenfeld, michaela; huinink, johannes; trappe, heike; walke, reiner 2012: demodiff: a dataset for the study of family change in eastern (and western) germany. in: schmollers jahrbuch 132: 1-8. lois, nadia 2012: “living apart together”: sechs typen einer heterogenen lebensform. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 24: 247-268. lois, daniel; kopp, johannes 2011: elternschaftskonstellationen bei alleinerziehenden. in: schwab, dieter; vaskovics, laszlo a. 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brienna et al. 2012: changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven european countries, 1970s to early 2000s. in: population studies 66: 167-182. rainer, helmut; smith ian 2012: education, communication and wellbeing: an application to sexual satisfaction. in: kyklos 65: 581–598. reichle, barbara; franiek, sabine; dette-hagenmeyer, dorothea 2010: frühe sozialisation und erziehung in der familie: konfl iktbewältigung in der elternpartnerschaft, erziehungsstil und das sozialverhalten angehöriger kinder in: walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena (eds.): partnerschaften und die beziehungen zu eltern und kindern. befunde zur beziehungsund familienentwicklung in deutschland. würzburg: ergon verlag: 241-267. rüger, heiko; feldhaus michael; becker, katharina s.; schlegel, monika 2011: zirkuläre berufsbezogene mobilität in deutschland: vergleichende analysen mit zwei repräsentativen surveys zu formen, verbreitung und relevanz im kontext der partnerschaftsund familienentwicklung. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 36,1: 193-220. schmitz, andreas; sachse-thürer, susann; zillmann, doreen; blossfeld, hans-peter 2011: myths and facts about online mate choice: contemporary beliefs and empirical fi ndings. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 23: 358-381. schwarz, norbert; sudman, seymore 1994: autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports. new york: springer verlag. empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam) • 325 smith, ian 2012: reinterpreting the economics of extramarital affairs. in: review of economics of the household 10: 319-343. walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena (eds.) 2010: partnerschaften und die beziehungen zu eltern und kindern. befunde zur beziehungsund familienentwicklung in deutschland. würzburg: ergon verlag. walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena 2010: partnerschaften und die beziehungen zu eltern und kindern. eine einführung. in: walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena (eds.): partnerschaften und die beziehungen zu eltern und kindern. befunde zur beziehungsund familienentwicklung in deutschland. würzburg: ergon verlag: 7-34. prof. dr. johannes huinink ( ). universität bremen, institut für empirische und angewandte soziologie (empas), bremen, germany. e-mail: huinink@empas.uni-bremen.de, url: http://www.soziologie.uni-bremen.de © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) infant mortality in germany in the 19th century rolf gehrmann* abstract: developments in infant mortality in germany have previously only been documented in a fragmentary fashion for the 19th century as a whole, and only on a small scale for the period prior to 1871. for the fi rst time, this paper lays a solid statistical foundation by reprocessing the fi gures assembled by the german states of that time. the reconstructed national statistical series (from 1826 onwards) reveals a comparatively high infant mortality, with minor deviations until the turn of the 20th century. the impact of urbanisation and industrialisation is not denied, but an evaluation of the different regional patterns and trends leads to a new weighting. the living and working conditions in the countryside were thus highly determining. the relationship between fertility and infant mortality is assessed differently for the era of the sustained reduction in fertility than for the preceding period. all in all, the prevalent customs and attitudes are regarded as being vital to infants’ survival chances. we therefore need to look at attitudes among the educated public and the authorities. efforts on the part of these groups to bring about change were particularly observed in the south west, where an awareness of the dramatic problem arose comparatively early. further historic research at the regional level will be needed in order to achieve a fi nal evaluation of these processes. keywords: infant mortality · germany · 19th century · female labour · urbanisation · public intervention comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 4 (2011): 839-868 (date of release: 01.11.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-22en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-22en0 * in collaboration with rembrandt scholz (max planck institute for demographic research, rostock), it is thanks to his initiative that this paper was drafted. i am also grateful to the reviewers of comparative population studies for their helpful comments. • rolf gehrmann840 1 introduction since its resurgence in the 1960s, historical demography has always focused strongly on infant mortality. mortality research absolutely must focus on what happened to small children, given that this made a major contribution towards general developments in life expectancy. moreover, this provides many different approaches on which further conclusions can be based. there are good reasons today why mortality in the fi rst year of life is regarded as an important indicator of a society’s state of development. as early as in the last third of the 19th century, bad chances of survival were no longer accepted as being a matter of course but were increasingly recognised as a social problem, so that the topic was the subject of studies which remain valid to the present day. these studies identifi ed many of the factors that ever since played an important role in the analysis of the circumstances in which infants live, that is hygiene, food, female labour, living conditions and climatic conditions. studies that were performed in this period are also of signifi cant value since the proximity to the studied circumstances permitted insights to contemporary researchers that can nowadays only be obtained indirectly. therefore the literature of that time is valuable as a source per se. around the turn of the 20th century statistical methods were increasingly used, and their developed forms are still dominating research. largely owing to the use of regression analyses, considerable progress has been made towards further delimitation of quantifi able infl uencing factors, such as fertility. the reconstruction of time series on infant mortality in the area of the later german reich can help to improve the foundations on which such analyses are based. however, it is not possible to quantify all aspects of the living conditions, so that the limits of the quantifying approach should not be overlooked and the socalled qualitative sources should be kept in mind. 2 the state of the research out of the large selection of individual contributions that occasionally also appear in edited volumes and special issues of relevant journals (bengtsson/lundh 1994; corsini/viazzo 1997; gehrmann 2002), when making an international comparison it is necessary to underline those studies where a statistical evaluation goes handin-hand with a precise knowledge of the concrete historic environment. these are naturally case studies on a suffi ciently large area from which more general conclusions can be drawn. on the basis of such a study on an icelandic island, for instance, guttormsson and gardarsdottir (2000) reached the conclusion that health policy, in this case in the shape of improvements in natal care, was already able to lead to a signifi cant reduction in infant mortality around the mid-19th century, even in an area where breastfeeding was not the norm. in a broader perspective, edvinsson, gardarsdottir and thorvaldsen (2008) state that the dissemination of information on infant care and the ability to read and to write also led to the leading position taken up by denmark, norway and sweden in this fi eld. this concurs with assessments made by contemporaries (finkelnburg 1882; prinzing 1899), whilst a link with infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 841 real wages, which can also be used as an indicator of food status, is not presumed to exist for infant mortality at least in scandinavia (bengtsson/lundh 1994). this means that main authors of both recent and older research are against the presumption which had been prevalent in historical demography for a long time since mckeown (1976), namely that the importance of public intervention was somewhat minor, whilst great signifi cance should still be afforded in the 19th century to factors such as food status – in the case of the infants that of the mother (floud 1991). for instance spree (1986), in agreement with lee (1984) – who however also includes women’s workloads – also explains the west-east divide which is observable in germany in the 19th century in this vein. in addition, he also admits that hygienic conditions exert a certain infl uence, but not healthcare. this approach disregards the fact that the latter might have been inseparable from the hygienic conditions. a different evaluation is therefore reached if one takes a closer look at the regional differences in the eastern provinces of prussia. the two factors, which are symptomatically expressed in the unequal successes achieved in the fi ght against child mortality, are therefore equally important when it comes to a certain west-east divide (gehrmann 2010). women’s workload proves to be of great importance among the social elements which have been regarded as determining factors for infant mortality since the end of the 19th century. this problem was already present at an early stage in the debate, so that it is also immediately mentioned in brief comments by the prussian statistics. this is associated with factory work (blenck 1886: lx).1 older and more recent demographic research, which moreover concentrates on agriculture, in this context particularly includes the surveys by prinzing (1899), grassl (1910), as well as heller and imhof (1983). demographers have pointed to the regional differences in the division of tasks in agricultural societies (wiegelmann 1975). as with the question on attitudes, local case studies have provided better access here in recent decades (e.g. medick 1996). the family reconstitution method makes it possible also to include the family context. a certain obstacle however repeatedly emerges from the diffi culty that the qualitative sources which are available for interpretation are not on the same level as the family data. the advantage of the large databases which historical demography has generated on the same basis (ortssippenbücher: village genealogies) for germany is that they facilitate studies which can focus on both the family environment and broader contexts. because of its size, the so-called berlin database (imhof 1990) is suitable for mortality surveys; it formed the basis of the study in which kloke (1997) worked out the causes of infant mortality until the mid-19th century. in a large-scale comparison, the differences in breastfeeding (knodel 1968, 1988), that were recognised at an early stage, remain the key to an understanding of the noticeable contrast 1 “the difference in the ... mortality of children in their fi rst year of life is partly explained by the fact that far fewer among the female population in mecklenburg-schwerin work in factories and other commercial facilities than in the prussian state. [...] with some occupations in which female workers are preferentially employed, [...] the deathbug is already implanted in the children in their mothers’ womb.” • rolf gehrmann842 between northern and southern germany. in her further analysis, she however opposes monocausal declarations, emphasising the differing interaction of individual factors at the microregional level. illegitimacy played a limited role in developments overall. spree (1998) quantifi es its explanatory value for germany in greater detail. according to this research, only one-tenth of the increase in overall infant mortality can be attributed to the mortality of children born out of wedlock, this taking place in a period when out-of-wedlock births accounted for a relatively large share among all births. hence, the inclusion of this factor, which is certainly interesting in other respects, can be neglected here. it also evidently does not explain the difference vis-à-vis the jewish population (derosas 2000), albeit this should be reviewed for germany. in the most recent survey from the school of knodel, kintner (1994) revisits the topic of illegitimacy in her assessments of published statistics, and she also assesses it as being subordinate for explaining infant mortality. however, illegitimacy, together with urbanisation, acted to slow the fall in infant mortality. but, according to kintner, the greatest infl uence was exerted by marital fertility; this link was particularly strong around 1900. in addition to more hygienic infant care, accordingly, the smaller number of siblings exerted a positive infl uence on the chances of survival. for large-scale patterns, as well as for the difference between towns and country areas, the hypothesis stating that climatic circumstances had an effect on infant mortality should not remain neglected. in the absence of a better explanation, this idea was suggested at the start of the statistical evaluations (würzburg 1887-1888), but it is also supported by more recent time series analysis (ekamper et al. 2010). there is no doubt that seasonal temperature fl uctuations, passed on and particularly amplifi ed in the towns by the microclimate in dwellings (prinzing 1899; stöckel 1986) especially affected the mortality of infants who were not breastfed. there is however greater dispute whether this applies not only with regard to the regional differences at a specifi c time, but also to longer-term developments in the infant mortality rate (according to perrenoud 1991, 1994). with his affi rmation, perrenoud (1994) refers to the statistical series on east frisia and the saarland from the berlin database, in which a reduction has been recorded since the 1790s. he traces this back to the fall in the seasonal temperature differences. however, he does not say anything about the opposite problem of the continuous increase in infant mortality in the southern german areas which cannot be brought into line with it. the fact that the general increase or resurgence from the 1840s onwards took place with no recognisable link to the economic development of a region would also favour the infl uence of meteorological factors. hypotheses of this kind can be examined using simple statistical series, given that climatic changes exert an infl uence in the same direction in major geographic connections. if they had been signifi cant, they could therefore be expected to lead to similar changes in mortality in various regions. if the presentation of robust statistical series on infant mortality is stressed as a central concern here, this is because only a small quantity of information is available for germany so far, and some of it is misleading. in the international context, in fact, only mitchell (2007) provides data on germany in his set of fi gures for 1750-2005. these have for instance also been included in the gesis dataset entitled “geschichinfant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 843 te der deutschen bevölkerung seit 1815”.2 however, when attempting to make a graphical portrayal, it becomes clear that the statistics on which they are based cannot be used as they are. there are leaps at various points in time which can only be explained by the successive broadening of the databasis. mitchell starts with bavarian fi gures (from 1836), afterwards saxony is included (from 1851 onwards), prussia is not taken on board until 1875. this fi nding makes clear both the need to take better advantage of and to document the quantitative sources, and the problem of the representativeness of the regional fi gures from which national series are to be created. firstly, the older prussian fi gures may not be overlooked, and secondly bavaria was presumably anything but representative. moreover, the prussian statistics prior to 1875 have already been used (spree 1998; gehrmann 2000) and are also known in the english literature (knodel 1974). a reconstruction already also exists for baden-wuerttemberg. however, the sources have not been marked clearly enough as being partial, i.e. in some cases only covering baden (steinki/ pristl/gröner 1989). 3 data and data processing the collection entitled “bevölkerung und wirtschaft 1872-1972” (statistisches bundesamt 1972), which is still authoritative for long series on german population history, can only provide fi gures on infant mortality from 1901 onwards, in line with the information contained in the statistical year books of the german reich. surveys on infant mortality had previously been exclusively a matter for the federal states. the reich statistics, established in 1871, did not require them to provide any information on the age of the deceased, but only to make a distinction between live and still births, the latter being defi ned as “children born after at least six months’ pregnancy who died before or during birth” (translated by cpos; kaiserliches statistisches amt 1913: 25 – from where the following information was also obtained). the need for a more detailed distinction was formulated as far back as in 1868, but its implementation was largely left up to the individual statistical offi ces. in its annual mortality statistics, the imperial statistical offi ce limited itself to reproducing the information provided to it on the month of death and sex. it was not until the resolution of the bundesrat of 6 december 1900 that an end was put to this unsatisfactory state of affairs with effect from 1901, and a uniform age classifi cation was prescribed for the german reich. infant mortality was additionally distinguished from 1910 onwards according to the legitimacy of the children and by age in months. the imperial reich’s federal structure therefore caused gaps in the printed statistics on infant mortality prior to 1901. more than that, it is obvious that no such information was enquired from registry offi ces of some states, or at least not from the beginning. when the imperial statistical offi ce wished to draw up the fi rst life table for the german reich in the 1880s, it therefore ascertained that “almost all 2 http://www.histat.gesis.org • rolf gehrmann844 types and degrees of specialisation customary in statistics were found” in the individual states (kaiserliches statistisches amt 1887: 21; translated by cpos) but that still no suitable documents could be obtained from some of them. nonetheless, the life table fi nally covered 96.8 % of the population of the reich in 1885 and 97.3 % of live births in 1872-80.3 this allows identifying the annual infant mortality rate from 1872 onwards, given that it can be derived from the materials on the calculation of the life tables. it was not yet possible to include the states saxony-coburg-gotha, mecklenburg-strelitz, waldeck, lippe and schaumburg-lippe in the tables for the decades 1881 to 1890 and 1891 to 1900. a representativeness level of 98.99 % in relation to the number of inhabitants in 1900 was however already achieved for 1891/1900 (kaiserliches statistisches amt 1913: 29; kaiserliches statistisches amt 1910, 2*). this value must be regarded as the upper limit for the 19th century. in addition to the restrictions that have been mentioned, knodel (1974) had no access to the data from thuringia, the principality of luebeck, birkenfeld and anhalt for his work, so that his data collection is less complete, although it still remains highly useful as a secondary source in the context of the european fertility project. with the aid of the life table material, it is therefore possible to extend the statistical series from “bevölkerung und wirtschaft” almost thirty years back. values are available from 1872 onwards which are so highly representative (> 95 %) that they would not undergo any signifi cant changes if one were to add the few missing data items. the situation is more complicated for periods further in the past. it is basically irrelevant that the statistics of the population movement prior to 1875 were calculated by the religious communities in almost all german states. in doing so, they were carrying out state tasks and were hence subject to state agencies which sanctioned irregularities and ensured that the provided material was complete. with the establishment of statistical offi ces in the individual states, the collection of demographic information was allocated to a separate branch of the administration, but the foundations remained the same as in what is perhaps best referred to as the protostatistical era. this went back as far as the 17th century in some states. the surveys of early demographic statistics sometimes produce information on infant mortality, such as prussia under frederick the great, whilst in other states, such as the stragglers named above, statistics remained rudimentary to the end or were based on an unsuitable distribution of the age groups. differentiated information on demographic movements was also already published prior to 1871, and this sometimes still took place retrospectively on the basis of the repositioned documents after the establishment of the reich. in some smaller states, however, neither one nor the other was carried out although the records would have been available. sometimes 3 this rate can be improved further by including hamburg and bremen. these states were not included in the life tables for 1871/72 to 1880/81 because the high age groups were not adequately attributed. würzburg (1887-1888) was able to ascertain further data on infant mortality 1875-1877, so that only saxony-coburg-gotha is totally excluded from his publication for the imperial health offi ce. at that time, still further material was therefore available in the central statistical authorities of smaller states. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 845 they remain in the archive stocks to this day. however, the corresponding analysis with small states such as reuß elder line (0.1 % of the births of the reich) is not profi table since the data to be collected do not affect the overall values for the area of the subsequent german reich. they can remain the subject of later investigations. as is customary in historical-demographic statistics, the reference territory for the 1816-1871 period is defi ned as the german reich within the borders of 1914, but not including alsace-lorraine. in statistical terms, this involves 32 territorial units, since hanover, the hesse electorate, frankfurt, homburg, nassau and schleswigholstein-lauenburg are historically to be separated from prussia, and the parts of coburg and gotha of the state saxony-coburg-gotha had differing statistical systems.4 it is hence a matter of calculating infant mortality values for this whole which can be used as the german values in an international comparison. such values will not be contested when they are based on a coverage which is similar to that of the reichsstatistik from 1872, but they have to be justifi ed, when the representativeness is lower. it must be noted that a simple extrapolation of known values cannot be done a priori, since there is no guarantee that the values of the undocumented areas were similar to the values of the documented parts of germany. however, the inclusion of the prussian statistics already makes the situation much more favourable than as portrayed by mitchell (2007). mortality for prussia is documented from 1816 onwards, and the state does represent half of the reference territory (50.7 % of births 1841/50). after the annexations which took place in 1866, the values of prussian infant mortality were very close to the reich values.5 it will be necessary to investigate whether this was also the case for the preceding period. because of the major regional differences, however, the prussian values or a dataset dominated by them should not be simply extrapolated. it is instead recommended to start by taking small steps and replacing the missing values in individual territories with probable ones. these emerge primarily when comparing the infant mortality values of neighbouring areas at different times. thus, for wuerttemberg prior to 1859 the information combined to form longer periods can be reduced to individual years by presuming the same spreads over the years as in bavaria. for the grand duchy of hesse, for instance, the clear analogies to the hesse electorate can be used for supplementation. secondly, the child mortality rates can also be evaluated assuming that, if the likelihood of survival is identical at ages 2, 5, 10, 14 or 15, the likelihood of survival until the fi rst birthday must also have been highly similar since, by virtue of its considerable magnitude, the latter was a determining 4 the schleswig-holstein values do not always contain lauenburg, which constitutes a special problem, although it is negligible because of its smallness. the independence of the two hohenzollern and of two anhalt states, as well as of a principality of reuß until a certain time prior to 1866, is also insignifi cant here, as are territorial changes in thuringia prior to 1830; this is because there is in any case no early information on infant mortality for any of these areas. 5 prussian infant mortality as a mean of the annual values in 1872 to 1901 was 98.5 % of the rate for the reich as a whole, ranging from 94.2 % to 102.5 %. • rolf gehrmann846 factor for all other age groups just named and mortality was subject to less marked structural variations after the fi rst year of life. how this was done in detail can be derived from the methodical remarks in appendix 1. all the values calculated refer to live births.6 this principle was retained here although it does not refl ect the contemporary understanding which is also expressed in the sources. a brief excursion on the defi nitions in the sources and on the problem of registration of the stillbirths is hence necessary here. the statistics of the 19th century generally stated both births and deaths, including stillbirths. the latter were stated separately, but were not always registered 6 they do not refer to the civil year in all states. this inaccuracy has to be accepted. fig. 1: annual data on infant mortality, 1816-1871 1 prussia 2 bavaria 3 saxony 4 wuerttemberg 5 hanover 6 baden 7 grand duchy of hesse 8 schleswig-holstein 9 hesse electorate 10 mecklenburg-schwerin 11 nassau 12 braunschweig 13 oldenburg 14 saxe-weimar-eisenach 15 hamburg * 16 saxe-meiningen 17 saxe-altenburg 18 anhalt 19 lippe 20 saxe-gotha 21 mecklenburg-strelitz 22 reuß younger line (gera) 23 bremen 24 schwarzburg-rudolstadt 25 waldeck 26 schwarzb.-sondershausen 27 frankfurt 28 reuß elder line (greiz) 29 saxe-coburg 30 luebeck 31 he.-homburg 32 schaumburg-lippe 1856 1861 18661836 1841 1846 18511816 1821 1826 1831 data on child mortality data on infant mortality oldenburg 1871 not incl. the principality of luebeck and birkenfeld * infant mortality without the rural area and bergedorf source: see statistical references. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 847 correctly. this especially applies to catholic areas. the apparent stillbirth rate was too low there and the apparent infant mortality rate somewhat too high, because many stillbirths were declared as live births. only for mecklenburg-schwerin does the opposite constellation occur in which many cases could be wrongly evaluated as stillbirths, since the statistics do not contain a special column for children who were born alive, but died before baptism. because of the methods used by different denominations to distinguish between stillbirths, on the one hand, and live births which died on the day of birth, on the other, a separation factor was also used in historical analysis carried out on the basis of precise information of the birth and death data based on the original material from church records. the presumption underlying this factor is that, at that time, a similar share (roughly ¾) of the total number of children registered in all places as having died on the day of their birth actually were stillbirths (imhof 1990). an analogous method would also be possible for mecklenburg. in the interests of an accurate data documentation, the original information on live and stillbirths was not corrected, however. the graphs (fig. 1 and fig. 2) show the representativeness of the fi gures available on infant mortality (fig. 1, year box marked dark). the eleven largest areas together accounted for 93.7 % of the births of the total reference territory of germany in 1841/50 (fig. 2). gaps in the data of these states hence have a negative impact on the representativeness of the overall values, whilst the remaining 21 territorial units are virtually negligible in statistical terms. taken individually, they never reached 1 % of the total number of births. fig. 2: representativeness of the individual states and territories, 1841/50 source: statistik des deutschen reichs, n.f. 44, 1892. prussia bavaria saxony wuerttemberg hanover baden grand duchy of hesse schleswig-holstein hesse electorate m.-schwerin nassau other • rolf gehrmann848 the share of births on which information is available on infant mortality is vital in order to carry out an overall evaluation of the statistical material (table 1). the reference value used here is based on the fi gures of the historical statistics of the german reich (vol. 44) from 1841 onwards, not including alsace-lorraine as has already been mentioned,. so far there is no such basis in published form for the period 1816 to 1841, so that own calculations were carried out to determine the total number of births in which estimates have also been included. the procedure employed in the reich statistics has been applied where possible. 4 results the complex procedure of supplementing missing data does not lead to signifi cantly different results for the 1826-1871 period than the simple addition of the fi gures from the sources. the difference between the two series is no more than 0.9 percentage points per year, which in relation to the level of infant mortality at that time can be called only a slight deviation (tab. 2, columns a and b in comparison). it is unlikely that the complete hundred percent values which cannot be ascertained here are signifi cantly different since even unexpected, extreme and individual outliers in individual states with missing data cannot be realistically presumed to be so large that they could exert a suffi cient infl uence on the overall values. this even applies to wuerttemberg, which is relatively large, and for which the lack of raw data for the years 1869 and 1870 are somewhat disturbing. this creates a tenable basis for estimating the overall development (table 2). the fi rst thing to notice is that the picture does not entirely correspond to the expectation expressed at the outset since developments in prussia cannot be equated to those of the territory as a whole, namely the later german reich. it is evident that the situation in the southern german states was too different to that in prussia before a kind of convergence set in following the establishment of the reich which tab. 1: representativeness of the fi gures on infant mortality a live births in the dataset per year b share of a in the number of births in germany a b 1819-21 634,538 .648 1826-30 648,163 .654 1831-40 769,176 .715 1841-45 890,203 .753 1846-51 986,559 .818 1852-66 1,195,255 .920 1867-71 1,378,671 .956 source: see statistical references. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 849 tab. 2: infant mortality in germany, 1826-1914 a acc. to raw data, 1872-1900 acc. to life tables b incl. calculated additions (constant not incl. alsace-lorraine) c acc. to federal statistical office 1972: 107 & 113 a b a b c 1826 .204 .206 1867 .236 .235 1901 .207 1827 .206 .204 1868 .249 .248 1902 .183 1828 .200 .203 1869 .220 .226 1903 .204 1829 .201 .206 1870 .232 .237 1904 .196 1830 .203 .203 1871 .264 .264 1905 .205 1831 .209 .213 1872 .242 .246 1906 .185 1832 .212 .214 1873 .240 .242 1907 .176 1833 .213 .213 1874 .237 .239 1908 .178 1834 .233 .236 1875 .241 .240 1909 .170 1835 .203 .207 1876 .231 1910 .162 1836 .199 .205 1877 .225 1911 .192 1837 .217 .220 1878 .226 1912 .147 1838 .206 .208 1879 .219 1913 .151 1839 .214 .214 1880 .237 1914 .164 1840 .207 .212 1881 .220 1841 .210 .215 1882 .224 1842 .214 .220 1883 .227 1843 .217 .220 1884 .231 1844 .190 .195 1885 .223 1845 .203 .208 1886 .242 1846 .231 .226 1887 .214 1847 .223 .220 1888 .215 1848 .226 .218 1889 .223 1849 .201 .199 1890 .223 1850 .214 .208 1891 .216 1851 .211 .208 1892 .227 1852 .228 .224 1893 .220 1853 .215 .213 1894 .209 1854 .221 .219 1895 .226 1855 .214 .213 1896 .198 1856 .205 .204 1897 .218 1857 .225 .223 1898 .208 1858 .228 .225 1899 .213 1859 .234 .231 1900 .225 1860 .210 .206 1861 .241 .235 1862 .228 .223 1863 .230 .225 1864 .226 .222 1865 .255 .251 1866 .235 .230 source: see statistical references. • rolf gehrmann850 led to a correspondence of the prussian and reich data. such regional particularities play a vital role for germany; they will be analysed in greater detail later. all in all, after the positive estimates of the 1820s had been superimposed by opposite tendencies, stagnation at a high level was predominant, whilst the situation was particularly critical in the fi rst half of the 1860s until the second half of the 1870s, with a value of 24.5 % in the fi ve-year period 1871/75. the epidemiological environment was extremely unfavourable during this period, this having corresponding effects on infants. the 1871/72 smallpox epidemic in prussia was symptomatic of this. other causes of death such as diphtheria and typhus however also occurred extensively in this period (e.g. 1865), but cannot be quantifi ed because of the inadequate death statistics, whilst the cholera epidemic of 1866 astonishingly did not leave a direct trace. similar side effects of diseases which actually tend to target older children also occurred in england in this period, where scarlet fever was a specifi c problem (woods 1994). no real change took place even after 1872 in spite of the ebbing of the wave of uncontrolled epidemics which also left their traces in scandinavia in the decades 1850-1870 (bengtsson/lundh 1994). the rising birth rate in the gründerzeit (the “founder epoch”) after the franco-german war may have contributed to this. whilst infant mortality subsequently fell slightly, the decisive mark of an irreversible sinking of around 10 % was however not overstepped until 1901, which was already recognised by knodel (1974: 162). with its sustainably high values, germany almost brought up the rear (fig. 3) among those european states for which longer time series are available, exceeded only by austria and russia (vallin 1989: 38). the divide in comparison to the western states had tended to widen further towards the end of the 19th century. was the course of infant mortality in germany based on a similar pattern which was perhaps delayed, or did it follow a different path? the comparison shows that there was indeed a model development (sweden), but otherwise no uniform marching route. nonetheless, various patterns are revealed, albeit only a representative selection of states is portrayed in fig. 3 for reasons of clarity: a. a continuous drop in infant mortality, starting shortly before the middle of the century: sweden. iceland follows, but on the basis of a very much higher level and with stronger outliers. the values in norway, already starting very low, only fall slightly, and there are discontinuities in denmark. b. stagnating infant mortality on a moderate level: england. belgium shows similar characteristics, france ultimately following suit after seeming initially to develop according to the swedish pattern. c. marked fall in infant mortality in the last third of the 19th century, starting from relatively high values, preceded by an increase: netherlands. italy followed a similar pattern – as far as documented by national statistics. like austria, germany cannot be positioned within this pattern. the fact that the mortality of infants did not reduce was not unusual per se (pattern b). this problem can be linked to industrialisation (vallin 1989), and is even occasionally generalised for the 19th century (van de walle 2005). what was unusual was rather the persistinfant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 851 ence of this problem and the widening gap in comparison with the netherlands (pattern c) for example. germany was in any case far removed from the scandinavian situation. this should however not rule out conditions pertaining in parts of germany that were similarly favourable to its northern neighbours. this is already indicated by the so-called berlin life tables (imhof 1990). this poses the question as to the signifi cance of the regional differences. were they largely constant, or were there diverging developments? in the latter case, the analysis would also have a heuristic value for the interpretation of the overall course and of the factors infl uencing them. the contrasts between the german states which are clearly recognisable in fig. 4 had been formed at the latest in the second half of the 18th century (imhof 1990), and the general difference between a high southern german and a low northern german infant mortality did not disappear at any time in the 19th century. until the 1860s, the situation in schleswig-holstein, hanover, oldenburg (not shown) or mecklenburg (combined in fig. 4 with schleswig-holstein) was even better than fig. 3: infant mortality in germany in an international comparison, 1825-1900 (5-years-moving averages) 0.075 0.100 0.125 0.150 0.175 0.200 0.225 0.250 0.275 1825 1835 1845 1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 austria (mitchell-data) germany prussia (of 1866) netherlands italy france england (from 1839 mitchell-data) sweden norway source: human mortality database, own calculations. • rolf gehrmann852 that in sweden, which is shown as a model above. the common features shown in some of the northern and baltic areas hence suggest that one should not exclude natural and climatic factors from the outset, but that one should include population density. on the other hand, there were the southern german states which were highly heterogeneous per se, but whose fi gures were negatively infl uenced by the widespread practice of not breastfeeding. however, progress was made there in the last third of the 19th century, whilst the situation did not improve in the industrial areas of central germany. in this period changes not only occurred in the problematic southern german states, but also in other regions that were better off. if these were hence possible, the fact that they did not occur elsewhere may also indicate why germany as a whole lagged behind comparable european states when it came to the survival chances of infants. the following regional patterns can be identifi ed which confi rm knodel’s observations (1974) on the link between the amount of and progress in infant mortality: fig. 4: infant mortality in the larger german states, 1825-1900 (5-years-moving averages) 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 1825 1835 1845 1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 wuerttemberg bavaria saxony baden prussia (of 1866) schl.-holst.-mecklbg. hanover hesse source: see statistical references. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 853 a. western and southern germany: clearly-recognisable fall in the infant mortality rate, partly from a high and previously even rising level (bavaria, wuerttemberg, baden), and partly from a moderate level (hesse). there are similarities to the development in infant mortality in the netherlands and in italy as far as fi gures are available. this progress meant that conditions for the survival of infants were ultimately better in hesse than in schleswig-holstein or mecklenburg. b. central germany: slight or no improvements. this is shown clearly in saxony and is to be analysed more closely for prussia. schleswig-holstein and mecklenburg show a similar pattern, albeit the total infant mortality rate was much lower there. the values in hanover remained largely unchanged. because of its size, prussia must be looked at more closely. what is interesting here is both the east-west divide and the problem of the attribution of individual regions to the two patterns named. the mentioned difference can be determined from the outset to a certain degree, but no uniform picture emerges overall. for instance, silesia and the leipzig basin area bordering on saxony to the north already showed high infant mortality in the 1820-34 period, whilst pomerania, which is further east, apart from the oder estuary, was equated to the baltic sea area further west (gehrmann 2010). the second criterion for an attribution, the course of progress, can be obtained from comparing the periods of 1833/37 (own data collection) and 1875/80 (printed statistics, compiled by knodel 1974) (table 3). the values also fell in areas of prussia in which they had previously been particularly high, and vice versa. this tendency to converge was however initially limited to reducing the extremes, whilst regional differences were not levelled out. on the contrary, they were accentuated when taken as a whole. apart from the administrative districts of koeslin and erfurt, all the central and eastern german areas therefore reached higher scales, whilst all the western german areas apart from cologne show values below 20 %. the increase in prussian infant mortality was largely due to the unfavourable development shown in the catchment area of the city of berlin and in eastern and western prussia. the initially negative effects of urbanisation caused by industrialisation (vögele 1997), which are also recognisable in the data presented here for hamburg, were therefore certainly present, but quite obviously do not refl ect the only social problems which had fatal consequences. it is also likely that an explanation based on the fostering system, which has not been investigated so far, and which affected the surrounding areas starting in the towns, is ineffective. rather, additional factors appear to have come into play which, when taken together, worsened rather than improved the living conditions of infants. such an absence of progress does not have to contradict an increase in the general standard of living, given that the connection between the parents’ material security and the survival chances of their children was anything but linear. for instance, it is frequently observed in historical demography that infant mortality was lower among unpropertied agricultural labourers than it was among farmers (schlumbohm 1992; bengtsson/lundh 1994; sponholz 1995; kloke 1997; stephan 2002), so that the poorer families were better off in this respect than the richer ones. it is however certain on the other hand that the progress made at the turn of the 20th century started in the towns. there, in turn, it fi rstly became noticeable among civil • rolf gehrmann854 tab. 3: changes in infant mortality rates in central administrative districts no. (knodel 1974: 288) 1833/37 1875/80 ± % 1 ostpreußen .182 .218 19.6 2 danzig .192 .235 22.7 3 marienwerder .181 .226 25.1 4 berlin .228 .304 33.2 5 potsdam .174 .254 46.2 6 frankfurt / oder .166 .220 32.8 7 stettin-stralsund .156 .215 37.5 8 köslin .147 .166 13.2 9 posen .191 .216 13.3 10 bromberg .177 .215 21.7 11 breslau .239 .274 14.5 12 liegnitz .279 .289 3.7 13 oppeln .209 .212 1.6 14 magdeburg .172 .219 27.0 15 merseburg .201 .214 6.6 16 erfurt .162 .186 15.0 24 münster .139 .150 7.6 25 minden .156 .151 -3.1 26 arnsberg .128 .151 18.1 27 kassel .207 .164 -20.9 29 koblenz .170 .179 5.5 30 düsseldorf .140 .166 18.9 31 köln .157 .202 28.9 32 trier .143 .157 9.4 33 aachen .165 .193 16.7 35 oberbayern .380 .383 0.8 36 niederbayern .337 .348 3.1 37 pfalz .177 .179 0.9 38 oberpfalz .314 .327 4.2 39 oberfranken .214 .192 -10.1 40 mittelfranken .293 .286 -2.4 41 unterfranken .241 .207 -14.0 42 schwaben .400 .383 -4.1 43 dresden .257 .267 3.9 44 leipzig .262 .266 1.5 45 zwickau .278 .303 8.9 66 lübeck .184 .178 -3.0 67 bremen .151 .171 12.9 68 hamburg .164 .219 33.3 dresden, leipzig and zwickau only 1835/37 source: see statistical references. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 855 servants and self-employed persons (vögele 1997; spree 1980; cf. woods 1994; sundin 1995). all in all, infant mortality did not sustainably fall until the “urban handicap” disappeared, hence paving the way towards the value of 10 %, which at that time could be regarded as optimal. in addition to urbanisation, and connected to this migration and population density, still another demographic condition is to be observed, namely fertility. the causality which was identifi ed early and appears plausible according to which a fall in infant mortality had to be preceded by a drop in fertility (van de walle 1986; preston 1978) cannot be upheld for germany. rather, there was a connection with the drop in fertility which is insoluble, or which rather has yet only been insuffi ciently solved by analysis. prior to the transformation in fertility behaviour, there was not yet a positive correlation between the two events at least in prussia. the gross reproduction rate which can be estimated relatively reliably because of the age distribution of deaths and the natural growth rates, did not increase there parallel to infant mortality, but fell until after the middle of the century. this also applied to potsdam administrative district, where the greatest increase in infant mortality was registered. particularly informative is the inclusion of natality when observing developments in hesse, since this region serves here as an example of an early fall in infant mortality from a level that was already moderate, and hence can be regarded as a german counterpart to sweden. the birth rate in hesse in the 1850s was relatively low, and this was probably also linked to emigration. then it initially increased, but subsequently fell once more. whilst no unambiguous correspondence with a movement in infant mortality can yet be registered for the fi rst fertility reduction, if it was real at all and not simply a result of the age structure,7 such a reduction is clearly revealed in the second half of the 1870s. thus, it can be concluded that a changed interaction between infant mortality and fertility behaviour only came about in a new historic context, and was perhaps unable to do so until such a change had taken place. 5 discussion hopefully, the results presented here will provide an impetus for further studies of the topic of infant mortality in historic germany. regardless of the more exact analyses of certain connections that have to be carried out in the future, the presented overview of the main international and interregional differences already enables one to comment on individual hypotheses of the research. the climatic hypothesis, which met with both approval but also disagreement at an early date (krull 1874), proved to be relatively unhelpful for our analysis. there is no denying that it can help to explain short-term fl uctuations, and perhaps also 7 the mortality statistics of the hesse electorate provide age distributions for deaths. the age groups are however relatively broad, so that model life tables have to be used in order to then estimate the gross reproduction rate. • rolf gehrmann856 favourable periods such as the 1820s. however, it can no longer be regarded as a decisive factor for the main part of the period surveyed. this already emerges from a synopsis of the data series presented here, since they were not subject to manifestly parallel infl uences. however, the approaches which are based on social factors can generally be agreed with. they necessarily focus on the workload of women, even if it cannot always be quantifi ed or made amenable to measure in another form (vallin 1989). the differences in this area, however, cannot be simply ascribed to an east-west divide, as happens with lee (1984) referring to agricultural property ownership. this is contradicted by the example of eastern pomerania with its extremely good survival chances, and farmers in mecklenburg were also not better off than elsewhere in the areas to the east of the elbe. there therefore remains some analysis to be done and concretisation to be carried out. especially the distribution of tasks in the countryside has to be analysed. furthermore, the indications of wiegelmann (1975), mentioned above, should be explored, since they suggest that the position of the baltic area was more favourable in this respect from the middle ages onwards. the contemporary literature also offers some source material on this topic. the fi rst provisional answer to the question of why germany had such a high infant mortality and why it was so diffi cult to limit it for a long time, must therefore be that the latter was by no means unusual in industrialised states with a high degree of urbanisation. additionally, however, the conditions in the area of the german reich, when taken as a whole, were much worse than elsewhere. unfavourable regional developments already occurred prior to 1815 when it came to breastfeeding and infant care which were due at least as much to attitudes as to social conditions. the forces of population pressure and population regulation may have been just as effective in the background. these regional differences, which have become constants, were now supplemented by new ones. they express a worsening in living conditions of infants. such a development was observed both in the towns and in the countryside, in particular in the central provinces of prussia. the term “women’s workloads” is the key to this development. it is equally important here to point out that the fi ndings support some known or somewhat neglected observations made by contemporaries and historical demographers. for instance, it may be regarded as certain that the reduction in fertility was accompanied by a drop in infant mortality (knodel 1974; kintner 1994), albeit one event was not the chronological consequence of the other. one can therefore conclude that both events were determined by a change in attitudes. where this was expressed in a corresponding health policy, it did not remain hidden (prinzing 1899; vögele 2010). the observations discussed so far however tend to refer to the 20th century rather than to the 19th, which is the one we are interested in here. however, there were already unmistakeable reductions in infant mortality which have been characterised above as the western and southern german pattern. they are reminiscent of the reduction which took place several decades before (gehrmann 2002), also regionally-limited, in which a change in breastfeeding and infant care is manifest. the fact that this event has been virtually disregarded in the research carried out so far may have been caused by the fact that it still took place in the context of infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 857 the old demographic circumstances, and not in the process of transition, which received greater attention. lessons could certainly also be drawn from patterns which occurred earlier for the interpretation of subsequent changes – or their delay. there has for quite some time no longer been a shortage of medical insight in the fi eld of infant care (rau 1840; fischer 1965), and the very low infant mortality among the jewish population of prussia is only one example of certain population groups in which the optimal 10 % mark was certainly already a realistic orientation (wappäus 1859: 215). it is obvious that from a certain time onwards the attempts were intensifi ed to engage in popular education, as can also be demonstrated for sweden. for instance, krull (1874: 144) quotes a paper which appeared at a time when the high child mortality in wuerttemberg fi nally began to fall (“die kindersterblichkeit in wuerttemberg: eine mahnung an das volk, 1868“). these had been preceded by detailed research carried out by the physikate (local public health offi ces) that had been ordered by the medical board in 1858. in this context, the education of women already appeared to them as the key to combating infant mortality, in its effects that were defi ned in early infant mortality (finkelnburg 1882). the degree to which new knowledge could be implemented primarily depended on the attitudes, and then on the social circumstances. the discussion of the question of what this meant in concrete terms in 19th century germany, and what conclusions can be drawn from this in terms of continuity and change in society, is still underway. statistical references preußen 1816-1860: engel, ernst 1861-1862. die sterblichkeit und die lebenserwartung im preußischen staate und besonders in berlin. zeitschrift des kgl. preußischen statistischen bureaus 1-2; 1861-1874: preußische statistik 5, 10, 18, 29, 43, ab 1875 datenbank patrick galloway. / bayern 1819-1821: gebhard, dismas a. 1844. 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(eds.): the decline of infant and child mortality. the european experience, 1750-1990. den haag: martinus nijhoff: 109-127. vögele, jörg 2010: „has all that has been done lately for infants failed?“ 1911, infant mortality and infant welfare in early twentienth-century germany. in: annales de démographie historique 2: 131-146. wappäus, johann eduard 1859-1861: allgemeine bevölkerungsstatistik. leipzig: hinrich. wiegelmann, günter 1975: bäuerliche arbeitsteilung in mittelund nordeuropa − konstanz oder wandel? in: ethnologia scandinavica: 5-22. woods, robert 1994: la mortalité infantile en grande-bretagne: un bilan des connaissances historiques. in: annales de démographie historique: 119-134. würzburg, arthur 1887-1888: die säuglingssterblichkeit im deutschen reiche während der jahre 1875 bis 1877. in: arbeiten aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte 2-3: 20-222, 343-446, 28-108. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “säuglingssterblichkeit in deutschland im 19. jahrhundert”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-22de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-22de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 02.09.2011 date of acceptance: 19.03.2012 dr. rolf gehrmann ( ). europa universität viadrina frankfurt (oder), 15230 frankfurt (oder), germany. e-mail: guietgehrmann@aol.com url: http://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/kg/wisogeschi/professurteam/ gehrmann/index.html • rolf gehrmann862 appendix 1: estimating and calculating missing infant mortality rates 1. retroactive extension: if both the infant mortality rate and child mortality rates are available for a later period, this ratio can be transferred to an earlier section of the 19th century for which the child mortality rate is known. this method is however only used here by way of exception since epidemic years had a stronger impact on the child mortality rate than on the infant mortality rate. 2. conclusion by analogy that values are taken on from areas which are not too far apart and in which at other times the infant mortality rate, or the child mortality rate in general, were very similar. 3. the following detailed estimates were carried out for the missing infant mortality rates: a. saxony: 1826-1831 calculated from the child mortality rate, b. hesse: homburg, grand duchy of hesse, nassau and waldeck, values as kurhessen, c. frankfurt: years 1847-50 in which there are gaps, as hamburg, d. wuerttemberg: calculated from the bavarian values (factor 1.172 – corresponds both to the 1818/21 ratio (1.18) and to the 1847/56 ratio (1.17)) e. hanover and braunschweig: infant mortality rate to 1851 and 1852, respectively, derived from 2q0 for lippe (factor 0.75, as in the east frisian life table 1820-1859), f. lippe and schaumburg-lippe: from 1852 as hanover, g. mecklenburg-schwerin: for 1826-52 as ratzeburg (partial land of mecklenburg-strelitz), for 1858-66 as hanover, h. mecklenburg-strelitz: as mecklenburg-schwerin, i. schleswig-holstein: for 1826-40 as ratzeburg, for 1860-66 as hanover, j. oldenburg: until 1854 as schleswig-holstein (i.e. prior to 1841 as ratzeburg) k. baden: for 1826-1851 as saxony since the infant mortality rates are almost identical in 1852-63 (0.259/0.262), l. anhalt: as prussia, m. altenburg: apart from 1826-30 (derived there from 2q0) as saxony, n. reuß elder line: as altenburg, o. coburg: as altenburg (until 1834 and 1865-67), then as reuß younger line (1868-71), p. reuß elder line: as coburg, q. gotha: from 1838 as meiningen, r. meiningen, weimar: before 1838 and 1835, respectively, the values derived from 2q0 values for gotha; meiningen 1868-71 as weimar; 1865-67 as kurhessen, s. schwarzburg: as meiningen. infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 863 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 19 47 7, 45 5 14 7, 49 2 4, 69 4 18 20 46 9, 17 4 14 3, 71 0 4, 80 9 18 21 48 8, 40 1 14 4, 54 0 18 12 -1 82 2: 4, 77 7 18 22 48 6, 60 6 53 4, 74 0 4, 98 8 18 23 48 2, 71 7 5, 08 0 18 24 48 8, 48 3 5, 17 3 18 25 50 6, 08 3 21 ,0 02 4, 80 3 18 26 50 7, 77 6 13 5, 83 9 21 ,2 56 4, 62 5 18 27 47 4, 04 5 13 6, 06 1 19 ,9 72 5, 30 8 18 28 48 2, 58 0 13 6, 57 3 20 ,5 28 5, 40 8 18 29 47 8, 59 9 13 2, 23 4 20 ,5 77 5, 61 7 18 30 48 0, 21 0 13 7, 76 3 21 ,4 90 5, 48 5 18 31 47 3, 30 4 13 8, 31 3 57 ,7 98 20 ,5 14 5, 03 3 18 32 46 4, 96 8 13 8, 03 3 57 ,5 07 21 ,4 28 5, 82 9 18 33 51 8, 18 1 14 2, 84 7 60 ,0 28 23 ,6 41 6, 15 3 18 34 53 6, 23 5 14 7, 71 4 60 ,3 67 24 ,5 29 6, 38 7 18 35 51 3, 16 2 15 1, 08 9 63 ,0 68 25 ,6 87 5, 89 2 18 36 52 9, 67 7 14 9, 29 9 62 ,4 06 24 ,3 73 5, 39 8 18 37 53 6, 75 4 14 5, 41 8 61 ,6 13 23 ,7 82 5, 82 8 18 38 54 5, 16 6 14 3, 97 4 63 ,3 94 25 ,0 54 6, 08 7 18 39 55 3, 28 7 14 9, 18 5 64 ,4 88 24 ,4 48 6, 11 6 18 40 56 5, 14 5 14 9, 90 9 65 ,2 47 25 ,4 05 6, 06 4 18 41 56 8, 75 1 15 1, 49 0 66 ,8 36 25 ,1 49 25 ,3 28 6, 41 9 18 42 59 9, 64 3 15 6, 64 3 71 ,4 41 25 ,9 89 26 ,3 55 7, 09 6 18 43 58 1, 15 2 15 3, 41 2 64 ,8 80 25 ,7 11 24 ,7 64 7, 01 8 18 44 59 8, 75 7 14 2, 98 6 67 ,6 53 26 ,1 45 25 ,3 52 7, 56 2 appendix 2: live births in the larger states and hanseatic cities, 1819-1900 • rolf gehrmann864 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 45 62 2, 75 7 15 6, 85 3 73 ,9 23 26 ,5 20 25 ,7 83 7, 89 5 18 46 60 2, 40 9 15 5, 20 2 73 ,7 03 26 ,7 84 25 ,3 17 7, 86 9 18 47 56 1, 39 2 14 7, 51 6 70 ,4 42 18 46 /4 7 25 ,2 32 22 ,1 79 7, 39 6 18 48 55 4, 62 0 14 2, 79 1 69 ,0 51 18 55 /5 6: 25 ,9 07 24 ,0 09 7, 70 0 18 49 66 4, 92 3 16 2, 11 1 78 ,3 67 64 5, 11 9 27 ,2 60 27 ,1 84 7, 53 9 18 50 65 3, 08 1 15 7, 06 8 78 ,3 30 26 ,8 10 26 ,3 13 7, 09 1 18 51 65 1, 07 3 15 7, 78 9 79 ,0 48 26 ,4 22 25 ,9 79 8, 14 3 18 52 64 7, 16 8 15 0, 66 7 76 ,7 20 56 ,4 14 43 ,7 24 30 ,0 33 23 ,5 74 7, 86 5 18 53 63 3, 01 8 14 5, 29 0 78 ,4 86 56 ,8 89 42 ,8 40 27 ,8 24 23 ,2 09 16 ,5 16 7, 94 2 18 54 62 2, 91 7 14 9, 77 9 77 ,1 70 54 ,9 95 40 ,7 28 28 ,1 93 22 ,5 36 16 ,6 91 7, 78 0 18 55 59 3, 51 1 13 8, 34 1 70 ,5 03 55 ,4 54 38 ,1 19 30 ,2 58 20 ,4 91 16 ,5 87 7, 86 6 18 56 60 1, 00 5 14 9, 59 4 77 ,2 11 56 ,6 59 43 ,9 06 30 ,2 67 21 ,7 37 16 ,6 59 7, 80 3 18 57 67 4, 78 4 15 5, 36 3 84 ,1 26 58 ,5 49 45 ,0 04 31 ,1 13 22 ,9 35 16 ,5 78 8, 47 1 18 58 69 9, 35 4 15 6, 23 5 86 ,0 30 60 ,5 67 45 ,1 67 31 ,4 79 24 ,3 84 8, 64 5 18 59 71 5, 63 5 16 0, 37 9 87 ,1 94 66 ,4 43 62 ,1 79 47 ,9 77 31 ,8 42 25 ,4 81 8, 61 9 18 60 69 9, 40 3 16 0, 10 3 88 ,5 55 64 ,8 20 60 ,4 33 46 ,5 40 24 ,1 43 9, 15 0 18 61 69 2, 98 9 15 7, 70 7 86 ,7 27 64 ,8 65 60 ,8 47 47 ,0 67 23 ,7 83 8, 76 0 18 62 69 2, 39 5 16 1, 59 3 89 ,0 36 65 ,7 23 57 ,8 96 47 ,5 06 23 ,5 14 9, 22 2 18 63 74 5, 22 6 17 1, 45 2 94 ,2 30 69 ,0 52 63 ,4 19 50 ,7 26 29 ,1 23 24 ,8 25 9, 50 6 18 64 75 8, 98 3 17 7, 97 1 94 ,2 93 71 ,3 91 62 ,8 54 53 ,1 35 30 ,0 37 26 ,3 04 10 ,0 93 18 65 76 1, 29 8 17 7, 68 5 96 ,3 72 71 ,8 33 62 ,5 95 53 ,6 65 30 ,0 83 26 ,2 63 10 ,3 98 18 66 76 5, 31 6 17 9, 69 0 99 ,5 73 73 ,7 54 64 ,0 00 55 ,4 52 29 ,4 74 26 ,9 77 10 ,9 12 18 67 74 3, 73 7 18 1, 36 9 94 ,0 14 72 ,8 67 62 ,2 59 53 ,2 75 28 ,5 26 31 ,2 99 26 ,5 46 18 ,0 27 20 ,6 06 11 ,5 30 18 68 74 6, 92 0 18 1, 74 3 98 ,2 18 73 ,4 92 61 ,2 79 53 ,1 17 28 ,7 14 31 ,1 69 27 ,3 99 17 ,8 15 20 ,7 16 12 ,1 62 18 69 77 4, 60 9 18 5, 17 1 10 0, 51 2 62 ,9 13 55 ,4 59 30 ,7 36 30 ,9 79 28 ,6 84 18 ,5 25 21 ,7 02 12 ,7 95 18 70 79 2, 28 7 19 4, 49 4 10 3, 91 5 63 ,2 86 56 ,9 34 31 ,6 21 31 ,8 06 28 ,5 87 18 ,5 01 22 ,3 10 12 ,6 38 18 71 69 6, 99 4 17 7, 29 0 95 ,8 56 74 ,3 89 60 ,8 05 52 ,6 54 28 ,8 94 29 ,0 97 25 ,1 43 17 ,3 48 19 ,8 59 13 ,8 00 18 72 83 5, 21 5 19 4, 80 5 10 9, 30 3 79 ,8 45 64 ,8 22 58 ,7 15 32 ,1 25 34 ,5 43 27 ,8 02 18 ,1 83 22 ,4 63 17 ,5 68 18 73 83 5, 18 0 20 1, 79 1 11 4, 26 9 81 ,7 90 69 ,6 13 58 ,7 04 32 ,4 90 34 ,4 41 28 ,7 94 18 ,1 75 23 ,1 27 18 ,4 63 18 74 85 4, 10 7 20 4, 08 9 11 8, 54 3 81 ,6 20 68 ,4 82 58 ,8 99 33 ,1 42 33 ,4 87 29 ,4 57 18 ,3 44 23 ,8 56 19 ,8 07 appendix 2 continuation infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 865 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 75 87 6, 57 2 20 9, 01 3 12 0, 03 8 85 ,1 32 69 ,4 43 60 ,7 16 34 ,1 21 34 ,5 86 30 ,7 75 18 ,5 57 24 ,3 85 20 ,5 56 18 76 88 8, 44 2 21 5, 28 2 12 6, 36 1 85 ,8 94 71 ,1 33 61 ,0 41 33 ,8 42 37 ,4 94 30 ,7 84 18 ,8 17 25 ,2 17 21 ,8 34 18 77 88 3, 31 4 21 3, 05 0 12 4, 90 7 84 ,1 87 71 ,0 40 59 ,9 49 33 ,2 90 37 ,7 01 30 ,7 88 18 ,7 03 24 ,9 09 21 ,9 46 18 78 87 0, 33 6 20 8, 47 2 12 3, 04 5 81 ,1 23 69 ,8 07 58 ,6 26 32 ,6 85 37 ,2 95 29 ,5 69 18 ,2 25 24 ,2 75 22 ,1 40 18 79 88 9, 21 6 20 7, 95 4 12 5, 44 9 80 ,9 14 70 ,2 71 57 ,5 39 32 ,3 77 37 ,6 63 29 ,6 10 18 ,9 20 24 ,3 82 22 ,4 32 18 80 87 0, 84 4 20 2, 66 8 12 3, 37 2 78 ,3 63 68 ,9 17 55 ,8 33 31 ,1 85 36 ,5 44 28 ,6 26 18 ,0 76 23 ,6 46 22 ,7 08 18 81 85 6, 34 1 20 4, 14 1 12 4, 95 1 76 ,8 03 67 ,9 76 55 ,4 42 30 ,9 76 36 ,2 68 28 ,2 29 17 ,8 39 23 ,7 50 22 ,7 17 18 82 87 8, 13 2 20 2, 20 6 12 6, 65 6 75 ,6 09 69 ,4 56 54 ,5 09 30 ,4 71 36 ,9 86 27 ,7 39 17 ,7 53 23 ,2 44 23 ,0 66 18 83 87 4, 19 5 19 7, 03 3 12 7, 27 4 72 ,7 63 68 ,4 83 52 ,9 35 29 ,8 83 36 ,4 60 26 ,7 82 17 ,2 24 22 ,5 94 22 ,8 76 18 84 89 1, 23 9 20 4, 32 8 13 2, 52 4 73 ,5 82 70 ,6 46 53 ,7 09 30 ,4 66 37 ,3 62 28 ,2 33 17 ,6 75 23 ,3 70 23 ,1 13 18 85 90 5, 55 7 19 9, 69 0 13 2, 85 2 71 ,7 66 71 ,0 96 52 ,5 74 29 ,9 17 37 ,2 86 27 ,4 22 23 ,0 40 22 ,9 85 18 86 91 4, 60 6 19 9, 90 1 13 6, 53 1 71 ,4 76 71 ,3 35 53 ,2 73 30 ,5 54 37 ,2 81 26 ,9 21 17 ,6 56 24 ,1 55 23 ,2 37 18 87 92 3, 64 9 19 9, 73 2 13 7, 36 6 70 ,3 04 71 ,9 37 52 ,8 65 30 ,2 04 37 ,9 86 27 ,1 43 17 ,7 23 24 ,2 80 23 ,4 14 18 88 92 8, 06 6 19 6, 79 4 14 0, 19 1 68 ,6 81 73 ,4 32 52 ,2 55 30 ,1 92 38 ,4 89 26 ,9 57 17 ,7 31 24 ,2 74 24 ,3 62 18 89 93 0, 82 4 19 9, 24 2 14 2, 63 9 68 ,0 36 72 ,6 66 52 ,9 90 30 ,7 29 38 ,9 31 27 ,1 65 17 ,5 57 24 ,9 18 26 ,2 22 18 90 92 8, 95 9 19 5, 04 7 14 0, 51 4 66 ,7 80 73 ,0 16 51 ,7 06 30 ,0 00 39 ,0 92 26 ,5 89 17 ,0 84 24 ,5 02 27 ,1 55 18 91 96 7, 25 3 20 5, 45 3 14 7, 48 0 70 ,1 21 75 ,4 31 55 ,3 05 32 ,0 16 41 ,1 67 27 ,7 34 17 ,4 16 26 ,5 78 28 ,5 71 18 92 93 8, 69 6 20 3, 44 9 14 2, 52 7 69 ,4 07 74 ,3 24 54 ,8 58 31 ,5 65 40 ,9 74 26 ,7 76 16 ,7 67 25 ,7 33 28 ,5 27 18 93 97 9, 76 2 21 0, 03 9 14 6, 15 8 70 ,7 32 78 ,8 73 55 ,6 22 32 ,7 24 42 ,1 75 28 ,3 18 17 ,6 35 27 ,1 22 29 ,3 39 18 94 97 0, 28 5 20 6, 39 5 14 5, 66 1 69 ,1 23 77 ,3 22 54 ,2 91 31 ,9 65 42 ,0 42 26 ,7 11 17 ,4 93 26 ,6 84 29 ,1 05 18 95 99 0, 60 3 20 8, 87 6 14 6, 16 0 71 ,1 56 79 ,2 17 56 ,6 52 32 ,9 21 43 ,0 34 27 ,4 86 17 ,8 33 27 ,5 87 28 ,7 58 18 96 1, 00 4, 92 9 21 5, 65 2 15 2, 21 7 72 ,5 10 80 ,7 22 57 ,8 63 33 ,6 75 43 ,6 04 27 ,8 53 17 ,5 65 28 ,1 76 29 ,7 71 18 97 1, 01 0, 75 7 21 6, 20 7 15 3, 66 3 71 ,5 01 82 ,3 23 58 ,9 18 34 ,1 48 43 ,6 99 28 ,0 27 17 ,5 92 29 ,0 54 29 ,5 54 18 98 1, 03 3, 43 9 21 9, 27 9 15 6, 96 2 73 ,1 77 83 ,8 01 60 ,4 83 35 ,3 01 44 ,2 25 28 ,1 19 18 ,0 95 29 ,7 76 29 ,9 32 18 99 1, 03 9, 90 1 22 4, 16 4 15 8, 57 9 73 ,8 10 83 ,3 27 62 ,2 88 35 ,9 12 43 ,6 02 28 ,4 35 17 ,4 36 30 ,1 89 29 ,1 71 19 00 1, 04 8, 04 2 22 6, 21 3 15 8, 56 3 74 ,2 93 83 ,3 73 63 ,4 82 36 ,9 75 44 ,1 85 28 ,7 72 17 ,0 95 31 ,3 47 29 ,0 53 appendix 2 continuation • rolf gehrmann866 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 19 83 ,0 66 39 ,3 66 74 6 18 20 74 ,6 23 39 ,3 74 80 4 18 21 76 ,5 30 39 ,8 56 18 12 -1 82 2: 76 9 18 22 84 ,7 48 18 5, 42 0 72 8 18 23 81 ,6 39 70 3 18 24 81 ,3 63 86 2 18 25 85 ,3 85 3, 71 3 77 7 18 26 93 ,2 59 38 ,4 78 3, 77 2 83 5 18 27 88 ,0 19 37 ,9 06 3, 92 6 84 2 18 28 85 ,5 11 38 ,7 16 4, 09 1 83 5 18 29 85 ,4 39 37 ,8 57 3, 78 2 96 5 18 30 86 ,5 79 39 ,7 66 3, 81 6 1, 04 3 18 31 87 ,3 03 38 ,1 25 14 ,2 99 4, 44 4 1, 00 8 18 32 84 ,1 56 41 ,6 77 14 ,8 92 4, 39 8 97 6 18 33 95 ,7 24 41 ,2 71 16 ,7 38 5, 01 2 94 5 18 34 10 6, 73 2 48 ,9 88 18 ,2 10 5, 59 8 1, 08 6 18 35 89 ,9 88 42 ,9 13 15 ,5 19 4, 70 7 91 0 18 36 88 ,6 66 42 ,5 36 16 ,5 49 4, 82 1 90 6 18 37 10 1, 35 4 43 ,7 61 16 ,9 94 5, 10 7 1, 04 3 18 38 97 ,3 42 42 ,7 45 16 ,4 89 4, 26 6 1, 16 4 18 39 10 5, 10 9 42 ,5 67 17 ,0 12 5, 05 9 1, 12 3 18 40 10 1, 18 1 44 ,8 30 16 ,4 35 4, 83 1 1, 07 1 18 41 10 4, 23 7 45 ,4 29 18 ,6 29 2, 98 2 4, 98 9 1, 39 9 18 42 11 2, 13 6 49 ,7 90 18 ,9 65 3, 11 6 4, 77 1 1, 46 7 18 43 11 4, 18 6 43 ,9 79 18 ,8 70 2, 92 5 4, 98 5 1, 31 7 18 44 10 0, 36 3 40 ,9 79 14 ,8 92 3, 01 9 4, 51 2 1, 38 6 appendix 3: infant deaths in the larger states and hanseatic cities, 1819-1900 infant mortality in germany in the 19th century • 867 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 45 11 1, 42 5 45 ,3 98 19 ,1 78 3, 59 3 4, 70 0 1, 39 9 18 46 11 7, 72 3 49 ,3 96 21 ,6 21 3, 56 0 5, 49 5 1, 51 3 18 47 11 2, 11 8 42 ,1 58 17 ,5 36 18 46 /4 7 3, 49 2 5, 15 6 1, 38 0 18 48 10 8, 67 6 44 ,5 36 18 ,1 17 18 55 /5 6: 3, 12 4 4, 32 8 1, 37 6 18 49 11 2, 96 2 46 ,1 49 18 ,8 35 21 8, 03 5 3, 24 1 4, 98 3 1, 43 6 18 50 12 0, 37 2 46 ,7 12 20 ,0 68 3, 37 4 4, 96 1 1, 36 1 18 51 11 5, 52 9 48 ,0 46 19 ,8 58 4, 00 2 4, 97 7 1, 32 8 18 52 13 3, 71 4 47 ,0 67 20 ,5 99 7, 90 6 11 ,9 83 3, 43 2 4, 84 7 1, 53 7 18 53 12 0, 83 3 45 ,1 66 18 ,6 76 7, 51 7 10 ,0 49 3, 34 9 4, 44 0 2, 06 6 1, 36 2 18 54 12 5, 96 0 46 ,3 20 19 ,6 86 7, 69 9 11 ,5 24 3, 28 2 4, 52 1 2, 41 3 1, 31 3 18 55 11 4, 97 5 41 ,6 55 17 ,9 60 7, 15 6 8, 92 9 3, 39 6 3, 76 9 2, 22 8 1, 38 2 18 56 10 9, 38 1 44 ,9 21 19 ,5 92 7, 47 6 10 ,1 81 3, 35 1 4, 04 6 2, 26 3 1, 43 7 18 57 13 4, 05 6 50 ,8 95 22 ,6 05 8, 88 1 12 ,2 39 4, 43 5 3, 89 2 2, 99 2 1, 78 1 18 58 14 8, 51 1 47 ,8 47 22 ,2 14 9, 01 4 12 ,0 91 3, 80 7 4, 66 5 1, 51 0 18 59 14 8, 50 3 56 ,3 78 23 ,7 94 21 ,5 42 9, 18 8 14 ,5 18 4, 15 1 4, 74 9 1, 82 7 18 60 13 0, 24 4 44 ,4 40 20 ,2 01 23 ,1 23 8, 61 1 10 ,6 27 4, 46 0 1, 79 7 18 61 14 8, 09 7 54 ,6 52 25 ,4 58 20 ,1 46 8, 80 8 13 ,8 44 4, 58 3 1, 65 6 18 62 13 7, 61 5 52 ,5 85 21 ,6 35 26 ,3 82 8, 41 3 11 ,6 28 4, 28 2 1, 67 1 18 63 15 6, 75 4 54 ,8 52 24 ,4 17 21 ,5 82 8, 36 0 13 ,3 68 5, 74 9 4, 43 8 1, 77 1 18 64 15 1, 18 6 56 ,5 51 24 ,1 86 24 ,5 37 9, 11 6 13 ,5 49 6, 08 5 4, 98 3 2, 06 9 18 65 16 8, 37 4 62 ,3 74 28 ,7 30 28 ,8 90 10 ,9 16 16 ,9 04 6, 62 6 5, 50 0 2, 47 6 18 66 16 3, 52 6 58 ,3 86 25 ,7 57 24 ,8 25 8, 92 9 14 ,7 50 6, 01 1 4, 83 3 2, 32 8 18 67 16 1, 46 1 60 ,1 05 25 ,8 75 24 ,5 45 9, 34 1 14 ,2 24 5, 58 7 5, 61 3 4, 63 1 2, 59 8 3, 42 1 2, 24 2 18 68 17 7, 66 2 59 ,3 18 26 ,5 26 25 ,4 75 10 ,2 34 14 ,9 79 6, 03 4 4, 69 1 5, 27 7 3, 03 1 3, 72 0 2, 59 0 18 69 16 0, 50 1 57 ,9 23 25 ,9 23 9, 44 1 15 ,0 85 6, 34 9 4, 38 8 5, 19 4 2, 31 2 3, 63 4 2, 66 6 18 70 17 6, 75 3 60 ,1 92 27 ,1 88 9, 91 4 17 ,0 23 6, 82 4 4, 74 7 5, 12 6 3, 05 0 3, 87 7 2, 82 1 18 71 17 5, 91 0 60 ,7 48 29 ,3 58 25 ,3 82 9, 58 3 16 ,4 81 6, 58 0 4, 71 0 4, 89 0 2, 48 0 3, 82 7 3, 53 8 18 72 19 9, 24 9 61 ,5 88 30 ,2 64 26 ,0 29 11 ,5 90 15 ,1 48 6, 09 1 4, 96 3 5, 22 8 3, 00 4 3, 64 3 3, 68 1 18 73 19 1, 59 5 64 ,0 14 33 ,1 23 27 ,1 54 10 ,7 12 15 ,8 50 6, 32 8 5, 22 2 5, 24 5 2, 57 3 3, 89 6 4, 20 1 18 74 19 3, 44 2 63 ,5 92 31 ,7 80 26 ,0 20 11 ,2 35 16 ,0 79 6, 69 3 4, 92 1 5, 82 2 2, 88 8 4, 00 5 4, 59 7 appendix 3 continuation • rolf gehrmann868 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 p ru ss ia (o f 1 86 6) b av ar ia s ax o ny w ue rt te m b er g h an o ve r b ad en g ra nd d uc hy o f h es se s ch le sw ig h o ls te in h es se k as se l m ec kl en b ur gs ch w er in n as sa u w ie sb ad en h am b ur g/ b re m en 18 75 19 4, 13 7 66 ,6 24 35 ,3 29 28 ,1 02 11 ,4 59 16 ,8 79 7, 11 8 5, 48 1 5, 65 7 3, 28 2 4, 31 8 4, 59 6 18 76 19 1, 31 4 65 ,2 66 34 ,8 52 27 ,2 71 10 ,1 48 15 ,1 99 6, 51 5 5, 55 8 5, 13 8 2, 70 8 4, 24 1 4, 68 2 18 77 18 5, 37 5 64 ,0 13 34 ,0 30 25 ,1 47 10 ,1 14 15 ,0 47 6, 48 1 5, 39 8 4, 91 0 2, 77 7 3, 76 1 4, 68 4 18 78 18 6, 71 9 61 ,7 68 33 ,2 71 23 ,4 85 9, 95 0 14 ,2 46 6, 13 4 5, 38 9 5, 05 7 2, 95 9 3, 82 9 5, 02 1 18 79 18 2, 51 3 60 ,6 71 33 ,6 28 24 ,5 33 9, 45 5 13 ,9 24 5, 60 5 5, 44 2 4, 34 5 2, 61 3 3, 80 7 4, 56 1 18 80 19 8, 38 1 60 ,1 92 36 ,6 76 23 ,5 40 10 ,7 83 13 ,4 00 5, 85 5 5, 90 9 4, 48 5 3, 30 3 3, 78 0 4, 84 8 18 81 17 8, 59 3 57 ,9 83 34 ,9 39 21 ,8 27 9, 63 2 13 ,3 62 5, 71 6 5, 39 0 4, 52 7 2, 46 7 3, 65 1 4, 68 1 18 82 19 1, 78 3 56 ,9 66 35 ,3 28 20 ,6 56 9, 91 2 12 ,3 74 5, 38 9 5, 28 9 4, 57 0 2, 79 1 3, 65 8 4, 84 0 18 83 19 4, 54 0 57 ,6 81 35 ,9 36 20 ,0 39 10 ,1 30 11 ,8 05 5, 35 9 5, 28 8 4, 07 6 2, 73 7 3, 19 7 4, 79 3 18 84 19 9, 44 5 58 ,9 51 38 ,7 02 21 ,4 71 10 ,8 15 12 ,7 29 5, 45 7 5, 75 6 4, 24 2 2, 86 6 3, 73 3 5, 42 1 18 85 19 4, 07 3 56 ,8 75 36 ,9 35 19 ,8 15 9, 88 5 12 ,5 65 5, 55 1 5, 20 2 4, 32 2 3, 67 8 5, 35 1 18 86 21 5, 87 7 58 ,9 54 41 ,8 15 20 ,1 99 11 ,8 54 13 ,3 72 5, 77 0 6, 05 9 4, 41 6 3, 10 2 3, 80 3 6, 67 6 18 87 19 2, 57 8 54 ,8 16 37 ,0 63 16 ,5 14 10 ,1 78 11 ,2 60 5, 24 2 6, 03 1 3, 94 1 2, 90 0 3, 58 8 6, 25 1 18 88 19 2, 19 1 55 ,1 14 37 ,3 99 17 ,4 72 10 ,4 43 11 ,7 57 5, 55 1 5, 83 4 4, 08 4 2, 56 5 3, 71 1 5, 52 2 18 89 20 1, 70 8 55 ,0 95 40 ,4 21 17 ,3 56 10 ,9 84 11 ,4 46 5, 11 6 6, 61 8 3, 86 5 3, 00 4 3, 68 7 6, 20 4 18 90 20 5, 17 8 53 ,3 78 39 ,8 22 16 ,4 35 10 ,6 33 11 ,2 20 5, 72 5 5, 96 5 3, 74 1 2, 63 7 3, 68 8 5, 76 8 18 91 20 2, 47 0 56 ,3 40 39 ,2 45 17 ,9 51 11 ,6 84 12 ,7 75 5, 25 6 6, 83 8 3, 85 0 2, 61 1 3, 61 0 6, 28 4 18 92 20 7, 63 2 55 ,7 14 42 ,4 26 17 ,7 89 11 ,1 05 11 ,9 59 5, 68 8 6, 72 3 4, 36 5 2, 81 3 3, 92 7 8, 72 7 18 93 21 2, 23 4 56 ,4 61 41 ,9 26 17 ,6 69 11 ,5 55 12 ,2 92 5, 83 3 6, 77 5 4, 02 2 2, 99 4 4, 05 1 5, 70 4 18 94 19 9, 61 3 55 ,0 15 38 ,4 83 16 ,8 87 10 ,5 61 11 ,4 55 5, 13 7 6, 39 7 3, 58 7 2, 71 6 3, 56 0 4, 98 3 18 95 21 9, 78 3 57 ,8 78 42 ,5 87 18 ,7 57 12 ,3 51 12 ,8 03 5, 67 0 7, 33 8 3, 69 5 3, 21 7 3, 97 1 5, 66 8 18 96 20 2, 38 9 50 ,0 94 37 ,7 11 15 ,0 60 10 ,8 80 10 ,6 70 5, 26 5 6, 53 2 3, 44 2 2, 72 6 3, 59 9 5, 14 8 18 97 21 6, 54 8 56 ,9 96 43 ,2 73 17 ,7 89 12 ,7 25 12 ,8 12 5, 76 6 7, 16 7 3, 82 0 2, 86 2 4, 20 3 5, 45 5 18 98 20 9, 02 1 56 ,7 85 39 ,8 30 17 ,7 45 11 ,8 07 13 ,4 97 6, 10 8 6, 71 0 3, 61 9 2, 48 8 4, 37 2 5, 64 5 18 99 22 1, 76 3 56 ,3 66 41 ,8 16 15 ,9 36 12 ,8 79 12 ,7 18 5, 63 9 7, 54 6 3, 77 9 3, 19 1 4, 19 6 5, 51 4 19 00 23 4, 17 0 62 ,9 37 44 ,3 85 18 ,6 79 12 ,6 36 14 ,5 35 6, 34 6 7, 33 2 3, 75 8 3, 02 1 4, 65 4 5, 45 6 appendix 3 continuation © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) basten_et_al_englisch.indd spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener abstract: sub-national trends in fertility are of great importance for policy makers and regional planners. this paper aims to provide a theoretical and empirical framework for policy makers, taking into account past and present trends in fertility, as well as their theoretical underpinnings. these will, we argue, be crucial in determining future trajectories and potential political responses to them. the theoretical part of the paper deals with the factors that may infl uence fertility differences at the sub-national level, including decisions and life course trajectories at the individual level, as well as contextual socio-economic phenomena operating at different geographical levels (local, regional, national, global). this is followed by an empirical section, which takes the eurostat publications on spatial fertility differences in europe as a starting point. in an attempt to overcome the limitations of these reports – both in terms of the lack of geographic detail and the short time span covered – we provide more thorough overviews for austria, germany and switzerland. using historical data from the princeton european fertility project and other sources, we have been able to reconstruct comparative regional fertility time series for the past 150 years. finally, we present a case study on local fertility development in the municipalities and unifi ed rural communities of the german state of lower saxony and the districts of the german city of bremen. based on the results of this analysis, we conclude that the recent degree of fertility convergence between regions within countries – particularly at the macroregional level – is, indeed, striking. however, taking a long-term perspective, we are able to identify some substantial time periods over the last 150 years in which regional fertility levels diverged. this implies that the current picture must not necessarily constitute fukuyama’s “end of history” over the coming decades. moreover, the study of local-level data reveals that, in contrast to the overall macro-regional fertility convergence process in all three countries, a trend towards divergence can be observed within the city of bremen. this demonstrates that local divergence can run parallel to overall regional convergence. keywords: fertility · nuts-2 · spatial variation · sub-national fertility comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 573-614 (day of release: 21.06.2012) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-08en5 • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener574 1 introduction the articles of sobotka et al. (cpos 36,2-3) and philipov/bernardi (cpos 36,2-3) have considered the individual and social decision-making processes which affect childbearing in german-speaking countries. in this article, we place a greater emphasis upon the spatial dynamics. over the last few centuries, we have witnessed increased integration of localities into nation-states, global networks and institutions. as a result, today’s local conditions are heavily infl uenced by structures and processes operating at the national, supranational and global levels (giddens 1990). naturally, this has implications for spatial differentials in demographic behaviour. for example, in from provinces into nations, susan watkins observed that, in “1870 national boundaries were faint on the demographic map of western europe; by 1960, they were deeply etched” (watkins 1991: xiii). despite this, she predicted that national boundaries of states will become less relevant as demographic divides due to european integration and globalisation processes (see also agnew 2008). in order to better anticipate future trends, it is crucial to know both the theoretical underpinnings of these spatial differentials, and the empirical studies on current developments. thus, in section 2, we present a review combining the theoretical background and a review of the literature. this highlights the key factors which are likely to drive future trajectories of sub-national fertility. having established the theoretical framework for examining sub-national trends of fertility, we demonstrate some of these features empirically. this is based on eurostat’s regional yearbooks (e.g. eurostat 2010a), which include data on sub-national fertility, and on how they relate to other population trends, with a particular focus on the nuts-2 level.1 we extend the empirical analysis performed in the eurostat reports in a number of ways. first, we integrate data from other sources to examine longer-term patterns in regional fertility. this allows us to place the current evidence in a much broader temporal context. fundamental to our understanding of patterns of subnational fertility are the geographic units that we elect to employ. in order to provide a comprehensive cross-continental comparative framework, the eurostat reports are uniform in their examination of regional fertility at the nuts-2 level. however, even among these three german-speaking countries, the nuts levels at which a regional “affi liation” is felt, or at which regional policy is shaped, are each different: the swiss cantons (nuts-3), the austrian bundesländer (nuts-2) and the german bundesländer (nuts-1). in germany, in addition to the bundesländer level, the nuts-2 level is also of relevance for regional identifi cation. this level consists of smaller bundesländer and the regierungsbezirke of bigger bundesländer. we therefore present evidence from the most appropriate country-specifi c nuts level. 1 all statistics at the regional level within the eu are based on the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (nuts). the nuts classifi cation has been used for regional statistics for many decades, and has always formed the basis for regional funding policy. it was only in 2003, though, that nuts acquired a legal basis, when the nuts regulation was adopted by the parliament and the council. (for a full explanation, see eurostat 2010b). spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 575 second, we perform an empirical analysis using small-scale local data to detect more nuanced patterns at a specifi c level. a crucial caveat is that nuts regions are frequently highly artifi cial, and cut across established cultural boundaries. for the small-scale analysis, we compiled data on the municipalities and unifi ed rural communities (samtgemeinden) of the north german state of lower saxony (niedersachsen), and information on the districts (stadtteile) of the german city of bremen. the latter belongs to the city-state of bremen, and constitutes an enclave within the state of lower saxony. our analysis covers the period 1971-2006. to our knowledge, there is no other existing dataset that provides fertility trends in a predominantly german-speaking area on such a small geographic scale, and over such a long period of time. furthermore, such micro-analyses of fertility are relatively rare given the tendency of social scientists to unrefl ectively gravitate towards the use of easily accessible national level data and nations as units of comparative analysis, otherwise known as the “whole-nation bias” (snyder 2001). socio-geographical analyses of fertility are relatively rare in the current policy literature (boyle 2003). this may be because it is widely assumed that, in modern and post-modern societies, fertility patterns gradually converge within and across countries, and because there is evidence that convergence at certain nuts levels is indeed taking place. but, like other expectations about the consequences of modernisation, this convergence may not materialise. by combining the latest empirical and theoretical evidence for these three countries, we hope to build on the articles of sobotka et al. (in cpos 36,2-3) and philipov/bernardi (in cpos 36,2-3), and thereby provide some fi rmer foundations upon which our assumptions about the future of fertility in german-speaking countries can be based. 2 theoretical approaches to the social geography of fertility 2.1 what causes regional fertility differences in contemporary europe? regional effects on fertility behaviour are not easy to identify. in general, one can assume that they stem from different aspects of the living conditions of individuals – which we refer to as the “local opportunity structure” – in the regional or the local context which infl uence the incentive structure of potential parents and their children in different ways. however, this is not the whole story. a more adequate approach (e.g. werlen 1995) differentiates between two groups of mechanisms compositional and contextual effects that can contribute to regional fertility differences. compositional effects are caused by the fact that inhabitants of different regions (e.g. different administrative units) are distributed differently with regard to individual-level characteristics related to fertility behaviour, such as educational attainment or socio-economic status. contextual effects are caused by the fact that aspects of the local opportunity structure in regions in which the individuals live encourage or discourage them to have children. the composition of a region’s population with regard to a certain attribute can, at the same time, also be a relevant contextual factor. if, for example, a region is mostly inhab• stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener576 ited by individuals with a conservative world view, this might provide a conservative societal context. the latter may also affect the decisions of individuals with a nonconservative world view, who may choose to engage in conservative behaviour to avoid diminishing their local social capital. the local opportunity structure encompasses: (1) the material and institutional (infra-)structure, including the degree of urbanisation, the level of family-relevant services, other local conditions of family life and housing, and other place-related issues, such as environmental factors; (2) economic conditions and prospects on the local labour market, which may, for example, be indicated by the level of unemployment, the availability of attractive jobs and the degree to which the local economy supports the workfamily balance; (3) socio-structural factors in the area of residence, such as the degree of socio-economic segregation or the socio-structural composition of the partner market; (4) cultural factors which contribute to a localised social climate, such as fertility and family-related values, gender roles and social norms; and (5) embeddedness in local social contexts, such as neighbourhoods, local kin and networks of friends. the local opportunity structure of regions and particularly their socio-structural composition is strongly interlinked with interregional migration which, therefore, is of fundamental importance in the analysis of regional specifi c fertility. selective migration can contribute to the selectivity of both stayers and movers with regard to relevant individual attributes. in a typology, huinink and wagner (1989: 673) disentangled the interplay between regional effects and migration outcomes on individual behaviour, which allows for a better explanation of regional-level fertility parameters. with regard to movers from a region a to a region b, we can distinguish (at least) three sub-cases, which are also considered in the current literature (kulu/ milewski 2007): assimilators: movers change their behaviour in response to the different fertility-related local opportunity structure in regions a or b. they adapt to the new regional environment in region b. in their region of origin a, they behaved in line with the behavioural pattern predominant in region a. this assimilative behavioural pattern contributes positively to the difference in regional level fertility parameters. this is referred to in the literature as the adaptation hypothesis. context selectors: movers move to region b, because it is more suitable for their intended fertility behaviour. they should be distinct among the population of the region of origin a due to the fact that they anticipate such a move. because this case requires that the relevant local opportunity structure in the region of destination b is different from that of region a, we observe an indirect regional effect on the migration decision which amplifi es the regional difference in the level of fertility parameters. in the literature, this is called the selection hypothesis. spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 577 persistently socialised: movers stick to the behaviour they learned in the region of origin a and probably differ from the stayers in region b. this tends to decrease the contrast in fertility parameters between regions. in the literature, this is called the socialisation hypothesis. a number of studies have supported one or the other of these hypotheses (kulu 2005; kulu/boyle 2009), but more research is needed. long-term longitudinal data would allow examining the effects of residential relocation on the fertility of migrants more closely. in any case, our understanding of the fertility patterns of migrants is that they are shaped by the spatial and compositional contextual factors in both the sending and the receiving areas which will be outlined below. 2.2 material and institutional infra-structure the degree of urbanisation is an important factor in regional patterns of fertility. to explain the low fertility in cities, we can refer to the familiar argument that living in an urban area should decrease the motivation to have children, because these areas offer more attractive alternatives to family life (hank 2002) – i.e. the opportunity costs of having children are higher in cities. a second set of arguments revolve around different living conditions for families: the architectural environment is said to provide less room for young children’s activities and for larger families, and to be too unsafe to allow children to play and spend time outdoors without parental supervision. the social environment is characterised by anonymity and a dearth of relationships with trusted individuals outside the family. thus, cities are often seen as less safe settings for children to grow up in, which could encourage selective migration of families to the suburbs. however, the quantity and quality of the provision of facilities essential for daily living may, in fact, be better in cities than in rural areas. the same is true for the density of day care facilities. this is positive for families. the favourable infrastructure, which provides families with a means of organising daily life, might make living in cities more attractive. cities could be a better place for parents to combine family-related tasks with their interests in other life domains (e.g. career opportunities), and to balance the pursuit of career and personal interests with child-rearing and parenting. these considerations are becoming increasingly important as more young couples pursue a wider variety of non-family activities. given the trend towards urbanisation in europe and throughout the world, this effect could probably play a greater role. different regions have different levels of family-related services, like day care facilities, both formal and informal. the extent to which these services are available should be relevant for individual fertility behaviour, because they make it easier to balance family and work. in particular the interaction of child care provision with other local/regional family policy measures (neyer/andersson 2008; baizán 2009) could play a signifi cant role in extent to which these measures shape fertility. another aspect causing strong compositional effects on regional period fertility measures is the existence or absence of post-secondary and tertiary institutions of education. most of these institutions are located in urban centres. these regions • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener578 usually experience a substantial in-migration of young men and women who are attending those institutions. most of them do not intend to have children while they are students, and postpone starting a family until after they have fi nished their studies (e.g. blossfeld/huinink 1991; kreyenfeld/mika 2008). and before starting a family, a substantial number of women will have left the area where they studied. as a result, university towns are reporting very low period total fertility rates (tfr) today, sometimes even below 1.0 (e.g. the german town heidelberg with a tfr of 0.95 in 2006; statistisches landesamt baden-würtemberg 2007). 2.3 local economic conditions the local economic conditions and prospects in the regional labour market must be considered as well. again, the assumed correlation with fertility behaviour is not clear-cut. it also depends to some extent on the welfare state policies and local family support systems (e.g. unemployment support, provision of day care facilities). a positive relationship between economic prosperity and good labour market prospects for women on the one hand, and fertility on the other, may be expected if the opportunity costs of childrearing can be kept suffi ciently low. then one can observe a pro-cyclical development of birth rates as found in sweden (andersson 2000). if the opportunity costs are high, they may even increase together with labour market prospects. in this case, fertility tends to be low, and patterns of polarisation in regard to the number of children can be observed (huinink 2002). another factor is housing, which encompasses both housing conditions and the regional housing market (mulder 2006a/b). we can, however, assume, that housing is more likely to affect selective migration than to infl uence fertility plans directly (mulder/wagner 2001; kulu/vikat 2008). however, the emergence in recent years of footloose industries and services, as well as teleworking, has, at least for some groups of actors, provided opportunities to move to rural areas with easier access to housing, without substantially affecting income opportunities. finally, we may want to consider region-related features or aspects of the natural environment (anderson 1986). in contemporary european countries, however, these features might be of minor importance. 2.4 socio-structural factors the local conditions and the socio-economic composition of the local partner and marriage market, which enables single people to establish suffi ciently satisfying relationships, is an important regional factor in family development (lichter et al. 1991; lloyd/south 1996). the probability of spatial homogamy is considerable (haandrikman et al. 2008; haandrikman et al. 2010). the socio-economic composition, or the segregation of the population of a region or a local area, is important in many other aspects. while it operates less through direct effects on fertility beyond the related individual characteristics, the socio-economic composition is correlated with the infrastructure of an area, and the area’s (sub-) culture and social climate. it is also shown that there are strong correlaspatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 579 tions between indicators of the composition of the population by socio-economic status or ethnicity, and the level of fertility in regions. a good example is urban districts as regional units (strohmeier/kersting 1996; hank 2002). 2.5 cultural factors the theory of the “second demographic transition” (sdt) posits that secularisation and religiosity, the level of individualisation and the relevance of postmodern values and life goals, i.e. ideational change, are important causes of changing fertility behaviour (lesthaeghe/neels 2002; lesthaeghe/neidert 2006). indeed, it is argued that apart from the effects of selective migration, the social control of fertility is among the decisive features that explain (stable) regional differences in both levels of fertility and the onset of change (lesthaeghe 1980). the relevance of cultural patterns— after socio-economic differences are taken into account—has been shown for a number of countries (knodel 1974; anderson 1986; nauck 1995). for example, the princeton project found that differences in fertility levels between culturally heterogeneous regions are greater than rural-urban disparities (sharlin 1986). however, this can also be an artefact of using provinces as the unit of analysis. based on more fi ne-grained data for the prussian districts, and contrasting protestant and catholic areas by urbanisation degree, the fi ndings of sharlin can only be confi rmed for the pre-fi rst demographic transition period (klüsener/goldstein 2012). according to inglehart value change is driven by the succession of cohorts growing up in the (local) socio-cultural and economic setting of their parents (inglehart 1977). he assumes the cohort members themselves do not change their individual values over the rest of their life. even though this kind of “socialisation hypothesis” is debatable theoretical and empirical evidence support it at least in part. we can assume that stable socialisation effects are in action at least for stayers in a certain region, where a stronger social control by kin might increase the likelihood of adhering to intergenerational norms. in this case, value change is not just slow, but cultural patterns are also linked to the region through socialisation and transmission mechanisms. it had been anticipated that, with advancing modernity and the increasing universalism of values, this regional link would be weakened. however, it seems that regional attachments remain strong. why should proven practices for organising life change so quickly or drastically that the regional community reject these norms overnight? thus, it has often been observed that people in rural areas are more prone to hold traditional values, to be religious and to adhere to conventional family norms. when studying how cultural factors work, szreter’s “communication community” is a helpful concept. it arose from the observation that there are huge differences in fertility among people with the same status in different regions of england in the early 20th century (szreter 1996). in his study of fertility in britain in 1860 to 1940, szreter assumed that fertility behaviour is the outcome of a complex interaction between individual characteristics, structural conditions in the region and customised patterns of courtship, marriage and childrearing behaviour. communication communities are not necessarily restricted to a certain region. they unite • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener580 groups of people “striving after similar social and cultural goals and adopting similar gender and work roles and sharing a similar language” (szreter 1996: 546). they encompass complex codes that are learned and internalised during early life, in the family and in the neighbourhood. even though this concept was developed as part of an historical study, the principle behind it could still be useful in understanding the relevance of local social norms established and stabilised by social exchange and interaction (blau 1977). another concept which addresses the relevance of culture is social climate (adriaanse 2007). it connects cultural issues with the interaction structure in communities. szreter’s concept of a communication community had emphasised the relevance of family and neighbourhood in the transmission process of cultural values and norms. he also noted the existence of reinforcing processes, which stabilise such contexts (szreter 1996). these processes take place in a complex grid of social relationships, in which social approval and esteem play important roles for the behaviour of individuals. the social context that makes up the social climate usually has a local basis, even though old-fashioned neighbourhoods no longer exist, and regional ties are less apparent (but are not completely lost). 2.6 embeddedness in social relationships and networks social interaction in social networks is a particular dimension of the local environment which affects fertility and, importantly, migration decisions. their impact can be broken down into the effects of social learning, social infl uence (imitation) and social support (social capital) (montgomery/casterline 1996; kohler 2001; keim et al. 2009; rossier/bernardi 2009). the effects of the deliberately chosen social relationships in a social network are diffi cult to study because of processes of self-selection, starting with the selectivity of the eligible people. moreover, we prefer to have close contact with people who share our orientation and our ideas about the way to live, which further promotes self-selection. therefore, the effects of the social network can only be identifi ed if we have the opportunity to follow the dynamics of social networks closely. 2.7 a convergent or divergent future? so, what will the future hold for sub-national spatial differences in fertility? to begin to answer this question, we must also look back at recent and historical patterns. watkins (1991) argued that several aspects of the nation-building process contributed to a convergence of regional differences in demographic indicators. one is the establishment of education systems with rather standardised curricula, usually favouring the most prevalent language. this increased the linguistic homogeneity in most of the western european countries. the standardisation of the curricula probably also contributed to a convergence in social norms with regard to family formation behaviour. the increased linguistic homogeneity supported the establishment of mass media with nationwide reach, which became technically possible spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 581 due to advancements in the transport network and communication technologies (e.g. radio and television) (basten 2010). another important process was the development of national markets and transport networks, which led to a decline in sub-national spatial economic inequalities (watkins 1991). in addition, many nation-states introduced programs to support regions where development lagged, through which they actively tried to harmonise economic conditions. as demographic behaviour is affected by economic circumstances (becker 1991), this probably also contributed to convergence of sub-national spatial variation in demographic behaviour. in addition, the introduction of national welfare state institutions, such as the pension system, unemployment insurance schemes or family policies, led to a homogenisation within each nation-state of local conditions for individuals seeking to start a family. however, in her concluding chapter, watkins noted that she expects the nationstates of western europe to become less important with respect to shaping the demographic map of europe. she observed that the european integration process, including the creation of the common market of the eu and efta countries, is likely to lead to a convergence of economic conditions among countries (e.g. cuadradoroura 2001). however, it should be pointed out that the european union, despite being one of the most important supranational bodies in europe, still has little to say in the area of family policies and other important welfare state institutions, such as the pension system. these are mostly still the sole responsibility of the national governments. indeed, despite watkins’ hypotheses, a number of economists and sociologists have suggested that the coming decades will, in fact, be characterised by increased divergence and fragmentation (veltz 1996; menzel 1998; krätke 1995). based on empirical economic fi ndings on france, veltz (1996) developed the hypothesis that the accelerating globalisation process will lead to the development of an “archipelago economy”. in this economy, the “global cities” (sassen 1991) will be the centres of capital accumulation. these centres will be connected by communication corridors, which also benefi t from growth effects. this promotes the development of a network pattern of the spatial economic organisation of these societies. areas that are not part of this network will probably slow down with regard to their development. veltz also hypothesised that this will occur because nation-states are losing the ability to redistribute resources to areas lagging behind in this process. a related theory by menzel (1998) posited that we will see increased societal fragmentation at all geographic levels. indeed, menzel argued that inequality is increasing at the global level, as well as the national and local levels. this theory is supported by urban studies that provide evidence of increased spatial segregation by social status (see maloutas 2004). it is likely that the emerging divide into regions with shrinking populations, and regions with growing or stable populations, will lead to economic fragmentation processes, as rapid population ageing and decline are very likely to negatively affect regional housing markets and the tax revenues of local and regional authorities. a fi nal process with potential relevance is sometimes called the “end of geography” (graham 1998; cairncross 2001). as recently as in the early 19th century, most • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener582 social interaction was still local in character. this has changed drastically over the last 200 years, due to advancements in transport and communication technologies (harvey 1990). this process has gained further momentum over the last 20 years due to the creation of the internet and mobile communication technologies. these communication systems allow people to stay connected and share thoughts, even if they are thousands of kilometres apart. as a result, today it is possible for individuals to maintain a social network stretching over several continents at relatively low costs. this clearly has implications for the analysis of fertility, as local living conditions may lose relevance as an infl uencing factor of behaviour. but while this trend towards globalised communication might foster further convergence, it is unlikely to lead to an end of spatial differences in the future, as most daily routines still need to be carried out in the real world, where individuals are confronted with geographic distances to artefacts such as infrastructure. having considered the theoretical underpinnings with respect to the analysis of the social geography of fertility, we now turn to an examination of the empirical evidence. 3 empirical trends in sub-national fertility in austria, germany and switzerland conducting research on sub-national fertility trends in the three predominantly german-speaking countries of austria, germany and switzerland is challenging as we are faced with severe data constraints. in contrast to the scandinavian countries or the netherlands and belgium, no detailed population register data are available. most of the existing individual-level datasets on austria, germany and switzerland with relevant family formation information are too small to allow us to examine fertility trends on a small geographic scale. therefore, for this paper we base our empirical analysis on aggregate-level fertility data. 3.1 expanding the eurostat-dataset the analyses employed in the eurostat regional reports (e.g. eurostat 2010a) are necessarily constrained by the need to present a harmonised, continent-wide dataset. these constraints are both temporal, in the use of recent data; and spatial, in the employment of nuts regions. in this section, we extend the eurostat analyses in both aspects. first, we employ historical data in order to gauge the extent of convergence over a longer period of time, and to show the historical signifi cance of this change at the regional level. to do this, we combine the latest available data with evidence from the princeton european fertility project and national printed statistical yearbooks. as previously mentioned, however, a universal analysis based on the nuts-2 level – or, indeed, on the nuts-1 or nuts-3 levels – may miss many important cultural, social and economic factors which play key roles in shaping the social spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 583 geography of fertility. therefore, we expand (or limit) the eurostat report spatially by conducting a case study with fi ne geographic detail. 3.2 data sources creating long historical time series of fertility rates for given regions is fraught with diffi culties. one of the problems relates to the spatial consistency of the regions over time. in attempting to construct as long a time series as possible, we have sought to identify regional level differences in fertility stretching back to the mid-19th century. however, it goes without saying that the period 1860-2010 saw german-speaking countries altered and shifted to a hitherto unheard of degree. the formation of the german nation-state, and the rise and fall of austria-hungary, national socialism and the gdr each played a role in shaping the sub-national regions which made up their ever-shifting borders. fortunately, however, the bundesländer of austria and the cantons of switzerland have stayed relatively constant over time. the rather more turbulent nature of germany’s borders will be examined shortly. any attempt to compile regional fertility data for the past 150 years will necessarily require the pulling together of a patchwork of very different data sources. the data sources and defi nitions are presented in table 1 below, and discussed in greater depth thereafter. whenever possible, we have attempted to remodel the historical data into the equivalent nuts boundaries. of course, this exercise requires a degree of geographical licence, and there will inevitably be some highly problematic cases, such as the inclusion of vienna in lower austria in the pre-1930 data. however, for the purposes of this analysis, we seek to identify patterns of changes within a broadly defi ned set of boundaries over time. therefore, rather than providing a continuous time series, we distinguish different time periods in which we can draw upon comparable data, both in terms of the regional set-up and in how the data was derived (see table 1 for details). these time periods should be viewed as a discrete set of observations, and only a provisional view of the relative range and degree of convergence or divergence over time should be taken. period γ period γ covers the pre-1960 era for all of the three countries, and is examined using data collected as part of the princeton european fertility project (pefp). the pefp was a path-breaking attempt to gather and analyse a wide set of demographic data relating to european fertility at the regional level over the 19th century, and up to 1960. despite having been the object of considerable criticism (e.g. galloway et al. 1994; brown/guinnane 2007), the princeton dataset defi ned much of the european historical demography for the period 1850-1960, and has served as the basis for two of the most infl uential books of the history of european provincial fertility (coale/ watkins 1986; watkins 1991). the project verifi ed the presence of signifi cant spatial differences in fertility across europe during the last two centuries up to the 1960s, and discussed the reasons for these disparities (anderson 1986; coale/treadway 1986). a main fi nd• stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener584 ta b . 1 : m ea su re s an d s o ur ce s o f s ub -n at io na l s p at ia l f er til it y in fo rm at io n, g er m an -s p ea ki ng c o un tr ie s r eg io na l l ev el p er io d m ea su re s o ur ce a us tr ia lä nd er (a p pr o xi m at el y eq ui va le nt to n u t s -1 ) (1 88 019 31 ) p se ud o -t fr c o nv er te d fr o m i f p ri nc et o n e ur op ea n fe rt ili ty p ro je ct b un d es lä nd er (n u t s -1 ) (1 96 020 08 ) t fr s ta tis tik a us tr ia g er m an y s ta at en /r eg ie ru ng sb ez ir ke (a pp ro xi m at el y eq ui va le nt t o n u t s -2 ) (1 88 019 31 ) p se ud o -t fr c o nv er te d fr o m i f p ri nc et o n e ur op ea n fe rt ili ty p ro je ct w es t g er m an y b un d es lä nd er (n u t s -1 ) (1 95 019 87 ) t fr s ta tis tic al o ff ic es o f l än d er ea st g er m an y b ez ir ke (a pp ro xi m at el y eq ui va le nt to n u t s -2 ) (1 96 219 87 ) t fr s ta tis tis ch es j ah rb uc h d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep ub lik g er m an y (u ni fie d) b un d es lä nd er /r eg ie ru ng sb ez ir ke (n u t s -2 )1 (1 99 120 07 ) t fr s ta tis tis ch es b un d es am t, w ie sb ad en , 20 09 s w itz er la nd c an to ns (n u t s -3 ) (1 86 019 60 ) p se ud o -t fr c o nv er te d fr o m i f p ri nc et o n e ur op ea n fe rt ili ty p ro je ct c an to ns (n u t s -3 ) (1 98 120 08 ) t fr s w is s fe d er al s ta tis tic s o ff ic e 1 d ue to a la ck o f t im e lin e d at a w e in cl ud ed fo r b ra nd en b ur g o nl y d at a fo r th e st at e le ve l ( n u t s -1 ) a nd n o t f o r th e tw o n u t s -2 r egi o ns , w hi ch w er e cr ea te d in 2 00 7. a ls o fo r s ax o ny -a nh al t w e o nl y p ro vi d e n u t s -1 d at a fo r th e st at e, a nd n o t f o r th e r eg ie ru ng sb ez ir ke d es sa u, h al le a nd m ag d eb ur g, w hi ch e xi st ed u nt il 20 04 . spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 585 ing was that spatial differences in europe are persistent over time, but had become somewhat smaller during the fi rst demographic transition. the marital behaviour played an important role, but cannot entirely explain these regional variations. for example, particularly in the early and middle phases of the fi rst demographic transition (1900), there were large differences in marital fertility between the provinces in some countries, but variations in the proportion of married couples was also responsible for differences in the overall fertility in many other countries. while data relating to marital fertility are available for period γ (as ig), we chose to employ the overall index of fertility (if), as it removes one extra layer of assumptions regarding these estimates. second, the output of the pefp was the development of a ratio of the number of births of women in a given region and calendar year in relation to the number of births given the hutterite standard of uncontrolled fertility. a simple procedure, described by sardon (1996), can be followed to convert this ratio to something similar to the total fertility rate (tfr). for the conversion to be meaningful, the following equality must fi rst be supposed: where: bobs= number of births observed in the population studied bhut = number of births in the population studied with the hutterite family schedule. hence: where: fi n = population of women aged i in year n fi n= fertility rate at age i in year n hi= hutterite fertility rate at age i this expresses the fact that “the relation between the observed number of births and the number expected if the hutterite fertility rates are applied is equal to the equivalent relation between observed and hutterite fertility rates” (sardon 1996: 253). it therefore follows that or, one can multiply the if by the hutterite tfr of 12.44 in order to fi nd the tfr of the population observed. sardon’s paper tested the veracity of this process by reestimating observed tfrs using this method and found the results to be “not bad” (257). hut obs hut obs tfr tfr b b ii n ii n i n ii n i n ii h f hf ff hutfhut hut obs obs tfrxitfrxtfr b b • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener586 period β for east germany, we were able to supplement the pefp and recent data by extracting fertility rates from published statistical yearbooks. we obtained the tfr rate at the bezirk level for the period 1962-1987. for west germany, we contacted individual statistical offi ces, of which many were able to produce long-run datasets of tfr. thanks to the efforts of statistik austria and the vienna institute of demography, we were able to secure a series of tfrs for austria at the bundesland level for the period 1960-2008. we have inserted an individual point estimate made for vienna in 1951 (gisser 1975). for switzerland, we were unfortunately not able to obtain adequate data at the canton level for this period. period α for this fi nal period, we were able to access tfrs published by national statistical offi ces and eurostat. while the period tfr has been rightly criticised as a misleading measure in recent times (sobotka/lutz 2009), it is still the foundation of our modern measurement of fertility. as such, this is the measure which both individual statistical offi ces and eurostat use as the basis for delivering information on regional-level fertility. the more general issues regarding the fertility data quality for the modern period are examined in greater depth in kreyenfeld et al. (2011 in cpos 36,2-3). it is clear, therefore, that the data employed in the time periods α, β and γ, respectively, are very different from each other in respect to the spatial integrity, nature and form of the data. as the goal of this exercise is to examine the relative differences in regional fertility rates at given points in time, we have decided not to try and force these three disparate datasets into one continuous time series. instead, we will examine each dataset as a refl ection of a discrete period in time. after taking into account the various inadequacies of each of the datasets – especially the possible errors in estimation in period γ and the period-quantum effects (sobotka/ lutz 2009), which would be particularly prevalent in period α – we can attempt to observe some historical patterns over time, which may enhance our understanding of contemporary differences. 3.3 measuring convergence over time convergence of the variation of an attribute over time can be measured in a variety of ways, but the most standard measure is to gauge the σ-convergence, or overall convergence, while accounting for the fl uctuating mean. in order to test for σ-convergence in this paper, we have used the measure of coeffi cient of variation (cv), which has also been employed in other studies of regional change in fertility (e.g. coleman 1993). this is calculated as vc spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 587 which is the standard deviation divided by the mean: if complete homogeneity is achieved, then cv= 0. this measure has been used because it represents the simplest way to account for the fl uctuation of the mean. there are benefi ts and drawbacks when using this particular measure. on the positive side, the cv measure ignores fl uctuating means by treating each sequential period observation as entirely independent. however, during the course of fertility transition, it is of course highly likely that these temporally juxtaposed observations of any region k are in fact related, given the effect of the timing of the onset of decline on its trajectory. despite this problem, we believe that cv still offers a useful way to present a mainly descriptive account of spatial fertility variability over a long period of time. 3.4 austria the austrian dataset is unusual in that it broadly maintains the spatial integrity of the bundesländer over time, although it should be noted that the pre-1930 data for lower austria include vienna, and that data for burgenland are not available until 1960. in terms of convergence, the inclusion of vienna in lower austria potentially masks an important outlier in the 19thcentury. in general, we can distinguish three periods in the development of the cv. a period of little change prior to the onset of the fi rst demographic transition is followed by an era with quite substantial divergence lasting until the period around world war i. since then, there has been a striking degree of convergence over the past fi ve decades. indeed, there appears to be clear evidence of convergence upon the viennese rates. the history of the regional characteristics of austrian fertility using the pefp data has been described by paul demeny and as part of the graz austrian fertility project (demeny 1968; gafp 2010), as well as in a recent phd thesis (gude 2010). historically, of course, separating austria from its wider imperial context can be quite diffi cult. indeed, the austro-hungarian empire was located to both the east and the west of the so-called “hajnal line” which demarcated the “european marriage pattern” (hajnal 1965). with regard to this demarcation, it is important to note that particularly vienna and lower austria received substantial in-migration from the eastern territories of the austro-hungarian empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. contemporary austria is, however far smaller, and more homogenous. furthermore, the social policy framework of austria is generally determined in vienna, rather than at the sub-national level of the federal states. despite this, a number of important and distinct patterns emerge. in particular, the extraordinarily low fertility of the city of vienna in the 1930s is notable, with the number of women aged 25 to 30 being more than three times larger than the number of girls aged zero to fi ve. indeed, the viennese tfr in 1934 was just 0.606 (lutz/hanika 1989), rising only to 1.11 by 1951 (gisser 1975). the trajectory of post-wwii viennese fertility is, however, particularly interesting. from the 1960s onwards, fertility in vienna was much lower than in the rest of austria, until the other federal states of the country broadly converged at the capital’s levels from the mid-1980s to the present day. it is worth now to consider • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener588 the relationship between the viennese and other regional fertility rates over the past few decades. in 1987, burgenland became the fi rst federal state to report a lower tfr than vienna. indeed, if we focus on the period after this change, we can see that burgenland consistently reports the lowest fertility in the country, and that especially in the post-2000 era, vienna’s fertility rates have been undercut by other federal states, notably styria and carinthia. in 2003, vienna reported the second highest fertility rate of all austrian federal states. however, a more in-depth analysis of the characteristics of fertility in vienna is made possible by the city’s geburtenbarometer, which shows the important effect of international migration. indeed, zeman calculated that migrant women in vienna have contributed around 0.3 to the city’s tfr in absolute terms between 2002 and 2008. for the rest of the country, the net contribution of migrants was just 0.12 in 2008 (zeman 2010). taking into account our theoretical discussion mentioned above, however, we might also suggest that the improved material infrastructure for families in vienna may have had an impact on fertility. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 c periodv c period /v burgenland kärnten niederösterreich oberösterreich salzburg steiermark tirol vorarlberg wien total fertility rate coefficient of variation fig. 1: sub-national fertility variation in austria 1880-2009, nuts-2 notes: for cv fi gures, see appendix iii. source: princeton european fertility project; vienna institute of demography/statistik austria spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 589 3.5 germany in the case of germany, we were faced with particularly severe data constraints. while for the period prior to 1945, data at the state level and the regierungsbezirk level (~nuts-2 level) can be obtained from the princeton fertility project, data are particularly scarce for west germany between world war ii and 1989. for east germany, we have data for the bezirke (~nuts-2 level), while for west germany we could only derive data at the nuts-1 level. for the period from 1991 onwards, we were again able to use detailed nuts-2 level data at the levels of regierungsbezirke and the small federal states. with respect to the last 60 years, this section on germany will mainly focus on differences between east and west germany, while a more detailed look at factors of regional fertility differences will be provided in the case study on lower saxony and bremen. like austria and switzerland, germany has experienced quite a substantial divergence trend in spatial fertility variation in the early period of the fi rst demographic transition (see fig. 2). as rural, and particularly rural catholic, areas tended to lag behind in this process, at least temporarily, the differences increased along the axes denoting the degree of urbanisation and the share of catholics (see klüsener/goldstein 2012). this can also be seen in appendix ii, where the cities of berlin, hamburg and bremen, as well as the highly urbanised and secularised state of saxony, were pioneering this process; while predominantly rural areas, such as bavaria or the western part of lower saxony (oldenburg/osnabrück) lagged behind. the process culminated in the 1930s, when similarly to vienna, the big cities reported tfrs well below sub-replacement levels. the following decades were characterised by a kind of rollercoaster pattern in the period fertility rates (particularly in east germany). the cohort fertility rates, on the other hand, remained rather stable at around 1.8 for the east german cohort born between 1945 and 1960, while west germany experienced a decrease to levels of around 1.6 (mpidr/vid 2010). the increase of the 1930s occurred parallel to the introduction of pro-natalist policies by the nazi regime (pine 1997). after a sharp decline caused by the war, the period tfr increased again in the 1950s, when even berlin reported levels of around 2.0. unfortunately, due to data scarcity, we are not able to calculate the cv for this period. in both parts of germany, the late 1960s and early 1970s were characterised by another sharp fertility decline with surprisingly few differences in the temporal trajectories of the west and east german regions. the decline took place within a period of ten years, while in the late 19th century, the onset of the fertility decline lagged by more than two decades in some regions. from the 1970s onwards, the period fertility rates stabilised in west germany, while east germany experienced another period with a sharp fertility increase. buttner and lutz (1990) provided empirical evidence that this can be mainly attributed to pro-natalist family policies, which were enacted in the gdr in the late 1970s. this led to a substantial divergence of tfrs between west and east germany, while within the two states, regional values converged. but the increase observed in east germany was short-lived, and was followed by a sharp decline in the transition crises in the 1990s, which partly even • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener590 affected cohort fertility rates. this again led to a divergence of west and east germany. owing to missing data in period β, we were only able to calculate a meaningful cv measure within east and west germany for the period 1970-1987. in figure 3, we can observe that the cv was greater in west germany, and that, hence, the country was more regionally heterogeneous than east germany. in recent years, period fertility differences between eastern and western germany have converged again, but some researchers (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011) believe that we will see another divergence trend in the future. this assumption is based on the expectation that east german tfrs are likely to increase to higher levels than those in western germany over the medium term. this expectation is based on two observations: first, east german attitudes to family formation are much less traditional than those of west germans, which can be seen, for example, when considering the high number of births outside marriage (klüsener/kreyenfeld 2009). additionally, access to child care is much better in eastern germany than in western germany. fig. 2: cv – sub-national fertility variation in germany 1867-1933, peft provinces (excluding territories east of oder-neiße-border) 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 1860 1880 1900 1920 coefficient of variation c periodv 1940 notes: for cv fi gures, see appendix iii. source: princeton european fertility project spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 591 3.6 switzerland in contrast to germany and austria, regional identities in switzerland are rather anchored at the nuts-3 level, which comprises the swiss cantons. this is also important because policy distinctions are made at the cantonal level. figure 4 shows the sub-national patterns of fertility in switzerland at the nuts-3 level from the mid-19th century to the present day. in period γ, the lowest fertility can be found in the primarily urban cantons of geneva, basel, neuchatel and zurich. in 1920, for example, while basel-stadt saw a nominal tfr of 1.3, the surrounding canton of basel-landschaft had a fertility rate that was almost twice as high. high fertility appears to be concentrated in appenzell-ausserrhoden and appenzellinnerrhoden, nidwalden, uri and obwalden; i.e. an area concentrated around the centre and the east of the country. lesthaeghe and wilson observed that, as in fig. 3: sub-national fertility variation in germany 1950-2008, nuts-1 (west germany in grey, east germany in light grey) notes: east german bezirke have been aggregated to their equivalent nuts-1 region. for cv fi gures, see appendix iii. source: west germany – statistische landesämter; east germany – statistisches jahrbuch der ddr; germany since 1991 – statistisches bundesamt 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 baden-württemberg bayern berlin (bis 1989: berlin-west) brandenburg bremen hamburg haupstadt berlin (ost)hessen mecklenburg-vorpommernniedersachsen nordrhein-westfalen rheinland-pfalz saarland sachsen sachsen-anhalt schleswig-holstein thüringen cv period / nuts-1 gdr c periodv frg c periodv c period nuts-2v total fertility rate coefficient of variation • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener592 many other european countries, the decline of marital fertility in switzerland during the period 1860-1920 can, at least in part, be associated with household economic circumstances and secularisation (lesthaeghe/wilson 1986). with regard to divergence and convergence, the swiss dataset is particularly interesting, as it is the longest time series available to us. the data go back to 1850. figure 4 shows that in the period prior to the fi rst demographic transition, a convergence process took place within the country. with the onset of fertility decline, the rates diverged, as urban areas again experienced the decline fi rst, reaching the highest levels in the 1920s and 1930s. since then, the rates have again converged, with a very signifi cant level of convergence occurring in recent decades. as well as identifying σ-convergence, we can also identify β-convergence, with the sharpest drops seen in areas of high fertility in 1980, while cantons with a low fertility in 1980 have either remained stable, or experienced a slightly increasing fertility rate. in order to better understand these variations in fertility, we need to examine the similarities and differences between cantons. cantons share broadly similar living conditions; there are no labour market barriers between them, and federal law regulates many aspects of the daily life. indeed, it has been argued that the cultural and religious diversity of the country no longer has a strong impact on fertility (wanner 2004). there are, however, very striking differences in terms of employment, particularly agricultural employment. in appenzell-innerhoden, for example, over 20 % of the population was active in agricultural employment in 2001, compared to almost none in basel-stadt and zurich. furthermore, differential fertility between native and immigrant populations, as identifi ed by wanner, plays an important role in shaping the fertility landscape of some cantons, particularly urban ones (wanner 2002). finally, a number of studies have identifi ed the signifi cant difference in family policies between cantons (vatter 2002; armingeon et al. 2004), and how these might be linked to differential fertility (bonoli 2008). indeed, the monthly amount of a standard child benefi t varies between 150 and 300 swiss francs, depending on the canton of residence, and similar differences can be seen when comparing the extent of childcare services. especially, catholic cantons tend to have the most generous family benefi ts, but invest fewer resources in childcare. meanwhile, armingeon et al. (2004) found that the relative strength of the left in cantonal politics was associated with both more generous family benefi ts and better child care services. a regression analysis by bonoli proved that there is an interaction of a number of different factors in different cantons. first, the process of de-agrarianisation is very important. second, bonoli suggested that the presence of day care centres, which are mainly concentrated in the urban cantons, may have played a role in keeping fertility rates in these areas stable between 1980 and 2000. finally, the study found a moderate but statistically signifi cant effect of the level of family benefi ts on fertility by canton. this echoes not only the theoretical section above, but also other studies, particularly from spain (baizán 2009) and norway (kravdal 1996). bonoli (2008: 74) concluded: “both old and new determinants seem to be playing a role simultaneously in explaining change in fertility. on the one hand, societal modernisation, measured with the decline in agricultural employment, is a statistispatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 593 cally signifi cant predictor in all models. on the other hand, the new determinants, child care availability and the generosity of child benefi ts, remain signifi cant predictors even after controlling for the effect of societal modernisation”. of course, bonoli is quite right to point out that “[f]ertility decisions are unlikely to be the result of rational calculations where a few swiss francs variation in family benefi ts can be important”; and that the family policies, together with “a general policy climate that is more favourable to the reconciliation of work and family life”, play crucial roles bonoli (2008: 74). fig. 4: sub-national fertility in switzerland 1860-2008, nuts-3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 1860 1910 1960 2010 (g) aargau (g) appenzell ausserrhoden (g) appenzell innerrhoden (g) basel-landschaft (g) basel-stadt (g) bern (g) glarus (g) graubünden (g) luzern (g) nidwalden (g) obwalden (g) schaffhausen (g) schwyz (g) solothurn (g) st. gallen (g) thurgau (g) uri (g) zug (g) zurich (f) fribourg (f) geneve (f) neuchatel (f) valais (f) vaud (i) ticino c periodv c periodv total fertility rate coefficient of variation (g) = german (f) = french (i) = italian notes: for cv fi gures, see appendix iii. source: swiss federal statistics offi ce, princeton european fertility project data • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener594 3.7 convergence? the evidence presented above strongly suggests that convergence is the dominant theme of sub-national fertility over recent decades, particularly when examined at the various nuts levels. table 2 shows 18 european countries with more than fi ve nuts-2 regions and the available data for comparing the cv in the early 1990s with the latest data (2004-2008). over this period, fertility differences between nuts-2 regions, at least measured by the cv, have decreased in 15 of the 18 countries. however, as we have already shown, none of the nuts levels is an appropriate level for considering the effects of both cultural and policy differences on fertility in all countries. signifi cant differences do still exist, and if we are to move beyond what sobotka (2002) calls “substantively empty mechanistic views of fertility change” in order to “try to obtain interdisciplinary and theory-driven explanations”, it is necessary to develop a more nuanced and less universalist approach (208). this may, as we have seen, mean examining the different sources of data in different ways for different countries. tab. 2: comparing cv for sub-national tfrs in 18 european countries, nuts-2 cv 1991-1995 cv 2004-2008 18 countries (unweighted) 0.199 spain 0.124 germany 0.183 portugal 0.118 italy 0.167 bulgaria 0.111 spain 0.162 greece 0.104 portugal 0.138 finland 0.098 czech republic 0.136 italy 0.097 bulgaria 0.135 18 countries (unweighted) 0.088 poland 0.126 czech republic 0.086 hungary 0.101 belgium 0.085 switzerland 0.093 poland 0.081 sweden 0.088 netherlands 0.078 netherlands 0.085 hungary 0.075 france 0.078 france 0.067 belgium 0.075 denmark 0.062 norway 0.074 switzerland 0.058 greece 0.074 norway 0.057 finland 0.073 austria 0.056 austria 0.072 germany 0.049 denmark 0.057 sweden 0.042 0 124 notes: only countries with at least 5 nuts-2 regions included. source: eurostat, statistical offi ces, mpidr rostock spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 595 3.8 divergence within convergence – contrasting the city of bremen and the state of lower saxony the preceding section has shown that the sub-national fertility trends at the macro-regional level in austria, (west and east) germany and switzerland have been characterised by a process of convergence in recent decades. in this section, we will turn to an exemplary analysis of more detailed geographic data, which will illustrate that the observation of convergence does not necessarily hold at a lower geographic level. the study area of lower saxony and the city of bremen comprises 8.5 million people, or around 1/10th of the german population. this is comparable to the populations of austria (8.4 million) and switzerland (7.8 million). both for lower saxony and bremen, we have tfr data available for the period 1971-2006 on a small geographic scale. this area of germany is of particular interest, as it exhibits the highest diversity in regional fertility levels, at least in western germany. the western part of lower saxony (areas around oldenburg and osnabrück) which borders the netherlands has reported the highest period tfrs in germany for decades (see also appendix i). in the beginning of the 1970s, many municipalities had rates above 3.0, while today’s levels are 1.6-1.8 – which is well above the german average. the area is rather rural and predominantly catholic. the eastern part of the state (e.g. areas around hannover and braunschweig), meanwhile, saw period fertility levels below replacement level in the 1920s (see appendix ii). today, that area is among the western german regions with the lowest fertility levels and the highest old-age dependency ratios. the principal unit of investigation for bremen are the city districts, while for lower saxony it is the municipalities and unifi ed rural communities (samtgemeinden). in order to have at least 1,500 females of reproductive age in each of the units during the whole study period, some smaller units have been amalgamated, while some larger units have been subdivided based on a set of rules (see klüsener 2009 for details). in addition, some problematic units were excluded from the analysis. in total, for bremen we have data for 28 units, while lower saxony is subdivided into 255 units. the geographic extent of each observed unit is time-constant over the period studied. we fi rst contrast the cv development of the local tfrs of lower saxony and bremen, which is displayed in figure 5. the fi gure for lower saxony shows a very similar pattern to that observed for the nuts regions of austria, switzerland and both west and east germany. since the mid-1970s, the values have converged, with the line being particularly steep in the period 1986-1988. this was a time in which the period tfr of many big urban areas saw substantial increases, while the levels of rural areas continued to decrease. the family policy reform of 1986 might have played a role in this trend (klüsener 2009). within the city of bremen, on the other hand, we can observe a divergence trend since the mid-1970s. klüsener (2009) identifi ed three main mechanisms which fostered this trend. all are at least partly connected to selective migration and spatial segregation processes. the fi rst is a long-lasting structural economic crisis, which • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener596 started in the 1970s and has not yet been overcome. as a result, quite substantial pockets of economically deprived actors can be found today in the working-class districts of the city. the second is a dramatic expansion of the tertiary education institutions, which led to an increase in the number of students studying at tertiary institutions, from 3,000 in 1970 to almost 30,000 in 2006. this infl ux of students led to tremendous social changes, particularly in those districts close to the tertiary education institutions. the third is a paradigm change in housing preferences, which resulted in a gentrifi cation process in the city districts around the city centre. today, several “gentrifi ed academic” districts of the city of bremen report tfr levels well below 1.0, while in other districts we observe levels above 1.6. it would be interesting to investigate whether these local “hot spots” of period lowest low fertility have a contextual impact on the fertility decisions of actors who have spent at least parts of their lives in these areas. fig. 5: divergence within convergence: cv in lower saxony and bremen 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.20 0.22 0.24 0.26 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 c lower saxonyv c bremenv coefficient of variation source: statistical offi ces of lower saxony and bremen, own calculations spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 597 for lower saxony, we also have a number of structural variables available which might infl uence fertility levels.2 this allows for an examination of potential associations between fertility trends and these structural variables. in an effort to avoid ecological fallacies, we do not simply interpret these associations to hold at the individual level.3 moreover, we will also refrain from setting up sophisticated models because of the limited time-series data availability. an introduction to spatial panel modelling techniques would also go beyond the scope of this paper. we will therefore focus on descriptive fi ndings, and point out potential challenges of attempts to implement causal modelling of the processes observed. first, we will examine whether the convergence pattern observed in the fertility development can also be observed in the structural factors which we have available (see fig. 6). among these indicators, “child care” and a longer time series with unemployment data are only available at the district level. the child care data were only available for 1986, 1994, 1998 and 2002, so these data were interpolated. with regard to the economic indicators, these appear to have remained rather stable over time, with exceptions being the share of employees in the industry and the local unemployment levels, which have registered a divergent trend since the mid-1990s. the graphs give no indication that there is a strong relationship between economic divergence and convergence trends and the convergence trend of the tfr. the same is true for population density (this variable has been log-transformed, as it is highly left-skewed). while a substantial convergence trend can be observed in the child care variable, it is very questionable whether a causal link between convergence in child care and the convergence in fertility levels could be easily established. one major challenge is illustrated in figure 7, which shows the rather unusual positive ecological association between tfr levels and child care coverage for 1986. but this pattern did not hold for long. by 2001, it had changed to the more common picture of a strong negative ecological association. in our opinion, the pattern of 1986 is largely an artefact created by local planning institutions. in recent decades, the expansion of child care did not follow the principle that child care should be developed in those areas where the demand for child care was highest. planning was in the responsibility of the local administration, and little strategic planning took place, at least until the early 1990s (jaich 2003). it was usually either based on the number of children in the respective age groups, or on the number of births observed, which provided a rough estimate of the short-term future demand. 2 a more detailed discussion of the bremen case can be found in klüsener 2009. 3 an “ecological fallacy” is a potential error in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of specifi c individuals are based solely upon mean values for the groups to which those individuals belong. if such groups display high internal heterogeneity in the variation of the attributes of interest, such an inference might not hold at the individual level. however, in spatial analysis, the risk of making an ecological fallacy error is dependent on the size of the region, as populations become usually more homogenous, the smaller the unit of observation (carstairs 1981). • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener598 as there usually is a lag of several years between local planning activities and the construction and opening of child care institutions, the coverage is to some extent infl uenced by the fertility levels that existed some years earlier. as a consequence, in periods of rapid expansion, such as the 1970s and 1980s, this impact is likely to be higher in those areas where the fertility decline occurred later, while it is likely to be lower in areas which had already reached a low fertility level. as a result, child care coverage is associated with lagging fertility changes (see the second graph on the left column of fig. 7), which is likely to cause endogeneity challenges in any causal analyses. in order to examine the association between economic trends and fertility levels (see section 2.2) we will study the ecological relationship between unemployment fig. 6: lower saxony: cv of developing structural factors 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 tfr l pop densityn unemployment rate (district) unemployment rate share employed in industry female employment rate child care coverage (3-6 y.) (district) coefficient of variation source: statistical offi ces of lower saxony and germany, own calculations spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 599 and fertility levels (see fig. 8). the high fertility areas in the western part of lower saxony (see appendix i) appear to be very unusual in terms of the economic development observed over the last 30 years. in the 1970s and early 1980s, this area, which is also called “emsland”, was characterised by very high unemployment levels between 15 % and more than 20 %. but this changed rapidly in the 1980s, also due to large-scale investments (schrader et al. 2001), turning this area from a rather economically disadvantaged into a very prosperous region. these kinds of economic changes are rarely observed, and it is interesting to investigate whether this trend is associated to fertility levels. fig. 7: child care coverage and tfr (lower saxony) 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 0 20 40 60 80 100 child care coverage (dt) 1986 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 child care coverage (dt) 2001 total fertility rate 1986 r = 0.05 total fertility rate 2001 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0 20 40 60 80 100 child care coverage (dt) 1986 change in total fertility rate 1980-1986 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 total fertility rate 1980 change in total fertility rate 1980-1986 r = -0.56 r = -0.15 r = -0.59 notes: dt stands for district as these data are only available at the district level. source: statistical offi ces of lower saxony and germany, own calculations • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener600 the fi gure for 1986 shows that the areas with high fertility rates in the western part of lower saxony also had quite high unemployment rates, resulting in a positive ecological association between fertility and unemployment. when these pockets of high unemployment turned into areas with moderate unemployment rates, they continued to have higher fertility levels than the other units in lower saxony. as a result, the ecological association between unemployment levels and fertility became negative. the evidence suggests that, in this case, fertility in the western part of lower saxony is largely independent of the observed unemployment fi gfig. 8: tfr and unemployment rate (lower saxony) 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 5 10 15 20 25 unemployment rate (dt) 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 5 10 15 20 25 unemployment rate (dt) total fertility rate r = 0.39 total fertility rate r = -0.20 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 5 10 15 20 25 unemployment rate (dt) total fertility rate r = -0.28 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 5 10 15 20 25 unemployment rate (dt) total fertility rate r = -0.30 emsland emsland 1986 1991 2001 2006 emsland emsland notes: dt stands for district as these data are only available at the district level. source: statistical offi ces of bremen, lower saxony and germany, own calculations spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 601 ures. further study in a multi-level framework that includes individual-level data is needed to provide a better understanding of this interesting change. in section 2.5, we noted that children usually grow up in the (local) social and economic setting of their parents, which makes it likely that they will adopt similar norms with regard to fertility decisions. this intergenerational transfer of norms makes cultural inertia very likely, particularly in regions with little inand out-migration. in those regions, the fertility development should therefore exhibit a strong path dependency. the availability of long-term fertility data allow us to test whether fig. 9: path dependency of local tfrs in lower saxony and bremen 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 1 2 3 4 total fertility rate 1971 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 total fertility rate 1991 total fertility rate 2006 lower saxony 2006-1971 r = 0.51 lower saxony 2006-1991 total fertility rate 2006 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 total fertility rate 1971 bremen 2006-1971 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 total fertility rate 1991 r = 0.44 bremen 2006-1991 total fertility rate 2006 total fertility rate 2006 r = 0.19 r = 0.67 source: statistical offi ces of lower saxony, bremen and germany, own calculations • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener602 there are path dependencies in the spatial fertility variation of bremen and lower saxony. in figure 9, we present plots for lower saxony and bremen, which contrast the fertility levels of 2006 with those of 1971 and 1991.4 in lower saxony, we fi nd evidence for a quite substantial path dependency. we even get the surprising result that the values observed in 1971 are slightly stronger associated with the values of 2006 than the values of 1991. with regard to the city districts of bremen, on the other hand, the levels of 1971 have very little to do with those of 2006. the processes which caused this change in the spatial pattern (expansion of academic institutions, gentrifi cation) have been outlined above. but in 1991, the new spatial fertility regime had already been well established in bremen, and since then has changed relatively little. the results show that the inner-city processes of polarisation and gentrifi cation can change the fertility regime of localities. it is likely that this is mainly caused by selective migration processes, in which gentrifi ers with high socio-economic status move in, while most of the former population with low socio-economic status are forced to leave these gentrifi ed districts in response to rising housing prices. generally, our study of lower saxony and bremen shows that fertility convergence at the regional level can coincide with fertility divergence on a smaller geographic scale. given that many cities in germany (friedrichs/triemer 2009), austria (fassmann/hatz 2006) and switzerland (rérat/lees 2011) have experienced gentrifi cation and segregation trends in recent decades (krätke 1995), internal patterns of divergence with regard to spatial fertility variation might also be found in other metropolitan areas of these three countries. the fi ndings also raise doubts about whether the fertility convergence is strongly linked with economic convergence trends, but we would need micro data to study this relationship in an appropriate manner. based on the evidence, we would suggest that the tfr convergence pattern in lower saxony is caused by time lags in the onset of drastic fertility changes. in the case of the fertility decline in the 1960s and 1970s, the population of urban areas experienced the decline earlier than the usual laggards (rural population, catholics). this does not mean that economic change is not affecting the results, but rather that spatial economic differences and spatial trends of economic divergence and convergence cannot be directly associated with the spatial divergence and convergence trends in fertility development, which are usually observed in such periods. we would, however, need better data and quantitative modelling to study these issues in greater detail. 4 discussion and conclusion in this paper, we fi rst outlined some of the main theoretical elements which underpin our current knowledge of the social geography of fertility trends. by a multi-faceted empirical analysis of datasets which had not existed in this form so far (a compara4 it should be noted that, in lower saxony, we change the scale of the x-axis between the two upper graphs. spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 603 tive long-term dataset and two datasets at small geographical scale), we have then tried to show that sub-national spatial fertility variation in austria, germany and switzerland are likely to be shaped by existing cultural, social and economic factors, but that they are also visible in and shaped by new developments. in a european context, at least, european integration and globalisation have played signifi cant roles in the homogenisation of cultures, economies, societies, languages, currencies and norms; and the freedom and capacity to travel, work and live within europe has opened up new opportunities to migrate. as sub-national regions sometimes struggle to defi ne and maintain their historical identity and integrity in the face of these challenges, both within their countries and within europe as a whole, it is hardly surprising that nuts-1 and -2 (and even nuts-3) level fertility should refl ect this kind of convergence. by juxtaposing a historical outlook with a very focused small-scale case study, we suggest however, that over the past few decades, development processes within cities have fostered a degree of inner-city divergence which is, in turn, likely to continue in the future. as such, “divergence within convergence”, despite a contradiction in terms, does seem to characterise the recent trends and likely future trajectories in sub-national fertility best. this is also supported by the observation that family formation and fertility behaviour has diversifi ed at the individual level over recent decades (e.g. brückner/mayer 2005). in this setting, the question of regional differences in fertility is therefore still on the agenda despite the macro-regional convergence. from studying the differences between and within german-speaking countries, we can see that dealing with regional disparities in fertility forces us to think about better theoretical models to improve our understanding of the complex interplay of different dimensions of the life course in societal contexts. by using datasets with increasingly fi ne-graded geographic scale, we are able to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between regional and local conditions and fertility decisions of humans. as discussed earlier, these include the material and institutional (infra-)structure, economic and socio-structural factors, cultural factors and the embeddedness in social contexts. the local conditions of organising a life course are considered as part of the opportunity structure of welfare production. individuals are to a certain degree able to modify those conditions or to elude from them by moving to another region. finally, exploring the complex interrelationship between regional conditions, the fertility behaviour of the population and migration processes would require the framework of a longitudinal perspective of analysis. ideally, these studies should be based on a combination of individual-level data and contextual data; for example, in austria, such research could utilise future waves of the generations and gender survey (ggs), while research on germany could be based on future waves of the pairfam study. • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener604 acknowledgement this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of 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1870-1960. princeton, nj: princeton university press. werlen, benno 1995: sozialgeographie alltäglicher regionalisierungen. band 1: zur ontologie von gesellschaft und raum. stuttgart: steiner. zeman, kryštof 2010: geburtenbarometer vienna: an overview report. vienna, austria. • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener610 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the authors is available under the title “räumliche unterschiede in der subnationalen fertilitätsentwicklung in österreich, deutschland und der schweiz”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-08de or urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2011-08de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 07.02.2011 date of acceptance: 19.05.2011 dr. stuart basten ( ). department of social policy and intervention, university of oxford, 32 wellington square, oxford ox1 2er, united kingdom. e-mail: stuart.basten@spi.ox.ac.uk url: www.spi.ox.ac.uk prof. dr. johannes huinink. universität bremen, institut für angewandte und empirische soziologie (empas), 28359 bremen, germany. e-mail: huinink@empas.uni-bremen.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-bremen.de dr. sebastian klüsener. max planck institute for demographic research, 18057 rostock, germany. e-mail: kluesener@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de in alphabetical order. spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 611 appendix i: the spatio-temporal emergence of sub-replacement period tfrs in lower saxony and bremen source: statistical offi ces of bremen and lower saxony, own calculations; base map: federal agency for cartography and geodesy in germany (2007), modifi ed • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener612 appendix ii: estimated tfr for german peft provinces 1867-1933, ordered at 1933 (excluding territories east of oder-neiße-border) peft province indicative nuts-1 region 1867 1871 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1925 1933 berlin be 4.08 3.91 4.42 3.98 3.52 3.21 2.96 2.70 2.54 2.28 1.06 1.12 hamburg hh 3.63 3.92 4.34 4.23 4.01 3.99 3.89 3.36 2.96 2.61 1.47 1.42 dresden sn 4.50 4.59 4.79 4.69 4.55 4.34 3.07 1.80 1.48 leipzig sn 4.90 5.01 5.26 5.21 5.05 4.39 3.18 1.79 1.48 zwickau sn 5.91 6.00 6.03 6.05 5.81 5.16 3.68 1.97 1.48 wiesbaden he 4.23 4.27 4.09 3.82 3.63 3.61 3.60 3.41 2.95 1.85 1.53 bremen hb 3.97 4.15 4.55 4.23 3.79 3.61 3.55 3.52 3.47 3.00 1.79 1.60 hannover ni 4.47 4.43 4.48 4.38 4.25 4.24 4.07 3.58 3.09 1.78 1.60 lübeck sh 3.82 3.92 4.29 4.23 4.13 4.03 3.84 3.64 3.13 1.92 1.63 köln nw 4.58 4.73 4.99 4.85 4.85 4.67 4.65 4.35 3.71 2.15 1.68 neckarkreis bw 5.22 5.81 5.29 4.78 4.42 4.23 3.55 1.94 1.72 schaumburg-lippe nw 4.49 4.44 4.40 4.08 3.99 3.36 2.00 1.73 düsseldorf nw 5.05 5.22 5.35 5.22 5.06 4.96 4.98 4.74 4.04 2.11 1.74 braunschweig ni 4.48 4.91 4.63 4.59 4.55 4.43 4.23 3.74 3.27 2.10 1.77 mittelfranken by 4.79 4.99 5.44 5.08 4.85 4.62 4.50 3.63 2.08 1.79 oberbayern by 5.05 5.20 5.73 5.40 5.09 4.83 4.58 3.63 2.11 1.79 rheinhessen rp 4.57 4.55 4.29 4.09 3.92 3.98 3.76 3.28 2.18 1.82 starkenburg he 5.08 4.88 4.54 4.39 4.40 4.54 4.37 3.81 2.25 1.84 arnsberg nw 5.54 5.86 6.06 6.00 5.93 5.90 5.93 5.73 5.03 2.55 1.87 magdeburg st 4.78 4.76 4.98 5.03 4.85 4.67 4.37 3.86 3.52 2.19 1.88 thüringen th 4.73 5.13 4.85 4.88 4.78 4.65 3.82 2.40 1.88 mannheim bw 5.14 5.15 4.93 4.79 4.83 4.11 2.44 1.90 karlsruhe bw 5.25 5.04 4.69 4.43 4.49 3.83 2.38 1.92 erfurt th 4.93 5.10 5.10 5.00 4.81 4.59 4.43 4.13 3.71 2.33 1.93 potsdam bb 4.73 4.71 4.98 4.85 4.73 4.35 3.76 3.20 2.60 2.03 1.94 anhalt st 4.76 5.16 5.00 5.04 4.95 4.47 3.42 2.39 2.00 lippe nw 4.73 4.94 4.89 4.89 4.65 4.09 2.46 2.00 minden nw 4.78 4.80 4.99 4.94 4.84 4.80 4.71 4.43 3.97 2.46 2.00 oberhessen he 4.43 4.30 4.06 3.86 3.86 3.82 3.69 3.42 2.45 2.02 frankfurt/ oder bb 4.76 4.85 4.95 4.90 4.86 4.65 4.45 4.07 3.63 2.34 2.03 hildesheim ni 4.50 4.53 4.65 4.57 4.55 4.49 4.37 4.01 3.63 2.36 2.03 kassel he 4.52 4.65 4.74 4.49 4.43 4.28 4.22 4.06 3.66 2.45 2.04 schleswig sh 4.40 4.33 4.65 4.63 4.63 4.64 4.43 4.18 3.79 2.16 2.05 schwaben by 4.96 5.27 5.83 5.65 5.32 5.00 4.75 4.22 2.49 2.05 lüneburg ni 3.97 3.97 4.09 4.13 4.11 4.22 4.15 3.93 3.69 2.30 2.08 schwarzwaldkreis bw 5.65 6.01 5.57 5.16 4.90 4.86 4.35 2.40 2.08 merseburg st 5.19 5.24 5.59 5.67 5.57 5.30 5.10 4.62 4.17 2.64 2.09 donaukreis bw 5.49 5.97 5.66 5.25 4.81 4.74 4.25 2.49 2.10 fürstentum lübeck sh 4.57 4.54 4.85 4.79 5.03 4.91 4.85 4.79 4.67 4.35 2.46 2.13 pfalz rp 4.65 5.09 5.65 5.27 5.05 4.83 4.91 4.29 2.61 2.13 aachen rp 4.64 4.80 4.91 4.83 4.84 4.79 4.74 4.50 4.12 2.67 2.14 birkenfeld rp 4.54 4.68 5.03 4.84 4.80 4.76 4.67 4.79 4.69 4.38 2.87 2.15 koblenz rp 4.49 4.63 4.81 4.63 4.55 4.52 4.48 4.29 3.91 2.65 2.15 freiburg bw 4.37 4.33 4.08 3.92 3.96 3.56 2.48 2.16 konstanz bw 4.94 4.91 4.50 4.27 4.22 3.86 2.59 2.20 sigmaringen bw 4.80 5.11 5.25 4.73 4.38 4.32 4.48 4.42 4.15 2.51 2.20 stade ni 4.64 4.71 4.88 4.93 4.85 4.90 4.84 4.71 4.33 2.53 2.20 oberfranken by 4.54 4.71 5.13 4.78 4.65 4.44 4.52 4.04 2.66 2.21 jagstkreis bw 5.62 6.05 5.65 5.27 4.90 4.64 4.29 2.70 2.30 mecklenburg mv 3.82 4.04 4.34 4.19 4.20 4.22 4.06 3.57 2.64 2.33 unterfranken by 4.57 4.69 5.11 4.68 4.38 4.22 4.34 4.07 2.85 2.35 münster nw 3.98 4.09 4.62 4.78 4.91 5.15 5.50 5.71 5.56 3.33 2.44 trier rp 4.99 5.03 5.26 5.13 5.15 5.26 5.39 5.26 4.80 3.26 2.45 oldenburg ni 4.13 4.09 4.50 4.39 4.35 4.42 4.63 4.74 4.64 4.34 2.91 2.56 osnabrück ni 4.28 4.45 4.59 4.63 4.50 4.57 4.60 4.55 4.40 3.05 2.60 köslin mv 5.10 5.16 5.25 5.29 5.24 5.21 5.24 4.91 4.55 2.94 2.61 aurich ni 4.08 4.19 4.53 4.64 4.71 4.71 4.62 4.52 4.35 3.06 2.72 oberpfalz by 5.15 5.46 6.02 5.87 5.77 5.52 5.59 5.15 3.50 2.91 niederbayern by 5.16 5.46 5.96 5.93 5.82 5.64 5.66 5.29 3.52 2.99 source: princeton european fertility project. for process of calculations, see section 3.2 spatial variation of sub-national fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland • 613 appendix iii: cvvalues from respective fi gures above figure 1: austria figure 2: germany pre-1940 figure 3: gdr figure 3: frg figure 3: period / nuts-1 all germany figure 3: cv period nuts-2 figure 4: switzerland 1860 0.16 1867 0.10 1870 0.14 1871 0.10 1875 0.12 1880 0.05 0.10 0.13 1885 0.11 1888 0.16 1890 0.06 0.11 1895 0.12 1900 0.07 0.13 0.18 1905 0.16 1910 0.14 0.17 0.22 1920 0.28 1925 0.19 1930 0.30 1931 0.09 1933 0.18 1941 0.23 1950 0.23 1960 0.06 0.20 1961 0.15 1962 0.15 0.11 1963 0.14 0.10 1964 0.15 0.11 1965 0.15 0.11 1966 0.14 0.09 1967 0.13 0.09 1968 0.13 0.09 1969 0.14 0.10 1970 0.13 0.06 0.11 0.12 1971 0.12 0.06 0.13 0.13 1972 0.13 0.06 0.13 0.11 1973 0.12 0.04 0.11 0.09 1974 0.11 0.04 0.10 0.08 1975 0.12 0.05 0.09 0.09 1976 0.12 0.06 0.09 0.11 1977 0.12 0.06 0.08 0.18 1978 0.11 0.04 0.09 0.20 1979 0.11 0.05 0.08 0.19 1980 0.11 0.03 0.08 0.16 1981 0.09 0.04 0.09 0.19 0.19 1982 0.10 0.03 0.09 0.18 0.20 1983 0.09 0.03 0.09 0.19 0.22 1984 0.08 0.02 0.09 0.18 0.21 1985 0.08 0.04 0.07 0.18 0.20 1986 0.08 0.03 0.08 0.15 0.20 1987 0.08 0.04 0.06 0.14 0.19 1988 0.07 0.06 0.20 1989 0.06 0.07 0.18 1990 0.06 0.06 0.19 1991 0.06 0.16 0.15 0.12 1992 0.08 0.22 0.19 0.12 1993 0.07 0.24 0.21 0.12 1994 0.07 0.23 0.20 0.10 1995 0.08 0.20 0.17 0.10 • stuart basten, johannes huinink, sebastian klüsener614 figure 1: austria figure 2: germany pre-1940 figure 3: gdr figure 3: frg figure 3: period / nuts-1 all germany figure 3: cv period nuts-2 figure 4: switzerland 1996 0.08 0.17 0.15 0.09 1997 0.07 0.14 0.13 0.11 1998 0.07 0.11 0.11 0.09 1999 0.07 0.09 0.09 0.09 2000 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 2001 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.09 2002 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.10 2003 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.09 2004 0.06 0.05 0.05 0.08 2005 0.06 0.04 0.05 0.08 2006 0.06 0.04 0.05 0.09 2007 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.09 2008 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.08 2009 0.06 0.15 © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase barbara wawrzyniak zusammenfassung: der beitrag befasst sich mit dem eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase, also die familiäre situation, bei der alle kinder aus dem elterlichen haushalt ausgezogen sind. zum einen wird dieser eintritt zeitlich im lebensverlauf positioniert und zum anderen das übergangsrisiko untersucht. mit hilfe von paneldaten (3 erhebungswellen) über einen zeitraum von 40 jahren einer kohorte ehemaliger nordrhein-westfälischer gymnasiasten wird mittels eines ereignisanalytischen verfahrens (cox-regression) analysiert, welche faktoren den übergang beschleunigen bzw. verlangsamen. es zeigt sich, dass die private lebensbiografi e (insbesondere das alter beim eigenen auszug, das alter bei der geburt des ersten kindes und die kinderzahl) der eltern einen hohen einfl uss auf den eintrittszeitpunkt besitzt, während der berufl iche werdegang keinen effekt hat. darüber hinaus verzögern söhne den übergang, während ein studium und eine berufstätigkeit der kinder diesen beschleunigen. schlagwörter: nachelterliche familienphase · auszug letztes kind · empty nest · panelstudie · cox-regression 1 die nachelterliche familienphase wenn kinder erwachsen werden und das elterliche haus verlassen, dann beginnt für die eltern ein neuer abschnitt im leben: die nachelterliche phase. dieser lebensabschnitt entwickelte sich erst im 20. jahrhundert zu einer über jahre andauernden phase, die 25 bis 35 % der gesamten lebensspanne einnimmt (lauterbach 2004: 229). durch die verlängerung dieses lebensabschnitts müssen die beziehungen zwischen erwachsenen kindern und ihren eltern länger gestaltet werden als zwischen minderjährigen kindern und ihren eltern, denn die zeit der pfl ege und versorgung der kinder beträgt nur noch ein viertel der gesamten lebenszeit (naveherz 2002: 57). der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase ist weniger institutionell gerahmt als eine hochzeit oder die geburt eines kindes (scherger 2007). comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 40 (2015): 33-52 (erstveröffentlichung: 25.02.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-01de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-01de8 • barbara wawrzyniak34 für die eltern birgt dieser lebensabschnitt neue herausforderungen für die konsolidierung der beziehungen zwischen den partnern und den kindern. es steht nicht mehr die betreuung der nachkommen im vordergrund, der familiäre alltag verändert sich. frühere studien berichten gar vom empty-nest-syndrom, das mit depressionen und anderen psychischen erkrankungen der mütter einhergeht (z.b. bart 1971; deykin et al. 1966). in späteren forschungen hingegen wird das aufkommen dieser belastungen widerlegt (z.b. radloff 1980) und eher auf ambivalente gefühle der mütter verwiesen (feser et al. 1989). papastefanou (2000) berichtet sogar von positiven bewertungen der räumlichen trennung durch die familienmitglieder. der räumliche abstand bewirkt eine reduzierung der alltäglichen reibereien zwischen eltern und kindern und die erfahrung des alleinlebens mit all seinen herausforderungen führt dazu, dass die jungen erwachsenen ihren eltern mehr verständnis entgegenbringen (papastefanou 2000: 62). der auszug der eigenen kinder kann sowohl positiv als auch negativ gewertet werden, je nachdem welches verhältnis zu den kindern besteht und ob der auszug als schritt zur gewünschten selbstständigkeit gesehen wird oder aber als frühzeitige „flucht“ aus dem elternhaus. darüber hinaus tangiert der auszug sowohl den lebensbereich elternschaft als auch den bereich partnerschaft: „… einerseits wird als schmerzlich empfunden, daß [sic] der alltägliche kontakt mit den kindern wegfällt; andererseits wird klar gesehen, daß [sic] die individuelle und partnerschaftliche entwicklung profi tiert“ (papastefanou 2000: 58). allerdings beeinträchtigt eine starke fixierung auf die elternrolle die verarbeitung des übergangs in die nachelterliche phase (papastefanou 2000: 58). vor allem für die mütter, die ihre erwerbstätigkeit für die familie aufgegeben haben, bildet der auszug ihrer kinder eine schwierige situation: „da mütter eine ihrer wichtigsten identitätsstiftenden aufgaben verlieren, entsteht oft das gefühl, nicht mehr gebraucht zu werden, verbunden mit depressivität, trauerreaktion und einer identitätskrise.“ (pinquart/silbereisen 2007: 498) doch gibt es auch studien, die diese phase ebenfalls mit positiven erfahrungen für die frauen belegen, so konnte eine abnahme negativer und eine zunahme positiver gefühle bei müttern, deren kinder ausgezogen sind, ausgemacht werden. auch ein anstieg des allgemeinen wohlbefi ndens und die reduktion kleiner alltagsärgernisse wurden festgestellt (dennerstein et al. 2002). für väter hingegen stellt sich heraus, dass diese wenige probleme mit dem auszug der kinder haben. allerdings kann sich bei sehr hohem berufl ichem engagement ein gefühl des bedauerns einstellen, dass sie das aufwachsen der kinder versäumt haben. und bei vätern, die sich in unglücklichen beziehungen befi nden, in denen die kinder gelegentlich als integrationsfaktor wirkten, können ebenso schwierigkeiten auftreten (papastefanou 1997). die beziehungsqualität zwischen den erwachsenen kindern und ihren eltern zeichnet sich in dieser phase durch eine geringe räumliche distanz und eine große enge aus, wobei zwischen müttern und töchtern die größte nähe besteht. von einem auseinanderleben der generationen kann nicht die rede sein (szydlik/schupp 1998: 311). allerdings bewerten eltern ihre beziehung zu den eigenen kindern enger als die kinder sie wahrnehmen, sie neigen auch eher dazu, die intergenerationalen gemeinsamkeiten hervorzuheben und konfl ikte herunterzuspielen, während die der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 35 kinder die gemeinsamkeiten unterund die konfl ikte überbetonen (szydlik/schupp 1998: 304). im zentrum dieses beitrags steht der übergang in die nachelterliche phase, die durch den auszug des letzten kindes markiert wird. zum einen wird geklärt, wie sich der übergang zeitlich im lebensverlauf der eltern positionieren lässt und zum anderen, wovon der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase abhängt. dabei wird sowohl der private als auch der berufl iche lebenslauf der eltern und kinder in die multivariaten analysen einbezogen. zunächst wird der forschungsstand zum übergang in die nachelterliche phase und zum auszugsverhalten junger erwachsener dargestellt. anhand der bisherigen ergebnisse sollen mögliche einfl ussfaktoren ausgemacht und in die analysen übernommen werden. anschließend werden die hier verwendete stichprobe, methode und datenbasis erläutert, bevor die deskriptiven und multivariaten ergebnisse vorgestellt werden. 2 determinanten des einfl usses auf den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase die perspektive und situation der eltern beim auszug der eigenen kinder bzw. des letzten kindes wurde bislang nur in wenigen studien beleuchtet (lauterbach 2004; mayer/wagner 1989), weshalb dieser aspekt nun stärker in den fokus gerückt wird. das auszugsverhalten junger erwachsener hingegen wurde bereits in mehreren studien ausgiebig untersucht. einen überblick über den forschungsstand zum auszugsverhalten und dessen bestimmenden faktoren fi ndet sich bei berger (2009). es lässt sich festhalten, dass sich der auszugszeitpunkt bei männern und frauen unterscheidet (berger 2009; ziegler/schaldt 1993; mayer/wagner 1989; scherger 2009). frauen verlassen das elterliche haus früher als männer, je nach studie im schnitt um zwei bis fünf jahre und meistens am anfang ihrer zwanziger. so fi ndet sich bei berger (2009) ein altersunterschied zwischen 21,2 jahren bei frauen und 22,8 jahren bei männern (median), während ziegler und schladt (1993) auf einen geringeren unterschied kommen und ein früheres auszugsalter feststellen: 20,6 jahre bei frauen und 21,9 jahre bei männern (median). darüber hinaus gibt es deutliche zusammenhänge zwischen dem berufl ichen und privaten lebenslauf und dem auszugsverhalten junger erwachsener (ziegler/ schladt 1993; mayer/wagner 1989). wobei das auszugsverhalten in der bundesrepublik in den letzten jahrzehnten einem strukturwandel unterlag: während früher ein auszug stark an die eheschließung gekoppelt war (mayer/wagner 1989), ist dieser heutzutage eher mit neuen lebensformen, wie der nichtehelichen kohabitation verbunden (berger 2009). darüber hinaus erweisen sich die berufl iche ausbildung und der eintritt in den arbeitsmarkt als zeitlich enger mit dem auszug verbunden als früher (berger 2009: 198). ziegler und schladt (1993) kommen bei der analyse des auszugsverhaltens der kohorte des kölner gymnasiastenpanels zu dem ergebnis, dass der loslösungsprozess vom elternhaus nicht von der sozialen herkunft abhängt, sondern vielmehr von • barbara wawrzyniak36 ereignissen und einschnitten im institutionell geregelten lebenslauf,1 also übertritte im bildungssystem, eintritte ins erwerbsleben und eine (eheliche oder nichteheliche) partnerschaft. so konnte auch berger (2009) aufzeigen, dass eine erwerbstätigkeit und die damit erreichte ökonomische selbstständigkeit das auszugtempo von frauen und männern sehr deutlich beschleunigt. ebenso bewirkt die aufnahme eines studiums bei beiden geschlechtern eine höhere auszugswahrscheinlichkeit. die einfl üsse einer berufsausbildung sind hingegen nicht sehr stark, sie erhöht die auszugsneigung nicht signifi kant. das bildungsniveau spielt insofern eine rolle, als ein längerer verbleib im schulsystem zu einem späteren auszug führt und somit die ökonomische selbstständigkeit hinauszögert. die partnerbeziehung zeigt sich ebenfalls als ein wichtiger faktor bei der bestimmung der auszugswahrscheinlichkeit. diese steigt deutlich an, wenn junge erwachsene sich in einer festen, nichtehelichen beziehung befi nden (berger 2009: 232). bei der entscheidung aus dem elternhaus auszuziehen spielt ebenso der wohnkomfort eine wichtige rolle: ist dieser hoch und verschlechtert er sich womöglich deutlich nach dem auszug, so wirkt die aussicht auf eine verschlechterung der eigenen wohnsituation eher hemmend auf die auszugsentscheidung (wagner 1989: 173). die fi nanziellen ressourcen der eltern können sich in zwei richtungen auf die auszugsentscheidung auswirken: zum einen kann ein fi nanziell gut ausgestatteter haushalt dazu führen, dass der wohnkomfort der kinder hoch ist und somit den auszug hinauszögert und zum anderen kann ein hohes haushaltseinkommen der eltern die eigene haushaltsführung des kindes stärker unterstützen und somit zu einem schnelleren auszug führen (wagner 1989: 174). die familiäre konstellation, gemessen an der kinderanzahl, kann sich ebenfalls als faktor auf den zeitpunkt des auszugs auswirken: bei einer hohen anzahl an kindern würde man vermuten, dass die älteren geschwister mit dem auszug das bedürfnis nach privatheit befriedigen können, wohingegen einzelkinder länger zu hause verweilen (lauterbach 2004: 163). einen weiteren wichtigen faktor, der allerdings in den folgenden analysen nicht berücksichtigt wird, stellt die familienstruktur dar: stiefkinder und kinder von alleinerziehenden ziehen in der regel früher aus als kinder, die mit beiden biologischen eltern zusammenwohnen (mitchell 1994). da in den daten bereits eine einschränkung bzgl. des familienverlaufs vorgenommen wurde, wird der einfl uss von stieffamilien und alleinerziehenden ausgeschlossen. die genannten einfl üsse auf den auszug der jungen erwachsenen sind wichtige faktoren zur bestimmung des eintritts in die nachelterliche familienphase, jedoch gilt es auch diejenigen zu bestimmen, die das leben der eltern kennzeichnen. ein früher beginn der nachelterlichen phase kann das ergebnis verschiedener einfl üsse sein: frühes heiratsalter, frühes erstgeburtsalter, geringe kinderanzahl und geringer abstand der geburten (mayer/wagner 1989: 29). wie sieht es aber mit der bildung der eltern aus? welchen einfl uss besitzt sie auf die zeitliche positionierung des eintritts in die nachelterliche phase aus? eltern, die über einen hochschulabschluss 1 es sind ereignisse, die durch institutionen geregelt werden oder gar selber als institution angesehen werden (z.b. ehe). der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 37 verfügen, wünschen sich womöglich für ihre kinder eine adäquate bildung und können ihnen diese auch fi nanziell ermöglichen (meulemann 1995). dabei kann der studienabschluss der eltern den auszugszeitpunkt der kinder in zwei richtungen beeinfl ussen: wenn die kinder in ortsnähe studieren, wird der auszug hinausgezögert und wenn sie außerhalb studieren beschleunigt. scherger (2007) kommt bei ihrem vergleich zwischen mehreren kohorten zu dem ergebnis, dass bei männern und frauen mit abitur die nachelterliche phase einige jahre später beginnt als bei denjenigen ohne abitur, was darauf hinweist, dass kinder höher gebildeter eltern längere bildungsprozesse durchlaufen, die den auszug verzögern (scherger 2007: 186). wagner (1989) stellt in diesem zusammenhang fest, dass das bildungsniveau der eltern eine gegenläufi ge wirkung aufweist, wenn der haushaltstyp der jugendlichen nach dem auszug ebenfalls betrachtet wird: wenn die kinder bei auszug heiraten, dann wirkt ein höheres bildungsniveau der eltern hemmend auf den auszug. wenn sie nicht heiraten, dann beschleunigt das bildungsniveau den auszug (wagner 1989: 182). die berufstätigkeit der mütter beschleunigt das auszugsverhalten der kinder, dabei kann eine berufstätige mutter zum einen als rollenvorbild einer größeren selbstständigkeit – vor allem für die töchter – dienen und zum anderen durch die weniger ausgeprägte überbetreuung der kinder zu einer schnelleren loslösung führen (ziegler/schladt 1993). in diesem beitrag sollen, aufbauend auf den bisherigen forschungsergebnissen, die zentralen faktoren zum eintritt in die nachelterliche phase ausgemacht werden. dabei wird der fokus nicht, wie bisher, nur auf einzelne lebensbereiche der eltern gelegt, sondern sowohl der einfl uss der privatbiografi e als auch der berufsbiografi e im längsschnitt betrachtet und ebenso die merkmale der kinder einbezogen. 3 stichprobe, methode und daten 3.1 stichprobe die analysen werden mit den daten des kölner gymnasiastenpanels (kgp) durchgeführt, bei dem es sich um daten einer kohorte der jahrgänge 1953 bis 1956 handelt. die befragten wurden zum ersten mal im jahr 1969 schriftlich befragt und waren zu dem zeitpunkt schüler der 10. klasse an nordrhein-westfälischen gymnasien. von den damals 3240 teilnehmern konnten im jahr 1984/85 1987 personen für eine persönliche wiederbefragung gewonnen werden. eine zweite wiederbefragung wurde im jahr 1997 mit 1596 personen telefonisch durchgeführt und schließlich eine dritte erhebungswelle im jahr 2010 mit 1301 teilnehmern, die ebenfalls telefonisch durchgeführt wurde. der fragebogen umfasst einen biografi schen teil, der die schul-, ausbildungs-, studiums-, erwerbs-, familienund partnerbiografi e abdeckt. darüber hinaus gibt es eine reihe von einstellungsund freizeitfragen sowie in der aktuellen erhebung fragen zur vorbereitung auf das alter. je nach erhebungswelle wurde ein anderer themenschwerpunkt gewählt, so wurde bei der ersten wiederbefragung die identitätsbildung des jugendlichen zwischen dem 16. und • barbara wawrzyniak38 30. lebensjahr in den vordergrund gerückt, während bei der zweiten wiederbefragung die identitätswahrung des erwachsenen zwischen dem 30. und 43. lebensjahr beleuchtet wurde. die dritte welle befasst sich mit der weiterentwicklung der identität und der vorbereitung auf das alter. besonders vorteilhaft ist, dass für die 1301 befragten, die 2010 an der dritten erhebungswelle teilgenommen haben, die gesamte partnerschaftsund familienbiografi e vom 16. bis zum 56. lebensjahr aufgezeichnet ist. somit lässt sich für diese kohorte eine genaue übersicht über dauer und verlauf der partnerschaften sowie informationen zu ausbildung, schulbildung, einkommen und beruf des partners erstellen. es sind ebenfalls informationen zur schulbildung, ausbildung und studium der kinder vorhanden sowie das auszugsdatum, kontakthäufi gkeit und fragen zu den enkelkindern. es bleibt anzumerken, dass es sich bei dieser stichprobe um eine stark bildungsselektive teilpopulation handelt, deren selektivität im verlauf von 40 jahren noch etwas zugenommen hat (birkelbach 2011: 27). für die folgenden analysen wurden nicht alle befragten einbezogen, sondern nur diejenigen, die im alter von 56 jahren verheiratet sind, kinder haben und die keine trennung, scheidung oder verwitwung erlebt haben. es handelt sich somit um personen, die den normalverlauf des familienzyklus (glick 1955; höhn 1982) durchlebt haben und deren familienverlauf durch die gleichen ereignisse geprägt ist und zwar von einer eheschließung, der geburt und dem auszug der kinder. das rigorose aussortieren von personen mit kritischen ereignissen im familienverlauf (filipp 1990) soll verhindern, dass diese sich auf den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase auswirken. es sollen hauptsächlich die einfl üsse der biographischen merkmale der eltern und kinder ausgemacht werden. welchen einfl uss kritische ereignisse auf den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase besitzen, müsste in einer gesonderten arbeit untersucht werden. immerhin erfüllen insgesamt 605 personen von den 1301 befragten, also 47 % der stichprobe, diese kriterien. bei diesen 605 befragten wurde überprüft, zu welchem zeitpunkt das letzte kind aus dem elterlichen haushalt ausgezogen ist. die genaue fragestellung lautete: „in welchem jahr hatte ihr kind zum ersten mal einen eigenen hausstand, ich meine ein eigenes zuhause?“ dabei muss es sich nicht zwangsläufi g um das jüngste kind handeln. 3.2 methode um den übergang in die nachelterliche phase im lebensverlauf verorten zu können, wird mit der sterbetafelmethode eine übergangsrate geschätzt. die übergangsrate entspricht dem risiko den momentanen zustand zu wechseln, z.b. von ledig zu verheiratet (diekmann/mitter 1984). die übergangsrate hjk(t) gibt die wahrscheinlichkeit an, dass in einem bestimmten zeitintervall t ein ereignis eintritt, unter der voraussetzung, dass es bis zum beginn dieses intervalls noch nicht eingetreten ist und kann wie folgt beschrieben werden (blossfeld 2010: 1001): hjk(t) = p(t = t | t ≥ t) t = 1,2,3 ... der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 39 dabei werden die verweildauern in monatsintervalle eingeteilt und „für jedes dieser intervalle werden die anzahl der untersuchungseinheiten, die am beginn des intervalls noch dem ereignisrisiko ausgesetzt sind, die anzahl der untersuchungseinheiten, die im intervall ein ereignis erfahren, und die anzahl der untersuchungseinheiten, die im intervall zensiert werden, gezählt.“ (blossfeld 2010: 1003) daraus ergibt sich die wahrscheinlichkeit, dass vor einem bestimmten zeitpunkt kein ereignis eintritt, hier also dass der übergang in die nachelterliche phase nicht stattfi ndet. für die grafi sche darstellung der überlebensquote wird der kumulierte anteil der überlebenden am intervallende verwendet und somit kann abgelesen werden, in welchem alter welcher anteil der befragten dem risiko des übergangs ausgesetzt ist. anschließend wird mittels einer cox-regression (cox 1972; blossfeld et al. 2007; blossfeld 2010) geprüft, welche faktoren den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase beschleunigen bzw. verlangsamen. es wird dabei das semiparametrische modell der cox-regression angewendet, also ein ereignisanalytisches verfahren, welches in der literatur häufi g als proportional-hazards-modell bezeichnet wird (blossfeld 2010). dieses bietet den vorteil, dass es angewendet werden kann, auch wenn nicht alle personen während der beobachtungszeit den auszug des letzten kindes erlebt haben. darüber hinaus eignet es sich besonders gut bei analysen, die keine begründbaren annahmen über den verlauf der basisratenfunktion besitzen (weick 1993: 97), was für den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase gilt. die untersuchten zeitspannen beginnen im alter von 30 jahren und enden mit dem ereignis des auszugs des letzten kindes, oder bei rechtszensierten fällen mit dem alter bei der befragung. bei der ereignisanalytischen regression bildet die rate des auszugs des letzten kindes die abhängige variable. es handelt sich um die wahrscheinlichkeit, dass eltern, die zu einem bestimmten zeitpunkt noch mit kindern im haushalt leben, in die nachelterliche phase eintreten. die eintrittsrate r(t) wird dabei durch eine für alle probanden gleiche übergangsratenfunktion h0(t) und die mit ihr multiplikativ und in exponentieller form verbundenen kovariateneinfl üsse exp(.) dargestellt (diekmann/mitter 1993): die schätzung des cox-modells erfolgt durch die partial-likelihood-methode (blossfeld 2010: 1005). bei der ereignisanalytischen regression interessieren vornehmlich die effekte der kovariaten auf das eintrittsrisiko. diese lassen sich an den β-koeffi zienten ablesen, wobei die antilogarithmen der β-koeffi zienten (αi=expβi) anschaulicher sind, denn diese lassen sich als prozenteffekte (αi-1)·100 der kovariaten auf das eintrittsrisiko interpretieren (berger 2009; ziegler/schladt 1993). 3.3 daten: kovariaten der cox-regression aufbauend auf den bisherigen forschungsergebnissen (siehe abschnitt 2) lassen sich mit den daten des kgp die folgenden unabhängigen variablen in die analysen r(t)= • barbara wawrzyniak40 mit einbeziehen. darüber hinaus werden zusätzliche faktoren aufgenommen, die ebenfalls als mögliche einfl ussgrößen ausgemacht werden können. privatbiografi e der eltern (befragte): das heiratsalter (in jahren), das alter bei der geburt des ersten kindes (in jahren) und die kinderanzahl werden als wichtige einfl üsse benannt. bei allen drei variablen ist anzunehmen, dass je geringer sie sind, desto eher erfolgt der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase. zusätzlich kann der abstand der geburten als erklärende variable aufgenommen werden, denn je größer der abstand zwischen dem ersten und dem letzten kind, desto später liegt der eintritt. dieser abstand wird in jahren als differenz zwischen den zeitpunkten der ersten und der letzten geburt dargestellt. darüber hinaus soll geprüft werden, wie sich das alter der eltern bei ihrem eigenen auszug (in jahren) auf die eintrittswahrscheinlichkeit in die nachelterliche phase auswirkt. denn ein früher eigener auszug der eltern kann einen positiven einfl uss auf den auszugszeitpunkt der kinder ausüben, weil er als ein gelungener start in die unabhängigkeit gesehen wird, oder aber einen negativen, weil er eher mit belastungen und unsicherheiten verbunden wird und diese erfahrungen von den eltern an die eigenen kinder herangetragen werden. bildungsund berufsbiografi e der eltern (befragte): das bildungsniveau wird durch das erreichen des abiturs und eines studienabschlusses abgebildet. da im kgp ebenfalls fragen zur bildungsbiografi e der partner gestellt wurden, können der schulund hochschulabschluss für die partner konstruiert werden. dabei wird zwischen müttern und vätern unterschieden, also separate variablen für die mütter und väter mit abitur und universitätsabschluss erstellt. es wird davon ausgegangen, dass ein höherer abschluss den eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase verzögert. die berufsausbildung wird ebenfalls aufgenommen. den einfl uss einer ausbildung zu bestimmen, gestaltet sich schwerer, denn zum einen könnten sich eltern, die eine ausbildung gemacht haben, für ihre kinder einen höherwertigeren bildungsabschluss vorstellen oder aber mit einem gleichwertigen zufrieden sein und sich weigern, ihren kindern ein studium zu fi nanzieren. da sich in den forschungsergebnissen die berufstätigkeit der mutter als signifi kant erwies, wird die zeitabhängige variable ‚erwerbstätigkeit der mutter zum zeitpunkt des auszugs des kindes‘ erstellt. beim einkommen wurde das monatliche haushaltseinkommen gewählt, welches sich aus dem höchsten erreichten einkommen in der phase zwischen dem alter von 43 und 56 jahren und dem aktuellen partnereinkommen berechnet. mit der verwendung des höchsten erreichten einkommens kann gegenüber dem durchschnittseinkommen auf mehr varianz zurückgegriffen werden. es gilt zu bestimmen, in welche richtung das einkommen auf den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase wirkt. da im kgp nicht nach wohnverhältnissen gefragt wurde, lässt sich keine eindeutige unterscheidung treffen, ob das einkommen die haushaltsspezifi schen oder die möglichkeit von transferierbaren ressourcen abbildet. die biografi e des kindes der befragten lässt sich nicht so einfach wie die der eltern integrieren. denn dadurch, dass die personen mehrere kinder haben, können sich signifi kante effekte gegenseitig aufheben, wenn bspw. jemand einen sohn und eine tochter hat, kann das einbeziehen des geschlechts alleine keine eindeutigen effekte der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 41 aufweisen, wenn töchter früher und söhne später ausziehen. deshalb wurden die variablen für die kinder auf basis des letzten ausgezogenen kindes erstellt bzw. des jüngsten noch im haushalt verbliebenen kindes. darüber hinaus wurden keine zeitpunkte der kinderbiografi e erfragt, somit lassen sich keine aussagen über den zeitlichen zusammenhang vom eintritt in die nachelterliche phase und bspw. der erwerbstätigkeit machen. es wurden fünf dummyvariablen erstellt: abitur (ja/nein), hochschulabschluss (ja/nein), berufsausbildung abgeschlossen (ja/nein), erwerbstätigkeit (ja/nein), geschlecht (männlich/weiblich). es werden nur diejenigen kinder in die analysen aufgenommen, die 18 jahre und älter sind, da im gymnasiastenpanel die eltern nur für jedes kind, das über 18 jahre ist, gefragt wurden, ob es einen eigenen hausstand hat. im modell in abbildung 1 werden die erwähnten variablen und ihr vermuteter einfl uss auf den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase dargestellt, jeweils differenziert nach merkmalen der eltern und kinder. in tabelle 1 sind die genannten variablen samt wertebereich und mittelwerte dargestellt. sie werden an dieser stelle nur kurz aufgeführt, um die stichprobe zu präsentieren und um ein besseres verständnis für die effekte dieser variablen in der cox-regression zu vermitteln. die befragten des kgp weisen eine überdurchschnittlich hohe bildung auf. so haben 69 % der väter und 53 % der mütter einen studienabschluss, während sich abb. 1: kovariateneffekte auf das eintrittsrisiko in die nachelterliche phase nach merkmalen der eltern und kinder nach vermuteter wirkrichtung privatbiografie alter bei auszug (-) alter bei erstheirat (-) alter bei erstgeburt (-) kinderanzahl (-) abstand der geburten (-) bildungsund berufsbiografie studium (-) ausbildung (?) erwerbstätigkeit der mutter bei auszug (+) monatl. haushaltsnettoeinkommen (?) eintritt in nachelterliche phase geschlecht (männlich) (-) abitur (-) studium (+) ausbildung (+) erwerbstätigkeit (+) kind eltern quelle: eigene darstellung • barbara wawrzyniak42 in der allgemeinen bevölkerung in der altersgruppe der 50bis 59-jährigen durchschnittlich nur 17 % mit studium befi nden (datenreport 2011). ebenfalls sehr hoch ist der anteil der abiturienten unter den eltern, mit 78 % bei den vätern und 65 % bei den müttern und gerade mal 24 % in der allgemeinen bevölkerung der gleichen altersgruppe. bei der berufsausbildung hingegen weisen die ehemaligen gymnasiasten einen geringeren anteil aus als die vergleichsgruppe in der gesamtbevölkerung mit 58 %. das haushaltsnettoeinkommen weist eine breite streuung auf und sein durchschnitt liegt bei über 6000 euro. es arbeiten 73 % der mütter zum zeitpunkt des auszugs des letzten kindes. bei den kindern fi ndet sich, wie bei den eltern auch, ein hoher anteil mit abiturabschluss wieder (67 %), während nur 25 % eine ausbildung abgeschlossen hatab. 1: übersicht der unabhängigen variablen: wertebereich, mittelwerte und standardabweichungen für eltern und kinder über 18 jahre (n=530) variable wertebereich mittelwert sd alter bei e intritt in nachelterliche phase 43-59 54.6 2.81 eltern (befragte) erstheiratsalter 18.9-39.3 27.5 3.95 erstelternschaft 2042.5 30.3 3.91 alter bei eigenem auszug 17.7-36.1 23.3 3.24 kinderanzahl 1-5 2.2 0.85 abstand der geburten in jahren 0-13.7 3.8 3.04 berufsausbildung befragte/r 0/1 .39 studium vater 0/1 .69 studium mutter 0/1 .53 abitur vater 0/1 .78 abitur mutter 0/1 .65 monatl. haushaltsnettoeinkommen 400-129 294 6282.50 8102.1 erwerbstätigkeit der mutter beim auszug (zeitabhängig) 0/1 .731 kinder geschlecht (männlich) 0/1 .51 abitur 0/1 .67 berufsausbildung 0/1 .25 studium 0/1 .58 erwerbstätigkeit 0/1 .29 alter 18.1-36.9 22.20 3.27 1 dieser anteil bezieht sich nur auf die frauen in der stichprobe. für die gesamte stichprobe beträgt der anteil der arbeitenden mütter 33 %. quelle: eigene berechnungen der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 43 ben. dafür besitzen bereits 58 % einen hochschulabschluss und 29 % gehen einer hauptberufl ichen tätigkeit nach. bevor die unabhängigen variablen in die cox-regression aufgenommen werden, sollen zuerst mögliche korrelationen zwischen den einzelnen faktoren ausfi ndig gemacht und beseitigt werden, um mögliche multikollinearitäten auszuschließen. vor allem bei den demografi schen größen ist damit zu rechnen, dass diese sich gegenseitig beeinfl ussen. denn wer früh heiratet, wird höchstwahrscheinlich auch in einem jüngeren alter kinder bekommen als jemand, der spät heiratet. bei variablen, die zu hoch miteinander korrelieren (r>0.3) wird eine davon aus den analysen ausgeschlossen. die ergebnisse der korrelationen sind nicht dargestellt, die wichtigsten erkenntnisse, die für das vorgehen der weiteren analyse von bedeutung sind, werden aber kurz erwähnt: das erstheiratsalter korreliert sehr stark mit dem alter bei der geburt des ersten kindes, es wird aber erwartet, dass das alter bei der geburt stärker mit dem auszug der kinder zusammenhängt als das alter bei der heirat. die kinderanzahl und der geburtenabstand korrelieren sehr hoch, da aber die anzahl der kinder in anderen umfragen öfter erhoben wird als der gesamte privatlebenslauf, wird diese variable einbezogen. die bildungsvariablen korrelieren ebenfalls alle sehr hoch miteinander, weshalb für mütter, väter und kinder jeweils nur der studienabschluss als unabhängige variable genommen wird, da die anteile derer ohne studienabschluss höher sind als ohne abitur. 4 die zeitliche positionierung des übergangs in die nachelterliche phase im lebensverlauf ab wann können eltern damit rechnen ihre eigenen vier wände wieder zu zweit bewohnen zu können? diese frage wird mittels der „überlebensquote“ für eltern mit kindern im haushalt grafi sch dargestellt. von den 605 personen befi nden sich 254 (42 %) personen in der nachelterlichen phase und somit ohne kinder im haushalt und bei 351 (58 %) personen lebt mindestens noch ein kind im haushalt. lauterbach (2004) datiert den zeitpunkt des eintritts in die nachelterliche phase auf die sechste lebensdekade (lauterbach 2004: 162). so errechnen z.b. mayer und wagner (1989) den median des alters für väter der kohorte 1949-51 auf 56 jahre, falls diese söhne haben, und auf 52 jahre, falls nur töchter betrachtet werden. für mütter desselben jahrgangs ergibt sich ein median von 53 jahren bei söhnen und 49 jahren bei töchtern. bei der hier untersuchten kohorte sind die unterschiede zwischen eltern mit töchtern und söhnen nicht so hoch: hier liegt der median von vätern bei 57 jahren für töchter und 58 jahren für söhne und von müttern bei 55 jahren für töchter und 57 jahren für söhne.2 werden unterschiedliche kohorten betrachtet, so konstatiert lauterbach (2004: 166-175), dass väter und mütter seit der nachkriegszeit immer früher in die späte familienphase eintreten und der anteil derjenigen, die diese phase überhaupt erleben, angestiegen ist. 2 da nicht alle eltern den auszug des letzten kindes erlebten, wurde der median mit der sterbetafelmethode geschätzt. • barbara wawrzyniak44 der zeitliche unterschied beim eintritt in die nachelterliche phase zwischen männern und frauen lässt sich nicht nur durch den median bestimmen, er lässt sich ebenfalls an den überlebenskurven für männer und frauen erkennen (abb. 2). die beiden kurven unterscheiden sich signifi kant voneinander (wilcoxon: 17,78 p=.000; log rank: 15,16 p=.000). frauen erleben somit den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase früher als männer. im alter von 56 jahren sehen sich bereits 53 % der mütter und nur 38 % der väter mit einem kinderlosen haushalt konfrontiert. die überlebenskurven verlaufen aber parallel zueinander, so dass die männer mit etwa drei jahren abstand den frauen folgen. dieser abstand entspricht recht genau dem für diese kohorte errechneten früheren eintritt der frauen in den familienzyklus: bei der hier betrachteten kohorte beträgt das durchschnittliche erstheiratsalter für männer 29 jahre und für frauen 26 jahre. anhand der überlebenskurve kann man zusätzlich erkennen, dass bei frauen frühestens mit etwa 45 jahren und bei männern mit 48 jahren mit dem auszug des letzten kindes zu rechnen ist und sich dann allmählich der anteil erhöht. der übergang vollzieht sich für die hälfte der eltern zwischen dem 45. und 55. (mütter) bzw. 48. und 58. lebensjahr (väter). das bedeutet, dass ein großteil der eltern bereits vor eintritt in den ruhestand in einem kinderlosen haushalt wohnt. da es sich beim gymnasiastenpanel um eine positiv bildungsselektierte teilpopulation handelt, ist es wahrscheinlich, dass die überlebensquote bei der gesamtbevölkerung bereits in einem früheren lebensalter sinkt. abb. 2: „überlebensquote“ von müttern und vätern im haushalt mit kindern 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 30 35 40 45 50 55 lebensalter in jahren frauen (n=255) männer (n=341) quelle: eigene berechnungen und darstellung der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 45 5 der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase an der zuvor dargestellten zeitlichen positionierung des eintritts in die nachelterliche phase lässt sich sehr gut erkennen, wann eltern mit dem auszug ihres letzten kindes rechnen können. in diesem abschnitt sollen nun die in abschnitt 3.3 genannten variablen als mögliche einfl üsse auf die wahrscheinlichkeit des eintritts in die nachelterliche phase in die cox-regression aufgenommen werden. die ergebnisse fi nden sich in tabelle 2. dabei wurden unterschiedliche modelle gerechnet, in denen die einfl üsse der bereiche der privatund erwerbsbiografi e sowie die merkmale der kinder zum einen separat und zum anderen in einem gesamtmodell errechnet wurden. die privatbiografi e der eltern wirkt sich sehr stark auf das eintrittsrisiko in die nachelterliche familienphase aus, wie in modell 1 zu sehen ist. das alter bei der ersten geburt senkt das eintrittsrisiko signifi kant um 19 %, dieser wert ergibt sich durch die subtraktion des α-koeffi zienten (.81) vom wert 1. er bedeutet, dass pro zusätzliches jahr bei der geburt des ersten kindes, die hazardrate um 19 % gesenkt wird, der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase sich somit verlangsamt. einen ebenfalls sehr starken einfl uss besitzt die kinderanzahl: pro zusätzlichem kind senkt sich das eintrittsrisiko um 61 %. auch das alter beim eigenen auszug verlangsamt den eintritt: je älter die befragten bei ihrem eigenen auszug sind, desto später treten sie in die nachelterliche phase ein. da diese variable trotz kontrolle des alters bei der geburt des ersten kindes einen signifi kanten effekt auf dem 5-prozent-niveau aufweist, scheint die erfahrung des eigenen auszugs einen eigenständigen effekt zu besitzen. da das auszugsalter mit der bildungsbiografi e zusammenhängt (abschnitt 3.3) ist zu vermuten, dass dieses an signifi kanz verliert, wenn die bildungsbiografi e der eltern ebenfalls betrachtet wird. der starke einfl uss der privaten lebensbiografi e auf das eintrittsrisiko in die nachelterliche phase ist aber nicht sonderlich überraschend. interessanter sind die effekte der anderen kovariaten unter kontrolle der privaten lebensbiografi e. bei modell 2 wird neben der privaten lebensbiografi e auch die bildungsund erwerbsbiografi e der eltern einbezogen. zum einen ist zu erkennen, dass die starken einfl üsse des alters bei der geburt des ersten kindes und die kinderanzahl bestehen bleiben bzw. sich sogar leicht erhöhen, zum anderen, dass das alter beim eigenen auszug immer noch einen signifi kanten effekt hat, obwohl für die bildungsbiografi e kontrolliert wird. dies lässt vermuten, dass eltern, die selber spät ausgezogen sind, ihre eigenen kinder ebenfalls länger bei sich wohnen haben. bei der bildungsund berufsbiografi e zeigt sich, dass weder der hochschulabschluss des vaters, eine ausbildung oder die erwerbstätigkeit der eltern, insbesondere der mutter, bei auszug der kinder sic h auf die eintrittsgeschwindigkeit in die nachelterliche phase auswirken. es macht also keinen unterschied bei der auszugsentscheidung der kinder, ob die mutter zum zeitpunkt des auszugs arbeitet oder nicht. dafür treten aber mütter mit einem hochschulabschluss schneller in die phase ein als mütter ohne studienabschluss und zwar unabhängig von der kinderzahl und des erstgeburtsalters. die rate erhöht sich dadurch um 36 %. ein studium bewirkt zwar in der regel ein höheres erstgeburtsalter, aber es führt offensichtlich auch zu einem • barbara wawrzyniak46 ta b . 2 : ei n fl u ss fa kt o re n d es e in tr it ts in d ie n ac he lte rl ic he p ha se . c ox -r eg re ss io n en (b et ak o ef fi z ie n te n; a lp ha k o ef fi z ie n te n in k la m m er n fü r si gn ifi ka n te e ff ek te ) va ri ab le n h m o d el l 1 m o d el l 2 m o d el l 3 g es am tm o d el l pr iv at bi og ra fi e e lte rn a lte r b ei g eb ur t d es 1 . k in d es -. 21 ** * (.8 1) -. 24 ** * (.7 9) -. 20 ** * (.8 2) -. 21 ** * (.8 1) k in d er an za hl -. 93 ** * (.3 9) -. 97 ** * (.3 8) -. 86 ** * (.4 1) -. 89 ** * (.4 1) a lte r b ei e ig en em a us zu g -. 06 * (.9 4) -. 05 * -. 05 * -. 05 * b ild un gs un d er w er bs bi og ra fi e e lte rn va te r s tu d iu m ? .1 4 .1 0 m ut te r s tu d iu m ? .2 8+ (1 .3 6) .2 3 a us b ild un g ? .0 6 .0 4 m o na tl. h au sh al ts ei nk o m m en /1 00 0 ? .0 2* ** (1 .0 2) .0 2* * (1 .0 2) e rw er b st ät ig ke it b ei a us zu g1 + .1 7 .1 9 e rw er b st ät ig ke it m ut te r b ei a us zu g2 + -. 10 -. 08 m er km al e de s ki nd es g es ch le ch t ( m än nl ic h) -. 44 ** (0 .6 4) -. 39 ** (.6 8) s tu d iu m + .8 7* ** (2 .3 9) .8 3* ** (2 .2 9) a us b ild un g + -. 07 -. 01 e rw er b st ät ig ke it + .4 4* * (1 .5 5) .5 2* ** (1 .6 8) lo gl ik el ih o o d (l l) -1 37 1. 2 -1 36 2. 8 -1 34 5. 8 -1 33 9. 3 c hi 2 18 6. 25 ** * 20 2. 92 ** * 23 7. 00 ** * 24 9. 93 ** * d f 3 9 7 13 ps eu d o -r 2 (m cf ad d en ) .0 6 .0 7 .0 8 .0 9 ** *p < .0 01 , * *p < .0 1, * p < .0 5, + p < .1 0 n = 53 0; l ln ul lm o d el l: 14 64 ,2 9; h = h yp o th es e (v er m ut et er e in fl u ss ) 1 z ei ta b hä ng ig e k o va ri at e fü r m än ne r un d f ra ue n 2 z ei ta b hä ng ig e k o va ri at e: in te ra kt io ns ef fe kt z w is ch en f ra u un d e rw er b st ät ig ke it b ei a us zu g q ue lle : ei ge ne b er ec hn un ge n der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 47 früheren eintritt in die nachelterliche phase. dass sich ein hochschulabschluss der mutter stärker auf die auszugsgeschwindigkeit auswirkt als der des vaters kann evtl. darauf zurückgeführt werden, dass mütter durch ihren intensiveren kontakt zu ihren kindern sie in ihrer bildungslaufbahn mehr beeinfl ussen und sie eher zu einem studium bewegen können, womit meistens auch ein umzug verbunden ist. das monatliche haushaltseinkommen (geteilt durch 1000) besitzt ebenfalls einen positiven und signifi kanten effekt. somit lässt sich festhalten, dass ein hohes einkommen den auszug der eigenen kinder beschleunigt, da diese eltern ihren kindern vermutlich eher die möglichkeit bieten können einen eigenen hausstand zu gründen. insgesamt lässt sich festhalten, dass sich der einfl uss des bildungsund berufslebens zwar auf die ereignisse der familiengründung erstreckt (birkelbach 1998), aber er verliert offenbar an bedeutung für die folgephasen des familienzyklus. in modell 3 wurden die merkmale der kinder in die analysen aufgenommen. diese ergebnisse sind allerdings mit einiger vorsicht zu betrachten, denn wie schon erwähnt, handelt es sich nicht um zeitabhängige variablen. somit ist bspw. ein kausaler zusammenhang vom eintritt in die erwerbstätigkeit und dem auszugszeitpunkt nicht nachvollziehbar. da als basis die daten des letzten ausgezogenen kindes in vergleich zum jüngsten noch im haushalt lebenden kind dienen, lassen sich die ergebnisse aus modell 3 wie folgt interpretieren: ist das letzte zuhause lebende kind ein sohn, so senkt sich das eintrittsrisiko in die nachelterliche phase um 36 %. besitzt es einen studienabschluss, beschleunigt dies sogar den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase um 139 % (alpha-koeffi zienten > 1 sind als prozentzahlen zu lesen). ist das kind erwerbstätig, erhöht sich das eintrittsrisiko um 55 %. eine ausbildung hingegen besitzt keinen signifi kanten effekt. diese ergebnisse decken sich mit denjenigen studien, die das auszugsverhalten von männern und frauen untersucht haben (z.b. ziegler/schladt 1993; berger 2009; lauterbach 2004). im gesamtmodell werden die einfl üsse der einzelnen variablen unter der kontrolle und konstanthaltung der anderen kovariaten berechnet. der starke einfl uss der privatbiografi e bleibt dabei bestehen. bei der bildungsund erwerbsbiografi e hingegen verliert der studienabschluss der mutter unter kontrolle der kindermerkmale an signifi kanz, aber nur wenig von seiner effektstärke. das haushaltseinkommen behält den schwachen positiven einfl uss. die effekte der kindermerkmale verändern sich nur geringfügig, so erhöht das studium des kindes die rate um 129 % und die erwerbstätigkeit um 68 % und söhne verlangsamen den übergang um 32 %. die merkmale der kinder wirken sich offenbar stärker auf die eintrittswahrscheinlichkeit in die nachelterliche phase aus als die der eltern. nur das einkommen besitzt weiterhin einen schwachen positiven effekt auf den eintritt durch den vergleich der log-likelihood-werte sowie des darauf basierenden kennwertes pseudo-r² wird deutlich, dass die hinzunahme der bildungsund berufsvariablen keine verbesserung des modells bewirkt. besser angepasst wird das modell aber durch die kindermerkmale, wohingegen das gesamtmodell keine verbesserung bewirkt. für die analyse des eintrittsrisikos in die nachelterliche phase reichen die angaben der privatbiografi e und der kindermerkmale offenbar aus. • barbara wawrzyniak48 6 fazit der auszug des letzten kindes wird vom großteil der eltern in der sechsten lebensdekade erlebt. jedoch zeigen die durchgeführten analysen, dass für diejenigen, die früh aus dem eigenen elterlichen haushalt ausgezogen sind, der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase früher erfolgt als für diejenigen, die später ausgezogen sind. einen noch größeren einfl uss auf den eintrittszeitpunkt besitzt, wie zu erwarten, das alter bei der geburt des ersten kindes: je jünger die eltern sind, desto früher können sie mit dem auszug der kinder rechnen. ebenso bedeutend ist die kinderanzahl, ist diese gering, sind die eltern früher allein im haushalt. damit steht fest: der eintritt in die nach-elternphase hängt stark von den entscheidungen im frühen, privaten lebensverlauf ab. der berufl iche lebensweg der eltern spielt keine rolle für ihren eintritt in die nachelterliche phase. weder ein studienabschluss, noch eine ausbildung oder eine erwerbstätigkeit der mutter zum zeitpunkt des auszugs können als eindeutige faktoren ausgemacht werden. lediglich ein höheres einkommen beschleunigt den eintritt und somit den auszug des letzten kindes. wesentlich stärker von bedeutung ist die berufsund bildungsbiografi e der kinder. bei kindern, die studieren oder erwerbstätig sind, können die eltern viel früher mit einem kinderlosen haushalt rechnen. ebenso bedeutend ist das geschlecht des kindes: bei söhnen zögert sich die phase des gemeinsamen haushalts länger hinaus als bei töchtern. die längsschnittanalyse zeigt deutlich, dass für den eintritt in die nachelterliche phase das privatleben der eltern und die merkmale der kinder von bedeutung sind. es wurden nicht alle anfangs erwähnten determinanten in die analysen mit aufgenommen, da diese teilweise sehr stark miteinander korrelierten und dieser effekt sich im regressionsmodell niedergeschlagen hätte. für folgeanalysen lässt sich aber festhalten, dass die korrelierenden variablen untereinander ausgetauscht werden können, da sie den gleichen effekt besitzen. abschließend soll auch auf einige limitationen dieser untersuchung eingegangen werden. die ergebnisse erfolgten auf basis einer bildungsselektierten stichprobe und sind nicht auf die gesamtpopulation übertragbar. zudem sind eingangs einige einschränkungen bzgl. des familienverlaufs gemacht worden: es wurden nur personen in die analysen einbezogen, die einen normalen familienverlauf ohne scheidung oder verwitwung aufweisen. einfl üsse dieser ereignisse müssten genauer theoretisch begründet und empirisch belegt werden. darüber hinaus handelt es sich nur um eine geburtskohorte, interessant wäre es auch zu erfahren, ob sich die hier gezeigten einfl üsse bei anderen jahrgängen ebenfalls als signifi kant erweisen. von interesse für weitere analysen zum übergang in die nachelterliche phase wäre auch die beziehungsqualität zwischen eltern und kindern vor dem auszug, die im kgp nicht erfragt wurde. darüber hinaus könnte die wohnsituation der familien und damit einhergehend der wohnkomfort zusätzliche erkenntnisse über das eintrittsrisiko liefern. in weiteren analysen sollte genauer untersucht werden, wie sich der eintritt selber auf das leben der eltern auswirkt, so könnte es sein, dass sich der auszug des letzten kindes auf die bedeutung der familie auswirkt, indem der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 49 er ihren stellenwert senkt. oder aber der wegfall der betreuung der kinder könnte sich auf das berufsleben der eltern auswirken, insbesondere der mütter, da ihnen nun mehr zeit für eine berufl iche tätigkeit zur verfügung steht. ebenso könnte der eintritt in die nachelterliche phase andere lebensbereiche beeinfl ussen, wie z.b. die freizeitgestaltung. literatur bart, pauline b. 1971: depression in middle-aged women. in: gornick, vivian; moran, barbara k. 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bedingungen der migration. stuttgart: enke verlag. wawrzyniak, barbara 2014: die subjektive bedeutung der familie in der nachelterlichen phase. phil. diss. essen-duisburg. weick, stefan 1993: determinanten des auszugs aus der elterlichen wohnung. in: dieckmann, andreas; weick, stefan (hrsg.): der familienzyklus als sozialer prozeß – bevölkerungssoziologische untersuchung mit den methoden der ereignisanalyse. berlin: duncker und humblot: 86-108. der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase • 51 ziegler, rolf; schladt, diana 1993: auszug aus dem elternhaus und hausstandsgründung. in: diekmann, andreas; weick, stefan (hrsg.): der familienzyklus als sozialer prozess. bevölkerungssoziologische untersuchungen mit den methoden der ereignisanalyse. berlin: duncker & humblot. eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und von der autorin autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2015-01en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2015-01en2, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 25.10.2012 angenommen am: 10.01.2014 dr. barbara wawrzyniak (). universität zu köln, institut für soziologie und sozialpsychologie (iss). köln. deutschland. e-mail: barbara.wawrzyniak@gmx.net url: http://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/wawrzyniak.html?&l=0 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships* michael feldhaus, monika schlegel abstract: this paper addresses the infl uence of different types of spatial mobility on relationship quality. although some studies have been carried out on this question, the existing empirical results remain contradictory. the paper tries to overcome some of these limitations by analysing to what extent mobility demands show direct as well as indirect effects. spatial mobility could have impacts on crucial aspects of relationship dynamics, which are theoretically and empirically identifi ed as signifi cant for relationship satisfaction. the mediating variables used therefore include relatedness, autonomy, confl ict and the perceived fairness with regard to the division of labour. the data support the stress hypothesis which assumes that job-related mobility has a negative effect on the relationship quality, but only for women and mothers. there are actually positive effects for men. in terms of indirect effects, the results show that spatial mobility does neither reduce relatedness in relationships nor increase confl ict behaviour signifi cantly. in fact, the opposite effect seems to come to play: there is empirical evidence, especially for women, that more demanding mobility increases the feeling of autonomy within a relationship. it also increases relatedness and reduces perceived confl icts, this in turn having a positive effect on relationship quality. keywords: commuting behaviour · job-related mobility · relationship satisfaction · relationship dynamics comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 291-314 (date of release: 25.06.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-07en8 * the authors would like to thank the reviewers and the editor eric widmer for their very useful and valuable advice. • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel292 1 introduction with regard to daily commuting in the context of a relationship, previous research – particularly from the microeconomic framework – concentrates on analysing the question of why people commute (instead of migrating), what is the rationale behind this and what effects are associated with commuting behaviour. for modelling this question, specifi c benefi ts and costs from the current situation as well as anticipated changes are considered and tested against empirical data. focusing on (expected) benefi ts and costs, many of these studies focus on indicators such as job-related reasons (e.g. income, status, job search, job stimulation or relations with colleagues), place utilities, bargaining processes, the infl uence of social networks (e.g. ommeren 1998; kalter 1994, 1997; kaufmann/widmer 2006; kley 2010; abraham/schönholzer 2009; abraham et al. 2010). but as stutzer and frey (2008) emphasize, commuting cannot be fully understood within the traditional economic framework. particularly with regard to intimate relationships, other relationship dynamics (such as quality, confl icts, intimacy, sexual satisfaction, intentions regarding family formation, entry into cohabitation or marriage, etc.) are important but are too frequently ignored in the fi eld (abraham/schönholzer 2009). looking at research linking commuting and relationship satisfaction, empirical fi ndings have been generated more often within a stress-theoretical approach (koslowsky et al. 1995; schneider et al. 2002a/b) or in the context of the “job mobility and family life” project (limmer/schneider 2008; schneider/meil 2008; schneider/ collet 2010). although some analyses have been carried out on this question, empirical results remain unclear and contradictory fi ndings have been ascertained: some studies fi nd a signifi cant relationship between certain types of mobility and relationship quality (e.g. rüger/limmer 2010; reuschke 2010), while others do not (e.g. viry et al. 2010). it seems more likely that theoretical and empirical work suggests that job-related circular mobility can be both helpful towards and detrimental to relationship satisfaction. this has encouraged theoretical speculation that, in most cases, the impact exerted by commuting is probably more indirect than direct via relationship dynamics (such as relatedness, intimacy, confl icts, autonomy, etc.) or other variables such as gender, parenthood, etc. (schneider et al. 2002a/b; biehl et al. 2005; schneider 2005; viry et al. 2010; meil 2010a; hofmeister/schneider 2010). on this crucial point, no data have been available for testing both the direct and indirect effects of relationship dynamics and job-related circular mobility on the relationship quality simultaneously. new data from the german family panel (huinink et al. 2011) now enable us to overcome some of these limitations. here we concentrate on commuting behaviour using the examples of daily commuters (long-distance commuter, medium-distance commuter and short-distance commuter) and varimobiles (individuals who spent more than 60 nights away from home for work-related reasons during the last 12 months). these categories are well introduced through previous research in the literature on commuting (schneider et al. 2002a/b; schneider/meil 2008; rüger et al. 2011). job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 293 our analysis begins with a brief review of previous fi ndings regarding the impacts of spatial mobility on relationship quality, followed by a theoretical approach to the stress and stimulation mechanisms which might accompany spatial mobility. the ensuing empirical section starts with a cross-sectional analysis to test the direct effects of spatial mobility by distinguishing between different types of daily commuting. then indirect effects are tested by using mediating variables such as relatedness, autonomy, confl ict and the perceived fairness with regard to the division of labour. this paper provides empirical support for unravelling the complex connections between commuting behaviour and intimate relationships, particularly in regard to mediating variables, and thus enriches the ongoing theoretical discussion in a new and valuable way. 2 research on spatial mobility and the quality of intimate relationships the impact of spatial mobility on relationship quality has been analysed quite often in the context of stress-theoretical approaches (koslowsky et al. 1995; limmer 2005). especially the early study of schneider et al. (2002a/b) was the fi rst to focus on job-related mobility, and its relation to different domains of the life course such as intimate relationships, family or single life in germany. this study distinguished between three important types of commuting or job-related mobility. long-distance commuters travel at least one hour to work. shuttlers maintain a second home near their workplace and commute back to their place of residence at weekends. varimobiles are recurrently but irregularly absent from home due to their jobs. other representative studies followed this differentiation of mobility types (rüger et al. 2011). taken together, the fi ndings regarding the impact of mobility on intimate relationships, family life or individual well-being are rather ambiguous. schneider et al. (2002a/b) found that 75 percent of mobile people reported that mobility exerted a negative impact on their relationships. they mentioned conjugal confl icts and closeness-distance problems as well as confl icts in regard to sexual satisfaction or to the division of domestic chores (see also biehl et al. 2005). particularly mobile women receive little support in household duties, which increases their burden (meil 2010a). one major issue is time costs. schneider et al. (2002a/b) noted that the lack of personal time leads to decreased physical and psychological well-being. exhaustion and stress reactions were often reported among the highly-mobile respondents (see also koslowsky et al. 1995; stutzer/frey 2008), and this could have negative effects on relationships. they concluded that those who are faced with high mobility demands (such as shuttlers, long-distance relationships, and varimobiles) are more likely to separate from their partners. viry et al. (2010) hypothesized that job mobility exerts an infl uence on conjugal satisfaction and conjugal confl ict because it affects couples’ cohesion and social integration. the authors expected less cohesion and social integration for shuttlers, varimobiles and other more time-consuming types of commuting. this in turn was expected to lead to lower conjugal satisfaction. however, their analysis of data from • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel294 the european survey on job mobility and family life did not confi rm their hypothesis. only individuals in long-distance relationships, but no individuals in any other mobility situation, reported lower conjugal satisfaction. although nearly one-third of respondents in the early work of schneider also reported positive effects such as a feeling of greater autonomy within relationships, which respondents also perceived as being positive (limmer 2005; schneider et al. 2002a), viry et al. (2010) and widmer et al. (2006; 2009) argue differently. they assume that when partners are highly autonomous from each other, their conjugal quality is lower, and that more highly job-mobile couples feel more autonomous from each other. early research supported the correlation between autonomy and mobility types. shuttlers, varimobiles and long-distance relationships tended to perceive greater levels of partner autonomy in the relationship (schneider et al. 2002a). but the direction of the impact of autonomy is still unclear. it could be positive for people and their partnership in which autonomy is important and job-related mobility enhances this. but it could also increase the likelihood of a separation because of the lack of time spent together. a test of these mediating effects has yet to be undertaken. in regard to further mediating variables, viry et al. (2010) posit that different types of mobility could generate different types of social networks. dense networks – defi ned as supporting relationships common to both partners – increase the quality of intimate relationships. long-distance relationships and shuttling, however, may have a negative impact on shared networks, presumably lowering relationship quality (viry et al. 2010). this thesis is supported by schneider et al. (2002a: 163), whose respondents reported defi cits in social integration. their analysis indicated that extended absence hindered the maintenance of friendships for both the mobile person and their partner. partners of varimobiles complained about the loss of social contacts because of the scarcity of opportunities to spend time together with friends and relatives as a couple. but again, it has also been found that daily commuting facilitated social integration because commuting allows couples to spend more time together with the partner or friends compared to shuttlers or those in long-distance relationships (schneider et al. 2002a: 188). in sum, fi ndings from the research on job mobility and relationship quality are somewhat ambivalent and yield fi ndings suggesting that commuting could be both supportive of and detrimental to relationship quality. the literature offers some theoretical explanations of these contradictory results. according to viry et al. (2010), the life course can have a mediating effect on the correlation between different types of mobility and relationship quality. referring to previous research, they point out that job mobility is more frequent in the early stages of adulthood, during years of education, or when one just entered the job market. thus, mobility is more typical of young people and singles, or of individuals with short-term intimate relationships. most of these couples are childless. partners without children are better able to cope with job mobility demands because they do not face the constraints associated with parenthood (such as child care, housework, organisation of child care arrangements, etc.). thus viry et al. (2010) state that “the job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 295 impact of job mobility on conjugal quality might be weaker than expected, especially in life stages where partners are not yet parents” (viry et al. 2010: 152). another theoretical consideration involves a selection problem. a large proportion of job-mobile people place a high priority on personal autonomy (limmer 2005; schneider et al. 2002a). viry et al. (2010) assume that, because of the emphasis on autonomy, these people probably consider their commuting less of a burden for their relationship, and that they use the different forms of mobility to harmonise confl icting goals and expectations in separate life domains. if this is the case, starting commuting behaviour can be associated with a positive effect for individual well-being and/or for relationship quality. 3 theoretical remarks and hypotheses previous research shows that job-related circular mobility can have a positive or negative effect on relationship quality. to elaborate this further, we use the life course approach as an overarching framework, which captures actor-specifi c needs and demands in a multidimensional context. in the context of the life course approach, goal-seeking behaviour is infl uenced by at least three dimensions: the multi-level structure of society, the multidimensionality of interdependent domains of the life course (relationship, family, work, friends, neighborhoods), and the path dependencies and trajectories of biographical decisions (mayer 1990; huinink/schröder 2008). these different parts defi ne the opportunity structure, which can be broken down into many sub-categories, and which varies over time, in space, in societies, and for each individual. given a specifi c opportunity structure, individuals who have a particular set of available resources (money, time, social relations), as well as personal traits and skills, try to satisfy basic needs by pursuing appropriate goals (huinink/schröder 2008; huinink/feldhaus 2009). note too that, in many cases, it is not possible to realise basic needs directly: people need “second-order goals” (lindenberg/frey 1993) or “instrumental goals” in order to realise different needs. in life course research, it is argued that, for instance, living in an intimate relationship could be an appropriate goal for reaching objectives such as affection, stimulation, and comfort (huinink/feldhaus 2009). this general theoretical framework is somewhat similar to other conceptual frameworks (limmer/schneider 2008). in the overarching concept of life course research, job-related circular mobility is theoretically relevant in at least three different ways: (1) in regard to goal-seeking behaviour, it is a well-known fact that different types of spatial mobility are prerequisites for realising individual goals in a given opportunity structure. thus, mobility is instrumental in goal-seeking behaviour (kalter 1994; schneider et al. 2002a/b; stutzer/frey 2008; lück/schneider 2010; kley 2010; huinink/feldhaus 2012). (2) jobrelated circular mobility is limited by specifi c parameters, related to the individual opportunity structure, such as resources, costs and benefi ts. accordingly, job-related circular mobility is basically determined by distances between the place where people habitually live and the work place, by the time people need for commuting, and by resources (money, physical well-being) and opportunities (a given infrastruc• michael feldhaus, monika schlegel296 ture, a car, or other aspects). furthermore, mobility increases both costs (stress, health problems, money) and at least one specifi c benefi t (such as income, contact with colleagues, stimulation, etc.) (stutzer/frey 2008). these costs and benefi ts vary in time and space as well as with regard to each individual’s specifi c needs. (3) given the interdependencies of life domains, the correlation between goal-seeking behaviour and job-related circular mobility, as well as related resources, costs and benefi ts, it can be assumed that daily commuting infl uences the balance between major domains of the life course. this shows that mobility could also have a supportive function. it enables one to achieve a specifi c goal or to balance two goals from different domains of the life course. in this regard, job-related circular mobility constitutes instrumental behaviour which generates new individual or relationship opportunities for goal achievement and may help individuals to harmonise confl icting demands from different domains of life (lück/schneider 2010; kley 2010). on the other hand, mobility could also have a detrimental function, which is the case if, for instance, the time and money needed for commuting are then unavailable for achieving goals and satisfying demands in other domains of the life course. similarly, stress or health problems resulting from job-related circular mobility can decrease individual well-being, which then can have a negative impact on relationship quality (koslowsky et al. 1995). both the supportive as well as the detrimental function may be found simultaneously, depending on which life domain one looks at. in line with this, stutzer/ frey (2008) stated that if commuting has extra (psychological) costs, then travelling longer distances to work is only chosen if it is either compensated by an intrinsically or fi nancially rewarding job, or by additional welfare gained from other domains of the life course. thus commuting as well as other types of mobile arrangements are one part of the individual set of spatial mobility options (in addition to migration and moving) which is somewhat necessary and which integrates goal-seeking behaviour into the different domains of the life course (limmer/schneider 2008; lück/schneider 2010; stutzer/frey 2008; kley 2010). taking all this into consideration, it is not surprising that contradictory effects of mobility on relationship quality are found. the theoretical challenge, resulting from these contradictory outcomes, lies in the specifi cation of which effects of job-related circular mobility can occur under which conditions of intimate relationships. two mechanisms, a stress and a stimulation mechanism, are explained below. 3.1 stresshypothesis given a sample of employed individuals living together with a partner, and controlling for job activity (full-time, part-time) as well as for educational and occupational status (factors signifi cantly related to circular mobility, rüger et al. 2011), it is assumed that more demanding types of job-related circular mobility, which is measured in terms of time, lead to lower relationship quality. this should be true because it generally leads to negative and resource-sapping effects. commuting over longer distances is more time-consuming and can therefore reduce time spent job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 297 together with the partner. it increases physical stress and lowers subjective wellbeing which – all in all – could have a negative effect on relationship quality (koslowsky et al. 1995; stutzer/frey 2008). although this should be the case for both men and women, it is argued that this negative effect should be more pronounced for women, particularly if children are living in the household. even in this day and age, women bear more of the burden of household chores and child-rearing. therefore, more time-consuming types of commuting may present an additional burden, in particular for mothers with young children, which increases physical stress and then leads to lower relationship quality (press et al. 2006; abraham/schönholzer 2009; lück 2010; kley 2010). furthermore, as mentioned in the previous sections, job-related circular mobility could indirectly affect relationship quality. some of these possible indirectly infl uenced issues are: intimacy and relatedness (schneider et al. 2002a/b; biehl et al. 2005; schneider 2005), confl ict (schneider et al. 2002a/b); autonomy (viry et al. 2010; schneider et al. 2002a/b), or the division of labour in the household (meil 2010a; hofmeister/schneider 2010). thus, these indirectly affected relations are also included in the following analysis. it is well documented that the quality of intimate relationships depends on feelings of intimacy and connectedness to the partner. in deci and ryan’s self-determination theory, autonomy, intimacy and relatedness are basic needs which are essential for on-going psychological growth, integrity and well-being (2000). the degree of satisfaction in regard to intimacy and relatedness is a crucial dimension in the analysis of intimate relationships (rüssmann/arránz becker 2004). intimacy and relatedness provide a secure base for exchange processes such as emotionality, sexuality, interaction, openness, confi dence or fi nancial aspects in relationships. thus, intimacy and relatedness or closeness and connectedness are necessary for a well-functioning relationship and are associated with a high relationship quality (barnes/sternberg 1997; neff/harter 2002). in line with previous research, this paper argues that long-distance commuting and varimobility result in higher degrees of estrangement due to a lack of time spent together with the partner. time spent together generally leads to a higher density of interaction and increased multiplexity with the consequence of greater intimacy (lenz 2003; rhoades et al. 2009). therefore, it is hypothesized that more demanding mobility reduces intimacy and relatedness, and through this mechanism has a negative impact on relationship quality. as found in previous research, confl icts in relationships are often linked with job-related circular mobility. for instance, commuting couples often spend less time together; they are frequently exhausted from commuting, report health or fi nancial impacts, and have diffi culties in organising the housework or day care arrangements for children. they also report lower embeddedness in social networks (widmer et al. 2009), which could generally lead to more confl icts within the relationship. confl icts tend to lower relationship quality (kersting/grau 2003; karney/ bradbury 1995; rüssmann/arránz becker 2004). unfulfi lled expectations, a lack of mutual understanding, different attitudes and emotions, daily hassles, stress and feelings of estrangement are often reported as crucial indicators of lower levels of satisfaction in intimate relationships and as predictors for separation (kersting/grau • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel298 2003; reichle/dette-hagenmeyer 2008; weiss/wagner 2008). thus we assume more confl icts due to more time-consuming commuting behaviour which is likely to impair the quality of the relationship. furthermore, a more demanding commuting behaviour increases the need for a more stringent household organisation, especially for women and for mothers. sometimes it is argued that women’s mobility seems to support a more egalitarian distribution of responsibilities between partners. nevertheless, a majority of mobile women – unlike mobile men – also have the burden of family and household work although they already shoulder the burden of work and mobility (meil 2010b, hofmeister/schneider 2010). previous research on the relationship between the division of labour and relationship satisfaction found that an absolutely equal distribution of housework is not important, but rather the perception of whether the situation as a whole is fair or unfair (e.g. wilkie et al. 1998; dew/wilcox 2011). the fi ndings support a theory of distributive justice, i.e. individuals become dissatisfi ed when they perceive their relationships as placing unfair burdens on them. thus, it is hypothesized that mobile women in particular feel that they do more than their fair share because women often have the responsibility for the household even if they have to be mobile. thus, especially for mothers, job-related circular mobility is accompanied by the perception of making a bad deal with regard to the division of household chores, which is likely to have a negative impact on the satisfaction with the relationship. 3.2 stimulation mechanism yet, as argued from the life course perspective, different types of circular mobility could also act as facilitators for a goal-seeking behaviour. considering empirical fi ndings from previous research, it is argued that job-related circular mobility using the examples of commuting and varimobility could also have a positive indirect effect on relationship satisfaction, particularly with regard to perceived autonomy. looking again at the self-determination theory of deci and ryan (2000), autonomy is a basic human need. autonomy does not refer to independence or to being separated, but rather to a state in which individuals know their own goals and try to realise them relatively unrestricted by others, while simultaneously taking care of their partner’s needs. therefore, relatedness and autonomy are not contradictory, and a well-functioning relationship is balanced on these dimensions, so that higher degrees of autonomy are also associated with a higher relationship quality (neff/harter 2002). relationships in which both partners wish to retain their personal freedom and maintain autonomy lead to living arrangements characterised by higher levels of mobility and separate living arrangements. empirical data demonstrate that for some, personal autonomy is seen as an important advantage of their present living arrangements. shuttlers and individuals who live in long-distance relationships state that times of absence of the partner enhance personal freedom (schneider et al. 2002b: 208). the same could be the case for people who commute daily. being a long-distance commuter or varimobile with a high amount of nights spend away from the common household could lead to an increased feeling job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 299 of autonomy. it might also be the case that these higher types of mobility have a stimulating effect for some people (meeting colleagues, visiting cities, time alone, etc.). thus commuting also gives the space for doing things outside the relationship. it is hence hypothesized that perceived autonomy may have a positive effect on relationship satisfaction, which is called the stimulation mechanism – “stimulation” because autonomy is seen as a window of opportunity for doing things of interest. particularly for women, being mobile and thus being increasingly autonomous is associated with greater freedom from the daily burden of organising the household (nave-herz 1994). thus, especially for women, there are good reasons to expect that more time-consuming mobility increases the perception of autonomy to a greater extent than for men, which could then also have a positive, balancing effect on the relationship. to put it in a nutshell, the following hypotheses are tested in the next section: job-related circular mobility using the examples of daily commuting and va-• rimobility decreases conjugal quality (h1). these negative effects should be more pronounced for mothers (h2).• job-related circular mobility using the examples of daily commuting and va-• rimobility indirectly decreases conjugal quality (mediated by intimacy, confl icts, division of household chores) (h3). job-related circular mobility using the examples of daily commuting and va-• rimobility has a positive indirect effect on conjugal quality (mediated over autonomy) (h4). 4 data and methods the data used are from the fi rst wave of the german “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (pairfam). this is a representative, interdisciplinary longitudinal study that aims at researching different lifestyles of people living in families or relationships in the federal republic of germany conducted by johannes huinink, josef brüderl, bernhard nauck, and sabine walper and funded by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft, dfg). this 14-year long-term project aims at interviewing a group of randomly-selected individuals once a year. at the time of the fi rst survey in 2008/2009, these individuals were categorised into representative groups aged between 15 to 17, 25 to 27, and 35 to 37 (cohort sequential design; n=12,402). every year, if applicable the partner of the representative respondent (anchor person) and/or from the second wave on their parents or step-parents and one child living in the household are also interviewed (multi-actor design) (huinink et al. 2011). despite the fact that the analyses of job mobility patterns are not the major point of focus in the set of tools used in the pairfam survey, it does record central modules of job mobility in order to grasp its opportunity structure relevant for people living in relationships and families. in its approach to measure circular mobility, the data are similar to those of the fi rst schneider et al. (2002a/b) study and to job mobility and family life in europe (schneider/meil 2008). this facilitates a comparison of both data sets (rüger et al. 2011). • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel300 as a panel study, pairfam thus allows to acquire data and analyse job mobility, its prerequisites, and the potential consequences that result from it with the help of a prospective cohort study design. due to the comprehensive questionnaire and the limited amount of time available for the interviews, detailed information on the subject of mobility is only available in every second wave. in this paper we can only include information concerning job-related and partnership-related mobility for two age cohorts (25-27 and 35-37 years). the big advantage of using pairfam data to answer this question is that the content offers detailed information with regard to relationship dynamics (sociological as well as psychological measurements and scales), which are not available in the job mobility project or in the german socioeconomic panel (soep). according to lück and schneider (2010), mobility is defi ned by the fulfi lment of at least one of the following criteria: (1) spending more than 60 nights during the last 12 months away from home for work-related reasons (varimobiles); (2) commuting one hour or more daily each way (long-distance commuter), (3) maintaining a long-distance relationship for work-related reasons, or (4) changing the place of residence by at least 50km for work-related reasons. in order to analyse the commuting behaviour in cohabiting relationships, we focused only on individuals who conform to criteria 1 and 2. in line with the empirical fi ndings, particularly from health surveys, the commuting time is used as a proxy for the burden of commuting (koslowsky et al. 1995; stutzer/frey 2008). in order to obtain a better differentiation of long-distance commuting, we formed a group of medium-distance commuters, defi ned as people who commute 30 to 59 minutes one way to work at least three times a week (rüger et al. 2011). this fi nally leads to a commuting control group of short-distance commuters (under 30 minutes one way), which also contains people who are employed but non-mobile (e.g. home offi ce, agriculture). this provided us with main independent variables, differentiating between varimobiles, long-distance commuters (ldc), medium-distance commuters (mdc) and short-distance commuters (sdc). short-distance commuters are the largest group (61 percent), and are therefore used as the reference category of commuting behaviour. varimobility is also more closely related to daily commuting, and the partners share one common household. this situation is different for shuttlers or long-distance relationships due to job-related reasons. thus, in order to receive a more balanced sample, we left these groups out and restricted the sample to employed people living together with their partners. we refer to these types because they capture a complete picture of job-related commuting behaviour. two items were used as dependent variables that measure general satisfaction with the relationship. the items are: “overall, how satisfi ed are you with your relationship?’ (ranging from 0=very dissatisfi ed to 10=very satisfi ed) and “my partner can fulfi ll my needs very well” (ranging from 1=not at all to 5=absolutely). the mediating variables used were autonomy, which is measured by the following four items: “in our relationship i can usually do what i want.”, “my partner fi nds it quite all right if i pursue my own interests in our relationship”, “in our relationship i can follow my own interests without [name partner] being upset” and “i can settle my personal matters by myself without having confl icts with [name partner] about job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 301 it” (1=not at all to 5=absolutely). furthermore, relatedness is included with the two items “how often do you tell [name partner] what you’re thinking?” and “how often do you share your secrets and private feelings with [name partner]?” (ranging from 1=never to 5=always). the third mediating variable is confl ict, which is measured by the items “how often do you and [name partner] disagree and quarrel?” and “how often are you and [name partner] angry or furious with each other?” (1=never to 5=always). finally, the perceived equity in the division of housework and labour is added as another mediating variable. the items are from 1=”i do much more than my fair share” to 5=”i do much less than my fair share”. there is a number of control variables related to mobility behaviour such as employment status (dummy variable with full-time and part-time employment) and occupational status (dummy variables from the isei scale of occupational status (ganzeboom/treiman 1996), which consist of three groups with values between 1= “0-40”, 2= “41-65”, and 3=”66-90”). further control variables are educational attainment (dummy variable using the casmin scale: lower=general elementary education and basic vocational training; middle=intermediate qualifi cation, higher=tertiary education and school-leaving certifi cate; and fi nally university degree=higher tertiary education), job relevance (the respondents have to distribute 15 tokens to assess the current relevance of different domains of the life course; this item reports the number of tokens assigned to job relevance), cohort (age 25-27, or age 35-37), sex, childlessness, and marital status. we used structural equation modelling (sem) with relationship satisfaction, autonomy, relatedness, and confl icts as latent variables. further covariates mentioned above are included as manifest variables (reinecke 2005; kline 2005). the sem structure allows including several dependent and mediating variables in one model and makes it possible to compute direct as well as indirect effects simultaneously. first, a model including the main independent variables of commuting behaviour and important covariates (models 1 and 2) is run, then the mediating variables of autonomy, relatedness, confl ict and division of labour (models 3 and 4) are included. if a crucial change in the estimations of commuting variables in model 1 (or 2) compared to model 3 (or 4) regarding relationship satisfaction is found, this constitutes an initial indication of the occurrence of a mediating effect. this is also the case if the signifi cance of the estimations changes (frazier et al. 2004; kenny et al. 1998; baron/kenny 1986). based on the results of the third and fourth models, indirect effects are estimated (preacher et al. 2007; muthén 2011). given the fact that the mediating variables are not independent from each other, the indirect effects are estimated simultaneously, a procedure called multiple mediation analysis (preacher/ hayes 2008). separate models were run in order to test interaction effects (e.g. sex, parenthood). if meaningful differences in the estimations were found, a wald test for testing the signifi cance (muthén/muthén 2007; preacher et al. 2007; reinecke 2005) is carried out. • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel302 5 results in regard to the initial descriptive fi ndings, we see that in the selected sample of employed people living together with a partner, roughly 39 percent are faced with more time-consuming types of mobility, such as medium-distance commuters (22.2 percent), long-distance commuters (6.8 percent) or varimobiles (9.9 percent) (table 1). men are typically more intensely mobile, as was also suggested by previous research (rüger et al. 2011). the data also show that full-time employment is more frequently associated with long-distance commuting or varimobility compared to part-time work and self-employment. these results are the same for educational attainment and occupational status: the higher the status or educational level, the greater is the chance of being a long-distance commuter or varimobile. a balanced distribution among the two cohorts is found, among the married and unmarried, and among groups with and without children. if a distinction is made between men and women, the data also provide evidence that childlessness occurs more often among women who are long-distance commuters or varimobiles, which is also a well-known result from former studies (meil 2010b; rüger et al. 2011). table 2 shows the means with regard to the dependent variables as well as for the mediating variables. comparing different types of mobility,1 we see that highlymobile individuals, such as long-distance commuters or varimobiles, differ signifi cantly in regard to relationship quality from low-mobile individuals. surprisingly, we fi nd a higher degree of satisfaction for people with a more time-consuming mobility behaviour. looking at the mediators, the differences are not very pronounced. table 3 shows the results of the structural equation model for relationship quality for men and women separately. models 1 and 2 report the results for job-related circular mobility behaviour without the mediating variables but controlled for variables correlated with job mobility. we only focus on the mobility variables. in general, there are positive effects for each job-related circular mobility type for men regarding relationship quality. the value for varimobiles is however only signifi cant at the ten percent level. compared to this, low negative effects of long-distance commuting and varimobility are found for women. the model fi t is good for this as well as for all following models. the focused mediating variables are then included in models 3 and 4. taking a fi rst look at the job-related circular mobility variables shows substantial changes in the estimations compared to both previous models, particularly for women, which indicates the existence of mediating processes (frazier et al. 2004). again there are positive values for men, particularly for long-distance commuters and varimobiles with regard to relationship quality, and strong negative effects for women, with signifi cant values for long-distance commuting women. furthermore, all mediating variables are highly signifi cant in the expected direction. the higher the relatedness and autonomy, and the lower the confl ict level, the more satisfi ed respondents are with their relationships. the infl uence of perceived equity in the division of house1 the reference category for the levene f test is less mobile. job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 303 tab. 1: descriptive statistics of variables includeda mobility types sum chi2-test variables shortdistance commuters n=1,688 61.2% mediumdistance commuters n=612 22.2% longdistance commuters n=186 6.8% varimobiles n=272 9.9% n=2,758 100% sex men 844 335 113 212 1,504 56.1% 22.3% 7.5% 14.1% 100% .000 women 844 277 73 60 1,254 67.3% 22.1% 5.8% 4.8% 100% employment full-time 1,037 440 142 241 1,860 58.8% 23.7% 7.6% 13.0% 100% .000 part-time 446 130 23 7 606 73.6% 21.5% 3.8% 1.2% 100% self-employed 204 41 21 24 290 70.3% 14.1% 7.2% 8.3% 100% education lower 334 79 25 40 478 69.9% 16.5% 5.2% 8.4% 100% .000 middle 650 202 61 104 1,017 63.9% 19.9% 6.0% 10.2% 100% higher 290 131 33 52 506 57.3% 25.9% 6.5% 10.3% 100% university 413 200 68 77 758 54.4% 26.4% 9.0% 10.2% 100% iseib 0-40 800 238 65 134 1,237 65.0% 19.0% 5.0% 11.0% 100 .000 41-65 637 234 73 78 1,022 62.3% 22.9% 7.1% 7.6% 100% 66-90 250 140 49 61 500 50% 28.0% 9.8% 12.2% 100% cohort 25-27 years 575 198 66 84 923 62.3% 21.5% 7.2% 9.1% 100% .622 35-37 years 1,113 414 120 188 1,835 60.7% 22.6% 6.5% 10.2% 100% childless yes 728 306 98 138 1,270 57.3% 24.1% 7.7% 10.9% 100% .002 no 959 306 88 135 1,488 64.4% 20.6% 5.9% 9.1% 100% married yes 1,108 387 113 165 1,773 62.5% 21.8% 6.4% 9.3% 100% .220 no 580 225 73 108 986 58.8% 22.8% 7.4% 11.0% 100% a for the description we use the dxpsweight; see brüderl et al. 2010; this reduces the sample size from 3,117 to 2,758. b international socio-economic index of occupational status (ganzeboom/treimann 1996). source: pairfam-data, wave 1 • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel304 work and labour for the relationship satisfaction is also seen. men and women who think they do less than their fair share are more satisfi ed with their relationship. regarding included covariates, we fi nd that both childless and married men are signifi cantly more satisfi ed with their relationships. for women, we found that more highly-educated women as well as women of the younger cohort report lower relationship quality. in the description and explanation of stress mechanisms (hypothesis 1) which could come along with job-related circular mobility, it is assumed that long-distance commuting and varimobility should be associated with a negative effect for men and women with regard to relationship quality. the data show that this hypothesis is only confi rmed for women, but not for men. the effect differences for long-distance commuters (p=0.027)2 as well as for varimobiles (p=0.023) are signifi cant between men and women in models 3 and 4. furthermore, it is argued that the negative effect of job-related circular mobility for relationship quality should be stronger for women compared to men, particularly if there are children in the household (hypothesis 2). this mechanism is confi rmed by the data in models 5 and 6. both models only include people with children under the age of 18 in the household, hence reducing the sample size. the effects are similar to the previous models. women who are long-distance commuters or varimobiles report lower relationship satisfaction compared to men (both differences are signifi cant; p=0.014 for ldc; p=0.016 for varimobiles). if a model with only childless women is estimated (results not shown), then the negative effects disappear, thus this effect is closely associated with the status of being a mother who is commuttab. 2: means (standard deviation in brackets) of dependent and mediating variables mobility types shortdistance commuters = reference mediumdistance commuters long-distance commuters varimobiles satisfaction 7.82 (1.94) 7.96 (1.66)*** 7.97 (1.85)+ 8.04 (1.68)** relatedness 3.82 (0.78) 3.88 (0.70)** 3.85 (0.76) 3.76 (0.74) autonomy 3.63 (0.81) 3.67 (0.77)* 3.54 (0.76) 3.56 (0.75) conflict 2.59 (0.65) 2.54 (0.64) 2.42 (0.56)* 2.55 (0.60) division of housework and labour 2.85 (0.71) 2.91 (0.66)* 2.93 (0.71) 3.08 (0.68) ***<.001. **<.01. *<.05. +<.10 source: pairfam-data, wave 1 2 structural equation modelling offers the opportunity to carry out a multiple group analysis and to compare (by using a chi2-wald test) whether the effects are statistically different from each other (see reineke 2005). in the multiple group analysis the whole model is estimated for each group separately (here men and women). job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 305 ing over a long distance or a varimobile. thus, we assume that this direct negative effect, particularly for mothers, is associated with a higher burden in regard to organising the household and child-rearing. the exhausting situation increases with higher commuting times, which is additionally accompanied by greater stress, fatigue and/or health problems. tab. 3: structural equation model of effects on relationship quality for men and women (age 25-27; 35-37; employed persons) satisfaction model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 men women men women men women with children < 18 in hh independent variables (ref.: short-distance commuters) medium-distance commuters 0.089 0.030 0.027 -0.022 0.118 -0.003 long-distance commuters 0.183 -0.034 0.150 -0.299* 0.194 -0.472* varimobiles 0.187+ -0.074 0.200* -0.255 0.263* -0.537+ mediating variables relatedness 0.820*** 0.913*** 0.838*** 0.894*** autonomy 0.612*** 0.735*** 0.815** 0.747*** conflicts -0.629*** -0.879*** -0.696*** -0.983*** division of labour 0.158** 0.154** 0.084 0.190*** control variables casmin (ref.: lower) casmin medium 0.118 -0.167 0.086 -0.285** 0.033 -0.398** casmin higher 0.161 -0.144 0.123 -0.286* 0.050 -0.383* casmin university degree 0.151 -0.137 0.136 -0.315* 0.078 -0.450+ part-time (ref.: full-time/self-empl.) 0.052 0.066 -0.152 0.038 -0.128 -0.009 isei 41-65 (ref.: isei 16-40) -0.048 -0.052 -0.022 -0.078 0.041 -0.052 isei 66-90 (ref.: isei 16-40) -0.213+ 0.059 -0.174 -0.048 -0.145 -0.157 job relevance -0.004 -0.061* 0.027 -0.001 0.054* 0.020 cohort 1971/73 (ref.: 1981/83) -0.095 -0.160+ -0.090 -0.161* 0.126 0.009 childless (ref.: with child(ren)) 0.382*** 0.421*** 0.247** 0.059 married (ref.: not married) 0.277** 0.141 0.266** 0.120 0.154 0.036 chi2/df/p 514.562/58/0.000 780.791/332/0.000 524.937/292/0.000 cfi/ rmsea/srmra 0.965/0.020/0.009 0.927/0.030/0.033 0.933/0.029/0.032 n= 1,619 1,493 1,619 1,493 989 880 a the cfi is a comparative fi t index. it assesses the relative improvement in the fi t of the researcher´s model compared with a baseline model (the independence model), which assumes zero population covariances among the observed variables. the expected unrelated variables lead to a high chi square. the improvement of the model is better to the extent that the researcher´s model reduces this chi square. if we have no improvement, it makes no sense to accept the researcher´s model. the cfi should be higher than 0.90. rmsea (root mean square error of approximation) is a “badness of fi t” index in that a value of zero indicates the best fi t. rmsea estimates the amount of error of approximation per model degree of freedom and takes the sample size into account. rmsea <0.05 indicates close approximate fi t. finally, the srmr (standardised root mean squared residual) is based on transforming both the sample covariance matrix and the predicted covariance matrix into correlation residuals. values less than 0.10, or even better 0.05, are generally considered favorable (kline 2005). these models are calculated without any weights, this explains why n is at 3117 again like in the original sample. five cases had to be excluded due to missing values. ***<.001. **<.01. *<.05. +<.10 source: pairfam-data, wave 1 • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel306 in order to test the following mechanisms (hypothesis 3), it is necessary to compute indirect effects. comparing the models (1 to 4) and their estimations, only small changes are found for men between models 1 and 3, but there are more pronounced effects for women (models 2 and 4). this indicates that job-related circular mobility behaviour is correlated with the mediating variables included, particularly for women. therefore a mediation analysis, shown in figure 1, is carried out by running two regressions: firstly, relationship quality is regressed on mobility types, controlled for other covariates (estimations for men and women are shown in models 3 and 4). subsequently, a regression of the mediating variable on job-related circular mobility behaviour is carried out (which is shown in table 4 for each type of job-related circular mobility and each mediating variable). the product of both regression effects is the resulting indirect effect (see fig. 1 and the values in brackets in table 4), which is also tested for signifi cance. this mediation analysis is carried out simultaneously for all mediators included, a procedure known as multiple mediation analysis (preacher/hayes 2008). focusing on the indirect effect of relatedness for men, we fi nd no evidence to support the stress mechanism stating that more time-consuming mobility behaviour lowers intimacy and relatedness. job-related circular mobility, such as medium-distance and long-distance commuting, as well as varimobility, does neither appear to lower the perceived intimacy and relatedness nor to have a negative impact on relationship satisfaction. for women, the opposite is true: long-distance commuting as well as varimobile women report that these types of mobility are accompanied by a higher degree of relatedness to the partner, which in sum has a weak signifi cant positive effect on relationship quality. no effect is found for men, and the difference between men and women is not signifi cant for long-distance commuters (p=0.228) fig. 1: direct and indirect effects between confl icts and relationship quality for long-distance commuting (ldc) women conflicts ldc partnership quality -0,132 -0,879*** -0,299* indirect effect: -0,132 x -0,879=0,12 source: pairfam-data, wave 1 job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 307 but it is for varimobiles (p=0.043). these results somewhat contradict the given theoretical assumption, although it is controlled for other important job-related variables (see table 1 and models 3 and 4 in table 3). similar results are found for intra-relationship confl icts. it is assumed in the description and explanation of stress mechanisms that confl icts are more prevalent due to circular mobility, which should lead to lower relationship quality. again, this could not be confi rmed. instead we found empirical support for a positive infl uence of long-distance commuting on decreasing confl icts, which then affects relationship quality in a positive way. this is the same for both men and women. thus, while confl ict directly reduces relationship quality, especially long-distance commuting is linked to a lower confl ict incidence, which in turn has a positive and signifi cant effect on the relationship. this result seems to support the fi ndings of other empirical studies which have shown that in relationships with higher forms of mobility, the shared time is regarded as very valuable (schneider et al. 2002a). if time is seen as very valuable, then frequent absences and less time spent together as a result of tab. 4: estimation of the regression of included mediators on job-related circular mobility behaviour (indirect effects in brackets) mediators relatedness autonomy conflict division of housework and labour men medium-distance commuters 0.042 0.011 -0.010 0.014 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (0.033) (0.007) (0.007) (0.002) long-distance commuters -0.008 -0.051 -0.096+ 0.019 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (-0.007) (-0.031) (0.060)+ (0.003) varimobiles -0.048 0.019 -0.009 0.059 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (-0.039) (0.012) (0.006) (0.009) n= 1,619 women medium-distance commuters 0.061 0.068+ -0.011 0.038 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (0.056) (0.050)+ (0.010) (0.006) long-distance commuters 0.131+ 0.135+ -0.132+ 0.081 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (0.120)+ (0.099)+ (0.120)+ (0.012) varimobiles 0.148+ 0.109 -0.073 0.100 (ref.: short-distance commuters) (0.135)+ (0.079) (0.064) (0.015) n= 1,493 ***<.001. **<.01. *<.05. +<.10 source: pairfam-data, wave 1 • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel308 commuting might decrease confl icts over daily hassles because couples seek to maximise enjoyment of the limited amount of time spent together. in regard to the stress mechanisms, it is also argued that especially for women, job-related circular mobility is associated with a perception of an unfair share of housework and labour because women take more responsibility for the household and are more burdened with mobility behaviour, which is likely to have a negative impact on satisfaction with the relationship. this is, however, not confi rmed by the data. finally, focusing on the stimulation mechanism (hypothesis 4), it is suggested that especially for women job-related circular mobility is accompanied by a higher perception of autonomy, which could also have a positive impact on relationship quality. empirical evidence indeed supports this mechanism, particularly for women. if they commute over medium-distances, long-distances, or if they are varimobiles, these mobility types have on the whole a positive indirect effect on the perception of relationship autonomy, which increases relationship satisfaction. the differences between men and women are only signifi cant for ldc (p= 0.044). it is possible to sum up the cross-sectional analysis as follows: hypothesis 1 which says that job-related circular mobility decreases conjugal quality is partly confi rmed. the data only support the stress mechanism of a direct negative effect on relationship quality for job-related mobility for women and for mothers in particular (hypothesis 2), whilst for men there are direct positive effects of job-related mobility with regard to relationship quality. we also fi nd that job-related circular mobility is not associated with lower relatedness or more confl ict behaviour in relationships. the opposite in fact happens: there is empirical evidence to suggest that, particularly for women, more demanding mobility actually has a positive infl uence on the perceived autonomy within the relationship, which has a positive effect on relatedness, and lowers perceived confl icts with the partner. altogether, this interacts positively with relationship quality. interestingly, for women, both direct negative effects of commuting behaviour and indirect positive effects via relatedness, autonomy and confl icts on relationship quality are found (hypotheses 3 and 4). for men, only positive direct effects of commuting on relationship quality occur. note that other job-related variables are controlled for, which means that these effects are not the results of job-related status variables. 6 conclusion this paper addresses the infl uence of different types of job-related mobility on couples’ relationship satisfaction. following cues from previous research, it is useful to distinguish between direct and indirect effects as well as to investigate it separately for men and women. in our cross-sectional analysis, the data only support the stress mechanisms hypothesis of a negative effect on relationship quality for more demanding mobility types such as long-distance commuters and varimobiles for women, and for mothers in particular. this fi nding confi rms previous research of a heavier burden job-related circular mobility and the quality of intimate relationships • 309 for women if they have young children and for instance have to commute over long distances. as meil (2010a) and hofmeister/schneider (2010) emphasize, despite the fact that women’s mobility seems to support a more egalitarian distribution of responsibilities between partners, a majority of women continue to shoulder the burden of organising the family while working and being mobile. surprisingly, this is not refl ected in the mediating effect of the division of household work. the indicator of the perceived fairness of the division of labour probably does not work all that well for this question, and it would be better to attempt to gather information on the factual distribution of housework tasks in future research. positive effects of job-related circular mobility in regard to relationship quality are found for men, and these effects are more pronounced if children are present. the differences between men and women are signifi cant. for men, it is assumed that commuting enables them to combine both job and family, which means that they do not have to do without a family, but they become less burdened because they reduce their engagement in household-related tasks and daily parental responsibilities. this partly supports the thesis of a traditionalising effect of men’s mobility on the household division of labour (meil 2010b), but further research is needed, particular from the longitudinal perspective. furthermore, our results support empirical evidence of the usefulness of including more mediating variables for disentangling the connection between job-related circular mobility and relationship quality, as argued by viry et al. (2010). it is seen that mobility behaviour is not – as had been assumed – signifi cantly associated with lower relatedness or higher confl ict behaviour in relationships. the data show that, particularly for women, more demanding mobility types are associated with higher degrees of perceived autonomy within the relationship, as well as in regard to relatedness. furthermore, it correlates with fewer perceived confl icts with the partner, which in sum results in a positive effect on relationship quality. thus for women both direct negative effects of job-related circular mobility, in support of the stress mechanisms, as well as indirect positive effects via relatedness, autonomy and confl icts on relationship quality are found, which also supports the mechanism of stimulation. this may seem a contradiction in terms, but as is also shown by reuschke for long-distance relationships (2010), women mentioned negative effects in regard to stress and health but positive effects in regard to relationship quality. similarly, collet and dauber (2010) found that mobile women are more concerned with negative psychological consequences than mobile men in the sense of being pressed for time, the feeling of being depressed, and being tired and exhausted (collet/dauber 2010: 185). thus it seems that job-related circular mobility increases the daily burden, particularly for women and mothers, which leads to lower subjective well-being and, in turn, to lower relationship quality. on the other hand, mobility behaviour could be associated with higher relatedness, autonomy, and fewer confl icts, and this has a positive effect on relationship quality. here however we have to mention a limitation of this analysis: we only looked from the crosssectional perspective, because the opportunity for a longitudinal analysis, including mediating variables, is so far restricted. here we need further analysis in order to see what the causality behind this correlation is and how the results might look like • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel310 in the long run: does long-distance commuting or varimobility increase relationship instability in the long run – as our results of direct negative effects for women indicate? there is still another problem regarding indications of causality: job-related mobility behaviour could increase relatedness and autonomy, or reduce confl icts. but it is also possible that people who have higher values regarding these dimensions are more willing to accept more time-consuming types of job-related mobility behaviour because they know that their relationship will cope with this in a satisfying way. then, the connection between job-related mobility and relationship satisfaction is rather based on a moderating effect than on a mediating effect. further, particularly longitudinal research is needed here. the analysis shows that the “commuting paradox”, mentioned by stutzer and frey (2008) in the sense that commuting behaviour leads to a lower subjective wellbeing in the long run while it simultaneously offers other benefi ts (job status, income), could be somewhat disentangled if benefi ts and costs of other life domains are also considered. references abraham, martin; 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dette-hagenmeyer, dorothea 2008: individuelle und dyadische bewältigung von alltagskonfl ikten: themen, copingstrategien und partnerschaftsqualität. in: feldhaus, michael; huinink, johannes (eds.): neuere entwicklungen in der beziehungsund familienforschung. würzburg: ergon: 229-257. reinecke, jost 2005: strukturgleichungsmodelle. münchen: oldenbourg. reuschke, darja 2010: multilokales wohnen. wiesbaden: vs verlag. rhoades, galena k.; scott m. stanley; markman, howard j. 2009: couples’ reasons for cohabitation. associations with individual well-being and relationship quality. in: journal of family issues 30,2: 233-258 [doi:10.1177/0192513x08324388]. rüger, heiko; limmer, ruth 2010: job mobilities and quality of life. in: schneider, norbert f.; collet, beate (eds.): mobile living across europe ii: causes and consequences of job-related spatial mobility in cross-national comparison. opladen: barbara budrich: 263-288. rüger, heiko; feldhaus, michael; becker, katharina; schlegel, monika 2011: zirkuläre berufsbezogene mobilität in deutschland: vergleichende analysen mit zwei repräsentativen surveys zu formen; 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(eds.): interaktion und kommunikation. eine empirische studie zu alltagsinteraktion, konfl ikten und zufriedenheit in partnerschaften. würzburg: ergon: 207-249. schmahl, franziska et al. 2012: scales. manual wave 1 to 3. technical report. schneider, norbert f. 2005: leben an zwei orten. die folgen berufl icher mobilität für familie und partnerschaft. in: mischau, anina; oechsle, mechtild (eds.): arbeitszeit – familienzeit – lebenszeit: verlieren wir die balance? zeitschrift für familienforschung, sonderheft 5. wiesbaden: vs verlag: 110-126. schneider, norbert f.; limmer, ruth; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2002a: mobil, fl exibel, gebunden. frankfurt/m.: campus. schneider, norbert f.; limmer, ruth; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2002b: berufsmobilität und lebensform. sind berufl iche mobilitätserfordernisse in zeiten der globalisierung noch mit familie vereinbar? schriftenreihe des bundesministeriums für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend. stuttgart: kohlhammer. schneider, norbert f.; meil, gerado 2008 (eds.): mobile living across europe. volume i: relevance and diversity of job-related spatial mobility in six european countries. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich. schneider, norbert f.; ruppenthal, silvia; lück, detlev; rüger, heiko; dauber, andrea 2008: germany – a country of locally attached but highly mobile people. in: schneider, norbert f.; meil, gerardo (eds.): mobile living across europe i. relevance and diversity of job-related spatial mobility in six european countries. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich publishers: 105-147. schneider, norbert f.; collet, beate 2010 (eds.): mobile living across europe ii. opladen/farmington hills: barbara budrich publishers. statistisches bundesamt 2005: leben und arbeiten in deutschland. wiesbaden. • michael feldhaus, monika schlegel314 sternberg, robert j. 1988: triangulating love. in: sternberg, robert j.; barnes, m.l. (eds.): the psychology of love, new haven. london: yale university press: 119-138. stevens, daphne; kiger, gary; riley, pamela j. 2001: working hard and hardly working: domestic labor and marital satisfaction among dual-earner couples. in: journal of marriage and family 63,2: 514-526 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00514.x]. stutzer, alois; frey, bruno s. 2008: stress that doesn t́ pay: the commuting paradox. in: scand. journal of economics 110: 339-366 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9442.2008.00542.x.]. viry, gil; widmer, eric d.; kaufmann, vincent 2010: does it matter for us that my partner or i commute? spatial mobility for job reasons and the quality of conjugal relationships in france, germany, and switzerland. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 22,2: 149-169. weiß, bernd; wagner, michael 2008: stehen konfl ikte einer guten partnerschaft entgegen? eine empirische analyse auf grundlage dyadischer daten. in: feldhaus, michael; huinink, johannes (eds.): neuere entwicklungen in der beziehungsund familienforschung. vorstudien zum beziehungsund entwicklungspanel (pairfam). würzburg: ergon: 187-228. widmer, eric d.; giudici, francesco; le goff, jean-marie; pollien, alexandre 2009: from support to control: a confi gurational perspective on conjugal quality. in: journal of marriage and family 71: 437-448 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00611.x]. widmer, eric d.; kellerhals, jean; levy, rene 2006: what pluralization of familiy relations? confl icts, conjugal interaction styles, and social milieu. in: revue française de sociologie 47, supplément: 131-156. wilkie, jane r.; ferree, myra m.; ratcliff, katheryn 1998: gender and fairness: marital satisfaction in two-earner couples. in: journal of marriage and the family 60,3: 577-594. a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the authors’ is available under the title “berufsbezogene zirkuläre mobilität und partnerschaftszufriedenheit”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-07de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-07de2, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 16.09.2011 date of acceptance: 11.02.2013 dr. michael feldhaus ( ). universität bremen, institut für empirische und angewandte soziologie (empas), bremen, germany. e-mail: feldhaus@empas.uni-bremen.de url: www.empas.uni-bremen.de dr. monika schlegel. university of vechta, institute for social work, education and sport sciences, vechta, germany. e-mail: monika.schlegel@uni-vechta.de url: www.uni-vechta.de © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) zeman_kreyenfeld_englisch.indd fertility data for german-speaking countries: what is the potential? where are the pitfalls? michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski abstract: this paper provides an overview of fertility data for germany, austria and switzerland. particular attention is given to the availability of order-specifi c fertility data. we discuss the quality of data provided by the statistical offi ces, both birth registration data and censuses or microcensuses. in addition, we explore how social science surveys can be used to generate order-specifi c fertility indicators, and compare survey fertility estimates with estimates from vital statistics. prior studies have shown that there is a “family bias” in most surveys, with the fertility of younger cohorts being overstated, because respondents with young children are easier to reach by interviewers. our assessment of various types of surveys from the three countries mostly supports this notion. the “family bias” is most pronounced in family surveys in contrast to all-purpose surveys. weighting data does not fully cure the “family bias”, which we attribute to the fact that the number of children is usually not considered a factor in calculating sample weights, as provided by the survey agencies and statistical offi ces. the confounding role of migration in the production of reliable and comparable fertility statistics is also discussed. keywords: fertility · germany · austria · switzerland 1 introduction fertility measures – such as the total number of children, the share of childlessness or the mean age at childbirth – are key indicators of demographic behaviour of a population. these indicators are regularly published by national statistical offi ces and they are also included in international demographic databases (e.g. council of europe, the united nations populations division and eurostat). fertility measures derived from vital statistics are assumed to be of high quality as events like births are precisely recorded by offi cial registrars and because they cover the total comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 349-380 (day of release: 19.01.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-06en3 • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski350 population. however, the desired level of detail is commonly not covered in vital statistics. this is particularly true for austria, germany and switzerland. in these countries vital statistics did not, until recently, provide order-specifi c fertility information. consequently, important demographic indicators, such as the mean age at fi rst birth or the level of childlessness, could not be generated. in recent years, the collection of vital statistics has been expanded in scope, and the statistical offi ces of austria, germany and switzerland are now registering births by biological order: the reforms were implemented in 1984, 2008 and 1998 respectively. however, since these are recent improvements, we do not have long time series of order-specifi c birth behaviour. neither can we derive cohort-specifi c data from birth registration data, because one needs data for the entire reproductive life of a cohort in order to, for example, generate the prevalence of childlessness by birth cohort. given these shortcomings of vital statistics, the question arises as to whether other types of data, such as survey data, are able to provide reliable fertility indicators. the chief aim of this paper is to provide an overview of order-specifi c fertility data that are available from vital statistics and population censuses for the three (predominantly) german-speaking countries: germany, austria and switzerland. moreover, we seek to answer the question: which additional data sources are available to generate order-specifi c fertility indicators? do social science surveys provide robust and reliable indicators? is there systematic bias in survey data? the paper is structured as follows. after a general discussion of concepts, defi nitions and methods, an overview of the data sets available for each country is presented. in addition to presenting the different estimates of mean number of children, birth-order specifi c data is also compared. the fi nal section evaluates the data situation in the three countries. the scope of this paper is limited to fertility indicators by birth order. we do not address more refi ned fertility measures, such as fertility by education or migration background. also, we are only concerned with fertility indicators that summarise the behaviour of women. male fertility is not addressed. furthermore, we only consider live-born children which means that we disregard adoption, stepor foster parenthood. 2 research question, method and data fertility indicators can be derived from vital statistics data, register data and from survey data. vital statistics include births that were derived from the vital registration system. in order to generate birth rates, these data need to be related to the female population. in the countries considered here, birth counts and population counts are gathered independently. the accuracy of the derived fertility rates is dependent on the quality of both data sets and on the exact equivalence of the observed population. register data (ideally) contain complete fertility histories of a population. the german pension registers are an example of this type of data. the austrian census in 2011 was register-based and included fertility data. survey fertility data for german-speaking countries • 351 data include an assessment of either the complete population or a subset of the population who are questioned regarding their achieved fertility up to the interview. for all countries under consideration, there are some census or mikrozensus data available. additionally, various smaller social science surveys exist that provide fertility information. we classify surveys into “family surveys” and “multi-purpose surveys”. we also follow the standard distinction between “cross-sectional surveys” and “panel studies”. vital statistics are generally used to calculate period fertility rates, while survey data and other types of register data are typically used for generating cohort fertility indicators. if there is a suffi ciently long series of period data from vital statistics, then cohort fertility can be estimated from period observations, too. for germany and switzerland, vital statistics do not provide a long time series of order-specifi c fertility rates. as such, the question arises as to whether survey data are able to close the gap left by the vital statistics of the three countries under consideration. various assessments of surveys for deriving fertility indicators have been made in the past, examining for example the united states fertility surveys (swicegood et al. 1984); the italian fertility and family survey (ffs) and multiscopo (rendall et al. 1999); the german mikrozensus (pötzsch 2010) and the german generations and gender survey (ggs) (kreyenfeld et al. 2010a); the ggs of bulgaria, hungary and georgia (burkimsher 2009); and ffs data from the 24 participating countries (festy/ prioux 2002). while these studies have primarily focused on the female population, attempts have also been made to validate male responses in surveys (rendall et al. 1999). there is some concern regarding the accuracy of responses of unmarried men who seem to underreport children with whom they do not co-reside. nevertheless, a general presumption of these studies is that the birth of a child is a hard fact in a person’s life. compared to employment or residential histories, it should therefore be possible to collect fertility histories without much decrement in data quality. however, fertility indicators derived from surveys suffer several limitations. in most cases sample sizes are too small and time periods too short to demonstrate long time trends or to cover many birth cohorts. furthermore, fertility information is mostly gathered retrospectively. only respondents that have survived up to the time of interview can be covered in surveys and selection upon survival might bias fertility estimates (murphy 2009). surveys invariably disregard the mobile population who has left the country before the interview, but include people who might not have lived in the respective country their whole reproductive life. this means that cohort fertility estimates based on survey data must, by defi nition, deviate from vital statistics, because the study population differs. additionally, surveys suffer from unitand itemnon-response. and, most importantly, individuals with certain socio-demographic characteristics may be under-represented or over-represented in the sample. in particular, women with children tend to be over-sampled in social science surveys, because it is easier for interviewers to reach them at home where they care for their children (festy/prioux 2002). this might be most severe in family surveys for which it will be easy to motivate respondents with children, while child• michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski352 less respondents will be reluctant to participate because they are of the opinion that the theme of the survey is not relevant to them. these considerations suggest that there tends to be a systematic “family bias” in survey data. it raises the question as to what extent social science surveys can be used to provide reliable indicators for fertility research and whether weights are able to correct for this bias. therefore, an evaluation is important for assessing the degree of reliance that can be put on survey data. method in order to asses whether there is a “family bias” in the social science surveys, we have compared fertility indicators across surveys. we also compared estimates from survey data with estimates from vital statistics and censuses, if available. the key indicators that we have used for comparison are the mean number of children and the parity distribution, particularly the proportion of childless women by birth cohort. the analysis has been restricted to female respondents with valid information on their number of biological children. if a child was born in the year of the survey, we have disregarded this birth. in other words, we have censored the observations in the year before the interview. the reason for this procedure is that we compared fertility estimates from surveys to fertility estimates from vital statistics. while surveys are usually conducted over a longer span of time, fertility information from the vital statistics usually refers to a calendar year. censoring the survey data at the end of the year before interview makes both data sets comparable, which is of importance especially for the cohorts who are of childbearing age. as sample sizes are rather small in the surveys, we have grouped the data into fi ve-year cohorts. unless noted otherwise, we have provided weighted and unweighted estimates. there is a similarity in methodology across surveys and countries: the weights usually only account for standard socio-economic characteristics (such as age, education and marital status). however, number of children is not included in “standard” weighting schemes. this issue is discussed in more depth later. data many of the data sources are country-specifi c, but data from some multi-country databases and surveys are also available. the fertility and family surveys (ffs) programme, organised by the population activities unit of the united nations economic commission for europe (pau unece), collected during the 1990s individual data on household characteristics, parental home, partnership characteristics and partnership history, children and fertility histories, fertility regulation, views on children, education and educational history, occupational history, and values and beliefs of respondents (ffs 1996, 1999). data were collected in 24 unece member states including germany, austria and switzerland. the follow-up to the ffs is the generations and gender survey (ggs), although fewer countries are currently participating than in the ffs (united nations ece 2005). it is envisioned as a three wave panel survey, with waves taking place three fertility data for german-speaking countries • 353 years apart. germany has completed the fi rst and second wave and austria the fi rst wave (the second one is in preparation). the swiss federal statistical offi ce plans to carry out a similar family and generations survey in 2013. the european social survey (ess) (jowell et al. 2007) is a general purpose social survey which takes place every two years; so far just the third wave, that of 2006/2007, has included a question on fertility. germany, austria and switzerland all gathered data in the ess wave 3. 3 germany 3.1 vital statistics and census data fertility data in germany is collected by the statistical offi ces of the “länder” who forward the data to the german statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt) which then publishes some of the birth statistics online.1 due to its specifi c history, which was marked by signifi cant territorial changes, the data do not cover a long period. for example, live births are only available for the time since 1950. birth data are made available by standard characteristics such as age, sex, region, and citizenship of the mother. however, german vital statistics did not provide birth counts by biological order until recently.2 only births by order in the current marital union were available. this situation has improved recently since the “german population statistics law” (bevölkerungsstatistikgesetz) was changed and prescribed that from 2008 onwards births were to be collected by biological order. since the data quality for 2008 was not good enough this data has not been released. however, fertility data from 2009 onwards is available by biological birth order. a valuable feature of the german vital statistics is that data from the birth registers are also available as individual records. data for the years 2001-2009 can be analysed on-site or via remote access to the research data centres of the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the federal states. the latter data is (so far) only available for non-order specifi c data. germany is providing fertility data to the human fertility database (hfd germany 2010). data in this data base are provided for east germany, west germany and for germany as a whole. age-specifi c fertility rates are available from 1952 onwards. also order-specifi c fertility data are included for east germany for the period 1 https://www-genesis.destatis.de 2 for the former east germany order-specifi c data were also available for the period from 1954 until 1988 (hfd germany 2010). for west germany, attempts have been made to generate order-specifi c birth rates by combining information on the births by order in the martial union with order-specifi c birth information from surveys (kreyenfeld 2002). • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski354 1954-1988.3 since 2009, order-specifi c data are available for germany as a whole, as well as separately for east and west germany. there is also a “monitor of births” available for germany which is hosted by the rostock centre for the study of demographic change.4 it has provided monthly fertility rates since january 2005 for germany as a whole, as well as for east and west germany (doblhammer et al. 2011). germany is conducting a census in 2011 (eppmann et al. 2006).5 this census is primarily register-based and will draw on data from the employment registers and the population registers of the municipalities. however, the census will not contain fertility information. nevertheless, the census has possible implications for fertility researchers as it will provide new estimates of the population size and structure by age and gender. the offi cial population size for germany was 81.8 million at 31 december 2009 (statistisches bundesamt 2010). it is expected that the new estimates will be lower. if the base population decreases, fertility rates based on the new data will be a little higher than previously calculated. however, it is diffi cult to assess the magnitude of this effect as it is unclear to what degree the population counts will change and how different age groups are affected. prior censuses of the federal republic of germany, such as the one in 1970, included a question on the number of children, but this information was only collected from married respondents. for the german democratic republic, data from the census of 1981 provided data on the full female population by age and parity. these data can be used to compile time series of the distribution of births for the cohorts 1902-1945. by and large, the availability of order-specifi c fertility data from german vital statistics has improved tremendously in recent years. in particular, the availability of order-specifi c fertility data is a landmark change for german birth registration statistics. however, there is still a lack of long time series to understand order-specifi c fertility behaviour. for germany, it is diffi cult to give a conclusive answer to the question of how the mean age at fi rst birth has changed over time. nor do offi cial birth statistics tell us as yet how the share of childless women has changed across cohorts. 3 it is, in principle, possible with the hfd to analyse fertility by east and west germany after 1990, too. however, it needs to be mentioned here that berlin has not been separated in this database because a regional reform – which came into force in 2001 – makes it diffi cult to divide berlin along the old territorial borders of the previous two german states. the question arises as to whether to group berlin into east germany or whether to exclude it from the time series. there is no common practice in fertility research yet. however, it needs to be noted that the inclusion of west berlin into east germany somewhat affects the east german birth rate (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). 4 http://www.zdwa.de/zdwa/artikel/index_dateien/index_0407.php 5 https://www.zensus2011.de fertility data for german-speaking countries • 355 3.2 perinatal statistics and pension register apart from the vital statistics, germany also offers other types of register data that can be used for fertility analysis. the register of perinatal statistics includes clinical records of children who were delivered in german hospitals. data are collected on a federal level, and prior to 2001 these data have primarily been used to analyse order-specifi c fertility patterns in selected federal states (voigt/hullen 2005). since 2001, the data have been stored in a central register which has opened up the opportunity to use this data for order-specifi c analysis for the country as a whole (kreyenfeld et al. 2010b).6 however, this data cannot be used to produce cohort fertility estimates. the german pension register also provides fertility information with the great advantage that it provides micro-level data of women both with and without children alike. thus it is possible to generate fertility rates by using just one source of data. this is a great advantage over deriving birth rates from vital statistics as this calculation draws the numerator (births) and the denominator (female population) from two different sources. the other advantage is that exposure rates can be calculated, as the duration since time of last birth is included. however, this data set is still not a full replacement for vital rates, as it does not include the total population of germany. certain sub-populations, such as farmers or lifetime-employed civil servants, are not included. fertility of non-germans is also not very accurate as children that were born outside germany are not included in these registers (for an evaluation see kreyenfeld/mika 2008). 3.3 survey data the major survey data set that provides information on household structure and household composition in germany is the mikrozensus. the mikrozensus is conducted by the german federal statistical offi ce and includes 1 % of all households in germany. up to 2008, the mikrozensus did not include information on the number of children ever born. however, researchers have used this survey to generate fertility information by estimating a fertility schedule based on information about the children living in the household of the respondent at the time of the interview (see e.g. duschek/wirth 2005). the drawback of this procedure has been that children who have died and those who had moved out of the parental home are discounted. after the recent reform of the mikrozensus law, a question on the number of children ever born has fi nally been included into the mikrozensus. the law stipulates that fertility information should be collected every four years for female respondents aged 15-75. the mikrozensus 2008 was the fi rst one which provided this 6 home births, which make up about two percent of all births in germany, are not included in the perinatal statistics. however, sensitivity analysis has shown that the omission of these births does not bias order-specifi c analysis in any substantial manner (kreyenfeld et al 2010b). • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski356 information. most of the questions in the mikrozensus are compulsory, i.e. respondents are required by law to provide information. unfortunately, the question on the number of children is not among them and the respondent can choose whether or not to answer this question. furthermore, the question on the number of children has been placed at the end of the questionnaire, where it is asked rather out of context. these two aspects taken together might explain that the item non-response is unusually high. about 12 % of respondents failed to answer this question in 2008. as it is considered probable that childless respondents more commonly failed to answer this question than others, the federal statistical offi ce has generated an imputation scheme that tries to correct for the bias in the data (statistisches bundesamt 2009; pötzsch 2010). social science surveys germany has several cross-sectional data sets that contain information on the number of children ever born (table 1). one of the most recent ones is the aid:a, launched by the german youth institute in 2009. aid:a is a successor to the djifamily survey that was last undertaken in 2000. the german birth survey (“geburten in deutschland”) conducted by the federal statistical offi ce in 2006 contains fertility histories of female respondents (statistisches bundesamt 2007; pötzsch/ emmerling 2008). the sample comprises prior respondents of the mikrozensus.7 germany also participated in the generations and gender survey (ggs). the fi rst round of the german ggs was undertaken in 2005. the german ggs also includes an oversample of turks. this subsample was observed in 2006 (ruckdeschel et al. 2006). an evaluation of the german ggs has been undertaken and major fl aws in the fertility histories have been diagnosed (kreyenfeld et al. 2010a; naderi et al. 2009). the german life history survey (glhs) provides complete fertility histories of female and male respondents for selected birth cohorts (mayer 2006).8 a very recent and large data set is a study conducted by the institute for employment research entitled “arbeiten und leben im wandel” (alwa). it is primarily geared towards collecting employment careers, but it also includes complete fertility histories of males and females. apart from the big family surveys, there are other social science surveys that include fertility information. all purpose surveys such as the “allgemeine bevölkerungsumfrage der sozialwissenschaften” (allbus) provide fertility histories; however, sample sizes are rather small. if one aims at reconstructing fertility his7 the german birth survey is a cross-sectional study which is drawn based on the population of respondents who have previously been interviewed in the mikrozensus. the mikrozensus is organized as a rotating panel: ¼ of the respondents are surveyed four years in a row. after four years, respondents usually leave the study population. the german birth survey therefore includes respondents who have previously been interviewed in the mikrozensus four years in a row. 8 http://www.yale.edu/ciqle/glhs/ fertility data for german-speaking countries • 357 tories of older cohorts, data from the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), the life expectancy survey or the german ageing survey (deas) might be useful (börsch-supan et al. 2010; engstler/motel-klingebiel 2010). however, it is generally only surviving children who are surveyed in these ageing-related data-sets. germany has also participated in the population and policy acceptance survey (ppas), the eurobarometer and the european social survey (ees). these data sets also contain fertility information; however, sample sizes are quite small compared to most of the other data sets. panel data the availability of panel data in germany is favourable too. the socio-economic panel (soep), of which the fi rst wave was launched in 1984, is one of the longest panel studies in europe and can be used to study the fertility of both males and females (e.g. schmitt 2004). for fertility researchers, it is also of interest that a subsample (soep-fit) was drawn in 2010, containing about 500 households in which a child has been born since 2007. this data collection has been fi nanced by the german family ministry and will become available for scientifi c use in 2013. the mikrozensus is also available as a panel data set. the great advantage of this data set is that sample sizes are large and unit and item non-responses are very low. a shortcoming is that fertility histories are not surveyed and need to be reconstructed based on information about the children who are living in the household of the respondent. another drawback is that a person automatically drops out of this panel when he or she moves into another household (kreyenfeld et al. 2009). there has been a whole series of family panels in germany. two of the fi rst were the “bielefelder family panel”, which was launched in the 1980s (strohmeier 1985), and the “bamberger ehepaar-panel”, which was conducted in the period 1986-2002 (schneewind et al. 1996). while these early panels comprised rather small sample sizes, the family panel of the german youth institute was the fi rst large scale family panel in germany. this data suffered, however, from the fact that the time between panel waves was long which contributed to large sample attrition. the same can be said for the generations and gender survey (ggs), of which the fi rst wave was conducted in 2005. the second wave followed in 2008; however, only a third of the respondents of the fi rst wave provided information in the second wave. the panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam), with a fi rst wave launched in 2008/2009, is the most recent family panel surveying more than 12,000 respondents (huinink et al. 2010). demodiff (demographic differences in life course dynamics in eastern and western germany) complements pairfam with an additional 1,400 east german respondents. both panels follow an annual rhythm. pairfam is currently the largest family panel in europe. it is surveyed on an annual basis and it envisaged to be conducted for 14 years. for family researchers, pairfam is a key micro-data set, as it contains highly reliable panel information combined with several innovative features such as a multi-actor design.9 9 http://www.pairfam.uni-bremen.de • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski358 ta b . 1 : s um m ar y o f s el ec te d g er m an s ur ve ys (b y al p ha b et ic al o rd er ) 1 t he a llb us is a va ila b le f o r th e ye ar s 19 80 , 1 98 2, 1 98 4, 1 98 6, 1 98 8, 1 99 0, 1 99 1, 1 99 2, 1 99 4, 1 99 6, 1 99 8, 2 00 0, 2 00 2, 2 00 4, 2 00 6 an d 2 00 8. s am p le s iz e re fe rs to th e ye ar 2 00 8. 2 t he e as t g er m an s am p le w as d ra w n in 1 99 4/ 95 a nd 2 00 0. p ar t o f t hi s d at a is a va ila b le a s a p an el . 3 t he g g s is o rg an iz ed a s a p an el . t he re is a n ad d iti o na l s am p le th at o ve rs am p le s tu rk s in g er m an y. t ha t s ub sa m p le w as d ra w n in 2 00 6. 4 t he li fe h is to ry s ur ve y co nt ai ns s ev er al s ub -s ur ve ys o f w es t g er m an c o ho rt s 19 19 -2 1, 1 92 931 , 1 93 941 , 1 94 951 , 1 95 456 , 1 95 961 , 1 96 4, 19 71 a nd e as t g er m an c o ho rt s 1 92 931 , 19 39 -4 1, 1 95 153 , 19 59 -6 1, 1 97 1. p ar t o f th e st ud y is o rg an iz ed a s a p an el . t he c o ho rt s w er e su rv ey ed a t v ar io us p o in ts in ti m e si nc e th e 19 80 s. f o r th e co ho rt s b o rn b ef o re 1 96 4, th e sa m p le s o nl y co nt ai ne d g er m an n at io na ls . 5 t he m ik ro ze ns us h as b ee n ca rr ie d o ut a nn ua lly s in ce 1 95 7 fo r w es t g er m an y an d s in ce 1 99 1 fo r e as t g er m an y, w ith t he e xc ep tio n o f th e ye ar s 19 83 a nd 1 98 4. f o r th e ye ar s 19 96 -2 00 0 an d 2 00 120 04 , t he m ik ro ze ns us is a ls o a va ila b le a s a p an el . s am p le s iz e re fe rs t o t he s ci en tifi c u se f ile o f t he y ea r 20 08 . 6 t he s o e p c o nt ai ns a n o ve rs am p le o f c er ta in s ub p o p ul at io ns s uc h as fo re ig ne rs a nd e as t g er m an s. it a ls o in cl ud es a s p ec ia l q ue st io nn ai re fo r m o th er s o f n ew b o rn c hi ld re n an d in fa nt s. a ls o 1 7ye ar o ld s ar e su rv ey ed s ep ar at el y. n um b er s in ta b le r ef er to th e ye ar 2 00 9. t yp e o f s ur ve y y ea r s am pl e s iz e r em ar ks m al es fe m al es a ll b u s 1 si nc e 19 80 1, 71 2 1, 75 7 a ge s 18 + , e as t g er m an y o ve rs am p le d a rb ei te n un d l eb en im w an d el ( a lw a ) 20 07 5, 27 1 5, 13 3 c o ho rt s 19 56 -1 98 8 a uf w ac hs en in d eu ts ch la nd : a llt ag sw el te n (a id :a ) 20 09 12 ,5 37 12 ,8 00 a ge s 055 b ir th s ur ve y (g eb ur te n in d eu ts ch la nd ) 20 06 - 12 ,4 56 a ge s 16 -7 5 e ur o p ea n s o ci al s ur ve y, w av e 3 20 06 /0 7 1, 43 7 1, 47 9 r ep re se nt at iv e in w av e 1 fa m ily s ur ve y o f t he y o ut h in st itu te 2 19 88 , 1 99 0, 2 00 0 4 ,6 29 5, 68 9 a ge s 18 -5 5 fe rt ili ty a nd f am ily s ur ve y (f fs ) 19 92 4 ,0 16 5, 99 6 a ge s 18 -3 8, g er m an n at io na ls g en er at io ns a nd g en d er s ur ve y (g g s )3 20 05 , 2 00 8 4, 61 0 5, 40 7 a ge s 18 -8 5 li fe h is to ry s ur ve y (l h s )4 fi rs t s tu d y in 1 98 1 t o ta l o f 1 1, 44 1 re sp o nd en ts s el ec te d c o ho rt s m ik ro ze ns us 5 si nc e 19 57 23 4, 71 1 24 9, 71 1 a ll ag es p ai rf am /d em o d iff 20 08 -o ng o in g (y ea rl y p an el ) 6, 76 3 7, 12 8 c o ho rt s 19 71 -1 97 3, 1 98 119 83 , 1 99 119 93 p o p ul at io n p o lic y a cc ep ta nc e s tu d y (p p a s ) 20 03 2, 03 0 2, 08 0 a ge s 18 -7 5 s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el ( s o e p )6 19 84 -o ng o in g (y ea rl y p an el ) 32 ,9 91 33 ,1 92 a ge s 17 a nd o ld er fertility data for german-speaking countries • 359 3.4 comparison of fertility estimates from various sources this section addresses the question of how fertility estimates can be compared across the different german surveys. we have focused on six data sets for this analysis: the soep, birth survey, ggs, mikrozensus, dji-family survey and pairfam. we have restricted the comparison to west germany. the defi nition of what constitutes west germany differs somewhat between samples. this issue should be of minor importance as the exclusion of west berlin does not affect the west german results markedly. figure 1 displays the mean number of children by female birth cohorts. there is some variation between how well the different types of surveys depict the overall fertility trend. while the mikrozensus follows the trend suggested by the vital statistics fairly well, this is not the case for the other surveys. particularly disturbing are the results for the german ggs which give a wrong impression of the overall trends in fertility (for a detailed discussion see also naderi et al. 2009; kreyenfeld et al. 2010a). it is also worth noting that the “family bias” is more pronounced in the pairfam, the ggs and the dji-family survey, while the bias does not seem as strong in the (weighted) soep-data. the soep and mikrozensus are all-purpose surveys which might explain why the bias is less strong than in the family surveys. the birth survey would classify as a family survey too; however, in this survey special efforts have been made to address childless respondents, which could explain why the “family bias” is less strong in this data set. the most important fi nding from this comparison is that, in all survey data, the bias runs in the same direction. while fertility seems too low for the older cohorts, it is too high for the cohorts who are at childbearing ages at time of survey. reachability might explain the pattern for the more recent cohorts; however, it is less comprehensible why there is a bias for the older ones. one could speculate that migration could affect the differences between the vital statistics and the survey data more for the older cohorts. one possibility could be that foreign women with larger families who have given birth to their children in germany, returned to their home countries later in life, perhaps at their own or their partners’ retirement age. another reason for this pattern could be a systematic underreporting of children by the older cohorts. why underreporting of children is age-dependent is, however, diffi cult to explain, unless deceased, emigrated or estranged children are essentially “forgotten” over time. another important fi nding from this investigation is that the weights do not affect the results very much. it is only for the soep – which is a highly stratifi ed sample – that weighting affects the results in any sizeable manner. a possible reason for this could be that the weighting factors account for standard demographic characteristics (such as age, education, marital status and region), but they do not consider the number of children. • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski360 fig. 1: mean number of children by female birth cohorts, west germany 1 the sample comprises women who live in west germany (excluding berlin). the fi gure draws on the mikrozensus data which used imputed fertility information. 2 the sample comprises women who live in west germany (including west berlin). source: own calculations panel 1: mikrozensus 20081 panel 2: soep 20092 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 mikrozensus 2008 vital statistics birth cohort panel 3: birth survey 20062 panel 4: ggs 20052 panel 5: dji-family survey 20002 panel 6: pairfam 2008/09, cohorts 1971-732 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 soep 2009 soep 2009 (weighted) vital statistics birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 birth survey birth survey 2006 (weighted) vital statistics birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 ggs 2005 ggs 2005 (weighted) vital statistics birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 dji-family survey 2000 dji-family survey 2000 (weighted) vital statistics birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 pairfam 2008/09 pairfam 2008/09 (weighted) vital statistics birth cohorts 1971-73 fertility data for german-speaking countries • 361 figure 2 compares the share of childless women by birth cohort. the dji-family survey and pairfam have been excluded for this part of the analysis, as they do not allow for the analysis of long-term trends in childlessness. unfortunately, there is no benchmark for comparison (such as vital statistics) when evaluating childlessness trends. nevertheless, it is disturbing to see that childlessness trends differ radically between the different sources of data. the mikrozensus and soep suggest that childlessness has increased since the 1940s cohorts. the ggs suggests that it has declined, while the birth survey suggests that it has levelled off recently. if one disregards the ggs, one can presume that childlessness has increased since the 1950s cohorts. for the youngest cohorts, childlessness is around 20 % in all the surveys (apart from the ggs). 4 austria 4.1 vital statistics and census data for austria, data on live births are collected by the central statistical offi ce, statistics austria, and have been published ever since 1871 for the present-day territory of austria. birth count data by the age of the mother, allowing the generation of fig. 2: share of childless women by female birth cohorts, west germany 0 5 10 15 20 25 1930-34 1935-39 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 mikrozensus 2008 ggs 2005 birth survey 2006 soep 2009 percent birth cohort source: own calculations, weighted estimates • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski362 age-specifi c fertility rates, have been available since 1951. for the period 1951–1983 only the birth order within the current marriage was recorded, not the biological birth order. in 1983 the “personenstandsgesetz” established a new birth registration system. hence, the number of live births by biological order and the birth cohort of the mother are available since 1984, and this has made it possible to conduct orderspecifi c fertility analyses (hfd austria 2010).10 fertility information is also available from census data. there have been three censuses that have contained fertility information: 1981 (may 12), 1991 (may 15), and 2001 (may 15). these included a question on the number of children ever born which was asked to all women who were older than 15. thus retrospective information on cohort fertility for women born after 1882 is available. unfortunately, there are some discrepancies between the censuses. the 1981 census show a signifi cantly higher proportion of childless women who are past their reproductive age (by 2-6 percentage points for women born between 1900 and 1930) than was recorded in the 1991 and 2001 censuses (fig. 3). this could partly be attributed to a change in the questionnaire. the slightly higher mortality of older childless women cannot account for such a large difference (prskawetz et al. 2008: 299), nor is migration a possible explanatory factor for this age group. another country-specifi c data feature for monitoring fertility trends in austria is the “geburtenbarometer”.11 this project, launched in 2005 by the vienna institute of demography (vid), provides continuous period fertility rates on a monthly basis. the advanced analysis of monthly birth rates is useful for studying short-term variations in fertility trends. in addition, the geburtenbarometer publishes the „pap“ (period average parity), which is a period fertility measure that is less distorted by tempo effects than this is the case for the conventional tfr (sobotka et al. 2005; zeman et al. 2011) in 2010-2011 the “geburtenbarometer” was refi ned further: separate fertility indicators were calculated for vienna and the rest of austria. the “geburtenbarometer wien” shows not only yearly indicators for 1984-2010 and quarterly indicators for 2002-2010, but also compares fertility in vienna with other provinces, and analyses the fertility of women born outside austria and their contribution to the fertility levels in vienna (zeman et al. 2011). 10 modelling of age and order-specifi c data for the period 1952-1983 has been carried out by anna šťastná and tomáš sobotka based on census data. the data are available by personal correspondence to the authors. they will also be made available in the human fertility collection of the max planck institute for demographic research and vienna institute of demography in the future. 11 www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/barometer fertility data for german-speaking countries • 363 fig. 3: mean number of children and childlessness by cohort, austrian censuses source: census 1981/1991/2001, statistik austria panel 1: mean number of children 1.20 1.40 1.60 1.80 2.00 2.20 2.40 2.60 1882 1892 1902 1912 1922 1932 1942 1952 1962 census 1981 census 1991 census 2001 birth cohort panel 2: percent childless 0 10 20 30 40 1882 1892 1902 1912 1922 1932 1942 1952 1962 census 1981 census 1991 census 2001 birth cohort • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski364 4.2 survey data austria has undertaken several social surveys that allow us to analyse how socioeconomic and cultural factors determine fertility choices (see table 2). the fertility and family survey (ffs) for austria was conducted in 1995/1996 by statistics austria and coordinated by the austrian institute for family studies (ffs 1996). it surveyed detailed fertility and family histories, fertility intentions, life biographies, contraceptive use and other socio-economic information from 4,581 female and 1,539 male respondents, with an overall response rate of 72 %. the age range of the respondents was 20 to 54 years at the time of the interview, which corresponds to the birth cohorts 1941-1976. the successor study, the generations and gender survey (ggs), was conducted in 2008/2009. a total of 3,001 females and 1,999 males were surveyed, with a response rate of 61 %. one shortcoming is the rather narrow age range of 18 to 45, which is a problem for investigating long term trends and analysing cohort change. since 1967, austria has been conducting a mikrozensus which covers 0.7 % of the population in austria. as participation in this survey is compulsory, the level of non-response is very low. a special module on fertility was included in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006. this module contained questions on the number of children ever born as well as on fertility intentions. in the 1976 and 1981 similar questions had been included, but they had been given to married women only. austria also participated in the european social survey (ess). like in germany and switzerland, the ees included a question on fertility in its wave 3. 4.3 comparison of fertility estimates from various sources the following section compares fertility measures across different surveys. for this investigation, we have looked at data from the ffs, ggs, ess and the mikrozensus of 2006. figure 4 displays the mean number of children from the different surveys. a comparison with vital statistics shows that the ffs overestimates fertility (panel 1). the same conclusion holds true for the ggs (panel 2). tab. 2: selected social surveys in austria survey year sample age females males range fertility and family survey (ffs) 1995/96 4581 1539 20-54 gender and generations surveys (ggs) 2008/09 3001 1999 18-45 mikrozensus (latest wave) 2006/q4 6135 – 20-60 european social survey – wave 3 2007 1287 1118 15+ note: the case number for the mikrozensus only refer to the fourth quarter of the year 2006, because only this data will be used fort he subsequent analyses. source: own design fertility data for german-speaking countries • 365 the “fertility bias” might be expected to be more pronounced in family surveys but less so in “all-purpose surveys”. this can be investigated by looking at the ess and the mikrozensus (panel 3 and 4). the fi gures for the ess show a similar bias of overestimation of fertility levels as already seen in the ffs, particularly for younger cohorts. for the mikrozensus, the pattern is less clear. our results show that for cohorts of 1970 and older the number of children is slightly overestimated. comparing the absolute deviations between indicators based on surveys and vital statistics, the mikrozensus, ffs and ggs provide similar results. a more detailed inspection of the parity structure of the ffs data proves that most of the discrepancies in the mean number of children are driven by the fact that childless women have been under-sampled, while two-child mothers have been over-sampled (fig. 5). older women with one child are also underrepresented. oversampling of mothers with one child as well as two children is very pronounced for the cohorts born around 1965. the younger the cohort, the greater the level of overrepresentation; this especially applies to younger one-child mothers. the possible reason for this might lie in the fact that mothers with newborn children are probably fig. 4: mean number of children by female birth cohorts, austria source: own calculations panel 1: ffs panel 2: ggs 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 ffs 1995/96 mean ffs 1995/96 mean (weighted) vital statistics 1996 birth cohort panel 3: ess panel 4: mikrozensus 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1963-64 1965-69 1970-74 ggs 2008/09 mean ggs 2008/09 mean (weights sa) ggs 2008/9 mean (weights vid) vital statistics 2008 birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 ess 2007 mean ess 2007 mean (weighted) vital statistics 2007 birth cohort 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 1946-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 mikrozensus 2006 mean mikrozensus 2006 mean (weighted) vital statistics 2006 birth cohort • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski366 easier to access and interview than other women, because they spend more time at home where interviewers can reach them. the most common problem therefore is with under-representation of childless women (and over-representation of women with more children), resulting in the overestimation of the mean number of children per woman. this is in line with the experience from other ffs countries discussed by festy and prioux (2002). special weights for the austrian ggs prior analysis have shown a systematic bias in most of the data. this can be cured only partially by using weights. the reason is that the weights usually do not consider information on the number of children. against this background, the vid team has generated a specifi c weighting factor for the ggs data that is particularly designed to account for the fertility bias. the special “vid weight” takes into account fig. 5: parity distribution by cohorts; fertility and family survey austria (wave 1995/1996, weighted) source: ffs 1996, own calculations panel 1: childless women panel 2: women with 1 child 0 20 40 60 80 100 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 1975-79 ffs vital statistics percent panel 3: women with 2 children panel 4: women with 3 or more children 0 20 40 60 80 100 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 1975-79 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 1975-79 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 1975-79 percent fertility data for german-speaking countries • 367 the specifi c cohort-parity distribution. as a benchmark, the data from the geburtenbarometer from 2008 are used (see buber 2010 for a more detailed explanation). by applying the vid weights that adjust (in addition to age, sex, employment status, country of birth and living arrangements) also for the parity of female respondents, the discrepancies are minimised, and the results then do not differ from the vital statistics, as shown in figure 5. 5 switzerland 5.1 vital statistics and census data the vital statistics for switzerland are collected and disseminated by the swiss federal statistical offi ce (sfso) in neuchâtel, which was founded in 1860. historical vital fig. 6: parity distribution by cohort, using different weights; ggs for austria (2008/2009) source: ggs 2008/09, own calculations panel 1: childless women panel 2: women with 1 child 0 20 40 60 80 100 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 ggs weighted ggs vid weight vital statistics percent panel 3: women with 2 children panel 4: women with 3 or more children 0 20 40 60 80 100 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 percent • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski368 statistics data for switzerland were compiled by calot et al. (1998). the publication (released with a data cd) includes several indicators: the total number of live births since 1801 – by month of birth since 1871 – and daily numbers since 1926. more detailed records of births by age of mother are available for the period 1944-1985. the data also include population counts by age and gender for 1861-1997. data for the most recent years are available in the human fertility database (hfd switzerland 2010). birth registration data since 1969 are available in electronic form from the sfso12, as are statistics of the mid-year population by age. prior to 1998, birth order was registered as order in the current marriage (also taking into account those children who were “legitimised” through marriage), with a separate category for extra-marital births. as the proportion of births outside marriage has increased, together with more complex partnership histories (rossier/ le goff 2005), there has been an increasing demand for collecting biological birth order. this information started to be collected in 1998, although at fi rst a signifi cant proportion of births were still being recorded as unknown order; it is only from 2006 that the information on biological birth order is comprehensive and has been offi cially available. to close the gap in order-specifi c birth information, burkimsher (2011) has estimated the number of births by order and age for the period 1969-2004 by drawing on the distribution of births from the years 1998-2008.13 in 2001 there was a change in the registration of births within switzerland pertaining to the residence status of the parents. after 2000 some temporary residents, such as asylum seekers, were no longer included in the vital statistic totals: this caused a decrease in the total number of births registered, and hence a “blip” in the tfr for 2001 compared to 2000. the swiss census has been carried out every ten years from 1860 up to 2000, with the exception of 1888 and 1941 (glei 2008). however, only the census in 2000 (as recorded on 5 december 2000) included a question on fertility. all respondents (both male and female) were requested to report the number of (biological) children they have ever had (regardless of civil status). the data may be analysed by gender, by education, and by origin (native/migrant population), as well as by any other variable included in the census, such as household characteristics, nationality, religious affi liation (but not practice), etc. the population included in the census is the resident population and includes temporary residents; however, for the registration of births only permanent residents are included. in the swiss census 2000, a signifi cant share (5.9 %) of the women failed to declare their number of children (hfd switzerland 2010). there is also a signifi cant difference in the proportion of women of foreign nationality who did not declare how many children they have had compared to swiss women (2-6 % for swiss women born between 1930 and 1975, compared to 6-11 % for the same cohorts of foreign 12 bevnat database – statistik der natürlichen bevölkerungsbewegung http://www.bfs.admin. ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/01/06/blank/data/01.html 13 the data are available in the human fertility collection of the max planck institute for demographic research and vienna institute of demography. fertility data for german-speaking countries • 369 women). the number of women with an undeclared number of children varies with age, and is especially high amongst very young and very old women. we suspect that most of the young women of unknown parity were in fact childless. to deal with this issue, we applied the following logic: for women up to 30, we consider those with an undeclared number of children to be childless, whereas after age 30 we consider only women who stated they had no children as being childless (dashed black line in fig. 7), and proportionally redistribute the women of unknown parity. we therefore probably overestimate to some extent the proportion of young women who are childless. in figure 8 cohort fertility derived from birth registration data and from the census 2000 are compared. the fi gure shows a remarkable level of agreement. the reason why the agreement is, however, not perfect is because the structure of the population changed quite dramatically between the period when these cohorts were in their main reproductive period (1950s-1990s) and 2000, when the census was taken: there had been large net immigration fl ows in that period. for example, the 1960 cohort of women grew from about 47,000 in 1980, when they were aged around 20, to 58,000 in 2000, an increase of 23 %. more recent cohorts have expanded to an even greater extent: for example, the 1975 cohort grew by 42 % between 1990 (the start of their potential reproductive life) and 2009. because immigrants have signifi cantly fig. 7: proportion of childless women and those with an unknown number of children, and the mean number of children by cohort, census 2000 0 20 40 60 80 100 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 m ea n nu m b er o fc hi ld re n 1905 1915 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 childless childless-recalculatedchildless + unknown unknown mean number of children percent c hi ld le ss ne ss source: census 2000, sfso, own estimates • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski370 different fertility patterns than swiss natives, this will cause differences between fertility statistics derived from birth registration and those from subsequent censuses and sample surveys. 5.2 survey data the main survey data set specifi cally designed to focus on the fertility history of women and men in switzerland was the 1994/1995 fertility and family survey. a number of other social surveys that included a question on number of children have also been carried out in switzerland (for an overview, see table 3). although the information from the ffs is now quite outdated, this is the best information on many fertility questions and attitudes that is available. the swiss federal statistical offi ce plans to carry out a family and generations survey in 2013. however, its scope will be more limited than that of the generations and gender survey. the swiss household panel (shp) started in 1999, with consecutive waves each year thereafter. it contains a wide range of questions on social and economic issues and on fertility intentions. the principal aim of the shp is to observe social change, in particular the dynamics of changing living conditions of the population. the european social survey (ess) is also available for switzerland. as in austria and germany, it included a question on fertility in its wave 3 fig. 8: mean number of children in vital statistics and swiss census 2000 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 vital statistics census birth cohort source: vital statistics, census 2000, sfso fertility data for german-speaking countries • 371 5.3 comparison of fertility estimates from different sources in the following, we evaluate three surveys which have included fertility questions, namely the ffs, shp (wave 2000) and ess (wave 3). figure 9 plots the mean number of children by female birth cohorts for these data. in contrast to the austrian and the german data that broadly overestimate fertility for the younger cohorts, we do not fi nd this pattern for the swiss ffs (panel 1). the commonly observed problem of overstating fertility in surveys apparently does not appear to be the case in the swiss ffs. the summary indicators of fertility from the ffs sample seem to be in excellent agreement with those derived from vital statistics. in the shp, retrieving the number of children was not as straightforward as in the case of the ffs because, given the design of the household panel, we needed to associate own co-resident children to mothers based on household id, then adding own children not living in the household. for the shp, we fi nd a similar pattern as in the german data. fertility for the younger cohorts is overestimated, while it is underestimated for the older ones (panel 2). for the ess, the pattern is very irregular (panel 3). here, one must consider that this is a rather small sample with only about 80 respondents per cohort group. we have investigated the parity distributions for the swiss data only for the ffs and shp, as the ees has a rather small sample for this part of the analysis. the parity composition derived from the ffs is displayed in figure 10. as swiss vital statistics do not provide any order-specifi c cohort data (yet), we used as benchmark estimates based on the census 2000 combined with vital statistics data generated by burkimsher (2011). from the graphs it is apparent that there exists a bias which is concealed when one uses summary measures such as the mean number of children: a slight over-sampling of women with 1 and 2 children is counterbalanced by under-sampling of women with 3 or more children. regarding the swiss household panel (shp) we have chosen to use wave 2000 which allows direct comparison with the census 2000 data. in figure 11 we observe that childless women have been over-sampled in general while women with three or more children have been under-sampled. both mismatches are very pronounced for the older cohorts. the best agreement is for one-child mothers. contrary to the more usual tendency to under-sample childless women in surveys, for the swiss household panel the results show the opposite: under-estimation of the mean tab. 3: selected social science surveys in switzerland survey year sample age range females males fertility and family survey 1994/1995 3,881 2,083 20-49 swiss household panel wave 2000 3,967 2,901 3-92 european social survey wave 3 2006/2007 988 815 15+ source: own design • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski372 fig. 9: mean number of children female birth cohorts, switzerland source: own calculations panel 1: ffs 1994/1995 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 ffs ffs-weighted vital statistics panel 3: ess 2006/2007 panel 2: shp 2000 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 shp shp-weighted vital statistics 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 ess ess-weighted vital statistics fertility data for german-speaking countries • 373 number of children and over-estimation of childlessness. however, for the youngest cohorts, the proportion of childless women followed the more usual pattern of being under-represented. fig. 10: parity distribution by cohorts; fertility and family survey (1994/1995) source: ffs switzerland 1999, own weighted calculations panel 1: childless women panel 2: women with 1 child 0 20 40 60 80 100 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 ffs vital statistics percent panel 3: women with 2 children panel 4: women with 3 or more children 0 20 40 60 80 100 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69 1970-74 percent • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski374 6 conclusion this paper had three objectives: fi rstly, to inform about the availability of orderspecifi c fertility data in the vital statistics of germany, austria and switzerland; secondly, to provide an overview of survey data that can be used to generate fertility indicators; and thirdly, to compare fertility estimates across surveys to evaluate the reliability of survey-based fertility indicators. an overview of the data situation can be summarized as follows. the big strength of the german situation is the fact that several high quality panel studies, such as pairfam and the soep, are available to study fertility and family dynamics. also the fertility information from german vital statistics has improved in recent years as order-specifi c birth information is now collected. moreover, a question on the number of children has fi nally been included in the 2008 mikrozensus. however, fig. 11: parity distribution cohorts; swiss household panel (wave 2000) source: shp 2000, own weighted calculations panel 1: childless women panel 2: women with 1 child 0 20 40 60 80 100 19 20 -2 4 19 25 -2 9 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 shp census 2000 percent panel 3: women with 2 children panel 4: women with 3 or more children 0 20 40 60 80 100 19 20 -2 4 19 25 -2 9 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 19 20 -2 4 19 25 -2 9 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 percent 0 20 40 60 80 100 19 20 -2 4 19 25 -2 9 19 30 -3 4 19 35 -3 9 19 40 -4 4 19 45 -4 9 19 50 -5 4 19 55 -5 9 19 60 -6 4 19 65 -6 9 19 70 -7 4 percent fertility data for german-speaking countries • 375 one big weakness is the large item non-response for the fertility question in the mikrozensus. our general assessment of the austrian situation is that the quality of vital statistics is very high. in contrast to germany, which only recently enhanced its vital statistics, austria did so in 1984. apart from the fertility data collected in the censuses of 1981, 1991 and 2001, the availability of large-scale survey data sets is limited. in regard to panel studies, the data situation in austria differs substantially from germany; there are no large panel studies that can be used for the analysis of fertility dynamics. the sample size in the main family survey, the austrian ggs, is also rather small and the age range is limited which restricts the possibility of determining long term trends. the swiss situation is mixed. the availability of order-specifi c data from swiss vital statistics is limited, as offi cial order-specifi c fertility data are only available from 1998 onwards.the swiss household panel survey includes fertility data; however, there are no comparable recent family surveys as in germany or austria. it is also unfortunate that the swiss census only gathered fertility information in 2000. overall, the availability of survey data to conduct fertility analysis varies quite radically between the three countries under consideration. in order to assess the quality of fertility data in the different social science surveys, we compared fertility estimates of various types of data with information from the vital statistics. the key indicator we used for validation was the mean number of children. we also calculated order-specifi c indicators such as the proportion of childlessness by birth cohorts of women. we assumed that a “family bias” tends to be inherent in social science surveys. the reason is that women with small children are usually easier to reach for interviewers than childless respondents or respondents with older children (festy/prioux 2002). therefore, cohort trends in childlessness derived from surveys tend to be biased, because the fertility of younger cohorts is overstated. for family surveys one additionally needs to consider that respondents with young children are likely to be more interested in participating in the survey, which will create an additional bias. our investigation of data from german-speaking countries gives some support to this hypothesis, as we fi nd a “family bias” in the austrian ffs and ess and the majority of the german surveys. applying standard weights to the data did not cure much of the bias, which we attribute to the fact that these do not control for number of children (however vid weights of the austrian ggs successfully corrected for the parity composition of women). it is also worth noting that the bias was particularly strong in the family surveys, but all-purpose surveys, such as the swiss household panel and the austrian and german mikrozensus, did not suffer from it to the same extent. thus we conclude that unit non-response is more selective in family surveys than in all-purpose surveys, as childless respondents might be less interested in participating in these types of surveys. while unit non-response is an issue in social science surveys, selective item non-response turned out to be an important issue in the german mikrozensus and in the swiss census. in censuses respondents are obliged to participate by law, • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski376 which results in a low unit non-response. however, item non-response was high for the question on the number of children and it is considered probable that childless respondents were more likely than others to not answer this question. given the major importance of the mikrozensus, it seems highly desirable to make a stronger effort to obtain reliable fertility information. this would not only guarantee that we get trustworthy “structural indicators”, it is also important for social science surveys which rely on the mikrozensus to generate their weighting factors. this paper has left several issues unresolved. we have compared survey data with vital statistics, but the effect of migration, which blurs the comparison, has only briefl y been mentioned and has not been explored suffi ciently. fertility indicators derived from survey data, compared to those derived from vital statistics, must differ because they consider different populations, particularly for the older cohorts. on the one hand, surveys do not include respondents who have died or emigrated, and selection upon “survival” will bias any estimates of childlessness for the older cohorts. on the other hand, surveys do include respondents who have moved into the country. as young childless women are the most mobile ones, both nationally and internationally, accurate estimates of their numbers over time are diffi cult to collect even with compulsory registration. full population registers that contain fertility as well as migration histories could be a remedy for this problem. the austrian register-based census might be a fi rst step in this direction. however, for switzerland, and particularly for germany, the future availability of this type of data is unlikely. surveys that contain fertility and migration histories will remain the most realistic option for now. however, sampling mobile, young, childless women remains a challenge for survey analysis. taking into account the effects of migration in fertility analysis is likely to be a growing challenge in the future for research based on survey data, as well as on vital statistics. acknowledgements we would like to thank the advisory group of the ffs programme of comparative research for its permission to use the original ffs data. we also used data from the european social survey, maintained by the norwegian social science data services (nsd) and archived on the website www.europeansocialsurvey.org. we have also had access to data collected in the living in switzerland project, conducted by the swiss household panel (shp), based at the swiss centre of expertise in the social sciences, fors, university of lausanne. that project is fi nanced by the swiss national science foundation. for valuable comments we thank olga pötzsch, nadja milewski and karsten hank. we also thank stéphane cotter and marcel heiniger, of the swiss federal statistical offi ce, for their assistance in obtaining the swiss birth vital statistics and census data and for providing their insights into the data. this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly 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http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid • michaela kreyenfeld, kryštof zeman, marion burkimsher, ina jaschinski380 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the authors is available under the title “fertilitätsdaten für deutschland, österreich und die schweiz: wo liegen die möglichkeiten? was sind die begrenzungen?”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-06de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-06de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 08.02.2011 date of acceptance: 10.06.2011 michaela kreyenfeld ( ). max planck institute for demographic research, rostock, germany. e-mail: kreyenfeld@demogr.mpg.de. url: www.demogr.mpg.de kryštof zeman. vienna institute of demography, austrian academy of sciences, vienna, austria. e-mail: krystof.zeman@oeaw.ac.at. url: www.oeaw.ac.at marion burkimsher. university of lausanne, ch-1015 lausanne, switzerland. e-mail: drmarionb@gmail.com ina jaschinski. statistik austria, 1110 vienna, austria. e-mail: ina.jaschinski@statistik.gv.at. url: http://www.statistik.at © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) research on divorce: causes and consequences editorial on the special issue “research on divorce: causes and consequences” paul b. hill, johannes kopp “of all changes in family life during the 20th century, perhaps the most dramatic – and the most far-reaching in its implications – was the increase in the rate of divorce“, paul amato (2000: 1269) wrote in a review. amato’s thesis can undoubtedly be approved; separation and divorce have certainly received a lot of attention in the sociology of the family. however, these topics are not as prominent in research as one would expect and as they surely deserve to be – especially in europe and germany. this is all the more surprising, considering that general sociology also refers to these phenomena and thereby shifts the focus to the question of how the – putatively or actually – rising instability of romantic relationships can be explained. the instability of close relationships is often seen as a consequence of modernisation and individualisation processes or even as a manifestation of the postmodern loss of solidarity and community spirit. with these speculative considerations, increasing divorce rates are often hastily taken as empirical evidence. the fact that this increased dissolution of close relationships is not historically unique – existing even in tribal, estate-based and pre-modern industrial societies – is often ignored. in the past, separation and divorce were less frequent in total numbers, but this was due rather to specifi c individual circumstances than to the social system. therefore, it is not surprising that even in pre-modern societies the instability of close romantic and long-term relationships was particularly observable in those social groups whose resource level made separation and divorce possible, as well as the support of those who were left behind (like children and women). thus, it is not the needs, the integrity or the bonding capacity of individuals that have changed, nor the infl uence of society with its framework of norms and values, but rather the allocation of resources and the additional possibilities for individuals. confi rmed by this reasoning, micro-sociological approaches dominate the explanation of separation and divorce. recent reviews (arránz becker 2015a; braver/ lamb 2013) on theory development only discuss approaches based on action theory. four theories are featured in nearly all lists: exchange theory, new home economics as well as its theoretical extensions, the vulnerability-stress-adaption model and the cascade theory. undoubtedly, exchange theory provides the central arguments for the explanation of separation and divorce and for the prior processes of partner choice and the institutionalisation of the relationship (thibaut/kelley 1959; lewis/spanier 1979). its key advantage is its applicability to a whole range of familcomparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 219-228 (date of release: 30.09.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-11en7 • paul b. hill, johannes kopp220 ial decisions and developments. new home economics, which provides important amendments to exchange theory and thereby emphasizes the relevance of market mechanisms and decision-making calculations, can be considered as quite “related”. within the same theoretical context, two other additional theories have to be mentioned: on the one hand commitment theory (rusbult 1980) which emphasizes the “sunk costs” or, in other words, the investments in relationships as stabilising factors, and on the other hand – in accordance to the action-theoretical assumptions of the two perspectives mentioned above – the framing model which provides another (additional) perspective, namely the theoretical integration of norms into the rational-choice-approach (esser 2002; kroneberg 2007). finally, stress theory and the “trajectory toward divorce” approach have been established. stress theory focuses on the social and psychological consequences of actions by partners (karney/bradbury 1995). the handling of stress-provoking interactions, dealing with stress and coping strategies in relationships provide important arguments for the causes as well as the consequences of divorce. the cascade theory analyses the paths leading to separation (gottman 1993, 1994), and explains how destructive interactions operate, spread, reinforce and fi nally lead to the dissolution of a relationship. altogether, these different theoretical approaches do not compete directly. some are based on action theory; others focus on the emotional and communicative consequences and their dysfunctional perpetuation. criticism has been raised with regard to all theoretical perspectives mentioned, but without a doubt they have lost little of their persuasive power so far. put more defensively, a superior theoretical alternative is not within sight. however, research on separation and divorce has a solid and coherent theoretical foundation. we mentioned at the beginning that empirical research on divorce, however, is not particularly elaborate. the number and the degree of sophistication of present analyses do not do the public signifi cance and the sociological defi nition of the phenomenon as a “common indicator” of social change justice. for germany, there merely exists one research study that compares married and divorced individuals on the basis of a large random sample and thus can also be classifi ed as a theorytesting survey, namely the “mannheim divorce study” from the 1990s (klein/kopp 1999). this over twenty years old survey has clearly increased the knowledge about relationship dissolution, but it is (unfortunately) still an exception in its comprehensiveness. its universal theoretic foundation corresponds to the action-theoretical tradition of the sociology of the family. in its specifi c confi guration, it is infl uenced (among others) by lewis and spanier (1979) and their utility theory. the lack of suitable studies is also connected to the methodological requirements they carry. due to the lack of a register, sampling among the population of divorced people, which consists of the currently divorced and the remarried divorced, is diffi cult. in practice, the sampling can almost only be run through a screening procedure. if restricted to the currently divorced, a bias is to be expected, because they probably differ systematically from the remarried. additionally, problems of retrospective memorising arise. besides methodological challenges, there are also restrictions in terms of content, because one single survey cannot reveal the full research on divorce: causes and consequences • 221 variety of processes including all relevant aspects of separation or divorce. the mannheim study could have been the starting point of increased empirical research on divorce, but the opportunity was not seized. however, it could at least answer questions which were, up until the 1990s, subject to speculation (for an overview see the empirical research of wagner/weiß 2003 as well as klein et al. 2013). the “german family panel” (pairfam), which includes questions on the quality, satisfaction and stability of relationships, was planned as a continuation of the mannheim study. but in this case – due to the large number of topics included and the variables of different fi elds of marriage and relationships – only a limited systematic test of theoretical hypotheses is possible. the research design as well as panel attrition are also problematic. overall, the number of recorded divorces is relatively low and hardly allows for causal analysis. other data sources (the “german socioeconomic panel study” (soep), the “german general social survey” (allbus) and data from the “international social survey programme” (issp), the “generations and gender survey” (ggs) etc.) allow for – more or less limited – analysis of separation and divorce. but such valuable studies only exist unrelated to each other and suffer from a lack of central explanatory variables and methodological restrictions. separation or divorce were not central topics in the conception of these and other surveys, they were rather viewed as marginal processes. in spite of these data limitations, empirical determinants for relationship dissolution can be isolated. some effects are to be mentioned: the risk of divorce rises with the urbanity of the living environment, the divorce of parents or parentsin-law (transmission of divorce), a lower marriage age, a non-religious wedding and increasing educational heterogamy of couples. children are probably the main risk-reducing effect (see for example klein/kopp 1999; wagner 1997; brüderl et al. 1997; kopp 2000; hill/kopp 2013; babka von gostomski et al. 1998). besides children, who are viewed as “marriage-specifi c capital”, other investments, such as a shared bank account, shared land or home ownership also act as stabilising factors (wagner 1997). infi delity, drifting apart as well as alcohol and drug abuse are individual causes that foster divorce (amato/previti 2003). de graaf and kalmijin (2003) prove the relevance of communication behaviour, such as a lack of attention and empathy among partners. the impact of interaction styles and confl ict resolution strategies has also been empirically proven. accordingly, openness, intimacy and trust strengthen the stability of relationships (arránz becker 2004; arránz becker/ rüssmann 2004). the effect of premarital cohabitation on stability is positive (see for example lois 2008). experiences of unemployment – especially among men – and ensuing fi nancial problems reduce the stability. the employment of women shows ambivalent effects (arránz becker 2015a; wagner/weiß 2003). however, in the last two decades, the focus of research on divorce has changed (amato 2010; arránz becker 2015a). roughly from the turn of the millennium onwards, the consequences of relationship dissolution are being addressed more often than its causes. this shift in research can be explained by the increase of divorce rates all over the world (goode 1993) and the assumed and empirically proven negative consequences. to mention only one example, the results of holden and smock (1991) proved that a divorce poses the greatest risk of impoverishment to women in • paul b. hill, johannes kopp222 the us. another study points out drastic psychological and social consequences of divorce for parents and their children (amato 2000). consequently, the majority of articles in this volume concentrate on the consequences of separation and divorce. however, there is no homogeneous perspective of theory in this fi eld of research. rather, there is a coexistence of theories and hypotheses. whereas the dissolution of relationships is treated as the explanandum in all approaches mentioned above, quite different explanatory phenomena operate under the heading “consequences of divorce”. still, the research is characterised by a common cause, namely the increasing instability of relationships. implications of separation vary substantially: social isolation, identity problems, economic deprivation and the loss of contact with one’s children, to name only a few. in this context, a stringent theory can hardly be expected and probably would not be very useful. the articles in this volume emphasize these facts and circumstances. there is no universal theoretical framework for post-divorce research, instead, specifi c explanatory approaches focus on individual issues. the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective of amato (2000) is a particularly infl uential approach on which many empirical studies of the psychological consequences of relationship dissolution are based. according to this approach, separation and divorce are dramatic life events, which drastically infl uence the lives of those involved, carrying shortand/ or long-term consequences. on the level of psychological implications, a variety of results prove the negative consequences. braver and lamb (2013: 493) summarise the relevant research results as follows: “it is not surprising that divorced parents are more likely to suffer psychological and emotional problems than married parents, although most parents are not permanently damaged by divorce. divorced parents have higher risks of depression, anxiety, and unhappiness, physical illness, suicide, motor vehicle accidents, alcoholism, homicide, and overall mortality.” the adjustment to new life conditions is, in the most cases, easier for women than for men, because they have better support networks, initiate divorce more frequently than men and often have more effective coping strategies. besides the psychosocial and personality-related consequences addressed above, other research priorities can be identifi ed. economic consequences, for example, make up a very important research area, as mentioned (weitzman 1985). separation and divorce are often connected with a reduced fi nancial scope, while women are the losers in most cases (given the fact that role division is often arranged traditionally between the genders). the magnitude of economic consequences also depends on legal and socio-political circumstances, which leads to diffi culties when it comes to international comparisons. for germany, economic effects have been examined by hans-jürgen andreß and miriam bröckel particularly (see for example 2007, as well as the article in the present volume). family dissolution also often negatively affects the raising and socialisation of children, which might have consequences on their educational careers. changes concerning the frequency and intensity of contact between former partners and their children are perhaps the most important research areas. contact between former partners is especially relevant and almost inevitable when both still are in touch with the child or the children and share childrearing duties (“parallel research on divorce: causes and consequences • 223 parenting”). the main intent is often to reduce negative psychosocial consequences for the children. according to us studies (braver/lamb 2013: 499-500), about 20 percent of children whose parents are divorced show adaptive and developmental disorders, whereas the respective number for stable families is only about 10 percent. the omission of interaction or clearly diminished communication with a parent – especially at the age of approximately one to three years – can lead to the formation of an unfavourable attachment style, which can negatively infl uence behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. in summary: “the quality of both mother and father-child relationships remains the most reliable predictor of individual differences in psychological, social, and cognitive adjustment in infancy, as well as in later childhood” (braver/lamb 2013: 498). this similarly applies to the methodological side of post-divorce research as well as to the analyses of the instability of relationships. surveys which focus exclusively on the diverse consequences of the separation process, which are theory-driven and include a suffi cient number of cases are rare. in the case of relationship instability, as well as the process of divorce, panel studies should ideally be carried out, because they are the only adequate means that is able to illustrate the consequences of divorce in their processuality. in this respect, pairfam might be a good starting point for initial analysis, although methodological problems such as high panel attrition exist. for the analysis of specifi c effects – for example changes of fi nancial resources as a result of separation and divorce – other data sets are also suitable, as demonstrated in the article by bröckel and andreß. the contributions to the present volume provide important research fi ndings focussing on prominent topics in europe and germany. the results provide new insights, complement and contrast recent american fi ndings and point to open questions. the fi rst article by ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk and johannes stauder deals with the determinants of divorce decisions. the authors take up wellknown considerations of exchange theory, according to which the opportunities on the so-called “marriage market” – meaning the availability of alternatives to the existing relationship – determine the stability of the relationship. allegedly, better alternatives theoretically have a destabilising effect, even if marriage quality is high. for the fi rst time in divorce research, the authors do not only try to use proxy variables for the analysis of market structures, but rather integrate the actual social contexts (as scott feld (1981) described in his focus theory) into the analysis and can therefore prove respective effects. with recourse to the latest “german marriage market survey”, the results of older surveys can be critically discussed with regard to the new data (rapp et al. 2015). the following articles then turn to the consequences of separation and divorce. father-child relationships after divorce, for example, are the issue of the survey by matthijs kalmijn. by focussing on living arrangements after divorce, the amount of contact with the father, and the perceived quality of the father-child relationship, he addresses questions which have hardly been taken into consideration in research so far. he analyses the dependence of contact frequency and the intensity of the father-child-dyad on demographic and socio-economic variables. the author uses • paul b. hill, johannes kopp224 different data sets, allowing for an international comparison between england, sweden, the netherlands and germany. results show that the national context also matters for understanding father-child relationships (kalmijn 2015). miriam bröckel and hans-jürgen andreß focus on the economic consequences of divorce. as the new home economics approach points out in particular, material gain can also be achieved by pooling resources during a cohabitation or marriage. when the advantages of a shared household break away due to separation, the expenditures for two separate households will typically be higher in total. specialisation gains resulting from the division of labour between the partners will also disappear. in consequence, greater restrictions regarding the available income are to be expected after divorce (bröckel/andreß 2015). the survey, based on almost 30 waves of the german socio-economic panel study (soep), directly draws on comparable analysis (andreß 2003; andreß et al. 2003; andreß/bröckel 2007). over this period, the socio-structural, socio-economic and legal conditions as well as the division of gender roles in relationships have clearly changed. the analysis shows the effects of these changes on the fi nancial situation of men and women after divorce. overall, the results prove that the fi nancial consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men. in his article, oliver arránz becker analyses in which way parent-child relationships change after a divorce or union dissolution, examining the differences between mother-child and father-child relationships. the focus is on adolescents and adults (of the offspring generation) and the relationships to their parents. the author bases his analyses on pairfam data and tests several competing hypotheses. according to the spillover hypothesis, stress and confl ict that parents experience between each other might be transferred to their children and consequently harms their well-being. however, a compensation of confl icts might also be possible through a more intensive and empathetic communication between children and both parents, or one parent (the “compensation hypothesis”). so far, little is known about the situation in germany. the main innovation of this article, compared with earlier studies, is the analysis method used. a rather methodical conclusion from the analyses is that the fi xed-effects regressions based on variance within respondents offer a different picture than earlier studies based on cross-sectional data. conclusions drawn in american studies are certainly very helpful; however, comparisons with results gathered in other national contexts allow conclusions on the relevance of family politics, economic and social normative arrangements. arránz becker is able to point out that there are evident indications for the infl uence of such contexts (arránz becker 2015b). sabine walper, carolin thönnissen and philipp alt examine the effects of family structure and the experience of parental separation on adolescents and their well-being. they also base their analyses on data of the pairfam panel. the data set allows a systematic comparison of four different family structures: stable nuclear families, single mother families, step-families and a group of prospective separators whose parents separated between the two waves taken into account here. adolescents’ satisfaction with different domains of life and their self-esteem were used as indicators of well-being. contrary to fi ndings from international studies, the data research on divorce: causes and consequences • 225 do not suggest that adolescents raised in a stepfamily are similarly or even more strained than adolescents living in a single mother family. generally, effects of family structure did not differ for boys and girls, but maternal education moderated the effects of family structure on adolescents’ life satisfaction. overall, the fi ndings are in line with other evidence from germany which suggests only limited disadvantages for adolescents from separated/divorced families (walper et al. 2015). references amato, paul r. 2000: the consequences of divorce for adults and children. in: journal of marriage and family 62,4: 1269-1287 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.01269.x]. amato, paul. r.; previti, denise 2003: people’s reasons for divorcing: gender, social class, the life course, and adjustment. in: journal of family issues 24,5: 602-626 [doi: 10.1177/0192513x03254507]. amato, paul r. 2010: research on divorce: continuing trends and new developments. in: journal of marriage and family 72,3: 650-666 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00723.x]. andreß, hans-jürgen 2003: die ökonomischen risiken von trennung und scheidung im ländervergleich: ein forschungsprogramm. in: zeitschrift für sozialreform 49,4: 620-651. andreß, hans-jürgen et al. 2003: wenn aus liebe rote zahlen werden. über die wirtschaftlichen folgen von trennung und scheidung. wiesbaden: westdeutscher verlag. andreß, hans-jürgen; bröckel, miriam 2007: income and life satisfaction after marital disruption in germany. in: journal of marriage and family 69,2: 500-512 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2007.00379.x]. arránz becker, oliver 2004: soziale determinanten und konsequenzen partnerschaftlicher interaktionsstile. in: hill, paul b. (ed.): interaktion und kommunikation. eine empirische studie zu alltagsinteraktionen, konfl ikten und zufriedenheit in partnerschaften. würzburg: ergon: 157-206. arránz becker, oliver; rüssmann, kirsten 2004: die interdependenz von sozialstruktur, familienzyklus, interaktionsstil und partnerschaftszufriedenheit. in: hill, paul b. (ed.): interaktion und kommunikation. eine empirische studie zu alltagsinteraktionen, konfl ikten und zufriedenheit in partnerschaften. würzburg: ergon: 207-247. arránz becker, oliver 2015a: determinanten und konsequenzen von trennung und scheidung. in: hill, paul b.; kopp, johannes (eds.): handbuch familiensoziologie. wiesbaden: springer vs: 527-561. arránz becker, oliver 2015b: the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships with their parents. in: comparative population studies 40,3: 313-334 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-09en]. babka von gostomski, christian; hartmann, josef; kopp, johannes 1998: soziostrukturelle bestimmungsgründe der ehescheidung. eine empirische überprüfung einiger hypothesen der familienforschung. in: zeitschrift für soziologie der erziehung und sozialisation 18,2: 117-133. braver, sanford l.; lamb, michael e. 2013: marital dissolution. in: peterson, gary w.; bush, kevin r. (eds.): handbook of marriage and the family. third edition. new york/ heidelberg/dordrecht/london: springer: 487-516. • paul b. hill, johannes kopp226 bröckel, miriam; andreß, hans-jürgen 2015: the economic consequences of divorce in germany: what has changed since the turn of the millennium? in: comparative population studies 40,3: 277-312 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-04en]. brüderl, josef; diekmann, andreas; engelhardt, henriette 1997: erhöht eine probeehe das scheidungsrisiko? eine empirische untersuchung mit dem familiensurvey. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 49,2: 205-222. esser, hartmut 2002: ehekrisen. das re-framing der ehe und der anstieg der scheidungsraten. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 31,6: 472-496. feld, scott l. 1981: the focused organization of social ties. in: american journal of sociology 86,5: 1015-1035. goode, william j. 1993: world changes in divorce patterns. new haven/london: yale university press. gottman, john m. 1993: the roles of confl ict engagement, escalation, and avoidance in marital interaction: a longitudinal view of five types of couples. in: journal of consulting and clinical psychology 51: 6-15. gottman, john m. 1994: what predicts divorce? the relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. hillsdale/new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. de graaf, paul m.; kalmijn, matthijs 2003: alternative routes in the remarriage market: competing-risk analyses of union formation after divorce. in: social forces 81,4: 1459-1498 [doi: 10.1353/sof.2003.0052]. hill, paul b.; kopp, johannes 2013: familiensoziologie. grundlagen und theoretische perspektiven. wiesbaden: springer vs. holden, karen c.; smock, pamela j. 1991: the economic costs of marital dissolution: why do women bear a disproportionate cost? in: annual review of sociology 17: 5178 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.17.080191.000411]. kalmijn, matthijs 2015: father-child relations after divorce in four european countries: patterns and determinants. in: comparative population studies 40,3: 251-276 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-10en]. karney, benjamin r.; bradbury, thomas 1995: the longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: a review of theory, method, and research. in: psychological bulletin 118,1: 3-34. klein, thomas; kopp, johannes 1999: scheidungsursachen aus soziologischer sicht. würzburg: ergon-verlag. klein, thomas; kopp, johannes; rapp, ingmar 2013: metanalyse mit originaldaten. ein vorschlag zur forschungssynthese in der soziologie. zeitschrift für soziologie 42,3: 222-238. kopp, johannes 2000: sociostructural determinants of divorce: a test of some hypotheses of the economic theory of the family. in: raub, werner; weesie, jeroen (eds.): the management of durable relations. theoretical models and empirical studies of households and organizations. amsterdam: thela thesis 2000. kroneberg, clemens 2007: wertrationalität und das modell der frame-selektion. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 59,2: 215-239 [doi: 10.1007/ s11577-007-0027-9]. lewis, robert a.; spanier, graham b. 1979: theorizing about the quality and stability of marriage. in: burr, wesley et al. (eds.): contemporary theories about the family. vol. 1. new york/london: free press: 268-294. research on divorce: causes and consequences • 227 prof. dr. paul b. hill (). rwth aachen university, institute of sociology. aachen, germany. e-mail: sekretariat.hill@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de url: http://www.soziologie.rwth-aachen.de/aw/cms/website/zielgruppen/mes/ mitarbeiter/mitarbeiter_mes/ablagestruktur/~tcj/paul-hill/?lang=en prof. dr. johannes kopp. universität trier, sociology. trier, germany. e-mail: kopp@uni-trier.de url: https://www.uni-trier.de/index.php?id=50114&l=2 lois, daniel 2008: arbeitsteilung, berufsorientierung und partnerschaftsstabilität. ehen und nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaften im vergleich. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 60,1: 53-77. rapp, ingmar et al. 2015: partner market opportunities and relationship stability. in: comparative population studies 40,3: 229-250 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-08en]. rusbult, caryl e. 1980: commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: a test of the investment model. in: journal of experimental social psychology 16: 172-186. thibaut, john w.; kelley, harold, h. 1959: the social psychology of groups. oxford/ england: john wiley. wagner, michael 1997: scheidung in ostund westdeutschland. zum verhältnis von ehestabilität und sozial-struktur seit den 30er jahren. frankfurt/new york: campus. wagner, michael; weiß, bernd 2003: bilanz der scheidungsforschung. versuch einer meta-analyse. zeitschrift für soziologie 32,1: 29-49. walper, sabine; thönnissen, carolin; alt, philipp 2015: effects of family structure and the experience of parental separation: a focus on adolescents’ well-being. in: comparative population studies 40,3 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-12en]. weitzman, lenore j. 1985: the divorce revolution. the unexpected social and economic consequences for women and children in america. new york: free press. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families: narratives of children reunited with their mothers in italy paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini abstract: the article explores the experiences of separation and reunifi cation by children of migrant mothers in italy by analysing 32 qualitative interviews conducted with adolescents who had rejoined their mothers at different points in their lives. we show that international migration causes children to face multiple shifts in the confi guration of their family ties due to the geographical dislocations and re-locations to which these ties are subject. the way in which children interpret and adjust to these changes depends on factors such as the timing of the family migration process and the frequency of transnational family practices, which are affected by more or less abrupt discontinuities in family life after their mothers’ and their own departure. keywords: transnational motherhood · transnational childhood · family reunifi cation · female migration 1 introduction globalisation and the intensifi ed fl ows of goods and people across national borders have prompted research on the role played by space in family and intimate life, especially in regard to care and parenting relationships (carling et al. 2012; glick 2010; mazzucato/schans 2011; bonizzoni/boccagni, forthcoming). as a signifi cant number of studies have shown, the migratory process often involves repeated and prolonged separations of the members of the extended family as well as of spouses, parents and children (boccagni 2012; dreby 2006; fresnoza-flot 2009; hondagneusotelo/avila 1997; horton 2009; parreñas 2005a; whitehouse 2009). transnational families therefore emerge as a new category of analysis, which further complicates the plurality of contemporary family forms while also confi rming the lack of correlation between family and household addressed by most contemporary social research. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 465-498 (date of release: 19.06.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-01en2 • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini466 as in the case of other important life course events, such as births, deaths, marriages or divorces, migration triggers changes in the family confi gurations (widmer 2010) in terms of both household composition and the meanings and relevance of intimate ties (mason/tipper 2008). in this regard, particular attention has been paid to the spatial reorganisation of parenting and care (baldassar et al. 2006) as well as to the strategies devised by families to maintain intimacy and affection as well as to exercise discipline and provide support across borders (baldassar 2001; gardner/ grillo 2002; mason 2004; sutton 2004). also, the risks that spatial separations may carry both for the well-being of the children in the country of origin and for their integration in that of arrival (bernhard et al. 2009; cortes 2007; olwig 1999; save the children 2006; suarez-orozco et al. 2005) were the focus of several research studies. international migration brings about changes in how family relations are understood and practiced in space, but also in time (bonizzoni/boccagni forthcoming; giralt/bailey 2010). separations can last for months or years; they may be lived at different “rhythms” (time spent home and away, frequency of visits and telephone calls etc.), by parents and children of very different ages, and who participate in the practices of transnational family life in different ways. an aspect often underestimated by transnational family research is that separation may only be a temporary phase followed by further geographical reconfi gurations of family relations following upon reunifi cation in the home country or return to the foreign country. these patterns have recently been investigated by studies which, often adopting clinical or therapeutic approaches, investigate the effects of these repeated relocations of care relations, emphasising the negative impacts of family separations on the integration of children reunited with their parents (mitrani et al. 2004; pottinger 2005; suarez-orozco et al. 2005). long-distance parenting and family reunifi cations are not historically new phenomena: despite the so-called “guest-worker regime”, migrant families did not only use to live apart but also to reunite, even in the earlier waves of migration in europe (kraler 2009). although migrant women have frequently played (and in some cases still play) the role of dependents in family reunifi cation fl ows, in southern european countries women now constitute a large share of migrant workers, a fact that raises new issues in regard to both life at a distance and family reunifi cation. migratory trajectories and long-distance care arrangements are in fact considered particularly critical when the migrants are women, given the greater responsibilities and obligations assigned to them in terms of care (parreñas 2010). female migration gives rise to a profound reorganisation in the management of care tasks and entails processes of more or less radical substitution which in most cases involve members of the extended family. female-led reunifi cations are an emerging phenomenon in italy, where the demand for low-skilled female labour in the domestic sector is increasing due to a growing need for (especially elderly) care, which cannot be satisfi ed by shrinking public resources and by women caught between competing work and care demands (ambrosini 2011). even though domestic (and especially live-in) work may be so demanding in terms of work schedules as to be hardly compatible with one’s shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 467 “own” family life (parreñas 2005a), several immigrant working women manage to put in place mobility strategies which enable them to start family reunifi cation processes. on the basis of 32 in-depth interviews conducted with children reunited with their mothers who had migrated to fi nd work in italy, we will investigate how migrant children experience and actively engage in the changes of the geographical confi guration of their families. in fact, still little is known about how children participate in negotiations of the family’s migratory path and about how those negotiations are infl uenced by their own desired geographies of family life (bushin 2009; phoenix 2010) as we shall show, international migration causes children to face multiple shifts in the confi guration of their family ties due to the geographical dislocations and re-locations to which these are subject. these changes can be seen not only in the household composition but also in the way family life is concretely practised (silva/ smart 1999), how tasks are performed by relatives and in the meanings that children attach to their intimate ties (mason/tipper 2008). 2 being cared for from afar since the pioneering work by hondagneu-sotelo and avila (1997), an increasing number of studies have investigated the consequences of female migration on family relations. the literature emphasises that motherhood at a distance often requires a radical reorganisation of the everyday care given to the children, and that it is simultaneously based on new meanings and everyday practices (åkesson et al. 2012; parreñas 2005b; raijman et al. 2003). the mother’s departure entails two different forms of family reorganisation. first of all, mother-child relationships are de-territorialised and simultaneously lived at a distance (levitt/schiller 2004) through the deployment of new practices and rituals of family life (silva/smart 1999). telephone calls, visits, gifts and remittances are the most common means by which faraway mothers display (finch 2007) their love and care. the mothers’ purpose is to maintain a sense of intimacy, to obtain information about the life-conditions of their children and to intervene actively in decisions that concern them. even if advances in transport (low-cost fl ights etc.) and communication (mobile telephony, internet etc.) have undoubtedly made the international circulation of money, information and affection more reliable, economical and rapid, a certain number of studies have also reported limitations of and ambivalences in care strategies across borders and over long distances (baldassar et al. 2006; bernhard et al. 2009; boccagni 2012; fresnoza-flot 2009; horton 2009). remittances undoubtedly ensure above-average living standards for migrant women’s children, giving them access to better schools, healthcare and housing (save the children 2006; scalabrini migration center 2004). however, it has also been pointed out that, although this infl ux of money “materialises” and makes “visible” the affection and care of the faraway mothers, it is necessary but not always suffi cient to guarantee the quality of the care received by the children in the home country. in fact, a great • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini468 deal depends on the skills and reliability of the caregivers, as well as on the mother’s capacity to organise control from afar (tolstokorova 2010). it has been shown that the children may suffer an acute sense of loss after the mother’s departure (pottinger 2005), and that at the same time a sense of mutual estrangement may develop between parents and children which is only partly mitigated by the practices of family life at a distance (bernhard et al. 2009; parreñas 2001). the ability of the children to take part in technology-mediated communicative exchanges and to directly communicate their needs signifi cantly depends on their age (bonizzoni 2012; carling et al. 2012). moreover, it may be extremely diffi cult for the parents to simultaneously invest in transnational practices (communications, remittances and journeys) intended to dampen the effects of separation on the one hand and, on the other, in integration processes (savings and investments for return or reunifi cation) intended to end family separation. the effi cacy of visits and communications in maintaining the bonds of knowledge, intimacy and affection between parents and children, as well as supervising how children are growing up, can by no means be taken for granted. home visits, for instance, are often diffi cult to arrange for mothers in very distant countries, due to travel costs, but also to the frequently undocumented status of women in the fi rst phase of their migratory paths during the fi rst period spent in italy (bonizzoni 2013; fresnoza-flot 2009; schmalzbauer 2004). secondly, mothers’ departures also imply a change in family confi gurations (widmer 2010), in terms of household composition, activities performed by relatives as well as the meanings attached to family ties, because mothers have to involve trustworthy people in supervising their children during their absence. foster caregivers are often other women (åkesson et al. 2012; hochschild 2000; parreñas 2010) who substitute for (or help) fathers who often remain engaged in paid work (at home or abroad). these shifts in care may be more or less drastic for the children: some children are left in the care of people with whom they had already established fond relationships before the mother’s departure; others may be forced to move into new households; yet others may even become caregivers themselves. care arrangements can also change in time, because the children may be reluctant to accept the presence of caregivers and their disciplinary roles, but also because mothers can be required to seek new and not always satisfactory arrangements following unforeseen events (death, illness, ageing, departure of the caregiver). because of diffi culties in transnational caregiving and the pain of separation – but also because of the desire to secure better school and work prospects for their children – mothers invest heavily in integration projects (regularising, fi nding a stable job and proper housing) in order to meet the stringent requirements imposed by the immigration law on bringing their families to italy (bonizzoni 2009, 2011). this process is another major turning-point in the biographies of children’s families. shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 469 3 remaking intergenerational relationships abroad family reunifi cations have been of a certain interest to clinical or therapeutic studies, which have emphasised the negative impact of separations on the “new” family and social life in the host country (adams 2000; artico 2003; bernhard et al. 2009; falicov 2007; landolt et al. 2005; pottinger et al. 2008; suarez-orozco et al. 2005). migrating children are forced to detach themselves from a more or less extensive and meaningful system of affective relations comprising kin, neighbours and peer groups. the sense of estrangement towards the parents abroad that may emerge over time must be confronted in a radically different socio-cultural context. the minors, often experiencing migration on their own, must fi nd ways to integrate into relational spheres – school, friendships, neighbour relationships – often entirely new to them. at family level, the children must once again live with their parents in a new environment, sometimes encountering family members (siblings born in italy or new partners of their mothers) wholly unknown to them (horton 2009; phoenix 2010). regarding education, they must cope with the effects of interrupted schooling which may hold them back or channel them into the less prestigious circuits of the educational system (phoenix 2009). the children must then develop all the linguistic and social skills required to establish new friendships in an often stigmatising environment (smith et al. 2004). many of these studies emphasise the role of age and the duration of separation as factors determining the extent to which migrant children adjust in the new country. adolescence seems to be a particularly crucial phase, due to the desire for independence common among youths, but also because of the greater diffi culties of integration in terms of friendships and education. the issue of the social integration of reunited children is important in terms of policies because some states (for instance germany) have implemented restrictive immigration policies explicitly raising the issue of the supposed non-integrability of reunited teenagers (kraler/kofman 2009). few studies, however, pay attention to the role that migrant children actively play in determining the outcomes of reunifi cation and life at a distance, to the changed meanings that they attach to new family confi gurations and to how they adjust to changing family confi gurations over time (bushin 2009; orellana et al. 2001; phoenix 2010; dreby 2006; olwig 1999). reunifi cations are not necessarily certain or permanent, and a long-period perspective (covering the time that the migrant children have spent in italy) may prove useful, as we shall see, in understanding the extent to which these repeated experiences of shifts in care relations affect integration into the new country. in what follows, we show that international migration causes children to face multiple shifts in the confi guration of their family ties due to the geographical dislocations and re-locations to which these ties are subject. the way in which children interpret and adjust to these changes depends on factors such as the timing of the family migration process and the frequency of transnational family practices, which subject them to more or less abrupt discontinuities in their family confi gurations after their mothers’ and their own departure. such experiences prove crucial for • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini470 understanding how the children would cope with migration and adaptation in the new country. 4 methods the following discussion is based on research carried out in milan between 2006 and 2008.1 it draws on 32 qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with reunited teenagers (19 girls and 13 boys aged 14-20) who had experienced physical separation from their mothers due to international migration. our intention was to select migrant children resident in italy for a variable number of years who had experienced both separation and reunifi cation at different stages in their lives more or less recently. interviewees were found with the help of schools2 and teachers: we asked teachers to signal to us cases of children whom they knew had arrived in italy quite recently. we asked them to focus on children from those countries in which mothers are usually the fi rst in the family to leave (for instance: the philippines, peru, ecuador, moldova and ukraine). subsequently, we asked the children (and in some cases also their mothers3) if they were willing to be interviewed. interviews were carried out in italian and they lasted one and a half hours on average; they thoroughly investigated several critical points in the interviewees’ migratory experience: separation from their parents (i.e. if they remembered how they felt the day when their mothers left; if they knew where their mothers were going and why), the relationships they established with their substitute caregivers (we asked them to describe changes in their household composition and the relationships with their substitute caregivers); their participation in transnational family practices (what they remembered of their mothers’ phone calls, if they received any gifts or money i.a.), the extent to which they took part in negotiations about their own migratory path (how they evaluated the perspective of their own departure), the adjustment to relatives in italy (how it has been coming back living with their own mothers after the separation, if they felt at ease with her), the relationships that they maintained with the people left abroad (if they still kept in touch with their substitute caregivers), the issues of school and peers. the interview guideline was semi-structured: accordingly, every child was asked the same questions, but not in the same order because 1 for a more detailed discussion of the data collected, see (leonini/rebughini 2010), ambrosini, bonizzoni, caneva (2010), ritrovarsi altrove: famiglie ricongiunte e adolescenti di origine straniera, milano, fondazione ismu. 2 especially technical and vocational schools, the ones at which children of foreign origin are most often enrolled. 3 other studies have compared the mothers’ and children’s perspectives (see for instance bonizzoni 2012). shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 471 we preferred not to constrict the interaction too much.4 the interviews were recorded and transcribed. we then carried out a thematic analysis, identifying key themes, coding the interviews, extracting and clustering quotes: we subsequently selected the most insightful and exhaustive of them as the basis for this article. the children interviewed came from the countries from which most migrant female workers come to italy (the majority of mothers were or had been employed in the care and domestic sector): 12 were from ecuador, 7 from peru, 5 from the dominican republic, 4 from the philippines, one from bolivia, one from colombia, and one ukrainian and one from moldova. almost all of them were enrolled at schools: 20 were in vocational training (shorter programmes for hairdressers, cooks, electricians etc.), 9 in long-term technical training (in subjects such as chemistry, accounting etc.), one was still in compulsory schooling, one was at university, and the remaining 2 were working. family confi gurations were extremely varied and complex because of the multiple intersections between life-cycle events (couple formations and dissolutions, births and deaths) and the family migration path. fourteen children had both of their parents in italy: 10 were the children of married couples, 4 of couples divorced tab. 1: children’s family confi gurations with respect to parents parents in italy both parents, mother and father 14 only the mother 18 parents’ marital status married 10 separated/divorced, both parents are living in italy 4 separated/divorced, father abroad, father unknown or dead 18 father, living abroad 13 father, place of residence unknown 3 father dead 2 parents in a new relationship in italy 11 mother 9 father 2 mother or father with new italian partner 7 source: own data 4 the interviews explored several sensitive and ticklish issues regarding the children’s intimate life: in most cases children actually proved to be quite eager (as it can be grasped by the quotes included in the paper) to openly express their (often ambivalent) feelings regarding their past and current family life. the low numbers of the children interviewed does not allow us to understand whether “overly optimistic” accounts could be attributed to sampling strategies (having been introduced to us by their teachers and in a few cases by their mothers) or reticence to express negative feelings in respect to their parents’ choices due to cultural issues. • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini472 in italy. therefore, a total of 22 children in the sample belonged to female-headed households. eighteen children had only their mothers in italy: 13 had their fathers in the country of origin, 3 had never known them and the fathers of the remaining 2 had died. eleven children had one parent engaged in another relationship started in italy: in 7 cases, with a partner of italian origin. also, family reunifi cation patterns showed signifi cant variations, with respect to both sequence (who migrates after whom) and timing (length of each separation). worth mentioning is that in 19 cases, the family reunifi cation required more than one step and entailed repeated separations between family members (mothers, fathers, siblings). as already mentioned, several fathers had not followed their children abroad (parents separated before migration). only 2 children had migrated together with their fathers. hence, 12 children had experienced the migration of both parents, who had migrated one after another (in 9 cases after a year or less). twenty-one children had siblings: in 7 cases, siblings had been reunited at different times, 5 had siblings born in italy (4 of which were half-siblings) and living with them. four children still had one brother or sister abroad: one was going to be rejoined quite soon; two siblings had returned to their country of origin after spending a period in italy; two of the children interviewed had also experienced some months abroad after migrating to italy, and were lately rejoined again. table 2 summarises some background information regarding the timing of the children’s family reunifi cations with mothers, who had in all cases been the fi rst in the family to leave. the second and third columns of the upper part of the table indicate the number of children left and reunited at the ages reported in column one; the second column of the lower part of the table indicates the number of children tab. 2: timing of children’s reunifi cation with their mothers age number of children left at the age of… number of children reunited at the age of… 1-3 9 1 4-8 12 5 9-13 10 16 14-17 1 10 total 32 32 years number of children by length of separation in years … number of children by years spent in italy … 1-3 13 15 4-8 14 11 9-13 5 6 14-17 0 0 total 32 32 source: own data shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 473 who had experienced separations, whose length (in terms of years) are reported in column one; the third column indicates the number of children who had spent the number of years reported in column one in italy. furthermore, because of the diffi culties experienced by mothers in applying for family reunifi cation provisions, separations were quite long (4 years or more) in more than half of the cases. as a consequence, very few children had rejoined their mothers at an early age (just 6 of them before the age of 8). as we shall show, the duration of the separation, the time when it was experienced (early childhood, teenagehood) and the number of years passed since the event are all crucial factors in understanding the diffi culties and outcomes of long-distance family life and integration into the new country. for this reason, when building our sample, we decided to pay signifi cant attention to the timing of relocation processes, assuming that the abovementioned factors (age at which children were left and reunited, after a certain number of years of separation) could lead to shared experiences, despite their different countries of origins. 5 children’s perspectives on transnational caregiving relationships our study confi rms the importance of female kinship networks in the management of childcare at a distance (parreñas 2005a). in only two cases, children had been left with only their fathers; in 10 cases, fathers lived with their children, but they were supported by other female carers (in most cases grandmothers, in two cases paid careworkers, in one case a 16-year-old daughter). fathers, in fact, continued to have an economic role in the family, either in the country of origin (no father had stopped working at the point of the mother’s departure) or by migrating themselves. overall, maternal grandmothers were those most often enrolled as caregivers, followed by aunts; in a limited number of cases, children had remained in the care of their teenage sisters and paid careworkers. children may experience this shift in family confi gurations as a more or less abrupt change. when the mothers had already been working full-time and were accustomed to managing care with other members of the extended family (as often in the case of female-headed households), this transition tended to be less abrupt. it is therefore evident that management of care relations prior to the mother’s departure (imputable to the family structure but also to particular cultural traditions in the country of origin) may be a crucial factor when evaluating the impact of separation (åkesson et al. 2012; coe 2008). forms of previously established “extended” care management may make this change in the care situation less traumatic, but geographical distances and prolonged separations radically reduce the time devoted to face-to-face social interactions between mothers and children, as shown in the case of elizabeth, from the dominican republic:5 5 all quotes are translated from the italian originals and reproduced in the appendix. • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini474 but you already knew your grandparents well, or was going to live with them a bit traumatic? no. i was already living with them, and then my grandma has always been my mum, because when my mum was pregnant and my father left, it was my grandparents who brought me up, my mum has always worked, in the beginning, however, she worked close to home, she’s always been a domestic worker, so sometimes i could go and see her. elizabeth, dominican. she had been left at the age of 10 and rejoined her mother at 14. my grandma took care of me, and i’m as close to her as i am to my mum, i grew really fond of her and i always clung to her. there were my cousins as well, because my uncle and aunt, my mum’s brother, had come to italy in the meantime and left three children, my cousins. that period from two to fi ve was important for me, but i can say that i had another fi gure, my grandma, who took my mum’s place very well, perhaps even better, i don’t know, but i’ve always got along with her very well as well, especially with her. i love her loads, perhaps more than my mum. for her i’d do anything, for my grandma. clara, ecuadorian. she had been left at the age of 2 and rejoined her parents at 5. the words of clara, a teenager of ecuadorian origin placed in her grandmother’s care at the age of only two, show that affective bonds of this kind may still be strong many years after departure. although clara had by now spent more than ten years with her “real” mother in italy (with whom she said she had an excellent relationship), compared with the only three years spent with her grandmother, she recognised the privileged nature of this bond because of its role in what she interprets to have been a delicate phase of her life. when family migratory chains involve several siblings, care may be managed collectively, so that the children experience new family confi gurations with respect not only to the caregivers but also to other members of the extended family (cousins, for instance). the interviews often exhibited multiple shifts in the meanings that the children attributed to their intimate relationships (mason/tipper 2008): grandmothers and aunts who became like mothers, cousins who became like siblings, testifying to the profound reconfi gurations that the transnational management of care may engender, especially when it is for a longer time-period. the children did not always have pleasant memories of the period following the mother’s departure. this was most frequently the case of children who, already grown, had established a primary bond with the mother, who could not always be successfully replaced by other relatives. some children expressed their distress through problematic behaviour or acts of rebellion (for instance, refusing to go to school or to do their homework) which the substitute caregivers were not always (b) (a) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 475 able to handle because of resistance against their disciplinary role. this could seriously jeopardise the parents’ plans, forcing them to look for new arrangements, or to reconsider their migratory project. when i was living with my grandma i stopped going to school because my parents were not there and i didn’t feel like going to school. so my aunt got really angry with us and she brought us to her house with my brother… then we started quarrelling with her and we moved in with her family in another city. then my brother started fainting, he was feeling very bad, we were worried, they told us it was because he missed my parents… in fact when we came here he stopped having those problems. eulale, bolivian. she had been left at the age of 14 and rejoined her parents at 15. and how did your life change after your mum left? well.... on the one hand i felt a bit lonely, with my sister. because... then my father took off... did he work away from home a lot? yes he worked... and then he didn’t give a toss... as long as i went to school. so if i’ve understood correctly, your relationship with your mum was a bit different from the one with your dad... yes, in fact i got lower grades at school... was that because there was nobody... to take care of you, or because you felt freer, even not to do your homework... well, yes. was there anyone else besides your sister and your dad? yes, there was my grandma, she’d come to live with us after my mum left, my dad’s mother. and what was this grandma like? well... she wasn’t strict. maybe she complained to my father when we did something... she wasn’t bad. i didn’t like the way she cooked. so my sister and i always went out and about to eat... and how did you fi nd living with your grandma? it didn’t bother me much... you did not appreciate her? no, not really. so after your mum left, you had more freedom, for example to go out? yes, much more. because the person who controlled you was … let’s say my father, to not let us feel lonely, right? there was this part of liberation which... how can i put it... then we became too (c) (d) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini476 free, and my father couldn’t keep hold of us anymore. but... he still didn’t care. and… about your departure, did you have time to get used to the idea of leaving? i don’t know, did they tell you about it some months beforehand, or was it something sudden? no, they told me three days before. ah, so close... yes, because... i had a showdown with my father. because he was always out, he never came home... so we quarrelled with him. you and your sister? yes, and also my grandpa, my mother’s father, he rang my mum, and she said all right, send them here. and i’d always wanted to be with my mum... vicente, ecuadorian. he had been left at the age of 11 and rejoined his mother at 14. the case of vicente demonstrates that the father’s presence is not by itself able to ensure the success of caregiving, especially in the case of conjugal confl ict. entrusted to his grandmother, for whom he felt no particular affection, vicente reacted to his mother’s departure with a sense of “liberation” which led him to neglect his schoolwork and to spend most of his time outside of his home with his sister. both eulale and vicente were soon reunited with their mothers because of problems of this kind, and both of them willingly accepted the idea of leaving to rejoin a mother whose absence they felt strongly. as will be discussed in section 7, the more the children adjusted positively to the “new” family life in the home country, establishing signifi cant relationships with the caregivers, the more the prospect of departure caused suffering and resistance, and the more “care substitution” processes became evident. practices of distance parenting, in fact, are not entirely able to replicate the mother’s position in the family, as discussed in the next section. 6 the participation of children in transnational family practices during the period of separation, the mothers relied on a series of rituals (gardner/ grillo 2002) to maintain relationships with their children from a distance. communication (mainly telephone calls, to a lesser extent emails and video calls), visits (although not more than one a year on average), and remittances were the forms in which the mothers expressed interest, concern as well as affection and monitored the caring process from afar. however, it became apparent from the interviews that these strategies had a limited effect on keeping the quality of the relationship unchanged over time, and they should be read in light of the age of the children, as well as the length of the separation. telephone calls and visits appeared more effective in preserving memories of the mothers abroad when the children had already been able to establish meaningful relationships with their mothers beforehand. but they proved unsuitable for shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 477 developing close relationships with children who had not spent a suffi cient number of years with the mother. this is demonstrated by the case of felicitas, left in her grandmother’s care when she was only a few years old. well, when i was a child i didn’t even know i had my mum. because i talked to my aunts, with my grandma, who’s almost my mum… when i went to school i discovered i had a mum. but didn’t you talk by phone? yes, but i didn’t know that it was my mum, because i was so small when she left me. she also came back every year but i went to school so we didn’t have much time to spend together… felicitas, filipina. she had been left at the age of 2 and rejoined her mother at 12. in these cases, the care shifting process was particularly drastic. felicitas had never felt the lack of a mother, who, in fact, she only got to know for the fi rst time in italy. for these children, therefore, it was not so much the delegation of care that was potentially traumatic but the process of reunifi cation with their mothers abroad. this does not mean, however, that the attitude of children towards their mothers was one of a lack of recognition. as shown by the words of martin, who had also been left in the care of his grandmother for a long period of time when very young, his mother’s concern for his well-being, expressed through the constant sending of remittances and gifts, created a sense of obligation and gratitude which laid the basis for a recognition of motherhood which extended beyond the emotional and relational aspect of the care conventionally associated with it (hondagneu-sotelo/ avila 1997). i mean, my mum is always my mum… she left me when i was one year old, but that was because there was poverty in my village, but she supported me, every month she sent money for me, for school... so that i could eat... then she sent me presents... martin, dominican. he had been left at the age of 1 and rejoined his mother at 13. in addition, thanks to the level of well-being ensured by the remittances, and to the fact that the absence of the mother was compensated by the presence of signifi cant others, the experiences of transnational care recounted by many of the children were not always marked by the loneliness and sense of abandonment reported by some studies. however, a great deal depended on the timing of the family migration process (age at which the child was left and rejoined), on the frequency of transnational family practices and on the way children experienced the change in family confi gurations and shifts in care, as recounted in the previous section. the type of transnational experience therefore infl uenced the way in which the children evaluated the prospect of leaving abroad and negotiation about the migratory path; (e) (f) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini478 negotiation which, as we will discuss in the next session, could be more or less confl ictual. whilst for some children rejoining their mothers was a desirable option because it matched their expectations in terms of care, for others it represented a major change which required radical adjustments in their inner lives – adjustments that sometimes were even more diffi cult than those experienced after the mother’s departure. 7 negotiating the children’s departure at the time of their departures, for the majority of mothers the purpose of their migration was to accumulate money with the prospect of eventually returning home. it was only over the course of time that the conditions necessary for stable settlement came about, and the children therefore realised that it was not their mothers who would return, but they themselves who would have to leave. the children did not always participate fully in negotiations about their migratory path, especially when they were still too young to do so (bushin 2009). however, as they grew, their mothers tended to see them as active subjects and negotiated with them on the matter. when did you realise that it was you who’d have to leave? ah… that was tough, because i had to leave everything, my grandparents, my cousins... and when i left, i remember i felt sad … even sadder than when my mum had left! and my grandma started crying... it was really awful. so how did you feel about leaving, were you happy? yes, i was even enthusiastic about getting to know another country, learning another language... the nostalgia, the pain at leaving my grandparents, came later, but just before i left... i was happy. there was never a moment when your mum told you to come and you said no? no, never, even before leaving i remember that she asked me if i was sure that i wanted to come… and then when we were here, she asked me if i regretted it… do you want to go back, do you want to return... but i’ve never returned. mariana, ecuadorean. she had been left at the age of 10 and rejoined her mother at 13. mariana’s words highlight the ambiguity of feelings which many children expressed at the prospect of leaving: on the one hand, the enthusiasm about discovering a new country and the desire to be with their mothers again; on the other, the necessity to leave behind a system of social and affective relationships established over time. the children’s departure entailed separation not only from their relatives but also from friends, school environments and their cities. it was not rare for some of them, especially the teenagers, to resist this prospect of radical change. (g) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 479 i didn’t want to come here, nor did my sister. it was october, the 9th of october 2006, at around eight, i’d gone dancing at a bar with some friends. when i came home i went to bed and i didn’t see anything. in the morning i saw all the suitcases ready and off we went, because she [the mother] knew that if she had told me beforehand, i’d have run away to my father. so she didn’t tell you? no, then she got my aunt, her aunt to come from the usa to convince us to come. carolina, dominican. she had been left at the age of 11 and rejoined her mother at 14. and then coming here, what was it like? ah (laughs)... bad, bad... what was it that... ah, fi rst the fact that it was lies that got me here... my mum and dad told me that they’d brought me here for a holiday, but then i’d go back, so i came thinking i’d be here for only a short while... and if they’d immediately told you that you had come to stay, what do you think you’d have said? ah... i certainly wouldn’t have wanted it... but i’d have done it anyway. i’d have done it anyway because it’s what they say that counts, not what i say. lorena, ecuadorean. she had been left at the age of 9 and rejoined her parents at 13. resistance by children was diffi cult to handle for the parents, who sometimes resorted to “half truths” or “negotiated” the departure on certain conditions. for example, some children gained the “concession” that they could complete their schooling in the home country; others were offered a holiday as a sort of “trial period”, on conclusion of which they would be free to choose whether to stay or not. family reunifi cation, therefore, was not a straightforward process. although almost all of the children interviewed had accepted the prospect of settling permanently in italy, some of them had siblings who had refused to leave or who had returned to the home country after some time in italy. these processes should be viewed in light of the adjustments that the children had been obliged to make in both the country of origin and italy; adjustments which differed greatly according to age, particular experiences of transnational family life and the relations that the children had been able to maintain, but also to recreate over time, with their mother abroad. (h) (i) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini480 8 family and intimate relations in italy: discontinuities and new beginnings the migrating children were forced to cope with radical changes in all spheres of their everyday lives, from family to friendships, to school. consequently, the fi rst period spent abroad was particularly diffi cult, even for those children who had wanted to leave most. not always fully aware of what awaited them, the children had to familiarise themselves with a new reality while at the same time coping with the loss of what they had left behind – a loss that take on different connotations according to the particular experience of separation. for the children left in the care of other relatives at a very young age or for a longer period of time, living with the mother sometimes was an entirely new experience because they had no memories of the period prior to her departure (phoenix 2010). when i came here i was quite happy because she was my mum… but i also felt i didn’t know who she was, she was like a stranger to me. when we talk she tells me that some things had happened which were quite painful for her. at the beginning we were a bit distant, i drew back when she wanted to hug me… then, step by step, we have partly overcome that, but at that time for me it was something instinctive, i held back from doing some things because it was a long time since we had been together. now they see us in the street and they tell us we look like sisters, we have a beautiful relationship. we’ve needed some time. jenny, ecuadorian. she had been left at the age of 6 and rejoined her mother at 13. at the beginning, i was really happy because i could see my mum again after all those years… but then... i expected my mum to be different... as time passed i saw that she was not like i had imagined... and then i don’t call my mum “mum”, i call her by her name. i imagined i’d fi nd... but then… life here is monotonous, she always has to go to work, even on saturdays and sundays... i see the mothers of my schoolmates… the mum of my friend is a real mum... because she worries about her daughter, she helps her, she calls her every day to hear how she is…my mum calls me hardly twice a week. when she gets home from work, we never talk… because in the evenings she still has to work as a cleaner in a garage … so we don’t communicate much… we’re not on the same wavelength. marisol, peruvian. she had been left at the age of 7 and rejoined her mother at 15. the children were very often unclear about the rhythms and lifestyles of their mothers, as from abroad, the latter did not always involve them in these aspects of (k) (j) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 481 their lives. girls like marisol expressed high care expectations following their past experiences but also on what they observed around them; expectations unlikely to be satisfi ed in this migratory context. however, the accounts of the children about how intimacy had been regained with their mothers varied greatly in terms of times and outcomes. girls like kimberly and carolina, who had rejoined their mothers at a relatively advanced age after a period of rather brief separation, did not remember the transition as particularly problematic: their mothers had already been signifi cant fi gures for them before departure. and over time, they were able to prevent estrangement with intense and active involvement in distance communication. when you arrived here, what was it like living with your mum again after not seeing each other for such a long time? ah… at the beginning it was a bit diffi cult, right. but then we got used to it... do you remember any confl icts or embarrassment? well, perhaps some embarrassment at the beginning, yes, but it didn’t last very long... so you don’t remember it as particularly diffi cult? no, no. kimberly, colombian. she had been left at the age of 9 and rejoined her mother at 12. and what was it like, living with your mum again? ah... seeing her again was wonderful... although everything was completely different because, as i told you, my mum has always worked, and so it was never my mum who told me “do this”, “do that”, it was my grandma who cooked. it was completely different. it was her who told me to get up, make the bed, and then we’d eat together, it was really... it was wonderful. carolina, dominican. she had been left at the age of 11 and rejoined her mother at 14. in other cases, the process was more complicated and required greater effort and more time. nadia, for instance, had been separated from her mother for fi ve years, and after rejoining her (at the age of 12) had felt a lack of knowledge and trust in her which she said had harmed their family life for a certain period. the care needs of the children, therefore, were relative not only concerning the time that the mothers spent with them but also concerning the quality of communication and the level of trust and mutual knowledge, which was partly affected by distance. according to nadia, the telephone calls between her mother and her had not been enough to maintain a “real” relationship, which therefore had to be revived in italy. she left fi rst and came here, and left us there, right? so it’s not that we had a relationship... i mean, i couldn’t remember the things that (m) (n) (l) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini482 we did when we were there, because i was too little. and the whole time she was here, on her own, we didn’t have a relationship, right? so the thing is... the result is, that we can’t really talk, tell each other things. for instance if i like someone, i fi nd it diffi cult, fi rst more, now it’s getting better, also my sister ... but were you (your sister and you) a little bit angry because she had left you behind, or…? no, no, it wasn’t like that, we didn’t feel hurt because she had left us, no, it wasn’t like that, she’d gone because she had to. then it’s not that she had gone away and forgotten us, that she didn’t speak to us, that she didn’t call us, no. in fact, if we’re here, if we’re still studying, and if we studied there, it’s because of my mum, so i don’t feel resentful… it was only a habit, because i didn’t have much confi dence in her, i couldn’t do it… but now it’s getting better. nadia, ecuadorian. she had been left at the age of 7 and rejoined her mother at 12. as nadia’s words show, transnational practices (telephone calls and remittances, for instance) were useful for averting the risk that the mother’s departure might be interpreted as “abandonment” (in fact, none of the children felt that they had been “abandoned” by their mothers). but they were insuffi cient in maintaining the bond of intimacy between mothers and children, and this “gap” in intimacy and reciprocal knowledge tended to become evident when the children migrated abroad. in some cases, even after many years in italy, the children continued to identify the caregiver left behind in the home country as their principal affective referent, with whom they continued to maintain extremely signifi cant bonds at a distance. for antonio, a dominican boy who had experienced early and long separation from his “second mother”, she was still his main affective referent. he felt his aunt was the one who knew him best, who knew best how to support him, and with whom he felt a bond equivalent to a “true” maternal relationship. this does not mean that antonio’s biological mother was irrelevant to him: quite contrary, he held her in high regard and respected her. he was deeply grateful for the efforts that she had made for him, but it was evident that the two fi gures were not replaceable, but rather complementary, in that they could offer different things. i call her (the aunt living in the dominican republic) even two or three times a week, sometimes i’m cheerful, really cheerful, other times i try to be cheerful but can’t manage it, and so she says “what’s the problem?”. i don’t tell her anything, i don’t tell her, but as soon as she gives me two or three words of advice, i feel better. like my mum here, i love her, i love her very much. when my mum here, my real mum, gives me some advice i take it… but it doesn’t raise my spirits like the advice from the one down there. it’s a completely different thing. i slept in the same bed with the one in santo domingo until i was seven. i don’t have the same intimacy with the (o) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 483 one here, even if i don’t see the one in santo domingo every day, i’ve seen her only for four months when i went back after i’d been here for fi ve years, but for me it was the same as when i was little, and still now it’s the same thing when i go back. instead, i don’t have the same confi dence in my real mum here, neither in speaking nor reacting. at the beginning, i felt sad because i couldn’t see my mum in santo domingo every day, my mum here helped me to get over it, she did everything so that i felt better, she gave me so very, very, very much. she did everything to let me have what i wanted if it wasn’t something that was too much of a hassle to get for me. if it was something that she thought i shouldn’t do, that i shouldn’t have, she said no. antonio, dominican. he had been left at the age of 1 and rejoined his mother at 9. however, the accounts of the children often wavered ambivalently between gratitude towards their mothers for their efforts (in paying for their studies or giving them the chance to migrate) and accusations of an inadequate emotional “performance” more or less irreparably compromised by distance (parreñas 2010). this accusation tended to be used in situations of confl ict, as if only intimacy could legitimate the exercise of authority. at the beginning i was quite angry towards her (the mother) because she was criticising me for the things i did, for the way i grew up… for instance, i was unable to do household chores because my grandma did everything, and my mum was saying “but didn’t your grandma teach you anything?” but she can’t criticise my grandma, because she was the one who brought me up while my mum didn’t see me in my childhood and my teenage years. […] on the one hand i think that i would have died without the money she sent, but on the other hand i also think that she can’t criticise me because she has never been with me. marisol, peruvian. she was left at the age of 7 and rejoined her mother at 15. she sometimes says that we never listen to her, and i go nuts. i tell her i never saw her for four years and i’m used to doing it this way. and she comes and starts yelling “do this”, “do that” … but then in the end i do what she tells me…. and what does she say? that it’s not her fault because she did it for our own good... that if you want one thing you must sacrifi ce another... and do you think she did it for you? (p) (q) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini484 yes, in the end here i have more things… also there i had my friends but there was no possibility to go to work, at sixteen you can do nothing … while here i can do all the things. loris, ukrainian. he was left at the age of 8 and rejoined his mother at 12. as the case of loris shows, even the children who recognised the advantages of migrating abroad, and who therefore did not regret leaving the home country, sometimes still blamed their mothers for having been “absent”. tensions of this kind obviously tended to be more complex when the children did not (yet) appreciate the outcomes of their migration. just like the adaptation to the mother, the adjustment to the new country also followed a largely common pattern, with an initial desire to return to the home country followed by the acceptance of the migratory path. it was a pattern, however, whose timing varied greatly from case to case. 9 from the desire to return to the desire to stay: changes in the migratory path in the eyes of the children the majority of the children interviewed remembered the early period spent in italy as marked by a more or less intense desire to return. this desire was stronger, the greater the disappointment with italian reality, and the more intense the bonds with those left behind in the home country. in two cases, the parents had decided to give in to their children and let them go back to the home country for some months. but then the children returned to italy (once and for all, they said). in both cases, these were children whose experience of separation from their caregivers had been rather traumatic, and in both cases the return followed a crisis (educational and relational) shortly after arrival in the new country. in both cases, the purpose of these processes of “transnational disciplining” (orellana et al. 2001) was to develop the children’s greater awareness of the opportunities available in the two countries, and thus gain their agreement with the parent’s choice. i soon quit school, when i’d fi nished middle school, because i’d returned to santo domingo and didn’t want to come back [to italy]. i mean, at the beginning i didn’t want to go, i went there and i didn’t want to return [to italy], but after not even three or four months i did want to return, i couldn’t stand it there any longer. because life there is different from what it is here. during the fi rst months you are fi ne, you see your friends again, i went here and there, but after a while i said to myself this isn’t the life that i want, i could never fi nd a job here like i could in italy. so i came back here, and as soon as i was back i started to work, i mean, at the age of fi fteen i started working. now that i’m here i’m happy to be here. to tell the truth, i’d only go to santo domingo for holidays, because by now i’ve spent (r) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 485 most of my life here. i spent nine years in santo domingo but i’ve been here for ten. i preferred to come here to make a future and only go there for holidays. antonio, dominican. he was left at the age of 1 and rejoined his mother at 9. as the case of antonio shows, this maturing process, centred around a project of emancipation and growth, may begin at a very early age. acceptance of migration as an ambivalent process which takes time and is described in terms of maturing or inner growth, and therefore of improvement, is a feature that emerged from numerous other interviews as well. this was evidently a strategy that the children adopted to make sense of the many and often painful losses which migration entails. in fact, only one of the girls interviewed (who had rejoined her mother less than one year previously) declared that she wanted to return to her country of origin because she was disappointed with her experience of life in italy. in all the other cases, therefore, the children had been able to develop positive forms of adaptation to their new reality. 10 conclusions in this article we have sought to provide an interpretation of how children who rejoin their mothers abroad experience the diverse family geographical confi gurations produced by international migration. and we have tried to highlight the active role that they play in this process. it has often been claimed that transnational motherhood is based on new meanings and practices (such as phone calls, home visits, remittances…), although to date these have predominantly been investigated from the standpoint of the mother. yet, the voices of the children are crucial for understanding not only the effectiveness of transnational family practices in reproducing intimacy at a distance but also how the family migration process impacts on the meanings that children attach to changed family geographies and belongings. the study has shown that migration is a crucial process that induces families to change their confi gurations (widmer 2010) in terms of household composition, chores performed by family members, responsibilities assigned to relatives, and the meanings that individuals attribute to their intimate ties (mason/tipper 2008). female work migration heightens the importance of extended family ties because fostering care arrangements are needed for sometimes very long periods of time and on wide geographical scales. the changing geographies of family life can be experienced more or less traumatically by children, depending on a range of factors. in particular, the age at which the children were left behind and reunited, the duration of separations and the involvement of extended family ties prior to the mothers’ departure are critical for understanding the different experiences that the children interviewed recalled in terms of both transnational caregiving and family reunifi cation abroad. transnational family practices seem more effi cient in the case of brief separations experienced • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini486 by children who had already been able to establish solid relationships with their mothers prior to departure. on the contrary, children left at a very early age in the care of other relatives soon tend to develop a sense of estrangement which cannot effectively be countered by telephone calls and temporary visits. whilst some children (especially the older ones, almost exclusively cared for by their mothers in infancy and left with people of little signifi cance to them) had indeed experienced the separation as marked by a care defi cit, others (especially those left behind when very young and/or for long periods of time with signifi cant family fi gures) had developed relationships with their caregivers entirely comparable to those with a mother. this type of experience proved crucial for understanding how the children would cope with migration and adaptation in the new country. far from being some sort of “baggage” (children whose migratory paths are predetermined by the will of their parents, orellana et al. 2001), children express specifi c orientations and desires in terms of geographical family confi gurations. these can be more or less coincidental with those of their caregivers, and they should be understood in light of family confi gurations which have been more or less radically altered by the migration process. the children who had suffered most from the separation from their mothers and from temporary transfer to the care by people with little signifi cance to them, tended to consider the prospect of departure as less problematic than did those who had been cared for by truly “second mothers”. the latter children remembered the experience of separation from their caregivers as the most traumatic loss in their migratory path, and they tended to express stronger opposition to the idea of departure. however, this does not mean that the fi gure of the biological mother was irrelevant to these children. also children with radical experiences of estrangement held their mothers in high regard and felt a profound sense of gratitude towards them for their support from both afar and in italy, even though they did not play the role of their most relevant affective referents. consequently, it would be wrong to claim that experiences of transnational motherhood are accompanied by a break in family relationships, by a lack of recognition of maternal fi gures and by a loss of solidarity and cohesion. rather, they can be characterised by a changed conception of motherhood founded more on providing than on emotional intimacy and by a complementarity set of more maternal fi gures. however, the experience of such a different kind of motherhood is somewhat ambivalent, as evidenced by the accusations of inadequacy sometimes made by several children against their biological mothers. these accusations tended to be made in situations of confl ict as strategies intended to delegitimise the authority exercised by biological mothers in italy. interestingly, they were made by children from very different countries – from peru to ukraine – and even by children who declared that they had actually received good care while their mothers were abroad. normative constructs of motherhood that emphasise the weight of “being there” could therefore furnish symbolic material on which the children could draw to handle confl icts, which are quite often driven by the diffi cult experiences of integration experienced in italy, as well as by the pain that most of them suffered in leaving loved ones behind. inevitably, once children are in italy, they compare their experiences of care and being “mothered” shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 487 with those received from their caregivers as well as with the experiences of the children around them – something which induced some of them to express criticisms in this regard. a long-period approach which considers the time that mothers and children had spent apart, but also together in the new country, gives a new perspective on the impact of separations on the adaptation by children when they rejoin their mothers (phoenix 2010). over time, many of the children studied had been able to (re) build a sense of mutual knowledge, trust and affection with their mothers and to establish the intimacy which transnational practices had failed to maintain. even for the children whose principal affective referents continued to be the caregivers left in the home country, the prospect of experiencing a shared migratory path, as well as their integration prospects (in terms of schooling, work and willingness to reside italy), were not thwarted. however, for all the children interviewed (even those most eager to leave), reunifi cation was initially a moment fraught with challenges and ambivalences, between desires to stay or to return which were more or less radical according to the type of separation experienced. the fact that the majority of the interviewees did not regret their departure, but instead interpreted it in light of a maturing process founded on an increasing capacity to appreciate the best (essentially economic) opportunities available in italy, should be interpreted in terms of the different meanings that care relationships assume over the life course. for these children, the choice between remaining in italy or returning to the country of origin was not determined solely by the desire to be close to those considered their principal caregivers. it was also determined by a desire to gain emancipation and independence, to take responsibility for one’s own fate and to create concrete opportunities for the future. in summary, our study shows that a mother’s migration can radically challenge the correlation of family and household even in regard to the members of the nuclear family. international migration is a process that induces family confi gurations to change in terms of both household composition and the meanings of the ties and tasks assigned 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alissa v. 2010: where have all the mothers gone? the gendered effect of labour migration and transnationalism on the institution of parenthood in ukraine. in: anthropology of east europe review 28,1: 184-214. shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 491 whitehouse, bruce 2009: transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in brazzaville, congo. in: global networks 9,1: 82-99 [doi: 10.1111/j.14710374.2009.00243.x]. widmer, eric d. 2010: family confi gurations: a structural approach to family diversity. ashgate pub co. a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “veränderung der räumlichen konfi guration von migrantenfamilien: narrationen von kindern nach der zusammenführung mit ihren müttern in italien”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-01de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-01de4, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 08.09.2011 date of acceptance: 21.05.2012 paola bonizzoni ( ). università degli studi di milano, dipartimento di scienze sociali e politiche. milano, italy. e-mail: paola.bonizzoni@gmail.com url: http://unimi.academia.edu/paolabonizzoni luisa leonini. università degli studi di milano, dipartimento di scienze sociali e politiche. milano, italy. e-mail: luisa.leonini@unimi.it url: http://www.socpol.unimi.it/persone.php?idp=49&lang=ita&st=sta&idq=20 • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini492 appendix shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families: narratives of children reunited with their mothers in italy invece i tuoi nonni tu già li conoscevi bene, o è stato un po’ traumatico andare a vivere da loro? no… io già vivevo lì con loro e poi mia nonna è sempre stata mia madre, perché quando mia mamma è rimasta incinta e mio padre se ne è andato quelli che mi hanno fatto crescere a me sono stati i miei nonni, mia mamma ha sempre lavorato, prima lavorava però vicino a casa mia, mia mamma è sempre stata una domestica, così io qualche volta andavo a trovarla… mia nonna mi ha tenuto ed io mi sono legata a lei come fosse mia mamma, mi sono affezionata tantissimo e le stavo sempre attaccata, c’erano anche i miei cuginetti perché anche i miei zii, il fratello di mia mamma, erano venuti in italia nel frattempo ed avevano lasciato tre cugini i tre loro fi gli. quel periodo da 2 a 5 anni è importante comunque, però posso dire che ho avuto un’altra fi gura che è quella di mia nonna che ha saputo sostituirla molto bene, anche meglio forse non lo so, però sono stata molto bene anche con lei, cioè soprattutto con lei, io le voglio un casino di bene, forse più bene che a mia mamma. per lei farei di tutto, per mia nonna. quando stavo con mia nonna non andavo più a scuola, perché non c’erano i miei genitori e non avevo più voglia di andare a scuola. così mia zia si è arrabbiata e mi ha portato da lei con mio fratello. poi mia zia ha incominciato ad arrabbiarsi e mi ha portato in un’altra città dove viveva con la famiglia. lì mio fratello cominciava a svenire, stava male, ci ha fatto preoccupare, la mancanza dei genitori, ci hanno detto… una volta che siamo arrivati qua non ha avuto più problemi. e com’è che è cambiata la tua vita, dopo la partenza di tua mamma? mah... da un lato mi sentivo un po’ solo, con mia sorella. perchè... mio padre poi prendeva e se ne andava... lavorava tanto fuori casa? sì lavorava... e poi non gliene fregava tanto, cioè... a lui bastava che io andavo a scuola. quindi il rapporto che avevi con tua mamma mi pare di capire che era un po’ diverso da quello che avevi con tuo papà... sì, infatti i voti mi si sono abbassati... (a) (b) (c) (d) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 493 ma perchè, perchè non c’era più nessuno che ti... curasse, perchè ti sentivi più libero, magari di non fare i compiti... eh sì. quindi oltre a tua sorella e a tuo papà c’era qualcun altro? sì, c’era mia nonna, era venuta a vivere lì dopo che mia mamma era partita, la mamma di mio papà. e com’era questa nonna? mah... non era severa. magari si lamentava con mio padre quando facevamo qualcosa però... non era cattiva. non mi piaceva come cucinava. per quello anche io e mia sorella eravamo sempre in giro, a mangiare fuori... e come è stato ritrovarsi a vivere con tua nonna... non è che me ne fregava molto... non la consideravi granchè? no, non proprio. ma dopo che tua mamma è partita il tuo grado di libertà, ad esempio nell’uscire, così, è aumentato? sì, molto. perchè quindi quella che vi controllava era... diciamo che mio padre per non farci sentire soli, no? c’era quella parte di liberazione che... che noi l’abbiamo, come ti posso dire... che poi siamo diventati troppo liberi, e mio padre non ce la faceva più a tenerci. però lui... continuava a fregarsene. e... per quanto riguarda la tua partenza, hai avuto modo di prepararti all’idea di partire, non so, te lo hanno anticipato qualche mese prima o è stata una cosa improvvisa? no, me lo hanno detto tre giorni prima. ah, così rapidamente... sì, perchè... praticamente è successo un casino con mio padre. dato che era sempre fuori, non tornava mai a casa... allora abbiamo litigato con lui. tu e tua sorella? sì, e anche mio nonno, il padre di mia madre, ha telefonato a mia madre e così lei ha detto va bene, allora mandali di qua. e anch’io ho sempre voluto stare con mia madre... beh, io quando ero piccola non sapevo che avevo mia madre. perché io comunque parlavo sempre con le mie zie, con mia nonna, mia nonna è quasi mia madre... poi quando sono andata a scuola, ho scoperto che avevo una madre. ma quindi non la sentivi neanche per telefono? si, però non sapevo che era mia madre perché ero tanto piccola quando mi ha lasciata, poi ogni anno tornava, però io andavo a scuola e quindi, cioè il tempo per stare insieme non ce lo avevamo. (e) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini494 cioè, mia mamma è sempre mia mamma… mi ha lasciato quando avevo 1 anno ma perché c’era povertà al mio paese, mi manteneva, mi mandava tutti i mesi i soldi per me, per la scuola… per mangiare… poi mi mandava i regali… e quando invece hai capito che saresti stata tu a dover partire? eh... questo è stato più duro, perchè ho dovuto lasciare tutto, i miei nonni, i miei cugini... e quando io poi sono partita mi ricordo che sentivo la tristezza... di più di quando è partita mia madre! e mia nonna si è messa a piangere.. è stato brutto, veramente. e quindi come te la vivevi la faccenda di partire, eri felice? sì, ero anche entusiasta, di conoscere un altro paese, di imparare un’altra lingua... la nostalgia, il dolore di lasciare i miei nonni, così è venuto dopo, appena prima di partire, però... ero felice. quindi non c’è stato mai un momento in cui quando tua mamma ha detto vieni tu hai detto no... no, assolutamente, anche prima di partite mi ricordo che me lo aveva chiesto sei sicura se ti va di venire... e ancora poi quando eravamo qua, mi chiedeva se mi ero pentita... vuoi tornare, vuoi tornare... ma io non sono mai tornata. io qui non ci volevo venire e neanche mia sorella… era ottobre, il 9 ottobre 2006, praticamente alle otto io sono andata a ballare ad un pub con alcuni amici, quando sono tornata a casa mi sono messa a letto e non ho visto niente, al mattino ho visto tutte le valigie pronte e sono partita, perché lo sapeva che se me lo diceva io scappavo da mio padre. quindi non te lo ha detto? no, ha fatto venire mia zia, sua zia, dagli usa per farci convincere a venire. e poi per te venire di qui com’è stato? eh (ride)... brutto, brutto... cos’è che... eh, intanto il fatto che io sono arrivata qui con le bugie... mia madre e mio padre mi hanno detto che mi portavano qui per fare una vacanza, ma che sarei ritornata, io venivo qui pensando che sarei rimasta per poco... e se ti avessero detto subito che venivi per rimanere che cosa pensi che avresti detto? eh... non avrei voluto, sicuramente... però l’avrei fatto lo stesso. l’avrei fatto lo stesso perchè comunque è quello che dicono loro che conta, mica quello che dico io. (f) (g) (h) (i) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 495 quando sono arrivata un po’ ero felice perché era mia mamma… ma un po’ sentivo di non riconoscerla, mi sembrava una persona strana. quando parliamo lei mi dice che sono successe cose che le hanno fatto un po’ male. quando sono arrivata eravamo un po’ distanti, io mi tiravo indietro dai suoi abbracci… poi a poco a poco abbiamo recuperato, ma era istintivo, mi trattenevo da fare certe cose, perché era tanto che non stavo con lei. adesso ci vedono per strada e dicono che sembriamo sorelle, abbiamo una bellissima relazione. c’è voluto tempo. all’inizio ero felicissima perché dopo tutti questi anni potevo vedere mia madre… ma poi… mi aspettavo che mia madre fosse diversa… con il passare del tempo ho visto che non era come mi immaginavo… e poi la mia mamma non la chiamo proprio mamma la chiamo con il suo nome. io mi immaginavo di trovare… ma poi la vita qua è monotona deve sempre andare al lavoro, anche al sabato e alla domenica…io vedo anche le mamma delle mie compagne di scuola… la mamma della mia amica è proprio la mamma per me…perché si preoccupa della fi glia, l’aiuta, tutti i giorni la chiama per sapere come sta… mia mamma mi chiama a malapena due volte alla settimana, quando arriva a casa dal lavoro allora non parliamo mai. alla sera deve lavorare ancora in un offi cina a pulire e quindi non abbiamo molta comunicazione, non c’è molta sintonia. quando poi sei arrivata qua, com’è stato tornare a vivere con tua mamma dopo tanto tempo che non vi vedevate? eh… all’inizio è stato un po’ diffi cile, no? però poi ci siamo abituate… ti ricordi confl itti, o imbarazzo? mah, forse un po’ di imbarazzo all’inizio sì, però non è durato tanto… quindi non te la ricordi come una cosa diffi cile? no, no… e come è stato quindi tornare a vivere con tua mamma? e… rivederla è stato bellissimo… anche se poi era tutto diverso, perché mia mamma come ti ho detto ha sempre lavorato, e quindi mai è capitato che era mia mamma che mi diceva fai questo fai quello, era mia nonna che cucinava. era tutto diverso. era lei che mi diceva alzati, devi sistemare il letto, e poi si mangiava tutti e due insieme era proprio… era bellissimo. lei è partita per prima ed è venuta qua e ci ha lasciato di là no? quindi non è che avevamo un rapporto… cioè io non mi ricordavo delle cose che facevamo quando eravamo di là, perché ero picco(j) (k) (l) (m) (n) • paola bonizzoni, luisa leonini496 la… e tutto il tempo che lei è stata qua, da sola, non avevamo un rapporto, no? e quindi, questa cosa… i frutti sono questi, cioè che non riusciamo proprio magari a parlare, a raccontarsi, ad esempio se a me piace qualcuno, trovo diffi coltà, prima di più, ora già un po’ meglio, anche mia sorella… ma eravate magari un po’ arrabbiate con lei per il fatto che vi aveva lasciati, o… no, no, non era quello, non perché eravamo ferite del fatto che ci aveva lasciato, no, non era questo, lei era andata perché c’era bisogno, poi non è che era andata via e ci aveva dimenticato, che non ci parlava, che non ci chiamava, no… anzi, se noi siamo qua, se noi stiamo ancora studiando, e se noi studiavamo là era per mia madre, quindi io non ho rancore… era solo un’abitudine, perché non avevo tanta fi ducia con lei, non riuscivo…però adesso va meglio. io la chiamo 2-3 volte la settimana, alcune volte sorridente, con un sorriso vero, altre volte tento di farlo ma non riesco e lei mi dice “che problema hai?”. non le dico niente, non glielo dico, però appena mi da due o tre consiglietti, due o tre parole e mi rianima. altrettanto la mia mamma che sta qua, io le voglio bene, tanto bene. quando la mia mamma che sta qua, la mia vera mamma, mi da dei consigli io li prendo… però non mi rianima come mi rianima quella che sta giù. è tutta un’altra cosa. io con quella che sta a santo domingo ho dormito fi no ai 7 anni. io con quella che sta qua non ho la stessa confi denza, anche se quella di santo domingo non la vedo tutti i giorni, l’ho visto solo quei 4 mesi che sono tornato giù a santo domingo dopo 5 anni, ma per me era la stessa cosa come quando ero piccolo e anche adesso se ritorno è la stessa cosa. invece con la mia vera mamma che sta qua non ho la stessa confi denza né di parlare, né di reagire. quando all’inizio stavo male perché non vedevo tutti i giorni mia mamma che sta a santo domingo, però quella che sta qua mi ha appoggiato a non star male, ha fatto tutto perché io stia bene, mi ha dato tanto, tanto, tanto. qualunque cosa volessi faceva di tutto per farmela avere, se non era una cosa che era un casino per lei farmi avere; se era una cosa che per lei io non dovevo fare, non dovevo avere mi diceva questo no. prima ero un po’ arrabbiata con lei (la madre) perché mi criticava su tutto quello che facevo, su come sono cresciuta… per esempio non ero capace proprio sulle faccende domestiche perché a casa faceva tutto mia nonna e su questo mia mamma diceva “ma la nonna non ti ha insegnato niente?” ma lei non può criticare la mia nonna perché è lei che mi ha cresciuta mentre mia mamma non ha vissuto tutta la mia infanzia la mia adolescenza. […] da una parte se non (o) (p) shifting geographical confi gurations in migrant families • 497 mi mandava i soldi morivo però dall’altra penso che lei non mi può criticare perché non è stata mai con me. a volte lei dice che noi non l’ascoltiamo mai e io inizio a sclerare. io le dico che per 4 anni non l’ho più vista e che sono abituato così. e lei invece arriva e si mette a urlare fai quello, fai quello… ma poi alla fi ne io faccio quello che mi dice… e lei cosa dice? che non è colpa sua e che l’ha fatto per il nostro bene… che se vuoi una cosa devi sacrifi carne un’altra… e tu pensi che lei l’abbia fatto per voi? si alla fi ne qua ho più cose… anche là avevo gli amici ma non c’è possibilità di andare a lavorare, a 16 anni non puoi fare niente… mentre qua posso fare tutte le cose… dopo un poco io la scuola l’ho lasciata, fi nite le medie perché sono tornato a santo domingo e non volevo più tornare. cioè, all’inizio non volevo andare, sono tornato là e non volevo più tornare, dopo neanche 3-4 mesi volevo ritornare, non ce la facevo più di là. perché la vita là è diversa da qua. stai benissimo i primi mesi, rivedi i tuoi amici, io giravo di qua e di là, ma dopo un po’ mi sono detto questa non è la vita che io voglio, io qua un lavoro non me lo potrei trovare come lo potrei trovare in italia. così sono tornato qua e appena tornato ho cominciato a lavorare, cioè io a 15 anni ho cominciato a lavorare. adesso che sono qua sono contentissimo di essere qua. se ti devo dire la verità io a santo domingo ci andrei solo per le vacanze, perché ormai ho passato la maggior parte della mia vita qua. nove anni li ho passati a santo domingo ma ormai qua sono dieci. ho preferito venire qua farmi un futuro e andare là solo per le vacanze. (q) (r) © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) pohl_englisch.indd the future demand for long-term carers in germany: model calculations for the federal länder until 2020 carsten pohl abstract: the increase in the birth rate shortfall, at the same time as an increase in life expectancy, will lead to more elderly people living in germany in future, in both relative and absolute terms. the possible development in the demand for professional long-term carers until 2020 for the individual federal länder is illustrated in this essay using model calculations. because of the differences in demographic change between the federal länder, the labour market for long-term care will develop heterogeneously in the federal territory as a whole. the increase in the number of persons in need of long-term care from its current level of 2.25 million to a forecast level of 2.9 million by 2020 will mean that professional long-term care in particular will continue to become more signifi cant in germany as a whole. the demand for long-term carers (in full-time equivalent posts) could increase from its current level of 561,000 to up to 900,000 by 2020. the actual development on the professional labour market will however be heavily dependent on the commitment of care-giving relatives. additionally, possible productivity advances in the provision of long-term care services will play a role, as can be shown in various scenarios of the model calculations. keywords: labour market for long-term care · demographic change · age structure · model calculations 1 introduction the increase in the birth rate shortfall, at the same time as an increase in life expectancy, will lead to more elderly people living in germany in future, in both relative and absolute terms. the labour market for long-term care will be particularly affected by this development since, on the one hand, the quantitative increase in the number of elderly people will mean that a much larger number of persons in need of long-term care will live in germany. on the other hand, the potential of those in comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 2 (2010): 379-400 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-09en0 • carsten pohl380 gainful employment will fall, so that the question will arise as to the adequate care of persons in need of long-term care. the increase in the number of persons in need of long-term care and the fall in the potential supply of labour are now widely divergent between the individual federal länder in some cases. the shrinking and ageing of the population has been recorded in the eastern german federal länder for several years, whilst the fall in the population size has only recently set in in the western federal länder. what is more, care arrangements for persons in need of long-term care vary between the federal länder. the placement of persons in need of long-term care in institutional facilities or in domestic care is more advanced in some federal länder than in other regions. for this reason, a regional perspective is adopted in order, on the one hand, to show results for the individual federal länder and, on the other hand, to work out both similarities and differences between the länder. taking as a basis the future number of persons in need of long-term care in the individual federal länder, this article aims to ascertain the possible requirement for long-term carers until 2020. on the basis of the data from the statistical offi ces of the federation and of the länder on the number of persons in need of long-term care in the future, it is shown that the type of care received by persons in need of long-term care will be decisive for determining the future demand for professional long-term carers. domestic care in particular will play a major role, given that a high degree of substitution exists between care-giving relatives and professional longterm care service providers. what is more, the need for long-term carers diminishes if progress is made in the productivity of long-term care. to quantify these effects, various scenarios are taken into account in the model calculations which show both the commitment of the care-giving relatives, and improvements in the ratio between carers/persons in need of long-term care. all in all, the model calculations show that the demand for long-term carers could increase from its current level of 561,000 to up to 900,000 full-time equivalent posts in 2020. the following section starts by providing an overview of the current situation on the labour market for long-term care in the federal länder. to this end, the providers of long-term care services are compared with persons in need of long-term care in terms of their demand. then, various scenarios on the possible development of the demand for professional long-term carers are calculated on the basis of the projection of persons in need of long-term care in the individual federal länder. the major results of the article are summarised in the last section. 2 the current situation on the labour market for long-term care in the federal länder the number of persons in need of long-term care has increased continuously since the introduction of the long-term care statistics. their number rose by 230,738 in the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 381 1 the increase in the number of persons in need of long-term care is not spread equally among all three care categories. whilst the number of individuals in care categories 2 and 3 remained virtually constant in the time under observation (care category 2: +2,641 and care category 3: +6,488; no allocation: -8,694), almost the entire increase, that is 230,303 persons in need of long-term care, is accounted for by entries in care category 1 (cf. statistisches bundesamt 2008). according to the extent of their needs, persons in need of a long-term care are assigned to one of three care levels (1, 2 or 3). assignment to care level 1 requires an extensive need for care and the assignment to care level 2 a strong need for care. persons with a very strong need for care are assigned to care level 3 (for details see social security code xi for details). 2 the professionalisation of care, that is care provided by domestic long-term care services or accommodation in long-term care homes, hence has a positive correlation with the care category of persons in need of long-term care. of all persons in need of long-term care in care category 3 (291,752), roughly 50 % (145,136) are cared for in long-term care homes, whilst of all persons in need of long-term care in care category 1 (1.15 million) only roughly 22 % (253,406) are housed in institutions (cf. statistisches bundesamt 2008). the years from 1999 to 2007, from 2.02 million to almost 2.25 million (+11.4 %).1 the number of persons in need of long-term care varies considerably between the federal länder. in order to restore comparability over land boundaries, persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants are shown (cf. fig. 1). it then emerges that relatively large numbers of persons in need of long-term care live in the eastern german federal länder in particular. mecklenburg-vorpommern, brandenburg and sachsen-anhalt now already have just over 330 people in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants. the number in the large surface-area länder of western germany varies between 220 (baden-württemberg) and 300 (niedersachsen) persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants. seen in absolute terms, the highest numbers of persons in need of long-term care live in nordrhein-westfalen, bayern and niedersachsen. from today’s fi gure of 2.25 million persons in need of long-term care in the entire federal territory, almost 1.03 million, or 46 %, are taken care of by relatives. roughly 22 % of persons in need of long-term care (504,232) are cared for at home by domestic long-term care services, whilst 32 % of all persons in need of long-term care (709,311 persons in need of long-term care) are accommodated in long-term care homes. the type of care changed in the period from 1999 to 2007: the number of care-giving relatives has remained largely constant (+5,695), whilst domestic longterm care services (+88,943) and in particular accommodation in homes (+136,100) have increased considerably.2 the nature of care varies signifi cantly between the länder in some cases. roughly 40 % of persons in need of long-term care are currently being cared for in institutional facilities in schleswig-holstein, whilst the corresponding share in hessen is only 25 %. in contradistinction to this, care by relatives takes on the most signifi cant position in hessen, at 54 %. the corresponding share in schleswig-holstein is 39 %. the number of persons in need of long-term care today is compared to that of providers of long-term care services. there were 11,529 domestic long-term care services and 11,029 long-term care homes in 2007. the vast majority of long-term • carsten pohl382 care services are operated by private institutions (60 %), followed by charitable institutions with a share of 38 % (cf. statistisches bundesamt 2008). the latter group is in turn the most important provider of long-term care homes, and shows a share of roughly 55 %. all in all, there were roughly 810,000 employees in the whole area of professional care in 2007 (corresponding to 561,000 staff members in full-time equivalent posts), 80 % (449,000) of whom are accounted for by long-term care homes and 20 % (112,000) by domestic long-term care services. this assessment takes into consideration not only employees in basic long-term care, but also technical and administrative staff. in order to make a comparison possible between the federal länder in relation to staff, long-term carers (measured in persons) are converted to full-time equivalent posts (full-time posts). it emerges from the type of the employment relationship that part-timers constitute the lion’s share of the staff fig. 1: no. of persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants (lefthand scale) and total (right-hand scale) in the federal länder in 2007 source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations. 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 m ec kl en bu rg v or po m m er n b ra nd en bu rg s ac hs en -a nh al t th ür in ge n b re m en n ie de rs ac hs en s ac hs en h es se n s aa rla nd b er lin s ch le sw ig h ol st ei n n or dr he in w es tfa le n r he in la nd -p fa lz b ay er n h am bu rg b ad en w ür tte m be rg persons in need of l-t care per 10,000 inhabitants persons in need of l-t care total per 10,000 inhabitants in 1,000s the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 383 in both domestic long-term care services and long-term care homes.3 part-timers account for 71 % of the staff of domestic long-term care services, whilst the share of part-timers among all staff in long-term care homes is much lower, at 57 %. the conversion of the staff into full-time equivalent posts is carried out by considering the actual working hours of the (part-time) staff using data from the long-term care statistics. this reveals the staff numbers in full-time equivalent posts.4 having said that, it would not be expedient to simply compare the full-time equivalent posts at the level of the federal länder since – as with the comparison between persons in need of long-term care – effects of scale would infl uence the result. for this reason, the full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care for each federal land were shown. additionally, the number of full-time equivalent posts differs according to the long-term care arrangement, so that the full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care are shown separately for institutional accommodation and domestic long-term care services (cf. tab. 1). rheinland-pfalz, nordrhein-westfalen and baden-württemberg head the institutional domain, with values of more than 0.7 full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care, meaning that the largest number of long-term carers is deployed in these federal länder in comparison to the others. in contrast to this, the corresponding rate in brandenburg, sachsen-anhalt and thüringen is below 0.5. the rate is also below 0.5 in the two city states berlin and hamburg. in other words, almost 30 % fewer full-time equivalents are employed per person in need of long-term care in these federal länder in comparison to the top group. the national german average is 0.6. the deployment of personnel, that is the number of employees in full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care, also differs from one federal land to another when it comes to domestic long-term care services. whilst domestic long-term care services employ an average of 0.18 full-time equivalents per person in need of long-term care in brandenburg, mecklenburg-vorpommern and sachsenanhalt, the corresponding value in the city states berlin (0.34) and hamburg (0.32) is almost twice as high. 3 the considerable signifi cance attaching to part-time employment is a result of the large share of women in professional long-term care (long-term care homes: 84.7 % and domestic care: 87.6 %). 4 data from offi cial statistics are used to convert the staff (in persons) into full-time equivalent posts. for our own calculations, fi rst of all the full-time equivalent posts in each federal land for 2007 were calculated. to this end, corresponding weights were applied to working hours for all non-full-time posts (part-timers, those in marginal employment, interns, school pupils, trainees, helpers in the voluntary social year, those rendering civil service). the aggregation of the länder results, fi nally, leads to the total of full-time equivalent posts in germany (“bottom up” approach). this leads to a total of roughly 449,000 full-time equivalent posts in the institutional domain and roughly 112,000 full-time equivalent posts in domestic long-term care services, that is a total of almost 561,000 full-time equivalent posts. the federal statistical offi ce has carried out a corresponding calculation regarding full-time equivalent posts for all of germany, but not for the individual federal länder. almost 575,000 full-time equivalent posts are shown for germany as a whole for 2007; this corresponds to a deviation of roughly 2.5% from our own calculations. • carsten pohl384 one may not however draw conclusions from the comparison of full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care as to the effi ciency/quality of care in the individual federal länder. the differences in the deployment of staff might be caused, on the one hand, by better-organised care in those federal länder in which fewer staff are deployed. on the other hand, the quality of care in the federal länder with a high staff deployment might indeed be much better. since no data are (yet) available on the quality of care, these hypotheses with regard to greater effi ciency or quality in the care of persons in need of long-term care can be neither confi rmed nor rejected.5 the situation on the labour market for long-term care must currently be regarded as tense, since there are already bottlenecks in the present circumstances. in addition to those staff who are included in the offi cial statistics, there is also “domestic help” – primarily from neighbouring countries in central and eastern europe – working in germany. the term “domestic help” is misleading in this respect since such individuals as a rule carry out long-term care activities. depending on the study, the estimates range here from 50,000 to 100,000 illegal employees (neuhaus et al. 2009). because of the (growing) shortage of specialists in long-term care, the legislature adopted a statute in mid-2009 which will also permit those leaving school with 5 cf. federal ministry of health for measures to increase quality in long-term care: http://www. bmg.bund.de/pfl ege/qualitaetssicherung/wie-erkenne-ich-ein-gutes-heim.html tab. 1: number of staff (in full-time equivalent posts) in domestic care and in institutions in 2007 institutional long-term care homes domestic long-term care services employees (persons) employees in fte fte per person in need of l-t care employees (persons) employees in fte fte per person in need of l-t care baden-württemberg 73,418 60,233 0.72 24,371 11,890 0.25 bayern 83,499 61,606 0.59 31,721 14,258 0.20 berlin 17,735 10,109 0.37 16,085 7,757 0.34 brandenburg 13,578 9,841 0.46 9,073 4,105 0.18 bremen 4,909 4,079 0.68 3,150 1,258 0.21 hamburg 10,710 7,014 0.48 8,876 4,130 0.32 hessen 36,844 27,309 0.61 16,456 8,354 0.23 mecklenburgvorpommern 10,420 8,319 0.50 5,496 2,548 0.18 niedersachsen 64,969 51,467 0.65 24,033 10,432 0.19 nordrhein-westfalen 139,013 117,566 0.77 48,019 23,698 0.22 rheinland-pfalz 26,523 22,982 0.78 9,467 4,901 0.25 saarland 7,669 5,422 0.58 2,522 1,238 0.21 sachsen 28,156 22,446 0.52 15,096 6,976 0.21 sachsen-anhalt 15,755 11,364 0.48 7,047 3,528 0.18 schleswig-holstein 27,038 19,230 0.60 8,264 3,687 0.22 thüringen 13,309 9,816 0.49 6,486 3,210 0.19 germany 573,545 448,801 0.63 236,162 111,968 0.22 note: fte = full-time equivalent posts source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations. the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 385 a secondary general school qualifi cation to take up training as a (geriatric) nurse. at the beginning of 2009, the federal parliament also agreed to have care for the elderly included in the posted workers act (entsendegesetz), so that there will be a minimum wage in this sector from mid-2010. the collective bargaining commission established by the federal ministry of labour and social affairs recommends minimum wages of eur 8.50 in western germany and eur 7.50 in eastern germany (cf. creutzburg 2010). the wages for staff in basic long-term care are to be increased by 25 cent in each of 2012 and 2013. the impact of the introduction of a minimum wage in long-term care is currently the subject of controversial discussion. on the one hand, the minimum wage could lead to an increase in the prices for long-term care services if the higher staffi ng costs are passed on to persons in need of longterm care, so that a larger share of the available income of persons in need of longterm care or of their relatives would have to be spent on long-term care services in the future. on the other hand, it would also be conceivable that the higher costs could not be passed on to persons in need of long-term care because of intensive competition, thus stepping up economic pressure on long-term care providers and increasing the probability of insolvency in this sector, which ultimately could lead to a supply defi cit when it comes to long-term care places (augurzky et al. 2009). 3 demographic change and future developments in numbers of persons in need of long-term care the number of persons in need of long-term care will be closely linked to future demographic developments. for this reason, it is predominantly the main results of the 12th coordinated population forecast of the statistisches bundesamt (2009) which are presented. because of the falling number of live births and at the same time of the rising number of deaths over time, the fall in the population size will accelerate in the coming years. all in all, the population could fall by -2.8 % from roughly 82 million in 2007 to 79.882 million in 2020 (scenario lower limit of the “median” population).6 the fall in the population size in the eastern german federal länder will be much more rapid: the population of sachsen-anhalt will fall by -13.6 % by 2020, that of thüringen by -11.4 % and of mecklenburg-vorpommern by -9 %. by comparison, the decreases in large surface-area länder of western germany will be 6 the 12th coordinated population forecast of the statistisches bundesamt (2009) covers the period until 2060. however, the statistical offi ces of the federation and of the länder only show the forecasts on persons in need of long-term care until 2020, so that the next ten years are observed in this article. the calculations concerning the future number of persons in need of long-term care here are based on the 11th coordinated population forecast of the statistisches bundesamt (2006). • carsten pohl386 relatively moderate: nordrhein-westfalen will lose -3.5 % and baden-württemberg -0.4 %, whereas in fact a slight increase is calculated for bayern (+0.8 %).7 whilst the impact of demographic change on the population size as a whole is comparatively moderate, in particular there will be shifts in the age structure which in turn are relevant to the long-term care sector. in 2007, 20.4 % of inhabitants in germany were aged 65 and older (16.729 million). the share of the overall population accounted for by 20to 64-year-olds was 60.6 % (49.655 million), and 19 % (15.619 million) were younger than 20. this structure will also change markedly in the short time until 2020 because of the increasing birth rate shortfall and the rising life expectancy. in the variant median population “lower boundary”, the share of those over 65 increases to 23.3 % (18.646 million), corresponding in absolute terms to an increase of roughly 2 million by 2020. signifi cant differences are found here in turn between the individual federal länder. the share of those aged from 65 in 2020 is expected to already be roughly 28 % in sachsen, sachsen-anhalt and thüringen, whilst in the large surface-area länder of western germany only not quite 22 % of the total population will then be over 64. only 13.601 million people below the age of 20 will live in the overall federal territory in 2020 (falling by 2 million or -13 %). the combination of a fall in the population size and an increase in the share of elderly people in the total population has two consequences for the labour market for long-term care. firstly, the potential for labour will fall since the size of the working-age population (20to 64-year-olds) will decrease. secondly, the number of persons in need of long-term care will considerably increase since more elderly people, and hence potentially more persons in need of long-term care, will live in society. the probability of being in need of long-term care is very closely correlated with age, there being pronounced differences between men and women in some cases. in the age class of 70to under 75-year-olds, the long-term care rate (prevalence rate), i.e. the number of persons in need of long-term care in this age class, divided by the population in this age class, is almost identical at 4.8 % (men: 4.8 %; women: 4.9 %). the prevalence rate of women rises faster with increasing age than that of men. 8.9 % of men aged 75to under 80-year-olds, but as many as 10.7 % of women, are in need of long-term care. the difference is most pronounced in the age class of 90-year-olds and older: 38.9 % of men and 68.8 % of women (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2008) are then in need of long-term care. the statistische ämter des bundes und der länder (2008) have presented a forecast of persons in need of long-term care at the level of the federal länder. two scenarios were shown for germany as a whole, whilst for the individual federal 7 all in all, twelve variants on demographic development are shown, all of these being based on different presumptions regarding fertility, life expectancy and the migration balance. in both “medium” variants, which seen from today’s point of view are most realistic, fertility will also continue at 1.4 children per woman. life expectancy will increase, so that life expectancy for boys and girls who are born in 2060 will have increased by between eight and seven years in comparison to those being born today. the only difference between the two “medium” variants lies in the presumed net immigration, which is however not relevant for the relatively short period until 2020. the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 387 länder only one variant (the so-called status quo scenario) was calculated up to 2020, thus forming the basis for further observations. in the status quo scenario at the level of the federal länder, the current long-term care rates are transferred to the population in the future, separated by fi ve-year age classes and gender.8 three scenarios are theoretically conceivable for the added lifetime as to the need of longterm care. this need could increase in parallel with the increase in life expectancy if the lifeyears gained are spent in good health. alternatively, a belowor aboveaverage increase in healthy years would be possible. these last two scenarios mirror the compression and medicalisation hypotheses. more recent empirical studies provide indications of the relative morbidity compression hypothesis, i.e. the overall phase of years spent in illness or long-term care decrease as a share of total life expectancy.9 having said that, the statistical offi ces of the federation and the länder did not show any fi gures for the individual federal länder for this scenario. the status quo scenario observed is hence likely to constitute an upper limit for the number of persons in need of long-term care in the future. the results of the statistische ämter des bundes und der länder (2008) are contained in table 2, with 2007 being selected as a reference year. because of the different age structures in the federal länder, the increase in numbers of persons in need of long-term care will also differ. for germany as a whole, an increase of roughly 650,000 persons in need of long-term care is anticipated to occur by 2020, reaching almost 2.9 million, corresponding to an increase of roughly 30 % in comparison to 2007. the increase is generally greater in the eastern german federal länder in general terms, being roughly 40 % in brandenburg and in mecklenburg-vorpommern, for instance. having said that, a relatively large number of persons in need of longterm care already live in the eastern german federal länder today in comparison to western germany, so that the growth rates may provide a distorted picture because of the different starting points. for this reason, the number of persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants is shown as well. there will be roughly 364 persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants in 2020 in the total ger8 the following example is to make this approach in the calculation clear: 15.6 % of men and 22.2 % of women were in need of long-term care in the age class of 80to 85-year-olds in 2007. these genderand age-specifi c long-term care rates are kept constant and multiplied with the population in this age class in 2020, so that the new number of persons in need of long-term care is then calculated. totalling all genderand age-specifi c persons in need of long-term care then gives the number of persons in need of long-term care in germany. 9 cf. also hackmann and moog (2008a) on the impact of life expectancy on the likelihood of needing long-term care. • carsten pohl388 man average, whilst there will be more than 500 persons in need of long-term care in some eastern german federal länder.10 in addition to the forecast of persons in need of long-term care at the level of the federal länder in total, it is decisive for the professional labour market for longterm care how persons in need of long-term care are distributed in future among the various long-term care arrangements, that is among care by relatives, domestic long-term care services and long-term care homes. since these calculations are not carried out by the statistical offi ces of the federation and the länder, two separate scenarios were developed. a distinction is made here between a base scenario and an alternative scenario. it is presumed in the base scenario that the distribution of persons in need of long-term care among the various care forms in future corresponds to the distribu10 the reasons for the different number of persons in need of long-term care per 10,000 inhabitants and for the increase from 2007 to 2020 vary. they include the differences in the age structure, but also differences in life expectancy between eastern and western germany, and hence, indirectly, the probability of needing long-term care at all. life expectancy at birth was three years lower in eastern germany than in western germany at the beginning of the 1990s. moreover, the remaining life expectancy was also lower, since medical care was not as good in the gdr as it was in the west. these differences have now become slight, but nonetheless exert an impact on the (future) number of persons in need of long-term care. tab. 2: no. of persons in need of long-term care in the federal länder in 2007 and 2020 2007 2020 persons in need of l-t care in 1,000s persons in need of l-t care in 1,000s increase from 2007 persons in need of l-t care per 10,000 inhabitants baden-württemberg 237 320 35% 299 bayern 314 417 33% 330 berlin 96 128 33% 376 brandenburg 85 118 39% 488 bremen 21 24 18% 369 hamburg 43 52 20% 282 hessen 176 215 22% 362 mecklenburg-vorpommern 57 80 40% 523 niedersachsen 242 300 24% 391 nordrhein-westfalen 485 614 27% 354 rheinland-pfalz 102 130 27% 330 saarland 29 37 27% 390 sachsen 127 170 33% 435 sachsen-anhalt 81 106 31% 508 schleswig-holstein 79 104 32% 371 thüringen 72 95 32% 468 germany 2,247 2,911 30% 364 source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations. the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 389 tion of 2005.11 in other words, all forms of care will cater for more persons in need of long-term care in future. table 3 presents the results of the base scenario. all in all, the number of persons in need of long-term care who are cared for at home totals roughly 1.339 million in 2020. here, differences in the increases between the federal länder appear. the increase is highest in mecklenburg-vorpommern, at 38 %, whilst the increase is only 20 % in bremen. the number of persons in need of long-term care who are taken care of by domestic services increases to a total of 646,000, and the number of persons in need of long-term care in institutional facilities increases to 925,000. the base scenario centres on the presumption that the number of care-giving relatives will also continue to increase in future. this presumption is however to be judged critically since a large number of studies suggest the conclusion that the supply of care-giving relatives will not increase in future, but will in fact fall slighttab. 3: no. of persons in need of long-term care in 2020 by type of care (base scenario; absolute fi gures in 1,000s; change from 2007 to 2020) at home domestic care institutional care total absolute change absolute change absolute change baden-württemberg 143 35% 66 41% 111 33% 320 bayern 190 36% 88 26% 139 33% 417 berlin 62 34% 30 33% 36 32% 128 brandenburg 54 31% 33 45% 32 49% 118 bremen 10 20% 7 20% 7 15% 24 hamburg 19 21% 15 20% 17 17% 52 hessen 118 23% 41 16% 56 25% 215 mecklenburg-vorpommern 36 38% 19 39% 24 43% 80 niedersachsen 132 23% 68 22% 100 26% 300 nordrhein-westfalen 285 27% 132 23% 198 29% 614 rheinland-pfalz 66 24% 26 29% 38 30% 130 saarland 18 28% 7 25% 12 26% 37 sachsen 69 35% 44 35% 56 31% 170 sachsen-anhalt 49 32% 26 31% 31 31% 106 schleswig-holstein 41 35% 21 29% 42 30% 104 thüringen 47 32% 22 31% 26 31% 95 germany 1,339 30% 646 28% 925 30% 2,911 source: own calculations. 11 the distribution of persons in need of long-term care among the individual care forms of 2005 (and not of 2007) is selected since from the present view one may presume that fewer relatives will (be able to) take care of their relatives in need of long-term care in future. the consequence of this presumption is that the increase in care provided by relatives will increase more slowly in future than if the distribution of 2007 had been presumed. the share of care-giving relatives among care provided to persons in need of long-term care was roughly one half percentage point higher in 2007 than the share in 2005. • carsten pohl390 ly.12 this is a result, fi rstly, of the low fertility in recent decades and of the increase in childlessness, so that the family care potential in germany is falling as a whole. secondly, the geographical distance between parents and children has increased in recent years, resulting in a reduction in family care (schnabel 2007 and konrad et al. 2002). thirdly, a further increase in gainful employment has a slowing impact on the potential for family care. since for years there has been a trend towards higher educational qualifi cations among both men and women, and the highly-qualifi ed also have a higher employment rate, this results in a fall in family care (women so far account for roughly ¾ of fi rst main carers).13 what is more, the increase in the statutory age limit for the statutory old-age pension can be assumed to mean that employees will be in employment for longer. fourthly, moreover, there is a trend towards less established partnerships among the elderly, so that not only care by one’s own children, but also care by partners could reduce (keck/saraceno 2009). fifthly, the population forecasts of the federal statistical offi ce show that a pronounced increase will be observed among the very old in particular. these are most likely to become in need of long-term care and to reach the upper care category, so that domestic and institutional care will take on greater signifi cance. in today’s terms, these reasons therefore suggest that care provided by care-giving relatives will not continue to increase in future, but that it will indeed fall slightly.14 for this reason, an alternative scenario is calculated in which the level of caregiving relatives is set at that of 2005.15 the total number of persons in need of long-term care corresponds precisely to the status quo scenario of the statistical offi ces of the federation and of the länder (or the base scenario), but the distribution among the individual care forms differs. the number of persons in need of long-term care who are cared for at home remains at the same level as in 2005; this means a slight drop in the national average in comparison to 2007 (-5 %). in contradistinction to this, the increases in domestic care and in the institutional domain are much more pronounced than in comparison to the base scenario. in brandenburg and mecklenburg-vorpommern, for instance, the number of persons in need of long-term care who need to be in institutional care doubles in 2020 in comparison with 2007. an increase of 61 % is anticipated for germany as a whole. the city 12 cf. in particular blinkert/gräf (2009), hackmann/moog (2008b), as well as hofmann (2006). 13 blinkert (2007) moreover shows that domestic care provided by relatives or friends and acquaintances varies considerably from one social group to another. in particular in higher-status groups, the opportunity costs, i.e. foregoing income from gainful employment, play a signifi cant role in selecting whether to care for relatives. 14 the incentive to provide family long-term care is to be increased through the proposal of the federal family ministry to introduce a legal right to family long-term care leave, (cf. braun/haas 2010). 15 a distribution scale was calculated for the distribution of persons in need of long-term care, which is above 979,000 (= number of persons in need of long-term care who were exclusively cared for by relatives in 2005). to this end, the total of persons in need of long-term care in the institutional and domestic domains was set to 100 in each case. the share resulting for institutional and domestic care was then used to distribute persons in need of long-term care among the two forms of professional care who had previously been cared for by relatives. the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 391 states of bremen (+30 %) and hamburg (+32 %) do best here. in addition to institutional care, one must also anticipate considerable increases in the domestic care of persons in need of long-term care. a heterogeneous picture also emerges in this case for the individual federal länder, from +42 % in hessen to +81 % in badenwürttemberg (not including the city states). the national german average is a 57 % increase in period from 2007 to 2020. these two scenarios make it clear in which corridor the number of persons in need of long-term care who need professional care could move in future. in the domestic domain, the number of persons in need of long-term care could be between 646,000 and 792,000 in 2020. the model calculations for the institutional domain reveal a range from 925,000 to 1.139 million. a comparison of the results of the base scenario with those of the alternative scenario hence makes it clear that there is a high substitution potential between private and professional care which will also ultimately be refl ected in the need for professional long-term carers in the future. tab. 4: number of persons in need of long-term care in 2020 by form of care (alternative scenario; absolute fi gures in 1,000s; change from 2007 to 2020) at home domestic care institutional care total absolute change absolute change absolute change baden-württemberg 101 -5% 84 81% 135 61% 320 bayern 138 -2% 110 58% 169 62% 417 berlin 46 0% 36 58% 46 68% 128 brandenburg 34 -17% 40 77% 44 107% 118 bremen 9 3% 8 30% 8 30% 24 hamburg 15 -5% 17 36% 19 32% 52 hessen 89 -7% 51 42% 75 69% 215 mecklenburg-vorpommern 23 -13% 25 78% 32 91% 80 niedersachsen 100 -7% 82 47% 118 49% 300 nordrhein-westfalen 212 -6% 161 51% 241 57% 614 rheinland-pfalz 50 -5% 31 58% 48 63% 130 saarland 14 -2% 9 53% 14 53% 37 sachsen 49 -4% 53 62% 67 56% 170 sachsen-anhalt 35 -6% 31 59% 40 67% 106 schleswig-holstein 31 1% 26 60% 47 46% 104 thüringen 33 -7% 27 61% 35 75% 95 germany 979 -5% 792 57% 1,139 61% 2,911 source: own calculations. • carsten pohl392 4 the future demand on the labour market for long-term care: model calculations for the federal länder to 2020 the future demand for professional long-term carers emerges below from the multiplication of the land-specifi c rate of full-time equivalent posts per person in need of long-term care by form of care (domestic long-term care services and institutional accommodation) by the number of persons in need of long-term care in the future. the results of these calculations are shown both for the base scenario and for the alternative scenario. the number of employees in full-time equivalent posts is 728,000 in the base scenario for the entire federal territory. this corresponds to an increase of 30 % as against 2007. a highly heterogeneous picture emerges for the individual federal länder: in brandenburg and mecklenburg-vorpommern the requirement might increase by 48 and 42 %, respectively, whilst the increase could be 28 % in the largest western german large surface-area länder (nordrheinwestfalen), 32 % (bayern) and 34 % (baden-württemberg). all in all, the requirement in the institutional domain (+30 %) will increase somewhat more rapidly than in domestic long-term care services (+28 %). however, there are also differences between the federal länder in this respect. the demand for long-term carers is much higher in the alternative scenario, in which the level of care-giving relatives is fi xed at that of 2005. overall demand could increase by 59 % by 2020; here too demand is growing more rapidly in the institutional domain (+60 %) than in the domestic domain (+57 %). a total of roughly 893,000 persons (in full-time equivalent posts) could be employed in long-term care in 2020. the increases over all care forms are largest in the two eastern german federal länder brandenburg and mecklenburg-vorpommern, at +98 and +88 % respectively. demand in institutional care, at +91 % (mecklenburg-vorpommern) and +107 % (brandenburg), is greater than in domestic care (mecklenburg-vorpommern: +78 %, brandenburg: +77 %). in some federal länder, by contrast, the increase in domestic care is more rapid than in the institutional fi eld; this includes baden-württemberg, sachsen and schleswig-holstein. it has so far been presumed in the base and in the alternative scenarios that the ratio between care staff and persons in need of long-term care remains constant over time. however, it is certainly possible for productivity increases to emerge (= improved ratio of carers/persons in need of long-term care) in the provision of long-term care services in the domestic and institutional domains: on the one hand, by virtue of the increased use of medical-technical aids, and on the other hand through new forms of organisation and procedures in care. in this context, changes in the qualifi cation-specifi c composition of the care staff (personnel mix) may impact the personnel assessment base. by using more qualifi ed staff, a positive impact can be expected on the ratio of carers/persons in need of long-term care. the requirement of carers per person in need of long-term care could furthermore be reduced by new concepts of living arrangements for persons in need of long-term care. for instance, supervised shared living arrangements (care provided by domestic long-term care services) might bring about favourable developments with the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 393 ta b . 5 : n o . o f e m p lo ye es in f ul ltim e eq ui va le n t p o st s in d o m es tic c ar e an d in t he in st it u tio na l d o m ai n in 2 02 0 (fi g ur es in 1 ,0 00 s; c ha ng e fr o m 2 00 7 to 2 02 0) b as ic s ce na ri o w ith o ut a d va nc es in p ro d uc tiv ity a lte rn at iv e sc en ar io w ith o ut a d va nc es in p ro d uc tiv ity d o m es tic c ar e in st itu tio na l c ar e t o ta l d o m es tic c ar e in st itu tio na l c ar e t o ta l ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge b ad en -w ür tt em b er g 16 .8 41 % 79 .9 33 % 96 .7 34 % 21 .5 81 % 96 .9 61 % 11 8. 4 64 % b ay er n 18 .0 26 % 82 .2 33 % 10 0. 2 32 % 22 .5 58 % 99 .9 62 % 12 2. 4 61 % b er lin 10 .3 33 % 13 .3 32 % 23 .6 32 % 12 .3 58 % 17 .0 68 % 29 .3 64 % b ra nd en b ur g 5. 9 45 % 14 .7 49 % 20 .6 48 % 7. 3 77 % 20 .4 10 7% 27 .6 98 % b re m en 1. 5 20 % 4. 7 15 % 6. 2 16 % 1. 6 30 % 5. 3 30 % 6. 9 30 % h am b ur g 5. 0 20 % 8. 2 17 % 13 .2 18 % 5. 6 36 % 9. 3 32 % 14 .9 34 % h es se n 9. 7 16 % 34 .1 25 % 43 .8 23 % 11 .8 42 % 46 .0 69 % 57 .9 62 % m ec kl en b ur gv o rp o m m er n 3. 5 39 % 11 .9 43 % 15 .4 42 % 4. 5 78 % 15 .9 91 % 20 .4 88 % n ie d er sa ch se n 12 .7 22 % 64 .9 26 % 77 .6 25 % 15 .3 47 % 76 .9 49 % 92 .2 49 % n o rd rh ei nw es tf al en 29 .2 23 % 15 1. 7 29 % 18 0. 9 28 % 35 .8 51 % 18 4. 6 57 % 22 0. 4 56 % r he in la nd -p fa lz 6. 3 29 % 29 .9 30 % 36 .2 30 % 7. 7 58 % 37 .5 63 % 45 .3 62 % s aa rl an d 1. 5 25 % 6. 8 26 % 8. 4 26 % 1. 9 53 % 8. 3 53 % 10 .2 53 % s ac hs en 9. 4 35 % 29 .4 31 % 38 .8 32 % 11 .3 62 % 35 .0 56 % 46 .4 58 % s ac hs en -a nh al t 4. 6 31 % 14 .9 31 % 19 .5 31 % 5. 6 59 % 19 .0 67 % 24 .6 65 % s ch le sw ig -h o ls te in 4. 8 29 % 25 .1 30 % 29 .9 30 % 5. 9 60 % 28 .2 46 % 34 .1 49 % t hü ri ng en 4. 2 31 % 12 .9 31 % 17 .1 31 % 5. 2 61 % 17 .2 75 % 22 .3 72 % g er m an y 14 3. 5 28 % 58 4. 4 30 % 72 7. 9 30 % 17 5. 9 57 % 71 7. 4 60 % 89 3. 3 59 % s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns . • carsten pohl394 regard to the ratio between carers/persons in need of long-term care (bartholomeyczik/hunstein 2000). domestic long-term care services could then care for more persons in one shift due to persons in need of long-term living together (time saving because of fewer journeys). all these factors, when added up, can lead to productivity advances in long-term care. however, the progress made in productivity in the care domain may be somewhat slight in comparison with other branches of industry because of the largely labour-intensive activities (advisory council on the assessment of developments in the health care system/sachverständigenrat zur be gutachtung der entwicklung im gesundheitswesen 2009). advances in productivity amounting to 0.25 % p.a. are expected to occur in both types of care, for the base scenario as well as for the alternative scenario, so that, in the fi nal analysis, the ratio between staff deployed and persons in need of long-term care is improved (cf. on this also ernste/pimpertz 2008). the demand for long-term carers in 2020 is now roughly 705,000 full-time equivalent posts in the base scenario – these are 23,000 fewer employees than in the scenario without productivity advances (cf. tab. 6). the productivity advances, which are already presumed to be slight, consequently lead to a lower demand for staff. in the alternative scenario, the demand in germany totals 865,000 full-time equivalent posts in 2020 – coming to roughly 28,000 fewer employees than in the alternative scenario without productivity advances. this makes it clear that gains in effi ciency may at least reduce the demand for long-term carers somewhat. a decisive role in the future development of the professional labour market for long-term care has however been played by the commitment of care-giving relatives, as documented in the comparisons between the base and alternative scenarios. all in all, the results from the individual variants differ widely because of the underlying presumptions. in the most favourable case, that is assuming that more relatives will take care of persons in need of long-term care in the future, the demand for institutional care increases by 115,000 additional full-time equivalent posts by 2020. the increase in absolute terms would be 27,000 full-time equivalent posts in the domestic domain. a comparison with other studies, which however relate to the total german labour market for long-term care, makes it clear that the results for the individual federal länder are highly plausible in the aggregate. augurzky et al. (2009) reach an increase in demand in their calculations amounting to almost 80,000 carers by 2020 for the institutional and domestic domains. having said that, these calculations relate only to carers, whilst this essay covers all employees in the care domain, i.e. both specialist carers and technical and administrative staff are taken into account. the cologne institute for economic research (institut der deutschen wirtschaft – iw) also reaches similar conclusions in its survey of germany as a whole: in the variant without productivity advances, there will be roughly 900,000 full-time jobs in 2020 according to the institute (cf. ernste/pimpertz 2008). schnabel (2007) calculates almost 830,000 full-time equivalent posts in 2020. the comparable alternative scenario without productivity advances (cf. tab. 5) shows roughly 893,000 full-time equivalent posts for 2020. the model calculations which have been carried out for the federal länder are to make it clear to what degree the development of the professional labour market for the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 395 ta b . 6 : n o . o f e m p lo ye es in f ul ltim e eq ui va le n t p o st s in d o m es tic c ar e an d in t he in st it u tio na l d o m ai n in 2 02 0 (fi g ur es in 1 ,0 00 s; c ha ng e fr o m 2 00 7 to 2 02 0) b as ic s ce na ri o w ith a d va nc es in p ro d uc tiv ity a lte rn at iv e sc en ar io w ith a d va nc es in p ro du ct iv ity d o m es tic c ar e in st itu tio na l c ar e t o ta l d o m es tic c ar e in st itu tio na l c ar e t o ta l ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu t ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge ab so lu te ch an ge b ad en -w ür tt em b er g 16 .3 37 % 77 .3 28 % 93 .6 30 % 20 .8 75 % 93 .8 56 % 11 4. 6 59 % b ay er n 17 .4 22 % 79 .5 29 % 97 .0 28 % 21 .8 53 % 96 .7 57 % 11 8. 5 56 % b er lin 10 .0 29 % 12 .9 27 % 22 .9 28 % 11 .9 53 % 16 .5 63 % 28 .4 59 % b ra nd en b ur g 5. 7 40 % 14 .2 44 % 19 .9 43 % 7. 0 71 % 19 .7 10 0% 26 .8 92 % b re m en 1. 5 16 % 4. 5 11 % 6. 0 12 % 1. 6 26 % 5. 1 25 % 6. 7 25 % h am b ur g 4. 8 16 % 8. 0 13 % 12 .8 15 % 5. 4 31 % 9. 0 28 % 14 .4 29 % h es se n 9. 4 12 % 33 .0 21 % 42 .4 19 % 11 .5 37 % 44 .6 63 % 56 .0 57 % m ec kl en b ur gv o rp o m m er n 3. 4 35 % 11 .5 38 % 14 .9 37 % 4. 4 72 % 15 .4 85 % 19 .7 82 % n ie d er sa ch se n 12 .3 18 % 62 .8 22 % 75 .1 21 % 14 .8 42 % 74 .4 45 % 89 .2 44 % n o rd rh ei nw es tf al en 28 .2 19 % 14 6. 9 25 % 17 5. 1 24 % 34 .7 46 % 17 8. 7 52 % 21 3. 4 51 % r he in la nd -p fa lz 6. 1 24 % 28 .9 26 % 35 .0 26 % 7. 5 52 % 36 .3 58 % 43 .8 57 % s aa rl an d 1. 5 21 % 6. 6 22 % 8. 1 22 % 1. 8 48 % 8. 0 48 % 9. 9 48 % s ac hs en 9. 1 31 % 28 .4 27 % 37 .6 28 % 11 .0 57 % 33 .9 51 % 44 .9 53 % s ac hs en -a nh al t 4. 5 27 % 14 .4 27 % 18 .9 27 % 5. 4 54 % 18 .4 62 % 23 .8 60 % s ch le sw ig -h o ls te in 4. 6 25 % 24 .3 26 % 28 .9 26 % 5. 7 55 % 27 .3 42 % 33 .0 44 % t hü ri ng en 4. 1 27 % 12 .4 27 % 16 .5 27 % 5. 0 56 % 16 .6 69 % 21 .6 66 % g er m an y 13 8. 9 24 % 56 5. 7 26 % 70 4. 6 26 % 17 0. 3 52 % 16 .6 55 % 86 4. 7 54 % s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns . • carsten pohl396 long-term care depends on the commitment of care-giving relatives and on productivity advances. there is no doubt that, on the demand side, the (future) costs for accommodation in institutional facilities and/or for the employment of domestic longterm care services play a major role in this context. on the supply side, work income is an important determinant in opting for or against working in care. this is likely to also play a role in the development of the family care potential, since in addition to moral aspects (care of the parents, of the partner) monetary factors (comparison of the income for the care of relatives with regular gainful employment) are also signifi cant. the development of the informal and professional labour markets for long-term care in germany will however also depend on the employment of foreign domestic help, since such individuals have recently been permitted to carry out basic long-term care activities legally (cf. bundesagentur für arbeit 2010), so that a further alternative to care of persons in need of long-term care has emerged. relatives of persons in need of long-term care are now faced with the decision of taking on care themselves, using domestic long-term care services, arranging placement in an institutional long-term care home or availing themselves of (foreign) domestic help. since the employment of foreign domestic help is frequently the cheapest alternative for care of a person in need of long-term care – in particular if it is timeintensive care – this form of (legal or illegal) employment is likely to continue to gain importance in the near future. this development is favoured by the predicted increase in the incidence of dementia, since 24-hour care is frequently necessary in such cases. since the statutory framework can change over time and this may exert a considerable infl uence on the selection of the care arrangement, these incentive mechanisms were however deliberately disregarded. care has very recently become the focus of greater political awareness, so that the incentives for taking up work in the care domain could change as a result of new legal initiatives. firstly, there will be a minimum wage for employees from mid-2010 onwards, coming to eur 8.50 in western germany and eur 7.50 in eastern germany. the impact of this sector-specifi c minimum wage on the supply of labour cannot be clearly determined a priori since interdependences exist between the labour market for long-term care and other sectors (and also illegal employment). these mutual relationships admittedly depend not only on the framework in care, but also on the conditions in the other labour market segments (working hours, wages, professional outlook, etc.) which may also still change over time. secondly, the introduction of family leave is being discussed at present (cf. braun/haas 2010). the introduction of the long-term care leave act (pfl egezeitgesetz) as early as 2008 has provided a legal right vis-à-vis employers (under certain preconditions) for employees who care for close relatives. however, such long-term care is restricted to a maximum of six months. the proposal of the federal family minister provides for a legal entitlement to two years’ long-term care leave in which half of the working hours are to be worked but three-quarters of the salary drawn. when long-term care leave ends, full-time employment is provided for, in which three-quarters of the salary is also earned until the wage and salary account is balanced. since care by relatives is cheaper than accommodation in a long-term care home, it is hoped that the act will reduce the burdens on the institutions funding long-term care. however, the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 397 industry has voiced reservations since this arrangement would oblige enterprises to advance payment for two years and risk an employee not returning to the enterprise after long-term care leave. 5 conclusion as a result of demographic change, there will be more and more elderly people in future, whilst the working-age population shrinks in size. since the probability of requiring long-term care is strongly correlated with age, a marked increase in the number of persons in need of long-term care is anticipated in germany. all in all, the number of persons in need of long-term care could increase from its current level of 2.25 million to 2.9 million by 2020. having said that, the development between the individual federal länder is highly heterogeneous in some cases because of the different age structures. the population has been observed to shrink and age for several years in the eastern german federal länder, whilst the fall in the population size has only recently set in in the western federal länder. thus, a relatively larger number of more persons in need of long-term care will live in eastern germany in future than in western germany. professional care will gain further signifi cance in general terms as the number of persons in need of long-term care increases, since the family care potential is decreasing. because of increasing care provided by domestic long-term care services and accommodation in long-term care homes, the demand for professional care staff will increase considerably. the model calculations show that the number of staff could increase from today’s level of roughly 561,000 (in full-time equivalent posts) between 700,000 and 900,000 in 2020. the very wide range in the results has made it clear that the development of the demand for professional carers in particular depends on the future commitment of caregiving relatives, as well as on productivity increases in the provision of long-term care services. over and above this, the increasing demand for professional care should also be met by a corresponding supply of workers to create an employment effect. to this end, on the one hand the long-term care services must be affordable for persons in need of long-term care and their relatives. on the other hand, the possibilities to earn a living on the labour market for long-term care must be suffi ciently high, so that more persons in gainful employment will opt for a caring profession. i would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable pointers and comments. furthermore, i would like to thank those who attended the “international conference on evidence-based policy in long-term care” at the london school of economics (lse), 8-11 september 2010, for their helpful comments. • carsten pohl398 references augurzky, boris et al., 2009: auswirkungen von mindestlöhnen auf pfl egeeinrichtungen und pfl egebedürftige. auszug aus dem pfl egeheim rating report 2009. rheinischwestfälisches institut für wirtschaftsforschung, admed gmbh unternehmensberatung health care, institute for health care business gmbh (hcb): essen bartholomeyczik, sabine; hunstein, dirk, 2000: erforderliche pfl ege – zu den grundlagen einer personalbemessung. pfl ege & gesellschaft 5,4: 105-109 blinkert, baldo, 2007: bedarf und chancen: die versorgungssituation pfl egebedürftiger menschen im prozess des demografi schen und sozialen wandels. in: pfl ege & gesellschaft 12,3: 227-239 blinkert, baldo; gräf, bernhard, 2009: deutsche pfl egeversicherung vor massiven herausforderungen. frankfurt: deutsche bank research braun, stefan; haas, sibylle, 2010: familien-pfl egezeit. ein angebot mit charme. in: süddeutsche zeitung. url: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/743/504950/text, 8.3.2010 bundesagentur für arbeit (eds.), 2010: vermittlung von haushaltshilfen in haushalte mit pfl egebedürftigen nach deutschland, zentral auslandsund fachvermittlung (zav). bonn bundesministerium für gesundheit, 2010: pfl ege-tüv. url: http://www.bmg.bund.de/ shareddocs/standardartikel/de/az/p/glossarbegriff-pfl ege-tuev.html, 25.03.2010 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981-998 neuhaus, andrea et al., 2009: situation und bedarf von familien mit mittelund osteuropäischen haushaltshilfen. köln: deutsches institut für angewandte pfl egeforschung e.v. sachverständigenrat zur begutachtung der entwicklung im gesundheitswesen, 2009: koordination und integration – gesundheitsversorgung in einer gesellschaft des längeren lebens, sondergutachten. bonn schnabel, reinhold, 2007: zukunft der pfl ege. köln: initiative neue soziale marktwirtschaft (insm) the future demand for long-term carers in germany • 399 statistische ämter des bundes und der länder (eds.), 2008: demografi scher wandel in deutschland: auswirkungen auf krankenhausbehandlungen und pfl egebedürftige im bund und in den ländern 2. wiesbaden statistisches bundesamt (eds.), 2006: bevölkerung deutschlands bis 2050: 11. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. wiesbaden statistisches bundesamt (eds.), 2008: pfl egestatistik 2007: pfl ege im rahmen der pfl egeversicherung. deutschlandergebnisse. wiesbaden statistisches bundesamt (eds.), 2009: bevölkerung deutschlands bis 2060: 12. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. wiesbaden translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the authorised original article in german is available under the title “der zukünftige bedarf an pfl egearbeitskräften in deutschland: modellrechnungen für die bundesländer bis zum jahr 2020”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-09de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-09de8, at http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. carsten pohl ( ). institut für arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung (iab), regionales forschungsnetz, iab nordrhein-westfalen, 40474 düsseldorf, germany. e-mail: carsten.pohl@iab.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext “the apple doesn’t live far from the tree”: living distances between parents and their adult children in europe bettina isengard abstract: geographic proximity or distance between parents and their adult children is a fundamental, if not the decisive prerequisite for intergenerational solidarity. but why do some parents and their children live closer together than others? and why are there national differences in europe? the objective of this article is to better understand the causes of geographical proximity or distance using the share data of 14 european countries. in addition to personal characteristics of the parents and children, familial structures and cultural contextual differences between the countries are also in the focus of interest. the fi ndings suggest that especially age and family-cycle infl uences have an impact on the living distance between the generations, but that socio-economic and origin-specifi c correlations are also important. a comparison reveals that geographical proximity or distance varies across countries. in the south of europe parents and adult children live far closer together, which is not merely due to co-residence. the differences can primarily be ascribed to cultural as well as institutional infl uences and the associated social consequences. keywords: geographical distance between family members · intergenerational relationships · europe · share 1 introductory remarks even in modern societies familial intergenerational relationships continue to be the most stable interpersonal bonds and have even become more signifi cant in recent decades. since (measured in numbers) less and less children will – due to an increased life expectancy – spend a longer lifetime together with their parents and even their grandparents (cf. bengtson 2001; szydlik 2000: 11). this is mainly a consequence of ageing processes and the demographic change, which is manifested in (1) the increasingly declining birth rate, (2) a drop in marriages and the associated rise in cohabitation, (3) the constantly rising number of divorces, (4) the decline in comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 237-262 (date of release: 06.06.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-09en4 • bettina isengard238 multi-person households as well as the increase in one-person households and (5) the rise in the average life expectancy (cf. hoff 2006). this does not only alter the quantitative, but also the qualitative relationship structures between the generations. while in earlier times low life expectancy meant that the family mainly fulfi lled a socialising and reproductive function, today family members are increasingly dependent on mutual solidary assistance. intergenerational solidarity is a chief element of familial support networks (bertram 1997). besides the subjective signifi cance of intergenerational relationships, marked by emotional closeness and affection (affective solidarity), the bonds are also refl ected in the contact frequency and mutual activities (associative solidarity). yet the most striking aspect in today’s societies is the extent of functional solidarity, i.e. the giving and taking of money, time and space, as numerous empirical studies show (cf. e.g. on fi nancial transfers deindl 2010; on assistance brandt 2009; on care haberkern 2009 as well as on co-residence isengard/szydlik 2010, 2012). beside existing family structures and the norm of solidarity (cf. szydlik 2000: 85), the geographical proximity or distance between generations is a central prerequisite for many types of intergenerational solidarity. for instance, the living distance is not only decisive for the assistance and care within family networks, but also for the care of grandchildren (igel 2012). it is only possible for parents and their adult children to render regular acts of assistance, for which direct contact is essential, when they live close enough together. exceptions to this are fi nancial assistance, which can easily be transferred across greater distances, or types of assistance that can basically also be given over the phone such as emotional support or assistance with administrative matters. nevertheless, many types of (intergenerational) support are dependent on geographical proximity or distance. although it is known from earlier fi ndings for germany and other european countries that parents and their adult children usually do not live far from one another (kohli et al. 1997; lauterbach 1998; hank 2007), there are individual and family related differences in geographical proximity or distance. in addition, cultural contextual circumstances also have a major infl uence on living distances and explain differences within, but primarily also between countries. these convergences and divergences have not yet been given suffi cient attention, however. although there are some studies comparing geographical proximity or distance, these are in most cases studies that only examine two nations (cf. e.g. bordone 2009; glaser/ tomassini 2000; höllinger/haller 1990) and that do not analyse the culturally and institutionally related causes more closely. the study by hank (2007) examining ten european countries and ascribing the differences to such aspects as divergent familial bonds also does not supply a systematic country comparison that examines the correlation between living distances and social circumstances outside the context of the welfare state more closely. especially, cultural contextual structures may be able to supply a signifi cant contribution to explain the differences within europe. the following study aims to close this research gap. the research issue is therefore two-fold: (1) what determines the geographical proximity or distance between parents and their adult children in europe? and (2) what cultural and institutional factors can explain national differences? to answer living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 239 these two questions, cluster-robust ordered logit models for 14 countries based on the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) are estimated. in addition to personal and familial indicators, the research interest is mainly focused on macro-structural causes in order to illuminate the previously quite neglected sphere of culturally and institutionally related convergences and divergences more precisely. 2 theoretical background and empirical evidence intergenerational solidarity depends on three central basic prerequisites (szydlik 2000: 85): (1) the relevant family structures should exist (in this case: familial generations), (2) the living distance should not be too great for many forms of solidarity and (3) a certain feeling of obligation to assist family members (solidarity norm) should dominate. against this background, the living distance between the generations is an important prerequisite for a number of types of support. unlike coresidence, i.e. giving and taking living space, geographical proximity is not a direct form of solidarity, but it makes many forms of intergenerational solidarity possible at all. nevertheless, the theoretical assumptions and supposed effects of the formation of intergenerational solidarity can be transferred to the living distance between the generations. this is possible since the geographical proximity or distance on the one hand (in the form of the special case of co-residence) is a direct form of functional intergenerational solidarity and is on the other hand indirectly closely linked to it (as a potential). in order to explain why some parents and their adult children live more closely together than others and why there are specifi c national differences in europe, the theoretical model designed by szydlik (2000: 39) to explain intergenerational solidarity is used (cf. also bengtson/roberts 1991). according to this model, it is assumed that three central structures have an infl uence on intergenerational support. these are (1) individual possibilities and needs, (2) familial factors and (3) cultural contextual structures. all three of these groups are also relevant for explaining the living distance between parents and their adult children. theoretically, they assume that the personal needs and the possibilities of the adult children and their parents infl uence the formation of solidarity. transferred to the geographical proximity or distance this would mean that a lesser or a greater living distance depends on the personal needs or opportunities. yet in this context, being embedded in familial structures is also relevant, since “competing” family members can decrease the necessity for proximity. according to the model, differences within but primarily between countries can be ascribed to divergent cultural contextual circumstances. but how should be adequately dealt with co-residence, in this case cohabitation of parents and their adult children? previous fi ndings have shown that in addition to age and its associated status within the life and family cycle, mainly the children’s economic needs either promote or impede co-residence (cf. e.g. aassve et al. 2002; choi 2003; deindl/isengard 2011; isengard/szydlik 2012). therefore, taking co-residence into account in countries with high rates leads to overestimations of the infl u• bettina isengard240 ence of economical resources in a joint approach. at the same time, a theoretical and empirical elimination of co-residence would only lead to an incomplete picture of geographical proximity or distance, since this type of living arrangement is very frequent in some european countries and thus would exclude a fundamental part of the population per se. against this background, it appears wise to look at both manifestations in the empirical section – including and excluding co-residence – in order to reveal the causes and reasons for living distances. previous research (with the exception of the study by hank 2007) mainly focuses on individual countries or on two-country comparisons and identifi es three indicator groups at the individual and familial level. first, age and life cyclical patterns are important that also result in gender-specifi c differences. in general, it becomes apparent that the geographical distance or proximity between the generations is considerably determined by age (cf. clark/wolf 1992; lin/rogerson 1995). moving out of the parental home is usually the fi rst step into independence, which often does not lead too far away. using data from the german socio-economic panel (soep), leopold et al. (2011) can show that on their fi rst move children on average only move about ten kilometres away. for parents, age usually plays a role in combination with health (silverstein 1995). in addition, increasing isolation caused by divorce or the death of a spouse or partner and of friends with advanced age can lead to parents and children moving (again) closer together (de jong gierveld/van tilburg 1999; dykstra et al. 2005). age-specifi c effects have not only a direct, but also an indirect infl uence since they are closely associated with family cycle processes (white 1994) – and hence with familial structures according to szydlik (2000). entering or being in a relationship, the birth of a child or grandchild, separation or dissolution of relationships through divorce or death: all of these events can have direct effects on the living distance between the generations. two opposite trends are apparent for geographical proximity or distance. although children frequently leave their parents’ home when they enter into a relationship (for europe iacovou 2001: 10), at the same time, they usually do not move as far away as singles (glick/lin 1986; aquilino 1990; lauterbach/pillemer 2001 for germany and the usa), although the opposite is the case in the netherlands (michielin/mulder 2007). the distances are lesser for the parent generation if mothers are single or both parents live together. this is not the case for widowed fathers; here the distances between the generations are also greater (lawton et al. 1994). smits et al. (2010) fi nd for the netherlands that children live more rarely with their parents when the parents are not single, but live with them far more often if they themselves are not married but have children. when parents have a number of children this also has a direct effect on the distance to each individual child (shelton/grundy 2000). while – from the child’s point of view – siblings enlarge their geographical distance to the parents, for the parents it is more probable that they have at least one child living close to them (hank 2007: 159). grandchildren usually also lead to the generations living closer together (crimmins/ingegneri 1990; rogerson et al. 1997; pettersson/malmberg 2009). however, madigan and hogan (1991) discover that single mothers do not live closer to their parents than mothers who cohabitate with the child’s father. living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 241 the gender of the children also has an infl uence on geographical proximity or distance, whereas scientifi cally the correlations are not quite uniform. although it is unquestioned that adult sons live together with their parents far more frequently (cf. e.g. billari et al. 2001), but the picture is not as clear for living distances outside the household. empirically it has been shown that although daughters live less often under one roof with their parents, when they do move out, they do not move very far away (clark/wolf 1992; lawton et al. 1994). for sweden pettersson and malmberg (2009), however, show that daughters live further away from their parents than sons. yet even in this context, the familial situation is relevant. leopold et al. (2011) fi nd out that when daughters leave their parents’ home, they usually move further away than sons, but this is only true when they leave a couple household. a current study for the netherlands shows that couples live closer to the husband’s parents than those of the wife. however as soon as young children live in the household, the family structures of women gain infl uence (blaauboer et al. 2011). all in all, based on the theoretical assumptions and previous empirical fi ndings it can be assumed that with increasing age and position in the family cycle (relationship, parenthood, etc.) the probability is greater that parents and their adult children live further apart (hypothesis 1a). since women usually marry earlier and have children, the geographical distance should be greater for daughters than for sons (hypothesis 1b). the personal needs and opportunity structures used by szydlik (2000) to explain intergenerational solidarity are closely associated with the second indicator group: the socio-economic variables. earlier fi ndings suggest that the geographical distance between the generations’ increases with rising status (bengtson/harootyan 1994; clark/wolf 1992; silverstein 1995), since this considerably infl uences personal opportunities and needs. key factors are education and the employment status as well as the associated level of prosperity. a higher level of education is related to a greater geographical distance, since higher educated children and parents usually have better career opportunities, which are often associated with greater demands for mobility and are frequently already relevant during studies (kalmijn 2006). but the fi nancial opportunities, primarily of the parents, can also have an infl uence. in italy for instance, due to the poor labour market situation and high rents, parents can frequently control where their children move either by passing residential property on to them or by fi nancially supporting them and by traditionally being involved in the choice of residence (glaser/tomassini 2000; giannelli/monfardini 2003). analogous to the assumptions of the heuristic model by szydlik (2000) and on the basis of the state of research for individual countries, it is expected that better socioeconomic opportunities and lesser need structures are accompanied by a greater geographical distance between the generations (hypothesis 2). thirdly, the effects of origins can infl uence the living distances between the generations. on the one hand, this can be the social origin, which is closely linked with socio-economic structures. children with a more highly educated background are themselves frequently more highly educated and thus they should be more accustomed to mobility than children from less educated social classes (on inherited education see schimpl-neimanns 2000). but regional origins are also important (hank • bettina isengard242 2007; lauterbach 1998; lauterbach/pillemer 2001), because they considerably determine the opportunities and needs of individuals. in larger cities and conurbations the labour market opportunities as well as the supply of educational institutions are usually far better than in rural or isolated regions. this results in parents and children from urban regions living closer together more often since the “compulsion” to move is lesser due to better opportunity structures than in the countryside. the housing market can also have an infl uence. in rural regions there are often only few rented fl ats available and therefore the necessity of moving further away from the parents can be greater than in the city (georg et al. 1994). finally, ethnic origins can also explain the geographical proximity or distance between the generations. two contrary trends are possible. on the one hand generations might live further apart because they live in different countries; on the other hand a migration background can lead generations not to move far apart since they often take advantage of a support network of relatives and friends from their country of origin, which is settled close together (aslund 2005). mulder (2007) can empirically prove that parents and children with migration backgrounds live closer together (see also angel/tienda 1982 for the usa, who confi rm more frequent co-residence). in the tradition of previous fi ndings for individual countries, it is assumed that also children in european countries with parents of high social status (hypothesis 3a), without a migration background (hypothesis 3b) and from rural regions (hypothesis 3c) live further away from their parents than children from less-educated classes, with migration backgrounds and from cosmopolitan or urban regions. finally and fourthly, cultural contextual structures, which vary socially and help explain national patterns, are relevant. generally it can be assumed that not only coresidence of parents with their adult children is a far more common living arrangement in southern european countries than in continental europe and in particular in comparison with northern europe (kiernan 1999), but also that living distances in general are closer (hank 2007). some of the possible convergences and divergences are related to welfare state arrangements. on the one hand, the need or necessity for intergenerational solidarity is structured by the welfare state and on the other hand the attitudes towards and signifi cance of the family are closely tied to the historic development of the welfare states. in countries where the church had a strong role in the development of the social state, the social and, in particular, the family-related benefi ts are still rather weakly today and the family is more important than in countries with extensive benefi ts and well-developed social systems (for a comprehensive portrayal, see esping-andersen 1998 as well as modifi cations by leibfried 1992 and keune 2009). correspondingly, in social-democratic systems such as those in denmark and sweden, the role of the family is rather weak, since social benefi ts are very extensive. by contrast, the signifi cance of the family in the continental european, conservative countries, among them germany, france and belgium, is rather strong due to the infl uence of the church. in the southern european, familialistic welfare systems such as italy, spain and greece, the church had a signifi cant infl uence on the design of the social benefi ts. in an oecd comparison, this means that the family-related, public support payments are quite low (cf. for example ferrera 1997; sciortino 2004), living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 243 but at the same time strong, traditional family structures predominate. in the postsocialist systems such as those in poland and the czech republic even today the state is “universally responsible” due to the experience of earlier times. the effects of the transformation processes can only gradually become effective. presently we can expect that the demand for intergenerational solidarity is still relatively pronounced in these countries due to the lack of state infrastructures. in the liberal welfare states, which are mainly spread in the anglo-saxon area, there is means-tested public welfare with few universal benefi ts. in this context, giuliano (2007) ascribes the differences between the countries to cultural divergences, which are expressed in a differing self-concept of family. according to reher (1998), family relationships can typically be classifi ed as “strong ties,” which traditionally predominate in southern european countries, and the “weak ties” traditionally existing in northern and western european countries. thus it is “not diffi cult to identify areas where families and family ties are relatively ‘strong’ and others where they are relatively ‘weak’ [and] these divergent practices appear to have deep historical roots” (reher 1998: 203 and 204). the role of the family is one of the driving forces behind the cultural divergences, but the actual social benefi ts and their direct and indirect consequences for the objective living conditions also play a role. for example, welfare benefi ts in general have direct effects on poverty and inequality, but also on (regional) unemployment and thus on the necessity of moving or generating the family as a support network. but actual family-related benefi ts such as maternity leave or child benefi ts can have an infl uence (neyer 2003). in general, these benefi ts are far more comprehensive in the north than in the south. against this (theoretical) background, it is expected that country-specifi c differences can be explained through institutional and cultural circumstances. it can be assumed that (1) the less comprehensive the welfare benefi ts in a country, the smaller will be the geographical distance between the generations (hypothesis 4a); (2) the greater the social inequality, the shorter are the living distances (hypothesis 4b) as well as (3) the more important the familial obligation norms and the role of the family, the closer parents and their adult children will live together (hypothesis 4c). the cultural contextual explanatory factors are closely linked here. in countries with weak social welfare systems – also due to the infl uence of the church– the family has a greater signifi cance and correspondingly social inequality is more pronounced due to a lesser redistribution. living distance between generations is not only related to institutional and cultural circumstances, but is also infl uenced by geographical circumstances. national differences are also ascribed to whether there is a chance at all to move far away. if we disregard emigration, in smaller, densely populated states it is more diffi cult to live far apart from one another than in countries with larger areas. it is therefore assumed that the larger (in area) a country is, the further apart the parents and their children will live (hypothesis 5a), but the denser the settlement structures, the lesser will be the living distances between the generations (hypothesis 5b). • bettina isengard244 3 data and methods 3.1 data the second wave of the share data (survey of health, ageing and retirement) coordinated by the munich center for the economics of aging (mea) were used for the analyses. this is a data set supplying relatively consistent information about older people for fourteen european countries. they are belgium (be), denmark (dk), germany (de), france (fr), greece (gr), ireland (ie), italy (it), the netherlands (nl), austria (at), poland (pl), sweden (se), switzerland (ch), spain (es) and the czech republic (cz). the advantage of these data is that the procedure is standardised in the countries and that a broad spectrum of subjects is measured. the survey covers people over 50 years of age as respondents and their (younger) partners and asks about various topics such as demographics, income, health, residence, education and employment, behaviour, social support, activities and expectations. in addition, the partners living in the same household, who may also be younger, are interviewed. a total of approximately 33,000 people were interviewed, each of whom provided information about their parents and their children, of whom the age, gender and living distance are asked. additionally more specifi c information is included about four children, chosen by the parents, such as marital status, employment status, the number and the age of their own children and highest level of educational attainment. since not many parents in europe have more than four children, the number of cases not accounted for is limited (almost 4 percent). the living distances between the parents and all of their adult children, for whom this additional information is available, are analysed in this article. 3.2 operationalisation the living distance between parents and their adult children is captured by using the following variable: “please look at card 5. where does {child name} live?: (1) in the same household, (2) in the same building, (3) less than 1 kilometre away, (4) between 1 and 5 kilometres away, (5) between 5 and 25 kilometres away, (6) between 25 and 100 kilometres away, (7) between 100 and 500 kilometres away, (8) more than 500 kilometres away, (9) more than 500 kilometres away in another country.” based on this question, the dependent variable is formed. essentially, the ordinal categories are kept and are used in the fi rst model estimation. only the categories 8 and 9, which measure living distances of more than 500 kilometres (once within a country and once outside a country), are combined. since co-residence is a direct form of intergenerational solidarity, in a second model specifi cation children who live in the same household or the same building (near co-residence, see isengard/ szydlik 2012) with their parents are excluded to see whether the results differ substantially. this is because co-residence can be explained by the economic needs of the children to a large part (cf. deindl/isengard 2011). as explanatory variables factors are used that refl ect the age, gender and lifecycle determinants as well as socio-economic variables and origin effects. in order living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 245 to explain the country-specifi c particularities, cultural contextual variables are taken into account. since the age of the parents and their adult children are strongly correlated a combined age variable is included into the models. younger children (18+ to 29 years of age) and older children (from 30 years of age) are each combined with younger parents (up to 64 years of age) and older parents (from 65 years of age); the age of the oldest parent in the household is used here. the familial structures taken into account, which are closely associated with the age and the position in the life cycle, are the relationship status of the parents and children, the number of children of the respondents (corresponds to the number of siblings of the children) as well as the number of grandchildren (or number of children’s children). the relationship status of the children is included as a dummy variable, whereby children living in a relationship (marital or non-marital) are compared to children living alone. the status of the parents is linked with the gender of the children, since, as previous fi ndings show, the gender-specifi c living distance varies with the parents’ relationship status. for data technical reasons, the gender of the parents is not included because the information about the living distance is available at the household level and is thus identical for both parents. four dummy variables are taken into account: daughter-relationship parents, daughter-parent alone, son-relationship parents, son-parent alone. moreover, the additional number of children is included in four dummy variables and the variables measure whether someone has next to the each recorded child no additional child, has one additional child, has two more children or has three and more children. the same differentiation is used for the number of grandchildren (none, 1, 2; 3 and more). the health of the parents is also an indicator that is closely linked with age and refl ects a possible need for solidarity, in particular if the parent has no (or no longer a) partner. for this reason, an interaction term between health and the existence of a relationship is formed. health is recorded as the number of restrictions according to adl and iadl and added. these are instruments that measure restrictions in activities of daily living (adl) as well as instrumental activities of daily living (iadl). adl includes, for example, eating, dressing, personal hygiene and walking, iadl includes shopping, preparing meals, housework and managing money. the value for the parent with the most restrictions is used and interacted with the relationship status, which is a dichotomous variable. as socio-economic variable the education of the parents is used as well as a proxy for the economic situation of the household, the “living on earnings”, an indicator that measures how well the household makes ends meet. the personal level of education is measured according to the isced classifi cation (international standard classifi cation of education), developed by the unesco to make different school systems and types comparable (cf. oecd 1999). three categories are established that portray a low (isced 1), intermediate (isced 2) and a high level of education (isced 3). the so far highest attained school education or professional achievement is recorded as the qualifi cation. people who are still attending school and have no certifi cate yet are subsumed under isced 1, as are people who are still attending vocational school but only completed compulsory schooling so far. people with an “other” achievement are also included in the lowest category since this means there is no information about their level of qualifi cation available in this case. since this • bettina isengard246 only applies to less than 1.5 percent of the cases, however, this type of categorisation does not affect the results. the assessment of the individual income situation is stored in four dummy variables and implies the following categories: with great diffi culty, with some diffi culty, with reasonable ease and with ease. this variable is preferred over the actual income since it highly correlates with the educational level thus making the estimation instable. the economic opportunities of the children are reproduced through the education, which was measured analogously with the parental information, as well as through the employment status. this is done using six dummy variables that differentiate between employment, unemployment, in training, economic inactivity (housewife/househusband), (early) retirement and a residual category (other). the third group of variables includes the origin effects. the social origin overlaps with the economic variables. moreover, the regional origin (city vs. country) and the ethnic origin are measured. the community size, which is developed using variables generated by share, only differentiates between city and country and thus combines the original fi ve categories, which were large city, suburbs of a large city, large towns, small towns as well as rural regions and villages. people living in a (large) city or a suburb are given the specifi cation of city, while people living in smaller towns and communities fall under the category of villages and municipalities. it is also taken into account whether it is a household with a migration background. for this, at least one parent must cite that they were born abroad or have no domestic citizenship. finally, in order to analyse the infl uence of cultural contextual differences in greater detail, a model is estimated containing all of the individual and familial indicators of the basic model (with fourteen country dummies), the respective macroindicator however is varied. these are the (1) classifi cation in four welfare state regimes as well as indicators that (2) refl ect the extent of social benefi ts, (3) measure poverty and inequality, (4) consider the labour market situation as well as (5) take geographical circumstances into account. the countries are classifi ed in the four regime types conservative (at, be, de, ch, fr, ie, nl), social democratic (dk, se), familialistic (es, gr, it) as well as post-socialist (cz, pl). since no liberal social states are included in share, unfortunately this type cannot be examined here. the extent of social benefi ts in the year 2006 is incorporated using social expenditures in general (per capita in current prices and adjusted for purchasing power in us dollars, oecd) as well as family expenditures (in percent of the gdp, oecd). the level of prosperity is indicated using the country-specifi c poverty rate (60 percent median, new oecd scale) and the extent of income inequality using the gini coeffi cients also from 2006 (undp 2006). additionally, the social labour market situation is taken into account using the country-specifi c (youth) unemployment rates (according to weltalmanach 2006). the signifi cance of family is operationalised using the percentage of non-marital births in all births in a country in the year 2006 (oecd) as well as using an index derived from the share data indicating familial obligation norms. for this, six individual items that indicate such norms were added and recoded so that high values indicate approval of the family and its responsibilities. then, the average value was ascertained for each country and used as macro-indicator in living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 247 the analyses. the bases are the following questions: (1) the following statements are related to the duties people may have in their family. please tell us how much you agree or disagree with each statement: (a) parents’ duty is to do their best for their children even at the expense of their own well-being; (b) grandparents’ duty is to be there for grandchildren in cases of diffi culty (such as divorce of parents or illness); (c) grandparents’ duty is to help grandchildren’s parents in looking after young grandchildren; (2) in your opinion, who – the family or the state – should bear the responsibility for each of the following…? (a) financial support for older persons who are in need? (b) help with household chores for older persons who are in need such as help with cleaning, washing? (c) personal care for older persons who are in need such as nursing or help with bathing or dressing? finally, the geographical circumstances are taken into account by recording the population density and the national area (weltalmanach 2006). other macro-indicators which are relevant for co-residence like the rate of residential property and the percentage of rent costs in the total expenditures of the households prove irrelevant for geographical proximity or distance between generations and are therefore not taken into account in the following analyses (cf. isengard/szydlik 2010). 3.3 methods since the dependent variable, the living distance, is a categorical variable, ordered logit models are estimated (cf. e.g. greene 2003; agresti 2002). these are an enhancement of the binary logit regression and are used when the dependent variable has an ordinal scale and has more than two categories that can be ranked hierarchically. the size of the intervals between the categories is insignifi cant. the corresponding regression equation is: exactly one regression coeffi cient is estimated for each of the independent variables, but a number of constants β0i, which can be interpreted as threshold values between the categories of the dependent variable. the probability of falling in categories 1 to i of a dependent variable, in this case the living distance, with j categories results from it being correlated to the probability of falling in the category i+1 to j. the probability of an event (y) is calculated according to: the question of the living distance from each individual child was only answered once per household so the information has to be transferred to the non-responding partner. this, however, results in no variation in the responses since the living distance to the parental home is a circumstance that cannot vary for both parents if they live together in one household and if it was not recorded when the parents 1... / 1... 0 1 1 2 2( | ) ...i i i i k klogit y x x x x . (1) 1pr( ) ( < )i j j i j y i pr k x u k . (2) • bettina isengard248 lived separately. for this reason, the information was regarded at the household level and the data were processed so that for each family one line per child exists in the data set. since, however, multiple observations may exist per household, in these cases robust standard errors were estimated for clustered data according to households (cf. bye/riley 1989). using an additional stata ado (cf. petersen 2009) it is also possible to calculate cluster-robust standard errors for two dimensions, however only for linear regressions and logit, probit and tobit models. for this reason, additional models (not shown here) were estimated for the macro-indicators (table 2 in section 4.2), which treat the living distance as a linear variable and estimate cluster-robust standard errors according to households and countries. the results proved to be very robust and show no notable differences compared with the onedimensional observation. mainly independent variables, which are additively linked, are included in the model estimations. however, an additional interaction term is used between the number of health restrictions (metric) and the relationship status of the parents (categorical), which indicates a multiplicative correlation. the effects of the number of restrictions without and with partner each show the main effect; the interaction term denotes whether both groups differ signifi cantly from one another (cf. in detail aiken/west 1991). 4 empirical fi ndings 4.1 living distances in europe a fi rst look at the living distances between parents and their adult children reveals distinct differences in the european comparison, in particular between the north and the south (cf. fig. 1). especially co-residence occurs relatively frequently in the southern countries (greece, italy and spain) as well as in traditionally catholic poland. in denmark and sweden, by contrast, parents and their adult children rarely live together under one roof. but here, too, the generations (irrespective of co-residence) live close together, whereas the trend of geographical proximity is again more pronounced in the southern european countries where about 80 percent live in a radius of 25 kilometres, while in denmark and sweden but also in france, by contrast, it is only almost 50 percent. in france and ireland large distances are far more probable than in many other countries of europe. germany, austria and switzerland lie within the european standard; about 40 percent of the parents and children live up to a maximum of fi ve kilometres apart. in the european average, which lies at roughly 50 percent, this is almost every second family. all in all, we see that the living distance increases from the south to the north. this might also be explained by the fact that co-residence plays a rather marginal role in scandinavia where only 5 percent (in denmark) and 6 percent (in sweden) of generations live together under one roof. living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 249 so what does geographical proximity look like if we only observe children who live outside the household or home? excluding children which co-reside the pattern largely remain the same (cf. fig. 2). in the southern countries the geographical distance is far lesser than in the north of europe as well as in france and ireland, whereas the netherlands is an exception. here, the percentage is comparable to that of greece: slightly over 60 percent live within a maximum radius of fi ve kilometres apart. austria and switzerland lie within the european average; in germany the living distances are somewhat greater, almost 30 percent of parents and children live more than 100 kilometres apart (of which approx. 11 percent live even more than 500 kilometres apart). in the czech republic, belgium and denmark the generations rarely live more than 500 kilometres apart, perhaps due to the respective size of the country. fig. 1: living distances in europe (in percent) 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent ø dk se nl fr be ch ie de at cz es pl it gr coresidence up to 5 km up to 25 km up to 100 km up to 500 km 500 km+ and abroad source: share, wave 2, rel. 2.5.0, own calculations (weighted, except for ireland). n=47.510. • bettina isengard250 whether these differences also remain stable if we control for individual variables and familial structures will be more closely examined in the following section. furthermore the infl uence of cultural and institutional circumstances will be illuminated. 4.2 determinants of geographical proximity or distance between the generations the correlations shown previously reveal that the degree of geographical proximity or distance between parents and their adult children in europe shows countryspecifi c differences. these results, however, only comprise the living distances in a quantitative manner, and reveal nothing about the possible causes or backgrounds. in order to fi nd out what determines the living distance between the generations, ordinal regression models are estimated, which take the personal, familial and cultural fig. 2: living distances in europe, excluding co-residence (in percent) source: share, wave 2, rel. 2.5.0, own calculations (weighted, except for ireland). n=38.262 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent ø dk fr ie se de ch at pl cz be gr nl it es up to 5 km up to 25 km up to 100 km up to 500 km 500 km+ and abroad living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 251 contextual structures into account. in table 1 the personal and familial infl uencing factors are included (controlling for countries), before then the country-specifi c differences are examined in greater detail (table 2). it can be shown (cf. table 1) that younger adult children (up to 29 years of age) live signifi cantly closer to their parents than older children (30 years and older). children from the ages of 18 to 29 live particularly often close to their parents when the oldest parent is not older than 64 years. with an increasing age of the parents and primarily the children the geographical distance increases signifi cantly. this is also true when co-resident children are not taken into account, whereas here the effects distinctly weaken. in addition to age, familial structures also play a role, whereas, in line with the life cycle concept, the existence of an own family is a central variable. the relationship status of the child shows signifi cant correlations with geographical proximity or distance. nonetheless this has different effects depending upon whether co-residence is included or not. when children live in a relationship, the living distances are greater in the fi rst case and lesser in the second case. this is because although children usually leave their parental home when they move in together with a partner, they do not move far away (primarily, when children are born). with regard to gender, we only see that sons live less far away than daughters if there is only one parent left. this effect disappears however when co-residence is excluded, this is probably due to the known correlation that sons remain at “hotel mum” far longer than daughters. if co-resident children are excluded, the gender combined with the relationship status of the parents has no longer any infl uence. “competing” family members strongly infl uence geographical proximity or distance. if parents have at least two children the geographical distance for each child enlarges. this pattern is, however, broken when only those children are taken into account who no longer live under one roof with the parents. while a grandchild increases the geographical distance of the generations taking co-residence into account, grandchildren lead to the generations moving closer together if the children (of the respondents) have already left the parental home. the health of the respondents combined with the existence of a relationship has no infl uence on the proximity or distance of the generations if we control for other variables. further results – not shown here – confi rm however that health has an impact on co-residence to such an extent that the probability increases with a rising number of restrictions if only one parent is still living or lives alone. if the parent has a partner, health restrictions do not lead to an increase in children living with their parent. how do socio-economic variables affect proximity or distance? for education, the expected correlations are confi rmed: the better the parents’ education as well as their children’s education, the further apart the generations live. this is also associated with the fact that both generations are generally more mobile and children already move further away for their studies. on the other hand, the economic situation of the parental home, operationalised via the living on earnings, has hardly any infl uence on the living distance (but it does have an infl uence on co-residence). things are different when looking at the labour force status of the children: unemployed children live more frequently near their parents (to a major part due to co-residence) than employed children. economically inactive children (housewives • bettina isengard252 tab. 1: determining factors for geographical proximity or distance: results of ordinal logit analysis including co-residence excluding co-residence coeff. z-value coeff. z-value age and life course indicators age (child up to 29 years/respondent up to 64 years) up to 29 years/65+ years .21* (2.08) .28** (2.96) 30+/up to 64 years .77** (21.12) .11** (2.82) 30+/65+ years .79** (21.80) .15** (4.04) co-habitation, child (no) yes .65** (26.77) -.11** (-4.06) gender child/partner, respondent (daughter-partner) daughter-alone .06+ (1.94) .05 (1.33) son-partner .03 (.93) -.01 (-0.47) son-alone .26** (5.66) .04 (0.80) additional children, respondent (none) one .11** (3.02) .05 (1.14) two .25** (6.61) .14** (3.33) three and more .27** (6.73) .12** (2.61) number of grandchildren, respondent (none) one .22** (7.53) -.27** (-4.06) two .04 (1.57) -.34** (-8.39) three and more -.02 (-0.46) -.33** (-10.81) health, respondent (adl + iadl) number of restrictions (without partner) -.01 (-1.18) .00 (0.10) ia effect: number*partner .02+ (1.91) -.00 (-0.06) number of restrictions (with partner) .01 (1.42) .00 (0.06) socio-economic indicators education, respondent (intermediate) low -.08** (-3.02) -.13** (-4.36) high .29** (8.55) .23** (6.75) income situation (great difficulty) some difficulty -.07+ (-1.90) .04 (0.90) reasonable ease -.07+ (-1.85) .05 (1.16) ease -.00 (-0.05) .06 (1.11) education, child (intermediate) low -.12** (-4.67) -.14** (-4.35) high .47** (18.66) .53** (19.87) employment status, child (employed) unemployed -.44** (-8.88) -.04 (-0.66) in training -.64** (-9.36) .71** (11.94) homemakers .20** (5.81) .10* (2.22) (early) retirement -.15** (-2.91) -.02 (-0.39) other -.31** (-2.57) .65** (5.61) origin effects community size (villages and townships) (large) cities -.08** (-3.78) -.19** (-7.66) migration background (no) yes .17** (3.87) .21** (4.71) n [hh-cluster] 38.812 [17.486] 30.973 [15.357] pseudo-r2 .06 .03 note: reference categories in italics. signifi cance levels: ** p<.01, * p<.05, + p<.10. z-values in brackets. the signifi cances for the main effect number of restrictions (with partner) were calculated based on the statistical post hoc probing (cf. in detail aiken/west 1991). models controlled for countries (results see table 2). source: share, wave 2, rel. 2.5.0, own calculations. living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 253 or -husbands) by contrast live further away, which is linked to family cycle events (relationship and child). finally, the origin effects also prove to be relevant. children with a more highly educated background live further away from their parents than children from lesseducated social classes. yet while living in cities signifi cantly lessens the distance between the generations as expected, the generations live much further apart when they have a migration background. based on the empirical fi ndings, it can be shown that individual and familial characteristics have a considerable infl uence on the geographical proximity or distance between generations. but what about country-specifi c differences? table 2 contains the regression coeffi cients based on cluster-robust standard errors for various country-specifi c variables controlled for the individual and familial variables from the basic model. in general, the national differences found in the bivariate results are confi rmed here. in the northern european states, the geographical distance between the generations is much greater than in the southern european countries. but how can these differences be explained? in order to illuminate the correlations more precisely, the results of the infl uence of various macro-indicators are shown below. the infl uence of the macro-indicators also proves signifi cant when controlling for individual variables and familial structures. in general: (1) the higher the social and family expenditure, the further apart the generations live from one another, (2) the poorer the national labour market situation, the closer parents and children live, (3) the more poverty and inequality, the lesser are the distances, (4) the greater the percentage of non-marital births and the lesser the value of family, the greater the geographical distance between the generations and (5) the larger the country, the greater the living distances and the more densely populated, the lesser the geographical distance. all in all, the effects are stronger if co-residence is included; nonetheless the directions and signifi cances of the correlations remain stable. only the country-specifi c income inequality shows no effect for geographical proximity if co-residence is excluded and youth unemployment then has the effect that the living distances increase. this means that children frequently live with their parents when youth unemployment is high, but also that in countries with high rates they are apparently rather forced to move further away from their parents to escape the precarious job situation. the likelihood ratio test shows that the infl uence of the countries or types of welfare states are the greatest, but also that family expenditure as well as the social status of the family measured via the percentage of non-marital births and agreement with familial obligation norms are of signifi cance. if we only observe children who do not live with their parents, then the geographical circumstances are also important. finally, we can note that overall the expected correlations were confi rmed. since it is shown that age and family-cycle processes and, conditionally, also genderspecifi c differences have an infl uence on the geographical proximity between the generations (hypotheses 1a and 1b). but socio-economic structures also have an infl uence. in particular a better education of parents and children promotes greater • bettina isengard254 geographical distances. the income situation of the parents and the employment status of the child are, by contrast, less important. hypothesis 2 is only partially confi rmed. likewise, social, regional and ethnic origins play a role when explaining living distances. children with a higher social status background from rural regions tab. 2: cultural contextual differences in europe note: models controlled for the variables from table 1, whereas each of the macro indicators were varied. 1 value was divided by 1,000 for the purpose of better portrayal. reference categories in italics. signifi cance levels: ** p<.01, * p<.05, + p<.10. z-values in brackets. (number of cases: n = 38.812) source: share, wave 2, rel. 2.5.0, own calculations. including co-residence lr ratio test excluding co-residence lr ratio test coeff. z-value coeff. z-value country (germany) 2704.73 940.20 austria -.29** (-4.20) -.20** (-2.84) sweden .48** (8.05) .34** (5.67) netherlands -.10+ (-1.47) -.30** (-5.04) spain -1.02** (-14.88) -.77** (-8.98) italy -1.06** (-16.94) -.41** (-5.86) france .43** (6.69) .48** (7.59) denmark .44** (7.44) .02 (0.33) greece -.98** (-14.44) -.03 (-0.42) switzerland .09 (1.47) -.09 (-1.25) belgium -.51** (-9.40) -.54** (-9.79) czech republic -.34** (-5.70) -.12+ (-1.95) poland -.84** (-13.67) -.13+ (-1.87) ireland -.11 (-1.20) .02 (0.26) country groups (continental europe) 2078.20 245.84 northern europe .55** (18.21) .32** (10.12) southern europe -.93** (-27.55) -.26** (-6.40) eastern europe -.51** (-15.50) -.02 (-0.43) social expenditure1 .15** (25.43) 905.94 .04** (6.61) 60.96 family expenditure .48** (32.64) 1576.96 .20** (12.65) 228.32 poverty rate -.10** (-28.44) 1278.20 -.03** (-8.87) 117.70 income inequality (gini) -.06** (-21.08) 644.52 -.00 (-0.76) 0.78 unemployment rate -.08** (-16.28) 378.72 .02* (-2.73) 10.35 youth unemployment rate -.03** (-15.63) 356.20 .01** (4.65) 30.31 non-marital births .03** (30.02) 1442.66 .01** (8.93) 122.07 familialism -.04** (-39.33) 1563.83 -.01** (-5.54) 30.67 population density -.08** (-8.59) 92.76 -.16** (-15.83) 323.61 national area .04** (6.86) 71.05 .08** (12.12) 220.07 living distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 255 live further from their parents (than children from lesser-educated social classes and from urban regions (hypotheses 3a and 3c)). contrary to the expectations, which are supported by previous empirical fi ndings from other countries, children with migration backgrounds, who cite the availability of networks of relatives and friends from the country of origin as the reason for geographical proximity, live further from their parents. therefore this analysis does not confi rm hypothesis 3b. this might be due to the fact that the older generation, for example those in retirement age return to their homeland while their children stay abroad. the empirically observed differences between the countries can be explained by referring to the type of welfare state. social benefi ts have both a direct (hypothesis 4a) and an indirect infl uence on geographical distance through the varying country-specifi c levels of prosperity, measured here via poverty and inequality (hypothesis 4b) the same applies to the importance of the family (hypothesis 4c). in addition to the cultural and institutional circumstances, however, geographical circumstances also play a role. the living distances rises with increasing national area (hypothesis 5a), while the settlement structure has the opposite effect: the more densely populated the country, the closer parents and their adult children live (hypothesis 5b). 5 conclusions and outlook from a historical perspective, families are the most stable form of human co-existence and, due to incisive demographic changes, in recent decades especially relationships between parents and their (adult) children are gaining more signifi cance. since most european countries demonstrate a trend towards fewer children, an ever lesser number of children spend a longer lifetime – due to the increased life expectancy – together with their parents. this purely quantitative change in relationships is accompanied by a qualitative change and familial bonds are characterised by a lifelong solidarity. against this background, the study of the geographical proximity or distance between the generations is not only of scientifi c interest, but it is also relevant for social policies since the living distance is a necessary prerequisite for many forms of intergenerational solidarity. while fi nancial transfers are even possible across great distances, timely support is often tied to geographical proximity: assistance in the household, with nursing or care of grandchildren, can only be provided if the givers and recipients do not live too far apart. yet why do some parents and their adult children live closer together than others? what is it like in the single european countries? and how can country-specifi c differences be explained? as could be shown, based on the empirical analyses, the generations in all of the countries studied live relatively close to one another. nevertheless there are personal, familial and cultural contextual differences, which are also important from a socio-political position. not least due to processes of demographic change, the relationships between the generations are becoming more important and familial support networks often help where the state is not obligated to do so. the living • bettina isengard256 distance is an important prerequisite for this. at the individual and familial level, geographical proximity in europe is promoted or impeded by (1) age and life course variables, (2) socio-economic factors and (3) origin effects. not only individual, but also social inequality structures strongly infl uence the living distances between the generations. against this background, co-residence cannot only be assessed as a direct reaction to socio-economic and social uncertainties – as known from the literature – but also intergenerational proximity or distance as a whole. since it can be shown that not only individual needs and opportunities of individuals but also contextual circumstances promote or impede proximity. the cultural and institutional structures can vary in each country and can partly be subject to welfare state infl uences. this results in both direct and indirect differences in the geographical distances between the generations in these countries. overall, it can be shown that in nations with generally better social benefi ts and specifi cally family-policy expenditures, parents and their adult children live further apart from one another. this might also be explained by the fact that in these countries not only the familial obligation norm, but primarily the necessity to provide assistance and support decreases compared to weak welfare states. since the geographical distances become smaller with increasing poverty and income inequality at the societal level, this hypothesis is supported. this argument can be underpinned with the example of co-residence, since this living arrangement increases in countries with the lowest welfare benefi ts. this enforces the assumption that co-residence is frequently not a voluntary living arrangement chosen by parents and children who want to live together, but rather that economic necessities or uncertainties exert infl uence. finally, however, it should not be forgotten that in addition to personal needs and opportunities, existing family structures and social opportunity structures, an action-based perspective can also be of signifi cance. ultimately, also the living distance is (almost) always the result of an individual decision and subjective action structures play just as much a role as objective variables. the psychological and social disposition of the generations is of signifi cance here. emotional bonds between parents and children as well as personal values also infl uence the co-existence between the generations. acknowledgements i am very grateful for valuable comments on an earlier version of the paper from two anonymous reviewers and for very helpful hints from my colleagues of the research group labour, generation, stratifi cation (ages) klaus haberkern, ronny könig, franz neuberger and marc szydlik as well as from martina brandt, christian deindl, corinne igel and tina schmid. i would also like to thank the swiss national science foundation for the fi nancial support. this paper uses data from share release 2.5.0, as of may 24th 2011. the share data collection has been primarily funded by the european commission through the 5th framework programme (project qlk6-ct-200100360 in the thematic programme quality of life), through the 6th framework programme (projects share-i3, rii-ct2006-062193, comliving distances between parents and their adult children in europe • 257 pare, cit5-ct-2005-028857, and sharelife, cit4-ct-2006-028812) and through the 7th framework programme (share-prep, 211909 and share-leap, 227822). additional funding from the u.s. national institute on aging (u01 ag09740-13s2, p01 ag005842, p01 ag08291, p30 ag12815, y1-ag-4553-01 and ogha 04-064, iag bsr06-11, r21 ag025169) as well as from various national sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org for a full list of funding institutions). for details see börsch-supan/jürges (2005). the data were adjusted for this study and an extensive plausibility check was conducted. references aassve, arnstein; billari, francesco c.; mazzuco, stefano; ongaro, fausta 2002: leaving home ain’t easy: a comparative longitudinal 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federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “der apfel lebt nicht weit vom stamm: wohnentfernungen zwischen eltern und ihren erwachsenen kindern in europa”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-09de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-201309de0, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 12.09.2011 date of acceptance: 01.05.2012 dr. bettina isengard ( ). university of zurich, institute of sociology. zürich. switzerland. e-mail: isengard@soziologie.uzh.ch url: http://www.suz.uzh.ch/isengard.html © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) milewski_et_al_englisch.indd monitoring of german fertility: estimation of monthly and yearly total fertility rates on the basis of preliminary monthly data gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters abstract: this paper introduces a set of methods for estimating fertility indicators in the absence of recent and short-term birth statistics. for germany, we propose a set of straightforward methods that allow for the computation of monthly and yearly total fertility rates (mtfr) on the basis of preliminary monthly data, including a confi dence interval. the method for estimating most current fertility rates can be applied when no information on the age structure and the number of women exposed to childbearing is available. the methods introduced in this study are useful for calculating monthly birth indicators, with minimal requirements for data quality and statistical effort. in addition, we suggest an approach for projecting the yearly tfr based on preliminary monthly information up to june. keywords: demographic monitoring · germany · monthly total fertility rate · confi dence interval · tfr 1 introduction despite the increasing interest – from both population researchers and the public – in short-term trends and variations in fertility patterns in germany, no up-todate birth statistics are currently available. there are two main reasons for the lack of recent and short-term demographic data. first, information on birth numbers is made available to scientists with a time lag. second, the possibilities for estimating demographic measures based on monthly data have, up to this point, barely been explored. the goal of this paper is to propose a new approach for rapidly estimating shortterm developments in fertility rates in germany. the demographic monitoring of recent developments is especially interesting in contexts in which, for example, a new policy has been introduced, or a sudden social upheaval has occurred. the focus of this paper is, however, on the technical aspects of the proposed strategy for demographic monitoring. we leave out any theoretical, historical, political, and comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 2 (2010): 245-278 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-07en4 • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters246 sociological framework that relates to fertility. instead, we seek to provide a detailed demonstration of our technical approach. we provide methodological tools that will enable us to calculate monthly fertility rates, and to estimate up-to-date indicators of fertility behaviour based on aggregate monthly statistics. our claims and our research were inspired by the latest state-of-the-art approach for calculating monthly fertility rates, which was introduced in a study by sobotka et al. (2005). unfortunately, it is not possible to apply the methods and indicators used in the study for austria to the german case, because the calculations require highquality data, such as parity-specifi c information, which is not available for germany (or for many other countries). therefore, we propose the construction of a monthly rate that serves as a basis for a relatively prompt estimation of the total fertility rate (tfr). the paper is structured as follows. we start by describing the peculiarities and limitations of fertility data in germany. next, we review the literature on four approaches that have been brought up in recent years in order to solve similar data problems. after providing an overview of the different data sources in germany that contain information on birth numbers (section 3), we introduce our method for calculating a monthly tfr, along with the confi dence intervals in section 4. the forth section deals also with the estimation of the yearly tfr on the basis of monthly data, as well as the projection of the yearly tfr after data for the fi rst six months have become available. the fi fth section presents an evaluation of our method. we conclude with a discussion and some refl ections. 2 background 2.1 motivation for the analysis of seasonal patterns of births (e.g., lam/miron 1991; doblhammer et al. 2000), as well as for studies in the growing fi eld of life-course research, data that is monthly, rather than yearly, is required. the effects on fertility of an economic crisis, welfare state reforms, or legislative changes can only be observed and studied properly when recent and detailed information is available. information on fertility behaviour that is solid and internationally comparable is, however, published with a time lag in a yearly cycle. in germany, the total fertility rate (tfr) for a given year is generally calculated und published in late summer of the following year. more detailed demographic data, such as the age of the women at childbirth and regional distributions, are not made available until even later dates. a further limitation of the german birth statistics is the lack of information on intra-year dynamics. for scientifi c or public use, no monthly data on the number of births per age of the mothers are published, mainly due to privacy restrictions. as a consequence, researchers with an interest in short-term variations in birth numbers are faced with a lack of recent and disaggregated data. monitoring of german fertility • 247 as is the case for most other countries that maintain national statistics, the monthly summarized total number of births is the only short-term indicator that is currently available for germany (sobotka et al. 2005). this raw number of births is published by the federal statistical offi ce with a time lag of about three months. both members of the media and policy makers tend to cite this raw number extensively. however, like any other crude number in demographic research, this fi gure has several serious shortcomings that are mostly neglected by the public: because no standardization is done, interpretations and comparisons over time and by country are very limited. without information on the number of potential mothers exposed to childbearing, and the age structure of women who gave birth during a particular month, the number of births is almost useless for research purposes. short-term trends and changes in births behaviour – i.e., intra-year dynamics – cannot be detected on the basis of the birth numbers currently available. we seek to address these problems by providing a standardized monthly rate that can be continuously updated, and that is made available with little or no delay to researchers, as well as to the public. we call it the “monitor of births”. one of the key challenges in creating this monitor is to fi nd a balance between demographic precision, which calls for a complex set of methods, and a high degree of accessibility. in addition, we strive to take into account the specifi c german context, observing fertility differentials between the eastern and the western federal states by calculating separate rates for the two regions. the challenge that we have been facing in doing so is two-fold: fi rst, we need to obtain adequate data; and, second, we need to solve the methodical problem of calculating a rate standardized for the unknown age of the mothers at childbearing, and for the unknown population at risk in a given month. 2.2 previous research monthly fertility rates before describing our approach, we will review previous projects that have made similar attempts to estimate short-term trends in fertility rates. for several decades of the previous century, fertility rates were calculated exclusively on the basis of yearly data, even though monthly birth numbers were also published (calot/nadot 1977). these two demographic sources were linked for the fi rst time in 1977 in france by calot and nadot (1977). although they used monthly birth data, their stated goal was the estimation of the expected number of births for the current year. the fi rst method for the observation of monthly fertility rates was introduced four years later (calot 1981)1. in contrast to the ideas calot and nadot developed in 1977, the new method used only one data source on monthly births, and was simul1 this paper, later termed “the calot method”, was translated and published in german in the same year by höhn (1981). • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters248 taneously applied to france, germany, and england and wales (calot 1981). due to the lack of age-specifi c information on births and the number of women exposed to childbearing, calot made a detailed investigation of the relationship between the yearly total number of births and the total fertility rate. he separated the two measures in order to calculate the mean size of the female population of reproductive ages. to calculate an estimated monthly tfr of the most recent year, the tfr and the population numbers from the most recent year of observation were used, adjusted for seasonal variations and the different lengths of months and the distribution of weekdays per month (calot 1981). to evaluate the accuracy of his method, calot analyzed separately any possible errors due to changes in the female population and age-specifi c fertility rates. the analysis showed that the deviation per calendar year from 1971 to 1983 was no more than two percent. these errors were mainly attributed to migration and changes in the mean age at birth (calot 1981). this method can be referred to as the “historic approach”, because it is not applied today, even though comprehensive plans to establish an international monitoring system of monthly fertility rates did exist2 (höhn 1981). we can only speculate as to why calot’s method failed to become widely accepted: first, the fundamental basis of the method – i.e., the relationship between the summary measures tfr and total number of births, expressed as a mean generational size – may have been too unconventional to fi nd a place in the practices of the federal statistical calculation system. second, calot calculated the error of his estimated mean generational size, but failed to evaluate the preliminary birth counts against the later published fi nal numbers. a further problem is related to the inclusion of weekday coeffi cients to control for the different numbers of weekdays and weekend days in each month.3 even though a bias is caused by such heterogeneity, in many countries the necessary information on daily records is not available, and the avoided error is so small that providing an additional data source and calculation method would be far out of proportion to the benefi ts of doing so. today, there are two approaches that are being used to calculate and publish monthly fertility rates, which we refer to here as “recent approaches”. the fi rst method was developed and applied by the offi ce for national statistics in england and wales (ons 2009), with the goal of calculating monthly fertility rates for past years, but not for the present year. accordingly, no estimation of births or use of preliminary data is performed, but a correction for seasonal fl uctuations is made. seasonal fl uctuations are eliminated through the application of the x-11 algorithm method. the denominator for each monthly rate is calculated by linear interpolation between two known mid-year populations (ons 2009). 2 in addition to england and wales, france, germany, hungary, the netherlands, switzerland, spain, and portugal planned to implement the “calot method” (höhn 1981). 3 on sunday and saturday the number of births is up to 20 % lower than during the week (höhn 1981). monitoring of german fertility • 249 the second, more recently developed approach is the “fertility monitoring system” of the vienna institute of demography (vid). this approach, which is the only method for calculating monthly tfr on the basis of preliminary and the most recent data, has been described by sobotka et al. (2005); here termed as “sobotka approach”. these authors have developed an innovative and complex method that differs fundamentally from its predecessors. they calculate total fertility rates for each birth order separately. in combination with an exposure-specifi c female population denominator, a period average parity (pap), based on parity progression ratios, is then calculated. hence, in addition to being standardized for age and parity, the resulting number is not affected by tempo effects. the similarity of this method to previous approaches lies in the adaptation of seasonal and calendar factors. furthermore, they have resolved the problem of instable endings in smoothed time series through the use of auto-regressive, integrated moving-average models (arima), in combination with the box-jenkins method (sobotka 2005). while sobotka et al. have succeeded in creating a high-quality system of fertility monitoring for austria, demographers who want to use the sobotka approach to create a birth monitoring system in other countries face a serious problem: for this approach to work, disaggregated individual data is needed. complete data on birth order, the date of the previous birth, and the yearly ageand order-specifi c distribution of women exposed to a birth of a certain order, as well as on daily births, are very rarely available. thus, the application of the austrian method to other countries is seldom possible, and calot’s (1981) original idea of constructing an indicator which allows international comparisons is, even today, not fully realized. to sum up, we can report that historic and recent approaches have been developed to observe and estimate monthly reproductive behaviour. of the approaches that use preliminary data, only the method developed by sobotka et al. is in use today. most attempts have failed to provide an easy-to-understand and easy-to-calculate indicator. based on the lessons of the failure of the calot method, these two fundamental characteristics should be demanded from an indicator, which could persist for more than just a couple of years. yearly fertility rates up to the present, no method for estimating a yearly tfr based on preliminary monthly data has been developed. so far, there have only been attempts at calculating the yearly number of births, as mentioned above (calot/nadot 1977). calot and nadot proposed a procedure for estimating in advance the number of births that will be observed throughout the current year. in order to make this kind of short-term forecast, two data sources on monthly births are used. the fi rst source contains a provisional number of births, based on manual counts of birth certifi cates, and published with a delay of at least three months. the second data source is even more up-to-date: it consists of a selected number of births in certain french towns that were released one month after they occurred. in order to estimate the total number of yearly births, a linear extrapolation technique based on the ratio of both sources and a seasonal variation factor was applied (calot/nadot 1977). • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters250 according to the evaluations of the authors themselves, the mean quadratic error of this extrapolation depends on the distance of the month to the forecast and the amount of provisional data available in the respective year. because this error is normally distributed, a 95 % confi dence interval could be computed (calot/nadot 1977). even though their approach seemed to work quite well, the authors did not implement it in a regular report. in addition, no effort to calculate a rate instead of the number of births was made. 3 data for germany, four different types of birth data exist (see tab. 1); three of them contain information about the month of birth. these datasets differ in terms of regional classifi cation, time reference, and time lag of release; and each set of data has its specifi c limitations. first, the most recent source, labeled n1 (we use the names of the datasets as given by the statistical offi ces), contains the number of births provided by the federal statistical offi ce about three months after the submission of the number of births from the local offi ces of vital statistics (standesämter) to the statistical offi ces of the federal states (länder). it is important to note that the date of this information does not necessarily match the date of birth. most signifi cantly, births that occur at the end of december often are not registered by the offi ce of vital statistics until january of the following year. second, after the births were reported by the offi ces of vital statistics to the statistical offi ce of the federal states, these länder offi ces add the place of residence of the parents to the statistics and check the data for plausibility. the result of this procedure is aggregated in the preliminary statistics n10, which also contains the variable “federal state”. while it contains a considerable amount of information, a major problem with this dataset is that all implausible cases are initially excluded, and are not entered into the statistics until a much later date, following clarifi cation of each case. thus, notable numbers of births are systematically missing every month. it is important to note that the cases that are excluded from n10 because of implausibility are not added to n10 at any time in the future, but are, rather, included in the fi nal dataset n30. third, the n30 statistics by the federal statistical offi ce provides aggregated birth numbers upon request, and also contains information on the ages of the mothers in one-year age groups, as well as on the mothers’ places of residence, and on the revised implausible cases. these numbers are not published until another year has passed, and, unfortunately, they appear without any information on a monthly or regional basis. in order to distinguish this source from the fourth dataset, we call it n30a, where “a” indicates aggregated data. fourth, the disaggregated data from n30 become available with a time lag of about one year at the federal research data center (forschungsdatenzentrum at the federal statistical offi ce or the statistical offi ces of the federal states), but this data can only be accessed by making an offi cial request. we call this scientifi c-use monitoring of german fertility • 251 fi le n30suf. these data contain monthly information, together with the age of the mother, as well as a regional breakdown to the district level for all individual cases. figure 1 shows the deviations of each preliminary data source (n1 and n10) from the fi nal offi cial result n30suf for the total number of children born in 2007. the lower degree of accuracy of the later published statistics n10 is an unexpected fi nding. while n1 differs no more than 10 % from n30suf within a given month, over the long term, n10 varies about -/+25 %, especially in january and december. the cause of this paradoxical phenomenon is a cumulative effect of the inclusion of those cases that were initially considered implausible, and were only later included in n30suf. because of this shortcoming, we decided to use the less accurate source n10 for the comparison between eastern and western germany only. for the calculation of the rate for all of germany, the data quality of n1 is superior until n30suf is fi nally published. due to the systematic underand over-coverage of the preliminary monthly birth statistics, a weighting factor for january and december must be added, at least for the data contained in n10. since the time lag of the publication of the offi cial statistics is also important, table 2 shows the dates and types of the announcements of the federal statistical offi ce in the year 2009. the offi cial german tfr for 2009 was published in september 2009. at this time, the number of births in n10 and n1 for 2009 was updated for march (n10) and june (n1), as well. the fi nal result n30 for 2008 did not become available at the federal research data center until december 2009; by this time, the preliminary data had already been updated to july 2009 and september 2009. tab. 1: types of monthly birth data in germany data source type of data regional depth age of the mother at birth time reference time lag of release by federal statistical office other characteristics n1 aggregated number of births total germany no month > 3 months date of registration at the office of vital statistics n10 aggregated number of births federal state no month > 6 months place of residence, date of birth, excluding implausible cases n30a aggregated number of births district yes year > 9 months place of residence, date of birth including implausible cases n30suf individual level district yes month > 12 months place of residence, date of birth, including implausible cases source: statistical offi ces in germany • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters252 in addition to information about births, data on the population at risk is needed in order to calculate demographic rates. we approximate the female population at risk by the mid-year population to be in the age range 15 to 45. since accurate data for women that are monthly and age-specifi c are not available, we use the offi cial annual fi gures on the numbers of people residing in germany, which implies the assumption of equally distributed censoring events (death and migration) during a calendar year. like the yearly tfr, the mid-year population numbers are published by the federal statistical offi ce with a lag of at least 10 months after the end of a given calendar year. a simple up-to-date estimation for calendar year t could be obtained by using the population at risk from the previous year: fig. 1: deviation between the absolute monthly number of births in the n1 and n10 statistics and the offi cial result n30suf, germany, 2007 (%) -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 ja nu ary feb rua ry marc h apri l may ju ne ju ly aug us t sep tem be r octo be r nov em be r dec em be r deviation between andn1 n30suf deviation between andn10 n30suf deviation in percent month source: federal statistical offi ce germany f ]45,15[p )1t(p)t(p f ]44,14[ f ]45,15[ (1) monitoring of german fertility • 253 accordingly, a small bias may be caused by migration and the number of deaths that occur during the preceding year. as will be seen later in our results section, this does not constitute a major problem for germany as a whole, but introduces a bias for east germany. 4 methods we develop one approach for calculating monthly fertility rates on the basis of the preliminary data n1 and n10, and label them “preliminary mtfr”. then we estimate a preliminary yearly tfr that is based on n1, and which is available well before the offi cial announcement. we also calculate the fi nal tfr on a monthly and a yearly basis once all the fi nal data of a year have become available, and label this the “fi nal mtfr (monthly)” and the “fi nal tfr (yearly)”. we test the signifi cance of the difference in the fi nal mtfrs of the current and previous years by assuming that the number of births follows a poisson distribution. finally, we project the yearly total fertility rate as soon as the preliminary data have become available for the fi rst half of the current year (january to june); this fi gure is labelled the “projected yearly tfr”. 4.1 estimating monthly total fertility rates estimation of the fi nal mtfr the fi nal mtfr can be computed accurately on the basis of the fi nal data n30suf. since the births included in this data, here referred as , are classifi ed by months and the age x of the mother, and the population at risk is known (as derived tab. 2: dates of announcements by the federal statistical offi ce regarding birth data (years 2008 and 2009) month type of announcement september 2009 official tfr for germany in 2008 (n30a) september 2009 number of births by federal länder in march 2009 (n10) september 2009 number of births in june 2009 (n1) december 2009 final result for the year 2008 (n30suf) becomes available at the federal research data center december 2009 number of births by federal länder in july 2009 (n10) december 2009 number of births for germany in september 2009 (n1) source: federal statistical offi ce germany suf30n xb • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters254 from equation 1), a fi nal mtfr (m,t) for month m and calendar year t can be obtained by (2): note that we introduce here the calendar adjustment factor caf (m,t), which standardizes each month m to 1/12 of each calendar year t. the factor caf (m,t) is calculated by dividing the number of days of a particular month n(m) by the number of days of the given year n(t). the term is then multiplied by 12 in order to construct an easy-to-interpret indicator as follows: as a result, the mtfr (m,t) for month m and calendar year t expresses the average number of children a woman would have if the conditions of the particular month m were constant throughout the whole year t. estimation of the preliminary mtfr for computing most recent fertility rates, based on the statistics n1 and n10 (which are available well before n30suf), an additional intermediary step is necessary, since only the total number of births, without any information on the age of the mothers at birth, are available here. we assume that the age-specifi c birth rates of a given year rx(t) are the same as in the preceding year.4 subsequently, the monthly number of births per age can be obtained by multiplying the number of women of the previous year by the recent birth rate rx(t). )t,m(caf )t(p )t,m(b )t,m(mtfr 45x 15x f x suf30n x (2) )m(n )t(n 12 )m(n 12/)t(n )t,m(caf (3) 4 originally, we had in this case used the approach that the expected relative number of births per age and month is the same as the relative number of births per age in the preceding year. in the evaluation of our results, we compared both approaches and found that they produced almost equal results; deviations occurred only on the third decimal (peters/milewski/doblhammer 2009). )1t(p )1t(b )t(r f x suf30n x x (4) )1t(p f ]1x[ )1t(p)t(r)t(b f ]1x[x const x (5) monitoring of german fertility • 255 the resulting number represents the births per age that would have been observed if the age-specifi c fertility rates had been identical to year (t-1). accordingly, we can now answer the following question: “how many births would have been observed in the respective age if the tfr had been the same as in the previous year, and no changes in the age distribution had occurred?” in order to calculate the number of births per age which fi t to the observed total number in the statistics n1 or n10, a weighting procedure has to be adopted: for computing the age-specifi c births for eastern and western germany, bn10(m,t), instead of bn1(m,t), is used in equation 6. according to equation 2, the preliminary monthly total fertility rate for germany, labelled mtfr, is calculated by summing up the age-specifi c birth rates over ages 15 to 45: in the same manner, the total fertility rates for eastern and western germany are computed as: since the number of births in n10 for western germany is systematically underestimated in january by about 25 % (20 % for eastern germany), and is systematically overestimated in december by approximately 25 % (20 % for eastern germany) (see fig. 1), a weighting factor for these months is specifi ed. this factor is termed error e, and is 0.25 for western germany and 0.2 for eastern germany. )t,m(b )t(b )t(b )t,m(b 1n 45x 15x const x const x1n x (6) )t,m(caf )1t(p )t,m(b )t,m(mtfr 45x 15x f ]1x[ 1n x (7) )t,m(caf )1t(p )t,m(b )t,m(mtfr 45x 15x f ]1x[ 10n x (8) )m(n )e1()t(n )t(cafdecember (9) )t(bconst x )m(n )e1()t(n )t(cafjanuary • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters256 estimation of the preliminary yearly tfr in addition to allowing us to observe monthly fertility behaviour, our approach for monitoring births in germany meets the demand for an up-to-date yearly tfr. normally, this indicator is offi cially published by the federal statistical offi ce for the previous year around august5 of the following year, while the preliminary number of total births in a calendar year n1 is already available in early spring of the following year. due to this time lag, we decided to estimate a yearly tfr that is based on n1, and which can be made available before the offi cial announcement. again, the major problem that we had to solve was the missing information on the age structure of the mothers. as for monthly fertility, only the total number of births is available for the previous year, and the population at risk is unknown. as was done for the computation of the monthly tfr, we assume that neither mortality nor migration occurred among the women in reproductive ages during the previous year. the population at risk can then be computed according to equation (1). in order to obtain age-specifi c fertility rates without having any information on the age-at-birth distribution, we use the respective distribution of the previous year. as was done in estimating preliminary monthly age-specifi c births counts, rx(t) of equation 4 is used for estimating yearly data, performed in equation 10. as (t) represents the number of births that would be expected if fertility rates had been the same as in the preceding year; equation 11 weights this number by the actually observed preliminary number of births. finally, the preliminary yearly tfr for germany can be computed analogically to our monthly procedure: 5 the offi cial tfr for 2007 was published on august 20, 2008; www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/ cms/sites/destatis/internet/de/presse/pm/2008/08/pd08__298__12641,templateid=renderpri nt.psml [access: 07/14/2009]. the offi cial tfr for 2008 was published on september 3rd 2009: www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/sites/destatis/internet/de/presse/pm/2009/09/pd09__ 327__12641,templateid=renderprint.psml )1t(p)t(r)t(b f ]1x[x const x (10) const xb )t(b )t(b )t(b )t(b 1n 45x 15x const x const x1n x (11) 45x 15x f ]1x[ 1n x1n )1t(p )t(b )t(tfr (12) monitoring of german fertility • 257 the quality of this preliminary yearly tfr depends, fi rst, on the degree of mismatch between the preliminary and the fi nal total number of births; and, second, on the amount of variation in age-specifi c distributions of births. generally, these limitations should not seriously distort the estimated tfr, because the preliminary number of births n1 usually has few missing cases, and fertility behaviour concerning age may not change dramatically from one year to another. signifi cance test of the difference in the tfr of the current month compared to the same month of the previous year one of the most characteristic features of monthly fertility rate measurement is its seasonal pattern (c.f. flaskämper 1962: 258f.; doblhammer et al. 2000)6. therefore, signifi cant trends in fertility cannot be detected by comparing monthly tfrs during one year. in addition, we have to control for calendar-month variation by comparing fertility rates of a particular month to the fertility rates in the same month of the previous year: deviation(m,t) = mtfr (m,t) – mtfr(m,t–1) another important issue that arises when observing monthly time series involves the distinction between random and systematic variations. due to the high degree of uncertainty of preliminary data, we will not compute any form of test statistics for monthly calculated fertility rates on the basis of n1 and n10. thus, we will only test differences on the basis of n30suf. note that this approach works for monthly, as well as for yearly data. a fi rst approximation involves treating births occurring in a certain month by a fi xed number of women of a specifi c age as rare events,7 and therefore as the realization of a poisson distribution. accordingly, the estimated age-specifi c variance of births is: by treating births at each age as stochastically independent from one another, the variance for the tfr can be computed by summing up the age-specifi c variances from ages 15 to 45:8 (13) 6 we decided to avoid eliminating seasonal fl uctuations by a certain algorithm since the preliminary data used as input do not include stable seasonal patterns. 7 rare events are characterized by the probability of occurrence converging to zero, while, at the same time, the number of trials converges to infi nity. 8 the sum of poisson-distributed random variables follows a poisson distribution whose parameter is the sum of the component parameters. 2f ]1x[ suf30n xsuf30n x )p( b )asbr(var (14) • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters258 given a suffi ciently large number of births we can approximate the poisson distribution by the normal distribution and we compute the confi dence interval of the tfr by the following formula: we follow payton et al. (2003), who demonstrate that non-overlapping confi dence intervals corresponding to an -error of 17 % (z0.83=1.0) are suffi cient to approximate a signifi cance test based on an -error of 0.05 (payton et al. 2003: 5). projection of the yearly tfr based on the fi rst six months of the current year in addition to the estimation of a preliminary yearly tfr, our goal is the projection of the fi nal yearly tfr on the basis of the births that occurred in the fi rst half of the current year. for example, to estimate a tfr in 2007, we calculated the proportion of the cumulated preliminary mtfr up to june from the later observed fi nal tfrn30a, as published by the federal statistical offi ce, separately for the period 2001-2006, according to equation 17. the geometric mean of these six proportions is almost exactly 50 %, as seen in table 5, and serves as a weighting factor for the projection of the yearly tfr, demonstrated in equation 18. 5 evaluation of the estimates of the preliminary monthly and yearly tfrs for the evaluation of our approach, we use the year 2007 (additional material for the years 2001 to 2006 is displayed in the appendix). we start by evaluating the estimates of the monthly tfrs for germany (tab. 3a). then we review our preliminary monthly estimates for eastern and western germany (tab. 3b-c). finally, we )tfr(varztfrupperlimit/lowerlimit suf30n 83.0 suf30n (16) a30n 1n junm janm tfr )t,m(mtfr )t(p (17) p junm janm 1n )t,m(mtfr)6t,...,1t(p)t(rtf (18) 45x 15x 2f ]1x[ suf30n xsuf30n )p( b )tfr(var (15) monitoring of german fertility • 259 evaluate our estimates of the preliminary yearly tfr (tab. 4a-c) and show our early projection of the tfr of the current year on the basis of six-month data (tab. 5). 5.1 monthly fertility rates germany table 3a presents the results for the preliminary and the fi nal mtfr. the second column, fi nal mtfr, contains the fi nal rate for the respective month, together with the confi dence intervals (in columns 3 and 4, ul: upper limit, ll: lower limit), as calculated on the basis of n30suf. column 5 contains our preliminary mtfr, calculated on the basis of n1. column 6 shows the absolute deviation of our estimate from the fi nal mtfr. the calculations for total germany are based on the earliest available statistics (n1). when using n1, the biggest absolute deviation appears in december (-0.15), with comparatively large deviations also seen in september and october 2007. the deviations are somewhat smaller in the preceding years (see tab. a1a in the appendix), and appear more frequently in january and april. figure 2a displays the average percentage deviation and the span of the percentage deviations for the years 2001 to 2007. western germany and eastern germany table 3b shows the values of the mtfr for western germany, while table 3c displays the corresponding values for eastern germany. the calculations for western and eastern germany are based on a different data source (i.e., n10) than the estimations for germany (n1). it should be noted that, whereas berlin is included in the german mtfr, it is excluded from the western and eastern mtfr; here we follow the common practice of the statistical offi ces. in addition, n10 excludes implausible cases. therefore, the german estimates cannot be compared to the eastern-western results. (example: we calculate a preliminary german mtfr of 1.39 for january 2007, but the rate for western germany is 1.31, and the rate for eastern germany 1.26. this indicates that a proportion of the births are missing in the regional mtfr.) nevertheless, the deviation of our preliminary western german mtfr from the fi nal result based on n30suf (tab. 3b, tab. a1b in the appendix) is, on average, small. the maximum absolute deviation in 2007 is 0.13 in october. figure 2b shows the average percentage deviation and the span of percentage deviations for western germany in the years 2001 to 2007. whereas our estimates for western germany show positive and negative deviations from the fi nal mtfr, the trend is different for eastern germany (tab. 3c and a1c in the appendix): here, we underestimate the preliminary mtfr by about roughly three percent, or, in absolute values, between -0.15 to -0.12. we assume that this systematic underestimation is related to our assumptions that there is no out-migration from eastern germany, and that we can use the population structure of the previous year as an approximation of the current • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters260 tab. 3: estimations of mtfr in 2007 – confi dence intervals and absolute errors a) germany final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.35 1.35 1.34 1.39 0.04 february 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.34 0.01 march 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.31 -0.01 april 1.25 1.25 1.24 1.25 0.00 may 1.33 1.33 1.32 1.34 0.01 june 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.39 -0.01 july 1.46 1.46 1.45 1.48 0.02 august 1.47 1.48 1.46 1.51 0.03 september 1.51 1.52 1.50 1.40 -0.11 october 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.53 0.13 november 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.36 0.04 december 1.29 1.30 1.29 1.14 -0.15 source: calculations based on n1 and n30 suf. b) western germany final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.31 -0.06 february 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.32 -0.02 march 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.32 -0.01 april 1.25 1.26 1.24 1.26 0.01 may 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.34 0.01 june 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.38 -0.02 july 1.45 1.46 1.44 1.46 0.01 august 1.48 1.49 1.47 1.50 0.03 september 1.50 1.51 1.49 1.40 -0.11 october 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.53 0.13 november 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.37 0.04 december 1.30 1.31 1.29 1.24 -0.06 note: january weighted by 0.75, december weighted by 1.25. source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. c) eastern germany final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.31 1.33 1.29 1.26 -0.05 february 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.25 -0.04 march 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.27 -0.03 april 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.19 -0.05 may 1.34 1.36 1.32 1.33 -0.01 june 1.44 1.46 1.42 1.37 -0.07 july 1.51 1.53 1.49 1.51 0.00 august 1.49 1.52 1.47 1.48 -0.01 september 1.55 1.57 1.53 1.39 -0.15 october 1.39 1.41 1.37 1.44 0.05 november 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.35 0.04 december 1.25 1.27 1.23 1.18 -0.08 note: january weighted by 0.8, december weighted by 1.2. source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. monitoring of german fertility • 261 fig. 2: average percentage deviation (solid line) and span of deviations of the preliminary mtfr from the fi nal mtfr – years 2001 to 2007 -20 -10 0 10 20 ja nu ary feb rua ry marc h apri l may ju ne ju ly aug us t sep tem be r octo be r nov em be r dec em be r deviation in percent month -20 -10 0 10 20 ja nu ary feb rua ry marc h apri l may ju ne ju ly aug us t sep tem be r octo be r nov em be r dec em be r deviation in percent month a) germany b) western germany • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters262 year’s risk population. in addition, a real increase in birth numbers may have occured in the second half of the year, which would be underestimated by our mtfr. 5.2 yearly fertility rates estimation after the preliminary data of all months have been published, we estimate the preliminary yearly tfr. table 4 shows the fi nal tfr (calculated on the basis of n30suf; column 2) and its confi dence intervals (columns 3 and 4), our estimation on the basis of n1 and n10, respectively, and its deviation from the fi nal tfr (columns 5 and 6). for all of germany (tab. 4a), our estimates of the preliminary yearly tfr deviate from the fi nal fi gures on average by +/0.01, while the maximum deviation is 0.03. the average deviation for western germany (table 4b) is zero, while for eastern germany, it is -0.03 (tab. 4c). source: calculations based on n1, n10 and n30suf. -20 -10 0 10 20 ja nu ary feb rua ry marc h apri l may ju ne ju ly aug us t sep tem be r octo be r nov em be r dec em be r deviation in percent month c) eastern germany monitoring of german fertility • 263 tab. 4: estimations of yearly tfr – confi dence intervals and absolute errors for the years 2001 to 2007 a) germany final tfr confidence intervall preliminary tfr deviation preliminary tfr year (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final tfr 2001 1.35 1.35 1.34 1.35 0.00 2002 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.37 0.03 2003 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.37 0.03 2004 1.36 1.36 1.35 1.38 0.02 2005 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.35 0.01 2006 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.34 0.01 2007 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.37 0.00 average deviation 0.01 source: calculations based on n1 and n30suf. b) western germany final tfr confidence intervall preliminary tfr deviation preliminary tfr year (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final tfr 2001 1.38 1.39 1.37 1.38 0.00 2002 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.38 0.01 2003 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.36 0.00 2004 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.38 0.00 2005 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.35 0.00 2006 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.34 0.00 2007 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.37 -0.01 average deviation 0.00 source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. c) eastern germany final tfr confidence intervall preliminary tfr deviation preliminary tfr year (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final tfr 2001 1.23 1.25 1.21 1.20 -0.03 2002 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.21 -0.02 2003 1.26 1.28 1.24 1.24 -0.02 2004 1.31 1.33 1.29 1.29 -0.02 2005 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.27 -0.02 2006 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.28 -0.02 2007 1.37 1.39 1.35 1.34 -0.03 average deviation -0.03 source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters264 projection of the yearly tfr based on monthly rates we use our approach presented above to project the yearly tfr of the current year after the preliminary data for the months january to june have become available. we demonstrate the calculations using the years 2007 and 2008 as examples. the projection procedure consists of three steps. based on the retrospectively gathered preliminary data n1, we fi rst estimate cumulated monthly fertility rates for the years 2001 to 2006. second, we calculate the proportion of the estimated cumulated tfr on the fi nal yearly tfr based on the n30suf, which is published at a later date. third, we use june as a cut-off point for the projection, because over the period 2001 to 2006, an average of 50 % of the yearly tfr of the respective year was reached at the end of june. table 5 shows this procedure for the projection of the tfr for the year 2007, based on the previous fi ve years 2001 to 2006, and the projection of the tfr for 2008, based on the years 2002 to 2007. we could test this method only for the years 2007 and 2008, since the method of data collection in n1 was changed in 2001. therefore, data on the years before 2001 are not comparable with data after this year. for the year 2007, the projected yearly tfr is 1.34, which is an underestimation of 0.03 of the fi nal tfr, and which, on the basis of n30suf, turned out to be 1.37. the tab. 5: projection of the yearly german tfr, 2007 (based on years 2001 to 2006) and 2008 (based on years 2002 to 2007) year preliminary mtfr final tfr proportion of mtfr january-june reference period january-june (n1) (n30suf) from final tfr in % 2001 0.676 1.346 50.3 2002 0.678 1.339 50.7 2003 0.674 1.338 50.4 2004 0.674 1.357 49.7 2005 0.667 1.338 49.9 2006 0.659 1.329 49.5 2007 0.668 1.368 48.8 2008 0.685 1.376 49.6 geom. mean 2001-06 50.1 geom. mean 2002-07 49.8 projection tfr 2007 1.335 deviation from final tfr -0.034 projection tfr 2008 1.375 deviation from final tfr -0.001 source: calculations based on n1 and n30suf. monitoring of german fertility • 265 reason for this underestimation is that from the middle of 2007 onwards, monthly birth rates are signifi cantly higher than those in the previous year. when we apply this simple technique to the 2008 data, our projection based on the births from january to june results in a yearly tfr of 1.38, which coincides with the fi nal tfr at the end of 2008 (1.38). 6 discussion we have developed an approach for estimating the monthly tfr in the current year based on preliminary data that does not include the age of the mother at birth. since this crucial information is only available for the previous year, we impute the age of the mother at birth in the current year by applying the age-specifi c birth rate to the data of the current year. timely information on the monthly tfr is of no help if the quality of the preliminary data is poor. this paper presents an overview of the various sources used for the calculation of the monthly fertility rates. calculating these rates can be challenging because the different sources are available at different points in time, they refer to different regional units, and certain cases are excluded from certain sources. the data source that becomes available fi rst is n1. here, the main problem is that the births are not correctly distributed to the month. n10, the data source that becomes available next, is supposed to provide more precise data, since it also includes information about whether the birth took place in eastern or in western germany. however, we fi nd that the estimations that are based on n10 are the least accurate, because the cases that are unclear are not included in these statistics. in addition, the case of berlin is diffi cult to handle. in line with the practices of the statistical offi ces in germany, we excluded berlin from the estimations that are based on the n10 source. this leads to deviations of up to 10 % from the fi nal tfr in n30suf, which is, of course, most often an underestimation. therefore, the results for eastern and western germany based on n10 have to be interpreted with caution. if the goal is to have timely results for all of germany, n1 is the most accurate data source. if, on the other hand, the goal is to make a regional comparison, n10 can serve as a starting point. however, researchers using n10 should be aware that there will be a six-month delay before this data becomes available, and that a certain degree of underestimation of the fertility rates may be expected to occur. different opinions exist concerning the statistical treatment of the seasonal fl uctuations in fertility. the sobotka approach eliminates them which has the advantage that the level of fertility can be compared within a year. changes in fertility patterns can thus be judged from one month to the other. our approach keeps the seasonal fl uctuations which has the advantage that users of the monitor are becoming aware of the large systematic fl uctuations that occur over the course of a year. another reason for keeping the seasonal fl uctuations is the limited type of data that we are using. we have to approximate the age structure of the mothers, as well as the population at risk. we do not want to modify the data any further and thus decided to estimate the fertility rates that fi t the aggregate number of births. not adjusting for • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters266 seasonality, however, has the disadvantage that the tfr of a specifi c month cannot be used as a predictor of the yearly tfr and that changes in fertility behaviour can only be evaluated in comparison to the same month of the previous year. our procedure systematically underestimates eastern german fertility. we trace this back to the assumption that the population of the previous year is an adequate estimation of the mid-term population of the current year. in fact, we know that this is not the case and that out-migration plays a large role in changing the underlying population structure in the eastern federal states. future improvements of our procedure should thus explore to what extent out-migration can be incorporated into the estimates. despite the problems that arise from the data sources, we believe that our approach provides adequate monthly fertility rates. nevertheless, we acknowledge that our method still has some shortcomings. for detailed research in the future, parity-specifi c data is necessary. since this information is as yet missing from the german birth statistics, other sources have to be taken into account. a promising source could be the german perinatal statistics, which contains detailed information about the biological birth order (kreyenfeld et al. 2010). without implementation of parity-specifi c information, important demographic measures, such as the mean age at fi rst birth or particular tempo standardizations, which are addressed in the bongaarts-feeney approach (2005), and parity-progression ratios as calculated in sobotka et al. 2005, cannot be calculated. another shortcoming of our approach is that we assume the age distribution of births to be constant between the previous and the current year. this assumption is particularly problematic in eastern germany, since the age distribution in that part of the country may be affected by high out-migration fl ows. a solution could be to implement a factor drawn from the previous years. since migration behaviour is, however, the least predictable demographic force, an introduction of a migration adjustment seems problematic in itself. we are aware of the fact that the age-specific distribution of births varies permanently, with a relatively constant rate of change in several age groups. an easy solution could be the implementation of a sort of drift; i.e., to assume that the particular age-specifi c rates increase, while others decrease. in our opinion, a detailed time-series analysis would be necessary to attain that goal. one advantage of using such a procedure would be that it would allow us to model many different assumptions and scenarios regarding variations in the age distribution of births. a disadvantage of using time-series analysis is that we would need a suffi ciently long time series, which would not be possible currently because adequate birth data have only been available since 2000. our approach of projecting the yearly tfr of the current year based on preliminary monthly data up to june results in an estimate of high validity. the projection procedure works when there are no systematic differences between the birth rates in the fi rst and second halves of the calendar year. if a substantial change occurs – which may, for example, be caused by social upheavals or considerable changes in family policies – early conclusions regarding yearly rates will prove incorrect, as was the case in the year 2007. by contrast, if we want to investigate the shortterm effects on birth behaviour of certain events, such as the introduction of family monitoring of german fertility • 267 policies, we can use the monthly total fertility rates produced by our approach. for example, our approach was used to measure the impact on fertility rates of the new parental-leave benefi t, which went into effect in germany in january 2007. since the new childcare benefi t was not announced until in mid-2006, we expected that the effects of the new law would not become visible in the offi cial birth statistics until the second half of 2007. in fact, we found signifi cantly increased monthly fertility rates compared to the previous year from autumn 2007 onwards. this systematic change in fertility rates led to the underestimation in the projection of the fi nal yearly tfr. the number of births in germany and the trends in fertility rates have been of great interest to the general public, and they feature prominently in the political discussion. given the interest in this topic, it is surprising that offi cial data on births are published with a considerable time lag, and that preliminary data lack important information for the calculation of fertility statistics. the result is that systematic changes in fertility, caused by new policies or societal changes, can only be detected with a considerable time lag. the monitoring procedure presented in this paper overcomes most of the data limitations of the preliminary data, and provides timely and adequate information on fertility trends in germany. our approach can detect systematic changes in fertility trends, such as in the second half of 2007, and it can project the fi nal total fertility rate with a high degree of accuracy, after data have become available for the fi rst six months. the monitoring procedure is implemented on the webpage www.rostockerzentrum.de/ and is updated monthly as soon as the latest data are published by federal statistical offi ce germany (see fig. a1 in the appendix). the authors are especially grateful to johannes klotz of statistics austria for advice on the project “monitor of births”, especially regarding the calculation of a tfr confi dence interval. comments and suggestions from the members of the max planck institute for demographic research, rostock, the rostock center for the study of demographic change, and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. the publication on the webpage has been realized by juliane steinberg. we thank miriam hils for valuable language editing of the paper. references bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th, 2005: the quantum and tempo of life cycle events. population council, working paper 207. new york: population council calot, gérard, 1981: l’observation de la fécondité à court et moyen terme. in: population 36,1: 9-40 calot, gérard; nadot, robert, 1977: combien y aura-t-il de naissances dans l’année? in: population 32 (numero special): 185-229 doblhammer, gabriele; rodgers, joseph c.; rau, roland, 2000: seasonality of birth in nineteenth and twentieth century austria. in: social biology 47,3: 201-217 • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters268 flaskämper, paul, 1962: bevölkerungsstatistik. mit einleitenden ausführungen über den gegenstand der besonderen sozialwissenschaftlichen statistik überhaupt. hamburg: richard meiner höhn, charlotte, 1981: die calot-methode zur aktuellen beurteilung von geburtenniveau und -trend. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 7,2: 231-254 kreyenfeld, michaela; scholz, rembrandt; peters, frederik, wlosnewski, ines, 2010: order-specifi c fertility rates for germany: estimates from perinatal statistics for the period 2001-2008. in: comparative population studies 35,2: 207-224 [doi: 10.4232/10. cpos-2010-06en] lam, david a.; miron, jeffrey a., 1991: seasonality of births in human populations. in: social biology 38: 51-78 offi ce for national statistics, 2009: review of the national statistician on births and patterns of family building in england and wales, 2008 [http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ downloads/theme_population/fm1-37/fm1-37.pdf] payton, mark e.; greenstone, matthew; schenker, nathaniel, 2003: overlapping confi dence intervals or standard error intervals: what do they mean in terms of statistical signifi cance? in: journal of insect science 34,3: 34 peters, frederik; milewski, nadja; doblhammer, gabriele, 2009: the “geburtenmonitor” – estimating births rates in germany on the basis of monthly data. discussion paper no. 27 of the rostock center for the study of demographic change. rostock: rz [http://www.rostockerzentrum.de/publikationen/rz_diskussionpapier_27.pdf] sobotka, tomas et al., 2005: monthly estimates of the quantum of fertility: towards a fertility monitoring system in austria. in: lutz, wolfgang; feichtinger, gustav (eds.): vienna yearbook of population research 2005. vienna: verlag der österreichischen akademie der wissenschaften: 109-141 [doi: 10.1553/populationyearbook2005s109] a german translation of this authorised original article by federal institute for population research is available under the title “monitor der entwicklung der geburtenhäufi gkeit in deutschland: schätzung von monatlichen und jährlichen zusammengefassten geburtenziffern auf der grundlage vorläufi ger monatlicher daten”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-07de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-201007de0, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. nadja milewski ( ), prof. dr. gabriele doblhammer, m. sc. frederik peters. rostock center for the study of demographic change, konrad-zuse-str. 1, 18057 rostock. e-mail: nadja.milewski@uni-rostock.de, doblhammer@rostockerzentrum.de, peters@ rostockerzentrum.de monitoring of german fertility • 269 appendix example for the estimation of the preliminary mtfr in 2007 basic information given: number of births age 20 in 2006 (n30suf): 14,256 total number of birth in 2006 (n30suf): 672,722 number of births january 2007 (n1): 58,875 population of age 19 in 2006: 475,857 population of age 20 in 2006: 472,189 estimation for 2007: 1st step: calculation of r20,2007 according to equation (4) in 2007 the age-specifi c birth rate for age 20 is 0.030. 2nd step: calculation of according to equation (5) if the age-specifi c birth rate at age 20 had been the same as in 2006, 14,276 children would have been born in 2007. 3rd step: calculation of according to equation (6): in january 2007, 1,268 births are estimated to have occurred at age 20. 030.0 472189 14256 )2006(p )2006(b )2007(r f 20 30n 20 20 )2007(b const 20 14276475857030.0 )2006(p)2007(r)2007(b f ]19[20 const 20 )2007,january(b 1n 20 126814276 662407 58857 )2007(b )2007(b )2007,january(b )2007,january(b const 2045x 15x const x 1n 1n 20 • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters270 4th step: calculation of masbrjanuary(2007) according to equation (7) and (9): in january 2007 for every woman at age 20, 0.0314 children are estimated. summed up over ages 15 to 45, the monthly total fertility rate is computed, which represents the number of children a woman would have had if the conditions in january had been constant throughout the whole year 2007. online-publication of the “monitor of births” at the rostock centre for demographic change the “monitor of births” is updated monthly for total germany, the regional levels of germany, eastern germany and western germany. in addition, a virtual press kit is published as soon as the new estimation of the yearly tfr is calculated, see www. rostockerzentrum.de/. figure a1 is an example from the website, which is published in german. the solid line represents fi nal data based on n30suf. preliminary data (n1 and n10) are presented as dashed line. below the line chart, bars indicate the respective differences between a given month and the same month of the previous year. here, the arrows show signifi cant differences at a confi dence level of 95 %, which is performed only for fi nal data. lastly, the two boxes in the upper section of the chart contain the most recent fi nal and preliminary monthly tfr. 0314.0 31 365 475857 1268 )2007,january(caf )2006(p )january(b )2007(masbr f ]19[ 1n 20 january monitoring of german fertility • 271 fig. a1: monthly tfr for germany, july 2004 to june 2009, as published on the website (in german only) note: the dashed line indicates estimated age structures and a w eighting factor for january and december signif icant increase compared to the respective month in the previous year (95%) signif icant decrease compared to the respective month in the previous year (95%) figure: rostock center for the study of demographic change / w w w .zdw a.de source: statistical off ices of the federal states, federal statistical off ice monthly total fertility rate for germany january 2005 to december 2009 0.80 0.90 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 january 05 july 05 january 06 july 06 january 07 july 07 january 08 july 08 january 09 july 09 m on th ly to ta l f er til ity ra te -15% 0% 15% 30% 45% c hange com pared to the sam e m onth in the respective year december 2007: 1.29 december 2009: 1.27 • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters272 tab. a1a: estimations of mtfr in 2001 to 2006, germany – confi dence intervals and absolute errors 2001 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.38 1.39 1.37 1.41 0.03 february 1.33 1.33 1.32 1.35 0.02 march 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.33 0.02 april 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.27 -0.04 may 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.43 0.07 june 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.33 -0.04 july 1.43 1.44 1.42 1.45 0.02 august 1.42 1.42 1.41 1.46 0.05 september 1.41 1.41 1.40 1.33 -0.07 october 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.44 0.12 november 1.28 1.28 1.27 1.31 0.04 december 1.24 1.25 1.23 1.09 -0.15 2002 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.34 1.34 1.33 1.49 0.15 february 1.35 1.36 1.35 1.38 0.03 march 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.26 -0.07 april 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.42 0.11 may 1.29 1.30 1.28 1.30 0.01 june 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.30 -0.04 july 1.43 1.43 1.42 1.51 0.08 august 1.39 1.40 1.39 1.40 0.01 september 1.44 1.45 1.43 1.44 0.00 october 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.44 0.10 november 1.25 1.26 1.25 1.26 0.01 december 1.26 1.27 1.25 1.19 -0.06 2003 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.45 0.13 february 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.35 0.03 march 1.28 1.29 1.27 1.28 0.01 april 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.33 0.02 may 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.28 -0.04 june 1.36 1.37 1.36 1.39 0.02 july 1.47 1.48 1.46 1.54 0.07 august 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.35 -0.04 september 1.47 1.47 1.46 1.51 0.05 october 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.41 0.10 november 1.24 1.25 1.23 1.22 -0.03 december 1.25 1.25 1.24 1.27 0.02 monitoring of german fertility • 273 2004 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.36 1.36 1.35 1.38 0.02 february 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.34 0.00 march 1.29 1.29 1.28 1.38 0.10 april 1.31 1.31 1.30 1.33 0.03 may 1.28 1.29 1.28 1.18 -0.10 june 1.41 1.42 1.40 1.48 0.07 july 1.48 1.49 1.47 1.46 -0.02 august 1.46 1.46 1.45 1.51 0.05 september 1.47 1.48 1.46 1.51 0.04 october 1.32 1.33 1.32 1.30 -0.02 november 1.28 1.29 1.27 1.36 0.08 december 1.29 1.30 1.28 1.32 0.03 2005 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.27 -0.05 february 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.35 0.00 march 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.31 -0.01 april 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.33 0.01 may 1.31 1.31 1.30 1.32 0.02 june 1.38 1.39 1.37 1.43 0.05 july 1.41 1.42 1.40 1.34 -0.07 august 1.41 1.42 1.41 1.49 0.08 september 1.44 1.45 1.43 1.43 -0.01 october 1.30 1.30 1.29 1.30 0.00 november 1.25 1.26 1.24 1.33 0.07 december 1.26 1.26 1.25 1.26 0.01 2006 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n1) from final mtfr january 1.29 1.29 1.28 1.30 0.01 february 1.32 1.33 1.31 1.32 0.00 march 1.29 1.30 1.29 1.33 0.04 april 1.25 1.26 1.25 1.16 -0.09 may 1.35 1.36 1.35 1.41 0.05 june 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.38 0.03 july 1.42 1.43 1.41 1.36 -0.06 august 1.41 1.42 1.40 1.49 0.08 september 1.45 1.46 1.44 1.41 -0.04 october 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.38 0.04 november 1.26 1.27 1.25 1.34 0.08 december 1.21 1.21 1.20 1.16 -0.05 source: calculations based on n1 and n30suf. • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters274 tab. a1b: estimations of mtfr in 2001 to 2006, western germany – confi dence intervals and absolute errors 2001 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.42 1.43 1.41 1.39 -0.03 february 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.34 -0.02 march 1.35 1.35 1.34 1.35 0.00 april 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.30 -0.04 may 1.40 1.41 1.39 1.47 0.07 june 1.41 1.41 1.40 1.37 -0.04 july 1.46 1.47 1.45 1.48 0.01 august 1.45 1.46 1.44 1.49 0.04 september 1.44 1.45 1.43 1.37 -0.07 october 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.46 0.11 november 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.33 0.02 december 1.27 1.28 1.26 1.21 -0.06 2002 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.36 1.37 1.36 1.35 -0.02 february 1.39 1.40 1.38 1.38 -0.01 march 1.37 1.37 1.36 1.29 -0.08 april 1.34 1.35 1.34 1.44 0.10 may 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.32 0.00 june 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.33 -0.04 july 1.45 1.46 1.44 1.53 0.08 august 1.42 1.43 1.41 1.41 -0.01 september 1.47 1.48 1.46 1.45 -0.02 october 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.49 0.12 november 1.28 1.29 1.27 1.28 0.01 december 1.29 1.30 1.28 1.25 -0.04 2003 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.31 -0.04 february 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.35 0.00 march 1.30 1.31 1.29 1.28 -0.02 april 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.36 0.02 may 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.31 -0.04 june 1.39 1.40 1.38 1.40 0.01 july 1.49 1.50 1.48 1.57 0.08 august 1.42 1.43 1.41 1.38 -0.04 september 1.48 1.49 1.47 1.52 0.04 october 1.34 1.34 1.33 1.43 0.10 november 1.27 1.27 1.26 1.22 -0.04 december 1.27 1.28 1.26 1.25 -0.01 monitoring of german fertility • 275 2004 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.38 1.39 1.37 1.32 -0.06 february 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.30 -0.05 march 1.30 1.31 1.29 1.40 0.10 april 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.33 0.01 may 1.30 1.31 1.30 1.20 -0.11 june 1.43 1.43 1.42 1.51 0.09 july 1.49 1.50 1.48 1.47 -0.02 august 1.47 1.48 1.46 1.52 0.04 september 1.49 1.49 1.48 1.53 0.05 october 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.32 -0.03 november 1.30 1.31 1.29 1.36 0.06 december 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.25 -0.05 2005 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.25 -0.08 february 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.33 -0.03 march 1.33 1.34 1.32 1.35 0.02 april 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.35 0.01 may 1.32 1.33 1.32 1.33 0.01 june 1.40 1.40 1.39 1.44 0.04 july 1.42 1.43 1.41 1.34 -0.08 august 1.43 1.43 1.42 1.50 0.08 september 1.45 1.46 1.45 1.46 0.01 october 1.31 1.32 1.30 1.32 0.01 november 1.26 1.27 1.25 1.32 0.06 december 1.27 1.28 1.26 1.22 -0.06 2006 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.30 1.31 1.29 1.23 -0.07 february 1.34 1.35 1.33 1.30 -0.04 march 1.31 1.31 1.30 1.37 0.06 april 1.26 1.27 1.25 1.18 -0.08 may 1.36 1.37 1.35 1.41 0.05 june 1.37 1.38 1.36 1.39 0.02 july 1.43 1.43 1.42 1.37 -0.05 august 1.41 1.42 1.40 1.50 0.08 september 1.46 1.46 1.45 1.40 -0.06 october 1.35 1.36 1.34 1.40 0.05 november 1.27 1.28 1.26 1.33 0.06 december 1.21 1.22 1.21 1.16 -0.05 note: january weighted by 0.75, december weighted by 1.25. source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. • gabriele doblhammer, nadja milewski, frederik peters276 tab. a1c: estimations of mtfr in 2001 to 2006, eastern germany – confi dence intervals and absolute errors 2001 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.27 0.03 february 1.21 1.23 1.19 1.17 -0.04 march 1.21 1.23 1.19 1.16 -0.05 april 1.20 1.22 1.18 1.13 -0.07 may 1.25 1.27 1.23 1.27 0.02 june 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.16 -0.07 july 1.35 1.37 1.33 1.33 -0.02 august 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.27 -0.04 september 1.29 1.31 1.27 1.20 -0.09 october 1.20 1.22 1.18 1.22 0.02 november 1.16 1.18 1.14 1.17 0.00 december 1.11 1.13 1.10 1.03 -0.08 2002 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.22 1.24 1.20 1.23 0.02 february 1.22 1.24 1.20 1.20 -0.02 march 1.21 1.23 1.19 1.11 -0.10 april 1.21 1.22 1.19 1.26 0.06 may 1.20 1.22 1.19 1.18 -0.03 june 1.24 1.25 1.22 1.14 -0.10 july 1.35 1.37 1.33 1.37 0.02 august 1.31 1.33 1.29 1.26 -0.05 september 1.34 1.36 1.32 1.32 -0.02 october 1.24 1.25 1.22 1.25 0.02 november 1.17 1.18 1.15 1.16 0.00 december 1.15 1.16 1.13 1.08 -0.06 2003 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.18 1.20 1.16 1.20 0.01 february 1.20 1.22 1.18 1.18 -0.02 march 1.19 1.21 1.18 1.15 -0.04 april 1.23 1.24 1.21 1.22 0.00 may 1.23 1.25 1.22 1.15 -0.09 june 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.28 -0.01 july 1.42 1.44 1.40 1.46 0.03 august 1.35 1.37 1.33 1.25 -0.11 september 1.44 1.46 1.42 1.48 0.03 october 1.26 1.28 1.24 1.26 0.00 november 1.16 1.18 1.14 1.13 -0.03 december 1.18 1.20 1.16 1.14 -0.04 monitoring of german fertility • 277 2004 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.29 1.31 1.27 1.24 -0.05 february 1.27 1.28 1.25 1.21 -0.05 march 1.25 1.27 1.23 1.30 0.06 april 1.28 1.30 1.26 1.24 -0.03 may 1.22 1.24 1.21 1.11 -0.12 june 1.37 1.39 1.35 1.44 0.07 july 1.47 1.50 1.45 1.41 -0.07 august 1.43 1.45 1.41 1.46 0.03 september 1.43 1.45 1.41 1.42 -0.01 october 1.26 1.28 1.24 1.20 -0.06 november 1.21 1.23 1.19 1.27 0.06 december 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.16 -0.08 2005 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.18 -0.07 february 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.28 -0.02 march 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.25 0.00 april 1.28 1.29 1.26 1.23 -0.04 may 1.25 1.27 1.23 1.26 0.01 june 1.36 1.38 1.34 1.33 -0.03 july 1.40 1.42 1.38 1.30 -0.10 august 1.38 1.41 1.36 1.43 0.05 september 1.40 1.42 1.38 1.39 -0.01 october 1.25 1.27 1.23 1.15 -0.09 november 1.24 1.26 1.22 1.33 0.08 december 1.20 1.22 1.18 1.15 -0.05 2006 final mtfr confidence intervall preliminary mtfr deviation preliminary mtfr month (n30suf) ul ll (n10) from final mtfr january 1.21 1.23 1.19 1.19 -0.02 february 1.26 1.28 1.24 1.23 -0.02 march 1.26 1.28 1.24 1.24 -0.02 april 1.23 1.25 1.21 1.13 -0.10 may 1.33 1.35 1.31 1.35 0.02 june 1.34 1.36 1.32 1.33 0.00 july 1.43 1.45 1.41 1.35 -0.08 august 1.42 1.44 1.40 1.44 0.02 september 1.44 1.46 1.42 1.38 -0.06 october 1.30 1.32 1.28 1.24 -0.06 november 1.23 1.25 1.21 1.35 0.12 december 1.17 1.19 1.15 1.11 -0.06 note: january weighted by 0.8, december weighted by 1.2. source: calculations based on n10 and n30suf. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern?* tomáš sobotka abstract: this article reviews major similarities and differences in period and cohort fertility in austria, germany and switzerland. these three countries share a long history of low fertility and currently belong to countries with the lowest cohort fertility rates globally. the study highlights persistent differences in fertility and family patterns between eastern and western germany, which are often rooted in pre-unifi cation contrasts and can be partly linked to continuing differences in institutional set-up and norms on organised childcare, living arrangements and maternal employment. the remarkable stability in period fertility over the last 30 years (with the exception of eastern germany) is illustrated with various indicators and discussed on the backdrop of recent reversals in european fertility trends. this stability in fertility levels contrasts with the long-term shift in childbearing towards less stable living arrangements (especially in eastern germany), including a high share of single mothers. the study also discusses a relatively small but persistent negative impact of the ongoing shift towards a late timing of childbearing on period fertility in the region. it highlights the educational gradient in fertility, which can be largely attributed to elevated childlessness rates among women with a higher educational degree. migrant women have on average higher fertility rates than “native-born” women, but their net positive impact on aggregate fertility rates has diminished over time and has become negligible in germany. a concluding discussion suggests that austria, germany and switzerland share a common pattern of low fertility that sets these countries apart from other regions in europe. keywords: fertility · family · childlessness · austria · germany · switzerland comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 263-304 (date of release: 02.08.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-11en9 * this article contains supplementary materials in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2011-12en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/81/77. • tomáš sobotka264 1 introduction austria, germany and switzerland, with a combined population of 98 million as of 2011, generally experienced fertility trends comparable to most other “western” countries after world war ii. the baby boom that peaked in 1963-64 was followed by a steep fall in fertility rates in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which paved the way to the subsequent period of stable and persistently low fertility. despite many similarities with western europe and nordic countries, a number of distinct fertility developments in these three countries can be pointed out, especially in germany, which is with a population of 82 million the most populous country of the european union. first, fertility rates have been lower than in most other regions of europe since the 1920s and the fall in fertility rates after 1964 took place somewhat earlier and with a higher intensity than in other regions of europe. second, fertility has remained at similar very low levels since the mid-1970s, largely unaffected by the upswings and down drifts typical for many other regions of europe. third, low fertility in austria, switzerland and western germany is largely attributable to the high level of childlessness, especially among the highly educated women. fourth, low fertility in austria and germany to a large extent appears to be linked to relatively low family size intentions and ideals, which are below the level found in most other countries in europe (goldstein et al. 2003; sobotka 2009). as a result of a prolonged period of low fertility, these populations have aged rapidly, especially in germany, which together with japan and italy has the highest median age globally (un 2011). in addition, germany has experienced a negative balance of births and deaths since 1972. these two trends, progressing faster and longer than in most other countries of the european union, have been fuelling debates about imminent population shrinking and its consequences, which have been vividly portrayed by the media and some population researchers. at the same time, important contrasts exist within and between the three countries. in particular, notable differences in fertility patterns between eastern germany (former german democratic republic) and western germany (former federal republic of germany) have not faded away even 20 years after the german unifi cation in 1990. this paper aims to provide systematic evidence of major similarities and differences in fertility in austria, germany and switzerland, keeping an eye on broader trends in other selected countries and regions of europe. besides mapping period and cohort fertility developments, i also pay attention to developments of parity distribution, childlessness, family context of childbearing as well as migrants’ fertility and educational differentials in fertility. given the prominent attention in social science research to the persistent differences between eastern and western germany, this study often provides a separate analysis for these two regions. this review sets the stage for more detailed analyses and discussions provided in the subsequent articles in this special issue (cpos 36,2-3). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 265 2 fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: a broad view 2.1 long-term shifts in period fertility low fertility in austria, germany and switzerland is not a new phenomenon. the late stage of the demographic transition has overlapped with the deep economic crisis during the great depression, which in turn stimulated the postponement of childbearing. in combination, these factors resulted in unusually low fertility rates in the early 1930s, when the period total fertility rate (tfr) tumbled to 1.65-1.66 in austria in 1933-34 as well as in germany in 1933 and to 1.74 in switzerland in 1937 (league of nations 1940: 46 (table 9); kirk 1946; sfso 1998; german tfr estimated on the basis of the net reproduction rates in 1933 and 1934 and the tfr in 1934). only a few other countries of europe with known fertility data recorded similarly low tfr levels at that time. after the second world war, fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland followed a remarkably similar course. all three countries experienced a small babyboom during the late 1950s and the early 1960s (fig. 1). the period tfr in austria peaked at 2.8 in 1961-1964, germany’s peak tfr of 2.5 occurred in 1963-1967, and switzerland’s peak tfr of 2.7 took place in 1963-1964. a steep fertility decline followed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. in the 1970s, a long trend towards delayed childbearing set in, which has pushed the timing of fi rst motherhood to ever later ages, and depressed the level of the period tfr below that of the corresponding completed cohort fertility rates (ctfr, see section 2.2). in all three countries the tfr fell below the replacement level threshold around 1970 and the decline continued until the midto late-1970s, with a period tfr falling to 1.5–1.6. the federal republic of germany (western germany) was the fi rst european country experiencing a tfr fall below 1.5 in 1975 and a brief decline below 1.3 a decade later. from the late 1970s through to the late 2000s, fertility underwent small fl uctuations, but a general trend (except in eastern germany) can be characterised by stable low levels, often contrasting with stronger shifts in other european countries (see also online appendix 2, in cpos 36,2-3). the three german-speaking countries of europe thus represent best what caldwell (2008) termed a “third fertility compromise”: more than three decades of remarkably stable fertility and gradually unfolding family and social trends, when, arguably, a “marginally bearable compromise” has been achieved in the balance between job careers and domestic work for mothers as well as between child costs and fertility aspirations for couples. in 2010, the period tfr remained relatively low in the three analysed countries, ranging from 1.39 in germany to 1.54 in switzerland;1 these values are slightly above the record lows reached between 1994 (1.24 in germany) and 2001 (1.33 in austria and 1.39 in switzerland). the data for germany, however, are an amalgam of values 1 period tfrs have been negatively affected by the changes in the timing of childbearing; see section 4, table 2 and figure a1 in online appendix 1 (in cpos 36,2-3) for alternative estimates of fertility rates unaffected by these timing shifts. • tomáš sobotka266 for the former federal republic of germany combined with those for the former german democratic republic, referred to as eastern germany (or neue länder in german). childbearing patterns were very different in the two german republics, not only prior to reunifi cation in 1990 and during the subsequent “demographic shocks” in eastern germany (conrad et al. 1996) when a record low level of 0.77 was reached in 1993-94, but even during the 1990s and 2000s (section 4). during these two decades, fertility patterns in the two parts of germany have become more similar, with a huge period tfr increase in eastern germany, surpassing the west german level since 2008 (fig. 1; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; statistisches bundesamt 2011). yet even though recent fertility levels converged to similar levels, the underlying patterns of childbearing behaviour were shaped by the differing social, economic and institutional environments in the two parts of germany (konietzka/ kreyenfeld 2002; kreyenfeld 2005 and 2010; dorbritz 2008; cassens et al. 2009; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). a comparison of austria, germany and switzerland with their neighbours and with other regions in europe demonstrates that they are among the countries with fig. 1: period total fertility rate in austria, germany and switzerland, 1930-2010 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 35 19 40 19 45 19 50 19 55 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 austria switzerland germany east germany west germany period tfr source: council of europe (2006); eurostat (2010 and 2011); human fertility database (2011); sfso (1998); league of nations (1940); statistisches bundesamt (2011). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 267 the lowest fertility in europe. while long-term trends were often similar to the developments in northern and western europe until the 1980s (fig. 2), none of the western and northern european countries experienced an extended period of similarly low fertility. for instance, the netherlands briefl y saw a period tfr falling below 1.5 in 1982-84, but a subsequent gradual recovery brought its level to 1.80 in 2010. similar trends were also recorded in belgium. among other countries neighbourfig. 2: period total fertility rate in broader european regions (1950-2010) 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 19 50 19 55 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 western europe northern europe southern europe central and southeastern europe eastern europe austria, germany, switzerland period tfr replacement threshold "lowest-low" fertility notes: data are weighted by the population size of given countries and regions. countries are grouped into regions as follows: western europe: belgium, france, ireland, luxembourg, the netherlands, and the united kingdom; northern europe: denmark, finland, iceland, norway, and sweden; southern europe: cyprus, greece, italy, malta, portugal, and spain; central-eastern europe: croatia, czech republic, estonia, hungary, latvia, lithuania, poland, slovakia, slovenia, bosnia-herzegovina, bulgaria, macedonia, montenegro, romania, and serbia & kosovo; eastern europe: belarus, moldova, russia, and ukraine. source: council of europe (2006); festy (1979); chesnais (1992); computations based on eurostat (2010) and national statistical offi ces. • tomáš sobotka268 ing germany to the west and north, denmark reached a tfr of 1.88 in 2010 and france recorded a tfr of 2.00 in 2010, close to the replacement-level threshold of 2.08. in comparison, countries in southern europe and the formerly state-socialist countries of central europe experienced “lowest-low fertility rates” below 1.3 in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but in many of them the tfr rose slightly above that in austria and germany by 2008. in fact, recent fertility trends in austria and western germany stand out for their rather limited “recovery” after 2000, which has taken place in most other european countries with both lower and higher fertility levels (goldstein et al. 2009). while this contribution mostly focuses on fertility developments at a national level, it is worth emphasising that fertility rates at the sub-national level have undergone a remarkable convergence between the 1930s and the early 2000s in all of the three analysed countries, reaching some of the lowest levels of within-country variation in europe (see basten et al., in cpos 36,2-3). illustrative of this broad convergence is the convergence in the fertility level between the city of vienna and other regions of austria, which has brought an end to the long-lasting distinctiveness of vienna as a region with the lowest fertility in austria, where period fertility rates were about 50 % below those for the whole country in the 1950s (zeman et al. 2011). 2.2 a history of low completed cohort fertility in correspondence to the period fertility trends, historically low completed fertility rates were reached in the three analysed countries already among women born at the turn of the 19th and 20th century (festy 1979). among women born in 1901, completed fertility ranged from 2.1 children per woman in germany through 2.0 in switzerland to the low value of 1.8 in austria. these levels should be interpreted with a view of high infant and child mortality at that time, which implies that all three countries had cohort fertility well below the replacement level threshold. for instance, replacement level cohort fertility in switzerland is estimated at 2.7 children per woman for women born in 1901 as compared to 2.11 among the mid-1960s cohorts (sardon 1991 and own computations based on human mortality database 2010). as a result, the completed fertility in the early 20th century cohorts was 25 % short of the replacement level in switzerland, 30 % below replacement in germany and even 33 % below replacement in austria (sardon 1991 and own computations; austrian values are estimated assuming the same female cohort mortality rates as in switzerland). the post-war baby boom constituted a marked interruption of the declining fertility level, with a particularly pronounced fertility peak in austria, where the cohort of 1935 reached completed fertility of 2.46 children per woman. germany had a less prominent peak in the early 1930s cohorts that reached a completed fertility of 2.2, whereas in switzerland a similar fertility level was reached among a broad range of cohorts born in 1915-1938 (frejka/sardon 2004). the baby-boom cohorts are unique in surpassing (austria) or at least briefl y reaching (germany and switzerland) replacement level fertility. no other cohorts of women born in the course of the 20th fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 269 century in these three countries have come close or are likely to come close to the replacement level. subsequently, a prolonged period of low fertility resulted in a continuous fall in completed fertility, interrupted by occasional brief plateaus in germany and switzerland. among all the birth cohorts from 1935 through those of the 1960s, germany had the lowest completed fertility (fig. 3). according to the european demographic data sheet (vid-iiasa 2010) the completed fertility among women in germany born in 1968 is estimated at 1.49 children per woman, representing the lowest cohort fertility in europe, followed by italy (1.52), spain (1.53), and russia (1.57). this low level contrasts strongly with most of the neighbouring countries, especially france, fig. 3: completed cohort fertility rate in austria, germany and switzerland; women born in 1900-1968 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 1.80 2.00 2.20 2.40 2.60 2.80 19 00 19 05 19 10 19 15 19 20 19 25 19 30 19 35 19 40 19 45 19 50 19 55 19 60 19 65 austria germany (total) switzerland switzerland: replacement level east germany west germany cohort completed cohort tfr notes: data for germany for the cohorts up until 1922 represent completed fertility for 5-year birth cohorts centred on a given year of birth. replacement fertility level in switzerland was computed from the cohort mortality data and sex ratio at birth in the human mortality database, assuming a mean age at childbearing of 30 years. these computations are generally insensitive to the precise level of this indicator, however. source: human fertility database (2011); human mortality database (2010); prskawetz et al. (2008); sfso (1998); council of europe (2006); sardon (1991); pötzsch (2010); vid-iiasa (2010) for the 1968 cohort. • tomáš sobotka270 where the completed fertility remained just above 2.0. women in austria and switzerland retain slightly higher completed fertility than women in germany, with the 1968 cohort having on average 1.62 and 1.66 children per woman, respectively. in all of the three analysed countries (except in the region of eastern germany) low completed fertility rates go hand in hand with relatively high childlessness levels (see section 3). as with period fertility, cohort data for germany represent a weighted average for the two german states that existed after the second world war. while west german women born in the 1950s had the lowest completed fertility in europe with around 1.6 children per woman, east german women retained a comparatively higher completed fertility just above 1.8. however, the fall of the state-socialist system brought a marked decline in completed fertility in eastern germany among the post-1960 cohorts, bringing their fertility level down to 1.6 in the 1965 cohort fig. 4: completed cohort ctfr (women born in 1968) and the period tfr in 1992-2000 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 1.80 austr ia germ an y eas tern germ an y w este rn germ an y switz erla nd ctfr, cohort 1968 tfr, years 1992-2000 tfr/ctfr notes: a small portion of completed fertility rates at ages 41+ was estimated. source: human fertility database (hfd 2011); council of europe (2006); vid-iiasa (2010) and own computations based on the hfd. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 271 (pötzsch 2010), and thus also much closer to the completed fertility among women in western germany. despite its long-lasting decline, completed cohort fertility rates remained above period tfrs in the analysed countries. figure 4 compares completed fertility among women born in 1968 (with a small portion of fertility above age 40 estimated) and the average period tfr in 1992-2000, when these women were in their peak childbearing ages. while tfrs fell below the corresponding completed ctfrs due to the shifting age at childbearing (causing a negative “tempo distortion” in the tfr, see section 4), the difference between the two indicators was rather modest, 0.16 (switzerland) to 0.20 (austria) in absolute terms. eastern germany stands out however, for its major mismatch between the average period tfr of 0.96 and a substantially higher completed ctfr of 1.52. this mismatch, which is largely explained by a profound change in the timing of births (section 4), shows that the period tfr can be a very poor “predictor” of completed cohort fertility and that extremely low period fertility rates do not necessarily imply very low cohort fertility rates. 3 cohort parity distribution and the recent cohort fertility trends 3.1 cohort parity trends: the persistence of a two-child family model and rising childlessness as in other parts of europe, a two-child family model has become increasingly prevalent in the three analysed countries throughout much of the 20th century (frejka/ sardon 2004). cohort data indicate that four out of ten austrian, german and swiss women born in the mid-1960s gave birth to two children as compared to about a quarter of women born in 1920 (data available for austria and switzerland only).2 however, with the exception of austria, the share of two-child families already peaked among women born in the 1940s-1950s (fig. 5). this earlier peak was most apparent in eastern germany, where – similar to many other formerly state-socialist countries of central and eastern europe – the “norm” of a two-child family became especially strong (sobotka 2011) and every second woman born in 1949-58 had two children by the end of her reproductive span. in more recent cohorts, the east german fertility decline after german unifi cation has been marked by a steady rise in the share of women with only one child that reached 36 % in the 1964-68 cohorts (2008 microcensus data, statistisches bundesamt 2009). as a result, one-child families in eastern germany have become almost as frequent as families with two children, a trend confi rmed also with the recent and yet incomplete data for women born in the early 1970s, among whom the share with one child at 37 % equalled 2 the data provided in this section are based on a variety of sources, often combining census data with vital statistics records and representative surveys (see sources below fig. 5). due to this variability, the results presented should be treated with caution and should be seen as best estimates of the cohort parity distributions and trends. for more details on the available data and their potential weaknesses, see kreyenfeld et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3. • tomáš sobotka272 that with two children at ages 36-40 (statistisches bundesamt 2009). in contrast to eastern germany, the share of women with one child has slightly declined among the post-1950 cohorts in western germany, where it is estimated at 23 % in the late 1960s cohorts, and it remained stable in austria and switzerland. while the trend in the share of one-child families remains relatively little discussed, rising childlessness has attracted ample attention in the media, in political debates as well as among some experts.3 this is particularly the case in germany, where the debate focused on interrelated topics of high actual and intended childlessness (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2007; dorbritz/ruckdeschel 2007; sobotka/testa 2008), and to what extent it is a voluntary phenomenon (dorbritz/schwarz 1996; stöbel-richter et al. 2005), especially among university educated women (kemkesgrottenthaler 2003; wirth/dümmler 2005; see also section 6 below). more broadly, the debate in germany often links voluntary childlessness to the rapid rise in the percentage of singles and unpartnered (eckhard 2006; dorbritz 2003, 2008), espoused in the notions of “generation single” and “singles-society” (see also section 5 below).4 with childlessness above 20 % and still rising in the late 1960s cohorts, western germany and switzerland belong to the regions with the highest childlessness globally. in austria, childlessness rates are only slightly lower, reaching 19 % among women born in 1968.5 at the same time, current childlessness rates are not anywhere near to their historically highest levels (schwarz 2003). childlessness was common in the past and reached particularly high levels among women born in the early 20th century. available data show that over a quarter of austrian and german women born in 1900-1905 and of swiss women born in 1910 remained permanently childless. in contemporary terminology, historical childlessness could mostly be classifi ed as “involuntary”, driven by a set of factors, including high rates of nonmarriage (“celibacy”) typical of economically disadvantaged women, delayed mar3 besides ample attention in the german media, the issue has been also noted outside germany. for instance, in 2006 the guardian published an article by luke harding titled “germany agonises over 30 % childless women” and claiming that the “highest number in world choose not to have family” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/27/germany.lukeharding) 4 for many years, an aptly named website, www.single-generation.de, has featured articles, debates and comments on singles, childlessness and low birth rates in germany. several prominent non-fi ction books have addressed these issues, including minimum, written by a journalist frank schirrmacher, who laments an absence of families in german society and in the media coverage, and die ausgefallene generation (“the absent generation”) by a conservative demographer herwig birg. also german fi ction has often refl ected on childlessness in the country. as early as 1980, a prominent german novelist günter grass wrote a book ironically titled headbirths, or the germans are dying out. 5 childlessness is still higher among men, especially at younger reproductive ages, but only a few reliable data sets exist in the three analysed countries. in austria, the ggs survey of 2008 found that men’s childlessness greatly surpassed that among women at ages 35-39, when 38 % of men and “only” 23 % of women remained childless, but the difference was small at ages 40-44 (21 % among men vs. 18 % among women; sobotka/buber 2009). in germany, the 2001 soep data analysed by schmitt (2004, table 1-2) indicated only a minor difference in childlessness in post-reproductive ages (46+), when 15.8 % of men and 14.6 % of women in the sample were childless. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 273 riage, spousal separation due to wars and labour migration, and infectious diseases (for austria, see ehmer 2011). as childlessness has risen, the share of larger families with three or more children has declined steadily since peaking at around 40 % in the early 1930s cohorts in austria and switzerland (and somewhat lower in germany). this share has been reduced to below 20 % among women born around 1968, with eastern germany exhibiting an extremely low proportion of women with three or more children, reaching 12 % in the 1964-68 cohorts (microcensus 2008, based on statistiches bundesamt 2010). the shift in reproductive behaviour, increasingly targeting a goal of having two children, is also clearly illustrated by the trends in parity progression ratios (fig. a1 in online appendix 1, in cpos 36,2-3). except in eastern germany, the likelihood of having a second birth among women with one child remained stable and relatively high, at or above 0.70, among the cohorts born since the 1920s.6 in contrast, the third birth progression rate fell rapidly among the german and swiss women born in the 1930s and 1940s and stabilised at a low level thereafter. in austria, it declined gradually, reaching west german and swiss levels slightly above 0.3 in the mid-1960s cohorts. in eastern germany, third birth parity progression rates are yet lower, implying that only a quarter of women with two children eventually have a third birth. given the prominent attention paid to childlessness, it is reasonable to ask to what extent its increase is “responsible” for the observed decline in completed fertility. table a1 in online appendix 1 (in cpos 36,2-3) approaches this issue from three different angles. first, it asks what would the completed fertility of women born in the mid-1960s be without childlessness. in effect, this purely hypothetical question looks at the average family size of mothers. second, it looks at the absolute and relative contribution of rising childlessness to declining completed fertility between the cohorts born in 1940 and 1965. the former cohort still reached fertility rates close to the replacement level threshold – 2.0 children per woman in germany, 2.1 in switzerland and 2.2 in austria. third, it shows the hypothetical completed fertility of the women born in 1965 if childlessness in each of the analysed countries reached the level of the same cohort of women in sweden, i.e., 12.5 %. with no childlessness, austrian, west german, and swiss women born in 1965 would have around two children on average, while in eastern germany, where the mean family size of mothers is small, completed fertility would be just short of the 1.8 threshold. keeping childlessness constant at the level of the 1940 cohort or identical to that in sweden does not make a large difference in completed fertility except in western germany, where this scenario “lifts” the completed fertility in the 1965 cohort from 1.5 to 1.7, implying that 44 % of observed cohort fertility decline was attributable to rising childlessness. taken all together, rising childlessness had a non-negligible impact on the observed fertility decline, but the fall in austria and switzerland has 6 the parity progression ratio (ppr) represents a probability of having another birth among the women reaching a given parity. the second-birth ppr of 0.70 implies that 70 % of women who have ever had a fi rst birth also eventually progressed to the second one. • tomáš sobotka274 been even more driven by the falling likelihood of having a third child and in eastern germany by declining second birth rates. 3.2 a likely stabilisation of completed fertility when cohort fertility trends are analysed among women past the reproductive age, the long-term decline in completed cohort fertility in austria, germany and switzerland has not yet come to an end (section 2.2, fig. 3). however, a look at the cumulatfig. 5: cohort parity distribution, women born 1900-1968 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 austria switzerland registration (est.) switzerland census west germany east germany childless 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 austria switzerland registration (est.) switzerland census west germany east germany one child 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 austria switzerland registration (est.) switzerland census west germany east germany two children 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 austria switzerland registration (est.) switzerland census west germany east germany three + children notes: data for austria are based on the 1991 census data (cohorts1900-1940), 2001 census data (cohorts 1940-1955) and on a combination of the 2001 census data with the vital statistics data for the period 2001-2008 (cohorts 1956-1968). data for germany are based on the 2008 mikrozensus survey and pertain to 5-year cohort groups. data for switzerland for the cohorts 1910-1955 are based on the 2000 census (computations excluding women with unknown number of children); additional series for the cohorts 1955-1965 is based on time series of period fertility data by birth order, estimated by marion burkimsher. source: data and computations based on dorbritz/schwarz (1996), prskawetz et al. (2008), statistisches bundesamt (2009), statistics austria (2005), human fertility database (2011), and estimates of cohort fertility rates in switzerland by birth order, provided by marion burkimsher. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 275 ed fertility rates among women in their earlyto mid-30s as well as at the projections of completed fertility for women born in the 1970s, reveals an important trend: the fall in completed fertility is likely to come to an end among the early 1970s cohorts. figure a2 (online appendix 1, in cpos 36,2-3) shows a gradual stabilisation in cumulated fertility rates among austrian and west german women born after 1970. among swiss and east german women, the pace of cumulated fertility decline in the early 1970s cohorts has diminished markedly. also the projections of completed fertility show a similar development. austrian women born in 1975 are likely to have the same completed fertility of 1.6 as their older counterparts born in 1968, whereas in germany a slight upturn is projected from a record-low completed fertility of 1.49 among the 1968 cohort (see also myrskylä et al. 2012 and goldstein et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3). only in switzerland, cohort fertility is projected to decline slightly to the level around 1.6 births per woman. as table 1 shows, this projected stabilisation is not limited to the three analysed countries. completed fertility is projected to stabilise or slightly increase in a number of other western and northern european countries, including the countries neighbouring austria, germany and switzerland to the west and north: belgium, denmark, france and the netherlands (prioux et al. 2010, table a.5; myrskylä et al. 2012, table 2). following the widespread trend of childbearing postponement among the cohorts born in the 1940s-1960s, this looming stabilisation may be interpreted as a result of a diminishing or stopping childbearing postponement combined with an increasing rate of fertility “recuperation” tab. 1: completed fertility among women born in 1950-68 and projected completed fertility among women born in 1975, selected european countries observed ctfr projected ctfr, cohort 1975 1950 1960 1968 trend projection (prioux et al. 2010) trend projection (myrskylä et al. 2012) stable rates projection (prioux et al. 2010) trend projection (recuperation index) austria 1.96 1.77 1.62 1.62 1.64 1.60 1.62 germany 1.72 1.66 1.49 1.54 1.56 1.51 .. switzerland 1.80 1.77 1.66 1.61 1.66 1.59 1.58 belgium 1.83 1.86 1.85 1.86 1.88 1.81 .. czech republic 2.10 2.02 1.89 1.74 1.81 .. 1.79 denmark 1.90 1.90 1.97 1.97 1.98 1.95 .. france 2.11 2.11 2.01 2.04 2.02 2.00 .. italy 1.89 1.67 1.52 1.44 1.45 1.38 .. the netherlands 1.89 1.85 1.78 1.81 1.79 1.76 1.77 poland 2.19 2.18 1.90 1.60 1.63 1.57 .. source: human fertility database (2011) and council of europe (2006) for observed ctfr, prioux et al. (2010) and myrskylä et al. for projected ctfr (fi rst three columns) and sobotka et al. (2011, in cpos 36,2-3) for the trend projection based on the recuperation index (last column). • tomáš sobotka276 at higher childbearing ages among the younger cohorts analysed (see sobotka et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3). 4 recent trends in period fertility: continuing shifts in the timing of childbearing with the exception of eastern germany, where period fertility rates underwent rapid changes after 1989, the three analysed countries have seen only minor changes in period total fertility during the last three decades (see fig. 1 and section 2). this conspicuous stability in fertility levels went hand in hand with an unfolding transformation towards a later timing of childbearing that was initiated in the early 1970s and has continued without interruption until now. this “postponement transition” (kohler et al. 2002), partly facilitated by the spread of modern contraception, particularly the pill, but also by the rise of higher education, female labour force participation, refl exive values and the “gender revolution” (van de kaa 1994; lesthaeghe 1995; sobotka 2004; goldin 2006) has been analysed in detail from a cohort perspective by sobotka et al. 2011, in cpos 36,2-3. figure 6 illustrates this timing shift from a period perspective, looking at the upturn in the mean age of mother at birth of the fi rst child. this indicator reached a record low in the three compared countries in the early 1970s, when austrian and german women entered motherhood at an early age of 22-24 years. since then, fi rst-time mothers have become 4-5 years older on average and this increase progressed almost linearly over time. while fertility rates have reached similar values in the three countries compared, some differences in the timing of fi rst birth still persist: switzerland currently has an oldest age at entering motherhood in europe with the mean age at fi rst birth approaching 30 (vid-iiasa 2010), while, eastern germany and austria exhibit somewhat younger childbearing pattern (mean age at fi rst birth around age 28 in 2010).) while in many european countries the trend of rising mean age at childbearing has slowed-down or ceased in the fi rst decade of the 21st century (goldstein et al. 2009), it has continued uninterrupted in austria and switzerland as well as both parts of germany. this continuation of fertility “postponement” is also illustrated in figure 7, which looks at developments in cumulated fertility rates in two broad age groups, the “younger one” below 28 years, and the “older” one aged 28-50. the steady fertility decline in the “young” age group that started around 1970 has continued until now. the development in the “older” age group follows a more complex pathway, but three basic stages linked to general period fertility trends can be outlined (see also frejka 2010), except in eastern germany which exhibited a specifi c trend. first, a rapid decline took place in the fi rst half of the 1970s, associated with a fall in higher-order fertility rates. second, a broad stabilisation or a slight rise occurred around 1980, which did not suffi ce to offset the ongoing fall in fertility at younger ages, resulting in some additional period fertility decline. finally, a sustained fertility increase in the older age group in the 1990s and 2000s has eventually equalled or even slightly outpaced the ongoing decline in the younger age group, resulting in a fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 277 broad stabilisation of the period tfr in austria and western germany, its slight rise in switzerland and a fast increase in eastern germany. fig. 6: mean age of mother at fi rst birth, austria, germany and switzerland, 1952-2010 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 19 56 19 61 19 66 19 71 19 76 19 81 19 86 19 91 19 96 20 01 20 06 austria germany switzerland west germany east germany switzerland (within marriage) mean age at first birth year 19 50 20 10 notes: offi cial statistics for switzerland prior to 1998 based on fi rst birth within marriage; if non-marital births were included, the mean age at fi rst birth would be slightly lower. data for western germany until 2000 represent estimates based on survey data, which were used to redistribute births outside marriage into “true” birth order data. source: austria: 1984-2010: geburtenbarometer (2011); data for 1952-1983 were estimated by anna šťastná (rilsa, prague) and tomáš sobotkaon the basis of unpublished retrospective records collected in the 1981 census and provided by statistics austria germany: eurostat (2011) for 2009-10 and kreyenfeld et al. (2010) for 2001-2008. eastern germany: human fertility database (2011) for the periods 1954-88 and luy/ pötzsch (2010) for 1995-2000 (based on the offi cial vital statistics); kreyenfeld et al. (2010) for the period 2001-2008. western germany: birg et al. (1990) and kreyenfeld (2002) for the period until 1995; luy/ pötzsch (2010) for the period 1996-2000 and for 2009; kreyenfeld et al. (2010) for the period 2001-2008. switzerland: council of europe (2006) and own computations based on eurostat (2010). • tomáš sobotka278 analysing fertility change in two broad age groups gives a simplifi ed picture of reality. therefore, additional evidence of fertility transformations in selected age groups during the last four decades is provided in table a2 in online appendix 1 (in cpos 36,2-3). these data show rapidly diminishing childbearing among young adults below age 25 and even more so among teenage women, once a target of social policy interventions in many countries. in the case of switzerland, teenage women currently account for only 1 % of the total fertility rate, whereas in western germany and austria their share is between 3 and 4 %, down from over 12 % in 1970. a mirror development is observed in the last 2-3 decades in fertility trends among the women that are nearing the fi nal stage of their reproductive lives. since 1990, fertility rates at ages above 35 doubled in austria, western germany and switzerland, and they have increased by a factor of 3.7 (admittedly, from a low initial level) in eastern germany. the shift to a later timing of childbearing has an important implication for the conventional measures of period fertility, especially for the overused period tfr (sobotka/lutz 2011): as long as it is underway, it negatively affects observed period fertility rates because some of the births that would have taken place in a given year were “postponed” into the future. this distortion may have no effect on cohort fertility, however. as a result, completed cohort fertility rates often stay well above the corresponding period tfrs (section 2.2, fig. 4). several approaches have been derived to estimate period fertility rates that are free of the infl uences of the changing age pattern of childbearing (the so-called “tempo effect”), among which the most frequent is a simple method derived by bongaarts and feeney (1998). table 2 presents this indicator (adjusted period tfr, labelled tfr*) alongside the conventional period tfr and the estimated tempo effect derived as a difference between them in two broad time periods, 1980-89 and, more recent, 2000-07. a more detailed look at the annual trends in both the tfr and tfr* is provided in figure a3 fig. 7: cumulated period age-specifi c fertility rates in two broad age groups, 12-27 and 28-50, austria, germany and switzerland, 1970-2009 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 austria east germany west germanyswitzerland cumulated fertility rate ages 12-27 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 austria east germany west germanyswitzerland cumulated fertility rate ages 28-50 source: human fertility database (2011); geburtenbarometer (2010) fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 279 in online appendix 1 (in cpos 36,2-3). this analysis broadly confi rms some of the conclusions derived from the conventional period tfr alone. with the exception of eastern germany, fertility levels in austria, germany and switzerland have been stable since the 1980s, with small declines observed in austria and switzerland. in the early 2000s, tempo-adjusted tfrs in these three countries reached a level of around 1.6. in austria and switzerland, the levels of tempo-adjusted tfr* converge to the projected completed fertility in the mid-1970s cohorts (table 1), lending additional support to the notion of a stabilisation in fertility levels. the negative tempo effect in the conventional tfr in the early 21st century was estimated at very similar levels of -0.24 (switzerland) to -0.30 (eastern germany). the persistence of childbearing postponement and the associated continuation of tempo effect also partly explain the absence of a larger upturn in period fertility rates in austria, western germany and switzerland as it occurred in many parts of europe since the late 1990s (goldstein et al. 2009; see also section 2). 5 changing family patterns, living arrangements and fertility a gradual retreat of marriage from the lives of men and women of reproductive ages has been a defi ning family trend across europe since the 1970s (sobotka/toulemon 2008) and also a key feature of the “second demographic transition” (lesthaeghe 1995). at younger ages, marriages have been increasingly postponed or foregone and replaced by cohabitation, non-residential partnerships (lat), single living, and tab. 2: conventional (tfr) and tempo-adjusted (tfr*) period total fertility rates and estimated tempo effect in austria, germany and switzerland (1980-89 and 2000-07) tfr tfr* tempo effect 1980-89 2000-07 1980-89 2000-07 1980-89 2000-07 austria 1.53 1.38 1.73 1.63 -0.20 -0.25 germany-east 1.80 1.25 1.83 1.56 -0.03 -0.30 (1980-87) (1980-87) (1980-87) germany-west 1.37 1.36 1.59 1.61 -0.22 -0.24 switzerland 1.54 1.42 1.73 1.68 -0.19 -0.26 notes: tempo-adjusted tfr* has been computed only for birth orders 1, 2 and 3, and combined with the ordinary tfr for birth orders 4+. given that births at birth orders 4+ typically constitute a very small fraction of total births, this omission has almost no effect on the resulting values of the tfr*. german order-specifi c data are based on kreyenfeld et al’s (2010) computations based on perinatal births statistics. the adjusted tfr* for switzerland in 1980-89 computed from the data for total birth orders as order-specifi c data are unavailable for that period. source: own computations based on human fertility database (2011); luy/pötzsch (2010); kreyenfeld et al. (2010). • tomáš sobotka280 a prolonged stay in parental home. for instance, in western germany cohabitation overtook marriage as a most frequent form of starting fi rst partnership already in the late 1970s (klein/nauck 2005: figure 13.2). at the peak reproductive ages, the prevalence of marriage has been eroded by an increasing share of never-married and rising divorce rates. consequently, more men and women stay unmarried throughout their thirties and forties and those who marry spend on average a shorter time in marriage. these trends are common to all countries across europe, but have progressed with varying intensity (sobotka/ toulemon 2008). this diversity, also typical of the three societies compared here, can be best illustrated with the shift towards a higher share of children born outside marriage. this indicator reached particularly low values in the mid-1960s, when it ranged between 4 % in switzerland and 11 % in austria (fig. 8). subsequently, this share increased steadily, especially in the 1990s and 2000s. in eastern germany, extramarital births became common already in the 1970s, in part due to policy profig. 8: share of births outside marriage (in percent), austria, germany and switzerland, 1950-2010 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 19 50 19 55 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 austria west germany east germanyswitzerland germany percent births outside marriage notes: data for eastern germany exclude (east) berlin since 1990; whereas the data for western germany include the whole territory of berlin since 1990. source: eurostat (2010); council of europe (2006); statistisches bundesamt (2011); statistics austria (2011). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 281 visions supporting single mothers (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2002; salles 2006). since 2001, a majority of births in eastern germany takes place outside marriage. with 58 % of non-marital births in 2009, the region reaches one of the highest values in europe. in austria, the share of non-marital births surpassed 40 % in 2009, whereas western germany (27 %, including berlin) and switzerland (18 %) belong to the regions with a relatively low share of non-marital births (fig. 8; in comparison, the share of non-marital births in the eu reached 37 %). these shares are yet higher for fi rst births, reaching around 70 % in eastern germany (kreyenfeld/bastin 2010). although childbearing out of wedlock has been traditionally linked to single mothers, most of the spectacular growth in non-marital childbearing can be attributed to the rise of unmarried cohabitation. recent data on the family situation in austria and germany around the time of fi rst birth indicate that only one in ten or fewer fi rst-time mothers can be classifi ed as “truly” single mothers. a “transient category” is made up by women having a partner not living with them (5 % in western germany, 10 % in eastern germany), whereas a much higher share of women cohabit (table 3). in eastern germany, unmarried cohabitation has become the most common living arrangement at the time of fi rst birth, while in austria, and even more so in western germany, marriage still dominates. single motherhood in austria and germany is closely linked to younger age, larger settlement size, and, above all, low educational attainment (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2005; perelli-harris et al. 2010a). the results are less clear-cut for having a child in a cohabiting union, where a negative educational gradient exists in austria and eastern germany, but not in western germany (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2005: table 4). many couples who cohabit when they have a fi rst child eventually marry or dissolve their union. as a result, marriage and single motherhood gain importance, while the prevalence of cohabitation diminishes as the fi rst child becomes older. single parent families also increase in importance with children’s age due to rising cumulative likelihood of divorce of biological parents. in switzerland, the share of tab. 3: partnership status of mothers at the time of birth of their fi rst child (in %) time frame married cohabiting lat single mother austria period 1995-2004 54 37 9* eastern germany cohorts 1971-73 36 43 10 11 western germany cohorts 1971-73 69 19 5 6 note: lat (living apart together) refers to a non-residential partnership, i.e., a relationship where each partner retains a separate household. * refers to both lat and single mother. source: austria: perelli-harris et al. 2010b; based on the generations and gender survey 2008; germany: kreyenfeld/bastin 2010; based on the pairfam 2008-2009 survey. • tomáš sobotka282 children living in single parent families in 2000 increased from 7 % at ages 0-4 to 16 % at ages 15-19 (höpfl inger 2010). taking all households with dependent children below age 18 together, one-parent families are still more common than cohabiting unions in a majority of the eu countries (sobotka/toulemon 2008). austria, germany and switzerland conform to this pattern: according to the 2007 eu-silc survey, one-parent families were almost three times as common as families with cohabiting parents in austria and almost twice as common in germany (iacovou/ skew 2010). overall, one out of seven families with children in austria and germany were headed by a single parent (around the eu average), whereas more than threequarters of families were composed of married couples with children (slightly above the eu average). also earlier data from the 2000-2001 population census revealed that families with single mothers are considerably more common in the three compared countries than families with cohabiting partners (table 4). period life table estimates by heuveline et al. (2003) based on data pertaining to the early 1990s show that cumulative share of children experiencing living with a single parent before reaching adulthood is surprisingly high in austria (40 %) and germany (39 %). a majority of these children were born to married or cohabiting couples and later experienced parental separation. as could be expected, a large majority of singleparent families are headed by women and only 15 % are headed by men in each of the three compared countries (oecd 2011a). it is equally important to analyse trends in living arrangements of childless men and women. especially in germany, later entry into marriage or cohabitation and lower stability of partnerships imply a higher share of people living without a partner and fewer opportunities for family formation (eckhard 2006). dorbritz (2003, 2008) pursues a view that living arrangements of adults in their 30s have become increasingly “polarised” between those living in family forms, mostly following a traditional pattern of marriage and childbearing, and those living outside a family, tab. 4: living arrangements in families with children (in %) married couple cohabiting couple single parent without parent census 2000-2001; families of younger mothers aged 20-44 austria 73.4 8.4 18.2 x germany 79.0 6.9 14.2 x switzerland 83.6 5.2 11.2 x eu-silc survey 2007; all families with children below age 18 austria 78.2 5.5 15.0 1.3 germany 76.1 7.4 14.3 2.2 eu-25 73.8 11.0 14.1 1.2 source: sobotka/toulemon (2008: table 6; 2000-2001 census data based on eurostat), iacovou/skew (2010: table 4.2; 2007 eu-silc data). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 283 often as singles. the non-family living arrangements are especially typical of highly educated and qualifi ed women (dorbritz 2003). figure 9 shows that the number of women aged 30-34 in childless living arrangements has risen particularly sharply in eastern germany, and was closely linked to the rapid expansion of single living and, to a smaller degree, of unmarried cohabitation. altogether, in 2004, 39 % of west german women and 27 % of east german women of that age lived without a child; of whom about one half (slightly more in eastern germany) lived as singles or with parents.7 men stay in the parental home longer and at any age more frequently than women, especially in austria, where as many as 20 % of men aged 30-34 and 12 % of men aged 35-39 still lived with their parents in 2008 (geserick 2011, based on ggs survey).8 in eastern germany, the partnership “market” for men and their chances to fig. 9: percentage of women aged 30-34 remaining childless by living arrangements, eastern and western germany, 1996 and 2004 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1996 2004 1.6 4.5 2.4 3.4 2.9 12.3 6.4 5.0 living with parents living single cohabiting married share of women aged 30-34 (%) east germany 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1996 2004 3.8 13.2 5.9 12.0 3.6 15.2 8.8 11.3 share of women aged 30-34 (%) west germany source: dorbritz/ruckdeschel (2009: table 10); based on mikrozensus surveys. 7 an international comparison based on the population policy and acceptance survey conducted around 2001 showed that childless german women and men aged 20-39 stood out for their unusually high preference for childless and partnerless living arrangements, including single living, non-coresidential partnerships and fl at sharing with friends (sobotka/testa 2008: 193). 8 this share is far above the share of german men living with parents, which stood around 6 % at age 30-39. however, not all austrian men living in the parental home are childless and partnerless, as multigenerational households with children are rather common in austria (iacovou/ skew 2010, table 4.2), especially in rural areas. • tomáš sobotka284 start a family have been negatively affected by a high level of emigration of younger and better-educated women, causing a fall in the number of women per 100 men around age 30 from 95 in 1991 to 89 in 2004 and this fall was most pronounced in structurally weak rural areas (berlin institut 2007). this “shortage of women” especially affects men with lowest qualifi cations and unemployed (lengerer 2011). 6 educational differentials in family size and childlessness among women, higher education has been associated with lower fertility throughout the whole of the 20th century (skirbekk 2008). the negative educational gradient in fertility is pronounced in countries institutionally supporting long withdrawal of mothers from the labour market, where highly educated women face diffi culties combining their work and family life, including austria, germany and switzerland (liefbroer/merz 2011). in these countries, low fertility and elevated childlessness among university-educated women have been frequently debated in social science research and by the media. they also resonate in populist texts that paint a picture of a progressive decline of a society that is increasingly dominated by lower-educated population with low levels of skills (e.g., sarrazin 2010: chapter 8).9 how large are educational differentials in fertility? do they decline over time, with generally declining family size? figure 10, based on census and microcensus data gives a long-term picture of completed fertility among women born in the 1920s1960s in the three compared countries. this comparison is hindered by different categorisations of achieved education. nevertheless, a number of well-supported observations can be made: women with a high degree of education have had a low family size through-• out the whole observation period. for instance, tertiary-educated austrian, west german and swiss women born in the mid-1930s had 1.6-1.7 children on average. this level has declined to 1.4-1.5 in the cohorts born around 1960, with the exception of eastern germany where it stood at 1.7. the educational gradient in fertility remained stable (western germany, • switzerland) or declined (austria, eastern germany) among the younger cohorts. the rising level of female education constitutes an important factor in the • observed decline in the mean family size. the diminishing group of women with elementary or no education has • achieved higher fertility close to the replacement level, around 2 children per woman, in the late 1950s and the early 1960s cohorts in austria and switzerland. 9 sarazzin (2010: table 8.7) presents a projection scenario, keeping estimated fertility differentials in germany by level of education constant and assuming that children will achieve identical education to their parents. in this scenario, the number of children born to parents with a high level of education falls by half from 22.5 % to 11.1 % in the course of fi ve generations, while the share of births to parents with low education surges from 14.5 % to 34.1 %. such projections are based on obscure premises, but nevertheless achieve the desired scare effect. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 285 in contrast to west german women, east german women born up until the • 1960s displayed very small fertility differentiation by level of education. this fi nding is usually explained by institutional factors supporting a rapid return to employment after childbirth among highly qualifi ed women in the former gdr, especially the wide coverage of public childcare facilities (kreyenfeld 2004; see also concluding section). what is the role of childlessness in explaining the observed fertility gradient by level of education? high childlessness among professionally active women with advanced educational attainment motivated numerous studies, especially in germany (dorbritz 2003; kemkes-grottenthaler 2003), but also in austria (buber et al. 2011). due to the lack of reliable data, childlessness among german women with a high educational degree has often been overestimated in the past, with some estimates fig. 10: completed fertility by level of education in austria, germany and switzerland, women born in the 1920s-1960s 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1926-30 1931-35 1936-40 1941-45 1946-50 1951-55 1956-60 total primary or no education lower secondary upper secondary tertiary completed fertility austria 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1933-38 1939-43 1944-48 1949-53 1954-58 1959-63 1964-68 total low education medium education high education completed fertility western germany notes: computations for switzerland exclude women with unknown number of children. defi nitions of education categories are available in online appendix 3 (in cpos 36,2-3). source: austria: population census 2001 (statistics austria 2005); switzerland: population census 2000 (based on data and computations kindly provided by marion burkimsher). germany: 2008 microcensus survey (statistisches bundesamt 2009). 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1933-38 1939-43 1944-48 1949-53 1954-58 1959-63 1964-68 total low education medium education high education completed fertility eastern germany 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 total primary or no education lower secondary upper secondary tertiary completed fertility switzerland • tomáš sobotka286 suggesting that more than 40 % of them will remain permanently childless. more recently, the 2008 microcensus survey revealed that these estimates have been exaggerated. figure 11 combines available data on permanent childlessness among tertiaryeducated women in the three analysed countries. the long-term trend shows a uturn, with high childlessness among the small and select group of women with a tertiary degree born around 1930 (surpassing 30 % in austria and switzerland), declining among the cohorts born in the 1930s and 1940s (except in switzerland), and then rising in the subsequent cohorts. among the younger cohorts of women past the reproductive age, switzerland has the highest share of childless, with more than one out of three tertiary educated women born in the late 1950s remaining childless as compared with one out of fi ve in the general population. in western germany, the share is also high, surpassing 30 % among women with a high educational degree fig. 11: childlessness among tertiary-educated women born in the 1920s-1960s; austria, germany and switzerland 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 switzerland west germany east germanyaustria in % birth cohort notes: computations for switzerland exclude women with unknown number of children. defi nitions of education categories are available in online appendix 3 (in cpos 36,2-3). source: austria: population census 2001 (statistics austria 2005); switzerland: population census 2000 (based on data and computations kindly provided by marion burkimsher); germany: 2008 microcensus survey (statistisches bundesamt 2009). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 287 born in the mid-1960s, while in austria it exceeded 25 %. as in many other demographic aspects, the west german level contrasts sharply with eastern germany, where childlessness was low (11 %) in the mid-1960s cohorts; this share is likely to increase rapidly among the younger cohorts growing up in the post-unifi cation conditions marked by elevated economic uncertainty, especially in the 1990s. in each of the analysed countries with the exception of eastern germany, childlessness is strongly differentiated by education, similar to the overall educational gradient in fertility (online appendix 1, fig. a4, in cpos 36,2-3). women with primary or lower secondary education display the lowest rates of permanent childlessness at about 15 % in the late 1950s and the early 1960s cohorts. this indicates that a large part of completed fertility differentials may be attributable to childlessness. one way to analyse this is to compare the family size of mothers only. in each country, educational differentials in the family size of mothers are indeed substantially lower than among all women. the mean family size of mothers is closely clustered around 2 children per mother for all educational groups except for the mothers with the lowest educational attainment who have a higher family size (online appendix 1, fig. a5, in cpos 36,2-3). these general fi ndings on educational gradient in fertility should be interpreted with caution. looking at a few education categories only hides much larger differences within each category. in particular, childlessness and family size are strongly differentiated by fi eld of education (hoem et al. 2006; van bavel 2010; neyer/hoem 2008 for austria). in addition, the observed gradient in fertility may be partly explained by “reverse causation” – some women are not able to complete their studies (and attain higher level of education) due to becoming pregnant and giving birth to a child during their studies. a study on norway by cohen et al. (2011) suggested that this effect may be actually larger than the negative effect of education on family size. however, these considerations do not make the presented fi ndings on the negative association between educational attainment and fertility among women less important. data on fertility ideals, desires and intentions suggest that the observed gradient is not refl ected in fertility desires and intentions: survey data show only a weak negative association between education and intended family size (e.g., sobotka 2009 and neuwirth et al. 2010 for austria). in the case of germany, heiland et al. (2005) even show that the dji family surveys conducted in 1988 and 1994 indicated a positive educational gradient in intended family size.10 10 this fi nding might be explained by a hypothetical nature of the intentions questions analysed: “if it was entirely up to you, how many children in total would you like to have or liked to have had?” a more realistic question on actual reproductive preferences might have yielded a neutral or slightly negative gradient, in line with the data for austria. • tomáš sobotka288 7 fertility of immigrant women: a gradual convergence to the level of “native” women in northern, southern and western europe, migrant women have on average higher fertility rates than the women born in the country (sobotka 2008). at the same time, this difference is not massive as occasionally thought among the broader public and most groups of migrants actually record below-replacement fertility rates. also the recent increase in period fertility rates in many countries of western europe between 2000 and 2008 was at times perceived as a consequence of high immigration rates of more fertile populations. however, for most countries this perception has not been supported by empirical fi ndings (goldstein et al. 2009). this section combines diverse data sets to track changes in fertility rates of immigrant and foreign women as well as their share on total births in the period 1970-2010. in addition, i also studied the net impact of the higher fertility rates of foreign women on the national tfr level as well as trends in the share of births to foreign mothers, and the tfr levels among the largest higher-fertility minority, i.e., among the group of turkish women. although theoretically simple, measuring migrants’ fertility is complicated due to different concepts of migration and citizenship, which are also refl ected in the vital as well as population statistics (sobotka 2008). the simplest defi nition of an immigrant as a person born abroad is not always followed in the offi cial statistics: in the three countries studied here, only one, austria, publishes data allowing computation of annual fertility rates by country of birth. in contrast, each of the three countries publishes fertility data by citizenship (nationality), which is, however, diffi cult to compare due to vast differences in the citizenship status of recent as well as longsettled migrants. for instance, austria has granted citizenship status in the past to many migrants with long-term stay in the country, while switzerland makes obtaining citizenship so diffi cult that many residents born in switzerland remain foreign citizens because their parents or grandparents migrated to the country. hence, the statistics presented here, based mostly on the nationality concept, should be seen as a crude and approximate measure of migrants’ fertility rates. finally, the available period data, especially the period tfr, are subject to measurement problems and interpretations, including tempo effects or the strong link between migrants’ duration of stay in the country and fertility (sobotka/lutz 2010; toulemon 2004). as in other rich societies, migrant women in austria, germany and switzerland have on average higher fertility rates than “native” women. this difference is not massive, however, and fertility rates among foreign women can hardly be considered high. the period tfr of foreign women dipped below the threshold of two children per woman as early as in the late 1970s in switzerland (with the exception of a brief period in the 1990s), in the 1990s in germany and recently also in austria (fig. 12). in germany, a fall in the period tfr among foreign women to the level below 1.6 led to a rapid narrowing in fertility differential between foreign women and german citizens from 0.8 in the early 1990s to 0.24 in 2008-09 (fig. a6 in online appendix 1, in cpos 36,2-3; see also schmid/kohls 2009). a cohort analysis based on 2008 microcensus data showed that migrant women in germany born in the fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 289 1960s reached sub-replacement fertility around 1.9 children per woman (dorbritz 2011). a more gradual convergence of the fertility level took place in austria and switzerland; in the latter, partly due to a gradual increase in fertility among the “native” women after 2003. the absolute fertility differential remains largest in austria and amounted to 0.7 in 2009 when measured with nationality status and to 0.57 when measured with migration (country of birth) status (table 5, online appendix 1, fig. a6, in cpos 36,2-3). although narrowing, this fertility differential still has a nonnegligible impact on the period tfr in austria and switzerland, where it “pushed” the period tfr upwards by about 0.10-0.11 in absolute terms in 2009; this positive fig. 12: period fertility rates in austria, germany and switzerland by nationality and migration status for all women with foreign nationality or foreign country of birth and for turkish women (1970-2010) 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 total women born in austria women with austrian nationality women born abroad women with foreign nationality period tfr austria 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 austria: born in turkey austria: turkish nationality switzerland: turkish nationality germany: turkish nationality period tfr turkish nationality / born in turkey 20 10 notes: data for germany in the period up to 1990 refer to western germany and west berlin. note that tfr data among foreign women in switzerland fl uctuate considerably; these fl uctuations have been partly caused by changes in the births statistics for foreigners, especially inclusion or exclusion of data for asylum seekers. source: austria: geburtenbarometer (2011); zeman et al. (2011); kytir (2006), and data provided by statistics austria. germany: statistisches bundesamt (2011); schmid/ kohls (2009); mammey/schwarz (2002: 227, table 6.3).switzerland: sfso (2011) and wanner (2002). 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 total women with swiss nationality women with foreign nationality period tfr switzerland 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 total women with foreign nationality women with german nationality period tfr germany • tomáš sobotka290 effect on the period tfr has become much smaller (0.03) in germany (fig. a6 in online appendix 1, in cpos 36,2-3). detailed analyses have repeatedly shown vast differences in fertility of migrants by country of origin, level of education, religious affi liation, or ethnicity (for germany, see schmid/kohls 2009; milewski 2010; dorbritz 2011). in the analysed countries, turkish women constitute the largest migrant group with relatively high fertility. however, the available data show a rapid fall in fertility among women with turkish citizenship in germany and switzerland, bringing their period tfr level down from 3.4 in 1981 to levels below 2 around 2000. similarly dramatic declines have been depicted in cohort fertility data for women born in turkey (e.g., kohls et al. 2010 for the post-1940 cohorts living in germany). only in austria, turkish women still retain relatively high fertility with the period tfr for turkish migrants hovering around 2.5 (fig. 12, table 5, geburtenbarometer 2011). when migrant or foreign women are disregarded, austrian, german and swiss women show remarkably similar fertility levels and trends with the period tfr at 1.3 for “native” austrian and german women and 1.4 for “native” swiss women in 2009-10 (online appendix 1, fig. a6, in cpos 36,2-3). these values are slightly higher than the minima reached in the early 2000s in austria and switzerland (1.24 and 1.22, respectively) and already in 1994 in germany (1.15). a combination of higher fertility of migrants, their relatively young age structure with many women in the prime reproductive ages, as well as their increasing share in the population, implies that immigrants have a high and often increasing share in the total number of births. in austria, this share tripled from 9 % in the mid-1980s tab. 5: period total fertility rate among women with foreign nationality and women born abroad, austria, germany and switzerland, 1985 and 2009 austria switzerland germany year 1985 2009 2009 1985 2009 2009 type of data natio nality natio nality country of birth nationality nationality nationality share of births by foreign mothers (percent) 6.0 21.6 29.3 15.6 36.3 16.8 (2007) tfr 1.47 1.39 1.39 1.52 1.50 1.35 tfr: native women 1.45 1.29 1.28 1.51 1.40 1.33 tfr: foreign women 2.14 1.99 1.85 1.54 1.82 1.57 tfr: turkish women 3.70 2.69 2.52 2.86 1.83 (84-89) (2002-4) tfr: abs. difference foreign-native 0.69 0.70 0.57 0.03 0.42 0.24 tfr: “excess“ fertility of foreigners (percent) 48 54 45 2 30 18 tfr: net impact of fertility of foreign women 0.02 0.10 0.11 0.00 0.10 0.03 source: austria: geburtenbarometer (2011); zeman et al. (2011); kytir (2006), and data provided by statistics austria; germany: statistisches bundesamt (2011); schmid/ kohls (2009); mammey/schwarz (2002: 227, table 6.3).switzerland: sfso (2011) and wanner (2002). fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 291 to a high level of 29 % in 2010 (fig. a6 in online appendix 1, in cpos 36,2-3). in switzerland, where the data pertain to foreign rather than immigrant women, their share of total births surged from 15 % in the mid-1980s to 37 % in 2010. in contrast, in germany the share of foreign women on the absolute number of births has been relatively stable at around 17 % since the mid-1990s. 8 discussion and conclusions austria, germany and switzerland: a shared fertility pattern? the three compared countries share a number of common features in their fertility patterns and broader family trends. they are characterised by comparatively low, but also relatively stable, fertility rates since the late 1970s which contrast with higher and less stable fertility rates in northern europe and in most parts of western europe (see also online appendix 2, in cpos 36,2-3). it appears that each of these three countries has already reached its lowest period fertility values. period total fertility rates have rebounded somewhat from the time of reaching their minima between 1985 (western germany) and 2001 (austria and switzerland). this rebound was only slight in western germany and austria; modest in switzerland and pronounced (although from extremely low levels) in eastern germany. this trend was uninterrupted by the recent economic recession, when fertility rates remained stable or increased slightly in 2009-2010. a continuing tempo distortion in the order of 0.2-0.3 in absolute values suggests that in the future an additional moderate rise in the period tfr is likely to lift period fertility rates yet higher above their minima reached in the past. this likely trend notwithstanding, all three countries have reached low completed fertility rates and an elevated childlessness around 20 % or higher (except in eastern germany), which is above the level of most european countries (online appendix 2, in cpos 36,2-3). austria, germany and switzerland also share a relatively pronounced negative correlation between the level of education and fertility rates, which is closely linked to high childlessness rates among women with higher degrees of education, especially among those with tertiary education. finally, immigrant women have a relatively high share of the number of births and their on average higher fertility level has a slightly positive effect on total fertility rates in each of the three countries studied. besides these similarities, two main differentiating factors can be pointed out. the fi rst concerns an internal differentiation of fertility in germany: two decades after german unifi cation, many contrasts in fertility patterns have persisted between the east and the west of the country (see below). the second is a considerable differentiation of family-related behaviours, living arrangements and non-marital childbearing in the compared countries which continues despite shared family trends over time. • tomáš sobotka292 east vs. west german fertility: convergence or persistent contrasts? at face value, fertility rates in east and west germany have broadly converged. thanks to a vigorous recovery of period fertility in east germany since the mid1990s, the period tfr has surpassed that of western germany since 2008 (see section 2). cohort fertility rates are also converging as the mean family size in eastern germany is gradually declining towards the low west german values. in addition, tempo-adjusted period total fertility converged between these two regions by the mid-2000s (section 4; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). this development seemingly confi rms initial expectations that political and institutional unifi cation of the two “germanies” should eventually also bring about similar fertility patterns. however, below the surface a surprising number of differences remain, often rooted in the pre-unifi cation contrasts in family patterns between the former gdr and frg (kreyenfeld 2004; becker et al. 2010; goldstein et al. 2010). western germany has high childlessness, but also a higher share of larger families with three or more children. in contrast, east german women are characterised by low childlessness combined with an increasing shift towards a one-child family model. the educational gradient in fertility is considerably smaller in the east, where university educated women display high fi rst birth rates after completing education (kreyenfeld 2010). marriage has largely become irrelevant for reproduction in eastern germany (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2002) and east german women do not show a strong preference for marriage as a “best” living arrangement for having children (mayer/ schulze 2009). in western germany marriage still remains by far the most common setting for childbearing. many women leave the labour force after becoming mothers in western germany, whereas being a “housewife” is much less common in eastern germany (kreyenfeld 2010; goldstein et al. 2010). about one-half of east german mothers retain full-time labour force participation (but only one-fi fth in western germany) and public childcare for children below age three is widely available, accepted and used in the east (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; statistisches bundesamt 2010; goldstein et al. 2010). in contrast, the prevailing societal norms and expectation that mothers will provide exclusive childcare when their children are small are strongly entrenched in western germany (rossier et al. 2011). as a result, most west german women plan a long interruption of their work career after the birth of their fi rst child, irrespective of their attitudes. in addition, surveys show that east german women are considerably more secular, but also more family oriented when childless as compared to their west german counterparts. immigrants have a negligible infl uence on fertility in eastern germany, especially due to their small share of the population. in contrast, “internal” emigration to western germany has a direct infl uence on the number of births as well as partnership and reproductive choices of east german men as young women emigrate from the east more frequently than young men do. in summary, the continuing fertility contrasts between eastern and western germany – characterised by a combination of elevated fi rst birth rates and a slower transition to the second birth in eastern germany (becker et al. 2010) – are closely fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 293 linked to persistent differences in family-related values, employment, public childcare acceptance and availability as well as partnership behaviour (mayer/schulze 2009; becker et al. 2010). goldstein and kreyenfeld (2011: 458) point out that “west germans tend to be highly concerned about the adverse effects of maternal employment on the well-being of children – exemplifi ed by the strong disapproval of the so-called rabenmutter (raven mother) who neglects her infant – while east germans generally do not share this worry.” in east germany, high unemployment fuels economic uncertainty and prevents many younger people from achieving stable full-time employment. while a secure job position is usually seen as a precondition for family formation in western germany, east german women and couples are often willing to “live with uncertainty” and pursue childbearing irrespective of their uncertain employment prospects (qualitative research by bernardi et al. 2008). finally, turning attention to men, mayer/schulze (2009: 26) emphasise that in the eyes of women, west german men are “diffi cult partners” who are reluctant to commit themselves to marriage and childbearing. institutional underpinning of low fertility in austria, germany and switzerland low fertility in austria, germany and switzerland is often seen as an outcome of specifi c institutional factors that sustain the pattern of low fertility. the three countries share a relatively “traditional” orientation of labour market and family policies (esping-andersen 1999; prskawetz et al. 2008; rosenfeld et al. 2004; spieß/wrohlich 2008), supporting gender roles division in childrearing tasks and a long withdrawal of mothers from the labour market, facilitated by both extended parental leave period (except in switzerland) and a limited availability of childcare for children below age 3 (except in eastern germany; recently, childcare availability has also improved considerably in western germany). in germany, joint taxation of married couples is an additional factor encouraging traditional gender division of labour and family care, impeding women’s full-time labour force participation and, potentially, also affecting their fertility decisions (apps/rees 2004; esping-andersen 2009). perceived diffi culties of combining work and family life are often cited as important reasons for low fertility and high childlessness among the tertiary educated women (see section 6). these factors should not be seen entirely as constraints imposed from above, since survey data show a continuing negative perception of working mothers and institutional childcare during the fi rst three years of the child’s life in austria, germany and switzerland (liefbroer/merz 2010); not so in eastern germany (mayer/ schulze 2009; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; see also above). several studies point out that women and men in austria and germany have low fertility ideals and intentions, which are both below the replacement threshold and below the levels reported in other european countries (goldstein et al. 2003; sobotka/testa 2008; sobotka 2009; see also philipov and bernardi 2011, in cpos 36,2-3). thus, low fertility in the analysed countries can also partly be seen as an outcome of a wide acceptance of childlessness and non-family living arrangements (see also section 5) as well as generally low family size preferences. it is likely, however, that • tomáš sobotka294 institutional constraints and low family size preferences are intertwined and that the former infl uences the latter. concluding comments by and large, austria, germany and switzerland share a common pattern of low fertility which has been remarkably stable during the last three decades. also completed cohort fertility is expected to stabilise in the early 1970s cohorts, following its long-term decline, and may even slightly rise, especially in western germany (section 3.2; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). fertility rates in these three countries have often risen and fallen in a similar fashion and have often been underpinned by similar institutional factors. a curious feature and an attractive subject of social science research is the peculiar position of eastern germany, which often shows contrasting patterns in family-related behaviours to those observed in austria, western germany and switzerland. this overview gives only limited support to the idea of reproductive polarisation, which has two distinct dimensions: fi rst, it can be seen as a sharper division in the population between living arrangements and life course trajectories that are not compatible with reproduction and those which involve family life with children (huinink 2002; dorbritz 2003). second, the polarisation can be seen as a process where fertility decisions are increasingly differentiated after the birth of the fi rst child, with one-child families rising in prominence (huinink 1989). although childlessness has been on the rise and one-child families became very common in eastern germany, the three compared countries still display a clear preference for a two-child family model, which also remains most common. it is unlikely that fertility rates in austria, germany and switzerland will show rapid changes or reversals. however, three factors suggest that a fertility increase is more likely than a fertility decline in the next two decades. first, the long-term shift towards a later age at childbearing is likely to diminish and eventually come to an end. when that happens, the negative tempo effect on the period total fertility rate will diminish, potentially pushing this indicator to the level around 1.6. in addition, these three countries have been affected relatively little by the recent economic recession and have seen a modest rebound of their economies, with unemployment in austria falling to the lowest level in the eu in 2011 and unemployment in germany reaching its lowest value since 1991. as positive economic conditions are conducive to childbearing (adsera 2005; örsal/goldstein 2010; sobotka et al. 2011), the current economic and labour market situation may eventually lead to higher fertility. third, policies once favouring the traditional “male breadwinner” model of work and family are gradually changing, accommodating more choice and giving better support to working mothers by increasing early childcare availability and making parental leave more fl exible and better paid for those who opt for its shorter duration (e.g., spieß/wrohlich 2008; prskawetz et al. 2008; oecd 2011b). this shift closer to the “nordic” policy model may also lead to a slight rise in fertility, one notch closer to the values observed in northern europe. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 295 acknowledgements many thanks to tomas frejka, michaela kreyenfeld and two anonymous reviewers who have commented on an earlier version of this article. i am also grateful to marc luy who has provided his and olga pötzsch’s computations of order-specifi c indicators for eastern and western germany and to marion burkimsher who has provided her computations of order-specifi c data for switzerland, based on the 2001 population census. finally, alexia prskawetz and ina jaschinski deserve many thanks for their patient reading and excellent revisions of the german translation of this article, while tomas frejka and linda kennedy have helped to improve the original english text. this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly established by the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina and is funded by the jacobs foundation. references adsera, alicia 2005: vanishing children: from high unemployment to low fertility in developed countries. in: american economic review, papers and proceedings 95,2: 189-193. apps, patricia; 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geburtenbarometer vienna: analysing fertility convergence between vienna and austria. vid working paper 07/2011. vienna: vienna institute of demography. fertility in austria, germany and switzerland: is there a common pattern? • 303 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “fertilität in österreich, deutschland und der schweiz: gibt es ein gemeinsames muster?”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-11de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-11de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 18.07.2011 date of acceptance: 07.01.2012 tomáš sobotka ( ). vienna institute of demography, österreichische akademie der wissenschaften und wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital. vienna, austria. e-mail: tomas.sobotka@oeaw.ac.at url: http://www.oeaw.ac.at © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity a cross-national comparison of family trajectories and life course norms in european countries dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková abstract: throughout recent decades, a gradual shift away from an early contracted and simple life course pattern which dominated in the 1950s and 1960s to late protracted and more complex patterns could be observed within european countries. yet, despite multiple cross-national similarities in the changes of individual life course patterns, there exist considerable differences in the form and frequency of these changes. we argue that one possible way of better understanding these variations is to examine the connection between family formation choices and value orientations. using data from the european social survey 2006 we empirically investigate to what extent the family trajectories have changed across generations and how these practiced family trajectories correspond to cross-cohort changes in socially established norms about family transitions. our results corroborate the assumption of an increasing restandardisation of family lives: even though family trajectories have become more turbulent involving more stages and stage changes for the younger generation, “deviations” from traditional family patterns (such as unmarried cohabitation) are turning into majority behaviour, i.e. into a “new standard”. contrasting these trends with developments in family-related norms reveals that the liberalisation in norms appears to precede such changes in actual demographic behaviour, even though european countries differ in the degree and pace to which such normative and behavioural changes have yet taken place. keywords: family trajectories · norms · cross-national comparison · european social survey · sequence analysis comparative population studies vol. 39, 3 (2014): 559-586 (date of release: 29.09.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-11en3 • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková560 1 introduction throughout recent decades, european countries have undergone substantial changes in the timing and sequencing of family transitions. childbearing, union formation and getting married are on average being experienced at a later age than several decades ago (sobotka/toulemon 2008; corijn/klijzing 2001). at the same time, the previously close linkage between the individual transitions, especially between marriage and family formation, has loosened. there is also an increasing decoupling between leaving parental home and union formation. as a result, more young people live alone before they enter into a relationship, and out-of-wedlock births are becoming more common across europe; in some countries in northern and western europe they even predominate (billari/liefbroer 2010; sobotka/toulemon 2008). empirical data on demographic markers of transitions to adulthood suggest that these changes in family formation from one cohort to the next refl ect a gradual shift away from an early, contracted, and simple life course pattern, which dominated in the 1950s and 1960s to late, protracted, and more complex patterns (billari/liefbroer 2010). these changes are often summarised as a de-standardisation of previously dominant standard life course models, implying that a long-lasting standard social “blueprint” of family structures and the timing of family transitions is losing signifi cance and is gradually being replaced by the emergence of a broad variety of more heterogeneous “choice biographies” (furlong/cartmel 1997). although similar changes in individual life courses are observed across europe, there exist considerable differences in the form and rhythm of these changes across different institutional and cultural backgrounds (cp. section 3.1). a number of different explanations have been put forward to explain these cross-national differences. in this paper, we shall argue that one possible way of better understanding these variations is to examine the connection between family formation choices and value orientations. in demography, an internationally common pattern of major changes of demographic behaviour since the late 1960s has been described as the “second demographic transition” (e.g. van de kaa 1987) and has been explained as the expression of a more general value change. in this sense, changes in family structures can be considered as part of a process of “individualisation” and a weakening of social norms that organise and structure the life course (beck 1992). findings from life course research, however, challenge the assumption of a gradual demise of family-related norms. life course theorists argue that despite trends of diversifi cation, the “standard family course” still serves as an orientation for individual life planning (kohli 2007). values within the family sphere have been remarkably stable over time (scott/braun 2006), suggesting that “the demise of traditional family values has been exaggerated” (scott 2006: 16). more than in other spheres of life (e.g. in employment or occupational careers), social norms about the timing and sequencing of family transitions still represent internalised “scripts” about appropriate behaviours (buchmann 1989; settersten/hagestad 1996) exerting infl uence on individual action (billari/liefbroer 2007). cross-national variations in norms (and their development over time) thus may provide a helpful analytical patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 561 tool to better understand the different forms and “rhythms” of changes in family life courses across countries. against this background, the aims of our contribution are twofold. first, we empirically investigate to what extent the family trajectories of young adults in europe are becoming more de-standardised in terms of timing and sequencing of four family transitions: leaving parental home, starting a union, entry into fi rst marriage and becoming a parent. using sequence analysis, we explore to what extent family trajectories of young adults in europe aged between 18 and 35 are becoming more turbulent and dissimilar across cohorts as compared to a “traditional family pattern”, defi ned as entry into marriage preceding childbirth without a previous period of unmarried cohabitation. secondly, we analyse how these practiced family trajectories correspond to cross-cohort changes in socially established norms about family transitions. our results contribute to the existing research by updating the description of change of family-related social norms and of family trajectories as well as by linking both spheres and processes of change across birth cohorts in an international perspective (cp. section 3.3). for our analyses, we refer back to wave 3 of the european social survey from 2006/2007 that contains comprehensive retrospective data on family life course transitions and related social norms in a separate questionnaire. furthermore, its pan-european scope allows us to study the relevant life course transitions across a wide set of different institutional and cultural backgrounds including those of the new eu member states of central and eastern europe, where family forms and demographic processes have changed most noticeably in recent decades. due to the cross-sectional nature of the ess, we cannot test for causal effects between individual attitudes and norms on individual decisions and behaviour. our analytical interest thus is mainly in describing changes in family behaviour and in social norms as well as elaborating associations between these two processes on the macro-level. the macro-level is of interest to us because it is plausible that individual behaviour is not only linked to individual attitudes but also to social norms that are based on dominant attitudes within a given society. in the following, we shall outline the key theoretical concepts underlying our analysis in more detail (section 2). section 3 subsequently presents a concise overview of the current state-of-the-art in comparative research on family trajectories, its main results and persistent limitations. against this background, we develop an analytical framework and derive hypotheses for our empirical analyses (section 4). subsequent to a short description of the ess data (section 5), section 6 presents empirical evidence on developments in family trajectories and family norms in europe based on descriptive statistics as well as a sequence analyses of retrospective survey data. finally, we critically discuss our results and draw conclusions for further analyses in this fi eld (section 7). • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková562 2 theoretical background 2.1 changes in family transitions: standardisation vs. destandardisation transformations in family life trajectories have been in the focus of various studies in the social sciences throughout previous decades. the analysis of such changes relates to more general efforts to conceptualise dimensions of life course trajectories (brückner/mayer 2005) and to develop statistical measures for them (barban/ billari 2012; elzinga/liefbroer 2007; fussell 2005; fussell et al. 2007). earlier research has described changes in life course patterns using various concepts like “de-institutionalisation”, “de-standardisation”, “pluralisation” and “differentiation” often used interchangeably. however, these processes entail multiple dimensions, which can occur independently or even incoherently. de-institutionalisation refers to a progressive weakening of normative, legal or organisational rules that regulate the organisation of sequences in the life course. the term de-standardisation of life courses refl ects the fact that either certain events in life are experienced by smaller and smaller shares of the population or occur at more diverse ages and for durations that vary more widely (brückner/mayer 2005). the processes of de-standardisation thus include both changes in the patterns of family life courses and of their volatility or turbulence, which can take different directions. for instance, the pluralisation of family forms (the increase in the number of synchronous states in a population) and the differentiation of the life course (the increase in the number of distinct stages within individual life courses, e.g. premarital cohabitation) may be accompanied by standardisation processes (e.g. when premarital cohabitation becomes an almost universal part of family trajectories) and may result in the emergence of a “new standard life course” (brückner/mayer 2005). at the same time, the processes of accompanying normative changes (de-institutionalisation) – to which we shall turn subsequently – can occur independently from the changes of demographic behaviour or it can precede them. 2.2 family norms previous research has pointed to a number of macro-social factors that may jointly have triggered recent transformations in demographic behaviour, including changes in the economic and social structure, cultural changes and technological innovations (cp. section 3.1). yet, while research results show that social norms about the timing and especially sequencing of family formation are still strong and differ widely across countries (e.g. billari/liefbroer 2010), surprisingly little research has considered these normative patterns as potential correlates of cross-national differences of changes in family trajectories. as liefbroer and merz (2009: 1) argue, cross-national differences in demographic behaviour may actually stem from “different norms being dominant in different countries.” individuals may thus not only orient their behaviour at the structural and/or material opportunities and constraints that economic and social structures create; they may equally take the expectable patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 563 external evaluation of their actions through their more immediate or wider social surroundings into account and therefore avoid acting in stark contrast to the convictions of people with whom they interact or to general social norms. expectations by relatives or friends may, for example, infl uence young people’s readiness to leave parental home at a specifi c age (billari/liefbroer 2007). from a role theory perspective, individuals seek positive sanctions by signifi cant others and try to avoid negative sanctions such as social exclusion. from a rational choice perspective, individuals may not only be acting “rationally” in their family decisions by seeking for material gains respectively by avoiding material costs. they may, at the same time, act in line with existing norms in order to receive “social consent” from relevant others, respectively to avoid social costs. following this line of argument, individuals may in times of rapid social and economic changes not directly adjust their demographic behaviour to changing structural conditions. instead, they may still tend to adhere to more “conservative” behaviour as norms are changing at a lesser pace. changes in demographic behaviour thus may then be regarded as a gradual process in which “obsolete” values hinder individuals in the adaptation of the new behaviours for some time, until the values change themselves and catch up with the innovation” (rossier 2010: 8). it thus can be assumed that demographic behaviour will change with a certain “time lag” after norms have changed up to a certain “threshold point” at which deviations from the previous behavioural standard do no longer imply a violation of a dominant norm. 3 previous studies following the theoretical overview, we shall now turn to a schematic synopsis of previous research on both changes in family transitions as well as the most recent developments in family norms and values. based on this synopsis, we subsequently identify research gaps and outline the additional contribution provided by our work. 3.1 diversity of family formation patterns across europe although pathways to family formation are changing into the same direction in most parts of europe, signifi cant differences across europe still persist and there is yet little sign of convergence in the timing and sequencing of family events (billari/ liefbroer 2010; blossfeld et al. 2005; corijn/klijzing 2001; sobotka/toulemon 2008). while there are some signs of convergence between eastern european countries on the one hand and northern and western european states on the other hand, living arrangements in northern and western europe and in mediterranean countries still differ considerably (fokkema/liefbroer 2008). in southern europe, for example, leaving home is still a much more protracted process and there is a smaller proportion of young people living on their own than in northern and western europe. consequently, alternative family forms (such as unmarried cohabitation, non-marital parenthood, lone parenthood etc.) as “intermediate steps” in family formation have spread differently across the two groups of countries (beier et al. 2010). • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková564 until now, there are only few comparative studies examining the demographic markers1 of the transition to adulthood in a holistic way – as a series of transitions (gauthier 2007). only throughout the last years, such studies were enabled through methodological developments in sequence analysis (cp. section 5) which allow studying entire life course trajectories as a whole (abbott/tsay 2000; aisenbrey/fasang 2007; lesnard 2006). using this method, elzinga and liefbroer (2007) explored data from the family and fertility survey from 1998/1999 on 19 european countries. chanvril and her colleagues (2009) applied sequence analysis to identify patterns of early family trajectories in european countries, using ess round 3 data from 2006. these studies revealed that, rather than being a general and uniform trend, destandardisation of family trajectories proceeds at a distinct pace. comparing data for women born in 1945-1964, elzinga and liefbroer (2007) observed increased dissimilarity of women’s family trajectories and increased variation in types of family trajectories across cohorts in most western european countries.2 in contrast, in the former communist countries of central and eastern europe, cross-cohort differences were rather small. however, these countries experienced a transformation in institutional and economic conditions only in the 1990s, affecting mainly family behaviour of those born in 1970 and later. for sweden (and partly the netherlands) elzinga and liefbroer (2007) found decreasing variation in types of family trajectories amongst the youngest cohort which might suggest an emergence of “new standard family trajectories” in these countries that have been the pioneers of the second demographic transitions. however, while much research acknowledges the persistence of cross-national differences in family trajectories, only little research has provided explanations for this asymmetric spread of de-standardisation (respectively re-standardisation). elzinga and liefbroer (2007) refer to the varying nature of welfare state benefi ts in different welfare regimes: in social-democratic countries, generous benefi ts are being provided irrespective of a person’s social position and thus are assumed to weaken reliance on the family, thereby lowering family infl uence and promoting autonomous behaviour. in contrast, family benefi ts in liberal, conservative and southern european regimes are rather marginal, leading to a stronger reliance on the family and thus to stronger adherence to “traditional” family behaviour. a similar conclusion is reached for post-socialist countries, where initial state support throughout communism was high, but was counteracted by “strong normative constraints on individual behaviour” (elzinga/liefbroer 2007: 229). furthermore, in a synthetic work on family formation patterns in europe, liefbroer points to the signifi cance of changes in the economic and social structure (e.g. educational expansion, the increasing labour force participation of women and most recent welfare state retrenchment), cultural 1 these demographic markers usually include leaving parental home, entry to fi rst union or marriage and having a fi rst child. from a broader perspective, the transition to adulthood typically also entails the transition from studying full-time to entering the labour market (modell et al. 1976). 2 their study focused on changes in following states: single, married, unmarried cohabitation and (not) having child(ren) (elzinga/liefbroer 2007). patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 565 changes (e.g. the rise of individualism, the re-emergence of feminism and the decrease in normative controls) and technological innovations (such as the spread of contraceptives and the increasing range of modern mass media; see liefbroer 2009 for an overview). however, the data underlying these analyses often originate from the late 1990s and it remains an open question how the above may still serve as adequate explanations of demographic behaviour in times of increasing economic, cultural and technological convergence among european countries. 3.2 previous research on family norms across europe while there has been a plethora of research on developments in actual family transitions, and despite a growing overall interest in values and culture within the social sciences (e.g. van oorschot et al. 2008), research on family-related norms has remained rather scarce. the reasons for this relative “ignorance of social norms in current demographic thinking” (liefbroer/billari 2010: 288) may be twofold: on the one hand, from a substantial perspective, theorists of the “second demographic transition” have frequently assumed that the signifi cance of social norms in governing individual life courses has weakened (see van de kaa 1987 and the above discussion). on the other hand, from a methodological perspective, the idea of “family norms” has proven to be rather diffi cult to operationalise. most generally, norms can be regarded as prescriptive, proscriptive or prohibitive statements about the “right” or appropriate behaviour, shared by a certain group of actors and related to some sort of sanctions in case of their violation (e.g. billari/liefbroer 2010; liefbroer/merz 2009). norms may become internalised as attitudes or “individual norms” but it can be assumed that regarding their explanatory power for group behaviour, it is rather norms shared by a sizeable proportion of the population (“societal norms”) that play a role. previous research on family-related norms had largely focused on “age norms”, i.e. prescriptive ages at which specifi c transitions “should” (or should not) happen. based on a regional us sample, settersten and hagestad (1996), for example, show that there exist defi ned and socially shared values about maximum ages until which specifi c family transitions such as leaving parental home, cohabitation or entry into parenthood should occur. norms may, however, also entail prescriptions about the occurrence (“quantum norms”) and the sequencing of specifi c stages of family life (“sequencing norms”). they provide a somewhat “weaker” type of family norms, as they do not explicitly focus on specifi c age limits but investigate how far more general deviations from a specifi c “standard” family model would be tolerated. existing studies point towards an increasing tolerance of deviations from a “traditional family life course”. contrasting various indicators of family-related behaviour included into the european values studies 1981 to 1999, halman (2009), for example, fi nds indications of a gradual but persistent trend of “de-traditionalisation”, i.e. a shift away from traditional norms and an increasing importance of individual choice in agency. however, there appear to be considerable cross-national differences in family-related norms (liefbroer/ merz 2009; wernhart/neuwirth 2007). one extreme is represented by scandinavian countries which show a high tolerance for “deviations” from the standard life course • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková566 model (such as unmarried cohabitation or childlessness). at the other end, there are countries especially in southern and to a lesser degree in central europe in which the acceptance of deviant “alternative” family forms (such as one-parent families or unmarried couples), of childlessness and family dissolution (e.g. through divorce) is still low (liefbroer/merz 2009). while much previous research focuses on developments in family-related norms per se, only a few recent studies try to systematically link the developments in norms to actual family behaviour. billari and liefbroer (2007) use a longitudinal dutch survey to reconstruct the infl uence of individual family norms on the process of leaving home and indeed fi nd that the timing of young people in leaving home is infl uenced by the social expectations their parents seem to have. in a similar way, liefbroer and billari (2010) argue based on dutch results that relevant social expectations related to the timing of family transitions and their sequencing still exist. their fi ndings also suggest the emergence of a new set of normative expectations on young adulthood that include living on one’s own and unmarried cohabitation. however, both studies remain restricted to the normatively rather “liberal” case of the netherlands, thus allowing for only limited generalisations. 3.3 aim and scope of the article our study draws on the existing research in both the analysis of family trajectories and family norms but goes beyond it in several respects: first, we turn from the analysis of single life transitions to a holistic perspective of entire family trajectories. we focus on a series of demographic markers of the transition to adulthood ranging from leaving the parental home, starting a fi rst relationship, making the transition to fi rst marriage up to having a fi rst child for both women and men. second, our study combines the analysis of demographic behaviour with a comparative investigation of their correspondence to family-related social norms. owing to the increasing availability of adequate data sets, cross-national comparative research into genderand family-related norms has amplifi ed signifi cantly throughout recent years, but patterns and developments in norms and values have hardly been systematically connected to actual changes in family trajectories. the systematic juxtaposition of family-related norms with actual family transitions using one unique data set, as done in this paper, thus can make a substantial contribution to a better understanding of the interrelation between the two spheres. finally, unlike much earlier studies, we contrast the development in family trajectories as well as social norms across birth cohorts in order to empirically investigate the cohort-specifi c interplay between structural and attitudinal changes. earlier studies, using for example data from the family and fertility surveys often were restricted up to the late 1990s. most recent data from the 2006 wave of the european social survey allows us to extend our analyses from the post-war generation to more recent cohorts (i.e. born in the 1970s) which partly experienced their family trajectories after the fall of the iron curtain. this extended “observation window” is of special importance for post-communist countries where family forms and demopatterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 567 graphic processes have changed noticeably in the last decades. until now, existing research has pointed to varying developments across this group of countries, but there has been only limited empirical proof for this claim.3 our study intends to provide insights into developments within this still largely under-researched group of countries. 4 hypotheses based on the theoretical outline as well as the research synopsis, we now develop hypotheses for the subsequent data analyses. as outlined above, empirical research using data up to the late 1990s has pointed to a rise in non-standard family forms and “intermediate” stages in family development (see elzinga/liefbroer 2007). we assume that this process may not yet be completed and thus expect to fi nd a similar increase in the overall number of states in family trajectories and/or increasing variation in durations of these states, i.e. a rise in the “turbulence” of family trajectories, in our study of family sequences. these changes will be less signifi cant in countries where the level of turbulence was already relatively high among older cohorts. at the same time we expect that family trajectories are becoming more dissimilar from traditional family formation patterns (hypothesis 1). however, we assume that, as in the past, developments in family trajectories have not occurred unidirectionally in all modern societies. in line with earlier research (e.g. elzinga/liefbroer 2007: 227-229), we assume that both the level of destandardisation as well as the direction and speed of changes in family trajectories will vary and that this variation is shaped by welfare regimes as well as by social norms. on the one hand, following elzinga and liefbroer (2007), we assume that given different welfare state support for autonomous behaviour, the level of destandardisation will be most pronounced in social-democratic countries while in both conservative and liberal countries the relatively low involvement of state policies into the family sphere will delimit autonomy and foster a higher adherence to more traditional family forms, i.e. a somewhat lesser degree of turbulence and destandardisation of family trajectories. for the largely familialistic southern european countries, we expect this pattern of a rather low level of destandardisation and turbulence in family trajectories to be even more pronounced. finally, in post-socialist countries 3 a recent study on polish women’s work-family trajectories after fi nishing full-time education (baranowska 2008) as well as a study on family trajectories of czechs between age 18 and 35 (chaloupková 2010) have found an increase of heterogeneity in young adult’s life-course trajectories after the fall of communism. however, using entropy analysis, the czech analyses revealed that the increase in the heterogeneity of age-specifi c family situations is not uniform, as for young people born in 1980s, a reversal trend of declining diversity in family statuses was found in their early adulthood due to a postponement of family-related transitions (chaloupková 2010). • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková568 we expect that the initial strong state support, suggesting a similar development as in scandinavian countries, has been largely counteracted by rather prohibitive norms through both public policies and traditionally conservative religious values (hypothesis 2). on the other hand, concerning patterns of changes in family behaviour over time, we assume that different “norms” about family behaviour will moderate the level and speed of change. while welfare regimes defi ne the general institutional opportunities and constraints under which individuals will make their (family) decisions, behavioural changes may be diffi cult to implement when they are in stark contrast to the norms and expectations of signifi cant others or the “general public”. existing norms thus may mediate the speed at which demographic behaviour may alter or reverse. in contexts in which deviations from a “standard” family model are being tolerated by large shares of the population, we assume that trends towards a “destandardisation” of family trajectories over time will be most dynamic. on the contrary, in contexts where a sizeable share of the population rejects such deviations and : a certain limit of minimum acceptance is not surpassed, processes of destandardisation will be rather slow or even reversed (hypothesis 3). 5 data and methods for testing our hypotheses, we draw upon cross-national data from the european social survey (ess) wave 3 which was fi elded in 2006/2007 and includes 23 european countries.4 this wave included a special module on “the timing of life: the organization of the life course in europe”, including various indicators on the organisation of family life courses using both behavioural as well as attitudinal questions. to explore changes in family structures we employ sequence analysis. sequence analysis is a set of methods which focus on complex descriptions of ordered lists of elements (e.g. events, statuses) as an entity. particularly, it concentrates on the comparison of similarity and dissimilarity of sequences and the identifi cation of typical patterns (brzinsky-fay et al. 2006; macindoe/abbott 2006). this approach enables to study the changes in a whole sequence of family transitions – and to take into account changes in the timing and order of family transitions. for reconstructing actual life course transitions, we draw upon a set of retrospective questions through which respondents were asked in which year (i) they fi rst left their parents for at least two months or started to live separately from them (“leaving home”– l), (ii) they fi rst lived with a spouse or a partner for three months or more (“cohabitation”– u), (iii) in which year they fi rst married (“marriage” – m) and 4 namely: austria, ireland, the netherlands, ukraine, belgium, bulgaria, cyprus, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, hungary, norway, poland, portugal, the russian federation, slovakia, slovenia, spain, sweden, switzerland, and the united kingdom. patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 569 (iv) in which year they fi rst gave birth to respectively fathered a child (“childbirth”– c).5 we restrict our analyses to respondents who were 35 years old or older at the time of data collection. this design permits us to analyse full trajectories of men and women aged between 18 and 35 years who were born up to the early 1970s – these cohorts could not be considered in earlier studies such as the previous work of elzinga and liefbroer (2007). using information on the respondent’s age when all “fi rst” family-related transitions happened, a set of 18 count variables representing each year of age from 18 to 35 years6 was created, and all events that respondents had already experienced by that age were assigned to each new age variable.7 in total, our data enable to reconstruct 20,486 trajectories. consequently, our sequences do not take into account possible reversibility of states and higher complexity of family patterns of young adults (e.g. the return to parental home or partnership union dissolution), but only „fi rst“ events. as an illustration, table 1 displays the family trajectory of a respondent who left parental home at age 20, started to live with a partner at 24, married at 26 and had a child at 27 years of age. in a shortened way, it can be reported as: 0(2) – l(4) – lu(2) – lum(1) – lumc (9), where the number in brackets indicates the number of years spent in a given state. to analyse changes in family trajectories of young european adults, we employ two indicators of destandardisation of family trajectories: the turbulence index and the dissimilarity index. the turbulence index proposed by elzinga and liefbroer (2007) is a composite measure that accounts for the number of distinct sub-sequences and the variance of the consecutive times spent in each state (for details see elzinga/liefbroer 2007; gabadinho et al. 2009). it not only measures the increase in the overall number of distinct states in individual family trajectories, but also increases in their volatility, i.e. an increasing variation in the durations of these states. given our state defi nitions, increasing values of the turbulence index indicate that family trajectories encompass more so-called “intermediate” states between leav5 all these single questions were preceded by a fi lter question to establish whether the respective event had actually taken place. consistency checks were undertaken to exclude wrong or unrealistic answers. 6 transitions that occurred before the age of 18 (such as leaving the home earlier, teenage pregnancies etc.) are coded as if they had happened at the age of 18. nevertheless, these transitions were marginal. at the age of 18 only 3 percent of the respondents already had a fi rst child and 4.9 percent were married. 7 as we are observing four events, there exist 16 (24) possible combinations of already experienced family stages. tab. 1: example of a family trajectory between the age of 18 and 35 age 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ... 35 state 0 0 l l l l lu lu lum lumc .... lumc source: own design • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková570 ing the parental home and parenthood (such as living alone or unmarried cohabitation) and that their durations are increasingly fl exible. to map the macro level changes in family patterns across european countries, the second measure – the dissimilarity index – compares all observed trajectories with a reference sequence representing a “traditional” family life course, defi ned as leaving parental home when married and having a child afterwards. the traditional family life course thus neither includes any periods of long-term unmarried cohabitation nor a period of living alone. technically, our reference trajectory not only includes a 0-lm-lmc trajectory (leaving parental home and marriage in the same year, without unmarried cohabitation) but also 0-lum-lumc, i.e. a trajectory in which also a short phase of premarital cohabitation has occurred in the same year, which may have lasted close to 12 months or only a few days.8 the reference length of the family life course phases were defi ned based on the highest observed frequencies in the whole data set: (0,3)-(lm,2)-(lmc,13) and (0,2)-(lum,1)(lumc,15). the fi nal distance for each trajectory was determined as the lowest value of the two distances to these two references. the comparison of observed and reference trajectories is based on the length of the longest common sub-sequence (lcs distance) (gabadinho et al. 2009). the normed lcs distance has a value of 0 when all sub-sequences occur in both sequences, and reaches its maximum of 1 if there is no common sub-sequence between these two trajectories. in our study, we measure the extent of destandardisation across cohorts by comparing the average normed lcs distance between empirically observed trajectories and the predefi ned “traditional family trajectory”. if the average dissimilarity is close to 1, the level of de-standardisation thus is high. the sequence analysis was done using the module traminer in r (gabadinho et al. 2009). for contrasting transition behaviour with related norms, we draw upon a series of questions which focus on possible deviations from a traditional family life trajectory. although the ess contains a series of respective questions differentiating between ideal transition ages of men and women for a number of family-related transitions, their comparison with actual transition ages is problematic. the fi rst descriptive analysis showed that across countries individuals tend to choose “round ages” in 5-year intervals, such as 20, 25 or 30 years as ideal transition ages.9 moreover, the ess contains no explicit question on the ideal age of leaving the parental home, thus making a direct comparison of actual and normative transition ages on all relevant dimensions impossible. for our analyses, we therefore rely on three different questions using 5-point likert scales, ranging from “strongly approve” to “strongly disapprove”, which measure in how far individuals support or reject (i) never having children, (ii) living with a partner without marrying and (iii) having a child with a partner one is not married to. these indicators allow us to compare the actual incidence of non-traditional 8 as data were only collected for the years when the family transitions happened, we cannot make a more detailed distinction. 9 based on own analyses; results are available on request. patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 571 family formation patterns with their perceived societal acceptance using standard descriptive statistics. we compare trends – in family behaviour and in family-related norms – between the three birth cohorts: 1941-1950, 1951-1960 and 1961-1972. they allow us to at least partly capture trends between the war and the post-war generation which are known to have grown up under rather different circumstances with the more recent cohorts having been subject to a number of major social transformations (e.g. educational expansion, gradually converging labour market participation of both spouses) as discussed in earlier literature (e.g. gradstein/nikitin 2004; blossfeld/ hofmeister 2006). for post-socialist countries, this span also allows us to compare cohorts that spend more or less their entire family cycle under socialism with more recent partially “post-socialist” cohorts. we are aware that life courses as well as social norms differ within societies and age cohorts by various factors, especially by education (sobotka 2008). yet, for reasons of analytical clarity and parsimoniousness of our multi-country analysis, we do not differentiate our cohorts further and follow a more descriptive research interest. the major strength of the ess undoubtedly lies in its comparative character including european countries of very different origin. one major restriction of our analysis, however, is the availability of cross-sectional data only. while retrospective life calendars incorporated into the ess allow for a rather accurate reconstruction of family-related events, this cannot straightforwardly be achieved for familyrelated norms that are only available for the time of the interview. it thus needs to be assumed that family norms may change across generations but remain largely stable within a generation, so that the norms measured at the time of the interview may be taken as overall proxies for norms held at earlier points in time. given that family-related norms relate to very basic conceptions about how to organise one’s own life course (unlike, for example, political norms) we assume that this approximation may be plausible. more detailed analyses with panel data (as, for example, provided by moors and lesthaeghe 2000 for belgium) will be needed to ascertain the assumptions laid out in this analysis. 6 results 6.1 changes in family trajectories across european countries our fi rst set of questions relates to cohort changes in family trajectories across european countries. we expected to fi nd an increase in turbulence in family trajectories and an increase of dissimilarity compared to traditional family patterns across cohorts. table 2 summarizes the number of distinct sub-sequences and the variance of the respective time spent in each state in an overall index of “turbulence” in family trajectories. based on table 2, we can draw several conclusions. the turbulence index reaches its highest values in scandinavian countries, switzerland, the netherlands, belgium and france implying that young people in these countries on average experience a higher number of distinct states and/or a higher variation in • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková572 their duration. while in most western european countries the index of turbulence increases signifi cantly across cohorts, it remains quite stable and even decreases for the youngest cohort in some countries of southern and central and eastern europe. unexceptionally, the results do not support the hypothesis of an increase of turbulence in family trajectories (h1), but rather point to cross-national differences largely in line with our regime hypothesis (h2). tab. 2: average turbulence per country and cohort 1941-1950 1951-1960 1961-1972 denmark** 4.63 5.10 5.38 netherlands* 4.73 4.72 5.36 sweden 5.03 5.10 5.22 france** 4.57 4.54 5.19 switzerland* 4.76 5.06 5.18 finland** 4.63 4.86 5.18 norway* 4.51 5.04 5.15 belgium* 4.52 4.79 5.04 united kingdom* 4.61 4.55 4.89 germany* 4.62 4.57 4.88 austria 4.58 4.68 4.79 ireland 4.44 4.54 4.79 spain 4.53 4.41 4.62 portugal* 4.42 4.01 4.42 estonia 4.32 4.51 4.37 cyprus 4.17 4.43 4.37 slovenia 4.49 4.48 4.30 poland 4.40 4.27 4.29 hungary 4.12 4.08 4.27 russian federation 4.27 4.35 4.23 ukraine 4.30 4.05 4.05 slovakia 4.33 4.16 4.03 bulgaria 4.05 4.04 3.89 note: values of turbulences are between 1-9.5; mean 4.62. cohort differences signifi cance *p< 0.05; **p< 0.01. turbulence is a composite measure that accounts for the number of distinct sub-sequences and the variance of the consecutive times spent in each state (for details see elzinga/ liefbroer 2007; gabadinho et al. 2009). increasing values indicate that family trajectories are more volatile and encompass more distinct states. source: european social survey wave 3 (own calculations) patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 573 in order to investigate whether family trajectories in young adulthood are indeed becoming more diverse across cohorts, we compute average distances between observed family trajectories and the “traditional” reference trajectory based on the longest common sub-sequence for every country and cohort (table 3). in line with our previous analyses, the fi ndings suggest that family trajectories indeed are becoming more dissimilar compared to traditional family trajectories across cohorts. tab. 3: average distances to “traditional family trajectory” per country and cohort a cohort differences are signifi cant at 0.05 level. the table shows normed distances of observed trajectories to reference traditional family trajectory (see above for defi nition) based lcs distance (gabadinho et al. 2009). it reaches values from 0 (similarity of sequences) to 1 (no common subsequence). the closer the value is to 1, the higher is the average dissimilarity to traditional family trajectory. source: european social survey wave 3 (own calculations) 1941-1950 1951-1960 1961-1972 swe dena 0.50 0.63 0.70 denmarka 0.39 0.58 0.66 irelanda 0.48 0.54 0.65 netherlandsa 0.41 0.57 0.65 norwaya 0.39 0.47 0.64 switzerlanda 0.51 0.58 0.64 united kingdoma 0.41 0.52 0.63 francea 0.40 0.46 0.62 finlanda 0.45 0.50 0.61 germanya 0.46 0.47 0.57 spaina 0.40 0.47 0.57 austriaa 0.43 0.51 0.56 portugala 0.37 0.38 0.51 sloveniaa 0.41 0.44 0.49 belgiuma 0.32 0.42 0.48 bulgariaa 0.39 0.42 0.47 estonia 0.43 0.40 0.44 poland 0.38 0.42 0.43 russian federationa 0.35 0.35 0.42 hungary 0.38 0.35 0.40 ukraine 0.37 0.36 0.40 cyprus 0.34 0.37 0.39 slovakia 0.31 0.33 0.36 • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková574 the highest dissimilarity is observed in scandinavian countries, ireland, switzerland and in the netherlands, while in post-communist countries, the dissimilarity is lower and cohort differences are less pronounced. obviously, there is a clear correlation between these two measures. in countries where family trajectories in young adulthood are more turbulent, the family trajectories are also more dissimilar compared to the “traditional” pattern.10 these processes, however, do not necessarily lead away from universal family models as refl ected in the idea of “de-standardisation”. if, for example, all young adults would follow similar new patterns of family developments “standard family trajectories” may prevail despite an increase in stages passed through. in principle, one can distinguish two alternative scenarios: firstly, in line with some earlier fi ndings (wagner/franzmann 2000) one may expect that despite the observed changes family life courses still remain rather uniform within societies. this scenario of continuing intra-cohort standardisation implies that there is no signifi cant increase in intra-cohort differences in trajectories and there is continuing dominance of one “standard” family model rather than a pluralisation of family forms, even if the “standard” family model changes between cohorts and becomes more turbulent. the alternative restandardisation scenario moves away from the assumption of a unilateral development by linking the ideas of de-standardisation and (re)standardisation as two subsequent phases. it assumes that while initial family life trajectories may become more diversifi ed, this divergence may only be temporary. in the long-term, a new (more turbulent) dominant model of family trajectories will be established in the youngest cohort. to differentiate these scenarios, we compare the share of individuals who experienced specifi c family states and events until the age of 35. table 4 shows the share of individuals who have ever (before the age of 35): (i) lived alone (neither living in a parental home, nor with the partner); (ii) lived in unmarried cohabitation (without subsequent marriage); (iii) experienced premarital unmarried cohabitation (lived in unmarried cohabitation at least one year before marriage); (iv) married; (v) had a child out of wedlock; (vi) married after childbirth; and (vii) who have remained childless until the age of 35. although the share of young people who left parental home and are not living with a partner is increasing across cohorts, there are pronounced differences across european countries. while in scandinavia and in most western european countries, more than 50 percent of individuals have left parental home without starting a union particularly in the youngest cohort, their proportion is much smaller in central and eastern european countries. similar differences arise with regard to the experience of premarital and unmarried cohabitation. cohabitation before marriage has become the standard pattern of family trajectories in most western european coun10 in some countries of eastern europe, the at fi rst sight surprising dissimilarity to the defi ned reference trajectory might be infl uenced by the fact that a notable proportion of those who married and have children continue to live in their parental home. patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 575 tab. 4: share of respondents who have experienced specifi c family states (in percent), by country and birth cohort had ever (until age of 35) lived alone lived in unmarried cohabitation lived in premarital cohabitation (% of married) married child out of wedlock marriage after childbirth childless austria 1941-1950 44.6 31.8 35.7 92.6 9.3 7.4 19.0 1951-1960 42.1 49.2 56.9 81.4 17.1 12.5 23.0 1961-1972 46.3 64.2 72.0 74.4 23.4 16.1 28.2 belgium 1941-1950 15.2 5.7 8.6 95.9 2.0 1.6 11.5 1951-1960 30.2 21.3 25.6 88.9 4.6 2.3 17.7 1961-1972 28.9 39.5 46.4 81.4 11.4 4.8 19.4 bulgaria 1941-1950 26.1 8.4 9.7 98.2 1.8 1.8 5.3 1951-1960 24.2 7.8 11.9 95.0 1.8 1.4 11.9 1961-1972 25.9 10.3 19.5 88.6 2.2 2.2 16.8 cyprus 1941-1950 22.1 13.0 17.6 95.4 0.0 0.0 13.7 1951-1960 30.5 17.5 23.2 93.2 2.8 2.3 10.2 1961-1972 27.7 26.5 35.5 86.7 3.6 3.0 17.5 denmark 1941-1950 68.5 42.6 45.9 88.9 12.6 7.8 14.1 1951-1960 68.5 84.4 87.9 71.6 30.4 17.1 25.3 1961-1972 63.4 87.1 91.9 66.8 40.3 22.0 21.7 estonia 1941-1950 65.1 14.3 22.2 88.4 9.5 4.8 12.7 1951-1960 57.0 25.7 32.2 85.2 16.1 8.7 10.9 1961-1972 52.7 39.2 43.8 80.0 20.4 9.2 12.3 finland 1941-1950 61.4 29.1 36.2 86.1 8.0 2.7 17.8 1951-1960 58.6 57.3 66.4 74.2 10.8 4.7 24.4 1961-1972 58.0 77.7 85.0 68.5 22.9 9.9 26.1 france 1941-1950 46.5 21.7 25.4 89.3 6.1 3.4 14.7 1951-1960 51.4 41.6 48.0 76.1 11.6 3.7 22.0 1961-1972 52.0 74.2 81.0 64.6 28.3 10.3 22.7 germany 1941-1950 41.9 26.6 31.3 88.3 8.4 4.5 19.9 1951-1960 45.9 41.1 48.3 83.0 12.0 7.9 22.4 1961-1972 51.4 59.5 69.9 69.7 17.3 9.0 32.4 hungary 1941-1950 16.5 7.4 13.6 90.9 4.9 3.7 13.6 1951-1960 16.6 12.4 16.2 91.7 4.6 3.3 13.3 1961-1972 21.1 26.3 32.9 82.6 7.5 2.8 17.8 ireland 1941-1950 50.5 4.8 20.7 82.4 2.1 1.6 23.4 1951-1960 52.5 13.8 33.6 72.8 5.5 4.1 30.9 1961-1972 53.7 38.3 53.7 66.9 15.6 4.6 34.4 netherlands 1941-1950 38.2 15.4 22.9 88.9 3.6 2.6 17.6 1951-1960 53.4 37.7 50.3 74.3 7.5 3.4 36.0 1961-1972 54.5 64.6 76.5 65.7 11.7 3.5 35.2 • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková576 tab. 4: continuation had ever (until age of 35) lived alone lived in unmarried cohabitation lived in premarital cohabitation (% of married) married child out of wedlock marriage after childbirth childless norway 1941-1950 70.8 27.6 33.6 89.2 6.4 5.6 12.8 1951-1960 74.5 57.7 61.6 83.9 18.1 11.0 12.6 1961-1972 70.5 74.6 80.1 65.8 37.2 19.7 23.0 poland 1941-1950 23.5 4.1 6.6 96.9 3.6 3.6 5.6 1951-1960 25.0 6.2 13.4 91.1 5.8 4.1 11.6 1961-1972 33.5 12.5 21.4 85.6 8.2 4.7 14.0 portugal 1941-1950 24.5 2.0 7.6 93.4 7.0 5.6 10.9 1951-1960 19.1 4.7 13.0 91.0 4.7 3.6 16.2 1961-1972 27.1 14.1 24.9 81.7 10.8 5.5 23.0 russian federation 1941-1950 47.4 5.6 11.7 92.1 5.3 2.6 8.6 1951-1960 48.8 8.5 12.6 93.9 6.4 3.5 8.5 1961-1972 42.6 16.2 24.2 87.2 10.3 5.3 12.0 slovakia 1941-1950 27.7 6.5 9.8 95.7 3.3 1.6 7.6 1951-1960 29.7 5.6 13.5 91.0 5.3 3.4 10.5 1961-1972 22.1 14.0 23.7 86.3 7.2 5.0 15.6 slovenia 1941-1950 34.3 14.8 20.5 92.4 10.5 8.6 9.0 1951-1960 32.1 29.1 33.8 86.5 15.2 7.6 10.5 1961-1972 29.8 40.8 51.7 70.2 26.1 10.1 16.4 spain 1941-1950 24.1 5.6 14.9 89.2 4.1 3.6 13.3 1951-1960 27.2 11.8 23.5 82.4 3.7 1.8 25.0 1961-1972 29.9 27.0 38.8 75.1 9.1 4.0 28.6 sweden 1941-1950 60.7 59.8 63.7 80.1 28.0 16.1 12.5 1951-1960 60.2 84.4 90.5 65.3 40.1 24.1 22.4 1961-1972 66.9 84.0 90.6 53.9 45.6 16.3 21.5 switzerland 1941-1950 66.5 24.8 33.5 83.8 5.4 1.8 24.1 1951-1960 67.1 56.6 62.7 79.3 6.1 2.7 34.2 1961-1972 65.5 70.0 78.4 71.6 7.9 4.5 35.8 ukraine 1941-1950 57.4 5.9 8.2 94.5 5.1 2.3 7.4 1951-1960 45.6 9.4 14.2 93.2 3.6 2.3 7.4 1961-1972 44.3 15.5 21.4 89.7 8.1 5.5 11.1 united kingdom 1941-1950 44.0 12.9 18.2 90.6 8.3 5.9 16.6 1951-1960 47.7 30.2 37.8 80.3 7.4 3.1 29.8 1961-1972 55.6 58.8 66.4 69.8 19.6 7.1 30.2 source: european social survey wave 3 (own calculations) patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 577 tries. although marriage still represents the dominant “fi nal stage” in family trajectories, there is an increasing proportion of individuals who have lived in unmarried cohabitation. the share of people who had a child born out-of-wedlock and who enter into marriage after childbirth are also increasing. comparing the proportion of married people and individuals who experienced premarital cohabitation shows that premarital cohabitation lasting at least one year is experienced by most of the people who entered into marriage in the scandinavian countries, the uk, france, the netherlands, germany and in austria – thus signalling the emergence of a new standard transition pattern – a process of restandardisation. the share of childless people at the age of 35 differs considerably across european countries. more than 30 percent of the youngest cohort stays childless at the age of 35 in switzerland, the netherlands, ireland and in germany. the lowest proportion of childless people at the age of 35, although increasing across cohorts, is found in east european countries like russia, ukraine, and estonia indicating relatively low ages when entering into parenthood in a european comparison. to sum up, leaving home without marrying and an unmarried cohabitation are becoming new “standard” stages in family trajectories in the youngest cohorts and unmarried cohabitation is becoming a standard prerequisite of marriage. these changes mainly occurring in western and northern european countries can be interpreted as signs of restandardisation towards a new family model, while particularly in eastern europe we rather observe a pattern of continued standardisation. 6.2 family norms related to family state sequencing/quantum following the study of actual family transitions, we now turn to the investigation of relevant family norms. table 5 displays individuals who “strongly disagree” or “disagree” with (i) the decision to remain childless, (ii) the decision to enter into non-marital cohabitation and (iii) the birth of a child out of wedlock, broken down by age cohorts. as further analyses (results not shown here) revealed that gender differences within countries are rather modest, these are aggregated results for both men and women. table 5 indicates that there are pronounced differences in the disapproval of different types of deviations from a standard life course pattern. in most countries, disapproval is clearly higher for childlessness than for the other two indicators. only in some countries (denmark, sweden, finland, the uk, ireland and switzerland) respondents are similarly or even more in opposition to births out of wedlock. yet, the degree to which europeans disapprove of these deviations from a traditional family life course differs markedly between countries: rejection is most pronounced in eastern european countries as well as cyprus where between half (poland, slovakia) and four fi fths (russia, ukraine) of the population disapprove of childlessness. rejection of unmarried cohabitation as well as births out of wedlock is markedly lower but still remains at around 30 to 50 percent. slovenia and hungary partly deviate from this pattern as only slightly less than half of all respondents reject childlessness and less than one fi fth disapproves of unmarried cohabitation and childbirth out of wedlock. • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková578 ta b . 5 : d is ap p ro va l* o f d ev ia tio n s fr o m a “ st an d ar d f am ily li fe c o ur se ” in p er ce n t, t o ta l a nd b y b ir th c o ho rt d is ap p ro va l c hi ld le ss ne ss d is ap p ro va l u nm ar ri ed c o ha b ita tio n d is ap p ro va l o ut -o fw ed lo ck b ir th 19 41 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 97 2 19 41 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 97 2 19 41 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 97 2 a us tr ia 29 .9 24 .8 24 .0 16 .1 10 .2 7. 5 21 .4 15 .3 13 .2 b el gi um 22 .4 13 .7 11 .9 10 .0 6. 8 4. 1 14 .4 11 .1 7. 0 b ul ga ri a 82 .3 80 .7 77 .7 44 .4 34 .3 27 .0 44 .0 32 .8 28 .9 c yp ru s 66 .7 58 .5 61 .9 55 .3 28 .2 19 .2 66 .7 42 .3 39 .8 d en m ar k 4. 7 2. 2 5. 0 8. 6 2. 9 3. 6 7. 8 8. 5 5. 6 e st o ni a 81 .2 77 .2 65 .7 38 .0 24 .4 18 .4 36 .8 26 .1 21 .1 fi nl an d 17 .8 13 .7 11 .6 6. 8 3. 3 3. 5 12 .7 6. 6 6. 3 fr an ce 37 .3 23 .6 24 .4 9. 6 11 .0 7. 4 13 .7 12 .8 9. 2 g er m an y 28 .6 20 .0 18 .0 8. 6 5. 6 6. 2 17 .6 10 .7 9. 8 h un ga ry 56 .7 46 .4 43 .1 14 .2 9. 7 9. 9 15 .1 10 .9 10 .6 ir el an d 18 .7 11 .3 11 .3 25 .2 13 .2 11 .8 33 .9 20 .1 18 .2 n et he rl an d s 13 .1 10 .1 8. 2 9. 7 8. 5 8. 0 12 .6 12 .1 9. 6 n o rw ay 6. 8 6. 2 3. 5 6. 8 3. 4 4. 6 7. 6 4. 7 4. 8 po la nd 62 .3 53 .7 50 .4 44 .1 35 .5 29 .8 33 .2 32 .2 25 .4 po rt ug al 26 .1 22 .0 16 .2 16 .1 11 .6 7. 1 16 .4 11 .6 7. 1 r us si an f ed er at io n 86 .4 82 .1 81 .5 47 .0 34 .6 30 .3 46 .3 36 .2 33 .6 s lo va ki a 60 .8 61 .6 47 .6 46 .4 35 .8 26 .6 50 .0 40 .1 35 .1 s lo ve ni a 49 .8 39 .1 32 .7 23 .1 16 .9 13 .5 19 .5 18 .4 12 .7 s p ai n 38 .6 18 .4 15 .0 16 .2 8. 5 8. 5 24 .3 11 .9 9. 5 s w ed en 3. 8 5. 8 5. 2 2. 9 2. 0 3. 3 4. 1 3. 7 5. 8 s w itz er la nd 11 .8 13 .3 12 .9 7. 9 5. 4 10 .7 19 .5 13 .2 15 .7 u kr ai ne 86 .7 83 .6 75 .3 55 .3 52 .1 33 .3 56 .3 49 .4 36 .4 u ni te d k in gd o m 3. 1 5. 6 5. 7 10 .8 7. 9 9. 1 21 .7 16 .2 15 .6 * d is ap p ro va l s um m ar is es th e an sw er s “s tr o ng ly d is ap p ro ve ”/ “d is ap p ro ve ” o n a 5p o in t l ik er t s ca le . s o ur ce : e ur o p ea n s o ci al s ur ve y w av e 3 (o w n ca lc ul at io ns ) patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 579 on the other hand, tolerance toward deviations from a standard family life trajectory is clearly highest in scandinavia where less than one tenth of all respondents object to any of the aforementioned items (with finland where 14.5 percent reject childlessness as the only exception). this group is joined by the uk, the netherlands and switzerland, where similarly “liberal” norms prevail. most southern european as well as central european countries occupy a position in between these two extremes with around a quarter of respondents rejecting childlessness but less than a fi fth expressing scepticism towards the other two items. in most of the countries, individuals in the oldest cohort (born 1941-1950) exhibit the most “traditional” family values while the two younger cohorts (and especially those born 1961-1972) seem to follow more “liberal” family norms. value changes appear to be most pronounced regarding the stigmatisation or acceptance of unmarried cohabitation where disapproval values among the youngest cohorts often only amount to half of that among the older cohort. only for countries where rejection of life course deviations was already low in the fi rst cohort, we fi nd no clear and systematic pattern across birth cohorts. liberalisation trends appear to be most pronounced in southern european countries. in many eastern european countries, however, the picture of largely conservative family norms remains persistent. to investigate the relationship between family norms and family structures in greater detail (h3), we select unmarried cohabitation as one exemplary life stage for which both actual occurrence and normative acceptance have increased most signifi cantly. figure 1 contrasts the incidence of unmarried cohabitation and its normative rejection for the oldest cohort (i.e. those born 1941-1950) with that of the youngest cohort (i.e. born 1961-1972). looking fi rst at results for the oldest cohort (1940-1951) three country groupings can be differentiated. on the one hand, there is a group of countries mostly consisting of northern european nations in which unmarried cohabitation is largely accepted (with less than 10 percent rejection) and its incidence is rather high (ranging between 30 and 60 percent). on the other hand, there is a group of countries mostly consisting of eastern europe as well as cyprus where unmarried cohabitation is still rejected by a majority of the population (i.e. 40-60 percent) and only occurs very occasionally. in between the two clusters, there is a heterogeneous group of nations (including continental and southern european countries as well as great britain, hungary and slovenia) where less than a third of the population rejects the idea of unmarried cohabitation but where it simultaneously remained a behaviour of a minority practiced by less than a third of the cohort under study. the comparison of these results with those for the youngest cohort (i.e. 19611972) suggests that both behaviour and norms are changing. especially in scandinavian countries, where normative rejection of unmarried cohabitation has been virtually non-existent, it has turned into a new “institutionalised” norm. in this case, family behaviour seems to have temporally followed normative ideas (not necessarily in the sense of a unilateral causal relationship), as transitional phases such as unmarried cohabitation or births out of wedlock have turned into widespread behavioural practices, especially among younger cohorts. this pattern is also increasingly found in conservative and liberal countries where family behaviour has • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková580 fig. 1: actual incidence (y-axis) and normative rejection (x-axis) of unmarried cohabitation (percentages, cohorts 1941-1950 vs. 1961-1970) source: european social survey wave 3 (own calculations) cohort 1941-1950 lived in unmarried cohabitation; in % cohort 1961-1972 lived in unmarried cohabitation; in % 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 swe dk por no fi ch d nl uk be hu es a slv irl ee pl bul slk rus ukr cyp 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 dk swe fi f no cha nl ukd be irl slv ee po cyhun es slk bul rus pol ukr disapproval of unmarried cohabitation; in % disapproval of unmarried cohabitation; in % patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 581 gradually converged with family norms on non-marital cohabitation among the younger cohort. the de and subsequent reinstitutionalisation of family norms thus was accompanied by a de and subsequent restandardisation of family trajectories across generations. for southern european countries, our fi ndings point to notable tensions between the patterns of family trajectories and their normative equivalence (at least with respect to the exemplary family type of unmarried cohabitation), as family norms have liberalised while family life and family trajectories still appear to follow rather traditional lines. change of family norms in these countries has progressed signifi cantly while family life has rather remained standardised. normative deinstitutionalisation towards unmarried cohabitation can also be observed among the majority of eastern european countries. while among those born in the 1940s, about half of the individuals rejected unmarried cohabitation; resistance only prevails among a third of the 1960s cohort. at the same time, however, behaviour has remained remarkably stable: less than a third in fact live in unmarried cohabitation. the dynamics in family trajectories have been clearly less pronounced than those with regard to normative change. these results reveal a process in which conformity between traditional family norms and practices among older birth cohorts has turned into an ambivalent situation of non-traditional family norms despite traditional family practices among the younger population. the situation in these two regimes appears to be well in line with the description of “gradual” transitions from one dominant demographic behavioural pattern to another. even though norms about family behaviour have been relaxed among the younger population, there still is a largely prevalent cultural orientation at a “traditional” family model within the overall population, refl ected in around 50 percent rejection of unmarried cohabitation. an individual may be affected primarily by dominant social norms within the same cohort (from which peers are typically recruited) but also by acceptance among people from other age groups. this “normative climate” may still present an obstacle for younger cohorts when it comes to adapting their behaviour. examples from central european countries indeed seem to indicate that only once a “critical point” of tolerance is surpassed – in the example chosen here: an open rejection by only around 10 percent of the population or less – traditional norms do no longer form an obstacle for individual adaptation of demographic behaviour among the majority of the population. even though the existence and identifi cation of such a “threshold” is not verifi ed by our analysis, the assembly of countries in fi gure 1 may be interpreted as a typical pathway of change. 7 summary in this paper, we have used data from the third wave of the ess to investigate in how far family trajectories and family-related social norms have changed over time as well as across european countries. our results provide support for the assumption of an increasing restandardisation of family lives. in most of the analysed countries, family trajectories have become more turbulent involving more stages and stage • dirk hofäcker, jana c haloupková582 changes for the younger generation. this increasing turbulence has led to a rising “dissimilarity” from traditional family life courses in most european countries (destandardisation). while marriage still constitutes the dominant “fi nal stage” in family trajectories, there is an increasing share of individuals across birth cohorts who experiences “intermediate” family phases such as unmarried cohabitation or parenthood before marriage, furthermore, an ever greater share of younger cohorts appears to either postpone fi rst birth beyond the age of 35 (the age window used in this study) or to entirely forego parenthood. in some countries, we fi nd fi rst evidence that previous “deviations” from traditional family patterns (such as unmarried cohabitation) are turning into majority behaviour, i.e. into a “new standard”, thus suggesting a “restandardisation of family life courses”. however, in line with our regime and social norms hypotheses (h2, h3), we fi nd that the degree and speed of these changes is very different across european regions. destandardisation appears to be most developed in northern and central european countries where family trajectories had moved away from standard “ideal” family trajectories with a higher degree of turbulence in family transitions. these countries also show fi rst signs of a restandardisation. on the other hand, eastern european countries display a higher proximity to traditional standard life courses and lesser turbulence in family lives and only rather modest signs of destandardisation. most southern european countries take an intermediate position between these two regimes with persistently moderate degrees of destandardisation and turbulence in family transitions. contrasting the results above showing changes in family trajectories with shifts in family norms allowed us to fi nd indications for the mutual interrelations between these two dynamics from a comparative perspective. our results point to a notable, yet not complete correspondence between norms and demographic behaviour. in fact, the liberalisation in norms appears to precede changes in actual demographic behaviour. given the cross-sectional and macro-oriented nature of the analyses conducted, this does not prove a unilateral causality; yet it provides some plausibility for the assumption that normative change (that might be fostered by innovative family life trajectories of a minority as visible examples) may provide the basis for change in family trajectories among the majority of the population. as long as norms stand in stark contrast to specifi c types of family behaviour, individuals will shy away from such behaviour in order to minimise social cost. however, once rejection of specifi c types of behaviour decreases below a certain critical level, changes in demographic behaviour may occur quickly across cohorts. our results indicate that european countries appear to have reached different stages of this continuum, with especially social democratic countries having established non-marital relationships and parenthood as a new “standard type” of the life course, while especially eastern european countries still largely follow a traditional pattern. despite the fact that our study helped to shed some light on the relationship between family structures and family norms and their regime-specifi c development over time, it apparently also entails some limitations. as indicated, family norms could only be collected at the time of the interview; this implies that we probably underscore generational differences in norms at the time of family formation at least patterns of family life courses in europe – between standardisation and diversity • 583 in part due to possible attitudinal adaptation across time. furthermore, due to the lack of longitudinal data on normative orientations, we were not able to establish causality between changes in norms and changes in family behaviour. these limitations call for a more comprehensive coverage of attitudinal data in cross-national longitudinal surveys in order to substantiate the relationship between the structural and normative dimension of social change. furthermore, given our objective to cover entire family trajectories of individuals from legal age to their mid-30s, we could only consider birth cohorts up to the early 1970s. especially for eastern european countries but also for some post-despotism southern european states such as portugal or spain, country-study evidence suggests that substantial transformations in family trajectories have taken place among younger birth cohorts which may only be reliably ascertained by future studies. acknowledgement this collaborative research was made possible through a short visit grant of the european science foundation (esf) social 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institute for family studies (oif). widmer, eric d.; r itschard, gilbert 2009: the de-standardization of the life course: are men and women equal? in: advances in life course research 14,1-2: 28-39 [doi: 10.1016/j.alcr.2009.04.001]. date of submission: 21.02.2011 date of acceptance: 02.07.2014 prof. dr. dirk hofäcker (). universität duisburg-essen, institut für soziale arbeit und sozialpolitik. essen, germany. e-mail: dirk.hofaecker@uni-due.de url: https://www.uni-due.de/biwi/hofaecker/zurperson.php mgr. jana klímová chaloupková, ph.d. institute of sociology, academy of science of the czech republic, prague, the czech republic. e-mail: jana.chaloupkova@soc.cas.cz url: http://www.soc.cas.cz/en/lide/jana-klimova-chaloupkova published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved nowhere better than here? the subjective well-being of german emigrants and remigrants marcel erlinghagen abstract: the paper investigates in the question if and how the subjective wellbeing (swb) of german emigrants, german non-migrants, and german remigrants differ. based on regression analyses of data from the european social survey (ess) the analyses focus on life satisfaction and happiness as main indicators of swb. it turns out that german emigrants show increased swb compared to german nonmigrants or remigrants. however, these fi ndings cannot be explained by differences in the socio-economic or socio-demographic group structure. in fact, the increased swb of emigrants is much more an effect of psychosocial differences and differences in the individual evaluation of household income. keywords: life-satisfaction · well-being · emigration · remigration 1 introduction considering the not only quantitatively but also culturally signifi cant immigration to germany in the second half of the 20th century in particular, until the recent past the phenomenon of emigration from germany appeared to be neither an issue in public debate nor in migration research. if at all, the term “emigrant” was mainly associated with the cliché of the “dropout” seeking new or apparently old freedoms, preferably in climatically pleasant regions of the world, beyond the confi nes of the modern working society. not until after the most recent economic crises and mainly in the face of yet high unemployment rates has the issue of emigration again become more the focus of the public, politics, and science since the mid-1990s. additionally, interest in emigration from germany has lately increased due to the growing understanding of migration as an uncompleted and at least partly transnational process of mobility (pries 1996; 2007). unlike the analysis of immigration, as yet there are only a few studies dealing with emigration from germany. most of these studies examine the re-migration of comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 4 (2011): 899-926 (date of release: 12.07.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-15en3 • marcel erlinghagen900 immigrants to their former homelands (cf. e.g. jankowitsch et al. 2000; constant/ massey 2003). with regard to the emigration of germans, there is hardly any scientifi cally valid data apart from anecdotal evidence and individual case descriptions in the media (cf. e.g. preuß 2009; heinrich 2010). furthermore there is hardly any information on the living conditions of emigrants from germany after their arrival in their new home – aside from television soaps such as “good bye germany” or “auf und davon” [up and away]. the number of research works dealing with the phenomenon of german emigration is growing only gradually. these works fi rst were limited to mainly aggregated migration data in the offi cial statistics, which were then supplemented by non-representative quantitative and qualitative studies of specifi c emigrant groups, in particular highly skilled workers (cf. enders/bornmann 2002; mohr 2002; diehl/dixon 2005). representative analyses based on large individual datasets remain rare and can be counted on the fi ngers of one hand. prominent studies are those of schupp et al. (2005) and erlinghagen et al. (2009), who analysed the social structure of german emigrants on the basis of the data of the german socio-economic panel (gsoep). there is also an extensive study by ette/ sauer (2010), who examined the socio-economic characteristics of germans living abroad in particular on the basis of the european labour force survey.1 while ette/sauer (2010) focus mainly on the earning situation of german emigrants, so far – with the exception of a small gsoep pilot study (schupp et al. 2008; erlinghagen/stegmann 2009) based on a few individual cases – no studies have examined the subjective well-being of emigrants in their new domicile. if we understand individuals as (bounded) rational actors who try to maximise their subjective expected utility, it would be particularly interesting to learn the extent to which the search for a “better life” assumedly associated with emigration was successful. this article takes this up by aiming to compare the subjective well-being of german emigrants, german non-migrants, and german remigrants. the chief aspects of subjective well-being in this context examine subjective general life satisfaction and happiness. the explanations begin in section 2 with the theoretical background of the following analysis, an outline of the state of research and the wording of the research questions to be examined in the following. section 3 presents the study’s data basis and explains the analysis strategy before the results of the analysis are presented in section 4. the article closes with a summarising conclusion (section 5). 1 there are also a few studies on the emigration willingness of migrants (cf. e.g. haug 2001) or germans (cf. e.g. diehl et al. 2008). however, we must keep in mind that ensuing actual migration movements can only be conditionally predicted on the basis of expressed migration intentions for a number of reasons. nowhere better than here? • 901 2 theoretical background and state of research 2.1 reasons for emigration emigration is not a monocausal process and the reasons that people leave their homeland can be highly different and diverse. in addition to personal reasons, for example, unemployment in the native country or a better job market abroad, the economic, social and political situation in the home and host societies also play a chief role. moreover, the literature draws attention to specifi c personality traits such as adventurousness, readiness to assume risks, or even an optimistic and confi dent basic attitude, which can favour emigration (cf. e.g. van dalen/henkens 2007). furthermore it is important to stress that emigration decisions should be observed in a family context when possible, in other words emigration can often also be a consequence of the emigration of family members and that therefore in such cases migration is only indirectly a consequence of the living conditions of the “followers” (haug 2000 and kalter 2000 offer an overview of the different migration theory approaches). in the “classical migration model” (braun/recchi 2008: 162), migration is the more probable the greater the difference is in the living conditions in the home and host societies. in this respect it is understandable that migration research in highly developed industrial countries such as germany focus in particular on the causes and consequences of immigration from far poorer regions of europe and the world that is again increasing in the course of globalisation. even if the different migration theory approaches are particularly explanatory in these cases, if e.g. the prosperity gap is great or the differences with regard to political liberties are particularly striking, basic assumptions should also apply when explaining emigration from countries with an overall relatively high standard of living (such as germany) (cf. van dalen/henkens 2007). santacreu et al. (2009) refer in this context to various personal reasons for emigration, whereby those surveyed repeatedly indicate in addition to vocational and family-related reasons the (aspired for) improvement of quality of life. if we base our assumptions on the premise of the action theory of limited rational actors who base their decisions on expectations (not on knowledge!), who are at the same time embedded in (in the broadest sense) social contexts, and under these preconditions attempt (!) to maximize their benefi t (lindenberg 1989; 1990, esser 1999), then we can anticipate that german emigrants also (should) promise themselves an increased benefi t from the decision to emigrate, regardless of their personal reasons for migration. first, we must clarify what we understand as “benefi t” or how “benefi t” can be empirically measured and operationalised. braun/recchi (2008), for example, examine the extent to which emigration is linked to social mobility. moreover, the relevant primary economic research discusses other options for measuring benefi ts (diener/ suh 1997). while for a long time benefi t was frequently equated with income, in economics not least there has increasingly been a departure from such objective indicators and now indicators that illustrate people’s subjective assessment of their quality of life (frey/stutzer 2002) are instead favoured to measure benefi ts. here, • marcel erlinghagen902 various facets of subjective well-being can be considered, whereby in practice in particular the question of subjective general life satisfaction and subjective happiness plays a chief role in research (cf. haller/hadler 2006) and therefore will be drawn upon in this study to measure subjective well-being. regardless of the actual operationalisation of individual benefi ts, it is clear that the increased benefi t supposedly expected from emigration is dependent upon a number of socio-economic and socio-demographic attributes and correspondingly differs among different groups of the population. in other words, emigration is more worthwhile for some people than for others. theoretically, it is at fi rst unclear what personal, family or social factors systematically enhance the emigration probability for germans. empirically, however, it is shown that german emigrants are recruited primarily from younger, well-educated, and unattached persons. furthermore, there are more women than men among the emigrants. also, there is increased emigration probability both among executives and among the unemployed (erlinghagen et al. 2009). moreover, the great majority of german emigrants move to other highly developed industrial nations. frequently, these are directly neighbouring states (in particular switzerland and austria), but also the united kingdom and the classical emigration country of the usa are the goal of german emigrants relatively frequently (erlinghagen/stegmann 2009). in their extensive study, ette/sauer (2010) furthermore point out that for germans in most cases emigration is merely a limited episode in their life course and that therefore there is a considerable amount of remigration. the group of remigrants is also chiefl y made up of younger and highly qualifi ed individuals. it is not the primary aim of this essay to explain socio-structural differences in the composition of the emigration or re-migration populations (cf. in particular chapter 2 in ette/sauer 2010; erlinghagen et al. 2009; braun/recchi 2008). here it is only important to ascertain that german emigrants and remigrants are a selective group. hence, if we would wish to compare the subjective well-being of german emigrants and remigrants with that of german non-migrants, this selectivity would have to be correspondingly taken into consideration in the empirical analysis. this is important in particular because the relevant research has shown that the subjective assessment of one’s own quality of life is systematically infl uenced by fundamental personal, family, and context-dependent factors. 2.2 determinants of subjective well-being a large number of studies fi nd a correlation between age and subjective well-being – however with inconsistent fi ndings (cf. brockmann 2010). if we at fi rst do not consider familial, health, and economic circumstances, there is an inverted u-shaped correlation and in particular people of middle age appear to have the highest quality of life (cf. e.g. easterlin 2006). however, if we consider infl uencing factors such as family and health there is instead a u-shaped correlation, i.e. young and older people show greater well-being than middle-aged people (cf. e.g. blachfl ower/oswald 2008). yang (2008) and brockmann (2010) additionally refer to cohort effects. consequently, we can assume distinct interactions between age, life course, and nowhere better than here? • 903 subjective well-being. familial events in particular (marriage, birth of children, separation) and state of health have a distinct infl uence on subjective quality of life (plagnol 2010 offers a detailed overview of the literature). gender differences with regard to subjective well-being are seen in particular in the differing signifi cance of different factors infl uencing quality of life. for example, employment status: “in the overall population, men’s happiness is signifi cantly dependent on employment status. compared to those who are not employed, nearly any other employment status makes men happier, higher ranked positions do in particular. […] in contrast, west german women report no signifi cant emotional benefi t from any engagement in the labour market” (brockmann 2010: 34). accordingly, unemployment has a distinctly negative infl uence on the well-being of men (winkelmann/winkelmann 1998), while this is comparatively less important for women (lucas et al. 2004). independent of gender, lucas et al. (2004) also reveal that unemployment lowers the quality of life for the long term even if the individuals have found a new job. in addition, the endowment with resources (fi nancial capital, human capital, social capital) is signifi cant. not surprisingly, wealthier individuals are in fact more satisfi ed with their lives (cf. e.g. blanchfl ower/oswald 2004; shields/wheatley price 2005). however, there is no linear correlation between income growth and subjective well-being, but from a specifi c income level no further growth in quality of life is observed (cf. e.g. frey/stutzer 2002: 409-410). rather there are indications that it is not the absolute income level or absolute income growth that have a positive effect on well-being, but that positive effects then result when an advantageous or better income status is achieved compared with other individuals (cf. e.g. clark et al. 2008). the correlation between well-being and educational level appears to be unclear. some authors fi nd a positive correlation between skills and well-being, others in turn prove no or even a signifi cantly negative correlation (for a brief overview cf. dolan et al. 2008: 99-100). furthermore, it has been shown that social capital in the form of involvement in social networks is also accompanied by increased wellbeing (cf. e.g. bjornskov 2003). finally, there are distinct indications of context-related infl uences through cultural factors and institutional circumstances. for example, there are clear national differences observed with regard to the social extent of subjective well-being (cf. e.g. borooah 2006). causes for these differences may lie, for one, in the actual economic, political, and social circumstances of the people. haller/hadler (2006) refer in particular to the fact that subjective well-being rises in societies with relatively equal income distribution, a functional democracy, and a well-structured social welfare state (cf. also veenhoven 2009). in addition to such institutional infl uences, cultural factors must also be taken into consideration. it seems very dubious whether there are actually nations that are fundamentally happier or more satisfi ed than others (cf. haller/hadler 2006: 174-175). however, it seems plausible that national differences with regard to the extent of subjective well-being may well be related to a culturally different way in which emotions are dealt with or expressed: “a substantive explanation for differences between nations in swb [subjective well-being] is that cultures may differ in the norms regulating the momentary experience of • marcel erlinghagen904 emotions” (diener et al. 1995). in assessing international comparisons of subjective well-being this basic problem in social research of the international comparability of survey responses must be taken into consideration accordingly (cf. for example johnson et al. 2005). 2.3 the subjective well-being of emigrants and remigrants up to now there have been comparatively few research works dealing with the subjective well-being of migrants. the great majority of these analyses examine the extent of and the infl uencing factors on the well-being of migrants either within a group of immigrants itself (cf. neto 1995; amit/litwin 2010) or in a comparison with the domestic population in the host country (verkuyten 2008; safi 2010), whereby the latter reveal that immigrants exhibit generally lesser well-being. according to our state of knowledge, there is only one study that examined the correlation between subjective general satisfaction and emigration. erlinghagen et al. (2009) were able to show that emigrants from germany exhibited no greater general dissatisfaction and also no greater dissatisfaction with their household income than german non-emigrants. and, with regard to changes in general life satisfaction after emigration, there is – as far as we know – also only one fi nding, which, however, is based on the non-representative data of the gsoep pilot study mentioned above. in it, the levels of satisfaction indicated by the gsoep participants before their emigration were compared with the results of the follow-up survey following their emigration. it showed that the general satisfaction of 20 of the 32 emigrants surveyed (hence about 62 %) increased, while it remained the same among seven persons (22 %). only fi ve emigrants (16 %) indicated a lower rate of general life satisfaction (cf. erlinghagen/stegmann 2009: 21). therefore, what is lacking to date is a comparison of the subjective well-being of non-migrants with emigrating or re-migrating fellow nationals. this paper intends to make an initial contribution to this. 3 data and methods 3.1 fundamental methodological problems in surveying emigrants quantitative empirical analyses of emigrants are faced with special methodological challenges. it is less problematic that migration, as other social phenomena, is a process. in other words, not solely the singular event of crossing a border is of signifi cance for researching migration, but the interest actually refers, fi rstly, to the developments leading to the migration event and, secondly, to the events following this singular migration event in the life course of the migrants. mapping such life course processes has always been the source of methodological problems in empirical social research. however, panel studies now conducted for many years offer the opportunity to map and study the processes of a large number of interesting social phenomena, surely fi rst and foremost the german socio-economic panel (gsoep) (wagner et al. 2007). nonetheless, the range of such panel data is restrictnowhere better than here? • 905 ed not only chronologically due to the respective survey periods, but also spatially by the boundaries of national states. this national restrictedness can be explained in the context of the generation of such data. the objective of population surveys was and is primarily to provide representative information for one society, which can still be spatially described quite well (in spite of increasing internationalisation and globalisation) by means of national borders. for most questions in the social sciences, this national restrictedness is, for the rest, relatively unproblematic, since certain research issues are meant to be explored only in the institutional and social context of a single, specifi c society anyway. an international comparison is not fundamentally prevented by nationally restricted survey data, since harmonisation is possible, thus allowing for comparisons. yet, the data situation is particularly dissatisfactory for migration research, since the theoretically well-substantiable processes of the migration occurrence can commonly not be mapped continuously. using panel data, emigrants from a home society can only be “followed” until the emigration event, since they then leave the geographical observation region of the national panel. conversely, immigrants do not enter the methodological sights of national surveys until they cross the border. due to this assessment problem, migration research consequently is faced with the problem that it cannot map the complete life courses of migrants. although it is basically possible for a national panel to continue to survey emigrating respondents in their new domicile, a pilot study based on the gsoep data has also shown that follow-up surveys of emigrated panel members is highly problematic and as yet hold little promise of success (cf. schupp et al. 2008). therefore, retrospective surveys are one suitable means to nonetheless study the effects of the “emigration” event on the individual life course. this pathway was taken by the pioneur project, a project funded within the eu and considered innovative in a variety of respects (cf. rother 2005). in order to analyse the living conditions of emigrants, separate samples were drawn in germany, the united kingdom, france, italy, and spain with immigrants from these very countries and compared with the populations of both the home and the host society (cf. e.g. braun/recchi 2008). also, in the recent past initial studies have begun to make use of internationally harmonised cross-sectional surveys in order to identify emigrants in their host society and compare this group either with emigrants in other countries (geis et al. 2011) or with respondents left behind in the home society (ette/sauer 2010). while ette/sauer (2010) make use of data from the european labour force survey, geis et al. (2011) work with national datasets, which they harmonise themselves for their own purposes. given the lack of uncensored panel data, this procedure is quite adequate. nonetheless, we must assume two fundamental methodological problems when using this strategy in particular, which lead to coverage problems of immigrants in national surveys and therefore also had to be considered in this study: undercoverage of emigrants – there is a danger that emigrant populations are not suffi ciently covered even during sampling. the extent to which this problem of undercoverage occurs (cf. in general biemer/lyberg 2003: 63-64; groves et al. 2004: 54-55; lohr 2008) depends decisively on the procedure taken for sampling. some sampling for surveys is based, for example, on voter registrations in which, • marcel erlinghagen906 of course, only those persons are listed who possess voting rights. depending on voting law, this is probably only limited in the case of emigrants. another sampling strategy is based on addresses found in telephone directories. here, as well, emigrants would probably only appear after a while and thus be undercovered (cf. van goor/rispens 2004). non-response of emigrants – non-response problems (cf. in general schnell 1997; biemer/lyberg 2003: 63-64; lynn 2008; haunberger 2011) would occur primarily because internationally harmonised surveys are conducted in the national languages of the respective survey countries. in this respect, participation in the survey requires considerable knowledge of the national language (cf. feskens et al. 2006; deding et al. 2008). we can therefore assume that in internationally harmonised surveys mainly those emigrants are underrepresented who recently entered the country. in the scope of the pioneur project mentioned above, not only were bilingual questionnaires used for surveying emigrants, but also interviewers who speak the languages of the home and the host society (santacreu fernandez et al. 2006: 87). due to undercoverage and non-response problems, foreigners or immigrants are frequently underrepresented in national population surveys (cf. blohm/diehl 2001; rendall et al. 2003). we can therefore also assume that only a selective number of german emigrants are covered in foreign surveys.2 in the description of the analysis strategy applied further on (section 3.3), we will explain how this problem can be dealt with in the analyses to be carried out. 3.2 data basis the european social survey (ess) served as the data basis for the following analyses. the ess is a survey funded together by the european commission, the european science foundation (esf) and national research funding institutions. the survey has been conducted regularly every two years since 2002. at time of the analyses, four waves were available for evaluation (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008). it is important to note that the ess is not a longitudinal, but a repeated cross-sectional survey and that new representative samples are drawn for the individual countries in each wave. the core of the participating countries is represented in all waves, but there are also countries that have only taken part in single waves. the number of participating countries thus deviates from wave to wave. with the exception of some country-specifi c questions, the interview sheet primarily consists of a number of 2 another fundamental problem is how long a person must have lived abroad to actually describe them as an “emigrant.” since a chronological defi nition is problematic, emigration is commonly considered the case when the person has shifted their focus of life abroad. in the following, we assume that this is given when germans abroad occur in the respective population samples and therefore also as respondents in the ess and are therefore understood in the further course as “emigrants.” moreover, it was discovered that far more than 80 % of the german ess participants surveyed abroad lived longer than fi ve years and almost 60 % even 20 years or longer abroad (cf. table 2 below). against the background of the sampling and the actual duration of stay, we can continue quite confi dently to speak of “emigrants.” nowhere better than here? • 907 modules that are uniform in all countries. two of these modules form the solid ‘core’ of the survey, that is, these modules were used in all survey waves (core modules). the other modules are variable and have had different content in the survey waves conducted so far (rotating modules) (cf. stoop et al. 2010; detailed information can also be found at www.europeansocialsurvey.com). a pooled dataset from all four available ess waves was used to increase the number of cases of available german emigrants in the dataset, whereby understandably only information from the core modules surveyed in all of the waves could be used. in the following, we defi ne german emigrants as survey respondents who did not live in germany at the time of the survey and who possess german citizenship or were born in germany. a more restricted defi nition of german emigrants as only those who live abroad and were both born in germany and possess german citizenship was not implementable since no citizenship information is available in the ess for a large number of persons living abroad and born in germany. we know only that they do not possess citizenship of the emigration country. this means that this also covers a certain number of persons as emigrants who were born in germany as the second immigrant generation. however, this does not appear unduly problematical for our study purpose since it deals with the correlation between leaving the home country of germany and for such a classifi cation there is no basic difference between people who were born here with and without foreign roots. using this method, we were able to identify 1,010 german emigrants in 24 ess countries. the largest group by far reside in switzerland (311 emigrants), followed by austria (126), luxembourg (74), greece (65), the netherlands (57), and the united kingdom (56). cyprus and the czech republic are at the bottom end of the list, where only one german emigrant each is contained in the ess data (table 1). two factors must be considered here. for one, using the data of the ess means that only those emigrants are covered in countries that take part in the ess and consequently important host countries such as the usa, canada, and australia cannot be included. the second is that there are deviations with regard to the quantitative signifi cance of emigration compared with the information on host countries recorded by the statistische bundesamt (cf. relevant fi gures in erlinghagen/stegmann 2009: 12) or also by international bodies such as eurostat (cf. for more information herm 2008). it appears that emigrants to greece and luxembourg are overrepresented in the ess dataset used here, while emigrants in turkey, france, and spain are undercovered. this can be a result of the deviating coverage problems in each country (cf. explanation on “undercoverage” and “non-response” above) for the national ess surveys in those countries. moreover, the data from the offi cial german statistics are not unproblematic since they can only record such emigrations according to the host countries if the migrants properly give notice of departure with their registration offi ce according to german registration law and thereby the host country is also effectively recorded. similar haziness possibly also occurs with regard to the registration of the number of german immigrants by overseas statistical offi ces. in addition, the ess data used here refers only to adult individuals, while the number of german emigrants recorded by the offi cial statistics commonly also includes children. in this respect there are a variety of methodological reasons for • marcel erlinghagen908 these deviations sometimes observed between the ess data used here and the data from the offi cial statistics. hence, when we speak of “emigrants” in the following, we are always referring to people living abroad at the time of the survey who originally came from germany. consequently all relevant assertions are not based in the present occurrence of emigration, but always on persons a great number of whom have lived for many years or even decades abroad. under this assumption, we have broken down emigrants in the following into three groups according to their time spent abroad so far (table 2). we differentiate between emigrants who have lived abroad for a maximum of fi ve years (150 cases), emigrants who have lived abroad for between six and twenty years (264 cases), and emigrants who left germany over 20 years ago (596 cases). the following analyses compare this emigrant population with germans who have remained in germany, who were both born in germany and possess german citizenship. under these conditions, we have data for 10,122 germans in germany. the third group of persons, fi nally, are german remigrants who are compared both with the emigrants and with the non-migrants. we understand remigrants to be persons born in germany with german citizenship who are living in germany at the time of the survey, but indicate in the ess that they have worked for at least six months tab. 1: number of the german emigrants identifi ed in the ess in the respective survey countries and percentage among all identifi ed german emigrants n percentage n percentage switzerland 311 30.8 norway 21 2.1 austria 126 12.5 ireland 19 1.9 luxembourg 74 7.3 spain 15 1.5 greece 65 6.4 portugal 10 1.0 netherlands 57 5.6 russia 8 0.8 united kingdom 56 5.5 turkey 7 0.7 sweden 42 4.2 ukraine 7 0.7 poland 35 3.5 italy 6 0.6 denmark 30 3.0 estonia 5 0.5 belgium 29 2.9 finland 5 0.5 france 28 2.8 hungary 3 0.3 israel 27 2.7 cyprus 1 0.1 slovenia 22 2.2 czech republic 1 0.1 total 1,010 100 source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations) nowhere better than here? • 909 abroad in the previous 10 years. under this condition, we could identify 202 persons as remigrants.3 3.3 analysis strategy the analyses fi rst begin by estimating various binary logistical regression models (cf. hosmer/lemeshow 2000) in order to analyse the primary socio-structural differences between emigrants, remigrants, and non-migrants. this is then followed by the actual analyses of the subjective well-being of german emigrants and remigrants. subjective general life satisfaction and subjective happiness are primarily used as indicators in the international research of subjective well-being (cf. haller/ hadler 2006). both are also measured in the four available ess waves with the following questions: all things considered, how satisfi ed are you with your life as a whole nowadays? taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? the respondents assess their general satisfaction and happiness on an elevenfi gure scale, whereby zero means entirely dissatisfi ed or unhappy and 10 means entirely satisfi ed or happy. multivariate regression analyses are a good strategy for examining the correlation between non-migration, emigration, or re-migration on these two indicators using further control variables. in the relevant research literature, both ordered logit or probit regressions and ordinary least square (ols) regressions are used for this purpose. corresponding method comparisons consistently fi nd, however “that assuming cardinality or ordinality of the answers to gen3 in the ess, re-migrants can only be identifi ed to a limited extent, since the relevant question about longer stays abroad (longer than six months) during the past 10 years is only asked of those participants who were gainfully employed at least once in their lives. tab. 2: number and percentage of non-migrants, emigrants, and re-migrants in the dataset n percentage in dataset non-migrants 10,122 89.3 % re-migrants 202 1.8 % emigrants 1,010 8.9 % of which: percentage of emigrants 0-5 years abroad 150 14.9 % 6-20 years abroad 264 26.1 % more than 20 years abroad 596 59.0 % source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations) • marcel erlinghagen910 eral satisfaction questions is relatively unimportant to results” (ferrer-i-carbonell/ frijters 2004: 655; cf. also studer/winkelmann 2011). in the following, we examined general life satisfaction and happiness using multivariate ols regressions. the regression analyses are used to examine the extent to which emigrants and remigrants systematically differ in comparison to non-migrant germans with regard to subjective happiness and general life satisfaction. a number of relevant factors (cf. section 2) are used as control variables in the following regression models to take both the selectivity of emigration and re-migration and important general determinants of subjective well-being into account. in addition to gender, also age and squared age are used as socio-demographic variables. socioeconomic status is recorded using the educational level (years of full-time education) and employment status. others are household status (single vs. with partner; children vs. no children in the household), frequency of contacts with friends, and subjective health. differences in attitudes and convictions are recorded using the extent of general trustfulness (0 = no trust, 10 = great trust in other people), satisfaction with the democracy in the (host) country (0 = completely dissatisfi ed, 10 = completely satisfi ed), and religiousness, which is measured by the frequency of prayer (regularly or frequently vs. rarely or never). moreover, the assessment of income is used as an explanatory variable, whereby three groups were differentiated: comfortable livelihood with the income, income suffi cient for subsistence, and (very) problematical income. to account for economic or political infl uences, moreover the survey time is used as a control variable. the basic composition of the analysis dataset is contained in table 3. in order to counteract the above-described undercoverage and non-response problems, in addition to the analyses of the total dataset, also regressions are estimated that account only for the german emigrants living in austria and switzerland and compare them with the german non-migrants and remigrants. since the ess questionnaire is provided in the german language in both austria and switzerland, the non-responses due to language problems should be of little signifi cance for our study purpose. nonetheless, undercoverage problems cannot be completely excluded even using this method due to the sampling strategy, in particular in switzerland. while in austria a mixed sampling strategy of telephone directory and the random route method should reduce undercoverage problems of immigrant households (in particular in cases of relatively short stay durations), the swiss ess sample is drawn only from the national telephone directory (including unlisted numbers and mobile phone connections) (information on the sampling strategy can be found in ess 2011). however, all in all a comparison of the estimation results of the total emigrant population and the emigrant population living in austria and switzerland is probably the best-possible strategy under these circumstances to assess possible distortions of the fi ndings based on these methodological problems. nowhere better than here? • 911 4 results 4.1 structural differences between non-migrants, emigrants, and remigrants table 4 documents the coeffi cients of the different binary logistical regression estimations, which is initially intended to provide further information about the diftab. 3: descriptive statistics non-migrants emigrants re-migrants average/ percentage n average/ percentage n average/ percentage n subjective well-being happiness (0-10) 7.1* 10,086 7.7* 1,008 7.2* 202 general satisfaction (0-10) 6.8* 10,103 7.5* 1,008 6.8* 202 demographics men 49.3 4,992 41.0 414 69.3 140 women 50.7 5,130 59.0 596 30.7 62 age (in years) 48.3* 10,122 49.6* 1,010 42.9* 202 employment status & education education duration (in years) 13.2 10,122 13.4 1,010 15.6 202 employed 40.9 4,144 42.0 424 55.5 112 self-employed 5.8 585 6.8 69 13.9 28 unemployed 7.0 704 3.6 36 7.4 15 retired. etc. 26.1 2,641 28.1 284 9.9 20 non-employed 19.9 2,012 18.9 191 12.9 26 meet friends never/rarely 18.5 1,875 17.4 176 18.3 37 regularly 44.9 4,543 39.5 399 40.6 82 frequently 36.5 3,695 42.7 431 41.1 83 family no partner 38.6 3,905 42.2 426 37.1 75 has partner 61.4 6,217 57.8 584 62.9 127 no children 67.5 6,828 67.3 680 64.9 131 has children 32.5 3,294 32.7 330 35.2 71 subjective health poor/satisfactory 40.2 4,068 25.6 259 22.3 45 (very) good 59.8 6,054 74.4 751 77.7 157 attitudes general trustfulness (0-10) 4.7* 10,122 5.3* 1,010 5.1* 202 satisfaction with democracy (0-10) 5.0* 10,122 6.1* 1,010 5.1* 202 pray: never/rarely 70.7 7,158 56.0 566 75.7 153 pray: regularly/frequently 29.3 2,964 44.0 444 24.3 49 assessment of income comfortable 27.2 2,802 43.9 443 36.6 74 adequate 55.8 5,651 38.3 387 47.0 95 (very) problematical 15.6 1,583 15.0 151 14.4 29 ess wave 2002 26.3 2,663 28.9 292 2004 24.7 2,497 26.8 271 28.2 57 2006 25.2 2,552 21.5 217 38.1 77 2008 23.8 2,410 22.8 230 33.7 68 * arithmetic mean (metric variable). source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations) • marcel erlinghagen912 ferent structure of the non-migrants, emigrants, and remigrants. we emphasise once more that this study is not (!) an analysis of the present migration occurrence; rather it covers individuals who are presently living abroad and at some point in their lives emigrated from germany. this study therefore refers to emigrants who (still) live abroad at the time of the survey and whose emigration in many cases took place years or even decades ago. under these conditions, model 1 compares non-migrants (0) with emigrants (1), whereby model 1a considers all emigrants and model 1b only those germans living in austria and switzerland. model 2 compares non-migrants (0) with remigrants (1), and model 3 fi nally compares emigrants (0) with remigrants (1). this reveals that even when controlling for the other factors, a larger number of women are among the emigrants; however the group of remigrants is dominated by men. this possibly indicates different gender-specifi c migration motives: perhaps women remain abroad permanently because their emigration is more strongly family-related and they have perhaps followed their (foreign) husbands. possibly there are so many men among the remigrants because their emigration is more employment-related and therefore to a greater extent was planned from the outset as a limited episode. for both emigrants and remigrants an inverted u-shaped correlation is recognisable with regard to the ages, i.e. both emigration and re-migration is a phenomenon of people of middle age. model 3 furthermore shows that there is also an inverted u-shaped age correlation when comparing the remigrants with the emigrants. this is not surprising and reveals that emigration and ensuing re-migration occur in a chronological sequence in the life course and in this respect remigrants tend to be older than emigrants. it is moreover interesting that there is no difference with regard to the skills of non-migrants and emigrants, however at the same time the remigrants on average are better educated than the emigrants and the germans who remain at home. this fi nding is clear proof that emigration from germany does not lead to a loss of human capital in society as a whole (brain drain), but rather that we can anticipate an increase in human capital (brain gain) by highly qualifi ed returning persons enriched by their experience of living abroad (cf. also the corresponding results in ette/sauer 2010). compared with the total german population, german emigrants are with signifi cantly lesser probability not unemployed, which indicates the strong employment orientation of emigrants. at the same time, there is no notable difference with regard to employment status if we compare remigrants with the total population. however, this also means that remigrants exhibit an increased risk of unemployment in comparison to germans who remain abroad (model 3). in my opinion, these fi ndings are lesser an indication of problems of remigrants, but underscore in general how successful german emigrants are and that the majority of those who remain abroad have (temporarily) better job opportunities than in their homeland. with regard to their social involvement, the group of german emigrants manifests a confl icting picture. compared with non-migrants their probability is higher both to meet friends more frequently and more rarely at the same time. there are nowhere better than here? • 913 tab. 4: coeffi cients of the binary logistic regressions for the comparison of non-migrants, emigrants, and re-migrants model 1a model 1b model 2 model 3 demographics women (ref.: men) 0.32 (0.08) *** 0.51 (0.11) *** -0.55 (0.17) *** -1.02 (0.20) *** age 0.03 (0.01) ** 0.10 (0.02) *** 0.13 (0.04) *** 0.11 (0.04) *** age2 -0.00 (0.00) * -0.00 (0.00) *** -0.00 (0.00) *** -0.00 (0.00) *** education & employment status education in years -0.00 (0.01) -0.00 (0.02) 0.14 (0.02) *** 0.09 (0.02) *** employed ref. ref. ref. ref. self-employed 0.13 (0.17) -0.20 (0.25) 0.60 (0.33) * 0.43 (0.40) unemployed -0.46 (0.21) ** -0.53 (0.34) 0.44 (0.39) 1.12 (0.48) ** retired, etc. 0.17 (0.15) 0.17 (0.21) 0.45 (0.41) 0.05 (0.45) non-employed -0.26 (0.13) ** -0.49 (0.20) ** 0.08 (0.34) 0.41 (0.38) meet friends never/rarely 0.23 (0.10) ** 0.06 (0.16) 0.34 (0.21) -0.14 (0.26) regularly ref. ref. ref. ref. frequently 0.22 (0.08) *** 0.22 (0.12) * 0.20 (0.17) 0.07 (0.20) family has partner (ref.: no partner) -0.26 (0.08) *** -0.50 (0.12) *** 0.02 (0.18) 0.45 (0.22) ** has children (ref.: no children) 0.10 (0.08) -0.25 (0.13) * -0.32 (0.18) * -0.50 (0.22) ** subjective health (very) good (ref.: poor/satisfactory) 0.69 (0.08) *** 1.05 (0.14) *** 0.50 (0.18) *** -0.31 (0.23) attitudes general trustfulness 0.05 (0.02) *** 0.07 (0.02) *** 0.01 (0.03) -0.03 (0.04) satisfaction with democracy 0.16 (0.02) *** 0.29 (0.03) *** -0.03 (0.03) -0.13 (0.04) *** prays regularly/frequently (ref.: never/rarely) 0.51 (0.07) *** 0.61 (0.11) *** -0.01 (0.17) -0.56 (0.20) *** assessment of income comfortable 0.64 (0.08) *** 0.91 (0.11) *** 0.26 (0.17) -0.66 (0.21) *** adequate ref. ref. ref. ref. (very) problematical 0.63 (0.11) *** 0.45 (0.19) ** 0.17 (0.24) -0.72 (0.28) ** constants -5.23*** -8.83*** -8.99*** -3.89*** n 11,121 10,506 10,175 1,171 pseudo-r2 0.084 0.154 0.111 0.207 model 1: non-migrants (0), emigrants (1); (1a: all emigrants; 1b: only emigrants in austria and switzerland). model 2: non-migrants (0), re-migrants (1). model 3: emigrants (0), remigrants (1). *** p < 0.01 ** p < .0.05 * p <= 0.1; standard errors in brackets. all models controlled for ess wave (results not shown). source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations) • marcel erlinghagen914 two possible explanations for this. it is possible that the german emigrant population is polarised, so that some of this group is well integrated and actively maintains social contacts while the other part of this group is more strongly affected by social isolation. however, the more plausible assumption is that this fi nding uncovers dynamic processes, which cannot be further examined in this analysis. by nature, establishing new social networks takes a certain amount of time, meaning that a time effect is hidden behind the simultaneous isolation and integration in social networks. correspondingly, the results are then not evidence of polarisation, but should correlate highly with the duration of residence in the new domicile. compared with the total german population, emigrants are more often single (cf. also the fi ndings in erlinghagen et al. 2009), while remigrants are more often childless. these fi ndings are clear evidence that the family or household context has a major infl uence on emigration and re-migration decisions. it would be easier for singles to decide to emigrate, since they need not reach consensus with a partner, whereas having children possibly makes the decision to re-migrate more diffi cult, because remigration by their parents would mean removing the children from their familiar school surroundings. moreover both emigrants and remigrants report signifi cantly better health than the total german population, which is not surprising since moving (particularly across national borders) is a physical and psychological burden that can only be undertaken in good health. an inverted causal direction is also imaginable (although rather unlikely), i.e. experience living abroad increases health and well-being (for example, through greater self-confi dence). in addition to the socio-demographic and socio-economic structural differences outlined above, there are furthermore distinct differences observable in individual attitudes. compared with non-migrants, emigrants have signifi cantly greater general trustfulness in other people, are more satisfi ed with the democracy in their respective country of residence, and are more religious. all of these correlations are statistically highly signifi cant and indicate the special signifi cance of psychosocial factors in the emigration decision. if we assume that trustfulness and religiousness are long-term behaviours, which formed prior to the decision to emigrate, then these results are evidence that primarily confi dent and optimistic character traits enable emigration decisions. the fact that additionally the democracy in the new host society is better assessed than the situation in germany by the total german population could possibly also be evidence of greater optimism in the emigrant population. it may possibly also be a sign that understandably the political events in a foreign land are less critically assessed by immigrants. however, it may be that the status of the democracy in at least some of the countries is simply essentially (“objectively”) better than in germany and in this respect has nothing to do with emigration as such. it is furthermore striking that compared with the emigrants who remain abroad remigrants do not manifest lesser general trustfulness but signifi cantly lesser religiousness. there appears to be further need for research here in future in order to better understand the correlation between religiousness, emigration, and re-migration. moreover there are striking differences between emigrants and the total german population with regard to assessment of personal income. compared with nonnowhere better than here? • 915 migrants, emigrants not only assess their household income to a greater degree as comfortable, but also report problematic incomes more often. this indicates that emigration is not always successful per se, but can very well also lead (temporarily) to poorer living conditions than may be the case in comparison to germany. 4.2 the subjective well-being of emigrants and remigrants the results of the regressions used to determine the determinants of subjective happiness and general life satisfaction are found in table 5 and table 6 respectively. six models were estimated for each, whereby models 1 to 5 use reduced variable sets and model 6a/b (full dataset and emigrants in austria and switzerland) include all control variables.4 the aim of the reduced models is mainly to learn more about the reciprocity between subjective well-being, emigration status, and psychosocial factors by always only adopting single, isolated variables in the model to measure personal attitudes or the assessment of income. this article is particularly interested in the correlation between emigration/remigration status and subjective well-being, which is why the other explanatory variables take up mainly a control function in the models. nonetheless, before interpreting the main results, we will take a look at the signifi cance of the control variables in a brief summary. we will look at the fi ndings concerning happiness and general life satisfaction together, since there are hardly any differences in the comparison of the two partial analyses. in summary, we can say that this calculation on the basis of the ess data largely confi rms the chief determinants of subjective well-being (cf. section 2.2) known from relevant research. women appear to have greater well-being than men, there is a u-shaped correlation between age and well-being, a higher educational level makes people happier, while unemployment has a negative effect on well-being. having many friendship contacts, good health, and living in a partnership make people more satisfi ed and happier, while having children does not lead to any original effect. the assessment of income as comfortable correlates with greater well-being while a problematic fi nancial situation has a negative effect on happiness and life satisfaction. moreover, religious people tend to feel better, and both trustfulness in other people and satisfaction with the political system increase well-being. in the correlation with psychosocial factors it is furthermore interesting that women in particular show a correlation between well-being and religiousness (cf. in particular model 3). it is also striking that in each of the models 1 to 5 parents have signifi cantly decreased satisfaction or decreased happiness – with the exception of model 4, in which the assessment of income is included. this indicates that the subjective well-being of parents in particular is more highly infl uenced by their fi nancial situation. the two latter fi ndings in particular of the correlation between 4 the results of the dataset reduced to emigrants in austria and switzerland are very similar to the results achieved on the basis of the whole analysis dataset. this indicates for one that methodological problems such as non-response or undercoverage are in this case negligible. it is also an indicati on that the ‘broad’ operati onalizati on chosen for this study of emigrants and the parti al coverage of emigrants with migrati on backgrounds born in germany do not notably infl uence the results. • marcel erlinghagen916 tab. 5: coeffi cients of ols regressions on subjective happiness model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6a model 6b1 emigration & re-migration non-migrants ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. emigrants (<= 5 years) 0.36 (0.15) ** 0.34 (0.15) ** 0.29 (0.15) * 0.28 (0.15) * 0.19 (0.15) 0.12 (0.15) 0.16 (0.19) emigrants (6-20 years) 0.34 (0.11) *** 0.32 (0.11) *** 0.30 (0.11) *** 0.24 (0.11) ** 0.18 (0.11) * 0.12 (0.11) 0.11 (0.15) emigrants (> 20 years) 0.44 (0.07) *** 0.41 (0.07) *** 0.39 (0.07) *** 0.43 (0.07) *** 0.33 (0.07) *** 0.31 (0.07) *** 0.42 (0.11) *** re-migrants -0.04 (0.13) -0.04 (0.13) -0.03 (0.12) -0.05 (0.12) -0.03 (0.12) -0.04 (0.12) -0.04 (0.12) demographics women (ref.: men) 0.08 (0.04) ** 0.05 (0.04) 0.08 (0.04) ** 0.09 (0.03) ** 0.11 (0.03) *** 0.10 (0.03) *** 0.10 (0.04) *** age -0.05 (0.01) *** -0.05 (0.01) *** -0.05 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** -0.05 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** age2 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** education & employment status education in years 0.05 (0.01) *** 0.05 (0.01) *** 0.04 (0.01) *** 0.03 (0.01) *** 0.04 (0.01) *** 0.02 (0.01) *** 0.02 (0.01) *** employed ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. self-employed -0.13 (0.08) -0.12 (0.09) -0.10 (0.09) -0.16 (0.08) ** -0.11 (0.08) -0.13 (0.08) -0.12 (0.08) unemployed -1.17 (0.08) *** -1.14 (0.08) *** -1.09 (0.08) *** -0.65 (0.08) *** -0.99 (0.08) ** -0.53 (0.08) *** -0.56 (0.08) *** retired. etc. -0.12 (0.08) -0.10 (0.08) -0.10 (0.07) -0.04 (0.07) -0.09 (0.07) -0.01 (0.07) 0.00 (0.07) non-employed 0.07 (0.07) 0.06 (0.07) 0.05 (0.07) 0.09 (0.06) 0.05 (0.06) 0.05 (0.06) 0.06 (0.07) meets friends never/rarely -0.57 (0.05) *** -0.57 (0.05) *** -0.52 (0.05) *** -0.48*** -0.52*** -0.42 (0.04) *** -0.42 (0.05) *** regularly ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. frequently 0.23 (0.04) *** 0.22 (0.04) *** 0.20 (0.04) *** 0.21 (0.04) *** 0.21 (0.04) *** 0.18 (0.04) *** 0.18 (0.04) *** family has partner (ref.: no partner) 0.97 (0.04) *** 0.97 (0.04) *** 0.97 (0.04) *** 0.81 (0.04) *** 0.96 (0.04) *** 0.82 (0.04) *** 0.84 (0.04) *** has children (ref.: no children) -0.12 (0.04) *** -0.13 (0.04) *** -0.12 (0.04) *** -0.04 (0.04) -0.12 (0.04) *** -0.04 (0.04) -0.05 (0.04) subjective health (very) good (ref.: poor/satisfactory) 0.89 (0.04) *** 0.89 (0.04) *** 0.83 (0.04) *** 0.76 (0.04) *** 0.81 (0.04) *** 0.67 (0.04) *** 0.69 (0.04) *** attitudes general trustfulness 0.11 (0.01) *** 0.07 (0.01) *** 0.07 (0.01) *** satisfaction with democracy 0.14 (0.01) *** 0.10 (0.01) *** 0.10 (0.01) *** prays: frequently (ref.: never/rarely) 0.20 (0.04) *** 0.10 (0.04) *** 0.11 (0.04) *** assessment of income comfortable 0.45 (0.04) *** 0.35 (0.04) *** 0.33 (0.04) *** adequate ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. (very) problematical -1.05 (0.05) *** -0.95 (0.05) *** -0.95 (0.05) *** constants 6.50*** 6.42*** 6.21*** 6.69*** 5.86*** 6.02 *** 6.07*** n 11,296 11,296 11,296 11,296 11,296 11,296 10,725 r2 0.176 0.178 0.193 0.227 0.208 0.254 0.254 adjusted r2 0.174 0.176 0.191 0.225 0.206 0.252 0.252 1 model 6b: only emigrants in austria and switzerland. *** p < 0,01 ** p < 0,05 * p <= 0,1; standard errors in brackets. all models controlled for ess wave (results not shown). source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations) nowhere better than here? • 917 religiousness, gender, and, happiness/satisfaction and between parenthood, assessment of fi nancial situation and happiness/satisfaction should be more closely examined in future studies. if we now turn to the underlying question of this study, we fi rst see that without taking psychosocial factors into consideration such as attitudes or the assessment of income (model 1), regardless of their duration of residence, emigrants are happier and more satisfi ed than non-migrants. if we then insert individual attitude factors in the estimations (models 2 to 5), it becomes clear that there are defi nitely reciprocal effects between religiousness (model 2), general trustfulness (model 3), and above all the assessment of income (model 4) and the well-being of emigrants. however, the correlation between happiness/satisfaction and emigration always remains highly signifi cant. not until we control for satisfaction with the democracy in the respective country of residence (model 5), can no more signifi cantly increased levels of happiness and life satisfaction in emigrants be found in comparison to germans who remain in germany. the differentiated observation of the infl uences in particular of psychosocial factors and of attitude parameters shows that emigrants have better well-being than non-migrants, but this better well-being can be explained mainly by a better-assessed personal income and by greater satisfaction with the respective political system. all in all, we therefore see that with regard to their subjective well-being nonmigrants and remigrants basically do not differ (model 6). this is true, however, only with one restriction: if emigrants have already been abroad for a very long time and left their homeland more than 20 years ago, even when controlled for all of the variables integrated in the model, they manifest a greater feeling of happiness and greater general life satisfaction in comparison with germans who remained in germany. no signifi cant correlation can be ascertained for rather short to medium-term stays abroad of up to 20 years. the explanation of this fi nding may be selective remigrations, which extend over a more or less long period of time and where those who are especially well integrated in the host country or are bound to a long-term life abroad remain in the new domicile permanently. in such cases, these are very deliberate decisions, which actually do lead to improved quality of life. if we return again to the signifi cance of attitudes and psychosocial factors, it was revealed that satisfaction with the democracy in the respective country of residence is an important element for understanding the greater well-being of emigrants. yet, it is the case that the emigrants covered in the ess live in very different countries (cf. table 2) and in this respect it is interesting to question in what host countries the german emigrants are more satisfi ed with the function of democracy. this is quite conceivable at least for some countries. for example, the german emigrants living in these countries may quite positively assess switzerland with its direct elements of democracy or sweden with its well-developed welfare state. but it is hard to conceive the same for russia, hungary, or the ukraine. in order to gain a bit more clarity about this, figure 1 shows the assessment of satisfaction with the democracy on a scale of eleven (0 to 10). the fi gures refer to german emigrants in the countries under each column (switzerland, luxembourg, sweden, austria, the netherlands, the • marcel erlinghagen918 tab. 6: coeffi cients of ols regressions on general satisfaction model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6a model 6b1 emigration & re-migration non-migrants ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. emigrants (<= 5 years) 0.49 (0.18) *** 0.46 (0.18) ** 0.39 (0.18) ** 0.36 (0.17) ** 0.20 (0.17) 0.09 (0.16) 0.02 (0.21) emigrants (6-20 years) 0.37 (0.13) *** 0.34 (0.13) *** 0.30 (0.13) ** 0.20 (0.12) * 0.12 (0.12) -0.00 (0.12) 0.03 (0.17) emigrants (> 20 years) 0.45 (0.09) *** 0.40 (0.09) *** 0.38 (0.09) *** 0.42 (0.08) *** 0.27 (0.08) *** 0.23 (0.08) *** 0.44 (0.13) *** re-migrants -0.12 (0.15) -0.12 (0.15) -0.12 (0.14) -0.14 (0.14) -0.11 (0.14) -0.13 (0.13) -0.13 (0.13) demographics women (ref.: men) 0.10 (0.04) ** 0.06 (0.04) 0.11 (0.04) *** 0.12 (0.04) *** 0.15 (0.04) *** 0.14 (0.04) *** 0.13 (0.04) *** age -0.06 (0.01) *** -0.06 (0.01) *** -0.06 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** -0.05 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** -0.04 (0.01) *** age2 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** 0.00 (0.00) *** education & employment status education in years 0.05 (0.01) *** 0.05 (0.01) *** 0.04 (0.01) *** 0.02 (0.01) *** 0.04 (0.01) *** 0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) employed ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. self-employed -0.08 (0.09) -0.07 (0.09) -0.04 (0.09) -0.13 (0.09) -0.05 (0.09 -0.09 (0.09) -0.08 (0.09) unemployed -2.05 (0.09) *** -2.00 (0.09) *** -1.94 (0.09) *** -1.23 (0.09) *** -1.79 (0.09) *** -1.04 (0.09) *** -1.08 (0.09) *** retired. etc. -0.06 (0.08) -0.04 (0.08) -0.04 (0.08) 0.06 (0.08) -0.01 (0.08) 0.11 (0.08) 0.11 (0.08) non-employed 0.14 (0.07) * 0.13 (0.07) * 0.10 (0.07) 0.17 (0.07) ** 0.10 (0.07) 0.11 (0.07) 0.10 (0.07) meets friends never/rarely -0.62 (0.04) *** -0.61 (0.04) *** -0.54 (0.04) *** -0.48 (0.04) *** -0.53 (0.04) *** -0.38 (0.04) *** -0.38 (0.05) *** regularly ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. frequently 0.25 (0.04) *** 0.24 (0.04) *** 0.21 (0.04) *** 0.22 (0.04) *** 0.23 (0.04) *** 0.18 (0.04) *** 0.19 (0.04) *** family has partner (ref.: no partner) 0.73 (0.05) *** 0.73 (0.05) *** 0.72 (0.05) *** 0.48 (0.04) *** 0.72 (0.04) *** 0.49 (0.04) ** 0.51 (0.04) *** has children (ref.: no children) -0.15 (0.05) *** -0.16 (0.05) *** -0.14 (0.05) *** -0.01 (0.04) -0.15 (0.04) *** -0.03 (0.04) -0.02 (0.04) subjective health (very) good (ref.: poor/satisfactory) 1.10 (0.04) *** 1.10 (0.04) *** 1.00 (0.04) *** 0.89 (0.04) *** 0.97 (0.04) *** 0.76 (0.04) *** 0.76 (0.04) *** attitudes general trustfulness 0.16 (0.01) *** 0.10 (0.01) *** 0.10 (0.01) *** satisfaction with democracy 0.22 (0.01) *** 0.15 (0.01) *** 0.15 (0.01) *** prays: frequently (ref.: never/rarely) 0.31 (0.04) *** 0.16 (0.04) *** 0.16 (0.04) *** assessment of income comfortable 0.77 (0.04) *** 0.62 (0.04) *** 0.60 (0.04) *** adequate ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. (very) problematical -1.62 (0.06) *** -1.47 (0.05) *** -1.48 (0.06) *** constants 6.03*** 6.05*** 5.66*** 6.37*** 5.07*** 5.33 *** 5.39*** n 11,313 11,313 11,313 11,313 11,313 11,313 10,742 r2 0.184 0.188 0.210 0.278 0.238 0.322 0.322 adjusted r2 0.182 0.186 0.208 0.276 0.236 0.319 0.320 1 model 6b: only emigrants in austria and switzerland. *** p < 0,01 ** p < 0,05 * p <= 0,1; standard errors in brackets. all models controlled for ess wave (results not shown). source: ess 2002-2008 (own calculations). nowhere better than here? • 919 united kingdom, greece, and poland) and to german non-migrants, who continue to live in germany.5 the black crossbars depict the confi dence intervals (95 %). figure 1 shows that german emigrants in switzerland assess the political system there most highly at 7.2 on average, followed by luxembourg (7.0), sweden (6.6), and austria (6.2). as the displayed confi dence intervals show, these differences are also signifi cant. in the other countries as well (with the exception of poland), the emigrants assess the function of the democracy on average more positively than germans living in germany – however these differences are not signifi cant. these are indications that future studies of the living conditions of emigrants and therefore in that context of the possible infl uencing factors on re-migration decisions should take the institutional context including the corresponding personal assessment by the emigrants into consideration. similar questions can be raised with regard to the actual wage situation of germans abroad, the assessment of income, and subjective 5 this restricted selection of countries is due to the corresponding numbers of cases, since only those countries are taken into account in which more than 30 emigrants could be identifi ed in the ess dataset. fig. 1: average satisfaction of german non-migrants / emigrants with the democracy in the respective country 4.85.0 5.35.35.5 6.2 6.6 7.07.2 ch lux swe aut nl gb gr d pol source: ess 1-4, own calculations • marcel erlinghagen920 well-being. however, this is beyond the scope of the questions chosen for this study and can therefore not be taken into consideration here.6 5 summary and concluding remarks existing studies have shown that on average, german emigrants are happier and more satisfi ed than germans who remain in germany or german remigrants. this greater sense of well-being is however not due to differences in the socio-demographic or socio-economic structure of the various groups under study. we were able to show that the enhanced subjective well-being of emigrants is related primarily with psychosocial differences or better assessment of their income abroad. the better assessment of the political situation in particular, at least in some of the main emigration countries (e.g. switzerland, sweden) has a key role in understanding the positive emotional state of emigrants. if such factors are taken into consideration, there are no more ascertainable differences between non-migrants and emigrants with regard to happiness and life satisfaction. the exception here, however, are those emigrants who left germany over 20 years ago and, even when considering attitude variables, manifest signifi cantly improved life satisfaction and increased happiness. this may be due to the effects of positive selection, i.e. these are persons who remain abroad for a very long time, feel especially comfortable there, and are well integrated in the host society. pertaining to remigrants, there is absolutely no evidence that they differ signifi cantly with regard to happiness or life satisfaction than germans who remain in their homeland. since no causal analyses are possible on the basis of the crosssectional data used here, we can only speculate when interpreting this fi nding. one the one hand, the remigrants could be failed emigrants who are now happy to be back in their homeland, but this is not expressed in increased levels of satisfaction or happiness, because this relief only compensates the previous reduced wellbeing while abroad to a “standard measure.” on the other hand, these results may indicate that temporary emigration and ensuing re-migration are phases in the life courses of people that appear appropriate under the respective life circumstances, but in comparison to non-migrants are not accompanied by any general increased benefi t but also not by any general loss in benefi t. since no causal analyses are possible based on the ess data used here, it must ultimately remain uncertain how emigration and subjective well-being are precisely related to one another. nonetheless, it appears plausible that enhanced well-being actually only arises once one resides abroad and is not due to the fact that generally more satisfi ed or happier people tend to emigrate. erlinghagen et al. (2009) were 6 on principle it may well be possible to methodologically take into consideration differences with regard to institutional contextual circumstances, e.g. by including the host countries as control variables in the regression model. however, due to the in part very low number of cases in some host countries, this approach did not appear adequate and must therefore be left to future research works. nowhere better than here? • 921 able to show, for one, that there is no correlation between general satisfaction prior to emigration and the emigration decision. moreover, the results of erlinghagen/ stegmann (2009) also indicate that the general satisfaction of emigrants tends to increase following their arrival in the new domicile. the particular signifi cance of psychosocial factors in the assessment of life circumstances in the new domicile, fi nally, indicates that emigrants possibly react especially positively to new impressions and experiences. this, in turn, would mean that emigration per se does not make them happy and satisfi ed, but that emigrants are the type of people who, due to their personality make-up, are easier to make happy or for whom the challenge of new life circumstances in particular increases their satisfaction. references amit, karin; litwin, howard 2010: the subjective well-being of immigrants aged 50 and older in israel. in: social indicators research 98: 89-104 [doi: 10.1007/ s11205-009-9519-5]. biemer, paul p.; lyberg, lars e. 2003: introduction to survey quality. london: wiley [doi: 10.1002/0471458740]. bjornskov, christian 2003: the happy few: cross-country evidence on social capital and life satisfaction. in: kyklos 56: 3-16 [doi: 10.1111/1467-6435.00207]. blanchfl ower, david g.; oswald, andrew j. 2004: well-being over time in britain and the usa. in: journal of public economics 88: 1359-1386 [doi: 10.1016/ s0047-2727(02)00168-8]. blanchfl ower, david g.; oswald, andrew j. 2008: is well-being u-shaped over the life cycle? 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author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “kein schöner land? glück und zufriedenheit deutscher ausund rückwanderer”, doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2011-15de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-15de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 07.11.2011 date of acceptance: 08.03.2012 prof. dr. marcel erlinghagen ( ). institut für soziologie, fakultät für gesellschaftswissenschaften, universität duisburg-essen, duisburg, germany. e-mail: marcel.erlinghagen@uni-due.de, url: http://www.uni-due.de/soziologie © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) could immigration prevent population decline? the demographic prospects of germany revisited could immigration prevent population decline? the demographic prospects of germany revisited hannes weber abstract: germany has a record of more than 40 years of below-replacement fertility and annual death surplus. hence, it is commonly accepted that germany’s population will decline considerably in the coming decades. recent increases in immigration may, however, challenge the offi cial long-term demographic projections for germany. this paper assesses the impact of a permanent higher-than-expected level of net immigratio n to germany as in the past three years on the projections for population, age structure and ethnic makeup by mid-century. the paper adds a higher immigration variant to the federal statistical offi ce’s latest coordinated population projection and two variants of a (a) constant or (b) decreasing fertility rate among migrant women. it can be shown that with permanent net migration as high as in recent years (around 300,000 per annum), germany’s population would not signifi cantly decrease in the coming decades but would rather remain at 80 million until 2050. on the other hand, the sharp rise in the old-age dependency ratio is only mildly weakened by increased immigration rates. this issue is therefore probably best addressed by other (or additional) means. the increase in retirees will level off after 2035 in any case. the ethnic makeup of society would be affected to a greater degree than its age composition: the share of fi rstand second-generation immigrants among the total population is projected to rise to about 35 percent in this scenario (and to above 40 percent if the third generation is also counted). keywords: immigration · germany · population decline · ethnic minorities comparative population studies vol. 40, 2 (2015): 165-190 (date of release: 17.04.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-05en6 • hannes weber166 1 introduction every year since 1972, deaths have outnumbered births in germany.1 since then, the total fertility rate (tfr) has remained constant at around 1.4 children per woman. while fertility decline is witnessed by all societies in the course of demographic transition (dyson 2010), the case of germany is exceptional with respect to the length and consistency of this period of below-replacement fertility and excess of deaths over births. in most other developed countries, the onset of natural population decline has occurred signifi cantly later, if at all. the fi rst post-war year in which natural population growth was negative in russia was 1992, in italy 1993, and in japan 2007. some countries, such as sweden or denmark, have returned to birth surplus after brief episodes of negative natural population growth while others, such as france or the united kingdom, have not had notable periods of post-war death surplus years. in a european comparison, most northern and western european countries have signifi cantly higher birth rates than germany, while many centraleastern and southern european countries are characterised by comparatively low fertility rates, but have witnessed the onset of fertility decline much more recently (see e.g. goldstein et al. 2009). moreover, some of the latter countries are currently experiencing a recovering fertility rate after a period of “lowest-low” fertility as a result of birth postponements, an effect that appears to have slowed down since the late 1990s (goldstein et al. 2009; sobotka et al. 2011; bongaarts/sobotka 2012). thus, in an international comparison, germany stands out as the country with a history of more than 40 years of negative natural population growth and a total fertility rate that is consistently below 1.5 children per woman. it is beyond the scope of this article to investigate the reasons for this exceptional process and the apparent futility of all pronatalist governmental policies. rather, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether a permanently high level of net immigration, as in the past three years, may prevent population decline until mid-century despite this quite spectacular record of a continuous birth defi cit. so far, the impact of fertility decline on society and the economy has arguably been rather low. in 2012, both the absolute and relative sizes of the workforce were at record highs in germany (statistisches bundesamt 2013c: 115). this indicates that germany is still at a point in demographic transition where the economic benefi ts arising from the decline in the young dependent population are not yet fully cancelled out by the growing retirement-age population (the so-called “demographic dividend”, see bloom et al. 2003): the dependency ratio (aged 0-14 and 65 or older relative to the working age population aged 15-64) is currently (0.51) still lower than in 1970 (0.57), before the onset of negative natural population growth. however, this will dramatically change in the coming two decades, when the baby boomer 1 this and the following statement refer to west germany before and unifi ed germany after 1990. the fertility rate in east germany was higher prior to 1990 (kreyenfeld 2004), but in total, east and west germany still displayed a consistent death surplus since 1972. data sources for this and the following statements are statistisches bundesamt (2013d) and united nations (yearly). could immigration prevent population decline? • 167 cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s retire. between 2025 and 2035, 13.4 million people now aged 45 to 55 will drop out of the labour force (assuming a retirement age of 67 and ignoring future migration and pre-retirement age mortality), while only 6.9 million – about half that number – of currently 0 to 10 year olds will enter the workforce. this obviously poses a great challenge to the pay-as-you-go pension system and germany’s export-oriented economy. the number of taxpayers will shrink disproportionately compared to a sharp increase in retirees, and companies may struggle to replace their retiring employees. furthermore, population decline will affect some geographical regions and branches of the economy more than others. the number of college graduates in the fi elds of social sciences, law and economics, for instance, has more than doubled between 1995 and 2011 (from 50,400 to 114,200) in germany, while the number of engineering graduates has risen only mildly during that same period (from 50,600 to 65,100; see statistisches bundesamt 2012a: 44-45). it can thus be assumed that a shortage of labour will more likely hit sectors recruiting from the latter group as opposed to the former (which is already the case to some extent, see bundesagentur für arbeit 2013).2 it should be noted, however, that population and labour force decline do not necessarily have only negative consequences in the eyes of public opinion (see, e.g., coleman/rowthorn 2011). all other things being equal, population decline may lead to, among others, a decrease in housing prices, less traffi c, and less pollution. moreover, if the demand for labour does not decrease in equal proportions, a decline in the labour force may lead to an increase in wages or a falling unemployment rate. while we cannot elaborate in greater detail on the likelihood or the desirability of such outcomes here, it should be emphasized that not every aspect of population decline and aging needs to be perceived as negative by a majority of the population. offi cial projections estimate the population will drop from currently more than 80 million to between 65 and 70 million by 2060 (medium variant, lower and upper limit, see statistisches bundesamt 2009). the prospects of a declining german population are widely considered to be beyond question and are communicated as such in the media (see, e.g., spiegel 2008; faz 2010; new york times 2013). in recent years, however, immigration to germany has risen to a considerably higher level than the offi cial projections had assumed. in 2013, deaths outnumbered births in germany by around 200,000; yet in the same year, immigrants outnumbered emigrants by 437,000, constituting the largest net immigration rate since the early 1990s and a remarkable increase since the year 2009, which had seen more emigrants from than immigrants to germany (see fig. 1). that year, the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009) estimated the latest coordinated population projection. the models included two assumptions with regard to external migration: one variant assumed a net immigration of 100,000 from 2014 on, while 2 a shortage of skilled labour may be even more severe in branches that traditionally recruit from the german dual system of vocational education (as already reported in bundesagentur für arbeit 2013), given the recent sharp increase in tertiary education: the share of college entrants within each cohort rose from 29 percent to 43 percent between 2000 and 2011 (statistisches bundesamt 2012a: 15). • hannes weber168 the other variant calculated 200,000 from 2020 on. probably unforeseeable in 2009, the actual annual net immigration to germany in the years 2011 to 2013 by far surpassed the rate assumed in the higher immigration variant of the offi cial projection. it is uncertain whether migration infl ows will continue at this level. on the one hand, improving economic conditions in southern europe may lead to less labour migrants especially from greece, spain, and italy as compared to the recent years since the onset of the fi nancial crisis. moreover, the countries in central-eastern and southeastern europe – from where germany currently receives the most migrants – are themselves characterised by aging populations and their future emigration potential may therefore decrease drastically. on the other hand, unrestricted access to the german labour market for romanians and bulgarians since 2014 may at least in the near future give rise to labour migration from these countries, as has been the case with poland and other eu-10 countries since 2011, when labour market restricfig. 1: net immigration and natural population growth in germany, 1991-2013 -300,000 -100,000 100,000 300,000 500,000 700,000 900,000 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 year natural population growth net immigration source: data federal statistical offi ce, own illustration could immigration prevent population decline? • 169 tions for these citizens were dropped.3 furthermore, the repeated refugee ship tragedies off the italian coastlines and the civil war in syria, among other events, have led to debates about less restrictive asylum regulations. finally, while the migration potential may decrease in central-eastern europe, the opposite is likely to be true for africa and the middle east in the coming decades, given the prospects for population growth – especially in the age group 20 to 35 – in these regions, which has been shown to infl uence migration rates (cohen et al. 2008; mayda 2010). in any case, we should consider the possibility that the offi cial projections underestimate the longterm immigration rates to germany. therefore, this paper aims to investigate how ongoing higher net immigration rates would affect the demographic prospects of germany and its ethnic makeup. 2 research design and methodology the purpose of this study is to show how the offi cial population forecasts for germany would change were there permanent higher-than-expected future immigration rates of a magnitude as in recent years (2011 to 2013). it therefore follows the federal statistical offi ce’s (statistisches bundesamt 2009) 12th coordinated population projection, adopting all its major assumptions but adding a higher immigration variant and two variants with regard to fertility among migrant women. 2.1 defi ning ethnic minorities apart from the consequences for the total population size, these projections also seek to assess the impact of immigration on the ethnic makeup of germany’s population. one of the biggest diffi culties of this task is defi ning ethnic groups and the rules for assigning them to individuals. there are different approaches to this topic based on differences in underlying concepts of national or ethnic identity as well as on national laws and customs of data collection. in germany, at least two historical factors have infl uenced the defi nition of racial and ethnic minorities. on the one hand, there was a long tradition of an ius sanguinis nationality law, such that children born to foreigners in germany were not granted german citizenship by birth unless they had some ethnic german ancestry (see, e.g., brubaker 1992). on the other hand, after the racially motivated persecution in the nazi era, german authorities usually refrain from using concepts such as race or ethnic ancestry in offi cial censuses or surveys. as a result, until recently ethnic minorities in post3 yearly infl ows from poland had been quite constant in the years before the 2004 enlargement, when they increased to 125,000, up from 88,000 in 2003. 2011 saw another signifi cant increase, when 163,000 people entered the country from poland, as compared to 115,000 in 2010. the most recent value (189,000 in 2013) is twice the fi gure of 2003 (cf. statistisches bundesamt 2014b). needless to say, there is no guarantee that this trend will be lasting, nor that a similar increase will occur with regard to romanian and bulgarian migrants from 2014 on, especially since a large number of romanians had already migrated to spain and italy in the previous decade. • hannes weber170 war germany have been almost exclusively analysed by looking at residents with foreign citizenship. this worked well for a long time, given the fact that even most secondor third-generation native-born residents of foreign origin did not hold german passports. this has changed, however, since the introduction of ius soli-type elements, i.e. german citizenship by birth to children of foreign parents under some conditions, to german nationality law in the year 2000. among 25-35-year-old german-born residents with at least one foreign parent, for example, only a minority (41 percent) were german citizens in 2012. however, this fi gure rises to 88 percent among the age group of 0 to 10 years (statistisches bundesamt 2013a). the federal statistical offi ce introduced the concept of “migration backgrounds” in 2005, which covers both foreignas well as native-born residents of germany with at least one foreign or foreign-born parent (excluding all persons who themselves or whose parents came to germany before 1950, e.g., as expellees from central-eastern europe in the aftermath of world war ii or in previous migration waves, which were apparently not assumed to be relevant for analysing the current ethnic diversity in germany). data on residents with “migration backgrounds” come from the micro-census, a household survey with a sample size of around 1 percent of the total population. survey questions on “migration backgrounds” were fi rst included in 2005. since offi cial statistics on ethnic affi liation based on self-ascription as used in the u.s. census do not exist in germany, this study works with the concept of “migration backgrounds” and uses this defi nition as a proxy variable for “ethnic minority status.” obviously, no assertions can be made regarding subjective ethnic identity or cultural assimilation among people of migrant or mixed origin in the future, or the possible changes in future public discourse with regard to those labelled “minority members.” this paper addresses the quantitative question of how many future residents will be fi rstor second-generation immigrants, depending on future levels of immigration and fertility among migrant women, but we do not intend to speculate here whether this will be of any sociological signifi cance in the future. the study thus looks at: • fi rst-generation immigrants, defi ned as future newcomers to germany in addition to foreign-born residents already living in the country, • second-generation immigrants, defi ned as native-born residents with at least one foreign or foreign-born parent, and • persons with migration backgrounds, defi ned as being either of the above. the migration background concept as used by the federal statistical offi ce also applies to the third generation in cases where at least one of the parents, despite being native-born, is a foreign (or naturalised) citizen. as the percentage of second-generation immigrants with (exclusively) foreign nationality is rapidly declining (from 59 percent to 12 percent among children aged 0 to 10 in the past 20 years), the proportion of third-generation immigrants covered by the offi cial defi nition will diminish as well. for the sake of simplicity, all children born to second-generation immigrants in the future are therefore treated as natives in this projection. moreover, the impact of future unions between natives and immigrants is neglected. mixed unions may lead to a numerically higher proportion of migrant-origin residents. could immigration prevent population decline? • 171 2.2 data and methods the offi cial population projections are based on traditional point forecast models which vary several key parameters and designate the resulting variants as “high,” “medium,” “low,” etc. it has long been argued that a stochastic approach, indicating confi dence intervals and probability estimates, is preferable for long-term population forecasts (e.g., lutz et al. 1998; keilman et al. 2002). however, estimating longterm prediction intervals for future immigration rates – which are the main scope of this article – is more diffi cult than projecting parameters such as the number of births or the old-age dependency ratio, as these are path-dependent factors that in most cases do not change abruptly, while immigration rates are highly sensitive to unpredictable changes in pushand pull factors such as economic growth, political violence and war, or migration-related policies in various countries. projections for future immigration rates can be based on expert estimates or surveys among potential migrants, or they can use empirical data on past migration fl ows to develop forecasting models based on demographic, geographic, economic (such as wage and employment differences) and other factors (e.g., linguistic similarities, past colonial ties, civil war or human rights violations, stock of migrants already living in the country as an indicator of migration networks; see, e.g., pedersen et al. 2008; brücker/siliverstovs 2006; cohen et al. 2008). these factors themselves must be projected into the future by certain routines or expert judgments that are associated with some degree of uncertainty, whether quantifi able or not. for instance, brücker/siliverstovs (2006: 49) assume constant unemployment and gdp growth rates for sending and receiving countries in their projection of future migration fl ows to germany. future empirical deviations from such assumptions add to the amount of unexplained variance in the various econometric models (39-50 percent in the case of the aforementioned study) due to unobserved factors, which inevitably exist despite the vast number of variables and model specifi cations that the authors consider. it is therefore not surprising that the recent substantial increase in immigration to germany has not been predicted by these models. for instance, brücker/siliverstovs (2006: 50) projected a sharply declining net migration potential from the ten central-eastern eu accession countries (i.e., the new member states of 2004/2007 except malta and cyprus) to germany from 98,000 in 2010 to 29,000 in 2015. the actual fi gure for 2010 was even below the projected number (80,000), but the recent increase to 189,000 in net infl ows from these countries in 2013 (statistisches bundesamt 2014b) stands in marked contrast to the projections. obviously, among other factors, the fi nancial and fi scal crisis starting in 2008, which affected germany less than other eu member states, could not have been taken into account in these projections (but this and other factors may well change in the near future). studies that quantify the degree of uncertainty with regard to projected migration fl ows include alders et al. (2007). their projections of international migration rely on expert judgments, the extrapolation of past trends, and ad-hoc assumptions about which countries are likely to receive belowor above-average levels of net migration (alders et al. 2007: 60). the limits of their 80 percent prediction interval for yearly net • hannes weber172 migration to germany until mid-century are –80,000 and 640,000, respectively. this illustrates why brunborg and cappelen (2010: 323) write that “with rapidly changing migration fl ows, the confi dence intervals easily become so large that they are of little or no value for users of the projections.” given the diffi culties in predicting migration fl ows with a quantifi able degree of uncertainty, we consider it appropriate to make a point forecast based on fi xed parameters of immigration as a “what-if” scenario to complement the existing offi cial scenarios. the starting point of the projection is the actual age pyramid of germany as of december 31, 2012. data from the 2011 census, as projected in statistisches bundesamt (2014a), have been combined with estimates on “migration backgrounds” among 5-year age groups from 2012 (statistisches bundesamt 2013a). the data on age cohort size for the total population were multiplied by two vectors containing the percentage values for foreignand native-born residents of migration background, respectively, by age cohort. missing values due to age cohort grouping were linearly interpolated. hence, three separate matrices were obtained containing data for residents without “migration backgrounds”, foreign-born residents, and second-generation immigrants, respectively. newcomers are added to the foreignborn group; their children are members of the second-generation group, while their offspring in turn count as native (see 2.3). it should be noted that the population estimates based on the census of 2011 are signifi cantly (around 1.5 million) lower than the projections based on the census of 1987, which prevailed in offi cial publications and projections until mid-2013. as described above, the model differentiates between residents without “migration backgrounds,” immigrants (i.e. foreign-born residents) and second-generation immigrants (i.e. native-born residents with at least one foreign-born parent). distinguishing between the two sexes within each of these groups resulted in six separate matrices. for reasons of space, the projection algorithms are given for females only in the following. the size of a future age cohort from the fi rst group is estimated as na,t = na,t-1 * sa,t, for a > 0, where na,t is the number of native females without “migration backgrounds” of age a in year t, sa,t is the age-specifi c survival rate for females (from statistisches bundesamt 2013e), varying by year as it has been linearly extrapolated to account for a rising life expectancy (see 2.2). the number of female newborns without “migration backgrounds” in a given year is estimated as where fa is the age-specifi c fertility rate and ma,t is the number of second-generation migrant women in a respective age group in year t, as their children (i.e. the third generation) are classifi ed as natives. this group, in turn, is equallyforwardprojected by ma,t = ma,t-1 * sa,t, for a > 0, (1) (2)n0,t = , (3) could immigration prevent population decline? • 173 while is the number of births to foreign-born women ia,t who count as second-generation migrants, given the differing age-specifi c fertility rate ga for immigrant women. finally, the foreign-born group grows by a yearly constant number of newcomers ca,v, dependent on variant v and distributed across age groups: ia,t = ia,t-1 * sa,t + ca,v, for a > 0, i0,t = c0,v. 2.2 underlying assumptions of the model the parameters of the model have been mainly adjusted according to the medium or basic variants of the offi cial projections: the total fertility rate is assumed to remain constant at the present level of roughly 1.4 children per woman, following the federal statistical offi ce’s medium variant. certainly, a tfr of 1.4 is not considered an inevitable fate and no policy recommendation is being made here to conceive it as such. yet, existing (point) forecasts expect germany’s tfr to remain at 1.4 until mid-century (alders et al. 2007) or increase only marginally (to 1.47 by 2050 according to eurostat, see scherbov et al. 2008).4 given the fact that the tfr “seems to have stalled at a level of 1.4 children since the 1970s” (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011: 454), it appears reasonable to fi x this parameter for the present analysis. age group-specifi c fertility rates are taken from the human fertility database (2013) and are assumed to be distributed as in 2010. further fertility postponement may occur as a result of, for example, the continuing growth of participation in higher education (ní brolchaín/beaujouan 2012). on the other hand, the pace of fertility postponement is declining and tempo effects are projected to disappear in the near future (bongaarts/sobotka 2012). the offi cial projections (statistisches bundesamt 2009) assume that the number of births to women aged 30 and over will rise, while the age-specifi c fertility rate for younger women is either assumed to decrease proportionately or over-proportionately or remain constant (which would result in a higher period tfr). as there is currently no coherent theory for the prediction of the future development of fertility, with (sociological, economic, or biological) arguments available in favor of both a rise as well as further decline (for an overview see lutz 2006), for the sake of simplicity both period and cohort tfr are held constant in the present study. m0,t = (4) (5) (6) 4 exceptions include the united nations (2013: 75) who assume a rise in germany’s tfr to 1.64 by 2050, similar to the federal statistical offi ce’s “higher variant.” • hannes weber174 fertility patterns among native and migrant women are assumed to either remain constant (variant a), or fertility among foreign-born women will decline to 1.4 children per woman (variant b). according to statistisches bundesamt (2012b: 39), the total number of births to foreign-born women until the age of 39 was 1.9 children on average. as the difference between native and foreign-born women has remained quite constant over the past decades (statistisches bundesamt 2012b), variant a of the model assumes that this trend will continue. however, there are some reasons to expect immigrant women’s fertility rates to decline (see schmid/ kohls 2009 for an overview of the determinants of migrants’ reproductive behavior in germany). apart from a general fertility decline in most countries of origin and an expectable approximation of immigrant women to host country family customs, the growing share of central-eastern and south-eastern european immigrants, whose fertility rates are comparable to those among germans, might lead to a convergence of birth rates among natives and immigrants (statistisches bundesamt 2012b: 23). for example, the completed fertility rate among migrant women aged 40 or older was 3.47 children for turkish women compared to 1.53 children for polish women (schmid/kohls 2009: 49). while turks make up the largest group of foreign residents in germany, poland has been the number one country of origin for new arrivers in the past years. fertility among migrants is thus likely to decline through this composition effect, in addition to other effects (e.g. socialisation). therefore, the second variant assumes a fertility rate among the foreign-born of 1.4 children per woman, as for the current total population, with age-specifi c fertility rates equaling those of native women. it should be noted that the tfr for native women without “migrant backgrounds” might be below the threshold of 1.4, but no reliable data are available to distinguish native women with and without migration backgrounds. secondgeneration immigrant women (whose children count as natives without “migration backgrounds”) are assumed not to differ from native women with regard to period and cohort tfr due to a lack of reliable data on fertility among native-born women with “migration backgrounds.” life expectancy is assumed to rise to about 87 years (85 for males and 89 for females) by 2050 according to the federal statistical offi ce’s base assumption (alders et al. 2007 as well as bijak et al. 2007, among others, project similar values). in the past, reality has disproved projections of a decreasing slope in the rise of life expectancy and the trend has instead been rather linear (oeppen/vaupel 2002). for the lack of a more plausible alternative assumption, the model specifi es a continuously linear trend. the probability of surviving from birth to age 85 is thus assumed to be 50 percent in 2050 (up from 30.1 percent in 2011) for males and rises linearly until then. the same is true for females until the age of 89. age-specifi c survival rates have therefore been multiplied by an interpolated factor such that survival rates linearly increase within each age group until reaching the target value for 2050. obviously, a rise in life expectancy will affect the age-specifi c survival rates of older age groups more than those of younger cohorts, which are already close to 1. therefore, the infl ating factor has been weighted by an exponential weight variable to affect older age groups more than younger ones. as a result, for instance, the probability of surviving the next year for a 30-year-old male rises from 99.94 percould immigration prevent population decline? • 175 cent to 99.96 percent, whereas the same probability for an 85-year-old male rises from 89.1 percent to 92.1 percent. four different variants are calculated for external migration rates. two of them correspond to the variants included in the federal statistical offi ce’s offi cial projection, assuming annual net migration infl ows of 100,000 and 200,000, respectively. a high-migration variant assumes an annual net immigration of 300,000, based on recent trends in migration to germany, whereas a zero variant assumes balanced external migration and is included for comparison. the 10th coordinated population projection, published in 2003 (statistisches bundesamt 2003), still included a variant assuming 300,000 immigrants per year, in light of an average annual net migration of 335,000 in the period of 1991 to 2000. the follow-up projections have dropped this variant given low immigration rates in the 2000s. recent increases in net migration (see fi g. 1) suggest reconsidering the 300,000 variant. changes in cohort size and age structure as a result of net immigration are supposed to be limited to foreign nationals, while external migration of native germans is assumed to be balanced and without impact on the age structure. note, however, that net migration of german nationals has been negative since 2005, but the data do not show a coherent trend. migrants are assumed to continuously have the same age and sex distribution as the new arrivers in 2012 did (as reported in statistisches bundesamt 2014c). most migrants are males aged 20 to 24 (16 percent of all male immigrants), the modal value being 22 years. in total, 60.3 percent of all newcomers in 2012 were reported to be male. 3 results 3.1 total population size figure 2 shows the results of the projections, with the upper graph displaying the constant fertility variants (1a to 4a) while in the lower graph migrant women’s birth rates are assumed to decline to the present tfr among the total population in the future (variants 1b to 4b). as the graphs show, the model reproduces the federal statistical offi ce’s forecasts for the annual net immigration assumptions of 100.000 and 200.000, respectively (variants 2 and 3). similar to the offi cial projections, a detab. 1: overview of variants included in the projection model tfr among migrant women remains at 1.9 children declines to 1.4 children external migration zero net migration variant 1a 1b 100,000 per year 2a 2b 200,000 per year 3a 3b 300,000 per year 4a 4b source: own design • hannes weber176 fig. 2: projections for germany’s population (in millions) by mid-century 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net migration 200,000 annual net migration 100,000 annual net migration balanced external migration year projections for total population (variants a: constant fertility) 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net migration 200,000 annual net migration 100,000 annual net migration balanced external migration year projections for total population (variants b: declining fertility among migrant women) millions millions source: own calculations could immigration prevent population decline? • 177 clining population to between 67 and 72 million in 2050 is forecasted for these two scenarios. if germany were to experience permanently higher immigration rates of around 300,000 per year, however, according to the projections the population would not signifi cantly decline by mid-century and would continue to be around 80 million until 2050. after 2050, population decline is probably inevitable if fertility rates do not rise. until then, germany may achieve stationarity through immigration (cf. schmertmann 1992), despite a then 80-year pattern of birth defi cit and death surplus. the lower graph in figure 2 shows that the mid-century population can be expected to be slightly lower if fertility among native and migrant women converges as opposed to the constant fertility variants. in the scenario where fertility among migrant women declines and external emigration is balanced, germany’s population drops by more than 17 million to around 63 million by 2050. 3.2 old-age dependency ratio with or without immigration, the percentage of retirees among the total population will greatly increase in the coming decades. as figure 3 shows, the old-age dependency ratio (the number of people aged 65 or older relative to the working age population of 15-64 years) is projected to rise from currently 0.31 to between 0.54 (variant 4a) and 0.66 (variant 1b) by 2050. we can thus conclude that while high immigration rates could prevent population decline until around 2050, they would only mitigate the challenge of population ageing to a relatively small extent, even though new immigrants are signifi cantly younger than the resident population. this fi nding is consistent with the united nations population division’s (2000) report about “replacement migration,” which in the year 2000 estimated that germany needed 344,000 immigrants per year to keep the population at a constant level until 2050, while an absurdly high annual infl ow of 3.6 million (or 181 million in total until 2050) would be needed to maintain the old-age dependency ratio at the 2000 level (for the development and public reception of this study, see teitelbaum 2004; similar results have been obtained by bijak et al. 2008). an annual net immigration rate of 300,000 instead of 200,000 would result in six million additional people living in germany, yet would lower the old-age dependency ratio by only 3-4 percent (see appendix for details). from around 2035 on, the slope will be less steep in any case, as the cohorts reaching retirement age from then on are already post-baby boom. starting in the late 2030s, all retirees will already have been born in the low-fertility period, so that the gap between the number of retirees and the number of young people entering the workforce each year will be much smaller than in the period from 2025 to 2035. the most challenging period of the demographic transition therefore certainly lies ahead for germany, specifi cally in the next two decades. • hannes weber178 fig. 3: projected number of people aged 65 or older per resident in age group 15 to 64 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net immigration 200,000 annual net immigration 100,000 annual net immigration balanced external migration year projections for old-age dependency ratio (variants a: constant fertility) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net immigration 200,000 annual net immigration 100,000 annual net immigration balanced external migration year projections for old-age dependency ratio (variants b: declining fertility among migrant women) per 100 persons per 100 persons source: own calculations could immigration prevent population decline? • 179 3.3 share of ethnic minorities figure 4 displays the projected impact of different scenarios of immigration and fertility rates on the ethnic makeup of germany. while immigration can only moderately affect germany’s future age structure, the infl uence on the percentage of ethnic minorities is signifi cantly greater. in the high immigration and constant fertility scenario, fi rstand second-generation migrants will make up 35 percent of the total population in 2050. with zero immigration and migrants’ fertility as low as natives’, the share of residents with “migration backgrounds” would stagnate at around 20 percent until mid-century. with future immigration rates as assumed in the offi cial projections (100,000 or 200,000), the share of fi rstand second-generation migrants is projected to rise to 24 percent in the lowest (2b) and 29 percent in the highest variant (3a).5 whether birth rates among migrant women remain at 1.9 or decline to 1.4 children per woman has only a marginal impact on the projection results with regard to this indicator. if the third generation of migrants is included in the defi nition of “migration background” as well, then the share of the latter group rises above 40 percent in the high immigration scenario. we must emphasize again that it is diffi cult to defi ne who belongs to an ethnic minority group and that patterns of subjective ethnic identifi cation may develop differently. in case of ongoing net migration of a magnitude as in recent years, however, we can project that the share of the population with a foreign background will rise signifi cantly in the future, even if the third and later generations of immigrants or minorities are defi ned as natives. moreover, the distribution of immigrants and ethnic minorities will probably continue to be uneven across the country. the percentage of residents with “migration backgrounds” currently ranges from only around 1 percent in some east german districts to more than 50 percent in the city of offenbach near frankfurt am main. in many west and south german urban agglomerations such as frankfurt am main, munich or stuttgart, the majority of children today are already being born into migrant families.6 the possible economic (e.g., rowthorn 2008; glitz 2012) or social (e.g., schlueter/wagner 2008; eger 2012) implications of this trend are beyond the scope of this study. yet from a demographic point of view, we can project that variance in future immigration rates will have a greater impact on the ethnic composition of society (as visualised by the diverging curves in fig. 4) than on its age structure (and thus the dependency ratio). 5 lanzieri (2011) has somewhat higher results (32-39 percent residents of foreign origin in germany by 2051) with a number of yearly net infl ows fi xed at around 155,000 on average per year. the differences can probably be attributed to the divergent defi nitions of “foreign origin.” in the present study, around 4-6 percent of the projected population in 2050 is made up of thirdgeneration immigrants who are not included in the defi nition of “migration background” in figure 4. 6 for the share of foreign nationals on local (nuts-3) level, see statistische ämter des bundes und der länder (2013b). for the share of people and children with “migration backgrounds” in selected cities and regions, see statistische ämter des bundes und der länder (2013a). the latter source is based on the micro-census survey, but several cities also use special software such as “migrapro” to determine the number of residents with “migration backgrounds” from their register data. • hannes weber180 fig. 4: projections for the share of people with “migration backgrounds” 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net immigration 200,000 annual net immigration 100,000 annual net immigration balanced external migration year projections for share of ethnic minorities (variants a: constant fertility) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 2012 2017 2022 2027 2032 2037 2042 2047 300,000 annual net immigration 200,000 annual net immigration 100,000 annual net immigration balanced external migration year projections for share of ethnic minorities (variants b: declining fertility among migrant women) percent percent source: own calculations could immigration prevent population decline? • 181 4 conclusions contrary to the widely held assumption, germany’s population may not decline signifi cantly by mid-century. ceteris paribus, an annual net immigration of 300,000 per year could prevent population decline until 2050 and cause the number of inhabitants in germany to stay roughly around 80 million. this would be the case if annual infl ows would be as high as in 2011-2013 (and during the 1990s). the share of fi rst and second-generation immigrants would rise to around 35 percent by mid-century (or above 40 percent including the third generation). the economic and social consequences of such an increase are disputed and cannot be assessed here, nor can we discuss the question whether it is ethically justifi able to draw on working-age immigrants to mitigate one’s own demographic problems, thereby potentially causing diffi culties in the countries of origin where these people may be needed as well. it is furthermore impossible to estimate the numerical likelihood of this higher net-infl ows scenario; but given the recent increase in net immigration to more than 400.000 in 2013, the possibility should be considered. with less immigration, germany’s population would indeed decline. in any case, increased immigration rates could only slightly ease the problem of the sharp increase in the old-age dependent population in the coming decades. this increase is an obvious result of the baby boomer cohorts retiring between 2025 and 2035. after this period, the gap between the annual number of retirees and the number of young people entering the workforce will abruptly decrease due to the fact that the retirees will themselves have been born in the era of below-replacement fertility. increasing the annual number of immigrants from 200.000 (as in the federal statistical offi ce’s high assumption) to 300.000 would result in a mere 3-4 percent decrease in the old-age dependency ratio by 2050, despite adding six million people to the total population. if a stationary total population by mid-century is considered desirable, immigration rates as high as in the 2011-2013 period are probably the only practicable means of achieving this goal. however, the main challenge arising from the demographic transition is arguably the rise in pensioners alongside the decline in the workingage population rather than a reduction in the total population (which may, after all, involve some desirable effects as well in the eyes of the public). this challenge is probably best met by means other than (or in addition to) immigration, as the latter only affects the old-age dependency ratio to a limited degree. such means may include increasing the labour market participation of older workers, as only about one in two men aged 55 to 64 in germany is active in the labour force – a sharp decline since the 1970s and a considerably lower value than in other developed countries (cooke 2006). policy changes to reverse this trend have already been implemented, but with disputable effects so far (buchholz et al. 2013). in total, the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2013c: 117) estimates an unused potential of almost seven million unemployed, underemployed and other non-active members of the labour force seeking work. this number is larger than the gap in the labour force that will occur when the baby boomer cohorts retire between 2025 and 2035. and since many of them are women, better opportunities to combine career and • hannes weber182 children are an obvious measure that policymakers may want to pursue. germany is still enjoying the “demographic dividend,” the concurrence of few children and a so far moderate number of old-age dependent persons. this will naturally change in the coming decades, but the major challenge will diminish after 2035. until then, there appear to be suffi cient options to address the issues associated with a shrinking and aging population, including, but not limited to, a higher 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[http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm, 02.01.2014]. date of submission: 13.01.2014 date of acceptance: 12.09.2014 hannes weber (). universität stuttgart. stuttgart, germany. e-mail: hweber@startmail.com url: http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/soz/avps/mitarbeiter/index.html • hannes weber186 ta b . a 1: p ro je ct io n s fo r to ta l p o p ul at io n si ze o f g er m an y (v ar ia n ts 1 a t o 4 b ) ta b . a 2: p ro je ct io n s fo r th e sh ar e o f r es id en ts w it h “m ig ra tio n b ac kg ro un d ” in % 20 12 20 15 20 20 20 25 20 30 20 35 20 40 20 45 20 50 1a 20 .0 5 20 .5 1 21 .1 2 21 .5 0 21 .6 6 21 .6 1 21 .4 2 21 .1 0 20 .6 6 2a 20 .0 5 20 .7 7 21 .8 4 22 .7 3 23 .4 4 23 .9 8 24 .4 3 24 .8 0 25 .1 0 3a 20 .0 5 21 .0 3 22 .5 5 23 .9 2 25 .1 4 26 .2 2 27 .2 2 28 .1 6 29 .0 7 4a 20 .0 5 21 .4 2 23 .6 2 25 .7 3 27 .7 3 29 .6 1 31 .4 1 33 .1 7 34 .8 8 1b 20 .0 5 20 .3 8 20 .7 9 21 .0 4 21 .1 0 20 .9 9 20 .7 6 20 .4 2 19 .9 6 2b 20 .0 5 20 .6 4 21 .5 1 22 .2 5 22 .8 5 23 .3 1 23 .6 9 24 .0 1 24 .2 8 3b 20 .0 5 20 .9 0 22 .2 1 23 .4 2 24 .5 2 25 .5 0 26 .4 1 27 .3 0 27 .8 8 4b 20 .0 5 21 .2 8 23 .2 6 25 .1 8 27 .0 2 28 .7 5 30 .4 3 32 .0 8 33 .7 1 a p p en d ix 20 12 20 15 20 20 20 25 20 30 20 35 20 40 20 45 20 50 1a 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 79 ,9 43 ,6 06 78 ,7 12 ,7 54 76 ,9 56 ,4 42 74 ,8 20 ,4 31 72 ,6 04 ,3 67 70 ,0 93 ,6 12 67 ,3 13 ,7 47 64 ,2 75 ,9 10 2a 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,2 06 ,2 38 79 ,4 39 ,6 87 78 ,1 79 ,4 68 76 ,5 60 ,7 86 74 ,8 70 ,5 62 72 ,8 88 ,2 91 70 ,6 39 ,5 14 68 ,1 36 ,3 44 3a 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,4 68 ,8 71 80 ,1 66 ,6 20 79 ,4 02 ,4 93 78 ,3 01 ,1 41 77 ,1 36 ,7 56 75 ,6 82 ,9 70 73 ,9 65 ,2 80 71 ,9 96 ,7 79 4a 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,8 61 ,3 81 81 ,2 85 ,4 43 81 ,3 35 ,2 07 81 ,1 09 ,8 40 80 ,8 52 ,8 97 80 ,3 25 ,5 85 79 ,5 56 ,8 07 78 ,5 66 ,3 64 1b 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 79 ,8 06 ,4 94 78 ,3 87 ,1 96 76 ,5 03 ,3 74 74 ,2 92 ,6 41 72 ,0 29 ,3 25 69 ,4 69 ,5 63 66 ,6 16 ,6 12 63 ,4 83 ,3 40 2b 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,0 67 ,9 89 79 ,1 03 ,0 54 77 ,6 95 ,5 08 75 ,9 74 ,9 39 74 ,2 05 ,9 82 72 ,1 39 ,9 54 69 ,7 79 ,3 49 67 ,1 36 ,8 66 3b 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,3 29 ,8 75 79 ,8 19 ,8 28 78 ,8 89 ,2 40 77 ,6 59 ,5 76 76 ,3 85 ,4 83 74 ,8 14 ,0 67 72 ,9 46 ,9 83 70 ,5 22 ,1 16 4b 80 ,5 23 ,7 46 80 ,7 19 ,0 74 80 ,9 09 ,3 27 80 ,7 41 ,1 10 80 ,3 17 ,0 03 79 ,8 69 ,0 92 79 ,1 34 ,1 27 78 ,1 15 ,4 00 76 ,8 29 ,2 02 could immigration prevent population decline? • 187 ta b . a 3: p ro je ct io n s fo r o ld -a g e d ep en d en cy r at io (p eo p le a g ed 6 5 o r o ld er / p eo p le a g ed 1 564 , p er 1 00 p er so n s) s o ur ce : o w n p ro je ct io ns v ar ia n te 20 12 20 15 20 20 20 25 20 30 20 35 20 40 20 45 20 50 1a 31 ,1 8 34 ,9 5 39 ,5 3 45 ,8 9 54 ,1 1 60 ,3 3 61 ,2 0 62 ,4 9 63 ,8 8 2a 31 ,1 8 34 ,6 8 38 ,9 0 44 ,7 3 52 ,1 5 57 ,5 3 57 ,8 4 58 ,5 4 59 ,3 0 3a 31 ,1 8 34 ,4 2 38 ,3 1 43 ,6 8 50 ,4 3 55 ,1 5 55 ,1 3 55 ,5 0 55 ,9 8 4a 31 ,1 8 34 ,1 6 37 ,7 3 42 ,6 7 48 ,8 3 53 ,0 0 52 ,7 2 52 ,8 7 53 ,1 6 1b 31 ,1 8 34 ,9 5 39 ,5 2 45 ,8 5 54 ,0 9 60 ,5 1 61 ,7 4 63 ,5 5 65 ,5 6 2b 31 ,1 8 34 ,6 8 38 ,9 0 44 ,7 3 52 ,2 2 57 ,8 5 58 ,6 2 59 ,9 4 61 ,4 6 3b 31 ,1 8 34 ,4 2 38 ,3 1 43 ,6 8 50 ,5 0 55 ,4 6 55 ,8 7 56 ,8 5 58 ,0 4 4b 31 ,1 8 34 ,1 6 37 ,7 3 42 ,6 7 48 ,8 9 53 ,2 9 53 ,4 3 54 ,1 6 55 ,1 4 • hannes weber188 fig. a1: population pyramid of germany in 2050 (high immigration variant 4a) note: the sudden increase in natives below the age of 38 is due to the projection defi ning second-generation migrants’ children as natives. see text for details. source: own projections 0 200 400 600 800 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100+ without migration background 1st generation immigrants 2nd generation immigrants females in 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100+ males in 1,000 could immigration prevent population decline? • 189 fig. a2: population pyramid of germany in 2050 (no immigration variant 1b) source: own projections 0 200 400 600 800 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100+ without migration background 1st geneneration immigrants 2nd geneneratgion immigrants females in 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100+ males in 1,000 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved parenthood and life satisfaction in germany matthias pollmann-schult abstract: this article examines the association between parenthood and life satisfaction. it focuses on the question to which extent parental life satisfaction is infl uenced by individual and familial context. the empirical study is based on the data from the fi rst wave of the german family panel (pairfam). all in all, the analyses show that although parents are less satisfi ed with their leisure time, their social contacts and their relationship, they are nonetheless more satisfi ed with their life in general than their childless peers. increased life satisfaction is observed in particular in the fi rst years following the birth of a child. the satisfaction of parents is, however, dependent upon different contextual factors. parents in the medium and higher income ranges report a comparatively high degree of life satisfaction, whereas only a weak association is observed between parenthood and life satisfaction among low-income persons. moreover, the life satisfaction of mothers, but not of fathers, varies with their employment status. for instance, only non-employed and part-time employed mothers report a greater life satisfaction than childless women. finally, fathers whose family formation was presumably unplanned record no higher level of satisfaction than men without children. keywords: life satisfaction · parenthood · happiness 1 introduction familial events such as starting a family are central status passages in the life course, which bring about an extensive restructuring of lifestyles. they affect, for example, employment, the use of leisure time and the social participation. the transition to parenthood can have both positive and negative effects on the various spheres of life (cf. nomaguchi/milkie 2003). on the one hand, starting a family can be a stressful event accompanied by restrictions to one’s own needs and interests. fathers and mothers often report a lower marital satisfaction (keizer et al. 2010; twenge et al. 2003) and a greater psychological distress (ross/van willigen 1996) than childless people. furthermore, comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 1 (2013): 85-108 (date of release: 14.03.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-05en6 • matthias pollmann-schult86 starting a family causes a decline in leisure activities away from home (knoester/ eggebeen 2006; pollmann-schult 2010). in spite of the diverse stressful effects of parenthood, we frequently also observe an increase – at least temporarily – in general life satisfaction after starting a family (kohler et al. 2005; pollmann-schult 2010; myrskylä/margolis 2012). the happiness-enhancing effect of children is usually explained by the fact that children satisfy a variety of their parent’s psychological needs. the value of children (voc) approach (nauck 2001) ties in with the social production function theory (ormel et al. 1999) and postulates that parents attempt to use having children to maximise both their social and physical well-being. in modern societies, children contribute mainly to optimising social well-being, in other words, by having children, close, intimate and long lasting social relationships are created that satisfy the parents’ emotional needs. also, children can be a status symbol that generates social esteem. finally, children can promote the social integration of their parents, since parenthood results in opportunities for new social contacts and social involvement. for example, the institutional participation of a child in kindergarten, school or a sports club often demands the civic engagement of fathers and mothers and generates new opportunities for contact with other parents (eggebeen/knoester 2001; knoester/eggebeen 2006). the question arises, however, whether an increase in life satisfaction following the start of a family is lasting or instead of a temporary nature. the dominant explanatory approaches in happiness research – i.e. the adaptation level theory (brickman/campell 1971) and the set point theory (headey/wearing 1989) – grasp life satisfaction as a time-constant individual trait. according to empirical studies, life satisfaction is chiefl y infl uenced by personality traits such as neuroticism and extraversion that remain stable over time (diener/lucas 1999). all in all, it is assumed that signifi cant life events only temporarily alter the subjective well-being and that after a certain time span it again approximates the original level of satisfaction. corresponding studies do show that major life events only infl uence the level of satisfaction for a shorter term (lucas et al. 2003; clark et al. 2008). for instance, matrimony only has a positive effect on life satisfaction during the fi rst years of marriage (stutzer/frey 2006), but even negative events such as divorce or the death of a partner have a relatively short-term effect on the subjective well-being (andreß/ bröckel 2007; lucas et al. 2003). with regard to the effect of parenthood on life satisfaction, we can therefore anticipate that an increased level of satisfaction can be mainly found during the fi rst years after the birth of a child. in this article, parental life satisfaction is seen against different contextual factors such as the income situation, participation in employment and family planning. moreover, i examine the extent to which biological children and stepchildren infl uence their parents’ level of satisfaction in different ways. although we use a causal language, the available data allow us to examine only the association between parenthood and life satisfaction. the following second section outlines the current state of research with regard to the effects of parenthood on life satisfaction. then in the third section, i describe the data basis and methodical procedure. the fourth section presents fi ndings on the association between subjective well-being and parparenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 87 enthood, and the fi fth section discusses methodological problems of the analysis. in the last section, the results are discussed. 2 parenthood and life satisfaction although in the past two decades life satisfaction has enjoyed an enormous interest, the association between fertility and life satisfaction has hardly been explicitly examined in either german-language or in international studies. many studies on subjective well-being take the existence of children into account as one of many explanatory variables. this particularly applies to longitudinal studies that investigate how crucial life events – marriage, divorce, death of a spouse, unemployment and the birth of a child – affect life satisfaction. usually, these studies reveal an increase in life satisfaction in the time period of the birth of a child and an ensuing decrease from the child’s fi rst birthday (clark et al. 2008; frijters et al. 2011; clark/georgellis 2012; angeles 2010). some of these studies observe a drop in life satisfaction below the pre-birth level and conclude that parenthood in the long-term has a negative effect on the subjective well-being (clark et al. 2008; clark/georgellis 2012). such a long-term negative effect is ascribed to a decrease in shared leisure time with the partner (claxton/perry-jenkins 2008) and an increase in marital confl icts (nomaguchi/milkie 2003) and depression (evenson/simon 2005). however, the above-mentioned longitudinal studies do not take into consideration that the effect of parenthood on life satisfaction can vary with the individual and the familial context. this study therefore pursues the question to which extent parental life satisfaction is infl uenced by context factors. first, the life satisfaction of fathers and mothers may differ. frequently, the assumption is made that starting a family has a more negative effect on women’s lifestyles and well-being than on men’s (nomaguchi/milkie 2003; umberson/grove 1989). nomaguchi and milkie ascribe this to the fact that mothers do a greater share of the housework and family-related work and experience greater problems reconciling family and work than fathers. contradictory to this view, however, various studies reveal a greater increase in life satisfaction after starting a family among women than among men (clark et al. 2008; kohler et al. 2005; myrkylä/margolis 2012; clark/georgellis 2012). parental life satisfaction also varies with the marital status. for example, single parents report a considerably lower life satisfaction than the childless (aassve et al. 2011; frey/stutzer 2000). the lesser life satisfaction of single parents appears to result mainly from fi nancial problems and psychological stress, which are observed among this group of persons at above-average frequency. an enduring cohabitation or marriage is apparently a basic prerequisite for an increase in life satisfaction following the start of a family. moreover, the life satisfaction of parents can be infl uenced by the income and employment situation. children bring about high fi nancial costs, which are particularly stressful for low-income households. for instance, bird (1997) argues that children as such do not impair the psychological well-being of parents, but primarily • matthias pollmann-schult88 the economic and social burdens that accompany the starting of a family (cf. also ross/van willigen 1996). even though fi nancial stress among german parents are lessened by social benefi ts such as child allowances or parental leave benefi ts and the fi ndings of us studies cannot be transferred to german circumstances without further ado, we can nonetheless assume that starting a family has a more positive effect on the life satisfaction of high-earning couples than of low-income couples. differences in life satisfaction also exist with regard to the employment status of the parents. among dual-income couples, parental child-raising and childcare tasks lead to an increased work–life imbalances (winslow 2005) and can therefore lessen marital satisfaction and exacerbate marital confl ict (claxton/perry-jenkins 2008). since parents in single-earner households are subjected to such a dual burden to a lesser extent, we can expect that these people demonstrate a greater life satisfaction than parents in dual-income households. working mothers, who often do the larger share of housework and family-related work alongside their gainful employment (grunow et al. 2007), are affected by work–life confl icts to a special extent. we therefore anticipate that mothers in dual-income households will report a low level of satisfaction. among fathers, who frequently only do a small share of the household work, life satisfaction by contrast should be infl uenced by the employment arrangement only to a low extent. finally, the life satisfaction of parents can vary with the type of kinship relation to the child as well as family planning. for example, parent-child confl icts, which can impair subjective well-being, are observed more frequently in stepfamilies (schlomer et al. 2010). in fact, various studies indicate that parents of stepchildren are less satisfi ed than parents of only biological children (kohler et al. 2005; rogers/white 1998). also, the life satisfaction of parents can depend on whether they planned to start a family or whether their families were unplanned. unplanned families have a negative effect on the quality of parental relationships (cox et al. 1999) and the subjectively perceived distress (leathers/kelley 2000). in particular, unwanted children can have long-term negative consequences on life satisfaction (barber et al. 1999). all in all, we anticipate parents of stepchildren reporting a lesser life satisfaction than parents with exclusively biological children and unplanned families leading to a lower level of satisfaction than planned families. 3 data, operationalisation and method 3.1 data basis the data from the german family panel (pairfam), supervised by josef brüderl, johannes huinink, bernhard nauck and sabine walper (huinink et al. 2011) is used for the following analyses. the pairfam study is designed as an annually recurring survey and is funded by the german research foundation (dfg) as a long-term project. in the fi rst survey wave conducted in 2008/09 approximately 12,000 young people and adults from the birth cohorts 1971-1973, 1981-1983 and 1991-1993 were interviewed. at the time of the fi rst survey, therefore, the respondents were 15-17, 25-27 parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 89 and 35-37 years old. in addition to the 12,402 anchors, 3,729 partners of the anchors were also interviewed, whose responses on life satisfaction are not, however, taken into account in this study. the pairfam study focuses on surveying information on intimate relationships, having children and on parent-child relationships. furthermore, the study records information on general life satisfaction, as well as marital satisfaction or leisure satisfaction. moreover, the dataset contains basic information on labour market participation and income. in the following, cross-sectional analyses are conducted using the data from the fi rst survey wave. it is therefore not possible to adequately control for selection effects and to clearly determine the causal direction of the association between parenthood and life satisfaction. following the discussion of results, i will talk about the implications resulting from this. the analysis is limited to the data from the two older cohorts, hence that of the 25-27 and 35-37-year-old respondents as well as to women and men with a heterosexual partner. therefore, single parents are not included in the analyses. in addition, people with adult children as well as childless couples that are physically unable to have children and people with only modest or poor german skills are excluded from the analysis. ultimately, the analysis is restricted to childless people and parents living together with their children in one household. restricting the survey sample to coupled men and women who do not live apart from their children avoids possible confounding between parenthood and marital status. however, this also means that the analyses do not enable any conclusions about the life satisfaction of single parents or parents living apart from their children. the data of the birth cohorts 1981-1983 and 1971-1973 are pooled in the analyses. to take into account the disproportionate stratifi ed sample and the systematic nonresponse, the design weighting recommended by brüderl et al. (2010) is used in all analyses. 3.2 operationalisation and method the key explanatory variable of the study is the life satisfaction of the respondents. life satisfaction is based upon an assessment of their own lives (diener/lucas 1999; diener et al. 1999). it results from a judgment process in which an individual evaluates his or her quality of life according to his or her own chosen criteria. therefore, life satisfaction is a purely cognitive construct and independent of moods, however it is usually impossible to clearly differentiate between a momentary mood and life satisfaction in empirical research. life satisfaction as well as satisfaction with leisure time, the relationship and social contacts were surveyed in the pairfam study using an 11-point scale (0 = very dissatisfi ed; 10 = very satisfi ed). the measurement of satisfaction in the pairfam study largely corresponds to that used by the german socio-economic panel (soep) and other representative population surveys. in happiness research, life satisfaction is frequently measured using multiitem scales, however various studies show that the measurement of satisfaction using one single item also generates reliable and valid results. for instance, lucas and donnellan (2012) use the longitudinal information on life satisfaction in the soep • matthias pollmann-schult90 to calculate a reliability of 0.74. abdel-khalek (2006) reports of a high test-retest reliability (r = 0.86) in measuring life satisfaction by means of a single-item scale at one-week intervals. furthermore, abdel-khalek describes a satisfactory correlation between the single-item scale and established multi-item scales such as the oxford happiness inventory (r = 0.63) and the satisfaction with life scale (r = 0.58), which indicates a good criterion validity of the single-item scale. the main covariate of the analysis is the familial situation. it is portrayed in the various models through the existence of parenthood or the age of the youngest child. other important covariates are the employment status, the income situation, the type of kinship relation to the child and family planning. the different categories of the employment status are the non-employed, part-time employed (up to 30 hours per week) and full-time employed (30 hours per week and more). in order to account for the income situation, the respondents are divided into four income groups using the household equivalent income. based on the categorisation of the “datenreport” (statistisches bundesamt 2011), the following income groups are formed: less than 75 % of the mean household equivalent income (poverty and precarious prosperity), 75-100 % of the mean household equivalent income (lower and medium income range), 100-125 % of the mean household equivalent income (medium to upper income range) and over 125 % of the mean household equivalent income (upper income range). the average household equivalent income in 2009 was exactly € 1499 (statistisches bundesamt 2011). with regard to the type of kinship relation between parents and children, three groups are differentiated: respondents with only biological children of both partners, respondents with at least one stepchild, and respondents with at least one biological child from an earlier relationship.1 family planning was not explicitly surveyed in the pairfam study, so this is indicated based on the time the partners commenced cohabitation. in the following, a family is referred to as “unplanned” when the partners commenced cohabitation following conception – or 9 months before the birth of the fi rst child. a family is referred to as “planned” when the partners began cohabitating before conception. although the validity of the indicator used is limited, in particular because unplanned pregnancies can also occur in married or cohabitating couples, all in all we can assume that an unplanned pregnancy occurs far more frequently if the couple is not yet living together at the time of conception. the average life satisfaction of women and men differentiated according to primary socio-demographic variables is shown in table 1. furthermore, various control variables are taken into account, their coeffi cients are, however, not reported here. relevant tables that also show the coeffi cients of the control variables are to be found in the appendix. i control for the birth cohort (1971-1973, 1981-1983), the region (eastern germany, western germany), the respondent or their partner being pregnant, the migration background (no migration background, the fi rst immigrant generation, the second immigrant generation), 1 in fi ve cases, both partners brought a child from an earlier relationship into the current relationship. these persons were not included in this stage of the analysis. parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 91 the educational level (in training, no certifi cation, apprentice certifi cate, vocational school, university of applied science, university degree), the occupational class based on the goldthorpe class scheme (7 classes) as well as for the employment status (employed, in training, non-employed, unemployed) and for the subjectively perceived health (poor, not good, satisfactory, good, very good). the personality tab. 1: average life satisfaction of women and men differentiated according to socio-demographic variables women men mean sd mean sd parenthood no children 7.8 1.6 7.7 1.5 at least 1 child 7.9 1.6 7.7 1.6 income position a no children, max. precarious prosperitya 7.5 1.5 7.5 1.8 children, max. precarious prosperitya 7.6 1.8 7.3 1.9 no children, lower to medium income rangeb 7.6 1.5 7.5 1.5 children, lower to medium income rangeb 7.9 1.6 7.8 1.4 no children, medium to upper income rangec 7.6 1.8 7.8 1.3 children, medium to upper income rangec 8.0 1.4 8.0 1.4 no children, upper income ranged 8.0 1.5 8.1 1.2 children, upper income ranged 8.3 1.3 8.1 1.4 employment arrangement no children, man full-time, woman non-employed 7.9 1.6 7.6 1.7 no children, man full-time, woman part-time 7.3 1.9 7.6 1.4 no children, man full-time, woman full-time 7.8 1.6 7.9 1.4 children, man full-time, woman non-employed 8.0 1.7 7.8 1.6 children, man full-time, woman part-time 7.9 1.5 8.0 1.5 children, man full-time, woman full-time 7.7 1.7 7.7 1.6 type of relationship to the children only biological children 7.9 1.6 7.6 1.7 at least 1 stepchild: respondent 7.7 1.7 7.3 1.4 at least 1 stepchild: partner 7.6 1.7 7.7 1.6 family planning „planned” family 7.9 1.6 7.8 1.6 „unplanned” family 7.8 1.7 7.5 1.6 sd = standard deviation a lower than 75 % of the mean equivalent net income (max. 1124 €); b 75-100 % of the mean equivalent net income (1125 €-1499 €); c 101-125 % of the mean equivalent net income (1500 €-1875 €); d over 125 % of the mean equivalent net income (over 1875 €). source: pairfam, author’s calculations • matthias pollmann-schult92 traits surveyed in the fi rst pairfam survey (explosiveness and anger, emotional autonomy, self-worth, shyness) are also incorporated. all four scales are composed of three items each (walper et al. 2010). the cronbach’s alpha of these four scales ranges between 0.63 and 0.80 (walper et al. 2010: 55), so that the internal consistency of the scales can be assessed as satisfactory. the information on the level of satisfaction is ordinal and analysed using ordered logit regression (cf. e.g. long/freese 2003). due to the skewed distribution of the satisfaction data, instead of the more common logit-link function, the complementary log-log link function was used. the tables show the non-standardised β coeffi cients. almost all of the regression models are estimated separately for women and men. possible differences in the effect size between men and women are checked using the test method designed by williams (2009) to compare logit coeffi cients. 4 results in a fi rst step, we look at the effect of parenthood on satisfaction with leisure time, the relationship, social contacts and general life satisfaction (table 2). as can be seen in the fi rst model, mothers as well as fathers report a lesser satisfaction with leisure time than childless women and men. furthermore, fathers record a lesser satisfaction with social contacts and mothers a lesser marital satisfaction compared to people without children. the coeffi cients of the fi nal models, however, indicate that mothers and fathers experience a signifi cantly greater life satisfaction than childless people. in general, these fi ndings confi rm the results of earlier studies: although starting a family apparently leads to confl icts and tensions in the relationship and greatly limits opportunities for leisure time activities, parenthood appears to have a positive infl uence on the general satisfaction with life. in the second step, we now look at the life satisfaction of parents depending on the age of the children (fig. 1). due to the low number of cases in the individual age classes, a combined model is estimated for women and men. in accord with the assumptions of the set-point theory, there is an increased level of life satisfaction especially among young parents, whereby a particularly high degree of life satisfaction is observed during the fi rst year of the youngest child’s life. a distinctly increased level of life satisfaction is only observed until the third birthday of the youngest child, and from the sixth birthday, the difference in life satisfaction between parents and childless people is only minor and no longer statistically signifi cant. the assumptions of the set-point theory also include anticipation effects, meaning that life satisfaction ought to increase during pregnancy. for instance, the analyses by clark et al. (2008) reveal a signifi cantly increased life satisfaction in the year before the birth of a child. this effect cannot be ascertained, however, in the analyses conducted here. although the coeffi cient for pregnancy is positive in all model estimations, it is not statistically signifi cant (cf. the tables in the appendix). the next step of the analysis looks at the life satisfaction of parents depending on the household income (table 3). since the psychological costs of parenthood parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 93 can be intensifi ed by the fi nancial burdens related to having children (bird 1997), we can assume that low-income parents will report a comparatively low life satisfaction. in order to check this, separate analyses for four income groups are conducted. as can be recognized in the fi rst model, there is no signifi cant effect of parenthood on life satisfaction among people living in poverty or precarious prosperity, thereby confi rming the assumption of lower life satisfaction among low-income parents. by contrast, among women and men in the medium and higher income ranges there is a signifi cantly positive association between the family situation and life satisfaction. surprisingly, the effect of parenthood on life satisfaction is strongest in the lower to medium income range, whereas this effect is also statistically signifi cant yet less pronounced in the two upper income ranges. possibly this comparatively weak association between parenthood and life satisfaction among high-income people is due to a higher percentage of dual-income couples among them. parents in dualincome households experience work–life imbalances between work and family far more frequently than working parents whose partners are non-employed (winslow 2005). in fact, in the upper income groups dual-income households are overrepresented, whereas single earner households are underrepresented. in the group of parents with an above-average household equivalent income, the percentage of dual-income couples is 20 % and the percentage of single earner households is 36 %. by contrast, among parents with a below-average household equivalent income, tab. 2: effect of parenthood on subjective well-being, separate estimates for women and men (ordered logit regression) satisfaction with leisure time satisfaction with social contacts marital satisfaction life satisfaction women mother (vs. childless) -0.2823** 0.0477 -0.2144 * 0.1616** number of cases 2728 2729 2705 2731 lr chi2 (df=30) 174.97** 206.67 ** 257.09 ** 433.77** men father (vs. childless) -0.3123** -0.2549 ** 0.1158 0.1360* number of cases 2196 2196 2173 2197 lr chi2 (df=30) 187.12** 239.75 ** 209.55 ** 386.24** likelihood ratio test: coefficient „mother” vs. coefficient „father” lr chi2 (df=1) 1.00 8.83 ** 17.53 ** 0.00 signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. control variables: birth cohort, region, interaction term „birth cohort x region”, wife/partner pregnant, migration background, educational level, vocational situation, personality traits, health. source: pairfam, author’s calculations • matthias pollmann-schult94 both partners are employed full-time in only 13 % of the households, while in 46 % of the households only the man is gainfully employed. we can assume that gainful employment of both partners is more of a burden for mothers than for fathers, since women do most of the family work even when they are employed full-time and are therefore subject to multiple burdens of gainful employment, housework and childcare, whereas the time spent by fathers doing housework hardly increases once they start a family (haberkern 2007). the results displayed in table 4 now explicitly account for the employment arrangement within the relationship while also controlling for income. the analysis sample is limited to the most common employment arrangement. since the pairfam dataset contains only a few non-employed fathers (105 persons) as well as fathers in marginal or part-time employment (36 persons), the following analysis is restricted to men who are employed full-time. due to the number of cases, women with a nonemployed or part-time employed partner are also not included. the reference group are women or men in a childless, dual-income relationship. as the calculations for women show (table 4), non-employed mothers report a signifi cantly greater life satisfaction than the reference group (full-time employed fig. 1: effect of the age of the youngest child on life satisfaction (ordered logit regression, coeffi cients and 95 % confi dence interval) -0,2 -0,1 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 1 2 3 4 year of life = p<0,05 = p<0,1 9-11 7-8 5-6 12-18 reference group: childless women/men. control variables: birth cohort, region, interaction term „birth cohort*region”, wife/partner pregnant, migration background, educational level, vocational situation, personality traits, health. source: pairfam, author’s calculations parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 95 tab. 3: effect of parenthood on life satisfaction differentiated according to the household income (ordered logit regression) max. precarious prosperitya lower to medium income rangeb medium to upper income rangec higher income ranged father/mother (vs. childless) 0.0878 0.2877** 0.2791* 0.2302* number of cases 1332 928 737 966 chi2 (df=31) 276.94** 206.23** 160.75** 226.32** signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. a equivalent net income between 0 and lower than 75 %; b equivalent net income 75-100 %; c equivalent net income 101-125 %; d equivalent net income >125 % control variables: gender, birth cohort, region, interaction term „birth cohort*region”, wife/partner pregnant, migration background, educational level, vocational situation, personality traits, health. source: pairfam, author’s calculations tab. 4: effect of parenthood on life satisfaction differentiated according to employment arrangement (ordered logit regression) women men likelihood ratio test „women” vs. „men” no children, man full-time, woman non-employed 0.1648 -0.0296 0.17 no children, man full-time, woman part-time -0.0237 -0.1815 0.10 no children, man full-time, woman full-time (ref.) children, man full-time, woman non-employed 0.4220** 0.0346 11.10** children, man full-time, woman part-time 0.2359** 0.1069 1.03 children, man full-time, woman full-time 0.1449 -0.0207 0.02 number of cases 1921 1427 chi2 (df=28) 398.74** 258.06** signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. control variables: birth cohort, region, interaction term „birth cohort*region”, wife/partner pregnant, income situation, migration background, educational level, personality traits, health. source: pairfam, author’s calculations • matthias pollmann-schult96 childless women). mothers in part-time employment also report a signifi cantly higher level of satisfaction; however the effect size is distinctly lesser. by contrast, full-time working mothers are not signifi cantly more satisfi ed than full-time working childless women. all in all, the assumption that mothers in dual-income relationships experience a comparatively low level of satisfaction is affi rmed. apparently, only non-employed and part-time employed women experience an increase in life satisfaction as a result of parenthood. the fi nding that mothers in dual-income relationships are less satisfi ed than mothers in traditional relationships with a male single earner concurs with earlier fi ndings by van schoor and seyda (2011). the corresponding analyses for men, by contrast, show that the employment arrangement within the relationship does not infl uence the life satisfaction of fathers. the comparatively high level of satisfaction of fathers in dual-income relationships can be explained by the fact that they are less often subjected to a dual burden of paid and unpaid work than their employed female partners. finally, we will look at the life satisfaction of parents depending on their type of kinship relation to the child and on family planning (table 5). in the upper model of table 5, mothers and fathers with exclusively biological children are the reference group. as we can see, these parents are signifi cantly more satisfi ed than childless women and men. however, parents who live in a household with stepchildren are not signifi cantly less happy than parents with exclusively biological children. although stepfamilies suffer more from familial confl icts, it seems that the type of kinship relationship to the child does not essentially infl uence the general life satisfaction of the parents. however, women who live with a stepchild and men who bring a biological child into the relationship exhibit a comparatively low life satisfaction. this is not the case for men with a stepchild or women with a biological child from an earlier relationship. possibly there are greater confl icts and lesser life satisfaction for both partners when the man brings a child from an earlier relationship into the new family. the lower model of table 5 examines the extent to which family planning has an infl uence on the life satisfaction of parents. fathers and mothers who presumably planned to start a family exhibit a signifi cantly greater life satisfaction than childless parents. by contrast, fathers with a presumed unplanned family are not more satisfi ed than childless men. these results concur with the expectations. however, mothers who we can assume did not plan their family also exhibit a signifi cantly greater life satisfaction than childless women. possibly, an unplanned family only has a negative effect on the life satisfaction of fathers, but not of mothers. this gender difference could be due to the fact that compared to men, women less often perceive unplanned families as unwanted. parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 97 5 correlation or causality: methodological problems of the analysis the analyses are based on cross-sectional data, so that the causal direction of the observed association cannot be determined empirically. in concrete terms, the analyses presented here have two serious problems that prevent a causal interpretation of the results. the fi rst is the problem of reverse causality. the fi ndings presented here might not be a result of parenthood having a causal affect on the life satisfaction, but an increase in life satisfaction might rather infl uence the decision to start a family. the second is that the results may be biased by unobserved heterogeneity, in that unobserved personality traits mark both the level of satisfaction as well as affect the probability of transition to parenthood, although in fact there is no causal association between parenthood and life satisfaction. the methodological problems outlined here can be met by the use of suitable longitudinal analysis methods. using fi xed effects regressions practically eliminates biases caused by time-constant unobserved heterogeneity. a comparison of the results of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses therefore indicates to which extent the results of cross-sectional analyses are able to refl ect the causal effect of tab. 5: effect of the type of kinship relation and family planning on life satisfaction (ordered logit regression) women men likelihood ratio test „women” vs. „men” type of relationship to the children no children -0.1665** -0.1555** 0.03 only biological children (ref.) at least 1 stepchild: respondent -0.2249 -0.0345 0.63 at least 1 stepchild: partner -0.0041 -0.3263 2.93+ number of cases 2708 2151 chi2 (df=32) 441.34** 366.89** family planning no children (ref.) „planned” family 0.1474** 0.1661* 0.29 „unplanned” family 0.2733* 0.0278 3.24+ number of cases 2708 2151 chi2 (df=31) 453.62** 370.57** signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. control variables: birth cohort, region, interaction term “birth cohort*region”, wife/partner pregnant, migration background, educational level, vocational situation, personality traits, health. source: pairfam, author’s calculations • matthias pollmann-schult98 parenthood on life satisfaction. both analysis techniques produce similar results. the studies by frijters et al. (2011) for australia as well as by myrkylä and margolis (2012) for germany and great britain observe an increase in life satisfaction at the time of the birth of a child and a decrease after the child’s fi rst birthday for ols as well as fi xed effects estimates. furthermore, for the longitudinal panel regressions for germany, myrskylä and margolis (2012) report greater positive effects than for the cross-sectional ols regressions, which indicates that cross-sectional analyses for germany do not overestimate, but underestimate a positive effect of parenthood on life satisfaction. hansen (2012: 40) discusses these fi ndings and states, “it seems unlikely that reverse causation or unobserved third factors (e.g., personality traits) are accounting for cross-sectional associations between parental status and well-being.” the results of longitudinal studies therefore indicate that the fi ndings in this article demonstrate a causal effect of parenthood on life satisfaction. however, the coeffi cients for small children shown here are far greater than the coeffi cients reported in earlier longitudinal studies. there are at least two reasons for this. firstly, we cannot exclude that the effect size of the coeffi cients shown here may have been overestimated due to insuffi cient control for unobserved heterogeneity. secondly, the analyses conducted here only include parents in a relationship, whereas earlier longitudinal studies did not make any such restriction and also included single, divorced and widowed parents. having children may well have a far lesser positive effect on the subjective well-being of this group of people than on coupled people (hansen 2012). finally, i would like to point out again that due to the restriction of the sample to people between the ages of about 25 and 35 years in this study, primarily parents with young children are observed. thus, almost half of the mothers and fathers included in the analyses have a child of a maximum of 2 years of age. the presented results therefore primarily allow for conclusions about the life satisfaction of parents of young children in a relationship. 6 conclusions most family sociology studies indicate that starting a family can have both positive as well as negative effects on the lives of the parents. while relevant studies from the 1980s and 1990s mainly focus on the negative effects of parenthood – in particular the drop in relationship satisfaction (cf. nomaguchi/milkie 2003; twenge et al. 2003) – more recent studies give more attention to the positive effect of parenthood on the subjective well-being. the analyses also reveal a positive association between parenthood and life satisfaction. nonetheless, the life satisfaction of parents depends on a variety of contextual factors. for instance, unlike the predictions of the „value of children” approach, children only appear to signifi cantly infl uence the life satisfaction during their fi rst years of life. this result affi rms the assumptions of the set-point theory, parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 99 whereby incisive life events only increase or reduce the level of satisfaction temporarily. other contextual factors taken into account were the income situation, the employment arrangements, the type of kinship relation as well as family planning. on the one hand, parental life satisfaction varies distinctly with the available household income. parents living in poverty or in precarious prosperity are not more satisfi ed than their childless peers, whereas in the medium and higher income ranges we can observe a distinct association between parenthood and life satisfaction. however, in the upper income group there is a weaker association between parenthood and the level of satisfaction than in the medium income groups. this fi nding is apparently due to the fact that an over-proportional number of high-income mothers and fathers live in dual-income households and therefore suffer from work–life imbalances to a greater extent. this association between work strain and life satisfaction is observed more frequently among mothers. while non-employed mothers are distinctly more satisfi ed than childless women, full-time working mothers experience no higher level of satisfaction than women without children. furthermore, the analyses revealed that familial factors such as the type of kinship relation between parents and children or family planning only slightly infl uence the life satisfaction of parents. hence, biological parents report no signifi cantly greater life satisfaction than parents living in a household with stepchildren. furthermore, mothers whose families were presumably unplanned are not less satisfi ed than mothers who consciously planned to start a family. however, fathers whose families were presumably unplanned report a comparatively low life satisfaction. finally, these fi ndings illustrate that the data from the german family panel are very well suited for the analysis of the psychological consequences of parenthood. this study not only recorded subjective well-being more precisely than many other data surveys, but also familial processes and contexts. although the data surveyed so far do not allow for any reliable causal analyses, corresponding longitudinal analyses ought to be conducted once information is available from a suffi cient number of survey waves. references aassve, arnstein; 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in: journal of socio-economics 35,2: 326-347 [doi: 10.1016/j. socec.2005.11.043]. twenge, jean m.; campell, w. keith; foster, craig a. 2003: parenthood and marital satisfaction: a meta-analytic review. in: journal of marriage and the family 65,3: 574-583 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00574.x]. umberson, debra; grove, walter r. 1989: parenthood and psychological well-being: theory, measurement, and stage in the family life course. in: journal of family issues 10,4: 440-462 [doi: 10.1177/019251389010004002]. van schoor, berta; seyda, susanne 2011: die individuelle perspektive: die zufriedenheit von männern und frauen mit familie und beruf. in: althammer, jörg et al. (eds.): wie viel familie verträgt die moderne gesellschaft? münchen: roman herzog institut e.v.: 23-42. walper, sabine et al. 2010: pairfam skalenhandbuch. ankerpersonen-capi welle 1. version 1.0 vom 15.03.2010. williams, richard 2009: using heterogeneous choice models to compare logit and probit coeffi cients across groups. in: sociological methods & research 37,4: 531-559 [doi: 10.1177/0049124109335735]. winslow, sarah 2005: work-family confl ict, gender, and parenthood, 1977-1997. in: journal of family issues 26,6: 727-755 [doi: 10.1177/0192513x05277522]. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title „elternschaft und lebenszufriedenheit in deutschland”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-05de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-05de6, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 02.02.2012 date of acceptance: 20.09.2012 pd dr. matthias pollmann-schult ( ). wissenschaftszenrum berlin für sozialforschung (wzb), 10785 berlin, deutschland. e-mail: matthias.pollmann-schult@wzb.eu url: http://www.wzb.eu/de/personen/matthias-pollmann-schult parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 103 s ig ni fi c an ce le ve l: * * = p < 0. 01 ; * = p < 0. 05 ; + = p < 0. 1. r ef er en ce g ro up s: a c hi ld le ss ; b b ir th c o ho rt 1 98 083 ; c no m ig ra tio n b ac kg ro un d ; d u p p er s er vi ce r an k; e h ea lth : ve ry g o o d ; f u ni ve rs ity d eg re e. s o ur ce : p ai rf am , a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns ta b . a 1: e ff ec t o f p ar en th o o d o n su b je ct iv e w el lb ei ng (o rd er ed lo g it re g re ss io n) s at is fa ct io n w ith le is ur e tim e s at is fa ct io n w ith s o ci al co nt ac ts m ar ita l s at is fa ct io n li fe s at is fa ct io n w o m en m en w o m en m en w o m en m en w o m en m en fa th er /m o th er a -0 .2 82 3* * -0 .3 12 3* * -0 .0 47 7 -0 .2 54 9* * -0 .2 14 4* * -0 .1 15 8 0. 16 17 ** 0. 13 60 * w o m an /p ar tn er p re gn an t -0 .2 02 7 -0 .0 72 5 0. 06 78 -0 .1 24 7 0. 10 42 0. 22 30 + 0. 03 21 0. 12 51 e as te rn g er m an y 0. 11 51 0. 10 50 0. 05 28 0. 08 32 -0 .0 33 1 0. 03 51 0. 07 63 0. 16 87 + b ir th c o ho rt : 19 70 -1 97 3b 0. 09 51 -0 .0 47 5 -0 .1 07 7 -0 .2 20 8+ -0 .0 72 7 0. 28 47 * -0 .1 51 7 -0 .2 09 9+ b ir th c o ho rt *e . g er m an y 0. 03 39 -0 .0 23 4 0. 04 06 0. 02 62 -0 .0 35 2 -0 .1 47 9 0. 15 62 0. 26 18 * 1st im m ig ra nt g en er at io nc -0 .1 82 2* * -0 .1 02 3 -0 .1 81 5* 0. 00 80 0. 05 18 0. 31 51 ** 0. 01 78 0. 06 98 2nd im m ig ra nt g en er at io nc -0 .0 23 0 0. 08 42 -0 .0 59 0 -0 .0 42 6 0. 03 33 0. 14 84 0. 08 86 -0 .0 03 3 lo w er s er vi ce r an kd 0. 12 15 0. 09 72 0. 16 87 + 0. 12 55 -0 .0 34 4 -0 .0 58 8 -0 .0 10 2 -0 .1 61 3* n o nm an ua l r o ut in e w o rk d 0. 06 49 0. 20 60 + 0. 20 58 * 0. 21 98 + 0. 15 12 -0 .1 41 9 0. 03 81 -0 .1 63 5 s el fem p lo ye d d -0 .1 17 1 -0 .0 06 5 0. 23 16 -0 .0 75 6 -0 .0 74 1 -0 .2 66 4+ -0 .2 41 0 -0 .1 87 3 t ec hn ic ia n, s up er vi so rd 0. 15 47 0. 00 98 0. 24 38 -0 .0 13 4 -0 .2 43 3 0. 04 31 0. 00 20 -0 .1 99 4 s ki lle d w o rk er d 0. 11 92 0. 29 51 ** 0. 30 91 0. 29 31 ** 0. 19 22 0. 03 06 -0 .1 94 1 -0 .1 58 9+ u ns ki lle d a nd s em i-s ki lle d w o rk er d 0. 01 72 0. 17 09 + 0. 31 24 ** 0. 14 84 0. 05 05 0. 14 31 -0 .1 47 2 -0 .2 04 6* p re se nt ly in tr ai ni ng d 0. 19 53 0. 04 68 0. 14 88 0. 17 33 -0 .1 18 3 -0 .0 71 4 -0 .0 00 5 -0 .2 46 5* u ne m p lo ye dd 0. 12 66 0. 19 95 0. 20 55 0. 23 53 0. 19 54 0. 25 23 -0 .2 08 0 -0 .6 41 3* * n o nem pl o ye d d 0. 10 50 0. 40 23 0. 16 60 + 0. 17 13 0. 23 79 * 0. 22 65 0. 19 04 * -0 .6 73 3* * h ea lth : po o re 0. 05 14 -0 .1 37 2 0. 05 30 -0 .0 05 0 0. 21 24 -0 .4 03 3+ -0 .7 08 0* * -0 .4 92 5+ h ea lth : no t g o o de -0 .3 08 0* * -0 .3 39 6* * -0 .1 92 2* -0 .0 18 0 -0 .3 59 9* * -0 .1 70 2 -0 .4 91 8* * -0 .4 75 6* * h ea lth : sa tis fa ct o ry e -0 .4 33 0* * -0 .3 68 8* * -0 .2 61 8* * -0 .1 93 5* -0 .2 40 1* * -0 .3 56 6* * -0 .5 37 4* * -0 .6 22 7* * h ea lth : go o de -0 .2 58 4* * -0 .2 00 6* * -0 .1 30 1* -0 .0 47 3 -0 .2 52 9* * -0 .1 93 2* * -0 .2 84 4* * -0 .3 59 8* * e d uc at io n: in tr ai ni ng f 0. 05 22 0. 12 69 0. 15 29 -0 .1 03 1 0. 18 22 -0 .1 08 8 0. 09 57 0. 05 46 e d uc at io n: n o c er tif ic at io nf 0. 16 95 + 0. 06 49 0. 18 59 + 0. 18 87 0. 02 68 0. 19 97 -0 .0 43 6 0. 10 53 e d uc at io n: a p p re nt ic e ce rt ifi ca te f 0. 09 53 0. 17 46 * 0. 13 26 + 0. 12 01 -0 .1 52 3* 0. 08 26 -0 .0 90 1 0. 04 98 e d uc at io n: s ec o nd ar y ed uc at io nf 0. 11 80 0. 07 66 0. 12 60 0. 07 62 -0 .1 90 0* -0 .0 90 6 -0 .0 96 6 -0 .0 41 7 e d uc at io n: v o ca tio na l s ch o o lf -0 .0 26 3 0. 14 99 0. 10 58 0. 15 62 -0 .0 88 3 -0 .0 71 3 -0 .0 01 5 0. 06 08 e d uc at io n: u ni v. o f a pp lie d s ci en ce f 0. 10 67 0. 07 93 -0 .0 05 3 0. 02 06 -0 .1 06 6 -0 .0 65 4 -0 .0 43 8 0. 14 55 p er so na lit y: e xp lo si ve ne ss -0 .0 13 6+ 0. 00 04 -0 .0 27 3* * -0 .0 26 0* -0 .0 57 9* * -0 .0 55 8* * -0 .0 39 2* * -0 .0 51 5* * p er so na lit y: e m o tio na l a ut o no m y 0. 00 67 0. 04 22 ** 0. 01 73 0. 03 46 * 0. 01 42 0. 04 80 ** -0 .0 04 0 0. 03 57 ** p er so na lit y: s el fw o rt h 0. 05 38 ** 0. 04 13 ** 0. 06 09 ** 0. 05 82 ** 0. 09 81 ** 0. 06 56 ** 0. 14 85 ** 0. 14 10 ** p er so na lit y: s hy ne ss -0 .0 23 6* -0 .0 35 4 -0 .0 64 1* * -0 .0 78 8* * -0 .0 14 3 -0 .0 22 3+ -0 .0 39 9* * -0 .0 13 4 appendix • matthias pollmann-schult104 tab. a2: effect of the age of the youngest child on life satisfaction (ordered logit regression) women and men up to 1 year olda 0.2731** 1 to 2 years olda 0.1573* 2 to 3 years olda 0.0498 3 to 4 years olda 0.2034* 4 to 6 years olda 0.1345+ 6 to 8 years olda 0.1151 8 to 11 years olda 0.1040 11 to 18 years olda 0.0775 man -0.1786** woman/partner pregnant 0.0974 eastern germany 0.0968 birth cohort: 1970-1973b -0.1819* birth cohort*e. germany 0.2288* 1st immigrant generationc 0.0627 2nd immigrant generationc 0.0601 lower service rankd -0.0996+ non-manual routine workd -0.0668 self-employedd -0.2017* technician, supervisord -0.1055 skilled workerd -0.1139 unskilled and semi-skilled workerd -0.1857* presently in trainingd -0.1321 unemployedd -0.4235** non-employedd 0.0252 health: poore -0.6107** health: not goode -0.4897** health: satisfactorye -0.5792** health: goode -0.3166** education: in trainingf 0.0635 education: no certificationf 0.0335 education: apprentice certificatef -0.0091 education: secondary educationf -0.0514 education: vocational schoolf 0.0398 education: univ. of applied sciencef 0.0593 personality: explosiveness -0.0429** personality: emotional autonomy 0.0124 personality: self-worth 0.1424** personality: shyness -0.0283** signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. reference groups: a childless; b birth cohort 1980-83; c no migration background; d upper service rank; e health: very good; f university degree. source: pairfam, author’s calculations parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 105 tab. a3: effect of parenthood on life satisfaction differentiated according to household income (ordered logit regression) max. precarious prosperity1 lower to medium income range2 medium to upper income range3 higher income range4 father/mothera 0.0878 0.2877** 0.2791* 0.2302* man -0.1685* -0.1470 -0.1287 -0.1416+ woman/partner pregnant -0.0373 0.1732 -0.2637 0.2606 eastern germany 0.0381 -0.1608 0.1191 0.2126 birth cohort: 1970-1973b -0.1938 -0.3666* -0.2039 0.0294 birth cohort*e. germany 0.3483* 0.5070** -0.0178 -0.0517 1st immigrant generationc 0.0537 0.1372 -0.0349 -0.0479 2nd immigrant generationc 0.0515 0.1821 0.0475 0.0449 lower service rankd -0.3344 0.1841 -0.0350 -0.0119 non-manual routine workd -0.1710 -0.0592 -0.1265 0.2202 self-employedd -0.6622** -0.1764 0.0663 -0.1623 technician, supervisord -0.4890+ -0.0455 -0.3379 0.4016 skilled workerd -0.2678 -0.0713 0.0126 -0.1426 unskilled and semi-skilled workerd -0.3884+ 0.0546 -0.3770+ 0.1438 presently in trainingd -0.4256* 0.3250 -0.2846 0.2881 unemployedd -0.6569** 0.3103 -0.6137 0.0272 non-employedd -0.1158 0.2130 0.1588 0.1856 health: poore -0.5202+ -0.5885* -0.1565 -0.5693* health: not goode -0.4336** -0.6381** -0.5319** -0.1390 health: satisfactorye -0.6397** -0.7081** -0.4431** -0.4843** health: goode -0.2960** -0.4342** -0.1632 -0.1506 education: in trainingf 0.1449 0.3295 0.3812 -0.5257* education: no certificationf 0.0237 0.0660 0.2783 -0.3275 education: apprentice certificatef -0.0580 0.0977 0.2211 -0.2728* education: secondary educationf -0.0117 -0.0808 -0.0419 -0.1660 education: vocational schoolf 0.1476 0.1175 0.0094 -0.1148 education: univ. of applied sciencef 0.0892 0.1080 -0.0054 -0.0924 personality: explosiveness -0.0461** -0.0235 -0.0689** -0.0460** personality: emotional autonomy 0.0042 -0.0180 0.0220 0.0729** personality: self-worth 0.1348** 0.1534** 0.1753** 0.1888** personality: shyness -0.0090 -0.0465* 0.0037 -0.0382* signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. reference groups: a childless; b birth cohort 1980-83; c no migration background; d upper service rank; e health: very good; f university degree. 1 equivalent net income between 0 and lower than 75%; 2 equivalent net income 75-100%; 3 equivalent net income 101-125%; 4 equivalent net income >125% source: pairfam, author’s calculations • matthias pollmann-schult106 tab. a4: effect of employment constellation on life satisfaction differentiated according to employment arrangement (ordered logit regression) signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. reference groups: a no children, man full-time, woman full-time; b birth cohort 1980-83; c max. precarious prosperity; d no migration background; e health: very good; f university degree. source: pairfam, author’s calculations women men no children, man full-time, woman non-employeda 0.1648 -0.0296 no children, man full-time. woman part-timea -0.0237 -0.1815 children, man full-time. woman non-employeda 0.4220** 0.0346 children, man full-time. woman part-timea 0.2359** 0.1069 children, man full-time. woman full-timea 0.1449 -0.0207 woman/partner pregnant -0.1608 0.2961 + eastern germany 0.1949+ -0.0974 birth cohort: 1970-1973b -0.0578 -0.3320 * birth cohort*e. germany 0.0781 0.4658 ** lower to medium income rangec -0.0293 0.1008 medium to upper income rangec 0.0278 0.2232 * upper income rangec 0.2332** 0.2280 * 1st immigrant generationd 0.0593 0.0716 2nd immigrant generationd 0.0878 -0.0023 health: poore -0.6753** -0.8002 ** health: not goode -0.5033** -0.4314 ** health: satisfactorye -0.5709** -0.5368 ** health: goode -0.2237** -0.3165 ** education: in trainingf 0.1052 -0.1515 education: no certificationf -0.1376 -0.0366 education: apprentice certificatef -0.0721 -0.0626 education: secondary educationf -0.0724 -0.1435 education: vocational schoolf 0.0140 -0.0147 education: univ. of applied sciencef -0.0404 0.0629 personality: explosiveness -0.0423** -0.0499 ** personality: emotional autonomy -0.0034 0.0536 ** personality: self-worth 0.1785** 0.1431 ** personality: shyness -0.0222+ -0.0058 parenthood and life satisfaction in germany • 107 tab. a5: effect of the type of kinship relation to the child on life satisfaction (ordered logit regression) signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. reference groups: a only biological children; b birth cohort 1980-83; c no migration background; d upper service rank; e health: very good; f university degree. source: pairfam, author’s calculations women men no childrena -0.1665** -0.1555** at least 1 stepchild: respondenta -0.2249 -0.0345 at least 1 stepchild: partnera -0.0041 -0.3263 woman/partner pregnant 0.0726 0.1703+ eastern germany 0.1430 0.2357+ birth cohort: 1970-1973b -0.1383 -0.1879 birth cohort*e. germany 0.0310 0.0574 1st immigrant generationc 0.0859 -0.0021 2nd immigrant generationc 0.0326 0.1287 lower service rankd -0.0208 -0.1663* non-manual routine workd 0.0301 -0.1702 self-employedd -0.2562+ -0.2060 technician, supervisord -0.0143 -0.1490 skilled workerd -0.1948 -0.1580 unskilled and semi-skilled workerd -0.1444 -0.2171* presently in trainingd -0.0035 -0.2452* unemployed d -0.2037 -0.6218** non-employedd 0.1779+ -0.6814** health: poore -0.7510** -0.5049+ health: not goode -0.4883** -0.4620** health: satisfactorye -0.5558** -0.5986** health: goode -0.2894** -0.3484** education: in trainingf 0.0997 0.0582 education: no certificationf -0.0619 0.1035 education: apprentice certificatef -0.0837 0.0553 education: secondary educationf -0.0905 -0.0377 education: vocational schoolf 0.0057 0.0608 education: univ. of applied sciencef -0.0386 0.1469 personality: explosiveness -0.0388** -0.0525** personality: emotional autonomy -0.0029 0.0340* personality: self-worth 0.1512** 0.1412** personality: shyness -0.0402** -0.0122 • matthias pollmann-schult108 tab. a6: effect of family planning on life satisfaction (ordered logit regression) signifi cance level: ** = p<0.01; * = p<0.05; + = p<0.1. reference groups: a no children; b birth cohort 1980-83; c no migration background; d upper service rank; e health: very good; f university degree. source: pairfam, author’s calculations women men „planned” familya 0.1474* 0.1661* „unplanned” familya 0.2733* 0.0278 woman/partner pregnant 0.0315 0.1294 eastern germany 0.0717 0.1690+ birth cohort: 1970-1973b -0.1367 -0.2059+ birth cohort*e. germany 0.1442 0.2459* 1st immigrant generationc 0.0340 0.0539 2nd immigrant generationc 0.0862 -0.0055 lower service rankd -0.0262 -0.1695* non-manual routine workd 0.0275 -0.1670 self-employedd -0.2639+ -0.2151 technician, supervisord -0.0304 -0.1442 skilled workerd -0.1996 -0.1506 unskilled and semi-skilled workerd -0.1542 -0.2128* presently in trainingd -0.0115 -0.2501* unemployedd -0.2018 -0.6279** non-employedd 0.1778+ -0.6622** health: poore -0.7758** -0.5132* health: not goode -0.4917** -0.4499** health: satisfactorye -0.5571** -0.6016** health: goode -0.2938** -0.3492** education: in trainingf 0.0999 0.0574 education: no certificationf -0.0614 0.1092 education: apprentice certificatef -0.0857 0.0559 education: secondary educationf -0.0931 -0.0485 education: vocational schoolf 0.0103 0.0643 education: univ. of applied sciencef -0.0385 0.1418 personality: explosiveness -0.0388** -0.0524** personality: emotional autonomy -0.0036 0.0354** personality: self-worth 0.1518** 0.1403** personality: shyness -0.0404** -0.0125 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) arranz-becker et al_engl.indd differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women disentangling the roles of cultural background and of the transformation process oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck abstract: the present study compares parity-specifi c fertility patterns of west and east german women (from birth cohorts 1970 and younger) after german re-unifi cation using panel data from the gsoep (waves 1990 through 2006). whereas the transition rate for the birth of the fi rst child tends to be higher in the east german than in the west german sub-sample, the likelihood of second births remains considerably higher among west german women across time. the analyses presented comprise a detailed comparative test of different intervening mechanisms, represented by sociocultural orientations and social inequalities resulting from the societal transformation process. although the transition rate to fi rst births among east german women is lowered by their higher education and work aspirations, their higher degree of family orientation promotes their propensity to start a family. surprisingly, the higher proportion of persons without a denomination in east germany promotes the transition to parenthood because it accelerates both the engagement in and the consolidation of intimate relationships. the lower transition rate to second births among east german women is partly accounted for by the higher work aspirations, by the lower religiosity and by the lower general life satisfaction in this subgroup. keywords: fertility · eastern germany · family formation · second birth 1 introduction birth and fertility rates are quite vivid indicators of a society’s capacity to regenerate and maintain itself. this may be why mass media and authors of popular scientifc literature sporadically turn their attention to the stagnating birth rates in germany. on the basis of aggregate statistics, such as the total fertility rate, germany has one of the lowest birth rates among european countries (dorbritz 2000). this view, comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 1 (2010): 7-34 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-02en4 • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck8 however, neglects the complexity and dynamics of fertility patterns, particularly in east germany after unifi cation. at a fi rst glance, the east german “birth slump” and the slow increase in birth rates later on, as shown by a comparison of descriptive fertility rates in east and west germany, might be interpreted as a “birth shock” followed by convergence. however, this interpretation does not take into account the fact that women who were raised in east and west germany, respectively, are likely to represent different subpopulations. the two groups can be expected to diverge from each other considerably with regard to cultural traditions, as well as in the way in which they experienced the situation after reunifi cation. due to the radical transformation of the political system in east germany and largely unchanged living conditions in west germany, german unifi cation represents a historically rare setting. within this framework, the fertility patterns of women who were socialized in east germany being in their fertile phase after the system change, may refl ect habits that are typical of the pre-unifi cation period, combined with the economic and biographical uncertainties caused by the transformation process. up to now, factors underlying the different fertility patterns in east and west germany have not been studied systematically. hence, the present study aims at empirically investigating the ways in which the fertility patterns of east and west german women (analysed separately for fi rst and second parity) differ in post-reunifi cation times. in a fi rst step, and based on recent longitudinal data from the german socio-economic panel (soep), we analyse the trajectories of fertility patterns in the east and west german sub-samples between 1990 and 2006. secondly, by using path models we examine in greater detail the roles played by various factors underlying this fertility differential. specifi cally, we analyse the infl uence exerted by divergent value orientations acquired during socialization (e.g. the higher occupational orientation of east german women). additionally, we test the degree to which the differing family patterns refl ect the consequences of the transformation process in the shape of biographical and economic uncertainties in east germany. the present article is structured as follows: firstly, existing research with regard to parity-specifi c differences in fertility patterns between women from east and west germany, respectively, will be discussed (section 1.1). the next step is to extract the vital differences between east and west german women concerning characteristics infl uencing fertility following a historical perspective (section 1.2). on the basis of the considerations outlined, hypotheses to explain the differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women will be generated, explicitly taking into account the intervening variables which were previously identifi ed (section 1.3). the methodological approach (section 2), the results of the analyses (section 3), as well as a theoretical discussion of the results (section 4), will be presented in the following part. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 9 1.1 current state of research on east and west german fertility patterns when studying the comparison of east and west german fertility patterns, the parity specifi city reported in the literature has to be taken into account (kreyenfeld 2003). previous life course studies dealing with the transition to parenthood have reached the conclusion that east german women born after 1971 (whose fertile period mainly spans post-reunifi cation years) postpone family formation to a higher age, whereas the cohorts of west german women do not exhibit a signifi cant shift in fertility behaviour (kreyenfeld 2006; kreyenfeld/huinink 2003). even though they have delayed their fi rst births, younger east german women still opt for parenthood somewhat earlier than west german women (kreyenfeld 2003); who continue to exhibit a relatively high average age at fi rst birth (kreyenfeld 2006). kreyenfeld (2000) states that these differences for the cohorts 1961-70 and 1971-80 are statistically signifi cant. altogether, the available evidence suggests that the likelihood of family formation has been higher among east german than among west german women since unifi cation. as for the transition to second birth, in the pre-unifi cation decade, east german women were characterized by a slightly lower transition rate compared to west german women; this gap has considerably widened after reunifi cation (kreyenfeld/ huinink 2003; kreyenfeld/mika 2006). dornseiff and sackmann (2003) have shown that this difference in the likelihood of second births is statistically signifi cant for all the age cohorts studied (1952-1980). as regards the central differences between east and west germans with respect to fertility patterns (namely, transition to fi rst and second births) after unifi cation, we can conclude that east german women, at least those from younger cohorts, have shown (at least) a postponement of fertility decisions in the post-unifi cation decade. as to the resulting differences in fertility levels, the fi ndings remain somewhat inconclusive due to the right-censoring of the data analysed in previous studies.1 the reported results for west german women can be subsumed in a “polarization thesis” (huinink 1995b: 199), according to which family formation processes are increasingly narrowed down to two alternatives: childlessness or two children. in east germany, however, the one-child family seems to enjoy comparatively greater popularity. so far, only a limited number of studies have been carried out in order to actually explain the differences between east and west german fertility behaviour described above. hank et al. (2004) reports that the availability of childcare facilities has a positive effect on the transition to fi rst birth in east germany. as to the transition to second births, dornseiff and sackmann (2003) state that the positive coeffi cient for west germany is insignifi cant in multivariate terms once a number of 1 in view of the limited time frame of the fertile period, it may be assumed that not all postponed births will actually be caught up later. • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck10 covariates (e.g., type of partnership and religiousness) are controlled for. however, since all variables are entered into the model in one step, it remains unclear which predictors primarily account for the different transition rates to the second child in east vs. west germany. almost all previous studies analyzing fertility determinants across east and west german subpopulations compute two separate event history models (east vs. west germans) (one important exception being the study by dornseiff/sackmann 2003 already cited). it remains unclear within this analytical framework whether the differences that have been observed can be traced back to systematic differences in the composition of the two subpopulations (e.g. differing distributions of relationship types or religious denominations). this is why we have chosen a slightly different model specifi cation for our analyses. in order to examine differences in fertility behaviour between our east and west german subsamples, the hypotheses are tested by computing combined models for the whole sample (including both east and west german women) with a dummy indicator for “east vs. west german”. the procedure proposed here, i.e. modeling socio-structural indicators and attitudes relevant to fertility as endogenous variables, is indispensable for testing whether already known differences in social characteristics of east and west germans are actually responsible for the diverging fertility patterns. 1.2 historical roots of differences in the structure of the population below, we use a socio-historic approach to identify origins and chronological trends in fertility determinants, comparing the east and west german subpopulations. three different layers of differences between east and west germany may be distinguished: 1. long-lasting cultural differences: east germany comprises the protestant, more secular north-east of germany, where the institutionalization of families shows many similarities to scandinavian societies, as does the acceptance of “social democratic” family policy. west germany, by contrast, was very much infl uenced by the catholic south, placing a strong emphasis on the principle of “subsidiarity”, reliance on the self-help patterns of kinship networks, and preference for non-interference by the state in family matters (cf. bertram 1996). 2. intermediate infl uences of belonging to two different political systems for decades: the differences between the two cultures may have been further enhanced by the contrasting political systems of the gdr and the frg, with a strong system of incentives towards fertility, on the one hand, and an array of rather indirect, sometimes even self-contradictory family-related policies on the other. 3. short-term effects of east germany’s political transformation, refl ected by the far-reaching substitution of social institutions. these transformations resulted in shock-like perceptions of economic and social instability immediately after political unifi cation. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 11 since cultural and political differences are intricately interwoven and are virtually impossible to disentangle in terms of their effects on fertility behaviour immediately after political unifi cation, both aspects are dealt with simultaneously. however, it would be short-sighted to attribute the behavioural differences between individuals from both sides to the political differences alone: the gender-based division of labour and resulting interdependence in the family, and the institutionalization of marriage, is as deeply culturally rooted in the south-west as is the independent position of women, their inclusion in the labour force, the secondary role played by marriage, the state’s responsibility for individual welfare in the north-east (bertram 1996). accordingly, most of the differences between these parts of germany existed long before the establishment of the two political systems after the second world war, and were subsequently enhanced by the, in some respects, mutually-antagonistic social and family policies. for example, the proportion of individuals with no religious affi liation was already higher in east germany before the establishment of the gdr, gained prevalence during its existence, and increased even further after political unifi cation. also, the propensity for extramarital births was already high before the gdr, increased steadily during its existence, and rose sharply after political unifi cation (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2005), whereas the higher level of the inclusion of mothers from the labour force before and during gdr times dropped sharply after unifi cation – not because of changing preferences, but because of receding opportunities (adler 2004). marriage and the family as the “basic elements” of society were a crucial rhetoric component of socialist ideology in the gdr (gysi 1989: 10). the social and family policies of the gdr regime met this standard inasmuch as considerable monetary and structural incentives were established in favour of family formation (kreyenfeld 2004). schneider et al. (1995: 2) estimate that, in that period, the state used to bear about 85 per cent of total child-related costs. hence, scientists postulate in the literature on the welfare state that the comparatively high fertility rate in the gdr can be primarily attributed to windfall gains (huinink 1995a). the “model: employed mother” (gysi/meyer 1993) was predominant as a social norm, emanating from the possibility to simultaneously reconcile motherhood and employment. it is widely known that the gdr regime was acting under serious economic pressure stemming from the low productivity of the centrally-planned economy, as well as from massive waves of emigration in the 1950s. hence, the political leadership was forced to offer women the opportunity to return to the labour market immediately after a child was born in order to take advantage of their labour force. actually, the publicly-preached concept of an egalitarian gender model largely appears to be a romantic illusion (dannenbeck et al. 1995). a culture of full-time employment among women nonetheless developed in the gdr, in contrast to most contemporary western countries (dornseiff/sackmann 2003). in fact, this culture was not restricted to childless women or women with older children, and it was defi nitely accepted by men. a tightly-meshed network of childcare facilities simultaneously provided the infrastructure needed to implement this model. consequently, family formation was a normative biographical element for most east germans: schneider (1994: 138) provides estimates according to which 20 – 25 per cent of west german • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck12 women remained childless at the end of the 1980s, whereas fewer than 10 per cent of east german women were permanently childless. an important facilitating factor for fertility decisions was the high degree of biographical security and predictability in the gdr (bertram 1995: 269). this exacerbated the impact of the far-reaching loss of biographical and material security related to the system change. previously unknown problems such as mass unemployment and increasingly precarious employment relationships then emerged. these socio-economic consequences of the transformation process interfered with the long-term planning of people’s own lives and made children a fi nancial risk factor (dorbritz/schwarz 1996; kreyenfeld in press). early demographic studies interpreted the abrupt changes in aggregate total fertility rates (tfr) after reunifi cation as a refl ection of these shock-like transformations (eberstadt 1994; witte/wagner 1995). according to gerlach and stephan (2001), economic problems are partly responsible for the lower life satisfaction in east germany after the changes. various empirical studies indicate that the gap between east and west germany with respect to income and other aspects of the standard of living, but also as to overall satisfaction with life, has diminished since unifi cation; however, a complete leveling has not yet been accomplished (geißler 2006: 77; gerlach/stephan 2001). this may have contributed to a convergence of east and west german fertility patterns after reunifi cation. taking the socialization patterns in the gdr into account, a number of additional, unintended side effects of socialist propaganda can be observed, which may have thwarted all pronatalist policies in a subtle way. the socialist regime’s disapproval of and sanctions against religious activities considerably restrained the proliferation of denominational affi liations as well as of religious activities, hence exerting a decisive normative infl uence on the denominational composition of the population (pollack 1998). the marginal role of religion has been fuelled by the lack of a traditional “catholic culture” in east germany (pickel 2003). previous studies fi nd no evidence of a revitalization of religiosity in east germany after reunifi cation; in the course of the general secularization process, in fact, a further decline of denominational commitment can be observed in the new federal states (pickel 2003; pollack/pickel 2003). in view of these sustained discrepancies, a harmonization of fertility patterns cannot be expected to occur in the short term. additionally, the comparatively low normative value of marriage as an institution, also refl ected by elevated divorce rates during the gdr period, may have contributed to the relatively low likelihood of east german couples to marry (huinink 1999). although the normative and empirical association between marriage and parenthood is traditionally weaker in east germany than in west germany (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2005), the larger number of unmarried couples, as well as the limited denominational and religious commitment, respectively, might still exercise a general dampening effect on fertility (huinink/konietzka 2003). unlike in the gdr, family policy in the frg has never striven to achieve overtly pronatalist goals. for a long period, social and family policy has focused on marriage, which almost automatically included children (dienel 2002: 21). the privacy of marriage and the family, as well as their status as autonomous institutions, were differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 13 generally respected; the state largely abandoned measures to actively stimulate family formation, confi ning its role to a passive protective position (schneider et al. 1995: 9). direct monetary or structural incentives for family formation comparable to those in the gdr were not established. in contrast, child-oriented motives towards marriage have been traditionally predominant in west germany (huinink/konietzka 2003; schneider 1994: 187). additionally, regulations in tax legislation introduced in the 1950s (particularly the socalled “ehegattensplitting”, a tax system geared to the combined income of husband and wife) provided rewards for a traditional division of labour in marriage: the wider the income gap grows, the greater are the resulting fi nancial gains for married couples (dienel 2002: 87ff). moreover, there has been a chronic shortage of childcare facilities, particularly crèches and full-time schools. thus, it may be interpreted as a logical consequence that west german women predominantly adhere to the sequential model of combining family and employment according to which women follow a life course pattern of alternating stages of employment and childcare. when it comes to values and attitudes, these structural conditions correspond to the prevalent skepticism of public childcare and employment of women: even in the mid-1990s, east and west germany were still at the opposite ends of the european continuum concerning to acceptance of employment of mothers with preschool children (treas/widmer 2000). as regards more recent developments, studies have provided evidence that the occupational orientation among east and west german women has not yet completely converged. the employment rate of east german women in 2007 was signifi cantly higher than that of west german women (federal statistical offi ce 2008: table 4.5). as for the gdr, another attitude became apparent that was obviously unintended by the political protagonists: despite (or even because of) the regime’s efforts to keep citizens under permanent and comprehensive surveillance, the population apparently developed a strong family orientation (huinink 1995a: 39). some authors argue that the state’s intrusion into people’s privacy made the population shift the focus of their lives from the public political domain to privacy within the family. paradoxically, the regime’s attempts to intrude into citizens’ private lives instead led to an unintended revaluation of family life. it thus stimulated the desire for a kind of individual “counter-world”, a hideaway within the surveillance society. after all, the consequences of the transformation process on family values are ambiguous. on the one hand, it can be assumed from the life course perspective that the biographical and economic impact caused by the transformation has resulted in increased tension and confl icts in the family (elder/caspi 1990: 29), which, in turn, might have reduced family orientations. in accordance with schelsky’s (1953) studies on changes in families after the second world war, it may be hypothesized, on the other hand, that cohesion and commitment within the family served as resources that helped to ease the negative impacts of unifi cation (franz/herlyn 1995: 93). in summary, it may be assumed that, on the one hand, the east and west german subpopulations still differ signifi cantly in their composition (e.g. denominational affi liations, empirical associations between marriage and parenthood, etc.), • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck14 as well as in their socio-cultural orientations (work and family orientation of women, religiosity) and, on the other hand, in the sustained impact of the transformation. 1.3 hypotheses concerning differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women considering existing research on parity-specifi c fertility differentials between east and west german women after reunifi cation, we fi rst expect differing family patterns: 1. east german women exhibit a higher likelihood of fi rst births, but a lower likelihood of second births, in the post-unifi cation period. further hypotheses concern the impact of differing socialization experiences of east and west german women, as well as effects of the societal transformation processes on parity-specifi c fertility patterns. decreased opportunities on the labour market and uncertainties in biographical options after political unifi cation have lowered life satisfaction and reduced the household incomes of east german women. because both income and satisfaction with life are expected to raise fertility,2 the following hypothesis is formed: 2. the consequences of the transformation process outlined above have exerted an inhibiting effect on the fertility behaviour of east german women. furthermore, we expect a high degree of continuity with regard to the sociocultural characteristics of the east and west german subpopulations which may be partly responsible for the different fertility patterns. educational level has been found to inhibit the transition to parenthood, but to increase the likelihood of a second birth. occupational orientation is expected to exert a negative impact on fertility, irrespective of parity: 3. the transition to fi rst and second births is reduced among east german women due to their stronger occupational orientation. 4. the higher level of education among east german women decreases their likelihood of fi rst births but increases the transition rate to second births. existing research indicates a generally positive effect of family orientation towards fertility: 2 there might be a non-linear association between income and fertility because of a positive price effect in low-income groups and a negative effect in high-income groups due to substitution of quality for quantity of children (becker 1973). differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 15 5. the transition rate to fi rst and second births is increased among east german women due to their stronger family orientation. the empirical literature suggests that the impact of religion on fertility may be ambiguous. although religious commitment raises fertility among married couples, it may delay their time until marriage. we thus examine the following research question: how does weaker denominational commitment and lower religiosity impact the relative likelihood of fi rst and second births for east german women? 2 data and approach 2.1 dataset and analyses existing studies on fertility patterns in east and west germany after unifi cation have been based on the analysis of retrospective survey data which either do not contain information on subjective preferences and values, or the available information is measured retrospectively for subjects who have already become mothers. in identifying causal effects, the panel approach is superior inasmuch as the collection of covariate data is supposed to take place prior to the occurrence of the event. for that reason, we utilize data of the german socio-economic panel (soep, samples a-e, waves g-w (including z), 1990-2006), a panel survey that started in west germany in 1984 and in east germany in 1990, with subsequent waves conducted annually. beyond socio-demographic standard indicators, the soep also contains data on attitudes, such as work aspirations and family orientation or religiosity, which is crucial for our research problem. we are not aware of any other published study on the topic that is based on more recent data. it should be noted that there are major differences between event history analyses based on retrospective and panel data in terms of sample composition. using panel data, the period of observation refers to historical time intervals (in our case, from 1990 to 2006), whereas in a retrospective design a life course perspective is adopted (i.e. following individuals from the beginning of process time). as a consequence, panel samples partly consist of respondents who have been at risk for a prolonged period of time prior to the fi rst panel wave without experiencing the event (left truncation, see guo 1993). in order to reduce the degree of left truncation as far as possible and to increase comparability with existing research, the sample comprises 17to 36-year-old women of birth cohorts 1970 and younger who were either childless (analysis of fi rst birth) or who already had one child (analysis of • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck16 second birth) in 1990, or at the beginning of the observational period, respectively.3 the resulting sample contains women in non-marital and marital unions who do or do not share a household with their partners. to avoid potential selection bias, persons who did not have a partner at the time of the interview were also included in the sample. we analyse the transition to fi rst and second births by utilizing discrete-time event history analysis based on conditional likelihoods (e.g. singer/willett 2003), which is particularly appropriate for panel data (guo 1993). within this framework, the dependent variable is binary and indicates whether the event of interest does or does not occur between two panel observations. the central concept of event history analysis is the transition rate, which, in the discrete-time case, may be interpreted as the conditional probability of a change of state at time t (pr), provided that the observation units belong to the risk set until time t (t = t), i.e. that no event has been observed for them so far. we thus use a multi-spell model in which subjects are defi ned to be at risk until the dependent event or right-censoring occurs. the data are arranged in such a way that each year of observation represents a single episode (so-called person years). the risk period comprises a maximum of seventeen panel waves (1990-2006). for instance, if a woman does not give birth to a child in seventeen subsequent waves, the dataset contains seventeen right-censored person years (rows). the period of observation ends in case of a fi rst or second birth, respectively, or of right-censoring (or panel attrition). table 1 shows the resulting sample sizes and the number of births observed (after listwise deletion of missing cases). tab. 1: sample size and number of births observed (17to 36-year-old women of birth cohorts beginning in 1970) west german subsample east german subsample total n childless women 1550 645 2195 women with one child 611 263 874 number of birth events first births 373 149 522 second births 266 72 338 source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) 3 in order to completely avoid the left truncation of data (i.e. observing respondents from age 15 onwards), in the chosen period of observation it would be mandatory to restrict the analyses to birth cohorts since 1975 which would have led to an insuffi cient number of observations. the analytical trade-off between a suffi cient sample size and comparability to existing life course studies chosen here was to include birth cohorts since 1970. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 17 a standard probit regression model is used in order to estimate the effects of covariates on the transition rate. it contains the duration of remaining in the initial state (indicated by age) as a covariate. in the tables, unstandardized regression (b) coeffi cients are displayed. accordingly, positive (negative) coeffi cients indicate a positive (negative) effect of the covariate on the transition rate. this paper focuses on the roles that various intervening variables (e.g. education and religiosity) play with respect to the effect of the characteristic “west vs. east german” on the transition rates to fi rst and second births. the literature distinguishes between two data constellations in such a framework: mediation and suppression (cf. mackinnon et al.2000). the direct effect of a predictor x (here: west vs. east german) on the dependent variable y (here: transition rate) may either rise (suppression) or diminish (mediation) after a control variable z (here: distinct social characteristics of east and west germans determining fertility) is introduced into the model. the indirect effect of x on y, mediated by z, is calculated as the product of the two direct effects (x → z and z → y). in case of mediation, the direct effect of x on y has the same algebraic sign as the indirect effect; in case of suppression, the signs of the direct and the indirect effects are different. in the standard hierarchical regression procedure, the indirect effect is usually inferred from the change in the coeffi cient for the effect x → y after multivariately controlling for potential intervening variables. since this procedure does not yield a statistical test of mediation or suppression, we compute additional path models (from the same dataset) based on the empirical covariance matrix of the model variables (for an introduction to covariance structure analysis, see reinecke 2005). these path models were computed with the mplus software (muthén/muthén 2007) and yield coeffi cients that are virtually identical to conventional event history analysis; however, they also provide additional information concerning the statistical signifi cance of the effects x → z and, therefore, of the corresponding indirect effects that cannot be estimated in conventional analyses. effects on the transition rates to fi rst and second births (and other binary model variables) are estimated by probit regressions (mccullagh/nelder 1989) with robust standard errors (huber-white correction). the operationalization of the various covariates will be explained below: 1. process time: in the transition to fi rst birth, the bell shape of the transition rate is modeled by using age as a linear and a logarithmic term. the age of the fi rst child is used in the models for the second birth, along with a logarithmic term. 2. in order to identify period effects, the serial number of the panel wave is controlled for. 3. type of partnership is captured via a categorical time-varying variable, with one of the following four values: marriage, unmarried couple (non-marital unions with a shared household), “living apart together” (unmarried, separate households) and single (i.e. no partner). 4. level of education is operationalized as a time-varying covariate, according to the casmin classifi cation which takes into consideration school, vocational and professional education and assumes an ascending order of • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck18 certifi cates and qualifi cations (brauns/steinmann 1999). the original ten categories were transformed into the years of schooling required to obtain the respective leaving qualifi cations in germany (coding scheme: casmin 0=12 years; 1a=8; 1b=9; 1c=11; 2a=12; 2b=10; 2c_gen=13; 2c_voc=15; 3a=16; 3b=18). 5. educational status is measured by a time-varying dummy variable, which is coded as “1” if the subject is currently enrolled in the educational system (secondary education or vocational training and tertiary education respectively, excluding further training). educational status is introduced as a time-lagged variable in order to avoid biased effect estimators due to a reversal of the causal order. 6. indicators of occupation and family orientation are based on the question of how important work, occupational achievements and family life, respectively, are for the respondents (four-point scale, 4 “very important”, 3 “important”, 2 “rather unimportant”, 1 “very unimportant”).4 in the period under observation, these items were assessed in fi ve waves (1992, 1994, 1998, 1999 and 2004). for the waves 1990 and 1991, the value from the 1992 wave was taken over; subsequently, values from the previous wave are taken until the corresponding characteristic is assessed again. 7. additionally, net weighted household income is measured by a time-dependent, lagged variable. the weight is determined from the number of persons living in the household (according to the new oecd scale: principal earner = 1.0, other persons in the household over age 14 = 0.5, persons in the household under age 14 = 0.3; cf. geißler 2006: 79). the resulting weighted income is logarithmized to compensate for the right-skewed distribution. 8. religiosity (z score) is operationalized by the item “frequency of churchgoing and attendance at other religious events” and the question of how important religion is for the respondent (four-point scales). in the observational period, subjects were interviewed eleven times as regards the frequency of churchgoing (1990, 1992, each year in the period 1994-1999, then every second wave), with the response categories 1 “never”, 2 “seldom”, 3 “monthly”, 4 “weekly”. the question concerning the importance of religion (same response categories as in 6.) was assessed three times (1994, 1998, 1999). between 1994 and 2000, religiosity is computed by averaging over both indicators; in all other waves, only the frequency of churchgoing is used. 9. additionally, a set of dummy variables for religious denomination was used (four categories: no denomination, catholic, protestant, other denomination). the corresponding information was gathered in 1990 (waves g and z respectively), 1997 (n) and 2003 (t). 10. life satisfaction is measured on a scale from 1 to 10 (from 1 = highly dissatisfi ed to 10 = very satisfi ed). this item has been used in all soep waves (exception: 1991) and enters into the analysis as time-dependent and lagged (i.e. from t-1). 4 as regards family orientation, respondents were asked in 1994, 1998 and 1999 how important family was for their satisfaction. in 1992 and 2004, respondents were asked how important their own children were for their satisfaction. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 19 11. availability of informal childcare is operationalized by a time-varying dummy variable, coded 1 if the respondent’s mother or father lives either in the respondent’s household or in the vicinity. 12. the dummy indicator for east vs. west german is based on the current place of residence. residential mobility between the two parts of germany is captured in that the variable is coded as time-varying. 3 results the empirical analyses follow a two-step procedure: in section 3.1, time trends in the fertility determinants mentioned over the period under observation (1990-2006) are analysed, focusing on differences between the east and west german sub-samples. the second step is to test whether the east and west german women under study differ in their transition rate to the fi rst and second child, and whether any differential trends across time (i.e. harmonization or divergence) can be identifi ed (chapter 3.2). additionally, each of the intervening mechanisms is tested on a multivariate basis through the computation of indirect effects. 3.1 development of fertility determinants in east and west germany over time figure 1 graphically displays the mean differences in potential fertility determinants among the interviewed east and west german women over time. the data points depicted were calculated by subtracting the east german from the west german means at each time of measurement. accordingly, a positive value means that west german women score higher on average compared to east german women, whereas a negative difference score implies a relatively lower mean for west german women. the period under observation (i.e. 17 panel waves) is represented on the horizontal axis.5 the analysis includes all women from birth cohorts 1970 and younger. in general terms, the assumptions with regard to key differences between east and west german women are largely confi rmed empirically: whereas the east german women from our sample have a higher occupational and family orientation, they are less religious and less satisfi ed with their lives and possess fewer economic resources than the west german women. in line with existing research (e.g. gerlach/stephan 2001; geißler 2006), fi gure 1 shows a trend towards convergence of both life satisfaction and household incomes in east and west germany. additional analyses (not shown) indicate that 5 the analysis consists of panel and trend components. as to the panel part, our results indicate the degree to which individual subjects change, on average, across time. concerning the trend component, some subjects enter the sample at a later stage (e.g. because of changes in the household composition or in the context of the 1998 supplement sample). • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck20 the life satisfaction and household income of east german individuals, relative to west germans, have risen over time. moreover, the differences as regards family orientation, only observed for 1992 and 1994, have evened out. if we focus on childless couples, however east german women in fact turn out to be signifi cantly more family oriented, even in 2004.6 in terms of all the other characteristics represented in the diagram, a considerable degree of continuity of the differences between east and west german women can fig. 1: differences between east and west german women in potentiallyrelevant fertility determinants over time (birth cohorts beginning in 1970) -0,6 -0,4 -0,2 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 work aspirations family orientation religiousness life satisfaction household income difference west-east (z values) note: in the waves for 1994, 1998 and 1999, religiosity is computed by averaging over frequency of churchgoing and subjective importance of religion; in all other waves only frequency of churchgoing is used. source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) 6 all differences between east and west germany displayed in figure 1 are statistically signifi cant at least at the 5 percent level according to t tests. the only exceptions are the non-signifi cant mean differences in family orientation in 1998, 1999, and 2004. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 21 be observed over time. this also applies to occupational orientation and religiosity. taken together, we conclude that the differences between east and west germany as regards the fertility determinants analysed (stemming either from socialization or from the transformation process) have not ceased to exist. bearing this in mind, there is little reason to expect social homogeneity or similar fertility patterns (see the following section) across both parts of germany. 3.2 period-specifi c differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women 3.2.1 descriptive fi ndings in order to describe the differences between east and west german women’s likelihood of fi rst and second births, we use nonparametric survivor functions (see fig. 2). regarding the transition to fi rst-time parenthood, it can be ascertained that east german women tend to become parents sooner than west german women, although this difference is not particularly pronounced before age 25. this differential is reversed when it comes to second births: west germans exhibit a clearly accelerated rate of second births once they have become fi rst-time parents. both results are well in line with fi ndings from life course studies. beyond a mere description of fertility processes in east and west germany, the primary focus of this study is on the explanation of the differing relative transition rates of east and west german women concerning fi rst and second births. in the following sections, differentials between east and west german women are traced back to the various intervening variables outlined above. 3.2.2 differentials in the transition to parenthood: an in-depth explanation the regression models shown in table 2 serve to determine whether the differences depicted in the survivor functions are statistically signifi cant. there is a signifi cantly higher likelihood of fi rst births among east german women overall in the period 1990 through 2006 (tab. 2, model 1), supporting hypothesis 1.7 the remaining models (2 through 5) in table 2 serve to explain this initial difference. the fi rst set of covariates is introduced in model 2. there are negative effects on the transition rate of educational status (blossfeld/huinink 1991) and work aspirations (barber 2001). although the effect of years of education tends to be negative, it remains insignifi cant until income and life satisfaction are controlled for (model 3). availability of informal childcare exerts a positive effect on the transition to parenthood (hank et al. 2004), whereas religiosity has no impact. 7 additional analyses showed that the difference remained invariant across time, indicated by insignifi cant interaction effects between the dummy “west german” and the period indicators. • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck22 fig. 2: transition to fi rst and second births in east and west germany (nonparametric survival functions) 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9 1,0 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 east west proportion of childless women age of women note: 17to 36-year-old women of birth cohorts beginning in 1970 source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9 1,0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 east west proportion of women with one child age of first child differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 23 tab. 2: predictors of transition to fi rst birth (discrete-time survival analysis, b coeffi cients with z values in parentheses) model 1 2 3 4 5 west germany -.10* -.15** -.20** -.08 -.02 (-2.19) (-3.19) (-4.06) (-1.43) (-0.33) years of education -.01 -.02* -.02* -.01 (-1.51) (-2.08) (-2.31) (-1.31) in education -.50** -.49** -.47** -.33** (-9.63) (-9.33) (-8.87) (-5.57) work aspirations -.14** -.14** -.18** -.13** (-4.06) (-3.98) (-4.97) (-3.48) religiousness (z score) .02 .02 .03 .01 (0.82) (0.77) (1.01) (0.17) informal childcare available .25** .26** .28** .60** (5.03) (5.19) (5.44) (10.03) household income (ln) .19** .13** .03 (4.22) (2.68) (0.68) general life satisfaction .01 .01 -.01 (0.98) (0.76) (-0.85) family orientation .33** .24** (8.89) (6.06) no religious denomination .18** .11 (2.66) (1.61) protestant .04 -.01 (0.70) (-0.10) other denomination .08 -.08 (0.92) (-0.80) type of union: marriage 1.66** (18.89) type of union: cohabitation 1.23** (11.15) type of union: lat .43** (4.89) west germany × cohabitation -.36** (-3.29) age of woman (-14) -.07** -.04+ -.04+ -.01 .02 (-2.86) (-1.75) (-1.70) (-0.28) (0.79) age of woman (-14) (ln) 2.36** 1.06** .98** .64* .05 (5.94) (4.05) (3.72) (2.42) (0.16) panel wave -.02** -.01 .00 .01 .03** (-3.75) (-1.19) (0.00) (1.38) (3.51) reduction of log likelihood 201.1** 351.4** 371.8** 474.0** 1062.4** note: + p= .10; * p= .05; ** p= .01; link function: probit; women aged 17 to 36, from birth cohorts beginning in 1970; n = 522 birth events, n = 10,389 person years; reference for religious denomination: catholic; reference for type of union: women without partner; fl ag variables for missing type of union and missing religious denomination have been added to models 4 & 5. source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck24 beyond these direct effects, it becomes obvious in model 2 that the differential between east and west german women grows even stronger (from b=-.10 to b=-.15) after controlling for the aforementioned factors. a glance at the corresponding indirect effects in table 3 further qualifi es these results. the positive sign of the indirect effects which differs from the negative sign of the dummy for “west german” suggests that east german women exhibit a slightly higher likelihood of fi rst births, despite being more highly educated (supporting hypothesis 4) and more work-oriented (see hypothesis 3). hence, statistically controlling for the latter variables actually increases the existing differential.8 in contrast, educational status and religiosity do not generate any change in the east-west differential (insignifi cant indirect effects). model 3 reveals that, whereas net household income has a positive impact on the likelihood of a fi rst birth (schoen et al. 1999), there is no effect of general life satisfaction. more importantly, these two factors do not seem to explain the differential between east and west germany, but in fact they increase it further. the positive indirect effect of household income indicates that the relative gap in fi rst births in west germany would tend to be even wider if east german households had economic resources similar to west german couples. this fi nding partly corroborates hypothesis 2. the most striking results are shown in model 4. the direct effects depicted suggest that family orientation generally increases the propensity to start a family. a surprising result concerns religious denomination: respondents who are non-denominational exhibit a higher likelihood of fi rst births than those who belong to a denomination. although this fi nding may seem counterintuitive at a fi rst glance, a closer inspection reveals that it is corroborated by existing research. for example, techman and schollaert (1991) report that, whereas religion increases the rate at which married couples start a family, it also greatly delays the time before marriage. hence, religious people seem to devote more time to the search for a partner, but once they have committed themselves to their partners (e.g. by marrying), they readily become parents. in empirical terms, the delaying effect of religion on marriage seems to outweigh its accelerating effect on fertility after marriage. thornton et al. (1992) report similar fi ndings. we are able to replicate these results: in model 5, the positive effect of “no denomination” becomes insignifi cant once the type of relationship is controlled for. the central result from model 4 concerns the insignifi cant effect of west vs. east german. turning to the strong negative indirect effects in table 3, it becomes evident that the lower rate of fi rst births among west german women can be entirely explained by their lower family orientation (see hypothesis 5), and by their stronger denominational commitment (research question); whereas 84.9 % of the childless in the west german sub-sample have a religious denomination, the proportion is 8 as a non-technical interpretation of this result, one could think about the following hypothetical case: if east and west german women were similar in their work aspirations and in their educational level, the relative defi cit of fi rst births of west (as compared to east) german women would be even more pronounced than it already is. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 25 as low as 25.6 % among east german women. in sum, the higher rate of fi rst births among east german women as compared to west germans after unifi cation can be explained by differing long-lasting cultural differences between these two subpopulations, namely the differing role of religion and attitudinal discrepancies with regard to family orientation. the last model 5 controls for the type of relationship, along with an interaction effect between type of relationship and the dummy variable “west german”.9 three important insights result from this model. first, the more committed the type of partnership, the higher the likelihood of fi rst births (cf. heaton et al. 1999), although the corresponding effects now refer to east germany (cf. frazier et al. 2004). second, the positive impact of non-marital cohabitation (compared to being single) is signifi cantly more pronounced among east german women, a fi nding that is in line with existing research (see konietzka/kreyenfeld 2005). third, the effects of education and household income are not causal; rather, they are fully explained by the type of relationship. 9 note that in this model, the main effect of west german becomes conditional in that it refers to respondents without a partner (cf. frazier et al. 2004). hence, this effect is not interpreted further. tab. 3: specifi c indirect effects of residence in west germany on the transition to fi rst birth indirect effect beta t west german in education hazard rate .010 1.43 west german years of education hazard rate .015* 2.25 west german work aspirations hazard rate .025** 3.80 west german religiousness hazard rate .008 0.95 west german life satisfaction hazard rate .007 0.78 west german household income hazard rate .019* 2.03 west german informal childcare available hazard rate -.008 -1.53 west german family orientation hazard rate -.032** -3.41 west german no denomination hazard rate -.094* -2.48 west german protestant hazard rate .005 0.61 west german other denomination hazard rate .005 0.74 note: + p= .10; * p= .05; ** p= .01; link function: probit; women aged 17 to 36, from birth cohorts beginning in 1970; n = 522 birth events, n = 10,389 person years; model specifi cation derived from model 4 in table 2; reference for religious denomination: catholic source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck26 3.2.3 differentials in the likelihood of second birth: an in-depth explanation in line with previous studies (dornseiff/sackmann 2003), west german women exhibit a considerably higher likelihood of transition to a second birth (see fig. 2, lower panel). this effect is statistically signifi cant (see tab. 4, model 1) and even stronger than the differential concerning the transition to parenthood. additional interaction effects with the panel wave were calculated. similar to the results for the fi rst child, no shift over time in the difference between east and west german women can be observed. characteristics of east german women that should promote fertility are introduced in model 2. family orientation has a clearly positive direct impact on the transition rate (schoen et al. 1999). in contrast to its negative effect on fi rst births, neither level of education nor enrolment in the educational system exhibit any effect on the likelihood of second births. as indicated by the insignifi cant indirect effects (see tab. 5), none of the three variables account for the east-west differential. in model 3, we control for variables that should decrease the relative transition rate of east german women to their second child, thus serving as potential explanatory factors for the east-west differential. similar to fi rst births, the availability of informal childcare has an effect (albeit a small one) on the rate of transition to second births. we fi nd positive effects of religiosity (brose 2006) and life satisfaction and a negative impact of work aspirations (budig 2003). religious denominations do not exert any effect beyond religiosity, though. the positive indirect effects of these three variables (see tab. 5) indicate that they provide a partial explanation of the differential concerning second births between east and west german women. west german women are thus more likely to have a second birth partly because they are less work-oriented, more religious and more satisfi ed with their lives, in line with hypotheses 2 and 3.10 however, the difference is not fully explained because the coeffi cient for west germany remains signifi cant in model 3 (see tab. 4). moreover, model 4 indicates that both cohabiting and being married to the partner signifi cantly increase the likelihood of second births (as compared to not having a partner). additionally, it can be seen in model 4 that the effects of work aspirations, family orientation and life satisfaction are confounded with type of relationship. 10 because there is neither a linear nor a quadratic effect of household income on the likelihood of second births, this variable is not included in the analyses. differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 27 tab. 4: predictors of transition to second birth (discrete time survival analysis, b coeffi cients with z values in parentheses) model 1 2 3 4 west germany .31** .33** .23* .23* (4.74) (4.69) (2.45) (2.33) years of education .01 .01 .00 (0.44) (0.66) (0.06) in education -.02 .01 .16 (-0.22) (0.06) (1.35) family orientation .23** .20** .09 (2.85) (2.83) (0.97) religiousness (z score) .08* .08* (2.32) (2.12) no denomination .01 .06 (0.11) (0.59) protestant .11 .17+ (1.06) (1.92) other denomination .18 .12 (1.43) (1.08) work aspirations -.08* -.06 (-1.96) (-1.29) general life satisfaction .04* .01 (2.00) (0.52) informal child care available .18+ .19+ (1.82) (1.69) type of union: marriage .94** (5.32) type of union: cohabitation .89** (4.66) type of union: lat .26 (1.04) age of first child (+1) -.46** -.45** -.45** -.47** (-10.48) (-10.30) (-9.91) (-8.82) age of first child (+1) (ln) 2.19** 2.15** 2.11** 2.21** (11.62) (11.37) (10.70) (9.68) panel wave -.02* -.01+ -.01 -.01 (-2.19) (-1.72) (-1.02) (-0.85) reduction of log likelihood 257.5** 266.8** 290.0** 338.1** note: + p= .10; * p= .05; ** p= .01; link function: probit; women aged 18 to 36, from birth cohorts beginning in 1970; n = 338 birth events, n = 3,387 person years; reference for religious denomination: catholic; reference for type of union: women without partner; fl ag variables for missing type of union and missing religious denomination have been added to models 3 & 4. source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck28 4 summary and discussion the present study compared the value of two approaches to explaining the fertility differential between east and west germany. the fi rst highlights the role of discrepancies in attitudes and values, stemming from both long-standing sociocultural differences and from experiences in two opposite political systems. the second approach stresses the role of temporary strains (e.g. economic and biographical insecurities) in the aftermath of the system change that has taken place. with regard to the fi rst approach, we fi nd that even more than one decade after unifi cation there is still evidence of sustained socio-cultural differences that reduce the relative transition rate to fi rst and second births among east german as compared to west german women). first, the lack of denominational affi liation and religiosity among east german women has to be mentioned. the historical roots of these characteristics lie in a long-standing secular tradition which was reinforced by the antireligious doctrine of the socialist regime (pollack 1998). the implications of this peripheral role of religion in east germany are, however, rather complex. whereas it leads to an acceleration of fi rst births (fuelled by a stronger tendency to commit oneself to a partner), it seems to reduce the propensity towards second births. secondly, according to the literature (adler 2004), east german women continue to exhibit particularly pronounced occupational aspirations. this feature still has an independent negative effect on the rate of transition to fi rst and second births. remarkably, however, east german women are characterized not only by a higher occupational orientation. at the same time, these women (at least those who remain tab. 5: specifi c indirect effects of residence in west germany on the transition to second birth indirect effect b t west german in education hazard rate .001 0.06 west german years of education hazard rate -.011 -0.66 west german work aspirations hazard rate .021+ 1.83 west german religiousness hazard rate .036* 2.19 west german life satisfaction hazard rate .018+ 1.85 west german family orientation hazard rate -.011 -1.56 west german no religious denomination hazard rate .009 0.12 west german protestant hazard rate .027 0.77 west german other religious denomination hazard rate .014 0.54 west german informal childcare available hazard rate .002 0.40 note: + p= .10; * p= .05; link function: probit; women aged 18 to 36, from birth cohorts beginning in 1970; n = 338 birth events, n = 3,387 person years; model specifi cation derived from model 3 in table 4; reference for religious denomination: catholic. source: soep (waves g-w, 1990-2006, own calculations) differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women • 29 childless) also exhibit a signifi cantly higher family orientation. this, in turn, has a positive effect on fertility. the second approach argues that negative consequences of the political transformation have temporarily restricted fertility processes in east germany. we fi nd little evidence that the fertility differential between east and west germany is a result of socio-economic consequences of the transformation process. although the east german women’s lower household incomes tend to operate as a suppressor variable for their elevated risk of fi rst births, its effect becomes insignifi cant once relationship type is controlled for. moreover, their lower life satisfaction only marginally contributes to explaining their lower risk of second births. however, it should be noted that the sample included only the birth cohorts starting from 1970. those women who were relatively young (20 and younger) at the time of reunifi cation had a number of years in front of them before the fertility processes studied in the present article typically become prevalent. hence, it is not very surprising that the fertility behaviour of these women was not seriously affected by the societal transformation process because they had plenty of time to recover from the fi rst “shock”. further research is required to compare these younger cohorts to older women from a genuine period-specifi c perspective, something beyond the scope of the present article. nonetheless, we are able to fully explain the differential in fi rst births between east and west germany in the selected “post-unifi cation” cohorts by means of the modeled intervening variables; to our knowledge, this has not been done in previous studies. although the differing transition rates to the second child could also be partially explained, a residual difference however remains unaccounted for by the available explanatory factors. in general terms, the present study substantially extends previous research by using a panel approach instead of conventional event history analyses or trend descriptions based on register data. we thereby managed to disentangle different types of factors underlying the persistent fertility differential between east and west germany: short-term period effects of the german reunifi cation, long-term cultural differences between the east and west german subpopulations and structural differences in educational and labour market opportunities. computing indirect effects within a path model framework made it possible to assess the direction and relative strength of the various intervening mechanisms. whereas the fi ndings of most existing studies relate to the immediate effects of the societal transformation of east germany (kreyenfeld/konietzka 2004), or integrate them into the general framework of “catch up modernization” (schneider et al. 1995) and of demographic transition models, this panel study also accounts for persisting regional cultural differences within germany, as indicated by religious affi liation, family orientation and work aspirations. it is not necessarily the existence, but rather the persistence of sociocultural differences between east and west germany, that is surprising. although coarse, cross-sectional measures such as the tfr might suggest a picture of convergence or adaptation, we feel that characterizing the corresponding fertility trends with these terms does not adequately refl ect the complex puzzle underlying • oliver arránz becker, daniel lois, bernhard nauck30 the differing, parity-specifi c fertility patterns in the eastern and western parts of germany. moreover, the study challenges the prevalent view of the political unifi cation of germany as being a kind of “natural experiment”. in fact, this view presupposes a homogeneous population, within which one group experiences a defi ned “treatment”. empirical evidence shows that regional cultural differences already existed prior to the existence of the gdr, and it is unclear whether the frg represents a valid control group. accordingly, the homogeneity criterion is massively violated. consequently, this study follows a theoretical framework within which fertility transitions are conceptualized in a combined context and life-course approach (nauck 1995: 46ff, 2000; hank 2002, 2003): social contexts provide not only opportunity structures for the realization of individual action preferences and serve as targets of selective migration, but are also places of social control, of transmission of cultural patterns and ways of life, as well as objects of identifi cation. as far as the dataset that was used allows for the inspection of the latter mechanisms, this study is the fi rst to account for such long-lasting socio-cultural differences between east german and west german women. finally, some limitations of the present study should be mentioned. one caveat is that we cannot apply a dyadic design to the analyses because the sample is restricted to women. unfortunately, there are no data available in the soep for male partners not living in the respondent’s household. however, the high unemployment rate of male partners in the new federal states might be relevant with regard to the fertility patterns examined. moreover, the data available do not enable us to completely explain all parity-specifi c differences in fertility patterns between east and west germany. some unobserved heterogeneity remains for the transition to second births; 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socioeconomic change. in: population and development review 21: 387-397 a german translation of this authorised original article by the authors is available under the title “unterschiede in den fertilitätsmustern zwischen ostund westdeutschen frauen”, doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2010-02de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-02de0, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. oliver arránz becker ( ), dr. daniel lois, prof. dr. bernhard nauck. tu chemnitz, institut für soziologie. thüringer weg 9. 09107 chemnitz. e-mail: oliver.arranz-becker@soziologie.tu-chemnitz.de, daniel.lois@soziologie.tuchemnitz.de, bernhard.nauck@soziologie.tu-chemnitz.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext on developments in the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families in western and eastern germany – a model calculation evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein abstract: this article tackles the question of how, on the one hand, the high life expectancy and, on the other, the increasing age of mothers at childbirth will impact the joint lifetime of three and four generations and will develop in future. to this end, indicators are derived from the offi cial data on mortality and fertility for the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families. because of the complicated data available, the investigation will be restricted to the female succession of generations, and here to an observation of the fi rst-born child in each case. the indicators act as model calculations, which is why they serve above all to indicate (future) developments in mean joint lifetimes. the indicators are calculated for the average jointly-spent lifetime of three-generation families for the period from 1990 to 2060, and of four-generation families for the period from 2010 to 2060. the result of the calculations for western germany show an increase in the jointly-spent lifetime of three generations of up to roughly 35 years in 2000, after which that the fi gure falls continually to a value of roughly 30 years. a similarly developing trend emerges for four generations, but this is delayed by roughly 30 years towards the future, and reaches the highest value around 2030 to 2040, at roughly seven to ten years. for eastern germany, with its even younger age of women at childbirth in both the past and in the present, the maximum jointly-spent life years of three generations at the beginning of the observation period (roughly around 1990) is almost 40 years, after which this indicator falls continuously. the indicator of the average jointly-spent years of four-generation families, by contrast, probably reaches a maximum around 2020, with a value of 12 to 14 years. also after this, one may anticipate a reduction in the joint lifetimes of four-generation families in eastern germany. all in all, the trends of the indicators denote that one may not necessarily conclude from the longer life expectancy that the generations will have a longer joint lifetime, nor that the number of four-generation families will increase. rather, the three-generation family also appears to remain the decisive generational composition of families in this century. keywords: generation interval · composition of generations in family structure · multigenerational family · model calculation comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 1 (2011): 41-76 (date of release: 20.01.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-01en3 • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein42 1 introduction the view is becoming increasingly prevalent in academic discussions and in publications that, in a “society of longevity”, families with four generations are increasing in number and that they will defi ne the picture of the future. here, the continuous increase in residual life – in particular in the higher age cohorts who have typifi ed mortality since the middle of the last century – above all leads one to presume that the four-generation family will become the norm. having said that, in light of such considerations there are also tendencies in the opposite direction which need to be considered. the age of mothers at the birth of their children has been increasing since the mid-seventies. one may hence anticipate that the (future) age at which mothers become grandmothers, and grandmothers in their turn become great grandmothers, will also increase. if this increase, which accumulates over several generations, is however faster than that of residual life, the mean joint lifetime of the four generations is likely to fall. if, for instance, the generation interval (which is estimated with the average age at which women have children) increases to 35, mothers would become grandmothers at an average age of 70 and grandmothers would have to become 105 in order to see their great grandchildren. in the fi nal analysis, however, this conceptual game generates the research question to be addressed in this article: is it possible to measure or estimate the mean joint lifetimes of successions of generations of family compositions on the basis of the offi cial mortality and fertility data? the authors’ main hypothesis here consists of the presumption that the increasing age of mothers at childbirth, and hence also the rising age at which mothers become grandmothers, and at which the latter in turn become great grandmothers, will be more likely to lead to a reduction than to an increase in the joint lifetimes of three or four generations in the coming decades. to answer this research question, this article will use model calculations to reveal the trends on which the development of the joint lifetime of the generations is based. the model calculations are founded on a whole series of assumptions, some of which tend to be reasoned more by plausibility considerations than by strict formal and academic criteria. the results obtained in this article therefore take account of the imprecisions which of necessity come about in that they do not speak of an estimation or forecast of the mean joint lifetime of three or four-generation families, but of indicators (and their projection) for this mean joint lifetime. the idea as to how to construct such indicators also emerges from the above exemplary consideration. if one knows at a fi ctive point in time of the birth of a child, related to a whole, the average age of the mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers (and hence also their average birth cohorts), it is possible to read from a suitable, selected cohort life table the average expected residual lifetime of the (fi ctive) child with his/her “average mother”, “average grandmother” and “average great grandmother”. these values can be interpreted as a mean joint lifetime of the various successions of generations “mother/child”, “grandmother/child” and “great grandmother/child”. because of the data available, it is necessary, fi nally, to restrict the calculations to modelling the female succession of generations. this is however of secondary signifi cance to answer the research question, given that, according to developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 43 current research knowledge, the generation intervals for the male generations are longer than those of women since men are on average older than women at the birth of their children. hence, analogously to the above considerations, the mean joint lifetime of men with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren is much shorter than that of women. for this reason, the restriction to the female succession of generations – and they are related in each case to the fi rst child – ultimately leads to a certain amount of estimation of the maximum mean joint lifetime of threeand four-generation families. the results for the mean joint lifetime of mother and child are not presented in this paper since they are of secondary relevance for the enrichment of the academic discussion of the question of whether the family associations will be more likely to consist of three or four generations. firstly, in addition to defi ning terms, section two of this paper outlines the historical and current state of research on the development of threeand four-generation families. since no one was dealing with the topic until about the mid-1980s, the listed literature does not distinguish between western and eastern germany. this differentiated approach is not followed until the calculations because the different age of women at childbirth in the past and also in the present leads one to anticipate different developments in the future here. the third section serves to formally elucidate the manner in which the indicators and their future extrapolations are ascertained, as well as to describe the data used. since the calculations act as model calculations, the results for the mean joint lifetimes of threeand fourgeneration families in the three main scenarios are presented in section four. in the following fi fth section, an investigation is carried out with a sensitivity analysis as to the direction and sensitivity at which the indicators react to changes in the assumptions. finally, the overall calculations will show above all that the development of the average age of a mother at the birth of her (fi rst) child is the decisive infl uencing factor for the future course of the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families over the next 60 years, rather than an increase in mean residual life. if the average age of mothers at the birth of their children also increases in the future, the mean joint lifetime both of threeand four-generation families will decrease in future. this circumstance will also mean that the shares of four-generation families in germany will tend to fall in future. section six concludes by summing up the overall the results of this paper. 2 state of research it was only in about the mid-1980s that a growing academic interest in multi-generational relationships became recognisable in sociological circles, with transfer and support benefi ts, as well as contact intensity and contact quality, primarily becoming the focus of the analyses (nave-herz 2005: 48). contacts, distance and proximity, as well as transfers between the generations, continue to form the focus of research into intergenerational relationships today. • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein44 2.1 defi nitions the defi nition of “generation” taken as a basis for our research is generally viewed at two levels: as a societal defi nition of “generation”, against the background of common • features shared by identical or neighbouring birth cohorts in a specifi c historical (political, cultural and economic) environment, as well as; as a familial defi nition of “generation” or lineage: here, affi liation to a gen-• eration always remains identical, whilst the position within the succession of generations changes – children become parents and later grandparents or even great grandparents (cf. on this szydlik/künemund 2009: 9; lüscher/ liegle 2003: 59 et seq., 90). the familial defi nition of “generation” is used for the topic of this article. the term “multigenerational family” is used in this paper in analogy to lauterbach (2002: 542) “in order to distinguish a living arrangement in which at least three generations are interlinked by lineage or adoption in the succession of generations from the living arrangement constituted by the nuclear family.”1 2.2 historical development the three-generation family is taken for granted today, but it is however something rather new in historical terms. up until the 20th century, a family model was prevalent for large sections of the population in germany which today is summarised by the term “western family” or “european marriage pattern”, and which was typifi ed by a high average marital age and low life expectancy. around 1800, for instance, women in germany married at an average age of 26, the fi gure for men being 28. a relatively large proportion of people remained single all their lives. the marital age continued to rise in the 19th century, and it was not until the fi nal third of that century that the values fell (cf. on this ehmer 2004: 47; mitterauer 2009: 14, 21, 70 et seqq.; höpfl inger et al. 2006: 22-28; eggen/rupp 2007: 6 et seqq.). this advanced marital age was primarily due to economic factors: “economic conditions also play a role in the characteristic european marital age. at least those groups of the population who were not able to rely on taking over an inherited household when setting up a home [for instance rural maids and servants, as well as urban messengers – the author] had to have saved suffi cient money for marriage to be able to make a home from scratch. [...] this led to relatively late marriages, particularly in the lower urban and rural population groups.” (mitterauer 2009: 21) especially in these social groups, this led to a long phase of single life and late marriages. lauterbach (2002: 541) therefore reaches the following conclusion for this period: “in historical terms, the multigenerational family is quite simply a myth. [...] because of the low life expectancy and the high marital age, multigenerational families in the sense of several successive generations living at the same time were virtually non-existent.” 1 all citations from papers in german language are own translations. developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 45 the vast majority of people who lived to an old age in the past are likely to have had children and grandchildren, but only a small number of children had surviving grandparents, and if they did, they lost them in early childhood (cf. on this hagestad/ herlofson 2007: 4; farkas/hogan 1995: 1; uhlenberg 1996: 682; putney/bengtson 2003: 151 et seq.). with the fall in child and youth mortality which occurred in the first demographic transition, the chances increased for surviving grandparents to have a larger number of children and grandchildren. this trend halted when fertility levels underwent a massive drop at the end of the 19th century. especially in the second half of the 20th century, increasing life expectancy among the elderly brings with it a new development: more and more children and juveniles have a chance to get to know their grandparents, and the joint lifespan of the three generations increases. taking into account the outlined historical development and calculations based on empirical data, for instance from the socioeconomic panel, lauterbach and other researchers conclude that grandparenthood did not become the norm in the composition of generations in family structure until the second half of the 20th century (lauterbach 1994; 1995a, 1995b; 2000; 2004; lüscher/liegle 2003; bengtson 2001; höpfl inger et al. 2006). in the usa, it was above all vern l. bengtson (bengtson 2001; bengtson/ rosentha/burton 1990; bengtson/schaie/burton 1995; bengtson/schütze 1992; putney/bengtson 2003) and peter uhlenberg (uhlenberg 1995, 1996; uhlenberg/ kirby 1998) who dealt with recent developments in such multigenerational families; the corresponding research in germany began above all in the context of dfg (german research foundation) collaborative research centre 3, “microanalytical basis of social policy”, and was particularly continued in recent years by wolfgang lauterbach. in a joint publication with rosenthal and burton (1990), bengtson indicated that changes in family structures and in intergenerational relationships are primarily caused by two demographic trends: 1. the dramatic drop in mortality since the end of the 19th century and 2. the fall in fertility. other infl uencing factors are a changed timing of births (more teenage births on the one hand and the postponement of births to a later age on the other), childlessness, growing lone child parenthood and divorces. the focus here lies on the increase in the joint lifetime of generations caused by falling mortality. the american research tends to marginalise the signifi cance of the increasing age of mothers at birth, which is however considerable for germany and on which this article focuses. this effect was relatively short-lived in the usa – the age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child increased there by roughly three years, above all between 1970 and 1990, after which only a slight increase to 25.0 was recorded up to 2006 (mathews/hamilton 2009: 1). a relatively large share of teenage pregnancies, combined with a low age of mothers at childbirth among hispanics, non-hispanic blacks, american indians and alaskan natives in particular, contrasted with the increase in the age of mothers at childbirth as a whole. nonetheless, the family structure has undergone considerable change in the usa, which has led academic conception of “beanpole family”: “one intergenerational family structure that has become increasingly common in contemporary north american society is what can be described as the ‘beanpole family’, the product • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein46 of declining mortality and fertility. also called ‘verticalisation’, this occurs through intergenerational extension, when the number of living generations within lineages increases, and intragenerational contraction, when there is a steady decrease in the number of members within each generation [...]. verticalisation has many implications for the complexity and potential pool of intergenerational relationships as well as for multigeneration living arrangements.” (bengtson et al. 1990: 264) this pattern which is typical for the usa cannot however be easily transferred to germany. instead, bengtson and schütze (1992: 500) found the following to apply to germany: “a further intergenerational pattern emerges which is more typical for germany than the ‘beanpole’; it has been called the ‘age-break structure’, emerging when women do not have their fi rst children until late in life. [...] if women postpone their fi rst pregnancy to their midor even late-thirties, and in particular if this takes place over two generations or more, a family structure comes into being which has major age gaps. [...] and fi nally, the later in life the fi rst child is born, the fewer children will be born altogether in all probability.” 2.3 four-generation constellations the statement that in a society of longevity, four-generation families increase in number and will determine the dimensions of family life in the long term (bmfsfj 2009) was an occasion for the authors to tackle this problem in greater detail. what is the scale of four-generation families in the family structure in germany? since the data available on this question are very thin, it is only possible to estimate a scale from a few empirical surveys. table 1 provides an overview of this. it is possible to estimate from the information contained in this table that roughly half of respondents from middle age onwards live in a three-generation family, roughly one-quarter to one-fi fth live in a two-family constellation, and a maximum of one respondent in fi ve to ten lives in a four-generation family. it is hence not possible to say anything at this point about trends because of the different survey fundamentals and respondent age cohorts. höpfl inger, hummel and hugentobler (2006: 27-28) found in their surveys that at the beginning of the 20th century only 1-2 % of newborn children in switzerland had great grandparents, and stated for the present: “only with an intergenerational tradition of starting a family early can today’s children expect a longer joint life expectancy with great grandmothers and in some cases great grandfathers. if the intergenerational birth interval is 75 years, roughly two-fi fths of ten-year-old children of the 1990 birth cohort can know their maternal great grandmother, and roughly one-fi fth can know their paternal great grandfather; these persons already being very old, with an average age of 85. [...] an intergenerational birth interval of 80 years in comparison to 75 already reduces the probability of a ten-year-old child having surviving great grandparents by half. if the average birth intervals between great grandchildren and great grandparents of 85 to 88 years currently actually observed in switzerland is presumed, even lower values are shown, and children in switzerland who can grow up with great grandparents – with its tradition of starting a family later – are clearly the exception.” developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 47 2.4 infl uencing factors on the composition of generations in family structure and the joint lifetime of the generations (1) as was already explained in section 2.2, the fall in mortality, and hence the increase in life expectancy, was the main reason why the cohabitation of several generations was able to become the norm at all. however, this is not the only factor infl uencing the length of the joint lifespan between the generations, even if the other factors receive much less attention in research and discussion. (2) a second major infl uencing factor which can have both a positive and a negative impact on joint lifetimes is the age of the parents at the birth of the fi rst children. the fall in average ages until the beginning of the nineteen seventies considerably increased the probability of threeor even four-generation constellations; the joint lifetime of the generations became longer. since then, a continuous increase in this average age can be observed which runs counter to an extension of the joint lifetime of the generations. depending on the level of the increase in life expectancy, an extension of this joint lifespan is nonetheless possible in the interaction of these two infl uencing factors. the question here is, however, what is the future development if the increasing average age adds up over several generations? this is for instance indicated by hoff (2006: 238) with the following statement: “on the one hand, with ongoing increases in life expectancy the probability of the existence of more than three generations in the expanded family network also increases. great grandparents and great grandchildren are no longer a rarity. on the other tab. 1: scale of the composition of generations in family structures in empirical surveys in recent years databasis no. of generations (survey year) two three four source age survey (1996), 40-85 years 16.0 % 55.9 % 20.1 % hoff 2006: 245 soep (1996), 40-80 years ca. 31 % ca. 47 % ca. 9 % own calculations acc. to lauterbach 2004: 107 oasis (2000), 50-74 years 23.0 % 50.0 % 6.0 % lowenstein/ogg 2003: 16 age survey (2002), 40-85 years 18.1 % 55.2 % 19.4 % hoff 2006: 245 share (2004), 50 years and older 20.9 % 49.8 % 17.3 % kohli et al. 2005: annex, tab. 4a9 ggs (2005), 40-79 years 24.6 % 53.5 % 9.9 % own calculations from the generations and gender survey • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein48 hand, the increasing age of german women at the birth of their fi rst children leads to an increase in the interval between the generations. it is still unclear which of the two trends will have the more pronounced effect on generation constellations in the second half of life, meaning whether an increase or a decrease in the prevalence of multiple-generation constellations can be anticipated within the expanded family.” (cf. on this also höpfl inger et al. 2006; höpfl inger 2008; lüscher/liegle 2003; lauterbach 1995a, 2002; bien 1994; bengtson/schütze 1992). wernhart et al. (2008: 16) estimate the infl uence of the increasing age of a mother at fi rst childbirth to be even stronger: “since this effect is twofold (women themselves become mothers later and their children again have children later [grandchildren]), one may presume in the long-term view that the birth time effect will overlap the increased life expectancy, leading in turn to a fall in the joint lifetime of grandchildren and grandparents.” (3) the falling fertility can infl uence the composition of generations in family structure and the joint lifespan in various directions: the delay in the birth of the fi rst child to a later age reduces the probability • that subsequent children are also born (cf. on this lauterbach 2002: 543). hence, the falling number of children per woman tends to push towards a reduction in the average age of births if one views age over all children born (fewer children are born per woman and the age of the mother at the birth of the last child falls). successive generations hence have fewer children and hence fewer and fewer grandchildren and great grandchildren (cf. e.g. hoff 2006: 234). the rise in childlessness leads to the succession of generations not be-• ing continued; family generational lines break. childless men and women hence live in intergenerational relationships which go only in one direction (towards the elderly), and which as a rule consist of a maximum of two generations. all in all, therefore, the proportion of families with three and more living generations also diminishes as childlessness increases. (4) in addition to demographic infl uencing factors, social and historical conditions may also impact the joint lifespan. for instance, the joint lifetime of grandchildren and grandparents from higher social groups may be positively infl uenced by their longer life expectancy. above all, historical infl uences are also shown in germany in connection with the two world wars. there are pronounced gender-specifi c differences here which will be briefl y outlined below. 2.5 gender-specifi c differences in the joint lifetime of the generations the gender-specifi c differences in joint lifetimes are the result of several processes acting at once – the higher life expectancy of women, the impact of the two world wars, and the different marital age between men and women, all adding up to a pronounced overhang of women in the high age cohorts. these processes result in developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 49 fathers having a much lower probability of becoming grandfathers or great grandfathers at all, and if they did of having a shorter joint lifespan with their grandchildren or great grandchildren (cf. z.b. lauterbach 1995a, 2000, 2004; hoff 2006). the higher life expectancy of women is not to be dwelled on at this stage; this fi nding is suffi ciently known from surveys on mortality (e.g. luy 2002). the first and second world wars particularly led to an above-average increase in mortality among men in the birth cohorts between 1900 and 1930, so that these men’s children were frequently only able to spend a short joint time with their fathers, and the grandchildren of these cohorts had particularly few grandfathers. the difference in the marital age of women and men is estimated to be between three and four years. the infl uence of this factor on the generation structure is presented by lauterbach (2004: 79) as follows: “these age differences accumulate over two generations to such a degree that a notable age difference on the transition into the family phase of grandparenthood between the fi liation lines and the genders can be found. consequently, it would have to be added that the maternal grandmother is the youngest within this generational structure and the paternal grandfather the oldest. independent of the wars that were waged in the fi rst half of the 20th century, or of other social infl uences, there are hence [...] structural particularities exerting a major infl uence on the generational structure in families.” the above makes it evident that it is not suffi cient to conclude from the longer life expectancy a generally longer joint lifetime of the generations and an increase in the number of four-generation families. the daughters of the now still relatively young grandmother generations, who delayed starting a family, will increase the intergenerational age differences and will enter grandparenthood at a much later age than their mothers’ generations. to what degree this development can be equalised by the increasing life expectancy is questionable. on this wolfgang lauterbach (2002: 543) has the following to say: “as to the differentiated development of the age of starting a family in germany, it is found that a successive bringing forward of births in life courses took place among those born up until the mid-1940s. by contrast, the younger birth cohorts show a considerable delay in the family-starting phase [...] the heightened life expectancy and the bringing forward of starting a family initially acted together to increase the joint lifetime. the further development of the joint lifetime of parents and children is however open: no statement can yet be made as to the further (residual) life expectancy of the younger generations after starting a family. in view of the considerable delay in starting a family, however, for the future (at least among college graduates) one may presume only a slight postponement, perhaps even stagnation.” the chapters below help to gain an understanding of the considerations put forward here on the developments in the joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families using data from offi cial statistics and to estimate the coming trends for the years to come. • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein50 3 data and modelling before explaining in the next section how the indicators and their extrapolation are ascertained for the future, a brief description of the important demographic benchmarks is to introduce the topic and make it clear why separate calculations are carried out for western and eastern germany. the benchmark which is most important in this context is the age of mothers at the birth of their children. this is where incisive changes have taken place in recent decades in that the age of mothers at childbirth for all children, having reached a low in the mid-nineteen seventies (frg 26.7, gdr 24.6), increased continually to 30.2 in western germany and to 29.3 in eastern germany. major age differences occur here if one compares out-of-wedlock births and the birth of the fi rst children in an existing marriage, accounting for 1.7 years in the west and 2 in the east. if one considers furthermore that almost 58 % of children in eastern germany are born out of wedlock, thus twice as many as in western germany, it becomes clear that demographic differentiations between the west and the east in this respect have persisted to the present day. this also relates to the proportion of childless women, who account for around 19 % in western germany, and about 7 % in eastern germany, in the birth cohorts around 1960 whose fertility biography is completed. whilst this share has remained virtually unchanged in eastern germany in comparison to the older women’s cohorts, it has increased in the west by roughly two-thirds in comparison to women in the 1930s cohorts. with regard to mortality, the differences between western and eastern german women have virtually vanished here; identical circumstances may be presumed for the future in this respect. it is however not possible with data from offi cial statistics either to ascertain the frequency of the occurrence of certain compositions of generations in family structure, or to make any concrete statements on the average generation intervals. it is possible to use survey data (e.g. age survey, soep, oasis, share or ggs) to ascertain the scale of composition of generations in family structures, and in some cases even in an adequate level of detail. however, these datasets also prove to be unsuited to estimate over time a trend for the shares of threeand four-generation families. by contrast, it is however possible to develop from the data of offi cial statistics via model calculations two indicators which show the (future) course taken by levels of threeand four-generation families. the idea behind the calculation of these indicators is a measurement of the joint lifetime of successive generations. however, because of the data available in germany, it is necessary to restrict the investigation to ascertaining the joint lifetime of great grandmothers and great grandchildren and of grandmothers and grandchildren. only then do the data available from offi cial statistics permit such joint lifetimes to be estimated via indicators and their course projected for the future. it must however be heavily underlined that this essay quite deliberately refrains from speaking of either measuring or estimating the joint lifetime of successive generations since all results come from model calculations. what is more, the indicators developed contain a whole series of implicit and explicit assumptions and (mathematically and technically) unsolvable imprecisions, so that the precision implied by the terms estimation or forecast is not tenable developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 51 here. this analysis aims to say something about the historical and future development of trends in the joint lifetime of great grandmothers and great grandchildren and of grandmothers and grandchildren, and does not provide an estimated value of this joint lifetime at a certain time of the calculation. the imprecision contained in the calculations is to be made clear via the expression “indicator” for the joint lifetime. since the calculations to be carried out are additionally purely average observations, we speak of (indicators for) mean joint lifetime. hence, fi nally, one indicator shows both a trend and a curve statement on the mean joint lifetime of four generations – that is of great grandmothers and their great grandchildren. the other indicator describes analogously the course of the mean joint lifetime of three generations – that is of grandmother and their grandchild. 3.1 the average age of a woman at the birth of the fi rst child the starting point of the considerations is the view of the (almost exclusively) female succession of generations, great grandmother, grandmother, mother and grandchild. of this succession of generations, however, only the special case is additionally observed that the fi rst child of the great grandmother was female (here then referred to as “the grandmother”) and the fi rst child of the grandmother was also female (here then referred to as “the mother”). the gender of the mother’s fi rstborn child is irrelevant in this observation of the mean joint lifetime, since a positive value for the mean joint lifetime implies that, on average, both generations are still alive and know one another and a negative value placed on this contrarily depicts an experience which, on average, no longer takes place. in order to ascertain such indicators, there is a need fi rst of all to know the average age of a woman at the birth of her fi rst child over time. these data should be available with the observation to be carried out here as a time series with considerable length, which is not revealed at all by the data of the offi cial statistics, and certainly not over an adequate period. since, however, the age-specifi c fertility rates (separated by western and eastern germany) are available in the offi cial statistics from 1956 onwards, a pragmatic approach is chosen here, and an estimator for the average age of a woman at the birth of her fi rst child (albeit a biased one) is ascertained from these data.2 because the average age of a woman at the birth of a child calculated on the basis of the age-spe2 the age-specifi c fertility rates for eastern germany for 1956 to 1989 originate from the “sonderreihe mit beiträgen für die ehem. ddr” (statistisches bundesamt 1993: 77 et seqq.), and were supplied for western germany by the federal statistical offi ce. for the period 1990 to 2008, the age-specifi c fertility rates from the age-specifi c information on offi cial statistics for the number of live births and women by western and eastern germany were calculated separately. the special case of berlin was tackled by the data for berlin from 1990 onwards being attributed neither to the east nor to the west of germany, and hence removed from the calculations. since the infl uence of the data from berlin on the shape of the age-specifi c fertility rate distributions for western and eastern germany tends to be slight, the resulting biased effect – which only occurs if the appearance of the age-specifi c fertility rate distribution of berlin differs from that of western or eastern germany – in the calculation of an estimator for the age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child is likely to be low, and hence negligible in the calculation of the indicators. • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein52 cifi c fertility rates is above the age of a woman at the birth of the fi rst child – this also applies to the corresponding median age – a suitable α-quantile is selected here that is below the median age, that is α < 0.5, as the estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child.3 figure 1 shows developments in the age of a mother at birth for western and for eastern germany for various α-quantiles. since the normed fertility rate distribution over time is always unimodal and low skewed, the developments in the α-quantile age for different α are virtually identical and differ almost only by a vertical shift. a pragmatic approach has to be taken for the selection of the suitable α-quantile to estimate the age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child, albeit information from the offi cial statistics can be taken as an orientation. the respective information on the average age of the mother by birth order can be reconstructed for the gdr for 1951 to 1989 using information from the living-born statistics of the gdr (from 1973 onwards), from the yearbooks of population statistics of the gdr (1966-1972), from the statistical annuals of the gdr (1956-1965) and from documents of the statistical offi ce of the former gdr. further information is missing with the same sociodemofig. 1: α-quantiles for the age of a mother at the birth of a child in western and eastern germany for 1956 or rather 1951 to 2008 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 1951 1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 age in years calender year western germany 0.25-quantile 0.3-quantile 0.35-quantile 0.4-quantile 0.5-quantile 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 1951 1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 0.25-quantile 0.3-quantile 0.35-quantile 0.4-quantile 0.5-quantile age in years calender year eastern germany source: own calculations 3 in formal terms, the α-quantile is calculated on the basis of the age-specifi c fertility rate distribution of a year normed by division with the corresponding total fertility rate, which having been thus normed has the characteristics of a relative frequency distribution. here, the calculation is carried out of an α-quantile using a relative frequency procedure for a grouped characteristic (here the age of a woman which is grouped into one-year age cohorts) according to the standard procedure of descriptive statistics, which is explained for instance in toutenburg/heumann 2008: 52 et seqq. the selection of a value of 0.5 for α would correspond to the median of the corresponding relative frequency distribution, and here to an estimated value for the mean age of a woman at the birth of a child. since the median age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child must be lower than this median age, an α-quantile with a (suitably selected) smaller α must be used. when calculating the indicators for the mean joint lifetime of multigenerational families, a value for α of 0.35 is used in the context of the main variants. this is to be interpreted such that the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child roughly corresponds to the age by which 35 % of all (age-standardised and normed) births have taken place. developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 53 graphic characteristics from the time of reunifi cation onwards. only information separated by eastern and western germany is then available for the average age of mothers at the birth of their fi rst living-born child within wedlock. if, however, one observes the differences between mothers at the live birth of a child as to their legitimacy, which is available via the offi cial statistics for 1991 to 2000 and differentiated by eastern and western germany, one may deduce that mothers are much younger on average in out-of-wedlock living arrangements at the birth of a child (cf. also fig. 2). ultimately, as an estimated value for the age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child the 0.35-quantile of the normed fertility rate distribution is regionally differentiated and used for eastern and western germany. nonetheless, the selection of the 0.35-quantile was carried out to some degree by rule of thumb since a more expedient procedure for adapting the data based on statistical procedures is not available because of a lack of values and due to inconsistencies with regard to content and form. the considerations which lead to the selection of the 0.35-quantile are explained briefl y below: 1. for reasons of plausibility, the resulting estimated values for western germany should be lower than the age of a mother at the birth of a child from non-marital forms of relationship (of the mother), as well as below the age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child in the context of a marital living arrangement (of the mother). according to information from the federal statistical offi ce, for instance, the average age of a married mother at birth in 2008, at 31.3, is three years higher than that of unmarried mothers. furthermore, a married woman is on average 1.2 years younger at the birth of her fi rst child of this marriage than at the birth of a child in general (if one therefore neglects the birth order). 2. for eastern germany the estimated value for the 1956 to 1989 period should roughly correspond to the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child. figure 2, which shows offi cial data which are available for western and eastern germany on the age of a mother at the birth of children born in and out of wedlock, as well as of the fi rst-born children in the respective marriage, supports the selection that has been made of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child. it is shown in chapter five in the context of a • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein54 sensitivity analysis that the selection of another α-quantile (which is however stable over time) largely shifts the trends of the indicators only in the absolute level.4 3.2 future development of the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child since the age-specifi c fertility rates for germany are only available and useable from 1956 to 2008, the envisioned grandmother/grandchild relationships can only be presented for a short period on this databasis. the databasis is too short in the time axis to calculate the mean joint lifetime of great grandmother/great grandchild relationships. for this reason, the data are extrapolated for the future via a suitable adaptation model, and hence extended. to this end, for the time series of the (α-quantile) age of the mother at the birth of a child – in formal terms the values of this time series for a pre-defi ned α and at a certain time t are designated below with xα(t) – a generalised logistic function is adjusted, whereby for instance a functional fig. 2: 0.35-quantile and average age of a mother at the birth of a child in western and eastern germany for the 1956 to 2008 period for children born in and out of wedlock and fi rst-born children born in wedlock 20 25 30 35 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 age in years calender year western germany 0.35-quantile marital childbirth illegitimacy childbirth marital childbirth parity one 20 25 30 35 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 0.35-quantile age in years calender year eastern germany birth order one marital childbirth illegitimacy childbirth marital childbirth parity one 4 since for eastern germany the course of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child from 1956 to 1989 is higher than the age of married women at the birth of their fi rst child, here too a selection of a smaller α, such as 0.3, could be justifi ed. this however leads to the distance between the course of the average age of a woman in eastern germany at an out-of wedlock birth and the course of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at childbirth with the fi rst child in the period from 1990 to 2008, being enlarged, and hence for this period this age could then be underestimated for the fi rst child (possibly by a considerable margin). this consideration ultimately also leads for eastern germany as a kind of compromise solution to the selection of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a woman at the birth of the fi rst child. what is more, it emerges in the context of the sensitivity analysis in chapter five that, where the 0.3-quantile is selected for this purpose, the indicators for the mean joint lifetime of multigenerational families only change slightly in terms of their level and the trends remain unchanged over time. source: federal statistical offi ce; own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 55 course in the shape of a lying “s” is presumed. the generalised logistic function is formally described by the following equation: the parameters β1, β2, β3 and β4 characterise the more detailed appearance of this function. since overproportional and hence unrealistic upward trends are created for the given data, the shape of the generalised logistic function is verifi ed via the constraints: for the generalised logistic function, the parameter λ determined a priori checks the maximum lower limit of the age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child. since when observing figure 2, this lower limit should be rather more towards 25 years than 30, it is set for all calculations at a value above 25 years: that is at a value of 28 years. parameter γ, which determines the maximum upper limit of the generalised logistic function, must also be defi ned a priori. because this upper limit from the pure view of the courses of the estimated age of the mother at the birth of the fi rst child according to figure 2 is much less clearly visible, in the sense of scenario formation the calculations should be carried out with different values for γ, parameter γ depending on the model variant lying in a value range of 27 to 36. in the three main scenarios, γ takes on values of 30, 32 and 34 years. with these scenarios it is presumed that the trend of the increase in the age of mothers at the birth of the (fi rst) child of the past 30 years continues, but in the course of time a type of “natural” upper limit is reached. hence, these variants ultimately postulate a period of how long the increase in the age of a mother at the birth of her children (or of her fi rst child) remains stable – roughly outlined until 2020 for the scenario “increase in the maximum age of mothers at the birth of the fi rst child fi rst to 30 years” (short-term increase scenario), roughly until 2030 for the scenario “increase in the maximum fi rst age of a mother at childbirth to 32 years” (medium-term increase scenario) and for instance by 2040 for the scenario “increase in the maximum age of mothers at the birth of the fi rst child to 34 years” (longer-term increase scenario). as the results regarding the course of the indicators for the main scenarios will show, the acceleration in the increase of the maximum age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child leads to an acceleration in the overall downward trends of the indicators, and the pattern of the courses of the indicators shifts towards a later point in time. for this reason, in the context of this paper results for extreme increase scenarios, such as an increase in the maximum age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child to 36 or 38, are not shown. parameter β3 determines slope and curvature, whilst parameter β4 sets the point in time of the infl ection point of the generalised logistic function. with the aid of the estimated parameters, fi nally, the estimated average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child is projected for the years 2009 to 2060. since the calculations of the algorithm to ascertain the indicators for the mean joint lifetime of great grandmothers and great grandchildren, and of grandmothers and grandchildren, in the sense of a model calculation constitute a description pure and simple, nonsignifi cant results are ignored in the estimation of the parameters of the generalised logistic function. what is more, undesirable parameter constellations (e.g. negative .00 4211 43 t 2 1 e1 tx • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein56 values of parameters β1, β2, β4) are ruled out via the constraints. as an adjustment period for a generalised logistic function, values for the years from 1972 to 2008 are used for eastern germany because from 1972 onwards the general trend of the previously-falling median age of a mother at the birth of a child changed towards a general trend of an increasing age of mothers at childbirth from then onwards. for the adjustment of a generalised logistic function to the data of western germany, the same period would suggest itself for these very considerations. however, a possible special effect arises as regards the average age of a mother at the birth of a child which might also be explained by the reunifi cation of the two german states: the median age of a mother at the birth of a child in western germany increased more rapidly in the years prior to german reunifi cation, and then slowed markedly until the mid-1990s. thus, the course of this median age for the period from 1972 to 2008 took on the functional form of a double lying “s” type, which contradicts the intention of a logistic function. the data of the years from 1989 to 2008 for western germany were therefore used for pragmatic reasons and in order to guarantee the proper adjustment of a generalised logistic function. as a result, with regard to the interpretation of the estimated values for parameter β4 the discrete time variable t for western germany for 1989 and for eastern germany for 1972 is set at the value of one. are always selected as initial values of the parameters in the iterative ascertainment of the maximum likelihood estimator. the estimated values of the parameters of the generalised logistic function belonging to the three main scenarios are listed for western and eastern germany in table 2 below, these being based on the data of the 0.35-quantile age of a mother at the birth of a child described in section 3.1. the courses of the adjusted and projected generalised logistic functions regarding the selection of the parameter γ of 30, 32 and 34 years can be portrayed in 20,0,10,22 )0( 4 )0( 3 )0( 2 )0( 1 tab. 2: estimated values of the parameters of the generalised logistic function for the estimated average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child in western and eastern germany parameters western germany eastern germany = 30 = 32 = 34 = 30 = 32 = 34 1 ˆ 26.065 26.005 25.974 21.758 21.601 21.488 2 ˆ 3.935 5.995 8.026 8.242 10.399 12.512 3 ˆ 0.195 0.163 0.149 0.131 0.109 0.097 4 ˆ 20.052 24.047 27.022 31.177 34.701 37.870 source: own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 57 figure 3 using this information. to make the adjustment quality clear, figure 3 contains the course of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child for western and eastern germany. as will be shown in the context of the sensitivity analysis in chapter five, only the (increasing) trend as a characteristic of the shape of the generalised logistic function of the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child projected from 2008 onwards exerts an infl uence on the indicator, albeit it tends to be slighter. the subordinate infl uence of the projected data for the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child is explained by the fact that many of the data required in the observation of threeand four-generation constellations are in the past. for this reason, even slightto medium-serious misspecifi cations of the functional course for the projected average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child on the results of the indicators tend to be marginal. this supports the pragmatic approach selected here. 3.3 the algorithm to calculate the indicators for the joint lifetime of threeand four-generation families the indicator of the mean joint lifetime of a great grandmother (or grandmother) with her great grandchild (or grandchild) can be construed using these estimated values and using the mean residual life by birth cohorts and age of a person, which are taken from the cohort life table for germany (published by the federal statistical offi ce in 2006) in variant v2 (higher life expectancy). the formal algorithm for the calculation of the indicator value for a certain point in time is presented below. since for the algorithm natural numbers are required at a number of places instead of positive real numbers, the positive real numbers regarding the natural number that is initially below this must be mathematically rounded off in these fig. 3: time course of the 0.35-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child for western and eastern germany, as well as the courses of the generalised logistic functions adjusted, and from 2009 projected, regarding the selection of the parameter γ (30, 32, 34 years) 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012 2020 2028 2036 2044 2052 2060 0.35-quantile age short-term increase scenario medium-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario age in years calender year western germany 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012 2020 2028 2036 2044 2052 2060 0.35-quantile age short-term increase scenario medium-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario age in years calender year eastern germany source: own calculations • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein58 places. to this end, a rounding function is needed, for which in formal terms the socalled fl oor function is used. this is defi ned as follows: , k originating from the volume of the whole numbers and y being a real number. the residual life of a woman with birth cohort a and at age b is designated below with e(a;b). the algorithm can hence be portrayed as follows: α-quantile age of the mother at the birth of a child at time t (1) birth cohort of the mother (2) residual life of the mother at the birth of the child at time t (3) α-quantile age of the grandmother at the birth of the mother (4) birth cohort of the grandmother (5) residual life of the grandmother at the birth of the mother (6) α-quantile age of the great grandmother at the birth of the grandmother (7) birth cohort of the great grandmother (8) residual life of the great grandmother at the birth of the grandmother (9) with these requirements for the algorithm for each time t, fi nally, the value (10) is placed as a mean joint lifetime of great grandmothers and great grandchildren and (11) as the average duration of existing grandmother/grandchild relationships. steps (3), (6) and (9) are not needed to calculate the indicator. they are however also listed here since they are placed directly into the logic of the algorithm. an example is to illustrate the approach to be followed: the time t = 2010 for western germany (since this is the fi rst time when one can calculate from the data both the mean joint lifetime for the constellation grandmother/grandchild and great grandmother/great grandchild). the 0.35-quantiles of the calendar-year normed agespecifi c fertility rates are used as estimated values for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child in a calendar year. a generalised logistic function with an upper limit of 32 years is presumed in order to project them from 2009 onwards. because of the estimated parameters for this generalised logistic function, a projected mean age of a mother at birth of x0.35(2010) = 28.51 years emerges for 2010, and the corresponding year of birth is calculated via t – x0.35(2010) = 2010 – 28.51 = 1981.49 to be gm = [1981.49] = 1981. one can read from the cohort life table that a woman with the birth cohort 1981 has a mean residual life of em = e(1981;28) = 60.65 at the age of 28. for the calendar year 1981 the estimated average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child is x0.35(1981) = 24.73, the average birth cohort of the grandmother being demmo gxg:g moo gx;ge:e ogx oou gxg:g ouu gx;ge:e uu gt;ge oo gt;ge kmax:y yk tx txt:gm tx;ge:e mm mgx developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 59 termined via gm – x0.35(1981) = 1981 – 24.73 = 1956.27 to be go = [1956.27] = 1956. analogue considerations reveal that the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child for the year 1956 is the value x0.35(1956) = 25.20. this provides an average birth cohort of the great grandmother of gu = [1930.80] = 1930. now, the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild and great grandmother and great grandchild can be estimated for 2010 via the residual average life expectancy which for a woman with a birth cohort 1956 and an age of 2010 – 1956 = 54 years (for the grandmother) and with a birth cohort 1930 and an age of 2010 – 1930 = 80 years (for the great grandmother) can be read from the cohort life table: – mean joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild: e(go ; t – go) = e(1956;54) = 32.99 years – mean joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild: e(gu ; t – gu) = e(1930;80) = 9.62 years hence, the average framework data can be summed up in table 3 below for a four-generation constellation (newborn; mother; grandmother; great grandmother) coming about in 2010. when interpreting the results, it should be taken into account that the calculations take place without consideration of infant mortality, and hence in the model of the joint lifetime only always ends with the death of the older generation. by virtue of the fact that, in the context of the algorithm, the birth of a child at time t is always placed at the beginning of the year and that mathematical rounding always takes place for the calculation of the birth cohort of the older generations in the generation composition, the algorithm tends to underestimate above all the birth cohort of the great grandmother by up to two years. this leads to a slight underestimation of the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild in a range of up to 0.2 years. this underestimation is tolerable for the interpretation of the fi gures and of the trend of the joint lifetime because of its small range in absolute terms. were one to calculate for the above example calculation the birth cohort of the great grandmother by means of deducting from time t the estimated or projected values for the average age of the mother, grandmother and great grandmother (here therefore 2010 – 28.51 – 24.73 – 25.20 = 1931.56) and fi nally rounding the result to calculate the year of birth (here hence 1931), the value of 9.68 years would emerge for the indicator of the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild. however, this implicitly leads to a situation in which it is determined for the individual years at what time in the course of year t a child is born on average. this is however just as unconvincing as for instance the arbitrary selection of the middle of the year as the average time for the birth of a child in the course of a year. since, ultimately, no solution to this “problem of deciding between time of birth in the course of one year and rounding the age of the mother” is completely convincing, the path of “immediate rounding” on the basis of the negligible nature of the underestimation is fi nally also always selected here. if one uses the data of the cohort life table for germany in variant v1 (lower life expectancy), the results on calculating the indicators change slightly towards a reduction in the joint lifetime of the child with his/her female ancestors. for the above example calculation, the data of the cohort life table for germany in variant v1 provide a mean joint lifetime of the child with the • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein60 mother of 58.54 years, of the child with the grandmother of 31.76 years and of the child with the great grandmother of 9.29 years. since the differences in the results in the two variants tend, fi rstly, to be marginal and, secondly, the trends emerging in the indicators are virtually identical, the results on the basis of variant v1 of the cohort life table for germany are not presented in this paper. the mean generation interval of great grandchild and great grandmother is obtained in the form of a by-product of the calculations of the difference in the birth cohorts. in the above example, this indicator shows a value of 80 years. 4 results as has already been described in section 3.2, the 0.35-quantile from the normed age-specifi c fertility rate distribution, separated for western and eastern germany, is always used as an estimated value of the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child for 1956 to 2008. 30, 32 and 34 years are selected as an upper limit for the three main scenarios for the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child. section fi ve presents three further scenarios in a sensitivity analysis: the average age of the mother at the birth of her fi rst child (1.) remains constant from 2008 onwards at the value used for 2008, (2.) increases until 2030 to the age of 31.15 years and then falls in symmetry with the previous increase and (3.) runs mirror-symmetrical to the past from 2009 onwards. additionally, the consequences selecting a different α-quantile as the estimated value for the age of the mother at the birth of the fi rst child is also illustrated (scenarios are presented for the selection of α = 0.3 and α = 0.4). the calculations and the presentation of the results take place differentiated by western and eastern germany in order to keep a particularly watchful eye on the differences in fertility conduct and the resulting consequences for the length of the joint lifetime of different generations of a family composition. by using the 2006 cohort life table for germany from the federal statistical offi ce (variant v2), the assumptions and calculation models used for drawing them up are presumed to be valid. equally, they are also presumed to be valid for 2009 to 2060. the results calculated for the indicators are presented graphically on the basis of their acting as model calculations. in the context of the algorithm, the cohort life table is read tab. 3: average framework data of a four-generation constellation arising in 2010 for western germany age birth cohort mean joint lifetime of the child and of his/her female ancestors child 0 2010 -- mother 28 1981 60.65 years grandmother 54 1956 32.99 years great grandmother 80 1930 9.62 years source: cohort life table for germany (statistisches bundesamt, 2006); own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 61 from, for which one ultimately must use discrete fi gures for the age and the birth cohort, and an estimated value is calculated for the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child as a constant fi gure. hence, a problem emerges that cannot be completely and fi nally satisfactorily mathematically solved via an algorithm, namely that the indicator of the mean joint lifetime of the different generations shows, over time, a shift of roughly one year. this may overlie the trends of the indicators, thus distorting them. however, in order to avoid these in the graphic presentation, fi vepoint simple moving averages over time are calculated and presented in the fi gures for the indicators of the joint lifetimes of the various generations. although some indicators of the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild can also already be calculated for some years prior to 1990, for reasons related to the uniform graphical presentation, the time courses of these indicators are always presented for the period from 1990 to 2060. the period from 2010 to 2060 is presented with regard to the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild for analogous reasons. 4.1 joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild the time courses of the indicators for the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild for eastern and western germany are presented in figure 4. for the interpretation of the indicators at a certain point in time, it should be pointed out here that information on years in indicator values refers to the year of the birth of the (great) grandchild. the time courses for western and eastern germany look very similar at fi rst sight since the main tendency of the indicators is a downward trend over time. however, these show some marked differences in detail. the indicator for western germany initially rises up to its maximum of almost 35 years in 2000. this is caused above all by the fall in the average age of a mother at the birth of a child from 1956 to 1973. due to the increasing age of the mother at the birth of the children since that time does the indicator fall for the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild since 2000. for eastern germany, where the reversal of the trend as to the average age of mothers at the birth of children can also be dated to 1973, it is shown to be a minimum of 24.7 years and hence a much lower level in comparison to western germany. the ensuing increase in the average age of mothers at the birth of their children was much slower until german unifi cation. hence, the peak comparable with the courses of the indicators for western germany occurs is at an earlier time, and is not visible in figure 4. the results of the algorithm however show that the indicators reach their maximum for eastern germany around 1990, with a value of approx. 38.8 years. the differences between the indicators for western and eastern germany on reunifi cation – that is around 1990 – can be mainly traced to the lower age of mothers in eastern germany at the birth of their (fi rst) children in comparison to western germany. the massive changes in birth timing on the part of eastern german women after german unity (that is until the mid-1990s), which are expressed in figure 1 (cf. section 3.1) by the pronounced fall in the α-quantiles of the normed fertility rate distributions have a milder impact on the indicator, delayed by a generation, as a result of a somewhat more pronounced fall in the period from • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein62 2025 to 2030. the indicators for western germany show a stabilisation, or even a slight increase, in the jointly-spent years of grandmother and grandchild from a time – depending on the scenario – between 2045 and 2060. this stabilisation takes place in eastern germany delayed by roughly ten years. all fi gures regarding the courses of the indicators have in common that an increase in the maximum age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child would lead to an increase in the trends, falling in overall terms, and the pattern of the courses would move towards a later time (that is to the right). 4.2 joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild figure 5 below, which depicts the course over time of the indicators of the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild, refl ects what has been shown previously for the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild with a time lag of approx. 30 years (that is of a generation). it should however be stressed that the falling trend reduces the indicator for the mean joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild by time between 2050 and 2060 to a value of around six years. fig. 4: course of time of the indicator of the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild for western and eastern germany, 1990-2060 (fi ve-point simple moving averages) 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 short-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario in years year of childbirth west east medium-term increase scenario source: own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 63 because of the time-lag effect of approx. 30 years between the indicators for the average duration of threeand four-generation constellations, it can be anticipated that the downward trend for the indicator with the four-generation constellations will continue until a time between 2080 and 2090. 4.3 mean generation interval between (great) grandmother and (great) grandchild as was already outlined in section 3.3, an indicator is created for the mean generation interval of great grandmother and great grandchild as a by-product of the algorithm to calculate the indicator for their mean joint lifetime. the graphic courses of this indicator for western and eastern germany are visualised in figure 6 below for the three main scenarios. we recognise that – depending on the scenario – the indicator for the mean generation interval of great grandmother and great grandchild in the period from 2010 to 2060 increases by approx. 10 to 15 years, which corresponds to an average rise of 0.2 to 0.3 years p. a. if one compares this with the increase in average life expectancy in western and eastern germany in recent years, which was roughly 0.2 years fig. 5: time course of the indicator of the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild for western and eastern germany, 2010-2060 (fi ve-point simple moving averages) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years short-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario year of childbirth west east medium-term increase scenario source: own calculations • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein64 p. a., this makes it clear that a further future increase in the age of mothers at the birth of the fi rst child tends to overcompensate for the rise in average life expectancy. this indicates that the age of mothers at the birth of their children in the assessment of the joint lifetime presents the family composition of generations in family structures in comparison to the average life expectancy in the framework of the next 50 years as the higher factor to be emerged. the indicator of the mean generation interval of grandmother and grandchild increases by between fi ve and 14 years in the period from 2010 to 2060, depending on the scenario. at the end of the period under observation, both indicators are virtually identical in the three main scenarios when it comes to a west-east comparison. in the medium-term scenario, the indicator of the average transitional age to great grandmotherhood in 2060 corresponds to a value of 88 years for eastern germany and 91 years for western germany, and the indicator regarding the average transitional age to grandmotherhood is 63 years for eastern germany and 64 years for western germany. all in all, a fi nding emerges that is similar to that of höpfl inger, hummel and hugentobler (2006) for switzerland (cf. section 2.3). having said that, the indicators for the mean generation interval are currently around 10 years below the values measured for switzerland; comparable generation intervals do not emerge for germany for about another 50 years. fig. 6: time course of the indicator for the mean generation interval of great grandmother and great grandchild and of grandmother and grandchild for western and eastern germany (fi ve-point simple moving averages, 2010-2060) 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years year of childbirth western germany birth interval great-grandchild / great-grandmother birth interval grandchild / grandmother short-term increase scenario medium-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years year of childbirth eastern germany birth interval great-grandchild / great-grandmother birth interval grandchild / grandmother short-term increase scenario medium-term increase scenario long-term increase scenario source: own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 65 5 sensitivity analysis this section presents results for the indicators with alternative scenarios in order to show the reaction of the indicators to changes in the assumptions if no ongoing increase in the maximum age of mothers at the birth of the fi rst child is presumed. to this end, a calculation is fi rst carried out with another selection for the α-quantile (α of 0.3 or 0.4, respectively) as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child. with regard to these quantiles, table 4 contains the corresponding estimation parameters of the generalised logistic function with a maximum limit for the average age of a mother at birth of the fi rst child of 32 years. additionally, for the keywords “constant”, “parabola” and “symmetry scenario” three further scenarios are listed. in the framework of the constant scenario, the tab. 4: parameters of the generalised logistic function for the estimated average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child in western and eastern germany (under sub-condition γ = 32) for the selection of the 0.3and 0.4-quantiles parameters western germany eastern germany = 0.3 = 0.4 = 0.3 = 0.4 1 ˆ 25.372 26.561 21.022 22.185 2 ˆ 6.628 5.439 10.978 9.815 3 ˆ 0.190 0.144 0.100 0.119 4 ˆ 24.770 22.567 36.438 33.256 source: own calculations fig. 7: time courses of the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child for the medium-term increase, constant, parabola and symmetry scenarios for western and eastern germany 20 23 26 29 32 35 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 age in years calender years western germany 0.35-quantile age medium-term increase scenario parabola scenario symmetry scenario constant scenario 20 23 26 29 32 35 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 0.35-quantile age medium-term increase scenario parabola scenario symmetry scenario constant scenario age in years calender year eastern germany source: own calculations • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein66 average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child is kept constant for all future years in accordance with the corresponding 0.35-quantile from the normed fertility rate distribution of 2008. this value corresponds to the age of 28.08 years for western germany and to the age of 27.06 years for eastern germany. the parabola scenario presumes a future course of the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child until the year 2030 in accordance with the medium-term increase scenario (that is a selection of α = 0.35 and γ = 32). from 2031 onwards, the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child runs mirror-symmetrical to the course of the medium-term increase scenario. the symmetry scenario presumes from 2009 onwards a mirror-symmetrical course to the trend of the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child for the years 1956 to 2008. figure 7 documents the courses of this average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child for the fi ve scenarios in western and eastern germany. 20 25 30 35 40 45 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 á = 0.30-quantile age á = 0.35-quantile age á = 0.40-quantile age in years west east 0.30 0.35 0.40 year of childbirth scenario fig. 8: time course of the indicator for the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild for western and eastern germany for the medium-term increase scenario on the basis of various α-quantiles regarding the selection α = 0.3, α = 0.35 and α = 0.4 (fi ve-point simple moving averages, 1990-2060) source: own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 67 as can be recognised in figures 8 and 9, a different selection of an α-quantile as an estimated value for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child only leads to a vertical shift in the indicators. the absolute distance between the indicators at a certain point in time, and/or where α = 0.3 and α = 0.4 is selected, is always less than four years and diminishes over time. the courses show that the selection of α has little infl uence on the trends of the indicators, and hence tends to be insignifi cant for their interpretation. a more pronounced infl uence on the trends of the indicators is exerted by the selection of the future trend for the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child. this is revealed in the observation of the indicators for constant, parabola and symmetry scenarios, as can be observed in figures 10 and 11. one only recognises that merely the symmetry scenario, which can be referred to as more improbable and which supposes a considerable fall in the age of women at the birth of the fi rst child, exerts pronounced, immediate infl uences on the indica0 5 10 15 20 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years year of childbirth á = 0.30-quantile age á = 0.35-quantile age á = 0.40-quantile age west east 0.30 0.35 0.40 scenario fig. 9: time course of the indicator for the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild for western and eastern germany for the mediumterm increase scenario on the basis of various α-quantiles regarding the selection α = 0.3, α = 0.35 and α = 0.4 (fi ve-point simple moving averages, 2010-2060) source: own calculations • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein68 tors. in the other two scenarios the trends of the indicators persists in the medium term – that is until about 2030. the constant scenario leads in the long term – that is here until 2060 – to a settling down of the indicators at a stable level. however, as soon as the average age of the mothers at the birth of their fi rst children starts to fall again over time, the parabola scenario suggests that the indicators for the mean joint lifetime of threeand four-generation families increase again with a lag of approx. one generation. fig. 10: time course of the indicator for the joint lifetime of grandmother and grandchild for western and eastern germany for the medium-term increase, constant, parabola and symmetry scenarios (fi ve-point simple moving averages, 1990-2060) 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years year of childbirth west east medium-term increase scenario parabola scenario constant scenario symmetry scenario source: own calculations developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 69 6 summary and discussion this article aimed to make a contribution towards the academic debate on the question of whether the shares of four-generation families in germany in future will increase, remain constant or diminish concerning an aspect which has received relatively little consideration in the past, namely the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families. in historical terms, the cohabitation of several generations lasts only a very short time since the three-generation family did not become a normal case in the composition of generations in family structure until the second half of the 20th century. by observing the historical developments in multiple-generation families, whilst at the same time considering the development of mortality and fertility for germany, the decisive infl uencing factors emerge on the composition of generations in family structures: the pronounced fall in mortality from the end of the 19th century onwards – fi rst with children and after the second world war above all in the higher age cohorts, the changing timing of births and the growing childlessness, as well as fi nally the changes in living arrangements fig. 11: time course of the indicator for the joint lifetime of great grandmother and great grandchild for western and eastern germany for the mediumterm increase, constant, parabola and symmetry scenarios (fi ve-point simple moving averages, 2010-2060) 0 5 10 15 20 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 in years year of childbirth medium-term increase scenario parabola scenario constant scenario symmetry scenario west east source: own calculations • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein70 (more lone parents, more divorces, more step and patchwork families). using some of the larger surveys which have been carried out in the past 20 years (age survey, soep, oasis, share, ggs), it is possible to roughly estimate the current circumstances of multiple-generation constellations for germany: roughly half of respondents live in three-generation families from middle age onwards; approximately one-quarter to one-fi fth live in two-family constellations and a maximum of between one in 5 to 10 respondents lives in a four-generation family. however, neither a development over time, nor a forecast for future developments in the shares of multiple-generation families can be generated from these data. additionally, it is not possible to obtain either from the survey data, or from the offi cial statistics for germany, valid estimate results relating to the joint lifetime of several generations of a family. as has been shown in the framework of this article, it is however possible on the basis of the data of a cohort life table and historic age-specifi c fertility rates to derive indicators for the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families. these indicators aim to provide an idea of the scale and the trends of this joint lifetime of threeand four-generation families in germany. however, the intention is not to study arbitrary family compositions of generations in family structures regarding their joint average lifetime, but on the basis of the complicated data available it is necessary to restrict to the female line and to trace it in each case to the fi rstborn child. hence, the indicators are only suited to study the joint average lifetime of great grandmothers with their fi rst-born great grandchildren and grandmothers with their fi rst-born grandchildren over time. since the average age of mothers at the birth of their fi rst child in the required time length and differentiated by western and eastern germany is not available via offi cial data, in the context of this observation the data required are estimated via a suitably-selected α-quantile of the calendar-year (normed) age-specifi c fertility rate distribution. the calculation via the female line is also a kind of “upper limit” for the joint lifetime of threeand four-generation compositions of generations in family structures, since the lower life expectancy of men and their higher age on starting a family indicates a shorter mean joint lifetime of (great) grandfathers with their (great) grandchildren than is the case with the female line. the indicators were calculated separated for western and eastern germany, since the average age of women in childbirth between the two regions developed very differently in the past, and to the present day also is roughly one year lower in eastern germany than in western germany. for the period from 1990 to 2008 it is possible to properly estimate with one indicator the maximum mean joint lifetime of three-generation families. the indicator for the four-generation constellations, by contrast, can only be ascertained if future values of the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child are available. the same applies to the three-generation indicator from 2009 onwards. since for this the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child on the basis of a suitable model had to be projected into the future, the indicators of the mean joint lifetime of threeand four-generation families from 2009 onwards act as model calculations. the generalised logistic function, with constraints, has been selected as an adjustment and projection model for the average age of a mother developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 71 at the birth of her fi rst child; above all, the maximum age at the birth of the fi rst child has been checked when it comes to the constraints. several scenarios were calculated in the context of the model calculations, whereas in the medium variant the 0.35-quantile, as well as a maximum age at birth of 32 years, was selected to calculate the age of the mother at the birth of the fi rst child. a sensitivity analysis with other, certainly also extreme, controversial assumptions has shown that the indicators react to another selection of the α-quantile mainly with a vertical shift, but that the trends remain unchanged. since, for a certain point in time t, the intergenerational family relationship is observed retrospectively, errors in the selection regarding the projection of the average age of a mother at the birth of her fi rst child have a very gradual effect, here too being defi ned mainly through vertical shifts in the indicators. only the selection of an extreme variant, and one which appears rather improbable, for the future development of the average age of a mother at the birth of the fi rst child – in this case the scenario of an immediate trend reversal taking place mirror-symmetrically in the time range of 1972 to 2008, that is the age of mothers in childbirth falling immediately – leads after a short response time of approx. 10 years to a pronounced change in the trends of the indicators for the mean joint lifetimes of threeand four-generation families. all in all, the following results may be concluded from the calculations put forward here: 1) the calculations in western germany show an increase in the lifetime spent jointly in three generations up to roughly 35 years in 2000. the average age of mothers at the birth of their children, which increased from roughly 1973 onwards, currently becomes noticeable via the gradual fall in the joint lifetime of grandma and her grandchildren. depending on the selected maximum age of mothers at the birth of their fi rst child, a faster (at 32 years) or later (at 34 years) stabilisation of the joint lifetime takes place, at a value of roughly 30 years. the jointly-spent years of four generations show a similar trend – but postponed roughly 30 years into the future. the highest values of joint lifetimes here, for instance, must be anticipated roughly between 2030 and 2040 (between seven and 10 years, depending on the selected age of a mother in childbirth), after which the downward trend will continue, under the presumed conditions, into the eighties of this century. 2) for eastern germany, the maximum of the jointly-spent years of life of three generations lies at the beginning of the observation period 1990 (at almost 40 years). from then onwards, a continuously-falling trend can be identifi ed which is only infl uenced in the rapidity of the descent by the selected maximum age at birth. this development is caused by the much slower increase in the average age of a mother at childbirth in comparison to western germany, which did not considerably accelerate until after 1990. this is then refl ected between 2025 and 2030 by a somewhat more rapid fall in the joint lifetime of grandma and her fi rst-born grandchild. the average number of years spent jointly by great grandmothers and their great grandchildren is likely to peak around 2020. it may currently be roughly one-and-a-half times as high as in • evelyn grünheid, manfred g. scharein72 western germany, since the lower age of a mother in childbirth in the east adds up over several generations, whilst the mortality differences are only minimal. one may also anticipate a fall in the joint lifetime of four-generation families in eastern germany after 2020, albeit starting at a higher level. at this point, however, it is necessary to point out once more that these are projections of the joint lifetime and not a statement that these theoretically-possible multiple-generation constellations will actually be experienced. to this end, sociostructural differentiations would be just as necessary as the consideration of the fact, as childlessness increases, above all in western germany, generation lines will break off (cf. section 2.4). to sum it up, however, it becomes evident that it is not suffi cient to conclude from the longer life expectancy a generally longer joint lifetime of the generations and an increase in 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(eds.): adult intergenerational relations. effects of societal change. new york: springer: 19–25 uhlenberg, peter, 1996: mortality decline in the twentieth century and supply of kin over the life course. in: the gerontologist 36,5: 681–685 uhlenberg, peter; kirby, james b., 1998: grandparenthood over time: historical and demographic trends. in: szinovacz, maximiliane e. (eds.): handbook on grandparenthood. greenwood: westport: 23–39 wernhart, georg et al., 2008: drei generationen eine familie. austauschbeziehungen zwischen den generationen aus sicht der großeltern und das altersbild in der politik. familienforschung – schriftenreihe des österreichischen instituts für familienforschung 18. innsbruck/wien/bozen: studienverlag developments in the mean joint lifetimes of generations • 75 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “zur entwicklung der durchschnittlichen gemeinsamen lebenszeit von dreiund vier-generationen-familien in westund ostdeutschland – eine modellrechnung”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-201101de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-01de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 13.08.2010 date of acceptance: 15.11.2010 dr. manfred g. scharein ( ), dr. evelyn grünheid. federal institute for population research, wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: manfred.scharein@destatis.de, evelyn.gruenheid@destatis.de url: http://www.bib-demografi e.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers and implications for the desire for continued employment victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum abstract: in times of demographic change, with the associated challenges for social security systems and the looming lack of skilled workers, extending working life becomes increasingly signifi cant. according to the continuity theory (atchley 1989) we can assume that individuals who are satisfi ed with their structures and performance will stay at work longer. we will therefore examine whether motivation and perceived work ability have an infl uence on the desire for continued employment. in addition, we will answer the question of whether factors that have a positive infl uence on motivation and work ability also have a direct infl uence on continued employment. besides objective factors such as enterprise size and occupational status, we will examine subjective factors, such as assessment of recognition, the demands, and the meaningfulness of the work for their contributions to the explanation. the following analysis is based on a survey taken in may 2008 together with the bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung (bib). it enables us to identify the desire for continued employment in old age, the existing work motivation, and the state of health. the core results of the statistical analysis show that in men high motivation is linked to the desire for continued employment in retirement age. this does not apply to women; for them, work ability is the decisive criterion. in general, we observe that a positive assessment of the subjective infl uencing factors strengthen work motivation. in addition, with regard to objective factors it was ascertained that for men the working hour regime (full-time work) and occupation status (salaried “white-collar” employees) correlate positively with the desire for continued employment. in particular, meaningful work increases motivation among men and work ability increases motivation among women. it appears important that enterprises convince their employees of the meaningfulness of the work. keywords: extended working life · older workers · employee motivation · health comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 4 (2010): 931-958 (date of release: 08.03.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-20en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-20en4 • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum932 1 introduction demographic change has far-reaching consequences both for the labour market and for the pension insurance system in germany. in the long term, a major decrease in the number of young gainfully employed persons in the labour market is foreseeable. in pension insurance, a shift in the number of contributors and pensioners in favour of pensioners is expected (börsch-supan 2011). the dependency ratio, which describes the ratio of older persons (“pensioners”), aged 65 and older to younger persons between the ages of 14 and 64 (“contributors”), is a relevant indicator for estimating intergenerational fi scal redistribution. it is developing unfavourably with regard to the funding of the system. while the ratio was 100:5 in the year 1890, shortly before introduction of pension insurance by bismarck, it changed to 100:32 by the year 2005 and will presumably be 100:50 in 2030. in order to make pension insurance sustainably fundable, various reforms have raised the retirement age since the 1990s (bäcker et al. 2009). the pension reform of 2007 will gradually raise the age limit from 65 to 67 years to retain deductionfree standard old age pensions from the year 2012. in 2029 the total increase will fi rst come into effect for those born in the year 1964 (mollenhauer 2006). it must, however, be taken into consideration that the factual retirement age averaging 63 years is lower than the deduction-free retirement age (brussig/wojtkowski 2006). in addition to the necessity of raising the standard retirement age the question is whether the gainfully employed persons are at all willing and capable of extending their working life. in the most recent past, there has been a rise in the time 55to 64-year-olds remain at work, so that in germany the number of persons in this age group in employment rose from 39.9 % in the year 2003 to 53.8 % in the year 2008 (eurostat 2010). therefore the central research issue is whether older workers are capable of fulfi lling the demands of work in the long term. in practice, there continue to be (negative) stereotypes with regard to the work ability of older workers, which leads to preferential treatment of younger workers. this contributes to explaining increased physical deterioration in the industrial sector, which has led over time to the development of age images that can be described as obsolete for many of today’s occupations (laschart/möller 2005). meanwhile, gerontological and psychological studies show no evidence whatsoever of decreased work ability that can be ascribed to the increased age of workers. various studies have shown that with regard to the work ability of older persons (a persons’ performance as a function of their ability and motivation – cf. klehe/kleinmann 2007), the so-called defi ciency model is not (or no longer) valid (lehr 1990). a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies on occupational work ability also confi rmed that there are no general differences between the work ability of older and younger workers in the same job (warr 2001). in spite of this, the mind-set still exists both among employers and employees that employees over 50 are no longer productive (henkens 2005; aschenbaum 2005). the international labour organization (ilo) has presented a report on discrimination that predicts an increase in discrimination (also of older workers) at the workplace. büsch et al. (2009) even observe a distinctly lower recruitment probabildeterminants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 933 ity of older applicants in spite of their productivity being assessed as equal to that of younger applicants (cf. ilo global report 2011; commerzbank ag 2009). hence, the central question for employees is the extent to which the workers desire to continue working after reaching retirement age and whether they feel capable of doing so. in 2008 infratest surveyed 1,500 workers between the ages of 55 and 65 years about their desires and expectations for possible continued employment (büsch et al. 2010). the results of this survey are the basis of the data used in the analysis we present here. this article consists of fi ve sections. we begin by summarising the current research on continued employment of older people. then, we discuss various factors infl uencing motivation and work ability. based on this, we develop a model approach to be able to illustrate the correlation between the desire to work longer and work motivation as well as work ability and derive corresponding hypotheses. in the ensuing empirical section we examine the informational value of the model. the article ends with concluding remarks and a brief description of future prospects. 2 factors infl uencing the desire for continued employment the reasons for people wanting to continue in employment after reaching retirement age have not yet been clearly delineated, in particular in germany. instead, the debate on raising the retirement age in germany has led to changes in the focus of research. while the focus was once on studies of early retirement decisions, in recent years there have been an increasing number of studies on the (desired) duration of employment (kapteyn et al. 2007). terms for continued employment after reaching retirement age such as “bridge employment” and “silver work” have become established (shultz 2003; deller et al. 2007). bridge employment is understood as the transitional phase between leaving one’s previous full-time job and full retirement. this can be a phase, for example, in which a person works part time or undertakes a new type of work, such as selfemployment. so-called silver workers are active retirees aged between 60 and 85 years. generally, a number of types can be differentiated in this context: partial retirement before reaching retirement age (active and passive), continued employment after reaching retirement age (in one’s previous job or in a different area) or full retirement. since the legal regulations promoting partial retirement were limited in time until 31 dec. 2009 and were no longer extended, we can expect that in future there will be ever more persons who remain active even at an advanced age (bundesagentur für arbeit 2011). therefore, it appears advisable to look at reasons for the desire for continued employment in a differentiated way. in the literature role and continuity theories are often used to explain this situation (von bonsdorff et al. 2009). according to the role theory there are symbols or roles that are perceived over the course of socialization and with which an individual identifi es. these symbols are formed both by the individuals themselves and by their social environment (mutran et al. 1997). hence, the attitude towards retirement depends on the individual’s social background and • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum934 employee identity as well as on their expectations for their future retirement situation or role as a retiree. depending upon one’s assessment of the socioeconomic status yet achieved, people can regard the transition to retirement as liberation or as a loss (carter/cook 1995). among those with higher vocational status in particular, the changed role is accompanied by an anticipated loss of power and prestige. adjustment to the new life role is better achieved the more complete one’s information of future life circumstances is. more details about this issue using the same data basis as this article can be found in micheel et al. (2011 in cpos 35, 4). the continuity theory of ageing has very similar argumentation. one of its central assumptions is that individuals attempt to retain a balance between continuity and change in the structures of their lives. this is only conditionally possible in the ageing process, as there is no return to one’s original condition once age-related events have occurred. the continuity theory also takes options to react to change into consideration. individuals set goals with regard to their own future development. in doing so, they possess specifi c behavioural patterns that infl uence the fabric of their decisions. the behavioural patterns themselves are infl uenced by the individual’s respective environment, so that the ageing process can be seen as culturallyor environmentally-related. lieberman and tobin (1983) emphasize that even when external circumstances change dramatically, an inner continuity remains, i.e. one’s decision-making patterns remain relatively constant. the “higher the quality” of the vocational patterns established so far, the higher is the preference for maintaining these patterns (quick/moen 1998). this illustrates that to explain the decision-making processes in the transition to retirement we must not only consult outer circumstances, but that personal factors play just as central a role. there are a large number of factors that infl uence retirement decisions. based on wang et al. (2008) and wang/schultz (2010), we differentiate between four groups of infl uencing factors (cf. gobeski/beehr 2009; deller/maxin 2010; van dam et al. 2009): personal factors• work and organisation-related factors • family-related factors• socio-economic factors • this article focuses on personal and organisation-related factors; therefore we will not elucidate the family-related and the socio-economic factors here. 2.1 personal factors personal factors such as health and age play major roles in the decision to continue working. in a study of 346 workers over 50 years old in the netherlands, these were asked about their motives for early or delayed retirement. the results made clear that a good state of health has a positive infl uence on extended working life (van dam et al. 2009). other studies also revealed that belonging to the working world plays a pivotal role in the age group of 50 to 59-year olds. positive feelings in condeterminants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 935 junction with the workplace have great explanatory force for the reasons people consider continuing work after reaching retirement age (phillipson/smith 2005). these fi ndings can be interpreted in line with the role theory, which emphasizes the importance of employee identifi cation. in the literature, gender is considered an important explanatory factor for differing attitudes, such as the attitude towards retirement (koloski et al. 2001). one interesting difference between the sexes with regard to continued employment is the higher percentage of men who no longer wish to work upon reaching retirement age in spite of very good health (beehr et al. 2000; gärtner 2010). it can be assumed that women, in their more complex employment biographies, also exhibit longer breaks due to parental leaves and thus wish to remain in the vocational context with its opportunities for social interaction. in addition, for women factors such as social contacts with co-workers, independence, and fl exibility play more signifi cant roles in work, while for men the importance of the work is a more relevant factor (shacklock et al. 2009). skills are another central factor in the decision to retire (koloski et al. 2001). employees with higher levels of education are more willing to continue working in the same fi eld than to train for work in other fi elds (wang et al. 2008). in a us survey from the year 2000 it was observed that persons with a higher level of education demonstrate a much higher probability of wanting to continue to work in “bridge employment” than persons with a lower level of education (von bonsdorff et al. 2009). 2.2 workand organisation-related factors some workand organisation-related factors that have proven relevant for the decision to continue working refer to enterprise size, position, and income. a british study showed that in small enterprises with up to ten employees employment of older workers is far higher than in larger enterprises (smeaton/mckay 2003). it can be assumed that this is because of the familial atmosphere and the identifi cation related to this. humphrey et al. (2003) showed that in particular persons with a lower job level work longer. however, the authors point out that this may well be due to a cohort effect that applies to this particular generation but does not always occur at this age. according to dorbritz and micheel (2010) higher income does not lead to consideration of continued employment. this would concur with the argument that employees with lower income are more likely to feel the need to continue to work even beyond retirement age (beehr 1986; feldman 1994; opaschowski 2008). in addition to the objective factors cited, subjective aspects that are directly linked to the job or the workplace in particular appear to positively infl uence the decision to continue working (beehr et al. 2000). these factors can include those that favour a high degree of identifi cation with the enterprise. results of empirical studies indicate the intrinsically motivating work factors that positively infl uence a decision for continued employment in the same environment (gobeski/beehr 2009). according to a dutch study those surveyed are more likely to consider intrinsic fac• victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum936 tors of work conditions such as meaningful tasks and ethical values important for a decision for continued employment after reaching retirement age (van dam et al. 2009). furthermore, recognition and the support of co-workers and senior management play central roles in the desire for continued employment as motivating factors for vocational work in old age (van dam et al. 2009). also, needs-tailored and demands-tailored confi guration of the work appears to be an important infl uencing factor for the decision for continued employment, as a qualitative study in germany shows (deller/maxin 2010). 3 factors infl uencing work motivation and work ability among older employees we will fi rst describe the motivation and work ability of older workers regardless of their desire for continued employment and discuss possible infl uencing factors. it is assumed that although older employees demonstrate a high degree of work motivation and are highly motivated, nonetheless different factors play a role among older and younger employees. we will therefore fi rst present factors that correlate positively with a higher motivation in particular among older employees. generally motives develop or change over the course of time and are stimulated by experiences. against the study background we will focus on the motivational aspects that are particularly relevant for older employees. 3.1 objective factors infl uencing work motivation the results of various studies show no noteworthy difference between different age groups with regard to motivation. but this also means that older workers are not less motivated than younger workers. basically, empirical studies reveal that the work motivation of older employees is high (rabl 2010; kooji et al. 2010). also, no studies have been able to provide evidence confi rming the generally negative age stereotypes (stamov rossnagel 2009; grube/hertel 2008). however, there are indications from studies that the factors behind motivation differ between age groups (rhodes 1983; lord 2002; kanfer/ackermann 2004; lord/farrington 2006; rabl 2010; stamov rossnagel 2009; kooij et al. 2010). we will briefl y discuss these factors in the following. with regard to the differing motives among age groups we can say that the importance of career and further training motives lessen somewhat with age. in newer studies, extrinsic motives such as the achievement of a certain social status and the results effect of work are more likely to be perceived as less important with advanced age. by contrast, intrinsic motives such as independence, collaboration with others, the perception of own performance and independently completing the tasks increase with age (kooji et al. 2010). gender is another objective personal criterion. in various empirical studies on employee motivation hardly any differences were ascertained between the sexes determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 937 (hauser et al. 2007). studies suggest that although the percentage of motivated men and women is practically the same, the factors that infl uence the motivation can be different for the genders. this is illustrated for instance in higher signifi cance of soft enterprise factors (such as company philosophy) among female applicants and employees (berufsstart.de 2006). skills are a third objective infl uencing factor. the impact of differences in skills on motivation may be explained in part by content theories, which often differentiate between defi ciency and growth motivators. unlike growth motivators defi ciency motivators are characterised by the fact that their fulfi lment avoids dissatisfaction, but does not induce any additional motivation (maslow 2010; herzberg et al. 2010). the needs of people with a higher level of education are usually already at a higher level of satisfaction, since needs such as a suitable salary, social interaction, and to some extent also recognition and skills enhancement as well as career are already met. we can state that both gender and skills of employees may have an infl uence on the types of motivating factors with advanced age, but that general motivation is not different. the objective organisation-related factors include enterprise size, position within an enterprise and income. we can assume that social interaction plays a greater role in smaller enterprises so that appreciation and recognition are more likely to be given. in a direct comparison of job satisfaction and employee dedication according to the different size ranges hauser et al. (2007) identifi ed no signifi cant differences. only a weak trend was observed: satisfaction and the active components of dedication were slightly more positive in small enterprises than in larger enterprises. according to this in small enterprises the company culture is experienced somewhat more positively than in medium-sized companies and in these, in turn, somewhat more positively than in large enterprises. in most studies, consideration of the position in the enterprise refers to a differentiation between persons with and without management responsibility. according to empirical fi ndings senior managers are, however, not generally more highly motivated than employees without management functions (sebald/kramarsch 2007). but, for them other motivating factors apply (freedom to make decisions, innovations and learning and development opportunities) than for non-senior managers (reputation of the enterprise, advancement and career opportunities, interest of the enterprise in the employees) (küppers/wunderer 2001, 2003). lastly, fi nancial aspects are relevant to the explanation of a desire for continued employment, because they can have existential signifi cance. in extreme cases, employees could be forced to continue working for fi nancial reasons. then, their work motivation may have no infl uence on their decision. this view is largely supported by a qualitative study of 29 engineers over the age of 55 years concerning factors at the workplace and their impact on productivity and bonds to the enterprise. they were basically asked whether or not their income was suffi cient to enter retirement. the responses showed that employees with suffi cient income tend to consider social needs as important. the workers who assessed their income as insuffi cient • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum938 were more likely to assess enterprise conditions such as security, pay, and working conditions as important. these factors display a rather low effect on motivation or work attitudes and satisfaction. by contrast, the so-called motivators, such as responsibility and work, are said to have a very high effect (lord 2002). salary aspects tend to play a role in the middle employment ages, whereby they also depend on family situations. here, too, we can assume that objectives change over the course of a lifetime (grube/hertel 2008). although there were also no general differences in the motivation of age groups in the objective organisation-related factors, there were in differentiating factors that bring about motivation. this may indicate that subjectively perceived factors are more likely to cause an increase in motivation. these will be discussed in the next chapter and examined in the empirical section following it. 3.2 subjective infl uencing factors work motivation besides actual circumstances, subjective perceptions are also important with regard to continued employment in retirement age. the following fi ve aspects are taken into consideration here: demands of the work, management and/or recognition, assessment of the meaningfulness of the work, and solidarity with the enterprise. the fi rst fi nding concerning this spectrum of factors is that work motivation becomes more task-specifi c for older employees. some tasks lower motivation, while other tasks keep it at the same level or even raise motivation. this can, for example, lead to greater motivation among older employees if tasks are dealt with in a team, while lower motivation can be assumed for tasks that involve new content. all in all, younger employees are more likely to focus on longer-term goals, while for older employees direct motivators have the greatest infl uence (stamov rossnagel 2009). results from various studies also show that the work itself or the assessment of the meaningfulness of one’s own work is decisive for older employees. this is enhanced by the opportunity to work in teams: positive social contacts and passing on knowledge are important attributes for older employees in enterprises (stamov rossnagel 2009). the goals with future-oriented aspects such as learning, feedback, and work variety decrease, while enjoyment of the work, the working climate, and independence are aspects that gain importance with age (grube/hertel 2008). with age, the motivation for social tasks grows (e.g. passing on knowledge), while the motivation for informative tasks (e.g. contributing expertise) remains about the same and the motivation to learn new things is more likely to decrease. here, as well, a positive connection was ascertained between motivation and job satisfaction. older workers develop a growing need to optimise their mental wellbeing (stamov rossnagel 2009). all in all, recognition and appreciation are central motivating factors for working at an older age (deller/maxin 2010). therefore the factors that increase in importance with age are those such as work climate, management, community and independence or material and immaterial recognition, enjoyment of work, demands, assessment of self-determination and the perception of meaningful work. determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 939 these fi ndings suggest that management should adapt to changed needs. this means that a positive attitude of senior managers towards older employees and the appreciation of their vocational experience and expertise are decisive for motivated work. solidarity with the enterprise also differs with age. younger employees are more likely to remain with a company for material reasons, while older employees feel more loyalty. reasons for staying with an enterprise also showed that younger employees in particular consider the fi nancial necessity and more material security aspects important. by contrast, older employees tend to enjoy the work more and are proud of their own work. identifi cation with the work is therefore particularly important (lord/farrington 2006). a survey by zacher et al. (2009) reached similar results. older employees fi nd goals in the area of company commitment more signifi cant (e.g. improving operational processes and structures). for younger employees, goals in the areas of skills enhancement and higher pay or career opportunities are more important. 3.3 factors infl uencing work ability vocational work ability is a matter both of mental capacity and physical fi tness. we differentiate between crystallised (experience-related) and fl uid (mechanical) intelligence (kruse 2000) when speaking of mental capacity. the former refers to factors such as routinely carrying out intellectual and physical tasks. since older employees have more experience with their work, it is not surprising that positive correlations are ascertained between age and performance in this context (warr 2001). a decrease in fl uid intelligence is observed as adults age, which although accompanied by a reduced speed in processing information can be compensated by routine or knowledge from experience (kruse 2000). in this study work ability consists mainly of characteristics that measure the state of health. health is an obligatory condition for the ability to continue employment. subjects are still asked to assess their own work ability with regard to the work demands based on the work ability index by ilmarinen. various studies demonstrate that the differences in performance within an age group are by far greater than those between different age groups (kruse 2000; ilmarinen 2005). it must also be taken into consideration that there are no monocausal links between age and work ability. warr (1994) pointed out, for instance, that the majority of psychological studies explore the question of how age affects the ability to work and not how work affects the ability in old age (warr 1994). this analysis will furthermore examine the factors of gender, skills, position, and income with regard to their signifi cance for work ability. a longitudinal study in finland has been unable to fi nd any differences in men and women with regard to their ability to work (ilmarinen et al. 1997). as for skills, there are indications that a higher skill level goes hand in hand with higher work ability. also, it becomes apparent that an individual’s position in the enterprise has a positive infl uence on work ability (aittomäki et al. 2003). due to the prevailing seniority-based pay in germany we are unable to measure the infl uence of income on productivity (skirbekk 2003). • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum940 in addition to the personal and organisation-related objective factors cited, we will also examine the infl uence of subjective factors. we assume that the perception of surrounding conditions is relevant for a person’s work ability. biomedicine shows that personal performance rates result from various environmental conditions. the stimulating environment consists both of one’s personal environment and the working world (rump/eilers 2009). tuomi et al. (2001) show that work demands and work environment play the greatest role in explaining the extent of work ability. for instance, the simple colour coding of work materials can contribute to increasing productivity. on the other hand, monotonous work can reduce work ability (warr 2001). a study conducted in denmark also illustrates that work-related factors have the greatest explanatory force for work ability (alavinia et al. 2007). moreover, the model devised for the ability to work contains the aspect of management as an explanatory variable for the ability to work (ilmarinen/tuomi 2004). 4 model explaining the desire for continued employment in this section, we will transfer the personal and organisation-related aspects to a model serving as the basis for testing the hypotheses yet to be developed. based on the continuity theory, we will assume that if a high degree of motivation and high self-assessed work ability have been attained in one’s past working life this has a positive infl uence on the desire for continued employment. in addition, we will differentiate between objective and subjective factors that can infl uence motivation or work ability based on the existing empirical fi ndings and taking the criteria described by wang and shultz (2010) into account. the objective factors are additionally broken down into personal and organisation-related factors (fig. 1). with regard to objective infl uencing factors there is, for one, the reference to the individual, or properties such as age, gender, and skills, and then there is the reference to the enterprise, including factors such as enterprise size, position, and income. the objective factors are therefore quantifi able quantities that are usually clearly defi nable regardless of subjective assessments. by contrast, the subjective assessments of the workers with regard to the enterprise are always dependent on the individual. therefore, the subjective infl uencing factors are always based on assessments that refer to the enterprise in particular, but the characteristics are not independent of the individual, so that in table 1 we did not strictly differentiate between personal and organisation-related factors the factors taken into consideration here are the demands of the job or work, recognition or management, the perceived value (meaningfulness) of the work, and solidarity (bonds) with the enterprise (tab. 1). the infl uencing factors will be examined for their relevance to motivation and the ability to work and, as a consequence, to the desire for continued employment. work ability refers primarily to health aspects, but also indicates self-assessed work ability with regard to work content. the construct contains 15 items following the work ability index (cf. section 5.1: construction of the latent variables). determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 941 fig. 1: desire for continued employment taking motivation and work ability in account desire for continued employment objective factors personal and/or organisation-related motivation work ability subjective factors personal and organisation-related source: own design tab. 1: classifi cation of infl uencing factors personal factors organisation-related factors objective age gender skills enterprise size position income subjective work demands work recognition management meaningful work organisational bonds source: own design • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum942 to test the model, we have derived fi ve hypotheses from the descriptions of the infl uencing factors on motivation and work ability of older employees: hypothesis 1: high motivation has a positive infl uence on the desire for continued employment upon reaching retirement age. hypothesis 2: high work ability has a positive infl uence on the desire for continued employment upon reaching retirement age. hypothesis 3: the objective and subjective infl uencing factors have a direct infl uence on the desire for continued employment. the more positively the factors are perceived, the greater is the desire for continued employment. hypothesis 4: a positive assessment of the subjective factors correlates positively with the motivation of older workers. hypothesis 5: a positive assessment of the subjective factors correlates positively with the assessment of personal work ability. 5 survey and evaluation in order to test the fi ve hypotheses, we used the data from a survey conducted in a cooperation between the bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung and the srh hochschule berlin. this survey explicitly asks subjects about their willingness to continue working in old age (büsch et al. 2010). the subjects were asked whether they wish to remain gainfully employed after they reach retirement age. in addition, various socioeconomic data were surveyed such as gender, income, occupational status, etc. the sample encompasses 1,500 individuals and is representative of employees in the reviewed age group of 55-64 years. in this sample, which is described in table 2, only gainfully employed persons are represented (blueand white-collar workers subject to social insurance contributions, civil servants, marginal part-time employees). we did not include retirees, pensioners, self-employed persons, unemployed persons, short-time workers, or employees on leave of absence. the question of a desire for continued employment did not seem wise against the background of unemployment. determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 943 tab. 2: description of the sample variable relative frequency in % gender male 55.5 female 44.5 age 55 59 73.3 60 64 26.7 vocational training no vocational training completed 4.09 apprenticeship or comparable training 50.24 master, technician or comparable technical school diploma 17.05 university of applied science or university diploma 27.63 extent of gainful employment full time 76.79 part time (15-35 hours per week) 17.86 marginal (less than 15 hours per week) 5.35 vocational position manual workers 32.04 non-manual workers 57.60 civil servants 10.36 vocational status under-skilled 20.56 skilled 48.24 highly skilled 31.20 enterprise size less than 10 employees 13.70 10 49 24.67 50 249 27.55 250 499 33.41 monthly net household income less than 1,000 euros 4.55 1,000 – 1,999 32.34 2,000 – 2,999 29.33 3,000 – 3,999 14.76 4,000 euros and more 13.48 not specified 5.54 source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum944 5.1 construction of the latent variables in this sub-section, we will document the construction of the latent variables used in the analysis and their internal consistency (cronbach 1951). the latent variable is constructed by adding up the respective single items following possible needed rescaling to a common range of values. then all latent variables are standardized for the analysis, i.e. they then have a mean value of 0 and a standard deviation of 0.5. this allows for direct comparison of the corresponding regression coeffi cients, in particular also with dichotomous indicator variables. the correlations of latent variables to one another are portrayed in table 3. work demands based on the effort construct of siegrist et al. (2004) the latent variable of work demands is constructed of seven items: “my work requires great concentration,” “my work demands that i make rapid decisions,” “my work demands high work speed,” “my work is strenuous,” “my work is involved with a great deal of responsibility,” “my work is physically strenuous,” “after work i feel exhausted.” the items are each measured on a fi ve-point scale. the internal consistency of the latent variable work demands under cronbach’s alpha is 0.71. work recognition based on the reward construct of siegrist et al. (2004) the latent variable of work recognition is constructed of seven items: “my co-workers criticise me for every little thing,” “the work climate is not as i’d imagine it should be,” “complaints and suggestions by my co-workers and myself usually receive no attention,” “my relationship with my supervisor is cooperative,” “i receive too little pay for my work,” “if i could, i would like to change jobs,” “my workplace is safe.” the items are each measured on a fi ve-point scale. the internal consistency of the construct is 0.66. tab. 3: the correlations of latent variables to one another 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. work demands 1,00 0,20 -0,08 0,10 -0,01 -0,20 2. work recognition 0,20 1,00 -0,40 -0,41 0,17 -0,30 3. management -0,08 -0,40 1,00 0,21 -0,00 0,09 4. meaningful work 0,10 -0,41 0,21 1,00 -0,04 -0,28 5. organisational bonds -0,01 0,17 -0,00 -0,04 1,00 -0,06 6. work ability -0,20 -0,30 0,09 0,28 -0,06 1,00 source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 945 management the latent variable of management/leadership consists of three items: “my supervisor often makes the wrong decisions,” “my supervisor informs me in detail of important matters,” “my supervisor gives me clear and comprehensible instructions.” the items are each measured on a fi ve-point scale. the internal consistency of the construct is 0.67. meaningful work the latent variable of meaningfulness and identifi cation with the work is constructed of fi ve items: “my work is meaningful,” “i identify with the objectives of my enterprise,” “i make a major contribution to attaining the objectives of the enterprise,” “i am very satisfi ed with my work,” “after completing my work, i often have the feeling that i have made a contribution.” the items are each measured on a fi ve-point scale. the internal consistency of the construct is 0.63. organisational bonds the latent variable of organisational bonds consists of three items, which, due to their different scales are brought to a common scale before addition: “duration of employment with the enterprise,” “number of previous employers,” “number of phases of unemployment.” the internal consistency of the construct is 0.66. work ability the ability to work based on health according to the work ability index of tuomi et al. (2001) consist of 15 items: “how high do you assess your present work ability with regard to the content of your work?”, “how high do you think your work ability will be with regard to the content of your work fi ve years from now?”, “present general state of health” and twelve specifi c physical and psychological clinical pictures. the internal consistency of the construct is 0.85. work motivation the item motivation asks the extent to which the statement “my work motivation is very high” applies. both the dichotomisation of the variables of work motivation in the categories “disagree” and “agree” including “neither / nor” and the use of the variables as a cardinal scale measurement of work motivation lead to the same result with regard to the desire for continued employment. 5.2 results of the analysis one of the fi rst results of the survey is that nearly half of those surveyed could envision continuing to work. nevertheless, only 5.8 % of those surveyed actually • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum946 cited a desire to postpone retirement after reaching their individually anticipated retirement ages, while 63.1 % desire an earlier retirement than they presently anticipate. correspondingly only 17.0 % of those surveyed assess the gradual rise in the retirement age as “rather good” or “very good” but 69.0 % as “rather bad” or “very bad.” in the following we will examine the dependency of the personal desire for continued employment on the above cited objective and subjective factors. since the desire for continued employment after reaching retirement in the survey was measured on an ordinal scale of four categories and there is no approximated normal distribution, ordered logit models are used to analyse the desire for continued employment (agresti 2010). we fi rst examined the direct effect of work motivation and good health on the desire for continued employment without taking other available variables (see tab. 2 and section 5.1) into consideration. the evaluation reveals a signifi cantly positive effect of work motivation on the desire for continued employment, while the measured positive effect of health on the desire for continued employment is not statistically signifi cant (see tab. 4). hence the data do not contradict the fi rst hypothesis, but the second hypothesis is not supported by the data according to this analysis. additionally, a likelihood ratio test shows that there is no statistically signifi cant interaction effect between work motivation and work ability (χ2=1.39; df=1; p=0.24). before examining the effect of work motivation and work ability on the desire for continued employment taking the other available variables into account, we need to examine whether and to what extent these variables explain the variance of work motivation and work ability. since work motivation is also only available on an ordinal scale and there is also no approximated normal distribution, an analysis of deviance based on an ordered logit model was used. work ability, by contrast, demonstrates approximated normal distribution so that we can use an analysis of variance as the basis here. tab. 4: logit models – analysis of the importance of motivation and health for the desire for continued employment model 1 model 2 model 3 motivation 0.22* (0.10) 0.20* (0.10) health 0.13 (0.10) 0.08 (0.10) control variables no no no gamma 0.10 0.07 0.12 * = signifi cant at the level of .05, ** = signifi cant at the level of .01, the fi gures in the brackets are standard errors. gamma measures the fi t of the ordered logit model similarly to an r2 (cf. goodman/kruskal 1954). source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 947 a likelihood ratio test indicates that there are signifi cant differences between male and female survey participants with regard to the tested subjective and objective factors explaining the work motivation (χ2=59.4; df=40; p=0.02; see tab. 5). all in all, some of the deviance in work motivation can be explained by the perceived meaningfulness of the work, recognition on the job, and management leadership – each with a positive correlation. separate tests of male and female participants reveals that the statistical signifi cance of recognition on the job is only given in the sub-sample of female participants, whereas the statistical signifi cance of management/leadership is only given in the explanation of work motivation in the male sub-sample. in addition, there are statistically signifi cant age differences in work motivation and an infl uence by vocational status in the male sub-sample (motivation increases with age, to then drop again in the oldest age group; men at the middle hierarchical level have less motivation) and a statistically signifi cant effect of household income in the female sub-sample (high and low income correlate with higher work motivation). hypothesis 4, which postulates a positive correlation of the subjective factors with the motivation of older workers, can only be verifi ed for the perceived meaningfulness of the work. this applies for the subjective factors of work recognition and management/leadership in each case only in the sub-samples of the women or men participating in the survey. tab. 5: analysis of deviance of work motivation factors total data set men women lr x2 df p(>x2) lr x2 df p(>x2) lr x2 df p(>x2) gender 2.2 1 0.14 age 11.9 9 0.22 20.4 9 0.05* 10.2 9 0.33 educational level 5.1 5 0.41 7.3 5 0.20 2.3 5 0.81 working hours 0.5 2 0.79 0.4 2 0.83 0.3 2 0.87 vocational position 1.0 2 0.60 1.6 2 0.45 0.3 2 0.88 income 16.3 10 0.09 16.7 10 0.08 22.2 10 0.01 enterprise size 3.8 7 0.80 5.6 7 0.58 3.5 7 0.84 status 3.4 2 0.18 6.2 2 0.05* 2.3 2 0.32 meaningfulness 309.0 1 <0.01** 202.3 1 <0.01** 100.0 1 <0.01 demands 3.8 1 0.05 2.1 1 0.14 2.3 1 0.13 recognition 6.2 1 0.01* 2.2 1 0.14 4.7 1 0.03* organisational bonds 3.4 1 0.06 0.6 1 0.43 2.8 1 0.09 management 5.5 1 0.02* 4.1 1 0.04* 2.2 1 0.14 the column lr x2 shows the chi2 statistic of the likelihood ratio test, column df the corresponding degrees of freedom, and column p(>x2) the p value of the chi2 statistic of the cited degrees of freedom. * = signifi cant at the level of .05, ** = signifi cant at the level of .01, source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum948 a linear model is estimated for the state of health since the characteristic studied exhibits suffi cient normal distribution. the results of the analysis of covariance are shown in table 6. an f-test reveals no signifi cant gender differences explaining health using the subjective and objective factors (f=0.92; df=40; p=0.61). the variance of work ability can be explained with statistical signifi cance by the perceived meaningfulness of the work (the linear regressions used as the basis for the analysis of covariance – not additionally reported here – ceteris paribus shows a negative correlation of the meaningfulness of the work and work ability), the job demands and recognition (each a positive correlation), gender (women have less work ability), income (non-linear relation), and enterprise size (negative correlation). the data do not falsify hypothesis 5; work ability correlates only with some of the subjective factors such as demands and recognition. lastly, we can examine the effect of work motivation and work ability on the desire for continued employment taking the other available variables into account. a likelihood ratio test shows that there are signifi cant gender differences for the explanation of the desire for continued employment through the studied subjective and objective factors (χ2=74.38; df=42; p<0.01). table 7 reports the regression result of the ordered logit model taking the other objective and subjective control variables into account as in table 4, however additionally divided up by male and female survey participants. after accounting for the control variables the effect sizes of both motivation and work ability increase; both variables are now statistically signifi cant. the separate consideration of female and male participants, however, tab. 6: analysis of covariance of health response sum sq df f value pr(>f) gender 2.14 1 10.83 < 0.01** age 2.84 9 1.60 0.11 educational level 2.09 5 2.11 0.06 working hours 1.12 2 2.84 0.06 vocational position 0.54 2 1.36 0.26 income 4.34 10 2.20 0.02* enterprise size 2.80 7 2.03 0.05* status 0.88 2 2.23 0.11 meaningfulness 14.60 1 73.93 < 0.01** demands 11.00 1 55.73 < 0.01** recognition 4.14 1 20.97 < 0.01** organisational bonds 0.14 1 0.72 0.39 management 0.01 1 0.07 0.80 residuals 286.40 1450 * = signifi cant at the level of .05, ** = signifi cant at the level of .01, source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 949 reveals that motivation makes a signifi cant contribution to explaining the desire for continued employment only for male and work ability only for female participants. table 8 shows the results of the corresponding analysis of deviance. tab. 8: analysis of deviance of the desire for continued employment factors total data set men women lr x2 df pr(>x2) lr x2 df pr(>x2) lr x2 df pr(>x2) motivation 5.6 1 0.02* 13.5 1 < 0.01** 0.2 1 0.63 work ability 4.5 1 0.03* 1.1 1 0.30 4.3 1 0.04* gender 6.9 1 0.01** age 19.0 9 0.03* 12.1 9 0.21 10.4 9 0.32 educational level 8.2 5 0.15 4.6 5 0.47 4.8 5 0.44 working hours 5.4 2 0.07 9.4 2 0.01** 1.6 2 0.46 vocational position 13.4 2 <0.01** 22.4 2 <0.01** 0.8 2 0.67 income 40.2 10 <0.01** 29.6 10 <0.01** 16.2 10 0.09 enterprise size 21.0 6 <0.01** 18.4 6 0.01** 12.1 6 0.06 status 1.9 2 0.39 4.3 2 0.12 16.5 2 <0.01** meaningfulness 0.1 1 0.83 0.1 1 0.75 <0.1 1 0.89 demands 2.0 1 0.16 0.2 1 0.66 1.5 1 0.21 recognition 7.3 1 0.01** 12.3 1 <0.01** 0.2 1 0.68 organizational bonds 15.0 1 <0.01** 4.7 1 0.03* 12.4 1 <0.01** management 0.2 1 0.66 0.9 1 0.36 0.1 1 0.78 * = signifi cant at the level of .05, ** = signifi cant at the level of .01, source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations tab. 7: desire for continued employment and work motivation and health taking other objective and subjective factors into account as control variables total data set men women motivation 0.28* (0.12) 0.58** (0.16) -0.09 (0.19) health 0.24* (0.11) 0.16 (0.16) 0.34* (0.17) control variables yes yes yes gamma 0.75 0.97 0.83 source: data set “weiterbeschäftigung im rentenalter”, own calculations • victoria büsch, dennis dittrich, uta lieberum950 the data do not falsify hypothesis 3. the desire for continued employment correlates both directly with some of the objective and some of the subjective factors. it is striking that there are hardly any overlaps among the genders with regard to the objective and subjective factors that can explain the deviance in the desire for continued employment with statistical signifi cance. 6 conclusions and prospects this study analysed which factors positively infl uence the willingness for continued employment after reaching the retirement age. first of all it shows that almost half of those surveyed can envision continuing work after reaching retirement age. however, men and women are infl uenced by different factors with regard to their desire for continued employment. in hypotheses 1 and 2 derived from the continuity theory (atchley 1989) we assume that a positive assessment of motivation and work ability correlate with a greater desire for continued employment upon reaching retirement age. with regard to these hypotheses we can state that after taking the available control variables into account these hypotheses cannot be rejected. nonetheless the data in the sub-sample of participating women do not support hypothesis 1. this means that high motivation only correlates positively with the desire for continued employment among men. by contrast, hypothesis 2, which assumes a positive infl uence from work ability, is only supported in the sub-sample of women. we illustrated that the desire for continued employment is signifi cantly infl uenced in men by motivation and in women by work ability. it is also apparent on the basis of hypothesis 4 that a positive assessment of the subjective infl uencing factors correlates positively with the degree of motivation. this applies, to varying degrees, with recognition and management as well as work demands. also, the assessment of work ability, in agreement with hypothesis 5, correlates with some of the subjective factors (demands and recognition) and some of the objective factors (income and enterprise size). hypothesis 3, which assumed that a positive assessment of the subjective and objective factors has positive effects on the desire for continued employment, can also not be rejected. yet here, too, the direct and indirect infl uence of the objective and subjective factors on the desire for continued employment is gender-specifi c. while four objective factors have a direct signifi cant infl uence on the desire for continued employment among men, only one objective factor can contribute to explaining this desire among women. the desire for continued employment among the male participants was infl uenced by their working hours (full-time employees are more likely to desire continued employment), their vocational position (white-collar workers are more likely to desire continued employment), their household income, the size of the enterprise and their recognition on the job (each with a negative correlation). on the subjective side, the desire for continued employment among male subjects can be explained by work motivation and organisational bonds (positive correlations in both cases). the perceived meaningfulness of the work, vocational status, and management/ determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 951 leadership have additional indirect effects on the desire for continued employment through motivation. the deviance in the desire for continued employment of female survey participants can be explained by their work ability, their vocational status, and their organisational bonds (each with a positive correlation). the perceived meaningfulness of the work, the demands and recognition on the job, income, and enterprise size have only indirect effect through their infl uence on work ability. we can state that organisational bonds are a signifi cant explanatory factor both for women and for men and therefore assume that employees who have worked in one enterprise for many years also have a distinct desire for continued employment. notably, meaningful work has a positive effect on the motivation of men and work ability on the motivation of women. since precisely these two parameters strongly infl uence the respective desire for continued employment it is important that senior managers in enterprises be able to convince their employees of the meaningfulness of their work and the enterprise objective respectively. these results therefore suggest that employees should be informed of the objectives or of their contribution to achieving the objectives so that they are able to place their own work in a meaningful context. one possibility for this is increased participation in the development of objectives or partial objectives for the enterprise. methods can be employed for this participative approach such as conducting strategy workshops, increasing teamwork, or mentors or sponsorships. it appears essential that female employees possess relevant work ability. in order to maintain the security of employability regular job-related skills enhancement measures could contribute to increasing the desire for continued employment. there is already a great deal of evidence on devising age-appropriate work conditions. many of these aspects can also be considered as implications for the desire for continued employment from this study. in particular, measures in the areas of management, task design, skills enhancement, and company culture appear to be wise approaches both to create a positive work atmosphere (before reaching retirement age), and ensure appreciation at all age levels. in general, age discrimination should be excluded as much as possible and a culture of knowledge sharing and experience transfer created. this can be achieved by means of deliberate team formation (collaboration among different age groups), through skills enhancement measures that are not offered on the basis of age, and through the opportunity to work independently (with regard to time and content). this course of action should apply as well for employment beyond retirement. these measures are nothing new, but the results of this study substantiate their relevance (bundesministerium für arbeit und soziales 2010). equal treatment of older 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(eds.): handbook of industrial and organizational psychology vol. 4. palo alto: consulting psychologists press: 485-550. warr, peter 2001: age and work behaviour: physical attributes, cognitive abilities, knowledge, personality traits and motives. in: international review of industrial and organizational psychology 16: 1-36. zacher, hannes; degner, manuela; seevaldt, robert; frese, michael 2009: was wollen jüngere und ältere erwerbstätige erreichen? altersbezogene unterschiede in den inhalten und merkmalen berufl icher ziele. in: zeitschrift für personalpsychologie 8,4: 191-200 [doi: 10.1026/1617-6391.8.4.191]. determinants of work motivation and work ability among older workers • 957 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title „determinanten der arbeitsmotivation und leistungsfähigkeit älterer arbeitnehmer und auswirkungen auf den weiterbeschäftigungswunsch”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-20de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-20de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 31.08.2010 date of acceptance: 02.02.2012 prof. dr. victoria büsch ( ). srh hochschule berlin, 10587 berlin, germany. e-mail: victoria.buesch@srh-hochschule-berlin.de prof. dr. dennis a. v. dittrich. jacobs university bremen, jacobs university’s school of humanities and social sciences, 28759 bremen, germany. e-mail: d.dittrich@jacobs-university.de prof. dr. uta lieberum. hochschule fresenius, standort hamburg, 20148 hamburg, germany. e-mail: lieberum@hs-fresenius.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) church membership and church attendance across time – a trend analysis considering differences between east and west germany daniel lois abstract: on the basis of allbus data this paper examines for the period under observation 1980-2008 how the probability of church membership and the frequency of churchgoing change depending on age, calendar time and birth cohort. in accordance with conventional secularisation theories, it is shown for western and eastern germany that the share of individuals with a religious denomination in the periods 1980-2008 and 1991-2008 is continuing to fall. the general secularisation trend is however counteracted by positive age effects on the probability of church membership (in western and eastern germany) and on the frequency of churchgoing (in western germany). a form of secularisation which has received little attention so far in this context lies in the fact that the positive age effect on church attendance among western german persons weakens signifi cantly with ongoing calendar time. in view of cohort effects, it is shown for western germany that in particular the 1946-1953 birth cohort, which was considerably infl uenced by the 68 movement, is typifi ed by low levels of religious participation. a revitalisation of ties to churches is shown in the new federal states in the cohorts from 1961 onwards, which were socialised during the dissolution of the gdr and after reunifi cation. keywords: secularisation · church membership · church attendance · trend analysis · apc analysis 1 introduction for many decades, sociologists have described the development of religion and the church under the conditions of a modern society as a crisis scenario. the fundamental presumption here is that modernisation processes such as urbanisation, industrialisation and rationalisation have caused various developments which are generally summed up under the umbrella term of secularisation. these include a reduction in the social standing of the traditional christian forms of religion, falling comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 1 (2011): 161-192 (date of release: 24.11.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-04en1 • daniel lois162 acceptance of the churches and their teachings, increasing renunciation of church membership or a weakening willingness to participate in church life (berger 1973; wilson 1982; bruce 2002). the core of the secularisation theory is based on allegedly unambiguous empirical fi ndings indicating an ongoing decline in religion in germany and europe. there is considerable empirical evidence of the decreasing signifi cance of christian faith or of a fall in the share of church members and in the frequency of churchgoing (e.g. jagodzinski/dobbelaere 1993: 79-88.; pollack/pickel 1999: 473-776, 2003: 457-460; wolf 2007; voas 2008: 28). however, these studies do not simultaneously take account of age, period and cohort effects. in order to clarify the related problems, a brief defi nition of these three time dimensions will be given below. (1) cohort and socialisation effects cover differences between various generations. this centres on the presumption that individual characteristics such as religious convictions are acquired during childhood and youth. the formative phase of socialisation is typifi ed here by various contextual conditions (events, socioeconomic characteristics) and leaves behind a lasting infl uence on the further course of life (ryder 1965). (2) age and lifecycle effects relate to changes within birth cohorts which are caused by the status of a person in the lifetime. chronological ageing, that is the advance of time after birth, is accompanied by biological ageing (physiological changes in the body), social ageing (changes in social relations) and psychological ageing (changes in attitudes, values and dispositions) (glenn 2005). (3) differences between various calendar times which equally concern all cohorts and age groups are designated as period effects. they include infl uences caused by the historical context, such as a typical spirit of the age or sociostructural changes that exert an impact on individuals. if no statistical distinction is made between age, period and cohort effects, it is no longer possible to unambiguously interpret trend developments. thus, there is a risk for instance that supposed cohort effects actually mask potential infl uences of age (ecological fallacy). jagodzinski and dobbelaere (1993: 82) are certainly aware of these problems when they write in the framework of their cohort analysis: “we cannot rule out that religious participation increases with age, although we do not consider the hypothesis to be highly plausible to such a general degree” (translated by the author). voas (2008: 27) observes that religiosity is declining in europe in a comparison between various cohorts, and notes with regard to possible age effects: “the suggestion that the higher religiosity of earlier birth cohorts merely refl ects an age-related return to faith can be rejected.” however, the authors of neither study provide proof backing up their supposition that there is no age effect. due to the lack of age-period-cohort (apc) analyses, the following questions are ambiguous at the present stage of research: is there in addition to negative cohort and period effects a positive age effect which runs counter to the inter-age secularisation trend? do the direction and the strength of this age effect change in the course of calendar time or in comparison between various birth cohorts? is the secularisation process primarily refl ected as a negative period effect which affects all birth cohorts and age groups equally? do, furthermore, certain birth cohorts prove to be particularly amenable or resistant to the secularisation process? church membership and church attendance across time • 163 this article aims to investigate these questions in the context of an apc analysis for the federal republic on the basis of trend data of the cumulated allbus. when it comes to church membership and church attendance, two dependent variables are observed which can be attributed to the dimension of ritual practice.1 development in eastern germany since 1991 receives special attention in the analyses. after the repression of the church and of religion during the period of socialism, a much discussed question is whether a revitalisation of adherence to the church can be observed in eastern germany after reunifi cation. since the studies carried out on this topic so far (e.g. jagodzinski 2000; pollack 2000; meulemann 2003) are largely based on data until the end of the 1990s, an analysis of the current trend developments appears to be required. 2 theoretical starting conditions: secularisation, religious market model and life cycle effects the discussion below focuses on which age, period and cohort effects on church membership and church attendance can be anticipated in the period under observation 1980-2008. in addition to the conventional macro-level theories of social change, more recent approaches such as the religious market model and the life cycle effects, to which relatively little attention had so far been paid, are also taken up to answer this question. 2.1 conventional secularisation theories: the tension between religiosity and modernisation the conventional secularisation theories refer to the loss of signifi cance of religion in the course of advancing modernisation (e.g. berger 1973; wilson 1982; bruce 2002). fundamental to this hypothesis is the idea that the processes of modernisation and religion are in confl ict with one another. it is above all macro-level processes of societal change, such as rationalisation and functional differentiation, which are primarily regarded as being a cause of this, and these will be briefl y outlined 1 according to the present state of research, the latent construct “religiosity” can be sub-divided into several dimensions, including the dimension of religious conviction (the confession of religious tenets of faith), the dimension of religious experience (the subjective religious experience), the cognitive dimension (the knowledge of the teachings contained in a religion), the dimension of ritual practice (participation in church life) and the dimension relating to the ethical consequences of faith (glock 1954). • daniel lois164 below.2 with regard to period and cohort effects, an attempt will be made here as far as possible to name historical periods and birth cohorts for which the above processes are particularly relevant. the process of rationalisation (weber 1972) describes the spread of a competitive economy which is orientated towards profi tability and the enforcement of a scientific world view characterised by thinking in terms of cause-and-effect. the principles that are valid for scientifi c predictions and explanations enter everyday thinking and contradict a world view which is built on religious meaning. the increasing amenability of processes of human life to being planned and controlled leads to a “demystifi cation” of the world. its interpretation is no longer orientated towards uncontrollable, inexplicable powers from the next world, but towards physical, psychological and social laws (cf. jagodzinski/dobbelaere 1993: 69-76; pickel 2011: 137-143). one of the most important preconditions for rationalisation processes should be the general expansion in education, which started in the federal republic in the 1950s, and its dynamics did not weaken until the mid-1990s (becker 2006). negative cohort effects can be anticipated for the cohorts from 1950 onwards, since this is when the process of higher qualifi cation accelerates (cf. becker 2006: 37-40).3 in the context of the ongoing process of functional differentiation (luhmann 1977), it is presumed that autonomous, and self-referential function systems (e.g. politics, economics, law, religion, science) with their own rules are formed. it therefore can be derived that religion is continuously renouncing societal functions which it previously carried out. this relates for instance to a withdrawal from schooling, social care or healthcare. in the course of the differentiation, religion and the church lose their power to interpret societal development and their infl uence as an agency for socialisation. this makes it increasingly diffi cult for religious organisations to pass on their norms and values and to infl uence political decisions which are important for them (cf. wilson 1982; pickel 2011: 152, 161). a further hypothesis is that the rationalisation process was favoured by the spread of urban lifestyles. various technological changes play an important role 2 the following depiction need not be exhaustive. the selection is orientated in line with developments which appear to be particularly relevant to individual cohorts or to the selected period under observation. a full overview of the highly-heterogeneous secularisation theories can be found for instance in pickel (2011: 137-177). it should furthermore be pointed out that criticism of the secularisation paradigm has become more pronounced in the last ten years. for instance, the usa, which is one of the most economically and culturally highly developed countries in the world, still has a high level of religious vitality. this contradicts the tension that is supposed to exist between religion and modernisation. critical discussions of the secularisation paradigm can be found in pickel (2011: 137-226) or pollack (2009: 60-104). 3 in accordance with a “rationalised” world view, the individual decision to belong to a church is connected to a cost-benefi t balance. it is noticeable in this context that signifi cant waves of withdrawal from church membership took particularly place in years in which the individual fi scal burden considerably increased as a result of special levies (eicken/schmitz-veltin 2010). within the base period under observation, this particularly includes the year 1991 in which the solidarity levy was introduced; moreover, the years 1983, 1993, 1998 and 2007 in which vat was increased may potentially be considered. the respective additional fi scal strains might have contributed towards a negative period effect on the probability of church membership. church membership and church attendance across time • 165 here. as a result of the expansion of private television and of the rapid growth of the internet, the 1980s and 1990s experienced a higher level of media density and media diversity. statements from the church which were previously unquestioned are hence undermined more frequently. at the same time, secular lifestyles came about which were caused to a major degree by the increased availability of leisure activities in the cities which compete with exercising religious practice. it is presumed in terms of the overall development that it leads to a “detraditionalisation” of private life since it has increased the possibilities open to the individual to break out of his/ her narrow, socially-controlled life-world (cf. jagodzinski/dobbelaere 1993; pickel 2011: 141). the increase in socioeconomic prosperity which is typical of modernisation is regarded as a further cause of secularisation processes (norris/inglehart 2004). the increase in prosperity is linked to a reduction in existential uncertainties. through the increase in the standard of living, the expansion of social security systems, the achievement of technological progress and the refi nement of medicine, the protection against threats to external and internal security becomes stronger. the need for religious securities and compensations falls as a result of growing possibilities to control society and nature (cf. pollack 2009: 70). from a cohort perspective, in particular the 1922-1934 cohorts, who can be regarded as the war and post-war generation, grew up under conditions of material need. if these socialisation infl uences have a long-term impact, the 1922-1934 cohort should be typifi ed by a higher level of religious affi liation and religious practice. the change in values has also exerted a potentially positive impact on secularisation. the individualisation process in the post-war period, which is interpreted in the sense of releasing from traditional social ties (beck 1986) was accompanied by a change in social values. this can already be demonstrated in the 1950s, but jumped rapidly in the 1960s and at the beginning of the 1970s (klages 1988). the changes in values are typifi ed above all by a fall in the signifi cance of duty and conformity values (e.g. discipline, obedience, fulfi lling obligations, submission, loyalty) and at the same time an increase in the signifi cance of self-development values (e.g. emancipation from authorities, equal treatment, democracy and creativity). as potential causes of the change in values, various modernisation processes are discussed in turn which range from the increase in prosperity and the expansion of the social state in the post-war period via the sociopsychological consequences of expansion in education, through to the media revolution (klages 1988: 51-59). the change in values can be connected with a turning away from religion and the churches, since the orientation towards self-development values is accompanied by a rejection of external demands such as religious norms which are asserted in an authoritative manner. as a result of their traditionalistic value system and hierarchical understanding of authority, the churches no longer did justice to the now prevalent expectations and values of people in the course of the rapid value change (klages 1984: 95-100). from a cohort perspective, particularly the so called “68 generation” is said to be characterised by emancipation from the church, which was regarded as an institution of the dominant duty and acceptance values. according to various studies on the change in values (e.g. klein/pötschke 2004) it is particularly the 1946-1953 • daniel lois166 cohort (“apo generation”) which was affected by the student movement and the events related to the year 1968. 2.2 the religious market model and developments in eastern germany after 1990 the religious market model was developed by us sociologists (stark/bainbridge 1987; stark/iannaccone 1994; stark 1999), and its core statements contradict the conventional secularisation theories. from this perspective, the individual “demand” for religion has not fallen in the course of the modernisation process. it is rather regarded as an inherent expression of universal human needs for security and answers to existential questions. the desire to overcome the diffi culties of life and one’s own mortality leads to a situation in which – as compensation for a lack of rationally-examinable solutions – religious faith contents such as a life after death are accepted. in the market model, religious diversity is based primarily on what is on offer from the churches and on the extent to which the religious market is regulated by the state. a fall in religious vitality can be traced in this regard to the fact that the monopoly churches are no longer able to satisfactorily meet the religious needs of the “individualised” faithful. if a large number of religious “entrepreneurs” compete on the market, the seeking faithful will once again fi nd a supply that corresponds to their preferences. the religious market model is hence a purely supplyorientated rational choice approach. the religious market model leads to some hypotheses regarding the consequences of the historically most signifi cant event which occurred within the period under observation: the german reunifi cation in 1990. germany is a special case because of the east-west differences which are highly pronounced in questions of religiosity. in cultural terms, these differences result from the fact that western germany has always been strongly infl uenced by the southern german catholic cultural tradition, whereas the liberal-to-secular currents of the largely protestant north east are dominant in eastern germany (cf. pickel 2003). in the medium term, these divergences were amplifi ed by decades of experience with systems that were diametrically opposed in political terms. in the course of “forced secularisation” (meulemann 2004), the share of people with no denomination in the former gdr increased, from no more than 5-8 % in 1950, to roughly 70 % in 1989 (pollack 2000: 2). state repression expressed itself in a number of measures addressed against the church, which in particular were carried out in the second half of the 1950s. these included the arrest of church workers, the impediment of religious events, the promotion of religious disaffi liation in companies, censorship of religious contents from the media and the abolition of the state collection of church tax via the tax offi ces. particularly serious consequences resulted from the introduction of the state-organised “jugendweihe” (youth consecration), which suppressed confi rmation on a massive scale. it should also be pointed out that “historical materialism” which has been introduced by state socialism was an ideological alternative to transcendental beliefs which was shared by broad groups of the population into the 1980s (cf. storch 2003; meulemann 2004). church membership and church attendance across time • 167 what development can now be anticipated in the time after reunifi cation? according to the secularisation theories, one may presume for eastern germany that there would be a further downward trend after 1990 – possibly after a return to the level corresponding to the modernisation level (pickel 2010). one would however have to presume here that the secularisation theories are based on a picture of the permanent fall of religion without the possibility of a return to a former level (voas 2008: 40-44). on the basis of the religious market model, it can be predicted, by contrast, that there would be a revitalisation of religion after the fall of state repression and a restoration of a religious market. even if no entirely free religious market came about after reunifi cation because of article 140 of the basic law (grundgesetz), there is greater scope for competition than has previously been (cf. jagodzinski 2000: 54-57). accordingly, an increase of church membership and church attendance can be expected from 1991 onwards. from a cohort perspective, the weakest adherence to the church should be anticipated in the 1945-1965 cohorts. these groups of individuals can be referred to as gdr cohorts since they were infl uenced in their youth by an established socialist state. a revitalisation of religion, by contrast, can be anticipated in the 1961-1974 and 1975-1990 cohorts, who were socialised during the dissolution phase of the gdr and after reunifi cation (cf. meulemann 2003: 274-275). there is already a detailed study by pollack (2000) on the development of religiosity in eastern germany following reunifi cation. it reaches the conclusion that, fi rstly, a loss of signifi cance of religion and the church has continued after 1989. this is expressed in marked waves of membership resignations from the popular christian churches from 1992 onwards, which appears to have been particularly motivated by avoiding having to pay the church tax. secondly, however, there are also indications of a trend towards consolidation of membership of the popular churches, expressing itself in a slight increase in those joining the churches after 1989, a temporary increase in the christening rates and a slight increase in the share of those attending religious services. meulemann (2003) reaches the conclusion that the east-west difference in various faith contents in comparison between two measurement times, 1991 and 1998, has remained constant; at the same time, however, one can observe a tendency towards a revitalisation of faith in the youngest cohort surveyed (cohorts from 1974). in an international comparison, the lack of revitalisation of religion in eastern germany appears to be more of an exception. pickel (2010) shows that the proportion of church members increases considerably in most eastern european states (especially in russia, bulgaria and lithuania) since 1990. 2.3 age and lifecycle effects or the question: “how does religiosity change across the life course?” whereas secularisation can be primarily understood as intergenerational change, lifecycle effects relate to the conditions which determine the extent of individual religiosity in the respective life phase. there is so far no standard theory on the basis of which infl uences on religiosity exerted by age can be predicted. in the literature • daniel lois168 however, several models can be found that assume the shape of the age effect. bahr (1970) distinguishes between four patterns: (1) according to the stability model, there is no independent age effect. the empirical positive correlation between age and church attendance is accordingly an artefact, possibly caused by cohort effects. (2) the traditional model predicts a drop in religious practice between the ages of 18 and 30, followed by an increase. (3) in the framework of the family cycle model it is presumed that the frequency of churchgoing increases after the transition into marriage, climaxes when children reach the age of fi ve or older and falls once more after all children have left home. (4.) the “disengagement” model fi nally presumes a fall in the frequency of churchgoing in advanced age. the state of research on age-specifi c changes in religiosity can be summed up as follows: various studies indicate the existence of an age effect. these particularly include two studies on the basis of panel data (lois 2011; argue et al. 1999), as well as apc analyses of the frequency of churchgoing on the basis of trend data from the united states (miller/nakamura 1996; schwadel et al. 2009; schwadel 2010). the fi ndings on the form of the age effect are not unambiguous. the results of most studies indicate a monotone increase in religiosity across the life course (miller/nakamura 1996; argue et al. 1999). additionally, for church attendance and the subjective importance of religion, there are however also indications of a (temporary) reduction in the transition from youth to adulthood (uecker et al. 2007; petts 2009). the stability and “disengagement” models are however hardly supported by research. with regard to the explanation of age effects, only a small number of arguments are found which favour a direct, causal effect of age on religiosity. one of the hypotheses put forward here is that people become increasingly aware of their own mortality as they age, so that particularly the belief in a life after death should increase (stark/bainbridge 1987: 50). moreover, the patterns named by bahr (1970) already imply several indirect explanations. for instance, the family cycle model is linked with the idea that changes in the frequency of churchgoing over a lifecycle can be traced back to biographical transitions such as marriage and family-formation. some important points in a person’s lifetime are tackled below, which according to the fi ndings of previous studies impact the probability of church membership or the frequency of churchgoing. in the context of the family cycle, it can be regarded as secure knowledge that transition into marriage is linked to an increase in religious practice (lois 2011; thornton et al. 1992). empirical research moreover indicates that a positive effect is exerted by having school-age children on church attendance and church membership of the parents (e.g. lois 2011; stolzenberg et al. 1995; schwadel et al. 2009). an event occurring late in the family cycle is widowhood, for which positive effects are also reported on various religiosity indicators (lois 2011; brown et al. 2004). additionally, biographical transitions are indicated which contribute towards a drop in religious practice and an increase in the probability of resigning church membership. these include the acquisition of advanced educational qualifi cations (lois 2011; mayrl/ouer 2009), starting work (birkelbach 1999) or divorce (lois 2011; stolzenberg et al. 1995; argue et al. 1999). church membership and church attendance across time • 169 the frequency and the timing of the various biographical transitions should determine whether a positive or negative overall trend can be observed in a life cycle, i.e. a correspondingly indicative age effect. a new perspective of the process of secularisation emerges at this point. the above studies indicate a positive or at least u-shaped age effect. accordingly, those lifecycle processes which exert a stimulating effect on religiosity have so far prevailed. here, however, one may certainly anticipate a shift in the weight since some very well proven demographic changes can be observed in recent decades. these for example include the delay in fi rst marriage, an increase in non-marital cohabitation, the rising divorce rates (in western germany) and the increasing female labour force participation (in an overview: peuckert 2008: 32-37, 169, 244-246). transitions during a lifetime leading to a fall in religious activities are hence becoming more frequent, whereas positive infl uencing factors on religiosity are becoming less signifi cant. one may hence presume that the positive impact of age in the course of historical time weakens in comparison between various birth cohorts. in a study with panel data, lois (2011) can confi rm that the age-specifi c increase in the frequency of churchgoing becomes weaker as calendar time advances. one goal of this study is to replicate this fi nding using trend data. 3 data and method 3.1 data basis and analysis procedure as was already discussed in the introduction, processes of social change such as secularisation can only be satisfactorily analysed if one simultaneously takes three time effects into account (age, period, cohort). this study relies on pooled trend data of the cumulated allbus for the years 1980-2008.4 the major advantage of this data basis is the fact that the period under observation covers almost 30 years in the allbus, whereas in the socio-economic panel for instance, church attendance has only been surveyed since 1990. the allbus data are hence comparatively well suited to enable an analysis of the long-term secularisation process. to analyse the data, multi-level analysis is used which takes into account the nesting of individuals into different levels (introduction e.g. hox 2002; luke 2004). generally, trend data have such a hierarchical structure since respondents (level 1) are embedded in the time context of the survey times (level 2) (cf. klein 2005). this approach can be expanded for the special case of an apc analysis such that the time context (spanning different ages) is broken down into period and cohort infl uences. it should be taken into account here that members of a birth cohort, or respondents 4 the target population up to 1990 consists of all eligible persons in the (old) federal republic and west berlin who live in private households. since 1991 the target population has consisted of the adult residential population (i.e. germans and foreigners) in western and eastern germany. • daniel lois170 at a specifi c historical time, are probably more similar than could be expected by chance. multi-level models with random coeffi cients cover both infl uences of the time context that were observed and those which were not observed, and lead to valid inference-statistical estimates (yang 2008). the attribution of persons to cohorts and periods is however not hierarchical, since the respondents at a survey time belong to several cohorts and the members of a cohort are surveyed at different survey times. in the context of an apc analysis, hence, it is not a 3-level model, but a so-called “cross-classifi ed random effects model” (ccrem, yang/land 2006; yang/land 2008) which is used. the cross classifi cation used here is presented in table 1, the columns correspond to all 16 allbus survey years from 1980 and the lines to all 19 5-year cohorts from the birth year 1895 on. this means in conceptual terms that persons of a specifi c cell in the table are embedded in two time contexts, period and cohort, at the same time. thus, for instance, n = 277 persons born between 1960 and 1965 were surveyed in 2000. on the basis of this cohort × period matrix, regression models are estimated with the dependent variables of religious denomination and frequency of churchgoing (for operationalisation see below). multi-level models with random coeffi cients (yang/land 2006, 2008) are used here. in the case of church attendance, the corresponding model has the following specifi cation: level 1 (within cell) model: level 2 (between-cell) model: for i = 1, 2,…, njk persons within cohort j and period k; j = 1,…, 19 birth cohorts; k = 1,…, 16 time periods (survey years). within birth cohort j and survey year k, the frequency of churchgoing for each person i is modelled as a function of their logarithmised age, of the gender and of affi liation to a denomination. β0jk is the intercept or “cell mean” in table 2, that is the mean frequency of churchgoing of persons who belong to birth cohort j and were surveyed in year k. β1-β3 are the level-1 fi xed-effects. eijk is the random individual effect, i.e. the deviation of the frequency of the churchgoing of an individual i in cohort j and period k from the cell mean. γ0 constitutes the fi xed part of the intercept, or to be more precise the mean frequency of churchgoing over all persons (grand mean). this random-intercept model specifi cation allows the level-1 intercept to vary randomly from cohort-to-cohort (lines in tab. 2) and period-to-period (columns in tab. 2). u0j is the residual random effect of cohort j, i.e. the contribution of cohort j averaged over all periods. v0k is the residual random effect of period k – that is, 0k0j00jk vuγβ ++= ijkijk3ijk2ijk1ojkijk eondenominatiβfemaleβlnageββgchurchgoin ++++= church membership and church attendance across time • 171 the contribution of period k averaged over all cohorts.5 additionally, analyses are carried out in which the slope for the logarithmised age (β1) can also randomly vary over cohorts or periods respectively (“random slope model”). in the case of the analysis of church membership (1 = yes, 0 = no), a logistic multi-level model (guo/zhao 2000) is used which is formally defi ned as follows (notation see above): level 1 (within cell) model: level 2 (between-cell) model: the symbol π represents the probability of having a religious denomination. hence, the dependent variable of the model shown is the logarithmised chance of membership of a religious organisation. in addition to the multi-level models with random coeffi cients, ols regressions (churchgoing) and logistical regressions (church membership) are estimated with conventional (fi xed) effects. robust standard errors (rogers 1993) are calculated in these models in order to also allow for the hierarchical data structure, i.e. the nesting of persons into cohorts and survey times. the clustering of the sample corresponds to the cohort × period cells presented in table 2. ijk3ijk2ijk1ojk ijk ijk frauβalter²βalterzββ )π(1 π ln +++=⎟ ⎟ ⎠ ⎞ ⎜ ⎜ ⎝ ⎛ − 0k0j00jk vuγβ ++= 5 a normal distribution is presumed for eijk,, u0k, and v0k. tab. 1: alternative cohort classifi cations for western and eastern germany western germany eastern germany cohorts designation cohorts designation 1895-1921 pre-war generation 1895-1930 national unity 1922-1934 war/post-war 1931-1945 establishment of the gdr 1935-1945 adenauer generation 1946-1960 consolidation of the gdr 1946-1953 apo generation 1961-1974 dissolution of the gdr 1954-1964 new social movements 1975-1990 reunification 1965-1975 generation golf 1976-1990 reunification note: inspired by meulemann (2003: 274-275) and klein/pötschke (2004: 449). • daniel lois172 ta b . 2 : c ro ss -c la ss ifi ca tio n o f 1 9 co ho rt s an d 1 6 su rv ey y ea rs ( w es te rn g er m an y) s ur ve y ye ar c o ho rt 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 t o ta l 18 95 -1 90 0 58 35 17 9 6 5 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 13 3 19 01 -1 90 5 99 86 74 43 36 26 8 12 8 6 4 2 0 0 0 0 40 4 19 06 -1 91 0 17 0 17 3 12 9 11 5 90 50 19 33 21 13 13 12 4 0 0 0 84 2 19 11 -1 91 5 25 7 22 3 19 8 13 0 14 1 11 9 51 88 57 36 43 32 7 9 7 3 1, 40 1 19 16 -1 92 0 17 2 18 2 16 0 14 3 17 1 16 4 65 97 59 58 71 42 15 19 13 14 1, 44 5 19 21 -1 92 5 22 3 22 4 22 7 22 5 20 2 21 7 10 8 16 2 12 5 96 11 4 90 65 51 47 61 2, 23 7 19 26 -1 93 0 21 7 23 9 20 8 18 8 21 2 22 4 10 9 16 9 15 4 15 0 15 3 13 7 10 0 89 88 77 2, 51 4 19 31 -1 93 5 22 4 21 6 19 6 19 9 18 9 18 3 90 15 5 16 8 16 9 18 4 17 3 11 0 10 8 12 4 13 0 2, 61 8 19 36 -1 94 0 26 8 29 1 25 5 25 0 23 6 26 6 12 1 21 2 23 0 22 1 20 4 22 4 16 8 15 7 23 2 19 5 3, 53 0 19 41 -1 94 5 26 3 22 8 23 3 26 9 18 0 21 7 10 7 16 6 17 1 19 6 17 8 18 5 13 9 16 5 18 1 18 4 3, 06 2 19 46 -1 95 0 24 4 24 0 24 9 25 6 22 4 23 8 12 8 19 9 19 3 21 3 15 5 20 4 15 6 13 2 18 6 16 5 3, 18 2 19 51 -1 95 5 24 7 25 6 24 5 25 5 23 2 30 6 14 1 22 5 21 5 20 7 17 8 22 8 16 2 15 4 19 2 20 4 3, 44 7 19 56 -1 96 0 21 8 22 0 24 2 29 1 27 5 31 0 17 3 28 7 24 5 22 7 19 8 24 9 17 8 21 8 20 9 22 6 3, 76 6 19 61 -1 96 5 72 14 0 24 0 27 8 32 6 35 9 17 7 27 1 25 6 27 5 21 1 27 7 22 7 21 4 24 5 25 6 3, 82 4 19 66 -1 97 0 0 0 19 11 2 24 1 22 6 15 7 21 8 27 5 25 7 20 1 21 3 19 5 20 0 22 7 23 0 2, 77 1 19 71 -1 97 5 0 0 0 0 0 41 49 88 15 9 19 5 14 0 18 1 14 5 16 5 17 3 16 6 1, 50 2 19 76 -1 98 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 60 10 7 17 1 13 9 12 3 12 2 14 1 86 3 19 81 -1 98 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 10 6 16 0 15 2 16 9 61 7 19 86 -1 99 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 69 14 0 20 9 t ot al 2, 73 2 2, 75 3 2, 69 2 2, 76 3 2, 76 1 2, 95 1 1, 50 3 2, 38 3 2, 33 7 2, 37 9 2, 15 5 2, 45 0 1, 91 6 1, 96 4 2, 26 7 2, 36 1 38 ,3 67 s o ur ce : c um ul at ed a ll b u s (1 98 020 08 ); o w n ca lc ul at io ns . church membership and church attendance across time • 173 a key problem in apc analysis is the model identifi cation problem – that is, the perfect linear relationship between age, survey time and birth year (survey time age = birth year). various measures are taken to resolve the confounding of age, period and cohort effects in the regression model. in order to gain degrees of freedom, at least fi ve cohorts are summed up to form a birth cohort (yang/land 2006: 83-85). with this specifi cation, it is no longer possible, knowing the age and the survey year, to conclude the exact birth year. moreover, non-linear age effects are estimated by including age in the shape of a linear and squared term (church membership) and alternatively in logarithmised form (church attendance) into the regression models. finally, there is an advantage to be gained by the modelling of period and cohort infl uences via random effects which is the reduction of collinearity problems in the estimation (yang/land 2006). 3.2 operationalisation the analysis encompass two dependent variables: church membership is operationalised via a dichotomous variable which assumes a value of 1 if a person belongs to one of the following religious denominations: protestant (including independent churches), roman catholic, other christian religious community and other non-christian religious community. a 0 is coded if a person states that he or she does not belong to any religious community. the frequency of churchgoing is measured via a scale on 6 levels in the allbus (6 = more than once per week, 5 = once per week, 4 = between once and three times per month, 3 = several times per year, 2 = less frequently, 1 = never). no transformation of these variables into the average annual attendance at religious services was carried out because of the different ranges of most categories.6 nor is a categorisation benefi cial since this approach causes a loss of information. continuous variables on the survey year and on the cohort are included in the regression models with fi xed effects in order to be able to identify linear and monotone time trends. in the case of the survey year, the corresponding variable measures how many years have passed since the respective fi rst measurement period (1980 = 0 and 1991 = 0). the variable concerning birth cohorts can have values from 1 = 1895-1900 to 19 = 1986-1990 (cf. also tab. 2). moreover, cohort classifi cations are used in the fi xed effects models (fe) which are orientated to content aspects that is to prominent historical periods (cf. tab. 1). gender (1 = man, 0 = woman) is included as a further control variable. it should be stated at the outset that it is shown in all models that women are more religious than men (collett/lizardo 2009). furthermore, an indicator measuring church membership (1 = yes, 0 = no) is considered in the regression models on churchgoing. 6 for the purpose of comparison, in addition to linear regressions, “ordered logit regressions” (with fi xed effects) were also calculated which are specifi cally suited to an ordinal scale level. the results of the estimate of the frequency of churchgoing remained largely stable here. • daniel lois174 all analyses are carried out separately for western and eastern germany, the eastwest classifi cation is based on the current place of residence. 4 results of the apc analyses 4.1 age, period and cohort effects on church membership the fi rst focus is the question which age, period and cohort effects can be identifi ed with regard to the probability of church membership. table 3 shows the results for western germany. the model with random coeffi cients (model 1) confi rms that the probability of church membership changes depending on age, birth cohort and calendar time. the fi xed estimated age effect is u-shaped (cf. also fig. 1) and highly signifi cant. as predicted in the traditional model of bahr (1970), the probability of church membership declines initially on transition from youth to adult age to fi nally increase once again. moreover, both random effects in model 1 show that the probability of being a member of a religious association differs signifi cantly between the 19 birth cohorts and – regardless of this – between the 16 survey times. the period effect is stronger than the cohort effect.7 the results in model 1 do not reveal whether the period and cohort effects follow a monotone trend over time. in model 2, the calendar time is hence operationalised as a metric covariate (years since 1980). in accordance with conventional secularisation theories, it shows a negative period effect on the probability of church membership (b = -.03). figure 2 illustrates the period effect. it becomes clear, that religious nonaffi liation in western germany increases successively during the period from 1980 to 2008. however, the proportions of church members predicted by the random effects model are slightly lower as the observed values.8 on the basis of model 2, moreover, there are no indications of a monotone time trend across the 19 birth cohorts. the corresponding coeffi cient (b = -.05) is not signifi cant. the cohort sub-division, which is orientated on content-related aspects, and on which model 3 is based, however leads to substantial results. as one might anticipate, the lowest probability of being tied to a denomination is shown by the 1946-1953 cohort (reference), which was particularly infl uenced by the events in and around 1968. a signifi cantly higher level of church membership is however demonstrable in the adenauer generation (1935-1945), and in particular in the war and post-war generations (1922-1934). these results correspond with the presumption that the material need in the post-war period exerted a positive infl uence on adherence to the church. the share of church members in the younger cohorts from the birth year 1954 onwards is slightly higher than in the reference cohort, but the cor7 according to the intraclass correlation, the share of the period variance among the overall variance is 2.8 % and the share of cohort variance is only 0.7 %. 8 the positive outlier in the east german survey of the year 2002 is possibly caused by a thematical focus on religion. church membership and church attendance across time • 175 tab. 3: age, period and cohort effects on the probability of church membership in western germany (logistic cross classifi ed models with random and fi xed effects) model 1 2 3 fixed effects logit coefficients (z-values) intercept .70*** 2.97*** 2.39*** (3.5) (7.3) (20.9) man -.47*** -.47*** -.47*** (-14.7) (-13.1) (-13.2) age (centred) -.05*** .004 .01 (-6.9) (0.4) (1.5) age² .001*** .001*** .001*** (8.7) (9.4) (6.0) period (years since 1980) -.03** -.03*** (-2.5) (-5.6) 5-year birth cohorts (ordinal) -.05 (-0.9) cohort classification (ref.: 1946-1953) pre-war generation (1895-1921) .33 (1.5) war/post-war (1922-1934) .49*** (3.6) adenauer generation (1935-1945) .25** (3.0) social movements (1954-1964) .10 (1.4) generation golf (1965-1975) .18 (1.4) reunification (1976-1990) .24 (1.2) random effects variance components ( ²-values) intercept period .096*** (319.4) intercept cohort .023*** (112.0) note: n = 39861; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001. source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations • daniel lois176 responding differences are not signifi cant. an illustration of the cohort effects for western germany – on the basis of model 3 – can be found in figure 3.9 the observed values in figure 1 also indicate the presence of a positive age effect for eastern germany. religious nonaffi liation decreases from roughly 20 % at the age of 18 to about 50 % at the age of 75. as is made clear by model 1 in table 4 and in the graphic presentation in figure 1, this gross effect also remains largely stable in multivariate terms.10 both the linear (b = .03) and the squared age term (b = .001) are highly signifi cant. moreover, cohort and period effects on the probability of church membership can also be discovered for eastern germany on the basis of model 1 in table 4. the variance of the corresponding regression constants over the survey years (0.047), and cohorts (0.009), is signifi cant. the results of model 2 in table 4 confi rm that the fig. 1: age-related changes of the share of church members * ccrem = cross classifi ed random effects model source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations 9 the cohort effects shown here are centred on a mean age and on the year 1994. 10 the predicted values for the age range above 75 years are not shown because of relatively small case numbers (n < 100) in figure 1. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 18 23 28 33 38 43 48 53 58 63 68 73 78 83 west (ccrem)* west (gross) east (gross) east (ccrem) share of individuals belonging to a denomination age church membership and church attendance across time • 177 probability of a denominational tie in eastern germany has fallen since 1991. the corresponding period effect (b = -.05) is signifi cant. figure 2 accordingly shows that church membership decreases successively between 1991 and 2008, from 30 % to roughly 20 %. this corresponds to the results that have been quoted, according to which the churches in eastern germany have also lost further members after reunifi cation. regarding cohort effects in eastern germany, it is not possible to identify any monotone time trend in model 2 (tab. 4). the corresponding coeffi cient (b = .09) is not signifi cant. also the cohort effects which are predicted by the multi-level model with random coeffi cients for eastern germany (not shown), are rather marginal and do not follow a recognisable pattern. one argument against the random effects model is however that the underlying 5-year cohorts are artifi cial since the corresponding groups of individuals do not typify themselves in each case by having collectively experienced prominent historical phases. particularly in view of the drastic political transformation process in the former gdr, the sub-division in gdr fig. 2: proportion of church members across birth cohorts 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 west (gross) west (ccrem)* east (gross) east (ccrem) survey year share of individuals belonging to a denomination * ccrem = cross classifi ed random effects model source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations • daniel lois178 and post-gdr cohorts that has been discussed appears to be more applicable. for this reason, a fi xed effects model is calculated in model 3 (tab. 4) in which a total of fi ve birth cohorts are compared with one another. the results indicate that the probability of church membership in the two youngest cohorts (1961-1975 and 1976-1990), which were socialised during the dissolution years of the gdr and after reunifi cation, has signifi cantly increased in comparison to the 1946-1960 “gdr cohort”. these fi ndings correspond with the results reported by meulemann (2003). however, the result that no signifi cant difference between the pre-gdr and the gdr cohorts (1946-1960) can be shown speaks against any decisive infl uence having been exerted by state socialism. it appears to be worth discussing whether these results can be interpreted as a revitalisation of adherence to the church. it should be borne in mind that the cohorts from 1961 onwards are also affected by the general fall in church membership numfig. 3: proportion of church members across survey years 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 18 95 -1 90 0 19 01 -1 90 5 19 06 -1 91 0 19 11 -1 91 5 19 16 -1 92 0 19 21 -1 92 5 19 26 -1 93 0 19 31 -1 93 5 19 36 -1 94 0 19 41 -1 94 5 19 46 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 95 5 19 56 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 96 5 19 66 -1 97 0 19 71 -1 97 5 19 76 -1 98 0 19 81 -1 98 5 19 86 -1 99 0 west (gross) west (fe)* east (gross) east (fe) birth cohort share of individuals belonging to a denomination * fe = fixed-effects source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations church membership and church attendance across time • 179 bers with advancing calendar time – and by age effects. one example may serve to clarify this: in 1991, the predicted probability of church membership of an eastern german female person aged 31 (birth year 1960) is 25 %. this value falls to 22.6 % in 2008, once age and period effects have been offset. for a comparable person who tab. 4: age, period and cohort effects on the probability of church membership in eastern germany (logistic cross-classifi ed models with random and fi xed effects) model 1 2 3 fixed effects logit coefficients (z-values) intercept -.82*** -1.51* -.61*** (-9.8) (-2.2) (-7.1) man -.33*** -.32*** -.33*** (-7.8) (-7.1) (-7.2) age (centred) .03*** .04*** .04*** (14.8) (3.2) (5.7) age² .001*** .001*** .0004** (6.0) (6.4) (3.2) period (years since 1991) -.05*** -.04*** (-3.4) (-5.1) 5-year birth cohorts (ordinal) .09 (1.3) cohort classification (ref.: 1946-1960) national unity (1895-1930) -.13 (0.7) establishment of the gdr (1931-1945) .02 (0.2) dissolution of the gdr (1961-1975) .30* (2.3) reunification (1976-1990) .60* (2.5) random effects variance components ( ²-values) intercept period .047*** (117.4) intercept cohort .009** (41.0) note: n = 11270; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001. source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations • daniel lois180 was however born in 1961 and is hence aged 30 in 1991, the probability of church membership is 30.6 % and falls to 27.5 % by 2008. since the 1961-1975 birth cohort, which was socialised during the dissolution of the gdr, shows a higher starting level in the fi rst survey in 1991, the term “revitalisation” appears to be appropriate. figure 3 shows the corresponding cohort-specifi c pattern.11 a comparison of gross and net cohort effects reveals major differences, especially among eastern german respondents. the actual infl uences of the birth cohort cannot be clearly identifi ed until age and period effects are controlled for. the gross cohort effects are, by contrast, highly biased as a result of the already documented age-specifi c changes in ties to the churches. 4.2 age, period and cohort effects on church attendance the analysis of the development of church membership does not yet permit any statement regarding the degree to which the members of a religious organisation are actively involved in church life (religious vitality). therefore, a further apc analysis is carried out examining the frequency of churchgoing. church membership is controlled for in all the regression analyses below. the diagrams also refer exclusively to persons with a denomination. it is hence possible to determine the net effects on religious practice, i.e. when controlling for membership. the results for western germany are shown in table 5. according to the results of the multi-level model with random coeffi cients (model 1), the frequency of churchgoing increases in a monotone fashion with increasing age (b = .63). this age effect is statistically independent of cohort and period effects which are controlled for. in technical terms, the frequency of churchgoing differs not only between the cells in table 2, but also within a cell, i.e. when keeping a specifi c calendar year and a birth cohort constant. the best model adjustment can be achieved by the logarithmic conversion of age. the resulting shape of the age effect is visible in figure 4, which relates to western german women. according to the predicted values, the frequency of attendance at religious services, increases successively with age. as a result of the logarithmic conversion, the increase is however not linear, but becomes increasingly fl at. the observed values also show that church attendance only increases until the age of 75, and subsequently falls once more. it is however not necessarily a “disengagement” in the sense of a deliberate withdrawal of old people from social roles which is responsible for this. a more plausible explanation lies in increasing physical impairments of older people which particularly pose obstacles to their churchgoing. has the strength of the age effect changed within the period under observation? in order to answer this question, the slope for the age effect is allowed to vary ran11 the cohort effects are centred here on a mean age and the middle of the respective observation periods. cohort effects for the cohorts in eastern germany prior to 1916 are not shown because of small numbers of cases. the x-axis in figure 3 corresponds to the 5-year cohort classifi cation. hence, smaller deviations from the alternative cohort sub-division in table 1 emerge. church membership and church attendance across time • 181 domly across cohorts or periods, respectively, in models 2 and 3 (“random slope” model). the cohort-specifi c variation of the age effect is not signifi cant according to model 2 in table 5 (z = 1.6). it can however be shown in model 3 that the strength of the age effect differs signifi cantly between the various survey years (z = 2.7). but the random effects model does not reveal whether these period-specifi c differences follow a monotone time trend. hence, in table 6 (model 2) interaction effects between the age and two continuous indicators for the ongoing number of the cohort, and the time in years since 1980 (period), are calculated. the conditional main effect of age in model 2 (b = 0.87) refers to the year 1994 and the cohort 1941-1945, since a centring was carried out. the interaction effect age × period makes it clear that the age effect falls by a factor of 0.01 with each calendar year since 1980. the corresponding interaction with the cohort has the same algebraic sign, but falls just short of the 5 % signifi cance level. tab. 5: age, period and cohort effects on the frequency of churchgoing in western germany (linear cross-classifi ed models with random effects) model 1 2 3 fixed effects b-coefficient (t-value) intercept .35* 1.48*** .38** (2.6) (8.5) (3.0) man -.25*** -.25*** -.25*** (-19.6) (-19.6) (-19.7) age (logarithmised) .63*** (18.3) any religious denomination 1.31*** 1.31*** 1.31*** (56.7) (56.2) (56.5) random effects variance components (wald z-value) intercept period .010** .004* (2.6) (2.3) intercept cohort .007* .006* (2.3) (2.1) period-age slope .381** (2.7) cohort-age slope .108 (1.6) level 1 residual variance 1.545*** 1.546*** 1.545*** (138.4) (138.3) (138.4) notes: n = 38367; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001. source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations • daniel lois182 figure 4 graphically illustrates the weakening of the age effect on the basis of the predicted values of model 2 in table 6. the far ends of the period under observation are compared, namely, the year 1980 is compared to the year 2008. the level of attendance at religious services is fi xed on the middle cohort (1941-1945). when comparing both regression curves, especially one difference becomes clear: the regression curve for the year 2008 has a weaker increase than the same curve for the year 1980. the increase in the frequency of churchgoing between the ages of 18 and 85 is roughly 1.5 units on the scale in 1980, whereas in 2008 it is only roughly one unit. comparable analyses for eastern germany (not shown) lead to the result that no signifi cant age effect on the frequency of churchgoing can be found when controlling for cohort and period effects. the fi ndings on the religious practice in western germany also lead to the result that the frequency of attending religious services falls in the course of the calendar time. this fi nding, which corresponds to conventional secularisation theories, exfig. 4: age-related changes of the frequency of churchgoing (women with a denomination in western germany) 1,50 1,75 2,00 2,25 2,50 2,75 3,00 3,25 3,50 3,75 4,00 18 23 28 33 38 43 48 53 58 63 68 73 78 83 1980-2008 (gross) fe estimation (1980, cohort 1941-1945) fe estimation (2008, cohort 1941-1945) age frequency of church-going (scale 1-6) * fe = fixed-effects source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations church membership and church attendance across time • 183 presses itself in the fact that a signifi cant variation of the regression constant over the 16 survey times of the allbus can be found in the random effects model. as is confi rmed by model 1 in table 6, this variation is furthermore based on a highly signifi cant, linear-negative trend (cf. also fig. 5). by contrast, no signifi cant period tab. 6: age, period and cohort effects on the frequency of churchgoing in western germany (linear cross-classifi ed models with fi xed effects) model 1 2 3 b-coefficients (t-values) intercept .14 1.62*** -.71* (0.4) (8.7) (-2.0) man -.25*** -.25*** -.25*** (-17.7) (-17.8) (-17.9) age (logarithmised) .52*** .87** .63*** (8.5) (3.0) (6.3) any religious denomination 1.33*** 1.33*** 1.32*** (60.4) (60.4) (59.6) period (years since 1980) -.01** -.01* -.01*** (-3.4) (2.2) (-4.2) 5-year cohorts (logarithmised) -.19** -.004 (-3.4) (-0.2) period × age (logarithmised) -.01* (-2.2) (ln)cohort × (ln)age -.02 (-1.8) cohort classification (ref.: 1946-1953) pre-war generation (1895-1921) .18* (2.2) war/post-war (1922-1934) .11* (2.1) adenauer-generation (1935-1945) .04 (1.1) social movements (1954-1964) -.02 (-0.5) generation golf (1965-1975) .06 (1.1) reunification (1976-1990) .18* (2.0) notes: n = 38367; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001; the logarithmised age and the period and cohort variables are centred in model 2. source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations • daniel lois184 effect can be identifi ed in eastern germany. the frequency of attendance at religious services is slightly below the western level, but has been largely at a constant level since 1991 (cf. fig. 5). finally, the question arises to which degree the religious practice in western and eastern germany changes as a result of infl uences of the birth cohort. the random effects model (tab. 5, model 1) initially confi rms that the variance of the regression constant is signifi cant over the 19 cohorts, even if only a very small share of the overall variance (< 1 %) is accounted for by cohort effects. it can also be found on the basis of model 1 in table 6 that church attendance rates fall with the ongoing number of the cohort (b = -.19).12 the alternative cohort sub-division, which is fig. 5: frequency of churchgoing across survey years (persons with a denomination) 1,50 1,75 2,00 2,25 2,50 2,75 3,00 3,25 3,50 3,75 4,00 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 west (ccrem)* west (gross) east (ccrem) east (gross) survey year frequency of church-going (scale 1-6) * ccrem = cross classifi ed random effects model source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations 12 developments in the number of the cohort are logarithmised in model 2 (tab. 6) since this can improve the model adjustment, and the extent of the collinearity between age, period and cohort effects can be reduced to a level within the tolerance limit. church membership and church attendance across time • 185 orientated towards characteristic historic periods, however provides further information. accordingly, the 1946-1953 cohorts (“apo generation”) and the 1954-1964 cohort (new social movements) once more show the greatest distance to religion and the church. the frequency of attendance at religious services, by contrast, is signifi cantly higher in the cohorts prior to 1935, and also in the youngest cohort (1976-1990). the cohort classifi cation in model 3 consequently indicates a u-shaped connection between the cohorts and church attendance. a graphical illustration of the corresponding cohort patterns in eastern and western germany can be found in figure 6.13 an upwards movement is suggested for eastern germany without fig. 6: frequency of churchgoing across birth cohorts (persons with denomination) 1,50 1,75 2,00 2,25 2,50 2,75 3,00 3,25 3,50 3,75 4,00 18 95 -1 90 0 19 01 -1 90 5 19 06 -1 91 0 19 11 -1 91 5 19 16 -1 92 0 19 21 -1 92 5 19 26 -1 93 0 19 31 -1 93 5 19 36 -1 94 0 19 41 -1 94 5 19 46 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 95 5 19 56 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 96 5 19 66 -1 97 0 19 71 -1 97 5 19 76 -1 98 0 19 81 -1 98 5 19 86 -1 99 0 west (gross) west (fe)* east (gross) east (fe) birth cohort frequency of church-going (scale 1-6) * fe = fixed-effects source: cumulated allbus (1980-2008); own calculations 13 the cohort effects shown here are in turn centred on a median age and the middle of the respective periods under observation. • daniel lois186 controlling for age and period effects, which however proves not to be signifi cant in multivariate analyses (not shown in a table). this is also made clear by the horizontal predicted values in figure 6, which are based on a sub-division into preand post-gdr cohorts. 5 summary and discussion the starting point of this article was the conclusion that no apc analyses are available so far on the development of church membership and church attendance in the federal republic. accordingly, data from the cumulated allbus in the period under observation 1980-2008 were analysed. the least surprising result of the analyses consists of the infl uences of the calendar time: the share of church members in western germany in the period 1980-2008, and in eastern germany in the years 1991-2008, fell continuously. a weakening of religious participation can additionally be observed among western german respondents since here the frequency of attendance at religious services also reduces with advancing calendar time. hence, regardless of age and independently of individual cohorts, a secularisation trend continues which started in the 1950s in eastern germany, and in the 1960s in western germany. the analyses presented however additionally provide new information on the relative signifi cance of age and cohort infl uences. age-specifi c changes in church membership and in church attendance are ignored either implicitly or explicitly in many previous studies (chaves 1989; jagodzinski/dobbelaere 1993; wolf 2007; voas 2008). the results of this study indicate that this approach is inappropriate. the probability of church membership increases in eastern and western germany with advancing age, after a temporary drop on the transition from youth to adulthood. moreover, a monotone-positive age effect on the frequency of churchgoing can be found to exist for western germany. the fi ndings hence show on the one hand that the inter-age secularisation trend is counteracted by lifecycle effects. but on the other hand at least for church attendance in western germany, it can be shown that the positive infl uence of age decreases with advancing calendar time. a possible explanation of this result lies in the fact that the relative signifi cance of biographical transitions which have a positive or a negative impact on religiosity has shifted in past decades. one should refer here for instance to the delaying of marriage or the increase of the incidence of non-marital cohabitation. the weakening of the age effect is also to be interpreted as a form of secularisation which has largely remained unobserved so far – even in international research. as a matter of principle, one may criticise the above analyses of age effects in that they are solely based on trend data. especially with regard to infl uences of age, there is hence no possibility to observe the same individual in the course of their ageing process. a comparison between various persons however implies that these individuals differ only by their age, and not with regard to further characteristics which are not observed. the nature of the data inevitably leads to a causal interpretation of the results that remains uncertain. to support the authoritativeness of church membership and church attendance across time • 187 the fi ndings, one may refer to the fact that it can also be proven in panel studies (lois 2011; argue et al. 1999) that religiosity increases with rising age and that furthermore the positive age effect becomes weaker as calendar time advances. the results on the age effects hence prove to be robust as against different data sources (soep and allbus) and evaluation methods (panel and trend analysis). with regard to cohort effects, the present studies (e.g. jagodzinski/dobbelaere 1993; wolf 2007; voas 2008) usually leave the impression that the level of ties to the church and of religious vitality continues to weaken with each passing generation. the analyses presented indicate that these are probably mistaken interpretations caused by the failure to take account of age effects. the infl uences of the birth cohort, shown when age and period effects are statistically controlled for, tend to be relatively weak. a u-shaped course is shown in western germany, in particular with regard to the frequency of churchgoing. the lowest frequency of attending religious services can be observed in the 1946-1953 and 1954-1964 cohorts, who were infl uenced by the 68 movement and the emergence of the new social movements. the level of religious participation, by contrast, is higher in the older birth cohorts prior to 1934, as well as in the youngest cohort observed (1976-1990). for the east german birth cohorts 1961-1974 and 1975-1990, who were socialised during the dissolution phase of the gdr and in the period following the political changes, increases in the starting level of church membership are shown. these fi ndings, which indicate a revitalisation of adherence to the church, speak against the irrevocability of forced secularisation and tend to confi rm the presumption that the restoration of the religious market after reunifi cation had a positive impact on religious participation. the results are however not suited to confi rm the validity of the religious market model since they do not reveal any indications of market mechanisms – such as a wider spread of memberships among various religious communities. for this reason, alternative explanations of the cohort effects mentioned cannot be ruled out. one presumption could be, for instance, that church membership belongs to a greater degree to the normative expectations in unifi ed germany than it has been the case in the former gdr. finally, some restrictions of the presented study should be indicated. with regard to the operationalisation of church membership those persons who in addition to the popular christian churches belong to other christian or other non-christian religious communities were also counted as church members. this approach may overlook a pluralisation of the religious market. relevant results on this topic can be found in wolf (1999) and also in many works on the individualisation of religion (cf. pickel 2011: 178-197 for an overview). moreover, the present study aims to provide basic research, but does not claim to provide explanations beyond this. the goal of the survey was primarily to present a statistically reliable estimate of age, period and cohort effects. the next step consists of a detailed explanation of the effects that have been observed. what 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age-period-cohort analysis of repeated cross-section surveys: trends in verbal test scores. in: sociological methodology 36: 75-97. yang, yang; land, kenneth c. 2008: age-period-cohort analysis of repeated crosssection surveys: fixed or random effects? in: sociological methods & research 36: 297-326. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “kirchenmitgliedschaft und kirchgangshäufi gkeit im zeitverlauf – eine trendanalyse unter berücksichtigung von ost-west-unterschieden”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-04de or urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2011-04de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 14.09.2010 date of acceptance: 28.05.2011 dr. daniel lois ( ). tu chemnitz. institut für soziologie. empirische sozialforschung. d-09107 chemnitz, germany. e-mail: daniel.lois@soziologie.tu-chemnitz.de url: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) scenarios for the equal division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood in germany anna dechant, florian schulz abstract: on the basis of a qualitative longitudinal study of 14 german couples, the conditions that are necessary and suffi cient for an equal division of labour in the transition to parenthood are examined in an explorative way. based on the assumption that couples with educational homogamy on a high level are probably more prone and suffi ciently assertive to establish egalitarian relationships, we show that such arrangements cannot be sustained or achieved without the existence of specifi c contiguous conditions. a comparison of attitudes, family values and norms with actual everyday routines also suggests in many cases the well-known “verbal open-mindedness and rigid behaviour”. keywords: division of labour in the household · transition to parenthood · longitudinal study · qualitative data · germany 1 introduction the transition to fi rst parenthood involves major changes to couples’ everyday lives with consequences which can hardly be adequately assessed and planned for in advance. so far, the processes of decision making and coping with everyday life during this phase as well as the resulting longer-term consequences for couple’s equal division of labour have rarely been analysed. particularly for career-oriented and similarly (highly) educated couples the question arises how employment and family work can be shared in the transition to parenthood. traditional gender roles, which generally assume complementary productivity by the partners, do not offer much orientation to such couples. although in opinion polls more and more people recently desire an equal division of labour (e.g. lück 2009), this “verbal open-mindedness” continues to be contrasted in everyday life by a “rigid behaviour” (beck/beck-gernsheim 1995: 20). for example, 45 percent of fathers would like to take parental leave (institut für demoskopie 2005: 11-12), yet under the conditions of the new parental leave regucomparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 39, 3 (2014): 615-644 (date of release: 18.04.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-06en2 • anna dechant, florian schulz616 lations, only about 19 percent actually do so (statistisches bundesamt 2010: table 1). research on housework reveals a similar picture. although at the beginning of intimate relationships housework is frequently shared equally, with increased relationship duration and in particular following the birth of the fi rst child, however, responsibilities are shifted increasingly towards the women. couples arranging the division of labour equally on a sustained basis are still relatively rare (cf. e.g. schulz 2010). hence, gender-specifi c division of labour is changing far more slowly than the corresponding attitudes.1 according to the egalitarian values model (van berkel/de graaf 1999), lasting egalitarian arrangements can be expected primarily among couples in which both partners have a high level of education and therefore, according to the assumption, have not only a similar degree of human capital, but are also rather open to liberal values and gender egalitarianism. our qualitative empirical study focuses on 14 such couples in the transition to parenthood. in the following, we will at fi rst discuss the theoretical expectations of the model in detail. it has become customary in the literature about the gendered division of labour to at least mention a variety of theories and mechanisms concerning the division of paid and unpaid work (e.g. becker’s human resource approach, different resource theories or the “doing gender” approach), because none of the established theories alone can comprehensively explain the division of paid and unpaid work in intimate relationships (wengler et al. 2009). however, since we are not striving for a theory-testing analysis, but are exploratively seeking specifi c conditions underlying the observed arrangements, which for all intents and purposes go beyond the range of the established approaches, we deem the egalitarian values model as quite suffi cient as a heuristic starting point for reconstructing the couple biographies. in the fi rst empirical step, we illuminate the individual components of the model, namely which educational constellations the couples exhibit, which attitudes the partners have, which types of division of labour they practised before, during and after the transition to parenthood and how individual normative beliefs and everyday routines are correlated. nonetheless, it appears that a high level of education and a greater open-mindedness towards democratic arrangements is merely a necessary and not yet a suffi cient prerequisite for lastingly breaking down traditional structures if considering that tendencies of traditionalisation are also detectable in couples with educational homogamy on a high level (cf. schulz 2010). in a second empirical step, we therefore examine which conditions lead to some couples resisting the traditionalising effect of the transition to parenthood with regard to the division of labour, while others are not able to do so. in this way, we gain indications of which conditions may be suffi cient for a successful egalitarian division of labour. 1 we use the terms attitudes, values, orientations etc. following the suggestions that are going to be discussed in the editorial of the special issue to which this article will be assigned. division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 617 2 theoretical considerations: the egalitarian values model many empirical studies about the value change among women and men supply evidence that young couples are increasingly questioning traditional gender roles and developing egalitarian ideals of living together (e.g. lück 2009). the question of which conditions are necessary in order to implement this normative change in actual everyday routines is investigated by van berkel and de graaf (1999) in their egalitarian values model using the division of housework as example. the basis of their argumentation is the assumption that the education of the individuals can indicate specifi c values, attitudes and gender role orientations, as well as being interpreted as human capital. in the fi rst case, van berkel and de graaf (1999) anticipate a negative relation between the educational level and the time spent doing housework by men and women, since taking up household duties raises the opportunity costs of lost employment income. at the couple level, based on resource theoretical arguments this results in various constellations of which the theoretically most interesting is that of couples with educational homogamy. in these cases, the resource theories (cf. e.g. blau 1964; ott 1992) would predict an equal distribution of housework between the partners. in all other cases the division of labour is determined by the difference in the educational levels of the partners, whereby the partner with a higher level of education tends to do less housework (cf. schulz 2010). another expectation with regard to the division of labour arises when considering the effect of the educational level as different support for values of equality and equity: “whereas for the lower educated inequality between the sexes is given, the higher educated are aiming at gender equality in public and private spheres as much as possible” (van berkel/de graaf 1999: 790). against this background, van berkel and de graaf (1999) argue that an equal distribution of housework will not be achieved in all homogamous couples, but that the level of homogamy is also relevant. they only anticipate an egalitarian division of housework when both partners have a high level of education, since such couples are more inclined to pursue democratic values. these not only include tolerance, freedom and equality, but also gender-specifi c egalitarianism. by contrast, among couples with lower levels of education, traditional gender roles are continuously predominant. to support this argument, van berkel and de graaf (1999: 790) use empirical evidence from research on attitude and modernisation theory. it appears, for instance, that there is largely agreement in the literature on democratisation processes that a higher level of education is linked with greater approval for democratic values of equality and equity, which is also refl ected in everyday actions. also, modernisation theorists have pointed out that the educational expansion is one of the major factors determining the change of family and gender roles in western industrial nations. besides the economical aspects associated with this, it also accounts for cultural changes with regard to once deeply rooted values and ideals (cf. e.g. also lück 2009). in their study for the netherlands, van berkel and de graaf (1999) found empirical evidence for their considerations. further indications in favour of the model • anna dechant, florian schulz618 are found in a danish study by bonke and esping-andersen (2011). using time use data, they show that time used for childcare tends to be equally distributed among couples with educational homogamy on a high level, in particular because the men in these couples are considerably more involved than in couples with other educational constellations. they also interpret their fi nding stressing the signifi cance of values and attitudes. a third indication that this specifi c couple constellation may stimulate greater gender equality in intimate relationships is provided by greenstein (1996). using us data, he shows that it is not enough if only one of the partners in a marriage pursues liberal gender role orientations to avoid traditional housework patterns. in his cross-sectional study, he reveals that the chances for turning away from traditional patterns in everyday life are the greatest if both partners have a “non-traditional” orientation (cf. also künzler/walter 2001: 195). grasping education as an indicator for these “non-traditional” orientations, this interpretation corresponds to that of the egalitarian values model of van berkel and de graaf (1999). finally, in his study of the division of housework in the course of marriages, schulz (2010) fi nds empirical evidence in favour of the egalitarian values model for western germany. since it can be assumed that the relationship between educational level and approval of more egalitarian divisions of labour does not only apply to housework, but also to childcare and employment, we generalise the egalitarian values model in this manner. hence, the working hypothesis for our qualitative empirical study is that the tendency of couples to fairly share employment and family tasks in the course of their relationship and specifi cally in the transition to parenthood is more pronounced among couples with educational homogamy on a high level; at the same time, these couples should show the lowest propensity to. the discrepancies between the results of the attitude measurements and studies of actual everyday realities are, however, often obvious. compared to couples with other educational compositions highly educated homogamous couples may exhibit an increased propensity to change their arrangement over the course of their relationships towards an equal division of labour or to retain such an arrangement; however this does not mean that they are basically able to resist tendencies to traditionalise. as the longitudinal study by schulz (2010) on the division of housework shows, traditionalisation is the most frequent pattern among these couples, but to a lesser extent than among couples, for example, in which the man has a higher educational level than the woman. in the population average this leads to the continued dominance of the traditional division of labour among couples in germany as in all other western industrial nations (cf. for germany e.g. huinink/röhler 2005; kühhirt 2011; röhler/huinink 2010; schulz 2010; wengler et al. 2009; international: e.g. baxter et al. 2008; kaufmann 2005; schober 2011; wiesmann 2010). in a qualitative study of dual earner couples working in science, schulte (2002) showed that a high level of education is not “automatically” accompanied by an equal division of labour. buchebner-ferstl and rille-pfeiffer (2008) demonstrate, also using qualitative interviews, how personal preferences concerning paid work and values play a role with regard to an equal division of childcare, while they are less explanatory for the division of housework. division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 619 against this background, we anticipate that a higher level of education paired with greater open-mindedness towards egalitarian arrangements is not a suffi cient condition ensuring a lasting breakdown of traditional gender-specifi c structures in intimate relationships. in fact, the combination of circumstances in everyday life must also enable to practise an egalitarian division of labour. therefore in this empirical study we search for the conditions that differentiate those couples who are successful in egalitarianism from those who pursue the traditional middle-class patterns concerning the gendered division of labour in the course of the transition to parenthood. 3 data and methods for the empirical study, we use data from a qualitative longitudinal study from the years 2006 and 2007 (schulz et al. 2008).2 the aim of this study was to examine the division of labour in couples in the transition to their fi rst parenthood. for this purpose, 14 couples were theoretically sampled (glaser/strauss 1998). they had to be cohabitating, childless and in the fourth to eighth months pregnant with their fi rst child at the time of the fi rst interview. among all of these couples both partners were gainfully employed and had almost equal, in most cases high levels of educational resources. a second interview was held approximately six to twelve months following the birth of the child. both partners were interviewed separately. the focus of the interviews was on the partners’ distribution of employment, housework and childcare. all of these aspects were surveyed for the time of the interview as well as retroand prospectively. the event-centred longitudinal design of the study allows examining the impact of the birth of the couple’s fi rst child on their division of labour. the qualitative longitudinal design enables the comparison of the developments in the division of labour among couples with predominantly similar initial situations. according to the theoretical considerations in terms of the egalitarian values models it can be anticipated for people who are mostly educational homogamous on a high level that they practise an equal division of labour both prior to the birth of the child and continue to do so afterwards. using the available data we can retrace the specifi c situations, expectations and rationales as well as the actual process of everyday routines among these specifi c couple constellations and determine the reasons for possible deviations from the model on the basis of concrete examples. the interviews were analysed using a combination of approaches of qualitative content analysis as proposed by mayring (2008), the construction of types according to individual cases as proposed by kelle and kluge (2010) and the confrontation 2 we thank the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft and the bayerische staatsministerium für arbeit und sozialordnung, familie und frauen for fi nancially supporting the data collection process as well as the analysis. the study is documented in detail in schulz et al. (2008), in particular with regard to the sampling, the interview guidelines and socio-demographic information about those surveyed. • anna dechant, florian schulz620 of theory-guided hypotheses with qualitative data as proposed by hopf (1993). in the qualitative content analysis, the relevant contents for the division of the different tasks are worked out from the interviews in a rule-based process. the themes of the interview manual serve as deductive categories, which are supplemented with aspects inductively gained from the data. this method condenses the contents of the single interviews (mayring 2008). it is done for both interview times. based on this summarising content analysis, each couple is examined as an individual case in order to illuminate the division of labour before and after the birth of the fi rst child and ascertain and explain processes of change. in the next step, classifi catory real types are formed from these individual cases (kelle/kluge 2010). signifi cant factors thereby are how the couples arrange their division of labour before and after the birth of their fi rst child and which changes occurred in the transition to parenthood. then, from the different behavioural patterns of the division of labour in the transition to parenthood, couples are deliberately chosen to identify the factors that lead to the different developments in the division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to fi rst parenthood within the individual patterns. for the identifi cation, as recommended by hopf (1993), we always kept in mind our working hypothesis that egalitarian divisions can be expected to a greater degree among those couples we examined with educational homogamy on a high level. this hypothesis refers to singular facts and can therefore also be confi rmed or rejected based on individual couples. educational constellations in the sample among 11 of the 14 interviewed couples, both partners have a similar educational degree; this is in ten cases a higher education entrance qualifi cation (or an advanced technical college entrance qualifi cation), in one case a secondary educational certifi cate. among two couples, the woman has a higher level of education than her partner; the opposite is the case among one couple. in general, the respondents of the sample have an above-average high level of education, 23 of the 28 interviewees have a university-entrance diploma or technical diploma. therefore this study is well suited for comparing and analysing the basic idea of the egalitarian values approach and the actual argumentation strategies of respondents with higher educational degrees, whether and to what extent these ideals are expressed and agree with the actual division of labour. we can also see whether the statements made and/or the actions change over the course of the birth. because we used a theoretical sampling, the couples are not a statistically representative random sample. this is emphasized by the attribute distributions of the respondents (schulz et al. 2008), which differ considerably from fi gures that are representative of the population (e.g. higher average age of the women at their fi rst child). however, it is not the aim of our study to provide quantitative certainties for the relations found, but instead to identify an empirical spectrum of possible scenarios for the division of labour in the transition to parenthood. in this respect we understand our interpretations in terms of “exemplary generalisations” (wahl et al. 1982: 206; translated by the authors). division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 621 4 empirical fi ndings in the description of the empirical fi ndings, we begin with the change of the division of labour in the transition to parenthood, then search for reasons for these processes and fi nally work out the conditions for egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work based on two exemplary cases. division of labour before and after the birth of the child table 1 shows that only 4 of the 25 possible combinations for the division of housework and employment are observable. prior to the birth of the fi rst child, almost half of the couples divide up housework in approximately equal parts.3 in the other cases, the women do the larger part of the housework than the men. the pattern with regard to employment reveals that among most of the couples both partners are employed to an approximately equal extent. in three cases, the man works longer hours than the woman, in one couple the opposite is the case.4 we label the couples who divide up both housework and employment equally (a, c, f, g, k, n) as egalitarian, the couples in which the women do a larger share 3 in the following, housework is defi ned as all activities that arise in and around the home, in addition to cooking, cleaning, tidying up, shopping and similar, also such tasks as repairs, gardening and manual work. this broad defi nition of housework enables a comprehensive look at the entire work of reproduction in the domestic sphere independent of the gender-specifi c division of certain activities into so-called “female” or “male” activities. 4 since gainful employment of both partners was a sample criterion, the case is excluded that only one of the partners is employed. tab. 1: division of housework and employment before the birth of the fi rst mutual child division of housework man alone man > woman man = woman man < woman woman alone man alone man > woman b, d, h man = woman a, c, f, g, k, n i, j, l, m man < woman e d iv is io n of em p lo ym en t woman alone note: categorization of the couples under the fi ve categories is based essentially on the respondents’ self-assessments, which were, however, validated using both partners’ everyday histories that were reported independently of this explicitly requested information. source: own design • anna dechant, florian schulz622 of the housework and at the same time work the same (i, j, l, m) or lesser hours (b, d, h) than their partners are labelled as couples with partially specialised arrangements. couple e can also be counted among this group since the man spends a lot of time working towards his professional further qualifi cation, which in the narrower sense does not count as time for employment. table 2 shows how the couples divide up housework, employment and childcare following the transition to parenthood. only two of the couples continue to share the housework in an equal manner (c, h). in all of the other cases, the women do most of or all of the housework. the distribution of employment has also changed: in 5 of the 14 couples, both partners work roughly the same hours. in the same number of couples the women work considerably fewer hours than the men. in another four cases only the men are employed or the women only work marginal hours. the birth of the fi rst mutual child adds childcare as a new set of responsibilities to the couples’ work duties. only two of the couples share these duties equally; for the majority, childcare becomes the responsibility of the women. in our sample, at the time of the second interviews, none of the men takes on a greater share of the care of the child as their partners. retrospectively, some couples report that the fathers took on a greater portion of childcare directly following the birth in order to relieve the women and allow them to recover from the delivery. however, this involvement was usually reduced by the men with the progressive convalescence of the women. a more differentiated picture is seen following the transition to parenthood with regard to the combination of shares of housework, employment and childcare. two couples divide up these spheres largely equally, whereby one of these couples practised a partially specialised arrangement prior to the birth. there are also couples with a partially specialised division of labour. contrary to the situation before tab. 2: division of housework, employment and childcare six to twelve months following the birth of the fi rst mutual child note: see tab. 1. source: own design division of housework man = woman man < woman woman alone division of childcare man = woman man < woman woman alone woman alone man alone d, l g n man > woman a, e, f, k, m d iv is io n o f em pl o ym en t man = woman c, h b, i j division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 623 the birth of the fi rst child, at the time of the second interview there are also couples who chose a highly specialised division of labour. a descriptive look at the arrangements and the patterns (fig. 1) illustrates that before the birth roughly half of the couples shared paid and unpaid work equally, however only one (couple c) was able to retain this arrangement beyond the birth of the child. another couple (h) shares the tasks at the time of the second interview equally, while beforehand it had a partially specialised division of housework and employment. among the other couples we observed a (further) polarisation of responsibilities according to the traditional family model according to which the man is increasingly employed and the woman does the domestic chores. family values, family norms and the actual division of labour prior to the birth of the fi rst child according to the egalitarian values model, nearly all of the couples in our sample should prefer and practise an arrangement of dividing labour equally. in this section, we compile the ideas expressed and the actual practice of the couples, in order to see which family values and norms were explicitly or implicitly communicated by the respondents and whether these concur with their actions. all in all, the interviews contain many indications of the values of the couples interviewed. largely all of the respondents refer to the egalitarian model. dividing earning and family work equally between the partners appears to be a central and largely understood reference value for the couples. in addition, the couples differ in whether they strive for the equality ideal with or without conditions, or exclude it entirely for their actual situation and merely consider it a general frame of reference. prior to the birth, it was initially understood by all of the respondents that both partners have a paid work; this was not justifi ed or questioned in the interviews by fig. 1: patterns of the individual couples labour division before childbirth labour division after childbirth egalitarian egalitarian (partly) specialised (partly) specialised legend: pattern of couple c pattern of couples a, f, g, k and n pattern of couples b, d, e, i, j, l and m pattern of couple h source: own design • anna dechant, florian schulz624 any of the individuals.5 this indicates that for childless couples with a similarly high level of education there is something like a dual earners norm that overrides the traditionally polarised gender roles ideal. we also encounter this unquestioned ideal of equality with regard to the division of housework, in this case from the perspective of a man and practised by g and k: “basically, it’s, it’s fi fty-fi fty ... yet it just worked out that way” (int_k2: 246, 258).6 other men argue, “yeah, it was ... clear to me in the fi rst place that the household is not just ... women’s work ... that’s the way i was brought up, too, we always had to help out and that’s the way it is there, too” (int_l2: 127). with a closer look at the arrangements practised by these couples, however, these expressed ideals prove to be more a case of “verbal open-mindedness,” since “together” does not necessarily mean “the same amount”. only one of the men with this justifi cation pattern (couple f) shares the housework with his partner equally, while the others (couples e, l) do a lesser share of the work than their female partners. men who detach themselves from the implicit egalitarian ideal and cite conditions for an egalitarian division of housework, tend to act to a greater degree according to their verbalised ideal. one example is the employment of both partners: “it’s clear from the start that..., if both go to work ... both also have to somehow do something” (int_a2: 239). the majority of those men who made such statements also practise an egalitarian arrangement in housework (couples a, c, n); only one of them does less than his partner (couple m). this can be interpreted in the sense of the bargaining theory (ott 1992) but also available time (coverman 1985) or the couple’s ideals of fairness (deutsch 1975). 5 at both interview times, all of the couples we directly asked for the reasons for the described division of labour in the two/three spheres. the statements are an initial indication of the response to the question of how the respective division came about. since it is probable that the respondents are not aware of all of the reasons or they might not want to state some of them, throughout the entire interview additional or deviating explanations were sought. 6 the interview quotes are marked as follows: first it can be identifi ed whether it was the fi rst (int) or the second interview (int2), the ensuing letters indicate which couple it is with the respective identifying letters and which partner (1 for women and 2 for men) stated the quote. the paragraph numbers of the location of the text are documented after the colon. the paragraphs were numbered in sequence from top to bottom. “i” indicates passages by the interviewer. passages by the respondent begin with “r”. omissions are noted with three dots. all quotes are translated from the german originals which can be found in the appendix as well as in the german original article (doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-06de, urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-06de4). (a) (b) (c) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 625 we encounter this conditioned ideal in its most acute form in rather resourceoriented rationales in coverman’s sense (1985): “just due to the fact that i work full-time and she works part-time she simply does ... the chores in the morning ... that come up and by the time i get home in the evening it’s done, and that’s why there’s rather little for me to do” (int_j2: 210). this means whoever spends more time at their jobs has to spend less time doing housework, and only when both partners work the same hours, the housework should also be shared equally. all of the men who follow this pattern of argumentation do less household chores than their partners (couples b, d, h, i, j), even if both of them are employed almost identical hours (couples i, j). we also encounter the unconditioned and conditioned justifi cations in the women’s interviews, at fi rst using the example of implicitness (practised this way by couples a, c, f, h; traditional-specialised deviation with couple l): “i simply thought it was understood that if he’s there anyway – even if he’s not living here all the time – that he can do his part and that was also clear to him in the fi rst place, because he’s not the kind of guy who would sit back and let himself be taken care of ..., but that was also natural for him that he also ... would do household things” (int_a1: 208). however, the women more frequently express the conditioned ideal with regard to available time resources (cf. coverman 1985): “we do it over the weekend, too, j. [husband] does things sometimes, but i don’t think it’s all so necessary if i have time to get it done” (int_j1: 594). most of the women who use this strategy of argumentation (couples b, d, e, h, i, j) do a greater share of the work than their partner. couple e is particularly remarkable in this respect, because although the woman works longer hours away from home she nonetheless spends more time doing housework in order to take the burden off her partner’s shoulders since he is in further training. by contrast, couple k equally divides up the housework using these justifi cation patterns. one woman reports that the egalitarian division developed without any closer scrutiny: “i: how did you share the work as fi rst? did you ever talk about it? … r: actually, it usually just happened” (int_n1: 223-229). in only one case a woman, but none of the men, referred to the traditional image of the family (couple m), this couple is indeed best characterised by a traditional division of labour: (d) (e) (f) (g) • anna dechant, florian schulz626 “r: there was never any question about it. ... it was always understood that this [the housework] would be my responsibility.” (int_m1: 337-340). this unquestioned adoption of the traditional woman’s role fi ts into the logic of the egalitarian values model, since couple m have less high educational levels. in this constellation the model does not assume an egalitarian, but a (partially) specialised division of labour. overall, with regard to the reasons given for the present division of labour there are a number of references to family values, principles and norms, which are also largely shared and cited by the partners in great agreement. for most of the respondents it is understood that employment and housework are shared by the couple. however, in practice this does not necessarily mean that they distribute the amount of work equally, even if the conditions cited for this, such as the repeatedly mentioned similar amount of paid working hours, are fulfi lled. hence, we already encounter indications that “verbal open-mindedness” and a high level of education of both partners are not suffi cient to practise an egalitarian division of labour. in fact, it appears that additional factors play a role for this. apart from egalitarian attitudes, frequent discussions about them are needed to ensure that patterns contradicting the expressed ideals do not inadvertently develop, as is reported by couple n. additionally, different degrees of strain in gainful employment also appear to be balanced out in the domestic sphere, which leads to fairness in the total working time in the perception of the couples in the sense of the equity approach (cf. e.g. deutsch 1975). family values, family norms and the actual division of labour following the birth of the fi rst child which developments in the division of paid and unpaid work do the couples expect in the course of the transition to parenthood? which changes to the current mutual responsibility for the spheres of employment and housework do the partners anticipate and how do they justify them? which family values and norms are refl ected in the expectations and realisations? the anticipations for the fi rst year following the birth of the child can be divided into four groups. we do not need to differentiate the expectations according to the respondent’s sex, because in all of the couples both partners expressed very similar ideals.7 first, they expect a polar sharing of tasks following the birth of the child, whereby the man is largely responsible for earnings and the woman for housework 7 there are minor differences for example in couple j. the woman plans to return to work following the obligatory maternal leave, while the husband thinks she may take 6 months paternal leave. since however over the short-term planning horizon of one year both have the same expectation, it is not necessary to differentiate between the statements of both respondents. similarly minor deviations occur among other couples as well. however, both partners in all couples roughly refer to the same anticipations. (h) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 627 and childcare (couples a, d, g, m, n). most of the couples describe their decisionmaking process as a mutual deliberation that the woman initially wants to be there for the baby and therefore is interrupting her employment. as a consequence of the interruption, she will have more time at home and, due to this time and spatial proximity, can take over the housework. the women themselves make this argument, even if prior to the birth of the child they by no means accepted doing more housework than their partner based on conventional gender roles: “so now in the future ... i’m at home and have the child, then it’s understood that i will do most of the housework, simply because i’m at home, but if i’m also working, then i don’t see why i should also do the household just because i’m a woman, not at all and he accepts it that way, too, ... that’s actually totally obvious to both of us.” (int_a1: 54-55). some of the women wish to take parental leave on their own, exclude their partners from it, and do not want to relinquish this time at home with the baby. they very distinctly express the attitude that caring for the child is the woman’s job: “i: did you ever consider deciding whether the man might take part of the parental leave? r: yes. ... for me that was not really an issue, because i like staying at home, ... but i think he ... wouldn’t have had any qualms about being the house husband and staying at home, but just ... with regard to breastfeeding, there’s no other way and i would not have allowed anybody to take that away from me to be quite honest.” (int_a1: 527-531). the explicitness with which the traditionally middle-class family values are explained in the anticipations is not least surprising since, with only one exception, they did not play any role whatsoever in the justifi cation for the division of employment and housework at the time of the fi rst interview. apparently the actors’ values are infl uenced to such a degree by the specifi c situation of the transition to parenthood that previously unacceptable traditional patterns of organising everyday routines and cultural principles are considered feasible and desirable, even if they were clearly and distinctly rejected in the past. many couples justify this change by referring to the biological rationale of breastfeeding. nonetheless, it remains unclear whether such traditional arrangements can persist on a continuing basis. couples b, f, i, j, k and l make up the second group of anticipations. they anticipate a partially polar division, in which after a certain transitional period (which varies between the duration of maternity leave and a few months) with only the male being employed, both will again be employed, but the man to a greater extent. the woman will, however, spend more time on housework and childcare. as expressed in the quote above (int_a1), the deviation from the previous ideal of equality is frequently justifi ed using biological reasons. only couple e expresses the third type of expectations for their future division of labour. they assume that they will not achieve their ideal of an egalitarian division (i) (j) • anna dechant, florian schulz628 of labour and will instead live in a polar arrangement, in which the woman will work full time while the man will have irregular jobs and take over the larger share of the housework and childcare. the reason cited for this is that the man does not have a job for the time following the birth and is searching for employment, which makes the future diffi cult to plan. we call the fourth type of anticipations egalitarian since these couples expect that both of them, after a brief initial period, will do about 50 percent of the work in all three spheres (couples c, h). rejection of the traditional, middle-class pattern is, as van berkel and de graaf (1999) assume, important for the couples. as we describe further below in the specifi c case studies, here egalitarian values and attitudes encounter visions of how conditions can be used and created to also implement these ideals. the comparison of anticipations with realisations (cf. tab. 2) shows that for most couples wishes and reality coincide. couples b, e and l were not able to implement their planned division of labour. in retrospect, this is accounted for in that the employment situation could not be realised as planned: the woman from couple b has a larger extent of employment due to a better business situation than expected, but is also dissatisfi ed that the child is cared for by an external caregiver to a greater extent than she wanted. couple e experienced an entirely new situation, since prior to the birth the man had temporary employment contracts limited to a very short period of time and shortly following the birth was offered a permanent full-time position. he took advantage of this opportunity, whereby the woman decided to reduce her employment hours to care for the child, although this quite clearly contradicted the egalitarian values expressed by both in all three spheres. the self-employed, hourly work that the woman from couple l had planned prior to the birth was not realised; neither she nor her man refer to this however in the second wave. the following explanatory patterns emerge in a comparison of the rationales for the chosen arrangements at the time of the second interview. in addition to normative arguments, situational rationales are also cited here. couples a, g and n explain their current arrangement at the second interview by the fact that the woman wished to care for the child and therefore interrupted her employment. therefore, these women take up a far larger share of the childcare than their full-time employed partners. both of the partners in these three couples derive from the fact that the woman spends more time at home that she must do most of the housework according to the middle-class traditional ideal. in addition, mainly the women argue according to coverman (1985) and deutsch (1975) that the family can spend quality time together when the man arrives home from work and he then does not have to do housework. couple g hires a cleaner, so that this woman does less household tasks herself than the two others. among other couples, it is absolutely no question that both partners are and want to be employed. this corresponds to the logic of ott (1992), whereby the own employment is considered something desirable. the women in couples b, e, f, i, k and m are, however, employed fewer hours than their partners. one of them (couple e) reduced her hours to allow her man to take on a full-time job. in this case, at least temporarily, his employment is given priority, which contradicts the ideal exdivision of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 629 pressed repeatedly by both of equally sharing all three spheres. this is justifi ed with the specifi c situation that the man has a choice between full-time employment and unemployment. in this group, all of the women do more housework because they spend more time at home than the men and thus go along with the expectation of the man as well as the woman herself of doing a greater share of the routine chores (conditioned equality ideal). nonetheless, all of the couples continue to expect that the man also takes on a certain share of the housework. hence, the antenatal ideal of sharing the household work is not entirely abandoned, but adjusted to the situation. some of the couples receive support from external service providers (couples b, i). in all of the cases the women do a greater share of the childcare, some of them can work from home and care for the child at the same time (couples b, i). all of the couples however procure support with childcare, whether from their own parents, day nurseries, babysitters or childminders. one pattern of explaining the woman’s (at least temporarily) dropping out of employment is the salary difference of the two partners and the couple’s assessment that the man would probably lose social status at the workplace if he were to take parental leave. these are therefore economical (e.g. as defi ned by becker 1998) as well as normative arguments, which can be associated with the rationale of the doing gender approach (cf. e.g. west/zimmerman 1987). as with the above explanatory patterns, couples d, j and l also justify the responsibility of the woman for the major share of the housework. while the woman in couple d works very few hours, the woman from couple j works a little more than part-time and the one from couple l is not employed. the two former organise childcare during their working hours differently. in one case the child is cared for by the partner (couple d), while in the other case it is possible and practised to take the child along to work (couple j). in order to better understand the constellations of conditions and attitudes of the two couples who practise an egalitarian division of labour following the birth (couples c, h) and therefore correspond to the expectation of the egalitarian values approach, in the following we illuminate them in greater detail and sketch the differences between them and the couples who exhibit the pattern of a specialised division of paid and unpaid work. case analysis of couple c couple c differs from most of the other couples in that both partners are divorced, but both were still married at the time that they fi rst met. the man must pay support to his ex-wife and the three children from their marriage. both partners are university graduates in the fi eld of business/engineering and work in the sales force or from home for the same company. for both, many overtime hours are part of their working routine. both partners do housework, whereby the couple employs a cleaner who wipes and vacuums, cleans the bathroom and irons. the man took up the initiative for this. the couple either does the other household tasks, such as cooking, together or divides them up, for example grocery shopping. each partner does about 50 percent of the household tasks that are not done by their external helper. • anna dechant, florian schulz630 both partners consider it natural to share the housework. for the man, the employment of both partners is the decisive condition for his participation in the household: “well, if my partner were at home all day, it would surely be expected that she simply does certain things. when you get home in the evening, it’s clear that certain things are already done. you’d probably be dissatisfi ed if they weren’t. since both of us are out all day, we’re certainly also dissatisfi ed about certain things. ... but that’s why you have to divide up the things equally and you don’t have any right or reason to be dissatisfi ed if there’s no food on the table in the evening. ... the only way to fi nd a solution to that is to call fi rst and ask ‘what’s for dinner? did you make any plans yet?,’ to make something yourself or to go out to eat.” (int_c2: 123). this implicitness in the division of labour probably also leads to the couple only speaking very little about how the division actually came about and that they say the situation arose without question. they also do not express any opinions or attitudes about the division of labour in general or about gender roles, but the interviews implicitly contain them. the implicitness of the egalitarian division in particular indicates a greatly internalised ideal of equality as defi ned by the egalitarian values approach. in light of the man’s conditioned expectation of dividing housework equally, it can be assumed that he anticipates an unequal distribution for the time about the birth. this is as the woman will be out of the labour market since she plans to take parental leave after her maternal leave and to interrupt her employment for six months. however when asked about his expectations for the future, the man responds that nothing will change since the woman will probably be caring for the child a great deal. in this, his assessment differs from that of most of the other couples, who specifi cally state that since the woman will spend so much time within the household to care for the child, she will also do more housework. “i: what do you expect then for the division of housework ..., once the baby ... has arrived? do you anticipate ... shifts when the woman ... is home the fi rst six months? ... r: i don’t think that anything will change. a. [name of partner] has to get used to the baby and to handling the baby fi rst and will probably simply spend a lot of time caring for it.” (int_c2: 284-286). it is very important for the woman to re-enter her job soon. on the one hand that is the only way she can continue to keep her present position and on the other hand she enjoys it and wants to avoid the role her mother took on, who stayed home at the request of her father. in this regard, her man’s support obligations are a welcome rationale for substantiating her ideal of an egalitarian division of labour: “what’s important to me is that i am free to continue to work. s. [name of the partner] has the charming advantage that he ... is liable for support and so he can’t even think up the silly idea of saying (l) (m) (k) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 631 ‘honey, i have a great idea. you stay at home and i will afford it for you.’ ... this saves me from that role like my mother has. as soon as i started school, my mother had to stay at home. this was really important to my father, too. when i told him we were expecting a baby, he simply assumed that i would stay at home in the future. ... ‘where’d you get that idea? you really want to work.’ yes. and then he blames it on s. oh, yeah, s. can’t do that. as if that was a negative thing. what’s a benefi t for me. well, it’s very important to me.” (int_c1: 364). figure 2 shows how the couple’s division of labour changed over time. before the pregnancy, the couple divided up the paid and unpaid work equally, as they did again at the time of the second interview. shortly before and after the birth the man is temporarily the sole earner. the woman gradually re-enters her job and fi nally is working full time again. this is possible because a childminder cares for the child. directly following the birth, the man did far more housework and a major share of fig. 2: man’s share of the work in couple c in the spheres of housework, employment and childcare over the course of time 0 50 100 ea rli er m at er ni ty le av e bi rth en d of m at er ni ty le av e se co nd in te rv ie w household chores paid work childcare in percent note: the y-axis shows the man’s percentage in the work spheres of housework, employment and childcare. the time axis is subdivided by events that are relevant for the couple. source: own design • anna dechant, florian schulz632 the childcare in order to relieve the woman. once she recovered from the delivery, the shares of both in housework and childcare levelled off at 50 percent, which is considered the normal level by the woman regardless of the fact that she did not work for a time or worked fewer hours than her partner: “well, let’s say that when the baby was born of course he did more than i did. ... but simply due to the fact ... for a whole week i could hardly walk and after that only a little. ... but after that actually everything balanced back out to the normal level.” (int2_c1: 1892-1896). in summary, both partners are convinced that housework should be done jointly. for the woman, the egalitarian division of labour is the normality, anything else is a deviation from this and caused by specifi c situations. for the man it is understood that he will share domestic chores with his partner after the birth in the same way as before the birth. couple c thus is exemplary for the egalitarian values model, which assumes that couples with similarly high levels of education have egalitarian attitudes and attempt to implement these attitudes in everyday routines. however, the couple’s outsourcing is the suffi cient condition for the equal division of chores. a major share of the work is outsourced to the cleaner and childminder so that the couple is able to divide up the remaining chores in an egalitarian manner. in the sphere of housework especially the unpopular chores and those that the man is unable (or unwilling, such as ironing) to do are outsourced. another important condition for the egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work is the fact that both consider full-time employment normal. they are each able to work a number of days of the week from home and thereby can and want to care for the child at the same time. with regard to the childcare, it should be noted that the man also very actively demands that he can spend time with the child and sees himself as just as competent as his partner in all matters and strives to prove this by his behaviour. case analysis of couple h the respondents are both academics; the woman majored in the social sciences, the man in the business-technical fi elds. at the time of the fi rst interview, the woman works part-time and the man has a full-time position. earlier both worked full-time, until the woman reduced her hours for health reasons. both partners do housework. many activities are assigned to one person in a relatively fi xed way. the woman cooks, prepares the breakfast and irons, does the grocery shopping and administrative formalities. the man is responsible for dusting, making beds, purchasing beverages, carrying out the rubbish, repairing the car, fi ling the tax returns and washing the windows. some activities are done by both, such as washing the dishes, fi lling and emptying the dishwasher, cleaning the bathroom, mopping and gardening. the woman tends to spend more time on housework, which both account for by the fact that she has fewer working hours and is at home longer hours than the man. hence, when both were full-time employees the housework was shared equally, and the woman explains her greater share of housework with her fewer working hours, (n) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 633 “because we both have the attitude that it’s simply divided up and i simply happen to do a little more because i only work half days” (int_h1: 158). although the woman attempts to fi nish many household tasks during the week so that the couple can spend a relaxed weekend together, it is clear that both partners must participate in the housework. the actual division of chores evolved primarily from preferences and skills. for the time following the birth of the child, the couple intends for the woman to return to her job after the maternity leave. at the same time, the man will reduce his working hours to about 40 percent since he “on his own ... had the ... desire, if a child then he wants to take care of it, too. ... yes, for him it was always that ... he actually wanted to do it from his own accord and ... based on our understanding of our roles in the relationship ... we have … an emancipated perception” (int_h1: 426). hence, following the birth the couple intends to equally divide up the labour amongst themselves. none of the other interviewed men express the willingness to reduce their working hours. figure 3 illustrates that the couple was able to implement these ideas in their everyday lives. directly following the birth of the child, the man took on a large part of the childcare and considerably more housework. at that time only he was employed. when his wife’s health improved, she increased her share of the housework. on her labour market re-entry, an arrangement solidifi ed in which both do approximately 50 percent of all spheres of paid and unpaid labour. compared to earlier, the couple is attempting to outsource some household tasks since the birth of the child. the ironing is handed over to the woman’s parents, a gardener does the gardening. between the two interviews the couple has had a cleaner for a while, “who now sadly – sadly for us – quit” (int2_h2:286). both stress that they hope to get some relief from housework again. this is a change compared to the time of the fi rst interview when the woman could not imagine this kind of outsourcing. it continues to be a matter of course for the couple to share the housework; the grown structures are not questioned. sometimes they agree on who will do what work, whereby it is usually a question of who will take care of the child and who will do housework: “but it’s often like, let’s say, the washing machine needs to be emptied or the dishwasher, do you want to do it or do you want to watch the baby? he always rather says he wants to watch the baby.” (int2_ h1: 788). it is of prime importance for the couple’s division of labour that both of them can care for the child and are employed: (p) (q) (r) (o) • anna dechant, florian schulz634 “for us it was always the optimal arrangement: both work and both take care of the baby” (int2_h1: 388). this is also the ideal situation for the man. it may be that this assessment was infl uenced by the fact that the woman may not have wanted to have a baby if the man had not reduced his working hours: “i have to say, though, if my husband had said he didn’t want that.... i don’t know if i would have wanted to have a baby, the idea of spending the whole week at home with the baby and nothing else ... would have been, i think, not really my thing.” (int2_h1: 261). although couple h explicitly expresses the preference that the arising work should be equally allocated to the partners, an egalitarian division of housework is not essential for every situation. particularly in the time following the birth the approximately equal distribution of the household tasks arose from the desire of both that the father also participates in childcare and that the woman not only cares for the child, but that both are employed part time in order to attain these objectives. hence, the egalitarian division of housework appears more like a by-product (t) fig. 3: man’s share of the work in couple h in the spheres of housework, employment and childcare over the course of time 0 50 100 ea rli er m at er ni ty le av e bi rth en d of m at er ni ty le av e se co nd in te rv ie w household chores paid work childcare in percent note: see fi gure 2. source: own design (s) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 635 of the egalitarian division of the other two spheres although both partners are highly sensitised to this subject and explicitly wish for the equal distribution of work, especially in the sphere of childcare (this was expressed otherwise only by couples c and e). in order to keep the amount of housework as low as possible, the couple procures external help and aims to expand that in the future. conditions enabling an equal division of paid and unpaid work in most of the interviewed couples and thus even among highly educated and homogamous couples, we fi nd a specialised division of labour in which the man does a greater share of paid work and the woman is primarily responsible for housework and childcare in the fi rst year following the birth. this pattern is not in accordance with the egalitarian values model, as it assumes that couples in which both partners have a high level of education tend to exhibit more democratic attitudes and thus strive for an egalitarian division of labour in all spheres and wish to continue to do so beyond the birth of the fi rst child. therefore, the question arises how the couples that share paid and unpaid work equally after the transition to parenthood differ from those couples that pursue a rather specialised arrangement. as described above, the egalitarian division of all three spheres of labour after the transition to parenthood is only observed in couples c and h. at fi rst, it is conspicuous that couple h did only practise an egalitarian division of labour at the time of the second interview and prior to the birth had an arrangement in which the man had more working hours and participated less in the housework. the different time spent for employment was given as the explanation for the partially specialised arrangement, which both partners actually rather disapprove. that is why this couple very frequently discussed its ideas about how to organise everyday life in the transition to parenthood. the man argued that he would like to take up his fair share of the childcare and thus would reduce his working hours. this matched the attitude of the woman who wholeheartedly rejects a traditionally specialised division of paid and unpaid work and was unsure whether she would have wanted to have a child without her man’s willingness to be involved in childcare (this can be understood as a negotiation over the division of labour). the egalitarian arrangement following the birth consequently was the result of strong ideals and values of gender equality, reminding of van berkel and de graaf’s (1999) model. this is coupled with the man’s opportunity to reduce his working hours, which is easily possible at his workplace and is further supported by his low career ambition. in order to realise the ideals, the couple additionally takes advantage of many options for outsourcing household tasks. this is consistent with the desire to spend as much time as possible with the child and to organise the other spheres in a way enabling this. couple h thus pursues a combination of the management strategies described by rüling (2007) to circumvent “the traps of traditionalisation”. by contrast, couple c divides the spheres of housework and employment equally both before and after the birth of the child. for both partners it is clear to share the • anna dechant, florian schulz636 housework equally if both are working the same hours. full-time employment is not questioned by either of them, for it is an important factor of their self-concept. the amount of domestic work that needs to be done by the couple is minimised as much as possible: the couple has a cleaner and often eats out. since her own employment is very important to the woman and she can only keep her position if she returns to work quickly and the man is obliged to support his children from his fi rst marriage, the couple decides that after a brief interruption the woman will pursue her job full time again. she re-enters in two stages. while she is at home the man does at least 50 percent of the housework and childcare. following van berkel and de graaf’s (1999) idea, it is a matter of course for him to continue to do household work to the same extent. he also wants to care for his child and tells his partner so. even after the birth the couple pursues a strategy of extensively outsourcing. in addition to housework, this also applies to childcare. the couple has a childminder who takes care of the child three days of the week, while they take care of the child on the other days. it is crucial for this possibility that both respondents can work from home two days of the week and can allocate their time freely. in addition to egalitarian values regarding the division of labour, this couple also exhibits a strong orientation towards employment. unlike couple h both are working full-time six months after the birth and structure their everyday life using every possibility to outsource tasks so that employment, housework and childcare can be divided up equally between both respondents. 5 conclusions our study contributes to understanding the division of paid and unpaid work in couple’s households in the transition to parenthood. based on qualitative longitudinal data, we analysed fi rst which arrangements couples practise before and after the birth of their fi rst child and second how these patterns can be evaluated against the background of the societal rhetoric of gender equality as well as the couples’ attitudes, principles and rationales. we considered all three spheres, employment, housework and childcare, jointly. we did not presume specifi c causalities a priori (which would be refl ected in the quantitative case in the defi nition of dependent and independent variables), but reconstructed the conditions for an egalitarian arrangement from the couples’ perspectives. this made it possible to separate necessary and suffi cient conditions for an equal division of paid and unpaid work. the analyses showed that the studied couples with educational homogamy on a high level express egalitarian values, such as those supposed by the egalitarian values model. nonetheless not all of the couples are able to implement these attitudes in their real division of paid and unpaid work and retain it beyond the transition to fi rst parenthood. hence, it seems that even if egalitarian values are prevalent, special concomitant circumstances are necessary to transfer the convictions into action, such as the possibility of reducing the working hours or to do a large part of the paid work from home. as the example of couple e shows, the lacking option to reduce the working hours can render an egalitarian division impossible if the partdivision of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 637 ners wish to care on their own for the child as much as possible. if the willingness is given to use external caregivers for a baby under the age of one year, a reduction of employment hours seems not to be a necessary condition, as the example of couple c shows. hence, outsourcing work is one determining factor infl uencing the egalitarian division of housework and childcare in a positive manner. it requires, in turn, a suffi ciently high income as well as specifi c attitudes, values and principles, such as a low career ambition of the man (e.g. couple h), the man’s strong desire to care for the child equally (e.g. couples c, h) or a fundamental awareness of the issue and frequent discussion about the division of labour (e.g. couples c, h).8 all in all, our study illustrates that the division of labour in intimate relationships must be studied with far more differentiation than is often the case. in particular, it is very important to review different spheres of labour together. it must be taken into consideration that the division of labour in the different spheres follows different rationales: the division of childcare is often decided upon the basis of preferences or gender-specifi c identities; especially in the initial period following the birth breastfeeding is also an important criterion; many women report a certain social pressure in this respect (cf. e.g. ehnis 2008 on the importance of breastfeeding). decisions about the employment situation are based on the one hand on the decision about childcare and on the other hand on the fact that a certain amount of material prosperity should be attained. sometimes, the gender-specifi c perceptions and assumptions of sanctions for an interruption or reduction of employment are important for the decisions; this is in particular the case as employment is a crucial component of the male gender role (cf. baur/luedtke 2008). by contrast, hardly any of the couples appears to make decisions about housework explicitly and prospectively, and this precisely appears to reduce the chances for an egalitarian division of labour. in many cases, well-known behavioural patterns are fi rst adopted to such an extent that the women take up an increasingly greater share of the chores. from the couples’ points of view, these inequalities are quite reasonable during the studied phase (cf. kaufmann 2005), as they are meaningful and relieve the couples from further negotiations. meanwhile, it seems that hardly any of the actors is aware that in doing so social structures that regulate the everyday routines are concurrently reproduced in the form of (mostly irreversible) institutions (cf. schulz 2010). hence, learning more about the processes of rationalisation and life planning of couples in the transition to parenthood is a way to unravel the phenomenon of the “traditional division of labour” which – although rejected verbally by most people – is nonetheless still practised in line with existing societal structures. it seems that an egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work is hardly realisable unless the mechanisms of traditionalisation in couples are uncovered and discussed in detail and constructively, both in the fi eld of (social) sciences and in couples’ everyday lives. 8 in the scope of this study, it is not possible to check whether the conditions cited by the couples who exhibit a (partially) specialised division of labour following the birth were not producible or not desired. this was the result of a review of the interview material. • anna dechant, florian schulz638 references baur, nina; luedtke, jens 2008: männlichkeit und erwerbsarbeit bei westdeutschen männern. in: baur, nina; luedtke, jens (hrsg.): die soziale konstruktion von männlichkeit. hegemoniale und marginalisierte männlichkeiten in deutschland. opladen: budrich: 81-103. baxter, janeen; hewitt, belinda; haynes, michele 2008: life course transitions and housework: marriage, parenthood, and time on housework. in: journal of marriage and family 70,2: 259-272 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00479.x]. beck, ulrich; beck-gernsheim, elisabeth 1995: the normal chaos of love. cambridge: polity press. becker, gary s. 1998: a treatise on the family. 4th edition. cambridge: harvard university press. blau, peter m. 1964: exchange and power in social life. new york: wiley. bonke, jens; esping-andersen, gøsta 2011: family investments in children. productivities, preferences, and parental child care. in: european sociological review 27,1: 43-55 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jcp054]. buchebner-ferstl, sabine; rille-pfeiffer, christiane 2008: hausarbeit in partnerschaften. studie „the glass partitioning wall“ zur innerfamilialen arbeitsteilung – ergebnisse für österreich. öif-working paper 69. wien [url: http://www.oif.ac.at/fi leadmin/oeif/ workingaper/wp_69_hausarbeit.pdf, 12.03.2012]. coverman, shelley 1985: explaining husband’s participation in domestic labor. in: sociology quarterly 26,1: 81-97 [doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1985.tb00217.x]. deutsch, morton 1975: equity, equality, and need: what determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? in: journal of social issues 31,3: 137-149 [doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb01000.x]. ehnis, patrick 2008: hegemoniale mütterlichkeit. vom selbstverständlichen einverständnis in die gesellschaftstypische arbeitsteilung nach der geburt eines kindes. in: marburger gender-kolleg (hrsg.): geschlecht macht arbeit. interdisziplinäre perspektiven und politische intervention. münster: westfälisches dampfboot: 56-69. glaser, barney g.; strauss, anselm l. 1998: grounded theory. strategien qualitativer forschung. bern: huber. greenstein, theodore n. 1996: husbands’ participation in domestic labor. interactive effects of wives’ and husbands’ gender ideologies. in: journal of marriage and family 58,3: 585-595 [url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/353719, 12.03.2012]. hopf, christel 1993: fragen der hypothesenbildung und hypothesenprüfung. in: hopf, christel; schmidt, christiane (hrsg.): zum verhältnis von innerfamilialen sozialen erfahrungen, persönlichkeitsentwicklung und politischen orientierungen. dokumentation und erörterung des methodischen vorgehens in einer studie zu diesem thema. hildesheim: 13-17 [url: http://w2.wa.uni-hannover.de/mes/berichte/rex93.htm, 12.03.2012]. huinink, johannes; röhler, heiko k. a. 2005: liebe und arbeit in paarbeziehungen. zur erklärung geschlechtstypischer arbeitsteilung in nichtehelichen und ehelichen lebensgemeinschaften. würzburg: ergon. institut für demoskopie 2005: einstellungen junger männer zu elternzeit, elterngeld und familienfreundlichkeit im betrieb. ergebnisse einer repräsentativen bevölkerungsumfrage. allensbach [url: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/frauenvertreterin/download/ allensbach-vaeter.pdf, 16.08.2011]. division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 639 kaufmann, jean-claude 2005: schmutzige wäsche. ein ungewöhnlicher blick auf gewöhnliche paarbeziehungen. 2nd edition. konstanz: uvk. kelle, udo; kluge, susann 2010: vom einzelfall zum typus. fallvergleich und fallkontrastierung in der qualitativen sozialforschung. 2nd edition. wiesbaden: vs. kühhirt, michael 2012: childbirth and the long-term division of labour within couples: how do substitution, bargaining power, and norms affect parents’ time allocation in west germany? in: european sociological review 28,5; 565-582 [doi: 10.1093/esr/ jcr026]. künzler, jan; walter, wolfgang 2001: arbeitsteilung in partnerschaften. theoretische ansätze und empirische befunde. in: huinink, johannes; strohmeier, klaus peter; wagner, michael (hrsg.): solidarität in partnerschaft und familie. zum stand familiensoziologischer theoriebildung. würzburg: ergon: 185-218. lück, detlev 2009: der zögernde abschied vom patriarchat. der wandel von geschlechterrollen im internationalen vergleich. berlin: edition sigma. mayring, philipp 2008: qualitative inhaltsanalyse. grundlagen und techniken. 10th edition. weinheim: beltz. ott, notburga 1992: intrafamily bargaining and household decisions. berlin: springer. röhler, heiko k. a.; huinink, johannes 2010: pair relationships and housework. in: treas, judith; drobnic, sonja (hrsg.): dividing the domestic. men, women, and household work in cross-national perspective. stanford: university press: 192-213. rüling, anneli 2007: jenseits der traditionalisierungsfallen. wie eltern sich familien und erwerbsarbeit teilen. frankfurt/main: campus. schober, pia s. 2013: the parenthood effect on gender inequality: explaining the change in paid and domestic work when british couples become parents. in: european sociological review 29,1: 47-85 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jcr041]. schulte, jürgen 2002: dual-career couples. strukturuntersuchung einer partnerschaftsform im spiegelbild berufl icher anforderungen. opladen: leske+budrich. schulz, florian 2010: verbundene lebensläufe. partnerwahl und arbeitsteilung zwischen neuen ressourcenverhältnissen und traditionellen geschlechterrollen. wiesbaden: vs. schulz, florian; jabsen, annika; rost, harald 2008: zwischen wunsch und wirklichkeit – der alltag erwerbsorientierter paare beim übergang zur elternschaft. methodenbericht einer qualitativen längsschnittstudie. ifb-materialien 4/2008. bamberg [urn: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-125388]. statistisches bundesamt 2010: öffentliche sozialleistungen. statistik zum elterngeld. gemeldete beendete leistungsbezüge 2009. wiesbaden. van berkel, michel; de graaf, nan dirk 1999: by virtue of pleasantness? housework and the effects of education revisited. in: sociology 33,4: 785-808 [doi: 10.1177/ s0038038599000498]. wahl, klaus; honig, michael s.; gravenhorst, lerke 1982: wissenschaftlichkeit und interessen. zur herstellung subjektivitätsorientierter sozialforschung. frankfurt/main: suhrkamp. wengler, annelene; trappe, heike; schmitt, christian 2009: alles wie gehabt? zur aufteilung von hausarbeit und elternaufgaben in partnerschaften. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 34,1-2: 57-78 [doi: 10.1007/s12523-010-0033-2]. • anna dechant, florian schulz640 wiesmann, stephanie 2010: 24/7 negotiation in couples’ transition to parenthood. ics dissertation series, issue 167. universiteit utrecht [url: http://igitur-archive.library. uu.nl/disse rtations/2010-0909-200252/uuindex.html, 12.03.2012]. west, candace; zimmerman, don 1987: doing gender. in: gender and society 1,2: 125-151 [doi: 10.1177/0891243287001002002]. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “bedingungsszenarien einer partnerschaftlichen arbeitsteilung beim übergang zur elternschaft in deutschland”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-06de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-06de4, at http:// www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 01.02.2011 date of acceptance: 15.08.2012 dipl.-soz. anna dechant (). state institute for family research at the university of bamberg. germany. e-mail: anna.dechant@ifb.uni-bamberg.de url: http://www.ifb.bayern.de/mitarbeiter/dechant.html dr. florian schulz. university erlangen-nürnberg, central university administration. germany. e-mail: florian.schulz@fau.de url: http://www.fau.de division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 641 appendix original german interviews “im prinzip ist es, ist es eine fifty-fifty-aufteilung ... hat sich aber einfach so ergeben” „ja, das war für mich schon ... von vornherein klar, dass der haushalt nicht allein ... bei der frau ist ... ich kenne es von daheim auch, wir haben auch immer mithelfen müssen, und genauso ist es halt da auch“ „das wird einem schon von vornherein klar, dass man dann ..., wenn beide auf arbeit gehen, ... auch beide irgendwie was machen müssen” „einfach dadurch, dass ich ganztags arbeite und sie halbtags arbeitet, macht sie einfach ... am vormittag die arbeiten, ... die so anfallen, bis ich abends komme, ist es erledigt, deswegen fällt da eigentlich für mich wenig an“ “ich habe es halt selbstverständlich gefunden, wenn er sowieso da ist, auch wenn er jetzt nicht fest da wohnt, dass er seinen teil halt dann mit dazu beitragen kann und das war ihm eigentlich auch von vornherein klar, weil er ist nicht so ein typ, der sich dann ins gemachte nest setzt ..., sondern das war dann für ihn auch selbstverständlich, dass er dann auch ... haushaltssachen macht” “wir machen auch am wochenende, der j. [ehemann] macht schon mal was, aber ich fi nde das auch nicht so notwendig, wenn ich die nötige zeit dafür habe, das zu machen” „i: wie habt ihr euch zunächst die aufgaben geteilt? habt ihr das dann irgendwie besprochen? … b: das hat sich eigentlich meistens so ergeben“ „b: das stand nie zur frage. .... also da war eigentlich immer schon klar, dass das [die hausarbeit] mein aufgabenbereich wird.“ „jetzt dann in zukunft ... ich bin daheim und habe das kind, dann ist es schon klar, dass ich dann den großteil des haushalts mache, weil ich einfach daheim bin, aber wenn ich gleichzeitig arbeite, dann sehe ich das nicht ein, dass ich dann auch noch den haushalt machen soll, nur weil ich eine frau bin, also gar nicht und das sieht er auch ein, ... das ist auch völlig klar eigentlich zwischen uns.“ (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) • anna dechant, florian schulz642 „i: hat das bei ihnen mal angestanden diese entscheidung, ob der mann einen teil der elternzeit nimmt? b: ja. ... von mir aus war das eigentlich kein thema, weil ich gerne daheim bleibe, ... aber ich denke er ... hätte überhaupt kein problem damit, hausmann zu sein und daheim zu bleiben, aber schon allein, ... was das stillen angeht, geht es ja gar nicht anders und ich hätte mir das auch nicht nehmen lassen, muss ich ganz ehrlich sagen.“ „wenn jetzt meine lebensgefährtin den ganzen tag zuhause wäre, würde man sicherlich erwarten, dass sie gewisse dinge einfach erledigt. wenn man abends heimkommt, dass dann gewisse dinge gemacht sind, das ist ja wohl klar. man wäre dann wahrscheinlich unzufrieden, wenn es nicht so wäre. dadurch dass wir beide den ganzen tag unterwegs sind, ist man sicher auch über viele dinge unzufrieden. ... aber deswegen muss man sich die dinge gleichmäßig teilen und hat gar keine berechtigung oder keinen grund, abends unzufrieden zu sein, wenn abends das essen nicht auf dem tisch steht. ... da kann man nur eine lösung fi nden indem man vorher anruft und fragt: ‚was gibt’s denn? hast du schon daran gedacht?‘, man sich selber was macht oder essen geht.“ „i: was erwarten sie denn im hinblick auf die aufteilung der hausarbeit ..., wenn das kind ... da ist? erwarten sie ... verschiebungen, wenn die frau ... das erste halbe jahr daheim ist? ... b: ich glaube nicht, dass sich da was ändert. a. [name der partnerin] muss sich erst an das kind gewöhnen und an den umgang mit dem kind und wird sich vermutlich auch viel darum kümmern schlichtweg.“ „was mir wichtig ist, dass ich weiterhin arbeiten darf. da hat s. [name des partners] den charmanten vorteil, dass er ... unterhaltspfl ichtig ist und insofern gar nicht auf die dusslige idee kommen könnte und sagen könnte ‘süße, ich habe eine tolle idee. du bleibst zuhause, ich leiste dir das’. ... was mich davor bewahrt, so die rolle wie meine mutter das macht. meine mutter musste, sobald ich in die schule kam, zu hause bleiben. da legt mein vater auch größten wert darauf. das war für ihn auch völlig selbstverständlich als ich ihm erzählt habe, dass wir ein baby kriegen, dass ich dann in zukunft zu hause bleibe. ... ‚wie kommst du denn darauf? du willst ja wirklich arbeiten.‘ ja. und dann schiebt er das s. in die schuhe. ach ja, s. kann das ja nicht. als ob das negativ wäre. was für mich ein vorteil ist. also das ist mir sehr wichtig.“ (k) (l) (m) (j) division of paid and unpaid work in the transition to parenthood • 643 „also, sagen wir mal so, so zum zeitpunkt der geburt hat er natürlich deutlich mehr übernommen als ich.... aber einfach aufgrund der tatsache, ... ich konnte ja eine woche lang oder fast gar nicht laufen und danach auch nur ganz wenig. ... aber danach hat sich das eigentlich alles wieder auf einen normalen level eingespielt.“ „weil wir eigentlich auch beide so von der einstellung her schon denken, dass man das halt einfach aufteilt und ich mache halt dadurch etwas mehr, weil ich halt nur halb arbeite“ „von sich aus ... den ... wunsch hatte, wenn ein kind, dann möchte er sich auch kümmern. ... ja, es war für ihn schon immer dass ... er das eigentlich von sich aus gerne wollte und ... von unserm rollenverständnis her ist es so, ... dass wir eine gleichberechtigte vorstellung ... haben“ „die hat jetzt leider, also für uns leider, gekündigt“ „aber es ist auch oft so, dass, was weiß ich, die waschmaschine müsste leergeräumt werden oder der geschirrspüler, willst du’s jetzt machen oder willst du aufs kind aufpassen? er sagt immer meistens eher, ich will aufs kind aufpassen.“ „für uns war’s immer die optimale regelung: beide arbeiten und beide betreuen das kind“ „ich muss allerdings sagen, wenn mein mann gesagt hätte, er möchte das nicht ... weiß ich nicht, ob ich ein kind hätte haben wollen, also die vorstellung, die ganze woche mit dem kind zu hause und nichts anderes ... wär‘, glaube ich, nicht ganz so meins.“ (r) (s) (t) (q) (p) (o) (n) published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? tim leibert, sophie golinski abstract: demographic change is an uneven spatial process in germany. depopulation and ageing have become pressing issues in most rural regions. in connection with low population densities and the fi nancial diffi culties of municipalities and service providers in rural regions, these demographic trends have led to a discussion about the future provision of services of general interest and – more broadly – the postulate of equal living conditions which was for a long time the basic principle of spatial development in germany. in this paper, we argue that the peripheralisation approach is a helpful tool to better understand how interaction of out-migration, dependence, disconnection and stigmatisation shape the future of rural regions. we also discuss the impact of peripheralisation on the development and implementation of adaptation strategies. based on the 3r-model (retrenchment, repositioning, reorganisation), we argue that adaptation strategies can reinforce (retrenchment) peripheralisation processes, but also serve as groundwork for the formulation of policies aiming at de-peripheralisation. keywords: peripheralisation · demographic change · adaptation strategies · public services · east germany 1 introduction: the demographisation of the debate on the future of rural areas territorial inequalities are increasing in all parts of the developed world. the reasons underpinning the growing rift between prospering cores and declining peripheries are essentially the same. america’s “rural ghettoes”, the “désert français” and decaying villages of east germany are all similarly affected by remoteness, structural economic weaknesses, long-term unemployment, out-migration and ageing (neu 2006). the depopulation of already sparsely populated regions combined with the budgetary crisis affecting public authorities has resulted in a controversial debate comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 255-284 (date of release: 03.03.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-02en7 • tim leibert, sophie golinski256 about the future provision of services of general interest as well as of social and technical infrastructures in the countryside. a striking feature of this debate is the lack of consideration for rural populations – aside from calls for more civic participation. demography, on the other hand, is omnipresent, be it in terms of infrastructure costs per capita, minimum populations, carrying capacities and the size of catchment areas. the demographisation of the debate on the future of rural areas can be summed up in one sentence: demography becomes destiny. it is assumed that the structure of the population determines the future prospects of any given society or region (neu 2009: 83). social, economic and cultural drivers are factored out or interpreted as a mere consequence of demographic changes (beetz 2013: 55). the demographisation of social phenomena is a highly persuasive mechanism. demographic trends are increasingly treated as inherent necessities and used to legitimise reform proposals (berger/kahlert 2006: 10). they are also utilised as arguments against political agendas that have become integral parts of the self-conception of the federal republic of germany, such as the paradigm of balanced spatial development and the idea of equitable living conditions in all parts of the country (neu 2009: 84; canzler/knie 2009: 97). these formerly unquestioned political goals are increasingly being perceived as obstacles in the process of making rural regions “fi t for the future” (see e.g., klingholz 2015; canzler/knie 2009: 106-107). there seems to be an emerging societal consensus on the fact that the constitutional mandate guaranteeing equitable living conditions in sparsely populated rural regions is no longer applicable (barlösius/neu 2007: 79). instead of “thinking outside the box” and developing innovative solutions that go beyond short-term pilot projects, the future of infrastructures and public services in rural regions is discussed in terms of minimum standards, subsidy requirements, and cost recovery. reinterpreting the future of rural regions as an inevitable “demographic destiny” implies excluding this question from the political decision-making process, nipping in the bud discussions regarding the organisation of territorial and social cohesion in germany (barlösius/ neu 2007: 88). this reinterpretation also eludes how approval procedures, administrative processes, allocation of tasks between the state, the market and the citizens as well as competences and funding of local governments could be adapted in order to allow for the implementation of more innovative solutions. this paper has two main aims. the fi rst one is to add an additional perspective to current research on the causes and consequences of demographic change as well as on possible adaptation strategies. following lang (2012: 1749), we argue that the causes and consequences of shrinkage and ageing can be better understood by using the concept of peripheralisation: namely since uneven spatial developments are linked to societal processes as well as to supraregional and even supranational developments. our second aim is to bring rural people (back) into the focus of research on rural restructuring. it has been argued that the response of people living in sparsely inhabited and depopulating rural regions to service cuts and the dismantling of services of general interest and of technical and social infrastructures is hardly taken into account (hyll/schneider 2011: 217-218). this is due to the fact that the adaptation of services and infrastructures to a decreasing population is in the peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 257 fi rst place perceived as a technical problem of quantities, not as a social problem of participation and exclusion. this paper is structured as follows. the second section centres on regional peripheralisation and addresses the four sub-dimensions of this concept, namely outmigration (section 2.1), disconnection (section 2.2), dependence (section 2.3), and stigmatisation (section 2.4). in a short case study (section 2.5), we consider the land of saxony-anhalt to empirically illustrate peripheralisation processes and their spatial effects under conditions of demographic change. section three deals with the infl uence of peripheralisation on the adaptation of public services. we discusses the 3r-model (retrenchment, reorganisation, repositioning) as an analytic concept of possible adaptation strategies in the triangle of confl icting priorities between tight budgets, demographic change and the principle of equivalent living conditions enshrined in the german constitution. in section 4, we sum up the most important fi ndings and shed light on future research issues. 2 theorising peripheralisation: the interplay of out-migration, disconnection, dependence and stigmatisation peripheralisation is the process of producing and reproducing peripheries through mechanisms of out-migration, disconnection, dependence, and stigmatisation (kühn/weck 2013: 24), which lead to the “gradual weakening and/or uncoupling of the socio-spatial development in a given region vis-à-vis the dominant process of centralisation”1 (keim 2006: 3). peripheralisation is driven by the action of certain actors, which, in turn, means that peripheries are not only determined by geographical location or the quality of the transport infrastructure (kühn/weck 2013: 24), but also by purposive decisions and their – often unintended – side effects. there are, hence, no distinct indicators or thresholds that can be used to transform peripheralisation into a statistically tangible and mappable concept (lang 2012: 1751). both kühn/bernt (2013: 312) and lang (2012: 1751) stress the relational nature of peripheralisation. the former argue that peripheralisation is a process consisting in downgrading a specifi c region vis-à-vis other regions, while the latter underscores the role of normative interpretations by pointing out that centre and periphery emerge in overall societal discourses. peripheralisation is, consequently, not an independent process, but a logical consequence of centralisation. as the two sides of the same coin, both processes “form a complementary as well as contradictory dialectic unit” (kühn/bernt 2013: 303). centralisation and peripheralisation are characterised by antithetic socio-spatial processes: autonomy/dependency; inclusion/exclusion; hegemony/stigmatisation; growth/decline; in-migration/out-migration (kühn 2015: 375). centralisation hence leads to the concentration of people, economic power, and infrastructure in metropolitan areas at the expense of other, mostly rural, regions. the main consequence of peripheralisation is a process of cultural, demographic, economic, and social con1 direct quotes from german texts have been translated by the authors. • tim leibert, sophie golinski258 traction, which leads to an increasing specialisation of a once multifunctional region to a restricted number of uses and activities (keim 2006). taken together, peripheralisation results in a permanent consolidation of structural defi cits and restrains opportunities for the resident population (beetz 2008). these structural defi cits are not necessarily economic in nature, as peripheralisation is a multi-dimensional and multifaceted process that also includes demographic, social, infrastructural, cultural, and political aspects (kühn 2015). fischer-tahir/naumann (2013: 18) add a different angle to this reasoning by linking peripheralisation and marginalisation in order to point out that “peripheralisation refers to a spatially organised inequality of power relations and access to material and symbolic goods that constructs and perpetuates the precedence of the centres over areas that are marginalised”. yet, there is not even a consensus whether peripheralisation is still a predominantly spatial process. copus (2001: 539) argues that – due to changes in the economic environment “in future peripherality will increasingly become an aspatial issue”. the relevant economic and technical developments are improvements in the transport and communication infrastructure, structural changes in the industry structure, in particular the expansion of the service sector at the expense of agriculture and heavy industries, and the advent and dynamic development of the information society, including the increasing importance of e-commerce (copus 2001: 544). these changes have – at least in theory – lead to a decreasing importance of distance, travel time and transportation costs. “aspatial peripherality” is hence not characterised by geographical location, but by the lack of embeddedness in business and institutional networks, poor access to and/or availability of social capital and information and communication infrastructures as well as weak links to global markets and information networks (copus 2001: 544-546). other authors, e.g. balogh (2015), lang (2015) or paasi (1995) view peripheries and peripherality as socially constructed. peripheralisation as the act of (re)producing peripheries is hence the result of socio-material and discursive processes (balogh 2015). the conceptualisation of peripheralisation goes beyond the “taken for granted” (paasi 1995: 235) understanding of the meaning of periphery and peripherality: “peripherality generally connotes distance, difference and dependency. a typical periphery is geographically remote, economically lagging, dependent upon external political and industrial decision-making, and culturally obsolete” (eskelinen/snickars 1995: 1). based on this defi nition, “peripheralisation” would be a process which results in a given region becoming more remote or less accessible, economically less viable and politically more dependent. one could even distinguish “active” and “passive” peripheralisation – the former caused by purposefully cutting transport links, closing businesses and limiting the political infl uence of (the inhabitants of) a specifi c region. “passive peripheralisation” would on the other hand imply that the region in question falls behind because it cannot keep up with the development of the centre. the most important additions of peripheralisation as a theoretical concept can be summarised as follows: (1) peripheralisation is relational: peripheralisation implies processes of centralisation and vice versa (lang 2015: 175). (2) peripheralisation is a social process, not a geographical fact. discourses and images peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 259 play an important role in this context (balogh 2015; bürk 2013). (3) peripheralisation is dynamic and reversible. in the following four sections, we critically discuss the four dimensions of peripheralisation identifi ed by bernt/liebmann (2013): out-migration (demographic peripheralisation), dependence (being in a marginal position in superordinate networks), disconnection (infrastructural peripheralisation and being on the margins of information society) and stigmatisation (discursive peripheralisation). this list was developed in a research project analysing how middle-sized towns in germany deal with processes of peripheralisation. against this backdrop, the four characteristics and their weighting need to be reconsidered and expanded according to different research questions. we believe, for instance, that there are two additional aspects of peripheralisation – social peripheralisation (i.e. social exclusion) and political peripheralisation (i.e. a distancing of larger parts of the population from democracy, expressed for instance in low voter turnout and a high percentage of votes for extremist parties) which are strongly interwoven with, yet only implicitly covered by these four dimensions. making social and political peripheralisation more explicit would also answer lang’s (2015: 180) call to pay more attention to how “ordinary people” deal with the processes of peripheralisation. this call indicates that the local civil society currently takes an (undeserved) backseat in research on peripheralisation. peripheralisation is a multilevel phenomenon that can affect whole regions, specifi c settlements, but also individuals. the former is especially true for the four “classical” aspects of peripheralisation, the latter for social and political peripheralisation processes as well as the strategies “ordinary” people develop to deal with the challenges of peripheralisation for their lives. there are, on the other hand, segments of peripheralised regions or societies that are less affected by peripheralisation, e.g. the municipalities where the services of general interest are centralised. this potential of peripheralisation as an overarching concept for multi-level research, especially the potential to link processes and developments at the macro level to their consequences at the micro level, should be strengthened in future empirical work and theoretical discussions. the fact that peripheralisation is a relational process, meaning that it is always connected to a process of centralisation, and a multidimensional process is in our opinion a major advantage vis-à-vis other concepts: since peripheralisation focuses on the interplay of multiple actors on various levels and can therefore lead to a better understanding of how people, communities or regions are pushed to the margins and their leeway to deal with or even resist becoming a periphery. the idea that peripheralisation is both reversible and a “constitutive element of capitalism” (fischer-tahir/naumann 2013: 10) allows for a more comprehensive perspective of the possible impact of adaptation strategies and best practices for regional development. the link of peripheralisation and adaptation is further elaborated in section 3. • tim leibert, sophie golinski260 2.1 out-migration out-migration is, according to bernt/liebmann (2013: 219-220), the primary indicator of peripheralisation. leaving can be interpreted as a voting “with one’s feet”. out-migration is usually a selective process, i.e., some subgroups of the population are more likely to leave than others, e.g., young women (leibert 2016; wiest/ leibert 2013; kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012). many rural adolescents have long before school assimilated that “all of the pathways to success that are understood to be strategic and/or successful are premised on pathways that lead [them] out of their rural homes and communities” (looker/naylor 2009: 54). this brain-drain of the young, highly qualifi ed, and well-educated people is an important barrier to “deperipheralisation” because it weakens the innovative potential of peripheries while inhibiting the development and implementation of new ideas and strategies (bernt/ liebmann 2013: 220; kühn/weck 2013: 31). migration should, however, not be solely interpreted as a threat for rural regions. out-migration is also a “pre-requisite for rural economic regeneration” (stockdale 2006) since the availability of appropriate “human capital” is a crucial aspect of endogenous regional development. migration is usually a precondition to the acquisition of the skills and knowledge necessary to participate in the economic regeneration of rural regions, as institutions of higher education are mostly urbanbased. the problem lies therefore not in out-migration per se, but in the weakness of the reverse fl ow, meaning that too many out-migrants go for good. migration is hence a double-edged sword for rural regions: unlike the popular stereotype which contrasts the “stable countryside” with the “hypermobile city” (milbourne/kitchen 2014), rural regions are intensely affected by mobility such as out-migration of the youth, in-migration of retirement migrants, “passing through” of tourists or longdistance labour mobility of weekend commuters. they all do affect rural areas in similar ways. this ambiguity of mobility can be translated into a rural mobility paradox: “on the one hand, [rural places] require mobilities to remain sustainable […] while, on the other these same mobilities have the power to destroy the essence of the place” (milbourne/kitchen 2014: 335). even sedentariness is not equivalent to stability and immobility. mobility (e.g., in terms of commuting) is increasingly used as a means to gain stability and to be able to remain in rural regions with a degraded job market or in regions in which mobility and long distance travel for the purpose of basic needs satisfaction is compelled by the withdrawal of state and market institutions (walsh 2012: 137). an open question is how to deal with the consumption of rurality, notably counter-urbanisation, second homes and travel (both tourism and day trips) (see e.g. halfacree 2012) i.e. temporary in-migration of people who value that “time stands still” and that the region in question is disconnected from modern life. since the consumption of the countryside involves a repositioning of services and infrastructures to the needs of the inhabitants of the centres, this form of in-migration can also be considered as a manifestation of peripheralisation (i.e. another form of dependence), but one that helps to maintain a certain level of services of general interest in depopulating regions. peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 261 2.2 disconnection disconnection can be understood as a progressive disconnection of the peripheries from regulatory systems like the state or the market based on decisions made in the centres of economic and political power (kühn/weck 2013: 33). this process is in the fi rst place related to not having or losing access to economic powerhouses and has two dimensions: disconnection from infrastructure and disconnection from economic and social innovation (neu 2006). in economic terms, peripheries can be defi ned as areas characterised by a lack of local and/or regional innovative capacities, which translates e.g., into the absence of institutions of higher education, low qualifi cation of the workforce or low intensity of research and development activities of local enterprises (kühn/weck 2013: 33-34). disconnection originates in the fi rst place from a non-dynamic knowledge economy sector and a disintegration of the link to advanced value-added processes (bernt/liebmann 2013: 220). in infrastructural terms, disconnection is related to a constrained access to the economic centres of gravity, thereby reinforcing and perpetuating spatial inequalities (naumann/reichert-schick 2015: 1). the existence of technical and social infrastructures and the provision of services of general interest are crucial for regional development (reichert-schick 2013: 34); this applies particularly to transport infrastructures. demand for mobility increases given that adaptation strategies most frequently consist in a centralisation of services of general interest in middle-sized towns (“people to services”). the need for a well-developed road network is hardly questioned since dependence on private car transportation is a key feature of peripheral regions (osti 2010: 306). the future of public transport in sparsely populated rural regions, on the other hand, is a topic that can easily fi ll volumes (see e.g., canzler/karl 2010; holz-rau et al. 2010; steinrück/küpper 2010). the abandonment of publicly funded transport in sparsely populated rural regions is not a taboo in this context (e.g., canzler/karl 2010). apart from fi scal arguments, proponents of phasing out or radically remodelling the provision of services of general interest in rural peripheries argue that it is morally questionable whether the public (i.e., the tax-payers in the core regions) should subsidise the residential preferences of rural residents. according to this view, the implementation of a “user-pays” principle is proposed to cut infrastructure costs in the countryside (holz-rau et al. 2010: 493, 502). the disconnection from economic and social progress and from technical and social infrastructures lead to social exclusion of the more vulnerable segments of rural societies – which might indeed be added as an additional fi fth characteristic of peripheralisation, notably children, the elderly, the poor, the unemployed, people with no cars and those without effective support networks. social exclusion has three core dimensions: (1) exclusion from economic life, (2) exclusion from social services, and (3) exclusion from civic life and social networks (spoor 2013: 140-141). the most important driver of social exclusion is a constrained access to mobility on an individual level, which is the most important precondition for participation in social and professional life (hauss et al. 2006: 35). disconnection hence results in mobility restrictions for parts of the rural population. it seems that social exclusion is rather widespread in rural east germany (laschewski 2009: 105). this is, for in• tim leibert, sophie golinski262 stance, transcribed in very high levels of long-term and youth unemployment, child poverty and strong dependency on transfer payments. 2.3 dependence unequal power relations between centres and peripheries are another key aspect of peripheralisation. the peripheries are dependent on decisions which are made in the centres and on which they have hardly any infl uence, e.g., with respect to location decisions, investments or allocations of funds (beetz et al. 2008: 305; kühn/ weck 2013: 41): “the relation of centre and periphery is less a spatial fact than a social confi guration resting on unequal power relations which lead to uneven spatial development. the political dimension is characterised by power in the centre and powerlessness at the periphery” (kühn 2015: 375). the political and economic decision and control functions in germany are mostly concentrated in the largest cities, notably munich, berlin, and düsseldorf (kühn/weck 2013: 37). smaller cities, including some state capitals, are largely deprived of decision-making centres, especially due to the absence of major enterprise’s headquarters (kühn/weck 2013: 37). the economic polarisation fades somewhat if global market leaders – many of which are small and medium-sized businesses – are taken into account. about one fi fth of such “hidden champions” are located in municipalities that can be characterised as “peripheral” or “very peripheral”, especially in baden-württemberg and bavaria. world market leaders are, on the other hand, notably absent in rural east germany (ermann et al. 2012). dependence is also connected to the funding of local governments. many rural municipalities only have limited freedom of action as a result of low fi scal revenues, high welfare expenses and debt servicing as well as fi nancial constraints caused by misguided investments in the past (beetz et al. 2008: 300). the result is a permanent dependence on transfer and equalisation payments as well as on budget appropriations (kühn/weck 2013: 37), leading to a keen competition for state, federal and european funds. this translates into an alignment on grant requirements and the programme’s objectives. hence, local governments are often unable to pursue consistent long-term development strategies based on specifi c local challenges and locally available resources. the changing philosophies, objectives, and rules of the subsidy programmes as well as the limited duration of funding periods and pilot projects do dictate a constant reorientation of local approaches. regional development policies turn into a “strategic management of dependencies” (bernt/liebmann 2013: 226). it would, however, be short-sighted to assume that peripheralised regions (and their inhabitants) are per se “victims of […] overarching processes beyond their control” (lang 2015: 176). while kühn/weck (2013) are certainly right with respect to the limited (fi nancial) leeway of many rural municipalities, the agency of other stakeholders is often neglected in discussions about rural futures. lang (2015: 180) argues that forms of agency can cover a spectrum ranging from reproducing the existing core-periphery relations to resistance. one notable (and fi nally successful) example of local resistance to decisions made in the centres is the “rebellion in the peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 263 classroom“ (steffen 2013) which took place in the small town of seifhennersdorf (saxony). in answer to the decision to close the local secondary school, the parents took matters in their own hand – by breaking the law: the pupils refused to attend the school they were assigned to and instead attended classes in seifhennersdorf, where retired teachers gave the lessons. the municipality has backed this civic disobedience and contested the school closure in court. in the end, the federal constitutional court declared the education act of the free state of saxony on which the decision to close the school was based to be unconstitutional (seibel 2014). other examples for agency in the periphery are “raumpioniere” (literally “spatial pioneers”) who develop on their own initiative innovative and tailor-made solutions in order to fi nd new ways to sustain services of general interest (faber 2013) and social entrepreneurship which aims at solving the problems of declining rural peripheries with marketable products and services (federwisch 2014: 100). one should, however, not overlook that peripheralisation is often connected to social exclusion (leibert 2013: 105-109). social exclusion, especially unemployment, is linked to a loss of regional human capital (ebenrett et al. 2003). since human capital seems to be an important precondition to become a “raumpionier” or a social entrepreneur, the question remains open whether the history of peripheralisation, especially the degree of selective out-migration in the past, limits regional agency capacities. we will get back to this question in section 3.3. 2.4 stigmatisation stigmatisation is the fourth dimension of peripheralisation. in contrast to bernt/ liebmann (2013: 219-220) who regard out-migration as the core indicator of peripheralisation, we believe that stigmatisation is the root cause of the consolidation of peripheralisation. the perception of a given region by its inhabitants and by external stakeholders (e.g., national politicians, potential investors) does infl uence location decisions of all sorts: whether to leave or to stay, whether to (dis-)invest, whether to establish, maintain or abandon services of general interest. in discourses on rural peripheries it is sometimes claimed that the negative consequences of peripheralisation are results of a failure of local governments and civil societies.2 one example is the notion of “lost regions”, where “no innovators can be found that try to create a future” (weber/klingholz 2009: 3). structural problems, on the other hand, are less frequently acknowledged; the responsibility for “arrested development” is allotted to the peripheries themselves (bernt/liebmann 2013: 221): the ascription of the failure to enter a virtuous circle of successful regional development to regional politicians and ultimately to the regional population itself fosters a negative regional image. the unfavourable development trends become a characteristic of the whole place (bernt/liebmann 2013: 221). this is especially apparent in the media cover2 see e.g. bürk’s (2013) analysis of the stigmatisation process of sangerhausen (saxony-anhalt) and the “discursive violence infl icted on the city” (2013: 175). bürk (2013: 180) interprets the (politically motivated and ideologically informed) stigmatisation of single places and regions as being about “’blaming the victim’ of new state spaces”. • tim leibert, sophie golinski264 age of rural peripheries and other demographically and/or economically declining regions. in recent years, the national press has, for instance, repeatedly picked up on the depopulation and ageing process undergone by the east german countryside linking demographic change with dramatising descriptions of moribund towns and villages hallmarked by poverty, hopelessness, and out-migration of the “best and brightest”. headlines like “empty east: only the footsore stay”, “ocean of poverty and dementia” or “drinking contests in the depression zone” (speck/schubarth 2009: 15) contribute to paint a gloomy picture of rural east germany. stayers who are depicted as a “negative selection” of society are given particularly bad press. this is especially true for young men who are often portrayed as unemployed and uneducated boozers with right-wing world views (rolfes/mohring 2009: 77-78). the demographisation of the discourse on rural infrastructures in the political and scientifi c spheres can be perceived as a form of stigmatisation and marginalisation that has especially far-reaching consequences. regional policy is, as lang (2015: 176) points out, “always normative […] and framed by individual and collective values linked to specifi c understandings and conceptualisations of development, desired policy outcomes and funding priorities”. removing the rural population from the picture can lead to policy recommendations such as the – fi ercely criticised (steffens/kröhnert 2009: 219) – proposal of an “orderly retreat” (klingholz 2015: 27) from the “lost regions” mentioned in the previous paragraph. given the high costs of providing and maintaining social and technical infrastructures in rural areas, it is proposed that residents of “fading places” – small villages with an overaged population in sparsely populated regions – should receive a bonus payment to encourage them to move to urban agglomerations or regional centres (berlin-institut 2007: 30; steffens/kröhnert 2009: 218): “the government of the land should communicate in [“lost regions”] that an ongoing emptying-out is inevitable in the long run. trying to prevent it would possibly be considerably more expensive than to allow it or even support it” (steffens/kröhnert 2009: 219). the stigmatisation and marginalisation is somewhat implicit: rural regions are portrayed as places that have absolutely nothing worth preserving for future generations. this label is probably even more detrimental for the future of rural areas since the public tends to readily accept the reasoning that a specifi c service of general interest has legitimate reasons to be cut when labelled “too expensive”. convincing voters that rural regions are a considerable burden for the budget and that the tax payers’ money would be better spent elsewhere (i.e., in the centres) is an especially powerful tool, helping to legitimise policies that result in infrastructure cutbacks. there is a risk that the inhabitants of demographically and economically declining rural regions themselves incorporate this perception. feelings of being left behind and forgotten, of living in a place that has had its days can affect regional identities and lead to senses of hopelessness, a “mental peripheralisation” (kühn/weck 2013: 39) that blocks innovation and creates isolated milieus as well as increases apathy of the population (reichert-schick 2013: 37). negative internal and external images can hence lead to mental lock-ins and paralyse whole regions, resulting in a downward spiral that is hard, but not impossible to break (lang 2012: 1751). peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 265 in the next section, we present a short case study in order to shed more light on the interplay of the processes of peripheralisation discussed in sections 2.1 to 2.4, in particular the links between stigmatisation and out-migration. 2.5 a case study of peripheralisation: saxony-anhalt saxony-anhalt is the german land with the most unfavourable population development. as such, it is chosen to exemplify peripheralisation “in action”. the demographic situation is characterised by a severe ageing dynamic and pronounced depopulation; in particular, in the remote and sparsely populated rural regions (leibert/köppl 2015). in this context, strong ageand sex-selective out-migration has emerged to be the most important driver of both depopulation and ageing. young women in their early 20s have been more likely to leave the rural areas than coeval men (wiest/leibert 2013: 459-460), leading to a pronounced “defi cit” of young women in many rural municipalities (kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012: 29-36; leibert 2016: 268). these trends contribute to a distorted ageand sex-structure of the population, eventually resulting in a lack of potential mothers and simultaneously weakening the overall reproductive potential (leibert 2016). figure 1 shows that outmigration of young adults – the fi rst basic dimension of peripheralisation (section 2.1) – is a comprehensive phenomenon in rural saxony-anhalt. net migration gains are largely restricted to the regional centres, selected district seats (kreisstädte) and medium-sized towns hosting institutions of higher education. the few rural municipalities exhibiting positive migration balances are in most cases those places with accommodation centres for asylum seekers (leibert/köppl 2015: 63). in addition to demographic problems, saxony-anhalt is also burdened with socio-economic problems such as unemployment and child poverty (table 1) as well as structural economic weaknesses (e.g., a weak innovation potential of the regional economy or a low wage level), both resulting in low levels of tax revenues (table 1). low fi scal revenues, in turn, generate structures of dependence, namely unequal power relations and dependence on funds and investments coming from outside the region. it is likely that the stigmatisation of east germany (section 2.4) and its inhabitants in the media, its bleak socio-economic outlook, perceptions of lacking career prospects, and selective out-migration of young adults are factors that do exacerbate each other. media reports usually interpret out-migration of young people, especially of young women, as a barometer of future prospects of a respective region. besides, public opinion is heavily infl uenced by reports on right-wing extremism, alcoholism, poverty, devastation, and desperation, which again enforces the migration patterns of young people. the ones who stay within the region are branded as “the stupid remainders” (speck/schubarth 2009: 15). youth are sensitive to media coverage when it comes to making major life decisions, and they, as a consequence, have little faith in the future sustainability of east germany (beetz 2009). these fi ndings are supported by results of a survey conducted among pupils and by in-depth • tim leibert, sophie golinski266 fig. 1: migration balance of young adults in saxony-anhalt by municipalities 2012/13 source: own calculations based on data of the federal as wells as regional statistical offi ces (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2015) peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 267 tab. 1: selected indicators of peripheralisation: social exclusion saxonyurban districts rural districts germany anhalt west east west east total social exclusion unemployment rate 11.5 6.4 11.2 4.5 10.2 6.8 youth unemployment rate 10.2 5.4 10.8 4.0 9.2 5.9 long term unemployed per 100 unemployed persons 35.4 36.9 35.3 29.3 36.8 35.6 underemployment* 16.5 8.6 15.6 6.2 13.8 9.3 welfare recipients (“hartz iv”) per 100 inhabitants under 65 16.7 8.9 17.6 5.5 13.5 9.5 child poverty rate 26.8 14.8 28.4 9.0 20.7 15.2 dependence tax revenue per capita 2012 451¤ 828¤ 547¤ 668¤ 448¤ 728¤ gross value added (gva) 2012 46.8 61.6 48.2 53.4 46.0 57.4 gva – development 2007-2012 5.7 8.6 11.6 13.1 8.8 9.6 r&d** personnel per 1,000 persons employed 3.5 15.7 8.8 7.9 4.6 12.6 personnel in skill-intensive enterprise-related services per 100 persons employed 6.0 12.5 12.0 6.6 4.8 10.7 personnel in creative industries per 100 persons employed 2012 1.6 4.0 4.9 1.7 1.2 3.4 personnel in skilland research-intensive industries per 100 persons employed 2012 6.1 12.0 5.9 11.9 7.0 10.9 personnel in the fire*** economy per 100 persons employed 2012 22.2 24.6 25.9 17.9 19.2 23.2 median income per capita 2012 2,137¤ 3,038¤ 2,338¤ 2,719¤ 2,069¤ 2,754¤ * proportion of the workforce employed on the subsidised labour market (e.g. job creation schemes, vocational re-training) ** research and development *** finance, insurance and real estate source: bbsr 2015 • tim leibert, sophie golinski268 interviews with young women carried out in the context of the espon semigra3 project (see leibert/wiest 2012 for details). a large majority of the surveyed pupils are deeply convinced that their home region has no future, and that moving away is a necessary precondition for a successful professional career. the survey results further indicate that young people view regional living and labour market conditions in rural saxony-anhalt as hopeless and very unappealing. an overwhelming majority considers it diffi cult or nearly impossible to fi nd a job, earn a living, and be successful in their rural home regions. the young people are not necessarily counting the days until they can fi nally leave, but they are not reluctant to move away either: only a third of the interviewees agreed that it would be painful for them to move away from their native region (wiest/leibert 2013: 462). the reasoning behind this grudgingly accepted mobility is that remaining in the countryside and becoming successful are perceived as mutually exclusive options, as the following statement reveals: “i would very, very much like to leave the rural area in order to improve my occupational outlook and to promote my career” (male pupil, harz district). such aspirations are fostered by perceptions of hopelessness affl icting home regions, but also by the “lure of the center”, which is regarded as a place to settle down permanently, a place where a variety of well-paid jobs are available: “i think i’ll live […] in bavaria [in 10 years]. i’ve always been attracted by this region and rumor has it that there are better career opportunities. i’ll start a family there and build a house” (male pupil, altmarkkreis salzwedel). young people tend to contrast opportunities available in rural regions with those offered in urban areas. the perception of a socio-economic disconnection of rural saxony-anhalt from economic centres, which translates into a feeling of spatial and social marginalisation, is a central topic within interviewees’ narratives (wiest 2016: 285). this indicates that home region peripheralisation is not an abstract concept for young people growing up in the east german countryside, but a reality they happen to experience every day. the parents of the interviewed pupils share the perception that rural saxony-anhalt is a declining periphery that has nothing to offer for ambitious young people. against this backdrop, many parents advise their offspring to leave, often years before they even graduate: “my daughter is eleven, an age at which you don’t really have to start planning for the future, but as her mother, i tell her she won’t stay here. she has to move away at some point, because she won’t be happy here. […] she’s eleven, so she really shouldn’t have to be thinking about these things yet, but as her mother, i tell her she won’t stay here.” (unemployed woman, stendal district). the peripheralisation of rural saxony-anhalt has hence resulted in a “culture of migration” (wiest/ leibert 2013: 463-464; leibert 2015: 38-39): staying is equated with failure, while leaving is perceived as being a very promising road towards success. 3 the espon 2013 semigra (selective migration and unbalanced sex ratio in rural regions) project (2010-2012) aimed at identifying the main reasons and consequences of ageand sexselective migration in rural regions of finland, germany, hungary and sweden. peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 269 3 the 3r-model: adaptation (strategies) in theory and practice peripheralisation can be understood as a “missing link” insofar as this concept stresses the interconnectedness of political, economic, demographic and ideational factors, which tend to be overlooked when questions of regional development are “demographised”. one of the most important lessons is that concepts of adaptation to demographic change in rural regions have to consider all four dimensions of peripheralisation: out-migration, disconnection, dependence and stigmatisation. on the one hand, we hypothesise that neither infrastructural cutbacks nor placebased strategies do fully acknowledge all the dimensions of peripheralisation yet. on the other hand, processes of out-migration, dependence, disconnection, and stigmatisation can severely limit a region’s ability to develop and implement adaptation strategies in order to improve regional living conditions and enhance economic potentials. more precisely, peripheralisation processes do constrain the region’s operational leeway in matters of adaptation to demographic change. they do affect the region’s autonomy to act (e.g., in terms of competences and funds), their ability to act (e.g., in terms of developing innovative measure) and the amount of resources available to them to act (e.g., in terms of infrastructure, social and human capital). one should always keep in mind that different regions have their own contextual particularities, both in terms of problems to be tackled and resources available. in other words, instruments and measures that are successfully implemented in one region may not work at all in another. an additional link between peripheralisation and adaptation is the normative nature of regional policy (lang 2015: 176) which is relevant for the design of adaptation strategies. meaning the question in which regions strategies of retrenchment and centralisation are pursued and in which regions a repositioning and reorganisation of the services of general interest is implemented. before we discuss this 3r-modell in the public sector using examples from the fi eld of rural public transport (section 3.2) we fi rst briefl y turn to the current discussion on the paradigm of equal/equitable living condition in germany (section 3.1) and conclude with some refl ections on whether voluntarism is an ubiquitous locational factor – to borrow a term form industrial location theory (section 3.3). 3.1 adaptation to what? – objectives of action the constitutional obligation towards the creation of equitable living conditions in all parts of germany is enshrined in article 72 (2) of the basic law of the federal republic of germany. more specifi cally, the german federal planning law (raumordnungsgesetz) refers to living conditions as an aggregation of several dimensions including economic performance, the labour market, health care, material prosperity, the housing market, the education system, culture, the technical infrastructure, mobility, and the environmental situation (bbsr 2011: 16). it does not mean that the same living conditions should be found everywhere (“equal”), but rather that a standard level of services of general interest should be met (“equitable”). in order to limit spatial disparities, the welfare state aims at providing a minimum level of services of general interests in all parts of germany (einig/jonas 2009: 130). the • tim leibert, sophie golinski270 paradigm of equitable living conditions is limited to services of general interest, i.e. public services provided and/or supported by the federal, regional or local governments or their agencies (öffentliche daseinsvorsorge), whereas private services are largely beyond the scope of governmental authority. public services include both technical infrastructures (e.g., water supply, sewage disposal, energy supply, waste collection and treatment, public transport) and social infrastructures (e.g., education, health care, culture, sports) (kersten et al. 2015: 9). in 2006, new guiding principles regarding the spatial development of germany (leitbilder der raumordnung) were enacted in order to achieve equitable living conditions while accepting a basic level of divergence among regions. one of the principles has been explicitly dedicated to secure the provision of essential public services and addresses the threat posed by demographic change and its consequences (bbsr 2015). the continued adherence of law-makers to equitable living standards in germany has cyclically provoked ideological disputes. whereas supporters justify equitable living standards by recalling the basic functions of a welfare state, opponents condemn the paradigm in order to rule out compensational actions remedying the locational disadvantages of lagging regions (e.g., canzler/ knie 2009; elbe/müller 2015: 57; klingholz 2015: 25). in general, the obligation of equitable living conditions in all parts of germany remains one of most important objectives of the german spatial policy which provides orientation and determines adaptation strategies. in terms of the provision of public services and facilities in rural areas, current adaptation strategies seem to be providing a set of useful tools, but recent research also recognises that long-term, sustainable and comprehensive structures are still implemented insuffi ciently (e.g., steinführer et al. 2014; beetz et al. 2008). 3.2 adaptation and peripheralisation: the 3r-model although numerous political discussions, maintenance efforts, and funding programmes have been conducted in response to demographic changes, current research has focused little on the adaptation of public sector organisations (boyne 2004: 97). several studies, related to organisation studies, have assigned concepts on organisational decline and turnaround of private organisations to the public sector. in other words, strategies of adaptation, which are pursued by private organisations in order to increase their performances, are assumed transferrable to nonprofi t organisations. primarily focused on the private sector, a substantial body of work on organisational turnarounds has investigated numerous activities operated by failing organisations. as a result, it has been found that organisational recovery can be managed through three different adaptation strategies (3r-model) – retrenchment, reorganisation, and repositioning – (walshe et al. 2004: 201; boyne 2004: 98). retrenchment basically indicates the reduction in scope or size of an organisation, thus immediately scaling down fi nances and costs. kersten et al. (2015: 12) give a brief and simple description of what retrenchment means: “less population + less money = less infrastructure”. reorganisation or replacement, instead, aims at changing the internal structure of an organisation. by replacing members peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 271 of the management, or beyond, internal changes are favoured over alterations in an organisation’s size or market position. finally, repositioning or renewal results in changing the entrepreneurial strategy of an organisation. longer-term actions involve fundamental shifts in vision, activities, and markets in response to changing external circumstances (küpper 2011a: 89; walshe et al. 2004: 204). boyne transferred the existing theory on failure and turnaround from the private to the public sector. he acknowledged that public services of general interest are also confronted to fast-changing demands and, therefore, have to accordingly adapt their supply structures. drawing lessons from the profi t-seeking sector, retrenchment suggest that non-profi t organisations withdraw from the market completely. this is, however, problematic as local authorities are usually obliged to provide certain services. hence, retrenchment strategies are solely applicable if exit strategies are only partial or the responsibilities are shifted to other, external organisations (boyne 2004: 100). strategies of reorganisation in the public sector encompass broad changes in the organisation culture, such as the decentralisation of responsibilities or the internal implementation of new concepts of service provision in accordance with fl uctuating customer expectations (boyne 2004: 101). repositioning is widely viewed as an innovative strategy, meaning that the quality of service provision is enhanced by new, innovative facilities and services (boyne 2004: 100). strategies are frequently combined: for example, the creation of entirely new services (repositioning) may also involve a structural reorganisation of the service provider. the 3r-model is increasingly used as a concept to analyse the process of adaptation of public services in rural areas in response to demographic change (see e.g., steinführer et al. 2014; küpper 2011a). in order to cut-down operating costs, retrenchment has for instance been adopted in many cases in response to declining demand (steinführer et al. 2014: 334). whereas fi nancially-motivated retrenchment strategies generally consist of (partial) closing-downs, reorganisation and repositioning strategies refer to a conversion towards a more fl exible system in strong accordance to customer needs. however, it has to be mentioned that the 3r-strategy was originally developed to turnaround the performances of single organisations, whereas rural areas are confronted with comprehensive and manifold challenges concerning almost all public services and where piecemeal, sectoral adjustments will not ensure the success of future planning strategies. moreover, if we do not consider peripheralisation as merely a decline in population (beetz et al. 2008: 296), we also have to discuss adaptation strategies regarding selective out-migration, disconnection, dependence, and stigmatisation on top of a “simple” adaptation to shrinking demands. retrenchment can be defi ned as the “r” that in almost all cases leads to (further) peripheralisation, both at the regional, the local and the individual level. reducing, abandoning or centralising services of general interest is interlinked with all four characteristics of peripheralisation. the concept of a downward spiral in rural regions (weber/fischer 2010: 91, fig. 2) triggered by a lack of jobs (disconnection) and selective migration (out-migration), ultimately leading to a loss of political clout and the emergence of a “no future” sentiment (stigmatisation) sheds light on the interlinkages and feedback loops of peripheralisation and infrastructural cutbacks. • tim leibert, sophie golinski272 the “dependence” aspect of peripheralisation is covered implicitly by the external decisions to reduce or close local infrastructures and the lacking assertiveness of the local population and local authorities to avert the implementation of aforementioned cuts. repositioning and reorganisation might, however, be alternative strategies that policies of de-peripheralisation could be based on, i.e. potential ways out of the vicious circle of depopulation, ageing and disinvestment. this is, however, a diffi cult process and a matter of small steps. one problem is that – due to the multilevel nature of peripheralisation – comprehensive deperipheralisation policies based on repositioning and reorganisation strategies have to operate at various levels in order to be successful. it is, however, likely that already partial deperipheralisation policies might improve the development prospects of a given region and the quality of life of its inhabitants. deperipheralisation policies approaching disconnection would include measures to re-connect the peripheralised regions by improving infrastructures and fostering economic and social innovation (see section 2.2). by pursuing this strategy one, however, faces the challenge to fi nd solutions that aim at more effi ciency, less subsidies and better infrastructures as well as provision of services of general interest at the same time. strengthening local self-government, increasing decision-making authorities as well as the fi nancial room to manoeuvre of districts and municipalities is a frequently suggested (see e.g. kröhnert et al. 2011: 73) and promising strategy to reduce the dependence of rural regions on decisions made at the federal or the fig. 2: socio-demographic downward spiral source: weber/fischer (2010: 91) peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 273 länder level. this would, however, result in more or less far-reaching reforms of the structure of german federalism. tackling the problem of stigmatisation is even more complex. stigmatisation has two spheres like regional identity: the sphere of stereotypes – the outsider’s view – and the sphere of emotions – the insider’s view. the former is linked to the image of a region, while the latter refers to the regional consciousness of the local population, a feeling of togetherness that is reproduced via social networks, schools and the local media (raagmaa 2015: 290-291). changing the outsider’s view is an uphill struggle. the “dominant narratives, icons and images” used by the media tend to be ”remarkably persistent” (bürk 2013: 175) not least because the stigmatised places serve as metaphors for larger regions (e.g. east germany) or socio-demographic processes (e.g. deindustrialisation, depopulation) (bürk 2013). in fi gure 3 we present possible strategies to improve the effi ciency and to maintain the economic sustainability of different forms of public transport and cab companies in peripheralised rural regions. the list is non-exhaustive and based on conceptual considerations rather than concrete examples. we believe that three aspects should be highlighted. first of all, it is not always possible to link a specifi c strategy unambiguously to one of the three “rs”. take for example the “replacement strategy” of line operation by demand-responsive transport schemes. if the timetable and the stops served remain the same and the only thing changing is that customers have to notify the operating company in advance that they wish to take the bus (the “l-bus”-model; see steinrück/küpper 2010: 40-41), one can also classify the service changes as retrenchment. if the timetable, the number and location of stops have been expanded as a result of the replacement of line services by a demand-responsive transit scheme according to the needs to the customers (the “r-bus”-model, steinrück/küpper 2010), the service adaptation would rather be a repositioning. one could fi nally refer to a reorganisation if the regular bus service would be replaced by a door-to-door-service without a real timetable (the “f-bus”model, steinrück/küpper 2010). secondly, the impact of adaptation is necessarily selective. while people that depend on a certain service of general interest will be immensely affected if the service in question is reduced, discontinued or made less accessible, non-users may hardly notice the changes. the former have to develop their own adaptation strategies, they may have to invest more time, money and creativity to hold their lives together. in most cases, the reduction or discontinuation of services of general interest have to be counterbalanced by increasing (auto-)mobility, e.g. if schools, hospitals or shops are centralised. since the young, the socially deprived and the elderly tend to be less (auto-)mobile, they are disproportionately affected by retrenchment. proponents of retrenchment strategies (e.g. holz-rauet et al. 2010 who promote the “user-pays-principle”) rarely pay attention to the social bias and the resulting danger of social exclusion for peripheralised social groups (see e.g. hauss et al. 2006). thirdly, the “improvement” strategy should not be ruled out from the beginning. a recent representative survey carried out in bavaria has shown that the percentage of people who use regional rail services on a regular basis has increased from • tim leibert, sophie golinski274 32 percent in 2005 to 50 percent of the total population in 2015. the number of regular train users has increased by 86 percent in municipalities with less than 5.000 inhabitants – even though many of these rural communities are not served by passenger trains. the reasons why bavarians take the train have also changed: commuting to work or school is no longer the dominant motive – people increasingly use public transport for leisure trips or to go shopping. however, the improvement strategy does not seem to work for all means of transport: bus ridership continues to decline (naumann 2016). in order to legitimise the maintenance of public services in rural regions, an extension of the consumer base may be a promising strategy, especially if the service in question is of supra-regional importance. the “demographisation” of the debate on the future of rural infrastructures tends to ignore the fact that certain infrastructures and services (e.g. railway lines) are not only used by the shrinking local population, but also by non-locals. in other words: local solutions (e.g. mobility vouchers, ride sharing) should only be pursued if the problem is basically local. finally, it has to be noted that demand-responsive transport schemes, which are frequently portrayed as the best solution for rural public transport (e.g. heinze 2007) do not necessarily result in lower costs for the taxpayer and better and more frequent services for the users. solutions like call-a-bus possibly improve the customer satisfaction and may lead to a higher demand, and thus meet the goal of providing a more customerand demand-oriented rural public transport. however, fig. 3: 3r-model: possible adaptation strategies service cutbacks demand /customer orientation retrenchment repositioning reorganisation improving efficiency, reducing subsidy requirements, maintaining economic sustainability replacement reorientation abandonment combination active citizenship paradigm shift entrepreneurial initiative improvement reduction realignmentcessation source: own design peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 275 the revenue-to-cost-ratio of demand-responsive transport schemes is very low in sparsely populated rural regions – as is the number of customers per trip (küpper 2011b: 161). in other words: due to frequent empty trips, demand-responsive transport schemes in sparsely populated rural regions can cause higher pollution than motorised personal transport and hence have a negative overall environmental balance (steinrück/küpper 2010: 2). replacing non-economical services of general interest provided by the public sector by alternative solutions based on active citizenship and volunteerism is another “popular” theme in discussions and scientifi c policy advice that should be considered more critically, as will be shown in the next section. 3.3 active citizenship – the silver bullet for rural regions? in practice, advocating individual and innovative solutions, public participation and responsibility as a recipe for the successful adaptation of public services as well as of social and technical infrastructures collide with the harsh reality of declining and disconnected local human and social capital (beetz et al. 2008: 300). spatially selective processes of population decline have eroded the potential of human capital over the past two decades (plöger/weck 2014). there is a shortage of active and dedicated actors in many municipalities, not only concerning civil society, but also regarding local administrations and enterprises (bernt/liebmann 2013: 230). the likelihood to mobilise societal stakeholders and networks and to make use of their potential determines the amount of social capital within a community. a decline in human capital hence corresponds to weaker cooperation, loss of mutual trust among local actors and lesser knowledge exchange (wiesinger 2007: 54). the loss of both human and social capital have a quantitative as well as a qualitative dimension: whereas the quantitative dimension is merely related to a shrinking population, the qualitative dimension has to be framed as a complex outcome of peripheralisation and its dimensions: selective out-migration, dependence, disconnection, and stigmatisation. as a consequence, rural peripheries might increasingly lack important preconditions and capacities to cope with the challenges of demographic change (nelle 2015: 3). however, up to today, only little is known on the impact of shrinking quantitative and qualitative human resources on endogenous development practices in peripheral regions. other investigations discuss the possible function of human and social capital for civic engagement in terms of voluntarism in the provision of public services. they conclude that a sustainable and long-term provision of services of general interest based on voluntarism is questionable (steinführer 2015: 15). the main reasons are: (1) active citizenship requires resources, notably human and social capital, which are not ubiquitous; (2) the number of possible volunteers will decrease in the future, especially in areas where they are most needed; and (3) even voluntary services and mutual help require a certain critical mass (osti 2010: 303). this is especially true for saxony-anhalt where we can fi nd the lowest level of voluntarism in germany and one of the lowest ratios of contact points supporting civic engagement per capita (generali/isab 2015: 14). moreover, the already low number of potential • tim leibert, sophie golinski276 volunteers is expected to decrease by more than 20 percent until 2025 relative to the 2006 level. according to this projection, the highest losses are likely to occur in rural districts which are already characterised by an accumulation of demographic and socio-economic problems such as unemployment, out-migration, low tax revenues, and structural economic problems (swiaczny 2010: 207-208). against this backdrop, swiaczny (2010: 209) concludes that “those regions most in need of additional volunteer services to compensate for declining public provisions seem to be those, which are probably least able to generate enough additional volunteers because of their limited demographic capacity”. both human and social capital are important prerequisites for place-based development strategies. the basic problem is, however, that active citizenship is not a ubiquitous resource, the same applies to social capital which is necessary for selfhelp. depopulated and economically weak rural regions are often characterised by a lack of endogenous resources – both with respect to fi nancial and social capital – necessary to tackle the problems of economic and infrastructural restructuring and to compensate the retreat of the state (beetz et al. 2008: 300; raagmaa 2015: 289). processes of peripheralisation threaten the local stock of human and social capital, thus infl uencing the active involvement and ability to participate in regional development initiatives. research assumes that a lack of human resources and social capital becomes obvious in volunteer services as compensations for declining public provisions. we additionally suggest to consider human resources (and their changes) for adaptation strategies under conditions of peripheralisation in general. a conceptualisation and implementation of comprehensive (adaptation) strategies with respect to sustainable regional development need a certain amount of intrinsic human resources. 4 conclusion and fi nal thoughts peripheralisation – i.e. the interconnectedness and interaction between out-migration, dependence, disconnection and stigmatisation – is a decisive, yet underestimated factor to any (rural) region’s ability to maintain (or even enhance) an appropriate level of services of general interest and of technical and social infrastructures. the forces of peripheralisation (inter)act in a spatially selective way, which means that the problem’s scope, methods of resolution and resources available are also region-specifi c. shifting perspectives from one-size-fi ts-all solutions to locally-developed and context-specifi c adaptation strategies do ultimately imply that the most useful instruments for addressing the challenges of demographic change – self-help and active citizenship – not only depend on the local stakeholder’s will to tackle the ensuing problems, but also on the complex network of power relations and dependencies they are embedded in. keeping that in mind, the peripheralisation approach is helpful as it is a means to better understand why differences matter and also because it offers insights on how rural development policies that avoid eroding potentials for endogenous regional development should be designed. the peripheralisation concept has, however, some weaknesses. they become apparent when peripheralisation: the missing link in dealing with demographic change? • 277 one tries to link the consequences of demographic change and the development of adaptation strategies. peripheralisation is, after all, a concept employed in order to better understand regional disparities, but not a theory on which interventions could be based upon. this endeavour would require a better understanding of how rural societies work, of local institutional frameworks, of social structures and of stakeholder networks. the notions of dependence and disconnection are especially helpful in this context; both can also be used to analyse social relations at the micro level. one additional aspect – the “human factor” – is however needed to complete the picture. it is this “human factor” that matters with respect to the formation of such networks, which keeps them operating (or eventually breaks them up). declining and peripheralised regions can become “laboratories of demographic change” in which alternative and innovative adaptation strategies are tested. new actors, e.g. “spatial pioneers” and social entrepreneurs can make an appearance because the problems are so pressing and the approaches at hand (by trend retrenchment strategies) appear to be part of the problem rather than the solution. against this backdrop, local stakeholders may be willing to try something new and different, the superordinate authorities may be willing to issue special permits for ideas that might be unsuitable in other contexts. in such a lab-like situation, ideas can be put into practice which would otherwise fail due to bureaucratic regulations or the opposition of local stakeholders. active citizenship and volunteerism are important preconditions for this kind of de-peripheralisation. local populations are, however, only to a certain degree willing and able to take over responsibilities that are perceived as core tasks of the public authorities. this willingness as well as the human and social capital necessary to design, implement and perpetuate voluntary services are not ubiquitous resources. and neither are external stakeholders automatically willing to support civil society initiatives – and this support is often crucial in order to put innovative ideas into practice. a voluntary transport scheme may, for instance, encounter opposition from local cab companies, face legal problems related to the public transport act or be abandoned by the local council if too large subsidies are required. the “human factor” may also be the reason why active citizenship does not work. there are often few key actors, which are involved in multiple citizens’ initiatives and serve as nodes for a given local society. but, what if two of these key actors become antagonists? or if one of these pillars of society is no longer willing or able to keep up his/her voluntary work? the role of the “human factor” remains under-researched. it may be helpful in this respect to analyse failed attempts in order to better understand at what stage and for what reasons projects may collapse. the peripheralisation concept could inspire holistic policies of de-peripheralisation. peripheralisation posits that peripheries are not determined by geographic location, but by social and economic processes. it is hence safe to assume that the peripheralisation of a given region is reversible, i.e., the region in question is not forever doomed to be a periphery. in other words: in contrast to the self-reinforcing and largely inevitable vicious circles and downward spirals that constitute the heart of the demographisation discourse, the peripheralisation approach implies that if peripheries are produced and reproduced via out-migration, dependence, discon• tim leibert, sophie golinski278 nection, and stigmatisation, de-peripheralisation still remains possible. this could be achieved by policies aimed at fostering or enabling in-migration, independence (or autonomy), integration, and improvement of the region’s external image. this is, however, a challenging enterprise. given the relative lack of power of the peripheries, it remains questionable if a political framework based on the idea of de-peripheralisation can be initiated in the peripheries themselves or if it has to be the result of decisions increasing territorial or social cohesion made in the centres. such a framework should be built on repositioning and reorganisation strategies as well as an empowerment of local actors and stakeholders and include measures that give the municipalities more fi nancial and legal leeway to develop and implement tailor-made solutions – provided that such solutions do not jeopardise services and infrastructures of supra-regional importance and that they do not lead to a uncoordinated coexistence of isolated local solutions that would ultimately threaten the territorial cohesion of rural regions. there is an abundance of promising suggestions to mitigate or even overcome the problems of dependence and disconnection, i.e., powerlessness and underfunding at the local level. however, to infl uence out-migration and stigmatisation is diffi cult, if at all possible. we may have to accept that there are regions, which permanently depend on external support. the question whether the inhabitants of such regions should have access to a well-developed infrastructure, networks, and adequate levels of services of general interest ultimately is a political, not a demographic question. weakly frequented rural bus services or other infrastructures may be expensive for the taxpayer, but not expensive enough to destabilise the federal, state or municipal 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sophie.golinski@mlv.sachsen-anhalt.de url: https://mlv.sachsen-anhalt.de/fachthemen/raumordnung-und-landesentwicklung/ interreg-projekte/rumobil/# published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census: still no trend reversal in sight fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census: still no trend reversal in sight olga pötzsch abstract: the population projections by the german federal statistical offi ce show a likely decrease in the number of births in the 2020s. this development will be the result of a declining number of prospective mothers combined with an assumed continued low fertility rate. given the available empirical fi ndings prior to the 2011 census, there was no indication that a possible distinct rise in the fertility rate in the next decade would compensate for the declining number of potential mothers. however, the 2011 census led to revisions in the population size, age structure and consequently in relative fertility measures such as period and cohort fertility rates. the objective of this article is to quantify the effects of the 2011 census on these fertility statistics and to check the validity of previous fi ndings for fertility trends on the census-adjusted data basis. a special focus is laid on analyses of the cohort fertility and the consequences of ever-later entry into motherhood on the completed fertility and on parity distribution. using numerous fi ndings, we will show that a continuous rise in the completed fertility in the coming two decades cannot be realised without a reversal of fertility behaviour. a greater increase in fertility from the age of 30 onwards would be necessary to offset the decrease in fertility for ages under 30 – a trend which intensifi ed with cohort 1974 – and thereby stabilise the total cohort fertility rate at a relatively low level between 1.5 and 1.6 births per woman. a rise and subsequent stabilisation of the total cohort fertility rate at the level of at least 1.6 births per woman would, additionally, necessitate a trend reversal in the development of childlessness and distinct changes in birth timing. keywords: postponement and recuperation of births · development of fertility rates · total fertility rate · cohort fertility · childlessness · census 1 introduction following the 2011 census, which enabled adjustments to population projections for the fi rst time in nearly a quarter century, demographic statistics also need to be reassessed. this also applies to the relative fertility measures, which, in addition comparative population studies vol. 41, 1 (2016): 87-118 (date of release: 30.06.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-02en2 • olga pötzsch88 to the absolute numbers, also describe the general development of fertility. they show the proportion of the actual number of children born to the number of potential mothers, i.e. women of childbearing age (in this case between 15 and 49 years). adjusted population fi gures thus have an infl uence on fertility rates via the female population (macro data level) while also forming the population for extrapolating the microcensus and thereby infl uencing its weighted sample results (micro data level). the microcensus is the largest random sample survey of private households in germany which gathers information about the number of children per woman born until the time of survey every four years since 2008. this data provides the basis for the distribution of female cohorts according to parity as well as for the development of childlessness. this article examines birth trends incorporating the effects of the 2011 census on the main fertility measures. emphasis is put on relevant aspects of fertility behaviour, which, from today’s perspective, can also be signifi cant for future fertility developments. respective fi ndings will be analysed here and combined to form a comprehensive picture of fertility. after presenting the data sources and methods in the second section of the article, we describe effects of the 2011 census on the measurement of fertility in the third section. the choice of indicators employed is aligned to internationally common and widely used fertility indicators. these include period-related fi gures such as the number of women in the respective cohorts who are potential mothers and thus belong to the so-called “population at risk” as well as the age-specifi c and total fertility rates. in the cohort perspective, these are mainly the cohort fertility rate and cumulated fertility rates at a selected age as well as the parity distribution among the female cohorts. the snapshot of the fertility level in the year 2011 before and after the census is the starting point for the adjustment of fertility trends and the assumptions for population projections. in the fourth section, current fertility trends and assumptions regarding future fertility developments based on new data after the census are discussed. while the number of prospective mothers in the next two decades will largely result from the previous demographic development, the future fertility rate has to be estimated on the basis of fi ndings about fertility behaviour. one approach chosen for this is based on studies of cohort fertility. the central question is how the completed fertility rate develops under the infl uence of a continued delay of fi rst births. the following analyses build upon the studies on the childbearing postponement and recuperation (frejka/calot 2001; frejka/sobotka 2008; sobotka et al. 2011; frejka 2012; pötzsch 2013), about interaction between parities and their impact on the cohort fertility (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013; sobotka 2011; bujard/lück 2015a) as well as on the development of childlessness (dorbritz/ruckdeschel 2007; sobotka 2011; konizka/kreyenfeld 2013; statistisches bundesamt 2013, 2015a; beier et al. 2012; te velde et al. 2012). preliminary estimations of the completed fertility published so far go back to the cohorts born in the midto late 1970s (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; pötzsch 2010a, 2013; myrskylä et al. 2013; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). there is no doubt that the declining trend among women born in the late 1960s ends and is replaced by a fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 89 slight increase in the completed fertility until cohort 1973. afterwards, the cohort fertility in western germany appears to stagnate while it probably increases further in eastern germany (cf. pötzsch 2013: 95-97; myrskylä et al. 2013, table 2 and appendix fig. 1). in the following, we will analyse the overall fertility trends in germany on the basis of the census-adjusted results and discuss perspectives of the fertility development up to the 1984 cohort. 2 data and methods the relative fertility indicators usually refer to the so-called average population. unlike the reference day population, the average population considers variations in the population size during the year, which usually and mainly are caused by migration. the average population therefore offers a better approximation to the “population at risk” as reference for fertility rates. the population at risk is an estimation of the lifetime in which this population was exposed to “the risk of a birth” (luy 2016: 123125). to calculate the age-specifi c fertility rates, we also need the average population broken down by single ages. the offi cial statistics use two calculation methods for this: completed age and birth years (cohort). in this article we use the population broken down by cohorts because it permits a long-term view. results according to completed age are only available from 2000 onwards. for clarifi cation’s sake, the cohort fertility is usually understood as the completed number of children that a female cohort had born on average. the cohort total fertility rate (ctfr) is calculated as the sum of the age-specifi c fertility rates of a female cohort ascertained in the calendar years in which this cohort was in the ages between 15 and 49 years. the age-specifi c fertility rate is a ratio between the number of births by mothers of a cohort c at a certain age, bc(x), and the number of all women of this cohort at the same age, pc(x), in one calendar year. the additive character of the ctfr allows us to subdivide these according to age spans by varying the parameters α and β. in this article, this character will be used to illustrate the different age-specifi c trends in the younger and older fertile ages as well as the interaction between the postponement and recuperation of births. this is done, for example, by adding both the age-specifi c fertility rates of the female cohorts aged between 15 and 29 years and of those aged between 30 and 49 years. the sum of the two results leaves us with the ctrf: the analysis of the cohort fertility rate in section 4.1 is based on an approach by frejka and calot (2001) and its further development by sobotka et al. (2011). this )x(p )x(b )x(fctfr c c c 1 2ctfr)x(f)x(f)x(f 49 15 c 29 15 49 30 cc • olga pötzsch90 approach for calculating the recuperation index was simplifi ed here and slightly modifi ed in order to present the development of postponement and recuperation of fertility as clearly as possible. the two processes are observed separately and are compared with one another. beforehand, the deviations between the cumulative age-specifi c fertility rates of the observed cohort and the cohort selected as a reference were measured for each age year. the greatest deviation marks the “trough” at which the cumulative fertility of the observed cohort differs the most from the reference cohort. once the trough is crossed, the recuperation phase begins. if the “postponed” births are not completely recuperated, there is a residual deviation between the completed fertility rates at the end of the fertile phase. however, if the deviation at the trough is compensated or overcompensated for by recuperation at an older age, then the cohort total fertility rate of the observed cohort will be the same or even higher compared to the completed fertility of the reference cohort. (for more details on the basic reference model and application examples for germany see sobotka et al. 2011, section 3.2, and pötzsch 2013). theoretically, the completed fertility of the female cohorts could also be ascertained based on micro data, i.e. the information about the number of children born provided by respondents in the microcensus. the total number of children born to women of a cohort would be divided by the number of women in that cohort. this average fertility rate is, however, only comparable with the ctfr to a limited extent. for one, these two indicators refer to different populations (pötzsch 2010b: 171-172; kreyenfeld et al. 2012: 394). for example, because of migration and mortality it is highly probable that the composition of the 1950 female cohort at the time of the microcensus survey in 2012 was a different one than in the years 1965 to 1999, from which the 35 age-specifi c birth rates of this cohort (between the ages of 15 and 49) originated. secondly, the microcensus results are marked by a sampling error and may be biased because of non-responses. an imputation method is employed in order to minimise systematic biases caused by non-responses (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013). nonetheless, some of the cases remain unknown. in the 2012 microcensus, this mainly affects the distribution of mothers according to the number of children born. hence, special attention needs to be paid when calculating average numbers of children per woman. if only known cases are included, the number of mothers without any information on the number of children is distributed proportionally to all parities including the parity 0 (i.e. no child). this approach increases the weight of the childless in this average fi gure. in addition, the percentage of missing information about the number of children born varies depending on the cohort, e.g. between 1 percent and 8 percent in the 2012 microcensus, which further limits the comparability of the results among the cohorts. in spite of these limitations, the microcensus is the main data source for ascertaining the rate of childlessness and the distribution of mothers according to the number of children. the microcensus is also used to assess the effects of the census-based revision of the population on the cohort fertility rate. to do so, the results of the 2012 survey are compared based on the extrapolations before and after the census. since the considered results refer to the same cohorts and are based on the same sample, the average fertility rate per cohort before and after the census can fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 91 also be compared. in this case it is less a question of the average number of children per woman than of the extent of the shifts caused by the new extrapolation. for many indicators, it remains advisable to portray the development not just for germany as a whole, but also for western and eastern germany. in spite of converging trends, differences in women’s fertility behaviour remain signifi cant (statistisches bundesamt 2013). although it is geographically located in germany’s east, berlin is not counted as “eastern germany” since berlin’s fertility patterns are more similar to western germany’s. due to its great weight, incorporating berlin into the results for eastern germany would dilute the eastern german fertility trends and bias the comparison with the western part. berlin is, however, included in the results for germany as a whole. 3 effects of the census on the main fertility fi gures 3.1 female population as reference value for the fertility rates the total number of potential mothers – i.e. women between the ages of 15 and 49 – in the year 2011 dropped in the census-adjusted population by 321,000, or 1.8 percent (table 1). in western germany, the revision was at only -1.5 percent and thus lesser than in former eastern germany at -2.0 percent. while the number of women of german nationality remained almost unchanged, there was a greater need for revisions among women with foreign citizenships. the number of women with fortab. 1: women aged between 15 and 49 years – revisions after the census 2011 region average annual population in 2011 changes after the census before the census after the census absolute relative 1,000 people % women only germany (as a whole) 18,209 17,888 -321 -1.8 western germany1 14,810 14,589 -221 -1.5 eastern germany1 2,554 2,504 -50 -2.0 german women germany (as a whole) 15,959 15,895 -64 -0.4 western germany1 12,811 12,797 -14 -0.1 eastern germany1 2,461 2,429 -32 -1.3 women with foreign citizenship germany (as a whole) 2,250 1,993 -257 -11.4 western germany1 1,999 1,792 -207 -10.3 eastern germany1 92 75 -18 -19.0 1 without west berlin or respectively without east berlin. source: statistisches bundesamt, intercensal population updates, own calculations • olga pötzsch92 fig. 1: women aged between 15 and 49 years1 – relative changes of the average annual population in 2011 after the census -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age germany western germany* eastern germany* percent -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age german women women with foreign citizenship percent 1 age reached at the end of 2011. * without west berlin or respectively without east berlin source: statistisches bundesamt, intercensal population updates, own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 93 eign citizenships between the ages of 15 and 49 had been corrected by -11.4 percent when looking at germany as a whole, in western germany by -10.3 percent and in eastern germany by -19.0 percent. therefore, the percentage of women with a foreign citizenship among all women of childbearing age dropped from 12.4 percent to 11.1 percent. changes in the individual birth cohorts within the childbearing phase are relevant for the age-specifi c fertility rates. germany-wide there is a relatively distinct pattern (fig. 1). the revision of the number of women between the ages of 19 and 27 was above average (to -2.5 percent). as shown in the lower segment of figure 1, these changes are mostly due to the revisions among the women of foreign nationality. by contrast, the deviations among women of german nationality are negligibly low. in eastern germany, there has been a greater need for revisions concerning the number of women aged 40 to 45 years. since the number of births among this age group is rather low, it seems resonable to suggest only minor effects on the completed fertility rate in 2011. at the same time, this might indicate that out-migration fig. 2: women aged between 15 and 49 years1 – relative changes of the average population size in 2011 after the census, in the federal states berlin hamburg württemberg saxony thuringia saarland axony-anhalt ower saxony cklenburg-v. e-westphalia brandenburg bavaria hesse wig-holstein bremen nd-palatinate -5,9 -4,3 -2,6 -2,4 -2 -1,9 -1,9 -1,7 -1,7 -1,5 -1,5 -0,9 -0,9 -0,7 -0,6 0,3 berlin hamburg baden-württemberg saxony thuringia saarland saxony-anhalt lower saxony mecklenburg-v. north rhine-westphalia brandenburg bavaria hesse schleswig-holstein bremen rhineland-palatinate germany -1,8 1 age reached at the end of 2011. source: statistisches bundesamt, intercensal population updates, own calculations and design • olga pötzsch94 of young women then aged between 20 and 25 years had not been fully included in population updates directly after german reunifi cation – due to missing registration data. therefore, the number of women of respective cohorts might have been slightly too high. for the cohort measures, such as the completed fertility, it is also important how the revisions affected the older female cohorts. the adjustments among the cohorts 1930 to 1961 – birth cohorts for which fertility rates are available – were far lesser, with an average of 0.9 percent, than among the younger women. we cannot preclude that the uncertainties were in part greater in each of the years between the censuses when the women of these cohorts were both of childbearing age and in their “mobile” phase. nonetheless, the low deviation at the time of the census 2011 is an important indication that the cohort-specifi c fertility rates apparently do not contain any major biases. the need for revisions varied in the federal states between +0.3 percent in rhineland-palatinate and 5.9 percent in berlin (fig. 2). the city-states of berlin and hamburg recorded the greatest deviations between the census results and the population updates between the censuses. 3.2 effects of the census on the 2011 fertility indicators when calculating the fertility rates, the census adjustment means that only the reference – the female population – in the denominator of the formula (1) changes, while the number of births in the numerator remains unchanged. the census revision therefore affects the relative birth fi gures in a comparable ratio to the revision of the number of women, but with reversed signs. from the demographic perspective, the age-specifi c and aggregated fertility rates are particularly interesting, such as the total fertility rate (from the period perspective) and the cohort total and cumulated fertility rate up to the respective age (from the cohort perspective). in 2011, when incorporating the census revision, the total fertility rate in germany was 1.39 births per woman (table 2). this fi gure was 2.0 percent higher than before the census (1.36 births per woman). in western germany the change was 1.8 percent (from 1.36 to 1.38 births per woman) and in eastern germany 2.0 percent (from 1.43 to 1.46 births per woman). for women of german nationality, the effects of the population revisions on the total fertility rate, with an average of 0.3 percent, were hardly noticeable. among women of foreign nationality, in contrast, it rose by 15 percent from 1.58 to 1.82 births per woman. the revisions of the birth rates in the federal states ranged from 0.5 percent in rhineland-palatinate to 6.3 percent in berlin. besides berlin, the federal states with a particularly great need for revisions included hamburg (4.6 percent), partly due to the high percentage of women with foreign citizenships in the female populations in both city-states (approximately 16 percent each among women between the ages of 15 and 49). since, according to the census, the foreign population dropped considerably, the fertility rates in the city-states rose to an above-average degree. fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 95 the age-specifi c fertility rates for all women only changed slightly; therefore, the distribution of fertility rates according to the age of the mother remained almost constant. the average childbearing age in germany even after the census revision was 30.5 years, the median was 31 years. however, the highest fertility rate, that of the 31-year-olds, rose from originally 98 to 100 children per 1,000 women. in western germany and in eastern germany only a slight increase in the maximum frequency was recorded. tab. 2: total fertility rate 2011 – necessary revisions after the census 2011 region/nationality before the after the changes census census absolute/relative children per woman % women (total) germany 1.36 1.39 0.03 2.0 western germany1 1.36 1.38 0.02 1.8 eastern germany1 1.43 1.46 0.03 2.0 german women germany 1.33 1.34 0.00 0.3 western germany1 1.32 1.32 0.00 0.1 eastern germany1 1.43 1.45 0.02 1.2 women with foreign citizenship germany 1.58 1.82 0.24 15.0 western germany1 1.60 1.81 0.22 13.5 eastern germany1 1.48 1.82 0.34 22.8 federal states baden-württemberg 1.36 1.39 0.04 2.8 bavaria 1.34 1.36 0.01 1.0 berlin 1.31 1.40 0.08 6.3 brandenburg 1.41 1.44 0.02 1.6 bremen 1.27 1.29 0.01 1.1 hamburg 1.26 1.32 0.06 4.6 hesse 1.39 1.40 0.01 0.6 mecklenburg-vorpommern 1.42 1.44 0.02 1.5 lower saxony 1.39 1.42 0.04 2.6 north rhine-westphalia 1.36 1.39 0.02 1.8 rhineland-palatinate 1.37 1.37 0.01 0.5 saarland 1.28 1.31 0.04 2.8 saxony 1.48 1.51 0.04 2.5 saxony-anhalt 1.40 1.43 0.03 2.0 schleswig-holstein 1.38 1.40 0.02 1.5 thuringia 1.41 1.44 0.03 1.9 1 without west berlin or respectively without east berlin. source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations • olga pötzsch96 the age-specifi c changes among women of foreign nationality occurred in particular among those in their mid-twenties (fig. 3). this led to a slight drop in the average childbearing age by 0.3 years to 29.3 years and in the median by 0.4 years to 29.6 years. the maximum fertility rate (at the age of 29) increased from 99 to 113 children per 1,000 women. these changes, however, have no relevant effects on the fertility of the women as a whole. figure 3(a) clearly illustrates that they merely lead to a marginal shift in the of the age-specifi c fertility rates. 3.3 effects of the census on the time series of the tfr the census-based adjustment does not result in a fundamental shift in the levels of the long-term development of the total fertility rate. the curves shown in figure 4 contain the fi gures for the year 2011 both before and after incorporating the census results. the new, adjusted fi gures follow the curves without any signifi cant leaps. even when we compare the annual changes in the total fertility rate it is clear that the “census effect” is no greater than the usual annual fl uctuations. among women of german nationality, the “census effect” on the development of the tfr is negligible. it remains at the low level of 1.34 births per woman rather than 1.33 births per woman before the census (fig. 5). among women of foreign nationality, however, the census adjustment led to a visible shift in the level of the tfr for 2011 from 1.58 to 1.82 births per woman. the consequence is that a trend revision is necessary and that the assumption of a rapid convergence of the fertility rate of female foreigners to that of german women must be qualifi ed. at 11 percent, the decrease in the total fertility rate of women with a foreign nationality between 1991 and 2011 is, according to the new fi ndings, only half as strong as originally presumed (22 percent). in 2012 and 2013 the fertility rate among women of foreign nationality stagnated further to the level of about 1.80 births per woman. the 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age before the census after the census a) births per 1,000 women all women 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age before the census after the census b) per 1,000 womenbirths women with foreign citizenship fig. 3: age-specifi c fertility rate 2011 – necessary revisions after the census 2011 source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 97 fig. 4: total fertility rate 1990 – 2013 with „census-effect“ in 2011 * without west berlin or respectively without east berlin. source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations and design fig. 5: total fertility rate according to nationality 1991 – 2013 with „censuseffect“ in 2011 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 year germany western germany* eastern germany* births per woman 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 year german women women with foreign citizenship births per woman • olga pötzsch98 fi g . 6 : c um ul at ed fe rt ili ty r at es a cc o rd in g to w o m en ’s a g e g ro up s 19 91 -2 01 3 w it h „c en su sef fe ct “ in 2 01 1 * w ith o ut w es t b er lin o r re sp ec tiv el y w ith o ut e as t b er lin . s o ur ce : s ta tis tis ch es b un d es am t, b ir th s st at is tic s, o w n ca lc ul at io ns a nd d es ig n 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 y ea r 15 -2 9 30 -4 9 g er m an y 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 y ea r 15 -2 9 30 -4 9 w es te rn g er m an y* 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 y ea r 15 -2 9 30 -4 9 e as te rn g er m an y* 6a )a ll w o m en 0 30 0 60 0 90 0 1, 20 0 1, 50 0 19 91 20 01 20 11 y ea r 15 -2 9 30 -4 9 6b )w o m en w ith fo re ig n ci tiz en sh ip b ir th s p er 1, 00 0 w o m en b ir th s pe r 1, 00 0 w o m en b ir th s p er 1, 00 0 w o m en b ir th s p er 1, 00 0 w o m en fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 99 percentage of births by mothers with a foreign nationality among all children born remained a steady 17 percent to 18 percent since 1996. long-term age-specifi c trends are decisive for the development of the total fertility rate. they can basically be illustrated using only two age groups. as figure 6a shows, the birth rate among women under age 30 drops while the fertility of the 30 to 49-year-olds rises. after the census, there is a slight revision for the younger age group for the year 2011 but even the revised tfr for 2011 is lower than in 2010. thus, the trend in the fertility rate of 15 to 29-year-olds is still declining even after the census. the adjusted fertility rate among the older age group fi ts perfectly into the previous development and does not disturb the curve progression. this is true for western germany and – with a minor variation in the curve progressions – also for eastern germany. the census-based revision resulted in a leap in the curve progression of the fertility rate among younger women of foreign nationality (fig. 6b). the accumulated fertility rate of the 15 to 29-year-olds in 2011 rose by 20 percent. however, there is apparently still a declining trend. among the age group of the 30 to 49-year-olds, the revisions are comparatively low at +9 percent. the main reason for the falsely estimated decrease in the birth rate among women of foreign nationality is thus due to the fertility rates of the 20 to 29-year-olds. the apparent systematic overestimation of the number of women with foreign citizenships, in particular for this very mobile age group, led to much too low fi gures. 3.4 effects of the census on the cohort fertility rate in germany, the cohort total fertility rate per woman is available for the cohorts from 1930 onwards.1 a cohort-by-cohort back-calculation would be necessary to revise the age-specifi c cohort fi gures after the 2011 census. however, the census only caused a slight change in the number of women in the cohorts until the early 1960s (average 0.9 percent) so we can assume a marginal bias to the cohort fi gures and therefore, a time-consuming and highly uncertain back-calculation does not seem worthwhile. among the cohorts at childbearing age, in particular the 1980s and 1990s cohorts, the number of women dropped a bit more after the census than among the older cohorts. but the changes in the individual age-specifi c fertility rates are also only minor as already shown in section 3.2. the cumulated cohort fertility rates of the women in their fertile ages therefore only slightly changed after the census. 1 cohort fertility, in this case, refers to all women. a separate analysis for german women and women of foreign nationality does not seem advisable, mainly because the foreign population constantly changes due to migration and their cohorts are subject to diffi cult-to-control exogenous infl uences. a cohort-specifi c analysis would be possible with restrictions for german women but since it hardly changed after the census, such an analysis would not provide any additional information with regard to cohort fertility among germans. • olga pötzsch100 fig. 7: completed or achieved average number of children per woman according to birth cohorts – results based on the microcensus 2012 according to the new (after the census) and the old (before the census) extrapolation 0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 199519901985198019751970196519601955195019451940 birth cohort before the census after the census completed average number of children achieved number of children until 2012 source: statistisches bundesamt, microcensus 2012, own calculations and design fig. 8: absolute differences of completed or achieved average number of children per woman according to birth cohorts between the results of the microcensus in 2012 with the new (after the census) and the old extrapolation (before the census) -0,02 0,00 0,02 0,04 -0.02 0.00 0.02 0.04 199519901985198019751970196519601955195019451940 birth cohort source: statistisches bundesamt, microcensus 2012, own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 101 the microcensus is another possibility for checking the census impacts on the cohort fertility rate (statistisches bundesamt 2013). the two questions about children born are asked in the microcensus every four years. the last survey took place in 2012. the results of the 2012 microcensus published so far were based on the old extrapolation that did not yet incorporate the census revisions. the results from the new census-adjusted extrapolation are now also available and enable us to make a comparison with the results from the old extrapolation. in the following, we will compare these for the average number of children per woman (see section 2) and for the distribution of the female cohorts according to number of children born (parity). the development of the average number of children per woman is shown in figure 7. for the cohorts of 1963 and older this development is completed, and for the younger cohorts only shown until 2012. the differences between the results according to the old (dotted line) and to the new (solid line) extrapolation are barely perceptible to the eye. the absolute differences are, as figure 8 reveals, minor. the highest deviations are the almost 30 children per 1,000 women in the 1976 to 1981 cohorts. among the western german female cohorts, the differences are similar to those for all women in germany. in eastern germany, the average number of children among the young cohorts after the census rose a little more. in the 1976 to 1983 cohorts the deviations are 40 to 60 children per 1,000 women but these differences are lesser than the doubled absolute standard error and are therefore within the 95 percent confi dence interval (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 66). among the older cohorts from 1964, in contrast, the deviations among the eastern german women are negligible. the basis of the average number of children is the respective structure of the women of one cohort according to parity distribution. the interaction between the parities infl uences the completed fertility rate. the new extrapolation incorporating the census results only caused minor changes to the parity distribution. the upper part of table 3 shows the percentage parity distribution of the cohorts according to the new extrapolation including the census-adjusted population. the lower section of the table shows the differences to the results of the “old” extrapolation. these tend to show a somewhat lower rate of childlessness and somewhat higher percentages of mothers with one or two children. the individual differences are, however, very slight and only marginally alter the previous basic fi ndings concerning the parity distribution of the female cohorts. 3.5 intermediate conclusions according to the 2011 census, the female population of childbearing age was 321,000 lower than indicated by intercensal population updates. therefore, the fertility indicators based on the number of women or on the extrapolated sample results of the 2012 microcensus only slightly changed. the 2011 total fertility rate increased by about 2 percent from 1.36 to 1.39 births per woman. with regard to long-term agespecifi c trends, the census-based revision was within the range of average annual • olga pötzsch102 ta b . 3 : s tr uc tu re o f f em al e b ir th c o ho rt s ac co rd in g to t he n um b er o f c hi ld re n – re su lt s b as ed o n th e m ic ro ce n su s 20 12 an d n ec es sa ry r ev is io n s af te r th e ce n su sad ju st ed e xt ra p o la tio n b ir th c o ho rt to ta l c hi ld le ss m o th er s ac co d in g to b ir th n um b er s (a g e in 2 01 2) w o m en 1 ch ild 2 ch ild re n 3 ch ild re n 4 o r m o re c hi ld re n n o t a p p lic ab le r es ul ts o f t he c en su s ad ju st ed e xt ra p o la tio n, in % 19 93 -1 99 6 (1 619 ) 10 0 99 1 / / / 0 19 88 -1 99 2 (2 024 ) 10 0 91 7 2 / / 0 19 83 -1 98 7 (2 529 ) 10 0 71 18 8 2 1 0 19 78 -1 98 2 (3 034 ) 10 0 44 27 22 5 2 0 19 73 -1 97 7 (3 539 ) 10 0 27 25 34 10 3 1 19 68 -1 97 2 (4 044 ) 10 0 22 23 35 11 4 5 19 63 -1 96 7 (4 549 ) 10 0 20 23 35 11 4 6 19 58 -1 96 2 (5 054 ) 10 0 18 23 38 12 5 4 19 53 -1 95 7 (5 559 ) 10 0 16 24 39 12 5 3 19 48 -1 95 2 (6 064 ) 10 0 14 27 39 13 5 2 19 43 -1 94 7 (6 569 ) 10 0 12 26 40 14 6 1 19 37 -1 94 2 (7 075 ) 10 0 11 23 37 17 10 1 d if fe re n ce s co m p ar ed to t he r es ul ts o f t he e xt ra p o la tio n b ef o re t he c en su s 20 11 , p er ce n ta g e p o in ts 19 93 -1 99 6 (1 619 ) 0. 0 0. 0 / / / 0. 0 19 88 -1 99 2 (2 024 ) -0 .3 0. 2 0. 1 / / 0. 0 19 83 -1 98 7 (2 529 ) -1 .1 0. 6 0. 4 0. 1 0. 0 0. 0 19 78 -1 98 2 (3 034 ) -1 .4 0. 4 0. 7 0. 2 0. 1 0. 0 19 73 -1 97 7 (3 539 ) -1 .0 0. 1 0. 7 0. 2 0. 0 0. 0 19 68 -1 97 2 (4 044 ) -0 .6 0. 0 0. 4 0. 1 0. 0 0. 0 19 63 -1 96 7 (4 549 ) -0 .1 0. 0 0. 1 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 19 58 -1 96 2 (5 054 ) 0. 1 0. 0 0. 0 -0 .1 0. 0 0. 0 19 53 -1 95 7 (5 559 ) 0. 1 0. 1 0. 0 -0 .1 -0 .1 0. 0 19 48 -1 95 2 (6 064 ) 0. 1 0. 1 0. 0 -0 .1 -0 .2 0. 0 19 43 -1 94 7 (6 569 ) 0. 1 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .1 -0 .1 0. 0 19 37 -1 94 2 (7 075 ) 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 s o ur ce : s ta tis tis ch es b un d es am t, m ic ro ce ns us 2 01 2, o w n ca lc ul at io ns fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 103 fl uctuations. the effects of the 2011 census on the cohort fertility rate were also minor. the census-based adjustment had varying effects on the birth rates according to nationality. while the total fertility rate of women of german nationality remained nearly unchanged at 1.34 births per woman, it rose signifi cantly among women of foreign nationality from 1.58 to 1.82 births per woman. this revision demands that previous fi ndings on the fertility of women with foreign citizenship be re-examined. however, the infl uence of women of foreign nationality on total fertility trends has been rather low so far. 4 development of the cohort fertility rate in germany the comparison of the main indicators showed that the general demographic picture of fertility developments largely remained the same after the 2011 census. the fertility studies can therefore be continued without major revisions. but what is the essence of this picture? in the following, we will attempt to approach this question by supplementing the results based on the data from the ongoing fertility statistics with the results of the 2012 microcensus. when put into context, these fi ndings offer us insights into the principle features of fertility behaviours and an outlook on future fertility developments. 4.1 no stable increase in cohort fertility rate foreseeable on average, women born in the 1930s – mostly the mothers of the so called “babyboom generation” – had more than two children (fig. 9). their family formation phase coincided with the economic upswing of the 1950s and 1960s. yet, within the 1930s cohorts there are already indications of a steady decline in the completed fertility rate. it dropped particularly rapidly because of the decreases of higher order births – four or more children – between the cohorts of 1934 and 1944 (statistisches bundesamt 2009, 2013). thereafter, the parity distribution of mothers largely stabilised but childlessness continued to increase. this has led, until today, to a less rapid yet steady decline in the cohort fertility rate. the 1964 cohort, with a total of 1.57 births per woman, is the most recent cohort to reach its fi ftieth birthday and whose cumulated fertility rate is statistically considered completed. it is already predictable that the completed fertility rate of the late 1960s cohorts will drop further to approximately 1.49 births per woman. afterwards, a slight recovery of the completed cohort fertility is anticipated (pötzsch 2010a; goldstein/ kreyenfeld 2011; sobotka 2011). one aspect contributing to this recovery is the stabilisation of the cohort fertility up to the age of 29 among the 1969 to 1973 cohorts. in addition, though, the fertility rates of these cohorts have continually risen for the ages of over 29. together, these two effects created a favourable constellation, which did not, however, continue from the 1974 cohort. between the 1974 and 1984 cohorts, cumulative fertility up to the age of 29 again dropped steadily. it remains to be seen how it will develop at an older age since these cohorts have not yet reached the end of their childbearing phase. nonetheless, we can derive some indications by • olga pötzsch104 analysing the postponement and recuperation of births, the so-called p&r process (frejka//calot 2001; sobotka et al. 2011; frejka 2012; pötzsch 2013). for p&r analysis, we must understand cohort fertility as a process in which the earlier fertility biography of women signifi cantly infl uences their future fertility decisions. every female cohort has its own birth timing resulting from its fertility behaviour. for example, if most of the women of a cohort tend to have children in the younger childbearing phase, the cumulative fertility rises quickly, reaches its peak relatively soon and then remains almost constant (fig. 10: 1944 cohort). if instead the majority of women of a cohort decide to have children in later ages, the cumulative fertility rises more slowly (1962 cohort). whether the completed fertility remains lower than among the cohorts with a relatively “young” birth timing depends on whether all births that have been omitted at a young age are, in fact, recuperated in later ages. in germany, the shift in timing to a later age has so far resulted in a trend towards a lower completed fertility (pötzsch 2013). fig. 9: completed as well as cumulative fertility until the age of 29 by female birth cohorts 0.0 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 1934 1944 1954 1964 1974 1984 births per woman at the age between 30 and 49* at the age between 15 and 29 completed completed number of children* * estimated fi gures for the cohorts 1965-1974. source: statistisches bundesamt 2013, own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 105 in comparison to the 1944 cohort, the 1962 cohort2 gave birth later. the largest difference in cumulative fertility was reached in their late twenties. although the distance between the two curves lessened, the extent of recuperation was not suffi cient to compensate for the decrease in fertility at the young age and the ctfr fell by 0.2. by the age of 28, the women born in 1973 had fewer births (on average) than the women of the 1962 cohort with a completed fertility of 1.61. starting at age 29, they have recuperated the “postponed” births. by the age of 40, the distance between the two curves lessened by three-fourths to 70 births per 1,000 women. they will probably not be able to completely close this gap at ages of 41 and above but it will be reduced considerably (cumulated cohort fertility rate at the ages of 41 to 49 is presently approx. 35 births per 1,000 women). the completed fertility rate of the 1973 cohort will be an estimated 1.57. the even younger 1983 and 1988 cohorts represent the current trends in cohort fertility rates. it becomes evident that ever fewer births are taking place during the younger fertile period. in order to be able to assess effects of the most recent birth postponement on the completed fertility rate, we attempt to estimate the future recuperation potential fig. 10: cumulative fertility rate of selected female birth cohorts by age 0 400 800 1.200 1.600 2.000 0 400 800 1,200 1,600 2,000 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age in 2013 1944 1962 1973 1983 1988 births per 1,000 women source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations and design 2 the 1962 cohort will be used as reference for further comparison since it is preliminarily the last completed cohort with a completed number of children of 1.6, for later cohorts the completed number of children will most likely drop below 1.6. • olga pötzsch106 using a graph (fig. 11). for this purpose, we defi ne the 1962 cohort with the ctfr of 1.61 as reference cohort. for every further cohort we calculate the difference between the cumulated cohort fertility rates of this cohort and the 1962 cohort (reference). these differences are negative because the birth rates decrease from cohort to cohort. they usually intensify up to the age of 29 years, which is the so-called trough, and then decrease, as shown previously using the example of the 1962 and 1973 cohorts in figure 10. the phase until reaching the trough corresponds to the postponement of births; after this trough, the recuperation of births begins. in order to compare the postponement of births with the extent of recuperation, the age-specifi c fertility rates per cohort are added in the postponement and in the recuperation phase, respectively. the postponement phase ranges from 15 to 29 years. multiple age limits are chosen for the recuperation phase in order to be able to make assertions even for the relatively young cohorts: from 30 to 35, from 30 to 37 as well as from 30 to 40 years. for these phases we look at the deviations in the respective cumulative fertility rates of the 1963 to 1984 cohorts in comparison to the 1962 reference cohort (fig. 11, upper part). as expected, the deviations in the postponement phase are negative up to the age of 29 years while they are positive in the recuperation phase because the cohort fertility rate of the younger cohorts increases starting at the age of 30. here, the developments described above are portrayed in a different way: the decrease in the cohort fertility at a young fertile age was especially strong among the 1960s cohorts. in spite of an increasing fertility at the age of 30 and older, it can hardly be compensated for by the end of the fertile period. instead, the remaining deviation at the age of 40 rose until the 1968 cohort, indicating a drop in the completed fertility (fig. 11, lower part). for the 1969 and 1973 cohorts, the graph illustrates the favourable constellation of the stabilised cumulated fertility of 15 to 29-year-olds on one hand and the increasing recuperations between the ages of 30 and 40 on the other hand (described above). as a result, the completed fertility will slightly rise. starting with the 1974 cohort, fertility under the age of 30 dropped steadily, indicating a renewed increase in childbearing postponement. how would this decrease affect the cohort fertility? using figure 11 (above) we can see the extent of recuperation that would be necessary in specifi c ages to compensate for the dropping fertility among the younger fertile age and reach the completed fertility rate of 1.6. this objective would not be reached until the 1980 cohort if the recuperation trends of the past 16 years were to continue in a linear way (cf. dashed lines). this scenario does not seem unrealistic at fi rst glance. but when we look closer, it becomes apparent that this is in fact a major challenge. on one hand, there are signs that recuperation tends to stagnate until the age of 35 in the case of western germany. the linear trend extrapolation used here is therefore already an optimistic assumption. on the other hand, such a shift in the cohort fertility rate to a higher childbearing age would mean that fertility at the ages of 36 to 40 years would have to increase by 250 percent between the 1962 and 1984 cohorts and recuperation at ages of 36 and older would have to equal that of the strong fertile period between 30 and 35 years of age. fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 107 residual deviance at the age of 40. estimated fi gures for the 1974 and later cohorts with a formal extrapolation of the recuperation trend -200 -100 0 -200 -100 0 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 -50 -133 -73 -62 -39 note: cfr x to (x+n) years is the total age-specifi c fertility rate of a cohort in the respective ages. absolute changes have been calculated as the difference between the crf of cohort c and the cfr of cohort 1962 for the respective age range. the dotted line shows the linear trend. source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations and design -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 births per 1,000 women cfr 30-40 years cfr 30-37 years cfr 30-35 years cfr 15-29 years recuperation postponement fig. 11: absolute changes of the age-specifi c cumulative cohort fertility rate (cfr) in the postponement and recuperation phase in comparison to the cohort of 1962 • olga pötzsch108 to stabilise the completed fertility rate at the relatively low level of 1.5 to 1.6 births per woman would require that the fertility rate of the late 1970s and 1980s cohorts rise continuously from the age of 30 onwards. with regard to parity, this means both more fi rst births at older fertile ages and an even distribution of mothers according to number of children in spite of later family formation. actually, the completed fertility rate of 1.6 births per woman is only reached when about 80 percent of the women of one cohort bear an average of two children. in the following, we will determine the extent to which these conditions can be fulfi lled. 4.2 stability of the fertility rate per woman is fragile between the 1930s and 1940s cohorts the average fertility rate per mother dropped from 2.3 to 2.0 and then stabilised at that level. during the decrease, the percentage of mothers with four or more children dropped from 12 percent to 6 percent. between the late 1940s and early 1970s cohorts the parity distribution of mothers exhibited only minor fl uctuations. by 2012, 31 percent of the 45 to 49-year-old mothers had one child, 48 percent had two children, 15 percent had three children and 6 percent four or more children. on average, mothers had two children in the course of their lives (statistisches bundesamt 2015c). however, given the long-term trend towards an older age at fi rst birth the stability of the mothers’ parity distribution among the younger cohorts is at risk. this is mainly due to the fact that the share of those mothers who start a family before their thirtieth birthday is gradually getting smaller. but these were the mothers who would potentially have had many children: the microcensus survey showed for the 1960s and 1970s cohorts that on average, the more children a woman has had during her lifetime, the younger she was at the birth of her fi rst child (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 30). the mothers of only children had their child on average at the age of 30. the mothers of two children were already three years younger when they began family formation at the age of 27. on average, mothers under the age of 25 formed families with three or more children.3 therefore, a future stable parity distribution requires that the fertility behaviour at an older fertile age changes by increasing the percentage of mothers who start a family during their thirties and then nevertheless have three or more children. since the fertile window is limited, the spacing between a mother’s births would also have to be shorter. this is also confi rmed by the results of the microcensus. the older a mother with at least three children was at the time of the fi rst birth, the shorter were the intervals between her births. for women who had their fi rst child at the age of 20, the interval between the fi rst and third child was a little under 10 3 these microcensus results refer to mothers who were between the ages of 35 and 44 at the time of the microcensus survey in 2012 and who lived in the same household with their children. using this method, the average age at fi rst birth may tend to be a bit too high since in some cases the oldest child may already have moved out of the mother’s household (source: microcensus 2012, author’s calculations). fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 109 years (fig. 12). among women who did not have their fi rst child until they reached the age of 33, this interval was 5 years which is only half as long. on average, 7.4 years passed between the fi rst and third birth. since an increasing number of women do not become mothers until their early thirties and, if they have more than one child, they consequently have shorter birth intervals, then the median spacing should also tend to be shorter. however, the analysis of birth intervals to the previous child of a mother at her second, third or subsequent births so far does not confi rm this assumption. the information about the completed birth order of mothers available since 2009, reveal instead that the median intervals between births remained unchanged from 2009 until 2014 – in spite of the continued postponements of family formation. “in 50 percent of cases a second child is born within 3.3 years after the fi rstborn. the other 50 percent of second born children have a further spacing to their older siblings. the third children usually follow at an even greater interval after the birth of the second child. half of all third births take place within 3.9 years, the other half even later.” (statistisches bundesamt 2014, quotation translated by cpos). these results also confi rm the fi ndings of the 2012 microcensus, according to which the interval between the fi rst and third birth is greater than 7 years on average. consequently, mothers of three or more children are still largely starting their family early. the percentage of women fig. 12: average spacing between the fi rst and the third birth, according to the mother’s age at fi rst birth* 0 3 6 9 12 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34-40 9.9 7.6 5.7 5.0 in years * includes mother between 35 and 44 years with (at least) 3 children who live together in one household source: statistisches bundesamt, microcensus 2012 (census adjusted projection), own calculations and design • olga pötzsch110 who have their fi rst child relatively late within their fertile period is apparently low among mothers of three or more children. therefore the distribution of birth spacing is hardly infl uenced by shorter intervals between their births. the development of the intervals between births is an important early indicator of whether not only the fi rst and second, but also subsequent births are “recuperated.” as figure 13 shows, the percentage of second or third children born within 2 years after the mother’s previous child remained steady at about 16 percent to 18 percent between 2009 and 2013. about 44 percent of second and approx. 36 percent of third children were born at an interval of under 3 years. it is also worth noting that the percentage of second children born at an interval of 2 to under 3 years after the fi rstborn was almost exactly as large as the percentage of second children born after an interruption of fi ve and more years. until the third birth the intervals tended to be even greater: 37 percent of third children in 2013 were at least fi ve years younger than the previous sibling. present fertility behaviour results from a combination of the trend towards late family formation, large birth intervals as well as the negative correlation between the time of the fi rst birth and the total number of children. if this constellation does not change in the near future, it would result in a decrease in the percentage of mothers with three or more children. 4.3 trend towards higher childlessness continues within the past twenty years, the development of the cohort fertility rates was greatly infl uenced by the rise in childlessness – especially in western germany (statistisches bundesamt 2013). according to sobotka’s calculations, the completfig. 13: share of births which occurred with a respective spacing to the birth of the preceding child 0 25 50 75 100 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 18 27 18 11 26 17 27 18 11 26 17 27 19 11 26 18 27 19 12 25 17 27 19 12 25 under 2 years 2 slightly under 2 years 3 slightly under 4 years 4 slightly under 5 years more than 5 years second birth 0 25 50 75 100 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 17 20 15 11 37 16 20 15 11 37 16 19 15 11 38 17 19 15 12 37 16 20 16 12 37 third birth * only one child was included in the case of giving birth to twins or multiples. source: statistisches bundesamt, births statistics, own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 111 ed fertility of the 1965 cohort would be 1.7 births per woman instead of 1.5 if the rate of childlessness had remained at the level of the 1940 cohort (sobotka 2011: 273). childlessness is also increasing in eastern germany, where the share of childless women was only 11 percent until the 1960s cohorts, just half as high as in western germany. from the age of 41 years onwards the rate of childlessness is hardly changing. although the number of over 40-year-olds who have a second or third child is increasing, it is still very rare for women to have their fi rst child when they are over 40. in 2013, only 3 percent of fi rstborns were children of women aged between 40 and 49, and only 1 percent from the age of 42 onwards. a comparison of the rate of childlessness in the respective female cohorts between the 2008 and 2012 microcensus surveys also only shows marginal changes from the age of 39 years with the exception, however, of women with university degrees, whose family formation phase may last longer (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 22 and 36). in the 1971 cohort, who reached the age of 41 in 2012, 22 percent of women remained childless. the rate of childlessness was therefore 10 percentage points higher than in the 1940 to 1946 cohorts (12 percent). between the 1946 and 1971 cohorts, the increase in childlessness was almost linear, with the exception of some minor fl uctuations (fig. 14). the extent to which and how long the fi nal level of childlessness will rise in the future remains to be seen. on one hand, there are positive stimuli, for example among western german women with academic degrees. their fi nal rate of childlessness recently stabilised at 29 percent and will probably even drop somewhat in the coming years (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 37; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). on the other hand, some fi ndings indicate that the peak of the childlessness has not yet been reached. this includes, for instance, the rising percentage of women with academic degrees who exhibit above average levels of childlessness. in eastern germany as well as among western german women without higher educations, childlessness will probably increase in the coming years. this would lead to a further overall increase of the childlessness level. socioeconomic, biomedical and cultural factors also indicate a continuation of the trend rather than a reversal. with the introduction of parental leave benefi ts and the expansion of childcare, family policy measures were taken that might work against this trend (bonin et al. 2013), however, they are nowhere near solving the problem of reconciling work and family life (bujard/lück 2015a). for biomedical reasons, continuing to postpone the birth of the fi rst child additionally leads to more women not being able to realise their desire for at least one child (beier et al. 2012; te velde et al. 2012). at the same time, the latest research on family-related role models shows that lifelong childlessness has become an appealing way of life and is “hardly ever perceived as a shortcoming anymore” (dorbritz/diabaté 2015: 131, translated by cpos). • olga pötzsch112 5 conclusions and discussion the comparison of the main indicators revealed that the fertility development after the 2011 census essentially remained the same. the previous fertility trends are therefore a reliable starting point for assumptions on future developments of fertility. these considerations are not only relevant to research; the future annual fertility rate also has a real effect on the number of births and thus on population development. given a total fertility rate of about 1.4 births per woman, a distinct decline in the number of births in the near future is predestined on the basis of the present age structure of the female population (statistisches bundesamt 2013: 11-14). from 2017 onwards, the decreasing 1990s and younger cohorts will reach their most fertile age during the mid-twenties to mid-thirties. the declining number of potential mothers will probably only partly be compensated by net immigration.4 based on the results 4 in 2013, the difference between the number of 30-year-olds and 10-year-olds was 150,000. with a positive net migration and a low mortality rate, the number of girls who are 10 years old will increase over the next 20 years. however, even given the high migration assumption of the 13th coordinated population projection, they would rise by a maximum of 60,000. thus the number of 30-year-old potential mothers in 2033 would still be smaller by 90,000 in comparison to 2013 (statistisches bundesamt. 13th coordinated population projection). fig. 14: share of childless women by the respective birth cohort, aged between 41* and 69 years in 2012 (in %) 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 1971196619611956195119461941 * from the age of 41 childlessness rates only marginally change. source: statistisches bundesamt, microcensus 2012 (census adjusted projection), own calculations and design fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 113 of the 13th coordinated population projection, a relatively steady numbers of births could only be reached if, in addition to a higher net immigration rate, the annual total fertility rate would rise to at least 1.6 births per woman (statistisches bundesamt 2015a: variant 6 “relatively young population”). for this, the completed fertility would have to rise to at least 1.6 births per woman and then stabilise. the previous projections showed a probable stabilisation of the cohort total fertility rate among the cohorts of the late 1970s at a level slightly below 1.6 (myrskylä et al. 2013; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). in order to be able to assess how probable a further increase in the cohort fertility rate would be, we studied the trends in the fertility behaviour of the female cohorts. the focus was on the effects of increasing postponement of the fi rst birth on the total cohort fertility rate. “in the latter part of the 20th century and early in the 21st century, the most prominent demographic mechanism determining fertility trends has been the extent to which childbearing postponement has been counterbalanced by birth recuperation.” (frejka/sobotka 2008: 30). the experiences in france and sweden, for example, revealed that a rising fi rst birth age does not necessarily lead to a decline in completed fertility. however, in the case of germany, these developments were apparently also associated with changing attitudes towards family (ehmer et al. 2012). while the average age at fi rst birth rose since the cohort of 1947 onwards (pötzsch/sommer 2009), the completed fertility rate per woman dropped from 1.80 (1946 cohort) to 1.57 (1964 cohort). the postponement of entry into parenthood was accompanied by a rapid rise in childlessness (from 12 percent to 20 percent) as well as by a decreasing percentage of women with 3 or more children, from 21 percent to 17 percent (bujard/lück 2015b, table 1). to prevent the completed fertility rate from falling in spite of childbearing postponement, the decrease in fertility at a younger age would need to be compensated or overcompensated by the recuperation of births. using postponement and recuperation analysis, we were able to gain insights into the interaction effects of the age-specifi c fertility of younger cohorts up to 1984. this allows us to explain the expected slight recovery of the completed fertility rate among the 1969 to 1973 cohorts. this recovery is due to a special constellation: the birth rate of these cohorts stabilised at a younger age below 30 years, while it continually rose from the age of 30 onwards. in contrast, it becomes apparent that fertility among under-30-yearolds from the 1974 cohort again drops steadily, which results in another rise in childbearing delay. this fertility decline at a younger age can only be compensated if the recuperation trends of the past 16 years would continue in a linear way. in addition to a signifi cant rise in births between the ages of 30 and 35, which appears consistent and realistic, this also means that fertility at the age of 36 and older would need to increase signifi cantly. from today’s perspective this is a very optimistic assumption. there are still “reserves” in fertility at older childbearing ages. for instance, the fertility rate of the over 36-year-olds in germany as a whole is 26 percent lower than, for example, in hamburg (statistisches bundesamt 2015d) and about 12 percent lower than in sweden, the country with the oldest average childbearing age in europe (eurostat 2015: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database). furthermore, • olga pötzsch114 goldstein et al. point out improved family policy frameworks, greater acceptance of female employment and the rising family focus of younger birth cohorts as factors that could result in a reversal of the trend (goldstein et al. 2012). although these factors apparently have a positive effect on fertility development at older childbearing ages, at the same time other fi ndings limit the extent of the compensation effects starting at the age of 36. in particular, the transition to the fi rst child during the last third of the childbearing period is still rare. according to beier et al. the ideal time for a fi rst pregnancy is – from the biological point of view – still between 18 and 30 years of age (beier et al. 2012: 303). afterwards the probability of fi rst pregnancy gradually decreases. it remains to be seen how further medical advances will be refl ected in the age-specifi c fi gures concerning fi rst births in the future. with regard to family size, neyer et al. reach the following conclusions: “regarding third births, there is a relatively uniform picture: in all the nordic countries the tendency of mothers with two children to have a third decreases with increasing age, [...]. [...] the relative risk of a second birth only drops signifi cantly for mothers from their mid-thirties. for these mothers we can assume that at least some of them did not have another child owing to decreasing fertility although they still wanted a child” (neyer et al. 2006; quotation translated by cpos). in addition, the results presented show that mothers with several children are a special group. it is characteristic for them to have their fi rst child before their mid-twenties and have relatively large intervals between individual births. in order for the percentage of mothers with three or more children to remain stable in the future, these patterns in fertility behaviour would have to change: more women who fi rst started a family at the age of 30 and older would have to have third and subsequent children and/or the age at fi rst birth would need to remain stable. empirically these changes cannot yet be ascertained. increasing childlessness is another obstacle. to achieve and maintain the completed fertility rate per woman of at least 1.6 – with the average number of children per mother of 2.0 – the childlessness rate should not exceed 20 percent. in 2012, the rate of childlessness, however, was already 22 percent and the peak has probably not yet been reached. despite some positive stimuli such as a consolidation of childlessness among highly educated women, there are no indications for a reversal of the increasing trend. all in all, we can say that even the stabilisation of the completed fertility rate on a relatively low level between 1.5 and 1.6 births per woman requires that the increase in the fertility of the 1970s and 1980s cohorts over the age of 30 must be suffi ciently strong to compensate for the increasing fertility decline under the age of 30. to achieve this, the fertility behaviour of women would both have to change in the transition to the fi rst child and with respect to family size. the positive momentum in the fertility rate in recent years is insofar consistent and shows that the recuperation process has intensifi ed. an increase and subsequent stabilisation of the total cohort fertility rate at the level of at least 1.6 births per woman, however, would also require a stable fertility below the age of 30 and a decline in the childlessness rate. fertility in germany before and after the 2011 census • 115 acknowledgements the author would like to thank felix zur nieden, bettina sommer, martin bujard, norbert f. schneider and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments regarding earlier versions of this article. references beier, henning m. et al. 2012: medizinische und biologische aspekte der fertilität. in: stock günter et al. 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(ed.) 2012: zukunft mit kindern: fertilität und gesellschaftliche entwicklung in deutschland, österreich und der schweiz. frankfurt 2012. te velde, egbert et al. 2012: the effect of postponement of fi rst motherhood on permanent involuntary childlessness and total fertility rate in six european countries since the 1970s. in: human reproduction 27, 4: 1179-1183 [doi: 10.1093/humrep/der455]. wood, jonas; neels, karel; kil, tine 2014: the educational gradient of childlessness and cohort parity progression in 14 low fertility countries. in: demographic research 31,46: 1365-1416 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2014.31.46]. • olga pötzsch118 date of submission: 15.10.2015 date of acceptance: 29.01.2016 olga pötzsch (). federal statistical offi ce. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: olga.poetzsch@destatis.de url: https://www.destatis.de/en/homepage.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) can you relate? the importance of need satisfaction for the quality and progressive union formation process of intimate relationships franziska schmahl, sabine walper summary: this article deals with the signifi cance of autonomy and relatedness as central needs in intimate relationships. it examines the infl uences of need satisfaction on relationship quality and progressive union formation (“institutionalisation”) processes of intimate relationships. using a random sample of 1,914 couples in a longitudinal, dyadic survey design, we ascertained the actor and partner effects of autonomy and relatedness on relationship quality and the union formation process. a cluster analysis resulted in four types of relationship need satisfaction, distinguished by high values in both domains, high values in only one of the domains, or low need satisfaction in both domains. balanced fulfi lment of autonomy and relatedness predicts the comparatively highest values of relationship satisfaction and future orientation (commitment). moreover, low need satisfaction in relationships reduces the progress of union formation processes (cohabitation, marriage, childbirth). women demonstrate more intense actor and partner effects of relationship need satisfaction than men. keywords: need satisfaction · autonomy · relatedness · intimate relationships · gender difference 1 introduction successful intimate relationships make an important contribution to personal wellbeing (e.g. braithwaite et al. 2010). insecure or unsatisfactory relationships, by contrast, are identifi ed in health surveys as one of the most signifi cant infl uencing factors for the development of psychological disorders such as anxiety disorders or affective disorders (whisman 2007). many studies, however, do not reveal in what way an intimate relationship infl uences personal well-being (e.g. berscheid/regan 2005; lucas/dyrenforth 2006). the fulfi lment of important psychological needs by an intimate relationship can be considered an obvious mechanism. in particular the comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 361-392 (date of release: 11.10.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-01en8 • franziska schmahl, sabine walper362 fulfi lment of the need for relatedness – demonstrated by sharing intimate thoughts and feelings and the experience of emotional closeness in the relationship with an appreciative partner (patrick et al. 2007) – has been given great academic attention in the past (e.g. baumeister/leary 1995; la guardia/patrick 2008). the fact that the fulfi lment of the need for autonomy also plays a role in intimate relationships has only been discussed more intensively in the past two decades – often with reference to the self-determination theory (sdt) of ryan and deci (2008). personal need satisfaction in relationships also appears relevant in the course of the social change of values (oesterdiekhoff/jegelka 2001), which is characterised by an increasing importance of self-fulfi lment values such as autonomy and self-actualisation. hence, personal expectations for happiness become increasingly central of intimate relationships, while the obligating and binding character linked, for example, with marriage, is losing signifi cance (peuckert 2008). in the following, we will fi rst present relevant theoretical concepts and empirical fi ndings that speak for a positive infl uence of autonomy and relatedness on the success of intimate relationships. then, we will examine on a broad data basis what signifi cance the fulfi lment and balance of autonomy and relatedness in a relationship has for its development. in addition to exploring the effects of need satisfaction and balance on subjective dimensions of relationship quality, we will also for the fi rst time investigate their effects on the union formation process via event data. in doing so, we employ a longitudinal dyadic research design, which enables us to model differential effects of need satisfaction for men and women and their reciprocal infl uences. 2 autonomy and relatedness in intimate relationships 2.1 theoretical perspectives the idea that there are two fundamental themes in human life – the aspiration to realise one’s own goals and the aspiration to fi nd intimacy with important attachment fi gures – was taken up in the past by theoreticians of various academic schools (e.g. angyal 1951; bakan 1966; franz/white 1985). in the traditional psychological needs theories of murray (1938) or maslow (1955) these aspirations were seen as basic human needs for relatedness or for autonomy and self-actualisation. furthermore, such needs again received more attention in more recent psychological theories such as the self-determination theory (ryan/deci 2008). from the perspective of the self-determination theory, fulfi lment of the needs for autonomy and relatedness is highly relevant not only in the context of parent-child or teacher-student relationships, but also with respect to the formation and perpetuation of intimate relationships (e.g. la guardia/patrick 2008; patrick et al. 2007). in addition to the need for competence, the self-determination theory conceptualises autonomy and relatedness as basic psychological human needs, the fulfi lment of which is “essential for ongoing psychological growth, integrity, and well-being” (deci/ryan 2000: 229). can you relate? • 363 unlike motives that can vary depending on one’s personal experiences of socialisation, needs are understood as innate and universal aspirations of all humans and their fulfi lment is always linked to well-being and personal growth (ryan/deci 2008). in the self-determination theory relatedness – or the need to belong – refers to the aspiration for strong and robust interpersonal bonds (baumeister/leary 1995; ryan/ deci 2000). in intimate relationships, it is exemplifi ed through the perceived appreciation and care by the relationship partner or by perceived closeness and intimacy in the relationship. in the context of close relationships, autonomy is understood as the feeling of self-determination and the potential exercise of infl uence on the relationship (cf. “basic need satisfaction in relationships scale”, la guardia et al. 2000). autonomy therefore is not the same thing as independence or separateness; “autonomy does not entail being subject to no external infl uences” (ryan 1993: 10). hence, autonomy and relatedness are also not understood as ends of a bipolar continuum, but rather as two central human needs that coexist throughout life and mutually infl uence one another (guisinger/blatt 1994). mature forms of autonomy are characterised by individuals who are aware of their own needs and able to act on them in a self-determined way, yet also able to take the needs of their partner into consideration without feeling their own autonomy to be restricted (knee et al. 2005). mature forms of relatedness enable emotional closeness and trust with one’s relationship partner without undermining one’s own identity. relationship maturity consequently involves the equal integration of autonomy and relatedness in relationships (harter et al. 1997; schultz/selman 1998). from this perspective, balancing autonomy and relatedness is also necessary for healthy psychological functioning and for the success of intimate relationships (blatt/blass 1996; neff/harter 2002). here, the perspective of sdt differs from many earlier theories, which assumed that autonomy and relatedness in intimate relationships refl ected constant tension or confl ict (e.g. murray 1938). the dialectic perspective of sdt is also confi rmed by empirical studies that demonstrate that in the best case, autonomy and relatedness are compatible and mutually benefi cial needs in intimate relationships. hence, there are close, positive correlations between the autonomy and intimacy of partners in adult intimate relationships (rankin/esquer et al. 1997) as well as between feelings of autonomy and personal attachment security (la guardia et al. 2000). other theoretical approaches also favour a dialectical perspective of autonomy and relatedness in intimate relationships. for instance, bakan (1966) describes two basic modalities of human existence – communion and agency – and stresses the necessity of balancing these two aspirations. he assumed that agency, or a focus on the self, must be weakened by a focus on others, or communion, to prevent destructive effects on individuals and society. while bakan saw communion exclusively as a positive orientation, helgeson and fritz (1999) expanded this approach by the concept of unmitigated communion, which is distinguished by the neglect of one’s own physical and psychological needs in favour of the needs of others (lack of selffocus) and excessive involvement in the concerns of others (extreme other-focus). they too assessed that balancing the two aspirations for relatedness on the one hand and autonomy on the other is desirable and particularly benefi cial for personal • franziska schmahl, sabine walper364 psychological and physical health and for entering and maintaining satisfying relationships. on this basis harter et al. (harter et al. 1997; neff/harter 2002, 2003) eventually developed a theory of relationship styles. they, too, assumed that integrating or balancing autonomy and relatedness in a relationship (mutuality) is the most adaptive way of handling these two needs. this is contrasted by the two less adaptive styles “self-focused autonomy” and “other-focused connectedness”, which are characterised by an excessive focus on autonomy or respectively relatedness. essentially persons with the relationship style of self-focused autonomy behave rather dominantly towards their relationship partner, draw clear boundaries between themselves and their partner, and feel uncomfortable with intimacy (harter et al. 1997). other-focused connected persons, by contrast, tend to subordinate themselves in relationships and neglect their own needs, while being very sensitive to the needs and feelings of their partner. people with a balanced relationship style keep their own needs and those of their partner in balance, have fl exible boundaries to their partner, are sensitive to their own feelings and those of their partner, and feel secure in their relationship. using a random sample of over 3,000 adult subjects, harter et al. showed that 70 % of the participants demonstrated a balanced style, compared to a far smaller percentage of those who over-emphasized either autonomy or relatedness in their relationships. the prevalence of the balanced relationship styles appears to be similarly high among older adults (harter et al. 1997; neff/harter 2002) and among young, college-age adults (neff/harter 2003). there were also no detectable gender differences in the distribution of the relationship styles (harter et al. 1997). although the focus of many other theoretical approaches is on the fulfi lment of relatedness needs in the context of relationships (baumeister/ leary 1995; drigotas/ rusbult 1992), the theoretical approaches described here nonetheless show very clearly how central the fulfi lment of the needs for autonomy and relatedness in relationships should be considered. in the following, we will fi rst discuss fi ndings that illuminate the signifi cance of autonomy and relatedness for relationship quality and then go into their role in union formation processes. 2.2 need satisfaction and relationship quality the signifi cance of need satisfaction for functioning intimate relationships has been confi rmed by a number of empirical studies. for example in a cross-sectional study ryan et al. (2005) showed that one’s willingness to emotionally trust one’s partner was greater the more autonomy and relatedness were reported in the current relationship. another cross-sectional analysis by patrick et al. (2007, study 2) of a random sample made up of 66 couples demonstrated that a greater degree of autonomy and relatedness in one’s current relationship was associated with greater relationship satisfaction, greater commitment, greater understanding for one’s partner during confl icts, less defensive confl ict reactions, and a lesser extent of perceived confl ict. in addition to these so-called actor effects, or the effects of personal need satisfaction on one’s own perception and own behaviour in intimate relationships, patrick can you relate? • 365 et al. (2007, study 2) also ascertained partner effects. the greater the fulfi lment of the autonomy and relatedness needs of partner a, the greater was the reported relationship satisfaction of partner b. an individual’s own need satisfaction in the relationship context thus appears not only to be important for personal relationship satisfaction, but also for that of the relationship partner. studies that are not based on the self-determination theory also revealed effects of need satisfaction on relationship quality and stability. prager and burmester (1998) for example showed that the fulfi lment of communal needs, such as the need for intimacy, had high positive correlations with relationship satisfaction for both men and for women. in addition to the fulfi lment of the needs for relatedness and autonomy in relationships, the extent to which this is possible in a balanced proportion also appears to play a role. cross-sectional studies show that the balanced relationship style of “mutuality” was more highly associated with greater relationship satisfaction than the two unbalanced relationship styles “other-focused connectedness” and “selffocused autonomy” (neff/harter 2003; neff/suizzo 2006). helgeson and fritz’s empirical studies of the personality styles “unmitigated communion” and “unmitigated agency” had similar results. persons with excessive orientations towards communion reported excessive involvement in the problems of others and diffi culties opening themselves in relationships and asserting their own needs (fritz/helgeson 1998). persons demonstrating unmitigated agency, by contrast, revealed themselves to be dominant and cold (fritz/helgeson 1999) and had diffi culties expressing their feelings (helgeson/lepore 1997). longitudinally, positive effects of a balance between personal and relationship needs on relationship satisfaction could also be demonstrated six months later (kumashiro et al. 2008). 2.3 need satisfaction and union formation events while a large number of studies highlight the infl uencing factors on relationship quality and stability, only comparatively few provide information about how intimate relationships solidify over the course of their development and what factors are crucial for this process. intimate relationships go through certain development stages – from the fi rst meeting and falling in love to marriage and starting a family together. in spite of the pluralisation of relationship types and changes in union formation processes, individual union formation events, such as cohabitation, marriage, and starting a family, can still be seen as indicators of a relationship consolidation process. for example, moving in together not only saves money and is more convenient, as often noted (sassler 2004), but also helps a couple get to know one another better in view of a possible later marriage. marriage continues to be the most signifi cant step of union formation, in spite of the fact that marriages are experiencing a documented delay until later in life (brüderl/klein 2003). in addition to legal consequences, marriage often also has a symbolic solidifying function and can strengthen the feeling of security and well-being in the relationship (schneider/ rüger 2007). starting a family or rather childbirth fi nally welds the couple together through the obligation to care for the common child and also increases separation costs. • franziska schmahl, sabine walper366 so, what factors infl uence the progress of the union formation process and the gradual consolidation of relationships? previous studies of the determinants of cohabitation or of marriage behaviours primarily focus on socio-structural factors such as education, employment status, or income (hill/kopp 1999; kley/huinink 2006; müller 2006). the transition to parenthood also proved to be infl uenced by socio-structural factors to a signifi cant extent (e.g. kurz 2005). however, kopp et al. (2010) additionally emphasize the relevance of relationship quality indicators as possible determinants for union formation processes and thereby refer to rusbult’s model of commitment (1983). hence, the union formation process of a relationship as an “expressive portrayal of personal commitment” (kopp et al. 2010: 58) benefi ts from a high relationship satisfaction and high investments already made. empirical studies also suggest that indicators of relationship quality are of relevance for the union formation process. for instance, sassler (2004) was able to show on the basis of qualitative interviews with 25 cohabitating couples that high relationship quality and frequent nights spent together in one residence prior to moving in together were accompanied by a comparatively rapid transition to cohabitation within six months. in addition, kopp et al. (2010) found correlations between the couple typologies they formed and the speed of the union formation process. “burdened” relationships, distinguished by comparatively low future orientation and low relationship satisfaction as well as a high level of confl ict, transitioned to cohabitation or engagement relatively slowly. by contrast “harmonious” couples, characterised by high relationship quality, demonstrated far more rapid transitions to cohabitation and engagement. fowers et al. (1996) also reported that compared to couples with higher relationship qualities, couples with a low amount of functional relationship interaction behaviour and lower satisfaction with the behaviour and habits of the partner (also described as “confl icted”) showed a clearly reduced probability of being married three years later. relationship quality or rather the perceived stability of the intimate relationship also appear to be benefi cial factors for the fertility of a couple. however, in most previous studies only the perspective of one of the partners was accounted for (e.g. myers 1997; rijken/liefbroer 2009). for the fi rst time it was rijken and thomson (2010), who examined the effects of relationship quality on a couple’s fertility from a dyadic perspective. their study showed that the probability of fi rst childbirth was exclusively positively infl uenced by the women’s perceived relationship quality, whereas the probability of having more children was linked to a positively perceived relationship quality by women and men. in addition to studies that were able to demonstrate the relevance of relationship quality for union formation processes with relative consistency, there are also restricting fi ndings. for example, although kopp et al. found a positive cross-sectional correlation between relationship satisfaction and the degree of union formation of the relationship, they found no longitudinal correlation. surra and hughes (1997) also showed that relationship satisfaction is only relevant for positive relationship development for some couples, which they described as “relationship-driven”. another group of the couples they studied, whose relationship satisfaction fl uctuated can you relate? • 367 strongly (“event-driven”), was by contrast more infl uenced by the progressive consolidation of their relationships by outside events (such as pregnancy). no study has yet been conducted on the extent to which not only relationship satisfaction, but also need satisfaction, which is closely linked to it, is relevant for the advancement of the union formation of intimate relationships. taking personal need satisfaction in the relationship into account is quite relevant, however, since today marriage and parenthood are increasingly less normatively prescribed life perspectives. both have become the object of individual decision-making and relationship negotiating processes. hence, in light of societal individuation processes (burkart/kohli 1989), we can imagine that for the continuation of a relationship and its consolidation through cohabitation, marriage, or childbearing, not only does the need for relatedness has to be fulfi lled. autonomy and self-actualisation in the relationship become prerequisites as well. the results of the cross-sectional study by patrick et al. (2007) can be deemed indicative of this. they showed that fulfi lment of the needs for relatedness and autonomy in a current relationship were accompanied by greater future orientation. a study by drigotas and rusbult (1992) also revealed longitudinal effects of the fulfi lment of relatedness-oriented needs in relationships on commitment and breakup probability. the higher the relatedness in the relationship, the higher was also the commitment reported by those surveyed and the lower their probability of breaking up. possibly need satisfaction not only has an infl uence on relationship commitment processes, but also on commitment-based union formation events, such as cohabitation, marriage, or childbearing. 3 problems and hypotheses the primarily cross-sectional, empirical fi ndings described here suggest that fulfi lment and a successful balance of autonomy and relatedness in intimate relationships contribute to positively perceived relationship quality (e.g. patrick et al. 2007; neff/suizzo 2006, kumashiro et al. 2008). the signifi cance of autonomy and relatedness for the union formation process of intimate relationships has not yet been studied. however, a high degree of autonomy and relatedness fulfi lment showed positive effects in relationships on commitment to the partner (patrick et al. 2007; drigotas/rusbult 1992). we therefore assume that high need satisfaction and need balance are benefi cial to commitment-based union formation events, such as living together or marriage. the aim of this study is to examine the longitudinal effects of need satisfaction and balance on relationship quality and on the union formation process. two competing hypotheses will be tested: the relatedness hypothesis assumes that the fulfi lment of the need for relatedness in intimate relationships is more crucial for the function and union formation of relationships than the need for autonomy. the results of the study by patrick et al. (2007, study 1), which show that relatedness is more closely linked to relationship satisfaction than autonomy, also suggest this. the balance hypothesis by contrast states that equal integration of relatedness and autonomy in a relationship are particularly benefi cial for the perceived relationship • franziska schmahl, sabine walper368 quality and the union formation process of the relationship. in addition to the signifi cance of relatedness, this hypothesis also emphasizes personal self-determination in the relationship – meaning an individuated relationship style characterised by autonomy in relatedness (williamson 2002). this hypothesis thus takes societal individuation processes into consideration, which are refl ected in the increasely autonomy-accentuated relationship forms (such as “living apart together”, hoffmann-nowotny 1995). accordingly, an overemphasis of relatedness at the expense of autonomy in the intimate relationship should have rather dysfunctional effects on the formation of the relationship. dyadic analyses by patrick et al. (2007, study 2) suggest that in addition to the described actor effects of need satisfaction, partner effects on relationship quality can also be expected. the research methods of patrick et al. (2007) did not, however, enable the examination of gender-specifi c actor and partner effects. therefore, using dyadic analyses we will fi rst examine gender-specifi c actor and partner effects of need satisfaction and need balancing on relationship quality. in the process, the validity of the relatedness and the balance hypothesis will also be tested for the partner effects. additionally, the dyadic design enables the study of gender-specifi c contributions of need satisfaction on various stages of union formation, as those proven by rijken and thomson (2010). in order to be able to take into account the effects of the concurrent characters of both relationship needs in this study, prior to testing the hypotheses we use cluster analyses to identify types of fulfi lment and the balance of autonomy and relatedness in the relationship. previous studies, particularly those from the perspective of the self-determination theory, almost exclusively examined the singular effects of autonomy or relatedness in the relationship (e.g. patrick et al. 2007; ryan et al. 2005). they neglected that the effect of one dimension of need on relationship quality or union formation events could possibly depend on the character of the other need dimension measured at the same time. 4 method 4.1 random sample the data is drawn from the fi rst and second waves of the relationship and family panel survey (pairfam or “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics”). this is a representative longitudinal study which surveys a random sample of the population of all german-speaking persons living in private households in germany of three birth cohorts (1991-1993, 1981-1983, and 1971-1973). it is drawn via the registry offi ce and is conducted annually since october 2008. the fi rst survey wave was conducted from the end of 2008 until the beginning of may 2009, the second from mid-october 2009 until mid-april 2010. in addition to the “anchor persons” originating from the random sample, the anchors’ partners were also quescan you relate? • 369 tioned if the anchor consented. the anchors were surveyed using computer-based interviews; their partners were assessed via a questionnaire. wave 1 (time of interview 1) and wave 2 (time of interview 2) pairfam data were used for the following analyses, whereby only anchor and partner data of couples were included in the random sample if both of the partners took part in both wave 1 and wave 2. anchors from cohort 1 (young people born 1991-1993) and their partners were excluded from the analyses since, due to their age, only very rare cases of union formation steps taken were to be expected from this group. thus, the random sample consisted of n=3,828 persons or 1,914 couples. for 723 couples the anchor was in wave 1 in the age cohort of 25 to 27-year olds, for 1,191 couples the anchor was in wave 1 in the age cohort of 35 to 37-year olds. the average age of all persons in the random sample (n=3,828) at the time of interview 1 was 32.72 (standard deviation=5.85). the women were on average 31.34 (sd=5.51), and the men 34.08 years old (sd=6.02). the average relationship duration of the couples was 112.21 months (sd=69.27) or 9.35 years (sd=5.77). at the time of interview 1 66.1 % of the couples (n=1,266) were married, 33.9 % (n=648) unmarried. at the time of interview 2 (wave 2) 70.2 % (n=1,344) of the couples were married, 29.8 % (n=570) unmarried. a very high percentage of the couples (91.6 %, n=1,753) were living together at the time of interview 1. at the time of interview 2 the number of cohabitating couples had risen by 2.4 % to 94 % (n=1,800). moreover, 61.6 % of the couples (n=1,172) had one or more common children at the time of interview 1, and in most cases (n=1,169) the child lived together with the couple in a household. 44.6 % of all persons in the random sample (n=1,706) had a higher schooling level (allgemeine hochschulreife, fachabitur), 37.3 % (n=1,428) reported an intermediate educational level (realschulabschluss, mittlere reife) and 16 % (n=614) a lower educational level (hauptschulabschluss). 1.7 % (n=65) of the random sample had no school certifi cate, 0.4 % (n=15) cited an educational level that could not be distinctly categorised. the random sample contains a certain degree of selectivity. selectivity analyses showed that the partner participation in pairfam wave 1 and wave 2 (compared with the total sample of all persons with partners) is linked to an increased number of persons with abitur certifi cates (higher schooling levels) as well as an increased number of cohabitating and married couples. with regard to relationship quality (e.g. relationship satisfaction, intimacy, and autonomy in the relationship) reported by the anchor, however, there were no signifi cant correlations with partner participation to wave 1 or wave 2. 4.2 indicators in the following we will describe the indicators employed. a more detailed portrayal of the indicators can be found in the pairfam scales manual (wendt et al. 2011). • franziska schmahl, sabine walper370 autonomy and relatedness in the intimate relationship t1 a short indicator consisting of four items from the “network of relationship inventory (nri)” by furman and burmester (1985) was employed to record the relatedness in the current relationship at t1. the fi ve-point response format (1=never, 5=always) refers to the frequency of the occurrence of specifi c relationship events. these events refl ect the subject’s personal openness (intimacy scale, e.g. “how often do you share your secrets and private feelings with [name partner]?”) or their perceived appreciation by their partner (admiration scale, e.g. “how often does [name partner] show that he/she appreciates you?”). the autonomy scale is based on the “independence” scale, which is part of the paarklimaskalen (pks) or “couple climate scales” by schneewind and kruse (2002). one of the four items on the scale is new (“i can settle my personal matters by myself without causing confl icts with [name partner]”.). with a fi ve-point response format (1=not at all, 5=absolutely) the scale measures the extent to which a person feels that they can pursue their own interests without restrictions in their relationship. relationship quality t2 the extent of relationship satisfaction at t2 was assessed as a central aspect of relationship quality. the satisfaction item (“overall, how satisfi ed are you with your relationship?”) comes from the german version of the ras (relationship assessment scale; hendrick et al. 1998) by sander and böcker (1993) and records global satisfaction with one’s own relationship by means of an 11-point rating (0=very dissatisfi ed to 10=very satisfi ed). the commitment scale future orientation, which originated from an instrument developed in the scope of the pairfam project based on grau, mikula and engel (2001), was used as a further indicator of relationship quality. this two-item scale records the plans for or expectations of a longer-term, common future as a couple (e.g. “i would like for our partnership to last for a long time”.) with a 5-point response format (1=not at all, 5=absolutely). institutionalisation event between t1 and t2 setting up a household together, marriage, or the birth of a couple’s fi rst child between t1 and t2 were assessed as union formation events. with regard to the birth of the child, it was taken into account that the subjects were not pregnant with this child at t1. in addition to the birth of the fi rst common child, a pregnancy reported at t2 by the female partner with the fi rst common child was assessed as a transition to parenthood. in addition to the occurrence of the individual union formation events (“1” occurred, “0” did not occur), a total indicator was formed, which recorded whether one or more union formation events (“1”) or no union formation events (“0”) occurred since t1. as table 1 shows, the scales used resulted in persistently satisfactory reliabilities. can you relate? • 371 4.3 methodical procedure first, missing values, which made up less than 5 % across all of the variables, were imputed via the em logarithm using the spss module “missing value analysis”. the spss statistics program was also used for all other analyses. to ascertain different types of need satisfaction in relationships we fi rst carried out a cluster analysis at the individual level (n=3,828) using the spss module “two-step cluster analyses”, in which the two scales of relatedness and autonomy were input. the following analyses were then all conducted at couple level (n=1,914) in order to do justice to the dependencies of the partner data. anova for repeated measurements was employed to test the effects of cluster affi liation of the man or woman on relationship quality. to estimate the effect size, both the signifi cance of the effects and the respective effect intensities were taken into account. according to bühner and ziegler (2009), for the effect size measurement eta2partial explanations of variance between 0.01 and 0.06 can be considered low to medium and explanations of variance of 0.06 to 0.14 as medium to high. cohen’s d, which was used in the scope of post-hoc analyses, was interpreted according to bortz and döring (2002: 603) at d=.20 as a small effect, at d=.50 as medium effect and at d=.80 as large effect. to test the effects of cluster affi liation at t1 on union formation events that occurred between t1 and t2 logistical regressions were carried out. in addition to the effects of cluster affi liation of the woman and the man on union formation events a size of need satisfaction at the couple level was used to predict union formation events. 5 results 5.1 cluster analysis at the individual level (n=3,828) a two-step cluster analysis was carried out using the spss software program to identify types distinguished by different degrees of relationship autonomy and relatedness at t1. in this way, we were able to identify four clusters (cf. fig. 1): cluster 1, to which 13 % of the random sample (n=496) source: own calculations scale item number cronbach’s alpha m (sd) total m (sd) men m (sd) women relatedness t1 4 .73 3.76 ( .64) 3.72 ( .62) 3.79 ( .66) autonomy t1 4 .72 3.68 ( .82) 3.45 ( .79) 3.90 ( .78) relationship satisfaction t2 1 8.09 (1.99) 8.13 (1.90) 8.04 (2.06) future orientation t2 2 .84 4.77 ( .58) 4.77 ( .55) 4.76 ( .62) tab. 1: item number, reliabilities, mean values, and standard deviations of the scales used • franziska schmahl, sabine walper372 could be allocated, is distinguished by clearly lower than average degrees of relationship relatedness (m=2.82; sd=.44) and autonomy (2.69; sd=.40) at t1 (defi cient cluster). cluster 2, consisting of 1,028 persons (27 % of the random sample), exhibits high autonomy values (m=4.01, sd=.43) and comparatively reduced relatedness values (m=3.32, sd=.36) (reduced relatedness cluster). 1,010 persons (26 % of the random sample), who demonstrate above average degrees of relatedness (m=3.99, sd=.36) and below average autonomy (m=2.96, sd=.41), are allocated to cluster 3 (reduced autonomy cluster). cluster 4 fi nally consists of 1,294 persons (34 % of the random sample) and is characterised by high degrees of autonomy (m=4.36; sd=.43) and relatedness (m=4,28; sd=.35) (individuated cluster). a comparison of the results of the different methods of cluster analysis was used to test the validity of the results. for validation, the congruence of the cluster affi liation ascertained using the two-step cluster analysis was calculated with a cluster affi liation ascertained in the scope of a cluster centre analysis (also using spss) (cf. wiedenbeck/züll 2011). a signifi cant x2 test (x2=8023.72, df=9, p<.001) speaks for a non-random distribution of the persons over the individual cells and can therefore be considered an indicator for the desired congruence of the cluster. additionally, using a cross-classifi ed table congruencies of 75.8 % to 91.9 % were shown between the two-step cluster solution and the cluster centre analysis solution, which indicates good validity. furthermore, univariate anovas show that the identifi ed clusters differentiate well between different degrees on the scales of autonomy (f=2626.59, df=3, p<.001, eta2partial=0.67) and relatedness (f=2534.31, df=3, p<.001, eta2partial=0.66). the cluster affi liation explains 67 % of the autonomy scale variance and 66 % of the relatedness scale variance. post-hoc tests with bonferroni correction result in signifi cant mean value differences in autonomy between all cluster stages (p<.001). there are small to medium effect sizes for the mean value differences between the defi cient and the reduced autonomy cluster (cohen’s d = .25) and between the reduced relatedness and the individuated cluster (cohen’s d = .37) and high effect sizes for the other mean value differences of the autonomy scale (d = .76 to d =.83). with regard to the relatedness scale post-hoc tests also result in signifi cant differences between all cluster stages (p<.001). for the mean value difference in relatedness between the reduced autonomy and the individuated cluster there is a medium effect size (cohen’s d=.37), for all other mean value differences between the individual cluster stages high effect sizes are recorded (d=.53 to d=.88). with regard to the distribution of the clusters there are signifi cant gender differences (x2(3)=234.31, p<.001, cf. tab. 2). women exhibit a defi cient need satisfaction in the intimate relationship far more infrequently than men (n=185 vs. n=311). also, compared to men, women report an impairment to the fulfi lment of their need for autonomy (reduced autonomy cluster: nwomen=345 vs. nmen=665) less frequently and are represented to a greater extent in the reduced relatedness cluster (n=566 vs. n=462). it also appears easier for them to satisfy both autonomy and relatedness in a balanced proportion. hence, 818 women are represented in the individuated cluster but only 476 men. these results make clear that men experience less can you relate? • 373 autonomy in relationships than women and are therefore less frequent in the clusters that refl ect a high fulfi lment of the need for autonomy. furthermore, there are also signifi cant differences with respect to the distribution of the cluster in the two age cohorts (cohort 2: 25-27 year olds, cohort 3: 35-37 year olds, x2(3)=73.06, p<.001). the older cohort reports a balanced fulfi lment of the needs for autonomy and relatedness far less frequently (29.4 %) than the younger age cohort (40.9 %; individuated cluster). by contrast it seems that more persons from the older cohort than from the younger cohort cite reduced relatedness (reduced relatedness cluster: 30.1 % vs. 21.6 %) and a defi cient need satisfaction in the current relationship (defi cient cluster: 14.6 % vs. 10.2 %). a look at the cluster distribution according to relationship duration results in a similar scenario. there are signifi cant differences in the distribution of the clusters (x2(3)=60.03, p<.001) between persons with a shorter relationship duration (2 years and less) and persons with a longer relationship duration (longer than two years). persons with a longer relationship duration are represented far less frequently in the individuated cluster (32.1 % vs. 51.5 %) and far more frequently in the defi cient cluster (13.7 % vs. 5.8 %) and in the reduced relatedness cluster (27.7 % vs. 18.6 %) than persons with shorter relationship durations. there are also signifi cant differences in the distributions of the clusters according to educational levels (x2(9)=87.02, p<.001; tab. 3). persons with low educational levels report far more frequently of defi cient (18.7 %) and reduced autonomy need satisfaction in their relationship (33.6 %) than persons with high educational levels (defi cient: 10 %; reduced autonomy: 23.2 %). persons with intermediate and fig. 1: autonomy and relatedness mean values in the different clusters source: own calculations 1 2 3 4 5 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated 2.82 3.32 3.99 4.28 2.69 4.01 2.96 4.36 autonomy relatedness • franziska schmahl, sabine walper374 high educational levels are far more frequently represented in the individuated cluster with 32.6 % and 38 % respectively than persons with low educational levels (25.3 %). also, in the reduced relatedness cluster there are more frequently persons with intermediate (26.7 %) and high educational levels (28.8 %) than persons with low educational levels (22.4 %). all in all, the fi ndings indicate that persons with low educational levels experience less fulfi lment of the need for autonomy in their relationship and are therefore less frequently represented in all clusters characterised by high autonomy in the relationship. 5.2 congruence of cluster affi liation between the partners an x2-test was calculated to test the correlations of cluster affi liation between the partners of a couple. the signifi cant x2-coeffi cient (x2(9)=143.99, p<.001) indicates total sample women men cohort 2 cohort 3 rel. duration 2 yrs. rel. duration > 2 yrs. deficient 13,0 % (n=496) 9,7 % (n=185) 16,2 % (n=311) 10,2 % (n=148) 14,6 % (n=348) 5,8 % (n=20) 13,7 % (n=476) reduced relatedness 27,0 % (n=1028) 29,6 % (n=566) 24,1 % (n=462) 21,6 % (n=312) 30,1 % (n=716) 18,6 % (n=64) 27,7 % (n=964) reduced autonomy 26,0 % (n=1010) 18,0 % (n=345) 34,7 % (n=665) 27,3 % (n=349) 25,9 % (n=616) 24,1 % (n=83) 26,6 % (n=927) individuated 34,0 % (n=1294) 42,7 % (n=818) 24,9 % (n=476) 40,9 % (n=592) 29,4 % (n=702) 51,5 % (n=177) 32,1 % (n=1117) total 100 % (n=3828) 100 % (n=1914) 100 % (n=1914) 100 % (n=1446) 100 % (n=2382) 100 % (n=344) 100 % (n=3484) tab. 2: distribution of the relationship clusters “defi cient”, “reduced relatedness”, “reduced autonomy” and “individuated” in the total sample and according to gender, cohort and relationship duration source: own calculations low educational level intermediate educational level high educational level deficient 18,7 % (n=127) 13,9 % (n=199) 10,0 % (n=170) reduced relatedness 22,4 % (n=152) 26,7 % (n=381) 28,8 % (n=492) reduced autonomy 33,6 % (n=228) 26,8 % (n=383) 23,2 % (n=396) individuated 25,3 % (n=172) 32,6 % (n=465) 38,0 % (n=648) total 100 % (n=679) 100 % (n=1428) 100 % (n=1706) tab. 3: distribution of the relationship clusters “defi cient”, “reduced relatedness”, “reduced autonomy” and “individuated” in the total sample according to education source: own calculations can you relate? • 375 that there are signifi cant intra-couple correlations with respect to cluster affi liation. for example, women at t1 who cite high autonomy and relatedness (individuated cluster) have increased probability compared with women from other clusters that their partner will also be allocated to the individuated cluster (34 %, see tab. 4). by contrast, only a very small percentage (5.4 %) of the women from the defi cient cluster has a partner from the individuated cluster. furthermore, women from the defi cient cluster exhibit the highest probability compared with women from other clusters to have a partner who is also allocated to the defi cient cluster (31.9 %). women from the reduced autonomy cluster exhibit the highest probability compared with the other women to have a partner who also comes from the reduced autonomy cluster (44.1 %). and reduced relatedness women have the comparatively highest probability to have a partner who is also in the reduced relatedness cluster (27.9 %). consequently, the partners exhibit great mutual dependencies in relationship need satisfaction at t1. if one of the partners experiences a high extent of autonomy and relatedness in the relationship, there is a comparatively great probability that their partner will also report high need satisfaction. by contrast, an impaired need satisfaction in one partner reduces the chance that the other partner will experience a high extent of autonomy and relatedness in the relationship. in addition to the autonomy and relatedness clusters as measures of need satisfaction at the individual level, a measure for the need satisfaction at couple level was also formed, whereby the number of fulfi lled needs of women and men was used as the basis for classifying the three different couple types. couples in which both partners cited defi cient need satisfaction or in which at most one need (autonomy or relatedness) of one partner was fulfi lled were allocated to the couple type “low need satisfaction at couple level” (see table 4, light-grey shaded couples, n=346 or 18.1 % of all couples). couples in which each of the partners cited that one need was fulfi lled or in which on partner was allocated to the individuated and the other to the defi cient cluster were allocated to the couple type “medium need satisfaction at couple level” (medium-grey shading in tab. 4, n=643 or 33.6 % of all couples). the third couple type “high need satisfaction at couple level” (n=925 or 48.3 % of all couples) included couples in which at least one partner reported fulfi lment of autonomy and relatedness, and the respective other partner at least fulfi lment autonomy or relatedness (see dark-grey shading in table 4). 5.3 effects of cluster affi liation at t1 on relationship satisfaction and future orientation at t2 to test the effects of the man or woman’s cluster affi liation on the indicators of relationship quality, a number of 2x4x4-factorial anovas for repeated measurements were carried out. the cluster affi liation of the man and the woman (4 stages each) were used in the analyses as between-subjects factors. since the analyses were conducted at the couple level, the gender functions as a repeated measurement factor or as a within-subjects factor (2 stages). hence, for each dependent variable one measured value each for the woman and the man were used in the analyses. additionally, the effects of cluster affi liation were examined gender-specifi cally • franziska schmahl, sabine walper376 and actor and partner effects could be modelled via the interactions between the cluster affi liation of the man and the woman and the repeated measurement factor “gender”. each anova for repeated measurement was controlled by incorporating covariates for the effects of the relationship duration of the couple, the ages of the man and woman and the couple’s cohabitation. furthermore, to control level effects as covariates the z-standardised avs measured at t1 were also incorporated. for example, for the anovas with the av future orientation t2 the future orientation of the woman and of the man, measured at t1, was recorded as covariate. all post-hoc tests were carried out using bonferroni correction. effects of cluster affi liation t1 on relationship satisfaction t2 as seen in table 5, the main effect of the women’s cluster affi liation at t1 (f(3)=31.00, p<.001) and the main effect of the men’s cluster affi liation at t1 (f(3, 897)=19.00, p<.001) on relationship satisfaction of the couple becomes signifi cant at t2. as post-hoc tests show, for the cluster affi liation of the women there are signifi cant mean value differences in the relationship satisfaction of the couple between all cluster stages, except between the defi cient and the reduced relatedness cluster. hence, the relationship satisfaction of couples in which women indicate defi cient need satisfaction is signifi cantly lower (m=7.01, se=.20) than in couples in which women indicate reduced autonomy and high relatedness (m=7.95, se=.12, d=.23) or fulfi lment of autonomy and relatedness (m=8.48, se=.07, d=.47). also, the relationship satisfaction of couples in which women indicate reduced relatedness need satisfaction (m=7.54, se=.09) is signifi cantly lower than that of couples in which woman: autonomy and relatedness cluster t1 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated total quantity 59 123 48 81 311 expected 30,1 92,0 56,1 132,9 311,0 deficient % within cluster woman 31.9 % 21.7 % 13.9 % 9.9 % 16.2 % quantity 39 158 70 195 462 expected 44.7 136.6 83.3 197.4 462.0 reduced relatedness % within cluster woman 21.1 % 27.9 % 20.3 % 23.8 % 24.1 % quantity 77 172 152 264 665 expected 64.3 196.7 119.9 284.2 665.0 reduced autonomy % within cluster woman 41.6 % 30.4 % 44.1 % 32.3 % 34.7 % quantity 10 113 75 278 476 expected 46.0 140.8 85.8 203.4 476.0 m an : au to no m y an d r el at ed ne ss cl us te r t 1 individuated % within cluster woman 5.4 % 20.0 % 21.7 % 34.0 % 24.9 % quantity 185 566 345 818 1914 total % within cluster woman 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % tab. 4: intra-couple correlations of the cluster affi liation source: own calculations can you relate? • 377 women belong to the reduced autonomy cluster (d=.12) or the individuated cluster (d=.34). and even between the reduced autonomy and the individuated clusters there is a signifi cant mean value difference (d=.17). the signifi cant interaction effect gender*cluster woman (f(3)=6.47, p<.001) reveals that the signifi cant main effect of the cluster affi liation of the women is primarily an actor effect on their personal relationship satisfaction. hence, among women high need satisfaction of both autonomy and relatedness is linked to the highest personal relationship satisfaction. as figure 2 shows, although the partner effect is far smaller, men nonetheless also report the highest relationship satisfaction when their partners exhibit high fulfi lment of both autonomy and relatedness. for the signifi cant main effect of the men’s cluster affi liation post-hoc analyses show signifi cant mean value differences in the relationship satisfaction of the couple between the defi cient cluster and all other clusters and between the individuated cluster and all other clusters. the relationship satisfaction of couples in which the men report defi cient need satisfaction is signifi cantly lower (m=7.06, se=.14) than among couples in which the men indicate high autonomy (m=7.71, se=.11, d=.19), high relatedness (m=7.94, se=.09, d=.30) or high autonomy and relatedness (m=8.27, se=.10, d=.35). there are no signifi cant mean value differences between the reduced relatedness and the reduced autonomy clusters with respect to the couple’s relationship satisfaction. the signifi cant interaction in gender*cluster man (f(3)=7.69, p<.001, eta2partial=.025) shows that although an increase is observed in the relationship satisfaction from the defi cient to the individuated cluster for both genders, the actor effect is far more intense than the partner effect of the men’s cluster affi liation at t1 (see fig. 2). effects of cluster affi liation t1 on future orientation t2 the main effects of the women’s cluster affi liation (f(3)=14.76, p<.001, eta2partial=.047) and the men’s cluster affi liation (f(3)=12.78, p<.001, eta2partial=.041) on the couple’s future orientation at t2 become signifi cant. post-hoc analyses concerning the effects of the cluster affi liation of the women show signifi cant mean value differences in the future orientation of the couple between the defi cient (m=4.36, cluster woman cluster man gender gender *cluster woman gender *cluster man f (3) eta2 f (3) eta2 f (1) eta2 f (3) eta2 f (3) eta2 relationship satisfaction 31.00*** .094 19.00*** .060 .80 .001 6.47*** .021 7.69*** .025 future orientation 14.76*** .047 12.78*** .041 .035 .000 3.93** .013 7.86*** .026 tab. 5: anova for repeated measurements: between-subjects and withinsubjects effects on the avs relationship satisfaction and future orientation, each measured at t2 source: own calculations • franziska schmahl, sabine walper378 se=.07) and the reduced relatedness clusters (m=4.61, se=.03, d=.22), between the defi cient and the reduced autonomy clusters (m=4.69, se=.040, d=.25) and between the defi cient and the individuated clusters (m=4.78, se=.02, d=.41). furthermore, the reduced relatedness cluster also differs signifi cantly from the individuated cluster in the future orientation of the couple (d=.18). the signifi cant interaction gender*cluster woman (f(3)=3.93, p=.008, eta2partial=.013) shows on the other hand that the actor effect of the autonomy and relatedness of the women is greater for their own future orientation at t2 than the partner effect is on the future orientation of their partner. although both their own future orientation and that of the partner increase from the defi cient to the reduced autonomy cluster, nonetheless fig. 2: adjusted mean values of the avs relationship satisfaction t2 and future orientation t2 according to the women’s relationship typology (left column) and the men at t1 (right column; each controlling the relationship duration of the couple, cohabitation, the age of the woman and of the man and the av measured at t1) source: own calculations interaction effect gender*cluster woman 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated women men relationship satisfaction interaction effect gender*cluster man 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated women men relationship satisfaction 4.0 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5.0 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated future orientation 4.0 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5.0 deficient reduced relatedness reduced autonomy individuated future orientation can you relate? • 379 high relatedness and autonomy only has an additional positive effect on the future orientation of the women compared with high relatedness and lower autonomy. the post-hoc analyses for the main effect of the cluster affi liation of the men show signifi cant mean value differences in the future orientation of the couple between the defi cient (m=4.41, se=.05) and the reduced relatedness clusters (m= 4.63, se=.04, d=.20), between the defi cient and the reduced autonomy clusters (m=4.68, se=.03, d=.27), and between the defi cient and the individuated clusters (m=4.74, se=.03, d=.29). the signifi cant interaction gender*cluster man (f(3)=7.86, p<.001, eta2partial=.026) also shows that there is only one actor effect of men’s autonomy and relatedness on their personal future orientation. their personal future orientation only drops at t2 if men reported defi cient autonomy and relatedness in the intimate relationship at t1. this effect does not apply to women’s future orientation. 5.4 effects of t1 cluster affi liation on union formation steps between t1 and t2 logistical regressions were carried out to test the effects of cluster affi liation at t1 on the occurrence of various union formation steps between t1 and t2. the dummycoded events “cohabitation”, “marriage”, and “childbearing” since t1 surveyed at t2 and a dummy-coded total indicator that recorded the occurrence of at least one of these union formation steps between t1 and t2 function as dependent variables. different subsamples were used for the dependent variable. to predict the event “cohabitation” a subsample of 161 couples was used who were not yet living together at t1. for the analyses with the dependent variable “marriage” only those couples were taken into account who were not yet married at t1 (n=648). and to predict the transition to parenthood a subsample of couples were employed who did not yet have a child together at t1 (n=742). in order to predict the occurrence of at least one union formation step since t1, logistical regressions were carried out with a subsample of 908 couples who either had not yet moved in together, were not yet married and/or did not have any children together at t1. between t1 and t2 a total of 62 couples moved in together (39.1 % of all non-cohabitating couples), 82 couples (12.7 % of all non-married couples) had married, and 70 couples (9.2 % of all couples without children) had become parents or were expecting their fi rst child. at least one of these events occurred between t1 and t2 for 196 couples (21.6 %). each of the cluster stages was dummy-coded to be able to examine the effects of the cluster affi liation of men and women in the scope of logistical regressions, whereby the individuated cluster served as reference category. also the control variables education woman, education man, and relationship duration were z-standardised. table 6 shows the effects of the cluster affi liation of the women and men on the individual union formation events. no signifi cant effects of the cluster affi liation of the women or men can be verifi ed with regard to the union formation events “cohabitation”, “marriage”, and “transition to parenthood”. however, if we look at the odds ratios it becomes clear that single probabilities of union formation events are reduced considerably according to cluster affi liation. for instance, compared with women from the individuated cluster, women from the reduced relatedness cluster • franziska schmahl, sabine walper380 have an 85.2 % (or=.54) lesser chance of moving in with their partner. and women from the defi cient cluster exhibit an 81.8 % (or=.55) lesser probability of marrying their partner between t1 and t2. women who indicate high autonomy and relatedness at t1 exhibit a 222.58 % (or=.31) higher probability of becoming mothers for the fi rst time between t1 and t2 compared with women from the defi cient cluster. and men from the defi cient cluster have a 72.41 % (or=.58) lesser chance for the transition to parenthood between t1 and t2. with regard to the prediction of at least one union formation step since t1, there is a marginally signifi cant effect of the reduced relatedness cluster of the man. compared with couples with individuated men, couples in which men indicate low fulfi lment of the relatedness need exhibit a 44.92 % lesser chance (or=.69) to take one or more union formation steps between t1 and t2. in spite of the odds ratios, the content of which was considered important, only a single marginally signifi cant effect could be verifi ed. this is probably due to the only very low occupancy of some of the cluster stages in the subsamples. we therefore +p ≤ .10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01; the reference category is “individuated cluster woman” or “individuated cluster man” source: own calculations cohabitation since t1 marriage since t1 transition to parenthood since t1 one or more union formation steps since t1 deficient woman t1 .76 .55 .31 .60 reduced relatedness woman t1 .54 1.05 .77 .78 reduced autonomy woman t1 .75 1.09 1.13 .89 deficient man t1 .75 .77 .58 .71 reduced relatedness man t1 .84 .76 .69 .69+ reduced autonomy man t1 .73 1.02 .84 .78 education woman 1.33 .93 1.00 1.11 education man 1.14 1.11 .83 1.06 age cohort 1981-1984 (reference: age cohort 1971-1973) 2.27* 1.37 .66 .82 relationship duration t1 .73 2.57** 1.37 .64* nagelkerke’s r2 .08 .05 .04 .05 n 161 648 742 908 tab. 6: logistical regressions for predicting “cohabitation”, “marriage”, “transition to parenthood” and the occurrence of at least one of the union formation events; the uvs are the dummy-coded cluster stages of the women and men. control for education, cohort, and relationship duration. the odds ratios of each predictor are indicated. can you relate? • 381 additionally examined the effects of need satisfaction at the couple level using the far more highly occupied couple types formed in section 5.2. table 7 shows the results of the logistical regressions, whereby the couple type “high need satisfaction” was used as the reference group to examine the effects of low or medium need satisfaction at the couple level. compared with couples with high need satisfaction, among couples with lower need satisfaction there are marginal signifi cantly reduced probabilities for cohabitation (or=.48), marriage (or=.55), and the transition to parenthood (or=.45) between t1 and t2. both for couples with lower and for couples with medium need satisfaction there is a signifi cantly lesser chance for the occurrence of at least one of the three union formation events (or=.54 or or=.63) compared with couples with high need satisfaction. 6 discussion this study made it possible to identify different types of relationship need satisfaction and to demonstrate their signifi cance for relationship quality and the occurrence of union formation events. cluster analyses were used to fi nd four different types of relationship need satisfaction of signifi cant content. at the time of interview 1, 13 % of the random sample reported low, defi cient need satisfaction of the +p ≤ .10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01 source: own calculations cohabitation since t1 marriage since t1 transition to parenthood since t1 one or more union formation steps since t1 low need satisfaction couple t1 .48+ .55+ .45+ .54* medium need satisfaction couple t1 .72 .60 .88 .63* education woman 1.26 .91 1.00 1.10 education man 1.17 1.09 .83 1.05 age cohort 1981-1984 (reference age cohort 1971-1973) 2.17+ 1.44 .64 .83 relationship duration t1 .77 2.67** 1.30 .64* nagelkerke’s r2 .07 .04 .03 .05 n 161 648 742 908 tab. 7: logistical regressions for predicting “cohabitation”, “marriage”, “transition to parenthood” and the occurrence of at least one of the union formation events; the uvs are low or medium need satisfaction at the couple level (reference category high need satisfaction at couple level). control for education, cohort, and relationship duration. the odds ratios of each predictor are indicated. • franziska schmahl, sabine walper382 two needs dimensions of autonomy and relatedness and 27 % reported reduced relatedness need satisfaction. a large part of the random sample (60 %) indicated either individuated need satisfaction in their relationship, characterised by a balance of autonomy and relatedness, or reduced autonomy, characterised by high relatedness. there were gender differences in the distribution of the need clusters. there were far less men than women in the reduced relatedness and individuated need clusters, both of which are characterised by high relationship autonomy. hence, it appears more diffi cult for men than for women to feel self-determined and autonomous in their relationships. although prior studies discovered no gender differences in the balance of the autonomy and relatedness orientation in relationships (harter et al. 1997), women reported signifi cantly higher need satisfaction in autonomy and/ or relatedness in their relationships than men (patrick et al. 2007). possibly gender differences in need satisfaction may be because of gender-specifi c behaviour in intimate relationships. for example, women initiate discussions about relationshiprelevant topics more often than men (dainton/stafford 1993) and express their love and affection for their partner more directly and openly (ragsdale 1996; stafford et al. 2000). hence, women appear to advocate the fulfi lment of their needs far more actively than men, which may be benefi cial to their need satisfaction in the relationship. moreover, it is also conceivable that women’s active, relationship-oriented behaviour not only contributes to greater fulfi lment of their own needs for autonomy and relatedness, but is possibly also accompanied by a reduction in the perceived autonomy of their partner. it might also be plausible that compared to women, men have a more autonomous, less relationship-related sense of self (e.g. cross/madson 1997), and thus far higher expectations of relationship autonomy which are correspondingly less often fulfi lled. the higher percentage of men reporting defi cient fulfi lment of both needs compared with women also allows for the assumption that men tend more than women to remain in relationships in which central needs are not fulfi lled. this would also concur with the results of divorce research, which has shown that women have a far higher probability of initiating separation than men (hewitt 2009; kalmijn/poortman 2006). in addition to the gender differences in relationship autonomy and relatedness, the study also revealed differences in the distribution of the autonomy and relatedness cluster according to relationship duration. the number of dysfunctional types of need satisfaction (defi cient and reduced relatedness types) increased considerably for relationship durations of over two years compared to durations of two or less years. whereas the number of persons allotted to the individuated cluster was reduced for relationship durations of over two years compared to shorter durations. this concurs with longitudinal studies that were able to prove a diminishment of relationship quality with increasing relationship duration (clements/markman 1996; huston/holmes 2004). the educational differences in cluster distribution also appear interesting. for example, there are considerably fewer persons with a low educational level in cluster stages refl ecting high autonomy in the relationship (reduced relatedness cluster and individuated clusters) compared with persons with intermediate or high educacan you relate? • 383 tional levels. hirseland and leuze (2010) were also able to show that the incidence of individualistic relationship orientations, characterised, for example, by a focus on personal self-actualisation, increases with higher education, however this effect occurred primarily among women. women with high education appear to be able to “afford” individualistic lifestyles due to their greater fi nancial independence from their partners, whereas women with lower education and lower income put more value on relationship and fi nancial security to the detriment of their own autonomy in the relationship. subsequent analyses should illuminate whether the educational effect detected also differs gender-specifi cally in this study. persons with low educational levels not only reported lower relationship autonomy, but also defi cient need satisfaction in the relationship more frequently than persons with intermediate and high educational levels. prior studies also showed that couples from lower educational and income strata exhibit lower relationship satisfaction as well as greater levels of confl ict and a higher risk of separation (amato et al. 2007; lichter et al. 2006). it is possible that the reduced relationship quality and stability of couples from lower educational strata can be explained by the defi cient need satisfaction in the relationship identifi ed in this study. this study was able to confi rm that low satisfaction of both need dimensions has a dysfunctional effect on perceived relationship quality. both women and men who belonged to the defi cient need cluster at t1 reported the lowest relationship satisfaction and future orientation at t2. here, the relatedness hypothesis is supported by the fact that relatedness-oriented and reduced autonomy need satisfaction predicted greater personal relationship satisfaction than defi cient or reduced relatedness need satisfaction. this applies both for men and for women. by contrast, it seems to be irrelevant for personal future orientation which of the two needs, autonomy and relatedness, is fulfi lled. hence, an impairment of relatedness did not have a negative effect on an individual’s being able to envision a long-term future together with their partner as long as the need for autonomy was fulfi lled. this result therefore contradicts the relatedness hypothesis and the fi ndings of the meta-analysis by patrick et al. (2007), which was able to reveal a greater signifi cance of relatedness compared with autonomy for the relationship quality, and also illustrates the relevance of autonomy for the continued course of the relationship. nonetheless, we could confi rm that for all actor effects on indicators of relationship quality, a balanced fulfi lment of both relatedness and autonomy has advantages over the fulfi lment of only one need. there was a quite strong additional positive effect of balanced need satisfaction for the relationship satisfaction of men and women. these results thereby confi rm the balance hypothesis postulated previously. a number of previous cross-sectional studies (neff/harter 2003; neff/suizzo 2006) and a longitudinal study (kumashiro et al. 2008) also showed that a balance of autonomy and relatedness comparably has the most positive effects on relationship quality. overall there were greater explanations of variance of the relationship quality indicators measured at couple level at t2 for the need satisfaction of the women than for the need satisfaction of the men. the fulfi lment of the needs for autonomy and relatedness in the relationship appears more important for the perceived relation• franziska schmahl, sabine walper384 ship quality for women than for men. this concurs with current research results that showed that the emotional quality of a relationship is a better separation predictor for women than for men (nock 2001; sayer/bianchi 2000). there are also greater correlations for women between relationship attributes and relationship satisfaction than for men (aron/henkemeyer 1995; morrow et al. 1995). in addition to actor effects of personal need satisfaction on personal relationship quality, the dyadic design of this study allowed us to also examine and verify partner effects. primarily the women’s need satisfaction exhibited distinct partner effects. for example, partners of women from the defi cient cluster at t1 reported lower future orientation and relationship satisfaction at t2 than partners of women from the individuated need clusters. conversely, a high, balanced need satisfaction among the men also had positive effects on the relationship satisfaction of the women; however the partner effect was considerably smaller. therefore, the partner effects also verify the balance hypothesis. personal need satisfaction appears to not only infl uence one person’s perceived relationship quality, but also that of their partner, as verifi ed in studies by patrick et al. (2007, study 2) and deci et al. (2006). these studies additionally showed not only that receiving need support from the partner was accompanied by greater need satisfaction and better relationship outcomes, but also that giving need support had positive effects. possibly the partners of persons with high fulfi lment of autonomy and relatedness also engage more in need-supportive behaviour, such as the expression of appreciation or a willingness to compromise, thereby contributing not only to the high, balanced need satisfaction of their relationship partner, but also to their own wellbeing and a positively perceived relationship quality. but why are there greater partner effects for the need satisfaction of women than of men? perhaps women are more open in addressing that their needs in the relationship are not fulfi lled than men (ragsdale 1996; stafford/dainton/haas 2000) or allow their partners to participate more in their happiness about positive need satisfaction. through this more open manner of dealing with relationship-related needs and feelings, women perhaps also have more of an infl uence on the partner’s perceived relationship quality than vice versa. while the signifi cance of need satisfaction for relationship quality has already been analysed in a number of mainly cross-sectional studies, so far there have been no empirical studies assessing the relevance of both autonomy and relatedness for the union formation process. this study was able to close this research gap and for the fi rst time verify empirically that couples with low need satisfaction tend to exhibit a reduced probability for cohabitation, marriage, or the transition to parenthood in the next year compared with couples with high relationship need satisfaction. the chance of the occurrence of one of more union formation steps in the following year was also reduced for couples with medium need satisfaction (compared with couples with high need satisfaction). if we consider the union formation process of relationships as an expression of relationship commitment, it seems only logical that need satisfaction not only infl uences commitment (patrick et al. 2007, study 2; drigotas/rusbult 1992), but also infl uences commitment-based union formation steps taken by the couple. a lack of need satisfaction appears to impair the willingness to enter into a long-term relationship commitment and the can you relate? • 385 union formation steps associated with it. previous studies already indicate that aspects of relationship quality are relevant for cohabitation (sassler 2004), marriage (fowers et al. 1996; kopp et al. 2010), and the transition to parenthood (myers 1997; rijken/thomson 2010). against the background of an increasingly more individualised society is appears quite comprehensible that personal need satisfaction in the intimate relationship is also relevant for the union formation process of the relationship. personal self-actualisation and added emotional benefi ts have become central demands on intimate relationships (nave-herz 1990; weiss 1995) and therefore also the prerequisites for being open to consolidating the relationship through cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing. the differential signifi cance of relationship autonomy and/or relatedness for the union formation process of the relationship could not be explained on the basis of the couple typology since we were not able to conduct a corresponding differentiation of the compared groups. the gender-specifi c study of effects of each of the autonomy and relatedness clusters on union formation events results in only a marginally signifi cant effect due to partially low occupancy of the cluster stages in the subsamples used. there is evidence that when the man reports reduced relatedness in the relationship this marginally signifi cantly reduces the probability for the occurrence of one or more union formation events in the following year, whereby the individuated need satisfaction functioned as the reference category. the fact that besides reduced relatedness also a low fulfi lment of autonomy needs in the relationship is relevant for the union formation process is refl ected in the signifi cant content yet insignifi cant effects of defi cient need satisfaction. for example, women with defi cient need satisfaction exhibit a considerably reduced probability of marrying or having their fi rst child with their partner in the following year. similarly, couples in which men experience defi cient need satisfaction in the relationship have a reduced probability of transition to parenthood. this fi nding emphasizes the relevance of the man’s perceived relationship quality for the fertility of the couple and contradicts the results of rijken and thompson (2010) that showed that only the relationship satisfaction of the woman, but not that of the man is relevant for the transition to parenthood. nevertheless we must note that the gender-specifi c effects of need satisfaction on union formation events resulted only in tentatively signifi cant effects. the discrepancy between the mostly quite substantial odds ratios and the lacking signifi cance of the results is probably due to the rare occurrence of union formation events and the low group size in the defi cient cluster. for women and men, there were no signifi cant differences in the probability of the occurrence of the various union formation events between the simultaneous fulfi lment of both autonomy and relatedness and the exclusive fulfi lment of relatedness concurrent with low autonomy in the relationship. this can be assessed as an indication that primarily the fulfi lment of the relatedness need is relevant for the union formation process of the relationship and that the balance hypothesis is not verifi ed in this context. although this study was able to identify meaningful types of relationship need satisfaction and thereby enabled us to examine the combined effects of the simultaneous occurrence of autonomy and relatedness in the relationship, the singular • franziska schmahl, sabine walper386 actor and partner effects of autonomy and relatedness remained unexplained. in order to better understand this effect additional analyses are needed at the individual scale level in future. a certain selectivity of the random sample was another restriction. hence, the sample of couples is comparatively “institutionalised” since partner participation records a higher number of cohabitating and married couples. this may have led to distortions primarily in conjunction with the analyses of various union formation events. non-dyadic analyses that are not linked to the participation of the partner will therefore be needed in future to be able to interpret the relevance of these results. furthermore, the merely small to medium explanations of variance by the autonomy and relatedness types show that there are a number of further infl uencing factors on personal wellbeing and relationship quality, which were not incorporated in the existing analyses. therefore, against the background of the gender and relationship duration differences in the distribution of the autonomy and relatedness types ascertained, it would be interesting to more closely illuminate the determinants of the need satisfaction in future. for example, it is conceivable that motives developed biographically, personality factors, and contextual factors such as stressors infl uence personal need satisfaction and thereby cause gender differences in need satisfaction. an examination of the conditions of relationship need satisfaction could also contribute to identifying starting points for relationship therapy interventions to promote perceived autonomy and relatedness in the relationship. systematic integration of such couple interventions aimed at promoting need satisfaction in the scope of relationship counselling and therapy appear expedient and necessary in light of the proven relevance of need satisfaction for 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translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “nur die verbundenheit zählt? die bedeutung partnerschaftlicher bedürfniserfüllung für die qualität und fortschreitende institutionalisierung von paarbeziehungen”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-201201de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-01de6, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 26.10.2011 date of acceptance: 15.03.2012 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz sybille steinmetz e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) fertility, family policy and welfare regimes elina schleutker abstract: this paper is inspired by the many similarities between gendered welfare state research and demographic research on the determinants of fertility. the fi rst part of the paper discusses some of the theories on childbearing in the light of the gendered welfare state theory. one important similarity between these two genres is that when work-life choices are studied, the emphasis is on policies which enable women to reconcile employment and family. support for informal care is accordingly treated as having a negative infl uence on work-life compatibility, and women are moreover assumed to have homogeneous preferences, i.e., they are supposed to want to combine work and family. however, such an approach does not pay suffi cient attention to informal care and to heterogeneity among women, either when it comes to preferences or to behaviour. to address these gaps, in the second part of the paper a new framework to analyse women’s work-life choices is developed. the suggested framework gives considerable attention to the way in which formal as well as informal care is supported or enforced in different welfare states and the consequences such support has on women’s decision making. moreover, heterogeneity among women is emphasised, both in preferences and when it comes to behaviour. the central argument is that women’s heterogeneous preferences transform differently to different lifestyle career strategies (with regard to employment and childbearing) in different welfare state settings, as each lifestyle strategy is encouraged or discouraged by family policy to differing degrees. hence, the number of women who choose a particular strategy, as well as the level of fertility, varies between the welfare states. in addition, household resources are assumed to infl uence the choices that are being made. the argument that is put forward is illustrated with recent data on family policy, women’s employment patterns and fertility in the social-democratic (denmark, finland, norway, sweden), conservative (austria, belgium, france, germany, greece, italy, the netherlands, portugal, spain) and liberal welfare states (australia, canada, ireland, the uk, the usa). moreover, a reinterpretation of the fi ndings on the relationship between family policy, female employment and fertility is provided in the light of the framework outlined. keywords: fertility · family policy · preferences comparative population studies vol. 39, 1 (2014): 123-156 (date of release: 14.11.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2013-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-18en0 • elina schleutker124 1 introduction for a welfare state researcher, a quick look at total fertility rates (tfr) in the developed countries probably awakens thoughts of the striking resemblance between the welfare regime types and levels of period fertility: in general, the liberal and social democratic regimes experienced relatively high fertility during 1990-2010 (1.7-2.1), whereas the conservative regimes have struggled with low (below 1.5) or lowestlow (below 1.3) fertility.1 however, there are some exceptions to this general rule. most notably, fertility rates in canada have been somewhat lower than in the other liberal countries. tfr in belgium, france and the netherlands has been only somewhat below or at the same levels as in the liberal and social democratic countries, and fi nally in sweden the fertility rates have fl uctuated radically, and occasionally approached the 1.5 limit (oecd 2012). given the similarities between the welfare state types and levels of fertility, it is not surprising that a number of scholars engaged in the gendered2 welfare state study discuss the possibility that some welfare state arrangements have an impact on childbearing (e.g. esping-andersen 1999; bettio/plantenga 2004; de henau et al. 2006; fagnani 2007). during the past decades, the infl uence of family policy on fertility has also been examined by demographers to an increasing extent (see section 3 below). the question of whether and how family policy can infl uence fertility rates is naturally also of interest to decision makers, who in many countries are worried about sub-replacement fertility levels (un 2010:7) and wish to take action to increase childbearing (for germany, see henninger et al. 2008). however, despite the extensive discussion on the matter, our understanding of the relationship between family policy and fertility is still somewhat limited (gauthier 2007; neyer 2011). in contemporary discussions the recipe for high fertility is often claimed, by both welfare state researchers and by demographers, to be generous family policy which enables the reconciliation of work and family (see sections 2 and 3). such an approach nevertheless ignores two important issues: firstly, women have heteregeneous preferences, varying from home-centeredness to work-centeredness, and women with different preferences will respond differently to different social policies (hakim 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003a/b). secondly, the concentration on policies which enable the reconciliation of work and family ignores the role of informal care, the cross-country variation in welfare state support it receives as well as the many changes that have taken place in this sphere (pfau-effi nger 2004, 2005). this paper focuses on the relationship between family policy and fertility, and has two aims. firstly, as the many similarities between gendered welfare state research and research on fertility call for a comparison between these fi elds, after a short review of the gendered welfare state theories (section 2) we discuss how demographers can learn from gendered research on the welfare state (section 3). secondly, a suggestion of how hakim’s preference theory and feminist research on 1 see section 4.1 for the list of countries included in each cluster. 2 “gendered” and “feminist” are used as synonyms here. fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 125 the welfare state can be combined into a new framework is put forward (section 4). the central argument made in the paper is that women’s heterogeneous preferences transform differently to different lifestyle career strategies (with regard to employment and childbearing) in different welfare state settings, as each lifestyle strategy is encouraged or discouraged by family policy to different degrees, and in addition infl uenced by household resources. consequently, the number of women who choose a particular strategy, as well as the level of fertility, varies between the welfare states. these claims are illustrated with recent data on family policy, women’s employment patterns and fertility in social-democratic (denmark, finland, norway, sweden), conservative (austria, belgium, france, germany, greece, italy, the netherlands, portugal, spain) and liberal countries (australia, canada, ireland, the uk, the usa). in addition, a brief reinterpretation of the fi ndings on the relationship between family policy, female employment and fertility is provided (section 5). the paper ends with concluding remarks (section 6). 2 women, families and welfare regimes a useful starting point for a review of gendered welfare state research is provided by the intensive critique which esping-andersen (1990) received from feminist scholars after he had put forward his argument about the tripartite welfare regime typology. esping-andersen’s well known key idea is that there are qualitative differences between the welfare states and that these differences can be analysed with help of three different indicators. firstly, the extent of de-commodifi cation (i.e. welfare state protection of workers who are unable to earn their living on the labour market) varies between the welfare states. secondly, there are cross-country differences concerning the most important provider of welfare in terms of state, market and family. thirdly, due to the differences in the degree of de-commodifi cation and the interplay between state, market and family, different welfare states promote different patterns of social stratifi cation. the dissimilarities between the welfare states, analysed along these three dimensions, permit the countries to be classifi ed into three clusters, each characterised by its own logic. in the northern european social democratic regimes, the state is the major actor when it comes to decommodifi cation. the benefi ts are generous and universal, and the system tends to create social equality among citizens. in turn, the liberal anglo-saxon regimes only allot a minimal role to the state and rely heavily on market-based solutions, such as private insurance. the market-based practices, combined with a low degree of de-commodifi cation through the state, mainly to the very marginalised groups (means testing), maintain the socioeconomic differences between those who can afford market-based welfare and those who cannot. a third type of de-commodifi cation is put into practice in the western and southern european conservative welfare regimes, where the state and the family take on the major responsibility. de-commodifi cation is provided based on the occupational status, and its extent varies accordingly, so that the system maintains the prevailing work-related status composition of the people. • elina schleutker126 this elegant classifi cation of welfare states initiated a vivid discussion (for methodological problems in esping-andersen’s work, see obinger/wagschal 1998; for a review, see arts/gelissen 2002). in particular, feminist researchers accused espingandersen of having based his classifi cation on male standards and of leaving women and the family outside the analysis. indeed, the worker whom esping-andersen has in mind is one with market employment and, consequently, de-commodifi cation is not relevant for the large amount of women who work at home and are not commodifi ed. further, unpaid household work is also done by women who are in market employment, but as this kind of work is excluded from esping-andersen’s conceptualisation, the typology unavoidably ignores the family as a provider of care and welfare. it is also worth noting that many housewives are not dependent on the labour market, but on their husbands, and their relation with the welfare state is defi ned through their roles as mothers and/or wives (not as workers). finally, women and families are treated differently in different welfare states, and hence welfare state arrangements do not only have an impact on the socioeconomic stratifi cation, as suggested by esping-andersen, but also on gender relations (lewis 1992; orloff 1993; ostner 1995; anttonen/sipilä 1996; sainsbury 1994; and for a review, lewis 1997). in other words, the feminist critique concentrates on unpaid care work (e.g. daly/lewis 2000), which was largely ignored in esping-andersen’s presentation. as a result of the feminist critique, esping-andersen (1999) integrated the family dimension into his typology with two new concepts, “familialism” (state and market non-provision of welfare services) and “de-familialization”3 (the extent to which the welfare burden of the family is eased through state or market provision of services, or/and through the arrangements within the family). according to espingandersen, the high degree of familialism in the conservative countries discourages female employment, whereas de-familialization in the social demcoratic countries enables women to become commodifi ed. these new concepts do not change the original typology of the three welfare regime types, although esping-andersen acknowledges that there are some differences between the continental and southern european countries. most notably, the degree of de-familialization by the state and within the family is lower in the continental european countries, child benefi ts are lower in the southern european countries and, fi nally, the tax and transfers system in the continental european countries creates disincentives for the second earner’s employment, whereas this is not the case in the southern european countries. even esping-andersen’s gendered framework is sometimes claimed to be unsatisfactory (knijn/ostner 2002; pfau-effi nger 2004, 2005; woods 2006; leitner/lessenich 2007). in particular, leitner (2003) puts forward a more nuanced framework of familialism and emphasises the fact that the state can either support the family in its caring function (familialization) or ease the welfare responsibilities of the family (de-familialization). further, in leitner’s framework the magnitude of familialization and de-familialization can be either strong or weak, which results in four differ3 originally introduced to the research vocabulary by lister (1994) and mclaughlin/glendinning (1994). fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 127 ent combinations of familialism. however, instead of improving esping-andersen’s conceptualisations, many scholars have concentrated on the creation of completely new frameworks. lewis and ostner for example distinguish between three different types of breadwinner regimes, namely strong, modifi ed and weak (lewis 1992; ostner 1995). further, pfau-effi nger (2004, 2005) emphasises the interaction between institutions and cultural factors and distinguishes between the dual breadwinner family model and the modernised male breadwinner model. finally, some studies classify countries based on how they cluster when a particular statistical method is applied (thévenon 2011). the results of the above studies in terms of the countries belonging to the different clusters are found in table 1. as can be read from the table, the number of clusters varies from three to fi ve and has remained relatively stable during the past two decades. in general, the nordic as well as the anglo-saxon countries and the continental european countries together with the southern european countries, form one group each. there are some exceptions from this rule. some studies have found belgium and france to be more similar to the nordic than to the continental european countries (leitner 2003; pfau-effi nger 2005), or they are even distinguished constituting a separate cluster (lewis 1992; ostner 1995). southern european countries are likewise sometimes clustered into a separate cluster which is distinct from the continental european countries due to the limited support for informal care (leitner 2003; thévenon 2011, but see also esping-andersen 1999). moreover, in two cases the uk is classifi ed together with the continental european countries which are biased towards informal care (lewis 1992, ostner 1995; pfaueffi nger 2005), and one of these studies (pfau-effi nger 2005) also fi nds that norway displays certain similarities with the continental european countries. in this context, it is important to remember that concentration on the general cross-country differences can sometimes overlook the many goals of family policy. thévenon (2011) for example distinguishes between six different aims, namely poverty reduction and income maintenance, direct compensation for the economic costs of children, promotion of employment, promotion of gender equity, support for early childhood development and increasing fertility. these aims are adopted to differing degrees in different welfare state regimes, which also translates to the differences in the actual policies. for instance, gender equity and women’s employment are given the key role in the northern european welfare states, whereas anglo-saxon countries prioritise poverty reduction and income maintenance. furthermore, the different policy goals may clash, which can result in inconsistencies. in austria and germany, for example, the reconciliation of work and family is to a certain extent supported by parental leave regulations, but at the same time the daycare system is underdeveloped since it has traditionally served the goal of early education (leitner/wroblewski 2006). in addition to the country groupings and studies on social policy, many feminist scholars have contributed to the research by evaluating the gender stratifi cation of the welfare state and social policy against the standards of woman-friendliness (hernes 1987/1989; for critique see borchorst/siim 2008), gender equality and gender equity. in these contributions the welfare state is often considered to be the cen• elina schleutker128 tral actor which either encourages or discourages gender equity (mazur 2002: 15). it is common that three different defi nitions of gender equity are applied. probably the most profound argumentation on the issue is that provided by fraser (1994), who discusses the types of gender equity along the lines of what she chooses to call the “universal breadwinner model”, where gender equity is striven for by promoting female employment, and the “caregiver parity model”, where gender equity is promoted by supporting informal care work. fraser herself concludes that neither tab. 1: family policy clusters i ii iii iv v lewis (1992), weak moderate strong ostner (1995) breadwinner: breadwinner: breadwinner: denmark belgium germany finland france ireland sweden netherlands uk esping-andersen socialliberal: conservative: (1999) democratic: denmark australia continental southern finland canada europe europe norway ireland austria italy sweden uk belgium portugal usa france spain germany netherlands leitner (2003) optional explicit de-familialism: implicit (childcare only) familialism: familialism: familialism: belgium austria ireland greece denmark germany uk portugal finland italy spain france luxembourg sweden netherlands pfau-effinger dual breadwinner modernisation of (2005) family model the male breadwinner model: france uk denmark norway sweden netherlands finland western germany thévenon (2011) continuous high financial short leave, limited long leave strong support support, but support targeted assistance for but low cash for working limited support to low-income families: benefits and parents of for dual-earner single parent greece childcare for children under families with families and italy children age 3: children under families with korea under age 3: denmark age 3: preschool japan czech republic finland austria children: portugal hungary iceland belgium australia spain poland norway france canada slovakia sweden germany ireland luxembourg new zealand netherlands switzerland uk usa fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 129 of the models is good enough as they do not require men to change and, consequently, she claims that gender equity can be achieved only when men become more like women, i.e., when men also combine care-giving and employment. in practice, according to pfau-effi nger (2004, 2005), a somewhat evolutionary view of gender equity has dominated the research, that is a high proportion of public childcare and female labour force participation (high degree of de-familialization) is seen as the woman-friendly and gender-equal alternative, whereas a low share of public child care and female employment (high degree of familialism) is understood as less women-friendly and gender equal. pfau-effi nger herself has criticised this approach by pointing out that there is evidence of several different paths which are taken to gender equity, and that the one-dimensional frameworks (such as familialization and de-familialization) are not adequate to capture current welfare state developments. 3 what lessons can demographers learn from gendered research on the welfare state? in order to exemplify how demographers can benefi t from gendered welfare state research, this section compares the theories discussed above on the welfare state with two types of theories on fertility, namely the economic theory on fertility and gender equity and role incompatibility theories. 3.1 new home economics and welfare state institutions the economic theory on fertility treats children as consumer durables and analyses household demand for children with the same tools as demand for any other durable. in this framework, the number of children is assumed to depend on a household’s preferences, the quality and quantity of children, household income and the costs of children (becker 1960; becker/lewis 1973; willis 1973; becker 1981/1991). women’s employment and thus their opportunity costs are in turn often presumed to infl uence fertility negatively. that is, the higher education and income, the higher the opportunity costs and the lower fertility. the importance of this theory for fertility research has been vast, but one of its drawbacks is that it ignores the fact that choices are made in national institutional contexts which differ substantially, as discussed above. consequently, it is probable that the economic theory, or at least research based on the theory, would benefi t if the knowledge of gendered welfare state research were taken into account when it comes to the differences between the institutional logics in the treatment of the family. many scholars already refer to welfare state literature when they make hypotheses or interpret the results (e.g. köppen 2006; brodmann et al. 2007). however, a more extensive discussion of the institutional constraints in different countries would enable more systematic context-specifi c hypothesising, and therefore also allow systematic predictions about the infl uence of the central variables on fertility in different types of welfare states. • elina schleutker130 it is, for example, well known that women’s inactivity infl uences fertility positively at micro-level (hoem/hoem 1989; berinde 1999; oláh 2003; cooke 2004; kreyenfeld 2004; prskawetz/zagaglia 2005; cooke 2008; breton/prioux 2009). as the direction of the impact is well established, the possible differences in the magnitude of the effect should be discussed. the descriptive evidence provided by feminist scholars concerning the welfare state support for informal care could prove to be helpful here. a possible hypothesis could be, for instance, that in countries where the male breadwinner family is generously supported (e.g. germany), the household income of families where the woman is inactive, and hence the fertility is higher, than in countries where practically no support is provided for male breadwinner families (e.g. sweden). other areas where the gendered welfare state theories might help in a similar manner to increase our understanding of the magnitude of the infl uence are for instance the negative impact of educational attainment on fi rst births (kreyenfeld 2004; klein/eckhard 2007; westoff/marshall 2010), and the mixed evidence of the impact of female income, varying from negative (rønsen 2004; rondinelli et al. 2010) to positive (hoem 2000; andersson 2000; vikat 2004) and even u-shaped (kreyenfeld/zabel 2005) depending on the country and parity that are studied. with a similar logic, considerations of the interaction between welfare state institutions might help researchers to explain why certain variables sometimes behave contrary to expectations. for example, the weak support for the impact of family policy on fertility (gauthier 2007) might be better understood by paying more attention to the welfare state institutions and especially to the consistency of family policies (e.g. leitner/wroblewski 2006). 3.2 role compatibility, gender equity and de-familialization the change in the macro-level association between female labour force participation and fertility from negative to positive in the mid-1980s (ahn/mira 2002; rindfuss et al. 2003; but see also castles 2003) inspired several scholars to theorise about the infl uence of family policy on fertility and women’s employment. for instance, rindfuss and brewster (1996), brewster and rindfuss (2000) and rindfuss et al. (2003) argue that, whereas governments in some countries are better at implementing policies that reduce role incompatibility between market employment and parenthood, institutions in other countries have not adapted to the labour force participation of mothers. according to them, high role incompatibility leads to low participation and low fertility, whereas role compatibility leads to both high participation and high fertility. mcdonald (2000a/b, 2002), in turn, claims that the size of the gap between gender equity in family-oriented institutions (institutions which deal with people as family members, such as joint taxation) and individual-oriented institutions (institutions which treat people as individuals, such as education and labour market) determines the level of fertility. according to mcdonald, the levels of gender equity in the individual-oriented institutions are high at present in all developed countries. those countries in which gender equity in the family-oriented institutions is likewise high have the highest fertility, whereas those countries where the degree of gender equity in family-oriented institutions is lower, experience lower levels of fertility. fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 131 there are several parallels between these theories on fertility and esping-andersen’s framework on familialization and de-familialization, which is also recognised by the authors themselves (rindfuss et al. 2003: 415; mcdonald 2000a: 1, 2002: 429). indeed, role compatibility and gender equity are basically de-familialization in disguise: in all theories, family policy which eases the welfare responsibilities of the family is identifi ed as a key determinant of high fertility. consequently, a very similar critique as that which has been targeted towards the concept of de-familialization can be targeted towards the role incompatibility thesis, as well as to gender equity theory. for example, all three theories in essence exemplify pfau-effi nger’s (see section 2) description of an evolutionary approach to social policy where the changes in informal care and different developmental paths of the welfare states are ignored and the focus is instead placed on the ways in which the different countries support women’s labour market participation. as i see it, the minor attention given to informal care and to the ways in which it is organised considerably weakens the analytical power of the frameworks discussed above. to put it differently, the theories do not take into consideration that a low degree of role compatibility and gender equity might mean completely different things in different countries, and that this might in turn have different consequences for fertility. moreover, the increases in role compatibility and gender equity can take different paths, each of which might infl uence fertility differently. one way to understand these diffi culties which arise from the lack of a profound consideration of informal care is to consider these theories in the light of the framework of leitner (2003) discussed above. to briefl y repeat the argument, leitner distinguishes between strong and weak defamilialization and familialization, respectively. this distinction results in a framework in which family policy can be classifi ed into four different types (table 2): strong familialization and strong de-familialization (optional familialism), weak de-familialization, but strong familialization (explicit familialism), strong de-familialization, but weak familialization (de-familialism), and weak familialization and weak de-familialization (implicit familialism). if the arguments put forward by the supporters of the role incompatibility thesis, and by mcdonald, are considered in the light of leitner’s framework, it is not very clear what, for example, a low degree of role compatibility and a low degree of gender equity in family-oriented institutions mean. in this case, are we dealing with explicit or implicit familialism, or with both alternatives? after all, the degree of role compatibility and gender equity in the family-oriented institutions is low in both tab. 2: leitner’s (2003) framework on familialism familialization de-familialization strong weak strong optional familialism explicit familialism weak de-familialism implicit familialism source: table 1 in leitner (2003: 358). • elina schleutker132 cases, yet in the fi rst case the state supports the family in its caring function (explicit familialism), whereas in the other case the state lets the family survive on its own resources (implicit familialism). a classic example here would be the low degree of childcare provision in the conservative welfare states (weak defamilialiazation), but generous tax support for male breadwinner families as well as in generously compensated long leave periods, for example in germany (strong familialization), and the lack of such tax support and shorter, poorly-compensated leave periods in greece (weak familialization). despite the common denominator of a low degree of role compatibility, defamilialization and gender equity, it appears logical that fertility is affected differently by family policy in these two countries. the same logic applies to the rising level of de-familialization: the theories of role incompatibility and gender equity assume that any increase in the degree of role compatibility or gender equity in the family-oriented institutions leads towards higher fertility. yet it is not clear whether the increases in the level of de-familialization, on the one hand, or familialization, on the other, infl uence fertility differently, or do so to differing degrees. for example: an increase in childcare supply increases the level of role compatibility and gender equity in family-oriented institutions (strong defamilialization), but does this increase infl uence fertility in a similar way and to a similar extent as an increase in parental leave periods and compensation (strong familialization)? these problems naturally do not challenge the core claims made by the supporters of these theories as to the positive impact of generous reconciliation policies on fertility. however, a further specifi cation of these theories might result in a better understanding of the causal mechanisms between family policy and fertility, and thus of the cross-country differences in fertility. 4 towards an integrated approach the introduction of the gendered welfare state perspective on demographic theories on childbearing can probably contribute to a better understanding of fertility behaviour. however, even though the theoretical frameworks on fertility discussed above have signifi cantly increased our understanding of the infl uence of micro and macro level factors on fertility, none of them has provided us with a comprehensive explanation of the variations in fertility between the countries. thus, it is reasonable to ask whether a further step should be taken towards a combined theory. one of the many possibilities to take an integrated approach is outlined below. the suggestion of combining elements from both sides of the research is not new, but comparable considerations have been articulated for example by mcdaniel (1996), neyer (2006), as well as by gonzález and jurado-guerrero (2006). the approach taken in this paper differs from the earlier attempts in that it also introduces women’s heterogeneous preferences and systematically discusses the way in which these preferences in different welfare states transform into different choices in terms of employment and family. fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 133 4.1 from preferences to career strategies according to the preference theory by hakim (1998, 2000, 2002, 2003a/b), women today have better possibilities to lead the kind of life they want, due to several historical changes which have contributed to a new scenario (contraceptive revolution, equal opportunities revolution, expansion of white-collar occupations, employment opportunities for secondary earners, and the increasing importance of attitudes, values and personal preferences when it comes to the choices made about lifestyle). consequently, both the variation in women’s fertility and labour market participation can be explained with the heterogeneity in women’s lifestyle preferences when it comes to employment and childbearing. hakim further argues that it is possible to distinguish between three different groups of women based on their preferences: the majority group (40-80 percent of the female population) consists of adaptive women who either wish to combine work and family without giving priority to either of them, or have unplanned careers and drift in a sense that they do not have a clear idea of how they want to lead their lives. these women are highly responsive for example to employment and social policy, as these policies infl uence working conditions and the degree of role compatibility. a minority of women (10-30 percent of the female population) are home-centred. the primary aspiration of these women is to devote themselves to homemaking, and they usually have large families. their employment choices are not affected by employment policy (as they prefer not to work, at least not when their children are young), but their fertility is partly determined by social policy, as it infl uences family income, which in turn infl uences fertility. finally, another minority group of women (also 10-30 percent of the female population) is work-centred. for these women, work is their fi rst priority and they only have children, if it is possible in the context of their work. consequently, and contrary to the other two groups of women, workcentred women are not very responsive to social or family policy. the sizes of the preference groups vary between the countries, as the policies normally support one group of women at the expense of the others. this, according to hakim, is also the reason for low fertility; when women are not supported in their preferred lifestyles by the government, they have fewer children than they would like to have. the preference theory is found to be problematic, both when it comes to theory and practice. several researchers have, for example, accused hakim of ignoring the fact that preferences alone do not explain women’s employment patterns but that women’s work orientations are a sum of nationally and culturally different opportunities and constraints (crompton/harris 1998a/b; mcrae 2003a/b). furthermore, pfau-effi nger (2004) has pointed out that hakim has not made it clear why women choose different labour market careers than their preferences would suggest, as well as why different types of preference have evolved in the fi rst place, and why an individual woman chooses one preference group over the others. moreover, at the theoretical level it is diffi cult to draw a demarcation line between the different preference groups (mcrae 2003a: 333), whereas at practical level it has proven to be diffi cult to distinguish between the groups using the existing survey material (hakim 2003c). the studies support the idea that preferences have an impact on • elina schleutker134 women’s employment patterns at least to some extent, but the interplay between preferences and constraints (doorewaard et al. 2004; crompton/lyonette 2005; kan 2007; kangas/rostgaard 2007; debacker 2008; gash 2008), as well as the complex association between attitude formation and behaviour (steiber/haas 2009), is underlined. moreover, the employment status and work preferences of mothers with children under school age are found to correspond poorly in most of the countries (beets et al. 1997; evans/kelley 2001; hakovirta/salin 2006; wall 2007). also, the evidence indicates that women who prefer to have one to two children usually prefer market employment, whereas women who desire larger families more often wish to concentrate on homemaking or work part-time (lee/gramotnev 2006). vitali et al. (2009) in turn fi nd that in the european countries there is an association between employment-childbearing preferences and realised fertility behaviour, whereas no link can be found between preferences and fertility intentions. all in all, then, although it is clear that more research is needed in order to establish a detailed understanding of women’s lifestyle preferences, in the light of the present evidence it appears reasonable to assume that, as suggested by hakim, women have differing preferences when it comes to childbearing and employment. it further appears reasonable to assume that by studying these preferences it is possible to group women into the three different groups of home-centred, adaptive and work-centred. the starting point of the current framework is thus that, as suggested by hakim, women have heterogeneous preferences. one of the strengths of this approach is that it acknowledges that women within and between the countries are not to be treated as one homogeneous group with similar kinds of desires, but that we should expect variation in the responses to, for instance, public policy. moreover, the theory guides us in the identifi cation of the different groups, and allows us to make suggestions about their relative size in each population. even though the assumption about the heterogeneity of women’s preferences is warranted, the above literature overview shows that it is not obvious how strongly these preferences infl uence behaviour. what the fi ndings of the cited studies do show is that women are also heterogeneous when it comes to labour market participation and to fertility. heterogeneity of behaviour is discussed for example by bernhardt (2000: 10), who divides women into three different groups according to their “lifetime career strategies in relation to childbearing”. the fi rst of these strategies is “career strategy”, and it is chosen by women who engage in a demanding career. given the demanding career, careerists often remain childless or only have one child. the second group of women, according to bernhardt, chooses a “combination strategy”, that is these women are interested in staying in employment, but are also willing to restrict their employment when they have children. bernhardt further states that these women have more children if society is family-friendly. finally, the third group of women chooses a “homemaking strategy”, which means that they choose homemaking, or at least long periods of homemaking, after the fi rst child is born. this group of women also usually has more children than those who choose the career or combination strategies. considering the evidence for and against the preference theory, as well as that on women’s heterogeneous choices when it comes to fertility and employment, it fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 135 appears plausible to assume that the preferred lifestyles are constrained to some degree. it can be similarly assumed that, given the constraints and preferences, women need to make different lifestyle choices when it comes to employment and fertility, and that women consequently end up with realising, at least roughly speaking, either the career strategy, the combination strategy or the homemaking strategy. these different categories proposed by bernhardt are convenient, as the association between the different preferences and strategy groups is straightforward: home-centred women prefer the homemaking strategy, adaptive women the combination strategy and work-centred women the career strategy. however, as the preferences remain an important determinant of lifestyle choices, it can be further postulated that when faced with constraints, and if she needs to choose a career strategy not in line with her initial preference, an individual woman will choose the strategy which bears the closest resemblance to her original desires. in other words, only in a very particular situation will, for example, a home-centered woman who cannot realise the homemaking strategy choose the career strategy instead of the combination strategy. to understand the relations suggested above, it is helpful to think in terms of distributions (fig. 1). what hakim basically argues is that the range of women’s preferences varies from exceptionally home-centred to exceptionally work-centred, and that three different groups of women can be distinguished within this range. according to hakim’s theory, the three different groups are suffi cient to capture the most important aspects of the variation between women, but it is basically possible to divide the female population into even a larger number of groups (e.g. ten groups based on deciles). hakim furthermore gives some loose suggestions concerning the skewness (the relative size of the different groups) of the distribution. according to her, basically any combination from a positively skewed distribution, where 30 percent of the women are home-centred women, 60 percent adaptive and 10 percent work-centred women, to a negatively skewed distribution, where 10 percent of the women are home centred, 60 percent adaptive and 30 percent work centred, is possible. however, she does not make any comments on the kurtosis (how homogeneous we can expect the women within the three different groups to be). in a similar manner, we can understand women’s career strategies as a distribution where we fi nd women who basically never work (homemaking strategy in its extreme form) at one end and at the other those women who continuously work full-time (career strategy in its extreme form). in between these two extreme types, we fi nd women who divide their time at home and employment differently. unlike hakim, bernhardt does not make any numerical suggestions as to what the distribution of the women might look like. the shape of the distribution (that is the size of the different groups of women as well as the homogeneity within the groups), both when it comes to preferences and to career strategies, is naturally ultimately a matter for empirical investigation. my suggestion is to link these two theories or distributions together. were workfamily choices to be solely determined by preferences, the distribution based on preferences would be identical with the distribution based on the chosen career strategies. however, because of different constraints that limit women’s opportuni• elina schleutker136 ties, the preference distributions and career strategy distributions are not congruent. below i will argue that family policy as well as household resources determine the way in which the preference distribution transforms into career strategy distribution to a large extent. 4.2 welfare state policies, household resources and women’s career strategy choices what kind of contextual factors help or hinder women in realising their preferences, and thus infl uence the way in which the preference distribution transforms to career strategy distribution? welfare state researchers, labour market specialists and demographers have pointed out that for example the tax system (gustafsson 1992; dingeldey 2001; apps/rees 2004), parental leave regulations (rönsen 2004; andersson et al. 2006; lalive/zweimüller 2009), child care supply (oláh 2003; uunk et al. 2005; baizán 2009) and the possibility to work part-time (del boca 2002; lewis et al. 2008) infl uence women’s labour market participation and fertility and shape the opportunity structures. these macro-level factors might have an impact on both the number of women who choose a certain strategy and on how the different strategies are realised. for instance, some adaptive women might see long periods of part-time work as a means to realise the combination strategy, whereas other adaptive women realise the same strategy by taking a very long parental leave. further, as there are signifi cant differences between the welfare states when it comes to family policy, it is reasonable to assume that in different countries the preference distributions transform to career strategy distributions differently and to a differing degree. in addition to welfare state policies, household resources such as fi nancial assets (wage, income, inheritance) and the number of family members and relatives who can share the burden of childcare with the mother are important for women’s choices. for instance: family income can infl uence the possibilities to buy good fig. 1: from preferences to career strategies source: own design fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 137 quality childcare, whereas care provision from family members, in turn, is particularly important for working mothers when welfare state support for childcare is inadequate or childcare is expensive. finally, even childbearing itself can act as a constraint. under some circumstances (e.g. expensive child care), an adaptive woman might therefore be able to realise the combination strategy by part-time work, but once she has her second child the combination becomes too costly and she has to opt for homemaking instead. table 3 shows data on the above variables for selected countries (except for parttime work, as indicators on part-time work measure the number of women working part-time rather than the actual availability of part-time employment). the number of full-rate equivalent parental leave weeks (column 1) and the maximum length of leave for the mother (column 2) show in particular whether and how the choices of the adaptive women, and thus the combination strategy, are supported: the longer and better compensated the leave, the better the support for the realisation of the combination strategy by long inactive periods. the shorter and more poorly compensated the leave, the more restricted the support for the combination strategy with long periods of inactivity, and the higher the incentives for a realisation of the career strategy, homemaking strategy or combination strategy with part-time work. as work-centred women who have children most likely wish to return to employment as soon as possible, the generosity or maximum length of leave periods is not likely to infl uence their decisions to any great extent, given that all countries provide for the possibility for at least brief leave periods. homemakers, however, are likely to benefi t from long and generous leave periods. enrolment in childcare for children under three years of age (column 3) as well as the average hours spent in daycare (column 4) in turn say something about the state support for adaptive and work-centred women: the higher the enrolment ratios and the number of hours in care, the better the support for the combination strategy and career strategy with children. the lower the enrolment ratios and the number of hours in care, the more incentives there are for work-centred women to stay childless. further, the lower the enrolment ratios and hours in care, the more incentives there are for adaptive women to realise either the combination strategy by limiting their fertility (as it might be diffi cult to fi nd formal or informal childcare for several children) or choose the homemaking or career strategy. in consequence, if the combination strategy is too diffi cult or even impossible to realise, adaptive women might need to choose between having children and remaining inactive, or not having children but work. the structure of the tax system shows in particular whether and if so what kind of support is available for home-centred and adaptive women. the tax rate for a family where only one of the spouses is in full-time employment (column 6) is an indicator of the disposable income of the family: the lower the tax rate, the higher the disposable income of the one-earner family and the better the possibilities for homemaking or the combination strategy with long periods of inactivity. the higher the tax rate, the more pressure there is for the second earner to enter employment and thus more support for the combination strategy through part-time employment. the family privilege (column 7) is calculated by dividing the tax rate in column 6 • elina schleutker138 ta b . 3 : d et er m in an ts o f w o m en ’s o p p o rt un it y st ru ct ur es le av es fo r m o th er c hi ld ca re fo r ch ild re n ag ed 0 -2 t ax at io n le ng th o f t he fr e p ai d le av e (w ee ks ) m ax le ng th (w ee ks ) e nr o lm en t ra te a ve ra ge ho ur s o f at te nd an ce p er w ee k n et c o st s in % o f f am ily in co m e t ax r at e: s in g le ea rn er fa m ily fa m ily pr iv ile g e n et in co m e w he n co up le w o rk s 10 033 n et in co m e w he n co up le w o rk s 10 067 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 s oc ia l d em oc ra tic d en m ar k 32 .3 64 66 34 8 36 0. 87 12 4 15 2 fi nl an d 35 .7 15 6. 5 29 32 7 30 1. 00 13 7 16 7 n o rw ay 38 .8 10 0 51 33 8 27 0. 92 13 1 16 1 s w ed en 37 .7 60 47 34 6 27 1. 00 13 4 16 3 c on se rv at iv e a us tr ia 35 .3 11 2 12 19 15 32 0. 95 13 2 15 8 b el g iu m 14 .4 28 48 29 4 31 0. 74 12 6 14 4 fr an ce 43 .8 15 9. 0 42 38 11 22 0. 79 13 3 15 8 g er m an y 54 .6 16 2. 0 18 31 8 24 0. 56 12 3 14 4 g re ec e 25 .4 73 .3 16 28 5 27 1. 01 13 8 17 0 ita ly 23 .8 46 29 29 22 0. 75 12 9 15 3 n et he rl an d s 21 .3 42 56 23 12 33 0. 93 13 4 16 2 p o rt ug al 17 30 47 30 4 15 0. 65 12 9 15 3 s p ai n 16 16 2 37 19 11 0. 59 12 8 16 1 li be ra l a us tr al ia 0 52 29 16 10 23 1. 00 12 6 15 1 c an ad a 27 .5 52 24 20 22 17 0. 74 12 6 15 2 ir el an d 6. 6 56 31 31 29 7 0. 46 12 8 15 2 u k 12 .8 65 41 18 33 24 0. 94 13 5 16 2 u s a 0 12 31 32 19 11 0. 46 12 6 15 3 n o te s: c o lu m ns 1 4 : d at a ap p ro xi m at el y fo r 20 08 . c o lu m n 5: r ef er s to a d ua lea rn er fa m ily w ith fu lltim e ar ra ng em en ts o f 1 67 p er ce nt o f t he a ve ra ge w ag e in 2 00 4 an d t w o c hi ld re n ag ed 2 a nd 3 in f ul l-t im e ca re . c o lu m n 6: r ef er s to a ve ra ge p ay m en ts t o g o ve rn m en t in p er ce nt o f gr o ss h o us eh o ld ea rn in gs in 2 00 8 o f a co up le w ith t w o c hi ld re n, w he re o ne p ar tn er ’s g ro ss in co m e is 1 00 p er ce nt o f av er ag e w o rk er e ar ni ng s, a nd w he re t he o th er p ar tn er d o es n o t w o rk a t al l. c o lu m n 7: c al cu la te d b y d iv id in g co lu m n 6 w ith t he a ve ra ge p ay m en ts t o g o ve rn m en t o f a ch ild le ss s in gl e p er so n w ith gr o ss in co m e o f 1 00 p er ce nt o f t he a ve ra ge e ar ni ng s. c o lu m ns 8 -9 : c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n d at a o n in co m e ta x p lu s em p lo ye e co nt ri b ut io ns le ss c as h b en efi t s as p er ce nt o f g ro ss w ag e ea rn in gs , o ne p ar tn er w o rk in g fu lltim e, th e o th er w o rk in g sh o rt p ar ttim e ho ur s (c o lu m n 8) o r lo ng p ar ttim e ho ur s (c o lu m n 9) . s o ur ce : c o lu m ns 1 -5 , o ec d (2 01 2) . c o lu m ns 6 -7 : o ec d (2 00 8: 5 0) . c o lu m ns 8 -9 : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n o ec d (2 00 8: 5 2) . fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 139 by the tax rate of a single person without children (cf. sainsbury 1999). the closer to the unit the ratio is, the less support there is for the one-earner family model, in other words for the homemaking strategy or the combination strategy with longer employment breaks. likewise, the further away the ratio is from the unit, the higher the support for the homemaking strategy and the combination strategy with longer breaks from employment. in addition (columns 8 and 9), following oecd (2001: 142), we take a look at how much the net income of a two-child family with average earnings (100-0) increases if the other spouse decides to work short part-time hours (100-33) or long part-time hours (100-67). the closer the net income increase is to the gross income increase (133 and 167 respectively), the more incentives there are for the second earner to enter employment, and the better the support for the realisation of the combination strategy by employment. the lower the income increase, the higher the incentives for the homemaking strategy or the combination strategy with longer inactive periods. as to the household resources, it is diffi cult to fi nd applicable macro level data and consequently only the net costs of childcare are included as a percentage of family income for a dual earner family with two children (column 5). childcare costs are likely to give some indication of how much the strategy choices of adaptive and work-centred women in particular are infl uenced by household income: the higher the costs, the more likely it is that the choices are determined by income. for example, adaptive women on a low wage might be attracted to homemaking if the costs of childcare make employment unbenefi cial. the outcomes which are generated by the different opportunity structures are shown in table 4. even though the outlined theory concentrates on women’s heterogeneity, and in essence requires to be tested with longitudinal micro level data, some trends can even be distinguished from the macro-level data. employment patterns among couple families with youngest child aged between 3 and 5 (columns 1-4) gives information on the actual choices women make concerning employment and family. the parity-adjusted total fertility rate patfr (or tfr), and patfr1 (or tfr1) (columns 5-6) in turn indicate the level of total and fi rst birth fertility. finally, the proportion of live births by rank of the children (columns 7-9) sheds some further light on fertility trends. to organise the data and the discussion, esping-andersen’s typology is employed. as the review of the gendered welfare state literature in section 2 shows, there is no consensus on how the countries cluster in terms of family policy. however, given that the results from different studies during the past two decades overlap relatively well with esping-andersen’s typology, his framework is employed here for its overall clarity. 4.2.1 social democratic countries in social democratic countries, family policy works in favour of the combination and career strategies at the expense of the homemaking strategy. adaptive women can rely on the generous parental leave arrangements which enable mothers to stay home for long periods without worrying about losing their jobs (the fre leave • elina schleutker140 varies from roughly 32 weeks in denmark to almost 39 weeks in norway, and the time rights are even more generous, particularly in finland and norway). at the same time, extensive, affordable childcare4 enables mothers, regardless of their household income, to return to work without diffi culties related to the organisation of childcare. thus, adaptive women are able to combine work and the preferred number of children relatively well, even though they may face constraints such as low local availability of part-time work, which in addition to the childbearing pref4 enrollment rates in finland are considerably lower, but according to the finnish legislation the municipalities have to organise childcare for all children below the age of three (välimäki/rauhala 2000). the low enrollment rates thus do not signal a limited supply, but rather a limited take-up. tab. 4: indicators of employment patterns and fertility employment patterns among couple families when the youngest child is aged 3-5 (%)a fertility rate proportion of live births by rank of childrenf both fulltime one parent full-time one parent full-time, other parttime other total first birth 1 2 3+ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 social democratic denmark 1.84e 43 37 20 finland 63 19 12 7 1.87b 0.79b 42 33 25 norway 1.98c 0.87c 43 35 21 sweden 33 15 43 9 1.94b 0.87b 45 36 19 conservative austria 15 27 51 8 1.41b 0.73b 47 35 18 belgium 32 23 36 9 1.86e france 46 24 22 8 1.99e germany 13 30 47 10 1.38d 0.68d 49d 34d 17d greece 47 44 6 3 1.52c 0.74c 47 38 15 italy 30 42 22 6 1.41e netherlands 4 20 62 14 1.79b 0.83b 45 37 18 portugal 67 22 7 4 1.41b 0.86b 53 35 11 spain 38 40 17 5 1.39c 0.77c 57 33 10 liberal australia 21 30 40 9 1.90e canada 1.67b 0.78b ireland 2.07e uk 19 28 43 11 1.94e usa 2.14b 0.88b notes: a data for approximately 2007; b data on patfr for 2009, except for canada and the usa for 2007; c data on tfr for 2009; d data on tfr for 2008; e data on tfr for 2009; f data for 2008, except for denmark for 2005. source: a, e, f oecd (2012); b human fertility database (2012); c author’s calculations based on data from eurostat (2012); d kreyenfeld et al. (2010). fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 141 erences, the costs of children and household income limit their fertility. furthermore, especially due to the good availability of affordable childcare work-centred women can have children without childbearing needing to interfere too much with their career plans, and consequently the level of childlessness is likely to be low. the homemaking strategy is not supported to any large extent, except for denmark where the family privilege is relatively high and the second earner’s employment is discouraged. in other countries, homemaking is costly and diffi cult to realise, and many home-centred women are likely to opt for the combination strategy. those home-centred women who choose the homemaking strategy are likely to be either a group of women whose household income is high enough to enable homemaking, or whose marginal income is low, or who have very strong preferences for homemaking. for these women, as for homemakers in general, the level of fertility can be assumed (as suggested by the economic theory on fertility) to depend on childbearing preferences, on the direct costs of children, as well as on household income. as to the outcomes, data on women’s employment patterns only exist for finland and sweden. the relative share of mothers in employment is highest in these two countries in the cross-country comparison and the number of one earner families is the lowest. notice, however, that it is common in finland for both partners to work full-time, and the role of part-time work is marginal, whereas in sweden it is almost the other way around. a somewhat larger share of women in finland are inactive, which is likely to be due to the extensive time rights connected to leave. in other words, the data suggests that in sweden women even realise the combination strategy often through part-time work, whereas in finland the combination strategy is mainly realised by prolonged inactive periods followed by a return to full-time employment. as to childbearing, all four nordic countries experience relatively high levels of fertility. however, the levels of fertility are lowest in denmark, which disagrees with the theoretical framework given that denmark gives the best incentives for all women to choose as they desire. the explanation of this discrepancy might be related to the lifestyle and childbearing preferences of danish women. rates for fi rst birth fertility are high for both norway and sweden, but are considerably lower for finland. in all countries the share of fi rst births from the total is relatively low (from 42 percent in finland to 45 percent in sweden), which indicates that many women have more than only one child. notice further that particularly in finland the share of higher-order births is relatively high, which might be related to the higher share of inactive women: combination through inactivity might favour larger families than combination through part-time work. 4.2.2 conservative countries there is a general bias in the conservative cluster towards the homemaking strategy, and this strategy is accordingly chosen by home-centred women as well as by many adaptive women. homemakers are likely to have a large number of children, which means that the parity progression ratios to higher birth orders are probably higher in the conservative than in the social-democratic country cluster. some adaptive women are able to realise the combination strategy, but need to rely extensively • elina schleutker142 on childcare provided by their friends and relatives. indeed, even though childcare services are relatively affordable, the scarce availability of them means that the compatibility of work and family is diffi cult regardless of the household income. consequently, households resources in terms of childcare provided by relatives and friends are likely to play a crucial role. if this kind of care is not available, homemaking becomes an attractive choice. moreover, a majority of work-centred women, as well as some adaptive women, are likely to choose the career strategy without children, which results to a relatively high degree of childlessness. even though a common general pattern can be identifi ed, there is a considerable variation between the countries in how the mechanism works. both in austria and germany the limited childcare supply and very long leave periods enforce and encourage homemaking, even for adaptive women. the tax system in germany additionally reinforces the homemaking strategy, but in austria the tax system encourages part-time work. also in greece, the lack of childcare enforces homemaking, but support for adaptive women is even more limited than in austria and germany as fre leave is relatively short. moreover, the tax system incentivises women’s employment and leaves homemakers without support. as to the outcomes, a signifi cantly higher share of mothers in austria and germany are inactive in comparison to the social democratic countries. those women who are in employment mostly work part-time, and in accordance with the tax incentives, part-time work is somewhat more widespread in austria than in germany. in greece, in turn, there is a strong polarisation between those mothers who work full-time and those who stay at home, and the role of part-time work is rather marginal. the level of total and fi rst birth fertility is low in all countries, and the share of fi rst-rank births is somewhat higher than in the social democratic countries. in other words, the data suggests that many women choose the career strategy without children, and those women who choose the combination strategy limit the number of children they have. for italy and spain, it is primarily the restricted length of well-compensated parental leave combined with the considerable male breadwinner bias in taxation that makes homemaking benefi cial for both home-centred and for adaptive women. at the same time, childcare supply is better in these countries than in austria, greece and germany, which gives somewhat better possibilities for adaptive and workcentred women to live according to their preferences. as to realised behaviour, the share of inactive mothers in italy and spain is at the same levels as in greece, which suggests that many women in these countries indeed relatively often opt for homemaking or the combination strategy by longer inactive periods. the share of part-time working women is lower than in austria and germany, whereas the share of full-time working women in turn is relatively high. thus, whereas in austria and germany it is mainly the restricted supply of daycare services that force women to choose the homemaking strategy and part-time work, the somewhat better daycare supply in italy and spain appears to allow the women to choose the career strategy with full-time work to a larger extent, and the restricted leave periods force them to do so. notice further that both the total and fi rst-birth fertility rates in spain are low, and a high share of the births are of fi rst rank. in other words, the data suggests that fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 143 many women choose to realise the career strategy by staying childless or by only having one child. portugal deviates from the patterns in these two countries. even though family policy structures are relatively similar to those in italy and spain in that the leave periods are short and there is a male breadwinner bias in the tax system, the availability of daycare services is relatively good. as to the outcomes, mothers’ full-time employment is even more popular in portugal than for example in finland and the share of inactive women is likewise at the same level as in finland. the role of parttime work, in turn, is very marginal. moreover, even though the level of total fertility is low, the level of fi rst birth fertility is relatively high. over 50 percent of the births are fi rst births, and only 11 percent third or higher are order births. in other words, portuguese women appear to a very large extent to choose the career strategy with only one child. in belgium and france, in turn, the male breadwinner bias in the tax system enables home-centred women to choose the homemaking career, but at the same time the good availability of affordable childcare in both countries and the long generous leave periods in france enable adaptive and work-centred women to choose according to their preferences. however, the length of the leave periods is more limited in belgium, which means that belgian adaptive women are attracted to realise the combination strategy by part-time work to a larger extent than adaptive women in france. the activity data shows that the share of inactive women is indeed slightly higher than in the social democratic countries (as the possibilities to realise the homemaking strategy are better) but lower than for example in austria, germany and greece (as adaptive women are not forced to choose the homemaking strategy but have good possibilities to opt for the combination strategy). further, the share of part-time working women is higher in belgium than in france, which is in accordance with the family policy incentive structures. the higher share of full-time working mothers in france in turn suggests that many women realise the combination strategy by longer inactive periods and return to full-time employment. finally, the fertility rates in both countries are at the same level as in the social democratic countries, but there is unfortunately no available good quality data on the level of fi rst birth fertility or the distribution of the births by birth order. in the netherlands, there is some bias towards homemaking created by the family privilege in taxation. however, in general the tax system encourages part-time work, the relatively short leave periods provide incentives for adaptive women to realise the combination strategy by part-time work and the availability of part-time childcare is likewise relatively good. consequently, the share of inactive mothers is somewhat lower than in belgium and france, but still higher than in sweden and at the same level as in finland. however, the extremely high share of part-time working mothers (62 percent), accompanied with a very low share of full-time working mothers, cannot be explained with the incentive structures alone. one possibility is that the career strategy is not a very popular alternative among dutch mothers, or that having children is not very popular among work-centred women. in any case, the huge popularity of the combination strategy is likely to be the main reason behind the high total and fi rst birth fertility. • elina schleutker144 4.2.3 liberal welfare states in the liberal countries, there is some support for each career strategy, but women’s possibilities to choose according to their preferences often depend on household resources. the family taxation shapes the constraints by favouring one earner families and the homemaking strategy, which makes the homemaking strategy easily available for the home-centred women. given the lack of well-compensated parental leave and publicly provided childcare, but the good availability of privately provided, expensive childcare, the career strategy choices of adaptive and work-centred women are likely to depend heavily on the initial resources of the family. many adaptive women can choose the strategy they desire by buying childcare from the market (or by relying on help from their friends and relatives). for those adaptive women who cannot afford market-based childcare, or obtain help in childcare from friends and relatives, homemaking becomes an attractive alternative. indeed, even though the enrolment rates in the liberal countries are at the same levels as in many of the conservative countries, the reason for the low enrolment is likely to be different. that is, in the conservative countries the low enrolment rates are probably due to the limited supply of public childcare, whereas in liberal countries the low enrolment rates indicate the limited take-up at current high prices. however, some adaptive women, due to the short compensated leave, might realise the combination strategy by working part-time, whereas some might even opt for the career strategy. finally, many work-centred women are able to have children according to their preferences due to the availability of private childcare, and hence the level of childlessness is likely to be low, or in other words at the same levels as in the social democratic cluster. consequently, the overall level of fertility is relatively high. there are some exceptions from these general patterns. most notably, the amount of fre leave in canada is somewhat longer than in the other countries, the tax system in the uk encourages short part-time work rather than homemaking, and childcare costs are relatively low in australia. as to the outcomes, it is diffi cult to obtain a good picture of what is going on in the liberal countries as there is only a very limited amount of data available. the fertility rates are high in all countries except for canada. data on fi rst-birth fertility is only available for canada and the usa, and shows that part of the reason for the low canadian total fertility is the relatively low level of fi rst-birth fertility. on the other hand, fi rst-birth fertility is relatively high in the usa. the data on women’s employment for australia and the uk in turn indicates that women’s realised behaviour corresponds relatively well to the incentive structures. in accordance with the generous incentives for homemaking, the share of inactive women is at comparable levels to austria and germany for example. as could be expected based on the limited possibilities to take leave, the share of part-time working mothers is likewise relatively high and indicates that the combination strategy is often realised by parttime work. notice furthermore that many mothers work full-time, which suggests that a relatively high share of the mothers choose the career strategy. fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 145 5 previous research on fertility, family policy and women’s employment revisited how useful is the framework outlined above when it comes to understanding the previous research on the determinants of childbearing? as to the relationship between employment and fertility, there is a relatively robust fi nding on the positive infl uence of inactivity on fertility across the welfare states (see section 3.1). this is consistent with the above framework, given that homemakers and combiners are frequently inactive for longer periods and likewise have more children than careerists. further, the results from the meta-analysis conducted by matysiak and vignoli (2008) show that the negative infl uence of employment on childbearing increases by parity and is strongest in the liberal and conservative countries, but weaker in the social democratic countries. these too are results which we would expect based on the outlined framework. the fi rst fi nding on the increases in the negative infl uence of employment by parity basically tells us that homemakers (who are inactive for very long periods) and combiners (who are frequently inactive for relatively long periods), have a higher propensity to continue childbearing than the careerists (who are inactive only very seldom and shorter periods) who often stay childless or have only one child. the second fi nding is also partly in accordance with the claim put forward above: since the social democratic welfare states create good circumstances for combiners and careerists (that is, for working mothers) to have children, the negative effect of employment on fertility should be smaller in this country cluster than in the conservative countries. it is further interesting that the results on the infl uence of part-time and full-time employment on childbearing vary depending on the welfare state. no signifi cant differences in the impact of part-time and full-time work on childbearing is found in the social democratic context (for second and third births in sweden, see hoem/hoem 1989; for second births in sweden, see oláh 2003; for second births in denmark, see brodmann et al. 2007). however, in the netherlands (liefbroer/corijn 1999) as well as in western germany and in the uk (for second births, see kreyenfeld/zabel 2005) part-time working women have a higher propensity to have children. this is consistent with the discussion above: in the scandinavian countries where generous parental leave enable longer breaks from employment and where the daycare supply makes it possible to return to full-time employment, adaptive women realise the combination strategy both by working full-time and part-time, which might explain why no major differences are detected between part-time and full-time working women. however, in the netherlands, germany and the uk, where part-time work is the main means for adaptive women to realise the combination strategy and where full-time working mothers are careerists to a greater extent, it is logical that a positive infl uence of part-time work on fertility is found. concerning family policy and fertility, many studies fi nd that childcare – regardless of the welfare state context – exerts a positive infl uence on fertility (see kravdal 1996 for third births in norway; del boca 2002 for childbearing in italy; oláh 2003 for the intensity of second births in sweden; bonoli 2008 for the level of fertility in switzerland; baizán 2009 for fi rst and higher order births in spain; rindfuss et • elina schleutker146 al. 2010 for the level of fertility in norway). likewise, several studies conclude that parental leave extensions, extensions of so-called care leaves, or increases in compensation for such leave periods, have a positive impact on fertility (for the timing of third births in austria, see hoem et al. 2001; for the timing of second and third births in norway, see aassve/lappegård 2009; for the positive effect on both tempo and quantum in austria, see lalive/zweimüller 2009). since adaptive and work-centred women are responsive to the availability of childcare, and since adaptive and home-centred women are responsive to the generosity of the parental leave, the results are consistent with the framework. notice also that the positive infl uence of maternity leave extensions in finland is found to increase by parity (rønsen 2004). a likely reason is that extensions in the leave periods create better conditions particularly for home-centred and adaptive women, who respond by having a higher number of children, whereas work-centred women who often only have one child are not infl uenced by these changes due to the already good possibilities to realise the preferred strategy. as to the domestic division of unpaid household work, there are several studies which show that a more equal division of unpaid work at home has a positive infl uence on fertility (for second births in the usa, see torr/short 2004; in germany, see cooke 2004; in denmark, see brodmann et al. 2007; in spain and italy, see cooke 2008), or that the probability of continued childbearing is higher when the father takes parental leave (for second births in sweden and hungary, see oláh 2003; for second and third births in sweden, see duvander/andersson 2006). one interpretation of these results is that the elevated birth risks indicate a higher propensity of adaptive women to proceed to higher parities if they have a supportive spouse who helps them to realise their preferences smoothly. however, torr and short (2004) report that those families where the women do a large majority of the household work also have a higher propensity of second births, and cooke (2004) shows that the more the women spend time on childcare, the higher the risk of second birth. in other words, these results indicate that homemakers who are likely to spend most time on household responsibilities have higher propensity to continue to higher parities. further, duvander and andersson (2006) point out that the risk of a birth in terms of mother’s parental leave take is inverted u-shaped for the second births (e.g. the risk is lowest for those mothers who take out least and most leave) and j-shaped for third births. the low propensity of second births for mothers who only take short leave periods in connection with their fi rst birth can probably be attributed to the careerists, who are likely to take the shortest leaves and often have only one child. likewise, the j-shaped pattern for third births clearly indicates that homemakers and combiners who are likely to take the longest leave also have the highest propensity to continue to higher parities. however, it is not clear why long leave periods in connection with the fi rst birth would lead to a lower propensity of second births, or why short leave periods in connection with the second birth would lead to a higher propensity of third births. fertility, family policy and welfare regimes • 147 6 concluding remarks in the fi rst part of the paper, i discussed some ways in which demographers may benefi t from gendered research on the welfare state. however, many perspectives on fertility which, for example, emphasise the role of values (van de kaa 1987, 2002; lestaeghe/surkyn 2004), as well as the way in which past fertility and population structures infl uence current fertility ideals and decisions (lutz/skirbekk 2005; lutz et al. 2006) were excluded from this overview. thus, in addition to the above mentioned topics and subjects, there might be several other ways in which demographers will fi nd the research conducted by welfare state researchers benefi cial. further, the above review is relatively rough, and future contributions on the topic should be more detailed. finally, it needs to be pointed out that even though the current paper concentrates on the lessons that demographers might be able to derive from welfare state research, an equally important question is naturally what welfare state researchers can learn from demographers. all in all, a further discussion between these two disciplines is recommended. the second part of the paper outlined a new framework which emphasises the role of preferences, family policy and household resources in women’s decision making. in other words, the framework only concentrated on a handful of variables, even though the research on the determinants of fertility has identifi ed even several other variables which are at play when decisions about childbearing are made. however, individual level variables such as values (van de kaa 2001), number of own siblings (murphy/knudsen 2002; kreyenfeld 2004), own (adsera 2006) and parents’ religion (branas-garza/neuman 2006; berghammer 2009), as well as other similar attributes which are found to infl uence fertility, might partly operate through preferences by having an impact on women’s lifestyle desires. other factors, for instance the level (kreyenfeld 2002, 2004) and fi eld (hoem et al. 2006a/b) of education, which have an impact on fertility, might in turn be determined at least to a certain degree by lifestyle preferences. finally, some factors, such as diffi culties to fi nd a spouse (tanturri/mencarini 2008), infertility or confl icting preferences on the number of children with the spouse (voas 2003) naturally also infl uence the individual women’s choices, and may even add to substantial patterns in the overall population. however, not all women do face these problems and circumstances, but all women make their choices within those structures which are determined by family policy and household resources. to put it differently, the point i want to make here is that in order to understand the cross-country differences in fertility we need to recognise the heterogeneous preferences of women, understand how the contextual factors shape women’s lives and carefully study how the preferences transform into choices. how other variables relate to this “big picture” is not unimportant, but it is unlikely that factors such as choices about educational fi eld or confl icting preferences with the spouse would be signifi cantly different or more common in some countries than in others, and such variables are thus likely to have less explanatory power on fertility differences between the countries. • elina schleutker148 acknowledgements this paper is a revised version of a chapter in my dissertation at heidelberg university. i would like to thank my supervisor prof. uwe wagschal for his valuable advice, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. the paper has also greatly benefi ted from discussions with thomas metz. references aassve, arnstein; lappegård, trude 2009: childcare cash benefi ts and fertility timing in 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2010: hispanic fertility, religion and religiousness in the u.s. in: population research and policy review 29,4: 441-452 [doi: 10.1007/ s11113-009-9156-3]. willis, robert j. 1973: a new approach to the economic theory of fertility behavior. in: journal of political economy 81,2: 14-64 [doi: 10.1086/260152]. woods, dorian r. 2006: focusing on care: family policy and problems of analysis. wip working paper series, paper number 30. institute of political science. university of tübingen. • elina schleutker156 a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “fertilität, familienpolitik und wohlfahrtsregime”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2013-18de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-18de7, at http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 19.11.2011 date of acceptance: 19.11.2012 elina schleutker (). albert-ludwigs-universität freiburg, seminar für wissenschaftliche politik, freiburg, germany. e-mail: elina.schleutker@politik.uni-freiburg.de, url: http://portal.uni-freiburg.de/politik/professuren/vergleichende-regierungslehre/ mitarbeiter/schleutker-elina?set_language=de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates christian wegner abstract: the question as to whether or not tempo effects distort the measurement of period mortality is controversial in recent demographic research. only few publications, however, illustrate the underlying phenomenon of tempo effects, namely that the period death rate may increase although the mortality of all cohorts living during the analyzed period has fallen. moreover, related literature only focuses on one of three methods to derive the age-specifi c death rate. this article primarily deals with the questions whether other methods of age-specifi c death rate are also affected by tempo effects in the logic of bongaarts and feeney and whether the tempo effect can be minimised solely by applying a specifi c method. the results demonstrate that all types of death rates are infl uenced by tempo effects and that different methods do not eliminate the infl uence of tempo effects. nevertheless, it is necessary to distinguish between two types of tempo effects, which can be revealed in theoretical as well as empirical perspective. keywords: tempo effects · death rate · period mortality · age-year-method · cohortyear-method · age-cohort-method · tempo-adjusted life expectancy 1 introduction the previous debate about tempo effects in period mortality has been essentially concerned with the question whether tempo effects infl uence period mortality indicators such as life expectancy at birth and whether current mortality conditions are therefore distorted (bongaarts/feeney 2002; vaupel 2002; wilmoth 2005; bongaarts/feeney 2008b; guillot 2008; luy 2008; rodríguez 2008; vaupel 2008; wachter 2008; luy 2009; bongaarts/feeney 2010). only few publications explicitly deal with the unexpected and curious phenomenon that the trend in period death rates fl uctuates despite a continuous improvement in survival conditions of all cohorts living during the analysed period (feeney 2010; horiuchi 2008; luy 2008; luy/wegner 2009). according to the logic of bongaarts and feeney (2002, 2008a, 2008b), these comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 3 (2010): 543-568 (date of release: 15.09.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-13en6 • christian wegner544 fl uctuations in the death rates are caused by tempo effects. they are accompanied by a temporary change in the number of deaths within a period in which mortality conditions have changed. although the unexpected trend in the period rates forms the basis of bongaarts’ and feeney’s methodical and empirical research, fundamental questions about tempo effects remain open until today. a shortcoming in current research is the relation between the method to derive the death rate and the occurrence of tempo effects. previous research merely analyses the cause of tempo effects by using the age-year-method, also known as type i rate. however, there are two further methods to compute the period death rate: the cohort-year-method (type ii rate) and the age-cohort-method (type iii rate). this leads to the question whether these two methods are also affected by tempo effects if period mortality has changed. all three methods are based on different numbers of deaths resulting from the overlap of age, time and birth intervals. subsequently, changes in period mortality conditions have differing impacts on the respective method. therefore, it can be assumed that the cause of tempo effects also differs. due to the different characteristics of each method, a second important question can be raised: does the extent of existing tempo effects depend on the selected type of death rate? to answer these questions, the article is structured as follows: the fi rst part of this paper introduces the different methods of deriving the death rate. the second part graphically illustrates the tempo effects in the logic of bongaarts and feeney by using the lexis diagram. their impact on age-specifi c mortality is explained by applying modelled numbers of living and deceased persons. a general classifi cation of the tempo effects regardless of the model assumptions is carried out in the third section. the last part fi nally presents the effects of the different types of death rates and the resulting differences in tempo effects based on empirical data for 26 countries. 2 methods to derive death rates mortality research distinguishes between three methods of deriving death rates. these methods are typifi ed by the death counts emerging from the overlap of age, time and birth intervals. all three intervals can be presented graphically by using the lexis diagram in figure 1. the abscissa of the diagram shows the calendar time, whilst the age is levelled on the ordinate (feichtinger 1973: 18-25). all people born in a specifi c year and their demographically-relevant events can then be shown diagonally to age and calendar time. the overlap of age, time and birth intervals allows to extract two triangles of events (becker 1874) which are marked in the lexis diagram by right-angled triangles. the 1st triangle of deaths includes the number of individuals of a birth cohort c who died at age x in year t. this area is shown in figure 1 by the triangle abc (cf. tab. 1.1). the 2nd triangle of deaths also contains all persons of the cohort c who died at age x, but in the following year t+1. they are presented by the triangle bcd in figure 1. tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 545 the legs of each triangle present two different sets of living persons. individuals who have reached age x in a year t are summarized as persons living of the same age (line ab in fig. 1). all persons aged x who lived exactly at the beginning of year t+1 are characterised as persons living at the same time (line bc in fig. 1). both sets of living persons constitute the number of states whilst the triangles of death include number of events at a specifi c time or age (cf. tab. 1.1). the triangles of deaths and the sets of living persons defi ne three methods for computing the death rate. the combination of both death triangles determinate three standard ways of classifying the number of deaths which form the numerator of each death rate (becker 1874). the denominator contains the person-years which are estimated by the number of living persons (feichtinger 1973: 55-56). the most common procedure used to derive the death rate in offi cial statistics is the age-year-method; also referred to as the type i rate (flaskämper 1962: 342-391; wunsch/termote 1978: 85-87; caselli/vallin 2006: 61-63). the german federal statistical offi ce has applied this method since the general life table of 1970/72 (statistisches bundesamt 2006). the method is based on the 3rd class of deaths resulting from the overlap of an age and year interval (square efgh in fig. 1). this classifi cation of deaths contains the 1st triangle of deaths of cohort c and of the 2nd triangle of the previous birth cohort c-1 at age x in year t (tab. 1.2). the type i fig. 1: classifi cation modes of deaths and living persons in the lexis diagram time t a b c d e f g h i j k l ag e x source: based on caselli/vallin (2006) • christian wegner546 death rate im(x,t) then is the quotient of the 3rd class of deaths to the person-years at age x in year t (tab. 1.3). the average of the living persons at the same time at the beginning (line eg) and at the end (line fh) of year t is used as an approximation of the number of person-years. the national institute of statistic of france uses the type ii rate to determine the period survival conditions, which is also known as the cohort-year-method (flaskämper 1962: 364-365; wunsch/termote 1978: 85-87; caselli/vallin 2006: 61-63). the type ii death rate is based on the 2nd class of deaths determined by the overlap of a birth and a period interval (area ijkl in fig. 1). this class is composed of the 1st triangle of deaths of the cohort c at age x and the 2nd triangle of the same cohort at the previous age x-1 (tab. 1.2). the comparison with the type i rate shows that the cohort-year-method includes all death counts of a cohort within a year t. however, a specifi c age classifi cation is not possible because the deaths are stretched over two age groups. the number of person-years is estimated from the average of the individuals living at the beginning and the end of the observed period t. in contrast to the age-year-method, however, the living persons are aged x-1 at the beginning of the year (line ik in fig. 1), whilst the surviving persons are aged x at the end of the year (line jl in fig. 1). accordingly, the death rate type ii iim(c,t) is calculated from tab. 1: classifi cation modes of deaths and living persons and different methods for computing the period death rate 1.1 events and states lexis-diagram in figure 1 ),( cxdi 1st triangle area abc ),( cxdii 2nd triangle area bcd )(xpt persons living at the same age line ab )1(tpx persons living at the same time line bc 1.2 classifications of deaths ),( txd 3th class area efgh ),( tcd 2nd class area ijkl ),( xcd 1st class area abcd 1.3 death rates ),( txmi )t(p)t(p. )t,x(d xx 150 type i death rate (age-year-method) ),( tcmii )t(p)t(p. )t,c(d xx 150 1 type ii death rate (cohort-year-method)) ),( xcmiii )t(p )x,c(d x 1 type iii death rate (age-cohort-method) source: based on becker (1874) and caselli/vallin (2006) tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 547 the quotients of the 2nd class of deaths to the approximated number of personyears (tab. 1.3). the last method is the type iii death rate, which is also referred to as the agecohort-method and was applied, for example, to calculate the fi rst general life table of the german reich 1871/81 (becker 1874: 38-45; wunsch/termote 1978: 85-87; caselli/vallin 2006: 61-63). determining mortality by this method is an uncommon procedure in period analysis. due to the characteristics of the method, it is mainly used in cohort analysis (caselli/vallin 2006). the type iii death rate iiim(c,x) takes into account the total number of deaths resulting from the overlap of a cohort and age interval. this area is referred to as the 1st class of deaths and comprises the 1st and 2nd triangle of a cohort c at age x (parallelogram abcd in fig. 1). this class of deaths does not cover the number of deaths within one calendar year but adheres to two periods t and t+1. the number of living persons aged x at the beginning of year t+1 (line bc in fig. 1) is used as an approximation of the number of person-years to derive the death rate type iii. 3 tempo effects in different types of death rate the presence and cause of tempo effects in each type of death rate are analysed by a modelled decline in mortality. the processes are graphically derived and explained in the lexis diagram. the mortality model is based on the discrete models which are commonly used in literature for describing tempo effects (feeney 2010; luy 2008). although all these models include simplifi ed assumptions, they can be adjusted to a real population without modifying the underlying statements. furthermore, other distortions, such as heterogeneity or selection effects, are excluded from the model. the model illustrates a population in which no migration takes place and in which an annual constant number of births is distributed uniformly over the respective birth year. it is further assumed that individuals only die at a certain age x, whilst no mortality occurs in the preceding age x-1 and the next age x+1. within age x, the number of deaths are distributed over fi ve different dates at intervals of 0.2 years. the mortality conditions are assumed to be constant until the beginning of year t, so that the population is stationary. the decline of mortality is modelled by a linearly rising age at death at the rate of 0.2 years per year in period t. in the following year t+1, age at death remains constant at the new, higher level. the new mortality conditions stay the same but have decreased in comparison to the base level. hence, the model presents a population with constant mortality until the beginning of year t following by a decline of mortality in year t. from year t+1 onwards mortality remains constant at a new level. there is never an observable contrary mortality-increasing effect. further, with the help of modelled samples of living and deceased persons, the trend in mortality is illustrated. under the constant mortality conditions, 1,000 persons alive precisely age x. within the observed age group, 100 persons die uniformly distributed across the fi ve dates of death. • christian wegner548 3.1 the tempo effect in the age-year-method (type i rate method) the lexis diagram in figure 2a shows the 3rd class of deaths at age x for the periods t-1 to t+1. based on the model assumptions, constant mortality conditions are prevalent until the beginning of year t. deaths in year t-1 are spread over fi ve times marked by vertical lines within the 3rd class of deaths at age x. in figure 2a, they are labelled in as a1 to a5. the decline in mortality in year t goes hand in hand with a linear increase in age at death by 0.2 years per year. the increase in lifetime causes a postponement of deaths diagonally to the age and time axes. consequently, two relevant effects occur: (i) the fi rst effect is an enlarged gap between the times of death (feeney 2008; horiuchi 2008). under constant conditions, the range between the times a1 to a5 is 0.2 years. the gap (b1 to b4) increases to 0.25 years during the increase in age at death. therefore, the space between times of death has widened in the year of the mortality change, which directly causes the second effect. (ii) as a result of the increased gap in the times of death, the last date b5 (and also all death counts belonging to it) is postponed into the following year t+1. consequently, the number of times of death in year t falls from fi ve to four, and hence the number of deceased persons. furthermore, the increasing age at death causes a shift of deaths into the next age x+1 (area s1 in fig. 2a). nevertheless, these deceased persons are still covered by the observed year t. in the next period t+1, the age at death remains constant at the new, higher level. the range between the times of death b5 to c4 has fallen from 0.25 to 0.2 years. hence, the number of times of death has again risen to the old stationary level of fi ve per year. however, the sequence of the times shows that the formerly constant number of deaths at age x of year t-1 has been postponed both in time and age. in year t+1, fi rstly those persons die who would have died in year t under the old mortality conditions (time of death b5), followed by the times c1 to c4. moreover, time b5 as well as the subsequent time points are spread over two age groups. within the age x, 80 % of deaths are covered in year t+1, whilst the remaining 20 % take place early at age x+1. in a real population, the death rate would only consider those deaths which remain at age x. however, the shifted deaths from the previous age x-1 during year t (area s2 in fig. 2a) and year t+1 (area v in fig. 2a) would be included in the calculation of the death rate. this means that postponed deaths from previous ages during the mortality change may minimise or compensate for shifted deaths of the time b5. this is hypothetically the case if the number of deaths in area s2 is greater than the number of deaths in b5. yet, in order to avoid the effect of postponed deaths of prior age on the derived death rate on the one hand and to analyse the overall impact of the postponed time of death b5 on the other hand, only the previously stationary number of deaths is included in the following calculation. therefore, the age range must be extended from x to x+1.2 in order to cover the age-shifted number of deaths. only the net effect of the number of deaths due to the increasing age at tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 549 fig. 2a: mortality decline in the 3rd class of deaths and the resulting tempoeffect t time t + 1 t + 2t 1t 2 a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 b1 b2 b3 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4 x 1 xag e x + 1 b5 s2 s1 v x 1 xag e t time t + 1 t + 2t 1t 2 100 80 208 72 x + 1 1130 1139 1159 fig. 2b: mortality decline in the 3rd class of deaths and the trend in number of person-years and deaths1 1 the number of person-years are bordered and the number of deaths are underlined source: own design • christian wegner550 death will be considered, because the model assumes no mortality at the preceding and following ages.1 the person-years (bordered) and the number of deaths (underlined) for the years t-1 to t+1 are shown in figure 2b. the number of person-years in the initial year of the observation t-1 is 1,130.2 100 persons die during this year. the death rate for year t-1 is calculated as follows: the decline in mortality in year t reduces the number of deaths by 20 % caused by the postponement of deaths into the subsequent year t+1. from 80 deaths in period t, 72 occur at age x and the remaining 8 at the next age x+1. at the same time, the number of person-years increases because both the number of persons living at the same time as well as the lifetime of deceased persons has increased slightly as a result of the rising age at death. the death rate in year t declines to: during the year t+1, the number of deaths reaches the stationary level of 100 persons because the times of death have increased to fi ve again. however, the deaths occur 0.2 years later in age than at the initial level, so that the number of person-years increases slightly further. the death rate under the new constant level equals to: the increase in type i rate between year t and t+1 suggests an increase in mortality. however, figure 2a illustrates that an increase in mortality did not actually occur for any observed person. moreover, the number of person-years steadily increased over time. only the number of deaths falls briefl y in year t because of the decline in mortality and the resulting postponement of deaths. according to the argument of bongaarts and feeney, the decline and the subsequent unexpected 1 an adequate model for the change in mortality over several age groups and the resulting trend in age-specifi c mortality rates was also simulated and led to identical tempo effects in the respective period mortality rate. corresponding model calculations can be provided by the author by request. 2 the person-years are calculated from the survivors and the age of those who died in the respective interval. in the year t-1, survivors contribute 925 person-years at age x and another 180 years until age x+1.2. the person-years of the deceased are 25. 08850 1130 100 1 .)t(mi 07020 1139 80 .)t(mi 08630 1159 100 1 .)t(mi tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 551 increase in the death rate are caused by a tempo effect (bongaarts/feeney 2002: 18-19; 2008b: 35-38). the tempo effect here primarily describes the disproportionate decline in the number of deaths in ratio to the person-years caused by a rising age at death. hence, the increase in the death rate between year t and t+1 is not the consequence of an actual increase in mortality, but of the temporary strong decline and resurgence of death counts due to the mortality change. 3.2 tempo effect in the cohort-year-method (type ii rate method) the question now arises as to whether the same tempo effect as with the age-yearmethod also occurs with the cohort-year-method. in both methods, death counts within a one-year interval form the basis for deriving death rate. hence, a rising age at death also shifts deaths of the 2nd class out of the analysed period. the extent to which this process also causes tempo effects in the type ii rate is analysed by using the simple mortality model same as in the previous section. the lexis diagram in figure 3a again illustrates the fi ve stationary times of death (a1 to a5) in the year t-1. in order to cover all deaths at age x, both cohorts c-2 and c-1 must be considered in this year. although the shaded lines of the times of death contain only half of both 2nd classes of deaths, they can be conceptually expanded in order to consider all deaths of the cohorts in each year. the simplifi ed model, however, does not infl uence the causes and impact of tempo effects in the type ii rate. as with the age-year-method, the increasing age at death in year t shifts the last time of death b5 into the following year t+1. accordingly, the number of deaths in year t is again temporarily reduced. the mortality conditions in the model remain constant in the year t+1, whereas deaths occur 0.2 years later in age because of the risen age at death. although the total number of deaths in year t+1 is identical to that of the previous stationary level, deaths are now stretched over three cohorts from c-1 to c+1. this expansion is caused by the postponed time point b5. the hatched area t1 in figure 3a refers to the deaths of cohort c which under the former mortality conditions would have been covered in the age interval [x-1/x]. due to the reduced mortality, these deaths now occur in the next age interval [x/x+1]. furthermore, the shifted time of death b5 also contains deaths of the previous cohort c-1 (black area t2). these deaths now take place within the next age group [x+1/x+2]. the remaining times of death c1 to c4 are comparable with the old stationary times a1 to a4, whilst the deaths have shifted by 0.2 years over time and age. the effect of the risen age at death on the type ii rate is illustrated by using the model populations in figure 3b. as with the type i rate, the focus of the model calculation lies on the trend in death rate, based on the constant number of deaths at the initial level. it is interesting here that in a real population the postponed deaths of the time b5 cannot be compensated for by shifted deaths from previous age groups in year t. the 2nd class of deaths covers two age groups. therefore, deaths which are postponed to age x (area s) are still examined in the analysed class. the following model considers the age range from x-1 to x+2.2 in order to take the shifted deaths of area t2 in figure 3a into account. in comparison to the age• christian wegner552 fig. 3a: mortality decline in the 2nd class of deaths and the resulting tempoeffect 1 t time t + 1 t + 2t 1t 2 t2 c 2 c 1 c c + 1 ag e in te rv al a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 b1 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4b5 t1 b3b2 s c 2 c 1 c c + 1 50 32 50 32 48 68 2080 2090 2100 ag e in te rv al t t + 1 t + 2t 1t 2 time fig. 3b: mortality decline in the 2nd class of deaths and the trend in number of person-years and deaths1,2 1 the brackets indicate two considered age groups 2 the number of person-years are bordered and the number of deaths are underlined source: own design tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 553 year-method, the number of person-years is higher in the cohort-year-method because in the 2nd class of deaths only half of the deaths are modelled.3 therefore, the individuals of cohort c-1 at the beginning of the year t-1 are not exposed to mortality risk until they have reached age x. the situation is similar for individuals born at c-2 who are not exposed to mortality after age x+1. the death rate in year t-1 then equals to: in year t, the number of deaths decreases by 20 % due to the rising age at death and the postponement of deaths to the next period. the deaths of cohort c decline more strongly (from 50 to 32 deaths) in comparison to the older cohort c-1 (from 50 to 48). at the same time, the number of person-years increases slightly as a result of the shifted deaths. the death rate in year t is: the postponed deaths of b5 occur in the next year t+1 and hence increase the total number to the previously stationary base level of 100 deaths. at the same time, the number of person-years increases slightly because all deaths now occur at a higher age. the new stationary death rate is calculated as: the results show that the type ii rate is also affected by tempo effects if period mortality changes. the rate also falls between year t-1 and t, whilst it rises again in the transition to the new stationary level in year t+1. in comparison to the base level, the rate is lower in the new constant level because the individuals survive 0.2 years longer. as in the case of the type i rate, the increase in death rate during the transition to the new stationary level is the consequence of the tempo effect, caused by the temporary and disproportional fall in deaths in relation to the person-years in year t. since both methods have identical period intervals, the tempo effects have a comparable effect on both death rates. 3.3 tempo effect in the age-cohort-method (type iii rate method) the reduction in the number of deaths during the mortality transition leads to an increase in the death rate in both the age-yearand cohort-year-method, although 3 in the fi rst year, the survivors contribute to a total of 2,030, and the deceased 50 person-years, over the analysed age interval. 04810 2080 100 1 .)t(mii 04760 2100 100 1 .)t(mii 03830 2090 80 .)t(mii • christian wegner554 mortality has continually fallen among the population. the signifi cant reduction was caused by those deaths which were postponed from year t into the next year t+1 because of the risen age at death. in the age-cohort-method, however, the number of the deaths is defi ned by age intervals and not by calendar years. a lower number of deaths in the 1st class can only occur via a postponement of deaths to the next age interval. figure 4a shows the 1st class of deaths at age x to x+1.2 for the period from t-2 to t+3. each class embraces two calendar years. to determine the period mortality in the period [t-2/t-1], the death counts of cohort c-2 at age x (area d in fig. 4a) and of birth cohort c-3 at age x+1 (area e in fig. 4a) are needed. in order to distinguish more easily between the periods, they were visualised in figures 4a and 4b by alternate grey shading. the death counts of cohort c-2 at age x still experience the constant mortality level. since the 1st class of deaths stretches over the years t-2 and t-1, a total of ten times of death (5 per year) are considered at intervals of 0.2 years. in the period [t1/t], the age at death rises within the cohort c-1 at age x. whilst the times of death a1 to a5 are still characterised by the old mortality level, the range between the following times b1 to b5 expand, as it was already demonstrated in the previous sections. the number of deaths, however, no longer declines because of the postponement of the time b5 but because of the age increase in b1 to b5. all deceases of cohort c-1 which are postponed to the following age level x+1 (area t1 in fig. 4a) are not considered within the observed period [t-1/t]. consequently, the number of the remaining deaths at age x has hence fallen by 10 % compared to the initial stationary level. in the next period [t/t+1], the age at death increases until the beginning of year t+1 and remains constant at the new level afterwards. the 1st triangle of cohort c at age x is still affected by the age-shifted deaths of b1 to b5. in contrast, the new stationary mortality level is already prevalent in the 2nd triangle. although at the base level, the deaths only occurred at age x, the deaths of cohort c are now spread over age x and x+1.for quantifying the mortality conditions in period [t/t+1], however, the deaths of cohort c at age x as well as the age-shifted deaths of the earlier cohort c-1 at age x+1 (area t1) are taken into account. the deaths of cohort c which have been postponed to the next age group x+1 (area t2) are not considered until the following period [t+1/t+2]. in a real population, the postponed deaths of cohort c from the previous age x-1 would additionally be accommodated in the measurement (area s). as in the age-year-method, the deaths from previous ages can therefore reduce or even compensate for the postponing effect (area t2). however, in the model used here – analogous to the approach in the other death rate types – these shifted deaths are ignored in order to illustrate the net effect of the rising age at death. the new stationary mortality conditions can be observed in the period [t+1/t+2] for the fi rst time. the deaths are now spread over two age groups and come from both cohorts c+1 and c due to the improvement in survival conditions. the reduction in mortality in year t hence causes a postponement of deaths in the 1st class of deaths to the next age intervals. tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 555 fig. 4a: mortality decline in the 1st class of deaths and the resulting tempoeffect1 time interval t1 t2 c 2 c 1 c c + 1 x 1 xag e x + 1 d e c 3 s a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 b1 b4 c1 c2 c3 c4b3b2 b5 50 50 50 40 10 32 48 32 48 20 ag e 00 x 1 x x + 1 1130 1133 1147 1150 time interval c 2 c 1 c c + 1c 3 fig. 4b: mortality decline in the 1st class of deaths and the trend in number of person-years and deaths1,2 1 the brackets indicate two considered periods 2 the number of person-years are bordered and the number of deaths are underlined source: own design • christian wegner556 whether this delay causes a tempo effect in the death rate, as with the other two rate types, can be tested by using the model populations in figure 4b. again, the focus of the model lies on the impact of the risen age at death. 100 deaths occur in the stationary level of the period [t-2/t-1]. the number of person-years at age x to x+1.2 is 1,130.4 the type iii death rate is then calculated from: caused by the rising age at death in the period [t-1/t], the deaths at age x decrease by 10 %. the formerly 50 deaths reduce to 40, whilst the 10 death counts are postponed to the following age level x+1, and hence not considered in the analysed period. the number of person-years increases slightly by the gained lifetime caused by the increased age at death. the death rate in the period [t-1/t] is: the increase in the age at death also affects the death rate in the period [t/t+1]. although the age-shifted deaths of cohort c-1 (area t1 in fig. 4a) are taken into account, however, the deaths of cohort c, which occur at the next age level (area t2 in fig. 4a) are missing. the number of person-years increases once more as a result of the rising age at death. the death rate then emerges from: the new constant mortality conditions in the year [t+1/t+2] include the number of deaths of cohorts c+1 at age x and cohort c at age x+1. despite the different cohorts, the number of deceased is again 100, 80 % of which occur at age x and 20 % at age x+1. the number of person-years is 1,150. hence, the new constant death rate is derived as follows: in comparison to the previous period, the death rate increases slightly in the transition to the new stationary level. therefore, the trend in the death rate type iii is also infl uenced by tempo effects. however, the age-shifted and not period-shifted deaths infl uence the trend of the death rate by the disproportional decline in the number of deaths. 4 the surviving persons together lived 1,080 person years, whilst the deceased contributed 50 person years to the total. 08850 1130 100 12 .)t/t(miii 07940 1133 90 1 .)t/t(miii 07850 1147 90 1 .)t/t(miii 08700 1150 100 21 .)t/t(miii tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 557 3.4 comparison of the tempo effect in the three calculation procedures the previous models have shown that tempo effects infl uence the trend in mortality in each of the methods of deriving the death rate. figure 5 shows the relative change in all three death rates in the course of the linear increasing age at death compared to the constant level at the beginning. it is evident that the relative trend in the type i and type ii death rates is almost identical. both death rates decline by 20 % in the year of the mortality reduction t although both classes of death and hence the levels of the rates differ. even if all deaths of the 2nd class were considered in the death rate type ii, the relative decline would also be identical because the number of times of death in year t also falls by 20 %. the rate at the new constant level is less than two percent in comparison to the old stationary level. the relative level of the tempo effect in year t is consequently identical in both procedures. a different picture emerges following the trend of the type iii death rate. the rate declines disproportionately quickly over two consecutive periods as a result of the tempo effect. as a result of the spread of the tempo effect over two periods, the impact is somewhat less pronounced in relative terms (10 % in the period [t-1/t] and 12 % in the period [t/t+1]) than in the other two methods. the relative deviation at the new stationary level is reduced to less than two percent as in the type i and type ii death rates. fig. 5: trend in modeled death rate by different computation methods in relation to a constant starting level1 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 t-2/t-1 t-1 t-1/t t t/t+1 t+1 t+1/t+2 time type i type ii type iii 1 type i and type ii death rate relate to the number of deaths in a year (bordered time), and the type iii death rate covers two periods source: author‘s calculation • christian wegner558 4 tempo effects of the 1st and 2nd kind the differences in tempo effects between the types of death rate are partly dependent on the respective model, in particular on the linear increase in the age at death. a non-linear increase in the age at death in the model, by contrast, would lead to differing amounts of tempo effects, and thereby possibly cause a more pronounced tempo effect in the type iii death rate. hence, the model does not permit any universal statements regarding the degree of the tempo effect in all three methods. however, differences between the causes of the respective tempo effects can be demonstrated. tempo effects accordingly result from two different effects. based on different classes of deaths, the number of deaths is reduced by the postponement of deaths over either the period or age interval. the postponement of deaths over the period interval can be referred to as a tempo effect of the 1st kind. as a result, the number of deaths of the 1st triangle (area abc in fig. 1) decreases at a certain age if the age at death increases. the occurrence of this tempo effect infl uences the death rate type i and ii. in both methods, the number of deaths in an analysed period can only decline if deaths have been shifted to the next calendar year. consequently, the total number of postponed deaths is identical in both methods although the level of death rates differs due to the different classes of deaths. the change in the 2nd triangle of deaths (area bcd in fig. 1) and the concomitant postponement of deaths beyond the age interval can also cause tempo effects, which are referred to as tempo effects of the 2nd kind. this kind is exclusively relevant for the age-cohort-method because only this method is infl uenced by ageshifted deaths. within the type i and ii death rate, the age-postponed deaths are still considered in the next age group within the observed year. the two kinds of tempo effect differ according to whether the increase in the age at death – regardless of the nature of the increase – causes a postponement of deaths to the next period or age interval. when it comes to the practical application, the question arises whether the tempo effect can be minimised by applying a specifi c type of mortality. this question can only be answered by looking at two highly-simplifi ed scenarios: (i) in the mortality models which are commonly used in the literature (feeney 2010; horiuchi 2008; luy 2008), the number of deaths of the 1st class remains constant during the mortality change. therefore, the change in mortality only causes a postponement of deaths to the next period but not the next age interval. in these models, consequently, the resulting tempo effect of the 1st kind only infl uences the death rate derived from the age-year-method and the cohort-year-method. the trend of the type iii death rate does not indicate any tempo effect. the decline in this death rate is entirely caused by the increase in the number of person-years, whilst the number of deaths remains constant. tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 559 (ii) in a second theoretically-conceivable scenario the 2nd class of deaths contains constant number of death during a change in mortality. in this scenario, reduced mortality can only occur through a postponement of deaths to the next age interval, but not by period-shifted deaths. in the cohort-year-method, the death rate decreases by the gain in person-years but the number of deaths remains unchanged. in the age-year-method, the number of deaths also changes at the respective age level, however, the age-postponed deaths still occur within the analysed period. hence, the death rates of type i and of type ii would not contain any tempo effect. only the trend of the type iii death rate fl uctuates due to the tempo effect of the 2nd kind. finally, only these two extreme scenarios can demonstrate a signifi cant difference between both kinds of tempo effect because only one kind of tempo effect can occur in each case. in all other cases (combinations of the two scenarios), tempo effects have a permanent infl uence on each type of death rate. the intensity depends on the increase in the age at death and the resulting shift of deaths to the next period and age interval. if more deaths would be postponed to the next age than to the next period, the tempo effect in the age-cohort-method would be greater than in the other two methods. the opposite is the case if more deaths are postponed in the following period than in the next age group. 5 the relevance of tempo effects in empirical data the last section analyses the differences of tempo effects and their impact on life expectancy by using mortality data of the human mortality database (hmd 2010) for 26 countries. the hmd contains the two triangles of deaths as well as the number of persons living at the same time. thus, all three types of death rate can be derived. the amount of the tempo effect corresponds to the difference between the conventional life expectancy and the tempo-adjusted life expectancy at age 50 for the year 2005. the reason for analysing life expectancy at age 50 is, fi rstly, that in developed countries, approximately 95 % of mortality occurs above this age and, secondly, that the mortality conditions follow the methodical requirements of tempo adjustment. as proposed by bongaarts and feeney (bongaarts 2008; bongaarts/feeney 2008b), tempo adjustment was carried out on the basis of the total mortality rate (tmr) (see annex for a more detailed description). the degree of the tempo effect (measured in years) is shown in figure 6 for women and in figure 7 for men. the fi rst two bars present the tempo effect of the 1st kind in the type i and type ii death rate. for men as well as for women, there are either no or only marginal differences between both methods. the average tempo effect is 1.41 years among women (±0.43 years) and 1.87 years among men (±0.69 years). the lowest tempo effect is shown for bulgaria, at 0.01 years among men and 0.76 years among women. this difference is presumably caused by the constant trend in life expectancy at age 50. until 1996 the standardised death rate from cardiovascular disease continually increased in bulgaria, whereas the death rate in e.g. • christian wegner560 fi g . 6 : te m p o e ff ec ts in li fe e xp ec ta n cy a t a g e 50 b y d if fe re n t t yp es o f d ea th r at e, fe m al es , 2 00 5 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 g er m an y (w es te rn ) en gl an d & w al es fi nl an d fr an ce 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 ire la nd ic el an d ita ly ja pa n 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 c an ad a * n et he rla nd s n or th er n ire la nd ** n or w ay 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 au st ra lia ** b ul ga ria d en m ar k g er m an y (e as te rn ) ty pe ity pe ii ty pe iii * d iff er en ce b et w ee n ty p e i/i i a nd ty p e iii d ea th r at e is lo w er th an th e m ea n st an d ar d d ev ia tio n ** d iff er en ce b et w ee n ty p e i/i i a nd ty p e iii d ea th r at e is h ig he r th an th e m ea n st an d ar d d ev ia tio n s o ur ce : h um an m o rt al ity d at ab as e, a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n de at h ra te m ea n sd ty pe i 1. 41 0. 43 ty pe ii 1. 41 0. 42 ty pe iii 1. 54 0. 41 d iff er en ce ty pe i/ ii t yp e iii -0 .1 3 0. 16 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 sc hw itz er la nd sl ow ak ia sp ai n * c ze ch r ep ub lic 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 a us tri a po rt ug al * s co tla nd sw ed en ** 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 h un ga ry u s a to ta l tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 561 fi g . 7 : te m p o e ff ec ts in li fe e xp ec ta n cy a t a g e 50 b y d if fe re n t t yp es o f d ea th r at e, m al es , 2 00 5 * * d iff er en ce b et w ee n ty p e i/i i a nd ty p e iii d ea th r at e is lo w er th an th e m ea n st an d ar d d ev ia tio n ** d iff er en ce b et w ee n ty p e i/i i a nd ty p e iii d ea th r at e is h ig he r th an th e m ea n st an d ar d d ev ia tio n s o ur ce : h um an m o rt al ity d at ab as e, a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io n 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 ire la nd ic el an d ita ly ja pa n 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 c an ad a n et he rla nd s n or th er n ire la nd ** n or w ay 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 au st ra lia ** b ul ga ria d en m ar k g er m an y (e as te rn ) ty pe ity pe ii ty pe iii 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 en gl an d & w al es fi nl an d* * fr an ce g er m an y (w es te rn ) 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 sc hw itz er la nd sl ow ak ia sp ai n * c ze ch r ep ub lic 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 a us tri a po rt ug al * sc ot la nd sw ed en ** 0. 0 0. 5 1. 0 1. 5 2. 0 2. 5 3. 0 h un ga ry u sa to ta l de at h ra te m ea n sd ty pe i 1. 87 0. 69 ty pe ii 1. 86 0. 68 ty pe iii 1. 98 0. 65 d iff er en ce ty pe i/ ii t yp ei ii -0 .1 2 0. 14 • christian wegner562 hungary, poland and romania either remained constant or declined (meslé 2004). the low tempo effect in bulgaria in 2005 suggests that life expectancy is only marginally increasing because mortality caused by cardiovascular disease could have reached a constant level. in contrast, women in eastern germany with 2.11 years and men in ireland with 3.01 years have the highest amount of tempo effect. the high tempo effect in eastern germany is the consequence of the rapid mortality decline since reunifi cation, which can also be observed among east german men (luy 2009). in ireland, on the other hand, the signifi cant increase in male life expectancy and the resulting high tempo effect can presumably be ascribed to the rapid drop in smoking-attributed mortality since the early 1990s (peto et al. 2006). the right-hand bar in figures 6 and 7 presents the tempo effect according to the age-cohort-method. in the previous models, the tempo effects of the 1st and 2nd kinds differed considerably in quantitative terms. the empirical data, however, only show slight deviations. the tempo effect in the type iii death rate is even slightly stronger than in the two other types of death rate. among men and women, the average difference between the tempo effects of the 1st and 2nd kind is around -0.13 years (±0.16 years among women and ±0.14 years among men). differences outside the standard error can be observed for portugal (-0.51 years among women and -0.44 years among men) and spain (-0.51 year among both genders), as well as among canadian women (-0.31 years). a lower tempo effect of the 2nd kind is shown for australia (+0.07 years), northern ireland (+0.05 years) and sweden (+0.10 years among women and +0.03 years among men), as well as among finnish (+0.12 years) and irish men (+0.07 years). the empirical data, therefore, do not permit any unambiguous statements which type of death rate can minimise the degree of the tempo effect. the dynamics of the mortality change in each population rather determine the impact of the respective tempo effect as it was described in theoretic terms in the previous chapter. consequently, the slightly higher tempo effect of the 2nd kind is ascribed to a higher proportion of age-shifted deaths, whilst a higher tempo effect of the 1st kind results from postponements of deaths into the next period. 6 summary and discussion in demographic research, the age-specifi c death rate is an important indicator to analyse the period mortality conditions. it also constitutes the key variable in the construction of life tables. various recent publications have shown that the type i death rate is affected by tempo effects if the mortality conditions change during an analysed period. this paper demonstrates that all types of death rates are affected by tempo effects. the modelled reduction in mortality causes a fall and subsequent increase in all death rate types during the transition to the new stationary level. this fl uctuation is not caused by an increase in mortality, but by a temporary, disproportionate decline in the number of deaths if mortality changes in the respective period. bongaarts and tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 563 feeney (1998, 2002) introduced the term “tempo effect” to describe this phenomenon. the tempo effects that were revealed in all three methods can be divided in two different kinds according to their origin. the tempo effect of the 1st kind is caused by the postponement of deaths to the next period interval whereas the tempo effect of the 2nd kind is generated by the age-shifted deaths. all three methods of deriving the death rate are infl uenced in different ways by these kinds of tempo effect. both the age-year-method and the cohort-year-method are affected by the tempo effect of the 1st kind. the age-cohort-method is infl uenced by the tempo effect of the 2nd kind if mortality changes within a period. the modelled trends in the rates in chapter 3 present major differences in the scope of the tempo effect between each computation method. however, these differences resulted from the assumption that the age at death increases linearly and hence causes a higher tempo effect of the 1st kind. the decline in mortality in real populations, however, is taking place in period as well as in age. thus, neither the tempo effect of the 1st kind nor of the 2nd kind only determines the mortality trend. this is fi nally shown in the empirical calculations for the 26 countries. the tempo effects in life expectancy at age 50 for the year 2005 only show marginal differences between the death rates of type i and ii on the one hand and of type iii on the other. moreover, it is not possible to make any unambiguous statement whether the death rate type iii or the other two methods minimise the impact of the tempo effect. the empirical data show higher as well as lower tempo effects for the age-cohortmethod (type iii rate). this leads to several important questions which must be studied in greater detail in further research. the currently available methods to adjust the life expectancy by tempo effects are based on the assumption that the age-specifi c pattern of period mortality changes proportionally (bongaarts 2008; bongaarts/feeney 2008b). it is assumed that tempo effects occur in all age-specifi c death rates and that these are more pronounced the higher the death rate is. to what degree the strict proportionality assumption is actually refl ected in a real population, or whether different tempo effects are available in the age-specifi c death rates, are two methodically and empirically-relevant questions for future research. despite the unresolved questions, the results of this paper confi rm that it can certainly be expedient and helpful to adjust the death rates of all types by the tempo effect if period mortality changes. without this adjustment, the trend in the death rates would suggest overestimated or nonexistent changes in period mortality. moreover, other articles show that differences in period mortality between two populations may be heavily infl uenced by tempo effects and that the lack in using tempo-adjusted rates may lead to incorrect conclusions about the dynamic of mortality trends (vgl. luy 2008, 2009; luy/wegner 2009; luy et al. 2011). 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(eds.): how long do we live? demographic models and refl ections on tempo effects. berlin et al.: springer: 109-128 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-78520-0_6]. wilmoth, john r. 2005: on the relationship between period and cohort mortality. in: demographic research 13, article 11: 231-280 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2005.13.11]. wunsch, guillaume j.; termote, marc g. 1978: introduction to demographic analysis. principles and methods. new york & london: plenum press. • christian wegner566 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “tempoeffekte in der periodensterberate bei alternativen berechnungsverfahren”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-13de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-13de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 05.12.2010 date of acceptance: 21.03.2011 christian wegner ( ). vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences, wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital, wohllebengasse 12-14, 6th floor, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: christian.wegner@oeaw.ac.at url: www.oeaw.ac.at tempo effects in different calculation types of period death rates • 567 annex − total mortality rate and tempo adjustment the total mortality rate (tmr) is a rarely used measure to determine the mortality condition of a period (sardon 1994; bongaarts/feeney 2008b). the calculation is based on the age-specifi c death rates of the 2nd kind. these state the proportion of persons of a birth cohort who died at age x at time t. (1) death rate 2nd kind d(x,t) number of deaths at age x of year t b(t –x) number of persons born t-x years ago the tmr is then calculated from the sum of the age-specifi c death rates of the 2nd kind: (2) total mortality rate similar to the total fertility rate (tfr), the tmr is a “quantum measure” as it states the average number of events per individual for a hypothetical cohort of a year t. since each person can only die once, the expected value of the tmr is always one. however, the tmr is below one if the average age at death increases during an analysed period or is bigger than one if the age at death declines (bongaarts/feeney 2008b; luy/wegner 2009). the difference of the tmr of one is regarded as being the indicator of the presence of tempo effects. in order to adjust the conventional death rates by the tempo effect, bongaarts and feeney work on the assumption that the effect is constant at all ages. the tempo-adjusted death rate m(x,t)* is then determined from the ratio between the conventional death rate and the tmr: (3) tempo-adjusted death rate )xt(b )t,x(d )t,x(m 2 0 2 x )t,x(m)t(tmr )t(tmr )t,x(m )*t,x(m published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas in the context of demographic change. towards counterpoints in the dominant discourse on “dying villages” analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas* in the context of demographic change. towards counterpoints in the dominant discourse on “dying villages” gabriela b. christmann abstract: empirically, this article is based on a research project on rural municipalities in structurally weak regions of germany suffering from demographic change and attempting to fi nd ways out of their crisis situation through novel approaches in community development. the example of the village of treptitz in saxony, which was investigated using an ethnographic discourse analysis, demonstrated that a small-scale discourse (of restricted spatial range) developed in the context of its innovative sewage works and biogas project. there, commonly shared knowledge could establish a context in which the village is considered an ingenious, socially intact, resolute and thus vibrant village; a village that actively pursues its prospects for the future. this small-scale discourse defi es the wider demographic discourse, which, as the article shows, focuses primarily on “dying villages.” for the conceptualisation of the empirical observations, the article is based on the assumption that it is in communications and in public discourses – in particular specifi c recurrent contents on rural areas and demographic change – that specifi c knowledge elements and reality constructions of rural areas emerge and stabilise within society. this assumption includes the idea that when the content of public discourses on rural areas change, for example through small-scale discursive counterpoints, it is possible for new knowledge elements and new constructions of reality to develop. against this background, the approach of a (new) discursive construction of spaces is selected as theoretical starting point for the analysis. by referring to the communicative-constructivism approach and by integrating the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, it is perfectly suited for theoretically spelling out changing discursive constructions of rural areas in the context of demographic change. keywords: demographic change · structurally weak rural areas · discourse · changing communicative constructions of spaces · community development comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 359-378 (date of release: 24.03.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-03en3 * here, rural areas are to be understood as a category of space. • gabriela b. christmann360 1 introduction given the perception that there is a lack of future prospects in rural areas in europe, many people are confronted with the question of whether they should leave their native regions or stay. indeed, migration from the country to the larger cities is nothing new; as always, cities with their variety of possibilities have been extremely attractive. however, what is happening these days in the context of emigration from – in particular peripheral – rural regions goes far beyond the historical phenomenon. apart from the fact that the degree and rapidity of emigration has grown enormously, these emigration processes are embedded in radical demographic change, which, as is well known, is characterised by declining birth rates and the increasing ageing of society (cf. e.g. birg 2003). at the international level, much has been published on demographic change (cf. e.g. bloom/canning 2004; andersen/molander 2003; hillebrand 2008; williams et al. 2012; european union 2011). one could say that an extensive international discourse is taking place on this topic, covering almost all spheres of life and making comprehensive future change a topic of discussion: the future economy, the labour market, the educational system, housing, different kinds of infrastructure, health care and nursing systems and not least old-age provision, to mention just the most important fi elds. spatial aspects of demographic change are also a topic of debate, whereby shrinking processes and emigration from towns and municipalities in particular are discussed (cf. e.g. müller/meyer-künzel müller/meyer-künzel 20072007; stryjakiewicz 2013). structurally weak rural areas form a considerable part of this discourse (cf. e.g. luck 2010; bausch et al. 2014). but what occurs if, at regular intervals, the sciences and the mass media communicate certain messages concerning demographic change (e.g. emigration)? this article is based on the assumption that it is in the context of communications and in particular of discourse that socially shared knowledge develops. in this case it is the knowledge of what structurally weak rural areas will look like in the future, given demographic change. this commonly shared knowledge in a society is not considered just a fantasy. it is powerful considering that realities are constructed in the course of the communicative and discursive establishment of shared knowledge (berger/luckmann 1987). in this context, the concept of reality means that commonly shared knowledge in a societal fi eld becomes binding for everyday life in that fi eld and that it fi nds expression in the actions of social actors. however, constructions of realities are nothing static. communications and discourses can change and with them new constructions of reality can occur. geographically speaking, this means that existing constructions of rural areas being subject to demographic change may be newly constructed by way of discursive processes. indeed, there have been considerations about the relation between discourse and space for quite some time. the most prominent voices at the international level have been the finnish human geographer paasi (1989) and, in the fi eld of new cultural geography in germany, primarily glasze and mattissek (2009). however, it must be stated that in theoretical terms these concepts are not yet worked out analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 361 in detail. above all, they do not consider either the dynamic aspects or the role of social actors in geographical discourse. what thus remains unclear is, in particular, how change occurs in discourses. this article aims to highlight the neglected aspects. accordingly, the comprehensive research question is how social processes of changing discursive constructions of rural areas in times of demographic change can be understood in detail. this necessarily also includes questions of how these processes can be conceptualised theoretically and how they can be investigated methodologically. in the following, i will report from an ongoing research project on innovative rural municipalities in germany, which are insofar interesting as they are trying to re-create their rural spaces. the project “innovations in rural municipalities. conditions, actors and processes of creative community development” (2015 to 2018) is funded and conducted by the leibniz institute for research on society and space in erkner (near berlin), germany. there, apart from the question of how innovation occurs in rural areas, the above research question of how processes of changing discursive constructions of spaces can be understood is part of the investigation. the focus of my presentation will be on one typical case (which is one of six cases in the project): the saxon village of treptitz. the presentation will be divided into three steps. in the fi rst step (section 2), i introduce the recently developed theoretical concept on changing communicative constructions of spaces (christmann 2016) which is currently the most appropriate approach for understanding dynamic discursive constructions. the second step (section 3) outlines the research design of the empirical project. there, an ethnographic discourse analysis is applied that has the capacity to investigate discursive processes and changing space-related constructions. in the third step (section 4), i present empirical results from the research project. on the one hand i show that in the broader discourse on demographic change – both in social science based publications and in newspapers – structurally weak rural areas are dominantly constructed as areas of “dying villages” (section 4.1). on the other hand, using the example of the saxon village of treptitz (section 4.2) i work out in how far, within the small public of a local discourse, new constructions of rural spaces in terms of dynamic villages can nevertheless be observed. this is due to local actors creating novel approaches to community development while at the same time initiating an alternative discourse (section 4.3). the main results will be summarised and refl ected in section 5. 2 the theoretical approach of changing communicative constructions of spaces in social science-based spatial research, the theoretical premise of the social construction of space is widely recognised. in attempts to theoretically work out this premise, concepts have been developed to explain the existence of spaces as a result of the attribution of meanings, manifesting themselves in the form of geographical knowledge (for example in the form of a regional image) and/or as a result of human actions shaping spaces (cf. e.g. lefebvre 1991). only gradually, aware• gabriela b. christmann362 ness developed of the fact that communication may also play a role in the social construction of spaces (cf. e.g. paasi 1989; schlottmann 2005; pott 2007). however, until today this evidence is only weakly conceptualised. there are only a few theoretical approaches dealing with communications as a factor for the social construction of spaces. the few existing ones are inspired either by luhmann’s (1984) theory of autopoietic systems, such as pott’s (2007) system-theoretical approach on space and communication, or by foucault’s (1974, 1981) post-structural discourse analysis, which became central for glasze’s and mattissek’s approach on discourse and space (2009). however, in these approaches, communications are only considered in a highly abstract manner as processes within systems or structures that create knowledge. as we know, the approaches do not pay attention to the signifi cance of social actors and communicative action in processes of knowledge production. this is why this article is based on the theoretical approach of changing communicative constructions of spaces (cf. christmann 2016), which emphasises that it is only through communications, for example among local actors, that mutually shared meanings can be produced and established and that it is only through communications that these meanings can be changed. furthermore, spaces are seen as dynamic constructs being constantly newly constructed even if some spatial constructions appear to be highly institutionalised or physically fi xed. communicative constructivism (initiated by knoblauch) and the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (developed by keller) were referred to in order to be able to conceptually develop the idea of changing communicative constructions of spaces. communicative constructivism (knoblauch 2013, 2016, 2017) makes “communicative action” the focus of attention, whereby the term does not follow jürgen habermas’s “theory of communicative action,” but is in line with alfred schütz’s socio-phenomenological approach. this concept allows for grasping action dynamics, restructurings or negotiations of reality constructions and is based on the assumption that it is in the context of communicative action that (new) knowledge is produced and communicated. keller’s (2013, 2016; keller et al. 2013) sociology of knowledge approach to discourse is inspired by foucault (1974, 1981) when it analyses how knowledge develops in the context of discourse. but whereas in foucault’s approach – as mentioned above – acting subjects are only of minor signifi cance, keller’s concept is based on an action-theoretical point of view, which makes it compatible with communicative constructivism. accordingly, discourse is conceptualised as an ensemble of topically related communicative actions of a multitude of different (collective) actors communicatively negotiating key contents of the discourse. against the background of these theoretical cornerstones, christmann (2016) suggested the approach of changing communicative constructions of spaces, which was developed based on two theoretical elements. the fi rst element (cf. christmann 2016: 96-101), which will only be mentioned briefl y here as it is conceptually not of utmost importance for my article, describes the communicative and discursive processes by which members of a society commonly produce “fi rst-time construction” of a specifi c – fi ctitious – spatial entity. the second part of the approach (christmann 2016: 101-112) is crucial for my refl ections, however. there, the changanalysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 363 ing discursive construction of an already established space-related construction is conceptually developed step-by-step in a very detailed manner. that is, it develops how the new construction occurs through communicative action of (i) individual actors, (ii) groups of actors, and (iii) networks. furthermore, it conceptualises how this occurs within smaller and larger discursive groups, and in particular in the context of (iv) mass-media discourses. here it is essential – as indicated above – that the process is initiated by social actors and their ultimate actions. individuals, groups of actors, networks or organisations are considered (collective) actors making more or less strategic attempts to topically infl uence the space-related discourse (according to their specifi c ideas) and to establish specifi c knowledge of the respective spatial entity. according to christmann (2016: 111), the mass media also play a role within this process. they do not simply function as discourse arenas or news communicating agencies. rather, due to journalistic action such as selecting and staging news, they appear as specifi c – powerful – actors. they are able to considerably infl uence the further public negotiation of specifi c discourse topics. 3 methodology: the ethnographic discourse analysis as pointed out in the previous section, changing discursive constructions of spaces should be seen as complex processes consisting of both communicative action by social actors and the dynamics of public media. this implies that the research design for the empirical investigation of such processes has to be complex as well. accordingly, the research project on rural municipalities applied ethnographic discourse analysis (christmann 2014) because it was particularly designed for analysing processes of social action as well as of discourses. as the term suggests, the ethnographic discourse analysis is a combination of two research fi elds: ethnography and discourse analysis. to be more precise, the approach of focused ethnography (knoblauch 2005) has been crossed with the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (keller 2013). while focused ethnography can be used to analyse methods and contents of space-related (communicative) action by social actors within groups and networks, the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse allows investigation of space-related discourse topics and developing knowledge both in small and large groups. however, both approaches are typically regarded as research concepts that must not be confused with empirical research methods; this implies that specifi c methods of data collection and data analysis should be selected for the empirical research. against this background, the following methods were applied and data were collected: (i) for the analysis of discourse topics (keller 2013) related to demographic change and rural areas, 37 books (or individual book chapters) as well as 16 journal articles written by social scientists in germany were collected for the period from 2000 to 2016; furthermore the data collection included 53 press articles accessible online by national, regional and local newspapers (searched for using keywords such as “rural regions”, “villages”, “demographic change” for the period 2000 to 2016) as well as websites, brochures • gabriela b. christmann364 and documents from innovative initiatives in the rural municipalities under investigation (for the period 2010 to 2016). these data were analysed using the coding procedures of the grounded-theory analysis (strauss/corbin 1990) in which recurring themes and typical semantics were identifi ed. the method of grounded-theory analysis was also applied for all the other data collected within the research project (e.g. through interviews and participant observation). (ii) for the analysis of the methods and contents of communicative action in local groups and networks in treptitz, in the years of 2015 and 2016 participant observation (madden 2010; fetterman 2010) of seven local events as well as nine problem-centred interviews (witzel 1982, 2000; hopf 2000) with local actors were conducted. 4 findings 4.1 “dying villages” – towards the predominant discourse on demographic change in structurally weak rural areas since the 1970s and increasingly the 2000s, there has been intensive, widespread social discourse on birth, death and emigration rates, which are carefully recorded in western societies. at the same time, for slightly more than a decade in this discourse the consequences that demographic change is expected to have for society have been discussed. predictions are made for this purpose and the consequences are usually considered negative. typical examples are the debates on shrinking processes in cities and municipalities, dismantling requirements in the context of infrastructure or pension schemes problems in the context of the statutory pension insurance (enquête-kommission demographischer wandel 2002; berlin-institut für bevölkerung und entwicklung 2009; stula/linz 2010). in germany, since the 2010s there has even been talk of a demographic “crisis” (cf. e-politik 2010), which indicates a very high awareness of the problem. right from the beginning, rural regions have also been a topic of the extended discourse on demographic change, in the context of which there has always been an awareness of the fact that, due to different geographic locations and context conditions, demographic change would not affect all rural regions to the same extent. in germany, primarily the so-called new federal states with their structurally weak rural areas have come into the particular focus of the discourse; even more so as demographic change started there very early and has been particularly intensive. meanwhile there are many publications by social science based spatial research that must be understood as part of the scientifi c discourse on demographic change. typically, they deal with the question of what problems have to be expected. furthermore, they discuss when and how adjustments can be made (cf. e.g. bmvbs/ bbsr 2009; rosenmeyer 2010; östlund 2011; wegner 2012). at the same time, developments and consequences of demographic change are regularly discussed in the context of a public – national, regional and local – media discourse. in it, journalists refer to scientifi c studies and communicate their contents in detail. as our discourse analysis revealed, however, they present these scientifi c analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 365 results within a framework of dramatising metaphors, which in most cases even appear in bold type in the headlines. they typically speak of a “bleeding to death” of rural peripheral regions (cf. e.g. lausitzer rundschau: 8 december 2008, frankfurter rundschau: 8 april 2015), of future “empty landscapes” and roving “wolf packs” (cf. e.g. süddeutsche zeitung: 4 october 2012) as well as of “dying villages” (cf. e.g. die welt: 28 november 2011). in the context of these communicative processes and specifi c semantics in the discourse on demographic change, we argue that new constructions of space occur. the regions previously referred to as “structurally weak rural areas,” now became regions of “dying villages,” of “emptiness” and thus of irreversible depopulation and desolation. by way of discourse they thus are not only made spaces that are structurally weak and lacking infrastructures, moreover they are made spaces without any future prospects, spaces that are abandoned by society. as initially mentioned (section 1), discursively created knowledge may become very powerful and results in social consequences. we can assume that rural inhabitants, given the negative predictions presented by the mass media at regular intervals (from further declining population via lacking prospects for the future as far as to future desolation), might come to the conclusion that they ought to leave their regions if they do not want to be counted among the losers. in this way, depopulation trends may increase, specifi cally among younger people (on this see putzing 2006: 73-83). at least in the social science based literature there is evidence that rural inhabitants are aware of negative media reports on their regions (cf. putzing 2006; tobiassen et al. 2012: 19). obviously, the knowledge of unfavourable predictions for the future communicated by the media is congruent with direct experiences rural inhabitants already have when it comes to local structural defi cits. these include experiences of below-average economic productivity, insuffi cient career prospects, insuffi cient technological, social and services infrastructures, but often also of a reduced social and community life in the respective regions, which also supports depopulation trends (müller/siedentop 2003; manthorpe/livsey 2009). never-ending emigration of rural inhabitants, however, starts what weber (2012: 75) calls a “downward spiral” insofar as the economic opportunities of a region deteriorate increasingly due to a potential lack of workforce. also infrastructures – if existent at all – are reduced, thus affecting the quality of life. the situation rural actors are confronted with – given the intermeshing of depopulation, negative discourses and negative structural developments – is thus that of a crisis. however, as crises force actors to give up their routines, they may accelerate development processes and initiate innovations. 4.2 socially innovative rural municipalities and the case of treptitz what actually can be observed is that at least some local actors in rural regions have started taking up innovative ideas, experimenting with new solutions and slowing down the “downward spiral.” they break with their previous action strategies, rethink their municipality and develop new practices. in the research project, this type of action is conceived of as a social innovation in community development since • gabriela b. christmann366 neither technological nor economic innovations are at the fore, although in some cases these types of innovation can be closely interlinked (zapf 1989; howaldt/ schwarz 2010). social innovations are understood as novel practices, as “novel ways of achieving goals, in particular novel ways of organisation, novel regulations” (zapf 1989: 177; own translation). in most cases, however, the novelty is to be understood rather as a “relative” than a “complete” novelty (gillwald 2000: 11). it is a novel way of combining elements that are already known. what is important, however, is that these socially innovative local actors also start to discuss their municipalities in new ways and thus change the local discourse on their places. what they are doing, in abstract terms, is discursively creating new constructions of space. as indicated above, the research project on rural municipalities selected six cases. all six municipalities are characterised by a marked rural settlement structure and a population density of less than 150 inhabitants per km² (bbsr 2010). furthermore, they are located in structurally weak areas insofar as the number of regular employees in the region is below average both regarding the respective federal state as well as the federal republic of germany as a whole. the gross domestic product (gdp) per capita of the rural population is also below average. the rural municipalities are located in regions characterised by demographic change and by negative predictions regarding their future demographic development. not least, their location is peripheral or very peripheral. this article exemplarily presents the case of treptitz. treptitz belongs to the district of nordsachsen. it is located between dresden, leipzig and torgau in the midst of a nature preserve (cf. fig. 1). the village has 130 inhabitants and belongs to the municipality of cavertitz. fig. 1: the location of treptitz in nordsachsen ( ! ! ! uva 13 treptitz uva 14 dresden leipzig elsterwerda riesa torgau source: own design analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 367 in recent decades, both the municipality of cavertitz and the entire district of nordsachsen have been much affected by demographic change. within a period of slightly less than 15 years (between 2000 and 2014) cavertitz lost about 18 percent of its population. in 2014, the population density was 32.6 inhabitants per km² (cf. citypopulation.de 2014). predictions until 2025 are also negative for the entire district of nordsachsen. future losses are calculated at more than 12 percent compared to the year 2009 (cf. statistisches landesamt des freistaats sachsen 2016: 2). thus, if we believe the predominant discourse on demographic change in structurally weak rural areas, treptitz is a “dying village.” however, the inhabitants of treptitz see things differently. 4.3 innovative action and a small-scale discourse on a “vibrant village” in the context of demographic change 4.3.1 innovative action: diy construction of a sewage works and bioenergy supply the village of treptitz is a case where social and technological innovations are interlinked. the social actors in the village use technology for their innovative community development. the starting point for their initiative is a sewage works problem, which at fi rst sight had nothing to do with demographic change. however, the inhabitants of the village developed an approach to a solution that was at the same time an answer to the demographic problem. the challenge was that due to the location of cavertitz, the existing eu guidelines demanded that the community provide for fully biological sewage works and that the calculated costs of a central installation for the whole municipality would have been so high that the municipality would have run up high debts lasting several generations. given such a situation, the municipal council of cavertitz, which had been dealing with the problem since 2007, decided that the individual villages should proceed independently when it came to the sewage issue. the innovative project of village development. in this situation, the inhabitants of treptitz proved to be ingenious and open for experiments. what makes the project tab. 1: population trend in the municipality of cavertitz (2000-2014) year population trend year population trend year population trend year population trend 2000 2,721 2004 2,620 2008 2,444 2012 2,299 2001 2,669 2005 2,571 2009 2,401 2013 2,282 2002 2,642 2006 2,549 2010 2,372 2014 2,243 2003 2,613 2007 2,507 2011 2,342 source: statistisches landesamt des freistaats sachsen 2016: 6 • gabriela b. christmann368 a novelty is the fact that literally, i.e. even in the physical-material sense, an entire village took matters into their own hands. the innovative project. part i: constructing a sewage works. instead of building expensive individual sewage works for each house, the plan foresaw the building of two treatment works for the whole village, which was much cheaper. the project was based on much diy work by the inhabitants when it came to the installation of sewer pipes and the construction works in general. a fi rst meeting of the inhabitants was a complete success. in september 2010, the verein zum ökologischen gewässerschutz treptitz e. v. (treptitz association for ecologic water protection) was founded, which enabled the village to act as a collective. there were astonishingly few confl icts during implementation of the plans. only the lower authorities were responsible for some obstructions, but they were overcome. soon young and old were digging everywhere in the village; they stood in the ditches and installed pipes. the innovative project. part ii: supplying bioenergy. inspired by innovative model projects from bioenergy villages, a second project was integrated into the running sewage works project that was supposed to be connected with the latter. to make the energy supply for the village much cheaper, in the course of construction works not only sewage pipes but also district heating pipes from the biogas plant of a nearby farm were installed for each household. in this way, they aimed to meet ecological criteria, make energy much cheaper for the inhabitants and, not least, increase the quality of life and attractiveness of the place. right from the beginning, the latter goal in particular was of great signifi cance for the actors. one key individual and the villagers pulling together. one inhabitant who was a treptitz native but had not always occupied a key position within the village community became a key individual in the process. being a young graduate engineer and scientist at a university in saxony, he was not considered a typical village dweller in this agricultural place. the fact that this actor’s special fi eld was hydraulic engineering and human settlement management and that he was thus capable of contributing extensive technological expertise as well as a network of other experts was crucial for the course of the project. another decisive factor for the success of the project was that the local network as such consisted of the entire village community. the villagers supported the project right from the beginning with very few confl icts. the reason for this is the history of the village, which had experienced a similar, though smaller, community project during gdr times. at that time, the community installed cable and antenna technology for television in the village. 4.3.2 a small-scale discourse on a “vibrant village” emerges and develops soon the plans and activities of the crucial actors became the talk of the village. within the small population of the village a discourse developed to which the inhabitants were very committed. the key individual was the starting point of the discourse since he introduced the novel solutions and promoted it in the whole village by talking with villagers individually, as we learned from conducting interviews with social actors of the village. furthermore, village assemblies held in the fi re brigade analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 369 house at the beginning of the project were important events for the development of the small-scale (i.e. of the still very local) discourse, because the village community came together there and started to discuss the project and the future of the village. however, the founding of the association for ecologic water protection (verein zum ökologischen gewässerschutz treptitz e. v.) in which most of the villagers became members was decisive for consolidating the discourse. by founding the association, the villagers created a network of collaborating inhabitants and of infrastructural measures that was needed to meet their visions. there, through association meetings the small-scale discourse was internally established and further developed. through participant observations of some of these assemblies in 2015, we discovered how lively the meetings and discussions still are. by setting up a website, the association members laid the groundwork for external communication of their small local discourse. among other things, key messages were created for the website that at the same time confi rmed the commitment of the village community. the following is a typical and essential statement: “we are treptitz, a village of 130 inhabitants at the fringes of dahlemer heide, and we are known for our community sticking together and being full of ideas.” (http://treptitz.de/der-verein-2/; own translation). in this way, the villagers of treptitz show how they see themselves and their place. in terms of discourse analysis, a sort of knowledge order becomes obvious here in the context of which treptitz is considered a village of ingenuity and solidarity. in this way, this rural place is socially constructed as a creative, vibrant space and not at all as a dying one. interview partners from treptitz tell us that the inhabitants were so proud of what they achieved together that they told outsiders about their project at every opportunity. even when on holiday they carried photos of the construction project with them to tell others about it. this indicates how the collective identity of the people of treptitz was strengthened. self-confi dence was spreading as, after all, they experienced that people can take matters into their own hands and thus organise community development themselves. in the context of the project and related discourse, the inhabitants’ awareness increased that it is possible to fi nd solutions for existing problems in rural areas provided there is suffi cient “ingenuity” and vigour. the following statement by the verein zum ökologischen gewässerschutz treptitz e. v. provides evidence of this: “in contrast to the common demographic situation in germany, treptitz is a young place. also, to keep our small village, which is in the middle of a rural area, attractive for young people in the long run we need an infrastructure that will be affordable for our children and is ecologically sustainable. our goal is to make life in the country worth living and affordable, to prevent small places such as treptitz from dying out.” (http://treptitz.de/der-verein-2/; own translation). the statement explicitly addresses the demographic situation that, at least as far as the issue of an ageing village community is concerned, is comparatively favour• gabriela b. christmann370 able, as we are told, and should be preserved. the goal, it says, is to make sure that the village will be attractive and sustainable in the long run for young people in particular, and this goal is to be reached by means of a sustainable and affordable infrastructure. interestingly, in this context the association refers to a crucial term from the predominant discourse on demographic change: that of “dying out.” however, it is obvious that the association does not consider “dying out,” as suggested by the discourse, to be the reality of the village. rather, it works to prevent this suggested reality of dying out and to ensure that it will not happen in future. treptitz presents itself as a village defying the process of dying out. by creating a new construction of place, a vision plays a role according to which the place is a good place to live, attractive and affordable. thus, the village of treptitz can be described as a village that, through its own small-scale discourse on demographic change, provides an alternative to the predominant negative discourse. however, the discourse analytical investigations showed that between 2010 and 2014, the treptitz approach to community development – with its marked discourse and remarkable local activities – found hardly any response in regional or national newspapers. thus, there were hardly any reports on what was happening at treptitz; at best the dates of events were announced. this makes a power structure obvious where the villagers with their small-scale discourse were sitting at the shorter end of the lever and the local and regional press continued to simply “overlook” the initiative. at best, there was one report that at bockwitz, fi ve kilometres away from treptitz, negotiations were taking place about whether treptitz might serve as a model for the problem of sewage works (cf. torgauer zeitung, 2 may 2014). thus, for a long time the discourse remained a small-scale one yet it had local effects since local knowledge grew in which the inhabitants began to consider their village a vibrant place with visions for the future. the new discursive reconstruction of space, which initially became manifest only by the villagers jointly inventing a positive future for their village, could even be implemented as a project in the context of the innovative approach. 4.3.3 the small discourse grows into a large one – counterpoint in the dominant discourse on demographic change the media coverage changed in 2014 when the village and its association took part in the innovationen querfeldein – ländliche räume neu gedacht (innovations across country – new ideas of rural areas) competition held by land der ideen (land of ideas). it is interesting how the people of treptitz presented themselves in their application (excerpts from the application were published on the association website): “we, as inhabitants of treptitz, have together searched for and identifi ed an inexpensive and environmentally friendly solution for our sewage disposal. together with a local farmer we worked out and implemented a concept for our local heating in order to, in the long run and with a clear conscience, keep the rural area, particularly our own village, analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 371 attractive and worth living in for our children in the future.” (http://treptitz.de/land-der-ideen/; own translation). once again they emphasise that the project pursued the goal of making sure that the village will be attractive and worth living in future. furthermore, the people of treptitz explicitly call their project “innovative,” probably in response to the concept of innovation demanded by the competition. after a detailed description of the technological aspects of the implemented project, the fi nal, seventh point mentions the following social effects: “7. cohesion in the village has considerably strengthened; ‘i’ has changed to ‘we’. our village is growing, in the meantime three young families have decided to move to treptitz and build their homes here as a result of the favourable conditions provided by the village.” (http:// treptitz.de/land-der-ideen/; own translation) the beginning of the statement refl ects the marked discourse at treptitz on the social cohesion in the village, which – as stated above – was a crucial experience in the context of the project from the actors’ point of view. it is remarkable that they also mention the fact that people moved to the village. the actors state that young families moved to treptitz, thus demonstrating that their actions against “dying out” indeed achieved the intended result. the actual creation of a construction of space as a result of these actions is that of an ingenious, resolute and socially intact village with a high quality of life and a high degree of attractiveness, which – as a result of their innovative and sustainable solution for an infrastructural problem – may attract more young families to the village in the context of demographic change. when, in autumn 2014, the jury of land der ideen announced treptitz was the national award winner of the “environment” category and thus socially recognised the reality construction of the village, it became the topic of wider mass media discourse (cf. e.g. eco-world, 9 september 2014; leipziger volkszeitung, 13 november 2014; die welt, 16 november 2014; freie presse, 23 november 2014). both in regional and national newspaper articles as well as on important online forums, the headlines revealed the crucial message: “innovations across country: everything is all right thanks to innovation at treptitz” (eco-world, 9 september 2014; own translation) “these ideas will save our villages from dying out” (die welt, 16 november 2014; own translation) the messages communicated by the media emphasised most of all that rural innovations are possible and that in the context of demographic change they may save villages from dying out. new tones could be heard in the predominant discourse on demographic change, which up to then had been dominated by “dying villages.” other typical topics of the discourse in the context of the innovation at treptitz were connected to the project being a model for others, to the success factors of the project and to the question of whether it could be transferred to other • gabriela b. christmann372 villages or municipalities (cf. e.g. leipziger volkszeitung, 8 september 2015; freie presse, 23 november 2014). however, treptitz was only temporarily in the focus of media attention. indeed, the treptitz project may be representative of countless other projects and small-scale discourses in rural regions where rural inhabitants have proven their ingenuity, originality and resolute cooperation – independently of competitions. however, they only rarely came into the focus of a wider mass media discourse and defi nitely not in the context of demographic issues. however, innovation semantics and competitions seem to be factors that attract extended media attention and thus also the attention of society. in this way, the predominantly negative discourse on rural areas in the context of demographic change is put into question. interestingly, for quite some time such small “bottom up” discourses have been supported by political “top down” activities. for example, based on a decision by the federal ministry of education and research, the demographic opportunity year of science was announced in 2013 to purposefully negotiate positive aspects of change in the public and to raise awareness of this trend – also when it comes to rural areas. in the following year the deutschland – land der ideen initiative mentioned above started the innovationen querfeldein competition (2014), which also aimed at emphasising innovative ideas particularly in rural areas and at making them publicly known. if we try to express this phenomenon in terms of discourse analysis, it is, in a way, strategies by political actors through which new – socially shared – knowledge concerning rural areas in the context of demographic change can be established, thus allowing for the creation of broader new communicative constructs about rural spaces. in this context, these rural regions may also be seen as “vibrant” and “attractive” places. 5 summary and conclusions the empirical analyses revealed that rural areas that initially were simply constructed as structurally weak, lacking in infrastructures and with low economic productivity within the discourse on demographic change in rural regions were given new constructs as they were presented as areas “bleeding to death.” in particular in the public media discourse, it regularly became a topic of discussion whether these rural areas will be characterised by “dying villages,” “empty landscapes,” and “roving wolf packs in future.” in this way, a space-related discourse was established in which perceptions of irreversible depopulation, emptiness and desolation became dominant with regard to rural regions (section 4.1). at the same time, however, further new constructions of rural areas were observed in the empirical data that contradict the predominant discourse on demographic change, as the case of treptitz illustrates (section 4.2). what we could see was the following (section 4.3) – and here, the approach of new communicative constructions of spaces (section 2) was helpful in structuring analysing changes in discursive constructions of rural areas ... • 373 and conceptualising the emergence of counterpoints in the dominant discourse on “dying villages”: • actually, it is due to the local actors’ innovative action and socially innovative initiatives in community development that new facets of the discourse have emerged, even though at fi rst these facets were still restricted to a small-scale discourse. • it is also due to the manifold communications on the future of the village that were very often organised by the key individuals of the initiatives. these communications happened in bilateral encounters as well as group discussions both in village assemblies and meetings of the newly founded local association. there, from bottom-up so to speak, the villagers started a small-scale, local discourse in which the village was discussed in terms of creative potentials and innovative approaches. the actors began to rethink their rural space and to develop new knowledge. thus, through communicative actions by key local players and fi nally by the entire village community, a small but effective discourse unfolded in which the construct of the village became that of an ingenious, socially intact, resolute and vibrant village. moreover, • this discourse even found its way into the wider media discourse on demographic change, 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nachrichten/sachsen/ein-dorf-baut-seine-eigene-klaeranlage-artikel9044643. php, 14.06.2015]. lausitzer rundschau, 08.12.2008: brandenburgs randregionen bluten weiter aus [http:// www.lr-online.de/nachrichten/brandenburg/brandenburgs-randregionen-blutenweiter-aus;art25,2302223, 14.06.2015]. leipziger volkszeitung, 08.09.2015: wasser marsch für neue anlage in treptitz [http://www.lvz.de/region/oschatz/wasser-marsch-fuer-neue-anlage-in-treptitz, 14.06.2015]. leipziger volkszeitung, 13.11.2014: dorf treptitz wird mit htwk-umwelt-konzept als „ort im land der ideen“ ausgezeichnet [http://www.lvz.de/leipzig/bildung/dorftreptitz-wird-mit-htwk-umwelt-konzept-als-ort-im-land-der-ideen-ausgezeichnet, 14.06.2015]. statistisches landesamt des freistaats sachsen 2016: 6. regionalisierte bevölkerungsvoraus-berechnung für den freistaat sachsen 2015-2030. ausgewählte ergebnisse für gemeinde cavertitz. dresden [https://www.statistik.sachsen.de/ download/080_regbev prognose-pdf/prog_cavertitz_14730050.pdf, 15.01.2017]. statistisches landesamt des freistaats sachsen 2016: landkreisinformation. landkreis nordsachsen. dresden [https://www.statistik.sachsen.de/download/010_gb-bev/lk_ nordsachsen.pdf, 15.01.2017]. süddeutsche zeitung, 04.10.2012: leere landschaften [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ leben/bevoelkerungsentwicklung-wie-der-demografi sche-wandel-deutschland-veraendert-1.1486334-2, 14.06.2015]. torgauer zeitung, 02.05.2014: spät ja, aber noch nicht zu spät [http://www. torgauerzeitung.com/default.aspx?t= newsdetailmodus %2875412%29, 14.06.2015]. vög treptitz e.v., 2014. in: http://treptitz.de/land-der-ideen/, 16.07.2015. date of submission: 07.02.2016 date of acceptance: 16.02.2017 prof. dr. gabriela b. christmann (). leibniz institute for research on society and space. leibniz, germany. e-mail: gabriela.christmann@leibniz-irs.de url: https://leibniz-irs.de/en/people-careers/staff/person/gabriela-christmann-0903/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität daniel lois zusammenfassung: auf der basis von soep-daten werden partnerschaften untersucht, die jeweils aus einem westdeutsch und ostdeutsch sozialisierten partner bestehen und aktuell in den alten oder neuen bundesländern wohnen. der geschätzte anteil der ost-west-paare an allen ehen bzw. nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften erhöht sich im beobachtungszeitraum kontinuierlich und liegt im jahr 2009 bei etwa zwei bzw. elf prozent. die speziellen charakteristika der ost-west-paare bestehen darin, dass die außerhäusliche arbeitsteilung relativ egalitär ausgerichtet ist, die partner sich überdurchschnittlich oft in ihrer konfessionellen zugehörigkeit sowie religiösen praxis unterscheiden, scheidungserfahrungen mindestens eines partners häufi g vorkommen und auch eine starke neigung zur nichtehelichkeit festzustellen ist. neben dem ort der sozialisation kommt dem aktuellen wohnort im hinblick auf die ökonomische lage, die arbeitsteilung und die heiratsneigung eine eigenständige bedeutung zu. analysen zur partnerschaftsstabilität zeigen, dass ost-west-paare ein relativ hohes trennungsrisiko aufweisen. dies ist teilweise auf religiöse differenzen zwischen den partnern, vor allem aber auf die geringe heiratsneigung und die überrepräsentation bereits geschiedener personen in diesem partnerschaftstyp zurückzuführen. schlagwörter: ost-west-unterschiede · binnenmigration · partnerschaftsstabilität · homogamie 1 einleitung unmittelbar nach der wiedervereinigung vor mehr als zwei jahrzehnten haben erhebliche innerdeutsche migrationsströme eingesetzt. nach fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln (2009: 32-35) sind, inklusive der rückkehrer und mehrfachmobilen, zwischen 1991 und 2006 etwa zweieinhalb millionen menschen von den neuen in die alten bundesländer gewandert und etwa eine million von den alten in die neuen bundesländer. verheiratete personen sind innerhalb der population der binnenmigranten deutlich unterrepräsentiert (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). daher comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 40 (2015): 3-32 (erstveröffentlichung: 05.12.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-17de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-17de7 • daniel lois4 ist zu erwarten, dass mittlerweile zahlreiche ost-west-paare entstanden sind, z.b. bestehend aus einer in der ehemaligen ddr sozialisierten frau und einem in der alten brd aufgewachsenen mann. das phänomen der ost-west-liebe scheint eine gewisse faszination auszuüben, was sich allein schon an einigen medienwirksamen aktionen ablesen lässt: so trafen sich am 9. januar 2009 über 100 ost-west-paare in berlin-mitte, um mit wolfgang tiefensee, dem damaligen beauftragten der bundesregierung für die neuen bundesländer, über den stand der wiedervereinigung zu sprechen (berliner kurier, 10.01.2009) und im februar 2013 suchte udo lindenberg zehn ost-west-liebespärchen für sein musical „hinterm horizont“ (hamburger abendblatt, 19.02.13). inwieweit die ost-west-dimension für partnerwahlprozesse relevant ist, wird durch die bisherige forschung nicht eindeutig beantwortet. eine studie von rösler (2010) zeigt, dass einige stereotype zu typischen westund osteigenschaften vorhanden sind. bei der befragung von etwa dreihundert berliner studenten zu ihren partnerwahlpräferenzen wird deutlich, dass empathie, erotik und sexuelle offenheit, ein großer bekanntenkreis und geselligkeit sowie ein gutes verhältnis zur familie als typisch ostdeutsch wahrgenommen werden. gutes benehmen, eine hohe bildung, berufl icher erfolg und ökonomische unabhängigkeit gelten dagegen als typisch westdeutsch. zudem zeigt sich, dass sich die ostbzw. westdeutschen befragten im hinblick auf politische und kulturelle merkmale jeweils mehr mit ihresgleichen verbunden fühlen. dies deutet auf eine defi nition der eigengruppe entlang der ost-west-kategorie hin. die journalistin simone schmollack (2005) kommt in ihrem buch zu den „deutsch-deutschen beziehungen“ allerdings zu einer eher optimistischen einschätzung, was die „kompatibilität“ von westund ostdeutschen angeht, die eine paarbeziehung miteinander eingehen. auf der basis von einigen qualitativen interviews wird davon berichtet, dass durchaus konfl ikte in diesen partnerschaften auftreten, die sich häufi g um das thema politik und dabei vor allem um die jüngste deutsche vergangenheit und aspekte wie wende, arbeitslosigkeit und treuhand drehen. unterschiedliche standpunkte in diesen fragen seien dabei jedoch weniger auf eine „ostalgie“ bzw. „westalgie“ zurückzuführen, sondern auf das bedürfnis, die eigene biografi sche identität in der partnerschaft nicht zu verlieren. gleichzeitig wird allerdings eine abschwächung von ost-west-divergenzen über die zeit diagnostiziert: „ost-west-paare, die sich bis mitte der neunziger jahre getroffen haben, bekamen die kulturellen, emanzipatorischen und ökonomischen unterschiede stärker zu spüren als paare, die sich erst vor wenigen jahren getroffen haben“ (schmollack 2005: 10). das fazit auf dem klappentext des buches lautet daher: „nirgendwo ist die deutsch-deutsche wiedervereinigung offensichtlicher als in der liebe.“ vor dem hintergrund dieser widersprüchlichen befunde besteht das ziel des vorliegenden beitrags darin, am beispiel von ost-west-paaren den widerstreit zwischen überdauernden sozialisationserfahrungen und anpassungen an den sozialräumlichen kontext und neue interaktionspartner zu untersuchen. ost-west-paare stellen insofern eine spezielle gruppe dar, da das eingehen einer partnerschaft mit personen aus dem „aufnahmekontext“ in der migrationsforschung als eine fortgeschrittene assimilationsstufe gilt (gordon 1964; alba/nee 2003). möglicherweise ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 5 werden unterschiede zwischen den partnern folglich im zuge von partnerwahlund anpassungsprozessen nivelliert. daneben besteht jedoch die möglichkeit, dass in der sozialisation erworbene prägungen, selbst im kontext der binnenmigration und der aufnahme einer neuen partnerschaft, stabil bleiben. in diesem fall könnten differenzen innerhalb von ost-west-partnerschaften zu einer erhöhten instabilität dieser partnerschaftsform beitragen. dies wäre gleichbedeutend mit einer fortwährenden segmentation sozialer gruppen entlang der ost-west-dimension. die studie ist wie folgt gegliedert: in abschnitt 2 wird zunächst aus theoretischer perspektive diskutiert, welche speziellen charakteristika ost-west-paare aufweisen. dabei wird auf einen theoretischen rahmen zurückgegriffen, der zwischen drei einfl ussgrößen differenziert: der sozialisation in der ehemaligen ddr bzw. alten brd, der adaption der binnenmigranten an den aktuellen sozialraum und neue interaktionspartner sowie der selektivität von räumlich mobilen personen (kulu/ milewski 2007; milewski 2009). in abschnitt 3 werden anschließend die eigenschaften der ost-west-paare in das rahmenmodell zur erklärung der ehestabilität von lewis und spanier (1979) integriert. nach methodischen anmerkungen im vierten abschnitt wird im empirischen teil (abschnitt 5) zunächst mit daten des soziooekonomischen panels geklärt, wie verbreitet ost-west-partnerschaften sind.1 dabei ist insbesondere auch der sonderstatus berlins zu berücksichtigen, da hier die gelegenheitsstrukturen für die entstehung von ost-west-paaren besonders günstig sind. die weiteren analysen befassen sich mit den speziellen eigenschaften und der stabilität dieser partnerschaften. in abschnitt 6 werden die ergebnisse schließlich zusammengefasst und diskutiert. 2 eigenschaften von ost-west-partnerschaften im kontext von sozialisations-, adaptionsund selektionseffekten die untersuchung der speziellen merkmale von ost-west-paaren stützt sich auf einen migrationssoziologischen theoretischen rahmen, der zwischen drei hypothesen unterscheidet: der sozialisations-, der adaptionsund der selektionshypothese (kulu/milewski 2007; milewski 2009). im rahmen der sozialisationshypothese wird davon ausgegangen, dass individuelle merkmale wie erwerbsorientierung oder religiosität, die durch die sozialisation in der ehemaligen ddr und der alten brd bedingt sind, selbst dann unverändert bleiben, wenn der akteur im zuge einer binnenmigration veränderten sozialen kontextbedingungen ausgesetzt ist. schneider et al. (1995) gehen in diesem zusammenhang unter dem stichwort „divergierende modernisierung“ davon aus, dass sich die unterschiedlichen strukturellen und kulturellen einfl üsse in der alten brd und der ehemaligen ddr nach der wiederver1 derzeit fehlen zahlen zur verbreitung dieser partnerschaftsform, da das statistische bundesamt im rahmen der statistiken zu eheschließungen nur den aktuellen wohnort, nicht aber den ort des aufwachsens vor 1989 berücksichtigt. (mitteilung des statistischen bundesamtes am 20.11.2012 auf anfrage) • daniel lois6 einigung nicht rasch aufl ösen, da ältere geburtsjahrgänge, vor allem vor dem jahr 1970, hierdurch in ihrem denken und handeln nachhaltig geprägt wurden. den gegenpol zur sozialisationshypothese stellt die adaptionshypothese dar. hiernach wird, im rahmen von akkulturationsund assimilationsprozessen (gordon 1964; alba/nee 2003), eine anpassung räumlich mobiler personen an den jeweils aktuellen lebenskontext postuliert. hier sind zunächst strukturelle aspekte des sozial-räumlichen kontextes zu berücksichtigen, z.b. die beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten oder die verfügbarkeit von einrichtungen zur kinderbetreuung. die entstehung einer ost-west-partnerschaft lässt sich darüber hinaus als eine form von sozialer assimilation deuten, die in der forschung zu internationalen migranten als fortgeschrittene assimilationsstufe gilt. beispiele sind das dritte stadium der assimilation („marital assimilation“) bei gordon (1964) oder der prozess der grenzverwischung („boundary blurring“) bei alba und nee (2003). schließlich wird im rahmen der selektionshypothese davon ausgegangen, dass die individuellen merkmale von binnenmigranten vom durchschnitt der nicht mobilen bevölkerung abweichen (kulu/milewski 2007; milewski 2009). in den folgenden abschnitten wird vor dem hintergrund von sozialisations-, adaptionsund selektionseffekten diskutiert, inwieweit sich ost-west-paare mit wohnort in den neuen oder alten bundesländern von paaren mit einheitlicher west oder ostsozialisation unterscheiden. bei den untersuchten merkmalsdimensionen handelt es sich dabei um die ökonomische lage (abschnitt 2.1), die arbeitsteilung des paares (abschnitt 2.2), die kirchliche religiosität (abschnitt 2.3) und familiale lebensformen (abschnitt 2.4). diese recht heterogene auswahl orientiert sich vor allem an den spezifi schen langfristfolgen der ehemaligen deutschen zweistaatlichkeit, die in der forschung aufgezeigt wurden (schneider et al. 2012). 2.1 zur ökonomischen lage von ost-west-paaren im hinblick auf die ökonomische situation des paares, die sich durch materiellen wohlstand (haushaltsäquivalenzeinkommen), die betroffenheit von arbeitslosigkeit und subjektive bewertungen wie die allgemeine lebenszufriedenheit äußern kann, sollte in erster linie der aktuelle wohnort von bedeutung sein. für ost-west-paare, die in den neuen bundesländern leben, ist, aufgrund der schlechteren einkommensund beschäftigungschancen, eine stärkere betroffenheit von ökonomischen mangelsituationen und arbeitslosigkeit zu erwarten als für ost-west-paare, die in den alten bundesländern leben. in den jahrzehnten nach der wiedervereinigung ist es allerdings zu einer ökonomischen ost-west-angleichung gekommen, die sich nach derzeitigem forschungsstand in verschiedene phasen einteilen lässt (göbel et al. 2010): bezogen auf das haushaltsäquivalenzeinkommen und die allgemeine lebenszufriedenheit wurden in der ersten hälfte der 1990er jahre deutliche angleichungsfortschritte erzielt, die sich jedoch zwischen 1995 und 2000 verlangsamt haben. nach dem jahrtausendwechsel lassen sich eine erneute zunahme der einkommensabstände und eine stagnation der zufriedenheitsdifferenzen feststellen. die ostdeutsche bevölkerung ist nach wie vor vermehrt im niedriglohnbereich präsent, stärker von arbeitslosigkeit betroffen, weist einen höheren anteil dauerhafter ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 7 armutsepisoden auf und hat zudem überproportional häufi g einkommenseinbußen im zuge der wirtschaftskrisen nach dem jahr 2000 zu verzeichnen (göbel et al. 2010: 469). dementsprechend sollte der sozialräumliche ost-west-kontext bis heute mit unterschieden in der ökonomischen lage von paaren verbunden sein. unabhängig vom aktuellen wohnort lässt sich die these aufstellen, dass differierende wohlfahrtschancen zwischen partnerschaften auch durch den ort der sozialisation bedingt sein können. ein gutes beispiel hierfür sind intergenerationale transfers und erbschaften. so besteht eine spätfolge des planwirtschaftlichen wirtschaftssystems der ehemaligen ddr darin, dass ostdeutsch sozialisierte personen, aufgrund von geringeren vermögenswerten und wohneigentumsquoten in den neuen bundesländern, nicht nur seltener erben, sondern im falle einer erbschaft auch geringere beträge erhalten (szydlik/schupp 2004). die selektiven merkmale der binnenmigranten sprechen allerdings eher gegen einen generellen ökonomischen nachteil von paaren mit ostdeutsch sozialisiertem partner, da vor allem junge und überdurchschnittlich gut qualifi zierte ostdeutsche personen eine hohe bereitschaft zur abwanderung in die alten bundesländer aufweisen (windzio 2007; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). inwieweit sich ostwest-paare von paaren mit übereinstimmender sozialisation innerhalb des gleichen sozialräumlichen kontextes unterscheiden, z.b. ost-west-paare in westdeutschland von west-west-paaren in westdeutschland, ist somit eine empirische frage. 2.2 zur partnerschaftlichen arbeitsteilung in ost-west-partnerschaften die sozialisationshypothese lässt erwarten, dass ostdeutsch sozialisierte frauen eine durchschnittlich höhere erwerbsorientierung aufweisen als frauen, die in der alten brd aufgewachsen sind. hierfür sind vor allem die divergierenden sozialund familienpolitischen arrangements in der ddr und der alten brd verantwortlich (trappe 1995). der westdeutsche staat hat lange zeit das alleinverdienermodell gefördert, wogegen in der ddr frühzeitig die rechtlichen und institutionellen rahmenbedingungen, z.b. bezogen auf kinderbetreuungsplätze, geschaffen wurden, um eine schnelle rückkehr der frau nach der familiengründung und eine vollzeiterwerbstätigkeit beider geschlechter zu ermöglichen. sind diese sozialisationserfahrungen dauerhaft stabil, ist für ost-west-paare mit ostdeutsch sozialisierter frau eine egalitärere ausrichtung der partnerschaftlichen arbeitsteilung zu erwarten als für west-west-paare oder für ost-west-paare mit westdeutsch sozialisierter frau. im hinblick auf selektionseffekte ist zudem bekannt, dass weibliche ost-west-migranten überwiegend hoch gebildet und entsprechend erwerbsorientiert sind (fuchsschündeln/schündeln 2009). darüber hinaus kommt der adaption an den sozialen kontext wahrscheinlich eine eigenständige bedeutung zu. vor dem hintergrund der besseren verfügbarkeit von kinderbetreuungsplätzen in den neuen bundesländern (hank et al. 2004) ist zu erwarten, dass in ostdeutschland lebende paare, unabhängig von ihren sozialisationserfahrungen, im hinblick auf ihre relative erwerbsbeteiligung egalitärer ausgerichtet sind als paare in den alten bundesländern. darüber hinaus besteht die möglichkeit von akkulturationsprozessen, z.b. im sinne einer abnehmenden er• daniel lois8 werbsorientierung ostdeutsch sozialisierter frauen im zuge des umzugs in die alten bundesländer und einer anpassung an einen partner, der in der alten brd aufgewachsen ist. dass sich geschlechtsrollenorientierungen in partnerschaften anpassen können, wird durch eine studie von kalmijn (2005) mit niederländischen daten bestätigt. männer und frauen werden hiernach über die zeit egalitärer (traditioneller), je egalitärer (traditioneller) der partner im ausgangszustand ist. das ausmaß der anpassung hängt jedoch stark von dem vorhandensein von kindern und der erwerbskonstellation ab. da bisher keine äquivalenten studien zu ost-west-paaren vorliegen, wird empirisch zu überprüfen sein, ob divergierende geschlechtsrollenorientierungen in diesen partnerschaften infolge von anpassungsprozessen nivelliert werden. 2.3 zur religiosität in ost-west-partnerschaften zu den gravierendsten soziokulturellen ost-west-differenzen zählt die unterschiedliche bedeutung von religion und kirche. die alten bundesländer sind seit jeher durch die süddeutsche katholische kulturtradition geprägt worden, während in den neuen bundesländern traditionell die liberalen bis säkularen strömungen des überwiegend protestantischen nordostens dominieren (pickel 2003). diese langfristigen unterschiede in der religiösen kultur wurden mittelfristig durch die erfahrungen mit entgegengesetzten politischen systemen verstärkt (storch 2003). als folge dieser entwicklungen ist die kirchliche religiosität in den alten bundesländern heute noch wesentlich stärker verankert als in den neuen. bezogen auf die erwachsene wohnbevölkerung in privathaushalten liegt der geschätzte anteil von kirchenmitgliedern in westdeutschland im jahr 2009 bei über 80 % und in ostdeutschland bereits bei unter 30 % (lois 2011). folglich ist aus sicht der sozialisationshypothese zu erwarten, dass sich ost-west-paare überdurchschnittlich häufi g in ihrer religiosität unterscheiden. dies könnte sich dadurch ausdrücken, dass nur der westdeutsch sozialisierte partner noch konfessionell gebunden und religiös aktiv ist. unabhängig von den sozialisationserfahrungen ist allerdings denkbar, dass nur zwischen religiös ähnlichen personen partnerschaften überhaupt zustande kommen. im falle der kirchlichen religiosität haben jedoch klein und wunder (1996) gezeigt, dass konfessionelle homogamie überwiegend nicht ausdruck von partnerwahlpräferenzen ist, sondern ein resultat relativer gruppengrößen und entsprechender gelegenheitsstrukturen. demzufolge hat z.b. eine ostdeutsch sozialisierte, konfessionslose person, die in die alten bundesländer zieht, allein aufgrund der gelegenheitsstrukturen eine größere chance, personen mit konfession zu treffen. nach der adaptionshypothese bestünde allerdings die möglichkeit, dass unterschiede der partner im hinblick auf die religiosität durch anpassungsprozesse über die zeit überwunden werden. auch diese annahme wird allerdings durch die bisherige forschung nur bedingt unterstützt. lois (2013: 184-209) zeigt am beispiel der kirchgangshäufi gkeit, dass in partnerschaften zwar eine tendenz festzustellen ist, sich über die zeit an den partner anzupassen, diese tendenz aber deutlich schwächer ist als bei vergleichsmerkmalen wie der freizeitgestaltung. den aus der sozialisation stammenden prägungen sollte demnach eine relativ große bedeutung zukommen. ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 9 schließlich liegen auch bereits erste ergebnisse dazu vor, inwieweit ost-westmigranten in bezug auf die kirchliche religiosität selektiv sind. lois (2013: 173) zeigt, dass binnenmigranten zwischen ostund westdeutschland, unabhängig von der mobilitätsrichtung, signifi kant häufi ger konfessionslos sind und zudem eine signifi kant niedrigere kirchgangshäufi gkeit aufweisen als nicht mobile personen (zu ähnlichen ergebnissen kommt vatterrott 2011). während somit die sozialisationsund auch die adaptionshypothese erwarten lassen, dass sich die religiöse prägung von partnern in ost-west-beziehungen überdurchschnittlich stark unterscheidet, sollte diese tendenz durch den geschilderten selektionsmechanismus wieder abgeschwächt werden. auch die religiöse ähnlichkeit in ost-west-paaren wird damit zu einer empirisch zu klärenden frage. 2.4 zur wahl familialer lebensformen in ost-west-partnerschaften die bisher diskutierten ost-west-unterschiede in den bereichen ökonomische lage, arbeitsteilung und religiosität sollten auch dazu beitragen, dass die in ost-west-beziehungen gewählten familialen lebensformen vom durchschnitt der bevölkerung abweichen. aus sicht der sozialisationsperspektive lassen sich argumente für eine stärkere neigung zur nichtehelichkeit beim ostdeutsch sozialisierten partner fi nden. aus historischer perspektive ist vor allem die starke verbreitung von nichtehelichen geburten im gebiet der neuen bundesländer bis in das 19. jahrhundert zurückzuverfolgen. diese wurde in der ddr durch die einführung des babyjahres, das ledige mütter privilegierte, verstärkt (schneider et al. 2012). trotz der angleichung sozialrechtlicher rahmenbedingungen ist die ost-west-schere in der nichtehelichenquote auch nach der wiedervereinigung größer geworden. im jahr 2010 lag der anteil nichtehelich geborener an allen erstgeborenen bei 74 % in ostdeutschland (ohne berlin), aber nur bei 37 % in westdeutschland (pötzsch 2012). zusätzlich ist im rahmen der selektionshypothese zu bedenken, dass in der gruppe der ost-west-binnenmigranten personen mit mindestens einer vorangehenden scheidung im lebensverlauf überrepräsentiert sind, vor allem in der ersten migrationswelle zwischen 1990 und 1995 (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). auch dieser selektionseffekt sollte zu einer geringeren heiratsneigung in ost-westpaaren beitragen, da die wahrscheinlichkeit des eingehens einer zweitoder drittehe gegenüber erstehen geringer ist (lankuttis/blossfeld 2003). arránz becker und lois (2010) fi nden allerdings insoweit hinweise auf adaptionsprozesse, da sich – im ausgangszustand ledige – frauen mit ost-west-mobilität an das heiratsmuster westdeutscher frauen anpassen, obwohl sie soziokulturelle prägungen ihres ostdeutschen herkunftskontextes, dazu zählen eine geringe religiosität und eine relativ ausgeprägte berufsorientierung, beibehalten. hierfür könnte eine anpassung an den westdeutschen partner verantwortlich gemacht werden, der, aufgrund seiner sozialisationserfahrungen, eine verstärkte „eheorientierung“ in die partnerschaft einbringen sollte. obwohl sich insgesamt mehr argumente fi nden lassen, die für eine starke neigung zur nichtehelichkeit in ost-west-paaren sprechen, handelt es sich hier wiederum um eine empirisch zu klärende frage. • daniel lois10 hinsichtlich des fertilitätsverhaltens sind ebenfalls bleibende ost-west-unterschiede nach der wiedervereinigung zu beobachten. nach 1990 kam es zwar scheinbar zu einer anpassung der ostdeutschen bevölkerung an die neuen strukturellen rahmenbedingungen. das alter bei familiengründung, das in der ddr deutlich niedriger lag als in der alten brd, stieg nach 1989 rapide an und führte dadurch kurzfristig zu einem einbruch der geburtenziffern (zapf/mau 1993). auch in der nachwendezeit weisen ostdeutsche frauen jedoch bei der geburt des ersten kindes mit 27.4 jahren ein etwas geringeres durchschnittsalter auf als westdeutsche frauen mit 29.2 jahren (pötzsch 2012); zudem ist die lebenslange kinderlosigkeit in den alten bundesländern stärker verbreitet als in den neuen (statistisches bundesamt 2009). im hinblick auf die familiengründung ist somit einerseits davon auszugehen, dass in der ddr sozialisierte personen seltener zu einer dauerhaften kinderlosigkeit neigen als personen, die in der alten brd aufgewachsen sind. zudem scheinen sich ostdeutsch sozialisierte personen, die in die alten bundesländer migrieren, nicht an das westdeutsche muster einer relativ späten erstgeburt anzupassen (vatterrott 2011). die speziellen merkmale der (weiblichen) ost-west-migranten, z.b. ihr hohes bildungsniveau (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; windzio 2007), lassen andererseits über einen selektionseffekt ein häufi geres auftreten der kinderlosigkeit in dieser gruppe erwarten. die gleiche schlussfolgerung kann gezogen werden, wenn der einfl uss des jeweiligen westdeutsch sozialisierten partners berücksichtigt wird, dessen sozialisationserfahrungen wiederum auf das biografi sche modell der späten familiengründung im lebenslauf hinauslaufen sollten. für ost-west-paare mit wohnort in den alten bundesländern ist ferner der infrastrukturelle effekt einer geringeren verfügbarkeit von kinderbetreuungsangeboten, insbesondere für kinder unter 3 jahren (hank et al. 2004), zu berücksichtigen. vor dem hintergrund dieser komplexen gemengelage wird auch im hinblick auf die familiengründung empirisch zu prüfen sein, inwieweit sich ost-west-beziehungen von der vergleichsgruppe der paare mit übereinstimmendem sozialisationshintergrund unterscheiden. 3 hypothesen zur stabilität von ost-west-partnerschaften im vorangehenden abschnitt wurde herausgearbeitet, dass sich ost-west-paare wahrscheinlich in hinblick auf eine reihe von merkmalen von partnerschaften mit einheitlichem sozialisationskontext unterscheiden. diese mutmaßlichen unterschiede müssen jedoch nicht zwangsläufi g die zufriedenheit und die stabilität einer paarbeziehung beeinfl ussen, da sie zum beispiel in der alltäglichen kommunikation und interaktion des paares nicht relevant sind. erst wenn sich zeigen lässt, dass ostwest-paare aufgrund ihrer charakteristika überdurchschnittlich instabil sind, ist die schlussfolgerung berechtigt, dass es auch im wiedervereinigten deutschland noch zu einer segmentation (esser 2001: 19-20) sozialer gruppen entlang der ost-westdimension kommt. ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 11 vor diesem hintergrund werden nun hypothesen zum trennungsrisiko in ostwest-paaren formuliert. als theoretische grundlage dient hier ein mehrdimensionales und integratives rahmenmodell der ehestabilität, das von lewis und spanier (1979) entwickelt wurde und sowohl gesellschaftliche als auch individuelle und dyadische merkmale einbezieht.2 die subjektive eheliche instabilität im sinne einer trennungsneigung ist dabei vorbedingung einer tatsächlich vollzogenen scheidung und ist selbst wieder von der ehequalität abhängig. die ehequalität wird von sozialen und personalen ressourcen beeinfl usst, die bereits zu beginn der ehe festgelegt sind, vom belohnungswert der partnerschaftlichen interaktion und von der zufriedenheit mit dem aktuellen lebensstil. übertragen auf die vorliegende fragestellung führen die ost-west-sozialisationserfahrungen zu spezifischen personalen und sozialen ressourcen. der etwas ungenaue ressourcenbegriff im modell von lewis und spanier (1979) kann unter rückgriff auf die familienökonomie (becker 1981) dahingehend präzisiert werden, dass zwischen komplementären und substituierbaren ressourcen zu unterscheiden ist. bei komplementären merkmalen wie der religiosität erhöhen sich die zufriedenheit und stabilität der paarbeziehung, wenn die partner sich möglichst ähnlich sind. bei substituierbaren eigenschaften wie der erwerbsbeteiligung kann dagegen im rahmen von spezialisierung und arbeitsteilung auch eine unähnlichkeit der partner effi zient sein. die einfl üsse des aktuellen sozial-räumlichen kontextes, etwa die unterschiedlichen einkommensund beschäftigungschancen in den alten und neuen bundesländern, beeinfl ussen zudem direkt die gegenwärtige zufriedenheit des paares mit dem lebensstil. ob eine ehe bei geringer ehequalität und hoher subjektiver trennungsneigung tatsächlich geschieden wird, hängt im modell von lewis und spanier (1979) zusätzlich davon ab, inwieweit externer druck zur aufrechterhaltung der ehe besteht und wie viele alternativen zur ehe zur verfügung stehen. auch hier ergeben sich anknüpfungspunkte zur vorliegenden fragestellung, da ost-west-paare sozialräumlich in großstädtischen kontexten – vor allem in berlin – überrepräsentiert sein sollten, weil dort mehr alternative partner zur aktuellen partnerschaft zur verfügung stehen (schneider et al. 2012). auf diesen aspekt wird in abschnitt 5.1 zurückzukommen sein. im folgenden wird zunächst dargestellt, welche schlussfolgerungen sich für die stabilität von ost-west-paaren ziehen lassen, wenn unterschiede in der ökonomischen lage, der partnerschaftlichen arbeitsteilung, der religiosität und der familialen lebensform berücksichtigt werden. in abschnitt 2.1 wurde die hypothese formuliert, dass aktuell in den neuen bundesländern wohnende paare, und womöglich auch paare mit mindestens einem in der ehemaligen ddr aufgewachsenen partner, in stärkerem ausmaß von ökonomischen problemlagen betroffen sind. hieraus lässt sich schließen, dass die genannten paare instabiler sind (deprivations-hypothese), da sich ökonomische mangelsituationen sowie arbeitslosigkeitserfahrungen destabilisierend auf partnerschaften 2 eine ausführliche diskussion sowie vorschläge zur weiterentwicklung des modells fi nden sich in arránz becker (2008: 29-37, 305-320). • daniel lois12 auswirken (im überblick: arránz becker 2008: 32-35). dies ist vor allem auf negative veränderungen der paarinteraktion zurückzuführen. fühlen sich paare ökonomisch depriviert, erhöht sich die wahrscheinlichkeit des auftretens dysfunktionaler wahrnehmungen und verhaltensweisen wie ängstlichkeit, depressivität und demoralisierung. zudem verringert sich die gegenseitige unterstützung der paare und es kommt vermehrt zu feindseligkeiten und konfl ikten (conger et al. 1990; conger et al. 1999). neben der ausstattung mit ökonomischen ressourcen stellt sich die frage, wie diese in partnerschaften durch arbeitsteilung erzeugt werden und welche konsequenzen dies für die partnerschaftsstabilität hat. lewis und spanier (1979) ordnen diesen aspekt, wie auch die ökonomische lage des paares, der kategorie „satisfaction with lifestyle“ zu. in der forschung gilt vor allem die erwerbstätigkeit der frau als faktor, der die trennungswahrscheinlichkeit in ehen, nicht aber in nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften (lois 2008), erhöht. dies wird, wie böttcher (2006) zusammenfassend dargestellt hat, auf einen verringerten „ehegewinn“ infolge einer ausbleibenden effi zienzsteigerung durch arbeitsteilung, eine doppelbelastung der frau durch hausund erwerbsarbeit, eine höhere verfügbarkeit alternativer partner im arbeitsumfeld der frau und den destabilisierenden selbständigkeitseffekt des einkommens der frau zurückgeführt. der negative zusammenhang zwischen der erwerbstätigkeit der frau und der ehestabilität wird durch zahlreiche studien belegt (im überblick: wagner/weiß 2003). es wird daher die hypothese formuliert, dass ost-west-ehen mit ostdeutsch sozialisierter frau sowie ost-ost-ehen aufgrund ihrer stärker egalitären arbeitsteilung instabiler sind als west-west-ehen oder ostwest-ehen mit ostdeutsch sozialisiertem mann (arbeitsteilungs-hypothese). ein klassisches beispiel für ein komplementäres merkmal, das bei lewis und spanier (1979) den bereits vorehelich festgelegten faktoren zugerechnet werden kann, ist die religiosität. theoretisch ist hier zu erwarten, dass eine religiöse ähnlichkeit der partner positive paarinteraktionen fördert und das auftreten von konfl ikten unwahrscheinlicher macht (im überblick: arránz becker 2008: 62-71). bisherige studien bestätigen diese annahmen (z.b. call/heaton 1997; wagner/weiß 2003). im ergebnis führt dies zu der erwartung, dass ost-west-paare deshalb instabiler sind als paare mit übereinstimmendem sozialisationsort, da sich die religiöse prägung der partner überdurchschnittlich oft unterscheidet (religiöse-homogamie-hypothese). das theoretische rahmenmodell von lewis und spanier (1979) ist ferner zu einer zeit entwickelt worden, in der nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaften (nel) wenig verbreitet waren. qian und lichter (2007) weisen jedoch im zusammenhang mit interethnischen partnerschaften darauf hin, dass die zunahme von nel die soziale distanz zwischen sozialen gruppen verstärken kann, da diese familiale lebensform, verglichen mit ehen, allgemein instabiler ist, mit einer geringeren überlappung der partnerschaftlichen sozialen netzwerke verbunden ist und zudem weniger häufi g mit der geburt von kindern einhergeht, die innerhalb der familienökonomie als beziehungsspezifi sche investition gelten. die stärker ausgeprägte nichtehelichkeit und kinderlosigkeit sollte daher zu einer erhöhten instabilität der ost-west-paare beitragen (nichtehelichkeits-hypothese, kinderlosigkeits-hypothese). ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 13 ferner ist die in abschnitt 2.4 diskutierte selektivität der ost-west-binnenmigranten zu berücksichtigen, die überdurchschnittlich häufi g bereits einmal geschieden sind. zweitehen weisen ein erhöhtes trennungsrisiko auf (wagner/weiß 2003). dies wird vor allem auf die selektiven merkmale bereits geschiedener personen, etwa mangelnde interaktionskompetenzen, zurückgeführt (arránz becker 2008: 5960). daraus folgt die zweitehen-hypothese, die ebenfalls eine erhöhte instabilität der ost-west-partnerschaft erwarten lässt. 4 daten und methode 4.1 datengrundlage die vorliegende studie greift auf daten des sozio-oekonomischen panels (soep, wagner et al. 2007) zurück. für diesen datensatz spricht, dass dyadische längsschnittdaten über einen beobachtungszeitraum von zwei jahrzehnten (hier: 19902009) zur verfügung stehen. die stichprobe setzt sich aus 16.396 ehen und nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften (unverheiratete partner in einem gemeinsamen haushalt) zusammen, die in den soep-erhebungen a-h seit 1990 beobachtet werden können. 87,2 % der beobachtungsepisoden entfallen auf ehen. paare mit getrennten haushalten können nicht berücksichtigt werden, da in diesen fällen keine partnerinformationen vorliegen. in tabelle 1 ist eine übersicht über die fallzahlen, differenziert nach paartypen, dargestellt. die stichprobe umfasst 974 ost-west-paare.3 die hier verfügbare zahl der ost-west-paare liegt deutlich höher als in anderen datensätzen, etwa dem beziehungsund familienpanel, und macht das soep derzeit zu der am besten geeigneten datenquelle für die vorliegende fragestellung. allerdings ist der typ „ostmann-westfrau“ in den neuen bundesländern mit 24 paaren zu schwach besetzt und wird daher aus den deskriptiven analysen (tab. 3 und 4) ausgeschlossen. in tabelle 1 ist zusätzlich die prozentuale verteilung verschiedener typen von ost-west-paaren dargestellt. zum beispiel handelt es sich bei 52,7 % der ost-westpaare um den typ „ostfrau-westmann“ mit wohnort in den alten bundesländern. diese prozentwerte basieren im gegensatz zu den absolutzahlen auf gewichteten berechnungen. es wäre ferner möglich, paare mit übereinstimmendem sozialisationskontext und binnenmigration, z.b. ost-ost-paare, die in die alten bundesländer ziehen, zu analysieren. dies würde den rahmen der vorliegenden arbeit jedoch sprengen. dasselbe gilt für ethnisch heterogame paare. die daten werden im long-format aufbereitet, sodass auf ein paar und auf einen erhebungszeitpunkt jeweils eine zeile im datensatz entfällt. der datensatz umfasst insgesamt 122.049 zeilen. der beobachtungszeitraum endet im falle von panelmor3 in 15,2 % der fälle wird der paartyp aufgrund von fehlenden angaben zum wohnort vor 1989 imputiert (siehe tab. a1). • daniel lois14 talität, rechtszensierung im jahr 2009 oder einer trennung der partner. dieselbe person kann über die zeit in mehreren partnerschaften vertreten sein. 4.2 auswertungsverfahren die empirischen analysen umfassen zwei schritte. zunächst werden verschiedene merkmale zwischen den paartypen verglichen. dabei ist zu berücksichtigen, dass die ost-west-paare mit einem mittleren paaralter von 40,2 jahren etwa neun jahre jünger sind als west-west-paare (49,6 jahre) bzw. ost-ost-paare (49,2 jahre). ein einfacher deskriptiver vergleich wäre somit wenig informativ, da er, neben den im mittelpunkt stehenden sozialisationseffekten, immer auch altersunterschiede widerspiegeln würde. aus diesem grund werden die eigenschaften der verschiedenen paare unter kontrolle von alters-, kohortenund periodeneffekten verglichen.4 als analyseverfahren werden zur analyse der eigenschaften von verschiedenen paartypen sog. random-effects-(re)-modelle (allison 2009: 21) eingesetzt, die, gewichtet nach dem jeweiligen varianzanteil, sowohl unterschiede innerhalb als auch zwischen paaren berücksichtigen. da eine der abhängigen variablen, die absolutdifferenz der kirchgangshäufi gkeiten der partner, einen hohen anteil der ausprägung 0 aufweist, wird in diesem fall ein re-poisson-modell berechnet (allison 2009: 49-69). bei dichotomen variablen kommt ein (binäres oder multinomiales) logistisches regressionsmodell mit panelrobusten standardfehlern zum einsatz. der zweite auswertungsschritt besteht in einer analyse des relativen trennungsrisikos in den verschiedenen paartypen. hier wird die auf dem logit-modell basierende zeitdiskrete ereignisdatenanalyse herangezogen, die speziell für paneldaten tab. 1: übersicht über die fallzahlen und die prozentuale verteilung der ostwest-paare aktuelle region alte bundesländer (inklusive westberlin) neue bundesländer neue bundesländer (inklusive ostberlin) gleiche region vor 1989 west-west-paare (n = 11.214) ost-ost-paare (n = 4.208) unterschiedliche regionen vor 1989 ostfrau-westmann (n = 563, 52,7 %) ostmann-westfrau (n = 259, 27,3 %) ostfrau-westmann (n = 128, 17,2 %) ostmann-westfrau (n = 24, 2,8 %) prozentwerte gewichtet mit querschnitts-hochrechnungsfaktoren gphrf-zphrf quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) 4 die kontrollvariablen umfassen hier das lineare und quadrierte alter (paarmittelwert), dummyvariablen zum jeweiligen beobachtungszeitraum (1990-1995, 1996-2000, 2001-2005, referenz: 2006-2009) sowie das als paarmittelwert operationalisierte geburtsjahr und das quadrierte geburtsjahr. ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 15 angemessen ist (singer/willett 2003: 357-406). aus fallzahltechnischen gründen wird ein gemeinsames modell für ehen und nel geschätzt. da sich die logit-koeffi zienten in hierarchischen regressionsmodellen auch ohne interkorrelation der unabhängigen variablen verändern können (mood 2010), werden hier durchschnittliche marginaleffekte (average marginal effects, ame) ausgewiesen, auf die dieses problem nicht zutrifft. 4.3 operationalisierungen zu den operationalisierungen ist vorwegzunehmen, dass alle unabhängigen variablen um ein jahr zeitverzögert in die analysen zur partnerschaftsstabilität aufgenommen werden. fehlende werte werden bei allen unabhängigen variablen mit hilfe des expectation-maximization-verfahrens (allison 2001: 19) imputiert. im falle von unregelmäßig gemessenen variablen erfolgt zuvor eine fortschreibung bis zur jeweils aktuellen erhebung. der anteil fehlender werte ist, zusammen mit deskriptiven statistiken, in tabelle a1 im anhang ausgewiesen. operationalisierung der paartypen: • die information, wo die jeweilige person vor 1989 aufgewachsen ist (alte brd, ddr) wird der meta-datei „ppfad“ entnommen. da die „sozialisationszeit“ in der alten brd bzw. ehemaligen ddr in jüngeren geburtskohorten kürzer ist,5 werden vertiefende analysen durchgeführt, bei denen die ostwest-paare in zwei gruppen (geburtsjahr der frau bis 1970 oder nach 1970) eingeteilt werden. der aktuelle wohnort (alte und neue bundesländer) ist zudem in zeitveränderlicher form für jede welle verfügbar. sozioökonomische lage und geschlechtsspezifi sche arbeitsteilung: • der „index ökonomische lage“ basiert auf drei indikatoren, die zunächst zstandardisiert und anschließend durch mittelwertbildung kombiniert werden (cronbach’s alpha rangiert zwischen .76 und .82). zum einen handelt es sich um das bedarfsgewichtete haushaltsäquivalenzeinkommen (nach neuer oecd-skala). da die forschung zur partnerschaftsstabilität zeigt, dass weniger eine objektive als subjektiv wahrgenommene ökonomische deprivation belastend wirkt (conger et al. 1999), fl ießen zum anderen indikatoren zu der zufriedenheit mit dem lebensstandard (10-fach abgestuftes antwortformat) und zu sorgen um die eigene wirtschaftliche lage (3-fach abgestuft) ein. höhere werte des index-wertes entsprechen einer besseren ökonomischen lage. • zusätzlich wird die arbeitslosigkeit eines partners oder beider partner (für mindestens einen monat pro jahr) erfasst. • zur abbildung der außerhäuslichen arbeitsteilung des paares wird zunächst für jeden partner ein erwerbsindex gebildet, der die auf das jahr hochgerechneten vollund teilzeitmonate wie folgt verrechnet: vollzeitmonate + (0.5*teilzeitmonate). anschließend werden für diesen index (1.) ein paarmittelwert sowie (2.) eine gerichtete partnerdifferenz (mann-frau) gebildet (griffi n et al. 1999). 5 etwa drei viertel der in ost-west-paaren lebenden personen wurden vor 1974 geboren. die jüngste person innerhalb dieses partnerschaftstyps wurde 1986 geboren. • daniel lois16 • um eine vom erwerbsverhalten unabhängige, indirekte messung der geschlechtsrollenorientierung zu erhalten, wird auf die stunden laut zeitschätzung zurückgegriffen, die der jeweilige partner am wochenende mit haus und familienarbeit (waschen, kochen, putzen, kinderbetreuung) verbringt (gemessen in jeder zweiten welle). auch hier werden ein paarmittelwert und ein gerichteter differenzterm (mann-frau) gebildet. kirchliche religiosität: • zur messung der kirchlichen religiosität wird auf die indikatoren kirchgangshäufi gkeit (erhoben 1990, 1992, 1994-1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007-2009) und konfessionelle zugehörigkeit (messzeitpunkte: 1990, 1997, 2003, 2007) zurückgegriffen. die frage zum kirchgang weist ein vierfach abgestuftes antwortformat auf (4 = jede woche, 3 = jeden monat, 2 = seltener, 1 = nie), das in den durchschnittlichen jährlichen gottesdienstbesuch (nie = 0, seltener = 5, jeden monat = 12, jede woche = 52) umgerechnet wird. gebildet werden ein paarmittelwert sowie eine absolutdifferenz der partner. im falle der konfessionszugehörigkeit wird – in den analysen zur partnerschaftsstabilität – zwischen drei konstellationen unterschieden: (1.) beide partner sind konfessionslos, (2.) die konfessionen der partner unterscheiden sich bzw. nur ein partner ist ohne konfession (heterogamie) und (3.) die partner haben die gleiche konfession (homogamie). familiale lebensformen: • basierend auf den soep-biografi edateien („biobirth“, „biobirthm“, „biomarsy“) wird im bereich der familialen lebensformen unterschieden, ob es sich um ehen oder nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaften handelt (jeweils mit und ohne scheidungserfahrung, d.h. eine vorangehende scheidung mindestens eines partners) und ob beide partner noch kinderlos sind. in die analysen zur partnerschaftsstabilität fl ießen zudem zählvariablen zur anzahl der 0-1-jährigen, 2-4-jährigen und über 4-jährigen kinder ein, die aktuell, laut der stellung zum haushaltsvorstand, im jeweiligen haushalt leben. verweildauern in der zeitdiskreten ereignisdatenanalyse:  im falle von ehen wird die ehedauer als verweildauerindikator der biografi edatei „biomarsy“ entnommen und, zur abbildung eines sichelförmig verlaufenden trennungsrisikos, in der form eines linearen und logarithmierten terms operationalisiert.  eine restriktion der soep-daten besteht darin, dass keine informationen zur partnerschaftsdauer verfügbar sind, die ein geeigneter verweildauerindikator für nel wäre. als ersatz wird hier das lebensalter herangezogen, das typischerweise hoch mit der partnerschaftsdauer korreliert. 5 empirische ergebnisse 5.1 wie hat sich der anteil von ost-west-paaren seit 1990 entwickelt? im ersten schritt der empirischen analysen stellt sich die frage nach der gesellschaftlichen relevanz des phänomens „ost-west-liebe“. in abbildung 1 ist dargestellt, wie sich die verbreitung von ost-west-paaren seit 1990 entwickelt hat. die schätzergebnisse basieren auf gewichteten daten (soep-querschnittgewichte phrf), mit denen eine anpassung an randverteilungen amtlicher mikrozensusdaost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 17 ten erfolgt (göbel et al. 2008). es zeigt sich ein eindeutiger positiver trend: während partnerschaften zwischen ostdeutsch und westdeutsch sozialisierten personen im jahr 1990 praktisch nicht beobachtet werden können, hat sich ihr anteil an allen ehen bis zum jahr 2009 auf 1,7 % und im falle der nel sogar auf 11 % erhöht. die ausgeprägten unterschiede zwischen ehen und nel haben mehrere mögliche ursachen. ost-west-paare hatten überwiegend erst seit 1990 die gelegenheit, sich zu treffen und zudem sind jüngere menschen in der gruppe der ost-westbinnenmigranten überrepräsentiert (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). der hohe anteil von nel ist daher wahrscheinlich zum großteil einfach auf altersund partnerschaftsdauereffekte zurückzuführen. darüber hinaus ist in abschnitt 2.4 bereits die vermutung formuliert worden, dass ost-west-paare, unabhängig vom alter, gegenüber den west-west-paaren eine geringere heiratsneigung aufweisen. inwiefern dies zutrifft, wird in abschnitt 5.2 analysiert. vertiefende analysen zeigen zudem, dass es sich bei 3,1 % der berliner ehen und bei beträchtlichen 25,3 % der berliner nel um ost-west-paare handelt, wie durch die günstigen gelegenheiten des kennenlernens einfach zu erklären ist. zusammenfassend ist festzuhalten, dass die binnenmigrationsströme zwischen den neuen und alten bundesländern seit dem jahr 1990 offensichtlich zu einer zunehmenden verbreitung von ost-west-partnerschaften beigetragen haben. dieses ergebnis allein lässt jedoch noch offen, inwieweit eine einteilung von partnerschafabb. 1: entwicklung des anteils von ost-west-paaren an allen nel und ehen im zeitraum 1990-2009 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 anteil der ost-west-paare an allen nel anteil der ost-west-paare an allen ehen prozent gewichtung mit querschnitts-hochrechnungsfaktoren gphrf-zphrf quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) • daniel lois18 ten anhand des ost-west-kriteriums sinnvoll ist, weil damit bestimmte soziokulturelle und ökonomische charakteristika einhergehen. dieser frage widmet sich der nun folgende abschnitt. 5.2 die eigenschaften von ost-west-partnerschaften im vergleich in den tabellen 2 und 3 werden verschiedene merkmale zwischen den paartypen verglichen. um einfl üsse des sozialisationsortes und des sozial-räumlichen kontextes soweit wie möglich zu isolieren, werden multivariate modelle mit einer reihe von (nicht dargestellten) kontrollvariablen berechnet. in tabelle 2 (modell 1) wird der index zur ökonomischen lage analysiert, der neben dem haushaltsäquivalenzeinkommen die zufriedenheit mit dem lebensstandard und sorgen über die wirtschaftliche lage umfasst. die strukturell besseren einkommensund beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten in westdeutschland kommen dadurch tab. 2: ökonomische lage, arbeitslosigkeit und arbeitsteilung in nach sozialisationsregion und aktueller wohnregion differenzierten paartypen (b-koeffi zienten mit panelrobusten tbzw. z-werten in klammern) modell 1 2 3 4 index ökonomische lage beide al (ref.: keiner) einer al (ref.: keiner) erwerbsindex (mann-frau) re linear multinomiales logit-modell re linear paartyp west-west-paar, alte bl (referenz) ost-ost-paar, neue bl -.43 (-40.3) ** .88 (17.8) ** .69 (21.4) ** -1.44 (-19.4) ** ost(f)-west(m)-paar, alte bl -.07 (-3.3) ** .09 (0.7) .14 (1.7) + -.32 (-2.0) * ost(m)-west(f)-paar, alte bl -.07 (-2.1) * -.32 (-1.5) .09 (0.7) -.60 (-2.4) * ost(f)-west(m)-paar, neue bl -.23 (-5.4) ** .68 (2.1) * .92 (5.5) ** -1.91 (-5.5) ** n (paare) 16.372 14.606 n (beobachtungen) 122.049 101.824 + p ≤ .10; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 re = random effects, al = arbeitslos modelle 2-4: beide partner im erwerbsfähigen alter kontrollvariablen: lineares und quadriertes alter (paarmittelwert); perioden-dummys; geburtsjahr (paarmittelwert), geburtsjahr quadriert; familiale lebensform (ehe vs. nel); anzahl der im haushalt lebenden kinder (0-1 jahre, 2-4 jahre, über 4 jahre; nur modell 4) quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 19 zum ausdruck, dass die ökonomische lage von in den neuen bundesländern lebenden paaren (paare der typen „ost-ost“ sowie „ostfrau-westmann“) insgesamt deutlich schlechter ist als bei paaren, die in den alten bundesländern wohnen. der eigenständige effekt des sozial-räumlichen kontextes wird insbesondere dadurch deutlich, dass die paare des typs „ostfrau-westmann“ mit wohnort in den neuen bundesländern in einer ökonomisch ungünstigeren position sind als die entsprechenden paare, die in den alten bundesländern leben. obwohl die ergebnisse damit eindeutig für einen sozial-räumlichen adaptionsmechanismus sprechen, sind die sozialisationserfahrungen nicht ganz zu vernachlässigen. so sind die ost-west-paare des typs „ostfrau-westmann“ und „ostmann-westfrau“ in einer etwas weniger vorteilhaften ökonomischen situation als die referenzkategorie der west-west-paare, mit denen sie den sozial-räumlichen kontext teilen. eine erklärungsmöglichkeit für diesen befund besteht z.b. darin, dass ostdeutsch sozialisierte partner nachteile im hinblick auf intergenerationale transfers haben. darüber hinaus könnten auch von der binnenmigration selbst kausale effekte ausgehen, wenn sich z.b. der erwerbseinstieg und der berufl iche aufstieg eines partners infolge der migration verzögern. die ergebnisse zu einer arbeitslosigkeit eines oder beider partner (modelle 2-3 in tab. 2) fallen ähnlich aus wie in modell 1, wobei die bedeutung des sozial-räumlichen kontextes insgesamt noch etwas deutlicher hervortritt. neben der ausstattung mit materiellen ressourcen stellt sich die frage nach der art und weise, wie diese im rahmen der partnerschaftlichen arbeitsteilung erzeugt werden. die abhängige variable in modell 4 (tab. 2) ist ein gerichteter differenzterm, der auskunft über die außerhäusliche partnerschaftliche arbeitsteilung gibt. es handelt sich um die differenz zwischen den jährlichen vollund teilzeitmonaten des männlichen partners und denjenigen des weiblichen partners. hier deuten hohe werte auf eine traditionellere ausrichtung des paares hin (der mann arbeitet in höherem umfang als die frau).6 für einen fortwährenden effekt von sozialisationserfahrungen spricht, dass die in den alten bundesländern lebenden ost-west-paare signifi kant egalitärer ausgerichtet sind als die west-west-paare. vertiefende analysen auf personenebene zeigen, dass hierfür in beiden fällen die – gegenüber westwest-paaren – höhere erwerbsbeteiligung der in ost-west-partnerschaften lebenden frauen verantwortlich ist. eine alternativerklärung zu sozialisationseinfl üssen besteht hier allerdings in einem selektionseffekt, da weibliche ost-west-migranten überwiegend hoch gebildet sind. ferner zeigt sich erneut, dass sich ost-west-paare des typs „ostfrau-westmann“ in abhängigkeit vom wohnort deutlich unterscheiden. die in den neuen bundesländern lebenden paare dieser konstellation praktizieren eine deutlich egalitärere arbeitsteilung. hierbei handelt es sich um einen weiteren hinweis auf einen eigen6 kontrolliert werden hier bodenund deckeneffekte durch die aufnahme der jeweiligen paarmittelwerte, die in der form eines linearen und quadrierten terms einfl ießen. wenn z.b. beide partner nicht erwerbstätig sind, können sie sich, trivialer weise, nicht im ausmaß ihrer erwerbsbeteiligung unterscheiden (bodeneffekt). • daniel lois20 ständigen effekt des sozial-räumlichen kontextes, der in diesem fall in der besseren verfügbarkeit von kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen in den neuen bundesländern begründet liegen könnte. um eigenständige sozialisationseffekte weiter einzugrenzen, wurden zusätzliche analysen zur innerhäuslichen arbeitsteilung am wochenende durchgeführt, die weniger stark von strukturellen faktoren, etwa im hinblick auf verfügbare kinderbetreuungsplätze und beschäftigungsangebote, beeinfl usst werden sollte. bei der abhängigen variablen handelt es sich um einen gerichteten differenzterm (mann-frau) zu den stunden, die vom jeweiligen partner für hausarbeit aufgewendet werden. die nicht dargestellten ergebnisse zeigen kaum bedeutsame unterschiede zwischen den paartypen. lediglich ost-ost-paare erweisen sich als signifi kant egalitärer als west-west-paare. diese ergebnisse sprechen eher dagegen, dass von den gelegenheitsstrukturen unabhängige ost-west-unterschiede in der geschlechtsrollenorientierung existieren. die in tabelle 3 dargestellten analysen widmen sich der partnerähnlichkeit im hinblick auf die kirchliche religiosität sowie die familialen lebensformen. die abhängige variable in modell 1 nimmt den wert 1 an, wenn die partner der gleichen glaubensgemeinschaft angehören (konfessionelle homogamie). unterscheiden sich dagegen die konfessionen der partner, oder ist nur ein partner konfessionslos, wird der wert 0 vergeben. die ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich die konfessionelle zugehörigkeit der partner in ost-west-beziehungen signifi kant häufi ger unterscheidet als dies bei west-west-paaren der fall ist. dabei ist unerheblich, ob das ost-west-paar aktuell in den neuen oder den alten bundesländern lebt. während die konfessionszugehörigkeit der partner z.b. bei ost-west-paaren mit ostdeutsch sozialisierter frau und wohnort in den alten bundesländern in 50,4 % der fälle nicht übereinstimmt, trifft dies bei west-west-paaren nur auf 28,2 % der fälle zu. darüber hinaus ist in modell 2 von interesse, inwieweit sich – bei kontrolle der konfessionellen homogamie – unterschiede in der religiösen praxis der partner feststellen lassen. bei der abhängigen variablen handelt es sich hier um die ungerichtete differenz der kirchgangshäufi gkeiten der partner. diese differenz ist innerhalb von ost-west-paaren signifi kant stärker ausgeprägt als bei west-west-paaren. der aktuelle wohnort spielt dabei nur eine untergeordnete rolle. zusammengenommen sprechen die ergebnisse zur kirchlichen religiosität damit eindeutig für die fortwährende bedeutung von divergierenden sozialisationserfahrungen. die religiösen unterschiede innerhalb der ost-west-paare können offensichtlich nicht vollständig durch partnerwahlpräferenzen oder anpassungsprozesse über die zeit überwunden bzw. durch selektionseffekte aufgewogen werden.7 7 zusätzlich sind unterschiede im niveau der religiosität zwischen den verschiedenen paartypen zu berücksichtigen. so beträgt z.b. die mittlere häufi gkeit von auf das jahr hochgerechneten gottesdienstbesuchen bei ost-west-paaren mit ostdeutsch sozialisierter frau und wohnort in den alten bundesländern nur 4,0 jährliche kirchgänge, wogegen sie im falle von west-westpaaren bei 10,7 liegt. ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 21 in modell 3 wird weiterhin für die verschiedenen paartypen untersucht, ob es sich um eine nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaft (codiert mit 0) oder ehe (codiert mit 1) handelt. in modell 4 nimmt die abhängige variable den wert 1 an, wenn mindestens ein partner bereits eine scheidung erlebt hat. die ergebnisse in modell 3 verdeutlichen, dass ost-west-paare, auch bei kontrolle von alterseffekten und dem vorhandensein von kindern, deutlich stärker zu nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften neigen als west-west-paare mit der insgesamt stärksten ehe-orientierung. die heiratsneigung in den ost-west-beziehungen ist dabei, unabhängig vom aktuellen wohnort, noch einmal deutlich niedriger als bei ost-ost-partnerschaften. da alterseffekte kontrolliert sind, deutet dieser befund zumindest auf verzögerungen im institutionalisierungsprozess bei ost-west-beziehungen hin (kopp et al. 2010). eine einfache erklärung, die aufgrund von datentab. 3: kirchliche religiosität und familiale lebensformen in nach sozialisationsregion und aktueller wohnregion differenzierten paartypen (b-koeffi zienten mit panelrobusten tbzw. z-werten in klammern) modell 1 2 3 4 konfessionelle homogamie kirchgang (|mann-frau|) ehe (1) versus nel (0) scheidungserfahrung logit re poisson logit paartyp west-west-paar, alte bl (referenz) ost-ost-paar, neue bl -.75 (-13.6) ** -.06 (-3.6) ** -.33 (-6.1) ** .04 (0.8) ost(f)-west(m)-paar, alte bl -.88 (-7.6) ** .07 (3.0) ** -1.39 (-10.6) ** 1.45 (11.5) ** ost(m)-west(f)-paar, alte bl -.46 (-3.1) ** .09 (2.4) * -1.30 (-7.0) ** 1.74 (10.0) ** ost(f)-west(m)-paar, neue bl -.78 (-3.9) ** .21 (4.3) ** -2.38 (-8.1) ** 1.60 (6.1) ** n (paare) 14.970 16.372 n (beobachtungen) 97.121 122.049 + p ≤ .10; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 re = random effects, nel = nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaft modell 1 ohne homogam konfessionslose paare kontrollvariablen: lineares und quadriertes alter (paarmittelwert); perioden-dummys; geburtsjahr (paarmittelwert), geburtsjahr quadriert; familiale lebensform (ehe vs. nel; nur modelle 1 und 2), paarmittelwert religiosität linear und quadriert und dummy zu konfessioneller homogamie (nur modell 2); anzahl der im haushalt lebenden kinder (0-1 jahre, 2-4 jahre, über 4 jahre; nur modell 3) quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) • daniel lois22 restriktionen nicht getestet werden kann, besteht darin, dass ost-west-paare erst ab 1990 gelegenheit hatten, sich zu treffen, und daher wahrscheinlich eine durchschnittlich kürzere partnerschaftsdauer aufweisen. die eigenständige bedeutung des sozial-räumlichen kontextes kommt darüber hinaus wiederum dadurch zum ausdruck, dass sich in den neuen und alten bundesländern lebende paare des typs „ostfrau-westmann“ unterscheiden, da die heiratsneigung der in ostdeutschland lebenden paare vergleichsweise geringer ist. in modell 4 wird zudem deutlich, dass in ost-west-paaren überproportional häufi g bereits mindestens ein partner eine scheidung erlebt hat. zusatzanalysen zeigen, in übereinstimmung mit der forschung (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009), dass dies vor allem auf den migrierten partner zutrifft. nach vertiefenden analysen ist die selektivität der ost-west-paare im hinblick auf scheidungserfahrungen auch zum teil für ihre geringe heiratsneigung verantwortlich, die modell 3 dokumentiert. in nicht dargestellten analysen wurde zudem der frage nachgegangen, ob sich das niveau der kinderlosigkeit bei ost-west-paaren, unter kontrolle der lebensformen nel und ehe, signifi kant von west-west-paaren unterscheidet. die ergebnisse zeigen, dass hier, im widerspruch zur kinderlosigkeits-hypothese, keine statistisch bedeutsamen unterschiede festzustellen sind. lediglich ost-ost-paare sind erwartungsgemäß signifi kant seltener kinderlos als die referenzgruppe der west-westpaare. um kohortenspezifi sche unterschiede zu testen, wurden ferner alle in den tabellen 2 und 3 dargestellten ergebnisse zwischen zwei gruppen verglichen: für paare, in denen die frau bis 1970 oder nach 1970 geboren wurde. für die ökonomische lage, die innerhäusliche und außerhäusliche arbeitsteilung sowie die kirchliche religiosität zeigen sich keine signifi kanten differenzen. hinsichtlich der heiratsneigung und dem vorhandensein von scheidungserfahrungen sind allerdings kohorteneffekte nachweisbar, da die heiratsneigung bei ost-west-paaren jüngerer geburtskohorten zunimmt und der anteil von personen, die bereits eine scheidung erlebt haben, abnimmt. eine erklärung für diese befunde besteht darin, dass sich die selektiven merkmale der ost-west-binnenmigranten im laufe der zeit nachweislich verändert haben. ostdeutsch sozialisierte personen, die in der zweiten großen migrationswelle zwischen 1997/1998 und 2004/2005 ihren wohnort in die alten bundesländer verlegt haben, sind, verglichen mit der ersten migrationswelle zu beginn der 1990er jahre, jünger und weisen seltener bereits scheidungserfahrungen auf, die sich hemmend auf eine wiederverheiratung auswirken könnten (fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln 2009). 5.3 wie stabil sind ost-west-paare? als zwischenfazit der analysen im vorangehenden abschnitt lässt sich festhalten, dass ost-west-paare wie erwartet einige „risikofaktoren“ aufweisen, die potentiell zu einer erhöhten instabilität beitragen könnten. dabei handelt es sich z.b. um die differenzen in der kirchlichen religiosität oder die ausgeprägte neigung zur nichtehelichkeit. mit den in tabelle 4 dargestellten ereignisdatenanalysen wird nun abost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 23 schließend getestet, inwieweit sich das trennungsrisiko zwischen den verschiedenen paartypen unterscheidet und wodurch diese differenzen erklärbar sind. als ausgangspunkt ist auf basis von modell 1 festzustellen, dass die bedingte wahrscheinlichkeit einer trennung bei ost-west-paaren mit wohnort in den alten bundesländern um 1,2 prozentpunkte und bei ost-west-paaren, die in den neuen bundesländern leben, um 1,5 prozentpunkte höher liegt als bei der referenzkategorie der west-west-paare.8 beide unterschiede sind hochsignifi kant und, da es sich um prozentpunkte handelt, auch von nicht unerheblicher größenordnung. ein weiteres beispiel kann dies verdeutlichen: die wahrscheinlichkeit einer trennung liegt bei einem durchschnittlichen paaralter von 30 jahren bei allen ost-west-paaren zusammengenommen mit etwa 5 % doppelt so hoch wie bei der stabilsten gruppe, den west-west-paaren (2,5 % trennungswahrscheinlichkeit in diesem alter). zur erklärung dieser differenzen werden nun schrittweise variablen in das regressionsmodell eingeführt, die sich verschiedenen merkmalsdimensionen zuordnen lassen. in modell 2 wird zunächst ein sozialräumlicher selektionsmechanismus berücksichtigt. in abschnitt 4.1 wurde bereits festgestellt, dass ost-west-paare in berlin überproportional häufi g vertreten sind. zudem zeigt sich in modell 2, dass das trennungsrisiko in großstädtischen kontexten wie berlin, wahrscheinlich auch infolge einer stärkeren verfügbarkeit alternativer partner, erhöht ist (arránz becker 2008: 41-44). die koeffi zienten für ost-west-paare gehen jedoch bei kontrolle des berlin-dummys in modell 2 nur sehr geringfügig zurück. in modell 3 werden familiale lebensformen durch die berücksichtigung der im haushalt lebenden kinder sowie durch die unterscheidung zwischen nel und ehen, jeweils mit und ohne scheidungserfahrung eines partners, kontrolliert. in übereinstimmung mit der forschung zeigen sich stabilisierende effekte der ehelichen gegenüber der nichtehelichen lebensform (kopp et al. 2010); gleichzeitig sind jeweils paare, bei denen mindestens ein partner bereits eine scheidung erlebt hat, instabiler (wagner/weiß 2003). darüber hinaus bestätigt sich auch der stabilisierende effekt kleiner kinder (im altersbereich 0-1 jahre). die nettounterschiede zwischen ost-west-paaren und west-west-paaren gehen bei kontrolle der familialen lebensformen deutlich zurück und sind, im falle von ost-west-paaren mit wohnort in den neuen bundesländern, nicht mehr signifi kant. nach vertiefenden analysen ist diese starke effektreduzierung vor allem auf die stärkere prävalenz von nel und ehen höherer ordnung bei ost-west-paaren zurückzuführen. hierin kann ein starker beleg für die zweitehen-hypothese und die nichtehelichkeits-hypothese gesehen werden. im vierten modell fl ießen indikatoren ein, die neben der ökonomischen lage des paares die geschlechtsspezifi sche arbeitsteilung abbilden. es kann bestätigt werden, dass paare mit günstiger ökonomischer lage stabiler sind (b = -.003) und sich zudem die arbeitslosigkeit eines partners destabilisierend auswirkt. im hinblick auf die außerhäusliche arbeitsteilung zeigt der konditionale haupteffekt des differenzterms „erwerbsindex mann – erwerbsindex frau“ (ame = -.0004), dass ehen ohne 8 ost-west-paare in den alten und neuen bundesländern werden aus fallzahlgründen jeweils zu einer gruppe zusammengefasst. • daniel lois24 tab. 4: zeitdiskrete ereignisdatenanalyse zum trennungsrisiko in nach aktueller wohnregion und sozialisationsregion differenzierten paartypen (durchschnittliche marginaleffekte mit z-werten in klammern) modell 1 2 3 4 5 logit paartyp west-west-paar, alte bl (ref.) ost-ost-paar, neue bl .001 (0.8) .001 (1.3) .001 (0.5) -.001 (-2.2) * -.003 (-5.0) * ost-west-paar, alte bl .012 (5.2) ** .011 (5.0) ** .006 (3.3) ** .005 (2.9) * .003 (2.2) * ost-west-paar, neue bl .015 (2.4) * .015 (2.5) * .006 (1.5) .005 (1.3) .003 (1.0) wohnort berlin .008 (2.9) ** .005 (2.2) * .004 (2.0) * .003 (1.6) familiale lebensform ehe ohne scheidungserfahrung (ref.) nel ohne scheidungserfahrung .013 (5.6) ** .011 (5.2) ** .010 (4.9) ** nel mit scheidungserfahrung .020 (6.0) ** .016 (5.3) ** .013 (4.8) ** ehe mit scheidungserfahrung .007 (4.7) ** .004 (2.6) ** .003 (1.9) + kinder 0-1 jahre im haushalt -.003 (-2.4) * -.001 (-1.2) -.001 (-1.2) kinder 2-4 jahre im haushalt -.0003 (-0.4) .0003 (0.4) .001 (0.7) kinder über 4 jahre im haushalt .0002 (0.7) .0002 (0.6) .001 (1.9) + ökonomische lage und arbeitsteilung index ökonomische lage# -.003 (-6.3) ** -.003 (-6.3) ** kein partner arbeitslos (ref.) ein partner arbeitslos .003 (3.3) ** .003 (3.3) ** beide partner arbeitslos .002 (1.2) .002 (1.2) erwerbsindex# .0001 (1.5) .0001 (1.0) erwerbsindex (mann-frau) -.0004 (-5.2) ** -.0004 (-4.9) ** ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 25 scheidungserfahrung durch eine traditionelle arbeitsteilung stabilisiert werden. wie die signifi kanten interaktionseffekte dokumentieren, ist dieser zusammenhang jedoch weder auf ehen noch auf nel, in denen mindestens ein partner bereits geschieden war, übertragbar. der multivariat verbleibende unterschied zwischen ostwest-paaren in den alten bundesländern und west-west-paaren geht insgesamt nur geringfügig im vergleich der modelle 3 und 4 zurück. über die ökonomische modell 1 2 3 4 5 logit erwerbsindex (mann-frau) × nel ohne scheidungserfahrung .0001 (0.5) .0001 (0.4) erwerbsindex (mann-frau) × nel mit scheidungserfahrung .0003 (2.5) * .0003 (2.4) * erwerbsindex (mann-frau) × ehe mit scheidungserfahrung .0005 (3.4) ** .0004 (3.2) ** kirchliche religiosität kirchgangshäufi gkeit# -.0003 (-6.2) ** kirchgang (|mann-frau|) .0001 (2.8) ** konfessionelle heterogamie (ref.) beide partner konfessionslos -.001 (-0.8) konfessionelle homogamie -.004 (-7.6) ** prozesszeiten alter# -.001 (-23.4) ** -.001 (-23.8) ** -.0005 (-11.5) ** -.0004 (-10.3) ** -.0004 (-10.3) ** ehedauer (+1) -.001 (-7.0) ** -.001 (-7.5) ** -.001 (-6.9) ** ehedauer (+1) logarithmiert .003 (3.8) ** .003 (4.3) ** .003 (3.9) ** pseudo-r² (mcfadden) .076 .078 .102 .109 .116 n (paare) 16.396 n (beobachtungen) 122.049 n (trennungsereignisse, ehe/nel) 1.323 (772 / 551) tab. 4: fortsetzung ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 bl = bundesländer, nel = nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaft # = operationalisiert als paarmittelwert quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) • daniel lois26 lage und die arbeitsteilung der partner ist die erhöhte instabilität der ost-westpartnerschaften, im widerspruch zur deprivationsund arbeitsteilungs-hypothese, somit kaum erklärbar. abschließend wird in modell 5 die kirchliche religiosität berücksichtigt. erwartungsgemäß sind paare, die im mittel relativ häufi g einen gottesdienst besuchen, stabiler (ame = -.0003; niveaueffekt). zudem erhöht sich das risiko einer trennung, wenn die konfessionszugehörigkeit der partner nicht übereinstimmt bzw. wenn unterschiede in der religiösen praxis vorliegen (ame = -.004 für konfessionelle homogamie und ame = .0001 für die ungerichtete differenz der kirchgangshäufi gkeiten). unterschiede im bereich der religiosität sind für die stabilität der ost-west-paare nicht ganz unerheblich: im vergleich der modelle 4 und 5 ist ein rückgang des effekts für ost-west-paare in den alten bundesländern zu beobachten (von .005 auf .003). die religiöse-homogamie-hypothese wird durch diesen befund zumindest tendenziell unterstützt. 6 zusammenfassung und diskussion als ein erstes hauptergebnis der vorliegenden untersuchung ist festzuhalten, dass partnerschaften zwischen einer westdeutsch und einer ostdeutsch sozialisierten person quantitativ immer stärker verbreitet sind. infolge der binnenmigrationsströme seit der wiedervereinigung hat sich der geschätzte anteil der ost-west-paare an allen ehen bzw. nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften im jahr 2009 auf 1,7 % bzw. 11 % erhöht. diese partnerschaftsform ist zudem in den alten bundesländern und insbesondere in berlin überproportional häufi g anzutreffen. zahlen zur inzidenz der ost-west-paare beantworten jedoch noch nicht die frage, inwieweit es sinnvoll ist, paarbeziehungen nach dem kriterium des aktuellen wohnortes in den alten und neuen bundesländern und nach ihrem sozialisationsort zu differenzieren. die weiteren analysen bestätigen jedoch, dass mit dem derzeitigen sozial-räumlichen kontext und dem ort des aufwachsens systematische unterschiede im hinblick auf die ökonomische wohlfahrt des paares sowie die soziokulturellen prägungen der partner einhergehen. eigenständige kontexteinfl üsse kommen vor allem dadurch zum ausdruck, dass sich bei konstanthaltung der sozialisationserfahrungen des paares deutliche sozialräumliche unterschiede zeigen. so weisen ost-west-paare mit ostdeutsch sozialisierter frau und westdeutsch sozialisiertem mann, die in den neuen bundesländern leben, eine schlechtere ökonomische lage, eine egalitärere arbeitsteilung und eine geringere heiratsneigung auf als die in den alten bundesländern wohnenden paare dieses typs. gleichzeitig fi nden sich hinweise darauf, dass sozialisierte prägungen auch im zuge von binnenmigration und sozialer assimilation nicht vollständig nivelliert werden. dies kommt z.b. dadurch zum ausdruck, dass in den alten bundesländern lebende ost-west-paare durch eine ungünstigere ökonomische lage und eine egalitärere außerhäusliche arbeitsteilung gekennzeichnet sind als die innerhalb des gleichen sozialräumlichen kontextes lebenden west-west-paare. das deutlichste beispiel für die bedeutung der sozialisation sind darüber hinaus die unterschieost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 27 de in der kirchlichen religiosität, die innerhalb von ost-west-paaren bestehen. die ergebnisse zeigen hier, dass sowohl die konfessionszugehörigkeit als auch die gewohnheiten in der häufi gkeit von gottesdienstbesuchen zwischen den partnern in ost-west-beziehungen überproportional häufi g nicht übereinstimmen. einschränkend ist darauf hinzuweisen, dass alternativerklärungen für die genannten befunde, die sich auf die selektivität der binnenmigranten beziehen, nicht ausgeschlossen werden können. zum beispiel ist die relativ egalitäre arbeitsteilung der ost-west-paare potentiell auch darauf zurückzuführen, dass weibliche binnenmigranten hoch gebildet sind und eine entsprechend hohe berufsorientierung aufweisen. um selektionsund adaptionseffekte vollständig zu differenzieren, wäre es in einem erweiterten analysedesign notwendig, binnenmigranten vor und nach der migration zu beobachten. ein weiteres wichtiges ergebnis des vorliegenden beitrags besteht darin, dass die bisher diskutierten eigenschaften der ost-west-paare konsequenzen für die stabilität dieser partnerschaftsform haben. ost-west-paare sind signifi kant instabiler als westund ostdeutsche paare mit übereinstimmendem sozialisationsort. die ereignisdatenanalysen haben verdeutlicht, dass diese erhöhte instabilität teilweise auf divergenzen in der konfessionelle zugehörigkeit und der religiösen praxis zurückzuführen ist. im hinblick auf die kirchliche religiosität ist folglich eine kulturelle distanz zwischen westdeutsch und ostdeutsch sozialisierten personen festzustellen, die über eine erhöhte instabilität von paarbeziehungen tendenziell auch zu einer verfestigung sozialer gruppengrenzen entlang der ost-west-dimension beiträgt. konfession und kirchgangshäufi gkeit sind allerdings lediglich indirekte indikatoren für die zugrundeliegenden werte und lebensstilelemente. daher müsste in vertiefenden analysen gezeigt werden, wie sich religiöse differenzen konkret auf die paarinteraktion auswirken. in überraschender deutlichkeit ist die hauptursache für das erhöhte trennungsrisiko der ost-west-beziehungen jedoch im bereich der familialen lebensformen und der beziehungsbiografi e zu suchen: ost-west-paare trennen sich vor allem deshalb relativ häufi g, da sie oft unverheiratet sind und zudem mindestens ein partner häufi g bereits einmal geschieden war. die geringe heiratsneigung ist potentiell auf die durchschnittlich kürzere partnerschaftsdauer der ost-west-paare zurückzuführen, die in der regel erst seit der wiedervereinigung die gelegenheit hatten, sich zu treffen. der auffällig hohe anteil von personen mit scheidungserfahrung in dieser bevölkerungsgruppe erklärt sich dagegen höchstwahrscheinlich über einen selektionseffekt, da bereits geschiedene personen nach vorliegenden forschungsergebnissen eine höhere wahrscheinlichkeit aufweisen, innerhalb deutschlands zu migrieren. für die zukunft stellt sich die frage, ob die aufgezeigten besonderheiten der ostwest-paare in jüngeren kohorten verschwinden. dies wäre der fall, wenn sich diese gruppe an das „durchschnittspaar“ der allgemeinbevölkerung angleicht. auch der umgekehrte fall ist nicht ganz unplausibel. in gewisser hinsicht sind die ost-westbeziehungen „ihrer zeit voraus“, da einige auffällige parallelen zwischen ihren speziellen eigenschaften – egalitäre arbeitsteilung, nichtehelichkeit, konfessionelle heterogamie – und verschiedenen allgemeinen trends festzustellen sind. dazu zählen • daniel lois28 der anstieg des heiratsalters und die zunahme nichtehelicher lebensgemeinschaften (peuckert 2008: 32-47), die sich erhöhende erwerbsbeteiligung der frau (peuckert 2008: 229-283) und der anstieg des anteils von konfessionellen mischehen (klein/wunder 1996). aus diesem grund bleibt auch im zusammenhang mit paarbeziehungen die frage spannend, inwieweit der innerdeutsche ost-west-vergleich infolge des allgemeinen modernisierungstrends zunehmend obsolet wird. literatur alba, richard d.; nee, victor 2003: remaking the american mainstream: assimilation and contemporary immigration. 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evolution and enhancements. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127: 161-191. wagner, michael; weiß, bernd 2003: bilanz der deutschen scheidungsforschung: versuch einer meta-analyse. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 32: 29-49. windzio, mark 2007: regionale arbeitslosigkeit und distanz zur grenze: individualund kontexteffekte auf die abwanderung von arbeitskräften von ostnach westdeutschland. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127: 553-583. zapf, wolfgang; mau, steffen 1993: eine demographische revolution in ostdeutschland? dramatischer rückgang von geburten, eheschließungen und scheidungen. in: informationsdienst soziale indikatoren 10: 1-5. ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität • 31 eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und vom autor autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-17en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2014-17en9, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 28.10.2013 angenommen am: 06.03.2014 prof. dr. daniel lois (). universität der bundeswehr münchen, fakultät für humanwissenschaften, department bildungswissenschaft. münchen, deutschland. e-mail: daniel.lois@unibw.de url: http://www.unibw.de/hum/dfb/swm/pers/daniellois • daniel lois32 anhang tab. a1: deskriptive statistiken zu den modellvariablen mw / % sd min max % imputiert paartypen west-west-paar, alte bl 72,1 % 0 1 15,2 ost-ost-paar, ne ue bl 25,7 % 0 1 ost-west-paar, alte bl 1,9 % 0 1 ost-west-paar, neue bl 0,4 % 0 1 familiale lebensformen nel ohne scheidungserfahrung 7,6 % 0 1 18,8 nel mit scheidungserfahrung 5,3 % 0 1 ehe ohne scheidungserfahrung 75,4 % 0 1 ehe mit scheidungserfahrung 11,8 % 0 1 partner haben mindestens ein kind 82,0 % 0 1 9,0 anzahl kinder 0-1 jahre im haushalt 0,04 0.2 0 3 0,0 anzahl kinder 2-4 jahre im haushalt 0,1 0.3 0 3 anzahl kinder über 4 jahre 0,2 0.5 0 4 ökonomische lage und arbeitsteilung index ökonomische lage# 0,0 1.0 -3.3 11.2 8,8 ein partner arbeitslos 20,4 % 0 1 12,6 beide partner arbeitslos 6,6 % 0 1 erwerbsindex# 6,4 4.1 0 12 erwerbsindex (mann-frau) 3,2 5.8 -12 12 hausarbeitsstunden wochenende# 1,8 0.9 0 10 19,7 hausarbeit (mann-frau) -1,9 1.8 -10 10 kirchliche religiosität kirchgangshäufi gkeit# 9,2 13.6 0 52 18,8 kirchgang (|mann-frau|) 5,0 10.1 0 52 beide partner konfessionslos 20,2 % 0 1 31,4 konfessionelle heterogamie 26,8 % 0 1 konfessionelle homogamie 53,1 % 0 1 zeitindikatoren alter# 47,5 14.4 17 95 1,0 ehedauer (codiert mit 0 bei nel, +1) 20,4 15.6 1 72 22,0 zeitraum 1991-1995 19,4 % 0 1 0,0 zeitraum 1996-2000 23,2 % 0 1 zeitraum 2001-2005 33,6 % 0 1 zeitraum 2006-2009 23,8 % 0 1 kohorte ab 1971 (ref.: bis 1970) 14,3 % 0 1 wohnort berlin 3,5 % 0 1 7,1 n (paare) 16.372 n (beobachtungen) 122.049 bl = bundesländer, nel = nichteheliche lebensgemeinschaft, sd = standardabweichung mw = mittelund anteilswerte; beziehen sich auf die 122.049 beobachtungen im long-format # = operationalisiert als paarmittelwert quelle: soep (1990-2009, eigene berechnungen) published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany nadja milewski, frederik peters abstract: our paper compares the birth outcomes of international migrant women in germany to those of non-migrant women. in germany, about one-third of all newborns are born to migrant mothers. since immigrant status and socio-economic disadvantages are highly correlated, the health of migrant children and their mothers has received increasing attention in the international literature. when investigating perinatal outcomes, the evidence on the effect of the immigrant status of the mother on the birthweight of her child has been contradictory. we use the sample of newborns collected by the german socio-economic panel (soep), which contains preand perinatal variables that allow us to analyse the determinants of adverse birthweight outcomes. the data are on 1641 births that occurred between 2001 and 2010. our study investigates the risk for children to be born with low or high birthweights (lbw and hbw) and small and large size for gestational age (sga and lga) by applying logistic regression analyses. we fi nd that immigrant status is associated with a lower prevalence of low birthweight (lbw) and at the same time with a higher prevalence of increased prenatal growth (lga). control variables of the mother – age, parity, height, bmi, education, and smoking – cannot explain the birthweight differences between migrants and non-migrants. the fi ndings support recent assumptions in the literature that the risk of low birthweight among newborns of migrant mothers has been levelling off. however, our results also suggest that new disadvantages of immigrants result from large size for gestational age, which increases the child’s risk of overweight later in life. keywords: birthweight · immigrant children · infant macrosomia · migrant health · soep · germany comparative population studies vol. 39, 1 (2014): 3-22 (date of release: 13.03.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-02en3 • nadja milewski, frederik peters4 1 introduction over the last decades, the percentage of births to migrant mothers has increased in many western european countries. since immigrant status and socio-economic disadvantages are highly correlated (massey 1981), and, to a large extent, early-life conditions account for health differentials in later life (robinson 2001), the health of migrant children and their mothers has received increasing attention (gagnon et al. 2009). disadvantages of migrant children have been observed in stillbirth (salihu et al. 2004), in preterm birth (goedhart et al. 2008), and in infant mortality (troe et al. 2006; razum et al. 2008). the correlation between the immigrant status of the mother and the birthweight of her child is not clear. the results mainly vary with the study design, the indicator, and the defi nition of migrants (gagnon et al. 2009). low birthweight is one of the indicators which is commonly used for monitoring public health. it is one of the major causes of neonatal mortality as well as a risk factor of poor growth and health in childhood (united nation’s children fund and world health organization 2004). further, it is an indicator for health inequalities between international migrants and non-migrants or between ethnic groups (gagnon et al. 2009). in the last years, however, a growing number of studies have suggested that the increased risk of low birthweight (lbw) among newborns of migrant mothers has been levelling off (fuentes-affl ick/lurie 1997; hessol/fuentes-affl ick 2000; acevedo-garcia et al. 2007; auger et al. 2008). at the same time, there is a relatively small number of studies that investigate high birthweight (or macrosomia or oversized or overweight children; these terms are used interchangeably) (bonellie/raab 1997; schwarz/teramo 1999; orskou et al. 2001; bergmann et al. 2003; orskou et al. 2003). these studies show that an increasing percentage of newborns has a high birthweight (hbw) or is too heavy relative to the pregnancy duration, which is termed large for gestational age (lga). however, these studies do not consider immigrant status. high birthweight is an independent risk factor, e.g., for diabetes (schwarz/teramo 1999), obesity in childhood or later in life, and long-term metabolic dysfunction (curhan et al. 1996; vohr et al. 1999; schaefer-graf et al. 2005; armitage et al. 2008; catalano et al. 2009; dyer/rosenfeld 2011; van rossem et al. 2011; lindberg et al. 2012). an absolute weight of more than 4,000 grams is associated with higher health risks for both the newborn and the mother, e.g., higher rates of stillbirth, infant mortality, and brachial plexus injury (axelsson 1990; bryant et al. 1998) as well as with higher rates of cesarean sections and instrumental delivery (zetterstrom et al. 1999). therefore, the aim of our paper is to bring these two directions of research together. we address the following research questions: are international migrant mothers more likely to experience adverse birthweight outcomes compared to non-migrant mothers? and how do birthweight differentials vary between the indicators used? our paper contributes to the literature by investigating low and high birthweight in the same analysis. whereas most of the previous literature has focused on north america, our study is concerned with germany. we compared births to immigrant mothers to those to non-migrant mothers. we used the data of the sample of newborns of the german socio-economic panel study (soep 2003too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 5 2010). we carried out multivariate logistic regression analyses on hbw/lbw and lga/sga, and compared the results for the four different indicators (controlled for socio-demographic characteristics and risk factors of the mothers). 2 background previous research has produced a large number of studies that support the hypothesis that immigrants are socially disadvantaged and that they therefore also have a higher risk of low birthweight. evidence was found, e.g., among migrants in the u.s. (hessol/fuentes-affl ick 2000; schempf et al. 2010), in canada (auger et al. 2012), and in germany (elkeles et al. 1990). these differences in lbw were partly traced back to the adverse socio-economic positions of migrants (kleinman/kessel 1987; hessol/fuentes-affl ick 2000). people who immigrated to developed countries in the west were found more likely to be malnourished and in bad health, with increased risks of contracting infectious diseases and of developing obesity and diabetes (mainly among women). these factors, in conjunction with social marginalisation in their host countries and a lower tendency to seek health care, lead migrant women to benefi t less from the public health system than non-migrant women (guendelman et al. 1999; wändell et al. 2003; denktas et al. 2009; ujcic-voortman et al. 2009; baraka et al. 2011; choté et al. 2011; lebrun 2012). in contrast, other studies on lbw have shown that migrant mothers, or certain migrant sub-groups, have equal or even lower perinatal risks than non-migrants (fuentes-affl ick et al. 1999; guendelman et al. 1999; reime et al. 2006; troe et al. 2007). the lower lbw prevalence was cited as evidence in support of the healthy migrant effect (guendelman et al. 1999; wingate/alexander 2006). according to this hypothesis, international migrants tend to be positively selected for health, and the health status of migrants therefore tends to be better than that of non-migrants. hessol/fuentes-affl ick (2000: 522) spoke of a “perinatal advantage” and acevedogarcia et al. (2007: 2507) claimed to have found a “protective effect of foreign-born status against lbw” across latino groups in the u.s. though they could not explain it. both a declining risk of low birthweight and a decrease in disadvantages among migrants can be regarded as indicators for a healthier migrant population (orskou et al. 2001). an increase in birthweight may, however, not only be due to a decline in lbw, but also to a rise in hbw. there is some evidence of an increasing trend in high birthweight (bonellie/raab (1997) for the uk, orskou et al. (2001 and 2003) for denmark, bergmann et al. (2003) and reime et al. (2006) for germany). for differentials in high birthweight between immigrants and non-migrants, we found only one study that used nationality as a control variable: reime et al. (2006) estimated that women of foreign nationality did not have different birthweight outcomes than german women. however, they merely used german/non-german nationality as the indicator for defi ning the mother’s immigrant status, which may not be suffi cient (reime et al. 2006). in a study of hbw risks in canada, rodrigues et al. (2000) took ethnic background into account and detected signifi cantly higher risks of high • nadja milewski, frederik peters6 birthweight among cree women than among non-native women. in two studies on migrant births in the us, the authors mentioned higher birthweights among migrants, but attributed them mainly to inaccurate estimations of the gestational age (buekens et al. 2000) or differences in the birthweight distribution between ethnic groups (chung et al. 2003). the very recent study by west et al. (2013) on newborns in the uk estimated higher risks of adiposity and increasing birthweights among south asian infants as an indicator for health inequalities. several studies on different indicators of child health have, however, taken into account differentials between migrants and non-migrants or between ethnic groups: high birthweight was also shown to correlate with higher childhood obesity among adolescents in germany (bzga 2008), among american indians (lindberg et al. 2012), among african americans (mehta et al. 2011) in the us, among native ethnic groups in new zealand compared to european women (craig et al. 2004), among children in preschool-age in the netherlands (van rossem et al. 2011) and among turkish children in particular (de wilde et al. 2009). in general, less favourable dietary habits (consumption of energy-dense foods with high levels of sugar and fat), along with a genetic predisposition to gain weight and a lack of exercise among immigrant groups, have led to an increased risk of developing diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension (gilbert/khokhar 2008). in conjunction with this higher prevalence of overweight and obesity, ethnic origin is one of the main risk factors of gestational diabetes (berkowitz et al. 1992; dornhorst et al. 1992). since these health disadvantages each correlate with high birthweight (dyer/ rosenfeld 2011), we investigated birthweight differentials between migrant and non-migrant newborns using indicators for low and for high birthweight outcomes. the following hypotheses guide our study: h1) the newborn children of immigrant mothers have a higher prevalence of low birthweight (lbw/sga). h2) the risk of high birthweight (hbw/lga) is higher among immigrant than among non-migrant children. in addition, we test the role of socio-demographic variables assuming that birthweight differences between migrants and non-migrants diminish when controlling for the different socio-demographic compositions of these groups (h3). we test these hypotheses for the case of germany, which has, until recently, been the leading destination country for international migrants in western europe. the migrant population consists of three major groups: migrant workers from mediterranean countries, ethnic germans from eastern europe, as well as refugees and asylum seekers. whereas the non-migrant population is declining due to persistent lowest-low fertility, the share of the population with a migrant background has been rising continuously. today, about 20 percent of the 82 million inhabitants of germany are either immigrants, or are born to one or two parents born abroad; the share of children in preschool-age with a migrant background exceeds 30 percent (swiaczny/milewski 2012). too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 7 3 methods 3.1 data we used data from the german socio-economic panel (soep), which is a panel study that started in 1984 as a random sample representative of private households in west germany. one of the samples, the so-called guest worker sample, consists of migrant workers who mainly came from turkey, greece, the former yugoslavia, italy, and spain. a sample of east germany was added in 1990, and a sample of new immigrant groups was added in 1994/95 (wagner et al. 2007). furthermore, refreshment samples have been performed in 1998, 2006, 2009, and 2011 in order to counter panel attrition. an additional sample for people with higher incomes was added in 2002. in 2003, a new annual questionnaire was introduced: the newborn sample. it applies to all women participating in the soep survey who gave birth to a child from 2002 onwards (schupp et al. 2010). the questionnaire aims at surveying the development process of each mother and her child. it contains information on the type and the circumstances of the delivery, breastfeeding behaviour, health examinations, health status and development of the mother and the child, and the pregnancy-related support provided by others. the number of interviews in the newborn sample is 1,814 from 2003 to 2010. we excluded the following cases from our analysis: cases without information on the timing of pregnancy, with implausible gestational weeks, missing birthweight, in-vitro fertilisation, twin births, cases in which the child could not be clearly linked to the mother, cases where no migration information could be identifi ed, cases with missing information on the mother’s body height or on age. our fi nal sample consisted of 1,641 newborns (about 40 percent of the cases were repeated observations because the mothers gave birth to more than one child from 2002 to 2010). 3.2 variables the dependent variables are two indicators for low birthweight and two indicators for high birthweight; they were coded as a binary response (1 yes/0 no). the absolute weight at birth was used to calculate low birthweight (lbw) with 2,500 grams as the upper threshold; and high birthweight (hbw) with 4,000 grams as the lower threshold. the lbw and hbw were both calculated regardless of the child’s sex and the gestational week, which is in compliance with other studies (schwarz/ teramo 1999; rodrigues et al. 2000; orskou et al. 2001; bergmann et al. 2003; reime et al. 2006; acevedo-garcia et al. 2007). the relative measures of small size for gestational age (sga) and large size for gestational age (lga) took into account the sex of the child and its weight relative to the gestational week. the indicator sga used the lower 10th percentile of the sex-specifi c birthweight distribution of the total population of germany for each gestational week as a reference. the indicator • nadja milewski, frederik peters8 for lga used the upper 10th percentile accordingly1 (auger et al. 2008; voigt et al. 2010) (see table 1). the immigrant status of the mother was identifi ed by using information on her country of origin, her nationality, her place of birth, and the type of sub-sample to which she belonged (migrant or descendant of migrants) (milewski 2007; scheller 2011). if any of these variables indicated a foreign nationality or a foreign place of birth, the woman was defi ned as migrant (which includes fi rst and second migrant generations). in our sample, 26 percent of the births were given by migrant women, and 74 percent were given by non-migrant mothers. we distinguished migrants into three groups according to the countries of origin: 33 percent of the migrant newborns have mothers who come from a mediterranean country, 22 percent from eastern europe and 44 percent from other countries.2 since information is not specifi cally given on the father of the child, we only used maternal characteristics. our control variables are commonly used in birthweight analyses. we carried out bivariate tests for each of the four birthweight indicators and each explanatory variable using chi2 tests for categorical variables and t-tests for metric variables (see table 1). the level of parity was represented in our sample on a scale from 1 to 12 (mean: 1.84, mode: 1, median: 2). a dichotomous variable accounted for primipara (45 percent) and multipara (55 percent), with migrant mothers having slightly more multipara births than non-migrant mothers. of the maternal characteristics, we used age at delivery as a continuous measure. at delivery, migrant women were on average 1.1 years younger than non-migrant women. since migrant mothers were signifi cantly shorter than non-migrants, the height of the mother was used as a separate variable accounting both for heterogeneity between migrants and nonmigrants and within the migrant group, which is in compliance with comparable studies (bergmann et al. 2003; troe et al. 2007). both continuous variables (age and height) were centred around their mean values before they were entered in the regression analysis. in order to account for the weight of the mother, we used the body mass index (bmi). this variable had a large share of missing values because of missing answers on weight. thus, we used bmi as a categorical variable, which distinguished between too low (below 18.5) and normal weight (18.5 to 30) in one pooled category, overweight (30+) in a second category, and missing values (doherty et al. 2006). no signifi cant differences have been observed between migrants and non-migrants regarding their bmi. 1 due to the inclusion of the gestational week, lga and sga are mainly indicators of prenatal growth, whereas hbw and lbw measure big or small birth outcomes in absolute terms. while both groups of indicators signal unusual weights, only hbw clearly identifi es cases with a high risk of birth complications and injuries (bergmann et al. 2003). newborns with lbw may still be large for their gestational age. hbw, on the other hand, is not associated with small size for gestational age. 2 the mediterranean countries include turkey, former yugoslavia, greece, italy, spain, portugal, croatia, bosnia-herzegovina, macedonia and kosovo-albania. the group of eastern european countries in our sample consists of poland, bulgaria, russia, moldavia, kazakhstan, albania, kyrgyzstan, ukraine, uzbekistan, slovakia, and belarus. too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 9 tab. 1: descriptive overview of the sample, by immigrant status of the mother non-migrant migrant n % n % birthweight indicators low birthweight (lbw) no (2500+ grams) 1132 93.2 405 94.8 yes (<2500 grams) 82 6.8 22 5.2 high birthweight (hbw) no (<4000 grams) 1085 89.4 385 90.2 yes (4000+ grams) 129 10.6 42 9.8 small for gestational age (sga) no 1082 89.1 387 90.6 yes 132 10.9 40 9.4 large for gestational age (lga)* no 1100 90.6 368 86.2 yes 114 9.4 59 13.8 child's characteristics parity* primipara 563 46.4 173 40.5 multipara 651 53.6 254 59.5 sex of child boy 617 50.8 230 53.9 girl 597 49.2 197 46.1 maternal characteristics bmi <30 652 53.7 229 53.6 30+ 49 4.0 18 4.2 mv 513 42.3 180 42.2 education*** low (up to 10 years of schooling) 105 8.6 98 23.0 medium or high (10+ years of schooling) 915 75.4 248 58.1 mv 194 16.0 81 19.0 smoking habits before pregnancy none or ex-smoker 595 49 194 45.4 smoker 279 23 114 26.7 mv 340 28 119 27.9 migrants' country of origin na mediterranean countries 142 33.3 eastern europe 96 22.5 other countries 189 44.3 calendar period 2001 to 2005 678 55.8 235 55.0 2006 to 2010 536 44.2 192 45.0 • nadja milewski, frederik peters10 the socio-economic status of the mother was measured by a dichotomous variable for education, distinguishing between no school degree, primary or lower secondary schooling (up to 10 years of schooling, termed low educational level) and upper secondary schooling (more than 10 years, termed medium/high educational level). the educational attainment was lower among migrants than among nonmigrants (23 percent of the group of migrants and 9 percent of the group of nonmigrants had a low education). further, we took the mothers’ smoking habits into account. our variable measured whether the mother characterised herself as smoker before the pregnancy (category 1) or if she stopped smoking or never smoked before pregnancy (category 0). unfortunately, the survey did not directly ask if the mother was still smoking during her pregnancy. migrant mothers were slightly more often identifi ed as frequent smokers than non-migrants (27 percent vs. 23 percent). despite the high share of missing values, the prevalence in our sample corresponds to that of the total population in germany (bergmann et al. 2008). in order to control for changes over the time period and possible effects of the sample refreshment in 2006, we used a dummy variable for births, which occurred before 2005, in 2006, and afterwards. other predicators of birthweight, such as diabetes type ii, gestational diabetes, and smoking during pregnancy are not contained in the sample we used. 3.3 statistical analysis in the multivariate analysis, we run binary logistic regression models for each of the four indicators, since we were interested in the extreme values of low or high birthtab. 1: continuation non-migrant migrant n % n % age*** 30.7 (mean) 29.6 (mean) height*** 168.2 (mean) 165.3 (mean) pregnancy week** 39.3 (mean) 38.9 (mean) total 1214 100 427 100 repeated observations 1x 722 75.8 266 78.2 2x 204 21.4 63 18.5 3x 24 2.5 10 2.9 4x 3 0.3 0 0.0 5x 0 0.0 1 0.3 note: *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 via chi2 test or one-way anova for association between variable and immigrant status. na=not applicable, mv=missing value. source: calculations based on soep 1999-2010; n=1641. too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 11 weights. the modelling process was done in multiple steps, estimating the odds ratios for immigrant status without controlling for maternal characteristics fi rst. whereas the measures sga and lga are based on sex, weight, and gestational age, the analyses of the two absolute-weight indicators lbw and hbw used the gestational age and the sex of the newborn as control variables (model 1). subsequently, we added the control variables in model 2: age, height, bmi, education, smoking status of the mother, and parity. model 3 showed the intra-group variation of migrant mothers by distinguishing between the different groups of countries of origin. finally, we carried out some sensitivity analyses (results not shown): in order to test the impact of repeated observations, we estimated a generalised linear model, accounting for the within-subject correlation. additionally, we tested whether repeated observations affect the models by excluding such cases. since the variable bmi had the highest shares of missing values, we also used the bmi with imputed values from the soep dataset instead of the missing-value category. in addition to the odds ratios (or), we calculated average marginal effects (ame), as this measure allowed us to compare the respective measures between models and sub-samples (mood 2010). 4 results table 1 displays the percentages of low and high birthweight by immigrant status. for low birthweight, we fi nd lbw slightly less frequent in migrant births than in nonmigrant births, at about 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively. the shares of sga are about 9 percent and 11 percent, respectively (the difference is not statistically signifi cant). regarding the distributions of the indicators for high birthweight, we fi nd that about 10 percent of the children of migrant mothers and 11 percent of the children of non-migrants have hbw. whereas the shares of hbw do not signifi cantly vary between migrants and non-migrants, the differences in lga are signifi cantly higher: about 14 percent of migrant newborns are large for gestational age compared to about 9 percent among non-migrant newborns. tables 2a and 2b display the results of the logistic regression analyses for the four different indicators. first, we concentrate on the two measures that indicate the weight of a newborn to be low (lbw and sga in table 2a). for both indicators (lbw adjusted for sex and gestational age), model 1 shows that migrant newborns have a reduced risk. the results for lbw are signifi cant. the risk for a migrant newborn to be born with lbw is 53 percent lower than the risk for non-migrants. the risk of sga is 15 percent lower (not signifi cant). adjusted for confounding variables, these differences between the groups do not diminish (model 2), but increase slightly. migrant newborns are less than half as likely to have lbw and their sga risk is about 30 percent lower than that for non-migrants. model 3 distinguishes between the different origins of the migrants. here we fi nd signifi cant variation between the groups of origin. both the group of newborns whose mothers come from eastern europe and the group • nadja milewski, frederik peters12 tab. 2a: impact of the immigrant status of the mother on lbw and sga (odds ratios and confi dence intervals) low birthweight (lbw) small for gestational age (sga) or 95 % c.i. 95 % c.i. p-value or 95 % c.i. 95 % c.i. p-value lower upper lower upper model 1 (unadjusted) immigrant status non-migrant 1 1 migrant 0.47 0.26 0.86 0.01 0.85 0.58 1.23 0.38 -2 log likelihood 516.68 1100.44 model 2 (adjusted) immigrant status non-migrant 1 1 migrant 0.44 0.24 0.82 0.01 0.68 0.46 1.01 0.06 sex of child na boy 1 girl 1.26 0.77 2.06 0.35 pregnancy week (centered) 0.53 0.48 0.59 <0.001 na parity primipara 1 1 multipara 0.62 0.37 1.05 0.07 0.58 0.41 0.82 0.00 age (centered) 1.03 0.98 1.08 0.29 1.02 0.98 1.05 0.36 height (centered) 0.97 0.93 1.01 0.12 0.93 0.91 0.96 <0.001 bmi <30 1 1 30+ 1.71 0.53 5.54 0.37 0.87 0.36 2.10 0.76 mv 1.19 0.69 2.05 0.54 1.10 0.77 1.59 0.59 smoking habits before pregnancy none or ex-smoker 1 1 smoker 1.22 0.66 2.24 0.52 1.46 0.98 2.19 0.07 mv 0.80 0.39 1.66 0.55 0.88 0.54 1.42 0.59 education low 1 1 medium or high 1.18 0.55 2.52 0.67 0.77 0.47 1.28 0.31 mv 1.54 0.57 4.18 0.40 1.16 0.60 2.24 0.67 calendar period 2001 to 2005 1 1 2006 to 2010 1.41 0.83 2.41 0.20 1.08 0.76 1.53 0.66 -2 log likelihood 505.30 1049.63 model 3 (adjusted) country of origin non-migrant 1 1 mediterranean 0.25 0.09 0.73 0.01 0.43 0.21 0.86 0.02 eastern europe 0.21 0.05 0.89 0.03 0.78 0.38 1.62 0.51 others 0.78 0.37 1.65 0.52 0.85 0.51 1.41 0.53 -2 log likelihood 500.50 1046.47 note: model 1 controls for pregnancy week and sex of child in hbw and lbw; model 3 controls for the characteristics of child and mother as in model 2. na=not applicable, mv=missing value. source: calculations based on soep 1999-2010; n=1641. too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 13 tab. 2b: impact of the immigrant status of the mother on hbw and lga (odds ratios and confi dence intervals) high birthweight (hbw) large for gestational age (lga) or 95 % c.i. 95 % c.i. p-value or 95 % c.i. 95 % c.i. p-value lower upper lower upper model 1 (unadjusted) immigrant status non-migrant 1 1 migrant 1.04 0.71 1.51 0.85 1.55 1.11 2.16 0.01 -2 log likelihood 1019.09 1099.27 model 2 (adjusted) immigrant status non-migrant 1 1 migrant 1.24 0.82 1.87 0.30 1.80 1.26 2.57 <0.001 sex of child na boy 1 girl 0.69 0.50 0.97 0.03 pregnancy week (centered) 1.57 1.39 1.77 <0.001 na parity primipara 1 1 multipara 2.03 1.39 2.96 <0.001 1.49 1.04 2.13 0.03 age (centered) 1.01 0.98 1.05 0.57 1.02 0.99 1.06 0.19 height (centered) 1.06 1.04 1.09 <0.001 1.06 1.03 1.09 <0.001 bmi <30 1 1 30+ 0.90 0.37 2.21 0.82 1.31 0.62 2.76 0.48 mv 1.01 0.69 1.47 0.96 0.95 0.66 1.38 0.79 smoking habits before pregnancy none or ex-smoker 1 1 smoker 0.95 0.61 1.49 0.82 0.95 0.62 1.46 0.82 mv 1.42 0.90 2.26 0.14 1.59 1.03 2.48 0.04 education low 1 1 medium or high 1.22 0.63 2.37 0.56 0.68 0.41 1.11 0.12 mv 0.95 0.42 2.15 0.89 0.43 0.21 0.86 0.02 calendar period 2001 to 2005 1 1 2006 to 2010 1.49 1.03 2.14 0.03 1.38 0.97 1.98 0.07 -2 log likelihood 972.20 1058.95 model 3 (adjusted) country of origin non-migrant 1 1 mediterranean 0.93 0.44 1.95 0.85 1.69 0.96 2.98 0.07 eastern europe 2.68 1.47 4.89 0.00 3.53 2.06 6.04 <0.001 others 0.89 0.50 1.59 0.69 1.19 0.71 2.02 0.51 -2 log likelihood 963.55 1049.43 note: model 1 controls for pregnancy week and sex of child in hbw and lbw; model 3 controls for the characteristics of child and mother as in model 2. na=not applicable, mv=missing value. source: calculations based on soep 1999-2010; n=1641. • nadja milewski, frederik peters14 whose mothers come from mediterranean countries are less likely to have lbw than non-migrant newborns. the mediterranean group further shows signifi cantly lower sga risks while no difference was found for the other groups. whereas our results reveal that migrant children do not have a higher risk of low birthweight or intrauterine growth restriction and instead have a more favourable risk structure than non-migrants, we fi nd the opposite results for the risk of high birthweight and a high prenatal growth rate (hbw and lga in table 2b). while model 1 shows that the higher risks of hbw for migrants are insignifi cant, the values of the lga are signifi cant. migrant newborns have a 55 percent higher risk of being large for gestational age. when adjusting for confounders, the risk gap between migrant and non-migrant children increases for both hbw (1.2, not signifi cant) and lga (1.8). including the country of origin, model 3 reveals which groups contribute to the elevated risks: newborn children whose mothers come from eastern europe have the highest risks of hbw (2.7) and lga (3.5). the risks of lga are also elevated in the mediterranean group, although the values are not signifi cant. this is because the insertion of the control variables explains a substantial part of the differences between the mediterranean group and non-migrants, which is not the case for eastern europeans. in contrast, the hbw risk does not signifi cantly vary between non-migrants and migrants from mediterranean or other countries. overall, the control variables show the effects which have already been described in the literature: a higher parity is associated with higher rather than lower birthweight. a similar effect was observed for taller mothers. for the group of smokers, the risk of sga is increased. no signifi cant differences were found for the effect of age, bmi and education of the mother. the sensitivity analyses showed that the results were robust. the differences between migrant and non-migrant newborns remained the same in direction and degree of signifi cance, and were similar in size. the exclusion of repeated observations slightly affected the size, but not direction of the odds ratios. 5 discussion our analysis investigated birthweight differentials between migrant and non-migrant children in germany taking into account low and high outcomes with different defi nitions for the thresholds. the results show different risk profi les for the groups. our fi rst hypothesis was concerned with low birthweight outcomes (lbw and sga). we assumed higher risks for migrant newborns than for non-migrants. many international studies suggest that the socio-economic disadvantages of the migrant group would also lead to lower birthweight outcomes as low birthweight is traditionally seen as an indicator for social inequalities. our results do not support this hypothesis. instead, migrant children in germany have a signifi cantly lower risk of lbw and, to some extent, also of sga. in fact, our study supports our second hypothesis: newborns of migrant mothers face a higher risk of high birthweights than non-migrant children. here, the results vary with the indicator that is used: children born to migrant mothers do not exceed the threshold value of 4,000 grams of the too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 15 absolute birthweight more often than children of non-migrants (hbw). however, they are more likely to exceed the reference values of the gestational-age and the sex-specifi c weight distribution of the german population of newborns (lga). concerning the conclusions of our third hypothesis, the risk differentials in low and in high birthweights cannot be explained by control variables. our study was further concerned with within-group differences and detected substantial variation: women from mediterranean countries and eastern europe are more likely to have children who are large for gestational age than non-migrants. for the mediterranean group, the observed higher prenatal growth rate may be related to a higher prevalence of blood glucose and of diabetes among these women. this has been documented for turkish women in germany (ujcic-voortman et al. 2009), who dominate the group of mediterranean migrants in our sample. likewise, lower levels of health care utilisation may lead to the increased risks (guendelman et al. 1999). the group of newborns whose mothers come from eastern europe consistently is the only group in the sample who exhibits higher risks of hbw and lga. consequently, this group faces the challenges arising from both hbw and lga, i.e., possible complications during delivery due to the absolute size of the newborn and higher risks related to overweight in the life course. in contrast to previous literature, we used two indicators for the absolute birthweight (lbw/hbw) and two indicators that relate the birthweight to the sex of the child and the gestational week (sga/lga). our results show that the differences between migrant and non-migrant births are more pronounced for lga than for hbw. we assumed that a higher prenatal growth rate, as suggested by lga, coincides with higher rates of preterm births among migrants. a recent study estimated higher prevalences of preterm births among turkish and ethnic german immigrants than among the non-migrant population (becker/stolberg 2012). we checked this hypothesis with a bivariate rank-test (kendall’s tau b) and found a signifi cant positive correlation between lga and preterm birth (gestational age lower than 37 weeks). this may explain why migrant newborns do not weigh more than 4,000 grams (the threshold of hbw) more frequently despite a higher prenatal growth rate. before drawing the conclusion that children of migrants face a double disadvantage here – that of preterm births and of lga – more detailed analyses are needed in order to explain this pattern. we did not only examine which of the birthweight indicators adequately detects birthweight inequalities, but also analysed the quality of the soep data. as in other studies on differences related to migrant or ethnic group membership, it is not easy to distinguish our study populations. further, the populations themselves are not homogenous (howard 1999). the observed birthweight differences could be an artefact of comparing the migrant groups to a common point of reference; our study used the national birth distribution dominated by german mothers. it has been shown that optimal birthweights differ substantially between countries (graafmans et al. 2002; kierans et al. 2008). future research could therefore apply the birthweight distributions of the respective countries of origin to migrant mothers in order to test whether birthweight rates would change. however, the results of our study are similar to those of previous studies. the shares of, e.g. hbw, are similar • nadja milewski, frederik peters16 to the respective percentages found in a population wide study by bergmann et al. (2003 – they used citizenship as the criterion and found that 9.5 percent of births to foreign mothers and 11.3 percent of births to german mothers had hbw). the evidence that migrant groups have overweight-related health problems at all stages in their life courses supports our fi nding of higher lga risks among migrants (gilbert/ khokhar 2008). in addition, shifts in birthweight distributions that are unrelated to adverse birth outcomes typically occur only when populations have experienced favourable living conditions for several generations (eveleth/tanner 1990). presumably, this is not the case for the migrant groups under study. we acknowledge that the sample size in our study is rather small. in particular, the results comparing the migrant subgroups should be treated with caution. the sample selection may not be optimal. even though the soep is a sample that is representative at the national level, with an oversampling of migrants,3 the newborn questionnaire is a voluntary add-on. detailed statistics on the participation rate and a potential selection bias towards lower-risk individuals are not available. we argue, however, that such a selection effect would rather support our fi ndings, as noncompliance is likely to be higher among high-risk groups. despite these limitations, our results suggest that future research should take both into consideration, intra-group variation as well as variation between different birthweight indicators. our fi nding of higher rates of a large size for gestational age among migrant newborns, which points at a faster intrauterine growth rate, is in line with the above fi ndings of a higher prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and especially gestational diabetes, which are known to enhance fetal growth. as the focus of this study is on detecting birthweight variation among immigrant and non-migrant groups using different indicators, a more profound explanation of the differences is beyond the scope of this paper. in general, lifestyle factors play an important role together with socio-economic disadvantages and integration polices (bollini et al. 2009; auger et al. 2012). furthermore, birthweight is highly heritable – to a degree of up to 40 percent (clausson et al. 2000). at the same time, it is diffi cult to distinguish between genetic and environmental and lifestyle factors (howard 1999; hessol/fuentes-affl ick 2000). in our study, we could use only a small number of confounding variables due to limitations in the sample. we found that the inclusion of these variables only partly explains birthweight differentials between migrants and non-migrants. in some respects, the lifestyle of migrant women tends to be healthier, e.g. they are less likely to consume alcohol. in other respects, however, it tends to be less healthy, e.g., they are less likely to make use of perinatal care than non-migrants (guendelman et al. 1999; orskou et al. 2003). consequently, it seems 3 although the sample size is relatively small, the data quality is high. whereas previous studies in germany used mainly cross-sectional hospital records, our data contain more reliable information on the immigrant status. the soep has several indicators that allow for the reconstruction of the migration history of a person, including the country of birth, the age at immigration, and the nationality in each survey year. moreover, the longitudinal structure of the soep contains other socio-demographic characteristics of the mother that were measured prior to the pregnancy, which allows for causal conclusions. too low or too high? on birthweight differentials of immigrants in germany • 17 promising to compare the migrant groups to the women in the respective countries of origin in order to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of the migration process. distinguishing between the fi rst, second, and third generations of immigrants would also help to identify patterns related to their adaptation processes in the host country and their effects on birthweight differentials. in sum, if we wish to understand the impact of social inequalities on birthweight, we should consider high birthweight (orskou et al. 2001; west et al. 2013) as well as low birthweight when investigating birth outcome differentials between migrants and non-migrants. whereas low birthweight is the main challenge among non-migrant children, migrant women are at a higher risk of having children that are large for gestational age. undoubtedly, a reduction of the share of newborns with a low birthweight is a success – but only if the amount of obese children does not increase to the same degree. acknowledgement research by nadja milewski was supported by a european reintegration grant provided by marie curie actions (fp7 people, perg-ga-2009-249266 – migfam) and funded by the european commission. the views expressed in this paper do not refl ect the views of the funding agencies. we thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. references acevedo-garcia, dolores; soobader, mah-j.; berkman, lisa f. 2007: low birthweight among us hispanic/latino subgroups: the effect of maternal foreign-born status and education. in: social science & medicine 65: 2503-2516 [doi: 10.1016/j. socscimed.2007.06.033]. armitage, james a.; 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alexander, greg r. 2006: the healthy migrant theory: variations in pregnancy outcomes among us-born immigrants. in: social science & medicine 62: 491-498. zetterstrom, jan et al. 1999: anal sphincter tears at vaginal delivery: risk factors and clinical outcome of primary repair. in: obstetrics and gynecology 94: 21-28. date of submission: 10.09.2012 date of acceptance: 21.05.2013 prof. dr. nadja milewski (). university of rostock, institute for sociology and demography, faculty for economic and social sciences. rostock, germany e-mail: nadja.milewski@uni-rostock.de url: http://www.wiwi.uni-rostock.de/soziologie/ frederik peters. erasmus mc, department of public health. rotterdam, the netherlands e-mail: f.peters@erasmusmc.nl url: http://survey.erasmusmc.nl/intern/pwp/index.php?tab=7 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved buber_engelhardt_englisch.indd the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women in europe. findings from share isabella buber, henriette engelhardt abstract: empirical evidence of the effects of age on depressive symptoms is mixed, ranging from positive to zero to negative effects, depending on the modelling of the age-depression profi le. this paper uses internationally comparative data to analyse the association between age and the prevalence of symptoms of depression, controlling for well-known determinants of mental health. based on the fi rst wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), depressive symptoms of 28,538 persons aged 50 to 89 from eleven european countries and israel are analysed using a negative binomial regression model. the results indicate that the number of depressive symptoms measured by euro-d scores increase with age and are higher among women than among men. when including socio-demographic characteristics, health conditions and economic strains, the association between depressive symptoms and age vanishes for men, and even reverses for women. thus, the association between age and mental health is mediated by the health and living conditions of older persons; age by itself has no explanatory power. keywords: depressive symptoms · older persons · share · euro-d · negative binomial model 1 introduction “there is no health without mental health” (ec 2005: 4). mental health is an indivisible part of health and mental problems, and can drastically reduce the quality of life of those effected and of their families. good mental health is important for individuals as well as for society. at individual level, it enables people to achieve their intellectual and emotional potential and to fi nd their roles in social and working life. at societal level, good mental health is important for social and economic welfare. mental disorders are common. estimates for the adult population in the eu affected by some form of mental ill-health and mental disorder within the past 12 months range between 20 % and 27 % (ec 2004b; wittchen/jacobi 2005). in the comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 1 (2011): 103-126 (date of release: 26.05.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-02en9 • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt104 near future, depression will become the disease group with the second heaviest toll globally (ec 2004a). accordingly, there is an increasing interest in the mental health of the eu population, and a strong political commitment to action in this fi eld. the most important forms of mental disorder are depression, specifi c phobias, somatoform disorders and alcohol dependence (wittchen/jacobi 2005). depression and dementia constitute the two most important mental problems in later life (copeland et al. 1999b). increasing life expectancy may contribute to a rise in prevalence among the aged. however, empirical evidence of the association between age and depressive symptoms is varied. analyses of depression in later life (i.e. above age 65) reveal a strong positive association between the prevalence of symptoms of depression and age (stordal et al. 2001; castro-costa et al. 2007), a modest association with age (prince et al. 1999b), or a lack of an overall tendency towards depression rising with age (trollor et al. 2007; korten/henderson 2000; litwin 2002; verropoulou/tsimbos 2007), except among the oldest old (copeland et al. 1999b). controlling for mediating effects, blazer et al. (1991) and berkman et al. (1986) found an inverse association between age and depression. mediating variables generally transmit the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable (baron/kenny 1986; mackinnon et al. 2007). the different results presented in the literature, ranging from negative to zero to positive effects, may be due to selective samples or caused by different modelling methods of the age-depression profi le, in particular due to adjustments for different sets of covariates that have different infl uences on the age effect of depressive symptoms (yang 2007). in this paper, we analyse the association between age and depression, controlling for well-known determinants of mental health, using a representative sample of older persons in several european countries. in contradistinction to previous studies, we pay particular attention to the underlying statistical model and analyse systematically the change in the effect of age on depressive symptoms when controlling for these mediating variables. we also want to stress that the present study is not a psychiatric or gerontological contribution targeting physicians or psychiatrists, but addresses sociologists, demographers and the broad group of those who are interested in ageing. 2 literature review mental health has two dimensions: positive mental health and negative mental health. the positive dimension refers to the concepts of well-being and ability to cope in the face of adversity. the negative dimension includes psychological distress and psychiatric disorders, and relates to the presence of symptoms. positive and negative mental health cover different aspects. (ec 2004a). there are several measures for analysing mental health. some instruments measure more generic factors, such as psychological distress, by recording the presence or absence of certain symptoms such as anxiety or depression. this type of instrument produces a mental health score, and for some of them, cut-off points can be used to categorise people into groups such as “probable cases” with mental the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 105 health disorders.1 other instruments are designed to produce answers which correspond to diagnoses of mental disorders (e.g., mood disorder, anxiety disorders and drug and alcohol disorders) and generate estimates of the prevalence of particular disorders2 (ec 2004a). there is a great wealth of literature on mental health, focussing inter alia on clinical aspects and treatments (e.g., beck 1987; beck 1991; adam 1998; drake et al. 2001; amber et al. 2006), social and economic costs of mental health (e.g. hamilton et al. 1997; stephens/joubert 2001; whooley et al. 2002), health care services and their use (e.g., alonso et al. 2004c, harris et al. 2006) and the relation between mental and physical health (e.g., braam et al. 2005; opolski/wilson 2005). the determinants of mental condition are multiple, including biological (e.g., genetics, sex), individual (e.g. health, personal experiences), familial and social (e.g., family status, social support), economic and environmental conditions (e.g., social status and living arrangements). the following brief overview of the literature focuses on central variables associated with depression. in general, a higher number of depressive symptoms is typically found among women (prince et al. 1999b; alonso et al. 2004a; lehtinen et al. 2005; carta et al. 2005; barry et al. 2008; hopcroft/bradley 2007; zunzunegui et al. 2007). copeland et al. (1999a) assessed the prevalence of depression among individuals aged 65 and over in nine european centres, and found that also women outnumber men among older persons with signs of depression. their meta analysis shows an overall prevalence of diagnostic depression of 12.3 % (14.1 % for women, and 8.6 % for men). marital status is an important determinant of depressive symptoms: widowed and divorced persons have poorer mental health (dean et al. 1992; lehtinen et al. 2003; carta et al. 2005). mental disorders are more common among persons who were either never married or who were previously married and currently have no partner (alonso et al. 2004b; buber/engelhardt 2008; schaan 2009). having a trustbased relationship seems to have a protective effect. several studies identify links between the prevalence of mental disorders and socio-economic disadvantages. in general, relatively high frequencies of mental disorders are associated with a poor level of education, material disadvantage, low family income, unemployment and living on a pension (e.g. beekman et al. 1999; alonso et al. 2004b; fryers et al. 2005; lehtinen et al. 2005; carta et al. 2005; ladin 2008; litwin/sapir 2008). consistent with analyses of european data, kessler et al. (1994) fi nds elevated rates of affective and anxiety disorders among women and individuals with lower socio-economic status for the us. other studies show a statistically signifi cant relationship between place of residence and mental health, with the lowest values being registered in large cities (ayuso-mateos et al. 2001; lehtinen et al. 2003; lehtinen et al. 2005). 1 instruments in this category include mental health index mhi-5, ghq (general health questionnaire) or euro-d. 2 as an example we mention the cidi (composite international diagnostic interview) instrument. • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt106 poor physical health is one of the most important risk factors for depression in older adults. physical health problems are demonstrated to be a predictor of both the onset and the persistence of depression (e.g. berkman et al. 1986; katz 1996; geerlings et al. 2000; lenze et al. 2001; fiske et al. 2003; braam et al. 2005; jang et al. 2007). moreover, cognitive health also turns out to be associated with mental health (e.g. jorm 2000; reischies/neu 2000; scogin/rohling 1989). berkman et al. (1986) show that the addition of functional disability to a multivariate model substantially weakens the association between age and depressive symptoms. based on us data, blazer et al. (1991) and mirowsky and ross (1992) show that the upward trend of depression in later life reverses after including as covariates mediating variables such as marital, employment, economic and sociodemographic status. more recently, cairney and krause (2005) show that depressive symptoms in later life are associated with age, gender, living arrangements and education. they suggest that key social factors are related to depressive symptoms in later life. thus, the question arises as to whether there is a true causal link between age and depressive symptoms. we hypothesize that this relationship is mediated by special circumstances associated with the ageing process. the different and even contradictory fi ndings on the age-depression profi le in the literature may be due to different the consideration of different socio-demographic characteristics, health conditions and economic strains. to answer this question, we take advantage of the multifaceted structure of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), a representative european dataset that allows the comparison of health status in a variety of countries as well as the analysis of the determinants of health in a very broad context. share includes representative samples of the total population of eleven european countries and israel. it makes it possible to study symptoms of mental health of europeans aged 50 and older. in this paper, we analysed the association between age and depressive symptoms – measured by euro-d score – of persons aged 50 to 89, adjusting for living arrangements, education, economic constraints, limitations in activities of daily living, cognitive orientation, functional impairments and chronic diseases in a representative sample in eleven european countries and israel. the share data permit us to take into consideration these various dimensions which might be responsible for an age-specifi c increase in symptoms of depression. 3 data, variables and method 3.1 data the study is based on the fi rst wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), which includes detailed cross-national information on health, well-being, economic circumstances and social networks for twelve countries, namely austria, belgium, denmark, france, germany, greece, israel, italy, the netherlands, sweden, switzerland and spain. the data of the fi rst wave which we utilize the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 107 were collected between 2004 and 2005. share covers the non-institutionalised population aged 50 and older. “release 2.0.1” of wave 1 comprises data on 31,115 individuals in 21,176 households, the weighted average response rate being 61.6 % (börsch-supan/jürges 2005; see also http://www.share-project.org). the focus of the present study is on depressive symptoms of persons aged 50 to 89. respondents aged 90 or older are excluded due to low numbers (285 persons aged 90 to 104). the current sample includes 28,538 persons (13,068 men and 15,470 women) with complete information on depressive symptoms, education and living arrangements. the mean age is 64 for men and 66 for women. 3.2 variables our central variable is depressive mood measured by the number of depressive symptoms. our study measures mental health on the euro-d scale. this is an instrument which is symptom oriented, based on the presence or absence of depressive symptoms, but does not generate diagnoses of different mental disorders (e.g., mood disorder, anxiety disorders and drug and alcohol disorders). euro-d was developed in an 11-country european collaboration to compare symptoms of depression in 14 european centres. five depression measures3 are harmonised to form a 12-item scale (prince et al. 1999a). the reliability of euro-d has been reported to be good. in terms of its validity, it has been shown to correlate well with other wellknown health measures (prince et al. 1999a). the euro-d is an internally consistent scale, captures the essence of its parent instruments, has been validated in a cross-european study of depression prevalence, and facilitates a valid comparison of risk factor associations between centres (prince et al. 1999a). the 12 contributing items for the euro-d scale are: depression, pessimism, suicidality (wishing death), guilt, sleep, interest, irritability, appetite, fatigue, concentration, enjoyment, tearfulness. the time frame of the symptoms refers mostly to the month preceding the interview. the euro-d is a discrete measure of depressive symptoms; the core ranges from 0 to 12, with higher scores indicating higher levels of depression. dewey and prince (2005) suggest to set a threshold at a score of 3 and defi ne clinically signifi cant depression as a euro-d score greater than 3. in the current sample, euro-d was internally consistent for all countries, with cronbach alpha being 0.74 for the current pooled sample, ranging from 0.62 (in switzerland) to 0.78 (in spain). thus, euro-d is a feasible instrument for evaluating different dimensions of mental health. however, we are not able to distinguish between mild and severe mental disorders. to allow for a fl exible, non-parametric association between age and the number of depressive symptoms, 5-year age groups are included in the regressions. based on the literature, we include in the analyses socio-demographic characteristics and 3 geriatric mental state-agecat (gms-agecat), short-care, centre for epidemiological studies depression scale (ces-d), zung self-rating depression scale (zsds), comprehensive psychopathological rating scale (cprs). • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt108 health conditions that were found to have an effect on mental health. the current study includes the following covariates: (a) living arrangements: alone; as a couple; alone with other persons; as a couple with other persons, (b) highest level of education: primary school (isced 0-1); lower secondary (isced 2); higher secondary (isced 3-4); tertiary education (isced 5-6), (c) cognitive orientation based on the orientation to date, month, year and day of week; ranging from 0 (bad orientation) to 4 (good orientation), (d) limitations in the following activities of daily living (adl): dressing; walking across a room; bathing or showering; eating; getting in and out of bed; using the toilet, (e) chronic diseases: no chronic diseases; mild chronic diseases (i.e. high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, asthma, osteoporosis, stomach, duodenal or peptic ulcer, cataracts or hip fracture), and severe chronic diseases (i.e. heart attack or chronic lung disease) (kalwij/vermeulen 2008), and (f) economic strain: subjective indicator of fi nancial distress, based on the question of how respondents make ends meet: with great diffi culty; with some diffi culty; fairly easily; easily. the distribution of these variables for the pooled sample is listed in tables 2a and 2b below. with increasing age, the number of respondents goes down both for men and women. the vast majority of men and women live with a spouse or partner; while about one-third of women live alone, only 17 % of men do so. differentiating by the highest educational level attained, it turns out that 56 % of all men and 42 % of women have completed higher secondary or tertiary education. women report economic constraints more frequently than men (34 % of women and 28 % of men). when it comes to health, about 10 % of respondents report one or more limitations in their adl; 15 % have a less than good cognitive orientation, and about 25 % of men and 21 % of women suffer from severe chronic diseases. 3.3 statistical procedure in a fi rst step, the association between age and depressive symptoms is analysed by comparing means of euro-d by age as well as by confi dence intervals. to complement the fi rst descriptive results, t-tests are used to estimate mean differences in euro-d scores between men and women, with 95 % confi dence intervals. next, multivariate regression models are applied to analyse the association between age and depressive symptoms, controlling for socio-demographic indicators (living arrangements, education and economic constraints), as well as diverse dimensions of health (cognitive orientation, limitations in activities of daily living, chronic diseases). to account for country-specifi c heterogeneity, we include country dummies in all models. covariates are included stepwise so as to detect possible changes in the magnitude as well as in the direction of associations between age and depressive symptoms. as a general rule, the reference category is the largest group in each covariate. for the variable highest level of education, the largest group contains the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 109 persons with a basic level of education. since all respondents in denmark have at least lower secondary education, “basic education” cannot be the reference group in this country. in order to have the same reference group in all countries, “higher secondary or tertiary education”, i.e. the highest educational level, is chosen as the reference group. analyses are carried out separately for men and women to allow for a different shape of the association between age and the number of depressive symptoms, for a different constant in the estimated model, and for a different association between the explanatory variable and the covariates included in the model. the explanatory variable of the current study is the number of depressive symptoms, a discrete variable ranging from 0 to 12. it can be classifi ed as a count variable indicating how many depressive symptoms a respondent reported. in principle, we were able to analyse these data using standard multiple linear regression. however, the preponderance of zeros (n = 6,760; i.e. 24 %) and the small values indicate that the dependent variable is clearly discrete. the poisson regression model accounts for these characteristics and is used widely to study such data. a common problem with the standard poisson model is that the equidispersion assumption (e(y|x) = v(y|x) = λ) is violated, i.e. the conditional mean does not equal the conditional variance. to solve this problem, different approaches are proposed, including the generalised event count model, the generalised poisson model and the negative binomial model to account for overdispersion (e(y|x) < v(y|x)) and underdispersion (e(y|x) > v(y|x)), with x and y being random variables (winkelmann 2003). a statistical test for dispersion reveals strong and signifi cant evidence of overdispersion, i.e. the conditional variance exceeds the conditional mean in the full sample. therefore, we estimate a negative binomial model which accounts for overdispersion and for the prevalence of zero counts in the data (winkelmann 2003). in this model, the probability pr(y|x) of observing any observed count y is given by where x and y are random variables, x is the vector of observed characteristics, is the gamma function and and μ are parameters to be estimated empirically. the parameter refl ects unobserved heterogeneity and determines the degree of dispersion in the predictions. systematic variation can be introduced in the parameter μ as in a log-linear model: μ=exp(x’β). the coeffi cients in this model cannot be interpreted directly; only the sign of a coeffi cient indicates the direction of an effect. we refer to long and freese (2006) and winkelmann (2003) for further mathematical details. to visualise the fi t of the current count model with a negative binomial regression model, the observed relative frequencies, both the variable (number of depressive symptoms) and the predicted probabilities are plotted for each value of the count. figure 1 clearly shows that the negative binomial distribution fi ts the data well and is an appropriate tool for the current study. y 11 1 1 1 1 )(!y )y( x|ypr)xx|yypr( , (.) • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt110 4 results at fi rst sight, the prevalence of depressive symptoms appears to increase with age among men and women, with women reporting more depressive symptoms compared to men. figure 2 depicts the mean euro-d scores for men and women. roughly speaking, the mean euro-d score increases between ages 50 to 89 from 1.6 to 3.0 among men and from 2.5 to 3.8 among women. confi dence intervals become broader at older ages, indicating a considerable variation in the number of depressive symptoms at older ages. table 1 includes the mean number of depressive symptoms among men and women within 5-year age groups and t tests estimating mean differences in eurod scores between men and women, as well as confi dence intervals indicating the difference. the results show that women reported signifi cantly more depressive symptoms than men, and, moreover, the gender gap widens with rising age (50-54: difference of 0.85 symptoms; 80-84: difference of 1.05 symptoms). it is therefore appropriate to run the analyses separately for men and women to allow for a different shape of the association between age and the number of depressive symptoms, fig. 1: observed relative frequencies and predicted probabilities for the number of depressive symptoms 0,00 0,05 0,10 0,15 0,20 0,25 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 observed relative frequency negative binomial prediction relative frequency and probalbility number of depressive symptoms source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1 the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 111 for a different constant in the estimated model, and for a different association between the explanatory variable and the covariates included in the model. for the multivariate analysis, we apply negative binomial regression models as described in the previous section. tables 2a and 2b give the estimated non-exponentiated coeffi cients of the various variables separately for males and females, with the respective reference group having a value of zero. positive coeffi cients imply an increase in the number of depressive symptoms; negative coeffi cients stand for a fig. 2: mean number of depressive symptoms by age and gender tab. 1: mean number of depressive symptoms by age groups and gender men women mean difference (95%-confidence interval) 50-54 1.72 2.57 -0.85 (-0.97; -0.74) 55-59 1.70 2.47 -0.77 (-0.88; -0.66) 60-64 1.63 2.56 -0.92 (-1.04; -0.81) 65-69 1.77 2.66 -0.89 (-1.02; -0.77) 70-74 1.94 2.84 -0.90 (-1.05; -0.75) 75-79 2.29 3.25 -0.97 (-1.16; -0.76) 80-84 2.46 3.50 -1.05 (-1.29; -0.81) 85-89 2.63 3.46 -0.82 (-1.23; -0.42) source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1 source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1 • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt112 decrease. all models include additionally country dummies to account for country heterogeneity in the number of depressive symptoms (results not reported here). the association between age and number of depressive symptoms is approximated with a piecewise constant function for 5-year age groups. this modeling procedure allows a fl exible form and does not imply a specifi c association between the tab. 2a: coeffi cients of a negative binomial regression model for the associations between euro-d scores and age, living arrangements, education, adl limitations, cognitive orientation, health and economic strain, male respondents model 1 model a model b model c model d model e model f distrib. in % age 50-54a 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 55-59 0.01 0.03 -0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 -0.04 19 60-64 -0.00 0.02 -0.03 0.01 -0.02 -0.01 -0.11* 17 65-69 0.07 0.11* 0.03 0.08+ 0.05 0.05 -0.06 16 70-74 0.19*** 0.22*** 0.13* 0.20*** 0.14** 0.16** 0.03 12 75-79 0.30*** 0.32*** 0.23*** 0.34*** 0.20*** 0.25*** 0.10+ 9 80-84 0.41*** 0.43*** 0.34*** 0.43*** 0.21** 0.35*** 0.19** 5 85-89 0.53*** 0.50*** 0.44*** 0.55*** 0.30** 0.43*** 0.34** 2 living arrangements couple a 0 52 ego alone 0.22*** 17 couple with others 0.08* 28 ego with others 0.34*** 3 highest level of education primary school 0.27*** 29 lower secondary 0.11* 15 higher secondary or tertiary a 0 56 make ends meet with great difficulty 0.77*** 8 with some difficulty 0.40*** 20 fairly easily 0.14** 27 easily a 0 19 missing answer 0.21*** 26 adl limitations none a 0 91 1 and more limitations 0.77*** 9 cognitive orientation 0 (bad orientation) to 3 0.33*** 15 4 (good orientation) a 0 85 chronic diseases no -0.31*** 34 mild a 0 41 severe 0.30*** 25 constant 0.49*** 0.40*** 0.43*** 0.24*** 0.44*** 0.78*** 0.60*** macfadden’s r² 0.012 0.014 0.014 0.022 0.027 0.015 0.024 n 13,017 13,017 13,017 13,017 13,015 13,010 13,017 notes: all models additionally include country dummies. the number of n differs in the various models due to missing data. a reference category. + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1; own calculations the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 113 number of depressive symptoms and age. this would be the case if, for example, age was entered for a linear relationship or age and age squared for a quadratic one. the sole association between age and depressive symptoms is confi rmed by the estimated signifi cant coeffi cients for ages 70 and above (tab. 2a and 2b, model 1). tab. 2b: coeffi cients of a negative binomial regression model for the associations between euro-d scores and age, living arrangements, education, adl limitations, cognitive orientation, health and economic strain, female respondents model 1 model a model b model c model d model e model f distrib. in % age 50-54a 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 55-59 -0.04 -0.03 -0.06+ -0.04 -0.05 -0.04 -0.11** 16 60-64 0.00 0.01 -0.04 -0.00 -0.03 -0.01 -0.09** 15 65-69 0.06+ 0.05 0.00 0.05 0.03 0.05 -0.07+ 15 70-74 0.08* 0.07+ -0.00 0.06+ 0.01 0.06 -0.06+ 13 75-79 0.24*** 0.20*** 0.14*** 0.24*** 0.15*** 0.19*** 0.06 11 80-84 0.34*** 0.28*** 0.23*** 0.33*** 0.18*** 0.25*** 0.15** 9 85-89 0.30*** 0.22*** 0.19*** 0.30*** 0.04 0.19*** 0.14* 3 living arrangements couple a 0 40 ego alone 0.14*** 33 couple with others 0.04 17 ego with others 0.18*** 10 highest level of education primary school 0.28*** 37 lower secondary 0.20*** 21 higher secondary or tertiary a 0 42 make ends meet with great difficulty 0.55*** 11 with some difficulty 0.35*** 23 fairly easily 0.12*** 25 easily a 0 14 missing answer 0.17*** 27 adl limitations none a 0 89 1 and more limitations 0.54*** 11 cognitive orientation 0 (bad orientation) to 3 0.31*** 15 4 (good orientation) a 0 85 chronic diseases no -0.33*** 29 mild a 0 50 severe 0.30*** 21 constant 0.92*** 0.86*** 0.83*** 0.71*** 0.89*** 1.20*** 1.05*** macfadden’s r² 0.016 0.017 0.019 0.024 0.027 0.020 0.027 n 15,399 15,399 15,399 15,399 15,396 15,389 15,399 notes: all models additionally include country dummies. the number of n differs in the various models due to missing data. a reference category. + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1, own calculations • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt114 thus, whilst controlling for country-specifi c heterogeneity, our results reveal in a fi rst step slightly higher levels for men and women aged 65-69, and signifi cantly higher levels of depressive symptoms in the age groups 70-74, 75-79, 80-84 and 85-89, compared to the reference group of respondents aged 50-54. the increase with age is more pronounced among men compared to women. in a next step, variables that are found to be correlated with depressive symptoms are included separately in the models to analyze the change in size of the age coeffi cients, whilst controlling for these characteristics. models a, b and c in tables 2a and 2b include living arrangements, education, and economic constraints as covariates separately, while models d, e and f take health conditions into consideration. first of all, all covariates are signifi cantly associated with the number of depressive symptoms with the expected signs both for men and women. living alone as well as living with people other than a partner, low levels of educational attainment, increased economic strains, adl limitations, less than good cognitive orientation and severe chronic diseases are associated with an increased number of depressive symptoms. the best model fi t is measured by mcfadden’s r2 results for fi nancial constraints, chronic diseases and adl limitations for both genders. for women, whilst controlling for each single covariate, the age effects diminish, with the exception of economic constraints. a signifi cantly increased number of depressive symptoms can only be observed for age 75 and older (models a to e) and age 80 and older in model f. for males, we observe only reduced age effects, whilst controlling for health conditions (adl limitations, cognitive orientation, and chronic diseases). living arrangements, level of education and economic strain do not alter the age effects in the way we observe for females. most interestingly, though, the estimated constant effect increases remarkably both for males and females in models e and f, where cognitive impairment and chronic diseases are controlled for. thus, the average number of depressive symptoms increases, while the effects for the different age groups decline compared to model 1. moreover, controlling for chronic diseases, only men aged 75 and older and women aged 80 and older have signifi cantly increased numbers of depressive symptoms. the coeffi cients for age change signifi cantly with the stepwise inclusion of different covariates. first, the initial strong positive association between age and the number of depressive symptoms weakens if one includes socio-demographic characteristics (tab. 3, model 2). second, including as covariates diverse dimensions of health virtually eliminates the age-depressive symptoms association among men, and even reverses the association among women. while men and women aged 70 and above initially have signifi cantly higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to those in their early fi fties, in the model including health indicators (model 3) the estimated coeffi cients in the male sample are small and no longer signifi cant (for age 70 and above). for females, all estimated coeffi cients turn negative and are even signifi cant for ages 55 to 74 and 85 to 89, the corresponding levels being between -0.09 and -0.13. the fi nal model includes socio-economic determinants as the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 115 tab. 3: coeffi cients of a negative binomial regression model for the associations between euro-d scores and age, living arrangements, education, adl limitations, cognitive orientation, health and economic strain men women model 2 model 3 model 4 model 2 model 3 model 4 age 50-54 a 0 0 0 0 0 0 55-59 0.02 -0.04 -0.03 -0.05+ -0.11*** -0.12*** 60-64 0.00 -0.10* -0.09+ -0.03 -0.11*** -0.13*** 65-69 0.08 -0.07 -0.05 -0.00 -0.09** -0.14*** 70-74 0.18*** 0.00 0.02 -0.02 -0.12*** -0.19*** 75-79 0.31*** 0.03 0.06 0.14*** -0.03 -0.09* 80-84 0.40*** 0.03 0.06 0.21*** -0.03 -0.11* 85-89 0.47*** 0.12 0.11 0.16** -0.13** -0.22*** living arrangements couple a 0 0 0 0 ego alone 0.16*** 0.16*** 0.11*** 0.11*** couple with others 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.02 ego with others 0.28*** 0.28*** 0.10** 0.07* highest level of education primary school 0.15*** 0.09** 0.22*** 0.17*** lower secondary 0.05 0.02 0.16*** 0.13*** higher secondary or tertiary a 0 0 0 0 make ends meet with great difficulty 0.71*** 0.60*** 0.48*** 0.40*** with some difficulty 0.37*** 0.33*** 0.30*** 0.26*** fairly easily 0.13** 0.13** 0.10** 0.10** easily a 0 0 0 0 missing answer 0.22*** 0.17*** 0.17*** 0.15*** adl limitations none a 0 0 0 0 1 and more limitations 0.63*** 0.57*** 0.45*** 0.41*** cognitive impairment 0 (bad orientation) to 3 0.24*** 0.21*** 0.23*** 0.20*** 4 (good orientation) a 0 0 0 0 chronic diseases no -0.28*** -0.27*** -0.30*** -0.28*** mild a 0 0 0 0 severe 0.20*** 0.25*** 0.19*** 0.18*** constant 0.16*** 0.53*** 0.25*** 0.62*** 1.00*** 0.75*** macfadden’s r² 0.025 0.037 0.047 0.027 0.039 0.047 n 13,017 13,008 13,008 15,399 15,386 15,386 notes: all models additionally include country dummies. the number of n differs in the various models due to missing data. a reference category. + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1; own calculations • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt116 well as health indicators (model 4). whereas no age effect is observed for men, the estimated coeffi cients for women are all negative and signifi cantly different from zero, indicating a lower number of depressive symptoms for ages 55 to 89 compared to women in their early fi fties. figures 3a and 3b depict the association between age and depressive symptoms for the stepwise setup of models. figures 3a and 3b provide unambiguous evidence of the importance of socio-demographic characteristics and indicators of physical and cognitive health for depressive symptoms for both men and women, especially in advanced age. the piecewise constant functions representing the fi nal multivariate model reveal that the increase in depression with age initially observed almost disappears for men, and even reverses for women. our results indicate that socio-demographic characteristics and physical as well as cognitive health absorbe, and even go so far as to reverse, the association between age and euro-d scores among older persons. moreover, the separate analysis of men and women reveals gender-specifi c differences in the association between age and living arrangements on the one hand and euro-d scores on the other. the association between educafig. 3a: estimated association between age and the level of depression with and without covariates for socio-demographic and health characteristics, men -0,4 -0,2 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85-89 model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 coefficients of regression models age in years note: the models refer to tables 2a and 3. source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1 the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 117 tion and depressive symptoms is stronger among women, whereas the estimated coeffi cients for economic constraints, adl limitations and chronic diseases are higher among men. to test whether health, demographic characteristics and economic circumstances are mediating variables as they carry the infl uence of our independent variable (age) on our dependent variable (mental health), we apply a sobel-goodman mediation test. we fi nd that the mediation effect of adl limitations is highly signifi cant, with approximately 49 % of the total effect (of age on depressive mood) being mediated. in other words, age infl uences physical health, which in turn infl uences mental health. gender-specifi c analysis reveals a more pronounced mediating effect among women than among men (52 % versus 42 %). also, educational status can be regarded as a signifi cant mediator, with 40 % of the total effect being mediated. cognitive impairment and chronic diseases, but also living arrangements and economic constraints, turn out to carry to a lesser degree the infl uence of age on mental health. -0,4 -0,2 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85-89 model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 coefficients of regression models age in years note: the models refer to tables 2b and 3. source: share 2004-05, release 2.0.1 fig. 3b: estimated association between age and the level of depression with and without covariates for socio-demographic and health characteristics, women • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt118 5 discussion in this study we analyze the association between the prevalence of depressive symptoms and age, including as covariates socio-economic characteristics and health. in contrast to existing studies which provide mixed empirical evidence, share allows the analysis of depressive symptoms of persons living in private households in various european countries based on a representative sample and a standardised questionnaire. in order to assess depressive symptoms, we use the euro-d scale and estimate the effects of age, whilst controlling for well-known determinants of mental health using a negative binomial regression model as an innovative tool in analysing the number of depressive symptoms. the present study reveals at fi rst sight a signifi cant increase in the number of depressive symptoms with age among both sexes. after including socio-economic characteristics and health conditions, the association almost disappears for men and even reverses for women. living arrangements, educational level, fi nancial strains, limitations in activities of daily living, chronic diseases and cognitive orientation are major determinants of depressive symptoms among older persons. depressive symptoms are highly correlated with circumstances that are associated with old age, such as health problems, fi nancial strains or the loss of one’s partner. once we had included these socio-demographic characteristics and health as covariates, age itself no longer had any explanatory power for men, and turns out to be positively correlated with depressive symptoms among women. our fi ndings for european data are in line with fi ndings for the us by berkman et al. (1986), blazer et al. (1991), mirowsky and ross (1992) and cairney and krause (2005). in addition, gender-specifi c analyses reveal that the association between the number of depressive symptoms and age reverses for women, whereas it “only” vanishes for men. in a recent study based on the greek share data, verropoulou and tsimbos (2007:178) state that the positive association between age and depressive symptoms may be “spurious and mainly due to the older suffering from disabilities and stressful life events such as bereavement”. our evidence supports this hypothesis and additionally even reveals for women an inverse association with age, sociodemographic, economic and health indicators being included as covariates. the outcomes of the covariates are in line with previous research (e.g. dean et al. 1992), but they also reveal remarkable gender differences related to education and living arrangements and adl limitation. for example, the impact of education is more marked among women than among men. additional analyses for men and women not shown here reveal that divorce and widowhood have a different impact on the mental health of persons aged 50 and older. for men, it is widowhood that had a stronger negative impact on mental health, while for women it is divorce (see also buber/engelhardt 2008). the stepwise introduction of covariates reveals that physical health is indeed an important aspect of mental health, in particular in old age. accounting for socioeconomic status attenuated the positive association between the number of depressive symptoms and age; only part of the increase observed with age can be the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 119 explained by living arrangements, education and economic situation. the association between age and mental health is mediated by health determinants, especially among women. with the inclusion of health determinants the initially positive association vanishes for men and even turns negative for women, indicating a falling number of depressive symptoms with increasing age. moreover, the measures for model fi t indicate that the differences observed with age are mainly due to physical health (verropoulou/tsimbos 2007). nevertheless, the direction of causality between physical and mental health is not clear. in the current analysis we fi rst include as covariates socio-demographic characteristics, followed by health conditions. alternatively, the covariates are introduced in a different order. it turns out that when including fi rst limitations in activities of daily living as well as cognitive orientation and later living arrangements, the results remain stable. therefore, both aspects – socio-demographic characteristics and health conditions – are independent determinants of mental health, association with the one group not being absorbed by the other. the unrefl ected use of gender, or sex, as a technical category is criticised by researchers on gender studies who argue that one must not neglect the substantial differences between being a man and being a woman (jylhä 2007). the current study does not include gender as a covariate, but men and women are analysed separately, allowing different associations between the number of depressive symptoms on the one hand, and age as well as socio-economic and health factors on the other. indeed, the results for age, living arrangements, educational level, economic strain, adl limitations and chronic diseases differ among men and women, either in size or in direction. two limitations have to be mentioned. first, our analysis is based on self-rated health, not on diagnoses by psychiatrists or general practitioners. regarding the structure of our data, we use a cross-sectional sample, and are therefore not able to disentangle period and cohort effects. as share is designed as a longitudinal study, it will allow us to address this issue in the near future, when several waves are available to the scientifi c community. what is more, we are not able to investigate dynamic aspects and causalities with our cross-sectional data. although the current analysis covers a range of different aspects, other dimensions such as social support, working conditions or transition to retirement are left out. another potential confounder in the study of the association of age and depressive symptoms in a cross-sectional analysis is the cohort effect (yang 2007). moreover, the analysis of the fi rst wave of share does not allow us to detect causalities but only associations. a compression of morbidity is being observed as europe ages (vaupel 2010). due to the increasing relative time spent in good health, the rise in the number of individuals suffering from depression should be less pronounced compared to a situation with prolonged morbidity. this holds true as long as economic strains and socio-demographic characteristics remain constant. • isabella buber, henriette engelhardt120 the authors would like two thank two anonymous reviewers from comparative population studies for important suggestions. the collection of the data was primarily funded by the european commission through the 5th framework programme (project qlk6-ct-2001-00360 in the thematic programme area “quality of life”). additional funding came from the us national institute on aging (u01 ag09740-13s2, p01 ag005842, p01 ag08291, p30 ag12815, y1-ag-4553-01 and ogha 04-064). data collection in austria (through the austrian science foundation, fwf), belgium (through the belgian science policy offi ce) and switzerland (through bbw/ofes/ ufes) was funded nationally. the share data collection in israel was funded by the us national institute on aging (r21 ag025169), by the german-israeli foundation for scientifi c research and development (g.i.f.), and by the national insurance institute of israel. further support by the european commission through the 6th framework program (projects share-i3, rii-ct-2006-062193, and compare, cit5ct-2005-028857) is gratefully acknowledged. references adam, christian 1998: depressive störungen im alter. epidemiologie und soziale bedingungen. münchen: juventa. alonso, jordi; 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[doi: 10.1177/002214650704800102] zunzunegui, maria-victoria; minicuci, nadia; blumstein, tzuia et al. 2007: gender differences in depressive symptoms among older adults – a cross-national comparison. in: social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology 42: 198-207 [doi: 10.1007/ s00127-007-0158-3]. the association between age and depressive symptoms among older men and women • 125 dr. isabella buber-ennser ( ). vienna institute of demography (austrian academy of sciences), wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: isabella.buber@oeaw.ac.at url: www.oeaw.ac.at/vid prof. dr. henriette engelhardt-wölfl er. chair of population studies, otto friedrich university bamberg, 96052 bamberg, germany. e-mail: henriette.engelhardt-woelfl er@uni-bamberg.de url: www.uni-bamberg.de/demografi e translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “der zusammenhang zwischen alter und depressiven symptomen bei männern und frauen höheren lebensalters in europa. erkenntnisse aus dem share-projekt”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos2011-02de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-02de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies. de. date of submission: 28.04.2010 date of acceptance: 17.01.2010 comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) luy_englisch.indd a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data underlying the estimates for the 2004 and 2006 united nations’ world population prospects marc luy abstract: the estimation of mortality conditions and trends is a sophisticated task for most populations in the world, above all for those of developing countries. after two decades of intensive discussion and derivation of specifi c estimation tools for these populations, the use of indirect estimation techniques seems largely forgotten among those who are not forced to apply them. however, for the majority of developing countries these methods are still the main and often the only available estimation tool. in order to systematise the available data and applied estimation techniques, we developed a fi ve-scale classifi cation of the nature of mortality data and assigned all countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants to the corresponding groups. the classifi cation is based on three sources of information regarding the nature of mortality data, the analytical reports of the 2004 and 2006 revisions of the united nations’ world population prospects and the methods and data descriptions of the 2006 global burden of disease study. although the information provided by our classifi cation is purely descriptive rather than giving a detailed overview of the specifi c methods and approaches, the contents of this paper should be of interest to politicians and scientists using the united nations’ world population prospects as well as to scholars who teach and learn about indirect demographic estimation techniques. keywords: mortality · nature of mortality data · life expectancy · indirect estimation techniques · model life tables · world population prospects · orphanhood method · growth balance method 1 introduction the biennially updated “world population prospects” (wpp) of the united nations form probably the most extensively used source of worldwide demographic data. this is well justifi ed since the wpp provide a huge range of demographic indicators comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 2 (2010): 315-334 © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-08en0 • marc luy316 for current, former and expected future trends for every single country. moreover, the wpp are prepared very carefully by using the best data available. the existence of such a comprehensive data source may easily conceal the fact that the estimation of demographic conditions and trends is a problematic and sophisticating task for most populations in the world, above all for those of developing countries. most demographers and population researchers are merely used to the classical direct methods, which are based on sexand age-specifi c counts of events like births or deaths and of the living population at risk. in most developing countries, however, such data are either lacking or severely defi cient to an extent that the common direct methods cannot be applied. mainly during the 1970s and 1980s, demographers developed a number of specifi c estimation methods to overcome these data problems. these specifi c estimation tools fall into two major categories: consistency checks with corresponding adjustment methods and indirect estimation techniques. the fi rst group comprises methods which are used for checking the completeness of registered data and for adjusting for typical underreporting in order to obtain less biased demographic measures. in the fi eld of mortality research, the most commonly used consistency checks/adjustment methods are different variants of the growth balance method (brass 1975; martin 1980; gray 1986; hill 1987; bhat 2002; hill/queiroz 2004) and the inter-census estimation techniques (e.g. preston/bennett 1983). with indirect techniques, mortality estimates are derived from survey information on the survival experiences of close relatives or household members. for the estimation of infant and child mortality, the most frequent method is based on information about children ever born and children surviving (sullivan 1972, brass 1975, trussell 1975, preston/ palloni 1977, hill et al. 1983, hill 1991), whereas the most prominent indirect method for the estimation of adult mortality is the orphanhood method, which is based on survey reports on parental survival. different approaches have been suggested to convert the share of people with mother or father alive into life table survivorship ratios (hill/trussell 1977, hill et al. 1983, chackiel/orellana 1985, timæus 1991a/b, 1992, timæus/nunn 1997) or to use two sets of orphanhood data to estimate adult mortality for the time between the surveys (zlotnik/hill 1981, timæus 1986). other approaches for the indirect estimation of adult mortality are based on the survival of spouses (hill/trussell 1977) and siblings (hill/trussell 1977, gakidou/king 2006, obermeyer et al. 2010). model life tables – like those by coale and demeny (coale/ demeny 1966, coale et al. 1983), the united nations (united nations 1982a/b) or the indepth network (ngom/bawah 2004) – are used to translate survival estimates for specifi c age segments derived from such indirect techniques into complete life tables and thus into life expectancy. after two decades of intensive discussion and derivation of these specifi c estimation tools, the use of consistency checks/adjustment methods and indirect estimation techniques seems largely forgotten among those who are not forced to apply them. however, for the majority of developing countries these methods are still the main and often the only possible estimation tool, even for the most recent demographic data. this paper deals with the methods used by the united nations to estimate life tables and thus life expectancy for their wpp. since the fi nal estimates a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 317 are published in one table for all countries, it might seem that the numbers were directly comparable. the different nature of the underlying data and estimation methods, however, should be kept in mind before proceeding with too detailed interpretations. for the three most recent wpp, i.e. the 2004, 2006 and 2008 revisions, the united nations published some brief information on the available data sources and the applied methods underlying the estimates of current and former conditions, which build the base of the projected future trends. in order to systematise the available data sources and applied estimation techniques, we developed a fi ve-scale classifi cation of the nature of mortality data and assigned all countries into the corresponding groups. note that the nature of mortality data does not necessarily refl ect the accuracy of the data itself, although indirect estimates always include more uncertainties than direct estimates. since in a number of cases the information provided on the used data and methods is rather vague, our classifi cation contains some uncertainties as well. furthermore, the information provided in this report is not comparable to the extensive publication of lopez et al. (2002) who supplied a detailed overview of the specifi c data sources and methods used for constructing life tables for 191 who member states referring to the situation in the late 1990s. as will be shown in the present paper, developing countries most recently experience considerable improvements in the quality of the available mortality data. 2 a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data the creation of a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data has been inspired by similar works of lopez et al. (2006) and wilmoth (2007) who both described fi ve categories of data availability but confi ned their work to a general description rather than providing the corresponding classifi cation for each country. the criteria used for assigning countries to one of these groups differ slightly from one another and also from the criteria we used, and as such, the classifi cation presented in this paper differs from both as well. our classifi cation is based on three major sources on information regarding the nature of mortality data, the analytical reports of the 2004 and 2006 revisions of united nations’ wpp (united nations 2006, 2008) and the methods and data descriptions of the “global burden of disease” (gbd) (lopez et al. 2006). the 2008 revision of united nations’ wpp (united nations 2010) has not been used because of lacking comparability to the gbd classifi cation as will be discussed in more detail in the concluding remarks. both the wpp and the gbd provide some – though differently structured – information on data sources and methods underlying the corresponding mortality estimates. unfortunately, the two sources cannot be matched directly since the gbd published some of the information only for groups of countries following from the classifi cation system of the world health organisation (who) which differs from the corresponding regional classifi cation system of the united nations. however, since lopez et al. (2006) estimated their own life tables for the most part independently from those of the united nations, the gbd was considered a useful tool for checking our interpretation of the partly vague information provided by the united nations. • marc luy318 our fi ve-group classifi cation is based on the following criteria: group i contains countries with complete and reliable vital registration based • on census data. the ageand sex-specifi c mortality rates as a basis for the life tables are calculated directly and unadjusted from the offi cially registered data. group ii contains countries for which the calculation or derivation of age• and sex-specifi c death rates is still possible. however, some adjustments of the registered data or the use of additional data sources are necessary. this group contains countries of three kinds of data characteristics: (i) countries whose vital registration and census data show some defi ciencies making adjustments of the numbers of deaths or the living population necessary, (ii) countries with current death registration in which former census data or life tables allow to derive estimates for the current age and sex composition of the living population from specifi c projection or modelling, and (iii) countries with existing death registers but whose data on infant and/or child mortality are based on other data sources, i.e. indirect estimates from survey or census data. group iii contains countries whose life tables are not based on ageand sex-• specifi c death rates but on two separated estimates, one for child mortality and one for a global level of adult mortality. estimates of child mortality are based on data from registers, censuses, dhs and papchild surveys or surveillance systems. regarding the estimation of adult mortality levels, the countries assigned to this group fall into two broad categories: (i) countries whose estimates for adult mortality are based on former life tables dating back too far to derive current ageand sex-specifi c death rates by projection techniques but allow deriving estimates for a global level of adult mortality, and (ii) countries with estimates of adult mortality levels from indirect estimation techniques based on information about surviving parents or siblings from survey data. in most countries of this group, the fi nal estimates for life expectancy are derived from model life table systems or are adopted from alternative sources like who or escwa estimates. group iv contains countries whose estimates for life expectancy are solely • based on direct or indirect estimates of child mortality, using model life table systems for the derivation of the corresponding life table for the total population. as in group iii, estimates of child mortality are based on data from registers, censuses, dhs and papchild surveys or surveillance systems. in some cases, unicef and who estimates were considered as well. group v contains countries without any useful information on prevailing • mortality conditions. in these cases, the estimated life expectancy is assumed to be similar to those of neighbouring countries with comparable socio-economic conditions, usually belonging to group iv. in practice, classifying countries into groups i or v was mostly unproblematic. however, the classifi cation of countries into the groups ii, iii and iv was a sophisticated task given the information provided on the data sources and methods for life table derivation. nevertheless, using all available information from the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 analytical reports and the gbd, we kept our classifi cation criteria as clearly as possible. first, we classifi ed the countries for the wpp 2004 since the years of data collection are roughly the same as for the gbd and therefore the information from the two sources could be combined. our fi nal classifi cation of a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 319 countries into the fi ve groups for the wpp 2004 is mostly consistent with the analytical reports of the united nations (2006) and very close to the gbd classifi cation. the classifi cation for the wpp 2006 is based on the analytical reports of the united nations (2008) and on our own classifi cation for the wpp 2004. note that since both the wpp analytical reports and the gbd description are used for assigning countries into the groups of nature of mortality data, some classifi cations might not correspond to the description of one report on its own. some examples might help explaining the diffi culties for, and the logic behind, our classifi cation. for the majority of the african countries the wpp analytical reports describe the source for life expectancy estimates as “derived from estimates on infant and child mortality by assuming that the age pattern of mortality conforms to the […] model of the […] model life tables”. in most cases this statement is supplemented by “the demographic impact of aids has been factored into the mortality estimates”. in cases where no further information is given other than that the estimates are based on infant and child mortality, countries were assigned to group iv. for some countries like bhutan, the wpp analytical report additionally included the information that some older (offi cial) life table estimates were considered. however, it remains unclear if these additional sources were used for estimating adult mortality levels or if they were used to test and adjust the estimates for child mortality. for classifying such countries we incorporated the information from the gbd, where for the main who regions the number of countries is listed by their fi ve classes of mortality data. if the gbd classifi cation indicates that the country should belong to group iii we assigned this country to group iii as well. for other countries the data description of the wpp 2004 analytical report leaves open whether they belong to group ii or to group iii. if the gbd team could not reconstruct age-and sex-specifi c rates from the data of such countries, they were assigned to group iii, as long as the wpp 2004 analytical report did not contain any explicit remark on ageand sex-specifi c data availability. consequently, when the description in the wpp 2006 analytical report did not change, the country remained in data quality group iii, although the analytical report itself might indicate mortality data of quality group ii. algeria is an example for such a classifi cation. furthermore, there are other countries theoretically fulfi lling the criteria for group ii (or even group i) but where the fi nal estimates of the united nations are based on model life tables. such countries were classifi ed into group iii, since obviously the data quality is insuffi cient to derive ageand sex-specifi c death rates. tunisia is such a country; it has regular censuses and offi cial estimates for infant and child mortality as well as for life expectancy provided by ins tunisia (see also vallin/ locoh 2001). however, the life expectancy in tunisia reported in the wpp is based on an underlying age pattern of mortality that conforms to the east model of the coale-demeny model life table system. bolivia and south africa are further examples of countries where the theoretically available data contradict our classifi cation. in bolivia, the national statistical offi ce publishes offi cial life tables while the united nations based their estimates for the wpp on indirect estimations. the same holds for south africa, where works of local demographers suggest that the available data could provide adjusted ageand sex-specifi c death rates and that the application of • marc luy320 model life tables might not be necessary (dorrington et al. 2006). however, since the united nations choose the data for their wpp very carefully, there seem to be justifi ed reservations with regard to the quality of such sources. finally, there are countries such as morocco, for which, according to the wpp analytical reports, no information on adult mortality exist. however, regarding the trend of the age pattern of mortality the united nations assumed for the wpp 2006 a convergence from the south to the east level of the coale-demeny model life tables, whereas all former, current and future estimates of the wpp 2004 were based solely on the west level. this indicates that at least some information on adult mortality patterns must have been available, and thus, morocco has been classifi ed into group iii. furthermore, classifying morocco into group iii was necessary in order to create fi gures in accordance with the gbd classifi cation for countries of the who region ‘middle east and north africa’. 3 a worldwide overview of the nature of mortality data the distribution of countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants into the fi ve groups of nature of mortality data underlying the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 is shown in tables 1 and 2 for the world’s major areas, as well as in fi gures 1 and 2 for each country. furthermore, the country-specifi c classifi cation for the wpp 2004 and the wpp 2006 and the model life table systems used for the wpp 2006 can be found in the appendix of this paper. table 1 shows that for the life expectancy estimates of the united nations’ wpp 2004 the countries are almost evenly distributed among groups i-iv. there are only two countries without any data on mortality, western sahara and guinea-bissau. the group to which most countries are assigned to is group iv with 52 countries. 42 of these countries are from africa, seven from asia, two from latin america and one from oceania. group iii contains 42 countries, dominated by 18 from asia. the other 24 countries of this group are distributed evenly across africa, oceania, and latin america and the caribbean. group ii consisting of 47 countries mainly comprises countries from latin america and the caribbean (21) and asia (16). further, eight european countries and one country from each africa and oceania also belong to this group. the group with the highest quality of mortality data contains 49 countries out of which most are from europe (31) but also from asia (9), latin america and the caribbean, furthermore from the united states and canada, australia and new zealand as well as mauritius (see also fig. 1). a comparison between the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 reveals some dynamics in the nature of mortality data underlying the most recent life expectancy estimates, mainly in terms of having more detailed data available (see tab. 1 and tab. 2). the most signifi cant changes are shifts from group iv to group iii which mainly occurred in western african countries (burkina faso, gambia, mali, mauritania, niger and senegal), but also in são tomé and príncipe, libya, south africa, bhutan, iran, saudi arabia, yemen, and saint vincent and the grenadines. three countries moved in our classifi cation from group iii to group ii, the democratic people’s republic of korea, sri lanka and kuwait. however, according to the analytical reports of wpp 2004 and a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 321 wpp 2006, there are also shifts in the other direction. two countries changed from group i to group ii (bahrain and ukraine), one from group ii to group iii (maldives) and another one from group iii to group iv (lebanon). these shifts towards less detailed and less accurate mortality data are based on the wpp analytical reports. tab. 1: classifi cation of the nature of mortality data underlying the estimation of life expectancy in united nations’ world population prospects 2004 for the world’s major areas group of nature of mortality data i ii iii iv v world 49 47 42 52 2 africa 1 1 8 42 2 asia 9 16 18 7 0 europe 31 8 0 0 0 latin america and the caribbean 4 21 8 2 0 northern america 2 0 0 0 0 oceania 2 1 8 1 0 source: own reconstruction based on information provided by the united nations (2006) and lopez et al. (2006) fig. 1: classifi cation of the nature of mortality data underlying the estimation of life expectancy in united nations’ world population prospects 2004 data: own reconstruction based on information provided by the united nations (2006) and lopez et al. (2006) • marc luy322 in bahrain, for instance, adjustments had to be made for infant and child mortality for the wpp 2006, which was not necessary according to the wpp 2004 analytical report. the maldives changed from group ii to group iii because the estimates for life expectancy of the wpp 2004 had been based on offi cial estimates, whereas the tab. 2: classifi cation of the nature of mortality data underlying the estimation of life expectancy in united nations’ world population prospects 2006 for the world’s major areas group of nature of mortality data i ii iii iv v world 47 51 53 39 2 africa 1 1 17 33 2 asia 8 19 19 4 0 europe 30 9 0 0 0 latin america and the caribbean 4 21 9 1 0 northern america 2 0 0 0 0 oceania 2 1 8 1 0 source: own reconstruction based on information provided by the united nations (2006, 2008) and lopez et al. (2006) fig. 2: classifi cation of the nature of mortality data underlying the estimation of life expectancy in united nations’ world population prospects 2006 data: own reconstruction based on information provided by the united nations (2006, 2008) and lopez et al. (2006) a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 323 wpp 2006 estimates used coale-demeny model life tables. in sum, regarding the nature of mortality data underlying the life expectancy estimates of the wpp 2006, most countries belong to group iii (53), followed by group ii (51), group i (47) and group iv (39). no improvements took place in western sahara and guinea-bissau, so both countries still belong to group v for the wpp 2006 estimates as they already did for the wpp 2004 (see also fig. 2). looking at the distribution of countries into the fi ve groups of nature of mortality data for the world’s major areas reveals that most african countries belong to group iv, despite the remarkable shifts to group iii. most asian countries belong to the groups ii and iii, although there are still four countries belonging to group iv (lebanon, nepal, indonesia and laos). most european countries produce more detailed and more accurate mortality data. however, there are still nine countries from eastern and south-eastern europe where an adjustment of ageand sex-specifi c death rates is necessary (belarus, moldova, ukraine, estonia, lithuania, albania, bosnia and herzegovina, malta, tfyr macedonia). most countries from latin america and the caribbean belong to group ii, nine to group iii, four to group i (argentina, chile, cuba, netherlands antilles), and with belize one to group iv. apart from australia and new zealand, most countries from oceania belong to group iii. there is only one country each in group ii (french polynesia) and group iv (federal states of micronesia). regarding the groups of nature of mortality data of the wpp 2006, it has already been said that group i contains developed high-income countries from europe, america and asia (see tab. 2 and fig. 2). most of the 51 countries belonging to group ii are from latin america and the caribbean (21) and asia (19), complemented by the nine european countries mentioned above as well as réunion and french polynesia from africa and oceania, respectively. the 53 countries of group iii are mainly countries from asia (19) and africa (17), complemented by nine from latin america and the caribbean and eight from oceania. with 33 out of 39 countries, africa dominates group iv. the other six countries of this group are lebanon, nepal, indonesia, laos (asia), belize (latin america and the caribbean) and the federal states of micronesia (oceania). finally, we looked at the specifi c estimation tools that were used for estimates of life expectancy of the wpp 2006 in cases where the available mortality data was insuffi cient to produce direct ageand sex-specifi c death rates. in most cases, the indirect estimates of infant and child mortality are based on the number of children ever born and children surviving obtained from survey or census information, or from maternity history and the number of births during the twelve preceding months from the same sources of information. regarding the estimation of adult mortality, the orphanhood method was explicitly mentioned in 13 cases (burkina faso, gambia, mali, mauritania, niger, senegal, dominican republic, bolivia, papua new guinea, solomon island, vanuatu, samoa, tonga), the growth balance method and its variants were given ten times (haiti, el salvador, honduras, panama, brazil, colombia, ecuador, paraguay, peru, venezuela). at least for the latter, the number of applications is probably higher since in most cases the only information was that some adjustment had been done without any specifi cation of the used method. • marc luy324 in order to overcome the lack of data in modelling life tables on some information about child – and in some cases additionally on adult – mortality levels, for 79 out of the 92 countries belonging to quality groups iii and iv model life tables were used (see appendix). the most commonly used model life tables are those from the coale-demeny model life table system, in particular the west pattern. the coaledemeny west pattern provides the background for 27 life table estimates, whereas the north pattern was used for 20, the south pattern for eight and the east pattern for six country estimates. for twelve countries, the united nations model life table system was applied, dominated by the far eastern pattern which was used for the estimates for nine countries, while the latin american, the south asian and the general pattern each were used once. for six countries in western africa (burkina faso, gambia, mali, mauritania, niger, senegal) the traditional coale-demeny model life table system was replaced by pattern 1 from the recently published indepth model life tables. interestingly, there are some other cases where the model life table system used was changed between the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 which also changed the assumed pattern of age-specifi c mortality indicating the existence of new information regarding former and current mortality trends. the model life tables have been changed for laos from coale-demeny north to coale-demeny west, for barbados, cambodia and afghanistan from coale-demeny south to coale-demeny west, for tanzania from coale-demeny south to coale-demeny north, for chad from coaledemeny north to coale-demeny south, for morocco from coale-demeny west to coale-demeny east, for belize from un latin american to un general, and fi nally for the solomon islands from un far eastern to coale-demeny west. 4 concluding remarks this paper makes an attempt at creating a fi ve-scale classifi cation of nature of mortality data for all countries of the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants, referring to the data and methods used by the united nations for their wpp, namely the 2004 and 2006 revisions. these are the fi rst two wpp for which at least some information about the specifi c data and methods is provided by analytical reports. besides describing the classifi cation criteria we also assessed the worldwide situation of mortality data availability and the changes which occurred between the two wpp. the most important change was the upgrade of many – mainly african – countries from group iv to group iii. however, africa and to some extent south-eastern asia are still the areas with most incomplete and probably least reliable data about mortality levels and trends. technically, the major change between wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 is the extension of the model life table systems used to the indepth model life tables, and the use of data from the human mortality database (hmd) instead of material from offi cial sources for some countries from eastern and south-eastern europe (bulgaria, russian federation, slovakia, ukraine). the most recently published 2008 revision of united nations’ wpp indicates that with regard to the nature and accuracy of mortality data the situation has fura classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 325 ther improved compared to the wpp 2006. this mainly concerns some african as well as eastern and western asian regions. on the other side, the most recent life table estimates for the russian federation and ukraine incorporated adjustments to infant mortality, and in those for the u.s. the demographic impact of aids has been factored. these adjustments were not done in the estimates of the wpp 2006 according to the corresponding analytical report. in this paper we did not include the wpp 2008 in our analysis since many descriptions in the actual analytical report are too vague for classifi cation and would need additional information. since there have been some obvious changes compared to the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006, the gbd 2006 is not suffi ciently up-to-date. nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the united nations stopped using the indepth model life tables for the wpp 2008 life expectancy estimates and substituted them by the timæus sahelian mortality pattern (timæus 1999). further changes in the used model life table system were made for sierra leone (from coale-demeny south to the timæus western and eastern africa mortality pattern), liberia (from coale-demeny west to coale-demeny south) and iraq (from coale-demeny east to coale-demeny west and the brass general standard). in the fi nal count, the developed classifi cation for the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006 might not be perfectly precise for every country. in particular, the differentiation between groups ii and iii was diffi cult in some cases. furthermore, the classifi cation does not provide a detailed overview of the specifi c methods and approaches used by the united nations population division. for instance, the new data from the dhs/ rhs/arab league etc. birth histories have led to the production of a whole new set of fi gures based on birth history analysis. detailed insights into the specifi c methods have been omitted because the intention of this paper was to provide a crude and descriptive overview of the situation of mortality statistics underlying the wpp 2004 and wpp 2006. however, the paper should by no means be understood as criticism on the work of the united nations population division and their estimates and projections of life expectancy. the lack of data in most developing countries is not the fault of the united nations and their efforts in producing the most reliable estimates of life expectancy deserve high credit. above all the united nations population division’s work factoring the demographic impact of aids is particularly diffi cult and very well done. likewise, the goal of this overview was neither to discuss the processes or mechanisms by which countries moved up in the classifi cation, nor to provide a detailed assessment of the state of vital registration in each country. this would require a careful analysis and much more extensive literature research for each country. nevertheless, the contents of this paper should be of interest for politicians and scientists using the united nations wpp as well as for scholars who teach and learn about indirect demographic estimation techniques. for the latter, it is especially interesting to see in which countries these methods are still applied, in order to realise the important role which indirect methods and model life tables still play in recent demographic estimates of the world. the author thanks werner richter and barbara müller for language editing. • marc luy326 references bhat, p.n. mari, 2002: general growth balance method: a reformulation for populations open to migration. in: population studies 56,1: 23-34 brass, william, 1975: methods for estimating fertility and mortality from limited and defective data. chapel hill: university of north carolina chackiel, juan; orellana, hernán, 1985: adult female mortality trends from retrospective questions about maternal orphanhood included in censuses and surveys. in: international union for the scientifi c study of population (ed.): iussp international population conference, florence 1985, 4. liège: iussp: 39-51 coale, ansley j.; demeny, paul, 1966: regional model life tables and stable populations. princeton: princeton university press coale, ansley j.; demeny, paul; vaughan, barbara, 1983: regional model life tables and stable populations. second edition. new york et al.: academic press dorrington, rob; timæus ian m.; gregson, simon, 2006: adult mortality in southern africa using deaths reported by households: some methodological issues and results. paper presented at the paa 2006 annual meeting. los angeles, march 2006 gakidou, emmanuela; king, gary, 2006: death by survey: estimating adult mortality without selection bias from sibling survival data. in: demography 43,3: 569-585 gray, alan, 1986: sectional growth balance analysis for non-stable closed populations. in: population studies 40,3: 425-436 hill, kenneth, 1987: estimating census and death registration completeness. in: asian and pacifi c population forum 1,3: 8-13 hill, kenneth, 1991: approaches to the measurement of childhood mortality: 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the multiplying factors for the brass technique for determining childhood survivorship rates. in: population studies 29,1: 97-107 united nations, 1982a: model life tables for developing countries. new york: united nations united nations, 1982b: unabridged model life tables corresponding to the new united nations model life tables for developing countries. new york: united nations united nations, 2006: world population prospects. the 2004 revision. volume iii: analytical report. new york: united nations united nations, 2008: world population prospects. the 2006 revision. volume iii: analytical report. new york: united nations united nations, 2010: world population prospects. the 2008 revision. volume iii: analytical report. new york: united nations vallin, jacques; locoh, thérèse, 2001: population et développement en tunisie. la métamorphose. tunis: cérès wilmoth, john r., 2007: the duration of life throughout the world. what do we know and how do we know it? paper presented at the max planck institute for demographic research, rostock, may 2007 zlotnik, hania; hill, kenneth, 1981: the use of hypothetical cohorts in estimating demographic parameters under conditions of changing fertility and mortality. demography 18,1: 103-122 • marc luy328 a german translation of this authorised original article by the author is available under the title “eine klassifi kation der mortalitätsdaten für die schätzungen der united nations’ world population prospects 2004 und 2006”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-08de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos2010-08de8, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. dr. marc luy ( ). austrian academy of sciences, vienna institute of demography, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: mail@marcluy.eu a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 329 2004 2006 model life table system africa eastern africa burundi iv iv coale-demeny north comoros iv iv coale-demeny west djibouti iv iv coale-demeny west eritrea iv iv un far east ethiopia iv iv coale-demeny north kenya iv iv coale-demeny north madagascar iv iv coale-demeny north malawi iii iii coale-demeny south mauritius i i ---- mozambique iii iii coale-demeny north réunion ii ii ---- rwanda iii iii ---- somalia iv iv coale-demeny north uganda iv iv coale-demeny north united republic of tanzania iv iv coale-demeny north zambia iv iv coale-demeny north zimbabwe iv iv coale-demeny north middle africa angola iv iv coale-demeny north cameroon iv iv coale-demeny north central african republic iv iv coale-demeny north chad iv iv coale-demeny south congo iv iv coale-demeny west democr. rep. of the congo iv iv coale-demeny north equatorial guinea iv iv coale-demeny north gabon iv iv coale-demeny north sao tome and principe iv iii coale-demeny south northern africa algeria iii iii ---- egypt iii iii coale-demeny east libyan arab jamahiriya iv iii un far east morocco iii iii coale-demeny east sudan iv iv coale-demeny north tunisia iii iii coale-demeny east western sahara v v ---- appendix classifi cation of the nature of mortality data and used model life table system underlying the data for the estimation of life expectancy in united nations’ world population prospects 2004 and 2006 for each country • marc luy330 2004 2006 model life table system southern africa botswana iv iv coale-demeny west lesotho iv iv coale-demeny west namibia iii iii coale-demeny west south africa iv iii un far east swaziland iv iv coale-demeny west western africa benin iv iv coale-demeny south burkina faso iv iii indepth 1 cape verde iv iv coale-demeny west côte d'ivoire iv iv coale-demeny south gambia iv iii indepth 1 ghana iv iv coale-demeny north guinea iv iv coale-demeny south guinea-bissau v v ---- liberia iv iv coale-demeny west mali iv iii indepth 1 mauritania iv iii indepth 1 niger iv iii indepth 1 nigeria iv iv coale-demeny north senegal iv iii indepth 1 sierra leone iv iv coale-demeny south togo iv iv coale-demeny south asia eastern asia china iii iii ---- china, hong kong spec. adm. r. i i ---- china, macao spec. adm. region i i ---- democr. people's rep. of korea iii ii ---- japan i i ---- mongolia iii iii ---- republic of korea ii ii ---- south-central asia afghanistan iii iii coale-demeny west bangladesh iii iii coale-demeny west bhutan iv iii coale-demeny north india ii ii ---- iran (islamic republic of) iv iii coale-demeny east kazakhstan ii ii ---- kyrgyzstan ii ii ---- a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 331 2004 2006 model life table system maldives ii iii coale-demeny west nepal iv iv coale-demeny west pakistan iii iii un south asia sri lanka iii ii ---- tajikistan ii ii ---- turkmenistan ii ii ---- uzbekistan ii ii ---- south-eastern asia brunei darussalam ii ii ---- cambodia iii iii coale-demeny west democr. rep. of timor-leste iii iii coale-demeny west indonesia iv iv coale-demeny west lao people's democratic republic iv iv coale-demeny west malaysia i i ---- myanmar iii iii un latin america philippines iii iii ---- singapore i i ---- thailand ii ii ---- viet nam ii ii ---- western asia armenia ii ii ---- azerbaijan ii ii ---- bahrain i ii ---- cyprus i i ---- georgia ii ii ---- iraq iii iii coale-demeny east israel i i ---- jordan iii iii ---- kuwait iii ii ---- lebanon iii iv coale-demeny west occupied palestinian territory iii iii ---- oman i i ---- qatar ii ii ---- saudi arabia iv iii coale-demeny west syrian arab republic iii iii coale-demeny west turkey iii iii coale-demeny east united arab emirates ii ii coale-demeny west yemen iv iii coale-demeny west • marc luy332 2004 2006 model life table system europe eastern europe belarus ii ii ---- bulgaria i i ---- czech republic i i ---- hungary i i ---- poland i i ---- republic of moldova ii ii ---- romania i i ---- russian federation i i ---- slovakia i i ---- ukraine i ii ---- northern europe channel islands i i ---- denmark i i ---- estonia ii ii ---- finland i i ---- iceland i i ---- ireland i i ---- latvia i i ---- lithuania ii ii ---- norway i i ---- sweden i i ---- united kingdom i i ---- southern europe albania ii ii ---- bosnia and herzegovina ii ii ---- croatia i i ---- greece i i ---- italy i i ---- malta ii ii ---- portugal i i ---- serbia and montenegro i i ---- slovenia i i ---- spain i i ---- tfyr macedonia ii ii ---- western europe austria i i ---- belgium i i ---- france i i ---- a classifi cation of the nature of mortality data • 333 2004 2006 model life table system germany i i ---- luxembourg i i ---- netherlands i i ---- switzerland i i ---- latin america and the caribbean caribbean bahamas ii ii ---- barbados iii iii coale-demeny west cuba i i ---- dominican republic iii iii ---- guadeloupe ii ii ---- haiti iii iii ---- jamaica ii ii ---- martinique ii ii ---- netherlands antilles i i ---- puerto rico ii ii ---- saint lucia ii ii ---- saint vincent and the grenadines iv iii coale-demeny west trinidad and tobago iii iii ---- united states virgin islands iii iii un far east central america belize iv iv un general costa rica ii ii ---- el salvador ii ii ---- guatemala ii ii ---- honduras ii ii ---- mexico ii ii ---- nicaragua ii ii ---- panama ii ii ---- south america argentina i i ---- bolivia iii iii ---- brazil ii ii ---- chile i i ---- colombia ii ii ---- ecuador ii ii ---- french guiana iii iii coale-demeny west guyana iii iii ---- paraguay ii ii ---- peru ii ii ---- • marc luy334 2004 2006 model life table system suriname ii ii ---- uruguay ii ii ---- venezuela ii ii ---- northern america canada i i ---- united states of america i i ---- oceania australia/new zealand australia i i ---- new zealand i i ---- melanesia fiji iii iii un far east new caledonia iii iii coale-demeny west papua new guinea iii iii un far east solomon islands iii iii coale-demeny west vanuatu iii iii un far east micronesia guam iii iii ---- micronesia (federated states of) iv iv coale-demeny west polynesia french polynesia ii ii ---- samoa iii iii un far east tonga iii iii un far east note: ----not applicable source: own reconstruction based on information provided by the united nations (2006, 2008) and lopez et al. (2006). published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlußredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) dirk j. van de kaa (den haag) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) hans-peter kohler (philadelphia) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2010 – all rights reserved feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext feiler-fuchs-b schreibmaschinentext the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health christiane gross, peter kriwy abstract: the infl uence of contextual factors on individual health status has been demonstrated by a number of studies even when controlling for the individual socio-economic situation (and other relevant factors). the article examines whether and to what extent variables of the place of residence have an effect on individual health status. we do not only refer to income levels and inequality, but also to effects of the educational level and inequality and the regional unemployment rate. as data basis for the individual level, we use the 2006 wave of the german socioeconomic panel study (soep) and add regional information on the aggregate level based on the regional units (raumordnungsregionen) of the microcensus of 2005. these data will be analysed using multilevel models. the results reveal that regional educational inequality intensifi es the individual educational effect, whereby members of less-educated groups in educationally disparate regions exhibit particularly low health chances. in addition, a high regional unemployment rate intensifi es the negative effect of individual unemployment on men’s health. keywords: health · regional inequality · education · labour market · context effect 1 introduction the article examines whether and to what extent health inequality in germany can be explained by regional variables (contextual effects) when controlling for individual effects (compositional effects). two different types of regional contexts are taken into consideration: variations in average levels (with regard to household income, educational level and unemployment) and variations in inequality (income inequality and educational inequality). in addition, we analyse whether the infl uences of individual variables vary depending on the regional context. previous analyses conducted to explain regional health inequalities in germany are mostly limited to single cities and their districts as territorial units. we use representative data for germany as a whole and – unlike most international studies comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 769-794 (date of release: 17.09.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-15en2 • christiane gross, peter kriwy770 – we take regional differences in levels as well as inequality variables on individual health into account. the current research and theoretical sections consequently refer to studies with very different territorial units (from neighbourhoods to national states), while our analyses are based on regional units (raumordnungsregionen) in germany, which are in between in terms of size. the fact that people in poorer neighbourhoods are on average less healthy has been known since 1828 from the historic works of villermé (krieger 2001) and has in many cases been proven for all kinds of different regions (haan et al. 1987; ecob/ smith 1999; bosma et al. 2001; borrell et al. 2004). this fi nding is not surprising given that poorer quarters are inhabited by poorer people who are at a health disadvantage due to a variety of social mechanisms. this explains the correlation between the poverty of a region and the average mortality and morbidity of its inhabitants by the composition of the population in terms of age, gender, marital status and socio-economic status (compositional effects). which mechanisms play a role here will be clarifi ed in section 2.1 as part of the theoretical explanatory approaches (section 2). the composition of the population, however, could not adequately explain the mortality and morbidity rates; therefore infl uences of the regional environment were taken into account (contextual effects). while the positive effect of a region’s prosperity on the health of its inhabitants is relatively easy to understand (less pollution, fi nancial means for health care, etc.), explaining the negative effect of social inequality on health chances is certainly more diffi cult. section 2.2 therefore describes in great detail the contextual effects of income level and inequality as well as educational level and inequality and the regional unemployment rate on individual health chances and explains which social mechanisms might be responsible for these. the contextual effects should also persist when we control for individual socio-economic situations. the hypotheses derived from the preceding sections are tested with the 2006 soep and 2005 microcensus using competing multilevel models (cf. section 3) and their results will be presented afterwards (section 4). the article closes with a summary (section 5). 2 theoretical approaches 2.1 individual determinants on health status the position of a person along the dimensions of social differentiation does not have a direct effect on morbidity and mortality, but rather via intermediary variables (health behaviour, resources and distress) (rothman 1986: 89-90). figure 1 shows an overview of the postulated correlations, which will be described in greater detail in the following. the centre column contains the social mechanisms intended to explain morbidity and mortality based on social differentiation. we can assume that there is empirically well-founded proof that health behaviour such as tobacco and alcohol consumption, physical activity, eating habits or healthcare utilisation affect health (see helmert/schorb 2009 for a summary). the the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 771 different dimensions of health behaviour are infl uenced by factors of social differentiation, which are explained in examples in the following. for example, an individual’s eating habits (gerhards/rössel 2003; helmert 2003; prahl/setzwein 1999) as well as smoking prevalence (helmert 2003; lampert/thamm 2004, 2007; statistisches bundesamt 1998), alcohol consumption (helmert et al. 1997; mielck 2000), extent of physical activity (helmert et al. 1997; zubrägel/settertobulte 2003) and healthcare utilisation (altenhofen 1998; janßen et al. 2009; critique: mielck 2000) vary depending on social class. usually income, education and vocational position (as the three main dimensions of prevalent class concepts) have independent effects on health behaviour (as an example for smoking prevalence cf. gross and groß 2008). similarly, variables of horizontal differentiation such as age, gender and ethnic origin determine health behaviour. for instance, smoking behaviour (gross/ groß 2008) and alcohol consumption (richter/settertobulte 2003) differ according to gender and age. likewise healthcare utilisation is gender-specifi c (summarised by rieker/bird 2000). additionally, health behaviour (e.g. drug use and type of physical activity) is closely linked to lifestyle and social milieu. referring to resources and distress the imbalance of effort and reward is considered particularly damaging to health (siegrist 1996; rugulies/siegrist 2002; siegrist et al. 2004; siegrist/theorell 2006; peter 2009). steinkamp (1993) emphasises that the objective effort-reward ratio is not nearly as important as its subjective assessment. social resources or social capital can either have a direct positive effect on health (holt-lunstad et al. 2010) or buffer the negative effect of distress on health (e.g. nuckolls et al. 1972). complex measurements of social integration show a greater infl uence on mortality risk than simple measurements of social capital such as cohabitation or marital status (holt-lunstad et al. 2010). genetic resources or biological factors produce gender-specifi c prevalence rates for example of cardiac disfig. 1: explanatory model of socially differentiated health chances vertical differentiation (income, education, vocational status) horizontal differentiation (lifestyle, milieu, gender, age, ethnic origin) resources (social, cultural, mental and genetic resources) health behaviour (eating habits, smoking, alcohol, sport, usage of healthcare) morbidity and mortality distress (work environment, home environment, social environment) social differentiation mediators health knowledge incentives source: based on jungbauer-gans/gross (2009: 91) • christiane gross, peter kriwy772 eases (lane/cibula 2001). both physical and mental stress factors are more frequent among people with low socio-economic status (ses) and are therefore well suited for explaining the correlation between ses and health chances (greiner 2001: 150). the decisive aspect here is the feeling of leading a self-determined life and possessing social confi dence (link/phelan 2000; mirowsky et al. 2000). current research on the infl uence of individual variables on health can only be mentioned briefl y here and are not discussed in detail (for more detail cf. jungbauer-gans/gross 2009). nonetheless, this section was intended to sensitise the reader to the main individual factors that need to be controlled for in order to study the infl uence of social context on subjective health. we must additionally note here that separating compositional and contextual effects is not seen without disapproval (e.g. cummins et al. 2007). the theoretical reasons are summarised by macintyre et al. (2002) as follows: (a) the characteristics of individuals and households may be infl uenced by local environment, (b) the individual control variables are possibly intervening rather than confounded variables and (c) there is a lack of extensive theoretical explanations describing the mechanisms between local environment and health behaviour or health. gravelle (1998) provides a statistical critique of the analytical separation of compositional and contextual effects. 2.2 contextual effects of the social environment on individual health status the diffi culty of determining causal mechanisms regarding the infl uence of social contextual characteristics on health is mainly due to the fact that the size of the social context varies greatly. while some studies make international comparisons using the national state as territorial unit (e.g. wilkinson/pickett 2010), other studies literally examine neighbourhood effects at the city district level (e.g. wolf 2004). in spite of these differences, the theoretical explanatory approaches differ astonishingly little. for instance, both at the national and at the district level, it is possible to suppose a health-promoting effect of social capital, although operationalising social capital for these two dimensions may be quite different.1 similarly, social deprivation can refer to very different territorial units. the determinants used (income and educational level and disparities as well as the unemployment rate) and the underlying social mechanisms (e.g. relative deprivation, social capital) can be applied to different territorial units. the majority of studies examining the correlation between health indicators and characteristics of the region discover – even controlled for the composition of inhabitants – signifi cant contextual effects of the places of residence (summarised by robert/house 2001). in the following, we will discuss these infl uential factors in 1 in internationally comparative studies, social capital is often measured via social trust or membership in associations, while the infl uence of social capital in neighbourhoods can be operationalised quite tangibly using neighbourly support. the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 773 terms of differences in levels with regard to income, education and unemployment (section 2.2.1) as well as inequality variables with regard to income and education (section 2.2.2). in doing so, we will present results of studies that make use of very different territorial units. 2.2.1 average level of income and education, and unemployment rates numerous studies have shown signifi cantly higher mortality rates in non-privileged places of residence controlled for individual factors (yen/kaplan 1999b; bosma et al. 2001; martikainen et al. 2003; borrell et al. 2004; marinacci et al. 2004) and only a few have found none (sloggett/joshi 1994; veugelers et al. 2001; gerdtham/ johannesson 2004). similarly, controlled for individual risk factors, an increased occurrence of depression symptoms (yen/kaplan 1999a) and cardiovascular diseases (diez-roux 2001; marinacci et al. 2004) were ascertained in non-privileged neighbourhoods. the rate of miscarriages and chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease is even high in deprived neighbourhoods when controlling for individual education, employment and income (pickett/pearl 2001). the differing effects of the average wealth and income levels on health chances in an international comparison is explained with the different characteristics of welfare state tendencies, which can mitigate both income inequality and its impacts. according to van lenthe (2006), welfare and public assistance can cushion the negative effects of a poorer residential area on health. dahl et al. (2006), however, do not fi nd a systematic correlation between egalitarian/welfare state versus liberal/ conservative tendencies and health inequality. according to stafford and marmot (2003) poorer people particularly suffer under a non-privileged neighbourhood, which they explain with greater dependency on local resources. the average educational level in neighbourhoods as an independent effect on the probability for older men to be treated for heart ailments was studied in sweden. low educational levels in the neighbourhood increase the probability of being treated for heart problems as an outpatient or inpatient (larsen/merlo 2005). high unemployment in a residential area can act as an indicator for low political and economic participation and empowerment, regardless of the poverty or unemployment of individuals (o’campo et al. 1997). using a sample of the amsterdam residential population, reijneveld et al. (2000) show that, controlled for individual variables and compared to a district with low unemployment,2 life in a district with high unemployment leads to a signifi cantly higher risk of poorly selfassessed health status, physical complaints, physical long-term restrictions, obesity and regular cigarette use. the results concerning the place-of-residence effect of high unemployment on a high mortality risk are, however, c ontradicttory. using data from the dutch globe study, bosma et al. (2001) show evidence of this effect and similarly stafford et al. (2004) prove the unhealthy effect of high unemploy2 the residential areas were classifi ed using the 33 percent and 66 percent quantile in three equal-sized categories with low, medium and high unemployment rates. • christiane gross, peter kriwy774 ment with data from the whitehall ii study (london and helsinki), whereby they only control for age and gender at level i. these are contradicted by analyses with data from a canadian survey by veugelers et al. (2001), who cannot ascertain signifi cant effects of unemployment (as well as the average wealth and educational level) in a neighbourhood on mortality risk. also, a high unemployment rate in residential districts reduces the protective effect of prenatal check-ups on the risk of low birth weight (o’campo et al. 1997). van lenthe et al. (2005a), who use data sources from six different studies (aric, globe, whitehall ii, helsinki, turin and madrid) and calculate separate models for men and women, also reach contradictory results with regard to the effect of the unemployment rate on individual mortality. without controlling for individual education and employment, all six models for men exhibit a signifi cantly negative effect of unemployment, which disappears, however, in two models when they are controlled for these individual socio-economic factors. the unemployment rate is signifi cant in three of the fi ve models for women (the helsinki data contain only male subjects), regardless of whether controlled for education and employment (van lenthe et al. 2005a). there are two possible mechanisms that might explain to what extent high unemployment in a residential region impacts the health-detrimental effect of individual unemployment. the negative future prospects of the unemployed in a structurally weak region may either have particularly health damaging effects or the stigmatising effect of unemployment in a region where many people share the same fate may be weaker and therefore less detrimental to health. there are also two mechanisms that might explain the correlation between prosperity of residential districts and health: selective migration and actual causation. according to selective migration ill people tend to move to neighbourhoods with a low status while healthy people tend to move to residential areas with a higher status – both controlled for individual ses. however, it is possible that the social origin accounts for both the choice of living area as well as health (van lenthe 2006). monden et al. (2006) fi nd evidence for the correlation between the ses of the childhood neighbourhood and the neighbourhood where one spends adult life. both the early and later neighbourhood in the life of a person – even when controlled for individual ses – correlates with smoking behaviour and obesity, however not with excessive alcohol consumption (monden et al. 2006). according to van lenthe et al. (2007), “upward migration” seems easier for women and highly educated people than for men and people with a lower educational background. all in all, van lenthe et al. (2007) assume a barely noticeable infl uence of selective migration to explain place-of-residence differences in health. causation applies when actual characteristics of the places of residence (living quality, low noise pollution, leisure and sport possibilities, environmental factors, etc.) act as mediators on health. according to the analyses by wolf (2004), the social status of the urban district and the quality of the outdoor air are decisive for individual health. voigtländer et al. (2011) specify the infl uence of outdoor air to the effect that only the subjectively perceived quality of the outdoor air effects physical health, not the objectively measured air quality. kamphuis et al. (2007) provide evidence, for instance, that people with low ses perceive the characteristics of the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 775 their neighbourhood (e.g. safety issues, lack of recreational opportunities) more as barriers to physical activities than people with high ses. according to kemptner et al. (2008), people in so-called risk neighbourhoods do less sport and are more frequently overweight. lee et al. (2007) show more frequent tiring activities among women with a lower ses, but less athletic activities than women with high ses. similarly, people in non-privileged neighbourhoods frequently cycle to work or shopping, but use a bicycle less often for sport. generally speaking, living in nonprivileged neighbourhoods is accompanied by lesser physical activity even when controlling for individual variables (van lenthe et al. 2005b). one often-neglected aspect of the infl uence of residential-area characteristics is the contagiousness of diseases as well as of health behaviour. in an area with a very high percentage of smokers it is presumably harder to quit smoking and easier to begin than in an area with a low percentage of smokers (van lenthe 2006). we therefore assume that the chances for very good or good health increase in regions with a high regional average income (hypothesis 1a), a high regional educational level (hypothesis 2a) as well as a low unemployment rate (hypothesis 3a). in addition, a high regional average income should lessen the individual income effect on health (hypothesis 1b), a high regional educational level should reduce the individual educational effect on health (hypothesis 2b) and high regional unemployment should strengthen the negative effect of individual unemployment on health (hypothesis 3b). 2.2.2 income inequality and educational inequality numerous studies provide evidence for the correlation between income inequality and health indicators (among them cubbin et al. 2000; babones 2008). however, to interpret the compositional versus contextual effect it is decisive whether this correlation remains when controlling for individual factors. beckfi eld (2004) ascertains a reduction in the signifi cant effect of income inequality when individual factors are taken into account, while the income inequality effect disappears entirely when fi xed-effects models are used to control for unobserved heterogeneity. backlund et al. (2007) verify that the correlation between income inequality and mortality is only valid for people under the age of 65. babones (2008) states that the causality between income inequality and health is diffi cult to prove since income inequality hardly varies over time. mcleod et al. (2004) provide evidence for an insignifi cant inequality effect controlled for the ethnic composition of the population at the national level. a few studies fi nd no indications that income inequality affects individual health indicators (e.g. mellor/milyo 2002). cubbin et al. (2000) note that the correlation between income inequality and self-reported morbidity is not robust if the operationalisation of income inequality and health indicators vary. voigtländer et al. (2010) conducted a study on the infl uence of regional deprivation on individual health using soep data. although they possess information for example on regional unemployment and employment rates, density of physicians and income levels, they only report the regional effect of an east-west dummy in the multilevel analyses. • christiane gross, peter kriwy776 according to wilkinson (2001: 1), the frequently documented fi nding that the life expectancy of people rises when income equality in their country increases has largely remained unexplained. wilkinson (2001: chapter 6) reveals that egalitarian societies are more healthy and exhibit greater social cohesion. the unhealthy effects of relative poverty do not consist of, say, poorer living conditions, increased cigarette use and poorer nutrition, but from a subjective feeling of relative deprivation: “to feel depressed, cheated, bitter, desperate, vulnerable, frightened, angry, worried about debts or job and housing insecurity; to feel devalued, useless, helpless, uncared for, hopeless, isolated, anxious and like a failure: these feelings can dominate people’s whole experience of life, colouring their experience of everything else. it is the chronic stress arising from feelings like these which does the damage.” (wilkinson 2001: 262, translated by cpos) in addition to wilkinson’s explanation of relative deprivation, gravelle (1998) notes an individual income interpretation and lynch et al. (2000) a neo-material interpretation. gravelle (1998) warns against analysing the correlation between social inequality and disease with aggregate data because one could otherwise draw an ecological fallacy. therefore, the much discussed work the spirit level by wilkinson and pickett (2010), which is only based on aggregate data and also does not examine and adhere to basal model assumptions, must be interpreted with great caution. lynch et al. (2000) explain the neo-material interpretation using a metaphor of fi rst and second-class airline passengers. while according to a psychosocial explanation of relative deprivation second-class passengers feel bad because they observe the comfort of fi rst class when walking through the plane, feel disadvantaged and thus develop negative emotions, according to the neo-material explanation, it is the poorer seats and poorer food in second class that lead to a poorer assessment of health after the fl ight. subramanian and kawachi (2004) argue that the average health of the population would improve with a lessening of income inequality since the health of the poorer part of the population would profi t greatly from an individual income growth, while the rich part of the population would have hardly measurable losses as a result of decreased individual income. another explanation focuses on social capital. according to this approach, a high degree of income inequality leads to low social capital in a living area, which in turn is made responsible for health burdens (mielck 2008). the study by kawachi et al. (1997) did the pioneering work to prove this chain of causation. the study operationalised social capital through social involvement in clubs and organisations and through social trust. similarly, lochner et al. (2003) confi rm the correlation between social trust, reciprocity and social participation on the one hand and higher life expectancy on the other controlled for material deprivation. according to engström et al. (2008) the risk factors of low self-assessed health are rather indicated by social participation and social trust (horizontal contextual social capital) than by political trust and political participation (vertical contextual social capital). social capital correlates negatively with an index of neighbourhood pro blems according to steptoe and feldman (2001). the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 777 educational inequality and individual health chances are also highly correlated. regional educational inequality was examined in 59 new york neighbourhoods as a predictor of various health indicators. according to this study, highly educated people in the neighbourhood have a health-promoting effect on all people in the affected areas (galea/ahern 2005). based on the infl uence of regional inequality variables on individual health, we assume high income equality (hypothesis 4a) and high educational inequality (hypothesis 5a) to have a health-promoting effect. in addition, high regional income inequality should increase the individual income effect (hypothesis 4b) and also high educational inequality should increase the individual educational effect (hypothesis 5b). table 1 provides an overview of all our hypotheses. 3 data and methods previous studies usually made use of territorial units formed for administrative purposes (tampubolon 2012). territorial units defi ned in this manner do not, however, necessarily conform to the subjectively assessed or perceived neighbourhood. hence, if we use administrative districts, the contextual effects of the residential districts are underestimated, corresponding to a conservative estimation model (van lenthe 2006). health studies that employ contextual effects as explanatory variables usually use the direct neighbourhood (wilkinson 1997) or entire nations (wilkinson and pickett 2010) as reference group. it is basically possible to operationtab. 1: overview of hypotheses main effects of social context: individual health improves with … … high regional average income (hypothesis 1a). … high regional educational level (hypothesis 2a). … low regional unemployment rate in a region (hypothesis 3a). … high regional income equality (hypothesis 4a). … high regional educational inequality (hypothesis 5a). interaction effects between social context and individual variables: a high regional average income lessens the effect of individual income on health. (hypothesis 1b). a high regional educational level reduced the effect of individual education on health. (hypothesis 2b). high regional unemployment intensifies the negative effect of individual unemployment on health. (hypothesis 3b). high regional income inequality intensifies the effect of individual income on health. (hypothesis 4b). high educational inequality intensifies the effect of individual education on health. (hypothesis 5b). source: own design • christiane gross, peter kriwy778 alise the selected districts on a small scale with data from the microcensus.3 unfortunately, the microcensus programme does not provide any useable variable to measure health. for this reason we did not use such extremely small-area selected districts for this study and chose the more irregular territorial unit of raumordnungsregionen, which is compatible with data from the soep. this means we used the smallest possible territorial unit in germany for which both the desired contextual characteristics are available and combination with useable health indicators at the individual level is possible. raumordnungsregionen (abbreviated below as rors) are administered by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development in bonn and largely correspond to the regional units of the federal states (länder). they “form the spatial frame of reference for large-area analyses of the spatial/ structural starting position, large-area analyses of spatially effective federal funds, predictions of large-area development tendencies, statement on large-area disparities in the infrastructure and employment structure” (bundesinstitut für bau-, stadt und raumforschung im bundesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung (bbr) 2009; translated by cpos). the rors are meant to correspond to functional spaces and, for example, cover the commuter linkage of employed people (bbr 2009). rors are formed so that a large part of commuter movements take place within an ror. an ror is not merely an administrative unit, but also an experienced space. in addition, regions that are defi ned by means of commuter linkages are the relevant units for studying the effect of regional unemployment on individual employment chances or individual well-being and health. the number of rors per state is roughly aligned to the size of the state; for instance bavaria is divided up into 18 and schleswigholstein into 5 such regions. on average, approximately 852,000 people live in one ror (authors’ calculation based on information from the bbr 2009). since the composition of the rors are neither comparable to urban districts, as used in small-area analyses, nor to entire national states, as used in internationally comparative studies, the extent to which previous results can be transferred to our study remains unclear. the descriptive distribution of the variables according to the 97 rors is portrayed in table 2.4 the average monthly net household income in private households in the rors in the year 2005 was almost €2,500. the minimum was €1,856 (eastern west pomerania); the maximum of €3,178 was made in munich and surroundings. the gini coeffi cient for income inequality across all rors is slightly under 34. the minimum of 29 is exhibited by mittweida in southeastern saxony. the maximum income inequality is in munich. the average years of education are approx. 12. the region with 3 schunck and windzio (2009) presented a convincing work on the self-employment of immigrants that uses multi-level analyses based on such selected districts. 4 an average of 7,027 observations in the 2005 microcensus are available per ror, whereby only the information from the heads of households are used to ascertain household income. these results were generated via the controlled remote data processing conducted by the research data centre of the federal statistical offi ce. in this way, we had access to the complete number of cases of almost 700,000 individuals in the 2005 microcensus. the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 779 the lowest level of education in germany is bremerhaven/cuxhaven; the citizens with the highest level of education in germany live in dresden, closely followed by munich. unemployed people were those who cited that they were registered at the federal employment offi ce as unemployed or seeking work during the 2005 microcensus survey. the unemployment rate reported here corresponds to the percentage of unemployed among people of working age at their main place of residence using the individual weighting factor. the lowest unemployment is recorded in the very south of germany (including oberallgäu, kempten, bad tölz) while high unemployment is observed in the northeast (including neubrandenburg, eastern and northern west pomerania). the suitability of the relatively large rors as structural units for the contextual level of the multilevel analyses was also checked for by analysing whether these are homogeneous territorial units. for this, bivariate analyses of variance were calculated with the dependent variables namely years of education as well as income and the independent variable namely the ror. rors explain 4 percent of the total variance for education (t-value 6.92) and 3 percent of the total variance for income (t-value 3.51).5 although the percentage of variance explained with the rors, and therefore the homogeneity of the units, is relatively low it becomes evident that the rors are relevant analysis units for the variables used. the gini coeffi cient (gini 1921; pyatt 1976; allison 1978) was also used to calculate educational inequality, for which the information on school leaving certifi cates, education and university studies were converted to years of education, which vary at the individual level between 8 and 18 years. for a better comparability, this coeffi cient was used both to measure income and educational inequality; it must be noted here that educational level and educational inequality may be highly correlated (moore et al. 2007). in our data that is, however, not the case (pearson correlation coeffi cient = 0.008, p > 0.05), but there is a strong statistical correlation (pearson correlation coeffi cient = 0.684, p < 0.001) between income level and income inetab. 2: descriptive distribution of the context variables based on the 97 rors (level 2) case numbers mean standard deviation minimum maximum avg. net household income in € 97 2466.16 304.81 1855.71 3178.18 income inequality (gini) 97 33.97 1.86 29.00 38.50 avg. years of education 97 12.27 0.34 11.58 13.15 educational inequality (gini) 97 11.06 0.97 8.79 12.72 unemployment rate 97 13.72 6.45 5.38 31.72 source: 2005 microcensus, authors’ calculations 5 the random-intercept-only model with the dependent variable of subjective health also confi rms this result (see section 4). • christiane gross, peter kriwy780 quality. for this reason the results are reported both with and without level variables (average household income, average years of education). the degree of urbanisation was controlled at the individual level. the dummy variables for small town (20,000-100,000 inhabitants) and city (100,000 inhabitants and more) do not, however, have an effect on individual health and are not listed in tables 4 and 5. the small-area information from the microcensus based on the 97 rors is from the year 2005. the individual data on health and relevant determining factors were supplied by the 2006 wave of the soep. this staggered data ensures that infl uences of regional inequality precede the individual effects. since the focus of this study is not on the individual level but the contextual level, we will only briefl y present the soep variables. the dependent variable is self-rated health measured on a fi ve-point scale and dichotomised for this article. the fi rst two categories (“very good” and “good” health) were combined. some research papers confi rm the high (point biserial) correlation between subjective and objective health (idler/benyamini 1997; heidrich et al. 2002; case/paxson 2005; kriwy/mielck 2006; lyyra et al. 2009), meaning we can attribute a high criterion validity to self-rated health. in addition, subjective health is especially suitable for cross-sectional analyses, as the meta-analysis by kondo et al. (2009) demonstrates. the age spectrum for these calculations was limited to 25 to 65 years. one reason for this is that older people in a panel in particular are subject to the survivor effect and it is therefore assumed that the “healthy old people” tend to take part in a panel more frequently, which impacts, for example, the estimation of life expectancy (schnell/trappmann 2006). also income effects are considered effects of the individual net income, which suggests that people over the age of 65 years should be excluded from the calculations. young people (under 25 years) were also excluded form the analyses since they do not yet exhibit any noticeable variations in their health status. table 3 shows the distribution of the individual variables. since the spatial clustering impairs the independence of the elements, we used multilevel analysis (for an introductory overview cf. hox 2002). the calculations are random effects logit models (random intercept and random slopes), which, unlike fi xed effects models, take varying slopes across the regional units into consideration.6 the multilevel analyses were conducted using hlm6. population-average estimations react less sensitively to erroneous specifi cations and distribution assumptions than unit-specifi c estimations. since regionally varying variables are incorporated at the second analysis level and we are interested in average effects resulting from this in the population, use of population-average models is suffi cient here (neuhaus et al. 1991). 6 fixed and corresponding random effects models were fi rst tested competitively with the hausman test using stata 11. the coeffi cients differ signifi cantly from one another, if only to a minor extent. the test therefore narrowly turned out in favour of the random effects models. the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 781 4 results the random-intercept-only model (not contained in table 4) shows that the average health according to ror varies in a highly signifi cant way (t-value 3.76). the models in table 4 provide information about the results at the individual level (level 1) and contextual level (level 2). at the individual level the results are mainly as expected and are only briefl y outlined here since the main interest of this article is in regional effects. better health chances are associated with higher education and higher income. with increasing age, health chances lessen and higher body-mass index and regular tobacco consumption are also accompanied by lesser prospects for good tab. 3: descriptive distribution of the individual variables (level 1) case numbers mean standard deviation minimum maximum dependent variable: self-rated health (1=very good/good) 15,529 0.53 0.50 0 1 vertical differentiation: net income in € 10,229 1699.45 1310.60 35 30000 net income in € (ln)a 15,550 4.96 3.14 0.69 10.31 unemployed 15,550 0.25 0.43 0 1 control variable: homemaker 15,550 0.11 0.31 0 1 years of education 15,227 13.18 2.67 8 18 horizontal differentiation: age in years 15,550 45.48 11.09 25 65 gender (1=female) 15,550 0.52 0.50 0 1 nationality (1=german) 15,550 0.92 0.26 0 1 health behaviour: regular tobacco consumption 15,535 0.32 0.47 0 1 regular alcohol consumption 15,550 0.17 0.38 0 1 body-mass index (metric) 15,406 25.87 4.59 12.03 76.21 resources: marital status (1=married) 15,550 0.67 0.47 0 1 has a confidant 15,550 0.91 0.28 0 1 square metres per person (ln) 15,505 3.67 0.47 1.39 6.04 stress: job at risk 15,550 0.13 0.34 0 1 more than 5 overtime hours 15,550 0.19 0.39 0 1 dissatisfied: dwelling 15,550 0.13 0.34 0 1 dissatisfied: family 15,550 0.15 0.36 0 1 a in order to be able to report the infl uence of unemployment of people, missing income data due to a lack of employment (not due to item nonresponse) was set at close to zero (2 euros monthly income). this makes even these income data logarithm-compatible and the resulting errors are controlled for by the variables homemaker and the unemployment dummy. note: unless noted otherwise 1 means yes and 0 stands for no. source: soep 2006, authors’ calculations • christiane gross, peter kriwy782 tab. 4: random effects logit models (dependent variable: self-rated health: 1=very good/good, age 25-65 years, population average models, robust standard errors) coefficient (t-value) model a model b model c level 1 (individual level): constant 0.12 (4.66)*** 0.12 (4.47)*** 0.12 (4.57)*** vertical differentiation: net income in € (ln) 0.02 (2.18)* 0.02 (2.21)* 0.02 (2.31)* unemployed -0.23 (-3.45)** -0.23 (-3.53)** -0.23 (-3.48)** control variable: homemaker 0.01 (0.09) 0.01 (0.24) 0.01 (0.06) years of education 0.06 (8.21)*** 0.06 (8.05)*** 0.06 (7.76)*** horizontal differentiation: age in years -0.04(-20.85)*** -0.04(-20.90)*** -0.04(-20.77)*** gender (female=1) -0.17 (-5.58)*** -0.17 (-5.75)*** -0.17 (-5.72)*** nationality (german=1) -0.21 (-2.38)* -0.22 (-2.41)* -0.22 (-2.44)* health behaviour: regular tobacco consumption -0.25 (-8.03)*** -0.25 (-7.97)*** -0.25 (-7.99)*** regular alcohol consumption 0.09 (1.67)+ 0.08 (1.59) 0.08 (1.49) body-mass index (metric) -0.06(-16.21)*** -0.06(-16.34)*** -0.06(-16.34)*** resources: marital status (1=married) -0.04 (-0.95) -0.03 (-0.85) -0.03 (-0.85) has a confidant 0.07 (1.23) 0.07 (1.25) 0.07 (1.20) square metres per person (ln) 0.01 (0.29) 0.02 (0.41) 0.01 (0.32) stress: job at risk -0.38 (-8.80)*** -0.38 (-8.82)*** -0.38 (-8.88)*** more than 5 overtime hours -0.10 (-2.47)* -0.10 (-2.58)* -0.11 (-2.62)* dissatisfied: dwelling -0.54(-10.65)*** -0.54(-10.54)*** -0.54(-10.49)*** dissatisfied: family -0.74(-14.81)*** -0.73(-14.78)*** -0.73(-14.70)*** level 2 (ror): gini index income 0.02 (1.18) 0.01 (0.55) 0.01 (0.58) avg. household income in 1000€ 0.26 (1.32) 0.26 (1.27) gini index years of education -0.03 (-0.80) -0.02 (-0.43) -0.01 (-0.18) avg. years of education 0.05 (0.64) 0.03 (0.39) unemployment rate 1.53 (1.59) 1.75 (1.80)+ cross-level effects: gini income * income 0.00 (0.12) avg. household income * income -0.02 (-0.65) gini years of education * years of education 0.02 (3.24)** avg. years of education * years of education -0.03 (-1.55) unemployment rate * unemployed -1.03 (-1.32) number of cases (level 1) 15,036 15,036 15,036 number of cases (level 2) 97 97 97 + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, authors’ calculations, controlled for degree of urbanisation at level 1 note: unless noted otherwise 1 means yes and 0 stands for no. source: soep 2006 (level 1), pooled ror microcensus 2005 (level 2) the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 783 health. health resources remain without effect. confi dants and a spacious living environment, measured in the number of square metres per person, have no healthpromoting infl uence. the stress factors (fear of losing a job, overtime hours, dissatisfaction with own dwelling and family) all have negative effects on health chances. unemployment is accompanied by a decrease in health chances, while the status of homemaker does not vary with individual health. the contextual variables encompass income and educational inequality , income and educational level as well as the unemployment rate at the ror level. the income level and income inequality are not signifi cant with very low t-values (refuting hypotheses 1a and 4a). regional educational inequality and the regional educational level also have no effects on individual health (refuting hypotheses 2a and 5a). local unemployment has only a very weak infl uence on individual health, which is only signifi cant in the model with cross-level effects (model c) at the 10 percent level, whereby we note that a tendency to the opposite effect of hypothesis 3a is proven. finally, the above-mentioned cross-level effects from model c are particularly interesting. while the interaction between income inequality and individual income, income level and individual income, educational level and individual education as well as the interaction between local unemployment and individual unemployment each have no signifi cant effect (contrary to hypotheses 4b, 1b, 2b and 3b), the interaction term of educational inequality and the individual level of education exhibits a highly signifi cant effect (preliminarily confi rming hypothesis 5b). people with high levels of education profi t from an educationally disparate regional environment, or, respectively, in addition to their individual health disadvantage people with low levels of education exhibit even additional lesser health chances in an educationally disparate environment. nonetheless, men and women are not equally affected by regional infl uences. for this reason, additional separate models were calculated, which are presented in table 5. the control variables at the individual level were not portrayed in this table since hardly any surprising results can be reported. only one effect on the individual level is worth mentioning here: overtime hours are negatively associated with women’s health, while there is no signifi cant difference among men. controlled for the individual variables (from table 4), the infl uences of regional income and educational inequality as well as regional unemployment have neither an effect on women’s nor on men’s health (cf. table 5). the effect of the average years of education in a region is only signifi cant among men when not controlled for the income level (compare models f and g for men). among women the crosslevel effect is of particular signifi cance here. in this case, high educational inequality intensifi es the individual educational effect (corresponding to hypothesis 5b). this means that highly educated women profi t most in educationally disparate regions, while women from less-educated groups experience an additional regional health disadvantage alongside their individual disadvantage (cf. models d and e). this effect is only signifi cant at the 10 percent level among men. if we regard the income level combined with individual income among men, a high regional income level weakens the individual income effect for men. when the regional income level is high, it seems as if individual income has a lesser effect. among men the unem• christiane gross, peter kriwy784 ployment rate also has a different impact than among women. high regional unemployment intensifi es the negative individual effect of unemployment. presumably, the frustration of unemployed men in regions with a high unemployment rate is particularly great because the chances for a new job are especially low there, which, in turn, has a particularly health-damaging effect (the assumption of hypothesis 3b only applies to men). 5 summary and discussion the purpose of this article is to explain individual health chances with regionally varying inequality dimensions. controlled for relevant individual variables, the regional infl uence of income and educational level, income and educational inequality as well as the local unemployment rate are ascribed an independent effect on individual health. this appears quite reasonable since in many existing studies smallarea effects also remain signifi cant when controlled for the main individual determinants. unlike similar anglo-american studies, however, this article makes use of relatively large regional units (raumordnungsregionen) to delimit the contextual coefficient (t-value) model d model e model f model g women women men men f ffi constant 0.07 (2.49)* 0.07 (2.49)* 0.17 (5.07)*** 0.17 (5.07)*** level 2 (ror): gini index income 0.03 (1.59) 0.01 (0.11) avg. household income in 1000€ -0.07 (-0.32) 0.36 (1.28) gini index years of education -0.01 (-0.30) 0.02 (0.43) -0.01 (-0.35) -0.02 (-0.44) avg. years of education -0.05 (-0.58) 0.01 (0.07) 0.21 (2.10)* 0.16 (1.43) unemployment rate 0.95 (1.52) 0.27 (0.25) -0.17 (-0.22) 1.51 (1.04) cross-level effects: gini income*income -0.00 (-0.36) -0.00 (-0.25) avg. household income*income -0.01 (-0.34) -0.05 (-2.14)* gini years of education*years of education 0.02 (2.13)* 0.02 (2.15)* 0.02 (1.84)+ 0.02 (1.89)+ avg. years of education*years of education -0.02 (-0.70) -0.02 (-0.66) -0.04 (-1.64) -0.04 (-1.66)+ unemployment rate*unemployed -0.55 (-0.62) -0.41 (-0.37) -2.10 (-2.51)* -1.02 (-1.18) n1 / n2 7811 / 97 7811 / 97 7225 / 97 7225 / 97 + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, authors’ calculations source: 2006 soep (level 1), pooled ror 2005 microcensus (level 2). the results were controlled for the individual variables (cf. table 4) but are not portrayed in table 5. tab. 5: random effects logit models broken down by gender (dependent variable: subjective health: 1=very good/good, age 25-65 years, population-average models, robust standard errors, controlled for level 1 variables) the infl uence of regional social inequality and labour market characteristics on health • 785 effects. this has the advantage that the single parameters for regional inequality are based on a solid data basis since the complete number of cases from the 2005 microcensus (almost 700,000 cases) are used to describe the rors. the disadvantage of this method is that due to their size, the regions exhibit considerable heterogeneity with regard to the relevant inequality dimensions. for this reason, small-area regional effects tended to be underestimated in this article, i.e. very conservative results are presented at the second level of analysis. the individual effects on health chances presented here are a good replication of current research. it becomes interesting, however, when regional contextual effects are taken into account. the respective main effects are by and large not signifi cant, i.e. neither income level, educational and income inequality nor regional unemployment infl uence individual health chances. solely the regional educational level has a slightly positive effect on the health of men; this result is, however, not very robust. the interaction between regional educational inequality and individual education, though, exhibits a highly signifi cant positive effect: increasing educational inequality in a region intensifi es the individual educational effect. less-educated groups then have even lesser and highly educated people even better health chances. broken down by gender, this effect is specifi cally dominant among women. regarding unemployment, the picture is different. men suffer from their individual unemployment more severely when unemployment in the region is high; there is no such effect among women. this result indicates two conclusions: 1) compared with women, the wellbeing of men is still far more dependent upon whether they can fulfi l the role of “breadwinner” and participate in the labour market and 2) chances of returning to the labour market based on the regional unemployment rate appear to be anticipated and poor career prospects in the region seem to have an additional negative effect on men’s health. since we only work with cross-sectional data we cannot, however, exclude the opposite causation whereby ill men in structurally weak regions fi nd it particularly diffi cult to enter the labour market. in their study galea and ahern (2005) interpret the educational level effect as all people in regions with high educational levels profi t from the health-promoting effect of the highly educated: “the presence in a neighborhood of highly educated people may be salutary for all residents, independent of the potentially deleterious consequences of income maldistribution” (galea/ahern 2005: 2198). galea and ahern (2005), however, did not look at any cross-level effects, which, in our opinion, may be the reason that their relevant conclusions come up short. the cross-level effect of regional educational inequality on the effect of individual years of education presented by us illustrates that regional educational inequality intensifi es the individual educational effect. the interpretation of this effect is by no means trivial and should be only done as part of careful speculation. since a low level of education is associated with poorer health of the population, a noticeably high incidence of poor health behaviour, health problems and diseases could lead to an increased implementation of preventive measures in educationally disparate areas. we know of these types of measures, however, that they often remain ineffective among those people who need the assistance most urgently. for example, after completing a measure for the prevention • christiane gross, peter kriwy786 of obesity, obese children of highly educated parents quickly attain a signifi cantly improved body weight, while children of less-educated groups do not profi t from the same measures (plachta-danielzik et al. 2008). this type of mechanism could lead to the health of highly educated people profi ting in particular in educationally disparate areas. previous 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christiane gross, peter kriwy794 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “einfl uss regionaler sozialer ungleichheitsund arbeitsmarktmerkmale auf die gesundheit”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-15de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-15de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 15.09.2011 date of acceptance: 08.04.2013 dr. christiane gross ( ). christian-albrechts-universität zu kiel, institut für sozialwissenschaften, 24098 kiel, germany. e-mail: cgross@soziologie.uni-kiel.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-kiel.de/mitarbeiter/gross/ dr. peter kriwy. friedrich-alexander universität erlangen-nürnberg, lehrstuhl für empirische wirtschaftssoziologie, 90402 nuernberg, germany. e-mail: peter.kriwy@wiso.uni-erlangen.de url: http://www.sozialforschung.rw.uni-erlangen.de/lehrstuhlteam/mitarbeiterinnen/ peter-kriwy.shtml © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work leena maxin, jürgen deller abstract: one consequence of demographic change is a longer average remaining lifetime after retirement. many people, however, remain able and willing to continue work after reaching the statutory retirement age. given the predicted shortage of skilled workers in the future, post-retirement activities have the potential to contribute to both organisations and society. this article elaborates the prerequisites for productivity in retirement age and the changed nature of retirement at present. it also quantifi es the extent to which activities are continued at retirement age. paid employment still occurs beyond the applicable retirement age, whereby with increasing age, self-employed persons and assistant family members make up the lion’s share of the statistics. an empirical study shows the concrete situation of active retirees and the prerequisites for post-retirement activities. at the explorative level, individual experiences of the transition into retirement, the reasons for and the framework of post-retirement activities, motivational factors in job design, and physical and intellectual demands before and after retirement are characterised. the qualitative data indicate that retirement entails changes towards more fl exible structures in everyday life. decisive reasons for taking up post-retirement activities are the desire to help, pass on knowledge or remain active; personal development and contact with others; and gaining appreciation and recognition. flexible job design and freedom to make decisions constitute major elements in shaping postretirement working activities. offering autonomy, skill variety, and task signifi cance is important for the design of post-retirement activities. the paper closes with identifying relevant research fi elds and the concrete need to take action at individual, organisational, and societal levels. all in all, the transition from working life to retirement should be made fl exible enough to do greater justice to the realities of life. keywords: older workers · work motivation · retirement · silver work · future of work comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 4 (2010): 801-832 (day of release: 15.12.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-18en6 • leena maxin, jürgen deller802 1 point of departure current debate on the gradual increase in the retirement age to 67 in germany, which was decided on in 2007 and has been the subject of controversy since then (spiegel online 2010), as well as the discussion on the growing labour force participation rate of 55to 64-year-olds in recent years (brussig 2009: 281), shows that society and the labour market have become aware of demographic change. from its current level of roughly 16 million, the number of over 65-year-olds in the german population will increase to over 22 million as early as 2030; approx. 23 million, that is, one inhabitant in three, will be 65 or older in 2050 (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung 2008: 18). at the same time, life expectancy is increasing, leading to a further rise in the remaining lifetime after retirement. according to the german statutory pension insurance scheme (deutsche rentenversicherung), men draw a pension for an average of 15.8 years and women for 20.6 years. in 2001, these fi gures were only 13.8 and 18.9 years, respectively (deutsche rentenversicherung 2010: 67). the old age dependency ratio will double in the next 40 years. while there are currently 33 retirees for every 100 persons of working age, there will be more than 60 per 100 in 2050 (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung 2008: 18). this can be expected to present considerable challenges to the german social welfare system and the existing pay-as-you-go system (moog/raffelhüschen 2010). according to analyses by prognos ag, the existing shortage of skilled workers will also continue to grow in all sectors in the coming years. if the present framework persists, there will already be a shortfall of nearly three million more workers in 2015 (gramke et al. 2009:16). at the same time, however, many people remain able to contribute to the economy beyond the statutory retirement age (lehr/kruse 2006: 241) and willing to continue to make use of their productivity: the federal institute for population research surveyed a representative group of 55to 64-year-olds in dependent employment, 47.3 % of whom wished to remain in employment after their retirement (büsch et al. 2010a: 6). in a survey of partially retired employees at one company, two thirds of them could have imagined working for longer (aleksandrowicz et al. 2009: 2-4). however, in view of different professional groups with different workload demands, it is necessary to distinguish between the nature and magnitude of continued employment. one indication of these disparities is that the average age of retirement is 60.6, much earlier than the statutory retirement age (deutsche rentenversicherung 2010: 68). moreover, individual differences in work ability become evident even prior to retirement age (ilmarinen 2005: 135-136). these differences are what continue to make the group with high ability willing and able to contribute. it is hence a matter of making it “not only desirable, but also possible in objective terms” to continue to work (naegele/sporket 2009: 279). post-retirement activities possess a vast potential and might help solve the societal problems outlined above: organisations can remain competitive by countering the shortage of specialists and managers at the same time that the burden on social security systems is reduced. individuals can also tap a major source of personal well-being and health by remaining in employment and earning a little extra income. however, since not all people possess the requisite physical and intellectual fi tness, activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 803 only a specifi c group of individuals remain active and productive at retirement age. nonetheless, a considerable degree of “silver work” can be observed (deller/maxin 2009: 309). this paper starts by studying the necessary prerequisites for productivity in advanced age and investigating the current situation that is characterised by changes in the nature of retirement. in order to describe the fi eld of tension between employment and retirement, this paper further quantifi es the extent of continued employment following retirement in germany. it then goes on to describe the concrete situation in which active retirees fi nd themselves, as well as the prerequisites for post-retirement activities, on the basis of an exploratory study. it concludes by identifying relevant fi elds of research and indicating where action needs to be taken. 1.1 productivity at retirement age people continue to be productive up to an advanced age (see börsch-supan et al. 2009: 54-57; giniger et al. 1983: 473-474). in some cases it is even possible to observe a larger contribution on the part of elderly workers in comparison to their younger colleagues (see ilmarinen 2005: 136). in addition, older workers often have more professional experience. many studies identifi ed a positive connection between professional experience and professional performance (avolio et al. 1990: 416; mcenrue 1988: 181; quiñones et al. 1995: 904). “defi cit models” of ageing, by contrast, which presume that intellectual performance generally declines in old age, are considered to have been disproven (lehr/kruse 2006: 241). there is no doubt that sensory, cognitive, and motor processes change as people grow older (yordanova et al. 2004: 358-360). however, crystallized intelligence (the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience) and fl uid intelligence (quickly and fl exibly dealing with sensory impressions), for instance, develop differently over the lifespan: the degree of crystallized intelligence can increase once more in old age if the person’s life provides favourable conditions and there is no specifi c brain pathology (baltes 1993: 589). laboratory studies, by contrast, show that with increasing age, performance and neurophysiological parameters appear to decline in terms of fl uid intelligence, e.g. with reaction tasks (kolev et al. 2009: 222). when it comes to making a contribution, however, compensating for failing skills with other skills that do not decrease or even increase plays a decisive role (baltes/carstensen 1996: 205-208; lehr 2007: 65-66; salthouse 1984; wild-wall et al. 2009: 302). additionally, environment and individual lifestyle exert an infl uence on the development of cognitive performance, so that increasing inter-individual differences are seen in advanced age (hertzog et al. 2008: 5). these infl uencing factors hence also affect the development of individual work ability in advanced age (ilmarinen 2005: 136). yet productivity in retirement age is infl uenced not only by the ability to contribute, but also by the willingness to contribute and the personal life situation of the individual. the importance attached to central aspects of life such as work, family, and health changes in the course of a lifetime (lehr 2007: 53-55). younger people (25-34) primarily invest in work, followed by friends, family, and independence. the • leena maxin, jürgen deller804 so-called life investment among the elderly (55-84), by contrast, is primarily carried out in families, followed by health and friends (staudinger 1996: 366). retention of intellectual skills for the life phase of this group of individuals, who in some cases are far above the standard working age, gains importance (staudinger/baltes 1996: 64-65). work-related motives of younger and older workers aged up to 65 also undergo age-dependent changes (grube/hertel 2008; stamov-roßnagel/hertel 2010: 896-898). in surveys among workers aged 18 to 64, whereas a linear increase between age and the signifi cance of the motive was shown for the aspects autonomy, signifi cance, creating something lasting, helping, and appreciation, a linear reduction was shown for the aspects infl uence, career, leisure, and fun and enjoyment (grube 2009: 102-103). these fi ndings provide information on age-related changes among older workers, but not on the motives of working retirees. for the group of 18to 64-year-olds, the socioemotional selectivity theory of carstensen (2006) can also take on particular signifi cance. it states that, as people grow older and have a subjectively perceived shorter remaining lifetime, motives shift towards emotionally signifi cant activities and goals: “... [when] people perceive time as fi nite, they attach greater importance to fi nding emotional meaning and satisfaction from life and invest fewer resources into gathering information and expanding horizons” (carstensen 2006: 1915). in the light of a lifetime that is increasingly perceived as being fi nite, the focus becomes placed on positive emotions, also, for instance, through positively valued experiences at work. motivations change when new priorities are set. north american research on motivation (kanfer 2009) distinguishes between two forms of work motivation, namely the status of work in general terms (motivation for work) and the motivation for a concrete activity (motivation at work). kanfer stresses that there is a shortage of empirical evidence that theories of work motivation transfer to a higher age (kanfer 2009: 87). the methods applied show that the “motivation for work” when people are in middle age and older is more closely linked to the working conditions experienced (kanfer 2009: 88). the motivation to carry out an activity in retirement can hence arise out of matching the activity with an individual motivation for precisely this concrete activity, but also from a high personal status attached to work in general. studies on the intention to engage in continued employment in retirement additionally show that post-retirement work appears more likely if work takes on a central status in life (lim/ng 1997: 199). age-related changes in work motivation can also emanate from personal attitude changes in self-concept or values (kanfer/ackerman 2004: 451-452). this can lead to a change in the acceptance of working conditions (kanfer 2009: 86). a change in the values attached to the dimensions of motivational job design (motivation at work) is hence also to be expected for active retirees. factors that exert an infl uence on the intrinsic motivation for a concrete task have already been defi ned in the job characteristics model (hackman/oldham 1975); based on this, morgeson and humphrey (2006) provide an enlarged, comprehensive concept for the motivational work characteristics. individual performance hence depends heavily on the job design (see also schooler 1999: 243). an appropriate job design can enhance the productivity of activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 805 older workers (skirbekk 2008: 9). as long-term studies have found out, complex tasks are particularly favourable to retaining intellectual abilities in advanced age, (schooler et al. 1999: 488-490). this also applies to leisure activities with a high degree of complexity (schooler/mulatu 2001: 473). in a survey of 55to 64-year-old workers, büsch et al. (2010b: 145) found that more than one quarter of respondents evaluated their subjectively estimated ability to work as high or medium, but their own willingness to work as low. even in the case of perceived performance ability just before retirement age, demotivating factors in job design may hence contribute to existing performance potential remaining unused in old age. organisational frameworks may partly lead to these changes in motivation. for both workers and retirees, there appear to be motivators for various tasks, not only for professional ones. many retirees are in a situation in which they can choose their preferences. we presume that existing performance potential can be accessed by reducing or excluding demotivating factors, as well as by establishing and expanding conditions that enhance motivation in a work environment. 1.2 a new form of retirement the nature of retirement has undergone considerable change over time (for an overview: shultz/wang 2011). a new relationship between work, learning, and leisure can be increasingly observed in which these elements are more closely interlinked and exist regardless of age (reday-mulvey 2005: 21-22). the term “retirement” used to signify the conclusion of an active working life, and implied that workers withdrew from the labour market altogether. given the increasing remaining lifetime in retirement, however, many people turn to alternative employment, such as voluntary work, after completing their regular working lives (alterssurvey 2002a: 5; freiwilligensurvey 2006: 303-305), but also to continued professional employment (alterssurvey 2002b: 3; griffi n/hesketh 2008: 115-117; ulrich/brott 2005: 160). continued professional employment in retirement has been the subject of research in north america for more than two decades (doeringer 1990: 5-7; wang et al. 2008: 818-819). since then, bridge employment has been registered and analysed as a social phenomenon likely caused to a considerable degree by the needs of the labour market. whereas elderly workers in the usa and canada in the 1950s were still able to presume that they would have lasting, long-term employment relationships (see calo 2005: 302), companies began to push elderly workers into early retirement in the 1980s. the reasons included increasing competition among organisations, also leading to mergers and take-overs, internal restructuring, and job cuts (see doeringer 1990: 7-8; feldman 1994: 286). since then, a signifi cant number of affected workers consequently participate in different forms of bridge employment (feldman 1994: 286). bridge employment refers to tasks that generally entail a combination of reduced working hours, less responsibility, greater fl exibility, and less physical strain (feldman 1994: 287-288). these conditions offer elderly workers the option to gradually withdraw from the labour market (see shultz 2001: 253; weckerle/shultz 1999: 325-326). at the same time, they give elderly workers the opportunity to remain on the labour market beyond retirement without having • leena maxin, jürgen deller806 to forego gains in terms of leisure time and self-determination in everyday life. in this context, bridge employment may be taken literally since it offers the individual a bridge between the obligations of full-time employment and complete withdrawal from the labour market into retirement (beehr/bennett 2007: 278). bridge employment activities do not necessarily constitute less demanding or challenging work (adams/rau 2004: 720). managers may, for instance, be available to their former employer in an advisory capacity beyond retirement age or return to the company for individual projects. the possibilities of employment in the context of bridge employment are manifold. the literature often distinguishes between career bridge employment and bridge employment in a different fi eld, also referred to as non-career bridge employment (see feldman 1994: 289; gobeski/beehr 2009: 409-410; wang et al. 2008: 818). in the context of career bridge employment, towards the end of their professional careers workers can continue in their original fi eld of work with their previous employer, with another company or on a self-employed basis (see gobeski/ beehr 2009: 417). alternatively, in the context of non-career bridge employment, it is conceivable to choose employment that is unrelated to the job or sector (see shultz 2001: 252-253). one example of work within career bridge employment is when retired teachers continue their teaching activity in adult education for a charitable organisation. an example of non-career bridge employment, by contrast, is when a postal company employee transports patients as an unskilled worker after reaching the statutory retirement age. because of the low level of skills required, non-career bridge employment is often poorly paid, which may also entail a loss of status (see feldman 1994: 289; gobeski/beehr 2009: 402). tasks in the context of bridge employment encompass paid employment or unpaid voluntary work (see griffi n/hesketh 2008: 102-103). the paid activities can be carried out on the basis of employment or self-employment (see doeringer 1990: 6). other alternatives are full-time and part-time work, as well as project and casual work (see gobeski/beehr 2009: 401). retirement constitutes a radical change in life that is felt to differing degrees by different individuals (calo 2005: 306; mayring 2000: 132). there are empirical indications of the change being perceived as less signifi cant in comparison to other life events, but there are major inter-individual differences in this perception (matthews/brown 1987: 567). the less rigid structure of daily routine or of relationships with others after retirement can in some cases be regained through activities (atchley 1989: 188). after a working life entailing a high workload, post-retirement activities can ease the transition into retirement. motives for engaging in bridge employment can be distinguished into personal reasons, a desire for contact, or fi nancial and generative reasons (dendinger et al. 2005: 23-25; mor-barak 1995: 332-334). personal reasons lead to acts that increase one’s own well-being. the need to remain intellectually and physically active is essential in this respect to activity in retirement (brown 2003: 21). perceived appreciation and recognition of the contribution made, as well as enjoyment of and interest in the activity appear to play a vital role in taking up a paid or unpaid activity after professional employment (aarp 2002: 59). adapting to retirement can be faciliactivities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 807 tated by maintaining external structures and previous contacts (atchley 1989: 183). a desire for contact can also be a major reason for activities in retirement (aquino et al. 1996: 488). the desire to pass on knowledge and experience to the next generation was identifi ed as a central infl uencing factor for continued employment in retirement in north america (calo 2005: 306-309; dendinger et al. 2005: 31-33; saba/ guerin 2005: 208). these generative reasons encompass passing on experience or the desire to help others. another major requirement for taking up an activity is fl exibility (brown 2003: 10). this includes, for instance, the possibility to take time to care for family members and to be able to determine one’s working time oneself. the transition into retirement is a process that is infl uenced by personal and environmental factors (beehr 1986: 46; feldman 1994: 291; ulrich/brott 2005: 163-164). a large number of empirical studies have identifi ed individual preconditions, as well as workand organisation-related, family-related, and socio-economic factors, as major factors infl uencing the process of retirement (wang/shultz 2010: 182). the various manifestations of the individual transition show either a quantitative and/ or a qualitative deviation from the previous employment, which is expressed in changes in working hours, a new employer, or another type of employment (pleau 2010: 4). feldman (1994: 288) identifi es as a motivation for retirement the need for a less stringent psychological connection with the world of work. the transition into retirement hence must not necessarily result in complete withdrawal from the labour market and in exclusively drawing pensions. in the sense of bridge employment, retirement can instead be perceived as a further stage in the individual career development (calo 2005: 307; wang/shultz 2010: 179-180) in which persons continue to work on the labour market in a reduced form. 2 post-retirement activities in germany in germany, initial practical models have been developed relating to the use of the professional skills that have been acquired by skilled retirees. these methods are currently exclusively concerned with the imparting of expert knowledge and skills. organisations complying with the concept of the senior expert service (ses), bosch management support gmbh (bms), or erfahrung deutschland gmbh (ed) place retirees in voluntary (ses) or paid work either within a company (bms) or without taking former company affi liations into consideration (ed). the existence of these organisations demonstrates that, when suitable frameworks and appropriate skills are available, employment in retirement can be interesting for persons and companies. because pensions drawn are likely to be lower in the foreseeable future, other forms of employment in retirement may also take on primary signifi cance. for the less highly skilled it will then presumably be more a matter of managing fi nancially than of imparting knowledge. since the population of traditional working age is shrinking, attractive framework conditions may be helpful for recruiting workers of all ages. here, work should be offered in an attractive and suitable form for all population groups. the current paper attempts to take an initial empirical step towards addressing the phenomenon of silver work. we have therefore chosen an exploratory approach here to cover • leena maxin, jürgen deller808 as broad a range of subjective estimates as possible. connected to the research on bridge employment, this approach generates initial fi ndings on the design of silver work in the socio-economical and political environment in germany, which differs from that in north america. the goal is to arrive at a differentiated depiction of the life reality of this specifi c group of individuals. this fi rst step will lay a necessary foundation for dealing with this new applied fi eld of research and testing hypotheses in further steps. the approach hence answers kanfer’s (2009: 89) call for targeted research into basic phenomena in “specifi c samples” if there are only few indications of the empirical validity of established theories in these fi elds. in order to illustrate the phenomenon of silver work, we fi rst quantify the extent of offi cially recorded post-retirement work in germany. we then present the explorative results of a fi rst empirical study, indicating the concrete situation and prerequisites for post-retirement activities in germany. 2.1 extent of post-retirement activities although bridge employment is a widespread phenomenon in north america (dendinger et al. 2005: 21-22; doeringer 1990: 6; shultz 2001: 248; wang et al. 2008: 818-819), no fi gures were available until recently on active retirees’ labour market participation in germany. 2.1.1 sample and method to determine the extent of post-retirement work in germany, we looked at numbers of persons in paid employment, which are regularly published in the microcensus by the federal statistical offi ce. although the federal statistical offi ce collects this information on a yearly basis, data for the group aged 65 years and older were reported for the fi rst time for 2007 (deller/maxin 2009: 308; statistisches bundesamt 2009a). 2.1.2 results of the microcensus figure 1 shows the number of persons remaining in paid employment at retirement age for 2007. as anticipated, an ongoing reduction in the number of persons in paid employment can be observed. whereas at the age of 65, 100,000 persons in paid employment are reported nationally, 11,000 persons are still in paid employment at the age of 75. furthermore, paid employment is still found in the even older cohorts on a case-by-case basis. here, however, more precise observations can likely be made only after a new census has been carried out, given that in the microcensus the number of cases in the 75-plus age groups has shrunk to a size for extrapolation is no longer possible (statistisches bundesamt 2009b). one group of particular interest are the self-employed. they form the largest professional group among those in retirement age, their share clearly growing with increasing age (see fig. 2). roughly 55,000 self-employed persons are still in paid employment in the age group of 70 to 74 alone. at the same time, professional activactivities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 809 ity on the part of civil servants in the same age group can no longer be observed. this suggests that pensioners from this group who are interested in continued activities beyond retirement age seek other forms of employment because of the existing restrictions on post-retirement work, possibly in self-employment. looking at the percentage of self-employed and of assistant family members among persons in paid employment (fig. 2), one can clearly observe for both groups a relative increase with rising age. the self-employed account for only 12.4 % of persons in paid employment aged 50 to 54, but for almost half of those aged 75 to 79 (47.7 %). if one adds to these numbers the assistant family members helping the self-employed, this group accounts for 65.9 % of all persons in paid employment in the highest age class. as has been shown, paid employment also exists beyond the applicable retirement age. the number of those currently of retirement age who remain in paid employment per age group sinks with advancing age. however, not all professional groups participate in continued paid employment to the same degree: whereas former civil servant pensioners aged over 65 do not appear in the statistics as being in paid employment, the dominance of the group of the self-employed increases with advancing age. other forms of employment in retirement, such as voluntary and family commitment, also play a major role in this age group. over 60-year-olds currently constitute the largest growth group of voluntary commitment (freiwilligensurvey 2006: 312-315). in the coming sections we will present the results of a comprehensive study on the life realities of currently paid and unpaid working retirees. fig. 1: persons in paid employment 2007 aged 65 to 75 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 workers absolute figures in 1,000s age in years source: statistisches bundesamt 2009a, own design • leena maxin, jürgen deller810 2.2 characteristics of post-retirement activities in this section, we present the results of a fi rst empirical study on the formation and manifestation of silver work in germany. 2.2.1 target group taking the point of departure outlined in the fi rst section, this exploratory study aimed to obtain a picture of the individual situation of active retirees in germany. to this end, we primarily developed open-ended questions, the answers to which were largely left to the respondents themselves in terms of their length and content. we explored some selected aspects on the basis of existing theories with the aid of quantitatively anchored scales. our sample consisted of silver workers, offi cially retired persons who continue to engage in one or several paid or unpaid activities (see deller/maxin 2008). the reasons for and framework of these activities formed the focus of the explorative and applied survey. open-ended questions on the transition into retirement and on the design of everyday routines, together with a quanfig. 2: percentage of all professional groups among persons in paid employment of the respective age group in 2007 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70 -74 75-79 self-employed persons assistant family members civil servants salaried employees wageearners age group percentage share source: statistisches bundesamt 2009a, own design activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 811 titative comparative survey of the former and current work situations, supplement the semi-structured questionnaire of the survey. in the following, questionnaire and sample are described. 2.2.2 questionnaire we collected the data with a semi-structured interview guide in the context of telephone interviews lasting an average of 60 minutes. the practical relevance of the questionnaire was ensured in close cooperation with personnel offi cers from dax companies and from a consulting fi rm specialised in evaluating jobs. it was possible to categorise the professional activity of the interview participant prior to retirement using questions on the nature of the job (complexity and responsibility) and the size of the company, using a version of the hay group job evaluation system. the topic of transition into retirement was explored by combining four open ended and four closed questions: a) what were your feelings on approaching retirement? b) in overall retrospect: have you achieved your professional goals (0-150; anchor: 0-no goal achieved, 50-partly, 100-completely achieved, 150-over exceed ed)? c) for what reasons did you retire (at this time)? d) looking back, would you make the same decision again (yes/no)? e) how did you fi nd your present activity? f) all in all, have you personally gained more freedom? how important is this to you? (0-100; anchor: 0-not important at all, 50-important but not suffi ciently, 100-indispensable/highly decisive)? g) to what degree are the skills you use today identical to those of your former work (in %)? h) please describe the ratio between your work and leisure times: to what degree are these interrelated? a total of fi ve open-ended questions were asked on the topic of reasons for and framework of post-retirement activities: a) what reasons do you have for working in retirement? b) what is particularly important to you in your work? c) what would be the ideal conditions for work in retirement? d) what should a specifi c personnel policy for elderly workers look like? e) where do you see the greatest need for action for fi rms with regard to the employment of elderly people? for the depiction of factors of work motivation, we applied a section from the job diagnostic survey of hackman and oldham (1975), which describes motivational work characteristics. we selected this method for two reasons: firstly, we wished, in addition to the open-ended questions, to obtain initial impressions of the distribution of the fundamental factors of work motivation in post-retirement work settings. we therefore asked for an assessment of these motivational work characteristics on a scale from 0 to 100. for this fi rst empirical step, we chose these fi ve basic job dimensions. only after data collection had started was a comprehensive questionnaire for motivational work characteristics published that also included other dimensions (morgeson/humphrey 2006). secondly, the many open-ended questions left little time for detailed quantitative surveys without going beyond the scope of the telephone interview. the study used a selection of the job dimensions skill variety, autonomy, task signifi cance, task identity, and task-related feedback that contribute to work motivation (hackman/oldham 1975; morgeson/humphrey 2006: 1323; oldham/hackman 2010: 464). skill variety is understood here as the degree • leena maxin, jürgen deller812 to which work requires many varied skills. autonomy signifi es the degree of selfdetermination with which the work is carried out. task signifi cance is expressed in how important or signifi cant individuals personally consider their work to be. task identity describes the degree to which the work facilitates the creation of a completed piece of work or project. task-related feedback signifi es the degree to which someone can directly ascertain from the job how well they have worked (hackman/ oldham 1975: 161-162; landy/conte 2010: 399; morgeson/humphrey 2006: 1323). the extent of the existence of these dimensions was assessed on a scale of 0 to 100 at three different points in time (before and after retirement, as well as in an ideal situation). physical and intellectual demands were rated on a scale from 0 to 100 with the anchor values 0-no demands, 50-medium demands, and 100-very high demands. once again, respondents were asked for an assessment of the current employment situation, a retrospective evaluation of the former work situation, and their ideal of employment in retirement. additionally, respondents were asked to state up to which age they wished to continue to work (maximum age). with this approach, we would like to gain an approximation of the actual ability of respondents to contribute at three points in their lives. the specifi c make-up of the sample in this survey (see section 2.2.4) is contingent on motivation, since only retirees who were working beyond the statutory retirement age on their own initiative and of their own accord were surveyed. 2.2.3 data analysis quantitative data were analysed using the spss 17.0 and microsoft excel software programs. the open-ended questions were analysed using content analysis (mayring 2008; neuendorf 2002). to this end, the unstructured statements were recorded on tape, transcribed, paraphrased, coded, and quantifi ed in a following stage by inductive category formation (mayring 2008: 74-76). wherever the complexity of the dataset allowed, interrater reliabilities according to krippendorff were determined for the categories of the content analysis (craggs/krippendorff 2004; see also krippendorff 2004: 427-428). two independent judgments by trained raters were consulted to calculate the coeffi cient. semantic validity and construct validity were ensured through multipersonal codebook development in a team of two to six developers, and in some cases through triangulation (flick 2008: 312-313; mayring 2008: 111). 2.2.4 sample characteristics organisations such as trade unions, charities, or companies were identifi ed that had contact with their former members in retirement, and contacted via e-mail. the goal was to recruit study participants from the white collar fi eld, in which more than 40 % of all those in paid employment in germany were employed at the time of data collection (baua 2008: 6). however, it was not possible to obtain a suffi ciently large sample on the basis of this systematic approach because of a lack of cooperation activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 813 on the part of the organisations approached. as an alternative, personal contacts of the research team and recommendations of interview partners were used for recruiting. a cumulative sample was created that does not claim to be representative of the population. from september to december 2005, as well as from april to july 2006, a total of 146 retirees in paid or voluntary work aged 60 to 85 (m=67, sd=4.2) were surveyed in telephone interviews lasting an average of 60 minutes. the standard deviation (sd) provides information about the amount of difference in the sample. a high value depicts a large degree of differentiation, and a low value shows a lower degree of differentiation between the individuals surveyed. 31 % of the sample were women and 69 % men. almost 60 % of the interviewees held a university degree. the sample hence has an above-average level of education. information on the interviewees’ work prior to retirement made it possible to distinguish between management and non-management functions. functions lying between these levels cannot be unambiguously determined. table 1 shows the composition of the sample with respect to the professional position prior to retirement, while table 2 reveals the fi eld of post-retirement activities. the categorisatab. 1: activities of the study participants prior to retirement level of complexity by hay group1 spread in the sample (%) example positions 1 0.7 2 1.4 3 0.7 state secretary, managing director, board member 4 7.9 5 higher complexity 10.8 6 12.9 chemist, head of division, general in the federal armed services, manager, professor, chairman of a savings bank, director of studies 7 medium complexity 21.6 manager, design engineer 8 13.7 9 18.0 10 10.1 11 0.7 12 lower complexity 1.4 master baker, banker, driver, teacher, pastor, office worker, tax official, technical worker, cleaner notes: n=139. 1 classifi cation of the last full-time position prior to retirement was carried out by the hay group. levels of complexity 1-6 correspond to management functions; levels 8-12 correspond to non-management functions; level 7 cannot be clearly attributed. source: own design • leena maxin, jürgen deller814 tion of the former professional position (tab. 1) is based on the information about the interviewees’ last full-time employment prior to retirement. 34.4 % of the respondents were employed in management; 43.9 % were not. 21.6 % of the sample worked in the area that was not unambiguously determinable. the categorisation of the clients of work after retirement (tab. 2) arose through a content-analytical evaluation of the responses to the open-ended question “please describe your work (e.g. voluntary, paid employment, social support of family or friends, other). describe the main activity to which you wish to refer.” because of the qualitative nature of the data material, it was not possible to make an unambiguous distinction between paid and unpaid work. künemund (2006: 116-121) also refers to the methodological problem in the delimitation between paid and unpaid work (see also rosenbladt 2001: 216). the respondents worked an average of 52.3 hours per week in their former professional positions (sd=12.8). these numbers refer to the actual working hours, and ranged from 10 to 85 hours per week. four out of fi ve respondents (80.3 %) had worked more than 40 hours per week. for post-retirement activities, the working hours ranged between one and 60 hours per week, averaging out at 18.3 hours (sd=12.3), which corresponds to roughly one third of the former hours per week. one third of respondents (30.5 %) worked for more than 20 hours per week in retirement. the sample’s high level of education corresponds to the complexity of the previous work. the activity currently carried out was established largely as a result of contacts from previous working life, through both external enquiries and following own initiative and active searches. one fi fth of the respondents worked for commercial enterprises, but also for charitable, art and cultural institutions, as well as tab. 2: clients of the study participants after retirement note: n=140. categorising responses to the open-ended question “please describe your work (e.g. voluntary, paid employment, social support of family or friends, other). describe the main activity to which you wish to refer.” source: own design clients spread in the sample (%) private industry 22.1 charities 12.1 art and cultural institutions 10.0 political institutions 9.3 educational institutions 8.6 rotary club/lions club 5.7 church institutions 5.7 economic associations, clubs, and foundations 5.0 sports clubs 3.6 other 17.9 activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 815 various associations. in our study, more than half of the retirees could benefi t from skills acquired in their previous working lives. the sample is characterised by previous work that was intellectually demanding, a level that post-retirement activities cannot entirely sustain. the results in the question areas described, namely transition into retirement, reasons and framework for post-retirement work, factors of work motivation, and physical and intellectual demands prior to and after retirement are presented in the following fi ve sections. these results provide an overview of the relevant areas for an initial understanding of the life world of active retirees in germany. 2.2.5 results: transition into retirement three quarters of the respondents (77.1 %) stated in retrospect that they have fully achieved their professional goals. the average degree of achieving goals is 108.4 (sd=27.4; scale: 0-150). all in all, the work goals were fully achieved and were exceeded in some cases. more than half of the respondents (52.2 %) had entered retirement with positive feelings. only 11.8 % spoke of negative feelings in the transition into retirement. in an open-ended question about the reasons for retirement, four out of ten (38.0 %) respondents stated that it had been stipulated by company regulations. more than one quarter of the respondents (26.8 %) cited internal company reasons such as job cuts or even insolvency of the company as the reason for retirement. only 12.7 % mentioned health-related reasons leading to the termination of regular work. looking back, the great majority of the respondents (93.2 %) would once again decide for the selected time of transition into retirement. not all respondents retired of their own accord, but largely after a fulfi lled working life and with positive feelings. table 3 provides an overview of the development of postretirement activities. one quarter of the unsupported statements (24.1 %) affi rmed that post-retirement activity had been established on the basis of the previous work or contacts from working life. nearly just as frequently (23.6 %), an external enquiry was named as leading to post-retirement activities. however, own initiative and active searching also accounts for one fi fth (19.7 %) of the occurrences. continuation and intensifi cation of ancillary work or hobbies already pursued during working life determined one sixth (15.8 %) of the statements. the use of the individual’s existing network, regardless of the former work, played a somewhat subordinate role (7.4 %), as did follow-on activities already pursued during working life (2.5 %) and the same activity on a different dimension (2.5 %). it should be taken into account here that multiple attributions were possible and that an individual’s attributions could occur in various categories. when asked whether they had gained greater freedom in retirement, respondents reported considerably more freedom in retrospect: 79.7 % responded positively to the question. almost two thirds of them referred to gaining greater freedom as being indispensable (61.8 %). more than half of the skills (56.5 %) used in post-retirement work were identical to those used in their former work. the largest share of the respondents reported a fl owing transition between • leena maxin, jürgen deller816 leisure and work (45.5 %). one third (33.6 %) rigorously distinguished between the two areas. by contrast, one fi fth did not distinguish between work and leisure at all (21.0 %). 2.2.6 results: reasons and framework major aspects of taking up post-retirement activities are shown to be the areas of helping, the desire to pass on knowledge, wishing to remain active, own development, and contact with others. table 4 provides an overview of the reasons, each of which were quantifi ed in a content analysis and identifi ed across different question areas. in two open-ended questions, a main general question was fi rst asked about the reasons for post-retirement activities, and later in the course of the interview about aspects of post-retirement work that are particularly important to the respondent. results of the two questions suggest that the category of wishing to help others and pass on knowledge is central. in the unstructured statements on the reasons for continuing in activities, it accounts for one eighth (12.3 %) of the occurrences, and for almost one third in the answers on importance (30.5 %). it is salient across both question areas in the category, indicating that it is a major element in the motivation for continuing to work. another such element is contact with others, which is linked with post-retirement activities, with one sixth (16.7 %) of occurrences regarding importance. a further fundamental component of the motivation for continuing activities is personal development and the desire to remain active, with more than one third (36.0 %) of occurrences regarding the reasons. recognition and appreciation experienced through post-retirement activities are similarly frequent in both areas (reasons: 9.3 %, importance: 9.9 %), indicating that they are a further essential component of the motivation to engage in activities in retirement. financial matters also appear within both the reasons for employment (6.4 %) and the tab. 3: development of post-retirement activities notes: open-ended question: “how did you fi nd your present work?” multiple responses were possible. content-analytical categorised fi elds. krippendorff’s α = 0.69. n=142. 203 occurrences. occurrences stated as percentages. source: own design category occurrences (%) from previous work, contact from job 24.1 external enquiry (passive) 23.6 own initiative, active search 19.7 continuation, intensification of work or hobbies 15.8 contacts, network (not from old work) 7.4 same work as before, different scale 2.5 follow-on work was already decided on during working life 2.5 other 4.4 activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 817 important aspects of activity in retirement (2.5 %), albeit with a comparatively small number of occurrences. the topic of remuneration was named in the responses to both open-ended questions. enjoyment and interest in the work were mentioned comparatively often among the reasons for post-retirement activities (18.6 %), but do not appear at all among important aspects of post-retirement work. table 5 sums up the results of the three open-ended questions on the ideal framework of post-retirement activities obtained by content analysis, the design of a specifi c personnel policy for older people, and in general on the areas with the greatest need for action for fi rms with regard to the employment of elderly people. in the overview of these open-ended questions, age-tailored working conditions and the consideration of specifi c needs, as well as recognition and appreciation, are shown to be promoted with different intensities. the salience of these categories is a clear indication that they are major structural elements in job design after retirement. these aspects are fundamental components of the design of post-retirement activities. the following are decisive across all three question areas: fl exible working hour arrangements, age-tailored working conditions and the consideration of needs, and the use of experience-based knowledge in intergenerational exchange. the demand for fl exible working hours is very dominant in the fi rst two question areas on the ideal framework and specifi c personnel policy, with almost one third (29.1 %) and one eighth (12.8 %) of the occurrences, respectively, but is not regarded as constituting the greatest need for action on the part of organisations. instead, tab. 4: reasons for post-retirement activities note: content-analytical categorised fi elds. information as a percentage of the occurrences. open-ended questions: 1 “what reasons do you have for working in retirement?” (n=139; 236 occurrences; krippendorff’s α = 0.78) 2 “what is particularly important to you in your work?” (n=141; 203 occurrences; krippendorff’s α = 0.87) source: own design reasons and importance reasons1 in percent importance2 in percent helping, wanting to pass on knowledge 12.3 30.5 contact with others 7.6 16.7 wanting to remain active, personal development 36.0 10.3 own demand, performance -10.3 recognition, appreciation 9.3 9.9 fulfilment, well-being -8.9 financial reasons 6.4 2.5 enjoyment, interest 18.6 - other 6.8 5.4 other contexts 3.0 5.4 • leena maxin, jürgen deller818 tab. 5: framework for post-retirement activities notes: content-analytical categorised fi elds. information as a percentage of the occurrences. open-ended questions: 1 “what would be the ideal conditions for work in retirement?” (n=141; 306 occurrences; despite a reduction in the complexity of the data it was not possible to calculate krippendorff’s α without combining the categories further, which would have entailed loss of content.) 2 “what should a specifi c personnel policy for elderly workers look like?” (n=111; 164 occurrences; krippendorff’s α = 0,67) 3 “where do you see the greatest need for action for fi rms with regard to the employment of elderly people?” (n=120; 151 occurrences; krippendorff’s α = 0.71) source: own design organisational framework ideal in retirement1 personnel policy for the elderly2 need for firms to take action3 flexible working hours 29.1 12.8 - advisory, freelance work 11.8 -- self-determination, freedom to make decisions 9.8 -- working conditions tailored to age, consideration of needs 7.2 18.3 11.9 providing a structure 5.6 -- providing a meaning and a goal 5.2 -- financial recognition, special remuneration arrangements 4.9 -2.0 offering self-realisation 4.6 -- facilitating social contact 4.2 -- no permanent job or employment 4.2 -- remaining active 3.6 -- recognition and appreciation 2.3 8.5 23.8 full-time, permanent post 2.0 -- using experience and know-how, exchange between young and old -15.2 29.1 active involvement in the company -15.9 18.5 involvement in further and advanced training -5.5 5.3 specific services for elderly workers -10.4 - offering possibilities for flexible retirement -7.9 - no special treatment -4.3 2.0 changing state regulations --3.3 other 5.6 1.2 4.0 activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 819 a change in state regulations is called for in the clustered responses to this question. even though this category, identifi ed by content analysis, is only slightly represented in the overview (3.3 % of occurrences of the question area), it nonetheless provides an indication of structural changes that employees would like to see for exercising their work when in retirement. a large share of the occurrences in table 5 stresses intergenerational exchange and passing on of knowledge as a major component, although the only statements quantifi ed here were answers to questions on specifi c contents of a personnel policy for elderly employees and on locating the greatest need for action for organisations. here, silver workers gave their personal retrospective accounts of the work situation prior to retirement. for post-retirement activities, it becomes clear that advisory, self-employed work is the goal, in which self-determination and freedom to take decisions are fundamental (altogether, 21.6 % of the occurrences regarding the ideal framework of post-retirement activities). aspects that were named across several question areas assume particular prevalence in the perception of the respondents. financial remuneration of the contributions made by silver workers is named for both the desired framework (4.9 %) and the identifi ed need for action (2.0 %). even when, overall, a relatively small number of occurrences focus on this aspect, it is nonetheless worth noting that it turns up unprompted and independently in two question areas. the fi nancial resources available to respondents appear to be an infl uencing element here. moreover, a need for action on the part of the employing organisation in providing fi nancial recognition was identifi ed. furthermore, remuneration is frequently regarded as constituting recognition of the contribution that has been made. from silver workers’ perspective, the responsibility is defi nitely on companies at this juncture: the fi nancial recognition of work in retirement does not always appear to be managed satisfactorily. working retirees would also like organisations to involve them more in basic and further training and quite clearly consider the companies to be responsible for this: one out of 20 occurrences in the question areas on specifi c personnel policy for the elderly (5.5 %) and on greater need to act on the part of fi rms (5.3 %),respectively, call for including the elderly in further and advanced training. some respondents called for equal treatment of all age groups in two question areas in unprompted statements (personnel policy: 4.3 %; need to act: 2.0 %). the two latter aspects, each occurring across different question areas, correspond with one another in terms of content: treating elderly workers normally, that is, equally vis-à-vis workers of all age groups also encompasses inclusion in further and advanced training. 2.2.7 results: factors of work motivation skill variety, autonomy, and task signifi cance as the selected factors of work motivation were assessed with regard to three different evaluation points. on a scale of 0 to 100, the respondents categorized the current employment situation in retirement, a retrospective of the former work situation, and the ideal of post-retirement activities. figure 3 shows the results for the dimensions with signifi cant average value differences (t test for dependent samples; bortz 1999: 140-142) between the three • leena maxin, jürgen deller820 evaluation points earlier, current, and ideal. differences in the points are shown for the motivation factors skill variety, autonomy, and task signifi cance. two different courses are portrayed. for the dimensions task signifi cance and skill variety, v-shaped curves are shown with the highest peak for each in the previous work situation (signifi cance: 90.4; sd=13.0; signifi cance earlier-current t=6.789, df=135, p<0.001; variety: 87.5; sd=14.5; variety earlier-current t=7.471, df=140, p<0.001). the tasks in current employment in retirement show a slighter degree of signifi cance (m=75.4; sd=24.3; current-ideal t=-4.499, df=135, p<0.001) and variety (m=72.7; sd=22.5; current-ideal t=-5.816, df=143. p<0.001), but have a much broader spread in comparison to variety. in an ideal situation, however, the respondents would again like to see a stronger manifestation of these two dimensions (signifi cance: 81.1; sd=22.4; signifi cance earlier-ideal t=4.418, df=133, p<0.001; variety: 81.0; sd=20.7; variety earlier-ideal t=3.653, df=139, p<0.001). for the motivation facfig. 3: factors of work motivation in comparison notes: attribution of selected factors of work motivation (hackman/oldham 1975; oldham/hackman 2010) at three different evaluation points: prior to retirement (earlier), in active retirement (current), and in an ideal situation (ideal). scale from 0-100 with the anchor values 0-no occurrence, 50-medium level of occurrence, 100-very high level of occurrence. n (autonomy earlier, current, ideal)=144. n (signifi cance earlier)=138. n (signifi cance current)=139. n (signifi cance ideal)=137. n (variety earlier)=141. n (variety current)=145. n (variety ideal)=144. the mean values of the three assessments differ signifi cantly from one another in each case, apart from the comparison autonomy current-ideal (t test for paired samples: p<0.001). source: own design 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 earlier current ideal 87.5 72.7 81.0 90.4 75.4 81.180.5 91.8 93.0 autonomy significance variety mean values of the rating activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 821 tor autonomy, by contrast, a different course is revealed: whereas for the work situation prior to retirement, with a broad spread overall, a much lower degree of autonomy is reported (m=80.5; sd=22.0), the respondents reported a signifi cant gain in autonomy for post-retirement activities (m=91.8; sd=13.7; earlier-current t=-5.626, df=143, p<0.001), with a lowest rating of 40. the degree of desired autonomy in an ideal situation achieves, with a very low spread, the highest value of all motivation factors (m=93.0; sd=12.0; earlier-ideal t=-6.468, df=143, p<0.001) and does not signifi cantly differ from the current situation. here,50 was named by the respondents as the the lowest profi ciency of the specifi ed scale (0-100). for the job dimensions task identity and feedback, not portrayed in figure 3, no signifi cant average value differences are seen between the three evaluation points. the respectively highest value is shown for both motivation factors in analogy to autonomy in the ideal situation (task identity: 85.6; sd=26.1; feedback: m=86.7; sd=19.3). the values for the earlier and current employment situations are, however, below the mean values of the ideal situation (task identity earlier: m=73.5; sd=32.3; task identity current: m=76.3; sd=33.5; feedback earlier: m=80.8; sd=18.9; feedback current: m=79.9; sd=23.5). 2.2.8 results: physical and intellectual demands in order to be able to assess the subjectively perceived demands of post-retirement activities in comparison to those of the earlier work situation and in an ideal situation (desired ideal), the respondents were asked to assess these on a scale of 0 to 100. physical and intellectual demands were surveyed in an assessment of the current employment situation, of a retrospective of the earlier work situation, as well as of the ideal of post-retirement activity. figure 4 shows the mean values of the rating of physical and intellectual demands for the three evaluation points. in each case they were assessed on a scale of 0 (no demands) to 100 (very high demands). intellectual demands are highest in the earlier work situation, with a mean value of 87.2 (sd=15.7); the lower bound is, remarkably, 40.upon retirement, the respondents left behind an intellectually demanding activity. the lowest mean value (m=69.7) and the highest standard deviation (sd=23.9), with full use of the scale of intellectual demands, are shown for the employment situation in retirement, with the mean assessment still being high. the high level of variance provides an indication of the variety of design of the activities and inter-individual differences in retirement. in an ideal situation, taken as a mean value, the respondents would again like somewhat higher intellectual demands (m=75.8; sd=21.7), but here too there are relatively signifi cant differences between the respondents. a similar distribution is shown in the assessment of the physical demands. in the earlier work situation these were comparatively highest, with a considerable spread (m=67.0; sd=31.8), but lower than the lowest rating value of current intellectual demands. physical demands in the post-retirement work situation were perceived as being lowest (m=52.5; sd=26.0). and in an ideal situation, the respondents would wish for greater physical demands to be made on them (m=57.5; sd=24.0). this median value lies between the earlier and current assessment. in the ratings of • leena maxin, jürgen deller822 the physical demands, the scale from 0 to 100 was fully exhausted for each case. stronger for intellectual demands, but also for physical ones, a v-shaped curve across the three evaluation points can be observed: the demands are lower in retirement in comparison to what they were earlier; in an ideal situation they would however be higher than they are currently. in each case, the mean values of the three evaluation points for intellectual and physical demands differ signifi cantly from one another (t test for dependent samples: intellectual demands earlier-current t=4.786, df=140, p<0.001; intellectual demands current-ideal t=-3.358, df=135, p≤0.001; intellectual demands earlier-ideal t=3.44, df=134, p≤0.001; physical demands earliercurrent t=7.651, df=144, p<0.001; physical demands current-ideal t=-3.895, df=134, p<0.001; physical demands earlier-ideal t=5.632, df=142, p<0.001). the interviewees desired a higher level of both intellectual and physical demands in retirement, albeit a lower level of physical than of intellectual demands. the respondents stated on average that they wanted to keep on working up to the age of 73 (m=72.98, sd=6.32; md=70.0; n=42). the majority of silver workers fig. 4: physical and intellectual demands in comparison notes: attribution of intellectual and physical demands at three different evaluation points: prior to retirement (earlier), in active retirement (current), and in an ideal situation (ideal) on a scale of 0-100 with the anchor values 0-no demands, 50-medium demands, 100-very high demands. n (intellectual demands earlier)=145. n (intellectual demands current)=145. n (intellectual demands ideal)=143. n (physical demands earlier)=141. n (physical demands current)=141. n (physical demands ideal)=136. the mean values of the three assessments in each case differ signifi cantly from one another. t test for paired samples: p≤0.001. source: own design 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 earlier current ideal 67.0 52.5 57.5 87.2 69.7 75.8 intellectual demands physical demands mean values of the rating activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 823 (30.2 %) wanted to continue work until the age of 70, while one seventh (14.0 %) wished to remain active until the age of 75. one sixth of respondents (16.3 %) went so far as to express a desire to remain active until the age of 80. 3 discussion and outlook the fi gures of the federal statistical offi ce demonstrate that paid employment clearly exists beyond the applicable retirement age. in view of the predictable demographic infl uences, this is already signifi cant for the economic development of germany today. in the future, the group of retirees will continue to grow in quantitative terms due to the baby boomer cohorts approaching retirement age. given this, the number of working retirees can be expected to rise. however, against the background of the results that have been put forward, realizing the further potential of paid employment is contingent on relevant frameworks of work continuing to develop. as people grow older, the group of the self-employed and assistant family members will become more signifi cant in relative terms while the total number of persons in paid employment at retirement age falls. the motivations that have been identifi ed through open-ended questions for post-retirement activities correspond in their content to the reasons for continuing to work in north america (aarp 2002; atchley 1989; dendinger et al. 2005; morbarak 1995), although here an exemplary sample is used. current research into work motivation advocates venturing to conduct “targeted research” in the fi eld (kanfer 2009: 89), that is, to conduct research into new phenomena in highly specifi c samples as well. nonetheless, the initial empirical approach to the environment and working conditions of active retirees in germany presented here has shortcomings. for one, the group surveyed here constitutes a fairly specifi c group of individuals who are far above the national average when it comes to educational status and fi nancial situation. the addition of a control group, that is, of a survey of comparable retirees with differences in level of education, professional status, age, socio-economic status, and the like would have been desirable. even so, this fi rst empirical survey provides indications that the areas of work and leisure can no longer be kept strictly apart after retirement. across different question areas, it becomes clear that the structure of silver workers’ everyday life has changed after retirement. whereas work activity, largely defi ned the day in regular working life, much more fl exible structures are manifest in active retirement. this fi nding matches the assumptions of kanfer that a much more fl exible job design will be needed in the future in order to retain the elderly on the labour market and in companies (kanfer 2009: 89). the frequently diverse activities of retirees are integrated in a variable, individual manner into leisure activities and family employment. this qualitative, overarching fi nding demonstrates the wide scope of action that silver workers make use of in their fl exible framework conditions. at the same time, a connection can be observed here with the perceived fi nite nature of one’s own life (socioemotional selectivity theory, carstensen 2006). in the reasons for activity in retirement arising from open-ended questions in this empirical study, one can also observe that active retirees focus on • leena maxin, jürgen deller824 meaningful activities linked with positive emotions, such as helping, wishing to pass on knowledge, and contact with others (see 2.2.6). this exemplary cross-sectional survey of a fairly homogeneous group cannot of course provide any information on the change of motives, but can provide an initial impression of relevant motives for work in retirement. the manifestation of motivation, however, also depends on other aspects, such as the design of the work. flexibility and freedom are key elements here. just as for elderly workers, the willingness of silver workers to continue activities is accompanied by a desire to considerably reduce their weekly working hours (see also büsch et al. 2010a: 6). in this context, it is particularly important to make use of experience-based knowledge, while also taking individual needs into consideration. a lack of motivation to fully contribute in terms of performance at an advanced age (see büsch et al. 2010b: 145) can also be traced back to the working conditions (see section 1.1). the results presented in this paper show that through the design of motivational work characteristic, active retirees can also contribute to the performance of organisations. the experience of autonomy, task identity, and feedback in post-professional job design is important, as is the freedom gained after the conclusion of a person’s actual working life. highly signifi cant tasks and a wide variety of skills are factors that silver workers miss in post-retirement activities in comparison to their previous working lives. this suggests the necessity of attractive job design for retirees whose skills are in demand on the market. kanfer (2009: 87) also pinpoints the development of motivation structures tailored to target groups of elderly workers whom organisations wish to help maintain a high level of motivation as a central challenge for applied research. the representative questionnaire of the federal institute for population research revealed that persons currently in dependent employment wish to be employed for an average of another 4.1 years after the anticipated retirement age (büsch et al. 2010b: 6). the retirees surveyed in the study presented here would indeed like to continue to work until the age of 73 on average. under given preconditions, the motivation to continue post-retirement activities hence exists in principle. furthermore, it is interesting to see that, despite the different social systems in germany and north america, the results presented here point to considerable commonalities with the motivations identifi ed in north america and the framework of post-retirement activities there (see brown 2003; calo 2005; dendinger et al. 2005; mor-barak 1995). 3.1 derived need for research the fi eld of post-retirement activities in germany was described for the fi rst time in the exploratory research project presented here. relevant topical fi elds were identifi ed. in future research on silver work, this fi rst step, which constitutes a precursor to a hypothesis-generating research design, must be followed by a hypothesis-testing one that works with control group designs as well. the results reported here suggest that a comprehensive investigation of motivational job design may be worthwhile for the target group of silver workers. the “motivational work characteristics” observed in isolation in this paper (hackman/oldham 1975; 160-162; morgeson/ activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 825 humphrey 2006: 1323) should be complemented by a comprehensive concept in which “knowledge characteristics” (morgeson/humphrey 2006: 1323), “social characteristics,” and “contextual characteristics” (morgeson/humphrey 2006: 1324) are also considered. the “work design questionnaire” (morgeson/humphrey 2006) offers itself for this purpose. stegmann and colleagues (2010) provide a validated german translation. to record further interesting variables, validated scales for the relevant fi elds should be used, or new constructs and their operationalisations should be developed. for instance, it should be considered whether the construct space of “appreciation” can be adequately recorded with scales to measure the “respect” construct. a further interesting question is how the willingness to continue in employment and various forms of post-retirement activities is formed over time. to this end, a longitudinal design measuring motivation, socio-economic parameters, and willingness to contribute suggests itself, starting in the end phase of traditional working life and extending beyond retirement age. silver work continues to be a relevant fi eld for work motivation research, largely – albeit not solely – inspired by demographic developments. for instance, future research should consider how age-related changes in the individual motivational preconditions, including physical and intellectual skills, personality characteristics, and demands outside the work situation infl uence the decision to continue to work (kanfer 2009: 87). there is a considerable need for research on the willingness and motivation to continue employment in the production industries, so-called blue collar employment. the working conditions, differing considerably from employment in the white collar area (offi ce jobs), make it likely that some major differences exist. self-employed persons and assistant family members are the decisive forms of employment in over-65 age group. further research in the fi eld of employment at retirement age should fully take into account the motivations of these two groups of individuals. this may lead to derivations being developed for other forms of postprofessional employment. previous fi ndings on motivation to continue employment are either highly specifi c and restricted to a company or to a sector (aleksandrowicz et al. 2009), thereby excluding relevant forms of employment such as self-employed persons (büsch et al. 2010a), or are not representative of the population and are hence of only descriptive nature (the study presented here). to identify possible potentials, research fi ndings the various forms of post-retirement activities must be applied to a larger, more representative population in future research. 3.2 concrete need to act at three levels recommendations for action regarding the design and realisation of silver work can be derived at three levels from the presented results. the individual level deals with the physical and intellectual prerequisites of the individual, in this case of silver workers. this is worth examining from two perspectives: 1) those interested in silver work create or maintain the individual prerequisites for an extension of their own active lifespan. • leena maxin, jürgen deller826 2) knowledge of the motives and demands of silver workers enables organisations to shape working conditions such that the well-being and job satisfaction of this group of individuals can be achieved. for the individual – regardless of age, given that each person in their mid-thirties today can be a potential silver worker one day – this implies a high degree of initiative, with measures such as further training, life-long learning, and healthcare spanning life phases. these measures can clearly be supported in an appropriate manner at an organisational level, such as via corresponding offers in the framework of personnel development and values that are entrenched in the corporate culture. in concrete terms, the introduction and expansion of fl exible working hours, advisory and freelance work, expansion of freedom to take decisions, appreciation of the contribution made by silver workers, benefi ting from experience and know-how, adjusted workload and demands, a structured daily routine, active inclusion in events, and fi nancial recognition lead to fruitful interaction between silver workers and organisations (see deller/maxin 2010a: 11). central to this is cultural change in organisations towards a respectful, appreciative environment of younger and older staff members, as well as the use of synergies and acceptance of various careers. perceptions and stereotypes of age are prevalent in many organisations, which generate antagonism more than collaboration between the generations. the concept of a life-phase-orientated personnel policy (see rump et al. 2008: 22) takes account of the interplay between professional and private phases of life and their specifi c demands and of fi elds of action for organisations. in concrete terms, for instance, appreciation for all age groups in the company can be expressed with the aid of internal and external communication. mentoring programs can encourage networking between elderly and younger workers in order to nurture mutual exchange and facilitate organisational learning. the introduction of diversity management (köppel/spie 2010) with an organisation-specifi c defi nition of success benchmarks or key performance indicators after each strategic goal can promote the sustainable development of the measures. the shaping of perceptions of age also plays a role at societal and political levels. the existing perception of age is undergoing change and appears to be turning slowly away from a negative picture that is based on the defi cit model (bmfsfj 2010). age and productivity are no longer automatically contradictory in the societal discussion of old age, and awareness has arisen of its potentials. a differentiated perception of age can make a major contribution towards cultural change in society. for instance, there has recently been intensifi ed public debate on the fact that if the statutory framework is made appropriately fl exible, silver work can lead, fi rstly, to reducing the burden on the pension system. secondly, the contributions made increasingly by senior citizens in voluntary work (see alterssurvey 2002a: 3; freiwilligensurvey 2006: 312) are becoming relevant to society. reforms of many options for the transition from working life into retirement appear to be necessary. it is a matter of taking into account the changing prerequisites that increasingly differ from one individual to another. for individuals who work beyond the statutory retirement age and at the same time would like to pay social insurance contributions, a binding and appealing statutory basis for this possibility would be expedient. it should be defi nitive that employment is to meet the needs of people activities in retirement: individual experience of silver work • 827 and should be shaped accordingly –regardless of age (see deller/maxin 2010b: 8). clearly, the world of work can be expected to change. a job design that is adjusted to workers’ needs can help today’s 35-year-old workers want to become healthy, motivated silver workers. acknowledgements we thank the editors of comparative population studies and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. we are indebted to 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available under the title “beschäftigung statt ruhestand: individuelles erleben von silver work”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos2010-18de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-18de5, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 31.08.2010 date of acceptance: 27.06.2011 leena maxin ( ), prof. dr. jürgen deller. institut für strategisches personalmanagement, leuphana universität lüneburg, 21335 lüneburg, germany and silver workers institute, genf, switzerland. e-mail: maxin@leuphana.de, deller@leuphana.de url: www.leuphana.de/institute/ispm, www.silverworkers.ch comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic* griffi th feeney abstract: the idea of mortality tempo effects derives from the idea of fertility tempo effects, which were introduced by norman b. ryder and are widely known and accepted. given the essential similarity of the ideas, it might be regarded as curious that mortality tempo effects have only recently been recognized and are not as yet generally accepted. the explanation for this may be that mortality tempo effects have implications that seem to be at variance with established ways of modeling and analyzing mortality and population dynamics. this paper develops a discrete approach to describing and analyzing mortality tempo effects. the discrete approach is mathematically undemanding, yet powerful. it is used here, for example, to defi ne age-specifi c tempo effects. the focus of this work is the measurement of length of life in empirical populations. it is shown that any empirical population may be approximated by a suitably constructed discrete model population. keywords: mortality · period mortality · death rate · tempo effects · tempo distortion · tempo adjustment · mortality tempo · bongaarts – feeney 1 introduction mortality tempo effects are proposed in several papers (bongaarts/feeney 2002, 2003, 2006; bongaarts 2005; feeney 2006). the idea derives directly from the idea of fertility tempo effects, which were introduced by norman b. ryder (1956, 1964) half a century ago and are widely known and accepted. for recent work and references see bongaarts and feeney (1998) and zeng yi and land (2002). given the essential similarity of the ideas, it might be regarded as curious that mortality tempo effects have only recently been recognized and are not as yet (this based on discussions with colleagues) generally accepted (see wachter 2005, goldstein 2006, guillot 2006). only few publications used tempo-adjusted fi gures for comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 3 (2010): 483-496 (date of release: 15.09.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-12en0 * the paper is a revised version of a working paper with the same title which was published at www.gfeeney.com in 2003. • griffith feeney484 analyzing international differences in life expectancy (luy 2006; luy/wegner 2009). the explanation for this may be that mortality tempo effects have implications that seem to be at variance with established ways of modeling and analyzing mortality and population dynamics (see also vaupel 2002, 2005). this paper develops a discrete approach to describing and analyzing mortality tempo effects. the continuous mathematics of bongaarts and feeney (1998, 2002, 2003, 2006) tends to obscure what are at heart quite simple ideas. the discrete approach is mathematically undemanding, yet powerful. it is used here, for example, to defi ne age-specifi c tempo effects, something that has yet to be done in the continuous formulation (a similar example can be found in horiuchi 2005). the focus of this work is the measurement of length of life in empirical populations, but it is convenient to begin by examining two simple model populations. the relevance of the models to empirical populations is established in paragraph 5, in which it is shown that any empirical population may be approximated by a suitably constructed model population. 2 the simplest case in the following, the idea of mortality tempo effects is illustrated by means of lexis diagrams. the lexis diagram is a useful device to clarify relations between exposure segments for cohorts and exposure segments for periods (preston et al. 2001: 31ff). in figure 1a, the period, i.e. the calendar year, is displayed on the x-axes for the years 1900 to 2000. age is displayed on the y-axes with age 0 at the top and age 90 at the bottom of the graph. the diagonal lines display the life lines of cohorts in which the demographic events occur. let calendar years be divided into 0.2 year subintervals and consider a population closed to migration in which (1) all births occur at the midpoints of these intervals and (2) all deaths to any cohort occur at a single exact age. in fi gure 1a, age at death is constant at exact age 60 prior to 1925, rises linearly at the rate of 0.2 years per year from 1925 through 1975, and is constant at exact age 70 from 1975 forward. because of the limited graphical resolution available, only select cohort lines are shown. this lexis diagram would be an incomplete representation of the population even if all cohort lines were shown because each cohort line may represent many persons, and possibly different numbers of persons in different cohorts. the number of persons in each cohort must be specifi ed exogenously. mortality tempo results may be derived without any assumption about the numbers of persons in different cohorts, but simplifi cations result if every cohort contains the same number of persons. figure 1b shows detail in the small rectangle in the vicinity of age 60 and 1925 in fi gure 1a. cohort lines are shown in full detail, at 0.2 year intervals. suppose that each life line represents 20,000 persons, for a total of 100,000 births annually. then 100,000 deaths occur during 1924, when length of life is constant, but only 80,000 deaths occur during 1925 and 1926, during which life times are increasing. this decline in the annual number of deaths results from the increase in length of life. mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 485 since each cohort lives somewhat longer than the preceding cohort, the intervals between deaths are longer than the intervals between births. the deaths to the fi ve cohorts that reach age 60 during 1925 are spread out over a period longer than one year. the deaths of persons in the last of the fi ve cohorts shown are “bumped” to 1926. fig. 1b: lexis diagram detail circa 1925 and age 60 1924 1925 1926 1927 calendar year 59 60 61 age 5 points 100,000 deaths 4 points 80,000 deaths 4 points 80,000 deaths source: own design fig. 1a: lexis diagram of a simple model population source: own design 1900 2000 calendar year 0 90 age 60 70 1925 1975 • griffith feeney486 this decline in the annual number of deaths is transitory in the sense that it will disappear when (if) length of life stops rising (it is conceivable that length of life will rise indefi nitely). this is illustrated in fi gure 1c, which shows detail in the small rectangle in the vicinity of age 70 and 1975 in fi gure 1a. during 1974, length of life is still rising. intervals between deaths are therefore still longer than intervals between births, and only 80,000 deaths occur during this year. in 1975 and 1976, however, length of life is no longer rising and the number of deaths rises back to 100,000 per year. unequal numbers of persons in different birth cohorts would change this example in detail without affecting the essential message. if annual numbers of births were increasing exponentially, for example, as they would in a stable population, numbers of deaths before 1925 and after 1975 would change continuously and the number of births in the last quarter of the century would be much larger than the number in the fi rst quarter of the century, but the number of deaths would decline sharply between 1924 and 1925 and rise sharply between 1974 and 1975. consider now the trend of the crude death rate in this population. prior to 1925, 6,000,000 person years are lived by the population each year: 100,000 person years by persons aged 0, 1, ..., 59. similarly, 7,000,000 person years are lived by the population in 1975 and each later year. the annual number of deaths to the population is the same before and after the rise in length of life: 100,000. the net decline in the crude death rate, from 16.7 per thousand to 14.3 per thousand, is due entirely to the increase in its denominator. the situation is different during the 50 year period when age at death is rising. during this period annual person years lived by the population increases linearly at the rate of 20,000 person years per year from 6,010,000 in 1925 to 6,990,000 in 1974. the annual number of deaths is constant at 80,000 per year. the crude death rate falls from 13.3 per thousand in 1925 to 11.4 per thousand in 1974. fig. 1c: lexis diagram detail circa 1975 and age 70 1974 1975 1976 1977 calendar year 69 70 71 age 4 points 80,000 deaths 5 points 100,000 deaths 5 points 100,000 deaths source: own design mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 487 these changes are summarized in fi gure 2 below. the net change in the crude death rate is modest (a 14 % decline) and plausible in relation to the magnitude of the change in length of life (a 17 % increase). the rate does not move smoothly from the higher to the lower level, however, as indicted by the sloping dotted line. rather it falls abruptly to a level well below the eventual level at the beginning of the period of increase, only to rise abruptly to this eventual level at the end of the period of increase. the net change refl ects the increase in the denominator of the rate, which is a direct result of longer length of life. the pattern of change – the sudden drop and subsequent recovery – refl ects mainly the decrease in the numerator of the rate from 100,000 to 80,000 deaths and the subsequent rise back to 100,000 deaths. during the transition, the rise in the denominator plays a minor role. note that the crude death rate does not decline linearly during 1925-1975, though no curvilinearity is visible in the plot, since the denominator of the rate is constant and the enumerator increases linearly. 3 relationships when cohort size is constant (constant annual births), there is a simple relationship between the rate of change in age at death and the magnitude of the tempo effect. to see what the relationship is consider fi gure 3a, which elaborates fi gure 1b. at the rate of increase in age at death illustrated here, 0.2 years per year, deaths of persons reaching exact age 60 during the last 0.2 year subinterval of the year (note the tick marks indicating the division of the year into 0.2 year intervals) will be bumped to 1926. the equality of these magnitudes is not coincidental. observe the small, shaded right triangle. the length of the right side of this triangle, 0.2 years, equals the annual rate of increase in length of life. the length of its top side represents the persons whose death will be bumped into 1926. fig. 2: trend in the crude death rate with increasing length of life 1900 1925 1975 2000 calendar year 10 18 cdr 16.7/1000 14.3/1000 13.3/1000 11.4/1000 source: own design • griffith feeney488 if each cohort line in the fi gure represents the same number of persons, the distribution of times at which people arrive at exact age 60 is (to within the limits imposed by the length of the interval between births) uniform. the length of the top side of the shaded triangle will then give the proportion of these persons whose death will be “bumped” from 1925 to 1926 by the increase in length of life. if r denotes the annual rate of change in age at death, then, the tempo effect reduces the annual number of deaths by a factor of 1 – r . of course the fi nite interval between births results in some “stickiness” in the effects. with a 0.2 year interval between cohorts, for example, a slightly more or less rapid rate of increase in length of life would not have any effect on the number of deaths bumped to the next year. but the choice of the 0.2 year interval is inessential to the logic of the argument. it simply makes for a clear diagram. in fi gure 3b, for example, the interval between cohorts is halved to 0.1 year, so that the annual number of cohorts is doubled to 10. in fi gure 3c the interval between cohorts is halved again to 0.05 years, and the annual number of cohorts doubled correspondingly to 20. the tempo effect is 1 – r in each case, and by the same argument given for fi gure 3a. the uniform births (constant cohort size) assumption is necessary for the 1 – r relation to hold, but tempo effects are general. to calculate their magnitude it is only necessary to know how many persons reached exact age 60 during the last fi fth of fig. 3a: lexis diagram detail illustrating “bumping” (0.2 year intervals) 1925 1926 calendar year 59.8 60 60.2 age● ● ● ● ● source: own design fig. 3b: lexis diagram detail illustrating “bumping” (0.1 year intervals) 1925 1926 calendar year 59.8 60 60.2 age● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● source: own design mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 489 the year. this determines the number of deaths that will be bumped to the following year. nor does the logic of the argument depend on what happens before or after a period during which length of life increases. observing only the data shown in fi gures 3a-c, it is evident that (1) length of life was increasing during this period by 0.2 years per year and that (2) more deaths would have occurred during the year (20,000 more, given the uniform births assumption) if this increase in length of life had not occurred. this is a simple consequence of what norman b. ryder once called “the most important fact in demography: we all get one year older every year.”1 it is impossible to defer age at death without also deferring time of death. 4 age-specifi city it is well known that changes in age distribution during an idealized demographic transition result in a temporary decline in the crude death rate well below its long term levels (feeney/mason 2001: 63-64). in view of this, the pattern of change in crude death rates displayed in figure 2 may be regarded as unsurprising. in this section, however, we show that the same effect occurs for age-specifi c death rates. consider a population in which all births occur in bursts at 0.2 year intervals, as before, but in which all deaths occurring during some base year occur at exactly the midpoint of a single year of age between 0 and 99 years. suppose that, at the end of this base year, age at death within each age group begins to increase linearly at the rate of 0.2 years per year for all persons, and ceases increasing at the end of the year, resulting in the pattern of life lines shown in fi gure 4. assume further, for the moment, that annual numbers of births to the population have been constant, at least from time (t – 1) – (x + 2) to time (t + 2) – (x – 1) , and that the proportion of deaths in any birth cohort that occur at the i-th age at death is constant over all cohorts. these two assumptions imply that each “dot” in fi gure 4 represents the same number of deaths. 1 oral statement of norman b. ryder. fig. 3c: lexis diagram detail illustrating “bumping” (0.05 year intervals) 1925 1926 calendar year 59.8 60 60.2 age● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● source: own design • griffith feeney490 let nx denote the number of persons reaching exact age x during each of the three years shown, and let dx denote the number of deaths during the fi rst and third years. the number of deaths during the middle year is 20 % less than dx. person years lived at age x in completed years in the fi rst through the third years are nx –0.5dx, nx –0.4dx, and nx –0.3dx, respectively, whence the age-specifi c death rates for the three years are the subtracted terms in the denominators represent person years not lived by the persons who die at age x in completed years. because of the rise in age at death, this term declines each year. the quantities (1) may be expressed as where qx denotes dx / nx, the proportion of persons reaching exact age x who die before reaching exactly age x + 1. with high life expectancy at birth, values for young and middle adult ages will be on the order of 0.01 or 0.001, the value of 1/qx will be 100 to 1,000, and the impact of the subtractions in the denominator will be negligible. this shows that, for the hypothesized model population, age-specifi c death rates for all but the oldest ages will decline by approximately 20 % between year t – 1 and year t and rise by approximately 25 % between year t and year t + 1. the result is approximate rather than exact only because of the slight differences in the denominators. this temporary decline in age-specifi c death rates is a tempo effect. it results from a decline in the numerators of the rates rather than from an increase in their denominators. figure 4 shows length of life increasing at the same rate in each of the three age groups shown, but this is inessential to the logic of the argument. if the ages of death in the three age groups increase at different rates, different numbers of deaths will be “bumped” and the magnitude of the tempo effect will vary from one age group to another. given the requisite information, however, these rates and the corresponding numbers of bumped deaths may be calculated exactly for each age group. in particular, with uniform births, the number of deaths at age x will be defl ated by the factor 1 – rx, where rx denotes the rate of increase in age at death for age x. we see, then, that tempo effects operate for age-specifi c death rates exactly as they do for the crude death rate in the simple case in which all deaths to every cohort occur at a single exact age. given suffi ciently detailed data, tempo adjustments may be made age-specifi cally. the assumption of a constant rate of increase in length of life in adult ages made in bongaarts and feeney (2002, 2003) is a good xx x d5.0n d , xx x d4.0n d8.0 , and xx x d3.0n d . (1) 5.0q/1 1 x , 4.0q/1 8.0 x , and 3.0q/1 1 x , (2) mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 491 approximation for high life expectancy populations, but tempo effects are not restricted to or in any way dependent on this assumption. they may be observed in any population and at any level of life expectancy at birth. 5 approximating empirical populations the model populations considered above are obviously artifi cial, and have been constructed specifi cally to reveal the operation of mortality tempo effects. is it valid to infer, on the basis of these models, that tempo effects occur in empirical populations? it is shown in this section that any empirical population may be approximated by a model population having all the essential characteristics of the model populations discussed above. tempo effects may not be visible in empirical populations as they are in fi gure 4, but they occur in the same way, and may be revealed in the same way, by constructing an approximating model population. the model construction is as follows. (1) “adjust” the time of birth of every member of the population to the nearest multiple of ∆ years, ∆ > 0, with any births occurring exactly half way between two such times adjusted to the following multiple. (2) select an initial birth cohort and an initial set of age intervals and compute the proportions of deaths that occur in each age interval for this initial cohort. fig. 4: lexis diagram detail illustrating deaths at multiple ages t−1 t t+1 t+2 calendar year age x−1 x x+1 x+2 source: own design • griffith feeney492 (3) defi ne age intervals for each following cohort in such a way that the proportion of deaths occurring in each age interval for the cohort equals the proportion of deaths in the corresponding age interval in the fi rst cohort. (4) “adjust” the age at death for every person in every cohort to the average age at death for persons dying in the same “customized” age interval in this cohort. these four steps defi ne a model population that approximates the empirical population, but for which (1) all births occur in bursts at ∆ year intervals, (2) all deaths to members of any cohort occur at one of a fi xed number of exact ages (different ages, in general, for different cohorts), and (3) the proportion of total deaths that occur at the i-th age is the same for all cohorts. note that the “customized” age groups of the preceding paragraph are a temporary “scaffolding” used to construct the model. they make no appearance in the fi nal result. imagine now the lexis diagram representation of this approximating model population in the manner of fi gure 4. if length of life in the empirical population does not change, the diagram will consist of cohort lines and dots representing deaths, like those in fi gure 4, but with all rows of dots falling on horizontal lines. if length of life increases, some or all of the rows of dots will turn down to higher ages at death. if length of life decreases, some or all of the rows of dots will turn up to lower ages. it is possible that, for a time, different rows of dots move in different directions. by construction, however, the rows of dots can never cross each other because i-th row, numbering from the top, corresponds to deaths occurring at the i-age age at death within each cohort. a model population constructed in this way will present a more complex picture than fi gures 4 in three respects. first, cohorts sizes will not in general be the same, so the number of deaths represented by the points for the i-th age at death for different cohorts will not necessarily be the same. second, the series of dots for the i-th age at death will in general move irregularly. third, when calendar years and single years of age are marked off, the series of points will not necessarily remain within single years of age during calendar years. the fi rst difference complicates the derivation of general formulas, but tempo affects may be calculated directly, given the requisite data, by the method indicated above. the second difference may be addressed by making the series of dots piecewise linear. the third difference requires consideration of “bumping” to the next age group as well as to the next year. these differences between empirical populations and the approximating model populations complicate the calculation of tempo effects, and require unconventionally detailed data, but they do not affect the essential conclusion that increasing (declining) length of life results in a temporary decline (increase) in age-specifi c death rates. mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 493 6 discussion the single age at death example of paragraph 2 shows how tempo effects operate when they take the form of a steady increase in the interval between two events. (there are of course other kinds of tempo effects, due for example to temporary postponement of births due to social disruption or temporary increases in numbers of deaths due to war or epidemics; the analysis in this paper does not apply to tempo effects of this kind.) when length of life increases, intervals between deaths rise above corresponding intervals between births. the number of deaths occurring during any particular time period is therefore less than it would have been if the rise in length of life had not occurred. a modest increase in length of life (0.2 years per year) substantially decreases the number of deaths (by 20 %). this establishes the existence of mortality tempo effects, but the age-specifi c example of paragraph 4 is required to demonstrate their importance. the age-specifi c example shows that, for a model population similar to empirical populations, mortality tempo operates in essentially the same way as in the single age at death example. the procedure of paragraph 5 for approximating empirical populations effectively extends this result to all populations. it is worth revisiting fi gure 4 and formula (2) with some specifi c magnitudes. for united states females in the year 2000, qx values for ages 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 were, respectively, 0.0015, 0.0032, 0.0080, .0200 and 0.0506 (bell/miller 2002; the tables are for the united states social security area). for the fi rst four of these ages, the change in the denominator between the fi rst and the last year is all but negligible. with q70 = 0.02, for example, the age-specifi c death rate for age 70 declines from 0.020202 in the fi rst year to 0.020121 in the last year, a decline of 0.4 %. even with q80 = 0.05, the decline is only 1.0 %. in contrast, the change in the numerator – the tempo effect – is 20 %. it is diffi cult escape the conclusion that age-specifi c death rates are a poor indicator of changing length of life. length of life over the three year period rises by 0.2 years, for the age groups shown, and the difference between the age-specifi c rates in the fi rst and last year, though variable and increasing with age, is only 1 % even at age 80 years. during the middle year, however, the age-specifi c death rate is 20 % lower than the rates in both the fi rst and the third year. an assessment of length of life based on these rates will evidently be very wide of the mark (see empirical estimates of tempo-adjusted life expectancy in luy/wegner 2009). hence, tempo effects might have signifi cant impact on the analysis of mortality trends and differentials as demonstrated by luy (2006, 2008). for the case of mortality differences between eastern and western germany, he has shown that the picture drawn by tempo-adjusted life expectancy differs from that painted by conventional life expectancy. moreover, he concluded that the tempo-adjusted fi gures better fi t expected trends in changing mortality and self-reported health among eastern and western germans than the conventional fi gures. the conclusion, then, seems clear: when length of life is increasing, age-specifi c death rates are “too low”, in the sense that they are much lower than they will be when (if) length of life stops increasing. and if length of life is decreasing, age• griffith feeney494 specifi c death rates are “too high”, in the sense that they are much higher than they will be when length of life stops decreasing. this conclusion has striking implications for population dynamics. in the classical view, a cessation of change in age-specifi c death rates signals that change in length of life has ceased. the result of fi xed age-specifi c death rates from this point in time forward is a more or less extended period during which the population age distribution moves toward equilibrium with the age-specifi c mortality risks. but if age-specifi c death rates are “too low” when length of life is increasing, it is illogical to stipulate that they will remain constant when length of life stops increasing. tempo effects imply that age-specifi c death rates will change when length of life stops increasing, specifi cally, that they will rise. referring again to fi gure 4 above, consider what will happen in the future if there is no further change in length of life. the obvious answer is that the ages at death to the right of those shown will be the same as the rightmost point in the plot. the point here is not whether this will happen, but that this is the only thing we can reasonably understand by “no further change”. but this implies that, for the uniform births case, at least, the population age distribution will cease to change as soon as the increase in lifetime stops. 7 conclusion in the classical view, mortality is defi ned by risks of death, captured empirically by age-specifi c death rates. the idea that these rates can be “too low” seems to undermine concepts and tools for the analysis of mortality that have been established for well over a century. this is an alarming prospect. let us strive to assimilate it. tempo effects, long recognized and accepted in the study of fertility, appear to be equally pertinent to the study of mortality, and in fact, to the study of demographic events generally. if this is so, they are pertinent not only to demographic analysis generally, but to all disciplines that work with similar concepts, such as biostatistics, failure theory and multivariate hazards modeling in economics and sociology. age-specifi c death rates (and occurrence-exposure rates generally) embody the principle of exposure to risk, arguably the most fundamental principle of classical demographic measurement. the principle is simply that numbers of events must be assessed in relation to the numbers of persons who might have experienced these events and the length of time during which they might have experienced these events. the mortality tempo argument suggests that numbers of events must also be assessed in relation to changes in the tempo of these events, and that this is conceptually as fundamental as the principle of exposure to risk. the principle of exposure to risk is recognized by dividing numbers of events by the appropriate “exposure”. exposure to risk deals with denominators. changes in tempo change the number of events in the numerators of occurrence-exposure rates and must be controlled for by a suitable “tempo adjustment”. tempo effects work on numerators. mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic • 495 in classical demographic analysis, length of life is a residual quantity: it is what is left when the various risks of death have played themselves out. this is refl ected in the most fundamental terminology of the subject. we speak fi rst of “mortality”, not of length of life. (arguably it should be the other way around.) deaths and death rates come fi rst. length of life comes only later, on incorporating death rates into a life table. the mathematics of this way of thinking was developed long ago and becomes second nature to anyone trained in demography. this way of thinking is nonetheless a model. it is not the actuality. the actuality consists simply of pairs of numbers giving time of birth and time of death for all persons in a suitably defi ned set of persons. the familiar model provides a very useful way to think about the actuality and to work with human mortality data. it is not the only model, however, as euclidian geometry is the only geometry, and it may not be the only useful model. consideration of tempo effects suggests that it may be useful to model length of life more directly, to develop mathematical models in which “increments to life” rather than “risks of death” play the fundamental role (see feeney 2006). references bell, felicitie c.; miller, michael 2002: life tables for the united states social security area 1900-2100. in: actuarial study 116. washington, dc: united states social security administration. [http://www.ssa.gov/oact/notes/actstud.html, 30.09.2003]. bongaarts, john 2005: five period measures of longevity. in: demographic research 13,21: 547-558 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2005.13.21]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 1998: on the quantum and tempo of fertility. in: population and development review 24,2: 271-291 [doi: 10.2307/2807974]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2002: how long do we live? in: population and development review 28,1: 13-29 [doi: 16.1111/j.1728-4457.2002.00013.x]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2003: estimating mean lifetime. in: proceedings of the national academy of science 100,23: 13127-13133 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.2035060100]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2006: the quantum and tempo of life-cycle events. in: vienna yearbook of population research: 115-151 [doi: 10.1553/populationyearbook2006s115]. feeney, griffi th 2006: increments of life and mortality tempo. in: demographic research 14,2: 27-46 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2006.14.2]. feeney, griffi th; mason, andrew 2001: population in east asia. in: mason, andrew (eds.): population change and economic development in east asia: challenges met, opportunities seized. stanford, california: stanford university press: 61-95. goldstein, joshua r. 2006: found in translation? a cohort perspective on tempoadjusted life expectancy. in: demographic research 14,5: 71-84 [doi: 10.4054/ demres.2006.14.5]. guillot, michel 2006: tempo effects in mortality: an appraisal. in: demographic research 14,1: 1-26 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2006.14.1]. horiuchi, shiro 2005: tempo effect on age-specifi c death rates. in: demographic research 13,8: 189-200 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2005.13.8]. • griffith feeney496 luy, marc 2006: mortality tempo-adjustment: an empirical application. in: demographic research 15,21: 561-590 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2006.15.21]. luy, marc 2008: mortality tempo-adjustment: theoretical considerations and an empirical application. in: barbi, elisabetta; bongaarts, john; vaupel, james w. (eds.): how long do we live? demographic models and refl ections on tempo effects. berlin et al.: springer: 203-233. luy, marc; wegner, christian 2009: conventional versus tempo-adjusted life expectancy – which is the more appropriate measure for period mortality? in: genus 65,2: 1-28. preston, samuel h.; heuveline, patrick; guillot, michel 2001: demography. measuring and modeling population processes. oxford: blackwell. ryder, norman b. 1956: problems of trend determination during a transition in fertility. in: milbank memorial fund quarterly 34,1: 5-21. ryder, norman b. 1964: the process of demographic translation. in: demography 1,1: 74-82. vaupel, james w. 2002: life expectancy at current rates vs. current conditions: a refl exion stimulated by bongaarts and feeney’s ‘how long do we live?’. in: demographic research 7,8: 365-377 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2002.7.8]. vaupel, james w. 2005: lifesaving, lifetimes and lifetables. in: demographic research 13,24: 597-614 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2005.13.24]. wachter, kenneth w. 2005: tempo and its tribulations. in: demographic research 13,9: 201-222 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2005.13.9]. zeng, yi; land, kenneth c. 2002: adjusting period tempo changes with an extension of ryder’s basic translation equation. in: demography 39,2: 269-285 [doi: 10.1353/ dem.2002.0022]. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article by the federal institute for population research and dr. marc luy is available under the title “tempo-effekte in der mortalität: ein wegweiser für skeptiker”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-12de or urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2010-12de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 04.08.2010 date of acceptance: 21.09.2010 griffi th feeney, ph.d. ( ). scarsdale solutions inc., 9 fairview road, scarsdale, new york 10583, usa. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved editorial on the special issue “rethinking migration in times of economic crisis in europe” felicitas hillmann, anne v. oswald, andrea schmelz the cpos special issue presented here is the result of a two-day international conference entitled “rethinking migration in times of economic crisis in europe”, which was outlined by the coordinators of this issue and held at the haus der kulturen der welt in berlin in december 2010. starting point was the question, to what extent the atnt the at that point subsiding economic crisis impacted upon the employment of migrants? could an interrelationship between the economicand fi nancial crisis and the employment situation of migrants even be established? and were there any comparable historical precedents or perhaps regional examples for dealing with such crisis situations? in the years 2009 and 2010, international organisations such as the oecd, ilo or the world bank noted in their reports that the economic crisis affects the most vulnerable population groups in particular, to which one can also count migrants , to which one can also count migrants and refugees solely because of their different legal status. in the autumn of 2010, and refugees solely because of their different legal status. in the autumn of 2010, the migration policy institute stated that two years after the crisis, both legal and illegal immigration into eu countries • had slowed down considerably, in various countries, certain immigrant groups were predominantly confront-• ed with the effects of the crisis on the labour market (e.g. in spain, the north african immigrants and the latin american migrants; in great britain, the immigrants from bangladesh and india), furthermore, men – especially young men – were more strongly affected by • the crisis-ridden developments than women, because they were generally employed in more crisis-prone sectors, such as construction or certain industries that are highly susceptible to changes in the economy, remittances by migrants to their countries of origin declined signifi cantly. • the recipient countries were thus particularly affected by the indirect effects of the crisis. the annual oecd report on the development of immigration and emigration (“migration outlook”) also informed about the growing diffi culties of the foreign population on the labour markets of industrialised countries. according to this report, the labour market integration of migrants experienced a particularly strong deceleration in those countries which had been most severely affected by earlier recessions (usa, britain, ireland and spain): as a consequence, unemployment rose comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 3-8 (date of release: 08.11.2012) © federal institute for population research 2012 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-04en6 • felicitas hillmann, anne v. oswald, andrea schmelz4 faster among the migrant population than among the native population, as the migrants were more strongly represented in cyclical industries, especially in manufacturing and construction. furthermore, migrants were under higher risk to become unemployed, as they are generally more likely to work under temporary contracts, on average have a lower level of education and are more commonly employed in small and cyclically vulnerable companies. furthermore, the oecd report pointed out the higher risks for self-employed migrants: they frequently have less fi nancial reserves than the native entrepreneurs and thus can hardly compensate economic crises under their own power. as another reason for the decreasing presence of migrants in the labour market, the report also contemplated discrimination. it becomes apparent that, in order to grasp the complexity of migration in times of economic crisis, an isolated observation of jobrelated migration is not suffi cient. especially in times of crisis, possible connections between the various forms of migration are utilised, as for example through applications for and granting of visas or through circular migration. focusing solely on the changes within one form of migration would be insuffi cient, because usually different forms of migration develop in relation to each other and are related to other subfi elds of action. to give an example: if, due to crisis-indicating developments in a country, no more visas are being granted for certain segments of the labour market, it may happen that the number of family reunifi cations increases. so, we argue that the understanding of migration is in need of a comprehensive and methodologically open approach. the articles presented in this special issue approach this complex topic from different methodological perspectives. while the contributions of christiane kuptsch as well as dirk godenau (in collaboration with dita vogel, vesela kovacheva and yan wu) attempt an analysis of the status quo based on available quantitative data, the case studies by irial glynn and piotr plewa present a historical comparison of the economic crises of 2008 as well as 2009 with the crisis in the 1930s and the so-called oil crisis in 1973/74. two further contributions of dirk hoerder and marketa rulikova refer to migration as individual strategies and to the signifi cance of transnationalism. these studies have primarily applied qualitative methods and only cursorily use quantitative data. christiane kuptsch’s piece deals with the crisis-related labour market policy for migrants in europe from a macroeconomic perspective. on the basis of available eu-statistics, the author shows how much the economic crisis has slowed down worldwide economic growth and how these changes have considerably affected sectors with particularly high employment of migrants. the impact of the economic crisis can be clearly proven. christiane kuptsch inquires about the differences and similarities of the various national migration policies with a focus on six case countries (ireland, spain, united kingdom, italy, france and czech republic) and distinguishes the data according to the options “return, onward migration or permanent settlement”. these are implemented in the form of existing regulations, adaptations of existing regulations or new regulations within the migration policies of the respective countries. kuptsch shows very clearly that, due to existing bilateral or multilateral agreements, an immediate action is not readily possible in most rethinking migration in times of economic crisis in europe • 5 countries and how different shortand long-term measures are designed. some countries have seized the “opportunity” of the crisis by implementing long-planned re-regulations. the author further emphasizes how these countries, as actors in migration policy, have acted more strongly in favour of migrants during the crisis and have thus actively pursued the structures of future labour market policy. the contribution of dirk godenau in cooperation with dita vogel, vesela kovacheva and yan wu places its analytical focus on the comparison between spain and germany. the authors have thus chosen two contrasting examples of the impact of the global crisis on national labour markets and on migrants. here, the two structural features sector (according to nace1-classifi cation) and economic growth are connected to immigration processes. at the same time, the public discourse on immigration is examined. by comparing the chosen economies, this article illustrates how much the global crisis is regulated by the national organisation of the labour market and by the access of migrants to labour markets. even more so, it shows how strongly, in the context of the economic crisis, the public discourse is drawn to the issue of “migration” and how this discourse runs almost independently from economic development. the two historical articles of irial glynn and piotr plewa attempt a comparison between the economic crisis 2008/09, the great depression in the 1930s (glynn), the oil crisis in the early 1970s (glynn/plewa) and the fi nancial crisis in the early 1980s (glynn). methodologically, historical comparisons can be delicate. they do, however, bring with them the added value of a sharp refl ection on how to deal with migrants and refugees in times of crisis. in his comparison, glynn analyses the infl uence of intergovernmental organisations in nation states and their approach in dealing with refugees in times of economic recession and depression: what infl uence did the league of nations during the great depression in the 1930s have on national politics and policies regarding jewish refugees? and, in comparison to the league of nations, what scope of action did the european commission have in regard to refugee and migration policy? the author compares the crisis in 1973/74, in the early 1980s and in 2008/09. glynn concludes that despite increasing power of the european commission towards the individual eu countries, the safety issue concerning migration of the “unwanted” stands in the foreground, and other possible scopes of actions are not used. when dealing with migrants, “more power, less sympathy” is the central approach, which irial glynn investigates regarding the european commission in comparison to the league of nations. with the onset of the economic crisis 2008/09, spain introduced return programmes for migrants. the contribution of plewa concentrates on this aspect of the correlation between economic crisis and migration and compares voluntary return programmes with similar programmes implemented by other european countries in the 1970s and 1980s. financial incentives, which were aimed at encouraging migrants to return to their home country, have been trialled in france, germany, the 1 nomenclature générale des activités economiques dans l’union européene (classifi cation of the economic activities in the european community). • felicitas hillmann, anne v. oswald, andrea schmelz6 netherlands and belgium since the oil crisis in 1973/74. among these, france has developed the most elaborate set of regulations. plewa compiles existing knowledge about the effects of these repatriation programmes by calling on statistical reports and by interviewing ngos operating in this fi eld. generally, fi nancial incentives were given or return tickets were paid for. drawing on these experiences, spain developed repatriation programmes, which were either aimed at unemployed migrants, followed a humanitarian approach or offered opportunities for investments in the home country. plewa is interested in the logic behind the migrants’ e migrants’ decisions to return to their home country or to remain in spain. he sums up that decisions to return to their home country or to remain in spain. he sums up that many migrants were still better provided for in spain than in their country of ori-many migrants were still better provided for in spain than in their country of origin and that many even accepted precarious work conditions. the return options gin and that many even accepted precarious work conditions. the return options of the migrants differed greatly depending on the country of origin: for instance, of the migrants differed greatly depending on the country of origin: for instance, in the face of emerging unrest back in their home countries, migrants frin the face of emerging unrest back in their home countries, migrants from north africa were hardly interested in a return, although they formed the majority of unemployed migrants. overall, the expectations of politicians regarding the positive effects of these programmes do not seem to have been fulfi lled, which the author ascribes to the persistence generated by the general structure of the labour market. this in turn shows the close relationship between labour market and migration policies and thus the diffi culty of political intervention without creating unwanted “side effects”. the article of dirk hoeder seizes this perspective on the analysis of migration processes – namely the close relationship between migration and other areas of social regulation – and investigates the historical embeddedness of migration processes. from his point of view, it is scientifi cally less relevant that migrants themselves feel uprooted. instead, attributions and ideologies, which accompany the migration processes, are rather in the focus of his research interest. hoerder pointedly looks at historical events, such as the oil crisis in 1973/74 or the crisis in 2008/09, and describes them as events produced by the elites. hoerder criticises that, historically, mass migrations have not been adequately placed in the context of prevailing ideologies. as a consequence, there are tendencies to underestimate the effects of the 2008/09-crisis on migrants. he attributes this to the strong national fi xation of migration research and argues that from the migrant’s point of view, relocation essentially takes place between two places and not between two states. therefore, hoerder is interested in the transcultural dimension of migration and in the existing global inequalities, which is being expressed through agency and through the ideological construction of “others”. here, hoerder argues not only as a historian, he also cautions citizens to look more closely and recommends a stronger political interpretation of global mass migration. marketa rulikova directs her attention more on the individual situation of migrants in the context of the crisis. based on a case study of the czech republic, rulikova investigates the effects of the economic crisis in 2008/09 on labour migrants, both on the policy-level and on the level of coping strategies of migrants. the czech republic itself is a new country of immigration within the eu, which – unlike most european immigration countries – has only recently started to gather experience in international migration and integration policy. in times of economic crisis, the czech rethinking migration in times of economic crisis in europe • 7 republic actually resorts to the “classical” approach of return programmes, as it had already been practised in germany or spain in the 1970s and 1980s (see also plewa). rulikova analyses to what extent the return programme was taken advantage of by migrants. in addition, she presents the results of an ethnographic study, by migrants. in addition, she presents the results of an ethnographic study, which deals with the different reactions to the economic crisis of migrant workers which deals with the different reactions to the economic crisis of migrant workers from the vietnamese, ukrainian and mongolian migrant communities in prague. it from the vietnamese, ukrainian and mongolian migrant communities in prague. it is not surprising that the limited material benefi ts of this not surprising that the limited material benefi ts of the offi cial return programme in the czech republic were only claimed by a small number of migrants. during the crisis, unemployed migrants preferred to stay within their respective communities or take on irregular work contracts, rather than returning to their poverty-stricken countries of origin. rulikova exposes the individually complex reasons for remaining in the czech republic, despite diffi cult living conditions, and thus places agency of migrants at the centre of her analysis. all in all, the various analyses and case studies presented in this special issue show, that crisis-induced short-term policy responses aimed at averting immigration as well as repatriation programmes can only partially infl uence the medium and long-term structural need of migrants. instead, crises create new migration dynamics and adaptation strategies of migrants. looking at it from a migrant point of view, economic crises oftentimes mean a further deterioration of the already diffi cult living conditions. as far as the political situation allows it, migrants are seeking ways to change their circumstances, again and again even accepting high personal risks. however, on a national level, many countries react to the economic crisis by further specifying existing policies or by reducing visa issues for various labour market segments. the articles presented in this issue show that, so far, there are yet no joint “european” solutions for dealing with the effects of the economic crisis, but rather a number of differing national strategies. references iom 2009: the impact of the global economic crisis on migrants and migration. in: iom policy brief march 2009. geneva papademetriou, demetrios et al. 2010: migration and immigrants two years after the financial collapse: where do we stand? washington: the migration policy institute. oecd 2009: policy brief: international migration: charting a couse through the crisis. ort: oecd observer. sommerville, will; sumption, madeleine 2010: immigration in the united kingdom. the recession and beyond. equality and human rights commission. washington dc: migration policy institute. • felicitas hillmann, anne v. oswald, andrea schmelz8 prof. dr. felicitas hillmann ( ). fu berlin, institut für geographische wissenschaften, zelf, malteserstr. 74 100, 12249 berlin. e-mail: hillmann@zedat.fu-berlin.de, url: http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/geog/fachrichtungen/anthrogeog/zelf/mitarbeiterinnen/ hillmann dr. anne von oswald. netzwerk migration in europa e.v., limonenstr. 24, 12203 berlin. e-mail: oswald@network-migration.org, url: www.network-migration.org dr. andrea schmelz. netzwerk migration in europa e.v., limonenstr. 24, 12203 berlin. e-mail: schmelz@network-migration.org, url: www.network-migration.org © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths an analysis of the first and second wave of pairfam jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi abstract: bilocal relationships have lost their status as an exclusive living arrangement. they occur almost as frequently as unmarried cohabiting couples and can be found in virtually all social groups. nevertheless, they are characterised by a set of very specifi c traits. the causes behind the increasing number of bilocal relationships can on the one hand be seen in a tendency towards greater individualisation, i.e. the desire for greater individual autonomy, and on the other hand in increasing demands for work-related mobility, which can only be met by separate households. it is generally assumed that one defi ning characteristic of bilocal relationships is that they are rather short-lived and often merely seen as a temporary or stopgap solution. on the basis of the fi rst and second wave of the pairfam survey, the aim of this paper is to investigate the general circumstances of bilocal relationships and its implications for their future stability. the central question is which conditions lead to the continuation or the breakup of a bilocal relationship or to an eventual shared household. when looking at wave one and wave two in comparison (i.e. a time period of one year), profound changes have already occurred regarding continuation or breakup. from those bilocal relationships found in wave one, more than half of the age-group questioned had not changed their chosen relationship type. the smaller portion of respondents had separated and thus ended bilocality (just over 10 %). the remaining bilocal relationships had increased their level of institutionalisation by becoming spouses or cohabitants. as regarding the development from wave one to wave two, it becomes apparent through the results of a multivariate analysis that the general circumstances of older respondents should be judged differently than those of younger ones. the work-related constellation between the two partners, spatial proximity, educational homogamy, previous experience in cohabitating and intentions in regard to separation or moving in together are explaining factors for the continuation of a bilocal relationship, the set-up of a shared household or a breakup. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 429-462 (date of release: 07.03.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-08en0 • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi430 keywords: bilocal relationships · stability and instability of relationships · change in living arrangements · living apart together 1 living apart and leading an intimate relationship bilocal relationships, generally defi ned as partners with separate households, have become a relevant living arrangement in terms of quantity. when looking at the population aged between 20 and 75, almost as many bilocal relationships as unmarried cohabiting couples can be found. the reasons behind the rising numbers are often attributed to a higher need for mobility and fl exibility, but also to the wish for greater personal space within an intimate relationship. bilocal relationships are characterised by a set of very specifi c traits. these include low fertility intentions, acting the part of a couple and then again of an individual or living apart, either voluntary or due to certain circumstances that do not allow a shared household. distance between places of residence and frequency of contact are also variable criteria that characterise the bilocal relationship. here, distances and contact frequency can range from low to high. the term bilocal relationship refers to a relationship consisting of two partners who at the time of the interview did not have a shared household. at the same time, both partners should defi ne the situation as an intimate relationship and are thus merely separated spatially. in recent literature on couples with separate households, four central factors can be found, on the basis of which bilocal relationships are identifi ed: firstly, one requirement is the existence of separate households (two different addresses). here, it is not relevant whether the couple is married or having a joint budget, as opposed to statements in previous works where bilocal relationships have been described as a living arrangement of unmarried couples (schlemmer 1995: 363). in the present study, both married and unmarried couples can belong to the group defi ned as bilocal relationships. secondly, it depends on the duration of the relationship. frequently, at least a year is required before a couple is defi ned as being in a bilocal relationship. thirdly, the couple should declare itself as being in a committed relationship, and haskey (2005: 36) adds the presence of a sexual relationship as a requirement. however, it is not relevant whether the couple is in a hetero or homosexual relationship. fourthly, the couple should be recognised as such by other couples, meaning for example that the partner is accepted by the circle of friends. several authors have used further or other defi nitions in their works that only specify the existence of two separate households. the defi nition of schmitz-köster (1990: 20-21), for example, is frequently applied. it defi nes long-distance relationships as “married and unmarried couples, who voluntarily or involuntarily, temporarily or permanently have no shared household or economic community” (translated by cpos). hans-joachim hoffmann-nowotny chose a different approach to stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 431 the topic in which the existence of separate households was given less weight. he rather accentuated the fact of specifi c spheres of life. in the context of the so-called living apart together relationships, his focus lies on “the substantial autonomy of lifestyles and activities that are only minimally coordinated” (hoffmann-nowotny 1995: 341-342, translated by cpos). separate households are only the most obvious expression of this living arrangement. further overviews of defi nitions and concepts are found in lichti (2006: 7-9) and peuckert (2008: 78-83). regarding the terminology, the term living apart together prevailed for a long time. the authors have decided to use huinink’s and konietzka’s (2007: 31) term bilocal relationships while at the same time not giving up living apart together (dorbritz 2009: 36), the justifi cation for this being that the term living apart together only covers a specifi c part of the relationships with separate households. living apart together is understood as couples who have a short-distance relationship, who can reach the place of their partner relatively quickly and who have more frequent face-to-face contacts. despite separate households, the emphasis here is on the “together”. long-distance relationships should be distinguished in their defi nition, as the two partners in this kind of relationship act both as a couple as well as singles. they are characterised by less frequent contacts and greater distances between place of residence. the distinction between living apart together and longdistance relationships is essential for the characterisation of bilocal relationships because they represent two important trends of social change – i.e. an increasing individualisation of living arrangements and a growing demand for mobility. it is the living arrangement in which intimacy and independence are perfectly compatible. as a consequence, the couple does not have to deal with the typical problems that might arise when living together (peuckert 2008: 79). schneider (2009: 679) portrays the situation as follows: “the partners enter into a solid relationship, but want to keep their distance because they deem greater individual autonomy and personal freedom as important and fear that these might be affected by moving in together” (translated by cpos). on the other hand, increasing work-related mobility and career aspirations force couples to live relatively far apart in two separate households. in this case, private life is adapted to fl exibility and career requirements. thus, longdistance relationships are often formed on an involuntary basis. bilocal relationships are generally referred to as the living arrangement which is best adjusted to the conditions of a postmodern society. at the same time, the probability is very low that bilocal relationships are maintained on a permanent basis. the following investigations are based on data provided by pairfam – panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics, which started as a panel in 2008 and allows, inter alia, a differentiated analysis of the situation of bilocal couples. bilocal relationships were reconstructed as follows: the respondents should show separate households, whereas those relationships which had only formed in the year of the fi rst wave were excluded from the analysis. the question was designed in a way that only people responded who themselves defi ne their relationship as intimate. the criterion for the defi nition as a couple was “overnight stays” (more often than never at least one month prior to the survey). pairfam does not include a variable for the fourth criterion, i.e. whether the two people who consider • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi432 themselves as a couple are also recognised as such by others. due to the number of cases, an explicit distinction between living apart together and long-distance relationships cannot be made in the survey design. therefore, only the term bilocal relationship will be used hereafter, which should be understood as an umbrella term for both the categories living apart together and long-distance relationships. the following research questions will be answered in this article: 1. what perspectives do bilocal relationships have in the context of a continuation, a break-up or an eventual set-up of a shared household? 2. are there certain conditions that promote either a continuation, a break-up or an eventual set-up of a shared household? the paper is structured as follows: in the next section, the current state of research will be reviewed shortly, complementing the defi nition of terminology outlined above. after having laid out the hypotheses in the third chapter, the fourth chapter will deal with the general approach. in sections 5 (prevalence of bilocal relationships in comparison to other ways of life) and 6 (bivariate analyses), descriptive fi ndings are presented. chapter 7 then outlines the results of a multinomial regression in order to explain the development of bilocal relationships within one year. finally, the paper will end with a discussion about the results presented here. 2 stability of bilocal relationships – literature review one of the defi ning characteristics of bilocal relationships is their instability. the literature on family-demographics shows a range of fi ndings on this. using data from the german socio-economic panel, asendorpf (2008: 762) proved that bilocal relationships are by far the least stable, compared to other types of relationships. the probability of separation was determined as 50 % for a time period of 6 years. the generations and gender survey1 (ggs) also shows a relatively short duration of this type of relationship (dorbritz 2009: 40). here, the average duration of bilocal relationships is 3.3 years in the age group of 20 to 75 year olds. one the one hand, the short duration of bilocal relationships might point towards a high frequency of separation. on the other hand, the end of a bilocal relationship does not necessarily mean the end of the relationship itself, that is to say, when couples move in together. the characteristics of instability and short duration are well-known. however, the causes of high instability have hardly been investigated so far. as an explanation for this, the literature gives a number of reasons. it is often assumed that bilocal relationships are not designed as a permanent living arrangement in the fi rst place. they are prevalent among younger people who are still in a decision or orientation phase (peuckert 2008: 82). it is likely that especially for younger people – albeit being in a bilocal relationship – the search for a suitable 1 cf. http://www.bib-demografi e.de/cln_090/nn_750130/de/forschung/ggs/ggs__node.html?__ nnn=true stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 433 partner is still on-going. in this context, it is noted that there is a high proportion of students among couples in bilocal relationships. schneider and ruckdeschel (2003: 247) have found that some of the bilocal relationships are long-distance relationships, that their formation can be attributed to the constraints of the labour market and that they can therefore be characterised as involuntary in regard to having to keep separate households. if these constraints are mitigated by fi nding two appropriate workplaces in close vicinity of a chosen place of residence, this means the end of bilocality, but usually not the end of the relationship. another reason for the emergence of bilocal relationships is seen in the changing ideals of relationships and a weakened standardisation of behaviour through the social institution of marriage, where the traditional family model is given less weight as an aim of action. as part of this trend towards individualisation, personal factors have gained considerable infl uence in the choice for a certain living arrangement. bilocal couples are the manifestation of a life style in which the perception of greater individual independence is of particular importance to the community of the couple. they are relationships with an emotional and individual distance, which are characterised by a certain reluctance toward too much closeness and by an increased attentiveness to possible unwanted infl uences by the partner (schneider 2009: 679). in this respect, a bilocal relationship is a living arrangement which is lived with emotions at bay and with free spaces for both partners. it is a strongly individualised form of private life, where specifi c ideas about gender roles and life with children can be assumed. this kind of a bilocal relationship is voluntary and is thus given a unique character as a living arrangement, which is also accompanied by a greater degree of stability. various studies show that single parents are involved in the “instability” of bilocal relationships in a special way. after the separation from one parent of the child (usually the father), a new relationship is started, usually as a bilocal relationship. therefore, singles are defi ned by lichti (2006: 35) as one of the three basic types of bilocal relationships, next to unmarried adolescents and elderly widowed persons. traub (2005) draws attention to the efforts of single mothers, for whom separate households are no ideal solution for a relationship, but rather a compromise, which should be ended by moving in together. the fact that persons in bilocal relationships always have to work on their shared commonalities, when coming together after having been in their own world of experience, is identifi ed as a core problem by wendl (2004: 1). “the most central of all challenges, therefore, is fi nding an individual way of communication – both for the time spent together as well as for the time apart. the couple should try to talk about and thus share the different positive as well as negative experiences of everyday life, such as feelings, expectations or hopes, fears and apprehensions, in order to be able to take part in the experience and feelings of the partner” (wendl 2004: 1, translated by cpos). this disadvantage is also recognised as such by the persons affected, who complain about low emotional support, loneliness, lack of daily assistance and the high costs for commuting (eberle 2004: 17). this can lead to dissatisfaction in the relationship. • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi434 in general, relationship satisfaction and its development pattern are essential for the continuation of bilocality or the eventual set-up of a shared household. in the literature, this is called “driven relationship”, an approach that goes back to surra and hughes (1997), which was not – however – specifi cally designed for bilocal relationships but for pre-marital relationship types. here, the process of becoming attuned to one another “develops slowly and steadily, controlled by positive episodes of interaction and a high satisfaction within the relationship” (kopp et al. 2010: 60, translated by cpos). a second pattern is called “event driven”. in this model, relationship development is subject to high fl uctuations, characterised by ambivalences, confl icts and setbacks. this is more likely to be the typical development of bilocal relationships and is an explaining factor for instability. the constant repetition of coming together and separating again, with two partners who do not share every day life most of the time, is likely to reinforce this aspect. if bilocal couples do not manage to handle this interdependency again and again, they are at high risk of separation. in this context, differing assumptions can be found in the literature. it is generally believed that interactions between the partners have a strong infl uence on relationship satisfaction. haustein and bierhoff (1999) suggest that cohabiting couples do effect spend more time together. however, bilocal couples spend time together more consciously, which leads to higher satisfaction in the relationship. in addition, it is assumed that everyday life in a shared household has a greater potential for confl ict than a weekend relationship (noyon/kock 2006: 29-30). eberle (2004: 14) reasons that relationship satisfaction in long-distance relationships is gender specifi c. behind this is the assumption that men are more interested in status and independence whereas women are more interested in commitment and intimacy. bilocal couples necessarily have a higher independence and autonomy within the relationship. eberle concludes from this that a long-distance relationship is a living arrangement that is preferred by men, but leads to a lower relationship satisfaction on the part of women. it is generally agreed upon the fact that cohabiting and bilocal couples have differing topics when arguing. to give an example, for bilocal couples, jealousy is more often a topic (freymeyer/otzelberger 2003). household chores, on the other hand, lead to arguments less frequently (noyon/kock 2006: 29-30). researchers believe that different perceptions of tidiness are tolerated, but housework is divided by gender with a higher burden on the women’s side, which leads to greater dissatisfaction. this result contradicts eberle’s assumption that bilocal relationships are the better relationship type for men. meyer and schulze reported in 1992 that women are solely responsible for their single household in bilocal relationships, which prevents confl icts. the results of the ggs prove that cohabiting and bilocal couples differ in terms of their confl ict potential (dorbritz 2009: 51). partners in bilocal relationships often argue about leisure time activities and parenting – if there are any children – and less often about their relationship to friends and alcohol consumption. different areas of confl ict need not necessarily lead to different satisfaction levels or to a higher or lower instability within the relationship. the reason for higher instability could also be the lower level of institutionalisation compared to married stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 435 – and even to unmarried – couples living together. bilocal relationships are naturally characterised by rare face-to-face contacts and spatial separation. this, for example, has an impact on expectations in regard to receiving and giving support, in regard to the integration into the nuclear family and kinship networks of the partner (diewald 1993) and also in regard to the emergence of separate groups of friends. the spatial situation generally leads to greater independence in private life. especially people in relationships with greater distances between places of residence often act as singles. in the literature, it is assumed that separate households lead to less of a commitment, especially because of limited opportunities to invest into the relationship (kopp et al. 2010: 58). this may result in separations. in addition to that, a separation is made easier if there is no shared household in the fi rst place that needs to be divided. one of the defi ning characteristics of bilocal relationships is that these couples rarely have children or that – compared to cohabiting couples – the women as well as the men in these relationships have a lower desire to have children. the generations and gender survey has shown that women in a bilocal relationship desire to have 1.5 children on average. cohabiting women would like to have 1.64 and married women 2.1 children on average (dorbritz 2009: 49). one of the most prominent reasons for these differences is the apprehension that a child might create a stronger bond to the partner. due to the fact that there are fewer parents among those couples in bilocal relationships and that the desire to have children is lower, there is no motive to move in together or to get married. principally, a closer look into the current literature shows that there is a research gap regarding the impact of the current living conditions on the development of bilocal relationships. therefore, the aim of this article is to identify the factors that have an infl uence on the stability or instability of bilocal relationships. those factors are looked for by analysing the circumstances of these living arrangements at the starting point and their impact on the results afterwards. 3 hypotheses the hypotheses in this paper are based on the idea that the development of a bilocal relationship is determined by a previous situation in the life course. depending on the initial situation, there is a higher risk of separation, a higher chance of setting up a shared household or of continuing the bilocal relationship. here, 12 months are regarded as a short time frame, which indeed is pre-determined by the data collection in the fi rst two waves of pairfam but nevertheless useful for empirically verifying the following hypotheses. the hypotheses are derived from various sociological approaches regarding the topic of family in order to explain stability of partnerships and the development of living arrangements, some of which are valid for all partnerships and were in part devised specifi cally for bilocal relationships. from a theoretical point of view, the hypotheses are based on the application of social exchange theory to relationship • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi436 stability, on the thesis of individualisation and the assumption of increasing mobility requirements in highly developed societies. social exchange theory suggests that living together in a relationship is seen as a rewarding exchange of resources by both partners. firstly, it includes premarital resources, such as the fi nancial situation, the family of origin as well as the circle of friends and secondly, socio-economic characteristics, such as employment, income, number of children and thirdly, characteristics of the relationship, such as emotional connectedness, interactions between the partners as well as mutual respect and appreciation (engelhardt 2002: 30). for bilocal relationships, it is assumed that the benefi t of this form of private lifestyle is that both partners can lead a loving relationship and at the same time realise their career aspirations. the thesis of individualisation assumes that “in the process of modernisation, individuals were liberated from tradititional and normative social structures (not just those of the family) in several stages” (huinink/konietzka 2007: 105). at the social level, this process is characterised by a de-institutionalisation of guiding social institutions. for individuals, this means an extension of options within a life course. looking at it from a relationship and family perspective, chances have increased that living arrangements deviating from that of the traditional family are becoming more common. this also includes the emergence of bilocal relationships, which beside job requirements may also refl ect the partners’ wish to lead a long-distance relationship. the decline in the standardisation of behaviour has enabled the increase in bilocal relationships, which in turn corresponds with the wish to lead longdistance relationships in individualised societies. this wish also arises on the basis of experiences in previous cohabiting relationships. in recent years, the increase in job-related mobility requirements has received growing attention from researchers. in a highly technological and global world, the labour market demands a high degree of fl exibility. besides this, career opportunities or avoidance of unemployment also play an important role. in addition, the entry of women into the labour market has become self-evident and with this, jobrelated mobility is increasingly posing a problem for relationships. those affected react in quite different ways to the growing mobility requirements. common forms are daily commuting, weekend commuting, long-distance relationships with separate households or relocations. however, in comparison to other forms of mobility, relocations are rather rare. the wish to keep the social environment constant rather leads to forms of commuting (ruppenthal/lück 2009:1). this form of mobility leads to a number of consequences for those concerned, such as health problems, a retraditionalisation of gender roles, impairments in voluntary commitment, decisions against parenthood and to the formation of bilocal relationships. according to the homogamy thesis, there is a tendency to choose a partner with the same or very similar socio-structural characteristics (huinink/konietzka 2007:128-129). this homogamy can be explained by the phenomenon that people often associate with social groups similar to themselves. thus, the chance to fi nd a partner who is socio-structurally matching increases. it is assumed that in a homogamous relationship both partners benefi t from the good match and as a consequence, relationship stability increases. in the context of bilocality, this is of major stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 437 signifi cance, as the likelihood of two people meeting who are at the same time professionally committed increases. if the workplaces are far apart and a change of job is not possible (at least temporarily), the probability of a couple to live in separate households rises. based on the approaches, assumptions about the infl uence of personal circumstances on the frequency of relationship separation or the stability of bilocal relationships have been made: hypothesis 1: if both partners are economically active, bilocal relationships have a higher chance to remain in this state, as no career changes and compromises have to be made. hypothesis 1 is based on the increasing demands for mobility in modern societies and on the social exchange theory. it is assumed that bilocal relationships are to a great extent due to work-related decisions. this primarily concerns long-distance relationships, which are characterised by relatively great spatial distances between the two households. both partners wish to continue the relationship, but at the same time do not want to give up their job. if it is not possible to fi nd two suitable workplaces close to one of the two households, then leading a bilocal relationship is the logical consequence. the desire to continue the relationship paired up with limited possibilities to fi nd acceptable jobs on the labour market, lead to a higher chance of continuation of the bilocal relationship. under the given conditions, both partners benefi t most with this type of relationship. hypothesis 2: the smaller the spatial distance between partners in a bilocal relationship, the more likely the set-up of a shared household. the greater proportion of bilocal relationships is covered by living apart together relationships, which are primarily entered into by young people in larger cities and are characterised by short spatial distances between households. from this perspective, living apart together relationships are a way to get to know each other and to test whether the setting-up of a shared household appears promising. therefore, shorter distances between partners facilitate the set-up of a shared household. hypothesis 3: the more homogamous a bilocal relationship, as measured by the level of education of both partners, the more likely the set-up of a shared household. a homogamous partner choice, meaning the tendency to choose a partner with the same social background (education, religion, age, socio-economic status), is a phenomenon that has long been known. here, the literature especially highlights the importance of educational homogamy. various studies show that the risk of divorce is low when educational homogamy is high (especially at higher education levels) (dieckmann/schmidheiny 2000). following this, we believe that if educational homogamy exists in bilocal relationships, there is a greater willingness to move into a shared household because there might be a stronger tendency to institutionalise. in the context of the job situation, homogamy might initially lead to an increase in the • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi438 risk of living in separate households. at the same time, however, homogamy is also a way to stabilise a relationship and thus increases the wish to move in together, if the general circumstances allow this. hypothesis 4: the higher the number of previous relationships, the higher the probability that the bilocal relationship is not transformed into a relationship with a shared household. with increasing relationship experience, especially with cohabitations, the likelihood that bilocal relationships remain permanently or at least last longer becomes greater, as previous separations may lead to negative associations with relationships in general. negative experiences might for instance be the costs and emotional strain when breaking up a shared household. therefore, the bilocal relationship is preferred as a type of relationship that ensures a greater degree of individual autonomy. hypothesis 5: the more a bilocal relationship is institutionalised, the greater the chance of set up of a shared household. bilocal relationships differ in their degree of institutionalisation, such as in the frequency of contact, the number of nights spent together as well as in the discussion of intentions to move in together. it can be assumed that planning and intention determine the future of bilocal relationships to a great extent, meaning if the set up of a shared household is intended by at least one partner, then it also has a higher chance of realisation. this also applies to the intention to end the relationship. hypothesis 6: the characteristics of bilocal relationships differ signifi cantly between the two birth cohorts observed (1981-1983 and 1971-1973). bilocality in younger people is more strongly connected to the living situation (still living with their parents), the dating phase (no set-up of a shared household in the phase of getting to know each other) and the education phase (vocational or higher education at different locations). in older people, it is the job situation (see hypothesis 1) and bilocality as a relationship ideal or as a stage after separation which determine the character of the relationship. furthermore, a higher stability of relationship is assumed in older people. 4 methodology and data basis this piece of work uses data from the fi rst and second wave (release 2.0) of the german family panel (pairfam). the project is run by josef brüderl, johannes huinink, bernhard nauck and sabine walper and has been sponsored as a long-term project by the german research foundation (dfg). a detailed description of pairfam can be found in huinink et al. (2011). for the analysis conducted here, the required variables of both data sets were combined. the fi rst wave of the survey took place in stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 439 the years 2008 and 2009, the second wave one year later. for this article, only the data from the interviews with the anchorpersons were used. these data were then cut down further to focus exclusively on the birth cohorts of 1981 to 1983 as well as 1971 to 1973. the youngest group from 1991 to 1993 was not considered, as they were still underage at the point of the survey and thus subject to different relationship conditions and situations than adults. basis for the construction of the dependent variable is the statement of the socalled anchorperson (main interviewed person – pairfam has a multi-actor design) that he or she is in an intimate relationship. a dichotomous variable was created, which consists of bilocal relationships on one and cohabitations on the other side. here, it was not taken into account whether the anchorperson is married or not. in the descriptive part of the article, the percentage distributions between several independent variables and bilocal relationships in the fi rst wave will be presented. for this purpose, the relevant information given by respondents in the survey was extracted from the data sets, meaning in a fi rst step those that stated to be in a relationship but do not cohabit with their partner. the group was then narrowed down further by selecting those whose relationship had already started in the year prior to the fi rst wave of the survey and who had stayed overnight at each others’ apartments at least one month prior to the survey on at least a rare or irregular basis. thus, respondents who had indicated that they “never” spent nights together in the month prior to the survey were excluded from the analysis. the bilocal relationships that were identifi ed in the procedure described above, thus provided the basis for the analysis and were studied in their development in the time period of one year. pairfaim records changes in living arrangements between wave 1 and 2. panel attrition has to be considered. this results in the dependent variable, which was used in the multivariate model. if a couple had moved in together prior to the second interview and if this was still the case at the point of the interview, the relevant cases were assigned to the category “set-up of shared household”. the same procedure was applied to separations which had occurred between wave 1 and wave 2. if a relationship was still bilocal at the end of wave 2, it was defi ned as continued. cases in which the bilocal relationship might have been transformed into a cohabitation to then be turned back to bilocality in the 12 months between wave 1 and wave 2 could not be detected. the categories of independent variables were combined for the most part, especially to take into account the small sample size in the multivariate model. for the group born between 1981 and 1983, this amounts to 350 cases (out of 4010 cases in this age group), and for the group born between 1971 and 1973, it was 109 cases (out of a possible 4054). the model shown in fi gure 1 can be seen as a conceptional model for studying the infl uence of general circumstances on the bilocal relationship. unfortunately, it could not be fully implemented due to a rather small sample size compared to the number of variables in the regression model. • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi440 fi g . 1 : fu ll m o d el r eg ar d in g th e in fl u en ce o f g en er al c ir cu m st an ce s o n th e p ro sp ec ts o f b ilo ca l r el at io n sh ip s s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n b ilo ca l r el at io ns hi ps e m pl oy m en t le ng th of re la tio ns hi p in st itu tio na lis at io n c on ta ct s, d is ta nc es c hi ld re n a ge d iff er en ce m ar ita ls ta tu s r el at io ns hi p ep is od es v al ue or ie nt at io n s ta tu s: e du ca tio n, in co m e t 1 = w av e 1 b re ak up c ha ng e or co nt in ua tio n of f ra m ew or k m ov in g in to ge th er c ou pl esp ec ifi c fra m ew or k t 2 = w av e 2 r el at io ns hi p st at us e m pl oy m en t le ng th of re la tio ns hi p in st itu tio na lis at io n c on ta ct s, d is ta nc es c hi ld re n a ge d iff er en ce m ar ita ls ta tu s r el at io ns hi p ep is od es v al ue or ie nt at io n s ta tu s: e du ca tio n, in co m e c ou pl esp ec ifi c fra m ew or k in te nt io ns to m ov e in to ge th er in te nt io ns to m ar ry s at is fa ct io n w ith re la tio ns hi p q ua lit y of re la tio ns hi p in te nt io ns to s ep ar at e in te nt io ns to m ov e in to ge th er in te nt io ns to m ar ry s at is fa ct io n w ith re la tio ns hi p q ua lit y of re la tio ns hi p in te nt io ns to s ep ar at e c on tin ua tio n t 2 = w av e 2 stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 441 5 prevalence of bilocal relationships compared to other living arrangements the structure of living arrangements and the occurrence of bilocal relationships differ signifi cantly in the two studied birth cohorts (see fi g. 2). in the younger age group, singles occupy the highest share with 31.8 %, followed by unmarried cohabiting couples. with 18.4 %, bilocal relationships are also high in numbers. this refl ects the fact that separate living plays an important role in the phase of getting to know each other and early relationship formation. the couples concerned might still be in education, but might also live in circumstances that do not allow a shared household (e.g. still living with the parents) or where a shared household is not (yet) desired. peuckert (2008: 79) assumes that due to the situation on the labour market and the extended periods of education, this living arrangements will lengthen in time among younger adults. in the older age groups, the image changes toward a dominance of married cohabiting couples, which make up 57.3 % in proportion. with 19.6 %, the second most important living arrangement are the singles. the proportion of bilocal relationships is reduced to 6.4 %. thus, the composition of living arrangements changes in the years of birth from 1971 to 1973. in pairfam, same-sex relationships are fig. 2: living arrangements of respondents in the age groups 25-27 (born between 1981-1983) and 35-37 (born between 1971-1973), in % of all anchorpersons 10 20 30 40 50 married cohabiting couples single unmarried cohabiting couples bilocal relationships rest 57.3 19.6 15.6 6.4 1.2 20.5 31.8 25.6 18.4 3.7 25-27 35-37 age at the time of wave 1 source: pairfam, own calculation • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi442 overall underrepresented. in the age group 25 to 27 years, there are only 69 and in the age group 35 to 37 only 66 cases. in the following analysis, this group is not considered separately. 6 situation and development of bilocal relationships – descriptive fi ndings when talking about the circumstances of bilocal relationships, we mean the conditions – subjective as well as objective – that may prompt a couple to decide for or against a relationship with separate households, voluntarily or involuntarily, for a shorter or longer time period. with regard to the circumstances, the following empirical contexts could be determined – without being included in the regression model. if possible, the bilocal relationships were compared to the couples with a shared household.2 couple-specifi c employment with regard to the couple-specifi c employment situation, there are signifi cant differences between the two age groups. in the age group born between 1981 and 1983, the are hardly any differences between bilocal relationships and couples with a shared household (see table 1). the most common constellation is full-time employment of both partners (bilocal relationships: 26.8 %, shared household: 27.7 %). the most obvious difference can be found in couples where on partner is full-time employed and the other non-employed. with 21.2 %, this constellation is less common in bilocal relationships compared to couples with a shared household (27.1 %). in the birth cohorts from 1971 to 1973, the proportions of employment situations of bilocal relationships compared to couples with a shared household show greater differences. as these couples are usually in an important professional and career phase at this point in their lives, it is not surprising that the proportion of those with both partners economically active is highest. in the case of cohabitations, the proportion then shifts towards the single-earner-model. rises in proportions could also be recorded in those constellations in which one partner works full-time and the other part-time. thus, bilocal relationships are living arrangements where full-time employment is being realised by separate households. reasons for this development might be changes in the labour market. this includes the globalisation of labour markets, precarious jobs, fl exibilisation of employment, but also greater participation of women as well as the context between educational expansion and selectivity of regional 2 for the descriptive analysis, applying the independent variables of wave 1, the weighting factor for wave 1 was used, which is supposed to compensate for deviations from the basic population. later on in the regression models, no weighting factor was used. stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 443 labour markets, making it diffi cult to fi nd work in the region of the partner (reuschke 2010: 279-280; schneider et al. 2002: 14). the changes in employment from wave 1 to wave 2 show a correlation between continuity in the employment situation and continuity of the type of relationship, at least to a certain point (see table 2). if changes did occur between wave 1 and 2, this lead to the set-up of a shared household more often among the 36 to 38 year olds, among the younger respondents to a separation. overall, however, the change in couple-specifi c employment situations has no signifi cant effect on the development of bilocal relationships. tab. 1: couple-specifi c employment situations in bilocal relationships and in couples with a shared household, by birth cohorts (in %) division of labour within relationships birth cohorts/living arrangements 1981-1983 1971-1973 bilocal relationships (n=594) shared household (n=1504) bilocal relationships (n=228) shared household (n=2719) full-time/full-time 26.8 27.7 33.3 18.9 full-time/non-employed 21.2 27.1 17.1 27.1 non-employed/non-employed 12.5 7.6 4.8 3.2 full-time/part-time 7.1 10.7 11.8 21.9 in education/full-time 6.7 2.6 3.1 0.6 full-time/marginally employed 3.7 4.6 7.5 7.0 self-employed/full-time 3.4 3.4 8.3 7.3 other divisions 18.6 16.3 14.1 14.0 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations tab. 2: changes in or continuity of couple-specifi c employment situations and the development of bilocal relationships, by birth cohorts (in %) 1981-1983 (n=325) 1971-1973 (n=135) employment situation employment situation constant changed n constant changed n continuation of bilocal relationship 52.4 47.6 196 60.7 39.3 87 breakup of bilocal relationship through separation/divorce 26.7 73.3 17 2 termination of bilocal relationship through set-up of a shared household 47.4 52.6 112 44.7 55.3 46 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi444 duration of relationships in the birth cohorts from 1971 to 1973, bilocal relationships have an average duration of 5.5 years. in the birth cohorts from 1981 to 1983, it is only 3.6 years on average. the difference in durations might be due to the fact that bilocal relationships have a greater chance for a longer existence in the older age groups. in addition, a phenomenon that has already been frequently discussed in the literature can be confi rmed here: bilocal relationships do not last long. that, however, does not mean that they are not intended to last long. among the older respondents, 17.0 % of bilocal relationships have already lasted at least 10 years. among the couples with a shared household, however, it is 66.2 %. 43.8 % of bilocal relationships in the older age group last 5 years or longer. in the younger age group, it is 29.2 %. institutionalisation of relationships the degree of institutionalisation of a relationship is considered crucial for its future prospects. here, the assumption is: the more a bilocal relationship is institutionalised, the greater its stability and its chance to eventually be transformed into a relationship with a shared household. pairfam measures the degree of institutionalisation based in four criteria: 1. whether one has already introduced the partner to the parents, 2. whether the partners have already told each other that they are in love, 3. whether personal belongings have already been deposited at the partner’s apartment and 4. whether nights have already been spent together at the partner’s apartment. a comparison to couples with a shared household can unfortunately not be drawn up at this point. in the vast majority of bilocal relationships, the partner has already been • presented to the parents (age group 1981 to 1983: 94.0 %, age group 1971 to 1973: 86.6 %). approx. 95 to 96 % in both age groups have told each other that they are in • love. 83.6 % of the younger and 78.0 % of the older respondents have deposited • personal belongings at the partner’s apartment. as described above, the respondents must have at least rarely or irregularly • spent nights together in the month prior to the survey in order to be categorised as a relationship by our defi nition. according to the anchor persons, most of the couples spend their nights together two to three times a week (1981 to 1983: 45.2 %, 1971 to 1973: 43.8 %). almost a third of respondents even spend their nights together more than four times a week. 11 to 12 % of respondents only spend a night together once a week, and 12 to 14 % irregularly spend nights together. using these four criteria, pairs with different degrees of institutionalisation can be matched. this is done by the number of times each criterion was chosen. a highly institutionalised relationship is present, if there are four nominations, meaning the partner has been introduced to the parents, both partners have told each other that they are in love, items have been deposited at the partner’s apartment stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 445 and the couple has spent nights together on a regular basis. if two or three items are nominated, the relationship is categorised as moderately institutionalised. with only one item or no items, it is weakly institutionalised. in the birth cohorts from 1981 to 1983, 57.4 % of bilocal relationships are strongly institutionalised, and from 1971 to 1973, it is 43.6 %. at a moderate level, there are 35.2 % in the younger and 37.3 % in the older group. the smaller proportion of bilocal relationships are weakly institutionalised, at 7.4 % in the younger and 19.1 % in the older group. frequency of contact and distances as frequency of contact and distances between the partners are closely connected, both are analysed in context to each other. the frequency of contact is calculated based on the number of nights spent together per week (never to rarely, 1 to 3 times a week, 4 to 5 times a week, almost every night). the distance to the partner (on a normal day, by ordinary means of transport) was divided into four groups (less than one hour, one to less than 2 hours, 2 to less than 3 hours, three hours or longer). the matrix of both criteria put together shows a number of typical and not unexpected constellations (see table 3). there are only few minor differences between the two age groups, which is why they were summed up in one. generally one can conclude: bilocal relationships are oftentimes close in proximity and nights are often spent together. tab. 3: frequency of nights spent together and spatial distances between partners (in %) distance between the households of the two partners overnight stays per week up to one hour (n=628) one to less than two hours (n=106) two to less than three hours (n=49) three hours or more (n=93) overall (n=876) never, rarely (n=134) 8.1 1.7 0.7 4.8 15.3 1-3 nights (n=481) 38.8 8.4 4.2 3.4 54.9 4-5 nights (n=118) 10.6 1.0 0.6 1.3 13.5 almost every night (n=143) 14.2 0.9 0.1 1.1 16.3 overall (n=876) 71.7 12.1 5.6 10.6 100.0 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi446 children according to the data of the generations and gender survey from 2005, bilocal relationships are a living arrangements in which partners rarely live together with children and in which the desire to have children is not very common (dorbritz 2009: 47-50). for the anchor persons interviewed in pairfam, similar fi ndings apply. in the birth cohorts 1981 to 1983, bilocal relationships hardly have any children. the average number of children is 0.16, the proportion of childless couples is as high as 87.5 %. people in bilocal relationships less frequently plan to become a mother or father within the next two years (current desire to have children), especially when they are younger. here, only the answers “yes, defi nitely” and “no, defi nitely not” were included. following this, 23.7 % in the younger age group and in bilocal relationships answered with “yes, defi nitely”, 50.3 % of the unmarried cohabiting couples and 70.5 % of the married cohabiting couples. when looking at the older age group, the differences are not as striking. the proportion of those who desire to have children within the next two years increases to 64.3 % for bilocal relationships and to 71.4 % for unmarried cohabiting relationships, whereas for married couples it drops to 45.5 %. it is assumed that married couples aged between 35 and 37 years already have children which implies a lower fertility intention compared to couples at the beginning of their family planning. marital status the distribution regarding marital status also differs signifi cantly between the two age groups. among the younger cohorts, single men and women are most frequently represented (96.6 %). here, bilocality can be seen as more of a pre-marital status. the literature often refers to this as the phase of getting to know each other and testing the relationship, which also indicates a spatial proximity. in older adults, singles are still in the fi rst place with 68.2 %. however, the proportion of married people increases to 13.2 % and that of divorced people to 16.9 % so that bilocal relationships are associated with more of a marital or post-marital status. for the divorced, it is assumed that their bilocal relationships are still at the beginning whereas for the married, external constraints – such as great spatial distances between workplaces – are the reason for the choice of this living arrangement. relationship episodes people who are in a bilocal relationship have had more relationships as a partner in a relationship with a shared household. this applies to both age groups. of those people in the age group of 1981 to 1983 who are in bilocal relationships, the proportion without previous relationship experiences is 26.2 %. among cohabiting couples, it is 41.9 %. in the older age group, the difference is similarly signifi cant (bilocal relationships: 20.3 %, shared households: 34.0 %). it can be assumed that stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 447 experience with failed relationships increases the chance to subsequently enter into a bilocal relationship. status: education and income status is being measured by looking at educational attainment and income. the results clearly show that bilocal relationships have lost their of social exclusiveness. they are no longer found in only one particular social group. this is especially true for the birth cohorts of 1971 to 1973 where the proportion of bilocal relationships by educational attainment of the anchors compared to the proportion of cohabiting couples is almost identical (approx. 46 % highly qualifi ed, 44 % with upper secondary education, 7 % with lower secondary education, 2 % with no qualifi cations, 1 % still in education). when looking at the educational levels of both partners within a relationship, bilocal relationships do not differ from relationships with a shared household. a high level of educational homogamy can also be found in bilocal relationships. among those respondents born between 1981 and 1983, 52.6 % have a partner with the same educational level (couples with a shared household: 53.9 %). in the older age group, the proportion of couples in a bilocal relationship with the same educational level increases to 57.4 % (couples with a shared household: 62.0 %). intentions to move in together regarding the intentions to move in together within the next 12 months, bilocal relationships present a heterogeneous picture and show signifi cant differences when it comes to age. in the younger birth cohorts, bilocal relationships rather take on the form of a preliminary stage, which comes before the eventual set-up of a shared household. with 52.3 % making up the largest group are those partners who both (have a tendency to) wish to move in together. 24.5 % are against the set-up of a shared household, 17.4 % are not sure (see table 4). tab. 4: bilocal relationships and intentions to move in together within the next 12 months, by birth cohorts (in %) intentions to move in together birth cohorts 1981-1983 (n=155) 1971-1973 (n=70) both partners are in favour of it (tendency) 52.3 38.6 both partners are not in favour of it (tendency) 24.5 32.9 the partners disagree 17.4 17.1 the topic has not been addressed 1.3 0.0 uncertainty, if topic has been addressed 4.5 11.4 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi448 among the older respondents, considerably fewer couples in bilocal relationships intend to move in together (38.6 %). in contrast, the proportion of couples who unanimously agree on not moving in together is much higher at 32.9 %. the group of 35 to 37 year olds who have not discussed a shared household is also larger in comparison (11.4 %). therefore, bilocal relationships at later stages of life are more frequently designed as a permanent living arrangement, which is characterised by emotional closeness while at the same time the partners are physically separated. this arrangement is often adopted when job-related external constraints create spatial distances between partners. intentions to marry here, marriage plans of bilocal couples were compared to those of unmarried cohabiting couples. the results show that bilocal relationships are an expression of a need for greater autonomy. the intention to marry within the next year is signifi cantly lower in bilocal couples than in unmarried cohabiting couples. the differences between these two relationship types are the same in both age groups so that an overall assessment is possible for this issue. only 13.5 % of the respondents in bilocal relationships said that they defi nitely or possibly plan to marry within the next year. among unmarried cohabiting couples, the proportion was as high as 38.5 %. the vast majority of bilocal couples do not plan to marry in the near future. relationship satisfaction relationship satisfaction was measured with an 11-point scale (0 = very unsatisfi ed, 10 = very satisfi ed) so that the satisfaction can be shown using mean values. the closer the mean value is to point 10, the greater the satisfaction with the relationship. respondents were asked about their own satisfaction as well as how they evaluated the satisfaction of their partner. bilocal couples were compared to unmarried cohabiting couples and married couples. in general, relationship satisfaction is relatively high, mean values are in the range of 7.59 (bilocal relationships, birth cohorts 1971 to 1973) and 8.30 (marriage, birth cohorts 1981 to 1983, own satisfaction) (see table 5). for married couples, the own and the perceived satisfaction of the partner reached the highest values in both age groups. bilocal couples and unmarried cohabiting couples are similar in their perceptions. in the age group of 1971 to 1973, the own satisfaction with the relationships is less pronounced than in unmarried cohabiting couples and married couples. some fi ndings apply to all types of relationships: the satisfaction is higher in the younger age group, and the satisfaction of the partner is perceived as lower than the own satisfaction. the general assumption in the literature that women in bilocal relationships show less satisfaction with their relationship could not be proven on the basis of pairfam-data. men indeed show slightly higher satisfaction levels, however, the values are not signifi cant. stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 449 general preferences and relationships pairfam asks the respondents to evaluate the importance of certain areas of life. for this purpose, respondents were able to assign a total of 15 labels to 5 items in the order of importance: a) work and career, b) hobbies and personal interests, c) social contacts, d) relationship and e) have (more) children. when looking at the allocations, meaning to which areas of life and by which age group the labels were allocated on average, the results were as follows: with 4.17, the importance of living in a relationship is at number 1 in the age group of 1971 to 1973 at the point of the fi rst wave. in the younger age group, it comes second place with 3.59, fi rst place being work and career. it should also be mentioned on the side that the area of having children shows an arithmetic mean of less than two and a modal value of zero in all age groups. this means that work and career is generally more important than family planning. the comparison of different living arrangements clearly shows that the importance of living in a relationship increases with the level of institutionalisation, both in the younger as well as in the older age group (see fi g. 3). nevertheless, bilocal relationships also show scores above average when it comes to importance of relationship as compared to other areas of life. this demonstrates that it is fi rst and foremost important to live in a relationship. it can be assumed that with increasing importance the tendency to move in together or to even get married also increases. intentions to separate the intentions to separate were determined on the basis of two factors. firstly, the respondents were asked whether they had thought about a separation or divorce in the year prior to the interview, and secondly whether a separation or divorce had actually been proposed (possible answers: yes or no). the results were similar to those about relationship satisfaction. it is the people in bilocal relationships who think most about or propose a separation (see table 6). unmarried cohabiting couples are somewhere in between bilocal and married couples. they generally think more often about separation or divorce than actually proposing it. there are further tab. 5: own satisfaction with the relationship and evaluation of the partner’s satisfaction, by living arrangements (mean values) living arrangement own satisfaction evaluation of partner’s satisfaction 1981-1983 1971-1973 1981-1983 1971-1973 bilocal relationship 8.20 (n=599) 7.81 (n=236) 8.02 (n=580) 7.59 (n=221) unmarried cohabiting couples 8.13 (n=832) 8.05 (n=574) 7.96 (n=817) 7.81 (n=559) married cohabiting couples 8.30 (n=668) 8.22 (n=2123) 8.14 (n=651) 8.03 (n=2041) source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi450 fig. 3: average number of allocated labels (a total of 15) for the importance of living in a relationship, sorted by type of relationship and birth cohorts in wave 1 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 4.50 5.00 bilocal relationships (n=604/240) unmarried cohabiting couples (n=840/582) married cohabiting couples ( n=673/2135) 4.11 4.3 4.65 3.71 4.09 4.38 1981-1983 1971-1973 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations tab. 6: intentions to separate, by living arrangements (proportion of affi rmative answers / in %) living arrangement have thought about separation/divorce have suggested separation/divorce 1981-1983 (n=355) 1971-1973 (n=322) 1981-1983 (n=262) 1971-1973 (n=245) bilocal relationship 22.6 23.2 16.5 19.5 unmarried cohabiting couples 17.1 17.8 12.2 11.9 married cohabiting couples 9.4 7.5 7.8 6.0 source: pairfam wave 1 (release 2.0), own calculations stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 451 differences between the living arrangements: in bilocal relationships, a separation is more often proposed than in unmarried cohabiting and married relationships. people in bilocal relationships are less satisfi ed with their relationship and think about separation more often. a fi rst conclusion bilocal relationships turn out to be an extraordinarily heterogeneous living arrangement. the empirical analyses show that for those born from 1971 to 1973 and 1981 to 1983, bilocal relationships show a specifi c character for each cohort group in the majority of the observed circumstances. following this, as a fi rst conclusion one can say that both age groups should be looked at separately in the multivariate analyses. what is striking is that with increasing age, full-time employment of both partners increases, that among the younger group, highly institutionalised relationships can be found and that bilocal relationships are mainly entered into by unmarried people. when looking at the older group, there is a history of more relationships and having separate households meets their idea of a relationship. thus, there are rarely intentions to move in together. the unique character of bilocal relationships compared to cohabiting couples is refl ected by the fact that full-time employment of both partners is more common, living with children is less common and fewer children are desired. compared to married couples, relationship satisfaction in bilocal couples is lower and they think about or propose a separation more frequently. regarding education and income, there are no differences between bilocal and cohabiting couples. 7 multivariate analysis of the development of bilocal relationships figure 4 describes the extent to which the relationship statuses of the bilocal relationships found in wave one have changed between the fi rst wave (2008/2009) and second wave (2009/2010). this is the basis for the construction of the dependent variable. four possible transitions in the two age groups were investigated (described above). in each, a small majority of bilocal relationships had not changed their relationship status within one year (see fi g. 4). these are 53.1 % in the birth cohorts 1981 to 1983 and 58.3 % in the birth cohorts 1971 to 1973. the other bilocal relationships had changed their status in some way or the other. more set-ups of shared households were recorded than separations. the fact that more than 40 % of bilocal relationships changed their status within the short time period of one year can be seen as an evidence for the dynamics of this living arrangement. the most common change was the transition from a bilocal relationship to an unmarried cohabiting relationship. 15.7 % of bilocal relationships in the age group 1981 to 1983 and 11.5 % in the age group 1971 to 1973 had separated by the time of the second wave. the smallest group is made up of those who moved in together as a married couple. in the older age group, bilocal relationships show a higher degree of stability between wave 1 and wave 2. their relationship status often remained • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi452 fi g . 4 : d ev el o p m en t o f b ilo ca l r el at io n sh ip s b et w ee n w av e 1 an d w av e 2, b y ag e g ro up s (in % ) 1 b ilo ca l r el at io ns hi p s 2 u nm ar ri ed c o ha b iti ng c o up le s s o ur ce : p ai rf am w av e 1 an d w av e 2 (r el ea se 2 .0 ), o w n ca lc ul at io ns b ilo ca l r el at io ns hi ps b re ak up 15 .7 % m ov in g in to ge th er al s u c c 2 24 .7 % c on tin ua tio n al s b r 1 53 .1 % m ov in g in to ge th er al s m ar rie d co up le 6. 5 % w aw e 1 w aw e 2 b ilo ca l r el at io ns hi ps b re ak up 11 .5 % m ov in g in to ge th er a ls u c c 2 19 .9 % c on tin ua tio n al s b r 1 58 .3 % m ov in g in to ge th er a ls m ar rie d co up le 10 .3 % w aw e 1 w aw e 2 25 -2 7 ye ar s 35 -3 7 ye ar s stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 453 unchanged and separations occurred less frequently. it is likely that bilocal relationships in the older age group are understood as a conscious living arrangement, whereas in younger people, they rather represent a relationship model for the beginning of a relationship. it is generally assumed that relationships at a younger age are less stable due to a lack of steps towards more commitment, such as setting up a shared household or becoming parents (kopp et al. 2010: 80). with the following regression, the effects of the theoretically and at the bivariate level plausible independent variable were examined primarily regarding the development of bilocal relationships. at the same time, the overall quality of the model was estimated, although their values might have been overestimated due to the small number of cases in relation to the number of input variables. a multinomial logistic regression was run in which the dependent variable consisted of the three categories continuation, set-up of a shared household and separation. here, the continuation of the bilocal relationship was the reference category. the independent variables were added in one step. for each age group (1981-83 and 1971-73), the regression was run separately. the selection of the explanatory variables shown in tables 7a and 7b are the result of theoretical considerations and based on the empirical relevance on the bivariate level. a selection is necessary, not least because of the small number of cases. in addition, the explanation also becomes clearer. all independent variables were combined so that they are dichotomous. as it is a multinomial logistic regression, the columns only show the set-up of a shared household and separation because the continuation of a bilocal relationship is the reference category. the odds ratios should be interpreted accordingly to this reference category. next to the odds ratios, the signifi cances are shown, all effects with a value of less than 0.1 are highlighted. the maximum number of cases are the result of the combination of all variables used. when looking at the effects and their statistical signifi cance, it becomes apparent that different variables are signifi cant depending on the age group or the development of bilocal relationships. the results point to a very different picture of the two birth cohorts examined. this is neither surprising nor implausible, as there are certain reasons why bilocal relationships transform into a cohabiting relationship or end in separation, especially as there are specifi c situations in each phase of life. accordingly, hypothesis 6 can already be confi rmed at this point: the character of bilocal relationships differs between the two investigated birth cohort groups. employment or education in wave 1 in this variable, the activity status of the respondent and the partner were combined. one the one hand, both partners are employed or in education in the binary version of this variable. on the other, only one partner or neither of them is employed or in education. this variable was added in regard to hypothesis 1 and because of its theoretical plausibility in explaining bilocal circumstances. one should expect that partners who are both active, have a tendency to remain in the bilocal state for longer or even permanently. however, this cannot be proven, and a reliable inter• jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi454 pretation cannot be made because of a high probability of error. despite their low statistical signifi cance, the results for the respondents born between 1971 and 1973 indicate that the probability to share a common household increases among couples with only one employed partner. for the younger group, the opposite should be the case, this being reasonable as in this phase of life, economic stability would be a prerequisite for the set-up of a shared household. tab. 7a: multinomial logistic regression* with respect to the development of bilocal relationships within one year, reference category of the dependent variable is the continuation of the relationship with a separate household, birth cohorts 1981 to 1983 situation wave 1 1981 to 1983 (n=350) independent variables categories set-up of shared household breakup of shared household exp(b) sig. exp(b) sig. employment or ref.: both are active (n=162) vocational education only one is active/both are not active (n=188) 0.809 0.433 0.950 0.882 distance in time between ref.: less than two hours away places of residence of (n=297) partners two hours and more (n=53) 0.631 0.252 0.778 0.593 nights spent together ref.: no more than one per week (n=86) two and more nights per week (n=264) 0.817 0.538 0.441 0.031 duration of relationship ref.: two and more years (n=269) in years at point of less than two years (n=81) 1.334 0.368 1.810 0.124 interview number of preceding ref.: at least one cohabitation (n=65) cohabitations of none (n=285) 1.966 0.074 0.579 0.155 respondents relationship satisfaction ref.: satisfied (7-10; n=309) of respondents unsatisfied (0-6; n=41) 0.773 0.585 1.506 0.396 education homogamy ref.: no homogamy (n=204) homogamy (n=146) 1.098 0.733 1.598 0.186 intentions of respondents ref.: not present (n=147) to move in together present (n=203) 4.135 0.000 1.169 0.663 intentions of respondents ref.: not present (n=300) to get married present (n=50) 1.018 0.959 0.204 0.040 serious suggestion of ref. no (n=298) respondents or their yes (n=52) 1.349 0.448 4.113 0.001 partners to end the relationship pseudo r² (nagelkerke) 0.207 * the procedure nomreg was used in spss. source: pairfam wave 1 and wave 2 (release 2.0), own calculations stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 455 distance between the places of residence of both partners in wave 1 the distance between the places of residence was measured by asking the respondents for the time it takes on average to reach the partner’s residence. regarding the set-up of a shared household, this variable is only signifi cant for the respondents born between 1971 and 1973. there is a clearly positive effect for the set-up of a shared household if the couple had a great distance between their residences at the tab. 7b: multinomial logistic regression with respect to the development of bilocal relationships within one year, reference category of the dependent variable is the continuation of the relationship with a separate household, birth cohorts 1971 to 1973 source: pairfam wave 1 and wave 2 (release 2.0), own calculations situation wave 1 1971 to 1973 (n=350) independent variables categories set-up of shared household breakup of shared household exp(b) sig. exp(b) sig. employment or ref.: both are active (n=60) vocational education only one is active/both are not active (n=49) 1.756 0.316 0.590 0.493 distance in time between ref.: less than two hours away places of residence of (n=93) partners two hours and more (n=16) 9.714 0.006 0.597 0.722 nights spent together ref.: no more than one per week (n=27) two and more nights per week (n=82) 8.392 0.015 2.218 0.430 duration of relationship ref.: two and more years (n=90) in years at point of less than two years (n=19) 3.003 0.114 5.895 0.056 interview number of preceding ref.: at least one cohabitation (n=72) cohabitations of none (n=37) 1.730 0.341 0.344 0.260 respondents relationship satisfaction ref.: satisfied (7-10; n=87) of respondents unsatisfied (0-6; n=22) 1.104 0.904 10.297 0.009 education homogamy ref.: no homogamy (n=48) homogamy (n=61) 2.949 0.059 1.469 0.605 intentions of respondents ref.: not present (n=57) to move in together present (n=52) 8.649 0.001 0.580 0.545 intentions of respondents ref.: not present (n=91) to get married present (n=18) 0.396 0.253 0.735 0.812 serious suggestion of ref.: no (n=93) respondents or their yes (n=16) 2.673 0.248 1.004 0.996 partners to end the relationship pseudo r² (nagelkerke) 0.408 • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi456 time of the interview in wave 1. therefore, hypothesis 2 cannot be proven. it stated that if the partners’ residences were in close proximity to each other, it would lead to the set-up of a shared household. however, it can be assumed that a great distance between residences is seen as undesirable and merely as a temporary state which can be changed by moving in together (again). as this is only signifi cant for those who were 35 to 37 years old at the time of the interview, the result is plausible: this is the economically active group, whereas the younger group is to a large extent still in education. as theoretically discussed above, these relationships are typically long-distance relationships of which the majority is only temporary and involuntary due to job-related reasons. on the other side, there are the voluntary living apart together relationships in the older birth cohort, who can spend time together but also have autonomy due to relatively small spatial proximity. in the younger group, however, living apart together relationships are rarely on a voluntary basis. there is a spatial proximity, but the set-up of a shared household is prevented by external constraints. nights spent together in wave 1 hypothesis 2 assumes that spatial proximity between two partners leads to the set-up of a shared household. this was tested further by the question of how many nights are spent together. there is a signifi cant and negative effect regarding separation among the younger respondents, when respondents frequently spent nights together with their partner. thus, frequent overnight stays lead to a continuation of the bilocal relationship among respondents born between 1981 and 1983. here, the effect for the set-up of a shared household is also negative, but not signifi cant. in the 1970-cohort, there is a positive effect regarding the set-up of a shared household. in this group, frequent overnight stays lead to or increase the chance of a transformation of the bilocal relationship into a cohabiting relationship. consequently, for the older birth cohort, hypothesis 2 can be confi rmed with this variable. however, the result for the younger group is not necessarily a contradiction. it seems likely that frequent overnight stays might be a compensation for not being able to move in together due to, for example, fi nancial or residence-specifi c reasons. relationship duration in years up to the time of the fi rst wave the variable relationship duration was generated by using the information as to when the anchor respondents had met their partner in combination with the time of the interview in wave 1. this information is retrospective. the integration of this variable is not directly related to the verifi cation of a hypothesis, but has been included to refl ect the duration as a criterion for institutionalisation. this can be seen in the result, which is only signifi cant for the 1970-cohort: there is a strong positive effect regarding separation if the relationship had only been of short duration at the time of the interview. therefore, this means that the overall chance of a permanent or longer duration of a bilocal relationship decreases if the relationship is established over the age of 30. stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 457 number of previous cohabitations of respondents in wave 1 this variable is based directly on a generated variable, which contains the information on how many previous cohabitations a respondent had prior to the current relationship. hypothesis 4 assumes that previous experiences with cohabitations may cause the respondents to prefer longer phases or even permanently prefer bilocal types of relationships. for the group born between 1981 and 1983, this was confi rmed with a signifi cant effect. there is a positive effect regarding the set-up of a shared household and thus a negative one for the continuation as a bilocal relationship in cases where the respondent did not have any prior experiences with cohabitation. the reason might be a more cautious approach with the currently existing relationship if cohabitations have previously failed. relationship satisfaction of respondents in wave 1 the variable for relationship satisfaction is based on a 10-point scale developed by pairfam, which was summarised for the regression. we assume that a deviation from the top scale points is an indicator for the tendency towards dissatisfaction. the result is accordingly, although only signifi cant for the 1970-cohort. respondents who were unsatisfi ed with their relationship showed a signifi cantly higher risk for a separation of the relationship between wave 1 and wave 2. this variable was also used to control and not to test a hypothesis. educational homogamy in wave 1 the variable educational homogamy was constructed using information provided by the respondents about their and their partners’ educational levels. for this purpose, isced-variables (6 groups, levels 1-8 and 0) generated by the data provider were used. educational homogamy is present in the case of partners belonging to the same group. hypothesis 3 states that there is a higher probability of moving in together among couples with educational homogamy because they dare to take the next step of institutionalisation more often. this result is signifi cant (10 %-level) and true for the 1970-cohort, because when looking at the set-up of a shared household, there is a positive odds ratio for homogamy. intentions of respondents to move in together in wave 1 the initial variable in the pairfam-questionnaire contains four categories consisting of the possible statements: defi nitely, maybe, rather not, defi nitely not want to move in together. the overall affi rmative attitude was summed up into one category and the negating one – together with the statement that one has not yet talked about it – into another category. both age groups show a signifi cant effect, meaning that the intention had actually been put into practice. with respect to the continuation, this means that the intention not to move in together is a commitment to the continuation of the bilocal relationship, provided that a possible disagreement of both • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi458 partners about this perspective did not lead to a separation. hypothesis 5, which stated that planning and intention determines the actual development of the bilocal relationship, can be confi rmed with this variable. intentions of respondents to marry in wave 1 the intentions to marry were asked in the same way as the intentions to move in together. it is obvious that marriage at least leads to a stabilisation of the relationship or to the set-up of a shared household. this effect is only signifi cant for the 1980-cohort, with a negative effect on separation in cases where there are intentions to marry. accordingly, the continuation of bilocal relationships is at least partly given when the partners do not plan to marry, as this is an expression of efforts to institutionalise. this result confi rms hypothesis 5. intentions of the respondents or their partners to end the relationship in wave 1 again, only for the group of those born between 1981 and 1983, there is a highly signifi cant effect regarding a separation, if this had been proposed. thus, the intention about how to proceed with the relationship stands in the foreground. it is quite likely that the intention to separate is not directly linked to the bilocal state, unless this is seen as a burden. rather, the relationship in itself did not work out. whether moving in together would lead to a stabilisation cannot be tested with only two waves. assessment of the overall model quality finally, the pseudo r² should also be mentioned, which shows a relatively high value for both groups. the development of the bilocal relationships within one year could be explained very well due to a sound choice of variables. the high value might be ascribed to the ratio of the number of variables to the number of cases. nevertheless, the results are plausible and comprehensible. here, the explanatory power is higher for the older than for the younger age group. 8 discussion the aim of this paper was to present a longitudinal empirical study of the development of bilocal relationships. two age groups (198-1983 and 1971-1973) were interviewed in order to fi nd out which infl uence external circumstances had at the point of the fi rst interview. here, the infl uence of external constraints on the relationship – only regarding the fi rst wave – was described. for the explanation, the development of the bilocal relationships between wave 1 and wave 2 was used as a dependent variable and were investigated with a selection of independent variables in a regression model. stability of bilocal relationships – conditions and development paths • 459 the investigation of the change in status in wave 2 of the relationships defi ned as bilocal in wave 1 showed that the majority of respondents (more than 50 %) were still in a bilocal relationship after 12 months, regardless of the age group. second came those couples who moved in together, adding up to more than 30 % in both age groups. considering the fact that all these relationships had already existed at least one year prior to the fi rst wave, bilocality seems to present itself as a longerlasting living arrangements to the respondents. bilocality occurs in married relationships, but in the majority of cases in unmarried relationships. nevertheless, the high degree of change within one year indicates a high dynamic that characterises this living arrangements. there were only few cases in which the end of a bilocal relationship represented a separation. all in all, external constraints have the most important infl uence, meaning the situation of the couple and the personal intentions regarding the development of the relationship. the stability of bilocal relationships is strongly dependent on age. one of the most important result of the analysis is that the character of bilocal relationships is very different in the two age groups. in the younger group, bilocality is often due to the educational situation or because respondents still live with their parents, a typical situation for the age group around 20. this is confi rmed by the fact that bilocal relationships do not only occur more often, but are also accompanied by a lot of time spent together in one of the two apartments. the effect shows that frequent meetings encourage the continuation of bilocality but also stabilise and protect the relationship against separation. however, bilocality is not desired as a permanent situation and thus often transforms into cohabitation as soon as there are changes in the economic or spatial circumstances or, in the worst case, leads to a separation. the age group ten years senior, on the other hand, show a very different pattern. overall, there are signifi cantly fewer bilocal relationships among those born between 1971 and 1973 – most of them are married und live together. quite remarkable was the fi nding that if residences were far apart from each other in wave 1, this had a signifi cantly strong effect on the couple moving in together. again, this shows that bilocality is an undesired situation in most cases. we are dealing with long-distance relationships in which two partners live apart most of the time due to job-related reasons. however, bilocality is possibly changed as soon as two adequate jobs are found in close proximity to each other. at the same time, compared to the younger group there is some evidence that primarily those with previous experiences with cohabitations are more cautious when it comes to moving in together. in addition, bilocal relationships at this age show lower stability in those cases where the relationship had been of a duration of less than two years at the time of the fi rst interview. the following is especially striking: the congruence between expressing the intention to move in together or not to move in together in wave 1 and then actually (not) following through with it. this highlights a certain degree of freedom of choice for life in bilocal relationships. it is therefore a particularly planned type of relationship. hypothesis 1, which assumed that the employment of both partners leads to a continuation of bilocality, is only valid for the older respondents. hypothesis 2, which assumed a correlation between spatial proximity and the probability of the set-up • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi460 of a shared household in wave 2, could not be confi rmed. hypothesis 3, which assumed that educational homogamy leads to the set-up of a shared household, only applies to the older birth cohorts. hypothesis 4, which assumed a correlation between experiences with cohabitation and remaining in the form of a bilocal relationship, could be confi rmed. however, previous experiences with cohabitations only decrease the chances of an eventual set-up of a shared household in the younger age group. not surprisingly, hypothesis 5 was found true. as soon as intentions to move in together or to separate are communicated, the chance of actual realisation of those intentions increases. testing hypotheses 1, 3 and 4 confi rm the validity of hypothesis 6, which assumed a different character of the bilocal relationships in the two age groups. the analyses presented here are limited to wave 1 and 2 of pairfam, as there were no further surveys available at the point of this investigation. however, the next waves will surely bring further insights into the stability or instability of bilocal relationships. the authors consider the results presented here as only one step in their research. further investigations will follow, which will not be limited to bilocal relationships, but will also consider other living arrangements and parenting. references asendorpf, jens b. 2008: living apart together: altersund kohortenabhängigkeit einer heterogenen lebensform. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 60,4: 749-764 [doi: 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partnerschaften mit zwei haushalten: eine moderne lebensform zwischen partnerschaftsideal und berufl ichen erfordernissen. in: bien, walter; marbach, jan h. (eds.): partnerschaft und familiengründung. ergebnisse der dritten welle des familien-survey. opladen: leske+budrich: 245-258. schneider, norbert f., limmer, ruth; ruckdeschel, kerstin 2002: mobil, fl exibel, gebunden. familie und beruf in der mobilen gesellschaft. frankfurt a.m.: campus. surra, catherine a.; hughes, debra k. 1997: commitment processes accounts of the development of premarital relationships. in: journal of marriage and the family 59: 5-21 [doi: 10.2307/353658]. • jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi462 traub, angelika 2005: neue liebe in getrennten haushalten. zur bedeutung von livingapart-together-partnerschaften für das wohlbefi nden und stresserleben alleinerziehender mütter. berlin: logos. wendl, peter 2004: fern-beziehung und wochenendbeziehungen – chancen und belastungen [http://www.gelingende-fernbeziehung.de/fern-beziehung.html, 05.03.2013]. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “stabilität bilokaler paarbeziehungen − rahmenbedingungen und entwicklungspfade. eine analyse der ersten und zweiten welle von pairfam”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-08de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-08de2, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 02.01.2012 date of acceptance: 15.08.2012 jürgen dorbritz, robert naderi ( ). federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: juergen.dorbritz@bib.bund.de, robert.naderi@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografi e.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/wissmitarbeiter/ dorbritz/dorbritz_node.html, http://www.bib-demografi e.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/ wissmitarbeiter/naderi/naderi_node.html © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) reviewers of the journal in 2016 and 2017 reviewers of the journal in 2016 and 2017 comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017) stephen adaawen, bonn neil argent, armidale oliver arránz becker, halle helen baykara-krumme, duisburg hovy bela, new york eva bernhardt, stockholm sunnee billingsley, stockholm richard black, london boris braun, cologne uta brehm, wiesbaden thomas büttner, berlin michael danson, edinburgh peter de souza, rena yohannes dibaba wado, nairobi christian dudel, rostock florian dünckmann, kiel jutta ecarius, cologne markus eder, vienna marcel erlinghagen, essen griffi th feeney, new york michael feldhaus, oldenburg tony fielding, brighton beat fux, salzburg claudia geist, salt lake city dafna gelbgiser, new york norbert gestring, oldenburg birgit glorius, chemnitz achim goerres, duisburg zoya gubernskaya, new york karsten hank, cologne ilse helbrecht, berlin timothy heleniak, stockholm sebastian henn, jena markus hesse, luxembourg holger jahnke, flensburg nico keilman, oslo koser khalid, maastricht eva kibele, groningen sebastian klüsener, rostock bernhard köppen, koblenz zoltán kovács, szeged sandra krapf, cologne michaela kreyenfeld, berlin slawomir kurek, krakow justin lavner, athens, usa andrea lengerer, mannheim ron lesthaeghe, brussels mengjia liang, new york emma lundholm, umeå nadja milewski, rostock sako musterd, amsterdam karel neels, antwerpen birte nienaber, luxembourg anja oppermann, hanover jürgen oßenbrügge, hamburg jasmin passet-wittig, wiesbaden etienne piguet, neuchatel ingmar rapp, heidelberg phil rees, leeds arnaud régnier-loilier, paris bernard reitel, arras ulrike sailer, trier nikola sander, wiesbaden kerstin schmidt-verkerk, bielefeld ansgar schmitz-veltin, stuttgart lutz schneider, coburg ian shuttleworth, belfast tomas sobotka, vienna ninna nyberg sörensen, copenhagen svenja spuling, berlin johannes stauder, heidelberg susan thieme, berlin alessandra trimarchi, leuven daniele vignoli, florence michael wagner, cologne sabine walper, munich rainer wehrhahn, kiel christina west, heidelberg kenneth aarskaug wiik, oslo gerald wood, münster the publisher and the editorial team wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable work for cpos! published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle barbara wawrzyniak abstract: the article examines entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle, which is the familial situation when all children have moved out of the parental household. we position this event chronologically within the life course and examine the probability of occurrence. using panel data (3 survey waves) covering a period of 40 years of a cohort of former north-rhine westphalian grammar school pupils, event history models (cox regression) are employed to analyse what factors accelerate or decelerate the transition. this revealed that the parent’s individual biography (in particular the age at the own move out, age at the birth of the fi rst child and the number of children) has a major impact on the time of occurrence, while the occupational history has no effect. in addition, sons delay the transition, while children’s academic studies and occupation accelerate it. keywords: postparental family phase · move out of the last child · empty nest · panel study · cox regression 1 the postparental phase of the family life cycle when children become adults and leave their parental home, a new phase begins in the lives of parents: the postparental phase. only in the 20th century did this phase of life develop to a period lasting many years constituting 25 to 35 percent of people’s entire lifespan (lauterbach 2004: 229). the lengthening of this phase implies that relationships between adult children and their parents must be shaped for a longer period than those between minor children and their parents, since the time for childcare takes up only one fourth of our entire lifetime (nave-herz 2002: 57). entry into the postparental phase is less institutionalised than marriage or the birth of a child (scherger 2007). for parents, this period of life holds new challenges for consolidating the relationships between the couple and the children. rearing of the children is no longer the focus; everyday family life changes. earlier studies report of the so-called empty-nest syndrome, accompanied by depression and other mental ailments of comparative population studies vol. 40, 1 (2015): 31-48 (date of release: 25.02.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-01en2 • barbara wawrzyniak32 mothers (e.g. bart 1971; deykin et al. 1966). later research, by contrast, refutes the emergence of these problems (e.g. radloff 1980) and refers to rather ambivalent emotions among mothers (feser et al. 1989). papastefanou (2000) even reports positive assessments of spatial separation between family members. geographical distance brings about a reduction in the daily friction between parents and children and the experience of living alone with all its challenges leads young adults to be more understanding of their parents (papastefanou 2000: 62). the moving out of one’s children can be assessed both positively and negatively depending on the kind of relationship to the children and whether the move is considered as a step towards desired independence or rather as an early “escape” from the parental home. in addition, departure affects both the parenthood as well as the intimate relationship: “… on the one hand the lack of daily contact with the children is missed sadly; on the other it is clearly recognized that both the individual as well as the relationship development profi t from it” (papastefanou 2000: 58, translated by cpos). however, a strong fi xation on the parental role impairs coping with the transition into the postparental phase (papastefanou 2000: 58). in particular for those mothers who gave up their jobs for the family, the move of their children is a diffi cult situation: “since mothers lose one of their most meaningful tasks, they often have the feeling they are no longer needed, combined with depression, mourning and identity crisis” (pinquart/silbereisen 2007: 498, translated by cpos). yet there are studies that also show that this phase can be accompanied by positive experiences for women, identifi ed as a reduction in negative and a rise in positive emotions among mothers whose children have left home. an increase in general well-being and decrease in minor everyday annoyances is also ascertained (dennerstein et al. 2002). by contrast, fathers appear to have few problems with the move of their children, though those who are highly dedicated to their work may feel regret that they missed out on watching their children grow up. and diffi culties can also occur among fathers in unhappy relationships in which the children occasionally acted as an integrative factor (papastefanou 1997). the quality of the relationship between adult children and their parents during this phase is characterised by low geographical distance and a great closeness, whereby mothers and daughters are the closest. as for drifting apart, we see nothing of the sort (szydlik/schupp 1998: 311), however parents assess their relationship with their own children as closer than the children perceive it and also tend to emphasize the intergenerational similarities and play down confl icts, while the children underemphasize similarities and overemphasize confl icts (szydlik/schupp 1998: 304). this article focuses on the transition into the postparental phase, which is marked by the move of the last child. it explains how the transition can be positioned chronologically within the life course of parents and on which factors the entry into the postparental family phase depends. it incorporates both the individual and occupational biographies of the parents as well as the children into the multivariate analyses. first, we will portray the current state of research on the transition into the postparental phase and on the leaving behaviour of young adults. based on previous results, we aim to identify possible infl uencing factors in order to include entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 33 them into the analyses. then, we describe the sample, methodologies and data basis employed here before presenting the descriptive and multivariate results. 2 determinants infl uencing entry into the postparental phase only a few studies (lauterbach 2004; mayer/wagner 1989) have focused on the perspectives and the situation of parents when their own children or of the last child leave(s) home, which is why this aspect will now be analysed further. by contrast, the leaving behaviour of young adults has been examined extensively in a number of studies. berger (2009) offers an overview of the current state of research on leaving behaviour and its determining factors. in summary, the time when men and women leave home differs (berger 2009; ziegler/schaldt 1993; mayer/wagner 1989; scherger 2009). women leave the parental home earlier than men, depending on the study on average by two to fi ve years and usually in their early twenties. berger (2009) identifi es an age difference ranging between 21.2 years among women and 22.8 years among men (median), while ziegler and schladt (1993) ascertain an even narrower difference and identify an earlier age upon leaving home: 20.6 years among women and 21.9 years among men (median). in addition, there are distinct correlations between the vocational and individual biography and the leaving behaviour of young adults (ziegler/schladt 1993; mayer/ wagner 1989), whereby home-leaving behaviour in germany faced structural transitions in recent decades. while earlier, leaving was highly linked to marriage (mayer/wagner 1989), today it is more linked with new types of living arrangements such as non-marital cohabitation (berger 2009). today, vocational training and entry into the labour market prove to be chronologically more closely related to the leaving behaviour than they were earlier (berger 2009: 198). in their analysis of the home-leaving behaviour of the cohort of the kölner gymnasiastenpanel (cologne grammar school pupil panel, abbreviated kgp), ziegler and schladt (1993) conclude that the process of detachment from the parental home is not dependent on social origin, but rather on events and turning points in their institutionally controlled1 life course, hence transitions within the educational system, entries into working life and (marital or non-marital) relationships. berger (2009), too, demonstrated that working and the respective economic independence very distinctly accelerates the move out of the parental home among women and men. beginning to study also leads to a higher probability of leaving home among both genders. the infl uences of vocational training, by contrast, are not as strong; it did not signifi cantly increase the tendency to leave home. the educational level does play a role in the sense that remaining longer within the school system leads to a later departure and this delays economic independence. entering into a relationship is also an important factor determining the probability of leaving home. this rises distinctly when young adults enter a lasting, non-marital relationship (berger 2009: 232). 1 these are events that are institutionalised by tradition or are rather institutions themselves (such as marriage). • barbara wawrzyniak34 living standard also plays an important role in the decision to move out of the parental home. if it is high and likely to deteriorate distinctly following departure, the prospects of a worsening of one’s living situation has a rather inhibitory effect on the decision to move out (wagner 1989: 173). the parents’ fi nancial resources can have two opposite effects on the decision to move out: a fi nancially well-endowed household can lead to a high housing comfort for the children and thus delay departure, or a high parental household income can provide more support for the child’s own household, thus leading to an earlier departure (wagner 1989: 174). the familial constellation, measured by the number of children, can also be a factor in the time of departure. a large number of children could assumedly imply that the older siblings could satisfy their need for privacy by moving out, while an only child would remain at home longer (lauterbach 2004: 163). family structure is another important factor, which is not, however, taken into consideration in the following analyses. stepchildren and the children of single parents tend to move out earlier than children who live together with both of their biological parents (mitchell 1994). the infl uence of stepfamilies and single parents was excluded here due to limitations in the data with regard to the family history. these infl uences on the leaving behaviour of young adults are important factors determining the entry into the postparental family phase; however those that characterise the lives of the parents also need to be identifi ed. an early beginning of the postparental phase can result from a variety of infl uences: early marriage age, early age at the birth of the fi rst child, small number of children and less time between births (mayer/wagner 1989: 29). but what about the parents’ educational histories? what infl uence does it have on the chronological position of the entry into the postparental phase? parents with academic degrees may want their children to receive an adequate education and can also fi nancially ensure this (meulemann 1995). parents having academic degrees can infl uence the time of departure of the children in two opposing ways: if the children take up studies close to home, the departure is delayed, if they study elsewhere, it is accelerated. in her comparison of a number of cohorts, scherger (2007) comes to the conclusion that the postparental phase begins a few years later among men and women with a university entrance diploma (abitur ), which indicates that children of more highly educated parents go through longer educational processes that delay leaving home (scherger 2007: 186). in this context, wagner (1989) determines that the educational level of the parents has an opposite effect if the type of household of the children following departure is also examined. when the children marry on departure, then a higher parental educational level delays the departure. when they do not marry, the educational level accelerates the departure (wagner 1989: 182). having a working mother accelerates the leaving behaviour of children. on the one hand, a working mother can serve as a role model for greater independence – in particular for daughters – and on the other hand, it may also lead to earlier detachment due to less pronounced overprotection of the children (ziegler/schladt 1993). this article aims to identify central factors affecting the entry into the postparental phase based on previous research fi ndings. the focus is not only put on analyses of individual spheres of the lives of parents, but on panel analyses of both the infl uentry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 35 ence of the individual as well as the occupational history as well as the characteristics of the children. 3 sample, methodology and data 3.1 sample the analyses are conducted using the data from the kgp, which includes a birth cohort from 1953 until 1956. the respondents were fi rst surveyed via a papi (paper and pencil) interview in 1969 when they were still pupils in the tenth form at northrhine westphalian grammar schools. of the then 3,240 participants, 1,987 people could be won for a face-to-face follow-up survey in 1984/85. a second follow-up survey was conducted in 1997 with 1,596 people by telephone and fi nally, a third survey wave was held, also by phone, in 2010 with 1,301 participants. the questionnaire includes a biographical section, which covers the schooling, training, university, occupational, family and relationship biographies. in addition, there are a series of attitude and leisure time questions and, in the latest survey, questions about preparations for old age. in each survey wave an additional thematic focus was chosen, for example, the fi rst follow-up survey focussed on the process of identity formation of the young people between the ages of 16 and 30, while the second follow-up survey concentrated on the maintenance of identity of the adults between the ages of 30 and 43. the third wave deals with the further development of identity and preparations for old age. it is particularly advantageous that the entire relationship and family histories from the age of 16 until 56 is recorded for the 1,301 respondents who took part in the third survey wave in 2010.therefore we can create a precise overview of the duration and course of relationships for this cohort as well as information about vocational training, schooling, income and vocation of the partner. information about the schooling, vocational training and academic studies of their children is also available as well as the date that they left home, frequency of contact and questions about grandchildren. it must be noted, however, that this sample is a highly selective subpopulation regarding education, whose selectivity has increased somewhat over the course of 40 years (birkelbach 2011: 27). not all respondents were included in the following analyses, but only those who were still married at the age of 56 years, have children, and are not separated, divorced or widowed. they are therefore people who have lived through the normal course of the family life cycle (glick 1955; höhn 1982) and whose family histories are marked by the same events, namely: marriage, birth and the leaving of the children. the exclusion of people with critical events in their family histories (filipp 1990) is meant to prevent these events from having an effect on the entry into the postparental phase and to primarily identify the infl uences of biographical characteristics of the parents and children. the infl uence of critical events on the entry into the postparental phase would have to be examined in a separate study. after all, 605 of the 1,301 respondents, or 47 percent of the sample, fulfi l these criteria. for these 605 respondents, we checked the time that the last child moved out of the parental • barbara wawrzyniak36 household. the precise question was, “in what year did your child have his/her own household for the fi rst time; i mean his/her own home?”, (translated by cpos). this did not necessarily have to refer to the youngest child. 3.2 methodology in order to be able to position the transition into the postparental phase within the life course, we estimated a transition rate using the life table method. the transition rate corresponds to the risk of changing the present status, for example from single to married (diekmann/mitter 1984). the transition rate hjk(t) indicates the probability that an event will occur in a specifi c time interval t, under the condition that it has not yet occurred by the beginning of this interval, and can be described as follows (blossfeld 2010: 1001): hjk(t) = p(t = t | t ≥ t) t = 1,2,3 ... the durations are divided into monthly intervals and in each interval we count the number of cases that are still at risk of experiencing the event at the beginning of the interval as well as the number of cases who experienced an event and those that have to be censored in an interval (blossfeld 2010: 1003; translated by cpos). this results in the probability that no event will occur prior to a specifi c time, in this case that the transition into the postparental phase does not take place. the cumulative percentage of survivors at the end of the interval is used for the graphic illustration of the survival rate and we can therefore see at what age what share of respondents is exposed to the risk of the transition. then a cox regression (cox 1972; blossfeld et al. 2007; blossfeld 2010) is used to check what factors accelerate or decelerate entry into the postparental phase. we employed the semi-parametric model of the cox regression, thus an event history method, which the literature often calls a proportional hazards model (blossfeld 2010). this offers the advantage that it can be used even if not all respondents experienced the move of the last child during the observation period. in addition, it is particularly suitable for analyses that do not have assumptions about the course of the baseline function (weick 1993: 97), which is the case here for the entry into the postparental phase. the time spans examined begin at the age of 30 and end with the event of moving out of the parental home of the last child, or, in right-censored cases, with the age at the survey. the rate of the move of the last child forms the dependent variable in the event history regression. this is the probability that parents who still live in a household with their children at a specifi c time will enter the postparental phase. the entry rate r(t) is shown with a transition rate function h0(t) that is the same for all subjects and the covariate infl uences exp(.) that are multiplicatively and exponentially associated with it (diekmann/mitter 1993): r(t)= entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 37 the partial likelihood method (blossfeld 2010: 1005) is used to estimate the cox model. the effects of the covariates on the risk of entry are especially interesting for the event history regression. they can be read in the β coeffi cients, whereby the antilogarithms of the β coeffi cients (αi=expβi) are easier to interpret because they can be understood as percent effects (αi-1)·100 of the covariates on the risk of entry (berger 2009; ziegler/schladt 1993). 3.3 data: cox regression covariates based on previous research fi ndings (cf. section 2), we included the following independent variables into the analyses using the kgp data. in addition, we include additional factors that were also identifi ed as possible infl uencing variables. individual biography of the parents (respondents): the marriage age (in years), the age at the birth of the fi rst child (in years) and the number of children are assumed to have important infl uences. for all three of these variables we expect that the lower they are, the earlier the entry into the postparental phase occurs. additionally, the time between births can be included as a further explanatory variable, because the greater the time between the fi rst and the last child, the later entry will be. these are included in years as the difference between the times of the fi rst and the last birth. in addition, we examined how the age of the parents on their own leaving of the parental home (in years) affects the probability of entry into the postparental phase. an early own departure by the parents can have a positive infl uence on the time of their children’s departure because it can be considered a successful launch into independence, or a negative infl uence because it is associated more with stress and uncertainties, experiences that the parents transfer to their own children. educational and occupational history of the parents (respondents): the educational level is measured by the attaining of a university entrance diploma and an academic degree. the school and academic degrees of the partners could be constructed since the kgp also asks about their educational history. mothers and fathers are differentiated, so that separate variables are created for the mothers and fathers with a university entrance diploma and academic degrees. we assume that a higher degree delays the entry into the postparental phase. the vocational training is also included. determining the infl uence of vocational training is more diffi cult because parents who completed vocational training can either imagine a higher educational degree for their children or be satisfi ed with one of equal status and refuse to fi nance their children’s academic studies. since the employment status of the mother proved signifi cant in previous research fi ndings, we created the time dependent variable “employment status of the mother at the time of the move of the child.” the income chosen was the monthly household income, which is calculated from the highest achieved income in the phase between the age of 43 and 56 years and the current income of the partner. using the highest achieved income rather than the average income can provide more variance. we needed to determine in which way income affects the entry into the postparental phase. since the kgp does • barbara wawrzyniak38 not ask about housing we are unable to distinctly differentiate whether the income refers to household-specifi c resources or rather indicates the possibility of transferable resources. the biography of the child of the respondent’s child cannot be integrated as easily as that of the parents. the fact that the respondents have more than one child can lead to signifi cant effects mutually eliminating one another, for example if someone has one son and one daughter, including the gender alone cannot exhibit distinct effects if daughters, for example, leave home earlier and sons later. therefore, the variables for the children were based on the last child who moved out or on the youngest child still remaining in the household. in addition, no times were surveyed in the children’s biographies, thus no conclusions can be made about the chronological correlation from entry into the postparental phase and employment, for example. we use fi ve dummy variables: university entrance diploma (yes/ no), academic degree (yes/no), vocational training completed (yes/no), employment (yes/no), gender (male/female). only those children 18 years and older are included in the analyses, since the kgp only asks the parents whether their children over 18 years old have their own household. the model in figure 1 shows the infl uencing variables mentioned above and their assumed effect on the entry into the postparental phase, by parents’ and children’s characteristics. fig. 1: covariate effects on the risk of entry into the postparental phase according to characteristics of the parents and children and assumed effects individual biography age at leaving home (-) age at first marriage (-) age at birth of first child (-) number of children (-) time between births (-) educational and occupational history academic degree (-) vocational training (?) mother employed at time of move (+) monthly net household income (?) entry into the postparental phase gender (male) (-) university entrance diploma (-) academic degree (+) vocational training (+) employment (+) child parents source: own design entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 39 table 1 summarises the cited variables including the range of values and mean values. they are listed here only briefl y to present the sample and in order to achieve a better understanding of the effects of these variables in the cox regression. the kgp respondents show educational levels above the average.69 percent of the fathers hold an academic degree and 53 percent of the mothers, while only an average of 17 percent of the respective age group of 50 to 59-year-olds in the general population are university graduates (datenreport 2011). the percentage of parents with university entrance diploma, at 78 percent among the fathers and 65 percent among the mothers, is also very high compared to only 24 percent in the general population of the same age group. by contrast, a lower number of the former grammar school pupils went through vocational training, compared to the tab. 1: summary of the independent variables: range, mean values and standard deviations for parents and children over 18 years of age (n=530) variable range mean value sd age at entry into postparental phase 43-59 54.6 2.81 parents (respondents) age at fi rst marriage 18.9-39.3 27.5 3.95 birth of fi rst child 2042.5 30.3 3.91 age at own leaving home 17.7-36.1 23.3 3.24 number of children 1-5 2.2 0.85 time between births in years 0-13.7 3.8 3.04 vocational training respondent 0/1 .39 academic studies father 0/1 .69 academic studies mother 0/1 .53 university entrance diploma father 0/1 .78 university entrance diploma mother 0/1 .65 monthly net household income 400-129 294 6282.50 8102.1 mother employed at time of move (time dependent) 0/1 .731 children gender (male) 0/1 .51 university entrance diploma 0/1 .67 vocational training 0/1 .25 academic studies 0/1 .58 employment 0/1 .29 age 18.1-36.9 22.20 3.27 1 this share only refers to the women in the sample. for the entire sample, the number of employed mothers is 33 percent. source: own calculations • barbara wawrzyniak40 reference group of the total population (58 percent). the net household income exhibits broad variance with the average lying above 6,000 euros. 73 percent of the mothers were working at the time the last child left home. like the parents, a large number of the children also have a university entrance diploma (67 percent), while only 25 percent completed vocational training. but 58 percent already hold academic degrees and 29 percent are working full time. before including the independent variables into the cox regression, we fi rst had to identify possible correlations between the individual factors and eliminate them in order to exclude possible multicollinearities. in particular, we assume that the demographic variables mutually infl uence each other, because those who marry early will most probably also have children at an earlier age than those who marry late. if variables correlate too highly with one another (r>0.3) one will be excluded from the analyses. the results of the correlations are not shown here, but the most important fi ndings that are of signifi cance for the further analysis are mentioned briefl y: the age at fi rst marriage correlates very highly with the age at the birth of the fi rst child, we anticipate, however, that the age at birth is more closely correlated to the move of the children than the age at marriage. the number of children and the time between births correlate very highly, but since the number of children is asked more often in other surveys than the complete individual biography, we include this variable. the educational variables also correlate very highly with one another, which is why only the academic degree is used as an independent variable for mothers, fathers and children, since the numbers of those without academic degrees are higher than those without a university entrance diploma. 4 chronological positioning of the transition into the postparental phase within the life course when can parents expect to live again as a couple within their own home? we plotted this question using the “survival rate” for parents with children in the household. 254 (42 percent) of the 605 people, are currently in the postparental phase and thus have no children living in the household; at least one child is living in the household of 351 (58 percent) people. lauterbach (2004) dates the time of entry into the postparental phase at the sixth decade of life (lauterbach 2004: 162). mayer and wagner (1989) calculate the median age of fathers in the cohort 1949-51 at 56 years if they have sons and 52 years if only daughters are considered. for mothers of the same cohort, the median is 53 years for sons and 49 years for daughters. in the cohort studied here, the differences between parents with daughters and sons are less extreme, with the median age of fathers at 57 years for daughters and 58 years for sons and of mothers at 55 years for daughters and 57 years for sons.2 looking at different cohorts, lauterbach (2004: 166-175) states that since the post-war era, fa2 since not all parents experienced the move of the last child, the median age was estimated using the life table method. entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 41 thers and mothers enter the late family phase ever earlier and the numbers of those who experience this phase at all has risen. the chronological difference between men and women at the entry into the postparental phase cannot only be determined through the median, but also using survival curves for men and women (fig. 2). the two curves differ signifi cantly (wilcoxon: 17.78 p=.000; log rank: 15.16 p=.000). thus, women experience entry into the postparental phase earlier than men. at the age of 56 years, 53 percent of the mothers are faced with a childless household, but only 38 percent of the fathers. both survival curves run parallel to one another with men lagging behind the women about three years. this distance quite precisely corresponds to the earlier entry of the women into the family life cycle calculated for this cohort: the average age at fi rst marriage is 29 years for men and 26 for women. the survival curve also reveals that the move of the last child can be anticipated for women at the earliest at about the age of 45 and for men at 48 years and afterwards the share rises gradually. for half of the parents the transition occurs between the ages of 45 and 55 (mothers) and 48 and 58 (fathers). this means that the majority of these parents already live in a childless household before their retirement. since the kgp is an educationally selective subpopulation, it is reasonable to assume that the survival rate among the total population already decreases at an earlier age. fig. 2: “survival rate” of mothers and fathers in households with children 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 30 35 40 45 50 55 age in years women (n=255) men (n=341) source: own calculations and design • barbara wawrzyniak42 5 entry into the postparental phase the chronological positioning of the entry into the postparental phase shown above reveals quite well when parents can expect their last child to leave home. in this section, we now include the variables named in section 3.3 into the cox regression as possible infl uences on the probability of entry into the postparental phase. the results are shown in table 2. a variety of models were calculated, in which the infl uences of the individual biographies, occupational histories and the children’s characteristics were calculated separately as well as in a total model. the individual biography of the parents has a very strong infl uence on the risk of entry into the postparental family phase, as seen in model 1. the age at the fi rst birth lowers the risk of entry signifi cantly by 19 percent, a value resulting by subtracting the α coeffi cients (.81) from the value 1. it means that per additional year of age at the birth of the fi rst child, the hazard rate drops by 19 percent, thus slowing down entry into the postparental phase. the number of children also has a very strong infl uence: the risk of entry into the postparental phase drops by 61 percent per additional child. the own age at leaving home also decelerates entry: the older the respondents were on their own move, the later they enter the postparental phase. since this variable has a signifi cant effect at the 5-percent level, also when controlling for age at the birth of the fi rst child, it appears that one’s own departure possesses an independent effect. since the age upon leaving home correlates with the educational history (section 3.3), we assume that it loses signifi cance when we also control for the parents’ educational history. the strong infl uence of the individual biography on the risk of entry into the postparental phase is, however, not really surprising. the effects of the other covariates when controlling for the individual biography are more interesting. model 2 includes the individual biography as well as the educational and occupational history of the parents. on the one hand, it reveals that the strong infl uences of the age at the birth of the fi rst child and the number of children remain or even slightly increase, on the other hand that the age on one’s own departure still has a signifi cant effect when controlling for the educational history. this implies that the children of parents who left home late themselves also remain in the parental home longer. as for the educational and occupational history, we see that neither the father’s academic degree, nor parents who were in vocational training or are still working at the departure of the children, particularly mothers, have an effect on the speed of entry into the postparental phase. hence, it makes no difference in the children’s decision to move out whether the mother is employed at the time of their move or not. however, mothers with an academic degree enter the phase earlier than mothers without academic degrees regardless of the number of children and their age at the birth of the fi rst child. this increases the rate by 36 percent. although academic studies usually lead to a higher age at the birth of the fi rst child, this apparently also leads to an earlier entry into the postparental phase. the fact that the mother’s academic degree has a stronger effect on the timing of leaving home than that of the father may be because mothers, through their closer contact with their children, infl uence them more in their educational careers and are more entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 43 ta b . 2 : fa ct o rs in fl u en ci ng e n tr y in to t he p o st p ar en ta l p ha se , c ox r eg re ss io n s (b et a co ef fi c ie n ts ; al p ha c o ef fi c ie n ts in b ra ck et s fo r si gn ifi ca n t e ff ec ts ) va ri ab le s h m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 to ta l m o d el in di vi du al b io gr ap hy o f p ar en ts a ge a t b ir th o f 1 st c hi ld -. 21 ** * (.8 1) -. 24 ** * (.7 9) -. 20 ** * (.8 2) -. 21 ** * (.8 1) n um b er o f c hi ld re n -. 93 ** * (.3 9) -. 97 ** * (.3 8) -. 86 ** * (.4 1) -. 89 ** * (.4 1) a ge a t o w n le av in g ho m e -. 06 * (.9 4) -. 05 * -. 05 * -. 05 * ed uc at io na l a nd o cc up at io na l h is to ry o f p ar en ts fa th er a ca d em ic s tu d ie s ? .1 4 .1 0 m o th er a ca d em ic s tu d ie s ? .2 8+ (1 .3 6) .2 3 vo ca tio na l t ra in in g ? .0 6 .0 4 m o nt hl y ho us eh o ld in co m e/ 10 00 ? .0 2* ** (1 .0 2) .0 2* * (1 .0 2) e m p lo ye d o n d ep ar tu re ¹ + .1 7 .1 9 e m p lo ye d m o th er o n d ep ar tu re ² + -. 10 -. 08 c ha ra ct er is tic s of t he c hi ld g en d er (m al e) -. 44 ** (0 .6 4) -. 39 ** (.6 8) a ca d em ic s tu d ie s + .8 7* ** (2 .3 9) .8 3* ** (2 .2 9) vo ca tio na l t ra in in g + -. 07 -. 01 e m p lo ym en t + .4 4* * (1 .5 5) .5 2* ** (1 .6 8) lo gl ik el ih o o d (l l) -1 37 1. 2 -1 36 2. 8 -1 34 5. 8 -1 33 9. 3 c hi 2 18 6. 25 ** * 20 2. 92 ** * 23 7. 00 ** * 24 9. 93 ** * d f 3 9 7 13 ps eu d o -r 2 (m cf ad d en ) .0 6 .0 7 .0 8 .0 9 ** *p < .0 01 , * *p < .0 1, * p < .0 5, + p < .1 0 n = 53 0; l l nu ll m o d el : -1 46 4. 29 ; h = hy p o th es is (a ss um ed im p ac t) 1 t im ed ep en d en t c o va ri at e fo r m en a nd w o m en 2 t im ed ep en d en t c o va ri at e: in te ra ct io n ef fe ct b et w ee n w o m an a nd e m p lo ym en t a t d ep ar tu re s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns • barbara wawrzyniak44 likely to be able to persuade them to pursue academic studies, which usually causes a move. the monthly household income (divided by 1,000) also has a positive and signifi cant effect. thus a high income promotes the move of own children since these parents can assumedly offer their children the opportunity of establishing their own household. all in all, we can say that although the educational and vocational history clearly infl uence the events of starting a family (birkelbach 1998), it apparently loses signifi cance for the ensuing phases of the family life cycle. the characteristics of the children were included in the analyses in model 3. these fi ndings should, however, be interpreted with some caution for, as mentioned above, these are not time dependent variables. for example, we cannot trace a causal correlation from entry into working life and the time of leaving home. since the data of the last child to move out compared to the youngest child still living at home serve as the basis, the results of model 3 can be interpreted as follows: if the last child living at home is a son, the risk of entry into the postparental phase drops by 36 percent. if this child has an academic degree, this favours the entry into the postparental phase by 139 percent. if the child is employed, the risk of entry increases by 55 percent. by contrast, vocational training has no signifi cant effect. these results correspond to previous studies examining the home-leaving behaviour of men and women (e.g. ziegler/schladt 1993; berger 2009; lauterbach 2004). the total model estimates the infl uences of the individual variables while controlling for and stabilising the other covariates. the infl uence of the individual biography remains strong, but with regard to the educational and occupational history the mother’s academic degree loses signifi cance but only little of its effect when controlled for the children’s characteristics. household income retains its weak positive infl uence. the effects of the children’s characteristics change only slightly, for instance the child’s academic studies increase the rate by 129 percent and employment by 68 percent and sons decelerate the transition by 32 percent. the characteristics of the children apparently have a stronger effect on the probability of entry into the postparental phase than that of the parents. only the income continues to have a weak positive effect on the entry. by comparing the log-likelihood values and the related pseudo r², it becomes clear that the inclusion of the educational and vocational variables does not improve the model. but the model does become better by including the children’s characteristics, although the total model does not show any improving effects. apparently, the information from the individual biography and the children’s characteristics are suffi cient for analysing the risk of entry into the postparental phase. 6 summary and conclusions the majority of parents experience the move of their last child during the sixth decade of life. however, the analyses show that for those who moved out of their own parental household early, entry into the postparental phase also occurs earlier than for those who moved out later. as expected, the age at the birth of the fi rst child has an even greater infl uence on the time of entry: the younger the parents are, entry into the postparental phase of the family life cycle • 45 the earlier they can expect their children to leave home. the number of children is equally signifi cant. if it is low, the parents will live alone in their household earlier. this confi rms that entry into the postparental phase is strongly dependent on decisions made early within the life course. the occupational history of parents has no importance for their entry into the postparental phase. neither an academic degree, nor vocational training nor employment of the mother at the time of departure can be identifi ed as distinct factors. solely a higher income favours the entry and thus the move of the last child. the child’s vocational and educational history is far more signifi cant. when children begin studies or work the parents can expect their children to leave home much earlier. the gender of the child is just as important: sons stay at home longer than daughters. the longitudinal analysis clearly reveals that the parent’s lives and the characteristics of the children are signifi cant for the entry into the postparental phase. not all of the determinants mentioned at the start were included in the analyses since some of them correlated very strongly with one another and this effect would have been refl ected in the regression model. however, for further analyses we can say that the correlating variables are interchangeable since they have the same effect. finallly, we would also like to mention some limitations of this study. the results are based on an educationally selective sample and cannot be transferred to the total population. in addition, some restrictions were made from the outset concerning the family histories: only those respondents with normal family histories – no divorced or widowed people – were included in the analyses. infl uences by such events would have to be accurately included into the theoretical model and empirically proven. moreover, this is only one birth cohort. it would be interesting to learn whether infl uences shown here also prove to be signifi cant among other cohorts. in further analyses of the transition into the postparental phase, it would be interesting to look at the quality of relationships between parents and children prior to their moving out, an aspect that was not surveyed in the kgp. in addition, the housing situation of families and the respective standard of living could provide additional fi ndings about the risk of entry. future research should examine more precisely how the entry itself affects the lives of the parents, for example, it may be that the move of the last child affects the signifi cance of the family by lowering their status. or perhaps no longer needing to care for children could affect the parents’ vocational lives, in particular that of mothers, since they then have more time available for employment. similarly, entry into the postparental phase could have an impact on other spheres of life such as the use of leisure time. references bart, pauline b. 1971: depression in middle-aged women. in: gornick, vivian; moran, barbara k. 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stuttgart: enke verlag. wawrzyniak, barbara 2014: die subjektive bedeutung der familie in der nachelterlichen phase. phil. diss. essen-duisburg. weick, stefan 1993: determinanten des auszugs aus der elterlichen wohnung. in: dieckmann, andreas; weick, stefan (eds.): der familienzyklus als sozialer prozeß – bevölkerungssoziologische untersuchung mit den methoden der ereignisanalyse. berlin: duncker und humblot: 86-108. ziegler, rolf; schladt, diana 1993: auszug aus dem elternhaus und hausstandsgründung. in: diekmann, andreas; weick, stefan (eds.): der familienzyklus als sozialer prozess. bevölkerungssoziologische untersuchungen mit den methoden der ereignisanalyse. berlin: duncker & humblot. • barbara wawrzyniak48 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “der eintritt in die nachelterliche familienphase”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2015-01de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-01de8, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 25.10.2012 date of acceptance: 10.01.2014 dr. barbara wawrzyniak (). universität zu köln, institut für soziologie und sozialpsychologie (iss). köln. germany. e-mail: barbara.wawrzyniak@gmx.net url: http://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/wawrzyniak.html?&l=0 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved reviewers of the journal in 2014 and 2015 comparative population studies vol. 40, 4 (2015) ann biddlecom, new york eckart bomsdorf, cologne josef brüderl, munich hansjörg bucher, bonn sandra buchholz, bamberg thomas büttner, berlin mathias czaika, oxford eldad davidov, zurich patrick deboosere, brussels sabine diabaté, wiesbaden claudia diehl, konstanz christian dudel, rostock andreas ette, wiesbaden michael feldhaus, oldenburg jürgen flöthmann, bielefeld tineke fokkema, the hague tomas frejka, sanibel markus grabka, berlin paul gans, mannheim jenny de jong gierveld, the hague daniela grunow, frankfurt a.m. bhakta gubhaju, canberra gerhard k. heilig, vienna nicole hiekel, cologne jan m. hoem, rostock johannes huinink, bremen naila kabeer, london vladimira kantorova, new york stefanie kley, hamburg thorsten kneip, munich dirk konietzka, braunschweig caroline kramer, karlsruhe anne-kristin kuhnt, duisburg hans dieter laux, bonn detlev lück, wiesbaden tilman mayer, bonn joão medeiros, brussels andreas mergenthaler, wiesbaden natascha nisic, hamburg natalie nitsche, vienna matthias pollmann-schult, berlin roland rau, rostock darja reuschke, st. andrews nikola sander, vienna michaela schier, munich david shapiro, university park pa vladimir m. shkolnikov, rostock joachim singelmann, san antonio jan skopek, san domenico di fiesole bettina sommer, wiesbaden johannes stauder, heidelberg anja steinbach, duisburg lisa strohschein, edmonton oliver thévenon, paris sabine walper, munich deadric williams, lincoln aslan zorlu, amsterdam the publisher and the editorial team wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable work for cpos! published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved editorial on the special issue “an international perspective on the processes, patterns, and outcomes of reurbanisation” editorial on the special issue “an international perspective on the processes, patterns, and outcomes of reurbanisation” paul gans, stefan siedentop anyone following the ongoing debate in urban research, policy-making and society about “reurbanisation” or the “renaissance” of big cities will fi nd it hard to imagine that not so long ago, urban futures still had largely negative connotations. in light of seemingly limitless mobility, new communication and information technologies, and changing residential and business location preferences, many commentators regarded high density forms of settlement as signs of a bygone era. it seemed that in a globalised and digitally networked world, there was no more need for traditional forms of urban centrality and agglomeration (gordon/cox 2012; lang/lefurgy 2003; dear/flusty 1998). the future was rather to be found in an urban society without cities. this assessment was fuelled by fl ight from cities to suburbs (which had, in some cases, been ongoing for decades), massive losses of industrial jobs combined with the occurrence of concentrated poverty in inner city areas, and derelict building stocks and infrastructure in many places. in view of this, the population increase that has taken place over the past 20 years in numerous cities of the global north appears to represent a radical break from these trends. the quantitative dimension of the new urban growth is striking: the fi ve biggest german cities (berlin, hamburg, munich, cologne, and frankfurt) – for example – collectively grew by nearly half a million inhabitants between 2011 and 2015; and, since the mid-2000s, numerous smaller cities also fi nd themselves confronted by new population growth (bundesinstitut für bau-, stadtund raumentwicklung 2017; see also gans in this issue). similar developments can be seen in other european countries and in the us. reference can be made here to available cross-sectional analyses of demographic developments in european city-regions and cities (kabisch/haase 2010; turok/mykhnenko 2008; wolff/wiechmann 2017), as well as to studies that illustrate the phenomenon of new urban growth from a national perspective (randolph/tice 2017; juday 2015; glaeser 2013; rae, 2013; sturtevant/jung 2011; rérat 2012a) and for individual cities and regions (kährik et al. 2016; hyra 2015; haase/rink 2015; lilius 2014; mulherin/howell 2012; bromley et al. 2007; lehrer/wieditz 2009; moos 2015). in western and central europe, as well as in north america, the phenomenon of reurbanisation is now being considered as an integral part of a more comprecomparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 391-398 (date of release: 23.03.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-03en8 • paul gans, stefan siedentop392 hensive process of economic and sociodemographic restructuring. the trigger for the corresponding debate was the observation of a re-population and densifi cation of inner-city areas in the us and canada starting in the 1980s (landis 2016; juday 2015; moos 2015; hyra 2012; birch 2005; sohmer/lang 2001). with a slight delay, these tendencies have also been noted for western european countries. here too, many inner cities had signifi cant population growth (rae 2013; herfert/osterhage 2012; rérat 2012a; koll-schretzenmayr/kramp 2010; kabisch/haase 2010; haase et al. 2010; bromley et al. 2007; bromley et al. 2005). since then, numerous observers see signs of a “revitalisation” of inner city areas, which is often regarded as the result of an actively pursued valorisation by urban marketing, the real estate industry and city politics (mulherin/howell 2012; holm 2012; breen/rigby 2004; see also brombach et al. in this issue). this is accompanied by critical voices that point to dynamic processes of displacement of lower income groups (hyra 2015; maciag 2015; holm 2012; lambert/ boddy 2010; shaw/porter 2009). in many cities, the discussion of reurbanisation is tightly interwoven with debates on the gentrifi cation of inner city residential areas and the approaches of combating it by means of land market and housing policy (schipper/wiegand 2015; holm 2012; shaw/porter 2009; lees 2008). some voices see the historical signifi cance of reurbanisation not so much in the absolute development of the population in inner cities, but rather in the changes of their social composition. according to this view, what is “new” in reurbanisation is to be found in signifi cant socio-demographic changes brought about by the infl ux of largely younger, well-educated and affl uent people into centrally located neighbourhoods (juday 2015; moos 2015; siedentop et al. 2017; siebel 2008). in contrast to the classical and well-established understanding of gentrifi cation, reurbanisation cannot be understood as a spatially limited process that is confi ned to a comparatively small number of inner-city neighbourhoods and can only be observed in large metropolises with a dynamic service sector and an existing built stock from the pre-war period. based on the observation of new, economically powerful population groups in inner city areas and the suburbanisation of social disadvantage (hochstenbach/ musterd 2017; randolph/tice 2017; häußermann et al. 2011; as well as dembski et al. in this issue), some scholars even expect a large scale “inversion” of the social structure of metropolitan regions (ehrenhalt 2012). in europe, unlike the us, reurbanisation is also being discussed on the city-regional level. in some countries – such as germany or the uk – a weakening of suburbanisation or even its reversion towards intra-regional concentration has been observed (geppert/gornig 2010; siedentop 2008; rérat 2012a; see also dembski et al., as well as brombach et al., in this issue). in more than a few german city-regions, current population growth in the city centres even exceeds that of the suburban belt (bundesinstitut für bau-, stadtund raumforschung 2017; herfert/osterhage 2012). in the us, on the other hand, observers point to an ongoing intra-regional deconcentration of the population (siedentop et al. 2017; wilson et al. 2012; brookings institution 2010). inner city population growth is regarded here as merely one spatial facet of an overall regional growth process. an international perspective on the processes, patterns, and outcomes of reurbanisation • 393 from the observation of both convergent and divergent developments in city-regions and cities, it can be concluded that reurbanisation is to be explained by forces of different spatial scope. firstly, place-independent effective changes in the economy and in society alter the framework conditions within which actors make location decisions. secondly, endogenous local factors embed the above-mentioned forces and developments in a strongly path-dependent, historical context and thus give rise to place-dependent outcomes. accordingly, higher level social and economic developments are “fi ltered” in a locally specifi c way, such that both the process of reurbanisation and its material outcome differ from country to country and from city to city (on this subject, see also beauregard 1990). such an understanding also explains why new growth has not occurred in certain cities up to now, or has occurred only to a limited extent. on the one hand, the higher level – ubiquitously effective – forces include the transition from an industrial to a service economy, a neoliberal political climate that emphasises competition and growth, the internationalisation of the real estate sector, and, last but not least, processes of demographic change and socio-cultural differentiation as drivers of reurbanisation (krätke 2014; gerhard 2012; geppert/ gornig 2010; siebel 2010). on the other hand, context-related forces include regional, strongly path-dependent economic and demographic developments, topographic and demographic conditions, and the local milieus of urban politics, each with their peculiar actor networks, institutional patterns and planning cultures (see brombach et al. in this issue). the latter aspect in particular has been the subject of intense debates in recent years. according to the predominant view, public and municipal investment in city centres and inner cities has favoured reurbanisation and gentrifi cation processes, either as an explicitly pursued strategy of renewal and social mixing (porter/shaw 2009; lees 2008; see also dembski et al. in this issue) or as a more or less unintended side-effect of the valorisation of public spaces and housing stock renovation programmes (rérat 2012b). overall, however, it must be admitted that assessments of the causal background of population growth and socio-demographic change continue to be widely divergent. despite empirical research that has been conducted in recent years, “reurbanisation” in no way gives the impression of being a robust scientifi c concept. so far, there are no convincing predictive theories which can claim validity for differing economic, social or urban political contexts and across national borders. reurbanisation appears, in part, to be an overly complex phenomenon, which can only be grasped in a coherent theoretical framework to a limited extent. the evident absence of a “grand theory” for explaining reurbanisation underscores the value of an inductive research design. by way of a spatially highly differentiated description of socio-demographic, economic and political processes, as well as by way of international comparisons, an inductive design allows us to draw conclusions about what is generalisable and what is case-specifi c. such a research strategy has, above all, to be oriented toward grasping heterogeneity and diversity, instead of only focussing on generalisable causal mechanisms. this is precisely where this special issue comes in, inasmuch as it offers an overview of demographic trends in selected city-regions of the global north which • paul gans, stefan siedentop394 have been discussed under the heading of “reurbanisation”. the four contributions are devoted to developments in city-regions in germany (see the article by gans and brombach et al.), england (see the article by dembski et al.), eastern europe (see the article by haase et al.), and the us (see the article by brombach et al.). in addition to providing empirical evidence of the changes in population numbers and structures that are observable in each case, the contributions also inquire into the causal backgrounds of reurbanisation phenomena. the article by paul gans explores the question of what factors could be responsible for the sometimes sharply diverging demographic developments in larger german cities. the point of departure is the observation of a general trend toward reurbanisation, whereby the great majority of cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants have seen population increases since the year 2000. at the same time, however, it is shown that substantial variance exists within the urban system with respect to the intensity of growth and its composition in terms of age and origins. using regression analysis, the author identifi es the size, heterogeneity and dynamics of regional labour markets, as well as higher educational infrastructure, as key drivers of reurbanisation. the article by sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing and olivier sykes discusses the effects of the national “urban renaissance” policy pursued by new labour in the 1990s on city-regions in the structurally weaker north of england. the manchester/liverpool case study shows that the “urban renaissance” largely remained limited to the inner cities, whereas municipalities in the suburban periphery are affected by ongoing structural problems and demographic shrinkage. this is particularly the case for highly industrialised municipalities and those that have evolved into mono-functional dormitory towns. the article argues that demographic and socio-economic developments in city centres and suburbs interact and hence have to be considered comprehensively. the authors conclude that it cannot be taken for granted that a reurbanisation policy focussed on city centres has a positive spill-over effect on suburban areas. the article by karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop and philipp zakrzewski intends to identify similarities and differences between reurbanisation in city-regions in germany and the us. it becomes clear that, beyond the re-population and increasing density of inner cities on both sides of the atlantic, sharp divergences are apparent with regard to spatial patterns and dynamics, as well as socio-structural changes and built-physical forms. using the case studies of stuttgart and portland, the authors show, however, that the valorisation of inner cities represents a planning strategy which was pursued in both cities over the course of decades and whose negative side effects in the form of gentrifi cation have lately created enormous political pressure for action to be taken. the article by annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková and adam radzimski enquires into the evidence for reurbanisation processes in eastern european city-regions, which, after the fall of the iron curtain, were fi rst affected by a dynamic suburbanisation. the authors currently see few signs of a reurbanisation trend and, at the same time, point to highly heterogeneous developmental trajectories, both between the countries and/or regions considered (eastern germany, poland and the an international perspective on the processes, patterns, and outcomes of reurbanisation • 395 czech republic) and within them. there is no specifi c “post-socialist type” of reurbanisation, they argue. for poland and the czech republic, an inner city population growth such as that which has been observed in eastern germany is also not very likely in the future. as explanations, they identify, among other factors, differing housing preferences and differences in the real estate markets, but also diverging public policies on both the national and municipal levels. according to the authors, the reurbanisation of eastern german cities is the result of broad public support for urban redevelopment and renovation, whereas neoliberal policy models have accelerated suburbanisation in post-socialist states. taken as a whole, all four contributions suggest that the new growth of urban cores can be interpreted as “universal” to the extent that such growth began to occur in western european and us cities at more or less the same time, despite the differing contextual conditions. but reurbanisation takes place 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siedentop. research institute for regional and urban development (ils). dortmund, germany. e-mail: stefan.siedentop@ils-forschung.de url: https://www.ils-forschung.de/index.php?lang=de&s=siedentop published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home: turkish immigrant and native families in germany marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home: turkish immigrant and native families in germany michael windzio, can aybek abstract: this article investigates differences between native germans and turkish immigrants in the timing of leaving their parental homes in germany. by using event history models, it is shown that leaving the parental home is closely linked to the intervening life-event of marriage, particularly among turkish women. moreover, there are interaction effects of religious norm orientation with gender which differ between native germans and turkish immigrants. in contrast to turkish immigrants, the linkage of marriage and leaving home became much weaker over birth-cohorts with time in the group of german women. finally, analyses of sequence patterns also show remarkable differences between native germans and turkish immigrants in the process of leaving home. religious norm orientation turns out to be less important in the turkish group than in the native german group. keywords: leaving the parental home · living arrangement · transition · adulthood · germany · native german · immigrant turkish · co-occuring event · marriage · religion · norms 1 introduction in modern western countries, leaving the parental home has become one of the major markers of the transition into adulthood (corijn/klijzing 2001). today, many adolescents leave their family in order to pursue either higher education or occupational training. marriage and childbirth, which actually are the more fundamental transitions in life, are postponed in favour of training or higher education and the entry into the labour market. at the same time, western countries have become more diverse in cultural and religious terms. in some countries, such as germany, the third and fourth generations of immigrants’ descendants are growing up. it remains to be seen, however, which type of a trajectory into adulthood young people of migratory background follow, and, for instance, if they show a pattern of leaving home similar to that of the native group in the respective country. comparative population studies vol. 40, 2 (2015): 105-130 (date of release: 15.06.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-07en8 • michael windzio, can aybek106 the largest group of immigrants in germany stems from turkey, and there are empirical fi ndings highlighting differences in many realms of life between native germans and turkish immigrants, such as labour market outcomes (kalter/granato 2004) or marriage patterns (gonzalez-ferrer 2006; kalter/schroedter 2010). since family structures and intergenerational relations differ between germany and turkey (nauck 1989; kağıtçıbaşı/sunar 1997), we expect that the patterns of leaving the parental home differ between these two groups as well. the role of the family in terms of the autonomy and dependence of individual family members in the turkish context is clearly different from patterns found in northern european societies (liljeström/özdalga 2002). for instance, in turkish society, pre-marital residential autonomy (goldscheider/goldscheider 1993) is found to be much less common (koç 2007). analyses conducted on immigrant and native-born youth in the netherlands led to similar observations that young men and particularly women of turkish descent are more likely to follow a traditional path that leads them from the parental home directly into marital cohabitation (zorlu/mulder 2011; windzio 2011). departing from fi ndings presented in literature on the topic, we expect that the event of leaving the parental home is more closely related to marriage in the turkish group than in the native german group. in contrast to windzio (2011), we distinguish between the preand post-marriage period and also devote particular attention to gender differences in religious norm orientation. with regard to changes over time, however, it is not clear whether the degree to which leaving home and getting married coincide has changed in the same way in both groups: in the context of the fundamental value changes taking place in many western european countries since the late 1960s, we indeed expect that the synchronicity of marriage and leaving the parental home has substantially declined in post-war germany as a result of trends in modernisation, secularisation and individualisation (konietzka/huinink 2003; konietzka 2010). the question of whether such a decline also occurred in the group of turkish immigrants will be tested empirically by using data from the german gender & generations survey programme. we further ask whether the expected difference in home-leaving patterns can be explained by the degree of religious norm orientation, which we measure through indicators concerning the importance of religious ceremonies and activities. one argument for considering religious norm orientation in this context is that the process of family formation has always been awarded special attention in religious norms and by religious authorities, because the family is an important medium for spreading and reproducing religious systems (zinnecker 1998). moreover, religion constitutes a basic element of culture in classical sociology (weber 1978). today, there are many empirical results showing the renewed importance of religion and religious diversity in western countries, especially in settings where the host society is predominantly christian and a large share of immigrants are muslim (modood et al. 2006). it will be argued that the timing of moving out of the parental home should differ between natives and turkish immigrants in germany, particularly with respect to gender (cf. esmer 2008). a comparison of survivor functions will provide fi rst insights into differences in the timing of moving out of the parental home. it will then marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 107 be investigated to what extent the intervening life-event of marriage has an impact on the rate at which the parental home is left and whether there are interaction effects of religious norm orientation with gender. finally, by using a simple analysis of sequence patterns, how religious norm orientation infl uences the order of the events of marriage, moving out and childbirth will be examined for women in both groups. 2 theory and research it is still an open question when and under which conditions, next to educationor work-related circumstances that might trigger the spatial mobility of adolescents, norms affect individual decisions on the timing and mode of leaving the parental home. with regard to age norms, i.e. the infl uence of informal social norms in a specifi c society concerning the “best” age at which young people should move out of the parental household, there is plenty of evidence in the literature (e.g. billari/liefbroer 2007; settersten 1998). we argue that this process is also strongly related to other types of norms, such as religious and family norms. the groundbreaking study by goldscheider and goldscheider (1993) illustrates that religious norms in culturally diverse societies, such as the usa, infl uence patterns of leaving the parental home. as is commonly known, religions are normative systems which relate the everyday conduct of life to the satisfaction of spiritual needs, for example through the promise of salvation under the condition of appropriate behaviour (weber 1999). in this regard, religion also infl uences attitudes towards intergenerational relations and marriage. this is of special importance, taking into consideration that marriage behaviour is closely linked to the reproduction and maintenance of religious systems (windzio/wingens 2014). however, religious claims regulating marriage behavior are often in competition with other functional requirements of society, such as regulating kinship, social ties and inheritance (cf. schweitzer 2000; segalen 1986). for this reason, we argue that the behavior of leaving home might be even more infl uenced by norms related to attitudes towards the family and kinship system and is not necessarily motivated by religious considerations alone (cf. kağıtçıbaşı/sunar 1997; nauck 1989; white et al. 2015). in order to understand the particular mechanisms behind patterns of leaving the parental home, it is important to differentiate between the infl uence of religiousness as such and the impact of familial norms. the concept of normative bonding describes ties of support and reciprocity within communities and families. social integration by normative bonding can be in sharp contrast to the self-interested individual rationality when an individual need – such as education – is subordinated to the fulfi lment of normative expectations of the community (halpern 2006: 20). similar to portes’ (1998) concept of negative social capital, normative bonding can be an obstacle to individual freedom. in conjunction with monitoring and social control in normatively bounded communities, this is what turns the process of leaving the context of the natal family into an event of high social signifi cance. leaving the parental home, from the perspective of the • michael windzio, can aybek108 parents, for instance, could be interpreted as an event that leads to a loss of control over the child. partnership and marriage are not considered to be a merely individual matter, but also a familial issue that serves the end of establishing an orderly life in accordance with normative expectations of the parental generation and the co-ethnic community. studies on family structures in turkish society underscore the high level of interdependence and interaction between married couples and their families of origin (hortaçsu 2003, 2007). the parents of both sides contribute considerably to the fi nancial burden of marriage and the establishment of a new household. furthermore, the natal family continues often to provide goods and services, such as childcare, that might be important to young couples (hortaçsu 2003; kalaycıoğlu/rittersberger-tılıç 2000). for immigrant families of turkish descent in germany, steinbach (2013: 1114) observes that the frequency of parent–adult child contact is signifi cantly higher than in native german families. from this perspective leaving the parental home gains a different meaning that is strongly embedded in a familial context. studies using the world values survey still reveal notable differences in average value orientation between citizens of eu member states and turkey (esmer 2008; gerhards 2004). it has also been shown that family-related norm orientation regarding the “economic value” of children differ greatly between germany, turkey and turkish immigrants (nauck 1989: 261), although at least to some degree differences in the normative structure of intergenerational relationships can be explained by educational differences (1989: 261). strikingly, in nauck’s (1989) analysis, differences in normative orientation and behavioural practices between respondents in turkey and turkish immigrants in germany were rather modest. in a similar manner, kağıtçıbaşı and sunar (1997) argue that, despite trends towards modernisation, family relations in turkey are still to a high degree characterised by a “culture of relatedness”. while research commonly hints at cultural differences between immigrants and natives (gerhards 2004; nauck 1989), there are nonetheless only a few studies linking patterns of leaving the parental home to norms and culture (billari/liefbroer 2007; huschek et al. 2010; zorlu/mulder 2011). diehl et al. (2009) found a correspondence of higher levels of religious adherence with less egalitarian gender roles in the group of turkish immigrants in germany, but not in the group of native germans. moreover, diehl and koenig (2009: 311) highlighted that levels of religious adherence did not decline for turkish immigrants in the second generation, but in certain aspects in fact increased. when persons with more traditional values and higher levels of religious norm orientation have stronger ties to their family, moving out of their parental home early on in order to achieve pre-marital residential autonomy should be less likely. consequently, high levels of religious norm orientation might slow down the process of leaving the parental home. moreover, due to far-reaching cultural changes in western societies since the late 1960s, one might expect a linear trend in individualisation and “de-linking” of life-events across birth cohorts in the native german sample. nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether turkish immigrants in germany show a similar trend. marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 109 3 data and methods the empirical analyses are based on the fi rst wave of the german generations and gender survey where among other things retrospective data on life events was collected. the data set consists of two independent random sub-samples which include n=10017 german-speaking persons and n=4045 turkish citizens who live in germany as fi rst and second generation immigrants (ette et al. 2007: 17; ruckdeschel et al. 2006: 13). since the sample of german-speaking persons also includes turkish immigrants, this group’s results have been shifted to the turkish sample. all other immigrant groups were excluded from the german-speaking sample, so that 1st and 2nd generation turkish immigrants can be compared with native germans. turkish respondents who moved out of the parental home while still in turkey were excluded from the sample. the timing of important life-events, such as leaving the parental home, was measured on a monthly basis, so continuous-time event history analysis and the method of episode splitting (blossfeld et al. 2007: 141) could be applied. with regard to the event of interest, which is the timing of leaving the parental home, the risk exposure starts at the age of 14. age 14 is fairly close to the legal marriage age of 16. however, we found several marriage-related cases of moving out at slightly earlier ages than 16 and hence decided to start the risk period at age 14 in order to include these events in our sample. this slight extension of the risk period does not infl uence the overall risk ratios. persons who do not hold any school diplomas as well as persons with low levels of secondary education are defi ned as having a low level of education. secondary education diplomas qualifying for university admission (“abitur” or “fachhochschulreife”) were defi ned as a high level of education, intermediate level diplomas of secondary education (“realschule”, “mittlere reife”) or similar diplomas as a medium level of education. the data provides information on the father’s and the mother’s occupation and education when the respondent was 15 years old. the following categories are used for the occupational status of the parents: 1. no employment, 2. blue-collar workers, 3. farmers and self-employed, 4. white-collar workers, civil servants, professionals (reference group). the educational certifi cates obtained by the parents are categorised as high education (master craftsmen, abitur, academic) and other education. unfortunately, with respect to the timing of general and occupational education, we can only discern the time the general education ended and the time when the highest occupational certifi cate was obtained – which might not necessarily coincide with the end of an individual’s general education. therefore, the period during which persons move out of the parental home due to entry into occupational training or higher education has been defi ned to start two months before completing general secondary education and to end 38 months later (training/higher education, end school -2/+36 month). with regard to intervening events in life, the exact co-occurrence of such events is rather unlikely. we assume that these events do not happen at precisely the same point in time (here: within the same month), but in temporal proximity to each other during a pre-defi ned time period. therefore, we used an interval long enough to • michael windzio, can aybek110 cover time for activities which are usually related to marriage, such as the organisation of a wedding, before and after moving out. twelve-month intervals were used with the dates of marriage and the birth of the 1st child as midpoints (marriage period (+/6 mon.), birth of 1st child period (+/6 mon.)). in table 1 we estimate the effects of two dummies and regard the marriage period as a reference category: the fi rst dummy (“6+ months before marriage”) indicates the period of potential pre-marital residential autonomy (pre-marriage period), the second dummy (“6+ months after marriage”) indicates the period of 6 months and more after marriage. regarding marriage, it should be noted that in the group of turkish immigrants, more than 90 percent of all marriages are intra-ethnic, that is, turkish immigrants choose partners mainly from the turkish community (kalter/schroedter 2010: 20– 21), which is higher than suggested by the demographic opportunity structure (resulting from the size of the group). in contrast, in the native german group, interethnic marriages have a similar share, but the opportunity structure for intra-ethnic marriages is completely different due to the large group size (cf. lanzieri 2012: 1). event-history analyses are based on weibull models. overall, the weibull model fi ts well with regard to our analyses and there is no noteworthy change in results when compared with cox models (windzio 2011). however, in contrast to the cox model, the parametric approach allows a simulation of the effects by using predicted survivor functions (cf. fig. 3). we apply single and competing risk models. single risks are defi ned by the event of moving out. in contrast, competing risks are defi ned as moving out with marriage and moving out without being married. moving out with marriage means that both life-events occur more or less simultaneously (within +/6 months). moving out without being married does not necessarily imply that respondents are not married precisely when they move out, but that they move out of the parental home (at least) 6 months before or after marriage. in the vast majority of cases, respondents do not stay in their parents’ home for more than six months after marriage. hence, competing risks are defi ned by leaving home either within (“with marriage”) or outside (“without marriage”) the marriage period of one year. 4 results figure 1 illustrates the distribution of factor scores of religious norm orientation for german natives and turkish immigrants (windzio 2011). these factors were extracted from the items shown in table a1 (appendix) by using principal component analysis. signs were reversed so that high factor scores measure high levels of religious norm orientation. it should be noted that this measurement is only cross-sectional, taken at the time of the interview. this is, in most cases, some years after the persons moved out of the parental home, so the causal interpretation is always based on the assumption of rather stable orientations. most studies on the religiousness and spirituality over the life-course analysed christian respondents and indicate a slight increase of religiousness over the life-course, especially for persons who already were religious earlier in life, while the overall change does not seem to be marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 111 pronounced (argue et al. 1999; mccullough et al. 2005; wink/dillon 2002). even though some measurement error can obviously be expected, the consequence of such an error is an underestimation of the effects, and therefore not detrimental to the study (skrondal/rabe-hesketh 2004: 76). overall, the turkish population tends towards higher levels of religious norm orientation. following our argument above, this distinct difference motivates us to focus on this norm orientation as a determinant of the process of leaving the parental home. before we test the hypotheses in a multivariate event-history design, the following graphs give a fi rst visual impression of the process. in fi gure 2, the time-axis has been rescaled, so that the period at risk starts at the age of 14. events of moving out of the parental home taking place before the 14th birthday are seldom and were excluded from the data. figure 2 compares the process of moving out of the parental home between german natives and turkish immigrants. regarding the median age of moving out, turkish immigrants move out later (22.1 years) than native germans (20.5 years). there are also gender differences. in both groups, women move out earlier than men, which may very well result from their younger age of marriage on average. the result of the wilcoxon-test is highly signifi cant (2(df)=333.77(3)), and this also holds true if we test for ethnic differences separately by gender (women (2(df)=36.12(2), p<.000), men (2(df)= 141.30 (2), p<.000)). the question of whether marriage actually is an important determinant of moving out will be analysed by using models of event history analysis in the following section. fig. 1: religiosity, factor scores 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 ke rn el d en si ty -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 religiosity, factor scores, t=34.60, p<.000*** turkish german n = 12555, turkish = 3976, german = 8579 source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations, see, windzio (2011: 193) • michael windzio, can aybek112 4.1 leaving the parental home as a life-course transition although the obvious strength of presenting kaplan-meier survivor functions lies in the clear illustration of the process for different subgroups, the shortcoming is their limitation in controlling for intervening life-events (billari 2001; kley/huinink 2006). as a result, multivariate event-history models were estimated in order to analyse the effects of different life-course transitions (moving out, marriage and childbirth) and religious norm orientation on leaving the parental home. in the fi rst two columns of table 1, the effects of weibull event-history models are shown for turkish immigrants and native germans. columns 3-6 show the results of models estimated separately for turkish and german men and women. at fi rst sight, cohort effects suggest a clear pattern of acceleration across cohorts in the native german sample, but no systematic pattern in the turkish sample. however, estimating the models separately for gender reveals that german women are the only group in which we fi nd such a clear pattern: the younger the cohort of native german women, the higher the rate and the earlier they leave their parents’ home. in the fi rst two models we fi nd a positive effect of female gender on the rate at which persons move out of the parental home, which is in line with the survivor functions in figure 2. in all models, the number of siblings was controlled for as a rough indicator of household “crowding”, that is, many people sharing only a limited number of rooms. this indicator is limited insofar as we only know the number of siblings in the data, but not how many of these siblings were still living in the parental household when the respondent moved out. nevertheless, our indicator of crowding increases the rate of moving out only in the native german sample, but fig. 2: leaving home, by ethnic group and gender 0. 00 0. 50 1. 00 st ill liv es in p ar en ta l h ou se ho ld 0 60 120 180 240 300 360 age, months since 14th birthday turkish male turkish female german male german female n[subjects] = 9009 n[events] = 8191 source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 113 not in the turkish sample, although the average number of siblings (including the respondent) amounts to 1.8 for germans and 3.3 for turkish immigrants. if crowding indicates an objective need to move out due to a scarcity of living space (room at home), we would expect signifi cant, positive effects in both samples and not only for native germans. the results of these models are also interesting with regard to respondents’ educational levels. compared with the low-educated reference group, highly educated native germans move out earlier, even though the effect is signifi cant only at the 10 percent level for german women. in the turkish group, respondents’ educational levels do not have any impact, neither for women nor for men. regarding social background, measured as parental occupational status when the respondent was 15 years old, we fi nd that children of blue-collar workers move out later than the children of white-collar workers, professionals or civil-servants, which holds true for all subgroups. moreover, female children of unemployed turkish parents (or of turkish parents who are inactive on the labour market) have a lower rate of moving out than the reference group. with respect to the age of immigration (in the turkish sample) the pattern is less clear. respondents who immigrated at the age of 18 or above have the lowest rates of leaving the parental home (hazard ratio 0.539, p<=0.000). maybe, this indicates that children who immigrated with their parents in late adolescence, are a selective subgroup who tend to stay in their parents’ household for unobserved reasons. regarding the models in the fi rst two columns in table 1, there is a negative main effect of religious norm orientation on the rate of moving out, but a positive interaction with the marriage period in both samples. regardless of their ethnic origin, persons with high levels of religious norm orientation move out later. however, during the marriage period this negative effect is at least compensated for, as the reversed sign of the interaction indicates (turkish: religiosity= 0.885, p<=0.01, religiosity*marriage= 1.215, p<=0.01). this basic pattern remains stable across all subgroups, except for turkish women, for whom we do not fi nd signifi cant effects. thus we can conclude from this analysis that religiousness does affect the process of leaving the parental home. as an intervening life event, the training/higher education period signifi cantly increases rates of moving out in the german sample, even if we estimate the models separately for men and women. in contrast, there is no such effect of training for turks, be it for men or for women. relative to the marriage period, the rate of moving out before marriage – denoted as pre-marital residential autonomy by goldscheider and goldscheider (1993) – is decreased by factor 0.107 in the german and by 0.059 in the turkish sample. in other words, there seems to be a much stronger effect of the marriage period (vs. pre-marital residential autonomy) in the turkish than in the german group (factor 1/0.059=16.950 vs. factor 1/0.107=9.346). this means that fi rstly, the coincidence of life events – in this case, marriage and leaving the parental home – is important for germans as well as for turkish immigrants, but the linkage of both events seems to be much tighter in the group of turkish immigrants. further, gender differences with respect to the strength of this effect are only marginal in the german sample, but • michael windzio, can aybek114 g er m an tu rk is h g er m an m al e g er m an f em al e tu rk is h m al e tu rk is h fe m al e co h or t b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 0 an d o ld er ( re fe re n ce ) b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 119 65 1. 13 5* * 1. 03 3 1. 09 6 1. 17 1* * 1. 04 1 1. 16 6 b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 6 -1 97 0 1. 14 5* * 1. 02 8 1. 05 9 1. 21 6* ** 0. 96 3 1. 12 4 b ir th c o h o rt 1 97 119 75 1. 29 6* ** 1. 40 4* * 1. 14 6+ 1. 42 2* ** 1. 43 1* 1. 40 1+ b ir th c o h o rt 1 97 6 -1 98 8 1. 34 3* ** 1. 21 0+ 1. 14 6* 1. 55 3* ** 1. 03 4 1. 42 2* re sp on d en t g en d er : fe m al e 1. 15 4* ** 1. 27 3* ** n u m b er s ib lin g s 1. 05 1* ** 1. 00 8 1. 06 0* ** 1. 04 6* ** 1. 03 7 0. 97 8 lo w e d u ca ti o n (r ef er en ce ) m ed iu m s ec o n d ar y ed u ca ti o n, o th er , p u p il 0. 97 8 0. 89 8 0. 97 1 0. 97 5 0. 89 9 0. 89 2 h ig h er s ec o n d ar y ed u ca ti o n 1. 13 5* ** 0. 96 9 1. 16 2* * 1. 10 1+ 1. 03 9 0. 85 7 p ar en ta l o cc u p at io n al s ta tu s an d ed u ca ti on w h it eco lla r, ci vi l s er va n ts , p ro fe ss io n al s (r ef er en ce ) u n em p lo ye d o r in ac ti ve 0. 89 3+ 0. 60 0* * 0. 86 3 0. 91 5 0. 78 8 0. 51 0* b lu eco lla r w o rk er 0. 90 4* * 0. 67 1* ** 0. 88 7* * 0. 91 3* 0. 71 4* 0. 62 0* ** fa rm er s o r se lfem p lo ye d 0. 92 8+ 0. 86 1 0. 90 2+ 0. 95 0 0. 91 4 0. 84 5 p ar en ts : h ig h ly e d u ca te d 1. 02 6 1. 18 6 1. 09 6* 0. 98 2 1. 17 4 1. 07 3 ti m e o f m ov in g ou t 6+ m o n th s b ef o re m ar ri ag e 0. 10 7* ** 0. 05 9* ** 0. 11 0* ** 0. 10 5* ** 0. 09 7* ** 0. 03 9* ** 6+ m o n th s af te r m ar ri ag e 0. 04 9* ** 0. 16 0* ** 0. 05 5* ** 0. 04 7* ** 0. 19 6* ** 0. 14 9* ** b ir th 1 st c h ild p er io d (6/ + 6 m o n th ) 2. 17 1* ** 2. 25 0* ** 2. 24 8* ** 2. 12 7* ** 2. 25 7* ** 2. 36 2* ** tr ai n in g /h ig h er e d u ca ti o n, e n d s ch o o l ( -2 /+ 36 m o n th s) 1. 34 5* ** 1. 02 5 1. 30 4* ** 1. 37 8* ** 0. 87 3 1. 14 6 re lig io si ty 0. 84 7* ** 0. 88 5* * 0. 85 3* ** 0. 83 8* ** 0. 87 6* 0. 88 3 re lig io si ty *m ar ri ag e 1. 34 1* ** 1. 21 5* * 1. 26 4* ** 1. 38 7* ** 1. 28 1* 1. 18 5 b o rn in g er m an y (r ef er en ce ) ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 0 -1 0 1. 05 9 1. 01 0 1. 09 3 ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 11 -1 7 1. 12 4 1. 03 3 1. 26 7+ ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 18 + 0. 53 9* ** 0. 56 3* ** 0. 50 0* ** ln (ρ ) .4 38 ** * .4 54 ** * .4 28 ** * 4 48 .* ** 53 7* ** .3 73 ** * n s u b je ct s 70 31 16 39 32 30 38 01 88 7 75 2 n f ai lu re s 66 56 12 22 30 10 36 46 63 5 58 7 ta b . 1 : d et er m in an ts o f l ea vi ng t he p ar en ta l h o m e, w ei b ul l m o d el s, h az ar d r at io s e xp o ne nt ia te d c o ef fi c ie nt s; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : g er m an g g s , w av e 1, 2 00 6, o w n ca lc ul at io ns marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 115 remarkably strong in the turkish sample. when entering the marriage period, the rate of moving out of the parental home increases by factor 26 for turkish women (1/0.039), but only by factor 10 for turkish men (1/0.097). accordingly, the linking of life-events is much more important for turkish women than for turkish men, whereas german men and women do not notably differ from each other. in order to clarify the difference in the marriage periods’ effect size between german women and turkish women, we use a simulation approach, graphed in fi gure 3. this approach avoids the problem of comparing coeffi cients across non-linear models (mood 2010). figure 3 is a conditional effect plot of survivor functions. the simulation is based on the two models in table a3 in the appendix. in the simulated scenario, marriage takes place at the age of 22 years and 6 months (which is 102 months after the 14th birthday). hence the marriage period, set to 12 months (+/6 months around the marriage date), begins in month 96 and ends in month 108. in this model, all control variables are held constant at their mean values. the result is a remarkable difference between turkish and german women: after 108 months (6 months after marriage), the proportion of german women still living in the parental household is only 8.8 percent. if these german women had not married, 40.1 percentwould still live in the parental household (difference: 31.3 percentage points). in contrast, 13.6 percent of turkish women who married at the age of 22 and 6 month remain in the parental household. if they had not married, this proportion would amount 63.5 percent, which makes a difference 49.9 percentage points. therefore, the marriage period causes 18.3 percentage points more events of leaving the parental home for turkish than for german women. fig. 3: effects of marriage on leaving the parental home for women, simulation from table a1, appendix, all controls held constant at mean values 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1 st ill li vi ng in p ar en ta l h ou se ho ld 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 months since 14th birthday turkish, no marriage turkish, marriage german, no marriage german, marriage n[subjects] = 4553 n[events] = 1339 source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations • michael windzio, can aybek116 g er m an m al e tu rk is h m al e g er m an f em al e tu rk is h fe m al e w it h o u t m ar ri ag e w it h m ar ri ag e w it h o u t m ar ri ag e w it h m ar ri ag e w it h o u t m ar ri ag e w it h m ar ri ag e w it h o u t m ar ri ag e w it h m ar ri ag e co h or t b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 0, o ld er ( re fe re n ce ) b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 119 65 1. 15 5* 0. 43 8* ** 1. 19 8 1. 19 5 1. 28 4* ** 0. 69 8* * 1. 21 9 1. 30 9 b ir th c o h o rt 1 96 6 -1 97 0 1. 11 6 0. 40 0* ** 0. 96 7 0. 86 0 1. 38 6* ** 0. 49 4* ** 1. 19 0 1. 42 3 b ir th c o h o rt 1 97 119 75 1. 22 4* 0. 35 7* * 1. 37 8 1. 77 3* 1. 61 2* ** 0. 32 1* ** 1. 60 4+ 2. 02 8* * b ir th c o h o rt 1 97 6 -1 98 8 1. 19 4* * 0. 14 1* ** 0. 97 6 0. 90 4 1. 73 8* ** 0. 17 6* ** 1. 52 0+ 1. 66 0* re sp on d en t n u m b er s ib lin g s 1. 06 9* ** 1. 09 7* ** 1. 06 3* 1. 01 3 1. 06 3* ** 1. 00 1 0. 97 1 0. 99 3 lo w e d u ca ti o n (r ef er en ce ) m ed iu m s ec o n d ar y ed u ca ti o n, o th er , p u p il 0. 99 6 0. 89 1 0. 72 2* * 1. 31 4 0. 99 3 1. 04 3 0. 76 0+ 0. 68 6* * h ig h er s ec o n d ar y ed u ca ti o n 1. 23 0* ** 0. 62 5* * 0. 87 4 0. 85 8 1. 17 9* * 0. 48 3* ** 0. 74 4 0. 42 1* ** p ar en ta l o cc u p at io n al s ta tu s an d ed u ca ti on w h it eco lla r, ci vi l s er va n ts , p ro fe ss io n al s (r ef er en ce ) u n em p lo ye d o r in ac ti ve 0. 78 7* 1. 13 1 0. 90 7 0. 54 6 0. 88 1 0. 89 5 0. 34 7* * 0. 39 4* b lu eco lla r w o rk er 0. 87 3* * 1. 02 8 0. 72 1* 0. 68 4 0. 85 5* * 1. 18 8+ 0. 38 3* ** 1. 00 3 fa rm er s o r se lfem p lo ye d 0. 89 1+ 0. 82 9 0. 99 1 0. 83 1 0. 92 9 0. 84 5 0. 59 6* 1. 28 0 p ar en ts : h ig h ly e d u ca te d 1. 11 8* 1. 19 2 1. 22 9 0. 26 2* 0. 99 5 0. 99 9 0. 79 6 0. 80 8 ti m e o f m ov in g ou t tr ai n in g /h ig h er e d u ca ti o n , e n d s ch o o l ( -2 /+ 36 m o n th ) 1. 36 3* ** 0. 19 1* ** 0. 78 7 0. 4 48 ** 1. 53 0* ** 0. 39 0* ** 1. 02 4 0. 67 2* b ir th 1 st c h ild p er io d (6/ + 6 m o n th ) 2. 90 7* ** 13 .1 30 ** * 3. 81 7* ** 1. 17 5 2. 97 0* ** 10 .4 64 ** * 5. 68 0* ** 2. 35 3* * re lig io si ty 0. 85 6* ** 1. 16 7* * 0. 88 8* 1. 43 7* ** 0. 85 5* ** 1. 04 7 0. 88 7 1. 25 6* * b o rn in g er m an y (r ef er en ce ) ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 0 -1 0 0. 99 8 1. 82 8* * 1. 64 4* * 1. 45 4* ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 11 -1 7 1. 12 5 1. 63 8* 1. 56 9* 1. 48 2* ag e o f i m m ig ra ti o n 18 + 0. 52 0* * 0. 62 5 0. 60 6* 0. 46 1* ** ln (ρ ) .4 07 ** * .4 88 ** * .6 04 ** * .6 36 ** * .4 10 ** * .3 90 ** * .5 88 ** * .5 24 ** * n s u b je ct s 32 30 32 30 88 7 88 7 38 01 38 01 75 2 75 2 n f ai lu re s 25 85 42 5 4 47 18 8 28 99 74 7 26 6 32 1 ta b . 2 : le av in g th e p ar en ta l h o m e w it h an d w it ho u t m ar ri ag e, c o m p et in g ri sk w ei b ul l m o d el s, h az ar d r at io s e xp o ne nt ia te d c o ef fi c ie nt s; + p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : g er m an g g s , w av e 1, 2 00 6, o w n ca lc ul at io ns marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 117 in table 2, we follow the approach of zorlu and mulder (2011) and estimate competing-risk models. the event of leaving home is split into moving out without marriage and moving out with marriage. again, “at the same time” does not mean perfect synchronicity of marriage and moving out, but a time interval of +/6 months around the date of marriage. table 2 shows estimates for turkish immigrants and native germans separately for men and women. here, we can see remarkable differences in cohort effects: for german men and german women, the rate of moving out without marriage increases across cohorts, while the rate of moving out with marriage decreases. thereby, the trend seems to be more steady-linear for german women than for german men. however, in the turkish group we do not fi nd such a trend: even though the rate of moving out without marriage increases across cohorts for turkish women (signifi cant at the 10 percent level), though not steadily, there even seems to be an increase in the rate of moving out with marriage in the 1971-75 and 1976-1988 cohorts. these cohort effects are also signifi cant for the events of moving out with marriage, but only at the 10 percent level. accordingly, there was a successive decline of the coincidence of moving out and marriage in the german group, but not in the turkish group. one could argue that the reference group of turkish respondents who were born before 1960 and who left their families’ home in germany might be exceptional: either, their families were “early movers” since the recruitment agreement between turkey and germany was signed in 1961, or they were comparatively old when their families emigrated to germany in the 1970s or later. however, we do not fi nd a declining trend in the subsequent cohorts, so the effect is not a result of choosing a rather exceptional reference group in the native german group, for men and women, high education (“higher secondary education” compared with the reference group of low education) corresponds with higher rates of leaving home without marriage and, at the same time, leads to lower rates of leaving home with marriage. this is consistent with our expectations, since highly educated respondents often postpone marriage and move out in order to complete tertiary education or other forms of higher or further education. while higher education decreases the rates of moving out with marriage for turkish women, it also reduces the rates of moving out without marriage for both turkish men and women (albeit insignifi cantly). this means that, contrarily to native germans, leaving home cannot be primarily considered an instrument towards pursuing higher education in the turkish group. regarding employment and the occupational status of parents, it is rather striking that children of blue-collar workers or unemployed persons (when the respondent was 15 years of age) show lower rates of leaving the parental home without marriage for all four groups. yet, even though not directly comparable, the differences in effect sizes are especially high for turkish women: compared with blue-collar workers, the reference group of children whose parents were either white-collar workers, civil servants or professionals have 2.61 times higher rates of moving out without marriage (1/.383). for german women, this rate is increased only by factor 1.17 (1/.855). • michael windzio, can aybek118 a high educational level of parents also has an impact. for turkish men, it reduces the risk of leaving home with marriage by factor 0.26. given the low average educational level of turkish immigrants in germany (diefenbach 2007), highly educated turkish parents might be a special group which is somewhat different from other turkish immigrants in terms of value and norm orientations, and that possibly does not strictly follow the norm of coinciding life-events. at the very least, it is striking that a highly qualifi ed parental background makes a difference with respect to the coincidence of life events in the turkish sample, but not in the native german one – indicating that the behavioural difference between the highly educated and others is more pronounced in the turkish group. as expected, the vocational training and higher education period has a positive effect on the rate of leaving home without marriage for native germans and a negative effect on the rate of leaving home with marriage. while the negative effects on moving out with marriage are nearly identical for german men and german women, the effect on moving out without marriage is not signifi cant in the turkish group. hence, moving out in order to pursue educational ambitions is more prevalent in the german sample, and it seems that turkish immigrants – both men and women – arrange their training or higher education while remaining under direct parental supervision during this period. it seems that the family and marriage norms are so dominant in the turkish sample that education plays only a minor role for leaving home. therefore, the education effect might be closely linked to the marriage norm effect. the birth of the fi rst child strongly increases both competing risks, but the effect on moving out in conjunction with marriage is much higher, which is consistent with common expectations: quite often, the events of marriage and the birth of the fi rst child are closely linked to each other. yet we fi nd especially strong effects of childbirth in the native german sample, where it occurs in an even more pronounced way (e.g. german male: factor 2.90 without vs. factor 13.13 with marriage). however, the effect differs in the turkish sample: for turkish men, the birth of the fi rst child does not infl uence the rates of moving out with marriage, but it increases the rates of moving out without marriage by factor 3.82. for turkish women, we fi nd signifi cantly positive effects of the birth of the fi rst child for both events, but the effect on moving out without marriage is even stronger than on moving out with marriage. once again, there is a remarkable difference between the turkish and the german group: for both german women and men, there is a high coincidence of three events: childbirth, marriage and leaving the parental home. for turkish men and women, in contrast, the rate of moving out without marriage is increased especially strongly due to childbirth. since we also know from our analysis in table 1 that moving out before marriage is a comparatively rare event, particularly for turkish women, the strong effect of childbirth on moving out without marriage indicates that moving out often takes place after the marriage period: the married women has given birth to a child, but still lives with the parents. unfortunately, the data does not provide further information on whether the young couple lives together in the husband’s parents household – which is a frequent pattern in the group of turkish immigrants (gonzalez-ferrer 2006). nevertheless, for turkish immigrants, the fi rst child has a much stronger positive effect outside the marriage period than inside marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 119 it. once more, this is a striking difference between native germans and turkish immigrants. we have to recall the coding of both variables in order to understand this result: the period “birth of the fi rst child” is measured as a one-year interval, with the date of birth as a midpoint. the same logic was applied for defi ning the marriage period and the competing risks. giving birth to the fi rst child during the marriage period and moving out during these twelve months is only likely if conception occurred while the respondent was unmarried and living with his or her parents. what we observe in the turkish sample is a high probability of childbirth after the one-year marriage period has elapsed. hence the insignifi cant effect of childbirth on leaving the parental home in conjunction with marriage for turkish men might result from the fact that for respondents still living in their parents’ household, premarital pregnancies rarely occur. for this reason, the birth of the fi rst child does not occur before or during the marriage period, but in most cases afterwards, which is another difference between native germans and turkish immigrants. 4.2 leaving the parental home in a sequence of transitions a closer look at the frequency distribution of life-course sequences in table 3 corroborates the result that pre-marital pregnancies rarely occur in the turkish sample. we used the “sequence concept” of sackmann and wingens (2003), which includes an origin state, a destination state and an intermediate state. when we distinguish between male and female respondents, considerable differences between sequences of turkish and native german respondents become apparent. 27.90 percent of turkish men, but only 13.90 percent of german men, follow a “traditional” sequence of marrying fi rst, then moving out and fi nally making the transition into parenthood. for females, these differences are even stronger: more than 50.07 percent of turkish women and only 17.41 percent of german women follow this pattern. similarly, 32.58 percent of turkish men, but only 11.35 percent of german men, show a sequence that indicates close bonds to the family of origin even after marriage: fi rst they marry, then have a fi rst child and move out afterwards. shares of this pattern are 19.19 percent for turkish women and 9.48 percent for german women, respectively. regarding these two paths beginning with marriage, we see that nearly 70 percent of turkish women do not have the experience of pre-marital residential autonomy. in contrast, more than 65 percent in the group of german women make this experience. paths beginning with childbirth rarely occur in both groups and the differences are only slightly signifi cant, if at all. finally, the two paths of pre-marital residential autonomy (goldscheider/goldscheider 1993) are far more prevalent in the german sample: these are sequences starting with leaving the parental home, having a fi rst child and marriage (men: 6.44 percent vs. 16.8 percent, women: 8.21 percent vs. 21.85 percent) as well sequences starting with leaving the parental home, marriage and having a fi rst child (men: 25.38 percent vs. 52.38 percent, women: 15.3 percent vs. 42.2 percent). can these differences be explained by religious norm orientation as an indicator of cultural difference? interestingly, in table 4, religious norm orientation makes a strong difference for native german, but not for turkish immigrant women! re• michael windzio, can aybek120 garding the pattern “marriage→move→child”, we fi nd, for instance, signifi cantly higher shares of highly religious german women. in contrast, in the category “move→child→marriage”, highly religious women show signifi cantly lower shares than less religious women. a main conclusion from this table is that the difference in leaving-home patterns between german and turkish women is not due to differences in religious norm orientation. therefore, researchers should search for other explanations. literature from cross-cultural psychology highlights the protectiveness displayed towards daughters, as an element of “culture of honour”, that is supposed to result from differences in the modes of economic production in specifi c geographic and institutional contexts (e.g. herding economies in mountainous male female sequence pattern turkish german turkish german marriagemovechild 27.90 13.90*** 50.07 17.41*** marriagechildmove 32.58 11.35*** 19.19 9.48*** childmarriagemove 5.68 3.39* 4.87 5.33n.s. childmovemarriage 2.02 2.17n.s. 2.36 3.73* movechildmarriage 6.44 16.80*** 8.21 21.85*** movemarriagechild 25.38 52.38*** 15.30 42.20*** n=7726 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 792 2625 719 3543 tab. 3: sequence patterns of life events, by ethnic group, in % source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations, signifi cance test based on marginal effects of multinomial logistic regressions religious norm turkish german orientations sequence pattern low high low high marriagemovechild 50.00 51.64n.s. 14.37 20.32*** marriagechildmove 18.39 19.40n.s. 8.61 10.02n.s. childmarriagemove 4.02 5.67n.s. 5.70 4.93n.s. childmovemarriage 2.30 2.69n.s. 4.33 3.18n.s. movechildmarriage 9.20 6.57n.s. 25.83 18.24*** movemarriagechild 16.09 14.03n.s. 41.15 43.32n.s. n=4193 348 335 1684 1826 tab. 4: sequence patterns of life events, by ethnic group and religious norm orientation, in %, women only source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations, signifi cance test based on marginal effects of multinomial logistic regressions, median split for religious norm orientation marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 121 regions with weak formal institutions) (nisbett/cohen 1996). in combination with a possible persistence of such norm orientation after migration, this could be an alternative explanation (nisbett/cohen 1996). however, this line of argument has not yet been systematically adapted towards the integration of immigrants and has only in rare cases been applied in empirical research (enzmann et al. 2004). 5 summary and conclusion the impact of marriage on leaving the parental home is particularly strong and gender-specifi c in the turkish sample, while we fi nd only negligible gender differences for native germans. one of the most striking results of this paper is that during the marriage period, the risk of leaving home is increased by factor 20 in the group of turkish women, while german women have risk ratios of roughly factor 10. one could argue, however, that strong effects of the marriage period on the rates of moving out mainly reveal economic differences between german natives and turkish immigrants. but as effects were still in operation even after we controlled for parental occupational status and education, an answer had to be sought for why this pattern is gender-specifi c. here, we argued that differences in religiosity could explain the rates of leaving home. we found signifi cant interaction effects, indicating that the decelerating effect of high religiousness was counterbalanced during the marriage period for turkish and german men as well as german women, but not for turkish women. however, further results are not in line with the expectation that religiousness could explain differences between native germans and turkish immigrants: differences in religious norm orientation do not explain differences in the sequence patterns of leaving the parental home. in addition, the effect of vocational training or higher education periods also differs between turkish immigrants and native germans. it considerably increases the rates of moving out for german men and women, but does not have any effect for the turkish group. accordingly, for native germans, education is a good reason to leave home, but not so for turkish immigrants. turks seem to arrange their educational biographies in a way that allows them to stay in the parental home and possibly subordinate their educational aspirations to the needs or expectations of their family. a similar pattern is suggested with respect to the effects of crowding. although crowding indicates an objective need to reduce room scarcity at home by moving out, it has no effect for the turkish group, but it signifi cantly increases the moving out of native germans – even though the average number of siblings is much higher for turks. finally, competing risk models on rates of leaving the parental home with and without marriage revealed important cohort effects: while rates of moving out in conjunction with marriage steadily decreased across german birth-cohorts, indicating a continuous process of the “de-linking” of life-events and individualisation, we did not fi nd analogous processes in the sample of turkish immigrants. in contrast, the turkish birth-cohort 1971-75 even showed higher rates of leaving home with marriage than the reference group and all other cohorts (which did not signifi cantly • michael windzio, can aybek122 differ from the reference group). the “de-linking” of life-events indicates a change in normative orientation towards the transition to adulthood. such changes in transition-related norms cannot only be measured by appropriate items in surveys, but also by the degree of actual coincidence between crucial life events of marriage and moving-out behaviour. as we have seen in the empirical analysis, despite the control of religious norm orientation, a very strong and consistent effect of this coincidence is observable. obviously the degree of coincidence of these two life events cannot be explained by religious norm orientation. there actually is an effect of religious norm orientation on leaving home, but this effect is only observable in the native german sample. the empirical analyses in this paper suffer from at least two shortcomings: fi rst, the measure of religious norm orientation is only cross-sectional. this presupposes the assumption of rather stable value orientation over the life-course – which cannot be tested using this data set. second, some measurements are only proxy indicators. for instance, the number of siblings as an indicator of crowding is not a perfect one, since it does not take into account the number of rooms or the housing space right before moving out. similarly, our measurements of the economic situation, the vocational training/higher education period and the composition of households at the time of moving out are far from being perfect. however, we cannot rule out that – at least partially – the differences between turkish immigrants and germans natives with regard to the association of marriage and moving out result from economic differences (which correspond with dwelling size, e.g.). we control for the number of siblings, but admittedly this does not fully capture the economically determined effect of household crowding as the amount of siblings could not be 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[doi: 10.1023/a:1013833419122]. zinnecker, jürgen 1998: die tradierung kultureller systeme zwischen den generationen. die rolle der familie bei der vermittlung von religion in der moderne. in: zeitschrift für soziologie der erziehung und sozialisation 18,4: 343-356. zorlu, aslan; mulder, clara 2011: ethnic differences in leaving home: timing and pathways. in: demography 48,1: 49-72 [doi: 10.1007/s13524-010-0012-1]. • michael windzio, can aybek126 date of submission: 02.07.2014 date of acceptance: 04.03.2015 prof. dr. michael windzio (). empas – institute of empirical and applied sociology. bremen, germany. e-mail: mwindzio@empas.uni-bremen.de, url:http://www.empas.uni-bremen.de/index.php?id=86&no_cache=1&l=1 prof. dr. can aybek. hochschule bremen. university of applied sciences. bremen, germany. e-mail: can.aybek@hs-bremen.de, url: http://www.can-aybek.eu/ marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 127 appendix tab. a1: items indicating religious norm orientation • how often, if at all, do you attend religious services, e.g. collective prayers? • it is important for an infant to be initiated/baptised in an appropriate religious ceremony. • it is important for couples who marry at public registry offi ces to have a religious wedding too. • it is important for a funeral to include a religious ceremony. cronbach‘s alpha=0.7892 • michael windzio, can aybek128 mean sd min max subepisodes with event .304 .460 0 1 cohort (ref.: 1960 and older) birth cohort 1961-65 .120 .325 0 1 birth cohort 1966-70 .110 .313 0 1 birth cohort 1971-75 .094 .293 0 1 birth cohort 1976-88 .192 .394 0 1 respondent turkish .527 .499 0 1 female gender .209 .407 0 1 number of siblings 2.151 1.846 0 17 low education (reference) medium education .365 .481 0 1 higher secondary education, (abitur/fachabitur) .202 .401 0 1 parental occupational status and education parents: no employment (1) (reference) parents: blue-collar workers (1) .035 .184 0 1 parents: farmers, self-employed .424 .494 0 1 parents: white-collar workers, civil servants, professionals (1) .123 .328 0 1 parents: high education, master craftsmen, academic (ref.: other) .209 .407 0 1 time of moving out 6+ months before marriage .860 .346 0 1 6+ months after marriage .038 .191 0 1 birth 1st child period (+/6 mon.) .043 .202 0 1 training period, end school -2/+36 mon .317 .465 0 1 born in germany (reference) age of immigration: 0-10 years .050 .218 0 1 age of immigration: 11-17 years .041 .200 0 1 age of immigration: 18+ years .026 .161 0 1 religiosity -.057 1.010 -2.056 1.757 religiosity * marriage period .014 .318 -2.056 1.757 tab. a2: descriptive statistics of event-history models n subepisodes = 26026, n persons = 8734, n events = 7933 sd = standard deviation source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations marriage, norm orientation and leaving the parental home • 129 tab. a3: determinants of leaving the parental home, weibull models, hazard ratios, models for simulation german female turkish female cohort birth cohort 1969-1965 1.180** 0.959 birth cohort 1966-1970 1.266*** 1.018 birth cohort 1971-1975 1.457*** 1.175 birth cohort 1976-1988 1.587*** 1.151 respondent number siblings 1.044*** 0.980 low education (reference) medium secondary education, other, pupil 0.970 0.832+ higher secondary education 1.099+ 0.779 unemployed or inactive 0.887 0.546* blue-collar worker 0.896** 0.623*** farmers or self-employed 0.917 0.820 white-collar workers, civil servants, professionals 0.980 0.971 time of moving out -/+6 months around marriage 10.584*** 19.214*** birth 1st child period (-6/+6 month) 2.076*** 2.829*** training/higher education, end school (-2/+36 months) 1.416*** 1.118 religiosity 0.843*** 0.925 religiosity*marriage 1.386*** 1.157 age of immigration 0-10 1.110 age of immigration 11-17 1.314* age of immigration 18+ 0.564*** ln(ρ) .399*** .480*** n subjects 3801 752 n failures 3646 587 exponentiated coeffi cients; + p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: german ggs, wave 1, 2006, own calculations published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved the association between norms and actions the case of men’s participation in housework daniela grunow, nina baur abstract: gender and family researchers are often puzzled by the differences between gender norms and actual behaviour. for example, many previous studies have shown that since the 1970s, attitudes have changed toward more modern gender role beliefs. however, this is generally not refl ected in behaviour, this being especially true for men’s involvement in housework and care work. in this paper, we analyse to what extent gender norms correspond with men’s participation in housework. we examine in particular cooking, vacuum-cleaning and doing the laundry, because these activities refl ect pronounced variation in norms and actions with regard to modern and traditional gender role attitudes. going beyond previous research, which assesses the general infl uence of norms on practices, we investigate the relative impact of different types of gender ideologies, namely the strength with which respondents endorse (1) the male provider and female homemaker model, (2) women’s employment, (3) employment as men’s primary role, and (4) men’s participation in unpaid work. our empirical fi ndings indicate that positive attitudes towards male contributions to housework are a key predictor of men’s housework. keywords: germany · gender · women · men · housework · division of labour · gender ideology · cooking · vacuum-cleaning · doing the laundry 1 introduction: the relationship between gender roles and daily routine behaviour nowadays, it is assumed that both men and women have increasingly developed a more critical attitude toward traditional gender roles. young couples and families in particular are believed to seek more gender egalitarian ways of combining employment and household tasks. indeed, empirical research has shown that attitudes toward gender-specifi c norms have shifted toward egalitarian norms over the past decades, especially in the areas of family, employment, and housework (blohm 2002; lück 2004, 2009). comparative population studies vol. 39, 3 (2014): 521-558 (date of release: 29.09.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-10en7 • daniela grunow, nina baur522 historically, it seems that society’s attitude toward male and female responsibilities in private and professional life has changed. especially housework, which was generally considered a woman’s responsibility and therefore “unmanly”, is increasingly considered men’s responsibility as well. panel studies analysing the gender-specifi c distribution of housework of married couples and families show that nearly half (45.5 percent) of recently married couples share domestic responsibilities equally (grunow et al. 2007, 2012). during the fi rst year of marriage, men and women take care of traditional female housework equally. it is striking, though, that most men gradually withdraw from doing housework, especially after entering parenthood. thus, for many men, there appears to be an increasing discrepancy between egalitarian gender norms and their actual daily behaviour, which traditionalises during family formation (oberndorfer/rost 2005). this discrepancy of norms and action is sociologically interesting as it is not clear why men and women give up egalitarian divisions of labour in favour of a more traditional division of labour. economic factors (i.e. higher education and a better earning potential of men compared to their partners) cannot suffi ciently explain this relationship, as recent empirical studies have shown (gupta et al. 2010). instead, family context appears to play an important role in the ‘traditionalisation’ of gender roles (grunow et al. 2007, 2012; kühhirt 2011). as a consequence, interest in the infl uence of norms on gender-specifi c behaviour has increased in recent years (for a summary see davis and greenstein 2009). unfortunately, there is a lack of studies that measure and represent male and female norms in a contemporary and adequate way (grunow 2010). in particular, studies measuring attitudes toward male roles and responsibilities in the private and domestic sphere are lacking. it is also rarely examined whether the importance of men’s role as earners has changed. recent empirical studies from the netherlands and sweden hint at gender-specific attitudes toward housework being an important predictor of male and female participation in housework (poortman/van der lippe 2009; evertsson 2014). more precisely, the respondent’s own attitudes play a greater role than the partner’s attitudes, and men's attitudes correspond more strongly to their actual behaviour than the attitudes of their female partners. hence, this paper addresses the urgent need for research on gender role change, especially in regard to men (ostner 2005; tölke/hank 2005). following lück (editorial on this special issue cpos 39, 3), we analyse individual attitudes toward gender roles, i.e. specifi c normative beliefs regarding male and female roles in the family, as well as individual assumptions regarding the consequences of traditional and nontraditional gender-specifi c behaviour which often explain individual attitudes. we empirically show that both types of beliefs express common latent normative constructs, which help to explain individual behaviour. subsequently, we label these constructs norm systems. subsequently, we introduce theories about the development and the infl uence of gender norms on housework. building on recent fi ndings that gender roles change during the formation of households and families (davis 2007; schober 2011), we discuss the impact of household and family contexts on gender roles. using data from the study “the image of men in society”, we examine both normative attitudes the association between norms and actions • 523 and assumptions regarding gender roles held by men and women and the extent to which men participate in traditional female housework depending on their family context. one advantage of our study is that our data allows us to separate in our analyses norms regarding male and female behaviours which relate to different realms of life. we view these distinct norms as separate norm systems. specifi cally, we investigate the infl uence of following norm systems on behaviour: 1) the extent to which men and women endorse the male provider and female homemaker model, 2) men’s and women’s attitudes regarding women’s employment, 3) men’s and women’s attitudes toward employment being a man’s central social role, and 4) men’s and women’s attitudes regarding men’s participation in unpaid work. especially the third and fourth system have been neglected by earlier studies due to lack of data. thus, we allow for a dimensionally differentiated view on male gender norms. using multivariate analyses, we explore how much of the variation in men’s participation in cooking, doing the laundry and vacuum-cleaning these norm systems explain. of particular interest is the amount of variation explained by normative beliefs compared to experience-based economic and demographic factors, especially household and family contexts. due to spatial restrictions, our paper focuses on men's correspondence of norms and behaviour. this decision is supported by international research indicating a signifi cant relationship between men’s own attitudes and their actual behaviour (poortman/van der lippe 2009; evertsson 2014). our paper contributes to current research literature both by measuring the multi-dimensionality of gender norms as different male and female systems and by describing empirically how these norms correspond to daily routine behaviour of men in germany. as our empirical analysis is based on cross-sectional data, our fi ndings have merely explorative value. 2 theories and concepts on the relationship between norms and behaviour although – across all social milieus – only a small share of germans (5.7 percent) favour the traditional male provider and female homemaker model, it is still the dominant pattern of division of labour (52.3 percent) (veil 2003: 14; see also bothfeld 2005). most men still have higher earnings than their female partners, and even in families where women have a superior professional status, women still carry out the majority of the housework (koppetsch/maier 2001). it is yet unresolved which social mechanisms contribute to the development of both traditional and egalitarian behaviour and why the traditional division of labour between men and women predominates in couple households and families (grunow et al. 2007, 2012). normative beliefs are considered to contribute to this situation, as the associated theories predict that attitudes and behaviour of men and • daniela grunow, nina baur524 women change at different paces. these theories state that a traditional division of housework develops because men and women develop different normative beliefs due to their respective social context (grunow 2007). in order to provide a conceptual and theoretical frame for our anticipated empirical fi ndings, we describe briefl y how the terms “norms”, “beliefs” and “attitudes” relate to one another conceptually and why they are assumed to have an impact on the behaviour of individuals (cp. lück, editorial on this special issue cpos 39, 3). historically, research on gender roles has produced a number of different terminologies, as is refl ected in the theoretical description which follows. we follow the assessment of davis and greenstein (2009: 88-89) that these different terminologies are only partly of conceptual signifi cance. for our paper, it is important to understand norms and behaviour as two separate processes which change over the life course. following bolzendahl and myers (2004), a number of interest-based and experience-based factors account for the development and shift of individual normative gender beliefs (also labelled “gender ideologies”). according to the interest perspective it is argued that men hold less egalitarian beliefs than women, because they expect to gain less from gender equality than women due to cultural expectations. the experience-based factors that are expected to affect gender norms are socialisation, education, labour market experience, and the different stages of family formation such as marriage, divorce and the birth of children (cf. davis and greenstein 2009). the fact that gender norms as well as behaviours change over the life course implies that they can infl uence each other. for example, due to their stronger family orientation, traditionally-oriented women are more likely to start a family and have children than women with an egalitarian attitude (kaufman 2000). furthermore, a recent panel study shows that women receiving higher wages and holding egalitarian gender norms are less likely to return to a traditional division of labour after entering parenthood (schober 2011). this literature largely argues that in the case of housework, norms infl uence behaviour and not vice versa (for a summary, see davis and greenstein 2009). lück (editorial on this special issue cpos 39, 3), for example, argues that while normative beliefs both directly and indirectly infl uence behaviour, comparatively explicit individual attitudes toward gender roles have a direct effect on behaviour. attitudes are normative beliefs that act as a basis for behaviour and do not need to be further justifi ed. individual assumptions regarding explicit gender roles of men and women are assumed to have an indirect effect on behaviour, but a direct effect on individual gender attitudes. based on these conceptual considerations, we will discuss the two most infl uential theoretical approaches that explicitly deal with gender-specifi c infl uences of norms on behaviour: role theory and the “doing gender” approach (described in detail in becker-schmidt 2005; grunow 2007, 2010). in a second step, we discuss the implications of both theories taking into account changing social conditions and household and family constellations. the association between norms and actions • 525 2.1 role theory role theory is highly contested – especially in the fi eld of women’s studies (becker-schmidt 2005; grunow 2010). however, it has a comparatively long tradition in family research going back to the 1940s to ralph linton and talcott parsons and – viewed historically – constitutes the starting point for current conceptions of gender identity. role theory assumes that people generally behave compliant to their attitudes and thereby align themselves with social norms. men's willingness to help with domestic and family responsibilities, and women's disposition to demand this commitment, should therefore relate strongly to their normative gender role beliefs. attitudes toward gender roles are generally measured by an individual's acceptance or disapproval of traditional gender roles, and it is assumed that individuals with traditional attitudes practice a traditional division of roles whereas individuals with egalitarian gender-specifi c attitudes attempt to practice egalitarian principles in their daily life. although empirical support can be found for this approach (fthenakis et al. 2002a: 100-101), the number of theoretical arguments and empirical fi ndings contradicting this theory has grown in recent years. for example, fi ndings showing a discrepancy between increasingly egalitarian gender norms and gender-specific behaviour falling short of these norms speak against the gender role approach. while 70 percent of west-german men and women agreed to the statement that a traditional division of labour is better for everyone involved in 1982, this agreement decreased to approximately 50 percent in 2000 (blohm 2002: 537). in east germany, the percentage of proponents of a traditional division of labour was even lower after the german reunifi cation (35 percent of men, 30 percent of women). yet, longitudinal studies over a similar period of time show only small changes in the daily routine behaviour of men (künzler et al. 2001; grunow 2007). these results, however, have not been systematically linked to one and other; fi rst behaviour and norms have mostly been investigated separately, and, second research has so far primarily focused on the infl uence of changes in attitudes toward female roles. changes in normative attitudes toward male roles – especially regarding housework – and their infl uence on men's participation in housework have been neglected. we argue that progressive attitudes and beliefs regarding women’s employment are of limited value to predict men's behaviour in the household. following the basic principles of role theory, the latter should rather be the result of normative beliefs regarding male participation in domestic responsibilities. hence, in contrast to previous research, we assume that individual attitudes toward men’s unpaid work are primarily responsible for this relationship (in contrast to, for example, attitudes toward women’s employment), as only these attitudes directly impact men's participation in housework. 2.2 doing and undoing gender role theory offers an explanation for why norms have an infl uence on behaviour, but it has a fundamental defi cit in explaining which social mechanisms cause changes in • daniela grunow, nina baur526 gender norms. drawing on socialisation theory, role theory assumes that divergent attitudes toward gender roles and behaviour already develop during adolescence and remain fairly stable through adulthood. this theoretical conjecture, however, does not correspond to empirical reality. davis (2007), for example, shows that gender norms are infl uenced much more by individual experiences such as household formation, cohabitation and employment than by the gender norms held by parents. the assumption that gender norms do not change over the life course has also not been conclusively verifi ed. for example, a recent hypothesis of life course research states that men and women experience a change of normative frames during the transition to parenthood, which – together with prevalent institutional conditions – further traditional attitudes (grunow et al. 2007, 2012). this hypothesis is consistent with psychological theories of cognitive dissonance (festinger 1957; jakobsen 2009). these theories assume that psychological stress, caused by dissonance between people’s individual beliefs and own actions, leads them to adapt their attitudes to their circumstances. in line with this view demographic research has found that individuals in changing household contexts adapt their norms and values based on their new experiences (surkyn/lesthaeghe 2004). the more recent approaches of “doing” and “undoing gender” refl ect these fi ndings which suggest that norms and behaviours change over the life course. the “doing gender” theory suggests that the production and reproduction of male and female gender identities is continuously reinforced through symbolic behaviours in daily life (west/zimmermann 1987). following this theory, it is assumed that housework is, on the one hand, a necessary task of household production, but, on the other hand, a legitimate form for women to affi rm their gender identity and to enact prevalent gender norms (berk 1985). conversely, men identify with their social role as provider and avoid housework as it is considered unmanly (brines 1994). in contrast to the initial pessimism implied by this theoretical perspective on role changes, recent feminist approaches emphasise the possibility of deliberate breaches with prevalent gender norms through non-conforming behaviour (lorber 2000, 2004). both perspectives (“doing gender” and “undoing gender”) stress that social conditions defi ning and institutionally framing gender-specifi c behaviour are important points of reference for the development and shift of individual normative beliefs and actions regarding the role of men and women. 2.3 social conditions for gender norms social conditions infl uence how men and women interpret and reproduce gender roles in daily life. classic “doing gender” theories base their assumptions on historically developed social and institutional conditions that reproduce a genderspecifi c division of labour. international comparative research shows that women in countries with high gender equality spend less time on housework than women in countries with low gender equality (stier/lewin-epstein 2007; gupta et al. 2010; grunow 2013). male participation in housework is also found to be higher in egalitarian countries (fuwa 2004). social conditions in the german welfare state and the association between norms and actions • 527 labour market are traditionally aligned with the male provider and female homemaker model (ostner 1995; pfau-effi nger 1999; baur 2007; hofmeister et al. 2009). the german civil code dating from 01.01.1900 defi ned the husband and father as the superior patriarch to whom the wife and mother is legally subordinate (in west germany until 1977). this political model was gradually relaxed – at least in regard to male and female roles and responsibilities within the family – through various legislative amendments (e.g. legal entitlement to a [half-day] place at a day nursery in 1993, fl exible parental leave in 2001, introduction of tax exemptions for household help and childcare in 2002, changes in maintenance obligations and parental leave benefi ts in 2007) (leitner et al. 2004). political changes that primarily affect traditional female gender roles are much more numerous and have a longer history than changes affecting traditionally male gender roles. for example, maternity leave regulations were introduced in west germany in 1952; the right to paternity leave was only introduced through the enacting of the child-raising benefi ts act in 1986 (vaskovics/rost 1999). as a consequence of these social developments, we expect heterogeneous attitudes toward gender norms that cannot fully be explained by role theory. in particular, we anticipate differences between male and female attitudes toward gender norms regarding the approval and disapproval of different norm systems that are affected by these structural changes: alignment with the male provider and female homemaker model and approval of women’s employment. 2.4 household and family context household and family contexts play a central role with regard to the issues mentioned above, since laws, structures, and regulations construe gender in connection with marital status and the presence of children. further, both classic role theories as well as “doing gender” theories assume gender-specifi c socialisation within the family to be the starting point for the formation of male and female roles and identities. while it is undisputed that boys and girls are still socialised in gender-specifi c ways (zimmermann 2006), it is becoming increasingly likely that men gain basic profi ciencies of housework such as cooking, doing the laundry and vacuum-cleaning during their adolescence and early adult years. since young people are becoming more likely to live on their own and start a household well before partnering and starting a family (burkart 1997), single men often have to do housework themselves regardless of their normative attitudes. in comparison, men living with a partner are more likely to be able to avoid housework. it can also be assumed that, when living on their own for a longer period of time, doing housework becomes a matter of course for men. how these experiences infl uence the relationship between gender norms and housework has unfortunately been empirically neglected. therefore, we investigate the following hypothesis: doing housework is not only dependent on the normative framing of gender roles, but also on structures offering men opportunities to avoid housework. accordingly, men living with a partner should do less housework than men living without a partner. • daniela grunow, nina baur528 research has shown that women in relationships without children do more housework than single women; however, relationship status does not infl uence the weekly time men spend doing housework (künzler et al. 2001: 141). the latter fi nding is contrary to our expectation that men seek to withdraw from housework. it has further been shown that the transition to parenthood is paralleled by an increasingly traditional division of labour in the household (grunow et al. 2007). it is yet unresolved, though, whether normative attitudes are responsible for this. care tasks such as child-raising are traditionally seen as maternal responsibilities (brannen 2007; dermott 2007) and in a broader sense include housework and other “caring” jobs. nevertheless, a change in normative attitudes has occurred over the last couple of years, especially regarding the role of fathers (baur 2007), which is refl ected in recent amendments of parental leave regulations. research from sweden has shown that couples in which the father takes parental leave have a higher chance of having another child (duvander/andersson 2006). therefore, it remains unresolved whether the effects of normative attitudes on daily behaviour affect the formation of households and families, e.g. regarding the number of children, or whether norms still have explanatory power regarding the participation in housework after controlling for family contexts. we therefore investigate two opposing hypotheses: since fathers are expected to participate more regularly in unpaid work, the number of children positively infl uences the probability that men do housework. as institutional and normative contexts merely constitute frames for individual behaviour, individual normative attitudes remain signifi cant predictors of male participation in housework, even after controlling for the family context. 2.5 gender-specifi c connotation of housework in the male provider and female homemaker model, men and women divide work in a traditional way, where the man invests more time in paid work and the woman spends more time doing unpaid work (hewener 2004; grunow 2007; dechant/ schulz 2013 in cpos 39,3). thus, there are traditionally “male” and “female” tasks, and housework is typically considered a female task. the concept of tasks being gendered not only applies to the division of employment, housework and child-raising, but also to the division within these fi elds. research within the sociology of work, for example, has shown that both typically “male professions” (e.g. construction worker or mechanic) and “female professions” (e.g. nurse or nursery-school teacher) exist. in modern times, women have not only increasingly sought employment, they have also – although with a delay – increasingly entered traditionally male professions (krüger 2001; körner 2006; lundgreen/ scheunemann 2006; baur/akremi 2011). a similar development can be observed for the typically female domain of “housework”. when men do housework, they undertake typical tasks: diy (do it yourself), repairs, gardening, car washing, negotiations with authorities, and fi ling tax returns – tasks that are associated with traditionally male professions and rather concern the outside world. other fi elds of responsibility such as household budgeting and household organisation, doing the laundry, and taking care of relatives the association between norms and actions • 529 continue to be female domains (zulehner 2004; döge/volz 2004; döge 2006; baur/ akrem 2011). however, since 1991 – parallel to the trend of women entering male professions – a small equalisation of male and female tasks in the household can be observed (döge 2006: 28-29). this equalisation is not evenly distributed over every household. gender norms seem to have an infl uence on whether men participate in housework and on what tasks they do. zulehner (2004) distinguishes between “old” men with traditional gender role beliefs and “new” men with modern gender role beliefs. “new” men take on additional tasks in the household that “old” men still leave to their partners such as child care and cooking (zulehner 2004). hence, similar to employment, there is not just “housework”, but rather a number of different tasks, which have partly male and partly female connotations. it is therefore reasonable to distinguish different tasks when investigating whether and how much housework men undertake. in congruence with the current state of research indicating that “new men” also select rather “male” tasks in the household, we expect our multivariate analyses to show that individual normative attitudes of men best explain variations regarding tasks that are “legitimately male”, namely vacuumcleaning and cooking. conversely, we expect situational factors such as household contexts to explain differences between those men doing and those men not doing the laundry. 3 data analyses are based on data from the survey “the image of men in society”, a cati survey from 2006 conducted by siegfried lamnek and nina baur from the department of sociology and empirical social research of the catholic university eichstättingolstadt. the questionnaire consists of 120 questions capturing behaviour as well as different norms and values. for our research question, it is important that the gender role beliefs of participants and the information concerning who manages each household task are captured. the respondents were male and female german citizens from 16 different municipalities in bremen, north rhine-westphalia, baden-württemberg and saxonyanhalt that were selected using purposeful sampling. detailed information regarding the municipalities and the generalisability of the sample can be found in otte and baur (2008). detailed information on the sampling method and the validation of data can be found in baur and luedtke (2008). the full questionnaire and a detailed description of the sampling method are available on request from the second author. the sample raises concerns regarding the generalisability of our fi ndings. while respondents were selected randomly within the municipalities, the municipalities themselves were not selected randomly. therefore, signifi cance tests only indicate whether distributions can be generalised at the level of the different municipalities, but not at a federal level. we are, however, not interested in generalising distributions, but in testing theoretical assumptions about patterns and associations. to • daniela grunow, nina baur530 this end, the sampling design is adequate as contrasting municipalities were consciously selected, with the aim that their inhabitants have distinct daily routines and norms. thus, the different combinations of norms and behaviours that occur empirically should be captured in the data. due to the above mentioned inferential limitations, our interpretations focus on effect sizes that are relatively large, and we report signifi cance tests mainly for exploratory purposes. the municipalities were selected to maximise the regional spread of urbanity, employment situations and political situations. within every municipality, a random sample accounting for age and gender was selected using data from the registry offi ce. based on the ascertained telephone numbers, the response rate was 39.3 percent. in total, 709 men and women were interviewed, and 696 answered the questions relevant for our research. in order to distinguish differences between male and female attitudes and responses, we fi rst compare men and women. in a second step, we focus solely on men to explore the question why some men do housework and others do not. 4 distribution of housework in the family context 4.1 dependent variables: femininity of household tasks in order to investigate the question which normative attitudes and which other factors affect housework, we follow the recommendations of current research and analyse specifi c tasks more closely instead of evaluating housework globally (cf. schulz/grunow 2011). specifi cally, we focus on three tasks: vacuum-cleaning, cooking, and doing the laundry. two criteria were relevant for selecting these activities: first, the selected tasks should produce different patterns regarding the infl uence of gender roles. whereas doing the laundry is nearly always the responsibility of women – even in non-traditional households – the greatest differences between “new” and “old” men become evident in cooking (zulehner 2004). according to zulehner's research, although men vacuum frequently, it seems that this is not related to modern gender role beliefs. second, it is unresolved whether certain household tasks are (arduous or cumbersome) housework or (pleasing and relaxing) recreation (see döge 2006 in comparison to pinl 2004). to account for this issue, two activities (vacuum-cleaning and doing the laundry) were selected that are unanimously seen as housework in recent studies, whereas one activity (cooking) should be somewhere in between work and leisure. for example, cooking for the family with children during the week is generally tedious routine work. cooking sophisticated or special meals on the weekend, in contrast, can be exciting and recreational leisure. this distinction highlights gender-specifi c typologies: whereas women are nearly always responsible for tedious routine work, men cook what they like whenever they enjoy doing it – with or without their partner (lincke 2007: 155-161). the association between norms and actions • 531 4.2 variations in the division of housework depending on family and household context most research operationalises the question of who does how much housework by letting participants state whether their partner or they themselves do it. however, looking at what couples actually do, it becomes apparent that a number of other constellations are possible in daily life. to begin with, activities can be undertaken together. young couples with an egalitarian attitude, for example, often cook together (lincke 2007: 155-161). thus, it is not surprising that when having to choose in surveys between themselves and their partner carrying out an activity, participants generally pick themselves. in consequence, results on housework differ considerably depending on who was asked. for instance, zulehner (2004) fi nds 80 percent of women with a traditional attitude stating to vacuum, whereas less than half of men with a traditional attitude state that their partner carries out this task. further, other people may live in a household and also be capable of doing housework, e.g. children, parents, or fl atmates. housework can also be externalised, that is, carried out by other people not living in the household such as friends, acquaintances, relatives, neighbours, a cleaner or social services (e.g. meals on wheels). it can be expected that housework is more likely to be delegated to women, since private help is provided more often by women (meulemann/beckers 2004) and professions that are closely related to housework and social services are traditionally female. therefore, the frequent conclusion that young couples and singles practice a modern division of labour may partly result from the way housework is measured. after all, daily life can be organised in such a way that certain tasks do not occur at all. employed people often eat warm meals in the canteen and do not cook during the week (lincke 2007: 155-161). to circumvent this problem, our study specifi cally asks who carries out each of the mentioned tasks. the introduction for the questions concerning housework was, “in every household, different tasks have to be taken care of. please, tell us who carries out each of the following tasks: mainly you, mainly another person, or you and another person in equal parts? by another person we mean e.g. your partner, your parents, children, fl atmates, but also social services and paid workers”. we then asked, “who does the laundry in your household? do you mainly do it yourself, does another person mainly do it, or do you and another person share it in equal parts?” a response alternative that wasn’t specifi cally offered was, “this task does not occur in my household”. if a respondent answered “mainly me” or “me and another person in equal parts”, we asked, “which other people do the laundry in your household?”. response alternatives were not specifi cally offered, but coded for gender. following options were possible: my wife/partner/girlfriend – my husband/partner/boyfriend – a female friend or acquaintance – a male friend or acquaintance – my mother – my father – my daughter – my son – other female relatives – other male relatives – a female neighbour – a male neighbour – a female fl atmate – a male fl atmate – a cleaner – social services (e.g. meals on wheels) – other, namely: [open-ended] – i’m the only one doing it. for vacuum-cleaning, we asked, “who does the vacuum-cleaning?”, • daniela grunow, nina baur532 for cooking, “who cooks in your household?” (questions and answers were translated by cpos). the remaining questions and response alternatives were equivalent to the questions on doing the laundry. as table 1 illustrates, our data confi rm previous research: overall, women carry out the mentioned household tasks more often than men, (irrespective of relationship status). at least two thirds of men receive help from their partner or other people, irrespective of the specifi c task, whereas women more often manage them on their own. as expected, there are clear differences between the various tasks. participation by gender has almost equalised for vacuum-cleaning: seven out of ten men and eight out of ten women vacuum; 35 percent of men and 45 percent of women are solely responsible for this task in the household. the division of labour differs considerably, though, for cooking and doing the laundry: nine out of ten women cook and do laundry. every second woman is solely responsible for cooking, and eight out of ten women never receive any assistance in doing the laundry. in contrast, only every second man cooks, and only three out of ten men do laundry at all (of these, only one out of fi ve does it on his own). examining gender-specifi c differences for these household tasks, it becomes apparent that doing the laundry most strongly polarises the genders whereas vacuum-cleaning is most equally distributed. cooking holds a position between the two. 4.2.1 the relevance of household and family contexts for the division of housework the household and family context affects the participation of men and women in housework. as table 2 illustrates, 83 percent of single men vacuum, 57 percent cook, and 51 percent do laundry either on their own or together with another pertab. 1: distribution of selected household tasks for men (n=361) and women (n=335), in percent oneself oneself with only other oneself only partner other people people with partner men vacuum-cleaning 35 12 12 23 19 100 cooking 21 7 19 20 34 100 doing the laundry 17 4 22 10 47 100 women vacuum-cleaning 45 16 12 20 7 100 cooking 56 13 9 19 4 100 doing the laundry 76 9 7 7 1 100 source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” the association between norms and actions • 533 son. if they have a partner with which they do not cohabit, the share of men doing the laundry remains almost the same (49 percent), but the share vacuum-cleaning and cooking decreases considerably (75 percent and 51 percent, respectively). if men move in with their partner, participation in housework decreases further: only 65 percent vacuum, 44 percent cook, and 21 percent do laundry. overall, men do considerably less housework when in a relationship. this result corresponds to our expectations. for women we do not fi nd these pronounced partnership effects. independent of their relationship status, eight out of ten women vacuum. the only partner effect for women shows that the percentage of women vacuum-cleaning together with another person doubles from approximately 20 percent to approximately 40 percent. tab. 2: division of selected household tasks depending on relationship status source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” rather oneself with another person rather another person does not occur n in % in % in % in % vacuum-cleaning men with partner, cohabiting 27 39 35 226 with partner, not cohabiting 49 26 23 2 53 singles 51 32 16 1 77 women with partner, cohabiting 41 38 21 197 with partner, not cohabiting 39 44 17 59 singles 60 23 17 78 cooking men with partner, cohabiting 13 31 56 226 with partner, not cohabiting 38 13 47 2 53 singles 32 25 42 1 77 women with partner, cohabiting 60 32 7 1 197 with partner, not cohabiting 31 39 31 59 singles 64 26 10 78 doing the laundry men with partner, cohabiting 6 15 79 226 with partner, not cohabiting 36 13 49 2 53 singles 36 14 49 77 women with partner, cohabiting 84 13 4 197 with partner, not cohabiting 51 31 19 59 singles 78 12 10 78 • daniela grunow, nina baur534 if women have a partner, but are not cohabiting, the percentage cooking or doing the laundry decreases from 90 percent to approximately 70 percent and 80 percent, respectively, as compared to singles. among those with a partner but not cohabiting approximately 40 percent and 30 percent, respectively, carry out these tasks together with another person. if women move in with their partner, the percentage exceeds the level for single women, with 92 percent and 97 percent respectively, and they receive assistance as often as when they were single. 4.2.2 delegation of tasks to third parties our results indicate that relationship context only partly explains the variation of male participation in specifi c household tasks. as table 1 shows, 31 percent (doing the laundry) to 70 percent (vacuum-cleaning) of men participate in the examined household tasks – irrespective of their relationship status. one in four men is assisted by another person or his partner in each of these tasks. one in four women receives assistance with vacuum-cleaning, but only one in fi ve with cooking and one in six with laundry. these results indicate why women take on more housework when moving in with a man: they replace the other people who previously carried out household tasks for their partner. thus, when the man does not carry out these tasks or when he does not do them on his own, it depends on the family context who takes them on. further analyses (not displayed) show that both men and women are most often assisted by their mothers, and that women receive help from third parties considerably less often than men. 5 gender role beliefs when investigating the impact of norms and values on male participation in housework the question arises which norms and values are most relevant for actions. existing surveys have operationalised attitudes toward the division of labour within the family differently, e.g. in the issp (zuma/infas 1994, 1997, 2002), the lbs-family-study (fthenakis et al. 2002a, 2002b), or zulehner’s (n.d.) research on men. since the focus of this paper is on male participation in housework, and since we follow poortman and van der lippe (2009) in assuming that men’s participation depends on their own normative attitudes (and not those of their partners), the fi ndings reported here focus on male gender role beliefs. in order to increase comparability to previous research on female gender role beliefs, we compare male and female normative attitudes, but do not relate these normative attitudes of women to actual behaviour of men. following the theories on the impact of norms on behaviour described above, we focus on four normative systems that are assumed to infl uence male participation in housework for different reasons: attitudes toward the male provider and female homemaker model (system 1) and attitudes toward employment as the central role for a man (system 3) are important, because both aspects normatively free men from the responsibility of participating in housework in order to be “good” the association between norms and actions • 535 partners and fathers (cf. bielby/bielby 1989). the approval of women’s employment (system 2) has been selected as a predictor variable in previous research, as it was fig. 1: distribution of gender norms 0 100 attitude toward the male provider and female homemaker model approval of women's employment endorsement of men's unpaid work employment as the man's central role 6% 41% 43% 10% 23% 37% 29% 12% 12% 39% 49% 36% 49% 12% men 0 100 attitude toward the male provider and female homemaker model approval of women's employment endorsement of men's unpaid work employment as the man's central role 9% 42% 41% 8% 16% 28% 33% 23% 10% 32% 58% 20% 56% 23% strongly disagree rather disagree rather agree strongly agree women % % % % 354 354 354 353 n 332 333 333 332 n source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” • daniela grunow, nina baur536 assumed to be logical that men have to participate more in housework if women are also expected to work. in contrast, we have argued in section 2 that women’s role as earners has changed institutionally much more than norms regarding men’s housework. therefore, the hypothesis of previous research that both norms are interrelated may be empirically incorrect. our fi nal indicator – the endorsement of men’s unpaid work (system 4) – seems more appropriate to determine male participation in housework, because this norm is directly related to the associated behaviour. the literature frequently discusses a further aspect regarding the attitude toward the division of labour within the family: the disposition of men to fatherhood. research has confi rmed repeatedly that men desire to be more active fathers and increasingly want a stronger role in the upbringing of their children (erler et al. 1988; fthenakis et al. 1999; matzner 2004; zulehner 2004; oberndorfer/rost 2005; cyprian 2005; grunow 2007; baur 2007; hofmeister et al. 2009). however, we decided to omit this aspect as it primarily concerns how men raise their children. figure 1 shows a summary of the different systems and allows a comparison of male and female rates of approval. the following sub-sections describe which items constitute each system and how men agree to each norm system. 5.1 identifi cation with the male provider and female homemaker model when investigating “gender norms”, the fi eld of gender studies often examines the extent to which couples identify with the male provider and female homemaker model (ostner 1995; pfau-effi nger 1999). this model conforms to the ideal of classic role theory. we constructed a number of items capturing different aspects of the male provider – female homemaker model in order to identify our participants’ attitudes toward this model. the specifi c questions and the distribution of male responses can be found in table 3. the comparatively large cronbach’s α in table 3 indicates that items correlate strongly with each other. looking at the different items, it becomes apparent that the male provider and female homemaker model involves more than a complementary division of roles in daily life, in which men are assigned the task of employment and women are assigned household tasks and – as soon as there are children – childraising tasks. our empirical fi ndings further confi rm keddis’ (2003) results indicating that the male provider – female homemaker model not only implies a pragmatic division of roles, but that the idea of partners representing a single unit plays a central role. this single unit is expressed in the belief that partners in a good relationship always spend their weekends together and always think and feel the same. table 3 shows that specifi c normative aspects polarise men, since the rates of approval vary greatly: only one third of the interviewed men state that partners should always think and feel the same in a good relationship, but seven out of ten men think that partners should always spend their weekends together, and three quarters think that in a good relationship, both partners want children. although only 15 percent think that the career of the man takes precedence over the family, four out of ten men agree to the statement that a man should make sure that his partner never needs to worry about fi nancial issues. at the same time, one in two the association between norms and actions • 537 ta b . 3 : a tt it ud es o f m en t o w ar d t he m al e p ro vi d er a nd fe m al e ho m em ak er m o d el le ve l o f s ig ni fi c an ce : + α ≤ 0 .1 0; * α ≤ 0 .0 5; * * α ≤ 0 .0 1; * ** α ≤ 0 .0 01 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e st ud y “t he im ag e o f m en in s o ci et y” d is tr ib ut io n o f r es po ns es in % c o rr el at io n o f n o rm s an d b eh av io ur (p ea rs o n’ s r) n s tr o ng ly d is ag re e r at he r d is ag re e r at he r ag re e s tr o ng ly ag re e m an va cu um s m an co o ks m an d o es la un d ry a tt itu d e to w ar d t he m al e p ro vi d er a nd fe m al e ho m em ak er m o d el 6 41 43 10 -0 .1 5* * -0 .1 1* -0 .1 3* 35 4 in a g o o d r el at io ns hi p , p ar tn er s al w ay s sp en d t he ir w ee ke nd s to ge th er . 5 26 39 30 -0 .0 4 -0 .1 1* -0 .1 0+ 35 8 in a g o o d r el at io ns hi p , p ar tn er s al w ay s th in k an d fe el t he sa m e. 17 50 23 10 < 0 .0 1 0. 06 -0 .0 2 35 8 in a g o o d r el at io ns hi p , b o th p ar tn er s w an t c hi ld re n. 4 20 37 39 -0 .0 1 -0 .1 3* -0 .1 6* 35 6 t he c ar ee r o f t he m an ta ke s p re ce d en ce o ve r th e fa m ily . 38 47 10 5 -0 .1 0+ < 0. 01 < 0. 01 35 2 in a g o o d r el at io ns hi p , t he m an m ak es s ur e th at th e w o m an ne ve r ha s to w o rr y ab o ut fi na nc ia l i ss ue s. 13 48 24 15 -0 .1 6* * -0 .0 5 -0 .1 1* 35 6 in a g o o d r el at io ns hi p , a w o m an m ak es s ur e th at th e m an ca n fo cu s o n hi s jo b a nd n ee d s no t w o rr y ab o ut o th er is su es . 9 37 32 22 -0 .0 7 -0 .0 4 -0 .1 1* 35 6 t he m o st im p o rt an t t as k o f t he w o m an is th e fa m ily . 18 36 26 20 -0 .1 7* * -0 .1 2* -0 .1 2* 35 4 t he w o m an c ar ri es t he m ai n re sp o ns ib ili ty fo r th e ho us eh o ld . 23 42 23 13 -0 .2 8* ** -0 .2 4* ** -0 .1 7* ** 35 7 a w o m an s ho ul d n o t w o rk , i f h er c hi ld is y o un g er th an t hr ee ye ar s o ld . 10 24 21 45 0. 02 -0 .1 3* * -0 .0 9+ 35 4 c ro n ba ch ’s 0. 76 • daniela grunow, nina baur538 men agrees that the most important task of a woman is the family and that she should take care of things so that the man can focus on his job. the latter applies more to raising children than to housework: only one third thinks that the woman has to carry the main responsibility for the household, but two thirds think that a mother should not work if her child is younger than three years old. 45 percent of the interviewed men even oppose the idea of mothers with young children being employed. although the distribution of responses varies, a pattern can be detected. respondents that agree to a particular item tend to agree to the other items as well, whereas respondents that disagree with an item tend to disagree with the other items as well. we therefore assume that the items measure the latent system “attitude toward the male provider and female homemaker model” and summarise them in one variable using factor analysis (fromm 2004).1 as figure 1 illustrates, 10 percent of the interviewed men strongly agree to the male provider and female homemaker model, 43 percent rather agree, 41 percent rather disagree, and 6 percent strongly disagree. as expected, male rates of approval are (slightly) higher than female rates of approval. 5.2 approval of women’s employment the male provider – female homemaker model assigns the role of employment to the man and the task of taking care of the family to the woman. however, this does not say much about women’s employment: when supporting the male provider – female homemaker model it is both possible to oppose women’s employment generally or in particular stages of life and to “allow” women to work while viewing this employment solely as a provision of extra income. conversely, opposing the male provider – female homemaker model does not automatically imply seeing women’s employment as the central role of women. in a qualitative study, keddi (2003) shows that some men and women neither perceive employment nor the household as the central point of their life, but consider personal self-fulfi lment as more important. other people oppose the male provider – female homemaker model, but align their life completely with their partner or do not know how they want to live. indeed, factor analysis shows that approval of women’s employment is a separate normative system. independent of whether respondents support or oppose the male provider – female homemaker model, some endorse women’s employment whereas others object to it. as table 4 illustrates, 58 percent of interviewed men hold the view that both men and women should work. however, only 40 percent believe it is good for a child to have an employed mother, and 66 percent hold the view that a mother should not work if her child is younger than three years old. summarising these items into a single variable, six out of ten men object to women’s employment. in contrast to the 1 we initially conducted factor analyses separately for men and women, achieving very similar results. this paper reports the results for the whole data set. the association between norms and actions • 539 ta b . 4 : m en 's a p p ro va l o f w o m en 's e m p lo ym en t le ve l o f s ig ni fi c an ce : + α ≤ 0 .1 0; * α ≤ 0 .0 5; * * α ≤ 0 .0 1; * ** α ≤ 0 .0 01 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e st ud y “t he im ag e o f m en in s o ci et y” d is tr ib ut io n o f r es po ns es in % c o rr el at io n o f n o rm s an d b eh av io ur (p ea rs o n’ s r) n s tr o ng ly d is ag re e r at he r d is ag re e r at he r ag re e s tr o ng ly ag re e m an va cu um s m an co o ks m an d o es la un d ry a p p ro va l o f w o m en ’s e m p lo ym en t 23 37 29 12 0. 03 0. 15 ** 0. 10 + 35 4 a w o m an s ho ul d n o t w o rk , i f h er c hi ld is y o un g er th an th re e ye ar s o ld . ( ne ga tiv e) 10 24 21 45 0. 02 -0 .1 3* -0 .0 9+ 35 4 m en a nd w o m en s ho ul d b o th b e em p lo ye d . 10 32 33 25 0. 05 0. 05 0. 08 35 5 it is g o o d fo r a ch ild , i f t he m o th er is e m p lo ye d . 13 47 31 9 0. 01 0. 16 ** 0. 10 + 35 0 c ro n ba ch ’s 0. 57 • daniela grunow, nina baur540 attitude toward the male provider – female homemaker model, considerable gender-specifi c differences can be observed: six out of ten women endorse women’s employment parallel to having young children in the household. previous research, such as the issp (zuma/infas 1994, 1997, 2002), the lbsfamily-study (fthenakis et al. 2002a, 2002b), as well as zulehner’s (n.d.) research on men, and longitudinal analyses show that the share of proponents of women’s employment has continuously risen in industrialised countries over the last decades (lück 2004, 2006, 2009; hofäcker/lück 2004; lück/hofäcker 2008). 5.3 employment as men's central social role whereas the question of how important employment is for women in comparison to her family is captured comparatively frequently in research, the inverse question – how important is employment for men – is rarely asked. is employment – as the male provider – female homemaker model suggests – really considered the central social role of the man (baur/luedtke 2008)? when examining these questions, an inverse pattern in comparison to the attitude toward women’s employment can be observed: while the majority of women endorse women’s employment and the majority of men object to it – and men therefore hold a traditional view of gender roles – women are even more conservative with regard to male employment: eight out of ten women, but only six out of ten men view employment as the central social role of men (see the rates of approval “strongly agree” and “rather agree” in fig. 1). overall, the attitude toward the role of men is much less ambiguous than toward the role of women. both attitudes are not necessarily related to each other. as displayed in table 5, an overwhelming majority of men believe that men work in order to support their family (99 percent), because they then feel needed (77 percent), and because they enjoy working (72 percent). roughly half think that employment is part of being a man. only four out of ten consider work the most important thing in life, and only every fourth man thinks that men can only gain recognition from others via their job. only 15 percent believe that the career of the man takes precedence over the family. 5.4 endorsement of men's unpaid work are men able to and should they do housework? as table 6 illustrates, the times in which men perceived housework as demeaning are over: only 4 percent see it that way, even if one in three thinks that women should carry the main responsibility for the household. 86 percent of the interviewed men believe that they are able to do housework as thoroughly as women, and 79 percent consider themselves just as competent in parenting. overall, nine out of ten respondents endorse the participation of men in housework, women even slightly more than men. the bivariate analyses in tables 3 to 6 highlight a number of aspects: fi rst, norms and behaviour correlate substantially. second, the direction of infl uence of particular norm systems vary: the more men support the male provider – female homethe association between norms and actions • 541 ta b . 5 : m en 's a tt it ud es t o w ar d m al e em p lo ym en t le ve l o f s ig ni fi c an ce : + α ≤ 0 .1 0; * α ≤ 0 .0 5; * * α ≤ 0 .0 1; * ** α ≤ 0 .0 01 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e st ud y “t he im ag e o f m en in s o ci et y” d is tr ib ut io n o f r es po ns es in % c o rr el at io n o f n o rm s an d b eh av io ur (p ea rs o n’ s r) n s tr o ng ly d is ag re e r at he r d is ag re e r at he r ag re e s tr o ng ly ag re e m an va cu um s m an co o ks m an d o es la un d ry e m p lo ym en t a s m en 's c en tr al s o ci al r o le 3 36 49 12 -0 .1 9* ** -0 .1 2* -0 .0 7 35 3 m en w o rk , b ec au se w o rk in g is p ar t o f b ei ng a m an . 15 32 29 24 -0 .1 4* * -0 .1 2* -0 .0 9+ 35 2 m en w o rk , b ec au se t he jo b is th e m o st im p o rt an t t hi ng in lif e fo r th em . 15 44 27 14 -0 .0 8 -0 .0 9+ 0. 03 35 4 m en w o rk , b ec au se th ey e nj o y w o rk in g. 5 24 48 24 0. 07 -0 .0 3 -0 .0 2 35 4 m en w o rk , b ec au se t he y th en fe el n ee d ed . 3 20 43 34 -0 .0 5 -0 .0 3 -0 .0 6 35 4 m en w o rk in o rd er to s up p o rt th ei r fa m ily . 0 1 27 72 -0 .1 6* * -0 .1 7* * -0 .1 2* 35 4 m en w o rk , s in ce th ey c an o nl y ga in r ec o g ni tio n fr o m o th er s vi a th ei r jo b . 31 44 19 5 -0 .1 5* * -0 .0 6 0. 05 35 4 m en 's c ar ee r ta ke s p re ce d en ce o ve r th e fa m ily . 38 47 10 5 -0 .1 0+ < 0. 01 < 0. 01 35 2 c ro n ba ch ’s 0. 71 • daniela grunow, nina baur542 ta b . 6 : m en 's e nd o rs em en t o f m en 's u np ai d w o rk le ve l o f s ig ni fi c an ce : + α ≤ 0 .1 0; * α ≤ 0 .0 5; * * α ≤ 0 .0 1; * ** α ≤ 0 .0 01 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e st ud y “t he im ag e o f m en in s o ci et y” d is tr ib ut io n o f r es po ns es in % c o rr el at io n o f n o rm s an d b eh av io ur (p ea rs o n’ s r) n s tr o ng ly d is ag re e r at he r d is ag re e r at he r ag re e s tr o ng ly ag re e m an va cu um s m an co o ks m an d o es la un d ry e nd o rs em en t o f m en 's u np ai d w o rk 0 12 39 49 0. 20 ** * 0. 16 ** 0. 11 * 35 4 m en a re ju st a s co m p et en t in p ar en tin g as w o m en . 2 19 35 44 0. 13 * 0. 04 0. 07 35 4 m en c an d o h o us ew o rk a s th o ro ug hl y as w o m en . 2 13 29 57 0. 14 ** 0. 12 * 0. 07 35 7 t he w o m an c ar ri es t he m ai n re sp o ns ib ili ty fo r th e ho us eh o ld . ( ne g at iv e) 23 42 23 13 -0 .2 8* ** -0 .2 4* ** -0 .1 7* ** 35 7 it is d em ea ni ng fo r a m an to d o h o us ew o rk . ( ne ga tiv e) 69 27 3 1 -0 .1 3* -0 .0 8 -0 .0 1 35 7 c ro n ba ch ’s 0. 54 the association between norms and actions • 543 maker model and see employment as their central role, the less they participate in the selected housework tasks. in contrast, if they endorse women’s employment and men’s unpaid work, the probability of doing housework increases. third, it is worth distinguishing and looking at different norm systems and particular tasks individually, since the direction of infl uence of different norm systems on particular tasks is similar, but unequally strong. for example, men endorsing women’s employment cook and do laundry more often than men objecting to it (r = 0.15 and r = 0.10, respectively). the relationship between the approval of women’s employment and vacuum-cleaning, however, is insignifi cant. these relationships are different for employment as the central role of men: the impact on doing the laundry is insignifi cant, whereas men focussing on their career vacuum and cook signifi cantly less often (r = -0.19 and r = -0.12, respectively). subsequently, we want to investigate the relative infl uence of the different norm systems on each other and whether the relationship between norms and behaviour can still be observed when controlling for the impact of experience-based factors that infl uence gender norms (bolzendahl/myers 2004). specifi cally, we account for regional differences between west and east germany, level of education, employment situation, employment prestige and income as well as household and family context (accounting for partner’s employment status, number of adults in the household and number of children under the age of 18 in the household). 6 the association between gender norms and men’s housework controlling for experience-based factors following sociological theories on the impact of norms on behaviour and previous research examining the impact of gender-specifi c attitudes toward housework on behaviour (e.g. poortman/van der lippe 2009), we empirically analyse to what extent the identifi ed norm systems can explain men’s participation in housework. we use each identifi ed norm system as an explanatory variable in multivariate analyses. the dependent variables are selected household tasks, namely vacuum-cleaning, cooking, and doing the laundry (cf. sub-section 4.2). response alternatives “oneself”, “oneself with another person”, and “oneself with partner” each describe the participation of men in a household task (coded “1”). the alternatives “only other people” and “only partner” were coded “0”. for each of the three dependent variables we calculate three logistic regression models.2 the fi rst model only includes experience-based factors and represents current practice in model-building regarding the division of labour in the household (for a 2 as a comparison of logit coeffi cients across different models is not appropriate (mood 2010), we use the validation method by karlson, holm, and breen (2010) to test for signifi cant changes between models. this procedure – also called khb method – allows the differences between logit coeffi cients in different models to be decomposed into a scaling and a confounding component (calculations based on the khb method are not presented in the tables and are available on request from the authors). • daniela grunow, nina baur544 summary, see davis and greenstein 2009). the second model contains the normative attitudes of respondents described above. the third model joins the variables of the previous models in order to analyse the extent to which the predictive power of normative attitudes is due to variations in the socio-demographic, economic, household and family context. this third model accommodates bolzendahl and myers’ (2004) argument that individual normative beliefs are infl uenced by experiencebased socio-demographic factors as well as the household and family context. thus, the socio-demographic factors and the household and family context serve as control variables for experience-based differences between men, which may confound the coeffi cients for normative attitudes in the second model. the aim of our analyses is not to develop a parsimonious regression model, but to examine the empirical relevance (or irrelevance) of the identifi ed norm systems for explaining men's behaviour. the following tables display the logit coeffi cients. 6.1 vacuum-cleaning as table 7 (model 1) shows, our data suggest that neither level of education nor employment status or employment prestige have a signifi cant impact on whether men vacuum. there are also no differences between east and west germany. however, men are less likely to vacuum the older they are and the higher their household income is. as further calculations with fully standardised coeffi cients show, the net equivalent household income is the most important explanatory variable in the fi rst model.3 neither being partnered nor the partner’s employment status explains why some men vacuum and others do not. among the family context variables, only the number of adults in the household has a highly signifi cant and negative impact: men are less likely to participate in vacuum-cleaning the more adults live in the household. this result confi rms our assumption that opportunity structures matter when men withdraw from doing housework. the fi ndings on the household context in subsection 4.2.1 illustrate that this relationship is not trivial, as single men and women generally do not have an alternative to doing housework themselves. model 2 illustrates the relative impact of the four norm systems on the probability of men vacuum-cleaning. as expected, a signifi cant relationship between norms and behaviour can only be found regarding the endorsement of men’s unpaid work (cf. sub-section 2.1).4 the more men support men’s unpaid work, the greater the 3 to compare the explanatory power of different independent variables in logistic regression models, coeffi cients have to be standardised – similarly to ols. both independent and dependent variables are standardised with a mean value of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 in order to create fully standardised coeffi cients (long/freese 2006). results for the full model (model 3 in tables 7-9) using fully standardised coeffi cients are reported in table a1 in the appendix. 4 the high value of the logit coeffi cient (b = 3.87) needs to be seen in light of the extreme skewness of the distribution of responses for this norm system (see table 6). further analyses ruled out multicollinearity. the correlation of the explanatory variable and the response variable is 0.5. as displayed in table a1 in the appendix, the effect is strong but not implausibly high for the standardised coeffi cients. the association between norms and actions • 545 probability that they at least participate in vacuum-cleaning. further analyses indicate that this effect becomes even stronger if children live in the household. when we additionally control for the experience-based variables in the full model (model 3), the impact of attitudes toward men’s unpaid work on the probability of a man vacuum-cleaning does not decrease signifi cantly, as calculations based on the khb method confi rm. at the same time, the effect of age loses its signifi cance indicating that older men hold more traditional views. the probability that single men vacuum also signifi cantly increases in this model. a change of sign can be observed for education and region, but these values are below the signifi cance level of 0.10. the other variables remain fairly stable. tab. 7: explanatory variables for men vacuum-cleaning, logistic regression level of signifi cance: + α ≤ 0.10; * α ≤ 0.05; ** α ≤ 0.01; *** α ≤ 0.001 source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” model 1 model 2 model 3 region, ref. west germany east germany -0.02 0.16 age (in years) -0.03** -0.02 education, ref. maximum “lower school leaving certificate” (hauptschule) “general school leaving certificate” (realschule) 0.01 -0.28 higher education entrance qualification 0.33 -0.09 graduate degree 0.24 -0.09 employment status, ref. employed pensioner 0.37 0.49 in education -0.92 -0.66 other 0.24 -0.18 treiman prestige 0.02 0.02 net equivalent income (in thousand euro) -0.67* -0.76** partner’s employment status, ref. not employed no partner 0.66 0.91* partner employed part-time 0.08 0.19 partner employed full-time 0.23 0.35 family context number of adults in the household (apart from the respondent) -0.45** -0.50** number of children in the household -0.19 -0.23 normative attitudes approval of the male provider female homemaker model 0.44 0.28 approval of women’s employment 0.11 -0.55 employment as men's central social role -1.61 -1.27 endorsement of men’s unpaid work 3.87** 4.35** explained variance (pseudo r2) 7% 7% 15% n 303 303 303 • daniela grunow, nina baur546 the full model accounts for 15 percent of the variance. thus, the experiencebased factors mentioned in previous research only have limited explanatory power regarding male participation in vacuum-cleaning. a comparison of the different models suggests that the four norm systems in model 2 have as much explanatory power as the socio-demographic, economic, and family context variables in model 1. both models are able to explain 7 percent of the variance in the participation of men in vacuum-cleaning. in the full model, the endorsement of men’s unpaid work is the strongest predictor of the participation of men in vacuum-cleaning, followed by household income and number of adults in the household (see table a1 in the appendix). thus, norms appear to be highly signifi cant in explaining male participation in vacuum-cleaning. 6.2 doing the laundry table 8 summarises the explanatory variables of the multivariate logistic regressions examining men’s doing of laundry. in contrast to vacuum-cleaning, doing the laundry is the most feminine task, in which men participate the least – a fact previous research has also shown. in contrast to vacuum-cleaning, none of the normative attitudes have a (signifi cant) impact on the probability of men doing the laundry (model 2, α ≤ 0.10). the coeffi cients refl ecting the approval of the male provider – female homemaker model, the approval of women’s employment, and the endorsement of men’s unpaid work, however, point in the expected direction. the variable measuring the endorsement of men’s unpaid work becomes signifi cant in the full model (model 3). thus, men who endorse men’s unpaid work are more likely to do laundry than men who object to men’s unpaid work. again, in contrast to vacuum-cleaning, neither demographic nor economic factors are able to explain why men (do not) do laundry (model 1). relationship and family context, however, have explanatory power. the probability of single men and women doing the laundry is about two and a half times as high as it is for men with partners who are not in employment. if other adults or children live in the household, men also do laundry signifi cantly less frequently. this again indicates that men often make use of opportunity structures in order to avoid housework. the effects of relationship and family context remain signifi cant in the full model. the full model in table 8 explains 17 percent of the observed variance. however, normative attitudes only explain 3 percent of the observed variance (model 2), whereas relationship and family context explain 15 percent. the number of adults in the household, followed by the number of children in the household and having a partner produce the largest effects for male participation in doing the laundry (see table a1 in the appendix). this confi rms our expectation that normative attitudes explain mainly the participation of men in “legitimately male” household tasks whereas the more feminine task of doing the laundry is mainly explained by situational factors such as being single and the household context. the association between norms and actions • 547 6.3 cooking the results of the explanatory variables for men cooking are illustrated in table 9. men cook comparatively often; however, according to previous research, it is not clear whether cooking is actually a leisure activity. model 1 shows that men with a general school leaving certifi fi cate (realschule) and a higher education entrance qualifi cation cook more than twice as often as men with a maximum of lower secondary schooling (hauptschule). the effect for graduates points in the same direction, but it is smaller and not statistically signifi cant. in the full model, only the positive effect of a higher education entrance qualifi cation remains signifi cant in explaining the participation of men in cooking. the higher the tab. 8: explanatory variables for men doing the laundry, logistic regression level of signifi cance: + α ≤ 0.10; * α ≤ 0.05; ** α ≤ 0.01; *** α ≤ 0.001 source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” model 1 model 2 model 3 region, ref. west germany east germany 0.43 0.32 age (in years) -0.02 -0.02 education, ref. maximum “lower school leaving certificate” (hauptschule) “general school leaving certificate” (realschule) 0.30 0.20 higher education entrance qualification 0.21 0.09 graduate degree -0.13 -0.30 employment status, ref. employed pensioner -0.27 -0.26 in education 0.74 0.77 other 0.51 0.40 treiman prestige 0.02 0.02 net equivalent income (in thousand euro) -0.14 -0.10 partner’s employment status, ref. not employed no partner 0.86* 1.03* partner employed part-time 0.43 0.43 partner employed full-time 0.43 0.42 family context number of adults in the household (apart from the respondent) -0.81** -0.78** number of children in the household -0.61* -0.58* normative attitudes approval of the male provider female homemaker model -1.59 -0.52 approval of women’s employment 0.74 0.72 employment as men's central social role 0.44 0.66 endorsement of men’s unpaid work 1.25 1.71+ explained variance (pseudo r2) 15% 3% 17% n 303 303 303 • daniela grunow, nina baur548 employment prestige, the more likely men are to participate in cooking. all of these factors indicate that particularly men from higher social classes cook. these result fi t the modern trend that cooking – in particular the preparation of elaborate meals – has increasingly gained social appreciation, partly mediated by cooking shows on television. household income, however, has a negative effect. relationship and family context also infl uence male involvement in cooking. single men are more than twice as likely to cook in comparison to men whose partner is not employed. men with a partner in full-time employment cook three times as often. this result indicates that cooking is not always a leisure activity for men, but often a necessity. similarly to vacuum-cleaning and doing the laundry, men who do not live on their own make use of household structures that enable them to avoid tab. 9: explanatory variables for men cooking, logistic regression level of signifi cance: + α ≤ 0.10; * α ≤ 0.05; ** α ≤ 0.01; *** α ≤ 0.001 source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” model 1 model 2 model 3 region, ref. west germany east germany -0.52 -0.79* age (in years) -0.01 0.00 education, ref. maximum “lower school leaving certificate” (hauptschule) “general school leaving certificate” (realschule) 0.76* 0.60 higher education entrance qualification 1.00* 0.87* graduate degree 0.44 0.31 employment status, ref. employed pensioner 0.18 0.26 in education 0.33 0.51 other 0.49 0.30 treiman prestige 0.02* 0.02+ net equivalent income (in thousand euro) -0.66** -0.63* partner’s employment status, ref. not employed no partner 0.74* 0.91* partner employed part-time 0.37 0.39 partner employed full-time 1.31** 1.35** family context number of adults in the household (apart from the respondent) -0.73** -0.72** number of children in the household -0.08 -0.08 normative attitudes approval of the male provider female homemaker model 0.52 1.43 approval of women’s employment 1.38* 1.7* employment as men's central social role -1.62 -1.78 endorsement of men’s unpaid work 2.37** 2.66** explained variance (pseudo r2) 12% 6% 16% n 303 303 303 the association between norms and actions • 549 cooking: the number of adults in the household has a negative impact on the probability of men cooking. model 2 shows the infl uence of normative attitudes on the participation of men in cooking. the endorsement of men’s unpaid work has the strongest effect. the more men approve this norm system, the greater the probability that they cook. the approval of women’s employment also has a signifi cant positive effect. the full model (model 3) indicates that men from east germany cook less frequently than men from west germany when keeping norms, socio-demographic and economic factors constant. the other effects are largely unchanged compared to the previous models. the full model only explains 16 percent of the variance in cooking. norms account for 6 percent of the variance (model 2), and the sociodemographic, economic, and family-related variables in model 1 explain 12 percent of the variance. 7 conclusion and discussion of fi ndings what can be learned from these fi ndings about the apparent discrepancy between egalitarian gender norms on the one hand and behaviours lagging far behind these norms on the other? our discussion follows the order of the outlined theoretical assumptions on the relationship between norms and behaviour in the household and family context. building on the basic assumption of role theory, our fi rst expectation was that people adapt their behaviour to existing normative gender roles and that there is a relationship between normative attitudes and the participation of men in housework. we argue – and fi nd empirical evidence suggesting – that an issue of previous research is the inaccurate theoretical defi nition and empirical measurement of gender norms. previous research has focussed especially on attitudes toward women’s employment (cf. sub-section 5.2). our empirical fi ndings suggest instead that this normative system is only relevant for explaining male participation in cooking. normative approval of the male provider – female homemaker model and attitudes toward employment as the central social role of men also appear only marginally relevant for predicting whether men participate in household tasks such as vacuum-cleaning, doing the laundry, and cooking (see also schober 2011). attitudes toward men’s unpaid work play a much more decisive role for male participation in housework. the empirical results not only hint at a relationship between norms and behaviour in regard to men’s unpaid work, but also suggest that it is important to examine specifi c norms and tasks. the effect of a norm system can vary for different tasks, and, depending on the task, various norm systems may be relevant predictors. furthermore, based on more precise theoretical assumptions and data allowing a separate analysis of male and female roles regarding employment and housework, our fi ndings suggest that historical changes regarding women’s employment do not automatically lead to changes in norms regarding men’s and women’s participation in unpaid work. the asymmetry of gender role changes (grunow et al. 2007) therefore does not only apply to behaviours, but also to attitudes. • daniela grunow, nina baur550 based on recent theoretical contributions arguing that gender constructions refer to (normative and institutional) context, our second expectation was that men generally hold less egalitarian beliefs than women. due to the asynchronous changes of male and female roles in germany during the 20th and the early 21st century, our third expectation was to fi nd gender-specifi c differences regarding the endorsement of or objection to those norm systems that were mostly affected by structural changes. our fi ndings indicate that there is still variation in the acceptance of, or objection to, women’s employment, both among men and women, and that employment is still seen as the central social role of men by a vast majority. our fi ndings further point to men having more traditional attitudes toward women’s employment than women themselves. at the same time, women are more conservative regarding male employment: eight out of ten women, but only six out of ten men view employment as the central social role of men. a possible interpretation of these results is that normative stereotypes – such as those expressed here – are applied more readily to the opposite gender. perhaps life contexts viewed from the outside appear less complex and ambivalent in comparison to one’s own life context. the fi ndings are also in line with the hypothesis of interest-based factors infl uencing individual normative beliefs (bolzendahl/myers 2004). furthermore, the evidence we have found suggests that individual attitudes toward men’s and women’s employment are not necessarily related to each other, i.e. someone holding a progressive view on the role of women does not automatically hold a progressive view on the role of men. our fourth expectation focused on the impact of household and family context on normative framing and on individual behaviour regarding participation in housework. we assumed that both household structures offering men opportunities to withdraw from housework and the individual gender role beliefs infl uence whether men participate in housework or not. our fi ndings support this hypothesis. we fi nd that single men vacuum, do laundry and cook signifi cantly more often than men with a partner. men’s own normative endorsement of men’s unpaid work plays a decisive role in predicting whether they perform either of these tasks. the evidence suggesting that men withdraw from housework with an increasing number of adults in the household further emphasises the importance of opportunity structures. the more adults live in the household, the less likely men are to vacuum, do laundry, or cook. our descriptive analyses further indicate that women take on more housework when moving in with their partner, particularly because they replace other people (often mothers) who carried out these tasks before. thus, the family context not only infl uences whether men do housework, it also infl uences who takes on certain tasks when the man does not do them himself. our fi fth expectation was that the number of children in the household has a positive effect on the participation of men in vacuum-cleaning, doing the laundry, and cooking, since more commitment is demanded of fathers with young children in the private domain these days and research has shown that couples with committed fathers have more children. our multivariate analyses, however, indicate the opposite, yet the effect is only statistically signifi cant for doing the laundry: the more children living in the household, the less inclined fathers are to participate in the association between norms and actions • 551 doing the laundry. this result complements earlier time-use studies (künzler et al. 2001) and research on the relative participation of men in household tasks (grunow et al. 2007) in one important aspect: parenthood not only leads to a more traditional gender-specifi c division of work because women take on the greater share of additional housework, some tasks – such as doing the laundry – are not performed by certain fathers at all. since institutional and normative contexts merely frame individual behaviour, we moreover assumed that individual normative attitudes of men infl uence whether they do housework even after controlling for family context. this hypothesis is confi rmed in our analyses. finally, our fi ndings on the gender-typing of specifi c household tasks are in line with the current state of research on the commitment of “new men” to housework. as even men with an egalitarian attitude tend to perform “male” rather than “female” tasks in the household, we assumed that normative attitudes of men especially explain male participation in “legitimately male” tasks (vacuum-cleaning and cooking). in the case of doing the laundry – still the most feminine task – we assumed a bigger impact of situational factors such as household and family context. this hypothesis is confi rmed in our multivariate analyses: in the case of vacuumcleaning, the norms-based models explain as much of the variance as the models including socio-demographic, economic and family context variables. in the case of cooking, norms explain one third of the variance explained by the full model. however, in the case of doing the laundry, norms make up only one fi fth of the total explanatory power of the full model. our fi ndings have both theoretical and methodological implications: fi rst, our norm systems help explain some of the variation in all three dependent variables in addition to socio-demographic, economic and family context variables. this implies that regression models not controlling for norms are incomplete, and results may be biased by spurious effects or suppressor effects. second, our fi ndings suggest that future studies on the division of housework should not – in contrast to common practice so far – sum up domestic work hours using indices or time budgets. such measures are likely to lead to ambiguity regarding both the contribution of men toward housework and the gender-specifi c connotation of particular household tasks. third, we want to point out the limitations of our fi ndings. it has been argued repeatedly (cooke 2004; grunow et al. 2007) that it is necessary to analyse processes of gender-specifi c divisions of work with longitudinal data. cause and effect of competing theoretical concepts can only be separated from mere composition effects or life course effects with panel data collecting norms that are differentiated over time and on an individual level (cf. grunow 2007). our multivariate cross-sectional analyses presume that the operationalised norm systems infl uence behaviour and not vice versa. however, this assumption cannot be confi rmed by our data. thus, our regression models mainly have explorative value. future research needs to collect and analyse differentiated longitudinal data on gender norms to verify these results. however, we interpret the relatively stable effects of norm systems after controlling for household and family context as an indication of our results not being signifi cantly affected by the mixture of norms and family context as explanatory • daniela grunow, nina baur552 variables for the participation of men in housework, despite using cross-sectional data. in theory, it would have been appropriate to look at the impact of interaction effects between family context and normative attitudes of men on the investigated household tasks. although we conduct these analyses and report some results, the full potential of such analyses could not be exploited due to the small sample size. we fi nd some indication that household and family context re-emphasise the effect of certain attitudes. it would be interesting for future research to understand how normative attitudes and gender-specifi c behaviour infl uence each other and change over the course of a relationship. acknowledgement we would like to thank sandra buchler for further editing of the translated english manuscript. daniela grunow would like to thank the european research council for fi nancial support in the context of the erc starting grant project apparent (grant agreement no.: 263651). references baur, nina 2007: der perfekte vater. vaterschaftsvorstellungen deutscher männer. in: freiburger geschlechterstudien 21: 79-114. baur, nina; luedtke, jens 2008: männlichkeit und erwerbsarbeit bei westdeutschen männern. in: baur, nina; luedtke, jens 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(o.j.): männer 2002. questionnaire. zuma; infas 2002: internationale sozialwissenschaftliche umfrage: issp 2002 – family and changing gender roles iii. fragebogen für deutschland [url: www.gesis.org, 1.1.2006]. zuma; infratest burke 1994: internationale sozialwissenschaftliche umfrage: issp 1994 – family and changing gender roles ii. fragebogen für deutschland [url: www. gesis.org, 1.1.2006]. zuma; infratest burke 1997: thema „arbeit“: meinungen in deutschland. issp 1997 – work orientations. fragebogen für deutschland [url: www.gesis.org, 1.1.2006]. the association between norms and actions • 557 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “die korrespondenz von normativen vorstellungen und handeln. das beispiel männlicher hausarbeit”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-10de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-10de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 25.02.2011 date of acceptance: 02.02.2012 prof. dr. daniela grunow (). goethe-university frankfurt am main, faculty of social science, sociology institute, frankfurt am main, germany. e-mail: grunow@soz.uni-frankfurt.de url: http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/47217051/home? prof. dr. nina baur. technische universität berlin, department of sociology, berlin, germany. e-mail: nina.baur@ tu-berlin.de url: http://www.mes.tu-berlin.de/baur • daniela grunow, nina baur558 appendix tab. a1: relative explanatory power of independent variables for men vacuumcleaning, doing the laundry and cooking, logistic regression, fully standardised b-coeffi cients level of signifi cance: + α ≤ 0.10; * α ≤ 0.05; ** α ≤ 0.01; *** α ≤ 0.001 source: own calculations based on the study “the image of men in society” man vacuums man does laundry man cooks region, ref. west germany east germany 0.05 0.09 -0.23+ age (in years) -0.29** -0.17 -0.04 education, ref. maximum “lower school leaving certificate” (hauptschule) “general school leaving certificate” (realschule) -0.08 0.06 0.18 higher education entrance qualification -0.03 0.03 0.25* graduate degree -0.03 -0.09 0.09 employment status, ref. employed pensioner -0.14 -0.07 0.07 in education -0.15 0.17 0.11 other -0.04 0.09 0.07 treiman prestige 0.20 0.20 0.23+ net equivalent income (in thousand euro) -0.35* -0.04 -0.28* partner’s employment status, ref. not employed no partner 0.26* 0.28* 0.25* partner employed part-time 0.05 0.12 0.11 partner employed full-time 0.10 0.11 0.37** family context number of adults in the household (apart from the respondent) -0.31** -0.47** -0.44** number of children in the household -0.12 -0.29* -0.04 normative attitudes approval of the male provider female homemaker model 0.03 -0.06 0.17 approval of women’s employment -0.08 0.11 0.25* employment as men's central social role -0.14 0.07 -0.20 endorsement of men’s unpaid work 0.52** 0.20+ 0.31** explained variance (pseudo r2) 15% 17% 16% n 303 303 303 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr: should we stop using it? tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz abstract: discussions about fertility in developed countries refer almost exclusively to the period total fertility rate (tfr). we argue that the use of this indicator frequently leads to incorrect interpretations of period fertility levels and trends, resulting in distorted policy conclusions and, potentially, in misguided policies. we illustrate this with four policy-relevant examples, drawn from contemporary europe. these illustrations show that the tfr (a) infl ates the presumed gap between fertility intentions and realised fertility, (b) erroneously suggests a signifi cant fertility increase in many countries of europe after the year 2000, (c) often exaggerates the level of immigrants’ fertility and (d) frequently suggests that family-related policies which led to shorter birth spacing in fact brought an upward swing in fertility level. there seems to be no policy-relevant question for which the period tfr would be the indicator of choice to be preferred over other existing measures. keywords: fertility measurement · total fertility · policies · fertility intentions · fertility timing · tempo effect 1 introduction demography has been in the headlines in europe for many years and is being discussed in the highest policy circles. the european commission has set up several bodies that discuss the “demographic challenge” which commission president barroso called one of the three main challenges for europe, and in 2006 it published an offi cial communication on the topic that was presented to the media under the catching title “five ways to defuse the demographic time bomb” (european commission 2006). the main policy paradigm conveyed in this communication as well as in speeches by family ministers around europe is that young people want to have signifi cantly more children than they actually can afford to have and that the role of policy is to help them meet their family size desires. the resolution of the european parliament on the demographic future of europe (21 february 2008) proposes that comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 3 (2010): 637-664 (date of release: 15.09.2011) © federal institute for population research 2010 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-15en8 • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz638 “the average birth rate in the european union, which at 1.5 is abnormally low, is not a refl ection of women’s choice or of european citizens’ actual aspirations for creating a family.” as we will discuss below, this dominant and politically in many respects most convenient policy paradigm is largely based on an inappropriate use of the period total fertility rate (tfr) which is compared with the cohort measure of desired family size as if it were itself a cohort measure of fertility. the same problem is found with another policy message that is being spread in europe, namely the reversal of the declining fertility trends. many politicians point at recent increases in the tfr as proof of their successful policies. in this study, we show that this trend often cannot be interpreted as a major turnaround in fertility because it is largely a consequence of the expected end of fertility postponement with government policies playing little role. again, it is frequently the inappropriate use of the tfr that causes this misleading message. current public discussions about fertility trends and policies in developed countries almost exclusively refer to the period tfr which has become the ubiquitous fertility indicator of choice since the 1960s. it is commonly labeled as the “mean number of children per woman” by many demographers and statistical offi ces and, in consequence, also by journalists and politicians. this “synthetic cohort” interpretation has become “deeply engrained in demographic thinking” (ní bhrolcháin 2007: 44). in the public discourse relatively few references are made to cohort fertility as the adequate measure of fertility or to other indicators of period fertility that may better refl ect changes in fertility trends. likewise, little reference is made to trends in the absolute number of births, which after all directly determine the future size and age structure of the population. although all demographers should be aware of the serious problems associated with calling the period tfr the “mean number of children per woman,” a notion that only makes sense from a cohort perspective, there is hardly any public discussion about this. one important exception was a brief but heated public discussion in france in the early 1990s (see keyfi tz 1993 and a discussion on period fertility measures in population 1994). interestingly, this debate initially focused on the choice between period and cohort fertility measures and practically took for granted that the tfr represents the period fertility measure of choice. more recently the european demographic data sheets (see vid 2010 for the latest one) have presented calculations of tfrs adjusted for “tempo effect” (i.e., the infl uence of changes in the timing of childbearing) along with traditional tfrs and cohort fertility measures in order to draw attention to this problem. in discussing the use and usefulness of the period tfr this article partly relates to a recent work by ní bhrolcháin (2007, 2008) who distinguishes fi ve purposes (“reasons”) for which the tfr is being used and stresses that the choice of the fertility indicator should be determined by the analyst’s objective. we go beyond this rather broad concept of measurement purposes and focus primarily on a policyrelevant analysis of fertility trends and the questions surrounding it. we believe that demographers are expected to address specifi c questions that have societal or policy relevance and communicate their research to broader public. for some of these questions (such as, how many school-age children can we expect in ten years) the most appropriate demographic measure is the absolute number of births misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 639 (adjusted for child mortality and actual or expected migration), while for others (e.g. whether women have on average more children as a consequence of economic or political changes) measures of fertility level would provide the best answer. as we will discuss in the concluding section, the well-established tfr index does not give a satisfactory answer to such “real world” questions beyond the narrow arena of demographic modelling. in the following we will try to demonstrate that the period tfr is a very problematic measure for assessing both the need for and the impact of policy changes and, more generally, for studying fertility trends in conjunction with selected social and economic trends. the excessive use of this problematic indicator, motivated in part by its wide availability for different countries and periods, can lead to erroneous conclusions. we will also address two natural follow-up questions (a) “can we offer a better indicator of fertility level based on period information?”, and, if the answer is affi rmative, (b) “is there any role left for the traditional period tfr?” most of the article deals with the fi rst question and compares the messages derived from the period tfr with those derived from three alternative measures of period fertility and from completed cohort fertility (labelled ctfr). the second question, which is more radical in its potential implications, is addressed in the concluding section. the study fi rst reiterates the increasingly recognised fact that the period tfr can diverge considerably and systematically from the ctfr of women having children in a given period and this divergence can stretch over long periods of time. timing effects and compositional factors affecting the period tfr may be seen as factors that confound the link between fertility and policy. we present four examples where the period tfr is typically used as a criterion for an evaluation of the “underlying” level of fertility, often referred to as “fertility quantum”1 (bongaarts/feeney 1998; van imhoff 2001). we discuss whether the period tfr provides adequate and useful information about fertility levels and trends and whether this evaluation changes when other fertility indicators are used instead of the conventional period tfr. these illustrations show that the tfr (a) infl ates the presumed gap between fertility intentions and realised fertility, (b) erroneously suggests a signifi cant fertility increase in many european countries after the year 2000, (c) often exaggerates the level of immigrants’ fertility and (d) frequently suggests that family-related policies which led to shorter birth spacing in fact brought an upward swing in fertility level. 1 while there is no generally recognized defi nition of “fertility quantum”, in a period perspective it is often understood to refl ect the fertility level that is undistorted by confounding factors like changing timing (tempo) of childbearing or changing parity composition of the female population. from a cohort perspective, the completed fertility rate is an unambiguous and undistorted indicator of fertility quantum. • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz640 2 problems with the period tfr an increasing number of studies have demonstrated that the period tfr is a questionable measure of the level (quantum) of period fertility. it controls neither for the parity distribution of women nor for duration since the last birth, which are the key determining factors of reproductive behaviour (rallu/toulemon 1994a and population 1994). even more important, it is very sensitive to changes in the timing of childbearing, which infl ate the tfr when women have children at progressively earlier ages and depress it when they postpone childbearing to later reproductive ages (e.g. ryder 1990; bongaarts/feeney 1998; bongaarts 2002; sobotka 2004a). the latter situation has been typical for most developed countries since the early 1970s, when a long-term trend towards delayed parenthood started in western and northern europe as well as in canada, japan and the united states (kohler et al. 2002; sobotka 2004b). various estimates suggested that without this shift in the timing of childbearing period tfr in the european union would have been by 0.2 to 0.3 higher in the late 1990s and early 2000s (lutz et al. 2003; sobotka 2004a), although this tempo effect was strongly regionally differentiated (bongaarts 2002; frejka/ sobotka 2008; vid 2010). as a result, the period tfr considerably diverged from the completed cohort fertility of women who were in their prime childbearing ages in a given period. such a mismatch is not problematic for short-term fl uctuations, when period fertility measures should refl ect actual ups and downs in birth rates that may not affect ultimate cohort fertility trends (ní bhrolcháin 1992). however, this disagreement becomes problematic once the period tfr differs systematically from the corresponding ctfr for two or three decades, as it has happened across much of the developed world. figure 1 gives an illustration of this divergence for denmark, where the gap between the period tfr and roughly corresponding ctfr averaged 0.26 in the period of 1970-1994 (the corresponding ctfr cannot be computed yet for the younger cohorts). such a long-term divergence implies that the period tfr provides incorrect signals about the levels and trends of fertility and, by extension, also about the longterm prospects of population replacement and population growth in the absence of migration. such “incorrect signals” about fertility levels also have policy relevance as they may provide arguments that exaggerate the problem of “extremely low” fertility as well as the prospects of future population decline. since the late 1970s, numerous statements and declarations of european politicians and parliaments about “insuffi cient birth rate” in europe were fi rmly based on the observations of trends in the period tfr (see european parliament 1984 and 2008). for example, the former commissioner for employment and social affairs has proclaimed that “ [t]he fertility level for the eu as a whole is about 1.5 children per woman, well below the estimated replacement level of 2.1,” noting that some countries with “fertility rates of 1.3 children or less […] face dramatic population decreases” (špidla 2007: 2). also these statements are grounded in the period tfr as there is no eu country at present where women born around 1970 are heading toward a completed fertility rate of 1.4 or below. misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 641 as an alternative to the period tfr, we use the following range of indicators of period fertility: (a) tempo-adjusted period tfr*s , proposed by • bongaarts and feeney (1998), which are based on birth-order specifi c correction in the conventional tfrs that refl ect the changes in the mean ages of fertility schedule; (b) an age and parity-specifi c index of fertility, patfr (e.g. • rallu/toulemon 1994a) which is based on a fertility table that controls for age and parity distribution of women of reproductive age (c) its variant adjusted for tempo and variance effects, patfr* (• kohler/ortega 2002). we also employ completed cohort fertility. the choice of these indicators is driven in part by their suitability to address a given issue and in part by data availability. fig. 1: period tfr (1965-2008) and ctfr (women born in 1937-1967) in denmark notes: data on ctfr are based on two neighbouring cohorts; e.g. cohort 1937 refers to a cohort born in 1937-1938. a small fraction of the ctfr is estimated for women born in 1960-1967. period data are compared with the cohort data for women born 27-28 years earlier; this distance corresponds approximately to the mean age at childbearing in 1968-1994. source: council of europe (2006) and eurostat (2008, 2009) for the period tfr; statistics denmark (2007) (tab. 2.5 and 2.6) for the ctfr. 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1965 1937 1970 1942 1975 1947 1980 1952 1985 1957 1990 1962 1995 1967 2000 1972 2005 1977 period (cohort) total fertility rate year cohort ctfr period tfr • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz642 we are well aware of the shortcomings of the bongaarts-feeney adjustment, such as its simplifi ed underlying assumption about the constant shape of fertility schedule, its lack of controlling for changes in the parity distribution of the female population and its relatively strong fl uctuations over time (van imhoff 2001; schoen 2004). however, we use it alongside the adjusted patfr* for the reason of data availability and also because in most cases, it gives similar results to the other fertility adjustment methods. we do not dispose for a number of countries with potentially more appropriate indexes based on parity and duration since the last birth, which largely eliminate the need for tempo adjustment (sobotka et al. 2005; ní bhrolcháin 2008). we provide a brief description of the indicators used in the appendix. example 1: the assumed gap between desired and actual fertility surveys on fertility ideals and intentions frequently indicate that despite the decline in fertility rates well below the replacement-level threshold, both mean ideal and desired family sizes in most countries of europe remain at or above two children per woman (e.g. testa 2007). the period tfr has been repeatedly used to estimate this gap, suggesting a huge aggregate discrepancy between actual and intended fertility (see also bongaarts 2008), often in the order of 0.5-0.8 children per woman (e.g. chesnais 2000). a recent oecd analysis (oecd 2007: 36) posits that “the gaps between desired and actual fertility rates have increased over the past ten to twenty years” and suggests that these gaps are largest in countries where fertility rates are lowest. several distinct explanations of this discrepancy have been proposed, among which institutional and structural constraints to childbearing and childrearing (mcdonald 2006) are frequently taken as evidence of a need for policy action (european commission 2005; mcdonald 2006). the issue has been empirically illustrated by lutz (2007); this illustration is further elaborated in table 1. it combines four different fertility and family size indicators in major regions of the european union (eu). the fi rst column lists the personal ideal family size as collected in the eurobarometer survey in 2006 for women aged 25-39 (testa 2006). the second column, also based on eurobarometer, gives the total intended family size for the same group of women. it combines the number of children already born with the number of children women intend to have in the future. this second measure constitutes a more realistic predictor of fertility than ideal family size, since it takes into account expected obstacles and diffi culties in realising their fertility ideals and desires. however, a comparison between these two measures from the same survey shows that there is only a small difference between them, 0.15 children per woman for the whole eu. the third and fourth columns in table 1 list the tfr for 2006 and the bongaartsfeeney (1998) tempo-adjusted tfr* for 2005-2007 as published in the european demographic data sheet (vid 2010). the difference between the conventional tfr and the ideal family size (gap 1 in column 5) is indeed substantial – more than half a child in all regions – and reaches 0.7 children for the eu. however, the two fi gures used to construct this gap are not comparable because they measure very different things, one cohort ideals and the other tempo-distorted period fertility. misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 643 if one wishes to compare the ideal family size to a period fertility measure, then tempo-adjusted tfr* would be more appropriate. as column 6 shows, the gap between those two indexes (gap 2) becomes smaller and reaches 0.5 for the whole eu. the last column fi nally indicates a third kind of gap, namely that between the intended family size and the adjusted tfr*. this third gap is the smallest of all, ranging around 0.3-0.4 for different regions and reaching 0.34 for the eu; it represents about half of gap 1. these data make the population policy rationale aiming at helping couples reduce the presumed gap between desires and reality look much less convincing: does this imply that governments have little reason to take action in countries like austria and germany that have a relatively small aggregate gap, but in the view of their governments undesirably low fertility rates? probably it does not. on the other hand, high-fertility countries of northern europe have a somewhat larger gap when measured this way. should governments be more active in countries which have a higher overall level of fertility? probably they should not. in fact, nordic countries, which have similar “fertility gaps” as other countries, are often cited as examples of what kind of policies governments in low-fertility countries should introduce in order to make it easier for couples to combine work and family. hence the policy paradigm based on the presumed “unmet need for children” is problematic on both counts; to some extent it refl ects wishful thinking of policy makers and their implicit pronatalism. while this analysis based on the eurobarometer data (testa 2006; lutz 2007) clearly illustrates the issue, there are some justifi ed doubts about the validity and representativeness of this type of data from an opinion survey with limited samtab. 1: ideal and intended family size and the period tfr of women in various regions of the eu in 2006 and different ways to calculate the ‘gap’ between ideal (intended) and actual fertility (1) personal ideal family size (2) actual + intended family size (3) tfr (4) tempo adjusted tfr* (5) gap 1 (1)-(3) (6) gap 2 (1)–(4) (7) gap 3 (2)-(4) western europe 2.44 2.36 1.88 2.05 0.56 0.39 0.31 northern europe 2.57 2.35 1.85 1.95 0.72 0.62 0.41 southern europe 2.08 1.81 1.37 1.46 0.71 0.61 0.35 austria + germany 2.07 1.88 1.34 1.62 0.74 0.45 0.25 central-eastern europe 2.09 2.04 1.31 1.60 0.79 0.50 0.44 eu-27 2.21 2.06 1.53 1.72 0.68 0.49 0.34 note: data are weighted by population size of countries in given regions. source: columns (1) and (2): eurobarometer 2006 data analysed by testa (2006). (3) and (4): vid 2010 • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz644 ple size (typically around 130 female respondents aged 25-39 per country), which vastly increases the potential margin of error (testa 2006). moreover, comparisons between intentions and period fertility rates are problematic. they relate the cohort intentions for children to be born in the future to the period measures of recent fertility behaviour. a comparison of intended fertility among selected cohorts of women, expressed when they were in their prime reproductive years, with their fi nal completed fertility, is methodologically preferable. hence, we also present a more in-depth analysis, using data from comparatively large surveys from austria and england and wales. we compare the intended family size, which best refl ects women’s and couples’ long-term childbearing plans with their completed cohort fertility. in fact, cohort analysis leads to conclusions that are very similar to the comparison based on adjusted period measures discussed above. in england and wales different cohorts of women who were interviewed at age 27-29 about their fertility plans expressed the mean intended family size (mifs) to be about 0.3-0.4 higher than the period tfr at that time (see smallwood/jefferies 2003 for trends in mifs over time). however, the eventual gap between their intentions and the ultimately achieved fertility level was reduced by about half and typically reached only 0.1-0.2 (tab. 2). similarly, in austria the period tfr also gives an exaggerated picture of the extent of unrealised fertility desires. at the time austrian women reach their typical tab. 2: difference between the mean intended family size (mifs), period tfr and ctfr in england and wales (women aged 27-29, period 1979-1996) mifs period tfr gap 1 ctfr gap 2 years cohort (1) (2) (2)-(1) (3) (3)-(1) 1979-81 around 1952 2.12 1.84 0.28 2.05 0.07 1982-84 around 1955 2.16 1.76 0.40 2.02 0.14 1985-87 around 1958 2.16 1.79 0.37 1.99 0.17 1988-90 around 1961 2.20 1.82 0.38 1.96 0.24 1991-93 around 1964 2.09 1.79 0.30 1.92 (est) 0.17 1994-96 around 1967 2.14 1.74 0.40 1.91 (est.) 0.23 average 2.15 1.79 0.36 1.98 0.17 notes: mifs refers to the mean intended family size among women aged 27-29; answers of undecided respondents were ignored (see smallwood/jefferies 2003 for alternative estimates of the mifs based on different assumptions about uncertain respondents). data on the ctfr are partly estimated for cohorts born around 1964 and 1967. source: mifs: smallwood/jefferies 2003, tab. 1. ctfr: ons 2007, tab. 10.2: 56-57. misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 645 age at childbearing the gap between their mean reproductive desires and the contemporary level of tfr commonly widens to 0.4-0.5. however, a comparison of fertility intentions at younger ages with completed fertility shows that the intentionbehaviour gap becomes substantially smaller, specifi cally, around 0.15 in the case of the cohorts 1955-60 and 1966-70 analysed in figure 2. this fi nding is again surprisingly consistent with the conclusions based on period-based tempo-adjusted measures of fertility. our detailed investigation of period fertility rates and fertility intentions in the czech republic after 1990, when the country underwent a dramatic fall in total fertility, also yields similar conclusions. in 1997, when the period tfr dropped to 1.18, the gap between the mean intended family size and the period tfr surpassed 0.8, whereas the tempo-adjusted tfr* indicated a much smaller gap of 0.3 (tab. 2 in sobotka/lutz 2009: 14 ). fig. 2: differences between mean intended family size (mifs), period tfr and ctfr, austrian women aged 25-30 (years 1986 and 1996, cohorts 1956-1960 and 1966-1970) 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0 1986 1996 intended family size, tfr and realised family size observed gap between mifs and ctfr tfr mifs ctfr period when mifs and tfr measured assumed gap using period tfr notes: mifs refers to the medium variant estimate of the mean desired family size among women aged 25-30 (see sobotka 2009). data on the ctfr are partly estimated for the cohorts born in 1966-1970. source: sobotka’s (2009) computation from microcensus (1986 and 1996) data • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz646 all in all, period measures of fertility that are less distorted by changes in fertility timing than the period tfr as well as the ultimately achieved cohort fertility show that the gap between intended and realised fertility is grossly exaggerated when analysed with the period tfr. if the intentions data were further adjusted for some factors that are mostly outside the reach of government policies, such as having no suitable partner, disagreement between partners or poor health status, the presumed gap might become entirely erased. a french survey analysed by toulemon and leridon (1999) revealed that when women who had never lived with a partner were disregarded, the mean ideal family size at ages 25-35 (2.21) corresponded remarkably well with the eventually achieved mean family size (2.23) among women born in 1950-65. caution needs to be taken when interpreting these fi ndings. the proper measurement of intentions and their correspondence with realised fertility is not settled just by properly accounting for tempo effect and remains challenging even when more appropriate indicators than the period tfr are used. aggregate consistency does not mean that most individuals achieve their intended family size. fertility intentions are often uncertain (westoff/ryder 1977; morgan 1981; sobotka 2009) and subject to changes and revisions during the life course (quesnel-vallée/morgan 2004; liefbroer 2009). the aggregate results represent an outcome of both under-achieving and over-achieving of the initial targets among individual women. furthermore, the concepts of intended and ideal family size can both be criticised. the defi nition of intended fertility adds the number of children already born to those still intended, which makes any unplanned births in the past part of the total intended family size. even in european countries with high contraceptive use and broad access to abortion, unplanned births push both the intended and realised fertility rate slightly upwards. this problem is avoided by the more hypothetical personal ideal family size which, on the other hand, is more detached from individual circumstances affecting reproductive behaviour, including infertility, and thus also harder to interpret. example 2: recent increase in the period tfr in europe since the late 1990s many countries of europe have recorded a notable increase in the period total fertility. in belgium, bulgaria, the czech republic, estonia, france, ireland, latvia, russia, slovenia, spain, sweden, united kingdom and ukraine the tfr increased by more than 0.2 between 2000 and 2008 (goldstein et al. 2009). this has been generally interpreted as a welcome sign, indicating the much-needed reversal of the previous long-standing trend of declining period fertility rates, which in many countries of europe had brought the tfr to “lowest-low” levels of 1.3 or below (kohler et al. 2002). some governments have proudly attributed this trend to their policy action and a leading newspaper in germany, die zeit, commented a tiny increase in the number of births in 2007 with the cheerful pronouncement “politics work!” (gaschke 2009). however, an alternative explanation provides a different perspective on the recent rise in the period tfr. it is possible that much of the recent increase in the period tfr in european countries can be attributed to the slowing down or ending of fertility postponement (goldstein et al. 2009, bongaarts/ misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 647 sobotka 2010). we look at fertility changes in two countries – the czech republic and spain – which have experienced a substantial rise in the period tfr since the late 1990s and for which we could compute alternative indicators of period fertility that are less affected by the tempo effect. a systematic analysis of the role of tempo effects in the recent tfr increase is provided in recent studies by goldstein et al. (2009) and bongaarts and sobotka (2010). spain experienced a steep and continuous decline in the period tfr between 1976 and 1996, when it reached a record-low level of 1.17. at the same time the alternative tempo-adjusted indicators of period fertility also displayed an almost continuous fall, although at somewhat higher levels, suggesting that the fertility “quantum” fell in parallel with the period tfr (fig. 3). after 1996 the tfr fi rst stabilised and then started rising, peaking at 1.46 in 2008 (e.g. delgado et al. 2008). however, the tempo-adjusted fertility indicators give another perspective on recent fertility “reversal”. first, they suggest that fertility was declining until 2000, i.e. during the time when the tfr had stabilised and started to increase. subsequently, these indicators essentially show a stabilisation in period fertility. in effect, there was convergence between the period tfr and the adjusted period fertility measures around 2005 when the increase in the mean age at fi rst birth stopped. this is a nice illustration of the expected consequence of the ending of the tempo effect. a different story is depicted in figure 3 for the czech republic. a massive postponement of childbearing after the collapse of the state-socialist system has taken place there since the early 1990s, bringing a pronounced rise in the mean age at fi rst birth (sobotka et al. 2008). in parallel, the tfr had fallen to the level of 1.13 in 1999 and then started a gradual recovery since the early 2000s, reaching 1.50 in 2008. the adjusted tfr* as well as the ageand parity-specifi c index of fertility, the patfr*, adjusted for tempo effects (kohler/ortega’s 2002 adjustment, see appendix) fell much less precipitously over the 1990s to a level around 1.6 in 1998. this divergence between the ordinary tfr and the tempo-adjusted indicators suggests that a substantial part of the steep drop in the tfr could be attributed to the tempo effect. in contrast to spain, a rise in the tfr in the early 2000s occurred in tandem with an increase in the adjusted tfr*, albeit a less intensive one. it is likely that the continuing rise in the ordinary tfr will bring a gradual convergence between different fertility measures in the future, in reaction to a slowing down of fertility postponement. in these two cases, and many others not discussed here (e.g. goldstein et al. 2009), the adjusted indicators offer a different interpretation of recent fertility trends than the ordinary tfr. whereas the tfr provides an impression of a substantial increase in fertility rates, the adjusted indicators often show that this increase was almost entirely (spain) or largely (czech republic) driven by the diminishing tempo distortion. this explanation is particularly pertinent for fi rst births, for which the recent rise in the tfr was most clearly manifested. to illustrate this point, we compare the ordinary tfr for birth order 1 in spain with the period fertility index based on agespecifi c probabilities of having the fi rst child computed for childless women (patfr), which is markedly less affected by the tempo effect (sobotka 2004b), and by its • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz648 fig. 3: period tfr, tfr*, patfr* index for total births and mean age at fi rst birth (mafb) in spain (1980-2007) and the czech republic (1988-2008) 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 tfr tfr* patfr* mafb fertility rate year mean age at first birth spain notes: for adjusted tfr* and patfr* average values for 3-year periods centred on a given year are shown. source: authors’ computations based on eurostat (2003, 2008 and 2010), ine (2009) and the data provided by the czech statistical offi ce. 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 tfr tfr* patfr* mafb fertility rate year mean age at first birth czech republic misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 649 adjusted variant (patfr*) computed using a simplifi ed version (sobotka 2004b: 94) of kohler and ortega’s (2002) adjustment (see appendix; see sobotka/lutz 2009 for an additional example of fi rst birth trends in the czech republic).2 these three indexes provide contrasting impressions about the trends and levels of fi rst-birth rates. between 1980, when they stood at around 0.9 (suggesting 10 % childlessness) and 2005-2007, when they generally converged, although at a lower level around 0.8, the fi rst-order tfr had dramatically fallen to 0.57 in 1996 and subsequently rose by a third during the next decade (fig. 4). in contrast, the fi rst-order patfr* depicts a gradual fall between 1980 and 1996 followed by a stabilisation. in other words, fi rst-birth intensity did not rise after 1996 and almost all the increase in fi rst-order tfr in spain can be explained by a mechanical effect of a steep increase in the number of childless women at higher childbearing ages, when fi rst-birth intensities remained relatively high and stable. this effect is not accounted for in order-specifi c tfr, which does not control for shifts in the parity distribution among women. finally, when taking both tempoand parity-composition effects into account the adjusted patfr* suggests that fi rst-birth intensities actually declined between 1996 and 2006. in sum, during the recent period the ordinary tfr usually indicates a larger magnitude of change, especially for fi rst births, than fertility indicators which control for parity, duration, tempo effect, or at least some of these potentially distorting factors. most of the tfr shifts can be explained by an increase in fi rst-order tfr and, in turn, most of the increase in fi rst-order tfr can be explained by a diminishing tempo effect coupled with an increase in the number of childless women at later childbearing ages. the often dramatic reversals in fi rst-order tfr can be seen as a product of two distinct phases of fi rst-birth postponement. during the fi rst phase, many cohorts of women delayed their entry into motherhood, causing a decline in the tfr. in a second phase, however, they began realising their “postponed” childbearing, contributing thus to the recuperation of fertility rates at higher reproductive ages, which pushed the ordinary tfr upwards. the analysis of fi rst-birth rates, where the cycle of fertility delay and subsequent recuperation is most apparent and fuels large shifts in the fi rst-order tfr, best exposes the weaknesses of the conventional period total fertility when it is used as a measure of childbearing intensity or as a synthetic cohort indicator of the “number of children per woman”. example 3: tfr as a problematic measure of the fertility of immigrants fertility of immigrants, when measured by the period tfr, is subject to yet another type of distortion linked to the endogeneity of migration for fertility. immigrant women, especially when migration took place for the purpose of family formation, 2 we do not employ the bongaarts-feeney tfr* in the analysis of fi rst births, as this indicator is rather unstable when analysed by birth order. this issue has been addressed by bongaarts and feeney (2006) who proposed parity-specifi c fertility adjustment (see also bongaarts/sobotka 2010). however, the inclusion of this new indicator would “burden” our study with yet another index of fertility and we decided not to use it here. • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz650 typically show elevated fertility rates during the fi rst years after their arrival (e.g. alders 2000; østby 2002; andersson 2004; toulemon/mazuy 2004). consequently, their fertility rates are often more closely related to the duration of their stay rather than to their age. the total fertility, which takes age as the indexing variable of fertility, may therefore be strongly biased by the size of immigration streams: even when fertility rates computed by the duration of stay in the country remain stable, increased migration would bring an infl ated tfr by increasing the number of migrant women with short durations of stay, when their fertility rates are highest. thus, the tfr computed for immigrants usually exaggerates their fertility quantum during periods of high immigration. this distortion becomes yet more serious when the data on births are recorded for women with foreign nationality only, rather than for all women of immigrant origin. as many immigrants undergo a process of naturalisation when they stay in a country for many years and at some point become classifi ed as nationals, foreigners frequently constitute a select group of migrants with relatively short duration of stay and thus also with elevated period total fertility. therefore, some researchers fig. 4: period tfr, patfr and patfr* for fi rst births, spain 1980-2007 0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65 0.70 0.75 0.80 0.85 0.90 0.95 1.00 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 tfr1 patfr1 patfr1* fertility rate year notes: for adjusted tfr* and patfr* average values for 3-year periods centred on a given year are shown. source: authors’ computations based on eurostat (2003, 2008, and 2010), ine (2008 and 2009). misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 651 have argued that the period tfr cannot serve as a reliable indicator of the level of immigrants’ fertility (andersson 2004; toulemon 2004). the selectivity of foreignnationality migrants and the methodological shortcomings of the tfr may explain why several european countries record the tfr for foreign women as high as 3.0 and above (e.g. sobotka 2008). for instance, the tfr for foreign women in france in 2005 was estimated at 3.29 as compared with 1.80 for women with french nationality (héran/pison 2007). not much research has been conducted yet to correct for this type of distortion in the tfr. alternative estimates of migrant women’s tfr for france controlling for age at entry and duration of stay (toulemon 2004; toulemon/mazuy 2004) constitute the main exception. for 1991-1998 this alternative estimate reduced the tfr of immigrant women in france from 2.50 (estimated by using the conventional tfr) to 2.16. thus, the “excess” fertility of immigrant women in france as compared to native women, falls to about one half of its estimated level, from 0.85 to 0.46 when a more appropriate fertility indicator is used (toulemon 2004: 4). example 4: changes in family policies and shifts in tfr so far our analysis has not referred explicitly to family policies. there is an increasing body of evidence that family-related policies can stimulate distinct swings in total fertility, which are often primarily induced by changes in fertility timing and spacing rather than by an increase in the underlying fertility quantum (gauthier 2007). specifi cally, policies may stimulate earlier entry into parenthood or, which is more frequently the case, a faster progression to higher-order births. the effects of changes in family policies on the timing of births have been documented for many european countries. for instance, sweden constitutes a wellstudied example of a sudden upswing in secondand third-birth rates at short birth intervals. this upswing followed two extensions of parental leave, which granted a continuous provision of paid parental leave benefi t amounting to 80 % of their previous salary (90 % until 1994) to women who had another child within 24 months from 1980 and 30 months from 1986 (e.g. hoem 1990; andersson et al. 2006; neyer/ andersson 2008). this regulation, which became known as “speed premium”, has led to a shortening of birth intervals and contributed to a distinct upward swing in period tfr in the late 1980s, as many parents found it manageable to have children closely spaced to take advantage of the continuous benefi t (hoem 1990). less well-known are the effects of policy changes introduced in russia since 1982. these policies extended the period of maternity leave and, more importantly, they also extended the options for mothers to take child care leave until the child reached age 3 (see zakharov 2006 and 2008; note that unlike in sweden child care leave compensation remained low in russia). following this new regulation, the tfr in russia increased from 1.88 in 1981 to 2.09 in 1983 and, after a short pause, to 2.23 in 1987 (council of europe 2006). however, what looks like a successful policy intervention that brought about a desired increase in fertility was mostly an indirect effect of a change in the timing of childbearing, bringing a temporary boost to the period tfr. the mean age at fi rst birth slightly declined, but the most pronounced • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz652 effect was recorded for women with one child, who were giving birth to their second child at considerably shorter intervals. in a period perspective, this second-birth interval fell from around 5.5 to 3.5 years between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s (zakharov 2008, fig. 5: 928). although second children were born much “faster” than before, especially among women born in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, zakharov (2008: 927) did not detect any increase in their second birth progression rate. he concludes that “the demographic effect of the policy did not manifest itself in an increase in average family size in any major social groups.” however, not only the period tfr is very sensitive to changes in the timing of childbearing. changes in birth intervals, which are frequent by-products of family policy changes, also affect period parity progression rates (pprs), computed from duration-specifi c fertility rates. breton and prioux’s (2005) detailed analysis of shifts in third-birth rates in france in the 1970s to 1990s reveal that third-birth pprs have fl uctuated in parallel with an introduction of family policies explicitly aimed at promoting third births (set up in 1978-1980 and again in 1985-87) as well as with the scaling-down of those measures in 1982. as in the previous two cases, these policies had primarily led to the temporary compression of birth intervals – in this case between the second and the third birth – and had only a limited effect on cohort fertility rates (breton/prioux 2005: 423; cohorts were defi ned as parity cohorts which measure progression rates to third birth among women having a second birth in a given year). 3 discussion and conclusions this study has discussed four examples of different situations where the use of the period tfr results in erroneous readings of the levels and trends of period fertility, which in turn may lead to incorrect policy conclusions and, potentially, to misguided policies. we have focused prominently on the infl uence of tempo distortions that have considerably affected levels and trends in the period tfr across europe since the early 1970s. our fi rst example makes it clear that the popular and politically convenient policy rationale according to which governments should only try to help couples fi ll the gap between their desired and actual family size is ambiguous and often not very signifi cant in terms of quantity. we arrive at the same conclusion when using adjusted period measures as well as when using the more appropriate cohort comparison of fertility intentions among women of reproductive age and their later reproductive outcomes. a much smaller aggregate difference between intended and realised fertility – typically about a half of the difference estimated from the period tfr – can be more easily explained by biological and social obstacles to childbearing (bongaarts 2008) that are largely outside the scope of policy infl uences, such as poor health, infertility, or an inability to fi nd a suitable partner. our second example refl ects upon the most widely documented distortion in the period tfr – its sensitivity to changes in the timing of childbearing. we show that the period tfr may suggest too low fertility levels and subsequently signal a trend misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 653 reversal and a substantial increase in fertility where other indicators show stagnation or even a slight downward trend (the example of fi rst births in spain). the difference between the period tfr and the more appropriate measures of period or cohort fertility level may be of major magnitude, potentially leading to a gross misinterpretation of fertility in a country (the examples of the czech republic and denmark). our analysis indicates that most of the recent increase in the period tfr has been driven by the rise in the tfr for fi rst births, which can in turn be largely attributed to the diminishing fi rst-birth postponement combined with a previous increase in the number of childless women at later childbearing ages (see also goldstein et al. 2009). this fi nding has an important policy corollary: while the rising tfr may be interpreted by some governments and politicians as proving the positive effects of their social or family policies on fertility, our fi ndings leave much less space for such a cheerful interpretation. our third example draws on the existing research on fertility of immigrant women. the fact that the tfr often distorts the picture of immigrants’ fertility may potentially lead to ill-informed policy efforts addressing the presumably high difference between fertility of migrant and native-born women. our fourth example turns to policy effects themselves. many fertility-related policies primarily affect the timing of childbearing and as a result they also bring a temporary shift in the period tfr without shaping cohort fertility trends. this shift, caused mostly by the tempo effect, may please policymakers who are likely to incorrectly interpret it as a welcome sign of the turnaround in fertility rates, following the new policy measures. let us now turn to the second question mentioned in the introduction, namely whether there is any role left for the traditional period tfr. we have presented clear evidence that it may grossly distort any policy-relevant analysis. does this imply that the use of period tfr should be entirely abandoned? on a theoretical level the answer essentially depends on whether or not the period tfr adequately measures and describes some process that can be meaningfully interpreted and that other fertility indicators do not capture in the same way (see also ní bhrolcháin 2007 and 2008). in the spectrum of summary indicators of natality and period fertility that ranges from the absolute number of births per year (infl uenced by population size, age structure, parity and birth interval distribution of women, as well as tempo effects) at one end to parity, age and duration-specifi c indexes on the other, the period tfr occupies an odd in-between position. it adjusts for population size and age structure but not for parity and birth intervals distribution or tempo effect. the decisive point then is whether there are any meaningful questions for which the answer would be provided by an indicator which only adjusts for age structure and not for other potentially important factors. by extension, this question also pertains to the issue of the factors that should be controlled for in an ideal fertility index of choice (see population 1994). in theory, such a list can be extended to include factors like infertility, partnership status of women, or even their education status or fertility preferences (only women wishing to have a child in a given year would be included in at-risk population). however, lack of data, measurement and computational problems as well as interpretation diffi culties imply that the list of characteristics to be • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz654 controlled for in any useful fertility index should be limited to the most essential ones. we could not come up with a policy-relevant question for which the period tfr would be our indicator of choice. all questions that were considered in the end either related to age structure, cohort size or population growth for which the simple natality indicators provide the adequate answer or pertained to childbearing behaviour, such as the question whether a certain policy has led to a higher fertility rate. the latter question, in order to be adequately addressed, requires controlling for parity or duration composition and tempo effect or turning to a cohort fertility analysis. the only instances for which we could identify a role for the period tfr is the artifi cial realm of models of age-structured population dynamics constructed by demographers. and of course, in this realm the tfr still provides the best answer to the question “did the tfr increase?” and since the tfr is such an established measure, a lot of people will keep asking this question. the infl uence of the changing timing of childbearing on the period tfr is in our view particularly pertinent to current policy debates and proposals. although the efforts to eliminate the tempo effect from period fertility measures remain by defi nition imperfect and subject to criticism, they are in our view worth undertaking. policy-relevant questions are usually concerned with the “quantum” of fertility, including the issues of anticipating future period and cohort fertility levels as well as population prospects or explaining trends and reversals in fertility. often, the presumed mismatch between fertility intentions and behaviour is largely a by-product of using period indicators of fertility, where the tempo effect strongly biases both the analysis and the resulting conclusions. also from the perspective of shorterterm trends and reversals in fertility, most policies that have potential effects on fertility are arguably “quantum-oriented”: if, for instance, a new system of parental leave is established, few politicians hoping that it may have a positive and lasting infl uence on fertility would be content to learn that this infl uence may vanish after a couple of years, because it would primarily operate through a tempo effect boosting the period tfr. however, “tempo policies,” aiming to stimulate earlier timing of childbearing in order to give a temporary boost to the number of births without necessarily affecting completed fertility, make up a legitimate and potentially useful goal (lutz/ skirbekk 2005, rindfuss/brauner-otto 2008). these policies in fact constitute an exception, where the tfr could give a useful signal about their effects, although the analysis of trends in total number of births and in tempo-adjusted fertility indicators and parity progression ratios would be equally valuable. with this exception in mind, these considerations seem to imply that there is indeed little use for the period tfr outside the models constructed by demographers. still, these considerations are “theoretical” because they are contingent on the availability of a broadly accepted better indicator of period quantum. while there are many useful indicators, we are unable to recommend any one as a “default” indicator of choice, since they are based on different underlying models of behaviour that are not universally accepted (population 1994) and that may not suit all types of measurement purposes (ní bhrolcháin 2007, 2008). given this situation, a parallel misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 655 use of several indicators, carefully selected on the basis of data availability and also of the research question asked or the policy goal formulated, should be considered (ní bhrolcháin 2008). if the aim is to get information on the average childbearing intensity in a given year (the period quantum of fertility), we recommend choosing parity progression ratios, tempo-adjusted patfr*s or adjusted tfr*s, or other indicators that at least partly reduce the distorting infl uences of age structure, parity distribution and the tempo effect. especially the use of durationand parity-specifi c fertility measures would provide a much better understanding of policy effects on fertility than the ordinary tfr can offer (ní bhrolcháin 1987, 1992, 2008). recently initiated efforts to collect and compute detailed and unifi ed sets of parity-specifi c fertility indicators within the framework of the human fertility database (www.humanfertility.org) should make a wider use of such indicators much easier in the future. ultimately, cohort fertility data are best suited to analyse whether specifi c policies have had a lasting effect or whether there was a discontinuity in fertility trends among the cohorts that reacted most strongly to the policy changes. while ordinary cohort fertility data, specifi ed by year-of-birth cohorts require a long “waiting time” for each cohort to complete its reproductive history, data for parity cohorts, namely, fertility rates and parity progression ratios specifi ed by duration since last previous birth can reduce this drawback (breton/prioux 2005 and hosseini-chavoshi et al. 2006 constitute nice recent examples of such analysis).3 our fi ndings on the problematic use and interpretation of the period tfr, which should be avoided where possible, are in agreement with earlier arguments of prominent analysts like norman ryder (1990), máire ní bhrolcháin (1992, 2008), jean-louis rallu and laurent toulemon (1994b) and john bongaarts and griffi th feeney (1998). while we also generally agree with a recent conclusion offered by neyer and andersson (2007: 22) who proposed that crude measures of fertility, such as the tfr, cannot serve as appropriate measures of policy effects, we do not fully support their claim that an accurate information on fertility changes following the changes in family policies can only be derived from individual-level data (see also neyer/andersson 2008). while this may be true for the study of differential fertility behaviour, a carefully drawn interpretation of a wide range of aggregate level fertility indicators can provide crucial insights into the nature of fertility changes. this enables researchers to draw frequently valid and important causal inferences concerning specifi c new policies or other social and economic changes (ní bhrolcháin/dyson 2007; šťastná/sobotka 2009). in conclusion, there is a strong case for stopping the use of the period tfr as a one-fi ts-all fertility indicator which is currently common practice. while demographers are increasingly aware of the pitfalls associated with the period tfr, their continuous reliance on this measure fuels large misperceptions of fertility levels and dynamics among policy makers, the media and the general public. as a minimum 3 note that in austria, duration-specifi c parity progression ratios are regularly computed and published within the geburtenbarometer project that monitors period fertility trends (see http:// www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/barometer/index.html). • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz656 reporting standard, demographers who still choose to use the period tfr should stop referring to it as the “mean number of children per woman”, which it evidently is not. the choice of the most appropriate indicator must depend on the question asked. since it is hard to think of a real-world question for which the tfr would be the indicator of choice there are good reasons for abandoning it altogether in communications with non-demographic audiences who almost inevitably will misinterpret it as a cohort measure. but such a radical solution may be premature as long as there is no widely accepted and easily available alternative. hence, for pragmatic reasons, the tfr should remain in use as part of a bouquet of fertility indicators. as the period tfr is most widely available and it often rises and falls in line with other indicators it is still worth being calculated and inspected. but its misleading “cohort” interpretation should be avoided and, wherever possible, more appropriate indicators should be used. when rené kuczynski fi rst proposed total fertility a century ago at the international congress on hygiene and demography in berlin in 1907 (see kuczynski 1932 [1982]) it was a major innovation in fertility research. but at least since 1946, when order-specifi c fertility indexes controlling for the parity of mothers have been devised by pascal k. whelpton, methodologically superior period fertility measures have become available. as in economics, where the use and computations of mainstream measures like the gross domestic product, gets repeatedly revised and questioned (stiglitz et al. 2009), it is time in demographers to go beyond the period tfr in routine fertility reporting and policy communications. given that it has become so dear to many cohorts of demographers and data users it would take quite a while for the period tfr to lose its dominant position even if the points made in this article were readily accepted. we hope nevertheless that our study will stimulate a discourse about the best practice of fertility reporting and will contribute to the broader dissemination of different fertility measures which will more accurately inform policy makers and the public at large about the aspects of fertility change that matter for their questions. notes and acknowledgements a preliminary draft of this study has been presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the population association of america in new orleans, 17-19 april 2008. we are thankful to the conference participants and to john bongaarts, laurent toulemon, dimiter philipov, françois héran, vegard skirbekk, marc luy and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. many thanks to werner richter for language editing. a previous, more extended version is available as a research paper (sobotka and lutz 2009). references alders, maarten 2000: cohort fertility of migrant women in the netherlands. paper presented at the bsps-nvd-uru conference in utrecht (the netherlands), 31 august-1 september 2000. misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 657 andersson, gunnar 2004: childbearing after migration: 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[demographic analysis of the effect of family policy measures in russia in the 1980s]. in: spero 4-5: 33-69. url: [http://spero.socpol.ru/docs/n5_2006-33_69. pdf]. zakharov, sergei 2008: russian federation: from the fi rst to second demographic transition. in: demographic research, special collection 7,19, article 24: 907-972 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2008.19.24]. tomáš sobotka ( ), wolfgang lutz vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences, wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital e-mail: tomas.sobotka@oeaw.ac.at, wolfgang.lutz@oeaw.ac.at • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz662 a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “wie politik durch falsche interpretationen der konventionellen perioden-tfr in die irre geführt wird: sollten wir aufhören, diesen indikator zu publizieren?”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-15de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-15de1, at http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 23.07.2010 date of acceptance: 07.10.2010 misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr • 663 appendix: fertility indicators used in this study besides the period and cohort total fertility rates, specifi ed separately for fi rst births and for total birth orders, this study uses the following indicators of period fertility: tempo-adjusted total fertility (tfr*), developed by bongaarts and feeney (1998), is computed as a sum of order-specifi c adjusted tfr*s, which take order-specifi c changes in the mean age of fertility schedule as an adjustment factor: tfri(t)* = tfri(t) / (1-ri(t)), where ri(t) is the estimated change in the mean age at childbearing of birth order i between the beginning and the end of year t. following bongaarts and feeney (2000: 563, fn. 1), this is estimated as follows: ri(t) = [mabi(t+1) – mabi(t-1)] / 2, where mabi(t) is the mean age of fertility schedule of order i, calculated from age-specifi c fertility rates by birth order (incidence rates which do not control for parity distribution). since the tfr* displays considerable annual fl uctuations, threeyear moving averages are used in this study. fertility index controlling for age and parity (patfr) is computed from a set of age and parity-specifi c birth probabilities, qi(a), which serve as an input of multistate fertility tables (e.g. park 1976). following rallu and toulemon (1994a: 66), orderspecifi c birth probabilities are computed directly from the annual data on live births by age of mother (a) and birth order (i) combined with the parity and age structure of the female population at the beginning of a given year: qi(a,t) = bi(a,t) / pf,i-1(a,t=january 1 of t). this equation expresses the probability that a woman aged a and having i-1 children at the beginning of a year t will give birth during the year. for more details of the computations used, see sobotka (2004b: 44-46 and 92-93). for further information on age and parity-specifi c fertility index and its computation, see park (1976), rallu and toulemon (1994a) and barkalov and dorbritz (1996). tempo and variance-adjusted period fertility index controlling for age and parity (patfr*). this modifi cation of the patfr index was proposed by kohler and ortega (2002). their method provides an estimation of period fertility that is free of three distortions present in the tfr, namely distortions caused by (1) changes in the parity distribution of women, (2) changes in fertility timing and (3) changes in the variance of the fertility schedule. it is an analogy of the method developed fi rst by kohler and philipov (2001) for an adjustment of age-specifi c fertility rates of the second • tomáš sobotka, wolfgang lutz664 kind (incidence rates), specifi ed by birth order. the authors employ a procedure that iteratively corrects the observed mean age and the inferred tempo change for distortions caused by the variance effects (kohler/philipov 2001: 10). we employ a simplifi ed version of this adjustment, which is described in sobotka (2004b: 94). as in the case of tfr*, we use three-year moving averages of the patfr* to reduce random fl uctuations in this index. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved the economic consequences of divorce in germany: what has changed since the turn of the millennium? the economic consequences of divorce in germany: what has changed since the turn of the millennium? miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß abstract: our analysis of data from almost 30 waves of the german socio-economic panel study (soep) shows that the economic consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men despite increased female labour force participation and, correspondingly, increased numbers of dual earner households. after reviewing recent shifts in the institutional fabric and the social structure of the conservative german welfare state with respect to families and marriage, the empirical analysis investigates the economic consequences of a sample of 844 men and 1,006 women in fi ve dimensions: child custody, support payments, housing, employment, and economic well-being. change is measured by comparing data from before and after the turn of the millennium. overall, the analyses show that the economic consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men after the turn of the millennium, although female labour participation has increased and the public child care system was expanded. nevertheless, some signs of change become visible indicating that the gains and losses of marital disruption are not unilaterally distributed among the genders. that men may also depend on incomes of their spouses can be seen for the increasing number of dual earner households. moreover, after the turn of the millennium, economic dependence on public transfers increased not only for women but also for men. keywords: divorce consequences · household income · gender inequalities · soep 1 introduction about a decade ago, we provided evidence on changes in material well-being that accompany marital disruption in germany (andreß et al. 2003; andreß/bröckel 2007).1 our analyses were among the fi rst to provide a comprehensive picture of comparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 277-312 (date of release: 17.04.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-04en0 1 at various places in this article, we repeat conclusions from our former work. for reasons of readability, we do not cite them explicitly unless they refer to concrete data. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß278 men’s and women’s occupation, income, housing, living conditions, unemployment and welfare dependency before and after separation. we found clear-cut gender inequalities among the separating men and women. women took care of children after separation more often than men, but were only partly rewarded for their care work by support payments from their former spouse. when there were minor children in the household after separation, mothers also moved out of their home more often than fathers did. the tight economic situation of their households led many women to increase their employment after separation, especially women living together with children. most men, on the other hand, were employed full-time during marriage, and had therefore already exhausted their employment capacities. contrary to public opinion, decreased employment among separated men was somewhat rare. as a result of all these changes in household composition, support payments, employment and residential mobility, women ended up with much lower average disposable household incomes than during marriage, especially when taking the number of dependents into account. after housing costs had been deducted, women’s equivalised household incomes one year after separation equalled two-thirds of men’s; women lost one-third of their pre-separation household income, while men lost a little more than one-tenth (andreß/bröckel 2007: 221-222). these gender inequalities were not unexpected, and were in line with international research on the economic consequences of partnership dissolution (andreß et al. 2006: table 1). four risk factors are usually identifi ed for women (holden/ smock 1991. 68; sørensen 1994: 173): 1. after separation, if there are children, economic needs are higher for the resident parent, which in most cases is the mother. because she has to care for more economically dependent household members, she is often restricted in her earning capacities, especially if child care facilities are scarce. 2. moreover, the risk that the resident parent does not receive the necessary child maintenance costs from the non-resident liable parent is high. 3. income sharing during marriage allows women to participate in men’s market incomes, which are higher than women’s market incomes on average. it is questionable whether the amount of maintenance payments received from their former spouse after separation compensates for the reduction in economic support compared to what women received during marriage. 4. finally, changes in material wealth, pension entitlements, and human capital that both partners experience during marriage are only imperfectly measurable and therefore hard to equalise after separation.2 this is especially true for the gains and losses in human capital. given the frequent division of labour with a husband employed full-time and a wife working part-time (at most) who takes care of the household and the children, it is probable that the gains in human capital by continued employment on the side of the husband (kenny 1983) are not set off against the losses of human capital resulting from interrupted or delayed working careers on the side of the wife. 2 even if such changes are measurable, the economic loss may be high when they are sold to pay off the partner (e.g. in case of property). the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 279 the magnitude of these risks is naturally moderated by the institutional context in which marital disruptions take place. for example, with respect to the fi rst risk, if the welfare state provides public child care, this would enable resident parents to participate in the labour market despite their family obligations.3 moreover, the number of jobs available for both genders that pay a living wage depends on the structure of the labour market. finally, anti-discrimination legislation may reduce potential gender wage gaps. concerning the second risk, the legal system may provide measures and enforcement procedures to ensure that non-resident parents pay the necessary maintenance costs for their children and that the better-off spouses make support payments for their former spouses, which would minimise the third risk. looking, fi nally, at the fourth risk, legal procedures may exist that equalise material wealth and pension entitlements accrued by both partners during marriage. moreover, employment-friendly policies may support women’s continued employment during marriage, thus minimising losses of human capital due to interrupted or delayed working careers. ten years ago, we argued that the conservative german welfare state model is characterised at least historically by strong support for the male breadwinner family (andreß/bröckel 2007: 196-202). given this dependence on the male breadwinner model, one would expect marital disruption to be much more consequential for german women than for women in other countries. on the other hand, since the german welfare state relied so heavily on the male breadwinner model, german maintenance law at that time included rather extensive support regulations for the economically-dependent spouse and children.4 in addition, a rather comprehensive system of public transfers cushioned the most severe economic consequences of marital disruption. we therefore had less strong expectations, and hypothesised that the economic consequences of marital disruption may be negative for german women, but not as severe as might be expected from a male breadwinner model without safeguards. indeed, our empirical analyses showed that the negative effects of the male breadwinner model on material well-being after marital disruption were attenuated, but less so by the legal system or the support payments resulting from it. it was rather the generous german system of income support that cushioned the most severe negative changes. our analysis was based on longitudinal data from 1984-1999. policies, legal regulations and individual behaviour have changed since that time, among them more employment-friendly family policies, but also increased female labour force participation rates and more dual earner households. this raises the question of whether and how the effects of marital disruption have changed since the turn of the millennium. in order to answer this question, we add the most recent waves (2000-2012) of the german socio-economic panel (soep) study to our former data 3 cash transfers or vouchers for buying child care services on the market would have the same effect. 4 however, it was unclear how these legal regulations were used by the benefi ciaries and how they were enforced by the legal system. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß280 base and compare the period before and after 2000. section 2 summarises the main features of the german welfare state model and how it changed in the last years. it also presents some stylised facts about recent socio-demographic changes of economic activity and household structures. section 3 describes our data and methodology. section 4 presents the results of our data analyses. section 5 concludes with an overall assessment of the economic consequences of marital disruption in germany. 2 theoretical background and research questions 2.1 the traditional german welfare state model the german welfare state was traditionally characterised by strong support for the male breadwinner family. this view is based on the following institutional features (andreß/bröckel 2007: 196-198): • joint taxation of spouses imposing strong incentives to combine a large primary income, that is the breadwinner’s income, with a comparatively small secondary income, • a health insurance system insuring spouses and minors whose attachment to the labour market is marginal along with the household head without any extra contribution, • pensions for surviving dependants being derived from the contributions of the head of the household without contributions of their own, • family policies focusing on the traditional complete family and providing mostly cash benefi ts such as child allowances and family tax benefi ts that allow the average worker to support a larger family, • a limited public child care infrastructure intended only to complement care work within the family, and • a generous parental leave system motivating mothers to withdraw from the labour market for several years and exclusively care for their children. these regime characteristics were combined with various legal safeguards for the economically-dependent family members in case a marriage breaks down (andreß/bröckel 2007: 199-200): • parents have an obligation to support their children until the completion of education or training irrespective of their marital status (payments in kind by the resident parent and cash payments by the non-resident parent). the amount of cash payments depends on the child’s age, the number of entitled persons (other children, previous spouse) and the liable person’s income. courts expect that the non-resident parent does everything possible to be able to pay the amount of child support that is set. • local youth welfare authorities intervene when a parent cannot or will not meet these responsibilities by helping to establish paternity, enforcing legal responsibility and advancing maintenance payments at a minimum level (“regelunterhalt”). the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 281 • spousal support is restricted to specifi c circumstances pertaining to the former marriage, among them child care, interrupted educational or working careers, and a standard of living below the former standard during marriage (“aufstockungsunterhalt”). • marriage-specifi c changes in property can be equalised at the request of one spouse. pension entitlements acquired during marriage must be equalised by the court (ex offi cio) in case of a divorce. however, it was unclear whether and to what degree these regulations were being enforced by the legal system (andreß/bröckel 2007: 201-202). moreover, it was questionable whether the liable persons would be suffi ciently solvent to pay all claims even if this were the case. liable persons are allowed to retain an amount for their basic needs, while the claimants’ basic needs are not considered. 2.2 what has changed in the institutional context? with respect to families’ material well-being, the most important changes are: 1. an upgrading of the public child care infrastructure, especially in western germany, and especially for children aged under three, 2. a reform of the parental allowance (from “erziehungsgeld” to “elterngeld”), 3. a reorientation of minimum income policies with the so-called “hartz” labour market reforms, and 4. increased expectations on women’s self-supply in reformed german maintenance law. since 1996, as part of the law on child and youth welfare (social code – sozialgesetzbuch – sgb – viii), parents in germany have had the legal right to enrol their children in a public day care institution. originally, this right was only granted to children aged three and older, but it has been extended to children aged one and older since august 1, 2013. the law also states that the youth welfare offi ces (“träger der öffentlichen jugendhilfe”) of the districts and municipalities, based on the current demand for child care, have to provide the necessary infrastructure. districts and municipalities receive money for this task from “their” federal state. although child and youth welfare is a task for the federal states in germany,5 in the late 2000s, the german federal government launched a major initiative to support the expansion of the public child care infrastructure. various legal regulations were adapted in 2008 (all collected in an omnibus act known as the child promotion act “kinderförderungsgesetz”), and an investment programme of about 12bn € was launched, of which the federal government paid about a third (bmfsfj 2010). an omnibus act (known as the day care expansion act “tagesbetreuungsausbaugesetz”) was passed as early as 2005, and this committed local authorities to provide an additional 230,000 child care places by 2010, especially in western germany. it 5 it is administered at local level (districts and municipalities), but fi nancial support comes from the respective federal state. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß282 was decided in 2007 that there should be enough places to provide 35 percent of all children below the age of three with a care place by 2013. consequently, the german public child care infrastructure has greatly improved since the turn of the millennium in terms of size (number of places) and scope (age of children and opening hours) (see table 1). nevertheless, the number of places available is still considered insuffi cient, especially in large cities in western germany. the discrepancy between supply and demand has always been less severe in eastern germany due to the extensive child care infrastructure that had been built up in the former german democratic republic (gdr) and then taken over after reunifi cation. instead, a lack of job opportunities for women, due to the economic down-turn after reunifi cation and later (comparatively) high unemployment rates, was more detrimental to women’s careers in eastern germany than employment restrictions due to family obligations (see section 2.3). with its strong focus on the male breadwinner model, the former (western german) federal republic of germany (frg) traditionally only needed public child care to complement mothers’ care work on a part-time basis, while due to its socialistic ideology and labour shortages, the former gdr wanted women to participate in the labour market full-time and hence provided full-time child care from the very beginning. today, with western germany catching up on eastern german standards, there is no doubt that there is much more public support for child care than before 2000. all in all, the majority of political actors is convinced that the state should provide more opportunities for parents, and especially for mothers to continue employment despite child care obligations. this new policy orientation is also motivated by the understanding that the educational resources of some families (e.g. with respect to language education) are rather limited and should be supported in public child care facilities. however, the cultural dispute on how to organise child care in a modern world is far from being settled. parts of the conservative political parties remain reluctant to provide more public child care, and are also demanding support for those who do not use this infrastructure (see the so-called “betreuungsgeld” in footnote 7). starting from july 1979, parental care itself was remunerated with a special allowance (labelled as “erziehungsgeld” from 1986 onwards) which provided a lump sum if the parent did not work more than part-time (max. 30 weekly working hours). both the amount and the duration of the allowance have been increased in several steps since its introduction,6 and it was not counted against any minimum income support payments (e.g. social assistance “sozialhilfe”). politically, “erziehungsgeld” was meant as a remuneration of the care work done at home by parents themselves. together with the comparatively long periods of parental leave (up to three years), it was considered to have strong negative effects on the female labour sup6 starting from january 1, 2004 (the most recent change), one could either receive 300 € for 24 months or 450 € for 12 months. on top of these payments, some federal states (bavaria, saxony and thuringia; all traditionally governed by christian democratic parties) made additional support payments. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 283 ply (e.g. aisenbrey et al. 2009; drasch 2013), and hence to increase the economic risks after marital disruption for the caring parent, which in most cases was the mother. moreover, it was criticised that such a low transfer income would not motivate better-educated women with higher labour incomes to have children. but it is especially this group of women that only has few children, if any. the “elterngeld” was therefore introduced in 2007, replacing the former lump sum allowance with an allowance that is dependent on the labor income of the applying parent and is paid for one year immediately after the child’s birth.7 “elterngeld” is meant to replace labour income, and in doing so to also motivate high-income earners to have children. on the other hand, it is counted against minimum income support payments (in the beginning only partly, since 2011 completely), which compared to the former “erziehungsgeld” is a clear impairment for low-income earners. nevertheless, “elterngeld” is a success story with a rising labour force participation of mothers with children aged between 1-2, namely from 33 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2010 (wrohlich et al. 2012). germany also saw a major reform of its labour market and minimum income policies in 2004. before that time, there was a separate minimum income payment for the long-term employed (unemployment assistance “arbeitslosenhilfe – alh”), which was merged with the general minimum income programme (social assistance “sozialhilfe”) in 2004 to form a common programme for all employable individuals. while the former alh provided a monthly payment that was indexed to former earnings, the new “arbeitslosengeld ii – alg ii” provides monthly payments at the level of “sozialhilfe”. moreover, both programmes are means-tested, i.e. they take partner incomes and economic wealth into account, but the exemptions with regard to partner income and wealth are much stricter in the alg ii programme. even more importantly, besides means testing and lower payments, expectations concerning recipients’ efforts to fi nd new work, even at a lower level, have increased dramatically. recipients have to sign target agreements with the job centre which can be enforced by lowered or interrupted payments in case of non-compliance. this “carrot and stick” policy has increased pressure to take up remunerative employment for all individuals who are currently unemployed but are in principle employable. since our former analysis of marital disruption showed that the worst economic consequences were cushioned by minimum income payments (andreß/bröckel 2007: 223), this policy change may also be effective for divorcees. a similar change has taken place in family law. as mentioned in section 2.1, a divorcee can request spousal support from the former spouse. maintenance claims are restricted to specifi c circumstances of the former marriage, the most important 7 if the other parent also interrupts his/her employment to care for the child, the payment period is prolonged by two additional (partner) months. an additional lump sum allowance (“betreuungsgeld”) was introduced on february 15, 2013 based on an initiative by the conservative christian social union (csu). starting from august 1, 2013, parents can receive a monthly payment of 100 € (from january 1, 2014: 150 €) for up to 22 months after “elterngeld” has expired if they do not take their child to a public (or publicly funded) child care institution and rather care for it at home or let someone else take care of it. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß284 one being child care (andreß/bröckel 2007: 200). until 2008, the corresponding legal provision (section 1570 of the german civil code [bürgerliches gesetzbuch – bgb]) mentioned no time limit for the claim. but since january 1, 2008, the amended section states that spousal support can be requested for three years following the birth of a child. an extension is only possible beyond that age if it is equitable. the decision on the extension must be based both on the needs of the child and on available child care facilities. moreover, the family law case-law shows that the family courts are increasingly turning away from the male breadwinner model, and in most cases expect a dual earner family in which the wife also works in order to maintain her own economic independence (famrz 2009: 1391, 2010: 1024, 2011: 713, 2013: 248, 864). if career interruptions due to child care occur, they are assumed to be rather short-term, or even better to consist of jobs with reduced working hours. correspondingly, court decisions on spousal support often only grant a fi xed-term claim or a claim that reduces over time in order to accustom claimants to their lower standard of living after divorce (famrz: 2009: 1391, 2010: 344, 357; mdr 2012: 771). put differently, as in reformed minimum income programmes, a limited payment is guaranteed, but sooner or later the economically dependent spouse has to be self-reliant.8 moreover, the latter expectation is often legitimised with the extended child care infrastructure. hence, with respect to family affairs, we observe a gradual transition in the german welfare state after the turn of the millennium away from the conservative male breadwinner model and towards the nordic welfare model that aims at providing equal opportunities for men and women; of course, at the cost of providing no specialised claims if economic independence is unequally distributed between spouses.9 2.3 changes in the economic behaviour of men and women table 1 shows some selected data on economic activity, incomes, and child care for 1985-2013 which are mostly based on offi cial statistics. while the employment rate of men hardly changed (except for the years with a high unemployment rate, around 78 percent of all men are gainfully employed), female labour force participation increased signifi cantly, from less than 50 percent to almost 70 percent. this is also true, although at a lower level, for women with children below the age of 6. however, this increased economic activity is to a large extent based on parttime employment. hence, if one measures female labour force participation in units equivalent to full-time positions, the corrected female employment rate actually decreases slightly, from 48 percent in 1992 to 46 percent in 2003 (cornelißen 2005: 8 it should be noted however that the procedures to determine the amount of child or spousal support payments have not been changed, while the reform of minimum income programmes also included lower payments for the long-term unemployed. 9 for example, the law provides for spousal maintenance in sweden, but in fact it is unusual to make such claims (saldeen 1995: 493). the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 285 indicator 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2013 a) employment rate (aged 15-64) (%) men 78.1 78.1 73.7 72.9 71.2 76.0 77.7 women 48.5 53.6 55.3 58.1 59.6 66.1 68.8 women (with children aged below 6) 46.7 54.6 60.5 b) part-time employment (%) men 1.4 2.2 3.2 5.0 7.4 9.3 9.9 women 28.9 33.8 33.9 38.3 44.3 45.9 45.8 c) unemployment rate (%) men 8.6 6.3 9.6 10.5 13.4 7.9 6.9 women 10.4 8.4 9.0 8.3 10.7 6.5 5.9 d) earnings gross monthly earnings (€) 1675 2018 2114 2230 2387 2594 net monthly earnings (€) 1174 1341 1411 1513 1610 1727 real net earnings (€) 1672 1666 1646 1636 1610 1634 women’s earnings as % of men’s earnings 21.0 21.0 22.0 23.0 22.0 e) price index for housing costs (2010 = 100) 59.5 75.1 83.0 90.9 100.0 107.5 f) economic activity, couples with children (%) man active/woman not active 40.0 36.8 33.3 30.4 29.5 man not active/woman active 4.1 4.1 5.2 5.6 5.3 man active/woman active 50.2 54.0 54.0 54.1 54.9 man not active/ woman not active 5.8 5.2 7.5 9.9 10.3 g) economic activity, couples w/o children (%) man active/woman not active 20.0 18.2 17.5 16.3 16.6 man not active/woman active 10.2 10.7 12.1 12.4 11.6 man active/woman active 48.6 49.3 53.2 55.2 55.3 man not active/ woman not active 21.2 21.8 17.2 16.1 16.6 h) children in publicly funded child care (%) western germany: aged 0-3 1.6 1.8 2.2 4.2 7.7 17.3 24.2 western germany: aged 3-6 62.4 64.6 56.1 73.6 88.6 92.2 93.6 eastern germany: aged 0-3 49.8 54.2 41.3 37.0 37.0 48.0 49.8 eastern germany: aged 3-6 89.9 84.8 87.1 93.2 95.2 95.6 tab. 1: selected statistics on economic activity, incomes, and child care (1985-2013) note: some statistics were not available for certain years. if they do not refer exactly to the year in the fi rst row, we have chosen the closest value. sources: a number of persons (females, males) aged 15-64 in employment as a share of the total population (females, males) of the same age group (eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/ page/portal/statistics/search_database, retrieved 12 june 2014). b number of employees reporting being part-time employed (until 1983: employees who work fewer than the agreed working hours for full-time employees) as a share of all employees (gesis – social indicators monitor (simon), version 4/2014). c number of registered unemployed (until 1990: only western german individuals) as a share of the dependent working population (simon, version 4/2014). d earnings: gross and net nominal earnings (statistisches bundesamt 2014b), net earnings defl ated with the consumer price index for germany (2010=100); gender pay gap: arithmetic mean of gross hourly wages of all female employees as a share of the corresponding mean for male employees (statistisches bundesamt 2012: 58; 2014a). e consumer price index for housing, water, electricity, gas, and other combustibles (statistisches bundesamt https://www.destatis.de/de/zahlenfakten/gesamtwirtschaftumwelt/preise/verbraucherpreisindizes/tabellen_/verbraucherpreisekategorien.html, retrieved 24 july 2014). f married couples and civil partnerships with at least one child aged below 18, data kindly supplied by matthias keller from the federal statistical offi ce (keller/haustein 2012: 58). g married couples and civil partnerships without children, data see (e). h) simon (version 4/2014) andstatistisches bundesamt (2013). • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß286 107). nevertheless, due to this increased labour force participation, female unemployment has been lower than male unemployment since the mid-1990s. the increase in female labour force participation was supported by a larger number of places for children in publicly funded child care facilities. while fewer than 5 percent of toddlers in western germany were taken care of in such institutions up to 2000, the care rate for toddlers has now risen to 24.2 percent in 2013. this is not suffi cient, but certainly much better than before the turn of the millennium. a similar positive development, fortunately on a much higher level, can be observed for preschool children in western germany. it is almost 100 percent in 2013, thus reaching a similar level to that in eastern germany. as has already been mentioned, due to its socialist heritage public child care was traditionally much more extensive in eastern germany, both for toddlers and for pre-school children. however, improved public child care is not the only explanation for higher female activity rates. labour market reforms which provided increased opportunities for temporary and marginal work, structural change entailing a shift from employment in manufacturing to services, and changes in parental leave regulations (see section 2.2), have also contributed to the rise in female employment. this positive development is also consequential for the economic well-being of households and families. although the gender pay gap has not changed signifi cantly since the mid-1990s (women still earn roughly one-fi fth less than men), increased female participation rates have signifi cantly decreased the number of households in which only the man is economically active. according to the data from table 1, the percentage of households where only the man was active fell by more than 10 percentage points for couples with children and almost 4 percentage points for couples without children. on the other hand, households where either both partners or only the woman was active increased in number. hence, the male breadwinner model is not dying out, but it is certainly on the downturn. earnings also increased for all employees by about 50 percent from the beginning of the 1990s until the end of our observation period. however, as the data on real earnings show, most of this increase is eaten up by infl ation, thus severely limiting the purchasing power of the working population. while the overall increase in living costs has been modest in the observation period, it has been disproportionately high for housing (see the price index for housing costs in table 1). since marital breakup is often connected with residential mobility, this is an additional source of fi nancial strain. 2.4 research questions and hypotheses we ask the same fundamental research questions as in our earlier analysis: q1: how considerable are the economic changes for married men and women with respect to separation and divorce? q2: who cares for the children, and are the costs of child care covered by support payments from the non-resident parent? q3: who moves out of the family home and how does this residential mobility affect the cost of living for mobile and immobile individuals? the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 287 q4: how does marital disruption change the labour supply of men and women? q5: to what degree do separated and divorced individuals depend on their own gainful employment and private transfers, especially from the former spouse, and public transfers? q6: how does the division of tasks during marriage and the living conditions after separation (custody of children, existence of a new partner, gainful employment) modify economic well-being after the break-up? the augmented data base however allows us to answer these questions more precisely and to add new questions about possible changes after the turn of the millennium. due to the larger sample size, we are now able to control for the multivariate relationships between the former marriage model, children, new partners, and gainful employment in q6. given the development of real earnings, we expect the economic consequences of marital disruption to be virtually the same as before the turn of the millennium (h1). with respect to possible gender inequalities, one could expect them to be less pronounced after the turn of the millennium due to women’s increased economic activity. on the other hand, the discussion in section 2.3 showed that this increase was based mostly on part-time or marginal employment. hence, we specify a more cautious hypothesis and assume similar gender inequalities before and after the turn of the millennium (h2). increased female labour force participation also implies that men are becoming increasingly dependent on women’s incomes, and therefore that the economic consequences can also be negative for men, at least for some men (h3). since recent amendments of family law lead one to expect the economically dependent spouse to be self-reliant earlier than before, we anticipate that spousal support payments will play a less signifi cant role than in our former analysis (h4). furthermore, having custody over children should be less detrimental to economic well-being after the break-up because a more extensive public child care infrastructure is available (h5). finally, with respect to public transfers, we have no hypothesis as to whether their formerly quite important role in cushioning the economic consequences diminishes or decreases. on the one hand, we have seen a downsizing of some minimum income payments (e.g. alh), but on the other hand, some new and quite lucrative support payments were introduced after the turn of the millennium (e.g., “elterngeld”). 3 data and methodology 3.1 sample the following analysis uses data from twenty-nine soep panel waves covering the period from 1984 to 2012 (wagner et al. 2007).10 it focuses on the separation of married couples, since earlier analyses (andreß/güllner 2001) have shown that 10 the high income sample was excluded. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß288 separation results in greater economic changes than legal divorce, which follows separation, sometimes several years later when the economic situation has already stabilised. separations were identifi ed by combining information from the partner variables provided by the panel group at the german institute for economic research (berlin) and from survey questions about family status and life events (güllner 2000). the year in which these separations are observed is defi ned by . since we would like to compare the situation before and after these separations, data of at least one spouse have to be available for the years t-1 (before) and t+2 (after). therefore, the unit of analysis is the corresponding separation in t, augmented by data from the years before and after the event.11 the data we use for the period before the turn of the millennium (1984-99) are slightly different from the data in our former analysis (andreß/bröckel 2007).12 therefore, we compute all statistics anew (rather than copying them from the former publication) with in some cases slightly different results. after removing individuals who leave the panel in the year of separation, our sample contains data for 393 men and 446 women separating in 1984-1999 and 451 men and 560 women separating in 2000-12. nearly two-thirds of these separated individuals become legally divorced within the observation period: 17 percent in the year of separation, 32 percent one year later, and 26 percent two years later. the remaining 25 percent take more than two and up to 19 years. it should also be noted that almost all the sample members are of working age (only 4 percent are older than 60). the following results are based on weighted data, using the cross-sectional soep weights that control for the sampling design, non-response, and panel attrition (see andreß/bröckel 2007: 204 for a discussion of the effects of panel attrition).13 because men and women have different attrition rates, it is not guaranteed that both spouses are included in our analyses. for example, if we measure median household incomes before separation when both spouses were still living together, the corresponding values for men and women can be different because some spouses’ data are missing. 3.2 income indicators changes in income are a central focus of our analysis. the soep provides various income indicators for different time periods (month, year), at both individual and 11 for certain analyses the longitudinal comparisons go even further than t-1 and t+1 (see below). if individuals experience several separations, only the fi rst is included in the sample. 12 firstly, in the former publication, all sample members were checked manually and missing partner information was added, thus resulting in a larger sample size for 1984-99. secondly, and as will be explained later, we used a different base year for computing real incomes. thirdly, incomes were expressed in dm, while now they are supplied in euro even for the years prior to the introduction of the euro in 2002. fourthly, the data base has been revised with each new edition of the soep. fifthly, our former measures of household income included imputed rents, while we are now using the housing costs specifi ed by the respondents. note also that the soep was extended to east germany (the former gdr) in 1990. hence, all data before 1990 come from west german respondents. 13 more specifi cally, we used the cross-sectional weight attached to the corresponding individual in the fi nal year in which the individual contributed to our data. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 289 household levels. given our interest in income redistribution by taxes, as well as by private and public transfers, we use data on yearly preand post-government household incomes as provided by the soep group in the pequiv fi le. amongst other things, the pequiv fi le augments the detailed soep data on various income sources with imputed payroll and income taxes. the use of yearly preand postgovernment household incomes also has important implications for our longitudinal comparisons. since the event of interest (separation) occurred at some point in time between the panel interview in t and the preceding interview in t-1, yearly incomes from t-1 are not a valid indicator of the economic situation before the event. in many cases they already characterize the time of separation. therefore, our income comparisons are based on data from t-2 and t+1. all selected cases were controlled for already living together with their spouse at t-2. technically, things are even more complicated: because yearly household incomes are based on retrospective questions, we use data from panel wave t+2 (including retrospective information for t+1) and panel wave t-1 (including retrospective information for t-2 ). these household incomes include private transfers received by the household, but do not take into account private transfers paid to other individuals outside the household. given the signifi cance of private transfers for our research problem, a few remarks on the underlying survey questions are needed. private transfers received are based on the so-called income calendar, which records the receipt of various income components for each month of the year preceding the interview, among them (support) payments from individuals outside the household (including payments from the advanced payment scheme for child maintenance). though it is possible to distinguish from 2001 onwards between legal support payments made by the former spouse (including payments from the advanced child maintenance scheme) and other private transfers to the household (and in addition, from 2010 onwards, also between payments made by the former spouse and those payments received from the advance child maintenance scheme), we use private transfers as the sum of all these payments to make data comparable over the whole sample period. thus, all private transfers received are included in pequiv pre-government household incomes, which then are subjected to the pequiv tax simulation programme to obtain post-government household incomes (after adding social security pensions and public transfers). although the soep personal interview also includes a question about the amount of (support) payments being made for individuals outside the household in the year preceding the interview, this information is not used in the pequiv. it is however highly important for our analysis, and we have therefore deducted these support payments14 from pequiv post-government household incomes in order to obtain a measure of disposable household incomes for separated individuals. given this procedure, it should be noted that private transfers received are taxed and include all kinds of sources, while private transfers that are paid are 14 the corresponding question distinguishes between different addressees (parents including parents-in-law, (former) spouse, children including son-in-law and daughter-in-law, other relatives, other non-related individuals). we have only used (support) payments for children and the former spouse. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß290 not taxed, but are restricted to the former family (children, spouse). until 2000, the survey question asks for “donations from individuals outside the household, including payments from the advanced maintenance scheme.” this includes gifts and other transfers from all private sources outside the household, as well as mandated child support and spousal support payments. from 2001 to 2009, private payments to the household can be additionally distinguished in terms of legal support payments from the former spouse (again including payments from the advance child maintenance scheme) as against other private payments. support payments from the former spouse and payments from the advance child maintenance scheme are separately asked for from 2010 onwards. as discussed in andreß and bröckel (2007: 206), the amount paid by the liable person and that received by the entitled person do not agree, and there is no possibility to correct these discrepancies. all household incomes were equivalised with respect to household size according to the formula: equivalised household income = household income / sizeθ these equivalised household incomes were then assigned to each individual in the household, and analyses were carried out on the individual level. a value of 0.5 was used for the elasticity parameter θ, yielding moderate economies of scale with increasing household size similar to equivalence scales applied by the oecd (buhmann et al. 1988). using θ=1, would yield per capita incomes and θ=0 total household incomes. in our earlier analysis, θ is varied to check the sensitivity of the results against different assumptions concerning economies of scale. it subsequently emerged that gender inequalities persist irrespective of the equivalence scale that is used (andreß/bröckel 2007: 217). when analysing incomes over such a long time-span as in our case, it is important to keep incomes comparable over time. thus, we expressed all incomes in 2000 prices, using the offi cial basket of commodities from the german federal statistical offi ce for 2005. the pequiv data supply an index which has been published by the german federal statistical offi ce and permits incomes to be expressed in 2005 prices. our old study used incomes that were expressed in 1995 prices. preliminary analyses with the data showed that using either one of the two indices is not without problems for our study. it emerged that expressing incomes in 2005 (1995) prices exaggerated (diminished) the level of incomes from the early (late) years of our observation period, and hence attenuated (aggravated) income changes. we decided to compromise by using the newer index but to rescale it to the base year 2000. 3.3 methods the following analysis focuses both on the absolute value of various measures of economic well-being after separation and their change relative to their amount before separation. consider the case of equivalised household income: let ii,t-2 and ii,t+1 be the equivalised household incomes of individual i two years previously (t-2) (1) the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 291 and one year after separation (t+1). as a measure of change, we use the percentage change in equivalised household income for each individual: below, %ii is termed a (percentage) change score of income. because of the variance of economic changes (not all women lose and not all men win), we analyse the median, as well as the fi rst and third quartiles of the distribution of change scores. we use violin plots to visualise the distribution of change scores. a violin plot is a combination of a box plot and a kernel density plot (hintze/nelson 1998). similar change scores were computed for other measures of economic well-being (e.g. housing costs). in principle, quantile regression models can be used to compute confi dence intervals and hypothesis tests for the median, fi rst and third quartiles of the distribution of change scores. again, preliminary analyses showed that the basic conclusions remain unchanged if one dichotomises change scores into gains (%ii≥0) and losses (%ii<0). therefore, in order to test gender differences and changes after the turn of millennium, we use logistic regression to model the probability of a loss of income subsequent to separation: pr(%ii≥<0). within these models it is also possible to control for some important changes in living conditions that take place in parallel to the separation of the two partners. the economic situation after separation naturally varies depending on whether the person is gainfully employed, has to care for children or lives together with a new partner. moreover, it is important whether he or she was economically independent during the marriage. as an indicator of economic independence, we measure whether the person lived prior to separation in a household with a male breadwinner, a household in which the husband contributed the main but not the only income (termed “husband main earner household”), a dual earner household, or a household with a female breadwinner or main earner. 4 results we start with an analysis of gender-specifi c changes in child care, housing and employment (sections 4.1-4.3), before turning to the more specifi c question of available incomes after marital disruption. section 4.4 focuses on the effects of private and public income redistribution and analyses income changes caused by separation for men and women and for fi ve different income concepts. using equivalised disposable household incomes, section 4.5 then controls for relevant living conditions parallel to the separation process. 4.1 children and support payments according to the most recent german time budget survey, mothers spend more than twice as much time with their children than their fathers do (bmfsfj/statis%ii=100· i i,t+1 -i i,t-2 i i,t-2 (2) • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß292 tisches bundesamt 2003: 22). this inequality continues when a marriage breaks down. as table 2 shows, 61 percent of all women separating after the turn of the millennium live together with minor children (under the age of 18) after separation, while only 17 percent of all men do.15 similar results are found for the period before 2000 and from representative surveys of divorced men and women (andreß et al. 2003). if one compares the two periods, not much has changed, except that couples separating after the turn of the millennium have fewer children on average. we can use the soep data to check whether these inequalities are compensated for by maintenance payments from the former husband. as already mentioned, the soep data do not make it possible to identify liable and entitled persons in a strict legal sense. but as described in section 3.2, we can identify those individuals who receive and/or make support payments to other persons outside their own private household. according to the data shown in table 2, only 33 percent of all men and 4 percent of all women give money to their children and/or former spouse after separation. even when focusing exclusively on parents, only 38 percent of all fathers (3 percent of all mothers) make support payments. on the other hand, as few as 3 percent of all men and 26 percent of all women receive support payments. the fi gures are slightly higher for individuals living together with children after separation (men: 4 percent, women: 35 percent), but 65 percent of all women living together with children do not receive any support payments at all. has there been any change over time? it is diffi cult to give a defi nite answer. with respect to child support, the risk population has changed (fewer children; see above). when it comes to support payments received, these payments may originate from the former spouse, but also from other individuals and public transfers via the advance maintenance scheme (see the discussion in section 3.2). from the data in table 2, it seems as if men make fewer support payments (at least those living with children), while women living without children make more support payments. given the aforementioned inaccuracies in the data, we hesitate to conclude that this is due to a lower economic potential of men and increased dependence on women’s incomes. accordingly, private transfers comprise only a small part of household income after separation, much smaller than public transfers. as table 2 demonstrates, private transfers only make a difference for women and constitute only 9 percent of their income package. women’s (and men’s) economic situation after separation depends much more on public transfers. in the case of women, public transfers constitute more than one-third (39 percent) of their income package on average if they live together with children after separation. this proportion is smaller if one looks at all separated women (30 percent) or at men’s household incomes (11 percent), but it is still a signifi cant fi gure which increases with separation in all cases (from t-2 to t+2), except for men without children. we therefore concluded in our previous analysis 15 after separation, these data may include children from a new partner. between 2000 and 2012 (1984-1999 in brackets), 10 percent (13 percent) of all separated men and 10 percent (18 percent) of all separated women live together with minor children and a new partner one year after separation. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 293 ta b . 2 : p ri va te a nd p ub lic t ra n sf er s fo r se p ar at ed m en a nd w o m en 2 00 020 12 (1 98 419 99 in b ra ck et s) a ll m en m en w it h ch ild re n a, b m en w it h o u t ch ild re n a ll w o m en w o m en w it h ch ild re n a, b w o m en w it h o u t ch ild re n t2 t+ 1 t2 t+ 1 t2 t+ 1 t2 t+ 1 t2 t+ 1 t2 t+ 1 li ve t o g et h er w it h m in o r ch ild re n b in t h e h o u se h o ld (% ) 62 ( 66 ) 17 (2 5) – – – – 67 ( 73 ) 61 ( 67 ) – – – – d o n o t l iv e to g et h er w it h m in o r ch ild re n b in t h e h o u se h o ld (% ) 38 (3 4) 83 ( 75 ) – – – – 33 (2 7) 39 (3 3) – – – – m ad e su p p o rt p ay m en ts c at t+ 1 (% ) – 33 (4 1) – 38 ( 53 ) – 24 (2 3) – 4 (5 ) – 3 (5 ) – 10 ( 5) r ec ei ve d s u p p o rt p ay m en ts d a t t + 1 (% ) – 3 (2 ) – 4 (3 ) – 1 (1 ) – 26 (2 4) – 35 (3 0) – 9 (1 2) p ro p o rt io n o f h o u se h o ld in co m e (% ) p ri va te t ra n sf er se 1 (0 ) 1 (0 ) 0 (0 ) 2 (1 ) 1 (0 ) 0 (0 ) 1 (1 ) 9 (1 0) 1 (1 ) 12 (1 1) 1 (0 ) 4 (8 ) p u b lic t ra n sf er se 14 (1 1) 11 (1 4) 17 (1 3) 29 (1 6) 10 ( 8) 8 (1 3) 17 (1 2) 30 (1 9) 20 (1 3) 39 (2 6) 12 ( 8) 17 ( 6) in d iv id u al la b o u r in co m ef 63 ( 64 ) 76 ( 76 ) 71 ( 70 ) 72 ( 76 ) 54 ( 57 ) 78 ( 76 ) 27 (2 8) 55 ( 55 ) 24 (2 5) 51 ( 52 ) 33 (3 7) 60 ( 61 ) p u b lic t ra n sf er s m o re t h an 5 0 % o f h o u se h o ld in co m e (% ) 5 (5 ) 10 ( 9) 6 (5 ) 12 ( 7) 3 (5 ) 9 (1 0) 6 (9 ) 25 (1 6) 8 (9 ) 35 (2 1) 5 (7 ) 12 ( 8) n o te s: a m ad e su p p o rt p ay m en ts : in d iv id ua ls li vi ng w ith c hi ld re n b ef o re ( t2) s ep ar at io n; r ec ei ve d s up p o rt p ay m en ts /t ra ns fe rs a s % o f hh in co m e: in d iv id ua ls li vi ng w ith c hi ld re n at t he t im e in q ue st io n (t -2 , t+ 1) . b c hi ld re n ag ed u nd er 1 8, in cl ud in g ch ild re n o f th e m ar ri ag e an d o th er c hi ld re n (e .g . c hi ld re n o f a n ew p ar tn er ). c s up p o rt p ay m en ts fo r ch ild re n o r fo rm er s p o us e. d p ay m en ts fr o m o th er in d iv id ua ls o ut si d e th e ho us eh o ld in cl ud in g ad va nc ed m ai nt en an ce p ay m en ts . e m ea n p er ce nt ag e o f d is p o sa b le h o us eh o ld in co m e (a ft er d ed uc tin g ta xe s an d s up p o rt p ay m en ts , b ut in cl ud in g p ri va te a nd p ub lic tr an sf er s) . f g ro ss e ar ni ng s as m ea n p er ce nt ag e o f p re go ve rn m en t i nc o m e (b ef o re ta xa tio n an d in cl ud in g p ri va te tr an sf er s) . s o ur ce : s o e p 1 98 420 12 , w ei gh te d d at a. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß294 that “although a rather comprehensive system of (legal) maintenance regulations exists in germany, it is not the former spouse who bears the main burden of income maintenance after separation” (andreß/bröckel 2007: 209). and this is obviously still the case after the turn of the millennium if one compares the data for the two periods in table 2. it even looks as if this dependence on the public purse has increased over time. for example, before the turn of the millennium, public transfers made up 16 percent of men’s and 26 percent of women’s post-separation income package if they were living with children in their households. these percentages increased to 29 percent and 39 percent after 2000. also the percentage of individuals where more than half of the income package consists of public transfers has increased by 5 percentage points (men) and 14 percentage points (women), respectively. but one has to take into account that after the turn of the millennium, income packages already consist to a higher degree of public transfers during marriage (see the percentage of public transfers at t-2 for all groups). although public transfers are of special policy relevance, one should not forget that, fi rst and foremost, it is the separated individual who takes care of himor herself through gainful employment (see below). even in the case of women with children, about one-half (51 percent) of their income package comes from their own work income (cf. table 2). strictly speaking, average percentages of work income in table 2 are not comparable with average percentages of private and public transfers. pequiv income data do not include net earnings that we could relate to our measure of net disposable household income (after taxation). we therefore used gross earnings as a percentage of pre-government household income (before taxation, but including private transfers). if one assumes that the tax rate is the same for earnings as for all other income components, the fi gures in table 2 roughly indicate the (average) signifi cance of earnings within the income package. nevertheless, the number of individuals for whom public transfers are the main source of income (i.e. at least half of their disposable household income consists of public transfers) increases dramatically in all groups after separation, and especially so for women with children. this shows the importance of public transfers, at least for a subgroup of separated people. 4.2 residential mobility in our sample, 60 percent of all men and 62 percent of all women moved homes within two years after separating from their partner. in other words, the majority of both genders has to cope with residential mobility after separation. focusing on individuals with minor children in the household after separation, the overall mobility rate is slightly lower, and noticeable differences exist between men (39 percent) and women (56 percent). “on the one hand,” we argued, “this result is in accordance with the common assumption in divorce proceedings that children should stay in their familiar environment and not change homes. on the other hand, it is surprising that this is true especially for men and less so for women” (andreß/bröckel 2007: 210). we suspected that the higher mobility rate of women with children is partly a the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 295 forced choice. given their lower average incomes, they have to reduce the fi nancial strain caused by separation by moving to smaller and hence less expensive homes. we will analyse below whether this is still the case after the turn of the millennium. to that end, table 3 looks beyond straightforward residential mobility and describes the concomitant changes in the size, quality and price of the home. the data are shown both in absolute (m2, number of rooms, euro) and relative terms (per household member, percentage of household income), and differentiate between men and women as well as between mobile and immobile persons. again, we focus mainly on the data for 2000-2012, and only comment on the earlier period, when marked differences exist. given the increase in housing costs (see table 1), it is no surprise that respondents separating after the turn of the millennium report higher yearly housing costs than those separating in the years 1984-99. part of this increase can also be explained by the fact that the fi rst group lives in slightly larger homes than the second. just as before the turn of the millennium, mobile persons move to smaller and less expensive homes (fewer m2, fewer rooms, lower housing costs). immobile persons, by defi nition, occupy the same home as before, and therefore have to manage to pay the costs of the former marital home from household incomes which are smaller in most cases. it may be possible to economise on utilities in some cases, or owner-occupied housing may become cheaper when mortgages have been paid off. but housing costs will remain the same for immobile persons in many cases.16 immobile men spend 29 percent of their household income on housing after separation, while mobile men spend 22 percent. on the individual level, housing costs increase at least 27 percent for half of immobile men, while the median increase for mobile men actually equates to a decrease of 1 percent. similar differences can be observed for immobile (+54 percent) and mobile women (+11 percent). thus, by moving to less expensive homes, the separated individuals are able to reduce the fi nancial strain caused by the household split at the expense of lower housing quality and a loss of neighbourhood contacts. when interpreting these data with respect to possible gender differences, we have to remember the changes in household composition as described in the previous section. if children mostly stay with their mothers, average household size decreases more for men than it does for women, irrespective of their mobility status. in other words, women share their homes with more persons on average, even when they remain in the family home (see the size of the home and the number of rooms per household member in table 3). the most important difference in our context, however, concerns the fi nancial strain caused by the household split. in that respect, women always have to pay a larger portion of their household income 16 a more differentiated analysis shows that the information provided by soep respondents on housing (size of home, housing costs, etc.) varies over time even for immobile individuals. this low reliability over time may explain, for instance, the slight differences in the reported size (m2) of their homes or the fact that median housing costs fell in 2000-2012 (but not in 1984-1999). altogether, however, we consider the statistics reported in table 3 to be plausible and theoretically meaningful. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß296 im m o b ile m o b ile t-1 t % c h an g ec t-1 t % c h an g ec m en (m ed ia n va lu es u n le ss s ta te d o th er w is e) m ea n ab so lu te s iz e (m ²) 10 5 (9 9) 10 4 (9 8) – 10 4 (9 2) 64 ( 60 ) -4 1 (36 ) … r el at iv e si ze (m ² p er h o u se h o ld m em b er ) 37 (3 4) 81 ( 73 ) + 10 0 (+ 10 0) 34 (3 0) 54 ( 51 ) + 57 (+ 68 ) m ea n n u m b er o f r o o m sd 4. 3 (3 .9 ) 4. 2 (3 .9 ) – 4. 1 (3 .6 ) 2. 6 (2 .3 ) -4 0 (40 ) ... o f r o o m s p er h o u se h o ld m em b er 1. 5 (1 .3 ) 3. 3 (2 .8 ) + 10 0 (+ 10 0) 1. 3 (1 .2 ) 2. 2 (2 .0 ) + 60 (+ 50 ) y ea rl y co st se (e u ro ) 49 26 a (4 29 4a ) 47 88 b (4 40 5b ) -6 (3) 59 07 a (4 60 6a ) 37 82 b (3 85 5b ) -3 3 (-1 6) y ea rl y co st se as % o f h o u se h o ld in co m e 23 a (1 5a ) 29 b (2 2b ) + 27 (+ 37 ) 19 a (1 4a ) 22 b (2 1b ) -1 (+ 53 ) w o m en (m ed ia n va lu es u n le ss s ta te d o th er w is e) m ea n ab so lu te s iz e (m ²) 10 0 (9 3) 10 0 (9 5) – 10 2 (1 01 ) 71 ( 68 ) -3 1 (34 ) … r el at iv e si ze (m ² p er h o u se h o ld m em b er ) 32 (2 8) 48 (4 3) + 33 (+ 40 ) 35 (3 4) 43 (4 0) + 18 (+ 15 ) m ea n n u m b er o f r o o m sd 4. 0 (3 .9 ) 4. 0 (3 .9 ) – 4. 1 (4 .0 ) 2. 8 (2 .7 ) -2 5 (33 ) ... o f r o o m s p er h o u se h o ld m em b er 1. 3 (1 .1 ) 1. 9 (1 .7 ) + 33 (+ 33 ) 1. 4 (1 .3 ) 1. 7 (1 .6 ) + 25 ( 0) y ea rl y co st se (e u ro ) 5, 64 0a (4 03 6a ) 5, 30 1b (4 57 2b ) -1 (+ 1) 5, 98 9a (4 82 4a ) 4, 57 1b (4 17 9b ) -2 5 (9) y ea rl y co st se as % o f h o u se h o ld in co m e 21 a (1 4a ) 37 b (2 2b ) + 54 (+ 75 ) 24 a (1 6a ) 26 b (2 1b ) + 11 (+ 23 ) ta b . 3 : r es id en tia l m o b ili ty o f s ep ar at ed m en a nd w o m en 2 00 020 12 (1 98 419 99 in b ra ck et s) n o te s: a m ea su re d a t t2. b m ea su re d a t t+ 1. c m ed ia n o f th e ch an ge s co re s o b ta in ed b y co m p ar in g th e b ef o re a nd a ft er m ea su re s fo r ea ch i nd iv id ua l. d e xc lu d in g ki tc he n, b at hr o o m , an d r o o m s sm al le r th an 6 m ². e r en t/ ho us in g co st s, i nc lu d in g ut ili ty c o st s, b ut ex cl ud in g he at in g co st s. s o ur ce : s o e p 1 98 420 12 , w ei gh te d d at a. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 297 for their home than men, irrespective of whether they are mobile (+4 percentage points) or immobile (+8 percentage points). before the turn of the millennium, there were hardly any gender differences with respect to housing costs as a percentage of household income. but because housing costs increased faster in the 1990s than in the 2000s (see table 1), the median increase in relative housing costs for individuals separating between 1984 and 1999 (+37 percent and +53 percent for immobile and mobile men, +75 percent and +23 percent for immobile and mobile women) was much larger than after the turn of the millennium, where the median increase varied between –1 percent and 54 percent. the hypothesis that residential mobility is a forced choice, especially for women, can be tested by comparing relative housing costs after separation with those during marriage. both mobile men and women experience fewer increases in fi nancial strain (men: –1 percent, women: +11 percent) than those men and women who remain in the family home (men: +27 percent, women: +54 percent).17 the fi gures (not shown in table 3) are even more remarkable for women living with children: relative housing costs increased for immobile women with children by +50 percent (+76), while mobile women with children increased their relative housing costs by only +47 percent (+32). these data suggest that residential mobility is partly enforced for women. this might also explain the comparatively high mobility rates of women with children, who contrary to the legal norms that have been mentioned leave their familiar environment more often than men with children. 4.3 employment table 4 shows that, between 2000 and 2012, 91 percent of all men and 67 percent of all women (64 percent of all women with children) are either employed full-time, part-time or marginally before they separate from their spouses. compared to the overall employment rates in table 1, these are rather high rates of economic activity, especially for women. we are interested in fi nding out how these men and women adapt their employment status to the new situation after separation. table 4 illustrates the corresponding changes in economic activity one year after separation. some persons have extended their employment in the sense that former part-timers are now working full-time, or persons who formerly were not gainfully employed are now working at least irregularly or marginally. since most men work 17 we observed a similar result for 1984-1999 in our earlier analysis (see andreß/bröckel 2007: 212). but our present replication shows an increase of +53 percent for mobile men, which compared to the earlier value (+25 percent) looks like a data or computation error. extensive data checks showed that it is not a computation error. one explanation of the discrepancy may be a large sampling error due to the small sample size in this cell of the table (the change score is based on data at t-2 and is computed for a specifi c subgroup of men). interestingly, mobile men have lower incomes after separation than immobile men do, which of course leads to aboveaverage increases in relative housing costs for mobile men, and may also explain the increase of +53 percent. we observe the opposite development for mobile women: their incomes are higher after separation than the incomes of immobile women are, which leads to below-average increases in relative housing costs. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß298 full-time before separation, further increases of employment are hardly feasible (only 2 percent of all men report an increase), so that these kinds of change are mostly observed for women (30 percent report an increase), especially for women with children (31 percent). given the predominance of full-time employment before separation, the opposite, namely a reduction of employment, is much more probable for men. however, this event is observed less frequently for men (9 percent report a decrease) than for women (13 percent; women without children: 16 percent). as we noted earlier, “this contradicts the prejudice often heard in public debates that men reduce employment in order to shirk maintenance payments for their spouse and children” (andreß/bröckel 2007: 213). all in all, women with children are the ones who change their activity status most frequently (47 percent report a change), mostly by increasing employment (31 percent). activity rates during marriage for individuals separating before the turn of the millennium are slightly lower (men: 87 percent, women: 63 percent, women with children: 56 percent), but still above the overall employment rates. as the data in tab. 4: employment and earned incomes for separated men and women 2000-2012 (1984-1999 in brackets) men all women women with childrena t-2 t+1 t-2 t+1 t-2 t+1 employment statusb (%) full-time 88 (86) 84 (81) 28 (36) 38 (41) 16 (22) 24 (25) part-time 2 (1) 1 (2) 28 (23) 25 (24) 34 (28) 34 (32) marginal 1 (0) 1 (0) 11 (4) 10 (3) 14 (6) 9 (4) training 1 (2) 0 (0) 2 (2) 1 (2) 4 (1) 1 (2) unemployed 6 (11) 12 (16) 31 (24) 26 (25) 32 (28) 33 (28) other 2 (1) 1 (0) 0 (11) 0 (6) 0 (16) 0 (9) change in employmentc (%) decreased 9 (11) 13 (14) 16 (15) no change 88 (84) 57 (59) 53 (52) increased 2 (6) 30 (27) 31 (33) gross earningsd 31.029 30.319 12.031 14.681 8.458 13.861 (median, euro) (28.976) (30.225) (15.062) (18.557) (11.095) (16.251) change in earningse (%) 1st quartile -13 (-7) -6 (-12) -4 (-5) median 2 (5) 26 (11) 36 (26) 3rd quartile 14 (22) 106 (60) 225 (96) notes: a women living with children after separation. b individuals aged below 61. c see text for further details. d individuals gainfully employed before and after separation. e distribution of change scores obtained by comparing earnings between t-2 and t+1 for each individual. source: soep 1984-2012, weighted data the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 299 table 4 show, the increase in economic activity after the turn of the millennium is due to less unemployment for men and more part-time and marginal employment for women. this observation is very much in line with the overall development of the labour market (see section 2.3 and table 1). but the pattern of changes due to separation is not much different from the pattern after the turn of the millennium. an important question is what these changes in economic activity mean in terms of earned incomes. we use yearly earnings before taxes measured in 2000 prices. yearly data are chosen to make this analysis comparable with the following analyses of equivalised household incomes. earnings before taxes are preferred to net earnings because we are interested in the effects of working hours and remuneration, and not in the question of how the state privileges or under-privileges changes in employment. furthermore, the income tax bracket for married individuals changes one year after separation. according to these data, the majority of men and women experience positive changes; and this is true both before and after the turn of the millennium. due to their lower economic activity before separation, the increases in earnings are especially high for women (numbers for 1984-1999 in brackets): half of them experience increases of +26 percent (+11 percent) and more, while the median increase for men amounts to +2 percent (+5 percent). one the other hand, since women start from a much lower level, their earnings lag far behind men’s despite the large increases. it should also be noted that not all men and women expand their economic activity in terms of earnings. one quarter of them has to deal with declining earnings of at least -13 percent (-7 percent) for men and -6 percent (-12 percent) for women. but this should not distract us from the general conclusion that both genders predominantly try to expand their economic activity, which results in signifi cantly increased earnings for women in most cases, albeit on a low level, and in minor positive changes for men. nevertheless, this positive picture is clouded if one compares the level of earnings before and after the turn of the millennium: real earnings have hardly increased for men, and they are signifi cantly lower for women in 2000-2012 than in the years prior to the turn of the millennium. we already know from our discussion in section 2.3 that real earnings have tended to decrease rather than to increase in our observation period (see table 1), and the stagnation of men’s earnings therefore comes as no surprise. we also noticed that increased female labour force participation is to a large extent based on part-time and marginal employment, which is refl ected in the activity patterns of our female sample members separating between 2000 and 2012 (see above). part-time (and also marginal) jobs pay signifi cantly less than full-time jobs (st atistisches bundesamt/wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung 2013: 132), which may go at least some way towards explaining the lower female earnings after the turn of the millennium.18 be this as it may, this result fi ts nicely 18 of course, for a fair comparison of earnings before and after the turn of the millennium one would have to control for this and other job characteristics as well as for differences in human capital. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß300 with the earlier observation that public transfers play a much larger role in women’s household incomes in 2000-2012 (see section 4.1 and table 2). 4.4 income and the effects of private and public redistribution according to the earnings indicator in table 4, women’s own income – at best – amounts to half of men’s own income from employment. it is therefore obvious that women, much more than men, need other sources of income to achieve the economic status that they had together with their husbands during marriage. on the other hand, men’s economic status is not as high as these data suggest because part of their income will be transferred to their former wives and children after separation in the form of maintenance payments. to see the effects of private and public redistribution, we modelled this process in four steps: (1) factor incomes, (2) taxation, (3) payment and receipt of private transfers and (4) receipt of public transfers (including social security pensions). for this analysis steps (3) and (4) could be reversed. for this analysis we used the following information from the pequiv: pre-government household incomes (hhpregov), post-government household incomes (hhposgov), private transfers received (hhprivat), public transfers (hhpublic). additionally, we operationalized support payments being made for spouses and children (hhsupport) as described in section 3.2. post-government household incomes equal pre-government incomes minus taxes plus public transfers and social security pensions. unfortunately, the pequiv includes private transfers received in pre-government household incomes, which are then subjected to a tax simulation programme. support payments being made for spouses and children are not considered in the pequiv. in order to model private and public redistribution as the third and fourth steps, we had to deduct hhprivat and hhpublic from the corresponding pequiv household incomes. more specifi cally, we calculated the four redistributive steps as follows: (1) = hhpregov – hhprivat, (2) = hhposgov – hhprivat – hhpublic, (3) = hhposgov – hhsupport – hhpublic, (4) = hhposgov – hhsupport. each of the results was then equivalized according to equation (1). in a fi nal step (5), we looked at disposable incomes (incomes at step iv) minus payments made for the home (i.e. rents, interest and amortisation payments for mortgages and utility costs, but excluding heating costs) to account for the fi nancial strain resulting from residential mobility. figure 1 shows, separately for men and women and for individuals separating before and after the turn of the millennium, the distribution of change scores observed at each step of this income redistribution process. the middle 50 percent of the distribution (ranging from the fi rst to the third quartile) are indicated by a vertical fat blue line, the median change score by a white point, and the whole distribution by a kernel density plot. if the median change score is below (above) the horizontal red line of no change (%ii=0), then the majority (more than 50 percent) experiences an income loss (gain). four observations are noticeable: firstly, there are clear-cut gender differences at each step of the redistribution process. the female median change score is always lower than its male equivalent, indicating that separation implies less positive the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 301 fig. 1: changes in equivalised household income for men and women separating in 1984-1999 and 2000-2012 notes: about 2 percent of all change scores top-coded at 200 percent. the distribution of change scores is shown for the following steps of the income redistribution process: (1) pre-government incomes, (2) ... minus taxes, (3) ... incl. private transfers, (4) ... plus public transfers, and (5) ... minus housing costs. source: soep 1984-2012, weighted data. • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß302 and more negative income changes for women than for men. secondly, the distribution of change scores is more skewed for women, with the mass of the change scores more in the lower than in the upper end of the distribution, while the men’s distribution looks much more symmetrical. this again shows that the balance of positive and negative changes tends more in the negative direction for women than for men. however, thirdly, it seems as if these gender inequalities decrease with each step of the income redistribution process (see the distance between the female and male median change scores at each step in fig. 1). in other words, taxation, support payments, and public transfers level out part of the gender inequalities. taxation and support payments predominantly affect men: their median change score drops when taxes are deducted from factor incomes (compare steps 1 and 2), and when private transfers have been paid and received (compare steps 2 and 3). such a decrease is not visible for the women’s median change scores. note also that the female score increases slightly in step (4), when public transfers are added. no similar increase is visible for men. in step (5), when housing costs are paid, the median change score decreases again for both genders. fourthly, and fi nally, this pattern of income changes does not change dramatically over time. the violin plots for 1984-1999 and 2000-2012 look very much the same, except perhaps the male change scores in steps (1) and (2). they seem to be more positive in 1984-1999 (the median change scores are more clearly above the red reference line). but given the possibility of sampling errors, this may be an exaggeration. therefore, in the next section, we will test the gender inequalities observed and possible changes over time for their statistical signifi cance. 4.5 gender inequalities, different living conditions, and changes over time in a series of logistic regression models, we estimated the probability of experiencing a negative income change after separation (i.e. the probability of a negative change score). we analyse the probability of such income losses at each step of the income redistribution process (models 1-5). finally, at the level of disposable incomes (incomes at step 4), we control for various aspects of the respondents’ living situation before and after separation (model 6). our main focus is on gender inequalities and changes over time between the two periods before and after the turn of the millennium. there has been some concern as to whether logistic regression coeffi cients can be compared across models; i.e. in our case, across different steps of the income redistribution process (auspurg/hinz 2011; breen/karlson 2013; breen et al. 2013; karlson et al. 2012; mood 2009). however, these concerns are not relevant for the interpretation of probabilities that are estimated from the regression coeffi cients (long 1997: 50). the estimated probabilities are shown in figure 2 and table 5.19 19 the estimated logistic regression coeffi cients, from which these probabilities were computed, are shown in table a1 in the appendix. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 303 the probability of an income loss amounts to approximately 75 percent for women before the turn of the millennium irrespective of whether one looks at factor or at disposable incomes (see fig. 2). neither private nor public transfers cushion these negative consequences of marital disruption. moreover, there is no change for women after the turn of the millennium: the probability of income loss is still about 75 percent. the situation is slightly better for men: at the level of factor incomes before and after taxation, only about 40 percent of all men experience an income loss; and this risk is almost the same before and after the turn of the millennium. however, if one takes private and public transfers into account, the situation becomes less favourable for men. the increasing estimates for men indicate that the probability of an income loss increases with each step of the income redistribution process. in other fig. 2: estimated probability of income loss after separation by gender and income concept (in percent) notes: probabilities for men (squares) and women (triangles) estimated from logistic regression models (models 1-5, see table a1 in the appendix). gender differences are signifi cant (α=0.05) for each step of the income redistribution process except for disposable incomes minus housing costs (step v) in 1984-99. source: soep 1984-2012, weighted data, estimates based on logistic regression coeffi cients (models 1-5, see table a1). • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß304 words, gender inequalities observed at the level of factor incomes decrease with each step. they even disappear (cease being signifi cant) in 1984-1999, once we control for housing costs (x2=0.58, df=1, p=0.45; all other differences are signifi cant at the 5 percent level).20 this overall picture of decreasing gender inequalities appears in both observation periods, with two notable differences: 1. before the turn of the millennium, the probability of an income loss for men increases notably, from 41.2 percent to 57.3 percent, if one takes private transfers into account. since a similar increase is not visible after the turn of the millennium, it seems as if private transfers became less important for adjusting gender inequalities in economic well-being after 2000. 2. contrary to the situation before the turn of the millennium, gender inequalities do not disappear once one controls for housing costs (x2=5.45, df=1, p=0.02). all in all, however, it would be wrong to conclude that gender inequalities are more quickly equalised before the turn of the millennium, given that none of the coeffi cients that tests for changes between the two observation periods is signifi cant (α=0.05). tab. 5: estimated probability of income loss after separation by living arrangement (in percent) group before separation after separation 1984-1999 2000-2012 t-2 t+1 household type new partner gainfully employed minor children men women men women 1 2 no yes no 70.8 81.3 60.1 80.7b 2 2 yes yes no 44.2a 52.4a 51.3 55.4a 3 2 no no no 65.4 93.8ab 79.6 94.7a 4 2 no yes yes 69.6 70.7 65.5 90.1bc 5 1 no yes yes 59.7 74.3b 43.8 80.2 6 3 no yes no 83.3a 89.3 72.2a 61.8c 7 4 no yes no 48.6 60.5 74.3a 56.2 8 1 no no yes 53.6 91.0b 66.9 94.5b notes: household type: 1 = male single earner, 2 = male main earner, 3 = dual earner, 4 = female main or single earner. signifi cant effects with respect to a the corresponding characteristic, b gender for each period, and c period for each gender (α=0.05). tests based on linear restrictions on the logistic regression coeffi cients. source: soep 1984-2012, weighted data, estimates based on logistic regression coeffi cients (model 6, see table a1). 20 these and the following differences are tested by applying linear restrictions to the relevant parameters of the logistic regression model. the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 305 a natural extension of this analysis is to ask how these income risks depend on men’s and women’s living situations before and after separation. almost a quarter (23.8 percent) of all respondents lived in a traditional male breadwinner household during marriage in which the husband was the single earner. however, the most common (40.5 percent) household type was a “modernised” male breadwinner household in which the husband was the main earner, but not the only one. dual earner households (22.4 percent), or households in which the wife was the main or even the single earner (13.3 percent), were less common. given the increase in female labour force participation during the entire observation period (see section 2.3), this distribution changed slightly after the turn of the millennium, with “modernised” male breadwinner households becoming more common (46.2 percent) at the expense of the traditional ones (17.9 percent). after separation, the most common living situation is being employed and living alone without a new partner and without any minor children (36.2 percent before and 42.9 percent after the turn of the millennium). the second most common living situation is almost identical, except for the fact that these men and women live together with minor children (21.4 percent before and 22.0 percent after the turn of the millennium).21 only a minority lives together with a new partner (27.6 percent before and 21.6 percent after the turn of the millennium). the fi rst row of table 5 shows the estimated probability of an income loss for the most common living situation before and after separation; i.e. men and women who have lived in a “modernised” male breadwinner household during marriage, but live alone and are unemployed after separation (termed group 1 or simply the reference group). the probabilities are derived from a logistic regression model regressing disposable incomes (incomes at step 4 neglecting housing costs) on selected aspects of the respondent’s living situation before and after separation (see model 6 in table a1 in the appendix). the probabilities in the fi rst row basically tell the same story as figure 2: an income loss is more probable for women, although the differences are not particularly pronounced at the level of disposable incomes that are shown here. the following rows 2-7 in table 5 show how this pattern would change if one of the characteristics of this reference group were different (group 8 will be discussed later). for example, living together with a new partner after separation (group 2) has a signifi cant positive effect both for men and women: all loss probabilities are smaller than in the reference group. unemployment (group 3) increases the economic risks (except for men before the turn of the millennium), as does living with minor children (group 4) (but only after the turn of the millennium). on the other hand, separating from a traditional male breadwinner household entails fewer economic risks (group 5). the same is true for individuals separating from households in which the wife was the main or the single earner (group 7) (except for men after the turn of the millennium), while individuals separating from dual earner 21 this living situation is naturally more common among women, but differentiating between two observation periods, two genders and various living conditions results in highly differentiated subgroups of the data, which then provide highly unreliable information due to their small sample sizes. however, these more differentiated data are available from the authors on request • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß306 households experience greater income losses (group 6) (except women after the turn of the millennium). but depending on the standard errors of the logistic regression coeffi cients, these descriptive differences may not be signifi cant. therefore, we formally tested whether there are signifi cant changes if an individual in the reference group cohabits with a new partner, is gainfully employed, lives together with minor children, or experiences separation within another type of marital household. these tests are performed for each gender separately for each observation period, and a signifi cant effect is indicated with the superscript (a) in the corresponding cell of table 5. each row of table 5 defi nes another subgroup of our sample. the values of all probabilities are however determined by the parameters of model 6 that have been estimated by taking all subgroups into account (and not only the ones shown in table 5). the tests apply linear restrictions on the relevant logistic regression coeffi cients of the model (cf. footnote 21), and hence test the overall effects of new partners, employment, parenting, and type of marital household for each gender and observation period. group 8 is not included in these tests because it is different from the reference group with regard to several characteristics (and not just in terms of one characteristic as in the case of groups 2-7). based on these tests, we can safely say that cohabitation with a new partner reduces the income risks of separation (except for men after the turn of the millennium). similarly, being gainfully employed after separation makes a signifi cant (positive) difference; but only for women, possibly because most men are already gainfully employed before separation (see section 4.3). living together with minor children after separation has no effect, and this holds for both genders. finally, the question of economic independence during marriage is also important for men. if they separate from a household where either both partners contributed an income or where the wife was the main or single earner, men’s loss probability increases signifi cantly (for men separating from female main/single earner households, the effect is only signifi cant after the turn of the millennium). our main interest however lies in gender inequalities and changes over time. all in all, there are signifi cant gender differences to the disadvantage of women in both periods.22 however, this overall picture does not necessarily hold true for all the subgroups in the sample. if it is true for groups 1-8 in table 5 (α=0.05), then the corresponding cell in table 5 is marked with the superscript (b). according to these group-specifi c tests, women in the reference group faced signifi cantly more economic risks before the turn of the millennium if they were unemployed (group 3) or if they separated within a traditional male breadwinner household (group 5). after the turn of the millennium, this is also true for all women in reference group 1 and who live together with minor children (group 4). 22 for 2000-2014 these differences are only signifi cant at the 10 percent level, which is at odds with the tests for figure 2, where they were signifi cant at the 5 percent level. note however that model 6 is based on fewer observations than model 4 (see table a1 in the appendix). the economic consequences of divorce in germany • 307 with respect to changes over time, the overall tests show no signifi cant differences for either men or women. looking at the probabilities, this comes as no surprise: period 2 probability is larger than its period 1 equivalent in some subgroups, whilst in others it is exactly the other way round. moreover, if group-specifi c differences exist, they may not be signifi cant. nevertheless, some are signifi cant (α=0.05), and this is indicated with the superscript (c) in the corresponding cell of table 5. the economic risks faced by women in the reference group who live together with minor children (group 4) have increased. on the other hand, if they have separated from a dual earner household (group 6), their economic risks have decreased. finally, table 5 looks at a subgroup that includes all the high risk factors for women. group 8 comprises individuals who separated within traditional male breadwinner households and are unemployed after separation while taking care of minor children without having a new partner. as expected, this situation implies signifi cantly higher economic risks for women than for men. this living situation fortunately becomes less common for women compared to the 1960s and 1970s. about one woman in seven fell into this group during our observation period (1984-1999: 14.4 percent, 2000-2012: 13.2 percent). 5 summary and discussion our analyses have shown that the economic consequences of divorce are still more negative for women than for men after the turn of the millennium. even now it is the woman who takes care of the children in most cases, and the majority of these women does not receive any child support payments from their former spouse. but we should also mention that men receive virtually no support payments if they live together with minor children after separation. one man in three, but only one woman in twenty, makes support payments, be it for the children or the former spouse. economically, support payments are of minor importance in the budgets of the separated individuals. moreover, they play a less pronounced equalising role in the redistribution process after the turn of the millennium, as we expected in h4. if one counts all private transfers from outside the household, which include the aforementioned support payments, these only constitute 1 percent of men’s household incomes and 9 percent of women’s household incomes. private transfers only make a difference if women live together with minor children after separation. nevertheless, they constitute only 12 percent of their household incomes. contrary to our expectations in h5, living together with minor children becomes a disadvantage for women after the turn of the millennium, and this is a clear change as against the situation pertaining prior to 2000, when minor children did not increase the risk of income loss for either women or men. a more detailed analysis of the change scores shows that the change occurred in the upper tail of the distribution, and therefore for women with the least negative income changes. before the turn of the millennium, the upper 25 percent of all women experienced a positive income change after separation of at least 8 percent, while after the turn of the millennium, they also experienced negative income changes of 17 percent at most. given the • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß308 expansion of the public child care system in the 2000s, this is a surprising result and needs further investigation. one possibility is that child care costs offset increases in earnings, although child care places are often free of charge for single mothers. the earnings increase after separation may also be negligible because women with minor children either do not increase their economic activity or choose marginal and part-time employment. it could also be the case that separated women with minor children make no use of public child care at all, or that it will still take some time until this infrastructural change becomes effective. public transfers are much more important than private ones, both for men and women. dependence on public transfers is dramatic in some cases: one man in ten and one woman in four has to rely on a household income after separation in which public transfers make up more than half of the budget. due to opposing changes in minimum income and family policies after the turn of the millennium, we refrained from hypothesising about the economic dependence of separated individuals on public transfers. but after comparing the data for our two observations periods, we have to conclude that economic dependence on public transfers increased for both genders after the turn of the millennium. both men and women try to ease the fi nancial strain accompanying separation: on the one side by economising on consumption and on the other, by increasing their own economic activity. cutting down on expenses is most visible with the most important cost factor: the residential home. almost two-thirds of the spouses leave the family home after separation. although they move to smaller and correspondingly less expensive homes, the increase in housing costs relative to their post-separation incomes is still considerable, but still lower than for those individuals who stay in the former family home. in a way, residential mobility after separation is a forced choice. this might also explain the comparatively high mobility rate of women with children. contrary to the legal norm stating that children should stay in their familiar environment, they leave the family home more often than men with children. expanding economic activity is a feasible option especially for women because only a minority works full-time before separation. this is not the case for men, who mostly work full-time before separation. but increased economic activity for women often means part-time or marginal work and signifi cantly lower earnings than men. hence, women need other sources of income besides their own labour income to maintain at least part of their former standard of living. but even taking all sources of household income into account, our analyses showed that separation implies fewer positive and more negative changes in household income for women than for men. some women naturally also experience positive changes, while some men suffer from income losses, but overall the balance of positive and negative changes runs more in the negative direction for women than for men. more refi ned tests showed that the changes in household income are signifi cantly more negative for women than for men. moreover, these inequalities persist if one controls for the economic situation of the former marital household and the living conditions after separation; i.e. whether the person has a new partner, lives together with minor children, and is gainfully employed. however, women’s disadvantages become more slight with each step of the income redistribution prothe economic consequences of divorce in germany • 309 cess. they are greatest at the level of factor incomes, and become smaller when taxation, private and public transfers are taken into account. finally, they actually become insignifi cant at the level of disposable incomes once we deduct housing costs, but only in 1984-1999. hence, if one takes all the changes into account, including residential mobility, the economic consequences of divorce seem to be much more balanced between the genders than it appears at fi rst sight. our larger data base also allowed us to scrutinize change over time in greater detail. on the whole, due to the overall stability of real earnings, we did not anticipate any change in the economic consequences of marital disruption (h1), and our hypothesis was clearly supported by our regression models. we did not expect any change with respect to gender inequalities because increased female labour force participation is based mostly on part-time and marginal jobs after the turn of the millennium. correspondingly, the women in our sample mostly took up part-time and marginal jobs when they increased their economic activity. therefore, as assumed in h2, we found no change of the gender inequalities after the turn of the millennium. nevertheless, there are some instances of change: men separating from dual earner households or from households where the woman was the main or even the single earner more often experienced negative changes after the turn of the millennium, although this risk was already visible for dual earner households in 1984-1999. in other words, in line with h3, the effects of an increasing dependence on female incomes can be seen at least for some, though rather small subgroups of men. moreover, economic independence pays for women whose economic risks of separation have decreased after the turn of the millennium if they have been living in a dual earner marital household. a distressing result is of course that cohabiting with minor children became more of a risk for women after the turn of the millennium than for men. more research is needed as to why recent policy changes towards more female employment and towards better reconciliation of family and work life are having so little effect on the economic consequences of marital disruption. references aisenbrey, silke; evertsson, marie; grunow, daniela 2009: is there a career penalty for mothers’ time out? a comparison of germany, sweden and the united states. in: social forces 88,2: 573-606 [doi: 10.1353/sof.0.0252]. andreß, hans-jürgen; bröckel, miriam 2007: marital disruption in germany: does the conservative welfare state care? changes in material well-being and the effects of private and public transfers. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127,2: 193-226. andreß, hans-jürgen; güllner, miriam 2001: scheidung als armutsrisiko. in: barlösius, eva; ludwig-mayerhofer, wolfgang (eds.): die armut der gesellschaft. opladen: leske + budrich: 169-197 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-322-99629-9_6]. andreß, hans-jürgen et al. 2006: the economic consequences of partnership dissolution – a comparative analysis of panel studies 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(eds.): family law in europe. london/dublin/edinbourgh: butterworth: 472510. sørensen, annemette 1994: women’s economic risk and the economic position of single mothers. in: european sociological review 10: 173-188. statistisches bundesamt; wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung 2013: datenreport 2013. ein sozialbericht für die bundesrepublik deutschland. bonn: bundeszentrale für politische bildung. statistisches bundesamt 2012: indikatorenbericht 2012 – nachhaltige entwicklung in deutschland. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2013: statistiken der kinderund jugendhilfe. kinder und tätige personen in tageseinrichtungen und in öffentlich geförderter kindertagespfl ege am 01.03.2013. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2014a: gender pay gap 2013 bei vollzeitbeschäftigten besonders hoch. pressemitteilungen des statistischen bundesamtes. retrieved from https://www.destatis.de/de/presseservice/presse/pressemitteilungen/2014/03/ pd14_104_621.html, 12.02.2015). statistisches bundesamt 2014b: volkswirtschaftliche gesamtrechnungen. fachserie 18, reihe 1.1. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. wagner, gert g.; frick, joachim r.; schupp, jürgen 2007: the german socio-economic panel study (soep) – scope, evolution and enhancements. in: schmollers jahrbuch 1271: 139-169 [doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1028709]. wrohlich, katharina et al. 2012: elterngeld monitor: endbericht; forschungsprojekt im auftrag des bundesministeriums für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend. in: diw berlin – politikberatung kompakt 61. date of submission: 07.08.2014 date of acceptance: 12.01.2015 • miriam bröckel, hans-jürgen andreß312 appendix we estimated a series of logistic regression models. the most complex model 6 is defi ned as follows: g and p are dummy variables indicating females (g=1) and the second observation period (p=1). x is a row vector of covariates. in case of models 1-5, the vector x only includes a “variable” equal to one. in model 6 it also includes dummies for new partner, gainful employment, and cohabitation with minor children. α, β, γ, and δ are suitable column vectors of regression coeffi cients. their estimates are shown in columns 3-6 of table a1. ln pr %ii<0 1pr %ii<0 =x +g·x +p·x +g·p·x tab. a1: log-odds of income loss after separation (logistic regression coeffi cients) model variables 1984-1999 2000-2012 men women men women n pseudo r 2 α β γ δ 1 (1) pre-government incomes -0.4497** 1.5636*** 0.1477 -0.2280 1362 0.090 2 (2) ... minus taxes -0.3545* 1.4807*** 0.1802 -0.1021 1362 0.087 3 (3) ... incl. private transfers 0.2938* 0.7786*** -0.2355 0.2841 1362 0.037 4 (4) ... plus public transfers 0.5341*** 0.5880** -0.2577 0.2466 1362 0.023 5 (5) ... minus housing costs 0.8295*** 0.1879 -0.3028 0.4336 1168 0.009 6 reference groupa 0.1995 2.7017*** 0.2740 -1.1148 916 0.123 new partner (t-1) -1.1203** -0.2513 0.7622 -0.5998 gainfully employed (t+1) 0.2498 -1.5024* -1.2029 1.0072 living with children (t+1) -0.0568 -0.5312 0.2888 1.0830 husband main earner (t-2) 0.4363 -0.6178 0.4520 0.5450 dual earner (t-2) 1.1606* -0.6911 0.2758 -0.8752 wife single/main earner (t-2) -0.5039 -0.7167 2.0449* -1.1856 notes: a men separating between 1984 and 1999 from a male breadwinner household, without a new partner, not gainfully employed, and living without minor children after separation. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. source: soep 1984-2012, weighted data. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved can we really (all) work longer? trends in healthy life expectancy according to social stratum in germany rainer unger, alexander schulze abstract: against the background of raising the retirement age to 67 years and the associated lengthening of working lifetimes in higher age groups, this article examines the question of the extent to which this political objective is covered by the health assets of the population. here, we will fi rst trace trends in “healthy” life expectancy among the total population for different points in time 1989, 1999 and 2009 on the basis of the data from the socio-economic panel study (soep) and analyse these against the background of social strata indicators such as income and educational levels. among others, one signifi cant result is the fact that social differences have a far greater effect on healthy life expectancy than on general life expectancy and that these differences increase further over the course of time. this effect can be found particularly in men. one mandatory uniform working lifetime for all persons would however not do justice to these fi ndings of socially highly unequally distributed life opportunities. instead, the fi ndings support a fl exible arrangement of retirement age limits. keywords: healthy life expectancy · social stratum · compression of morbidity · social change · working lifetime 1 introduction against the background of raising the retirement age to 67 years and the associated lengthening of working lifetimes in higher age groups, this article examines the question of the extent to which this political objective is covered by the health assets of the population. setting the retirement ages at 67 years can, by contrast to earlier provisions, be described as a re-standardisation (sackmann 2008) or alignment to a fi xed age limit that is valid for everybody. of course, relevant provisions on the working lifetime are only expedient if the older population is physically and mentally able to work longer (lehr/kruse 2006). although a number of studies have comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 3 (2013): 565-582 (date of release: 31.01.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-03en4 • rainer unger, alexander schulze566 been published proving that the state of health of the population in germany has generally improved (e.g. kroll/ziese 2009; unger 2006), a standardised retirement age is also inevitably accompanied by problems based on individual differences in the state of health of the older population. not all people reach an advanced age in good health. these individual differences in ageing are frequently disregarded in the current debates on lengthening working lifetimes (höpfl inger 2007: 308). individual health differences are also an expression of different socio-economic infl uences, which are refl ected, for example, in material circumstances, in health behaviour, and in health care. if we look at the economic developments in germany, the income disparity, for instance, has rather increased in recent decades than decreased. for example, between 1992 and the mid-1990s there was an increase in income disparity, followed by a slight recovery, and since about 2000 a repeated increase, whereby the development in eastern germany shows a similar pattern but on a lower level than in western germany (goebel et al. 2007). against this background, the question arises whether the growing income disparity is also accompanied by a growing health disparity. in the following analyses, we will therefore investigate the health trends of various population groups and then whether all population groups profi t equally from an improvement in health over the course of time. the article focuses exclusively on the role of health for employability of people of advanced ages and disregards economical aspects of labour force demand, the skills of potential workers, and possible vocational stress caused by the demands of the work. following a review of the state of research (section 2) and an analysis of the data basis and method employed (section 3), we will fi rst trace trends in “healthy” life expectancy among the total population for different spans of time on the basis of the data from the socio-economic panel study (soep) from 1984-2009 and analyse these against the background of social strata indicators such as income and educational levels (section 4). since the analysis of life expectancy or healthy life expectancy refers to the total population, we will also examine how the state of health of the employed and the non-employed has changed over the course of time and whether indications can be found for mobility processes, such as leaving the work force (in good health) that show that the state of health of the non-employed but not of the employed has improved over the course of time. in the conclusion we will discuss the results (section 5). 2 state of research studies on health development are conducted primarily with regard to the emerging controversy about the “compression of morbidity.” they question whether increasing life expectancy is also accompanied by an increasing number of healthy life years or rather whether longer life expectancy merely lengthens the phase of life with health impairments. in the literature, the majority answers this question in favour of the former alternative: the years gained are in general also healthy years, as empirical studies on the change in healthy life expectancy in some countries can we really (all) work longer? • 567 show. for example, brønnum-hansen (1998) for denmark, perenboom et al. (1993) for the netherlands, crimmins et al. (1997) for the usa, bebbington (1988) for the united kingdom, and pinheiro and krämer (2009) for the german state of northrhine westphalia predominantly ascertain an increase in healthy life expectancy over time.1 further studies have shown that this gain in healthy years of life is also dependent on the defi nition of health and/or disease: with regard to grave health impairments a distinct gain in healthy life expectancy is recorded for younger birth cohorts. this gain is lesser in the case of moderate and minor impairments (cambois/robine 1996; robine et al. 2003; unger 2006). there are also numerous studies concerning the correlation between socioeconomic status and life expectancy and/or healthy life expectancy, whereby with a higher compared to a lower status (higher income and higher education) not only more years of life, but also more healthy years of life are anticipated (e.g. crimmins/ saito 2001; crimmins et al. 1996; guralnik et al. 1993; katz et al. 1983; land et al. 1994; valkonen et al. 1997). these studies also showed that both educational differences (sihvonen et al. 1998; valkonen et al. 1997) and income disparities (kaneda et al. 2004) are of greater signifi cance for healthy life expectancy than for general life expectancy. for example, the difference in life expectancy between persons with at most 9 years schooling and at most 13 years schooling is 6.3 years for men and 3.2 years for women. by contrast, the difference in healthy life expectancy is 10-13 years for men and 7-11 years for women depending on the health indicator used (valkonen et al. 1997). moreover these differences are considerably greater for men broken down by social stratum than for women (sihvonen et al. 1998). income, education, and employment status are considered the most important dimensions explaining the stratum-specifi c distribution of health. income is usually associated with material circumstances such as housing conditions (feinstein 1993), but also diet (hummer et al. 1998) if it is subject to material restrictions. there is also the dimension of income dependence when making use of the medical care system (klein/unger 2001). educational levels on the contrary mainly emphasize different lifestyles, such as health-relevant behaviours like smoking habits and alcohol consumption as well as eating habits, but also better access to health-relevant information (sihvonen et al. 1998). due to their correlation with vocational status, income and education are also associated with working conditions (siegrist/dragano 2006). however little is known about how these socio-economic infl uences have changed over the course of time. there are hardly any studies, in particular for germany, whereby most of them ascertain an enlargement of health disparity over time (kroll/lampert 2010; lampert/kroll 2008). an explanation of the change in the cited stratum-specifi c infl uences on health is only rudimentarily discussed in these studies. one explanation for the change in these socio-economic infl uencing factors is that of wilkinson (2001), who cites a rather psychological aspect of the effect of disparate incomes with the subjective feeling of relative deprivation. nonetheless, 1 inconsistent trends were only ascertained for the female population in denmark (brønnumhansen 1998) and the male population in the netherlands (perenboom et al. 1993). • rainer unger, alexander schulze568 there has been so far no satisfactory explanation for the change in health disparity from a macro-structural perspective. in order to answer the empirical question of whether all population groups in germany equally profi t from improved health over the course of time, we will conduct calculations of general life expectancy and of healthy life expectancy for the three years 1989, 1999, and 2009 for three income levels and three educational levels. since the analysis of healthy life expectancy covers both the employed and the non-employed, we will also examine how the prevalence of disease has changed over the course of time among the employed and the non-employed. this can also provide evidence of (health-related) mobility processes. 3 data and method this study is based on the socio-economic panel (soep), which has been conducted since 1984 as an annually repeated survey of initially approximately 12,000 persons from the age of 16 years in private households by the german institute for economic research (deutsches institut für wirt schafts forschung (diw)) in ber lin (soep group 2001). all of the household members surveyed for the soep were drawn upon for this analysis. the sample of high-income recipients (sample g) was excluded from the ensuing analysis, since we assume that income disparities at that level do not have any signifi cant effects on the probability of disease. the probabilities of death and the prevalence of disease are the base measures for modelling healthy life expectancy and were calculated for the years 1989, 1999, and 2009. table 1 provides an overview of the distributions of the socio-demographic and socio-economic variables. the analysis of disease is based here on the subjective assessment of the state of health, which was surveyed with the question: “how satisfi ed are you with your health?” (translated by cpos). the assessment is based on an 11-stage scale from 0 (“not at all satisfi ed”) to 10 (“altogether satisfi ed”), the variable was dichotomised and the values of 0-4 were assessed as the occurrence of disease. subjective health assessments have been employed for numerous studies on the analysis of healthy life expectancy (e.g. brønnum-hansen 2005; sihvonen et al. 1998). these have shown that the subjective health assessments differ to a similar extent according to socio-economic positions, such as extended illnesses or functional aspects of disease (sihvonen et al. 1998; valkonen et al. 1997). nevertheless, it must be noted that in the intertemporal comparison conducted here the subjective health assessments may also be determined by periodand cohort-specifi c concepts of health, which can also vary according to age and gender. we cannot, however, make a comparison with functional aspects of disease, since they were neither continuously nor identically surveyed in the soep. the recoding produces a suffi ciently large number of cases for the analysis of disease while also mapping a group of people that assesses its present state of can we really (all) work longer? • 569 health by approx. 70 % and thus predominantly as “not so good” or “poor.”2 the different stratum infl uences were operationalised via the needs-weighted relative income position and the years of education. the so-called equivalent income is calculated based on the net household income and the number of household members and enables a comparison of income positions among different household sizes since the calculation takes into consideration the cost savings resulting from joint housekeeping, for example from the sharing of fi xed expenses (such as electricity and rent), and the more economical consumption conditions (for example purchasing less expensive large packages).3 the ascertained needs-weighted equivalent income was correlated relative to the average income of the corresponding year for the comparison over the different survey waves of the soep. 2 the computation is based on a fi ve-level subjective health grading with the categories “very good,” “good,” “satisfactory,” “not so good” and “poor.” alternatively taking into account multilevel disease defi nitions, which for example also separately account for “moderate” health is, by contrast, probably less clearly classifi able, especially in an intertemporal comparison, than “poor” health. 3 when calculating the needs-weighted equivalent income, the net household income is divided by needs weights. the weights are 1 for the head of the household, 0.5 for every additional person aged at least 14 years in the household and 0.3 for each person younger than 14 years (new oecd equivalence scale). the needs-weighted equivalent income can also be interpreted as individual prosperity level. tab. 1: distribution of the socio-demographic and socio-economic variables of the sample (n = 250,569 person years) mean standard deviation minimum maximum survey year 1999.13 7.21 1984 2009 gender1 0.521 0 1 age 57.579 20.892 40 104 relative income position2 91.677 51.497 0.028 399.714 years of education3 9.891 1.469 8 13 employment status4 0.136 0 1 satisfaction with health5 0.205 0 1 deaths 0.017 0 1 1 men = 0, women = 1. 2 relative income position in percent. 3 no school-leaving certifi cate = 8 years, lower secondary school certifi cate = 9 years, secondary school certifi cate = 10 years, university of applied sciences degree = 12 years, university-entrance diploma (abitur) = 13 years. 4 not gainfully employed = 0; gainfully employed = 1. 5 satisfi ed with health = 0; unsatisfi ed with health = 1. source: soep (1984-2009) • rainer unger, alexander schulze570 healthy life expectancy was calculated using the prevalence rate method by sullivan (1971), whereby the survivors of the survival functions are weighted according to the prevalence of disease. the probabilities of death were calculated by means of event analysis while the prevalence of disease was calculated using logistic regressions models. to model the healthy life expectancy for the years 1989, 1999, and 2009 each of the probabilities of death and the prevalence of disease were analysed over all waves of the soep (1984-2009) according to age and year of the survey, so that by using the respective year the age-specifi c probabilities of death or the age-specifi c prevalence can be gained for 1989, 1999, and 2009 and from this the healthy life expectancy can be determined for each of these three points in time. in the analysis of healthy life expectancy according to social stratum a consistency is assumed for the corresponding relative position in the social stratum over the entire life course. one advantage of the instrument of healthy life expectancy over other health indicators is that both the stratum-specifi c differences in the mortality risk as well as the morbidity risk are taken into account. since the analysis of healthy life expectancy refers to the total population, logistical regressions are also used to examine how the prevalence of disease has changed for the employed and the non-employed over the course of time. 4 results 4.1 the change in healthy life expectancy table 2 fi rst shows the risks on which healthy life expectancy is based. for instance, the table shows (in model 1) that the mortality risk of men (women) increases by 10.2 % (11.5 %) with each year of age and decreases again for every ensuing calendar year by 2.9 % (2.7 %). with regard to the strata differences (models 2 and 3) it shows that the mortality risk drops both for men and for women along with higher income and higher education, for instance for men by 0.4 % for each increase in the relative income position by 1 percentage point and by 14.6 % for each additional year of education. no interaction effects were ascertained between the stratum infl uences and the year, i.e. across all calendar years the stratum infl uences equally reduce the mortality risk or equally increase life expectancy. the morbidity risk for men and women overall (model 4) proves that the odds of prevalence of disease among men (women) rises by 2.6 % (3.2 %) per year of age and drops for every ensuing calendar year by 0.4 % (1.0 %). with regard to the strata differences there are – unlike the mortality risks – interaction effects with the year. this means that among men the prevalence of disease decreases more strongly in the higher income groups over time than in the lower income groups (model 5), while for women with the educational level of university-entrance diplomas (abitur) (model 6) the prevalence of disease even increases over time. for women with no school-leaving certifi cates or with secondary school certifi cates it also declines. can we really (all) work longer? • 571 table 3 contains the results of the later life expectancies and the healthy life expectancies, calculated from table 2, for men and women both for age 40 and according to the survey period. at fi rst, for men there is great consistency in the comparison of life expectancies from the offi cial mortality tables with the life expectancies calculated using the soep. the deviation is very low in the year 1989 (34.7 versus 34.3 years), rises slightly in the year 1999 (36.5 versus 37.1 years), and somewhat more in the year 2009 (38.6 versus 39.9 years).4 all in all, using the soep tab. 2: change in overall mortality and morbidity risks and according to social stratum for men and women (mortality: relative risks; morbidity: odds ratios) mortality morbidity model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 men constants 47.678*** 55.245 *** 44.230*** 5.819*** 15.521*** -1.378 age 1.102*** 1.101 *** 1.101*** 1.026*** 1.027*** 1.024*** year 0.971*** 0.968 *** 0.974*** 0.996*** 0.991*** 0.999 income1 0.996 *** 1.138** years of education2 0.854*** 0.886*** income1*year 0.999** years of education2*year episodes 101183 100318 91493 incidence 1510 1473 1381 log-likelihood -6799.439 -6622.417 -6151.116 number of cases 117674 117674 117674 women constants 42.552*** 48.108 *** 39.455*** 16.801*** 36.801*** 67.218*** age 1.115*** 1.114 *** 1.113*** 1.032*** 1.032*** 1.031*** year 0.973*** 0.971 *** 0.975*** 0.990*** 0.980*** 0.966*** income1 0.997 *** 0.995*** years of education2 0.877*** 0.002*** income1*year years of education2*year 1.003*** episodes 112409 109615 103230 incidence 1377 1337 1306 log-likelihood -6148.413 -5957.988 -5805.602 number of cases 128609 128609 128609 1 relative income position in percent. 2 no school-leaving certifi cate = 8 years, lower secondary school certifi cate = 9 years, secondary school certifi cate = 10 years, university of applied sciences degree = 12 years, university-entrance diploma (abitur) = 13 years. with an error probability of +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. source: soep (1984-2009) 4 the comparative value of the latest available offi cial mortality table at the third survey period refers to the period of 2007/2009 and thus is one year prior to the corresponding (higher) value of the soep in the year 2009. • rainer unger, alexander schulze572 ta b . 3 : li fe e xp ec ta n cy a nd h ea lt hy li fe e xp ec ta n cy o f m en a nd w o m en a t t he a g e o f 4 0 ac co rd in g to s o ci al s tr at um la te r lif e ex p ec ta nc y in y ea rs la te r he al th y lif e ex pe ct an cy in y ea rs p er ce nt ag e 19 89 19 99 20 09 c ha ng e 20 09 to 1 98 9 in ye ar s2 19 89 19 99 20 09 c ha ng e 20 09 to 1 98 9 in ye ar s2 19 89 19 99 20 09 c ha ng e 20 09 to 19 99 in p er ce nt ag e p oi nt s m en m or ta lit y ta bl e1 34 .7 36 .5 38 .6 + 3. 9 s o e p o ve ra ll 34 .3 37 .1 39 .9 + 5. 6 26 .9 29 .2 31 .4 + 4. 5 78 .5 78 .6 78 .6 + 0. 1 5 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 32 .5 35 .6 38 .8 + 6. 3 23 .8 26 .6 29 .6 + 5. 7 73 .3 74 .8 76 .3 + 3. 0 10 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 34 .3 37 .4 40 .6 + 6. 3 26 .4 29 .5 32 .8 + 6. 7 77 .1 79 .0 80 .7 + 3. 7 20 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 37 .9 41 .0 44 .2 + 6. 3 31 .6 35 .2 38 .8 + 7. 2 83 .4 85 .7 87 .7 + 4. 3 n o s ch o o l-l ea vi ng c er tif ic at e 32 .0 34 .6 37 .2 + 5. 1 24 .4 26 .1 27 .8 + 3. 5 76 .0 75 .5 74 .9 -1 .1 s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l c er tif ic at e 35 .1 37 .7 40 .3 + 5. 2 27 .9 29 .8 31 .6 + 3. 7 79 .5 79 .0 78 .5 -1 .0 u ni ve rs ity -e nt ra nc e d ip lo m a 39 .7 42 .3 44 .8 + 5. 1 33 .3 35 .3 37 .2 + 3. 9 83 .9 83 .5 83 .1 -0 .8 w o m en m or ta lit y ta bl e1 40 .4 41 .8 43 .3 + 2. 9 s o e p o ve ra ll 38 .8 41 .2 43 .6 + 4. 8 28 .9 31 .2 33 .4 + 4. 5 74 .5 75 .6 76 .6 + 2. 1 5 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 37 .6 40 .3 42 .9 + 5. 3 25 .9 28 .9 32 .1 + 6. 2 68 .8 71 .9 74 .8 + 6. 0 10 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 38 .9 41 .6 44 .2 + 5. 3 28 .6 31 .7 34 .8 + 6. 2 73 .4 76 .2 78 .7 + 5. 3 20 0 % o f a ve ra ge in co m e 41 .5 44 .2 46 .7 + 5. 2 33 .7 36 .8 39 .8 + 6. 1 81 .1 83 .2 85 .2 + 4. 1 n o s ch o o l-l ea vi ng c er tif ic at e 37 .3 39 .5 41 .8 + 4. 5 26 .8 28 .9 31 .0 + 4. 2 71 .9 73 .1 74 .2 + 2. 3 s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l c er tif ic at e 39 .7 41 .9 44 .1 + 4. 4 30 .5 32 .2 33 .8 + 3. 3 76 .9 76 .8 76 .7 -0 .2 u ni ve rs ity -e nt ra nc e d ip lo m a 43 .2 45 .4 47 .5 + 4. 3 35 .9 37 .1 38 .1 + 2. 2 83 .0 81 .6 80 .2 -2 .8 1 t he m o rt al ity ta b le s o f t he s ta tis tis ch e b un d es am t a re b as ed o n th e p er io d s 19 88 /1 99 0, 1 99 8/ 20 00 a nd 2 00 7/ 20 09 . 2 d ev ia tio ns p o ss ib le d ue to r o un d in g. s o ur ce : s o e p (1 98 420 09 ); c al cu la tio n b as ed o n d at a fr o m ta b le 2 . can we really (all) work longer? • 573 data over the time period of 20 years examined here there is a rise in the (periodrelated) life expectancy at the age of 40 from 34.3 years to 39.9 years and therefore by 5.6 years. at the same time, the later healthy life expectancy at the age of 40 rose from 26.9 years to 31.4 years and therefore by 4.5 years in the corresponding time period. according to this, the male population will not only get older, but will also experience more years of life in health. this fi nding is consistent with other international studies according to which the increased life expectancy and thus the “gained” years are predominantly also “healthy” years (cambois/robine 1996; robine et al. 2003). if, however, we look at the share of healthy life expectancy in total life expectancy, it is striking that this remains almost constant at 78.6 % over the entire time period. hence, although more healthy years of life are experienced in absolute terms, but this rise is not greater than that of total years of life. the relative share remains constant. how great healthy life expectancy is or how greatly the share of healthy years in life expectancy increases all in all is primarily dependent upon the indicator of disease or disability used (jagger et al. 2011). for younger cohorts the rise is greater with minor health impairments than with serious health impairments (unger 2006). among women there is also great consistency in the comparison of the life expectancies in the offi cial mortality tables with the life expectancies calculated using the soep, although the deviation in the year 1989 is at fi rst greater (40.4 versus 38.8 years) and drops by the year 2009 (43.3 versus years 43.6). overall the life expectancy of women rises in the 20-year time period considered here by 4.8 years, while healthy life expectancy increases almost to the same magnitude with 4.5 years. as with the men, women are not only getting older, but are experiencing more years of life in health, whereby unlike the men this share also increases relatively (from 74.5 % to 76.6 %). to answer the question of whether all population groups equally profi t from an improvement in health over the course of time, the calculations for general life expectancy and for healthy life expectancy were conducted for three income levels and three educational levels. the fi ndings clearly prove that life expectancy is considerably linked to both income and educational level. for example, for the men (women) in the year 2009 the difference in life expectancy between the lowest income group (50 % of the average income) of 38.8 (42.9) years and the highest income group (200 % of the average income) of 44.2 (46.7) years was 5.4 (3.8) years and therefore is somewhat lesser than the gain of 6.3 (5.3) years of life in every income group in the past 20 years! the differentiation according to educational levels shows a similar pattern. in the year 2009, men (women) with no school-leaving certifi cates can expect to live another 37.2 (41.8) years, while the life expectancy of men (women) with university-entrance diplomas is another 44.8 (47.5) years and thus additional 7.6 (5.7) years. the gain in years of life in the past 20 years of approx. 5.2 (4.4) years for the individual education groups is somewhat lesser than for the individual income groups. the uniform rise in years of life in the income and education groups is due to the fact that the mortality risk for all income and education groups drops to the same extent over time (cf. table 2). therefore, all income and educational classes profi t equally from a longer life. the results furthermore confi rm the fi nding • rainer unger, alexander schulze574 from other studies whereby both educational differences and income disparities are considerably more signifi cant for the life expectancy of men than of women (kaneda et al. 2004; sihvonen et al. 1998). the greater strata differences among men might be explained by the fact that for men the income position or years of education attained may be more greatly associated with vocational stress than in the case of women, since a considerably smaller share of women are employed. yet to answer the initial question it is essential to know whether healthy life expectancy has also developed similarly for all social strata. first, the extent of healthy life expectancy varies distinctly more between the individual income and educational levels than the extent of general life expectancy, as sihvonen et al. (1998) ascertained for various educational levels. for example, among the men (women) in the year 2009 the difference in later healthy life expectancy between the lowest income group of 29.6 (32.1) years and the highest income group of 38.8 (39.8) years is 9.2 (7.7) years, but in general life expectancy however “only” 5.4 (3.8) years. the difference of the later healthy life expectancy between the group of men (women) with no school-leaving certifi cates of 27.8 (31.0) years and with university-entrance diplomas of 37.2 (38.1) years is 9.4 (7.1) years, however “only” 7.6 (5.7) years for general life expectancy. the gain in healthy years of life also varies for the individual income groups. while for men in the lowest income category there was an increase in the past 20 years from 23.8 years by 5.8 years to 29.6 years, the number of healthy years of life in the upper income group rose from 31.6 years by 7.2 years to 38.8 years. there are less differences in the education groups, in which the healthy life expectancy for men with no school-leaving certifi cates rose by 3.4 years and for the men with university-entrance diplomas by 3.9 years. the fact that healthy life expectancy develops differently depending on the social stratum is also seen in the development of the share of healthy life expectancy in general life expectancy, which rises more quickly for the men in the higher income groups than in the lower income groups, or drops less in higher education groups than in the lower education groups. among women the scenario is, in part, dissimilar. while there were practically no income disparities in the healthy life expectancy in a comparison of the years 1989 and 2009 (it rose steadily by approx. 6.2 years), there are distinct differences among the educational levels, whereby women with no school-leaving certifi cates experience a greater increase in healthy years of life with 4.2 years compared to 2.2 years for women with university-entrance diplomas. in women, educational infl uences are more signifi cant than economic infl uences. this can probably be attributed to the fact that the income has been generated in the household context and therefore, the income of women consists mainly of the (earned) income of the men. overall we can assert that for the male population in germany both the lower income and education groups can expect considerably fewer healthy years of life than the upper income and education groups. nevertheless all social strata profi t from a gain in healthy years of life, whereby the upper income group profi ts to a considerable degree. however, the gain in healthy years of life is far more similar for the different education groups. we can assert that for the female population also all income and education groups profi t from a gain in “healthy” years of life, whereby – can we really (all) work longer? • 575 by contrast to the men – the different income groups profi t to the same degree and the lower education group profi ts more than the higher education group. overall, with regard to the initial question these fi ndings suggest that a rise in the standard retirement age should not involve one mandatory age for all persons. since apart from the fact that social differences have a far greater effect on healthy life expectancy than on general life expectancy these also increase over the course of time. hence, over time, health disparity according to social stratum increases. this effect occurs in particular for men since in their case the educational and income positions correlate more strongly with the vocational burden resulting from employment than among women. moreover, healthy life expectancy with its differentiation according to social stratum is far more suited for revealing the ability to work than life expectancy. one possible option for designing age limits could be to align it to a ratio of healthy to unhealthy life expectancy determined differently depending on the social stratum. one mandatory uniform working lifetime for all persons would however not do justice to these fi ndings of socially highly unequally distributed life opportunities. instead, the fi ndings support a fl exible arrangement of retirement age limits. 4.2 the change in the prevalence of disease among the non-employed and the employed since the analysis of later life expectancy and healthy life expectancy refers to the total population, it does not yet conclusively clarify whether the state of health of the employed also improved over the course of time or whether, for example, mobility processes resulted in an increase in people leaving work in good health, after which only the state of health of the non-employed improved over the course of time and perhaps contributed to an improvement in the health of the total population. it must also be taken into account that the group of older non-employed persons is quite heterogeneous (also with regard to their state of health). for example, the duration of non-employment may vary and for women family-related issues may play a greater role than for men. in this respect, the state of health of the non-employed is characterised by a number of causal correlations, which may also change over time. for this purpose, the changes in age-specifi c prevalence of disease among nonemployed and employed men and women (model 1 and 4) and according to social stratum (models 2-3 and 5-6) were calculated. the results of the logistical regressions are shown in table 4. the overall effect of the year shows that the prevalence of disease for both non-employed and employed men and women declines (or is not signifi cant) with each ensuing year, regardless of whether it was controlled for social stratum. since the parameters calculated on the logit are diffi cult to interpret, the example of the 40th year of age is used to better evaluate the development. the corresponding prevalence of disease for the non-employed and employed men and women are shown according to social stratum in figures 1a and 1b. initially a reduction in prevalence is ascertainable both for the non-employed (25.1 % versus 23.3 %), and • rainer unger, alexander schulze576 for the employed male population (11.4 % versus 10.5 %). even when differentiated according to income, there is a reduction in prevalence both for the non-employed and for the employed, whereby the prevalence decreases slightly more with increasing income. to some extent, another scenario is apparent among the educational levels: there is also a (albeit only) slight drop in prevalence among the employed, whereas among the non-employed the prevalence decreases only in the group of those with no school-leaving certifi cates, while it even increases among those with university-entrance diplomas. due to the ascertained improvement in the health of the non-employed and the employed, the observed improvement in the healthy life expectancy of the overall male population can therefore probably not be explained solely with mobility processes between these two groups. rather, it seems that the working conditions of the employed in the income and education groups examined here (with the exception of those with university-entrance diplomas) have also improved. additionally, the fact that the state of health of the non-employed improved over the course tab. 4: change in the prevalence of disease overall and according to social stratum for men and women (logistic regressions, odds ratios) non-employed employed model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 men constants 7.982** 24.897*** 63.532** 6.531* -7.385 0.390 age 1.005*** 1.005*** 1.005*** 1.025*** 1.030*** 1.023 *** year 0.995** 0.987*** 0.969** 0.995** 1.002 0.999 income1 1.153* 1.273*** years of education2 0.001** 0.925 *** income1*year 0.999* 0.999*** years of education2*year 1.003** -2 log-likelihood number of cases 55693 55693 55693 55693 55693 55693 women constants 5.161* 34.042*** 38.138+ 31.503*** 46.462*** 138.8 *** age 1.024*** 1.025*** 1.024*** 1.024*** 1.027*** 1.021 *** year 0.996** 0.982*** 0.980+ 0.983*** 0.976*** 0.932 *** income1 0.893* 0.997*** years of education2 0.016+ 0.001 *** income1*year 1.001* years of education2*year 1.002+ 1.006 *** -2 log-likelihood number of cases 61981 61981 61981 61981 61981 61981 1 relative income position in percent. 2 no school-leaving certifi cate = 8 years, lower secondary school certifi cate = 9 years, secondary school certifi cate = 10 years, university of applied sciences degree = 12 years, university-entrance diploma (abitur) = 13 years. with an error probability of +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. source: soep (1984-2009) can we really (all) work longer? • 577 fig. 1a: prevalence of disease among men at the age of 40 according to survey year and social stratum 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 total 50 % of income 100 % of income 200 % of income no schoolleaving certificate secondary school certificate universityentrance diploma 23.3 24.9 19.7 11.9 26.6 22.9 18.1 24.2 28.1 23.1 15.1 27.8 22.9 16.7 25.1 31.7 26.9 19.0 29.1 22.8 15.3 1989 1999 2009 prevalence in percent 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 total 50 % of income 100 % of income 200 % of income no schoolleaving certificate secondary school certificate universityentrance diploma 10.5 11.6 9.5 6.3 12.9 11.2 9.1 11.0 12.0 10.4 7.8 13.0 11.3 9.1 11.4 12.4 11.4 9.6 13.1 11.5 9.3 1989 1999 2009 prevalence in percent employed non-employed • rainer unger, alexander schulze578 fig. 1b: prevalence of disease among women at the age of 40 according to survey year and social stratum 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 total 50 % of income 100 % of income 200 % of income no schoolleaving certificate secondary school certificate universityentrance diploma 16.4 17.3 14.3 9.6 18.7 15.7 11.9 17 19.6 15.9 10.3 19.3 15.7 11.3 17.5 22.1 17.7 11.0 19.9 15.6 10.7 1989 1999 2009 prevalence in percent 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 total 50 % of income 100 % of income 200 % of income no schoolleaving certificate secondary school certificate universityentrance diploma 10.3 11.1 9.5 6.9 11.3 11.1 10.7 12.1 13.7 11.8 8.6 13.5 11.9 9.7 14.0 16.9 14.6 10.8 16.0 12.7 8.8 1989 1999 2009 prevalence in percent calculation based on data from table 4. source: soep (1984-2009) employed non-employed can we really (all) work longer? • 579 of time speaks against the alternative explanation of a growing infl uence of selection processes that lead to more healthy people being employed to an increasing degree thereby contributing to an improvement in health over the course of time. however, the fact that the prevalence among the non-employed drops more quickly than among the employed may also indicate that mobility processes should not be entirely neglected. on principle, the scenario of an improvement in the health both among non-employed and employed women is similar, which speaks – like the fi ndings for men – more for a reduction in workloads than for particularly pronounced (health-related) mobility processes between these groups. while, however, for the men the prevalence among the non-employed drops more strongly than among the employed, the reduction in prevalence for women is greater among the employed than the non-employed. this fi nding might be explained by differing health-related mobility processes for men and women, according to which, for instance, men tend to leave employment while in good health and women while in poor health. 5 discussion this article investigates the question of whether lengthening working lifetimes is a realistic perspective against the background of the changes in health in the past 20 years. overall, it was shown that the number of healthy years of life increased both among men and among women. although all social strata profi t from the gain in healthy years of life, it was also shown that an improvement in health among the male population in the lower social strata cannot be said to equal that in the higher social strata. the upper income groups particularly profi t from a gain in “healthy” years of life. the differences are less distinct among the educational levels. nevertheless, the upper educational levels here also profi t to a greater extent than the lower educational levels. among the female population all income groups profi t to the same extent from additional healthy years of life, while – unlike the men – the lower educational levels experience more additional healthy years of life than the higher. one reason for the greater income dependence of the change in healthy life expectancy among the men compared to the women is probably the higher correlation between income and the burden associated with the vocational situation for men. the analyses also revealed that the social differences in healthy life expectancy are to some extent far more distinct than general life expectancy. therefore, people of the lower social strata are not only disadvantaged through their social position, but in fact this disadvantage increases further over the course of time. one mandatory working lifetime for all persons would therefore not do justice to these fi ndings of socially highly unequally distributed life opportunities. one possible option for designing age limits, for instance, could be to align it to a ratio of healthy to unhealthy life expectancy determined differently depending on the social stratum. hence, the fi ndings support a fl exible arrangement of retirement age limits. furthermore, this study ascertained that the lengthening of healthy years of life is also refl ected in an improvement in health of both the employed and the non• rainer unger, alexander schulze580 employed population. in this respect, the improvement in the health of the general population appears not to be caused primarily by health-related mobility processes, but rather also by a reduction in workloads for instance. presumably this study was unable to identify particularly disadvantaged population groups in the strata differentiation according to income and schooling conducted here, since they are, for example, exposed to particularly stressful working conditions. due to the small number of cases, the necessary differentiation for this in different vocational groups could not be carried out in this study using data from the socio-economic panel. besides belonging to specifi c vocations, different employment biographies should also be considered. for instance, the careers of women are often characterised by interruptions for child-raising or other kinds of family support. for this purpose, we suggest referring to other data sources such as those provided by the institute for employment research (institut für arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung (iab)) for instance. references bebbington, andrew c. 1988: the expectation of life without disability in england and wales. in: social science and medicine 27: 321-326. brønnum-hansen, henrik 1998: trends in health expectancy in denmark, 1987-1994. in: danish medical bulletin 42: 217-221. brønnum-hansen, henrik 2005: health expectancy in denmark, 1987-2000. in: european journal of public health 15: 20-25 [doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cki106]. cambois, emmanuelle; robine, jean-marie 1996: an international comparison of trends in disability-free life expectancy. in: eisen, roland; sloan, frank a. (eds.): long-term care: economic issues and policy solutions. boston: kluwer academic publishers: 11-23. crimmins, eileen m.; hayward, mark d.; saito, yasuhiko 1996: differentials in active life expectancy in the older population of the united states. in: journal of gerontology: social science 51: 111-120. crimmins, eileen m.; saito, yasuhiko; ingegneri, dominique 1997: trends in disabilityfree life expectancy in the united states, 1970-90. in: population and development review 23: 555-572. crimmins, eileen m; saito, yasuhiko 2001: trends in healthy life expectancy in the united states, 1970-1990: gender, racial, and educational differences. in: social science and medicine 52: 1629-1641 [doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00273-2]. feinstein, jonathan s. 1993: the relationship between socioeconomic status and health. in: the milbank quarterly 71: 279-322. goebel, jan; krause, peter; zähle, tanja 2007: dynamik von einkommen und armut in ostund west-deutschland. in: sozialer fortschritt 56: 200-207. guralnik, jack m. et al. 1993: educational status and active life expectancy among older blacks and whites. in: the new england journal of medicine 329: 110-116. can we really (all) work longer? • 581 höpfl inger, françois 2007: ausdehnung der lebensarbeitszeit und die stellung älterer arbeitskräfte – perspektiven aus sicht einer differenziellen alternsforschung. in: pasero, ursula; backes, gertrud m.; schroeter, klaus r. (eds.): altern in gesellschaft. wiesbaden: vs verlag: 306-343 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-531-90416-0_14]. hummer, robert a.; rogers, richard g.; eberstein, isaac w. 1998: sociodemographic differentials in adult mortality: a review of analytic approaches. in: population and development review 24: 553-578. jagger, carol et al. 2011: inequalities in health expectancies at older ages in the european union: fi ndings from the survey of health and retirement in europe (share). in: journal of epidemiology and community health 65: 1030-1035 [doi: 10.1136/ jech.2010.117705]. kaneda, toshiko; zachary, zimmer; tang, zhe 2004: differentials in life expectancy and active life expectancy by socioeconomic status among older adults in beijing. working paper no. 189. katz, sidney et al. 1983: active life expectancy. in: the new england journal of medicine 309: 1218-1224. klein, thomas; unger, rainer 2001: einkommen, gesundheit und mortalität in deutschland, großbritannien und den usa. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 53: 96-110 [doi: 10.1007/s11577-001-0005-6]. kroll, lars eric; lampert, thomas 2010: zunehmende unterschiede im subjektiven gesundheitszustand zwischen den einkommensschichten. in: informationsdienst soziale indikatoren (isi) 43: 5-8 [doi: 0935-218x]. kroll, lars eric; ziese, thomas 2009: kompression oder expansion der morbidität? in: böhm, karin; tesch-römer, clemens; ziese thomas (eds.): gesundheit und krankheit im alter. robert koch-institut. berlin: 105-112. lampert, thomas; kroll, lars 2008: zeitliche entwicklung der gesundheitlichen ungleichheit in deutschland und anderen europäischen ländern. in: public health forum 16: 1-3 [doi:10.1016/j.phf.2008.04.006]. land, kenneth c.; guralnik, jack m.; blazer, dan g. 1994: estimating increment-decrement life tables with multiple covariates from panel data: the case of active life expectancy. in: demography 31: 297-319. lehr, ursula; kruse, andreas 2006: verlängerung der lebensarbeitszeit – eine realistische perspektive? in: zeitschrift für arbeitsund organisationspsychologie a&o 50: 240-247 [doi: 10.1026/0932-4089.50.4.240]. perenboom, rom j.; boshuizen, hendriek c.; van de water, harry p. 1993: trends in health expectancies in the netherlands, 1981-1990. in: robine, jean-marie et al. (eds.): calculation of health expectancies: harmonization, consensus achieved and future perspectives. paris: libbey eurotexte: 309-320 pinheiro, paulo; krämer alexander 2009: calculation of health expectancies with administrative data for north rhine-westphalia, a federal state of germany, 1999-2005. in: population health metrics 7: 4 [doi: 10.1186/1478-7954-7-4]. robine, jean marie et al. 2003: determining health expectancies. chichester: john wiley and sons. sackmann, reinhold 2008: chancen und risiken der festlegung von altersgrenzen des ruhestands. in: zeitschrift für gerontologie und geriatrie 41: 345-351 [doi: 10.1007/ s00391-008-0005-5]. • rainer unger, alexander schulze582 siegrist, johannes; dragano, nico 2006: berufl iche belastungen und gesundheit. in: wendt, claus; wolf, christof (eds.): soziologie der gesundheit. sonderheft 46 der kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie: vs-verlag: 109-124. sihvonen, ari-pekka et al. 1998: socioeconomic inequalities in health expectancy in finland and norway in the late 1980s. in: social science and medicine 47: 303-315. soep group 2001: the german socio-economic panel (gsoep) after more than 15 years – overview. in: holst, elke; lillard, dean r.; diprete, thomas a. (eds.): proceedings of the 2000 fourth international conference of german socio-eco nomic panel study users (gsoep2000), vierteljahrshefte zur wirtschaftsforschung 70: 7–14 [doi: 10.3790/vjh.70.1.7]. sullivan, daniel f. 1971: a single index of mortality and morbidity. in: hsmha health reports 86: 347-354. unger, rainer 2006: trends in active life expectancy in germany between 1984 and 2003 – a cohort analyses with different health indicators. in: journal of public health 14: 155-163 [doi: 10.1007/s10389-006-0037-5]. valkonen, tapani; sihvonen, ari-pekka; lahelma, eero 1997: health expectancy by level of education in finland 44: 801-808. wilkinson, richard g. 2001: kranke gesellschaften. soziales gleichgewicht und gesundheit. wien/new york: springer. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “können wir (alle) überhaupt länger arbeiten? trends in der gesunden lebenserwartung nach sozialschicht in deutschland”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-03de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos2013-03de0, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 13.09.2011 date of acceptance: 25.04.2012 dr. rainer unger ( ). universität bremen, zentrum für sozialpolitik, 28359 bremen, germany. e-mail: r.unger@zes.uni-bremen.de url: http://www.zes.uni-bremen.de/das-zentrum/organisation/mitglieder/rainer-unger/ dr. alexander schulze. johannes gutenberg-universität mainz, institut für soziologie, 55099 mainz, germany. e-mail: schulal@uni-mainz.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-mainz.de/fb02/hradil/118.php © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world: recent experience and opportunities for improvement joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz abstract: in this article, the offi cial fertility projections of the statistical agencies in germany, austria, and switzerland are examined. we refer to the literature on this topic and the history of fertility projections in all three countries. we conclude that the basis of fertility projections is the persistence of the present. we then investigate the most recent projections in more detail – with special regard for their consistency of timing and level changes of fertility. this shows that in the low fertility context, such as in the three countries under consideration, where fertility postponement is expected to stop sometime in upcoming decades, the medium assumptions of constancy contain an implicit decline in the forecasted level of fertility. both tempo and cohort perspectives on projected fertility reveal this conclusion. consequently, we suggest that agencies should deal explicitly with the prospect of postponement and their effect on fertility levels. the bongaarts-feeney framework or similar ones could be used. we also provide examples of three consistent variants (low, medium, and high) in the case of germany, and show that such a forecast can in some cases outperform the usual constant level forecast in a low-fertility context. keywords: fertility · projections · forecasts · tempo · statistical agencies 1 introduction declining fertility is considered to be a key driver of the aging and shrinking of a population. consequently, a key component of future composition and size of populations is their future fertility. the object of our analysis is not fertility as such, but rather forecasts of fertility. our interest is in the offi cial forecasts of germany, switzerland, and austria since the last baby boom.1 since sobotka (2011 in cpos comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 36, 2-3 (2011): 661-692 (date of release: 31.05.2012) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2011-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-09en5 1 the title of this paper refers to the “german-speaking world”, but when we consider switzerland we refer to the whole country. • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz662 36,2-3) pointed out that the fertility patterns of these three countries are very similar, it seems appropriate to discuss their projection strategies together. we fi rst provide an overview of the existing literature on this topic and the forecasts that were made for the countries under consideration during the last four decades which allow us to make some generalisations about forecasting practice. second, we look at the range of rationales that are used to justify different forecasts, and updates of past forecasts. these range from an appeal to easterlin’s theory of relative cohort size, to the conclusion that there is no adequate theory. third, we look at the issue of fertility postponement in the forecasts in greater detail, showing that forecasting agencies have yet to adopt a consistent practice for dealing with “tempo” effects and the divergence between cohort and period fertility. finally, we offer some observations comparing and contrasting the approaches used to date, and making some recommendations which we hope will give future forecasts a fi rmer scientifi c basis. our suggestions may not necessarily improve forecasting accuracy, but we hope that they will make it easier to understand why forecasts go wrong, if they do. forecasters are aiming to combine the application of the best known demographic methods with analyses of demographic structural developments. the advancement in demographic methods, including fertility analysis and projections, is a continuing process. in addition, increasingly in-depth analyses of demographic, social, economic, political, cultural and historical conditions shaping fertility behaviour are taken into account when defi ning assumptions about future fertility trends. since it is diffi cult to assess how the use of such variables in forecasts have preformed, we are focusing in this article on the demographic methods and logic used in the projections. 2 general preliminary remarks the terms “forecast” and “projections” can in theory refer to quite different kinds of exercises. whereas projections refer to hypothetical scenarios under defi ned assumptions, forecast try to foresee the future as precise as possible. in practice, however, as keyfi tz (1982) has noted, the scenarios used by statistical agencies (particularly when there is a middle case) are chosen because they appear to agencies to be the most reasonable and most likely for the future. we therefore follow keyfi tz’s practice of using the two terms “forecast” and “projection” interchangeably, although the statistical agencies themselves often restrict themselves to the “projection” label. in addition to this comment, it is also worth prefacing the actual experience of forecasting fertility in the german-speaking world with some general comments and refl ections from the literature on fertility forecasting. as early as 1950, dorn had enumerated points not given enough consideration in fertility projection (dorn 1950). he noted that the fertility of a single year or a short period does not provide suffi cient information to assess future trends. the use of very recent trends will in many cases give them undue weight, especially in a long-term projection. another relevant issue is that a long-lasting trend, such as falling birth rates, need not necesfertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 663 sarily be a continuing trend. a very critical view of population forecasting in general was taken by hajnal (1955). he argues that “much of the elaborate technique of forecasters is expended in vain; crude methods could have archived equally good results” (hajnal 1955: 310). instead of improving techniques to extrapolate agespecifi c fertility rates, demographers should include other factors affecting fertility in the analysis. as examples of factors for which data could be found, he mentions impending changes in sex-ratios, imbalances in marriage markets, and fl uctuations in distribution of birth by parity. a detailed overview of techniques to project fertility was given by de beer (1992). he concludes that use of age-specifi c fertility rates is essential, since changes in age structure of potential mothers within coming decades is projectable with a high degree of certainty. besides changes in the fertility of certain age-groups, the number of women in these age-groups is the main driver of changes in the number of total births, and cannot be excluded from the analysis. de beer (1992) also discusses the use of methods based on period or cohort observations. period observations can be distorted by the changes in the timing of fertility and thus do not always lead to plausible levels of family size for successive birth cohorts. a cohort approach uses this fi gure (completed fertility of real cohorts) as a central variable, but fi rst, requires a long data series, and second, disregards information on cohorts still reproductively active, particularly for women at the beginning of their childbearing years. hence, de beer advises the use of period observations for short term forecasts, and cohort considerations for medium and long term forecasts. for other extensive reviews of population projection methods involving fertility projection, see booth (2006) and wilson and rees (2005). for a review of fertility projection strategies in particular, see sorvillo (1999). it can be summarised, that the prevalent practice by forecasters in post-demographic-transition populations in north america, europe, and asia has been to assume that there is no trend toward either higher or lower fertility. rather, forecasts tend to take the current level of fertility and extrapolate it into the future. the basis of fertility forecasting is the persistence of the present. the contrast of fertility studies with mortality is striking at fi rst glance. in mortality forecasts, the question is not whether mortality will improve but rather how quickly this will happen. but with mortality, societies and individuals clearly have a common aim, and are marshalling common resources toward healthier and longer life. with fertility, there is no such common aim. it may be that people want fewer, or more, children in the future. it may be that conditions are more conducive, or less, to having children in the future. governments, despite, answering the united nations’ population policy statements (united nations 2007: 12) pursue policies which are not aimed solely at raising their birth rates, but rather have many competing goals, including economic growth, reducing economic inequality, enhancing gender equality, improving the environment, protecting the aged, improving education, and more – all of which have potential bearing on future fertility decisions. there is so much uncertainty surrounding future fertility rates that one cannot with confi dence even state the direction of the trend. demographers failed to predict the baby boom, and also failed to predict the baby bust. no one saw the onset of postponement and the dramatic effect it would • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz664 have on period fertility. although some predicted that postponement would slow someday, no one knew when. the swiss, in a particularly self-critical statement, say that based on known factors, the recent increase in fertility should have been better predicted (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: 32).2 forecasting is always an uncertain task, however, and there will always be the potential for making a wrong prediction. we think the question that should be asked is “are we incorporating the full informative potential of contemporary demography theory and analysis?” in the absence of a set of fertility determinants that everybody can agree on, the answer is probably yes. keyfi tz (1982) argued in this context that theory-guided assumptions cannot be used for projections at all, even if valid theories exist. the reason is that they are conditional on and affected by other relations. hence, it is not possible to forecast explanatory variables. even if these forecasts are available, they are usually of too short a term for use within population projections. the forecasts we consider are one-size-fi ts-all forecasts, aimed at a wide variety of users. the same forecasts are used to infl uence educational policy decision in the next decade and pension policy decisions going forward half a century or more. while short-term forecasts obviously need to be updated on a frequent basis, it is remarkable that long-term forecasts are also frequently updated. as we will see, forecasts made fi ve years apart can have quite different views of the same future some 20 years hence. our focus here is on the “middle” or “main” forecasts, as opposed to the high and low variants. alternative approaches to fertility forecasting include “stochastic” forecasts in which a time series model is developed, which then provides not only a central forecast, but also a range of uncertainty, and set of probabilistically consistent future paths for fertility to follow (e.g. lee/tuljapurkar 1994). 3 the recent offi cial forecasts in the german-speaking countries. we now consider the offi cial forecasts since about 1960 in germany, austria, and switzerland. for germany, we consider only the west german experience before unifi cation. for purposes of comparison we also consider the most recent versions of other forecasts for these countries, produced at the european level by eurostat and at the international level by the united nations. however, the focus of this paper lies on the offi cial national forecasts, because they give us the greatest insight into how the agencies react to national-level changes in their fertility rate. figure 1 shows the total fertility rate observed in the german-speaking countries along with the forecasts of this rate made at different points in time. we show only 2 „auf der grundlage der zwar gewünschten, aber aufgeschobenen geburten der in den 1970erjahren geborenen frauen war die letztere zunahme eigentlich vorhersehbar“ (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: 32). fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 665 fig. 1: observed (circles) vs. projected (solid line) tfrs for german speaking countries with the respective base years of the projections germany 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 tfr 1st (1966) 2nd (1968) 3rd (1970) 4th (1972) constant 4th (1972) decline 6th (1988) 12th (2009) 5th (1975) austria 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7 2.9 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 tfr projection 1963 projection 1967 projection 1971 projection 1954 projection 1984 projection 1987 projection 1958 projection 1978 projection 1998 projections 2005, 2007, 2009 projection 2002 • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz666 the central forecast, both for graphical clarity and for consistency, since high and low alternatives were not always given.3 the method used for the german forecasts is transparent. from 1966 to 2009, future fertility has been forecast to be a level continuation of the fertility observed at the year of the forecast. thus the forecast for the year 2000 goes from 2.50 in 1966 to 1.4 in 1988, not because of any new theories of the determinants of fertility behaviour, nor because of changing forecasting methods, nor from new insights of statistical analysis, but simply because the level of fertility at the time of the forecast fell from about 2.5 to about 1.4 children per women. in austria and switzerland, the forecasts have been more complex and varied. until 1977, austria followed the same approach as germany, extrapolating the level of tfr observed in the forecast year. however, since 1977, the austrians have predicted a non-monotonic path of future fertility consisting of an initial dip in fertility, followed by a subsequent rise. as we will see in the rest of the paper, this strikingly non-monotonic forecast is a result of the austrian method of assuming constancy – not in the period tfr, but in the cohort tfr under changing tempo. the austrian method failed in its fi rst attempt in 1978, predicting a rapid rebound of fertility within a dozen years. however, the 1987 forecasts were very accurate for their fi rst years of their forecast, before failing to see another dip in fertility after 1995. the 1998 switzerland 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 tfr projection 2010 projection 2005 projection 1991 projection 2000 projection 1995 sources: publications by statistical agencies, human fertility database 3 our fi gures are inspired by lee (1976) and his graph showing that the us forecasters behaved similarly. fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 667 forecast captured, to some extent, the rise in the 2000 to 2005 period. whereas the 2002 projection predicted a stable tfr level of 1.4, current forecasts are predicting a rebound of about 0.1 children to a level of 1.5 children over the long term. switzerland has also been predicting an increase of fertility since 1990. the forecasts in 1991, 1995, and 2000 all predicted a rebound, but the forecast of 2005 predicted a decline. the most recent forecast in 2010 predicts no change at all. on one level, the three countries share almost identical fertility histories and also similar forecasts. the current long term tfr in austria and switzerland is set at 1.50, in germany it is 1.40. on the other hand, the approach to forecasting is quite different. austria and switzerland have tried to include the likely recovery of fertility, but germany has decidedly not done so. since projections on the european level, by eurostat, and on the international level, by the un, show considerable differences from the offi cial forecasts by statistical agencies, we will consider their approaches to project fertility in the following. the un projections are cohort-component projections, produced in 5-year intervals for 5-year age-groups. the publication of revisions for the projections follows a biennial cycle. within the most recent publication (the 2010 revision) a great change in regard to the fertility forecasting strategy was conducted. the preceding revisions used a very simple linear model to forecast the tfr for below-replacement fertility countries. tfr-levels were assumed to change linearly at a quinquennial rate of 0.05 to approach a level of 1.85 children per woman, which was assumed to remain constant after it was reached. this procedure delivers fertility forecasts that are not country-specifi c, which had been one of the initial reasons for the 2010 revision. here the authors of the un switched to a bayesian projection model – more precisely, a fi rst order autoregressive time series model with its mean fi xed at a tfr of 2.1 as approximate replacement level. in the case of germany, austria and switzerland, the model parameters depend on estimates from observed data, which is supposed to make the trajectory country-specifi c, back to the replacement level. in both fertility forecasting strategies, a low and a high fertility scenario were derived in the same manner: half a child was either subtracted or added to the target value. the un demographers directly address the infl uence of tempo-effects on their projections: “bongaarts and feeney (1998) have pointed out that current belowreplacement period tfrs may be lower than the cohort tfrs for the currently fertile cohorts, refl ecting a tempo rather than a quantum effect. our ar(1) model for the low fertility phase 3 predicts a recovery from below-replacement period tfr, as does the bongaarts-feeney work, and so it may to some extent capture this phenomenon.” (raftery et al. 2009: 16). however, the projections were with regard to separate projections on tempo and quantum effects not made compatible. figure 2 displays the latest tfr projections for the three countries under consideration by eurostat, as well. the underlying assumption of the eurostat projections for all demographic indicators is a europe-wide convergence in the very long run (eurostat 2011b). for germany and switzerland, the outcome of fertility assumptions leads to projections that are higher than the medium scenarios of projections • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz668 fig. 2: projected tfrs of the most recent population projections from the un, eurostat and the statistical agencies in comparison 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 19 50 19 60 19 70 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 20 20 20 30 20 40 20 50 tfr un medium eurostat statistical agency germany 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 19 50 19 60 19 70 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 20 20 20 30 20 40 20 50 tfr un medium eurostat statistical agency austria 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 19 50 19 60 19 70 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 20 20 20 30 20 40 20 50 tfr un medium eurostat statistical agency switzerland sources: united nations population division 2011, eurostat 2011a fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 669 by statistical agencies, but considerably lower than the ones by the un. for austria, the eurostat tfr projection is very similar to the one by the statistical agency.4 4 the rationale for forecasts in this section, we recount the history of offi cial forecasts in the three countries, following the history of the stated rationale for forecasting assumptions as they evolved over time. in so doing we exclude offi cial forecasts that have been made on the sub-national level. in all three countries, forecasts exist at the level of federal states (or cantons) and are coordinated with the one on the national level, but with varying assumptions for the demographic parameters (statistik austria 2008: 8, statistisches bundesamt 2009: 9, bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2011: 1).5 4.1 germany in germany the tradition of projections goes back to 1952. since 1966 the federal statistical offi ce has conducted coordinated population projections by harmonising demographic trends of the federal states and national territory. currently the 12th and latest coordinated population projection is from 2009. the 1st (1966-2000) and the 2nd (1968-1990) coordinated population projection postulated only a single variant in fertility development, assuming constant birth rates over the entire forecast horizon. the forecasters did not anticipate the sharp decline in fertility since 1966. although the forecasters have noticed that fertility rates were strongly overestimated in both previous projections, they didn’t formulate any alternative scenarios to assess to what extent fertility levels might decline. the 3rd projection (1970-1985) is based on the 1969 age specifi c fertility rates, with a proportional adjustment for the expected fertility decline in 1970. from 1970 onward, a constant fertility trend was assumed. the forecasters acknowledged that they had little basis on which to predict the future, since the variations in fertility furnish no conclusion for the long term fertility trend. consequently they explicitly acknowledged that they must assume constancy to get a picture of likely future trends. conducting projections in short time intervals is therefore very important in order to account for changing fertility developments (kampl/rückert 1971: 668). the 4th coordinated population projection (1972-1985) added an assumption of fertility decline by 9 % in 1975 in addition to the constant variant (bretz 1986: 257). the forecasters argued that the scenario of fertility decline refl ects the dramatic reduction in fertility in several european countries related to a change in age-specifi c fertility patterns caused by considerable changes in family planning6. 4 a more detailed description of the methodology of eurostat’s projections is forthcoming and was not available for us at the time of publication (see eurostat 2011). 5 for a further analysis of sub-national fertility trends see basten et al. 2011 in cpos 36,2-3. 6 „in den veränderungen der altersspezifi schen fruchtbarkeitsziffern spiegeln sich – sehr allgemein formuliert – auswirkungen der familienplanung wider.“ (linke/rückert 1973: 83) • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz670 the authors narrowed the forecast horizon from a period of 35 years in the 1st to less than 15 years in the 4th coordinated population projection.7 similar arguments underlie the fertility assumption of the 5th coordinated population projection (1975-1990). the forecasters acknowledged that there was little information about the determinants of individual fertility decisions regarding number of children or spacing of childbearing. some examples of possible deterrents to childbearing included widespread use of contraceptives, changing attitudes toward gender roles, and the rising proportion of women in the labour force. an economics-based approach to explaining fertility-related behaviour suggests that potential parents might react to increasing costs of childrearing by having fewer children. upon these considerations, the forecasters concluded that an increase of fertility was rather unlikely. however, they predicted that the decline would stop around 1977.8 the 6th coordinated population projection (1988-2030) was the last one conducted for west germany alone. only one scenario – a constant fertility level – has been postulated. in the 7th coordinated population projection (1990-2030), which was the fi rst one after reunifi cation, assumptions were separately made for both parts of the country, assuming convergence in 1995 (sommer 1992: 217). in the subsequent projections there was a focus on the speed of the convergence between the two parts of germany. complete convergence in 2010 in the 8th coordinated population projection (1993-2040) or alternatively in 2005 in the 9th coordinated population projection (1999-2050) and again 2010 in the 10th coordinated population projection (2003-2050) were functional estimates, as fertility levels did converge between east and west germany in 2007.9 nevertheless, all these projections have been made without regard for any alternative assumptions for the tfr. the forecasters assume that the fertility rate will stay at 1.4 which is rather low, particularly over a period of half a century. it was not until the 11th coordinated population projection (2006-2050), however, that fertility assumptions were made for a low, medium and high variant. the main assumption, “approximate stability”, supposes continuation of current age-specifi c birth trends until 2025. the total fertility rate remains at its present level of nearly 1.4 children per woman and the average age at birth rises by about 1.6 years. the second variant, “slight increase”, assumes an increase in birth rates to 1.6 children per woman until 2025 with a rise in the average age at giving birth of about one year. afterwards birth rates remain constant from 2026 to 2050. the low variant, “slight decrease”, assumes that birth rates will gradually decrease to 1.2 children per woman until 2050, and that woman’s average age at giving birth further rises by about 7 we could not fi nd any explanation for the forecast horizon reduction from the 1st to the 2nd projection, and even further reduction in the 3rd and 4th projection. 8 „die gemachten annahmen unterstellen ein ausklingen des geburtenrückgangs bis 1977.“ (linke/höhn 1975: 795) 9 sommer 1994: 497; statistisches bundesamt 2000: 9; statistisches bundesamt 2003: 10. fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 671 two years (statistisches bundesamt 2006: 8-11). the long-run values for the tfr of the latest 12th coordinated population projection (2009-2060) coincide with the ones assumed in the previous 11th coordinated population projection. in addition, the authors of the forecast state that their assumptions are based on a detailed analyses of cohort fertility (pötzsch 2010). the outcome of a constant level of the period tfr of 1.4 for the medium forecast is explicitly linked with a decline in cohort tfr from 1.66 to 1.4. the argumentation here is that the increase in age-specifi c fertility rates above age 30 can presumably not compensate the decrease of age-specifi c fertility rates below age 30. in addition to that the authors refer to an potential increase of childlessness. (statistisches bundesamt 2009; pötzsch 2010). 4.2 austria austria produces population projections regularly, going back to 1953. updates of the population projections are provided annually by statistics austria and are based on the most recent population data available. every three to four years, a new projection generation is set up based on revisions of the assumptions on fertility, mortality and migration. since 1987, external experts are included in the assumptionfi nding process (hanika 1988: 4). early forecasts were published already in 1953, 1959, 1964, 1967 and 1974 (findl 1979: 273). in these early projections no change in the tfr was assumed nor was migration taken into account (parizek 2006: 32). therefore we concentrate our analysis on projections launched from 1977 onwards as these projections did account for changes in fertility. in the projection for the period 1978-2010, a set of three variants was introduced. the main hypothesis corresponds to a mean scenario assuming a slight increase of the tfr from 1.65 to 1.78. the forecasters argue that clear assumptions based on the continuation of observable historical trends are very diffi cult, as periods of fertility decline and fertility increase have been alternating over the last 50 years. therefore, the recent decline was assumed to be only temporary, and it was argued that an increase of fertility is likely in the near future.10 the high variant makes an optimistic prediction of reaching replacement-level fertility eventually. due to this underlying concept that fertility is subject to fl uctuations, the forecasters take the possibility of another “baby-boom” into account.11 the authors refer to the “easterlin-hypothesis” to explain that a less competitive environment of the smaller cohorts, e.g. labour market conditions, might have positive effects on fertility behaviour. in ac10 „um nicht in den fehler zu verfallen, kurzund mittelfristige entwicklungen langfristig fortzuschreiben, wird daher der gegenwärtige rückgang der fruchtbarkeit als zeitliche begrenzt anzusehen sein, und es wird in absehbarer zeit sogar wieder mit einem gewissen anstieg der fruchtbarkeit zu rechnen sein.“ (findl 1979: 279) 11 „es kann nicht nur keineswegs ausgeschlossen werden, dass sich in zukunft abermals ein “baby-boom” ereignet, sondern das konzept der fruchtbarkeitsschwankungen legt dies sogar nahe“. (findl 1979: 279) • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz672 cordance with the concept of fl uctuation, it is also likely that no remarkable increase in fertility will occur. in that case, the low variant will result in a decline of the total fertility rate to 1.5.12 in the subsequent projection generation for the period 1984-2015, fertility assumptions were adjusted to lower levels in general, but at the same time the range between the high and low variants was extended in the long term view. in this projection a fourth variant was established, assuming constant fertility rates over the entire forecast horizon. the revision of the fertility assumptions incorporate recent developments, referring to a distinct decline in fertility rates by 6 % in 1983, which reversed the upswing that had started in 1979 (findl 1984: 659-660). a new projection generation was launched again in 1987. this was the fi rst time that experts were consulted in order to give a representative picture of likely future trends (hanika 1988: 4). due to increasing mean age of childbearing, the forecasters considered tempo aspects, assuming that delayed births would be recouped later in life. the explanatory factors that account for the process of postponement are related to the positive trend of young women spending more time in education, in tandem with an increasing female labour force participation.13 evidence on the desired number of children from the 1986 microcensus was incorporated to support the main assumption of a slight increase of tfr from 1.45 to 1.56 in 1995 if postponed but actually desired children will be realised.14 in a revision in 1990 and for subsequent years, the set of alternative fertility variants have been abandoned. because fertility rates have been relatively stable on a low level over the last years, fertility rates were projected to remain stable on a level of 1.56 in the long run (hanika 1990: 635). within the new projection generation for the forecast horizon 1995-2050 the main variant postulated that fertility would be stabilizing in the long term at a level of 1.5. the assumption was based on the fertility level of 1994 with a tfr of 1.44 – the slight increase to the stable label up until 2010 was explained with recuperation effects. the forecasters referred here again to tempo aspects by observing that recent period fertility rates clearly underestimated cohort fertility, as women of reproductive age continued with the process of postponement. in the high variant, 0.3 children were added to the tfr projections of the mean scenario in order to examine the infl uence of higher fertility, such as observed in norway or sweden. in the low variant, 0.3 children were subtracted from the tfr projections of the mean 12 „mit der niedrigen variante sollte der tatsache rechnung getragen werden, dass die annahme künftiger fruchtbarkeitsschwankungen erst durch die erfahrung zweier zyklen gestützt ist und ein ausbleiben eines nennenswerten und einigermaßen dauerhaften aufschwungs durchaus möglich ist.“ (findl 1979: 279) 13 “längere schulbildung der jungen frauen und damit späterer eintritt ins berufsleben sowie andererseits auch ein höheres heiratsalter bewirken, dass kinderwünsche häufi ger als früher erst in höherem alter realisiert werden.“ (hanika 1988: 5) 14 „gestützt werden diese vermutungen durch ergebnisse des mikrozensus 1986. die hier von frauen angegebenen kinderwünsche würden bei realisierung ein deutlich höheres fruchtbarkeitsniveau ergeben als das derzeitige.“ (hanika 1988: 5) fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 673 scenario, which were close to those from the southern european countries such as italy or spain (hanika 1996: 330). in the projection generation for the period 1998-2050, the assumed long term trends have not been changed at all, but the time of approaching the target values is extended to 2020 instead of 2010. the forecasters made similar arguments as those in previous projections in regard to tempo effects distorting the present period fertility (hanika 1998: 697). statistics austria obtains their projection in a deterministic fashion by using the cohort component method, as is usually applied by national agencies. considerable methodological changes took place with the new projection generation 2000-2050 only in regard to migration assumptions. the projected fertility levels have been taken from the previous projections without any change. however, in the mean variant, reaching a tfr of 1.50 was scheduled earlier to 2015 instead of 2020 (hanika 2000: 977-978). in the following projection generation for the period 2002-2050 fertility assumptions were once again adjusted to lower levels. the mean variant is kept a constant value of 1.40 over the entire forecast horizon. this rather simplifi ed assumption refers to similar expectations of fertility trends of neighboring countries such as germany, italy or switzerland. the high variant postulated that the tfr would rise to 1.70 by 2015, which is possible if future development resembles that of northern european countries or france. in contrast the low variant assuming a tfr of 1.10 in case austria would follow the path of lowest-low fertility rates as observed in the southern european countries (hanika et al. 2004: 19). in the projection from 2005-2050, the main assumption is that recent fertility trends, at a level of 1.40, will continue for a short time, but between 2010 and 2030 the tfr would gradually rise to 1.50. the forecasters note the relevance of timing effects and assume that postponed births will be partly recouped in the future. in such a scenario, the completed fertility of female cohorts would arrive at a level of 1.5 children per woman in a long term.15 the range of 0.80 between the high (1.90) and low (1.10) variant points to considerable scope of likely future trends, as contemporary fertility rates in europe vary greatly from country to country (hanika 2005: 975). a new projection generation was launched in 2009, but again, the fertility assumptions regarding the target values have not been changed. furthermore, persistent convergence of regional fertility statistics is assumed through postulating that regional fertility differences will narrow from 0.20 in 2008 to 0.17 in 2030 (hanika et al. 2009: 966). 15 „unabhängig von allfälligen timingeffekten bedeutet ein langfristig stabiles fertilitätsniveau von 1,50 kindern pro frau auch eine endgültig erreichte kohortenfertilität der künftig ins elternalter kommenden frauen in derselben höhe.“ (hanika 2005: 975) • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz674 4.3 switzerland the swiss federal statistical offi ce has been conducting population projections since 1984. the fi rst projection, in 1984, distinguished between swiss and nonswiss women and offered three alternative scenarios for fertility in 2025 (assuming a convergence of fertility among nationalities): low (1.4), medium (1.7) and high (2.0). this projection was revised two years later, as the fertility assumptions for swiss women turned out to be too high. the main variant in 1986 postulated that fertility levels of swiss women would stay constant at 1.5. moreover, while in 1984 it was assumed that the fertility levels of swiss and non-swiss women would converge in 2005, the 1986 revision assumed that fertility of foreign women would continue to be higher than that of swiss women. as fi gure 3 indicates, the gap between the fertility of swiss and non-swiss women is still pronounced. since the 1991 projection, the national forecasts for switzerland began to distinguish between eu and non eu nationalities within the group of non-swiss women. an interesting aspect of this is that the projected cohort fertility is explicitly prefig. 3: observed vs. projected tfrs for swiss and non-swiss women in switzerland, projection 1984 and 1986 revision 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 20 25 20 30 swiss women non-swiss women projection 1984 projection 1986 tfr source: bfs schweiz fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 675 sented by the forecasters. however, it is not clear how far cohort fertility patterns have been integrated into the forecasts of fertility. the cohort perspective is a result of the fact that the forecasters took tempo issues into account. they argued that the ctfr was decreasing less than the tfr, because births are occurring later in life. although the forecasters see no return to replacement-level fertility, they argue that an increase of cohort fertility cannot be precluded, as it is still possible under certain societal circumstances, such as work and family reconciliation policies.16 for the projections for 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010, very detailed information (agespecifi c fertility rates) was provided by the swiss federal statistical offi ce upon request. the main variant of the 1995 projection projects a slight increase of the tfr to 1.56 in 2005, remaining constant until 2060. summing up these arguments for the main variant indicates that they are based on the stability of past developments of cohort fertility, the changing role of women in society, the economic changes in the labour and housing market as well as the role of grandparents in assisting childrearing. the high scenario assumes an increase of the tfr to 1.80 before 2030. it assumes an increase of births of order three and argues that such an increase would indicate a considerable change of social norms, and would require family orientated policies. the scenario based on the low fertility assumption postulates a decline of the tfr to 1.20, arguing that an increase in divorces may negatively affect the time frame of reproduction (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 1996: 19). for swiss women, the long run values of the 2000 fertility projections in 2030 coincide with the ones assumed in the 1995 projections. furthermore, they were in accordance with the assumptions by eurostat for germany and austria – countries close in their fertility patterns to switzerland. interestingly, the arguments underlying the three scenarios are mainly based on the feasibility of family policies and labour market policies to ease the combination of motherhood and work (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2001: 11-12). in 2005, the long term projection offers rather low fertility rates, reaching a level of 1.40 in 2050. unfortunately, we could not fi nd any specifi c argument that explains this rather pessimistic assumption except the fact that the forecasters refer to recent analysis of fertility patterns. several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the further trend of fertility, most interestingly these arguments are based on research in the fi eld of fertility. according to work by frejka and sardon (2005) fertility levels may stabilise at a rather low level in many western european countries. higher levels of childlessness, according to wanner and fei (2005) may occur in all social groups. immigration policy favors migrants from low fertility countries, and there is increasing integration of women in the labour force. family policies are lagging behind, and hence a 16 “unter bestimmten kulturellen und sozialen bedingungen (vermehrte wertschätzung des kindes und der familie, bessere möglichkeiten zur verbindung von berufstätigkeit und mutterschaft usw.) ist auch in der schweiz ein erneuter anstieg der endgültigen nachkommenschaft der generationen nicht auszuschließen.“ (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 1992: 16) • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz676 low level of fertility between 1.2 and 1.4 is likely. as in the 2000 projections, variants of fertility development are based on different assumptions on how far work-family reconciliation policies will succeed (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2006: 16). since the last two projections underestimated fertility rates in the short term, the forecasters have adjusted the fertility projection upwards in 2010, as compared to the 2005 projections. due to increasing fertility rates, they argue that they have changed their assumptions by considering the recent changes.17 they explain differences between projected and actual development from the previous projection 2005-2050, by referring to the increasing age at childbearing for women born in the 1970s. these cohorts postponed their intended children which led to the underestimation of fertility levels. the authors admit that these factors were known and that considering them adequately would have led to more accurate predictions (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: 32). interestingly, in the 2010 projections reference to a study by schubert et al. (2009) can be found arguing that fi nancial and labour market uncertainties might induce families to postpone and, in the extreme cases, give up childbearing at all. moreover, the current increase in period fertility rates is argued to be just a sign of cessation of postponement of childbearing, but not to be related to an increase in cohort fertility. they argue that a further decline in cohort fertility is possible, since the decline of fertility in younger ages is not compensated by the recuperation of births in older ages.18 again references are made to the changing role of females in the labour market and the attitude towards this societal change in terms of designing and adapting family policies. 4.4 discussion in all three countries, statistical agencies make good efforts to explain the rationale for their forecasting assumptions. to generalise, the current practice is to assume a persistence of current behaviour into the future for the main or “middle” forecast, reserving the use of theories of fertility behaviour for the justifi cation of high and low scenarios. there is some recognition of the transient effects of changes in fertility timing on observed period fertility levels, and also some recognition of the need to incorporate information on cohort fertility (e.g. pötzsch 2010). disaggregated forecasts on the regional level or by immigration status have been performed, but here success has been mixed. in germany, the convergence between east and west was forecast accurately by the second attempt (as early as 1992 within the 8th coordinated forecast). the efforts in switzerland to forecast 17 „so wurden die fruchtbarkeitsziffern unter berücksichtigung der in den letzten jahren festgestellten entwicklungen geändert.“ (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: 33) 18 „die geburtenrate der über 30-jährigen frauen steigt zwar an, doch mit diesem anstieg wird die abnahme der geburtenziffer ebendieser frauen, als sie noch jünger waren, nicht kompensiert. daraus resultiert für zahlreiche frauengenerationen ein rückgang der endgültigen nachkommenschaft.“ (bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: 10) fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 677 fertility by immigration status have been less successful: native fertility was overestimated and foreign-born fertility was underestimated. agencies make fairly frequent changes in forecasting methods and in the basis for assumptions. what is striking to us is that short term changes in fertility often produce updates not only in the short term forecasts but also in the assumptions about long term levels. the last decade has been a “calm” period in forecast updates. because period fertility has remained nearly constant, so have forecasts. the open question is, if fertility rises or falls, how will forecasters react? 5 inconsistent changes in timing and level in forecasting fertility in this section we follow a three-stage-process. first, we aim to illustrate how tempo distortions could matter within the most recent fertility forecasts of the statistical agencies and what the implications for projected levels of fertility are. secondly, we provide an illustrative projection for the case of germany with consistent changes in the level and timing of fertility. thirdly, we test the accuracy of such a forecast with historical data. 5.1 inconsistent changes within the most recent forecasts as we saw in the discussion of assumptions, agencies recognise that the postponement of births to older ages is an important factor in keeping period fertility lower than cohort fertility.19 in austria and switzerland, the temporary nature of such “tempo effects” was explicitly mentioned, and presumably provides part of the rationale for assuming that, even in the middle forecast, period fertility rates will rise in years ahead. in germany, the latest forecasts assume no increase in fertility for what is considered the medium scenario. from one perspective, a tempo effect is considered relevant to projection when an increase or decrease of mean age at childbearing (mac) is expected, which slows or stops during the projection period. in such cases, there will be a response in the conventional tfr, without a change in the quantum of fertility. if for example a sudden stop of the increase in the mean age at childbearing is foreseen, the conventional tfr should immediately adapt to the values of the tempo-adjusted one, if there is no simultaneous decline in the quantum of fertility assumed as well. in this section, we use the period-tempo framework developed by bongaarts and feeney (1998, 2000, 2008) to look at these consistencies of the assumptions in the forecasts in all three german-speaking countries. we fi nd that changes in timing are not refl ected in changes in period total fertility rates in a consistent way. the bongaarts-feeny framework posits an underlying period intensity of fertility tfr*(t) in the absence of timing changes. just as the total fertility rate summarises 19 for or a deeper analysis of postponement and recuperation in cohort fertility for the three german speaking countries see sobotka et al. 2011 in cpos 36,2-3. • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz678 the birth rates of the population in the absence of age-structure effects, the tempoadjusted total fertility rate tells us the tfr in the absence of tempo-effects. the formula used to calculate the tempo-adjusted fertility rate is tfr*(t) = tfr(t)/ (1 – r(t)), where r(t) is the rate of change in the mean age of childbearing. the measure can be applied on a parity specifi c basis, but for purpose of the all-parity forecasts considered here, all parities are considered together. apart from boongaarts-feeny (1998), there are also other approaches (e.g. ryder 1980; kohler/ortega 2002; goldstein/cassidy 2010), that try to correct for tempo distortions. that is one reason why trained demographers might be alarmed to see the bongaarts-feeney method, which has been subject to substantial controversy (e.g. imhoff/keilman 2000; kim/schoen 2000; schoen 2004; keilman 2006), recommended for use for offi cial forecasts. objections to the method, such as the assumption that the age-pattern of fertility retains its shape even as it moves to older or younger ages, may be relevant to the analysis of empirical fertility change, but are, we believe, less applicable to forecasts.20 we are dealing with just such stylised scenarios and so the difference between tempo-adjustment approaches, and even the distinction between tempo-adjusted period fertility and cohort fertility is small, and the terms and approaches can be used more or less interchangeably. usually age-specifi c fertility rates, and hence the tfr as their sum, are forecasted in a way that prospective changes in timing and quantum of fertility are not checked with regard to their consistence. the usage of an approach for tempo-adjustment like the one by bongaarts and feeney would, in contrast, allow to forecast both aspects consistently. as we have seen, the forecasting agencies aim is to use the assumption that current fertility behaviour, measured by the tfr, will persist into the future. a reasonable way to do this is to assume that tfr* will stay about the same. in this case, the forecaster would need to forecast r(t) in order to obtain an estimate of tfr. because the agencies forecast age-specifi c fertility, they are implicitly forecasting the future timing of births. one can calculate the pace of postponement implied by the forecasted age-specifi c rates, and see what they imply about the underlying intensity of births, measured by the tfr*. figure 4 shows the results of such an exercise for all three countries. the mean age of childbearing predicted from the main forecast is labeled mac and can be read from the right hand axis. the tfr (observed and forecast) is shown as a solid line. the tempo-adjusted tfr* is shown with dots as empty circles. the alternative forecast implied by constant tfr* is shown in the grey line. (1) 20 zeng and land (2001) have shown that the tfr corrected with the bongaarts-feeny approach does not differ signifi cantly from an adjustment that allows for a constant annual change of the fertility schedule. fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 679 fi g . 4 : m ea n ag e at c hi ld b ea ri ng , t fr a nd t em p o -a d ju st ed t fr f ro m 1 99 0 o nw ar d s, in cl ud in g th e la te st fo re ca st s s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n d at a fr o m th e st at is tic al a ge nc ie s g er m an y a us tr ia s w itz er la nd • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz680 in germany we can see that the forecast age-specifi c fertility rates have the mean age of childbearing increasing at about the historic rate until 2020, at which point postponement comes to an end. however, the end of postponement produces no corresponding increase in the period fertility rate, quite contrary to what we would expect in the bongaarts-feeney framework, and contrary to what we have seen happen in populations with slowing rates of postponement (goldstein et al. 2009). accordingly, what the german forecasts implicitly assume is that in the year 2020 there will be a drop in the underlying intensity of childbearing (tfr*) of nearly 0.2 children. a superfi cial problem with this is that the change happens suddenly, which seems implausible, but a deeper problem is that the assumption is hidden in the forecasts. it can only be disclosed by looking into the (implied) assumptions for the projected cohort fertility. figure 5 shows that for the cohorts born in 1975 and after, all three medium projections of the statistical agencies imply a downward shift of total cohort fertility by 0.15 children. this contradicts the argumentation by sobotka (2011 in cpos 36,2-3) and sokotka et al. (2011 in cpos 36,2-3). it is argued there, that future total fertility rates are likely to remain around 1.6 birth per women. a number of justifi cations are provided for this conclusion. for germany also goldstein and kreyenfeld (2011) bring up many arguments for that cohort fertility will rather increase than decrease. in the most recent offi cial population projection for germany, it is assumed that the level of cohort fertility will only increase up until the cohort 1975, then remain constant for about 10 birth cohorts, before it starts to decline again until it reaches a level of 1.4. thus, both the cohort and the tempo perspective show us that the implicit assumption behind the medium scenarios is that fertility will decline by a substantial amount. figure 4 also shows what would happen to the observed period tfr under the alternative assumption that tfr* would stay constant, namely, that there would be an increase in period fertility of 0.2 children. austria and switzerland, although they discuss in the rationale for their assumptions tempo effects explicitly, suffer from the same kind of inconsistency. in austria, the rate of postponement slows slightly at the beginning of the forecast. there is some increase in the period tfr forecasts, but we see this forecast implies a slight drop and then a rise in the tfr*. then, when postponement comes to an end the tfr* also drops suddenly. the swiss projection has the same issues, but with its inconsistency immediately at the beginning of the projection period. the recent increase in the mean age at childbearing is projected to end at the beginning of the forecast, so that a response in the period fertility shall be expected, if no decline in period quantum is assumed. what could be done to make consistent forecasts of mean ages and period fertility levels? a minor change that could be made would be to assume a gradual slowing of the mean age of childbearing. this would at least prevent sudden jumps in the implied tfr*. but a more important change would be to produce forecasts of the tfr that in combination with the changes in fertility timing produce consistency in the tempo-adjusted fertility rate. in our opinion, this would have three advantages. first, and most importantly, it would encourage forecasters to be more explicit about their assumptions. in all three countries, it would become more clear fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 681 that the forecasts are assuming a long-term drop in the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate, which in this context can be thought of as equivalent to assuming a long-term drop in the cohort fertility rate. second, it would simplify the argumentation for the statistical agencies in case the future diverges from the forecasts. of course the agencies want to produce accurate forecasts, but prediction is inevitably a diffi cult task, and will in the majority of cases not be exactly accurate. explicit and consistent forecasting of timing and level changes will allow agencies to see what went wrong with their forecasts, and to make adjustments when appropriate. finally, an approach that assumed constancy in tfr* over time would be easier to update. when period fertility changes from one forecast to another, the current practice results in changes in both short and long-term forecasts. aiming forecasts at tfr* could alfig. 5: cohort fertility rate (ctfr) in germany, austria and switzerland for cohorts born between 1955 and 2010 – observed values and projections according to or implied by the medium variants of the statistical agencies* 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 19 55 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 00 20 05 20 10 ctfr austria germany switzerland * the dotted line indicates that more than about 20 % of the cohorts total fertility was made up by projected rates. source: own calculation based on data from the statistical agencies • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz682 low agencies, faced with a tempo-driven change in recent period fertility, to change their short-term forecasts without necessarily changing the long-term level. 5.2 illustrative approach to provide consistent forecasts in the following we aim to show how agencies could include tempo-effects explicitly in their forecasts. as an illustration, we present a possible application to germany, shown in figure 6. the illustration shows how a combination of assumed changes in mean age and in the underlying quantum of fertility produce the forecast tfr. in all three cases, there is complete convergence when postponement comes to an end. the assumptions we used have been simplifi ed for this application in order to make the method clear. in terms of the timing of fertility, we have in this case assumed that all scenarios see postponement come to an end at the same date of 2030. furthermore, in all scenarios, postponement continues at its 2008 rate for the fi rst three years of the forecast. this was done so that it was clear that the forecast is not predicting an immediate slow-down of the tempo-effect, but rather one in the “near future.” we used linear interpolation to connect the current pace of postponement to a zero pace in 2030. in contrast, the quantum of fertility (tfr*) was assumed to differ across the scenarios. in the main scenario, it is kept constant at the level observed in 2008. in the low scenario it is assumed to fall linearly from 2008 to a level of 1.4 in 2030. and in the high scenario, the quantum is assumed to rise linearly to 1.8 in 2030. these differences of 0.2 children between adjacent scenarios are the same as in the latest forecasts of the federal statistical offi ce, but the levels of long-term fertility are higher in this example than in the actual forecasts. we note that in real applications, agencies might want to add further complexity to the scenarios by assuming variations in postponement as well as quantum across scenarios. the important features of using the tempo-quantum framework in forecasts are that the forecaster has to be very explicit about what the quantum assumptions are. one sees, for example, in the panel on the low scenario, that the forecast tfr is even slightly increasing only because the slow down of the tempo-effect exceeds the impact of the predicted decline in the quantum of fertility after a few years into the forecast horizon. the consistency imposed by the tempo-quantum framework makes such assumptions transparent. 5.3 testing the accuracy of consistent forecasts although the forecasts taking tempo effects into account have some theoretical appeal to demographers, it is of course fair to ask the more practical question of whether they can improve the accuracy of forecasts. before presenting a historical example, we would emphasise what many others have already said. fertility’s ups and downs have not ever been successfully forecasted, so even the best forecasting method can not be expected to be completely accurate. the decomposition of fertility into tempo and quantum components allows one to see, as in the late 1960s and 1970s, if one was wrong because one could not foresee a quantum decline, or fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 683 fi g . 6 : m ea n ag e at c hi ld b ea ri ng , t fr a nd t em p o -a d ju st ed t fr fo r g er m an y fr o m 1 99 0 o nw ar d s w it h an il lu st ra tiv e fo re ca st fo r d if fe re n t s ce na ri o s s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n d at a fe d er al s ta tis tic al o ffi ce g er m an y m ai n h ig h lo w • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz684 whether one was wrong because in the 1990s one did not accurately predict the continuation of fertility postponement. in order to illustrate and evaluate a method of forecasting that takes tempo into account, we compared the “constant level” forecasts that constituted the vast majority of fertility forecasts against a “gradual decline of tempo effect” forecast in figure 7. we show this for the netherlands, a country which in some ways is further along the tempo-transition than the german speaking countries, and a country for which parity-specifi c data are available. in figure 7, we show the observed tfr in black and the estimated tempo-adjusted tfr in grey dots. we then show simulated forecasts using the “constant level” and “gradual decline of tempo effect”.21 the fi rst message that applies to both methods is that fertility is easy to forecast when it is remains constant and hard to predict when it changes. however, there is also an important second message, and that is that the tempo-adjusted forecast method tends to point in the right direction. during the baby boom the tempo adjusted method tended to forecast that 21 the reader should keep in mind that neither of these are the actual offi cial dutch forecasts. fig. 7: comparison of a “constant level” and a “gradual decline of tempoeffect” forecast for the tfr in the netherlands from 1950 to 2015 source: own calculation based on data from the human fertility database 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 tfr tfr* constant projection tempo projection tfr fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 685 fertility will eventually decline, and during the low fertility of the 1980s and 1990s, the tempo-adjusted forecast tended to predict an increase. there are years when the tempo adjusted forecast does remarkably better, for example in the mid-1990s, where the tfr ten years later is nearly matched. however, the same increase would have been forecast several years earlier, and as we can see the tempo adjusted forecast overshoots in these earlier periods. of the 11 forecasts, the tempo-adjusted forecast clearly does better in six cases, the constant level assumption does better in two cases, and the forecasts are essentially the same in three cases. again, we offer this not as proof of the superiority of incorporating adjusted fertility but rather as an example of the kinds of situations that the tempo-adjusted forecast would have outperformed the constant level forecast. we believe the future in the german speaking countries resembles that of the netherlands in the 1990s, where postponement slowed down in a low fertility context. 6 conclusions in this paper we have looked at the recent practice of fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world. our analysis of the history of forecasts showed us that austria, germany, and switzerland all follow the same general practice of assuming that recently observed fertility behaviour will continue unchanged. we fi nd this assumption reasonable, since we agree that there are contradictory theories predicting increase and decrease, and that it is diffi cult to say with any certainty what the future trend will be. indeed, in the rationale given for forecast assumptions, agencies are quite open about the absence of theory, and also quite open about the arbitrariness of the decision to project current levels of fertility into the future. they emphasise that this kind of forecast does not mean that they have a strong belief in constancy – but rather that in the absence of better alternatives, this simple assumption is best. still, we see that agencies have the opportunity to improve their forecasts by considering more carefully how they use the idea of unchanging fertility behaviour.22 in the past, and to an extent today, the forecasters’ implementation of unchanging behaviour is constancy in age-specifi c fertility rates, or equivalently constant tfr. when current period fertility is lower than cohort fertility because of postponement of births, the assumption of a continuation of current period fertility implicitly assumes either that postponement will continue (indefi nitely) or that there will be a drop in the cohort tfr. we would suggest as an alternative that a reasonable medium assumption would be to assume that cohort fertility is roughly constant in the future and that as postponement comes to an end, period total fertility will rise to converge with cohort fertility levels. with a classical period approach this assumption is hard to 22 despite the use of different approaches, the central forecast assumes either a constant level of period tfr or a level very close to it. in the case of germany this is a result of a detailed analyses of cohort fertility, which is assumed to change (see pötzsch 2010). • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz686 implement; with a pure cohort approach it would be possible, but other shortcomings (such as the ones mentioned in the introduction of this paper) have to be considered.23 what we are suggesting here is a greater use of a formal demographic model to relate periods, cohorts, and timing effects. use of a tempo-framework such as that developed by bongaarts and feeney would make it possible for agencies to produce consistent forecasts, would provide explicit assumptions about the pace and level of fertility, would allow them adequately to incorporate information on the cohorts still bearing children. it would also make it possible to see if changes in both short and long range forecasts are required, or if, in the case where period fertility changes because of tempo effects, only short term forecasts need to be updated. our three suggestions are: (1) agencies should continue to make the rationale for their forecasts explicit. this is helpful even if it only means, saying simply that in the absence of theories we have continued the past practice of assuming constant future fertility from the last observed year. (2) agencies should deal explicitly with the prospects of postponement and their effects on fertility levels. the bongaarts-feeney framework or similar ones could be used. the forecasts should be consistent. this may or may not actually change forecasts, but we believe it will give them a fi rmer rationale. (3) agencies should be reluctant to change long-term forecasts without seeing changes in cohort fertility. another improvement would be the inclusion of parity-specifi c fertility analyses into the strategies to forecast fertility. this is particularly relevant when fertility changes dramatically such as during a baby boom or baby bust, as such a change usually effects birth parities very differently (see sobotka et al. 2011 in cpos 36,2-3). it is less relevant when fertility changes incrementally, such as in the low fertility context we experienced in the german-speaking world during the last decades. in addition to that the required data is often diffi cult to acquire – in our case, only austria could provide information in a suitable state. statistical agencies in germany and switzerland can provide reliable information on order-specifi c fertility only recently – thus the time series are not long enough to base reliable projections upon.24 fertility forecasting is remarkably diffi cult. no country has succeeded in predicting future changes in fertility rates. in austria, germany, and switzerland, great care is taken with fertility forecasts. the statistical agencies update their forecasts frequently and tend to provide clear and sound explanations for their forecast assumptions. moreover, the constancy of recent fertility makes it appear that agencies have improved their accuracy in recent years. in our view, however, there is still room for improvement. the current level of period fertility has remained constant because the level of cohort fertility has slightly declined and the pace of postponement has remained stable. if in the future, as has happened elsewhere, postponement slows, 23 the use of both period and cohort approaches by a number of forecasting agencies is reported in the review by sorvillo (1999). 24 for a more detailed description of the data situation in all three countries see kreyenfeld et al. (2011 in cpos 36,2-3). fertility forecasting in the german-speaking world • 687 our expectation would be for fertility rates to rise substantially. current estimates of tempo-adjusted fertility as well as cohort fertility are in the range of 1.5 to 1.7, making it seem to us that long-range level of at least 1.5, and perhaps 1.6 would be reasonable. introducing the analysis of tempo effects to the rationale for forecasts would provide forecasters with a better basis for deciding on the direction of fertility in the long term as well as giving a rationale for short term changes. acknowledgement we thank four anonymous reviewers, michaela kreyenfeld and colleagues at the max planck institute for demographic research and the vienna institute for demography for their critical comments on earlier versions of this paper. further assistance was given by olga pötzsch (federal statistical offi ce germany), alexander hanika (statistics austria), stéphane cotter, marcel heiniger (swiss federal statistical offi ce) and marion burkirmsher and is gratefully acknowledged. this publication was generated in the context of the interdisciplinary working group future with children – fertility and the development of society. this group has been jointly established by the berlin-brandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften and the nationale akademie der wissenschaften leopoldina and is funded by the jacobs foundation. references basten, stuart; huinink, johannes; klüsener, sebastian 2011: spatial variation of subnational fertility trends in austria, germany and switzerland. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 36,2-3 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos2011-08en]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 1998: on the quantum and tempo of fertility. in: population and development review 24,2: 271-291 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00560.x]. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2000: on the quantum and tempo of fertility: reply. in: population and development review 26,3: 560-564. bongaarts, john; feeney, griffi th 2008: the quantum and tempo of life-cycle events. in: barbi, elisabetta; vaupel, james w.; bongaarts, john (eds.): how long do we live? demographic models and refl ections on tempo effects. demographic research monographs 29,6 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-78520-0]. booth, heather 2006: demographic forecasting: 1980 to 2005 in review. in: international journal of forecasting 22,3: 547-581 [doi: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2006.04.001]. bretz, manfred 1986: bevölkerungsvorausberechnungen: statistische probleme und grundlagen. in: wirtschaft und statistik 4/1986: 233-260. bundesamt für statistik schweiz 1992: szenarien zur bevölkerungsentwicklung der schweiz 1991–2020. unveröffentlichter bericht. bundesamt für statistik schweiz 1996: szenarien zur bevölkerungsentwicklung der schweiz 1995-2050. unveröffentlichter bericht. bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2001: szenarien zur bevölkerungsentwicklung der schweiz 2000–2060. in: demos 1+2/2001. • joshua r. goldstein, felix rößger, ina jaschinski, alexia prskawetz688 bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2006: szenarien zur bevölkerungsentwicklung der schweiz 2005–2050. neuchâtel. bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2010: szenarien zur bevölkerungsentwicklung der schweiz 2010–2060. neuchâtel. bundesamt für statistik schweiz 2011: szenarien des bfs und szenarien der kantone. neuchâtel.[http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/01/03/blank/key_ kant/01.parsys.33549.downloadlist.31849.downloadfile.tmp/szenariendesbfsundszenarienderkantone.pdf, 08.09.2011]. de beer, joop 1992: methods of fertility projections and forecasts. in: keilman, nico; cruijsen, harri (eds.): national population forecasting in industrialized countries. amsterdam: swets & zeitlinger: 27-59. dorn, harold f. 1950: pitfalls in population forecasts and projections. in: journal of the american statistical association 45,251: 311-334. eurostat 2011: europop2010 – convergence scenario, national level. 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21.02.2011 date of acceptance: 31.10.2011 joshua r. goldstein ( ), felix rößger. max planck institute for demographic research, 18057 rostock, germany. e-mail: goldstein@demogr.mpg.de, roessger@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de ina jaschinski. vienna institute of demography, austrian academy of sciences, 1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: ina.jaschinski@oeaw.ac.at url: http://www.oeaw.ac.at alexia prskawetz. institute of mathematical methods in economics, research unit economics, vienna university of technology (tu), 1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: afp@econ.tuwien.ac.at url: http://www.econ.tuwien.ac.at © federal institute for population research 2012 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@destatis.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) regional poverty and population response: regional poverty and population response: a comparison of three regions in the united states and germany rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann abstract: in this paper, we examine poverty in three regions in the united states and germany and discuss its causes and demographic consequences. the three regions are those with the highest rates of poverty in the two countries: the mississippi delta and texas borderland in the united states and the northeastern border region in germany. we show that standard models to explain poverty need to be placed in the historical legacies of the three regions in order to understand their current levels of poverty. while our results show many common factors for poverty in the three regions, they also point to important differences. similarly, we identify differences among the regions in their demographic responses to poverty, in part refl ecting their different historical legacies. thus, one implication of the paper is the importance of place-based poverty-mitigation strategies for successful policy planning. keywords: determinants of poverty · regional development · outmigration · germany · usa 1 introduction economic development in most countries is characterized by substantial regional inequalities. well-known examples include italy’s mezzogiorno, brazil’s northeast, and parts of the southern united states. in most cases, economically lagging regions fi nd it diffi cult to catch up with the more prosperous parts of their countries, since development is a moving target. in rare instances, regional laggards become leaders, as in the case of bavaria in germany. during the post-war period through the mid-1970s, bavaria was one of the poorer states in the former west germany. after the oil shock in the 1970s and the ensuing restructuring of the economy, it developed into one of the richest west german states and has maintained that status after unifi cation. comparative population studies vol. 40, 1 (2015): 49-76 (date of release: 03.03.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-02en8 • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann50 the purpose of the present paper is an examination of poverty and demographic response in three regions in the united states and germany: the mississippi delta, the texas borderland, and northeastern border region of germany. all three regions are the poorest ones in the two countries. while individual counties elsewhere might have poverty rates as high or even higher than those found in these three regions, they tend to be more isolated incidents and do not form contiguous poverty areas. (the sole exception in the united states is central appalachia whose level of poverty rivals that of the mississippi delta and texas borderland.) our specifi c objectives are as follows: (1) to review the historical legacy for today’s conditions that are associated with poverty in the three regions; (2) to examine the correlates of poverty in these regions; and (3) to discuss the range of demographic responses to poverty in the three regions. we start out with a brief review of factors that previous research had found to be associated with poverty in non-metropolitan (hereafter non metro) and rural areas,1 to be followed by a discussion of the three regions in terms of the objectives listed above. the fi nal section discusses differences and similarities among the three regions and addresses some policy implications. 2 past research findings on aggregate poverty research on aggregate poverty has increasingly recognized the importance of place, both theoretically and methodologically (gans 2002; gieryn 2000; lobao 2004; lobao/sáenz 2002; lobao et al. 2007; tickamyer 2000). the addition of a spatial dimension has expanded social stratifi cation research and promises to help us understand how differential resource allocation across class, race, and gender are linked to issues of uneven regional development (slack et al. 2009). the joining of the both perspectives holds the promise to detangle “both the importance of where actors are located in geographic space and how geographic entities themselves are molded by and mold stratifi cation” (lobao et al. 2007: 3). focusing on place/ region-specifi c poverty, as we do in this paper, permits us to contextualize poverty in space and time. there is overwhelming research evidence for the united states that geographic location and poverty are connected (lichter/johnson 2007; lyson/falk 1993; massey/denton 1993; rural sociological society task force on persistent rural poverty 1993; tickamyer/duncan 1990; wilson 1980). this evidence goes back to the war on poverty in the united states during the 1960s when the president’s national advisory commission on rural poverty issued a report entitled the people left behind (1967). “in it, the commission noted that not only were poverty rates generally high1 in the united states, metropolitan counties are those that include a city with a population of 50,000 inhabitants, or that are part of a larger metropolitan area as defi ned by the u.s. bureau of the census. most counties in the two u.s. regions are non-metropolitan. in the german border region, the larger cities (frankfurt/oder, cottbus, and stralsund) are not included in any county (since they are kreisfreie [county-free] cities); thus, a metro-nonmetro distinction of counties in this region is not meaningful. regional poverty and population response • 51 er in rural compared to urban areas, but that the very poorest regions of the country were in the rural south and southwest and, with the exception of appalachia, were characterized by high concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities. forty-fi ve years later, these observations remain sadly accurate” (slack et al. 2009: 355-356). the relationship between place, on the one hand, and poverty and other social outcomes is complex. at the core of the argument made by those who call for a spatial perspective in social science analysis (e.g., gieryn 2000; lobao 2004; lobao et al. 2007) is the assumption that individual outcomes (e.g., educational attainment as well as the return [occupational status and income] on education, employment, or crime) are in part a function of place. to address this relationship between place and social/individual outcome, it is useful to differentiate between levels of place or space. a common differentiation, in ascending order of spatial hierarchy, is neighborhoods, counties or county groupings, and regions. perhaps the most authoritative study of the effects of neighborhoods is sampson’s the great american city (2012) in which he brings together research spanning more than a decade on place and social outcomes. he shows that regardless of business cycles and economic dislocations, such as the recent great depression, the type of neighborhood had identifi able effects on a wide array of social, economic, and demographic outcomes. as put by massey (2012: 35), “[that study] convincingly demonstrates that individual outcomes are not the simple result of atomistic choices but refl ect highly contingent decisions that unfold within spatially grounded social structures and institutionalized processes that limit options and reproduce existing inequalities between individuals, households, and neighborhoods.” for the u.s., the neighborhood effect is not all that surprising, (although the sweep of that effect as demonstrated by sampson is remarkable), given the close connection between school quality and neighborhood wealth that is the result of funding for schools through property taxes. with a different funding mechanism for schools in germany, one could expect smaller neighborhood effects, or even their absence, in that country. for some time now, social scientists have argued that even at higher levels of spatial aggregation, the relationships between, say, being in poverty and individual characteristics is shaped by contextual factors (diprete/forristal 1994; cotter 2002; curley et al. 2009). recently, poston et al. (2010) showed that in the texas borderland and the lower mississippi delta, characteristics of public use microdata areas (puma)2 not only affected the likelihood of a person being in poverty, they also had an effect on the slope of the individual determinants of poverty. thus, even within the two high-poverty regions, variations in spatial characteristics affected the probability of being poor. in the sections to follow, we detail the historic conditions that explain why the three regions covered in our analysis continue to have such high poverty rates. a 2 pumas are aggregations of counties for which the u.s. census bureau makes individual-level survey data available. these aggregations are required to meet the 100,000 population threshold required for assuring confi dentiality of the census. • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann52 root cause of poverty in the two u.s. regions is race and ethnicity, as evidenced by the lingering effects of slavery and the plantation system in the delta, and those of slavery-like conditions for latinos in the texas borderland. in the german region, today’s poverty has its origin in the agrarian structure prevailing up to world war ii and, more recently, is the result of the economic dislocations in agriculture and industry after unifi cation. those conditions are more pronounced in the three regions than in other parts of the united states or germany. several previous publications (slack et al. 2009; fontenot et al. 2010; poston et al. 2010; singelmann et al. 2012a/b) showed that the correlates of aggregate poverty are multi-dimensional. specifi cally, poverty is associated with the (1) economic structure, (2) demographic structure, (3) human capital, and (4) the location of a place on the urban-rural continuum. (1) economic structure several indicators of the economic structure are associated with an area’s level of poverty. the economic literature for a long time showed the importance of manufacturing for development (clark 1940). the greater value-added of manufacturing compared to agriculture leads to better wages which, in turn, reduce poverty. similarly, the growth of service industries, especially producer services, is a correlate of more advanced industrial development (singelmann 1978). advanced industrial countries typically have larger employment in fi nancial and other producer services to meet the needs of their economy. the associations between the size of the manufacturing sector and employment in the fire (fi nancial, insurance and real estate) services sector are similarly related to economic development among counties. accordingly, counties with a higher share of employment in manufacturing and in fire services tend to have lower poverty (mencken/singelmann 1998; parisi et al. 2003; brady/wallace 2001; cotter 2002; rupasingha/goetz 2007). similarly, the employment rate is negatively associated with the level of poverty (and, conversely, unemployment and poverty are positively correlated) (cotter 2002; slack/jensen 2002; gundersen 2006; rupasingha/goetz 2007). (2) demographic structure extensive research exists that demonstrated a positive association between poverty and single female-headed households with children (albrecht/albrecht 2000; goe/rhea 2000; lichter et al. 2003; lichter/mclaughlin 1995; parisi et al. 2005; singelmann et al. 2012a). single-headed households with children have the highest poverty rates of all household types in both the united states and eu countries. in the united states in 2010, 42.2 percent of all persons living in households headed by a single female lived in poverty, compared to only 15.1 percent for persons in all households and 10.1 percent for persons in married couple households (u.s. bureau of the census 2011). according to data from the 2010 german mikrozensus, 42.7 percent of persons living in households headed by single adults with children (most of those adults are women) were poor (i.e., received hartz iv [social security payments]), compared to only 8.7 percent for persons in households headed by couples (deutscher paritätischer wohlfahrtsverband 2012). similarly, in brandenburg in regional poverty and population response • 53 2007, the poverty rate for households with children headed by a single parent was 34 percent, compared to a poverty rate of 14 percent for persons in all households (ministerium für arbeit, soziales, frauen und familie des landes brandenburg 2009). and the corresponding poverty rates in mecklenburg-pomerania for femaleheaded households with children and two-parent households with children were 50 percent and 26 percent, respectively (prognos 2009: 23). an earlier report by smeeding and torrey (1988) showed that the disadvantage of single-parent households with children is not a new phenomenon. the authors report that around 1980 in australia, canada, germany, sweden, united kingdom, and the united states, the poverty rates of one-parent households were a multiple of those for two-parent families in all six countries except sweden (where the difference was only 100 percent). the intergenerational reproduction of poverty adds to the importance of family structure. in the united states, general consensus exists that family structure has an important effect on children’s educational attainment. adolescents who grow up in single female-headed families have a greater risk of dropping out of high school than do those growing up in two-parent families, even when the usual socioeconomic factors are controlled for (sandefur et al. 1992). mclanahan (1985) clearly showed how family structure is related to the reproduction of poverty; children growing up in a one-parent family are more likely to be poor in adulthood than those raised in two-parent families. similar fi ndings exist for germany. singelmann and woijtkiewicz (1993) found for then west germany that children from a one-parent family, net of other factors, were less likely to have a certifi ed occupational training (vocational or university) than their counterparts from two-parent families.3 francesconi et al. (2010) found evidence of the effect of family structure on schooling outcomes in germany for the more recent past. given the high correlation between social origin and allocation within the three-level educational system in germany for social mobility where fewer children from the lower-income groups enter higher education than in most other european countries, the effects of family structure on educational attainment has a long-term effect to reproduce the high poverty of single-parent families for their children when they reach adulthood (see also edelstein 2006; legrand 2011). previous research (cotter 2002; rupasingha/goetz 2007) has shown that a young age structure (percent population under 15 years of age) tends to be positively associated with poverty. adelman and jaret (1999) found that metro areas with large percentages of young blacks have higher poverty than metropolitan areas where the black population is older. the mechanisms for this relationship are not entirely clear. on the one hand, a larger percentage of the population that is young can be the result of domestic in-migration, since in-migrants are typically at the age at which they also have children. in that scenario, there is probably no effect of a 3 their data came from a nationally representative west german survey conducted in 1985. back then, there were hardly any school dropouts in west germany which made certifi ed occupational training the substantive equivalent of high-school completion in the united states. • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann54 young age structure on poverty because domestic migrants tend to relocate because of job opportunities. on the other hand, where a higher proportion of the population under 15 years of age is largely made up by children in non-intact families, it would be a correlate of increased poverty. in both scenarios, the interaction between young population structure and either net migration or percent non-intact families would be important, in addition to the individual correlates. the percent of an area’s foreign-born population also has an effect on poverty. poverty among mexican immigrants to the united states is substantially higher than among those that are native born (crowley et al. 2006). the higher poverty rates among immigrants have signifi cantly increased the overall size of the total american population living in poverty (camarota 2001). the percent of the population foreign-born was found in previous research to increase poverty for metro areas, but was not found to be signifi cant for nonmetro areas, including the nonmetro south (rupasingha/goetz 2007). other research found that the percent of an area’s foreign-born population decreased black poverty but not white poverty in metro areas (adelman/jaret 1999). research also found that foreign-born immigrants depressed earnings for natives in low-skill occupations, but not in high-skill occupations (camarota 2001). finally, given the objective of this paper to examine the population response to regional poverty, the association between poverty and net migration is especially important. several decades ago, todaro (1969) developed a model of labor migration according to which migration between low-wage and high-wage areas would (re-)establish the wage equilibrium within countries. an important element in that model is the calculation by potential migrations of the probability of obtaining a job, as indicated by the unemployment rates among regions. accordingly, positive net migration is often used as a proxy for economic growth. although this model was developed to explain internal migration in developing countries, research has shown its relevance for poverty regions in more developed countries as well. for the united states, for example, frey and liaw (2005) found that migrants fl ock to areas that have signifi cant employment growth; and rupasingha and goetz (2007) showed that counties with fewer in-migrants had higher rates of poverty. in germany, states (excluding city states) with lower per-capita income have higher poverty rates (deutscher paritätischer wohlfahrtsverband 2013: 10). according to migration theory (todaro 1969; borjas et al. 1992) migrants tend to relocate to areas with per capita income that is higher than in their areas of origin. while people also take the chance of employment (and its steadiness) into account before they decide to migrate to a certain destination, in germany that assessment of employability appears to be more important than the wage differential between origin and destination (institut für arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung 2012: 1). (3) human capital two key aspects of human capital are education and the ability to speak the native language. an extensive body of research exists which shows that educational attainment is an important factor in reducing poverty rates in both germany and the united states (deutscher paritätischer wohlfahrtsverband 2012; edelstein 2006; regional poverty and population response • 55 sáenz 1997a; adelman/jaret 1999; rupasingha/goetz 2007; crowley et al. 2006). fuhr (2012) showed the same importance of educational attainment for lowering the odds of becoming poor in germany. similarly, speaking english well (in the united states) results in better economic outcomes for immigrants (davila et al. 1993). immigrants who speak poor english are economically penalized in both border and non-border metro areas (davila/mora 2000). in their study of mexican immigrants, crowley et al. (2006) found that speaking english ‘‘very well’’ reduced the odds of poverty by 16 percent. in germany, the ability to speak german well was found to be a major determinant of educational attainment (kriele 2007: 9) and poverty (fuhr 2012: 556). (4) urban-rural axis finally, an area’s status on the metro-nonmetro (in the united states) or urban-rural (in germany) continuum is linked to its poverty level. poverty has consistently been found to be positively associated with nonmetro location (jensen/tienda 1989; parisi et al. 2003; rank/hirschl 1988; rural sociological society task force on persistent rural poverty 1993; sáenz/thomas 1991; singelmann et al. 2002). in 1999, the rural south of the u.s. had the highest shares of families living below the poverty line (rupasingha/goetz 2007). similarly, people in rural areas in europe, germany included, tend to have higher risks to be poor than persons living in urban areas (european commission 2008).4 3 data and methodological considerations for the two u.s. poverty regions, the data for the empirical analyzes come from the 2000 u.s. census, whereas the data for the german border region are for 2010 and were obtained from the statistical offi ces of the states of brandenburg and mecklenburg-pomerania. the reason for why we use 2000 data for the u.s. regions is that during the 2000s, the american community survey (acs) was introduced which has taken the place of the long-form of the decennial u.s. census (which contains the information needed for our analyzes). while the advantage of the acs is the collection of annual data, the sample size for small counties prevents publication of annual data for confi dentiality reasons. instead, depending on the population size of a county, only 3-year or 5-year averages are made available to the public. for many of the counties in the two u.s. poverty regions, only 5-year averages are available. since the 5-year averages would not enable a precise time comparison with the german data, we decided to use the 2000 u.s. census data. 4 in some ways, or course, the urban-rural poverty differential is the result of this specifi c spatial dichotomization. in many metropolitan areas in both the united states and germany, parts of their inner cities have poverty rates comparable to those in rural areas. but if rural areas, in turn, are more differentiated, one tends to fi nd that poverty is especially high in areas furthest away from metro areas. • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann56 the difference in the reference years between the u.s. and german regions is less problematic than it appears. in previous analyzes, we found a high consistency between 1990 and 2000 in the correlates of poverty for the two u.s. regions (fontenot et al. 2010). the study by poston et al. (2010) further showed the same factors associated with poverty for the delta and the texas borderland during the 2000s that we show below. thus, we believe it to be a reasonable assumption that the correlates of poverty in the two u.s. regions did not change much between 2000 and 2010; only their coeffi cients will be slightly different. it is also worth noting that a majority of the counties in the delta and the texas borderland are classifi ed as “persistently poor.” according to this defi nition by the u.s. department of agriculture, a county is persistently poor if its poverty rate has exceeded 20 percent since 1970. again, this persistence of poverty in those two regions indicates a long-term absence of economic growth. if anything, the fi nancial crisis that started in 2008 increased poverty in comparison to 2000; but again, we can assume that this increase did not change the factors associated with the level of poverty. finally, a substantial number of counties in the texas borderland are experiencing drilling for oil and natural gas through the “fracking” process. while this resource boom will change the landscape of poverty in the region in the coming years, the level of fracking activity in 2010 was not extensive enough to have affected the level of poverty at that time. the three poverty regions differ in the geographical size, number, and population density of their counties. the delta has the largest number of counties (133) which allowed us to estimate a full model for the correlates of poverty. we also conducted a diagnosis for spatial autocorrelation and found no need to adjust the model. we did not expect any spatial autocorrelation for the texas borderland counties because of their low population density and, indeed, did not fi nd one. however, the smaller number of counties (41) made it necessary to reduce the full model used for the delta to estimate the correlates of poverty in the texas borderland. factor analyzes as well as crombach’s alpha, however, showed that the items of the constructed indices tapped one dimension and are comparable to the full model. the small number of counties in the german poverty region (14) only allowed a correlation analysis for which we analyzed the same or comparable factors as in the two u.s. regions. we should point out that regardless of the method used, we do not assume causality of population response to poverty because a variety of public policies that cannot be measured in the models are likely to play an important role in the relationship between poverty of a region and population response. 4 mississippi delta, texas borderland, and northeastern germany both the delta and the texas borderland have a long history of poverty. their traditional economy was based on agriculture, with few efforts made towards industrialization until late in the 20th century. the economies of both regions were based on economic systems that did not rely on labor markets, for such markets assume that regional poverty and population response • 57 workers have free choices of where to work and with whom to enter labor contracts. the legacy of oppression in these two regions resulted in disenfranchisement of the social minority populations that remains to be fully overcome. given those conditions, the concentration of minorities in the two regions resulted in especially high rates of aggregate poverty. the history of northeastern germany is somewhat different from this. while its economy has been dependent as much on agriculture as in the two u.s. regions, the historical events during the 20th century (two world wars and two economic system changes) lead to a more uneven economic trajectory in that part of germany. we now turn to a discussion of the three regions by briefl y summarizing the historical context for their current conditions, to be followed by an examination of the correlates of poverty in these regions and, subsequently, a discussion of the range of possible demographic responses to unfavorable economic conditions. 1. mississippi delta (1) historical legacy. the delta’s legacy is the plantation system that relied on slavery for economic survival. to control labor and keep it cheap after the end of slavery, land owners and power brokers systematically kept industries out of the region because it was feared that they would compete with agriculture for labor, thus likely raising wages in the region. while slavery was abolished after the civil war, slavelike conditions (e.g., jim crow laws; voting conditions; tenant farming) continued after the end of reconstruction in 1877 and lasted through the middle of the 20th century (hyland/timberlake 1993). in many ways, de facto slavery in the south did not end until the civil rights act of 1964. the rejection of industrialization went hand in hand with limited access to the u.s. rail system and, especially, the road system, keeping the delta economically isolated. objections to industrialization and other non-agricultural activities continued well into the latter part of the 20th century, with landowners rejecting federal programs that could have diversifi ed the economy. while the delta includes some of the most fertile agricultural soil in the nation – found in the mississippi river fl oodplain that benefi ted from the rich sediments of the river – the concentration of land ownership among a few families in many counties has meant a high level of income inequality, with a few families very well off and many in poverty. that inequality largely persists through today (lee/singelmann 2005). those conditions gave rise to the great migration toward the north, mostly during the period 1916-1930, and the second great migration of the period 1930-1970 (lemann 1991). as a lingering consequence of those adverse conditions, population growth in the delta remains largely stagnant or is negative. (2) results of analysis. our previous work on poverty in the delta included modeling the correlates of aggregate poverty among counties. for that analysis, we used the defi nition of the delta according to the geography delineated by the lower mississippi delta development commission that was established by the u.s. congress in the 1980s (now the delta regional authority); we further restricted the geography to the core delta area made up of counties in the states of arkansas, louisiana, and mississippi (see fig. 1). we use the term core delta here because in many ways • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann58 these counties include the cultural, social, and economic geography that is called the delta. even in this core, political pressures lead to the inclusion of counties whose connection to the delta is debatable (e.g., a number of ozark counties in arkansas). in these three states, 133 counties belong to the delta area. blacks are the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the delta, making up 35 percent of the total population. in 30 of the 133 counties in the delta, blacks represent a majority of the population, reaching as high as 86 percent. using 2000 u.s. census data, we built a model based on correlates of poverty discussed above and regressed the aggregate poverty rate of counties on those factors (singelmann et al. 2012a/b; slack et al. 2009). the results showed the following factors to be statistically signifi cantly associated with poverty (see table 1). as expected, the employment rate and the percent of employment in manufacturing tend to lower the poverty rate, whereas three factors are associated with higher poverty: the percent of the population under age 15, the percent of families headed by a single female, and the percent of the population 25 years of age and over that is without a high school education. none of the other factors discussed above had statistically signifi cant effects on the level of poverty among delta counties. fig. 1: poverty in the borderland and delta relative to the national average, 2000 source: u.s. bureau of the census 2000 u.s. census summary files regional poverty and population response • 59 (3) population and poverty. table 1 also shows that net in-migration is associated with lower poverty rates. overall, the delta region experienced small net out-migration. among the three states, louisiana shows moderate out-migration; it is the only southern state to have had more migrants leaving the state than coming in during the 1990s. in contrast, mississippi had some population gain from net in-migration, and arkansas benefi tted substantially from net in-migration, further indicating that much of arkansas is located outside the economically less advantaged delta region. the relatively low overall net out-migration from the delta region during the period 1990-2000 masks the fact that this region had lost substantially in population during the preceding decades. by 1990, the outfl ow had almost stabilized, and the delta population is expected to remain at around the level observed in 2000. 2. texas borderland (1) historical legacy. the texas borderland had settlements dating back to when this part of the united states was part of mexico, prior to formation of the republic of texas and the later incorporation of texas into the union as a state of the united states. given that history, many of the native-born persons in the region are latinos. the proximity of the borderland to mexico continued to fuel a steady supply of mexican labor and, more recently, of immigrants from other central american countries such as guatemala, el salvador, and honduras (betts/slottje 1994; snipp tab. 1: total family poverty in the delta states, the delta region, and the united states, 2000 variables (in percent) united states delta louisiana mississippi arkansas poor 9.2 16.1 15.8 16.0 12.0 employed (-) 71.2 64.7 64.4 64.7 69.1 manufacturing (-) 14.1 13.4 10.1 18.3 19.4 net migration (1,000) (-) 4.6 -0.2 -1.6 1.1 4.9 under age 15 (+) 22.8 22.2 24.0 24.1 22.5 female-headed (+) 11.9 17.2 16.7 17.2 11.8 less than hs. (+) 19.6 26.3 25.2 27.1 24.7 nonmetro (+) 66.0 71.0 55.0 79.0 73.0 average annual population growth 1.3 0.7 0.6 1.1 1.1 notes: hs = high school percent nonmetro = percent of counties that are nonmetro n=133 source: u.s. census bureau. variables shown to be associated with family poverty derived from multivariate regression analysis of county/parish-level data in the delta. the cell entries represent the distribution of each variable at the respective geographic level. the (+) sign indicates a local factor that is associated with higher family poverty in the region, while a (-) sign indicates a local factor that is associated with lower family poverty in the region. • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann60 1996). immigration laws such as the bracero program that started during world war ii and lasted until 1964 provided u.s. agribusiness with cheap and steady labor. those workers had little to no labor mobility once in the united states. subsequently, and especially after the implementation of the north american free trade act (nafta), labor-intensive manufacturing plants known as maquiladoras were set up on both sides of the border and served as magnets for low-skilled labor (see slack et al. 2009). the indirect effect of mexican maqiladoras on the labor market in the borderland has been to lower u.s. wages because of the lower wage level in mexico. the special form of industrialization benefi tted the region relatively little. as put by yoskowitz et al. (2002: 30), the economy remains “one dimensional with regard to trade, mainly transportation and warehousing, leaving little possibilities for growth in other areas.” a consequence of low wages that often do not raise families out of poverty has been the expansion of colonias. these are unincorporated subdivisions that are not part of municipalities and thus without the public services provided by towns. colonias typically have very small plots and little infrastructure; houses there often lack such basic amenities as electricity and plumbing. residents in the colonias are both socially and geographical isolated. according to one estimate, about 400,000 people in the borderland live in such subdivisions (texas secretary of state 2009). such residential concentration of poverty has been shown to have many socially undesirable outcomes (massey/denton 1993), including lack of job opportunities and the absence of social networks with resources. (2) results of analysis. the borderland stretches from el paso in the west along the rio grande river to brownsville in the east (see fig. 1). following sáenz (1997b), we include all counties in this region whose largest city is within 100 miles of the u.s.-mexican border. latinos represent the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the borderland, making up 80.2 percent of the total population. in fact, latinos are the numerical majority in 30 of the 41 counties in the borderland, reaching as high as 98 percent. the result of our regression analysis showed very similar factors to be statistically signifi cant that we identifi ed for the delta (see table 2). a key difference is the absence of signifi cance for the percent single female-head families. models differentiated by ethnicity showed that the lack of signifi cance for this factor applies only to latinos (but since latinos make up the majority of the population in the borderland, their results essentially drive the results for the entire population). for reasons not yet entirely clear to us, latinos get economically less rewarded for having two-parent families, in contrast to fi ndings for non-hispanic whites or for blacks. (3) population and poverty. the borderland region, in contrast to the delta, has been experiencing net in-migration, at a yearly rate of about 1.0 per 1,000 population during the 1990s. this gain from migration has continued during the past decade. however, in contrast to the negative association between net migration and the poverty rate in the delta, net migration has no statistically signifi cant association with the poverty rate in the borderland. regional poverty and population response • 61 the substantial net in-migration to the borderland occurred despite low wages prevailing in that region. although migrants typically tend to seek out higher-wage areas, they also consider their chances of obtaining a job. thus, the labor intensive manufacturing plants with their demands for low-skilled labor attract migrants with lower human capital who reason that they would be less competitive in higher-wage labor markets. in many ways, positive net migration in the borderland contradicts the economic theory of migration (todaro 1969) according to which migrants move from disadvantaged (poverty) areas to places with more favorable economic conditions. however, potential migrants also assess the likelihood of fi nding a job which is a function of unemployment at the place of destination as well as their competitiveness in terms of human capital. while many migrants who move to the borderland would prefer places like austin, texas, with its well paid high-tech jobs, they know that their low human capital does not make them competitive in that kind of labor market. in the borderland, their wages often do not get their families out of poverty (because of the low minimum wage in the united states), but at least they have a realistic chance of securing employment. in turn, the low-wage structure of the borderland turns migration into a non-signifi cant factor for variance among counties in their level of poverty. besides net in-migration, population growth in the texas borderland benefi ts from substantial natural increase. for one, latinos in the united states have the highest fertility rate of all major ethnic groups. in addition, immigration of latinos results in especially high growth rates for the population in child-bearing ages, thereby further adding to natural increase. tab. 2: poverty and its correlates in the texas borderland, 2000 variables (in percent) borderland texas united states means poor 22.3 13.7 9.2 less than hs. (+) 39.6 28.9 19.6 nonmetro (+) 80.3 70.0 66.0 under age 15 (+) 26.1 23.6 22.8 employed (-) 60.6 66.7 71.2 foreign-born (+) 13.7 7.2 3.4 no english (+) 16.4 17.3 15.6 average annual population growth 2.6 2.2 1.3 notes: hs = high school percent nonmetro = percent of counties that are nonmetro n=41 source: 2000 census summary files; u.s. census bureau, population estimates program • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann62 3. german border region (1) historical legacy. the northeastern parts of the german federal states of brandenburg and mecklenburg-pomerania form the largest continuous region of high-poverty counties in germany. the region of ostfriesland shows similar social and economic vulnerability, but it does not compare in size to northeastern germany. for the past two centuries, the economic base of this region has been dependent on agriculture. most counties in this region are rural with a lack of industrial centers. some counties, of course, do include larger towns and cities (for example greifswald), and the region features the three larger cities of stralsund,5 frankfurt/oder, and cottbus (all three are independent cities, i.e., they are not part of any county). but the development of this region has witnessed more upheavals during the past one hundred years than is the case with either the delta or the texas borderland. in the delta, the outcome of the civil war with its de jure end to slavery formally ended the plantation system in the south. but after the short period of reconstruction, the emergence of the jim crow laws provided for a de facto continuation of many elements of the plantation economy. the u.s.-mexican war ended with the takeover by the united states of all land north of the rio grande, which has remained the contemporary border between the united states and mexico. however, the peripheral position of the texas borderland continued throughout this period, with its emphasis on agriculture until the recent semi-industrialization as part of the north american free trade act (nafta). in contrast, germany’s northeast during that period saw a history of stateplanned rural settlement as well as expulsion and mass migration. in this region, farm structures several times have been completely transformed. before the second world war, much of the land belonged to large (and often feudal) estates. in 1945, through a land reform agreed upon as part of the potsdam treaty, such holdings were expropriated and distributed among farm workers and small holders, with priority given to the thousands of refugees who were expelled from the former german territories. also in 1945, the river oder became the new border between germany and poland, turning the northern counties of the region that used to be part of the hinterland of the former german city stettin (since then szczecin) into a peripheral area (siebert/laschewski 2010). while this description applies most aptly to mecklenburg-pomerania, counties in brandenburg that share a border with poland are similarly peripheral and share the structural disadvantages of the counties further north. in the german democratic republic (gdr), the society underwent a fundamental process of rural restructuring. family-based farming, fi sheries, and other economic activities were collectivized and, from the 1970s onwards, rural society was built on industry-like farm estates that also played a central role for local social and cultural development. the gdr government also attempted to reduce the structural differ5 since the county reform of 2011, stralsund is no longer a “county-free” city and is now included in ost-vorpommern county. regional poverty and population response • 63 ence between the mostly agricultural north and the more industrialized south by establishing large industrial facilities in east germany’s northeast (e.g., the petrochemical state combine in schwedt with about 8,000 workers, steel manufacturing in eisenhüttenstadt, or the nuclear reactor lubmin near greifswald with about 5,000 employees) (siebert 2004; bogai et al. 2006). after 1989 and unifi cation, rural eastern germany, for the third time in less than 50 years, underwent a major process of restructuring, which once again imposed a new social order on rural society and, at the same time, brought about a radical decline of non-agricultural production, with a matching decrease of employment in both agriculture and non-agriculture. in uckermark county, for example, employment in agriculture and forestry declined from 25,000 in 1990 to 4,500 in 1992. employment in industry decreased similarly between 1990 and 1993. the former petrochemical state combine in schwedt reduced its employment by 75 percent, from about 8,000 to 2,000; the decision in 1990 to close the nuclear reactor lubmin reduced employment by 80 percent. although new job positions were created after 1990 in retail trade, crafts industries, services, and tourism, the number of those positions are too small to compensate for the loss of employment that resulted from privatization. similarly, new jobs were created in the former industrial sites such as schwedt and lubmin, but their total numbers are a fraction of the job losses during the early 1990s (siebert 2004; bogai et al. 2006). moreover, during that period, new farmers from western germany and other western european countries moved into the area and set up new farm businesses. the speed as well as the scale of the changes that hit eastern german rural economies are almost without historical precedent, and are shaping the nature of development to this day (laschewski/siebert 2001, 2004). this region nowadays serves as the “worst case” example of an economically depressed countryside in germany and has been studied intensively by “experts” from all academic areas. it is facing huge demographic changes, and its rural economic outlook is perceived as close to hopeless. for some years now, cases such as this region have prompted a debate about rural decline, in which technocratic ideas of taking a proactive approach to empty sparsely populated areas have found considerable public attention (berlin-institut für bevölkerung und entwicklung 2007, 2011). (2) results of analysis. the economically most distressed counties in brandenburg and mecklenburg-pomerania are those along the german-polish border and most of the counties in the “second row” that are adjacent to the border counties. we call this area the german border region (see fig. 2). it consists of the following counties: uckermark, barnim, märkisch-oderland, landkreis oder-spree, spreeneisse, oberhavel, dahme-spreewald, and oberspreewald-lausitz (all in brandenburg); rügen, nordvorpommern, ostvorpommern, demmin, uecker-randow, and mecklenburg-strelitz (all in mecklenburg-pomerania). table 3 shows the high levels of poverty in these counties, with the exception of counties that are in proximity to berlin (barnim and landkreis oder-spree). • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann64 fig. 2: counties within the german border region border regions within germany source: own design regional poverty and population response • 65 in our previous comparisons of the correlates of poverty between the delta and the texas borderland, we were restricted in the complexity of our models by the small sample size for the texas borderland (41 counties) (singelmann et al. 2012a; fontenot et al. 2010; slack et al. 2009). with only 14 counties in the german border region, it is impossible to estimate a multiple regression model for poverty in this region. thus, we had to resort to bivariate-correlation analyzes which we used to identify those factors that are statistically signifi cantly associated with the poverty rate in the border region. in table 3, we present the means for those factors for germany, brandenburg, mecklenburg-pomerania, and the german border region. the results show that in the german border region, very similar factors are associated with poverty that we had found for the delta and the texas borderland. the data in table 3 also clearly show that for all factors, brandenburg and mecklenburgpomerania compare less favorable with all of germany, and that the situation is even worse in the border region. the percent employment in manufacturing and positive net migration both tend to be associated with lower levels of poverty; but there is less manufacturing in the border region, and the area experiences substantial out-migration. conversely, the three factors associated with higher levels of poverty (percent leaving school without a formal certifi cate, unemployment rate, and percent of employment in agriculture) are all higher in the border region than in germany as a whole. (3) population and poverty. in table 3, we also present the average rate of natural population growth for the four geographies. while all of germany experiences negative natural population growth (i.e., the number of death exceeds the number of births), that gap between birth and death is more than twice as high in the border region than in all of germany. the combined effect of substantial net out-migration from the border region and its negative population growth rate indicate a shrinking of the population in this area that is unmatched by any other region of germany. the even more dire population projections have resulted in substantial attention to tab. 3: poverty and its correlates in the northeast german border region, around 2010 variables (in percent) germany brandenburg mecklenburgvorpommern border region poverty 14.5 16.3 22.4 18.5 without school certifi cate (+) 6.2 8.2 13.7 11.1 unemployed (+) 7.7 10.5 12.7 12.5 agriculture (+) 2.1 3.6 3.9 4.8 manufacturing (-) 24.8 22.7 18.1 22.2 net migration rate (per 1,000) (-) 1.5 0.2 2.2 4.0 natural growth (per 1,000) 2.2 3.5 3.3 4.5 source: statistisches amt mecklenburg-vorpommern 2011; statistisches amt brandenburg 2011 • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann66 the population trends in this region (cf. klingholz 2010; bmvbs/bbsr 2009; berlininstitut für bevölkerung und entwicklung 2011, 2009, 2007; prognos 2009; ministerium für arbeit, soziales, frauen und familie des landes brandenburg 2009; impuls mv 2010). 5 comparison and discussion in this paper, we selected the poorest regions in the united states – the mississippi delta and the texas borderland – and the border region in northeast germany for which we discussed the origin of their weak economies and identifi ed factors associated with higher and lower levels of poverty at the county level. despite the substantial differences among the three areas regarding their history, current socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics, and structural problems, similar factors emerged from these analyzes that help explain variation in aggregate poverty among counties. in general, human capital (education and language ability), employment rate, the size of the manufacturing sector, and net migration are associated with lower levels of poverty, whereas percent single female headed families, percent of the population under 15 years of age, and nonmetro status of a county are associated with higher poverty. but there also difference among the three regions in their correlates of poverty. for example, latinos in the texas borderland gain much less from higher proportions of two-parent families than do either nonhispanic whites or blacks. (we have not been able to obtain information on this variable at the county level for the german border region, but based on the discussion of the relationship between family structure and poverty in germany earlier in this paper, we expect that it would also be associated with higher levels of poverty.) and the high poverty of the german border region, as is the case for the delta, cannot be explained by high proportion of foreign born, because the percent foreign born in the delta and the percent foreigners in eastern germany is much lower than what is found in the united states outside the delta and in other federal states in western germany. a major difference among the three poverty regions concerns migration and population growth. in the delta, net out-migration is consistent with the economic theory of migration according to which the fl ow of migration goes from poor regions to those better off. much of the out-migration from the delta happened as part of the great migration to the north during the period 1930-1960 and then continued for about another 20 years. for that reason, the current level of net out-migration is lower than what the weak economic conditions would suggest. furthermore, latino immigrants for about the past two decades have gone to non-traditional destinations, including the south and parts of the delta. this redirection of latino migration has kept net migration close to zero. in addition, with fertility rates in the u.s. high enough to assure natural growth, a good part of net out-migration has been offset by the surplus of births over deaths with the result that the population of the delta has remained fairly steady over the past two decades. regional poverty and population response • 67 the texas borderland experiences substantial net in-migration which is only partly made up of immigrants, with most of the migrants to the borderland coming from other parts of the united states. often, they are return migrants who were born in that region and/or had grown up there. the pull of the region for migrants is the abundance of low-skilled jobs in light manufacturing (assembly work). retail services that cater to mexican customers from across the border create additional demand for labor. while those jobs offer wages that often do not lift a family out of poverty – even with full-time and year-round employment – migrants with low levels of human capital nevertheless have a high degree of certainty of fi nding a job. in addition, with latinos having the highest fertility rates of all ethnic groups in the united states, the population in the texas borderland has experienced substantial growth rates that have contributed to texas gaining more congressional representation almost every decade. in fact, during the 1990s, population growth in the texas borderland was higher than for the state of texas as a whole, and was double the average u.s. population growth. this trend continued through the 2000s; after the 2010 population census, texas was awarded four new congressional districts. as is the case with the delta, the border region in northeast germany also experiences net out-migration, refl ecting the lack of economic opportunity in the region. however, its rate of net out-migration of -4.0 is substantially larger than the -0.2 out-migration rate for the delta. this population loss is amplifi ed by a high rate of natural decrease (-4.5) that is more than double the german average. as a result, the population loss of the german border region is very high, and population projections show no turnaround in this trend. in contrast to an increasing number of rural counties for which latino in-migration (and increasingly natural increase for the latino population already established) is the sole source of a stable population (johnson 2012), ethnic in-migration to the german border region does not appear to be an option. the place-based approach to our analysis helped us to show how poverty is embedded in structural and historic conditions. even individual characteristics (educational attainment, for example) are in large part the result of neighborhoods, historical legacies, and structural dislocations. in both the delta and the texas borderland, educational opportunities for blacks and latinos were severely restricted for generations and only improved, albeit ever so slowly, after the mid-1960s. even today, the quality of schools in areas with minority concentrations is far below the state average, even in states with low educational attainment (such as louisiana, mississippi, and even texas). moreover, migrants contribute a substantial share of overall population growth the texas borderland, despite that area’s high rate of poverty. the assessment by these migrants appears to be that with their low human capital, they at least fi nd employment opportunities in the borderland, although at wages that do not lift them out of poverty. in sum, the demographic response to poverty conditions ranges from substantial population growth in the texas borderland to no growth in the mississippi delta and very heavy population losses in germany’s northeastern border region. the regions also differ in the extent to which they have been the focus of policy initiative, or are in the spotlight for possible future policy measures. • rosemarie siebert, joachim singelmann68 the delta is the only one of the three regions for which an institutional policy framework was set up. during the 1980s, the u.s. congress established the lower mississippi delta development commission to promote development and reduce poverty. that commission initially charged all federal departments to clearly specify in their appropriations request to congress what they specifi cally intended to do for the delta. much of those initiatives, however, remained on paper, and the delta commission never had the success of the appalachian development commission after which it was modeled. the difference is partly historical: when the appalachian development commission was established to reduce poverty and hunger in the mining region, there was still a fair consensus in the united states that government programs could solve social problems. by the 1980s, that belief had completely disappeared. with social welfare programs being viewed – incorrectly – as government support for african american, it could also be that the political will did not exist to establish a far-reaching development plan for the delta because of its high concentrations of african americans. no government initiative was ever started for the texas borderland, partly because of its population growth dynamic and, partly, because it has been viewed – similarly incorrectly – as a region where only latino immigrants are poor. the low voter turnout of latinos in the past might have been another reason for lack of attention by legislators. however, the pivotal role played by latinos in the 2012 presidential election is beginning to draw development projects to the borderland (e.g., the establishment of a medical school by the university of texas system). the current focus on the german border region by policy debates has little to do, in our view, with the fact that the region has high poverty, but rather because it is shrinking dramatically in demographic terms. the tenor of the debates is less about how poverty can be reduced but how the population decrease can be stopped or at least slowed down. the terms of that debate – equality of opportunities, the costs of maintaining an infrastructure for fewer and fewer people, and rural landscapes as cultural value – are completely absent in any discussion of the two u.s. regions. it is important to note that in germany, a law exists (raumordnungsgesetz [rog]) that mandates “equivalent living conditions” for persons in all regions. this implies a “value parity of living conditions which also considers structural differences of sub-areas” (akademie für raumforschung und landesplanung 2005: 612). the aim of this legislation is an adequate accommodation of the population in all areas of life and an infrastructure that corresponds to the needs of the population. the world economy is just coming out of the great recession, the worst economic crisis since the world depression of the late 1920/early 1930s. its aftermath has been a series of fi nancial crises around the globe and shouldered governments with high levels of debt. the political response has largely focused on austerity measures that leave little room for social engineering. in the united states, for example, the strategy for reducing welfare rolls favored work-fi rst over empowering poor people through better human capital and work-readiness training. the debt levels of many countries makes investments in human capital even less likely today. thus, there is little prospect for reducing poverty in the delta through development efforts that could also attract new in-migration. the future of the texas borderland regional poverty and population response • 69 is closely tied to the integration of the border regions of the united states and mexico, and that dynamic makes a continuation of population growth in the borderland probable. in germany, the great recession was less severe. cooperation between the government, labor unions, and the private sector made it possible to design labor market measures (e.g., kurzarbeit [reduced work hours at less than equivalently reduced wages]) that buffered the increase in unemployment. moreover, fi nancial restrictions for buying real estate in germany prevented a housing crisis as it existed in the united states. in germany, people did not lose their homes due to foreclosure at nearly the rate existing in the united states; thus, german consumers were not burdened with as much debt as were their u.s. counterparts. but, as we pointed out above, the discussion about the german border region refers less to poverty – although 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sociology 61: 125-142 [doi: 10.1111/j.1549-0831.1996.tb00613.x]. texas secretary of state 2009: colonias faq’s [http://www.sos.state.tx.us/border/colonias/faqs.shtml, 15.01.2009]. tickamyer, ann r. 2000: space matters! spatial inequality in future sociology. in: contemporary sociology 29: 805-813 [doi: 10.2307/2654088]. tickamyer, ann r.; duncan, cynthia m. 1990: poverty and opportunity structure in rural america. in: annual review of sociology 16: 67-86 [doi: 10.1146/annurev. so.16.080190.000435]. todaro, michael p. 1969: a model for labor migration and urban unemployment in less developed countries. in: american economic review 59: 138-148. u.s. bureau of the census 2011: current population survey – annual social and economic supplement. 2010 poverty tables. washington dc: census bureau. wilson, william j. 1980: the declining signifi cance of race: blacks and changing american institutions, 2nd edition. chicago: university of chicago press. yoskowitz, david w.; giermanski, james r.; pena-sanchez, rolando 2002: the infl uence of nafta on socio-economic variables for the us-mexico border region. in: regional studies 36: 25-31 [doi: 10.1080/00343400120099834]. regional poverty and population response • 75 dr. rosemarie siebert. leibniz centre for agricultural landscape research (zalf). müncheberg, germany. e-mail: rsiebert@zalf.de url: http://www.zalf.de/en/forschung/institute/soz/mitarbeiter/siebert/pages/default. aspx prof. dr. joachim singelmann (). the university of texas at san antonio. usa. e-mail: joachim.singelmann@utsa.edu url: http://copp.utsa.edu/faculty/joachim-singelmann/ date of submission: 19.11.2012 date of acceptance: 13.05.2013 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland. demografische projektionen und konsequenzen für unterschiedliche politikfelder folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland demografi sche projektionen und konsequenzen für unterschiedliche politikfelder martin bujard zusammenfassung: deutschland ist länger als alle anderen länder der welt ein „low-fertility“-land, seit vier jahrzehnten liegt die total fertility rate unterhalb von 1,5. als „pionier“ in dieser entwicklung lassen sich anhand einer fallstudie deutschlands die folgen eines langfristigen geburtenrückgangs analysieren. dieser rückgang ist in deutschland zunehmend auch ein megathema in politik und wissenschaft, da die folgen sich auf mehrere politikbereiche auswirken und teilweise bereits deutlich sichtbar sind. allerdings werden diese folgen völlig unterschiedlich eingeschätzt – zum einen in ihrer vehemenz und danach, ob die alterung oder die schrumpfung das größere problem ist. nach beiden prozessen differenziert, verbindet der beitrag die demografi sche analyse mit der politikwissenschaftlichen bewertung der folgen für die politikfelder rente, gesundheit, wirtschaft, arbeitsmarkt, kultur, europäische union, internationale beziehungen sowie den parteienwettbewerb. die folgen sind für alle diese politikfelder gravierend, teilweise ambivalent, aber in der summe negativ. der zeitpunkt der folgen und die politischen möglichkeiten damit umzugehen unterscheiden sich zwischen den politikfeldern erheblich. alterung ist ein größeres problem als die schrumpfung, da die vehementen altersstruktureffekte für die sozialversicherungen bis 2040 die meisten deutschen betreffen und unabwendbar sind. anders die folgen der schrumpfung, denn sie sind demografi sch noch abwendbar und beträfen nicht alle einwohner negativ. bei einem bevölkerungsrückgang muss man zwischen individueller und staatlicher ebene differenzieren: die auswirkungen auf den staat sind durch einen rückgang an internationalem einfl uss und macht, insbesondere in der europäischen union, negativ. die studie zeigt aber auch, dass die langfristigen folgen des geburtenrückgangs für den politischen wettbewerb, die kultur, den arbeitsmarkt und die wirtschaft nicht negativ sein müssen, wenn entsprechende politikmaßnahmen erfolgen. die analyse identifi ziert demografi sche und politische stellschrauben für die zukunft. die befunde dieser fallstudie sind auch für andere low-fertility-länder relevant, die einige jahre später mit ähnlichen prozessen konfrontiert sind. schlagwörter: geburtenrückgang · alterung · sozialsysteme · bevölkerungsrückgang · europäische union comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 40 (2015): 53-86 (erstveröffentlichung: 03.06.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-06de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-06de8 • martin bujard54 1 einleitung im jahr 2012 gab es weltweit bereits 29 „low-fertility“-länder (world bank 2014), wobei sich diese defi nition an einer total fertility rate (tfr) von unter 1,5 festmacht. diese 29 länder sind von dem phänomen jedoch überwiegend erst seit ein bis zwei jahrzehnten betroffen. die bundesrepublik deutschland ist länger als alle anderen länder, seit vier jahrzehnten, ein low-fertility-land.1 nach deutschland weisen italien seit 1984, spanien seit 1988 sowie japan, bulgarien und rumänien seit 1993 am längsten ununterbrochen derart niedrige tfr auf. für die analyse der langfristigen folgen des geburtenrückgangs ist der fall deutschlands besonders interessant, weil bereits die zweite generation von niedriger fertilität betroffen ist, so dass sich die folgen einer langfristig niedrigen tfr bereits stärker abzeichnen. die folgende fallstudie analysiert die folgen des geburtenrückgangs in deutschland, wobei – trotz einiger spezifi sch deutscher rahmenbedingungen – die erkenntnisse für viele andere länder relevant sind, da diese zeitverzögert vor ähnlichen herausforderungen stehen. der geburtenrückgang und der demografi sche wandel erfahren in deutschland in politik, medien und wissenschaft eine enorme beachtung (vgl. barlösius/schiek 2007; stock et al. 2012), inzwischen wird sogar von einem eigenen politikfeld „demografi epolitik“ gesprochen (hüther/naegele 2013; mayer 2012). in der politik ist dieses megathema inzwischen so angekommen, dass die bundesregierung einen demografi ebericht (bmi 2012) erstellen ließ und eine demografi estrategie (bmi 2013) entwickelt hat. bundeskanzlerin angela merkel stellt den demografi schen wandel auf die gleiche stufe wie die globalisierung (merkel 2012). dass viele politikfelder unmittelbar vom demografi schen wandel betroffen sind, zeigen nicht zuletzt die mitwirkung fast aller bundesministerien bei der demografi estrategie der bundesregierung und die anwesenheit von acht bundesministern und der bundeskanzlerin bei den ersten beiden „demografi egipfeln“ 2012 und 2013. „der demografi sche wandel bedeutet neben den fragen der globalisierung wahrscheinlich die größte veränderung unseres gesellschaftlichen lebens, aber auch des persönlichen lebens jedes einzelnen in der ersten hälfte des 21. jahrhunderts.“ (merkel 2012) angesichts dieser bedeutung ist es erstaunlich, wie höchst un terschiedlich die bewertungen der folgen des geburtenrückgangs in deutschland sind. während birg (2003: 14) einen „demographischen niedergang deutschlands“ sieht, der „vorzeichen für den abschied unseres landes aus seiner tausendjährigen geschichte“ sein könnte, hält hondrich (2007: 1) den geburtenrückgang für einen „glücksfall für unsere gesellschaft“. die beiden zitate weisen exemplarisch auf die enorme bandbreite der einschätzungen hin. die polarisierung zwischen „untergangsszenarien“ und „verharmlosung“ ist charakteristisch für die debatte über den geburtenrückgang in den arenen politik, medien und wissenschaft in deutschland. 1 im jahr 1975 beträgt die tfr 1,45 und ist seitdem mit werten zwischen 1,24 und 1,45 bis heute unterhalb von 1,5 geblieben (statistisches bundesamt 2013a). folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 55 wie kommt das? es gibt viele unterschiedliche folgen für gesellschaft, wirtschaft und politik, die bei einer gesamtbewertung berücksichtigt werden müssen. zu einzelnen aspekten gibt es umfassende analysen, jedoch wird meistens nicht zwischen beiden demografi schen konsequenzen des geburtenrückgangs – alterung2 und schrumpfung der bevölkerungszahl – konsequent differenziert, was jedoch analytisch notwendig ist. auch bei der frage, ob die folgen der alterung oder die der schrumpfung vehementer sind, unterscheiden sich die einschätzungen in der literatur fundamental. zudem müssen jeweils demografi sche projektionen verwendet und deren annahmen adäquat eingeschätzt werden. häufi g sind analysen fragmentiert zwischen demografi schen auf der einen seite und sozialbzw. politikwissenschaftlichen analysen der folgen anderseits. das erschwert eine systematische bestandsaufnahme der einzelnen folgen des geburtenrückgangs in abhängigkeit von demografi schen parametern und damit eine wissenschaftlich fundierte gesamtbewertung. auch daher dominieren demografi sche fehlinterpretationen, fragwürdige annahmen oder partikuläre betrachtungen die einordnung des phänomens geburtenrückgang. dieser artikel analysiert die folgen des geburtenrückgangs anhand einer fallstudie zu deutschland für verschiedene politikfelder wie rente, gesundheit, wirtschaft, arbeitsmarkt, internationale beziehungen und eu sowie für die gesellschaft und den parteipolitischen wettbewerb. dazu wird eine systematische verbindung zwischen demografi schen prozessen einerseits (abschnitt 3-4) und den politischen, gesellschaftlichen und ökonomischen folgen andererseits (abschnitt 5-6) hergestellt. auf dieser basis wird eine synthese zu den folgen der geburtenrückgangs entwickelt, die dreierlei fragen beantwortet: welche folgen der geburtenrückgang zu welchem zeitpunkt auf die einzelnen politikfelder hat, welche politischen und demografi schen stellschrauben in der zukunft existieren und ob alterung oder schrumpfung problematischer ist. abschließend wird die übertragbarkeit der befunde für andere länder diskutiert. 2 forschungsstand und analysestrategie 2.1 forschungsstand der mitte der 1960er jahre in europa einsetzende zweite geburtenrückgang ist teil des zweiten demografi schen übergangs (van de kaa 1987). er wird in der demografi e als eigenes phänomen gegenüber dem ersten demografi schen übergang abgegrenzt, der von einem erheblichen rückgang der kindersterblichkeit begleitet wurde und in deutschland von 1870 bis 1930 dauerte. infolge des zweiten geburtenrückgangs hat sich in deutschland und einigen südeuropäischen und ostasiatischen ländern die total fertility rate (tfr) bei 1,2 bis 1,5 eingependelt, während 2 der begriff „alterung“ wird hier für die verschiebung in der altersstruktur verwendet, wonach der anteil älterer menschen an der bevölkerung deutlich zunimmt. • martin bujard56 andere industrieländer in nordeuropa, nordamerika oder frankreich eine tfr nahe des bestandserhaltungsniveaus von 2,1 aufweisen (oecd 2014). die tfr ist in vielen ländern durch das steigende alter der frauen bei der geburt beeinfl usst und niedriger als die endgültige kinderzahl der entsprechenden kohorten (bongaarts 2001). in der bundesrepublik deutschland liegt die tfr seit 1975 im engen korridor von 1,24 bis 1,45, also seit mehr als einer generation ein drittel unterhalb der ausgleichsrate (zu den ursachen vgl. bujard et al. 2012). das ist weltweit die längste phase eines solch niedrigen geburtenniveaus. zur analyse der folgen dieses geburtenrückgangs bedarf es einer analytischen trennung zwischen alterung und schrumpfung (u.a. swiaczny 2014). beide phänomene implizieren höchst unterschiedliche folgen. die bewertung der gesamtfolgen des geburtenrückgangs in deutschland variiert in der literatur dahingehend, ob die alterung die „schlimmere“ entwicklung sei (sinn 2013) oder der bevölkerungsrückgang (birg 2003; kaufmann 2005). bei bevölkerungsprojektionen unterscheidet sich der einfl uss der drei zentralen parameter – lebenserwartung, migrationssaldo und geburtenrate – im hinblick auf alterung und schrumpfung fundamental. bevölkerungsprojektionen, die sowohl projektionen für die bevölkerungsgröße als auch die alterung umfassen, gibt es u.a. von den vereinten nationen für den zeitraum bis 2100 (un 2012) und vom statistischen bundesamt (2009a/b) für deutschland bis 2060. dabei werden bisherige trends der demografi schen parameter fortgeschrieben, wobei ein spektrum unterschiedlicher annahmen und ihrer kombinationen berechnet wird. diese projektionen verstehen sich explizit nicht als prognosen, trotzdem werden die mittleren varianten faktisch oft als solche interpretiert. allerdings sei auf zwei ernst zu nehmende kritikpunkte an diesen projektionen hingewiesen: zum einen wird die auswirkung des angenommenen durchschnittlichen gebäralters auf das fertilitätsniveau teilweise nicht berücksichtigt (goldstein et al. 2011), was bei der vorausberechnung des statistischen bundesamtes (2009a) angesichts eines ab 2020 nicht mehr steigenden gebäralters in der mittleren variante zu einer anschließenden unterschätzung der tfr führen kann. zum anderen kritisieren probabilistische ansätze die deterministische beschaffenheit klassischer projektionen und dass die unsicherheit durch verschiedene varianten abgebildet und nicht anhand von konfi denzintervallen quantifi ziert wird (werte für deutschland siehe: scherbov et al. 2008: 40-41). allerdings können auch probabilistische ansätze die wahrscheinlichkeit von systembrüchen und zukünftigen entwicklungen der annahmen nicht vorhersagen. die bevölkerungsvorausberechnungen des statistischen bundesamtes sind grundlage der demografi schen analysen in abschnitt 3 und 4, da sie in der anwendung in deutschland dominant sind. die literatur zu den folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs und der alterung im hinblick auf sozialsysteme, wirtschaft, gesellschaft, eu, internationale beziehungen und den politischen wettbewerb ist umfangreich. da sich die bisherige forschung oft auf einzelne folgen bezieht, wird der forschungsstand nicht gebündelt, sondern an entsprechender stelle in abschnitt 5 und 6 dargestellt. folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 57 2.2 analysestrategie um die folgen des geburtenrückgangs für ein bestimmtes politikfeld zu analysieren, ist die verbindung demografi scher und politikwissenschaftlicher perspektiven notwendig. da der geburtenrückgang sich mit alterung und schrumpfung in zwei unterschiedlichen demografi schen phänomenen manifestiert, werden diese prozesse jeweils anhand verschiedener zukunftsprojektionen diskutiert. dabei werden die jeweiligen dynamiken und zeithorizonte sowie ihre beeinfl ussbarkeit von den drei demografi schen hebeln geburten, migration und lebenserwartung skizziert (siehe abb. 1). welchen einfl uss der geburtenrückgang zu welchem zeitpunkt und mit welcher wahrscheinlichkeit bspw. auf die sozialen sicherungssysteme hat, kann man nur verstehen, wenn man zuvor die demografi schen prozesse analysiert hat. wohlgemerkt: es reicht nicht aus, einen projektionswert für ein bestimmtes jahr zu betrachten, vielmehr ist ein verständnis der prozesse und stellschrauben essentiell. im nächsten schritt werden die folgen des geburtenrückgangs für einzelne politikfelder analysiert, wobei der fokus auf einigen zentralen folgen liegt. die konsequente trennung von alterung und schrumpfung wird beibehalten. die folgen der alterung für sozialsysteme, wirtschaft, gesellschaft und parteiendemokratie werden anhand der unterschiedlichen projektionen erörtert. anschließend werden die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs in hinblick auf internationale beziehungen, eu, wirtschaft, umwelt und gesellschaft analysiert, gerade im vergleich zu anderen industrieländern. diese analyse ermöglicht auch eine bewertung, welche folgen als negativ, welche als positiv und welche nicht in dieser dichotomie einordenbar sind. aufgrund des dynamischen charakters demografi scher prozesse ist der zeithorizont maßgeblich für die beurteilung der folgen. diese sind dem geburtenrückgang viele jahrzehnte nachgelagert, wobei den alterungsprozessen und dem beabb. 1: folgen eines geburtenrückgangs mit jahrzehntelanger niedriger fertilität quelle: eigene darstellung • martin bujard58 völkerungsrückgang eine unterschiedliche dynamik und ein anderer höhepunkt der folgen zugrunde liegen. hierbei ist ausschlaggebend, ob die projektionen für den zeitraum bis 2030, 2060 oder gar 2100 angefertigt sind. da mit zunehmendem zeitraum projektionen unsicherer werden, andererseits aber die demografi sche trägheit langfristige berechnungen ermöglicht, wird der frage nachgegangen, bis zu welchem jahr und mit welchen unsicherheiten diese sinnvoll zu interpretieren sind. anschließend wird die demografi sche analyse mit der politikwissenschaftlichen zusammengebracht. angesichts der folgen des geburtenrückgangs verbleiben zwei grundsätzlich verschiedene arten politischer optionen: die beeinfl ussung der demografi schen parameter wie zukünftige geburtenrate und migration sowie die anpassungsreaktionen in den einzelnen politikfeldern. dabei werden die jeweiligen gestaltungsspielräume analysiert und eine grundlage für demografi epolitische politikberatung gelegt. diese analyseschritte ermöglichen ein abschließendes urteil zu den beiden vorne genannten kontroversen: erstens zur frage der gesamtbewertung des phänomens und zweitens, ob alterung oder bevölkerungsrückgang als gesamtgesellschaftlich negativer einzuschätzen sind. 3 alterung die alterung der bevölkerung beruht nicht nur auf dem geburtenrückgang, sondern wird durch die steigende lebenserwartung verstärkt. die unterschiede der altersstrukturen zwischen den industrieländern sind weitestgehend auf den geburtenrückgang zurückzuführen, da die fertilitätsentwicklung zwischen den ländern deutlich stärker variiert als der trend der zunehmenden lebenserwartung. der alterungsprozess lässt sich durch lageparameter und altenquotienten quantifi zieren. so ist für die auswirkungen der alterung auf das wahlsystem das medienalter ausschlaggebend, während für die sozialversicherungen der altenquotient entscheidend ist. 3.1 medianalter das medianalter ist in deutschland von 35 jahren im jahr 1950 auf 43 jahre in 2009 gestiegen und wird zwischen 2045 und 2060 bei etwa 52 jahren liegen. das medianalter der wahlberechtigten ist für veränderungen parteipolitischer kräfteverhältnisse aufschlussreicher: es war in der zweiten hälfte des 20. jahrhunderts recht konstant: es lag 1950 bei 44,4, 1970 bei 44,7, 1990 bei 45,0 und 2000 bei 46,4 jahren. im jahr 2012 betrug es mit 50,1 erstmals mehr als 50 jahre. in abbildung 2 ist das medianalter der wahlberechtigten bis 2060 dargestellt, das anhand der mittleren variante (untergrenze) der 12. koordinierten bevölkerungsvorausberechnung (statistisches bundesamt 2009b) berechnet wurde. demnach wird es 2030 auf 55,4 jahre (vgl. sánchez gassen 2015: 248) und bis 2060 auf 58 jahre steigen. der hauptanstieg erfolgt zwischen 2000 und 2030. während bis in die 1990er jahre die hälfte der wahlberechtigten unter 45 jahre alt war, ist ab dem jahr 2026 die hälfte über 55 jahre, also im rentenalter oder kurz davor. folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 59 3.2 altenquotient der altenquotient ist eine zentrale maßzahl für die umlagefi nanzierten sozialversicherungen, er zeigt die relation der personen im rentenalter zu denen im erwerbsfähigen alter an. der hier verwendete altenquotient bezieht sich auf die relation der ab 65-jährigen zu den 20bis 64-jährigen. der größte anteil der epochalen zunahme des altenquotienten fi ndet zwischen den jahren 2010 und 2040 statt. in diesem zeitraum erreichen die geburtenschwachen jahrgänge den arbeitsmarkt. dieser effekt wird durch die noch geburtenschwächere nächste generation ebenso verstärkt wie durch das erreichen des rentenalters der babyboom-generation zwischen 2020 und 2030. abbildung 3 zeigt das projektionsspektrum des statistischen bundesamtes (2009a/b). die ergebnisse des neuen zensus, die noch nicht in dieabb. 2: medianalter der gesamtbevölkerung und der wahlberechtigten medianalter in jahren 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 frauen männer gesamt frauen männer gesamt gesamtbevölkerung bevölkerung über 18 jahre jahr anmerkungen: ab 2012: ergebnisse der 12. koordinierten bevölkerungsvorausberechnung, variante 1-w1 (annahmen siehe abb. 3). die hier analysierte bevölkerung ab 18 jahre ist nicht identisch mit den wahlberechtigten, da auch die nicht wahlberechtigte ausländische bevölkerung inkludiert ist. da die altersstruktur bei den deutschen etwas älter ist, ist das medianalter der wahlberechtigten minimal höher. berechnungen für 2011 zeigen, dass dieser effekt ein knappes jahr (0,9 jahre) ausmacht. quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2009b. eigene berechnung zusammen mit harun sulak. • martin bujard60 sen bevölkerungsvorausberechnungen berücksichtigt sind, verzerren die werte für den altenquotienten nur unwesentlich. das spektrum der mittleren basisvarianten weist altenquotienten für 2060 von 63,1 und 67,4 auf, was ausgehend von 2008 einem anstieg um 87 % bzw. 100 % entspricht. die verdopplung des altenquotienten wird bereits 2040 mit werten um 60 erreicht, danach fl acht der anstieg ab. im schattierten bereich zeigt abbildung 3 die verläufe für die höchsten und niedrigsten kombinationen von annahmen zu wanderung, geburtenrate und lebenserwartung innerhalb der zwölf berechneten und als realistisch eingestuften varianten. in der variante mit der höchsten alterung kommt der altenquotient 2040 auf 65,6 und steigt bis 2060 auf 77,1. die variante mit der geringsten alterung, also der jüngsten altersstruktur, verläuft bis 2040 mit 58,4 ähnlich und bleibt danach konstant (2060: 59,8). während sich der anteil der ab 65-jährigen bis 2040 verdoppelt, erhöht sich der hochbetagtenanteil (ab 80-jährige) aufgrund der steigenden lebenserwartung noch stärker. für deutschland wird auf basis der mittleren vorausberechnungsvaabb. 3: entwicklung des altenquotienten auf basis verschiedener annahmen anmerkungen: annahmen der basisvariante (1-w1): jährlicher migrationssaldo langfristig 100.000, lebenserwartung 2060 85,0 bzw. 89,2 jahre; tfr 1,4. basisvariante 2 (1-w2): migrationssaldo langfristig 200.000, sonst gleich. variante mit höchster alterung (6-w1): tfr 1,2, migrationssaldo langfristig 100.000, lebenserwartung 87,7 bzw. 91,2 jahre. variante mit geringster alterung (3-w2): tfr 1,6, migrationssaldo langfristig 200.000, lebenserwartung 85,0 bzw. 89,2 jahre. quelle: eigene darstellung basierend auf statistisches bundesamt 2009b. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 2008 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 variante mit höchster alterung (6-w1) basisvariante (1-w1) basisvariante 2 (1-w2) variante mit geringster alterung (3-w2) modellrechnung tfr 2,1 ab 2015 altenquotient (65+/20-64 jahre) jahr folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 61 riante (statistisches bundesamt 2009a) erwartet, dass sich der hochbetagtenanteil von etwa 5 % (4 mio.) im jahr 2008 auf 14 % (9,05-9,23 mio.) im jahr 2060 fast verdreifachen wird. 3.3 einfl uss der zukünftigen migration und geburtenrate auf die alterung wie wenig eine erhöhte zuwanderung die alterung bremsen kann, zeigt das viel zitierte rechenbeispiel der vereinten nationen (un 2000), wonach in deutschland bis zum jahr 2050 eine zuwanderung in exorbitanter höhe von 188 millionen menschen nötig wäre, um den altenquotienten konstant zu halten. zuwanderer und ihre etwas höhere geburtenrate haben zwar effekte auf arbeitsmarkt und altersstruktur (sobotka 2008), werden später aber auch alt und ihre geburtenrate nähert sich der deutschen häufi g an (birg 2003). im folgenden wird der hebel der migration auf die alterung quantifi ziert: wenn der jährliche migrationssaldo bei 100.000 liegt, wird der altenquotient 2060 der mittleren projektion nach bei 67,4 liegen. würde man unter sonst gleichen bedingungen in jedem jahr bis 2060 eine doppelt so hohe zuwanderung annehmen, läge der altenquotient bei 63,1. nach über 50 jahren mit verdoppelter migration hätte sich der altenquotient also nur um 6,8 % reduziert. die geburtenentwicklung der letzten fünf jahrzehnte hat zwar die alterung maßgeblich verursacht, allerdings könnte ein plötzlicher anstieg der geburtenrate an der alterung kurzund mittelfristig nur wenig ändern. für die altersstruktur ist die zahl der geburten und weniger die geburtenrate entscheidend. die zahl der potenziellen mütter im jahr 2030 hängt von der anzahl der in den letzten jahren geborenen mädchen ab. da eine generationenfolge etwa 30 jahre umfasst und es weitere 20 jahre dauert, bis das arbeitsfähige alter erreicht ist, ist der effekt der zukünftigen geburtenentwicklung auf den altenquotienten für die nächsten 50 jahre relativ gering. würde die tfr statt bei rund 1,4 dauerhaft auf 1,6 ansteigen – was gegenwärtig etwa zusätzliche 96.000 geburten pro jahr wären – würde sich der altenquotient bis 2060 nur von 67,4 auf 63,6 reduzieren. ein halbes jahrhundert mit deutlich höherer geburtenrate würde den altenquotienten also nur um 6 % reduzieren. würde die tfr dauerhaft auf 2,1 – die ausgleichsrate – ansteigen, wäre der altenquotient bis 2040 kaum anders. zwischen 2040 und 2060 würde er dann jedoch nicht mehr weiter ansteigen, sondern leicht auf 53,5 zurückgehen (vgl. abb. 3). dies würde die sozialsysteme ab 2040 entlasten. verglichen zur basisvariante (tfr 1,4) wäre der altenquotient 2060 um 26,0 % niedriger, so dass c.p. die rentenbeiträge um ein gutes viertel gesenkt (oder die renten entsprechend erhöht) werden könnten. 3.4 (un-)sicherheit von projektionen zur alterung die genauigkeit der hier skizzierten demografi schen projektionen ist aufgrund der demografi schen trägheit bis 2040 sehr hoch und bis 2060 relativ hoch. selbst bei höchst unterschiedlichen annahmen liegt der altenquotient 2040 im engen spekt• martin bujard62 rum zwischen 58 und 66. bis 2060 wird er in allen zwölf projektionen ansteigen und zwischen 60 und 77 liegen. in absoluten zahlen liegt dann das spektrum der über 64-jährigen zwischen 21,975 mio. und 25,123 mio. bei weiterhin niedrigen geburtenraten wird der altenquotient jedoch nicht mehr so drastisch ansteigen wie zwischen 2010 und 2040, da die nettoreproduktionsraten dann seit einem menschenleben konstant niedrig sind. allerdings könnte ein deutlicher anstieg der tfr auf 2,1 ihn auf 53,5 bis 2060 senken und eine weitere reduzierung in den folgejahren bewirken. es kann also als sicher gelten, dass der durch den zweiten geburtenrückgang maßgeblich verursachte alterungsprozess bis 2040 zu einer verdoppelung des altenquotienten, einer verdreifachung des anteils der hochbetagten bis 2050 und einem anstieg des medianalters der wahlberechtigten auf deutlich über 55 jahre führt. bis 2060 ist es wahrscheinlich, dass alle drei indikatoren der alterung grob auf diesem niveau liegen, ob und wie stark sie weiter ansteigen, hängt von der zukünftigen entwicklung von geburten, lebenserwartung und migration ab. 4 bevölkerungsrückgang der bevölkerungsrückgang ist die zweite demografi sche folge des geburtenrückgangs. geburtenraten unterhalb der ausgleichsrate führen zu nettoreproduktionsraten unterhalb von eins. da diese über mehrere jahrzehnte in deutschland existiert haben, ist ein niedriges bevölkerungsmomentum entstanden (vgl. blue/espenshade 2011). in diesem momentum, also in der altersstruktur, ist ein rückgang der bevölkerung angelegt, der auch bei ansteigenden tfr noch viele jahre weitergeht. migration und steigende lebenserwartung reduzieren den bevölkerungsrückgang – anders als bei der alterung. auch die dynamik im zeitverlauf bei anhaltendem fertilitätsniveau unterscheidet sich grundsätzlich: im unterschied zur alterung setzt die schrumpfung allmählich ein und verstärkt sich ab 2050 exponentiell. 4.1 projektionen der bevölkerungsgröße bis 2060 abbildung 4 zeigt im grau schraffi erten bereich das spektrum der zwölf vom statistischen bundesamt (2009a) als realistisch eingeschätzten szenarien. die darüber liegende linie stammt aus einer modellrechnung für eine tfr von 2,1, die als unrealistisch eingestuft wurde. die bevölkerung geht in der basisvariante (tfr 1,4; lebenserwartung 85,0 und 89,2; migrationssaldo 100.000) von 2010 bis 2030 um 4,2 mio., bis 2040 um 7,7 mio., bis 2050 um 12,1 mio. und bis 2060 um 16,9 mio. zurück. deutschlands bevölkerung hätte dann 2060 64,651 mio. einwohner – ein rückgang um 20,7 % innerhalb von 50 jahren. in der basisvariante 2, bei der der jährliche migrationssaldo langfristig bei 200.000 liegt, wäre der bevölkerungsrückgang erheblich geringer. deutschland hätte dann 2060 70,120 mio. einwohner, was einem rückgang von 11,4 mio. bzw. 14 % entspricht. beide szenarien sind in ähnlicher weise denkbar bzw. realistisch, gleichzeitig aber kaum langfristig vorherzusehen. betrachtet man sämtliche zwölf folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 63 varianten, liegt die bevölkerungszahl 2030 zwischen 76,6 und 81,0 mio. und 2060 zwischen 61,8 und 76,8 mio. die spannbreite der projektionen ist erheblich: in einem fall ist der rückgang über einen langen zeitraum von 50 jahren minimal bei 5,9 %, beim anderen extrem von 24,2 % kann man von einem enormen bevölkerungsrückgang sprechen. entscheidend für die konkreten lebensbedingungen der menschen ist allerdings die bevölkerungsentwicklung auf regionaler ebene. hier gibt es gegenläufi ge entwicklungen, bereits heute sind wachstumsund schrumpfungsregionen offenkundig. aufgrund der fortschreitenden binnenwanderung in kombination mit der demografi schen verstärkung, die entsteht, wenn junge menschen zum beginn des berufslebens abwandern, wird es in einigen regionen entvölkerungstendenzen geben (vgl. kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012). da dieser aspekt des demografi schen wandels nicht primär vom geburtenrückgang induziert ist, wird er hier nicht weiter thematisiert. abb. 4: entwicklung der bevölkerungsgröße deutschlands auf basis verschiedener annahmen 60.000 65.000 70.000 75.000 80.000 85.000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 variante hoher bevölkerungsrückgang (5-w1) basisvariante (1-w1) basisvariante 2 (1-w2) variante geringer bevölkerungsrückgang (4-w2) modellrechnung tfr 2,1 ab 2015 bevölkerung (in tausend) jahr anmerkung: annahmen der basisvarianten siehe abb. 3. quelle: eigene darstellung basierend auf statistisches bundesamt 2009b. • martin bujard64 4.2 einfl uss der zukünftigen migration und geburtenrate auf die schrumpfung die bevölkerungsgröße bis 2060 wird von der heutigen altersstruktur und der zukünftigen entwicklung der drei parameter geburtenrate, migration und lebenserwartung beeinfl usst. ein weiterer anstieg der lebenserwartung ist unstrittig, der einfl uss ihrer unterschiedlichen szenarien auf die bevölkerungsgröße ist jedoch gering. anders migration und geburtenrate: der hebel der migration auf die schrumpfung lässt sich quantifi zieren: geht man von der basisprojektion aus, würde bei einem jährlichen migrationssaldo von 100.000 menschen ab 2014 deutschlands bevölkerungsgröße 2060 bei 64,7 mio. liegen. würde man ab 2020 in jedem jahr bis 2060 eine doppelt so hohe zuwanderung annehmen, hätte deutschland 70,1 mio. einwohner. 100.000 zusätzliche migranten pro jahr reduzieren den bevölkerungsrückgang folglich um etwa ein drittel. mit entsprechend noch höherer zuwanderung, grob geschätzt 400.000 pro jahr, ließe sich die schrumpfung bis 2060 komplett abwenden. die annahme eines dauerhaften zuwanderungssaldos von 100.000 oder gar 200.000 menschen pro jahr sollte kurz diskutiert werden: eine derartige zuwanderung von 2015 bis 2060 würde kumuliert einen saldo von 4,6 bzw. 9,2 mio. menschen ausmachen. da beim saldo die auswanderer von den zuwanderern abgezogen werden müssen, wäre die gesamtzuwanderung sogar deutlich höher. da stellt sich die frage, aus welchen ländern diese menschen kommen könnten. historisch lag der saldo zwischen 1950 und 2012 im durchschnitt zwar bei 168.863 (eigene berechnung nach: statistisches bundesamt 2013b), jedoch war die entwicklung sehr volatil und von speziellen historischen konstellationen wie dem zuzug von millionen (spät-)aussiedlern oder den eu-erweiterungen geprägt. da in den meisten klassischen herkunftsländern die tfr inzwischen auch unter der ausgleichsrate liegt, müsste eine hohe dauerhafte zuwanderung zunehmend aus nicht-europäischen ländern kommen. dadurch würden sich die politischen und gesellschaftlichen anforderungen an die integration und die anwerbung qualifi zierter zuwanderer vergleichsweise erschweren. nun zum hebel der geburtenrate: wenn die tfr ab 2025 bei 1,6 statt 1,4 läge, kommt die projektion 2060 auf 68,8 statt 64,7 mio. einwohner. der tfr-anstieg um 0,2 über 35 jahre würde 4,1 mio. einwohner mehr ausmachen. kombiniert man migrationsund geburtenhebel in der genannten größenordnung und nimmt eine etwas optimistischere lebenserwartung an, verstärken sich die effekte, so dass die schrumpfung bis 2060 bei dann 76,8 mio. einwohnern gering ist. der langfristige hebel der tfr auf die bevölkerungsgröße ist auch bei dem heutigen altersaufbau immens. angesichts manch apokalyptischer und fatalistischer projektionen (u.a. birg 2003) mag das ergebnis überraschen: wenn die tfr dauerhaft auf 2,1 steigen würde, würde die bevölkerungszahl zwischen 2025 und 2027 sogar die 83-mio.-marke übersteigen und von 2028-2060 im engen korridor zwischen 82 und 83 mio. oszillieren. bei dieser berechnung wurden die basisannahmen steigende lebenserwartung (85,0 bzw. 89,2 jahre) und migrationssaldo von 100.000 folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 65 verwendet. hier unterscheiden sich die dynamik und das zukünftige ausgleichspotenzial der demografi schen entwicklung grundlegend von der alterung: der bevölkerungsrückgang ist auch heute komplett abwendbar, wenn die geburtenrate auf das ausgleichsniveau steigt. je später sie das allerdings tut, desto stärker ist der zwischenzeitliche bevölkerungsrückgang. 4.3 dynamik der schrumpfung um den exponentiellen charakter des bevölkerungsrückgangs darzustellen und die effekte langfristig niedriger geburtenraten einzuordnen, sind modellrechnungen bis zum jahr 2100 hilfreich. diese sind allerdings nicht nur aufgrund des längeren projektionshorizonts mit erheblichen unsicherheiten verbunden, sondern auch, weil die schwer abschätzbare höhe des migrationssaldos und der tfr stärker als bei der alterung die projektionen beeinfl usst. hypothetisch lässt sich die schrumpfungsdynamik verdeutlichen: ohne zuwanderung und bei dauerhaft niedrigen tfr würde sich jede generation um rund 35 % verkleinern, wobei sich diese schrumpfungsspirale von generation zu generation beschleunigen würde. dieses wäre ein evolutionsbiologisch spannendes phänomen, jedoch beruht es auf zwei diskussionswürdigen dauerhaften annahmen: die annahme eines nicht positiven zuwanderungssaldos entspricht weder der historischen entwicklung der brd bis in die gegenwart, noch der relativen attraktivität deutschlands für migranten. gegen die annahme langfristig andauernder niedriger fertilität in der zukunft könnten vier gründe sprechen: • der irgendwann nachlassende verzerrungseffekt des timings von geburten auf die tfr (bongaarts 2001), • der intergenerationale zusammenhang des generativen verhaltens, wonach sich kinderlose lebensstile weniger reproduzieren (kolk et al. 2014), • die langfristige wirkung familienpolitischer maßnahmen auf die fertilität im internationalen vergleich (bujard 2011), • die einschätzung von experten, deren mittelwert für die tfr der jahre 2030 und 2050 1,57 bzw. 1,58 beträgt (basten et al. 2013: 68). in den neuesten un-projektionen (un 2012) gibt es eine variante, bei der die durchschnittliche tfr konstant bis 2100 fortgeschrieben wird (abb. 5). bereits in der ersten hälfte des 21. jahrhunderts würden frankreich und großbritannien demnach deutschland bei der bevölkerungsgröße überholen. da diese im jahr 2050 bei allen drei ländern ein ähnliches niveau hat (69,0-72,9 mio.), könnten leichte veränderungen im wanderungssaldo oder bei der geburtenentwicklung die reihenfolge verändern. die türkei würde 2020 mit deutschland bei 81,2 mio. einwohnern gleichziehen und 2050 mit 103,4 mio. etwa um die hälfte größer sein. im jahr 2100 wäre dieser modellrechnung nach die türkei mit 122,1 mio. weitaus größer als die anderen eu-länder wie frankreich (77,8), großbritannien (75,1), deutschland (43,4), italien (39) oder spanien (30,6). mit blick auf die historische dimension ist festzustellen, dass dieser bevölkerungsrückgang in seiner art ein neues phänomen in der • martin bujard66 weltgeschichte wäre.3 anders die usa: sie hätten aufgrund ihrer stationären tfr bei positivem migrationssaldo dann mit 491,5 mio. die 11-fache bevölkerungsgröße deutschlands. ob dieses szenario eintrifft, weiß niemand. entscheidend ist, ob sich die geburtenrate in deutschland wieder erhöht. allerdings ist eine schrumpfung bereits heute in der altersstruktur angelegt: obwohl frankreich und die türkei heute weniger einwohner haben, ist die absolute geburtenzahl dort deutlich größer als in deutschland. also steht heute schon fest, dass es in beiden ländern in 30 jahren mehr frauen im gebärfähigen alter gibt. in den letzten jahren wurde der strukturell angelegte bevölkerungsrückgang in deutschland durch die zuwanderung noch verschleiert: beispielsweise lag das geburtendefi zit 2012 bei 196.038 (673.544 lebendgeborene 869.582 gestorbene), durch den hohen zuwanderungssaldo von 368.945, der durch die hohe arbeitslosigkeit in vielen eu-ländern bedingt ist, ist die bevölkerung sogar um 172.907 angestiegen. in jahren ohne großen zuwanderungsüberschuss, wie 2006-2009, geht die bevölkerung jedes jahr um die höhe des geburtendefi zits zurück. deutschland schrumpft also derzeit ohne einwanderung um rund 200.000 menschen jedes jahr. dieser trend setzt sich in den nächsten jahren verstärkt fort. der basisvariante (1-w1) nach übersteigt das geburtendefi zit ab 2021 die 300.000er schwelle, ab 2029 die 400.000er, ab 2041 die 500.000er und pendelt sich dann zwischen 500.000 und 600.000 ein. in jedem jahr ab 2041 wird die bevölkerung durch abb. 5: bevölkerungsmodellrechnungen für die jahre 2050 und 2100 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 2010 2050 2100 jahr bevölkerung (in mio.) de fr uk it sp tü de fr uk it sp tü de fr uk it sp tü quelle: eigene darstellung auf basis von: un (2012). 3 historische bevölkerungsrückgänge beruhen meistens auf kriegen oder seuchen (pest). folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 67 das geburtendefi zit um die größe einer stadt wie düsseldorf, leipzig, bremen oder nürnberg zurückgehen. eine jährliche zuwanderung in höhe des durchschnittlichen migrationssaldos der brd seit 1950-2012 von 168.863 könnte nur ein knappes drittel des geburtendefi zits kompensieren. zusammenfassend bleibt festzuhalten, dass deutschland bei verbleiben der fertilität auf derzeitigem niveau einen dramatischen bevölkerungsrückgang erleben wird. die deutsche altersstruktur ist auf einen rückgang angelegt, das geburtendefi zit verstärkt sich aufgrund einer sich beschleunigenden dynamik von jahr zu jahr. der bevölkerungsrückgang jedoch kann durch eine erhöhung der geburtenraten ebenso abgebremst werden, wie durch eine kontinuierliche hohe zuwanderung. 5 die folgen der alterung die auswirkungen des alterungsprozesses sind für mehrere politikbereiche von immenser tragweite. insbesondere die sozialversicherungen sind davon massiv betroffen (u.a. castles 2004; schmid et al. 2000). in diesem abschnitt werden die wichtigsten folgen für die sozialsysteme, die wirtschaftliche entwicklung und den arbeitsmarkt skizziert, aber auch mögliche gesellschaftliche und kulturelle veränderungen sowie implikationen für den politischen wettbewerb. 5.1 die folgen der alterung für die sozialsysteme die erwartete verdoppelung des altenquotienten von etwa 2010 bis 2040 hat unmittelbare konsequenzen für die sozialversicherungen. die probleme sind bei umlagefi nanzierten rentensystemen größer, ebenso bei ehrgeizigen sozialsystemen mit hohem dekommodifi zierungsgrad und in ländern mit geringer geburtenrate. daher sind die rentenprobleme in deutschland besonders ausgeprägt. im folgenden werden rentenproblematik und potenzielle lösungsansätze anhand der rentenformel ausführlicher dargestellt. die rentenformel setzt sich vereinfacht aus diesen fünf variablen zusammen: der beitragssatz (b) entspricht dem altenquotienten (aq) multipliziert mit dem rentenniveau (n) multipliziert mit dem quotienten aus rentner-koeffi zienten4 (a(r)) und erwerbstätigen-koeffi zienten (a(b)) multipliziert mit dem kehrwert des steueranteils (s). ein gedankenspiel anhand der rentenformel: wenn sich der altenquotient verdoppelt und alles andere konstant bleibt, verdoppelt sich automatisch der beitragssatz – derartig hohe lohnnebenkosten hätten dramatische folgen für den 4 der anteil der rentner an der ab 60-(65-)jährigen bevölkerung im verhältnis zu den erwerbstätigen in dieser altersklasse. • martin bujard68 arbeitsmarkt. möchte man den beitragssatz konstant halten, würde sich c.p. das rentenniveau halbieren – verbreitete altersarmut wäre die folge. eine anpassung über das renteneintrittsalter würde ein tatsächliches eintrittsalter von 71 jahren erfordern, was einem formellen von etwa 75 jahren entspricht (vgl. rürup/schmidt 2003) – dies ist illusorisch. auch der steueranteil allein könnte diese dimension nicht annähernd ausgleichen. als reaktion auf die vorausberechnete verdoppelung des altenquotienten zwischen den jahren 2000 und 2035 wurde in deutschland an allen vier verbleibenden stellschrauben der rentenformel gedreht. betrachtet man die fast jährlichen, inkrementalistischen reformen im rentensystem, so kann man diese sparmaßnahmen jeweils leicht einer dieser vier stellschrauben zuordnen: 1) die erste stellschraube ist eine erhöhung des beitragssatzes, wie es seit 1953 27-mal geschah (schmidt 2005). dies ist die offensichtlichste stellschraube. für die jüngeren kommen mit staatlichen zuschüssen unterstütze investitionen in kapitalgedeckte rentenversicherungen zu den beitragssätzen hinzu. die internationalisierung der wirtschaft setzt der finanzierung zu lasten der lohnnebenkosten jedoch faktische grenzen (scharpf 2001). 2) eine geringere anrechnung von ausbildungsjahren, die anbindung an die nettolohnentwicklung, der blüm’sche demografi sche faktor 1997, der ähnliche schröder’sche nachhaltigkeitsfaktor 2004, eine reduzierung der anrechnung für schulund hochschulausbildung und die entrichtung des vollen pfl egebeitrags für rentner mindern das rentenniveau mit der stellschraube zwei. die niveausicherungsklausel nach § 154 abs. 3 sgb vi sichert lediglich die brutto-standardrente eines rentners mit 45 jahren durchschnittsverdienst auf dem niveau von 43 % im jahr 2030 (derzeit 52 %). 3) die dritte stellschraube, die veränderung des rentner-koeffi zienten, wird durch die schrittweise anhebung des formellen ruhestandsalters von 65 auf 67 jahre ab dem jahr 2011 bis 2029 justiert. auch wurde die frühverrentung in deutschland erschwert wie bspw. durch den § 77 des sgb vi, wonach der zugangsfaktor sich um 0,3 % pro vorzeitigen monat ruhestand reduziert. des weiteren entlastet ein anstieg der arbeitsmarktpartizipation in der erwerbsfähigen bevölkerung die sozialsysteme, u.a. durch eine erhöhung der frauenerwerbstätigkeit und den abbau der arbeitslosigkeit. walter et al. (2013: 42) zeigen szenarien, wonach eine kombination dieser faktoren den rückgang der erwerbspersonenzahl bis 2030 reduzieren kann. 4) steuergelder fl ießen beispielsweise durch die ökosteuer in das rentensystem. umgekehrt liegt durch die finanzierung von beamtenpensionen bereits eine demografi sch bedingte wachsende last auf dem staatshaushalt. ein transfer des steuersystems in das rentensystem ist z.b. die herausnahme versicherungsfremder leistungen. durch die langfristigen reformen, durch die erhöhung des rentenzugangsalters auf 67 jahre und des nachhaltigkeitsfaktors ist das deutsche rentensystem bereits zu einem beträchtlichen teil an das ansteigen des altenquotienten in den nächsten jahrzehnten angepasst worden. dabei hat die deutsche alterssicherungspolitik einen einnahmeorientierten charakter angenommen zu lasten der orientierung an einem gewünschten niveau. jedoch sind die sozialen belastungen für beitragszahler und rentner, aber auch die makroökonomischen belastungen für staat und wirtfolgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 69 schaft bis zum jahr 2040 exorbitant hoch. das argument, wonach die durch den geburtenrückgang induzierte rentenproblematik durch produktivitätsfortschritte ausgeglichen werden könnte (u.a. hondrich 2007), ist kaum haltbar. dazu ist erstens die dimension der verschiebung des altenquotienten zu hoch und zweitens ist es naiv anzunehmen, dass unternehmen und arbeitnehmer sämtliche produktivitätsgewinne über jahrzehnte nur in die rentenkassen fl ießen lassen. die folgen der alterung für die gesetzliche krankenund pfl egeversicherung (gkv, gpv) ähneln denen für die alterssicherung insofern, da auch hier weniger beitragszahler auf mehr leistungsempfänger kommen. die größenordnung ist für die lohnnebenkosten zwar annähernd gleich hoch, allerdings sind die folgen des geburtenrückgangs aus zwei gründen hier geringer: die rentner sind an der finanzierung der gkv selbst beteiligt, und die fernere lebenserwartung nach dem renteneintritt ist nicht mit krankheitsjahren gleichzusetzen. grundsätzlich sind die gesundheitsausgaben schwieriger zu prognostizieren, da angebot und nachfrage von gesundheitsdienstleistungen nicht allein auf demografi schen annahmen beruhen – vor allem der medizinische fortschritt fungiert als kostentreiber. birg (2003: 185) errechnet, dass sich der beitragssatz der krankenkassen bis 2050 von 13 % auf 21-24 % erhöhen und der pfl egesatz auf rund 6 % vervierfachen wird. allerdings sind in relation zum bip, anders als beim beitragssatz, die leistungsausgaben der gkv in deutschland seit drei jahrzehnten konstant geblieben (rürup/ranscht 2009: 112). anders der anstieg der pfl egekosten: die drastische zunahme der hochbetagtenquote führt zu einer zunahme bestimmter pfl egebedürftiger krankheitsbilder wie demenz, so dass trotz medizinischer verbesserungen eine hohe steigerung wahrscheinlich ist (vgl. doblhammer/scholz 2010). hier muss man allerdings zwischen professioneller und informeller pfl ege differenzieren (micheel 2013). diesen überlegungen folgt, dass selbst bei einem deutlichen anstieg der öffentlichen gesundheitsausgaben eine zunahme an eigenverantwortung und eine partielle rationalisierung der leistungen auf die menschen zukommen wird. diese entwicklung birgt große sozialpolitische konfl ikte. aufgrund des geburtenrückgangs muss die gesellschaft in den nächsten drei jahrzehnten also einen wachsenden teil der produktivität und des wohlstands in die sozialsysteme umschichten und trotzdem werden rentenniveau und gkvleistungen relativ abnehmen. daran könnte auch ein zeitnaher anstieg der geburtenrate nichts ändern. nach 2040 wird der altenquotient weniger schnell steigen, wodurch der anpassungsdruck auf die sozialsysteme dann nachlassen wird. 5.2 die folgen der alterung für wirtschaft und arbeitsmarkt steigende sozialabgaben bewirken indirekt eine belastung für wirtschaft und arbeitsmarkt – insbesondere für wohlfahrtsstaaten, die ehrgeizig sind und sich in starkem maße über den faktor arbeit fi nanzieren (schmidt 2005). insofern könnten die oben skizzierten sozialstaatlichen folgen negative effekte auf den arbeitsmarkt haben, was jedoch politisch steuerbar ist, wenn diese nicht überwiegend auf die lohnnebenkosten abgewälzt werden. gelegentlich wird argumentiert, dass sich durch das schrumpfende arbeitsangebot von erwerbstätigen die arbeitslosigkeit • martin bujard70 reduziert. dies folgt jedoch einem statischen verständnis von angebot und nachfrage, da diese effekte höchstens kurzfristig auftreten können (friedman 1968). inwieweit sich die produktivität einer älteren belegschaft verändert, wird kontrovers diskutiert. die these, alterung gehe mit einer geringeren innovationsfreude einher, lässt sich nicht belegen. teilweise werden forschungen von guilford zitiert (sinn 2003: 67), nach denen die größte geistige leistungskraft mit 30-40 jahren erreicht wird. diese these ist jedoch zu undifferenziert, da bei älteren arbeitnehmern wissensund erfahrungskomponenten zunehmen (akademiegruppe altern 2009: 41). zudem steigt die fitness der 60-jährigen stetig an. ein zentraler punkt ist politisch steuerbar: investitionen in humankapital können auch bei älteren arbeitskräften in form zunehmender weiterbildungsmaßnahmen eine innovationssteigernde wirkung haben. die auswirkungen auf das wirtschaftswachstum lassen sich anhand der cobbdouglas-produktionsfunktion nachvollziehen, wonach sich das produkt aus dem technischen fortschritt, dem arbeitseinsatz und dem kapitaleinsatz zusammensetzt. der arbeitseinsatz in form der anzahl der menschen im erwerbsfähigen alter geht in den nächsten drei jahrzehnten durch den bisherigen geburtenrückgang absolut und relativ zurück. dieser effekt könnte durch umso größeren technischen fortschritt oder kapitaleinsatz kompensiert werden. nach verschiedenen modellrechnungen könnte die wirtschaftliche wachstumsrate europas dauerhaft zurückgehen: laut oecd (1998) von 2,3 % auf 0,5 % für 2025-2050. durch eine kapital-intensivierung (lee/mason 2007) oder durch zunehmende bildungsinvestitionen (lutz et al. 2008) lassen sich negative wachstumseffekte der alterung jedoch kompensieren. striessnig und lutz (2013) zeigen anhand von simulationsmodellen mit um bildung gewichteten unterstützungskoeffi zienten, dass auch fertilitätsraten unterhalb der ausgleichsrate optimal sein könnten. die fokussierung der demografi schen folgen auf das wachstum des sozialprodukts unterliegt einer beschränkung, da es nicht mit dem wachstum von lebensqualität gleichzusetzen ist (easterlin 1974). unterhalb dieser gesamteffekte induziert die alterung diverse sektorale nachfrageverschiebungen (kaufmann 2005). so werden pfl egedienstleistungen, tourismus, altenheime und finanzdienstleistungen in der zukunft wachstumsindustrien sein. auch steigt infolge der alterung das erbschaftsvolumen, wodurch sich dem staat eine große einnahmequelle eröffnet und das pro kopf gerechnete vermögen ansteigt. 5.3 die folgen der alterung für gesellschaft und kultur hinsichtlich der gestiegenen lebenserwartung und der kompression der morbidität auf wenige jahre ist alterung prinzipiell ein für viele menschen vorteilhaftes phänomen im sinne „gewonnener jahre“ (imhof 1981). durch den geburtenrückgang entsteht zusätzlich jedoch eine verschiebung der kohortengrößen zwischen jung und alt, deren folgen für die gesellschaft ambivalent und spekulativ sind. in alternden gesellschaften könnte zwar die risikoaversion höher sein (kaufmann 2005), andererseits hat dies eine enorm stabilitätssichernde wirkung im vergleich zu extrem jungen gesellschaften (huntington 1996). die these einer quantitativen abnahme folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 71 von verwandtschaft und des familiären netzwerks (u.a. schirrmacher 2004) ist angesichts demografi scher vorausberechnungen zu hinterfragen (dudel 2014). die begriffe „alter“, „überalterung“ und „alternde gesellschaft“ sind überwiegend negativ und teilweise mit klischees besetzt (akademiegruppe altern 2009). schirrmacher (2004) skizziert szenarien, wonach ein „krieg der generationen“ und „rassistische altersstereotypen“ die zukunft prägen. kruse (2013) dagegen verweist auf potenziale wie differenzierte wissenssysteme, refl ektierte erfahrungen, resilienz, generativität und gerotranszendenz. höhn et al. (2006) zeigen, dass die menschen in den oecd-ländern nicht altenfeindlich eingestellt sind und die erfahrung älterer menschen geschätzt wird. außerdem ist zu beachten, dass 70-jährige in der zukunft viel gesünder, mobiler und selbstständiger als 70-jährige in früheren zeiten sind. insofern bietet der dritte lebensabschnitt von pensionären bzw. rentenbeziehern enorme chancen, sowohl individuell als auch zivilgesellschaftlich, bspw. durch ehrenamtliches engagement dieser altersgruppe. zudem existieren vielfältige beziehungen und transfers in den intergenerationalen beziehungen, bei denen die ältere generation ein großes potenzial an teilhabe und unterstützung aufweist, wobei die jeweilige beziehungsqualität ein maßgeblicher faktor ist (ausführlich siehe: ette et al. 2010). die gesellschaftlichen folgen der alterung sind spekulativ und hängen davon ab, wie politik und gesellschaft damit umgehen. dabei fordert die akademiegruppe altern (2009) auf der individuellen ebene ein umdenken bezüglich tradierter lebenslaufvorstellungen, auf der ebene der unternehmen kontinuierliche investitionen in qualifi kation und auf der gesellschaftlichen ebene die überwindung eines negativen altersbildes. 5.4 die folgen der alterung für den politischen wettbewerb wie oben gezeigt wurde, steigt das medianalter der wahlberechtigten bis 2040 so weit an, dass rentner und kurz vor der rente stehende personen eine mehrheit im wahlsystem haben. damit treffen menschen, die nicht mehr erwerbstätig sind, entscheidungen, deren folgen von erwerbstätigen zu tragen sind. die frage ist, wie sich diese interessen im parteiensystem und der politischen willensbildung auswirken werden – ob sie gar zu einer „gerontokratie“ führen. langfristige bindungen von wählern an parteien und milieus und systemerhaltene adaption der parteien sprechen dafür, dass renteninteressen innerhalb des parteiensystems vertreten werden. das alter ist auch schwer als konfl iktlinie vorzustellen, da innerhalb eines lebenslaufes meistens beide seiten vorkommen (goerres 2007). allerdings könnten gerade die volksparteien spd und cdu/csu zu parteien mutieren, die die rentnerinteressen in besonderem maße vertreten, zumal die rentner ihr treuestes wahlklientel sind. ein beispiel ist der koalitionsvertrag der dritten großen koalition, der eine mütterrente für geburten vor 1992 und die rente mit 63 nach 45 beitragsjahren vorsieht (cdu, csu, spd 2013). für die volksparteien birgt eine zu starke orientierung an rentnerinteressen die gefahr, dass sich eine der kleineren parteien als sprachrohr der unter 50-jährigen profi liert. bereits heute sind unterschiede auf einstellungsebene zur rentenpolitik und wählerverhalten zwischen alt und jung evident (bergmann et al. 2012). • martin bujard72 in der zukunft sind verschiedene szenarien vorstellbar: die konfl iktlinie alt/jung bzw. sozialstaatsempfänger/-fi nanzierer könnte sich im parteiensystem und in der verbändestruktur abbilden, so dass der verteilungskampf in verschärfter form über den parteienwettbewerb und in polarisierender rhetorik über die medien ausgetragen wird. die präferenz für sozialausgaben wie rente oder bildung ist in hohem maße altersabhängig (busemeyer et al. 2009). möglich wäre jedoch auch, dass dieser konfl ikt durch die etablierten parteien und interessengruppen aufgegriffen und kanalisiert wird, so dass ältere konfl iktlinien dominant bleiben. da alte menschen ein großes interesse am wohlergehen der jüngeren generation zeigen, besonders wenn sie selbst kinder und enkel haben, ist auch ein relativ konfl iktfreier interessenausgleich zwischen den generationen denkbar (vgl. bergmann et al. 2012). insofern wäre eine konfl iktlinie zwischen kinderlosen und familien eher wahrscheinlich, da bei ersteren der generationenverbindende verwandtschaftseffekt so nicht gegeben ist. generationenverbindend wäre auch eine als geburtenfördernd kommunizierte und am kindeswohl orientierte nachhaltige familienpolitik, von der die junge generation direkt und die ältere indirekt über den nachlassenden demografi schen problemdruck profi tiert. 6 die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs 6.1 die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs für die internationalen beziehungen und die eu für demografi sche effekte auf die außenund verteidigungspolitische stärke eines landes gibt es mehrere historische beispiele. einen machtpolitischen rückgang hat davis (1945: 603) den europäern bereits 1945 prophezeit. der einfl uss der verschiebungen der demografi schen gewichte zwischen frankreich, deutschland und russland auf die militärische stärke im 19. und frühen 20. jahrhundert wurde oft thematisiert und auch im zusammenhang mit dem ausbruch des ersten weltkrieges diskutiert (morgenthau 1948: 123). auch in der merkantilistischen epoche oder in der antike beim untergang roms spielte der wirtschaftsund machtpolitische aspekt von bevölkerungsgröße eine wichtige rolle. zweifellos wird der bevölkerungsrückgang in den besonders betroffenen staaten europas und ostasiens zu einem relativen verlust an außenpolitischer bedeutung führen. formulierungen wie „demografi scher niedergang deutschlands und europas“ (birg 2003: 14) sind auf basis demografi scher analysen jedoch nicht haltbar. doch die „verschiebung internationaler gewichte“ (wöhlcke et al. 2004: 11) hat politikwissenschaftlich interessante implikationen für die internationalen beziehungen. ein nexus von bevölkerungsrückgang und machtverlust lässt sich aus (neo)realistischer perspektive (morgenthau 1948) aus der schwächung von militärischer stärke herleiten und aus interdependenztheoretischer sicht (keohane/nye 1977) aus dem sinkenden gewicht in internationalen organisationen wie un, nato, aber auch eu. die bevölkerungsgröße wirkt sich unmittelbar da aus, wo eine legitimation nach dem demokratischen prinzip hergeleitet wird – beispielsweise der folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 73 doppelten mehrheit bei eu-ratsentscheidungen. zudem reduzieren sich bei einem bevölkerungsrückgang die wirtschaftskraft und damit auch die militärischen möglichkeiten – insbesondere in relation zu den staaten, deren bevölkerung und wirtschaftskraft zunehmen. ob sich die eu neben den usa und china als weltmacht etablieren kann, wird nicht an der demografi schen entwicklung scheitern. die eu-28 würde auch bei konstanter tfr 2100 noch über 300 mio. einwohner haben. vielmehr ist die entwicklung der politischen kriterien ausschlaggebend, also inwieweit eine außenund verteidigungspolitische integration in der eu zu „politischer handlungsfähigkeit, politischem konsens und ordnungserfahrung“ (weidenfeld 1995) führt. innerhalb der eu wird die demografi sche entwicklung deutschlands gegenwärtige dominanz dauerhaft reduzieren. deutschland ist nicht nur das ökonomisch stärkste mitglied, sondern hat auch mit abstand von fast 20 mio. auf frankreich und großbritannien die größte bevölkerung. im jahr 2030 wird der abstand auf unter 10 mio. geschmolzen sein und in den 2040ern sind alle drei staaten auf dem gleichen niveau, möglicherweise überholen beide deutschland in 30 jahren. bei den effekten auf deutschlands stellung in der eu gilt es zwischen dem demokratischen prinzip und der ökonomischen stärke zu differenzieren: im eu-ministerrat wird sich die machtbalance in den nächsten jahrzehnten verschieben, da die mehrheitsentscheidungen eine doppelte mehrheit von 55 % der eu-staaten und 65 % der eubevölkerung erfordern. dies führt zu neuen gestaltungsmehrheiten und sperrminoritäten (münch/wilkoszewski 2006), wobei deutschlands einfl uss entsprechend der oben genannten projektionen zurückgehen wird. analoges gilt für deutschlands repräsentation im europäischen parlament (ep). zweitens reduziert der geburtenrückgang die gesamte wirtschaftskraft des landes stärker als die pro kopf berechnete. bei aller ungewissheit über die langfristige ökonomische entwicklung ist – demografi sch bedingt – ein erheblicher rückgang der ökonomischen vormachtstellung deutschlands plausibel. vor diesem hintergrund hat die gegenwärtige eu-binnenmigration nach deutschland enorm weitreichende außenpolitische implikationen. 6.2 die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs für die wirtschaft der nexus zwischen bevölkerungsgröße und ökonomie ist gegenstand mehrerer ökonomischer theorien. nach adam smith (1776) verstärkt bevölkerungswachstum die potenziale an arbeitsteilung und skaleneffekten. der umkehrschluss bei bevölkerungsrückgang ist bei großen binnenmärkten wie der eu und globalisierten gütermärkten jedoch von untergeordneter bedeutung. keynes sieht in dem damaligen leichten bevölkerungsrückgang eine mitursache für die nachfrageschwäche in der großen depression. mehrere neoklassische ansätze externalisieren die bevölkerungsentwicklung (u.a. friedman 1968). die wachstumstheorie von solow (1956) analysiert dagegen den wechselseitigen zusammenhang von bevölkerungswachstum, einkommen und investitionen. dabei sinkt der pro-kopf-kapitalstock bei steigendem bevölkerungswachstum, und umgekehrt kann ein bevölkerungsrückgang demnach c. p. zu einer erhöhung der pro-kopf-investitionen und des sozialprodukts pro kopf (bippc) beitragen. der mangel an arbeitskräften ist aus neoklassischer perspektive durch erhöhten kapitaleinsatz substituierbar. demnach kann das ge• martin bujard74 samte bip bei einem bevölkerungsrückgang dann wachsen, wenn technischer fortschritt und investitionen ihn überkompensieren. für technischen fortschritt sind jedoch nicht nur kapitalinvestitionen, sondern vor allem gute ausbildung möglichst vieler arbeitskräfte von bedeutung. dieses thematisiert die humankapitaltheorie (schultz 1971). da sich humankapital aus dem produkt von arbeitskräften und ihrer durchschnittlichen qualifi kation zusammensetzt, kann ein bevölkerungsrückgang mit bildungsinvestitionen theoretisch kompensiert werden (lutz et al. 2008). dazu müssten die bildungsinvestitionen in ländern mit einer tfr um 1,4 aber weitaus höher sein als in ländern mit höherer fertilität. da dies in deutschland trotz einer nettoreproduktionsrate von 0,59 bis 0,69 seit 1975 nicht der fall war, errechnet kaufmann (2005) eine investitionslücke in das humankapital von 2,5 billionen euro. grundsätzlich ist jedoch zu hinterfragen, die wirtschaftlichen folgen am wachstum des sozialproduktes eines landes festzumachen: das bippc ist für die prosperität und den zukünftigen wohlstand viel aussagekräftiger als das gesamte bip, denn bei einem bevölkerungsrückgang ist es vorstellbar, dass das bip fällt, während das bippc ansteigt. wenn man statt des wachstums den vermögensstand einer volkswirtschaft betrachtet, kommt man zu einem positiveren ergebnis, denn das vermögen pro kopf steigt c.p., wenn der nenner kleiner wird. aber auch die öffentlichen schulden erhöhen sich bei einem bevölkerungsrückgang, wenn man sie pro kopf betrachtet. beides zusammen legt den schluss nahe, dass dann eine stärkere besteuerung des vermögens sinnvoll wäre. ein anderer wichtiger aspekt betrifft die konzentration von vermögen und die verteilungsgerechtigkeit, die zukünftig stärker durch eine besteuerung von erbschaftsvermögen hergestellt werden muss. die vererbung an eigene kinder wird für einen zunehmenden personenkreis nicht möglich sein, da der anteil kinderloser frauen und männer auf über 20 % angestiegen ist (bezogen auf die 1960er kohorten, vgl. statistisches bundesamt 2013a). bei dieser gruppe könnte das erbschaftssteuervolumen relativ größer sein, wenn man die besteuerung von erbschaften an direkte nachkommen durch freibeträge begünstigt. betrachtet man wohlstand aus der perspektive von sen (1995), der die teilhabechancen betont, sind sogar positive effekte möglich: aufgrund der kleineren kohorten und dem bedarf an gut ausgebildeten arbeitnehmern gibt es ökonomische anreize, die bildungsfernen schichten stärker als heute auszubilden und zur teilhabe zu „befähigen“. der bevölkerungsrückgang wird zu einem gigantischen strukturwandel führen, der besonders in ländlichen regionen dramatische ausmaße annehmen wird. aufgrund von binnenwanderung, v. a. der jungen bevölkerung in urbane regionen mit arbeitsplätzen, wird der bevölkerungsrückgang in manchen urbanen regionen kompensiert und in deindustrialisierten und ländlichen regionen noch verstärkt. dieser effekt ist bereits heute in ostdeutschland sichtbar. aber auch einige städte werden deutlich schrumpfen. diese regionalen disparitäten beinhalten große herausforderungen für die öffentliche daseinsfürsorge, v.a. für dienstleistungsangebote und öffentliche infrastruktur wie schulen, kindergärten, krankenhäuser, pfl egeeinrichtungen oder feuerwehr (vgl. bmi 2012; steinführer et al. 2014). die folgen folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 75 für mietund immobilienmärkte der ländlichen schrumpfungsregionen sind erheblich, für mieter positiv und für immobilienbesitzer negativ. 6.3 die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs für die umwelt die auswirkungen des bevölkerungsrückgangs für energie und umwelt sind dagegen positiv, da der ressourcenverbrauch und die umweltverschmutzung bei einer geringeren bevölkerungszahl ceteris paribus abnehmen. auf nationaler ebene könnte ein bevölkerungsrückgang zur renaturalisierung in einigen regionen genutzt werden. weitaus bedeutender ist hier jedoch die globale perspektive, da der ressourcenverbrauch in industrieländern wie deutschland überproportional hoch ist (siehe auch: meadows et al. 1972). der pro kopf bezogene ressourcenverbrauch in den industrieländern hat seit der meadows-publikation bezüglich der meisten ressourcenarten zugenommen. der ökologische fußabdruck ist pro person von 1961 bis 2007 in europa um 30 % und in deutschland um 42 % angestiegen (ewing et al. 2010: 63). ein maßstab für nachhaltigkeit ist, dass sich die genutzten umweltressourcen langfristig regenerieren lassen. in einer globalen perspektive ist dies nicht der fall, was sich v.a. durch den klimawandel und den verlust an biodiversität sowie durch eine zunehmende ressourcenknappheit an energie, wasser oder fischbestand auswirkt. hier kann ein bevölkerungsrückgang auch eine chance sein, den ressourcenverbrauch und den klimawandel zu reduzieren. aus globaler perspektive sind die einsparpotenziale deutschlands allerdings zu relativieren: denn erstens macht die bevölkerung deutschlands nur 1,1 % der weltbevölkerung aus und dieser anteil ist rückläufi g (un 2012) und zweitens nimmt der ressourcenverbrauch in den entwicklungsund schwellenländern, in denen der größte teil der weltbevölkerung lebt, enorm zu. folgende zahlen zum ressourcenverbrauch gemessen in globalen hektar pro person (gha) im jahr 2007 verdeutlichen die relationen: der ökologische fußabdruck der produktion liegt in deutschland bei 4,72 gha, der des konsums bei 5,08 gha, während die biokapazität 1,92 beträgt. dieses pro kopf berechnete defi zit multipliziert sich mit der bevölkerungszahl. in deutschland wird also das 2,65-fache an ressourcen im vergleich zur biokapazität verbraucht. global werden „nur“ das 1,52-fache der ressourcen verbraucht (ewing et al. 2010: 31). demnach ist das deutsche defi zit mit 165 % mehr als drei mal so hoch wie das globale von 52 %. beim bevölkerungsrückgang steigt nach diesem modell die biokapazität pro kopf an. neben diesem effekt ist die symbolwirkung nicht zu unterschätzen, wenn sich in einem industrieland der ressourcenverbrauch bzw. die bevölkerungsgröße reduziert. dazu kommt, dass sich die befunde auch auf andere länder übertragen lassen und ein bevölkerungsrückgang in mehreren industrieländern einen erheblichen entlastungsfaktor für die umwelt bedeuten könnte. abgesehen von dieser demografi schen argumentation gibt es andere politische und technologische hebel, um die umweltbelastung zu reduzieren. • martin bujard76 6.4 die folgen des bevölkerungsrückgangs für die gesellschaft und kultur die kulturellen folgen sind schwer abschätzbar. die meisten gesellschaftlichen institutionen wie kirchen, gewerkschaften, parteien und verbände werden einen mitgliederschwund erleiden. der begriff „entvölkerung“ oder gar die analogie mit dem dreißigjährigen krieg (schmid et al. 2000: 184) sind per se nicht angemessen angesichts eines bevölkerungsrückgangs bis 2060 nach den mittleren projektionen um 14 bis 21 %. allerdings gibt es regionen, in denen abwanderung und geburtendefi zit zusammenkommen, was sich für die bleibenden als dramatische entvölkerung darstellt. dies ist insbesondere in einigen ostdeutschen regionen der fall, wobei nicht nur die ost-west-migration, sondern auch wanderungen zwischen ostdeutschen regionen ursächlich sind (sander 2014). welche gesellschaftlichen auswirkungen das haben wird, hängt auch von der kompensierenden regionalpolitik ab. neben diesen verliererregionen wird es prosperierende städte und regionen geben, deren bevölkerung in den nächsten jahrzehnten nicht zurückgehen wird. träger von kultur und sprache eines landes ist die bevölkerung. wenn diese schrumpft, schrumpft auch die anzahl der menschen, die die sprache verstehen und sprechen sowie die kulturellen traditionen leben und weitergeben. die die kollektive identität formenden kommunikations-, erfahrungsund erinnerungsgemeinschaften (kielmannsegg 1995) werden durch den bevölkerungsrückgang kleiner. wie sehr eine zurückgehende kulturelle bedeutung im internationalen vergleich oder eine geringere trägerschaft kultureller und historischer erfahrungen als negativ empfunden wird, wird sehr unterschiedlich bewertet. der versuch, angesichts der konstanten zuwanderung menschen mit migrationshintergrund über generationen hinweg dauerhaft aus diesen kommunikationsgemeinschaften auszuklammern (und sei es durch bevölkerungsberechnungen, vgl. birg 2003), ist abwegig – nicht nur, da er fehlenden integrationswillen und wirkungslose integrationspolitik für die zukunft unterstellt, sondern auch angesichts von gemischten familiengründungen und auswirkungen des staatsbürgerschaftsrechts. 7 fazit, synthese und diskussion die fallstudie deutschland zeigt, dass die folgen der jahrzehntelang niedrigen geburtenrate in erheblichem maße von politischen weichenstellungen, aber auch von der zukünftigen migrationsrate abhängen. die extremen einschätzungen einiger autoren sind nicht zutreffend. die deutsche geburtenentwicklung ist weder ein „glücksfall“, noch wird sie einen „niedergang deutschlands“ hervorrufen. der geburtenrückgang führt zu den beiden demografi schen prozessen alterung und bevölkerungsrückgang, die sich massiv auf die gesellschaftliche, politische und ökonomische zukunftsentwicklung auswirken. intensität, zeitpunkt und bewertung der folgen sind je nach politikfeld verschieden. in der gesamtbewertung sind die folgen überwiegend negativ, teilweise ambivalent und sie manifestieren sich langfristig mit großer vehemenz. dies widerspricht den zunehmend auftretenden befolgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 77 wertungen, die eine neutrale gesamtbilanz der folgen des geburtenrückgangs mit herausforderungen und chancen vornehmen. andererseits sind die folgen für den politischen wettbewerb, die kultur, den arbeitsmarkt und die wirtschaft nicht zwingend negativ, da sie von politischen entscheidungen und bewertungsperspektiven abhängen. hinter dieser gesamtbewertung sind fundamentale differenzierungen bezüglich demografi scher projektionen sowie politischer, ökonomischer und kultureller folgen notwendig: (1) manche demografi sche folgen sind sicher, andere beruhen auf szenarien, von denen wir nicht wissen, ob sie eintreffen. nahezu sicher ist die alterung, insbesondere dass sich der altenquotient von 2000 bis 2040 mehr als verdoppelt. der altenquotient 20-65, der 2008 bei 33,7 lag, wird 2040 etwa zwischen 57 und 66 liegen. sicher ist auch der anstieg des medianalters der wahlberechtigten von heute 50,1 auf etwa 55 jahre bis 2030 mit steigender tendenz in den folgejahren. anders der bevölkerungsrückgang: es ist heutzutage sogar noch offen, ob und in welchem ausmaß wir ihn erleben werden. bei einem zeitnahen anstieg der tfr auf 2,1 und einem geringen migrationssaldo von 100.000 würde die bevölkerung bis 2060 um 82-83 mio. liegen. dieses szenario ist nicht das wahrscheinlichste, aber auch nicht völlig unrealistisch. in realistischeren szenarien mit einer tfr zwischen 1,2 und 1,6 wird die bevölkerung 2040 zwischen 74 und 78 mio. und 2060 zwischen 61 und 77 mio. liegen. sollte jedoch die tfr die nächsten 86 jahre auf dem heutigen niedrigen niveau verbleiben und der migrationssaldo nicht steigen, würde die deutsche bevölkerung erheblich auf 43,4 mio. schrumpfen – jedoch sind derart langfristige modellrechnungen höchst spekulativ. (2) einige politische entwicklungen lassen sich so gestalten, dass sie sich nicht per se in die dichotomie „positiv-negativ“ einordnen lassen; andere wiederum sind bei allen gestaltungsspielräumen negativ. die deutlich negativste entwicklung betrifft die folgen für die sozialsysteme. auch wenn sich die halbierung der renten (die c.p. der verdopplung des altenquotienten entspräche) durch die kombination von höherem realen wie formellen renteneintrittsalter, steuerzuschüssen, beitragssatzanstieg und höherer frauenerwerbstätigkeit vermeiden lässt und horrorszenarien abwendbar sind: der geburtenrückgang reduziert den zukünftigen wohlstand erheblich. denn der anstieg des realen renteneintrittsalters und der frauenerwerbstätigkeit würde ohne die alterung zu höheren renten und niedrigeren lohnnebenkosten führen. ab 2030 werden für mehrere jahrzehnte die renten niedriger und die krankenkassenleistungen begrenzter sein, was zu zunehmender altersarmut und exklusion von einigen gesundheitsleistungen führt. zudem wird bei den arbeitenden generationen ein erheblicher teil der produktivitätszuwächse für die sozialen sicherungssysteme verwendet werden. die folgen für den politischen wettbewerb ergeben sich durch den anstieg des medianalters der wahlberechtigten: das wahlgewicht der rentner nimmt rapide zu. inwieweit dies zu reformblockaden oder veränderungen im parteiensystem führt, bleibt abzuwarten. dafür sprechen die gemeinsamen pekuniären interessen von rentnern in verteilungsfragen – dagegen die adaptionsfähigkeit von parteien und der intergenerationalen solidarität der wähler. innerhalb der eu wird das relative gewicht deutschlands infolge des geburtenrückgangs abnehmen. in den 2040er jahren werden frankreich und großbritannien eine ähnliche bevölkerungsgröße wie deutschland haben. dies wirkt sich direkt über die doppelte mehrheit im rat und das abgeordne• martin bujard78 tenkontingent im ep aus, zudem indirekt über verhandlungspositionen und wirtschaftskraft. (3) die ökonomischen folgen des geburtenrückgangs sind unterschiedlich: die effekte für das potenzialwachstum und das bip sind tendenziell negativ aufgrund des höheren abhängigkeitsquotienten (alterung) und des rückgangs des humankapitals (bevölkerungsrückgang). allerdings lässt sich der rückgang der arbeitenden bevölkerung durch eine höhere arbeitsmarktbeteiligung, einen höheren kapitalstock und v.a. höhere bildung kompensieren. negative gesamteffekte auf das bippc sind jedoch nicht plausibel. je stärker der bevölkerungsrückgang sein wird, desto mehr steigen die staatsverschuldung pro kopf, aber auch das vermögen pro kopf. die sektoralen nachfrageverschiebungen werden erheblich sein. regional wirkt sich der bevölkerungsrückgang aufgrund von binnenwanderungen sehr unterschiedlich aus. es wird entleerte regionen mit einbrechenden immobilienpreisen und regionalpolitischen herausforderungen ebenso geben wie prosperierende städte. (4) die kulturellen folgen der alterung werden vielfältig sein. negative altersstereotype sind weitgehend unrealistisch, da rentner gesünder und vitaler sein werden als in früheren generationen. das zivilgesellschaftliche engagement und die öffentliche wahrnehmung der rentnergeneration werden zunehmen. das ausmaß eines kulturellen verlustes im falle eines erheblichen geburtenrückgangs – eines möglichen, jedoch nicht sicheren szenarios – sind normativ schwer einzuschätzen. träger von sprache und erinnerungsgemeinschaften würden sich reduzieren. dies wird sich im kulturellen alltag kaum auswirken, jedoch würde die internationale „geltung“ erheblich zurückgehen. da gleichzeitig der anteil von menschen mit migrationshintergrund zunehmen wird, wird auch die kultur vielfältiger. bewertungen dazu sind oftmals subjektiv, auf jeden fall kommt der integrationspolitik und dem spracherwerb eine zunehmend wichtige rolle zu. kommunikations-, erlebnisund erinnerungsgemeinschaften können sich sowohl auf vergangene jahrhunderte als auch auf kürzere zeiträume, die menschen mit und ohne migrationshintergrund gemeinsam haben, beziehen. tabelle 1 fasst für die analysierten politikfelder jeweils die demografi sche wahrscheinlichkeit bestimmter folgen, den zeithorizont, die politischen optionen und eine bewertung der folgen zusammen. die frage, ob alterung oder bevölkerungsrückgang die schlimmere folge des geburtenrückgangs für die menschen ist, lässt sich hier klar beantworten: alterung. erstens weil die verdopplung des altenquotienten bis 2040 sicher ist, während ein bevölkerungsrückgang um mehr als 20 % keineswegs sicher ist. zweitens da sich die alterung massiv auf die sozialsysteme und damit auf den wohlstand fast aller deutschen auswirkt, während die als gravierendsten eingeschätzte folge eines bevölkerungsrückgangs, „deutschlands kultureller niedergang“, im alltag kaum greifbar sein wird, sofern er nicht auf der annahme fehlender integration von migranten beruht. dies wäre allerdings keine folge des geburtenrückgangs. nimmt man jedoch statt der individuellen perspektive die des staates ein, hat der bevölkerungsrückgang erhebliche negative auswirkungen, da er zu einem rückgang von internationalem einfl uss und macht beiträgt. ein wichtiges ergebnis ist, dass bei der analyse der folgen eine analytische trennung zwischen denen der alterung und denen des bevölkerungsrückgangs enorme vorteile mit sich bringt, da beide sich hinsichtlich des zeithorizonts, der dynamik folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 79 ta b . 1 : fo lg en d er d au er ha ft n ie d ri g en f er til it ät a u f v er sc hi ed en e po lit ik fe ld er p o lit ik fe ld d em o g ra fi sc h er p ro ze ss s ic h er h ei t d em o g ra fi sc h er fo lg en h ö h ep un kt d es w an d el s g ra d d er p o lit is ch en fo lg en o p tio n en d er p o lit ik (b ei sp ie le ) e in fl u ss e in er st ei g en d en t fr r en te np o lit ik a lt er un g h o ch 20 10 -3 5 ho ch u n d n eg at iv e rh ö hu ng b ei tr äg e, le b en sa rb ei ts ze it; ni ed ri g er e r en te n ab 2 04 0 le ic h te r ed uz ie ru ng g es un d h ei ts p o lit ik a lt er un g h o ch 20 10 -3 5 h o ch u n d n eg at iv e rh ö hu ng b ei tr äg e, g er in g er e le is tu n g en ab 2 04 0 le ic h te r ed uz ie ru ng w ir ts ch af t b ei d es te ils h o ch u n d am b iv al en t h ö h er e b ild u n g sin ve st it io ne n, e rb sc h af ts st eu er ja a rb ei ts m ar kt b ei d es te ils h o ch u n d am b iv al en t a n st ie g lo h n n eb en ko st en b re m se n ja u m w el t s ch ru m p fu ng un g ew is s g g f. ab 2 05 0 m it te l u n d p o si tiv r en at ur al is ie ru ng , s ta d tp la n u n g ja k ul tu r b ei d es te ils h o ch u n d am b iv al en t e hr en am t f ür ä lt er e fö rd er n; in te g ra tio n sp o lit ik ja p o lit is ch er w et tb ew er b a lt er un g h o ch 20 10 -3 5 h o ch u n d am b iv al en t g en er at io n en p o lit ik in te re ss en p o lit is ch au fg re if en ab 2 04 0 le ic h te r ed uz ie ru ng in te rn at io n al e b ez ie hu ng en s ch ru m p fu ng un g ew is s g g f. ab 2 05 0 m it te l u n d n eg at iv e ur o p äi sc h e in te g ra tio n ja e u s ch ru m p fu ng un g ew is s g g f. ab 2 05 0 ho ch u n d n eg at iv ke in e ja q ue lle : ei ge ne d ar st el lu ng • martin bujard80 sowie des einfl usses von migration und steigender lebenserwartung grundsätzlich unterscheiden. dies erklärt auch teilweise die heterogenen interpretationsmuster, da in der literatur häufi g nicht exakt zwischen diesen demografi schen prozessen differenziert wird. bei autoren, die negative folgen des zweiten geburtenrückgangs verneinen (u.a. müller 2004; hondrich 2007), werden die oben gezeigten höchst negativen konsequenzen für die sozialen sicherungssysteme nicht als solche wahrgenommen. angesichts der verdoppelung des altenquotienten wird mit kompensationsmöglichkeiten durch zukünftiges produktivitätswachstum und migration argumentiert, jedoch ohne detaillierten nachweis; beides wird in relation zur alterungsdynamik völlig überschätzt. außerdem werden entwicklungen der beiden geburtenrückgänge vermengt und irreführende analogien hergestellt. auf der anderen seite sind die szenarien einiger demografen, die die negativen konsequenzen des geburtenrückgangs betonen (u.a. schmid et al. 2000; birg 2003), deutlich überzeichnet. dazu trägt die spezifi sche auswahl von (negativen) annahmen ebenso bei wie die fehlende einordnung der unsicherheit von langfristigen modellrechnungen beim bevölkerungsrückgang. wenn sich jedoch bewertungen nicht nur auf den geburtenrückgang, sondern auf den demografi schen wandel insgesamt beziehen, ist die normative neutrale bewertung nicht unplausibel (u.a. merkel 2013). denn dieser beinhalt mit der zunahme der lebenserwartung ein positives (akademiegruppe altern 2009; kruse 2013) und mit dem geburtenrückgang ein negatives phänomen. allerdings bedingen sich beide phänomene nicht gegenseitig. während von der zunehmenden lebenserwartung alle industrieländer betroffen sind, haben nur ein teil der länder wie deutschland eine zu niedrige geburtenrate. wie lassen sich erkenntnisse der fallstudie zu deutschland auf andere länder übertragen? niedrige fertilitätsraten implizieren nicht derartige folgen, wenn sie nur für wenige jahre so niedrig sind. in deutschland dagegen hat sich der rückgang der geburtenzahl dynamisiert, da er sich bereits über zwei generationen vollzieht. vor dieser entwicklung befi nden sich gegenwärtig einige südund osteuropäische staaten sowie japan und südkorea. wenn das low-fertility-syndrom in diesen ländern ähnlich lange andauert wie in deutschland, wird die schrumpfung in südund osteuropa sogar noch stärker erfolgen, da deutschland in den letzten jahrzehnten von einer erheblichen nettozuwanderung profi tiert hat und diese staaten teilweise von abwanderungswellen betroffen sind. da deutschland ein einwanderungsland ist, in das u.a. wegen der aussiedlerwelle aus der (ehemaligen) sowjetunion nach dem fall des eisernen vorhangs ebenso wie infolge der finanzkrise viele menschen aus südund osteuropa gezogen sind, ist die durch das jahrzehntelange geburtendefi zit angelegte schrumpfung kompensiert worden. in japan ist dies nicht der fall; zudem wird der altenquotient höher steigen als in deutschland, da dort die lebenserwartung mehrere jahre höher ist. länder mit einem ausgeprägteren babyboom wie frankreich haben auch bei einer tfr um die ausgleichsrate enorme probleme mit dem rentensystem, da der altenquotient ebenfalls rapide ansteigt, wenn die babyboomer-generation das rentenalter erreicht. folgen der dauerhaft niedrigen fertilität in deutschland • 81 auf die folgen für die sozialsysteme wurde in deutschland in den ersten zwei jahrzehnten nach beginn der niedrigfertilität 1975 kaum oder nur in kleinteiligen reformschritten reagiert. die umfassendere rentenreform, die das renteneintrittsalter um zwei jahre erhöht hat, wurde 2007 verabschiedet, also im 33. jahr mit einer tfr unterhalb von 1,5. eine offi zielle, ressortübergreifende demografi estrategie wurde 2012, im 38. jahr als low-fertility-land vorgelegt. je stärker der altersstruktureffekt und der bevölkerungsrückgang sichtbar werden, desto intensiver wird die politische und mediale debatte zur demografi e. der deutsche demografi ediskurs wird, wie gezeigt wurde, mit erheblichen übertreibungen und extrempositionen geführt. dies ist möglicherweise für andere länder nicht so übertragbar, da die erfahrungen mit pronatalistischen missbrauch in nazi-deutschland einen langen schatten auf den diskurs geworfen haben. andererseits ist die debatte über demografi sche folgen kompliziert, wenn wissenschaftler bestimmte entwicklungen benennen können, während die anderen bürger noch keine folgen sehen. die auswirkungen für wirtschaft, arbeitsmarkt, umwelt und den politischen wettbewerb lassen sich auch weitgehend auf andere länder übertragen, sofern die niedrige fertilität dort ähnlich lange anhält. die auswirkung auf die eu-machtbalance ist bei deutschland besonders gravierend, da deutschland bezüglich der größe von wirtschaft und bevölkerung dominiert und bei einem starken bevölkerungsrückgang die politische führungsposition verlieren könnte. bei anderen ländern wie estland sind dagegen die kulturellen folgen immens, da die träger der sprache und erinnerungsgemeinschaft dort relativ klein sind. da es sich beim auftreten von dauerhaft niedriger fertilität um ein phänomen neuer dimension handelt, sind viele folgen noch ungewiss und gegenstand von zukünftiger forschung. einwanderung kann, möglicherweise auf kosten zusätzlicher probleme, den bevölkerungsrückgang bremsen, nicht jedoch die alterung. die analyse der folgen zeigt, dass länder wie deutschland ein fundamentales interesse an zukünftig höheren geburtenraten haben. das langfristige wirkungspotenzial eines familienpolitischen policymix auf die tfr (bujard 2011; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013) macht die familienpolitik zu einem schlüsselpolitikfeld der zukunft. allerdings lassen sich die auswirkungen auf die sozialversicherungen für die nächsten zwei jahrzehnte nicht mehr demografi sch abwenden. steigt aber die geburtenrate wieder auf bestandserhaltungsniveau an, könnte der altenquotient 2060 um 26 % niedriger sein als bei konstanter tfr. dies würde dauerhaft spielräume für rentensteigerungen für die nach 1970 geborenen generationen implizieren. zur abwendung des möglichen bevölkerungsrückgangs wäre ein anstieg der tfr die zentrale stellschraube. auch wenn sie erst in ein, zwei oder drei jahrzehnten anstiege, ließen sich die negativszenarien einer exponentiell rückläufi gen bevölkerung abwenden. danksagung der autor dankt christian fiedler, frank micheel, harun sulak und stefan wurster sowie zwei anonymen gutachter(inne)n für wertvolle hinweise. • martin bujard82 literatur akademiegruppe altern in deutschland 2009: gewonnene jahre. stuttgart: wissenschaftliche verlagsgesellschaft. barlösius, eva; 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politische konsequenzen. baden-baden: nomos. world bank 2014: world development indicators [http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators, 1.8.2014]. eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und vom autor autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study. demographic projections and implications for different policy fields“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2015-06en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-06en2, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 01.08.2014 angenommen am: 24.02.2015 dr. martin bujard (). bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografie.de/bujard published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova abstract: this paper aims to illuminate and provide a critical assessment of the nationalist discourse on declining population in bulgaria. nationalist discourse is one of the mainstream approaches in bulgaria and is widely spread through mass media having been voiced by renowned intellectuals, policy experts, scholars and media celebrities. it can be recognised in the political programmes of left-wing and nationalist parties, but also in governmental documents at both national as well as regional levels. the nationalistically oriented advocates articulate current concerns regarding the declining birth rates and declining population in the country labelling the demographic situation as “bulgarian national catastrophe” and “bulgaria’s collapse”. they place an emphasis on the decreasing proportion of ethnic bulgarians and the growth of the ethnic minorities, especially roma. the latter trend was labelled by the derogatory term “gypsyisation”, i.e. a distortion of the bulgarian nation and shrinkage of its core ethnicity – ethnic bulgarians. the threat of the “gypsyisation” of the bulgarian nation has not only been viewed in quantitative terms, but also through the lens of an alleged worsening of the national human capital (e.g. level of education, professional skills and civic culture of the population). another set of arguments exploited in the nationalist discourse is the diminishing size of the bulgarian nation as a threat to national sovereignty, territorial unity and economic stability. we use a qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis of media textual materials in order to reconstruct the main ideas, arguments and strategies of the proponents of the nationalist discourse regarding the consequences of the declining population in bulgaria, its social policy implications and future demographic prospects. keywords: nationalism · population decline · ethnic minorities · roma · bulgaria · qualitative content analysis · thematic analysis comparative population studies vol. 39, 4 (2014): 767-788 (date of release: 27.11.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-15en7 • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova768 1 introduction 1.1 population decline and ethno-stratifi cation in bulgaria after 1990 the transition period in bulgaria was characterised by profound transformations in all aspects of social life. severe economic downturn, skyrocketing infl ation, and high unemployment rates in the mid-1990s followed by mass impoverishment and signifi cant deterioration of living standards were the main features of the crisis-led societal transformations. these transformations also had a signifi cant impact on the demographic development of the country. after 1990, the rate of natural increase became negative. this trend persisted throughout the whole period of the last two decades. in 2012, the rate of natural increase reached -5.5‰ (demographic processes 2013). as stated by d. coleman and r. rowthorn (2011: 219): “population decline can arise from any combination of low birth rates, high death rates, and net emigration. in the modern world, low birth rates are the key”. this combination of factors shaped bulgaria’s demographic development from the beginning of the 1990s onwards. the persistent population decline witnessed in the country after 1990 has been caused by the intensifi ed process of emigration, increasing levels of mortality and changes in reproductive models associated with postponement of the onset of reproduction and reduction in the number of children the contemporary young people choose to have. in particular, it has been estimated that for the period 19902005 the population loss due to out-migration exceeds one million (out of 7 369431 according to the last census of 01/02/2011). the trend of emigration has been extremely intensive in the initial years of the transition period. the population decline in the country has also been caused by the increasing trends of mortality. the situation is particularly dramatic because mortality has retained at a very high level of above 14‰, reaching 15.0‰ in 2012 (the highest crude death rate in europe) with no signs of improvement in the coming years (demographic processes 2013). the increase of mortality rates was triggered by several underlying processes – deterioration of the health status of the population due to a signifi cant drop of living standards and population ageing associated with a process of fertility reduction and changes in the cohort size that had been in effect long before the societal transition. important differentials in mortality following the increasing social inequalities in the country have been discussed in the literature as well. ethno-stratifi cation of the bulgarian post-socialist society and the increasing inequalities between the three main ethnic groups in the country (bulgarian, turkish and roma) is also refl ected by diverging mortality trends. the national statistics recorded excessively higher infant mortality and also signifi cantly lower life expectancy at birth among the ethnic roma. these inequalities continued to reproduce and increased even further over the last two decades (table 1). substantial ethnic differentials are observed in fertility trends as well. the roma minority has the highest level of fertility (table 1). koytcheva and philipov (2008: 373) point out also that “roma often enter into motherhood as teenagers, while for nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 769 the turks the mean age at entry is between 20 and 21, and bulgarians start childbearing above age 23 on average. also, in the second half of the 1990s we observe a rise in the mean age at fi rst birth that is especially evident for the bulgarians and the roma”. the sharp decrease of the total fertility rate (tfr) recorded since the early 1990s marked the end of the two-child family model as previously dominant compositional characteristic of the bulgarian family. since 1990, the tfr dropped from a stable level of approximately two children per woman that prevailed during the socialist times leading to the “lowest low fertility level” less then 1.3 children per woman (kohler et al. 2002: 641-680) in the mid-1990s. in 2012, after a period of slight increase, the national tfr reached the level of 1.50 children per woman (demographic processes 2013). the changes in the number of children born in today’s bulgarian families involved mainly higher-order fertility, and in particular, second births. among the young generations today, the second birth is increasingly postponed and even foregone. several studies show that the arrival of the second child in the family could be seen as an intersection of enlarging social inequalities in modern bulgarian society (koytcheva/philipov 2008; dimitrova 2012). in particular, the advancing ethno-stratifi cation of the bulgarian post-socialist society turned reproduction into a socially stratifi ed phenomenon that follows the increasing social inequalities between different ethnic groups. until recently roma women who experienced the most severe socio-economic deprivation continued to have signifi cantly increased probability of second and higher order births compared to the women from the other two ethnic groups in the country, although the analysis reveals that in the roma ethnic group, the decline in higher-order fertility has also been occurring after 1990 (dimitrova 2011). all these changes in the demographic profi le of the country and the persistent ethnic differentials in fertility, witnessed in particular after 1990, focused the attention of experts, policy makers, and civil society. the issue of population decline and exceptionally plummeting fertility became a subject converging the discourses tab. 1: main demographic characteristics of bulgarian, turkish and roma ethnic groups in bulgaria bulgarians turks roma share in the total population (2011) in %1 84.8 8.8 4.9 total fertility rate (2001)2 1.1 2.3 3.0 average number of children – women age at 45-49 (2011)1 1.6 2.0 2.8 average number of children – women age at 65-69 (2011)1 1.8 2.6 3.2 mean age at fi rst birth (2000)2 24.2 21.1 20.1 infant mortality rate (2003) in %3 9.9 17.0 28.0 life expectancy at birth (1999-2001)3 71.8 61.8 source: 1 population census report 2011; 2 koytcheva/philipov 2008: 373-374; 3 national health strategy for people belonging to ethnic minorities 2005-2012. • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova770 of various stakeholders on searching means to counteract further negative demographic implications. on the other hand, higher birth rates and the worsening living conditions for raising children in the families of the roma minority raise public concerns. reproductive models in other minorities, especially the turks, do not attract politicians’ attention as they go in line with overall demographic trends. 1.2 methodology in this paper, our main research question is “how is bulgaria’s population decline after 1990 framed in the context of nationalist discourse?” thus, our focus is on the content of public speech on “demographic crisis”, on comprehensions of demographical trends and their social effects rather than on the objective measurements of demographic data. “discourses are practices that generate the things (e.g. the “population”) […] [they] exert describable effects [….] they are no nature-given units but owe their existence to specifi c historical constellations [….]” (etzemuller 2011: 102). our aim is to extract the main traits of the nationalist rhetoric on the “population problem” that is embedded into a conception of “demography as construction” (etzemuller 2011: 101). in this vein, it is interesting to understand how the “demographic crisis” is articulated in the frame of nationalism. the demographic structure of the nation represents a key element in nationalist mode of thinking. thus, it is not surprising that the nationalist visions and interpretations of the “population problem” prevail in a context of the upheaval of “nationalising nationalisms” of the political space of today’s post-communist european countries, in which the dismantling of the socialist state unlocked ethnic tensions previously suppressed by the totalitarian regimes (brubaker 2004). after a brief macro-level analysis of the expected outcomes of the persisting population decrease in a long-term perspective, which has been labelled a “demographic crisis” in the public discourse, the paper outlines the main conceptualisations of nationalism and the ideas of a nation’s reproduction and ethnic homogeneity in the framework of “politics of reproduction”. the conceptualisation of population shrinkage and population ageing as a societal and national “threat” is presented in a “apocalyptic demography” that has been used to “reconstruct and redefi ne social problems in ways that fi t a political agenda or, at least, that calibrate with current and popular ideological positions” (gee 2002: 750; see also gee/gutman 2000; vincent 1996). in the post-socialist bulgarian context, it is the nationalist ideology that addresses all social and economic problems by reference to the “demographic crisis”. and vice versa, current talk about demography is void if nationalist thinking is not present in it. in the empirical section of the paper, we try to extract different themes and nuances of interpretations/representations of the term “demographic crisis” within the framework of nationalist thought. particularly, we will try to reconstruct the manners in which the topics related to the country’s population shrinkage are framed in offi cial positions of experts/researchers and politicians as well as in the vox populi represented in online forums and blogs. nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 771 data collected for this analysis include thematic discussions in electronic media, internet forums, and blogs as well as the offi cial speeches and media publications by leaders of the vmro1 – a party that falls in the extreme right of the political spectrum. the party describes itself as a nationalist and patriotic organisation, whose mission is the country’s demographic development and the defence of the bulgarian values including the protection of the traditional bulgarian family. the reason for choosing the vmro as a representative nationalist party of the bulgarian political landscape is that the party has developed a very detailed programme/strategy on the country’s demographic future and it is very active in public debates with demographic reference covered on e-media, tv and printing press. although the vmro has not been in parliament for the last decade, an analysis of the party’s statements might be useful as it is assumed that they contain the archetypical structure of nationalist discourse in bulgaria. in the last 3 years, the vmro leaders present themselves not only as politicians but as researchers when presenting a demographic expertise in the public. the method that we use to analyse the collected material is a qualitative content analysis of textual materials (mayring 2000; keller 2005). we have set google alerts to receive all articles on the “population topic” and, for the aim of this research, we only chose articles in bulgarian, published online between 1st october 2011 and 1st june 2012. additionally, we gathered further online publications from this period, which were not found by the google alerts. in order to fi nd these online publications, we entered the following search terms in google: “demographic crisis”, “demographic policy” and “fertility in bulgaria”. our material comprises newspapers (e.g. interviews, author’s articles), videos (e.g. textual materials from television programs), forums and blogs as well as informational websites. our fi nal sample consisted of 317 articles. the collected material was downloaded and the contents were thematically analysed by atlas.ti (v.7.0). the coding scheme tracked such categories as: general information about each article (informative, argumentative, discussion), tone of the article (optimistic/positive, neutral/balanced, pessimistic/negative), concerns and fears (explicit, implicit), accuracy of information conveyed, sources cited, (possible) solutions/recommendations. our coding identifi ed and summarised the content of the materials under three main sub-categories/modes of thinking: nationalist, (neo) liberal and state-interventionist.2 for example, the material was coded as nationalist if expressions like “ethnicity”, “minority”, “ethnic ratio”, “ethnic rights” are used to express the superiority of a certain national ethnic group. according to our three “deductive categories” (mayring 2000), we identifi ed 66 individual articles as “nationalist” (of which 21 were published on the vmro website) and discursively analysed their content. 1 vmro-bulgarian national movement is one of the oldest political parties in bulgaria founded more than 100 years ago as a national organisation of liberation of bulgarians in macedonia. 2 a comparative analysis of nationalist, (neo)liberal and state-interventionist framing patterns is not the purpose of this paper and must be conducted in another article. • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova772 2 the focus on “demographic crisis” rhetoric instead of “national population decline” the importance and the anticipated negative consequences of the long-lasting trend of depopulation for all spheres of the bulgarian society have been widely discussed for more than two decades. the public discourse on the country’s demographic situation is characterised by an extreme terminology. it is described as a “national catastrophe”, “collapse of the nation” or “heavy crisis” rather than more neutrally as “population decline” or “depopulation”. although the decrease in fertility and the increase in mortality, which presumably caused the recent demographic developments have already taken place in the 1970s and 1980s, the strongest effects became visible at the beginning of the 21st century. the population decrease beginning in the early 1990s continued in the fi rst decade of the 21st century despite a minor increase in fertility in the period 2004-2009 (celebrated by the national media as a “baby boom”) and a decreasing emigration during the same period. public concerns about the severity of the population decline are additionally reinforced by two statistics. first, even the optimistic variant of the demographic forecasts prepared by the national statistical institute in bulgaria predict that the negative population growth will continue uninterruptedly until 2060. second, of all eu countries, bulgaria showed the lowest negative natural growth for the last decade and in the world bank population analyses the country has been ranked as the eu country with the highest pace of population loss. coleman and rowthorn (2011: 220, 238) point out that “[…] a rate of decline of 0.5 percent per year seems quite rapid in the context of historical and current experience”. bulgaria is the only eu country experiencing an annual total population decline of -4.41‰. the public discourse on the “demographic crisis” is associated mainly with a steep fertility decline, which is interpreted as a response to severe economic hardships and low living standards during the last two decades. moreover, in a broader context, the label of “demographic crisis” has been used as a landmark connoting transformations with negative consequences in all areas of social life. the fear of a “demographic crisis” penetrates public debates on most important issues. it is closely related to unemployment, generally low salaries and pensions, expensive dwelling, scarcity of childcare services in big cities, etc. for a number of reasons, the “population problem” has been considered as particularly severe: • first of all, the demographic crisis is characterised by its comprehensiveness. it has an impact on all spheres and institutions of the bulgarian society. it affects the labour market, the educational sphere, the healthcare system, the national pension system, and the social care system. for example, it has led to several important changes in the area of education. from 1990 onwards, many kindergartens and schools in small towns and villages closed down because of the low number of enrolled children; many schools faced a decrease of the in-class size, which led to amalgamating schools and classes and a decreasing quality of education. in the last 3-4 years, the consequencnationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 773 es of persistently low fertility are actively discussed by authorities of the higher education system. again, the signifi cantly low number of registered students applying and enrolling in bulgarian universities has been seen as an outcome of the “demographic crisis”. the shortage of labour force in certain segments of the labour market, the signifi cant drop of working age population paralleled by a substantial increase of the number of people at retirement age have been expected to lead to long-lasting defi cits in the national pension funds and the national insurance system in the future. finally, the gloomy statistics assume that in the country’s demographic “future”, in addition to the 200 settlements, which have been deserted over the last 20 years another 1000 rural settlements will be depopulated in the next 10 years. to summarise, every problem that has evolved in any social sphere of the bulgarian society has been considered as an outcome of the “demographic crisis”. • much attention has been paid to population ageing as one of the most negative aspects of the country’s “demographic crisis”. mass media comprehensively cite offi cial sources of information that bulgaria is among the world’s top 5 countries with the highest percentage of people above the age of 65. the advanced process of population ageing constitutes a solid argument for public offi cials to justify the lack of progress in never-ending chaotic reforms in the health and pension system during the last 10 years. on the other hand, social experts alarm for other challenges stemming from ageing. the increase in the share of senior citizens raises the issue of providing them with economic stability and wellbeing. evidently, the diminishing number of young cohorts entering the labour markets will face this challenge – a problem that can seriously erode social solidarity as a fundamental principle of modern society. last but not least, the increasing importance of senior citizens’ votes in the national elections lead to increasing public attention to their needs and the development of future policies designed for elderly people (krastev 2011). • another key dimension of academic research and public discourse is the potential decrease in the human capital of the next generations. some scholars claim that the demographic crisis proceeds at different paces and affects the various social strata, regions and communities in the country in different ways (mirchev 2010). this raises serious concerns about the quality of the human capital of the next generations as the current trends refl ect the hampered reproduction of “genuine” bulgarian citizens. in the same vein, differences at mortality have also been closely associated with increasing health inequalities among different social groups in bulgaria. however, the declining population is not a unique process exclusive to the bulgarian society. this process has also been witnessed in most european countries and presents fundamental challenges to them. in 2008, 14 countries in europe face • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova774 population shrinkage including 12 east european countries together with italy and germany (coleman/rowthorn 2011: 220). despite the fact that in the offi cial documents of the european commission the terms “demographic crisis” and “demographic policy” are not used, these documents frequently discuss the need of fostering population growth, to support europe’s young people to have the number of children they desire, and to guarantee solidarity between generations (ec 2011). unlike west european countries, and similarly to some ex-socialist countries, e.g. russia (isola 2008), in bulgaria terms like “demographic crisis” and “demographic catastrophe” have become a central part of the debate on population decline. the “crisis” rhetoric echoes the country’s socialist past with its coercive pronatalist demographic policy. thus, in a situation when the “future of the nation” has been considered at stake due to population decline, the “crisis” rhetoric becomes relevant for persuasive and argumentative purposes in the discourses of public agents with nationalist attitudes. 3 nationalism and nation reproduction before discussing the manner in which the “demographic crisis” is discursively constructed in some of the offi cial public discourses in the recent bulgarian society we will briefl y touch upon the main conceptualizations of nationalism. not aiming to delve in a comprehensive debate on nationalism, national state, ethnicity, etc. i.e. topics that lay beyond the scope of this paper, we rather briefl y elaborate on some main theses that we use as analytical instruments in our empirical analysis. modern theorists of nationalism unanimously agree that nationalism is not a monolithic phenomenon. further, it is not a universal but a “contextual” concept that encompasses different meanings and modes of development according to a diverse range of socio-cultural environments. nationalism is shaped by national ideologies around which different social movements unfold. the contextual nature of nationalism still allows for identifi cation of two different modes: western, rational, civic, territorial nationalism and eastern, organic, ethnic-genealogical nationalism (smith 2000). anthony smith argues that ethnicity is a paramount premise in the formation of a nation, referring to the state-nation building model of britain and france which were founded around a dominant ethnic group. ethnicity defi ned as shared culture (common language, religion, customs), shared historical legacy, and a link to a specifi c territory (homeland) develops a strong sense of collective identity and solidarity. stressing continuity between pre-modern ethnic groups and modern nations, smith emphasises the core cohesive power of ethnic identity for the unfolding of nationalism: “[…] as an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population […]” (smith 2000: 25). in contrast to smith’s ethno-centrist origin of nationalism, ernest gellner (1983: 94) suggests that both modern nation-state model and nationalism had emerged due to political and cultural proximity of different ethnic groups, thus creating a new type of homogeneity. nationalism based on territorial-political unity develops more nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 775 sources for national cohesion and integrity while ethnic rooted nationalism could cause energetic separatist and isolationist trends. resurgence of nationalism in post-communist societies has also reshaped a wide range of nationalist ideologies and movements in the globalised world. in studies on genealogy of “east european nationalisms”, social analysts stress the link between pre-communist and communist ideologies, the emergence of new emancipative ideas of subversion of previous forms of ideological colonisation, and state-nation building under the conditions of globalism (altermatt 1998; brubaker 2004; puhle 2008). rogers brubaker says about the revival of new nationalism in post-communist countries: “[…] nationalizing nationalisms include appeals on behalf of one “main nation” or nationhood, defi ned in ethno-cultural sense and clearly detached from the community of citizens as a whole” (brubaker 2004: 19). bulgarian studies on nationalism adopt the idea of the existence of a wide spectrum of nationalist views and sentiments. nationalism has been comprehended in both positive, constructive and negative, destructive modes. according to velev (2005: 6), a positive strand of modern nationalism is based on the idea of national unity, the defence of bulgarian territorial integrity, and the construction of a modern national doctrine similar to the ideas of national independence and independent state building spread in times of bulgaria’s pre-liberation from the turkish ottoman empire in the 19th century. an aggressive, destructive nationalism has been recognised as a mode of thinking that stirs up multiethnic tensions, confl icts, and xenophobic attitudes through language of hate and warlike rhetoric. on the other hand, some sociologists (kabakchieva 2008) observe a spread of strong nationalist attitudes among bulgarians citing data from national representative studies, where bulgarians avoid identifying with large communities, such as nation and state. bulgarians demonstrate strong distrust in all public institutions; they are extremely disappointed by their political entities and leaders. thus, it is argued that if nationalism had emerged in bulgaria, it would hardly imply the identifi cation with the state. most bulgarian people identify with their family settings and local communities that inspire the so-called “familial patriotism” instead of politically based nationalism. gal and kligman (2001: 25) mention that it is remarkable that modern theorists of nationalism – anderson, smith, gellner, hobsbaum, horowitz – ignore gender and reproduction. in contrast, some scholars in cultural studies put strong emphasis on the reproduction of the nation, which becomes a focal point in the nationalist discourses (parker et al. 1992; wilford/miller 1998; mayer 2000). in the second stream of theorising, biological reproduction has been discussed as a symbol of a nation’s vitality and strength and a nation’s liveliness considered as a social and genetic-biological entity. decreased fertility of the nation has been viewed as stagnation of its vital potential, as a threat to gradual development, and as a symbol of the nation’s death (gal/kligman 2001; rivkin-fish 2010). women are at the centre of nationalist thought as they represent the biological rejuvenation of the nation by reproducing cultural, lingual and gender identity and by becoming the allegorical emblem of the nation’s continuity. mothers are the symbol of a nation’s viability, whereas women who do not reproduce indicate the • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova776 nation’s regress (yuval-davis 1997). motherhood is viewed as the “primary form of female political agency” (gal/kligman 2001). thus, nationalism claims control over women’s reproductive capacities and morally condemns women who do not want to reproduce. in the socialist regimes, the states exercised strict control over women’s bodies by making abortions illegal and restricting access to modern contraceptives. the socialist governments imposed an ideology that women were urged to have children in order to fulfi l their patriotic duty; giving birth in the name of the communist party and state. the family metaphor is central to nationalist thinking (gal/kligman 2001). the family is an exceptional entity because nation can be characterised as a big family. family interests are superior to individual interests because the nation has survived and existed due to the reproduction of the family. moreover, the image of the family is idealised as a traditional marital union where both parents raise children. all other types of family unions like monoparental family, homosexual family, or even childless family are ignored as they threaten the family’s reproductive potential. the nationalist debate on reproduction goes hand in hand with normative debate about who are the “correct” producers and citizens of the nation. due to the effective enforcement mechanisms, modern nation-states exercise great power to regulate human reproduction, a process that michel foucault called “a biopolitics of the population” (foucault 1990). under the conditions of severe economic and political transformations and in face of population decline in most of east and central european countries, politicians and leaders of the post-communist states debate how to stimulate women’s fertility and how to cope with the negative consequences of low birth rates. these debates assure political legitimacy and state authority over these tackling demographic issues. in the following sections we will analyse how the main characteristics of the nationalist discourse are constructed in the political agenda of vmro and in the nationalist oriented talks in the internet forums. the centre of the nationalists’ discourse is the “roma problem”, particularly the roma minority’s (fast) reproduction as a “threat” to the bulgarian welfare and the people’s wellbeing.3 4 nation and roma ethnicity 4.1 “gypsy issue at the heart of the demographic policy” the idea for ethnic homogeneity of the leading ethnic community takes a central role in the ethnonational vision of the nation. the higher birth-rate among the ethnic minorities combined with the lower fertility of the “dominant” ethnic group give 3 the “roma problem” is also discussed in hungary and romania, where a large number of hungarian and romanian roma live. the nationalists are actively involved in discussing minority policies in these countries by constantly producing negative stereotypes of roma (madroane 2012; denes 2011) nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 777 the nationalists rise to concern. they fear that the ethnic ratio in the country could change and turn the minority into majority. this worry is expressed by the claim of “expulsion and replacement of the bulgarian people by the gypsy ethnic group” (vmro 2012). this concern permeates a large portion of the attitudes and opinions on the demographic crisis in bulgaria. this view is most openly articulated by the vmro leaders, e.g. “bulgarian children on the verge of extinction”, “bulgarian population is dying out”, “today – a muslim netherlands, tomorrow a gypsy bulgaria”, “sos for bulgarians”, “dobrudhza is depopulated and overrun by gypsies”, “one million less ethnic bulgarians since the last census” (vmro 2012). in vmro’s main document – “bulgaria 2050 – demographic strategy project” the “gypsy issue” is presented both from a quantitative perspective – the higher ethnic birth-rate – and from a qualitative aspect of the human capital – the ghetthoisation and marginalisation of this group: “this is only the quantitative side of the problem. unfortunately it has a qualitative, a social side as well, because there is a twofold model of reproduction in bulgaria. on one hand, the larger population group has a low birth-rate (for ethnic bulgarian it is below 7% [sic]) which is rather insuffi cient for reproduction. on the other hand, the socially isolated and marginalised strata, which mainly consists of gypsies, make 8% of the population, but give 20% of the live births and these shares are constantly increasing. this leads to further ghetthoisation of this group and does not help solving their problems in any way.” (vmro 2012) although the consequences of the “demographic crisis” are presented from a broader perspective – population ageing, increased retirement age, strains on welfare funds, prevalence of infertility among large number of bulgarian families, problems with national security, migration pressure, and others – all these questions are deduced from the main problem identifi ed by vmro – the “disappearance of ethnic bulgarians” and the impending “gypsy threat” over the bulgarian nation. on the vmro’s website the demographic crisis in bulgaria is analysed and discussed in detail and a special subsection called the “gypsy issue” is dedicated to this topic. there are “5+1 urgent measures” proposed on the site, including combining child benefi ts with compulsory schooling and minimal living conditions, introducing different forms of community service in cases of insolvency and unpaid bills, penalties cutting social benefi ts and abolishing the equal treatment before the law of this ethnic group. these steps defi ne the vmro’s proposed governmental policy for the integration of the roma population, viewed as part of the effi cient demographic policy. the claim of anticipated ethnic dominance of roma over ethnic bulgarians is also constructed using statements of foreigners visiting bulgaria. this view is exemplifi ed in the words of a famous british journalist, who presents bulgaria as a country where half of the population is “gypsy”: “a scandalous fi lm on bbc presented bulgaria like a gypsy country. the author is the british journalist michael palin famous as one of the actors of “monty python”. his “picture” of our country steered a controversy at home and abroad. “bulgaria is famous mostly with the fact that a lot of gypsies live there. in this country they represent almost half of the population”, said the author of the eastern delight fi lm, reports bulgarian national radio” • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova778 (demographic collapse in bulgaria. in: http://forum.framar.bg, date of publication 12.1.2012) the “gypsyisation” of bulgaria is viewed as a weakening of the cultural and historical power of the bulgarian population and as a serious threat to the foundations of the state and the historic legacy of the country: “the problem is not only in the depopulation. the bulgarian statehood degrades as well. in more and more municipalities, bulgarians are a minority. there, they are oppressed and discriminated. in the not too far future, the bigger part of the population of our homeland will not understand bulgarian. […..] because the demise of bulgarians means the disappearance of fi fteen hundred years of bulgarian civilisation and the end of the third bulgarian state.” (kostadinov, kostadin. in: desant (debark) newspaper, date of publication 26.2.2012) thus, in the vmro’s language on the “demographic crisis” we recognise a classic malthus’ discourse on population marked by the fear of irrationally high fertility of the lower strata, which poses a threat to the living conditions of the civilised middle-class of the bulgarian society. the nationalists use the malthusian argumentation of class-differentiated fertility in order to warn about the increase of allegedly inferior human capital, which would, in turn, result in the overall downgrading of the nation and the state. thus, the vmro’s population discourse reproduces the main worries of the “apocalyptic demography”: the shrinking of the superior, i.e. middle and upper-class population and the expanding of the inferior, “socially problematic” population. the vmro’s discourse on population is not new – this mode has shaped the political thinking about the population in western europe and the usa since the 19th century until today (etzemuller 2011) 4.2 “the covert genocide turned into a fi nancial one” the perceived “gypsyisation” of bulgaria embodies another painful topic in the popular consciousness of bulgarian citizens – the aspired distribution of common goods according to one’s contribution instead of the current system, in which everyone is entitled to receive social benefi ts for unemployment, childcare, poverty, etc. the social discontent is instigated by media coverage of the supposed large spending on roma integration and the miniscule, almost non-existent results. the latter is allegedly caused by the widespread corruption practices among the “gypsy” activists, roma organisation leaders and european project consultants dealing with roma integration. “expert” opinions on the topic by scholars from the centre for demographic policy4 are often used and quoted by both vmro leaders and the media: 4 the centre for demographic policy is a recently founded ngo consisting of scholars, experts and activists with nationalist attitudes (including some vmro leaders). regularly, it publishes its own demographic reports, prognoses and evaluations that are widely spread by the mass media. the centre claims to produce more “correct” and “true” statistical information on demographic issues than the offi cial demographic information released by sources like the national statistical institute, the demographic department of the institute for population and human studies at bulgarian academy of sciences, etc. nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 779 “the centre for demographic policy calculated that annually 3.1 billion leva are spent supporting the gypsy community in bulgaria. those funds include social benefi ts, child allowances, maternal benefi ts, and others, legally distributed to the roma population. this means that every bulgarian – from the infant to the old man – pays 50 leva monthly for roma support, calculates prof. petar ivanov.” (roma build palaces using money set for their education. in: monitor newspaper, date of publication 3.12.2011) according to the vmro, during the years of the transition, the state has neglected the interests/needs of the working and tax-paying bulgarian citizens and has instead favoured the roma minority by granting them generous benefi ts including child allowances and thereby generating “a leeching sect pilfering from the bulgarian majority” (kostadinov, kostadin. in: desant (debark) newspaper, date of publication 26.2.2012) the vmro leaders see the main reason for advantaging the group of roma and the disenfranchising of the larger part of “bulgarians” in the roma voting power. during elections, roma votes are often illegally purchased by political agents swaying election results in the roma neighbourhoods. according to the vmro position, maintaining the roma marginalisation and poverty is seen as a prerequisite for continuing the illegal vote trade and as such benefi ts only politicians’ interests. in the vmro activists’ views, the roma are “political players” who can be easily manipulated and who are served by the state, which in turn burdens its tax paying citizens. the roma represent “the main electoral body” (dzhambaski a., interview skat tv: 21.3.2012). “there are no reasons for a special treatment of roma and to grant them more privileges.... the state discriminates bulgarians, because roma are more important voters”, continued dzhambaski in the same interview. according to the vmro, the state refrains from responding to the problems with the roma minority because: “gypsies are the only ethnic group in the country which reproduces, but this does not prevent the politicians to concoct new privileges for them in order to receive their votes. we see an excellent example for the saying “the sick carries the healthy one”. the sick bulgarian nation is forced to carry on its back the gypsies who are multiplying like cockroaches.” (kostadinov, kostadin. in: desant (debark) newspaper, date of publication 26.2.2012) 4.3 “our money for their (gypsy) kids” the fear of turning bulgaria into a “gypsy” country and the outrage of the perceived preferential treating of the roma minority is widespread in the media – newspapers, forums and blogs: “i heard the following news on the radio: we are facing a demographic catastrophe, warned the professors from the centre for demographic policy. according to their forecasts, which are based on the offi cial census data, in 2050, there will be 3.5 million gypsies in bulgaria, 1.2 million turks and barely 800 thousand bulgarian people. personally for me that is scary.” (demographic collapse in bulgaria. in: framar forum, date of publication 12.1.2012) “whose children do they [the politicians – t.k.&e.d.] want to spend our money on? on their (gypsy) children! on the one hand, we are strength• tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova780 ening the “occupants”, on the other the traitors [...] (spending funds – for police or for children? in: sega (today) newspaper forum, date of publication 12.12.2011) “the gypsy woman with fi ve kids, receiving fi ve child allowances, on top, i don’t know what, social benefi ts, then for 2-3 of them she receives disability payments (because they are registered with chronic diseases) making 1500 leva per month. they live in the slums, the gypsy father drives a new mercedes. the bulgarian mother with two children receives 70 leva child allowance and roughly 340 leva salary, and her husband drives his father’s fiesta from 20 years ago. so! who’s better off. where does the welfare go?! i am not against helping those in desperate need, but being pikey has become a profession […]” (spending funds – for police or for children? in: sega (today) newspaper forum, date of publication 12.12.2011) “in the end, those who work do not reproduce in more than 1:1 ratio, often at a lower rate, while those who do not work, reproduce intensively. they acquire greater infl uence over political players. policies are prepared for them, programs are penned, fi nancing and funds are planned. the welfare spending increases. the country becomes a bigger distributor, burdening the good citizens and serving the scroungers. until the moment of crisis when everything crashes down. we arrived exactly at the turning point. but who cares?” (spending funds – for police or for children? in: sega (today) newspaper forum, date of publication 12.12.2011) these excerpts from internet forums demonstrate that worries about high fertility of roma population are linked to people’s increasing concerns of the economic diffi culties experienced by an average bulgarian family consisting of working parents with one or two children. over the last 20 years of transition ordinary people paid a very high price for economic and social transformations. many of them became more sensitive and demanding towards the post-communist governments which, by contrast to the previous communist governments, are expected to act in a most democratic way that guarantees social justice. as susan gal and gail kligman state: “[…] the issue of reproduction is one of the means by which the morality and desirability of political institutions is imagined […]” (gal/kligman 2001: 28). the national ideology namely exploits people’s demographic fear and distrust in demographic and social politics of the post-communist state that endows the “gypsy” minority with social benefi ts, and thus supposedly drains the meagre social welfare budget of the country. keeping in mind the social structure of the contemporary bulgarian society in which the middle class strata represents a tinny segment and almost 45 percent of the population live at risk of poverty and severe material deprivation (eu-silc 2012), nationalists gamble with the individuals’ perceptions of what is an un/fair social re-distribution. outbursts of nationalism are illustrated in the hate speech used: the roma minority is portrayed as “scroungers”, “leeching sect”, “cockroaches”, and “pikey”. the use of dichotomies5 is a common strategy to 5 lundgren and ljuslinder (2011: 165-183) describe how the dichotomization strategy is used for presentating population ageing in the media: old against young, economic active against supported, disaster against growth, etc. nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 781 underscore the inferior nature of the roma minority: our (bulgarian money) against their (roma kids), our (bulgarian) money against their (roma education), poorly paid workers (bulgarians) against people living on social benefi ts (roma mothers with many kids), honest citizens (bulgarians) against corrupted voters (roma), underprivileged (bulgarians) against privileged (roma), disappearance (of ethnic bulgarians) against proliferation (of roma). therefore, the nationalists constantly produce borders, which divide the nation into two antagonistic parts – “we”, the ethnic bulgarians and the threatening “others”, the roma. 5 the link between nationalism and pronatalism the nationalist vision of the future of a country goes hand in hand with pronatalism, understood as a state policy targeting an increased birth-rate (king 1998, 2001, 2002; lee et al. 1991; rivkin-fish 2003; 2010). usually, pronatalism fl ourishes during periods of fertility decline. in a context of increasing nationalism, pronatalism as a special state policy targets specifi c family types by taking into consideration their ethnic makeup. in the vmro’s demographic vision, the state should support fertility of bulgarians and restrict the roma birth-rate. according to public opinion, however, the current policies lead to the opposite effect. to bring about the desired results, the vmro offers a set of measures: differentiated access to family benefi ts and allowances, which are only granted to families with one or two children. the support for any further child, is only available to parents with secondary education. implicitly, this measure assumes that only educated (bulgarian) families with one or two children should be entitled to state support. thus, higher fertility as a particular feature of the reproductive models of the non-bulgarian ethnic groups would be tacitly discouraged. these restrictive measures are widely supported by bulgarians. the question, which was posed in an internet forum “should the birth-rate in bulgaria be limited to up to 3 children and to cancel child support for the next parenting (vmro’s proposal)?” was approved by 63.1 percent of 1088 voters. 30.3 percent disapprove, 4.8 percent could not decide and 1.7 percent had no opinion (should the birth-rate in bulgaria be limited up to 3 children. in: http://www.ndt1.com/polls, 6.4.2012). some experts also support the idea that child benefi ts for the fourth and any further parenting should be discontinued: “it is necessary for the government to immediately propose and for the national assembly to pass a law, which regulates the following: give 35 leva, as currently done (if they can’t do more) for the fi rst child. for the second child, to support birth-rate among bulgarians – give 50 leva and for the third – 70 leva, because it ensures positive natural growth, and for the forth – 35 leva again. for all following children – no child allowance. mothers who’ve given birth before reaching the age of 18, should not only be denied any child allowance, the underage mothers as well as their parents should also be taxed.” (gavrilov: taxes for mothers aged under 18. in: duma newspaper, date of publication 12.1.2012) • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova782 the differentiated welfare support for childbirth which (implicitly) aims to penalise higher fertility of the roma population questions the equality of the individual right to receive state support for every child in the family regardless of parity. recently, the national commission for antidiscrimination, the preeminent state body on discrimination providing legal advice and monitoring, logged a complaint by a mother, who considers the differential state support for childbirth as unequal treatment based on “personal status”: “the woman explained why all bulgarian citizens are discriminated by the state policy. according to her, the law aiming to curb the high birth-rate among the roma families by decreasing the allowance for the third and higher order birth, affects all ethnic groups.” (the birth bonuses are discriminatory. in: dir.bg, date of publication 12.4.2012) the commission reviewed the complaint and acknowledged the discriminatory implication in the offi cial policy of the state with regard to child benefi ts. as a result, it sent a letter to the ministry of labour and social policy in which the varying bonuses at birth are qualifi ed as an indirect discrimination based on “personal status”. thereupon, the ministry published an offi cial response stating that the current social policy stimulates families to have two children and that is why the bonus at birth for a second child is higher. the ministry rejects “the claims for a connection between the bonus at birth and the goal of limiting fertility in a specifi c ethnic group” as “completely ungrounded” (the birth bonuses are discriminatory. in: dir. bg, date of publication 12.4.2012) one of the pillars of the demographic policy, according to the vmro, is the state support for infertile families in bulgaria. the special interest in this group is fostered by the observation that infertility is more common among ethnic bulgarians and that supporting infertile couples to have children could partly solve the demographic problem of the country. childless couples are viewed as a potential source of population increase. moreover, the responsible parenting of these couples would guarantee proper care and upbringing of children. “according to different sources, close to 250 thousand couples suffer from some sort of infertility. infertility treatment methods used in the medical centres for assisted reproduction can help 60% of the couples, meaning that the bulgarian nation has a potential for an increase with approximately 150 thousand highly desired babies.” (vmro 2012) bulgarian society unanimously approves the state fi nancial support for infertile couples. nobody questions the redistribution of tax money to these families, although the committing of funds at times of economic hardships and low income rates is a legitimate concern. more importantly, by this support, the state legitimises its power to control the nation’s reproduction. the demographic argument6 is actively used by the initiators of this support – ngos defending the interests of 6 experts reject the thesis that reproduction by assisted technologies could recover low levels of fertility. for more details see e.g.: kotzeva/dimitrova 2009. nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 783 people with fertility problems as well as by medical specialists involved in infertility treatment. 5.1 “the most dangerous strike is that of the mothers – they simply refuse to give birth” in online forums, young people discuss the hardships of raising children and the defi cit of family-friendly policies by the state, labelling their position as “strike”. but who is the target of young mothers’ “strike”? women share the view that they have to go on strike, i.e. to refuse having more than one child, because the employer (the state – in their view) does not fulfi l its responsibilities. one of the widely discussed topics in the forums is that the bulgarian state owes money and services to the mothers – family support and income need to be increased, because they are insuffi cient to support childbearing; young people need to be provided e.g. with work. in this way, the reproduction changes from a personal or a family decision to a state decision. this etatist type of attitudes are widely exploited by the nationalist opinion leaders. in the nationalist vision, it is the state which carries full responsibility for the country’s “demographic crisis”. the refusal to have children expresses the breached contract between women, family and the state .this is why, in the popular belief, as well as in the nationalist “claims”, the “demographic crisis” symbolises the disintegrating statehood. in the nationalist discourse, the nation represents an extended family, and the family reproduces the nation. this places an exclusive responsibility on the family to preserve the nation. thus, nationalists criticise not only the state’s ignorance of the demographic issue but also families/women who escape their responsibility for the future reproduction of the nation.7 in the nationalist view, the erosion of the traditional family values, the decline of moral family norms, and the dilution of traditional gender roles in the modern society are emphasised as the main reasons for a reproductive mission of the family which is perceived faulty: “we conducted our research in three large university cities. the larger group of the respondents replied that they don’t want to get married. women argue that men have become more feminine, you can’t rely on them to support a family. men, on the other hand, fi nd women to money driven and so on. these responses do not depend on the fi nancial status of the respondents – this is the opinion of both wealthy and poor. the truth is that even at the beginning of the 1990s, we scrapped education from school. the family teaches moral values, while the school – social ones. a generation grew up without those values, now children are considered as a burden, not as a value. and we are wondering why bulgarians are degrading, why the nation is becoming dumber. that is why, because of the missing value system.” (kostadinov, kostadin: the third national catastrophe. date of publication 15.5.2012) 7 similarly, moral discourse on blaming women for rejecting motherhood and pursuing selfi sh priorities (professional career, etc.) has been enhanced by the catholic church and the nationalist governments in the postsocialist poland (mishtal 2012: 153-169). • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova784 in some internet blogs and forums, the demographic crisis is explained not so much by severe material restrictions experienced by the majority of bulgarians, but by the lack of moral pillars, translated into “moral degradation” and “spiritual squalor” of generations born after 1989. in the forum discussions, the “demographic crisis” is part of the larger degradation of the state together with corruption, mafi a connections of the state, crime, economic crisis, high prices of utilities, low salaries, and similar calamities (gypses bullying bulgarians. in: forum hooligans.bg, date of publication 6.3.2012). the demographic crisis is viewed as a result and at the same time, as another manifestation of the moral debasement of bulgarian society, in which the profane and the sinfulness are expressed in the rejection of traditional values like marriage, children and collective responsibility. 6 concluding remarks the aim of this paper was to study how bulgaria’s steep population decline during the post-communist transitional years has been interpreted in the nationalist ideology and nationalist public consciousness. an analytical grid developed on the basis of theories of nationalism, particularly the idea of its resurgence in post 1989 eastern europe (altermatt 1998; brubaker 2004), fi ltered through the concept of “reproduction as politics” (gal/kligman 2001), has been used to analyse main topics in the nationalist discourse on the population problem and declining birth-rates in contemporary bulgaria. in trying to shed light on the complicated relationship between nationalism and reproduction in the bulgarian post-communist context, we start from the idea that reproduction is a key dimension of the relationship between the state and the citizens in modern times. it becomes an object of a legitimised control exercised by the state by various policies and institutional mechanisms aiming to infl uence individuals’ reproductive decisions. nationalism as one of the most infl uential ideologies of the modern and postmodern societies constructs the essence of the reproduction policies: who can reproduce the nation, how many children are needed for the nation-state to guarantee its continuity, who is responsible for the reproduction, what is moral in terms of distribution of social welfare – these are questions which defi ne the parameters of the political actions undertaken in the realm of family and reproduction. the analysis of public discourse on the “population problem” and the “demographic crisis” manifests the main arguments of the ideology of (ethno)nationalism for the creation of the nation as “imagined community” (anderson 1991). nationalism seeks and offers “solutions” for the demographic crisis by tacitly differentiating the social policy based on ethnicity, by rejecting immigration of people with “non-bulgarian” origin, and by escalating pronatalist rhetoric and thus being nostalgic about lost traditional family values. identifying themselves as “national responsible citizens”, vmro’s activists plead for the revival of the prestige of the “normal” family, but at the same time avoid the discussion on how to implement family-friendly policies. nationalism and declining population in bulgaria after 1990 • 785 nationalist ideology is grounded on the people’s sentiments and emotional attachment to their homeland on one hand, but it is challenged by the ongoing processes of bulgaria’s integration into the european union and the globalised world, on the other. in this context, anti-roma campaign of the nationalist ideology (anti-tsiganism) of the nationalist ideology instead of 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the ‘dying nation’ and the postsocialist logics of declining motherhood in poland. in: anthropology & medicine 19,2: 153-170 [doi: 10.1080/13648470.2012.675048]. national health strategy for people belonging to ethnic minorities 2005-2012: [http:// www.ncedi.government.bg/zdravna%20strategia_prieta.htm, 15.7.2012]. parker, andrew; russo, mary; sommer, doris; yaeger, patricia (eds.) 1992: nationalisms and sexualities. new york/london: routledge. population census report 2011: sofi a: nsi [http://www.nsi.bg/epdocs/census2011fi nal.pdf, 15.7.2012]. • tatyana kotzeva, elitsa dimitrova788 puhle, hans-jürgen 2008: new nationalisms in eastern europe – a sixth wave? in: egbert, jahn (ed.): nationalism in late and post-communist europe. volume 1 – the failed nationalism of the multinational and partial national states. baden-baden : nomos: 153-171. rivkin-fish, michele 2003: anthropology, demography and the search for a critical analysis of fertility: insights from russia. in: american anthropologist, new series 105,2: 289-301 [doi: 10.1525/aa.2003.105.2.289]. rivkin-fish, michele 2010: pronatalism, gender politics and the renewal of family support in russia: towards a feminist anthropology of “maternity capital”. in: slavic review 69,3: 701-724 [doi http: //dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 01925139701800600]. romas build palaces using money set for their education 3.12.2011: in: monitor newspaper [www.monitor.bg, 15.7.2012]. should the birthrate in bulgaria be limited up to 3 children 2012: 6.4.2012 [http://www. ndt1.com/polls/index.php?qid=2011-02-02&aid=-15.7.2012]. spending funds – for police or for children? 2011: sega (today) newspaper forum, 12.12.2011 [http://www.segabg.com/replies.php?id=196699&v=3939167, 15.7.2012]. smith, anthony 2000: natzionalnata identichnost. sofi a: kralitsa mab [firtst published as: smith, anthony 1991: national identity. reno: university of nevada press]. the birth bonuses are discriminatory 12.4.2012 [www.dir.bg, 15.7.2012]. velev, grigor 2005: (nacionalizym) nationalism. sofi a: znanie press (in bulgarian). vincent, john 1996: who is afraid of an ageing population? nationalism, the free market, and the construction of old age as an issue. in: critical social policy 16,3: 3-26 [doi: 10.1177/026101839601604701]. vmro 2012: bulgaria 2050 – demographic strategy project [http://www.vmro.bg/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=321:-2050-&catid=17:2012-01-20-10-1734&itemid=49, 15.7.2012]. wilford, rick; miller, robert l. (eds.) 1998: women, ethnicity and nationalism: the politics of transition. new york/london: routledge. yuval-davis, nira 1997: gender and nation. london: sage publications. date of submission: 19.11.2012 date of acceptance: 19.08.2013 prof. dr. tatyana kotzeva (). institute for population and human studies, bulgarian academy of sciences, sofia; burgas free university, burgas. bulgaria. e-mail: tanyakotzeva@gmail.com url: http://www.bfu.bg/bg/tsentar-po-humanitarni-nauki/akademichen-sastav/ personalna-stranitsa-na-prepodavatel?teacher=337 assoc. prof. dr. elitsa dimitrova. institute for population and human studies, bulgarian academy of sciences. sofi a, bulgaria. e-mail: elitsa_kdimitrova@yahoo.com url: http://www.iphs.eu/n/index.php/departament-demografi ya/vazproizvodstveniprotzesi-i-strukturi-na-naselenieto published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved the register-based census in germany: historical context and relevance for population research the register-based census in germany: historical context and relevance for population research rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld abstract: in 2011, germany carried out its fi rst census after a 20-year break. in light of the united nations’ recommendations that countries initiate a population census at least every 10 years, the census was long overdue. moreover, demographers had for some time been demanding a new enumeration that would enable them to place the calculation of demographic indicators on a reliable basis. with the 2011 census, germany not only met the demand for a current population census, but also broke new ground by using a register-based approach. unlike the scandinavian countries, which have a long tradition of performing register-based data analyses, the linking of administrative data in germany is restricted by the country’s legal framework. thus, the 2011 census was an ambitious project. after contextualising the 2011 census historically, we discuss in this contribution the census’ relevance for generating central demographic data. specifi cally, we compare the updated population estimates of the 1987 census to the results of the 2011 census in order to identify possible systematic sources of error that distort demographic indicators and analyses. keywords: demographic indicators · register data · census 1 introduction the relevance of the census for demographic research is undisputed. it provides estimations of the population by age, sex, and region. this information is included in the calculation of demographic indicators, such as mortality, migration, nuptiality, and fertility rates. the census data also directly infl uence the results of survey data. the census provides the sampling frame for the microcensus, on which in turn the weights used in the social science surveys are based. however, the census’ signifi cance goes far beyond its relevance for demography and the social sciences. first, it provides the spatial distribution of the population, which is a prerequisite comparative population studies vol. 41, 2 (2016): 175-204 (date of release: 31.08.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-08en8 • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld176 for the planning of municipal infrastructure projects. second, the census results serve as a basis for the fi nancial equalisation scheme between the german federal states, which regulates the distribution of public funds among the federal states and municipalities. furthermore, the census results are relevant for the confi guration of the constituencies (wahlkreise) for national and federal elections, and they can infl uence the distribution of seats among the federal states in the german federal parliament (bundestag). thus, the german census is, like censuses in other countries, more than a data survey for the purposes of demographic and social research; it is, above all, a political issue. or, with the words of prewitt (2003: 1), the “... census is a drama at the very center of our political life.” in recent decades, the political dimension associated with the census appears to have been more pronounced in germany than in any other country. in west germany, rancorous debates about privacy rights led to a boycott of the census in 1983, and to the postponement of the census to 1987. a decade later, the government of reunifi ed germany insisted on a non-binding character of the european community’s guidelines for implementing censuses (grohmann 2011), and became the only european union member state that did not conduct a census at the turn of the last century. in 2008, the eu ratifi ed a new and binding implementing regulation on the 2010/2011 census; this time with the support of germany. the german government opted to conduct the 2011 census using a register-based approach, rather than relying on the “traditional” approach to census-taking that had been used up to that point. in light of germany’s experiences with the 1987 census, this move seemed reasonable. the transition to using a register-based approach is, however, a consequential step, especially because germany – unlike the scandinavian countries, which have long used register data for census purposes – does not have a central population register, and there are no serious plans to establish one. furthermore, germany still does not make use of a uniform identifi cation number, such as a social security number, of the sort that the scandinavian countries employ to link their registers.1 additionally, under german law – as expressed, for example, in §21 of the german federal statistics act (bundesstatistikgesetz) – there are strict conditions for the linking of the federal statistics registers (see bstatg (1987) and zensg (2011)). in this contribution, we discuss the 2011 register-based census from a demographic research point of view. after providing a historical classifi cation of the 2011 census (section 1), we set out in section 2 to assess the accuracy of the population fi gures in the 2011 census. in section 3 we examine the systematic sources of error in the updated population estimates, and discuss the consequences of the census results for demographic indicators. in section 4, we take a critical look at the benefi ts of the 2011 census for population research, and at the potential uses of the data that have yet to be fully explored. 1 while a uniform tax identifi cation number was introduced in 2008, this number has so far been of no relevance for the systematic linking of register data. there is, however, an indirect connection between this number and the census, because in the course of its introduction, the addresses in the registration offi ces (einwohnermeldeämter) were corrected and completed. the register-based census in germany • 177 2 the census in germany: a historical classifi cation 2.1 the development of the modern census in germany up to 1939 together with church records, data from censuses have always been the main sources used in demographic analyses. it is important to note, however, that the modern census was not developed out of a genuine interest in understanding demographic or social processes. the history of statistical recordings of the population, as well as of the survey of specifi c structural characteristics, is directly linked to the emergence of public administrative bodies, and can thus hardly be separated from the interests of political actors. initially, the surveys focused on the population size, the number of taxpayers, and the number of men fi t for military service. it was not until later that data on the structure of households and on certain characteristics of household members – such as profession, educational level, marital status, or citizenship – were collected (gehrmann 2009; grohmann 2000, 2011; rothenbacher 1997). censuses have been conducted on the territory of present-day germany since the middle ages. however, the fi rst population counts took solely place in individual cities. starting in the early 19th century, systematic censuses for entire regions were conducted, albeit with differing objectives and regularities. generally, the focus of these censuses was on counting the number of inhabitants at a given point in time based on their offi cial place of residence (de jure); and, later, the focus shifted to the number of inhabitants who were actually present (de facto) (gehrmann 2009). for many centuries, demographic events such as births, marriages, and deaths were captured mainly by the parishes of the catholic church. over the course of the protestant reformation, the newly protestant parishes introduced “registers of souls,” (seelenregister or martinilisten), while the catholic parishes started compiling “status animarum” registers. the data in these registers, which were largely collected and maintained by members of the clergy, can still be used to partially reconstruct information on historic households and families. some original documents of these enumerations have been preserved until today, albeit in fragmented forms (see, e.g., baten/szołtysek 2014). most of the early censuses in germany were conducted at irregular intervals by cities. but following the congress of vienna and the establishment of the german customs union (deutscher zollverein), systematic, uniform, and regular population counts were introduced (grohmann 2000; zahn 1900).2 the enumerations were 2 the establishment of the bundesmatrikel in 1818 provided the stimuli for the uniform calculation of the militia costs (landsturm). in 1834, prussia, bavaria, hesse-darmstadt, hesse-kassel, and wurttemberg founded the german customs union (deutscher zollverein), and conducted enumerations every three years (gehrmann 2009). the procedure was completed within four weeks when it was fi rst introduced, and within three days from 1843 onward. it was not until 1858 that the enumerations were conducted on a single reference day. records were collected of the custom accounting population (zollabrechnungsbevölkerung), and these records were often combined with the survey results in the police registers or the tax lists. the counts were also partly coupled with counts of buildings and livestock, as well as with the results of a survey of individuals of military service age. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld178 considered necessary because the individual states that belonged to the customs union were expected to contribute to the costs of the coalition’s military operations in proportion to their population size. the member states of the customs union thus had to conduct regular enumerations to determine their population numbers. the surveys also enabled government bureaucrats to generate lists of households that were used for imposing household charges, poor rates, and a wide range of taxes, including poll, property, trade, income, hearth, war and church taxes. citizen or inhabitant lists were used to ensure that all inhabitants contributed to the support of community services, such as orphan or poor relief. the establishment of the german statistical association (verein für deutsche statistik) in 1846 and of the central statistical offi ce (statistisches zentralbureau) in frankfurt in 1848 represented fi rst steps in the development of a germany-wide system of offi cial statistics with uniform standards. for example, the 1864 census was the fi rst to introduce the household as a survey unit (gehrmann 2009). in addition, the last census of the german customs union in 1867 is considered a model for all of the censuses that were subsequently conducted in germany and other european countries. the 1867 census used household lists that included information on both the de facto population and the inhabitants who were not present on the record date.3 following the separation of church and state responsibilities and the founding of the german empire in 1871, the offi cial censuses conducted in germany had a uniform, systematic structure, and were obliged to follow uniform quality standards (michel 1985). meanwhile, the documentation of demographic events (e.g., births, deaths, and marriages) was no longer left to the churches, but was instead taken over by state institutions, which passed this information on to the statistical authorities. the offi ce of offi cial statistics was developed as an independent agency of the administration, and was expected to provide the data needed to perform a wide range of administrative tasks. after 1871, enumerations took place in regular intervals of four or fi ve years in all regions of germany. starting in 1900, the length of the intervals between censuses was extended to 10 years (for an overview of the census in germany, see table a1 in the appendix). the first world war interrupted all enumerations in germany. during the war years, only restricted censuses were conducted, mainly in order to organise the food supply for the population. the 1939 census (which was originally planned for 1938), represents a notorious chapter in the history of censuses (see wietog 2001 for details). most historians now agree that the 1939 census was not the main source used for the identifi cation and deportation of jews in germany, as the survey data were processed relatively late in the deportation process; and that other sourc3 the oldest census documents that are entirely preserved today are those of the grand duchy of mecklenburg-schwerin (großherzogliches statistisches amt 1898; manke 2005; scholz 2013). for the grand duchy of mecklenburg-schwerin, the original documents include handwritten questionnaires and household lists by municipality that were collected in the censuses of 1819, 1867, 1890 (partly), and 1900. these documents provide information on each head of household, such as name, age, sex, marital status, confession, and profession. the register-based census in germany • 179 es were available for identifying individuals of jewish origin and belief. however, ehmer (2013: 74) has suggested that the statistical offi ce (statistische reichsamt) did rely on publications in which the number of remaining jews in germany was identifi ed based on data from the 1939 census, and that refer to the “effectiveness of anti-semitic persecution.” 2.2 censuses in divided germany in the immediate aftermath of world war ii, the four occupying powers conducted a census of germany (see table a1 in the appendix). this 1946 census was, however, the last uniform census carried out in germany until 2011. from 1949 onward, the offi cial statistics systems in the two parts of germany went their separate ways and conducted separate censuses. whereas west germany introduced an administration and statistics system at the federal state (bundesland) level, the gdr continued to maintain a centralised statistics system (fischer 1994; oettel 2006; statistisches bundesamt 1999). in the gdr, the census data were collected on a decentralised basis, but were processed centrally by the central administration for statistics (later the statistisches amt der ddr). in the mid-1970s, the gdr established a central population data repository based on the model used in the scandinavian countries. this population register included all inhabitants, and was linked to the birth, death, and migration statistics. the 1981 census was the last census conducted in the gdr that used traditional methodologies. the population fi gure on the census reference day deviated only slightly from the corresponding fi gure drawn from updated population registers (20,000 individuals out of 16.7 million inhabitants). the last register counting of the central resident database (einwohnerdatenspeicher) was carried out on october 3, 1990. the generated population fi gures were incorporated into the now joint federal population statistics for eastern germany.4 unlike the gdr, offi cial statistics in the federal republic of germany are organised in a decentralised manner. the statistical offi ces of the federal states collect the data and deliver them to the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt) that combines the information into a unifi ed statistics. until today, germany does not have a central population register.5 the population fi gures for germany as a whole are based on censuses and updated population estimates. however, the controversies in the run-up to the 1987 census marked a sharp turning point in approaches to census-taking in germany. the debate over the census had constitutional consequences, not just because of the approval of the so-called “census act” (grohmann 2000). germany did not take part in the eu-wide 2001 census, largely as 4 linking the data of the gdr’s resident database (population register) and the frg’s updated population estimates was accomplished largely without diffi culties, since the two datasets were relatively comparable. for example, the criteria for including current residents and foreign military personnel were the same in both parts of germany. 5 although a discussion on establishing a central population register was initiated by wolfgang schäuble (cdu) in 2008 (der spiegel 2008), the topic has not been seriously raised since then. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld180 a consequence of the boycott of the previous census and the fl ood of census-related lawsuits that were fi led starting in 1983 (eppmann 2004). nevertheless, debates over whether a register-based census should be conducted began in the wake of the 1987 census (bierau 2001; eppmann 2004; eppmann/schäfer 2006). 2.3 2011 census in 2011, or 20 years after the last enumeration, germany fi nally conducted a nationwide census. for the fi rst time, the country opted for a register-based approach. in order to generate the population fi gures, data from the decentralised municipal population registers were used. overcoverages (outdated fi les) and undercoverages (missing fi les) in the population registers were the most central problems that arose in using this approach. these registers contained many sources of errors, including the multiple registrations of individuals with multiple residences, and errors related to migration. since 2000, the local population registration offi ces have been automatically comparing all of the records on movements within germany. furthermore, individuals are legally required to notify the responsible registration offi ces upon moving from one residence in germany to another. however, unlike internal migration, migration abroad is not subject to systematic offi cial controls (bucher 2014: 150).6 in addition, the quality of the register data can vary across individual registration offi ces. for example, it has been shown that the differences between the updated population estimates based on data from the local population registers of rhineland-palatinate differ little from the new census data. this consistency is largely attributable to the introduction of an internal registration procedure for internal migration in rhineland-palatinate as early as in the 1970s (bucher 2014: 150). moreover, rhineland-palatinate keeps and maintains a population register at the state level.7 attempts were made to correct the population fi gures that were transmitted from the local registration offi ces to the statistical offi ces with the help of a complex, multi-stage correction procedure (berg 2011; diehl 2012; michel 2004).8 furthermore, in order to check the quality of the population registers, an additional household sample was drawn. however, the household sample was used to verify the quality of the register data only for municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. the reasoning behind this decision was that the results of the census test showed that there were more irregularities in the population registers of big 6 the procedure was gradually modifi ed in 2000. since around 2004, the procedure for automatically matching the registrations and deregistrations has been applied throughout the country. 7 the other federal states that maintain central population registers are the city states of berlin, hamburg, and bremen; as well as the federal state of thuringia. 8 however, because of legal restrictions (the so-called rückspielverbot), the corrections made by the federal statistical offi ce were not transferred back to the population registers of the municipalities. this failure to transfer the corrections may have resulted in a gap between the census population fi gures and the fi gures of the population registers on the day of the census (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). the register-based census in germany • 181 municipalities than in those of smaller ones (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 27). for smaller municipalities, the data were corrected only if certain irregularities were detected. it is generally assumed that, due to the errors in the updated population estimates, the old-age mortality fi gures and the mortality and fertility rates reported for the foreign population were especially distorted (kibele et al. 2008). accordingly, the new population fi gures of the 2011 register-based census were eagerly awaited. this anticipation was, however, clouded by the long period of time that passed between the collection and the publication of the data. while the reference date was may 9, 2011, the fi rst (partly) preliminary and highly aggregated results were not available until may 2013. moreover, the initial data by age and sex were not published until january 2014, and the fi nal data of the updated population estimates and the 2011 census were not published until april 2015. thus, four years passed between the recording and the publication of the fi nal results. although it was well known that the data that were used included a net deviation in the population fi gures of 1.5 million on the reference day, during these four years the calculations still had to be based on the updated data of the 1987 census, because the new data were subject to legal and content-related reservations (bucher 2014: 149). similarly, the federal statistical offi ce had to wait a very long time for the release of the fi nal census data on age, sex, and citizenship needed to calculate the 13th coordinated population projection and the life tables 2010/12. international demographic datasets, such as the human fertility database (hfd) and the human mortality database (hmd), also used until recently the “old” updated estimation results.9 3 how accurate are the population fi gures of the 2011 census? according to the current enumeration, the offi cially confi rmed total population of the federal republic of germany on the reference date of may 9, 2011, was 80,219,695 inhabitants (statistisches bundesamt 2014c). although this fi gure is seemingly precise, it is important to note that, like similar fi gures arrived at in the censuses of other countries (hillygus et al. 2000: 17), it is the result of a complex estimation process.10 whereas from a research point of view it would seem preferable to conduct sensitivity analyses in order to check the robustness of the estimation, given 9 in the hfd (http://www.humanfertility.org/) and the hmd (http://www.mortality.org/), the demographic data of different countries are prepared in a comparable manner and are made available to the scientifi c community and the interested public for download. because of the high demands on the comparability of data – not only between countries, but also over time – researchers have used a back calculation to balance the distortions in the databases that arise from the errors in the updated estimates in germany. due to the relatively late publication of the new census results, the back calculation could not be applied until recently. 10 a census fi gure is an estimation of the population at a given point in time. its accuracy depends in part on the time lag between the occurrence of demographic events (birth, death, migration) and their registration. in some cases, there is a time lag of up to six months between the occurrence and the complete registration of an event (hannemann/scholz 2009). • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld182 the census’ political dimension it is clear that an exact, offi cially confi rmed, and, preferably, incontestable population fi gure is needed. in spite of (or presumably because of) the complex and logistically challenging procedures used to generate these results, and their apparent accuracy, the census results are being questioned, particularly by those municipalities that feel disadvantaged by the outcomes. the current census is vulnerable to criticism in particular because of its systematically different treatment of small and large municipalities (christensen et al. 2015; rendtel 2015; statistisches bundesamt 2015). demographic researchers are faced with the question of to what extent the 2011 census presents a precise picture of the actual population fi gures. although the procedures used to generate the data have been described in various publications of the federal statistical offi ce (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2004; statistisches bundesamt 2015), and were discussed in advance with representatives of the scientifi c community in a number of committees, such as the census commission and its subgroups, the options researchers have to verify the census data are extremely limited. due to the complexity of the procedures applied and to the fact that, in the end, scientists can only analyse the fi nal fi gures, not the procedures used to generate these fi gures, validating the census is akin to engaging in detective work (rendtel 2015). in the following, we attempt to “elicit” the population fi gures of the 2011 census. due to the lack of reliable external data, a comprehensive validation of the data is not possible (see, however, section 4.2 for the external validation of the 2011 census estimates and the updated estimates, exemplifi ed using the elderly population). moreover, it is not possible to conduct sensitivity analyses, since this would require us to have access to the population register and the household survey data that were used for generating the population fi gures. the federal statistical offi ce has granted researchers access to the household survey for scientifi c analyses, and is also planning to make the census data available as individual-level datasets. however, because all the auxiliary characteristics were deleted at the earliest possible point in time on the grounds of data protection, reconstructing the calculation of the population fi gures is impossible, even if researchers have the individual-level data of the census at their disposal. thus, our only option is to use the results of the updated population estimates based on the 1987 census to evaluate the 2011 census results. given our lack of better alternatives, we will follow the approach of bucher (2014), rendtel (2015), christensen et al. (2015) and of kaus/mundil-schwarz (2015), who compared the population fi gures of the 2011 census with the updated estimates of the 1987 census. we do not have a valid external measure for estimating the quality of either dataset. nonetheless, the systematic deviations allow us to draw conclusions regarding the factors that distort the results. the 2011 census fi gures for may 9, 2011, as well as the data of the updated estimates (by the end of the respective calendar year) serve as databases for this investigation (statistisches bundesamt 2013b, 2014a/b). in the framework of the 2011 census, an additional survey that included 10 percent of the households in germany has been drawn in order to gather additional information not included in the registers. this sample is also used to identify errors the register-based census in germany • 183 in the population registers for larger municipalities. past evaluations have generally shown that the census results for smaller municipalities, for which there have been fewer corrections, deviate less from the updated estimates than those of bigger municipalities, which show higher deviations on average (bucher 2014; christensen et al. 2015). in figure 1 we replicate this result in the form of a scatterplot. every dot in the fi gure corresponds to one municipality, a total of around 11,000 municipalities are represented in the fi gure. the ordinate depicts the difference between the 2011 census data and the “old” updated results. the abscissa covers the population fi gure of the individual municipality. the fi gure shows that the relative variation is signifi cantly higher for smaller than for larger municipalities. it also shows that the variation decreases rapidly at a population fi gure of 10,000 inhabitants. fig. 1: relative difference (in %) between the updated estimates of the 1987 census and the 2011 census results, by size of municipalities on may 9, 2011 source: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld184 figure 2 systematically compares the degree of deviation between the 2011 census and the updated estimates for small and large municipalities. the abscissa shows the relative difference between the census and the updated estimates. on the ordinate, the number of municipalities is presented. the fi gure shows considerably less deviation in large than in small municipalities. on average, the relative difference between the updated estimates and the census data is 2.27 percent for large municipalities, compared to 0.48 percent for small municipalities.11 this result is of political relevance because the system of fi scal equalisation between the federal states depends on the numbers of inhabitants, and the distribution of small and large municipalities differs across the federal states. for example, in rhineland palatinate, the number of small municipalities is relatively large; whereas in north fig. 2: number of municipalities (ordinate) by relative difference in % between 2011 census and updated estimates of 1987 census (abscissa), by small municipalities (fewer than 10,000 inhabitants) and big municipalities (10,000 or more inhabitants) 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities all municipalities note: municipalities were designated as big or small according to their number of inhabitants in the updated estimates. source: statistisches bundesamt 2013b 11 the mean values were calculated by weighing the population fi gures of the individual municipality based on the 2011 census results. the register-based census in germany • 185 rhine westphalia, the number of municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants is relatively small (see fig. a1 in the appendix for a representation of the differences across the federal states). because the distribution of large and small communities differs across the federal states, the population fi gures for the federal states in which a relatively large share of the municipalities are small may have required fewer corrections (see christensen et al. 2015; rendtel 2015 for further details). the signifi cantly lower degree of variation among municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants suggests that the method had a systematic infl uence on the population fi gures. at this point, no fi nal statement can be made regarding the question of whether the different degrees of deviation between the updated estimates and the census results depending on municipality size are solely attributable to the method applied, or whether they result from the varying quality of the updated estimates which might be more accurate in the smaller municipalities.12 at the same time, however, it can be assumed that the total population in germany was somewhat overestimated by the applied method, since the population fi gures of smaller municipalities have not been adjusted downward.13 4 quality of the updated population estimates 4.1 differences between the census results and the updated estimates by age, sex, and nationality although the 2011 census only provides an estimated value of the population fi gures for the year 2011, which might include a slight overestimation of the population fi gures of small municipalities, this value is still the only criterion we can use to evaluate the quality of the updated estimates. in the past, it was not possible to estimate the old-age mortality fi gures on the basis of the updated population estimates, because the updated population fi gures were known to be signifi cantly distorted in old age (kibele et al. 2008). one of the main reasons for the overestimation of the population fi gures are relocations abroad, which are often not registered, and are therefore not included in either the migration statistics or the updated population estimates. 12 the age structure and the proportion of foreigners relative to the total population are central factors that infl uence the quality of the population registers in the municipalities. since the share of the foreign population is, on average, lower in small municipalities than in large ones, the registers in small municipalities are less affected by the undocumented relocations of foreigners. furthermore, members of the highly mobile age group 20-39 are less heavily represented in small municipalities than in large municipalities (see fig. a3 in the appendix). this factor might also infl uence the quality of the registers in small communities. 13 however, non-registered persons were not systematically searched for, which might result in an underestimation. yet to our knowledge, there are no indicators that refl ect the extent of a possible underestimation due to individuals not being registered. a further reason why the population fi gures might be underestimated in the census is that some relocations and births might not be registered (see also footnote 10). • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld186 against this background, figures 3a and 3b present the differences between the census and the updated estimates by year of birth and by sex – for foreigners and for germans. the abscissa shows the deviations between the updated estimates and census data for men, with the ordinate showing the deviations for women. each dot in the fi gure represents one birth cohort. the closer the values are to the origin of the coordinate system, the better the updated estimates and the census results match. positive values indicate that the population fi gures were corrected downward by the 2011 census. negative values, accordingly, indicate an upward correction. the values on the diagonal indicate that the distortions were the same for women and men (see also fig. a2 in the appendix for a two-dimensional image). looking fi rst at the pattern for germans (fig. 3a), it is noteworthy that for the younger cohorts the values were corrected upward. for example, the 2009 cohort was corrected slightly upward (by 0.5 percent) by the census data. since the 2009 cohort was two years old at the time of the census, one would expect that the errors in the updated estimates would be rather small. presumably, the negative deviation for the younger cohorts is attributable to the fact that the characteristic “citizenship” created ambiguities for individuals with dual citizenship. furthermore, figure 3a indicates that the deviation is more pronounced among men, and does not show a symmetric pattern in the coordinate system. there are various reasons for the differences between the sexes. first, the non-proportional change in the deviation of the census results suggests that there were sex-specifi c differences in migration behaviour. second, women and men might have differed in the extent to which they followed the guidelines for registering and deregistering. finally, it cannot be ruled out that when the register was being adjusted, different corrections were made according to sex. figure 3b presents the results for the foreign population. it is important to keep in mind that an axis with a different range was used for the foreign population than for the german population (fig. 3a), because the deviation between the census results and the updated estimates was considerably more signifi cant for foreigners than for germans. for foreigners, the census data and the estimates differ considerably, especially at older ages. by contrast, we do not fi nd such a pronounced imbalance among the german population. a higher degree of deviation is found for men than for women among both the german and the foreign population. for example, for foreign men of the 1950 cohort, there is a difference of 12 percent between the updated estimates and the 2011 census results. for foreign men of the 1940 birth cohort, the difference is 17 percent, and for foreign men of the 1930 cohort, the difference is nearly 50 percent. for very old foreign men, who were born in 1921 or earlier, the difference between the updated estimates and the 2011 census results is more than 600 percent; a value that is not included in the fi gure. in conclusion, our fi ndings suggest that the new census results mainly corrected the population fi gures for the elderly foreign population. furthermore, the values for men changed more substantially than the values for women. thus, the relevance of the census results differs considerably from the point of view of a fertility researcher compared to the perspective of a mortality researcher. when calculating fertility indicators, only the population fi gures of women aged 15 to 49 are used. as the register-based census in germany • 187 the discrepancies between the census results and the updated estimates are smallest for this group, the infl uence of the new census data on the fertility indicators is likely to be small. the fertility fi gures by citizenship, which were calculated based on the updated estimates, are considerably more distorted (see pötzsch 2016; zur nieden/sommer 2016). in mortality research, the new census results provide a signifi cant correction of the old-age mortality rate. moreover, the proportions of people in long-term care are likely to change considerably based on the census data (see table a2 in the appendix). since the federal statistical offi ce is not planning any back calculations for correcting the population fi gures by age, we have to accept leaps in the time series of the demographic indicators, which differ according to sex and, especially, according to citizenship. fig. 3a: representation of the relative deviation of the 2011 census from the updated estimates based on the 1987 census for men and women, by cohorts for germans source: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld188 4.2 external validation of the 2011 census and the updated estimates exemplifi ed using the old-age population in general, information about the population in germany is provided only on the basis of the census and the updated estimates. there are, however, indirect procedures that use alternative data sources to generate population fi gures. these fi gures can lend plausibility to the quality of both the census and the updated estimates. among these sources are the estimates of deaths in older age groups. since the number of deaths by age can be derived from the death statistics in a relatively reliable manner, the number of individuals by birth cohort and by sex who were alive in previous years can be indirectly derived from their ages at death. this is an indirect method based on the assumption that migrations abroad are very rare fig. 3b: representation of the relative deviation of the 2011 census from the updated estimates based on the 1987 census for men and women, by cohorts for foreigners source: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b. the register-based census in germany • 189 among the aged population. however, because this method can only be applied to those cohorts whose members are all deceased, it has to be restricted to very old ages. despite these limitations, sensitivity analyses for different countries have demonstrated that this method provides qualitatively better population fi gures than updated estimates (jdanov et al. 2005). figure 4 illustrates the difference between the updated estimates and the number of individuals aged 90 or older calculated based on the death statistics. the census values are marked with a cross. as we can see in the fi gure, the value for the census and the value for the population based on the death statistics are almost identical. this provides evidence that the quality of the census results for very old age groups is good. conversely, this fi nding confi rms the imbalance of the “old” updated estimates. at age 90, the deviation between the updated estimates and the “actual” values in 2008 is more than 30 percent. figure 4 also presents the differences between the updated estimates and the population estimates based on the death statistics for previous years. at the reference date of each population census there are only minor discrepancies which tend to increase with the time that has passed since the preceding census. among men, for example, the differences rise from 0.6 percent in the 1987 census to roughly 25 percent in 2011. however, there is also a very uneven development over time, with the differences decreasing instantly in 2008. this erratic development can probably be explained by the adjustments of the registers. first, the residents’ registers were adjusted between 2007 and 2010 in connection with the introduction of the tax identifi cation number (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). second, in the course of the census tests between 2001 and 2004, adjustments to the registers were conducted which are probably linked to the adjustment of the central register of foreigners from 2001 to 2003. presumably, most of the discovered misrepresentations within the registers were cases of individuals no longer living in germany. these individuals were deleted from the registers by marking them as “relocation unknown” (for germans) and “relocation abroad” (for foreigners). in order to understand why these adjustments infl uenced the updated estimates of the census, it is essential to be aware that the national migration statistics in germany are based on the data from the population registers of the local municipalities. if the municipalities record an increase in emigration, this increase will eventually show up in the updated estimates of the census.14 problems with data from these population registers can arise for a number of reasons. first, the registers were 14 in the description of the migration statistics, the following passage appears: “it should be taken into account for 2008 and 2009 that a considerable amount of correction work was carried out in the population registers in these two years because of the nationwide introduction of the personal tax identifi cation number in 2008, and that this led to many people being removed from the registers by the authorities. since it is impossible to statistically quantify the extent of these corrections from the reports fi led by the registration authorities, the actual extent of emigration in 2008 and 2009, as well as the developments in comparison to the previous years, remains unclear” (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge 2015: 13) (for english version, see https:// www.bamf.de/shareddocs/anlagen/en/downloads/infothek/forschung/studien/migrationsbericht-2013-zentrale-ergebnisse.pdf?__blob=publicationfile). • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld190 corrected at a certain point in time after the year 2001, even though the fl aws in the register data were largely caused by non-recorded migrations that occurred in the 1990s. second, it is regrettable that the corrections were not marked as such, as it is impossible to reconstruct for the years 2008/2009 whether net immigration in germany was indeed negative, or whether this result was “produced” by the corrections only. because the migration statistics are also included in the updated estimates, the correction indirectly changes the population fi gures of the updated estimates, as well – and thus changes the basis for calculating demographic indicators. 5 conclusion as in other countries, the census in germany fulfi lls various functions. for public administrative agencies, the census and the updated population estimates are the basis for planning a wide range of development projects and the provision of services, including those related to local infrastructure, housing and transport infig. 4: relative difference at age 90 or older (in %) between the updated population estimates and the population calculated from the death rate in relation to the population update 0 10 20 30 40 50 19 87 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 year in percent women men x x census 2011 (men) census 2011 (women) source: own calculations, based on human mortality database (http://www.mortality.org/) the register-based census in germany • 191 frastructure, traffi c fl ows, medical and care infrastructure, schools, the promotion of education and culture, social benefi ts, and energy supply (see zensg 2011 § 1).15 census population fi gures are also central to demographic research, as mortality and fertility fi gures are calculated based on these fi gures. furthermore, the census is of major importance for social science surveys. the number of inhabitants by municipality, birth year, and sex are of immediate relevance for the drawing of samples from the registration offi ces. the census also provides the sample plan on which the structure of the enumeration districts for the microcensus are based. the results of the microcensus are, in turn, used to generate the “post-stratifi cation weights” for the social science surveys. is the census signifi cant for demographic and social science research for reasons that go beyond those described above? because the census data include a large number of cases, the results could be used to conduct regionalised scientifi c analyses. however, given that up to today (e.g., fi ve years after the census) it is not yet clear whether – and, if so, in what ways – regionalised individual census data will be provided, the census data might become less and less attractive for scientifi c research over time. this observation also applies to the data of the additional household survey, which have also only recently been made available for scientifi c microanalyses. more recent microcensus results are now available that have a similar – or in some cases a greater – potential for addressing family demographic issues relative to the household survey of the census. the (fi nal) population fi gures by age and sex, which are particularly relevant for generating demographic indicators, were published with a four-year delay. by comparison, in sweden, where the population registers have been systematically developed, the fi nal population data by age and sex are published within one year. one argument that was made for conducting a register-based census was that it would be less expensive and more effective than using traditional census-taking methodologies, because the necessary data were already available in the registers (bierau 2001: 335; eppmann 2004). however, the complex procedures that were needed to link the different registers call this assertion into question. the lack of transparency and verifi ability of the census results are certainly attributable in large part to the specifi c legal framework in germany. however, the question arises as to whether the ability to link the registers has been overestimated. even in norway, where the household register has been built up systematically over a long period of time, the 2011 census was the fi rst one for which household register data have been used (zhang/hendriks 2012). it is indeed surprising that germany, which has no experience with household registers, chose in its fi rst attempt at conducting a register-based census to generate the household information from the register data using a highly complex procedure (vorndran 2004). in the end, the opportunities offered by the register-based 2011 census have not been used to build up and 15 federal act on the register-based 2011 census (zensusgesetz 2011, zensg 2011) as published on july 8, 2009. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld192 maintain over the long term a household register, a population register (as in switzerland), or an administrative register. in addition to its relevance for social policy, demography, and social science research, the census results are also signifi cant from a political point of view, because the population fi gures calculated from these results and the subsequent updated estimates serve as the basis for the fi nancial equalisation scheme between municipalities and federal states, as well as for the confi guration of the constituencies for national and federal elections. as an undesirable side effect of the census’ “dual nature,” criticism of the census – even if it is based on scientifi c grounds alone – is a sensitive issue. the census is always vulnerable to being instrumentalised for “political purposes” by those who feel they are disadvantaged by its results. because the validity of population fi gures is a political issue, it can be diffi cult to ensure that the debate about how the population fi gures are generated remains factual and scientifi c. the vehement complaints made by some politicians about the census corrections of the population fi gures (see, e.g., rennefanz/zylka 2013 for berlin) are still surprising, given that in the past the serious shortcomings of the updated estimates were tacitly accepted. while politicians have been challenging the population fi gures of the 2011 census (statistisches bundesamt 2016), they have been less eager to engage in a discussion about how the population registers and the updated population estimates can be improved. the problems that distorted the population fi gures in the updated estimates have yet to be resolved. we therefore expect that systematic errors will occur again in the future developing in line with the time lag since the last census. acknowledgements we thank lena klein for the translation of this article into english. we wish to thank harald utne (senior adviser population statistics, statistics norway) for his valuable advice concerning the household-generating procedure in the norwegian census, as well as gunnar andersson (stockholm university, demography unit) for providing information on the swedish registers. many thanks to bernhard schimplneimanns for providing information on the german microcensus. we would like to thank rainer walke (max planck institute for demographic research) very sincerely for his support in creating figures 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data for dwelling and household. united nations economic commission for europe. conference of european statisticians. oslo, norwegen, 24-26. september 2012. zur nieden, felix; sommer, bettina 2016: life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census: was the healthy migrant effect merely an artefact? in: comparative population studies 41,2: 145-174 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-05en]. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld196 date of submission: 26.10.2015 date of acceptance: 22.03.2016 dr. rembrandt scholz. max-planck-institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. e-mail: scholz@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/rembrandt_d_ scholz_663.htm prof. dr. michaela kreyenfeld (). hertie school of governance. berlin, germany. e-mail: kreyenfeld@hertie-school.org url: https://www.hertie-school.org/kreyenfeld/ the register-based census in germany • 197 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: po p ul at io n ce n su se s in g er m an y si n ce 1 87 1 b y nu m b er o f i nh ab it an ts (i n th o u sa nd s) , t er ri to ri es a nd s o ur ce s d eu ts ch es r ei ch in h ab it an ts s o u rc e (in 1 ,0 00 ) d ec em b er 1 , 1 87 1 41 0 58 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 87 5) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e vo m 1 . d ez em b er 1 87 1. v ie rt el ja h re sh ef te z u r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, r ei h e 1, b an d 1 4, h ef t 3 , a b t. 3 , s . v i.3 -4 9. d ec em b er 1 , 1 87 5 42 7 27 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t ( 18 78 ): d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e vo m 1 . d ez em b er 1 87 5. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, m o n at sh ef te , r ei h e 1, b an d 3 0, h ef t 4 , 2 . t ei l, s . 3 -2 3. d ec em b er 1 , 1 88 0 4 5 23 4 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t ( 18 83 ): d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e am 1 . d ez em b er 1 88 0. b an d 5 7, v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . 7 6 -1 17 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 88 5 46 8 55 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 88 8) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch a m 1 . d ez em b er 1 88 5. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, n eu e fo lg e, b an d 3 2, b er lin , s . 9 6 -1 23 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 89 0 49 4 28 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 89 4) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g am 1 d ez em b er 1 89 0 im d eu ts ch en r ei ch . s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, n eu e fo lg e, b an d 6 8, b er lin , s . 3 1* , 4 4 -7 1. d ec em b er 2 , 1 89 5 52 2 79 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 89 7) : d ie b ev ö lk er u n g d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s n ac h d er v o lk sz äh lu n g vo n 2. d ez em b er 1 89 5. v ie rt el ja h re sh ef t zu r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . i .2 728 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 90 0 56 3 67 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 97 4) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 24 . ja h rg an g 19 03 , g eo rg o lm s v er la g , n ac h d ru ck , b er lin , s . 6 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 90 5 60 6 41 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 90 6) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g am 1 . d ez em b er 1 90 5. v ie rt el ja h rs h ef t zu r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, b an d 1 5, h ef t 4 , s . i v .2 98 -3 01 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 91 0 64 9 25 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 91 3) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 34 . ja h rg an g , v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . 8 -9 . d ec em b er 1 , 1 91 6 n o in fo rm at io n d ec em b er 1 5, 1 91 7 n o in fo rm at io n o ct o b er 8 , 1 91 9 60 4 12 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 22 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 4 2. j ah rg an g 19 21 /2 2, v er la g fü r p o lit ik u n d w ir ts ch af t, b er lin , s . 4 -5 . • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld198 d eu ts ch es r ei ch in h ab it an ts s o u rc e (in 1 ,0 00 ) ju n e 16 , 1 92 5 62 4 10 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 28 ): v o lk sz äh lu n g . d ie b ev ö lk er u n g d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s n ac h d en e rg eb n is se n d er v o lk sz äh lu n g 19 25 . te il i e in fü h ru n g in d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g 19 25 , ta b el le n w er k. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, b an d 4 01 , i , b er lin , s . 1 74 -2 95 . ju n e 16 , 1 93 3 65 2 18 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 37 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch fü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 5 6. j ah rg an g 19 37 , v er la g fü r s o zi al p o lit ik , w ir ts ch af t u n d s ta ti st ik , b er lin , s . 1 6 -1 7. m ay 1 7, 1 93 9 79 3 75 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 42 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 5 9. j ah rg an g 19 41 /4 2, b er lin , s . 2 4. o ct o b er 2 9, 1 94 6 64 5 01 a u ss ch u ß d er d eu ts ch en s ta ti st ik er f ü r d ie v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g 19 46 (1 94 9) : v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g vo n 29 . o kt o b er 1 94 6 in d en v ie r b es at zu n g sz o n en u n d g ro ß -b er lin . v o lk sz äh lu n g ta b el le n te il. d u n ck er & h u m b lo t, b er lin -m ü n ch en , s . 7 273 . g d r in h ab it an ts s o u rc e (in 1 ,0 00 ) a u g u st 3 1, 1 95 0 18 3 88 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 12 -1 3. d ec em b er 3 1, 1 96 4 17 0 03 s ta at lic h e z en tr al ve rw al tu n g fü r s ta ti st ik (1 96 7) : e rg eb n is se d er v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g am 3 1. d ez em b er 19 64 . s ta at sv er la g d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik , s . 3 5 -4 9. ja n u ar y 1, 1 97 1 17 0 68 s ta at lic h e z en tr al ve rw al tu n g fü r s ta ti st ik (1 97 3) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch 1 97 3 d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik . 1 8. j ah rg an g , s ta at sv er la g d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik , b er lin , s . 4 17 . d ec em b er 3 1, 1 98 1 16 7 05 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 99 4) : a u sg ew äh lt e z ah le n d er v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g en u n d g eb äu d e u n d w o h n u n g sz äh lu n g en 1 95 0 b is 1 98 1. s o n d er re ih e m it b ei tr äg en f ü r d as g eb ie t d er e h em al ig en d d r , h ef t 15 , w ie sb ad en , s . 2 236 . o ct o b er 3 , 1 99 0 16 0 33 r eg is te rz äh lu n g d es e in w o h n er d at en sp ei ch er s (b ev ö lk er u n g sa n za h l b ez ie h t s ic h au f d en 3 1. 12 .1 99 0) ta b . a 1: c o n tin ua tio n the register-based census in germany • 199 fr g in h ab it an ts s o u rc e (in 1 ,0 00 ) s ep te m b er 1 3, 1 95 0 47 6 95 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 25 . s ep te m b er 2 5, 1 95 6 53 1 98 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 9) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 29 . ju n e 6, 1 96 1 56 1 74 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 96 4) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 34 . m ay 2 7, 1 97 0 60 6 51 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 97 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 35 . m ay 2 5, 1 98 7 61 0 77 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t ( 19 90 ): b ev ö lk er u n g u n d e rw er b st ät ig ke it . v o lk sz äh lu n g am 2 5. m ai 1 98 7. f ac h se ri e 1, h ef t 3 , t ei l 1 , w ie sb ad en , s . 2 0 -3 1. m ay 9 , 2 01 1 80 2 20 s ta ti st is ch e ä m te r d es b u n d es u n d d er l än d er ( 20 14 ): e rg eb n is d es z en su s 20 11 z u m b er ic h ts ze it p u n kt 9 . m ai 2 01 1. o n lin e li n k: h tt p s: //e rg eb n is se .z en su s2 01 1. d e/ # s ta ti cc o n te n t: 00 ,b e v _1 1_ 1, m ,t ab le . ta b . a 1: c o n tin ua tio n • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld200 ta b . a 2: c o m p ar is o n o f t he y ea ren d u p d at ed p o p ul at io n es tim at es b as ed o n th e 19 87 c en su s an d t he 2 01 1 ce n su s, a nd se le ct ed d em o g ra p hi c ev en ts a nd r at es p er 1 ,0 00 p er so n s, b y ag e s o ur ce : s ta tis tis ch es b un de sa m t 20 13 a, 2 01 4a /b , a nd o th er p ub lic at io ns o f t he f ed er al s ta tis tic sa l o ffi ce p o p u la ti o n 31 /1 2/ 20 11 e ve n ts 2 01 1 r at e p er 1 ,0 00 p er so n s in 2 01 1 u p d at ed e st im at es b as ed o n th e 20 11 c en su s u p d at ed e st im at es b as ed o n th e 19 87 c en su s u p d at ed es ti m at es b as ed o n 20 11 c en su s u p d at ed es ti m at es b as ed o n 19 87 c en su s d if fe re n ce b ir th s d ea th s lo n g -t er m ca re b ir th s d ea th s lo n g -t er m ca re b ir th s d ea th s lo n g -t er m ca re 0 -4 3 38 6 58 6 3 40 8 76 2 2 2 17 6 2 40 12 5 18 0. 7 3. 7 0. 7 3. 7 5 -9 3 49 7 32 6 3 51 5 78 9 1 8 46 3 46 3 26 6 69 0. 1 7. 6 0. 1 7. 6 10 -1 4 3 88 9 09 4 3 90 7 53 7 1 8 4 43 52 31 1 28 5 47 0. 0 0. 1 7. 3 0. 0 0. 1 7. 3 15 -1 9 4 02 7 94 6 4 08 0 46 2 52 5 16 12 7 13 39 5 23 4 09 3. 2 0. 1 5. 8 3. 1 0. 1 5. 7 20 -2 4 4 82 2 07 7 4 95 9 92 0 13 7 84 3 80 8 41 1 03 4 21 3 56 16 .8 0. 2 4. 4 16 .3 0. 2 4. 3 25 -2 9 4 85 5 40 7 4 99 0 60 2 13 5 19 5 18 1 34 9 1 92 2 18 2 79 37 .3 0. 4 3. 8 36 .3 0. 4 3. 7 30 -3 4 4 80 9 95 4 4 94 2 91 4 13 2 96 0 22 7 02 9 2 03 1 16 4 41 47 .2 0. 4 3. 4 45 .9 0. 4 3. 3 35 -3 9 4 64 9 4 46 4 78 5 17 1 13 5 72 5 12 5 77 8 2 60 7 16 5 74 27 .1 0. 6 3. 6 26 .3 0. 5 3. 5 40 -4 4 6 16 6 63 0 6 36 3 15 4 19 6 52 4 33 0 41 3 56 5 24 9 23 5. 4 0. 6 4. 0 5. 2 0. 6 3. 9 45 -4 9 6 99 8 76 0 7 13 7 63 4 13 8 87 4 1 77 5 7 94 7 37 1 77 0. 3 1. 1 5. 3 0. 2 1. 1 5. 2 50 -5 4 6 32 4 08 0 6 42 2 95 3 98 8 73 10 7 15 3 80 48 4 21 0. 0 2. 4 7. 7 0. 0 2. 4 7. 5 55 -5 9 5 46 5 59 2 5 55 0 05 4 84 4 62 24 0 07 62 0 92 4. 4 11 .4 4. 3 11 .2 60 -6 4 4 83 1 57 0 4 89 8 24 1 66 6 71 33 1 33 85 7 61 6. 9 17 .8 6. 8 17 .5 65 -6 9 3 98 4 74 4 4 03 9 54 3 54 7 99 43 2 03 11 4 50 4 10 .8 28 .7 10 .7 28 .3 70 -7 4 4 95 2 54 4 5 00 1 25 5 48 7 11 56 5 63 23 8 98 2 11 .4 48 .3 11 .3 47 .8 75 -7 9 3 39 6 97 2 3 43 8 52 8 41 5 56 99 3 90 33 7 05 8 29 .3 99 .2 28 .9 98 .0 80 -8 4 2 33 3 43 1 2 36 7 68 4 34 2 53 11 7 13 9 48 4 81 8 50 .2 20 7. 8 49 .5 20 4. 8 85 -8 9 1 34 6 88 8 1 37 2 71 1 25 8 23 15 1 47 1 52 2 00 1 11 2. 5 38 7. 6 11 0. 3 38 0. 3 90 + 5 45 4 33 66 0 82 9 11 5 39 6 28 9 35 6 38 1 91 1 53 0. 5 70 0. 2 43 7. 9 57 7. 9 to ta l 80 2 84 4 80 81 8 43 7 43 1 55 9 26 3 66 2 68 5 85 2 32 8 2 50 1 4 41 8. 3 10 .6 31 .2 8. 1 10 .4 30 .6 the register-based census in germany • 201 fig. a1: number of municipalities (ordinate) by relative difference between 2011 census and updated estimates based on the 1987 census (abscissa), by small municipalities (fewer than 10,000 inhabitants) and big municipalities (10,000 or more inhabitants) and by federal states, in % 0 100 200 300 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities baden-wurttemberg 0 100 200 300 400 500 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities b variaa brandenburg hesse 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities mecklenburg-vorpommern lower saxony 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld202 fig. a1: continuation 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities north rhine-westphalia 0 100 200 300 400 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities rhineland-palatinate saxony saxony-anhalt 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities schleswig-holstein thuringia 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 small municipalities large municipalities note: berlin, hamburg, and bremen were not included in the fi gure because there is no variation by municipalities for city states. saarland was excluded because of the low number of municipalities for this federal state. source: statistisches bundesamt 2013b the register-based census in germany • 203 fig. a2: relative deviation between 2011 census and updated estimates of 1987 census, by sex, age, and citizenship -10 0 10 2010 2002 1992 1982 1972 1962 1952 1942 1932 1922 year men women in percent german -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2010 2002 1992 1982 1972 1962 1952 1942 1932 1922 year men women in percent foreigners source: statistisches bundesamt 2014 a/b • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld204 fig. a3: relative distribution of the population by 1,000 (ordinate) by age (abscissa) and by size of municipality -5 0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 >10.000 inhabitants < 10.000 inhabitants difference source: statistisches bundesamt 2014b published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) internal migration in germany, 1995-2010: new insights into east-west migration and re-urbanisation nikola sander abstract: over the last two decades, patterns of internal migration in germany have been discussed under the headings of east-west movements and suband re-urbanisation. this paper argues that the intense scientifi c and public debate that ignited about the possible causes and consequences of internal migration should be based on a clear understanding of how internal migration fl ows impact on regional population change. using the german internal migration (gim) database, a unique new dataset that holds annual interregional migration counts drawn from the population register for 397 regions with temporally consistent boundaries, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the spatial structure of inter-county migration in germany and how it has changed over the period 19952010. to reduce the complexity of the county-level fl ow data and to facilitate the identifi cation of patterns and trends, county-to-county fl ows were analysed using a spatial framework of 132 “analytical regions”. the results show that the intensity of migration between east german regions has been higher than east-west migration throughout the period, suggesting that the former type of migration has a stronger impact on rural population decline than commonly believed in the literature. following a strong suburbanisation pattern in the 1990s, over the last decade, migration between counties in eastern germany has resulted in a growing concentration of population in the cities of berlin, leipzig and dresden. increasing net migration gains were recorded by many urban cores across germany. the trend was driven by both continuing in-migration of young adults in search for education and employment, and by a cessation of the long-term trend of family out-migration to the cities’ suburban and non-metropolitan hinterlands. keywords: internal migration · east-west · reurbanisation · regional population change · germany comparative population studies vol. 39, 2 (2014): 217-246 (date of release: 08.05.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-04en5 * this article has coloured fi gures and data in an online appendix: doi 10.12765/cpos-201405en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/89/175. • nikola sander218 1 introduction over the last two decades, two seemingly substantial shifts in the patterns of internal migration ignited an intense scientifi c and public debate about the possible causes and consequences of regional population change: east-west migration and reurbanisation. such a debate is extremely timely, especially in the context of low birth rates, increasing life expectancy and comparatively low levels of international migration. as very few predominantly urban counties record a natural increase of population (gatzweiler/schlömer 2008), the movement of people between germany’s regions plays a key role in shaping population growth and age structures. following reunifi cation in 1990, rapid deindustrialisation, labour market restructuring and subsidised housing investment caused a tidal wave of internal migrants leaving the east german cities for the countryside. however, the fact that the total volume of moves to suburban areas was considerably larger than out-movement to western german states has not been refl ected in the literature. in the 1990s, studies focused primarily on aggregate intensities of east-west migration between the six states (länder) in eastern germany (including berlin) and the ten states in western germany (heiland 2004; kontuly et al. 1997). the literature points to strong impacts of this type of movements on regional population growth in the years following reunifi cation. net losses from eastern states were highest in the years 1989/90, with a second peak in the temporal trend visible in 2001 (heiland 2004). out-migration was found to be highest among young adults with above average education, who left non-metropolitan regions in the east and moved to western states with good job prospects (heiland 2004; kontuly et al. 1997; kröhnert/vollmer 2012; peukert/ smolny 2011). thus, to borrow the words of kontuly et al. (1997: 43): “the overall consequence of unifi cation […] was a broad spatial distribution of growth to all western german regions and a wide pattern of loss in the east”. much less attention has been devoted to the patterns and trends of migration between regions in eastern germany and their impact on population decline, with the exception of schlömer (2009). this is despite the fact that migration propensities decrease with distance, so that the volume of short-distance movements is much higher than that of longer distance moves to a different state (lee 1966). thus, intraand interregional migration, especially between the larger cities, their hinterlands and non-metropolitan areas can be expected to have a much stronger impact on regional population change than longer distance moves. although not in the context of east-west migration, kabisch et al. (2010) fi nd that the recent growth of east german cities is primarily driven by changes in the propensities of movement between the larger cities and their non-metropolitan hinterlands. since the beginning of the century, a new wave of migrants appears to be directed towards the city centres, a phenomenon which has been speculated about and discussed quite extensively under the headings of reurbanisation and renaissance of the city (see, for example, hesse 2008; köppen 2008; siedentop 2008). studies focused on specifi c perspectives (for example, the concept of the city as a place) and aspects (for example, individual level decision making, values and preferences) of residential mobility and internal migration (see, for example, haase et internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 219 al. 2010; west et al. 2008). there is a general consensus that urban areas in several european countries have been growing since the late 1990s, and that migration is a key driver of this growth (buzar et al. 2007; colomb 2007). these conclusions were drawn mainly from case studies of european cities, which were characterised by a geographical focus on eastern germany and the uk (kabisch et al. 2010; rink et al. 2012). given the distinctive history of eastern germany, the fi ndings may be limited in their general applicability. but more comprehensive studies of nation-wide patterns of interregional migration and changes over time have been hindered by the lack of adequate data. while the national population register data are ideally suited for the study of migration fl ows at the county level, changes over time in the geography for which the data are collected impede any time series analysis. as a consequence, more recent work on the characteristics of internal migrants has made use of the german socio-economic panel (kemper 2008; peukert/smolny 2011). while these longitudinal survey data allow key insights into the determinants of migration and the migration-triggering effects of live course events, the sample size inevitably restricts the level of spatial detail that is essential for analysing migration spatial structure. this paper overcomes the problem of non-comparability of inter-county migration fl ow data due to changing spatial boundaries. the new german internal migration (gim) database holds information on migrant fl ows between 397 counties (kreise) with consistent boundaries, covering the period 1995 to 2010. such harmonised inter-county migration fl ow tables allow new insights into trends and patterns of internal migration in germany. in considering the debate about east-west migration and reurbanisation as key drivers of regional population change, fi ve key questions emerge that will help determine whether the evidence drawn from case studies and aggregate analyses hold at a county scale: has the intensity of east-west migration been higher or lower compared to other types of moves? have non-metropolitan areas been the primary regions of origin of east-to-west migration fl ows? how have the spatial patterns and intensities of inter-county migration changed over time, and did they differ by age? has the recent trend of renewed urban growth been universal across germany? which migration fl ows can be identifi ed as the drivers of this trend? the paper continues with a description of the harmonised migration fl ow data and the spatial framework, followed by an analysis of the intensity of migration by type of move. the paper then turns to introduce bicomponent mapping as a mapping technique for visualising changes over time in the spatial patterns of migration, and then proceeds to evaluate separately the dynamics in the spatial patterns of the three most mobile age groups. this is followed by a discussion of the key regions of origin and destination of migrants to and from the largest german cities. the paper ends with a discussion of the fi ndings in the context of population ageing and the growing attractiveness of the city cores as a place to live. • nikola sander220 2 data the analysis presented in this paper uses data on changes in place of residence as captured by the german population register. the data were kindly provided by the german federal statistical offi ce (destatis). population registers record every change of permanent residence across municipal boundaries as an event and thus capture all moves within a 1-year period, including multiple and return moves. there might be some undercount of young adults who move several times after leaving the parental home before registering. the data are disaggregated by six age groups and cover the period 1995 to 2010. the data provided by destatis contain movement events data on place-to-place migration fl ows between german counties (kreise). numerous boundary changes that occurred at the county level since 1995 generate signifi cant spatial discontinuities. hence, comparisons of migration patterns and intensities across counties and over time require the development of a temporally consistent, customised geography. the german internal migration (gim) database developed by the author is based on such a temporally consistent geography of temporally consistent counties (tccs), and thus overcomes the problem of temporal incomparability. the customised geography was developed by adopting the “update to contemporary zones” approach discussed in blake et al. (2000). this approach appeared to be most appropriate given that most historic boundary changes involved the aggregation of several smaller counties to one larger region. the number of counties in germany decreased from 444 in 1995 to 412 in 2010. in the harmonisation process, the most recent county geography for the year 2010 was used as the benchmark and migration fl ow data from earlier years were translated to the 2010 zonal system. the translation was based on a concordance list that sets out all original county ids, the temporally consistent county (tcc) ids and the type of boundary change (see supplementary online material). information about boundary changes obtained from german state governments and the gemeindeverzeichnis-informationssystem.1 the concordance list sets out the links between the original (unharmonised) geographies and the harmonised zonal system that is based on the 2010 county geography. based on the information given in the concordance list, all of the earlier geographies were converted to larger regions. in brandenburg, saxony-anhalt and thüringen, counties were split and the resulting parts merged with different counties. in such cases, all counties affected by the split were merged to form new, larger regions. consequently, the tcc geography consists of 397 regions, whereas the 2010 county geography that was used as the benchmark contains 412 regions. an example for such a split up is anhalt-zerbst, a county in saxony-anhalt that was split into three parts during the reforms in 2007. all three counties that gained parts of anhalt-zerbst (i.e. jerichower land, wittenberg and anhalt-bitterfeld) thus had 1 https://www.destatis.de/de/zahlenfakten/laenderregionen/regionales/gemeindeverzeichnis/namensgrenzaenderung/namensgrenzaenderung.html (accessed on 01.09.2012) internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 221 to be converted into one larger region. migration data for the years 1995 to 2010 were then aggregated to the harmonised, larger zones for subsequent analysis. in addition to the harmonisation of the zonal system, the migration counts held by the gim database were corrected for fl ows that were unusually large in volume due to resettlement of ethnic german migrants (spätaussiedler) from eastern european countries and asylum seekers. all ethnic germans and their families returning to germany are required to register with a small number of so-called “border transit centres” (grenzdurchgangslager), where the legal process is initialised so that the returning migrants can become naturalised german citizens. following naturalisation, returning migrants and their families are then assigned to smaller institutions across germany based on where places are available at the time. the initial fl ows to the border transit centres are recorded as international moves, whereas the latter fl ows to regional institutions are recoded as internal moves, introducing substantial bias into the offi cial statistics on internal migration. the intensities, patterns and reasons for such resettlement have been discussed in detail by schlömer (2012). the fl ow data held by the gim database were adjusted for fl ows from and to the following eight counties: göttingen (denoted as “tcc id” 21 in the supplementary online material), plön (10), osnabrück (49), dortmund (107), unna (117), rastatt (196), freudenstadt (204), and ostprignitz-ruppin (337). as noted by schlömer (2012), the adjustment is not straightforward since the timing and intensity of the resettlement of spätaussiedler differs substantially across counties. therefore, all potentially infl ated migration fl ows were set to missing and then re-estimated. missing data methods commonly used for the indirect estimation of migration fl ows, such as iterative proportional fi tting (ipf) or log-linear models (see, for example, rogers et al. 2010), require the margins of a fl ow table (i.e. total in-migration and out-migration for each region) to be known. in case of the german fl ow data, however, these totals are potentially infl ated by the resettlement practices. spatial interaction models offer a practical alternative in situations where the margins for some regions are unknown and the number of missing cells in the fl ow table is small. in the gim database, 6280 (or 4 percent) of a total of 157212 county-to-county fl ows were estimated using spatial interaction models. to summarise, the model assumes that the size of a migration fl ow between counties is proportional to the population size of the origin and destination and the distance between the two counties (boyle 1995; flowerdew/lovett 1988). the unconstrained spatial interaction model based on the poisson distribution has the form (see boyle 1995): where mij is the predicted count of movement events between counties i and j. pi and pj, denote the size of populations in origin (pi) and destination county (pj). the distance in kilometres between county centroids is denoted by dij and cij is a contiguity variable that controls for movements between neighbouring counties. εi is the error term. table 1 sets out exemplary results from the poisson models for 389 counties in 1995 and 2010 that were used to estimated missing cells. separate mod • nikola sander222 els were run for each age group and year, with estimated model parameters being broadly similar across age groups and time. the models were run for migrant fl ows between 389 (=397-8) regions to ensure that the results were not infl uenced by the resettlement of spätaussiedler. as expected from the literature, the distance-decay effect on inter-county migration was negative for both years, indicating that the size of migrant fl ows decreased with the distance moved. this tendency is also refl ected in the contiguity variable being strongly positive. the effects of population size at the origin and destination were also strongly positive in both years. the adjusted r-squared values indicate that the models explain more than 80 percent of the variance in the migration fl ows, suggesting that the approach is well-suited for estimating missing cells. figure 1 compares the observed and estimated in-migration and out-migration fl ows for the eight counties affected by resettlement. the resulting large interaction database holds migration counts for 16 annual intervals for 397 origins, 397 destinations, two sexes and six age groups (see the supplementary online material for a list of all 397 tccs and their corresponding unharmonised [original] counties). the fl ow tables between the tccs for the period 1995-2010 are also provided in the supplementary online material. the complete set of fl ow tables disaggregated by age groups and gender can be obtained by contacting the author. tab. 1: results for spatial interaction models used to estimate fl ows affected by the redistribution of ethnic germans and refugees 1995 2010 variable coefficient standard error coefficient standard error ln(origin population) 0.990 0.001 0.904 0.001 ln(destination population) 0.757 0.001 0.974 0.001 ln(distance in km) -1.199 0.002 -1.300 0.001 contiguity 1.393 0.001 1.081 0.002 constant -12.747 0.014 -13.890 0.015 deviance 1,928,269 1,866,213 no. of observations 150,932 150,932 residual df 150,927 150,927 mcfadden's adj r-squared 0.81 0.81 source: author’s calculations based on destatis data internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 223 3 spatial framework the gim database holds migration counts for two temporally consistent spatial frameworks to facilitate the analysis of inter-county migration in germany over the period 1995 to 2010: one for “temporally consistent counties” (tccs) and one for “analytical regions” (ars). the tcc geography is similar to the 2010 county geography used in offi cial statistics; the only difference being that fi ve eastern german counties were aggregated to larger regions to ensure temporal consistency. the ar geography, which was developed to facilitate analyses of migration patterns and trends by type of move is used in this paper. the ar geography is used as this paper focuses on east-west migration and on trends in the spatial patterns of migration that may indicate reurbanisation tendencies. the spatial framework of analytical regions is based on a single county or aggregations thereof and was originally developed by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr 2009). the aim of its design was to provide a manageable set of regions that enables fl ows to and from different types of regions to be distinguished. however, the modifi able areal unit problem, which impacts on the observed intensity of migration (openshaw 1984), cannot be fully avoided since the spatial framework is determined by the administrative regions that are used for data collection. the bbsr typology classifi es counties into three main groups (agglomeration regions, urbanised regions and fig. 1: observed and estimated total in-migration and out-migration for eight counties affected by resettlement of spätaussiedler and asylum seekers 60.000 40.000 20.000 0 plön, county göttingen, county osnabrück dortmund unna, ycount rastatt, county freudenstadt, county ostprignitz-ruppin, county out, observed out, estimated 20.000 40.000 60.000 in, observed in, estimated source: author’s calculations based on destatis data • nikola sander224 fig. 2: spatial framework for the study of internal migration for 132 analytical regions, typology adapted from bbsr " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 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" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " nuremberg regensburg heilbronn freiburg karlsruhe trier heidelberg kiel bonn mainz berlin munich erfurt bremen dresden leipzig hamburg cologne rostock dortmund wolfsburg magdeburg wiesbaden stuttgart dusseldorf saarbrucken göttingen frankfurt 37 110 40 71 104 96 46 97 7 91 98 56 26 123 44 122 132 24 117 53 9 1 99 1938 86 75 78 27 20 105 72 65 12 131 106 118 79 100 21 23 10 109 47 113 107 54 69 13 62 87 102 115 89 95 8 18 121 80 81 61 22 49 2 30 11 70 94 114 68 92 63 74 62 55 90 73 110 128 93 127 103 88 54 25 130 34 14 129 4 32 77 28 76 39 101 42 6 35 111 36 112 57 43 15 3 58 31 116 66 85 55 60 33 120 82 108 4151 17 67 125 45 50 59 16 119 65 84 52 83 48 29 agglomeration core agglomeration ring non-metro area in agglomeration urban core " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " urban ring " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " non-metro area in urban area non-metro region source: own design internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 225 non-metropolitan regions), and within these groups distinguishes the cores from their high-density ring and their lower-density extended hinterlands. for the development of the spatial framework used in this paper, high-density and lower-density hinterlands were aggregated so that seven region types remained: agglomeration core, agglomeration ring, non-metro area in agglomeration, urban core, urban ring and non-metropolitan areas. as shown in figure 2, all neighbouring counties of the same type and within the same state (bundesland) were aggregated to form contiguous regions, whereas the cores remained as separate regions. in summary, the 132 analytical regions fall into seven types of regions: 23 agglomeration core regions, which are the large cities with substantial higher-order functions and strong linkages with other urban centres; 15 agglomeration ring regions, which are the surrounding or adjacent counties that have a close functional relationship with the core; 8 non-metro areas in agglomerations, which tend to be more distant from the core but in some cases may also be surrounding the core; 27 urban cores, which are the medium to large cities with fewer higher-order functions than the agglomeration cores; 23 urban ring regions, which have functional links with the urban cores but vary in the strength of such links; 21 non-metro areas in urban areas, which are essentially less densely populated hinterlands of urban areas; and 15 non-metro regions which are the least-densely populated parts of the country with the weakest functional links to core regions. all tccs and the corresponding analytical regions are listed in the supplementary online material. the distinction between agglomeration ring and non-metro area in agglomeration is partly based on the population density of the counties, which in turn is infl uenced by the area size of the counties. this issue is of particular importance for the city of berlin and its hinterland. berlin is a single county, but there are spill-over effects into neighbouring counties. these counties are large in size and characterised by relatively low population density. thus, in the spatial framework used in this paper, no county is classifi ed as berlin’s agglomeration ring. overall, the distinction between cities and their hinterlands is somewhat blurred due to spill over effects of the city core into neighbouring regions as well as commuting ranges that might not encompass the entire region that is classed as “agglomeration ring”. 4 intensity of internal migration the scholarly literature is characterised by a strong focus on trends in the intensity of east-west migration since reunifi cation. while the overall volume of fl ows from eastern to western german regions has been substantial in the early 1990s, its intensity and, consequently, its impact on the population growth in the regions of origin have declined relative to other types of movements since the mid-1990s. the migration rates shown in figure 3 highlight substantial differences in migration intensities by type of move, which are stronger than changes in migration over time. since the number of migration events recorded over an annual period is directly related to the size of the corresponding population at risk of moving, the occurrence-exposure rates shown in figure 3 were calculated by expressing the migra• nikola sander226 tion count in a given year as a percentage of the mid-year population in the origin region. as expected, west-to-east movement was lower than the counter-fl ow to western regions, which peaked in the year 2001. however, migration between counties in eastern germany was higher in intensity than migration from eastern to western counties across the entire period. one may argue that the considerably higher intensity of east-to-east migration compared to east-to-west migration is primarily due to movements to and from berlin. figure 4 reveals that this is not the case. the number of migrations between all eastern counties excluding berlin was highest in 1997, which refl ects the suburbanisation trend of the 1990s. the number of movements from eastern (excluding berlin) to western counties peaked sharply in 2001, but was lower than east-toeast movements throughout the entire period. in contrast, movements to and from berlin were much more stable over time, with marginal differences in intensities between inbound and outbound moves. high intensities of migration do not necessarily imply a strong impact of migration on population redistribution. a common assumption is that it was east-west migration that had the strongest impact on population decline in east german regions. in other words, east german counties would have recorded stronger net losses to counties in the west compared with net losses to other east german counties. figure 5 depicts in each year, 1995-2010, the number of temporally consistent counties with net loss (left hand fi gure) and with net gain (right hand fi gure). both fi gures show separately the net gain or loss with west german and with east gerfig. 3: migration rates (as percent of mid-year population) for moves between and within west and east germany (including berlin) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 west -> west west -> east east -> east east -> west migration intensity in % source: author’s calculations based on destatis data internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 227 fig. 4: number of migrations for moves between and within east germany (excluding berlin), west germany and berlin 0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 east -> east east -> west west -> east berlin -> east berlin -> west east -> berlin west -> berlin total number of migrations, in thousands, moves within the west not shown source: author’s calculations based on destatis data fig. 5: net migration gains and losses in east german tccs disaggregated by east and west, 1995-2010 source: author’s calculations based on destatis data 43 39 42 52 56 61 64 61 57 58 59 59 57 57 55 56 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 t o ta l n et m ig ra tio n in e as t g er m an c o un tie s in 1 0, 00 0 net with west net with east 29 33 30 20 16 11 8 11 15 14 13 13 15 15 17 16 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 t o ta l n et m ig ra tio n in e as t g er m an c o un tie s in 1 0, 00 0 net with west net with east number of counties with net gain number of counties with net loss tccs with net loss tccs with net gains • nikola sander228 man counties. labels indicate the number of counties with net loss (left hand fi gure) and net gain (right hand fi gure). it appears that east-west migration had a stronger impact on population decline in eastern counties than movements to other counties in the east in the period from 1999 to 2008. however, the degree of the impact declined substantially in recent years. in 2010, half of all net losses from east german counties were to other counties in the east. moreover, counties in the east with overall net gains have begun to record a positive net balance with counties in west germany in recent years. it is worth noting that the east german counties recording net gains changed over the 16 year period. in the late 1990s, it were the city hinterlands that recorded strong net gains from the core centres, while the cores regained their attractiveness as destinations and showed a net migrant gain since the turn of the century. the net migration rates calculated by region type also refl ect the two migration patterns that have dominated the literature. figure 6 demonstrates that the suburbanisation pattern observed in east germany in the 1990s resulted in strong net losses of the urban cores and, although to a lesser degree, of the agglomeration fig. 6: net migration rates among the total population (as percent of mid-year population) for inter-county fl ows aggregated by region type for the whole of germany source: author’s calculations based on destatis data -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 agglomeration core agglomeration ring non-metro area in agglomeration urban core urban ring non-metro area in urban area non-metro region net-migration rate (%) internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 229 cores. the primary destination of this movement pattern was the agglomeration hinterland with the ring and the non-metropolitan areas in agglomeration regions. at the beginning of the century, the overall intensity of migration decreased and net gains and losses converged to zero. over recent years, the pattern of net gains and losses has changed fundamentally, although the levels of net migration remained lower than they were in the mid-1990s. the propensity to migrate varies systematically not only by type of move but also by age. such regularities in the age pattern are commonly described as being consistent across countries and over time (rogers et al. 1978). the age-specifi c migration rates for all inter-county moves closely resemble those found in other western societies (not shown). it is remarkable, however, that the age at which the profi le peaks has shifted leftwards over time. this shift has been paralleled by a substantial increase over time in net migration of 18-24 year olds to the agglomeration and urban cores as shown in figure 7. at the same time, non-metropolitan regions and the core hinterlands recorded increasing net losses of young adults. the core regions are becoming more attractive for both young adults in search of fig. 7: net migration rates among 18-24 year olds (as percent of midyear population in the respective age group) for inter-county fl ows aggregated by region type for the whole of germany -7 -5 -3 -1 1 3 5 7 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 agglomeration core agglomeration ring non-metro area in agglomeration urban core urban ring non-metro area in urban area non-metro region net-migration rate of 18-24 year olds (%) 0 source: author’s calculations based on destatis data • nikola sander230 job opportunities and tertiary education, and for middle-aged (30-49 years) people who want to balance jobs and family life. until the turn of the century, people aged 30-49 tended to move from the cores to their hinterlands and to non-metropolitan areas, which were regarded as better places to raise a family. figure 8 shows that this pattern has changed substantially over the last 16 years, with more and more people aged 30-49 opting to stay in the city rather than moving to the hinterlands. 5 bicomponent trend mapping conventional approaches to the visualisation of regional population change use a series of maps to separately display the intensity and change over time, making it hard to identify trends. in order to more effectively visualise temporal trends in spatial patterns of internal migration, bicomponent mapping translates the three dimensions of intensity, space and time into a two-dimensional map (for an application to regional population growth in the usa, see schroeder 2009). net-migration fig. 8: net migration rates among 30-49 year olds (as percent of midyear population in the respective age group) for inter-county fl ows aggregated by region type for the whole of germany source: author’s calculations based on destatis data -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 agglomeration core agglomeration ring non-metro area in agglomeration urban core urban ring non-metro area in urban area non-metro region net-migration rate of 30-49 year olds (%) internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 231 rates for ars for the period 1995-2010 are used to illustrate the method. in a fi rst step, principal component analysis (pca) of net migration rates for the 132 ars and for each year, 1995-2010, is used to identify the fi rst two components. in other words, pca was run with 132 regions and 16 net rates (132 x 16 data entries). figure 9 depicts the loadings of the fi rst two components for each year. the fi rst component explains 47 percent of the variance in net-migration rates and indicates the overall level of net-migration across the 16-year period. the second component explains 31 percent of the variance and captures the change over time in net-migration (i.e. increasing or decreasing). this interpretation of the components with regards to overall level and change over time is also valid for the analysis of net-migration for specifi c age groups presented in section 6. in a second step, the region-specifi c loading scores for the fi rst and second component are each divided into three quantiles, resulting in nine possible combinations of groups of analytical regions. in a third step, a three-by-three matrix of mean trends is constructed, based on the intersections of each pairing of pc 1 (overall level) and pc 2 (change over time) quantiles. the matrix shown in figure 10 has nine fi elds, which are indicated by roman numerals and arranged based on the regions’ component loading scores. the mean levels and changes over time in net-migration are shown in each fi eld. these are net-migration rates in percent, rather than regions’ component scores. the fi eld in the bottom left corner shows the mean trend in net-migration for 21 regions (n: 21), where the intensity of net migration was low and declined even further over time. at the other end of the spectrum, the top-right fig. 9: component loadings, pca of net-migration rates at ar level, 1995-2010 source: author’s calculations based on destatis data -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 comp 1 (47 %) comp 2 (31 %) component loading • nikola sander232 fi g . 1 0: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f n et -m ig ra tio n (in % ) o f t he t o ta l p o p ul at io n fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 233 fi eld indicates a high intensity and increasing trend for 16 regions. the bicomponent trend matrix is accompanied by a map that indicates the group membership of analytic regions. 6 spatial patterns of internal migration 6.1 dynamics among the total population not only the intensities, but also the destination choices among migrants changed substantially over the last two decades. as expected from the literature review, the overall trend was towards strong net gains in the core regions and decreasing gains or even losses across all non-core regions. this pattern refl ects the revival of the residential function of the cities that follows the longer-term suburbanisation pattern. the bicomponent matrix in figure 10 depicts systematic variations in trends and intensities across the 132 analytical regions. net migration increased in 44 regions (fi elds iii, vi and ix), decreased in 61 regions (fi elds i, iv, vii and viii) and remained stable in 27 regions (fi elds ii and v). no regions had strong net gains across the entire period. changes over time were stronger in northern germany, with the cities of bremen, kiel, wolfsburg, göttingen, berlin and rostock experiencing a marked recovery, while their hinterlands changed from being strong net receivers of migrants to net senders. these dynamics were somewhat less pronounced in south-eastern and western regions. the only non-core regions that experienced a positive trend in net migration (fi eld ix) were the hinterland of munich and freudenstadt. the strong economic and population growth of the munich region and high housing costs in the core explain the rising popularity of the ring as a migrant destination. the trend for freudenstadt has been strongly affected by the movements of ethnic germans. while the patterns and trends in net migration for the total population are in line with those presented in the literature, these overall trends mask substantial variations in migration patterns in different age groups. of key importance for regional population change are the mobile age groups of young adults and families, to which the paper now turns. 6.2 dynamics among 18-49 year olds as shown in section 4, the spatial patterns of migration among young and middleaged adults changed substantially over the last 16 years. the migration behaviour of these subgroups of the population is thus likely to have had a substantial impact on population change at the regional level. this section looks more closely at the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of migration among these three population groups and summarises the combined impact of their movements on the growth of core regions. the overall picture of migration among 18-24 year olds is one of strong net losses in almost all non-core regions, except for the hinterlands of stuttgart and munich (fig. 11). the east-west divide in the degree of net-loss is not as • nikola sander234 fi g . 1 1: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f n et -m ig ra tio n (in % ) o f 1 824 y ea r o ld s fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 235 pronounced as for the total population discussed earlier. several non-core regions in northern and southern germany also experience out-migration among this highly mobile population group (fi elds i, ii and iii). compared to 18-24 year olds, the migration patterns among the population aged 25-29 show stronger and less systematic spatial variations in intensities and trends. this may be due to the variety of reasons for moving among this age group, which include education, job, marriage, family formation and altered housing needs. each of these motivations is associated with different types of moves and destination choices. the mean net migration trends shown in figure 12 highlight the increasing losses experienced by eastern german non-core regions, as well as by central and far-west regions (e.g. saarbrücken county) (fi elds i, ii and iv). at the other end of the spectrum, the trend for most core regions was positive, refl ecting the general attractiveness of the cities for this age group (fi elds vi, viii and ix). noteworthy is the continuing net-gain in the hinterlands of munich, stuttgart, frankfurt and heidelberg-mannheim (fi eld viii). all these regions have in common that they are located in commuting distance to agglomeration cores with expensive housing and strong labour markets. the net migration behaviour of 30-49 year olds as shown in figure 13 reveals several remarkable spatial patterns that may serve as a starting point for further research. the bicomponent map highlights decreasing outfl ows of 30-49 year olds to the cities’ suburban and non-metropolitan hinterlands, as indicated by declining net losses in the core regions (fi elds ii and iii). this trend would have inevitably caused declining net gains in the cities’ hinterlands. what is remarkable, however, is the far more universal pattern of declining net gains or even a change from gain to loss, which was experienced by all non-core regions, including the hinterland of munich (fi elds iv, vii, viii and ix). while regions in northern and southern germany still gained families through migration at the end of the last decade, although at a lower rate (fi eld ix), eastern and central german regions showed a pattern of beginning net loss. the regions with memberships of fi elds i, iv and v form a “belt-like” region that extends from saarland in far-western germany to mecklenburg in the north-east. there seems to be a general trend of families breaking with the stereotype of the detached suburban family home and remaining in the core regions. the reasons related to behavioural changes have been discussed already in the literature (see, for example, haase et al. 2010; rérat 2011; west et al. 2008). the declining out-movement from the cores is especially important for the future population change in non-metropolitan regions. if the core-to-hinterland movement of families with small children continues to decrease, the children cannot become potential hinterland-to-core migrants once leaving the parental home. given that, based on the current pattern, not all young adults move from non-core to core regions, the current family migration pattern might become a self-reinforcing trend where population is increasingly concentrated in core regions. • nikola sander236 fi g . 1 2: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f n et -m ig ra tio n (in % ) o f 2 529 y ea r o ld s fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 237 fi g . 1 3: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f n et -m ig ra tio n (in % ) o f 3 049 y ea r o ld s fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a • nikola sander238 6.3 inand out-migration fl ows as drivers of urban growth the trend of increasing city growth and declining out-migration discussed in the previous sections is likely to have been driven by two, at least in part, independent processes: stronger in-movement to cores among 18-24 year olds or less outmovement among 30-49 year olds. to shed light on what has been the driving force of urban growth, the effects of infl ows and outfl ows on net migration need to be disentangled. the bicomponent maps showing in-migration of young adults aged 18-24 (fig. 14) and out-migration of 30-49 year olds (fig. 15) suggest that both processes have contributed to the growth of core regions. the overall pattern is one of increasing in-migration to the urban cores among young adults, paralleled by decreasing out-migration from the cores among 30-49 year olds. but this overall trend disguises substantial differences between agglomeration cores. in 2010, heidelberg and darmstadt recorded the highest in-migration rates among young adults (22.8 percent and 20.6 percent respectively), but also the highest out-migration rates among families (6.9 percent and 6.5 percent respectively). in contrast, the cities of essen and wuppertal experienced very low levels of both in-migration (6.9 percent and 6.6 percent respectively) and out-migration (2.8 percent and 3.4 percent respectively). a very different pattern of growth was recorded by the cities of dresden and leipzig, where the in-migration rate of 18-24 year olds was with 16.5 percent relatively high, but out-migration of 30-49 year olds was much below average (3.4 percent in both cities). a closer look at the changes over time in the core regions reveals three different combinations of inand out-migration trends that have driven overall growth. a fi rst group of agglomeration and urban core regions (cologne, frankfurt, munich, stuttgart and all eastern cores) recorded increasing in-migration of 18-24 year olds (fi elds vi and ix), while family out-movement remained relatively stable (fi elds ii, vi and ix). the second group of urban cores (aschaffenburg, freiburg, heilbronn and münster) were characterised by stable in-movements (fi eld vii) and declining outmovements (fi eld vii). bremen and nuremberg formed the third group, which recorded both increasing in-migration of young adults (fi eld ix) and less out-migration of families (fi eld viii). in terms of impact on regional population change, the third group may be the most signifi cant, although the self-reinforcing pattern of decreasing family outmigration discussed earlier may also impact strongly on future growth. however, any speculations about future changes in population size and age structure need to consider the regions of origin of young adults moving to the cores, as well as the destinations of families moving in the opposite direction. this question is important because it determines the degree of redistribution of population through migration. for example, population is redistributed if young adults move from the hinterland of region a to its core, while families who move out of core a move to the hinterland of region b. otherwise, if these families move back to the hinterland of region a, such an hypothetical setting would lead to an exchange of population between a core and its hinterland. internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 239 fi g . 1 4: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f i n -m ig ra tio n (in % ) o f 1 824 y ea r o ld s fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a • nikola sander240 fi g . 1 5: b ic o m p o n en t m ap o f o u tm ig ra tio n (in % ) o f 3 049 y ea r o ld s fo r 13 2 an al yt ic al r eg io n s, 1 99 520 10 s o ur ce : a ut ho r’ s ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n d es ta tis d at a internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 241 7 origins and destinations of fl ows to and from large cities in order to compare the origins of in-migrants to the largest german agglomeration cores with the destinations of its out-migrants, the numbers of in-migrants to and out-migrants from six selected cities were compared across cities and over time using the spatial framework discussed in section 3. the numbers of migrants for each of the seven region types were translated into shares of the total inand out-fl ows in order to avoid problems of scale in interpreting the trends. a distinction was made between the target city’s own hinterland and all other regions in order to address the issue of redistribution versus exchange that was introduced earlier. the shares by region type shown in figure 16 highlight remarkable differences in the composition of in-migration and out-migration fl ows between the six german cities and point to a clear trend of migration up the urban hierarchy. the shares of migrants from non-metropolitan areas to the selected cities were larger than the corresponding shares in the outfl ow to non-metropolitan areas. moreover, cities drew in a considerable share of their migrants from outside their own hinterland, but sent a much larger share to their own hinterland. it should be noted, however, that the city-hinterland relationships are partly determined by the size of a city’s own hinterland and the distance to other types of regions. for example, the city of leipzig is located in closer proximity to other non-metro areas and urban rings than the city of berlin. the proximity might explain why leipzig recorded a higher share of in-migrants from these region types than berlin. similarly, frankfurt sends a higher share of out-migrants to other agglomeration cores, because the cities of mainz and wiesbaden are located in close proximity, and munich received a larger share of in-migrants from the relatively closely located non-metro alpine region. a comparison of the patterns over time shows that the city-hinterland relationships were broadly consistent. this fi nding suggests that the recent renaissance of the city has been universally observed across all types of origin regions of young adults as well as all traditional destinations of young families leaving the cities. the trend of migration up the urban hierarchy somewhat intensifi ed from 1995 to 2010, with an increasing share of out-migrants moving to other agglomeration cores and fewer migrants moving to the cities’ own hinterlands. the differences across cities in the shares sent to their own hinterland may in part be explained by the competition for and the affordability of housing. the cities of frankfurt, stuttgart, munich and hamburg are all characterised by tighter and more expensive housing markets compared to berlin and leipzig. consequently, a larger share of families still chose to move out of the city into the hinterland regions where competition on the housing market is less strong. the most substantial changes over time were observed for the composition of out-migration from the city of leipzig. while in both years in-migrants were almost evenly distributed across the seven region types and the city’s own hinterland, outmigration to the city’s hinterland decreased strongly over time. in 2010, leipzig‘s share of out-migrants moving to other agglomeration cores, presumably berlin and dresden, was almost as large as the share it sent to its own hinterland. therefore, leipzig redistributes population through migration in a crucially different way than • nikola sander242 the other fi ve cities. the relatively affordable housing stock and the lower attractiveness of the local labour market compared to the other fi ve cities may go some way toward explaining the decreasing out-migration to the hinterland. 8 conclusions this paper provided a more comprehensive picture of the spatial structure of interregional migration in germany and highlighted substantial dynamics over the period 1995-2010. although numerous recent articles have focused on east-west migration and reurbanisation, the literature is characterised by micro-level studies and by descriptive work, mostly focusing on net-migration, state-level patterns, or exclusively on migration streams between eastern and western states. hence, an argument was made that the debate about internal migration and its impact on regional population change requires a better understanding of the intensities and spatial patterns of migration. by drawing on data from the newly developed german fig. 16: composition of infl ows among 18-24 year olds and outfl ows among 3049 year olds to and from large german cities in 1995 and 2010 source: author’s calculations based on destatis data internal migration in germany, 1995-2010 • 243 internal migration (gim) database, the analysis presented here could overcome the limitations imposed by changes in boundaries of administrative regions that have thus far hindered comparisons of internal migration over time. since 1995, the overall intensity of internal migration between germany’s regions showed only minor changes over time, whereas larger discrepancies were apparent for migration between eastern german regions and the core-hinterland relationship. the results highlight the importance of movements from east german cities to suburban hinterlands for regional population change in the late 1990s. the intensity of such moves between the eastern counties was substantially higher than the much debated east-west migration and showed marked changes over time. changes in the core-hinterland relationship were driven by the combined effects of (a) a decline in net out-migration from the cores to their hinterlands among families, commonly referred to as suburbanisation, and (b) an increase in net in-migration from both hinterlands and other non-metropolitan regions among younger adults. the onset of both changes was relatively slow and resulted in a gradual increase of urban populations, and a remarkably universal pattern of decreasing net gains or even changes from gain to loss in the cities’ hinterlands and non-metropolitan regions. the spatial variation in the intensity of the change in the cores, however, was much more pronounced. while the changes in the cities of frankfurt, munich, stuttgart, leipzig and berlin were driven by increasing in-migration, it was higher out-migration that triggered population growth in freiburg, heilbronn and münster. the growth of populations in bremen and nuremberg was driven by both factors. the underlying causes of the core’s population growth have been discussed extensively since fi rst signs of this trend became apparent in the late 1980s. in the german case, declining family size, women’s increasing labour force participation, the growing dependence of families on child care facilities, increasing costs of commuting, and new-build residential development may go some way in explaining the growing attractiveness of the core regions as a place to live. this paper has shown, however, that the processes and patterns underlying the renewed urban growth differ substantially between cities, even between those within the same state. in the context of growing urban concentration of population, such spatial variation points to a shift from competition between city cores and their hinterlands to competition between the cities, a trend which in times of globalisation may well extend to the european level. acknowledgements i thank ramon bauer and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. • nikola sander244 references blake, marcus; bell, martin; rees, phil 2000: creating a temporally consistent spatial framework 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and their impact on the choice of residence. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 33: 3-4: 381-408 [doi: 10.1007/s12523-009-0021-6]. date of submission: 07.10.2012 date of acceptance: 25.03.2013 dr. nikola sander (). wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (a collaboration of iiasa, vid/öaw, wu), vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences. vienna, austria. e-mail: nikola.sander@oeaw.ac.at, url: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/staff/staff_nikola_sander.shtml published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth: descriptive findings and interpretations fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth: descriptive findings and interpretations* mathías nathan, ignacio pardo abstract: previous studies have documented an increasing heterogeneity in firstbirth timing in countries experiencing the postponement transition. sobotka (2004), for instance, showed a rising dispersion in age at first birth in developed countries, particularly in the united kingdom and the united states, where the timing polarisation between more and less advantaged women is most evident. however, these studies have included few countries outside europe and north america, and lack a thorough interpretation of the rising dispersion in first births. our aim is to compare the evolution of dispersion in age at first birth in countries in europe, east asia, north america and south america. using data from the human fertility database and the human fertility collection, we describe the evolution of the period mean age at first birth and its variance for 21 countries since 1970. in line with previous studies, our results show a widespread pattern of increasing heterogeneity in age at first birth after the onset of the postponement transition, although with marked differences among regions and countries. the greatest heterogeneity can be found in countries where timing of family formation varies greatly among women with different socioeconomic status. chile and uruguay, in particular, exhibit the highest heterogeneity even though they are at the beginning of the postponement transition. there is no general explanation of why dispersion increased as the mean age at first birth rose. further studies in this area should investigate causes and interpretations of this trend, and develop measures for studying heterogeneity in fertility timing. keywords: fertility · fertility postponement · dispersion in age at first birth · agespecific fertility rates comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 37-60 (date of release: 15.04.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-07en4 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of a data appendix: doi 10.12765/cpos-2019-08en url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/290/278. • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo38 1 introduction the postponement of childbearing has been the central focus of tempo studies in fertility research over the last two decades (balbo et al. 2013). while a large body of research has focused on its driving forces and consequences (beets 2010; billari et al. 2006; kohler et al. 2002; mills et al. 2011; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; sobotka 2004, 2010), the evolution of heterogeneity in age at first birth across countries and regions has rarely been studied. heterogeneity in age at first birth is not only crucial for understanding the evolution of fertility changes but also relevant in itself. dispersion levels show the diffusion of an emerging reproductive norm. for instance, an increasing concentration of first birth in a late age interval evidences widespread late-childbearing behaviours. conversely, a more dispersed schedule of age at first birth shows the coexistence of different types of reproductive behaviours and a merely partial diffusion of the new fertility norm. moreover, even greater heterogeneity in age at first birth possibly suggests high levels of social inequality and stratified life courses among socioeconomic groups (sobotka 2004). the few studies that analysed the dispersion in the age at first birth in the context of fertility postponement, describing its evolution in specific countries or regions, focused almost exclusively on europe and the united states (burkimsher 2015; kohler et al. 2002; philipov 2017; sobotka 2004). in those regions, whereas kohler et al. (2002) had predicted an increasing concentration of childbearing at older ages as a result of the advancement of fertility postponement, other researchers showed that this shift was in fact followed by increasing socioeconomic differences in fertility timing (beets 2010; mclanahan 2004; ravanera/rajulton 2006; rendall et al. 2010; sobotka 2004, 2010). philipov (2017) found that the transition towards a late fertility regime in europe was being coupled with growing heterogeneity in the timing of first births and interpreted this as macro-evidence of the diversification of life courses, in which first births occur over a longer reproductive life span. most studies, however, tend to highlight inequality, such as growing educational disparities among women, as the key factor behind reproductive polarisation, especially in highly unequal countries (united states, united kingdom, latin american countries). in any case, no comprehensive explanation has indisputably coupled the evolution of dispersion in age at first birth with increasing differences in reproductive careers across different socioeconomic groups. it is reasonable to assume that both processes might foster dispersion concurrently, although one of them may have more impact, depending on the regional and national context. our contribution lies in describing different patterns in the evolution of dispersion in age at first birth and in discussing interpretations. more precisely, we describe dispersion in countries going through the postponement transition in eight regions of the world, broadening the scope of the inquiry from previous studies in terms of number of countries and years examined. we aim to compare the evolution of dispersion in european and non-european countries as they move towards a late-fertility regime, identify regional trends and patterns, and discuss theoretifertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 39 cal and methodological implications. we believe that revealing different dispersion patterns may contribute to a more thorough description of the unfolding of fertility postponement in several contexts. 2 postponement transition and heterogeneity in the age schedule of first birth the term “postponement transition” (pt) was introduced by kohler et al. (2002) to describe the widespread and pervasive increase in the period mean age at first birth (mab1) in developed countries since 1970. the period mean age at first birth (mab1) increased between 3 and 5 years in european countries from 1970 to 2005, during a steady decrease of fertility levels (billari et al. 2006; sobotka 2010). researchers have identified a broad set of causes behind this shift towards late childbearing. these include the spread of the contraceptive pill, the increase in women’s educational attainment and participation in the labour market (beets 2010; billari et al. 2006; frejka/sardon 2006; kolher et al. 2002; mills et al. 2011; sobotka 2004, 2010, 2017). according to the literature, the onset of the pt varies across countries and regions. the pt started in the early 1970s in northern europe and most western european countries, while in southern european countries the onset took place in the early 1980s, and during the 1990s in central and eastern european countries, following the collapse of socialist regimes (beets 2010; billari/liefbroer 2010; kohler et al. 2002; philipov 2017; sobotka 2004). outside europe, canada and the united states began experiencing postponement transition in the 1970s (beets 2010; sobotka 2004). in east asian countries, women born in the 1950s and 1960s showed the first signs of a change towards a later entry into motherhood, making the phenomenon noticeable from a period perspective in the 1970s and 1980s (frejka et al. 2010). finally, a set of latin american countries have shown signs of an initial shift towards fertility postponement since 2000, according to rosero-bixby et al. (2009) and esteve et al. (2012). argentina, chile, and particularly uruguay – all countries in south america’s southern cone – seem to be at the forefront of this change (lima et al. 2018; pardo/cabella 2018; also see appendix, table 2). it is useful to note different starting points and paces in the mab1, since its dispersion is usually low before pt, but is expected to increase as the process unfolds. previous studies show the mab1 before the onset of fertility postponement within the 23.5-24.5 years interval for almost every country in northern, western, and southern europe. in the latter case, the average mab1 was slightly higher than in the other regions mentioned. former socialist countries, on the other hand, exhibited a lower mab1 at the start of the pt in comparison to the rest of europe (less than 23 years) (beets 2010; sobotka 2004). after the onset, the pace of postponement also exhibited marked differences among regions. for example, southern european countries experienced a rapid increase of mab1 and this region now displays the highest mab1 in the world (philipov 2017). presently, mab1 continues to rise in most developed countries, although the pace of increase is slowing down (philipov • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo40 2017), fostering debate on whether the pt will reach an end soon (goldstein et al. 2009; sobotka 2004). research carried out in developed countries showed increasing differences in the age at first birth between social groups, particularly in the united kingdom and the united states (mclanahan 2004; ravanera/rajulton 2006; rendall et al. 2010; sobotka 2010). philipov (2017) also showed that heterogeneity increased in european countries some years after the onset of fertility postponement and remained at a high level towards the end of the pt. using the standard deviation of the mean age at first birth (sdmab1) he identified different stages. first, a period when sdmab1 did not increase, followed by a longer trend where sdmab1 did increase continuously and a final stage where sdmab1 stabilised at high levels. increasing dispersion around the mean age may be seen as a combination of period effects affecting young people, processes of “learning of new behaviour” influencing new cohorts and changes in ideas driving diffusion (philipov 2017). comparative studies showed that cross-country and regional differences in the pt are related to a diverse array of determinants, such as institutional and cultural settings, educational composition of the population, or prevailing social norms, among others (sobotka 2010; billari 2004; gustafsson et al. 2002). in particular, the emergence of different fertility patterns in the context of the pt can be construed as the result of a) the specific influence of each determinant of postponement at the country level, and b) the different starting points at the onset of the process (frejka/ sardon 2006). higher educational attainment (via opportunity costs or time constraints due to enrolment), partnership instability and uncertain conditions within the labour market are often-cited factors that foster delayed motherhood at the micro level (ni bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; rindfuss/brauner-otto 2008; gustafsson/ kalwij 2006). intergenerational transmission of timing preferences and prevailing social norms are also mentioned as well-established determinants (de valk/liefbroer 2007; liefbroer/billari 2010). within the field of fertility research, transition theories have relied on both structural changes and diffusion processes to explain the spread of a new reproductive pattern among the population (bongaarts/watkins 1996; kohler et al. 2002; lesthaeghe 2010). from this approach, postponement of childbearing is expected to be initially adopted by women with high socioeconomic status, in response to changing external (social, economic) conditions and incentives. after this initial phase, a “bandwagon effect” comes into play, with social interactions encouraging other members of the population to adopt the new behaviour (goldstein et al. 2009). in this perspective, more disadvantaged women are not entirely “immune” to the overall change in reproductive values, attitudes and behaviour; rather, they should follow the same trend with certain time lag. but to what extent do socioeconomic inequalities limit the spread of long-term changes in fertility among less advantaged groups? evidence has shown growing socioeconomic heterogeneity of fertility patterns in countries with “liberal” welfare regimes, and a more homogeneous impact in those countries with universal provision of childcare services (rendall et al. 2010; sullivan 2005). countries with family-oriented welfare regimes and low institutional fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 41 compatibility between childrearing and employment (e.g. countries in southern europe) also experience increasing heterogeneity (rendall et al. 2010). from a life-course perspective, delaying motherhood is one dimension of the general trend towards delayed transitions to adulthood (billari/liefbroer 2010; furstenberg et al. 2005; billari/wilson 2001). changes in the life course trajectories of young adults in this typically “demographically dense” period (rindfuss 1991) result in more diverse transitions to adulthood. this process in which the social and temporal organisation of the life course become less guided by normative, legal or organisational rules (billari/wilson 2001; elzinga/lifbroer 2007) provides, as a result, a much less clear normative order of events making it more common for people to experience multiple events (e.g. marriages) or combine multiple roles (e.g. worker and student). the age schedule of events of transition to adulthood is as important as its sequence with other events of transition to adulthood (e.g. leaving parental home, finishing school) with both dimensions influencing one another. evidence in a variety of countries has shown that women of different social status undergo different sequences in transition to adulthood. women of lower status not only have a shorter transition to adulthood but also a sequence in which some events are omitted, thus motherhood does not necessarily follow post-secondary graduation, work and marriage/union (ravanera/rajulton 2006). this tendency could favour the bifurcation of the life course (schulze/tyrell 2002), given that in the middle and upper social strata the normative sequence is more frequent and, in that context, the postponement of the entire process “naturally” increases the age to the first child. the differential appropriation of delaying type of behaviour by women of these strata suggests that the influence of ideas is not the only explanation, but that there are costs and restrictions that foster heterogeneity by strata (neels/perelli-harris 2013). in addition, educational expansion could be contributing to said increasing heterogeneity to the extent that in such a context, those left behind progressively move away from the average age to the first child.1 in fact, a growing body of evidence links increasing heterogeneity to differences in work experience duration and the number of years spent in education (nicoletti/ tanturri 2008). in any case, micro-level variables such as educational attainment interact with country-level variables such as institutional arrangements and policy regimes (billari 2004). considering the future evolution of dispersion in age at first birth, a possible convergence in fertility by education might generate expectations about diminishing heterogeneity within countries. however, it is reasonable to believe this trend would be limited to certain regions, at least in the short term. recently, basten et al. (2014) gathered experts who concluded that diminishing education-fertility differentials are expected especially in latin america, middle east and southern europe, but are unlikely in other areas, such as the united sates. 1 this process can also be described by focusing on the educational composition of the population from a cohort perspective (rendall et al. 2010). • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo42 3 data and measures using data from the human fertility database (hfd) and the human fertility collection (hfc),2 we jointly examined the evolution of the period mab1 and sdmab1 from 1970 to 2014.3 we also analysed the share of first birth rates before age 20 and after age 29 and the shape of age-specific fertility schedules (asfr1) in selected years. to discuss the accuracy of the standard deviation as an indicator of heterogeneity in the age at first birth, we also compared the sdmab1 with the coefficient of variation (cv1). the hfd provides reliable fertility data and estimates that can be compared across countries. the hfc, on the other hand, was originally designed as a supplementary dataset to broaden the scope of countries that are covered by the hfd. due to variability in data origins and estimation methods, the hfc data do not meet all the quality standards of the hfd and therefore estimates should be analysed with caution. in this work, we used the hfc for a certain number of countries, not available in the hfd, that we considered relevant to improve our depiction of the specific fertility patterns by region. we selected 21 countries in eight regions: northern europe, western europe, southern europe, central & eastern europe, post-soviet countries, north america, east asia, and south america. compared to recent studies, our research brings a larger number of countries and regions under analysis, thereby expanding our understanding of the unfolding postponement transition. we selected no more than three countries per region, giving priority to those countries with quality data and well covered in the fertility literature. with a few exceptions, all chosen countries have available data sets beginning in 1970 and continuing until at least 2010 (see appendix, table a1). given that countries started the postponement transition at different points in time, we plotted the joint evolution of the mab1 and the sdmab1 without a calendar marker. the model of the pt has been described from a period perspective. changes in the mab1 and sdmab1, however, are the outcome of cohort-driven fertility changes as well as contextual factors associated with period effects. the mean age at first birth is usually measured from a period approach; however, the examination of heterogeneity in the timing of first births has relied equally on period and cohort approaches. we used a period perspective to examine the evolution of mab1 and sdmab1, as we intend to compare aggregate measures for particular years, tracing the course of the pt. a theoretical sketch of this joint evolution can be useful to understand how the mean age and the standard deviation are expected to evolve in each country. we plot the mab1 in the horizontal axis and its standard deviation on the vertical axis, 2 the hfd and the hfc are provided by max planck institute for demographic research (germany) and vienna institute of demography (austria). available at www.humanfertility.org and www.fertilitydata.org (data downloaded on october 2016). 3 both variables were available for most countries, when this was not the case they were computed with data from hfc. fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 43 and assume that t represents the first data point, i.e. the year at the onset of the postponement transition (fig. 1). assuming a linear relation between these two variables, one stylised path shows an increasing mean age while the standard deviation remains constant (blue line). another two paths might be observed, while the mean age increases: i) a linear increase (yellow line) or ii) a linear decrease of the standard deviation (green line). stylised age schedules associated with these paths can also be modelled for two moments in time, assuming a normal distribution of the asfr1. k = constant over time source: own design fig. 1: theoretical paths of the joint evolution of the mean age at first birth and its standard deviation 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 mab1 mab1; sdmab1 mab1; k sdmab1 mab1; sdmab1 sdmab1 t 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 age t t+1 mab1; k sdmab1 mab1; sdmab1 mab1; sdmab1 asfr1 asfr1 asfr1 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 age t t+1 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 age t t+1 • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo44 the peak of the curve moves to the right due to an increase in the mean age at first birth and the shape of the curve varies according to dispersion levels. 4 results 4.1 joint evolution of the mean age at first birth and its standard deviation our results confirm the increasing dispersion of first-birth rates by age as a notable trend throughout the postponement transition. in light of this evidence, the scope of the statement is broadened, since we now know this did not happen exclusively in european countries, as stressed by philipov (2017), or in other developed (sobotka 2004) and non-developed countries (lima et al. 2018; pardo/cabella 2018; nathan et al. 2016) but rather more extensively, as shown in figure 2. overall, marked differences exist among countries and regions regarding level and pace of changes in the mab1 and sdmab1. as also stated by philipov (2017), countries in northern europe show a very similar pattern of steady increase in both the mab1 and sdmab1 (at least after the first years of increase in the mab1), while post-soviet countries exhibit a much more modest increase in the mab1 and do not reach high levels of dispersion. eastern asia countries (japan and taiwan) experienced an important increase of the sdmab1, having begun at very low levels. on the other hand, the dispersion of first birth rates increased in england and wales and the united states, along with a slow pace of postponement. however, the mab1 and sdmab1 did not start to increase at the same time in all cases. in northern, eastern, and southern europe, east asia, and canada, the start of the increase in the sdmab1 lagged behind that of the mab1. our results show this happened once the mab1 reached 26 years of age. those countries fit the model described by philipov (2017), whereby the pt is expected to evolve in 3 phases, as mentioned above: 1) constant dispersion over time, during the first years after the mab1 starts to increase, 2) increasing dispersion later on, and 3) a stabilisation of levels of dispersion at higher levels towards the end of the process. however, our evidence shows that this does not hold for countries where the pt started later (as in eastern european, post-soviet and south american countries). in those countries, the mab1 and its dispersion increased jointly, since the beginning of the transition. they also showed lower base levels of the mab1 (below 24 years) compared to countries where the pt began earlier. the evolution of the mab1 and sdmab1 in the united states also follows the latter pattern, despite having experienced the onset of the pt at the beginning of the 1970s. some of the most relevant conclusions arising from these results are those linked to the stabilisation of sdmab1 at high levels. first, the sdmab1 in early-postponing countries seems to have stabilised at approximately 5-6 years during the later stages of postponement. among developed countries, england and wales, and the united states exhibit the highest heterogeneity in age at first birth, followed by southern european countries. also, central and eastern european countries also fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 45 fig. 2: evolution of the mean age at first birth (mab1) and its standard deviation (sdmab1) in selected countries by region 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 finland norway sweden northern europe 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 austria england&wales the netherlands western europe 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 spain greece portugal southern europe 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 bulgaria czech rep. hungary central & eastern europe 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 belarus russia ukraine post‐soviet countries 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 japan taiwan east asia 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 canada united states north america 3 4 5 6 7 sd m ab 1 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 chile uruguay south america source: own calculations based on data from human fertility database and human fertility collection • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo46 reached high levels of dispersion in their rapid transition to a late-fertility regime. remarkably, uruguay started the postponement transition at the end of the 1990s and has reached the highest level of dispersion to date. moreover, some countries follow unique paths that depart from the general trend. in the netherlands the sdmab1 decreased over the first years of the pt until mab1 reached age 26, after which sdmab1 increased. in spain, sdmab1 was quite high at the onset but remained almost unchanged while the mean age at first birth experienced a sharp increase, from 24 to 29 years. thereafter, standard deviation increased only after 15 years of fertility postponement.4 as this broader picture shows a certain degree of heterogeneity among countries and regions, it calls for a better understanding of the demographic processes that may lie behind an increase in the sdmab1, as different patterns of change in fertility timing may produce a similar result in terms of dispersion. descriptions tend to focus on the decline in adolescent fertility and the simultaneous increase in fertility rates at age 30 and above, assuming that when those two trends do not evolve at the same pace, it is reasonable to expect increasing heterogeneity in period measures. our results show the proportion of first births after age 29 has increased in every country almost without any exception since the onset of their respective pt (fig. 3). greater differences were found between regions and countries when analysing the evolution of the share of first births occurring before age 20. in some regions, the weight of teenage fertility started to decrease almost in parallel with the rise in childbearing at older ages (northern and southern europe). in other regions or countries, such as england and wales or uruguay, the percentage of first births at younger ages remained stable or decreased only slightly and remains quite high, fuelling an increase in dispersion. finally, in other countries (japan, the netherlands) there was little change in the share of first births before age 20, but these countries already possessed low levels of teenage fertility at the onset of the pt. in any case, dispersion is determined not only by changes in both extremes of the age schedule range but also by changes in first birth rates at ages 20 to 29. therefore, a broader picture appears when analysing the evolution of all age-specific fertility rates for first births. 4.2 age-specific fertility patterns figure 4 depicts four different patterns of age schedule for first birth rates (asfr1). firstly, some countries (for example, sweden and the netherlands) exhibit low dispersion levels, both at the onset and at advanced phases of fertility postponement (group a). secondly, there are countries with very low dispersion at the onset of the pt that later experienced large increases in the sdmab1, for instance, ex-socialist countries in eastern europe and, to a lesser extent, east asia (group b). a third 4 this might be the reason why kohler et al. (2002) proposed the “rectangularization” hypothesis, missing the rapid increase in dispersion that took place after 2002 in countries like spain. fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 47 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 finland norway sweden northern europe 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 austria england&wales the netherlands western europe 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 spain greece portugal southern europe 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 bulgaria czech rep. hungary central & eastern europe 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 belarus russia ukraine post‐soviet countries 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 japan taiwan east asia 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 canada united states north america 0 10 20 30 40 %  f br  b ef or e  ag e  20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % fbr after age 29 chile uruguay south america fig. 3: share of first birth rates (fbr) before age 20 and after age 29 in selected countries by region source: own calculations based on data from human fertility database and human fertility collection • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo48 group of countries shows high dispersion levels at the onset and a small increase in the sdmab1 (countries in southern europe; group c). finally, the fourth group of countries reached the highest dispersion levels without having reached an advanced stage of the postponement transition (namely, england and wales, the united states, and south american countries) (group d). in these countries, the relative distribution of the asfr1 does not show a normally distributed curve. instead, it appears to reflect a polarised pattern, consistent with some of the recent literature on these three countries (chandola et al. 2002; lima et al. 2018; nathan et al. 2016; sullivan 2005). polarisation implies widening gaps between subgroups of population, usually with different socioeconomic status, and it tends to take place when less advantaged women show no significant signs of birth postponement, while women who are better positioned in the social structure exhibit a pronounced shift in the timing of entering into motherhood (sobotka 2004). fig. 4: share of asfr1 in selected countries, period 1980-2010 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a s fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 sweden 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a s fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 the netherlands group a group b 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 czech rep. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2009 hungary 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 japan 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 russia fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 49 the emergence of this pattern in south american countries may be made more visible by comparing the pattern of the asfr1 with other countries at similar stages of the pt – i.e. those with the same mab1 (see fig. 5). when countries are compared at the point at which the mab1 equals 23.7 years, uruguay and chile show a slightly more polarised pattern than other countries, whereas by the end of the uruguayan time span (2011), when the mab1 equals 24.7, this pattern becomes much more pronounced. at this point, uruguay resembles the united states – where the mab1 reached 24.7 in 1996 – while differing from the rest of the countries. a similar pattern is observed in chile at its highest mab1 (not shown). fig. 4: continuation 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % as fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 portugal 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % as fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 spain group c group d 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2007 england & wales 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1980 1990 2000 2010 united states 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1992 2005 chile 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % a sf r 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1996 2005 2011 uruguay source: own calculations based on data from human fertility database and human fertility collection • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo50 5 discussion since literature on fertility postponement tends to concentrate solely on the increase in mab1, studies focusing on dispersion in timing at first birth are scarce. still, two hypotheses on the evolution of dispersion emerge from the existing literature. on the one hand, while describing the features of the pt model, kohler et al. (2002) predicted the “rectangularization” of fertility patterns, suggesting that the concentration of age at first birth becomes increasingly narrow once the increase in mab1 approaches its limits. on the other hand, sobotka (2004, 2010) and philipov (2017) found evidence to support the hypothesis of rising heterogeneity in first-birth timing throughout the pt. aiming to contribute to a broadening of the research agenda in the study of the timing of first births, we examined the evolution of the mean age at first birth and its standard deviation since 1970, as well as changes in age schedule of first birth rates across 21 countries from europe, east asia, north and south america. our results support the hypothesis of a rising heterogeneity in age at first birth throughout the pt (sobotka 2004; philipov 2017), and stress the relevance of distinctive regional patterns, which arise in connection to national/regional socio-historical and institutional features. for instance, south american countries, well known for their high levels of social inequality, showed the highest level of dispersion at the onset of fig. 5: share of asfr1, sdmab1, and modal age at first birth for selected countries for the year in which mab1=23.7 and mab1=24.7 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % as fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age norway 1977 eng. & wal. 1975 taiwan 1978 u.s. 1982 chile 2003 uruguay 1996 mab1=23.7 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 % as fr 1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age norway 1984 eng. & wal. 1986 taiwan 1985 u.s. 1996 uruguay 2011 mab1=24.7 country and year sdmab1 mode country and year sdmab1 mode uruguay 1996 5,8 19 uruguay 2011 6,5 18-19 chile 2003 5,7 19 chile united states 1982 5,0 19-20 united states 1996 5,8 19 england & wales 1975 4,7 21-24 england & wales 1986 5,1 24-25 norway 1977 4,3 20 norway 1984 4,4 24-25 taiwan 1978 3,9 23 taiwan 1985 4,0 23 source: own calculations based on data from human fertility database and human fertility collection fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 51 fertility postponement and an extraordinary increase in the sdmab1 over a short period. additionally, we showed that country-specific distribution of age-specific fertility rates of first birth can reveal four basic patterns of dispersion: three are variants of the usual normally distributed pattern, while the remaining group shows greater heterogeneity, which can be associated with social status polarisation, particularly noticeable in the united states and latin american countries. two underlying processes explain the emergence of this pattern: the persistence of high fertility rates at younger ages, often observed in women from lower social strata, and the postponement of first births pioneered by women in middle and upper socioeconomic strata (lima et al. 2018; nathan 2015; pardo/cabella 2018; rendall et al. 2010; sullivan 2005). overall, the debate over the proper interpretation of an increasing dispersion is twofold. on the one hand, an increasing dispersion in age at first birth maintaining a unimodal distribution curve tends to be interpreted within the general framework of increasing heterogeneity in the timing of events in the life course, as an indicator of increasing personal autonomy in the pursuit of self-realisation (billari/liefbroer 2010; macmillan 2005). on the other hand, when an increasing variance is associated with a non-normal distribution pattern (usually reaching the highest levels of sdmab1), it is usually linked to social status polarisation. in latin america, where data on fertility by birth order are limited, there is consensus that the shift towards late childbearing will produce a rapid rise in heterogeneity in first-birth schedules, due to the persistence of high teenage fertility rates (cepal 2012; rodriguez/cavenaghi 2014). it has been shown that chile and uruguay, for example, underwent the first stages of fertility postponement with a lower mab1 and higher standard deviation than those of developed countries. this pattern is also reflected in the emergence of bimodal curves of hazard rates of first birth by age. even though burkimsher (2017) interprets non-normal shapes as a transitional stage in the postponement transition, it is likely that latin american countries are developing a bimodal pattern of their own (lima et al. 2018; nathan et al. 2016; nathan 2015; pardo/cabella 2018). all period trends observed are fostered by a combination of cohort and period factors. bongaarts/sobotka (2012) assume that purely period-driven change should leave variance unchanged, while cohort-driven postponement should lead to a decline. then a stabilised sdmab1, noticeable in many countries of our sample, suggests the prevalence of period factors of change. but how should the increasing dispersion be interpreted in terms of cohort and period factors? philipov (2017) assumes that a mixture of both might be behind the increase of sdmab1, as periodspecific factors persist while changes in ideas influence new cohorts, which “learn” new behaviour as they reach reproductive ages. to make matters more complex, period factors may influence only one stage of the age span. however, when marked socioeconomic disparities are observed, period heterogeneity is expected to be high at the onset of the pt and increase as a result of the widening gaps among younger cohorts entering reproductive ages. • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo52 in light of these results and discussion, three questions may contribute to a more extensive debate and a broader research agenda. first, how should we interpret an increasing sdmab1? data on age-specific first birth rates are crucial to understanding reproductive behaviour, but a more rigorous theoretical perspective is indispensable to interpret data within a broader context of social change and to assign meaning to observed trends and patterns. second, are we measuring dispersion with the appropriate indicator? at first glance, a straightforward and highly available measure such as the sdmab1 seems to be the best option in order to capture dispersion of first births. but when the mean changes, it may be appropriate to measure the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean, i.e. the coefficient of variation of age at first birth (cv1) (see appendix, fig. a1).5 in any case, we favoured the sdmab1 in this study in order to capture absolute instead of relative variation. additionally, should we discard the sdmab1 as dispersion measure when dealing with non-gaussian shaped curves, considering the underlying assumptions of variance and standard deviation? if so, the interquartile range is a suitable alternative, as it is not based on the assumption of a symmetric distribution. sobotka (2004) arrived at similar results using the interquartile range, as did we (not shown). third, how might dispersion of first births evolve as postponement reaches its “limits”? this is not yet possible to ascertain, but so far, a noticeable decrease in the pace of postponement seems to be coupled to the sdmab1 plateauing at high levels. will countries and regions converge around a similar age schedule of first birth rates? acknowledgements an earlier version of this paper was presented in the human fertility database symposium (2016) and the population association of america 2017 annual meeting. we are thankful to two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments and suggestions. 5 data from two countries may help us illustrate this dilemma. in sweden, the sdmab1 has increased over the last 25 years, while the cv1 has remained quite stable (17 to 18 percent); however, in the united states, the sdmab1 has plateaued since 2003, while the cv1 has started to decrease (see appendix, fig. a1). would it be accurate to prefer the cv1 and state that dispersion has remained constant in sweden and fallen in the united states? fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 53 references balbo, nicoletta; billari, francesco c.; mills, melinda 2013: fertility in advanced societies: a review. in: european journal of population 29: 1-38 [doi: 10.1007/s10680-0129277-y]. basten, stuart; sobotka, tomáš; zeman, kryštof 2014: future fertility in low fertility countries. in: lutz, wolfgang; butz, william p.; samir k. c. 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(eds.): family life and family policies in europe, volume 2, problems and issues in comparative perspective. oxford: oxford university press: 69-119. sobotka, tomáš 2017: post-transitional fertility: childbearing postponement and the shift to low and unstable fertility levels. working papers 01. vienna institute of demography: vienna. sobotka, tomáš 2010: shifting parenthood to advanced reproductive ages: trends, causes and consequences. in: tremmel, joerg c. (ed.): a young generation under pressure? berlin/heidelberg: springer-verlag: 129-154 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-034831_7]. sobotka, tomáš 2004: postponement of childbearing and low fertility in europe. amsterdam: dutch university press. sullivan, rachel 2005: the age pattern of first-birth rates among u.s. women: the bimodal 1990s. in: demography 42,2: 259-273 [doi: 10.1353/dem.2005.0018]. date of submission: 09.03.2018 date of acceptance: 12.02.2019 mathías nathan (*), ignacio pardo. universidad de la república uruguay, facultad de ciencias sociales (fcs). montevideo, uruguay. e-mail: mathias.nathan@cienciassociales.edu.uy, ignacio.pardo@cienciassociales.edu.uy url: http://cienciassociales.edu.uy/unidadmultidisciplinaria/nathan-mathias/ url: http://cienciassociales.edu.uy/unidadmultidisciplinaria/pardo-ignacio/ fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 57 appendix tab. a1: list of countries by region, data source, and time span region & country source time span northern europe finland fin hfd 1982-2012 norway nor hfd 1970-2014 sweden swe hfd 1970-2014 western europe austria aut hfd 1984-2014 the netherlands nld hfd 1970-2012 england and wales gbrtenw hfc 1970-2007 southern europe greece grc hfc 1970-2008 portugal prt hfd 1970-2012 spain esp hfd 1975-2014 central & eastern europe bulgaria bgr hfd 1970-2009 czech republic cze hfd 1970-2014 hungary hun hfd 1970-2014 post-soviet countries belarus blr hfd 1970-2014 russia rus hfd 1970-2014 ukraine ukr hfd 1970-2013 east asia japan jpn hfd 1970-2012 taiwan twn hfd 1976-2014 north america canada can hfd 1970-2011 united states usa hfd 1970-2014 south america chile chl hfd 1992-2005 uruguay ury hfc 1978-2011 • mathías nathan, ignacio pardo58 tab. a2: percentage of women aged 25-29 who are childless in latin american countries, 1970-2011 source: esteve et al. (2012), using ipums data files, and authors’ computations for argentina, bolivia, chile and venezuela 2006-2011, using census tabulations from national statistical offices (argentina 2010; bolivia 2012; venezuela 2011) and microdata from the chilean survey encuesta de caracterización socioeconómica nacional (casen 2011). 1970-77 1978-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011 argentina 30.4 32.9 36.9 39.1 bolivia 19.1 19.3 22.9 20.2 brazil 29.5 28.3 29.2 30.8 39.9 chile 15.6 26.1 27.2 31.4 39.7 colombia 27.1 27.2 29.1 29.4 costa rica 22.1 22.2 25.9 36.1 ecuador 18.8 20.6 23.9 23.4 24.8 el salvador 25.6 26.4 mexico 23.2 24.1 27.6 30.2 nicaragua 15.5 14.7 17.5 panama 17.7 21.0 24.5 26.1 28.3 peru 26.3 33.3 puerto rico 23.5 25.2 33.0 uruguay 32.8 32.1 34.4 43.7 venezuela 26.9 27.2 28.2 33.4 fertility postponement and regional patterns of dispersion in age at first birth • 59 fig. a1: evolution of the mean age at first birth and its coefficient of variation by region and country source: own calculations based on data from human fertility database and human fertility collection 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 finland norway sweden northern europe 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 austria england&wales the netherlands western europe 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 spain greece portugal southern europe 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 bulgaria czech rep. hungary central & eastern europe 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 belarus russia ukraine post-soviet countries 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 japan taiwan east asia 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 canada united states north america 0 .1 .2 .3 c oe ffi ci en t o f v ar ia tio n of a ge a t f irs t b irt h 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 mab1 chile uruguay south america published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) _goback geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations from a life course perspective karin wall, sofi a aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes abstract: geographical mobility is a well-established trend in european societies, and social theorists have put forward the hypothesis that mobility patterns have an impact on family trajectories and on their processes of pluralisation and individualisation. using a life course perspective, the main aim of this article is to provide evidence of the impact of geographical mobility on family life in portuguese society. the mobility and family trajectories of three different generations in their early adulthood are analysed, with results pointing to a diversity of trajectories as well as to relevant connections between mobility variables and family trajectories. the article draws on data from a national survey on life trajectories conducted in 2010 on a representative sample of men and women (n=1,500) from three generations (born between 1935 and 1940; 1950 and 1955; and 1970 and 1975; n=500 per generation). based on sequence and cluster analyses, we were able to identify seven patterns of mobility trajectories and four main types of family trajectories across the three generations. these refl ect not only the biographies of individuals within our sample, but also the geographical and family changes that have been taking place in portugal over the past few decades. drawing on multinomial regression analysis, the article seeks to disentangle the complex linkages between mobility and family trajectories. to this end, we adopted a double angle approach by linking these two variables as predictors of each other alongside other key socio-demographic variables and life course events. the main fi ndings reveal that geographical mobility is a signifi cant predictor of family trajectories, even if its effects are dualistic: mobility may work as a facilitator of standardised family trajectories (early transition to parenthood, for example), but it also predicts a higher probability of “non-linear” family trajectories. on the other hand, family trajectories are weak predictors of mobility trajectories. the latter are predicted by variables that refl ect structural constraints, such as unemployment, but gender and generation effects also play an important role and provide evidence that mobility trajectories are anchored in specifi c historic and social contexts. finally, we were also able to link geographical mobility to individualisation processes by examining its impact upon specifi c life course events related to family and gender relations. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 38, 2 (2013): 341-370 (date of release: 20.06.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-11en8 • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes342 keywords: geographical mobility · migration patterns · family trajectories · life course · individualisation 1 introduction recent research and discussion about demographic trends and families in portuguese society has led to a consideration of the crucial role of migration in the processes of modernisation of family dynamics over the last few decades. theorists of modernity and post-modernity establish linkages between the importance of geographical mobility, in particular during the second half of the twentieth century, and the trend towards pluralisation and individualisation in families (e.g. beck 2000). this trend is seen to unfold in various ways. a widely-accepted hypothesis is that the accumulation of resources through migration facilitated marriage and family formation, leading to a marked increase in the marriage rate during the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. wall 2005). however, a second hypothesis is that the opposite effect is also pronounced: migration, in particular male-led emigration or return migration from the former portuguese colonies in africa – which became independent countries after the 1974 democratic revolution – or from europe, may be assumed to have a number of disruptive effects on conjugal life, leading to more and more varied transitions in family life (separation and divorce, lone parenthood, living alone). therefore, a third assumption is that geographical mobility may also lead to individual autonomy, facilitating not only more egalitarian gender roles in the family, in particular the participation of women in the labour market, but also a stronger focus on the postponement of family formation or the transition to parenthood. drawing on a life course approach, the main aim of this article is therefore to provide more systematic research evidence on the impact of geographical mobility – defi ned in this paper as migration1 – on family life. on the basis of a national survey on the life course in portuguese society,2 we sought to describe geographical mobility patterns of three different generations and analyse the interconnections between the latter and individuals’ family trajectories. the article’s main concern is to examine the extent to which geographical mobility is indeed related to individuals’ family lives, to identify the specifi c effects of mobility on family trajectories and to assess whether these effects are the same across social and historical time. 1 geographical mobility includes not only migration but also other forms of mobility, such as commuting or overnighting. see, for instance, limmer and schneider 2008. 2 the “family trajectories and social networks: the life course in an intergenerational perspective” project is funded by the portuguese science foundation and coordinated by karin wall at the institute of social sciences (2008-2011). this article derives from this larger research project on family trajectories and social networks in portugal, the main aims of which are to reconstitute the life trajectories of individuals from different generations through a multidimensional approach to the life course, which combines different spheres and aspects: family life (coresidence, conjugality/partnerships and parenthood), educational and professional trajectories, residential and geographical mobility. geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 343 our particular emphasis on historical time was key to our choice of three specific groups of individuals, each of which experienced major historical changes and social disruptions, even turmoil, across their life courses. therefore, we perceive birth cohorts as generations, which entail a common historical location and also the experience of a common subjectivity (mannheim 1952 [1927]) propelled by the massive societal transformations that occurred in portuguese society (e.g. kertzer 1983). as alwin and mccammon (2003) note, generations and cohorts are concepts often used interchangeably in spite of their different meanings. a distinction should however be made here. both focus on the location of individuals in a given historical time, but by resorting to the idea of “a generation”, we wish to underline not only the strength of history as an external constraint, but importance is also given to the shared biographical experiences that moulded both the potential life courses of individuals and the ways in which they have constructed specifi c and relatively similar worldviews (e.g. eyerman/turner 1998; corsten 1999). although generations are widely discussed and often criticised because of their lack of objectivity, when compared to the concept of cohort, we agree with white (1992), who stresses that cohorts should only be interpreted as generations when they subjectively show suffi cient coherence. in the portuguese case, and in this analysis, our methodological strategy was designed to reconstruct generations by taking into account both structural constraints and signifi cant subjective experiences (e.g. living under an authoritarian regime; experiencing a democratic revolution in 1974; living in conditions of political freedom and economic growth). all in all, by exploring and comparing the life courses of three different historical generations, we expect to convey additional knowledge on the inter-connections between geographical mobility and family life. bearing this in mind, it is necessary to connect family and biographical time to social and historical time (elder 1985, 1994), as well as to examine the main factors infl uencing each generation of individuals (mayer 2004). our methodological strategy therefore implies combining a macro approach (which places life trajectories and transitions in wider generational and social contexts) and a micro approach (centred on the individual), which may allow us to observe the fl ow of diversifi ed biographies in each generation (elder et al. 2003). the article is divided into four parts. the fi rst briefl y describes the main migration fl ows in portuguese society over the last few decades. the second examines the life trajectories of individuals across the three generations included in the study, focusing in particular on patterns of geographical mobility, their intrinsic characteristics, and the main types of family trajectories. the third draws on multinomial logistic regression analyses to examine the connection between individuals’ geographical trajectories and family trajectories. geographical mobility is considered both as an independent variable, which is expected to exert a number of effects upon family life, and as a dependent variable. through this double analytical strategy, we seek not only to test our main hypothesis – e.g. the impact of geographical mobility on family trajectories – but also to identify the factors that lie behind mobility events throughout the life course. in the fourth section, we examine the relationships between geographical mobility and a number of key events related • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes344 to the process of individualisation (ranging from living alone or as a lone parent to having gone through a divorce). this analysis will allow us to explore the effects of geographical mobility upon particular key life course events and stages, which are of paramount importance for testing the hypothesis that geographical mobility has also been a driver of individualisation, even if its role in promoting entry into conjugal and parental life is anticipated in our study. our main goal is thus to assess, from a variety of angles, the extent to which geographical trajectories – which can be of intense mobility or, on the contrary, of immobility across the life course – have had a real impact on family patterns over time and across generations, and also to single out the specifi c effects that may be associated with the dynamics of family life in each generation. 2 geographical mobility and family life in portuguese society: an historical overview since the end of the nineteenth century, geographical mobility has been a major structural process of change in portuguese society, leaving indelible marks both on the lives of all of those who have been through the experience of migration and on the organisation of social and family life. migration is not a recent fact, deriving mainly from contemporary globalisation processes, but rather a phenomenon with a long history, thereby representing one of the key forces of change in portuguese society during the twentieth century (wall 1982; arroteia 1983; rocha-trindade 1984; serrão 1985; peixoto 1999, among others). economic as well as social, religious and political factors have been the main drivers of emigration and the large portuguese diaspora in the fi ve continents. however, the patterns of portuguese migration have gone through important changes over time. in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, portuguese emigrants were mainly part of the intercontinental fl ows that had their roots in the previous century, and which have contributed over time to the development of individualisation processes, as well as transforming traditional societies with familialistic regimes into increasingly conjugalist and individualistic societies, as norbert elias (1993) has noted. brazil, argentina, venezuela, among other south american countries, and the us, alongside canada, were the most important destination countries for migration. the poor living conditions and the lack of opportunities for job mobility led thousands of people to look for a better life abroad, a tendency that increased strongly after the second world war and particularly in the 1960s, when a three-front colonial war exhausted the already scarce resources of the impoverished rural areas of the country. countering the earlier transcontinental fl ows of emigrants, the migration patterns of the second half of the twentieth century developed along three main lines: emigration, internal migration and immigration. emigration being the fi rst signifi cant trend, offi cial statistics show that around 1.5 million individuals left portugal between 1958 and 1974. some went to the portuguese african colonies (particularly after 1961, paradoxically the year when the national liberation wars against portuguese rule began in those territories), but most of them emigrated within europe, geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 345 mainly to france but also to germany and luxembourg. emigration declined gradually during the 1970s, due not only to the economic crisis of 1973 but also to the political changes in portugal, namely the 1974 military coup that overthrew the dictatorial political regime of the estado novo, which lasted for nearly fi fty years. in the 1980s and 1990s, individuals continued to head for a number of european countries, particularly switzerland, germany and luxembourg (silva 1992; marques 2008). a second major trend was internal migration, mainly from rural areas to the cities. until the 1950s, most of the portuguese population was in the primary sector, but new job opportunities started to be available in the industrial sector during the 1960s and 1970s. entire families moved to the rapidly-developing urban areas in search of a better standard of living. this represented a movement from the rural hinterland to the coastal and increasingly urbanised areas and cities, a geographical pattern of mobility that is refl ected in the country’s regional outline. the exodus from rural society was one of the most signifi cant processes of change in portuguese society, and its impact on family life follows closely the patterns that shorter (1995) has described so well in his the making of the modern family. immigration has been a third major trend. however, compared to its long emigration history, portugal has only recently become a country of immigration. the most important phenomenon after 1974 was the return of the colonial settlers in africa (pires et al. 1987). with decolonisation, nearly half a million people arrived in portugal and had to be integrated into a new, but still frail, democratic society. in the 1980s, some of those who had worked for several years in france or other european countries also came home, normally after retiring from active work. and lastly, from the mid-eighties onwards, portugal began to see an increasing and diversifi ed fl ow of immigrant workers, fi rst from brazil, and then from other sending countries in the late 1990s (ukraine, moldavia, russia, romania, china, pakistan and india) (pires 2002; baganha et al. 2004). these major migration fl ows were permeated by different gender dynamics and family strategies. the early intercontinental fl ows were mainly a case of family mobility, with both members of the couple and their offspring leaving the country together to the americas or to the portuguese former colonies. most families left portugal with a lifelong project. in this sense, for quite a few of the “returnees”, the return from africa represented a major disruptive turning point in their lives, leading them to a forced reorganisation of family and work. the same long-term familybased rationale can be applied to the thousands who migrated from rural to urban areas. on the other hand, the typical male breadwinner emigration, where the man leaves his family behind, has been linked to intra-european geographical mobility. nonetheless, family reunion became more common from the mid-1960s onwards (arroteia 2001). this trend is well expressed not only in the increase in the number of female emigrants – 40,0 percent in 1966; 40.8 percent in 1967 and 53.5 percent in 1968 – but also in the age structure of those who left the country. at this time, a signifi cant proportion of the emigrant population was made up of children below the age of 14. in spite of a certain predominance of the male adult and a low-qualifi ed model of emigration, family reunion became increasingly important. in spite of its importance in the restructuring of social stratifi cation and family patterns, portuguese migration still lacks a more extensive analysis, particularly • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes346 regarding the impact of migration on family life. moreover, a model that integrates a life course perspective is still a task to be undertaken and a theoretical problem to be tackled in the empirical study of portuguese society (e.g. kulu/milewski 2007; european foundation for the improvement of living and working conditions 2005; green/canny 2003; geist/mcmanus 2008). little is known about the interconnections between migration fl ows and the organisation of family life, even though there are a number of studies that point to the existence of different migration patterns. 3 data and methods data for analysis of geographical and family trajectories is taken from a national survey conducted in 2010 and based on a representative sample of men and women (n=1,500) belonging to three different generations (born between 1935 and 1940; 1950 and 1955; and 1970 and 1975; n=500 per generation). the sample corresponds to a stratifi ed probability sample of portuguese men and women residing in the country (response rate equals 60 percent and overall sampling error corresponds to ± 2.5 percent; α = 0.05). foreigners and individuals with mental or physical disabilities were deemed to be ineligible. interviews were conducted by a group of trained interviewers in the respondents’ households following the papi method. our three-generation sample was built in accordance with key principles of the life course theory, as defi ned by elder (1994). from this perspective, we consider that individuals can become active agents of their own life course. individuals’ biographies are simultaneously defi ned by the context in which they live, and by the ways in which they are able to shape and act upon the different external constraints and opportunities available to them in a given historical context. therefore, the life course approach allowed us to take into consideration both macro and micro variables in the analysis of individuals’ geographical mobility and family trajectories across generations. furthermore, in accordance with recent developments in life course analysis (abbott 2001; sapin et al. 2007), we have adopted an inductive methodological strategy that allows monitoring the sequence of events that are a constituent of each individual’s biography rather than deriving all the possible range and variety of life courses from the historical environment in which individuals lived and were socialised. however, we still grant a key role to historical processes insofar as macro-social changes set the constraints suffered by, and also the opportunities available to, each generation of individuals. in line with this view, our three-generation sample refl ects major historical processes that took place in portuguese society and have marked men’s and women’s biographies. the fi rst group of individuals represents a generation born before world war ii and raised in the heyday of salazar’s right-wing authoritarian and colonialist regime of the estado novo (1926-1974). the second generation is the postwar generation, which entered adult life in the late 1960s, during the fi nal period of the authoritarian regime. this middle generation lived through the troubled times of the transition to democracy, also undergoing the impact of the major changes that occurred in economic, social, political and cultural structures. finally, the third geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 347 generation represents an age group that entered adult life in the post-eu-accession period. the beginning of the 1990s was a time of stabilisation and consolidation in terms of the massive social changes that had shaken portuguese society in earlier decades. the analysis of geographical and family trajectories across and within generations implied three important methodological procedures: first, with regard to intergenerational comparison, our analysis of both geographical and family trajectories across the three generations considers individuals’ life courses from age 18 to age 35. this procedure was necessary in order to compare the generations over a similar life period (longitudinally), that is early adulthood. on the other hand, it should be noted that we are simultaneously dealing with biographical events (for instance, the number of times a given individual moved from one geographical location to another in this age period) and with generational differences across historical time. closely following key tenets of life course theory, these two angles of analysis should be taken into account in the interpretation of the results of our study. secondly, in order to reconstitute geographical mobility trajectories, we took into account a number of biographical variables (for instance, the occurrence of migration, the number of migration movements, the timing of mobility) and identifi ed the geographical locations in which each individual resided every single year between the ages of 18 and 35. moreover, it should be mentioned that to capture geographical trajectories, we focused on “residential” mobility and took as an elementary variable the place of residence (the “municipality” of residence in portugal or, if abroad, the country of residence). locations were therefore classifi ed in accordance with a number of combined criteria: the “number of inhabitants” in each municipality, proximity/distance from the coast, urbanisation density and country.3 nine categories were used: rural inland, rural coast, urban inland, urban coast, suburban, major cities, colonies, europe and rest of the world. all the individuals in the sample were included in this analysis, whether they experienced geographical mobility or not. as a result, this procedure allowed us to observe geographical trajectories from different angles: the mobility or immobility of individuals throughout the biographical period of early adulthood and the changes from generation to generation. we were able to capture the internal exodus from rural regions to densely-populated urban areas as well as the emigration fl ows to and from european countries, non-european countries and the former portuguese colonies. however, it should be noted that our methodological option revealed geographical trajectories at the intersection of two different criteria: the mobility or immobility of 3 the national statistical institute nomenclature of units for territorial statistics (nuts3) was used to classify each location in terms of inland vs. coastal. all locations situated in a nuts bordering or less than 20 km from the coast, were labelled coastal, others being inland. regarding urbanisation density, the cities of lisbon and porto were classifi ed as major cities; locations in the metropolitan areas of larger cities were classifi ed as suburbs; cities outside metropolitan areas of larger cities were classifi ed as urban; other locations in portugal were classifi ed as rural; the remaining locations are self-explanatory. • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes348 individuals, thereby drawing a distinction between those who “stayed” and those who “moved”, and the geography of residence in contrasting social environments (such as rural versus urban). thirdly, family trajectories were reconstituted by analysing household living arrangements. as above, data were organised sequentially by considering, for each individual, all the changes in living arrangements from ages 18 to 35. fourteen possible confi gurations where chosen, namely: living with one parent; living with both parents (with or without siblings); living only with siblings; living with other kin; living with parents and other kin; living only with non-kin; living with parents and step-parents; living as a couple; living as a couple with children; living as a couple with children and others; living as a couple and with others; living as a lone parent; living as a lone parent with others; and living alone. our analytical strategy followed a three-step pathway: firstly, we identifi ed two types of life trajectories for the three generations: family and mobility trajectories. the optimal matching method (e.g. gauthier et al. 2009) was the main statistical tool used in this fi rst procedure. data on trajectories was therefore analysed using the traminer package for sequence analysis in r software (gabadinho et al. 2008; ritschard et al. 2008). in accordance with this method, each trajectory was sorted and analysed as a whole in order to characterise its evolution in each generation. following this procedure, mobility and family trajectories were clustered using an agglomerative clustering algorithm (ward’s method). since our purpose was to identify the common types of trajectories, the clustering procedure was carried out for the whole sample. the types of trajectories will be described in the section below. a second key analytical step focused on the complex interconnections between geographical and family trajectories. multinomial regression4 procedures enabled us to measure the impact of different patterns of mobility on family life. although we consider this as our key hypothesis, we also used an additional multinomial regression to test the inverse statistical connection in order to fi nd out to what degree family life, among other factors, could also exert an infl uence on mobility trajectories. this procedure allowed us to identify the main factors that predict the likelihood of having a particular type of mobility trajectory. through this approach, we took into account the timing of events and their sequential order over the life course: that is to say, family dynamics may be drivers of mobility at earlier stages of the life course while also being affected by geographical mobility later on. to sum up, we analysed the impact of geographical mobility on the family, but also set out to portray the inverse connection, that is the ways in which certain family and work events may function as drivers for mobility in the three contrasting generations. 4 the multinomial logistic regression model is a generalisation of the binary logistic regression model. the dependent variable in this model corresponds to a nominal variable with three or more categories. the results are interpreted by taking into consideration a reference category of the dependent variable, which can be previously defi ned in the model (menard 2002). geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 349 we included a number of key variables in our regression models. alongside the types of geographical and family trajectories, we measured the predictive infl uence exerted by generational and gender coordinates, the impact of schooling careers and, most importantly, the effect of certain events and life stages linked to employment trajectories. the number of years of unemployment was also included in the regression models due to the paramount importance often attributed to unemployment as a key trigger of emigration (e.g. massey 1988). finally, in a last step, the aim was to record the effects of mobility trajectories on individualisation processes by taking into consideration a few specifi c life course events and experiences, such as living alone, childlessness, divorce or lone parenthood. the analysis of these biographical events was important in order to examine, in another light and from a different methodological perspective, the hypothesis that links geographical mobility to individualisation processes in family life. 4 results 4.1 geographical mobility and family trajectories the cluster analysis that resulted from the optimal matching procedures enabled us to identify, for the three generations in our sample, seven clusters of geographical mobility among young adults aged between 18 and 35 (see fig. 1 and table 1). these seven types of geographical trajectories reveal the location of residence of different individuals as well as the intensity of mobility5 that defi nes the trajectories clustered in each of the seven types. as a result, we measured two crucial processes that cut across generations by both analysing the mobility of people in their biographies and putting forward key changes in the geographical organisation of portugal over the past few decades. the fi rst cluster revealed by the analysis, namely the suburban type, includes mainly individuals who found themselves in the outskirts of lisbon and porto – the two major portuguese cities – during their early adulthood. these individuals (in total 22 percent of the sample) may either always have lived in suburban areas around lisbon or porto or migrated from the city to its outskirts at some point in their lives. although this cluster has a high proportion in the younger generation, the biographical movement of migration from the “big cities” to the surrounding suburban areas is more visible among individuals from the older generation. on average, older individuals lived nearly 3 years in the city and 13 years in the suburbs. in the middle and younger generations, the average period of residence in the city decreases (to less than 2 years), with individuals having spent most of their young adulthood in suburban areas. however, in spite of the generational differences that cut across this pattern (which increased considerably in the middle and younger generations, with 5 5.2 percent of individuals experienced mobility between ages 18 and 35. this means that 64.8 percent of individuals in our sample did not experience mobility in this period of their lives. • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes350 fig. 1: trajectories of geographical mobility (under 19 to under 36 years), by cluster* major cities (12.9)freq. (n=193) rural coast (6.7)freq. (n=101) colonies, europe, and beyond (5.5)freq. (n=84) suburban (22.0)freq. (n=330) urban inland urban coast suburban rural inland rural coast rest of world major cities former colonies europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 urban inland (17.0)freq. (n=253) 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 351 * participants were asked for their place of residence between ages 18 and 35. the original categories are: europe, former colonies, major cities, rest of the world, rural coast, rural inland, suburban, urban coast and urban inland. the clustering resulted in 7 major trajectories. source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 rural inland (10.5)freq. (n=157) freq. (n=382) urban inland urban coast suburban rural inland rural coast rest of world major cities former colonies europe urban coast (25.5) 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 continuation fi g. 1 tab. 1: clusters of geographical mobility by generation and gender (%) total generation generation generation 1935-1940 1950-1955 1970-1975 cluster m f total m f total m f total m f total suburban 21.5 22.4 22.0 17.5 18.3 17.9 23.1 23.5 23.4 23.3 24.5 24.1 major cities 9.5 15.1 12.9 15.8 19.8 18.2 10.4 16.3 13.9 2.9 10.3 7.5 rural inland 9.5 11.1 10.5 12.0 16.7 14.8 9.9 10.5 10.2 6.8 7.3 7.1 rural coast 7.8 6.0 6.7 9.8 8.0 8.7 9.9 5.2 7.1 3.9 5.2 4.7 urban inland 18.3 16.1 17.0 13.7 16.7 15.5 15.6 14.4 14.9 25.2 17.3 20.3 urban coast 26.8 24.6 25.5 23.0 17.1 19.5 23.6 24.2 23.9 33.5 30.9 31.9 colonies, europe and beyond 6.7 4.7 5.5 8.2 3.4 5.4 7.5 5.9 6.6 4.4 4.5 4.5 total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 chi2 (6) = 16.01, p < 0.05; cramer’s v = 0.10 chi2 (6) = n.s. chi2 (6) = n.s. chi2 (6) = 14.08, p < 0.001; cramer’s v = 0.16 inter-generational comparison: chi2 (12) = 70.25, p < 0.001; cramer’s v = 0.15 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes352 nearly a quarter of the individuals residing in the suburbs of lisbon and porto), a slow but steady movement into the suburbs started in the older generation. coming from rural areas to major cities, some of the older people in our sample had moved to the outskirts of the city at some point in their young adulthood, initiating a trend that gained pace over the succeeding decades and generations. the increase of this pattern in the middle generation can be easily related, in the portuguese case, with the golden period of migration to the industrial belts that surrounded lisbon and porto, which took place from the late 1960s onwards. in the younger generation, the lower housing costs in the suburbs have perhaps led many to stay or move to suburban areas. this pattern is heavily infl uenced by generation effects, which reveal key trends of geographical reorganisation over the last few decades, in particular the emptying of larger cities and the corresponding transfer of people into the suburbs. all in all, nearly 40 percent of the individuals in this cluster have changed their place of residence at least once between the ages of 18 and 35. the second cluster covers individuals who lived in the two major portuguese cities (lisbon and porto) for most of their early adulthood. in the middle and younger generation, this period amounts, on average, to 16 years of residence in the city between the ages of 18 and 35. a slightly different pattern characterises the older generation. among older individuals (who lived, on average, 14 years in the city), this pattern comprises a greater proportion of people migrating after age 18 from the rural areas of the country and also from smaller cities along the coast. in fact, 57 percent of these individuals have had at least one episode of geographical mobility in their early adulthood, whereas a similar pattern includes only 27 percent of men and women in the younger generation. the major cities were, after all, a key internal migration destination for those who left rural areas, particularly in the older generation. indeed, while 18 percent of individuals in the older generation lived in major cities, this percentage falls dramatically in the younger generation to only 7.5 percent of the interviewees in our sample. on the other hand, there are two clusters of geographical mobility comprising individuals who spent their early adulthood in rural areas: the rural coast and the rural inland. both patterns reveal a very low degree of geographical mobility, with individuals spending most of their lives, between the ages of 18 and 35, in the same residential areas (on average 16 years for all three generations). however, even if we can consider these types as rather immobile when we look at the biographies of individuals, an inter-generational comparison reveals a very different scenario. from this latter perspective, both types show a strong decrease, even if the pace of change is slightly different for each type. while the rural coast cluster has been shown to decrease particularly in the younger generation, the rural inland cluster clearly fell from the older to the middle generation, thus revealing the speed of the rural exodus that took place in portuguese society from the 1960s onwards. our analysis revealed two other patterns which include individuals living in urban areas, or more accurately, in smaller cities, whether these urban conglomerations are located along the coast – the urban coast cluster – or inland – the urban inland cluster. the latter is clearly more mobile (with individuals living on average 15 years in inland urban areas), particularly in the older and middle generations, geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 353 when many individuals moved from inland rural areas to more urban environments. in fact, nearly 40 percent of these individuals have experienced at least one episode of geographical mobility in their early adulthood. but, most importantly, it is across generations that we see the clear-cut trends that make both these clusters very different from the former two. while the rural patterns have decreased considerably, the urban types are, by contrast, more signifi cant among the younger generation. as before, however, the generational comparison does show different growth trends for each pattern. the urban coast cluster − which corresponds to mediumsized towns located along the coastal strip, particularly in areas north of lisbon and in the algarve – has steadily increased across the generations (from 19.5 percent in the older generation to 23.9 percent in the middle generation, and fi nally to 31.9 percent in the younger generation). in terms of moves from one location to another, this is also the less mobile pattern, with only 24.3 percent of individuals undergoing an episode of geographical mobility. following a different trend, the inland urban cluster slightly decreases from the older to the middle generation and then displays signifi cant growth in the younger generation. in short, while the concentration of people in towns located along the urban coastal area refl ects the enduring urbanisation of the coastal regions (littoralisation), the movement to inland cities can be seen as a more recent phenomenon in portuguese society (ferrão 2002). the last cluster, which we named former colonies, europe and beyond, covers the group of individuals who have emigrated, leaving or entering portugal at least once in their early adulthood. whether heading for or returning from the former portuguese colonies in africa, europe or other continents, 82 percent of the individuals in this cluster have a biographical profi le of geographical mobility. overall, this pattern represents 5.5 percent of the respondents in the three-generation sample. from a generational perspective, this emigration pattern increases in the middle generation (6.6 percent) and drops to a lower percentage (4.5 percent) in the younger generation. however, an analysis that takes gender differences within each generation into account enables us to stress the importance of male migration when describing this pattern. if we analyse male emigration on its own, the generational fl ow is slightly different. the percentage of men who emigrated is higher in the older generation (those born between 1935 and 1940) than in the middle generation (8.2 and 7.5 percent, respectively). the trend is quite different in the case of women, (see table 1). the destination countries also differ from generation to generation. in the older generation, individuals (and men particularly) emigrated to the former portuguese colonies from age 18 to age 35 (they lived in africa for an average of about 7.5 years). emigration to europe is much more pronounced in the middle generation (those born between 1950 and 1955): individuals in this generation lived in a foreign european country for about 9.5 years. the most common movement in the younger generation is that of return to portugal, whether coming from the former colonies or from europe. in many cases, these men and women move to suburban areas of lisbon and porto (where they live for an average of about 3 years). altogether, a generational reading of this pattern is needed to further our understanding of portuguese emigration fl ows: mainly to africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s and then • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes354 to europe, a migration trend that lasted until the 1980s and, as expected, has been a marker of the middle generation’s geographical life course. all in all, a generational comparison of these seven clusters shows that in the older generation there was greater movement from rural areas to urban locations or even to africa and europe. in this generation, 42 percent of the individuals have experienced at least one episode of geographical mobility, which is a higher percentage than those of the other two generations. the percentage of mobile individuals is also high in the middle generation (40 percent), whereas the decrease is quite marked in the younger generation, with only 29 percent of individuals experiencing geographical mobility (data not shown). we may thus characterise the older generation according to the strength of the rural exodus which most men and women experienced when seeking a better life in the urban areas of the country. the middle generation, as mentioned above, is characterised by a higher rate of geographical mobility in the case of men, a higher percentage of whom emigrated mainly to europe. although a few individuals in this generation returned from the portuguese colonies after the 1974 revolution, european emigration and the continuous exodus from rural areas to urban locations is paramount for those born between 1950 and 1955. it is well known that these migration processes contributed to the concentration of the portuguese population in coastal and urban areas. as a result, and as anticipated, the younger generation, raised far from the already desertifi ed rural inland, is considerably less mobile. even so, the younger generation is marked by a major geographical movement, suburbanisation, which increases noticeably, thus reinforcing a trend already visible in the middle generation. family trajectories, the second key variable in our analysis, were clustered into four main types (see fig. 2 and table 2). a predominant family trajectory (early parental, 45.1 percent in total) is linked to the prevalence of the nuclear family, through an early transition to conjugality and a very short interval between the beginning of a partnership and the arrival of the fi rst child. in the older generation, individuals entered conjugal life at age 22 on average, in the middle generation at age 21.6 and in the younger generation at age 21. the fi rst child was also born a year later on average. there is practically no childlessness in this cluster, and the same can be said of divorce or living as a single parent. this biographical pattern is quite similar for the three generations. the early parental trajectory is nonetheless subject to generational effects. while this cluster included half of the individuals in the older generation (49.8 percent) and was even more predominant in the middle generation (53.3 percent), it decreases considerably in the younger generation, with only onethird of individuals matching this type. gender differences are pronounced across the three generations: more women than men follow an early parental trajectory. in a second family trajectory, the extended parental, there is also very early entry into conjugal and parental life, following a pattern quite similar to the one described above. in each generation, the timings of the beginning of the conjugal and parental life stages are the same, with all couples having at least one child. the main difference is that rather than matching a nuclear family pattern, this cluster describes a couple which is part of an extended living arrangement, in which others (mostly kin) are also found. however, if we combine the two clusters together, since they geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 355 fig. 2: family trajectories (under 19 to under 36 years), by cluster delayed parental (26.2)freq. (n=393) extended parental (7.3)freq. (n=110) non linear (21.4)freq. (n=321) early parental (45.1)freq. (n=676) alone alone with children alone with children and others couple couple with children couple with children and others couple with others with 1 parent with 2 parents with non relatives with other family with parents and other family with step parents with siblings na 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 0 20 40 60 80 100 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30 a31 a32 a33 a34 a35 a36 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes356 both involve an early start to the conjugal and parental stages of the life course, early parental patterns become even more signifi cant. in the middle generation, the sum of these two family trajectories reveals that 64 percent of couples were able to start and raise a family at a very early age, whether living in a nuclear or extended family arrangement. most likely, the historic opportunities generated by the expansion of industry and the economic development that marked the 1960s in portugal, alongside migration as a catalyst for access to fi nancial resources, allowed people to adopt a more standardised pattern of family life. in this generation, only one-third of individuals failed to follow this type of trajectory. the contrast with the younger generation is clear-cut: in this later generation, more than 60 percent of the individuals did not experience the early parental trajectory. in the third cluster (delayed parental), which is still characterised by the predominance of the nuclear family, there are some signifi cant differences. on the one hand, couple formation occurs later in life. couples in all three generations start living together at around age 26 on average. on the other hand, the gap between the start of the partnership and the arrival of the fi rst child is longer. once again, in all three generations parenthood occurs, on average, at around age 28, and in many cases even later. couples wait longer to have children. this pattern represented close to one in every four cases in the older generation, amounting to only 21 percent in the middle generation. in the younger generation, the delayed parental trajectory covers 32.3 percent of individuals, although gender differences are also a durable trend which has to be taken into account. in the younger generation, 42.2 percent of men follow a delayed parental trajectory, as against only 26.1 percent of women. our fourth and fi nal family trajectory covers 21.4 percent of individuals from all three generations in the sample. it corresponds to what we have labelled non-linear trajectories, and clusters together a greater diversity of family trajectories. if we take all three generations into account, we fi nd a clear breakdown in this pattern: half the individuals (and nearly 55 percent in the younger generation) did not have children between the ages of 18 and 35. we are therefore describing a large group tab. 2: clusters of family trajectories by generation and gender (in %) total generation generation generation 1935-1940 1950-1955 1970-1975 cluster m f total m f total m f total m f total early parental 36.1 51.1 45.1 42.6 54.8 49.8 42.0 61.1 53.3 24.3 38.8 33.2 extended parental 5.8 8.3 7.3 6.0 7.6 7.0 9.0 11.8 10.6 2.4 5.8 4.5 delayed parental 35.4 20.0 26.2 33.9 18.6 24.9 30.2 14.7 21.0 42.2 26.1 32.3 non-linear 22.6 20.6 21.4 17.5 19.0 18.4 18.9 12.4 15.1 31.1 29.4 30.0 total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 chi2 (3) = 54.37, p < 0.01; cramer’s v = 0.19 chi2 (3) = 13.80, p < 0.01; cramer s v = 0.18 chi2 (3) = 27.25, p < 0.001; cramer s v = 0.23 chi2 (3) = 21.59, p < 0.001; cramer’s v = 0.20 inter-generational comparison: chi2 (6) = 83.77; p < 0.001, cramer’s v = 0.17 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 357 of people who are childless. and even if most of these individuals have experienced a conjugal partnership, the percentage of those who stayed single is much higher than in other family trajectories: 14 percent for the older and the middle generations and 25 percent for the younger generation. between the ages of 18 and 35, a signifi cant percentage of the individuals in this pattern have also lived alone at a certain point in their lives: 22 percent in the older generation, 33 percent in the middle generation, and 52 percent in the younger generation. separation and divorce are also more common events, ranging from 13 percent in the older generation to 20 percent in the middle and 32 percent in the younger generation. taken together, though the majority of these individuals have embarked on conjugal life, they have remained childless in many cases and have followed less stable trajectories, frequently living alone, divorcing, or living in single parent families. as anticipated, this pattern is more signifi cant among the younger generation (30 percent). the middle generation, where we found a higher degree of conjugal and parental standardisation, has the lowest percentage of non-linear trajectories (15.1 percent). in the older generation, this percentage was slightly higher (18.4 percent). a few important conclusions can be drawn from our data. from a generational perspective, we can clearly associate a higher degree of standardisation with the middle generation, which formed family trajectories in accordance with an early parental model. interestingly, this pattern is somewhat less marked in the older generation. however, the major changes appear clearly in the younger generation, which is evidently more susceptible to non-linear as well as delayed parental family trajectories. 4.2 linking geographical mobility and family trajectories our second key goal, as described earlier, was to explore the connections between geographical mobility and family trajectories. in order to link the two trajectories, we used multinomial logistic regression models. as explained above, and aiming to measure the complex connections between migration and family life, we carried out two regression analyses, giving geographical mobility a role as both a dependent and an independent variable in our regression models. through the operationalisation of such an analytical strategy, we were able not only to examine the impact of geographical mobility on family trajectories – our main hypothesis − but also to pinpoint the causes, in individuals’ biographies and across generations, that may have led some individuals to migrate, whether heading to portuguese urban areas or to other countries, while others stayed where they were. in this line of reasoning, even though we were expecting geographical trajectories to have a stronger impact on family life, we started out by testing a regression model in which geographical trajectories are considered as dependent variables. the analysis was carried out for the whole sample and alongside key socio-demographic variables, such as generation, gender and the number of years spent at school. we also took into account other biographical factors, in particular the number of years of unemployment as well as the age of entry into the labour market. with respect to mobility, we included the number of changes in the places of resi• karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes358 dence, so as to grasp to what extent the likelihood of being mobile and following a certain type of geographical trajectory in early adulthood may be related to experiences of mobility before the age of 18. our goal was to observe the potential impact of family trajectories on geographical mobility, and for that purpose we included the types of trajectory revealed by sequence analysis and also the overall number of changes in living arrangements from the ages of 18 to 35. by operating with this regression model, we were able to isolate the impact of family on mobility without disregarding other key predictive factors (see table 3). one important conclusion must be immediately noted. our fi ndings show that, across generations, unemployment is a highly-relevant predictor of geographical trajectories. the rural exodus to major cities and their outskirts, which was signifi cant for the older and middle generations’ trajectories, can with a degree of certainty be associated with prolonged unemployment, and therefore with the lack of opportunities to build a better life. interestingly, those who spent longer at school are more often able to migrate to urban areas and to other countries. when compared to individuals who spent their early adulthood in inland rural areas (our category for comparison), we can clearly see that those who were more likely to migrate already tab. 3: predictors of geographical mobility trajectories – multinomial logistic regression (odds ratios) suburbana major citiesa rural coasta colonies, europe and beyonda urban inlanda urban coasta generation 1935-1940b 1.351 6.022*** 1.211 0.302* 1.070 0.551* generation 1950-1955b 1.642 4.226*** 1.409 0.626 1.172 0.891 genderc 1.316 0.617* 1.650 1.565 1.090 1.569* schooling years 1.180*** 1.261*** 1.110 1.121* 1.196*** 1.131** age of entry into the labour market 1.067* 1.023 0.974 1.015 0.999 1.029 years unemployed 1.592* 1.613** 1.694** 1.451* 1.389 1.409 geographical movements before the age of 18 1.417 1.445 0.944 1.304 1.291 0.850 number of changes in family living arrangements 0.990 0.949 1.031 1.154*** 0.980 1.086** family trajectory: non lineard 1.051 2.322 0.942 1.582 1.070 1.076 family trajectory: delayed parentald 0.789 0.871 0.881 0.524 1.172 0.827 family trajectory: early parentald 1.350 1.769 1.981 1.478 1.070 1.233 nagelkerke = 0.214 a the reference category for comparison is “rural inland”. b the reference category for comparison is “1970-1975 generation”. c the reference category for comparison is “female”. d the reference category for comparison is “extended parental”. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 359 had higher educational qualifi cations. in short, the most relevant fact for all three generations is that while geographical trajectories are strongly predicted by unemployment and lack of fi nancial resources, family life is a very poor predictor of these different types of mobility. all in all, migration and geographical trajectories were the product of structural constraints – the lack of job opportunities and the impoverishment of rural areas impelled individuals to migrate – that affected individuals in each generation. in addition, the results also suggest that patterns of geographical mobility, particularly the movement of those heading towards the major cities in the older and middle generations, can be predicted by generational and gender coordinates, which leads us to conclude that mobility trajectories were well rooted in specifi c historical contexts. as expected, certain mobility trajectories are less closely associated with the younger generation in overall terms, thus pointing to the close connection between biographies and history. our second multinomial regression model, which defi nes family trajectories as the dependent variable, reveals very different fi ndings and confi rms the impact of geographical mobility on family dynamics in early adulthood (see table 4). even if generations are strong predictors of family trajectories, namely because the middle generation is very closely associated with the early parental trajectory, mobility variables are extremely important when it comes to explaining the diversity of family trajectories. first, it is relevant to stress that both the age at which individuals experienced their fi rst episode of geographical mobility and the total number of movements (or episodes of mobility) after the age of 18 appear as strong predictors of family trajectories. when compared to those with a delayed parental trajectory, individuals with other family trajectories (whether early parental or non-linear) are more likely to have experienced a geographical mobility event at an early age. this result is extremely important because it enables us to grasp the complex effects of mobility on family dynamics. if migration experienced at a young age tends to increase the likelihood of having an early parental trajectory, it also operates as a predictor for non-linear trajectories (see section 4.1). similar effects are shown by the predictive strength of the number of mobility events in early adulthood: the more an individual is mobile, the more he or she is likely to have had either an early parental or a non-linear trajectory. in short, the impact of mobility (of its timing and intensity across the life course) seems to be somewhat dualistic, insofar as it tends to promote very different family trajectories. while in some cases mobility works as a facilitator for standardised family trajectories, which reached a peak in the middle generation, in other cases it also predicts a higher probability of falling into a non-linear trajectory. even if we know that this type is amplifi ed in the younger generation, a similar statistical connection can be applied to all the generations in our study. finally, there is one other very interesting result, which once again confi rms the impact of geographical trajectories upon family life. the early parental type is strongly predicted by all of the geographical trajectories, with the exception of the rural inland trajectory (our reference category for comparison). in other words, the mere fact of having lived in inland rural areas from ages 18 to 35 considerably re• karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes360 duces the likelihood of having had an early parental trajectory. whether individuals migrated to portuguese urban regions or went abroad, the effect revealed by the analysis is quite clear and demonstrates the accuracy of one of our key hypotheses. that is to say, migration in many cases helped individuals to accumulate the resources or savings needed to start a family. in rural areas, poverty and the lack of opportunity have historically and across the generations prevented many individuals from entering into a conjugal partnership and starting a family (bandeira 1996). however, even if we found a clear connection between the rural exodus and early parental family patterns, the dual effects exerted by mobility upon family, which were hinted at by our regression analysis, are also a key trend, which we will examine in more detail in the following section. tab. 4: predictors of family trajectories – multinomial logistic regression (odds ratios) non-linear early parental extended parentala generation 1935-1940b 0.742 2.037* 0.304 generation 1950-1955b 1.114 3.079*** 1.670 genderc 1.064 0.543** 0.757 schooling years 0.960 0.953 0.873* age of entry into the labour market 1.051 0.994 0.982 years unemployed 1.071 0.988 1.039 age when geographical mobility first occurred 0.924*** 0.917*** 0.880*** geographical movements before the age of 18 0.703 0.745 0.498 geographical movements after the age of 18 1.246* 1.281** 1.235 geographical trajectory – rural coastd 0.345 3.434* 2.723 geographical trajectory – urban inlandd 0.889 3.391** 4.009 geographical trajectory – urban coastd 1.441 3.692** 11.281** geographical trajectory – suburband 0.903 2.970** 4.315 geographical trajectory – major citiesd 1.698 2.629* 3.225 geographical trajectory – colonies, europe and beyondd 1.556 3.508** 9.827* nagelkerke = 0.216 a the reference category for comparison is “delayed parental”. b the reference category for comparison is “1970-1975 generation”. c the reference category for comparison is “female”. d the reference category for comparison is “rural inland”. *p <0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 361 4.3 geographical mobility and individualisation trends in accordance with the hypotheses set out above, it is important to explore the relationships between geographical mobility and a number of key markers of individualisation processes taking place in family life (see table 5). as we have seen, regardless of the direction of geographical movements, mobility is a signifi cant predictor of family trajectories, though its effects reveal a dual pattern that can either promote an early parental or a non-linear family trajectory, that is a type of trajectory in which a few markers of individualisation processes are quite evident. our focus on individualisation led us to select a number of suitable indicators in order to examine the extent to which certain geographical movements also tend to promote non-linear family trajectories: namely, the percentage of individuals who did not embark on conjugal life and become parents as well as the number of those who, in each generation, lived alone, as a single parent or were separated and divorced between the ages of 18 and 35. finally, we also examined the connection between female domesticity (being a housewife for a period of time during young adulthood) and geographical movements. in spite of the key role played by history in setting the macro-scenario where lives are constructed and the rapid pace of individualisation processes across generations, there are still a number of important effects that may be associated with the impact of geographical mobility on individual biographies. in other words, although generational change is striking for most of the selected indicators (see table 5), in the transition from older to younger generations the type of geographical movement has had a visible infl uence on individuals’ family lives. in some cases, mobility patterns have encouraged individualisation, producing a sharp contrast with the once much more common conjugalist and familialistic trajectories. one important trend is what we may call a “city effect”. moving to and settling in major cities (lisbon and porto in this case) is likely to have led people to live less standardised conjugal lives. in spite of the generational differences in this geographical pattern – with more members of the older generation migrating to the city and more young adults living in the city among the younger generation – the association of major cities with non-linear family patterns is quite marked. moreover, this is a biographical effect that cuts across the three generations, even if it is more signifi cant for the younger individuals in our sample. in all generations, when there is high mobility, there are always fewer people entering conjugal life and having children, more individuals living alone and as lone parents or experiencing separation or divorce (particularly in the middle and younger generations). in addition, we fi nd a lower percentage of housewives in all the generations. among those who stayed in inland rural areas, the percentage of individuals in the older and middle generations who were not able to embark on conjugal life is also signifi cantly above average. nevertheless, these biographies can hardly be described as non-linear family trajectories. these individuals were excluded from conjugal life because they were unable to fi nd suitable partners and start families. imbalances generated by migration (male migration in particular) and extreme poverty were the main underlying causes, and these can hardly be associated with • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes362 individualisation. on the contrary, permanent celibacy was not uncommon in rural communities, where public respectability was important and constantly in the public eye (particularly, of course, for women) (wall 1998). those who failed to meet these standards – and it should be noted that a high percentage of separated or divorced individuals is a marker of this group in the older generation, perhaps as a result of migration – frequently lived outside the bounds of the normative family model. in fact, stigmatisation and shame often accompanied these less normatively standardised events. conversely, the “urban experience” (martuccelli 2006) represented, in many cases, almost the diametric opposite of this community controlled celibacy insofar as it allowed individuals to experience a higher degree of freedom with regard to their private choices and family biographies. the more recent fl ow of migration to inland urban or coastal areas (which increased in the younger generation) reinforces the importance of the “urban experience” for the further understanding of processes of individualisation. in the younger tab. 5: geographical mobility trajectories and individualisation markers (age 18-35), by generation (in %) cluster generation individuals without conjugal life childless individuals lived alone lived as lone parent divorced/ separated women in domestic work total 1935-1940 9.9*** 15.5*** 9.6*** 7.0** 9.0*** 19.7*** 1950-1955 9.1*** 13.9*** 13.1*** 6.6** 6.8*** 14.3*** 1970-1975 17.4*** 26.5*** 21.6*** 11.8** 14.0*** 6.7*** rural inland 1935-1940 15.2 12.1 9.1 12.1 15.2* 24.2 1950-1955 17.0 13.2 7.5 0.0 0.0* 17.0 1970-1975 15.8 13.2 7.9 7.9 15.8* 13.2 rural coast 1935-1940 10.3 10.3 2.6 5.1 5.1 10.3 1950-1955 8.1 10.8 10.8 8.1 8.1 16.2 1970-1975 8.0 12.0 4.0 12.0 8.0 16.0 urban inland 1935-1940 8.7*** 8.7*** 10.1** 5.8 5.8 20.3 1950-1955 7.8*** 15.6*** 22.1** 7.8 2.6 13.0 1970-1975 26.6*** 36.7*** 33.0** 5.5 5.5 8.3 urban coast 1935-1940 3.4* 13.8*** 12.6 4.6* 9.2* 17.2 1950-1955 5.6* 8.9*** 12.9 5.6* 5.6* 16.1 1970-1975 12.9* 26.3*** 21.6 12.9* 15.8* 4.7 suburban 1935-1940 8.7 18.7 8.8 10.0 10.0 26.3 1950-1955 9.9 13.2 12.4 6.6 9.1 10.7 1970-1975 13.2 22.5 15.5 12.4 15.5 3.1 major cities 1935-1940 14.8** 23.5 7.4** 4.9 6.2 16.0 1950-1955 9.7** 26.4 9.7** 11.1 9.7 13.9 1970-1975 35.0** 42.5 27.5** 17.5 17.5 2.5 colonies, europe 1935-1940 8.3 20.8 25.0 4.2 12.5 20.8 and beyond 1950-1955 8.8 8.8 20.6 5.9 14.7 17.6 1970-1975 12.5 12.5 33.3 25.0 29.2 20.8 inter-generational comparison using chi2 test: *p <0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 source: “family trajectories and social networks” project, portugal 2010 geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 363 generation, the postponement of conjugal and parental transitions as well as the experience of having lived alone between the ages of 18 and 35 became more common, in particular among those individuals who lived in inland urban areas during this period of young adulthood. the combination of two factors which fundamentally altered portuguese society from the late 1980s onwards probably accounts for individuals postponing such family events. the new and rapid expansion of higher education at this time paved the way for new forms of migration. on the one hand, there was an increase in the number of universities and other institutions of higher education. they relocated to medium-sized inland cities, and even to smaller towns, in order to avoid an excessive concentration of universities in major cities. on the other hand, the number of students in the universities also increased considerably, with a growing number of individuals attending university in these newly-established institutions. in short, broader geographical and class-based access to higher education contributed signifi cantly to reinforcing the trend towards individualisation. young individuals were then allowed to migrate in order to pursue their career goals. such opportunities led many to live alone and to postpone partnership and parenthood. displacement and relocation are therefore inseparable from the changes that took place in education strategies, particularly among younger individuals who benefi ted from this historic process of democratisation. all in all, the lengthening of school careers and relocation to urban settings are deeply interwoven processes which have contributed strongly to the growth of more individualised family biographies. lastly, alongside the paramount importance of the urban experience, the effects of experiences of intense migration (such as those experienced by individuals who emigrated to or returned from the former colonies, europe and beyond) are equally relevant to an understanding of individualisation in portuguese society. as we have already seen, intense migration has a dualistic effect on family trajectories. individuals with a geographical pattern of intense migration (from or to the colonies, europe and beyond) have a very interesting profi le (see table 5). across the generations, the great majority of these individuals have indeed embarked on conjugal and parental life. these indicators confi rm the hypothesis that migration is associated with the opportunity of starting a family, but this is just one side of the coin. the experience of intense migration has also produced a number of other transitions and experiences that we normally associate with processes of individualisation in family life. indeed, starting with the older generation, highly-mobile individuals are those who have most often lived alone. episodes such as living alone, as a single parent, or going through a divorce or separation before the age of 35 were relatively rare among people born between 1935 and 1940. yet these episodes were far more common among those who migrated than among those who stayed behind. in the younger generation, the number of individuals who lived as single parents or experienced separation and divorce is also considerably above the average. these numbers clearly show the association of intense migration with non-linear family trajectories, even if migration can also be seen as a catalyst for starting conjugal life and parenthood at an early age. interestingly, however, while the “urban experience” tends to encourage women to • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes364 enter the labour market, trajectories of intense migration such as those profi led in our cluster analysis seem to promote an increase in female domesticity in young adulthood. once again, there are two sides to this phenomenon. for some, intense migration was linked to a historical context in which early parental trajectories led to lower employment rates for mothers. it should be noted, for instance, that in the middle generation these intense migration trajectories were very closely associated with early parental trajectories, with 70 percent of those who migrated to the former colonies, europe or other host countries falling into this family pattern (data not shown). on the other hand, the succession in time of several episodes of mobility, alongside the increased non-linearity of many family trajectories, may well have led women to stay at home for a certain period of time. 5 discussion and conclusions in modern times, in contexts of industrialisation and urbanisation, migration has played an important role in the strengthening of key processes of individualisation (elias 1993). from the early twentieth century onwards, the increasing fl ows of intercontinental migrants have seen their traditional familistic social environments broken down by their own geographical mobility, which allowed them to reconstruct their lives, families and ties away from their villages of origin. similarly, the massive movements from the countryside to the city, though internal within a country, produced a similar overall effect in family life and social relations. modern migratory processes draw us into one of the most compelling debates in the social sciences, which has focused on the idea that “community control” would fade with modernisation, giving way to more individualised relationships, far from wider kinship, neighbourhood ties and traditional alliances. theories of community decline have been posited since the beginning of sociology, as a result of the founding fathers’ concern with the impact of modernity on the formation of social ties. the subject was enshrined in ferdinand tönnies’ (1957 [1887]) celebrated distinction between pre-modern gemeinschaft (community) and modern gesellschaft (society), and in emile durkheim’s (1978 [1893]) famous distinction between “mechanical” and “organic” solidarity. from this perspective, migrations are indelibly linked to the changing patterns of conjugal and family dynamics (shorter 1995), though promoting, as we have seen, different and somewhat complex changes in family life. in this line of reasoning, and taking into account the specifi cities of portuguese history, this article found empirical evidence for the hypotheses outlined at the beginning. on the one hand, geographical mobility tended to promote individuals’ access to conjugal and family life, but, on the other, it also paved the way for more individualised biographies and more non-linear family trajectories. both phenomena confi rm that migratory processes, whether internal within the country or heading abroad, have been one of the central dynamics in the construction of portuguese modernity and have underpinned the changes in family dynamics across time. for this reason, we believe that our study may contribute to the further understanding of the connections between geographical mobility and family trajectories across geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 365 generations. the impact of mobility on family life was an important conclusion drawn from our data. the dual impact of mobility was also an extremely important fi nding. a fruitful way of achieving such goals was to develop a life course approach, which allowed us to examine both generational change and biographical trajectories on the basis of sequence analysis. the diversity of mobility trajectories revealed by sequence analysis was found to be relevant for locating each generation in its historical time. from a comparative perspective, as anticipated, generations are important for interpreting predominant mobility patterns at a given historical moment and among specifi c groups of individuals. in this fi rst set of conclusions related to the impact of history on biographies, we can highlight two clear-cut trends across generations. on the one hand, portuguese society has witnessed a signifi cant rural exodus over time. to this day, that exodus remains an important marker of mobility life courses, and it is common to the three generations in our study, in spite of their differences. in every generation, large numbers of men and women have moved to urban areas, both to small cities and to the two major cities lisbon and porto. a variety of factors, ranging from changes in the country’s economic structure to longer school careers, have helped to sustain this geographical movement over time and to the present day. on the other hand, while rural exodus represents a signifi cant generational similarity, there are also some key generational differences. first, there has been a clear increase in suburbanisation among the younger generation. younger individuals are often compelled to move from major cities to the suburbs (where, for instance, the costs of housing are much lower), even if the process is very different from the one pointed out by castells (1983) when analysing the wealthy suburbia of countries such as the us. secondly, migrants have returned from the former colonies and from different european and non-european countries. for historical reasons, a larger number of former emigrants who have returned en masse is found among the older and middle generations. finally, more members of the younger generation are tending to stay put, even if our fi ndings reveal that geographical mobility has been a key marker of the life course for large numbers of individuals in every generation. we offer a second important set of conclusions on the impact of mobility on family life. the results of our multinomial logistic regressions show consistent connections between the two trajectories, attesting to the importance of geographical mobility as a predictor of family dynamics. our fi ndings show a steady correlation between geographical mobility, family trajectories and family transitions across the generations. to interpret these fi ndings, we need to consider the historical processes of individualisation and pluralisation. generational coordinates are clearly important when it comes to analysing the impact of geographical mobility on the family. overall, mobility helped to sustain a standardised early parental family pattern, which was particularly signifi cant in the middle generation. during their young adulthood, almost two-thirds of these individuals fell into this pattern, thus establishing a clear contrast with the older generation, in which individuals were less likely to meet the normative demands of the conjugal and parental family models. • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes366 however, the contrast between the two older generations and the younger generation is sharper in every respect: it is among the latter group of individuals that we fi nd only one-third of early parental trajectories. the increase in delayed parental and non-linear trajectories is paramount. building on the changes that affected and were enacted by the two previous generations, the younger generation continues, nonetheless, to suffer from the impact of geographical mobility. in fact, some of the more recent phenomena taking place in family patterns can only be fully explained through the long-lasting effects of the geographical reorganisation of the country, whether younger individuals are themselves the protagonists of mobility episodes or just built their family lives around the changes that linger from earlier historical times and the older generations. all in all, there are two key processes underlying the different patterns of migration in our study, both of which are of key importance for interpreting the movement of family individualisation in portuguese society over time. the fi rst is the “city effect” or the “urban experience”. the rural exodus that led to an “urban experience” was a major turning point in their lives for the majority of people. as martuccelli (2006) points out, life in the city became a formative element in most individuals’ biographies, due to the many ways in which this experience represented a challenge to traditional ways of life. as in other western contexts, this was perhaps the most common migratory process in portuguese society, although the fact that it occurred later than in other countries refl ects portugal’s structural backwardness and delayed modernisation. until the 1960s, the majority of portuguese worked in agriculture, but as the effects of industrialisation became clear in the 1950s, new job opportunities arose in the emerging industrial sector. entire families moved to the rapidly developing urban areas in search of a better life. for those coming from traditional poor peasant contexts, the urban experience led to profound changes in family organisation. whether the whole family or just one individual migrated, the move to urban areas within the country produced major changes in family dynamics and in the gender division of labour, particularly as more women entered the labour market, a phenomenon which was more visible in the major cities (see table 5). as elizabeth bott (1957) has shown for the us of the 1950s, the weakening of social (local community) and family control also produced new and more modern conjugal dynamics, even if migration to lower class neighbourhoods did reproduce community control and the lost rural environment in some cases, particularly when the migration involved an openly familial strategy. the second key process involves the complex effects of intense migration trajectories. the experience of early and intense migration is clearly connected to a number of other transitions and experiences that we normally associate with processes of individualisation in family life. indeed, starting with the older generation, highly mobile individuals are those who have most often experienced life events such as living alone, as a single parent or going through a divorce or separation. nevertheless, to explore the effects of mobility on family dynamics we have to go beyond the mere fact of being a mobile individual. seen in the context of different mobility trajectories and the historical processes of geographical mobility, the impact of mobility is more complex and produces less clear-cut or even dualistic geographical mobility and family life: comparing generations • 367 effects. for 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(eds.): dynamics of cohort and generations research. amsterdam: thesis publishers: 31-51. • karin wall, sofia aboim, vasco ramos, cátia nunes370 dr. karin wall. institute of social sciences (ics), university of lisbon. lisbon, portugal. e-mail: karin.wall@ics.ul.pt url: http://www.ics.ul.pt/investigadores/?ln=e&pid=59&mm=1&ctmid=1&mnid=1&doc =&sec=3 dr. sofi a aboim. institute of social sciences (ics), university of lisbon. lisbon, portugal. e-mail: sofi a.aboim@ics.ul.pt url: http://www.ics.ul.pt/investigadores/?sofi a.aboim vasco ramos ( ). institute of social sciences (ics), university of lisbon. lisbon, portugal. e-mail: vasco.ramos@ics.ul.pt, cátia nunes. ine national statistical institute. lisbon portugal. e-mail: catia.nunes@ine.pt a german translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the federal institute for population research is available under the title “räumliche mobilität und familienleben: generationenvergleich aus der lebenslaufperspektive”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-11de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2013-11de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 08.09.2011 date of acceptance: 07.08.2012 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) international variation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk abstract: within this analysis of demographic and economic dependency ratios for 45 countries around the world, we reiterate the importance of ageand gender-specifi c employment levels as well as their determinants when discussing the economic challenges associated with population ageing. building upon existing research on economic dependency, we portray and discuss cohort variation in employment and its possible effect on the challenges of population ageing, focusing on the implications of high youth unemployment, the role of changes in female employment and the evolution of retirement patterns across cohorts. the insights from our analysis reaffi rm fi ndings elsewhere that younger populations may not be as well off in the light of demographic change as an analysis of their demographic structure alone would suggest and stress the importance of considering the cohort dimension of employment in this discussion. keywords: dependency · population ageing · economic dependency · cohorts 1 introduction all nations age: low fertility and low mortality imply that nations are growing older globally. current variations in age structures result from historic variations in the timing of the onset of fertility and mortality declines. although the onset of sustained fertility decline varies from region to region, it tended to take place early in the 20th century in europe, while often in the second half of the 20th century for south america, africa and asia (reher 2004). in terms of mortality, the number of the world’s 232 nations that experienced life expectancy below the age of 60 fell from 85 in 1980 to 45 in 2010 and is projected to decrease to only three in 2040 (united nations 2013). as a consequence, ageing is spreading throughout the world, the main difference being the timing when the transition to a permanently older age structure is taking place. for example, japan has an age structure that northern europe or latin america will not experience until later points in time. in spite of the comparative population studies vol. 41, 2 (2016): 121-144 (date of release: 03.06.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-04en4 • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk122 universality of ageing, there is large variation in the degree to which nations are prepared for this unprecedented fundamental demographic change. some nations are “growing old before growing rich,” experiencing population ageing without fi rst having accumulated high levels of capital, which would allow people to have a higher quality of living in their fi nal years of life (lee et al. 2010). it is important to highlight the historic demographic determinants of contemporary population trends, as these in turn may affect current ageand gender-specifi c labour market outcomes. in nations where the european marriage pattern prevailed, high levels of premarital celibacy and late marriage kept gross fertility at low levels, and as mortality started declining, gross fertility adjusted so that population growth stayed at low levels. in effect, net fertility did not increase much during the demographic transition – i.e. the period where populations transition from high levels of mortality and fertility to low levels of mortality and fertility, with mortality reductions leading the development before reductions in fertility set in – and population sizes increased less than in other parts of the world (united nations 2013; livi-bacci 1992; mcevedy 1978; skirbekk et al. 2015). population growth was greater in many parts of the world as mortality declined more rapidly, and fertility – which had in the pre-demographic transition phase been at higher levels, often 7-8 children on average compared to the european case of 4-5 children on average – did not decline in time to allow for a modest increase in net reproduction. the massive population growth that ensued presented a number of severe challenges. in terms of labour supply, these demographic changes often took place in a setting where educational systems were insuffi cient and labour markets poorly developed. the rapid population growth was in many nations not matched by an improvement in function of relevant institutions, such as a broadening of school coverage, improvement of labour market systems, infrastructure development and suffi cient economic investments. as a consequence, opportunity costs for childbearing often remained low, as women tended to receive relatively little schooling of often mediocre quality. it is only once fertility decreases further that signifi cant changes in the population structure take place, leading to a situation with an advantageous age composition: with a small share of the population still being old, and a decreasing share of the population being children, the working-age population constitutes the largest part of the population during this phase. this shift in the age composition entails potential benefi ts for economic growth that can be reaped if this large working age population is productive, i.e. if its members are healthy and educated and if economic policies conducive to economic growth are in place (bloom et al. 2003). hence, this so-called demographic dividend does not happen automatically when the population structure changes. instead, these changes pose a window of opportunity that can lead to economic prosperity given the right environment. still, countries with younger populations are often assumed a priori to have better prospects when it comes to economic growth and per capita income – except when child-dependency ratios are high – relative to countries with older populations (lee/hong 2012). for example, although india and turkey are poorer today, they are sometimes considered to have the advantage of greater long-term growth international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 123 potential relative to china or europe due to their younger age structures and growing population size as well as the reduced need to provide for an older, more dependent population. anjalika bardalai from the economist intelligence unit (eiu) argues that economic growth in india will overtake china by 2018 in large part due to india’s youthful age structure and population momentum, leading to more rapid growth in the working age population (times of india 2010). the potentially deleterious effects of rapid population growth, low female economic participation and weak labour market attachment of younger age groups are usually not taken into account within traditional projections of old age burdens. within the context of rapid growth, many demographically younger countries continue to have low education levels and younger cohorts can end up as “lost generations”, with weak labour force attachment and few prospects of catching up. conventional ways of assessing the economic burden of ageing through an exclusively demographic approach such as the old age dependency ratio (oadr) are misleading: they are based on a set age below which people are considered to be supporters – and above which people are considered to be dependents. the purpose of the oadr is to capture the degree of dependency in a society, for example in the context of discussing the sustainability of pay-as-you-go pension systems. this approach completely ignores that countryand period-specifi c variation in individual characteristics can be more important than age-structures per se. several approaches accounting for the fact that dependency is more than a question of chronological age have been suggested and applied to investigate differences in the burden of ageing between countries (ryder 1975; sanderson/scherbov 2010). spijker (2015) provides a comprehensive overview of existing alternative indicators of population ageing, grouping them into fi ve categories into those based purely on demographic or purely economic information, both demographic and economic information, information on health and disability, and those including information on human capital. the particular comparison of dependency ratios based on employment rates with those based on income and consumption data reveals the crosscountry variation in dependency levels depending on the specifi c defi nition of who is dependent and who is not (loichinger et al. 2014). another example for an ageing measure that is not based on age but on specifi c characteristics of a population is the cognition-adjusted dependency ratio: differences in investments in education have contributed to a large variation across world regions in the physical and mental condition one experiences at older ages. recent old age frailty measures have been based on cognitive and physical functional measures, which differ across successive cohorts (marshall et al. 2015; ruan et al. 2015). further considerations refer to functional and subjective perspectives on aging that incorporate biological, social, and psychological ages, as well as societal and personal beliefs about old age (staudinger 2015). rising longevity may be related to changes in the timing of disease, which does not increase in parallel (murray et al. 2015). based on cognitive levels, the age when an individual becomes “old” can differ by more than 20 years (skirbekk et al. 2012). still, in spite of ample evidence that dependency purely based on age is defi cient and obsolete, measures that use simple cut-off ages to defi ne who is dependent and who is not are still widely used. • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk124 this article aims to further promote the calculation of dependency based on economic characteristics such as employment rates instead of chronological age and to illustrate the additional insights that can be gained from this approach. we provide a broad picture of the determinants of employment decisions and show how these factors are directly related to countries’ ageing prospects, pointing out differences and commonalities. for instance, in some countries an increase in female employment can more than offset the effect of a growing number of seniors – a development that would go unnoticed if demographic characteristics were the sole basis for assessing a country’s ageing prospects (oecd 2006; boeri et al. 2005). greater economic activity levels, for instance among the elderly and women, are important for understanding how employment patterns by age and sex might affect transfers between generations, fi scal sustainability and possibly growth prospects. importantly, factors such as wages, macro-economic conditions and union/government policies can affect employment patterns. the contribution of this study can be summarised in the following facts: first, we present evidence for the past and the present on the similarities and differences when comparing 45 countries based on either demographic or economic dependency. there are other studies that have shown similar comparisons. however, until recently, they put scant focus on comparisons with non-european countries. carone (2005) presents total economic dependency ratios – defi ned as the ratio of the total inactive population (including the 0-15-year-olds) to those employed – for all eu countries. contrary to his oadr forecasts, total economic dependency is projected to decline in the majority of eu25 countries until 2025 and to increase only afterwards. more recent calculations of the total economic dependency ratio for eu countries and for varying age groups can be found in a detailed report by the european commission (2014). in order to paint a more comprehensive picture, we include more countries than previous studies did, covering up to 45 countries globally. secondly, we explain the observed international variation in economic activity, stressing the cohort dimension in addition to presenting evidence on ageand sexspecifi c employment levels. there is a lack of theoretical analyses of international variation in cohort trends. much existing evidence does not take into account, for instance, cultural variation in employment patterns, gender roles and age trajectories of employment – factors that will be decisive for whether one would benefi t from a young age structure and excel in the course of the demographic transition. as we will demonstrate, cohort variation can help explain large international variations in economic dependency, where some countries experienced an earlier transition from low to high female employment decades before others. knowing and understanding cohort trends in employment is crucial to projecting future developments because economic participation rates early in life can determine economic participation over the entire life cycle (gregg/tominey 2005; blacket al.2010; percheski 2008). if individuals entered the workforce at younger ages, they are more likely to be employed at middle and older ages, while individuals who were not employed in early adult ages are less likely to fi nd employment later in adult life. the remaining part of the paper is structured as follows: after defi ning demographic and economic dependency ratios and introducing our data sources, we give international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 125 a detailed account of past and current levels of both ratios for our selection of countries. we then present age-, sex-and cohort-specifi c changes and levels of employment rates and draw on the existing literature in order to explain differences across countries and to stress the importance of paying attention to a multitude of factors when assessing the present and future dependency burden of a country. 2 demographic and economic dependency ratios the concept behind the construction of any dependency ratio is that a given population consists of two groups: those who are “contributors,” and those who are “dependents”. an often-used proxy for this classifi cation is the age-specifi c allocation of people into those of working age who are the contributors, whereas those above (and below) working age are the dependents. hence, the oadr is generally defi ned as the ratio of the number of people above working age to the number of people of working age, i.e. the ratio of the number of persons 65+ to the number of persons aged 15 to 64.1 this does not account for variation in retirement ages, although the united nations (2011) alternatively uses age 70 as the “cut-off age” when one is counted as “dependent”. however, this still does not take into account that many are economically inactive in their adult years, while others work beyond typical pension ages. a more relevant measure of dependency is the notion of economic dependency. this measure takes account of the fact that not everybody of working age is actually working, just as not everyone beyond 65 is retired. the economic dependency ratio (edr), which relates the number of non-workers to the number of workers in a given economy, provides a better representation of the share of the dependent population.2 1 sometimes, the lower end of the working-age population is defi ned at age 20, rather than 15 because in many developed countries, people do not enter the labour force until that age due to education. since we include the bric countries in our analysis, where many people still enter the labour force well below the age of 20, we take 15 as the lower cut-off age. 2 a “worker” is anyone who is considered employed according to the ilo defi nition of employment, i.e. anyone aged 15 and above who works for at least one hour per week (see resolution i of the thirteenth international conference of labour statisticians for details). economic dependency has been defi ned in various ways in the literature, depending on what is considered the appropriate defi nition of activity and inactivity. what we refer to as economic dependency is based on employment and has previously been called effective economic dependency (mattil 2006). this is the strictest defi nition of economic dependency; when employment is replaced with labour force participation (i.e. the sum of the employed and unemployed), the resulting ratio is a measure for potential economic dependency. • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk126 the total number of persons 15+ who are working is the result of age-specifi c employment rates. age-specifi c employment rates are defi ned as the ratio between the number of employed persons and the total number of persons in the respective age group. the profi le of employment rates across age shows a reversed u-shape – lower rates for young and older persons, high rates for the middle-aged. to technically account for this age-specifi c variation, a more elaborate representation of the edr is where nx is the number of persons by 5-year age groups and erx are the respective employment rates, sometimes also referred to as employment-to-population ratios. in addition to age, employment rates also differ by sex, with men generally showing higher employment rates than women. however, the magnitude of these differences varies greatly between countries. to account for this variance, the formula above can be rewritten, including sex-specifi c rates: displaying economic dependency this way, it becomes clear that ageand sexspecifi c variation can greatly infl uence the eventual degree of economic dependency. for example, country a with low employment levels of older persons could have a similar economic dependency ratio as country b with high employment of older workers, simply because employment of women is high in country a. as the following sections show, the potential future developments of economic dependency depend on the development of employment patterns, particularly on those of the elderly in general and of women in particular. to what extent increases in employment rates of these two groups can offset the expected reduction in total employment that most countries will face due to shrinking cohort sizes of the main age groups (20-65) depends on the individual country context. 3 data and methods we focus on both developed economies and larger industrializing countries that have shown substantial growth over recent periods: oecd members and/or eu27 countries and bric countries. past and present economic dependency ratios can be international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 127 calculated with aggregated employment data for persons aged 15+. detailed data by sex and 5-year age groups is used for the cohort analysis. • age-specifi c population data for the calculation of old-age dependency ratios is taken from the un’s 2008 population prospects (united nations 2009).3 • internationally comparable aggregate employment estimates for the calculation of economic dependency ratios come from the ilo’s key indicators of the labour market database (kilm) (ilo 2011). time series data starts in 1991. this data source does not contain ageand sex-specifi c employment rates, which explains the need for another data source as described in the next paragraph. • ageand sex-specifi c employment rates over time are compiled from the oecd (oecd 2012). the earliest data points are for 1960 with availability varying by country. in contrast to the data for calculating the edrs – which are comparable between countries since defi nitions of employment are harmonised in kilm by the ilo – data from this source for the cohort development of employment are not automatically internationally comparable and also include fewer countries. the defi nitions vary slightly between countries (for instance, in the classifi cation of armed forces as part of the labour force or not). however, differences are minimal and for the most part do not affect the comparability of developments over time within a country. repeated cross-sectional surveys are commonly used to separate age patterns from cohort trends and period effects (alwin/krosnick 1991; andré 2010; skirbekk et al. 2013). this technique, which is applied in the present study, is used relatively often to look at employment trends of persons belonging to different cohorts. even though we include employment levels, and thereby go a step beyond demography, we acknowledge that the current analysis does not include information on differences in productivity resulting from variation in working hours, organisation, technology, capital or infrastructure. furthermore, we do not take variation in skills, experience and education into account. still, economic activity is an important measure with several important implications for fi scal sustainability, economic growth and income inequality. 4 analysis of demographic and economic dependency 4.1 old-age and economic dependency ratios in 2008 figure 1 and figure 2 compare oadrs and edrs in 2008 for the 45 selected countries. the three countries with the highest oadr are japan (0.33), italy (0.31) and germany (0.30). for every three people of working age in these countries there is about one older person. the four countries with the youngest populations (i.e. the 3 we deliberately restrict our analysis to the years before the fi nancial crisis. developments during the years 2009-2013 would need to be treated differently, since employment changes during that period in many countries are due to cyclical, not structural, changes. • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk128 lowest oadr) are india (0.08), turkey (0.09), mexico (0.10) and brazil (0.10). in these countries, one older person is balanced by at least 10 people of working age. the remaining countries fall between these two groups and have an oadr between 0.1 and 0.3. economic dependency is higher than demographic dependency in each of the 45 countries, and the range of economic dependency ratios is greater than the range of demographic dependency ratios (from 0.41 to 1.36 and from 0.08 to 0.33, respectively). 13 of the 45 countries have an edr greater than 1, which means there is more than 1 person who is not working for every person that is. the two countries with the highest edr are turkey (1.36) and italy (1.3), which is remarkable because turkey is one of the countries with the lowest oadr and italy has one of the highest. as previously mentioned, japan, italy and germany have the highest oadr and based on the comparison of these countries’ demographic situations alone, one might conclude that they share a similar ageing problem. however, looking at edr, japan – despite being the oldest country in terms of old-age dependency – has the lowest economic dependency (0.85) of these three countries. another noteworthy direct comparison is china and india: even though china shows higher old-age dependfig. 1: old-age and economic dependency ratios, oecd/eu27/bric countries, 2008 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 india turkey mexico brazil china chile republic of korea israel ireland slovakia iceland russian federation cyprus poland new zealand united states of america canada australia malta czech republic luxembourg romania netherlands norway slovenia lithuania hungary denmark switzerland united kingdom finland spain latvia estonia bulgaria austria croatia france portugal belgium greece sweden germany italy japan oadr (2008) 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 1,6 iceland china brazil new zealand norway canada switzerland denmark australia netherlands united states korea ireland sweden cyprus mexico russian federation united kingdom portugal india latvia finland austria estonia czech republic japan slovenia slovakia germany luxembourg israel lithuania chile spain greece poland romania france belgium bulgaria croatia malta hungary italy turkey edr (2008) source: population data: united nations 2009. employment data: ilo estimates, kilm database, table 2a international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 129 ency than india, its economic dependency is only half that of india’s in 2008 (0.41 vs. 0.80, respectively). this discrepancy is summarised in a weak correlation between the two ratios (spearman’s correlation coeffi cient is only 0.34). the discrepancy between demographic and economic dependency is by far the greatest in turkey and india: the edr/oadr ratio in these two countries is 14.66 and 9.62, respectively, which means that the oadr is not a very accurate proxy for economic dependency in these countries. the ratio of edr to oadr is smallest for iceland (1.33), japan (1.57) and switzerland (1.58), which means that in those countries, old-age dependency ratios capture economic dependency relatively well. this congruence comes from a combination of comparatively high employment rates among working age individuals and (particularly in iceland and japan) high employment rates observed in the 65+ age group. 4.2 changes in dependency between 1991 and 2008 in addition to the current distribution of countries by dependency, there is considerable interest regarding the change of demographic and economic indicators over time. figure 3 depicts the absolute changes in oadr and edr between 1991 and 2008. fig. 2: old-age and economic dependency ratios for 45 selected countries, 2008 australia austria belgium brazil bulgaria canada chile china croatia cyprus czech republic denmark estonia finland france germany greece hungary iceland india ireland israel italy japan latvia lithuania luxembourg malta mexico netherlands new zealand norway poland portugal republic of korea romania russian federation slovakia slovenia spain sweden switzerland turkey united kingdom united states 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 ed r (e co no m ic d ep en de nc y ra tio ) oard (old-age dependency ratio) source: population data: united nations 2009. employment data: ilo estimates, kilm database, table 2a. own calculations. spearman’s correlation coeffi cient: 0.34 • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk130 the great majority of countries (42 out of 45) experienced an increase in their oadr in the specifi ed time period. the largest absolute increase in old-age dependency happened in japan (from 0.18 to 0.33), croatia (from 0.18 to 0.33), germany (from 0.22 to 0.30) and italy (from 0.23 to 0.31). in three countries, old age demographic dependency actually decreased between 1991 and 2008: sweden (from 0.28 to 0.27), norway (from 0.25 to 0.22) and ireland (from 0.18 to 0.16), which is due to the fact that the working-age population in these countries grew faster than the number of persons 65+. the picture is more balanced as far as the development of economic dependency is concerned: about half of the countries experienced a relative rise in edr; the other half stayed the same or saw a decrease. the increase was by far the greatest in turkey (from 0.91 to 1.36) and the decrease was largest for ireland (from 1.30 to 0.73). the four quadrants of figure 3 illustrate the four possible combinations of increases/decreases in oadr and increases/decreases in edr. only two countries, namely ireland and norway, fall in quadrant iv, meaning that these were the only countries to see a simultaneous decrease in oard and edr. the majority of countries (23 out of 45) fall in quadrant ii, which means their demographic as well as their economic dependency increased. only slightly fewer countries though (19 out of fig. 3: absolute changes of oadr and edr between 1991 and 2008 for 45 selected countries 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.06 0.04 0.02 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16 edr oadr turkey norway ireland japan spain sweden united states i ii iiiiv germany croatia italy source: population data: united nations 2009. employment data: ilo estimates, kilm database, table 2a. own calculations international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 131 45) experienced an increase in oadr, but actually saw a decrease in edr (quadrant iii), which means that even though their populations grew older, an increasing share of their adult population was employed. figure 4 shows the trajectories of demographic and economic dependency that selected countries took between 1991 and 2008, illustrating the great variety of patterns and highlighting how the development of economic dependency is more volatile than its demographic counterpart. for example, spain saw an initial sharp increase in economic dependency that was followed by a sharp decrease, changing direction again only shortly before 2008, whereas japan shows a continuous increase during the whole observation period. in the case of germany, continued increases in female employment rates and later effective retirement ages of both men and women have entailed that even though germany was among the countries with the largest increase in old-age dependency between 1991 and 2008, economic dependency showed a decline towards the end of the observation period. the underlying demographic developments that explain changes in oadr over time have been well documented elsewhere (chesnais 2000; oeppen 2006). in the following section, we will attempt to shed light on the developments that have led to the remarkable differences in economic dependency developments. fig. 4: trajectories of oadr and edr from 1991 (a) to 2008 (b) for selected countries 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 e d r (e co no m ic d ep en d en cy r at io ) oadr (old-age dependency ratio) a b a: 1991 b: 2008 b b b b b b b a a a a a a turkey india china a japan germany italy spain usa source: population data: united nations 2009. employment data: ilo estimates, kilm database, table 2a. own calculations • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk132 5 cohorts as determinants of employment patterns the development over time of economic dependency is the result of ageand sexspecifi c employment rates, in combination with changes in the demographic composition of a population. on the macrolevel, employment variation between countries can be explained through a myriad of factors, like business cycles, reservation wages, institutional factors, skill levels of the population, property rights, openness to trade, fl exibility of fi nancial markets, labour market fl exibility, employment protection level, active labour market programs, fi rm establishment costs, quality and coverage of education systems and labour market regulations (blanchard/wolfers 2000; freeman 2007; nickell/layard 1999). trends in sexand age-specifi c employment differ widely between nations. in particular, participation of women differs more across nations, periods and successive cohorts than that of men, with women belonging to younger cohorts in nations characterised by greater gender equality, higher gdp and longer average education more likely to be part of the labour force (charles 2011; inglehart/norris 2003). in general, there is a tendency that nations at earlier stages in industrial transition have relatively high employment levels and late retirement ages (oecd 2011; kohli et al. 1991; elu terán 2006) and that the transition from primary to industrial and service sector jobs is related to lower employment levels and earlier retirement. however, longer education is associated with later retirement, where particularly tertiary education relates to a later age of labour market exit (muench et al. 2009; solem et al. 2001) and continued educational advancements in many countries are likely to lead to longer working lives. at the same time, the better educated have a longer study period, which means that they on average postpone labour market entry. research on employment and retirement differences across cohorts highlights the importance of cohort factors in determining ages at retirement (percheski 2008; joshi/ hinde 1993). figure 5 illustrates the developments described above by depicting changes in employment rates between 1991 and 2008 for prime aged and older men as well as women for 26 countries for which oecd data is available.4 whereas employment levels of women increased in the great majority of countries in both age groups, increases for men are concentrated in the older age group. the largest increases in employment of 35-39-year-old women occurred in the netherlands, spain and ireland. among the older age group, men and women in new zealand show by far the largest absolute and relative growth, whereas turkish men and women show the most noticeable decline. cultural factors may also infl uence ageand sex-specifi c economic activity levels in a multitude of ways; it may impact health related behaviours (such as diet, education, family dynamics and support, physical activity levels, socialisation activity levels) that can infl uence health outcomes (deaton 2009; glaeser/sacerdote 4 we deliberately chose an age group were participation in education and training and hence delayed entry into the labour market should no longer impact employment rates. international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 133 2008; lehrer 2004; seguino 2011). schooling is a key driver of both health as well as the degree of religiosity (hungerman 2011; javier arias-vazquez 2012), which could affect productivity potential and economic activity, particularly at older ages (cicirelli 2011; kessler/bromet 2013). those with a higher education stay employed longer (dorn/sousa-poza 2005; hardy 1984) and prefer to retire later (solem et al. 2001). in effect, one may expect large variations in culture and in economic activity when it comes to population ageing. culture and shared beliefs in a society may also impact demographic outcomes, including marital patterns and fertility behaviour, which can affect health at older ages (grundy/read 2015; lehrer 2004). age-specifi c employment rates tend to follow cohort trends: individuals belonging to cohorts that experienced high or low employment levels at younger ages tend to have higher or lower employment levels throughout their lives (plane et al. 2001; muench et al. 2009; carone 2005). economic recessions at the time of labour marfig. 5a: employment rates in 1991 and 2008 by age group (35-39 (two top panels)) and sex for available countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 sw itz er la nd ja pa n m ex ic o lu xe m bo ur g ko re a po rtu ga l ic el an d ita ly g re ec e tu rk ey g er m an y be lg iu m n et he rla nd s sw ed en fr an ce n or w ay sp ai n u ni te d st at es u ni te d ki ng do m fi nl an d a us tra lia n ew ze al an d d en m ar k ca na da ire la nd is ra el 0 20 40 60 80 100 sw itz er la nd ja pa n m ex ic o lu xe m bo ur g ko re a po rtu ga l ic el an d ita ly g re ec e tu rk ey g er m an y be lg iu m n et he rla nd s sw ed en fr an ce n or w ay sp ai n u ni te d st at es u ni te d ki ng do m fi nl an d a us tra lia n ew ze al an d d en m ar k ca na da ire la nd is ra el men 35-39 0 20 40 60 80 100 sw ed en ic el an d fi nl an d d en m ar k n or w ay po rtu ga l u ni te d st at es ca na da sw itz er la nd u ni te d ki ng do m g er m an y n ew ze al an d fr an ce a us tra lia be lg iu m ja pa n ko re a n et he rla nd s is ra el lu xe m bo ur g ita ly g re ec e sp ai n m ex ic o ire la nd tu rk ey 1991 0 20 40 60 80 100 sw ed en ic el an d fi nl an d d en m ar k n or w ay po rtu ga l u ni te d st at es ca na da sw itz er la nd u ni te d ki ng do m g er m an y n ew ze al an d fr an ce a us tra lia be lg iu m ja pa n ko re a n et he rla nd s is ra el lu xe m bo ur g ita ly g re ec e sp ai n m ex ic o ire la nd tu rk ey 2008 women 35-39 source: employment/population ratios from oecd statextracts, http://stats.oecd.org/ • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk134 ket entry can result in limited economic opportunities and numbers of employed for specifi c cohorts in some of the countries we discuss (bentzen 2015; travaglini 2015). for instance, cohorts born around 1950 in countries dependent on oil imports may have suffered from the oil price hike of 1973-1974 (covi 2015). figure 6 depicts ageand sex-specifi c employment by cohorts for three example countries. the netherlands experienced drastic increases in female employment during the last decades with women who belong to younger cohorts showing signifi cantly higher labour market attachment than women of older cohorts. in the united states, employment developed in opposite directions for men and women (increasing employment rates for women, decreasing employment rates for men). in contrast, women as well as men in turkey who belong to younger cohorts have had lower employment rates than older cohorts. fig. 5b: employment rates in 1991 and 2008 by age group (60-64 (two bottom panels)) and sex for available countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 ic el an d m ex ic o sw itz er la nd ja pa n ko re a sw ed en n or w ay po rtu ga l is ra el tu rk ey u ni te d st at es ire la nd u ni te d ki ng do m d en m ar k g re ec e a us tra lia ca na da sp ai n ita ly n ew ze al an d fi nl an d g er m an y n et he rla nd s fr an ce be lg iu m lu xe m bo ur g 0 20 40 60 80 100 ic el an d m ex ic o sw itz er la nd ja pa n ko re a sw ed en n or w ay po rtu ga l is ra el tu rk ey u ni te d st at es ire la nd u ni te d ki ng do m d en m ar k g re ec e a us tra lia ca na da sp ai n ita ly n ew ze al an d fi nl an d g er m an y n et he rla nd s fr an ce be lg iu m lu xe m bo ur g men 60-64 0 20 40 60 80 100 ic el an d sw ed en n or w ay ko re a ja pa n u ni te d st at es sw itz er la nd po rtu ga l d en m ar k u ni te d ki ng do m ca na da m ex ic o fi nl an d tu rk ey is ra el g re ec e n ew ze al an d fr an ce sp ai n a us tra lia ire la nd ita ly g er m an y n et he rla nd s lu xe m bo ur g be lg iu m 1991 0 20 40 60 80 100 ic el an d sw ed en n or w ay ko re a ja pa n u ni te d st at es sw itz er la nd po rtu ga l d en m ar k u ni te d ki ng do m ca na da m ex ic o fi nl an d tu rk ey is ra el g re ec e n ew ze al an d fr an ce sp ai n a us tra lia ire la nd ita ly g er m an y n et he rla nd s lu xe m bo ur g be lg iu m 2008 women 60-64 source: employment/population ratios from oecd statextracts, http://stats.oecd.org/ international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 135 fig. 6: employment patterns by age and sex for the netherlands, the united states and turkey for selected cohort groups (the years in the legend refer to cohorts’ birth years) 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate turkey, male 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate turkey, female 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate netherlands, male 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate netherlands, female 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate united states, male 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75+ age employment rate united states, female 1911-1915 1921-1925 1931-1935 1941-1945 1951-1955 1961-1965 1971-1975 1981-1985 source: employment/population ratios from oecd statextracts, http://stats.oecd.org/ • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk136 the netherlands is characterised by a high level of part-time work among women, which is considered to have played an important role in the rising rate of female work participation in this nation (figart/golden 2013; bosch et al. 2010). in the us, women born in the 1960s saw the strongest increases in employment compared to earlier cohorts (boeri et al. 2005). turkey is the outlier of this group, where economic activity continues to be below 40 percent even for women belonging to recently born cohorts, suggesting that rapid economic growth has not translated into greater economic activity for large segments of the population. the turkish situation appears to refl ect increased development in economic activity due to economic necessity that is subsequently reduced due to cultural reasons that constrain the growth of female employment. in this case, the effects of modernisation may be smaller than those of culture, implying that most turkish women do not have paid work (gündüz-hoşgör/smits 2008). another explanation for low overall levels of female economic activity in turkey is the continued urbanisation and decline of employment in subsistence agriculture (world bank 2009). it is also important to note that income from work is more important in turkey than in other oecd nations for determining poverty (şeker/dayıoğlu 2014), which in turn may reduce costly investments in skills and education for families that are relatively poor, maintaining low employment rates. gender roles, including attitudes towards work, vary widely, also within europe and have been found to affect labour force participation and economic activity levels (camussi 2013; göksel 2013). cohort differences in attitudes could explain cohort differences in work patterns for men and women (parry/urwin 2011). in some countries, such as japan and several european countries, attitudes towards gender equality are much more positive among younger cohorts, which could suggest a much more positive effect for these nations (norris/inglehart 2011; pampel 2011; skirbekk et al. 2015). 6 conclusion ageing has led to widespread concerns about rising dependency ratios and fears of negative effects on economic growth and sustainability of social security (oecd 2006). however, the economic behaviours, characteristics and abilities that vary by country and cohort are often more important than the demographic age structure per se. our analysis of 45 countries reiterates the discrepancy between old age dependency ratios and economic dependency ratios. nations that have experienced a lower old age burden from a demographic viewpoint are often nations that have low economic activity in their working age population – many of whom face a greater economic dependency burden in spite of their young age structure. for instance, even if turkey and india have the second lowest old age dependency ratio in our 45-nation sample, they have the highest economic dependency ratio. in contrast, nations such as sweden or norway, which are relatively old, have a much more favorable economic dependency ratio. this suggests that countries with cultural and economic environments conducive to the inclusion of women in international va riation in ageing and economic dependency: a cohort perspective • 137 the labour market are in a more advantageous situation when it comes to population ageing. furthermore, nations that manage to maintain longer working lives for seniors and higher levels of employment among the young are in a better position to cope with demographic change. the contextual dimension of ageing has not been suffi ciently discussed, and this study provides an example that may provide insights into some of the dynamics associated with cohort and cross-country variation in labour force participation by sex. one potentially important dimension of economic activity that has seldom been factored in when it comes to macro level variation in ageing is culture. although ageing takes place everywhere and demographic age distributions in the longer term are likely to partially converge between countries, there is greater uncertainty in the extent to which cultural traits converge and whether these traits will affect behaviours relevant to how well nations age, including economic activity. such non-economic factors infl uencing economic outcomes seem to have received insuffi cient attention in the general literature on population ageing. national cultures and norms may infl uence the ages for entering and exiting the workforce and attitudes to work in life. whether women enter the labour force, whether women continue to work after childbearing years and overall levels of economic activity are all infl uenced by ageing. in effect, culture can be determining how nations experience population ageing. for example, cultural factors may have a decisive role in countries such as turkey, which is the nation with the lowest female employment level in our sample, and also in many asian countries. given that employment patterns follow cohort trends, changes in age-specifi c employment levels occur slowly and current levels will determine future levels at least for the medium term. how employment, particularly of older people and of women, will develop depends on a multitude of factors. attitudes towards older workers, particularly older people’s productivity and their work potential could be important in determining future work participation – more positive attitudes could potentially translate into later retirement (remery et al. 2003; conen et al. 2012). one study based on an analysis of 11 nations from the european social survey found that older people’s participation in paid and volunteer work is related to perceptions of older people’s competence independent of older people’s actual competence (bowen/skirbekk 2013). later retirement could make it easier to cope with demographic change as it could raise the ratio between the economically active and the economically inactive. although development is universal, in many nations attitudes towards women in the labour market are still negative (inglehart/ baker 2000; lueck 2005). this can be increasingly important following demographic change, as more individuals will enter ages where economic activity levels tend to be low and if women would increase their economic activity, this could alleviate the impacts of population ageing to a signifi cant extent. cultural variation in the understanding of the ages one should enter and leave the workforce, whether working is seen as positive – for instance through self-realisation or a service to society – or whether women should be economically active after having children can be highly important for determining lifetime outcomes. in some countries, for example in greece and spain, the fi nancial crisis in europe has led to unprecedented levels of unemployment among the young generation. • elke loichinger, vegard skirbekk138 what this generation’s employment history will look like as they grow older remains to be seen. since experience in other countries and contexts has shown that low levels of employment at young ages can translate into lower than usual activity levels during the whole life course, events like the fi nancial crisis can directly affect economic dependency for decades to come. this again stresses the importance of moving away from measuring dependency based on age structure and to instead include the economic dimension and to pay particular attention to cohort developments. employment opportunities and outcomes do correlate with educational attainment. a natural extension to our paper could be the addition of human capital in considerations of future levels of economic dependency. the effect of changes in the educational attainment structure along cohort lines can have positive as well as negative consequences and thus alleviate or aggravate population ageing, depending on the size of different effects. on the one hand, expansions in the educational attainment level of european workers entails higher human capital among the future workforce compared to the present situation, exerting a potential positive effect on labour productivity and economic growth (loichinger 2015; crespo cuaresma et al. 2016). on the other hand, weighting people according to their level of educational attainment illustrates how upward changes in the educational attainment level of the future elderly may put additional pressure on pension systems, as exemplifi ed in the case of italy (philipov et al. 2014). hence, the construction of economic dependency ratios for a wide range of countries that do take changes in human capital into account could potentially capture these kinds of effects and provide a more complete picture of future global dependency. acknowledgements partial funding for this work was made possible by the “wittgenstein 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division. united nations 2013: world population prospects: the 2012 revision. new york: united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division. world bank 2009: female labor force participation in turkey: trends, determinants and policy framework. 48508-tr. washington, d.c.: world bank. date of submission: 17.12.2014 date of acceptance: 04.12.2015 dr. elke loichinger (). college of population studies, chulalongkorn university, bangkok. research institute human capital and development, vienna university of economics and business. e-mail: elke.l@chula.ac.th url: https://www.wu.ac.at/index.php?id=20299 vegard skirbekk. columbia aging center, columbia university, new york. norwegian institute of public health, oslo. e-mail: vegard.skirbekk@fhi.no url: http://aging.columbia.edu/vegard-skirbekk-phd published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods revitalising housing stocks as a new policy field for suburban and rural municipalities philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop abstract: the single-family home neighbourhoods that were built in west germany in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s will be increasingly affected by future socio-demographic changes. today, the above-average length of occupancy by owners and the rise in life expectancy are leading to the increased over-ageing of the populations in these residential areas. the generational change means that a constantly growing number of these homes are being put up for sale and encountering a changing and regionally differentiated housing market. regionally diverse shrinking and ageing of the population will decrease the potential demand for single-family homes in coming years. in addition, social change will lead to qualitative changes in demand. the pluralisation of living arrangements and residential preferences can be expressed in the changed household structures and the geographic shift in housing demand in favour of more dense urban areas. therefore, residential areas in peripheral regions with unfavourable demographic and economic conditions are particularly at risk. at the local level, winners and losers will emerge among the existing residential neighbourhoods of suburban or rural municipalities. disadvantages such as unfavourable characteristics of a certain location and construction or energy effi ciency shortcomings, as well as image perception, can combine to create serious problems. in the worst case, homes are at risk of a loss in value, neglect, vacancy and dilapidation – developments that have, to date, been largely unknown in germany’s single-family home sector. the question for areas with at-risk homes is how the looming change in owner generations, not to mention the structural and infrastructural transformation processes, can be managed. this article, based on the results of a research project conducted by the wüstenrot foundation, examines the general demographic and socio-economic causes of this development and characterises the present situation in selected case studies. we also address questions about handling these problems and identify initial considerations about possible municipal interventions in the revitalisation of single-family home neighbourhoods. in addition, the article presents a strategic framework for action and a number of possible municipal provisions. comparative population studies vol. 39, 2 (2014): 285-318 (date of release: 18.06.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-06en7 • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop286 keywords: single-family home neighbourhoods · urban development · socio-demographic change · housing stock · housing surpluses 1 introduction in the single-family home neighbourhoods that were built in large numbers during the fi rst three decades of the federal republic, a generational change is presently underway that can be quite different in nature from place to place. in principle, the development of an older single-family home neighbourhood is determined by the ratio of supply and demand in the used single-family home market segment. however, isolated observation of housing market processes overlooks other decisive infl uencing factors that have effects at different levels. single-family home neighbourhoods can take very different development pathways depending on the regional socio-demographic and economic conditions, local peculiarities in the housing market, and local planning policies, as well as the characteristics of the location, urban form and infrastructure provisions. this article hypothesises that the development of west german single-family home neighbourhoods from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is infl uenced at the macro level by three key “mega trends”: demographic change, a change in living preferences, and broad and regional shifts in housing demand. we briefl y outline these three basic trends in this introduction according to their relevance to the research question. compared with other western nations, the consequences of the second demographic transition are particularly visible in germany (united nations 2011). since the 1970s, germany’s fertility rate has been far lower than the level required for the population’s natural reproduction. since 2003, the rising surplus of deaths over births and declining net immigration has led to a declining population balance. despite a slight immigration-related rise in the population in 2011 related to the european debt crisis, continual population decline is expected for the long term. according to the 12th coordinated population projection by the german federal statistical offi ce, the population could drop by up to fi ve million by 2030 and by up to 17 million by 2060 (statistisches bundesamt 2009); further, as of 2025, the number of households will also begin to decline (pötzsch 2011). in some peripheral rural and economically weak regions that are additionally affected by internal migration losses, declines in the number of residents of up to 30 percent are expected. the direct consequence of a decline in the population and average household size is partly an actual and partly a statistical increase in per capita consumption of living space. both positive and negative effects arise when fewer people reside in a stable or growing housing stock. when the numbers of households begin to decrease, an excess supply of housing terms of the total stock will almost inevitably result. the resultant challenges are of varying intensity, depending on the location and the housing market segment. these and other effects of demographic changes on the housing market have been discussed for some time in germany (e.g., bbsr 2010; eichener 2003; just prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 287 2009; payk 2011; schmitz-veltin 2011). lately, an increasing number of publications have drawn attention to the fact that single-family home neighbourhoods may soon also be affected by demographic change (adam/krings-heckemeier 2010; aring 2012; dransfeld 2010; fina et al. 2009). the stocks of privately owned homes were built and are largely still occupied by the family members of relatively large cohorts, but the ensuing generations of potential buyers belong to increasingly smaller cohorts. this may result in a quantitative mismatch, when a growing number of housing stocks becoming vacant encounter a declining number of demanding households (see also myers/ryu 2007). the unique fact that owner-occupiers in germany continue to reside in their homes for particularly long times and thus “block” a huge number of single-family homes and large dwellings intensifi es this mismatch (neugebauer 2007: 43), a phenomenon also known as the remanence effect (cf. simons 1999; just 2009: 67). in the meantime, the current demand for family-suitable housing space is often satisfi ed by the construction of new housing. nonetheless, for many years, it was assumed that single-family home neighbourhoods would not be affected by a decline in housing demand given the unbroken appreciation for less dense settlements and germany’s comparatively low percentage of single-family homes in the total housing stock. increasingly, however, the certainty that this specifi c segment of the west german housing stock will continue to be a “fast sell” on the market in the medium and long term is beginning to totter. the pluralisation of lifestyles and accompanying major changes in household structures, along with a loss of signifi cance for traditional family models and a rise in single households, single-parent families and childless couples, is giving rise to changed residential needs that can be better served by urban residential locations (buzar et al. 2005, 2007). a loss in the attractiveness of living in suburban singlefamily homes may also result from work-related changes such as the rise in female employment, the erosion of standard employment and the increase in precarious employment (häußermann 2009, 2007; siebel 2008). here, we refer to the signifi cant amounts of time and money required for the care and upkeep of a house and garden and for organising everyday life in locations with poor amenities. the assumed discrepancies between altered living preferences and the characteristics of many stock locations can thus be described as a potential qualitative mismatch. the quantitative and qualitative mismatches are overlain by the geographic polarisation between growing and shrinking regions. this development is caused by the interregional north-to-south and east-to-west migration of the population towards economically prospering cities and regions and the major intraregional concentration processes in germany over the past ten years. while many core cities and their densely populated surroundings recorded above-average population growth in recent years, some peripheral suburban and rural areas were affected by major population losses (herfert/osterhage 2012; siedentop 2008). for the long term, we can therefore expect continued growing demand and rising prices for older singlefamily homes in central urban areas and in the city outskirts of prospering regions (aring 2012; aehnelt et al. 2008; empirica/bayern lb 2009). in growing regions with tight housing markets, we can assume that even buildings with an unfavourable (micro) location and construction defects will fi nd a ready market. in contrast, pri• philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop288 vately owned homes in poor locations that are structurally imperfect and located in shrinking regions will be confronted with demand problems and reduced value in the future (aehnelt et al. 2008; hahne 2010; spehl et al. 2011). thus, in some regions, we can assume there will be continued demand for single-family homes, while other places are heading towards surplus supplies, leading to a geographic mismatch of supply and demand. this qualifi es the widespread assessment that this housing market segment is generally unproblematic due to the high demand for single-family homes. given these issues, the question is whether and how society and municipalities in particular can contribute to maintaining the housing stocks of single-family home neighbourhoods. west german funding policies actively supported the construction of single-family home neighbourhoods for decades through a variety of direct and indirect policies such as special homeowner and commuter tax benefi ts. home ownership assistance was always also considered a means of old-age security that could relieve the state of later social aid payments. should a large number of privately owned homes lose value, however, this would no longer be effective. for example, should the sales revenue from a house not be suffi cient to fund a place in a nursing home, the state must step in with its fi duciary duty. to this extent, maintaining the value stability of single-family homes is basically in the state’s interests. in addition, from the municipal point of view, any vacant housing involves lower revenues and higher infrastructure costs (schiller/siedentop 2005). the already low economic sustainability of infrastructure services in single-family home neighbourhoods is further reduced by the decreasing occupancy density and the increasing number of vacancies. moreover, the image of entire residential areas or even entire towns suffers from the visible dilapidation of individual houses. while intervention by the public sector is only justifi able for a single “problem property” when construction shortcomings have already become clear, it is doubtless needed to avoid foreseeable negative developments when entire residential areas or neighbourhoods are affected. although we are not seeing extensive vacancies in less dense settlements at present, in the future, certain partial stocks can expect widespread marketing problems, losses in value and growing vacancies. while one unfavourable factor alone is usually not problematic, an accumulation of disadvantages, such as a peripheral location, a low-appeal residential location and poor building conditions, certainly is. if, at the same time, the real estate market is offering attractive alternatives such as inexpensive building land or renovated apartments in good locations, the excess supply in the stocks of privately owned homes can increase. municipalities confronted with such unfavourable prospects should become active in the interest of the general welfare to be able to counteract foreseeable undesirable developments early. a proactive municipality need not necessarily make use of funds but should instead create the conditions and a positive climate for privately funded investment in the housing stock. against this background, in this article we delineate the causes and characteristics of a possible critical development of older single-family home stocks in germany and present a catalogue of suitable countermeasures for discussion. we present prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 289 the results of a research project1 by the wüstenrot foundation (wüstenrot stiftung 2012), in which the options for a sustained development of single-family home neighbourhoods from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were examined extensively.2 we seek answers to the following questions: • what is the current general condition and market position of single-family home stocks from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s? • how can the generational transition in these neighbourhoods be characterised from the residents’ point of view? • what priority does municipal urban planning give to maintaining the stock of single-family home neighbourhoods? • what measures are suitable for promoting the sustained use of existing single-family home neighbourhoods under the local circumstances? the most important fi ndings from the research project are illustrated in the following. first, we present the results of the case studies in 29 residential areas from 14 municipalities (section 2). following a brief overview (2.1), we present the results of the surveys (2.2) and then examples of four neighbourhoods in two cities (2.3). we then discuss various municipal strategies for dealing with aged single-family home neighbourhoods (3.1) and illustrate options for action (3.2). the article closes with a summary and conclusions (4). 2 case studies 2.1 overview two or three case study towns with varying conditions were chosen in each of the fi ve west german states of baden-württemberg, bavaria, hesse, lower saxony and north-rhine westphalia. in addition to increased affectedness and the resulting need for action, the selection criteria included the willingness of the towns to actively participate and a minimum size of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. a total of 14 municipalities (table 1) were included: one large city, six medium-sized towns, six small towns and one rural community. towns and communities from largely rural and urban regions were considered equally. the seven municipalities 1 in addition to the authors of this paper, kerstin bläser, prof dr rainer danielzyk, karin hopfner and prof dr christina simon-philipp were also part of the research team. 2 this article portrays a summary of selected excerpts from the publication cited. identical or slightly adapted passages can be identifi ed. for the sake of a better legibility we did not label each these passages individually. • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop290 in rural districts are all small towns, with the exception of the medium-sized town of meppen and the rural community of markt pressig. the six municipalities in densely populated districts are all, with the exception of the small town of gundelsheim, medium-sized towns. the independent city of kassel is the only regional centre in the sample. arnsberg and, to some extent, backnang, mosbach and meppen are other regionally signifi cant centres. garbsen near hanover and erkrath near düsseldorf are typical suburban communities that benefi t from their direct proximity tab. 1: overview of the characteristics of the selected case study municipalities municipality state population town size district building stocks 2005 pop. development 2010 type type % of sfh % built 20102010 1949-78 2020 2030 in % in % kassel hesse 195,530 large city urban district 63.1 51.8 -1.8 -4.4 arnsberg north-rhine westphalia 74,227 large mediumsized town compact 80.2 41.9 -6.0 -12.0 garbsen lower saxony 61,790 large mediumsized town compact 80.4 56.4 -3.6 -7.7 erkrath north-rhine westphalia 45,963 small mediumsized town compact 77.8 56.4 -6.0 -11.5 backnang badenwürttemberg 35,395 small mediumsized town compact 76.8 48.2 -1.9 -4.3 meppen lower saxony 34,944 small mediumsized town rural 92.2 51.1 3.3 4.4 mosbach badenwürttemberg 24,490 small mediumsized town compact 86.3 57.9 -1.8 -4.5 sulzbachrosenberg bavaria 19,665 small town rural 83.8 46.2 -7.2 -12.5 beverungen north-rhine westphalia 14,147 small town rural 92.3 44.4 -8.5 -15.3 lauterbach hesse 13,783 small town rural 90.0 47.7 -8.0 -14.2 rehau bavaria 9,427 small town rural 84.9 43.0 -9.8 -16.6 bad sachsa lower saxony 7,679 small town rural 82.0 38.0 -12.9 -20.8 gundelsheim badenwürttemberg 7,221 small town compact 92.8 39.6 -2.5 -4.3 pressig bavaria 4,123 rural town rural 92.9 43.2 -8.1 -- sfh = single-family home source: authors’ calculations and design, population and building data: statistische ämter des bundes und der länder, population projections: pressig: bayerisches landesamt für statistik und datenverarbeitung 2012, all others: bertelsmann stiftung 2012 prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 291 to the respective state capitals of lower saxony and north-rhine westphalia. in these two towns and in mosbach, the building stocks are most characterised by the period of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. in these three municipalities, extensive and largely simultaneously planned residential construction projects of higher density were realised and in part also distinguished as model developments (“demonstrativbauvorhaben”) (mosbach-waldstadt, garbsen-auf der horst) in the 1960s. the share of single-family homes in the towns’ building stocks usually increases counter to the size of the towns. for example, it is only 63 percent in the large city of kassel. meppen is an outlier here: with 92 percent, it has a far higher percentage of single-family homes than do the other medium-sized towns, which is typical for the emsland region. in contrast, bad sachsa and rehau, with a far lower percentage of single-family homes compared with the other small towns, deviate in the other direction. in the case of the former this can be explained by the specifi c housing stock structure of a tourist town and, in the case of the latter, by its industrial character. as for demographic trends, it is striking that the greatest population decline is predicted for the small towns located in rural districts. the anticipated inhabitant reductions of up to 21 percent between 2010 and 2030 are in part two to three times higher than the west german average of 7.7 percent (bbsr 2012). only fi ve municipalities are below the west german average, including meppen as the only participating city where a population increase is predicted. tab. 2: basic features for neighbourhood characterisation locations near the city centre outskirts separate district/not integrated construction times predominantly 1950s-60s predominantly 1960s-70s mixed settlement types gradual settlement by a variety of individual builders simultaneous construction by one or a few property developers structural types predominantly detached (single and two-family houses or semi-detached houses) predominantly compact (terraced houses, tract homes or atrium houses) mixed structural types of single and two-family houses mix of single and two-family houses and apartment buildings source: own design • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop292 first, all of the relevant single-family home neighbourhoods from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in the case study municipalities were recorded and categorised using the four basic features: intra-municipal location, time of construction, settlement process and structural type (table 2). during the fi nal selection of the neighbourhoods, we considered the municipalities’ preferences to participate but also ensured that a broad spectrum of different neighbourhood types was included. up to three neighbourhoods per municipality were selected for the study for a total of 29 single-family home neighbourhoods. detailed information about the population composition, neighbourhood structure and infrastructure, as well as land use and construction and spatial quality, was recorded for each neighbourhood. the evaluation of the data and information provided by the municipalities and our own on-site studies were supplemented with surveys of the relevant stakeholders, namely representatives of the municipal administration and real estate sector and the residents. the semi-structured interviews with local representatives and real estate experts worked on two levels. first, the local stakeholders were asked about their views on the topic of ageing singlefamily home neighbourhoods. second, the experts were asked for an assessment of the situation and the actions needed in the neighbourhoods studied. the residents’ perspectives were recorded solely on a written survey in ten of the neighbourhoods studied. the questionnaire design allowed us to differentiate between the responses of fi rst-generation residents and later residents, thereby illuminating the largely invisible process of generational transition. 2.2 survey results one focus of the case studies was to conduct both semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders and a standardised written resident survey to be able to record specifi c evaluations of neighbourhood change and future prospects. we included municipal representatives (mayors, heads of the building and planning authorities), local actors on the real estate markets, and residents. the results of the surveys were compared with assessments by the research team to qualify the subjective assessments and differentiate between insiders’ and outsiders’ perceptions. 2.2.1 local perspective the interviews with representatives of local politics and municipal planning departments revealed that the extent of addressing the problems of ageing single-family home neighbourhoods varies greatly, ranging from thorough considerations to largely ignoring the subject. it became clear that the threshold for municipal intervention is relatively high. there is often uncertainty whether it is a case of the interests of common welfare or only the particular interests of the homeowners. “vacancies and ageing of the population is one thing. the resulting problems for the housing estate are another. we must differentiate between prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 293 personal problems, like ‘i can’t sell my house,’ and the problematic situation for the entire area that arise for the neighbourhood” (translated by cpos). the decision-makers lack reliable indicators and threshold levels that identify the need for municipal intervention. examining price developments seems to be a limited approach: it is expected that dropping prices in particular can ensure marketability because this enables even low-income households to become homeowners. municipal stakeholders certainly admit that the demographic change is a process that will infl uence neighbourhood developments in future. however, they presume that the signifi cance of the demographic factor differs depending on the location of a neighbourhood. poor development is especially anticipated for neighbourhoods in non-integrated locations such as peripheral districts or villages. “decisive criterion: location, location, location. you need to differentiate between rurally structured areas and urban areas. neighbourhood x, for instance, was built in the 1950s in a very good location and won’t have any problems, but there will surely be problems in the villages!” (translated by cpos). as for the question of the resulting options for intervention, we ascertain that the municipalities surveyed do not yet have experience with or routine mechanisms for handling single-family home stocks. possible measures are additionally limited by the lack of fi nancial and personnel resources. “of course, the municipality has or can take on a steering function. it can also stimulate certain things and certainly attempt to become active, but that alone will surely not suffi ce. therefore, the private side has to take on a large role; private commitment is necessary” (translated by cpos). measures that strengthen urban infi ll, which require changes in zoning plans rather than cost-intensive steps, are considered particularly relevant. in practice, these are the non-allocation or reduction of new building plots. however, there are fears of a of “free riding problem”, whereby the neighbouring municipalities will profi t from the land-saving policies of a municipality by continuing to allocate building plots and thus recruit people interested in building. “the neighbouring towns tend to work against us and continue to allocate building land. we view this with scepticism. that is where the problem neighbourhoods we are talking about are being built” (translated by cpos). 2.2.2 real estate sector perspective the local real estate stakeholders, including estate agents, the staff of fi nancial institutes and representatives of housing companies, could provide practically relevant information about both developments in the privately owned home market • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop294 and the relevant demander groups. the remanence effect (section 1) was confi rmed to be a signifi cant phenomenon in the real estate market. this effect also results in an increasing decline in the structural quality of homes at the time of sale because older owners rarely carry out renovations and modernisations. there are contradicting statements with regard to the effect of building condition on marketability. some studies report that un-refurbished houses are in high demand because interested purchasers tend to look for inexpensive objects to renovate independently in their own tastes. however, it has been shown that thermal insulation measures, new roofs and windows do ease marketing because renovations that have already been completed cannot be completely added to the asking price and are therefore worth it for buyers. for the seller, however, the sales revenue does not increase by the value of the renovation work. still, cosmetic repairs such as fresh paint can have positive effects on the marketability and price of the real estate. individual objects in poor condition can quickly lead to the devaluation of entire streets and neighbourhoods. according to the assessment of the experts surveyed, the main demand groups for single-family homes remain families with one or two children. for the past few years, however, the spectrum of buyers has expanded. for example, childless couples and single persons have become demanders, most of whom prefer more compact types of houses. demand from older people who, for example, would like to move from their large single-family homes in peripheral locations to smaller, more central and barrier-free houses is rarer but does exist. assessments with regard to the importance of social infrastructure and local amenities in single-family home neighbourhoods vary. locations with good infrastructures are usually preferred. the real estate experts explain this with an increased awareness of the problem and of the fact that in families with children, both parents typically work and therefore require a good supply. “yes, the customers do look to see what infrastructure is available: the bakery next door that can be reached on foot, but also the school and kindergarten. this is all important, especially for families” (translated by cpos). we were also told that in less compact single-family home neighbourhoods, it is simply not possible for the entire range of services to be at hand but that this criterion does not play a major role due to the widespread availability of cars. the cited advantages of used single-family homes over newly constructed homes are large lots, better, more central locations, less density, the existing residential environment, the familiar social structure of the neighbourhood and lower fi nancial risk. nonetheless, the costs of necessary renovations are often underestimated during purchasing, so that in some unfavourable cases, the cost of modernising the existing stocks can be as high as building new homes. generally, interviewees from the real estate sector fi nd it diffi cult to steer demanders who wish to build a new house towards existing stocks because personal living preferences are often diffi cult to realise there. to ensure continued use of the stocks, real estate experts adhere to the important condition that prices for the existing stocks, including their renovations, prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 295 must remain below the level of new houses. in this context, the experts reported consistently that owners considerably overestimate the attainable prices for their single-family homes (by up to 50 percent). for the longer term, many municipalities reckon with (continued) falling real estate prices and predict a steady and rising development only in exceptional cases. “presently slightly upward, although we expect the long-term trend to be downward. i assume it has to do with the debt crisis. there are still many customers who prepone their investments” (translated by cpos). over smaller areas in the municipalities and regions, development will vary a great deal. the difference in price between good, integrated locations and nonintegrated locations or parts of towns is widening. a price drop for single-family home stocks to a certain level will regulate their marketability; however, because the main demander group of families is decreasing in size in many places, a supply surplus of single-family homes is anticipated in the future. “the supply will rise and demand will tend to drop, also due to demographic change and the jobs situation” (translated by cpos). in regions with steady or growing housing demand, most expect that the question of renovation or demolition and re-building in older single-family home neighbourhoods will be posed far more often in coming years. 2.2.3 resident survey the results of the expert interviews above were supplemented by a written survey that was used to gather residents’ assessments of the perceptions of the neighbourhoods – their qualities and defi ciencies. the resident survey was not conducted in all 29 neighbourhoods studied but was instead limited to ten neighbourhoods for the sake of research economy. the surveyed neighbourhoods were chosen as representatives of certain types of single-family home neighbourhoods. the main selection criteria were the location of the municipality (central/peripheral pursuant to bbsr region types 2010), the structure of the neighbourhood (predominantly low-density or compact) and the settlement process (gradual or simultaneous). two thousand four questionnaires were distributed. the response rate was almost 30 percent with 586 questionnaires. in the following, we present the key results of the survey. the survey participants’ ages were requested to allow for an assessment of the ageing process in the neighbourhoods. on average, 46 percent of the participants are over 65 years old. a comparison of the respondents with the age data of the population registers showed that the age group of 65-79 years is somewhat overrepresented in the sample (on average, +33 percent), the age group of 45-64 years almost matches that of the population registers and the age group of 30-44 years is underrepresented (-21 percent). • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop296 over half of the participants live in a detached single-family home, followed by two-family homes and row houses, each with 20 percent. semi-detached houses, accounting for only 7 percent, are distinctly less common. first-generation residents who built or newly purchased the house comprise 45 percent of the participants (n=458). the remaining 55 percent of the households inherited the real estate (19 percent) or purchased it used (36 percent). this relatively balanced distribution allows a good comparison of the assessments made by these two residential generations. although only 14 percent of the participants (n=76) wish to sell their house or apartment, the question about anticipated diffi culties in a potential sale was apparently answered by other homeowners, who, although they have no existing sales plans, have thought about future plans for their houses. of these respondents (n=232), 42 percent provided information about anticipated diffi culties (fig. 1). they were primarily concerned with realising their asking price but also quite frequently with fi nding interested buyers at all. figure 2 shows the reasons why second-generation residents purchased their houses or dwellings. it is clear that location criteria are the highest priority. the neighbourhood is most frequently cited as the reason for their choice, and closeness to the city centre is the third factor cited. about 85 percent of fi rst-generation residents and 99 percent of second-generation residents have already carried out fig. 1: anticipated selling diffi culties n = 97; multiple responses allowed; percentages refer to the number of respondents source: own survey and calculations 0 20 40 60 80 100 finding interested buyers realising asking price finding age-friendly residence percent 43 % 80 % 24 % prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 297 alteration and rehabilitation measures, confi rming our impressions from the onsite inspections. first-generation residents primarily carried out energy-saving improvements; second-generation residents cited modernisations of bathrooms or kitchens in the fi rst place (79 percent), followed by energy-saving adaptation measures such as the installation of new windows and the modernisation of the heating system. both fi rstand second-generation residents named the addition of thermal insulation as their fi rst planned alteration and rehabilitation measures. in their evaluation of the specifi c characteristics of the residential area, particularly the infrastructure, accessibility of public facilities, city centre and recreational opportunities, the survey respondents most frequently assessed the accessibility of schools and kindergartens as good. the 30to 64-year-old age group most frequently assessed the parking situation in public spaces as poor, followed by areas for recreational activities. the older group (65+) most frequently assessed the supply of shopping opportunities as poor, followed by the parking situation. overall, the resident survey shows that the residents do not perceive the present situation in residential areas to be unfavourable. the location characteristics of the neighbourhoods, the home comforts and the amount of greenery in less compact living situations are often appreciated. nevertheless, the residents do fear future marketing problems. fig. 2: reasons for choosing the house/apartment n=204, multiple responses allowed source: own survey and calculations 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 neighbourhood close to city centre inexpensive purchase price right size good layout size of property garden number of answers • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop298 2.2.4 summary the relatively balanced ratio of fi rstand second-generation residents ascertained by the resident survey shows that the neighbourhoods studied are currently in the midst of a generational transition. most of the respondents interpret the widely ascertainable drop in real estate prices as the market’s adaptation to changing demand, but not as a symptom of structural crisis. however, we note a looming trend of polarisation that is distinguished by steady developments in well-located residential neighbourhoods and by initial re-use problems in peripheral districts. both the municipal interview partners and the representatives of the real estate sector perceive a sort of “fringe-core gradient” with regard to this problem and expect that the phenomenon will intensify along with progressive demographic change. this pattern is reshaped by geographically different problems in specifi c segments of the housing stocks such as row and duplex houses or objects in topographically diffi cult locations and those with serious construction faults. many interview partners reported drastically high asking prices, which can lead to prolonged delays in sales and thus further intensify the known remanence effects in the generational transition of the neighbourhoods. however, the results of the resident survey also show that an awareness of realistic selling prices is apparently growing because a large number of the residents surveyed anticipate diffi culties asserting their asking prices. with regard to questions about the future of older single-family home neighbourhoods, the municipalities are presently undergoing an orientation phase with a high degree of uncertainty in planning policy. they vaguely perceive a possible presentation or intensifi cation of the problem but lack any clear idea of how these problems may actually manifest themselves and with what intensity as well as what preventive measures would be suitable to avert critical developments in the neighbourhoods. we encountered similarly disparate perceptive patterns in the real estate sector where the assessments fl uctuate between trusting market processes – for instance, referring to the adaptation of supply and demand to lower prices (“dropping the price will fi x it”) or to new demander groups – and hoping for supportive municipal measures in the case of intensifi ed supply surpluses. today, single-family home neighbourhoods largely appear to be blind spots in urban planning and urban renewal. after their initial planning in the course of their origination, the neighbourhoods were long considered fast sells for which no interventional planning appeared necessary at all. accordingly, there is hardly any experience in municipal stock management. in summary, we can state that at all three levels – municipal policies and planning, the real estate sector and, to a limited extent, the owners – attention to changes in older housing areas is increasing. the municipalities acknowledge the reasonableness of increased observance and, if needed, taking intervening measures. at the same time, however, there are considerable uncertainties about what strategies and steering instruments can be put into practice. prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 299 2.3 case studies: garbsen and beverungen in the following, we supplement our evaluation of the survey results by describing selected areas from the case study towns of garbsen (lower saxony) and beverungen (north-rhine westphalia). we highlight the differences that exist with regard to the housing demands and development opportunities between the two municipalities and among the neighbourhoods within a community. 2.3.1 garbsen garbsen, with approximately 62,000 inhabitants, is a large medium-sized town within the direct vicinity of the lower saxon state capital of hanover. the city of garbsen was created over the course of the 1960s and 1970s through gradual mergers of a number of communities. garbsen does not have a long-distance rail connection, but it is connected to local public transport by a light rail system administered by the hanover transport authority. the municipality is situated directly on the federal motorway a 2 and the federal highway b 6. the modern city of garbsen consists of the more densely populated and now connected districts of altgarbsen, havelse, auf der horst and berenbostel as well as eight smaller districts, some of which are more suburban and others more rural. in addition the district of garbsen-mitte between altgarbsen and berenbostel has been under development since the 1980s. by concentrating public and private facilities such as the town hall, municipal library, a multiplex cinema and shopping centres, the different districts of the city of garbsen have a new, mutual centre here. the garbsen districts bordering on hanover grew strongly in the post-war years as typical suburban residential locations. accordingly, the percentage of residential buildings from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is rather high at 56 percent. since 2001, the city of garbsen has been losing 0.25 percent of its population per year on average, and this shrinkage will presumably increase in coming years. according to the population projection by the lower saxony state offi ce of statistics and communication technology (lskn 2012), until 2030, the city faces a population decline of approximately 20 percent compared with 2010; however, the bertelsmann foundation (bertelsmann stiftung 2012) and the lower saxony institute for economic research (niw 2012) project distinctly smaller losses. garbsen’s development was and is dependent on its proximity to hanover and, in particular, to the large industrial operations in the directly adjoining hanover district of stöcken, where important production sites for the automobile and battery technology industries are located. the city hopes for a stimulus for independent economic development from the hanover centre for production technology (pzh) located within garbsen’s boundaries, which unites six institutes of the leibniz-university of hanover that handle production engineering and logistics together with a number of enterprises from the same sector. in addition, other departments of the university have been moved to garbsen, and there are plans to settle the entire faculty of mechanical engineering in garbsen. • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop300 the area studied, garbsen-planetenring, is part of the large housing estate “auf der horst,” which was industrially built under the general management of the state capital of hanover between 1964 and 1968 and was distinguished as a demonstrative federal construction scheme. the large housing estate consists mostly of threestorey multiple family dwellings, scattered high-rises and two areas with compact row and garden courtyard houses. the number of residents has decreased from approximately 10,000 to 7,000 inhabitants in 2009 – a decline of approximately 30 percent. the formerly municipally owned apartment buildings have been sold in the meantime, and some are now owned by investment companies that invest little in the housing stocks. the apartment buildings have been part of the “social city” federal funding programme since 2006. in the studied sub-area of planetenring, there are four different types of single-family homes. the neighbourhood is accessed via cul-de-sacs from the main access roads, residential streets and pedestrian passageways, and it has one discount grocery, two kindergartens, a primary school and a mixed secondary school centre. an adjacent row of shops is partly vacant and partly converted for social facilities. there is a light rail system station and a bus stop at the edge of the neighbourhood. the centre of hanover can be reached by rail in 23 minutes, and the new garbsen city centre by bus in 11 minutes.the old-age dependency ratio of 1.28 in the neighbourhood exceeds the city total (0.35) by more than 3.5 times, and the average age of 58.3 years is also far higher than the garbsen fig. 3: change in the population of garbsen between 1990 and 2030 (2010 = 100, projected from 2010) -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 bertelsmann niw lskn percent source: own calculations, data basis: population prognosis by the bertelsmann stiftung (2012) (institut für entwicklungsplanung und strukturforschung gmbh, deenst gmbh), niw (2012) , lskn (2012) (population projection by the landesbetrieb für statistik und kommunikationstechnologie niedersachseni prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 301 average (44.6 years). the planetenring neighbourhood has the highest average age of all neighbourhoods studied and is therefore only at the onset of generational transition. the homogeneous age structure of the residents can be explained by the fact that they all moved into the fi nished complex at the same time. the generational transition is thus likely to occur here in a relatively short time. due to the good connections to hanover and the equally good infrastructure in planetenring, no serious re-use problems are to be expected. however, in the meantime the municipality could take up the task of adapting public services to the needs of the aged residents. the studied area of garbsen-waldstrasse is a suburban settlement of low-density single-family homes built by individual builders. at that time, the local centre of havelse was growing at the western edge of the area studied, with a church and various shops. today, however, most of the shops are vacant. the neighbourhood is located in the southeast of the city of garbsen and is bordered to the east by hanover’s marienwerder forest. in addition to traditional housing estate houses and a few semi-detached and row and duplex houses, the area studied consists predominantly of detached single-family homes, most of which are built on 700to tab. 3: structural data of the neighbourhoods planetenring and waldstrasse in garbsen planetenring waldstrasse location distance to town centre 2.0 km 3.5 km location within entire town central outskirts topography level level area neighbourhood area (net) 5.1 ha 9.1 ha average lot size 337 m² 576 m² percentage of empty lots 0.0% 5.5% construction site occupancy index (actual) 0.43 0.23 structure type compact unattached settlement process simultaneous gradual dominant building age classes 1960s 1950s-1960s residents number of inhabitants (2010) 323 inhabitants 487 inhabitants inhabitant development 1989-2010 inhabitant density (2010) 62.8 inhabitants/ha 53.6 inhabitants/ha old-age dependency ratio 1.28 0.51 percentage of migrants 6.8% 6.4% source: own survey and calculations • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop302 1,200-square-metre lots. because many of the lots are very deep, some houses have already been built in the “second row” and are accessed via a cul-de-sac on the front lot. a kindergarten and a playground are located within the area studied, and there is a primary school nearby. the new city centre can be reached by bus in 12 minutes; the centre of hanover can be reached by public transport in approximately half an hour. at 0.51, the old-age dependency ratio of the population is distinctly higher than the city total (0.35). on average, a house is occupied by 3.3 people, which is a comparatively good occupancy fi gure. because the area was settled gradually, the age structure is more mixed than in the planetenring area, and generational transition is occurring less abruptly. the generally low lot utilisation is increased by the many new houses that have been built on the rear lot sections, but because the inside of the block is not accessed via a continuous public street but via cul-de-sacs on private property, complicated access structures have been created. due to the proximity to hanover, the quiet location, the direct proximity to the marienwerder forest and adequate public transport connections, the area studied has good development prospects. because the existing individual construction is characterised by different architectural styles and façade types, the appearance of the housing estate is not highly sensitive to construction changes such as modernisation, alteration and later densifi cation. 2.3.2 beverungen beverungen is a small town with approximately 14,000 inhabitants in weserbergland in the east of north-rhine westphalia. beverungen as it is today was created in 1970 through the incorporation of numerous surrounding villages. the core city has only approximately 6,600 inhabitants. due to the loss of many large enterprises, particularly the furniture industry, the city has lost approximately one-third of its employees in recent decades. its economic structure continues to be dominated, however, by the manufacturing industry, which employs approximately 41 percent fig. 4a: two-storey row house type in garbsen-planetenring fig. 4b: detached single-family homes in garbsenwaldstrasse source: photos taken by the authors prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 303 of all employed people. beverungen has continually recorded population losses since 1998. according to a projection by the north-rhine westphalian state offi ce of information and engineering, between 2010 and 2030 – due to a negative natural population and migration balance – it can expect a further continuous inhabitant decline of approximately 17 percent, thus lowering the number of inhabitants to less than 12,000 (it.nrw 2012). the population prognosis by the bertelsmann foundation reaches a slightly lower fi gure (bertelsmann stiftung 2012). the studied area beverungen-poelten is a low-density single-family home neighbourhood with detached houses predominantly from the 1950s and 1960s. it directly borders the core city. originally, the privately owned homes in poelten were built primarily by citizens of beverungen. later, a number of inhabitants who originally came from berlin settled in one section of the housing estate and chose the charming weserbergland region as their retirement home while seeking a topographically level location. between 1990 and 2009, the number of inhabitants in this residential neighbourhood dropped by 17 percent; many houses already exhibit internal vacancies, i.e., they are inhabited by only one usually older person. as a result, at 0.54, the old-age dependency ratio is higher than that in beverungen overall (0.40). due to the neighbourhood’s good infrastructure and local amenities, schools, kindergartens and physicians as well as a level location – not typical for weserbergland – the neighbourhood is equally suitable for young families and older people. according fig. 5: change in the population of beverungen between 1990 and 2030 (2010 = 100, projected from 2010) -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 bertelsmann it.nrw percent source: own calculations, data basis: population prognosis by the bertelsmann stiftung (2012) (institut für entwicklungsplanung und strukturforschung gmbh, deenst gmbh), population prediction by the landesbetrieb information und technik nordrhein-westfalen (it.nrw 2012) • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop304 to the overall situation of the city described above, we cannot expect family households to contribute to a suffi cient extent as a demander group to entirely avoid a vacancies development in future; the location advantages of the neighbourhood and the city’s plans to make beverungen attractive for senior citizens could, however, be used to adapt the neighbourhood to the needs of an ageing population, for example, through the promotion of age-friendly home alterations or relevant image campaigns. in addition, the existing potential for urban infi ll could be taken advantage of to add smaller facilities for barrier-free and assisted living, for which there is great demand in beverungen, according to the municipal stakeholders. this could enable older residents requiring care or nursing to remain in the neighbourhood. the neighbourhood of beverungen-selsberg, which was built upward from the foot of a steep eastern slope, is situated at the edge of the city centre of beverungen. a few apartment buildings that were built by a non-profi t housing estate organisation are located at the lower edge; today, they are owned by a real estate investment fund. since then, the image of this neighbourhood has been characterised by apartment buildings, which is rather atypical for beverungen, with a large number tab. 4: structural data of the neighbourhoods poelten and selsberg in beverungen poelten selsberg location distance to town centre 1.4 km 1.9 km location within entire town central outskirts topography level slope area neighbourhood area (net) 13.2 ha 11.4 ha average lot size 605 m2 594 m2 percentage of empty lots 5.2% 10.3% construction site occupancy index (actual) 0.2 0.2 structure type unattached mixed settlement process gradual gradual dominant building age classes 1950s-1960s 1960s-1970s residents number of inhabitants (2009) 767 inhabitants 684 inhabitants inhabitant development 1990-2010 -17% -9.5% inhabitant density (2009) 58 inhabitants/ha 60 inhabitants/ha old-age dependency ratio 0.54 0.33 percentage of migrants 7.4% 3.5% source: own survey and calculations prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 305 of welfare recipients. across from the multiple family dwellings in the lower section of the neighbourhood, steep cul-de-sacs provide access up the hill to duplex and row houses. the upper section of the housing estate contains detached single and duplex homes on spacious lots. at the western edge of the housing estate, newer buildings, predominantly detached single-family homes, make the transition to the open countryside, where there are also some empty lots for new buildings. the neighbourhood was settled later than poelten was (1960s and 1970s), and the new construction areas at the edge of the housing estate result in a relatively low oldage dependency ratio of 0.33, although the generational transition has not yet been completed. the local amenities in the studied area are inadequate because a car is needed to purchase the daily essentials. secondary schools and two day-care facilities are located only one to two kilometres away, but the primary school is located across town. the public transport connections mainly aim at the transport of pupils. for the older residents living in the neighbourhood, the distance to shops and amenities is a distinct defi ciency. the steep access roads are another barrier to the elderly leading self-suffi cient lives. due to the specifi c topography of the neighbourhood, the distance to relevant infrastructure facilities and the access to houses that is sometimes steep and only possible on foot, the older building stocks face re-use problems, which could be further intensifi ed by competition with the greenfi eld development and the infi ll of empty lots. conversely, the low home prices that are a result of the negative factors could make the neighbourhood appealing for other groups such as the residents of the apartment buildings at the edge of the housing estate. this trend appears to have already begun due to the growing numbers of residents of russian origin. 2.3.3 summary the two studied municipalities, each with two neighbourhoods, were chosen to represent the 14 examined municipalities with a total of 29 neighbourhoods. they fig. 6a: detached single-family homes in beverungen-poelten fig. 6b: row houses on a steep slope in beverungen-selsberg source: photos taken by the authors • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop306 reveal the scope of different house and neighbourhood types and illustrate the infl uence of a rural/peripheral location or a central location in an urban agglomeration. despite the visible rehabilitation backlog and a few negative factors, the two garbsen neighbourhoods are on a relatively solid footing. the future population decline in garbsen is a special uncertainty factor because the prognoses differ considerably, but due to other positive circumstances, this is not of great consequence. the size of garbsen and its central location in the hanover region ensure a functional housing market that can easily, if not favourably, absorb the segment of older single-family homes. for planetenring, in addition to the age-friendly adaptations mentioned above, land use planning measures in particular could help the town attain qualifi ed further structural development of the neighbourhood.all of the population development projections for the city of beverungen reveal major population declines. the economically diffi cult situation in the region means that the development of vacancies cannot be avoided in the long term, although the vacancy problem will impact other post-war neighbourhoods located in remote villages fi rst. the favourable location of the neighbourhood of poelten could be further adapted to the needs of an older population. in addition, smaller units of barrier-free and assisted living arrangements could be added to cover the existing demand in beverungen. selsberg, with its steep slopes and poor infrastructure, is not suitable for elderly people. here, we assume that the existing infl ux trend of other socio-demographic population groups will continue and shift the vacancy problem to the apartment buildings. 3 housing stock development: a municipal fi eld of action the fi ndings presented here pose the question of whether and in what way public intervention is necessary and reasonable to support renewal processes in older single-family home neighbourhoods. because municipalities are the main stakeholders in this context, we must ascertain the self-conception on which municipal action is based. the possible roles of the municipality are described in section 3.1 with a spectrum ranging from a mere observer role to the provision of advice and mediation services all the way to regulative and investment measures. to make informed decisions, a municipality must examine the development perspectives of its respective neighbourhoods. therefore, section 3.1 also presents considerations on neighbourhood development perspectives and municipal development strategies before we describe selected action approaches in detail in section 3.2 (see also table 5). 3.1 motives and strategies for municipal action because home ownership is chiefl y a private matter that is usually beyond the grasp of governmental and municipal control, seemingly political decision-makers have limited options to infl uence or take action in the sphere of privately owned home neighbourhoods. nonetheless, our survey of local representatives revealed a more differentiated picture. the representatives do see a need for action if it is in the prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 307 interests of the common welfare. municipalities consider themselves responsible when structural problems arise for entire neighbourhoods but not when problems arise for individual home owners. differentiating between these two, however, is still diffi cult for many municipalities. the motivation to take part in the research project was therefore often driven by the desire to better estimate a town’s own situation compared with that of other municipalities and to see examples that refer to actions needed. at fi rst, the municipal stakeholders frequently cited precarious budgets and scarce human resources as basic obstacles to establishing single-family home neighbourhoods as a distinct fi eld of municipal action. however, in the ensuing indepth discussions about options for intervention, the municipalities were able to list more steering options than were apparent at fi rst glance. it is worthwhile to examine the entire spectrum of possible municipal action, especially in neighbourhoods with numerous private owners. generally, we can differentiate the following fi ve municipal roles (kern et al. 2005: 11; fox-kämper et al. 2009: 23): • plan and regulate: the set of regulating instruments includes, for example, granting or denying building permits and urban-development orders such as building or demolition orders. in addition, the fl exibilisation of building regulations for housing stock development may be helpful as long as they are not contrary to the requirements of historic preservation. • supply and provide: municipalities are directly or indirectly responsible for providing social and technical infrastructure services within the municipal territory. changes in the number of inhabitants and the age composition in housing stock areas infl uence the demand for infrastructure, which can result in the need for expansion, conversion or removal. • observe and advise: in most cases, local administrations possess a variety of statistical data that unfortunately frequently exist in isolation in different specialised offi ces. by compiling this information, a database can be created that can help authorities evaluate planning needs and serve as a basis for advisory services for housing stock management. • initiate and stimulate: in addition to possible fi nancial incentives, municipalities can offer technical support for owners such as construction advice or aid prior to applying for funds from state funding programmes. • mediate: the municipality may be needed as a mediator in the creation of neighbourhood development schemes or in solving individual problems such as in conjunction with urban infi ll or the demolition or alteration of infrastructures. in some cases, however, it may be advisable to employ external mediators. • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop308 determining which of these very different roles is appropriate in any given situation depends not only on the local planning culture and the available human and fi nancial resources of the local authority but also on the realistic development options of a single-family home neighbourhood. while municipal advisory services (e.g., energy-saving rehabilitation measures) may be considered suffi cient in one neighbourhood, the development of another neighbourhood may raise further questions about possible interventions by the municipality. we can differentiate three possible developments for a single-family home neighbourhood that present municipalities with very different tasks (cf. adam/krings-heckemeier 2010; zakrzewski 2011): • neighbourhoods can be “fast sells,” i.e., houses are absorbed by the market, and the image and character of the neighbourhood does not face notable social and structural changes. generally, no public intervention is needed in fast sell areas. municipal stakeholders in prospering regions in particular note that the houses usually change hands with ease in the course of generational transition. • favourable factors such as a good residential location, favourable economic circumstances and consequently a high demand can mean that neighbourhoods are so popular that their image and real estate prices gain in value and that the social status of the new residents also rises (“fi ltering up”). municipal intervention can be advisable in “upward” neighbourhoods, for example, to prevent undesired urban infi ll. • finally, a neighbourhood can also experience a descent when the transitional phase is accompanied by rehabilitation backlogs, underuse and vacancy problems, a poorer image and a problematic amount of incoming “other” socio-demographic population groups (“fi ltering down”). in this case, a broad spectrum of municipal options for action opens up. similar to experiences in the urban restructuring of apartment buildings, three different neighbourhood development strategies can be distinguished and combined: stabilisation – qualifi cation – restructuring (cf. kirchhoff/jacobs 2005; adam et al. 2006). depending on the neighbourhood and strategy chosen, municipalities can take different measures and vary their role or the extent of their intervention. the strategies presented below for neighbourhood development are not to be understood as directly transferable and immediately employable “blueprints” but are merely intended to show municipalities’ major options with regard to housing stock development in single-family home neighbourhoods. stabilisation strategies are particularly suitable for neighbourhoods that have a suffi cient demand for privately owned homes. from the point of view of urban development policy, such neighbourhoods need to be maintained in their current structure, characteristics and residential function. the existing defi ciencies and shortcomings are eliminated at once, and the existing location potentials are utiprospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 309 lised. the residential function is strengthened and developed further while preserving the existing basic urban-development structures. qualifi cation strategies are recommended primarily for single-family home neighbourhoods for which diffi culties are expected with regard to their long-term use due to unfavourable circumstances and unattractive neighbourhood characteristics but that have the potential – through targeted measures – to develop positively. urban-development shortcomings such as permanently vacant and dilapidating buildings are eliminated. targeted upgrade measures can diminish losses in both attractiveness and value and improve use perspectives. restructuring strategies are best suited for neighbourhoods in which adequate demand cannot be anticipated for the long term due to negative circumstances and unfavourable neighbourhood characteristics. when vacancies increase and are accompanied by a further decrease in attractiveness, extensive demolition measures may be necessary to limit damages to the image of the municipality and to improve the functionality of other housing stocks. restructuring measures can also involve the type of use, such as increasing permits for non-residential uses. 3.2 recommendations for action one central insight gained from the municipal case studies that we conducted is that regions, cities or neighbourhoods that have a higher risk of marketability of single-family home stocks can be identifi ed only to a very limited extent by means of specifi c indicators or available statistical data. additionally, our site inspections and in-depth investigations of the areas of housing stocks revealed that even within communities, there are disparate developments in structurally similar residential areas, which can frequently be explained by specifi c location characteristics or image patterns. because neither a regionally specifi c nor a universal scheme can thus be developed to qualify single-family home stocks, this project established a so-called “toolbox” of certain strategies, options for action and measures that allow solutions to be developed in accordance with locally and regionally specifi c features. the toolbox allows the user to combine options in a variety of ways. depending on the specifi c strategy chosen, the spectrum of possible municipal actions ranges from more informal instruments such as non-binding neighbourhood development plans to regulatory interventions in the context of municipal land use planning (table 5 provides an overview). the recommendations for action were developed based on the fi ndings from the case studies and underwent an initial evaluation in workshops with experts. the case studies presented here prove that the future development of singlefamily home neighbourhoods should not be observed in isolation from broader changes within the municipalities because aspects such as local demographic developments, the dynamics of the local economy and specifi c area policies decisively characterise housing stock conditions. this results in the necessity for an integrated and integral regional perspective from which neighbourhood-specifi c development strategies are established. in the interviews and workshops, the municipal stakeholders cited careful recording and analysis of the condition of single-family • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop310 home neighbourhoods and their importance for the local housing supply as fi rst important steps to place strategic actions on a reliable foundation. our interviews also revealed that certain individual matters have already been analysed within the municipalities but that there is a lack of integration and thus of the combination of individual aspects. this can be done in the context of integrated urban development schemes or housing market schemes and, if needed, can be supplemented by talks with or surveys of residents and real estate agents. generally, constant neighbourhood monitoring is an appropriate measure for recognising unfavourable developments early and becoming proactive. even municipalities that do not face any present need for action favoured this approach. one important measure to promote housing stocks is limiting the allocation of new building land. particularly in municipalities with unfavourable demographic trends, the competition between existing neighbourhoods and new greenfi eld construction can be curbed using this strategy. however, municipalities affected by new construction reported of competition for inhabitants with nearby towns and consequently perceived the need to allocate additional lots. the negative consequences of such “local parochialism” have been described more than once (cf. schiller/gutsche 2009; preuß/floeting 2009; danielzyk et al. 2010). we therefore recommend an intermunicipal harmonised building land strategy that seeks a fair balance of interests between the participating communities. while we found a trend towards urban infi ll in almost all of the municipalities that are frequently politically anchored by council orders, none of the municipalities studied implemented approaches for intermunicipal cooperation. a restrictive building land policy should be supplemented by neighbourhoodlevel approaches. we addressed measures to activate vacant lots and urban infi ll, which can also have positive effects on the viability of infrastructure facilities. the idea of a municipal building land registry providing information about buildable vacant lots within the municipal area was described by municipal stakeholders as a useful measure to unite supply and demand. in municipalities registering marketing diffi culties and distinct drops in prices for older single-family homes, an image campaign promoting existing housing can contribute to emphasising the specifi c qualities and potential of existing housing stock neighbourhoods compared with new greenfi eld developments, which could steer demand to existing homes or certain neighbourhoods. similar campaigns that combine the purchase of older houses with fi nancial incentives are being observed closely (e.g., the “young buy old” programme in the town of hiddenhausen). the funding programme, which was established in 2007, simultaneously reduced the number of vacant buildings and increased the utilisation of the social infrastructure. this type of good publicity and addressing relevant groups could contribute to a positive outlook for urban infi ll and the purchase of used homes. urban infi ll schemes are frequently called “the building blocks of successful increase in building density” (umweltministerium baden-württemberg 2009; translated by cpos). many less compact single-family home neighbourhoods exhibit very low structural density and therefore have potential for infi ll. low density, however, is often a sign of a high quality of living; in particular, a spacious settlement prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 311 and large share of open space are often decisive in the popularity of many singlefamily home neighbourhoods. therefore, especially in municipalities with high demand in specifi c neighbourhoods, it can even be wise to protect a lower density from undesired structural infi ll. according to the municipal stakeholders, there are certainly neighbourhoods in which the low degree of land use is considered disadvantageous; even so, infi ll schemes are employed with great reserve. the surveyed municipalities only expect success if such schemes are created in an open, participative process. the municipal stakeholders cited infrastructure and local amenities as another essential fi eld of action. there is a complex relationship among demand potentials, accessibility, economic viability, the municipal public supply mandate and effects on the attractiveness of neighbourhoods. single-family home neighbourhoods are generally characterised by low population densities, as mentioned above. the ageing process of the residents and related remanence effects often lead to further reductions in density and therefore also in demand. this can seriously endanger the economic viability of the technical infrastructure (schiller/siedentop 2005; koziol 2004; siedentop 2009). against this background, the municipalities address the need to maintain infrastructure facilities in spite of a drop in utilisation to keep housing estates attractive to new buyers. the phase of generational transition was considered a special challenge, particularly in homogeneously settled single-family home neighbourhoods in which both older residents and families with children must be supplied. increased synergies can possibly be achieved via collaboration between the existing facilities for young and old and by means of multifunctional and fl exible schemes that allow for use by different groups. because there is often a lack of knowledge about the small-scale supply quality of local amenities, municipalities should fi rst investigate the current situation in single-family home neighbourhoods or the entire town, including all residential areas. municipalities in which local amenity facilities cannot be viably operated in certain neighbourhoods reported efforts to organise the supply of essential goods and services by means of alternative schemes. although the municipal stakeholders emphasised that initiating new supply models is not within their direct jurisdiction, they did see themselves in the role of creating contacts, inputting ideas and offering fi nancial and organisational support. alternative models include cooperative shops or community centres where the inhabitants themselves organise local amenities such as mobile retailers or supermarkets on wheels and delivery services. the municipalities studied have already had initial, largely positive experiences with such models. in the face of climate protection, municipalities do recognise their important role as advisory entities to motivate the large but heterogeneous group of owner-occupiers to undertake energy saving modernisations. there is still a signifi cant modernisation backlog of single-family homes, particularly in energy-saving rehabilitation. the academic literature cites the lack of information (e.g., about houses’ energyrelated conditions) or prejudices, fears and anxieties (e.g., about the expense of rehabilitation) as the main reasons for investment reticence among single-family homeowners (kleemann/hansen 2005; stieß et al. 2010). therefore, municipalities • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop312 tab. 5: overview of municipal fi elds of action, measures and objectives field of action measure objective strategic urban development planning and monitoring analysis of the housing stock and the resident structure based on the local statistics record the initial situation and previous development of the neighbourhoods; estimate the future development of the neighbourhoods resident survey record deficiencies from the residents’ viewpoints; collect data on the needs and wishes of the residents dialogue with real estate agents and other housing market stakeholders assess the situations and marketing perspectives of the neighbourhoods; gain knowledge of the needs of new demander groups regular collection of indicators that identify negative trends early monitor neighbourhood development; early warning system for critical developments that require municipal intervention establish integrated development schemes framework for municipal action; framework for investments; basis for planning policy urban development and land management stock-oriented housing estate development, restriction of allocation of additional building lots create incentives for the purchase of existing housing stocks, avoiding excess supply on the housing market intermunicipal land management develop an inter-municipal greenfield strategy to avoid excess supply on the housing market urban infill urban development through utilising existing building sites conversion of vacant non-residential buildings (greyfield development) activate and convert vacant areas, elimination of vacancies schemes for increasing population density increase the number of dwellings and enlarging floor spaces demand stimulation and public relations steer attention to existing buildings and vacant lots infrastructure and local amenities analysis and creation of background information record and analyse shortcomings; decision basis for further measures to eliminate supply deficits adaptation of the technical infrastructure adapt the networks to stabilise economic viability and ensure technical functionality adaptation of the social infrastructure eliminate supply deficiencies; upgrade neighbourhoods by improving the infrastructure adaptation of nursing services in the area care of older residents; create or secure an adequate nursing supply; ensuring longest possible independence and that they can remain in familiar surroundings securing and strengthening existing local amenities long-term maintenance of local amenities alternative management of local amenities ensure provision of essential goods and services; upgrade neighbourhoods by means of improved supply prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 313 tab. 5: continuation field of action measure objective public space and townscape upgrading the public space increase attractiveness; improve availability of open space; make the public space a place of communication and a meeting place; stimuli for successive private upgrades designing low-barrier public space improve accessibility for people with low mobility; improved accessibility for all residents preservation of housing estates that define the townscape protect the original appearance; thoughtful further construction traffic and mobility adaptation/strengthening of local public transport adapt public transport connections to changed needs of residents; upgrade the neighbourhood through improvement of public transport connections alternative/flexible mobility schemes ensure mobility in spite of low viability; stimulate civic commitment and neighbourliness; establish self-sufficient structures redesigning parking spaces (in compact housing estates) create new parking spaces; upgrade the public space; preserve the characteristics of neighbourhoods buildings and housing space disseminating information on energyefficient renovation of buildings overview of funding options; reduce the modernisation backlog; reduce energy consumption disseminating information on age-friendly adaptation of housing spaces overview of funding options; adapt housing stocks to barrier-free standards disseminating information on general housing space adaptation overview of funding options; adapt dwellings to changed demands; shared dwellings setting up a model house as an example of successful housing stock modernisation portray the spectrum of possible alterations; strengthen private willingness to invest promoting cooperation and networks of craftsmen specialised in modernisation of single-family homes facilitate measures for stock adaptation; bring together providers and demanders construction of age-friendly dwellings; facilitating moves to age-friendly living arrangements support generational transition; ”clear” “blocked” buildings for young families residents and participation local owner associations upgrade the neighbourhoods through coordinated measures by private owners promotion of self-help initiatives alternative supply and support by, e.g., associations, cooperatives, neighbourhood networks cooperative and participative planning processes increase acceptance of municipal measures and plans consider the concerns of residents promotion of measures that improve neighbourhood life increase social cohesion and civic involvement source: own design • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop314 can attempt to increase the rehabilitation rate of privately owned homes by providing relevant information and assistance and at the same time supporting the adaptation of buildings to the needs of older residents. municipalities can support the generational transition in single-family home neighbourhoods by granting building permits and initiating relevant projects for the construction of barrier-free dwellings with care services or other facilities for the elderly on vacant lots or other unused areas (e.g., unused playgrounds). another option is to alter and combine large single or duplex homes into smaller, age-friendly units. in this case, we recommend the inclusion of local providers of such living arrangements, such as local building societies and nursing facilities. the fi elds of action sketched out here are merely a selection of options for municipalities. the following table 5 shows an overview of a variety of further fi elds of action, measures and objectives. the fi elds of action described above lie within the municipalities’ scope of infl uence. there are also some important fi elds of action at the regional and national levels, however, such as governmental housing promotion, which still makes building new homes preferential to purchasing used homes in some states. fiscal and legal instruments are of primary relevance at the national level by, for instance, differentiating property transfer tax to reduce the burden on the purchase of built-up plots as and levying a special fee on vacant lots to create incentives and thus strengthen housing stock development. another interesting question is the extent to which the instruments and funding lines of urban restructuring (in germany, a joint task of the federal and state governments) could be effective in the housing improvement districts in single-family home neighbourhoods. during our discussions with experts, however, we identifi ed a basic restriction regarding the use of urban development funds in single-family home neighbourhoods. in many municipalities, the situations in neighbourhoods with compact apartment buildings are so urgent that shifting urban development funds to single-family homes is considered unrealistic. 4 summary and conclusions due to the comparatively low percentage of single-family homes in german housing stocks and germans’ great affi nity for this type of residence, it was hardly anticipated that this market segment could be affected by negative development. however, socio-demographic changes will quite likely have an impact on the market even for used single-family homes, which may be intensifi ed by the continued construction of new homes. the main causes for the possible instability of this housing segment are clearly on the demand side and are not supply related defi cits. population decline and massive changes in household structures will lessen the demand for privately owned homes. future problems can mainly be anticipated in suburban and rural regions that are far from larger cities, while single-family home neighbourhoods in urban locations or in the closer vicinity of core cities will remain a segment that is in demand on the real estate market. in the latter areas, generational transition and stock renewal will occur via general market action without the need prospects for west german post-war single-family home neighbourhoods • 315 for substantial public action. therefore, we can expect the increased polarisation of stock development, which is already becoming noticeable in the price development of housing stocks. the anticipated decline in demand and loss in value of stocks of privately owned homes in peripheral regions will not necessarily lead to defi cits in town planning, however. when looming problems are recognised early, thus allowing enough time to actively take countermeasures, single-family home neighbourhoods, even those with smaller populations, can be preserved as appealing residential locations. this will, however, require municipal stabilisation and adaptation measures with which we have little experience. contrary to the common opinion that the stock of singlefamily homes largely eludes the infl uence of public action, we have been able to illustrate a variety of municipal courses of action in this article. a fi rst and important step for municipalities would be to begin to devote themselves to their older singlefamily home stocks. the continuous observation of neighbourhood developments is necessary for recognising and discussing whether the market mechanisms lead to satisfactory results or whether municipal intervention is needed to preserve the general welfare. references adam, brigitte; krings-heckemeier marie-therese 2010: strategien für wohnstandorte der 1960/70er jahre am stadtrand. in: raumplanung 149,4: 91-96. adam, brigitte; weidner, silke; ginzel, beate 2006: szenarien und modellrechnungen für eine virtuelle stadt. in: bundesministerium für verkehr, bau und stadtentwicklung; bundesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung (eds.): stadtquartiere im umbruch. infrastruktur im stadttumbau – chancen für neue freiräume. 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städte? zur plausibilität der reurbanisierungshypothese. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 3/4: 193-210. siedentop, stefan 2009: entdichtung der siedlungsstruktur als siedlungsund infrastrukturpolitisches schlüsselproblem – infrastruktur in der remanenzkostenfalle? in: tietz, hans-peter; hühner, tanja (eds.): zukunftsfähige infrastruktur und raumentwicklung – handlungserfordernisse für verund entsorgungssysteme. hannover: akademie für raumforschung und landesplanung: 162-175. simons, harald 1999: perspektiven des westdeutschen wohnungsund büromarktes bis 2030. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 11/12: 744-754. spehl, harald (ed.) 2011: leerstand von wohngebäuden in ländlichen räumen. beispiele ausgewählter gemeinden der länder hessen, rheinland-pfalz und saarland. e-paper der arl 12. hannover • philipp zakrzewski, andrea berndgen-kaiser, runrid fox-kämper, stefan siedentop318 statistisches bundesamt 2009: bevölkerung deutschlands bis 2060. 12. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt [url: https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/thematisch/bevoelkerung/vorausberechnungbevoelkerung/bevoelkerungdeutschland2060presse5124204099004.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile, 28.05.2014]. stieß, immanuel; van der land, victoria; birzle-harder, barbara; deffner, jutta 2010: handlungsmotive, -hemmnisse und zielgruppen für eine energetische gebäudesanierung. ergebnisse einer standardisierten befragung von eigenheimsanierern. frankfurt a.m. umweltministerium baden-württemberg 2009: bausteine erfolgreicher innenentwicklung: empfehlungen aus der kommunalen praxis. umweltministerium baden-württemberg. stuttgart . united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division 2011: world population prospects: the 2010 revision, highlights and advance tables. esa/p/wp.220. wüstenrot stiftung (ed.) 2012: die zukunft von einfamilienhausgebieten aus den 1950er bis 1970er jahren – handlungsempfehlungen für eine nachhaltige nutzung. ludwigsburg: wüstenrot stiftung. zakrzewski, philipp 2011: in der übergangszone: alternde einfamilienhausgebiete zwischen revitalisierung, stagnation und schrumpfung. in: schnur, olaf; drilling, matthias (eds.): quartiere im demographischen umbruch. wiesbaden: vs research: 47-66. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “herausforderungen westdeutscher einfamilienhausgebiete der nachkriegszeit. bestandsentwicklung als neues handlungsfeld für kommunen”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-06de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-06de1, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 17.08.2012 date of acceptance: 04.09.2013 philipp zakrzewski. ils research institute for regional and urban development. dortmund, germany. e-mail: philipp.zakrzewski@ils-research.de url: http://www.ils-forschung.de/cms25/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=975&itemid=292&lang=en andrea berndgen-kaiser (). ils research institute for regional and urban development. aachen, germany. e-mail: andrea.berndgen-kaiser@ils-research.de url: http://www.ils-forschung.de/cms25/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=737&itemid=292&lang=en runrid fox-kämper. ils research institute for regional and urban development. aachen, germany. e-mail: runrid.fox-kaemper@ils-research.de url: http://www.ils-forschung.de/cms25/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=745&itemid=292&lang=en prof. dr. stefan siedentop. ils research institute for regional and urban development. dortmund, germany. e-mail: stefan.siedentop@ils-research.de url: http://www.ils-forschung.de/cms25/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=939&itemid=292&lang=en published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents: results from the german family panel jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger abstract: the pairfam study offers the rare opportunity of conducting dyadic analyses of partner and of parent-child relationships. not only the randomly drawn anchor respondents are surveyed in the study, but also – with the consent of the anchors – their partners, parents and children. however, we must ask whether or in how far the participation of the secondary respondents is selective, thus introducing a nonresponse bias in the dyadic data. this article analyses what factors infl uence the participation of partners and parents of the anchors on the german family panel pairfam. we focus on the question of whether the quality of the relationship between the anchor and partner or anchor and parent infl uences participation. among parents there is both an infl uence of the relationship quality in the narrower sense and an infl uence of the closeness of the relationship with regard to contact and mutual support. by contrast, relationship quality appears to have a lesser signifi cance for the participation of partners, whereas the degree of institutionalisation in the relationship has a major infl uence. the article aims to sensitise pairfam users to the possibility of a nonresponse bias in dyadic analyses and provides information on suitable handling of the data. keywords: secondary nonresponse · nonresponse bias · dyadic data analysis · response propensity · pairfam 1 introduction for most panel studies, either a random sample of individuals is drawn and the survey is restricted to the persons in this random sample, or household samples are drawn with the aim of surveying all persons (above a certain age) in the household. if the interest is focused on intimate and familial relationships however, this design is unsatisfactory. in order to examine the process of mutual dependency of decisions and actions in relationships, it is, for example, essential to know the perspectives of both partners. yet, when using a household design to study couples, information from both partners is only available if they live together in one household. comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 37, 3-4 (2012): 591-614 (date of release: 07.03.2013) © federal institute for population research 2013 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2012-07en4 • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger592 in addition, we can assume that there are reciprocal infl uences not only in intimate relationships, but according to elder’s concept of “linked lives” (elder 1994: 6), we must assume that such interdependencies also exist with regard to other family members such as parents and children. these interdependencies can hardly be adequately studied using household samples. therefore, as a panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics, pairfam is not designed as a household sample, but uses a multi-actor design. for this purpose, a random sample of anchors was drawn and then their partners, parents and children (the secondary respondents) were surveyed based on these anchors. the distinctive feature of this is that the anchor at fi rst must agree to the respective secondary respondents being part of the survey. and unlike a population sample, the secondary respondents learn that the anchor was already surveyed and agreed to this survey when they are contacted and asked to take part in the survey. hence, participation by the secondary respondents in the survey may be steered by other processes than participation of the persons surveyed in conventional population samples. therefore, it is possible that the quality of the relationship between anchor and secondary respondents infl uences whether the survey of the secondary respondents can be realised, either because the consent of the anchor to the survey of the secondary respondents depends on the relationship quality; or because the relationship quality has an infl uence on whether the secondary respondents who are contacted actually take part in the survey. such a correlation would be problematic in particular because relationship quality is a relevant object of the study. therefore, this article aims to examine which aspects infl uence the participation of the secondary respondents. we will set a special focus on the effect of relationship quality, but also control for other determinants in the models. we restrict our analysis to the participation of partners and parents since the response process among (underage) children structurally distinctly differs from that of partners and parents. the following section initially illuminates the problem and provides an overview of the current research. the data and operationalisation are described in the third section. the results of the regression analyses are to be found in the fourth section. the article concludes with a summary of the results and a discussion of the implications for dyadic analyses with pairfam data. 2 background response rates are an important quality characteristic in survey research. although a low response rate is not necessarily a problem, it increases the probability of biased data due to systematic differences between persons who give their consent to a survey and those who do not. it is therefore important to ensure high response rates also among secondary respondents. the participation of secondary respondents is a two-stage process. first, the anchor of a survey must agree to the inclusion of the partner or the parents, and then the partner or the parent must fi ll out and return the written questionnaire. the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 593 selective response may occur during both stages. however, it is not clear whether the two selection processes intensify or perhaps compensate for one another. consequently specifi c hypotheses are required concerning the direction and intensity of both selection processes for each potential selection factor. this can be explained using the example of the relationship quality as follows. relationship quality is one of the main explanatory factors of the pairfam study (huinink et al. 2011: 81). if there were a selective response alongside relationship quality, this could lead to biased analyses of relationship quality (cf. in general stoop 2005: 33). it is therefore important to know to what extent relationship quality leads to selective participation of secondary respondents’. on that basis, one may be able to employ some correction methods in the analysis of relationship quality. compared to analysing primary nonresponse, the researcher examining secondary nonresponse is in a comfortable position: due to the information from the anchor concerning the traits of the secondary respondents and on their relationship with the secondary respondents, a great deal of information is available for nonrespondents. we take advantage of this information in this article. in the following, relationship quality is examined not only in the sense of the relationship dynamics using psychological scales and self-reported values (e.g. network of relationship inventory), but also based upon factual information that characterises the relationship, such as contact frequency and other measures of the closeness of the relationship. relationship quality can infl uence the consent of the anchor or the participation of the secondary respondents via each of two mechanisms: on the one hand, a poor relationship quality increases the burden caused by the survey, on the other hand a poor relationship quality increases the salience of the burden in the decisionmaking situation. a greater burden in the survey has been identifi ed as a factor for lower cooperation rates (schnell 1997: 167-173). according to the leverage-salience theory (groves et al. 2000) both of these infl uences together alter the probability of participation in that respondents with a poor relationship quality take part in a survey less frequently than respondents with a better relationship quality. in the case of the anchor, we can assume that a poor relationship quality reduces the probability of consent to surveying the secondary respondents, since “incriminatory information” is feared. conversely, “liking” (a positive attitude towards the anchor) leads to a greater probability of the secondary respondent taking part in the survey:”... one should be more willing to comply with the request of liked others” (groves et al. 1992: 484-485). since both of these selection processes move in the same direction, we can assume that, all in all, the relationship quality has a great infl uence on the participation of secondary respondents. research results concerning the participation of secondary respondents in surveys are quite rare. this is primarily due to the fact that this type of research design is implemented relatively rarely. as far as we know, besides pairfam only two other large-scale studies employ a multi-actor design: the us national survey of families and households (nsfh) and the netherlands kinship panel study (nkps). the former study surveys cohabitating partners, one child and one parent, the latter study surveys the partner, one parent, one sibling and up to two children. • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger594 as for selectivity in the unit non response of secondary subjects, we are only aware of the study by kalmijn and liefbroer (2011). in their study, the authors examine the selectivity of participation by secondary respondents surveyed in the nkps and whether this selectivity infl uences models addressing substantive research questions and their results. the design of the nkps study, like that of the pairfam study, envisages contacting the secondary respondents (in this case the adult children) through the anchors. the authors examine the reasons for participation by means of the relationship characteristics, social and demographic factors as well as descriptions of the interview situation. by comparing standardised coeffi cients, they conclude that the relationship quality has the greatest infl uence on participation, followed by fi nancial payments to the child, the frequency of personal contacts and the frequency of support given by the child (kalmijn/liefbroer 2011: 750). the study by kalmijn and liefbroer therefore proves that a good relationship between parents and children increases the willingness of adult children to participate as secondary respondents. our study can additionally supply evidence with regard to the participation of parents and partners as secondary respondents. 3 data, models and operationalisation 3.1 data the analysis is conducted using the data from the german family panel (pairfam).1 this panel is an annual survey of a random sample of persons from three different age groups. the population from which the random sample was drawn for the fi rst wave encompasses all persons in the federal republic of germany living in private households, having adequate german language skills and belonging to the birth cohorts 1991-1993 (cohort 1), 1981-1983 (cohort 2) and 1971-1973 (cohort 3). in the fi rst wave, which was conducted in 2008, 12,402 anchors were interviewed. the study was carried out as a computer-aided personal interview (capi) by tns infratest (a detailed description can be found in huinink et al. 2011). for this paper, the most important feature of the pairfam panel is the implementation of a multi-actor design: not only the anchors are interviewed, but also their partners, parents and children. in order to limit the burden on respondents in the fi rst survey and therefore avoid a negative infl uence on their willingness to be reinterviewed, during the fi rst wave only the partners of the anchors were included in the design. then, during the second wave the partners were once again surveyed in addition to one child of the anchor as well as up to three parents of the anchor. we examined the participation of partners and parents and in each case used the wave during which the initial contact took place. partner participation is being 1 the german family panel (pairfam) is coordinated by josef brüderl, johannes huinink, bernhard nauck and sabine walper and funded as a long-term project by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg). the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 595 analysed using data from wave 1, the analysis of parent participation uses data from wave 2. for both analyses, we are using data release 2.0. in both cases, our analysis was restricted to the birth cohorts 1971-1973 and 1981-1983. this decision was based on the following considerations. the relationships of the teenagers in cohort 1991-1993 to their parents as well as to their partners differ in many aspects from relationships of adults to parents and partners. these differences would have had to be taken into account in the model and separate models would have to be estimated for teenage cohorts and adult cohorts, which, however, would have gone beyond the scope of this article. in the fi rst wave, 6,109 (76 %) of the 8,064 respondents in the older cohorts, had a partner. these anchors with partners were asked for consent to also interview their partner using a written questionnaire. then, the partners for whom we obtained consent were issued a written questionnaire. more details on the consent request and delivery of the questionnaire are contained in the fi eld report of the fi rst wave (suckow/schneekloth 2009: 30-34). table 1 shows an overview of the participation by partners. respondents in the older cohort more frequently have partners. they also give their consent to the partner survey slightly more frequently (76 %) and their partners participate more frequently (78 %). overall, there is information from the partner survey for 52 % of the dyads in the younger cohort and for 59 % in the older cohort. hence, secondary nonresponse was considerable, which emphasizes the relevance of our research question. the survey of parents in wave 2 not only includes biological (and adoptive) parents, but also stepparents, i.e. the current partners of the biological parents. only parents to whom contact existed were deemed eligible. if an anchor was in contact with four parents, meaning to two biological and two stepparents, then only three parents were surveyed (we did not survey the current partner of the biological father in this case). parents with a place of residence outside germany were considered tab. 1: consent and response rates of partners in wave 1 by cohort 1981-1983 1971-1973 total total anchors 4,010 4,054 8,064 anchors with partner 2,756 3,353 6,109 (% of anchors) 68.73 % 82.71 % 75.76 % consent for partner survey 2,005 2,551 4,556 (% of anchors with partner) 72.75 % 76.08 % 56.50 % participation of partner 1,428 1,977 3,405 (% of addresses granted) 71.22 % 77.50 % 74.74 % response rate (% complete anchor-partner dyads) 51.81 % 58.96 % 55.74 % source: own calculations based on the german family panel (pairfam), release 2.0 • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger596 out of scope. for each relevant parent, the anchor’s permission to survey them and their address was requested. the parents for whom the consent and address were given received a written questionnaire (suckow et al. 2010: 41-45). among the 5,514 respondents of the birth cohorts 1971-1973 and 1981-1983, 4,789 were in contact with at least one parent. table 2 shows an overview of the number of parents, the consent rates of the anchors to the parent survey and the response rates. a total of 9,424 parents were eligible for the parent survey, i.e. the anchor was in contact with the parents (not more than three per anchor) and they resided in germany (cohort 1971-1973: 4,521; cohort 1981-1983: 4,903). of these, 1,940 or 21 % took part in the survey (cohort 1971-1973: 877; cohort 1981-1983: 1,063). 3.2 analysis approach and analysis methods since the participation of secondary respondents in a multi-actor design is a twostage process, a two-stage modelling of participation would seem appropriate. we would then fi rst examine the infl uence of the relationship quality on whether the anchor gives consent to the survey of the secondary respondent and secondly the infl uence on whether a secondary respondent who actually received a questionnaire takes part in it. the disadvantage of two-stage modelling, however, is that the models do not provide information on whether the secondary respondents who ultimately participate in the survey are a selective group compared with those who do not participate. hence, for example, non-signifi cant effects of a variable could add up in both stages of the process, resulting in an overall signifi cant effect on participation, or, in the opposite direction, effects of a variable on both stages could compensate for one another. since we can assume that the users are mainly interested in the questab. 2: distribution of respondents in wave 2, number of parents, consent rates of the anchors to the parent survey and response rates by cohort 1981-1983 1971-1973 total anchors surveyed in w2 2,621 2,893 5,514 number of parents living 5,664 5,332 10,996 number of parents in contact with anchors 5,327 4,996 10,323 number of parents in the target group of the parent survey 4,903 4,521 9,424 consent to make contact 2,133 1,649 3,728 (% target group) 43.50 % 36.47 % 39.56 % questionnaire completed 1,063 877 1,940 (% of addresses provided) 49.84 % 53.18 % 52.04 % response rate (% target group) 21.68 % 19.40 % 20.59 % source: own calculations based on the german family panel (pairfam), release 2.0 the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 597 tion of the extent to which participation by secondary respondents is selective overall, we decided on one-stage modelling: using logistic regressions, the infl uence of the relationship quality is examined for whether a survey of secondary respondents in the target population is actually realised at the end of the two-stage process. the logistic regressions are calculated separately for partner and parent participation. 3.3 operationalisation in this section, we will fi rst describe the dependent variables, then the variables characterising the relationship between the anchor and the secondary respondent, and fi nally the control variables. 3.3.1 dependent variables both in the parent and in the partner regressions, the dependent variable is the participation of the respective secondary respondents in the survey. each of the analyses only refers to the relevant cases. in the partner regression, these are all partners named by the anchors. in the parent regression, these are the parents mentioned with whom anchors are in contact (however, a maximum of three, cf. section 3.1) and who reside in germany. 3.3.2 variables on the quality of the relationship between anchor and secondary respondents in the choice of variables we paid attention to two factors in particular: their relevance as indicators of relationship quality and the availability of the indicators for as many respondents as possible. we therefore gave preference to non-fi ltered questions and those with as little item-nonresponse as possible. partner participation regression the fi rst variables for describing the quality of the relationship are the indicators of the union formation process of the relationship. these variables are based on objective characteristics of the relationship and have the advantage of a low measurement error. for this analysis, the relationship status (living apart together (lat), cohabitating, married) (cf. brüderl et al. 2012: 24), the existence of common children (0 = no, 1 = yes) as well as the relationship duration in years were considered. since it is very probable that one additional month at the beginning of the relationship bears more weight than if the relationship has lasted for a few years, the relationship duration was included in the analysis in logarithmised form. the quality of the relationship in the narrower sense is for example measured by the network of relationship inventory (nri). this is an established instrument for describing the dynamics of relationships (furman/burmester 1985). based on the eight items of the nri, four dummies were developed, which include the following four dimensions of the relationship quality: confl icts between anchor and partner, • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger598 intimacy with the partner, admiration of the anchor by the partner, dominance of the partner over the anchor (for each 0 = no, 1 = yes) (cf. also schmahl et al. 2012: 35). another dimension of the quality of the relationship is the frequency of confl icts. the indicator is based on a set of items asking about the frequency of confl icts in six important life domains. the response scales for each of the life domains range from 1 “almost never or never” to 5 “very often.” an additive index was formed ranging from 0 (confl icts almost never) to 24 (confl icts very often in all life domains). the scale self-assessed instability of the partnership “gathers information on subjectively perceived instability of the relationship or marriage; specifi cally, intentions of breaking up or divorcing” (schmahl et al. 2012: 52). out of these three items with a yes/no answer format, an index is formed. the index corresponds to the number of items to which a yes response was given. the tendency towards hostile attributions includes 3 items “[that] measure the tendency of the respondent to see the cause of the partner’s negative behaviour in the partner’s own deliberate actions and corresponding negative dispositions” (schmahl et al. 2012: 41) in one index. the response scales of the items range from 1 “not at all” to 5 “absolutely.” the respective index value results – for all respondents with at least two valid answers – from the average of the three items. the central dimension of relationship satisfaction was measured in the questionnaire using a general satisfaction question with an 11-point scale (0 = very dissatisfi ed; 10 = very satisfi ed). in addition, a question was added about the extent to which the partner is able to satisfy the needs of the anchor (5-scale answer). before adding the two questions, the response scale of the second question was rescaled to correspond to the eleven-scale format. parent participation regression the nri indicators were also used to illustrate the quality of the parent-anchor relationship and the four dummy variables confl ict, intimacy, admiration and dominance were also developed. the bond with the parent reported by the anchors was accounted for using four dummy variables (not close, average, close, very close). the frequency of shared leisure activities, such as trips, attending cultural events or shopping tours is also recorded using a set of dummy variables (never, seldom, sometimes, often, very often). contact frequency in the form of visits, letters, phone calls and the like was also taken into account as another dimension of the relationship quality. we differentiated between the categories “less than once a month,” “at least once a month (but less than several times per week)” and “several times per week or more often.” the support given to the parent by the anchor (giving support) is operationalised through the number of domains in which the anchor provided the parent with assistance in the past twelve months. the operationalisation of support given to the anchor by the parent (receiving support) is conducted analogously. the following seven domains were each taken into account: advice in personal problems, larger monetary or material gifts (more than 100 euro per gift), assistance completing docthe infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 599 uments such as tax returns or in administrative formalities, fi nancial support, help with shopping or work at home, household or garden, conversations about sorrows and worries, help caring for or watching over family members. since a grandchild can substantially change the relationship between anchor and parent, a dummy variable records whether the anchor has a living biological child and another whether the grandparents participate in caring for the grandchild. to record the geographical distance between anchor and parent, the categories “living in the same household,” “living in the same house (but in a separate household),” “travel duration less than 30 minutes” and “travel duration greater than 30 minutes” were differentiated. additionally it is controlled whether the parent is the mother, father, stepmother or stepfather and whether the anchor and the parent are of the same gender. the last relationship variable which is controlled for in the parent regression is the anchors’ assessment of their own childhood on an 11-stage rating ranging from “not at all happy” to “very happy.” 3.3.3 control variables the relevant control variables in the analysis of participation in the secondary respondents’ surveys include the socio-demography of the anchor as well as the secondary respondent’s, the burden on the anchor in the interview and the anchor’s response behaviour. control variables: response behaviour with regard to the response behaviour of respondents, we anticipate that persons who are generally more uncooperative and frequently refuse to answer questions or answer with “i don’t know” will also refuse to provide addresses when requested. panel studies have shown that nonresponse to important individual questions can predict nonresponse to the ensuing interview request (loosveldt/carton 2002: 554). we therefore control for the percentage of items for which there is item nonresponse. persons who fi nd it diffi cult to answer more intimate questions also possibly consent with a lesser probability to a survey of secondary respondents. we can assume that these respondents have greater concerns with regard to data privacy. this group of people cooperate in surveys less often (singer 2003: 278). we therefore took two dummy variables into consideration as indicators for nonresponse to sensitive questions: nonresponse for questions on sexuality and nonresponse for the household income. control variables: burden on the anchor in the interview it also seems plausible that respondents who have a heavier interview burden than others will be less likely to consent to a survey of secondary respondents. for these respondents, refusing consent to the interview of the partner or the parents is a • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger600 clearly recognisable strategy to avoid even further burden for themselves and their families. one indicator of burden is the number of questions or items that a respondent has to answer before he or she is asked for the permission to interview the partner or the parents. due to the fi lters, this varies greatly (for the analysis sample “parent questionnaire,” for instance, between 154 and 704 items). based on the variable “number of items before request,” four fairly equal-sized groups were formed: the assignment of a respondent to one of the four groups is used as a control variable. an additional burden indicator is used in the parent regression: whether the respondents were already asked for their permission to the interview of a child prior to the request for permission to the interview of the parents. finally, in the parent regression a set of dummy variables is controlled for which measures for how many parents consent was asked. control variables: socio-demography of the anchor anchor characteristics can also have an infl uence on the permission of the anchor to interview secondary respondents and on their participation in the survey. this is in line with results by kalmijn and liefbroer (2011: 746-749): their analyses reveal an infl uence of demographic variables on the participation of secondary respondents. we therefore control for the following variables both in the parent regression and in the partner regression: the birth cohort of the anchor (0 = 1981-1983, 1 = 1971-1973), the gender of the anchor, the number of years of education of the anchor, the migration status, the region of residence (with the categories western germany and eastern germany) and the town size, i.e. the number of inhabitants of the city of residence. additionally, the relationship status of the anchor is included in the parent regression as a control variable (in the partner regression this is one of the relationship variables, for details see section 3.3.2.). with regard to the relationship status, it is conceivable that respondents with a more institutionalised relationship are more willing to consent to the interview of the parents on family topics because their lives are closer to the parents’ ideals and therefore they fear less that the survey might stimulate negative thinking in the parents. the sexual orientation of the anchor is controlled for in the partner regression. another aspect that is taken into consideration in the partner regression is whether the partner was present during the anchor interview. this was true in 16 % of the cases. in these cases, the partner may have been directly asked for participation by the interviewer. in these cases we assume a far higher participation probability, since the intermediate step of permission from the anchor is circumvented and the interviewer can personally motivate the partner to participate. control variables: socio-demography of the secondary respondents the literature repeatedly shows that the personal traits of respondents infl uence whether they take part in a survey or not. consequently, we controlled for the charthe infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 601 acteristics of the secondary respondents that could infl uence their participation behaviour. in the partner regression these are the following characteristics: age, years of education, german nationality (0 = no; 1 = yes), country of birth (with the categories frg, gdr and foreign country), region of residence (with the categories western germanyincluding west berlin-, eastern germany and foreign country) as well as employment status. the employment status is measured by the dummy variable “in training or gainfully employed,” which assumes the value 1 if the partner is in full-time or part-time employment or in training. in the parent regression the gender of the parents is already controlled for by including the type of parent. the age of the parents is not controlled for since the percentage of missing values was very high for this variable. other possibly relevant socio-demographic characteristics of the parents were not yet surveyed in the fi rst wave and therefore cannot be controlled for. 4 results 4.1 results of partner participation in the fi rst wave, 6,109 respondents stated that they had a partner: 5,131 of these are included in the analysis. 978 cases cannot be taken into account due to missing values in the independent variables. table 3 shows the results of the logistic regression with the dependent variable being partner participation. relatively few relationship aspects infl uence whether the partner participates or not. among the indicators which measure the degree of institutionalisation in the relationship, only relationship status showed a signifi cant effect in the expected direction: the higher the degree of institutionalisation in the relationship, the higher is the participation probability. among cohabitating couples the odds of participation are higher by a factor of almost 2.7 than among couples who do not live together, and even by a factor of 3.3 among the married. the existence of common children has no signifi cant effect on participation in the partner survey. the effect of the logarithm of the relationship duration is also not signifi cant. as for the indicators of the relationship quality in a narrower sense, there were no signifi cant effects for the nri dummies. the indicators of confl ict frequency and satisfaction also appeared not to correlate with partner participation. hostile attributions, however, do infl uence partner participation: for every additional point on the 5-point scale, the odds of partner participation drop by about 10 %. in very instable relationships, it is far more probable that the partner will take part than in very stable ones: the odds are almost 50 % higher. this result seems counterintuitive, but one must consider that this is the effect controlling for other negative behaviours such as confl icts or hostile attributions. hence, perhaps the feeling that the relationship is not very sound leads to the partners being more occupied with analysing their relationship and more willing to discuss it. some of the control variables of the partner regression also show signifi cant effects. this is the case, for instance, in the response behaviour of the anchor: all • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger602 tab. 3: logistic regression partner participation (odds ratios and level of signifi cance) odds ratio relationship characteristics relationship status living apart together ref. cohabitating 2.69 *** married 3.28*** children with partner (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.90 logarithmised relationship duration (years) 1.09 network of relationship inventory conflict within the anchor-partner dyad (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.99 intimacy within the anchor-partner dyad (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.18 admiration of anchor by partner (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.37 dominance of the partner (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.93 frequency of conflicts in the relationship (scale: 0-24) 1.00 self-assessed instability self-assessed instability 0 (very stable) ref. self-assessed instability 1 1.24 self-assessed instability 2 1.27 self-assessed instability 3 (very instable) 1.48 ** global satisfaction in the relationship (scale: 0-10) 1.01 hostile attributions in the relationship (scale: 1-5) 0.90 * response behaviour of anchor percentage of item nonresponse/all items 0.82 *** nonresponse intimate questions (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.69 ** nonresponse household income (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.69 *** burden on anchor in the interview number of items before request for permission for partner survey up to 110 (1st fourth) ref. 111-120 (2nd fourth) 0.96 121-135 (3rd fourth) 1.10 136-252 (4th fourth ) 1.14 socio-demography of the anchor anchor: male 1.11 anchor: birth cohort 1971-1973 1.03 anchor: years of education (8-20 years) 1.04 ** migration background of anchor anchor: no migration background ref. anchor: 1st generation immigrant 0.64 *** anchor: 2nd generation immigrant 0.92 anchor: homosexual 1.46 anchor: resides in eastern germany 0.79 the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 603 three nonresponse indicators reveal a signifi cant negative effect on the participation probability. by contrast, the burden indicator shows no signifi cant effect. this may, however, be explained by the fact that the request for permission to interview the partner takes place relatively early in the questionnaire, making the burden caused by the survey itself relatively low even for persons who have answered all questions up to this point. as for the socio-demographic characteristics of the anchor, the gender, the birth cohort, the sexual orientation and the residence (eastern or western germany) have no signifi cant infl uence on the participation probability. the odds of participation rise, however, by about 4 % for each additional year of education. if the anchor is a fi rst generation immigrant, the odds of the partner participation drop by about 36 %. to our surprise, we found the greatest willingness to participate in mediumsized towns. the effects of the socio-demographic characteristics of the partner are largely similar to those of the anchor: age and residence in eastern germany or a foreign tab. 3 (continuation) odds ratio town size anchor: less than 5,000 inhabitants ref. anchor: 5,000 less than 20,000 inhabitants 1.23 * anchor: 20,000 less than 50,000 inhabitants 1.17 anchor: 50,000 less than 100,000 inhabitants 0.98 anchor: 100,000 + inhabitants 1.07 socio-demography of the partner partner: year of birth 1.01 partner: years of education (8-20 years) 1.02 partner: in training or gainfully employed 0.62 *** residence of partner partner: resides in western germany ref. partner: resides in eastern germany 1.23 partner: resides in foreign country 0.53 country of birth of partner partner: born in the frg ref. partner: born in the gdr 1.01 partner: born in foreign country 0.70 ** partner: german nationality 1.65 *** interview situation partner present during anchor interview 3.51 *** pseudo r2 0.11 n 5131 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: own calculations based on the german family panel (pairfam), release 2.0 • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger604 country have no signifi cant effect, while a migration background decreases the propensity for partner participation. another factor with negative effects is the employment or training of the partner. whether partners are in training or employment also has a negative effect on participation. if the partner is employed or in training, the odds of participation are 38 % lower than if this is not the case. ultimately, the partner’s education – unlike the education of the anchor – has no signifi cant effect. this could be explained by the fact that the educational levels of the anchor and partner are highly correlated. finally, we controlled for whether the partner was present during the anchor’s interview. in these cases the chances of participation are more than three times as high as in cases when the partner was not present. this outcome confi rms our expectation that direct contact by the interviewer with the partner has a positive infl uence on their willingness to participate. among the partners it was striking that the indicators of relationship quality show a great number of missing values. therefore, it is possible that many cases in which the relationship is under stress – and where the partner therefore refused to answer these questions – were not at all included into the analysis. for control purposes, we estimated models without the variables of instability and frequency of confl icts (not shown). all other effects remained unchanged in their direction, signifi cance and levels. 4.2 results of parent participation of the 9,424 relevant parents, 9,212 are included in the analysis. 212 cases cannot be taken into account due to missing values in the independent variables. table 4 shows the results of the logistic regression with the dependent variable being parent participation. unlike the case of the partners, two of the nri dummies infl uence the participation probability. the other two have no infl uence, however. if the relationship between the anchor and parent is associated with confl icts, the odds that the parent takes part in the survey are almost 20 % lower than in the opposite case. if the parent demonstrates admiration for the anchor, the odds of participation are 47 % higher than if they do not. by contrast, neither intimacy within the anchor-parent dyad nor the parent’s dominating role in the relationship have signifi cant effects on participation. the anticipated infl uence of the bond with the parents did not emerge from our analyses. only the difference between the category “close” and “not close” is signifi cant. if the bond with the parents is defi ned as “close”, the parent participates with 39 % higher odds than if the relationship is “not close.” the difference is, however, somewhat lesser and not signifi cant for the category “very close.” a test of all variables shows that, overall, the bond with the parents does not make a signifi cant contribution to explaining participation. shared leisure activities have a distinctly positive effect on parent participation. the more frequently the anchor undertakes activities with the parent, the higher the probability of the parent taking part in the survey. nonetheless, the differences the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 605 tab. 4: logistic regression of parent participation (odds ratios and level of signifi cance) odds ratio relationship characteristics network of relationship inventory conflict within the anchor-parent dyad (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.81* intimacy within the anchor-parent dyad (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.02 admiration of anchor by parent (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.47* dominance of the parent (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.93 bond with the parent not close ref. average 1.19 close 1.39* very close 1.27 shared leisure activities never ref. seldom 1.03 sometimes 1.08 often 1.43** very often 2.20*** contact frequency less than once a month ref. at least once a month 1.70* several times per week or more frequently 2.09** parent gives support to anchor number of domains (0-7) 1.12*** anchor gives support to parent support is given (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.87** number of domains (0-7) 0.92** biological child and care by parent anchor: child (living, biological) (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.75* anchor: biological child and parent cares for child (1 = yes; 0 = no) 1.32* distance between residences in the same household ref. in the same house 0.49*** parent lives up to 30 min. away 0.45*** parent lives more than 30 min. away 0.46*** type of parent mother ref. father 0.76*** stepmother 0.40*** stepfather 0.55*** anchor and parent same gender 1.04 happy childhood (scale 0-10) 1.05* • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger606 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 note: in the calculation of the model for parent participation the stata option “cluster” was used to correct that the observations of different parents of one anchor are not independent. source: own calculations based on the german family panel (pairfam), release 2.0 tab. 4 (continuation) odds ratio response behaviour of anchor percent of nonresponse/all items 0.88* nonresponse to intimate questions (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.54*** nonresponse to household income (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.54*** burden on the anchor in the interview number of items before request for permission for parent survey up to 326 (1st fourth) ref. 327-384 (2nd fourth) 0.72* 385-433 (3rd fourth) 0.68* 434-1314 (4th fourth) 0.71 request for permission for child survey (1 = yes; 0 = no) 0.80 number of parents to survey one parent ref. two parents 0.90 three parents 0.85 socio-demography of the anchor anchor: male 0.86 anchor: birth cohort 1971-1973 0.93 anchor: years of education (8-20) 1.13*** relationship status anchor: single ref. anchor: living apart together 1.42 anchor: cohabitating 1.55* anchor: married 1.73*** migration status anchor: no migration background ref. anchor: 1st generation immigrant 0.34*** anchor: 2nd generation immigrant 0.84 anchor: resides in eastern germany 0.87 town size anchor: less than 5,000 inhabitants ref. anchor: 5,000 less than 20,000 inhabitants 1.02 anchor: 20,000 less than 50,000 inhabitants 0.85 anchor: 50,000 less than 100,000 inhabitants 1.18 anchor: 100,000 + inhabitants 1.21 pseudo r2 0.12 n 9212 the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 607 between the categories “rarely” or “occasionally” and the category “never” are low and not signifi cant. however, there are distinct effects when the anchors undertake leisure activities with the parents more frequently. among anchor-parent dyads where this is often the case, the odds of parent participation are 43 % higher than among those where it is never the case and even 120 % higher among anchorparent dyads where this is very often the case. the contact frequency with parents also has a positive effect. when the anchor and parent are in contact at least once a month (but less than a few times a week), the odds of participation are 70 % higher than when they have contact less than once a month. if parents and anchor have even more frequent contact, the odds of participation are even 109 % higher than the reference category’s. the difference between the category “at least once a month” and the category “a few times a week or more frequently” is also signifi cant. mutual support also has a considerable infl uence on the participation of the parent. for every additional domain in which the anchor receives support from the parent, the odds of participation rise by 12 %. when the parent supports the anchor in seven domains, the odds of parent participation are therefore 121 % (odds ratio: 1.127) higher than when the parent provides no support at all to the anchor. unlike the effect of support given to the anchor by the parent, the effect of support given to the parent by the anchor is clearly non-linear (with regard to the logits). therefore, in addition to the metric variable for the number of domains in which the parents are given support, a dummy variable was also included into the model indicating that the anchor provides any support at all to the parents. this shows that the effect of these dummy variables is positive, while the effect of the metric variables is negative. this means that support basically has a positive effect, but that the positive effect decreases with the number of domains. if a person supports a parent in one domain, the odds that this parent takes part in the survey are 72 % (odds ratio: 1.87*0.92) greater than without any support at all given to the parent by the anchor. if the anchor gives support to the parent in seven domains, the odds are only 4 % (odds ratio: 1.87*0.927) greater than those without any support. hence, there is hardly any difference. this fi nding appears plausible since support given to parents is not only associated with closeness, but is also an indicator of the parents’ need for assistance. the effect of a living biological child refers only to biological children who are not cared for by the parent of the anchors. such a biological child of the anchor who is not cared for by the anchor’s parent has a negative effect on the participation probability of this parent. the odds of participation – compared to parents of anchors without a biological child – are then 25 % lower. there is no such negative effect, however, if the anchor’s parent also cares for the grandchild. the overall effect for this group is calculated from the effect of a biological child multiplied by the effect of the variable “biological child and child care” and therefore 0.99 (odds ratio: 0.75*1.32). in other words, the odds of participation in this group are only 1 % lower than when the anchor does not have a biological child. with regard to the distance between residences, it is only of signifi cance whether the anchor lives in one household with the parent. if this is not the case, the par• jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger608 ticipation probability is signifi cantly lower than if it is the case. if there is no common household, the geographical distance between anchor and parent is irrelevant for participation: the differences between the categories “in the same house (but not in the same household),” “lives up to 30 minutes away” and “lives more than 30 minutes away” are low and not signifi cant. it makes no difference for the participation probability whether the parent lives in their own household in the same house or an hour away. the question of which parent is involved has a distinct infl uence on the participation probability. the participation probability of the biological mother is the greatest, followed by that of the biological father. the participation probabilities of stepparents are lesser than that of biological parents. the difference between stepmother and stepfather – unlike all other possible comparisons between different groups of parents – is not signifi cant. by contrast, the gender combination of anchor and parent, i.e. whether they are of the same or a different gender, has no infl uence on the participation probability of the parent. the fi nding that a childhood perceived as happy increases the participation probability is very interesting. for every additional point on the 11-stage rating, the odds of participation rise by 5 %. correspondingly, the relative participation probability of the parent of an anchor who assesses his or her childhood as very happy is 63 % higher than that of the parent of an anchor who assesses his or her childhood as not at all happy. in addition to the relationship variables, some control variables also have a signifi cant infl uence. the tendency of the anchor towards item nonresponse reduces the participation probability of the parents – same as that of the partner – signifi cantly. there are no distinct effects for the indicators of burden on the anchor. there are only signifi cant differences between individual categories for the number of items. however, this variable is not signifi cant overall. of the socio-demographic control variables, education and migration experience have signifi cant effects, as was already the case in partner participation. relationship status also has a signifi cant effect in the anticipated direction. although there are no signifi cant differences between the individual categories and the reference category chosen within the model for town size, the variable as a whole is signifi cant. the birth cohort, the gender or whether the respondent lives in eastern or western germany, however have no signifi cant infl uences, as has already been the case in the partner regression. 5 conclusions all in all, we can say that there is clear evidence for selective participation of secondary respondents. however, the processes appear to be different for parents and partners. with regard to the participation of the parents, both better relationship quality in the narrower sense and greater closeness in the relationship with regard to contact and mutual support have clearly positive effects on the participation. these results correspond to the results reported above by kalmijn and liefbroer the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 609 (2011) on the participation of adult children of primary respondents in a follow-up survey. by contrast, relationship quality appears to have a lesser infl uence on the participation of the partners. for example, variables that measure the quality of the relationship in the narrower sense – such as satisfaction with the relationship, frequency of confl icts and the four dimensions of the network of relationship inventory – have no signifi cant infl uence. one exception to this is the lesser participation of partners when there are hostile attributions. we also came to the counterintuitive fi nding that partner participation is more likely when the anchor assesses the relationship as very instable. the degree of institutionalisation in the relationship is highly signifi cant for the participation of the partner: the higher the degree of institutionalisation in the relationship, the higher is the probability of partner participation. the fact that the non-participation of secondary respondents is not random, but systematic, has implications on the analyses. firstly, it can be assumed that descriptive analyses are biased. furthermore, there is also a possibility that the estimators of multivariate regression analyses are biased. the risk of a signifi cant bias in multivariate regression analyses is, however, lesser than in descriptive analyses. in an ols regression, for example, the estimators are unbiased as long as exogenous variables, namely independent model variables that do not correlate with the error term, infl uence the unit-nonresponse process. the same applies if nonresponse is dependent on unobserved factors that do not correlate with the error term or the independent variables. nonetheless, biases can also occur in multivariate analyses when nonresponse is dependent on the characteristics of the dependent variables or on non-observed factors that correlate with the error term (wooldridge 2003: 585-587). theoretically, there are a number of alternative methods for avoiding a nonresponse bias in dyadic analyses. one possibility is to weight the observed cases with the objective of eliminating the bias. for this purpose, a logistic regression is estimated, as we did here for partner and parent participation. then, from this regression the predicted response probability is estimated for each secondary respondent. the inverse value of this probability is then the weight (inverse probability weighting). this is a practicable method for cross-sectional analyses. however, problems quickly arise when forming weights for longitudinal analyses with a number of waves. for the method described here, namely, a separate weight for each wave would be calculated. the standard methods of the panel analysis, however, do not allow the addition of a weight for each dyad at each survey time. rather, a weight can only be allocated to the entire time series of a dyad – regardless of whether the dyad was observed at all survey times or whether there is nonresponse for certain times. the complex pattern of response and nonresponse among secondary respondents across the waves and additional complications, such as changing partners, make it practically impossible to calculate one single meaningful weight for the complete time series of each dyad. another approach for countering a potential nonresponse bias is the use of heckman’s sample-selection model. kalmijn and liefbroer (2011) recommend that such a sample-selection model should always be estimated in addition to the models ad• jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger610 dressing substantive research questions in order to check whether the results are affected by a nonresponse bias. in their work, they examine whether the selective participation of adult children of the primary respondents leads to a nonresponse bias. they base their analyses on fi ve substantive questions. they found no bias in four of the fi ve models. these results indicate that regression analyses do not necessarily suffer from the selective participation of secondary respondents, but that in individual cases this can quite possibly occur. the recommended use of heckman’s sample-selection model can only be carried out in cross-sectional analyses, since the model is limited to this type of application. although sample-selection models have also been proposed for the analysis of panel data (wooldridge 2010: 833-837), these are based on strong assumptions with regard to the data structure and are also not implemented as standard models, for example in stata. young and johnson (2009) fi nally recommend replacing missing values for the secondary respondents through multiple imputation – even if the secondary respondent did not take part in the survey. multiple imputation is a promising approach for countering a potential bias and far more fl exible than the other two approaches with regard to data analysis. imputed data can be used both to conduct descriptive analyses and estimate complex regression models. multiple imputation has, however, only been a practicable method for data sets with a relatively simple data structure. but, for such complex data as in the german family panel, which is intricately fi ltered and also contains categorical variables to a greater extent, multiple imputation is not yet useable in a satisfactory way. a further development of the methods may be able to solve this problem in the future. what conclusions can we draw with regard to the analysis of dyadic pairfam data? it would defi nitively be wrong to conclude from these results that due to the selectivity of the secondary respondent participation we should not collect and analyse such data at all, since surveying secondary respondents is the only way to study the reciprocal infl uence of family members or partners. the only alternative to surveying secondary respondents – surveying proxy data for these persons by questioning the primary respondents – is even more problematic when collecting data on opinions and orientations (eiser/morse 2004). nonetheless, in our opinion the risk that descriptive analyses are biased when using data of secondary respondents is considerable. we therefore advise against drawing conclusions for the population based on such results. if this is done, however, we believe that the risk of biases must at least be discussed in a prominent place. the analyses presented in this article can provide an informative basis for this. we do not, however, generally advise against estimating multivariate models. every researcher must, nevertheless, be aware of the risk of a bias and critically examine the estimated models. as far as possible we fi nd it quite advisable to compare the results with weighted analyses or sample-selection models. yet it must also be considered that weighting using a few observed characteristics does not guarantee that estimations with weighted data are less biased than with unweighted data. in the worst case, the opposite may be true: the bias could increase with weighting. the same applies to the selection models. the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 611 primarily we recommend estimating fi xed effects panel data models whenever appropriate. in addition to the basic advantages of fi xed effects models, they also have the advantage that selective participation only becomes a problem if the selection process is linked with unobserved factors that change over time (wooldridge 2010: 832). this eliminates a majority of the relevant causes for biases in crosssectional analyses. fixed effects models are also superior to weighting methods and heckman’s selection models in the analysis of biased samples, for both through weighting and through the heckman selection, only such biases of estimators can be avoided that are caused by observed characteristics. yet, biases caused by unobserved characteristics can potentially lead to problems. by contrast, the use of fi xed effects regressions is not problematic if participation depends on time-constant factors – regardless of whether these were observed or not. this article has clearly revealed that the dyadic data of the pairfam panel are selective. we are nonetheless convinced that these data are very benefi cial for research – if they are analysed with the necessary awareness of potential problems and with suitable methods. for the future, we hope that a further development of multiple imputation will make it possible to employ this method even in the complex case of a panel of multi-actor design. references brüderl, josef et al. 2012: pairfam data manual. release 3.0. [http://www.pairfam.de/ fi leadmin/user_upload/redakteur/publis/dokumentation/manuals/data-manual_en_ pairfam_3.0.pdf, 27.09.2012] eiser, christine; morse, rachel 2004: can parents rate their child’s health-related quality of life? results of a systematic review. in: quality of life research 10,4: 347-357. elder, glen jr. 1994: time, human agency, and social change: perspectives on the life course. in: social psychology quarterly 57,1: 4-15. furman, wyndol; burmester, duane 1985: children‘s perceptions of the personal relationships in their social network. in: developmental psychology 21: 1016-1024. groves, robert; cialdini, robert; couper, mick 1992: understanding the decision to participate in a survey. in: public opinion quarterly 56,4: 475-495. groves, robert; singer, eleanor; corning, amy 2000: leverage-saliency theory of survey participation – description and an illustration. in: public opinion quarterly 64,3: 299-308. huinink, johannes et al. 2011: panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam): conceptual framework and design. in: zeitschrift für familienforschung 23,1: 77-101. kalmijn, matthijs; liefbroer, aart 2011: nonresponse of secondary respondents in multi-actor surveys: determinants, consequences, and possible remedies. in: journal of family issues 32,6: 735-766. loosveldt, geert; carton, ann 2002: utilitarian individualism and panel nonresponse. in: international journal of public opinion research 14,4: 428-438. • jette schröder, laura castiglioni, josef brüderl, ulrich krieger612 schmahl, franziska et al. 2012: pairfam scales manual wave 1 to 3. release 3.0. [http:// www.pairfam.de/fi leadmin/user_upload/redakteur/publis/dokumentation/manuals/ scales_manual_en_pairfam_3.0.pdf, 26.09.2012] schnell, rainer 1997: nonresponse in bevölkerungsumfragen. ausmaß, entwicklung und ursachen. opladen: leske + budrich. singer, eleanor 2003: exploring the meaning of consent: participation in research and beliefs about risks and benefi ts. in: journal of offi cial statistics 19,3: 273-285. stoop, ineke 2005: the hunt for the last respondent. nonresponse in sample surveys. the hague: scp, social and cultural planning offi ce of the netherlands. suckow, jana; schneekloth, ulrich 2009: beziehungen und familienleben in deutschland (2008/2009) welle 1. [http://www.pairfam.de/fi leadmin/user_upload/redakteur/publis/ dokumentation/methodenberichte/pairfam_methodenbericht_w1.pdf, 27.09.2012] suckow, jana; schneekloth, ulrich; wich, philipp 2010: beziehungen und familienleben in deutschland (2008/2009) welle 2. [http://www.pairfam.de/fi leadmin/user_upload/redakteur/publis/dokumentation/methodenberichte/pairfam_methodenbericht_ w2.pdf., 27.09.2012] wooldridge, jeffrey 2003: introductory econometrics: a modern approach. mason: thomson. wooldridge, jeffrey 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. cambridge/london: the mit press. young, rebekah; johnson, david 2009: a comparison of four methods for handling missing secondary respondent data. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american sociological association. san francisco, ca. the infl uence of relationship quality on the participation of secondary respondents • 613 dr. jette schröder ( ). gesis – leibniz institute for the social sciences. mannheim, germany. e-mail: jette.schroeder@gesis.org. url: http://www.gesis.org dr. laura castiglioni . mzes – university of mannheim. mannheim, germany. e-mail: laura.castiglioni@mzes.uni-mannheim.de url: http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de prof. dr. josef brüderl. university of munich, department of sociology. munich, germany. e-mail: bruederl@lmu.de url: http://www.ls3.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professor/bruederl_josef/ index.html ulrich krieger. german internet panel, sfb 884, university of mannheim. mannheim, germany. e-mail. ulrich.krieger@uni-mannheim.de. url: hhtp://ssrn.com/ author=2003214 translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “der einfl uss der beziehungsqualität auf die teilnahme sekundärer respondenten: ergebnisse mit dem beziehungsund familienpanel”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2012-07de or urn urn:nbn:de:bibcpos-2012-07de4, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 25.10.2011 date of acceptance: 10.10.2012 © federal institute for population research 2013 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny editorial assistant / redaktionsassistenz katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) † michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability daniel lois abstract: soep data were used to examine relationships consisting of one partner socialised in west germany and one in east germany and who presently reside in the “old” (former west german) or “new” (newly for med east german) federal states. the estimated share of east-west couples among all marriages or cohabiting couples rises continuously within the observed period reaching approximately two and eleven percent respectively by 2009. the specifi c characteristics of east-west couples are that their employment-related division of labour is relatively egalitarian, above-average the partners are of different confessions and practice different religions, at least one of the partners is frequently divorced and there is also a strong tendency towards unmarried cohabitation. besides the place of socialisation, the present place of residence has an independent impact on the economic situation, division of labour and marriage propensity. analyses of relationship stability reveal that east-west couples exhibit a relatively high risk of separation. this is partly due to religious differences between the partners, but primarily to the low marriage propensity and the overrepresentation of divorced persons within this type of relationship. keywords: east-west differences · internal migration · relationship stability · homogamy 1 introduction immediately following reunifi cation more than two decades ago, considerable fl ows of inner-german migration commenced. according to fuchs-schündeln and schündeln (2009: 32-35), between 1991 and 2006 about two and a half million people, including returnees and multiple movers, migrated from the “new” (newly formed east german) to the “old” (former west german) federal states and about one million from the old to the new states. within the population of internal migrants, married individuals are clearly under-represented (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). we therefore expect that numerous east-west couples have formed in the meancomparative population studies vol. 40, 1 (2015): 3-30 (date of release: 05.12.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-17en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-17en9 • daniel lois4 time, for example consisting of a woman socialised in former east germany and a man who grew up in former west germany. the phenomenon of “east-west love” appears to have a certain appeal, as we can see merely from a few media-covered occasions. for example, on 9 january 2009 over 100 east-west couples congregated in berlin-mitte to speak with wolfgang tiefensee, the then federal government appointee for former east germany, about the status of reunifi cation (berliner kurier, 10.01.2009) and in february 2013 the german rock musician udo lindenberg sought ten east-west twosomes for his musical “hinterm horizont” (beyond the horizon; hamburger abendblatt, 19.02.13). previous research is not clear about the extent to which the east-west dimension is relevant for partner selection processes. a study by rösler (2010) shows that there are some stereotypes about typical western and eastern german traits. a survey of approximately three hundred berlin students about their partner selection preferences demonstrates that empathy, eroticism and sexual openness, large circles of acquaintances and sociableness as well as a good family relationship are perceived as typically eastern german. good manners, a high level of education, vocational success and economic independence are, by contrast, considered typically western german traits. it also became apparent that eastern and western german respondents each feel more connected with their own peers with regard to political and cultural issues. this indicates identifi cation with their own ingroup with regard to the east-west categorisation. in her book on “inner-german relationships,” however, the journalist simone schmollack (2005) makes a rather optimistic assessment with regard to the “compatibility” of western and eastern germans in intimate relationships. based on qualitative interviews, she reports that confl icts do occur in these relationships that frequently centre on politics and in particular the recent german past and aspects such as reunifi cation, unemployment and privatisation. differing opinions about these issues are, however, less due to any “ostalgie” or “westalgie” (nostalgia for the east or west german past) than to the need to retain their own biographical identity within the relationship. she also diagnoses a weakening of east-west divergencies over time, stating, “east-west couples who met before the mid-1990s felt the cultural, emancipatory and economic differences more strongly than couples who met only a few years ago” (schmollack 2005: 10, translated by cpos). the conclusion in the book’s blurb is therefore, “nowhere is german reunifi cation more evident than in the realm of love” (translated by cpos). against the background of these contradictory fi ndings, the objective of this article is to use the examples of east-west couples to examine the confl ict between enduring socialisation experiences and adaptions to the socio-spatial context and new interaction partners. east-west couples are a special group inasmuch as entering into a relationship with people from the “receiving context” is considered an advanced stage of assimilation in migration research (gordon 1964; alba/nee 2003). consequently it is possible that differences between the partners are levelled in the course of partner selection and adaption processes. there is, however, also a possibility that norms and ideologies acquired during socialisation remain stable even in the context of internal migration and entering a new relationship. in this case differeast-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 5 ences within east-west relationships could contribute to an increased instability of this form of relationship. this would be the equivalent of a sustained segmentation of social groups along the east-west dimension. the study is structured as follows: in section 2, we fi rst discuss from a theoretical perspective what specifi c characteristics east-west couples exhibit. to do so, we employ a theoretical framework that differentiates between three determining factors: socialisation in former east germany or former west germany, adaptation of internal migrants to the present social environment and new interaction partners as well as the selectivity of geographically mobile people (kulu/milewski 2007; milewski 2009). in section 3, we then integrate the characteristics of the east-west couples into the model used to explain marital stability by lewis and spanier (1979). following methodological remarks in the fourth section, in the empirical part (section 5) we fi rst use data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep) to explain how widespread east-west relationships are.1 the special status of berlin must be taken into particular consideration since here the opportunities for east-west couples are especially favourable. further analyses deal with the specifi c characteristics and the stability of these relationships. finally, in section 6 we summarise and discuss the results. 2 characteristics of east-west relationships in the context of socialisation, adaptation and selection effects the study of specifi c characteristics of east-west couples is based on a theoretical framework which differentiates between three hypotheses: the socialisation, adaptation and selection hypotheses (kulu/milewski 2007; milewski 2009). according to the socialisation hypothesis, it is assumed that individual characteristics such as career orientation or religiousness determined by socialisation in former east germany and former west germany remain unchanged even if the individual is exposed to changed social contexts in the course of internal migration. schneider et al. (1995) thus presume – using the key phrase “diverging modernisation” – that the different structural and cultural infl uences in former west germany and former east germany will not rapidly dissipate following reunifi cation since the thoughts and actions of older birth cohorts, especially those born before 1970, were lastingly shaped by this. the adaptation hypothesis is the opposite to the socialisation hypothesis, postulating that on the basis of acculturation and assimilation processes (gordon 1964; alba/nee 2003), geographically mobile people adapt to the respective current context of life. at fi rst, structural aspects of the socio-spatial context must be taken 1 figures on the distribution of this type of relationship are presently lacking because in its statistics on marriages, the federal statistical offi ce only considers the present place of residence, but not the place in which individuals grew up before 1989. (communication from the federal statistical offi ce dated 20 nov. 2012 on inquiry) • daniel lois6 into consideration, such as employment possibilities or the availability of childcare facilities. the establishment of an east-west relationship also indicates a form of social assimilation, which is considered an advanced stage of assimilation in research on international migrants. examples include the third stage of assimilation (marital assimilation) in gordon (1964) or the process of boundary blurring in alba and nee (2003). finally, selection hypothesis is based on the assumption that individual characteristics of internal migrants deviate from the average non-mobile population (kulu/ milewski 2007; milewski 2009). in the following sections, we will discuss the extent to which east-west couples with their place of residence in eastern or western germany differ from couples with uniform west or east german socialisation in the light of socialisation, adaption and selection effects. the dimensions examined are the economic situation (section 2.1), the couple’s division of labour (section 2.2), religiousness (section 2.3) and familial living arrangements (section 2.4). this quite heterogeneous selection is oriented primarily to the specifi c long-term consequences of the former division of germany that have been highlighted by research (schneider et al. 2012). 2.1 the economic situation of east-west couples the current place of residence should be of primary importance with regard to a couple’s economic situation, which can be expressed through material wealth (equivalent household income), impacts of unemployment and subjective assessments such as general life satisfaction. because of poorer income and employment opportunities, greater impacts of economic shortcomings and unemployment are anticipated for east-west couples living in eastern germany than for east-west couples living in western germany. in the decades following reunifi cation, however, there has been an economic east-west convergence, which can, according to current research, be divided into different phases (göbel et al. 2010). in the fi rst half of the 1990s, distinct progress was made with regard to convergence of equivalent household incomes and general life satisfaction, which slowed, however, between 1995 and 2000. following the turn of the millennium, a renewed rise in income gaps and stagnation in satisfaction differences has been observed. the eastern population continues to be overrepresented in the low wage range, more affected by unemployment, has a higher percentage of long-term episodic poverty in addition to over-proportionally frequent losses of income over the course of the economic crises after the year 2000 (göbel et al. 2010: 469). accordingly, the socio-spatial east-west context should still continue to be linked to differences in the economic situations of couples today. regardless of the present place of residence, one could hypothesize that differing chances of prosperity among couples could also be caused by the place of socialisation. intergenerational transfers are a good example for this assumption. a long-term consequence of former east germany’s planned economy is that, due to lesser asset values and residential property rates in eastern germany, people east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 7 socialised there are not only less likely to inherit property, but also lesser amounts when they do receive inheritances (szydlik/schupp 2004). the selective characteristics of internal migrants, however, do not speak for any general economic disadvantage of couples with partners socialised in east germany, since primarily young eastern people with above-average qualifi cations exhibit great willingness to migrate to the west (windzio 2007; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). to what extent east-west couples differ from couples with the same socialisation within the same socio-spatial context, for example east-west couples in western germany from west-west couples in western germany, is thus an empirical question. 2.2 couples’ division of labour in east-west relationships according to the socialisation hypothesis, women socialised in east germany would on average exhibit greater career orientation than women who grew up in former west germany. the diverging social and family policies of the two regions are primarily responsible for this (trappe 1995). the west german state long promoted the male breadwinner model, while east germany early created the legal and institutional conditions, for instance with regard to childcare places, for women to return to the workplace soon after childbirth, enabling full-time employment for both sexes. if these socialisation experiences are long lasting, we anticipate that east-west couples with women socialised in east germany would have a more egalitarian division of labour than west-west couples or east-west couples with women socialised in west germany. with regard to selection effects it is also known that female east-to-west migrants are mostly well educated and correspondingly career oriented (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). additionally, adaptation to the social context has probably gained signifi cance. against the background of the better availability of childcare facilities in eastern germany (hank et al. 2004) we can expect that couples living in eastern germany, regardless of their socialisation experiences, have a more egalitarian division of labour than couples in western germany. acculturation processes are also possible, for example expressed in a drop in career orientation among women socialised in east germany on their move to western germany and adaptation to a partner who grew up in former west germany. a study by kalmijn (2005) with data from the netherlands confi rms that gender role orientations can adapt in relationships. accordingly, over time men and women become more egalitarian (or more traditional), the more egalitarian (more traditional) their partner originally is. the extent of adaptation is, however, strongly dependent on the existence of children in the family and the employment constellation. since no equivalent studies have been conducted on east-west couples, we must empirically examine whether diverging gender role orientations are levelled in these relationships as a result of adaptation processes. • daniel lois8 2.3 religiousness in east-west relationships the different signifi cance of religion and church are among the most pronounced socio-cultural east-west differences. western germany has always been infl uenced by the southern german catholic cultural tradition, while in eastern germany the liberal or rather secular trends of the largely protestant northeast traditionally dominate (pickel 2003). these long-term differences in the religious culture were even intensifi ed by experiences with opposing political systems (storch 2003). as a consequence of this, religiousness is far stronger in western germany today than in the east. based on the adult population living in private households, the estimated percentage of church members in western germany in 2009 was over 80 percent and in eastern germany even under 30 percent (lois 2011). consequently, according to the socialisation hypothesis, we would expect that east-west couples especially differ in their religiousness. this could be manifested in that only the partner who was socialised in west germany is still member of a church and religiously active. regardless of socialisation experiences it is, however, possible that relationships only form between people of the same religion. but in the case of ecclesial religiousness, klein and wunder (1996) showed that confessional homogamy is largely not an expression of partner selection preferences, but instead a result of relative group sizes and corresponding opportunity structures. accordingly, a religiously unaffi liated person socialised in east germany, for example, who moves to western germany, would have a greater chance, solely on the basis of the opportunity structures, to meet persons with confessions. according to the adaptation hypothesis, however, there is a possibility that differences between the partners’ religiousness would be overcome over time through alignment. this assumption is, however, only partly supported by previous research. lois (2013: 184-209) uses the example of church attendance to show that although there is a tendency in relationships to adapt to the partner over time, this tendency is far weaker than among comparable variables such as leisure activities. therefore, the infl uences of socialisation should have relatively great signifi cance. finally, there are also initial results concerning the extent to which east-west migrants are selective with regard to religiousness. lois (2013: 173) shows that internal migrants between eastern and western germany, regardless of the direction of their mobility, are signifi cantly more often non-denominational and also less frequently attend church than non-mobile people (vatterrott 2011 reaches similar results). hence, while the socialisation as well as the adaptation hypothesis lead us to assume that especially the religious infl uences of partners in east-west relationships differ, this tendency would be weakened by the described selection mechanism. therefore, the religious similarity in east-west couples is also a question of empirical interest. east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 9 2.4 the choice of familial living arrangements in east-west relationships the previously discussed east-west differences in economic situation, division of labour and religiousness should also contribute to the fact that familial living arrangements chosen in east-west relationships deviate from the average (of the german population). from the socialisation perspective, there are arguments for a stronger tendency towards unmarried cohabitation among partners socialised in east germany. from a historical perspective, a strong distribution of children born out of wedlock can be traced primarily in eastern germany back to the 19th century. this was even intensifi ed in the former state of east germany through the introduction of the so called “baby year” which privileged single mothers (schneider et al. 2012). in spite of the alignment of social laws, the east-west discrepancy with regard to children born out of wedlock has even become greater after reunifi cation. in 2010 the share of children born out of wedlock among all fi rstborn children was 74 percent in eastern germany (without berlin), but only 37 percent in western germany (pötzsch 2012). additionally, according to the selection hypothesis, we must consider that people with at least one previous divorce in their life course are over-represented in the group of east-to-west internal migrants, primarily in the fi rst wave of migration between 1990 and 1995 (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). this selection effect should also contribute to a lower marriage propensity in east-west couples, since the probability of entering into a second or third marriage is lower than a fi rst marriage (lankuttis/blossfeld 2003). arránz becker and lois (2010), however, fi nd indications of adaption processes since originally single women with east-to-west mobility adapt to the marriage pattern of western german women although they maintain the socio-cultural infl uences of their eastern german origin, including a low religiousness and a relatively distinct career orientation. adaption to a western german partner who, due to his socialisation experiences, would contribute an increased “marriage orientation” to the relationship may be responsible for this phenomenon. although we can fi nd more arguments that speak for a strong tendency towards unmarried cohabitation in east-west couples, this, again, is a question that would have to be answered empirically. we also observe lasting east-west differences with regard to fertility behaviour following reunifi cation. there was an apparent adaptation among the eastern german population to the new structural circumstances following 1990. the age at starting a family, which was far lower in east germany than in former west germany, rose rapidly after 1989, leading to a short-term drop in birth rates (zapf/mau 1993). however, in the years following reunifi cation, eastern women exhibit a somewhat lower average age at the birth of their fi rst child (27.4 years) than western women (29.2 years) (pötzsch 2012); in addition lifelong childlessness is more widespread in western germany than in the east (statistisches bundesamt 2009). therefore, with regard to starting families, we can assume that people socialised in east germany have a lesser tendency to remain childless than people who grew • daniel lois10 up in former west germany. also people socialised in east germany who migrate to western germany appear to not adapt to the western german pattern of having their fi rst child relatively late in the life course (vatterrott 2011). furthermore, the specifi c characteristics of (female) east-to-west migrants, for instance their high level of education (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; windzio 2007), would lead us to expect a selection effect leading to an increased occurrence of childlessness in this group. the same conclusion can be drawn when taking the infl uence of the respective west german socialised partner into consideration whose socialisation experiences would, in turn, amount to the model of starting a family relatively late in the life course. for east-west couples living in western germany, moreover, we must take into account the infrastructural effect of lower availability of childcare facilities, in particular for children under the age of three (hank et al. 2004). against the background of this complex melange, it also needs to be empirically examined, to which extent east-west relationships differ with regard to starting families from the group of couples with the same socialisation backgrounds. 3 hypotheses on the stability of east-west relationships in the previous section, we assumed that east-west couples probably differ with regard to a number of characteristics from couples with uniform socialisation contexts. these assumed differences need not necessarily infl uence the satisfaction and the stability of an intimate relationship, since they may not be relevant, for example, in everyday couple communications and interactions. not until there is evidence that east-west couples are instable to a signifi cant degree due to their characteristics is a conclusion justifi ed that there is still segmentation of social groups in reunifi ed germany along the east-west dimension. against this background, we will now formulate hypotheses on the risk of separation in east-west couples. as a theoretical basis for this we use a multidimensional and integrative model of marriage stability developed by lewis and spanier (1979) that incorporates social, individual and dyadic characteristics.2 accordingly, subjective marital instability is the precondition of an actual divorce and is itself dependent on the quality of a marriage. the quality of a marriage is infl uenced by social and individual resources that are already determined at the beginning of the marriage, by the rewards of spousal interaction and by satisfaction with the present lifestyle. transferred to our question, east-west socialisation experiences lead to specifi c individual and social resources. we can render the somewhat imprecise defi nition of “resources” in lewis and spanier’s model (1979) more precisely by making use of family economics (becker 1981) thus differentiating between complementary and substitutable resources. the satisfaction and stability of the intimate relationship 2 arránz becker (2008: 29-37, 305-320) offers a detailed discussion and suggestions on further developing the model. east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 11 increase when the partners are more similar in complementary characteristics such as religiousness. by contrast, specialisation and division of labour and thus partner dissimilarity can also be effi cient in so called substitutable characteristics such as labour participation. the infl uences of the current socio-spatial context, for example the different income and employment opportunities in western and eastern germany, directly infl uence the current satisfaction of the couple with their lifestyle. in the model by lewis and spanier (1979), it also depends on external pressure that may exist to preserve the marriage and on available alternatives to the marriage whether a married couple actually divorces due to the low quality of a marriage and high subjective separation propensity. here, there are also links to our questions since east-west couples should be over-represented in large urban contexts – primarily in berlin – because more alternative partners are available (schneider et al. 2012). we will return to this aspect in section 5.1. in the following, we fi rst describe the conclusions that can be drawn for the stability of east-west couples when taking differences in the economic situation, the division of labour, religiousness and familial living arrangements into account. in section 2.1, we described the hypothesis that couples currently living in eastern germany and quite possibly couples in which at least one partner grew up in former east germany are affected to a greater extent by economic diffi culties. we can conclude from this that these couples are less stable (deprivation hypothesis), since economic deprivation as well as unemployment are destabilising relationships (see overview: arránz becker 2008: 32-35). this is primarily due to negative changes in couple interaction. when couples feel economically deprived there is an increased probability of dysfunctional perceptions and behaviours such as anxiety, depression and demoralisation. in addition, the couple’s mutual support lessens and there are increased animosities and confl icts (conger et al. 1990; conger et al. 1999). in addition to the amount of economic resources, there is the question of how the division of labour contributes to their production and the consequences on the relationship stability. lewis and spanier (1979) categorise this aspect along with the couple’s economic situation under the label of “satisfaction with lifestyle.” in current research, women’s employment is considered the primary factor that increases the risk of separation among marriages, but not among cohabiting couples (lois 2008). as böttcher (2006) summarised, this is attributed to a lesser “marriage asset” as a result of the lack of effi ciency through the division of labour, the woman’s dual burden of housework and employment, a greater availability of alternative partners in the employment environment of the woman and the destabilising autonomy effect of the woman’s income. numerous studies provide evidence of the negative connection of female employment and marriage stability (see overview: wagner/ weiß 2003). we therefore assume that east-west marriages with wives socialised in east germany as well as east-east marriages due to their more egalitarian division of labour are more instable than west-west marriages or east-west marriages with husbands socialised in east germany (division of labour hypothesis). religiousness is a classic example of a complementary variable, which lewis and spanier (1979) count among the factors determined even before marriage. theoreti• daniel lois12 cally, we would expect that religious similarity of partners promotes positive couple interactions and decreases the probability of confl icts (see overview: arránz becker 2008: 62-71). previous studies confi rm these assumptions (e.g. call/heaton 1997; wagner/weiß 2003). as a result, this leads to the expectation that east-west couples are more instable than couples socialised in the same place since the religious infl uences of the partners more frequently differ (religious homogamy hypothesis). lewis and spanier’s theoretical model (1979) was moreover developed at a time when cohabiting couples were less widespread. however, qian and lichter (2007) point out that the increase in cohabiting couples can intensify the social distance between social groups in the context of interethnic relationships since this living arrangement is generally less stable than marriage, is linked to a lesser overlapping of spousal social networks and also is less often accompanied by the birth of children, which are considered relationship-specifi c investments in family economics. more frequent cohabitation and childlessness should, therefore, contribute to increased instability in east-west couples (cohabitation hypothesis, childlessness hypothesis). furthermore, as discussed in section 2.4, the selectivity of east-west internal migrants must be taken into consideration, as they are more frequently divorced. second marriages exhibit an increased risk of separation (wagner/weiß 2003). this is primarily attributed to the selective attributes of divorced people, such as the lack of interactive skills (arránz becker 2008: 59-60). from this we derive the second marriage hypothesis, which also leads us to anticipate increased instability in eastwest relationships. 4 data and methods 4.1 data basis this study uses data from the german socio-economic panel study (soep, wagner et al. 2007). the benefi t of this data set is the availability of dyadic longitudinal data over an observation period of two decades (in this case 1990-2009). the sample is composed of 16,396 married and cohabiting couples (unmarried partners living together in one household), which could be observed in the soep surveys a-h since 1990. 87.2 percent of the observation episodes derive from marriages. couples living in separate households cannot be included since there is no information about the respective partners in these cases. table 1 shows an overview of the numbers of cases broken down by couple types. the sample comprises 974 east-west couples.3 the number of east-west couples available here is far higher than in other data sets, such as the german family panel (pairfam), making the soep the best suitable data source for our study. however, with only 24 couples the type “eastern man-western woman” is too small 3 in 15.2 percent of the cases, the couple type is imputed due to missing information on the place of residence before 1989 (see table a1). east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 13 in eastern germany and is therefore excluded from descriptive statistics (tables 3 and 4). table 1 additionally shows the percentage of different types of east-west couples. for example, 52.7 percent of the east-west couples are the type “eastern woman-western man” with their place of residence in western germany. these percentages, unlike the absolute fi gures, are based on weighted calculations. it would also be possible to analyse couples with the same socialisation contexts and internal migration, e.g. east-east couples who move to western germany, but this would go beyond the scope of this study. the same applies to ethnically heterogamous couples. the data are processed in the long format so that one line of the data set each accounts to one couple and one survey time. the data set comprises 122,049 observations. the observation period ends in cases of panel mortality, right-censoring in 2009 or a separation of the partners. the same person can be represented in multiple relationships over time. 4.2 method the empirical analyses include two steps. first, various characteristics are compared between the different types of couples. it must be taken into consideration that the east-west couples with an average couple age of 40.2 years are about nine years younger than west-west couples (49.6 years) and east-east couples (49.2 years). a simple descriptive comparison would therefore be hardly informative, since, in addition to the socialisation effects focused on, it would also always retab. 1: overview of numbers of cases and percentage of east-west couples current place of residence western germany (including west berlin) eastern germany (including east berlin) same place of residence before 1989 west-west couples (n = 11,214) east-east couples (n = 4,208) different place of residence before 1989 eastern womanwestern man (n = 563, 52.7 %) eastern man-western woman (n = 259, 27.3 %) eastern womanwestern man (n = 128, 17.2 %) eastern man-western woman (n = 24, 2.8 %) percentages weighted with cross-sectional extrapolation factors gphrf-zphrf source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) • daniel lois14 fl ect age differences. for this reason, the characteristics of the different couples are compared controlling for age, cohort and period effects.4 the methods used to analyse the characteristics of different couple types are so-called random effects (re) models (allison 2009: 21), which, weighted according to the respective variance, consider both differences within as well as between couples. since one of the dependent variables, the absolute difference in church attendance of the partners, exhibits a high percentage of the value 0, in this case an re poisson model is calculated (allison 2009: 49-69). a (binary or multinomial) logistic regression model with panel-robust standard errors is used for dichotomous variables. the second step involves analysis of the relative separation risk in the different couple types. for this, a discrete time event history analysis is used, which is specifi cally suited for panel data (singer/willett 2003: 357-406). for technical reasons related to the number of cases, a joint logit model is estimated for married and cohabiting couples. since the logit coeffi cients in hierarchical regression models can change even without intercorrelation of the independent variables (mood 2010), average marginal effects (ame) are reported which are not affected by this problem. 4.3 measures all independent variables were included time-lagged by one year in the analyses of relationship stability. missing values were imputed for all independent variables using the expectation-maximisation method (allison 2001: 19). irregularly measured variables were updated to the respective current wave. the percentage of missing values, along with the descriptive statistics, is shown in table a1 in the appendix. couple types: • information about where the respective respondent grew up prior to 1989 (west germany, east germany) is taken from the meta fi le “ppfad.” since the “socialisation period” is shorter in younger birth cohorts in former west germany and former east germany,5 further-reaching analyses are conducted in which the east-west couples are divided up into two groups (year of birth of the woman up to or after 1970). the current place of residence (western and eastern germany) is also available for each wave even when changing over time. socio-economic situation and division of labour:  the “index on the economic situation” is based on three indicators, which are fi rst z-standardised and then combined by averaging the respective indicators (cronbach’s alpha ranging between .76 and .82). one is the equivalent household income (according to the new oecd scale). since the research 4 the control variables here include the linear and squared age (couple average value), dummy variables for the respective observation period (1990-1995, 1996-2000, 2001-2005, reference: 2006-2009) as well as the year of birth operationalised as the couple average value and the squared year of birth. 5 about three-fourths of the people in east-west couples were born before 1974. the youngest person within this type of relationship was born in 1986. east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 15 on relationship stability shows that economic deprivation is more stressful when perceived subjectively than objectively (conger et al. 1999), indicators are also included on satisfaction with lifestyle (10-point rating scale) and on concerns about individual economic situations (3-point rating scale). higher index values correspond to a better economic situation.  additionally, unemployment of one or both partners (for at least one month per year) is recorded.  to describe the employment-related division of labour in couple relationships , we fi rst formed an employment index for each partner that allocates full and part-time months extrapolated for the year as follows: full-time months + (0.5*part-time months). then we formed an average value for this index per couple (1.) as well as an adjusted partner difference (man-woman) (2.) (griffi n et al. 1999).  to attain an indirect measurement of gender role orientation independent of employment behaviour, we made use of the hours estimated that each partner spends on weekends with housework and family chores (laundry, cooking, cleaning, childcare) measured in every second wave. here, as well, we formed an average value per couple and an adjusted difference term (man-woman). religiousness:  to measure religiousness, we employed the indicators church attendance (surveyed 1990, 1992, 1994-1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007-2009) and confession (measured 1990, 1997, 2003, 2007). the question about church attendance offers four alternative response items (4 = every week, 3 = every month, 2 = less often, 1 = never), which is converted into an average value of annually attended church service (never = 0, less often = 5, every month = 12, every week = 52). we again formed an average value per couple as well as an absolute difference for the partners. in the case of confession, we differentiated between three constellations in the analyses of relationship stability: (1.) both partners lack a confession, (2.) partners’ confessions differ or only one partner has no confession (heterogamy) and (3.) the partners are of the same confession (homogamy). familial living arrangements:  the soep fi les “biobirth,” “biobirthm” and “biomarsy” are used to differentiate married or cohabiting couples (previously divorced and not, i.e. at least one partner is previously divorced) and whether both partners are childless. the analyses of relationship stability also incorporate counter variables on the number of 0 to 1-year-old, 2 to 4-year-old and over 4-year-old children currently living in the respective household measured according to their relationship to the head of the household. durations in the discrete-time event history analysis:  in the cases of marriages, the marriage duration is taken from the “biomarsy” fi le as the event indicator and operationalised as a linear and logarithmised term to model a sickle-shaped separation risk.  the soep data is limited in that no information on the relationship duration is available that could be used as a suitable event indicator for cohabiting couples. instead, we used the ages, which typically correlate highly with the relationship duration. • daniel lois16 5 empirical results 5.1 how has the share of east-west couples changed since 1990? the fi rst step of the empirical analyses asks about the social relevance of the phenomenon of “east-west love”. figure 1 shows how the distribution of east-west couples has developed since 1990. the estimated results are based on weighted data (soep cross-sectional weights phrf) used to adapt them to marginal distributions of offi cial microcensus data (göbel et al. 2008). it shows a distinctly positive trend. while practically no relationships were observed between east and west-german socialised people in 1990, their percentage among all married couples increased to 1.7 percent by 2009 and among cohabiting couples even to 11 percent. the distinct differences between married and cohabiting couples have a number of possible causes. generally, east-west couples only have had the opportunity to meet since 1990 and younger people are over-represented in the group of eastto-west internal migrants (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). therefore, the large number of cohabiting couples is probably largely due to age and relationship durafig. 1: development of the share of east-west couples among all cohabiting and married couples in the period 1990-2009 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 share of east-west couples among all cohabiting couples share of east-west couples among all marriages percent weighting with cross-sectional extrapolation factors gphrf-zphrf source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 17 tion effects. in addition, in section 2.4 we already assumed that east-west couples, regardless of their age, exhibit a lower marriage propensity compared to west-west couples. we will analyse whether this is true in section 5.2. in-depth analyses also reveal that 3.1 percent of berlin marriages and 25.3 percent of berlin cohabiting couples are east-west couples, which can be explained by the favourable opportunities of their meeting. in summary, the internal migration fl ows between eastern and western germany since the year 1990 have apparently contributed to an increased number of eastwest relationships. this result alone, however, does not explain whether relationships can be classifi ed according to the east-west criterion and thus implying that this criterion is accompanied by specifi c socio-cultural and economic characteristics. the following section will explore this question. 5.2 comparing characteristics of east-west relationships tables 2 and 3 compare various characteristics between couple types. in order to isolate infl uences of the place of socialisation and socio-spatial context as much as possible, multivariate models are calculated with a series of control variables (not shown). table 2 (model 1) analyses the index on the economic situation, which, along with the equivalent household income, includes satisfaction with the living standard and worries about the economic situation. the structurally better income and employment opportunities in western germany can be seen in that the economic situation of couples living in eastern germany (couple types “east-east” as well as “eastern woman-western man”) is altogether considerably poorer than that of couples living in western germany. the independent effect of the socio-spatial context is revealed in particular by the fact that couples of the type “eastern woman-western man” with a place of residence in eastern germany are in economically less favourable positions than the same type of couple living in western germany. although the results thus clearly speak in favour of a socio-geographical adaptation mechanism, we must not completely neglect socialisation experiences. for example, the east-west couples of the type “eastern woman-western man” and “eastern manwestern woman” have a somewhat less advantageous economic situation than the reference category of west-west couples, with whom they share the socio-spatial context. one possible explanation for this fi nding is, for instance, that partners socialised in east germany have disadvantages with regard to intergenerational transfers. in addition, causal effects may result from the internal migration as such, for example when the entry into employment and the career advancement of one partner is delayed due to migration. the results concerning the unemployment of one or both partners (models 2-3 in table 2) are similar to those in model 1, whereas the general signifi cance of the socio-spatial context is somewhat more distinct. in addition to available material resources, the question is how these are produced with regard to the couples’ division of labour. the dependent variable in model 4 (tab. 2) is an adjusted difference term that provides information about the • daniel lois18 couples’ division of labour outside the home. it is the difference between the annual full and part-time months worked by the male partner and those of the female partner. here, high values indicate a more traditional orientation of the couple (the man works longer hours than the woman).6 east-west couples living in western germany are signifi cantly more egalitarian in this respect than west-west couples, indicating an enduring effect of socialisation. further analyses at the individual level reveal that in both cases women in east-west relationships – compared with westwest couples – are responsible for the greater labour participation. a selection eftab. 2: economic situation, unemployment and division of labour in couple types, by place of socialisation and current place of residence (b coeffi cients with panel-robust t or z values in brackets) model 1 2 3 4 index of economic situation both unemployed (ref.: neither) one unemployed (ref.: neither) employment index (man-woman) re linear multinomial logit model re linear couple type west-west couple, western germany (reference) east-east couple, eastern germany -.43 (-40.3) ** .88 (17.8) ** .69 (21.4) ** -1.44 (-19.4) ** east(w)-west(m) couple, western germany -.07 (-3.3) ** .09 (0.7) .14 (1.7) + -.32 (-2.0) * east(m)-west(w) couple, western germany -.07 (-2.1) * -.32 (-1.5) .09 (0.7) -.60 (-2.4) * east(w)-west(m) couple, eastern germany -.23 (-5.4) ** .68 (2.1) * .92 (5.5) ** -1.91 (-5.5) ** n (couples) 16,372 14,606 n (observations) 122,049 101,824 + p ≤ .10; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 re = random effects models 2-4: both partners of working age control variables: linear and squared age (average value per couple); period dummies; year of birth (average value per couple), year of birth squared; familial living arrangement (married vs. cohabiting couples); number of children living in household (0-1 years, 2-4 years, over 4 years; only model 4) source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) 6 bottom and ceiling effects are controlled for by using the respective couple average values, which are included in the form of a linear and squared term. if, for example, neither partner is employed they cannot, trivially, differ in the extent of their labour participation (bottom effect). east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 19 fect may, however, be an alternative explanation to socialisation infl uences, since female east-to-west migrants are predominantly highly educated. moreover, we again observe that east-west couples of the type “eastern womanwestern man” differ distinctly depending on the place of residence. the couples of this constellation living in eastern germany practice a far more egalitarian division of labour. this is yet more evidence of an independent effect of the socio-spatial context, which could, in this case, be caused by the better availability of childcare facilities in eastern germany. to further isolate independent socialisation effects, we additionally analysed the domestic weekend division of labour, which should be less infl uenced by structural factors such as available childcare places and employment opportunities. the dependent variable is an adjusted difference term (man-woman) on the hours that each of the partners spend doing housework. the results (not shown) reveal hardly any signifi cant differences between the couple types. only east-east couples are signifi cantly more egalitarian than west-west couples. these results tend to deny that there are east-west differences in gender role orientations which are independent from opportunity structures. table 3 covers the analyses of partner similarities regarding religiousness as well as familial living arrangements. the dependent variable in model 1 takes on the value 1 if the partners are members of the same denomination (confessional homogamy). if, however, the partners are of different confessions or if only one partner is non-denominational, the value is set at 0. the results show that the confessions of partners in east-west relationships differ signifi cantly more often than of west-west couples regardless of whether the east-west couple currently lives in eastern or western germany. while the religious affi liation of the partners does not agree in 50.4 percent of cases of east-west couples living in western germany in which the woman was socialised in east germany, this is true for only 28.2 percent of the cases of west-west couples. also of interest in model 2 is the extent to which– controlled for confessional homogamy – differences in the partners’ religious practices can be determined. the dependent variable is the absolute difference in church attendance of the partners. this difference is signifi cantly more distinct within east-west couples than west-west couples. the current place of residence only plays a minor role here. altogether, the results on religiousness clearly speak for the enduring signifi cance of diverging socialisation experiences. the religious differences within east-west couples can apparently not be completely overcome by partner selection preferences or adaptation processes over time or be balanced out by selection effects.7 model 3 furthermore examines whether the different couple types are cohabiting (coded with 0) or married (coded with 1). in model 4, the dependent variable reaches the value 1 if at least one partner is previously divorced. 7 in addition, differences in the level of religiousness between the different couple types must be taken into account. for example, the mean frequency of church attendance extrapolated to the year among east-west couples with women socialised in east germany and living in western germany is only 4.0 annual church visits, but 10.7 for west-west couples. • daniel lois20 the results shown in model 3 illustrate that east-west couples, even when controlled for age effects and children, tend to cohabit far more than west-west couples, who exhibit the overall greatest marriage orientation. the marriage propensity in east-west relationships, regardless of the current place of residence, is far lower than in east-east relationships. since we controlled for age effects, this fi nding indicates delays in the institutionalisation process among east-west relationships (kopp et al. 2010). one simple explanation that cannot be tested due to data restrictions is that east-west couples did not have the opportunity to meet until 1990 and therefore probably exhibit shorter relationship durations on average. the independent signifi cance of the socio-spatial context is again expressed in the fact that couples of the type “eastern woman-western man” living in eastern and western germany tab. 3: religiousness and familial living arrangements in couple types by place of socialisation and current place of residence (b coeffi cients with panel-robust t or z values in brackets) model 1 2 3 4 confessional homogamy church attendance (|man-woman|) married (1) versus cohabiting couples (0) previously divorced logit re poisson logit couple type west-west couple, western germany (reference) east-east couple, eastern germany -.75 (-13.6) ** -.06 (-3.6) ** -.33 (-6.1) ** .04 (0.8) east(w)-west(m) couple, western germany -.88 (-7.6) ** .07 (3.0) ** -1.39 (-10.6) ** 1.45 (11.5) ** east(m)-west(w) couple, western germany -.46 (-3.1) ** .09 (2.4) * -1.30 (-7.0) ** 1.74 (10.0) ** east(w)-west(m) couple, eastern germany -.78 (-3.9) ** .21 (4.3) ** -2.38 (-8.1) ** 1.60 (6.1) ** n (couples) 14,970 16,372 n (observations) 97,121 122,049 + p ≤ .10; * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01 re = random effects model 1 without homogamous religiously unaffi liated couples control variables: linear and squared age (average value per couple); period dummies; year of birth (average value per couple), year of birth squared; familial living arrangement (marriage vs. cohabiting couples; only models 1 and 2), linear and squared average value for religiousness per couple and dummy for confessional homogamy (only model 2); number of children living in household (0-1 years, 2-4 years, over 4 years; only model 3) source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 21 differ since the marriage propensity of couples residing in eastern germany is comparatively lower. model 4 also reveals that one partner in east-west couples was more frequently previously divorced. additional analyses show that, in agreement with the research (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009), this is primarily true of the migrant partner. according to further analyses, the selectivity of east-west couples with regard to previous divorces is also to some extent responsible for their low marriage propensity, which model 3 documents. in analyses not shown here, we also pursued the question whether the level of childlessness among east-west couples differs signifi cantly from west-west couples, controlled for the two living arrangements cohabitation and marriage. the results show that in this case no statistically signifi cant differences can be ascertained, thus contradicting the childlessness hypothesis. only east-east couples are, as expected, signifi cantly less often childless than the reference group of west-west couples. in order to test cohort-specifi c differences, we also compared the results portrayed in tables 2 and 3 between two groups: couples in which the woman was born up to or after 1970. no signifi cant differences were revealed for economic situation, division of labour inside and outside the home or religiousness. with regard to marriage propensity and previous divorces, however, cohort effects were verifi able since the marriage propensity among east-west couples of younger birth cohorts increases and the percentage of previously divorced people decreases. one explanation for these fi ndings is that the selective characteristics of the east-west internal migrants changed over time. people socialised in east germany who moved their place of residence to western germany during the second major wave of migration between 1997/1998 and 2004/2005 are, compared with the fi rst migration wave in the early 1990s, younger and less often previously divorced, factors that may have an inhibitive effect on remarriage (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). 5.3 how stable are east-west couples? based on the analyses in the previous section, we can draw the preliminary conclusion that east-west couples, as expected, exhibit some “risk factors” that may contribute to increased instability. these include the differences in confessions and the distinct propensity towards unmarried cohabitation. now, using the event history analyses as shown in table 4, we test the extent to which the risk of separation differs between the different couple types and how these differences can be explained. based on model 1 we learn that the conditional probability of separation among east-west couples with their place of residence in western germany is 1.2 percentage points and among east-west couples living in eastern germany 1.5 percentage points higher than among the reference category of west-west couples.8 both of 8 east-west couples in former west and east germany are each allocated to one group for the sake of case numbers. • daniel lois22 tab. 4: discrete-time event history analysis of the risk of separation in couple types by current place of residence and place of socialisation (average marginal effects with z values in brackets) model 1 2 3 4 5 logit couple type west-west couple, western germany (ref.) east-east couple, eastern germany .001 (0.8) .001 (1.3) .001 (0.5) -.001 (-2.2) * -.003 (-5.0) * east-west couple, western germany .012 (5.2) ** .011 (5.0) ** .006 (3.3) ** .005 (2.9) * .003 (2.2) * east-west couple, eastern germany .015 (2.4) * .015 (2.5) * .006 (1.5) .005 (1.3) .003 (1.0) place of residence berlin .008 (2.9) ** .005 (2.2) * .004 (2.0) * .003 (1.6) familial living arrangement married, not previously divorced (ref.) cohabiting couples not previously divorced .013 (5.6) ** .011 (5.2) ** .010 (4.9) ** cohabiting couples previously divorced .020 (6.0) ** .016 (5.3) ** .013 (4.8) ** married, previously divorced .007 (4.7) ** .004 (2.6) ** .003 (1.9) + children 0-1 years in the household -.003 (-2.4) * -.001 (-1.2) -.001 (-1.2) children 2-4 years in the household -.0003 (-0.4) .0003 (0.4) .001 (0.7) children over 4 years in the household .0002 (0.7) .0002 (0.6) .001 (1.9) + economic situation and division of labour index of the economic situation# -.003 (-6.3) ** -.003 (-6.3) ** neither partner unemployed (ref.) one partner unemployed .003 (3.3) ** .003 (3.3) ** both partners unemployed .002 (1.2) .002 (1.2) employment index# .0001 (1.5) .0001 (1.0) employment index (man-woman) -.0004 (-5.2) ** -.0004 (-4.9) ** east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 23 these differences are highly signifi cant and, since it is a matter of percentage points, also of considerable magnitude. another example illustrates this more clearly: at about 5 percent, the probability of separation for an average couple age of 30 years among all east-west couples put together is twice as high than among the most stable group, the west-west couples (2.5 percent probability of separation at this age). in order to explain these differences, we now gradually include variables into the regression model that can be allocated to different dimensions. model 2 fi rst takes account of a socio-spatial selection mechanism. in section 4.1 we already noted model 1 2 3 4 5 logit employment index (man-woman) × cohabiting couples not previously divorced .0001 (0.5) .0001 (0.4) employment index (man-woman) × cohabiting couples previously divorced .0003 (2.5) * .0003 (2.4) * employment index (man-woman) × married, previously divorced .0005 (3.4) ** .0004 (3.2) ** religiousness church attendance# -.0003 (-6.2) ** church attendance (|man-woman|) .0001 (2.8) ** confessional heterogamy (ref.) both partners non-denominational -.001 (-0.8) confessional homogamy -.004 (-7.6) ** process times age# -.001 (-23.4) ** -.001 (-23.8) ** -.0005 (-11.5) ** -.0004 (-10.3) ** -.0004 (-10.3) ** marriage duration (+1) -.001 (-7.0) ** -.001 (-7.5) ** -.001 (-6.9) ** marriage duration (+1) logarithmised .003 (3.8) ** .003 (4.3) ** .003 (3.9) ** pseudo-r² (mcfadden) .076 .078 .102 .109 .116 n (couples) 16,396 n (observations) 122,049 n (separation events, married/cohabiting couples) 1,323 (772 / 551) tab. 4: continuation ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 # = operationalised as average value per couple source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) • daniel lois24 that east-west couples are especially to be found in berlin. in addition, model 2 shows that the risk of separation in urban contexts such as berlin is higher, probably also due to greater availability of alternative partners (arránz becker 2008: 41-44). the coeffi cients for east-west couples, however, are only slightly lower when controlled for the berlin dummy in model 2. in model 3 we control for familial living arrangements by considering the children living in the household as well as by differentiating between cohabiting and married couples, each with and without one previously divorced partner. in line with current research, marital living arrangements reveal stabilising effects compared to cohabiting arrangements (kopp et al. 2010). at the same time relationships in which at least one partner is previously divorced are less stable (wagner/weiß 2003). moreover, we also confi rmed the stabilising effect of small children (in the age range of 0-1 year). when controlled for familial living arrangements, the net differences between east-west couples and west-west couples decrease considerably and are no longer signifi cant in the case of east-west couples living in eastern germany. after further analyses, it becomes clear that this major effect reduction is primarily a consequence of the greater prevalence of cohabiting couples and remarriages among east-west couples. we consider this strong evidence for the second marriage hypothesis and the cohabitation hypothesis. the fourth model includes indicators that illustrate both the couple’s economic situation and their gender-specifi c division of labour. it confi rms that couples with a more favourable economic situation are more stable (b = -.003) and also that unemployment of one partner has a destabilising effect. with regard to the division of labour outside the home, the conditional main effect of the difference term “employment index man – employment index woman” (ame = -.0004) shows that marriages with no previously divorced partner are stabilised by a traditional division of labour. as the signifi cant interaction effects document, however, this context is transferable to neither married nor cohabiting couples in which at least one partner was previously divorced. the remaining multivariate difference between east-west couples in western germany and west-west couples only marginally drop when comparing models 3 and 4. therefore, contradicting deprivation and division of labour hypothesis, the increased instability of east-west relationships can hardly be explained by the economic situation and division of labour. finally, model 5 considers religiousness. as expected, couples who on average attend church services relatively frequently are more stable (ame = -.0003; level effect). in addition, the risk of separation increases when the partners are not of the same confession or they practice their religion differently (ame = -.004 for confessional homogamy and ame = .0001 for the absolute difference in church attendance). differences in religiousness are not irrelevant for the stability of east-west couples: comparing models 4 and 5, a drop in the effect is observed for east-west couples in western germany (from .005 to .003). this fi nding at least tends to support the religious homogamy hypothesis. east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 25 6 summary and discussion the initial key result of this study ascertained that relationships between a person socialised in west germany and one in east germany have become increasingly widespread in quantity. as a consequence of internal migration fl ows since reunifi cation the estimated share of east-west couples among all married couples increased to 1.7 percent and among cohabiting couples to 11 percent in 2009. moreover, this form of relationship is especially to be found in western germany, in particular in berlin. figures on the incidence of east-west couples do not, however, answer the question of why to differentiate intimate relationships according to the current place of residence in western and eastern germany and according to the place of socialisation. further analyses confi rm, however, that the current socio-spatial context and the place of socialisation are accompanied by systematic differences with regard to their economic welfare as well as the partners’ socio-cultural infl uences. independent contextual infl uences are expressed primarily in that distinct socio-spatial differences are exhibited when controlling for the couple’s socialisation experiences. for instance, east-west couples in which the woman was socialised in east germany and the man in west germany and who live in eastern germany exhibit poorer economic situations, a more egalitarian division of labour and a lower marriage propensity than couples of the same type living in western germany. at the same time, we found indications that socialisation infl uences are not completely levelled even over the course of internal migration and social assimilation. this is confi rmed, for example, by the fact that east-west couples living in western germany are characterised by a less favourable economic situation and a more egalitarian division of labour outside the home than west-west couples living in the same socio-spatial context. the most striking example for the signifi cance of socialisation is, in addition, the difference in religiousness within east-west couples. here, the results reveal that both the religious affi liation as well as the frequency of church attendance especially differ among partners in east-west relationships. nonetheless, we note that alternative explanations for our fi ndings related to the selectivity of internal migrants cannot be ruled out. for example, the relatively egalitarian division of labour among east-west couples might also be ascribed to the fact that female internal migrants are highly educated and thus exhibit a higher career orientation. it would be necessary to observe internal migrants before and after migration in an enhanced analysis design in order to completely differentiate selection and adaptation effects. another important result of this study is that the characteristics of east-west couples previously discussed have consequences for the stability of this type of relationship. east-west couples are signifi cantly less stable than german couples of identical socialisation. the event history analyses illustrated that this increased instability is in part due to diverging confessional affi liations and religious practices. consequently, in terms of religiousness, a cultural distance can be found between people socialised in west and east germany, which contributes not only to increased instability of intimate relationships but also tends to solidify boundaries • daniel lois26 between social groups along the east-west dimension. confession and church attendance are, however, merely indirect indicators of basic values and lifestyles. therefore, further analyses should analyse how religious differences actually affect couple interaction. however, with surprisingly clarity the primary cause for the increased risk of separation in east-west relationships is shown to lie in the sphere of familial living arrangements and relationship histories: east-west couples separate relatively often, primarily because they are often unmarried and at least one of the partners is frequently previously divorced. the low marriage propensity is potentially due to the shorter average relationship duration of east-west couples, who only had the opportunity to meet since reunifi cation. the notably large number of previously divorced people in this population group can most probably be explained through a selection effect, since, according to current research fi ndings, divorced people exhibit greater probability of migrating within germany. the question is whether these characteristics of east-west couples will disappear among younger cohorts. this would be the case should this group conform to the “average couple” in the general population. the opposite case is also not entirely implausible. in a certain way, east-west relationships are “ahead of their time,” since some striking parallels can be observed between their specifi c characteristics – like egalitarian division of labour, unmarried cohabitation, confessional heterogamy – and various general trends. these include the rise in marriage age and the increase in cohabiting couples (peuckert 2008: 32-47), the rise in female labour participation (peuckert 2008: 229-283) and the increase in the number of interreligious marriages (klein/wunder 1996). for this reason, the extent to which the inner-german east-west comparison becomes increasingly obsolete on account of the general modernisation trend will remain a fascinating question, even in the context of intimate relationships. references alba, richard d.; nee, victor 2003: remaking the american mainstream: assimilation and contemporary immigration. cambridge, ma: havard university press. allison, 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analysis. modeling change and event occurrence. oxford: university press. statistisches bundesamt 2009: mikrozensus 2008 – neue daten zur kinderlosigkeit in deutschland. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. storch, kersten 2003: konfessionslosigkeit in ostdeutschland. in: gärtner, christel; pollack, detlef; wohlrab-sahr, monika (eds.): atheismus und religiöse indifferenz. opladen: leske + budrich: 231-245. east-west couples: distribution, characteristics and stability • 29 szydlik, marc; schupp, jürgen 2004: wer erbt mehr? erbschaften, sozialstruktur und alterssicherung. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 56: 609629 [doi: 10.1007/s11577-004-0106-0]. trappe, heike 1995: emanzipation oder zwang? frauen in der ddr zwischen beruf, familie und sozialpolitik. berlin: akademie verlag. vatterrott, anja 2011: the fertility behaviour of east to west german migrants. in: mpidr working paper 2011-13. wagner, gert g.; frick, j. r.; schupp, jürgen 2007: the german socio-economic panel study (soep) – scope, evolution and enhancements. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127: 161-191. wagner, michael; weiß, bernd 2003: bilanz der deutschen scheidungsforschung: versuch einer meta-analyse. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 32: 29-49. windzio, mark 2007: regionale arbeitslosigkeit und distanz zur grenze: individual und kontexteffekte auf die abwanderung von arbeitskräften von ostnach westdeutschland. in: schmollers jahrbuch 127: 553-583. zapf, wolfgang; mau, steffen 1993: eine demographische revolution in ostdeutschland? dramatischer rückgang von geburten, eheschließungen und scheidungen. in: informationsdienst soziale indikatoren 10: 1-5. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “ost-west-paare: verbreitung, eigenschaften und stabilität”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2014-17de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-17de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 28.10.2013 date of acceptance: 06.03.2014 prof. dr. daniel lois (). universität der bundeswehr münchen, fakultät für humanwissenschaften, department of education. münchen, germany. e-mail: daniel.lois@unibw.de url: http://www.unibw.de/hum/dfb/swm/pers/daniellois • daniel lois30 appendix tab. a1: descriptive statistics for the variables included into the model mean value / % sd min max % imputed couple types west-west couple, western germany 72.1 % 0 1 15.2east-east couple, eastern germany 25.7 % 0 1 east-west couple, western germany 1.9 % 0 1 east-west couple, eastern germany 0.4 % 0 1 familial living arrangements cohabiting couples not previously divorced 7.6 % 0 1 18.8cohabiting couples previously divorced 5.3 % 0 1 married not previously divorced 75.4 % 0 1 married previously divorced 11.8 % 0 1 partners have at least one child 82.0 % 0 1 9.0 number of children 0-1 years old in the household 0.04 0.2 0 3 0.0number of children 2-4 years old in the household 0.1 0.3 0 3 number of children over 4 years old 0.2 0.5 0 4 economic situation and division of labour index of the economic situation# 0.0 1.0 -3.3 11.2 8.8 one partner unemployed 20.4 % 0 1 12.6both partners unemployed 6.6 % 0 1 employment index# 6.4 4.1 0 12 employment index (man-woman) 3.2 5.8 -12 12 hours of housework weekends# 1.8 0.9 0 10 19.7 housework (man-woman) -1.9 1.8 -10 10 religiousness church attendance# 9.2 13.6 0 52 18.8 church attendance (|man-woman|) 5.0 10.1 0 52 both partners non-denominational 20.2 % 0 1 31.4confessional heterogamy 26.8 % 0 1 confessional homogamy 53.1 % 0 1 time indicators age# 47.5 14.4 17 95 1.0 marriage duration (coded with 0 for cohabiting couples, +1) 20.4 15.6 1 72 22.0 period 1991-1995 19.4 % 0 1 0.0 period 1996-2000 23.2 % 0 1 period 2001-2005 33.6 % 0 1 period 2006-2009 23.8 % 0 1 cohort from 1971 (ref.: until 1970) 14.3 % 0 1 place of residence berlin 3.5 % 0 1 7.1 n (couples) 16,372 n (observations) 122,049 mean values and percentages refer to the 122,049 observations in the long format # = operationalised as average value per couple, sd = standard deviation source: soep (1990-2009, own calculations) published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis marc luy abstract: demographic period indicators like the total fertility rate or life expectancy are well known since more than a century and until recently there were only minor discussions about their usefulness. this changed with a series of publications by bongaarts and feeney (bf) in which they claimed that these indicators are inappropriate for describing current demographic conditions when the average age at childbearing respective death is changing. therefore, bf proposed alternative tempo-adjusted indicators for such situations which can be very useful for demographic analysis. the still existing scepticism against the bf approach and the general rejection of mortality tempo adjustment in particular have their origin in a set of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of tempo-adjusted indicators. this paper systematically describes the basic idea of tempo effects, how they can distort the commonly used conventional period indicators and how the proposed methods approximate the idea of tempo adjustment, illustrated with empirical data for west germany. we also summarize the critiques against tempo adjustment and try to put the tempo approach in the right perspective. finally, the paper strives for providing a better understanding when tempo-adjusted measures should be used as alternative or in addition to the commonly used conventional demographic indicators. keywords: tempo effects · tempo adjustment · tempo distortion · bongaarts – feeney · period analysis · total fertility rate · life expectancy 1 introduction producing indices to summarize demographic conditions and to describe demographic trends is the main task of formal demography. although demographers developed and are still developing a huge set of different indicators with very specifi c features most users of demographic data revert to a few specifi c indices only. in the fi eld of fertility the most common indicator is the “total fertility rate” (tfr), usually known and interpreted as “average number of children per woman”, and in the fi eld of mortality it is “life expectancy” (le) at birth or at an advanced age like 20 when comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 3 (2010): 415-446 (date of release: 15.09.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-11en4 • marc luy416 one is interested in adult mortality only or at age 65 when the interest refers to the number of years of live in retirement. these indicators are common and well known since more than a century and until recently there were only minor discussions about their usefulness. this changed, however, with a publication of bongaarts and feeney (1998) in which the authors claimed that the tfr is an inappropriate indicator for current fertility conditions when the average age at childbearing is changing and proposed an alternative indicator for such situations, the “tempo-adjusted” tfr* (with the asterisk symbolizing tempo-adjusted rates or indicators). four years later, bongaarts and feeney (bf) extended their “tempo approach” to the analysis of mortality (bongaarts/feeney 2002), and another four years later they described a general framework of their approach that applies to any kind of demographic event (bongaarts/feeney 2006). meanwhile tempo adjustment is widely practiced in the area of fertility analysis, whereas mortality tempo adjustment is less accepted and only used rarely in empirical analyses so far. the different treatment of tempo adjustment among demographers in fertility and mortality is irrational since the basic idea behind the tempo approach is independent of the kind of demographic event. same as the whole discussion surrounding the tempo approach the rejection of mortality tempo adjustment and the still existing scepticism against tempo adjustment among many scholars and users of demographic data are rooted in a set of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of tempo adjustment. this confusion was increased by the fact that in the fi rst years after the initial bf publications the discussion focussed almost exclusively on technical aspects of the proposed tempo-adjusted indicators. many demographers and users of demographic indices with different backgrounds did not or could not follow this complex technical discussion and as a consequence regarded tempo adjustment sceptically or repellent without understanding the tempo approach itself. the correct understanding of bf’s basic idea is, however, very important for anyone who is interested in demographic conditions and processes. therefore, the aim of this paper is to systematically describe the basic idea of tempo effects, how they can distort the commonly used conventional demographic indicators and how the proposed methods approximate the idea of tempo adjustment. it is very important to note that the bf indicators are only approximations since a perfect statistical realization of tempo adjustment would require data in such detail that do not exist in empirical practice. the paper is mainly aimed for readers who never heard of tempo adjustment, heard a little bit about tempo adjustment or got confused in the complex discussion on tempo adjustment. however, the paper also contains some new thoughts and perspectives which might help changing the direction of the discussion among experts. we do not use any complex mathematical derivation or theoretical model in this paper but rather illustrate the aspects around tempo effects and tempo adjustment with empirical data for west germany. generally, in the german-speaking literature the tempo approach is only rarely picked out and we would also like to introduce this new demographic approach in this context. tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 417 to get the right starting point when thinking about tempo effects and to avoid the common misunderstandings we begin with a short systematisation of the basic demographic concepts and indicators, like the substantial difference between period and cohort dimension (section 2). on this basis we describe the basic idea behind bf’s tempo approach (section 3) and how it has to be seen in the period-cohort framework (section 4). in section 5 we compare the tempo-adjusted indicators with other alternative indices that are to some extent related to the bf indicators but differ from them conceptually. after separating tempo-adjusted indicators from these other concepts we summarize the critiques against bf’s tempo approach in section 6 and try to put the tempo approach in the right perspective also admitting that some critical arguments are basically justifi ed. however, as will be argued in this section of the paper, these aspects concern the technical realization of tempo adjustment and do not concern the basic idea itself. at the end we summarize the main aspects of the paper and combine them with the thoughts of other demographers who argued either in favour or against tempo adjustment. in conclusion we hope to provide a better understanding what tempo effects and tempo adjustment are and when they should be used as alternative or in addition to the commonly used conventional demographic indicators. 2 basic demographic concepts and indicators the most common demographic indicators like the tfr or le are based on “demographic event rates”.1 demographic event rates are constructed by relating events (births, deaths, marriages, divorces, etc.) which occurred in a defi ned risk population (people of a specifi c cohort or people living at the same time with the same specifi c characteristics) to the risk years lived by the same population (with the same time reference).2 the tfr is based on age-specifi c fertility rates, i.e. the number of births by women aged x divided by the risk years lived by women aged x. the tfr results from summing up these age-specifi c fertility rates over all reproductive ages (usually ages between 15 and 49). le is based on age-specifi c death rates, i.e. the number of deaths of women or men aged x divided by the corresponding risk 1 we use the term “demographic event rate” to avoid a separation between “rates of fi rst kind” (which are also called “hazards“ or “occurrence-exposure rates”) and “rates of second kind” (which are also called “conditional rates” or “incidence rates”) in order to keep the paper as simple as possible. in practice, rates of both kinds are used. rates of fi rst kind are used in mortality analysis where the denominator of the death rates (which includes all people living in a specifi c year or period) represents in fact the persons in risk of experiencing the event. rates of second kind are typically used in fertility analysis. the denominator of age-specifi c fertility rates (which can be subdivided by parity) includes all women in reproductive ages, regardless whether they are at risk to experience a fi rst birth, a second birth, etc. (for more details see bongaarts/feeney 2006). for most arguments presented in this paper the separation between rates of fi rst and second kind is not necessary. however, rates of fi rst and second kind exhibit different properties regarding tempo adjustment. we will come back to this issue in section 3 (footnote 8). 2 in empirical analysis, the risk years lived are usually approximated by the number of the average population (see e.g. preston et al. 2001). • marc luy418 years lived, which are transferred into age-specifi c probabilities of dying. these probabilities of dying are combined to a survival function (life table) which enables us to derive le. demographic indicators can be calculated for two different dimensions, namely the cohort and the period dimension. the calculation of the indicators, like the tfr or the le, is identical for both dimensions. in the case of cohort indices the rates refer to specifi c birth cohorts, and in the case of period indices the rates refer to specifi c calendar years (or periods of more than one calendar year). figures 1 and 2 illustrate the difference between cohort and period dimension in the lexis diagram for a reference of ten birth year cohorts and for an observation time of ten calendar years, respectively. calendar years are represented on the x-axes of the graphs and ages are represented on the y-axes. the diagonal lines through the diagram display processes of individual lifes, since with every additional calendar year an individual ages by one year of life (the arrows indicate the direction of time and ageing). in the fig. 1: cohort dimension in the lexis diagram 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 calendar year a ge 0-10 80-90 70-80 60-70 50-60 40-50 30-40 20-30 10-20 90-100 source: own design tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 419 cohort dimension, all individuals born in a specifi c year (or period) are observed throughout their lives and demographic events and risk years are collected along the corresponding diagonals in the lexis surface (dark-grey shaded diagonal area in fig. 1, illustrated for the cohorts born between 1890 and 1900 and for 10-year age groups). the demographic event rates are calculated in the cohort dimension and combined to cohort summary indicators, like the cohort tfr (ctfr) or cohort life expectancy (cle). figure 2 illustrates the period dimension of demographic analysis. in the period perspective, all individuals living in a specifi c year (or period) are observed with regard to the risk years lived and demographic events experienced during this year (or period). the demographic event rates are calculated in the crossfig. 2: period dimension in the lexis diagram 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 calendar year a ge 0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-70 70-80 80-90 90-100 source: own design • marc luy420 sectional light-grey shaded area of the lexis diagram and are combined to period summary indices, like the period tfr (ptfr) or period life expectancy (ple).3 many users of demographic indicators are not aware of the fundamental difference between cohort and period dimension. in most cases, people are interested in the experiences of cohorts. this already becomes evident when looking at the notations typically given to demographic indicators, like “average number of children per woman” or “life expectancy”, which only have a clear meaning in the cohort dimension. the same indicators calculated for periods are very diffi cult to interpret and even demographers disagree in this respect. basically all demographers however agree that period indicators are not representative for any real living individual.4 nevertheless, most demographic indicators refer to periods. this is mainly due to the fact that only the period dimension provides a complete set of actual demographic event rates. cohort indicators by their very nature refer to past events or they need to include a set of projected (not observed) rates for the future. thus, the description of “current demographic conditions” and their year-to-year changes which are the most important kinds of information for the majority of users of demographic data can only be based on the period dimension. the trials to defi ne the meaning of demographic period indicators look very similar in all demographic and related publications. for instance, the statistical offi ce of germany defi nes the ptfr in the following way: “the [period] total fertility rate gives the number of children a woman would have in her complete life if the conditions of the current year prevailed throughout her life from age 15 to 49. the indicator has a hypothetical character, since it does not refer to a real but to a modelled cohort of women. its advantages are that it provides actual information and measures the population’s level of fertility independently of its age composition.” (translated by the author from statistisches bundesamt 2009: 48; italics not in original) 3 note that this paper does not deal with the general question whether the tfr and le are the most suitable indicators for describing fertility and mortality. for example, ní bhrolcháin (1994) commented with respect to the analysis of fertility that “[i]n studying period fertility, we are concerned with the description and representation of change. there appears to be something profoundly contradictory in the convention of representing change (i.e. time trends in fertility) by an index [ptfr] which is interpreted through a hypothesis of unchanging fertility conditions. [...] [w]e should be sceptical about the validity of representing the fertility of a period in a metric which is inappropriate to the phenomena that occur in a period.” (ní bhrolcháin 1994: 117). ní bhrolcháin’s critiques against the ptfr do mainly concern the fact that changes in the population at risk by parity and duration since the last birth are not controlled for (see also ní bhrolcháin 1992). there are several alternative measures for period fertility, based on age-, durationand parity-specifi c fertility data which might refl ect fertility conditions more appropriate than the ptfr (see e.g., rallu/toulemon 1994). 4 the main problem is that period indicators are expressed in the same measurement units that only make sense for real cohorts. as stated by ní bhrolcháin with respect to fertility analysis, “[t]o use a mean family size as an indicator is to adopt a form of measurement that misrepresents what occurs in a period. neither individual women nor the populations of which they are members acquire a mean number of children in a period” (ní bhrolcháin 1994: 117). tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 421 similarly, ple is defi ned as: “the average number of further years a person of a specifi c age can probably expect to live according to the current mortality conditions. it [ple] is derived from the life table of the statistical offi ce which is based on the actual probabilities of dying for the corresponding ages. it is a hypothetical measure since the mortality conditions might change during the course of the further life.” (translated by the author from statistisches bundesamt 2009: 47-48; italics not in original) the highlighted parts of these defi nitions represent the typical four features of conventional period indicators: 1. period indicators are constructed to represent the demographic conditions prevailing in the current year or a period of years. therefore, they include all events that occurred in the analyzed year or period. 2. period indicators are given a clear interpretable meaning, like the “average number of children” in the case of the ptfr or the “average number of further years to live” in the case of ple. these units of measurement fulfi l one central function: they are easily understandable and interpretable, like a difference of one child per woman or ten years of life. 3. the populations to which period indicators refer are hypothetical, since it is quite clear that a real cohort of people will not experience current demographic event rates during their lives because demographic conditions usually change over time. 4. since all demographic processes vary with age, the age composition of a population has a strong infl uence on the overall number of events that occur in a period. to allow the comparison of conditions of different populations or conditions in different times, period indicators are standardized for age. in order to understand the basic idea behind tempo adjustment it is important to note that the bf approach is nothing more than an extension of the fourth feature of demographic period indicators. the other three features similarly apply to tempo-adjusted period indicators. thus, bf’s claim is simply to consider not only age but also tempo effects as a compositional factor which affects the total number of demographic events in a certain year or period, as will be described in the next section. 3 the tempo approach of bongaarts and feeney in the logic of bf, the term “tempo effect” describes a change of period rates for demographic events (births, deaths, marriages, etc.) that solely results from a change of the average age at which the event occurs during the observation period. a tempo effect works as follows: an increase of the average age at occurrence leads to a decrease of period rates, and a decrease of the average age leads to an increase of period rates. since demographic period rates are calculated with the aim of measuring the quantum of the analyzed event during the observation period in the sense of “current conditions” (i.e. the quantity of events in a specifi c year or period according • marc luy422 to the demographic behaviour or experiences of the currently living individuals), tempo effects have to be seen as undesired distortions.5 consequently, this holds equally for all demographic indicators derived from period rates, like the ptfr or ple. the basic intention of bf can be summarized as follows: in order to fulfi l the central aim of demographic period indicators (i.e. the representation of demographic conditions prevailing in the current year or period of years; see feature 1 of conventional period indicators in the previous section), a standardization of age alone is not suffi cient since tempo effects also cause distortions in period indicators. therefore, period indicators should be standardized (adjusted) for tempo effects as well. the justifi cation for tempo adjustment is rooted in certain inconsistencies that might arise between demographic experiences of the real living population and those of a hypothetical population whose characteristics are based on conventional period rates. such paradoxes have been demonstrated with very simple simulation models by bongaarts and feeney (1998) for the case of fertility and bongaarts and feeney (2002) for the case of mortality. the theoretical examples presented in these papers reveal that changing mean ages at which the demographic events occur can cause misleading information from period rates. for instance, it is possible that period fertility rates decline although fertility remains unchanged among all cohorts (bongaarts/feeney 1998) or that period mortality rates increase although all cohorts experienced only decreasing or stagnating mortality (bongaarts/feeney 2002; see also horiuchi 2005 and feeney 2010). luy (2008, 2009) extended these models for demonstrating the consequences of tempo effects in period mortality by comparing two populations with different levels of mortality and different levels of mortality changes. he showed that it is possible that a population in which each cohort has higher mortality than the corresponding cohorts of another population can have lower period mortality rates when tempo effects are not adjusted for. luy and wegner (2009) further elaborated this example and demonstrated that such a situation can even occur with total life expectancy, i.e. that a population has a higher ple than another population although the cle of each cohort living in this period is lower in the population with higher ple. luy (2008, 2009) and luy and wegner (2009) argued that such paradoxes contradict the main aim of period indicators which is to refl ect current demographic conditions. the results of their simulations raise the following questions in favour of tempo-adjusted period indicators: do we really want that ple can indicate a lower mortality in a population in which each member dies earlier than in another population with lower ple? moreover, does anyone who uses period indicators for demographic conditions or processes and who interprets corresponding differences and trends take into account that such a paradoxical situation might occur? 5 that demographic period rates aim to measure the period quantum of the analyzed event is true for all kinds of period rates. for example, the age-specifi c fertility rate represents the average number of births of women in a certain age and the age-specifi c death rate represents the average number of deaths of women or men in a given age group. tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 423 the possibility of contradictory results regarding differences in demographic conditions between populations in period and cohort perspective also has another very important consequence for the typical analysis of demographic processes. when we fi nd differences in period conditions between populations (like a lower ptfr or ple) we are usually trying to fi nd the causes for these differences. therefore, demographers (and scholars from other related disciplines) who want to explain such differences analyze the discrepancies between the studied populations with respect to the factors that are assumed to infl uence the level of fertility or mortality (or other demographic processes). however, such factors only apply to the real population and not to a hypothetical period population. the possibility that period conditions and trends can contradict the corresponding conditions and trends in the cohorts might cause severe problems for the analyzed cause-effects-chain since the real population living at a certain time consists of the members of different cohorts. luy (2006) assumes such period distortions caused by tempo effects to be the reason why the trends in mortality differences between eastern and western germany are still largely unexplained (see also luy 2008, 2009). everyone who is aware of the specifi c features of period indicators is also aware of the fact that period indicators can differ from corresponding cohort indicators. for example, current ple can (and probably will) be very different from the cle of the current newborns, and the actual ptfr can differ from the average number of children of those cohorts who are currently within the reproductive life span. however, the analysis of period indicators can only be meaningful when they refl ect the demographic experiences of the real population. the demographic conditions of cohorts should therefore be refl ected by the combined period conditions of all years in which a cohort experienced demographic events. empirical data reveals that this is not the case when conventional period indicators are summarized over the cohorts’ life spans. for instance, west german women who were born in 1960 have a completed fertility of 1.60 children per woman (see pötzsch 2010: 203). during the years from 1975 to 2009, in which the women of the 1960 cohort reached the reproductive ages 15 to 49, the ptfr ranged between 1.28 and 1.45 with an average ptfr of 1.38. figure 3 shows the average number of children per woman of the west german birth cohorts from 1943 to 1961 according to the ctfr and according to reconstructions from weighted averages of the conventional ptfr and of the tempo-adjusted tfr*.6 it becomes evident that the conventional ptfr does not allow reconstructing the real completed fertility. the reconstruction with the tfr*, however, resembles the real fertility conditions quite well. similar examples can be given for the relation between cle and the ples and le*s of the 100 calendar years in which the cohorts lived their lives from birth to death (see bongaarts/feeney 2006). 6 the reconstructions of the ctfr were done in the following way. for example, women born in 1950 experienced their reproductive life span (approximately) in the years from 1965 to 2000. thus, the reconstruction averaged the ptfrs and the tfr*s (separately for each birth order) for the years from 1965 to 2000 by weighting each of them with the proportion of the ctfr of the 1950 cohort that was realized in each calendar year (according to the corresponding agespecifi c fertility rates). • marc luy424 these examples might help to understand the basic intention behind bf’s tempo approach. tempo adjustment, i.e. the standardization of period indicators for age and tempo effects, is supposed to provide period indicators which 1. allow a less distorted comparison of period conditions between populations or times, and 2. are closer to the average experience of real cohorts than conventional period indicators. because of (1), tempo-adjusted period measures are supposed to be more appropriate indicators for the demographic conditions prevailing in a specifi c year or period of years. nevertheless, tempo-adjusted measures are also pure period indicators which refer to hypothetical cohorts same as conventional period indicators. equivalently to what has been stated above for conventional period indicators, real cohorts will also not experience a given set of tempo-adjusted period rates during their lives. however, because of (2), the usual interpretations of period indicators, fig. 3: average number of children per woman of the west german cohorts 1943 to 1961 according to the cohort total fertility rate (ctfr) and reconstructions from weighted averages of the ptfr and the tfr* 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 c hi ld re n pe r w om an birth cohort ctfr reconstructed from conventional ptfr reconstructed from tempo-adjusted tfr* source: own design; age-specifi c fertility rates by birth order were calculated by luy and pötzsch (2010 in cpos 35,3) tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 425 like “average number of children” or “average number of further years of life”, are better fi tting to tempo-adjusted indicators than to conventional ones. in empirical applications of bf’s tempo adjustment, conventional period rates (pr) have to be divided by one minus the annual change in the average age at which the corresponding event occurs during the period p (denoted with rp),7 thus for age-specifi c rates like the age-specifi c fertility rates f(x) or the age-specifi c death rates m(x) these events are the births/deaths of mothers/women and men aged x. thus, ideally, tempo adjustment of such age-specifi c rates would require knowledge about the shifts within the single ages (e.g. in age 32 from 32.3 to 32.4).8 usually, however, single ages are the smallest unit of registration of demographic events and of the average population to approximate the risk years lived. therefore, bf suggested to assume that the schedules of age-specifi c rates shift along the age axes without changing the shape as shown in figures 4(a) and 4(b) for empirical sets of f(x) and m(x), respectively. consequently, the annual change in the average age at childbearing/death derived from the whole schedules of age-specifi c fertility rates and age-specifi c death rates is assumed to apply to each single age. this implies that the bf model excludes specifi c cohort effects, or in other words, the bf model assumes that all cohorts respond identically to changing period conditions. since in the case of mortality this “constant shape assumption” can be accepted to approximate reality only in developed populations, in more recent years and in ages above 30, the existing methods for mortality tempo adjustment proposed by bf (and thus their application) are limited to these restrictions. it is important to note that the assumptions of shifting age-specifi c fertility respective death rates with constant shape are approximate solutions only, but they allow the estimation of tempo-adjusted variants of period indicators like the ptfr and ple. the natural relation between period conditions and cohort experiences and bf’s intention to provide period indicators that are closer to the average experience of 7 bongaarts and feeney (2006) refer to the term (1-rp) as “period distortion index”. 8 note that these age shifts refer to average ages at event occurrence derived from rates of second kind. in contrast to rates of fi rst kind, rates of second kind are free of tempo distortions because the tempo distortion occurs in both the numerator and the denominator of the rates, and thus cancels out (see bongaarts/feeney 2006). this is why rp is derived differently for tempoadjustment of the tfr and le. whereas the typically used age-specifi c fertility rates are rates of second kind and thus the average age at childbearing derived from these rates can be directly used to estimate rp, the typically used death rates (and measures derived from them like the conventional ple) cannot be used for that purpose since these are rates of fi rst kind (see footnote 1). denominators of the death rates of second kind include all cohort members ever born, i.e. persons who have already died as well as those who are still alive. sardon (1993, 1994a) and bongaarts and feeney (2003) showed that these death rates of second kind can be regarded as comparable to the usual age-specifi c fertility rates and thus can be used to estimate the period distortion index (1-rp). . r1 pr pr* p • marc luy426 real cohorts than conventional period indicators caused several misunderstandings regarding the nature of tempo adjustment. therefore it is helpful to separate tempoadjusted period indicators from other demographic measures which also connect period and cohort dimension. 4 classifying the tempo approach between period and cohort analysis in section 2 we introduced the basic demographic concepts of period and cohort analysis. there are several approaches that combine these two dimensions to produce demographic indices. tempo-adjusted period indicators also include some – but minor – cohort components as do other measures that combine the period and cohort dimension. in order to understand the basic idea behind the tempo approach and how it can be distinguished from other approaches it is necessary to separate between three methodological combinations of period and cohort analysis: 1. translation measures, 2. cross-sectional cohort averages, 3. tempo-adjusted measures. translation measures aim to translate period indicators into cohort indicators and vice versa (see fig. 5). examples for translation measures are the approaches fig. 4: bongaarts and feeney’s “constant shape assumption” to estimate ageinvariant changes in the average age at event occurrence (a) fertility 0,00 0,05 0,10 0,15 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age x fe rti lit y r at e f(x ) (b) mortality 0,0001 0,001 0,01 0,1 1 0 20 40 60 80 100 age x d ea th r at e m (x ) source: own design tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 427 of ryder (1964) or zeng and land (2002) for fertility analysis and the approaches of schoen and canudas-romo (2005) as well as of goldstein and wachter (2006) for the analysis of mortality. the main characteristic of translation measures is that the outcomes are either cohort estimates derived from period rates or indicators, or period estimates derived from cohort rates or indicators. one of the translation approaches that operates in the direction from cohorts to periods results in the so-called “lagged cohort indices” like the “lagged cohort fertility rate” (lcfr) or the “lagged cohort life expectancy” (lcle). the idea of lagged cohort indices is to use a cohort estimate, e.g. ctfr or cle, as indicator for the demographic conditions in the period in which a cohort realized a demographic event on average. for instance, the cohort of west german women born in 1943 experienced a ctfr of 1.85 (children per woman) with an average age at childbearing of 26.5 years. in the lagged cohort approach, this ctfr can be used to characterize the fertility conditions of west german women in the year of 1969, i.e. the year in which the women of fig. 5: the concept of translation measures in the lexis diagram 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 calendar year a ge source: own design • marc luy428 the 1943 cohort realized their fertility on average (1943 + 26.5 = 1969.5). similarly, the cle of a specifi c cohort can be used to characterize the mortality conditions of the calendar year that results from the year of birth of the cohort plus the average life expectancy of its members (i.e. the calendar year in which the members of the cohort died on average). the main feature of cross-sectional cohort averages is that they produce a crosssectional average of the demographic experiences of all cohorts living in a specifi c period. the concept of cross-sectional cohort averages is illustrated in figure 6 where the thick cohort arrows indicate that the complete lifetime experiences of all cohorts living in the light-grey shaded period are considered. in the fi eld of fertility analysis, a cross-sectional cohort average is the “average completed fertility” (acf) proposed by ward and butz (1980). the acf is based on the so-called “timing index” (ti). calculating the ti requires for each cohort living in the observation period the proportion of the overall ctfr that was realized during the analyzed calendar year(s). when fertility remains constant for all cohorts living in the observation period, the ti calculated as sum of these proportions will be 1.0. in the case of fertility postponement, the ti will be below 1.0, and in the case of advanced fertility, the ti will be higher than 1.0. as schoen (2004) pointed out, “[t]he timing index measures the extent to which the cohort fertility of women childbearing during year t occurs in year t” (schoen 2004: 806; italics in original). the acf adjusts the ptfr for changes in the cohort timing of childbearing by dividing the ptfr with the ti. thus, the “acf does not refl ect the fertility of any single cohort but represents a behaviourally weighted average of the fertility of all living cohorts” (schoen 2004: 806). obviously, this calculation can only be done for periods in the distinct past since the ti requires knowledge about the ctfr even for the youngest women alive in the observation period. a possibility to overcome this problem is to assume for all still reproductive cohorts the ctfr of the last cohort with completed fertility. this enables one to estimate the “ex-ante completed fertility” (ecf) even for the current period (see ward/ butz 1980). in our logic of classifi cation the indices developed by kohler and ortega (2002a, 2002b) do also belong to the group of cross-sectional cohort averages since they also work in terms of real cohorts (see also van imhoff 2001). cross-sectional cohort averages do also exist for the analysis of mortality, like the “total mortality rate” (tmr) as introduced by sardon (1993, 1994a). as described by guillot (2006: 4), “in a cohort (real or synthetic), the tmr is the number of lifetime deaths divided by the initial size of the cohort. in a life table with a radix of one, the tmr can be calculated by adding all age-specifi c life table deaths. obviously, the tmr in a cohort, real or synthetic, is invariably one.” however, the tmr can also be calculated cross-sectional for a specifi c period. therefore it is necessary to determine the proportion of deaths occurring during the observation period for each cohort living within that period (adjusted for all migrations until the observation period), and by summing up these proportions across all cohorts (for more details, see guillot 2006). in principle, the tmr can be seen as the mortality equivalent to the ti refl ecting the degree of completeness of the cross-sectional sum of cohort events. like the ti in the case of fertility, the tmr equals 1.0 when mortality remains unchanged. as soon as some or all currently living cohorts experience a change in tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 429 mortality conditions, the tmr changes as well and becomes higher than 1.0 in the case of increasing mortality and lower than 1.0 in the case of decreasing mortality (see also luy/wegner 2009).9 according to our classifi cation of indices, another cross-sectional cohort average for period mortality is the “cross-sectional average length of life” (cal) as introduced by brouard (1986) and guillot (2003). cal is derived from the cross-sectional sum of the cohort-specifi c probabilities of surviving from birth to the age that the cohorts reach in the observation period (see also guillot/kim 2011). since in the case of mortality the cohort quantum is always 1.0, cross-sectional cohort averages fig. 6: the concept of cross-sectional cohort averages in the lexis diagram 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 calendar year a ge source: own design 9 additionally, the period tmr could also be regarded as mortality equivalent to the ptfr. both represent the average number period events in a hypothetical cohort constructed on the basis of periodand age-specifi c indicators. • marc luy430 like the tmr and cal can be calculated even for the current period without the need to forecast the future quantum as it is the case with the ti and the acf. the ti and the tmr have the property that they directly refl ect the occurrence of tempo effects in a specifi c period. thus, the idea of cross-sectional cohort averages is to some extent related to bf’s idea of tempo adjustment. the difference to tempo-adjusted measures is, however, that cross-sectional cohort averages are based on complete cohort experiences that are averaged for all events occurring in a specifi c period. as outlined in section 3 of this paper, tempo effects are solely based on the changes of the average age at event occurrence during the observation period. the cohorts’ demographic experiences outside of the observation time do not matter in the logic of bf’s tempo approach – at least theoretically – as illustrated in figure 7. tempo adjustment of period indices like the ptfr and ple is performed on the basis of the annual change in the average age at childbearing and death, respectively, in the observation period only. thus, tempo-adjusted measures fig. 7: the concept of tempo-adjusted measures in the lexis diagram 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 calendar year a ge source: own design tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 431 are pure period indicators which adjust period quantum for period tempo (with period tempo being defi ned as the period-specifi c change in the timing of cohorts). consequently, tempo-adjusted measures have to be separated conceptually from cross-sectional cohort averages. as will be shown in the subsequent section, acf/ ecf and the tempo-adjusted tfr* are not only conceptually different but they also differ in empirical application. 5 translation measures, cross-sectional cohort averages and tempoadjusted measures in empirical application the differences and familiarities between translation measures, cross-sectional cohort averages and tempo-adjusted measures can be demonstrated best by empirical data. figure 8 shows the trends in the period total fertility rate (ptfr), the tempoadjusted fertility rate (tfr*), the ex-ante completed fertility (ecf) and the lagged cohort fertility rate (lcfr) for west germany from 1960 to 2010. the lcfr displayed in the graph comprises the cohorts 1933 to 1961 which reached their average overfig. 8: period total fertility rate (ptfr), tempo-adjusted total fertility rate (tfr*), ex-ante completed fertility (ecf) and lagged cohort fertility rate (lcfr), west germany, 1960-2010 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 c hi ld re n pe r w om an calendar year cohort 1936 cohort 1961 ptfr tfr*ecf lcfr source: ptfr and tfr* from luy and pötzsch (2010), ecf and lcfr based on own calculations; note: calculations of ecf are based on the assumption that ctfr = 1.60 for cohorts born 1962 and later. • marc luy432 all fertility in the years 1961 to 1989. the ecf was calculated assuming that all still reproductive cohorts will have 1.60 children on average which is the ctfr for the cohort 1961 whose members reached the age of 48 in the last year for which data on age-specifi c fertility rates is available. therefore, the ecf converts to the level of 1.60 children per woman in the most recent periods which equals the ctfr of the cohorts around 1960 and thus the lcfr of the late 1980s. however, also in the oldest periods displayed in figure 8 the ecf is close to the lcfr with respect to both level and trend. this illustrates that the ecf as representative of the cross-sectional cohort averages is more related to cohort than to period indicators of fertility. the ptfr as the most common indicator for period fertility shows a trend that is very different to the lcfr showing more fl uctuations and different levels of fertility. whereas the ptfr for west germany is fl uctuating around 1.37 since the mid-1970s, no cohort with completed fertility experienced less than 1.60 children on average. the trend of the tfr* is much closer to the trend of the ptfr than to the trend of ecf and lcfr. the level of the tfr*, however, is in most years closer to the lcfr and the ecf than to the conventional ptfr, especially since the 1970s when lcfr and ptfr became rather stable. this reveals that the tempo-adjusted tfr* is in fact an indicator of period fertility conditions, however, refl ecting the fertility levels of the real cohorts rather than those of the hypothetical cohorts based on current agespecifi c fertility rates. figure 9 shows the trends of the different mortality indicators for west german males, i.e. conventional period life expectancy (ple), tempo-adjusted life expectancy (le*), cross-sectional average length of life (cal) and lagged cohort life expectancy (lcle).10 similar to what has been shown for the fertility indicators, le* is much closer to the life expectancy levels of cal and lcle indicating that the tempoadjusted period measure approximates the mortality experiences of the real population better than conventional ple. it might seem puzzling that the tempo-adjusted le* is lower than the conventional ple since it is well known that life expectancy is rising and thus ple will be lower than the cle of those being born in the current period. note, however, that tempo-adjusted measures are not intended to project future cle but to indicate the average mortality level experienced in the analysed calendar year by the currently living cohorts. from this perspective it makes sense that le* is smaller than ple in a situation of decreasing mortality since tempo effects cause a downward bias of the age-specifi c death rates (see section 3). the similarity between le* and cal in the graph is primarily due to the fact that changes in life expectancy have been similar among periods and cohorts as can be seen in the trends of ple and lcle. consequently, the tempo changes in period mortal10 all indicators shown in figure 9 assume no mortality under age 30 because the assumptions behind the bf model of mortality tempo adjustment hold only for ages 30 onwards (see section 3 of this paper). tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 433 ity are very similar to the corresponding changes in cohort mortality.11 this does, however, not mean that le* and cal are conceptually identical. in corresponding estimates for populations for which available data allow to derive these indicators fig. 9: period life expectancy (ple), tempo-adjusted life expectancy (le*), cross-sectional average length of life (cal) and lagged cohort life expectancy (lcle) for men, west germany, 1970-2010 (no mortality under age 30) 68,0 70,0 72,0 74,0 76,0 78,0 80,0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 li fe e xp ec ta nc y calendar year cohort 1902 ple cohort 1932 le* lcle cal source: own calculations; notes: le* was estimated with the tmr-method (see section 6); cal and lcle are based on estimates for cle by statistisches bundesamt (2006) for total germany with age-specifi c death rates being substituted by those for west germany from 1950 onwards compiled by luy (2004), updated until 2009. 11 the similarity between lcle, cal and le* under specifi c theoretical and empirical conditions has also been shown by bongaarts (2005), bongaarts and feeney (2006), rodríguez (2006), guillot (2006) and guillot and kim (2011). the closeness of le* to lcle and cal is also partly due to the fact that the existing methods for mortality tempo adjustment include to some extent past trends of ple (in the case of the indirect method suggested by bongaarts/feeney 2002) or cohort survival (in the case of methods using death rates of second kind). thus, these different methods to estimate le* combine characteristics of cross-sectional cohort averages and tempo-adjusted measures for period mortality. note, however, that these are empirical approximations for le* which are only justifi ed for contemporary populations from developed countries and from the age of 30 onwards. an exclusively period-based method to estimate le* has not been developed yet. • marc luy434 for a longer time period it becomes evident that le* and cal differ in years with unstable and changing mortality conditions as shown by bongaarts (2005) with data for sweden. 6 critiques on bongaarts’ and feeney’s tempo approach the tempo approach of bf is subject to different kinds of criticism. however, most of the critiques are based on over-interpretations of tempo-adjusted period indicators. this makes it diffucult for demographic and non-demographic scholars to understand the basic approach behind tempo adjustment. moreover, this situation causes restrictions on the empirical application of the tempo approach, especially with regard to mortality tempo adjustment. in this section we try to summarize the basic critiques and we try to evaluate them taking into account the basic idea behind the bf approach. therefore, we describe the contents of these critiques rather than explicating them in detail. these details can be found in the given references or in summaries in van imhoff (2001) and schoen (2004) with regard to fertility tempo adjustment and in barbi et al. (2008) with regard to mortality tempo adjustment. the critiques in the fi eld of fertility tempo adjustment can be summarized to four main arguments: 1. the tempo-adjusted tfr* is an inappropriate indicator for cohort fertility, 2. cohort-specifi c changes in the timing of births are more complex in reality than assumed in the bf formula, 3. the tempo-adjusted tfr* does not take into account changes in the parity distributions of the female population, 4. the bf formula is based on inappropriate fertility measures. from the point of view of bf’s tempo approach one can reply quite easily to the fi rst kind of critique, which was mainly brought up by van imhoff (2001) and schoen (2004): the tempo-adjusted tfr* is not supposed to be a cohort indicator of fertility. this also concerns the critique of lesthaeghe and willems (1999) who claimed that the bf model cannot be recommended to estimate prospective fertility rates. but also this is not the intention of tempo adjustment. the tempo-adjusted tfr* is nothing more than a standardized indicator for period fertility. the misunderstanding might be rooted in the original publication of bongaarts and feeney (1998) where the authors reconstructed cohort fertility from averaged ptfrs and tfr*s (as we did in section 3) to demonstrate that the averaged tfr* is closer to real cohort fertility than the averaged conventional ptfr. these averages were, however, neither conceptually nor technically constructed to refl ect the fertility of real cohorts. the second critique refers to the “constant shape assumption” in the bf model, which assumes that the shape of the order-specifi c age pattern of the age-specifi c fertility rates remains constant during the year of observation and thus the changes in the mean age at childbearing are due to shifts of the complete schedule of agespecifi c fertility rates (see section 3 of this paper). this aspect has been raised in tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 435 several papers (van imhoff/keilman 2000; kim/schoen 2000; inaba 2003; keilman 2006; schoen 2006) and it might in fact become problematic in cases where the variation in the mean age at childbearing is caused by severe changes in the age variance of the age-specifi c fertility rates. for instance, van imhoff and keilman (2000) showed that the constant shape assumption does not hold in empirical data for the netherlands and norway. however, kohler and philipov (2001) demonstrated that it is possible to extend the bf model to incorporate changes in the variance of the distribution of age-specifi c fertility rates if the necessary empirical data are available. more importantly, with respect to these alternative indicators for tempoadjusted period fertility kohler and philipov concluded that “[t]hese extensions [...] still support the necessity for adjusting the total fertility rate and related period fertility measures for tempo distortions in order to properly assess the quantum of fertility in many low-fertility settings” (kohler/philipov 2001: 13). also zeng and land (2001) introduced an extension of the simple bf adjustment. their variant of the tfr* allows the shape of the fertility schedule to change at a constant annual rate. they showed that the results of the methods are very similar implicating that tempo adjustment is quite insensitive to the constant shape assumption. an alternative approach to overcome the constant shape assumption was introduced by kohler and ortega (2002b) who suggested extending tempo adjustment to occurrence/exposure rates and parity progression ratios. however, this method combines properties of timingand tempo-adjusted measures as described in section 4 of this paper. the related third critique accuses the simple bf procedure of not taking changes in the parity distributions of the female population into account (van imhoff/keilman 2000; kohler/ortega 2002b). to address this issue, bongaarts and feeney (2006) have proposed an alternative of the basic bf method which was developed independently in a similar form by yamaguchi and beppu (2004). this tempoand parityadjusted total fertility (tfrp*) is estimated by using age-specifi c birth hazard rates from fertility tables with all women who have not reached parity i – and not only those with i-1 births – being exposed to the risk of having an i-th birth. however, in empirical comparisons of the different methods the tfrp* and the simple tfr* provided very similar results, with spain being the only exception (see bongaarts/ sobotka 2011). moreover, the calculation of the tfrp* requires very detailed fertility data which does not exist for most countries including germany. the fourth argument, that was raised by van imhoff and keilman (2000) and keilman (2006), concerns the way in which the orderand age-specifi c fertility rates are calculated in the bf model. the rates of the bf model are computed by dividing the number of births of a specifi c birth order of women aged x by the total female population aged x. keilman (2006: 219) claims that such rates in a period perspective introduce “extra tempo distortions” because summing up these rates for a specifi c parity implies the assumption that the proportion of women without children at the start of one age interval is equal to that proportion at the end of the previous age interval. this might in fact be a problem when these orderand age-specifi c fertility rates are used for demographic translation (see section 4 of this paper) or for analysing the risk of having a child of a specifi c birth order. however, in the bf model these rates are only used for decomposing the overall tfr into its order-specifi c • marc luy436 components (see also luy/pötzsch 2010). in this respect, tempo-adjusted tfr* and conventional ptfr are identical since both can be decomposed into this kind of order-specifi c components. thus, if this aspect is seen critical, the same argument must be used equivalently against the conventional ptfr. the decomposition of the age-specifi c fertility rates into their birth order components is necessary for tempo adjustment since the average age at childbearing of the birth orders might change in different directions, and thus order-specifi c tempo adjustment excludes an overall adjustment in the wrong direction. figure 10 shows that such a situation can indeed occur in empirical data. the graph depicts the average age at childbearing for the birth orders 1, 2, 3 and 4+ as well as for all births combined (thick solid line) of west german women between 1960 and 2010. during the fi rst half of the 1970s, the average age at childbearing was slightly decreasing, whereas the average ages at childbearing of birth orders 1 and 2 increased and those of birth order 3 and 4+ decreased. since births of fi rst and second children have a much higher weight among all births than births of third children and children of higher birth orders (see luy/pötzsch 2010), a consideration of changes in the average age at childbearing for all births can lead to severe defi ciencies in the tempo adjustment in such situations. mortality tempo adjustment is less accepted than fertility tempo adjustment until today and has been criticized in a number of papers. the contents of these papers can be summarized in two basic critiques: 1. tempo-adjusted life expectancy is not a suitable measure for cohort life expectancy, 2. mortality tempo adjustment is paradox since life expectancy is a tempo measure itself and the quantum of mortality is always one by defi nition. the fi rst argument of the critique against mortality tempo adjustment has been used for instance by goldstein (2006) and can be returned equivalently as the fi rst critique against fertility tempo adjustment: tempo-adjusted le* is not supposed to refl ect cohort life expectancy. the tempo-adjusted le* is nothing more than a standardized indicator for period mortality. further expectations towards this indicator would be over-interpretations of the bf model. the second argument outlined by wachter (2005), wilmoth (2005) and rodríguez (2006) seems convincing, but it is based on further misunderstandings which might be rooted in the two original publications of bongaarts and feeney (1998, 2002). since the 1998 publication entitled “on the quantum and tempo of fertility” the idea of tempo adjustment seems fi rmly connected to the idea of quantum adjustment. since tempo adjustment of life expectancy with the method proposed in bongaarts and feeney (2002) is done directly with the conventional ple, the idea of quantum adjustment seems indeed paradox since the quantum of deaths in the life table (as the basis of ple) is always one. the decisive aspect that is overseen in this critique is that tempo effects in the logic of bf do not have their origin in the life table but in the age-specifi c death rates which are based on the empirical deaths of the analyzed population. when age-specifi c death rates are affected by tempo effects, then the probabilities of dying, which are derived from the age-specifi c death rates, are tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 437 affected by tempo effects, too. consequently, the tempo effects are transported into the life table and affect all parameters derived from it. that the period tmr can lie distinctly below 1.0 as shown by luy and wegner (2009) with empirical data for west germany reveals that empirical age-specifi c death rates are indeed affected by tempo effects.12 in principle, the critiques against tempo adjustment mix two fundamentally different questions: 1. do tempo effects distort conventional period indicators? 2. do bf’s adjustment formulae provide adequate measures for tempo-adjusted period indicators? fig. 10: average ages at childbearing for all births and by birth order in west germany, 1960-2010 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 a ve ra ge a ge a t c hi ld be ar in g calendar year birth order 1 birth order 2 birth order 3 birth order 4+ all births source: own calculations with data from luy and pötzsch (2010) 12 the idea of tempo effects in the conventional ple is more diffi cult to understand than the corresponding idea in the case of fertility analysis. in principal, the conventional period life table adjusts for tempo effects as well since it also produces a hypothetical population with tmr = 1.0. however, this “adjustment” is based on the age distribution of the empirical death rates and thus does not produce an adjustment in the sense of standardization because it differs between populations and periods (see luy/wegner 2009 for more details). • marc luy438 in most papers criticizing the bf approach question (2) is answered with “no” and as a consequence, question (1) is answered in the same negative manner. this is illogical, especially because the existence of tempo effects in conventional period indicators has been described earlier by other authors without being criticised with regard to both fertility (hajnal 1947) and mortality (sardon 1994b). however, the two questions have to be separated in order to do justice to the bf approach. for instance, wachter (2005) described in his rejection of mortality tempo adjustment that the tempo-adjusted le* approximates a weighted average of past conventional ples. regardless of the fact that the similarity between le* and such a weighted average of past ples is in line with the bf approach as long as changes in life expectancy occur steadily (see section 5 of this paper), such an argument should not lead to the conclusion that mortality tempo adjustment itself is not justifi ed.13 more detailed arguments opposing the critiques against mortality tempo adjustment can be found in luy (2006) and bongaarts and feeney (2008). in the meanwhile four different ways for estimating tempo-adjusted life expectancy have been suggested: (1) calculation of the “mean age at death” (mad) based on death rates of second kind which directly provides a tempo effect-free measure for period life expectancy,14 (2) adjustment based on changes in “gompertz’ beta” (indirect method), (3) adjustment based on changes in cal, and (4) adjustment based on the annual tmr (see bongaarts/feeney 2003 for more details). however, these methods are not based on different theoretical approaches. they are just different techniques to approximate the intended tempo adjustment. figure 11 shows estimates for tempo-adjusted life expectancy in west germany according to these different methodological approaches. the graph elucidates that the four methods are just alternative approaches to estimate tempo-adjusted life expectancy, in other words, to estimate the same thing. there is no doubt that the existing methods for tempo adjustment in both fertility and mortality still have some defi ciencies and further research should aim to improve these techniques. for instance, we should fi nd a possibility to conduct tempo-adjustment age-specifi cally in order to relax the constant shape assumption. however, none of the critiques against the bf approach can be seen as a severe argument against the existence of tempo effects. the question is rather when and under which circumstances tempo-adjusted indicators should be used instead of or in addition to the conventional period indicators. 13 wachter (2005) refers to the indirect method for estimating le* proposed by bongaarts and feeney (2002). however, as outlined in footnote 11, this empirical solution for mortality tempo adjustment includes characteristics of both cross-sectional cohort averages and tempo-adjusted measures. thus, wachter’s critique should refer to timing-adjusted measures for period mortality such as cal as well. as soon as an exclusive period-based method for mortality tempo adjustment exists this critique does not hold anymore. 14 note that mad is not the mean age of deaths occurring in a specifi c calendar year since the effects of variations in cohort size (i.e. in the number of people alive in the single ages) are removed (see bongaarts/feeney 2006: 119). tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 439 7 summary and conclusions we started this description of the idea behind bf’s tempo approach with the basic difference between period and cohort perspective. this difference seems to be very clear at a fi rst glance but it gets more complex the more intensive one deals with demographic indicators and their interpretation. as already stated by calot (1994) in connection with fertility analysis, “[c]onceptually, the longitudinal perspective seems more natural, but the world we live in is essentially periodwise. [...] the tools of statistical observation used for cohort analysis are naturally the same as for period analysis. [...] but we prefer to synthesize period quantum independently of [...] specifi c population structures – which are, in a way, contingent – to obtain a result expressed, if possible, in cohort terms, closer to the individual. to do so, we concoct the fi ctitious cohort: we determine what the longitudinal measure would be for a cohort of women whose fertility performance at each different stage of fig. 11: trends in le* according to different methods of mortality tempo adjustment in comparison the tempo effect-free mad, west germany, 1970-2005 (a) males 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 1970 1980 1990 2000 li fe e xp ec ta nc y calendar year le*[b] le*[tmr] le*[cal] mad (b) females 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 1970 1980 1990 2000 li fe e xp ec ta nc y calendar year le*[b] le*[tmr] le*[cal] mad source: own calculations; notes: estimates for tempo-adjusted life expectancy are based on adjustments on basis of changes in “gompertz’ beta” (le*[b]), changes in cal (le*[cal]) and the annual tmr (le*[tmr]); mad = mean age at death based on death rates of second kind. • marc luy440 their life course would be that of the period considered” (calot 1994: 96-97, italics in original). to understand bf’s tempo approach correctly it is fi rst of all important to realize that tempo-adjusted period indicators are by no means cohort but pure period measures to describe current demographic conditions. the conventional period indicators like the ptfr and ple standardize for age as the only “specifi c population structure” in the words of calot. however, a changing mean age at which the demographic events occur also causes additional structural effects that infl uence the quantitative outcome of the conventional period indicators. the main aim of tempo adjustment is to produce indicators that are free of the mix of quantum and tempo effects and estimate the tempo effect-free characteristics of demographic experiences. this tempo-quantum mix is evident in all kinds of demographic events and thus in all kinds of corresponding demographic event rates, including rates of fertility, mortality and other demographic processes.15 the indicators proposed by bf simulate a period situation in the absence of changing conditions which lead to changes in the age at occurrence. conditions affecting fertility are, for example, level of education, women’s labour force participation, availability of childcare facilities, government incentives and disincentives for childbearing, gender equality and cultural norms. conditions affecting mortality are, among others, the availability and use of immunizations and other public health practices, the availability of medical devices, screening programs for early detection of different kinds of cancers, drugs that prolong life by reducing the incidence of particular life-threatening diseases, surgical procedures and behavioural changes that improve health and prolong life (see bongaarts/feeney 2010: 7). thus, changing conditions are normal in human populations and this is why bf’s tempo approach is relevant for everyone who is interested in the levels and trends of demographic processes in the period perspective. the difference between conventional and tempo-adjusted period indicators is the theoretical model behind the hypothetical cohort that is constructed to represent the current demographic conditions. as stated by keilman (1994: 112) for the analysis of fertility, “whatever fertility rate we compute [...], there is always an underlying model, and [...] computing the rate in fact boils down to estimating a parameter in that model.” the decisive question for anyone interested in or using demographic indicators is which model is more appropriate, or in other words: conventional period indicators based on current demographic event rates versus tempo-adjusted period indicators based on bf’s idea of unchanging conditions – which tells us more? this question can only be answered on basis of the purpose for which one uses a demographic period indicator. since, as we have indicated, all period measures are hypothetical by their very nature, it is not possible to conclude that one model is 15 in this paper we concentrated exclusively on fertility and mortality. however, tempo effects have been described and analyzed also with regard to nuptiality (see winkler-dvorak/engelhardt 2004 and bongaarts/feeney 2006) tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 441 correct and the other is incorrect (see also inaba 2007). but it is possible to estimate the consequences the models have for the parameter calculated and whether these consequences meet the purpose of its use. in most cases, the goal of period analysis is the representation of current demographic conditions with the aim to study time trends and to compare different populations. the paradoxes that might occur between demographic experiences of the real living population and those of a hypothetical population whose characteristics are based on conventional period rates (see section 3 of this paper) support the use of tempo-adjusted indicators for these purposes, at least in addition to the conventional period indicators (see also sobotka/lutz 2010). conventional rates do not refl ect real conditions that occurred in a population in years of changing conditions. tempo-adjusted rates do, at least they do better. cross-sectional cohort averages also refl ect the real conditions, however, derived from the cohort perspective. moreover, cross-sectional cohort averages for fertility have the problem that they can be calculated only for periods of more than 30 years in the past or that they need assumptions regarding the completed fertility of the currently reproductive cohorts. in this case they refl ect more cohort projections than real current conditions. it is true that it is also possible to use conventional period indicators and analyze them in the light of parallel changes in the age at event occurrence. especially in the case of fertility analysis this seems to be a possible alternative to tempo adjustment. however, such an analysis requires deep demographic expertise to understand the relationships between the fi gures. many users of demographic data do not have this specifi c background knowledge. moreover, having one indicator that can be interpreted easily is much more useful for most users of demographic data. in mortality, the use of different indicators to interpret trends in conventional ple would be even more diffi cult. as already mentioned several times in this paper, the existing methods for tempo-adjustment are only approximations of the basic approach of bf and they are imperfect solutions in cases where the basic statistical assumptions behind the methods are not fulfi lled. bf themselves wrote just recently: “tempo effects can be measured, and appropriate corrections can be made, only by imposing simplifying assumptions. the most important of these in our analysis is that there are no cohort effects, i.e. all cohorts respond to changing period conditions in the same way. we have argued elsewhere that this assumption holds approximately for fertility and adult mortality in many contemporary populations. when this simplifying assumption does not hold, the [tempo-adjusted indicator] is affected by distortions other than tempo effects, e.g. a changing parity distribution in the case of fertility. in such cases tempo effects still exist, but the measurement of quantum and tempo becomes diffi cult. the conventional bf method for estimating tempo effects is then not accurate and it does not address these other distortions. further methodological research is needed to develop general methods for estimating period quantum and tempo” (bongaarts/feeney 2010: 9-10). the main aim of this paper was to describe the theoretical idea behind tempo adjustment and to separate the idea from the technical aspects of tempo adjustment. we also hope that the paper is helpful in order to evaluate the critiques against the • marc luy442 tempo approach properly. in fact, most of the critiques are not related to the basic idea of bf. the tempo approach is straightforward and tempo-adjusted indicators like tfr* or le*can be interpreted as the tfr/le that would have been observed in year t if the pattern of age-specifi c fertility rates (for each birth order)/death rates (i.e., shape and location at the age axes) had been constant during the whole year and only the values of the rates had been changed. thus, tempo-adjusted indicators are based on the theoretical quantum of demographic events that would have occurred, if conditions and thus the average age of occurrence did not change during the year of observation. in most practical uses of demographic period indices, these criteria for standardization create indicators with useful information for its purpose. conventional period indicators are simpler, but this simplicity implies a certain risk that important structural 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(eds.): die bevölkerung in ostund westdeutschland. demografi sche, gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche entwicklungen seit der wende. wiesbaden: vs-verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 140-168. luy, marc; pötzsch, olga 2010: estimates of the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate in western and eastern germany, 1955-2008. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 605-636 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-201014en]. luy, marc; wegner, christian 2009: conventional versus tempo-adjusted life expectancy – which is the more appropriate measure for period mortality? in: genus 65,2: 1-28. ní bhrolcháin, máire 1992: period paramount? a critique of the cohort approach to fertility. in: population and development review 18,4: 599-629. ní bhrolcháin, maíre 1994: past history, synthetic indicators and period fertility. in: population: an english selection 6: 116-120. pötzsch, olga 2010: cohort fertility: a comparison of the results of the offi cial birth statistics and the microcensus survey 2008. in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,1: 185-204 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-05en]. preston, samuel h.; heuveline, patrick; guillot, michel 2001: demography. measuring and modeling population processes. oxford: blackwell. rallu, jean-louis; toulemon, laurent 1994: period fertility measures. the construction of different indices and their application to france, 1946-89. in: population: an english selection 6: 59-93. rodríguez, germán 2006: demographic translation and tempo effects: an accelerated failure time perspective. in: demographic research 14,6: 85-110 [doi:10.4054/ demres.2006.14.6]. ryder, norman b. 1964: the process of demographic translation. in: demography 1,1: 74-82. sardon, jean-paul 1993: un indicateur conjoncturel de mortalité: l’exemple de la france. in: population (french edition) 48,2: 347-368. sardon, jean-paul 1994a: a period measure of mortality. the example of france. in: population: an english selection 6: 131-150. sardon, jean-paul 1994b: probabilities, frequencies and events. in: population: an english selection 6: 151-157. schoen, robert 2004: timing effects and the interpretation of period fertility. in: demography 41,4: 801-819 [doi: 10.1353/dem.2004.0036]. schoen, robert 2006: dynamic population models. demographic methods and population analysis 17. dordrecht: springer. tempo effects and their relevance in demographic analysis • 445 schoen, robert; canudas-romo, vladimir 2005: changing mortality and average cohort life expectancy. in: demographic research 13,5: 117-142 [doi:10.4054/ demres.2005.13.5]. sobotka, tomáš; lutz, wolfgang 2010: misleading policy messages derived from the period tfr: should we stop using it? in: comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 35,3: 637-664 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-15en]. statistisches bundesamt 2006: generationensterbetafeln für deutschland. modellrechnungen für die geburtsjahrgänge 1871-2004. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt statistisches bundesamt 2009: bevölkerung deutschlands bis 2060. 12. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. begleitmaterial zur pressekonferenz am 18. november 2009 in berlin. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. van imhoff, evert 2001: on the impossibility of inferring cohort fertility measures from period fertility measures. in: demographic research 5,2: 23-64 [doi:10.4054/ demres.2001.5.2]. van imhoff, evert; keilman, nico 2000: on the quantum and tempo of fertility: comment. in: population and development review 26,3: 549-553. wachter, kenneth w. 2005: tempo and its tribulations. in: demographic research 13,9: 201-222 [doi:10.4054/demres.2005.13.9]. ward, michael p.; butz, william p. 1980: completed fertility and its timing. in: journal of political economy 88,5: 917-940. wilmoth, john r. 2005: on the relationship between period and cohort mortality. in: demographic research 13,11: 231-280 [doi:10.4054/demres.2005.13.11]. winkler-dworak, maria; engelhardt, henriette 2004: on the quantum and tempo of fi rst marriages in austria, germany, and switzerland: changes in mean age and variance. in: demographic research 10,9: 231-263 [doi:10.4054/demres.2004.10.9]. yamaguchi, kazuo; beppu, motomi 2004: survival probability indices of period total fertility rate. paper presented at the annual meeting of the population association of america 2004. boston. zeng, yi; land, kenneth c. 2001: a sensitivity analysis of the bongaarts-feeney method for adjusting bias in observed period total fertility rates. in: demography 38,1: 17-28 [doi: 10.1353/dem.2001.0010]. zeng, yi; land, kenneth c., 2002: adjusting period tempo changes with an extension of ryder’s basic translation equation. in: demography 39,2: 269-285 [doi: 10.1353/ dem.2002.0022]. a german translation of this reviewed and author’s authorised original article is available under the title “tempo-effekte und ihre bedeutung für die demografi sche analyse”, doi 10.4232/10. cpos-2010-11de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-11de9, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 04.05.2011 date of acceptance: 28.05.2011 dr. marc luy ( ). vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences, wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital, a-1040 vienna, austria. e-mail: mail@marcluy.eu url: http://www.marcluy.eu published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (mannheim) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy susan f. martin abstract: enhancing the protection of persons displaced by natural disasters and the impacts of climate change will require sustained attention. this article identifi es practical solutions, many of which are currently under consideration by governments and international organizations, to improve the lives of millions of people affected by environmental crises. it begins with a brief overview of why people move, the nature of those movements, and the relationship between human mobility and adaptation to environmental change by highlighting three types of mobility – migration, displacement and planned relocation. next, the international and regional level will be discussed, with particular focus on legislative and policy frameworks for addressing human mobility in the context of environmental change. the article identifi es gaps in existing frameworks as well as recent efforts to address them, particularly through mini-multilateral initiatives aimed at identifying principles and practices that should guide governmental action. the article concludes that efforts to improve responses require a better evidence base than currently exists on issues such as the environmental determinants of migration, displacement and planned relocation; the multi-faceted ways in which environmental factors relate to the many other causes of population movements in the cases of human mobility; and the impact of such movements on the well-being of migrants, communities of origin, and communities of destination. keywords: migration · environmental change · displacement · planned relocation 1 introduction the environment is but one of many reasons that prompt people to move, sometimes operating on its own but more often through other mechanisms, particularly loss of livelihoods affected by environmental disruption (see for example, black et al. 2011; etzold et al. 2014; foresight project 2011; ginetti 2015; hugo 2011; kniveton et al. 2011; white 2011). nevertheless, there has also been growing recognition that comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 187-218 (date of release: 25.10.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-13en9 • susan f. martin188 climate change poses profound consequences for human mobility. according to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), “climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people” (ipcc 2014: 20). the ipcc’s detailed review of the evidence indicated that “[e]xtreme weather events provide the most direct pathway from climate change to migration” but in the longer term, “sea level rise, coastal erosion, and loss of agricultural productivity (…) will have a signifi cant impact on migration fl ows” (adger et al. 2014: 767-769). the human consequences – including on mobility – have not escaped the attention of governments, international organizations and civil society. in 2010, the conference of the parties to the un framework convention on climate change (cop) adopted the cancun adaptation framework, which called on all countries to take “measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at national, regional and international levels.” the resolution refl ected growing awareness that environmental change, and climate change1 in particular, was already having a profound impact on the mobility of people and was likely to have still more impacts in the years ahead. in addressing human mobility, the resolution differentiated between displacement, migration and planned relocation, setting out three markedly different responses to environmental processes and events. this article uses “mobility” to encompass the three different forms of movement and “migration”, “displacement” and “planned relocation” when specifi c forms of mobility are discussed.2 a working description of each group is provided in the next section. in doha in 2012, the cop reiterated the need for more attention to human mobility within the context of loss and damage, noting the need for greater understanding of “how impacts of climate change are affecting patterns of migration, displacement and human mobility (unfccc 2012: 23).” in this regard, loss refers to the “inability to respond to climate stresses (i.e. the costs of inaction)”, whereas damage is defi ned as “costs associated with existing coping and adaptive strategies (cf. erosive coping strategies and mal-adaptation)” (warner et al. 2012). the cop 21, which took place in paris in 2015, requested “the executive committee of the warsaw international 1 environmental changes include a broader understanding of hazards and processes than encompassed by climate change. examples of the former include earthquakes and human-made environmental degradation and destruction, such as nuclear and industrial accidents. climate change includes rising sea levels, drought, cyclones and other weather-related events. 2 in contrast to refugees, who are defi ned in international law, there are no legal defi nitions of migration, displacement or planned relocation. the closest is a working defi nition provided by the international organization for migration (iom) of environmental migration: “environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their homes or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad (iom 2007).” this defi nition is so broad, however, that it encompasses displacement and planned relocation under the rubric of migration, making it diffi cult to distinguish among the forms of movement. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 189 mechanism3 to establish, according to its procedures and mandate, a task force (…) to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change (unfccc 2016: 8).” although it did not specify the form that the recommendations are to take, the statement indicated that the work of the taskforce should “complement, draw upon the work of and involve, as appropriate, existing bodies and expert groups under the convention including the adaptation committee and the least developed countries expert group, as well as relevant organizations and expert bodies outside the convention (unfccc 2016: 8).” this directive represented the fi rst attempt by the unfccc process to develop concrete recommendations on ways to address an important form of human mobility associated with climate change. progress is also being made in developing guidance for states on ways to enhance protection of those who move in the context of environmental change. these efforts stem from broad recognition that current legal and institutional frameworks do not apply in many of the situations arising when people move as a result of natural disasters or the slow-onset effects of climate change. two state-led initiatives are paving the way for rethinking the policy frameworks that apply in these cases: the nansen initiative for cross border displacement from natural disasters and climate change, and the migrants in countries in crisis (micic) initiative for nonnationals already in countries experiencing natural disasters (and confl ict). these initiatives are being driven by states themselves, rather than international organizations, academic institutions or nongovernmental agencies. as such, they represent a commitment from states to formulate principles and guidelines to address a compelling issue. the following sections present a brief overview of why people move, the nature of those movements, and the relationship between human mobility and adaptation to environmental change. it highlights the three types of mobility – migration, displacement and planned relocation – discussed in the cancun adaptation framework. the article then turns to responses at the international and national levels, with particular focus on legislative and policy frameworks for addressing human mobility in the context of environmental change. it seeks to identify gaps in existing legal and institutional frameworks. the next section examines the nansen and micic initiatives in greater depth. finally, the conclusion explains why the author is cautiously optimistic about these mechanisms and the potential for more effective responses. 3 the unfccc established the warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in 2013 “to address loss and damage associated with impacts of climate change, including extreme events and slow onset events, in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.” see http://unfccc.int/ adaptation/workstreams/loss_and_damage/items/8134.php for additional information. • susan f. martin190 2 setting the stage this section provides an overview of the determinants of movements, forms of mobility, and the role of mobility in regard to adaptation to environmental risks and changes. 2.1 determinants of mobility in the context of environmental change the report of the uk foresight project (2011) provides an excellent framework for identifying the factors that help determine not only whether people move but also when and where they go (see fig. 1). the chart includes macro level factors, demonstrating the multiple drivers of movement (economic, social, political, demographic as well as environmental). however, these drivers alone will not necessarily result in the movement of people. the decision to migrate or stay is also infl uenced by personal and household demographic and socio-economic characteristics as well as intervening obstacles and facilitators that determine whether movement is feasible. household vulnerability and resilience to environmental changes – that is, the capability to cope with or adapt to them – often determines the degree to which people need to move and their ability to get out of harm’s way. the most vulnerable populations may well be those who are trapped in fragile eco-systems, unable to support themselves and unable to move to places of greater safety and opportunity. the mix of all of these determinants that lead to the decision to move or to stay makes research on the determinants of mobility resulting from environmental change a complex endeavor. fig. 1: drivers of international migration source: foresight project: migration and global environmental change 2011 environmental exposure to hazard ecosystem services, incl. • land productivity • habitability • food/energy/ water security macro political discrimination/persecution governance/freedom conflict/insecurity policy incentives direct coercion personal/household characteristics age, sex, education, wealth, marital status, preferences, ethnicity, religion, language micro migrate demographic population size/ density population structure disease prevalence stay social seeking education family/kin obligations economic employment opportunities income/wages/well-being producer prices (e.g. agriculture) consumer prices intervening obstacles and facilitators political/legal framework cost of moving social networks diasporic links recruitment agencies technology meso spatial +/or temporal variability & difference in source & destination gradual actual sudden perceived so see fam decision environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 191 within this context, research is converging on the role that climate change is likely to play in accord with these other factors. as discussed above, the ipcc’s review of the literature concludes that climate change will indeed play an important role in future movements, potentially even more than in the past. more specifi cally, there are four paths by which climate change may affect human movement either directly or, more likely, as per foresight, in combination with other factors: • changes in weather patterns that contribute to longer-term drying trends that affect access to essential resources such as water and negatively affect the sustainability of a variety of environment-related livelihoods including agriculture, forestry, fi shing, etc. those most affected by drought may, however, have lower levels of migration if the drying pattern reduces household income so that they are unable to move (see, for example, bylander 2016; gray/mueller 2012; jülich 2011). • rising sea levels and glacier melt cause massive and repeated fl ooding and render coastal and low-lying areas uninhabitable in the longer-term (warner/van geest 2013; de sherbinin et al. 2011; wrathall 2012; dun 2011; shen/gemenne 2011). • increased frequency and magnitude of weather-related acute natural hazards, such as hurricanes and cyclones, which already destroy infrastructure and livelihoods and require people to relocate for shorter or longer periods (ifrc 2012; adger et al. 2014). as climate change intensifi es these events, even more people will be at risk. • competition over natural resources that may exacerbate pressures contributing to confl ict, which in turn precipitates movements of people. prolonged drought appears to have exacerbated tensions in syria, contributing to the 2011 demonstrations against the assad regime, which in turn led to the protracted confl ict that has displaced millions of people (kelley et al. 2015). confl ict also clearly makes it more diffi cult to address the needs of climate-change affected populations, as witnessed in somalia in 2011, during the severe drought in the horn of africa. only somalia among the drought affected areas experienced high levels of famine and displacement.4 in 2017, the un high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) warned of the widespread threat of famine in south sudan, nigeria and yemen if there is an escalation of the ongoing confl icts in these countries (unhcr 2017). it is important to note that drivers of mobility include not only factors at work in source communities and countries that may push people to leave their homes. they also include pull factors in potential areas of destination that make them attractive destinations. as the foresight diagram indicates, both actual and perceived differences between conditions in source and destination communities are likely to infl uence mobility. 4 see unhcr statistics at http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/country/516282cf5/unhcr-statistical-yearbook-2011-11th-edition.html. • susan f. martin192 2.2 forms of mobility the foresight fi gure also captures gradual and sudden onset drivers, which can in turn infl uence gradual or sudden movements. the fi rst two scenarios – longerterm drought and rising sea levels – are likely to cause slow-onset migration, in which people seek new homes and livelihoods over a lengthy period as conditions in their home communities worsen. in many cases, this migration is voluntary and is a strategy to reduce the risk of being exposed to current and future shocks. migrants seeking to avoid such environmental changes may resemble labor migrants, seeking better livelihood opportunities in a new location. this will especially occur if people move in anticipation of worsening conditions, rather than as a direct reaction to the changes taking place. the third and fourth scenarios – acute natural hazards and confl ict – are likely to create conditions that cause large-scale displacement, often in the context of emergencies. in these situations, those who move may resemble refugees and internally displaced persons who have fl ed situations beyond their individual control. the movements will likely involve displacement of entire communities who will often move en masse to new locations with little or no warning. in both cases, there may be individuals and households who are unable or unwilling to leave even in the face of life-threatening situations. for them, planned relocation may be needed. these two forms of environmental hazard (acute and slow onset) and their resulting patterns of movement (migration, displacement and planned relocation) need to be assessed separately to determine the appropriate policy responses and program requirements. in both slow onset and acute cases, movement may be temporary, cyclical or permanent. the decision as to whether return is possible involves a range of variables, including the extent to which the environmental causes – either direct or through other channels – is likely to persist or frequently reoccur. policies in the receiving communities and countries, depending on whether the movement is internal or international, will also affect the likelihood for return or settlement in the new location. in addition to immigration policies, the policies affecting return and settlement include land use and property rights, social welfare, housing, employment, and other frameworks that determine whether individuals, households, and communities are able to fi nd decent living conditions and pursue adequate livelihoods. return and reintegration is also affected by plans and programs to mitigate future dislocations from environmental hazards. different types of environmental stressors also affect the destinations of those who move. many experts believe that most mobility in the context of environmental change will be domestic (except for low-lying small island states without higher elevation) or immediately cross-border. such migration may be particularly challenging as the receiving communities and countries will likely have few resources, legal structures, or institutional capacity to respond to the needs of the migrants. geographical proximity may also mean that destination areas face some of the same environmental challenges as areas of migration origin (e.g. drought, desertifi cation) and may offer little respite in this regard. some long-distance movements are inevitable given the scope of migration today, as witnessed by the attempt of many environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 193 syrian and other asylum seekers to reach europe. it is important to keep in mind, however, that there are about 6 million internally displaced persons (idps) in syria itself and about fi ve million syrian refugees in jordan, lebanon and turkey. the numbers attempting to enter europe are much smaller by comparison, estimated at about 1.3 million in 2015 (connor 2016). 2.3 mobility and adaptation as discussed above, the cancun adaptation framework adopted language that placed mobility fi rmly on the climate-change adaptation agenda. largely because of the complexities in mobility patterns discussed above, the cancun framework outlined three different forms of mobility – migration, displacement and planned relocation. climate adaptation strategies related to mobility fall into two major categories: first, and more commonly, governments view adaptation to climate change as a way to reduce emigration pressures and allow people to remain where they are by modifying agricultural practices, management of pastoral lands, infrastructure such as dykes and coastal barriers, fi shing patterns and other strategies to reduce pressures on fragile eco-systems. second, movement of people to other locations may instead be seen as an adaptation strategy itself by climate change-affected countries (stojanov et al. 2014; martin 2012; geddes/somerville 2013; rademacher-schulz et al. 2014). some countries see migration as a way to reduce population pressures in places with fragile eco-systems; others recognize that resettlement of some populations may be inevitable, but should be accomplished with proper planning. moreover, people already living outside vulnerable areas may be important resources to help communities adapt and respond to climate change, a perspective that is of particular interest to development policy makers. just as migrants are contributing to the broader development of their home countries, such strategies envision that the diaspora may have the technical knowledge and fi nancial resources to help communities cope with the effects of climate change. finally, in the absence of appropriate relocation strategies, populations that should be moved away from hazardous situations may be trapped in place, unable to leave on their own. even countries facing similar climate changes differ in the extent to which they focus on the interconnections between human mobility and adaptation and the ways in which they understand the relationship. smith and macnamara (2014) note the different approaches of tuvalu and kiribati to the prospect of relocation of large numbers of their citizens. they refer to tuvalu’s approach as preventative action to avoid migration: “the migration issue was not wholly denied as a possible future scenario for tuvalu but this appears to be something that would only be considered in the case of a tsunami or similar disaster event, rather than the progressive incremental environmental degradation of the islands” (smith/macnamara 2014: 53). by contrast, kiribati views migration as an “active policy option,” refl ecting frustration at the slow pace of international negotiations regarding the mitigation of climate change (smith/macnamara 2014: 55). • susan f. martin194 research is scarce on both issues – the effi cacy of strategies to reduce emigration pressures, and the impacts of different forms of mobility on those who move and communities of origin and destination when used as an adaptation strategy. interdisciplinary research will likely be needed, engaging the expertise of researchers familiar with agriculture, fi shing, infrastructure, land use and tenure and other relevant issues as well as those who understand the determinants of migration. strategies that focus on specifi c environmental responses that do not take into account the other macro, meso and micro factors discussed above are unlikely to be effective in infl uencing mobility. similarly, research on the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches will need to consider multiple variables in assessing the effi cacy of the adaptation strategies. as many of these strategies are still in the planning stage, thinking through what factors to consider in evaluations is essential. a new body of research is beginning to assess the impact of mobility as an adaptation strategy. the rainfalls project, for example, posits four likely outcomes of mobility for those who move as well as their families left behind: (1) some families will prosper as a result of movements; (2) others will survive but not be materially better off; (3) still others will be worse off having left their home communities; and (4) a fi nal group will be trapped in place unable to leave their homes (warner/afi fi 2014). these are far from self-evident since a range of factors, including pre-existing levels of resilience and vulnerability, as well as the forms of movement that take place, determine which impacts are experienced by households and even entire communities. research to replicate or challenge these fi ndings in other locations and with other environmental drivers would help expand the understanding of the potentially multiple impacts of mobility on those most affected by environmental change. similarly, understanding the impacts derived from different forms of movement would help identify the strengths and weaknesses of adaptation strategies themselves. for example, more evidence is needed to determine if those who move voluntarily in anticipation of environmental harm show greater capacity to improve their situation than those who are spontaneously displaced or forced to participate in planned relocation programs. third parties (e.g., humanitarian and development) may offset some of the harms that might otherwise occur when people are forced to leave home but there is little evidence as to best practices in this area. since a number of governments, including those as different as small island countries in the pacifi c and the united states, are considering planned relocation of their citizens from environmentally hazardous areas to new sites, learning the lessons from development projects involving relocation – such as hydroelectric dams – is imperative.5 research on these projects has raised many questions about their impacts on the resettled groups, many of whom were worse off after relocation than they had been previously (cernea 1997, 2005). in 2001, the world bank adopted guidelines on involuntary resettlement to address some of the more egregious 5 see case studies referenced in georgetown university et al. (2016) for further examples. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 195 actions.6 unhcr, the brookings institution and georgetown university developed guidance on planned relocation in the context of natural disasters and environmental change that would improve the protection of those who are relocated as well as the communities into which they move, as discussed below (brookings institution et al. 2015; brookings institution et al. 2014; georgetown university et al. 2016). 3 legal and policy gaps this section discusses legal and policy frameworks for protecting those who move in the context of environmental change. it highlights gaps in current law and policy with regard to both internal and cross-border movements. it focuses on international and regional law as well as national policies. 3.1 internal movements internal mobility is a matter of state sovereignty. the limits of sovereignty are not absolute, however. the universal declaration of human rights provides clear guidance in article 13 that “everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.” article 12 of the international covenant on civil and political rights (iccpr) affi rms that “everyone lawfully within the territory of a state shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.” the iccpr provides certain exceptions: “the abovementioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present covenant.” to the extent that climate change produces conditions that undermine national security, public order or public health, which may be the case in extreme natural disasters or confl ict, then governments would have the right to enact provisions that would require people to move. a further relevant framework are the guiding principles on internal displacement and the african union convention for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons in africa. the guiding principles are not legally binding, but many states have adopted them into national law. they describe internally displaced persons or groups of persons as those “who have been forced or obliged to fl ee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed confl ict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.” the au convention, which went into force in 2012, explicitly recognizes that there will likely be displacement from climate change, stating in article 4: “states parties shall take measures 6 see the guidelines at https://policies.worldbank.org/sites/ppf3/ppfdocuments/090224b0822 f89db.pdf. • susan f. martin196 to protect and assist persons who have been internally displaced due to natural or human made disasters, including climate change.” the guiding principles affi rm that all persons have the “right to be protected against being arbitrarily displaced from his or her home or place of habitual residence.” in the case of climate change-induced displacement, arbitrary displacement would include situations in which individuals are forced to fl ee for reasons that “are not justifi ed by compelling and overriding public interests”. in the case of natural disasters, such displacement is arbitrary, “unless the safety and health of those affected requires their evacuation”. the guiding principles also state that “the authorities concerned shall ensure that all feasible alternatives are explored in order to avoid displacement altogether. where no alternatives exist, all measures shall be taken to minimize displacement and its adverse effects.” the guiding principles emphasize the need for consultation with the affected parties, stating that the free and informed consent of those to be displaced shall be sought. the authorities responsible for displacing persons are encouraged to involve those affected, particularly women, in the planning and management of their relocation. in particular, care should be taken to ensure that “proper accommodation is provided to the displaced persons, that such displacements are effected in satisfactory conditions of safety, nutrition, health and hygiene, and that members of the same family are not separated.” 3.2 international mobility states possess broad authority to regulate the movement of foreign nationals across their borders. although these authorities are not absolute, states exercise their sovereign powers to determine who will be admitted and for what period. the authority of states is limited by certain rights accorded foreign nationals in international law. there are no international instruments that specifi cally address international movements stemming from environmental factors. those moving because of environmental factors have the same rights and responsibilities as others who cross international borders. the universal declaration of human rights (udhr), the iccpr and the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) defi ne the basic rights of all persons. importantly, udhr article 13 also declares that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s own country.” the declaration does not, however, require any other country to admit people who exercise their right to leave. similarly, udhr article 14 states that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” but there is no corresponding obligation on the part of states to offer asylum. the obligation, as discussed below, is not to forcibly return someone to where they face a well-founded fear of persecution. there are no legally binding conventions that apply specifi cally to persons whose displacement is correlated with climate change. the un convention on the protection of all migrant workers and members of their families would apply if those who move enter the labour market in a host country. there are no specifi c provisions, however, within the migrant workers convention for those moving because of envienvironmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 197 ronmental factors compared to any other reasons. some may be covered under the 1951 un convention relating to the status of refugees and its 1967 protocol.7 the convention defi nes refugees as persons who were unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of their home countries because of a “well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.” while few persons seeking protection because of purely environmental reasons are likely to meet the defi nition, those fl eeing from the impacts of climate change may qualify if their lives are in danger because they are unable to access resources because of a protected characteristic (that is, race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion). in africa, the scope of coverage might be greater because the 1969 oau (now au) refugee convention includes those who, “owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality (emphasis added), is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality.” the cartagena declaration, adopted by latin american countries in 1984, has a similar broadening of the refugee defi nition to include “among refugees persons who have fl ed their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by (…) other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order,” but it is not binding regional law. to the extent that the impacts of environmental change seriously disturb public order, persons forced to leave their homes may be covered under these instruments (lopez 2007).8 the immigration policies of most destination countries are not conducive to receiving large numbers of environmental migrants, unless they enter through already existing admission categories. typically, destination countries admit persons to fi ll job openings or to reunify with family members. employment-based admissions are usually based upon the labour market needs of the receiving country, not the situation of the home country. family admissions are usually restricted to persons with immediate relatives (spouses, children, parents and, sometimes, siblings) in the destination country. humanitarian admissions are generally limited to refugees and asylum seekers – that is, those who fi t the defi nition in the un convention relating to the status of refugees: persons with a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. as is the case regarding international law, most people moving because of environmental harm will be unlikely to meet the legal defi nition of a refugee, forced to fl ee because 7 the protocol eliminated geographic (that refugees be from europe) and time (pre-1951) limits on the convention, making it a universal document. 8 lopez (2007: 390) acknowledges that the “international conference on central american refugees (cirefca) report interpreting the cartagena declaration distinguishes, however, between ‘victims of natural disasters’ and other events ‘seriously disturbing the public order,’ and observes that the former do not qualify as refugees.” while cartagena may not apply in natural disasters, it could apply in human-made environmental crises that result in serious disruptions of public order. • susan f. martin198 of loss of livelihood or habitat and not because of persecutory policies. a new zealand case highlights the barriers to refugee claims based on the effects of climate change. a kiribati citizen who had overstayed his visa applied for asylum citing the effects of climate change on his home country. the supreme court of new zealand held in 2015 that “[i]n relation to the refugee convention, while kiribati undoubtedly faces challenges, mr teitiota does not, if returned, face ‘serious harm’ and there is no evidence that the government of kiribati is failing to take steps to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation to the extent that it can.”9 the court did not rule out that another case involving serious environmental harm from climate change might meet the persecution bar for refugee status. presumably, if a country were to protect some of its nationals from environmental harm while allowing others to suffer because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, a claim to asylum might be appropriate. despite the lack of law and formal policies, governments respond frequently, albeit mostly in an ad hoc way, to those who have been displaced by natural hazards. the 2010 earthquake in haiti provides a good example of humanitarian admissions policies that were used by governments to protect persons not already on their territory and who did not qualify as refugees. the dominican republic responded almost immediately, permitting an estimated 160,000 haitians to cross onto its territory. many of those permitted entry had been seriously injured and required medical care. family members were also allowed to enter the dominican republic to stay with the injured during their convalescence (weiss fagen 2013). other haitians received humanitarian visas to enter brazil. at fi rst, the haitians applied for asylum but the brazilian government determined that they did not fi t the refugee defi nition. also recognizing that they were not seeking admission for purely economic reasons, brazil offered the alternative of humanitarian visas. initially, the determinations were made at the border. thousands of haitians had travelled to ecuador, which had suspended visa requirements for haitians in 2008, and then made their way to the brazilian border. subsequently, brazil instituted processing procedures in haiti for persons seeking humanitarian admissions. at fi rst, these were for temporary admissions but brazil now has a category for permanent admissions. in september 2015, the iom established the brazil visa application centre (bvac) to facilitate applications for these visas. countries such as canada and the united states sped up the entry of persons who had already applied for admission, recognizing that they would remain in lifethreatening situations if forced to wait for their turn in the admissions queue. for canada, for example, “this meant expediting and to some extent stretching the existing immigration categories through which haitians would be eligible to come to canada without changing existing immigration rules and regulations.” these applied primarily to family reunifi cation applications. the province of quebec, which controls its own immigration policy, expanded its notion of family reunifi cation to 9 ioane teitiota, applicant and the chief executive of the ministry of business, innovation and employment, respondent, supreme court of new zealand, sc 7/2015 [2015] nzsc 107. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 199 include “formerly inadmissible categories of adult brothers and sisters, step brothers and sisters and adult children, along with their own families.” as a result, quebec admitted about 9,000 haitians in 2010 alone. governments also have applied policies for deferral of deportation of those displaced by natural disasters. these range from statutory measures to ad hoc ones. one of the most well-developed statutory provisions is in u.s. legislation enacted in 1990 to provide temporary protected status to persons “in the united states who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of ongoing armed confl ict, an environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions.”10 environmental disaster may include “an earthquake, fl ood, drought, epidemic, or other environmental disaster in the state resulting in a substantial, but temporary, disruption of living conditions in the area affected.”10 in the case of environmental disasters, as compared to confl ict, the country of origin must request designation of tps for its nationals. importantly, tps only applies to persons already in the united states at the time of the designation. it is not meant to be a mechanism to respond to an unfolding crisis in which people seek admission from outside of the country. it also only pertains to situations that are temporary in nature. on the other hand, countries are often re-designated and “temporary” protection is offered to their nationals over lengthy periods. for example, tps was originally triggered in 1999 in the wake of hurricane mitch, which had severe impacts on nicaragua and honduras. its most recent extension is until january 5, 2018. those granted tps are left in limbo throughout these periods; they are unable to become permanent residents unless they meet the criteria of other immigration statuses (e.g., they have married a u.s. citizen). if the environmental disaster has permanent consequences, however, a designation of temporary protected status is not available or it may be lifted. when a volcano erupted in montserrat in 1997, tps was granted to its citizens and was extended six times. in 2005, however, it was ended because “it is likely that the eruptions will continue for decades, [and] the situation that led to montserrat’s designation can no longer be considered ‘temporary’ as required by congress when it enacted the tps statute.” another signifi cant factor is that the designation is discretionary, to be made by the secretary of homeland security. countries or parts of countries are designated, allowing nationals only of those countries to apply. notably, tps was not triggered for the hurricanes that destroyed large parts of haiti but was offered following the 2010 earthquake and has since been extended. sweden and finland have also included environmental migrants within provisions of their immigration policies. sweden includes within its asylum system persons who do not qualify for refugee status but have need for protection. such a person in need of protection “has left his native country and does not wish to return there because he: [1] has a fear of the death penalty or torture [2] is in need of pro10 immigration and naturalization act sec. 244. 1/ [8 u.s.c. 1254] https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/ docview/slb/html/slb/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-7238.html. • susan f. martin200 tection as a result of war or other serious confl icts in the country [3] is unable to return to his native country because of an environmental disaster.” the decision is made on an individual basis. although many prospective recipients of this status are presumed to be in temporary need of protection, the swedish rules foresee that some persons may be in need of permanent solutions. similarly, in the finnish aliens act, “aliens residing in the country are issued with a residence permit on the basis of a need for protection if […] they cannot return because of an armed confl ict or environmental disaster.” a number of other countries provide exceptions to removal on an ad hoc basis for persons whose countries of origin have experienced signifi cant disruption because of natural disasters. after the 2004 indian ocean tsunami, for example, switzerland, united kingdom and canada suspended deportations of those from such countries as sri lanka, india, somalia, maldives, seychelles, indonesia and thailand. a number of governments announced similar plans after the 2010 earthquake in haiti. to date, there are no examples of legislation or policies that address migration or relocation of persons from slow onset climate changes that may destroy habitats or livelihoods in the future.11 for the most part, movements from slow onset climate change and other environmental hazards that limit economic opportunities are treated in the same manner as economically motivated migration. persons moving outside of existing labour and family migration categories are considered to be irregular migrants. in the absence of a strong humanitarian basis for exempting them from removal proceedings (which is unlikely in the slow onset situation), these migrants would be subject to the regular systems in place for mandatory return to their home countries. as their immediate reasons for migrating would be similar to that of other irregular migrants – that is, lack of economic opportunities at home and better economic opportunities abroad – there would be little reason for destination countries to manage these movements outside of their existing immigration rules. there are also no binding international instruments governing the rights of those who are relocated because of the impacts of environmental change or the responsibilities of governments in requiring or supporting such actions. recognizing the gap, unhcr, in collaboration with the brookings institution and georgetown university and the support of the european commission, launched a project in 2011 to develop guidance in this area. the project focused only on planned relocation within affected countries, leaving discussion of cross-border relocation to the nansen initiative (see below). as the cancun framework did not defi ne planned relocation, the fi rst task was to offer a defi nition: 11 new zealand’s pacifi c access category (pac), under which 75 people from tuvalu, 75 from kiribati, and 250 from tonga may immigrate to new zealand each year, is sometimes described as climate change related legislation. the program is based on employment, however, not environmental factors. the immigrants must be between 18-45 years old, have an offer of employment in new zealand, have english skills, meet minimum income requirement, undergo a health check, and have no history of illegal entrance. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 201 planned relocation is (…) a planned process in which persons or groups of persons move or are assisted to move away from their homes or places of temporary residence, are settled in a new location, and provided with the conditions for rebuilding their lives. planned relocation is carried out under the authority of the state, takes place within national borders, and is undertaken to protect people from risks and impacts related to disasters and environmental change, including the effects of climate change. such planned relocation may be carried out at the individual, household, and/or community levels (brookings institution et al. 2015: 9). the guidance then sets out core principles: planned relocation should be “undertaken for the benefi t of relocated persons and in a manner that respects and protects their rights and dignity” (brookings institution et al. 2015: 10). generally, planned relocation is a measure of last resort when other disaster risk reduction or adaptation options fail. as such, “states must have compelling reasons, robust evidence, and a sound legal basis for undertaking planned relocation” (brookings institution et al. 2015: 11). those most affected by planned relocation – the relocated and other affected communities12 – should be consulted. and, every effort should be made to enable relocated persons “to improve, or, at a minimum restore, their living standards” and host populations “to maintain their pre-existing living standards, or to attain the same living standards as relocated persons, whichever is higher.” this last principle is important because too often, involuntary resettlement in the context of major construction projects has resulted in lowered standards of living as well as economic, social and cultural loss (cernea 1997; dewit 2006).13 from principles, the guidance moves to practical approaches to protect those affected by relocation in the pre-, duringand post-relocation phases. it emphasizes the need for states, as the entities with principal responsibility for planned relocation, to develop and enact the legal and policy basis for undertaking these programs; establish the institutional framework for carrying them out as well as the criteria for making decisions throughout a planned relocation; put in place an impartial and equitable grievance, review, confl ict resolution, and redress mechanisms; provide for timely, suffi cient, and sustainable funding; and ensure planned relocation is incorporated into other intersecting and crosscutting issues and activities, including development and land-use frameworks (brookings institution et al. 2015). the guidance was derived from consultations with experts from within and outside government in multiple fi elds: development, environment, humanitarian efforts, human rights, migration and refugees, disaster risk reduction and adapta12 other affected persons include host populations, persons who choose not to take part in planned relocation, and persons who live in close proximity to the communities to be relocated but who do not qualify for relocation. the second and third group may be affected by the relocation if services, infrastructure and/or markets are relocated along with people. 13 in his seminal 1997 work, cernea lists 8 harms from involuntary resettlement: (a) landlessness; (b) joblessness; (c) homelessness; (d) marginalization: (e) food insecurity; (f) loss of access to common property resources; (g) increased morbidity; (h) community disarticulation. many of these problems persist as examined in a 2015 special issue of development in practice (25.5) on development-induced displacement and involuntary resettlement in asia. • susan f. martin202 tion. the current phase of the project involves consultation with states and other stakeholders and the development of more operational guidance to promote effective implementation. it has also taken on new partners, including the iom and un university’s institute for environment and human security. 4 organizational arrangements just as the international legal frameworks for addressing climate change-induced movements are weak, so are the institutional roles and responsibilities at both the international and the national levels. with the exception of the refugee regime, in which clear responsibility is given to unhcr, there is no existing international regime for managing international movements of people. this is not to say that there is a total absence of governance. there are a plethora of international organizations that have some responsibilities related to both internal and international movements. recognizing the potential importance of climate change as a driver of humanitarian crises (including large-scale displacement), the members of the interagency standing committee (iasc) for coordination, policy development and decisionmaking on humanitarian assistance established a task force on climate change. the iasc was created in 1992 through resolution 46/182 of the general assembly, with members drawn from the united nations, the red cross and red crescent movement, the iom and key nongovernmental humanitarian organizations. the iasc taskforce on climate change leads the preparation of high-quality analytical inputs to the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) process, and provides guidance as appropriate to the iasc on integrating climate risk management into agency policies, operations and relevant iasc guidelines and tools. the advisory group on climate change and human mobility, comprised of academic and humanitarian institutions and coordinated by unhcr, was formed in 2013 to serve as a conduit for translating knowledge into policies that consider the protection of people on the move. while serving a useful role in providing longerterm recommendations, the advisory group has had limited success in infl uencing the outcomes of the 2015 negotiations in paris (cop 21). as its recommendations remain relevant, they are worthy of extended examination. the advisory group called for human mobility to be addressed in all its forms (displacement, migration, planned relocation), and considered in policies that take into account the full range of societal impacts (mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage). it highlighted the needs of migrants, refugees and people displaced internally or across borders, and called on parties to “[r]ecognize that safeguards should be adopted to prevent and reduce the displacement of populations and its negative impacts, in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation projects and policies (advisory group on climate change and human mobility 2015).” the advisory group strongly encouraged states party to unfccc to take measures, including in their national adaptation plans, to prevent and reduce internal environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 203 and cross-border displacement in close consultation with communities at risk of displacement. among the efforts governments could make would be increasing resilience among displaced persons and host communities, and formulating participatory, dignifi ed and sustainable responses. crucially, the advisory group also recommended that states “[r]ecognize that human mobility measures within national and regional climate change adaptation plans, policies and strategies may require adaptation funding, including from the operating entities of the fi nancial mechanism of the unfccc supporting both adaptation and loss and damage as well as other mechanisms” (advisory group on climate change and human mobility 2015). the advisory group members reiterated the necessity for loss and damage policies to address climate change-related displacement and emphasized the “catalytic” role that the unfccc can play in supporting relevant organizations and frameworks that provide assistance and protection to persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change. more specifi cally, the group called for a climate change displacement coordination facility to “serve as a forum for sharing experience and enhancing capacities to plan and implement climate adaptation measures that avoid displacement, facilitate voluntary migration, and encourage participatory and dignifi ed planned relocation” (advisory group on climate change and human mobility 2015). finally, the advisory group emphasized the importance of securing funding to support local, national and regional climate change adaptation, resilience building, and disaster risk management plans and activities. the paris conference of the parties to the unfccc resolved to establish a taskforce to take on some of the responsibilities outlined in the recommendation for a displacement coordination facility but did not provide for the fi nancing mechanism that the advisory group proposed. on a more operational level, there is no designated organization to assist and protect those who move in the context of climate change. unhcr has clear responsibility for refugees and those who are internally displaced by confl ict, but it does not have responsibility for those displaced by natural hazards. the organization has nevertheless been drawn into providing assistance during several notable natural disasters, such as the tsunami in indonesia, sri lanka and somalia (2004), cyclone nargis in burma (2008), china’s earthquake (2008), fl oods in pakistan, bangladesh and myanmar/burma (2010), and the nepal earthquake in 2015. in many of these cases, unhcr was already providing aid to confl ict-induced refugees and internally displaced persons. iom has responsibility for camp management and, on a case by case basis, protection of those displaced by natural hazards. it has also played an important role in stimulating research on environmental migration, displacement and planned relocation. the role of both organizations is limited, however, particularly as compared to unhcr’s mandate for protection of refugees, because of the absence of a legally binding convention that spells out the rights of those whose mobility is affected by climate change and other environmental shocks. • susan f. martin204 5 new initiatives to address protection gaps given the dearth of legal, policy and institutional frameworks at the international, regional or national level specifi cally focused on the impacts of climate and other environmental changes on human mobility, a number of initiatives have been launched to promote guidelines that would be applicable in these situations. sir peter sutherland (2016), the special representative of the secretary general on international migration, has dubbed these efforts mini-multilateralism – that is, efforts by states to develop non-binding guidance based on existing principles and effective practices. the success of the guiding principles on internal displacement in shifting perceptions and practices in countries throughout the world (including the promulgation of a regional convention in africa) is the backdrop for these efforts. this section discusses two such initiatives that pertain to displacement, migration and planned relocation in the context of natural disasters and the slow onset effects of climate change: 1) the nansen initiative and its successor, the platform on disaster displacement; and 2) the migrants in countries in crisis (micic) initiative. 5.1 the nansen initiative and the platform on disaster displacement the nansen initiative,14 was launched in 2011 at a ministerial conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of unhcr’s founding and adoption of the 1951 refugee convention. the aim was to develop an agenda for improving protection of people displaced cross borders by natural disasters and the slow onset effects of climate change. the impact of climate change on displacement had long been a concern to antónio guterres, then the high commissioner. as early as 2007, he gave voice to his concerns: when we consider the different models for the impact of climate change, the picture is very worrying. the need for people to move will keep on growing. one need only look at east africa and the sahel region. all predictions are that desertifi cation will expand steadily. for the population, this means decreasing livelihood prospects and increased migration. all of this is happening in the absence of international capacity and political will to respond. (guterres 2007) the following year, assistant high commissioner for protection erika feller summarized the dilemma before the unhcr executive committee: “new terminology is entering the displacement lexicon with some speed. the talk is now of ‘ecological refugees,’, ‘climate change refugees,’ the ‘natural disaster displaced.’ this is all a serious context for unhcr’s efforts to fulfi ll its mandate for its core benefi ciaries. (…) the mix of global challenges is explosive, and one with which we and our 14 the initiative was named after fridtjof nansen, the famous explorer who was named high commissioner for refugees by the league of nations in 1921 and received the nobel peace prize in 1922 for his work on behalf of refugees and displaced persons. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 205 partners, government and non-government, must together strike the right balance (feller 2008).” in an address before the security council in november 2011 – with famine and displacement in somalia heavily on his mind – high commissioner guterres returned to the theme: “we should be addressing the more complex issue of the way in which global warming, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and other manifestations of climate change are interacting with and reinforcing other global imbalances, so as to produce some very powerful drivers of instability, confl ict and displacement” (guterres 2011). in the lead up to the ministerial conference, the organization commissioned new research on climate change and displacement. preparatory meetings were held in bellagio (unhcr 2011a) and oslo (the nansen conference 2011) to discuss gaps in the international response to the evolving phenomena. the june 2011 oslo conference resulted in the nansen principles, which outlined core approaches for addressing both internal and international displacement. recognizing that the guiding principles on internal displacement already covered those displaced by natural disasters and other environmental disruptions, the nansen principles urged action on cross border movements: “a more coherent and consistent approach at the international level is needed to meet the protection needs of people displaced externally owing to sudden-onset disasters. states, working in conjunction with unhcr and other relevant stakeholders, could develop a guiding framework or instrument in this regard” (the nansen conference 2011: 5). the initial hope was that governments would back reforms in the institutional arrangements, particularly for responding to natural disasters, in the ministerial conference. this would have helped clarify under which situations unhcr should take leadership in assisting and protecting victims. governments did not agree that unhcr should become more systematically involved with those displaced by natural disasters or climate change. a number argued that unhcr was already overwhelmed with the growing number of refugees and internally displaced persons. the ministerial conference instead gave very indirect acknowledgement of the problem: “we note that today’s challenges in providing protection and achieving solutions continue to be serious, interconnected and complex. (…) we will reinforce cooperation with each other and work with unhcr and other relevant stakeholders, as appropriate, to deepen our understanding of evolving patterns of displacement and to agree upon ways to respond to the challenges we face in a changing global context” (unhcr 2011b). the swiss and norwegian governments did take up the call in the nansen principles for more attention to protection needs, pledging to fund an intergovernmental process that would examine the issue and make recommendations for enhancing protection in both acute emergencies and slow onset processes. switzerland and norway asked walter kälin, formerly the special representative of the secretary general on the human rights of internally displaced persons and • susan f. martin206 one of the principal architects of the guiding principles on internal displacement, to take on the leadership of the initiative, serving as the chair’s envoy. the nansen initiative was clear in stating, however, that it did “not seek to develop new legal standards, but rather to build consensus among states on the elements of a protection agenda, which may include standards of treatment.” (the nansen initiative 2017) there was no expectation that the process would lead to a set of guiding principles on cross-border displacement that would be equivalent to the ones developed for internally displaced persons. rather, the nansen initiative sought to identify existing practices that complement refugee and other humanitarian protection regimes in use by countries in protecting those who are displaced by natural disasters and other forms of environmental change. the initiative also differed from the guiding principles process in that it was state-led, rather than un-led. it was governed by a steering committee, chaired by switzerland and norway, and included australia, bangladesh, costa rica, germany, kenya, mexico and the philippines. a consultative committee15 was formed to bring the expertise of representatives from international organizations dealing with displacement and migration issues, climate change and development, researchers, think tanks and non-governmental organizations to bear. a group of “friends of the initiative” allowed other governments to provide advice and remain informed of the deliberations. finally, a secretariat supported the work of the initiative. the main fact-fi nding activities were a series of regional consultations to pull together evidence about the impacts of natural disasters and climate change on displacement and to solicit the views of governments and civil society. the secretariat also distilled the lessons of research for the initiative’s consideration and commissioned background papers on a number of topics. the agenda for protection, adopted as the outcome of the nansen initiative, focuses on three principal areas of action. the fi rst is to improve the collection of data and to enhance knowledge on cross-border disaster-induced displacement. more specifi cally, the agenda recommends improvements in the collection, consolidation and analysis of “genderand age-disaggregated data regarding the overall number of people displaced in disaster contexts, both internally and across international borders, based on clear criteria and effective methods” (the nansen initiative 2015: 45). it also calls for new “methodologies to identify those at risk of being displaced in disaster contexts, including across international borders” and new research to “determine to what extent men and women already rely on migration as a strategy to cope with the effects of natural hazards and the effects of climate change, and what lessons can be learned for improving the benefi ts of migration and addressing related protection risks” (the nansen initiative 2015: 45). finally, it emphasizes the need for additional data and analysis of planned relocation processes in the context of disasters and effects of climate change. 15 the author was a member of the consultative committee. environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 207 the second area of the agenda focuses on “humanitarian protection measures for cross-border disaster-displaced persons, including mechanisms for lasting solutions” (the nansen initiative 2015: 44). this section is most pertinent to the development of measures to complement and augment protection of those displaced by environmental factors. these measures include ones related to the admission of disaster displaced persons from abroad as well as those preventing the return of displaced persons to countries experiencing natural disasters and the effects of climate change. the agenda points to the need for new legal instruments and policies that would, for example, grant “temporary entry and stay for cross-border disaster-displaced persons, such as through the issuance of humanitarian visas or other exceptional migration measures” (the nansen initiative 2015: 26). the nansen initiative emphasized that governments could use existing legal frameworks, such as existing temporary labor migration and humanitarian admissions programs, more creatively to permit entry of those needing protection. it identifi ed a number of examples in current practice (the nansen initiative 2015): • granting visas that authorize travel and entry upon arrival for people from disaster-affected countries, or temporarily suspending visa requirements; • prioritizing and expediting the processing of regular migration categories for foreigners from affected countries following a disaster, or waiving certain admission requirements for such categories; • relying upon regular (sub-)regional or bilateral free movement schemes to permit the temporary entry and stay of disaster displaced persons, and providing for the suspension of documentation requirements in disaster situations, recognizing that such persons may not possess, or have lost and are unable to acquire documentation normally required; • granting temporary entry and stay for cross-border disaster-displaced persons, such as through the issuance of humanitarian visas or other exceptional migration measures; • granting entry and temporary stay for a group or “mass infl ux” of crossborder disasterdisplaced persons; • developing transhumance agreements to facilitate the cross-border movement of pastoralists and their livestock, particularly in situations when drought endangers the health and lives of humans and animals; • reviewing asylum applications of and granting refugee status or similar protection under human rights law to displaced persons in disaster contexts who meet the relevant criteria under applicable international, regional, or national law; • exploring at sub-regional and regional levels, where relevant, whether and under what circumstances regional instruments on refugee, and similar protection under human rights law, can and should be interpreted as applying to cross-border disaster-displacement situations; and • reviewing and harmonizing existing humanitarian protection measures at sub-regional and regional levels. • susan f. martin208 the agenda for protection recognized, however, that these measures are not consistently implemented. instead, they are “largely unpredictable, because they generally rely upon the discretionary power of relevant authorities as opposed to a legal obligation to admit or permit the stay of disaster displaced persons” (the nansen initiative 2015: 28). nansen also identifi ed examples of mechanisms that were complements to the refugee non-refoulement standard. the effective practices in this regard include: • providing such persons with humanitarian protection measures such as suspending their deportation or extending or changing their existing migration status on humanitarian grounds if they would experience extreme hardship as a consequence of the disaster in case of return to the country of origin; or their country of origin has declared a disaster and is temporarily unable to manage the return of its citizens for reasons related to the disaster; and • providing persons eligible for humanitarian protection measures with adequate information on the possibility to benefi t from such protection, and their rights and responsibilities once such protection has been granted. the third set of recommendations is aimed at strengthening the management of disaster displacement risk in the country of origin so that those affected by natural disasters and the effects of climate change would not need to cross international borders. these include “integrating human mobility within disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies, and other relevant development processes; … improving the use of planned relocation as preventative or responsive measure to disaster risk and displacement; and … ensuring that the needs of idps displaced in disaster situations are specifi cally addressed by relevant laws and policies on disaster risk management or internal displacement” (the nansen initiative 2015: 44). finally, the agenda notes that legal migration can prevent displacement since it allows people to move in a safe and orderly manner. the agenda was endorsed by 109 governmental delegations during a global multi-sectoral consultation in october 2015. more than 360 participants from governments, international organizations, academic institutions and civil society attended. that so large a number of governments endorsed the agenda was impressive. those who spoke at the consultation noted the utility of the agenda and the fl exibility of governments to adopt its recommendations in accord with national law. subsequently, the german government took on the chairmanship of the process, announcing the platform on disaster displacement (pdd) in may 2016 at the world humanitarian summit in istanbul. the pdd has four main goals in furthering the agenda for protection. first, it seeks to address knowledge and data gaps. the longterm goal is to produce “global information management, analysis, tracking of trends and reporting regarding cross-border disaster-displacement, including on its root causes” (platform on disaster displacement 2016a). in the shortto medium-term, the aim is to help ensure the inclusion of displacement in post-disaster needs and damage assessment tools and methodologies and in national censuses; strengthen environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 209 risk mapping and forecasting modelling to identify vulnerable populations at risk of displacement and to better understand existing and emerging displacement risk drivers; and commission new research, as needed, to fi ll information gaps. the second aim is to promote policy and normative development to fi ll gaps in protection, as outlined in the protection agenda. in keeping with the nansen perspective, the focus is not on international conventions but rather with law and policy at the regional and national level. the pdd intends to work with regional consultative processes to develop guidance for countries on norm development, referencing the “guide to effective practices on admission and stay for persons moving across borders in the context of disasters” produced by the nansen initiative and regional conference on migration (rcm) in central and north america (platform for disaster displacement 2016b). it will strive to support “legal and policy development at domestic and regional level and support the development of bilateral and regional frameworks regarding admission, stay and non-return of cross-border disaster-displaced persons” (platform for disaster displacement 2016b). the third aim fl ows naturally from the second area for the pdd. the aim is to enhance the use of effective practices identifi ed by the nansen initiative. the focus is on humanitarian protection measures, such as policies that provide admission and temporary relief from removal for disaster displaced persons. other practices that the pdd will promote include consideration of displacement in national, bilateral and regional contingency plans, disaster risk management and humanitarian response plans. it will also enhance use of options, such as planned relocation and voluntary migration, which are designed to reduce the likelihood that people will be displaced by natural hazards or the slow-onset impacts of climate change (platform on disaster displacement 2016c). mainstreaming disaster-induced displacement across sectors, mandates and areas of expertise related to its multi-causality is the fourth aim of the pdd. this area stems from recognition that a “key gap and challenge highlighted by the nansen initiative is the need to bring together and link multiple policy and action areas that to date have been uncoordinated in order to better address cross-border disasterdisplacement and its root causes.” to achieve this aim, the pdd will work with states as well as stakeholders from multiple sectors and disciplines. it will also coordinate with other initiatives, such as those commissioned with follow-up to the sendai framework on disaster risk reduction, the unfccc warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage’s task force on displacement, and the follow-up to the world humanitarian summit. 5.2 migrants in countries in crisis the origins of the micic initiative are similar to nansen, whose success infl uenced its development. sir peter sutherland, the special representative of the secretary general, played the role that high commissioner guterres did in urging governments to fi ll the protection gap for non-nationals caught in acute emergencies resulting from confl ict and natural disaster. the mass displacement of migrant workers in libya during the 2011 confl ict, followed by similar confl ict-related crises in • susan f. martin210 cote d’ivoire and syria, in addition to the natural disasters in japan, thailand, and the united states that affected millions of non-nationals, generated substantial interest among governments, civil society and the private sector. in support of sir peter and with funding from the macarthur foundation, georgetown university’s institute for the study of international migration commissioned a paper outlining the protection gaps (koser 2014) and produced desk studies of the major crises involving displacement of non-nationals. the call for action was met with a positive response by the united states and the philippines. in her plenary statement at the 2013 high level dialogue on migration and development, assistant secretary anne richard, thanking sir peter and noting the seriousness of the problem, pledged on behalf of the united states to chair what became the micic initiative. she used language similar to nansen’s in describing the initiative: “i envision a state-led process aimed at examining the responsibilities of different actors in these crisis situations” (richard 2013). a working group was subsequently named; in addition to the us and the philippines, australia, bangladesh, costa rica, ethiopia, and the european commission (ec) also served on it as did iom, unhcr, the international centre for migration policy development (icmpd), and isim. micic also worked in similar ways to nansen. a grant from the united states established a secretariat based at iom; the ec funded regional consultations and the us and australia supported consultations with civil society and the private sector, as well as members and friends of the intergovernmental consultation on migration, refugees and asylum seekers. the ec also supported a research program that examined the longer-term impacts of the crises on migrants and the us supported capacity building for countries experiencing the impacts of these crises. the results of the consultations and research contributed to a set of principles, guidelines and effective practices that were presented on june 15, 2016 at the united nations. the principles focused on core rights and responsibilities. the duty to save lives in confl ict and disasters is the fi rst responsibility; as such, the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence should govern responses to migrants in these crisis situations. to ensure effective protection, the principle of non-discrimination, particularly by immigration status, when lives are at risk permeates the recommendations. the principles and resulting guidelines emphasize that states have primary responsibility but that other stakeholders, including nonnationals themselves, play an important role in ensuring protection. in that respect, principle 6 states clearly that “[m]igrants are rights holders and capable actors, resilient and creative in the face of adversities, not merely victims or passive recipients of assistance” (micic 2016: 16). the guidelines are described as “targeted suggestions, organized by theme, that identify in broad terms the actions needed to better protect migrants in countries experiencing crises. states, private sector actors, international organizations, and civil society can use the guidelines to inform and shape crisis preparedness, emergency response, and post-crisis action” (micic 2016: 19). they are organized around the phases of crises: pre-, duringand post-crisis. each is elaborated with concrete practices that would aid their implementation. the most detail is provided environmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 211 on pre-crisis emergency preparedness since this is the phase in which much can be done to lay the groundwork for effective action during crises. the guidelines recognize, however, that crises often take on lives of their own and that needs and contexts depart from even the best laid plans. as such, they recommend continual assessment of the situation and fl exibility to adapt and innovate as needed during the emergency response period. they also take into account that the post-crisis stage requires special attention to the long-term needs of migrants displaced by confl ict and disasters as well as to the needs of communities to which they may need to relocate. while many of the issues raised in micic apply equally in confl icts and natural disasters, the initiative did make distinctions where applicable. a discussion brief prepared for micic observed that one of the most important differences is in the role of national authorities in the affected countries. whereas in confl icts, the national authorities may be part of the problem in protecting citizens and non-citizens alike, “in most cases of natural disasters, governments are willing to assist all persons on their territory requiring emergency assistance, including non-citizens. they may not have the capacity, however, to carry out all of the tasks needed to protect citizens and non-citizens alike and may require the assistance of other actors (martin 2016)” as a result, micic emphasized integration of the needs and capabilities of migrants into existing and disaster risk reduction, early warning, emergency preparedness and emergency response systems, with particular attention to migrant-specifi c issues such as their ability to read and comprehend the host language. it also urged states to institute awareness-raising programs for migrants about prevention, preparedness, and emergency response procedures in host countries. recognizing that some migrants may leave post-natural disaster, while others enter affected areas, micic also recommended measures to prevent the exploitation of migrants working in post-disaster reconstruction jobs by providing prevailing wages, monitoring work conditions, providing safety equipment as needed, and enforcing laws against human smuggling, traffi cking in persons, occupational health and safety, and other labor violations (micic 2016). 6 conclusion this review of trends in environmental change and human mobility identifi es some areas of research and policy development that are needed to respond more effectively. it is not meant to be exhaustive in laying out a research or policy agenda. in the area of research, more attention is needed to improve the evidence base on the environmental determinants of migration, displacement and planned relocation; the multi-faceted ways in which environmental factors relate to the many other causes of population movements in the cases of migration, displacement and planned relocation; and the impact of migration, displacement and planned relocation undertaken in the context of environmental change on the well-being of migrants, communities of origin, and communities of destination. as compared to even ten years ago, there has been great progress in fi lling the gaps in evidence and knowledge of the • susan f. martin212 mobility implications of environmental change generally and climate change more specifi cally. with the increasing attention of governments to these issues, there is reason for cautious optimism that this progress will continue. at the legislative and policy level, there are also grounds for cautious optimism. the nansen and micic initiatives represent new ways in which governments and other stakeholders are attempting to address persistent protection gaps for those affected by environmental change. there are four reasons for optimism. first, unlike earlier efforts that focused primarily on the adoption of binding international conventions, these initiatives are less formal, more ad hoc and less binding. they are more pragmatic, given the reluctance of states to adopt and ratify new binding instruments related to movements of people. promulgation of the guiding principles on internal displacement has proven to be a highly effective way to gain visibility and improved protection for a population that had not previously received suffi cient attention. the guiding principles have been recognized widely as applicable to a broad range of persons forced to leave their homes because of events beyond their control. they have broad support, as witnessed by the 2005 world summit’s entreaty to states and international organizations to implement them. many individual countries have incorporated them into national law and the african union has promulgated a binding convention based on them. second, because states are leading these efforts, there is a built-in constituency for ensuring their implementation. the nansen initiative has been succeeded by the platform for disaster displacement, which was announced at the world humanitarian summit in may 2016. the platform will follow up on nansen and implement the recommendations of the protection agenda by building “partnerships between policymakers, practitioners and researchers and constitute a multi-stakeholder forum for dialogue, information sharing as well as policy and normative development.” the chairs of the micic initiative have pledged a similar follow-up process, with the continuation of the secretariat’s capacity-building and other activities. third, these processes have been highly inclusive in terms of regional scope and participation. members of the steering/working groups have come from all regions. regional variations have been solicited in consultations that brought together governments, civil society, the private sector, international organizations and the research community. the resulting recommendations have been vetted with multiple stakeholders although responsibility for issuing them ultimately rested with the state leads. finally, the ad hoc nature of these processes allows them to address emerging issues and concerns more effectively than more formal mechanisms that are often tied to specifi c mandates. micic was criticized by some civil society organizations and a few governments at its inception because its focus was restricted to migrants affected by confl ict and natural disasters. the critics urged the working group to address the problems of those in crises stemming from other causes – for example, irregular migrants stranded by smugglers en route to their destination. fearing that it would be more diffi cult to build consensus around solid recommendations on other populations, the working group held fast. however, micic made a clear statement that “notwithstanding the limited scope of the micic initiative, it is hoped and exenvironmental change and human mobility: trends, law and policy • 213 pected that its outcomes will be useful for states and other stakeholders in addressing a broader range of migration scenarios.” in fact, many of the recommendations in the micic guidelines do apply more broadly and civil society groups could readily use them to advocate for others moving in the context of environmental change. most notably, principle 2 states: “as human beings, all migrants are entitled to human rights, regardless of their immigration status. at all times, the human rights of migrants should be respected, protected, and fulfi lled in a non-discriminatory manner and in accordance with applicable international law” (micic 2016: 15). members of the working group have also been supportive of the recommendation in the secretary general’s report for the high level meeting on large-scale migration and refugee movements to form a working group similar to micic on vulnerable migrants more generally. this is not to say that the ad hoc, non-binding nature of the processes is without problems. as has been seen with regard to internally displaced persons, protection is still highly dependent on the willingness of states to implement the guiding principles and the international community to intercede when states are unwilling or unable to fulfi ll their responsibilities. enhancing protection of those displaced by natural disasters and the impacts of climate change will require sustained attention. mechanisms such as the nansen and micic initiatives, and their follow-up, are promising ways to foster greater attention to the 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global warming 5,4: 367-386 [doi: 10.1504/ijgw.2013.057289]. warner, koko; afi fi , tamer 2014: where the rain falls: evidence from 8 countries on how vulnerable households use migration to manage the risk of rainfall variability and food insecurity. in: climate and development 6,1: 1-17 [doi: 10.1080/17565529.2013.835707]. weiss fagen, patricia 2013: receiving haitian migrants in the context of the 2010 earthquake. geneva: the nansen initiative. wrathall, david 2012: migration amidst social-ecological regime shift: the search for stability in garífuna villages of northern honduras. in: human ecology 40,4: 583-596 [doi: 10.1007/s10745-012-9501-8]. white, gregory 2011: climate change and migration. oxford: oxford university press. date of submission: 23.03.2016 date of acceptance: 21.07.2017 prof. dr. susan f. martin (). georgetown university. washington d.c., usa. e-mail: martinsf@georgetown.edu url: http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/martinsf/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele abstract: the age limit adjustment act, which was adopted in 2007, constitutes a climax in the developments of a paradigm shift in pension policy towards remaining at work for longer. this development entails profound changes and restrictions on benefi ts for assured persons. in future, many of the insurable employed will not receive a pension without incurring deductions until they reach the age of 67. both employers and employees are faced with new challenges if they wish to avoid pension reductions in the event of an early retirement and consequently possible precarious incomes at old age. especially women need particular support in this regard, given that in structural terms, they are in a weaker position on the labour market. against this background, a representative nationwide survey of 1,800 female workers born between 1947 and 1964 was commissioned by the new quality of work initiative (inqa) and conducted by the institute of gerontology at the technical university of dortmund in cooperation with tns infratest in 2007. these cohorts are to be affected by the increase of the age limit from 2012 onwards. in addition to structural data, this survey studied the respondents’ assessment of their current ability to work and to continue to work until reaching the standard age limit. further, the survey explored specifi c working conditions and strains of work. the results show that more than 40 % of the female respondents are sceptical about the conditions of being able to continue their current work until reaching their statutory age limit. the only moderate to poor workability and the consequential danger of having to leave work result e.g. from work-related strains which accumulate in certain sectors and professional groups. the creation of appropriate jobs for older workers as well as the implementation of a staff policy in companies, which is sensitive to demographic developments and individual circumstances, can contribute to maintaining and nurturing the workability. keywords: labour · demographic change · female empolyees · work conditions · pension · workability comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft vol. 35, 4 (2010): 739-766 (date of release: 22.12.2011) © federal institute for population research 2011 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-17en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-17en0 • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele740 1 introduction the age limit adjustment act (altersgrenzanpassungsgesetz), which was adopted by the german federal parliament on 9 march 2007, marked a major turn in german social policy. for a long time it had been regarded as a more desirable goal to shorten the working life, whereas the age limit adjustment act introduces a gradual increase in the retirement age from its current level of 65 to 67. the federal minister for labour and social affairs at the time stated in the federal parliament: “today’s decisions are right. there is no reason for people in germany to be afraid of this decision. on the contrary, our country needs the wealth of experience, the knowledge and the abilities of the older generation to maintain its prosperity in future” (deutscher bundestag 2007). nonetheless, the possible consequences of this decision remain the subject of critical discussion. the proponents of an extension of the statutory retirement age usually refer to the demographic changes in the country. these changes are said affect the fundability of the social security systems, in particular the contribution-based old-age pensions. a paradigm shift is required both in social policy and in companies’ personnel policy. it is said that the “culture of early retirement” should be countered with a strategy of creating and enhancing skills in order to enable elderly people to remain at work for longer. skills should be retained and constantly developed at old age so that they can remain available to the society as a whole as well as to industry in particular (sporket 2010; schmähl 2010). the signifi cant critical reservations generally relate to the aspects of employability on the one hand and the workability on the other. both factors exert an infl uence on actual gainful employment until the statutory age limit is reached, and hence the risk of being affected by precarious fi nancial circumstances at old age. thus, there is a critical discussion about the degree to which the politically-motivated increase in supply meets the demand for older workers. further, there is a public debate on the degree to which the age cohorts affected by the new arrangements are physically and mentally able to actually work longer (dpw et al. 2008; bäcker et al. 2010; sporket 2010). these questions, however, can only be answered adequately if we have identifi ed the factors on which the particular employment opportunities and the individual ability to work at old age depend. this essay wants to shed some light on these factors, in particular on the basis of the research results from the project entitled “retirement at 67 – prerequisites for the ability of older female workers to continue working”.1 further, this article provides an insight into the employment situation of older female workers. despite the existence of a legal basis for equal treatment of men and women, their employment situation remains characterised by structural disadvantages, and hence requires particular attention especially in view of a longer phase of gainful employment. 1 the project was carried out on behalf of the new quality of work initiative (inqa) by the institute for gerontology at the technical university of dortmund in cooperation with tns infratest sozialforschung in 2007. “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 741 2 the employment policy background of the retirement at 67 demographic change which is characterised by enduring low birth-rates accompanied by increasing life expectancy, fi rstly leads to a shrinking population as a whole. secondly, profound changes can be anticipated within the age structure of the population living in germany which cannot be compensated by immigration even in the medium term (statistisches bundesamt 2009). especially, the ageing of the population as a whole as well as the working-age people, poses a number of challenges on society, industry and policy-makers. demographic change has a major impact on the social security systems in germany, particularly on the old-age pension system. the imbalance between those paying pension contributions and those who are already pensioners has already led to diffi culties in fi nancing the statutory payas-you-go pensions insurance system in recent years. further, the enduring trend towards an early retirement fostered by trade unions, policy-makers and companies as well as workers poses a burden not only on the pension system, but also – as a result of various opportunities for opting out of them – on other security systems. in order to alleviate the increasing pressure on the pension funds, a political rethink has taken place since the 1990s. three central objectives can be identifi ed in the legislation on pension policy (bogedan/rasner 2008; schmähl 2006): to counter the trend towards early retirement;• to slow down the expenditure development; and• to partly privatise old-age pensions.• until now, the climax of the rethink which has occurred within the statutory pensions insurance system is constituted by the “act to adjust the standard age limit to demographic development and to strengthen the funding base of statutory pensions insurance”, adopted in 2007. this law entails a large number of changes and restrictions on benefi ts for insured parties: essentially, the act provides a gradual increase of the standard age limit from 65 to 67, starting in 2012. the process is to be completed by 2029. all birth cohorts from 1947 to 1963 are affected by the monthly increase in the standard age limit. consequently, the 1964 cohort will be the fi rst one to which “retirement at 67” applies. in addition to increasing the standard age limit, the legislature also provides for increases in the qualifying ages of other old-age pensions (e.g. pensions for the seriously disabled from 63 to 65, starting with the 1952 cohort), the removal of opportunities for early retirement (e.g. for women, the unemployed and after old-age part-time working) and the introduction of further deductions for early retirement (deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2008). on the one hand, access to pensions for reductions in earning ability becomes more diffi cult (cf. on this amongst others brussig 2010) and private and company oldage pension provision is strengthened. on the other hand, particularly older workers are increasingly expected to maintain and apply their workability until reaching the new standard age limits in order to avoid de facto pension reductions. • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele742 nonetheless, the actual retirement age today is already far below the legal retirement age. in comparison to current labour market data, this is generally a positive development considering e.g. the increasing employment rates among the elderly. however, this does not apply to certain disadvantaged groups of employees on the labour market. for instance, among elderly employees, especially the unskilled workers, as well as older women and people with a migratory background, are affected by a less favourable position and by disadvantages on the labour market (bäcker et al. 2010; sporket 2010). getting back to work after losing their jobs becomes an insurmountable obstacle for some of these groups of employees when they become older (bundesagentur für arbeit 2008). for several years, policy-makers (also at european level) have been trying to counter negative perceptions of old age in companies’ personnel and management departments mostly with the aid of persuasive political measures. numerous employment policy measures, particularly intended to create incentives for companies to recruit elderly people, have been introduced by policy-makers as an attempt to improve the employability of elderly people. these measures, however, largely target older workers who are already unemployed or have no work. they hardly help to keep the elderly in employment or to maintain their workability. particularly older workers are not only especially affected by risks on the labour market, but are also increasingly subject to individual health-, skillsand employment-related risks. 3 employment risks of older female employees an individual’s workability depends on the interaction between human resources on the one hand and the demands of work on the other hand (oldenbourg/ilmarinen 2010). hence it constitutes a major condition for any individual’s employability. because of their structurally-weaker labour market situation, especially (older) women are subject to particular employment risks endangering their ability to work until retirement. one may presume that they accumulate gender-specifi c and age-typical risk factors. throughout their working lives, women are confronted with less favourable opportunities for development and promotion stemming from specifi c sectoral and work organisation-related factors. further, they are exposed to lower income and problems of reconciling employment and care for children and/or relatives in need of long-term care (naegele/reichert 1998; statistisches bundesamt 2010; leve/naegele/sporket 2009). furthermore, the increase in the frequency of part-time working arrangements, marginal employment as well as temporary employment is largely accounted for by women (klammer/tillmann 2001; bogedan/ rasner 2008). the insuffi ciently fl exible arrangements under social and labour law constituted by these “new” types of employment also lead to more precarious protection against social risks, such as unemployment or pension poverty. despite the constitutionally-entrenched principle of equal rights of men and women (art. 3 para. 2 of the basic law [gg]), the prohibition of discrimination in art. 3 para. 3 of the basic law and the anti-discrimination act (geleichbehandlungsgesetz – agg), which has been in force since 2006, and which additionally sanctions discrimina“retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 743 tion on grounds of age, research indicates that older female workers face multiple disadvantages. in particular, companies as places in which the conditions for employment opportunities for the elderly are created (naegele 1988) are still not at all adjusted for the needs of ageing staff. 3.1 work-related health risks ageing, understood as the entirety of time-related changes of the organism over its lifecycle (siegrist/dragano 2007: 7) is accompanied by a change in performance which is not an automatic process. as a variable biological process, it is determined by a large number of external infl uences. from a health science point of view, these infl uences include both genetic propensities and individual health–related behaviour. further, there are numerous environmental infl uencing factors, including the various conditions of the working environment. for this reason, it is diffi cult to speak of the typical older worker. also ageing processes and the often related health restrictions vary greatly among social groups, industrial sectors and professional groups (siegrist/dragano 2007: 7). not only the individual health-related behaviour and biological processes, thus not only age, are responsible for the rise of the increased health risk. also working conditions and strains to which workers are exposed and which accumulate over the working life have a signifi cant impact (behrens 2003). there is a verifi able link between the extent of the work-specifi c strain factors and the number of chronic diseases. the number of chronic diseases especially increases with age but also with the growing number of labour market strains. they can be found in particular in low-skilled groups of workers with large shares of heavy physical activity and little scope for individual choices and/or in those fi elds of work in which typical manual labour and/or production activities are carried out (naegele 2005: 215) (cf. on this also oldenbourg/ilmarinen 2010; sporket 2010). the presumption that the shift in the focus of employment towards the service sector would have positive effects on the strains in the working world has not been confi rmed. a representative survey on the topic “strains and demands as well as work-related diseases” shows that the classical strains resulting from working environments and conditions, as well as physical work demands, also play a major role in the service sector (jansen/müller 2000). for instance, 85 % of women in the service sector work in so-called female employment with relatively little freedom to act and considerable physical and mental strains. further fi elds of employment typical of women can also be found in offi ce, health-care, social service, and cleaning jobs (clemens 2006). this can be examplifi ed by the working profi le of a geriatric nurse, which is characterised by massive mental and physical strains and unfavourable working hours (frerichs et al. 2004; berufsgenossenschaft für gesundheitsdienst und wohlfahrtspfl ege 2007; naegele 2007). older female workers are typically subject to a work-related health risk, which is refl ected amongst other things in the fi gures on illness-related absenteeism. for instance, evaluations of data on inability to work show that the duration of inability to work increases from the age of 45. whilst the average duration of inability to work • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele744 among 30to 35-year-olds is only ten days per case, it increases continuously over all age groups until it peaks at 23 days per case in the age group of 60to 65-yearolds (bmas 2009). as to the duration of inability to work, no major differences are observed between the genders across the age groups (bmas 2010). this changes when cases of permanent inability to work are observed. they remain almost constant over the lifespan. their distribution only shows increased values at the beginning and at the end of the working life (sporket 2010; bmas 2009). among women until the age of 45, there is a slightly increased incidence of inability to work, which is caused by the multiple burdens of family work and gainful employment. a noticeable decline in the number of cases of inability to work can be observed in the age group of 60to 65-year-olds, which according to baillargeon is a result of the “healthy worker effect” (baillargeon 2001). according to this, workers with health restrictions are found less frequently in this age group since, presumably, they have already left work due to their impairment. hence, older workers are by no means more frequently ill. however, their illnesses usually last longer than those of younger people. the increased duration of the inability to work at old age is closely linked to the increase of chronic-degenerative diseases among these cohorts. work-related diseases such as diseases of the muscles and the skeleton, heart and circulatory diseases, as well as metabolic diseases, malicious tumours and multimorbidity are widely spread among these age groups. in addition to physical complaints at old age, mental disturbances also become increasingly signifi cant. these forms of work-related disease are also dominant among women but with a slightly altered emphasis. for instance, psychological diseases occur more frequently among women, which is caused by their greater likelihood to work in low-status employment, e.g. in the service sector (rki 2005; parent-thirion et al. 2007). at this point, it can be summarised that, despite a reduction in risks at work, health risks remain and that these are primarily due to the particular course of gainful employment. especially at old age, employees who are exposed to stressful working conditions for a long time have to expect negative consequences for their ability to work with regard to their health performance. in order to ensure that the workability can also be maintained in advanced age with longer exposure periods entailed by retirement at 67, and with restricted access to pensions for reduced ability to work; measures must be taken at company level which go beyond statutorily entrenched industrial safety and health protection. thereby, gender-specifi c differences in the identifi cation of protection factors in the promotion of resilience must be taken into account (fischer/hüther 2008). the risk potential of highly-demanding job requirements also depends on the availability of work-related and non-work-related supporting structures. these should additionally be considered when looking at potential opportunities to reduce the workload (lenhardt et al. 2010). 3.2 skill-related risks in addition to the health risks emerging mostly from the employmentand activityspecifi c requirements of work, older workers remain subject to a skill-specifi c risk. “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 745 the skills and qualifi cations of an individual are a major condition to actually perform a specifi c type of work (naegele 2005; ilmarinen 2005). frerichs and naegele identify a variety of individual skill-related risks which in most cases accumulate to create employment and deployment problems for older workers: skill-related risks emerging from individual age-specifi c performance changes,• intergenerational skill-related risks emerging, in statistical terms, from co-• hort effects, and risks of de-skilling or devaluation of existing skills becoming more signifi -• cant, especially in regard to the ongoing globalisation and technicalisation. previously-acquired skills are often no longer suffi cient to handle new challenges. various surveys based on available further training data, however, show that older workers in general, and older women in particular, have fewer chances to improve their fundamental skills by participating in further training. this decrease is caused by a decline of in-company training with age. only 33 % of the workers aged between 50 and 65 participate in further training, in contrast to 48 % of those under 50 years.2 this shows a signifi cant age-related decrease in participating in further training by a total of 15 % age points. if there is neither an enhancement of workers’ skills nor a systematic adjustment of initial working skills to modifi ed working skills, which are mostly technological knowledge requirements, older people are at risk of being supplanted by younger workers (frerichs/naegele 2001; sporket 2010). whilst the phenomenon of deskilling through technological development largely affects men, the risks for today’s older female workers lie fi rstly in the low level of initial skills. women with a low level of education do not even take part in in-company further training half as frequently as men with the same level of education (bmbf 2010). the further training data show additional structural disadvantages for women which accumulate with age-specifi c skills risks: for instance, women with children participate less frequently in further training than men with children (expertenkommission finanzierung lebenslangen lernens 2004; leber/möller 2007). 80 % of long-term family care for the parents or a partner is also carried out by women. often, this constitutes a risk for the ability to participate in the working life (maly-lukas 2003). the recourse to part-time employment is commonly used as an individual “problem-solving strategy”, as is the case with child-rearing. furthermore, it can be presumed that many of the affected women temporally give up gainful employment completely. hence, to a certain degree, their work potential is unavailable to the labour market (cf. naegele et al 2008). such family-related interruptions in careers are identifi ed as female deskilling risks. just like the various burden effects caused by a lack of reconciliation solutions (pietrzyk 2002; scherger 2007), they should be seen as central factors of gender-specifi c risks for the ability to continue working. 2 the data are based on the adult education survey 2007 carried out by tns infratest. • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele746 even where they have the same initial skills as men, women are mostly employed in lower-status positions or fi nd themselves in lower-status, female-dominated, worse-paid jobs which also have a negative impact on women’s participation in further training. the existing employment risks increase for such jobs because of unfavourable working conditions and the paucity of opportunities for skill-building (burchell et al. 2007; morschhäuser 2007; bellmann/leber 2003). this framework hence leads to a further exacerbation of the problems described. what is more, studies on the basis of the microcensus show alarmingly low further training rates, particularly among women who are not employed, which according to allmendinger were as low as 6.3 % in 2006 (bmfsfj 2009). these discrepancies lead to an exacerbation of the existing differences in the initial skills level3 between the genders, especially since measures, which could update or expand workers’ knowledge, are taken up less frequently. thus, the differences in participation in further training between the genders become even more obvious. in particular, in the case of in-company further training, women of all ages are at a disadvantage. this contrasts with the situation in external further training and general further training, where women’s participation is generally higher than that of men. the comparison with general further training shows that the reasons for women’s low level of participation in vocational further training do not stem from women’s individual conduct as a whole. rather, the reasons for this may lie in restricted access and in the management conduct of the companies (leber/möller 2007; expertenkommission finanzierung lebenslangen lernens 2004; bmbf 2010). the decision whether a person attends further training or not is therefore taken according to initial and vocational skills, gender, age and civil status, and hence consolidates the existing social differences. in the implementation of further training possibilities, special attention needs to be given to disadvantaged groups with cumulative participation risks. presuming that the requirements of the working world will continue to increase as a result of the globalisation of the markets, accelerated innovation dynamics, and the implementation of new forms of work and organisation (iw 2008; bmfsfj 2010b), a number of corresponding fi elds of action can be distilled in connection with retirement at 67. as a result of the shrinking and ageing workforce, employees who are older on average will have to deal with technological and organisational innovations. in order to preserve the workability, it is necessary to counter ageand status-related further training practices in companies and to create incentives for them to provide further training for their workers at an early stage. this is how workers can be enabled to maintain opportunities on the labour market even in the event of unemployment. due to ever shortening knowledge half-lives, new concepts such as the life-long learning approach play a major role when it comes to dealing with demographic change. knowledge must be updated early and tailored to the needs of a changing working world throughout people’s entire working lives in order for 3 leber and möller were unable to fi nd a link between older workers’ educational level and their participation in further training (2007). the individual’s occupational skills and the professional status are rather decisive in older age groups. “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 747 them to participate in the working life at an old age (bosch 2010). as the dependency on knowledge increases in all areas of life, both the efforts of enterprises’ to provide further training as well as the efforts of workers themselves are indispensable in order to guarantee workability and employability until the age of retirement. 3.3 risk of reconciliation due to the easier access to education and the consequently increased educational participation of the younger birth cohorts, the employment rates of women have constantly increased in recent years. nevertheless, these fi gures do not at all indicate an equal labour market integration of the genders. for instance, the problem of reconciling gainful employment with family or long-term care is also typical for female working biographies, and includes subsequent risks for the late phase of the working life and for pension provision (naegele/reichert 1998; reichert 2010). women with children are less frequently employed than women without children, whilst the situation is reversed among men. women’s labour force participation increases with older children, but even among mothers aged 40, it continues to be far lower than among fathers of the same age with 67 % in contrast to 89 % (statistisches bundesamt 2010). moreover, the increase in women’s labour force participation is partly characterised by an increase in part-time working (incl. marginal jobs). women frequently reduce their working hours in order to better reconcile family work with their gainful employment. although this allows them not to give up their employment, it nevertheless lowers their pension rights. in the microcensus 2008, 85 % of the mothers stated that they were reducing their working hours for childcare, care for persons in need of long-term care or disabled persons. the fathers, in contrast, mostly reduced their working hours because of a lack of full-time jobs (statistisches bundesamt 2010). women’s lower labour participation and the high frequency of women working part-time can therefore be traced back to the diffi culties encountered in adequately fulfi lling both professional and family duties. childcare largely remains the responsibility of women albeit the utilisation of professional care facilities has increased in recent years (bmfsfj 2010a). there is an additional family strain affecting women between 40 and 60. in 2007, more than two-thirds of all persons in need of long-term care (approx. 1.5 million) were being looked after in private households (statistisches bundesamt 2008a). in addition to ambulatory care services, mostly female relatives were providing the required care. an allensbach survey from 2008 revealed that 12.7 % of working mothers took care of both their underage children and their parents in need of long-term care (institut für demoskopie allensbach 2008). traditional housekeeping, such as cleaning, cooking and shopping for food is also mainly carried out by women. apparently, in the majority of households, nothing much has changed so far in the classical roles. to the contrary, it has often been passed on to the succeeding generations as girls are more frequently asked to do housekeeping than boys (bmfsfj 2010a). women’s disproportionate share of responsibilities in the family contrasts with the high demands of fl exibility and availability in the working life. as atypical em• barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele748 ployment becomes more common, the demands on workers increase. more often, they need to work on the weekends and in alternating shifts. they have to travel further to work and go on business trips. at the same time, as there is an increase in fi xed term contracts and temporary jobs, workers have to change their work location and adapt to new work processes at ever shorter periods (bmfsfj 2010a). these increasing strains are even more severe if they are neither countered by adequate support like public or charitable long-term care and childcare services, nor by fl exible working hours, nor a civic culture which encourages fathers to take on some of the family work . taking these aspects into account, it seems obvious that without any adequate support, single mothers are especially prone to risks regarding an incomplete working biography. hence, they are unable to suffi ciently secure their income at old age, since they have to take care of both gainful employment and family work (eichhorst/ thode 2009). furthermore, as a result of the postponed family formation caused by demographic changes, women often fi nd themselves in situations in which childcare and care of relatives in need of long-term care coincide. 3.4 risks associated with the organisation of work as we have shown so far, skill-related risks and opportunities, reconciliation or health are by no means equally spread but also depend on structural contexts and opportunities. therefore, different conditions of work organisation prevail in different sectors of the labour market, which infl uence the opportunities of older workers for development and health. in particular, sector-specifi c employment risks emerge for female workers. older women work much more frequently in lower-status fi elds of employment. jobs, which are typically carried out by women can mostly be found in the service sector, such as hotels and gastronomy, health-care and longterm care professions, as well as industrial cleaning jobs, and low-tech industries like the textile industry (stier/spindler 2006; klammer et al. 2000). industrial sectors, which are specialised in standardised mass production and offer infl exible jobs, rely on manual labour. as a result of the large share of typical wear-and-tear jobs, they lead to considerable individual health risks (frerichs 1998). a disproportionately high amount of piecework as well as night work and shift work are also found here, leading to further health risks. in particular, the experience of older workers is virtually not valued. further training campaigns are also rare, since lower skills are suffi cient for many jobs in these sectors. therefore, further training appears to offer poor economic returns to the hr department. furthermore, the use of human resources in these forms of organisation is usually temporary; often, activities cannot be carried out up to the age of retirement. the capacity of older workers is often restricted as a result of the strains involved in working under such conditions. as low-skilled workers can easily be substituted, they are frequently replaced by younger workers who have been subject to fewer such strains (lois 2005). as women are commonly working in the service sector, they are just as much affected by such work organisation-related risks as men. depending on the work “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 749 segment, service occupations also entail considerable physical and/or mental strain (frerichs 1998; stiehr/spindler 2006). work processes involving considerable physical strains specially occur in the typical female sectors of hotels, gastronomy, and building cleaning, as well as in the non-medical healthcare professions and longterm care professions. in addition, mental strains can arise from the low-status activities, which include close contact with customers and permanent confrontation with the extreme circumstances of persons in need of assistance and long-term care. similar to work in manufacturing company, these kinds of work are characterised by shift work and night work. in particular, women usually prefer such working time models in order to combine gainful employment and family work. thereby, solutions are preferred, which may entail extreme health and social risks, such as social isolation as a result of ongoing atypical working hours (sczesny 2003). structural changes within the industrial sector are caused by technological and economic rationalisation and economic globalisation. these developments lead to the decrease of industrial mass production with infl exible working structures, which is replaced by diversifi ed high-quality production based on knowledge and communication resources. there is a predominance of skill-related job hierarchies. usually, external access to employment is only possible at the lower end. the need for additional skills is covered by an increasing supply of in-company further training. under such conditions, there are closer ties between employers and employees and hence, there is a greater interest in long-term employment and participation in further training even at old age. older women are especially disadvantaged because of their lower initial skills when they started working. this can be observed in the underrepresentation of older female managers in germany. however, access also becomes more diffi cult for younger women since they are more likely to have discontinuous careers, for instance as a result of family-related interruptions (von alemann 2007). the changes in the world of work go hand-in-hand with the spread of new forms of work and management. studies indicate a comprehensive increase in resultsoriented work systems (klenner 2007; ahlers 2010; lenhardt et al. 2010; apitzsch 2009). the steering of work results, which becomes more important in the light of the internationalisation of work, may partly entail considerable autonomy in determining working hours and places. however, it also requires a high degree of personal responsibility and the adaption of the individual lifestyle in order to meet customer and market requirements (apitzsch 2009; klenner 2007). so far, too little research has been done on the change of working conditions and the work-related burdens with regard to older workers. nevertheless, multiple studies show a general increasing signifi cance of mental illness related to new forms of work and management (lenhardt et al. 2010). the ambivalent perception of the higher pressure to perform and to achieve objectives, as well as a lack of time resources, on the one hand, and the growing responsibility and self-regulation on the other, can easily lead to mental burdens and/or health risks. these occur, for example, if workers voluntarily extend their working hours, when they do not take breaks and avoid illnessrelated absence because of the high pressure to perform (ahlers 2010). such work organisational risks especially concern women who use such forms of employment • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele750 to reconcile of family and gainful employment. moreover, apitzsch refers to the farreaching implications, which the project orientated work may have for employees’ scheme of life, particularly with regard to the lower employment, promotion and income security as well as the high demands in terms of fl exibility (2009). 4 concept and fi ndings of the project “retirement at 67 – prerequisites for the ability of older female workers to continue working” the project “retirement at 67 – prerequisites for the ability of older female workers to continue working” tackles the problems that have been described so far. the research aimed at offering an insight into the employment situation and specifi c risks of older female workers. particular attention has been devoted, fi rstly, to the question how individual workers estimate their workability (cf. ilmarinen/tempel 2002) and, secondly, to the question how the respondents estimate their workability until reaching the new standard age limit. to answer these questions, the institute of gerontology at the tu dortmund carried out a national representative telephone survey in cooperation with tns infratest on behalf of the new quality of work initiative (initiative neue qualität der arbeit) (inqa) in 2007. 4.1 the sampling procedure and the methodology the population of the representative survey carried out in 2007 (naegele et al. 2008) was exclusively constituted by women who will be the fi rst to be affected by the increased statutory standard age limit from 2012 to 2029. at the time of the survey, all respondents were employees subject to mandatory social insurance at the time of the survey. these conditions are met by the 1947 to 1964 birth cohorts.4 the target population only pictures a small part of the total population, not least because fewer female employees subject to mandatory social insurance are found in the older age classes. for this reason, an address pool of tns infratest was used for taking the sample, which was generated in a representative omnibus telephone survey, the infrascope survey. on the basis of the infrascope sample, it was possible to take a representative (gross) sample in two steps. first, a representative sample was taken in accordance with the infrascope information (screening).5 subsequently, the respondents’ belonging to the population was checked in a prior survey (naegele et al. 2008). 4 women who applied for old-age part-time working before 1 january 2007 and are not affected by the increase in the age limit were excluded from the survey. 5 the mikrozensus 2005 and the employment statistics of the federal employment agency 2006 were used as reference statistics. “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 751 in 2007, computer-assisted telephone interviews (cati) were carried out for the survey. with a response rate of 34 %, 1,800 women could be interviewed whose characteristics corresponded to those of the population. the weighting of the relevant characteristics from the net sample guaranteed the adjustment to the structures in the population.6 the results of the survey permit representative conclusions regarding the employment situation of female employees subject to mandatory social insurance whose age today ranges from 46 to 63 (naegele et al. 2008).7 4.2 the work ability index the work ability index (wai) was used in this survey in order to be able to access and assess the respondents’ ability to work. the wai comprises a questionnaire, which was validated over a period of eleven years by the finnish institute of occupational health (fioh) in numerous multidisciplinary clinical longitudinal studies. the wai is not only a suitable tool to record subjectively-assessed workability, but due to its concept is also well-suited to predict inability to work (baua 2008). the wai consists of seven dimensions (tuomi et al. 1998): (1) assessment of current workability in comparison to best workability ever achieved (2) assessment of workability in relation to demands of work (3) number of diseases currently diagnosed by a doctor8 (4) estimated impairment of work performance as a result of the disease(s) (5) absenteeism in previous year (6) assessment of own workability in two years’ time (7) estimated extent of available mental performance reserves a point value can be attributed to each of these dimensions, which in total describes the ratio of current performance to the demands of work. it should be noted that the wai is able to indicate a need for action, however, the underlying conditions leading to better or worse ability to work cannot be recorded using the wai (wai netzwerk 2008). 6 the mikrozensus 2005 and the employment statistics of the federal employment agency were used as a data basis for the spread of the characteristics. year of birth, federal state, highest school qualifi cation (no qualifi cation/secondary general school/intermediate school leaving certifi cate/higher school-leaving certifi cate), extent of gainful employment (full-time/part-time) and occupational status (wage-earner/salaried employee) were included in the weighting. 7 the sample represents 4.913 million female workers, as of june 2006. 8 in the long version of the wai, the number of illnesses currently diagnosed by a doctor is checked using a list of 51 possible illnesses. in this research, the list was not used , and the number of diagnosed illnesses was asked for directly. • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele752 4.3 sample description the responding women were, on average, aged 50. as anticipated, the number of female employees subject to mandatory social insurance continuously falls with age. whereas 33 % of the 46-to-50 year-old women fall into this group, only 17 % were still employed at the age of 56 to 60. 59 % of the respondents are married and live with their spouses, whilst 21 % have been already divorced at least once; 5 % of female employees are widowed. equivalent to civil status, 43 % of older women live in two-person households, 23 % in three-person households and 15 % alone. the average net monthly household income is approximately 2,500 euros. as mentioned before, older women have a comparatively low level of schooling and vocational training, largely due to cohort-specifi c differences. in this survey, the differences in education are smaller than initially presumed, since the population includes those persons who were able to benefi t from the expansion in education since the mid-1960s. this picture is also refl ected in the spread of the highest school qualifi cation. nearly 80 % of women in employment have graduated from a secondary general or intermediate school. almost one woman in four aged between 43 and 60 has attained a qualifi cation to enter technical school or university. by comparison, in 2007, 40 % of 20-to-30 year-olds have a comparable qualifi cation (statistisches bundesamt 2008b). regarding the highest educational qualifi cation of older female employees, that is the level of formal vocational qualifi cations, it is noticeable that 58 % of all respondents more than half have graduated from vocational school, have done an apprenticeship or passed an apprentice’s examination. 13 % state that they have successfully graduated from a specialist vocational school or a higher commercial college, whilst 9 % of the respondents do not have vocational training qualifi cation. 10 % of female workers have graduated from university. tab. 1: description of the sample, n=1800, 2007 characteristics of female employees subject to mandatory social insurance age 50 (min. 43; max. 60) civil status married, living with spouse: 59 % married, separated: 4 % single: 11 % divorced: 21 % widowed: 5 % highest school qualification secondary general school: 39 % intermediate school leaving certificate/intermediate school (gdr: 10th grade of a polytechnic secondary school [pos]): 38 % (technical) higher school leaving certificate/technical school or university entrance qualification (gdr: further secondary school [eos]): 23 % source: own calculations, 2007 “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 753 4.4 employment situations of older female workers 27 % of the pool of responding women consists of wage-earners and 73 % of salaried employees. the vocational status falls among wage-earners, whilst it increases among employees with age. the lion’s share of female employees subject to mandatory social insurance is employed in small and medium-sized enterprises. only 16 % work in large enterprises with more than 500 employees. the following sectors are dominant here: public service (23 %), industry and manufacturing (19 %), other private industry (17 %) and retail (16 %). the present study also confi rms the segregation of the labour market. for instance, the respondents consider the share of women at their workplace to be, on average, as high as 85 %. the work climate towards older workers is furthermore generally perceived as being highly positive. 4.5 work-related strains and the workability until retirement in the survey, particular attention has been focused on the individual assessment of the respondents’ workability. the workability, which is also referred to as the ability to cope with work, was measured by using the wai. it is noticeable that the workability is generally considered positive among the responding age groups. female workers have an average wai of 41 points, corresponding to the category “good”. in total, 82 % of female workers have a “good” or “very good” wai value. however, this also means that 18 % have a mediocre or poor workability (cf. fig. 1). here, both age and the highest school qualifi cation correlate only weakly with the wai value. a sector-specifi c analysis revealed more prominent values. 33 % of women employed in charitable organisations or public facilities have a mediocre or poor wai value. note that more than half of the employees in these sectors work in health or social care professions. the different job-specifi c strains become obvious when the strains of work are analysed: approximately three quarters of women working in metallurgical occupations (71 %) and production (78 %) experience damaging environmental infl uences such as noise, chemicals, poor air or extreme temperatures. further, 40 % of the cleaning staff is affected by these conditions. pressure from superiors is particularly experienced by women in metallurgical occupations (44 %) but also by sales assistants (27 %). 15 % of sales assistants, 10 % of cleaners and 10 % of women working in characteristic production jobs suffer from condescending or undignifi ed treatment by other people. one-sided strains and activities like constant sitting or standing as well as heavy work are generally widespread among nearly all work groups: more than half of the respondents are frequently or always subject to this form of strain. a multivariate regression model was estimated in order to identify work strains, which in fact have a negative impact on the workability, and which consequently also have a negative effect on the possibility to continue to work until the statutory age limit. work strains categorised as “heavy work/ one-sided strains”, “damaging environmental infl uences”, “time pressure and/or stress”, “condescending treatment”, “pressure from superiors”, “pressure from colleagues”, “performance competition with colleagues”, and “confrontation with other people’s problems” ap• barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele754 pear to have a highly-signifi cant infl uence on the wai. if female workers are permanently exposed to such work strains, this has a negative impact on the wai value (cf. tab. 2). “high level of concentration” emerged as a positive predictor. this demand can largely be attributed to higher-status positions. the relevance of this study is highlighted especially by the data on future gainful employment against the background of a successive increase in the standard age limit. 42 % of women assess the conditions for being able to exercise their current activity until the statutory retirement age as “negative” or “highly negative”.9 according to the responding women health conditions that are required to work until reaching the standard age limit are mostly missing. 43% see their own health condi9 it should be noted here that the lion’s share of respondents underestimate their personal retirement age, which means that they presume that they can retire earlier without any deductions. 74 percent of female workers share this misconception, and only one in eight correctly assess their retirement age. fig. 1: workability in accordance with the work ability index (in percent) very goodgoodmediocrepoor 43% 39% 15% 3% * multiple responses possible source: own calculations, 2007 “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 755 tions as a major or somewhat major problem. the assessments tend to be positive with regard to the skills prerequisites. 41 % consider them as no problem at all; 20 % only anticipate minor problems in the future. 4.6 participation of older female workers in further training a large number of measures are conceivable and necessary in order to enhance the workability and to prepare for extended working lives. almost half of the respondent female workers state that they had taken part in vocational further training in the past two years. whereas 59 % – so far more than half – of the salaried employees have attended in-company further training in the past two years, only 17 % among wage-earners participated in such training. it is further shown within the status groups that participation in in-company further training increases with the level of skills. the highest value, which is found among the highly-skilled and senior salaried employees, is at 80 %. the participation rates are very low in the hotel and gastronomy sector, where only one in ten attended in-company further training in the past two years. in the two years before the survey, women working in the metallurgical sector (27 %) or the cleaning sector (6 %), as well as female sales assistants (31 %) also have hardly attended in-company further training. furthermore, the participation rates fall clearly in the higher working age (56 to 60) – especially among women who started working with only low formal qualifi cations. it is positive that more than 60 % of women state that they found it easier to perform their (current) activity after further training. nearly 40 % stated an increastab. 2: the infl uence of work strains and demands on the work ability index work strains/demands b heavy work/one-sided strains -1.712*** damaging environmental influences -1.406*** high level of concentration 1.187*** minor errors, major damage -.268 time pressure and/or stress -1.231*** condescending treatment -1.063*** difficult decisions .467** constant friendliness .495** development of new ideas -.315* pressure from superiors -1.284*** pressure from colleagues -3.103*** performance competition with colleagues -.792*** confrontation with other people’s problems -.514*** linear regression. r²=0.159. ***. **. * represents p ≤ 1/ 5/ 10 %. source: own calculations, 2007 • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele756 ing job security, and 37 % were given more responsibilities after completing the training. however, one in fi ve participants did not experience any change. privatelyorganised further training is also highly important for maintaining the workability. thus, almost 40 % of the respondents stated that they had privately invested in vocational further training. in addition to work-related and private further training, almost half of the respondents take other measures to maintain their workability, which are mainly related to sports (62 %), healthy living (13 %) and a healthy diet (11 %). 4.7 conditions for working until the age limit female workers consider it to be mostly their own responsibility to maintain their workability: 80 % state that it is their own responsibility to maintain and develop their workability. more than half of female workers further state that employers or company management are also responsible. it is noticeable that neither the workers’ and staff councils, nor the trade unions are perceived to have considerable responsibility in this fi eld, even though 60 % of the respondents work in a company with a workers’ or a staff council. considerable personal responsibility goes together with explicit demands, especially concerning the working conditions and the organisation of work. when asked what is still required to enable employees to continue working until the new retirement age, more than 50 % of the female employees considered a reduction in the strains of work to be the most important prerequisite. a better reconciliation of fig. 2: conditions for working until the age limit* (in percent) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 customised workplaces changed working hours skill-building greater recognition of the work performance reconciling work and private obligations reducing strains at work 54% 46% 37% 36% 35% 27% * multiple answers possible source: own calculations, 2007 “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 757 work and private obligations as well as a greater recognition of their work performance were also deemed important (cf. fig. 2). the women were further interviewed with regard to their expectations towards the employers. in terms of their own workability, 68 % of female workers considered health-promotion measures in their enterprise or company to be effi cient. as shown in figure 3, the promotion of further training also corresponds with the wishes of older female workers. 66 % of the respondents would like to be informed about further training in the future. almost as many respondents think that the leave of absence in order to attend further training contributes to their workability. 61 % of the respondents hope for greater challenges at work and/or more demanding work in order to maintain their ability to work. 4.8 new and old reconciliation-related problems to be responsible for an average of 77 % of the housework is only one of many factors of the multiple strains faced by female employees at work and in their families. almost 60 % of the respondents would like more fl exible working hours in order to improve the reconciliation of private and work obligations. the high frequency of part-time working among women indicates that until now, these demands have only been met to an inadequate degree. approximately 40 % of the responding female employees subject to mandatory social insurance were working part-time, whereas 3 % were in marginal employment or were working less than 15 hours per week. in fig. 3: support by the employer* (in percent) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 trainer to cope with projects or tasks personal advice and talks flex. working hrs to improve reconcil. offering demanding challenges release to attend further training information about further training health-promoting measures 68% 66% 65% 61% 59% 57% 41% * multiple answers possible source: own calculations, 2007 • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele758 a work-orientated social security system, this leads to statutory pensions insurance expectancies, which hardly cover subsistence costs. approximately 50 % of the women state that family and/or personal obligations are the main reason for a reduced work volume. these obligations mostly include childcare, as well as long-term care of relatives. for instance, in addition to their gainful employment, nearly half of the women with children in their household care at least partly for at least one under-age child. with the youngest child’s median age of 17, it could be presumed that care obligations of children in the surveyed age classes play a less prominent role than in the previous working years. on the contrary, one in ten respondents is affected by the “new” version of the reconciliation problem, namely the reconciliation of gainful employment and long-term care. 68 % of the affected women spend an average of 15 hours per week on taking care of a parent. these women have already been caring for the same person for an average of fi ve years. the vast majority of 75 % do not receive any professional support. amongst others, risks resulting from reconciliation problems may be alleviated if employers enable their female workers to arrange fl exible working conditions and working hours. each individual’s autonomy of choice plays a highly decisive role here. only 18 % of the women, who are affected by the “new” reconciliation problem, had the opportunity to work from home. only 33 % were able to spontaneously take time off to reduce overtime. in each case, nearly half of the women performing long-term care were able to briefl y leave their workplace to make phone calls during work or/and make fl exible working hours arrangements. the employer did not offer any of these possibilities for 24 % of the affected respondents. considering that 30 % of the working women in the respective age classes assess the likelihood of having to accomplish (additional) long-term care in the coming fi ve years as very high or fairly high, it becomes clear that there is a major need for action. 5 conclusion and recommendations for action the income oriented german pension system establishes and consolidates existing imbalances between social groups, which develop during people’s working lives until old age. only people who acquire suffi cient expectancies in statutory pensions insurance during their working life have suffi cient security at old age (bäcker et al. 2010). private and in-company old-age pension, which has become considerably more signifi cant since the latest reform of the public pensions system focus mostly on income. therefore, gainful employment can not only be seen as the most important mean for social recognition and for the creation of identity. primarily, it secures the personal or family existence at old age. interruptions in careers, such as unemployment and/or child-rearing and family work, as well as having part-time jobs, largely lead to lower pension claims at old age and to an increasing employment risk. especially female careers, which are frequently typifi ed by discontinuity, mobility, variations and caesuras (stiehr/spindler 2006; leve et al. 2009), carry an aggravated risk of poverty at old age. “retirement at 67” – findings on the employment situation of older female workers • 759 workability is considered to be a prerequisite for employability. hence, it is a decisive factor for the possibility to remain at work until the age of 67. individual physical and skills-related resources constitute the fundamental prerequisite for employment, and hence, for a suffi ciently secure income at old age. if women shall be enabled to generally extend their working lives, numerous measures are necessary, which should particularly focus on the design of the working conditions. therefore, especially companies are asked to cooperate and address this challenge. negative effects on the ability to work for particular groups must be recognised at an early stage and ageing-friendly jobs must be created. thus, the present analysis of promoting the workability of older female workers leads to the following recommendations for action: measures to maintain and promote health, should focus especially on re-• ducing health-endangering work-related strains. an effective intervention requires analyses of the demands and strains at work. there is a particular need to account for the mental strains of work that can be found in the service sector as well as in the production industries. these strains stem from growing performance pressure and rising productivity demands together with a shortage of staff. gender-specifi c aspects should be taken into account when measures to re-• duce the strains of work are introduced in the work organisation in order to enhance the workers’ resilience. our results clearly show specifi c strains for women such as stress and pressure caused by the interaction with superiors, colleagues, customers, and clients. this indicates a need for health-promoting measures to supervise and strengthen the employees’ self-responsibility, particularly in social work jobs and health-care professions. furthermore, in these occupational groups and in the service sector, measures to promote team building and team development should be implemented to improve the working environment by strengthening social relationships at work. working time policy should receive particular attention. the available data • prove that respondents are highly sensitive to strains emanating from the place and duration of work. this signals a pressing demand for more real autonomy in organising working hours, including innovative forms of management of work organisation and work design. in future, companies should take the “new” reconciliation-related problems • into account and establish support structures to maintain and promote especially the female employees’ ability to work – particularly, when considering “two-fold strains”. this includes advice and information for employees concerning long-term care for relatives as well as cooperation with social care services. • barbara zimmer, verena leve, gerhard naegele760 this study further highlights a need for additional further training and skill-• building measures. further individual training measures can help today’s older female workers to compensate their lack of skills due to the course of their working life. with regard to the ageing employees and especially with regard to the unskilled workers, the participation in further training measures must be facilitated from the start in order to increase the employability of groups, which are at particular risk. future challenges of technological work organisational innovation must be • addressed by ageand status-related further training practice in companies. thus, incentives for companies must be created to provide further training and skill-building for their employees early in their working lives. as our results show, there is a high willingness among female workers to participate in further training measures. a considerable number of respondents also report employment-promoting effects of further training. consequently, there will be a future need to establish more informal further training in fi elds of employment with a high proportion of women. for instance, measures like on-the-job training or rotation procedures could be implemented. due to part-time working, as well as family phase-related interruptions, • women are clearly disadvantaged when it comes to participating in vocational further training. however, they often gain certain skill profi les in private life through informal learning contexts which should be higher valued and included in company practice. as shown in this study, older female workers are quite aware of their em-• ployment situation and are willing to contribute to a reduction of potential risks and dangers. this major potential should be used to a greater degree than it has been in the past. however, there is often a lack of the required in-company and political contexts. when initiating and implementing corresponding measures at company level, the role of representative bodies is of great relevance and they should be made aware of the special employment situation faced by women. generally, a culture of recognition and appreciation should be established in • companies, which especially includes older 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[doi: 10.1007/s00391-006-0350-1]. tuomi, kaija et al. 1998: work ability index. 2nd revised edn. helsinki: finnish institute of occupational health. wai netzwerk 2008: http://www.arbeitsfähigkeit-uni-wuppertal.de, 20.08.10. von alemann, annette 2007: unterrepräsentanz ohne ende? geschlechterungleichheit bei führungseliten der deutschen wirtschaft. in: wsi mitteilungen 9/2007: 487-493. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research. the reviewed and author’s authorised original article in german is available under the title “„rente mit 67“ – befunde zur erwerbssituation älterer arbeitnehmerinnen”, doi 10.4232/10.cpos-2010-17de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2010-17de7, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 31.08.2010 date of acceptance: 18.02.2011 barbara zimmer ( ), verena leve, prof. dr. gerhard naegele. institut für gerontologie an der technischen universität dortmund, dortmund, germany. e-mail: zimmer@post.uni-dortmund.de, verena.leve@uni-dortmund.de, orka@post.uni-dortmund.de url: http://www.ffg.uni-dortmund.de comparative population studies – zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) © federal institute for population research 2011 – all rights reserved published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider layout and print: federal institute for population research, wiesbaden (germany) managing editor / redaktion frank swiaczny copy editor / schlussredaktion dr. evelyn grünheid scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (göttingen) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) henriette engelhardt-wölfl er (bamberg) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (zürich) joshua goldstein (rostock) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) franz-josef kemper (berlin) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) editorial on the special issue “family values and family norms. what impact does culture have on familial and generative behaviour?” detlev lück in a survey on “where does family research stand?” hartmann tyrell (2006) expresses two impressions. the fi rst: “in recent decades, [rational choice theory] has become the dominating theory of orientation within german family sociology” (tyrell 2006: 142, all direct quotations have been translated from german into english by cpos). the second: “the hegemony of rational choice theory [is] not good for family sociology” (tyrell 2006: 142). this special issue aims to contribute to rectifying this d rawback or to clarifying whether it truly is a drawback. preliminary, some refl ections shall be made here, on the current situation of the theoretical landscape in family research, on the contribution of the various theoretical approaches as well as on the conceptualisation of cultural-normative approaches; afterwards the empirical articles are presented. it is true that in the past two decades much use has been made of quantitative microdata and benefi ts-oriented action theories to explain familial and most of all generative behaviour, as in many sociological (sub-)disciplines. strictly speaking, this is less a hegemony of rational choice approaches in general (for an overview cf. hill/kopp 2006: 102-146), which (as shown in the following) are based in part on quite complex actor models, but, in very concrete terms, of economic explanatory approaches such as the human capital approach and new household economics (becker 1993). there are multiple reasons for this. one is the rapidly growing availability of survey data and of powerful computers and statistical software for their analysis. this also logically has led empirical social research to shift more to quantitative microanalyses. these analyses are theory-led, for which economic theoretical approaches lend themselves in particular. for one, comparatively distinct projections can be derived from economic theories, which facilitate the formation of hypotheses. in addition, these usually argue using “hard facts,” which can be easily ascertained using standardised measuring instruments. yet the interest in economic theories has also grown for reasons of theoretical and content nature. after all, the individualisation thesis of beck and beck-gernsheim (1993, 1994) proclaims liberation of individuals in the late modern age from traditional constraints and greater personal responsibility for shaping their own biographies. rather than prefabricated “normal biographies,” today we live personally designed “self-made biographies.” if we pursue this thesis, we must presume that comparative population studies vol. 39, 3 (2014): 451-464 (date of release: 29.09.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-12en9 • detlev lück452 since the 1970s, rationally balancing individual costs and benefi ts has truly become a (more) important way of explaining biographical events (schimank 2007: 165-166). against this background, rational choice approaches appear timely. ultimately, even empirical fi ndings provide arguments in favour of the turn to economic approaches in the late 20th century, particularly in family research. the drastic drop in fertility in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, can be relatively simply and plausibly explained with increased opportunity costs of motherhood. so, why shouldn’t we explain familial and generative behaviour by means of benefi ts-oriented action theories? in recent years the economic paradigm has come – at least a bit – under pressure because it encountered empirical contradictions. in spite of some approximation tendencies, the patriarchal-complementary division of work between the sexes in relationships, for example, has remained inexplicably stable if one considers that women today have the same educational levels as men (wengler et al. 2009; beckdomżalska 2007). it even re-traditionalises in the course of a relationship, in particular in the course of family formation (huinink/reichart 2008; schulz/blossfeld 2010). this cannot be explained through opportunity costs alone. as for the relationship between human capital and fertility, apparently the same economic rules do not apply for the decisions of women and men. while a high educational level lowers the probability of a woman becoming a mother, it raises the probability of a man to become a father (schmitt/winkelmann 2005: 8-11). the theory also encounters contradictions in an international comparison. for example, in english-speaking countries like the usa, uk, australia or new zealand, a comparatively large number of children are born in spite of low governmental support for childcare and correspondingly poorer career and family compatibility (sardon 2006). there are, however, also many fi ndings that confi rm the assumptions of economic theories, for example the negative correlation between education and parenthood among women or the positive correlation between childcare rates and fertility. this partial plausibility suggests that we should not completely reject the economic view of families, but fl ank and supplement it with other complementary theoretical approaches. even hartmann tyrell does not criticise rational choice per se, but “mind you: the hegemony” (tyrell 2006: 142). there are many alternative theoretical approaches. the hegemony of rational choice could be reduced, for example, through increased consideration of interactionist, constructivist theories such as “doing family” (jurczyk/lange 2002) or of social practice theories such as bourdieu’s (2005). however, the main issue should be how the economic approach can be supplemented within methodological individualism, whereby our gaze is drawn mainly to cultural action theories. in spite of the dominance of economic explanations, cultural approaches never fully disappeared from family research. for example, the theory of the second demographic transition (van de kaa 1987; lesthaeghe 1992) is highly popular until today, particularly in demographics. it attributes changes in generative behaviour in particular to a value shift (inglehart 1977, 1995). the theory of gender arrangements (pfau-effi nger 1996; pfau-effi nger et al. 2009) and others argue that national differences not only stem from different economic circumstances, but also are linked to family values and family norms • 453 “norms, values and leitbilder”* (pfau-effi nger 1996: 467). however these two theoretical approaches are hardly able to break the hegemony of rational choice for they do not offer any extensive explanatory approaches, but are limited to very specifi c issues and contexts. the second demographic transition theory “only” explains the change of patterns of familial behaviour in the 1960s and 1970s. the gender arrangement theory mainly explains national differences in maternal labour force participation within europe. broad action theories that include cultural explanatory approaches are few and far between. one of these is the role theory, which played a dominant role in family sociology a few decades ago mainly to explain the division of work between women and men in relationships. it is still signifi cant today, but its application to gender differences and the concept of gender roles (at least in gender studies) in particular have come under fi re. for one, the concept is seen as too infl exible and too static (lorber 1999: 41-42; rendtorff/moser 1999: 316). also, the gender role concept is said to obstruct the view of power and inequality structures in gender relations (lenz/adler 2010: 23). but most of all, this interpretation of gender roles is criticised for suggesting something that is only relevant in specifi c social contexts (in the offi ce, the club, at home) and therefore only in certain phases in the course of the day and lifetime. it applies to the roles of “mother” and “father,” but not for the situation-independent circumstance of being a “woman” or a “man,” thus making the term “gender roles” unsuitable (hirschauer 2001: 215). the criticism formally does not apply at least to dahrendorf’s interpretation of role theory, the more so as dahrendorf (1977: 54-56) considers very general and timeless categories – like being a woman or man, adult, catholic or german – as roles. yet the criticism that role theory is less plausible if the reference group to whose expectations an actor is aligned is society as a whole is justifi ed. according to this criticism, role theory merely offers access to understanding social relationships and behaviour patterns within the family, but not to gender or culture specifi c behaviour patterns prior to family formation, such as the decision to have children or not or specifi c strategies in choosing a partner. indeed, the contours of the expectation-steered “homo sociologicus” become clearer if we imagine him or her in the context of a group or, better yet, an organisation, and link them to more specifi c, formally designated positions. in other contexts it is often diffi cult to defi ne what actor is playing what role and what the relevant reference groups and expectations are to which they are aligned. that which makes people align themselves to genderand culture-specifi cally defi ned normal biographies is possibly more subtle than role theory would make us think. one concept that attempts to make this infl uence timelier is that of “familienleitbilder” (“family-related guiding images”) (diabaté/lück 2014). the concept is primarily used in pfau-effi nger’s gender arrangement approach. pfau-effi nger partly equates the core of the gender culture that makes national differences in the em* the german term „leitbild“ stands for „guiding images“ or „cultural models“ (pfau-effi nger 2004: 382) • detlev lück454 ployment behaviour of women understandable with “norms, values and leitbilder” (pfau-effi nger 1996: 467); later describing it with the terms “gender-cultural models,” “family models” or “cultural leitbilder” (pfau-effi nger 2001: 493-494). however, she defi nes the concept fuzzily and mainly uses it only in a macro-sociological sense. diabaté and lück therefore base their conceptualisation on katharina d. giesel, according to whose defi nition leitbilder “[combine] socially divided ... notions of a desired or desirable and basically attainable future...” (giesel 2007: 245). in diabaté and lück’s interpretation, the notions combined in leitbilder are not necessarily socially controlled by the social environment, nor even necessarily defi ned by the actors themselves as consciously desirable. they are frequently unquestioned notions of normality that are perceived as a matter of course; some of them that the sociology of knowledge calls everyday knowledge or the reality of everyday life (berger/luckmann 2001: 21-48) and that the theory of frame selection (esser 1990, 2002) would consider a pairing of frame and script (i will go into this theory and its terminology later). leitbilder are not called up in order to avoid ostracism or other negative sanctions, but to gain orientation in a complex decision-making situation without having suffi cient information about the advantages and disadvantages (or even merely the existence) of the various available options. in this sense, the approach attempts to be compatible with the constructivist perspective of the doing family approach (jurczyk/lange 2002) and other concepts from the sociology of knowledge and interactionism. at the same time, the concept is oriented to methodological individualism so that it can be operationalised for quantitative research, and claims to supplement the rational choice perspective in the explanation of familial and generative behaviour in a complementary way. familienleitbilder (or familyrelated leitbilder) are internalised by individuals due to their socialisation and thus independent of positions and functions. they can vary from one person to the next and hence can basically explain individual behavioural differences. they tend, however, to be collectively shared within societies, regions, milieus and generations so that they can also be drawn upon, for example, to explain national differences and form an element of a culture. in addition to social roles and family-related leitbilder, there are a number of other culturall y normative concepts that can generally be used to explain familial and generative behaviour such as norms and values. in light of the diversity of terms and their not always uniform usage, a disambiguation would be appropriate. it is based on prevalent defi nitions and – at least for the articles in this volume – aims to ensure uniform terminology (cf. fig. 1). we therefore understand an attitude to be a relatively tangible, individual, normative, judgemental conviction (e.g. “the mother of a toddler should not go to work”). fuchs-heinritz et al. defi ne the term in part as “a relatively stable, learned disposition or willingness to react to an object [...] with certain (positive or negative) emotions, perceptions and notions as well as behaviours” and point out that largely the affective component is considered central (fuchs-heinritz et al. 2007: 156). individual convictions that refer not to a normative assessment/judgement, but to an empirical fact are called assumptions (e.g. “a toddler suffers when his/her family values and family norms • 455 mother goes to work”). these are often suited for justifying attitudes and are therefore methodically sometimes used in place of attitude indicators. preferences are subjective weightings of various options (e.g. “i’d rather go to work and remain childless than remain at home with a child”). unlike attitudes, they do not consist of assessments, but of a relation between a number of assessments and are thus methodically not measured by rating, but by ranking them. relatively abstract, individual, normative, judgemental convictions should be seen as (individual) values or value orientations (e.g. “[i feel that] equal rights are [worth striving for]”). clyde kluckhohn (1976: 395) offers a broadly used defi nition of values: “a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which infl uences the selection from available modes, means and ends of action.” thus, the defi nition encompasses the two different terms used here of (individual) values and social values. values or value orientations differ from attitudes in that they do not take a stance on any tangible issue, but cite general principles that may be relevant in all sorts of situations yet are always in need of interpretation. if values are considered the consensus in a certain social collective, they are called social values. if an attitude is also considered consensus, we call it public opinion. like attitudes, this differs from social values in that it takes a stance on tangible issues. notions of normality, which can also occur combined as leitbilder, were introduced above. these are also subjectively internalised convictions. they are also normative in the sense that they demand a certain behaviour or aspiration for a certain condition. yet they are not normatively judgemental in the narrower sense: their directive is not based on an actor considering a certain behaviour worth aspiring to, but that he has not considered – whether for lack of time, whether for convenience – the existence and the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives. he fig. 1: systematisation of culturally normative concepts source: author’s schematic depiction level individual (micro) collective (macro) conviction (subjectively internalised) ... with regard to a normative assessment (consciously considered) d eg re e o f a b st ra ct io n general / abstract individual value social value specific / tangible attitude public opinion ... with regard to a relation of normative assessments specific / tangible preference — ... with regard to an empirical fact specific / tangible assumption — ... with regard to an understood necessity (if unconsidered) (not specified) individual notion of normality cultural notion of normality directive (socially controlled) (not specified) expectation social norm • detlev lück456 goes without any deliberation, and therefore subjective assessment, and instead adopts an existing, presumably proven script of action. notions of normality are also commonly collectively shared, so we can differentiate between individual and cultural notions of normality. social norms are (usually tacit) directives based on public opinion or social values that demand to be adhered to or implemented. following such a directive is controlled through positive and negative sanctions. social norms are defi ned relatively beyond dispute as “mutually known and accepted standards (rules) of coexistence” (schäfers 1995: 26, other explanations can be found i.e. in bellebaum 1994: 36-50). when directives address one specifi c individual or one single holder of specifi c roles, we call them expectations. dahrendorf, for instance, does not defi ne the term “expectation,” but uses such terms as “demand” (dahrendorf 1977: 27) and “demands of society,” as synonyms, which can refer to the behaviour, appearance and character of a holder of positions (dahrendorf 1977: 33). i t may be a major difference for the subjective perceptions of an individual whether she, for example, acts according to her convictions or bends reluctantly to the social pressure of her environment and does what is expected of her. to this extent, it is quite advisable to differentiate between the various culturally normative concepts at the theoretical level. at the methodically empirical level this proves quite diffi cult. often it is left to the subjective interpretation of researchers whether they wish to recognize the impact of normative pressure or of personal convictions in a statistical correlation between a behavioural pattern and a so-called “attitude variable” and what concept they use to characterise these. the possibilities for differentiation are limited, in particular for quantitative research with its standardised measurement instruments. thus, this question may be better off in reference to qualitative, perhaps even psychological research. linking the infl uence of culturally normative notions and economic utility maximisation is a challenge that is just as important for both methodology and for theory. there have been many proposals in the past – many from rational choice proponents – about how this interaction can be described theoretically. the subjective expected utility approach (savage 1954; esser 1991) assigns individual subjectivity a decisive role both in the defi nition of utility and the estimation of occurrence probability, whereby a rational consideration process remains the core of decisionmaking. bernhard nauck (2001) drew up a value of children approach that goes back to lois w. hoffmann and martin l. hoffman (1973) and assumes that the decision to have children or not is an economic one, yet includes both positive emotions and a rise in social status as possible utilities or values of children and thus offers a point of contact for supra-individual cultural assessments. the rreemm model (lindenberg 1985) proposes fusing homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus into a “resourceful restricted evaluating expecting maximising man.” our search takes us back to classics like max weber who describes, for example, purposeand value-rational actions as ideal types of logics of action (weber 1984), or talcott parsons, according to whose general theory of action, action (as all systems) is oriented to the four functions of the agil scheme: adaptation, goal-attainment, integration and latent pattern maintenance (parsons 1978; parsons/shils family values and family norms • 457 1951; parsons/platt 1990). uwe schimank’s action theory, whose three logics of action besides homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus also includes the “identitätsbehaupter” (“identity preserver”) (schimank 2007), also offers a solution. most recently, hartmut esser’s theory of frame selection (1990, 2002) has been relevant in family sociology. besides economic rationality it includes cultural and, in some circumstances, unconsidered routines, which may lend a marriage stability, for example, or can make the decision to split up practically irreversible, even if current cost-benefi t calculations do not make it appear comprehensible. esser assumes that actors attempt to interpret each situation they fi nd themselves in and allocate them to a culturally prefabricated category of situations that he calls a frame. the choice of a certain frame usually results in a specifi c action pattern or script. the better and more distinctly the frame matches the current situation, the more likely is it that the actor will choose an automatic, spontaneous mode of action rather than undertaking conscious, rational refl ection and thus practically calls up the script as a knee-jerk reaction. social psychology provides another approach that combines rational deliberation and culturally normative infl uences: the theory of planned behaviour put forth by icek ajzen (1985, 1987, 1991). it starts from the question of the relationship between intentions and actions and correspondingly includes a dual infl uencing mechanism. accordingly, people’s actions (in the theory: behaviour) are determined by their behavioural intention coupled with their perceived behavioural control. (“perceived behavioural control” is an individual’s belief in her ability to be able to truly act in the intended manner and is similar to the concept of self-effi cacy (cf. hilkenmeier/van treeck 2007; tavousi et al. 2009).) behavioural intention is infl uenced by the actor’s individual attitudes towards the possible action as well as by the actor’s perceived social norms (“subjective norms”), coupled with his perceived behavioural control. individual attitudes are not understood as purely culturally normative constructs, but as a product of subjective assessment of the possible consequences of an action and their subjectively perceived probability of occurring – a concept that is similar to the subjective expected utility theory. similarly, “subjective norms” are a product of the motivation to fulfi l the expectations of a certain attachment fi gure and assumptions of what this fi gure expects of one. to this extent, not only the infl uencing factor of perceived behavioural control exhibits parallels with economically rational action theory, but also the other two. culturally normative concepts can be found in the infl uencing factor of social norms and in individual attitudes. each of these approaches, depending on the issue and context, may be suited to adequately describe the interplay of culture and utility-oriented deliberation. the choice is left to the theoretical viewpoint of the researcher; how appropriate this choice was is left to a confrontation with empiricism. for the rest, this summary reveals that the theoretical models exhibit a surprising degree of common ground and that some basic fi gures are repeated. this calls for us to outline a condensed synthesis of these basic fi gures; a model in which the majority of the theoretical approaches might each be categorised as special cases (see fig. 2). i will omit only the concept of perceived behavioural control from the theory of planned behaviour, which is rarely considered in family sociology, and thus practically reduce it to its • detlev lück458 predecessor, the theory of reasoned action (fishbein/ajzen 1975; ajzen/fishbein 1980). this synthesis consists of seven assumptions: • an actor’s behaviour can result both from conscious rational deliberation and from consciously being led by emotions and intuition (“gut decisions”) or can arise from undeliberated automatisms. we should therefore not speak of an action theory, but of a behavioural theory. • there are two fundamental modes of behavioural logic: economicor utilityoriented deliberation and behaviour infl uenced by cultural norms. utility is not solely monetary benefi t in the strict economic sense, but, for example, also a material benefi t in the broader sense, the use of a service, laboursaving means, or a gain in prestige. to keep the categories from overlapping, however, utility should not be interpreted so broadly as to include culturally normative behaviour and, for example, consider avoidance of sanctions as a utility, even if this would be possible in individual cases (cf. schimank 2007: 85-87, 101-106). one demarcation could be to consider any personal advantage that is independent of social control as a utility. behaviour infl uenced by cultural norms can be subdivided into at least three sub-dimensions, allowing for four modes of behavioural logic: – actors behave according to utility: they optimise the ratio from their expected personal advantages as well as their expected personal disadvantages. – actors behave according to norms: they attempt to fulfi l the expectations and norms of their social environment in order to avoid negative sanctions and reap positive sanctions (in particular integration in the community). – actors behave according to values: they attempt to act so that the desirable circumstances (not personal advantages) according to their own personal convictions (attitudes, values) become or remain reality with the greatest probability. – actors behave according to models: they orient themselves to internalised “frames,” notions of normality and leitbilder and follow scripts and routines in their behaviour. • the integration of behavioural logic is a compromise. economic costs and benefi ts as well as normative, emotionally perceived pros and cons are “balanced” – consciously or unconsciously – against each other. as a result, behaviour is a hybrid of all four modes of behavioural logic. interaction effects are also possible. in the case of distinct contradictions, processes become active to reduce cognitive dissonance (festinger 1966). • the four modes of behavioural logic should be understood as ideal types. the weight given to each mode of behavioural logic varies from case to case and depends on the situation (e.g. on available time, the familiarity of the situation, the existence of normative expectations from the social environment, family values and family norms • 459 the existence of relevant personal normative convictions, the availability of information about anticipated costs and benefi ts, etc.). • the behaviour-relevant circumstances are situated, depending on the behavioural logic, partially at the micro and partially at the meso or macro level. utility-oriented behaviour is primarily infl uenced by individual resources and structural circumstances (coleman 1990, 1991). norm-oriented behaviour is based only on norms and expectations of the social environment, valueoriented behaviour only on individual attitudes and values, model-oriented behaviour only on individual notions of normality. • since behavioural intentions may fail (e.g. inability to conceive a child), they must be differentiated from actual behaviours and considered intervening variables between initial circumstances and actual behaviour. • when a behaviour needs to be agreed mutually with other actors (e.g. family planning by a couple), then the behavioural intentions of the involved actors enter a coordination process. this process requires its own theoretical description, which can, for example, be discursive, negotiating or confl ictive in nature. the articles in this special issue are based on varying theoretical concepts, without continuing the discussion presented here in detail. their demands are primarily empirical. for one, they aim to provide evidence that it is important to take cultural elements into consideration when researching familial and generative behaviour. secondly, they wish to provide examples of how this can be implemented. in doing fig. 2: model explaining individual behaviour source: author’s schematic depiction le ve l co nt ex ts b eh av io ur m es o / m ac ro in d iv id ua l ( m ic ro ) social notions of normality social values, public opinion norms, expectations individual notions of normality values, attitudes individual resources structural circumstances formation of structures and culture cultural circumstances behavioural intention behaviour utility oriented norm oriented value oriented model oriented • detlev lück460 so, they largely make use of quantitative data and methods and attempt to open these for cultural phenomena. some also rely on qualitative methods. due to the repeatedly ascertained discrepancy between attitudes expressed in interviews about the fair division of work in a relationship and its actual realisation, daniela grunow and nina baur (2014) examine the extent to which individual convictions correspond to the factual engagement of men based on the household activities of vacuuming, laundering and cooking. they do this using data from the study “das bild des mannes in der gesellschaft” (the male image in society), a standardised cati survey from 2006. dirk hofäcker and jana chaloupková (2014) analyse the change in family biographies and in social norms in the familial context in a european comparison. they make use of the third wave of the 2006 european social survey. their article focuses on the question of the extent to which processes of deand re-standardi sation of normal biographies, both of which are observed in various parts of europe, are accompanied by a corresponding change in social norms. anna dechant and florian schulz (2014) again take up the subject of the division of work in intimate relationships. they focus on the biographical time of family formation, which we know often results in a re-traditionalisation of the division of work. based on a qualitative longitudinal study of 14 couples (2006/2007) surveyed shortly before and shortly after having children, they examine what circumstances are pivotal for whether and how the division of work shifts. they are particularly interested in the educational levels of the partners, their homogeneity and for the convictions that tend to correlate with these levels of education about how the division of work should ideally look. references ajzen, icek 1985: from intensions to actions: a theory of planned behavior. in: kuhi, julius; beckmann, jürgen (eds.): action 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annelene; trappe, heike; schmitt, christian 2009: alles wie gehabt? zur aufteilung von hausarbeit und elternaufgaben in partnerschaften. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 34,1-2: 57-78 [doi: 10.1007/s12523-010-0033-2]. dr. detlev lück (). federal institute for population research, wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: detlev.lueck@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografi e.de/en/institute/staff/researcher/lueck/lueck_node.html published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved attitudes toward abortion for medical and non-medical reasons among the turkish second generation in europe – the role of the family and societal contexts attitudes toward abortion for medical and non-medical reasons among the turkish second generation in europe – the role of the family and societal contexts* nadja milewski, sarah carol abstract: this paper studies attitudes toward abortion among the second generation of turkish migrants and their native counterparts in six western and northern european countries. we focus on turkish migrants because they not only constitute one of the largest immigrant groups, but are also hypothesised to be culturally and demographically very distinctive from the native group. we used data from the project on “the integration of the european second generation (ties 2007-08)” from austria, france, germany, the netherlands, sweden and switzerland. the sample consisted of 4,761 respondents aged 18 to 35, 49.5 percent of whom were children of turkish migrants born in europe and 51.5 percent belonged to the respective non-migrant comparison groups. unlike in other surveys, the question regarding attitudes toward abortion in the ties questionnaire distinguished between “medical” and “non-medical” reasons for abortion, with the possible answers being “never”, “in specifi c cases” and “always”. we carried out multinomial logistic regression analyses and investigated three research questions: 1) departing from assimilation theory, we examined whether the attitudes of migrant descendants differed from those of their non-migrant counterparts. our results show that both groupings under study expressed a range of attitudes, and that abortion for medical reasons was more accepted than abortion for non-medical reasons. however, second-generation turks were more likely than the natives to say that they would never accept abortion. 2) we investigated the extent to which the societal climate and the integration context of the respondents infl uenced their attitudes toward abortion, while assuming that we would fi nd cross-country variation in these attitudes. our results reveal that among natives, levels of acceptance of abortion are lowest in germany and highest in sweden and france. we found a similar country pattern for women and men of the second turkish generation. 3) we explored the degree to which the respondents’ family contexts (childhood backgrounds as well as current socio-demographic variables) infl uenced their attitudes toward abortion. while these factors comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 307-342 (date of release: 18.03.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-05en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility. • nadja milewski, sarah carol308 partially explained the variation within the turkish second generation and within the native comparison group, the country differences remained signifi cant. we conclude that attitudes toward abortion in the turkish second generation are infl uenced by their family backgrounds, but also by their socialization experiences in european receiving countries. these fi ndings suggest that cultural assimilation processes are occurring, but not to the point where the attitudes of migrant descendants have converged with the attitudes of natives in the respective destination country. keywords: abortion · attitudes · second generation · ties · turkish migrants 1 introduction with recent political shifts, the topic of abortion appears back on the agenda in european public debates. as we still lack suffi cient knowledge of the determinants of attitudes toward abortion, particularly in the face of migration (rydgren 2005), our paper studies attitudes toward abortion among the second generation of turkish migrants living in six western and northern european countries and the respective native majority group members. the demographic behaviour and the structural and cultural integration of turkish migrants and their descendants in europe have been intensely studied (kulu/ gonzalez-ferrer 2014). this research interest has been explained by demographic characteristics of this group: it is a large group; its members live in almost all western european countries; and its members come from a country that has entered the second demographic transition later than western european countries (van de kaa 1987). the family demographic patterns and the religious backgrounds of turkish migrants differ from those of european non-migrant populations (e.g. nauck 1997; milewski 2007, 2010a/b, 2011; garssen/nicolaas 2008; cifuentes et al. 2013; krapf/ wolf 2015). while the fertility behaviour of turkish migrants and their descendants has received considerable scholarly attention, reproductive health as one aspect of family planning among migrants remains an understudied subject. little is known about international migrants’ family planning, reproductive health practices or attitudes toward induced abortion (carol/milewski 2017; agadjanian/yoo 2018) – in part because these topics are sensitive, and therefore hard to study (bankole et al. 1998). thus, the study of attitudes toward abortion is relevant from a demographic perspective, but also from the perspective of assimilation theory. as an indicator of cultural integration, these attitudes are most resistant to change along with family and gender values (norris/inglehart 2012). therefore, we attempt to explain these attitudes focusing on turkish descendants in europe. there is considerable cross-country variation in the prevalence of induced abortion as well as in the norms towards it. many immigrant groups in europe originate from the mena region and neighbouring countries with above or close-to replacement fertility, such as turkey. on the one hand, patriarchal family systems and highattitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 309 er levels of religiosity foster anti-abortion norms in these countries (norris/inglehart 2012). on the other hand, the acceptance, availability and usage of contraceptives are lower in these countries than in europe (haub 2007; ribbert 2009; helfferich et al. 2011). hence, in some of these migrant-origin contexts, abortion may be the sole – though not always legal – method of birth control (bankole et al. 1998); and the prevalence of abortion may be higher than in western europe – despite lower levels of acceptance (sedgh et al. 2016). regardless of the actual abortion practices of a population, people’s attitudes toward abortion can be framed from different perspectives. as these attitudes refl ect norms regarding life and death and the rights of the unborn, they are highly intertwined with religiosity. in addition, because views on abortion touch on the question of women’s self-determination, they refl ect norms regarding gender equality and sexual liberalisation. moreover, they trigger questions about state interference in individual decisions (gerhards/rucht 2000). for international migrant groups, attitudes and values regarding gender equality, marriage, fertility and sexuality are indicators of cultural assimilation processes (kalmijn/kraaykamp 2017). as many immigrant groups in europe originate from countries that differ from europe in their prevailing attitudes toward religion, gender equality and sexual liberalisation (norris/inglehart 2012), these indicators are central to debates about immigrant integration in europe (koopmans 2015). studies of turkish migrants have shown that they tend to transmit the culture of origin across generations. moreover, compared to their non-migrant counterparts, turkish migrants maintain higher levels of religiosity (e.g. van tubergen/sindradóttir 2011), are less likely to promote gender equality (e.g. röder 2014), and have higher fertility rates (kulu/gonzález-ferrer 2014). these fi ndings suggest that the second generation should also differ considerably from the majority population at destination in their attitudes toward abortion, i.e. they should be less likely to accept abortion. however, assimilation theory would lead us to expect that attitudes toward abortion in the second generation would resemble those of natives (gordon 1964). educational achievement, which is considered a driver of integration in other life domains, is usually higher in the second than the fi rst generation (alba et al. 2011). having a higher education is typically associated with having more egalitarian values (röder/mühlau 2014), using contraception and engaging in family planning – behaviours that may in turn be linked to increased acceptance of abortion (e.g., milewski 2011; helfferich et al. 2011). to investigate these contrasting perspectives, we employed data from the project ”the integration of the european second generation (ties 2007-08)”, which targeted turkish migrant descendants of the second generation, i.e. those children who were born in the country of destination to one or two immigrant parents from turkey. the countries of residence included in our sample are austria, france, germany, sweden, switzerland and the netherlands. we investigated three research questions: 1) departing from assimilation theory, we asked whether the attitudes toward abortion of turks belonging to the second generation differed from those of their native-born counterparts. 2) based on the assumption that the country of residence and its institutional context, policies and cultural norms affect the inte• nadja milewski, sarah carol310 gration processes of immigrants and their descendants, we tested the role of the societal climate (almond/verba 1989) and the integration context (crul et al. 2012) by examining cross-country variation in attitudes toward abortion. 3) we explored to what extent the characteristics of the context of the current family and of the family of origin can explain individualand group-level attitudes toward abortion. previous research mainly captured the current situation of the respondents (carol/ milewski 2017). in addition to addressing a rarely researched topic, our study contributes to the literature by using two dependent variables: namely, medical and non-medical reasons for abortion. the majority of previous surveys and studies tended to ask more about attitudes in general, thus producing bias. the answers in the ties survey were not collected on a continuous scale, but in three categories. this approach allowed us to depart from the common practice of analysing the mean when attitudes are measured on a metric scale. previous authors have argued that the distribution in attitudes toward abortion may have changed despite a rather stable mean over the decades (jelen/wilcox 2003). thus, our study can produce a much more differentiated picture based on the reason for abortion for both study populations. 2 theoretical background in the following sections, we will outline our arguments as to why migrants and natives might differ in their attitudes toward abortion. in order to explore potential group differences, we draw attention to the reasons for abortion (section 2.1). while abortion on the basis of medical reasons is widely granted, including in immigrants’ countries of origin (shapiro 2014), non-medical reasons are more contested. we therefore expect that the divide between natives and descendants will be strongest in the case of abortion for non-medical reasons. the main mechanisms explaining the preservation of restrictive attitudes toward abortion are ethnic and religious socialisation and the transmission of values through parents originating in turkey (section 2.2) and religious institutions (section 2.4). however, counterinfl uence might stem from the country of residence (section 2.3) where persons of turkish origin have attended school and where they have been exposed to a different socio-political climate with regard to abortion. according to assimilation theory, they should hold attitudes that resemble those of natives. accordingly, the gap between descendants and natives should be small. we will elaborate on these contrasting perspectives in the following sections. 2.1 reasons for abortion previous studies on attitudes toward abortion have found large differences across regions. people in the arabic countries of asia and north africa are less likely to approve of abortion than people in western europe and north america (adamczyk 2013; jelen/wilcox 2003; jelen 2014; bahr/marcos 2003), even though abortion rates are higher in the former than in the latter group of countries (sedgh et al. attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 311 2016). these broad regional differences are associated with different religious traditions, which are in turn correlated with gender equality and sexual liberalisation. people living in western, largely christian societies express more support for gender equality and sexual liberalisation than people living in muslim-majority countries (norris/inglehart 2012). among muslim countries, turkey has relatively liberal abortion policies. nonetheless, the legality of induced abortion in turkey depends on the timing and type of abortion being sought, as well as the reasons for the abortion (loeber 2008). even in europe, individual attitudes and societal norms do not always foster tolerance of abortion. however, most developed countries have policies that allow induced abortion under certain circumstances. while social reasons for seeking an abortion are permitted, in most cases the woman seeking an abortion must give a medical/physical reason for an abortion, such as a serious threat to her physical or mental health. the social reasons a woman seeking an abortion can cite include that her family does not have enough money to support a (or another) child, that the child would be illegitimate, that she is under 16 years of age, or that the pregnancy resulted from a sexual crime. often, the reason given for the abortion depends on the duration of the pregnancy, as the legal time frame for seeking an abortion for medical reasons is longer than the legal time frame for seeking an abortion for social reasons (levels et al. 2014; clements 2015; ankara 2017). just as national policies differentiate between medical and non-medical reasons for abortion, individuals also differentiate between these reasons in their attitudes toward abortion. clements (2015) reported that in a survey conducted in great britain in 1993, levels of approval of abortion varied greatly depending on the reason for the abortion. relatively small percentages of respondents said they disapprove of abortion in cases in which the health/life of the mother was endangered by the pregnancy (ranging from 0 percent to 1 percent among protestants to 9 percent among roman catholics), and when the foetus was at risk of deformation (3 percent to 22 percent). by contrast, much larger percentages of respondents said they disapprove of abortion for social reasons, such as fi nancial constraints (39 percent to 65 percent). for the us, bumpass (1997) investigated how the design of such surveys – i.e. the phrasing and the order of the questions – infl uenced the responses. overall, however, he also found that around 80 percent of respondents said they approve of abortion for limited reasons only: namely, if the woman’s health is endangered, if the foetus has a serious impairment, or if the pregnancy resulted from rape. in line with clements’ (2015) fi ndings, he reported that only 41 percent to 46 percent of respondents said they approve of a woman having an abortion because she wants no more children, has fi nancial constraints, or is unmarried (i.e. for more inclusive reasons); and that slightly smaller percentages of respondents agreed that a woman should be able to obtain an abortion for any reason at all (bumpass 1997). unfortunately, most (cross-nationally comparative) datasets do not assess attitudes in such a detailed fashion, or they present the information in a summary scale (rosenhouse-persson/sabagh 1983). the study by clements (2015) is an exception in differentiating attitudes toward abortion by reasons for the abortion. the focus of the vast majority of surveys and studies has been more on asking about attitudes • nadja milewski, sarah carol312 in general, thus mixing different reasons and producing bias, and within-country variation by migrant background or ethnicity has hardly been considered in the previous literature. 2.2 migrant socialisation while natives and migrants alike are exposed to political socialisation in their countries of residence, it is not clear whether they are affected similarly or differently by it. on the one hand, we can assume that they are equally infl uenced. the approximation of cultural patterns, including the values of minorities and natives, is regarded as one indicator in a two-sided understanding of immigrant integration (alba/nee 1997). classical assimilation theory would suggest that migrant generations gradually adopt the attitudes and behaviours of the natives at the destination (gordon 1964). on the other hand, empirical evidence does not show such a clear pattern (alba/nee 2003), and migrants and natives might be socialized differently. in their socialisation, compared to natives immigrant children can draw upon various resources, i.e. their ancestors’ culture and that of the society at destination, which means that they are exposed in addition to political socialisation in their parents’ countries of origin or their communities, parents or families that transmit values from their countries of origin. women and men of subsequent migrant generations need to manoeuvre throughout their childhood and adolescence by choosing from or between elements of two cultural heritages under societal circumstances that may clash with these cultural traditions. foner (1997) calls this process “bicultural adjustment.” previous literature has tended to portray the second generation as being “exposed to competing pressures” (kalmijn/kraaykamp 2017: 2), based on the assumption that the family of origin has more conservative values than the majority group in the destination country. the fi ndings on the demographic behaviour and the processes of structural and cultural integration among turks in europe are confl icting. like other muslim minorities, turks lag behind in their socio-economic integration (koenig et al. 2016) are more likely to be religious (e.g. diehl/koenig 2009; jacob/kalter 2013), and experience more discrimination than other migrant groups (weichselbaumer 2016). the social distance between turks and non-migrants is also relatively large (sniderman/ hagendoorn 2007). while we might expect to fi nd that the second generation is better integrated than the fi rst (e.g. diehl/koenig 2009; van tubergen/sindradóttir 2011), it is also possible that attitudinal differences persist because of the intergenerational transmission of religiosity (e.g. diehl/koenig 2009; jacob/kalter 2013) or of norms, values and attitudes. there is also evidence that immigrants from turkey in several european countries tend to maintain their family formation behaviour (i.e. number of children, early marriage and low rates of extramarital births) across generations (e.g. milewski 2011; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017). only a few previous studies based on descriptive statistics have examined abortion practices among immigrants. these studies found that fi rst-generation turkish women in the netherlands (loeber 2008) and in germany (helfferich et al. 2011) have higher abortion attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 313 rates than the majority group in the country of residence, in line with the differences in abortion rates between european countries and turkey. regarding attitudes toward family and marriage, sexuality and gender equality, the previous literature has produced a diverse picture. while considerable variation within the immigrant groups persists, there is evidence that assimilation processes are occurring, but that a native-immigrant gap remains in the second generation. for example, soehl (2017) found acculturation in attitudes toward homosexuality among immigrant descendants living in europe, with levels of acceptance increasing with duration of stay and among the second generation. kalmijn/kraaykamp (2017) reported similar results for several attitudes toward marriage and sexuality. with regard to attitudes toward abortion, carol/milewski (2017) found that immigrants from muslim countries were less likely to accept abortion than members of the respective majority groups in several western european destinations. controlling for socio-demographic characteristics and several indicators of religiosity, the study showed that attitudes toward abortion were even less tolerant among the second than the fi rst generation. based on these considerations, we derive our fi rst working hypothesis on the effect of the migrant background: we compare members of the second turkish generation to their native counterparts, i.e. those who have non-migrant parents, and expect to fi nd that the second generation are, on average, less accepting of abortion because of their socialisation in their ancestors’ culture of turkey, which has more restrictive abortion policies, less egalitarian gender values, lower levels of acceptance of abortion, and higher religiosity than european countries. we start to test this hypothesis for the whole sample of six countries, which compared the turkish second generation on average to the natives’ cross-country average in joint models. in addition, we estimate the group difference within each single country by preparing separate models for each country in order to check whether the second generation and the native comparison group show similar differences (if any) in each country. we distinguish between the reasons for abortion, and assume that the migrant-native gap in acceptance is smaller for medical reasons than for nonmedical reasons because the regulations regarding medical reasons are more similar between europe and turkey than those regarding non-medical reasons. in addition, we investigate in more detail the impact of the compositional differences of the groups under study. we assume that any differences between the second generation and the natives will decrease or vanish when we control for socio-demographic variables that mediate the effect of nativity status on attitudes toward abortion (sex, age, education). additional variables that capture the respondents’ individual characteristics are marital status and parenthood. 2.3 european cross-country differences our second working hypothesis concerns the infl uence of the countries of residence. multiple studies have shown that policies can affect immigrants’ integration (e.g. goodman/wright 2015), religiosity (ersanilli/koopmans 2011; carol et al. 2015), union formation (hamel et al. 2012; carol et al. 2014), and fertility patterns • nadja milewski, sarah carol314 (andersson/scott 2005; milewski 2007). moreover, in line with theories on political socialisation through school, work or the media (almond/verba 1989) we expect to fi nd that the societal climate (e.g. the climate created by abortion policies and their implementation, and the general level of gender equality) infl uences the attitudes of a country’s residents. european countries share a rather long history where induced abortion has been subject to public and political discourses and to legislation. abortion has been legal in the european countries included in our study since the 1970s at the latest. despite their proximity, european countries have different histories and contents of abortion policies and permit different methods of abortion.1 countries vary in the extent to which they allow abortion. for example, a woman may be permitted to seek an abortion if her life is at risk, if her physical or mental health is at risk, if she was raped, if there are foetal abnormalities, or if she is suffering from socio-economic deprivation or distress (levels et al. 2014; see also table a1 in the appendix). the cross-country variation in medical reasons for an abortion is smaller than the variation in non-medical reasons. abortion to save a woman’s life or to preserve her physical health is permitted in all of the countries included in our study. abortion in response to foetal abnormalities is allowed in austria, france and the netherlands, but not in germany, sweden or switzerland. abortion for mental health reasons is permitted in austria, switzerland and germany. abortion on the grounds of a sexual crime is legal only in germany (until week 12) and sweden (until week 24). the woman’s socio-economic circumstances are considered in germany. abortion for reasons of distress is legal in france, germany, switzerland (until week 12) and in the netherlands (until week 22), but not in austria and sweden (levels et al. 2014). germany ranks as the most tolerant country in terms of the number of legal grounds for abortion. but the netherlands may be the least restrictive country overall because a woman is permitted to have an abortion on the grounds of distress – which encompasses several reasons – until relatively late in her pregnancy. the countries also vary in the implementation of these policies. despite the rather large number of legal grounds for abortion, germany is clearly restrictive in the practice of abortion. for instance, the medical abortion pill (mifepristone) is much harder to obtain in germany than in other european countries, especially in france, switzerland and sweden (arisi 2003). also, women in germany needed a prescription to obtain emergency contraception until 2015, while the morning-after pill has been widely available for a much longer time in sweden, france, austria and switzerland than in germany (eshre capri workshop group 2015). scholars have frequently argued that feminism shapes abortion policies (levels et al. 2014). thus, the topic is often connected to gender equality. just as there 1 of the countries included in our sample, the netherlands was the fi rst to legalise abortion; in 1886 abortion became legal in order to save life. austria, germany and switzerland followed in the 1930s. abortion became legal in sweden in 1946 and in france in 1955. until the 1970s, medical reasons were the only grounds for legal abortion in these countries. rape and distress were only subsequently introduced (except in sweden and the former german democratic republic) (levels et al. 2014). attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 315 is cross-national variation in abortion policies, there is cross-national variation in gender equality norms. among the countries included in our study, survey fi ndings indicate that support for gender equality is highest in sweden, followed by france; it is lowest in germany, and it is moderate in the netherlands and switzerland (norris/ inglehart 2012; austria was not included here). compared to people in other countries with muslim traditions, people in turkey tend to express greater support for gender equality (inglehart/norris 2003; norris/ inglehart 2012). this stance on gender equality is also refl ected in the regulation of abortion, which is less restrictive in turkey than in other muslim-majority countries (hedayat et al. 2006; loeber 2008; shapiro 2014) to our knowledge, there are only a few quantitative studies that have investigated attitudes toward sensitive topics like abortion and sexuality in international migrant groups across european receiving countries. ersanilli (2012) examined various values, including beliefs about abortion, among turkish migrants in several countries. the author also found less support for abortion in germany than in france. looking at attitudes toward abortion, carol/milewski (2017) found signifi cant country variation across both the majority and the muslim-minority populations, with those in france being the most accepting and those in germany the least accepting of abortion. these fi ndings suggest that the wider policy and societal climate as well as norms regarding gender equality may be better predictors of attitudes toward abortion than abortion laws. our study adds to the previous literature by focusing on the within-group comparison of second-generation turks in six european countries. more importantly, we can differentiate between attitudes toward abortion for medical and non-medical reasons and draw on a retrospective measure of religiosity during childhood, which is superior to current religiosity. based on the considerations outlined above, we formulated our working hypothesis on country variation as follows: we expect to fi nd differences between the natives in the destination countries and between the individuals of the turkish second generation living in these countries. more precisely, we expect to fi nd the highest levels of acceptance of abortion in sweden, the netherlands and france; the lowest levels in germany; and moderate levels in switzerland and austria. 2.4 family context and religiosity the third aspect we investigate in more detail are the within-group differences among the second generation and among natives. we focus on the main factors likely to affect attitudes toward abortion because they are related to gender equality, i.e. religiosity and variables associated with the family context. we include measures that refer to the family background and childhood of the respondents, as well as to their current living situations, in order to disentangle direct and indirect effects of the family background in the socialisation process on present-day attitudes of the migrant children (kalmijn/kraaykamp 2017). individual values and attitudes are mainly formed during a person’s primary period of socialisation, with parents serving as models or direct instructors (bandura • nadja milewski, sarah carol316 1977). alternatively, parents may indirectly infl uence the social contacts of their children by determining their educational paths (bozon/héran 2006). in addition, religious institutions are likely to infl uence attitudes toward abortion. the role of religion has been well documented in previous studies (e.g. adamczyk 2013; lewis/ kashyap 2013). for example, religious institutions may cite religious scriptures that teach that life is given and taken by god alone, and that humans have no right to interfere in this process (almond et al. 2013; jelen 2014; shapiro 2014). although abortion is widely condemned by various denominations, levels of condemnation vary. jelen (2014) found that disapproval is signifi cantly higher among muslims than among members of other denominations. our data allow us to consider whether the respondents were raised in a religious family; and, for muslims, whether they attended koran lessons. nevertheless, there is also signifi cant opposition to abortion in christian churches (clements 2015). thus, we expect to observe the lowest levels of acceptance of abortion among muslims and christians and the highest levels of acceptance of abortion among those without religious education. we assume that the infl uence of religious education in childhood is mediated by the current level of religiosity. religiosity can take different forms (believing, bonding, behaving and belonging (saroglou 2011)), which have different infl uences on attitudes (jelen 2014). here, we consider answers to the question of whether religion is an important part of the respondent’s life. we assume that highly religious people are less likely to approve of abortion than those who have no religious affi liation or see religion as unimportant (carol/milewski 2017). families with relatively high educational levels and status may be especially likely to transmit knowledge and goals that go beyond family formation, and may thus discourage (early) childbearing (murphy/wang 2001). in fertility research, fi ndings on the infl uence of parental education have been mixed. it seems likely that the impact of the parents’ education is mediated by the individual’s own education (baykara-krumme/milewski 2017). as an indicator of gender equality and the integration of the fi rst generation, we use labour market activity of the mother when the respondent was aged 15. we assume that if the mother was participating in the labour force, the respondent would have a higher degree of structural integration and more liberal gender attitudes, which would in turn be associated with greater acceptance of abortion. another family background variable we consider is the number of siblings. a higher number of siblings coincides with higher own fertility among turkish women (nosaka/chasiotis 2010; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017), which may suggest more conservative family values. thus, we would expect to observe less acceptance of abortion if the family of origin was relatively large. in addition, we use the presence of a third person at the interview as a control because it has been shown to bias the responses to sensitive questions. the type of third party present ranged from the parents of the respondents (mainly for those who still lived with their parents) to the partner or the children. therefore, the thirdparty presence could be seen as refl ecting the social control of the parents or the pressure to engage in social modelling. for example, a respondent who was interattitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 317 viewed in front of her/his spouse may have sought to appear to be conforming to the norm (milewski/otto 2017). 3 data, variables and methods 3.1 data we analysed data from the survey ”the integration of the european second generation (ties 2007-08)”.2 ties is a european comparative survey that targeted migrant descendants who were born in their parents’ country of destination, i.e. the second generation. the survey was designed to specifi cally study the transitions of migrant youth during early adulthood, with a focus on school and work trajectories. around 10,000 children of immigrants from turkey, morocco and the former yugoslavia, as well as a native comparison group, were interviewed in 15 cities in eight european countries. an urban sample frame was chosen because most immigrants and their descendants throughout europe live in cities. the sample size was approximately 500 respondents per city, with half belonging to the second generation and half belonging to the native comparison group. we selected turks because they were sampled in seven of the eight countries, whereas the other two minority groups were sampled in a few countries only. respondents were sampled as turkish second generation if they were born in the country where the survey was held, and at least one of their parents was born in turkey. the respondents were aged 18-35. a standardised questionnaire was used in the survey (groenewold/lessard-phillips 2012). for our analyses, we selected all country datasets that included the turkish second generation, as well as responses to the question on abortion. our sample included data from 11 cities in six countries: vienna and linz in austria, paris and strasbourg in france, berlin and frankfurt in germany, stockholm in sweden, zurich and basle in switzerland, and amsterdam and rotterdam in the netherlands. 3.2 variables the last module of the ties questionnaire contained a range of sensitive questions, including questions on attitudes and partnership history. there were two questions on abortion, which were introduced with a joint phrase: “please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it is always acceptable, acceptable in some specifi c cases, or never acceptable: … abortion for medical reasons and abortion for non-medical reasons.” 2 the ties survey plays a pioneer role in data collections that allow the comparison of one or more origin groups in different destinations. other projects, such as eurislam, do not contain such detailed information on attitudes toward abortion. besides the age of the ties data, we believe the uniqueness of the survey information is a reason to use it. • nadja milewski, sarah carol318 compared to qualitative in-depth interviews or special surveys on family planning and reproductive health (bumpass 1997; clements 2015), these two questions seem rather broad. for some respondents, the term “acceptable” may have captured such attitudes in general, while for others it may have referred to the question of whether abortion should be legal. moreover, we cannot know how the respondents interpreted the term “medical reasons”; they may have thought about complications caused by the pregnancy for the mother, or about the health problems of the child, or both (clements 2015). it is, however, unusual for a social science survey targeting international migrant groups to contain questions on family planning and reproductive health. compared to the data from the general questions included in, for example, the eurislam survey (which sampled migrants from muslim countries in several european destinations) about whether abortion was justifi able (carol/milewski 2017), the ties data allow for a more differentiated analysis of such attitudes because they distinguish between “medical” and “non-medical” reasons. in addition, the answers were not collected on a continuous scale, but in three categories (1= “never acceptable”, 2= “acceptable in specifi c cases”, 3 = “always acceptable”). table 1 provides a descriptive overview of the variables used in the multivariate analyses by migrant status. the fi rst set of explanatory variables that are assumed to mediate the effect of the migrant status on attitudes toward abortion capture socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents at the time of the survey. “marital status” distinguished between non-married and married individuals. similarly, the “number of children” was combined to a dummy indicating parenthood. “educational attainment” was measured using six categories that were constructed for a comparison across the ties countries, which have different educational systems (crul et al. 2012). it refers to the highest educational degree obtained. because of the age structure of the sample, about a quarter of the respondents in both groups were still in education; in these cases, the education variable indicates the type of school attended. we then used an indicator for “religiosity”. in the ties survey, the respondents were asked to totally agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or totally disagree with the statement: “being muslim/christian… is an important part of myself.” we reduced these categories to three, and added another for respondents who did not indicate any religious affi liation. the second set of variables takes into account variables of the respondents’ family background and childhood. “father’s education” was made comparable across the destination countries and turkey. we also employed the information about the “mother’s labour market activity” when the respondents were aged 15. we recoded the original variables into two broad categories: “not active” were those who did not work outside the household (this captures the original answers working in the home or the family business) and “active” were those who had participated in paid employment at some point (i.e. employed, unemployed, or no longer working due to disability or retirement). for the “number of siblings”, we used the categories “none,” “1 or 2,” and “3+.” the variable on “religious upbringing” is a combination of several questions. the respondents were asked whether they were raised acattitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 319 variable native compaturkish second rison group generation n % n % attitudes toward abortion acceptance for medical reasons*** never acceptable 68 2.8 343 14.6 acceptable in specifi c cases 661 27.5 1072 45.5 always acceptable 1676 69.7 941 39.9 acceptance for non-medical reasons *** never acceptable 346 14.4 1167 49.5 acceptable in specifi c cases 1093 45.4 817 34.7 always acceptable 966 40.2 372 15.8 country of residence*** austria 467 19.4 441 18.7 france 351 14.6 500 21.2 germany 503 20.9 503 21.3 netherlands, the 480 20.0 428 18.2 sweden 182 7.6 130 5.5 switzerland 422 17.5 354 15.0 socio-demographic characteristics sex woman 1256 52.2 1248 53.0 man 1149 47.8 1108 47.0 age*** (mean) 26,9 24,4 marital status *** not married 1908 79.3 1539 65.3 married 492 20.5 816 34.6 divorced 5 0.2 1 0.0 children in household*** no 1995 83.0 1696 72.0 yes 410 17.0 660 28.0 education *** primary 31 1.3 88 3.7 lower secondary 172 7.2 434 18.4 apprenticeship 460 19.1 600 25.5 upper secondary 631 26.2 664 28.2 tertiary 1105 45.9 560 23.8 mv 6 0.2 10 0.4 tab. 1: descriptive overview of the sample, by migrant status • nadja milewski, sarah carol320 variable native compaturkish second rison group generation n % n % religion is important *** agree 356 14.8 1535 65.2 neither nor 173 7.2 171 7.3 disagree 151 6.3 80 3.4 na/mv 1725 71.7 570 24.2 family background siblings*** none 447 18.6 115 4.9 1 or 2 1516 63.0 1183 50.2 3+ 342 14.2 1035 43.9 mv 100 4.2 23 1.0 religious upbringing*** christian 1265 52.6 92 3.9 muslim/no koran school 755 32.0 muslim/attended koran school 1118 47.5 other religion or none 1140 47.4 391 16.6 father’s education primary 68 2.8 1046 44.4 secondary 1417 58.9 888 37.7 tertiary 785 32.6 210 8.9 mv 135 5.6 212 9.0 mother’s labour market activity (respondent aged 15)*** not active (house wife) 737 30.6 1109 47.1 not active (unpaid work in family business) 54 2.2 74 3.1 active (unemployment/retirement/disability) 78 3.2 138 5.9 active (employment/enrolment in education) 1474 61.3 927 39.3 mv/na 62 2.6 108 4.6 third-person presence*** yes 437 18.2 708 30.1 no 1786 74.3 1518 64.4 mv 182 7.6 130 5.5 total 2405 100 2356 100 tab. 1: continuation note: ***p<0.001 via chi2 test for the association between the categorical variable/t-test for the metric variable and migrant status. mv=missing values, na=not applicable. source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08. n=4761 attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 321 cording to a certain religious tradition, and, if so, which. in addition, muslims were asked whether they attended koran lessons during their childhood. although the questionnaire distinguished between several muslim and christian denominations, we combined them to form the categories “muslim” for turks and “christian” for the natives because of the small numbers in most of the original categories. finally, we used the “presence of a third person” at the interview as a dummy (milewski/otto 2017; note that third-party presence was not included in the swedish ties questionnaire). 3.3 analytical strategy first, we address the hypothesis that attitudes toward abortion for medical and non-medical reasons differ between the turkish second generation and the native comparison group. we give a descriptive overview of the attitudes toward abortion by type of reason, migrant background and sex (fig. 1). we then present the results of the multivariate analyses based on multinomial logistic regression techniques3 for the whole sample and then for the six countries separately, comparing the second generation to the native comparison group (fig. 2a and 2b; table a2 in the appendix). the results are displayed as average marginal effects (ame, mood 2010). in the second part, we focus on the cross-country comparison and within-group variation by carrying out separate models for the turkish second generation and natives. a descriptive overview is presented in figures 3a-d; followed by the multivariate models in tables 2a and 2b (fig. 4a-d). the objective here is to test our second working hypothesis on cross-country variation and the impact of the comparative integration context on the migrant group. if the country of residence plays a role in the attitudes of the migrant children, then they should exhibit a cross-country variation similar to that of the native comparison group across countries (a similar research design was employed to test this hypothesis e.g. in milewski 2011). in order to test our third hypothesis on the impact of the childhood and family background within the groups, the three groups of independent variables were used as controls; these are country of residence and sex, family background and childhood variables, current socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents as well as third-party presence at the interview. 3.4 sample and data quality although the attitudes under study are of a sensitive nature, the response rates to the questions regarding attitudes toward abortion were rather good. for a compari3 multinomial regression analyses was preferred over ordered logistic regression because the assumption of proportionality in the odds was violated (brant test). a multinomial model allows an estimate of the differences in change between the answer categories, not the average change. • nadja milewski, sarah carol322 son, clements’ study on britain does not indicate non-responses; the percentages of respondents answering “don’t know” ranged from about 3 percent to 11 percent (clements 2015: 131-133). in our ties sample, the non-response (including a small number of cases with non-valid responses) on attitudes toward abortion was about 11 percent. the share of non-responses did not vary much between the two reasons given; most of the respondents answered both questions, and only a few answered one question only. therefore, we included all those cases in which the respondent answered both questions in our analyses. however, the non-response rates varied between the groups under study: with about 11 percent, the rate was almost twice as high among the turkish second generation than among the native comparison groups (less than 6 percent). moreover, there was some variation by country of residence: in france and germany, the non-response rate was zero – most likely because this module was a written questionnaire in these countries. the non-response or non-valid response rates in the other countries were moderate: below 3 percent in austria, about 10 percent in the netherlands, and about 15 percent in switzerland. the highest non-response rates for attitudes toward abortion were in sweden (about 38 percent in total, 27 percent among natives, and 47 percent among the second generation). to check the data quality of the sample used, we compared the socio-demographic composition of the sample used (n=4,761) and the sample that only included the cases with non-responses and was not used in our analyses (n=450). for both groupings, we found that the percentages of highly educated respondents and of respondents with no religious upbringing were slightly higher in the nonresponse group, which suggests that we may be underestimating the effects of higher education and secularism on attitudes. given the otherwise high degree of compositional similarity between our sample and the non-response group and the high overall response rate, we are rather confi dent of the data quality in our sample. our fi nal sample consisted of 4,761 respondents, 49.5 percent of whom belonged to the second generation and 51.5 percent to the native comparison group. 4 results in the whole sample, abortion for medical reasons was more accepted than abortion for non-medical reasons (results not shown). less than 9 percent of the ties respondents said they would never accept abortion for medical reasons, whereas about 32 percent said they would never accept abortion for non-medical reasons. while 55 percent said they would always accept abortion for medical reasons, 28 percent said they would always accept abortion for non-medical reasons. for both reasons, more than one-third said they would accept abortion in specifi c cases. by sex, we did not fi nd signifi cant differences in the attitudes in the whole sample. the only minor difference was that women would be slightly more likely to “never” accept abortion for non-medical reasons, but answer “in specifi c cases” more often than men. attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 323 4.1 migrant background and the reason for abortion we fi rst test our working hypothesis of the migrant background, comparing the turkish second generation to the native comparison group. fig. 1: attitudes toward abortion, by reason, sex and migrant status (%) 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent native comparison group turkish second generation native comparison group turkish second generation 16 43 41 51 34 16 3 28 69 14 46 40 n o nm ed ic al re as o ns m ed ic al re as o ns a women 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent native comparison group turkish second generation native comparison group turkish second generation 12 48 40 48 36 16 3 27 71 15 45 40 never acceptable acceptable in specific cases always acceptable n o nm ed ic al re as o ns m ed ic al re as o ns b men source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08 • nadja milewski, sarah carol324 for both reasons for abortion, we found large signifi cant differences by migrant status, with persons of the second turkish generation being less accepting (fig. 1a for women and 1b for men). among women, just 3 percent of the native comparison group, but about 14 percent of the second-generation group, said they would never accept abortion for medical reasons. the percentage of those women who said they would never accept abortion for non-medical reasons was about 16 percent among the natives and 51 percent among the second-generation group. the rather low levels of disapproval of abortion among the natives suggest that the non-migrant populations in europe have more liberal attitudes toward abortion than immigrants from turkey, and particularly toward abortion for medical reasons. we should, however, keep in mind that the ties sample is urban, and at least half of these country samples were drawn in the respective capitals. as inhabitants of cities have been shown to have more “liberal” values than those living in rural areas, the analysis may overestimate the acceptance of abortion among non-migrants. however, the low percentage of those who would never accept abortion does not imply a full acceptance of abortion, even for medical reasons. the attitudes among native women may be described as “plural”: about 69 percent said they would always accept abortion for medical reasons, and 28 percent said they would accept it in specifi c cases; while 41 percent said they would always accept abortion for non-medical reasons, and 43 percent said they would accept it in specifi c cases. among the women of the turkish second generation, the attitudes toward abortion were rather plural, too, but the acceptance levels were lower overall. this was not only because more respondents said they would never accept abortion, but also because fewer of these respondents said they would always accept it (40 percent for medical and 16 percent for non-medical reasons). compared to women, hardly any differences were found for men within either grouping. the fi nding of no-sex difference is consistent with the literature (carol/ milewski 2017). the overall differences between the turkish migrant children and the native comparison group diminished in the multivariate analyses, but remained signifi cant when analysing the whole sample of six countries (fig. 2a and 2b as well as table a2 in the appendix show the marginal effects for turkish descendants relative to those for the comparison group). with regard to abortion for medical reasons, the biggest difference was found in the category “always” acceptable. individuals of the second turkish generation were about 11 percentage points less likely to say they always accept abortion for medical reasons, and were 8 percentage points more likely to say they accept it in certain cases only (m.m3 in tab. a2). by contrast, with regard to abortion for non-medical reasons, the biggest difference was that turks were 10 percentage points more likely to say they never accept abortion (holding all other variables constant/m.n 3 in tab a2). it is important to note, however, that the native comparison group may be rather heterogeneous here in their attitudes toward abortion because of the country variation in policies as described in section 2.3. women and men of the turkish second generation differ in their attitudes from the average of the european natives. according to the literature, however, this is because the citizens in each european attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 325 fig. 2: attitudes toward abortion in turkish second generation relative to native comparison group, by reason and country results of multinomial logistic regression models, reference: native comparison group. controlled for sex, siblings, mothers‘ lfp, father‘s education, religious education, age, education, marital status, parenthood, religiosity, third-party presence. bars in black frames indicate signifi cant differences at 5 percent. source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08 -0.20 -0.15 -0.10 -0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 w ho le sa mp le au str ia fra nc e th e n eth erl an ds ge rm an y sw ed en sw itz erl an d a medical reasons -0.20 -0.15 -0.10 -0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 w ho le sa mp le au str ia fra nc e th e n eth erl an ds ge rm an y sw ed en sw itz erl an d never acceptable acceptable in specific cases always acceptable b non-medical reasons average marginal effects (ame) average marginal effects (ame) • nadja milewski, sarah carol326 country hold more liberal values toward abortion as well as to sexual liberalization and gender equality compared to those in other regions of the world, despite some variation between european countries (norris/inglehart 2012). when we explored the comparison between the second generation and natives within each individual country, the overall patterns were found in all six analyses (fig. 2a and 2b): the chances that second-generation turks would never accept abortion for medical reasons hardly varied from the attitude of natives. but turks were more likely to say “in specifi c cases” and less likely to say “always” than natives. with regard to abortion for non-medical reasons, second-generation turks were more likely to never accept abortion. it must be noted, however, that much of the group differences could be explained by the additional explanatory variables and by the fact that the sample size of the single countries is rather small. this certainly also contributed to rather large confi dence intervals. therefore, we refrain from overinterpreting these results. 4.2 country variation second, we test our working hypothesis of cross-country variation within the second generation and within natives separately. figures 3a-d display the country variation in attitudes by reason for abortion and migrant background (the countries were ordered by the highest level of “always” accepting for medical reasons in the native comparison group). in each country and in both groupings, we found greater acceptance of abortion for medical than for non-medical reasons. overall, the highest levels of “always” acceptance of abortion for medical and non-medical reasons were found in sweden and france, corresponding to the lowest percentage of “never” acceptance. the lowest levels of “always” and the highest shares of “never” acceptance were found in germany and in switzerland. in the second generation, country variation did appear but was less clear-cut. the percentages of turkish women and men who said they always accept abortion followed roughly the same pattern as that of natives, albeit on a lower level: the second-generation turks in sweden and france were the most likely to say they always accept abortion for medical and for non-medical reasons; but the trends were similar in switzerland when it comes to abortion for medical reasons. the attitudes expressed by turkish migrant children in germany were closer to those of their counterparts in austria and the netherlands. while the variation of “never” acceptance of abortion was moderate regarding medical reasons, it was larger for non-medical reasons. again, the lowest percentage was found in sweden; the highest rates of rejection were found in the second generation living in germany, austria and in the netherlands. figures 4a and 4b provide the results of the multivariate analyses (ame) for medical reasons in which we study the second turkish generation and the native comparison group separately. as it has the lowest levels of acceptance, germany serves as the reference category. in the native comparison group, the respondents in all six countries show no signifi cant difference in their “never” acceptance, when attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 327 we control for all other explanatory variables. the respondents in france and sweden and – to a somewhat lesser degree – those in the netherlands and austria were signifi cantly less likely to answer “in specifi c cases”, but more likely to “always” accept abortion for medical reasons. looking at the second generation, we found a small but signifi cant variation in the category “never”, with those in sweden, france, austria and switzerland less likely to reject abortion than those in germany and in the netherlands. compared to the women and men of turkish ancestry living in germany, those in the other fi ve countries answered “always” more often. fig. 3: attitudes toward abortion, by reason, migrant status and country (%) a medical reasons native comparison group b medical reasons turkish second generation c non-medical reasons native comparison group d non-medical reasons turkish second generation 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd g er m an y 06 95 2 12 87 4 19 78 3 30 67 3 37 60 4 44 52 never acceptable acceptable in specific cases always acceptable 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd g er m an y 5 30 65 11 33 56 26 41 33 9 57 34 8 46 46 20 55 25 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd g er m an y 1 25 74 4 33 63 12 45 43 16 44 40 11 65 23 30 46 24 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd g er m an y 26 35 39 35 39 26 55 33 12 63 25 12 35 52 13 64 28 8 in percent in percent in percent in percent source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08 • nadja milewski, sarah carol328 figures 4c and 4d display the country results of the multivariate analyses for non-medical reasons. compared to germany, the persons in all other countries were signifi cantly less likely to “never” accept abortion. sweden and france stood out as having high shares of respondents who said they would always accept abortion; and there was less likelihood of “never” and “in specifi c cases” than in the other countries. fig. 4: attitudes toward abortion, by reason, migrant status and country (ame) a medical reasons native comparison group b medical reasons turkish second generation c non-medical reasons native comparison group d non-medical reasons turkish second generation average marginal effects (ame) average marginal effects (ame) average marginal effects (ame) average marginal effects (ame) -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd never acceptable acceptable in specific cases always acceptable -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 s w ed en fr an ce n et he rla nd s a us tr ia s w itz er la nd results of multinomial logistic regression models, reference: germany. controlled for sex, siblings, mothers‘ lfp, father‘s education, religious education, age, education, marital status, parenthood, religiosity, third-party presence. bars in black frames indicate signifi cant differences at 5 percent. source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08 attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 329 in the second turkish generation, the country variation was less pronounced. a similarity to the patterns of the native comparison group was that those in france and sweden were less likely to say “never” and more likely to say “always”. also second generation turks in the other three countries were more “liberal” than those in germany – either by stating “in specifi c cases” more often (as is the case with those in switzerland), or by being more likely to answer “always” (as is the case with those in the netherlands or austria). 4.3 the role of the explanatory variables coming back to our third hypothesis, we look at the effects of the socio-demographic controls and the socialisation context of the family. the independent variables did not contribute much to explaining the variation within the groupings under study, neither between the native comparison group and the second turkish generation (table a2 in the appendix) nor within natives or turks (tables 2a and 2b). in the turkish second generation, religious upbringing (koran school attendance) had an infl uence on attitudes toward abortion for medical reasons and non-medical reasons, i.e. lower “in specifi c cases” and “always” acceptance. having 3+ siblings and the father’s primary education were associated with lower acceptance of abortion. among the variables referring to the respondents’ socio-economic situation at the time of the interview, tertiary education was associated with higher acceptance and primary education with lower acceptance of abortion for both types of reasons, compared to secondary schooling. those who considered themselves religious said less often that they accepted abortion “in specifi c cases” or “always”. being married and carrying out the interview in the presence of a third person were also associated with lower levels of acceptance. these trends were similar to those in the native comparison group, albeit with smaller coeffi cient sizes. 5 discussion we analysed attitudes toward abortion among turkish descendants living in six european countries, and compared them to the attitudes of their counterparts with non-migrant parents. based on the assimilation theory, we had hypothesised that we would observe a gap between the second turkish generation and the native comparison group. we did indeed fi nd such a gap in our results: overall, the migrant descendants were less approving of abortion than the natives. but, as expected, the size of this gap varied depending on the reason for abortion. the differences between the second generation and the comparison group were smaller for abortion for medical reasons than for non-medical reasons. moreover, we had hypothesised that this gap would diminish when we controlled for the socio-demographic composition of the groupings and further variables of the family background and childhood of the respondents. our results only partially supported this hypothesis, because the differences between the groupings could be partially explained by the controls. • nadja milewski, sarah carol330 n at iv e co m p ar is o n g ro u p tu rk is h se co n d g en er at io n “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” ca se s” ca se s” c ou n tr y of r es id en ce ( r ef = g er m an y) a u st ri a -0 .0 1 -0 .1 5* ** 0. 16 ** * -0 .1 1* ** -0 .0 1 0. 12 ** * fr an ce -0 .0 2° -0 .2 9* ** 0. 31 ** * -0 .0 7° -0 .2 3* ** 0. 30 ** * n et h er la n d s, t h e 0. 00 -0 .1 9* ** 0. 19 ** * 0. 04 -0 .1 7* ** 0. 13 ** * s w ed en -0 .0 4* ** -0 .3 7* ** 0. 40 ** * -0 .1 0* -0 .2 1* ** 0. 30 ** * s w it ze rl an d -0 .0 1 -0 .0 4 0. 06 -0 .0 9* * -0 .0 8° 0. 17 ** * s ex ( r ef = m an ) w o m an 0. 00 0. 01 -0 .0 1 -0 .0 2 0. 01 0. 00 s ib lin gs ( r ef = 1 or 2 ) n o n e -0 .0 1° -0 .0 2 0. 03 -0 .0 3 -0 .0 2 0. 04 3+ 0. 01 0. 05 ° -0 .0 6* 0. 00 0. 05 * -0 .0 4* m ot h er ’s la b ou r m ar ke t ac ti vi ty ( r ef = n o) a ct iv e -0 .0 1 0. 00 0. 01 -0 .0 2 0. 02 0. 00 fa th er ’s e du ca ti on ( r ef = se co n d ar y) p ri m ar y -0 .0 2° 0. 01 0. 01 0. 04 ** -0 .0 3 -0 .0 1 te rt ia ry -0 .0 1 -0 .0 6* * 0. 07 ** 0. 03 -0 .1 3* * 0. 10 * r el ig io u s u p b ri ng in g (r ef = c h ri st ia n) (r ef = m u sl im /n o ko ra n sc h oo l) m u sl im /a tt en d ed k o ra n sc h o o l n a n a n a 0. 04 * 0. 04 ° -0 .0 8* * n o n e/ o th er -0 .0 1 0. 04 ° -0 .0 3 0. 03 -0 .0 1 -0 .0 2 ed u ca ti on ( r ef = lo w er s ec on d ar y) p ri m ar y 0. 03 0. 02 -0 .0 4 0. 09 ° 0. 02 -0 .1 1* a p p re n tic es hi p -0 .0 2 0. 06 ° -0 .0 5 -0 .0 3 0. 04 -0 .0 1 u p p er s ec o nd ar y -0 .0 2 0. 02 0. 00 -0 .0 6* 0. 02 0. 04 te rt ia ry -0 .0 4* -0 .0 3 0. 07 ° -0 .0 9* ** -0 .0 2 0. 11 ** m ar it al s ta tu s (r ef = n ot m ar ri ed ) m ar ri ed /d iv o rc ed 0. 00 0. 01 -0 .0 1 0. 06 ** -0 .0 1 -0 .0 6° ta b . 2 a : a tt it ud es t o w ar d a b o rt io n fo r m ed ic al r ea so n s – m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n (a m e ), b y m ig ra n t s ta tu s attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 331 n at iv e co m p ar is o n g ro u p tu rk is h se co n d g en er at io n “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” ca se s” ca se s” c h ild re n in h ou se h ol d (r ef = n o) ye s 0. 01 0. 03 -0 .0 4 -0 .0 2 0. 01 0. 01 r el ig io n is im p or ta n t (r ef = n ei th er n or ) a g re e 0. 01 0. 10 * -0 .1 2* * 0. 11 ** * -0 .0 4 -0 .0 7° d is ag re e 0. 00 -0 .0 8 0. 08 0. 02 -0 .0 7 0. 05 a ge 0. 00 -0 .0 1* * 0. 01 ** -0 .0 1* ** -0 .0 1* 0. 01 ** * th ir d -p er so n p re se n ce ( r ef = n o/ m v) ye s 0. 02 0. 01 -0 .0 2 0. 02 0. 03 -0 .0 4* c ra gg -u h le r/ n ag el ke rk e r 2 0. 21 5 0. 22 6 b ic ’ -6 .1 -7 8. 5 n 24 05 23 56 ta b . 2 a : c o n tin ua tio n n o te : ** *p < 0. 00 1, * *p < 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 , ° p < 0. 1. c o nt ro lle d fo r ag e; m is si ng v al ue s no t d is p la ye d ; na = no t a p p lic ab le . s o ur ce : c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n t ie s 2 00 708 • nadja milewski, sarah carol332 n at iv e co m p ar is o n g ro u p tu rk is h se co n d g en er at io n “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” ca se s” ca se s” c ou n tr y of r es id en ce ( r ef = g er m an y) a u st ri a -0 .1 4* ** -0 .0 5 0. 19 ** * -0 .0 2 -0 .0 3 0. 04 * fr an ce -0 .2 4* ** -0 .1 6* ** 0. 40 ** * -0 .2 5* ** 0. 09 ** 0. 17 ** * n et h er la n d s, t h e -0 .1 2* ** -0 .0 2 0. 15 ** * -0 .1 1* * 0. 04 0. 07 ** s w ed en -0 .2 6* ** -0 .2 0* * 0. 46 ** * -0 .2 6* ** 0. 04 0. 22 ** * s w it ze rl an d -0 .1 6* ** 0. 16 ** * 0. 00 -0 .2 1* ** 0. 19 ** * 0. 02 s ex ( r ef = m an ) w o m an 0. 03 -0 .0 5* 0. 02 0. 02 -0 .0 2 0. 00 s ib lin gs ( r ef = 1 or 2 ) n o n e 0. 02 -0 .0 8* * 0. 06 * 0. 01 -0 .0 3 0. 02 3+ 0. 04 * -0 .0 4 -0 .0 1 0. 02 0. 03 -0 .0 5* ** m ot h er ’s la b ou r m ar ke t ac ti vi ty ( r ef = n o) a ct iv e 0. 00 0. 01 -0 .0 1 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 fa th er ’s e du ca ti on ( r ef = se co n d ar y) p ri m ar y 0. 02 -0 .0 2 0. 00 0. 09 ** * -0 .0 8* ** -0 .0 1 te rt ia ry -0 .0 3° -0 .0 2 0. 04 * -0 .0 3 -0 .0 1 0. 05 ° r el ig io u s u p b ri ng in g (r ef = c h ri st ia n) (r ef = m u sl im /n o ko ra n sc h oo l) m u sl im /a tt en d ed k o ra n sc h o o l n a n a n a 0. 13 ** * -0 .0 7* * -0 .0 5* * n o n e/ o th er -0 .0 3° -0 .0 3 0. 06 ** -0 .0 1 -0 .0 1 0. 02 ed u ca ti on ( r ef = lo w er s ec on d ar y) p ri m ar y 0. 03 -0 .0 2 -0 .0 1 0. 14 ** -0 .1 1* -0 .0 3 a p p re n tic es hi p 0. 00 -0 .0 1 0. 01 -0 .0 1 -0 .0 1 0. 02 u p p er s ec o nd ar y -0 .0 2 -0 .0 1 0. 03 -0 .0 3 0. 01 0. 02 te rt ia ry -0 .0 6* -0 .0 2 0. 08 * -0 .1 5* ** 0. 07 * 0. 08 ** m ar it al s ta tu s (r ef = n ot m ar ri ed ) m ar ri ed /d iv o rc ed 0. 03 ° -0 .0 3 0. 00 0. 12 ** * -0 .0 5° -0 .0 6* * ta b . 2 b : a tt it ud es t o w ar d a b o rt io n fo r no n -m ed ic al r ea so n s – m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n (a m e ), b y m ig ra n t s ta tu s attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 333 n at iv e co m p ar is o n g ro u p tu rk is h se co n d g en er at io n “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” “n ev er ” “i n sp ec ifi c “a lw ay s” ca se s” ca se s” c h ild re n in h ou se h ol d (r ef = n o) ye s 0. 05 ** 0. 01 * -0 .0 6* 0. 01 -0 .0 3 0. 02 r el ig io n is im p or ta n t (r ef = n ei th er n or ) a g re e 0. 14 ** * -0 .0 7 -0 .0 7° 0. 17 ** * -0 .0 8* -0 .0 9* * d is ag re e -0 .0 1 -0 .0 7 0. 09 ° 0. 01 -0 .0 1 0. 00 a ge 0. 00 * 0. 00 0. 00 ° -0 .0 1* ** 0. 01 * 0. 00 ** th ir d -p er so n p re se n ce ( r ef = n o/ m v) ye s 0. 03 ° 0. 01 -0 .0 4 0. 01 0. 00 -0 .0 1 c ra gg -u h le r/ n ag el ke rk e r 2 0. 27 0. 31 3 b ic ’ -2 17 .3 9 -3 09 .9 n 24 05 23 56 ta b . 2 b : c o n tin ua tio n n o te : ** *p < 0. 00 1, * *p < 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 , ° p < 0. 1. c o nt ro lle d fo r ag e; m is si ng v al ue s no t d is p la ye d ; na = no t a p p lic ab le . s o ur ce : c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n t ie s 2 00 708 • nadja milewski, sarah carol334 however, as signifi cant differences remained, we cannot conclude that ideational assimilation occurred within one migrant generation. our second working hypothesis referred to country variation. we had expected to fi nd that the respondents in sweden, france and the netherlands were the most accepting of abortion, and that those in germany were the least accepting. indeed, the respondents of the native comparison group by and large followed this pattern. moreover, the patterns among the second generation were similar, although the differences between the countries were less pronounced. these results imply that the societal context plays a role in shaping the cultural assimilation processes of immigrants and their descendants. the family of origin and the socio-demographic characteristics of the migrants and the subsequent generations were, however, important. among the explanatory variables we used, education and religiosity stood out as determinants of attitudes toward abortion. the higher the education of the respondents, the more accepting they were of abortion. the religious education received during childhood exerted an infl uence on current attitudes, even when controlling for present religiosity. the higher the level of religious education was during childhood – i.e. when turkish descendants attended koran school in addition to receiving religious education at home – the lower their acceptance of abortion. these fi ndings indicate that the socialisation context of the family of origin has a long-lasting impact on the ideational assimilation of migrant descendants. it appears that compared to the pace at which they adopt other attitudes, such as attitudes regarding gender equality, second-generation migrants acculturate rather slowly to the dominant views on abortion in the destination country. one of the reasons might be that turkish descendants lack a clear reference group. the topic of abortion does not lead to tension between the migrants’ countries of origin and of destination; attitudes toward abortion are also among the most controversial issues within societies. our results demonstrate that even among the native comparison groups in european countries, attitudes toward abortion vary widely. for example, while only a very small percentage of natives said they would never approve of abortion for medical reasons, the remainder were divided into one-third who said they would accept it in specifi c cases and two-thirds who said they would always accept it. the natives’ levels of acceptance of abortion for non-medical reasons were lower overall, and the percentages of those who said they would accept it in specifi c cases or always were almost equal. we should also bear in mind that because the ties sample was drawn from cities only, the levels of acceptance of abortion among natives may be overestimated. hence, in this context, fi nding the reference point for adaptation processes among immigrants in europe is not as straightforward as it is for indicators of structural integration and modernisation such as education. the group to which the second generation adapts therefore remains open. another reason for the comparatively slow pace of cultural assimilation may be that the signals sent in the receiving contexts are contradictory. in some societies, such as germany, the policies regulating abortion may not fully align with public discourse about these issues. germany has the most liberal abortion regulations among the countries we studied when it comes to reasons for abortion, and it is attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 335 one of the countries in our sample where abortion is legal for non-medical reasons. in practice, however, access to abortion is highly contested in germany, as women are required to seek counselling, and doctors who perform abortions are discredited in the political/public debate. while it is legal to perform abortions, physicians are not allowed to publicly list “abortion” among their services. if they do, they are punished – as the present-day debate shows.4 knowledge of abortion options is, however, crucial to women’s health. such information is even more important for immigrants, as their knowledge of the host country’s language and health care institutions and regulations may be less than that of the majority population. in the countries in our study where religiosity is lower and support for sexual liberalisation and gender equality is higher (france, sweden, the netherlands) – and these attitudes are refl ected in policies – the views on abortion of migrant descendants were more liberal as those of natives. a higher overall level of acceptance of abortion does not, however, mean that the residents of europe generally approve of abortion. while few reject abortion in all cases, the remainder are divided over whether they would “always” accept it, or “in specifi c cases” only. we may speculate here that given the availability of modern methods of family planning and contraception, abortion is seen as the very last option for fertility control. abortion and contraception have been found to be complementary (miller/valente 2016). hence, future research on migrant fertility and integration should also look at knowledge about and the use of contraception. access to both contraception and abortion are reproductive rights that are central to women’s self-determination and gender equality. if migrant women – especially those from countries with patriarchal family systems – are to gain access to equal opportunities (even gradually over generations), this topic deserves special attention in policies, education and research on gender equality and public health. thus, if we want to understand processes of cultural integration among migrants, we should also pay attention to the topic of abortion, which is crucial to maternal and perinatal health (canning/schultz 2012). because of socio-economic inequalities in the prevalence of induced abortion and its health risks (ankara 2017), abortion is also an issue that arises in discussions of inequality between social/ ethnic groups. references adamczyk, amy 2013: the effect of personal religiosity on attitudes toward abortion, divorce, and gender equality – does cultural context make a difference? in: 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nadja milewski (). university of rostock, institute of sociology and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: nadja.milewski@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/isd/lehrstuhl/jp-demo/milewski/ prof. dr. sarah carol. university of cologne, institute of sociology and social psychology (iss). cologne, germany. e-mail: carol@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: https://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/c/prof-dr-sarah-carol/ attitudes toward abortion among the turkish second generation in europe • 341 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: c ro ss -n at io na l c o m p ar is o n o f d ev el o p m en ts o f l eg al it y o f a b o rt io n in s el ec te d e ur o p ea n co un tr ie s an d t ur ke y b et w ee n 19 60 a nd 2 01 0 c o u n tr y y ea r r es tr ic ti o n s to m ed ic al r ea so n s r es tr ic ti o n s to n o n -m ed ic al r ea so n s o n re q u es t a d o p te d in fo rc e s af e lif e p hy si ca l fe ta l m en ta l r ap e s o ci o -e co n o m ic d is tr es s h ea lt h im p ai rm en t h ea lt h re as o n s a u st ri a 19 37 19 37 x x 19 74 19 75 x x x x 12 , w h en u n d er a g e 14 fr an ce 19 55 19 55 x 19 74 19 75 x x 10 19 79 19 80 x x 10 20 01 20 01 x x x 12 g er m an y 19 33 19 34 x x x g er m an y (g d r ) 19 50 19 50 x x x 19 65 19 65 12 12 12 12 12 12 19 72 19 72 x 12 g er m an y (f r g ) 19 76 19 76 x x 22 x 12 12 g er m an y (a ft er r eu n ifi ca ti o n) 19 92 19 92 x x 22 x 12 19 95 19 95 x x x 12 x 12 n et h er la n d s, t h e 18 86 18 86 x 19 81 19 84 x x 22 s w ed en 19 46 19 46 x x 24 24 24 19 74 19 75 x x 18 s w it ze rl an d 19 37 19 42 x x x 20 01 20 02 x x x 12 tu rk ey 19 83 19 83 x x x x x x n o te s: a n um b er in d ic at es th e w ee k up to w hi ch a n ab o rt io n is le ga l. s o ur ce : a d o p te d f ro m l ev el s et a l. (2 01 4) ; ht tp :/ /w w w .u n. o rg /e n/ d ev el o p m en t/ d es a/ p o p ul at io n/ p ub lic at io ns /p d f/ p o lic y/ w o rl d a b o rt io np o lic ie s2 01 3/ w o rl d a b o rt io np o lic ie s2 01 3_ w al lc ha rt .p d f. • nadja milewski, sarah carol342 tab. a2: attitudes toward abortion in the turkish second generation relative to native comparison group – multinomial logistic regression (ame) for medical reasons for non-medical reasons m.m 1 m.m 2 m.m 3 m.n 1 m.n 2 m.n 3 six countries (pooled sample) (n=4761) never acceptable 0.12*** 0.06*** 0.03* 0.35*** 0.16*** 0.10*** acceptable in specifi c cases 0.18*** 0.12*** 0.08** -0.11*** -0.05* -0.04 always acceptable -0.30*** -0.18*** -0.11*** -0.24*** -0.11*** -0.05** single-country analyses austria never acceptable 0.06*** 0.01 0.00 0.47*** 0.17* 0.12° acceptable in specifi c cases 0.27*** 0.11 0.08 -0.19*** -0.12° -0.10 always acceptable -0.33*** -0.12° -0.08 -0.28*** -0.11*** -0.02 france never acceptable 0.09*** 0.06** 0.04 0.31*** 0.15** 0.10* acceptable in specifi c cases 0.21*** 0.10° 0.04 0.06° 0.02 -0.03 always acceptable -0.31*** -0.16** -0.08 -0.37*** -0.05 -0.07 netherlands, the never acceptable 0.22*** 0.16*** 0.10* 0.43*** 0.22*** 0.09 acceptable in specifi c cases 0.22*** 0.16* 0.05 -0.12*** 0.01 0.05 always acceptable -0.44*** -0.31*** -0.14* -0.31*** -0.23*** -0.14* germany never acceptable 0.16*** 0.00 0.00 0.34*** 0.09 0.09 acceptable in specifi c cases 0.11*** 0.13° 0.12 -0.18*** -0.02 -0.04 always acceptable -0.28*** -0.13* -0.12° -0.16*** -0.07 -0.06 sweden never acceptable 0.05** 0.04 0.04 0.25*** 0.13** 0.05 acceptable in specifi c cases 0.24*** 0.18** 0.08 0.09° 0.03 -0.03 always acceptable -0.29*** -0.22 -0.12 -0.35*** -0.16* -0.03 switzerland never acceptable 0.05** -0.04 -0.05 0.24*** 0.13* 0.09° acceptable in specifi c cases 0.09* 0.07 0.04 -0.13*** -0.12° -0.09 always acceptable -0.14*** -0.03 0.01 -0.11*** -0.01* 0.00 note: ***p<0.001, **p<0.01, *p<0.05, °p<0.1. model 1 controlled for sex. model 2 additionally controlled for country of residence, siblings, mothers’ lfp, father’s education, religious education. model 3 additionally controlled for age, education, marital status, parenthood, religiosity, third-party presence. results of the models 3 are displayed in figures 2a and 2b. m.m. = modell for medical reasons m.n. = modell for non-medical reasons source: own calculations based on ties 2007-08 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis* daniel lois abstract: the present study investigates the change of gender role attitudes in germany between 1982 and 2016. nine waves of the german general social survey are used (n = 26,389). in contrast to previous trend studies, which largely ignore age effects, a mechanism-based age-period-cohort model (winship/harding 2008) is applied. it becomes clear that age, period and cohort independently have an impact on gender role ideology. compared to earlier research, new insights concerning the shape of cohort effects come to light: specifi c to traditional gender ideology in western germany, it is apparent that the trend towards increasingly egalitarian attitudes comes to a halt in men born around 1956 and later and in women born 1966. for eastern germany we observe that the cohort-specifi c trend towards liberalisation in younger cohorts either is diminishing or even tends to reverse. this pattern of effects mainly mirrors the phases of the feminist movement in western germany and the rise and decline of the german democratic republic, respectively. keywords: apc analysis · identifi cation problem · sexism · gender role attitudes · german reunifi cation 1 introduction gender role attitudes can, generally speaking, be defi ned as an individual’s norms respective to gender-specifi c appropriate behaviour (krampen 1979). if this specifi cally involves gender-based stereotypes that result in the inequality of men and women, this can be termed sexism (swim et al. 1995). the traditional role preconception of ascribing the role of wife, mother and career aide for men to women is a typical form of sexism. research into traditional gender role orientations is societally relevant, since it implies a devaluation of or disadvantage to women: domestic and family-orientated tasks are, by and large, unpaid, are accorded less social recognition, frequently result in economic dependence and poverty in old age comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 35-64 (date of release: 03.02.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-02en9 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de • daniel lois36 among women, and exacerbate their public invisibility and political powerlessness (cf. mays 2012). furthermore, gender role orientations are useful for explaining various demographically relevant attitudes and modes of behaviour and constitute a worthwhile subject of research for this reason as well. thus, for instance, gender role orientations have an impact on the perceived fairness of the division of domestic work (greenstein 1996), marital satisfaction (amato/booth 1995) or fertility behaviour (kaufman 2000). while researching the long-term transformation of gender role orientations, in principle, three temporal dimensions merit consideration: cohort effects, age effects and period effects. (1) cohort or socialisation effects cover differences between various generations. this centres on the assumption that individual characteristics such as gender role attitudes are acquired during childhood and youth. the formative phase of socialisation is typifi ed here by various contextual conditions (events, socioeconomic characteristics) and has a lasting infl uence on the further course of life (ryder 1965). (2) age or life cycle effects relate to changes within birth cohorts that are caused by the status of a person in the life cycle. chronological ageing is accompanied by biological ageing (physiological changes in the body), social ageing (changes in social relations) and psychological ageing (changes in attitudes, values and dispositions). (3) differences between various calendar times that equally concern all cohorts and age groups are designated period effects. they include infl uences caused by the historical context, such as a typical spirit of the age (“zeitgeist”) or socio-structural changes that exert an impact on individuals (cf. lois 2011). previous studies addressing the development of gender-based attitudes in western industrialised countries (germany, luxembourg, usa) have for decades shown that these attitudes are increasingly becoming more egalitarian (mason/lu 1988; braun/alwin 1994; braun et al. 1994; brewster/padavic 2000; thornton/young-demarco 2001; brooks/bolzendahl 2004; lee et al. 2007; valentova 2013; baier 2014). this trend manifests itself, in the fi rst instance, as a cohort effect (cohort replacement): older cohorts and those with traditional attitudes are gradually replaced by younger cohorts with a more liberal orientation. secondly, a period effect is evident (intra-cohort change): irrespective of cohort affi liation, more egalitarian gender role orientations are found in more recent survey years. however, specifi c to the usa, cotter, hermsen and vanneman (2011) observe in a more recent study that the longterm and consistent trend towards increasingly egalitarian gender roles seems to have decreased since the mid-1990s, or in post-baby-boom cohorts (born 1952 or later). according to one hypothesis, this supposed end of the “gender revolution” is a result of a changing popular culture in which aspects of feminist equality and traditional motherhood roles are combined. several panel studies have shown that gender role ideology changes in the course of life – for instance during education or after the birth of the fi rst child (bryant 2003; crouter et al. 2007; davis 2007; katz-wise et al. 2010; vespa 2009). however, age effects are largely neglected by previous studies which are based gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 37 on repeated cross-sections. thus, it cannot be ruled out, for example, that cohort effects reported so far are biased by age-specifi c variance which is not accurately addressed by the statistical model. this is the backdrop against which, in the following, a trend study on gender role orientations specifi c to germany is conducted based on the newest available data of the german general social survey (ggss). the application of a full-fl edged age-period-cohort (apc) model which builds on the mechanism-based approach (winship/harding 2008) promises new insights on the actual shape of age, period and cohort effects. with regard to cotter et al. (2011), special attention is paid to the question of whether the trend towards liberalisation has also decreased in the german context. the paper is structured as follows: section 2 summarises the current state of research on the change of gender role attitudes in germany. section 3 examines the debate on the simultaneous existence of age, period, and cohort effects. following methodological explanations in section 4, the apc analyses are presented in section 5 and fi nally discussed in section 6. 2 the change of gender role attitudes in germany: the current state of research braun, alwin and scott (1994) compare germany with the united states and assess items in terms of the impact of women’s employment on young children and in terms of a traditional gender ideology. data are based upon the german general social survey (ggss) and, for the usa, the general social survey (gss). for western germany, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, there was a signifi cant shift towards a more pronounced advocacy of egalitarian gender roles. this applies both to women and to men and, in particular, to gender ideology. this german trend towards increasingly egalitarian gender roles took hold earlier than in the united states, and began to diminish as early as the late 1980s. lee, alwin and tufi s (2007) carry forward the analyses of braun et al. (1994). they similarly base their study on ggss data for the review period 1982-2004. instead of comparing western germany and the usa, however, a comparison is drawn between the old federal states (the pre-reunifi cation federal republic of germany frg) and the new federal states (the former german democratic republic gdr). descriptive analyses show that east german respondents are, at any given point in time, less traditional in their views than west german respondents. furthermore, it is clear that in both the new federal states (1990-2004) and the old federal states (1982-2004), there is an uninterrupted trend towards increasingly egalitarian gender roles. linear cohort and period effects are differentiated within the framework of a decomposition analysis (ignoring age). the results indicate that gender ideology in west german men and women has liberalised, especially during the fi rst phase (1982-1991). using ggss data from 2008, wenzel (2010) concludes that east german respondents still evaluate mother’s paid employment more positively than west german respondents do. this difference holds even in multivariate models controlling for age, sex, education, employment status, and religious denomination. • daniel lois38 baier (2014) investigates the change of gender role attitudes in germany from 1982-2008 using ggss data. in descriptive terms, he confi rms the trend towards more liberal attitudes from a period-specifi c and a cohort-specifi c perspective. additionally, he tries to estimate a full apc model and fi nds that age has no additional explanatory power when controlling for period and cohort. viewed critically, the studies of braun et al. (1994), lee et al. (2007) and wenzel (2010) have an underfi tting problem due to the cross-sectional design (wenzel 2010) or the missing of the age effect (braun et al. 1994, lee et al. 2007), respectively. the main issue with the apc model estimated by baier (2014) is that a conventional ols model is used which potentially is affected by collinearity problems within the apc framework. that is, a simple ols model is likely to overestimate or underestimate the true age, period and cohort effects in this context. 3 changes in gender role attitudes in germany: an apc approach in the following, various factors are outlined which might be the potential causes of specifi c age, period, and cohort effects. besides important historical phases, especially the period of german partition, various “megatrends” – such as the expansion of education – are considered. an important historical factor underlying cohort-specifi c socialisation effects in western germany is the second wave of the new women’s movement. it emerged in the late 1960s from the student movement and spanned various phases. the fi rst phase was defi ned by campaigns against abortion law (paragraph 218 of the german criminal code) in the fi rst half of the 1970s; the second phase was characterised by the establishment of encounter groups, and the third phase – from 1977 onwards – by the emergence of numerous feminist projects. the new women’s movement brought together women with differing ideological standpoints. first and foremost, the radically feminist school of thought is diametrically opposed to traditional gender role orientations and considers its primary task to be fi ghting patriarchy (nave-herz 1997: 75-77). in the historical context, the infl uences of the new women’s movement are considered to have set in from the west german 1946-1950 cohorts onwards. furthermore, one could cautiously assume that the new women’s movement was at its height during the 1970s. it is apparent that two counter-movements emerged during the 1980s – simultaneously with us developments. thus, in the fi rst instance, a new “feminine myth” gained popularity; emphasising the signifi cance of physical experiences such as motherhood, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding as the essence of womanhood. the second counter-movement can be termed “new motherliness” and promised women appreciation and personal fulfi lment derived from the maternal role (nave-herz 1997: 48-51). after reunifi cation in 1990, the situation was characterised by a drive for more heavily institutionalised women’s policy, such as the increase in university-driven research in the fi eld of women’s studies and the institutionalisation of equal opportunity legislation. secondly, the women’s movement “individualised” itself to the gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 39 point that it was characterised less by representative organizations or prominent factions than by numerous women’s projects and a diverse and colourful “scene”. whether this structural shift, consistent with fragmentation, is associated with a loss of relevance of the women’s movement is a controversial issue (nave-herz 1997: 73-74; karl 2011: 240-251). in contrast to the old frg, in the gdr – apart from the period immediately prior to the fall of the berlin wall – there was no independent grassroots women’s movement. nevertheless, the ideological climate was shaped by the fact that women’s equality ranked among the primary objectives of state policy. along with doing away with class antagonism, the development of socialist polity after the second world war was also supposed to eliminate antagonism between the sexes. this was refl ected, for instance, in a relatively female-friendly gdr constitution, which stipulated equal rights in the family, wage equality for work of equal value, the right to equal education and a ban on discrimination against children born out of wedlock and their parents (karl 2011: 203-204). the role model for the gdr’s labour market and family policies was the working mother, since women’s participation in the development of the socialist state was an economic necessity. up to the beginning of the 1970s, the promotion of women’s employment, which was equated with women’s emancipation, was a priority. specifi c initiatives ranged from one year’s paid maternity leave, the reduction of working hours for mothers, an increase in child benefi ts, to the expansion of crèches and kindergartens (karl 2011: 207-208). in 1988, 83 percent of women in the gdr were engaged in paid employment. in the frg, where the male breadwinner model was, for a long time, considered to be the ideal and was promoted by the state, only 55 percent of women were concomitantly in employment (pritchard 2003). despite women’s robust participation in the labour market in the gdr, one cannot speak of complete equality. female employees were under-represented in positions of leadership and over-represented in low-wage industries. for reasons of compatibility, they often accepted jobs that were below their level of qualifi cation. in societal terms, a patriarchal family model continued to be upheld in the gdr; this apportioned women sole responsibility for the household and the family, thus frequently resulting in a dual burden (karl 2011: 208-211). nevertheless, it can be assumed that the birth cohorts that were socialised in a consolidated gdr state – primarily in the cohorts born between 1940 and 1960 – manifest more egalitarian gender role orientations than west german cohorts do. during the course of reunifi cation, the social position of east german women in particular suffered structural deterioration. in reunifi ed germany, the employment of mothers was no longer fi nancially promoted on the same scale as in the gdr; the labour market situation worsened – particularly during the fi rst few years following reunifi cation – and childcare facilities became less readily available than they were prior to reunifi cation (lee et al. 2007). however, qualitative and quantitative studies show that the high level of east german women’s orientation towards paid employment has continued over the fi rst decades following reunifi cation (beck 2003; arránz becker et al. 2010). in the new federal states, the labour force participation rate between 1991 and 2000 initially dropped from 77.2 percent to 69.3 percent, • daniel lois40 subsequently rising again to 75.8 percent in the years leading up to 2012. clear differences between the east and the west are manifest, above all, in employment among mothers: in 2012, 55.7 percent of mothers with children aged below the age of 18 in their household are in full-time employment in the new federal states; in the old federal states, this fi gure stands at just 25.2 percent (holst/wieber 2014). the consistently robust vocational orientation and employment rates among east german women (particularly mothers) thus lead to the assumption that their relatively egalitarian gender role orientation continued after 1990, i.e. in the postreunifi cation post-1970 cohorts. regarding period effects, various “megatrends” which can be attributed to western industrialised nations have to be considered. general expansion in the realm of education, which commenced in the federal republic as far back as the 1950s and lost momentum only in the mid-1990s, is considered to have contributed to the liberalisation of gender role orientations. in relation to birth cohorts, effects of this expansion of education are to be expected from the year 1950 onwards (becker 2006: 37-40). closely linked to the expansion of education is women’s growing participation in the labour market. for instance, there is a rise in the employment rate among west german women from 54.6 percent (1991) to 67.5 percent (2012) (holst/wieber 2014). the correlation between women’s employment and egalitarian gender roles is a robust fi nding (e.g., thornton et al. 1983; tallichet/willits 1986; bolzendahl/myers 2004; brooks/bolzendahl 2004). with respect to familial living arrangements, research shows that married people and those with children tend to hold more traditional gender role orientations compared to unmarried, divorced or childless individuals (e.g., thornton et al. 1983; tallichet/willits 1986; bolzendahl/myers 2004; vespa 2009). while in the new federal states the tendency to favour marriage is traditionally modest, since the 1980s, marriage has also become less important in the old federal states. this is borne out, for instance, by marriage later in life, the increasing proportion of nonmarital cohabitation, the increase in extra-marital births and the loss in importance of the institution of marriage at the attitudinal level (for an overview, see peuckert 2012: 29-46). regarding fertility behaviour, bujard and sulak (2016) show, from a cohort perspective, that the decline in the birth rate in germany can be explained in terms of two phases: while a decline in higher order births was decisive for women in the years 1933-1947, an increase in childlessness was the key factor for those in the years 1948-1968. from a period perspective, what must also be pointed out here is the rapid drop in fertility in the new federal states during the period under review, particularly evident in the fi rst half of the 1990s (kreyenfeld 2000). finally, evidence pointing to the existence of age effects comes from (rather rare) panel studies which focus on intra-individual changes in the course of important biographical transitions. regarding primary socialisation, crouter et al. (2007) fi nd a u-shaped trend for the development of traditional gender role attitudes between ages 7 and 19. however, this general trend is moderated to a substantial degree by parent’s traditionalism as well as the gender and the age of siblings (see also davis 2007). bryant (2003) shows with respect to secondary socialisation in educational institutions, that traditional gender role attitudes generally decrease within the fi rst gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 41 four years in higher education. the amount of the decline depends on the area of study as well as on the social composition of the peer group. katz-wise, priess and hyde (2010) fi nd that gender role attitudes, especially those of women, become more traditional after the birth of the fi rst child (see also vespa 2009). in general, based on the state of research and the theoretical arguments mentioned above, the conclusion seems to be justifi ed that a full-fl edged age-periodcohort model is neccesary to investigate the change of gender role attitudes in germany. 4 data and methods 4.1 data and measures the analyses are based upon the german general social survey (ggss, gesis 2016). since 1980, the ggss has been collecting data on attitudes, behavioural patterns, and the social structure in germany in the form of repeated cross-sectional surveys. questions on gender role orientations have thus far been raised in nine waves: 1982 (western germany only), 1991, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. the cumulative sample size is n = 26,389 persons. until 1990, the target population of the ggss consisted of all adult german nationals living in private households in the federal republic of germany (including west berlin). from 1991 onwards, the target population consists of all adult german nationals and adults of other nationalities living in private households in the federal republic (west and east). foreign nationals are surveyed only if the interview can be conducted in german. in order to take into account the new defi nition of the target population, a dummy variable “foreign citizen” is considered in all models (1 = yes, 0 = no). furthermore, depending on the survey design, those living in multiple-person households also have lower chances of being selected. because familial living arrangement is used as a standard mediator (see below), all models implicitly control for this issue. furthermore, it must be borne in mind that respondents from the new federal states are over-represented in the ggss. since there are, concurrently, major east-west differences in gender role orientation (lee et al. 2007; mays 2012), all the analyses below are conducted separately for western germany and for eastern germany.1 finally, gender-specifi c differences are to be anticipated (mays 2012). for this reason, all analyses within the area surveyed are conducted separately for men and for women. 1 a restriction of the data lies in the fact that for the east-west classifi cation, merely the current domicile is available, and not the place of birth and socialisation. due to internal migration between east and west, a classifi cation based on the domicile is becoming increasingly problematic. • daniel lois42 gender role orientations in the ggss are surveyed by means of six four-level items, originating from the american general social survey (gss). respondents are presented with three statements each on traditional gender ideology (henceforth termed tgi) and three statements on the evaluation of mother’s paid employment for young children (henceforth termed employ). the wording of the items can be found in table 1.2 a new version of the questionnaire was introduced in the 2012 and 2016 waves, incorporating partially modifi ed item formulations, using the split-half method. for reasons of comparability, this analysis draws solely upon the original version. for this reason, only half the sample is available in 2012 and 2016. using a confi rmatory factor analysis, lee et al. (2007) show that the six items can indeed be subdivided into the two subdimensions tgi and employ. thus, two scales corresponding to the arithmetic mean of the individual items are computed. reliability in terms of cronbach’s alpha ranges – depending on the wave – between .71 and .78 (tgi), and .56 and .72 (employ). in order to indirectly model age effects, familial living arrangements and employment status are used as mediators (see section 4.2) and measured as follows: • familial living arrangements: distinctions are drawn between (1) married persons with children (below 18 years of age, resident in the respondent’s household), (2) unmarried persons with children, (3) married persons without children and (4) unmarried persons without children (cf. cotter et al. 2011). • employment status: the employment status of the respondent and their partner or spouse is recorded according to four gradations: full-time employed, part-time employed, in education, and non-working (including small-scale employment and unemployment). 2 reverse coded items are included in questionnaires to disrupt a response set where subjects respond favorably or unfavorably to all items. tab. 1: item wordings traditional gender ideology evaluation of mother’s paid employment (tgi) (employ) “it is much better for everyone if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and the family.“ “a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her child as a mother who does not work.” (reverse coded)“ “for a woman it is more important to help her husband with his career than to get ahead herself.“ “a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works and does not just take care of the home and family.” “a married woman should renounce working if there is only a limited number of jobs and if her husband is able to provide the living for the family.” “for a child it is better if his or her mother works and does not just take care of the home and family.” (reverse coded)” source: ggss (1982-2016) gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 43 information on a non-marital partner is not included in the ggss 1982 wave. for this reason, for western germany, partner variables refer to the spouse only. missing values not caused by structural reasons were handled via full information maximum likelihood (acock 2005). missing values for the dependent variables were not imputed. instead, the scale values were computed here if the respondent had provided information pertaining to at least four of six items (schafer/graham 2002). the process of preparing and analysing the data is comprehensively documented in the attached syntax fi les. 4.2 analytical approach a key problem in age-period-cohort analysis is model identifi cation – that is, the perfect linear relationship between age, survey time, and birth year (survey time – age = birth year). there are three main approaches for solving the identifi cation problem: • the fi rst approach rests on the assumption that the dependent variable is only infl uenced by two of the three time dimensions (age, period and cohort). for example, lee et al. (2007) assume that gender ideology does not change with increasing age. this is a strong theoretical assumption which might be incorrect. • second, the identifi ability of the models can be guaranteed by equality constraints. examples include the conventional constrained generalized model (mason 1973) or more recent approaches such as the intrinsic estimator (yang/land 2013). this approach is problematic because non-adequate restrictions can lead to biased estimators. at the same time, it mostly cannot be tested whether restrictions are adequate (fienberg 2013). • the third approach is based on equating the effect of one or more time dimensions with one substantive variable. it can be assumed, for example, that the cohort effect is proportional to the cohort size effect. the so-called mechanism-based approach (winship/harding 2008) the present study is based upon is a generalisation and extension of this idea. the main idea of the analytical approach outlined in figure 1 is to specify the mechanisms underlying age, period and cohort effects. technically, the direct effects of the three time dimensions are replaced by indirect effects, for which age, period and cohort have an impact on mediator variables (employment status and familial living arrangement), which in turn infl uence the dependent variable (tgi and employ). in order to make the model identifi able, it is suffi cient to estimate all relevant mechanisms for at least one of the three apc variables. age seems to be appropriate for this context for two reasons: first, the age effect is weaker compared to the relatively strong period and cohort effects (see below). second, age effects can be justifi ed through the employment cycle and the family cycle (see section 3). model specifi cations are based on the graph displayed in figure 1. for the period and cohort, direct effects are estimated. the age effect, by contrast, is represented indirectly through mediators representing variables on employment and the family cycle. it must be considered that mediators can be so-called shared mechanisms. full-time employment, for instance, is a state that does not only change subject to • daniel lois44 age but might also be affected by a period-specifi c shift. for example, the share of full-time employed women in western germany rose between 1982 and 2016 (see table 2). the existence of shared mechanisms results in a specifi c requirement regarding appropriate mediators: a mediator variable can relate to a maximum of two dimensions (e.g. period and age, or cohort and age) to avoid another identifi cation problem in the front part of the model (paths b1, b2, b3). hence, paths b2 and b3 are marked by dotted lines in figure 1. covariance-based path models are estimated with mplus. familial living arrangement and employment status are measured by sets of dummy variables and therefore are nominal. nevertheless, paths b1-b3 in figure 1 are estimated using a linear link function. based on hellevik (2009) it is assumed that the use of linear regression in combination with binary outcomes has advantages with respect to estimation stability in path models. however, standard errors, which are by default (in ols) calculated assuming normality for the outcome (conditional on covariates), will be potentially invalid. in order to avoid such bias, bootstrapping (efron 2000) with 500 draws is used as estimation method in all models. to illustrate the analytical approach based on a concrete example, the detailed output of the apc model for traditional gender ideology and west german women is presented in table 2.3 the upper part of column i shows the direct effects of period and cohort on tgi, that is, the b4 and b5 paths in figure 1. two examples might illustrate the interpretation of these effects: first, the traditional gender ideology of west german women is 0.305 points higher for respondents interviewed in the year 1982 compared to the year 1991 (the reference category). additionally, west german women born between 1892 and 1905 are much more traditional (by 0.713 fig. 1: analytical approach b1 b 2 b 3 b 4 b 5 c 1 age period cohort mediators (employment status, living arrangement) tgi / employ source: own design 3 not shown in table 2 are the estimated correlations between mediators, e.g. the correlations between employment status and familial living arrangements. gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 45 tab. 2: mechanism-based age-period-cohort model (west german women, n = 9445) dependent tgi full-time part-time in education full-time employment employment (spouse) independent i ii iii iv v (paths in fig. 1) age (b1) 18-28 years ref. ref. ref. ref. 29-46 years -.086 .178 -.213 .300 47-61 years -.146 .134 -.225 .048 62+ years -.405 -.063 -.251 -.450 period (b2, b4) 1982 .305 -.006 -.020 .000 1991 ref. ref. ref. ref. 1992 .100 -.017 .016 .001 1996 .012 .032 .006 -.007 2000 .022 .036 .019 .092 2004 -.078 .026 .033 -.001 2008 -.127 .033 .042 .017 2012 -.233 .048 .087 .022 2016 -.307 .088 .110 .019 cohort (b3, b5) 1892-1905 .713 1906-1910 .593 1911-1915 .625 1916-1920 .541 1921-1925 .492 1926-1930 .358 1931-1935 .374 1936-1940 .176 1941-1945 ref. 1946-1950 -.081 1951-1955 -.146 1956-1960 -.235 1961-1965 -.332 1966-1970 -.296 1971-1975 -.287 1976-1980 -.257 1981-1985 -.236 1986-1998 -.182 employment respondent (c1) full-time -.363 part-time -.293 in education -.407 non-working ref. employment spouse (c1) full-time -.030 part-time -.136 in education -.134 non-working ref. familial living arrangement (c1) unmarried, no children -.145 married without children -.012 unmarried with children -.148 married with children ref. foreign citizen (control) .402 -.078 -.052 -.039 -.057 r² .32 .11 .09 .15 .33 • daniel lois46 points on a 4-point scale) than women of the birth cohort 1941-1945. both effects are statistically signifi cant at p < .01. the direct period effects and cohort effects on tgi and employ are discussed in more detail in the results sections (5.1 and 5.2). as has been already discussed, no direct age effect is estimated. instead, agespecifi c infl uences are represented indirectly by indicators covering employment status (of the respondent and the respondent’s spouse) as well as familial living arrangement. corresponding with the current state of research (section 3), a more liberal gender ideology can be observed for the following groups: full-time employed women, part-time employed women and women who are currently enrolled in edutab. 2: continuation dependent part-time in education not married, married, not married, (spouse) (spouse) no children no children children independent vi vii viii ix x (paths in fig. 1) age (b1) 18-28 years ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. 29-46 years .005 -.059 -.381 -.016 .072 47-61 years .002 -.065 -.264 -.401 .016 62+ years .000 -.064 -.094 -.376 -.014 period (b2) 1982 -.002 1991 ref. 1992 .004 1996 .007 2000 .012 2004 .004 2008 .012 2012 .013 2016 .027 cohort (b3) 1892-1905 .515 -.524 -.012 1906-1910 .487 -.493 -.010 1911-1915 .423 -.428 -.011 1916-1920 .326 -.342 -.003 1921-1925 .258 -.238 -.024 1926-1930 .137 -.140 .007 1931-1935 .080 -.084 -.006 1936-1940 .013 .016 -.002 1941-1945 ref. ref. ref. 1946-1950 .041 -.029 .002 1951-1955 .036 -.086 -.010 1956-1960 .027 -.090 .033 1961-1965 .074 -.123 .027 1966-1970 .096 -.131 .049 1971-1975 .151 -.137 .061 1976-1980 .161 -.117 .037 1981-1985 .209 -.157 .090 1986-1998 .340 -.192 .026 foreign citizen (control) -.057 -.078 -.078 -.001 -.009 r² .002 .05 .22 .22 .04 source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations); coeffi cients: in bold, p ≤ .01, in italics p ≤ .05. gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 47 cation. the reference category are non-working women. furthermore, women who are unmarried and do not have children in their households, and women who live in a nonmarital cohabitation with children, are less traditional than women who are married and live with children. the corresponding effects are examples of c1-paths in figure 1. it is assumed that age infl uences are fully represented by the cumulative effects of employment status and familial living arrangement. whether this assumption holds will be evaluated by model fi t statistics which are discussed below. in the remaining parts of the output in table 2 (columns ii–x), the mediators, which indirectly cover age infl uences, are dependent variables. for example, the employment status of west german women is predicted by age (b1paths in fig. 1), period (b2) and a dummy variable measuring foreign citizenship. to avoid the identifi cation problem in this part of the model, cohort effects (b3) are assumed to be zero. concerning age effects, it is confi rmed that women in the youngest age group (which is the reference category) are more often employed full-time or enrolled in education than women in the older age groups are. in contrast, part-time employment is the typical employment status of women in the middle age groups (29-46 years and 47-61 years). additionally, the period effects show that the participation of west german women in the labour market is growing (columns ii and iii) and that the share of persons who are currently enrolled in education is also rising over time (column iv for women and column vii for men). because of the relative stability of west german men’s employment behaviour over time, no period effects are estimated for men’s full-time and part-time employment (columns v and vi). in the results section below (section 5.3), we will make indirect statements about age-specifi c changes of attitudes by computing specifi c indirect effects (bollen 1987). the computation of these indirect effects can be reproduced using the output shown in table 2. for example: west german women in the age group from 29-46 years are less likely to be employed full-time compared to women in the reference age between 18 and 28 years. the unstandardised effect “age 29-46 (ref.: 18-28) → full-time employment” is b = -0.086. at the same time, women working full-time have a more liberal attitude compared to the reference category (non-working). the effect “full-time employment (ref.: non-working) → traditional gender ideology” is b = −0.363. multiplying both partial effects (-0.086 × -0.363 = 0.031) results in the specifi c indirect effect. in columns viii – x in table 2, age and cohort effects on familial living arrangements are estimated. period effects are assumed to be zero. it is intuitively plausible that the living arrangement “unmarried and not living with children” is most frequent for younger ages whereas the arrangement “married with children,” which is the reference category here, is more typical in the oldest age group (62 years and older). besides age effects, interesting cohort trends emerge. it can be observed that the number of unmarried couples with children tends to rise with the birth cohorts (column x). this result refl ects the declining importance of the “institution marriage” discussed in section 3. furthermore, west german women in older cohorts are signifi cantly more often unmarried and childless than in successive cohorts (column viii). this is partly due to excess mortality in men in the second world war (cf. lengerer/klein 2007). • daniel lois48 in sum, the model displayed in table 2 makes several assumptions resulting in a distinct number of degrees of freedom (df): • no direct age effects on the dependent variable are estimated, resulting in 3 degrees of freedom for the three age-specifi c dummy variables. • for several covariates, it is assumed that age and period effects exist, but cohort effects do not: full-time employment and part-time employment as well as training phases of west german women and training phases of the woman’s spouse. the effects of the corresponding cohort-specifi c dummy variables (17 in each case) are restricted to zero, resulting in 68 degrees of freedom (4 × 17). • concerning full-time employment and part-time employment of women’s spouses, only age effects are specifi ed. from this restriction, 50 degrees of freedom emerge (34 for cohort and 16 for period). • with regard to familial living arrangements, which are measured using 3 dummy variables, age effects and cohort effects are estimated, and period effects are restricted to zero (24 degrees of freedom). thus, the apc model for west german women has 145 (3 + 68 + 50 + 24) degrees of freedom in total. a major advantage of the mechanism-based approach is the possibility to test the model restrictions with respect to their empirical fi t using model fi t indices. x², rmsea (root mean square of approximation; browne and cudeck 1992), cfi (comparative fit index; bentler 1990) and srmr (standardized root mean square residual; hu and bentler, 1999) are used. table 3 summarises the empirical fi t of all models which are computed for the different groups of respondents and the two dimensions of gender role attitudes (tgi and employ). in general, there are only a few differences in the specifi cation of the different models, which are mainly justifi ed by the gender of the respective respondent. more specifi cally, whereas full-time employment and part-time employment of female respondents and female partners are predicted by period effects, the latter are set to zero for male respondents and male partners. table 3 shows fi t statistics for each model. x² is a traditional measure for evaluating overall model fi t and assesses “the magnitude of discrepancies between the sample and fi tted covariances matrices” (hu/bentler 1999: 2). however, because x² is a statistical signifi cance test it is sensitive to sample size. this means that x² nearly always rejects the model when large samples are used (cf. hooper et al. 2008). concerning further fi t indices, the cut-off points for an acceptable model fi t are at < 0.08 (rsmea), > .90 (cfi) and < 0.08 (srmr; hooper et al. 2008). measured against these values, the fi t is good for all eight models. 5 results using the analytical approach demonstrated in the preceding section, the following sections are focused on the change of gender role attitudes depending on age, period and cohort. gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 49 5.1 period effects in a fi rst step, we investigate period effects (fig. 2 and 34) which are estimated while controlling indirectly for age and controlling directly for cohort.5 in figure 2, the development of the traditional gender ideology (tgi) with passing calendar time is displayed. first, a typical result is confi rmed, in that men have more traditional attitudes than women. the development over time can be divided into three phases: the 1980s are, as documented by braun et al. (1994), characterised by a rapid trend towards more liberal attitudes. the second phase (1991-2000), similarly to the development in the usa (cotter et al. 2011), can be described as a sideways movement. finally, in the third phase, the trends towards liberalisation speeds up again from 2000 onwards. the development in the new federal states can be subdivided into two phases. following a trend of liberalisation between 1991 and 2004, a sideways trend is observable between 2004 and 2016. a potential explanation for this sideways trend is tab. 3: empirical fi t of apc models west german east german women men women men overall model fi t (tgi) x² 1007.9 928.5 788.2 865.0 df 145 145 140 140 rmsea 0.025 0.025 0.033 0.036 cfi 0.971 0.968 0.952 0.938 srmr 0.009 0.009 0.012 0.012 n 9445 8750 4265 3929 overall model fi t (employ) x² 1007.6 934.8 784.5 875.3 df 145 145 140 140 rmsea 0.025 0.025 0.033 0.037 cfi 0.969 0.966 0.951 0.935 srmr 0.009 0.009 0.012 0.012 n 9445 8750 4265 3929 source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) 4 the plotted 95 percent confi dence intervals can be used for two-tailed hypothesis testing. for example, the gender role ideology of east german women in the year 2004 is signifi cantly more egalitarian compared to the year 2000 because the corresponding confi dence intervals do not overlap. 5 the level of the plotted lines in figure 2 and 3 refers to a combination of the respective reference categories: german citizen, non-working, married with children, and cohort 1941-1945. • daniel lois50 a “fl oor effect.” the mean of east german women is 1.67 in 2016, which is already quite low on a 4-point scale. because of the sideways trend in east germany, the difference between eastern and western germany, which had increased since 1991, decreased between 2008 and 2016. figure 3 shows how the negative evaluations of mothers’ paid employment have changed over time. higher values on the employ scale indicate that the respondent fears more negative consequences for small children if the mother is working. compared with traditional gender ideology, some differences come to light. regarding gender, west german men are much more sceptical of mothers’ employment than west german women are. furthermore, the difference between east and west is more pronounced because of a very positive evaluation of working mothers in east germany. furthermore, the figure shows that the western german trend towards more liberal attitudes, which had been stable for decades, came to a halt in recent waves between 2012 and 2016. when interpreting the displayed trends, an important detail of the analytical approach must be kept in mind. because the age and period dimensions share mechanisms (see table 2), the displayed period effects are net of employment status. the corresponding specifi c indirect effects (bollen 1987) are shown in tables a1 fig. 2: period effects on traditional gender ideology (estimates with 95 percent confi dence intervals) 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 20 10 20 12 20 14 20 16 year west german men west german women east german men east german women traditional gender ideology (fitted values) source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 51 and a26 in the appendix. accordingly, the negative period effects on tgi can be explained by two well-known mechanisms: the increasing extension of educational training phases and the increasing employment of women, especially in western germany. using specifi c indirect effects, it can be computed to which extent the net effects displayed in figures 2 and 3 are already explained (reduced) by controlling for employment status. the multivariate reduction is 11.7 percent for west german women and tgi. in all other groups and for the dimension employ multivariate effect reduction is smaller and does not exceed 8 percent in any case. fig. 3: period effects on negative evaluations of mothers’ paid employment (estimates with 95 percent confi dence intervals) 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 20 10 20 12 20 14 20 16 west german men east german men west german women east german women employ (fitted values) year source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) 6 in order to calculate the specifi c indirect effects in tables a1 and a2, calendar time is modelled using a linear term instead of dummy variables. example: the indirect effect “year → full-time employed → tgi” is negative (b = -0.0007). this is because, on the one hand, full-time employment of west german women has increased over calendar time (b = 0.002) and, on the other hand, full-time employed women hold more egalitarian attitudes than non-working women (b = -0.359). the specifi c indirect effect equals 0.002 × -0.359 = -0.0007. • daniel lois52 5.2 cohort effects next, we look at cohort effects. in figure 4, the development of traditional gender ideology over 18 birth cohorts is displayed. in western germany, a strong trend towards more egalitarian attitudes is apparent. it starts with cohort 1931-1935 for men and with cohort 1936-1940 for women. however, beginning with cohorts 1956-1960 (men) and 1966-1970 (women), the liberalisation trend ends and turns into a sideways trend. because the cohort effect for tgi in western germany can be described as u-shaped, an additional model is specifi ed in which the cohort-specifi c dummy variables were replaced by cohort and cohort squared. cohort squared has a positive effect for men and women which is statistically signifi cant with p < .01. thus, the u-shaped pattern is confi rmed by this specifi cation. at this point, the results markedly differ from earlier studies which have reported that every younger cohort is more liberal than its predecessor. fig. 4: cohort effects on traditional gender ideology (estimates with 95 percent confi dence intervals) 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 18 92 -1 90 5 19 06 -1 91 0 19 11 -1 91 5 19 16 -1 92 0 19 21 -1 92 5 19 26 -1 93 0 19 31 -1 93 5 19 36 -1 94 0 19 41 -1 94 5 19 46 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 95 5 19 56 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 96 5 19 66 -1 97 0 19 71 -1 97 5 19 76 -1 98 0 19 81 -1 98 5 19 86 -1 99 8 cohort west german men west german women east german men east german women traditional gender ideology (fitted values) source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 53 a u-shaped pattern is also observable in eastern germany. the trend towards more liberal attitudes mainly spans across cohorts which were socialised prior to german partition (i.e. 1892-1930) or in the early gdr (1934-1945). starting between birth years 1951-1960, a sideways trend is observable for east german men and east german women which still holds in post-reunifi cation cohorts from 1975 onwards. furthermore, it is apparent that cohort effects are much stronger in western germany because west german cohorts, starting from a rather high baseline level, converge to the east german level. additionally, gender differences are greater in eastern germany because the cohort effect is stronger for east german women than for east german men. with respect to the assessment of mothers’ employment (fig. 5), cohort effects are weaker. for west german women, a u-shaped pattern is observable with the most egalitarian cohorts between 1941 and 1970. for west german men, the cohort effect is linear negative. furthermore, if the development in eastern germany is compared between the sexes, interesting results emerge. in the case of east german men, no systematic fig. 5: cohort effects on negative evaluation of mothers’ paid employment (estimates with 95 percent confi dence intervals) 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 18 92 -1 90 5 19 06 -1 91 0 19 11 -1 91 5 19 16 -1 92 0 19 21 -1 92 5 19 26 -1 93 0 19 31 -1 93 5 19 36 -1 94 0 19 41 -1 94 5 19 46 -1 95 0 19 51 -1 95 5 19 56 -1 96 0 19 61 -1 96 5 19 66 -1 97 0 19 71 -1 97 5 19 76 -1 98 0 19 81 -1 98 5 19 86 -1 99 8 cohort west german men west german women east german men east german women employ (fitted values) source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) • daniel lois54 cohort effect exists. however, for east german women, the cohort effect clearly follows a u-shaped pattern. mothers’ paid employment is – with the exception of the oldest cohort – most positively evaluated between birth years 1926-1970, i.e. from those cohorts who were socialised in the gdr. women in post-reunifi cation cohorts (1971-1975 onwards) are still more sceptical concerning mothers’ employment, however.7 once again, because of shared mechanisms, it must be mentioned that the cohort effects displayed in figures 4 and 5 are net of a substantial covariate; familial living arrangement, in this case. the corresponding specifi c indirect effects are given in tables a1 and a2 in the appendix.8 5.3 age effects finally, to complete the apc analyses, age effects are assessed based on the specifi c indirect effects, which are displayed in tables 4 and 5 (see also section 4.2 for a computational example). the results show that tgi increases with west german and east german women over the course of life, as they are less likely to work fulltime with increasing age and, moreover, are less probable to be in training phases. this process begins later with east german women than with west german women. part-time employment is only of importance among west german women: women working part-time have more liberal attitudes than non-working women. at the same time, west german women in the middle age groups (29-46 years and 47-61 years) work part-time more often than in the youngest and oldest age groups. for the age group of 29-61 years, part-time employment therefore results in a liberalisation in gender role ideology. as west and east german men are less likely to be affected by family-related career breaks, only the transition to retirement leads to a turn towards more traditional tgi values from age 62 onwards (compared to the 18-28 reference group). for the middle age range (29-46 years), the frequent full-time employment of men has a liberalising effect. moreover, west german men are particularly affected by partner effects (kalmijn 2005). thus, most notably, part-time employment of west german female spouses in the age group 29-62 correlates with a more liberal tgi of the west german male spouse. more importantly, the training phase of the partner has a liberalising effect on the tgi in all age groups, beyond own training phases (cf. bryant 2003). 7 in a model not shown, the effect of the birth year2 is signifi cant with p < .001, which confi rms the u-shaped pattern of the cohort effect. 8 the analytical approach chosen here is to select three birth cohorts (1926-1930, 1946-1950 and 1976-1980) which are compared to the reference cohort (1906-1910). most importantly, indirect effects show that respondents from older west german birth cohorts (1906-1910) were on the one hand more frequently unmarried and childless than respondents from younger cohorts. this can be partly explained by the excess mortality of men in the second world war (lengerer/ klein 2007). on the other hand, unmarried and childless persons hold less traditional attitudes than respondents who are married and have children. accordingly, the respective indirect effects in tables a1 and a2 are positive. gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 55 the intervening effects of the familial living arrangement (lower part of table 4) tend to be rather weak and can only be observed for west germany. for example, west german women in the age group 29-46 have more liberal attitudes, as they live in an unmarried household with children more often than younger and older women do. here, married women with children represent the reference category. the tgi of unmarried persons without children is also rather liberal. the loss of tab. 4: decomposition of age effects (traditional gender ideology, unstandardised specifi c indirect effects) indirect effect (mechanism) west german east german women men women men employment status age 29-46  full-time employed  tgi .031** -.022** -.019** -.021** age 47-61  full-time employed  tgi .052** -.013** .021** -.003 age 62+  full-time employed  tgi .145** .039** .114** .062** age 29-46  full-time partner  tgi -.010+ -.012** .005 -.056** age 47-61  full-time partner  tgi -.002 -.005 -.002 -.046** age 62+  full-time partner  tgi .016+ .039** -.013 .026** age 29-46  part-time employed  tgi -.052** .000 -.002 -.000 age 47-61  part-time employed  tgi -.043** .000 -.001 -.000 age 62+  part-time employed  tgi .019** .000 .003 .001 age 29-46  part-time partner  tgi -.001 -.036** -.000 -.004 age 47-61  part-time partner  tgi .000 -.040** -.000 -.004 age 62+  part-time partner  tgi -.000 -.003** .000 -.000 age 29-46  in education  tgi .083** .056** .028** .043** age 47-61  in education  tgi .088** .059** .034** .044** age 62+  in education  tgi .098** .066** .041** .048** age 29-46  partner in education  tgi .008* .023** .007 .030** age 47-61  partner in education  tgi .009* .027** .008 .032** age 62+  partner in education  tgi .009* .028** .008 .033** familial living arrangement age 29-46  not married, children  tgi -.011** -.004+ -.004 -.001 age 47-61  not married, children  tgi -.003 -.003 .001 -.000 age 62+  not married, children  tgi .002 -.002 .001 -.000 age 29-46  not married, no child  tgi .058** .060** .004 -.004 age 47-61  not married, no child  tgi .040** .062** .002 -.003 age 62+  not married, no child  tgi .014** .053** -.000 -.002 age 29-46  married, no child  tgi .000 -.001 .002 -.003 age 47-61  married, no child  tgi -.006 -.011 .022 -.019 age 62+  married, no child  tgi -.006 -.016 .018 -.022 ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 references: age 18-28, non-working, married with children source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) • daniel lois56 importance of this living arrangement over the course of life can partly explain why west german men and women become more traditional with increasing age. a similar decomposition for the employ dimension is shown in table 5. compared with tgi, results of employ show a similar structure although being weaker than for tgi. tab. 5: decomposition of age effects (negative evaluation of mother’s gainful employment, unstandardised specifi c indirect effects) indirect effect (mechanism) west german east german women men women men employment status age 29-46  full-time employed  e. .023** -.003 -.008* .002 age 47-61  full-time employed  e. .038** -.002 .009* .000 age 62+  full-time employed  e. .107** .005 .048** -.006 age 29-46  full-time partner  e. -.001 -.011** .001 -.028** age 47-61  full-time partner  e. -.002 -.005 -.000 -.023** age 62+  full-time partner  employ .012 .038** -.002 .013** age 29-46  part-time employed  e. -.053** .000 .002 .001 age 47-61  part-time employed  e. -.040** .000 .001 .001 age 62+  part-time employed  e. .019** .001 -.003 -.002 age 29-46  part-time partner  e. .000 -.033** .002 .004 age 47-61  part-time partner  e. -.000 -.036** .001 .005 age 62+  part-time partner  employ -.000 -.003** -.000 .000 age 29-46  in education  employ .053** .006 .019** -.005 age 47-61  in education  employ .062** .007 .022** -.005 age 62+  in education  employ .064** .008 .027** -.005 age 29-46  partner in education  e. .004 .010** .003 .006 age 47-61  partner in education  e. .004 .012** .003 .007 age 62+  partner in education  e. .004 .013** .003 .007 familial living arrangement age 29-46  not married, children  e. -.014** -.006* -.007 -.006 age 47-61  not married, children  e. -.003 -.004* .001 -.002 age 62+  not married, children  e. .003 -.003+ .001 -.001 age 29-46  not married, no child  e. .005 .042** -.008 .004 age 47-61  not married, no child  e. .004 .043** -.003 .003 age 62+  not married, no child  e. .001 .037** .001 .002 age 29-46  married, no child  e. -.000 .000 -.000 -.004+ age 47-61  married, no child  e. .011 .004 -.005 -.029+ age 62+  married, no child  employ .010 .005 -.004 -.033+ ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 references: age 18-28, non-working, married with children source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 57 6 conclusion the aim of the present paper was to decompose the change in gender role attitudes, i.e. traditional gender ideology and assesments of mothers’ paid employment, using a full-fl edged, elaborated apc approach as developed by winship and harding (2008). a fi rst important result of the analyses is that, in nearly all groups studied, all three time dimensions – age, period, and cohort – have an independent effect. the decomposition of age effects shows that gender attitudes within the lifecourse change according to status passages such as starting education, entering the labour market, or starting a family. these age effects are signifi cant net of period and cohort effects. thus, the validity of earlier studies which have ignored age is questionable (braun et al. 1994; lee et al. 2007). additionally, the present results are at odds with baier’s study (2014) which does not identify an independent age effect. by extending the analytical approach to a full apc model, new insights concerning the actual shape of apc effects come to light. this is especially true for cohort effects. previous studies reported that gender ideology is becoming increasingly egalitarian from cohort to cohort in germany. the fi ndings presented here slightly contradict this assumption: a relatively pronounced trend towards more egalitarian attitudes is, indeed, initially seen specifi c to western germany; this sets in roughly from the 1936-1940 cohort onwards. after a certain time lag in relation to the usa, where no further liberalisation is evident from the 1952 cohort onwards, the trend towards increasingly liberal gender roles nevertheless turns into a sideways trend from the 1956-1960 (men) and 1966-1970 (women) cohorts onwards. this development becomes plausible if it is, at least in part, seen as a historical refl ection of the various phases of the new women’s movement. this likely contributed, primarily in the 1970s, to a liberalisation of gender role orientations, forfeiting its pervasive socialisation infl uence to some extent once again in the decades that followed. with the data at hand, it cannot be evaluated to what extent the debate on sexism, e.g. the #metoo movement from october 2017 onwards, will lead to a reinforcement of the cohort-specifi c liberalisation trend. this is an interesting issue for future research. in eastern germany, cohort effects generally tend to be weaker than in western germany. again, the liberalisation trend comes to a halt in some groups and changes into a sideways trend. for example, east german women from the postreunifi cation cohort 1971-1975 increasingly see the employment of women in the context of young children more sceptically. the development of cohort effects in the new federal states appears to be a historical refl ection of the consolidation and dissolution of the gdr. those in the eastern german 1940-1960 cohorts are considered to have been most emphatically shaped by a more egalitarian climate of opinion, which was characterised by socialist ideology and the labour market and family policies of the gdr. by contrast, the structural changes in the course of reunifi cation appear to have contributed to a slight weakening of liberalising socialisation infl uences in younger cohorts. concerning period effects, on the one hand, the present results confi rm earlier research. in all groups a trend towards more liberal attitudes can be observed • daniel lois58 with the passing of calendar time. on the other hand, there are some hints that the period-specifi c trend turns into a sideways trend as well. this is especially true for eastern germany since the year 2004. however, potential “fl oor effects” have to be taken into account, because the vast majority of east german respondents disagrees with statements which express traditional attitudes in recent years. hence, the potential of the ggss items to measure liberalisation tends to be exhausted. against this backdrop, it is understandable why new items have been tested since the 2012 ggss wave. finally, attention should be drawn to restrictions largely to be found in the type of trend data. in some of the contexts discussed here (e.g., women’s employment, familial living arrangements), the direction of causation is unclear. does parenthood, for instance, result in traditional gender roles, or are those with traditional attitudes more likely to be parents? since this study is not based upon panel data, the causal direction can be clarifi ed only to a limited extent. particularly for determining age and life course effects, panel data are advantageous compared to trend data, as they make repeated observations of the same person before and after central biographical transitions. from a methodological point of view, it has become clear that the mechanismbased approach has high requirements for both theory and data because of the necessity to specify all relevant mechanisms for at least one of the apc dimensions. however, a major advantage of the approach is also confi rmed: while model restrictions in alternative apc models largely remain unproven, it is possible to test the empirical model fi t in the framework of the mechanism-based model. accordingly, under specifi c conditions, this approach seems to be one of the most promising ways of dealing 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age-period-cohort analysis: what it is and how to use it. in: american journal of sociology 113,6: 1697-1736 [doi: 10.1086/587154]. yang, yang; land, kenneth c. 2013: age-period-cohort analysis: new models, methods, and empirical applications. boca raton/london/new york: crc press. • daniel lois62 date of submission: 09.04.2019 date of acceptance: 12.10.19 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of a data appendix: url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/318/303. prof. dr. daniel lois (). universität der bundeswehr münchen, fakultät für humanwissenschaften. neubiberg, germany. e-mail: daniel.lois@unibw.de url: https://www.unibw.de/hum-bildungswissenschaft/professuren/swm/personen/profdr-daniel-lois http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/318/303 mailto:daniel.lois@unibw.de https://www.unibw.de/hum-bildungswissenschaft/professuren/swm/personen/prof-dr-daniel-lois https://www.unibw.de/hum-bildungswissenschaft/professuren/swm/personen/prof-dr-daniel-lois https://www.unibw.de/hum-bildungswissenschaft/professuren/swm/personen/prof-dr-daniel-lois gender role attitudes in germany, 1982-2016: an age-period-cohort (apc) analysis • 63 appendix tab. a1: employment status and familial living arrangements mediating period and cohort effects on traditional gender ideology (unstandardised specifi c indirect effects) ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 references: non-working (including small-scale employment), married with children, cohort 1906-1910 source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) indirect effect (mechanism) west german east german women men women men employment status year  full-time employed  tgi -.001** -.000 year  part-time employed  tgi -.001** -.000 year  in education  tgi -.0004** -.0002** -.0005** -.0002** year  partner in education  tgi -.0001* -.0003** -.000 -.0003** year  full-time partner  tgi -.0005** -.000 year  part-time partner  tgi -.0005** .000 familial living arragement c1926-30  unmarried, children  tgi -.003* .000 -.000 -.000 c1946-50  unmarried, children  tgi -.002 -.001 -.002 -.000 c1976-80  unmarried, children  tgi -.007* -.008+ -.004 -.001 c1926-30  unmarried, no child  tgi .053** .036** .003 -.002 c1946-50  unmarried, no child  tgi .068** .023* .005 -.001 c1976-80  unmarried, no child  tgi .050** -.002 .000 .005 c1926-30  married, no child  tgi -.006 -.009 .009 -.008 c1946-50  married, no child  tgi -.007 -.004 .016 -.004 c1976-80  married, no child  tgi -.006 -.001 .009 .002 • daniel lois64 tab. a2: employment status and familial living arrangements mediating period and cohort effects on negative evaluation of mother’s gainful employment (unstandardised specifi c indirect effects) ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05; + p ≤ .10 references: non-working (including small-scale employment), married with children, cohort 1906-1910 source: ggss (1982-2016, own calculations) indirect effect (mechanism) west german east german women men women men employment status year  full-time employed  e. -.0005** -.000 year  part-time employed  e. -.001** .000 year  in education  employ -.0002** .000 -.0003** .000 year  partner in education  e. -.000 -.0001** -.000 -.000 year  full-time partner  employ -.0005** -.000 year  part-time partner  empoy -.0005** -.000 familial living arragement c1926-30  unmarried, children  e. -.003* .000 -.000 -.000 c1946-50  unmarried, children  e. -.002 -.001 -.002 -.001 c1976-80  unmarried, children  e. -.009* -.009* -.006 -.006 c1926-30  unmarried, no child  e. .005 .025** -.005 .002 c1946-50  unmarried, no child  e. .006 .016* -.008 .001 c1976-80  unmarried, no child  e. .004 -.002 -.000 -.005 c1926-30  married, no child  e. .009 .003 -.002 -.012 c1946-50  married, no child  e. .012 .001 -.004 -.006 c1976-80  married, no child  e. .010 .000 -.002 .003 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de editorial on the special issue “coping with local challenges of population decline and ageing – case studies from germany” paul gans, claus schlömer for some years, demographic change with its effects on germany’s future population development has been an important subject in socio-political discussions as, for instance, the federal government’s demographic strategy documents. although germany’s population rose in 2013, as it did in the two previous years, this increase to 80.8 million inhabitants at the end of 2013 resulted from a net migration gain of over 400,000 people from abroad, more than balancing out the negative difference of births and deaths of about 210,000 people in these years. since, at an average of 1.4 births per woman, fertility in germany has been one-third below the natural reproduction level for approximately 40 years, the defi cit of births will continue to grow in future. the consequences are declining population fi gures and a relative and absolute increase in older people alongside a continuous loss in signifi cance of younger age groups. temporarily, immigration gains can quantitatively and qualitatively attenuate this trend, but they cannot reverse it in the long term. this development raises questions on societal challenges, and sustainable solutions to these challenges are crucial for preserving the quality of life in germany. what kind of effects on economic development are to be expected from the decline in population fi gures? what kind of infl uence does the ageing of the population have on funding our social security systems? to what extent does the declining number of young people of working age endanger our economy’s global competitiveness? can active immigration policies diminish the lack of younger workers? can local authorities handle the challenges of integrating people with immigration backgrounds, challenges that increase along with immigration? what kind of impacts does the rise in single-person households have on social structures? with regard to public services, what consequences does the population decline in rural regions have on the quality of life of the people living there? these dimensions of demographic change have inherent regional characteristics, i.e. there are considerable deviations between regions with both comparable and different settlement structures and sizes with regard to population development and structure. figure 1 illustrates the contrast in population development in eastern and western germany for the period of 1990 until 2010. the causes lie in the distinctive decline in fertility in eastern germany until 1994 as well as in the out-migration of many people to western germany. in the early 1990s, in western germany there was an additional population increase as a consequence of immigracomparative population studies vol. 39, 2 (2014): 197-206 (date of release: 30.06.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-08en9 • paul gans, claus schlömer198 tion gains, mainly from formerly socialist states. figure 1 also emphasizes regional differences that are expressed in the opposing trend of population development between prospering and economically weak regions. in eastern germany, this contrast is closely linked to an urban-rural gradient, as “landmarks” like berlin, dresden and leipzig indicate; while in western germany the regional differentiation of population development only refl ects settlement structures to a certain extent, it is, rather, infl uenced by economic disparities. for example, both agglomerations and rural regions recorded growing (e.g. munich, rhine-main, foothills of the alps, northwestern germany) as well as declining population fi gures (e.g. ruhr, saarland, parts of upper franconia, hesse and southeastern lower saxony). for germany as a whole, we observe an intraregional redistribution of the population in the period of 1990 until 2010. in particular couples with children move from the urban districts to their surrounding areas to improve their housing situation. suburbanisation began in western germany in the 1950s and has continued, with varying intensity, until today. in eastern germany, by contrast, it does not become signifi cant for settlement development until the mid-1990s, supported by tax reduction for private residential property. nevertheless, since the year 2000 there have been increasing signs of changing spatial patterns of internal migration, which nikola sander examines in the fi rst article of the special issue. she analyses the spatial structure and dynamics of internal migrations in 397 districts in germany between 1995 and 2010. with regard to the geographical consequences of demographic change for population distribution and structure, two results are striking. the intensity of migration from eastern to western germany has continuously lessened since 2001, lying distinctly below the frequency of migrations between the sub-regions within eastern germany in 2010. patterns form in favour of the growth of berlin, dresden, leipzig, potsdam, jena and erfurt, where positive economic effects are observed in relatively relaxed urban housing markets. she also identifi es this re-urbanisation trend in western germany. this concentration process is led by young adults who prefer to live in bigger cities for educational and job-oriented reasons. these internal migration fl ows are selective both with regard to age structure and geography, with the losses occurring in more rural and peripheral regions. by contrast, districts with institutes of higher education and a wide variety of educational opportunities profi t from the infl ux of 18 to under 25-year-olds, and core cities in agglomerations with a knowledge-based economic structure as well as diversifi ed jobs have great appeal for 25 to under 30-year-olds. at the same time, urban development projects are revitalising brownfi elds and changes in the working environment are increasing the appeal of living in the city rather than the suburbs, with the consequence that the outfl ow of classic suburbanites from cities with housing markets that are not over-strained is declining. according to population projections by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development, in the period from 2010 until 2030 development will be characterised by a slow tilting from growth to shrinkage (fig. 2). from a spatial perspective, this trend corresponds to growing and shrinking regions existing side by side with a more or less continuously lessening number of growing coping with local challenges of population decline and ageing • 199 fig. 1: population development in germany by districts (1990-2010) source: own design based on data from the regional development projection by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) • paul gans, claus schlömer200 fig. 2: population development in germany by districts (2010-2030) source: own design based on data from the regional development projection by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) coping with local challenges of population decline and ageing • 201 sub-regions. while in the 1990s, the decline in the population concentrated mainly on eastern germany, in future more and more regions will have declining population fi gures in the west as well. hence, the former inner-german border has ceased to exist, as depicted in figure 2. instead, a wedge-shape appears from northern hesse and the southern part of lower saxony that reaches to the ruhr, in which shrinking areas realign to ever larger areas. by contrast, the remaining growing regions in the south and northwest increasingly look like islands. this process has accelerated in the recent past and will continue in future. within eastern germany, around berlin and – less pronounced – in leipzig, dresden and the series of towns in the thuringian basin, “islands of stability” stand out from large shrinking regions, which are predominantly rural. while in the longer run population dynamics tend to refl ect patterns that largely agree with economic opposites and regional disparities, the ageing of the population, particularly in terms of aspects regarding the settlement structure, reveals unique characteristics, even if the basic features of regions with advanced ageing largely match those with shrinking as do regions with below average ageing of the population and growth (figs. 1, 3, 4). this dichotomy, which is mainly based on different numbers of women of childbearing age, is, however, overlaid by small-scale yet highly systematic opposites. for example, most large cities with a rise in the average age of their inhabitants of 2.5 years (2010-2030) display a comparatively steady age structure, since both external and internal migrations lead to population gains among young adults and to losses among older inhabitants. the shifts of the age-structure outside the large cities are all the greater. the increase of older people in the direct surroundings of large cities, where the average age of the population is rising by about four years in western and by fi ve years in eastern germany, is particularly prominent. in the west, this development is a “long-term consequence” of earlier age-selective, pronounced city-to-hinterland migrations. over the course of the suburbanisation process that began in the 1950s, singlefamily home neighbourhoods were built, some of them quite large, in which resident ageing has progressed greatly due to the owners’ immobility. as a consequence of this “ageing in place”, in coming years we expect that a large share of housing stocks will be put up for sale during the change of generations. in their article, zakrezewski, berndgen-kaiser, fox-kämper and siedentop deal with the situation of single-family home neighbourhoods built in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. based on extensive case studies in fi ve western german states, they demonstrate how the interaction of neighbourhood characteristics (e.g. image, location), the housing stocks and thus the housing supply (e.g. construction, energy shortcomings) as well as demand (e.g. change in household structures and residential needs, rise or drop in owneroccupier age groups) lead to different types of developments. single-family home neighbourhoods that are fast sells or anticipating “fi ltering up” (a rise in social status of the households due to selective infl ux) may require (if at all) stabilising measures by local authorities. but in neighbourhoods anticipating “fi ltering down”, in which the change of generations is accompanied by increasing vacancies, modernisation backlogs and diminished images, municipal interventions are needed that aim to increase quality and restructure in order to counteract a future downward spiral of the • paul gans, claus schlömer202 fig. 3: average age of the population in germany by districts (2010) source: own design based on data from the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) coping with local challenges of population decline and ageing • 203 fig. 4: average age of the population in germany by districts (2030) source: own design based on data from the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) • paul gans, claus schlömer204 residential areas. the authors provide recommendations for such actions derived from interviews with real estate experts and municipal representatives. in both eastern and western germany a second source of ageing, namely the decrease of young people, rather affects rural regions than agglomerations. in western germany in particular this is a relatively new development. in eastern germany the decline in numbers of young people was already more pronounced in gdr times than in the west. consequently, demographic ageing is particularly pronounced in places where a decline in numbers of younger people is accompanied by an increase in numbers of older people. this describes almost all of eastern germany outside of big cities and increasingly also sub-regions in the west. the article by steinführer, küpper and tautz focuses on how public services are safeguarded in regions with low population density using the example of a rural region straddling the former border in the harz area. the region is affected by a population decline and very progressed population ageing due to years of selective out-migration of young adults and infl ux of older people. the associated challenges are discussed on the basis of semi-structured interviews with key regional individuals and group interviews with elderly inhabitants of two towns in the harz area from two perspectives: the adaptive strategies of stakeholders who need to provide public services and the coping strategies of the older population reacting to the changing supply. the many options for maintaining and shaping public services aim at lowering their density and centralisation in favour of larger municipalities. their implementation is increasingly limited by economic and human resources. older people pursue active strategies to cope with their daily lives, however their available social capital is limited by increased age accompanied by less dense social networks and health restrictions limit personal resources. the article also reveals that problem-solving strategies are rather of short-term nature. educational institutions are very important for rural regions. their existence ensures residential appeal for families, thus counteracting population decline and ageing. educational institutions also cast a positive light on other public services. bartl uses the example of saxony-anhalt to discuss strategies pursuing the objective of adapting the different levels of the educational system (pre-school to university) to changing demands. between 1991 and 2012 saxony-anhalt recorded a decline in population of almost 20 percent, and almost 60 percent among under 18-year-olds. the state’s fi nancial straits require an adaptive strategy that exhausts all saving potentials, however there are a variety of reasons that oppose this objective such as institutional differences between educational levels, changes in demand behaviours, for example for childcare, and the trend towards higher educational degrees, but also the welfare state objective of ensuring equal access to all levels of the educational system in all sub-regions of the states and the infl uence of municipalities on the preservation of educational facilities aimed at securing the residential appeal of the respective town. generally, reduced costs in education must be balanced out, for example with increasing costs for public budgets in other sectors or with negative welfare state consequences for educational quality. the articles examine the challenges resulting from the spatial divergence of population development and ageing. in shrinking regions this leads to vacancies and coping with local challenges of population decline and ageing • 205 losses in value on real estate markets and in growing regions to housing shortages and excessive price increases. quantitative and qualitative changes in demand have led to both the enhancement and reduction of public services including technical infrastructures for communication, water supply and disposal, social infrastructures in the educational and health systems, local public transport, public safety and local amenities. the articles discuss adaptation and coping strategies, options for actions by private households as well as representatives of various administrative levels using the examples of public services, education and housing. prof. dr. paul gans (). university of mannheim, chair of economic geography, mannheim, germany. e-mail: paulgans@uni-mannheim.de url: http://gans.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/1461.1.html dr. claus schlömer. bundesinstitut für bau-, stadtund raumforschung (bbsr) im bundesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung (bbr), referat i 1 “raumentwicklung”, bonn, germany. e-mail: claus.schloemer@bbr.bund.de url: http://www.bbsr.bund.de published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany: estimations using the longitudinal survival method life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany: estimations using the longitudinal survival method* marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker abstract: reliable estimates for differences in life expectancy (le) by socio-economic position (sep), that can be assessed in an international context and are comprehensive in terms of considering different sep dimensions, are missing for the german population so far. the aim of the present study is to fi ll this gap by providing estimates for differences in le by education, household income, work status and vocational class. the lack of national mortality data by sep required an innovative methodological approach to estimate le from survey data with a mortality followup. the main strengths of the method are the low demand on the data, its simple applicability and the estimation of a set of age-specifi c probabilities of dying. we employed the method to the german life expectancy survey and estimated period life tables for 45 male and 32 female sep subpopulations. the results show striking differences in le across all analysed sep indicators. among men, le at age 40 ranges by more than fi ve years between the lowest and highest household income quartiles, more than six years between individuals with low and high education, around ten years across the work status groups, and almost 15 years across the vocational classes. the proportion of those who reach the classic pension age of 65 years also varies considerably, as does the remaining le at this age. the corresponding differences among women are smaller, yet still notable. the results yield an interesting fi nding for the ongoing discussion about the various consequences of an increased pension age. moreover, they provide policy-makers, doctors, researchers and public health workers with insights into germany’s most disadvantaged sep subpopulations and the potential extent of their disadvantages in terms of longevity and mortality. keywords: life expectancy · mortality · socioeconomic position · longitudinal survival method · germany comparative population studies vol. 40, 4 (2015): 399-436 (date of release: 14.12.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-16en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-16en7 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2015-17en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/203/218. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/203/218 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker400 1 introduction differences in lifetime by socioeconomic position (sep) are some of the most studied phenomena in international mortality research. the social gradient in longevity – i.e., the higher the sep, the lower the mortality – has been shown for nearly every industrialised society (e.g. kunst 1997; mackenbach et al. 1997; spijker 2004). however, estimates for germany are missing in most international comparative studies (see for instance the recent compilation of life expectancy by educational attainment for the european union and norway by eurostat in corsini 2010). this is due to the fact that offi cial german population statistics do not provide data for mortality by sep. therefore, researchers who are interested in social differences in mortality in germany must consult alternative data sources. most commonly used are data from health insurances, pension registers and surveys with a mortality follow-up. based on such data, the mortality gradient by sep has also been confi rmed for the german population for each of the three central dimensions of sep, i.e. education, income and occupation (an extensive overview can be found in lampert/kroll 2014). due to the specifi c data situation in germany, most studies analysing this topic provide results in terms of relative risks for specifi c age segments. for instance, klein et al. (2001) found that among the 25-64 years old participants of the augsburg monica study, the risk of dying decreases by 7.6 percent with every year of education. such numbers are diffi cult to assess, however. this diffi culty holds especially true for estimates on young and middle adult ages where the general level of mortality is low, and thus even small absolute differences in mortality can easily cause large relative differences. for most users of data on mortality differentials – such as public health workers and policy-makers – estimates for life expectancy (le) would be more informative. unfortunately, studies containing such estimates for the german population are rare. most of them analyse differences in le by income (e.g. doblhammer et al. 2008; kibele et al. 2013; lampert/kroll 2006; lampert et al. 2007; luy 2006; perna et al. 2010; shkolnikov et al. 2008; von gaudecker 2006; von gaudecker/scholz 2007), but we found only six which present differences by education level (doblhammer et al. 2008; klein 1996, 1999; luy 2006; perna et al. 2010; unger/ schulze 2013), and even less include estimates for le by occupation status defi ned by main work status groups (doblhammer et al. 2008; luy 2006) or the basic differentiation between blue and white collar occupations (kibele et al. 2013). what makes the thin information on differences in le by sep in germany even more limited is the fact that the existing studies are very heterogeneous with regard to the data and methods used as well as the defi nitions of the analysed subpopulations. we illustrate this briefl y for the six studies providing estimates for differences in le by education level. four of them (doblhammer et al. 2008; klein 1996, 1999; unger/schulze 2013) are based on data of the german socio-economic panel (soep), whose mortality follow-up has been demonstrated to be not representative for the mortality of the overall german population (schnell/trappmann 2006). the study conducted by luy (2006) is based on data of the german life expectancy survey (les), and the study of perna et al. (2010) on data of the augsburg monica/ kora study. the longevity indicators used in these publications range from le at life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 401 birth (perna et al. 2010) to le at age 16 (klein 1996), at age 40 (klein 1999; unger/ schulze 2013), at age 45 (luy 2006) and at age 50 (doblhammer et al. 2008). however, only klein (1996) and unger and schulze (2013) derive these fi gures from the classical period life table approach. klein (1999) presents estimates for educationspecifi c le only for a further subdivision of the education groups by income and marital status. perna et al. (2010) translate an estimated hazard function for the study sample on the basis of odds ratios into education-specifi c survival functions. doblhammer et al. (2008) estimate how variations in the education level change the expected remaining life years of a reference person defi ned by specifi c characteristics with regard to marital status, work status, income, satisfaction with health and number of persons in the household. luy (2006) performs cohort projections for individuals born between 1934 and 1952. another aspect which further complicates comparisons is that the six studies analyse different education levels, but none of them classifi es the subgroups according to the internationally recognised isced scale: klein (1996) presents estimates for the graduation levels of tertiary and below tertiary, klein (1999) for minimum secondary and maximum primary, luy (2006) for tertiary, secondary and primary, doblhammer et al. (2008) for tertiary versus primary, perna et al. (2010) for lower secondary and tertiary, and unger and schulze (2013) for tertiary, secondary and having no graduation (without presenting data for the primary level). as a consequence of these different approaches, the estimated variation in le by education level varies considerably, ranging from 2.3 years (perna et al. 2010) to 7.7 years (unger/schulze 2013) among men and from 1.9 years (luy 2006) to 6.4 years (doblhammer et al. 2008) among women. finally, all studies base their education-specifi c le estimates on the assumption of age-invariant relative mortality risks, which were derived – with different methodological approaches – from survival experiences in young and mid-adult ages. this is questionable, because mortality differences by sep have been shown to vary across ages and are usually higher in young and midadulthood than in older age groups (e.g. zajacova et al. 2009). the main point of this brief overview of existing estimates for differences in le by sep is that reliable estimates with regard to the extent of the differentials, that can be assessed in an international context, and that consider different sep dimensions are missing for the german population. the aim of the present study is to fi ll this gap by providing estimates for differences in period le by the three central sep dimensions – education, income and occupation – which (i) refer to the same age segment, (ii) are derived from the same data, (iii) are based on a method which takes age-specifi c mortality patterns into account, and (iv) are easily accessible and applicable for further research. the lack of national mortality data by sep in germany requires the development of a methodological approach to estimate le from survey data with a mortality follow-up. this method – to which we refer as the “longitudinal survival method” (lsm) – is introduced in section 2 with its theoretical and formal derivation (section 2.1) and its implementation with the used les data (section 2.2). the estimates for le at ages 40 and 65 and the survival probabilities between these ages by education, income, and occupation are presented in section 3. in section 4 we discuss the specifi c characteristics of the lsm in comparison to other • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker402 approaches for estimating le from longitudinal survey data (section 4.1) and summarise the most important results of this study in an international context (section 4.2). the paper ends with the fi nal conclusions. 2 the longitudinal survival method (lsm) 2.1 theoretical and formal derivation the development of the lsm was inspired by the techniques of indirect mortality estimation, which are used for estimating le in many developing countries. for most of these populations, detailed data on deaths and the populations at risk are still unavailable or of too bad quality to be useable (luy 2010a). to produce demographic estimates despite this lack of data, specifi c estimation techniques – the so-called “indirect methods” – have been developed. these are based on particular survey questions which are included in censuses or special survey projects (for an up-to-date overview of these methods see moultrie et al. 2013). the dominating indirect technique for the estimation of adult mortality is the so-called “orphanhood method”. its basis is the information whether the survey respondents’ mothers and fathers are still alive at the time of interview. the proportion of respondents with mother and father alive is then transformed into a period survival probability from age 25 to age 25 plus the age of respondents. because the underlying mortality levels and patterns are widely unknown in developing countries, the transformation is based on theoretical population models (see hill et al. 1983). with the help of model life tables, the best fi tting survival function is used as estimated life table for a specifi c period before the time of the survey. this reference period – i.e. the calendar year to which the life table is assumed to apply – is derived from the age of the respondents and the level of their parents’ mortality. alternative and similarly functioning indirect techniques for estimating adult mortality are based on information about the survival of respondents’ siblings and spouses (more details can be found in the above references as well as in hill et al. 2005; timæus 1991). the functionality of these indirect techniques and thus the quality of the resulting estimates depend predominantly on the fi t between the assumed theoretical mortality models and the actual mortality patterns. this has been demonstrated for the orphanhood method with data from industrialised countries where the transformation of information about the survival of the respondents’ parents into a period life table can be based on empirical data of trends in age-specifi c mortality (festy 1995; luy 2012). the availability of detailed data on mortality trends in developed countries has been used by luy (2012) to develop a “modifi ed orphanhood method” (mom) for application in these populations. the mom has already been deployed by luy et al. (2011) to estimate le by education and occupation in italy – where offi cial population statistics are also limited with respect to socially differentiated mortality – and by wiedemann (2012) to estimate le of immigrants in germany. the lsm adopts the concept of indirect mortality estimation to transform longitudinal survival data into a period life table. in contrast to these techniques, the balife expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 403 sic information of the lsm is not the (indirectly surveyed) survival of respondents’ relatives but the (directly recorded) survival of the respondents themselves. the basic idea of the lsm can be loosely described as follows: when we have a survey with a mortality follow-up, then we can “ask” the respondents themselves whether they are still alive at the time of the follow-up. thus, the proportion of respondents who survived until the mortality follow-up can be used for an almost identical transformation into period survivorship as it is done in indirect estimation approaches with the proportions of respondents with relatives alive. the basis of the lsm is the proportion of individuals in age x at the time of the fi rst survey who survived the time z until the mortality follow-up, denoted by )zx ,x(sr ˆ , with the bars indicating the average ages and average observation times of all x-year old survey respondents at the time of the fi rst interview. the hat on rŝ indicates that the survival rate is derived directly from the survey data, whereas survival rates without hat – being introduced below – are derived from data for the entire population. the subscript r marks the reference to the survey respondents. )zx ,x(sr ˆ can be calculated by dividing the number of survivors at the time of the mortality follow-up – derived from the difference between the number of respondents at age x at the time of the fi rst survey, r(x), and the number of those who died d(x) by r(x), thus in order to maximise our use of the available information for the transformation of these longitudinal survivorships into period survival probabilities, each individual i is used with the precise age x at the time of the fi rst survey and the precise time z until the mortality follow-up (calendar dates transferred into decimals). an expected longitudinal survival )zx ,x(sl  is estimated for each age from the sum of the individual survival rates from age x to x+z derived from the corresponding survival probabilities px of cohort life tables for the total population divided by r(x). the expected longitudinal survivals are reconstructed for each survey respondent’s precise age x and time z until the mortality follow-up by interpolation from the available cohort life tables (which usually only include survival probabilities for exact ages x). in formal terms, the estimated expected longitudinal survival for the survey respondents aged x at the time of the fi rst interview until the mortality follow-up results from in the next step, the corresponding period survivals )zx ,x(sp  for the reference period t are derived from the period survival probabilities lx, which are recon. r(x) d(x)-r(x))zx,x(sr ˆ (1) . r(x) p p )zx,x(s r(x) 1i x zx l (2) • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker404 structed – equivalently to the previous step – by interpolation from the available period life tables, thus an appropriate reference period t is the mid-year between the times of the fi rst survey and the mortality follow-up. alternatively, the reference period can also be derived – if available – from the dates of death of the deceased survey respondents. the longitudinal survival rates of the survey respondents )zx ,x(sr ˆ can be transformed into period survival rates from the exact age x to x+z from with w( zx  , x + z)t being a weighting factor for converting the period survival rate from the age span between x and zx  to the age span from age x to x+z (for exact ages x and survival times z). these weighting factors can be derived from the period life table for the reference period t. the resulting survivorship functions – one for each age x – can be smoothed and extended to the highest ages with the brass model life table system (brass 1975), setting the model parameter β = 1.0 and using the reference life table as standard. from the resulting smoothed survival curves, the age-specifi c probabilities of dying can be derived and weighted averages can be calculated for each age x by taking r(x) into account. this results in a specifi c age pattern of probabilities of dying q(x) which constitute the fi nal basis for the life table construction. the lsm can be used to estimate life tables for any sub-population of the underlying survey. the only necessary assumption is that the relationship between cohort and period survival prevalent in the entire population, which is used for the transformation in formula (4), applies equivalently to each subpopulation. 2.2 application to the data of the german life expectancy survey (les) mortality data from surveys with mortality follow-ups are rarely large and complete enough to apply an estimation method such as the lsm without specifi c adjustments. for our analysis, we used data from the western sample of the german life expectancy survey (les). the les is a panel that consists of two waves of interviews, restricted to individuals with german citizenship, and is based on the national health survey. the fi rst wave was carried out between 1984 and 1986 and included a representative random sample of the total west german population. in 1998, the german federal institute for population research (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung, bib) carried out a follow-up survey among the individuals . r(x) l l )zx,x(s t r(x) 1i x zx tp (3) (4), )zx,x(s )zx,x(s )zx,zx(w)zx,x(ŝ l l l tp tr tx zx life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 405 interviewed in the 1984/86 national health survey. in this second survey, the initial questionnaires were slightly modifi ed – e.g. purely medical details were removed and replaced by questions on general living conditions and family situations – and the number of respondents was restricted to those born between 1914 and 1952 (more details can be found in gärtner 2001). the les contains demographic indicators as well as information about economic and social status, social networks, health behaviours, life attitudes and a variety of health indicators. the western german les sample includes a total of 4,139 women and 4,335 men. of those, 304 women (7.3 percent) and 653 men (15.1 percent) died between the two survey waves. for 1,047 women (25.3 percent) and 903 men (20.8 percent) the survival status by 1998 is unknown. tests of the quality of the les mortality data revealed that the refl ected survival of the les sample between 1984 and 1998 is representative for the western german population, regardless of whether individuals with unknown survival status in 1998 are included or not (luy/di giulio 2005; salzmann/bohk 2008). as suggested by luy and di giulio (2005) we excluded the individuals with unknown survival status from the analysis. a sensitivity analysis on the basis of the average health statuses of individuals with known and unknown survival statuses at the time of the mortality follow-up indicates that neither the reduced les sample as a whole nor the small sep subgroups (which are introduced in more detail below) are health-biased. the differences in average health status between individuals with known and unknown survival statuses are minor in most subpopulations and in no case statistically signifi cant (see appendix, tables a1 and a2). thus, we can assume that the mortality of the sep subpopulations is also refl ected properly in the reduced les sample. in the following, we illustrate how we applied the lsm to the les data. the fi rst step is the calculation of the observed longitudinal survival of the survey respondents. for instance, the les sample includes 71 women who were 65 years old at the time of the fi rst survey, their average age being 65.4 years, thus x = 65.4. the fi rst wave interviews of these women took place in the year 1985.3 (on average), and the second interviews of those who survived until wave 2 were conducted in the year 1998.4 (on average). thus, the observed survival time until the mortality follow-up was 13.1 years, hence z = 13.1. during this time, 18 of the women died and 53 survived. applying these numbers to formula (1) indicates that in total, we obtain 70 )zx ,x(sr ˆ estimates for women and men and the single ages 35 to 69, covering the survival rates from age 35.5 to 48.6 until age 69.6 to 82.9 among women, and from age 35.5 to 48.6 until 69.4 to 82.6 among men. for each of these estimates, the expected longitudinal survival is determined by formula (2) on the basis of the german cohort life tables published by the german statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2006). as described in section 2.1, the calculation incorporates the observed survival times of each individual of the les sample with the precise ages at the beginning and at the time of the mortality follow-up, assum0.7465. 71 5378.5)(65.4,ˆ rs • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker406 ing for the deceased individuals the average time of the second interview as time of mortality follow-up. when mortality estimation is conducted with survey data such as the les, the sample sizes can in some cases become so small that not every single age group contains deceased individuals. to overcome this problem, we estimated the survival rates from moving averages of 11 age groups, i.e. estimating the survival rate for age 40 from the average of the ages 35 to 45, the survival rate for age 41 from the average of the ages 36 to 46 and so on. figure 1 shows the resulting )zx ,x(sr ˆ values for women and men and every single age (grey arrows) in comparison to the corresponding expected longitudinal survivals derived from the german cohort life tables (bold black lines). the next steps of the transformation of the proportions of surviving survey respondents into period survivorship estimates are performed as described in the previous section, by applying formulas (3) and (4). we chose the year 1992 as our reference period, as it lies between the average points in time at which the surveys were conducted. the corresponding period survival probabilities were taken from the offi cial period life table 1991/93 for western germany, published by the german statistical offi ce. this life table ends with the open age interval of 90+ years. fig. 1: observed and expected longitudinal survival rates for the les sample by single ages (11-year moving averages) source: own calculations with les data (a) men (b) women 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 30 40 50 60 70 80 age expected observed longitudinal survival rate longitudinal survival rate 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 30 40 50 60 70 80 age observed expected life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 407 we extended the life table to age 110 by applying the kannisto model, which has proven to be the most accurate method for extrapolating mortality at highest ages (thatcher et al. 1998). after smoothing the single survival functions with the brass logit life table model, we averaged the resulting probabilities of dying for each single age. we used weighted averages, giving higher weights to the probabilities of dying from survival functions being based on observations from the survey data, and giving lower weights to those that resulted from extrapolation of survival functions derived from observations of younger ages. this was done by weighting the probabilities with the number of survivors of the corresponding survival function. figure 2 shows the estimated probabilities of dying, gained from the les data, for all women and men with the lsm in comparison to the corresponding values of the offi cial german life table 1991/93 for ages 40 to 90. the fi gure illustrates the functionality of the method, as the estimates derived from the les with the lsm are very close to the values from the offi cial german life table for the entire population. the corresponding le estimates for the les sample are also close to the offi cial german life table, being slightly lower among men (34.5 vs. 35.2 years) and slightly higher among women (41.1 vs. 40.7 years). we performed the illustrated lsm estimations for each examined sep subpopulation. we used information from the les about education, household income and fig. 2: estimated probabilities of dying for ages 40 to 90 with the lsm in comparison to the corresponding values of the offi cial german life table 1991/93 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 age life table 1991/93 lsm estimate men women probability of dying (log. scale) source: statistical offi ce of germany, own calculations with les data • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker408 occupation at the time of fi rst interview in 1984/86 as indicators for individuals’ sep. educational attainment was grouped according to the isced-97 scale (united nations educational scientifi c and cultural organization 1996) into the three levels of “low” (isced 0-2), “medium” (isced 3-4) and “high” (isced 5-6). the isced combines school and vocational training degrees and is used in most international studies. the monthly net household income was separated into quartiles. the fi rst quartile indicates the lowest income group (less than 895 €) while the fourth quartile indicates the group with the highest income (1,917 € and more). the current – or, in the case of retirement or unemployment, the last – position on the labour market is defi ned on the basis of the work status as well as the vocational class. the work status includes four main groups: manual workers, employees, public servants and self-employed workers. each main group was further subdivided into two or three specifi c work status subgroups, such as unskilled and skilled workers or employees in simple, qualifi ed and highly qualifi ed tasks. the vocational classes are recorded in the les according to the german classifi cation of professions kldb-92 (statistisches bundesamt 1992). the kldb-92 provides a hierarchical order of all professions with respect to the industrial segment with the six main classes (i) husbandry, forestry and horticulture, (ii) mining and mineral workers, (iii) production jobs, (iv) technical occupations, (v) service sector, and (vi) other work force. each of these main classes includes up to three sublevels of specifi c professions. because of the case numbers it was only possible to analyse the main classes and the fi rst sublevel. nonetheless, the main and fi rst level subclasses allow us to isolate specifi c professions with substantial health risks, such as miners and mineral workers, structural and civil engineers or metalworkers. in contrast to the more common international standard classifi cation of occupation (international labour offi ce 2012), the kldb-92 does not defi ne the skill level and specifi cation of an individual’s profession. thus, the kldb-92 does not present differentiations between chief or senior positions on the one hand and workers or clerks on the other in a specifi c occupational group. for instance, the jobs in the health sector, as a subclass of the service sector, contain physicians as well as nurses. as is to be expected, the number of different occupations depends on gender. the employment rate of women – particularly for the cohorts contained in the les sample – is notably lower than for males, leading to less variations and smaller case numbers in the female occupation groups. descriptive statistics for each of the analysed subpopulations can be found in the appendix (tables a3 and a4), including the number of respondents r, the number of deaths d, the average age at the time of fi rst survey x, the average survival time until the mortality follow-up z, and the entire subsamples’ survival rate )zx ,x(sr ˆ . we restricted the analysis to subpopulations with at least fi ve observed deaths and estimated 95 percent confi dence intervals for le with the method proposed by chiang (1984). the required death numbers for each single age were derived from applying the estimated survival functions to the number of individuals of the les sample belonging to the particular subpopulation. the complete life tables for each subpopulation with the corresponding confi dence intervals are available in csv-format as online supplement. life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 409 3 results table 1 presents an overview of the results for each analysed sep subpopulation of men, including estimates for the remaining le at age 40 (e40), the probability to survive from age 40 to 65 (25p40), and the remaining le at age 65 (e65). all estimates refer to the period 1991/93. cases in which the 95 percent confi dence interval for e40 respective e65 does not include the corresponding value for the total male les population are marked with an asterisk. figure 3 provides an additional visual summary for selected subpopulations by showing the differences in e40 (black bars) and e65 (white bars) to the values of the total male population (figures 3c and 3d for the work statuses and vocational classes include all main groups and the subgroups with the lowest and highest values of e40 and e65). the results confi rm the existence of striking differences in le among men across all the four analysed sep indicators (education, household net income, work status and vocational class). for the subpopulations with the highest and lowest le, the differences to the total population are statistically signifi cant despite the low case numbers in the les sample (i.e. the 95 percent confi dence intervals for these subpopulations do not include the le value for the total male population). the le at age 40 by education level varies by 6.3 years, being 32.0 years for low, 34.0 years for medium and 38.3 years for highly educated men. the probability of survival until age 65 differs by 0.145 between men with a high (25p40 = 0.870) and men with a low level of education (25p40 = 0.725), i.e. the proportion of 40-year-old individuals who survive until age 65 is 14.5 percentage points higher for highly educated men than for their counterparts with a low education. at age 65, remaining le for men still shows signifi cant differences, with a gap of 3.7 years between a high (e65 = 16.5) and a low education (e65 = 12.8). similar – but slightly smaller – differences can be seen with regard to the net household income quartiles. the le gap between men belonging to the fi rst (e40 = 31.1, e65 = 12.8) and fourth quartile (e40 = 36.8, e65 = 15.6) is 5.7 years at age 40 and 2.8 years at age 65. the probabilities to survive from age 40 to age 65 are 0.838 for men in the highest and 0.697 for men in the lowest household income quartile. figures 3a and 3b reveal that the social gradient in mortality does not only affect the individuals in the lowest and the highest sep, but applies to all sep groups: the higher the sep, the higher the le. the social gradient in mortality also becomes apparent when work status is used as indicator for sep. among the main work status groups, manual workers exhibit the lowest le (e40 = 32.4, e65 = 13.2), followed by public servants (e40 = 35.6, e65 = 14.8), employees (e40 = 36.1, e65 = 15.2) and self-employed workers (e40 = 36.6, e65 = 15.3). thus, compared to manual workers, the surplus in le for public servants, employees and self-employed workers is 3.2, 3.7 and 4.2 years at age 40, and 1.6, 2.0 and 2.1 years at age 65. the corresponding differences in the probability to survive from age 40 to age 65 are 0.101, 0.088 and 0.080, respectively. the differences in le become larger when we consider the work status subgroups. at age 40, the lowest le can be found for employees in simple tasks (e40 = 30.1) and the highest le for self-employed farmers (e40 = 39.6), yielding an e40-difference of 9.5 years. the • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker410 tab. 1: life expectancy at ages 40 (e40) and 65 (e65) and the survival probability between ages 40 and 65 (25p40) by different indicators for sep, men sep indicator / subpopulation e40 25p40 e65 all men 34.5 0.789 14.2 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 32.0* 0.725 12.8* medium (isced 3-4) 34.0 0.775 14.0 high (isced 5-6) 38.3* 0.870 16.5* household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 31.1* 0.697 12.8* 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 34.8 0.798 14.3 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 35.5 0.812 14.9 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 36.8* 0.838 15.6* work status manual workers (all) 32.4* 0.737 13.2* unskilled or semi-skilled workers 30.4* 0.678 12.4* skilled workers 34.2 0.787 13.8 master craftsmen, overseers, foremen 32.7 0.740 14.0 employees (all) 36.1* 0.825 15.2* simple tasks 30.1* 0.659 12.5 qualifi ed tasks 35.4 0.808 14.6 highly qualifi ed tasks 38.3* 0.869 16.6* public servants (all) 35.6 0.817 14.8 simple or medium service 33.4 0.756 13.8 higher or senior service 37.8* 0.867 15.9* self-employed workers (all) 36.6* 0.838 15.3 entrepreneurs 35.0 0.800 14.7 freelancers 37.4 0.848 15.8 farmers 39.6* 0.902 16.8* vocational classes according to kldb-922 jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry, horticulture 33.1 0.749 14.2 miners and mineral workers 26.2 0.541 11.5 production jobs (all) 33.3 0.761 13.5 metal production and metal working 34.9 0.808 14.3 metal constr., mech. engineering and similar 31.9 0.705 13.7 electrical engineering 33.8 0.767 13.0 foodstuffs sector 33.7 0.762 13.7 structural and civil engineering 30.9 0.693 13.0 wood and plastics processing 39.6* 0.913 16.3 painting, varnishing and similar occupations 38.2 0.864 16.6 unskilled workers without specifi cation 32.3 0.747 11.5 life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 411 probabilities of surviving from age 40 to age 65 are 0.659 and 0.902 respectively, i.e. a difference of 24.3 percentage points. at age 65, the gap in remaining le is 4.4 years between self-employed farmers with the highest le (e65 = 16.8) and unskilled or semi-skilled manual workers with the lowest le (e65 = 12.4). the largest differences in mortality and longevity can be found between the vocational classes. miners and mineral workers are the main class with the highest mortality. their le at age 40 is 26.2 years, and only slightly more than half of them survive until age 65 (25p40 = 0.541). in contrast, the technical occupations are the main vocational class exhibiting the lowest mortality, with le at age 40 being 39.4 years and the probability of surviving until age 65 being almost 90 percent (25p40 = 0.895). in between are the service sector (e40 = 35.0, 25p40 = 0.800), production jobs (e40 = 33.3, 25p40 = 0.761), jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry and horticulture (e40 = 33.1, 25p40 = 0.749) and the residual category “other workforce” (e40 = 32.9, 25p40 = 0.744). with regard to le at age 65, we fi nd the same order of subgroups, with miners and mineral workers exhibiting the lowest (e65 = 11.5), and the technical occupations the highest level of le (e65 = 16.8). sep indicator / subpopulation e40 25p40 e65 technical occupations (all) 39.4* 0.895 16.8* engineering, chemistry, physics, maths 38.8* 0.871 17.1* technicians, technical specialists 39.5* 0.900 16.7* service sector (all) 35.0 0.800 14.5 goods und service marketing 34.4 0.786 14.3 transport industry 31.9* 0.725 13.0 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 35.1 0.801 14.8 public and private security sector 34.2 0.788 13.7 health sector 38.8 0.864 17.0 social service and education 40.6* 0.909 18.0* other service occupations 38.2 0.874 15.9 other work force 32.9 0.744 14.1 tab. 1: continuation * = statistical signifi cant deviation from total le, p < 0.05 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions note: estimates for the small subgroups of work statuses and vocational classes have to be interpreted with caution. some of them are based on very small case numbers (see appendix, table a3), and the shapes of the estimated period life tables might differ from the longitudinal survival patterns of the corresponding les subsamples. source: own calculations with les data • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker412 fig. 3: deviation of life expectancy at ages 40 and 65 of subpopulations defi ned by specifi c sep indicators from the total population, men (a) education (b) household net income difference to total le difference to total le -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 low medium high education level age 40 age 65 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 1 2 3 4 income quartile age 40 age 65 (c) work status (d) vocational class difference to total le difference to total le -9.0 -7.0 -5.0 -3.0 -1.0 1.0 3.0 5.0 7.0 9.0 e m p l. si m p le ta sk s m an ua l w o rk er s (a ll) p ub lic s er va nt s (a ll) e m p lo ye es (a ll) s el fem pl o ye d (a ll) s el fem pl . f ar m er s age 40 age 65 -9.0 -7.0 -5.0 -3.0 -1.0 1.0 3.0 5.0 7.0 9.0 m in er s u ns ki lle d w o rk er s o th er w o rk fo rc e h us b an d ry p ro d uc tio n jo b s s er vi ce s ec to r t ec hn ic al o cc . s o ci al s er vi ce age 40 age 65 source: own calculations with les data life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 413 the differences become even greater when we examine the subclasses. miners and mineral workers remain the subgroup with the lowest le at age 40. this vocational subclass also has the lowest le at age 65, together with unskilled workers in production jobs, with a remaining le of 11.5 years. however, compared to the miners and mineral workers, the unskilled workers in production jobs have a lower mortality at younger ages, with e40 being 32.3 years and the probability of surviving from age 40 to 65 being almost 75 percent (25p40 = 0.747). the lowest mortality level of all vocational subclasses can be found among men working in the social service and education sector, including mostly school teachers, but also scientists and social workers (e40 = 40.6, e65 = 18.0). their advantage in le compared to the vocational subclasses with the highest mortality levels is 14.4 years at age 40 and 6.5 years at age 65. members of the social service and education sector have a 0.909 probability of surviving from age 40 to 65. the corresponding results for women are summarised in table 2 and figure 4. compared to men, the differences in le and survival probabilities between ages 40 and 65 are smaller and in fewer cases statistically signifi cantly different from the total female les population. to facilitate the comparison of the le differentials among women and men, we use an identical axis scaling in figures 3 and 4. with regard to education and household net income, we fi nd the same sep gradient for women as for men. the difference in le between women with a high (e40 = 43.0, e65 = 20.3) and a low education (e40 = 40.7, e65 = 18.3) is 2.3 years at age 40 and 2.0 years at age 65. differently from men, we fi nd a larger le span among the household net income quartiles than across the three education groups. the differences in le at ages 40 and 65 between women belonging to the highest (e40 = 43.4, e65 = 20.1) and lowest household income quartiles (e40 = 39.2, e65 = 17.5) are 4.2 and 2.6 years, respectively. the corresponding spans in the probabilities to survive from age 40 to age 65 are 0.020 across the education groups and 0.063 across the household income quartiles. more interesting differences between women and men can be found with regard to the work statuses. across the main work status groups, manual workers also show the lowest le at age 40 among women (e40 = 40.2), but the group of employees exhibits only a small advantage of 0.5 years (e40 = 40.7). the highest le at age 40, among the main work status groups, can be found for female public servants (e40 = 46.7) with 6.5 years more than manual workers. self-employed women (e40 = 43.6) are placed between employees and public servants, with a 3.4year advantage to the manual workers. the same order holds for le at age 65. compared to the manual workers (e65 = 17.8), the surplus of employees (e65 = 18.3), self-employed women (e65 = 20.2) and public servants (e65 = 22.9) is 0.5, 2.4 and 5.1 years, respectively. the highest probability of surviving from age 40 to age 65 can be found among public servants, with 25p40 being 0.960. the lowest survival probability is prevalent among the manual workers (25p40 = 0.900). employees and self-employed women lie in between with 25p40 being 0.902 and 0.944, respectively. across the work status subgroups, we fi nd the highest mortality among employees in highly qualifi ed tasks (e40 = 38.3, e65 = 16.5, 25p40 = 0.866) and the lowest mortality among self-employed entrepreneurs (e40 = 49.4, e65 = 24.8, 25p40 = 0.986). the • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker414 tab. 2: life expectancy at ages 40 (e40) and 65 (e65) and the survival probability between ages 40 and 65 (25p40) by different indicators for sep, women sep indicator / subpopulation e40 25p40 e65 all women 41.1 0.911 18.5 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 40.7 0.903 18.3 medium (isced 3-4) 41.3 0.915 18.6 high (isced 5-6) 43.0 0.923 20.3 household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 39.2* 0.877 17.5* 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 41.0 0.910 18.5 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 43.1* 0.929 20.2* 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 43.4* 0.940 20.1* work status manual workers (all) 40.2 0.900 17.8 unskilled or semi-skilled workers 39.9 0.894 17.7 skilled workers 42.2 0.939 18.6 employees (all) 40.7 0.902 18.3 simple tasks 39.8 0.887 17.8 qualifi ed tasks 42.2 0.923 19.3 highly qualifi ed tasks 38.3 0.866 16.5 public servants (all) 46.7* 0.960 22.9* simple or medium service 40.2 0.864 19.1 self-employed workers (all) 43.6* 0.944 20.2* entrepreneurs 49.4* 0.986 24.8* farmers 39.1 0.867 17.8 vocational classes according to kldb-922 production jobs (all) 40.7 0.893 18.7 textile sector 41.5 0.901 19.4 foodstuffs sector 41.6 0.898 19.6 unskilled workers without specifi cation 37.9 0.842 17.3 technical occupations (all) 42.6 0.917 19.8 service sector (all) 41.4 0.916 18.7 goods und service marketing 41.9 0.924 18.9 transport industry 41.0 0.914 17.9 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 41.6 0.917 18.8 health sector 39.3 0.875 17.7 social service and education 45.1* 0.939 22.1* other service occupations 40.5 0.904 17.9 other work force 38.0 0.875 15.5 * = statistical signifi cant deviation from total le, p < 0.05 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions note: estimates for the small subgroups of work statuses and vocational classes have to be interpreted with caution. some of them are based on very small case numbers (see appendix, table a4), and the shapes of the estimated period life tables might differ from the longitudinal survival patterns of the corresponding les subsamples. source: own calculations with les data life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 415 fig. 4: deviation of life expectancy at ages 40 and 65 of subpopulations defi ned by specifi c sep indicators from the total population, women (a) education difference to total le -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 low medium high education level age 40 age 65 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 1 2 3 4 income quartile age 40 age 65 (c) work status (d) vocational class -9.0 -7.0 -5.0 -3.0 -1.0 1.0 3.0 5.0 7.0 9.0 e m p l. hi gh ly q ua l. m an ua l w o rk er s (a ll) e m p lo ye es (a ll) s el fem pl o ye d (a ll) p ub lic s er va nt s (a ll) s el fem pl . e nt re p r. age 40 age 65 -9.0 -7.0 -5.0 -3.0 -1.0 1.0 3.0 5.0 7.0 9.0 u ns ki lle d w o rk er s o th er w o rk fo rc e p ro d uc tio n jo b s s er vi ce s ec to r t ec hn ic al o cc . s o ci al s er vi ce age 40 age 65 source: own calculations with les data difference to total le (b) household net income difference to total ledifference to total le • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker416 corresponding differences are 11.1 years in le at age 40, 8.3 years in le at age 65, and 0.120 in survival probability between ages 40 and 65. across th e main vocational classes with suffi cient case numbers for analysis, we fi nd the same order as among men. the technical occupations have the highest le (e40 = 42.6, e65 = 19.8), the residual category “other workforce” has the lowest (e40 = 38.0, e65 = 15.5). the le gaps are 4.6 years at age 40 and 4.3 years at age 65. the corresponding survival probabilities from age 40 to age 65 are 0.917 and 0.875, respectively. in between these, we fi nd the production jobs (e40 = 40.7, e65 = 18.7, 25p40 = 0.893) and the service sector (e40 = 41.4, e65 = 18.7, 25p40 = 0.916). as for male workers, the vocational subclass with the lowest mortality is the social service and education sector. the surplus in le compared to the vocational subclasses with the highest mortality levels is 7.2 years in e40 (unskilled workers in production jobs and other work force), 6.6 years in e65 (other work force), and 0.097 in the probability of surviving from age 40 to 65 (unskilled workers in production jobs). figure 5 depicts the overall range of survival differences by showing the survival functions for the subgroups of men and women with the lowest and highest mortality levels, together with the corresponding total populations. among men, these are the vocational subclasses “miners and mineral workers” and “social service and education”, among women the vocational subclass “unskilled workers in production jobs” and the work status subgroup “self-employed entrepreneurs”. the graphs illustrate the substantial survival differences between the displayed populafig. 5: survival functions for the male and female subpopulations with lowest and highest life expectancy in comparison to the male and female total populations source: own calculations with les data (a) men (b) women survivors in % survivors in % 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age social service all men miners 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age self-empl. entrepr. all women unskilled workers life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 417 tion subgroups. for instance, age 65 is reached by 90.9 percent of the 40-year-old men working in the social service and education sector, but only by 54.1 percent of miners and mineral workers, a difference of 36.8 percentage points (see the crossings of the survival functions with the vertical dotted line in fig. 3a). among the displayed female subpopulations, the corresponding percentages are 98.6 for self-employed entrepreneurs and 84.2 for unskilled workers in production jobs, resulting in a difference of 14.4 percentage points. also, the vertical dotted lines indicating the median of the survival functions reveal the extent of the survival differences. the age to which 50 percent of the initial 40-year-old individuals survive is 82.5 among the men working in the social service and education sector, but only 66.6 among miners and mineral workers. this leads to a difference in the median survival age of 15.9 years. for women, the corresponding ages are 90.6 for self-employed entrepreneurs and 80.6 for unskilled workers in production jobs, yielding a difference in the median survival age of 10.0 years. 4 summary and discussion 4.1 method the estimation of le for specifi c subpopulations and the differentials between them is a common problem for demographers because offi cial population statistics usually do not include the required detailed data on deaths and the population at risk. a few countries – for instance austria, belgium, the netherlands, switzerland, the united kingdom and the scandinavian countries – link their death registries with their census data, population registers or other registers. this enables researchers to construct life tables for specifi c subpopulations, which can be identifi ed on the basis of the variables covered in the registries or censuses. for most populations, however, such data do not exist, or the information of interest is not included in the registers. therefore, longitudinal survey data with registration of deceased participants or mortality follow-ups must be used to derive the desired estimates. the case numbers of these data sources are in most cases too small to derive agespecifi c death rates, even for the larger subpopulations, what prohibits the use of classic life table techniques. some scholars have employed different approaches to estimate le on the basis of longitudinal survey data, including proportional hazards models (li et al. 2014; reuser et al. 2008; reuser et al. 2009; reuser et al. 2011), bayesian markov chain monte carlo methods (lynch/brown 2005), multi-state markov models (majer et al. 2011; matthews et al. 2009), hidden markov models (van den hout et al. 2009) and the so-called “population attributable fraction” paf (preston/stokes 2011). these approaches combine sophisticated statistical methods with more classic (life table) techniques, resulting in particular statistical properties and data requirements. in this paper, we developed an alternative but comparatively simple demographic approach for deriving life tables from survey data with a mortality follow-up. we refer to the method as the “longitudinal survival method” (lsm) because it is based • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker418 on longitudinal survival experiences of survey respondents, which are then transformed into a period life table. the transformation procedure of the lsm is basically a direct adoption of the transformation formula of the indirect modifi ed orphanhood method developed by luy (2012). the differences are (i) that the observed life spans of respondents between the time of the survey and the time of the mortality follow-up can be used with their exact ages, times and lengths, (ii) that the transformation of the survival rates to a default age is not necessary, and (iii) that the reference period for the life table must not be estimated to a time some years before the survey, but can be determined directly to a time between the survey and the mortality follow-up. the applicability of the lsm is not restricted to the les data used in this study. the method can be applied to all surveys with a mortality follow-up, such as soep, monica/kora or share. the lsm requires only three kinds of information for each age group x of the survey population (with x including single ages from x to x+1 or, if necessary, broader age intervals e.g. from x to x+5) and one assumption: • the observed longitudinal survival of the survey respondents )zx ,x(sr ˆ , i.e. the proportion of individuals aged x at the time of the survey who survived until age x+z at the time of mortality follow-up, • the expected longitudinal survival of these survey respondents from age x to zx  , derived from cohort life tables, • the corresponding period survival for the same age interval x to zx  , derived from the reference period life table, and, • the assumption that the relationship between cohort and period survival prevalent in the entire population applies equivalently to each subpopulation. the specifi c strengths of the lsm include the low demand on data (e.g. no information on the date of deaths and the age at which they occur is necessary, no specifi c statistical distributions of deaths need to be assumed), its simple applicability, and the estimation of a set of age-specifi c probabilities of dying. consequently, the lsm is not based on the assumption of constant relative risks, but yields age-specifi c mortality patterns for every subpopulation. the different age patterns in the estimates become apparent from the varying orders of the subpopulations’ mortality levels according to the used indicators e40, 25p40 and e65, e.g. across the vocational subclasses among men. another strength of the lsm is that it includes a strong longitudinal component, which makes the estimated differences in period le between subpopulations less susceptible to distortions caused by period tempo effects (see luy 2010b). moreover, when a constancy of the subpopulations’ age patterns of mortality and relative differences to the total population can be assumed, the lsm can also be used to produce estimates for other periods by varying the reference life table for the transformation. this can be particularly valuable when the life table for a specifi c subpopulation produced with the lsm is to be employed for estimating healthy le with the basic health information stemming from data for a different period. finally, the lsm can be used to estimate life tables for any subpopulation life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 419 that can be identifi ed in the underlying data, even when the case numbers are extremely low. 4.2 results lifetime inequalities by sep are an important topic not only for mortality researchers, but also for policy-makers, physicians, public health workers and the general population. several german books have been dedicated to this subject, with (translated) titles such as “if you are poor, you have to die earlier” (oppolzer 1986), “social inequality before death” (ritz 1992; spree 1981) or “must poor people die earlier?” (helmert et al. 2000). mortality differences by occupation already sparked interest in the 19th and early 20th centuries (prinzing 1931; westergaard 1882). however, these publications only included relative risks for specifi c subgroups defi ned by occupation or work status, as also the most recent studies on this topic do (helmert 2000; linke 1990). as already described in the introduction, the situation is similar with regard to the other indicators of sep, and no comprehensive overview of the variation of le by sep in the german population exists. the central aim of this paper was therefore to bridge this gap of knowledge by producing corresponding estimates for the sep dimensions of education, income and occupation. we found clear evidence for social disparities in mortality for all sep dimensions that we considered. in the following, we summarise the estimated ranges of longevity among the analysed sep indicators, i.e. the differences between the subgroups with the highest and lowest mortality levels. according to our estimations for the period 1991/93, based on data of the german les, le at age 40 for men ranges by 6.3 years between individuals with a low and a high education, 5.7 years between the lowest and highest household income quartiles, 4.2 years across the main work statuses, and 13.2 years across the main vocational classes. the maximum difference across all analysed male sep subpopulations is 14.4 years between miners and men working in the social service sector. the proportion of those who reach the classic pension age of 65 years also varies considerably. the spans in percentage points are 14.5 with regard to the education level, 14.1 with regard to household income, 10.1 with regard to the main work status, and 35.4 with regard to the main vocational class. the difference between the subpopulations with the highest and lowest survival probabilities until age 65 is 36.8 percentage points, referring again to miners and men working in the social service sector. signifi cant differences are even prevalent in the remaining le at this classic pension age. the ranges in le at age 65 are 3.7 years for education, 2.8 years for household income, 2.1 years for the main work status, and 5.3 years for the main vocational class. the maximum range in le at age 65 across all sep subgroups is 6.5 years between miners and unskilled workers in production jobs on the one hand, and the social service sector on the other. the corresponding differences among women are smaller, but nonetheless notable. at age 40, le varies 2.3 years by education level, 4.2 years by household income, 6.5 years by main work status, and 4.6 years by main vocational class. the maximum difference across all analysed female sep subpopulations is 11.5 years, • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker420 between self-employed entrepreneurs and unskilled workers in production jobs. due to the generally lower mortality of women in middle ages, the differences in survival until age 65 are less distinct than among men. the proportions of 40-yearold women reaching age 65 vary by 2.0 percentage points by education, 6.3 by household income, 6.0 by main work status, and 4.2 by main vocational class. the largest difference between the two mentioned subgroups with minimum and maximum mortality levels is 14.4 percentage points. as another consequence of the relatively low female mortality between ages 40 and 65, the variations in le at age 65 do not differ considerably from those at age 40. with regard to education, le at age 65 varies by 2.0 years, 2.6 years by household income, 5.1 years by main work status, and 4.3 years by main vocational class. the maximum difference in le at age 65 across all analysed female sep subpopulations is 9.3 years between the selfemployed entrepreneurs and the main vocational class “other work force”. we are confi dent that these results are reliable at least for the main sep subgroups for four reasons: • the les data is representative for the total population of western germany, • the mortality follow-up of the les is representative for the total population of western germany (and our sensitivity analysis suggests that this is likely to also hold true for the les subpopulations), • subgroup-specifi c age patterns of mortality are taken into account, and • our estimates for le differentials by education level are similar to corresponding data for the neighbouring countries. the last point is an especially strong indicator of the results’ validity. calculations for austria on the basis of austrian census data with one-year mortality followups published by statistics austria provide differences in le (at age 35) between the same isced levels of high and low education of 6.1 years among men and 3.3 years among women, averaged for the years 1981-2001 (klotz/asamer 2014). corresponding estimates for the german-speaking part of switzerland on the basis of the swiss national cohort (a linkage of the 1990 census with death certifi cate data registered between 1990 and 1997) reveal a difference in le at age 40 of 6.3 years among men and 3.3 years among women (spoerri et al. 2006). thus, our estimates for the german population provide an almost identical education-specifi c difference in le among men and a gap approximately one year smaller among women. similar le differentials for education among men in the period between 1980 and 2000 can be found, for instance, in the czech republic (shkolnikov et al. 2006), finland (shkolnikov et al. 2006; valkonen et al. 1993; valkonen et al. 1997) and among the white us population (crimmins/saito 2001; meara et al. 2008). slightly smaller differences (of about fi ve years) are reported for belgium (deboosere et al. 2009), denmark (brønnum-hansen/baadsgaard 2012) and lithuania (kalediene/ petrauskiene 2000). considerably larger differentials are prevalent in russia and estonia, with a le difference at young adulthood of more than ten years (shkolnikov et al. 2006). in general, the same regional differences can be found among the female populations. according to our estimates, however, german women are closer to life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 421 the populations with smaller education-specifi c differences in le, such as denmark and lithuania, whereas the female belgian population is – according to the estimations of deboosere et al. (2009) – closer to the populations with medium-sized differentials (austria, czech republic, finland, the white us population, switzerland). also among women, russia and estonia exhibit signifi cantly larger inequalities in le by education level. our results for income and occupation are in line with fi ndings for other populations as well, for instance with regard to the order of professions’ or work status groups’ le levels and the generally larger differentials among men (see e.g. brønnum-hansen 2000; burström et al. 2005; hattersley 1999; valkonen et al. 1993). nonetheless, the estimates for subclasses have to be interpreted with caution. some of them are based on very small case numbers. although the estimated le values refl ect the observed average survival time of the les subsamples, it can happen that the shape of the estimated period life table differs from the longitudinal survival pattern. this holds true, for instance, for the male workers in wood and plastics processing and in painting, varnishing and similar occupations. our results for the german population imply that the variations in survival and longevity are much larger with respect to occupation than with respect to education and household income. the spans are more than double among men and approximately tripled among women. this is due to the fact that the subpopulations defi ned by specifi c occupations are more selected than those defi ned by education and income. when assessing these differences from an analytical point of view, it is also important to note that our estimates are based on empirical life tables – thus refl ecting the actual mortality of the survey sample – and not on theoretical ones. the former can include a 100 percent survival rate for some ages when no case of death is observed, while a theoretical life table never features a zero percent probability of dying. among the subpopulations analysed in our study, this is the case among female self-employed entrepreneurs between ages 40 and 56, for instance (see fig. 5b). nonetheless, the specifi cs of the resulting survival curve are not as unrealistic as they might seem at fi rst glance. the survivorship function tells us that almost all (98.6 percent) female self-employed entrepreneurs reach age 65, and that approximately one in ten (10.8 percent) reaches age 100. although this survival curve might look exceptional, these fi gures are not totally impossible. another fact to keep in mind is that the presented estimates refer to the early 1990s, and are thus not fully refl ective of current developments. however, changes in mortality – especially the relative differences between subpopulations – do not occur very suddenly. this is confi rmed by the trends of le by education level in austria from 1981 to 2011, where only minor variations took place over time, with the tendency of a slight increase among men and a small decrease among women (klotz/asamer 2014). unger and schulze (2013) draw a similar picture for the german population in their analysis of education-specifi c differentials in le, which did not change between 1989 and 2009 for either sex. thus, it is likely that the currently prevalent sep-specifi c differences in le among german women and men are close to those presented in this paper. finally, it is important to note that this paper was neither intended to analyse the causal mechanisms behind the sep-specifi c differences in le, nor did we aim • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker422 at contributing to the question of which dimension of sep affects the mortality differentials among the others. obviously, the different dimensions of sep are interrelated, but they still have independent effects on mortality (geyer/peter 2000). the network of interrelations and causal factors is very complex (see e.g. schneider 2008; spijker 2004) and it is possible that the so-called “status syndrome” is only driven by the factors education, income and occupation to a minor extent, but is instead rooted in an overarching mechanism determined by socially-produced hierarchical differences in individuals’ autonomy and opportunities for social participation (marmot 2004). all these questions are still unanswered, and more research is necessary to provide decisive knowledge for developing appropriate strategies for reducing the existing inequalities in le. 5 conclusions the lsm provides improved estimates for differentials in le of subgroups on the basis of survey data with a mortality follow-up. the particular strength of the lsm is the incorporation of age-specifi c mortality patterns for each subpopulation. the only necessary assumption is that the relationship between cohort and period survival prevalent in the entire population applies equivalently to each subpopulation. application of the lsm can be extended to estimate cohort life tables as well as multi-state life tables, and it enables researchers to produce estimates even for subpopulations with extremely low case numbers. however, the quality of the data must always be taken into account. if the mortality follow-up is not representative of the population’s mortality, no valid estimates can be derived with the lsm (or any other method). thus, our assessment is in line with charafeddine et al. (2014), who concluded in their comparative analysis of healthy le estimated with belgium’s census and survey data including a mortality follow-up that the latter is a useful and valid data source in the absence of population-wide data when it is of good quality. this paper illustrates the variation of le in germany by sep. no information about causality can be extracted from these results, and it has to be kept in mind that the estimates are derived in a cross-sectional setting which does not necessarily refl ect the factual longitudinal survival. nonetheless, the results of this study are useful for all researchers, policy-makers and other parties interested in the extent of differences in lifetime by sep across the german population. in particular, the presented fi gures provide an interesting subject of discussion for the ongoing debate about the implementation of an increasing pension age, which is considered to be necessary by many scholars in order to reduce the consequences of the demographic change (for a special focus on the german population see e.g. birg 2001; schimany 2003; schmid et al. 2000). moreover, the results presented in this study provide doctors, scientists and public health workers with insights into the most disadvantaged sep subpopulations and the potential extent of their disadvantages in both longevity and mortality. life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 423 acknowledgements this research was supported by the european research council, within the european community’s seventh framework programme (fp7/2007–2013), erc grant agreement no. 262663 (hemox) and erc grant agreement no. 323947 (re-ageing). we thank karla gärtner (german federal institute for population research, bib) for providing us with the les codes for the specifi c occupations which are not included in the publically available data set. author contributions ml developed the idea of the study as well as the method and wrote most parts of the text. cws helped in refi ning the method, performed the analyses and contributed to the text. aw contributed to this study by collecting literature on mortality differences by sep in germany and giving inputs to the text. js performed a systematic review of the existing methods for estimating mortality from longitudinal survey data and commented on all parts of the paper. references birg, herwig 2001: die demographische zeitenwende. der bevölkerungsrückgang in deutschland und europa. münchen: beck. brass, william 1975: methods for estimating fertility and mortality from limited and defective data. chapel hill: university of north carolina. brønnum-hansen, henrik 2000: socioeconomic differences in health expectancy in denmark. in: scandinavian journal of public health 28,3: 194-199 [doi: 10.1177/14034948000280030801]. brønnum-hansen, henrik; 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valkonen, tapani; sihvonen, ari-pekka; lahelma, eero 1997: health expectancy by level of education in finland. in: social science & medicine 44,6: 801-808. van den hout, ardo; jagger, carol; matthews, fiona e. 2009: estimating life expectancy in health and ill health by using a hidden markov model. in: journal of the royal statistical society: series c (applied statistics) 58,4: 449-465 [doi: 10.1111/j.14679876.2008.00659.x]. von gaudecker, hans-martin 2006: differentielle sterblichkeit in der grv: problemaufriss und erste berechnungen. in: deutsche rentenversicherung bund (ed.): forschungsrelevante daten der rentenversicherung: bericht vom zweiten workshop des forschungsdatenzentrums der rentenversicherung (fdz-rv) vom 27. bis 29. juni 2005 in würzburg. drv-schriften 55. bad homburg: wdv gesellschaft für medien und kommunikation: 242-252. • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker428 von gaudecker, hans-martin; scholz, rembrandt d. 2007: differential mortality by lifetime earnings in germany. in: demographic research 17,4: 83-108 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2007.17.4]. westergaard, harald 1882: die lehre von der mortalität und morbilität. anthropologisch-statistische untersuchungen. jena: gustav fischer. wiedemann, angela 2012: die mortalität erwachsener immigranten in deutschland: eine indirekte schätzung der sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen türkischund italienischstämmigen einwanderern und der deutschen bevölkerung. diplomarbeit: universität wien. zajacova, anna; goldman, noreen; rodríguez, germán 2009: unobserved heterogeneity can confound the effect of education on mortality. in: mathematical population studies 16,2: 153-173 [doi: 10.1080/08898480902790528]. date of submission: 05.05.2015 date of acceptance: 07.09.2015 dr. marc luy (), dr. christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann. wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (iiasa, oeaw/vid, wu), vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences. vienna, austria. e-mail: mail@marcluy.eu, christian.wegner@oeaw.ac.at, angela.wiedemann@oeaw.ac.at url: http://www.marcluy.eu http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/staff/staff_christian_wegner.shtml http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/staff/staff_angela_wiedemann.shtml dr. jeroen spijker. centre d’estudis demogràfi cs. bellaterra, spain e-mail: jspijker@ced.uab.es url: http://www.ced.uab.es/content/spijker-jeroen life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 429 appendix tab. a1: average health status at the time of fi rst survey of respondents with known and unknown survival status at the time of mortality follow-up (second survey) and unknown-known health status ratio of average health statuses for all analysed subsamples, men sep indicator / subpopulation survival status unknownknown unknown known ratio all men 2.67 2.66 0.99 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 2.94 2.95 1.00 medium (isced 3-4) 2.70 2.69 1.00 high (isced 5-6) 2.46 2.38 0.97 household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 2.85 2.85 1.00 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 2.73 2.68 0.98 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 2.63 2.70 1.03 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 2.48 2.41 0.97 work status manual workers (all) 2.85 2.79 0.98 unskilled or semi-skilled workers 2.95 2.95 1.00 skilled workers 2.82 2.72 0.96 master craftsmen, overseers, foremen 2.67 2.42 0.91 employees (all) 2.60 2.51 0.96 simple tasks 3.12 2.90 0.93 qualifi ed tasks 2.67 2.68 1.00 highly qualifi ed tasks 2.47 2.30 0.93 public servants (all) 2.50 2.56 1.02 simple or medium service 2.60 2.39 0.92 higher or senior service 2.40 2.61 1.09 self-employed workers (all) 2.57 2.57 1.00 entrepreneurs 2.66 2.67 1.01 freelancers 2.45 2.17 0.89 farmers 2.49 2.57 1.03 vocational classes acc. to kldb-92 (germany)2 jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry, horticulture 2.62 2.62 1.00 miners and mineral workers 3.51 4.06 1.16 production jobs (all) 2.80 2.76 0.98 metal production and metal working 2.76 2.76 1.00 metal constr., mech. engineering and similar 2.66 2.68 1.01 electrical engineering 2.74 2.61 0.95 • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker430 sep indicator / subpopulation survival status unknownknown unknown known ratio textile sector 3.28 2.71 0.83 foodstuffs sector 2.70 2.53 0.94 structural and civil engineering 2.96 2.40 0.81 wood and plastics processing 2.86 2.94 1.03 painting, varnishing and similar occupations 2.60 2.60 1.00 unskilled workers without specifi cation 2.96 3.11 1.05 technical occupations (all) 2.50 2.49 1.00 engineering, chemistry, physics, maths 2.44 2.23 0.92 technicians, technical specialists 2.55 2.56 1.00 service sector (all) 2.61 2.62 1.00 goods und service marketing 2.69 2.59 0.96 transport industry 2.77 2.63 0.95 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 2.57 2.54 0.99 public and private security sector 2.53 2.40 0.95 health sector 2.35 2.23 0.95 social service and education 2.45 2.77 1.13 other service occupations 2.60 2.71 1.04 other work force 2.94 3.35 1.14 tab. a1: continuation notes: health status is measured by means of self-perceived health (“how is your health in general?” very good=1 / good=2 / satisfactory=3 / not so good=4 / poor=5); average health statuses are age standardized with the total male les population in 5-year age groups as standard (known + unknown survival status); subpopulations with case numbers of fi ve or less among individuals with known or unknown survival status are marked in italic; none of the differences in average health status between individuals with known and unknown survival status at the time of mortality follow-up is statistically signifi cant (95 percent confi dence level); figures exclude les participants below age 33 at the time of the fi rst survey. 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions source: own calculations with les data life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 431 tab. a22: average health status at the time of fi rst survey of respondents with known and unknown survival status at the time of mortality follow-up (second survey) and unknown-known health status ratio of average health statuses for all analysed subsamples, women sep indicator / subpopulation survival status unknownknown unknown known ratio all women 2.78 2.82 1.01 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 2.86 2.88 1.01 medium (isced 3-4) 2.76 2.81 1.02 high (isced 5-6) 2.53 2.39 0.94 household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 2.91 2.86 0.98 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 2.85 2.84 1.00 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 2.78 2.92 1.05 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 2.60 2.60 1.00 work status manual workers (all) 2.90 2.93 1.01 unskilled or semi-skilled workers 2.91 2.92 1.00 skilled workers 2.88 2.92 1.02 master craftsmen, overseers, foremen 2.71 2.70 1.00 employees (all) 2.71 2.72 1.00 simple tasks 2.80 2.75 0.98 qualifi ed tasks 2.63 2.66 1.01 highly qualifi ed tasks 2.66 2.61 0.98 public servants (all) 2.71 2.38 0.88 simple or medium service 2.77 2.40 0.87 higher or senior service 2.54 2.24 0.88 self-employed workers (all) 2.81 2.83 1.01 entrepreneurs 2.67 2.73 1.02 freelancers 2.60 2.91 1.12 farmers 3.20 3.05 0.96 vocational classes acc. to kldb-92 (germany)2 jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry, horticulture 2.79 3.05 1.10 miners and mineral workers 3.00 2.00 0.67 production jobs (all) 2.88 2.89 1.00 metal production and metal working 3.10 3.00 0.97 metal constr., mech. engineering and similar 3.02 3.36 1.11 electrical engineering 2.19 3.80 1.74 • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker432 sep indicator / subpopulation survival status unknownknown unknown known ratio textile sector 2.83 2.74 0.97 foodstuffs sector 2.79 2.97 1.07 structural and civil engineering --3.00 --wood and plastics processing 3.00 5.00 1.67 painting, varnishing and similar occupations 3.68 ----unskilled workers without specifi cation 2.87 2.95 1.03 technical occupations (all) 2.63 1.86 0.71 engineering, chemistry, physics, maths 2.35 ----technicians, technical specialists 2.65 1.86 0.70 service sector (all) 2.74 2.76 1.01 goods und service marketing 2.81 2.81 1.00 transport industry 2.76 2.72 0.98 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 2.71 2.70 1.00 public and private security sector 2.79 2.66 0.95 health sector 2.58 2.57 1.00 social service and education 2.66 2.52 0.95 other service occupations 2.83 2.85 1.00 other work force 2.74 2.68 0.98 tab. a2: continuation notes: health status is measured by means of self-perceived health (“how is your health in general?” very good=1 / good=2 / satisfactory=3 / not so good=4 / poor=5); average health statuses are age standardized with the total female les population in 5-year age groups as standard (known + unknown survival status); subpopulations with case numbers of fi ve or less among individuals with known or unknown survival status are marked in italic; none of the differences in average health status between individuals with known and unknown survival status at the time of mortality follow-up is statistically signifi cant (95 percent confi dence level); figures exclude les participants below age 33 at the time of the fi rst survey. 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions source: own calculations with les data life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 433 tab. a3: number of respondents r, number of deaths d, average age at the time of fi rst survey x, average survival time z until the mortality follow-up, and respondents’ survival rate for the total subsamples, men sep indicator / subpopulation r d x z ŝr all men 3,364 651 50.03 13.11 0.8065 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 448 123 52.51 13.09 0.7254 medium (isced 3-4) 2,165 442 50.21 13.12 0.7958 high (isced 5-6) 748 85 48.01 13.08 0.8864 household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 747 232 52.86 13.12 0.6894 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 1,091 196 49.63 13.13 0.8203 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 744 115 48.52 13.06 0.8454 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 692 89 49.16 13.10 0.8714 work status manual workers (all) 1,282 305 50.31 13.11 0.7621 unskilled or semi-skilled workers 471 139 51.69 13.12 0.7049 skilled workers 558 110 49.03 13.12 0.8029 master craftsmen, overseers, foremen 253 56 50.60 13.06 0.7787 employees (all) 1,121 168 49.34 13.10 0.8501 simple tasks 104 30 51.40 13.06 0.7115 qualifi ed tasks 459 70 48.60 13.15 0.8475 highly qualifi ed tasks 558 68 49.57 13.07 0.8781 public servants (all) 392 73 51.25 13.09 0.8138 simple or medium service 218 46 50.40 13.13 0.7890 higher or senior service 277 35 48.60 13.14 0.8736 self-employed workers (all) 495 81 49.39 13.14 0.8364 entrepreneurs 185 41 51.70 13.08 0.7784 freelancers 109 17 50.22 13.02 0.8440 farmers 93 14 51.37 13.17 0.8495 vocational classes acc. to kldb-92 (germany)2 jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry, horticulture 126 27 50.48 13.17 0.7857 miners and mineral workers 26 11 55.35 13.22 0.5769 production jobs (all) 996 216 49.86 13.11 0.7831 metal production and metal working 73 14 49.21 13.09 0.8082 metal constr., mech. engineering and similar 277 57 48.53 13.12 0.7942 electrical engineering 84 16 46.40 13.06 0.8095 )zx ,x(sr ˆ • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker434 sep indicator / subpopulation r d x z ŝr textile sector 14 3 54.36 13.07 0.7857 foodstuffs sector 44 8 49.09 13.09 0.8182 structural and civil engineering 126 33 50.76 13.13 0.7381 wood and plastics processing 51 14 55.78 13.04 0.7255 painting, varnishing and similar occupations 47 8 49.11 13.11 0.8298 unskilled workers without specifi cation 61 21 53.13 13.13 0.6557 technical occupations (all) 364 40 49.49 13.14 0.8901 engineering, chemistry, physics, maths 146 16 50.16 13.17 0.8904 technicians, technical specialists 218 24 49.05 13.12 0.8899 service sector (all) 1,553 277 49.57 13.11 0.8216 goods und service marketing 294 54 49.33 13.06 0.8163 transport industry 258 63 50.09 13.13 0.7558 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 563 100 50.16 13.13 0.8224 public and private security sector 160 35 49.97 13.13 0.7813 health sector 46 5 49.17 13.16 0.8913 social service and education 159 12 46.61 13.09 0.9245 other service occupations 39 6 50.51 12.97 0.8462 other work force 71 15 50.28 12.94 0.7887 tab. a3: continuation note: figures exclude les participants below age 33 at the time of fi rst survey. 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions source: own calculations with les data life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany • 435 sep indicator / subpopulation r d x z ŝr all women 3,044 304 50.05 13.11 0.9001 education according to isced-971 low (isced 1-2) 1,215 146 52.46 13.13 0.8798 medium (isced 3-4) 1,630 150 48.78 13.10 0.9080 high (isced 5-6) 196 8 45.45 13.15 0.9592 household net income 1st quartile (below € 895) 867 142 54.32 13.12 0.8362 2nd quartile (€ 895–1,406) 930 93 49.45 13.13 0.9000 3rd quartile (€ 1,406–1,917) 599 29 47.06 13.09 0.9516 4th quartile (€ 1,917 and more) 528 25 47.31 13.09 0.9527 work status manual workers (all) 842 96 50.27 13.13 0.8860 unskilled or semi-skilled workers 726 83 50.39 13.12 0.8857 skilled workers 108 13 49.18 13.18 0.8796 master craftsmen, overseers, foremen 8 0 53.88 13.41 1.0000 employees (all) 1,348 119 48.59 13.09 0.9117 simple tasks 626 67 49.61 13.12 0.8930 qualifi ed tasks 616 42 47.96 13.06 0.9318 highly qualifi ed tasks 106 10 46.20 13.07 0.9057 public servants (all) 259 24 51.31 13.13 0.9073 simple or medium service 35 5 50.09 13.14 0.8571 higher or senior service 87 0 42.40 13.14 1.0000 self-employed workers (all) 122 5 44.61 13.14 0.9590 entrepreneurs 83 6 50.73 13.14 0.9277 freelancers 27 1 46.56 13.13 0.9630 farmers 61 9 55.16 13.13 0.8525 vocational classes acc. to kldb-92 (germany)2 jobs in (animal) husbandry, forestry, horticulture 60 4 50.77 13.23 0.9333 miners and mineral workers 1 0 56.00 12.21 1.0000 production jobs (all) 387 41 50.94 13.17 0.8941 metal production and metal working 5 0 48.40 13.13 1.0000 metal constr., mech. engineering and similar 7 1 48.29 13.15 0.8571 electrical engineering 5 3 57.20 13.23 0.4000 tab. a4: number of respondents r, number of deaths d, average age at the time of fi rst survey x, average survival time z until the mortality follow-up, and respondents’ survival rate for the total subsamples, women )zx ,x(sr ˆ • marc luy, christian wegner-siegmundt, angela wiedemann, jeroen spijker436 sep indicator / subpopulation r d x z ŝr textile sector 136 14 51.72 13.11 0.8971 foodstuffs sector 34 2 49.74 13.24 0.9412 structural and civil engineering 0 0 ------wood and plastics processing 1 0 62.00 13.19 1.0000 painting, varnishing and similar occupations 3 0 46.00 13.49 1.0000 unskilled workers without specifi cation 96 13 49.54 13.22 0.8646 technical occupations (all) 56 5 49.88 12.92 0.9107 engineering, chemistry, physics, maths 5 2 53.00 12.56 0.6000 technicians, technical specialists 51 3 49.57 12.95 0.9412 service sector (all) 1,879 157 48.21 13.11 0.9164 goods und service marketing 390 32 48.17 13.14 0.9179 transport industry 67 7 48.30 13.17 0.8955 organisation, administration, clerical jobs 709 56 48.26 13.08 0.9210 public and private security sector 14 2 49.93 13.14 0.8571 health sector 145 13 46.63 13.04 0.9103 social service and education 172 6 45.56 13.13 0.9651 other service occupations 358 41 49.85 13.15 0.8855 other work force 43 8 50.72 12.98 0.8140 note: figures exclude les participants below age 33 at the time of the fi rst survey. 1 isced-97 = international standard classifi cation of education 2 kldb-92 = german classifi cation of professions source: own calculations with les data tab. a4: continuation published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants – a quantitative analysis using the example of foreign university staff members in aachen, bonn and cologne linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants – a quantitative analysis using the example of foreign university staff members in aachen, bonn and cologne daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme abstract: integration issues among highly-skilled migrants were long considered rather irrelevant, a view being based on the image of a transnational, highly mobile elite that easily gets along at different workplaces during their respective duration of stay. recent studies, however, indicate the heterogeneity of the group, for example with regard to vocational situation as well as migration trajectories. accordingly, questions about their integration in the respective host society gain importance. therefore, this article deals with integration processes of highly-skilled migrants in germany. based on a standardised survey (n=553) of foreign academics at the universities in aachen, bonn and cologne, we examine aspects of the cultural and social dimension of integration processes in this group. in order to operationalise cultural integration, we chose linguistic competence indicators and social integration is operationalised using variables related to neighbourhood relationships. the study was primarily conducted using a cluster analysis. with regard to their linguistic skills, the respondents can be divided into fi ve clusters. the members of the fi rst two clusters assess their language profi ciency as above the mean, while the members of the last two clusters assess their language skills as distinctly lower than average. with regard to neighbourhood relationships, we identifi ed six clusters that again differ in the assessment of their neighbourhood contacts. however, no linear-hierarchical composition is apparent in the neighbourhood integration clusters as was for the linguistic clusters. furthermore, we examined the reciprocal effects between linguistic competence and neighbourhood relationships and the infl uences of selected predictor variables on these two dimensions. there is a highly signifi cant correlation between linguistic competence and the neighbourhood situation. the correlation between linguistic competence and neighbourhood situation and a series of predictor variables such as nationality, academic discipline, family and household structures and duration of stay is also highly signifi cant. we can also assume that some of these correlations, such as the latter, are reciprocal. keywords: highly-skilled migrants · integration · linguistic competence · neighbourhood relationships · cluster analysis comparative population studies vol. 39, 4 (2014): 727-766 (date of release: 02.09.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-09en9 • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme728 1 epistemological interest and objectives international migration movements are among the most important sub-aspects of globalisation. recently, highly-skilled migrants have been receiving growing attention. a signifi cant percentage of this group consists of foreign academics who meet with great interest among the management of the universities due to the aspiration for internationalisation in the higher education sector. until only recently, the dominant opinion was that highly-skilled migrants could make their own way in the society of the host country due to their cultural and social capital and therefore required no orientation assistance in their new environment. for this reason, the integration of highly-skilled migrants in general and foreign academics in particular was long, in a way, a “blind spot” in municipal support when settling into their university city and was left more or less to coincidental private contacts. only in recent years this group has received the necessary attention and both the universities and the administrations of the cities studied are becoming aware of the importance of the integration of international academics. in this respect, it is notable that the concern for international orientation is refl ected in the positions of the prorector for public and international relations at the university of bonn and the prorector for academic careers, diversity and international affairs at the university of cologne, which are both found at the top management level (of these universities). this quasi institutional attention needs to be supplemented however on location because the cities and urban regions are the places in which actual decisions are taken on easing integration and in which integration is experienced (hillmann 2010: 8). against this background, there is a distinct need for empirical research on the integration of highly-skilled migrants in the respective urban society. the vague term “integration” and its varying connotations must be divided into sub-aspects or sub-dimensions and be defi ned in order to provide an operational basis for indepth analysis. this study aims to contribute to this with a special focus on the signifi cance of linguistic competence and the development of neighbourhood relationships and will present a few empirical analyses on the social and cultural integration of foreign academics.1 on principle, both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used when examining the integration of highly-skilled migrants in urban society. within the context of this entire project, qualitative approaches were also the basis in some other articles (föbker et al. 2011, 2014; otto/temme 2012; otto et al. 2011). however, this paper presents the results of a quantitative method. here, we fi rst pursue the question of whether clusters of foreign academics can be identifi ed that differ from one another with regard to their cultural integration (represented by linguistic competence variables) or their social integration (represented by variables describing neighbourhood relationships and settling into the 1 since very few empirical results exist on the integration of international academics, the theoretical and conceptual discussion chiefl y refer to highly-skilled migrants in general and only in some cases explicitly to the group of foreign academics. linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 729 neighbourhood). further, it will be assessed how these clusters are structured. the types were formed using cluster analysis methods. secondly, we attempt to verify correlations between both the cultural dimension of integration and the social dimension and a series of independent predictor variables. in particular, we examined personal, vocational and migration biography variables as infl uencing factors, but also analysed variables that assess the subjective experiences of the foreign academics in their respective urban environment. 2 highly-skilled migrants in germany 2.1 the political and socio-economic debate for a long time, germany has had, at best, an ambivalent relationship with its immigrants. this already began with the easily misunderstood or euphemistic term “guest workers” in the era of the recruitment agreements. the rather defensive attitude continued with the persistent claim that germany is not an immigration country. as early as the 1970s, with almost four million persons of non-german nationality and a percentage of foreigners of over six percent of the total population of germany, this claim was obviously already false. the fi gures by the federal statistical offi ce for the year 2012 account for approximately 16.3 million persons with a migration background among germany’s 81.9 million inhabitants or 20.0 percent of the total population (statistisches bundesamt 2013a: 31-32). near the end of the 20th century, the looming lack of skilled workers intensifi ed the debate over legally regulating labour migration. in particular, the introduction of a green card in 2000 was meant to eliminate the lack of workers in the information and telecommunications sector. after lengthy disputes, immigration was legally regulated and a compromise was found with the law that came into force in 2005 that was given the not exactly immigration-friendly name “act for the control and restriction of immigration and for the regulation of the residence and integration of eu citizens and foreigners”. in industry circles in particular, the assessment that germany attracts far too few qualifi ed immigrants still prevails today (cf. e.g. hinte/zimmermann 2010). this position is based on the grounds that the consequences of demographic change are irrefutable, whereby from an economic standpoint it is argued mainly that the needs of the market, specifi cally for well-qualifi ed workers, cannot be met by exhausting existing workforce potentials (female employment rate, educational offensive). even if some do not want to admit it, germany has been an immigration country for decades and will also be urgently dependent on attracting and embracing immigrants in future both for demographic and labour market policy reasons. • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme730 2.2 determining factors of the immigration of foreign academics to germany the transition to a knowledge society increasingly means that the transfer and the geographical concentration of economically relevant knowledge are the keys to future innovation and economic prosperity. the bearers of this knowledge are primarily persons with corresponding qualifi cations (florida 2003: 7; tremblay 2005: 197; beaverstock 2005: 245). international academics have special status here since they, as “bearers of diverse knowledge resources and experience” (jöns 2006a: 333) can provide “new stimuli for research and teaching” where they live (jöns 2006a: 333). therefore, today their immigration is considered a chief element of national and supranational development strategies (ec 2008: 10; mahroum 2000b: 373). in the competition for the best talent, germany is increasingly making an effort to present itself as an appealing research location in order to increase its competitiveness as a science and business location. we examine a positive development in the number of foreign members of academic staff at german institutions of tertiary education: between 2006 and 2011, the numbers rose by 13,424 persons (+61.4 percent) to 35,291. at present 10.0 percent of all academic staff is made up of academics from over 150 different countries of origin (statistisches bundesamt 2007: 38, 2013b: 29). a corresponding promotional infrastructure and the availability of resources, for example through the funding programmes of scientifi c organisations, are a chief factor here (daad 2012: 70). the elimination of impediments to mobility by means of legal frameworks is no less important. while most eu citizens can work and settle within the european union without restrictions, this does not apply to citizens from third countries (braun/recchi 2008: 161-162; guth 2007: 2). the implementation of the eu researcher directive and the eu blue card are thus meant to ease the hiring of highly-skilled third country nationals and make germany more appealing as an immigration destination for top staff. the latter also enables third country nationals to receive an unlimited settlement permit under specifi c conditions (bmi 2012: 91; bamf 2012). the universities are also increasingly engaging in global competition for international academics and students. for example, the number of strategically developed international partnerships between universities and the number of internationally compatible courses of studies are increasing (föbker et al. 2010: 65; tremblay 2005: 197). furthermore, some universities have developed special facilities for recruiting and supporting foreign academics and students (alexander von humboldt-stiftung 2012). in line with the great diversity of the durations of stay, the programmes aim both to support persons with both short-term and longer term stays (bauder 2012: 5). the programmes range from offers to get to know people, to help with bureaucratic hurdles, to support in the search for housing, schools for children or employment opportunities for accompanying partners (föbker et al. 2010). yet it is not only from a social policy and economic perspective, but also from the viewpoint of students and academics themselves that stays abroad are increasingly becoming a natural and necessary element of academic education and career linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 731 development (ackers 2010: 85; bauder 2012: 5; mahroum 2000a: 26). the decision for or against a stay abroad and its progression are infl uenced by a set of structural and personal factors. in addition to institutionalised funding options and legal framework conditions (see above), these include in particular the availability of a diverse array of personal resources (jöns 2006a: 346), one’s personal situation and familial context (cf. e.g. ackers 2010; föbker et al. 2014; guth 2007; hardill 1998). depending on the form and interrelation of these factors, the possibilities and the motivation for international mobility vary. the resulting mobility patterns differ, for example with regard to the origin and destination regions, the career phase or the duration of stay (jöns 2006a/b; cf. also mahroum 2000a/b; otto/temme 2012). the latter can be highly variable – depending on individual and structural framework conditions – and range from brief stays lasting only a few days to a number of years or life-long stays (bauder 2012: 3; ackers 2010: 84). satisfaction with the new environment plays a prominent role when deciding how long to stay (otto/temme 2012: 74-75; föbker et al. 2011: 353). 3 the integration of highly-skilled migrants 3.1 changes in forms of migration international migration was long understood as a basically permanent shift of one’s place of residence to the destination or host country. this understanding was also the basis of the classical explanatory approaches of international migrations (cf. e.g. massey et al. 1993). in recent decades, the general trends of globalisation with a growing economic interweaving even of distanced regions have brought about new forms of migration, which differ in part considerably from conventional migration types (cf. e.g. gans 2011: 118; hillmann 2010: 6-7). variations on circular migration have experienced a renaissance lately (fassmann 2008). these forms of migration are of considerable relevance, in particular for highly-skilled migrants. this refers both to so-called expatriates, usually highly qualifi ed employees of multinational corporations who take on a position abroad for a limited time, usually 1-3 years (cf. e.g. cohen 1977; beaverstock 2005; findlay 1995; meier 2009), and academics, as those studied in this article, who can be mobile for their careers and thus come under the category of circular migration (cf. e.g. ackers 2010; todisco et al. 2003; bauder 2012; föbker et al. 2011). this also applies to foreign students (tremblay 2005). this change in forms of migration results in altered conditions for integration in the host society. in addition to the previously dominant idea of long-term, gradual integration of immigrants in the society of the host country, today there are increased questions about “temporary integration.” the terms transnationalism and transmigration also indicate that in times of globalisation, immigrants increasingly maintain close contact with earlier stations of their migration biographies. thus, through simultaneous inclusion in various societies, such as the origin and host society, they create new, pluri-local social spaces that are independent of national • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme732 borders and thus transnational and can develop their own transcultural identity with specifi c practices of daily life and symbolic systems (pries 2001: 49-52; glorius 2006: 141-142, 2007: 2-4). 3.2 integration of highly-skilled migrants most european studies on the integration of immigrants refer to the integration of the earlier “guest workers” and their families. differentiated according to various dimensions of integration – for instance structurally with regard to the work and residential situation, socially with regard to the development of social relationships in the host society and culturally with regard to the acquisition of specifi c knowledge and skills such as the language – they examine the phases, successes and impediments to the integration of these mostly blue-collar immigrants (cf. e.g. gestring et al. 2006). by contrast, the discourse about the social and cultural consequences of the immigration of the highly qualifi ed has only begun recently. for a long time, their reception in various spheres of urban society was not perceived as a problem either by academia or by politics and examination of the integration processes of this group was considered largely irrelevant (kolb 2006: 169; white 1988: 411). this was based on the grounds that highly-skilled migrants frequently had temporary stays. however, in the previous section, we demonstrated that the durations of stay of the academics focussed on here are quite diverse so that examining their integration processes appears relevant. 3.2.1 structural dimensions of integration – labour market and residential situation the perception of highly qualifi ed as immigrants who can become integrated in an urban society with comparative ease is also based on the focus on those immigrants who migrate according to their qualifi cations for an actual employment relationship (findlay 1995: 515). this applies both to the studies on the international mobility of expatriates and to the foreign academics in germany examined here. since these are largely high-ranking positions with corresponding income, this group of the highly qualifi ed appears to be a transnational elite (beaverstock 2005) that differs distinctly in their social situation from traditional immigrant groups and is not perceived as a “problem group” with regard to structural integration in the labour market (glebe 1997: 406). nevertheless, some authors point out that this portrayal of a putative elite status of foreign highly qualifi ed people does not do justice to the heterogeneity of this group (favell et al. 2006: 2; conradson/latham 2005: 289-290). for instance, in most countries, only a minority of these academics have permanent employment contracts. young academics in particular are commonly temporarily employed and their continued employment is often uncertain (föbker et al. 2010: 65; cf. also todisco et al. 2003: 125). the independent search for a (new) adequate position in the host society can prove diffi cult, for example due to labour laws, linguistic diffi culties, prejudices to the employment of foreigners and a lack of linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 733 networks (voswinkel/kontos 2010; braun/recchi 2008: 161).2 we can assume that this relatively uncertain longer-term structural integration can infl uence the entire integration process – in particular among labour immigrants from third countries whose residence permits are usually tied to a specifi c employment contract (bmj 2012). the residential situation of highly-skilled migrants was also hardly expounded on for a long time (glebe 1986: 460). this group was perceived as a transnational elite, linked to the idea that they – due to their above-average socio-economic resources and high social acceptance among the host population – possess “practically unlimited access to the sectors of the housing market they prefer” (glebe 1997: 410). this is accompanied by the fact that some of the highly qualifi ed are given support in the search for a residence by their employers (glebe 1997: 410; white 1988: 415-416). actually, studies on living locations of high-status immigrants3 in european cities ascertain a partly distinct spatial concentration of this group in upmarket residential areas of the city or, depending on their family phase, the suburbs (scott 2006: 1117-1119; glebe 1997: 410-411; freund 2000: 94-95). the geographic distribution according to socio-economic factors is in some cities overlaid with a geographic distribution according to ethnic variables (glebe 1986, 1997; freund 2000; white/ hurdley 2003). frequently, these residential areas are characterised by a good international or ethnic infrastructure – ranging from specialities shops and medical services to associations, schools and kindergartens. these “expat enclaves” are appealing residential locations for the highly qualifi ed and their employers because they can ease rapid settling in (white/hurdley 2003: 694-696; white 1988: 419-420; cf. also willis/yeoh 2002: 558). however, not all highly-skilled migrants can or wish to live in such high-status neighbourhoods with a large number of other international highly qualifi ed people. for instance, scott (2006) indicates the increasing signifi cance of a transnational middle class, to which most of the foreign academics studied here can also be allocated. with regard to their professional biographies and resources and thus also their residential situation, they differ in part greatly from high-income transnational professionals (scott 2006: 1120; cf. also ilyes 2006: 6-7). due to their lesser fi nancial resources, they require less expensive living space in less high-status residential areas, which is quite positively assessed by some of the highly qualifi ed since it can ease the development of local contacts outside the expat community (thang et al. 2002: 546). it is, however, also possible that linguistic and cultural differences are more obvious in less cosmopolitan neighbourhoods 2 this problem also affects the accompanying partners who often, at least at fi rst, cannot or are not permitted to pursue employment for the above reasons (pethe 2006: 91, 133; hardill 1998: 266). föbker et al. (2014) point out that this in some cases can have very negative effects on well-being and intentions to stay. 3 since most countries do not have precise data about the residential locations of highly-skilled migrants, some authors instead make use of data on the geographical distribution of selected nationalities (e.g. usa, japan or western european countries) in a city. in doing so, they assume overall that members of these nationalities are largely highly qualifi ed and have high-ranking employment (glebe 1997: 407; white 1988: 411). • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme734 and therefore impeding the development of social contacts and settling in (föbker et al. 2014). 3.2.2 the cultural dimension of integration – linguistic competence and settling in generally, profi ciency in the respective national language is considered the central prerequisite for integration in relevant spheres of the host society. accordingly, enhancing the language skills of immigrants is a central element of german integration policies (vogel/rinke 2008: 261). according to esser (2006: 11) language has three functions in integration. language skills are fi rstly a resource; learning a language can thus be seen as an investment in the human capital of the stakeholders. furthermore, language has symbolic functions, since it “describes things, expresses inner conditions, transports demands and can ‘defi ne’ situations (about them), including the activation of stereotypes about the speaker with any associated discriminations, for example through an accent” (esser 2006: 11). finally, as a medium of communication, language has the function of coordination and understanding. language skills are thus an expression of cultural integration (vogel/rinke 2008: 265). at the same time, via these functions language skills are closely correlated to the progression of structural and social integration in essential areas of the respective host society (esser 2006: 8). the great importance given to linguistic competence for the integration of immigrants is also refl ected in numerous empirical studies on the subject. in his summary of numerous quantitative studies on the correlation between language and integration, esser (2006) cites central conditions for language acquisition including, in particular, aspects of the family and migration biography. a higher level of education, a longer duration of stay and more frequent stays can promote immigrants’ acquisition of a second language. on the other hand, a higher age on arrival and low intentions to stay can have negative impacts on the competent acquisition of a second language (esser 2006: 23-24). furthermore, some aspects of the origin and destination context play important roles (portes/böröcz 1989). it is signifi cant, for example with regard to the destination context, that the experience of discrimination can have negative effects on the motivation to acquire the second language (van tubergen/kalmijn 2005: 1442; cf. also espenshade/fu 1997: 288). with regard to the signifi cance of cultural or social distances between the origin and host society, there are not yet reliable results. however, the infl uence of the linguistic distance between the languages of the origin and of the host country on learning the second language has been empirically proven (esser 2006: 25-27), although these results refer to more traditional groups of immigrants. on the other hand, there are only a few fi ndings about language acquisition and the importance of language for the integration process of highly-skilled migrants. whether and how well the language of the host country is learned is closely correlated with the planned duration of stay. if a temporary stay is planned from the outset, many highly qualifi ed persons do not go to the trouble of learning the new language, not least due to intense workloads, and in particular when no future linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 735 benefi t can be drawn from investment in language skills (nowicka 2006: 194; föbker et al. 2011: 350, 352). however, the extent to which one can do without learning the national language depends highly on whether sound knowledge of the national language is necessary for exercising one’s vocation and managing daily life. immigrants can be confronted with quite different demands and expectations depending on their circumstances (vogel/rinke 2008:264). some authors point out that since english is the lingua franca in many international corporations and academic institutions, many highly qualifi ed people do not require sound knowledge of the respective national language in their vocations and therefore do not need to learn it (hillier 2007: 35-36; thang et al. 2002: 547). the results of a study by the federal offi ce for migration and refugees on the immigration of highly qualifi ed workers from third countries (hess 2009) show, however, that this applies only with reservations. although approximately half of the surveyed highlyskilled migrants said that they did not require good or any german skills to practice their profession, the other half of the respondents need at least good, and even 30 percent of them very good german skills (hess 2009: 40-41). also with regard to the academics focussed on in this study, we can assume that the working language in many natural sciences is increasingly english. thus, the academics in these fi elds are less dependent on skills in the respective national language than for example in the humanities or legal sciences (jöns 2006b: 154). however, this applies in particular for those countries, in which broad parts of the population possess good english skills, such as the netherlands and finland, and less for those countries, where this is not the case such as germany and france (ep 2009: 16) and where at many universities most courses, meetings, etc. continue to be conducted in the respective national language (otto/temme 2012: 90). in these countries, poorer language skills or even speaking with an accent can lead to exclusion and discrimination (föbker et al. 2011: 357; vogel/rinke 2008: 264). we can assume that these differences exist, however, not only at the national level, but, due to location (e.g. in border areas), immigration history, economic and population structures, also at the regional level. we therefore assume that communication in many relevant daily spheres – e.g. in contacts with the local population, while shopping, when using public transport or dealing with public authorities – without exhaustive knowledge of the national language is easier in large international cities than in small towns without much experience with internationalisation. however, this correlation surely depends on the frequency and the quality of contacts. while communication is possible without or with less knowledge of the national language in less complex situations, it becomes more diffi cult with increasing complexity of the issue being communicated (vogel/rinke 2008: 264). therefore, highly-skilled migrants who wish to or must develop more intense social contacts in the host society require knowledge of the national language more than persons for whom this is not the case (thang et al. 2002: 547). however, good language skills are no guarantee for the establishment of such contacts since they can hardly compensate for a lack of interest of the host society (föbker et al. 2014). language is therefore a necessary but not always suffi cient qualifi cation for success in a new environment both for structural and social integration (vogel/rinke 2008: 275). • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme736 3.2.3 the social dimension of integration – neighbourhood relationships and settling in the question of social integration, in other words the development of social contacts and relationships in the host society, is directly related to the above remarks. in what contexts do social relationships develop and what signifi cance do they have for settling in? according to grossetti (2005: 291-293), social relationships develop in only the rarest of cases based on fl eeting, coincidental encounters. rather the family or friends, work environment or the neighbourhood are the basis for the development of personal relationships. for the highly-skilled migrants focused on here, in particular the work environment appears to be the sphere in which they tend to make social contacts (pethe 2006: 133; otto/temme 2012: 89-90). the mutual work and similar vocational interests, long work hours and low language barriers can ease the development of social contacts as compared to persons outside of the work environment (guth 2007: 2). often, the local social networks of highly-skilled migrants, at least at fi rst, almost exclusively include work colleagues. in many internationalised work contexts, as those of these academics, this can mean that their social contacts are made up largely of international highly qualifi ed persons with whom they spend their working as well as leisure time. therefore, this can lead to social integration in a specifi c sphere of the host society – a transnational expat community – that has hardly any contacts with the autochthonous population. by contrast, many international academics also attempt to not focus too much on the traditional expat communities and to make social contacts with the local host society (cohen 1977: 46-47; coles 2008: 132; thang et al. 2002: 547; beaverstock 2005: 261). often this is diffi cult due to linguistic and cultural differences as well as low interest on the part of the host society (föbker et al. 2014). against this background and with regard to the social integration of highly-skilled migrants, it appears especially interesting to examine whether local networks are developed beyond the work environment and to what extent. at the beginning of the section, we noted the signifi cance of neighbourhoods for the development of social networks (grossetti 2005). yet, it is also interesting to examine social integration from the angle of neighbourhood relationships since we can assume that – unlike, for example, membership in clubs – the overwhelming majority of highlyskilled migrants live within a neighbourhood and that more contact opportunities with the autochthonous population arise in the environment of the neighbourhood than in the quite specifi cally structured university work environment. but what role do neighbourhood relationships play in the settling in of highlyskilled migrants? there are very few empirical studies that have taken up this subject matter, although the social signifi cance of neighbourhoods has repeatedly been ardently discussed in recent years (cf. e.g. forrest 2008; forrest/kearns 2001; kearns/ parkinson 2001). on the one hand, they point out that neighbourhood contacts, in particular in big cities, are increasingly losing signifi cance for many people in their daily life because increased mobility and modern information and communication technologies offer far more opportunities today to maintain social contacts indelinguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 737 pendently from local placing (forrest/kearns 2001: 2126). today more than ever, the establishment and maintenance of neighbourhood contacts is merely one way of gaining access to social contacts (fischer 1982: 98, 103; guest/wierzbicki 1999: 97). on the other hand, however, neighbourhood relationships, in spite of the developments of recent years, are still an essential element of social contacts for many people (gues/wierzbicki 1999: 108-109). although henning and lieberg (1996: 22) point out that these are in most cases rather superfi cial relationships, whose maintenance is important in particular for the organisation of everyday life (e.g. looking after the dwelling during longer absences, cf. also fischer 1982: 132), these relationships have nevertheless relatively high status for feeling comfortable in the living environment. still, the status of neighbourhood relationships for individuals depend largely on their respective socio-economic situation and phase of life. for instance, for employed persons, we can assume that neighbourhood contacts have comparatively low signifi cance since, unless they work from home, they spend little time there and also have easy and diverse possibilities to establish social networks through their work environment (henning/lieberg 1996: 22-23; fischer 1982: 97). we also assume that this applies to the highly-skilled migrants focused on here, particularly since many of them have the opportunity to make contacts in different workplaces and establish transnational networks from these due to their greater geographic mobility (mau/mewes 2008: 265-266). nevertheless, neighbourhood relationships are particularly important for people who spend a lot of time at home and in their neighbourhood (forrest/kearns 2001: 2132; fischer 1982: 98, 102). in the case of highly-skilled migrants, this applies primarily to the often non-employed accompanying partners (pethe 2006: 91, 133; hardill 1998: 266; föbker et al. 2014) and their children. unlike their working partners, they have fewer opportunities to establish social networks beyond their living environment so we can assume they give higher status to neighbourhood relationships. often new neighbourhood contacts for adults arise from their children’s “play contacts”, schools or childcare facilities (coles 2008: 133; föbker et al. 2014). while the establishment of neighbourhood contacts in the so-called expat enclaves appears unproblematic (see above), outside of them language and cultural differences can impede sometimes very sought-after neighbourhood relationships (föbker et al. 2014). obviously, this can have a distinct impact on the well-being on location. generally, we can say that integration processes of highly-skilled migrants have increasingly been the focus of scientifi c studies in recent years. previous fi ndings on the integration processes of highly-skilled migrants are diverse if not contradictory not least due to the heterogeneity of this group. it appears a promising possibility to operationalise the cultural and social dimensions of integration based on an extensive random sample of the group of foreign academics at three large german universities and to examine them using the multivariate method of cluster analysis. • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme738 4 project implementation and methodology 4.1 project implementation and sample description the results portrayed in the following are based on a pilot study funded by the dfg,4 which was conducted in the years 2009 and 2010 in a joint project by the geographical institutes in aachen, bonn and cologne. it focused on questions about the integration of foreign academics in the respective urban society. the study conducted both qualitative surveys through problem-centred interviews and quantitative surveys through a standardised survey (in german and english). for the latter, all foreign academic employees of the universities in aachen, bonn and cologne (a total of 1,820 persons) received a standardised questionnaire. the response rate was 29 percent (cologne), 32 percent (aachen) and 35 percent (bonn). this results in a sample size of 553 respondents, on which the analysis is based. table 1 summarises some of the variables of the sample that are relevant for this article. about 60 percent of the respondents are men. this refl ects the unbalanced gender ratio at the three universities. the average age of the respondents is 34 years old. over half of the respondents have worked for less than three years at their present university, almost 30 percent even less than one year. the disproportionately high short-term nature of employment is also revealed in the temporary contracts of 85 percent of the respondents. in order to describe the origin of tab. 1: sample variables source: authors’ calculations 4 we would like to thank the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (german research foundation) for its fi nancial support for the project. gender (n=550) in % origin by world regions (n=524) in % female 40 europe (western) 38.5 male 60 europe (formerly socialistic) 19.5 age (n=547) mean value predominantly islamic countries 11.1 34.2 east asia 12.8 duration of employment in years (n=547) in % south asia 8.6 less than 1 28.5 sub-saharan africa 2.5 1 to less than 3 33.8 latin america 4.4 3 to less than 5 17.4 north america and australia 2.7 5 to less than 10 11.7 discipline (n=430) in % 10 and more 8.6 natural sciences 40.9 employment status (n=533) in % humanities 13.5 temporary 84.8 medicine 20.2 permanent 15.2 engineering 25.3 linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 739 the respondents the spectrum of nationalities was summarised in world regions.5 the two largest groups come from europe. the third largest group is made up of employees from east asia with 13 percent.6 finally, table 1 summarises the most frequent responses on academic disciplines: approximately 40 percent of the respondents work in the natural sciences, approximately one fourth in engineering. far fewer respondents cite that they work for an institute in the fi elds of the humanities (13.5 percent). 4.2 general considerations about surveying integration information the questionnaire contained a self-assessment of settling into urban society using the following two dimensions: competence in the german language and life in the neighbourhood. for linguistic competence, four aspects of linguistic skills were differentiated: speaking, listening comprehension, reading comprehension and writing ability. the respondents were able to make their assessments based on the following assessment key (german skills in…): very good (1), good (2), fair (3), a little (4), not at all (5). for the life in the neighbourhood, the respondents were given seven statements: • i have contact with many people living in my neighbourhood. (= many contacts) • i hardly know anyone in my neighbourhood. (= acquainted with neighbours) • i often have longer conversations with some neighbours. (= converse with neighbours) • i greet the neighbours, but have hardly any contact otherwise. (= greet the neighbours) • i do not know who lives in my neighbourhood. (= recognise neighbours) • i know some of my neighbours so well that we extend reciprocal invitations. (= invite neighbours) • my neighbours help me when i ask. (= help from neighbours) the respondents were asked to classify these statements according to the following four responses: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. with regard to the ensuing evaluations, the assessment scale for all seven aspects was coded with the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 whereby 1 always represented the highest 5 the countries of origin of the respondents were divided up into the following regional categories, whereby cultural aspects (linguistic, religious and ethnic) played a particular role in creating the categories: europe (western), europe (formerly socialistic), predominantly islamic countries, sub-saharan africa, south asia, east asia, latin america, north america and australia. 6 this distribution (for the three universities) corresponds roughly to the national values where employees from european (63 percent) and asian (23 percent) countries are most frequently represented. only between four and fi ve percent come from great britain and the usa, the internationally leading science centres and favoured destinations of german academics abroad (statistisches bundesamt 2013b: 191-194). • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme740 degree of integration in the neighbourhood and 4 the lowest. hence, for acquainted with neighbours, a 4 was coded when someone strongly agreed with the statement (and therefore hardly knows anyone in the neighbourhood) and those who disagreed received a 1. the settling in of the foreign university employees is compiled and characterised in three analysis steps for the two dimensions based on the listed aspects. first, a general description is provided using statistical parameters. then, based on a cluster analysis, clusters of respondents are extracted for the two dimensions whose assessments are similar for the four or seven aspects and who are therefore similarly structured with regard to the two dimensions of settling in. in the third step, interrelations between these clusters and potentially infl uencing variables, for example nationality, discipline, duration of stay, are revealed or verifi ed. 4.3 methodology (cluster analysis and contingency analysis) clusters of respondents with similar assessments for the two dimensions of settling in are extracted using cluster analyses. this approach can suffi ciently fulfi l the demand for representative results due to the sample size of over 550 subjects while at the same time enabling meaningful classifi cation of the persons surveyed. the primary reason for choosing this method in order to create types is that both for the language and for the neighbourhood dimension, there was no prior information about how to delimit types (e.g. thresholds for the individual variables). at fi rst a hierarchical, agglomerative cluster analysis was conducted based on the four or seven variables (= aspects) according to the ward algorithm for each of the two dimensions. all of the eleven variables (= 4 + 7) are essentially of ordinal scale. cluster analyses actually require variables of metric scale. in this case of evaluations, we assume that the differences between neighbouring evaluation categories for the individual interviewees are similar and can be set with the value 1. this produces a metric character for the ordinal-scaled variables that suffi ces to be able to adequately conduct the cluster analyses. in the following, the elbow criterion – a measure of the increase in information loss when iteratively forming clusters – will be used in particular as the stop criterion for the cluster analysis (= criterion to determine the number of clusters) (cf. e.g. backhaus et al. 2008). the precise operationalisation is provided in the presentation of each of the analyses. then, the clustering result is optimised using the procedure of cluster centre analysis (= quick cluster) based on the target function “each object (= each respondent) should be in the cluster with a minimum distance between the objects and the cluster centroids (= most similar).” this kind of iterative optimisation method is suitable because the result of the hierarchical cluster analysis can depend on the order in which the objects enter the cluster analysis (backhaus et al. 2008; bahrenberg et al. 2008; schendera 2008; steinhausen/langer 1977). based on the resultant clusters with similar assessments for the two dimensions german language competence and life in the neighbourhood, a contingency table analysis is used to verify the reciprocal effects with other variables of the survey. linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 741 in addition to the general question of whether a signifi cant correlation exists, the strength and the form of the correlations are also of interest. 5 dimensions of integration 5.1 linguistic competence – a self-assessment 5.1.1 overview of linguistic competence if, in theory, we assume that the assessment is symmetrical across the fi ve evaluation categories (e.g. equal distribution), then we always reach a mean value of μ = 3. with regard to dispersion, such symmetrical distributions deliver different values depending on the type of distribution. the distributions that are of interest would be, for example, the equal distribution or the distribution that differs the most in the assessment. this would be the case if half of the respondents assess their skills with very good (1) and the other half with not at all (5) (u distribution). the following standard deviations result for these two distributions: equal distribution: u distribution: table 2 shows the actual ascertained mean values and standard deviations as well as the minima and maxima. it demonstrates that all fi ve of the evaluation categories are cited for all four aspects, but that the evaluation in the mean is always better than that achieved for a symmetrical distribution in the mean. it also illustrates that german writing skills are generally assessed considerably poorer than the other language skills (cf. also vogel/rinke 2008: 265). the frequency distributions for the four linguistic aspects (table 3) additionally show that for the two aspects listening and reading the distributions are relatively similar, with very high percentages in the assessment very good. at least two thirds of the respondents assess good or very good for both aspects. in speaking the percentages of at least a good assessment are quite high at almost 60 percent. by contrast, the percentages for the writing aspect are far more evenly distributed across the evaluation categories. not even half of the respondents assess their german writing skills as at least good. 2)14( 5 12)0 5 11 5 22 5 2(1)(1 2222 1 2 nnn n x n n i i 4142.12 222 1 2 221)(1 n n x n n i i 2 • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme742 5.1.2 linguistic competence clusters when carrying out the hierarchical cluster analysis the elbow phenomenon emerges in the step from fi ve to four clusters, indicating a very large increase in information loss in this step. the loss is more than three times as large as the losses registered in the previous steps. hence, a solution using fi ve clusters is advisable. it remains manageable with regard to the number of clusters and the degree of generalisation (information loss) is not yet too advanced. all in all the clusters are – as the statistical parameters in table 4 show – quite homogeneous. for example, the standard deviations within the clusters are far smaller than those for the entire sample shown in table 2. in addition, there is a very clear ordinal arrangement of the clusters – as the mean values and the frequency diagrams for the clusters show –, namely from clusters whose members assess themselves in almost every aspect with very good to clusters in which the members concede themselves no language skills for almost every aspect. the sequence used in the following description of the clusters takes up this ordinal structure: linguistic cluster 1: this cluster contains only respondents who assess all four aspects of their language skills mostly as very good and at least as good. tab. 2: parameters of the four linguistic aspects minimum maximum x s speaking 1 5 2.3494 1.2539 listening comprehension 1 5 2.0924 1.1859 reading comprehension 1 5 2.1128 1.2203 writing ability 1 5 2.6987 1.2995 source: authors’ calculations tab. 3: percentage frequencies of the four linguistic aspects source: authors’ calculations very good (= 1) good (= 2) fair (= 3) a little (= 4) not at all (= 5) speaking 33.64 25.32 19.41 15.71 5.91 listening comprehension 41.59 26.99 17.01 9.43 4.99 reading comprehension 43.07 23.84 16.82 11.28 4.99 writing ability 23.11 24.58 21.63 20.70 9.98 linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 743 linguistic cluster 2: the members of this cluster also give themselves pretty good assessments for the aspects of speaking, listening and reading (most at least good), whereby many still say very good for listening and reading. poorer assessments than good occur only for the aspect writing to a larger extent. there are no more very good assessments for this aspect. linguistic cluster 3: the assessments chiefl y range between good and fair. this cluster contains hardly any persons who give themselves a very good rating for any aspect; but there are also none who claim to have no language skills at all for one of the four aspects. the mean values show that the assessment of the two aspects listening and reading are still relatively positive; by contrast the value for the aspect speaking tends more in the direction of fair. this fair assessment is clearly not reached for the writing aspect. linguistic cluster 4: this cluster contains no good assessments for the writing aspect. for all aspects the dominant assessment is fair or below fair. the assessment is generally somewhat more positive for the two aspects of listening and reading than for the two aspects speaking and writing, but it is distinctly poorer than for the previous three clusters. linguistic cluster 5: the cluster now only represents persons who place themselves in the negative area for all four linguistic aspects, thus ascribing themselves little or no skills. the focal point here, as the cluster mean values and the frequency diagram for the four aspects show, is clearly in the range of no skills at all. tab. 4: statistical coeffi cients for the fi ve linguistic clusters (l cluster 1 to l cluster 5) l cluster 1 l cluster 2 l cluster 3 l cluster 4 l cluster 5 mean values speaking 1.0115 2.0348 2.6330 3.7339 4.9118 listening comprehension 1.0230 1.5304 2.2936 3.3486 4.7941 reading comprehension 1.0230 1.4522 2.3394 3.5046 4.7353 writing ability 1.2816 2.3217 3.2110 4.1468 4.9412 standard deviation speaking 0.1069 0.4575 0.5210 0.5026 0.2879 listening comprehension 0.1503 0.5013 0.4773 0.5834 0.4104 reading comprehension 0.1503 0.4999 0.4757 0.5548 0.4478 writing ability 0.4511 0.5052 0.4920 0.4874 0.2388 source: authors’ calculations • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme744 all in all, we reached the following results: there are two clusters whose members attest to linguistic competence in all four aspects that is very clearly above the mean. there are also two clusters whose members assess their linguistic competence clearly below fair. the fi fth cluster (l cluster 3) holds a “middle” position ranging above fair linguistic competence for the two aspects listening and reading while the aspect of speaking is located slightly below and the aspect of writing distinctly below the assessment of “fair.” the fi ve clusters are not only ordinal, but for the assessment of the four linguistic aspects, they are clearly linear-hierarchically arranged as the structural web in figure 1 demonstrates strikingly: the assessments for each aspect become consistently poorer from l cluster 1 to l cluster 5. in view of the generally quite positive self-assessment of linguistic competence addressed above, it is not surprising that many people are represented in the “good” clusters (table 5). yet, it is notable that almost one third of the respondents categorise themselves in the “very good” range of linguistic competence. only a little more than one fourth of the respondents classifi es their own linguistic competence as “poor” at best, whereby only a little over 6 percent of the respondents attest that they have no german skills at all. fig. 1: structural web of the linguistic clusters (based on mean values) 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 speaking listening comprehension reading comprehension writing ability l cluster 1 l cluster 2 l cluster 3 l cluster 4 l cluster 5 source: own design linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 745 5.2 neighbourhood – a self-assessment 5.2.1 neighbourhood in an overview along the lines of our considerations for the linguistic competence aspects, based on the four evaluation categories used here, the mean value for symmetrical distributions is always μ = 2.5. the standard deviations for the equal and u distribution are then: equal distribution: u distribution: the information contained in table 6 show that for all seven neighbourhood aspects, the respondents always named all of the four evaluation categories as responses. it is striking that only the three aspects acquainted with neighbours, recognise neighbours and help from neighbours were assessed more positively in the mean than would have for a symmetrical distribution. more negative mean assessments were cited for the other four aspects, which reveals that settling into the neighbourhood occurs only “aspect-by-aspect” and is/was not as intense (cf. section 3.2.3). this “aspect-by-aspect” breakdown of the assessment of settling into the neighbourhood also is shown by the percentage frequencies (table 7). the values again confi rm that the assessments for the various aspects are not, on the whole, very good. only for the three aspects mentioned above, acquainted with neighbours, recognise neighbours and help from neighbours, there is a generally quite positive tab. 5: linguistic clusters – frequencies absolute frequency percentage frequency l cluster 1 174 32.2 l cluster 2 115 21.3 l cluster 3 109 20.1 l cluster 4 109 20.1 l cluster 5 34 6.3 total 541 100.0 source: authors’ calculations 25.1)25.025.2( 4 12)5.0 4 25.1 4 2(1)(1 222 1 2 nn n x n n i i 1180.125.1 222 1 2 5.15.11)(1 n n x n n i i 5.1 • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme746 assessment if approximately two thirds of respondents or more see these aspects positively. the majority of respondents assess the other four aspects in their neighbourhood rather negatively. 5.2.2 neighbourhood integration clusters the number of clusters could not be as clearly determined as for the linguistic clustering since the elbow phenomenon for information loss was not as distinct. however, when gathered in fi ve clusters this did lead to a distinct loss of information. in this respect, we considered the 6-cluster solution a good solution. the six neighbourhood clusters identifi ed in this manner are quite homogeneous. compared with the linguistic clusters, however, inner-cluster differences are greater. although a rudimentary ordinal structure is also identifi able between the neighbourhood clusters, it is far weaker than among the linguistic clusters (cf. table 8). the neighbourhood clusters can be described as follows: tab. 6: parameters for the seven neighbourhood aspects minimum maximum x s many contacts 1 4 2.6741 0.91031 acquainted with neighbours 1 4 2.0567 1.03725 converse with neighbours 1 4 2.6781 0.92500 greet the neighbours 1 4 2.6457 0.93934 recognise neighbours 1 4 1.8077 0.86951 invite neighbours 1 4 2.9150 0.98922 help from neighbours 1 4 2.0587 0.79207 source: authors’ calculations tab. 7: percentage frequencies for the seven neighbourhood aspects very good (= 1) good (= 2) poor (= 3) very poor (= 4) many contacts 10.73 30.77 38.87 19.64 acquainted with neighbours 40.08 25.10 23.89 10.93 converse with neighbours 10.93 31.17 37.04 20.85 greet the neighbours 14.17 25.51 41.90 18.42 recognise neighbours 45.14 33.00 17.81 4.05 invite neighbours 10.32 22.47 32.59 34.62 help from neighbours 21.05 59.51 11.94 7.49 source: authors’ calculations linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 747 neighbourhood cluster 1: this neighbourhood cluster is very clearly concentrated in the two positive evaluation categories, whereby the predominant majority of all respondents in this cluster assess all seven neighbourhood aspects very positively. neighbourhood cluster 2: the respondents in this cluster also offer an altogether positive assessment, however, their assessments vary more for the aspects. for the two aspects acquainted with neighbours and recognise neighbours, the focus is clearly on a very positive assessment, but for all other aspects it lies only in the positive range with one exception: the invite neighbours aspect is strictly dichotomous in that roughly the same number of cluster members assess this aspect positively or negatively. neighbourhood cluster 3: this cluster is highly characterised by the above-mentioned dichotomy for all seven aspects. assessments go into the negative range for the two aspects many contacts and greet the neighbours. the other aspects tend to be seen rather positively, whereby the aspect help from neighbours in particular is notable for quite good evaluations. tab. 8: statistical coeffi cients for the six neighbourhood clusters (n cluster 1 to n cluster 6) n cluster 1 n cluster 2 n cluster 3 n cluster 4 n cluster 5 n cluster 6 mean values many contacts 1.2917 2.0642 2.5205 2.7660 3.2385 3.8852 acquainted with neighbours 1.0625 1.1193 2.1644 1.5106 2.8716 3.7705 converse with neighbours 1.2500 2.1927 2.1644 3.1383 3.1009 3.8197 greet the neighbours 1.3125 1.7798 2.6164 3.0957 3.2569 3.4918 recognise neighbours 1.1042 1.0459 2.1233 1.4894 2.2477 3.0492 invite neighbours 1.2292 2.4771 2.2603 3.5426 3.4404 3.9016 help from neighbours 1.1042 1.8165 1.9178 2.0851 2.4587 2.6557 standard deviation many contacts 0.5035 0.5490 0.6894 0.6788 0.4493 0.3214 acquainted with neighbours 0.2446 0.3256 0.6239 0.5235 0.5110 0.4240 converse with neighbours 0.4376 0.6006 0.5777 0.6493 0.5923 0.4285 greet the neighbours 0.4684 0.5831 0.5684 0.6234 0.5838 0.5951 recognise neighbours 0.4722 0.2102 0.6861 0.5631 0.6688 0.6690 invite neighbours 0.4722 0.7403 0.6242 0.5421 0.5346 0.4361 help from neighbours 0.3087 0.6111 0.3998 0.7429 0.7140 0.9641 source: authors’ calculations • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme748 neighbourhood cluster 4: as for n cluster 2, this cluster has again a very varying assessment structure, whereby the seven aspects in this cluster can be broken down into four different tendencies. unlike n cluster 2, however, the assessments in this cluster are on the whole less positive. also, the aspects acquainted with neighbours and recognise neighbours are quite positively assessed (positive to very positive). also, the aspect help from neighbours is assessed positively (tendency 2). conversely, the aspects converse with neighbours and greet the neighbours are given clear minus points (tendency 3). this tendency also includes the aspect many contacts, although a little more positively. the members of this cluster almost exclusively were negative (tendency 4) about the aspect invite neighbours. all in all, the neighbourhood relationships remain at a consistently superfi cial level (cf. section 3.2.3). neighbourhood cluster 5: with the exception of the two aspects recognise neighbours and help from neighbours, which the majority of cluster members assessed positively, the by far largest number of members rated all other aspects at least negatively, in particular the assessment for invite neighbours. neighbourhood cluster 6: with the exception of the aspect help from neighbours, for which at least some of the members of this cluster gave a positive assessment, otherwise almost only negative or very negative assessments were made. the four aspects many contacts, acquainted with neighbours, converse with neighbours and invite neighbours are particularly striking as more than three fourths of the members (up to over 90 percent) assess the situation in the neighbourhood as “very negative.” all in all, we can state the following results: the members of n cluster 1 rated all aspects of their neighbourhood as good to very good. on the opposite side, the members of cluster 6 assess all aspects of their neighbourhood situation negatively, whereby this poor assessment is only less stark for the aspect help from neighbours. the other four clusters align between these two extremes, however, without the clear linear-hierarchic arrangement that we saw in the linguistic clusters. rather, the members in these “middle” clusters rate a number of aspects similarly while other aspects are assessed very divergently (cf. fig. 2). for example, the members of the two clusters 4 and 5 rate the situation in their neighbourhoods for the aspects converse with neighbours, greet the neighbours, recognise neighbours and invite neighbours relatively similarly and the members of cluster 5 rate only the other three aspects many contacts, acquainted with neighbours and help from neighbours negatively. the members of the two n clusters 3 and 4 rate the two aspects many contacts and help from neighbours quite similarly, but their assessments for the other aspects are very different, whereby for the two aspects acquainted with neighbours and recognize neighbours the members of n cluster 4 see the situation more positively. it is the exact opposite for the aspects converse with neighbours, greet the neighbours and invite neighbours. linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 749 given the overall rather less positive assessment of the neighbourhood situation, it is not surprising that not even one third of the respondents are represented in the two clusters whose members assess the neighbourhood situation as at least positive in almost all matters (n clusters 1 and 2) (table 9). compared with the linguistic clusters, the distribution of respondents over the neighbourhood clusters is far more even, whereby the two “extreme” clusters (n cluster 1: positive; n cluster 6: negative) contain comparatively fewer members. all in all, these two clusters together contain less than one fourth of all respondents and more than three fourths are found in the “middle” clusters. fig. 2: structural web of neighbourhood clusters (based on mean values) 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 many contacts acquainted with neighbours converse with neighbours greet the neighboursrecognise neighbours invite neighbours help from neighbours n cluster 1 n cluster 2 n cluster 3 n cluster 4 n cluster 5 n cluster 6 source: own design • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme750 5.3 language and neighbourhood in correlation with and subject to predictor variables 5.3.1 correlation between language and neighbourhood the contingency table analysis proves that there is a highly signifi cant correlation between linguistic competence and neighbourhood situation. at c = 0.3607, the contingency coeffi cient is quite high. table 10 shows that a disproportionately high number of members of the clusters with good linguistic competence rate their neighbourhood situation positively. by contrast, a disproportionately low number of members from the clusters with less linguistic competence are found in these positive neighbourhood clusters. members with low linguistic competence rate their neighbourhood contacts as rather low. tab. 9: neighbourhood clusters – frequencies absolute frequency percentage frequency p fn cluster 1 48 9.7 n cluster 2 109 22.1 n cluster 3 73 14.8 n cluster 4 94 19.0 n cluster 5 109 22.1 n cluster 6 61 12.3 total 494 100.0 source: authors’ calculations tab. 10: the correlation between linguistic clusters and neighbourhood clusters linguistic cluster neighbourhood cluster 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 ++++ --- 2 ++++ 3 - ++ 4 - ++++ 5 - ---= very disproportionately low (= signifi cant at the 1 percent level); -= disproportionately low (= signifi cant at the 5 percent level); ++ = disproportionately high (= signifi cant at the 5 percent level); ++++ = very disproportionately high (= signifi cant at the 1 percent level) source: authors’ calculations linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 751 5.3.2 hypotheses on the correlation between language and neighbourhood relationships with other predictor variables the clearly recognisable formation of linguistic and neighbourhood clusters addressed above leads us directly to the question of whether we can identify variables that are correlative with this cluster formation. these could be variables that can be interpreted as the result, for example, when good language skills help a person to feel at home in the city or variables that could account for this clustering. in the following, we will look at fi ve spheres: personal individual and vocational variables, migration biography variables, environmental variables as well as variables that provide information on the assessment of the environment from the respondents’ point of view. note that the direction of the correlation is not always clearly identifi able. for instance, we assume that good linguistic competence makes closer neighbourhood ties more probable, but, on the other hand, we can also assume that closer neighbourhood ties promote good linguistic competence. in this respect we primarily focus on the term correlation without providing its direction. against this background, we took the following variables from the survey and examined them for their correlation with the linguistic competence and/or neighbourhood situation: personal individual variables – gender: in numerous studies on immigration, gender is emphasised as a differentiating variable. however, there are no clear fi ndings on whether the gender of academics infl uences the integration dimensions of neighbourhood and linguistic competence. – age: we could assume that younger persons, for example because of their greater fl exibility, display greater potential for integration and accordingly that this group is more liable to assert they possess good linguistic competence and are better settled in their neighbourhood (cf. section 3.2.2). however, it may also be that younger people do not require such an extent of linguistic competence in german because english is primarily spoken at work. we must also consider that the age variable can be correlated with two other variables: the duration of stay and the number of stays in germany. if these two variables have an impact, this could lead to the correlation between integration and age being the exact opposite; namely that older people tend to be better integrated. – family/household structure: the family/household structure is of signifi cance for integration in that we can assume that particularly if there are children in the household, this has a positive infl uence on linguistic competence and neighbourhood ties also among the adult members of the household. for example, these adults may come into closer contact with the neighbours via ties between their children (cf. section 3.2.3). personal vocational variables – employment relationship: a permanent position will be a far greater incentive to improve one’s german language skills and become more involved in the neighbourhood (cf. section 3.2.2). – discipline: on the one hand, we could assume that the discipline of foreign university employees is in no way related to integration aspects. on the other hand, we could argue that foreign academics working in the humanities might be more • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme752 interested in learning the german language while in disciplines such as the natural and economic sciences where english is increasingly the lingua franca there is far less necessity to “get involved” in learning german (cf. section 3.2.2). migration biography variables – duration of stay: we assume that a longer stay has a positive effect on linguistic competence and the development of neighbourhood relationships (cf. section 3.2.2). – number of stays: like for the duration of stay variable, we assume that a greater number of stays also has positive effects on linguistic competence and the development of neighbourhood relationships. – origin: the origin is commonly considered a variable that infl uences integration, for instance in that persons from countries where the language is similar to that of the host country can more easily make social contacts (cf. section 3.2.2). in this study, we asked the respondents to name their country of origin (nationality). as described in section 4.1, these were then summarised in world regions. because of statistical restrictions (suffi cient number of cases), the following world regions were incorporated in the contingency table analyses: western europe, formerly socialistic europe, predominantly islamic countries, south asia and east asia. – transitional phase: guests who consider their time in germany only as a transitional phase will probably go to less “effort” to increase their competence in german and their settling into the neighbourhood than those who do not consider their stay in germany a transitional phase (cf. section 3.2.2). environmental variables – city: we must ask whether the urban environment – in this case that of the university cities of aachen, bonn and cologne – is correlated with the two dimensions language and neighbourhood, for instance in that the cities may be “open to integration” to different extents (cf. section 3.2.2). – language course: we assume that attending german courses has a favourable effect on linguistic competence. in addition, it can provide better prerequisites for settling oneself in the neighbourhood. however, attending a german course cannot be assessed as a guarantee of good language skills. furthermore, we must assume that persons who already possess good language skills from other contexts do not attend language courses. reciprocal effects of linguistic competence and neighbourhood integration with the assessment of the new environment the variables discussed above describe actual situations of the survey subjects. the following variables refer, by contrast, to evaluations or assessments by the respondents with regard to a variety of spheres. – living in the city: how well a person likes living in the new city can certainly be infl uenced by very diverse factors. we could argue that linguistic competence and settling/integration in the neighbourhood can be considered good prerequisites for a good assessment. – new friends and acquaintances in the city: finding new friends and acquaintances in the host country certainly implies a signifi cant extent of integration. we linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 753 assume that good command of the german language and getting along well in the living environment promote this process. – treated like germans: no doubt, good command of the german language is an important prerequisite for being treated like a “native.” we also assume that a similar effect occurs along with good settling into the neighbourhood because one “simply is one of us.” – feel comfortable: feeling comfortable in the new environment is certainly promoted if one can communicate in the language of the destination country and when one has settled oneself in the neighbourhood. likewise, we assume that this good feeling is also an incentive to improve one’s language skills and become more involved in the neighbourhood. – exclusion: the experience of discrimination is no doubt an impediment to integration, but it is possible that a low degree of integration at the two dimensions of linguistic competence and living in the neighbourhood is also more liable to cause discrimination situations or feelings (cf. section 3.2.2). 5.3.3 discussion of the results of the contingency table analysis the correlations resulting from the contingency table analyses for the cited variables with the two dimensions language and neighbourhood are listed in table 11. when there are signifi cant correlations between the two dimensions and the variables, they are (with the exception of the correlations linguistic competence – family/household structure) always highly signifi cant. it is also notable that only the two variables gender and living in the city do not correlate signifi cantly with the dimension language. for the neighbourhood dimension, there is a lack of signifi cant correlations among far more variables. this applies to the variable gender as well as the migration biography variables number of stays and origin. furthermore, no signifi cant correlation can be identifi ed for discipline, the two environment variables city and language course or the assessment variable feel comfortable. a comparison of the contingency coeffi cients additionally shows that in many cases, these are far higher for the correlations with the dimension language. this does not apply only to the two personal variables age and family/household structure, the variables transitional phase and employment relationship and for the assessment variable living in the city. for the latter we also fi nd no correlation with linguistic competence, but only with the dimension neighbourhood. therefore, the degree of linguistic competence apparently plays no direct role for the assessment whether living in the new city is positive, while more active involvement in the neighbourhood has a positive effect on the assessment of living in the city. the analysis of the residuals for the variables largely shows the results anticipated in the hypotheses discussion above. we wish to look more closely both at the correlation between the family/household structure and the two integration dimensions and at the correlations between linguistic competence and the variables origin, discipline and city (we identifi ed no correlations between these three variables and the dimension life in the neighbourhood). the results for the remaining variables are briefl y portrayed in table 12. • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme754 integration dimensions and family/household structure (cf. table 13): for the two integration dimensions linguistic competence and neighbourhood, we ascertained a distinct correlation in the anticipated direction whereby persons from households with children rate their linguistic competence higher and their neighbourhood integration better than persons living in households without children. we also noted that the correlation for the neighbourhood dimension is stronger than that of the language dimension (cf. section 3.2.3). tab. 11: signifi cant correlations (coeffi cients of contingency) between selected variables and linguistic and neighbourhood clusters variable linguistic clusters neighbourhood clusters personal individual variables gender 0.1441 0.0872 age 0.2764*** 0.3292*** family/household structure 0.2345** 0.4654*** personal vocational variables employment relationship 0.2686*** 0.2875*** discipline 0.3763*** 0.2237 migration biography variables duration of stay 0.4456*** 0.3686*** number of stays 0.3183*** 0.2423 origin 0.3709*** 0.2469 transitional phase 0.3763*** 0.4090*** variables of the environment city 0.2532*** 0.2196 language course 0.3508*** 0.0910 assessment of the new environment1 living in the city 0.1010 0.2703*** new friends and acquaintances in the city 0.3182*** 0.3882*** treated like germans 0.5007*** 0.3458*** feel comfortable in the city 0.2454*** 0.2137 exclusion 0.3950*** 0.2773*** 1 all of the assessment variables were originally coded – like the neighbourhood aspects – according to a scale of four assessments. the two poor assessment categories 3 and 4 were united to form one category for the contingency table analyses for statistical reasons (low numbers of cases). ** = signifi cant at the 5 percent level (= signifi cant); *** = signifi cant at the 1 percent level (= highly signifi cant) source: authors’ calculations linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 755 tab. 12: correlations between selected variables and the dimensions language and neighbourhood variable language neighbourhood gender we found no correlation between linguistic competence and gender. we found no correlation between neighbourhood integration and gender. age a disproportionately high number of over 50-year-olds attest to good linguistic competence, while the under 30-year-olds assess theirs disproportionately frequently as poor. the situation is similar to that for linguistic competence: older people assess their ties to the neighbourhood disproportionately frequently as positive; the younger consider their ties more frequently as low. employment relationship persons with permanent positions exhibit greater linguistic competence. persons with permanent positions are disproportionately frequently in neighbourhood clusters characterised by a more favourable neighbourhood situation. language course persons who took one or more german courses are more often members in clusters with greater linguistic competence. language course attendance has no direct effect on settling into the neighbourhood. duration of stay linguistic competence increases with the duration of stay. persons who have lived for a good while in germany (more than 5 and more than 10 years respectively) are disproportionately more frequently in the neighbourhood clusters with generally quite positive assessments (n cluster 1 and 2). number of stays a disproportionately high number of respondents who had never been to germany before frequently rate their linguistic competence as poor and only very rarely as very good. those who had been in germany before less frequently rated their linguistic competence as poor, yet also not necessarily as high. there is no signifi cant correlation. transitional phase the linguistic clusters with high linguistic competence contain a disproportionately high number of members who do not consider their stay a transitional phase. those who do, by contrast, tend to gather in the clusters with low linguistic competence. the correlation between neighbourhood clusters and assessment of the stay as a transitional phase is similar to that for the linguistic dimension. living in the city we identifi ed no correlation between the assessment on whether the respondents liked living in the city and the assessment of their linguistic competence. persons who say that they have settled well in the neighbourhood also say that they like living in the city. • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme756 language and origin (cf. table 14): there is a very distinct correlation based on “cultural affi nity.” l cluster 1, the cluster with high linguistic competence, consisted of a very disproportionately high number of respondents from western europe. persons of this region of origin are, by contrast, found in disproportionately low numbers in the clusters with low linguistic competence. conversely, primarily respondents from asian regions attest themselves very low language skills, while it was extremely rare to fi nd persons from these countries with high linguistic competence. tab. 12: continuation variable language neighbourhood new friends and acquaintances in the city foreign respondents with high linguistic competence have found more new friends and acquaintances in the city. respondents who have settled well in the neighbourhood fi nd more new friends and acquaintances in the city. treated like germans high linguistic competence is far more likely to lead to immigrants having the feeling they are treated like natives by the german population. good integration in the neighbourhood leads immigrants to feel that they are treated more often like natives. feel comfortable persons with high linguistic competence report far more frequently that they feel very comfortable where they live. the quality of settling into the neighbourhood has no direct effect on the extent of feeling comfortable in the chosen university city. this result is at fi rst surprising and may stem from the fact that settling into the neighbourhood is not the fi rst priority for the stay and feeling comfortable. exclusion a disproportionately high number of members from clusters with low linguistic competence have experiences of exclusion. only very few of the respondents in high linguistic competence clusters report such experiences. also, only a few people who live in a positive neighbourhood situation report of such experiences of exclusion. source: authors’ calculations tab. 13: structure of the correlation: neighbourhood and family/household structure family/ neighbourhood household structure 1 2 3 4 5 6 alone ++ with partner/relatives ++++ with children ++++ ++++ ----- source: authors’ calculations (legend cf. table 10) linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 757 language and discipline (cf. table 15): in this case, in particular the exceedingly different structure of responses by university employees in the two disciplines natural sciences and humanities are notable. the humanities scholars very frequently rate themselves with very good linguistic competence and only very few consider it poor. among the natural scientists it is exactly the opposite. the surveys conducted cannot measure the extent to which the academic fi eld plays a role in this (language being a chief element of the humanities) or whether it is more due to the work environment (cf. section 3.2.2). the engineers (exclusively working at the university in aachen) on the whole lean more towards the humanities scholars; only a few of them consider their linguistic competence in german is poor. a closer look at the survey data does not explain this at fi rst surprising fi nding with a high number of dutch and belgians due to the border location of aachen in the belgium-germany-netherlands triangle. language and city (cf. table 16): the highly signifi cant correlation is caused by the dichotomy of the two cities aachen and bonn. aachen has very few foreign university staff members who rate their language skills as poor. the situation in bonn is the exact opposite where quite a large number of foreign staff of the university in bonn rate their own linguistic competence as low and only very few as good or very good. one possible cause tab. 14: structure of the correlation: language and origin origin linguistic clusters 1 2 3 4 5 europe (western) ++++ --- europe (formerly socialistic) predominantly islamic countries - south asia --- ++ east asia --- ++++ ++ source: authors’ calculations (legend cf. table 10) tab. 15: structure of the correlation: language and discipline discipline linguistic clusters 1 2 3 4 5 natural sciences ---- ++++ ++++ humanities ++++ ---- medicine engineering - source: authors’ calculations (legend cf. table 10) • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme758 is the different disciplines of the respondents in the three cities. in bonn, far more natural scientists responded than in the two other cities. moreover, many engineers were surveyed at the rwth aachen, a discipline that does not exist in the two other cities. as explained above, natural scientists tend to assess their linguistic competence as low and engineers tend to consider theirs better. in this respect, the result refl ects a difference between the cities from a formal and statistical perspective; however, it is in content a result of the structure of respondents and confi rms the differences in assessment by the disciplines. the above-discussed correlation between language and urban environment (cf. section 3.2.2) cannot, therefore, be conclusively verifi ed with the data surveyed and analysed here. this may, however, also be because the cities studied are neither distinctly small towns nor, in the other extreme, cosmopolitan cities. 6 summary and conclusions the integration of foreign immigrants has been an intense focus of both public discourse and research, but this noticeably is not the case for highly-skilled migrants. hardly any validated, detailed fi ndings have been made by research with the exception of a few studies of expatriates, a group that has a special place among highlyskilled migrants. an analysis of existing literature on the subject of integration reveals that the process exhibits very diverse facets and the results are by no means always clearcut. however, it also shows that the cultural and the social dimensions play or can play a constitutive role in the shaping of integration. it turns out that the specifi c living conditions perceived by the immigrants in the cities have some infl uence on how integration is experienced. against this background, this article deals with the integration processes of highly-skilled migrants in germany, specifi cally of foreign academics. based on a standardised survey of foreign academics at the universities in aachen, bonn and cologne, the integration process was examined with regard to the following questions: 1. are there clusters of foreign academics that differ from one another in the extent of their linguistic competence or their integration in the neighbourhood? how are clusters identifi ed in this manner structured? tab. 16: structure of the correlation: language and city city linguistic clusters 1 2 3 4 5 aachen --- bonn ---- ++++ cologne source: authors’ calculations (legend cf. table 10) linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 759 2. are there reciprocal effects between these two dimensions of integration or their structure and other variables? question 1: we identifi ed fi ve linguistic competence clusters on the basis of a cluster analysis. they are in themselves very homogeneous and can be ranked according to the quality of linguistic competence. this ranking of the clusters was equally identical with regard to all four individual aspects of linguistic competence. it therefore results in a clear linear-hierarchical structure. the clusters with greater linguistic competence have disproportionately high numbers. more than half of the respondents can be categorised in the two clusters with high linguistic competence and a mere six percent of the respondents say that their linguistic competence is very poor. the results are surprising in that the predominant majority only have temporary employment contracts. this indicates that although german language skills have lost signifi cance in the working routine of german institutions of tertiary education, they continue to be necessary. six clusters were identifi ed for the dimension of life in the neighbourhood through cluster analysis. these clusters are not as homogenous in structure as the linguistic competence clusters. nonetheless, we were also able to detect a ranking; however the ranks were not as even with regard to all seven partial aspects, i.e. the structure is not as completely linear-hierarchical as for linguistic competence. question 2: 16 variables were chosen from the available survey. they can be categorised in the fi ve attributes personal individual variables, migration biography, personal vocational variables, infl uence of the environment and assessment of the new environment. it is assumed that they correlate with the two integration dimensions of language and neighbourhood. we must emphasise that the direction of effect is not always clear. the correlations were verifi ed using contingency table analyses. as expected, there is a highly signifi cant correlation between the two dimensions of integration, linguistic competence and life in the neighbourhood, in that disproportionately high numbers from the clusters with good linguistic competence assess their neighbourhood situation positively. by contrast, members with low linguistic competence tend to assess their degree of neighbourhood contacts as low. it is striking that the signifi cance of the correlations between the two integration dimensions and the 16 selected variables are usually – if they are signifi cant at all – highly signifi cant (1 percent signifi cance level). moreover, there are far more identifi able correlations with linguistic competence than with the neighbourhood. for linguistic competence we identifi ed a signifi cant correlation with 14 variables; only the variables gender and living in the city did not have this. for the neighbourhood, contrastingly, we only found signifi cant correlations for nine variables. the results of the analysis generally reveal the results we anticipated based on the hypotheses discussion. the correlations between the two dimensions linguistic competence and settling into the neighbourhood and the variable family/household structure (personal individual variables) as well as those of linguistic competence and the three variables national origin (migration biography variables), academic discipline (personal • daniela imani, josef nipper, günter thieme760 vocational variables) and city (environmental variables), which do not exhibit any signifi cant correlations with the neighbourhood dimension, were examined in more detail with the following results: a) the household situation of the respondents here in germany has distinct effects on linguistic competence and on settling into the neighbourhood in that the respondents with children in the household attest to far better integration with regard to the two dimensions. b) foreign academics from europe attest themselves good to very good language skills far more, while a disproportionately high number of academics from asian countries place themselves in the clusters with low linguistic competence. c) also, natural scientists place themselves in clusters with low linguistic competence, while humanities scholars give themselves good to very good marks in german. we assume that one reason for this differentiation is their vocational routine since english is more frequently the language used to communicate in the natural sciences. d) the highly signifi cant correlation between city and linguistic competence results from the contrast between the two cities of aachen and bonn. in aachen very few foreign university staff members rate their language skills as poor. the situation in bonn is the exact opposite. we were unable to derive possible causes of this from the results of the survey. we can state that the international mobility of academics exhibits some special features that differentiates them from other groups of highly qualifi ed persons, in particular the institutional conditions of academic mobility sketched out above, which generally aim to support the mobility and integration of students and academics. this rarely exists in a comparative way for other professional groups. all in all, the analyses of the group of highly-skilled migrants under study resulted in predominantly distinct and highly signifi cant correlations between the dimensions cultural integration (linguistic competence) and social integration (neighbourhood relationships) on the one hand and a number of predictor variables on the other hand. these correlations reveal that there are a number of tangible starting points for improving co-existence (and therefore integration) of immigrants in their urban environment, such as language courses, duration of employment contracts or an improved welcoming culture at the university and in particular in the city. acknowledgements in addition to the authors cited, the following colleagues worked on the project and are co-authors of this article: stefanie föbker, marius otto, carmella pfaffenbach, günther weiss and claus-c. wiegandt. the authors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable advice in the design of this article. in february 2014, after the article has been fi nished and accepted for publication, günter thieme passed away. he was an esteemed colleague for all of us. working with him was satisfying and his contributions in discussions were enlightening, always. linguistic and neighbourhood integration among highly-skilled migrants • 761 references ackers, louise 2010: internationalisation and equality. the contribution of short stay mobility to progression in science careers. in: recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques 41,1: 83-103. alexander von humboldt-stiftung 2012: der wettbewerb welcome centres 2010. ergebnisse der dritten runde [http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/pls/web/docs/f19345/ avhwelcomfolder_2010_web.pdf, 10.12.2012]. backhaus, klaus; erichson, bernd; plinke, wulff; weiber, rolf 2008: 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http://www.wiegandt-stadtforschung.de/arbeitsgruppe-stadt-und-regio.4.0.html prof. dr. josef nipper (). geographisches institut, universität zu köln, germany. e-mail: j.nipper@uni-koeln.de url: http://www.geographie.uni-koeln.de/contact.536.en.html prof. dr. günter thieme †. seminar für geographie und ihre didaktik, universität zu köln, germany. published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved einfluss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität: neue schätzwerte auf kreisebene in deutschland einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität: neue schätzwerte auf kreisebene in deutschland* martin bujard, melanie scheller zusammenfassung: betrachtungen des regionalen kontexts haben eine lange tradition in der fertilitätsforschung. allerdings liegen für deutschland kreisspezifi sche fertilitätsdaten bisher lediglich für die zusammengefasste geburtenziffer (tfr) vor, nicht jedoch zur endgültigen kinderzahl (kohortenfertilität, ctfr). auf basis von zensus 2011 und geburtenstatistik werden schätzwerte für die ctfr auf kreisebene generiert und einfl ussfaktoren ihrer variation analysiert. zunächst wird die ctfr der geburtskohorten 1969-72 für alle 402 kreise berechnet. die geschätzte ctfr variiert erheblich zwischen den kreisen bei einer spannbreite von 1,05 bis 2,01. sie unterscheidet sich deutlich von den bekannten werten der tfr. diese unterschiede beruhen hauptsächlich auf verzerrungen durch die timing-komponente der tfr, die in ostdeutschland, bei universitätsstädten und im stadt-land-vergleich auffällig sind. daher ermöglichen die geschätzten ctfrwerte einen weitaus besseren einblick in regionale fertilitätsunterschiede. im zweiten schritt werden die unterschiede der neu gewonnenen ctfr auf kreisebene mittels linearer regressionen analysiert. die drei kompositionseffekte geringe akademikerinnenquote, hoher katholikenund hoher migrantenanteil tragen signifi kant zu einer höheren ctfr in westdeutschen kreisen bei. allerdings spielen regionale opportunitäten ebenfalls eine wichtige rolle: eine geringe bevölkerungsdichte, das angebot relativ großer wohnungen und ein männerüberschuss sind deutlich mit höherer fertilität assoziiert, ebenso ökonomische faktoren wie traditionelle wirtschaftsstruktur und niedrige arbeitslosigkeit. insgesamt zeigen die analysen, dass regionale faktoren einen hohen einfl uss auf die fertilität haben. schlagwörter: kohortenfertilität · bevölkerungsgeographie · regionaler kontext · urbanisierung · deutschland · zensus federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-07de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-07de1 * dieser artikel enthält ergänzende materialien in einem online-anhang: doi: 10.12765/cpos2017-08de, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/278/251. comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 41 (2016): 101-136 (erstveröffentlichung: 22.08.2017) • martin bujard, melanie scheller102 1 einleitung ein großer teil der fertilitätsforschung lässt sich in zwei gruppen aufteilen: solche, die individualdaten untersuchen und solche, die auf makroebene länder vergleichen. bei beiden ansätzen werden regionale faktoren oftmals ausgeklammert, was angesichts der erheblichen regionalen unterschiede im generativen verhalten (basten et al. 2011) zu verzerrungen aufgrund von selection-bias oder whole-nationbias (rokkan 1970) führt. da bspw. innerhalb deutschlands die varianz der fertilität auf kreisebene sehr hoch ist und sich auch die lokalen opportunitätsstrukturen hinsichtlich ökonomischer, politischer und kultureller faktoren stark unterscheiden (bbsr 2015), ist es essenziell, die fertilitätsforschung um kreisspezifi sche faktoren zu erweitern. die ursachen regional divergierender fertilitätsraten können dabei sehr unterschiedlich sein: die regionale varianz lässt sich zum teil auf kompositionseffekte (hank 2002; hank/huinink 2015) und zum teil auf unterschiedliche regionale opportunitätsstrukturen (überblick: basten et al. 2011) oder historisch gewachsene kulturelle prägungen (klüsener/goldstein 2014) zurückführen. der in der literatur am stärksten belegte regionale faktor ist zweifellos der urbanisierungsgrad (kulu et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; trovato/grindstaff 1980), hinter dem sich jedoch unterschiedliche mechanismen verbergen können (sharlin 1986); insbesondere faktoren wie wohnraum (fiori et al. 2014; kulu 2013) und selektive binnenmigration (courgeau 1989; kulu/milewski 2007). auch regionale unterschiede bezüglich familienpolitik (baizan 2009; rindfuss et al. 2007), ein hoher grad an religiosität (sobotka/ adigüzel 2002) und niedrige arbeitslosigkeitsraten (kravdal 2002) sind mit höheren fertilitätsraten assoziiert. allerdings ist die befundlage in europa teilweise widersprüchlich, was zum einen an länderspezifi schen unterschieden liegt und zum anderen an den spezifi schen forschungsdesigns und datensätzen. viele regionale analysen decken nur einen teil der potenziellen faktoren ab, indem wenige regionale variablen in ereignisanalytischen mehrebenenmodellen getestet werden. dieser state of the art der forschung ermöglicht zwar eine kausale interpretation, jedoch oft zum preis eines selection-bias, wonach die vielfalt potenzieller regionaler variablen und ihre interaktionen ausgeblendet werden. um fertilitätsunterschiede auf regionaler ebene – und insbesondere auf kreisebene – für deutschland quantifi zieren und ihre faktoren analysieren zu können, war die datenlage bisher begrenzt, denn es lagen keine daten zur kohortenfertilität auf kreisebene vor. es gibt zwar detaillierte daten zur zusammengefassten geburtenziffer (tfr, auch bekannt als ptfr) auf kreisebene (grünheid 2015; bbsr 2015), allerdings ist die tfr als abhängige variable weniger geeignet, da sie durch die timing-komponente (bongaarts/feeney 1998; schoen 2004) verzerrt ist. die kohortenfertilitätsraten (cohort total fertility rate, ctfr) lassen sich bezogen auf regionale unterschiede besser analysieren. die ctfr (bzw. die durchschnittliche kinderzahl pro frau) auf kreisebene und die damit verbundenen regionalen analysen stellen eine erhebliche forschungslücke für demografi sche und geografi sche analysen dar. der zensus 2011 hat zwar nicht die biologische kinderzahl erfragt, einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 103 bietet jedoch das potenzial, mittels demografi scher schätzmodelle diese forschungslücke zu schließen. dieser artikel hat zwei ziele: • einen schätzwert zur ctfr für alle 402 deutschen kreise zu berechnen auf basis der aus dem zensus 2011 ermittelten kinderzahl pro frau im haushalt sowie • einen breiten überblick zu regionalen erklärungsfaktoren zu generieren und deren interaktionen im kontext sozialstruktureller faktoren zu analysieren. für die berechnungen der ctfr sind hohe fallzahlen erforderlich, da auch in kleineren kreisen ausreichend fälle für jahrgangsspezifi sche kinderzahlen vorhanden sein müssen. dies ist selbst beim mikrozensus (mz) mit 688.931 personen im berichtsjahr 2012 nicht ausreichend gegeben. der zensus ermöglicht hier neuland zu betreten: es wurden 7,9 mio. personen, also rund 10 % der deutschen bevölkerung, befragt. da der zensus daten zur kinderzahl nicht direkt erfasst, wird als annäherung die kinderzahl im haushalt (familienebene) verwendet, um einen schätzwert der ctfr für alle 402 deutschen kreise zu berechnen. durch eine identifi zierung der frauenjahrgänge, die einerseits die reproduktive lebensphase weitgehend abgeschlossen haben und bei denen andererseits die kinder überwiegend noch im elternhaus leben, lässt sich ein möglichst genauer schätzwert für die ctfr auf kreisebene generieren. um die jahrgangsspezifi sche unterschätzung im vergleich zur amtlichen bevölkerungsstatistik zu berechnen, sind extrapolationen auf basis der amtlichen bevölkerungsstatistik sowie ein nach ostund westdeutschland differenzierter multiplikator notwendig.1 die so errechneten ctfr-werte auf kreisebene sind in form von grafi ken und tabellen im anhang sowie in einem excel-dokument im online-anhang dargestellt. die faktoren der regionalen fertilitätsunterschiede werden durch lineare regressionsanalysen auf der makroebene operationalisiert, wobei die 402 kreise die fälle und die zuvor berechnete ctfr die abhängige variable darstellen. um kompositionseffekte abbilden zu können, werden soziodemografi sche merkmale wie angaben zu bildung, religion, migrationshintergrund und lebensform basierend auf eigenen auswertungen mit den mikrodaten des zensus aggregiert. aus der datenbank inkar2 (bbsr 2015) werden kreisspezifi sche daten zu arbeitsmarkt, wirtschaftsstruktur, frauenerwerbstätigkeit, wohlstand, urbanisierung, familienpolitik, wohnraum und geschlechterproportionen für die analyse aufbereitet. dies ermöglicht eine gemeinsame betrachtung regionaler und soziodemografi scher einfl ussfaktoren der fertilität. 1 zu ostdeutschland zählen in dieser berechnung die neuen bundesländer sowie berlin. 2 inkar ist das akronym für „indicators, maps and graphics on spatial and urban monitoring”. • martin bujard, melanie scheller104 2 forschungsstand 2.1 fertilitätsdaten der kreise in deutschland die tfr wird von den statistischen landesämtern auf kreisebene berechnet, wobei die altersspezifi schen fertilitätsraten (asfr) für jedes alter in einem bestimmten jahr addiert werden. für einzelne jahre wie 2013 (grünheid 2015; ohne thüringen) liegen diese werte für gesamtdeutschland vor. datenreihen zur tfr werden von inkar (bbsr 2015) berechnet, die auf daten der statistik der geburten und sterbefälle des bundes und der länder und der regio-datenbank von eurostat beruhen. der von inkar verwendete algorithmus berechnet die tfr jedoch nicht auf basis der asfr sondern auf basis von fünfjahresaltersgruppen, wie 15-19 jahre, 20-24 jahre usw. (wir nutzen diese daten für einen vergleich mit der berechneten ctfr in abschnitt 4.1). daten zur kohortenfertilität auf kreisebene in deutschland existieren bisher nicht. die amtliche geburtenstatistik berechnet die ctfr auf basis von asfr für jedes einzelne jahr und jede kohorte, wobei sich das alter aus der differenz zwischen geburtsjahr und berichtsjahr errechnet (statistisches bundesamt 2014). jedoch bietet sie nur ctfr für gesamtdeutschland bzw. nach ostund westdeutschland differenziert. sozialwissenschaftliche erhebungen und der mz 2012, die die biologische kinderzahl erheben, haben zu geringe fallzahlen für die berechnung der kreisspezifi schen kohortenfertilität. der mz 2012 hat immerhin 688.931 fälle, die frauenjahrgänge 1969-1972 haben jeweils im schnitt 4.569 fälle, was pro kreis durchschnittlich 13 fällen entspricht. der zensus hat 7,9 mio. fälle, dabei durchschnittlich 48.484 fälle für einen der frauenjahrgänge 1969-1972, was pro kreis im schnitt 121 fällen entspricht. nimmt man die vier jahrgänge zusammen, beträgt die durchschnittliche fallzahl immerhin 482 pro kreis. die ctfr auf kreisebene ist ein wertvoller indikator, um regionale fertilitätsunterschiede und die sie beeinfl ussenden regionalen opportunitäten zu messen, da sie die fertilität innerhalb der gesamten reproduktiven lebenszeit berücksichtigt. dagegen handelt es sich bei der tfr um ein andersartiges konzept, bei dem neben dem quantum auch der zeitpunkt der geburten einfl ießt. auf kreisebene ist die tfr durch das ausmaß der binnenmigration junger frauen, insbesondere von studentinnen sowie die unterschiedlich starken geburtenaufschübe so verzerrt, dass die interpretierbarkeit begrenzt ist. der timingeffekt ist problematisch (schoen 2004), da sich der aufschub der geburten bzw. das durchschnittliche alter bei der geburt regional erheblich unterscheiden. universitätsstädte mit einem hohen akademikeranteil wie heidelberg, münster oder würzburg haben ein durchschnittliches geburtsalter (mac) von 32,5-33,3 jahren. im vergleich dazu liegt das mac im jahr 2013 in ländlichen regionen wie mecklenburgische seenplatte und vorpommernrügen bei 27,0-27,4 jahren (grünheid 2015). einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 105 2.2 forschungsstand zu regionalen fertilitätsunterschieden bei den regionalen fertilitätsunterschieden lassen sich zwei grundsätzlich verschiedene erklärungen anführen: sie können auf kompositionseffekten oder auf regionalen opportunitätsstrukturen beruhen (basten et al. 2011; boyle et al. 2007; firoi et al. 2014; hank 2002; hank/huinink 2015; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu et al. 2007; trovato/ grindstaff 1980). hinsichtlich dieser grundsatzfrage stimmen zwar die meisten autoren der these zu, dass beide erklärungen sich ergänzen. allerdings fi nden einige autoren eher kompositionseffekte relevant (hank 2002;3 hank/huinink 2015), während andere regionale kontextfaktoren betonen (kulu et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009). diese unterscheidung ist für die bedeutung regionaler analysen wichtig, denn sowohl der whole-nation-bias bei makroanalysen (rokkan 1970) als auch der selection-bias durch die ausblendung regionaler faktoren bei individualanalysen sind umso größer, je stärker regionale kontextfaktoren wirken. kompositionseffekte führen v.a. dann zu regional unterschiedlichen fertilitätsraten, wenn in bestimmten regionen personen mit solchen sozialstrukturellen merkmalen überrepräsentiert sind, die ein spezifi sches fertilitätsverhalten aufweisen. in ländern, bei denen höhere bildungsabschlüsse mit niedrigerer fertilität assoziiert sind, ist die fertilität in regionen deutlich niedriger, in denen besonders viele akademiker und wenige frauen mit niedrigem bildungsabschluss leben (hank/huinink 2015). ähnliches gilt für den sozioökonomischen status (kulu 2013). kompositionseffekte können auch auf migrantengruppen bzw. ethnischen minoritäten beruhen, die in bestimmten regionen überrepräsentiert sind und ein abweichendes fertilitätsmuster aufweisen. die fertilität von migranten unterschiedlicher herkunftsländer ist sehr heterogen. in deutschland und großbritannien, wo die mehrzahl der migranten aus ländern mit deutlich höherer fertilität kommt, wie türkei oder pakistan, ist der effekt von migranten positiv (hank/huinink 2015; kulu/washbrook 2014). andere studien zeigen keinen einfl uss von internationalen migranten, v.a. im vergleich zu den deutlichen effekten der binnenmigration (michielin 2002). individuelle merkmale bezüglich der lebensform (hank 2003) oder der erwerbstätigkeit erweisen sich auch in vielen analysen als signifi kant (hank/huinink 2015). ihre interpretation als kompositionseffekte ist jedoch schwierig, da diese faktoren auch folge von fertilitätsereignissen oder zumindest unterschiedlich stark ausgeprägten kinderwünschen sein können. regionale kontextfaktoren beruhen auf lokalen opportunitätsstrukturen (ausführlich: basten et al. 2011), die sich in bezug auf urbanisierung, wohnraum, kultur, familienpolitik und arbeitsmarkt unterscheiden. ein zentraler faktor ist der urbanisierungsgrad (courgeau 1989; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu et al. 2007; kulu 2013; trovato/grindstaff 1980), der bereits in der historischen demografi e und der ersten demografi schen transition negativ mit fertilität verbunden war (andorka 1978; sharlin 1986; wolf 1912). die bevölkerungsdichte weist in 3 allerdings weist hank auf weiteren forschungsbedarf, u.a. durch eine nutzung groß-skalierter individualdatensätze, hin (hank 2002: 296). • martin bujard, melanie scheller106 einem internationalen vergleich von 145 ländern einen negativen zusammenhang mit fertilität auf (lutz et al. 2006), wobei dies nur bedingt auf europa zutrifft. die interpretation des einfl usses des urbanisierungsgrades für fertilitätsentscheidungen ist jedoch kompliziert, da die dahinter stehenden mechanismen vielfältig sind. sharlin (1986: 236) bezeichnet stadt-land-unterschiede als „code phrase for an array of social, economic, and cultural differences and changes”. die mechanismen hinter dem urbanisierungseffekt lassen sich in lokale opportunitätsstrukturen, selektive binnenmigration, kulturelle faktoren (inklusive dem timing von wandlungsprozessen) und kompositionseffekte differenzieren: • bestimmte lokale opportunitätsstrukturen unterscheiden sich typischerweise zwischen städten und ländlichen regionen: in städten ist der wohnraum knapper und teurer sowie der arbeitsmarkt von hoher spezialisierung und wissensbasierung geprägt; beide faktoren sind mit niedriger fertilität assoziiert. in ländlichen kreisen dagegen können grünfl ächen zur naherholung und weniger autoverkehr eher zu einer kinderfreundlichen wohnumgebung beitragen. es lohnt sich jedoch aus zwei gründen die faktoren einzeln zu analysieren: erstens, um die tatsächlichen wirkungsfaktoren zu erhalten, die sich hinter der urbanisierung verbergen. zweitens ist eine differenzierung der lokalen opportunitätsstrukturen in städten sinnvoll, da es auch urbane räume mit familienfreundlichen wohnumgebungen gibt. mehrere studien zeigen, dass die fertilität in vororten höher ist als im stadtzentrum (boyle et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu/washbrook 2014). • selektive binnenmigration (courgeau 1989; huinink/wagner 1989; kulu/milewski 2007; michielin 2002) verstärkt stadt-land-unterschiede in der fertilität. häufi g ziehen paare kurz vor oder nach der familiengründung von städten aufs land und kinderlose eher in städte. courgeau (1989) zeigt für frankreich, dass die binnenmigration von stadt nach land mit höherer fertilität einhergeht (und vice versa). dies zeigt er nicht nur für die familiengründung, sondern auch beim übergang zu höheren paritäten. es wird argumentiert, dass frauen ihr verhalten an die neue umgebung anpassen bzw. eine umgebung entsprechend ihrer kinderwünsche auswählen, wobei der wohnungsmarkt eine wichtige rolle spielt. da manche vororte zur stadt und andere zu angrenzenden ländlichen kreisen gezählt werden, sind abgrenzungsprobleme hier virulent. • kulturelle unterschiede zwischen städtischen und ländlichen kreisen sind auf unterschiedliche sozio-kulturelle milieus zurückzuführen. in urbanen milieus ist ein städtischer lebensstil verbreitet, der von vielen lebensoptionen außerhalb von familie geprägt ist. dabei interagieren urbaner lebensstil und lokale opportunitätsstrukturen miteinander. der einfl uss dieser milieus und des sozialen lernens ist bei der familiengründung größer als bei dem übergang zu weiteren paritäten (fiori et al. 2014). stadt-land-unterschiede können auch die avantgarde und nachzügler in historischen wandlungsprozessen, wie dem ersten demografi schen übergang, abbilden (coale/watkins 1986). selektive binnenmigration fi ndet jedoch nicht nur im stadt-land-bezug statt, sondern generell zwischen unterschiedlichen kreisen mit unterschiedlichen regionalen kontexten. kulu und milewski (2007) haben eine elaborierte systematik vorgelegt, bei der sie vier hypothesen für das fertilitätsverhalten bei migration differenzieren: der sozialisationshypothese zufolge bleibt die fertilität nach einem einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 107 umzug von erwachsenen personen konstant, da die präferenzen bereits vor dem umzug gebildet worden sind. dagegen postuliert die adaptionshypothese, dass der regionale kontext ausschlaggebender ist und sich die fertilität an das muster ihrer neuen umgebung anpasst. die selektionshypothese geht davon aus, dass ein umzug als folge von spezifi schen fertilitätspräferenzen vorgenommen wird (für großbritannien: kulu/washbrook 2014). die disruptionshypothese besagt, dass direkt nach einem umzug die fertilität niedriger ist; diese hypothese ist weniger für binnenmigration als für internationale migration (abgesehen vom familiennachzug) plausibel. anders als die befunde von courgeau (1989) für frankreich, huinink und wagner (1989) für deutschland und michielin (2002) für italien zeigen neuere analysen für den übergang zum zweiten und dritten kind für großbritannien (fiori et al. 2014) und für die ersten drei paritäten in finnland (kulu 2013) keinen effekt der selektiven migration. der wohnraum erweist sich in mehreren studien als signifi kanter regionaler kontextfaktor (fiori et al. 2014; kulu/vikat 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu 2013). kulu zeigt für finnland, dass das wohnen in freistehenden häusern und reihenhäusern beim übergang zum ersten kind einen deutlichen effekt hat, der sogar den häufi geren übergang in ländlichen gebieten erklärt (kulu 2013: 904). für finnland konnte auch ein wahrscheinlicherer übergang zum dritten kind bei einfamilienhäusern gezeigt werden (kulu/vikat 2007). für großbritannien fi nden fiori et al. (2014) einen positiven effekt von wohnungen mit mehr als fünf räumen lediglich beim übergang zum zweiten kind. kulturelle unterschiede auf regionaler ebene, die historisch gewachsen und oft bereits vor dem gegenwärtigen politischen system entstanden sind (vgl. klüsener/ goldstein 2014), können sich auf regionale fertilitätsunterschiede auswirken. die bedeutung der kultur in relation zu sozioökonomischen unterschieden betonen die autoren des „european fertility project“ (coale/watkins 1986). während ein gewisser grad an modernisierung eine voraussetzung für den prätransitionellen geburtenrückgang war, wurde der zeitpunkt primär vom regionalen kulturellen setting beeinfl usst (knodel/van de walle 1986). dies gilt nicht für die konfessionelle prägung in großen städten preußens; zudem spielen ansteckungseffekte zwischen geografi schen nachbarregionen eine rolle (goldstein/klüsener 2014). auch neuere studien weisen auf den einfl uss von regional unterschiedlichen sozialen milieus auf fertilität hin (fulda 2015). andererseits ist die kultur im sinne von fertilitätsbezogenen einstellungen zu einem gewissen teil national, durch sprache und massenmedien, geprägt (lesthaeghe 1995). die konfessionen und die unterschiedliche religiosität, beispielsweise durch wöchentliche kirchbesuche messbar, sind ein ankerpunkt für kulturelle analysen. mehrere studien zeigen, dass eine hohe kirchgangsquote zur erklärung regionaler fertilitätsunterschiede beiträgt (kemper 1991; sobotka/adigüzel 2002). während vor einem jahrhundert die höhere fertilität bzw. geringe neigung zur verhütung von katholiken betont wurde (wolf 1912; vgl. goldstein/klüsener 2014), wird katholizismus in neueren publikationen mit niedriger fertilität infolge von familienpolitischen defi ziten im internationalen vergleich assoziiert (castles 2003). analysen von 28 oecd-ländern zeigen, dass die protestantenquote zwischen 1987 und 2006 • martin bujard, melanie scheller108 positiv mit der tfr assoziiert ist, wobei kinderbetreuungsund protestantenquote in multivariaten regressionen eine ähnliche varianz erklären (bujard 2011). dabei ist in vielen ländern nur eine konfession dominierend. deutschland ist hier ein interessanter fall, da es kreise gibt, die primär katholisch (u.a. in südbayern) und solche, die primär protestantisch (u.a. in schleswig-holstein) sind. dabei unterscheiden sich die anteile auch innerhalb der einzelnen bundesländer teilweise deutlich. um den kirchlichen einfl uss zu messen, ist neben der konfession auch die religiosität maßgeblich, wobei ostdeutschland – nicht nur aufgrund des ddr-regimes – in besonderem maße säkular ist (klüsener/goldstein 2014). studien, die regionale fertilitätsunterschiede in deutschland im kontext von kirchen und religiosität untersuchen, sind selten. kemper (1991) zeigt für 31 westdeutsche regierungsbezirke anhand eines pfadmodells einen direkten positiven einfl uss der kirchenbesuchsrate und einen indirekten negativen der protestantenquote. einige neuere studien zum einfl uss der familienpolitik auf die fertilität auf länderebene zeigen einen positiven effekt (bujard 2011; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013). auch wenn viele familienpolitische maßnahmen national einheitlich sind, existiert v.a. bei der kinderbetreuung eine zum teil erhebliche variation innerhalb eines landes. die befundlage zum einfl uss regionaler unterschiede durch die familienpolitik, insbesondere von kinderbetreuung, auf die fertilität ist heterogen. einen positiven effekt von kindertagesstätten auf den übergang zum ersten kind zeigen rindfuss et al. (2007) für norwegen. unterschiedlich sind die regional differenzierten befunde zu deutschland (bauernschuster et al. 2013; hank et al. 2004), wobei der analysezeitraum bei bauernschuster et al. die kita-expansion in westdeutschland berücksichtigt. für spanien kann baizan (2009) einen positiven effekt von formaler kinderbetreuung nachweisen, der beim übergang zu höheren paritäten bei einer höheren frauenerwerbsquote verstärkt wird. regionale arbeitsmärkte unterscheiden sich teilweise erheblich zwischen kreisen, dies betrifft arbeitslosenquote, wirtschaftsstruktur und frauenerwerbstätigkeit. dabei ist der einfl uss von arbeitslosigkeit eng mit dem wohlstand einer region verbunden. die zunehmende berufl iche und ökonomische unsicherheit im frühen lebensverlauf (mills/blossfeld 2005) ist bei hoher arbeitslosigkeit und im dienstleistungssektor besonders deutlich. für beide faktoren wurden für norwegen negative effekte auf die fertilität gefunden (kravdal 2002), wobei weniger individuelle, als aggregierte regionale effekte ausschlaggebend sind. gemischte befunde fi nden hank und huinink (2015) für deutschland: einen positiven effekt der arbeitslosigkeit auf die kinderzahl und einen negativen auf die intention einer geburt in den nächsten zwei jahren. 3 daten, methoden und forschungsdesign 3.1 daten die vorliegende studie basiert auf den mikrodaten der haushaltebefragung des zensus 2011 (bechthold 2016). circa 10 % der deutschen bevölkerung, rund 7,9 mio. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 109 menschen, wurden im rahmen dieser haushaltebefragung zu zusätzlichen soziodemografi schen informationen befragt, die nicht in den registerdaten enthalten sind (statistisches bundesamt 2010). die ermittlung der haushaltsstichprobe erfolgte nach einer regional geschichteten zufallsauswahl von anschriften aus dem anschriftenund gebäuderegister. alle personen einer ausgewählten anschrift wurden befragt, wobei auskunftspfl icht bestand. sensible sonderbereiche, wie psychiatrische einrichtungen oder justizvollzugsanstalten, und im ausland tätige angehörige der bundeswehr, der polizeibehörden und des auswärtigen dienstes sowie ihre dort ansässigen familien wurden vorab aus der auswahlgrundlage entfernt, da das bereitstellen von informationen für diese personengruppen mit sozialer benachteiligung verbunden sein kann. die haushaltsund familienzusammenhänge aller an einer anschrift lebenden personen wurden nicht direkt erfragt, sondern nachträglich im rahmen der haushaltegenerierung erzeugt (statistisches bundesamt 2015; kreuzmair/reisch 2013). hierbei wurden klassische haushaltsund familienzusammenhänge anhand von direkten verzeigerungen der melderegister, wie ehen, eingetragene lebenspartnerschaften oder nachkommensbeziehungen, gebildet. die angabe der nachkommensbeziehung ist üblicherweise bis zur vollendung des 18. lebensjahres des kindes vorhanden. verzeigerungen, die über dieses lebensjahr hinaus im register enthalten sind, wurden ebenfalls bei der haushaltegenerierung berücksichtigt. zur durchführung der zuordnung weiterer lebensformen, wie beispielsweise nicht-eingetragener partnerschaften, wurden weitere registerinformationen, wie zuzugsdaten oder zuzugsanschriften, genutzt. die mikrodaten des zensus sind innerhalb eines relationalen datenmodells strukturiert, bei dem alle teildatensätze des zensus als eigene tabelle abgelegt sind und über identifi katoren miteinander verknüpft werden können. innerhalb der vorliegenden studie wurden die einzeldaten der haushaltebefragung sowie die im rahmen der haushaltegenerierung nachträglich gebildeten familienzusammenhänge nach nationaler typisierung verwendet. da die für die berechnung benötigten familieninformationen nicht für personen aus kleineren gemeinden vorliegen, wurden diese personen aus der analyse ausgeschlossen. zunächst wurden alle frauen der haushaltsstichprobe selektiert und anhand der generierten zusammenhänge über familientyp und familiengröße für jede frau die anzahl der kinder gebildet.4 die stichprobenergebnisse wurden mittels eines hochrechnungsfaktors auf die zensus-gesamtbevölkerung hochgerechnet, um vergleiche mit anderen datenquellen zu ermöglichen. zu berücksichtigen ist 4 zu beachten ist, dass für die vorliegende untersuchung das generative verhalten von frauen im allgemeinen relevant ist und nicht auf der ebene der familien abgebildet ist. daher werden frauen in gleichgeschlechtlichen lebensgemeinschaften als zwei fälle erfasst. ferner sei einschränkend erwähnt, dass es bei der zuordnung von müttern in mehrgenerationenfamilien bedingt durch die methodik der haushaltegenerierung zu einer untererfassung der kinder kommen kann. das familienkonzept des zensus 2011 bezieht sich auf direkte beziehungen (ersten grades) zwischen vorfahren und nachfahren, d.h. auf beziehungen zwischen eltern und kindern. • martin bujard, melanie scheller110 hierbei, dass der wohnort der frau zum zeitpunkt des zensusstichtages abgebildet wird und nicht zum zeitpunkt der geburt. zum zeitpunkt der zensusbefragung existierten 412 kreise. infolge der gebietsreformen in mecklenburg-vorpommern 2011 wurden 18 kreise in acht kreise zusammengefasst. alle daten für diese kreise wurden auf basis von kühntopf (2015) umgerechnet, so dass alle ergebnisse – nach den kreisgebieten mit dem stand vom 1.1.2015 – für 402 kreise angegeben werden. 3.2 berechnung des multiplikators und schätzung der ctfr um die endgültige kinderzahl pro frau bzw. die ctfr zu schätzen, wird die durchschnittliche anzahl der kinder im haushalt der frauen verwendet. die biologische kinderzahl und damit auch die endgültige kinderzahl sind im zensus nicht enthalten. die kinderzahl im haushalt beim zensus unterschätzt die endgültige kinderzahl v.a. aus zwei gründen: erstens werden bereits aus dem haushalt ausgezogene kinder nicht erfasst, wodurch insbesondere bei frauen ab dem 38. lebensjahr die erfasste kinderzahl zunehmend die ctfr unterschätzt. zweitens wird bei frauenkohorten, die jünger als 45 jahre alt sind, die endgültige kinderzahl unterschätzt, da diese ihre fertilitätsbiografi e noch nicht abgeschlossen haben. zunächst werden die jahrgänge identifi ziert, bei denen die verzerrungen zwischen der kinderzahl im haushalt und der ctfr am geringsten sind. in abbildung 1 werden die zensus-werte und die mz-werte für die kinderzahl im haushalt mit der endgültigen kinderzahl basierend auf der amtlichen geburtenstatistik (1960-70)5 bzw. der linearen trendextrapolation (1971-75) verglichen.6 der vergleich zeigt, dass für die 38bis 42-jährigen frauen, die kohorten 1969-72, die differenz mit 6,6 % bis 7,8 % am geringsten ist. mit zunehmendem abstand von diesen jahrgängen vergrößert sich die differenz zwischen den kindern im haushalt und der endgültigen kinderzahl. diese unterschätzung ist zweifellos ein nachteil. da die geburtenfrage im zensus jedoch nicht gestellt wurde, ist dieses vorgehen alternativlos. um eine ausreichende anzahl an fällen für eine kreisbetrachtung zu erhalten, werden die zahlen der vier identifi zierten kohorten 1969-1972 zusammengenommen. die unterschätzung hält sich durch die auswahl der jahrgänge 1969-72 in grenzen. die prozentuale unterschätzung der ctfr beträgt 7,17 % bei der verwendung der anzahl der kinder im haushalt für die kohorten 1969-72 im zensus. es ist plausibel, dass sie für die meisten kreise relativ gleichmäßig verteilt ist und dass unterschiede v.a. mit einem jüngeren geburtsalter und dem damit verbundenen früheren auszug verbunden sind. dies gilt v.a. für ostdeutschland, wo das erstgeburtsalter 5 die daten der amtlichen geburtenstatistik berücksichtigen beim jahrgang 1970 die altersspezifi schen fertilitätsraten (asfr) bis einschließlich der asfr 42. die danach noch folgenden geburten sind sehr gering, ihr effekt summiert sich auf <= 0,01. 6 dabei sei auf erhebungsbedingte unterschiede hingewiesen, da der zensus – ähnlich wie der mz und im unterschied zur geburtenstatistik – kinder von zugewanderten frauen berücksichtigt, die im ausland geboren wurden (vgl. pötzsch 2010). einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 111 erheblich geringer ist (statistisches bundesamt 2014), so dass bei mehr ostdeutschen müttern der jahrgänge 1969-72 im jahr 2011 die kinder bereits aus dem elternhaus ausgezogen sind. entsprechend beträgt die unterschätzung in den alten bundesländern nur 5,86 %, während sie in den neuen mit 12,20 % deutlich höher ist (tab. 1). eine weitere differenzierung nach großstädten und anderen regionen würde den schätzwert weiter verbessern. allerdings ist dies aufgrund der datenlage nur begrenzt – bspw. für die stadtstaaten – möglich. zudem würde die kompliziertheit des verfahrens in einem schlechten verhältnis zum präzisionsgewinn stehen. da die kinderzahl im haushalt für ostdeutschland die ctfr weitaus stärker unterschätzt, wird ein zwischen westund ostdeutschland differenzierter multiplikator angewendet. mit diesen multiplikatoren und den kreisspezifi schen werten zur durchschnittlichen kinderzahl im haushalt pro frau im zensus wird die ctfr der frauenjahrgänge 1969-72 für alle 402 kreise geschätzt. abb. 1: vergleich von durchschnittlicher kinderzahl im haushalt (zensus und mz) und endgültiger kinderzahl (amtliche geburtenstatistik und lineare extrapolation) der geburtskohorten 1960-75 in deutschland 0,8 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,6 1,7 1960 1965 1970 1975 geburtskohorte frauen ctfr nach linearer interpolation ctfr, amtliche bevölkerungsstatistik 2014 cfr, amtliche bevölkerungsstatistik 2014 kinder im haushalt, zensus 2011 kinder im haushalt, mikrozensus 2011 durchschnittliche kinderzahl je frau quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und mz 2011; ferner statistisches bundesamt (2014); goldstein/kreyenfeld (2013). • martin bujard, melanie scheller112 3.3 sensitivitätsanalyse: vergleich der zensusbefunde mit dem mikrozensus im folgenden werden die berechneten werte zur durchschnittlichen kinderzahl von frauen im haushalt (familienebene) aus dem zensus geprüft, indem sie mit denen des mikrozensus (mz) aus dem gleichen jahr7 verglichen werden (siehe tab. 2). ein vergleich mit dem mz 2012 hätte zwar den vorteil, dass dort die tatsächlichen geburten erfragt wurden, allerdings sind bei den ausgewählten kohorten die fertilitätsbiografi en noch nicht abgeschlossen. insofern ist der vergleich der zensusergebnisse mit dem mz aus dem gleichen jahr und mit vergleichbaren variablen aussagekräftiger, um die plausibilität der zensus-analysen zu überprüfen. tab. 1: vergleich der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl im haushalt nach zensus und ctfr jahrctfr (geburtenstatistik) zensus 2011 differenz (ctfr – zensus) gang ost west gesamt ost west gesamt ost west gesamt in % 1960 1,80 1,60 1,66 0,56 0,91 0,84 1,23 0,69 0,82 97,3 1961 1,76 1,58 1,63 0,63 0,99 0,92 1,13 0,59 0,71 77,6 1962 1,72 1,56 1,61 0,69 1,08 1,00 1,03 0,48 0,61 61,1 1963 1,68 1,54 1,59 0,75 1,14 1,06 0,93 0,40 0,52 49,3 1964 1,64 1,53 1,57 0,86 1,22 1,15 0,78 0,30 0,41 35,9 1965 1,60 1,52 1,55 0,94 1,30 1,23 0,67 0,22 0,33 26,5 1966 1,56 1,50 1,52 1,04 1,32 1,27 0,52 0,17 0,25 19,8 1967 1,55 1,47 1,50 1,13 1,35 1,31 0,42 0,12 0,19 14,2 1968 1,51 1,47 1,49 1,20 1,37 1,34 0,31 0,10 0,15 11,1 1969 1,49 1,48 1,49 1,28 1,40 1,38 0,21 0,07 0,11 7,8 1970 1,46 1,49 1,49 1,29 1,42 1,39 0,17 0,07 0,10 7,2 1971 1,50 1,51 1,51 1,37 1,43 1,42 0,13 0,09 0,09 6,6 1972 1,51 1,53 1,53 1,38 1,44 1,43 0,14 0,10 0,10 7,1 1973 1,53 1,57 1,56 1,38 1,43 1,42 0,15 0,14 0,14 9,8 1974 1,54 1,57 1,57 1,35 1,39 1,38 0,19 0,19 0,18 13,3 1975 1,54 1,58 1,57 1,33 1,35 1,35 0,21 0,23 0,22 16,6 anmerkungen: differenzen sind rundungsbedingt. die grau schattierten jahrgänge werden in der analyse berücksichtigt. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011(hochgerechnete werte) und amtlicher geburtenstatistik (1960-70: statistisches bundesamt (2014); 1971-75: goldstein/kreyenfeld (2013). 7 beide befragungen stammen aus dem jahr 2011. beim zensus war der stichtag 09.05.2011 relevant, während beim mz die befragung – bedingt durch die unterjährige erhebungsmethodik – zu unterschiedlichen zeitpunkten stattgefunden hat. bei den hier ausgewählten kohorten wird davon ausgegangen, dass die dadurch entstandenen monatsdifferenzen zu einer vernachlässigbaren verzerrung führen. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 113 die differenzen der durchschnittlichen kinderzahl von frauen für die kohorten 1960-75 und für ostund westdeutschland sind nur minimal. sie liegen zwischen 0,00 und 0,09. diese genauigkeit bestätigt die in abschnitt 3.1 beschriebene selektion und filterung. sie ist nur möglich, weil die fallzahlen in mz und zensus enorm hoch sind und die befragung aufgrund des verpfl ichtenden charakters wenig durch non-response-probleme verzerrt wird. 3.4 forschungsdesign der multivariaten analysen die multivariaten und räumlichen analysen dienen dem ziel, einen breiten überblick über regionale faktoren der ctfr, ihr zusammenspiel und die räumlichen cluster zu generieren. bei den linearen regressionsanalysen fungieren die 402 kreise als fälle, wobei für gesamtdeutschland sowie für westund ostdeutschland separate analysen durchgeführt werden. diese differenzierung wird aus zwei gründen vorgenommen: zum einen weist die literatur auf große demografi sche, kulturelle und strukturelle unterschiede zwischen beiden regionen hin (u.a. goldstein/ kreyenfeld 2011; schneider et al. 2012), zum anderen zeigen eigene voranalysen erhebliche ost-west-unterschiede. diese unterschiede lassen sich nicht durch einen west-ost-dummy sinnvoll erfassen, da ein solcher mit mehreren unabhängigen tab. 2: durchschnittliche kinderzahl im haushalt von frauen: vergleich zensus und mikrozensus mz 2011 zensus 2011 differenz (mz – zensus) ost west gesamt ost west gesamt ost west gesamt in % 1960 0,48 0,86 0,78 0,56 0,91 0,84 -0,08 -0,05 -0,06 -7,1 1961 0,56 0,96 0,88 0,63 0,99 0,92 -0,07 -0,03 -0,04 -4,3 1962 0,62 1,05 0,96 0,69 1,08 1,00 -0,07 -0,03 -0,04 -4,0 1963 0,70 1,12 1,04 0,75 1,14 1,06 -0,05 -0,02 -0,02 -1,9 1964 0,81 1,20 1,12 0,86 1,22 1,15 -0,05 -0,02 -0,03 -2,6 1965 0,90 1,30 1,21 0,94 1,30 1,23 -0,04 0,00 -0,02 -1,6 1966 1,00 1,32 1,26 1,04 1,32 1,27 -0,04 0,00 -0,01 -0,8 1967 1,04 1,34 1,28 1,13 1,35 1,31 -0,09 -0,01 -0,03 -2,3 1968 1,14 1,35 1,32 1,20 1,37 1,34 -0,06 -0,02 -0,02 -1,5 1969 1,25 1,40 1,37 1,28 1,40 1,38 -0,03 -0,00 -0,01 -0,7 1970 1,28 1,44 1,41 1,29 1,42 1,39 -0,01 0,02 0,02 1,4 1971 1,28 1,40 1,38 1,37 1,43 1,42 -0,09 -0,03 -0,04 -2,8 1972 1,38 1,43 1,42 1,38 1,44 1,43 -0,00 -0,01 -0,01 -0,7 1973 1,40 1,42 1,43 1,38 1,43 1,42 -0,02 -0,01 0,01 0,7 1974 1,32 1,35 1,36 1,35 1,39 1,38 -0,03 -0,04 -0,02 -1,4 1975 1,31 1,35 1,33 1,33 1,35 1,35 -0,02 0,00 -0,02 -1,5 anmerkung: die differenz in prozent ist der quotient aus gesamtdifferenz und zensusgesamtwert. quelle: zensus 2011, mz 2011, eigene berechnung und darstellung. • martin bujard, melanie scheller114 variablen unterschiedlich interagiert. die hier verwendete kreisebene hat gewisse limitationen, da wie bei allen makroanalysen auf kreisebene das „modifi able areal unit problem“ (maup) (openshaw 1984) auftritt, das bei multivariaten analysen zu interpretationsproblemen führen kann (fotheringham/wong 1991). abhängige variable ist die in dieser studie berechnete kreisspezifi sche ctfr für frauen der jahrgänge 1969-72. die datengrundlage des zensus beinhaltet 193.934 frauen der kohorten 1969-72, die alle in die berechnung der 402 kreisspezifi schen ctfr-werte eingegangen sind. die unabhängigen variablen basieren auf kreisspezifi schen aggregierungen der mikrodaten der haushaltsstichprobe des zensus 2011 (kompositionsvariablen) sowie auf der inkar-datenbank (regionale opportunitäten; inkar 2015). die zensus-aggregierungen werden für dieselben kohorten (1969-72) wie die abhängige variable berechnet und der kreisumschätzer für die gebietsreform in mecklenburgvorpommern angewendet. folgende anteile werden als unabhängige kompositionsvariablen verwendet: migrationshintergrund, niedriger bildungsabschluss (isced 1-2), hoher bildungsabschluss (isced 5a, 6), katholiken, evangelische christen, verheiratete frauen, frauen in nichtehelichen lebensgemeinschaften (nel) sowie die summe der frauen, die in ehe oder in nel leben. zur abbildung der regionalen opportunitäten werden die durchschnittswerte von 1995-2011 (sofern vorhanden)8 verwendet, da der einfl uss dieser regionalen faktoren in der phase der generativen entscheidung im lebenslauf maßgeblich ist. diese phase umfasst bei den frauen, die im jahr 2011 um die 40 jahre alt sind, den zeitraum der zurückliegenden zehn oder mehr jahre. folgende variablen werden als regionale opportunitäten verwendet: beschäftigtenquote im tertiären sektor, arbeitslosenquote (als anteil an der gesamten erwerbsbevölkerung), beschäftigtenquote in forschung und entwicklung (fue), anteil an frauen in teilzeitarbeit, beschäftigtenquote der frauen, erwerbsquote der frauen, bruttoinlandsprodukt je einwohner, bruttolohn und -gehalt, anteil an kinderarmut, betreuungsquote von kleinkindern von null bis zwei jahren, betreuungsquote von vorschulkindern zwischen drei und fünf jahren, ganztags-betreuungsquote von vorschulkindern,9 pädagogisches personal in tageseinrichtungen in relation zur kinderzahl, anteil von fünfund mehr raum-wohnungen, wohnfl äche pro person in quadratmetern, naturnähere fläche je einwohner und die geschlechterproportion der 20bis 39-jährigen (anteil von frauen/männern). der natürliche logarithmus (zur basis e) der bevölkerungsdichte wird zur operationalisierung des effektes des urbanisierungsgrades verwendet. 8 bei den meisten inkar-variablen (bbsr 2015) sind werte von 1995-2011 vorhanden. bei folgenden variablen geht die datenreihe nicht so weit zurück: arbeitslosenquote ab 1998, bruttogehalt ab 2000, fue-beschäftigungsquote ab 2003, familienpolitische betreuungsquoten ab 2007, beschäftigtenquote im tertiären sektor und frauenerwerbsquote ab 2008. dies ist ein nachteil, jedoch kann aufgrund der entwicklung bei den anderen variablen davon ausgegangen werden, dass die relation dieser variablen zwischen den kreisen im gesamten zeitraum relativ ähnlich war. 9 dieser indikator misst den anteil der kinder von drei bis fünf jahren in kitas mit einer betreuungszeit von sieben und mehr stunden pro tag. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 115 4 ergebnisse 4.1 ctfr auf kreisebene die ergebnisse für die geschätzte durchschnittliche ctfr der kohorten 1969-72 für alle 402 kreise werden in abbildung 2 grafi sch dargestellt. die einzelnen werte für jeden kreis sind in tabelle a-1 im anhang sowie in der excel-tabelle im onlineanhang abgetragen. die spannbreite liegt zwischen 1,05 in passau und 2,01 in cloppenburg (siehe abb. 3). in 28 kreisen ist die ctfr unterhalb von 1,3, insbesondere in großstädten wie köln, hamburg, stuttgart oder münchen. in 44 kreisen liegt sie oberhalb von 1,7. viele dieser kreise mit einer relativ hohen kohortenfertilität liegen im allgäu, in der odenwaldregion, in südfranken, in ostsachsen und in der region zwischen münster und dem emsland. bezüglich des kreisspezifi schen einfl usses auf die endgültige kinderzahl von frauen ist die geschätzte ctfr aussagekräftiger und besser interpretierbar als die tfr. aufgrund fehlender regionaler daten zur ctfr wird manchmal für solche fragestellungen die tfr herangezogen, jedoch oft missinterpretiert. denn es gibt fundamentale unterschiede zwischen beiden messkonzepten, die sich anhand eines lexis-diagramms zu alter und zeit illustrieren lassen (luy 2010). die tfr zeigt nicht nur das quantum, sondern auch einen timingeffekt an (bongaarts/feeney 1998). auch die binnenwanderung von müttern beeinfl usst beide indikatoren in vielen kreisen unterschiedlich. dies wird im folgenden anhand des vergleichs der ctfr mit vorhandenen tfr-daten auf kreisebene gezeigt. datengrundlage für die tfr-werte sind schätzungen des bbsr (2015). für den vergleich wird die tfr der jahre verwendet, in denen das durchschnittliche alter der mütter bei der geburt (mac) der ctfr-kohorten 1969-72 lag. im jahr 1999 lag das mac bei 30,1 jahren, also etwa im alter der 1969 geborenen frauen (statistisches bundesamt 2012). das mac ist bis 2003 auf 30,67 jahre angestiegen, was dem 1972er jahrgang entspricht. entsprechend wird für die kreise der durchschnitt der tfr-werte der jahre 1999-2003 für den vergleich mit den ctfr-werten der kohorten 1969-72 verwendet. die verwendung der fünf-jahre-durchschnitte hat auch den vorteil, dass tfr-schwankungen auf kreisebene geglättet werden. grundsätzlich ist der vergleich von ctfr und tfr problematisch. hier geht es darum zu zeigen, dass und warum die hier gewonnenen ctfr-werte erheblich von den bisher bekannten tfr-werten divergieren. der zusammenhang zwischen beiden fertilitätsindikatoren auf kreisebene liegt bei einem pearson’schen korrelationskoeffi zienten von 0,56. die hohe abweichung von 1 verdeutlicht, dass es einen großen unterschied macht, ob man ein kohortenmaß (ctfr) oder ein periodenmaß (tfr) betrachtet. durchschnittlich ist im vergleich der ctfr (1969-72) mit der tfr (1999-2003) die ctfr um 0,12 höher, entsprechend unterschätzt daher die tfr die tatsächlichen geburten pro frau. dies ist bei fertilitätsdaten auf kreisebene aus zwei gründen umso problematischer: erstens, wenn der aufschub der geburten in einem unterschiedlichem tempo erfolgt (und damit die verzerrung durch den timingeffekt divergiert) und zweitens aufgrund von binnenwanderung zwischen verschiedenen kreisen. beides hat auf die tfr der • martin bujard, melanie scheller116 abb. 2: endgültige kinderzahl (ctfr) auf kreisebene: schätzwerte der geburtsjahrgänge 1969-72 anmerkungen: eine karte mit nummeriertem schlüssel und eine liste der kreisnamen sowie die zugehörigen ctfr-werte werden im anhang zur verfügung gestellt. ferner kann ein excel-dokument mit den kreispezifi schen ctfr unter folgendem link heruntergeladen werden: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/278/251. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011. kartengrundlage: © geobasisde/bkg (2015). ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! kiel mainz erfurt bremen berlin potsdam dresden münchen hamburg schwerin hannover magdeburg stuttgart wiesbaden düsseldorf saarbrücken endgültige kinderzahl von frauen der jahrgänge 1969-72 < 1,32 1,32 1,46 1,46 1,58 1,58 1,71 > 1,71 einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 117 kreise in deutschland eine erhebliche wirkung. die frage, wie viele kinder frauen in bestimmten kreisen haben (oder bekommen), lässt sich inhaltlich mit den tfr auf kreisebene nicht befriedigend beantworten. demgegenüber steht der vorteil der tfr, dass sie eine hohe aktualität ermöglicht. die daten zur endgültigen kinderzahl dagegen ermöglichen eine antwort auf die frage, wie viele kinder frauen einer kohorte haben. temporär kinderlose frauen, die für die ausbildungsphase oder das studium in eine andere stadt umziehen, beeinfl ussen die tfr dieser stadt negativ, denn sie werden im nenner mitgezählt und führen ggf. zu einer erheblichen unterschätzung der fertilität von frauen in universitätsstädten. diese phänomene führen dazu, dass die abweichung von ctfr und tfr auf kreisebene zwischen +0,50 im brandenburger kreis elbe-elster und -0,30 in lüchow-dannenberg (niedersachsen) liegt, also eine spannbreite von über 0,8. die kreisspezifi sche variation der tfr-verzerrung im vergleich zur ctfr ist erheblich, wobei drei phänomene zentral sind: 1. in ostdeutschland ist die timing-komponente der tfr besonders deutlich, da der aufschub des mac nach der wende enorm hoch war. entsprechend ist die ctfr in fast allen ostdeutschen kreisen um mindestens 0,2 höher als die tfr – in 37,7 % sogar mehr als 0,3. gera ist der einzige von 77 ostdeutschen kreisen, in dem die tfr höher ist. 2. in mehreren kreisen sind stadt-land-wanderungen nach der geburt von kindern sichtbar, wobei familien mit kleinen kindern von der stadt in angrenzende ländliche kreise ziehen. dieses phänomen zeigt sich in köln, düsseldorf, essen und frankfurt am main und besonders deutlich in bayern, wo in münchen, ingolstadt, amberg, weiden, nürnberg, fürth und erlangen mehrere städte eine niedrigere ctfr im vergleich zur tfr haben. abb. 3: geschätzte endgültige kinderzahl (ctfr) auf kreisebene: top 10 und bottom 10 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 2,0 schätzwerte endgültige kinderzahl der jahrgänge 1969-72 passau, stadt kiel, landeshauptstadt gera, stadt würzburg, stadt weiden i.d.opf., stadt münchen, landeshauptstadt düsseldorf, stadt köln, stadt frankfurt/main, stadt osnabrück, stadt median daun rottal-inn neckar-odenwald-kreis straubing-bogen eichstätt freudenstadt vechta mühldorf a.inn günzburg cloppenburg quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011. • martin bujard, melanie scheller118 3. in mehreren studentenstädten wie münster (0,33), tübingen (0,23) oder heidelberg (0,48) ist die ctfr erheblich höher als die tfr, die durch die überwiegend temporär dort lebenden und in dieser zeit gering fertilen studentinnen gedrückt wird. 4.2 makroanalysen zu regionalen faktoren der ctfr auf basis der neu gewonnenen daten zur kohortenfertilität auf kreisebene lassen sich regionale faktoren auf der makroebene analysieren. tabelle 3 zeigt die zusammenhänge zwischen der ctfr und einigen sozialstrukturellen, ökonomischen, politischen und geografi schen faktoren, wobei zwischen westund ostdeutschland differenziert wird. bei den sozialstrukturellen faktoren gibt es deutliche unterschiede zwischen westund ostdeutschland. bspw. ist die negative korrelation der arbeitslosenquote und der nel jeweils mit der ctfr nur in westdeutschland signifi kant. bemerkenswert ist die religionsvariable: während ein hoher katholikenanteil nur in westdeutschland signifi kant mit höherer kohortenfertilität assoziiert ist, verbirgt sich hinter dem negativen vorzeichen beim anteil evangelischer christen für gesamtdeutschland ein signifi kant positiver zusammenhang für ostdeutschland. die kinderbetreuungsquoten sind nur in westdeutschland signifi kant. der zusammenhang der ctfr mit kleinkindbetreuung und ganztagsplätzen ist negativ, was erklärungsbedürftig ist. da beide variablen mit arbeitslosigkeit korrelieren (r = 0,71 und 0,67 für gesamtdeutschland), könnte sich dahinter ein drittvariableneffekt verbergen. zudem sind sie aufgrund des betrachteten zeitraums nur begrenzt aussagekräftig für die fertilität der untersuchten frauenkohorten (siehe 3.4). da urbanisierung in der literatur als ein zentraler faktor der regionalen fertilitätsunterschiede genannt wird (siehe 2.2), wird der zusammenhang zwischen bevölkerungsdichte und kinderzahl pro frau grafi sch dargestellt (abb. 4). aufgrund der schiefen verteilung der bevölkerungsdichte wird diese variable logarithmiert. der zusammenhang zwischen beiden variablen ist deutlich negativ, der korrelationskoeffi zient pearsons r beträgt 0,54. im folgenden werden die ergebnisse linearer regressionsanalysen für gesamtdeutschland gezeigt, wobei die 402 kreise die fälle darstellen (siehe tab. 4).10 in modell 1 fl ießen lediglich die kompositionsvariablen ein, in modell 2 und 3 werden die von der sozialstruktur beeinfl ussten opportunitätsvariablen inkludiert und modell 4 berücksichtigt die variablen zu regionalen opportunitäten. modell 5 ist das best-fit-modell, wenn man sich auf die sechs einfl ussreichsten variablen fokussiert. der negative effekt der beschäftigtenquote im tertiären sektor, der bevölkerungsdichte und einer geschlechterrelation mit wenigen männern ist über alle modelle hinweg robust und hochsignifi kant (p<0,001). ebenfalls als signifi kant erweisen sich 10 um multikollinearität zu vermeiden, werden variablen, deren interkorrelationen über 0,7 liegen, nicht zusammen in einem regressionsmodell verwendet. daher wird die variable ganztagsbetreuungsquote der dreibis fünf-jährigen statt der betreuungsquote für unter dreijährige sowie bei den wohlstandsindikatoren das bip anstelle von kinderarmut und gehalt benutzt. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 119 tab. 3: bivariate korrelationen auf kreisebene zwischen der ctfr und ausgewählten kompositionsund opportunitätseffekten faktoren/indikatoren d west ost k o m p o si tio n bildung anteil niedriger bildungsabschluss (isced 1-2) -0,05 -0,12* -0,19 anteil hoher bildungsabschluss (isced 5a, 6) -0,49*** -0,52*** -0,33** migration anteil migrationshintergrund -0,20*** -0,31*** -0,32** religion anteil katholiken 0,30*** 0,33*** 0,18 anteil evangelische christen -0,03 -0,10 0,38*** lebensform anteil verheirateter frauen 0,64*** 0,73*** 0,66*** anteil frauen in nel -0,23*** -0,31*** -0,11 anteil frauen verheiratet oder nel 0,67*** 0,68*** 0,67*** arbeitsmarkt beschäftigtenquote tertiärer sektor -0,56*** -0,57*** -0,49*** v o n s o zi al st ru kt u r b ee in fl u ss te re g io n al e o p p o rt un it ät en arbeitslosenquote -0,28*** -0,42*** -0,01 anteil fue beschäftigte -0,03 -0,05 -0,02 frauenerwerbstätigkeit anteil frauen in teilzeit -0,44*** -0,47*** -0,29* beschäftigtenquote frauen -0,02 0,01 0,07 erwerbsquote frauen 0,21*** 0,31*** 0,29* wohlstand bruttoinlandsprodukt je einwohner -0,36*** -0,41*** -0,45*** bruttolohnund gehalt -0,14** -0,23*** -0,33** anteil kinderarmut -0,46*** -0,50*** -0,41*** urbanisierung bevölkerungsdichte logarithmiert -0,54*** -0,60*** -0,44*** r eg io n al e o p p o rt u n it ät en städtischer/ländlicher raum (dummy) 0,27*** 0,30*** 0,26* familienpolitik betreuungsquote kleinkinder -0,20*** -0,38*** -0,29* betreuungsquote vorschulkinder -0,04 -0,01 -0,19 ganztags-betreuungsquote vorschulkinder -0,33*** -0,55*** -0,16 pädagogisches personal in tageseinrichtungen 0,30*** 0,47*** 0,40*** wohnraum anteil fünfund mehr raum-wohnungen 0,59*** 0,65*** 0,48*** wohnfl äche 0,21*** 0,23*** -0,02 naturnähere fläche je einwohner 0,12* 0,11 0,33** geschlechterproportionen geschlechterproportion 20-39 -0,18*** -0,31*** -0,33** n 402 325 77 anmerkung: *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0,05. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und bbsr (2015). • martin bujard, melanie scheller120 die katholikenquote und der anteil an fünfund mehr raum-wohnungen, wobei das signifi kanzniveau zwischen den modellen variiert. bspw. reduziert sich bei der katholikenquote der t-wert von 7,1 in modell 1 auf 2,2 in modell 5. der migrantinnenanteil hat im modell 1 einen signifi kant negativen effekt, wobei sich durch inklusion der variablen tertiärer sektor und bevölkerungsdichte (modelle 3-5) das vorzeichen umdreht – ebenfalls auf einem signifi kanten niveau. da migranten eher in städten wohnen, ist der negative zusammenhang in modell 1 ein ökologischer fehlschluss; er ist durch einen überlagernden effekt der urbanisierung verursacht. modell 5 kommt mit diesen sechs faktoren auf einen korrigierten determinationskoeffi zienten von 0,47. dagegen verlieren die effekte von arbeitslosenquote, teilzeitarbeit und akademiker-anteil in den modellen ihre signifi kanz, in denen bevölkerungsdichte und wohnraum inkludiert sind (modell 4). bei den regressionsanalysen für westdeutschland muss der aufbau der modelle aufgrund von multikollinearität teilweise etwas abweichend erfolgen.11 die modelle zeigen, dass sich kompositionseffekte und regionale opportunitäten in ihrer erklärungskraft ergänzen (tab. 5). das best-fi t-modell w3 kommt auf eine erklärungskraft von 0,51. demzufolge ist die ctfr in den kreisen höher, in denen wenige abb. 4: zusammenhang kinderzahl pro frau und einwohnerdichte in 402 kreisen deutschlands quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und bbsr (2015). 11 aufgrund von zu hohen interkorrelationen sind das bip, der anteil an fünfund mehr raumwohnungen und die wohnfl äche nicht berücksichtigt. auch werden die variablen migrantenanteil und bevölkerungsdichte nicht im gleichen modell inkludiert. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 121 akademiker und viele katholiken leben (kompositionseffekt) sowie eine geringe bevölkerungsdichte, relativ viele männer, eine traditionellere wirtschaftsstruktur und geringe arbeitslosigkeit (regionale opportunitäten) zusammenkommen. abgesehen vom effekt der geschlechterproportionen sind alle diese variablen auch in modifi zierten modellen (nicht gezeigt) robust signifi kant. tab. 4: ols-regressionen zur ctfr auf kreisebene: deutschland gesamt modell 1 modell 2 modell 3 modell 4 modell 5 anteil hoher -0,0081*** -0,0038*** -0,0015 0,0005 bildungsabschluss (0,0009) (0,0011) (0,0011) (0,0013) anteil migrations-0,0018** -0,0011 0,0024** 0,0022* 0,0021** hintergrund (0,0006) (0,0007) (0,0009) (0,0009) (0,0008) anteil katholiken 0,0019*** 0,00070* 0,00085** 0,00073* 0,00065* (0,0003) (0,00032) (0,00031) (0,00031) (0,00030) beschäftigte tertiärer -0,0037*** -0,0024*** -0,0026*** -0,0026*** sektor (0,0007) (0,0007) (0,0007) (0,0007) arbeitslosenquote -0,0060** -0,0060* -0,0005 (0,0020) (0,0024) (0,0030) anteil frauen in -0,0045* -0,0029 -0,0025 teilzeit (0,0020) (0,0020) (0,0019) bip -0,0012 -0,0017 -0,0017 (0,0011) (0,0011) (0,0010) bevölkerungsdichte -0,046*** -0,030** -0,038*** logarithmiert (0,010) (0,011) (0,011) geschlechterproportion -0,61*** -0,74*** -0,65*** 20-39 (0,17) (0,18) (0,15) ganztags-betreuungs-0,00082* quote vorschulkinder (0,00041) anteil fünfund mehr 0,0025* 0,0035*** raum-wohnungen (0,0010) (0,0008) konstante 1,616*** 1,960*** 2,595*** 2,477*** 2,311*** (0,016) (0,045) (0,165) (0,194) (0,129) r2 0,326*** 0,433*** 0,483*** 0,500*** 0,479*** adj. r2 0,321*** 0,423*** 0,471*** 0,486*** 0,472*** n 402 402 402 402 402 anmerkungen: unter den koeffi zienten steht in klammern der standardfehler. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0,05. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und bbsr (2015). • martin bujard, melanie scheller122 die frauenerwerbsquote und die katholikenquote erklären eine ähnliche varianz, letztere ist nur dann signifi kant, wenn erstere nicht inkludiert ist (modelle w4-w5). zwei für gesamtdeutschland signifi kante variablen, die letztendlich aufgrund von hohen interkorrelationen mit der bevölkerungsdichte nicht berücksichtigt wurden, wurden zusätzlich getestet (modelle nicht gezeigt): der migrationseffekt ist signifi kant positiv, wenn der migrantinnenanteil zusammen mit der bevölkerungsdichte berücksichtigt wird. der positive effekt der wohnungsgröße ist hochsignifi kant, wenn diese variable statt der bevölkerungsdichte inkludiert wird. tab. 5: ols-regressionen zur ctfr auf kreisebene: westdeutschland modell w1 modell w2 modell w3 modell w4 modell w5 anteil hoher -0,0092*** -0,0097*** -0,0062*** -0,0051*** -0,0034** bildungsabschluss (0,0010) (0,0012) (0,0014) (0,0014) (0,0011) anteil migrations-0,0013 -0,00003 hintergrund (0,0008) (0,0007) anteil katholiken 0,0020*** 0,0004 0,0005 0,0007* 0,0011*** (0,0003) (0,0024) (0,0003) (0,0003) (0,0003) beschäftigte -0,0024** -0,0023** -0,0022** -0,0035** tertiärer sektor (0,0008) (0,0008) (0,0008) (0,0008) arbeitslosenquote -0,026*** -0,020*** -0,013*** (0,004) (0,004) (0,004) frauenerwerbsquote -0,0083*** -0,0082*** (0,0026) (0,0025) bevölkerungsdichte 0,030*** 0,032*** 0,050*** logarithmiert (0,009) (0,009) (0,007) geschlechterproportion -0,44* -0,40* 20-39 (0,20) (0,20) konstante 1,617*** 2,617*** 3,101*** 2,388*** 2,045*** (0,024) (0,219) (0,289) (0,191) (0,054) r2 0,355*** 0,498*** 0,523*** 0,507*** 0,484*** adj. r2 0,349*** 0,489*** 0,513*** 0,498*** 0,477*** n 325 325 325 325 325 anmerkungen: unter den koeffi zienten steht in klammern der standardfehler. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0,05. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und bbsr (2015). einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 123 die regressionsanalysen für ostdeutschland12 in tabelle 6 zeigen, dass der anteil evangelischer christen in allen modellen signifi kant mit einer höheren ctfr assoziiert ist. daneben gibt es ein cluster von vier faktoren, die untereinander hoch interkorrelieren und sich jeweils einzeln als hochsignifi kant (p<0,01) erweisen (modelle o2-o5): beschäftigte im tertiären sektor, bip, bevölkerungsdichte und der anteil von fünfund mehr raum-wohnungen. in weniger urbanen kreisen ist die wirttab. 6: ols-regressionen zur ctfr auf kreisebene: ostdeutschland modell o1 modell o2 modell o3 modell o4 modell o5 anteil hoher -0.0026 bildungsabschluss (0.0020) anteil migrations-0.0051 hintergrund (0.0038) anteil katholiken 0.0028 0.0026 0.0025 0.0029* 0.0023 (0.0015) (0.0014) (0.0014) (0.0014) (0.0014) anteil evangelischer 0.0051** 0.0043* 0.0052** 0.0054** 0.0046* christen (0.0016) (0.0019) (0.0018) (0.0018) (0.0019) arbeitslosenquote 0.0078 0.0041 0.0054 0.0098* (0.0047) (0.0050) (0.0049) (0.0047) beschäftigte tertiärer -0.0039** sektor (0.0012) bip -0.0096** (0.0032) bevölkerungsdichte -0.036** logarithmiert (0.012) anteil fünfund mehr 0.0055** raum-wohnungen (0.0017) konstante 1.471*** 1.559*** 1.517*** 1.504*** 1.082*** (0.041) (0.139) (0.135) (0.130) (0.101) r2 0.269*** 0.318*** 0.307*** 0.310*** 0.317*** adj. r2 0.229*** 0.280*** 0.268*** 0.272*** 0.279*** n 77 77 77 77 77 anmerkungen: unter den koeffi zienten steht in klammern der standardfehler. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0,05. quelle: eigene berechnung basierend auf zensus 2011 und bbsr (2015). 12 die ergebnisse für ostdeutschland sind aufgrund der niedrigen fallzahlen mit vorsicht zu interpretieren. • martin bujard, melanie scheller124 schaftsstruktur traditioneller, das bip geringer und mehr wohnraum vorhanden. in diesen kreisen ist auch eine geschlechterproportion von wenigen jungen frauen häufi g. welcher dieser faktoren ausschlaggebend ist, lässt sich aufgrund der interkorrelationen und der geringen fallzahl bei ostdeutschland nicht interpretieren. 5 zusammenfassung und diskussion dieser beitrag hat das ziel, die bedeutung regionaler rahmenbedingungen für die fertilität zu analysieren und daten zur regionalen kohortenfertilität auf kreisebene in deutschland zu generieren. zum einen wurden basierend auf den mikrodaten der haushaltsstichprobe des zensus 2011 sowie der geburtenstatistik erstmalig schätzwerte für die ctfr für alle 402 deutschen kreise berechnet. zum anderen wurde mittels linearer regressionsanalysen, basierend auf zensusund inkar-daten, faktoren der regionalen fertilitätsunterschiede analysiert. dabei konnte gezeigt werden, dass regionale demografi sche faktoren wie bevölkerungsdichte und geschlechterproportionen sowie regionale ökonomische variablen wie wirtschaftsstruktur, wohnraum und arbeitslosigkeit zum verständnis kreisspezifi scher fertilitätsunterschiede beitragen können. gleichzeitig zeigen die befunde, dass auch kompositionseffekte bezüglich bildung, religion und migrantenanteil mit kreisspezifi schen fertilitätsunterschieden assoziiert sind. die unterschiede der geschätzten kreisspezifi schen ctfr für die kohorten 196972 sind enorm: die spannbreite liegt zwischen 2,01 in cloppenburg und 1,05 in passau. die niedrigste durchschnittliche kinderzahl haben frauen in großstädten. in 44 kreisen liegt sie bei über 1,7, vor allem im allgäu, in der odenwaldregion, in südfranken und im westlichen niedersachsen. die kreisspezifi sche verteilung der ctfr unterscheidet sich fundamental von der verteilung der tfr für vergleichbare jahre (bbsr 2015); der korrelationskoeffi zient beträgt lediglich 0,56. der vergleich beider indikatoren auf kreisebene verdeutlicht, dass der der tfr immanente timing-effekt insbesondere in ostdeutschland die fertilität unterschätzt. auch die niedrige tfr in studentenstädten ist ein statistisches artefakt, da studenten temporär den nenner für bestimmte altersbedingt noch kinderlose gruppen erhöhen. während bspw. die heidelberger tfr viele jahre um die 1,0 oszillierte, liegt die ctfr bei 1,36. die befunde der multivariaten analysen haben eine breite internationale relevanz, da verschiedenste faktoren, die in der literatur diskutiert werden, kombiniert berücksichtigung fi nden. für deutschland lässt sich konstatieren, dass die ctfr in den kreisen signifi kant höher ist, • die einen geringen akademikerinnenanteil aufweisen, • deren katholikenquote hoch ist, • deren wirtschaftsstruktur traditioneller ist (geringer tertiärer sektor), • deren arbeitslosenquote geringer ist, • die stärker ländlich geprägt sind, einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 125 • deren immobilienmarkt relativ viele große wohnungen für familien anbietet und • die einen relativen männerüberschuss aufweisen. die befunde für gesamtdeutschland sind erwartungsgemäß denen für westdeutschland ähnlich, da ein großteil der kreise (81 %) westdeutsch ist. allerdings unterscheiden sich die ergebnisse für westund ostdeutschland teilweise grundlegend. in ostdeutschland ist die ctfr in den kreisen signifi kant höher, • in denen viele evangelische christen leben und • die einem cluster aus niedriger bevölkerungsdichte, traditionellerer wirtschaftsstruktur, niedrigem sozialprodukt und vieler großer wohnungen angehören. der robuste fertilitätsmindernde einfl uss einer hohen bevölkerungsdichte bestätigt damit im grundsatz die urbanisierungsthese. dieser bleibt auch bei berücksichtigung anderer faktoren signifi kant, wenngleich sich die effektstärke bei inklusion der bildungsvariablen reduziert. die erheblichen stadt-land-unterschiede liegen demnach sowohl darin begründet, dass in städten mehr akademikerinnen leben (die zu späteren erstgeburten neigen), als auch daran, dass dort aufgrund der geringeren naherholungsfl äche und eines größeren angebots an außerfamilialen freizeitoptionen weniger familien mit kindern wohnen. dazu trägt auch der migrationsspezifi sche selektionseffekt bei, der besagt, dass karriereorientierte frauen häufi ger in städte migrieren und umgekehrt. dabei haben die analysen ein cluster von mehreren variablen im breiteren kontext von urbanisierung identifi ziert. dies ist theoretisch interessant, da es einen ansatzpunkt darstellt, die urbanisierungsthese weiter zu differenzieren. denn in urbanisierten kreisen treffen knapperer wohnraum (fiori et al. 2014; kulu/vikat 2007; kulu 2013), eine moderne dienstleistungsorientierte wirtschaftsstruktur sowie teilweise frauenüberschüsse und modernere kulturelle werte aufeinander. diese faktoren regionaler opportunitäten erhöhen die erklärungskraft, wenn man sie zusammen mit der bevölkerungsdichte in modellen inkludiert. die befunde konkretisieren sharlins (1986) these für das frühe 21. jahrhundert, wonach die urbanisierungsthese auf geografi schen, demografi schen, ökonomischen und kulturellen faktoren beruht. dazu kommen bildungsspezifi sche kompositionseffekte.13 in diesem artikel wurde nur eine erste, tentative annährung vorgenommen. jedoch könnte zukünftige forschung die mechanismen im urbanisierungscluster weiter ergründen. bemerkenswert ist die hohe erklärungskraft der religionsvariablen – zumal sie nicht nur die häufi g untersuchte katholikenquote betrifft, sondern auch die ostdeutschen protestanten. der effekt bei den katholisch geprägten kreisen ist auch im kontext von kinderbetreuung zu sehen, die in diesen kreisen vergleichsweise ge13 ohne den migranteneffekt, wonach fertile und kulturell traditioneller orientierte migrantengruppen überproportional in großstädten wohnen, wären die stadt-land-differenzen sogar noch deutlich größer. • martin bujard, melanie scheller126 ring ausgebaut ist. dieser befund steht im widerspruch zu ländervergleichenden analysen (castles 2003), bei denen die katholikenquote negativ mit der fertilität assoziiert ist. eine erklärung könnte sein, dass der kinderbetreuungsausbau auf länderebene hochgradig mit der konfession zusammenhängt (bujard 2011), während das geringe betreuungsangebot zu beginn dieses jahrhunderts und der ausbau seit dem jahr 2005 phänomene sind, die in katholischen und evangelischen kreisen in westdeutschland in ähnlicher weise zutreffen. dabei stellt sich eine grundsätzliche frage: misst der anteil einer religiösen konfession überhaupt einen kompositionseffekt oder handelt es sich um einen indikator zur kulturellen prägung einer region, die ein konservativeres familienbild transportiert und kinderreichtum eher als etwas erstrebenswertes sieht (vgl. bereits wolf 1912). hier sind weitere analysen notwendig. auch die geschlechterproportionen stehen mit der ctfr in zusammenhang. diese sind insbesondere in den ostdeutschen kreisen, bei denen auf 80 bis 90 frauen 100 männer kommen, positiv für die fertilität der frauen. anscheinend führt die günstige situation auf dem partnermarkt dazu, dass weniger frauen ohne partner und damit verbunden ohne kinder bleiben. eine interessante frage wäre, inwieweit die männer in solchen kompetitiven partnermarktkonstellationen eher bereit sind eine familie zu gründen, um eine partnerin „sicherer“ an sich zu binden. eine alternative erklärung ist der migrationsspezifi sche selektionseffekt. bei den variablen zum kinderbetreuungsangebot lassen sich keine einheitlichen effekte fi nden. dies bedeutet jedoch keinesfalls, dass diese faktoren, die sich zwischen den kreisen erheblich unterscheiden, keinen einfl uss haben. vielmehr lassen sich die effekte von kinderbetreuungsangebot und arbeitslosigkeit nur sinnvoll analysieren, wenn ihre veränderungen im zeitverlauf quantifi ziert werden (u.a. bauernschuster et al. 2013). eine wichtige implikation für die familienpolitik ist jedoch der große einfl uss des wohnungsmarktes auf die fertilität. da der rückgang kinderreicher familien für mehr als zwei drittel (68 %) des ctfr-rückgangs zwischen den frauenjahrgängen 1933 und 1968 in deutschland verantwortlich ist (bujard/ sulak 2016), ist es plausibel, dass die knappheit an wohnungen mit fünf und mehr räumen zur niedrigen geburtenrate beiträgt. die hier vorgenommenen makroanalysen bieten erstmals einen überblick zu den faktoren der regionalen unterschiede der kohortenfertilität. sie können jedoch keine aussagen darüber machen, wie hoch die varianzerklärung der kompositionseffekte im vergleich zu den regionalen effekten ist. dafür sind mehrebenenmodelle notwendig, die die hierarchischen unterschiede von mikround makro-variablen adäquat nutzen. in der literatur zu deutschland wird – stärker als in der internationalen – den kompositionseffekten eine dominierende rolle für die regionalen fertilitätsunterschiede zugesprochen (hank 2002; hank/huinink 2015). dies steht zunächst in widerspruch zu dem hier gezeigten einfl uss von regionalen faktoren. bisherige mehrebenenanalysen wurden mit individualdatensätzen wie pairfam, dji-familiensurvey oder soep und der zuspielung kreisspezifi scher faktoren vorgenommen. dabei sind die fallzahlen relativ gering, wenn man bedenkt, dass pro kreis durchschnittlich 20 bis 50 individuelle fälle vorliegen. daher bleibt es eine spannende frage, zu welchem ergebnis mehrebenenanalysen auf basis des zensus einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 127 kommen. allerdings erkauft man sich durch die etwa 500-fache vergrößerung der fälle den nachteil eines forschungsdesigns im querschnitt,14 das allerdings für die abschätzung der varianzanteile geeignet ist. dieser beitrag hat zwei implikationen für die weitere forschung: erstens lassen sich die hier generierten schätzwerte zur kohortenfertilität für zukünftige forschungsvorhaben verwenden. sie ermöglichen ein besseres verständnis der kreisspezifi schen fertilitätsunterschiede als die periodischen tfr. die daten ermöglichen, bei makroanalysen auf kreisebene die kohortenfertilität zu berücksichtigen. sie ermöglichen aber auch die identifi zierung spezieller regionaler konstellationen, insbesondere die identifi zierten hochfertilitätsregionen im östlichen teil von baden-württemberg, südfranken und im nordwesten von nordrhein-westfalen. um deren ursachen zu erforschen, sind tiefenschärfere fallanalysen einzelner kreise vielversprechend. zweifellos ergänzen regionale fertilitätsanalysen den forschungsstand zur fertilität. zweitens werfen die signifi kanten befunde zum einfl uss von religion, von geschlechterrelationen und vom cluster des urbanisierungskontextes neue fragen hinsichtlich methodik und theoriebildung auf, gerade wenn es darum geht, die anteile von kompositionseffekten und regionalem kontext an der gesamterklärung der ctfr abzuschätzen. ein problem ist dabei die fehlende trennschärfe zwischen einigen variablen, die sowohl individuell als auch strukturell wirken können. ein beispiel hierfür ist der anteil von katholiken, da die katholische konfession ein individuelles merkmal ist, der faktor aber aggregiert die katholische prägung und damit einen wichtigen kulturellen faktor misst. insgesamt liefert der beitrag neue erkenntnisse über den zusammenhang zwischen regionalen kontexten und kohortenfertilität. danksagung wir danken sebastian klüsener, 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(hrsg.): the decline of fertility in europe. princeton: university press: 234-260. sobotka, tomáš; feray, adigüzel 2002: religiosity and spatial demographic differences in the netherlands. som research report. groningen: university of groningen. statistisches bundesamt 2010: haushaltebefragung beim zensus 2011. wiesbaden. statistisches bundesamt 2012: bevölkerung und erwerbstätigkeit. fachserie 1 reihe 1.1. wiesbaden. statistisches bundesamt 2014: altersspezifi sche geburtenziffern der geburtsjahrgänge 1930 bis 1997. wiesbaden. statistisches bundesamt 2015: die haushaltegenerierung – mehr als nur die bildung von haushalten [https://www.zensus2011.de/de/zensus2011/methode/methode_ haushaltegenerierung_node.html, 01.06.2016]. einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 131 trovato, frank; grindstaff, carl f. 1980: decomposing the urban-rural fertility differential: canada, 1971. in: rural sociology 45: 448-468. wolf, julius 1912: der geburtenrückgang. die rationalisierung des sexuallebens in unserer zeit. jena: gustav fischer. übersetzung des originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung, nur zur information. der begutachtete und von den autoren autorisierte englische originalbeitrag ist unter dem titel „impact of regional factors on cohort fertility: new estimations at the district level in germany“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2017-07en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-07en7, auf http:// www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 15.09.2016 angenommen am: 15.05.2017 dr. martin bujard (). bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografie.de/bujard melanie scheller. statistisches bundesamt. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: melanie.scheller@destatis.de url: https://www.destatis.de/de/startseite.html • martin bujard, melanie scheller132 anhang abb. a1: nummerierter schlüssel der 402 deutschen kreise quelle: eigene berechnungen. karte: © geobasis-de/bkg (2015). einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 133 tab. a1: name, nummerierter schlüssel und geschätzte ctfr für die geburtskohorten 1969-72 der 402 deutschen kreise schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr 1 flensburg, stadt 1,39 51 ammerland 1,63 101 herford 1,48 2 kiel, landeshauptstadt 1,11 52 aurich 1,60 102 höxter 1,66 3 lübeck, hansestadt 1,30 53 cloppenburg 2,01 103 lippe 1,55 4 neumünster, stadt 1,31 54 emsland 1,82 104 minden-lübbecke 1,66 5 dithmarschen 1,50 55 friesland 1,60 105 paderborn 1,67 6 herzogtum lauenburg 1,53 56 grafschaft bentheim 1,67 106 bochum, stadt 1,36 7 nordfriesland 1,53 57 leer 1,67 107 dortmund, stadt 1,42 8 ostholstein 1,43 58 oldenburg 1,47 108 hagen, stadt 1,59 9 pinneberg 1,42 59 osnabrück 1,72 109 hamm, stadt 1,63 10 plön 1,48 60 vechta 1,86 110 herne, stadt 1,58 11 rendsburg-eckernförde 1,53 61 wesermarsch 1,61 111 ennepe-ruhr-kreis 1,39 12 schleswig-flensburg 1,57 62 wittmund 1,55 112 hochsauerlandkreis 1,70 13 segeberg 1,43 63 bremen, stadt 1,28 113 märkischer kreis 1,45 14 steinburg 1,34 64 bremerhaven, stadt 1,43 114 olpe 1,76 15 stormarn 1,43 65 düsseldorf, stadt 1,18 115 siegen-wittgenstein 1,61 16 hamburg 1,27 66 duisburg, stadt 1,56 116 soest 1,61 17 braunschweig, stadt 1,37 67 essen, stadt 1,29 117 unna 1,57 18 salzgitter, stadt 1,50 68 krefeld, stadt 1,57 118 darmstadt, stadt 1,44 19 wolfsburg, stadt 1,53 69 mönchengladbach, stadt 1,49 119 frankfurt am main, stadt 1,20 20 gifhorn 1,63 70 mülheim/ruhr, stadt 1,37 120 offenbach am main, stadt 1,41 21 göttingen 1,49 71 oberhausen, stadt 1,43 121 wiesbaden, stadt 1,31 22 goslar 1,47 72 remscheid, stadt 1,47 122 bergstraße 1,42 23 helmstedt 1,51 73 solingen, stadt 1,52 123 darmstadt-dieburg 1,42 24 northeim 1,67 74 wuppertal, stadt 1,61 124 groß-gerau 1,48 25 osterode am harz 1,55 75 kleve 1,63 125 hochtaunuskreis 1,49 26 peine 1,60 76 mettmann 1,39 126 main-kinzig-kreis 1,48 27 wolfenbüttel 1,47 77 rhein-kreis neuss 1,49 127 main-taunus-kreis 1,47 28 region hannover 1,40 78 viersen 1,51 128 odenwaldkreis 1,60 29 diepholz 1,59 79 wesel 1,54 129 offenbach 1,38 30 hameln-pyrmont 1,45 80 bonn, stadt 1,34 130 rheingau-taunus-kreis 1,42 31 hildesheim 1,51 81 köln, stadt 1,19 131 wetteraukreis 1,46 32 holzminden 1,56 82 leverkusen, stadt 1,36 132 gießen 1,45 33 nienburg (weser) 1,53 83 aachen 1,46 133 lahn-dill-kreis 1,61 34 schaumburg 1,61 84 düren 1,56 134 limburg-weilburg 1,61 35 celle 1,65 85 rhein-erft-kreis 1,56 135 marburg-biedenkopf 1,55 36 cuxhaven 1,51 86 euskirchen 1,50 136 vogelsbergkreis 1,65 37 harburg 1,37 87 heinsberg 1,57 137 kassel, stadt 1,48 38 lüchow-dannenberg 1,24 88 oberbergischer kreis 1,65 138 fulda 1,64 39 lüneburg 1,48 89 rheinisch-bergisch. kreis 1,55 139 hersfeld-rotenburg 1,51 40 osterholz 1,46 90 rhein-sieg-kreis 1,55 140 kassel 1,43 41 rotenburg (wümme) 1,69 91 bottrop, stadt 1,37 141 schwalm-eder-kreis 1,53 42 soltau-fallingbostel 1,53 92 gelsenkirchen, stadt 1,59 142 waldeck-frankenberg 1,46 43 stade 1,62 93 münster, stadt 1,44 143 werra-meißner-kreis 1,64 44 uelzen 1,41 94 borken 1,78 144 koblenz, stadt 1,35 45 verden 1,54 95 coesfeld 1,65 145 ahrweiler 1,54 46 delmenhorst, stadt 1,64 96 recklinghausen 1,46 146 altenkirchen (westerwald) 1,57 47 emden, stadt 1,68 97 steinfurt 1,76 147 bad kreuznach 1,41 48 oldenburg, stadt 1,37 98 warendorf 1,65 148 birkenfeld 1,44 49 osnabrück, stadt 1,21 99 bielefeld, stadt 1,40 149 cochem-zell 1,60 50 wilhelmshaven, stadt 1,33 100 gütersloh 1,62 150 mayen-koblenz 1,52 • martin bujard, melanie scheller134 tab. a1: fortsetzung schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr 151 neuwied 1,57 201 pforzheim, stadt 1,75 251 freyung-grafenau 1,61 152 rhein-hunsrück-kreis 1,59 202 calw 1,71 252 kelheim 1,71 153 rhein-lahn-kreis 1,48 203 enzkreis 1,62 253 landshut 1,64 154 westerwaldkreis 1,65 204 freudenstadt 1,86 254 passau 1,65 155 trier, stadt 1,29 205 freiburg im breisgau, stadt 1,32 255 regen 1,51 156 bernkastel-wittlich 1,66 206 breisgau-hochschwarzwald 1,63 256 rottal-inn 1,84 157 bitburg-prüm 1,65 207 emmendingen 1,62 257 straubing-bogen 1,84 158 daun 1,83 208 ortenaukreis 1,62 258 dingolfing-landau 1,66 159 trier-saarburg 1,56 209 rottweil 1,70 259 amberg, stadt 1,31 160 frankenthal (pfalz), stadt 1,44 210 schwarzwald-baar-kreis 1,63 260 regensburg, stadt 1,26 161 kaiserslautern, stadt 1,26 211 tuttlingen 1,77 261 weiden i.d.opf., stadt 1,16 162 landau in der pfalz, stadt 1,46 212 konstanz 1,47 262 amberg-sulzbach 1,61 163 ludwigshafen am rhein 1,41 213 lörrach 1,60 263 cham 1,64 164 mainz, stadt 1,42 214 waldshut 1,56 264 neumarkt i.d.opf. 1,74 165 neustadt weinstraße, stadt 1,54 215 reutlingen 1,60 265 neustadt a.d.waldnaab 1,73 166 pirmasens, stadt 1,27 216 tübingen 1,52 266 regensburg 1,54 167 speyer, stadt 1,60 217 zollernalbkreis 1,67 267 schwandorf 1,52 168 worms, stadt 1,35 218 ulm, universitätsstadt 1,42 268 tirschenreuth 1,78 169 zweibrücken, stadt 1,40 219 alb-donau-kreis 1,76 269 bamberg, stadt 1,21 170 alzey-worms 1,58 220 biberach 1,81 270 bayreuth, stadt 1,44 171 bad dürkheim 1,54 221 bodenseekreis 1,60 271 coburg, stadt 1,51 172 donnersbergkreis 1,56 222 ravensburg 1,78 272 hof, stadt 1,38 173 germersheim 1,53 223 sigmaringen 1,66 273 bamberg 1,61 174 kaiserslautern 1,55 224 ingolstadt, stadt 1,41 274 bayreuth 1,59 175 kusel 1,44 225 münchen, landeshauptstadt 1,18 275 coburg 1,63 176 südliche weinstraße 1,51 226 rosenheim, stadt 1,39 276 forchheim 1,68 177 rhein-pfalz-kreis 1,37 227 altötting 1,63 277 hof 1,45 178 mainz-bingen 1,39 228 berchtesgadener land 1,51 278 kronach 1,48 179 südwestpfalz 1,52 229 bad tölz-wolfratshausen 1,64 279 kulmbach 1,47 180 stuttgart, landeshauptstadt 1,29 230 dachau 1,53 280 lichtenfels 1,78 181 böblingen 1,52 231 ebersberg 1,61 281 wunsiedel i.fichtelgebirge 1,23 182 esslingen 1,49 232 eichstätt 1,86 282 ansbach, stadt 1,43 183 göppingen 1,61 233 erding 1,59 283 erlangen, stadt 1,32 184 ludwigsburg 1,55 234 freising 1,55 284 fürth, stadt 1,31 185 rems-murr-kreis 1,55 235 fürstenfeldbruck 1,44 285 nürnberg, stadt 1,26 186 heilbronn, stadt 1,49 236 garmisch-partenkirchen 1,53 286 schwabach, stadt 1,34 187 heilbronn 1,70 237 landsberg a.lech 1,81 287 ansbach 1,63 188 hohenlohekreis 1,78 238 miesbach 1,57 288 erlangen-höchstadt 1,49 189 schwäbisch hall 1,76 239 mühldorf a.inn 1,87 289 fürth 1,40 190 main-tauber-kreis 1,75 240 münchen 1,51 290 nürnberger land 1,44 191 heidenheim 1,78 241 neuburg-schrobenhausen 1,60 291 neustadt a.d.aisch-bad w. 1,57 192 ostalbkreis 1,76 242 pfaffenhofen a.d.ilm 1,62 292 roth 1,66 193 baden-baden, stadt 1,22 243 rosenheim 1,69 293 weißenburg-gunzenhausen 1,73 194 karlsruhe, stadt 1,26 244 starnberg 1,56 294 aschaffenburg, stadt 1,50 195 karlsruhe 1,52 245 traunstein 1,67 295 schweinfurt, stadt 1,77 196 rastatt 1,53 246 weilheim-schongau 1,71 296 würzburg, stadt 1,16 197 heidelberg, stadt 1,36 247 landshut, stadt 1,27 297 aschaffenburg 1,64 198 mannheim, stadt 1,34 248 passau, stadt 1,05 298 bad kissingen 1,63 199 neckar-odenwald-kreis 1,84 249 straubing, stadt 1,60 299 rhön-grabfeld 1,64 200 rhein-neckar-kreis 1,49 250 deggendorf 1,47 300 haßberge 1,64 einfl uss regionaler faktoren auf die kohortenfertilität • 135 tab. a1: fortsetzung anmerkung: ein excelfi le mit 5-stelliger kreisnummer, kreisname, bundesland und dem ctfr-schätzwert wird öffentlich bereitgestellt unter: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/278/251. quelle: eigene berechnungen basierend auf zensus 2011. schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr schlüssel kreis ctfr 301 kitzingen 1,77 351 vorpommern-greifswald 1,45 401 greiz 1,67 302 miltenberg 1,60 352 ludwigslust-parchim 1,51 402 altenburger land 1,46 303 main-spessart 1,57 353 chemnitz 1,65 304 schweinfurt 1,66 354 erzgebirgskreis 1,71 305 würzburg 1,51 355 mittelsachsen 1,62 306 augsburg, stadt 1,28 356 vogtlandkreis 1,56 307 kaufbeuren, stadt 1,54 357 zwickau 1,56 308 kempten (allgäu), stadt 1,45 358 dresden 1,52 309 memmingen, stadt 1,50 359 bautzen 1,61 310 aichach-friedberg 1,59 360 görlitz 1,73 311 augsburg 1,67 361 meißen 1,66 312 dillingen a.d.donau 1,62 362 sächsische schweiz-oster. 1,65 313 günzburg 1,88 363 leipzig 1,34 314 neu-ulm 1,74 364 leipzig 1,51 315 lindau (bodensee) 1,50 365 nordsachsen 1,62 316 ostallgäu 1,76 366 dessau-roßlau 1,37 317 unterallgäu 1,80 367 halle (saale) 1,40 318 donau-ries 1,65 368 magdeburg 1,45 319 oberallgäu 1,57 369 altmarkkreis salzwedel 1,62 320 stadtverband saarbrücken 1,34 370 anhalt-bitterfeld 1,47 321 merzig-wadern 1,57 371 börde 1,53 322 neunkirchen 1,46 372 burgenlandkreis 1,51 323 saarlouis 1,38 373 harz 1,47 324 saarpfalz-kreis 1,39 374 jerichower land 1,38 325 st. wendel 1,39 375 mansfeld-südharz 1,55 326 berlin 1,37 376 saalekreis 1,48 327 brandenburg an der havel 1,24 377 salzlandkreis 1,46 328 cottbus, stadt 1,44 378 stendal 1,58 329 frankfurt (oder), stadt 1,34 379 wittenberg 1,52 330 potsdam, stadt 1,35 380 erfurt, stadt 1,48 331 barnim 1,47 381 gera, stadt 1,11 332 dahme-spreewald 1,50 382 jena, stadt 1,47 333 elbe-elster 1,68 383 suhl, stadt 1,39 334 havelland 1,59 384 weimar, stadt 1,41 335 märkisch-oderland 1,49 385 eisenach, stadt 1,33 336 oberhavel 1,48 386 eichsfeld 1,66 337 oberspreewald-lausitz 1,64 387 nordhausen 1,32 338 oder-spree 1,47 388 wartburgkreis 1,68 339 ostprignitz-ruppin 1,53 389 unstrut-hainich-kreis 1,60 340 potsdam-mittelmark 1,62 390 kyffhäuserkreis 1,52 341 prignitz 1,63 391 schmalkalden-meiningen 1,58 342 spree-neiße 1,52 392 gotha 1,53 343 teltow-fläming 1,53 393 sömmerda 1,63 344 uckermark 1,42 394 hildburghausen 1,54 345 rostock 1,38 395 ilm-kreis 1,44 346 schwerin 1,41 396 weimarer land 1,44 347 mecklenburgische seenplatte 1,53 397 sonneberg 1,33 348 landkreis rostock 1,58 398 saalfeld-rudolstadt 1,43 349 vorpommern-rügen 1,53 399 saale-holzland-kreis 1,48 350 nordwestmecklenburg 1,71 400 saale-orla-kreis 1,49 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand: an analysis of counterfactual projection scenarios based on german health insurance routine data the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand an analysis of counterfactual projection scenarios based on german health insurance routine data* alexander barth abstract: although demand for long-term care (ltc) in germany is expected to increase over the coming decades, the ltc sector will struggle to provide suffi cient capacity. evaluating the impact of different risk factors on future ltc demand is necessary in order to make informed policy decisions. with regard to ltc need, dementia and lower extremity injuries (lei) are common risk factors. both are used to demonstrate their maximum attainable effi cacy in mitigating the future increase in overall ltc need, both at home and in nursing homes. we use a multi-state projection model for which the estimation of the underlying transition and mortality rates is based on longitudinal health claims data from aok, germany’s largest public health insurance provider, between 2004 and 2010. we project six different scenarios of ltc for ages 75+ in germany for the period from 2014 to 2044, including counterfactual scenarios that remove the effects of lei, dementia, or both. our multi-state projections distinguish between home-based and institutional ltc. removing the effect of ltc risk factors mitigates the increase in total ltc demand and postpones demand until a later age. removing dementia markedly shifts future care demand from institutional ltc to ltc at home and even increases demand for ltc at home at older ages beyond the baseline projection due to the dual function of dementia as a risk factor for both ltc demand and mortality. removing lei has less of an effect on overall and sectoral ltc demand. removing both risk factors at the same time results in the greatest impact, which is even more marked than that of both individual scenarios combined, thus indicating a synergistic relationship between dementia and lei on ltc risk. the type of ltc demand (home-based or institutional) shows considerable plasticity when specifi c risk factors are removed. we demonstrate the degree to which comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 235-268 (date of release: 03.12.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-19en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-19en5 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of a data appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2019-20en; url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/304/290. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/304/290 • alexander barth236 ltc demand can be affected in favour of ltc at home, using dementia and lei as examples of potentially modifi able risk factors, and thus show how the effi cacy of potential intervention targets for policy-makers can be assessed. this study provides evidence on the degree of plasticity of future long-term care demand at home and in institutions that would hypothetically be attainable when completely removing specifi c cognitive or physical risk factors of care need (dementia or lower ei). it is based on large-scale health claims data, which contain longitudinal individual level data on morbidity and long-term care status. a close link exists between the cognitive risk factor of dementia and the type of ltc, as its absence shifts care demand to home-based care at older ages. the study also demonstrates the usefulness of counterfactual projections based on health claims data in assessing the hypothetical maximum effi cacy of different intervention strategies. keywords: long-term care · counterfactual projections · dementia · extremity injuries 1 introduction increasing life expectancy and declining fertility are driving population ageing in developed countries. across oecd states, the share of people aged 80 years and older is expected to triple from 2005 to 2050, causing a marked increase in ltc demand (fujisawai/colombo 2009; comas-herrera et al. 2006). ageing nations need to manage this increase, e.g. by providing opportunities for informal care, giving professional assistance to informal caregivers or by increasing capacity in nursing homes. the growth rate in ltc expenditure was the highest among all healthcare sectors (oecd 2017) and total ltc expenditure is expected to increase from 1 percent to up to 4 percent of gdp between 2005 and 2050 (fujisawai/colombo 2009). between 2030 and 2050 in particular, ltc demand is expected to increase markedly, as large baby boomer cohorts born between the mid-1950s and 1960s will reach ages at which ltc becomes prevalent (doblhammer 2012; rothgang et al. 2012b). as both personnel and funding in the ltc sector are in short supply, further strategies to mitigate increases in ltc demand are of vital interest. since ltc dependency often arises due to illnesses (koller et al. 2014; barth et al. 2016), lowering either the prevalence of a disease or its impact on ltc demand could mitigate the increase in demand. however, most studies focus on total future ltc demand or labour supply (doblhammer 2012; fujisawai/colombo 2009). evidence on the effi cacy of specifi c conditions is sparse. this article therefore uses counterfactual projections that remove either dementia, lower extremity injuries (lei), or both to assess their effi cacy in mitigating the increase in total and sectoral ltc demand. this study uses a large sample of german statutory health insurance routine data, which provide morbidity, mortality and ltc status. it allows all transition risks that are required for the counterfactual projections to be modelled based on the the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 237 same source. in terms of ltc, dementia is a greater risk factor than lei (barth et al. 2016), which leads us to hypothesise that its overall mitigating effect will be greater. since dementia often requires a higher degree of care, its removal should result in a marked reduction in institutional ltc demand. because health insurance routine data cover all diseases and are available in many countries, this approach could also be applied to different diseases or countries. 2 background 2.1 individual level ltc risk factors in order to examine trends in population health, health expectancy measures such as healthy, active or disability-free life expectancy are common, which divide the number of remaining life years into unimpaired and impaired years. while results largely depend on the exact measure in question, fi ndings generally show that a compression of morbidity occurs. against the background of increasing life expectancy, this means that the life years gained are mostly spent in good health. these gains pertain in particular to serious conditions, while for minor impairments, a dynamic equilibrium (additional life years distributed evenly) or even an expansion of morbidity can be found, which is characterised by multimorbidity and chronic impairments (unger/schulze 2013; christensen et al. 2009). ltc dependency often arises due to chronic functional impairments when basic tasks cannot be performed alone. we focus on two common ltc causes: one related to mental health – dementia; and one related to physical mobility – lower extremity injuries (lei). dementia is the primary cognitive cause of ltc and mostly occurs at the age of 75 and older. it describes a syndrome that subsumes different diseases that all cause a severe decline in cognitive functioning or affect personality traits. most patients require assistance and supervision (doblhammer et al. 2012). lei are a major physical health risk factor as regards ltc. mobility limitations are often caused by lei such as a broken hip, often resulting from falls (barth et al. 2016), which are common in older age and especially frequent among women (stevens/sogolow 2005). as mobility is a basic requirement for independence, lei can cause ltc dependency. they can also act as a proxy for impairments that increase ltc risk. falls are linked to age, because they are often caused by other age-related conditions like muscle weakness, problems with gait or balance, impaired vision or mild cognitive impairment. restoring mobility after a lei can be diffi cult, and future mobility may be reduced as a precaution after suffering a lei (neuman et al. 2014; guralnik et al. 1995). a study comparing both risk factors found that dementia is more infl uential than lei as far as individual ltc risk is concerned (barth et al. 2016). dementia and lei can also be causally related (barth et al. 2016; lautenschlager et al. 2008). lei can make performing daily tasks or maintaining an active lifestyle diffi cult, thus undermining the protective effect that such a lifestyle can have against dementia (wang et al. 2002) and making lei a risk factor for dementia (barth et al. 2016). mobility impairments like gait instability can be a predictor of cognitive de• alexander barth238 cline. delirium can occur after a lei, which in turn can cause dementia (krogseth et al. 2011). dementia is often found in older fracture patients (bruijn et al. 2013; hamer/chida 2009; zhou et al. 2016) because it shares direct and intermediate risk factors with fractures. dementia can negatively affect gait and balance, and its treatment can increase fracture risks (friedman et al. 2010). if dementia and lei are present concurrently, they can synergistically increase ltc risk (barth et al. 2016; inagawa et al. 2013). looking at trends of years lived with disability (yld) as a result of these conditions helps to contextualise their importance with regard to ltc demand. worldwide, yld due to falls, which are the primary cause of lei in older age, have increased by 46 percent from 1990 to 2010. falls account for 2.5 percent of all yld, making them the 10th most frequent cause of yld globally and the 3rd most frequent cause in western europe. yld due to dementia increased by 80 percent, thus being responsible for 0.9 percent of all yld worldwide. globally, dementia is the 24th most frequent cause of yld, and the 10th most frequent cause in western europe. while the increases in total yld due to both conditions are driven in part by population ageing, yld rates per 100,000 persons have also increased by more than 12 percent in the case of falls, and by more than 38 percent for dementia (vos et al. 2012). in terms of disability-adjusted life years (dalys) lost, which weight and combine life years lived with health impairments with those lost due to premature mortality, and looking at the population aged 60 years and older, both dementia and falls are among the fi fteen most frequent causes. dementia accounts for 1.7 percent (9th most frequent cause), and falls for 2.2 percent (7th most frequent cause) of all dalys lost in 2010 (prince et al. 2015). along with population ageing, dementia and falls are therefore increasing in importance as causes of yld. 2.2 long-term care in germany ltc dependency is defi ned in accordance with german statutory public ltc insurance (“pfl egeversicherung”), which was introduced in 1995. benefi ts are granted based on one of three dependency levels, which are assigned by an objective assessment that focuses on limitations in activities of daily living (adl). for care level one, a minimum of 90 minutes of assistance are required, at least half of which must relate to basic care tasks. level three is assigned when fi ve hours are required, four hours of which must relate to basic care tasks. thus, not everyone in need of assistance is covered. the higher the care level, the more time and skill are required by the caregivers. payments can be used for professional care at home, in institutions or at the discretion of the recipient, e.g. for informal caregivers, utilities or renovations. the benefi ts do not cover all care-related costs. institutional care in particular causes cost-benefi ts gaps (rothgang et al. 2012b). in 2014, more than 2.6 million people received benefi ts, around two thirds of whom were female. figure 1 shows the age structure by care type at age 75 and older. more than half of all ltc recipients are at least 80 years of age, and more than one third are aged 85 years and older. over two thirds are in ambulatory care. for the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 239 two thirds of recipients, care was provided on an informal basis by relatives. informal care at home is thus the most frequent type of care, which is best suited for a lower level of care need. professional care services provide either partial or full care for the remaining recipients living at home. less than 30 percent of ltc recipients live in institutions, and about half are 85 years or older (statistisches bundesamt 2015b). 2.3 infl uences on future long-term care supply both ltc sectors face diffi culties in the coming decades. informal care depends on partners, spouses, daughters or in-laws (doblhammer/scholz 2010). the share of older people living with a partner is expected to increase slightly up to 2030, due to a sharper increase in the life expectancy of males compared to females (schulz 2010; pötzsch 2011). as a result, no decrease in partner-based care potential is expected to arise until then. even if couples are living together longer, home care might be too demanding when the need exceeds the partner’s potential to give care. between the 1937-1942 and 1963-1967 birth cohorts, the share of childless women has nearly doubled to 20 percent, leading to a reduction in the care provision potential by own children or their spouses (statistisches bundesamt 2015a) from the late 2030s onwards when the latter cohort begins to reach age 75 and older. informal care depends on the labour market participation of caregivers, because working full-time jobs restricts available time. since most informal care is provided by females (dukhovnov/zagheni 2015; oecd 2017), female labour market participation is a key factor. female labour market participation between the ages of 50 and 65 is expected to increase from 44 percent to 61 percent (2003-2050). in absolute terms, however, the number of women will decline due to lower fertility and a higher prevalence of childlessness, which both decrease the care potential of females fig. 1: population aged 75 and older by care need in 2014 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ no care home care institutional care 0.000.200.400.60 m f 0.600.400.200.00 f in millions source: long-term care statistics (“pfl egestatistik”), own design. • alexander barth240 (schulz 2010). when informal caregivers are themselves parents, they also have to care for their young children (dukhovnov/zagheni 2015). providing care requires the caregiver to live close to the recipient. job-related mobility might increase distances, especially in rural areas which younger people leave to move elsewhere, while their parents remain behind (maretzke 2016). a decreasing population, fewer people of working age and fewer young people entering the labour market indicate that the recruitment of care workers will prove challenging over the next few decades (geerts et al. 2012; oecd 2017; rothgang et al. 2012a). between 2010 and 2030, the working age population will decrease by nearly three million, and the economically active population will decrease by 1.4 million (bundesministerium für arbeit und soziales 2013). the level of job vacancies in the care sector is already more than twice as high as the overall average (bundesministerium für gesundheit 2015). all sectors will compete for fewer potential employees, and care is currently not one of most appealing career choices due to low wages and the high demands placed on carers. the shortage of ltc staff is expected to total between 140,000 and 200,000 full-time jobs by 2025 (bundesministerium für gesundheit 2015) and exceed 500,000 by 2030 (vereinigung der bayerischen wirtschaft 2012). 2.4 projection of long-term care need for germany a number of scientifi c or administrative ltc projections are available (doblhammer 2012; doblhammer/scholz 2010; pfaff 2010; geerts et al. 2012; doblhammer/ziegler 2010; schulz 2010; rothgang et al. 2012a). they are based on population scenarios that are combined with different variants or trends of age-specifi c prevalence of total or sectoral ltc demand, or which incorporate determinants of ltc use such as household composition. they vary in their defi nition of care need, with some using the objective ltc insurance defi nition, and others using self-reported criteria, sometimes based on survey data like share (geerts et al. 2012). the focus lies mostly on the number of ltc recipients. some projections differentiate between care settings at home and in institutions (geerts et al. 2012; rothgang et al. 2012a). because care need depends on the size of the cohorts reaching older ages, the primary source of uncertainty is the trend in life expectancy, while assumptions on the cohorts’ health status are the second key factor. despite their methodological differences, all projections agree on a marked increase in ltc demand ranging from 22 percent to 62 percent between 2005 and 2030, and from 45 percent to 123 percent between 2005 and 2050. health improvement scenarios assume that the increase in demand for ltc will be reduced by between 400,000 and 600,000 individuals in 2030, and by around one million in 2050 (doblhammer 2012). age structure therefore dictates a marked increase in ltc demand that no realistic degree of compression of morbidity can compensate. ltc demand will increase markedly, but the increase can be mitigated by health improvements. the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 241 2.5 aim of this study increasing ltc demand as a result of population ageing does not allow macro level interventions besides making changes to legislation regarding entitlement. individual level risk factors such as diseases are potentially modifi able, which shifts the focus on their effi cacy in mitigating future ltc demand. our fi rst goal is to assess the plasticity of future ltc demand that is achievable by removing one or both of the two risk factors, namely dementia and lei. first, we assess the impact on the total number of ltc recipients and second, on whether care demand arises at home or in institutions. the third aim is to demonstrate the general use of counterfactual projections based on claims data for the assessment of interventions and to show their use for policy planning. germany is a good example of a country where ltc demand is growing. with japan and italy, germany is one of the three countries most advanced on the path of population ageing and already has an age structure that other countries will be reaching (united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division 2017). germany’s mandatory public ltc insurance system has been established over 20 years ago, meaning suffi cient real life experience has been gained and is available for analysis in routine data. germany has a high and expanding capacity of institutional ltc beds per 1,000 people aged 65 and over, surpassed only by a few countries such as the netherlands or sweden (statistisches bundesamt 2017; oecd 2017). informal and institutional ltc demand can therefore be studied using data for germany. recent ltc reforms included persons formerly below the threshold for the lowest care level, which shows that providing care to those who require it remains important for policy-makers (straub 2018). given its status as a country where population ageing is at an advanced stage and continuing, germany is a good example for retrospective studies and was also used as example to comparatively study the costs of establishing national entitlement to ltc at home in different countries (pickard et al. 2007). 3 methods 3.1 defi nition of long-term care everyone with at least care level one is defi ned as ltc dependent. this study does not distinguish between care levels, but between ltc settings. ltc recipients not living in an institution are defi ned as receiving home care whereas benefi ciaries living in an institution are defi ned as institutional ltc recipients. the remainder of the population is considered as non-ltc dependent. 3.2 defi nition of dementia dementia is defi ned as one or more of the following: alzheimer’s disease (icd-10 codes f00/g30), vascular dementia (f01), lewy body dementia (g31.82), circum• alexander barth242 scribed brain atrophy (g31.0), dementia as a side-effect, e.g. of parkinson’s disease (f02, f05.1, g23.1), or other/unspecifi ed dementia (f03). to ensure validity, only diagnoses fl agged as “verifi ed” for outpatients or “discharge” for inpatients are considered. second, at least two diagnoses issued in the same quarter either by an inpatient and an outpatient physician or from different outpatient specialists are required: inpatient diagnosis and neurological specialist, inpatient and general physician, inpatient and other type of specialist, neurological specialist and general physician, neurological specialist and other type of specialist, or other type of specialist and general physician. alternatively, at least two verifi ed diagnoses at different quarters from inpatient care, an outpatient neurological specialist, a general physician or other specialist are required. in these cases, the diagnosis is deemed valid from the time of the fi rst diagnosis onwards. if the fi rst verifi ed diagnosis occurs in the last observed quarter, it is also deemed valid. dementia is coded as being present from the fi rst validated occurrence onwards. 3.3 defi nition of lower extremity injury lower extremities are defi ned from the hip downwards. relevant injuries are fractures, wounds, luxations, contusions, burns, frostbites and amputations (icd codes s70–s99, relevant parts of t). lei is coded as being present from the fi rst occurrence onwards. 3.4 population projection population projections often use the cohort-component method, which projects the population by age and sex. multi-state projections like those used here extend this method and share many characteristics. age is divided into groups of equal size, in this case single years. the projection steps are of the same length as the age groups. the highest age group is open-ended, in our case 95 years and older. the projection requires a starting population that is specifi ed by age and sex for the fi rst year, and parameters of population development, i.e. fertility, migration and mortality. the subgroups defi ned by age and sex are projected into the future for each step forward in time – in this case, single calendar years – by applying mortality, fertility and migration rates. in this case, fertility is disregarded because the interest of this study lies in the projection of ltc demand of cohorts that have already been born. according to the german federal statistical offi ce, between 2000 and 2018 migration of persons in the 75 and older age group contributed between 0.3 percent and 0.8 percent to total annual immigration, and between 0.8 percent and 1.4 percent to total emigration. this corresponded to annual net totals of between +1,200 and -6,500 persons, or between 0.01 percent and 0.09 percent of the entire population in this age group, which increased from nearly 6 to 9.5 million persons. all variants of the most recent 14th offi cial coordinated population projection also assume net migration of similarly small amounts in the highest age group going forward. the impact of migration on population change at older ages is considered to be of minor importance and the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 243 is thus disregarded here. our focus lies on assessing the effects of health changes on ltc demand: including concurrent migration fl ows would act as a confounding factor. further, data to estimate age, sex and ltc-type-specifi c migration rates for older people are not available. multi-state projections divide the population by age, sex and several functional states. we distinguish different ltc types using the states healthy (no ltc), ltc at home and ltc in an institution. transitions (mobility between states) are possible from healthy to ltc at home (1st transition path) and to institutional ltc (2nd), and additionally from ltc at home to institutional ltc (3rd). each state can lead to death (4th-6th). while transitions from any care to no care or from institutional to home care are possible, they are very rare. ehing et al. (2015) show that the yearly transition probabilities to either a lower care level or from institutional to home care are very low, and rothgang et al. (2017) describe the absolute number of changes from institutional to home care per year as marginal compared to the overall institutional care demand. the possibility of decreasing care need is thus disregarded and all transitions are considered as irreversible. multi-state projections require all parameters of the cohort-component method for each functional state. assumptions on the ageand sex-specifi c transitions into every other accessible state are required, too. the additional data we require for a multi-state approach consist of age-, sexand state-specifi c parameters of mortality, and ageand sex-specifi c parameters for transitions between different ltc states. for all transitions in all scenarios, ageand sex-specifi c transition and mortality rates were estimated separately using parametric survival regressions with age and age-squared as covariates with an exponentially distributed baseline hazard (stata procedures streg and predict) and calendar time as process time, with h(t\age) = eß0+ß1*age+ß2*age2 used to estimate all required rates. for counterfactual scenarios, only data spells before the onset of the respective conditions are used: e.g. the dementia-free scenario only uses spells before the onset of dementia. each model was run separately for both sexes. the estimated transition rates are applied unchanged for the entire projection time span, while mortality rates are reduced by 1.5 percent each year to account for increasing life expectancy. for germany, a reduction of this amount is congruent with the decrease in mortality observed for ages 75 and over in the past decade. the 2014 starting population is based on the general population structure at the end of 2014 (census) and ltc statistics. it consists of males and females by age in all states (no care, care at home or care in institutions). 3.5 health insurance routine data all parameter estimates are based on longitudinal health insurance routine data. a random sample was drawn, of 250,000 individuals who were at least 50 years old in the fi rst quarter of 2004 and were insured with germany’s largest public health insurance provider aok (“allgemeine ortskrankenkasse”). besides icd-10 records of medical diagnoses, information on age, sex, ltc status and date of death are • alexander barth244 included. claims data is process-generated and used for the reimbursement of outpatient practitioners and inpatient clinics. the aok covers about one third of the population aged 50 years and older, with this proportion increasing to as much as 50 percent among people of older ages. aok data are not completely representative of the german population, as there are differences regarding socio-economic and health status compared to other public sickness funds, and especially to private health insurance schemes (which cover about 11 percent of the population). the literature indicates that on average, compared to other public or private health insurance providers, aok members tend to be slightly older, have a lower socio-economic position and exhibit a somewhat higher prevalence of common conditions like hypertension, diabetes or cardiovascular diseases (neubauer et al. 2017; hoffmann/icks 2012). the sample was drawn from all insured persons, including those in nursing homes, regardless of whether they were seeking treatment and includes data up to the end of 2010 with one data spell per quarter. after data cleaning, consistency checking, removal of interrupted observations (e.g. due to a change of insurance provider) and the implementation of a two-year validation period for incident dementia, there remained around 122,000 individuals aged 65 and older at the fi rst quarter of 2006. 3.6 scenarios table 1 gives an overview of the properties for all scenarios. each scenario covers the period from 2014 to 2044. three counterfactual scenarios (2a-4a) are used to assess plasticity of ltc demand when removing specifi c risk factors: without dementia (2a), without lei (3a) and the absence of both (4a). the status quo scenario 1a is the baseline for comparison. it shares the mortality decline with all counterfactual scenarios without removing any ltc risks. two additional status quo scenarios with alternative mortality assumptions are used to compare the impact of removing risk factors with the effect of different rates of mortality decline (1b, 1c). results are shown for the population in the relevant age group for ltc (75 years and older). all scenarios were calculated using the pde population module tool (international institute for applied systems analysis (iiasa) 1997). the pde project fi les, which include all necessary transition rates for all scenarios and variants presented here, as well as the base year population, are available as an online data appendix. 3.7 use of counterfactual scenarios in order to assess the impact on ltc plasticity of potentially modifi able risk factors, we use counterfactual projections that eliminate the respective risk factors. all differences between a counterfactual scenario and the baseline are caused by the elimination of the specifi c risk factor. the counterfactual scenarios do not strive to be realistic but are instead tools used to assess different options. they show the maximum degree to which the increase in ltc demand can be mitigated. the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 245 3.8 hypotheses 3.8.1 general considerations removing a ltc risk factor should mitigate future ltc demand. the amount of plasticity is likely to depend on the strength of the risk factor in question. the effect on total ltc demand of conditions that markedly increase the risk of ltc should be greater than that of weaker factors. different risk factors can affect ltc risk differently depending on age, sex or care setting. as a result, ltc plasticity can be observed in terms of total or sex-specifi c demand, age structure of ltc recipients and setting. ltc risks are also mortality risks. their removal also increases life expectancy without and with ltc need due to other causes. the removal of a specifi c ltc risk can thus counterintuitively increase ltc demand due to other causes. removing an ltc risk can lead to greater relative increases in older-age ltc demand compared to the baseline scenario. as the mortality decrease of 1.5 percent per year is the same for all counterfactual scenarios, an increase in older-age ltc demand is expected as a global effect for all main scenarios (1a-4a). tab. 1: overview of assumptions of all projection scenarios and variants a b c 1. status quo mortality rates mortality rates mortality rates -2 % -1.5 % each year -1 %each year each year includes dementia includes dementia includes dementia & & lei cases & lei cases lei cases 2. no dementia mortality rates -1.5 % each year excludes dementia cases 3. no lower mortality rates extremity -1.5 % each year injuries excludes lei cases 4. no dementia or mortality rates lower extremity -1.5 % each year injuries excludes dementia & lei cases source: own design • alexander barth246 3.8.2 dementia (2a) (1) total demand dementia is a risk factor for ltc. its removal should decrease total demand compared to the baseline. as dementia is a greater ltc risk than lei, it should have a greater effect on total demand. (2) sectoral demand dementia is strongly linked to institutional ltc. its removal should decrease institutional demand compared to the baseline. (3) older-age demand institutional older-age ltc demand is expected to decrease due to the strong link between dementia and institutional ltc. total older-age demand should increase compared to the baseline, because dementia’s removal should decrease mortality and cause later entry and longer life in ltc. 3.8.3 lei (3a) (1) total demand lei are a risk factor for ltc. their removal should decrease total demand compared to the baseline, but not as much as dementia, since lei are the risk factor which has less of an impact. since lei are more frequently found among women, their removal is likely to affect overall ltc demand among females in particular. (2) sectoral demand lei are less of a risk for institutional ltc than dementia; accordingly a minor decrease in institutional demand is expected. (3) older-age demand a shift from older-age institutional demand to ltc demand at home is expected, although to a lesser extent than without dementia. total older-age demand should increase compared to the baseline as removing lei ought to decrease mortality, delay entry into ltc and enable longer life in ltc. 3.8.4 dementia & lei (4a) (1) total demand when present concurrently, dementia and lei act synergistically and increase ltc risk to a disproportionate degree. in the absence of both factors, total demand should be markedly lower than in the baseline and also lower than in both individual scenarios combined. (2) sectoral demand due to the removal of dementia, a marked shift towards ltc at home is expected. (3) older-age demand a strong shift to older-age ltc at home is expected. total demand should increase more than in any other scenario due to lower mortality, and is exthe impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 247 pected to be even higher than in both individual counterfactual scenarios combined. 4 results 4.1 total long-term care demand the plasticity of ltc demand that is attainable when removing dementia, lei or both can be shown from different perspectives. figure 2 shows the total demand over time, by scenario. figure 3 subdivides the total demand by ltc type. table 2 shows the endpoints of all scenarios in total, by care type as well for the younger (75-84) and older (85+) age group and by sex. figure 4 shows the sex-specifi c population age structure by ltc type at the endpoint of each scenario. the benchmark for all counterfactual scenarios is the main status quo scenario (1a). in this scenario, ltc demand increases by 78 percent in total, from 1.82 to about 3.24 million people, between 2014 and 2044 (fig. 2, table 2) with ltc demand fig. 2: total number of ltc recipients in millions over time, all scenarios 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 2014 2019 2024 2029 2034 2039 2044 year status quo (1a) no dementia (2a) no lei (3a) no dementia or lei (4a) status quo (1b) status quo (1c) in millions source: own calculations • alexander barth248 among males more than doubling and female demand growing by 64 percent. like the status quo scenario (1a), all counterfactual scenarios also show increasing demand over time, indicating that no counterfactual scenario can mitigate the increase caused by population ageing. beyond this demographically-driven increase, mitigating plasticity is visible. figures a1-a4 (appendix) show the respective base year transition probabilities for scenarios 1a-4a. figure a1 indicates that without ltc need, the transition to ltc typically starts with home care, the probability of which doubles roughly every six years. the probability that recipients of ltc at home will transition into institutional ltc also increases with age, although not as rapidly as seen for the transition into ltc at home for persons without ltc dependency. direct transition from no ltc dependency to institutional ltc dependency is far less common. the removal of ltc risk factors decreases the probability of transitioning into ltc, and also from ltc at home to institutional ltc. removing individual ltc risk factors in the counterfactual scenarios (2a-3a) therefore slightly mitigates the increase in overall long-term care demand compared to the baseline scenario. the lower the probability of transition into ltc, the greater the mitigating effect on total ltc demand will be at each endpoint. changes in the transition probabilities to ltc are smallest in the lei-free scenario (3a), where they are more apparent for females than males (fig. a3). mitigation of ltc demand in this counterfactual scenario, which results in a 72 percent increase in total ltc demand compared to 78 percent in the baseline scenario, is primarily attributable to female ltc demand (table 2). the dementia-free scenario (2a) shows a more considerable decrease in ltc transition probabilities from no care to home care, and especially from home care to institutional ltc (fig. a2) and results in a slightly more marked mitigation of future overall ltc demand, with an increase of 71 percent. the dementia and lei-free scenario (4a) shows the biggest reduction in the transition probabilities into ltc (fig. a4) and thus results in a marked mitigation of the increase in total ltc demand to 61 percent, compared to 78 percent in the baseline. these fi ndings support hypotheses 2a-1, 3a-1 and 4a-1 concerning the impact on total ltc demand. the more pronounced increase in male than female ltc demand is consistent in all scenarios. the alternative status quo scenarios, which assume faster (1c, 103 percent increase in total ltc demand) and slower (1b, 54 percent) mortality decreases without eliminating a specifi c ltc risk factor, indicate that the future mortality trend is a more important factor than individual ltc risks, because its effect on future ltc demand is greater. 4.2 sectoral long-term care demand figure 3 shows ltc demand by type over time. it illustrates that the major differences between the counterfactual scenarios are found in their effects on ltc setting. the dementia-free (2a) and the dementiaand lei-free counterfactual scenarios (4a) indicate that removing dementia affects ltc type, because these scenarios markedly decrease the transition probabilities to institutional ltc and thus show a shift towards ltc at home compared to the baseline scenario 1a (fig. 3, a2, a4). the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 249 compared to a 103 percent increase in institutional ltc within 30 years, which equates to about 1.3 million people, the dementia-free scenario (2a) reduces by half the increase in institutional demand, to 51 percent, and the dementiaand lei-free variant (4a) lowers the increase to 32 percent (table 2). at the status quo endpoint, 39 percent of ltc recipients are institutionalised, while the dementiaand lei-free scenario (4a) and the dementia-free scenario (2a) show that 28 percent and 30 percent respectively of ltc is provided in institutions. in turn, home care is more frequent than in the baseline. without dementia, ltc at home increases by 81 percent (2a), and without dementia and lei (4a) by 76 percent, while the baseline indicates a 65 percent increase. removing dementia markedly shifts demand from ltc at institutions to ltc at home, coupled with a small decrease in total ltc demand growth. this supports hypotheses 2a-2 and 4a-2. the lei-free scenario (3a) does not show fig. 3: total number of long-term care recipients (millions) by care type over time, all scenarios 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year home care institution status quo (1a) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year status quo (1b) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year status quo (1c) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year no dementia (2a) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year no lei (3a) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 20 14 20 18 20 22 20 26 20 30 20 34 20 38 20 42 year no dementia or lei (4a) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 in millions in millions in millions in millions in millions in millions source: own calculations • alexander barth250 such a marked shift to ltc at home, because the growth in institutional demand which it projects (88 percent) is only 15 points less than the 103 percent increase in the baseline, which tends to support hypothesis 3a-2. the lei-free scenario (3a) is an exception, as it primarily mitigates the increase in female ltc demand in both care settings; the other effects on care setting are largely identical for both sexes. of the two conditions considered, a marked mitigation of total and institutional ltc demand is only achievable by targeting dementia. 4.3 older-old and younger-old long-term care demand table 2 shows all scenario endpoints separately for younger (75-84 years) and older (85 years and older) ltc recipients. the relative increase in older-age demand compared to the baseline scenario (1a) is generally greater than for the younger group. the reasons are the same in all scenarios: large cohorts reach this age group and mortality risk progressively decreases in all scenarios. for instance, the baseline scenario (1a) shows an increase in total ltc demand of 69 percent for the younger and 86 percent for the older group. the plasticity when removing risk factors primarily lies in shifting the majority of the increase in demand to the older age group. for instance, removing dementia (2a) shows an increase in younger total ltc demand of 27 percent, and of 111 percent for the older age group. larger relative increases of this kind in counterfactual scenarios are accompanied by a greater ltc demand in absolute terms for the older age group. for instance, the absolute difference in total demand between the endpoints of the baseline (1a) and the dementia-free scenario (2a) for the 85 and older age group is close to 250,000 individuals. thus, for both genders and overall, more people reach the highest ages in the counterfactual scenarios due to the removal of conditions that also act as mortality risks. the share of institutional ltc recipients among those larger older cohorts is smaller than in the baseline due to the removal of ltc risk factors. the differences between the development of younger and older-age ltc demand are also apparent for the different ltc settings. compared to the status quo (1a), where older-age institutional demand increases by 119 percent and demand for ltc at home by 64 percent, the older-age demand in the counterfactual scenarios resembles the setting-specifi c effects seen for overall demand: the removal of ltc risk factors mitigates the increase in institutional demand compared to the baseline scenario (1a) at the cost of more recipients of home care, due to both mitigation and postponement of the increase in ltc transition probability (fig. a1-a4). removing dementia (2a) mitigates the increase in institutional demand to 94 percent, while demand for ltc at home increases to 122 percent, double the increase seen in the status quo scenario. the dementia and lei-free scenario (4a) shows even stronger plasticity: it extenuates the increase in institutional demand even more (70 percent), but shows the largest increase in home care demand of any particular scenario (129 percent). the lei-free scenario (2a) shows the smallest degree of plasticity, which supports hypotheses 2a-4, 3a-4 and 4a-4. these outcomes occur in largely similar fashion among both genders, except for the lei-free scenario (3a), where no the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 251 mitigation, but instead an even greater increase in older-age male institutional ltc demand occurs. consequently, the most substantial effect is that in the case of the younger group, both ltc types see a mitigated increase in demand in all counterfactual scenarios compared to the baseline, whereas for the older group, decreases in institutional demand growth come at the cost of increased demand at home. this indicates that removing ltc risk factors delays entry into any type of ltc and also delays transitioning from home to institutional ltc. the results for older-age ltc demand show that the total demand cannot be mitigated, because decreases in institutional demand always come at the cost of more recipients of ltc at home. however, the sector where higher increases in ltc demand occur can be infl uenced by targeting specifi c risk factors, as the dementia-free (2a) and, in particular, the dementiaand lei free (4a) scenarios demonstrate. male home care % institutional % all care % all results (75+) 2014 379,061 135,684 514,745 status quo (1a) 764,203 102 332,710 145 1,096,913 113 no dementia (2a) 809,016 113 239,982 77 1,048,998 104 no lei (3a) 754,897 99 335,201 147 1,090,098 112 no dem. or lei (4a) 775,677 105 237,137 75 1,012,814 97 status quo (1b) 668,933 76 256,566 89 925,499 80 status quo (1c) 862,926 128 423,509 212 1,286,435 150 75-84 2014 236,473 73,116 309,589 status quo (1a) 434,471 84 146,819 101 581,290 88 no dementia (2a) 364,164 54 64,868 -11 429,032 39 no lei (3a) 410,410 74 131,733 80 542,143 75 no dem. or lei (4a) 328,809 39 56,366 -23 385,175 24 status quo (1b) 387,602 64 118,075 61 505,677 63 status quo (1c) 481,827 104 179,195 145 661,022 114 85+ 2014 142,588 62,568 205,156 status quo (1a) 329,732 131 185,891 197 515,623 151 no dementia (2a) 444,852 212 175,114 180 619,966 202 no lei (3a) 344,487 142 203,468 225 547,955 167 no dem. or lei (4a) 446,868 213 180,771 189 627,639 206 status quo (1b) 281,331 97 138,491 121 419,822 105 status quo (1c) 381,099 167 244,314 290 625,413 205 tab. 2: overview of scenario results by sex, care type, age group and in total • alexander barth252 5 discussion 5.1 summary the ageing of large baby boomer cohorts will increase the demand for ltc services in the coming decades (nowossadeck et al. 2016; doblhammer 2012). to ensure that the ltc system will be able to respond to this challenge (bundesministerium für gesundheit 2015; fujisawai/colombo 2009), policy-makers require tools to assess the effi cacy of interventions aimed at mitigating the increase in ltc demand. counterfactual projections that eliminate specifi c health-related risk factors can be used to assess the maximum degree of plasticity attainable with specifi c conditions. this study investigates the effi cacy of dementia and lei in mitigating the increase in ltc demand, thus using one physical and one cognitive health-related determinant of tab. 2: continuation female home care % institutional % all care % all results (75+) 2014 818,263 489,398 1,307,661 status quo (1a) 1,208,259 48 934,980 91 2,143,239 64 no dementia (2a) 1,359,754 66 705,818 44 2,065,572 58 no lei (3a) 1,206,675 47 842,629 72 2,049,304 57 no dem. or lei (4a) 1,336,821 63 587,928 20 1,924,749 47 status quo (1b) 1,114,848 36 771,747 58 1,886,595 44 status quo (1c) 1,299,872 59 1,117,975 128 2,417,847 85 75-84 2014 386,858 167,286 554,144 status quo (1a) 597,527 54 279,258 67 876,785 58 no dementia (2a) 530,333 37 134,828 -19 665,161 20 no lei (3a) 544,103 41 230,525 38 774,628 40 no dem. or lei (4a) 472,033 22 113,215 -32 585,248 6 status quo (1b) 561,031 45 242,396 45 803,427 45 status quo (1c) 632,364 63 317,628 90 949,992 71 85+ 2014 431,405 322,112 753,517 status quo (1a) 610,732 42 655,722 104 1,266,454 68 no dementia (2a) 829,421 92 570,990 77 1,400,411 86 no lei (3a) 662,572 54 612,104 90 1,274,676 69 no dem. or lei (4a) 864,788 100 474,713 47 1,339,501 78 status quo (1b) 553,817 28 529,351 64 1,083,168 44 status quo (1c) 667,508 55 800,347 148 1,467,855 95 the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 253 ltc as two examples which are responsible for signifi cant shares of life years lived in disability in western europe and worldwide, and whose importance will only increase further as population ageing continues (vos et al. 2012). we analyse their effects on both total and sectoral ltc demand at home and in nursing homes. the results indicate the varying effi cacy of dementia and lei in mitigating the increase in total, sector-specifi c and age group-specifi c ltc demand, and show that their outcomes are broadly similar for both genders. only in the lei-free scenario (3a) do some results differ by sex, with the increase in female ltc demand mitigated primarily. this indicates that, in line with the literature, lei affect older women much more frequently than they affect older men (stevens/sogolow 2005; ismail et al. 2002). tab. 2: continuation total home care % institutional % all care % all results (75+) 2014 1,197,324 625,082 1,822,406 status quo (1a) 1,972,462 65 1,267,690 103 3,240,152 78 no dementia (2a) 2,168,770 81 945,800 51 3,114,570 71 no lei (3a) 1,961,572 64 1,177,830 88 3,139,402 72 no dem. or lei (4a) 2,112,498 76 825,065 32 2,937,563 61 status quo (1b) 1,783,781 49 1,028,313 65 2,812,094 54 status quo (1c) 2,162,798 81 1,541,484 147 3,704,282 103 75-84 2014 623,331 240,402 863,733 status quo (1a) 1,031,998 66 426,077 77 1,458,075 69 no dementia (2a) 894,497 44 199,696 -17 1,094,193 27 no lei (3a) 954,513 53 362,258 51 1,316,771 52 no dem. or lei (4a) 800,842 28 169,581 -29 970,423 12 status quo (1b) 948,633 52 360,471 50 1,309,104 52 status quo (1c) 1,114,191 79 496,823 107 1,611,014 87 85+ 2014 573,993 384,680 958,673 status quo (1a) 940,464 64 841,613 119 1,782,077 86 no dementia (2a) 1,274,273 122 746,104 94 2,020,377 111 no lei (3a) 1,007,059 75 815,572 112 1,822,631 90 no dem. or lei (4a) 1,311,656 129 655,484 70 1,967,140 105 status quo (1b) 835,148 45 667,842 74 1,502,990 57 status quo (1c) 1,048,607 83 1,044,661 172 2,093,268 118 source: own calculations • alexander barth254 fig. 4: population aged 75 and older by care type at end points, by scenario -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ no carehome careinstitutional care 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f status quo (1a) 0.00 -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f no dementia (2a) 0.00 -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f status quo (1b) 0.00 -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f no lei (3a) 0.00 -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f status quo (1c) 0.00 -600,000 -200,0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ 0.00 0.200.400.60 0.600.400.200.00 m f no dementia or lei (4a) 0.00 in millionsin millions in millionsin millions in millionsin millions source: own calculations the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 255 dementia is a more infl uential risk factor than lei, both in terms of its impact on total as well as on sectoral and age group-specifi c ltc demand. in the status quo scenario that is used as the baseline, the relative increase in institutional ltc demand is nearly double the increase in ltc demand at home. the removal of dementia shifts the majority of the increase in ltc from institutions to ltc at home, and also results in a modest mitigation of the increase in total ltc demand. additionally, the removal of dementia causes a later onset of and a longer life with ltc dependency. both circumstances contribute to most of the increase in ltc demand shifting from the 75-84 to the 85 and older age group. less institutional ltc dependency in the younger age group comes at the cost of higher demand for ltc at home for the 85 and older group. mitigating the increase in total ltc demand by removing a specifi c risk factor does not therefore necessarily translate into a mitigation for all age groups or for all sectors, but can be a composite effect of trends differing by both age group and ltc type. the effi cacy of lei in mitigating the increase in total ltc demand is smaller than the effect seen when removing dementia, and its impact on sectoral ltc demand is different. the removal of lei mitigates the increase in institutional ltc demand in comparison with the baseline, yet the fi gure is higher than if dementia is removed. the increase in demand for ltc at home is not signifi cantly affected. as a result, the effi cacy of lei lies almost completely in mitigating the increase in institutional ltc demand, albeit to a lesser degree than dementia. eliminating lei also results in a larger increase in ltc demand for the 85 and older age group while the mitigation of the increase in ltc demand for the 75-84-yearold age group is modest. this is the same general pattern as seen for dementia, although to a lesser degree. the largest impact on the plasticity of ltc demand is seen as a consequence of the concurrent removal of both dementia and lei. this scenario not only retains the core characteristics of both individual counterfactual scenarios, but also shows that both conditions are linked synergistically (barth et al. 2016). when both are removed at the same time, the mitigation of the increase in ltc is even more pronounced than could be expected by combining both individual scenarios, both in terms of plasticity of total ltc demand, and regarding the shift in ltc setting from institutions to the home. 5.2 strengths and weaknesses the main strength of this study is that all input parameters are estimated using the same reliable and large-scale longitudinal empirical data that include medical diagnoses, sex, age and type of ltc. it is unaffected by typical survey biases like unitnonresponse or recall uncertainty, which would have been particularly problematic for dementia patients. the data covers the whole population, including those in nursing homes. it should be reiterated that aok data cannot be entirely representative of the german population, as those insured with aok tend to be in slightly worse health and occupy lower socio-economic positions than members of other public or private health insurance schemes (neubauer et al. 2017; hoffmann/icks 2012). basing our estimates on a group that is in a somewhat less favourable posi• alexander barth256 tion might cause our fi ndings to be slightly biased in two ways. first, in terms of overestimating the risk (or mitigating effect) that dementia and lei (or their absence) exert on people’s ltc need, e.g. because they might develop dementia at a younger age or to a more severe degree or be more likely to fall and sustain a severe injury than persons insured elsewhere, who might be healthier or have a more protective lifestyle in terms of compensatory cognitive reserves or dementia or fall risk factors. this could affect both the absolute size as well as the sectoral distribution of future ltc demand in the counterfactual scenarios. second, persons in higher socio-economic positions might have greater fi nancial reserves, which could mean that they are able to avoid or delay having to apply for ltc benefi ts, or institutionalization in cases where the care need is severe, and remain without formal ltc status or in home care longer. this would result in a slight reduction in the transition from no care to home care, or the marked sectoral shift from institutional to home care in dementia-free scenarios. one weakness that affects our projections of ltc is its defi nition, which has changed since the data we used was collected. in the timeframe covered by our data, dementia played a special part in the assessment of offi cial ltc dependence. until 2008, persons with dementia who did not meet any of the adl dependency requirements were not formally eligible for ltc insurance benefi ts. in 2008, ltc dependence level 0 was introduced to include dementia as a criterion for ltc dependency, but this is not available in our data. thus, not everybody with dementia as the sole impairment may have been registered as being ltc dependent. however, the likelihood of receiving ltc benefi ts as a dementia patient is high, especially for older patients (barth et al. 2016; doblhammer et al. 2012; fink/doblhammer 2015; rothgang et al. 2012b). since 2015, after the observation period of the data used here, dementia became a criterion for ltc dependency, which means that more people with dementia as their sole limitation are eligible for ltc benefi ts (straub 2018). under these terms, the effi cacy of dementia in mitigating the increase in future ltc demand might therefore be even higher than our results indicate. the assumptions of future developments of mortality are central to the results. this is the same for any projection, and we showed different scenarios to account for this. 5.3 future research questions this paper explores the impact of two conditions on the plasticity of total, sectoral and age-specifi c ltc demand and fi nds distinct effects and differences. dementia and lei are important cognitive and physical health risk factors, but are only examples. further research should investigate the effects of more diseases that are common in older age. the distinction of different ltc settings and the differentiation of younger and older-age ltc demand should be upheld, because, as the results for dementia indicated, signifi cant differences might occur. in this case, they were caused by a decreased risk of transitioning from home to institutional ltc. further research could thus not only consider the risk of requiring any kind of ltc, but also focus on factors for the increase in care need, i.e. the transition from ltc at home to institutional ltc or to a higher care level. going beyond health-related risk factors the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 257 for ltc, other potentially modifi able determinants of ltc demand, e.g. individual living conditions, individual lifestyle factors or social interactions, could be incorporated. household composition is an important aspect of living conditions that should be taken into account. it is not only important for the possibility of receiving care from the partner. living alone in older age is also a risk factor for ltc need. compared to households with more than one resident, people living alone in older age are often in poor health, have problems performing adl tasks, have lower levels of physical activity, are at greater risk of being isolated and suffer falls more often – all of which are risk factors for care need and for determinants of care need, like dementia (kharicha et al. 2007). it is plausible that for a comparatively milder ltc risk factor, a dependent person living alone has a higher institutionalization risk than one living with a partner. consequently, the inclusion of household composition in models used to estimate ltc transition risks would be desirable. however, we were unable to consider it in this paper because information on household structure is not included in health insurance routine data. each country’s care regime and their defi nitions of care need are unique. how diseases or impairments translate into ltc entitlement, how access to ltc is regulated, whether ltc support is means-tested, which level of government organises ltc provision, whether care is provided on a public or private basis or a mixture of the two, how ltc demand is related to specifi c care settings and what level of quality is aimed for all depend on the ltc regime (riedel/kraus 2011). future research could also assess whether our fi ndings are unique to the german ltc regime between 2004 and 2010, or if and to what degree they can be generalised. 5.4 conclusion the total demand for ltc services will continue to increase across developed countries over the coming decades (fujisawai/colombo 2009; comas-herrera et al. 2006). we show that the amount of the increase in total and sector-specifi c ltc demand can be mitigated by targeting potentially modifi able risk factors. in particular, the removal of dementia and, to a lesser degree, the removal of lei, signifi cantly mitigate the increase in institutional ltc dependency at the cost of additional increases in ltc at home. because nursing homes are both cost-intensive and labourintensive, identifying effective intervention strategies is important for policy-makers striving to decrease ltc costs and provide suffi cient care services when faced with a potential shortage in professional ltc staff (fujisawai/colombo 2009; geerts et al. 2012). according to the german federal ministry of health, up to 214,000 jobs for care professionals will be vacant in 2025 due to insuffi cient labour supply (bundesministerium für gesundheit 2015), while another projection indicates half a million vacant full-time jobs by 2030 (vereinigung der bayerischen wirtschaft 2012). due to smaller cohort sizes in recent decades, the total number of people of working age is decreasing and will continue to do so well into the 2030s (bundesministerium für arbeit und soziales 2013). policy-makers have already taken action to make the care sector more competitive, for instance by campaigning for higher wages or • alexander barth258 underlining high job security (bundesministerium für gesundheit 2015; fujisawai/ colombo 2009). even if the increase in institutional ltc demand were able to be mitigated by targeting risk factors like dementia, this would come at the cost of a marked increase in demand for ltc at home. although this does not necessarily require care professionals, it depends on the availability of informal caregivers, primarily partners and children (dukhovnov/zagheni 2015). relatively speaking, more older people will live with a partner in the future (pötzsch 2011), so the availability of partner-based informal ltc potential is not the most serious problem for care needs that are classed as being non-severe. children make up the other major group of informal caregivers. as far as the availability of informal care potential is concerned, increasing childlessness in particular might be a problem once cohorts that have seen a decline in fertility reach ages where ltc becomes prevalent by the end of the 2030s (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). projections of informal care potential by adult children indicate a decrease of more than 30 percent between 2009 and 2040, and up to 40 percent by 2060 (dudel 2015). this is not only a result of fewer children, but also of increasing labour-market participation, especially by middle-aged women (schulz 2010), which reduces their availability as caregivers (bundesministerium für arbeit und soziales 2013). this decline in informal care potential is estimated to be equal to 125,000 full-time care professionals in 2030 (vereinigung der bayerischen wirtschaft 2012). additionally, greater distances between where a dependent person and supporting child live might make the provision of informal care more diffi cult (nowossadeck et al. 2016). as a result, professional ltc will be required above all by persons with ltc dependency who are single and childless, or whose children do not live close by. these factors should be taken into account when planning ltc services from a regional perspective. more fl exibility in mixed work-care scenarios might help in enabling more children of working age to provide care to their parents. this also requires fi nancial losses incurred as a result of fewer working hours to be partially compensated by transfer payments. since most informal care is still provided by females (dukhovnov/zagheni 2015), efforts to promote more male provision of informal care could also help to recruit more informal carers. aside from trying to tap into all available informal care resources and increasing the attractiveness of the care sector, other areas could be explored. for instance, innovations in housing and technology could help ltc dependent persons to live at home longer (barth/doblhammer 2016; fujisawai/colombo 2009). new forms of living arrangements, such as shared apartments, could enable ltc recipients to assist each other as far as possible and split the use of informal or professional assistance between the remaining tasks. for home owners, re-mortgaging to fi nance ltc support is becoming more popular. however, the most promising approach is the prevention or delay of primary risk factors for ltc need. identifying infl uential health-related ltc risk factors and assessing their effects on the plasticity of total, sectoral and age-specifi c ltc demand is thus useful for policy planning. in this study, dementia was identifi ed as a determinant that has a particularly big impact, especially in terms of mitigating the increase in institutional ltc demand. the results of counterfactual scenarios the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 259 cannot be interpreted as realistically achievable goals because they assume the population-wide, instantaneous elimination of a specifi c disease. however, they illustrate the maximum attainable impact and targeting the risk factors that have the biggest impact is a reasonable strategy. a risk factor identifi ed as signifi cant in a counterfactual scenario should also have a notable, albeit smaller impact in real life, where intervention is only partially successful. in the context of our results, this indicates that dementia should be a primary target, because its impact was so pronounced that even partly successful interventions would mitigate the increase in ltc demand to a greater extent than a completely successful intervention against less severe risk factors like lei. lesser risk factors should not be dismissed outright as possible intervention targets, because synergistic effects between risk factors should be taken into account. the effect of concurrent lei and dementia, which disproportionately increases ltc risk, is a reason to target the lesser risk factor lei, if assessed individually. without lei, ltc dependency can be slightly reduced directly, but its removal can also be helpful in the event of a later onset of dementia as it then prevents the disproportionately greater ltc risk. acknowledgements i would like to thank gabriele doblhammer for her important input in the design of this study, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions which have led to signifi cant improvements in the manuscript. i would also like to thank wido, the scientifi c research 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can we really (all) work longer? trends in healthy life expectancy according to social stratum in germany. in: comparative population studies 38,3: 565-582 [doi: 10.4232/10.cpos-2013-03en]. united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division 2017: world population ageing 2017. united nations new york, 2017 vereinigung der bayerischen wirtschaft 2012: pfl egelandschaft 2030. vos, theo et al. 2012: years lived with disability (ylds) for 1160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2010. in: the lancet 380,9859: 2163-2196 [doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(12)61729-2]. wang, hui-xin et al. 2002: late-life engagement in social and leisure activities is associated with a decreased risk of dementia: a longitudinal study from the kungsholmen project. in: american journal of epidemiology 155,12: 1081-1087 [doi: 10.1093/ aje/155.12.1081]. zhou, ying; putter, hein; doblhammer, gabriele 2016: years of life lost due to lower extremity injury in association with dementia, and care need: a 6-year follow-up population-based study using a multi-state approach among german elderly. in: bmc geriatrics 16,1: 9 [doi: 10.1186/s12877-016-0184-7]. the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 263 date of submission: 14.10.2018 date of acceptance: 07.10.2019 alexander barth (). university of rostock, institute for sociology and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: alexander.barth2@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/isd/lehrstuhl/esf/staff-members/ • alexander barth264 appendix fig. a1: base year transition probabilities for status quo scenario 1a 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability male 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability female 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 265 fig. a2: base year transition probabilities for dementia-free counterfactual scenario 2a 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability male 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability female 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability • alexander barth266 fig. a3: base year transition probabilities for lower extremity injury-free counterfactual scenario 3a 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability male 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability 0.001 0.010 0.100 1.000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.000 probability female 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability the impact of dementia and extremity injuries on the plasticity of long-term care demand • 267 fig. a4: base year transition probabilities for dementia and lower-extremity injury-free counterfactual scenario 4a 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.0000 probability male 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age no care —> home care no care —> institutional care no care —> death no care —> no care 0.0000 probability female 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age home care —> institutional care home care —> death home care —> home care probability 0.00 0.01 0.10 1.00 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95+ age institutional care —> death institutional care —> institutional care probability published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020: men from eastern germany most affected decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020: men from eastern germany most affected marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego abstract: the covid-19 pandemic caused an increase in mortality in 2020 with a resultant decrease in life expectancy in most countries around the world. in germany, the reduction in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020 was comparatively small, at -0.20 years. the decrease was stronger among men than among women (-0.24 vs. -0.13 years) and in eastern rather than in western germany (-0.36 vs. -0.16 years). men in eastern germany experienced the biggest decline in life expectancy at birth (-0.41 years). for western german men, the decline was less pronounced (-0.19 years). among women, the decline in life expectancy at birth was also greater in eastern (-0.25 years) than in western germany (-0.10 years). as a result of these developments, the differences in life expectancy between the two parts of germany, and between women and men, increased compared with the previous year. life expectancy at age 65 decreased more strongly than life expectancy at birth for both sexes and in all regions. this refl ects the fact that it was mainly older age groups that were affected by the increase in mortality in 2020. this paper provides further insights into mortality changes in 2020, based on age decomposition and an analysis of lifespan inequality. we conclude that the population in eastern germany was hit harder by the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 than the population in the western germany. keywords: life expectancy · lifespan inequality · mortality · covid-19 · germany · eastern germany · western germany · west-east difference · gender difference comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 555-574 (date of release: 20.12.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-20 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-20en3 • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego556 1 introduction the covid-19 pandemic changed human life signifi cantly in 2020, affecting all populations around the globe and leading to increases in human mortality in many parts of the world. in germany, the fi rst cases of death related to the covid-19 pandemic were reported at the beginning of march 2020. as the virus continued to spread, not only in germany but also worldwide, researchers began investigating the impact of covid-19 on mortality. since there is no uniform way of classifying, recording, and reporting covid-19 deaths (karanikolos et al. 2020), and because the number of reported covid-19 cases is affected by individual countries’ testing capacity, scholars have focused on comparing the total number of deaths observed in the current period, i.e. deaths from all causes, with death counts observed in previous periods (ghislandi et al. 2021; beaney et al. 2020; vandoros 2020). in this way, it is possible to assess the extent to which the observed number of deaths in a given period – e.g. in a calendar week or year – is unexpected in relation to the previous year(s). this is also referred to as “excess deaths”. previous studies have found that germany did indeed experience excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, it has been shown that excess deaths in germany are not distributed uniformly over time, age, and regions (zur nieden/ engelhard 2021; sauerberg 2021). for instance, the largest number of excess deaths occurred in the fi nal calendar weeks of 2020, with particularly high levels observed in eastern germany.1 it has also been documented that, in germany and in other countries, excess mortality has been generally higher among older individuals and that men tend to show a higher risk of dying as a result of covid-19 than women (islam et al. 2021; kontis et al. 2020; gebhard et al. 2020; bhopal/bhopal 2020). the metric of excess deaths provides useful information about exceptional changes in death counts. yet, the extent to which the increase in mortality is exceptional is diffi cult to assess from these numbers. an intuitively more accessible number is the resulting change in period life expectancy (le). it connects a set of age-specifi c death rates observed in a given period and summarises them in terms of the average number of life years that would be lived in the population under current death rates. accordingly, an increase or decrease in le can be directly ascribed to changes in age-specifi c death rates. it should be noted, however, that comparisons based on mortality count measures both before and during the pandemic and statistics of excess deaths, and changes in le might be impacted by any additional temporary external shocks to mortality in the study period, e.g. heat waves in the summer or infl uenza epidemics in the winter. for example, the interventions to contain the spread of sars-cov-2 might have actually reduced the spread of infl uenza in 2020 and hence resulted in lower death rates from this cause in 2020 than in 2019, as suggested by recent reports showing that infl uenza viruses were at historic low levels in 2021 (olsen et al. 2021). as a result, the excess mortality 1 see “death counts by calendar week” for each state in germany. available at https://service. destatis.de/de/bevoelkerung/sterbefallzahlen_bundeslaender.html. decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 557 in 2020, as compared with 2019, might have been higher than the observed fi gures if the spread of infl uenza had not been reduced by non-pharmaceutical measures such as lockdowns and social distancing. several studies have used le to assess the impact of covid-19 on mortality in european countries such as italy, sweden, spain, and the uk (ghislandi et al. 2021; modig et al. 2020; trias-llimós et al. 2020; aburto et al. 2021a). estimates for europe revealed that the extent of changes in le in 2020 compared with 2019 is very heterogeneous, ranging from a considerable decrease of -1.6 years in spain to an increase of +0.3 years in norway (see eurostat 2021). as of the beginning of september 2021, we had found three publications with information on changes in le in germany. the fi rst stems from the federal statistical offi ce of germany, which published life tables with corresponding le estimates for the periods 2017-2019 and 2018-2020 (statistisches bundesamt 2021). however, the aggregation of three calendar years makes it diffi cult to assess the impact of covid-19 on le because the pandemic only started in 2020. the increases in mortality in 2020 are compensated by decreasing mortality in previous years which meant that le remained more or less constant between the two periods 2017-19 and 2018-20 (+0.04 years for women and +0.01 years for men). the abovementioned data from eurostat (2021) includes le fi gures for germany for single calendar years up to 2020. they report that le has decreased by -0.2 years between 2019 and 2020 for the population of germany as a whole. yet, the database of these estimates is limited. first, the number of deaths includes both sexes combined, which prevents a gender-specifi c view of the changes. second, the data from which le is calculated is only divided into broad age intervals, i.e. in 10-year age groups below age 40, in 5-year age groups for ages 40 to 84, and 85+ as the last open age interval (eurostat 2021). this might bias the le values because the indicator is particularly sensitive to changes in death rates at very young ages. in addition, the starting age of the last open age interval might be too low because deaths related to covid-19 have occurred predominantly in older age groups. thus, changes in old age mortality between 2019 and 2020 might not be fully taken into account. finally, aburto et al. (2021b) estimated le reductions in 2020 for several countries, including germany. their data stems from the “short-term mortality fluctuations” (stmf) data series provided by the human mortality database (hmd 2021). in the case of germany, data refers to weekly death counts from 2016 onwards which are available by sex and 5-year age groups (except for the fi rst age group 0-29), with 95+ being the last open age interval. aburto et al. (2021b) used a penalised composite link model (pclm) to obtain single age-specifi c death counts from age 0 to 110 from the grouped data. according to their estimates, le in germany decreased in 2020 by -0.23 years among women and -0.38 years among men. all of these estimates suggest that the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on le were much smaller in germany than in most of the other countries. the aim of our paper is to extend the knowledge presented to date on changes in le in germany in 2020 by breaking the german population down into the regions of eastern and western germany, based on their former borders. even 30 years on • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego558 from reunifi cation, the two parts of the country continue to experience differences in many aspects, including population health and health care.2 among men, the gap in le at birth is still more than one year in favour of western germany (grigoriev et al. 2021).3 although the gap between eastern and western germany seemed to have vanished among women, the differences in living conditions that continue to prevail might have resulted in the covid-19 pandemic affecting both sexes in different ways. in addition to presenting the changes in le at birth and at age 65 for eastern and western germany, we decompose the differences in le between 2019 and 2020 by age to see whether the changes in le were caused by similar or different changes in age-specifi c mortality of women and men in the two german regions. as we know from previous studies, the mortality increase observed in 2020 was of a different magnitude for young and old age groups, reinforcing the importance of capturing the role of specifi c ages in the observed mortality changes. finally, we evaluate whether changes in le were accompanied by an increase or decrease in lifespan inequality and if the direction and magnitude of the changes were the same for both regions. it is worth mentioning the biggest challenge of this study, namely to estimate le separately for eastern and western germany, because the necessary data had to be reconstructed from the statistical material that was available and provided by the federal statistical offi ce. this cannot be done without a number of assumptions and approximations which will be explained in detail in the subsequent section on data and methods. after presenting the results of our analyses, we will summarise and discuss them in the fi nal section, focusing in particular on the different impact of the covid-19 pandemic on le in eastern and western germany. 2 data and methods the analyses that are presented are based on life tables for different regions, namely western germany (refl ecting the geographical area of the former federal republic of germany, frg), eastern germany (refl ecting the geographical area of the former german democratic republic, gdr) and germany as a whole, resulting from the sum of western and eastern germany.4 the calculations are based on age and sex-specifi c numbers of deaths and the living population (population at risk) for single calendar years provided by the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt). because the federal statistical offi ce stopped producing statistics for 2 see the recent “spiegel” article about health inequalities between eastern and western germany 30 years on from reunifi cation, for example. available at: https://www.spiegel.de/ gesundheit/diagnose/30-jahre-mauerfall-so-unterscheidet-sich-die-gesundheit-in-west-undost-a-1288102.html. 3 see also the time series of differences in life expectancy between western and eastern germany at https://lebenserwartung.info. 4 we update and publish these data with corresponding statistics on life expectancy in germany regularly on the website https://lebenserwartung.info. decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 559 the geographical areas of the former frg and gdr in 2000, we had to derive these numbers from the statistics available. for the population at risk, we used the ageand sex-specifi c average population for single ages from 0-99 and the last open age interval of 100+, as provided by the federal statistical offi ce. these data related to germany as a whole, western germany excluding berlin and eastern germany excluding berlin. until 2012, the data on the living population is based on a forward projection of the censuses of 1981 in former east germany and 1987 in former west germany (intercensal population updates). since 2013, the data is based on the forward projection of the census in 2011. note that unlike previous censuses in germany, the census in 2011 was not carried out as a traditional census in which all residents are counted and the heads of all households are interviewed. instead, only a sample of households was interviewed and most of the data was collected from registers of administrative authorities, like the residents’ registration offi ces, and the registers from the german federal employment agency.5 as a consequence, the total population numbers result from extrapolations which leads to decimal numbers in the population counts and, accordingly, to rounding deviations between the offi cial total and aggregated total population numbers. in a fi rst step, we used the data from the federal statistical offi ce to derive the ageand sex-specifi c average population for berlin by subtracting the data for western and eastern germany excluding berlin from the data for the total population of germany. we then subdivided the population of berlin into former west and east berlin on the basis of the average total population numbers for the twelve districts of berlin as published annually by the statistical offi ce of berlin and brandenburg (amt für statistik berlin-brandenburg), derived for a year t from the published population stocks on 31 december of the years t-1 and t. the districts of charlottenburg-wilmersdorf, spandau, steglitz-zehlendorf, neukölln and reinickendorf were assigned in their entirety to west berlin, and the districts of pankow, tempelhof-schönefeld, treptow-köpenick, marzahn-hellersdorf and lichtenberg to east berlin. the districts of mitte and friedrichshein-kreuzberg cover territories of both former german states and were assigned equally (50:50) to the populations of west and east berlin. figure a1 in the appendix shows the resulting proportions of the estimated total average populations of west and east berlin which were in turn used as weights to assign the population of berlin accordingly to western and eastern germany. because a further separation of the data for the districts of berlin by age and sex was not available for each calendar year, we used the weights for the total populations of west and east berlin for each age and sex group. finally, we constructed the ageand sex-specifi c populations of western germany (former frg) and eastern germany (former gdr) by adding the estimated population numbers of west and east berlin to the statistical offi ce data for western germany excluding berlin and for eastern germany excluding berlin accordingly. 5 for details, see https://www.zensus2011.de. • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego560 information about deaths was available with the same specifi cations as the data for the average population until 2017, i.e. ageand sex-specifi c number of deaths for single ages from ages 0-99 and the last open age interval of 100+, available for germany as a whole, western germany excluding berlin and eastern germany excluding berlin. these data were assigned to the geographical areas of the former frg and gdr using the same strategy as described above for the living population, and with the same weights for east and west berlin as derived from the population data for the districts of berlin. since 2018, however, the federal statistical offi ce no longer provides data relating to deaths with the same structure and details. data for single ages is now provided for germany as a whole, western germany excluding berlin and eastern germany including berlin; this prevents the derivation of data for berlin. moreover, for confi dentiality purposes, the only data made available is for ages with a certain minimum number of deaths. therefore, we used the available data for deaths by broader age groups for the 16 german states and derived the numbers for western germany excluding berlin, eastern germany excluding berlin and for berlin for these broader age intervals. because of the confi dentiality issue, the extent of the age intervals differs between sexes and calendar years: the age group 0-1 remained a single-year age group in all calendar years, but the following interval from age 1 differs in its extent, being 1-19 in 2018, 1-34 in 2019, and 1-29 in 2020. the remaining ages were grouped into 5-year intervals up to the age group 95-99 and 100+ as the last open age interval. we estimated the proportion of deaths for western germany excluding berlin, eastern germany excluding berlin and for berlin for each available age interval, and separated by sex. these proportions were then applied to the number of deaths by single ages for the total female and male populations of germany, e.g. for 2020, the weight for the age interval 1-29 for the single ages 1-29, the weight for the age group 30-34 for the single ages 30-34, and so forth. the fi nal allocation to the geographic units western germany (former frg) and eastern germany (former gdr) was made as described above for the living population and for deaths until 2017. although these restrictions in the information available on deaths in germany increased the extent of assumptions, we are confi dent that the estimated age and sex-specifi c numbers of death for eastern and western germany are good approximations. figure a2 in the appendix shows the trends in the relative number of deaths for women and men in western and eastern germany from 2001 to 2020, summarised for the age groups 0-29, 30-64 and 65+. the graphs reveal that the changes in the estimation strategy in 2017 do not lead to any break in the time trends. the life tables for women and men of western germany, eastern germany and germany as a whole were calculated using the standard demographic methodology, based on the ageand sex-specifi c death rates for single ages 0-99 and the last open age interval 100+ for single calendar years (see, for example, preston et al. 2001). changes in le between 2019 and 2020 were decomposed into age-specifi c contributions with the decomposition method proposed by arriaga (1984). the method allows the contribution of each age (group) to the difference in le to be calculated, i.e. decreases or increases in age-specifi c mortality will lead to either decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 561 positive or negative contributions and the sum across all age-specifi c contributions is equal to the overall change in le. more details about the decomposition method and the corresponding equations can be found in preston et al. (2001). in addition to investigating patterns and changes in le, we also examine changes in lifespan inequality, measured here by the e-dagger indicator (shkolnikov et al. 2011; vaupel/canudas-romo 2003). while le refl ects the average lifespan duration, lifespan inequality focuses on differences between individuals in the duration of life. when studying age at death distributions over calendar time or comparing populations, the inclusion of lifespan inequality in addition to the le indicator allows for a deeper understanding of how differences in mortality, or changes over the calendar time, are distributed across different age-groups. for example, it has been demonstrated that a rise in le can be accompanied by either an increase or a decrease in lifespan inequality, depending on which age groups benefi t most from the mortality decline (vaupel et al. 2011; van raalte/caswell 2013; zhang/vaupel 2009). the same applies to a reduction in le: it can be accompanied by an increase (vigezzi et al. 2021) or a decrease (aburto et al. 2021a) in lifespan inequality. once again, the effect depends on the ages at which most of the increase in mortality occurs. 3 results in 2020, le at birth was 81.01 years for the population of germany as a whole (83.43 years for women and 78.60 years for men). compared with the previous year, le decreased by -0.20 years in the population as a whole (table 1). the decrease was greater for men than for women (-0.24 vs. -0.13 years), and it was stronger in eastern than in western germany (-0.36 vs. -0.16 years). the biggest decrease in le among all of the subpopulations that were considered was experienced by men in eastern germany (-0.41 years). for men in western germany, the decline in le was less pronounced (-0.19 years). among women, the decline in le was also greater in former east germany than in former west germany: -0.25 years of le among eastern german women versus -0.10 years among western german women. as a consequence of these changes in le at birth, the le gaps between western and eastern germany increased between 2019 and 2020 (see fig. 1). among men, the gap now amounts to 1.50 years in favour of western germany (1.28 years in 2019). such a large difference was last observed 20 years previously, in 2000. among women, the west-east difference, which had been fl uctuating around zero for around a decade, reversed again in favour of the west and now amounts to 0.10 years (2019: -0.05 years). for the population as a whole (both sexes combined), the difference in le between western and eastern germany increased to 0.86 years (2019: 0.66 years). as a further consequence of the changes in le at birth, the differences in le between women and men increased in 2020 compared with 2019. the gender gap in le is now 4.84 years in favour of women in germany as a whole (2019: 4.72 years), 4.57 years in western germany (2019: 4.47 years) and 5.97 years in eastern germany • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego562 (2019: 5.80 years). however, the increase in the differences in le between sexes was slightly smaller than the increase in inequality between eastern and western germany (+0.11 vs. +0.20 years). between 2019 and 2020, the decrease in le at age 65 was greater than the decrease in le at birth for both sexes and in all regions (see table 1). this indicates that it was mainly the older age groups that were affected by the increase in mortality in 2020. figure 2 shows the results of the decomposition of changes in le between 2019 and 2020 into the contributions of 5-year age groups (exceptions: single age 0-1 and last open age interval 100+). the results of the decomposition analysis confi rm that it was mostly older age groups that contributed to the decrease in le. among men, the mortality increase started at around age 65 in germany as a whole and in western germany, and at a slightly younger age (around 60) in eastern germany. mortality among the younger age groups (0-30 years) remained almost constant in germany as a whole and in western germany. in contrast, there was a decrease in mortality among men in eastern germany of the same ages between 2019 and 2020. tab. 1: life expectancy at birth and at age 65 (by sex) for germany as a whole, eastern germany and western germany in 2019 and 2020 year 2019 year 2020 difference 2019-2020 at birth at age 65 at birth at age 65 at birth at age 65 germany as a whole both sexes 81.21 19.77 81.01 19.55 -0.20 -0.22 women 83.56 21.27 83.43 21.11 -0.13 -0.16 men 78.84 18.10 78.60 17.84 -0.24 -0.26 eastern germany both sexes 80.66 19.67 80.31 19.27 -0.36 -0.40 women 83.60 21.38 83.35 21.09 -0.25 -0.29 men 77.79 17.75 77.38 17.28 -0.41 -0.47 western germany both sexes 81.33 19.79 81.17 19.62 -0.16 -0.17 women 83.55 21.25 83.45 21.12 -0.10 -0.13 men 79.08 18.18 78.88 17.98 -0.19 -0.20 difference between sexes germany as a whole 4.72 3.18 4.84 3.27 +0.11 +0.09 eastern germany 5.80 3.63 5.97 3.80 +0.17 +0.18 western germany 4.47 3.07 4.57 3.14 +0.10 +0.07 west-east difference both sexes 0.66 0.13 0.86 0.35 +0.20 +0.22 women -0.05 -0.13 0.10 0.03 +0.15 +0.16 men 1.28 0.43 1.50 0.69 +0.22 +0.26 source: own calculations with data from the federal statistical offi ce. decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 563 women show smaller age-specifi c contributions than man, which is in line with their smaller decreases in le. however, women do not only differ in terms of the magnitude of the le decrease, but also in terms of the age pattern. compared with men, the changes in le were due in larger part to increased mortality in older ages (around ages 75+ for germany as a whole and for western germany). the pattern for women in eastern germany differs slightly, however. first, and similar to what was described for men, the mortality increase started at slightly younger ages (in this case around 65). second, girls born in eastern germany experienced a higher level of infant mortality in 2020 compared with 2019, contributing about -0.03 years to the difference in le. table 2 summarises the described age-specifi c contributions to differences in le for germany as a whole, eastern germany, and western germany for the broader age groups 0-29, 30-64 and 65+. finally, we examine the effect of the pandemic on mortality in germany in another statistic frequently derived from period life tables: lifespan inequality. as can be seen in table 3, the decrease in le in 2020 was accompanied by a small decrease in lifespan inequality (of -0.09 years, from 9.93 years to 9.84 years), which was of a similar magnitude for both women and men, but stronger in eastern than in western germany. in keeping with the changes observed in le, men in eastern germany experienced the largest decrease in lifespan inequality at birth (-0.23 years). for western german men, the decline in lifespan inequality was only -0.10 years. among women, the decline in lifespan inequality was also greater in former east germany than in former west germany: -0.16 years among eastern german women versus -0.08 years among western german women. the fact that lifespan inequality decreased in 2020 as against a year earlier is due to the increase in mortality affecting predominantly the younger elderly. this in turn led to a stronger concentration of deaths in this age segment and thus to a reduced variation in ages at death. this is also refl ected in the fact that the decrease in lifespan inequality at fig. 1: difference in life expectancy (le) at birth and at age 65 between western and eastern germany, 2000-2020 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 calendar year west-east difference -0.1 le at birth 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 calendar year men women total west-east difference -0.1 le at age 65 source: own calculations with data from the federal statistical offi ce. • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego564 fig. 2: age decomposition of differences in life expectancy (le) at birth between 2019 and 2020 in germany as a whole, eastern germany and western germany, by sex -0.150 -0.075 0.000 0.075 0.150 0 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 0+ age group men, change in le at birth: -0.24 women, change in le at birth: -0.13 contribution to change in le at birth germany as a whole -0.150 -0.075 0.000 0.075 0.150 0 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 0+ age group men, change in le at birth: -0.41 women, change in le at birth: -0.25 contribution to change in le at birth eastern germany -0.150 -0.075 0.000 0.075 0.150 0 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 0+ age group men, change in le at birth: -0.19 women, change in le at birth: -0.10 contribution to change in le at birth western germany source: own calculations with data from the federal statistical offi ce. decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 565 ages 65+ was similar to the changes in lifespan inequality at birth for both sexes and in all regional groups. the varying extents of changes in lifespan inequality led to some interesting consequences regarding the differences between eastern and western germany. whereas in 2019, women in western germany were characterised by only slightly higher lifespan inequality as against eastern german women (higher by 0.05 years), the gap increased to 0.13 years in 2020. the opposite can be observed for men: inequality in the lifespans of western german men was lower than that of eastern german men. in 2019, the west-east gap in lifespan inequality was of more than half a year (-0.56) before decreasing to -0.43 in 2020. 4 summary and discussion differences in mortality between eastern and western germany have been a longstanding topic for demographic research. these are rooted in varying health experiences during the period prior to reunifi cation which were caused by differing economic, social, medical, and environmental contexts in the two parts of germany, resulting in excess mortality in eastern germany that persisted until long after reunifi cation and the adoption of the western health care system in the territory of the former gdr (kibele 2012; diehl 2008; gjonça et al. 2000; luy 2004; simon 2005). although the gap in le between the two regions has been narrowing rapidly since reunifi cation, mortality has not converged in a uniform manner for both sexes and has also differed between age groups and causes of death (nolte et al. 2000, 2001; vogt et al. 2017). in addition, overall living conditions in eastern regions remained persistently worse relative to western germany, indicating that current eastern-western differentials are still relevant when it comes to explaining mortality tab. 2: contribution of changes in mortality in selected age groups to changes in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020 contribution by age group 0-29 30-64 65+ total change germany as a whole women +0.01 +0.01 -0.15 -0.13 men +0.04 -0.06 -0.22 -0.24 eastern germany women +0.01 +0.01 -0.27 -0.25 men +0.09 -0.11 -0.39 -0.41 western germany women +0.01 +0.01 -0.12 -0.10 men +0.04 -0.05 -0.18 -0.19 source: own calculations with data from the federal statistical offi ce. • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego566 patterns, and have increasingly gained scientifi c and political awareness (luy 2006; razum et al. 2008; shkolnikov et al. 2008). as a result of these ongoing differences, the covid-19 pandemic was likely to have a different effect on mortality in the two parts of the country. even though the extent of the decrease in le in 2020 was only minor in germany compared with other countries, our results indicate that the increase in mortality between 2019 and 2020 did indeed follow different patterns in eastern and western germany. this fi nding suggests that the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on le and lifespan inequality was not the same in the two parts of germany. the biggest decrease in le at birth was experienced by men in eastern germany (-0.41 years). for men in western germany, the decline in le was less pronounced (-0.19 years). similarly, among women, the decline in le was also greater in eastern germany (-0.25 years) than in western germany (-0.10 years). as a consequence of these changes, the gap in le between western and eastern germany increased to a level that was last observed in the year 2000. even though these differences also affected tab. 3: lifespan inequality at birth and at age 65 (by sex) for germany as a whole, eastern germany, and western germany in 2019 and 2020 year 2019 year 2020 difference 2019-2020 at birth at age 65 at birth at age 65 at birth at age 65 germany as a whole both sexes 9.93 7.34 9.84 7.27 -0.10 -0.08 women 9.04 6.97 8.94 6.89 -0.10 -0.07 men 10.42 7.45 10.30 7.35 -0.12 -0.10 eastern germany both sexes 10.23 7.36 10.06 7.23 -0.17 -0.14 women 9.00 6.87 8.84 6.74 -0.16 -0.13 men 10.88 7.52 10.65 7.33 -0.23 -0.18 western germany both sexes 9.87 7.34 9.79 7.27 -0.08 -0.06 women 9.05 6.99 8.97 6.93 -0.08 -0.06 men 10.32 7.43 10.22 7.35 -0.10 -0.09 difference between sexes germany as a whole 1.39 0.49 1.37 0.46 -0.02 -0.03 eastern germany 1.88 0.65 1.81 0.60 -0.07 -0.05 western germany 1.27 0.44 1.26 0.42 -0.01 -0.02 west-east difference both sexes -0.37 -0.02 -0.28 +0.05 +0.09 +0.07 women +0.05 +0.12 +0.13 +0.20 +0.07 +0.07 men -0.56 -0.08 -0.43 0.02 +0.13 +0.10 source: own calculations with data from the federal statistical offi ce. decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 567 the gap in le between women and men for germany as a whole, the increase in differences in le between sexes was smaller than the increase in differences between eastern and western germany. in addition, our decomposition of le into age-specifi c contributions showed that le at age 65 decreased more strongly than le at birth for both sexes and in both regions from 2019 to 2020. this underlines the fact that older age groups were those accounting most for the increase in mortality in 2020, whereas younger individuals experienced constant or even slightly lower mortality levels in 2020 (at least partly because of a lower number of accidents due to lockdown measures). the age at which the increase in old age mortality began was slightly earlier in men than in women. in accordance with these changes in age-specifi c mortality, the changes in lifespan inequality also differed between women and men, and between western and eastern germany. because eastern german women and men were affected by the mortality increase among the younger elderly more than their western counterparts, lifespan inequality decreased to a greater extent for both sexes in this part of the country. the decrease in lifespan inequality among both sexes in all regions confi rms the fi ndings from studies for other countries that also found a decrease in lifespan inequality between 2019 and 2020 as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic (e.g. aburto et al. 2021a). note, however, that the fact that lifespans became more equal during the covid-19 pandemic should not be interpreted as a positive change in mortality. it instead refl ects the shift of deaths from older to younger elderly with the resulting decrease in the variation of ages at death. as a result, ages at death became more homogenous, but in a negative way, because more people died at a younger age. in light of the comparatively small mortality changes in germany in 2020, the diffi cult data issue regarding berlin (for which population and death data are no longer published separately for former east and west berlin by the federal statistical offi ce) is a noteworthy limitation of this study. as described in the data section, we assigned the population and deaths in berlin to eastern and western germany simply by the calendar year-specifi c proportions of the current population in the former territories of east and west berlin, thus assuming that mortality is identical in the two parts of the german capital. although internal and external migration has seen a considerable mixing of the populations in east and west berlin following reunifi cation, there are several reasons why this assumption might be incorrect, one being the continuing difference in age structures and socioeconomic conditions. however, the possible bias caused by this assumption can be neglected for western germany because of west berlin’s low proportion in the population as a whole (around 5 percent for both the living population and deaths in 2020). the corresponding proportion for eastern germany is higher (around 25 percent for the living population and around 20 percent for deaths in 2020), but comparisons of our le estimates with those of the hmd, which carried out more detailed reconstructions of the data for former east and west berlin until 2017, shows only minor deviations (for 2017, our estimates are only 0.01 years higher for women and 0.10 years lower for men). similarly, the estimates of e-dagger – the lifespan inequality measure applied in this study – are lower in our data only by 0.01 years for eastern german women • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego568 and higher by 0.05 years for eastern german men in 2017, compared with those based on the hmd (data not shown). nonetheless, it may be the case that these deviations apply similarly to 2020, possibly making the relatively small differences between eastern and western german men even smaller. it should be noted again, however, that the reductions in le observed in germany are much smaller relative to other countries such as the us, russia, spain, and belgium (andrasfay/goldman 2021; aburto et al. 2021b/c). this is likely to be a result of the strict prevention and social support measures imposed by the government. since the differences in le decreases that we are seeing are relatively small for the most part (e.g. -0.25 years for women in eastern germany vs. -0.10 years for women in western germany), statistical randomness should be considered when interpreting our results. more specifi cally, deviations in le trends that lay in the range of about 0.10 to 0.20 years may have occurred at random. furthermore, neither the western nor the eastern german population is homogenous. it has been shown, for example, that saxony experienced the strongest decline in le while mecklenburg-western pomerania is one of the regions where changes in le between 2019 and 2020 have been the smallest (bib 2021). in this sense, readers should be aware that the results presented in this study refer to average values for territories with substantial heterogeneity. in addition to differences between eastern and western germany in terms of mortality deterioration during the covid-19 pandemic, there is also empirical evidence for a north-south gradient (bib 2021; zur nieden/engelhart 2021). this suggests that differences in recent le trends cannot be fully explained by the health differentials that persist between eastern and western germany. likewise, the incidence of infection in neighbouring countries is likely to play a role as well. a proper assessment of the reasons for the observed le differences is, however, beyond the scope of this study. finally, it should be noted that a decline in le between two calendar years and the magnitude of the decline observed in 2020 are not exceptional (see fig. 3). for instance, le decreased in 2015 in all regions and for both genders as well. the magnitude of this reduction was even greater in 2015, but other population groups were affected. whereas in 2020 increased levels of mortality were greater among men than women, the decrease in 2015 was stronger among women. with regard to the west-east differences in 2015, eastern germany displayed a disadvantage in the younger age groups, while mortality in the upper age groups increased mainly in western germany (data not shown). the mortality increase in 2020 was obviously related to the covid-19 pandemic. in contrast, the causes of increasing mortality levels in 2015 are still unclear (luy et al. 2020). to conclude, the most important fi nding of our analysis of the changes in mortality in 2020 is that increases in mortality rates due to covid-19 were not uniform across eastern and western germany. the population in eastern germany was hit harder, with a greater increase in mortality which started in younger ages than in western germany and, consequently, a greater reduction in le. further research is necessary to assess which factors are associated to these persistent differences between 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rich? in: international journal of public health 53,1: 13-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-007-6116-8 sauerberg, markus 2021: das mortalitätsgeschehen während der covid-19-pandemie in deutschland und anderen europäischen ländern. in: lines, emily (ed.): postpandemic populations: die soziodemografi schen folgen der covid-19-pandemie in deutschland. discussion paper no. 13. berlin: max planck society/population europe. shkolnikov, vladimir m. et al. 2008: length of life and the pensions of fi ve million retired german men. in: european journal of public health 18,3: 264-269. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckm102 shkolnikov, vladimir m. et al. 2011: losses of expected lifetime in the united states and other developed countries: methods and empirical analyses. in: demography 48,1: 211-239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0015-6 simon, michael 2005: das gesundheitssystem in deutschland. eine einführung in struktur und funktionsweise. bern/göttingen/toronto/seattle: verlag hans huber 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england and wales. in: social science & medicine 258,113101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113101 vaupel, james w.; zhang, zhen; van raalte, alyson a. 2011: life expectancy and disparity: an international comparison of life table data. in: bmj open 1,1:e000128. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000128 vaupel, james w.; canudas-romo, vladimir 2003: decomposing change in life expectancy: a bouquet of formulas in honor of nathan keyfi tz’s 90th birthday. in: demography 40,2: 201-216. https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2003.0018 vigezzi, serena et al. 2021: divergent trends of lifespan variation during mortality crises. in: socarxiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ze57r vogt, tobias et al. 2017: the german east-west mortality difference: two crossovers driven by smoking. in: demography 54,3: 1051-1071. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0577-z zhang, zhen; vaupel, james w. 2009: the age separating early deaths from late deaths. in: demographic research 20: 721-730. https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/demres.2009.20.29 zur nieden, felix; engelhart, alexander 2021: sterbefallzahlen und übersterblichkeit während der corona-pandemie. statistisches bundesamt: wirtschaft und statistik, ausgabe 3/2021. date of submission: 09.09.2021 date of acceptance: 15.11.2021 dr. marc luy (); markus sauerberg, ph.d.; magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, ph.d.; vanessa di lego, ph.d. vienna institute of demography (oeaw), wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (iiasa, oeaw, university of vienna). vienna, austria. e-mail: mail@marcluy.eu, markus.sauerberg@oeaw.ac.at, magdalena.muszynska@oeaw.ac.at, vanessa.dilego@oeaw.ac.at url: https://marcluy.eu https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/markus-sauerberg https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/magdalena-muszynska-spielauer https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/vanessa-di-lego decrease in life expectancy in germany in 2020 • 573 appendix fig. a1: proportions of the estimated total average populations of western and eastern berlin 0.47 0.48 0.49 0.50 0.51 0.52 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 calendar year western berlin eastern berlin proportion source: own calculations with data of the statistical offi ce berlin-brandenburg. • marc luy, markus sauerberg, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, vanessa di lego574 fig. a2: relative change in the number of deaths by age for women and men in western and eastern germany, 2001-2020 (2001=1.0) 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 calendar year change since 2001 (a) western germany, men 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 calendar year change since 2001 (b) eastern germany, men change since 2001 (c) western germany, women 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 calendar year age 0-29 age 30-64 age 65+ change since 2001 (d) eastern germany, women 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 calendar year source: own calculations with data of the federal statistical offi ce. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study demographic projections and implications for different policy fields martin bujard abstract: compared to all other countries in the world, germany has been a “lowfertility country” for a longer period: the total fertility rate has been below 1.5 for four decades. being the fi rst to experience this development, a case study of germany allows analysing the consequences of an enduring birth decline. in germany, low fertility is also an increasingly big issue in politics as well as science, especially due to its extensive consequences on several policy fi elds that already become visible. however, the assessment of the consequences differs tremendously when it comes either to its intensity or to the question whether ageing or rather population decline is the more severe problem. differentiated by these two processes, this article combines demographic analysis with the assessment of the consequences for different policy fi elds such as pensions, health, the economy, the labour market, culture, the eu, international relations and the party system. for all these policy fi elds, the consequences are serious, and partly ambivalent but overall negative. the occurrence of the consequences and the different policy options how to deal with these consequences differ considerably between the policy fi elds. ageing is a more severe problem than shrinking, because the severe changes in the age structure in the social security system that will take place until 2040 apply to most germans and are inevitable. on the other hand, the population decline can still be avoided demographically and does not affect all inhabitants negatively. regarding the consequences of a declining population, one has to differentiate between an individual and a national perspective. national consequences are rather negative due to a decline of international infl uence and power, especially within the european union. the study also demonstrates that the long-term consequences of enduring low fertility are not necessarily negative for political competition, the culture, the labour market and the economy, if appropriate political action is taken. the analysis also identifi es possible future demographic and political parameters. thus, this case study is relevant for other low-fertility countries, which will have to face similar demographic processes in the future. keywords: low fertility · ageing · welfare state · population decline · european union comparative population studies vol. 40, 2 (2015): 131-164 (date of release: 03.06.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-06en2 • martin bujard132 1 introduction in 2012, there have already been 29 “low-fertility countries” worldwide (world bank 2014), being defi ned as having a total fertility rate (tfr) of less than 1.5. most of these 29 countries have however only been affected by this phenomenon for one or two decades. compared to all other countries in the world, the federal republic of germany has been a low-fertility country for a longer period, in fact, for four decades.1 despite germany, other countries also exhibited a continuously low tfr such as italy since 1984, spain since 1988, and japan, bulgaria and romania since 1993. the case of germany is especially interesting for the analysis of the long-term impact of an enduring low fertility since a second generation is already affected by this phenomenon. this leads to the situation that consequences are already clearly visible and a large number of analyses are available from different disciplines. the following case study analyses the impact of the enduring low fertility in germany. despite several specifi cally german contexts, the fi ndings are relevant for many other countries as they are facing similar challenges, albeit delayed. the enduring low fertility and the demographic change are receiving a massive amount of attention in politics, the media and the scientifi c community in germany. (cf. barlösius/schiek 2007; stock et al. 2012). there is even talk now of “demography policy” as constituting a separate policy area (hüther/naegele 2013; mayer 2012). this big issue has also arrived in politics: the german federal government commissioned a demography report (bmi [federal ministry of the interior] 2012) and developed a demography strategy (bmi 2013). federal chancellor angela merkel is placing demographic change on the same level as globalisation (merkel 2012). the fact that many policy areas are directly affected by demographic change is shown not lastly by the cooperation of almost all the federal ministries in establishing the federal government’s demography strategy as well as the presence of eight federal ministers and of the federal chancellor at the fi rst two “demography summits”, which were held in 2012 and 2013. “demographic change, along with globalisation, probably constitutes the greatest change in our society, but also in the personal life of each individual, in the fi rst half of the 21st century.” (merkel 2012; translated by cpos) in view of this signifi cance, it is astonishing how very different the assessments of the impact of the low fertility in germany are. whilst birg (2003: 14) sees the “demographic demise of germany” which could be a “herald of our country departing from its thousand-year history”, hondrich (2007: 1) considers the low fertility “a blessing for our society” (quotations translated by cpos). these two quotes provide examples of the enormous range of assessments. the polarisation between “apocalyptic scenarios” and “downplaying” is characteristic of the debate on low fertility in politics, the media and the scientifi c community in germany. 1 the tfr was 1.45 in 1975, and has remained below 1.5 since then, ranging at values between 1.24 and 1.45 (statistisches bundesamt 2013a). consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 133 how did this come about? there is a multitude of impacts for society, industry and politics which need to be considered in order to reach an overall evaluation. the individual aspects have been analysed extensively, but no consistent distinction is made in most cases between the two demographic consequences of low fertility – ageing2 and shrinking of the population. this is, however, necessary in analytical terms. the assessments found in current literature also diverge fundamentally when it comes to the question of whether it is the impact of ageing or of the shrinking process that will be more severe. moreover, demographic projections need to be taken into account and their assumptions also need to be appropriately assessed. analyses are frequently fragmented, with demographic analyses of the impacts on one side and, on the other, analyses from a social or political science perspective. these circumstances make it more diffi cult to systematically assess the different impacts of low fertility plotted against demographic factors, and also to come to a scientifi c overall evaluation. this might also be the case why demographic misinterpretations, questionable assumptions or particular views often dominate the assessment of the phenomenon of low fertility. this article analyses the impact of enduring low fertility in germany for various policy areas such as pensions, health, the economy, the labour market, international relations and the eu, as well as the society and party competition. to this end, a systematic link is created between demographic processes on the one hand (section 3-4) and the political, societal and economic consequences on the other (section 5-6). based on this link, a synthesis of the consequences of low fertility is developed which offers answers to three questions: which impact does the german low fertility have on different policy areas – and when does it happen exactly? what kind of political and demographic adjustments will be possible in future? as well as: are greater problems caused by ageing or by shrinking? finally, the validity of the fi ndings for other countries will be discussed. 2 the state of research and analysis strategy 2.1 current state of research the second fertility decline, which started in europe in the mid-1960s, forms part of the second demographic transition (van de kaa 1987). it is distinguished in demography as a separate phenomenon compared to the fi rst demographic transition, which was accompanied by a considerable decline in child mortality and lasted in germany from 1870 to 1930. as a result of the second fertility decline, the total fertility rate (tfr) has settled at 1.2 to 1.5 in germany and some southern european and east asian countries, whilst other industrialised countries in northern eu2 the term “ageing” is used here for the shift in the age structure according to which the share of elderly people in the population increases considerably. • martin bujard134 rope, north america or france have a tfr that is close to the replacement rate of 2.1 (oecd 2014). in many countries, the tfr is infl uenced by the increasing age of women at fi rst birth, and the tfr is lower than the fi nal number of children of the respective cohorts (bongaarts 2001). in germany, the tfr has been ranging between 1.24 and 1.45 since 1975, and hence has been one-third below the replacement level for more than a generation (on the causes cf. bujard et al. 2012). this is the longest phase of such a low fertility level ever recorded in the world. when analysing the consequences of this enduring low fertility, one needs to distinguish between ageing and shrinking in analytical terms (e.g. swiaczny 2014). both imply a highly diverging impact. the assessment of the consequences of the enduring low fertility in germany varies in the literature with regard to whether it is ageing (sinn 2013) or the population decline (birg 2003; kaufmann 2005) which is the “worse” development. when it comes to population projections, the infl uence of the three major indicators – life expectancy, the migration balance and the birth rate –vary fundamentally with regard to ageing and shrinking. population projections which include projections both for the size of the population and for ageing are available for example from the united nations for the period up to 2100 (un 2012), as well as from the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009a/b) for germany up to 2060. trends observed so far from demographic indicators are extrapolated, and different models are calculated for different assumptions as well as for different combinations of assumptions. these projections are explicitly not understood as predictions, but the medium variants are nonetheless frequently interpreted as such. it is nonetheless necessary to point to two criticisms of these projections: firstly, the infl uence of the presumed average age at childbirth on the fertility level is not taken into account in some cases (goldstein et al. 2011), and this may lead to the subsequent underestimation of the tfr in the medium variant of the forecast of the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009a) given that the age at childbirth ceases to rise from 2020 onwards. secondly, probabilistic approaches criticise the deterministic nature of classical projections and the fact that uncertainty is reproduced by different variants, and that it is not quantifi ed using confi dence intervals (values for germany see: scherbov et al. 2008: 40-41). however, probabilistic approaches cannot predict the probability of regime collapse or future developments in the assumptions. the demographic analyses in sections 3 and 4 are based on the population projections of the federal statistical offi ce since they are dominant in germany. the literature on the consequences of the population decline as well as population ageing with regard to social systems, the industry, the society, the eu, international relations and competition between political parties is extensive. since current research frequently focuses on individual consequences, we will not give an overview of the literature review, but rather refer to the state of research at respective places in sections 5 and 6. consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 135 2.2 analysis strategy in order to analyse the consequences of the enduring low fertility for a specifi c policy area, it is necessary to link demographic and political science perspectives. since the low fertility manifests itself in two different demographic phenomena, namely ageing and shrinking, these two processes are each discussed using different projections. here, the respective dynamics and time frames, as well as their likelihood of being infl uenced, are outlined by the three demographic indicators of births, migration and life expectancy (see fig. 1). analysing the demographic processes is necessary in order to understand what infl uence is exerted by the enduring low fertility for instance on the social security systems at what time and with what probability. moreover, it is not suffi cient to only look at a specifi c projection value for a single year, but it is rather essential to understand the processes and possible adjustments to it. next, the impact of the low fertility on individual policy areas is analysed, focussing on some central consequences. the consistent distinction of ageing and shrinking is retained throughout the paper. the impact of ageing on the social systems, the industry, society and party democracy will be discussed using the different projections. the impact of the population decline is then analysed with regard to international relations, the eu, the economy, the environment and society, particularly in comparison to other industrialised countries. this analysis therefore makes it possible to evaluate which consequences can be regarded as negative, which as positive and which cannot be categorised in this dichotomy. because of the dynamics of demographic processes, the aspect of time is vital to the evaluation of the impacts. these impacts occur many decades after the manifestation of low fertility, whilst ageing processes and the population decline fig. 1: consequences of an enduring low fertility source: own design • martin bujard136 are based on differing dynamics and a different climax in the consequences. in this context it is of major importance whether the projections refer to the period up to 2030, 2060 or even 2100. since projections become less certain as the period stretches, whilst on the other hand the demographic momentum makes long-term calculations possible, we explore the question of up to which year it makes sense to interpret them and which uncertainties have to be taken into account. the demographic analysis is then combined with a political science approach. there remain two fundamentally different types of policy options with regard to the consequences of the enduring low fertility: to infl uence the demographic indicators such as future fertility rates and migration, as well as to adjust responses of the individual policy areas to the consequences. the respective policy options are analysed here, thus establishing a basis for demographic policy advice. these steps allow a fi nal judgment regarding the two controversies mentioned above: firstly, on the question of the overall evaluation of the phenomenon, and secondly whether ageing or rather the population decline is more severe for society. 3 ageing the ageing of the population is not only caused by the low fertility, but it is amplifi ed by the increase in life expectancy. the differences in age structures between the industrialised countries are largely caused by the low fertility, given that the fertility development varies much more widely between the countries than does the trend in increasing life expectancy. the ageing process can be quantifi ed through frequency measures and age dependency ratios. for instance, the median age is relevant to the impact of ageing on the electoral system, whilst the age dependency ratio is decisive for the social insurance systems. 3.1 median age the median age in germany increased from 35 in 1950 to 43 in 2009, and will rise to about 52 years between 2045 and 2060. the median age of voters is more authoritative when it comes to the assertion of changes in the relative strength of parties: it was quite constant in the second half of the 20th century with 44.4 years in 1950, 44.7 in 1970, 45.0 in 1990 and 46.4 in 2000. reaching 50.1 in 2012, the median voter age increased to over 50 years for the fi rst time. figure 2 shows the median voter age up to 2060 which was calculated using the medium variant (lower limit) of the 12th coordinated population projection (statistisches bundesamt 2009b). accordingly, it will increase to 55.4 years by 2030 (cf. sánchez gassen 2015: 248) and to 58 years by 2060. the main increase will be registered between 2000 and 2030. whilst half of the voters were aged under 45 years until the 1990s, half will be aged over 55 from 2026 onwards, and will therefore be of retirement age or shortly below. consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 137 3.2 age dependency ratio the age dependency ratio is a central measure for pay-as-you-go social insurance; it relates the ratio of people who are of retirement age to those who are of working age. the age dependency ratio used here refers to the ratio of those aged 65 years and older to those aged 20 to 64 years. the largest share of increase in the age ratio takes place between 2010 and 2040. within this period, the cohorts with low birth numbers will enter the labour market. this effect will be further amplifi ed by the next generation, which registered even lower birth rates, as it will be by the so called baby boomer generation reaching retirement age between 2020 and 2030. figure 3 shows the projection spectrum of the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009a/b). results of the new german census, which have fig. 2: median age of the total population and of voters median age in years 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 women men total women men total total population population aged over 18 years year notes: from 2012: results of the 12th coordinated population projection, variant 1-w1 (for assumptions see figure 3). the analysed population aged 18 and older is not identical to voters since it also includes those foreigners who are not eligible to vote. since the age structure among germans is somewhat older, the median voter age is slightly higher. calculations for 2011 show that this effect accounts for slightly less than one year (0.9 years). source: statistisches bundesamt 2009b. own calculation together with harun sulak • martin bujard138 not yet been taken into account in current population projections only marginally alter the age dependency ratios. the spectrum of the basic medium variant shows age dependency ratios of 63.1 and 67.4 for 2060 which on the basis of 2008 corresponds to an increase by 87 percent and 100 percent, respectively. the doubling of the current age dependency ratio is already reached in 2040 with values around 60; afterwards the increase slows down. the shaded area of figure 3 shows the progressions of the highest and lowest combinations of assumptions regarding migration, birth rate and life expectancy within the twelve different variants that have been calculated and which are regarded as realistic. in the variant with the highest ageing, the age dependency ratio reaches 65.6 in 2040, and increases to 77.1 by 2060. the variant with the lowest ageing, consequently the variant with the youngest age structure, shows a similar development until 2040 reaching 58.4, but remains constant after that (2060: 59.8). fig. 3: development of the age dependency ratio on the basis of different assumptions notes: assumptions of the base variant (1-w1): long-term annual migration balance of 100,000, life expectancy 2060 85.0 and 89.2, respectively; tfr 1.4. base variant 2 (1-w2): long-term migration balance of 200,000, otherwise unchanged. variant with the highest ageing (6-w1): tfr 1.2, long-term migration balance of 100,000, life expectancy 87.7 and 91.2, respectively. variant with the lowest ageing (3-w2): tfr 1.6, long-term migration balance of 200,000, life expectancy 85.0 and 89.2, respectively. source: own design based on statistisches bundesamt 2009b 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 2008 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 variant with highest ageing (6-w1) base variant (1-w1) base variant 2 (1-w2) variant with lowest ageing (3-w2) model calculation tfr 2.1 from 2015 age dependency ratio (65+/20-64 years) year consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 139 whilst the share of people aged 65 years and older doubles by 2040, the share of the very old (aged 80 years and older) increases even more because of rising life expectancy. on the basis of the medium projection variant (statistisches bundesamt 2009a), it is assumed for germany that the share of the very old will almost triple, from roughly 5 percent (4 million) in 2008, to 14 percent (9.05-9.23 million) by 2060. 3.3 the infl uence of future migration and fertility on ageing that an increased immigration can only have a minor effect on ageing is clearly shown by the much-cited model calculation of the united nations (un 2000), according to which germany would need an exorbitant amount of immigration, namely 188 million people by 2050, in order to maintain the age dependency ratio at a constant level. immigrants and their somewhat higher fertility do have an impact on the labour market and on the age structure (sobotka 2008), but later in life they also become old, and their fertility frequently tends to resemble that of germans (birg 2003). the infl uence of migration on ageing will be quantifi ed below: if the annual migration balance is around 100,000, the age dependency ratio will be 67.4 by 2060 according to the medium projection. if immigration is twice as high for every year until 2060 with all other conditions remaining unchanged, the age dependency ratio would be 63.1. after more than 50 years with a migration balance twice as high, the age dependency ratio would only have fallen by 6.8 percent. though the fertility development of the past fi ve decades has contributed to the ageing process, a sudden increase in the fertility rate would have little effect on ageing in the short and medium term. it is the number of births and less the fertility rate that is important for the age structure. the number of potential mothers by 2030 depends on the number of girls born in recent years. since a succession of generations takes roughly 30 years and it takes another 20 years until working age is reached, the impact of future fertility development on the age dependency ratios is relatively minor for the next 50 years. even if the tfr increases from roughly 1.4 to 1.6 – which means roughly 96,000 additional births per year – the age dependency ratio would only fall from 67.4 to 63.6 by 2060. half a century with a much higher fertility rate would thus only reduce the age dependency ratio by 6 percent. if the tfr increases to 2.1 – the replacement level – the age dependency ratio would remain virtually unchanged until 2040. between 2040 and 2060, it would, however, no longer increase, but would slightly fall to 53.5 (cf. fig. 3). this would relieve the burden on the social systems from 2040 onwards. compared with the base variant (tfr 1.4), the age dependency ratio would decline by 26.0 percent until 2060, so that the contribution rates could be reduced by about a quarter (or pensions could be increased accordingly). • martin bujard140 3.4 the (lack of) certainty of projections on ageing because of demographic momentum, the precision of demographic projections for 2040 is very high, and for 2060, it is relatively high. even with quite different assumptions, the age dependency ratio only ranges between 58 and 66 by 2040. it will increase up to 2060 in all of the 12 projections, ranging between 60 and 77. speaking of absolute fi gures, the number of people aged over 64 years will be between 21.975 million and 25.123 million. if fertility remains low, the age dependency ratio will however no longer rise as drastically as between 2010 and 2040 since, by then, the net reproduction rates will have been constantly low for as long as a human lifetime. however, a considerable increase in the tfr to 2.1 could reduce the age dependency ratio to 53.5 by 2060, and then bring about a further reduction in ensuing years. it can be regarded as being certain that the ageing process that has been caused to a considerable degree by the second fertility decline will lead to a doubling in the age dependency ratio by 2040, to a tripling of the share of the very old by 2050 and to an increase of the median voter age above 55 years. it is very likely that all three indicators of ageing will be roughly at this level by 2060; whether and how rapidly they continue to increase will depend on the future development of fertility, life expectancy and migration. 4 population decline population decline is the second demographic consequence of the enduring low fertility. fertility below replacement level results in net replacement fi gures below 1. since this has been the case in germany for many decades now, it led to a low population momentum (cf. blue/espenshade 2011). this momentum understood as the age structure is responsible for shrinking processes that will persist for many years even if the tfr rises. unlike the effect of ageing, migration and rising life expectancy slow down the population decline. the dynamics over time also differ fundamentally given an enduring low fertility level: unlike ageing, shrinking fi rst begins gradually and increases exponentially from 2050 onwards. 4.1 projections of the population size by 2060 the grey hatched area of figure 4 shows the spectrum of the twelve scenarios which the federal statistical offi ce (statistisches bundesamt 2009a) considers to be realistic. the dashed line above the scenarios is based on a model calculation with a tfr of 2.1, which was considered to be unrealistic. in the base variant (tfr 1.4; life expectancy 85.0 and 89.2; migration balance 100,000), the population decreases by 4.2 million from 2010 to 2030, by 7.7 million up to 2040, by 12.1 million up to 2050 and by 16.9 million up to 2060. the german population would then have 64.651 million residents by 2060 – a decline by 20.7 percent within 50 years. the population decline would be much less pronounced in base variant 2, in which the long-term annual migration balance is around 200,000. consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 141 germany would then have 70.120 million residents in 2060, corresponding to a decrease by 11.4 million, or 14 percent. both scenarios are similarly conceivable and realistic, but it is diffi cult to project the long-term development. if one takes all 12 variants into account, the population size will be between 76.6 and 81.0 million in 2030, and between 61.8 and 76.8 million in 2060. the range between the different projections is considerable: in one case, the decline is minimal, namely 5.9 percent, over a long period of 50 years, whilst in the other case it is 24.2 percent, signifying an enormous population decline. the population development at the regional level is, however, decisive for people’s respective living conditions. there are contrary developments on the regional level, and even today it is evident that there are regions which are growing as well as regions which are shrinking. because of the advancing internal migration, in combination with the amplifi cation of the demographic process which comes about when young people move at the beginning of their working lives, some regions will tend to become depopulated (cf. kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012). since this aspect of demographic change is not primarily caused by the fertility decline, it will not be discussed here any further. fig. 4: development of the german population size on the basis of different assumptions 60,000 65,000 70,000 75,000 80,000 85,000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 variant with high population decline (5-w1) base variant (1-w1) base variant 2 (1-w2) variant with low population decline (4-w2) model calculation tfr 2.1 from 2015 population (in thousands) year note: assumptions of the base variant see fig. 3 source: own design based on statistisches bundesamt 2009b • martin bujard142 4.2 the infl uence of future migration and fertility on the shrinking process the size of the population by 2060 will be infl uenced by today’s age structure and the future development of three indicators: fertility rate, migration and life expectancy. there is no doubt that the life expectancy will continue to rise; the infl uence of different scenarios on the size of the population is however minor. effects of migration and the fertility rate are, however, different: the effect of migration on population shrinking can be quantifi ed: according to the base projection, germany’s population size would be 64.7 million by 2060, assuming an annual migration balance of 100,000 people from 2014 onwards. assuming immigration fi gures twice as high in each year from 2020 up to 2060, germany would have 70.1 million residents. 100,000 additional migrants per year consequently reduce the population shrinking by roughly one-third. the shrinking process could be completely averted until 2060 if even higher immigration fi gures of roughly estimated 400,000 per year are achieved. the assumption of a permanent immigration balance of 100,000 or even 200,000 people per year needs to be briefl y discussed: this level of immigration from 2015 to 2060 would, when cumulated, account for a balance of 4.6 or 9.2 million people. since emigrants must be deducted from immigrants in order to calculate the balance, total immigration would in fact be much higher. this fact gives rise to the question of typical countries of origin of possible migrants. historically, the balance between 1950 and 2012 averaged 168,863 (own calculation based on statistisches bundesamt 2013b), but the development was highly volatile, and was affected by specifi c historic constellations such as the immigration of millions of (late) repatriates or the eu enlargement. since the tfr is now also below the replacement level in most classical countries of origin, a high level of permanent immigration would increasingly have to come from non-european countries. this would exacerbate the political and societal demands on the integration and recruitment of qualifi ed immigrants. now let us turn to the effect of the fertility rate: if the tfr were to be 1.6 from 2025 onwards, instead of 1.4, the projection for 2060 amounts to 68.8 instead of 64.7 million residents. the increase in the tfr by 0.2 over a period of 35 years would account for 4.1 million additional residents. combining the mentioned effects of migration and fertility rate, and assuming a somewhat more optimistic life expectancy, the impact would be amplifi ed, so that the shrinking occurring up to 2060 would be only minor with 76.8 million. the long-term effect of the tfr on the population size is also huge with today’s age structure. given certain apocalyptic and fatalistic projections (inter alia birg 2003), the result may be surprising: if the tfr permanently increases to 2.1, the population size would exceed the 83 million threshold between 2025 and 2027 and oscillate in the narrow range of 82 and 83 million from 2028-2060. for this estimation, we used the basic assumptions of an increasing life expectancy (85.0 and 89.2 years, respectively) and a migration balance of 100,000. the dynamics and the future compensation potential of demographic developments fundamentally difconsequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 143 fer from ageing: the population decline is also completely avertable today if the birth rate increases to the replacement level. the later this takes place, however, the greater the immediate population decline. 4.3 the dynamics of the shrinking process model calculations up to 2100 are helpful in order to portray the exponential character of the population decline and to categorise the impact of enduring low fertility. these, however, entail considerable uncertainties, not only because of the longer time horizon of the projection, but also because it is diffi cult to estimate the actual size of the migration balance as well as the tfr which both exerts a greater infl uence on the projections than in the case of ageing. the dynamics of the shrinking process can be made clear by a hypothetical example: without immigration, and if the tfr remains low, each generation would shrink by roughly 35 percent, this shrinking spiral accelerating from generation to generation. this would be an exciting phenomenon in terms of evolution biology, because persisting sub-replacement fertility is historically without precedence. but it is based on two permanent assumptions which need to be discussed: the assumption that the immigration balance will not be positive corresponds neither to the historic development of germany, nor to the relative attractiveness of germany for migrants. second, the following reasons might object the assumption of an enduring low fertility in the future: • the fact that the distorting effect of the timing of births on the tfr will decrease at some point (bongaarts 2001), • the intergenerational relation of fertility behaviour, according to which childless lifestyles are less likely to be reproduced (kolk et al. 2014), • the long-term impact of family policy measures on fertility in an international comparison (bujard 2011), • expert assessments suggesting on average a tfr of 1.57 and 1.58 in 2030 and 2050 (basten et al. 2013: 68). the latest un projections (un 2012) include a variant where the average tfr is constantly extrapolated to 2100 (fig. 5). accordingly, france and the united kingdom would already overtake germany in the fi rst half of the 21st century when it comes to the size of the population. since it will be at a similar level in all three countries (69.0-72.9 million) by 2050, slight changes in the migration balance or in the fertility development could reverse the ranking of the countries. turkey would equal germany by 2020 with 81.2 million residents, and it would be roughly onehalf larger by 2050 with 103.4 million residents. according to this model calculation, with 122.1 million residents turkey would be much bigger in 2100 than eu countries such as france (77.8), the united kingdom (75.1), germany (43.4), italy (39) or spain (30.6). with regard to the historic dimension, we fi nd that a population decline of • martin bujard144 this nature would be an entirely new phenomenon in world history.3 the us tells a different story: because of its stationary tfr and a positive migration balance, its population (491.5 million by 2100) would then be 11 times that of germany. no one knows whether this scenario will come true. the question is whether the fertility rate in germany will recover. a shrinking process is however already inevitable due to the current age structure: although france and turkey have fewer residents today, their absolute number of births is much higher than in germany. therefore, it is already certain today that in 30 years from now there will be more women of child-bearing-age in both countries. the structural population decline in germany has still been concealed by immigration in recent years: for instance, the birth defi cit was 196,038 in 2012 (673,544 live births 869.582 deaths), but as a result of the high immigration balance of 368,945, caused by the high rate of unemployment in many eu countries, the population actually grew by 172,907. in years without a large immigration surplus, such as 2006-2009, the population declines each year by the amount of the birth defi cit. without immigration, germany is currently shrinking, by roughly 200,000 people each year. this trend will continue and will increase in the coming years. according to the base variant (1-w1), the birth deficit will exceed the threshold of 300,000 from 2021 onwards, the 400,000 threshold from 2029, the 500,000 threshold from 2041 and it will then settle between 500,000 and 600,000. the population size will decline in each year from 2041 onwards by the 3 historic population declines are usually caused by wars or epidemics (such as the plague). fig. 5: population projections for 2050 and 2100 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 2010 2050 2100 year population (in millions) de fr uk it sp tu de fr uk it sp tu de fr uk it sp tu source: own design, data based on: un (2012) consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 145 equivalent of a city such as düsseldorf, leipzig, bremen or nuremberg as a result of the birth defi cit. an annual immigration comparable to the average migration balance of germany since 1950-2012, namely of 168,863, could only compensate for almost one-third of the birth defi cit. in summary, germany will experience a dramatic population decline if fertility remains at its current level. the german age structure enhances decline; the birth defi cit is growing from year to year because of an accelerating dynamic. the population decline can, however, be slowed by an increasing fertility rate, just as it can be through continuously high immigration levels. 5 the impact of ageing the consequences of the ageing process are serious for several policy fi elds. in particular, social insurance is massively affected by it (inter alia castles 2004; schmid et al. 2000). this section focuses on the most important effects for the social systems, economic development and the labour market, but also potential societal and cultural changes, as well as implications for competition between political parties. 5.1 the impact of ageing on the social systems the anticipated doubling of the age dependency ratio from about 2010 to 2040 has immediate consequences for social insurance. the problems are greater in countries with pay-as-you-go pension systems as well as in countries with ambitious social systems which have a high degree of decommodifi cation and in countries with a low birth rate. hence, the problems are particularly pronounced in germany. these problems and their potential solutions are presented in greater detail below using the pension formula. in simplifi ed terms, the pension formula is made up of these fi ve variables: the contribution rate (c) corresponds to the age dependency ratio (ad) multiplied by the pension replacement rate (pr), multiplied by the ratio of pensioners4 (a(p)) and workers (a(w)), multiplied by the reciprocal value of the tax share (t). an example using the pension formula: if the age dependency ratio doubles and everything else remains constant, the contribution rate automatically doubles as well – such high ancillary wage costs would have a dramatic impact on the labour market. if one wishes to keep the contribution rate constant, all other things being equal, the pension replacement rate would be halved, and widespread pension poverty would 4 the percentage of pensioners among the population aged 60 (65) and older in relation to the working population in this age group. • martin bujard146 be the consequence. an adjustment via the retirement age would correspond to a de facto retirement age of 71, and therefore a formal one of roughly 75 (cf. rürup/ schmidt 2003), which is illusory. furthermore, the tax share alone could not compensate for this dimension. all four remaining components of the pension formula have been adjusted in germany as a reaction to the anticipated doubling of the age dependency ratio between 2000 and 2035. if one takes a look at the almost annual, incrementalistic reforms of the pension system, it is easy to attribute each of these savings measures to one of the components of the pension formula: 1) the fi rst example is an increase in the contribution rate, which has already taken place 27 times since 1953 (schmidt 2005). this is the most obvious adjustment. for younger people, state-subsidised investment in capital-funded pension insurance schemes is added to the contribution rates to the compulsory pay-as-you-go pension schemes. the internationalisation of the economy, however, sets limits on fi nancing of pension schemes via added ancillary wage costs (scharpf 2001). 2) a second possibility for adjustment is the pension replacement rate which has been reduced by measures such as a less generous allowance of years spent in training, indexing to the evolution of net wages, blüm’s demographic factor (1997), schröder’s similar sustainability factor (2004), a reduction in the allowance for schooling and higher education and the establishment of the full long-term care contribution for pensioners. the clause to maintain the pension replacement rate in accordance with section 154 subsection (3) of book vi of the social code (sgb vi) only ensures the standard gross pension of a pensioner with 45 years’ average earnings at the level of 43 percent in 2030 (currently 52 percent). 3) the third component of the pension formula, namely the pensioner coeffi cient, is adjusted by gradually increasing the formal retirement age from 65 to 67 years between 2011 and 2029. also, early retirement has been made more diffi cult in germany, for instance via section 77 of book vi of the social code (sgb vi), according to which the pension replacement rate decreases by 0.3 percent per month of early retirement. furthermore, an increase in the labour market participation of the working-age population reduces the burden on the social systems, which can be achieved, for example, by increasing women’s labour force participation and reducing unemployment. walter et al. (2013: 42) show scenarios in which a combination of these factors can reduce the decline in the working population up to 2030. 4) tax revenue for instance fl ows into the pension system via the ecotax. conversely, a burden is already being imposed on the national budget by the funding of civil servants’ pensions, which is growing by virtue of demographic factors. removing benefi ts which are alien to insurance, for example, constitutes a transfer from the tax system to the pension system. the long-term reforms, the increase in the retirement age to 67, and the sustainability factor, have already done a lot to adjust the german pension system to the increase in the age dependency ratio in the next few decades. german old-age pension policy thus became more revenue-orientated as opposed to an orientation towards a desired replacement rate. the social burdens for contributors and pensioners as well as the macroeconomic burdens on the state and industry up to consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 147 2040 are extremely high. the argument that the pension problems brought about by the fertility decline could be compensated for by making progress in productivity (inter alia hondrich 2007) is hardly tenable. firstly, the shift in the age dependency ratio is too high, and secondly it is naive to presume that companies and workers will permit the entire productivity gains made over several decades only to fl ow into the pension funds. the impact of ageing on statutory health and long-term care insurance is similar to that on old-age security in the sense that, here too, fewer contributors will be accounted for by more benefi ciaries. the scale is similar when it comes to ancillary wage costs, but the impact of the enduring low fertility is less pronounced here for two reasons: pensioners themselves contribute to fund the statutory health insurance, and the remaining life expectancy after retirement does not equate to years of illness. health expenditure is more diffi cult to forecast since supply and demand for healthcare services does not only depend on demographic assumptions – medical progress in particular acts as a cost driver. birg (2003: 185) calculates that the contribution rate of the health insurance funds will increase from 13 percent to 21-24 percent by 2050, and that the long-term care rate will quadruple to roughly 6 percent. however, in relation to gdp, and unlike the contribution rate, the benefi ts of statutory health insurance in germany have remained constant for three decades (rürup/ranscht 2009: 112). the rise in long-term care costs is different: the drastic increase in the ratio of the very old leads to an increase in specifi c diagnoses requiring long-term care such as dementia, which will probably cause a considerable growth despite improvements in medical treatment (cf. doblhammer/ scholz 2010). it is, however, necessary to distinguish here between professional and informal long-term care (micheel 2013). even if there is a marked increase in public health expenditure, people will have to face a growing individual responsibility and a partial rationalisation of the benefi ts. this development could lead to serious socio-political confl icts. low fertility will require society to shift a growing share of productivity and prosperity into the social welfare systems in the next three decades, and the pension replacement rate and statutory health insurance benefi ts will nonetheless reduce in relative terms. this could not even be changed by a rapid increase of the fertility rate. the age dependency ratio will rise more slowly after 2040, which in turn will relieve pressure from the social welfare systems. 5.2 the impact of ageing on industry and the labour market increasing social security contributions put an indirect burden on industry and the labour market – in particular for welfare states which are ambitious and are fi nanced to a considerable degree via the active labour force (schmidt 2005). the consequences on the social welfare state that have been described above may have negative effects on the labour market, which can, however, be regulated by politics, if these negative effects are not largely transferred to ancillary wage costs. people occasionally argue that the shrinking supply of workers reduces unemployment. • martin bujard148 this is, however, based on a static understanding of supply and demand since such impacts can only occur in the short term (friedman 1968). there are controversial discussions whether the productivity of an older workforce changes. the hypothesis according to which ageing is accompanied by a decline in innovativeness cannot be verifi ed. research by guilford is quoted in some cases (sinn 2003: 67), according to which the greatest mental performance is reached at the age of 30-40. this hypothesis is, however, too undifferentiated since knowledge and experience increase as workers age (akademiegruppe altern 2009: 41). furthermore, the fi tness of 60-year-olds is constantly increasing. one central point can be infl uenced by politics: investment in human capital can also enhance innovation among older workers by increasing further training activities. the impact on industrial growth can be understood using the cobb-douglas production function which is made up of technical progress, labour input and capital input. labour input understood as the labour force will decline in the next three decades in absolute and relative terms as a result of the enduring low fertility. this impact could be compensated for by even greater technical progress or more capital investment. according to various model calculations, europe’s economic growth rate could drop permanently: from 2.3 percent to 0.5 percent for 2025-2050 according to the oecd (1998). intensifying capital (lee/mason 2007) or increased investment in education (lutz et al. 2008) can, however, compensate for the negative effects of ageing. striessnig and lutz (2013) use simulation models controlled for education to show that fertility rates below the replacement rate could also be optimal. focussing demographic consequences only on gdp growth has its limits since it is not equivalent to the rise in quality of life (easterlin 1974). in various sectors, ageing induces further shifts in demands besides these overall effects (kaufmann 2005). for instance, long-term care services, tourism, oldpeople’s homes and fi nancial services will attract attention in the future. as another result of ageing, inheritances increase, thus opening up a large source of income for the state and increasing per capita assets. 5.3 the impact of ageing for society and culture due to the increase in life expectancy and the compression of morbidity into a small number of years, ageing is a phenomenon that is generally advantageous for many people in the sense of “years gained” (imhof 1981). the low fertility, however, additionally entails a shift in the cohort sizes between young and old, its impact on society is ambivalent and speculative. risk aversion could be higher in ageing societies (kaufmann 2005), whilst on the other hand this has a highly stabilising impact in comparison to extremely young societies (huntington 1996). the hypothesis of a quantitative reduction in family relationships and family networks (inter alia schirrmacher 2004) is questionable in light of demographic projections (dudel 2014). the terms “age”, “overageing” and “ageing society” have largely negative associations, and in some cases are weighed down with clichés (akademiegruppe altern 2009). schirrmacher (2004) outlines future scenarios of a “war of the generations” and “racist age stereotypes”. kruse (2013), by contrast, points to potentials consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 149 such as differentiated knowledge, refl ected experience, resilience, generativity and gerotranscendence. höhn et al. (2006) show that people in oecd countries are not hostile to the elderly, and that the experience of older people is appreciated. furthermore, it should be taken into account that the 70-year-olds of the future will be much healthier, more mobile and more independent than 70-year-olds in the past. in this regard, the third stage of life of retirees and those drawing a pension provides enormous opportunities, both individually and in terms of civil society, for instance through (community) volunteering of this age group. moreover, there are diverse relationships and transfers when it comes to intergenerational relationships where elderly people have great potential to take part and give support. relationship quality is of great importance in this case (see ette et al. 2010 for details). the societal impact of ageing is not only highly speculative, but also depends on how policy makers and society deal with it. here, the research group ageing (akademiegruppe altern 2009) is calling for a re-think at the individual level of traditional life course concepts, for continuous investment in qualifi cations at the level of companies, and for overcoming a negative perception of age at the societal level. 5.4 the impact of ageing on party competition as was shown above, the median age of voters will increase by 2040 to such an extent that pensioners and persons about to retire will form a majority in the electoral system. this means that people who are no longer working will make decisions that primarily affect the working age population. the question is how these interests will impact the party political system and political decision-making – whether they may even lead to a “gerontocracy”. voters’ long-term loyalties to parties and to social environments, and the adaptation of the parties to perpetuate the existing system, suggest that pensioners’ interests will be asserted within the party system. it is also diffi cult to imagine age constituting a line of confl ict since both sides mostly occur in the life course (goerres 2007). however, particularly the catch-all parties like spd (social democratic party of germany) and cdu/csu (christian democratic union of germany) could mutate to become parties which especially represent the interests of pensioners, especially because pensioners are their most loyal electorate. one such example is the coalition agreement of the third grand coalition, which provides for a pension for women with children born before 1992 and a pension at 63 for people who have contributed to the pension system for at least 45 years (cdu, csu, spd 2013). when catch-all parties are too ambitious representing the interests of pensioners, they might enable smaller parties to establish as advocates for the under 50-year-olds. differences between old and young can already be seen when analysing attitudes towards the pension policy and voting behaviour (bergmann et al. 2012). a variety of future scenarios is conceivable: the line of confl ict between old and young, and between benefi ciaries of and contributors to the social welfare state, could be refl ected in the party system as well as in the union structure, which might cause the struggle for resources to become more extreme with regard to party competition and polarising rhetoric in the media. the preference in favour of social • martin bujard150 expenditure such as pensions or education depends on age to a considerable degree (busemeyer et al. 2009). it would, however, also be possible that this confl ict is taken up and channelled by the established parties and interest groups which allow older lines of confl ict to remain dominant. since older people show a considerable interest in the welfare of the younger generations, especially if they themselves have children and grandchildren, compromise between the interests of different generations is also conceivable (cf. bergmann et al. 2012). a confl ict line between childless people and families would appear more likely in this regard since the former do not have any such relationship establishing ties between the generations. a sustainable family policy promoting births and being orientated towards the well-being of children would also encourage solidarity between the generations, and such a policy would directly benefi t the young generation, the older generation would indirectly profi t via the weakening in pressure from demographic problems. 6 the impact of the population decline 6.1 the impact of the population decline on international relations and the eu there are several historical examples of the demographic impact on a country’s strength in terms of foreign and defence policy. a decline in europe’s political power was already predicted in 1945 by davis (1945: 603). the infl uence of the shifts in the demographic weights between france, germany and russia on the military strength in the 19th and early 20th centuries was frequently discussed – also in the context of the outbreak of the first world war (morgenthau 1948: 123). the economic and power political aspects of the population size also played a major role in the mercantile era or in ancient times, with regard to the fall of rome. there is no doubt that the population decline will lead to a relative loss of foreign policy signifi cance in the particularly adversely affected states of europe and east asia. statements such as the “demographic demise of germany and europe” suggested in birg (2003: 14) are, however, untenable on the basis of demographic analyses. the “shift in international weights” (wöhlcke et al. 2004: 11) has implications for international relations which are particularly interesting with regard to the political sciences. from a (neo)realistic perspective (morgenthau 1948), a nexus of a population decline and a loss of power can be derived from the resulting weakening of military power and, from the point of view of interdependency theory (keohane/ nye 1977), from a decline in the infl uence exercised in international organisations such as the un and nato, but also the eu. the population size has a direct impact where a legitimation is derived from the democratic principle – such as the qualifi ed majority in decisions of the european council. moreover, when there is a population decline, the economic power and hence also the military potential decrease – in particular in relation to those states whose population and economic power still increase. whether the eu can become established as a global power alongside the us and china will not solely depend on demographic developments. the eu-28 would consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 151 still have well over 300 million inhabitants in 2100 were its tfr to remain constant. rather, the development of the political criteria is decisive, that is the degree to which foreign and defence policy integration within the eu leads to the “ability to take political action, political consensus and experience of order” (weidenfeld 1995; translated by cpos). demographic developments will reduce germany’s present dominance within the eu in the long term. germany is not only the strongest member in economic terms, but also has the largest population, with almost 20 million inhabitants more than france and the united kingdom. the margin will have shrunk to less than 10 million in 2030, all three states will be at the same level in the 2040s, and both may overtake germany 30 years from now. when it comes to the impact on germany’s status within the eu, there is a need to distinguish between the democratic principle and economic power: the balance of power in the eu’s council of ministers will shift in the next few decades since the majority decisions require a qualifi ed majority meaning 55 percent of eu countries and at the same time these have to represent 65 percent of the eu’s population. this leads to new structural majorities and blocking minorities (münch/wilkoszewski 2006), and germany’s infl uence will decline in line with the above projections. the same applies to germany’s representation in the european parliament (ep). secondly, the enduring low fertility reduces the country’s overall economic power more severely than what is calculated on a per capita basis. even given all the uncertainty with regard to the long-term economic development – in demographic terms –, a considerable decline in germany’s economic dominance seems plausible. today’s internal eu migration to germany has massive foreign policy implications against this background. 6.2 the impact of the population decline for the economy several economic theories are based on the nexus between population size and the economy. according to adam smith (1776), population growth increases the potential in terms of the division of labour and economies of scale. the opposite conclusion of the population decline is however of subordinate signifi cance when it comes to large internal markets such as the eu and globalised commodity markets. keynes regards the slight population decline as having contributed towards the weak demand in the great depression at that time. several neoclassical approaches externalise the population development (inter alia friedman 1968). solow’s theory of economic growth (1956), by contrast, analyses the interaction between population growth, income and investment. according to his theory, the per capita stock of capital falls as population growth increases, and conversely population decline can hence lead to an increase in per capita investment and per capita gross domestic product (per capita gdp). from a neoclassical point of view, a shortage of labour force can be substituted by an increase in capital investment. accordingly, total gdp can increase even if there is a population decline if technical progress and investment overcompensate for this. in order to bring about technical progress, however, it is especially good training of as many workers as possible that is signifi cant, and not only capital investment. • martin bujard152 this is also discussed by human capital theory (schultz 1971). since human capital is made up of the product of workforce and its average skills, a population decline can be theoretically compensated for by investing in education (lutz et al. 2008). to this end, investment in education in countries with a tfr of around 1.4 would, however, have to be much greater than in countries with higher fertility. since this has not been the case in germany since 1975 despite a net reproduction rate of 0.59 to 0.69, kaufmann (2005) calculates an investment defi cit in human capital of 2.5 trillion euros. it can, however, be questioned to solely determine the economic impact on growth by a country’s gdp: per capita gdp is much more signifi cant in terms of prosperity, both now and in the future, than total gdp, given that a population decline may cause gdp to fall, whilst per capita gdp rises. if one looks at the assets of the national economy instead of growth, a more positive result is reached since per capita assets increase if the denominator becomes smaller and all other things being equal. however, public debt also increases in the case of a population decline when looking at per capita rates. the two together suggest the conclusion that greater taxation on assets would then make sense. another major aspect relates to the concentration of assets and to distributive justice, which in future might have to be brought about through greater taxation on inherited assets. a growing group of individuals will not be able to leave assets to their own children since the number of childless women and men has risen to more than 20 percent (based on the 1960s cohorts, cf. statistisches bundesamt 2013a). the volume of inheritance tax could be greater in relative terms in this group if the taxation of inheritance to direct offspring is favoured by means of providing for exemptions. if one looks at prosperity from the perspective of sen (1995), who stresses the opportunities for participation, a positive impact is even possible: given the fact that cohorts are smaller, and because of the need for well-trained workers, there will be increasing economic incentives to train those sections of society with lower educational levels in order to “enable” them to participate. the population decline will lead to a huge structural transformation which will be especially dramatic in rural regions. because of internal migration, particularly of the young population to urban regions where there are jobs, the population decline in some urban regions will be compensated for and intensifi ed still further in deindustrialised and rural regions. this impact becomes already visible in eastern germany today. however, some towns and cities will also shrink. these regional disparities entail major challenges for public welfare, particularly services offered and public infrastructure such as schools, kindergartens, hospitals, long-term care facilities or the fi re service (cf. bmi 2012; steinführer et al. 2014). the impact on rental and real estate markets in the shrinking rural regions is considerable, being positive for tenants and negative for real estate owners. 6.3 the impact of the population decline on the environment the impact of the population decline in terms of energy and the environment, by contrast, is positive since the consumption of resources and environmental polluconsequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 153 tion decreases as the population becomes smaller, all other things being equal. at the national level, a population decline could be used for re-naturalisation in some regions. the global perspective is, however, much more signifi cant here since resource consumption in industrialised countries such as germany is disproportionately high (see also: meadows et al. 1972). since meadows’ publication, per capita resource consumption in the industrialised countries has increased with regard to most types of resources. the per capita ecological footprint increased by 30 percent in europe between 1961 and 2007 and by 42 percent in germany (ewing et al. 2010: 63). a standard for sustainability is that the environmental resources used can be regenerated in the long term. this is not the case in a global perspective which is expressed in climate change and the loss of biodiversity as well as in increasing resource shortages in terms of energy, water or fi sh stocks. in this respect, a population decline can be seen as an opportunity to reduce resource consumption and climate change. the potential for savings in germany should however be placed into a global perspective: firstly, the population of germany only accounts for 1.1 percent of the world’s population, and this share is declining (un 2012). secondly, resource consumption is massively increasing in the developing and threshold countries, in which the largest share of the world’s population lives. the following fi gures on resource consumption, measured in global hectares per person (gha) in 2007 make the ratios clear: the ecological footprint of production in germany is 4.72 gha, and that of consumption is 5.08 gha, whilst biocapacity is 1.92. this per capita shortfall that has been calculated is multiplied by the population size. according to that, 2.65 times as many resources are consumed in germany in comparison to biocapacity. globally, “only” 1.52 times the resources are consumed (ewing et al. 2010: 31). accordingly, the german defi cit, at 165 percent, is more than three times as large as the global one at 52 percent. if the population size declines, per capita biocapacity increases according to this model. in addition to this impact, the symbolic effect should not be underestimated if, in an industrialised country, resource consumption and the size of the population decrease. moreover, the fi ndings can also be transferred to other countries, and a population decline in several industrialised countries might cause a considerable relief to the environment. apart from this demographic argument, there are other political and technological possibilities to reduce environmental burdens. 6.4 the impact of the population decline on society and culture it is diffi cult to estimate the cultural impact. most social institutions such as the churches, trade unions, political parties and associations will lose members. the term “depopulation”, or even the analogy with the thirty years’ war (schmid et al. 2000: 184), are not appropriate as such, given a population decline of 14 to 21 percent by 2060 according to the medium projections. however, there are regions in which emigration coincides with low fertility, which might constitute a dramatic depopulation for those who remain. this is particularly the case in some regions of eastern germany, albeit this is not only caused by east-west migration, but also by • martin bujard154 migration between eastern german regions (sander 2014). what societal impact this will have also depends on the compensating effect of regional politics. in addition to these weak regions, there will be prosperous towns, cities and regions whose population will not decline in the following decades. it is the population which is the medium of a country’s culture and language. if it shrinks, the number of people who understand and speak the language, and who live and pass on the cultural traditions, also declines. the community characterised as sharing a common communication, experience as well as a common memory establishing the collective identity (kielmannsegg 1995) become smaller as a result of the population decline. the degree to which a decline in cultural signifi cance in an international comparison or a smaller medium for cultural and historical experience is regarded as being negative is evaluated very differently. the attempt, despite the constant level of immigration, to permanently exclude people with a migration background from these “communication communities” over generations (be it via population projections, cf. birg 2003) is a falsehood – not only because it presumes a lack of willingness to become integrated and of the effect of integration policy for the future, but also in view of mixed family formation and the impact of nationality law. 7 conclusion, synthesis and discussion the case study on germany shows that the impact of the enduring low fertility depends to a considerable degree on political decisions, but also on the future migration rate. the extreme assessments of some authors are not appropriate. the change in german fertility is neither a “blessing”, nor will it lead to the “demise of germany”. enduring low fertility leads to two demographic processes, namely ageing and a population decline, which both have a massive impact on the future societal, political and economic development. the intensity, time and evaluation of the impact differ depending on the policy area. in an overall evaluation, the impact is largely negative, partly ambivalent and manifests itself in the long term with a considerable intensity – according to this paper. this contradicts the increasingly occurring evaluations which suggest a neutral overall balance of the impact of the enduring low fertility with its challenges and opportunities. on the other hand, the consequences for party competition, culture, the labour market and the economy are not necessarily negative since they depend on political decisions and evaluation perspectives. this overall evaluation needs to be accompanied by general distinctions regarding demographic projections as well as political, economic and cultural consequences: (1) some demographic effects are certain, whilst others are based on scenarios where we do not know whether they will come about. ageing is almost certain, and in particular the fact that the age dependency ratio will more than double from 2000 to 2040. the 20-65 age dependency ratio, which was 33.7 in 2008, will be between 57 and 66 in 2040. there is also certainty that the consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 155 median voter age will rise from today’s 50.1 to roughly 55 years by 2030, with a further increase in the subsequent years. the situation is slightly different when it comes to the population decline: it is an open question even today whether and to what extend we will actually experience it. the population would be around 82-83 million by 2060 if the tfr does soon increase to 2.1 and under the condition of a moderate migration balance of 100,000. this scenario is not the most probable one, but it is also not entirely unrealistic. in more realistic scenarios with a tfr between 1.2 and 1.6, the population will be between 74 and 78 million by 2040 and between 61 and 77 million by 2060. if, however, the tfr were to remain at the same low level for the next 86 years and the migration balance does not increase, the german population would shrink considerably to 43.4 million. such long-term projections are, however, highly speculative. (2) some political developments can be shaped in such a way that they cannot generally be categorised in the dichotomy of “positive-negative”; others, in turn, are negative irrespective of possible structural adjustments. the most negative development relates to the impact on the social systems. even if the halving of the pensions (which, all other things being equal, would correspond to doubling the age dependency ratio) can be avoided by combining a higher de facto and legal retirement age, tax subsidies, an increase in the contribution rates and higher female labour force participation, and horror scenarios are thus avoidable: the enduring low fertility considerably reduces future prosperity. without ageing, the increase in the de facto retirement age and in female labour force participation would lead to higher pensions and lower ancillary wage costs. pensions will be lower for several decades from 2030 onwards and the benefi ts provided by the health insurance funds will be more restricted, leading to rising pension poverty and exclusion from some healthcare services. moreover, a considerable share of the increase in the productivity of the working generations will be used to fund social security systems. the impact on party competition results from the increase in the median age of voters: the electoral infl uence exerted by pensioners increases rapidly. the question remains to what degree this leads to reforms being blocked or changes in the political party system. such scenarios become likely when thinking of pensioners’ shared monetary interests in questions related to distribution, but, on the other hand, are being objected when thinking of the ability of political parties to adapt and of the intergenerational solidarity of the electorate. within the eu, the relative weight of germany might decrease as a result of the enduring low fertility. in the 2040s, france and the united kingdom will have a similar population size to that of germany. this will have a direct impact via the qualifi ed majority in the council and the number of ep members, as well as indirectly via negotiation positions and industrial power. (3) the economic impact of the low fertility in germany differs. the impact on potential growth and gdp tends to be negative because of the higher age dependency ratio (ageing) and the decline in human capital (population decline). however, the decline of the working population can be compensated for by higher level of labour market participation, a larger capital stock and especially higher education. negative overall effects on the per capita gdp are not plausible, however. the more severe the population decline, the more the per capita public debt will increase, but this also applies to per capita assets. the sectoral shifts in demand will be considerable. on the regional level, the impact of the population decline will substantially differ due to unequal internal • martin bujard156 migration. there will be deserted regions with falling real estate prices facing regional policy challenges, just as there will be prosperous towns and cities. (4) the cultural impact of ageing will vary widely. negative age stereotypes are rather unrealistic since pensioners will be healthier and fi tter than was the case in earlier generations. (community) volunteering and the public perception of the pensioners’ generation will increase. the extent of an impact on cultural in the case of enduring low fertility – a scenario which is possible but not certain – is diffi cult to assess in normative terms. the language media and common memory would reduce in size. this, however, will have virtually no impact on everyday cultural life, but the international profi le might be weakened. since, at the same time, the share of people with a migration background will increase, culture will also become more diverse. evaluations of this development are highly subjective. integration policy and language skills will certainly take on an increasingly important role. a common communication, experience as well as a common memory can relate both to past centuries, as well as to shorter periods of time which are shared by people with and without a migration background. table 1 summarises for each analysed policy area the demographic probability of certain possible impacts, their time horizon, the policy options and an evaluation of the impact. the question whether ageing or rather a population decline is associated with worse consequence of the enduring low fertility for people can be answered now: it is ageing. first, because it is certain that the age dependency ratio will double by 2040, whilst a population decline by more than 20 percent is by no means certain. secondly, ageing has a massive impact on the social systems, and hence on the prosperity of almost all germans. the most serious consequence of a population decline, on the other hand, namely a possible “cultural demise of germany”, will be virtually intangible in everyday life unless it results in a lack of integration of migrants. this, however, would not be a consequence of low fertility. from the perspective of the state, however, the population decline indeed has a negative impact since it contributes to a decline in international infl uence and power. one central fi nding is that an analytical distinction brings about a major advantage when analysing the impacts of ageing and the impacts of the population decline since the two differ substantially with regard to the time horizon, the dynamic and the infl uence of migration and increasing life expectancy. this partly explains the heterogeneous interpretations since the literature does frequently not distinguish precisely between these demographic processes. those authors who deny the negative impact of the second demographic transition (inter alia müller 2004; hondrich 2007), do not similarly perceive the highly negative consequences for the social security systems. given the doubling of the age dependency ratio, it is frequently argued that future growth in productivity as well as migration might compensate for ageing but without giving detailed references. both are, however, seriously overestimated in relation to the dynamic of ageing. furthermore, developments of the two demographic transitions (fdt and sdt) are mixed, and misleading analogies are drawn. on the other hand, scenarios put forward by some demographers, who stress the negative consequences of the enduring low fertility (inter alia schmid et al. 2000; birg 2003), are clearly exaggerconsequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 157 ta b . 1 : im p ac t o f t he e nd ur in g lo w fe rt ili ty o n va ri o u s p o lic y ar ea s p o lic y ar ea d em o g ra p hi c p ro ce ss c er ta in ty o f d em o g ra p h ic im p ac t c lim ax o f ch an g e d eg re e o f im p ac t o n p o lit ic s o p tio n s fo r p o lic ym ak er s (e xa m p le s) in fl u en ce o f a ri si n g t fr p en si o n s p o lic y ag ei ng hi g h 20 10 -3 5 hi g h an d n eg at iv e in cr ea se d c o n tr ib u tio n ra te s, e xt en d ed w o rk in g lif e; lo w er p en si o n s sl ig h t r ed u ct io n fr o m 2 04 0 h ea lt h p o lic y ag ei ng hi g h 20 10 -3 5 hi g h an d n eg at iv e in cr ea se d c o n tr ib u tio n ra te s, lo w er b en efi t s sl ig h t r ed u ct io n fr o m 2 04 0 e co no m y b o th p ar tl y hi g h an d am b iv al en t m o re in ve st m en t i n ed u ca tio n, in h er it an ce ta x ye s la b o ur m ar ke t b o th p ar tl y hi g h an d am b iv al en t sl o w d o w n in cr ea se in an ci lla ry w ag e co st s ye s e nv ir o nm en t p o p ul at io n d ec lin e un ce rt ai n p o ss ib ly fr o m 2 05 0 m ed iu m a n d p o si tiv e re -n at ur al is at io n, u rb an p la nn in g ye s c ul tu re b o th p ar tl y hi g h an d am b iv al en t p ro m o te (c o m m un it y) vo lu n te er in g o f t h e el d er ly ; in te g ra tio n p o lic y ye s c o m p et it io n b et w ee n p o lit ic al p ar ti es ag ei ng hi g h 20 10 -3 5 hi g h an d am b iv al en t g en er at io n al p o lic y; in te g ra te in te re st s in to p o lit ic s sl ig h t r ed u ct io n fr o m 2 04 0 in te rn at io n al re la tio n s p o p ul at io n d ec lin e un ce rt ai n p o ss ib ly fr o m 2 05 0 m ed iu m a n d n eg at iv e e ur o p ea n in te g ra tio n ye s e u p o p ul at io n d ec lin e un ce rt ai n p o ss ib ly fr o m 2 05 0 hi g h an d n eg at iv e n o n e ye s s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • martin bujard158 ated. this is contributed to by the specifi c selection of (negative) assumptions, and by the failure to categorise the uncertainty attached to long-term model calculations in case of the population decline. if, however, evaluations do not only relate to low fertility, but to the demographic change as a whole, a normative neutral evaluation is not implausible (inter alia merkel 2013). since it entails a positive phenomenon, namely the increase in life expectancy (akademiegruppe altern 2009; kruse 2013), and a negative one in the enduring low fertility. these two phenomena are, however, not interdependent. whilst increasing life expectancy affects all industrialised countries, only some of the countries, such as germany, are characterised by low fertility. how can fi ndings derived from the case study on germany be transferred to other countries? low fertility rates do not have such consequences if they are only low for a few years. in germany, by contrast, the enduring low fertility has taken on a dynamic force since it already stretches across two generations now. some southern and eastern european states, as well as japan and south korea, currently face a similar development. if the low-fertility syndrome lasts for a similar period in these countries as it does in germany, the shrinking process in southern and eastern europe will be even more pronounced since germany has benefi ted from considerable net immigration in recent decades and some of these countries are affected by waves of emigration. since germany is an immigration destination country to which many people have moved from southern and eastern europe, because of the wave of ethnic german resettlers from the (former) soviet union after the fall of the iron curtain, as well as due to the fi nancial crisis, the shrinking process set in motion by an enduring low fertility has been compensated for. this is not the case for japan; here the age dependency ratio will rise greater than in germany since life expectancy is several years higher there. countries such as france with a more pronounced baby boom also have problems with the pensions system despite a tfr around the replacement level, since the age dependency ratio also rises rapidly when the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age. in the fi rst two decades after the start of low fertility in 1975, germany did not react to the impact on the social systems, or only did so by enacting minor reform measures. the more extensive pension reform, which increased the retirement age by two years, was adopted in 2007, and thus in the 33rd year in which the tfr was lower than 1.5. an offi cial interdepartmental demography strategy was presented in 2012, in germany’s 38th year as a low-fertility country. the more visible the age effect and the population decline, the more intensive becomes the political and media debate on demography. as has been shown, the german debate on demography features considerable exaggerations and extreme positions. this situation may not be transferable to other countries since the experience with pronatalistic abuse in nazi germany has cast a long shadow over the debate. on the other hand, the discussion of the demographic impact is made more complicated when researcher describe specifi c developments which cannot yet be seen by the citizens. the impact for the economy, the labour market, the environment and party competition can also largely be transferred to other countries if the phenomenon of low fertility lasts for a similarly long period there. the impact on the balance of power within consequences of enduring low fertility – a german case study • 159 the eu is particularly serious from the perspective of germany since germany has a leading position regarding the size of its economy and of its population, and might lose its position should there be a considerable population decline. on the contrary, when it comes to other countries such as estonia the cultural impact is huge since the language media and the common memory there are relatively small. since the occurrence of enduring low fertility is a phenomenon which has taken on a new dimension, many effects are still uncertain and are subject to future research. immigration may decelerate the population decline, possibly at the expense of additional problems, but this has no effect on ageing. the analysis of the impact shows that countries such as germany have a fundamental interest in increasing future birth rates. the potential long-term impact of a mixture of family policies on the tfr (bujard 2011; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013) makes family policy a key policy area in the future. the impact on social insurance within the next two decades can, however, no longer be averted by demographic means. if, however, the fertility rate rises to replacement level, the age dependency ratio could be 26 percent lower by 2060 compared to a scenario with a constant low tfr. this would imply long-term latitude to increase pensions for the generations born after 1970. in order to avert the projected population decline, an increase in the tfr would be the central adjustment. even if it does not increase within the next one, two or three decades, the negative scenarios of an exponential population decline could be averted. acknowledgement the author wishes to thank christian fiedler, frank micheel, harun sulak and stefan wurster, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice. references akademiegruppe altern in deutschland 2009: gewonnene jahre. stuttgart: wissenschaftliche verlagsgesellschaft. barlösius, eva; 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n = 76). adolescents’ satisfaction with different domains of life (family, education/work, and their general life satisfaction) as well as their self-esteem were used as indicators of well-being. a series of multiple regression analyses tested the effects of family structure on well-being at t1 and changes in well-being over time, controlling for various background factors. furthermore, likely mediation effects of infrequent contact to the non-resident father and economic strain were tested. the fi ndings show (relatively minor) effects of parental separation, namely lower well-being among youth1 in single mother families compared to nuclear families. disadvantages of youth in single mother families could only be partly explained by the higher fi nancial strain generally experienced in these families. youth in stepfather families reported a similar overall well-being as adolescents in nuclear families, but indicated a greater decrease in family satisfaction over time. pre-separation disadvantages among prospective separators were limited to greater dissatisfaction with school. infrequent contact with the non-resident father did not affect adolescents’ well-being. effects of family structure did not differ between boys and girls, but maternal education moderated the effects of family structure on adolescents’ life satisfaction. overall, the fi ndings are in line with other evidence from germany, which points towards only limited disadvantages of youth in separated or divorced families. keywords: parental separation · divorce · stepfamily · adolescent well-being · economic deprivation comparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 335-364 (date of release: 27.11.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-12en3 1 the terms “youth” and “adolescent” are used interchangeably. • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt336 1 introduction only few recent changes in family life have received as much public and scientifi c attention as the increasing instability of marriage. ever since the “golden age of marriage” of the 1960s started to wane, divorce became a prominent issue not only among demographers and family sociologists, but also among developmental and clinical psychologists seeking to determine the impact of parental divorce for the children involved. meanwhile, marital instability has increased considerably across many countries – as refl ected in the crude divorce rate for europe (eu-27), which doubled from 1.0 divorces per year per 1 000 inhabitants in 1970 to 2.0 divorces by 2010 (eurostat 2013). at the same time, marriage rates declined, cohabitation increased, and a rising share of children is born to unmarried parents. in the u.s., the percentage of births to unmarried women increased relatively steadily since the 1960s, peaking in 2009 and levelling off since, with 40.6 percent in 2013 (curtin et al. 2014). other countries show similar trends, albeit at different levels. given that unmarried childbearing increasingly occurs in cohabiting unions and that such unmarried unions have a higher risk of breakup (e.g. liefbroer/dourleijn 2006), even when joint children are involved (bastin et al. 2012; schnor 2012), it is no longer only the instability of parents’ marriages, but also the instability of unmarried unions which has become an issue for child development. not surprisingly, concerns about the impact of these changes on the next generation are high. however, the focus and theoretical framing have changed over the years. while early studies from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s (hetherington/stanleyhagan 1999) on the effects of parental divorce were largely guided by a common defi cit model assuming that children from divorced homes are per se worse off than children from nuclear families, these generalising assumptions proved to be inadequate. the initial methodological approach, which relied on simple comparisons of children’s development in nuclear and separated (single parent) families, also turned out to be insuffi cient. as pointed out by amato (2010: 661), “focusing on the average effects of divorce masks the substantial degree of variability that exists in people’s adjustment”. over the past decades, large numbers of studies have contributed to a refi ned understanding of relevant conditions that may – or may not – occur in the context of divorce and may contribute to or ameliorate the many challenges in children’s and adolescents’ coping with parental breakup (for an overview see amato 2010). accordingly, understanding the effects of parental breakup has become a complex enterprise. this paper starts by providing an overview of relevant perspectives, models, and fi ndings focusing on several key issues: the role of economic deprivation in linking family structure to child development, the infl uence of children’s contact with the non-resident parent on children’s well-being, effects of interparental confl ict, the infl uence of pre-separation stress in families which eventually separate, and costs and benefi ts of stepfamily formation. the majority of such fi ndings come from the u.s., but we will also look into evidence from europe, particularly from germany. the empirical analyses presented here investigate adolescents’ well-being in different family types and address the mediating role of fi nancial hardship and reduced effects of parental separation • 337 contact with the non-resident father. we focus particularly on the experience of parental separation in midto late adolescence using prospective data from the german family panel pairfam, through which we can address possible strains prior to and following parental separation. 2 perspectives on the effects of divorce research on the well-being of children and adolescents in divorced or separated homes has examined a wide variety of consequences, including emotional well-being and mental health (chase-lansdale et al. 1995; strohschein 2005), behavioural problems and delinquency (burt et al. 2008; fergusson et al. 1992), cognitive competencies (sanz-de-galdeano/vuri 2007), academic achievement and educational attainment (francesconi et al. 2010; hilmert 2002), as well as life-course trajectories with respect to home-leaving, employment and earnings, partnership stability, and early childbearing (cherlin et al. 1995; ross/mirowsky 1999). given the many empirical studies which address differences in children’s well-being by family structure, several meta-analyses have sought to integrate available empirical evidence. in an update of his earlier meta-analysis (amato/keith 1991), amato reviewed empirical evidence from studies mainly conducted in the u.s. during the 1990s (amato 2001) and found consistent evidence for overall disadvantages among children from divorced families when compared to children from nuclear families, even though the effect sizes were rather small. elaborating on this approach and looking at evidence from europe, a recent meta-analysis covered 17 studies from europe (amato 2014), encompassing investigations on behavioural and emotional problems (from bulgaria, the netherlands, greece, germany, and norway), research on educational achievement (from italy and sweden), studies that have looked at health problems, substance use (alcohol and tobacco), and risky sexual behaviour (from germany, france, greece, the netherlands, and slovakia), two studies on delinquency (from denmark) and one study on attachment security (from germany). almost all of these studies reported poorer outcomes for children with divorced parents than for children with continuously married parents. the weighted effect (accounting for differences in sample size) revealed a mean value of -.17 across all studies – a value which proved small and very similar to the overall effect sizes from american studies. accordingly, amato (2014: 15) concluded that “irrespective of national and cultural characteristics, the gap between children with divorced and continuously married parents is about the same on both sides of the atlantic.” at the same time, there is considerable variability in fi ndings across studies and countries (amato/james 2010). while some authors stress the dramatic consequences which parental breakup may have for the offspring’s well-being (wallerstein et al. 1988), others highlight the coping potential in divorced families (hetherington/kelly 2002). such divergent views also fi nd support in evidence from germany: several studies based on large samples did not fi nd higher depressiveness, impaired selfesteem, more problems in peer relations, or increased behaviour problems among • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt338 children and adolescents from separated single parent families compared to nuclear families (walper 2002; walper/wendt 2005; wendt/walper 2007). furthermore, a recent study on the effects of parental separation on young children whose parents cohabited, but were not married when the children were born, found no evidence for increased emotional or behavioural problems among those who experienced parental separation (walper/langmeyer 2014). similarly, the large-scale pisa assessment of academic competencies among 15-year-old adolescents did not suggest any differences between youth from single parent and two-parent families in germany, whereas marked differences were found in other countries, such as the u.s. (ehmke et al. 2004). however, other research conducted in germany reported increased emotional and behavioural problems for up to two years after parental separation (schmidt-denter 2000), an increased likelihood of insecure attachment representation for boys in single parent families (gloger-tippelt/könig 2007), and – in a clinical sample – more instances of conduct disorder among youth raised in separated single parent families (steinhausen et al. 1987). in seeking to account for the variability of fi ndings across as well as within samples and to better understand the origin of differences between children from separated and nuclear families, researchers have long pointed out that divorce is not a uniform single event, but typically comes along with other stressors triggered by union dissolution (amato 2000; hetherington/stanley-hagan 1999). this divorcestress-adjustment perspective views disadvantages among offspring from separated families as caused by divorce-related stressors and differences in coping resources. in contrast, the selection perspective cautions against overestimating the causal role of separation and disadvantages and points towards common causes for parental separation and offspring strain (amato 2000). both perspectives shall be shortly reviewed. 2.1 parental separation as stressor the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective (amato 2000) points out that parental breakup is neither a uniform nor a single event, but instead is likely to be embedded in a longer series of events and stressors which partly precede but mostly follow separation or divorce. such stressors differ in prevalence and strength, and they occur in the context of varying coping resources. both factors – divorce-triggered stressors and the available coping resources – jointly shape the individual experience and outcomes of parental separation. prominent divorce-related stressors are (1) economic problems which arise when available fi nancial resources have to cover the expenses of two households, (2) reduced contact to the non-resident parent, and (3) confl ict between parents (e.g. about child custody and child-support payments). findings from many countries have shown that single parenthood is linked to an increased risk of income poverty and downward mobility (amato 2010), even though effects of family structure on income vary by family policy and welfare programmes, with a weaker effect in scandinavian countries than in the u.k. and the u.s. (garriga/härkönen 2009). poverty, in turn, has been shown to increase the risk for compromised child development in effects of parental separation • 339 terms of health, education, emotional well-being, social relations, and behavioural problems (conger et al. 2000; duncan/brooks-gunn 1997; walper 2009). in line with the economic strain hypothesis, several fi ndings suggest that a large share of the disadvantages found for children in single parent families can be explained by the increased risk of inadequate fi nancial resources (see also amato 2010; mclanahan 1999), at least in countries where divorce typically leads to fi nancial hardship (garriga/härkönen 2009). support has also been provided for the interparental confl ict hypothesis, as children’s increased emotional and behavioural problems in divorced families could be largely accounted for by the higher prevalence of intense confl ict between separated parents (e.g. schick 2002). similarly, looking at subgroups of children with different developmental trajectories after parental separation, more negative trajectories were linked to more severe problems in the post-divorce relationship (schmidtdenter 2001). in general, for nuclear as well as for separated families, interparental confl ict has been pointed out as a major stressor for children, because it is likely to spill over into parenting (buehler/gerard 2002; erel/burman 1995), contributes to loyalty confl icts, and undermines children’s emotional security in the family system (davies et al. 2002; walper/beckh 2006). however, since post-divorce confl ict may have its roots in pre-separation marital problems, it is less clear whether increased interparental tension and confl ict in the post-separation period can be interpreted as resulting from parental breakup, or whether it actually preceded the parents’ decision to separate. in general, it is quite likely that confl ict was already present in the pre-divorce period. accordingly, interparental confl ict is also a factor addressed by the selection perspective. in contrast, parental separation is very likely to affect a child’s relation to the non-resident parent, at least in terms of frequency of contact. many studies fi nd that contact with the non-resident parent – usually the father – diminishes as time goes by, especially if the father lacks the economic resources to provide for the children and if the interparental relation is strained (amendt 2004). a decrease in contact with the non-resident parent can also be observed if the children were very young at the time of parental breakup and once they reach adolescence and invest more time in peer relations (see walper/krey 2009). in legal decision-making, counselling, and public debate, considerable concern relates to such effects, because it is commonly held that children thrive on a continuous relation to both parents despite parental breakup. interestingly, however, available evidence does not suggest that the frequency of contact is a crucial variable for well-being (amato 1993, 2010). in a meta-analysis of links between child well-being and several aspect of non-resident fathers’ involvement, almost no effects of contact frequency were found, whereas the quality of fathers’ parenting had the strongest effect (amato/gilbreth 1999). furthermore, a study from germany on adolescents who never had contact to their separated father evidenced no differences in well-being compared to adolescents in nuclear families (walper/wendt 2011). a longitudinal study from the u.s. involving a large sample of adolescents from separated families even found that the link between fathers’ engagement and adolescent behaviour had to be interpreted in the opposite direction: fathers’ engagement did not affect their child’s subsequent • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt340 well-being, but an increase in adolescents behavioural problems led to a decrease in paternal involvement in the subsequent year (hawkins et al. 2007). while the effects of contact frequency on children’s well-being seem to be less reliable, contact does affect the chances of establishing a close relationship with the non-resident parent (walper/krey 2009; whiteside/becker 2000). finally, union dissolution opens the options for parents to repartner and remarry, thus potentially triggering additional changes in children’s family composition and parenting experiences. in germany, about eleven percent of all minors are estimated to live with a stepparent in their primary household (steinbach 2008). furthermore, in about 5 percent of all nuclear and 17 percent of stepfamilies, at least one parent has one or more children outside of the household, suggesting a secondary or “weekend” stepfamily constellation. although parents usually benefi t from the support of a new partner (schmidt-denter 2001), the advantages of such changes are less clear for children (coleman et al. 2000; sweeney 2010). typically, they not only have to adapt to a new person in the household, who is likely to claim infl uence on decisions and may be inexperienced in child rearing, but they also lose some of the time and attention of their biological parent. adolescence has specifi cally been pointed out as a diffi cult phase in stepfamily life, and some studies suggest more negative fi ndings for girl’s adjustment in stepfamilies (coleman et al. 2000; hetherington/jodl 1994). integrating fi ndings from 61 studies, a meta-analysis found that stepchildren generally fare worse than children in nuclear families (with both biological parents) regarding academic achievement and psychological wellbeing (jeynes 2006). when compared to children in single parent families, however, stepchildren did not show any advantages. they did not differ in psychological wellbeing and showed lower scholastic achievement than youth from divorced single parent families. 2.2 the selection perspective while the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective highlights the causal role of divorce-related stressors in explaining disadvantages of children whose parents separated, the selection perspective addresses possible differences between stable and disrupted families preceding parental breakup, which may affect not only the likelihood for separation or divorce but also for children’s compromised development. likely factors are parents’ personality problems, low socio-economic resources, problems in the parents’ relationship, but also genetic factors that play a role in social behaviour (amato 2000; garriga/härkönen 2009). several approaches have been developed to address issues of selectivity (see amato 2010; garriga/harkönen 2009). taking into account pre-disruption differences in family characteristics and child well-being is one of the main methods for estimating selection effects. in fact, much support for the selection perspective came from prospective longitudinal studies which were able to trace family characteristics and child development across time prior to parental separation (e.g. block et al. 1986; cherlin et al. 1991). many of these fi ndings suggested that disadvantages in child development can be observed well ahead of their parents’ separaeffects of parental separation • 341 tion. interestingly, boys seemed to be more strongly affected in the pre-separation period than girls. in the study by cherlin et al. (1991), effects of parental breakup were considerably reduced once such pre-separation differences were taken into account. in some cases, the effects of parental separation disappear when controlling for children’s pre-divorce well-being and competencies. for example, a study based on data from the national education longitudinal study observed teenagers from divorced families before and after the divorce and compared them to youth from intact homes (sanz-de-galdeano/vuri 2007). the authors did not fi nd that parental divorce negatively affected adolescents’ cognitive skills when controlling for pre-divorce competencies. however, selection effects such as these are not consistently found in all studies on the topic (e.g. allison/furstenberg 1989; forehand et al. 1997). in a study on urban youth in germany, only limited pre-separation differences were found when comparing adolescents from stable and instable families one year prior to parental separation, in the year of parental breakup, and one year later (schwarz 1999). preseparation disadvantages were restricted to adolescents’ relationships to parents and peers, but were not found for their transgression proneness (positive attitudes to delinquency) or their self-derogation. other data suggest a combination of selection effects as well as additional stresses caused by parental separation (cherlin et al. 1998; cherlin et al. 1995; sigle-rushton et al. 2005). for example, a 14-year longitudinal study which compared children of unmarried or divorced mothers to children with married mothers drew from information about the mothers’ development during their adolescent years, long before the children were born (emery et al. 1999). as expected, children from single mother families showed increased problematic behaviour, which could partly be explained by the higher delinquency of these mothers during their adolescent years. it is quite likely that mothers‘ earlier problem behaviour prompts risky choices in mate selection and contributes to problems with the child’s father, thus triggering partnership instability at a later stage. furthermore, problems in self-regulation or anti-social traits may undermine mothers’ parenting competencies, thus reducing the chances for positive child development. at the same time, parental separation seems to have caused additional problems in child development. given such direct similarities in parents’ and children’s behaviour, addressing genetic issues seems to be a logical next step, even more so since some evidence points to genetic infl uences on the likelihood to divorce (see amato 2010; garriga/ harkonen 2009). however, when comparing the effects of parental divorce in biological and adoptive families, child outcomes in terms of problem behaviour and substance use were similar for biological and adopted children (e.g. amato/cheadle 2008; o’connor et al. 2000). accordingly, it is unlikely that these effects of parental separation can simply be attributed to genetic selectivity. overall, there is evidence for selection effects which often, but not consistently, lead to increased problems among children even prior to parental separation. in general, these fi ndings are not at odds with the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective, even more so since increased strain among youth shortly before their parents’ separation could still be seen as part of the separation process as a whole. this • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt342 phase of decision making is often particularly stressful for the adults involved. thus, selection and socialisation may jointly be at work. 2.3 differential effects across contexts and child characteristics some attention has been paid to the question of whether the negative consequences of divorce fade as divorce becomes more prevalent and a more common experience in children’s lives. such an increased “institutionalisation“ of divorce is likely to reduce the risk of stigmatisation and may facilitate successful coping with the demands of parental breakup given that many peers share the same experience. however, comparing the disadvantages of children from divorced families across time, the meta-analysis by amato (2001) does not provide evidence of a linear trend. although effects in the 1980s were less marked than in older studies conducted up until the 1970s, more recent fi ndings from the 1990s show an increase in disadvantages for children from divorced families. since most of these studies were conducted in the u.s., where social benefi ts for single parent families had been cut back during the 1990s, such changes in policy have been suggested as a likely explanation (see amato 2001). findings from other countries point towards similar evidence. a large multi-country study based on data from the generations and gender survey provided no support for the „institutionalisation hypothesis“, which would have predicted less disadvantages for divorced families where divorce is highly prevalent. instead, these data indicated larger effects of parental separation on the offspring’s educational attainment in countries and at times with higher divorce rates (bernardi/radl 2014). such fi ndings also raise issues of self-selection into divorce. when divorces are rare, the threshold to separate is high. hence, couples with highly dysfunctional relationships are more likely to select into the group of those who opt for divorce. since many fi ndings show that children’s well-being is undermined by frequent and intensive interparental confl ict (fincham 1998; krishnakumar/buehler 2000), one might expect more negative consequences of parental breakups for children in such highly stressed families. however, prospective studies suggest otherwise (see amato 2010): when tracing the effects of divorce for families with more or less problems in the parents’ pre-divorce relationship, it rather seems that children from high-confl ict families have less to loose and more to gain if their parents separate. in contrast, offspring from previously unstressed marriages showed considerable disadvantages in their adult life (e.g. amato et al. 1995). many studies have addressed the issue of children’s vulnerabilities, examining age and gender as likely moderators. although some fi ndings are in line with the wide-spread notion that younger children are more dependent on a well-functioning family and thus more vulnerable to family disruption (allison/furstenberg 1989; emery 1988), other researchers have suggested that it is adolescent children who are particularly vulnerable to parental breakups (chase-lansdale et al. 1995). the majority of fi ndings do not suggest differential effects by children’s age (amato 2001). similarly, gender differences in children’s coping with parental breakup are not very clear. in line with evidence suggesting that boys are more vulnerable to effects of parental separation • 343 family stress than girls (e.g. gloger-tippelt/könig 2007), pre-separation distress was found to be higher among boys whose parents break up during childhood (block et al. 1986; cherlin et al. 1991). in general, however, divorce does not seem to affect boys and girls differently (e.g. fergusson et al. 1994). for the adolescent years, the evidence is even less consistent. since divorce has been found to be more prevalent among families with low socio-economic resources, studies usually control for parental education, occupation, or a ses (socioeconomic status) composite when estimating the effects of divorce. however, little attention has been paid to differential effects of parental separation depending on parents’ ses resources. in a recent study using data from the generations and gender survey (covering 14 countries), bernardi and radl (2014) investigated the long-term consequences of parental separation for children’s educational attainment, focusing on the likelihood of achieving tertiary education. comparing the effects of parental breakup for families with different levels of parental education, they found no evidence for the “social origin compensation hypothesis“, which claims that parents with higher ses resources are better able to cope with divorce and protect their children from negative consequences. rather, their data provided clear support of the „fl oor effect“, i.e. for weaker effects of parental breakup among families with low parental education whose children face substantially lower chances for tertiary education anyway. interestingly, this „fl oor effect“ was not observed in countries with early tracking, i.e. early performance-based selection into different school tracks (like in germany). in these countries, offspring from families with higher as well as lower parental education experienced markedly lower chances for tertiary education when their parents separated. in the following study, we sought to follow up on these issues by looking at various aspects of adolescents’ wellbeing, including their satisfaction with their domain of education and work. 2.4 research questions in the following analyses, we compare adolescents’ well-being in different family structures over a 2-year time period. we employ a broad concept of parental separation, including all cases with both parents alive but not living in a union, irrespective of whether they have been married in the past or not or whether they are still formally married but separated and no longer live in an intact partnership. when testing possible disadvantages of adolescents in stable single parent households and stepfamilies as opposed to nuclear families, we control for important background factors and explore whether both types of separated families are linked to similar disadvantages (separation disadvantage hypothesis) or whether either of these two types of separated families is less likely to promote adolescent well-being (single mother or stepfamily strain hypothesis). although single parent families are more likely to suffer from fi nancial hardship and may thus provide a more stressful environment for youth development, available evidence does not suggest advantages of stepfamilies compared to single parent families for children’s well-being (jeynes 2006). hence, we expect similar disadvantages for youth from both types of separated families when compared to adolescents from nuclear families. further• sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt344 more, we seek to explore effects of a recent parental separation employing a prospective design. based on previous fi ndings from prospective studies, we expect to fi nd lower well-being among adolescents prior to parental separation than among adolescents from nuclear families (pre-separation strain hypotheses). secondly, we investigate whether changes in outcomes differ across time by family type. in this respect, we expect a reduction in adolescents’ well-being after parental separation among those whose parents separated between both waves, while controlling for pre-separation well-being and background factors (post-separation strain hypothesis). these analyses also explore whether other types of separated families show different trends in adolescents’ well-being than nuclear families do. thirdly, we ask whether infrequent contact to the non-residential parent and/or economic deprivation explain any effects of family type on changes in well-being across time. such evidence would suggest that contact and/or economic resources function as mediating links between family structure and adolescent outcomes. while public discourse gives major importance to the amount of contact children have to their non-residential parent, research on the topic has not found substantial effects of such contact on children’s and adolescents’ well-being. hence, we include this factor, but do not expect it to explain differences in adolescents’ well-being when comparing youth from separated families to those from nuclear families. in contrast, economic deprivation has been pointed out as an important mediator for explaining disadvantages of youth in single mother families, who are most likely to be hit by fi nancial strain. we expect to replicate this fi nding (economic strain hypothesis). finally, we test whether adolescents’ gender and parental education moderate the link between family structure and adolescent well-being. with respect to parental education, we expect to fi nd more negative effects of a recent parental separation, single motherhood, and stepfamily life in the less educated group (resource hypothesis). although previous fi ndings have not pointed to the signifi cance of a child’s gender as a factor that moderates the effects of parental separation, prospective studies have suggested that boys may be more strained prior to parental separation. thus, we test such moderation effects for t1 differences between family types as well as for t3 changes in adolescents’ well-being in different family types. 3 method 3.1 sample the paper’s sample was drawn from the german family panel pairfam (huinink et al. 2011), a three-cohort longitudinal study on family development with annual assessments, which started in 2008/2009 for three birth cohorts. participants were recruited through register data and personal visits of the interviewer, who conducted the interviews in the participants’ home. for our purposes, the sample was restricted to the adolescent cohort (born 1991–1993). adolescents were mostly 15 to 17 years old during wave 1, with only very few younger or older participants. of the effects of parental separation • 345 initial adolescent cohort in wave 1 (n = 4334), 72.3 percent were re-interviewed two years later for wave 3 (n = 3132). our analysis are based on the data from the fi rst three waves of pairfam, release 4.0 (nauck et al. 2013). data on household composition in waves 1 and 3 was available for 3128 adolescents. the family type was identifi ed by the adolescents’ report on whether both parents currently lived in a joint household and the adolescents’ household composition at their main residence. in a fi rst step, the sample was restricted to youth whose parents were both still alive (n = 3019) and who lived with at least one parent in waves 1 and 3 (n = 2760). this second criterion excluded youth who had left the parental home prior to wave 3 (n = 259). as might be expected, the likelihood of having left the parental household differed for youth from higherand lower-track schools. adolescents who had already left the parental home by wave 3 were less likely to be on the higher school track than those who still stayed with their parents (35.1 percent vs. 44.6 percent; chi2 = 8.69; df = 2; p<.01). in a second step, we selected family types of suffi cient group size. adolescents who lived with a single father (n = 57) or with their father and his new partner/a stepmother (n = 27) in waves 1 and 3 could not be considered due to their low prevalence in the sample. for similar reasons, newly formed or separated stepfather families (n = 27 and 31) were not included in the analyses. in addition, we excluded all cases in which no information about either maternal or paternal education was provided (5.1 percent of all cases; n = 160). based on data for waves 1 and 3, we categorised all remaining cases as stable nuclear families (with both biological parents in adolescents’ household, n = 1968), stable single mother families (biological mother, without a partner in the household; n = 360), stable stepfather families (biological mother and her partner in the household; n = 214), or prospective separators, i.e. families who started as nuclear families in wave 1 but experienced parental separation between waves 1 and 3 (n = 76). in total, n = 2618 adolescents who participated in waves 1 and 3 were available, among these up to 2483 had complete data for our analyses. as analyses regarding selective drop-out across time revealed, longitudinal drop-out was not randomly distributed between nuclear and separated families (chi2 = 13.44; df = 1; p < .01). adolescents from separated families were more likely to drop out by wave 3 than adolescents from nuclear families were (32.5 percent vs. 26.8 percent). table 1 provides an overview of the sample, subdivided by family type as well as providing totals. as shown in the last column, adolescents’ average age during wave 1 was 15.92 years (sd = .88), and about half of the sample was female. almost half of all adolescents were currently enrolled or had already fi nished grammar school (“gymnasium”), the highest school track which – if successfully fi nished – provides access to university studies. the share of families with high maternal education (university or advanced technical college entrance qualifi cation) was about a third. one-fi fth of the adolescents had a migration background, i.e. they and/or at least one of their parents were not born in germany. in line with population statistics, only a minority (18.0 percent) of participants lived in eastern germany. to test for signifi cant differences by gender, maternal education, migration background, and region of residence between the subgroups defi ned by family type, • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt346 chi2-tests were carried out. the share of adolescents in grammar schools proved signifi cantly lower in single mother families and stepfather families than in nuclear families (chi2 = 34.28; df = 3; p < .01). a similar pattern was found for maternal education. the share of high maternal education (graduation from grammar school) proved signifi cantly lower in single mother families and stepfather families than in nuclear families (chi2 = 8.03; df = 3; p < .05). signifi cant differences were also found by region (chi2 = 12.39; df = 3; p < .01): adolescents in stepfather families were more likely to live in eastern germany, while regional distribution did not differ for the other family types. furthermore, migration background differed signifi cantly across family types (chi2 = 15.42; df = 3; p < .01): prospective separators and adolescents in stepfather families were less likely to have a migration background than youth in single mother families. in order to inspect the fi nancial situation of the family, we decided not to rely on household income, which was only available as reported by adolescents. instead, we used a presumably more valid indicator: a two-item-scale which was assessed in wave 3 and measured fi nancial strain in the household (see indicators below). analyses of variance comparing the four family types revealed highly signifi cant effects of family type (f = 85.37; df = 3; p < .001): economic deprivation was signifi cantly lower in nuclear families than in all types of separated families. according to post-hoc tests, youth from single mother families reported signifi cantly higher economic deprivation than youth from stepfather and prospective separation families. stepfather families and prospective separators did not differ signifi cantly. tab. 1: descriptives of the sample by family type nuclear families prospective separators* single mother families stepfather families total n 1968 76 360 214 2618 age at t1 m 15.90 15.91 15.97 15.95 15.92 sd .87 .80 .89 .94 .88 gender (% female) 47.4 53.9 47.2 46.7 47.5 school track (% grammar school) 48.2 42.7 33.9 35.5 45.1 high maternal education (% yes) 32.9 27.6 27.2 26.6 32.5 migration background (% yes) 21.3 11.8 23.3 11.2 20.8 region (% east) 16.9 22.4 18.3 26.2 18.0 economic deprivation t2/3 m 2.10 2.55 2.91 2.32 2.24 sd .87 .92 1.01 .90 .93 % with contact to non-resident father at t3 -97.3 77.7 76.7 79.7 * adolescents whose parents separated between waves 1 and 3 source: pairfam data release 4.0 effects of parental separation • 347 finally, we compared the share of adolescents’ who still had contact to their non-residential father in wave 3 and found signifi cant differences between the three types of separated families (chi2 = 16.11; df = 2; p < .001). as might be expected, youth in recently separated families (prospective separators) were less likely to have lost contact to their biological fathers at t3 than youth in stable single mother and stable stepfather families. no signifi cant differences regarding age or gender were found. 3.2 indicators economic deprivation. to assess economic deprivation in the household, two items from a larger scale were used in wave 3 indicating the inadequacy of the family’s budget for ordinary living expenses (e.g. “my parents often have to forego something because they have to watch their budget”). the indicator was computed as the mean of both items. more specifi c information on this, as well as all other indicators used in our analyses is presented in table 2. contact to father. for separated families, information on the frequency of contact to the non-residential father was assessed by a single question: “how often are you in contact with your father, adding up all visits, letters, phone calls, etc.?” for the purpose of our analyses, we focused on the effects of infrequent contact and recoded the categories into a dichotomous variable combining the categories “contab. 2: description of indicators variable number of items source response format cronbach’s alpha mean (standard deviation) wave 1 wave 3 economic deprivation 2 schwarz et al. (1997) 1 = not at all correct to 5 = completely correct .89 (w3) 2.24 (.93) contact to father 1 pairfam 1 = daily to 7 = never 10 = contact never existed 1.87 (1.75) satisfaction with family 1 pairfam 0 = very dissatisfi ed to 10 = very satisfi ed 8.83 (1.54) 8.55 (1.58) satisfaction with school, education, career 1 pairfam 0 = very dissatisfi ed to 10 = very satisfi ed 7.36 (1.85) 7.42 (1.98) overall life satisfaction 1 pairfam 0 = very dissatisfi ed to 10 = very satisfi ed 7.99 (1.47) 7.90 (1.45) self-esteem 3 adapted from rosenberg (1965) 1 = not at all to 5 = absolutely .78 (w3) 4.13 (.74) 3.98 (.82) • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt348 tact never existed”, ”never” and “less than several times per year” into the category infrequent (no or rare) contact (n = 186; coded as 1), while the other categories (from “several times per year” up to “daily”) served as reference category indicating more frequent contact (n = 2407; coded as 0). although this coding implies a loss of information about variations in frequency of contact, it provided a variable which was less confounded with family structure than the original categories. adolescents’ well-being. to assess adolescents’ well-being in waves 1 and 3, we relied on indicators which were similarly measured in both waves. three singleitem indicators gave information about adolescents’ satisfaction with their family, school/work, and life in general. the items were introduced with the question “how satisfi ed are you with the following domains of your life?”. the domains were named “family” and “school, education, career”. overall life satisfaction was assessed with the question “all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your life at the moment?”. furthermore, a 3-item-indicator of self-esteem was included in both waves. since the assessment mode of self-esteem was changed between waves 1 and 2 from computer-assisted personal interviews (wave 1: capi) to computer-assisted self-completed interview (waves 2 and later waves: casi), the scale had to be corrected for mean-level differences which emerged between wave 1 and later waves (with higher levels of self-esteem reported in the capi than in the casi interviews). in order to correct for mean level differences without changing the rank order of participants at each wave, the scale was z-standardised for the entire sample of each wave. due to the loss of sample size for the present analyses (with a higher loss in wave 1 than in wave 3), the distribution of the self-esteem scales does not completely match the original means and standard deviations. more detailed information on all indicators used in the present analyses can be found in the scale manual for the pairfam project report, available online (thönnissen et al. 2014). 3.3 analyses multiple regression analyses were used to test effects of family structure on adolescents’ well-being at waves 1 and 3 (t1 and t3), controlling for adolescents’ age, gender, maternal education, migration background, and region of residence. family type was dummy-coded using nuclear families as the reference category for comparisons with recent separators, single mother families, and stepfather families (each coded as a dichotomous dummy variable). for each dependent variable, fi ve analyses were conducted: (1) in model 1, data for t1 inform about mean differences between youth from different family types, with a special focus on possible pre-separation strain among those whose parents later separated in the following two years (between t1 and t3). these fi rst analyses control for background variables only. (2) in model 2, we added interaction effects between family type and gender or maternal education to test whether pre-separation well-being among prospective separators was more compromised for boys or youth from families with lower maternal education than their respective counterparts. in addition, these analyses examined similarities and differences in the effects of single motherhood effects of parental separation • 349 and stepfamily life between boys and girls and between families with higher or lower educational resources. (3) the third model used data for t3 as dependent variables to assess changes in well-being between both waves, controlling for the stability of the respective outcome variable across time. it tested effects of family type, controlling for the background variables as well as for effects of the outcome variable at t1. (4) model 4 added the effects of infrequent contact to the biological father at t3 and economic deprivation at t3 as likely mediators between family structure and adolescent outcomes. in these latter analyses, we were interested in seeing (a) whether youth from separated family types evidenced less favourable changes in well-being across the two-year time period than youth from nuclear families, (b) whether infrequent contact to the father and/or economic deprivation affected adolescent outcomes, and (c) whether and to what extent the effects of family structure were diminished when introducing infrequent contact to the father and economic deprivation as additional predictors. given that infrequent contact to the father is only found in separated families and economic deprivation has been shown to be substantially higher in single mother families (see sample description), both are potential mediators which may explain disadvantages in adolescent well-being when comparing separated to nuclear families (for tests on mediator effects see baron/kenny 1986). furthermore, particular attention was paid to effects of a prospective separation between t1 and t3. if a recent parental separation was more stressful than the pre-separation period, adolescents’ well-being should be signifi cantly compromised over time for this group of prospective separators (controlling for the previous level of the respective outcome at t1). (5) in a fi nal model, we tested interactions between family type and adolescent gender or maternal education, using multiplication terms between the dichotomous family type variables and either gender or education (each variable coded 0/1). all interaction terms were entered simultaneously (controlling for the predictors used in the model 4 for t3). if any interaction term proved signifi cant, the multiple regression analyses were repeated separately for the relevant subgroups (males vs. females or adolescents with highervs. lower-educated mother) to allow for more detailed comparisons. 4 results satisfaction with family. the fi ndings for multiple regressions on adolescents’ satisfaction with their family are depicted in table 3. as shown in the fi rst column for family satisfaction at t1, youth from single mother families indicated signifi cantly lower satisfaction with family life, whereas youth in stepfather families did not differ from nuclear families. furthermore, youth in nuclear families whose parents separated within the subsequent two years (prospective separators) also indicated signifi cantly lower satisfaction with their family at t1, even though this effect was rather weak. there were neither age nor gender differences, nor did the region of • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt350 residence or a migration background have any effect. however, adolescents with highly-educated mothers reported signifi cantly lower satisfaction with family life than youth with a less highly-educated mother. as can be seen in model 2, no interaction effects were found, i.e. the effects of family type did not differ by adolescent gender or educational resources. at t3 (model 3), disadvantages of separated families had slightly increased, as evident in signifi cant negative changes when controlling for family satisfaction at t1. this particularly holds for prospective separators, whose family satisfaction showed a signifi cantly stronger decline than found among youth in nuclear families. youth in single mother or stepfather families also indicated a small, but signifi cantly stronger decrease in satisfaction with their family than youth in nuclear families, but these effects were weak overall. as can be seen in model 4, these effects were not diminished when controlling for economic deprivation and infrequent contact to the father even though economic deprivation had a signifi cant negative effect on adolescents’ satisfaction with their family. as expected, infrequent contact to the t1 t3 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) gender (male) -.006 -.005 .017 .016 .008 age -.021 -.022 -.010 -.010 -.010 migration background .039 .038 .021 .035 .034 maternal education -.096** -.091*** -.012 -.028 -.044* region (east) .022 .021 -.014 -.001 -.003 prospective separators+ -.084** -.042 -.106*** -.099*** -.150*** single mother families -.139** -.152*** -.081*** -.059** -.080* stepfather families -.024 -.016 -.054*** -.050** -.061* family satisfaction t1 .393*** .387*** .388*** economic deprivation -.089*** -.089*** infrequent contact to father .004 .008 prosp.sep. x gender -.053 .032 single fam. x gender .029 .022 stepfather fam. x gender -.010 -.006 prosp.sep. x education -.012 .057 single fam. x education -.013 .007 stepfather fam. x education .000 .027 r2 .031 .031 .186 .192 .193 n 2481 2481 2427 tab. 3: effects on adolescents’ family satisfaction at t1 and t3: standardised regression coeffi cients note: signifi cance: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 + adolescents whose parents separated between waves 1 and 3 source: pairfam data release 4.0 effects of parental separation • 351 father did not affect adolescents’ satisfaction with their family. model 5 introduced the interaction terms, but none of these proved signifi cant. satisfaction with school, education, and occupation. similar to the previous analyses, youth from single mother families as well as prospective separators reported lower satisfaction with their education or work situation at t1 when compared to adolescents from nuclear families (see table 4). this indicates not only disadvantages of youth with single mothers, but also pre-separation strain in the scholastic or occupational domain among adolescents whose parents later separated. however, both effects were rather small. adolescents from stepfather families did not differ from youth who lived with both biological parents. age, gender, maternal education, and migration background showed no effects. there were small effects for region, as youth from eastern germany tended to report less satisfaction with their education and work than youth from western germany. in model 2, no interaction effect emerged. regarding change across time (model 3), prospective separators as well as youth from single mother or stepfather families did not differ tab. 4: effects on adolescents’ satisfaction with school, education, and occupation at t1 and t3: standardised regression coeffi cients t1 t3 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) gender (male) -.008 -.012 .057** .055** .060** age .038 -.038 -.018 -.017 -.018 migration background -.010 -.009 -.047* -.029 -.031 maternal education -.026 -.024 -.015 -.035 -.031 region (east) -.052* -.051* -.043* -.028 -.030 prospective separators+ -.052** -.062* -.021 -.012 -.023 single mother families -.090*** -.102** -.032 .001 .016 stepfather families -.027 -.013 -.010 .000 .017 satisfaction with school, education, and occupation t1 .208*** .197*** .197*** economic deprivation -.106*** -.106*** infrequent contact to father -.014 -.016 prosp.sep. x gender .028 -.009 single fam. x gender .009 .006 stepfather fam. x gender -.011 -.026 prosp.sep. x education -.018 .033 single fam. x education .011 -.035 stepfather fam. x education -.010 .004 r2 .011 .010 .050 .059 .059 n 2481 2481 2426 note: signifi cance: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 + adolescents whose parents separated between waves 1 and 3 source: pairfam data release 4.0 • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt352 from youth in nuclear families. a small gender effect was found, as male adolescents reported a slightly stronger increase in satisfaction than female adolescents. economic deprivation proved to predict lower satisfaction with this domain but did not explain any effect of family structure (model 4), as there were no such effects in model 3. interestingly, satisfaction with this domain was substantially less stable than family satisfaction. no interaction effects between family structure and gender or maternal education were found (model 5). overall life satisfaction. table 5 shows a summary of multiple regressions on adolescent’s life satisfaction. a signifi cant effect of family type was found at t1 and t3 (model 1), with lower overall life satisfaction at t1 and more negative changes (t3) reported by youth from single mother families (see model 1 and 3). the latter effect was reduced to insignifi cance when controlling for economic deprivation (model 4), which proved to be a highly signifi cant predictor of compromised life satisfaction. infrequent contact to the father did not affect overall life satisfaction. as for the control variables, males and younger adolescents proved more satisfi ed tab. 5: effects on adolescents’ life satisfaction at t1 and t3: standardised regression coeffi cients t1 t3 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) gender (male) .074* .063** .057** .055** .062** age -.067* -.069** -.028 -.029 -.028 migration background .018 .017 -.045* -.013 -.014 maternal education -.024 -.006** .017 -.019 -.039 region (east) -.028 -.028 -.070*** -.042* -.043* prospective separators+ -.001 .014 -.030 -.014 -.012 single mother families -.076* -.062*** -.076*** -.018 -.052 stepfather families -.013 -.040 -.015 .002 .021 life satisfaction t1 .335*** .308*** .311*** economic deprivation -.188*** -.190*** infrequent contact to father -.020 -.014 prosp.sep. x gender -.008 -.023 single fam. x gender .023 .011 stepfather fam. x gender .032 -.035 prosp.sep. x education -.019 .025 single fam. x education -.060* .048* stepfather fam. x education .010 .008 r2 .014 .015 .134 .163 .164 n 2483 2483 2426 note: signifi cance: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 + adolescents whose parents separated between waves 1 and 3 source: pairfam data release 4.0 effects of parental separation • 353 than females and older adolescents, while maternal education and migration background did not matter. a small effect of region emerged at t3 (model 3), indicating a slightly stronger decrease in life satisfaction among youth in eastern than in western germany. in model 4, however, controlling for economic deprivation, this effect was no longer signifi cant. finally, both tests for interaction effects (model 2 and 5) evidenced differential effects of single motherhood among families with higher or lower educational resources. however, the effect differed for both models, i.e. changed over time. separate regression analyses (as in model 1) were conducted for both educational groups. among families with higher maternal education, youth from single mother families reported lower life satisfaction than youth from nuclear families (beta = -.153, p < .001), while no such effect was evident among youth with less highly-educated mother (beta = -.046, n.s.). while this fi nding does not support the resource hypothesis, changes over time (model 3) were more in line with the resource notion. these changes were less favourable for youth from less resourceful families (beta = -.102, p < .001) than for adolescents with a higher-educated mother (beta = -.004, n.s.). tab. 6: effects on adolescents’ self-esteem at t1 and t3: standardised regression coeffi cients t1 t3 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) gender (male) .213*** .197*** .113*** .115*** .107** age -.009 -.010 .001 .000 .001 migration background .049* .049* .016 .026 .026 maternal education .016 .026 -.010 -.021 -.027 region (east) -.028 -.028 -.025 -.016 -.017* prospective separators+ -.023 -.029 -.001 .002 -.031 single mother families -.012 -.011 -.052** -.049* -.071* stepfather families -.016 -.050 -.017 .010 .013 self-esteem t1 .380*** .369*** .369*** economic deprivation -.075*** -.075*** infrequent contact to father .040 .043* prosp.sep. x gender -.020 .023 single fam. x gender .024 .023 stepfather fam. x gender -.036 .000 prosp.sep. x education -.014 .033 single fam. x education -.036 .009 stepfather fam. x education .016 -.007 r2 .047 .047 .131 .164 .165 n 2482 2416 note: signifi cance: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 + adolescents whose parents separated between waves 1 and 3 source: pairfam data release 4.0 • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt354 self-esteem. finally, turning to adolescents’ self-esteem, table 6 shows the fi ndings from our regression analyses. as can be seen, no effects of family type were found at t1. prospective separators did not differ from youth in nuclear families, neither prior to parental separation (t1), nor shortly after (t3). similarly, we did not fi nd any disadvantage of youth in stepfather families at either measurement point. only at t3 did adolescents growing up with a single mother indicate slightly lower selfesteem. although signifi cant, this effect was very weak and could not be accounted for by the negative effects of economic deprivation on adolescents’ self-esteem (model 4). there were no interaction effects (model 5). with respect to the control variables, males consistently reported higher selfesteem than females at t1 and t3, and youth with a migration background had slightly higher self-esteem than youth without a migration background. age, maternal education, and the region of residence did not have any signifi cant effects at t1 (model 1) or over time (model 3). no interaction effects were found in model 5. 5 discussion the aim of the current study was to assess the effects of family structure on different aspects of adolescent well-being across a period of two years. we not only wanted to explore possible disadvantages for adolescents in stable single mother and stepfather families compared to nuclear families, but also took the opportunity of following a group of adolescents whose parents separated within the two-year interval between the two longitudinal assessments. this group of so-called “prospective separators” allowed for addressing issues of selectivity and pre-separation strain that may compromise adolescents’ well-being prior to parental separation. we also examined whether changes in adolescents’ well-being differed by family type and expected to fi nd more negative change among prospective separators. secondly, we explored the mediating role of infrequent contact to the non-residential parent as well as economic deprivation in linking family structure to adolescent outcomes in well-being. finally, we tested whether gender and maternal education moderated the effects of family structure at t1 or across time. in the following, we summarise and discuss the overall pattern of results linking our fi ndings to the hypotheses previously specifi ed. we end with a brief outline of strengths and limitations of our study and of challenges for future research. 5.1 effects of family type effects of family structure on adolescents’ well-being were evident for all outcome variables, but differed with respect to the domain under consideration. most consistent evidence was found for disadvantages of youth from single mother families, who reported lower satisfaction with family life and with the domain of education and occupation as well as a limited overall life satisfaction compared to their peers in nuclear families at t1. these youth with single mothers also evidenced a stronger decrease in family satisfaction, overall life satisfaction, and self-esteem than youth effects of parental separation • 355 in nuclear families. although these fi ndings are in line with the large body of research on parental separation (amato 2010), it should be noted that the effects are mostly very small. as might be expected, the most pronounced effects were found for family satisfaction, indicating that the problems faced by these youth are indeed rooted in the family system and not in confounded external factors. in contrast, there was almost no evidence for disadvantages of adolescents raised in stepfather families. at t1, they did not differ in any of the outcome variables from youth in nuclear families. when looking at changes over time, only family satisfaction was found to show a stronger decline among youth living with a stepfather, while the other three indicators did not reveal any less advantageous changes than found for youth in nuclear families. overall, these fi ndings suggest that the majority of stepfamilies manage to adjust successfully to the challenges of stepfamily life and provide a positive context for adolescents’ well-being. this fi nding is noteworthy, since other evidence has instead focused on the challenges and problems in stepfamily life (amato 1994; sweeney 2010). contrary to the fi ndings from the large body of data available from international studies (jeynes 2006), our data do not suggest that adolescents raised in a stepfamily are similarly strained or even worse off than youth living in a single mother family. the slightly stronger decrease in satisfaction with family life may indicate that stepfamily life becomes more stressful in late adolescence when autonomy is more fully established. however, this effect was quite small and should not be over-interpreted. with respect to prospective separators, the expected pre-separation strain at t1 was evidenced by lower family satisfaction than found for youth from stable nuclear families. furthermore, such pre-separation impairment of well-being was also evident in the domain of education and work, which these adolescents were less satisfi ed with than those from stable nuclear families. it should be noted that – contrary to youth from single mother and stepfather families – prospective separators were not less likely than their peers from stable nuclear families to be enrolled in or have fi nished the highest track of schooling. this may suggest that such problems with education/work were not yet evident at the end of elementary school but rather emerged more recently, refl ecting distractions emanating from discord at home. while these effects are in line with other evidence suggesting higher levels of strain in the pre-separation phase (e.g. cherlin et al. 1991), they prove to be rather weak. moreover, neither overall life satisfaction nor adolescents’ self-esteem suggest any major general pre-separation strain extending into adolescents’ outlook on life. overall, our fi ndings at least partly resemble other evidence from germany, which provided only limited evidence for pre-separation effects (schwarz 1999). similarly, more negative changes across time are restricted to family satisfaction, indicating that family problems increase when parents separate. this fi nding is no surprise. rather, it must be emphasized that this effect is quite limited, not only in content, but also in size. neither did we fi nd any signs for a spillover of post-separation problems into the domain of education or work, nor did the experience of parental separation seem to affect more general features of well-being, such as life satisfaction or self-esteem. • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt356 in summary, while the expected effects of parental separation were evident for almost every outcome variable, these effects proved rather weak and fell below the average effect sizes reported in meta-analyses for data, most of which come from the us (amato 2001). the most pronounced effects were found for adolescents’ family satisfaction, which – along with adolescents’ satisfaction in the domain of education and work – also provided support for the expected pre-separation strain. an additional decrease in well-being shortly after a recent parental separation was only evident for family satisfaction. finally, stepfamilies seem to provide a rather unobtrusive context for adolescents’ well-being. 5.2 the mediating role of infrequent contact to the father and economic deprivation our analyses also tested for possible mediation effects of infrequent contact to the father and economic deprivation. throughout the analysis, infrequent contact to father had no effect on adolescents’ well-being and thus could not explain any effects of the family type. overall, these fi ndings are well in line with other studies (amato/gilbreth 1999). economic deprivation, however, proved to mediate at least some of the effects of family structure. such mediation effects of economic deprivation were restricted to disadvantages of single mother families (who experienced the highest fi nancial strain). the stronger decrease in overall life satisfaction which was found among adolescents in single mother families could be fully accounted for by the higher economic deprivation reported by these youth. with respect to family satisfaction, however, only partial mediation was found, and our results for self-esteem did not indicate any mediation by economic deprivation. although self-esteem decreased more strongly in single mother families than in nuclear families, this effect remained unchanged when controlling for fi nancial conditions. overall, these fi nding are at least partly in line with other evidence suggesting that a substantial share of disadvantages found for children raised by a single mother can be accounted for by the increased fi nancial problems these families face (e.g. mclanahan 1999). at the same time, parental separation seems to also play a distinct role, as particularly evident in cases of recent separations. elevated post-separation strain among prospective separators, as evident in reduced family satisfaction, could not be explained by economic deprivation. this suggests that a recent separation does provide a unique stressor which cannot be reduced to fi nancial problems. 5.3 the moderating role of gender and maternal education we also addressed possible moderating effects of gender and adolescents’ school type to test for differential effects of family type in the respective subgroups. in line with other fi ndings, gender did not moderate any effects of growing up in a single mother family. while other evidence suggests that girls fare worse than boys in stepfather families (hetherington/jodl 1994), we did not fi nd stronger disadvaneffects of parental separation • 357 tages in well-being among girls (or boys) growing up with a stepfather. similarly, we could not replicate earlier fi ndings indicating stronger pre-separation strain among boys. while the group of prospective separators may have been too small to detect such effects, the overall pattern suggests rather homogeneous effects of family type for males and females. maternal education was found to moderate the effects of family type in one case only: for adolescents’ overall life satisfaction. at the same time, this effect was complex and not easy to interpret. contrary to the resource hypothesis, but in line with the fl oor effect found by bernardi and radl (2014), our data also indicate a “divorce penalty” among more privileged youth only: negative effects of parental separation at t1 were restricted to youth with a higher-educated mother. in this subgroup, youth from single mother families indicated lower life satisfaction than those from nuclear families, while no such difference was found for adolescents with a less highly educated mother. it may well be that adolescents from families with higher educational resources have more to lose when their parents separate, at least in terms of fi nancial resources. interestingly, however, support for the resource hypotheses was found when looking at changes across time. adolescents’ life satisfaction decreased more strongly in single mother than nuclear families with a lower education, while no such effect was found among adolescents with a higher-educated mother. as expected, the decrease in life satisfaction among youth from less resourceful single mother families could be fully explained by fi nancial strain. this suggests that fi nancial resources linked to parental education play a major role in differential outcomes of single parenthood. 5.4 strengths and limitations of the study this study used a large sample of adolescents in germany for systematically testing several research questions regarding the effects of parental separation on adolescents’ well-being. taking a broad view on separation and re-partnering, we did not only focus our analyses strictly on parental divorce or on remarried families, but also included youth whose parents were still or never married but separated, and those who lived with their mother’s new partner, no matter whether they were married or not. overall, our data provide support for the detrimental effects of increased fi nancial strain among single mother families, while the role of contact to the nonresidential father for adolescents’ well-being seems to be much less marked. this latter fi nding is well in line with broad evidence from international studies (amato/ gilbreth 1999) as well as studies conducted in germany (walper/wendt 2011; walper/krey 2009), but not with current legal practice, which places much emphasis on preserving the continuity of adolescents’ relationship to their non-custodial parent, even against the children’s will. furthermore, we could identify increased preseparation strain in the subgroup of prospective separators, who also seem to face additional post-separation strain, not with a broad impact on general well-being, but more specifi cally in the domain of family life. finally, we found evidence for the moderating role of socio-economic resources as addressed by maternal education. • sabine walper, carolin thönnissen, philipp alt358 nevertheless, these fi ndings should be interpreted with caution. first, as pointed out above, the effects of family structure were mostly very weak. many of them would have remained undetected using a smaller sample. while the large sample may be considered an advantage of this study, the subgroups in focus differ considerably in size. particularly the group of prospective separators was very small in comparison to the large group of nuclear families. restricting the number of nuclear families by selecting a random subsample or by matching them to the separated families might have solved this problem. however, such procedures carry other risks. we decided to capitalise on the full sample to provide a broader picture of adolescents growing up in different family types. second, we restricted our analyses to adolescents who still lived with their mother in any case. although the number of adolescents who had already moved out by age 17 to 19 (the majority age range at t3) was small, our selectivity analyses showed that offspring from separated families is overrepresented in this group. hence, we may underestimate the effects of family structure if those who were most strained by their parents’ separation moved out earlier. third, we could only rely on a limited range of outcome variables. indicators of adolescents’ depression differed at both measurement points and thus could not be considered. information about adolescents’ problem behaviour was not available at either measurement point. hence, we may underestimate psychological and behavioural problems that have been pointed out to be more sensitive to negative effects of parental separation (amato 2001). finally, our analyses did not inform about some key variables previously discussed, such as the role of interparental confl ict and the number of family transitions adolescents went through prior to our study. some of these data are available in the pairfam panel, and can be addressed in future analyses. acknowledgement this 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weinheim: juventa. walper, sabine; langmeyer, alexandra 2014: auswirkungen einer elterlichen trennung auf die entwicklung von kindern in den ersten lebensjahren. in: kißgen, rüdiger; heinen, norbert (eds.): trennung, tod und trauer in den ersten lebensjahren: begleitung und beratung von kindern und eltern. stuttgart: klett-cotta: 159-176. walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena 2005: nicht mit beiden eltern aufwachsen ein risiko? kinder von alleinerziehenden und stieffamilien. in: alt, christian (ed.): kinderleben aufwachsen zwischen familie, freunden und institutionen. band 1: aufwachsen in familien. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. dji deutsches jugendinstitut: 187-216. walper, sabine; wendt, eva-verena 2011: die bedeutung der abstammung für die identitätsfi ndung und persönlichkeitsentwicklung in der adoleszenz: adoption, samenspende und frühe vaterabwesenheit nach trennung der eltern. in: vaskovics, laszlo (ed.): pluralisierung der elternschaft und kindschaft (sonderheft der zeitschrift für familienforschung): 211-237. wendt, eva-verena; walper, sabine 2007: entwicklungsverläufe von kindern in einelternund stieffamilien. in: alt, christian (ed.): kinderleben start in die grundschule band 3: ergebnisse aus der zweiten welle. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 211-242. whiteside, mary f; becker, betsy jane 2000: parental factors and the young child’s postdivorce adjustment: a meta-analysis with implications for parenting arrangements. in: journal of family psychology 14,1: 5-26 [doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.14.1.5]. date of submission: 14.11.2014 date of acceptance: 21.09.2015 prof. dr. sabine walper (). german youth institute. munich, germany. e-mail: walper@dji.de url: http://www.dji.de/~walper ludwig-maximilians-university of munich. munich, germany. url: http://www.dji.de/~walperl dr. carolin thönnissen, philipp alt. ludwig-maximilians-university of munich. munich, germany. e-mail: c.thoennissen@edu.lmu.de, philipp.alt@edu.lmu.de url: http://www.edu.lmu.de/apb/personen/wiss_ma/thoennissen/index.html http://www.edu.lmu.de/apb/personen/wiss_ma/alt/index.html published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline: school closures in practice and discourse in saxony-anhalt governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline: school closures in practice and discourse in saxony-anhalt walter bartl, reinhold sackmann abstract: the subject of this analysis is the practice of school closures, since it constitutes a key response to demographic decline and is usually hotly disputed in regional discussions on demographic change. our research is guided by two questions: how do political and administrative responses to demographic decline emerge? how is the practice of school closure publicly portrayed and discussed in the newspapers? we assume that in democratic welfare regimes, the spatial allocation of school infrastructures is mediated by the use of key administrative indicators allowing the calculation and public deliberation of questions related to education infrastructure policy. however, in transformation societies, a democratic political culture of “governing by numbers” only develops as a result of collective learning processes in which the participants acquire what we refer to as “democratic numeracy”. in the stratifi ed german school system, social prestige is conferred unequally among the different school types, with the grammar school (gymnasium) being the most prestigious school type. it is therefore likely that the elements of the school system are not affected equally by policy responses to demographic decline and public attention, which results in spatial inequalities. empirically, the article follows a mixed-methods approach, whilst emphasising a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of school closures in the regional press of saxony-anhalt from 1990 to 2014. the results show that, in the transformation process, the relevance of indicator-based governance of the school infrastructure increases both in practice and in discourse. however, as the participants gain in democratic numeracy, the use of numbers becomes politicised. with respect to the pattern of school closures, grammar schools receive a disproportionately large share of public attention. this has a positive effect on their survival chances and diminishes differences in spatial distances between grammar schools and integrated secondary schools. keywords: demographic change · governance · quantifi cation · school planning · content analysis comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 321-358 (date of release: 28.10.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-09en8 • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann322 1 introduction demographic change in the form of ageing and shrinking populations is seen as a mega trend of current and future social change. nearly all nations are already ageing; a small number of them are also registering a decline in population size. especially in a regional perspective, the latter trend is being observed in a rising number of european and asian countries, and this has serious repercussions for the education system. knowledge within the social sciences concerning societies’ response to a declining population is still controversial: some demographers state that demographic change will be the main determinant of social developments (birg 2001), whilst other social scientists tend to fi nd demographic change irrelevant (butterwegge/klundt 2003). both extreme positions are somewhat vague as to their theoretical concepts of the connection between demographic change and societal response, suggesting some kind of law-like determination on the one hand, as against a kind of social constructivism which gives discourse a central role, on the other. we will be focusing on an empirical analysis to see how the two dimensions of demographic development and public discourse are interlinked. the subject of this analysis is the practice of school closures, since it constitutes a key response to demographic decline, and is usually hotly disputed in regional discussions on demographic change. a guiding question for the analysis is: how do political and administrative responses to demographic decline emerge? the second lead question is: how are practices of school closure publicly portrayed and discussed in newspapers? we therefore try to relate the structure of practice to the patterns of discourse. as a theoretical starting point, we borrow an argument from recent discussions about the quantifi cation of politics and apply it to the governance of school infrastructure in the context of demographic decline in eastern germany. first, we assume that, in democratic welfare regimes, the spatial allocation of school infrastructures is governed by key administrative indicators allowing the calculation and public deliberation of questions of spatial justice, pedagogical adequacy, and economic viability. the systematic use of numbers is important not only for administrative practice, but also for legitimating this practice in public discourse (desrosières 2005; rose 1991). by emphasising the political nature of school infrastructure governance, we diverge on the one hand from (economic) research, which assumes a general practice of economic calculation in the fi eld of education policy without ever questioning the adequacy of this assumption. on the other hand, we also diverge from contributions of discourse analysis suggesting that the use of demographic projections in politics would preclude political deliberation and confl ict (barlösius 2007; cf. messerschmidt 2014). second, we assume that a democratic political culture of “governing by numbers” is not a fact, but might emerge historically as a contingent result of collective learning processes in which the participants acquire what we call “democratic numeracy” (cf. cohen 1982; rose 1991). the governance of school infrastructure in the (post-)transformation context of eastern germany is especially interesting in this respect because the states of the former eastern bloc differed signifi cantly from the established western democracies in their public use governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 323 of statistics. third, investigating school closures in the stratifi ed german school system seems to be especially relevant for the spatial re-structuring of educational opportunities because social prestige is conferred unequally among the different school types, with the grammar school (gymnasium, hosting the most advanced secondary school track) being the most prestigious school type (tenorth 2008). hence, it is likely that sections of the hierarchically-differentiated school system are not affected equally by policy responses to demographic decline and public attention. the article begins by discussing the theoretical concepts used in our fi eld of inquiry and elaborating our own approach. this is followed by a presentation of the data and methodology employed, emphasising a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of school closures in the regional press of saxony-anhalt from 1990 to 2014. the results in the fourth chapter focus on the process of school closures and the pattern of reporting on it. 2 education policy and education administration responding to demographic change 2.1 demographic decline and school closures: previous research one strand in social science literature analyses the effects of demographic decline on educational expenditure. an (implicit) criterion of this mainly economic literature is the proportional elasticity of education expenditure to accommodate pupil cohort sizes, which would indicate an effi cient adaptation of supply capacities in line with “demand”. most studies registered that the adaptation of expenditure fell short of the corresponding decline in the number of pupils, both in size and velocity (poterba 1997; wolter 2009; rattsø/sørensen 2010). however, some studies on primary schools in eastern germany (kempkes 2010) and school expenditure in japan (ohtake/sano 2010) show that the infrastructure adapted with rather high elasticity. as these studies mainly apply secondary data analyses to administrative process data, it remains unclear whether the cost stickiness that has been observed is the result of unintended inertia or of politically-desirable investment in education. an interdisciplinary discourse is concerned with the effects of population decline on school infrastructure, whereby the focus is on school closures, as these are often described as having detrimental effects on communities (e.g. kearns et al. 2010; egelund/laustsen 2006; autti/hyry-beihammer 2014; barakat et al. 2011; elshof et al. 2015), albeit this view is not universally held (godinho 2012; barakat 2014). school closures were rather common in industrialised countries in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. this recently applied to germany, especially to eastern germany (weishaupt 2006). the causes of this development are diverse, and cannot be reduced to a demographic decline in the number of pupils alone. also, a socially widespread pedagogical orientation which associates larger schools with a better quality of instruction is an important reason for this development (kramer 1997; meusburger 1998: 394-398; frank 2011). other causes are • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann324 rising aspirations for higher education – which in stratifi ed school systems eschew academically less demanding secondary schools (helbig/schmolke 2015) –, social segregation (bondi 1987), the education standard attained by schools (billger 2010), as well as the organisational capability of interest groups (stinchcombe 1984; post/ stambach 1999), and the (protest) strategies that they employ (uba 2015; larsson taghizadeh 2015; finnigan/lavner 2012; phipps 2000), which are also seen as infl uential factors for school closures. a relatively recent phenomenon is the closure of schools with a perceived poor performance (ewen 1997; elacqua et al. 2012; engberg et al. 2012). although the literature on school closure repeatedly stresses how controversial these decisions are, the political processes involved have so far been the object of only very limited case studies on individual school closures. in particular, the roles played by key administrative indicators and by public discourse in these processes have not been analysed in any systematic manner. 2.2 political responsiveness to demographic change in order to obtain a precise understanding of how the political system reacts to demographic change, it is useful to apply the concept of responsiveness. taken literally, “response” means answer. in political sciences, responsiveness has two dimensions. assuming democratic premises, it means that policy on the one hand takes up voters’ wishes, and on the other hand explains decisions taken by answering respective questions in public discussions (uppendahl 1981; behnke 2009). in this respect, the mass media are important transmitters of adequate information, both in the process of policy formation as well as in the processes of democratic control (sarcinelli 2012; besley/burgess 2002; soroka/wlezien 2015). similar arguments on the processes of policy formation and political control have been made for the use of statistics (kelman 1987: 280-286; prewitt 1987). hence, both forms of communication, i.e. the mass media and statistics, are assigned an intermediary role in the constitution of political responsiveness. we take up this argument from both fi elds of knowledge, and in doing so assume that the mass media and statistics are not copies of a pre-existing reality, but that they constitute realities in their own right.1 based on such a two-dimensional concept of responsiveness, the present article investigates processes of policy formation and legitimation of political decisions that refer to demographic problems of school infrastructure. we defi ne a demographic problem as a discrepancy of demographic conditions and social (in our context often legally codifi ed) expectations that has to be settled (cf. merton 1976: 7). but what do demographic problems in school infrastructure policy consist of, and how is demand for collective decisions produced? 1 there is more knowledge about the effects of the mass media than there is about the effects of statistics (starr 1987: 52). governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 325 2.3 administrative key indicators of school planning we will argue in this section that demographic problems related to school infrastructure are essentially defi ned via key administrative indicators, that is via quantifi cations of social reality which are crucial to collective decision-making and democratic control. these indicators constitute the subjects of political decisions and public debate (cf. desrosières 2005: 360). modern welfare states secure the loyalty of their citizens by implementing programmes to include the population politically and economically (bommes 1999). in a spatial dimension, these inclusive programmes have resulted in the establishment of technical and social infrastructures (kaufmann 2012) such as education facilities. schooling is (still) provided in many countries in a largely decommodifi ed environment where market prices do not apply (sackmann 2010a: 370). when school systems lack the signalling function of a market, key administrative indicators become decisive for adjusting school infrastructure capacities in line with the needs of the spatially distributed target populations and with legitimate decisions taken. in instrumental terms, quantitative indicators allow the administration to calculate building and personnel capacities, provided as services in kind. calculations of such services relate units of production directly to units of consumption. only in further steps of administrative practice are these calculations of services in kind translated into monetised values which can be used to (de)legitimate existing structures. as with the technical and legitimating functions of double entry bookkeeping in business (carruthers/espeland 1991), public administration indicators can be expected to form not only the object of educational governance, but also that of public discourse, thus (de)legitimating this administrative practice (cf. desrosières 2005: 360). the institutionalisation of school planning as an administrative script of world culture (meyer/ramirez 2012) from the 1950s onwards appears to be particularly relevant to the responsiveness of school infrastructure to demographic change. while the fi rst instances of education planning can be traced back to the early 19th century in europe, the worldwide promotion of education planning by international organisations only took on systematic shape after the second world war (lynch/ tason 1984: 316). this does not preclude the possibility that the implementation of planning models very often falls short of the political targets they were meant to reach – because of a lack of data, poor technology, or a shortage of qualifi ed personnel (jones 1975: 75).2 it can be observed for western germany that, by the late 1960s, education planning was considered a legitimate process within public administration that was to be implemented as soon as possible on various state levels (cf. frommberger 1974; brixner 1972; deutscher bildungsrat 1973: 270-275). the political aim was to provide equal educational opportunities to different local populations. 2 rather than looking at snapshot views of school planning, it is important to assess the direction of changes (cf. anderson-levitt 2003). • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann326 we argue that the responsiveness of school planning to demographic change crucially rests on two types of administrative quantifi cation: population indicators on the one hand, and indicators of organisational viability on the other. a common feature of professional refl ections on education planning practice is the recommendation of population indicators in order to make quantitative projections of future enrolments (e.g. jacoby 1959; jones 1975; rösner 2004).3 hence, while not all planners will necessarily use population indicators in the same way, these professional recommendations do suggest that planners will nevertheless consider their use as a normatively legitimate practice within school planning. the systematic use of demographic projections shifts the time horizon of collective decision-making from short-term to long-term perspectives (cf. keyfi tz 1987). apart from the estimation of future enrolments, school authorities are also concerned with schools’ organisational viability. when we talk about organisational viability, we are referring to administrative criteria which defi ne features considered to be necessary for the continued existence of a school. frequently-used indicators of organisational viability are size thresholds of classes or schools (cf. frank 2011). similar to business insolvency regimes, indicators of organisational viability – such as school size – allow decisions to be taken as to which schools should no longer be permitted to exist. formally-defi ned requirements of minimum school sizes act as ”statistical rules” (starr 1987: 55) reducing personal discretion and enhancing democratic control. while it could be argued that the tradition of codifi ed law in continental europe favours such formally-defi ned threshold indicators of organisational viability, it is interesting to note that this criterion is also used informally in english-speaking countries which share a tradition of case-law (e.g. bondi 1989; basu 2007). organisational size indicators reduce complexity in terms of at least two dimensions: firstly, they suggest clear-cut categorical thresholds, even though the scientifi c evidence on the effects of class size (arnhold 2005; hattie 2005) or school size (ares abalde 2014; döring 1977) is mixed. secondly, while the interdisciplinary studies in this fi eld differentiate between various dimensions of effects – such as economic effi ciency and the pedagogical effectiveness of learning conditions –, size thresholds in school administration seem to symbolise both economic and pedagogical professional values at the same time. h1: our fi rst hypothesis is therefore that demographically-induced problems of school infrastructure are not determined by demographic change “as such”, but are constituted through the systematic use of administrative numbers indicating a discrepancy between demographic conditions and political or administrative expectations (problem constitution hypothesis). quantitatively-constituted demographic problems of school infrastructure not only inform political decision processes, but also objectify them in the public de3 we do not argue that the literature on school planning exclusively recommends population indicators to estimate future enrolments. on the contrary, many models are more complex, including school choice options, dropout rates, grade retention, etc. however, we are trying to clarify the responsiveness of school planning to demographic change. governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 327 bate. whereas some scholars argue that the communication of numbers is likely to evoke less dissent than the communication of words because their contingency is less obvious (heintz 2007), competent users of key administrative indicators might well know or learn about the (hidden) contingencies involved in the production of these numbers, and contest them. hence, when demographic problems are essentially constituted by numbers, this does not preclude critical (public) discourse in the way that some contributions might suggest (cf. barlösius 2007). pragmatist accounts of the use of statistics emphasise that numerically-constituted objects are always subject to critical examinations (desrosières 2005: 375). 2.4 democratic numeracy: decision-makers and the public the systematic use of numbers in politics has intensifi ed due to the rising complexity of an ever more connected world society (rottenburg/merry 2015), and due to the diffusion of the new public management discourse (kroll 2012). however, a precondition for political planning and democratic public control in the mode of administrative indicators is that both administrators and the electorate possess a minimum of numeric competence (numeracy) (cohen 1982; rose 1991). numeracy is the “ability to count, keep records of these counts, and make rational calculations” (emigh 2002: 253). according to patricia cohen’s (1982) account of the development of numeracy in the united kingdom, and in the united states, the spread of elementary education and the regular publication of offi cial statistics were important factors in this process. other historians have pointed out that the population’s previous experiences with informal calculation methods, e.g. on pre-capitalist local markets, deserve more attention (emigh 2002), an argument that highlights the rather more interactive than “top-down” nature of the formation of numeracy. while the pioneering studies of numeracy treat this competence as a basic element of democratic political culture, it would certainly be misleading to universalise this feature as if it applied to every modern society (cf. parsons 1964). on the one hand, the worldwide expansion of mass education (meyer et al. 1992) would actually support such a generalisation. but on the other hand, the public use of statistics has always been associated with democratic regimes (kelman 1987), while non-democratic regimes, such as those of the former eastern bloc, are said to be far more restrictive and manipulative with regard to the publication of quantitative information on their societies (starr 1987: 13, 38). offi cial statistics in the german democratic republic for example were deliberately manipulated before publication, usually in order to align them to political targets (lippe 1999, 2002). furthermore, school planning was a centralised administrative procedure (scholz 1990), which means that education administration at local levels lacked the professional expertise required to use key indicators of school planning as part of their organisational routines. these differences in state organisation and political culture can be expected to have effects on the numeracy of both administrative personnel and the public. in order to capture these effects, we consider it useful to distinguish between a general and a context-specifi c concept of numeracy. by general numeracy we mean the • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann328 ability to perform basic arithmetic calculations. in contrast to this general concept, we defi ne democratic numeracy as the ability of citizens to use key quantitative indicators for collective (or private) decision-making and public deliberation about diverging political interests (cf. kelman 1987). historical evidence on the process of introducing bookkeeping practices in a numerically-literate population supports such a distinction between a general and a context-specifi c concept of numeracy. it suggests that generally numerate people (and organisations) acquire contextspecifi c numeracy only through formal and informal learning processes (lampland 2010). democratic numeracy can then be regarded as a specifi c dimension of a more general democratic capability of social actors which implies their active participation in collective decision-making, and also that they contest policy decisions. applying this argument to the process of political transformation in eastern germany, we expect similar learning processes to take place. as the federal structure of the education system and corresponding forms of democratic school planning were not implemented in eastern germany until after reunifi cation, we hypothesise the following: h2: the longer a democratic political system exists, the more important key administrative indicators will be for the responsiveness of school infrastructure policy to demographic change and the public representation of these decision processes (democracy hypothesis). as an element of the process of establishing a democratic political culture, both policy makers and the public have to become acquainted with the routine use of key indicators. key indicators recursively link democratic decision-making and public debate by providing stable “objects” to be referred to. 2.5 school closures in the public debate after having elaborated the importance of quantitative indicators for the construction of demographic problems and the democratic numeracy of involved actors as a precondition of an extensive quantifi cation of politics, we would like to focus on the representation of potential school closures in the mass media. we will argue that administrative and social conventions of classifying the school system shape public attention and deliberation. the mass media follow their own criteria of selection (luhmann 1996). the product of a mass media-attuned public is to establish particular topics (whilst ignoring others) with the effect of creating a certain agenda of publically-known topics at a given time which can be referred to. hence, public attention itself is a source of power in political processes because it facilitates communication about certain topics. from the point of view of democratic theory, the mass media can be regarded as responsive to their environment insofar as they present a structurally-equivalent picture of political positions and political processes (gerhards 1999). this does not refer to a complete set of issues, but to the transmittance of political needs for decision-making and public agenda (cf. luhmann 1994). it has been shown in empirical terms that national newspapers tend to portray speakers, topics and parliamentary debates in a responsive way (gerhards 1999; soroka/wlezien 2015). local newspagovernance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 329 pers present content quite neutrally. political elites are however quoted more often than are unorganised interest groups (neller 1999). in other words, local newspapers seem to display a social power bias in the sense that their ability to set public agendas tends to reinforce the status quo of power. such self-reinforcing processes have been captured in other fi elds by the concept of cumulative advantages (merton 1988). how can this assumed pattern of discourse be related to school closure processes? from our point of view on the german school system, two dimensions of power relations are relevant. first, international research showed that formal and informal school planning procedures ascribe more power to political and administrative decision-makers than they do to pupils and parents (frank 2011; basu 2007; bondi 1987). local newspapers tend to include the views of decision-makers more often than those of pupils and parents because collectively-binding decisions by defi nition create news in the sense of new circumstances that deserve public attention. secondly, stratifi ed school systems are characterised by differences in social prestige conferred on each school type. these differences in social prestige are very often of historical origin. at the top of the hierarchically-differentiated german secondary school system, the gymnasium (comparable to grammar schools in the uk) is the most prestigious school type (tenorth 2008). differences in prestige become entrenched over time through offi cial classifi cation systems as they are codifi ed in school laws, offi cial statistics or central defi nitions of places.4 these classifi cations are used in social evaluations as they occur in families’ school selections, companies’ location arrangements as well as in political-administrative decisions on education infrastructure. support from various stakeholders has led to an expanding role of the grammar school in the german school system (e.g. lundgreen 2000). despite this expansion, the grammar school still retains a somewhat exclusive character, thus nurturing the prestige of the institution. children of parents from a high socio-economic background are four times more likely to attend this school type than are those from a low socio-economic background (62 vs. 15 percent; autorengruppe bildungsberichterstattung 2014: 76). however, conventionalised forms of evaluating secondary school types are not static, but in fact evolve as they become subject to competition and critique, on the one hand (zymek et al. 2011), and new distinctive practices at the top of the hierarchy, on the other hand (ullrich 2014). the unequal social prestige attached to different school types in a stratifi ed school system seems to be especially relevant when it comes to demographicallyinduced problems of school infrastructure policy, given that different school types might compete for the same resources in such a situation. while we argue that key administrative indicators constitute demographic problems, they do not determine the decisions which are to be taken. in spite of indicators of organisational viability activating routines of school closure, there always remains some room for political discretion (which on a higher level also includes changes to or suspension of exist4 in the central place hierarchy of saxony-anhalt, for example, only municipalities of at least “intermediate centrality” are typically entitled to host a grammar school. • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann330 ing thresholds – as in the 1980s for example in western germany [derenbach/gatzweiler 1988]). in the context of a potential school closure, a stronger presence in the mass media is likely to be helpful when expressing protest against an announced closure. we hence expect a power bias with respect to the relationship of administrative practice and public discourse: h3: the presentation of school closures in local newspapers privileges the views of interest groups connected with more prestigious secondary school types over views related to other secondary schools (power hypothesis). 3 data and methods of analysis the empirical perspective of this article highlights the question of the responsiveness of school infrastructure in regions with a declining population, as the supposed mismatch between cohorts that are amenable to education and school infrastructure might induce collectively binding decisions. the portrayal of these decision processes in local newspapers is in the focus of this study. saxony-anhalt was chosen for our case study because it is the german state which has undergone the highest population loss since the democratic revolution in 1989. demographically-induced problems should therefore be clearly observable. the article refl ects analyses of three data sources: first, the school lists of all schools providing general education in the years from 1991 until 2014; second, all relevant legal texts and documents on debates in the parliament of saxony-anhalt; and third, a corpus of 1,283 newspaper articles on the topics of “school closure” or “school planning” from the archives of the mitteldeutsche zeitung (mz) for the years 1990 to 2014. the mz is the largest local newspaper in saxony-anhalt, dominating the press in the southern part of the state. table 1 gives an overview of our empirical design, followed by a more detailed description of data collection and analysis procedures.5 3.1 secondary data analysis of school lists in germany, education policy lies within the competence of the states (länder). the states are responsible for laws and for appointing teaching staff in general education. school buildings and their maintenance staff are the responsibility of the municipalities. procedures of school planning, which according to our theory supposedly mediate the responsiveness of school infrastructure to demographic change, differ between german states (rösner 1999; winkler 2011). in saxony-anhalt, there are currently 14 districts (kreise) and non-district towns (kreisfreie städte) that have the competence to formulate school planning within the legislation of the state. administrative decisions on single schools in the time interval 1991-2014 can only 5 the data collected will be made available for secondary analyses at the data service center for business and organizational data (dsz-bo) in bielefeld (bartl et al. 2016). governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 331 be approximately reconstructed due to the lack of an encompassing data source. school lists seem to be the best data source for this reconstruction. even if school lists do not provide information about debates on alternatives and decision processes, they at least document the results of these decisions. school lists of a german state allow for the identifi cation of all schools existing at a given time. hence, matched school lists make it possible to construct panel data at the level of individual organisations, and to observe single population events (i.e. school closure and school inauguration).6 tab. 1: overview of data and methods used source period data method of analysis statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt (sachsen-anhalt regional statistical offi ce) 1991-2014 offi cial school lists descriptive statistics gesetzund verordnungsblatt für das land sachsen-anhalt; schulverwaltungsblatt für das land sachsen-anhalt (law and ordinance gazette for the state saxony-anhalt; school administration gazette for the state saxony-anhalt) 1991-2014 school laws and related legislation qualitative content analysis saxony-anhalt landtag 1991-2014 46 documents from the parliament of the state related to school legislation qualitative content analysis dumont 1990-2014 1,283 newspaper articles on “school closure” or “school development planning” from the archives of the mitteldeutsche zeitung (mz) qualitative and quantitative content analysis, hermeneutic interpretation of crucial sequences 6 a precondition for a correct identifi cation of a school closure or a school inauguration is that the analytical defi nition of such an event is identical to the administrative assignment of school numbers. this is not always the case in the school list used. a new school number was assigned in a few cases because the school form or organising institution changed. a comparison of aggregate data with school list data showed that aggregate data slightly underestimate the number of relevant population events, whereas school list data slightly overestimate the number of closures and inaugurations. because both data sets lead to similar observations of the processes of interest, we decided to use school list data because they include more information. • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann332 3.2 documentary analysis many structural shifts documented in offi cial statistics can only be adequately interpreted by paralleling them with relevant legal regulations and political debates. in this article, the offi cial gazettes of the state of saxony-anhalt were consulted for the legal dimension,7 and for debates 46 documents of the state parliament were retrieved from its databank through a keyword search (landtag von sachsen anhalt 2015; cf. bartl 2016). these data were mainly taken into account as supplementary data for the media analysis. 3.3 analysis of the local press the text corpus of the content analysis of the local press consists of 6,092 articles from the years 1990-2014 in the mz. articles were drawn by keyword selection from the archive of dumont (publisher) using print material only. the keywords “schulschließung” (school closure) and “schulentwicklungsplanung” (school development planning) produced 1,025 and 5,067 hits, respectively. these 6,092 articles constitute the universe of the content analysis, which targets discussions regarding imminent, decided, or averted school closures. due to the limited resources of the research, a random sample of approximately 1,000 articles was sought, amounting to one-sixth of the universe and approximately 40 articles per year observed. to represent the time variation in the published articles, a stratifi ed random sample was drawn proportional to the annual distribution of hits (cf. diekmann 2009: 386-387). due to the particular relevance of the transformation process for school infrastructure policy in eastern germany, the entire article universe of the years 1991-1995 was retained in the sample of the quantitative content analysis. a code book with 107 codes and sub-codes was developed for the quantitative content analysis based on theoretical criteria and qualitative content analysis. a fi nal trial of parallel coding of 14 articles with three coders resulted in an 83 percent coeffi cient of concordance (out of 4,494 possible concordances). out of the 1,283 articles selected, 828 had valid content which was used in the fi nal analysis. some articles that were considered to be especially relevant were analysed in depth using hermeneutic interpretation techniques such as strictly sequential reading, the extensive development of interpretations, and the systematic examination of their compatibility with the remainder of the text (reichertz 2010: 580). 4 the practice and discourse of school closures the empirical part of the present article will start by clarifying whether decisions on school closures are tackling demographically-induced problems, and how re7 gesetzund verordnungsblatt für das land sachsen-anhalt: law and ordinance gazette for the state saxony-anhalt; schulverwaltungsblatt für das land sachsen-anhalt: school administration gazette for the state saxony-anhalt). governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 333 sponses are shaped by key administrative indicators (h1: problem constitution thesis); second, how democratic numeracy evolves in a temporal perspective (h2: democracy thesis); and third, how public discourse represents power relations in school infrastructure policy (h3: power thesis). the following section begins with an examination of the fi rst two hypotheses because they are intrinsically interrelated. 4.1 key administrative indicators and responsiveness due to the very rapid onset of the fertility decline in eastern germany after the opening of the wall in november 1989 and the rapid shift of lifetime patterning of births, the drop in the total fertility rate in eastern germany between 1990 and 1994 was one of the sharpest ever recorded in history. the demographic change in the form of a decline in the age cohort size of school beginners was therefore massive, as figure 1 shows. the sudden drop in fertility at the onset of the transformation period impacted on schools with a time lag: within just four years, the number of pupils starting primary school at the age of six dropped to half its size in relation to the school admission fi gures at the beginning of the 1990s (fig. 1). the timing of the decline itself is also noteworthy: starting at a slow pace in 1994, the most pronounced decline did not take place until between 1996 and 1997. figure 1 shows that a similarly sharp fig. 1: school-age population in saxony-anhalt (1991-2013) 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 population aged 6 population aged 10 population aged 12 source: own compilation based on statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt 2010; statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2015 • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann334 drop in the number of pupils starting secondary school at age 10 or 12 took place at approximately the beginning of the new millennium. we can conclude that the demographic conditions changed dramatically for primary schools in about 1996, and in secondary schools after 2001. since we assumed that population statistics might be used in administrative practice, we will be examining whether this temporal pattern re-emerges in the timing of school closures and press reports on school closures. looking initially at the development of general education schools in saxonyanhalt, three developments are signifi cant. first, the transformation from a communist regime to democracy and capitalism by incorporation meant a change of institutions in a very short time for the eastern german education system (sackmann 2010b: 179) which resulted in an immediate 55 percent increase in the number of schools on the territory of saxony-anhalt (fig. 2). the comprehensive school system of the german democratic republic (gdr) consisted of an obligatory polytechnical secondary school (grades 1-10, polytechnische oberschule) and a highlyselective extended secondary school (grades 11-12, erweiterte oberschule). this system was replaced in the transformation process by a slightly modifi ed version of the stratifi ed western german school system, with some minor variations occurring between the eastern german states. the new school system in saxony-anhalt was comprised of a comprehensive primary school (grundschule, grades 1-4), an integrated lower secondary school hosting a basic and an intermediate school track, which constituted an institutional innovation (sekundarschule, grades 5-9/10), grammar schools containing the academically most demanding school track at the lower and upper secondary levels (gymnasium, grades 5-12/13), and special education schools.8 the discretionary growth in the number of schools and school types created a particularly vulnerable system of education infrastructure, and in fact became a precursor to a contrary development. second, the initial increase in the total number of schools is followed by a steady decrease until the end of the period analysed. third, the decline in the number of schools occurs in waves and affects some school types more than others, with closures of primary and integrated secondary schools being the most frequent in absolute numbers. with respect to school closures, as a response to demographic decline, the fi rst wave occurs long before demographic numbers would have indicated demographic problems. school closures before 1995 almost exclusively affect integrated secondary schools, while demographic problems for this school type would not have been expected until the beginning of the new millennium. how can we explain school closures before 1996 (vertical line in fig. 2)? in order to investigate the reasons for school closures, we fi rst took a look at the public discourse. figure 3 shows waves of public attentiveness to the topic of school closures for the period of observation: there are peaks in 1996, 2000, 2003, 2009 and 2014. astonishingly, there are no articles mentioning school closures in 8 for the sake of clarity, we omit four comprehensive schools and two steiner schools in the transformation process. governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 335 the interval between 1990 and 1992, despite around 20 closures occurring from 1991 to 1992. as a further step towards answering the question of school infrastructure policy responding to demographic decline, the number of articles on school closures is systematically compared to the annual number of school closures registered in the school list data set (fig. 3). the total number of schools in general education decreased continually during the period of observation (fig. 2). however, the process is discrete with regard to the annual numbers of school closures. the temporal pattern of school closures is partially inconsistent not only with the demographic development, but also with the temporal distribution of newspaper articles on this topic. to help compare practices in school closures and public discourses on them, three temporal phases have been differentiated and marked with vertical lines in figure 3. the fi rst period, 1990-1995, is characterised by a large number of school closures, which receives almost no attention in the press. the second period, 19962007, demonstrates a large number of school closures, fl anked by a large amount of media coverage. in the third period, 2008-2014, a small number of school closures is accompanied by a disproportionately high degree of attentiveness in the press. fig. 2: total number of schools on the territory of what today is saxony-anhalt (1989-2014), after 1990 also by school type 0 500 1000 1500 2000 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 total primary schools integrated secondary schools grammar schools special education schools source: own compilation based on statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt 2016, 19912014 • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann336 4.1.1 period one: many closures, few reports school closures in the 1990-1995 period do not correspond to demographicallyinduced problems because the cohorts of typical school age were still large at that time. they are a by-product of the transformation of the education system formerly practised in eastern germany. as additional, new school types were introduced, the number of schools increased (fig. 2). figure 4 shows that this transformation immediately led to a massive drop in the average number of pupils per school as soon as in 1991. whereas schools in the gdr tended to have approximately 350 pupils per school, the switch to a stratifi ed secondary school system streaming pupils into different education tracks at age 10 or 12 immediately produced a school system of approximately 250 pupils per school in 1992. school sizes were even lower in the less highly-populated areas of saxony-anhalt. these rather small schools (in an international perspective; cf. lee 2006) were quite prone to closure because the districts were not forced to establish formal school planning procedures until 1993, after a period of “provisional planning” (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1991). the new districts were obviously unfamiliar with the new school planning procedure, as documented by the fact that the education ministry had to publish practical guides for planning procedures (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1992b). 0 50 100 150 c ou nt s 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 school closures articles on school closures 1 eriod 199 -1995 2 eriod 1996-2007 3 eriod 2008-2014 fig. 3: school closures (1991-2014) and articles on school closure in the mitteldeutsche zeitung (1990-2014) by year of publication source: own compilation based on statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt 1991-2014; dumont 2015 governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 337 specifi c for each school type, the standard amount of streams (zügigkeit) and a minimum average class size (klassenfrequenzrichtwert) were now a formal requirement for the viability of a school (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1991: 39). this minimum could be undercut in exceptional cases until a second minimum level was reached. however, the offi cial publications of the state of saxony-anhalt did not mention any explicit minimum levels of average class size. only a range was defi ned between which class sizes could fl uctuate (e.g. kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1992a). one can conclude that no clear-cut administrative viability limit was fi xed (for schools) in this phase, and that none could be precisely deduced from given regulations on class sizes. other sources however provide a more comprehensive picture of the practice of the administration with regard to directives for school planning. one answer, given by the cdu/fdp government of the state to an interpellation submitted by the opposition pds parliamentary group, reveals that minimum numbers for schools were employed for the fi rst formal school planning. the lower limit for primary schools in 1993 was 60 pupils, for integrated secondary schools 250 and for grammar schools at grade 5-10 432 pupils (landtag von sachsen anhalt 1993: 3). the answer also makes it clear that numerous schools had numbers below these minimum levels at that time, and were therefore threatened with closure. this was especially the case fig. 4: average number of pupils per school in eastern and western germany (1975-2012/2014) 200 250 300 350 400 pu pi ls p er s ch oo l 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 western germany (until 1990 incl. west berlin) gdr/eastern germany (from 1991 incl. west berlin) saxony-anhalt source: own compilation based on statistisches bundesamt 1975-2013; statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt 1991-2014 • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann338 for integrated secondary schools, which in many instances had replaced the comprehensive polytechnical schools of the gdr, but had lost a signifi cant number of pupils to primary schools and grammar schools. the state government justifi ed its minimum levels with educational goals. the aim is “for the uniform socialist school system of the former gdr to be replaced by a modern, effi cient multi-tier school system. (…) to fulfi l the requirements of differentiated tuition, school sizes must be reached that both provide the planned instruction and facilitate different school streams from a teaching and fi nancial perspective” (landtag von sachsen-anhalt 1993a: 1-2; translated).9 this parliamentary debate was reported on in a newspaper article. it is one of the very rare articles on school closures in the 1990-1995 period. it reads as follows: “the pds fears that the extinction of schools in saxony-anhalt will continue. (…) ms. hein demanded a rethinking in school policy because pupil numbers would fall rapidly every year, starting from 1997. renewed school closures would lead to longer journey times for children. (…) in the school year 1993/94, the bodies maintaining schools will already close 16 primary schools, 100 integrated secondary schools, 3 grammar schools and 17 vocational schools. (…) the state government stresses in its answer that school planning has so far abstained from making radical cuts. school planning will consequently require municipalities to achieve the required school sizes in 1995/96. until then, exceptional rulings that refer to region and situation are possible.” (mz_1993_11_11; translated) it is interesting to note the three frameworks that are defi ned in the entire newspaper article: a) the pds opposition party calls school closures an “extinction of schools”, which dramatises institutional procedures by giving the organisation a personality that one can mourn. b) back in 1993, ms. hein, as the speaker of the opposition party, gave the processes a demographic meaning (“pupil numbers … fall … starting from 1997”) in an effort to underline the importance of discussions on the current topic for the future. c) the state government de-dramatises by referring to “exceptional rulings that refer to region and situation”. especially the last point, “situation”, is very vague and corresponds to a whole range of aspects to be considered (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1993: 163). we therefore conclude that the state government is avoiding setting defi nite rules in order to obtain a maximum range of discretion when deciding on each individual case. as bourdieu (1990) has shown, maximum power of local clientele policy is achieved by implementing rules that allow maximum arbitrariness in case-by-case decision-making. procedures that allow decisions with reference to undefi ned circumstances of “situation” do provide this mode of policy. a characteristic of the 1990-1995 period is that there are almost no contemporary newspaper articles on the large number of school closures. a detailed analysis of one of the small number of articles that did appear shows why the press 9 all quotes from primary sources were translated from german into english by the authors. governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 339 are unresponsive to closures: even the opposition does not (successfully) pick out school closures as a central theme of transformation policy. the opposition shifts the meaning of school closures to a demographic event that will happen four years later. furthermore, the policy of the government to set discretionary rules that are negotiated in informal networks keeps the topic out of the press limelight. as the structure of the press at that time was still being established (schneider et al. 1997; thomaß 2015), the press itself did not independently make an agenda on school closures. the topic was even absent from most of the academic debates in germany during this period (one exception is: budde/klemm 1992). in sum, during the fi rst period, pressure for local decisions on school maintenance stemmed from decisions made through the transformation process and the subsequent application of organisational limits of viability. there was no demographic problem. however, these indicators were set and implemented somewhat shielded from public scrutiny, thus refl ecting a limited level of democratic numeracy on the part of the actors involved. 4.1.2 period two: many closures, many reports press coverage of school closures grew in intensity after 1995. a closer look into the content reveals that most reports now even anticipate the events. the peaks in coverage in 1996, 2000 and 2003 anticipate the imminent closures in the following years (fig. 3). this anticipative pattern of responsiveness can be explained by the temporal structure of school planning. by defi nition, school planning is a prospective procedure. in the 1990s, the districts were obliged to submit plans to education authorities for approval at the end of each calendar year in order to attain an actual basis for planning in the coming school year. decisions that were prepared in this way were related to future developments in the number of pupils. therefore, public discussion is geared before the demographic development manifests itself in organisations. this temporal pattern is also refl ected in the seasonal pattern of newspaper reports on school closures in the local press, which peak in the months of november and december. as the deadline for conclusive school planning is set at the end of the year, the pressure to reach a decision increases in the last months of the year, and relevant newspaper articles cluster in this time interval. the school closures however lag behind a shrinking school-age cohort size. figure 1 showed that the primary school admission cohort fell most sharply in 1996/97 as a result of the rapid drop in the fertility rate in 1991. negative migration balances between eastern and western germany enhanced this development between 1991 and 2008 (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2011). the saxony-anhalt education ministry at fi rst tried to react to this fi rst demographic shock in the late 1990s by lowering the minimum size requirements for the formation of beginners’ classes in schools. this reduction privileged grammar schools even more, as minimum levels for forming classes were suspended for them. the state government obviously acted on the presumption of a brief birth trough that could be countered by defi ning an exceptional phase. however, as later experiences were not convincing, minimum size levels were already increased in 1999, and the time horizon • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann340 for school planning was enlarged from one year to fi ve years (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 1999). the 1999 decree on medium-term school planning was amended in 2003 (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2003b), effecting the fi rst complete fi ve-year planning cycle to last from 2004 to 2008.10 this change of procedure gave rise to a need for discussion in the local press because the local subjects of the planning process were uncertain. the lack of self-confi dence among this group is also revealed in 2000 and 2003 in the fact that the ministry published practical guides for planners to reassure them in their practice (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2000, 2003a). mass media responsiveness to school closures peaked in the same years (fig. 3). the large number of school closures in the 1996-2007 period can be interpreted as an intention to systematically consolidate the school infrastructure of saxonyanhalt through increased centralisation. at the same time as low-fertility cohorts entered secondary schools, medium-term school planning was introduced and regulations were tightened. as can be observed in the decrees of 1999 and 2003, saxony-anhalt governments made up of different political parties11 followed this unitary response pattern. a systematisation of key indicators in this respect results in increased minimum levels of school size and the formation of beginners’ classes, and – as a new criterion – the catchment population as a planning indicator: “above all, two magic number packages orientate school planning for the school years 2001/2002 until 2005/2006. firstly, these are the new minimum numbers of pupils which the state has set: 60 pupils for a primary school, 16012 for an integrated secondary school, and 525 for a grammar school. secondly, there are guiding numbers for the proportion of inhabitants in ratio to the number of schools in a territory: 2,000 inhabitants are thought to be needed for a viable primary school, 10,000 inhabitants for an integrated secondary school and 25,000 inhabitants for each grammar school.” (mz_2000_04_04; translated). it is interesting to observe in this newspaper article that many indicators are explained and that the state is identifi ed as the regulatory agency. in descriptive terms, the journalist gives a metaphoric framing of the new systematic use of indicators that refers to an intention of school planners: “two magic number packages”. in this perspective, indicators produce results in infrastructure by transforming a chaotic reality into a clear-cut structure. indicators are therefore seen as an effi cient way to neutralise politics and to establish a kind of self-referential technocratic tool to produce predictable results in a policy process. despite the fact that the state is 10 2003 was also the fi rst year in which all minimum size requirements for the formation of beginners’ classes were regulated in a separate circular decree by the ministry (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2002). 11 the governing coalitions in saxony-anhalt were: 1990-1994 cdu, fdp; 1994-1998 spd b90/ grüne; 1998-2002 spd; 2002-2006 cdu, fdp; 2006-2011 cdu, spd; 2011-2016 cdu, spd. 12 the minimum number of 160 pupils refers to grades 7-10, beyond the orientation phase in the fi rst two grades, which were part of the school system at that time. governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 341 correctly mentioned as the regulator, the formula of “magic number packages” suggests that some agency of the state is transferred to the indicator itself (cf. thévenot 2009). the following article shows how the pressure to act is implied in these indicators and perceived by local actors: “the continuity of the integrated secondary school in teuchern/nessa is acutely threatened, the mayor stressed, and underlined his position with numbers. at present, there have to be at least 20 pupils from grades 5 to 7 in two classes. further, there should be at least 160 girls and boys in a school from grades 7 to 10. according to gieler [the mayor], this requirement could be fulfi lled. the state demands as many as 240 pupils for grades 5 to 10 for the school year 2004/05. this criterion can be met with 256 pupils in the school. however, the minimum number of 40 pupils for two classes in grade 5 would no longer be reached.” (mz_2003_08_29; translated). in this article, the newspaper reports the perspective of a mayor for whom the list of indicators (and its imminent change) is a kind of checklist to observe the imminent threat of a school closure. despite fulfi lling three criteria positively, the mayor can point to a fourth criterion which he assumes will not be met in the following school year. as he presupposes that his audience would like to hold on to the school, the wording “is acutely threatened” indicates pressure to act either by accepting or protesting, or by fi nding ways to meet the criteria. in sum, the increasing number of articles on school closures as a result of indicator-driven school planning is characteristic of the 1996-2007 period. indicators are often used in this period as a technical justifi cation for a mode of decision-making which leaves little scope for discretion. 4.1.3 period three: few closures, many reports somewhat surprisingly, the last period, 2008-2014, is characterised by a large number of articles, but the number of school closures was small. how can this pattern of press hyper-responsiveness be explained? according to our democracy hypothesis, a process of collective learning in the use of key administrative indicators should be at the heart of this process. to test this hypothesis, all articles were coded according to the institutional frames of reference mentioned in the articles (fig. 5). institutional frameworks were differentiated between amendments to the school law or decrees, the mentioning of exceptional rulings, and the school planning procedure, which forms the institutional framework within which collectively-binding decisions are taken on school infrastructure and legitimised vis-à-vis different interest groups. a uniform pattern exists with the exception of the last two years: changes in legal frameworks applying to schools established by the state are rarely mentioned (in just 14.7 percent of all the articles). administrative school planning procedures are referred to most often (in 72.9 percent of the articles), which form the prescribed framework for reaching decisions on school closures or fi nding alternatives. 28 percent of the articles relate to institutionalised exceptions . as school-hosting munici• walter bartl, reinhold sackmann342 palities have an interest in a school remaining in their territory, they will usually try to point to all the existing exemptions that could be applied within school planning. school planning is mentioned more often than are exemptions, as exceptional rulings on school closures cannot be referred to in all cases. a peak in newspaper reports on school closures in 2009 (fig. 3) marks the start of a new fi ve-year-planning period (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2008b). the rules on the formation of beginners’ classes were amended in a decree (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2008a). they introduced a geographical differentiation in the application of key indicators resulting in a lower level of school closures (fig. 3). this change of rules is referred to in the following article: “further school closures are therefore ruled out in the near future, and the pupils in the district should not anticipate having to travel further to school.’ for the spd member of the state parliament (landtag) and chairwoman of the committee on culture and education of the wittenberg district, corinna reinecke, this was the most important result of the new guiding indicators for school infrastructure planning, which were defi nitively set by the state last week.” (mz_2008_07_28; translated). the rapid rise in the number of newspaper articles in the latter years of the 20082014 observation period is the result of an increasing number of confl icts between the local and the state level in saxony-anhalt. one reason for this is the raising of fig. 5: institutional frameworks mentioned in newspaper articles on school closures in the mz (1990-2014) 0 20 40 60 80 n um be r o f a rti cl es 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 legislation/decree exemption clauses school planning source: dumont 2015 governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 343 minimum primary school sizes (kultusministerium sachsen-anhalt 2013). as is illustrated in figure 5, the number of articles which mention state laws and decrees went up in recent years. an example of these new confl icts is given in this article: “the chances to save small schools in the burgenland district are poor under current circumstances. […] this is the summary of what rita mittenzwei, spokeswoman on education of the spd parliamentary group of the state, announced to her comrades and other members of the district group during a round table discussion on current school planning […]. ‘the legal situation is clear. no one wants to change this decree.’ with these words, rita mittenzwei snubbed [district] delegates who had hoped for such an amendment, and who had previously campaigned vociferously. because they – like the entire district council – do not want to see any more school closures. […] the district has therefore applied for proceedings on the constitutionality of this decree of the ministry of education [normenkontrollverfahren]. the offi cial legal document only allows a minimum number of 120 pupils for specifi callylisted individual integrated secondary school locations. this was set in relation to the population density. however, the minimum number of pupils for schools in the burgenland district is set at 180, a number they will not reach in the next few years, whereas they would have reached more than 120.” (mz_2009_11_13; translated). in this article, local politicians are already arguing in an experienced way on the ratios between indicators, exceptions and school closures. with formal exemptions, the policy of the state tries to take local particularities into account when reaching decisions for sparsely-populated districts (i.e. a reduced minimum of 120 pupils). an increase in local politicians’ democratic numeracy level corresponds with the notion of defi ning one’s own local interests and fi ghting for them. the article describes this as having “campaigned vociferously” in order to indicate that local politicians are engaging in open confl ict, even within their own parties. to seek a judicial review of the case also indicates a mature level of competence with regard to the forms of democratic competition between interests. exemption rules increase the room to manoeuvre. state-level politicians, like the member of parliament mentioned above, are increasingly being placed on the defensive by local politicians. the amount of media coverage on school closures is increasing because confl icts of this kind are growing in number as differences of opinion are voiced in public. the paradox of a strong de-coupling between the frequency of school closures and the intensity of discourses on this topic in the press is resolved by a rationalisation process of political actors. the increasing time horizon of state government planning corresponds to an extension of the preventive protection time horizon of local politicians who debate in public, long before events are set to take place. in this constellation, even unlikely confl icts within factions and governments can break out, as other articles show as well (e.g. mz_2014_10_18). in the last period of responsiveness observed between demographic change and school closures, not only the level of reports shifts from the local area to the sphere of the federal state, but the style of reports is also more prone to media coverage. newspaper articles on the topic of school closures had read like administrative reports for many years. • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann344 as confl icts grew in number, the news value of the information increased. in the article mentioned above, even a seemingly minor confl ict on minimum school sizes of 52 or 60 pupils can be transformed into a heart-rendering tale of how important regulators are “fi ghting back tears” (mz_2014_10_18). the results obtained so far can be summarised as follows: the initial hypothesis stated that key administrative indicators would constitute demographic problems and create a need for collective decisions. a more specifi c second hypothesis argued that, in transformation societies, key administrative indicators would become more important over time as governance devices due to a collective learning process leading to heightened democratic numeracy. the empirical analysis basically confi rms both hypotheses. 4.2 power relations of school infrastructure policy in the local press we argued in our power hypothesis that administrative and social conventions for classifying the school system would shape public attention and deliberation. this section will examine this proposition. the content analysis shows that school closures are a topic that is seen as a local event in journalistic terms. the large majority of the 828 articles that we analysed appeared in the local pages of the newspaper studied, only 2.4 percent of all articles fi gured in the general edition of the mz. the local character of the reporting is emphasised even more strongly by the locally-focussed nature of the articles’ content. only 1.1 percent of all articles cover the situation of the school infrastructure throughout the whole state of saxony-anhalt; all other articles concentrate on one single district or on a couple of districts. this locally-limited attribution of relevance is partly explained by the fact that districts are the subject of school planning. 72.9 percent of all articles mention a current or upcoming process of school planning as an institutional framework in the article. only 14.7 percent of all articles refer to changes in the legal framework of the state. as the state sets the terms for school planning, the local newspaper applies a kind of local bias to its reporting, as it focuses on local actors and not on federal state rules. despite the fact that the demographic development in the districts of saxony-anhalt follows similar patterns, and an identical constraint shapes planning which is fi xed by the state, articles rarely make an agenda of school infrastructure beyond local relevance. districts (58.3 percent) and municipalities (44 percent) are therefore the main actors found in the articles on school closures; parents (23.9 percent) and pupils (10.5 percent) appear less often. districts are the relevant decision-makers in formal terms. as the subject of the planning process, they are legally obliged to relate with municipalities as school building owners, as well as with parents and pupils. districts therefore seek information on positions of the (sometimes divergent) interests of these actors, but they do not have to come to a joint decision. the federal state has the power to set the rules for school planning and to monitor their implementation. despite this important regulatory function of federal state representatives, they are quite often “invisible” in the articles: only 19.4 percent name actors of the federal state, of which the larger part (14.7 percent) refers to the changes in legal governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 345 frameworks which have already been mentioned. existing or changed administrative size regulations are only given in concrete fi gures in 7.6 percent of the articles. how are different types of schools represented in the articles on school closures? if our power hypothesis is correct, well-organised interest groups will be reported on more often. there will therefore be more articles on imminent school closures of higher-prestige school types than on those of lower prestige. the question can be answered by consulting table 2. it relates all the school closures that have been identifi ed to the number of articles on school closures, as well as to articles on efforts to rescue schools. the table shows that primary and integrated secondary schools amount to almost 90 percent (86.5 percent) of the more than one thousand schools closed since 1990. in contrast, grammar schools and special education schools were rarely closed. comparing school closure practices with press reporting, table 2 indicates tab. 2: closures of general education schools in saxony-anhalt (1991-2014) and articles on this topic in the mitteldeutsche zeitung (1990-2014), by school type schools in 1991 % schools in 2014 % school closures % articles on school closure in mz % articles on efforts to rescue schools in mz % primary school 48.9 57.8 40.7 39.3 47.4 integrated secondary school (sekundarschule) 34.8 17.3 45.8 39.4 37.4 grammar school (gymnasium) 8.2 8.8 7.8 16.9 11.3 special education school (förderschule) 7.8 11.9 4.2 3.9 1.3 other schools* 0.3 4.2 1.5 0.4 2.6 total (%) 100 100 100 100 100 total (n) 1741 880 1071** 903*** 302*** * comprehensive schools, steiner schools, community schools (gemeinschaftsschulen, introduced in 2013). ** the total number of closures and the number of schools in 2014 do not add up to the number of schools in 1991 due to newly-established schools and some changes to school identifi cation numbers for administrative reasons. *** a single article may mention large numbers of closures per type of school. the maximum count was one in each article. if specifi c school closures appeared in different articles, they were counted repeatedly. source: own calculations based on statistisches landesamt sachsen-anhalt 1991-2014; dumont 2015 • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann346 that reports are biased with regard to integrated secondary schools: reports on their closure are less likely than are reports on the closure of grammar schools, which attract a disproportionate amount of attention. reports on primary schools and special education schools are similar in number to closures. press coverage on efforts to rescue schools is even more unbalanced against integrated secondary schools. there are disproportionally more articles on efforts to save grammar schools and primary schools. these numbers refl ect among other elements the social prestige which distinguishes grammar schools from integrated secondary schools. however, prestige seems not to be the only determinant of public attention. primary schools are supported on an equally high level because the guiding idea of the decentralised provision of primary education (as expressed in the frequently mentioned motif “short legs, short distances”) is not shared by school planners and municipalities alone, but also resonates a general notion that young school children are a group that deserves special protection. with regard to our power hypothesis, the results that have been obtained can be summarised by stating that local media coverage enhances the existing asymmetry of power between school types and the social groups which they tend to represent. the latter shows up in the fact that grammar schools disproportionally often cater for families from a higher socio-economic background (autorengruppe bildungsberichterstattung 2014: 76; schwarz/weishaupt 2014: 25), thus fuelling the social prestige traditionally ascribed to this school type. hence, the spatial distribution of grammar schools is privileged by this kind of media responsiveness. 5 summary and discussion this article investigated the guiding question of whether – and how – responsiveness to demographic change is constituted in the education system. it was stated that, in the case of democratic politics, demographic problems have to fi rst be established as relevant before there is a need for any collective decisions to be taken. according to this concept, the fi rst hypothesis was that, in democracies, key indicators are crucial for establishing relevance because they are used to evaluate the results of previous policy and enable the need-based viability of existing programmes and organisations in a largely decommodifi ed context to be monitored. a second hypothesis specifi ed our fi rst assumption for the context of societies in transition, stating that the relevance attaching to key indicators as governance devices should increase with the democratic numeracy of the actors involved. in a third stage within our theory of responsiveness, we stated that, in democracies, the media play an important role in the policy cycle as they observe societies selectively, and thereby establish issues. we hypothesised that press attention to education infrastructure policies will slightly increase power because reports on plans to close grammar schools (and to protest against it) will be more frequent than reports on other types of secondary school. governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 347 the empirical study on the political-administrative practice of school closures, and reports on them in the media, was focused on the german state that was hardest hit by a decrease in population. the results that were obtained are interesting not least due to the extensive observation period from 1990-2014. this is even more so because democracy had been established in this eastern german state at that time, after 57 years of dictatorship, so that the constitutive logic of democratic responsiveness could be observed throughout the observation period. our initial hypothesis of responsiveness to demographic change, for which key indicators are crucial in democratic systems, is supported. in hindsight, the empirical material allows a more precise analysis of its functioning and its developmental logic. the process that was observed of the democratisation of political responsiveness took place in three stages that were apparent in divergent patterns of the relationship between policy events and media coverage. large numbers of school closures took place in the initial period from 1990-1995 with virtual media silence, whilst there is a higher concordance in the second period of 1996-2007 between the frequency of reports and the number of closures, whereas a high number of media reports occurs in the last period of 2008-2014 despite a relatively small number of closures. at fi rst glance, it could be stated that there is a variance originating basically from public discourse. however, a closer qualitative and quantitative analysis reveals that this pattern refl ects substantial changes in the practice of education infrastructure policy. we are of the view that this has broader implications. the fi rst period is characterised by unintentional effects of reunifi cation. the barely refl ected adoption of the stratifi ed western german school system to replace the unifi ed gdr system results in an ineffi cient increase in school organisations, long before a drop in birth rates reached the schools. in order to correct these measures, the number of school closures in the 1990-1995 period increases, despite the fact that organisational viability criteria are used in a relatively discretionary fashion. it is important to note for a general theory of political responsiveness that, in this case, numerous events occur without public discussion because the rules relating to school closures are not transparent. in hindsight, similar processes of a politically-induced over-supply can be observed in housing, where also unintended effects of transformation precede market crises in the form of a rise in the vacancy rate, later attributed to demographic processes. with regard to education, the number of school organisations was structurally increased by the introduction of a multi-tier system which produced a situation of over-supply, followed by a fall in demand (cf. budde/klemm 1992). in this respect, the later “demographisation” of the problem of school closures masks mistakes made in the transformation process. another aspect that needs to be noted for a theory of political responsiveness is that failing to use transparent key indicators when deciding on school closures transforms these into “occurrences” which are not the object of public reports and discussions. this kind of more arbitrary responsiveness is therefore more akin to forms found in autocratic orders than a certain bureaucratic form in fully-fl edged democracies. in a similar vein, research on the transformation of local governments in eastern germany showed that public administration in the gdr was bound less • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann348 by keeping written records than would have been expected, if one regards the gdr as having constituted a bureaucratic regime (seibel 1993). in the ensuing 1996-2007 period, the introduction of responsiveness to demographic decline by key indicators results in a rationalisation of political decisions. an increasing usage of population indicators is also an effect of democratisation processes. indicators allow comparisons to be made between different local situations which can be objectifi ed without privileging one population group over another. key administrative indicators enable a transformation of occurrences into planning decisions. when it comes to school planning, key indicators allowed future conditions to be anticipated, initially with a time horizon of one year, subsequently extended to fi ve years. responsiveness to demographic change via key indicators is hence a systematic endeavour to formulate responses to anticipated future challenges; it is not a spontaneous response to a sudden, new problem. for this kind of need-based economic thought experiment, demographic data outperform other time series data because they are less affected by short-term external infl uences. two further features of responsiveness to demographic change by key indicators are highlighted in the 1996-2007 period. if key indicators are simply used as “statistical rules” (starr 1987: 55), they will be able to de-politicise a topic. the whole pattern of media reports on school closures being restricted to local news (neglecting regulation at state level), and following administrative rules of school planning at the end of the year, displays the logic of technocracy. key indicators can objectify political decisions and thereby avoid controversy. in this sense, such indicators are agents i.e. they are perceived as powerful stakeholders. when press reports talk about “magic number packages”, the autonomy of these technical instruments is underlined. however, key indicators have a potential for social experiments and learning because they can objectify problem analysis: given for instance that the minimum size of primary schools was lowered in 1996-2000, it can be monitored whether a shortterm change in a viability indicator can bridge demographic troughs. if this turns out not to be the case, as was seen in 2001, normality can be restored. because rule-based indicators enable one to formulate precise expectations, deviations from rules can be featured as social experiments. this enables collective learning. whether societies are successful in using these rationalisations not only to raise formal rationality, but also to further material rationalisation, is decided when confl icts of interest arise. the alleviation of collective learning as a dimension of responsiveness to demographic decline is accentuated in the fi nal 2008-2014 observation period. the analysis showed that the periodic increase in media coverage on school closure is a result of an increase in the incidence of public confl icts. both between the local and state levels, and within the state level, confl icts on key indicators arise independently of party factions. the tendency to see this topic as one of state policy is on the rise. a close analysis of articles shows that, both on the local and state level, democratic numeracy is improving insofar as the knowledge spreads on how indicators behave. the potential for using indicators for one’s own purposes is therefore growing. parallel to more public confl icts, a re-politicisation of key indicators is taking place governance indicators and responsiveness to population decline • 349 as programme-setting decisions by the state are demanded and criticised. in this sense of more universal numeracy, responsiveness constituted by key indicators provides a chance to make decisions on programmes more transparent for interest groups, thereby alleviating open controversy. as in other studies on indicators (rottenburg et al. 2015), we see that the effects of indicators are ambivalent: they de-politicise decisions in some periods, but in later periods they create a forum for refl ected public debates on political goals. with regard to the power thesis, i.e. media coverage of school closure processes, the initial hypothesis of power bias is basically supported: the proportion of reports on grammar school closures and their frequency is twice as high as the corresponding ratio of reports to closures in the case of integrated secondary schools. also because of this tendency, the number of articles on school rescue strategies for grammar schools is disproportionally high. this accelerating effect on the vertical stratifi cation of the supply structure is largely ignored when discussing the effects of demographic change on education structures: lower secondary schools are not only more often closed in relation to decreasing population numbers, but there are also disproportionally fewer reports on their closure, and fewer controversies in the media on the closure. in relation to decreasing numbers of children, grammar schools are closed down disproportionally less often, also because there are more media reports on imminent closures, and there are more public discussions on strategies for rescuing them.13 interestingly, this pattern of responsiveness indirectly furthers education expansion, as the spatial difference between the supply structure of grammar schools and other secondary schools is reduced. because patterns of selective school closures reduce differences in proximity, arguments put forward by parents and pupils, which stress a higher proximity of integrated secondary schools in comparison to grammar schools, become less important. in general, similar to the results of gerhards (1999), our study shows a relatively weak bias of media responses to politics: the media depict existing structures of responsiveness relatively accurately, showing a slight bias towards existing power relations, and virtually never set a new agenda independently of existing structures. acknowledgements we would like to thank michael eckert, keno frank and hermann budde for their valuable context information on school planning procedures, which was input in the early stages of our research. we also highly appreciate the comments made by the participants of the workshop on “responsiveness” at the fiw in bonn, where we had the chance to present and discuss our results in september 2015. the following colleagues generously invested their time to read an earlier version of this paper: oliver winkler, oliver arránz becker, christian papilloud and manfred stock. their 13 this conclusion is supported by initial results from logistic regressions on the organisation level, which will be part of another article on this topic. the results can be made available on request. • walter bartl, reinhold sackmann350 critical questions and thorough advice contributed much towards sharpening our argument. we are also deeply grateful for the remarks of the editors of this special issue, birgit glorius and birgit leick, the editor of cpos frank swiaczny, and two anonymous reviewers as well as for the copy-editing by cpos. furthermore, we would like to acknowledge the attentive and reliable support given by clara breyer during the coding process of the content analysis. we thank the state of saxonyanhalt for funding an important part of this study (grant no. 5207/ad/0609m). references anderson-levitt, kathryn m. 2003: a world culture of schooling? in: anderson-levitt, kathryn m. 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wendt, sabine; hegemann, moritz; ragutt, frank 2011: regional governance und kommunale schulentwicklungspolitik im prozess des rückund umbaus regionaler schulangebotsstrukturen. in: zeitschrift für pädagogik 57,4: 497-513. date of submission: 15.02.2016 date of acceptance: 26.05.2016 dr. walter bartl (). martin-luther-university halle-wittenberg, institute of sociology. halle (saale), germany. e-mail: walter.bartl@soziologie.uni-halle.de url: http://soziologie.uni-halle.de/professuren/sozialstruktur/mitarbeiter/bartl/ prof. dr. reinhold sackmann. martin-luther-university halle-wittenberg, institute of sociology. halle (saale), germany. e-mail: reinhold.sackmann@soziologie.uni-halle.de url: http://soziologie.uni-halle.de/professuren/sozialstruktur/sackmann/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships with their parents the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships with their parents oliver arránz becker abstract: using data of the german family panel pairfam, this article examines whether relationship-related transitions among adolescents and adults – separations with or without subsequent new relationships and transitions from being single to a relationship – impact different aspects of their relationship with their parents (contact frequency, intimacy, and confl ict). several competing hypotheses are tested. the resource hypothesis, following a supply-side argumentation, posits that relationships generate resources (i.e. social capital) that facilitate exchange with parents; relationship breakup implies resource deprivation and produces strain, which adversely affects the parent-child relationship (spillover hypothesis). according to the demand-based compensation hypothesis, horizontal relationships and vertical intergenerational relations are substitutively associated with each other; hence, exchanges between generations should be strongest when children are not involved in romantic relationships. the analyses yield evidence in line with both the compensation hypothesis (particularly among adolescents) and the spillover hypothesis (among adults). the effects are largely gender neutral. keywords: intergenerational relations · solidarity · life course · union dissolution and divorce 1 introduction separation and divorce are critical events within the life course with especially serious individual consequences for those affected. extensive empirical literature documents the many economic (cf. for germany and europe: andreß 1999; andreß et al. 2006; andreß et al. 2003; for the usa: holden/smock 1991) as well as health and psycho-social consequences (cf. for an overview: beelmann/schmidt-denter 2003; kopp et al. 2010) of marital instability. more recent studies show that the consequences of the dissolution of non-marital relationships frequently lead to similarly negative consequences as those of a divorce (avellar/smock 2005). comparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 313-334 (date of release: 14.08.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-09en4 • oliver arránz becker314 this article, however, focuses on the social consequences of union dissolution. one of the most thoroughly documented fi ndings in this context are the diverse negative effects of divorce on parents’ relationship with their children (amato 2000, 2010; amato/booth 1996; amato et al. 1995; booth/amato 1994). in this fi eld of research, which is characterised by a strong longitudinal empirical tradition, it is, however, striking that the consequences of a separation or divorce in the offspring generation on relationships with parents is rarely examined; the relevant overviews (amato 2000, 2010) completely ignore this issue. this issue is, however, an important and largely open-ended research question. on one hand, we can assume – based on the above-mentioned research on the consequences of union dissolution – that material losses, stress and strain spread to an individual’s relationship with their parents and reduce its quality. generally speaking, this perspective assumes that a relationship provides specifi c resources (social capital) from which parent-child relationships also profi t and thus the loss of which consequently impairs them. on the other hand – and this can be related to concepts of family or kinship solidarity (bengtson 2001; nauck/arránz becker 2013) – one central characteristic of families is to stick together in calamities and “hard times” and thus attenuate crises (compensation). according to this perspective, relationships and intergenerational relations compete with each other, thus we could even anticipate positive effects of a separation or divorce on intergenerational relationships with parents. these questions have been largely ignored in past research on the consequences of separation and divorce. there are, however, some relevant fi ndings from a different line of research studying intergenerational relationships (cf. deindl et al. 2014; szydlik 2000). this research considers romatic relationships as a part of the structural framework of intergenerational exchange. however, the relevant studies of this research tradition – unlike the studies cited above – are almost all crosssectional studies as will be illustrated in detail in the section on the state of research. this leads to serious problems with regard to interpretability of the fi ndings, since it is unclear, for example, whether the compared groups are comparable at all or can be made comparable by means of controlling for all relevant third variables (“unobserved heterogeneity”). this leads directly to the objectives of this article. the central objective will be (1) to examine the effects of union dissolution among adolescents and adults (with or without immediate subsequent relationships) on relationships with their parents, (2) while taking the moderating infl uence of age and gender of the children as well as the gender of the parent into consideration. and fi nally the study (3) will determine the role of potential explanatory mechanisms for the ascertained effects. since the theoretical points outlined above (and discussed in further detail in the next section) can basically be applied to any type of relationship, in this article i will examine marital as well as non-marital relationships. i will also analyse transitions to a new relationship, since the general theoretical arguments can equally be applied to entry into and exit from relationships; this leads to a more general question concerning the effects of relationship transitions. i will focus my attention on a within-subject the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 315 longitudinal approach, which allows for stronger causal inference than most previous studies. 2 theoretical background, state of research and hypotheses 2.1 theoretical considerations before deriving the hypotheses, i will fi rst specify the construct of intergenerational relations. intergenerational relations – a term here not referring to social, but to familial generations (cf. mannheim 1928) – are understood as individual exchange relationships within families (szydlik 2000). familial intergenerational relations are also very signifi cant because they are an expressive counterpart of “public,” instrumental barter relations (e.g. trade). frequently, the maxim of quid pro quo (“something for something”) does not apply to the (nuclear) family – in particular not to parents and children; exchange in families is rather generalised, i.e. the manner and time of “repayment” remain undetermined (cf. hennig 2014). in some cases openly expressed expectations of reciprocity are even negatively sanctioned (clark/mills 1979), which, however, does not mean that reciprocity is entirely absent in family exchange (leopold/raab 2011). instead, the resources exchanged within families are diverse: ranging from money and services to affection and love (hill 1992). the empirical literature on intergenerational relationships usually refers back to a series of theoretically and conceptually seminal studies by the group of vern bengtson and merril silverstein (cf. bengtson/roberts 1991; bengtson 2001; silverstein et al. 1997). these studies established theoretically derived and empirically tested dimensions of the construct of intergenerational solidarity. among the six (bengtson 2001) – or with the addition of confl ict (silverstein et al. 2010), seven – dimensions, three primary aspects can be distinguished. in addition to structural solidarity, which refers to opportunity structures (e.g. family structure) and is in fact a fundamental prerequisite for intergenerational exchange, there are (1) associative solidarity, in particular contact frequency, (2) affective solidarity (e.g. emotional closeness) as well as (3) functional solidarity, including practical, non-material and material support (cf. szydlik 2000). the latter will be excluded in this article due to lacking data (for details see the methodology section). the main objective of the article is, however, not to describe familial exchanges, but to test explanatory hypotheses on the infl uence of relationship transitions in the offspring generation on selected aspects of the relationship to their parents (associative and affective solidarity as well as confl icts). for the purpose of generating the hypotheses this article will refer to exchange theory. in doing so it is useful to theoretically differentiate between two perspectives: the supply side and the demand side (cf. szydlik 1995). from the supply perspective, we can expect that the exchange between the generations is more intense the more resources – time, money, affection and suchlike – are available to the family members and can be “invested” into the relationships. in this view, resources are basically the “opportunity structure” (szydlik 1995) of • oliver arránz becker316 intergenerational relations. based on diverse fi ndings on negative consequences of union dissolution (amato 2000; beelmann/schmidt-denter 2003) we might (somewhat naively) assume that due to the associated loss of material and psychosocial resources, a separation from a partner reduces emotional closeness to the parents. conversely, this reasoning implies that the existence of a (marital) partner in the offspring generation improves the availability of resources, thus strengthening the intergenerational exchange (referred to in the following as the “resource hypothesis”). it is, however, possible that familial exchanges are frequently demand-oriented. from the demand perspective, we could assume that intergenerational exchange intensifi es with increasing demand – in other words in the course of resource deprivation. a partner relationship, as mentioned above, usually creates access to the partner’s social capital and, not least, to their social support, and additionally ties up time resources. hence, we can assume that intergenerational exchange tends to lessen with the existence of a relationship, but intensifi es after the loss of these resources due to separation. in this respect, according to the demand-based argument, the intragenerational relationship and the vertical intergenerational relationship have a substitutive association with each other (“compensation hypothesis”). we must nonetheless take into consideration here that family relationships have no purely instrumental character, but rather possess a strong expressive component. this means that interpersonal communication plays a special role in familial exchange (arránz becker 2008). this, however, makes family relationships highly susceptible to “malfunctions.” for example, we can anticipate that although strain resulting from a separation can be cushioned to a certain extent by social support from parents and other family members, but it can nonetheless lead to a transfer of confl icts (“spillover hypothesis”) and thereby disturb the intergenerational exchange. 2.2 differentiations: moderator effects of gender and age the strength of the effects of the relationship status of children on their relationship to their parents might systematically vary according to different social characteristics. first of all, the gender of parent and child seems to be important. earlier studies show that relationships to mothers tend to be closer than those to fathers and that daughters on average report closer relationships to their parents than sons (szydlik 1995). thus we could assume that the impact of union dissolutions (or relationship transitions in general) vary in intensity (or even reverse their effect) according to the genders of the parents and children involved. from a theoretical perspective, the “kin-keeper” hypothesis appears at fi rst glance quite plausible in this case (cf. szydlik 1995). according to this hypothesis, sons more often profi t from a relationship than daughters because, in line with prevailing gender roles, the female partner frequently keeps and maintains contact with the outside world, including that to parents and family (hagestad 1986). since from this perspective parent-daughter relationships are considered more normatively controlled and therefore less sensitive to external stimuli and opportunity structures (cf. esser 2000), a separation can be expected to have a more negative the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 317 effect on the relationship to the parents for sons than for daughters. we could make a similar argument in the case of father relationships, which are also assumed to be more affected by relationship transitions of the children. on the other hand, we could also argue that in parent-child relationships involving women there is potentially more closeness “at stake,” so that potential deteriorations in relationships following a separation in the offspring generation may be particularly pronounced. in previous studies, neither of these two arguments has been confi rmed empirically. according to szydlik (1995), the effects of relationship status are only signifi cant in the case of mother-child relationships, but not with regard to relationships with the father. in addition, berger and fend (2005) report that the “married” status of the child facilitates closeness in daughter-mother relationships, but signifi cantly impairs the son-mother relationship (szydlik 1995 replicates this negative effect). it is possible that contacts with the wife’s family of origin become more intense among married couples. further clarifi cation would, however, require that we take in-law relationships into consideration. in other studies the effects are only signifi cant among selected gender combinations of the parent-child dyad (kaufman/uhlenberg 1998; sarkisian/gerstel 2008) and the authors have interpreted this as a gendered effect pattern in the past. this interpretation is, however, not justifi ed in most of the studies because they usually do not test the effect differences between subgroups (e.g. through interaction effects), but merely report separate models for the different dyads. therefore, the common practice of calculating separate models for the two genders results in an overemphasis of gender differences. due to the unclear underlying mechanisms, in the present article no explicit moderator hypotheses concerning gender are formulated. a second moderator effect that is relevant with regard to the sample studied in this article is age. we know from developmental psychology that intergenerational relations change systematically with the transition to adulthood and the related developmental tasks such as detachment from the parental home and individuation (walper 2003). employment and partnering processes in adolescence facilitate autonomy from the parents (masche 2008) and require repeated re-negotiations of the parent-child relationship (cf. youniss 1982). in adolescence, intensifi ed parental monitoring of children’s romantic relationships is to be assumed, including both reactance against new relationships as well as support in cases of separation. this monitoring may gradually recede following the transition to adulthood. as a result, the greater parental involvement may reinforce compensation effects among adolescents. in addition, developmental transitions in adolescence, which surely also include relationship-related transitions, are sometimes accompanied by disputes with parents during the course of which the parent-child relationships transform towards greater emancipation and being “on par” (aquilino 1997; masche 2008). overall, shifts in the parent-child relationships after relationship-related transitions are expected to be more pronounced among adolescents than among adults (“development hypothesis”). ultimately, the extent of the effects of union dissolution could increase with the relationship’s degree of institutionalisation since this also increases separation costs. none of the studies discussed has ever examined this aspect in detail. al• oliver arránz becker318 though szydlik (1995) controls for multiple indicators for “living apart together” as well as non-marital and marital cohabitation (reference group: single) in his analyses, no systematic differential effect pattern can be identifi ed from the fi ndings, because the differences in the coeffi cients are not tested for signifi cance. this article will explore moderator effects of relationship status. finally, we can assume that the existence of siblings may also infl uence the extent of consequences of union dissolution. no studies have been conducted on this question, hence it will be explored in the present article. 2.3 potential explanatory mechanisms earlier studies shed little light on possible explanatory mechanisms for the found effects. from a theoretical perspective, it would seem desirable to control not only for a general time indicator (e.g. age) and opportunity structures (e.g. indicated by cohabitation) but in particular for those (time-varying) factors that correlate with the demand for intergenerational exchange. two groups of variables seem to be relevant here: on the one hand, the available human and social capital (e.g. income and social contacts), and on the other hand, indicators of mental states that represent subjective manifestations of these objectively available types of capital (e.g. general satisfaction and self-esteem). if the resource hypothesis is correct, we can anticipate that negative resource effects in the case of separation can be “explained” by an increasing demand for support, for example a decrease in general satisfaction (mediation hypothesis). if, instead, the compensation hypothesis is correct, the effects of relationship transitions, controlling for capital and mental state, should not change much; rather, we can presume that potential impairments (e.g. to the mental state) may be buffered by the parents’ attention or that unfavourable changes may not impinge upon the relationship to the parents. 2.4 previous research some, but by no means all us studies confi rm the compensation hypothesis. in what is probably the best known of them, sarkisian and gerstel (2008) conclude that marriage is a “greedy institution.” compared to never married or divorced people, they found signifi cantly less solidarity on average among married people with regard to a variety of dimensions (structural, associative, affective and functional). spitze et al. (1994) also found empirical evidence for the compensation hypothesis. according to their analyses, divorce has a positive effect on the frequency of personal and telephone contacts as well as on functional solidarity (babysitting and other forms of support) for daughters, but not sons. other studies provide weak evidence for the compensation hypothesis, a positive effect of being single (compared to being married) on affective solidarity (white/rogers 1997) is reported as well as weak negative effects of cohabitation (masche 2008) and marriage (bucx et al. 2012) on individual aspects of functional solidarity. despite the rather mixed, cross-sectional-based evidence, swartz (2009: 204) concludes in her overview that the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 319 “marriage in the younger generation […] is associated with weakened intergenerational family integration.” two of the most detailed and convincing longitudinal studies so far (aquilino 1997; kaufman/uhlenberg 1998) lead, however, to opposing conclusions. kaufman and uhlenberg (1998) use multinomial logistical regressions to analyse the direction of changes (improvement vs. deterioration vs. no change) between two different points in time fi ve years apart. they report that the relationships of daughters with their parents improve upon marriage, while separation has positive effects both on an improvement and on a deterioration in the relationship between daughters and parents. among sons, by contrast, marriage makes deterioration of their relationship with their parents less likely. this renders the fi ndings at least partially compatible with the resource hypothesis, but the parent-child relationship is measured only using one single, rather vague question, with response categories differing across the waves. aquilino (1997) estimates effects of a child’s relationship status at the second point in time with regard to four aspects of intergenerational relationships – emotional closeness, shared activities, support of the parents by the child as well as confl icts due to parental control behaviour –, whereby different aspects of the parent-child relationship are controlled for at the fi rst point in time measured. compared with the reference group of singles, the relationship statuses of cohabitation and marriage have positive effects on emotional closeness and shared activities and marriage has a negative effect on confl icts, while the coeffi cients for the indicator for separation or divorce were insignifi cant for all dependent variables. the fi ndings as a whole therefore support the resource hypothesis, but the chosen analytical approach is suboptimal because it is based on comparisons between different respondents and thus the effect estimates, even in longitudinal studies, can be biased by unobserved heterogeneity. some other studies also tend to confi rm the resource hypothesis. for example, belsky and colleagues (2003) report a rise in affective solidarity among married compared to unmarried sons and daughters with partners, while the presence of a partner in itself shows no effects. in their cross-sectional study, kalmijn and de vries (2009) fi nd a positive effect of marriage (reference: single) on contact frequency with fathers (but not with mothers). finally, willson et al. (2006) report stronger negative feelings towards mothers among their unmarried children than their married children. some other studies result in mixed fi ndings that partly confi rm both the resource and the compensation hypotheses. another study by kalmijn (2012) using sophisticated panel analyses with a broader focus on changes in social embeddedness over the life course is based on data from the swiss household panel. the author comes to the conclusion that both a transition into a relationship (according to the resource hypothesis) as well as a separation (according to the compensation hypothesis) – controlling for age effects – are accompanied by intensifi ed contacts with and support from family members. however, the dependent variable is a general question on the entire family network which was taken from the network module of the questionnaire so that the fi ndings cannot be easily transferred to the relationship with the parents. an older study of soep data by szydlik (1995) also partly supports the needs perspective. on the one hand, marital and non-marital cohabitation • oliver arránz becker320 (compared to being single) has negative effects on the quality of relationships with parents; but on the other hand a separation from a partner is associated with a weaker relationship with parents, which, again, would rather support the resource or spillover hypotheses. some older studies also rather indicate deterioration than improvement in the parent-child relationship as a consequence of a separation in the offspring generation (cf. the overview in spitze et al. 1994). finally, it has to be mentioned that several studies do not show any family status effect. for example, some studies do not fi nd effects of the status “married” on affective closeness (booth/amato 1994; dykstra 1997) and functional solidarity (dykstra 1997; fingerman et al. 2009) and silverstein et al. (1997) and van gaalen et al. (2010) only report merely weak and inconsistent effects. one major problem of most existing studies lies in their cross-sectional perspective. comparisons between groups with different family statuses in a crosssectional study do not take into account that, for example, a possible self-selection in certain relationship and family arrangements depending on third variables that simultaneously infl uence relationships with parents (unobserved heterogeneity) can lead to a bias when estimating the causal effect of the living arrangement or of the relationship status. as a consequence, it can be assumed that among the group of the married, respondents who have comparatively good relationships with their parents are over-represented. similarly, we can assume a negative selection into separation or divorces with regard to the relationship with parents so that among separated and divorced, ceteris paribus, people with poorer relationships with their parents may be over-represented. there are, however, hardly any studies on this issue. in total, the described selection processes could contribute to the fact that comparisons between singles and married people in cross-sectional studies are more frequently – though perhaps incorrectly – in favour of the resource hypothesis. in contrast, comparisons between married and divorced people can lead to a confi rmation of the compensation hypothesis if not all relevant third variables are controlled for that determine this selection process. if, as is the case in many of the described studies, there is no further differentiation between different relationship types or transitions, but merely a dichotomous status (e.g. marriage or relationship) that is controlled for, then the estimates can theoretically be biased in both directions, depending on which process dominates in the specifi c case or in the actual sample. for this reason, longitudinal analyses that control for (self) selection are necessary for more conclusive research on this topic. therefore, in the present article fi xed effects panel regression models are used (see methodology section). 2.5 summary of the goals and hypotheses of this article the primary objective of the analyses is to determine the effects of union dissolution and relationship transitions (change of partner as well as the transition from being single to a new relationship) on relationships with parents, which is operationalised by means of three dimensions: contact frequency, emotional closeness and confl ict potential. two competing hypotheses are tested with the following anticipated effects: the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 321 1. resource or spillover hypothesis: (a) according to both hypotheses, separation leads to the deterioration of a parent-child relationship. (b) the resource hypothesis also predicts an improvement in a parent-child relationship on transition into a new relationship. 2. according to the compensation hypothesis, (a) an improvement in a parent-child relationship is expected in the case of separation, but (b) a negative change in the case of a new relationship. 3. the development hypothesis assumes that compensation effects of relationship transitions are more pronounced among adolescents than among adults. 3 methodology 3.1 data basis and sample the analyses in this article are based on data from the fi rst four waves of the german family panel pairfam (nauck et al. 2013). the pairfam study is a multi-actor panel survey of the current relationship and family-related behaviour of the population in germany; conceptual information about this study can be found in huinink et al. (2011). the sample of the primary respondents – the so-called anchors – consists of an adolescent cohort (birth years 1991-1993) and two adult cohorts (birth years 1971-1973 and 1981-1983) with a disproportionate sampling design. because it is an analysis of parent-child relationships, this article focuses on dyads and not individuals. in the following, repeated measurements for all relevant variables are analysed on the basis of the anchors’ responses in each wave. based on n = 12,402 anchors in the fi rst wave, an unbalanced episode data set with all available measurement points for each anchor across the four waves with n = 36,371 person-years was generated, in which the anchors provided repeated assessments about their relationship with one or both (living) parents. for details about the survey and the sample development, cf. arránz becker et al. (2012). 3.2 analysis strategy as described in the research overview, most previous studies on the research question examined in the present article are based on cross-sectional designs. most of them use one or more dummy variables to operationalise the relationship or family status. as shown above, the resulting estimates in these studies may be biased both through unobserved heterogeneity (i.e. third variables causally infl uence both the relationship status and the intergenerational solidarity) and through reverse causality or endogeneity (intergenerational relations affect relationship-related transitions). a similar approach can also be pursued using longitudinal data, whereby dependence over time has to be accounted for by correcting the standard errors or by modelling the multi-level structure (giesselmann/windzio 2012). unfortunately, • oliver arránz becker322 however, these so-called random effects (re) panel regressions, confound variance within and between individuals, i.e. it is unclear whether the resulting differences between different relationship statuses are caused by systematic differences between respondents or, rather, by shifts over time within persons (i.e. the difference in average intergenerational solidarity before and after a transition within the same individual) (brüderl 2010). one possibility for improving causal inference is to eliminate the variance between respondents, i.e. using regressions with respondent fi xed effects (fe), which are used in this article. this approach keeps all (time invariant) differences between people constant, regardless whether they are due to observed or unobserved factors, and only variables containing within-variations (i.e. intra-individual changes) are included in the analysis (allison 2009; brüderl 2010). yet, controlling for relationship status via a dummy variable (0: no partner; 1: partner), even when using an fe model, is not suffi cient since it confounds changes within respondents caused by the transition from being single to a relationship (0  1) and vice versa from a relationship to being single (1  0). therefore, both transitions were considered using separate indicators: a transition from a relationship to being single changes the separation indicator to 1 and it remains at 1 until a new relationship begins (in this case, the indicator changes to 0) or until the observation period ends. the reverse transition from being single to a new relationship is captured using a counter variable that increases by 1 with each new relationship. since this variable can only rise and only changes to this variable are included in the fe model, this effectively partials out an entry into a new relationship from the separation effect. moreover, it should be noted that a change of partner between two waves, when the status of single is not observed following a separation, represents a combination of an intermediate separation event and a new relationship and therefore should not automatically be contained in the reference category (no transition). therefore a third indicator was controlled for, which measures such “seamless” transitions from one to another partner. this has some consequences for the data preparation of the analysis sample. since the focal events in the fe regressions are union dissolutions, only those respondents are taken into account who were at all exposed to the risk of separation within the fi rst four waves, i.e. who were observed in at least one intimate relationship during one wave. this reduces the sample by 3,340 respondents to n = 9,062. the fe analyses that are based on changes or differences include all cases in which a respondent is observed in at least two waves (n = 23,390 episodes). nonetheless, it must be noted that each anchor was asked to assess their relationship to their mother and father (if the parent is still living). therefore the data was fi rst reshaped into a long-long format, in which each parentand time-specifi c assessment of each intergenerational relationship is represented by its own observation in the data set. this doubles the original gross case number (to n = 46,780 person-years, without missing values). to prevent (downward) biased estimates of the standard errors as a result of this clustering, standard errors were adjusted using the id of the anchor variables as a cluster variable (williams 2000). one of the advantages of the long-long format is that – unlike most of the earlier studies – we can the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 323 actually test differential gender-specifi c effects using interaction effects between the relevant covariates (e.g. the three transitions) and the gender of the child or of the parent. in further moderator analyses interaction effects were computed with cohorts to test for effect heterogeneity between adolescents and adults. one unique feature of the fe models is that they implicitly also control for all time invariant characteristics of the respondents’ parent. since only time-varying variables can be controlled for in the models (because time invariant variables cannot change over time and thus have no within-subject variance), the fe model specifi cations are comparatively simple. the additional analyses of mediating mechanisms control for additional time-varying indicators measuring available capital and mental states and ascertain changes in the relevant effects of the transitions. 3.3 indicators with regard to the dependent variables, three aspects of intergenerational solidarity1 were taken into account (for more information cf. wilhelm et al. 2013): 1. associative solidarity was operationalised using the following question2 on contact frequency: “how often are you in contact with your mother (with your father), adding up all visits, letters, phone calls etc.?.” the response categories were 1 = daily, 2 = several times per week, 3 = once a week, 4 = 1-3 times per month, 5 = several times per year, 6 = less often, 7 = never.3 since the intervals are certainly not equidistant, the characteristics were recoded as contacts per year (assigned values: 0, 2, 4, 24, 52, 150, 365). comparative analyses with the original coding produced very similar results to those reported here. 2. affective solidarity was measured using two intimacy indicators: “how often do you tell your mother (father) what you are thinking?” and “how often do you share secrets and private feelings with these persons?” whereby separate assessments were requested for both the mother and the father (response categories: 1 = never to 5 = always).4 cronbach’s alpha is α = 0.77 (mothers) and α = 0.78 (fathers). 1 although pairfam also contains questions about further dimensions of solidarity (e.g. functional solidarity), these were not included in this analysis because they were only surveyed every two years in an additional in-depth module on intergenerational relationships so that the chosen analytical approach would not have been possible. 2 from wave 2 onwards, the question regarding the indicators measuring the three dimensions were amended slightly: instead of speaking of “biological mother”/“biological father,” they only refer to “mother”/“father,” thus including adoptive parents (cf. the pairfam code books). the relationships with new partners of parents or step-parents surveyed separately since wave 2 were not analysed in this article since relationships with stepparents cannot readily be compared with biological intergenerational relationships, for example because of their shorter duration (steinbach 2010). 3 the response “was never in contact” of the indicator measuring contact frequency in the fi rst wave was coded at the same value as the response “never.” 4 if there is no contact with the respective parent at the time of the interview, the information about intimacy and confl icts are coded as missing (“does not apply”) due to fi lters; these episodes are not included in the corresponding analyses as well as cases in which the respective parent is deceased. • oliver arránz becker324 3. intergenerational confl icts were recorded using two items: “how often are you and your mother (father) annoyed or angry with each other?” and “how often do you and your mother (father) disagree and quarrel?” (response categories: 1 = never to 5 = always). cronbach’s alpha is satisfactory, α = 0.80 (mothers) and α = 0.78 (fathers). the questions about affective solidarity and confl icts were adapted from the network relationship inventory by furman and buhrmester (1985). the analyses are conducted separately for the three dimensions of solidarity. since these only correlate slightly with each other (all |r| < 0.30), we cannot assume one-dimensionality, which is confi rmed by earlier research (bengtson/roberts 1991), therefore adding them to one sum score is not advisable in this case. additionally, co-residence of the respective parent and the child as an aspect of structural solidarity was recorded as a covariate (0 = no, 1 = yes). for this purpose, we fi rst used information from the so-called household grid to determine whether the respective parent lives in the same household as the anchor. additionally, the coresidence variable was coded as 1 (otherwise: 0) when the respondents answered the question about the travel-time distance (“how much time do you need to get to your mother’s/to your father’s dwelling?”) with “we live in the same house.” the relationship status of the respondents was examined as central independent variable. for the fi xed effects longitudinal analyses three event indicators were coded to measure the possible transitions (for more details cf. the section on the analysis strategy): transition from being single to a relationship (in the following: “new relationship”), transition from a relationship to being single (“separation”) as well as transition from one relationship to a different relationship (“change of partner”). table 1 lists the frequencies of the transitions. a number of further covariates were also taken into account. in addition to the gender of the parent and of the child, the birth cohort and the anchor’s number of siblings (taken from wave 1) were used as further time invariant moderator variables. the following variables were included as time-varying covariates: age of the anchors, their current relationship status – operationalised using three dummy variables (reference: single): separate households (living apart together, lat), cohabitation and marriage, parenthood status (0 = no children, 1 = child/ren) as well as the serial number of the current partner, which was generated using the relationship biography data. additional analyses also examined potential mechanisms with the following time-changing covariates: health (“how would you describe your general health in the past 4 weeks?” with 5 response categories ranging from 1 = poor to 5 = very good), the needs-weighted monthly net household income, general satisfaction (indicator: “now i would like to ask about your general satisfaction with life. all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your life at the moment?” with responses ranging from 0 = very dissatisfi ed to 10 = very satisfi ed), satisfaction with social contacts (“how satisfi ed are you with the following domains of your life? friends, social contacts”) and self-esteem (three items, e.g. “all in all, i am pleased with myself” with fi ve response categories ranging from 1 = not at all” to 5 = “absolutely,” cronbach’s α=.73). due to the overall small number of missing values (usually <1 percent, cf. the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 325 tab. 1: description of the sample, descriptive statistics min. max. n mean/% sd time constant characteristics1 gender: son 0 1 9062 0.45 cohort adolescents (born 1991-93) 0 1 9062 0.26 young adults (born 1981-83) 0 1 9062 0.34 middle-aged adults (born 1971-73) 0 1 9062 0.39 number of siblings of anchor (w1) 0 17 9003 1.52 (1.44) intergenerational relationships (dependent variables) relationship with mother contact frequency (per year) 0 365 21913 218.97 (142.57) intimacy 1 54 21366 2.93 (0.99) confl ict 1 54 21380 2.35 (0.81) co-residence 0 1 21913 0.37 (0.48) relationship with father contact frequency (per year) 0 365 19724 173.31**3 (148.62) intimacy 1 54 18251 2.37**3 (0.90) confl ict 1 54 18207 2.25**3 (0.82) co-residence 0 1 19724 0.28**3 (0.45) time varying characteristics (independent variables) age 14 41 23390 28.65 (8.27) has partner 0 1 23351 0.84 relationship status (ref. single) lat (living apart together) 0 1 23351 0.25 cohabitation 0 1 23351 0.18 marriage 0 1 23351 0.41 parenthood 0 1 23390 0.46 number of partners 0 13 22547 2.12 (1.30) net monthly household income (needs-weighted) 0 28284 23390 1588.62 (874.31) health status 1 55 23370 3.75 (0.99) general life satisfaction 0 106 23373 7.70 (1.64) satisfaction with social contacts 0 106 23376 7.87 (1.96) self-esteem 1 57 23302 3.98 (0.83) events2 frequency % separation 0 1 1596 0.08 change of partner 0 1 895 0.04 new relationship 0 1 1942 0.12 1 figures refer to the fe (fi xed effects) data set with n = 6,588 respondents; 2 figures refer to the simple fe episode data set with n = 23,390 person-years; 3 mean comparisons (relationship with mother minus relationship with father) signifi cant with p < 0.001 (basis: fe model); 4 responses: 1=never, 5=always; 5 responses: 1=poor, 5=very good; 6 responses: 0=very dissatisfi ed 10= very satisfi ed; 7 responses: 1=not at all 5=absolutely source: data of the german family panel, waves 1 to 4, own calculations • oliver arránz becker326 the case numbers in table 1) episodes with missing values were excluded from the analysis. only missing values in household income (making up approx. 25 percent) were imputed (regression-based). table 1 shows descriptive statistics for all variables included into the analysis. 4 results in the analyses reported below fi xed effects panel regressions are estimated for each of the three dependent variables, showing effects of relationship transitions using three dummy variables while at the same time controlling for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity. the analyses were conducted separately for adolescents and the two adult cohorts,5 since there were signifi cant cohort differences for some effects (details can be found in the section below on moderator effects). table 2 shows the results of the fi xed effects models. with regard to contact frequency with parents, the effect of separation was positive among adults (cf. model 4) – at least in the relationships of daughters to which the conditional main effect (b = 9.994) here refers – which supports the compensation hypothesis (i.e. limited time budget). the negative signifi cant interaction effect “son x separation” (b = -16.191) reveals that the separation effect is signifi cantly weaker among sons than among daughters; additional analyses of sons illustrate (not shown in the table) that the effect is not signifi cant here. by contrast, both a change of partner with an immediate subsequent relationship and a transition from being single into a relationship show no effects on the contact frequency with the parents. with regard to intimacy, the fe models do show signifi cant effects. in line with the compensation hypothesis, which suggests an increasing need for support after a separation, union dissolutions – with and without an immediate subsequent relationship – intensify emotional bonds between adolescent respondents and their parents (cf. model 2), while among adults (model 4) only the positive effect of separation is signifi cant. a transition from being single into a relationship, by contrast, decreases the intimacy of the relationship of adolescents with their parents, which also confi rms the compensation hypothesis. the latter is, however, only true for relationships with mothers, to which the signifi cant main effect “new relationship” here refers. by contrast, a new relationship has no infl uence on the relationships with fathers since the negative main effect of a separation for the relationships with mothers (b = 0.077) and the positive interaction effect “father x new relationship” (b = 0.082) neutralise one another.6 5 since the effects between the two adult cohorts did not differ signifi cantly, they were combined. 6 an additional model (not shown) with a reversed coding of the gender of the parent shows that the effect on the relationship with the father is not signifi cant. the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 327 ta b . 2 : fi xe d e ff ec ts m o d el s o n th e in fl u en ce o f r el at io n sh ip s ta tu s o n th e re la tio n sh ip w it h th e m o th er a nd t he f at he r, se p ar at ed a cc o rd in g to a d o le sc en t a nd a d ul t c o ho rt s (w it h ro b u st s ta nd ar d e rr o rs ) c o h o rt a d o le sc en ts (b o rn 1 99 193 ) a d u lt s (b o rn 1 97 183 ) d ep en d en t v ar ia b le (a ) c o n ta ct (b ) i n ti m ac y (c ) c o n fl i ct (a ) c o n ta ct (b ) i n ti m ac y (c ) c o n fl i ct m o d el (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) (5 ) (6 ) c o va ri at es b (s e ) b (s e ) b (s e ) b (s e ) b (s e ) b (s e ) r el at io n sh ip -r el at ed t ra n si ti o n s s ep ar at io n 2. 51 81 0. 08 8* *1 -0 .0 26 9. 99 4* 1 0. 06 4* 1 0. 05 9* (2 .2 6) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 2) (5 .0 0) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 3) c h an g e o f p ar tn er -1 .6 73 0. 11 2* *1 -0 .0 50 1 2. 67 1 0. 00 11 0. 10 6* 1 (4 .1 7) (0 .0 4) (0 .0 3) (9 .0 0) (0 .0 5) (0 .0 5) n ew r el at io n sh ip -1 .0 17 -0 .0 77 ** 0. 00 6 -5 .4 74 0. 02 9 -0 .0 31 (2 .6 7) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 2) (5 .8 3) (0 .0 4) (0 .0 3) in te ra ct io n ef fe ct s2 w it h g en d er 3 fa th er x s ep ar at io n – – 0. 05 4* – – – (0 .0 3) fa th er x c h an g e o f p ar tn er – – – – – – fa th er x n ew r el at io n sh ip – 0. 08 2* * – – – – (0 .0 3) s o n x se p ar at io n – – – -1 6. 19 1* 1 – – (6 .5 8) c o -r es id en ce w it h p ar en t 13 7. 13 5* * 0. 01 9 0. 16 1* * 95 .6 75 ** -0 .0 82 ** 0. 11 1* * (6 .6 1) (0 .0 5) (0 .0 4) (5 .1 9) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 3) li fe c o u rs e tr an si ti o n s c o h ab it at io n -6 .6 73 0. 05 3 -0 .1 78 ** -1 8. 39 3* * 0. 01 8 -0 .0 24 (5 .4 2) (0 .0 5) (0 .0 4) (3 .2 5) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 2) m ar ri ag e 31 .0 51 0. 37 2* 0. 02 9 -2 2. 48 9* * 0. 01 9 -0 .0 21 (3 6. 97 ) (0 .1 7) (0 .2 4) (4 .3 8) (0 .0 4) (0 .0 3) p ar en th o o d 29 .6 10 * -0 .1 79 -0 .0 87 18 .4 01 ** -0 .0 59 * 0. 00 2 (1 2. 60 ) (0 .1 1) (0 .1 1) (4 .2 6) (0 .0 3) (0 .0 3) a g e (in y ea rs ) -6 .9 91 ** 0. 08 9* * -0 .0 30 ** -4 .1 12 ** 0. 03 6* * -0 .0 40 ** (1 .1 9) (0 .0 1) (0 .0 1) (0 .5 6) (0 .0 0) (0 .0 0) n (e p is o d es ) 11 58 8 11 11 6 11 10 5 29 76 7 28 19 4 28 16 8 n ( p er so n s) 23 75 23 72 23 73 61 67 60 59 60 58 f 75 .6 0 20 .7 2 10 .3 9 57 .5 8 12 .6 8 19 .5 4 p (f ) 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 r ² (w it h in ) 0. 25 0. 04 0. 02 0. 08 0. 01 0. 01 * p < 0 .0 5; * * p < 0 .0 1. n o te s: f e s ta nd s fo r fi x ed e ff ec ts . u ns ta nd ar d is ed r eg re ss io n co ef fi c ie nt s ar e sh o w n. 1 e ff ec t d iff er s m ar gi na lly b et w ee n ad o le sc en ts a nd a d ul ts (p < 0 .1 ); 2 to s im p lif y th e m o d el s, in si gn ifi ca nt in te ra ct io n ef fe ct s ar e no t es tim at ed ; 3 t he m ai n ef fe ct s o f t he g en d er o f p ar en ts an d c hi ld re n ar e no t e st im at ed in th e fe m o d el s si nc e th es e va ri ab le s ar e tim e co ns ta nt . s o ur ce : d at a o f t he g er m an f am ily p an el (u nw ei gh te d ), w av es 1 to 4 , o w n ca lc ul at io ns • oliver arránz becker328 with regard to confl ict intensity there is evidence among adults for increased confl ict potential following a separation with or without a subsequent relationship (model 6), while among adolescents (model 3) the relationship with the father is burdened signifi cantly stronger by separation (positive interaction effect father x separation: b = 0.054, p < 0.05) than with the mother (main effect separation: b = -0.026, n.s.). these fi ndings thus support the spillover as well as the resource hypothesis, in particular among adults. the control variables confi rm previous fi ndings in the literature: cohabitation of parent and child is an important structural prerequisite for contact and emotional bonds (hank 2007) but also for confl icts (aquilino 1997). among adults the tendency to be in contact with the parents decreases (increases) with an increasing (a decreasing) degree of relationship institutionalisation (model 4), while the transition to parenthood is associated with increased contacts (models 1 and 4) as well as with a decrease in intimacy among adults (model 5) (cf. masche 2008). regardless of this, both intergenerational contact and confl ict decrease over the waves, while intimacy tends to increase (in particular among adolescents). 4.1 summary of fi ndings from the moderator analyses the interaction effects shown in table 2 indicate that the gender of the parent apparently only plays a minor role in the effects of the modelled transitions. similar fi ndings emerge for gender of the child; only one single gender-specifi c effect can be identifi ed. no signifi cant effects with opposite signs can be found for the two genders in any of the models. the moderator analyses of the birth cohorts appear more revealing with several signifi cant effect differences (shown in table 2). at least with regard to the dependent variable of intimacy, the effects are stronger among adolescents than among adults, supporting the development hypothesis. for the other two dependent variables, by contrast, some effects are stronger among adults, e.g. the positive effect of separation among daughters on contact frequency (model 4) as well as the positive effect of a change of partners on confl ict (model 6). overall, there is no uniform picture with regard to the development hypothesis. in further analyses (not shown here), interaction effects between transitions and the relationship status as well as the presence or number of siblings were analysed but no signifi cant moderator effects could be found. 4.2 mediating mechanisms at the beginning of the article, following the resource hypothesis, it was assumed that the anticipated decreased social capital after a separation (and potentially before entering a new relationship) would be manifested in a lower availability of resources. therefore, additional resource and mental state indicators were added to the fe models shown in table 2 to test potential mediating mechanisms. the respective covariates were each added individually as well as en bloc. as the analyses show (results not shown here), these covariates “explained” none of the effects. the impact of union dissolution and divorce on adolescents’ and adults’ relationships ... • 329 none of the theoretically anticipated mediator variables thus proved to have explanatory power. overall this pattern thus best supports the compensation hypothesis. 5 summary and discussion against the background of existing fi ndings of diverse negative material and psychosocial consequences of union dissolution (amato 2000), this article investigated whether separation from an intimate partner also has negative effects on relationships with parents or whether in such cases intergenerational relations rather serve as a buffer offering an additional source of social support. this question can be related to a more general question: is there a competing or substitutive negative association between horizontal romantic relationships (in this case in the offspring generation) and vertical intergenerational relations, or is there a positive correlation between their quality? with regard to “harmonious” aspects of solidarity represented by the dimensions of contact and intimacy, fi ndings clearly speak for the compensation hypothesis: the greater the demand, the more intense the intergenerational exchange with parents. conversely, a transition into a relationship or its institutionalisation can lead to decreases in emotional closeness or reduced contacts with the parents. this conforms with the support function that is often attributed to family and relatives (bengtson/harootyan 1994). on the other hand, a separation can also result in an increase in confl ict potential, which can theoretically be interpreted as a spillover effect. altogether, this indicates that during partnerless phases the intensity of relationships with parents tends to increase both in a positive and a negative sense. the greatest innovation compared with earlier studies is the analysis method used here. a rather methodical conclusion from the analyses is that the fi xed effects regressions based on variance within respondents offer a different picture than earlier studies based on cross-sectional data. the differentiations introduced show that the effects of dichotomous indicators of the relationship status frequently reported in earlier studies are possibly primarily the result of separation than other relationship transitions since larger effects result from transitions into separation than from transitions into a relationship. in any case, there is a continued need for careful longitudinal studies that answer these questions in a more elaborate way than earlier research. the moderator analyses of gender also greatly qualify earlier fi ndings on possible gender-specifi c effects. while earlier studies suggested a variety of gender differences in the effects, in the present analyses hardly any interaction effects with either the gender of the parent or of the child could be ascertained. this again impressively demonstrates that separate analyses by gender, as most commonly reported in the literature, convey a biased picture with regard to the actual differences in gender-specifi c effects. if effects are signifi cant in one case and not signifi cant in another, this does not necessarily mean that the effects themselves differ signifi cantly. • oliver arránz becker330 the differences in effects among adolescents and the adult cohorts seem far more illuminating. they may refl ect a general development whereby during adolescence the parent-child relationship functions more as a stress buffer, while among adults it increasingly mirrors spillover of confl ict, in this case as the consequence of a separation. this concurs with developmental psychology that ascribes interaction with parents great importance for handling developmental tasks in the transition to adulthood (masche 2008). of course, this study also has its limitations. for example, the observation period in the analysed data is still too short to allow for more differentiated analyses of possible long-term development trajectories (e.g. using growth curve models). furthermore, the fe models used offer no protection from bias in estimates due to endogeneity (cf. brüderl 2010) resulting from, for example, reverse causality (intergenerational relations might causally affect relationship-related transitions). indeed masche (2008), for instance, shows that trust to one’s parents is associated with a signifi cantly increased probability of marriage. this also appears plausible against the background of attachment theory (bowlby 1975), according to which a stable parental attachment fi gure can be seen as the basis of lasting relationships (hazan/ shaver 1987). nevertheless, within-estimators comparing the average level on the dependent measure before and after a transition within the same individual are often superior to conventional analyses based on variance within and between individuals (e.g., comparing married with unmarried individuals) with regard to causal inference, hence they ought to be employed more frequently in future research. overall the analyses demonstrate the great potential of the data from the german family panel for studying changes in family networks. this is well in line with the theoretical assumptions of life course research according to which the life courses of family members are closely interdependent (“linked lives,” cf. elder 2009). in this case, the fi ndings indicate that the potential solidarity of intergenerational relations can make an important contribution to handling developmental tasks during the transition to adulthood. acknowledgements the author would like to thank josef brüderl and klaus pforr as well as two anonymous cpos reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. references allison, paul d. 2009: fixed effects regression models. thousand oaks/london/new delhi: sage. amato, paul r. 2000: the consequences of divorce for adults and children. in: journal of marriage and family 62,4: 1269-1287 [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.01269.x]. amato, paul r. 2010: research on divorce: continuing trends 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dykstra, pearl a.; komter, aafke e. 2010: where is the exit? intergenerational ambivalence and relationship quality in high contact ties. in: journal of aging studies 24,2: 105-114 [doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2008.10.006]. • oliver arránz becker334 walper, sabine 2003: individuation im jugendalter. in: mansel, jürgen; griese, helmut m.; scherr, albert (eds.): theoriedefi zite der jugendforschung. standortbestimmung und perspektiven. weinheim: juventa: 119-143. white, lynn k.; rogers, stacy j. 1997: strong support but uneasy relationships: coresidence and adult children’s relationships with their parents. in: journal of marriage and family 59,1: 62-76. wilhelm, barbara et al. 2013: scales manual of the german family panel (waves 1 to 4, release 4.0). williams, rick l. 2000: a note on robust variance estimation for cluster-correlated data. in: biometrics 56,2: 645-646. willson, andrea e. et al. 2006: ambivalence in mother-adult child relations: a dyadic analysis. in: social psychology quarterly 69,3: 235-252 [doi: 10.1177/019027250606900302]. youniss, james 1982: parents and peers in social development: a sullivan-piaget perspective: university of chicago press. date of submission: 07.08.2014 date of acceptance: 29.04.2015 prof. dr. oliver arránz becker (). martin-luther-universität halle-wittenberg, institut für soziologie. halle (saale), germany. e-mail: oliver.arranz-becker@soziologie.uni-halle.de url: http://www.soziologie.uni-halle.de/methoden/ published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective* tomas frejka abstract: this paper deals with the fertility transition, one of the two essential components of the demographic transition. the analysis demonstrates that by applying the cohort perspective new insights are obtained about how the fertility transition unfolded. within the overall framework of the fertility transition there were four distinct pathways of fertility trends. combining these fi ndings with those of other scholars shows that the demographic transition has not yet led to an equilibrium of relatively stable low mortality and stable low fertility. the four fertility transition pathways are the following: (1) the western fertility transition pathway characterized by major cohort total fertility rate (ctfr) fl uctuations; (2) the south european fertility transition pathway characterized by an almost uninterrupted ctfr decline; (3) the central and east european fertility transition pathway characterized by stable ctfrs in the 1920s to 1950s cohorts and a decline in the 1960s and 1970s cohorts; (4) the east and south-east asia fertility transition pathway characterized by a late start in the mid-20th century with rapidly declining ctfrs. the exploration of societal conditions shaping fertility trends in the 19th and 20th centuries confi rms notestein’s conclusions that the causes are a complex combination of “technological, social, economic, and political developments” as well as cultural and ideational effects, and that it is “impossible to be precise about the various causal factors”. at times the primary factors were economic, as in the great depression of the 1930s and the 1960s post-war prosperity in western countries. however, these economic factors also had many political, cultural, social, policy and other important facets. in central and eastern europe the primary factors during the era of state socialism were the political system and social policies. the patriarchal nature of societies was the prime factor shaping fertility trends in southern europe and in east and south-east asia. keywords: fertility transition pathways · international comparative analysis · cohort fertility · fertility transition causes comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 89-116 (date of release: 08.08.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-09en3 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2017-10en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/272/244. • tomas frejka90 1 introduction this paper deals primarily with the fertility transition, one of the two essential components of the demographic transition. the analysis in this paper demonstrates that by applying the cohort perspective new insights can be obtained about how the fertility transition unfolded. such an analysis can be performed because a suffi cient amount of cohort fertility data series have been assembled for many of the same populations for which period data were available about a century ago, when the initial portrayals of the demographic transition were introduced. also, enhanced insights are now possible due to signifi cant progress in the science of demography and in statistical analysis, which has enabled the application of cohort fertility measures elaborated by ryder (1951 and 1964). the new fi ndings show that – within the overall framework of the fertility transition – there were at least four distinct pathways of fertility trends in the countries examined here. moreover, combining my fi ndings with those of other scholars shows that thus far the demographic transition has not led to an equilibrium of relatively stable low mortality and stable low fertility. over 70 years have passed since the demographic transition theory was elaborated at the offi ce of population research (opr) of princeton university. in the words of dudley kirk, “by convention, frank notestein’s article published in 1945 (notestein 1945) is regarded as its fi rst defi nition” (kirk 1996: 361). this was complemented by another, lesser known but arguably equally important paper (notestein 1953), which examined the causes of the demographic transition in greater detail and spelled out the implications for research, policy development, and actions. this was at a time when the demographic transition had been taking place only in europe and the overseas countries with populations of european origin, at a time when 70 percent of the world’s 2.5 billion inhabitants was in the pre-transitional stage of high mortality and high fertility. yet notestein foresaw the demographic transition would spread to the remainder of the world, including the need for “speeding the processes of social change in directions that yield falling birth-rates, which in turn will permit more rapid increases in per capita income” (notestein 1953: 25). the empirical basis for notestein’s development of the theory of the demographic transition consisted of data compiled by the british demographer alexander carrsaunders in world population: past growth and present trends (1936), “a massive … compendium of materials relating to population size and demographic change in many countries” (kirk 1996: 363), together with research conducted at the princeton opr in the early 1940s and published in several volumes dealing with european the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 91 populations and their prospective growth (notestein et al. 1944; moore 1945; kirk 1946; lorimer 1946).1 the essence of the fertility transition consists of a transformation from extensive reproduction where many children are born yet few survive, to the reverse, and a transformation from generally unplanned to planned parenthood. notestein (1953: 17) described the circumstances that generated the demographic and fertility transitions as follows: the new ideal of the small family arose typically in the urban industrial society. it is impossible to be precise about the various causal factors, but apparently many were important. urban life stripped the family of many functions in production, consumption, recreation, and education. in factory employment the individual stood on his own accomplishments. the new mobility of young people and the anonymity of city life reduced the pressures toward traditional behaviour exerted by the family and community. in a period of rapidly developing technology new skills were needed, and new opportunities for individual advancement arose. education and a rational point of view became increasingly important. as a consequence the cost of child-rearing grew and the possibilities for economic contributions by children declined. falling death-rates at once increased the size of the family to be supported and lowered the inducements to have many births. women, moreover, found new independence from household obligations and new economic roles less compatible with child-rearing. the principal circumstances and motivations for people to want, have and be able to have small families are valid to this day, even though we are living in a postindustrial society. increasing shares of people are living in urban areas, technologies are undergoing continuous improvements, productivity is increasing, the need for education is never-ending, availability and use of contraceptive means as well as legal induced abortions have been increasing, and gender relations continue to change. it is the changing of gender relations – the gender revolution – which has increasingly become the focus of attention. several scholars have engaged in theoretical and empirical analyses to investigate the fertility effects of the gender revolution. findings in three recent papers are representative (esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; anderson/kohler 2015). all three consider a reversal of fertility trends (i.e. an increase) to be in the offi ng as a result of the progress in the gender revolution. however, as will be discussed below (section 4.2.3), the analysis of available cohort data in the ±35 populations analyzed does not yet indicate a reversal of fertility trends presumed to occur as a consequence of the gender revolution. 1 three scholars had described and discussed the principal contours of modern mortality and fertility trends before notestein. adolphe landry (1909) published the fi rst crude formulation of the demographic transition in an article which he later developed extensively in his book la révolution démographique (1934). warren thompson (1929) elaborated an early version of the demographic transition in an article entitled “population”. finally, the british demographer alexander carr-saunders published the volume world population: past growth and present trends in 1936. • tomas frejka92 also, there is no doubt that many demographic characteristics pertaining to unions, fertility, and societal backgrounds have been changing over time and were signifi cantly different in the last third of the 20th and in the early 21st centuries compared to the 19th century and to the fi rst two-thirds of the 20th century. these realities have been eloquently discussed and advanced as the second demographic transition (sdt) in papers by lesthaeghe, van de kaa and others (lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986; lesthaeghe 2010). many specifi c characteristics pertaining to marital and informal unions, fertility, and societal backgrounds have changed, as outlined by the sdt theory. regarding the basic demographic developments of the past two centuries, in my view the sdt and the demographic transition as described by notestein do not appear to be two contrasting systems; rather the sdt is a natural, more detailed component of notesteins’s assessment. mortality continues to decline and the basic fertility trends depicted in the cohort fertility measures have been fl uctuating as shaped by, in notestein’s words (1945: 36), the “technological, social, economic, and political developments” of the past 70 years. at the same time, signifi cant progress has been made in vital data registration and data collection, in the development of the science of demography and in statistical analysis, which has enabled the application of cohort fertility measures elaborated by ryder (1951 and 1964). thus we can describe and examine fertility trends not only over the 70 years since notestein’s formulation of the demographic transition, but it is also possible to arrive at an improved, more profound understanding of the fertility trends during the past two centuries, i.e. during the entire course of the demographic transition. long-term cohort total fertility rate series have been assembled for 36 populations and these will be scrutinized and analyzed in the remainder of this paper. it turns out that this analysis of the fertility transition reveals characteristics that cannot be observed when using period measures. having reviewed the rationale and background for the research reported on in this paper in section 1 (above), section 2 presents data used and methods applied. section 3 provides an overview of the dynamics of four pathways of the fertility transition as revealed by using cohort rather than period measures. in section 4, basic societal conditions shaping fertility trends of the past two centuries are discussed. the fi ndings of this research are summarized in section 5. 2 data and methods the principal methodological innovation of this investigation is to use the cohort total fertility rate (ctfr) as the measure for analyzing the fertility transition. in contrast to the period total fertility rate (ptfr), the ctfr refl ects only the quantum of fertility whereas in the ptfr the quantum of childbearing is modifi ed by the timing of childbearing within each cohort. this is especially important when comparing trends between ptfrs and ctfrs. ptfrs tend to be variable and volatile from year to year. even more importantly, during periods when childbearing is being advanced, ptfrs are infl ated and, vice versa, when childbearing is being postponed, ptfrs are defl ated (ryder 1951; bongaarts/feeney 1998; frejka 2011). it turns out that these dythe fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 93 namics can be crucial for the present analysis because in general the effects of basic societal, i.e. economic, social, cultural, and political developments in the respective societies may be better refl ected in ctfr rather than in ptfr levels and trends. the data assembled and analyzed in this paper come from the following documents and collections of data: festy (1979), archives of the observatoire démographique européen (2012), sardon (1991), the human fertility database (2016), heuser (1976), hamilton/cosgrove (2010, 2012), myrskylä et al. (2013), sobotka (2016), spéder (2016), frejka et al. (2010) and personal communications from puur (2016), stankuniene (2016), tymicki (2016), zeman (2016), and zakharov (2008, 2016). only cohort total fertility rates (ctfrs) are dealt with in this paper, although the fertility transition also involves changes in cohort parity distributions, cohort parity progression ratios, and changing age patterns of cohort childbearing. the latter are not dealt with in this paper. two methods were applied in the listed sources to derive cohort total fertility rates data: • age-specifi c cohort fertility rates are computed using original birth registration statistics compiled by single year of age and single year birth cohort of mother. the age-specifi c cohort fertility rates are subsequently applied to compute cohort total fertility rates, cohort fertility rates by birth order, cohort fertility progression rates and cohort parity distributions. • cohort total fertility rates are derived from children ever born (ceb) in population censuses. the average numbers of ceb are computed for single-year birth cohorts of women usually aged 40 (or 45) to 80 (or 85) years at the time of the census. several censuses are used and averages for the respective birth cohorts from available censuses are applied. this method is less reliable than the one based on registration data if for no other reason than that only data for women surviving to the census date enter the computations. even though inaccurate, these data are suffi ciently reliable to delineate trends. while it is preferable to use single year data, averages for several cohorts, most often for fi ve-year clusters of cohorts, were also used. this tends to be dictated by data availability. as a rule, single-year data were used primarily in 20th century analyses, broader year groupings for earlier ones. this is refl ected in the presentation of the data in figure 2 (broader groupings) and in figures 3 to 7 (single year birth cohorts). it would also have been preferable to have and analyze continuous time series of cohort total fertility rates (ctfrs) for individual countries from the early 19th century to the end of the 20th. such series are at present available for only a few populations. thus for the analysis the several-cohort averages in figure 2 have to be combined with the single year-cohort data from other sources in subsequent figures 3-6. geographic groupings are not strictly uniform for different time periods. they follow accepted and familiar conventions. for 19th and early 20th century analysis the classifi cation used by festy (1979) is followed as specifi ed in figure 2. for the remainder the classifi cations are similar to what is customary in contemporary professional literature (for instance, lutz et al. 2014). specifi cally, the following classifi • tomas frejka94 cation of the 36 populations for which it was possible to assemble long-term series of cohort fertility measures into regions and sub-regions is used: the western region consists of the following sub-regions: – northern europe: denmark, finland, norway, and sweden; – western europe: belgium, england and wales, france, and netherlands; – overseas english-speaking countries: australia, canada, new zealand, and united states; – german-speaking countries: austria, switzerland, and west germany. southern europe: – greece, italy, portugal, and spain. the central and east european (cee) region consists of the following sub-regions: – central europe: czech republic,2 hungary, poland, and slovakia; – south-eastern europe: bulgaria, romania, and serbia; – eastern europe: belarus, russia, and ukraine; – baltic countries: estonia and lithuania. east and south-east asia: – hong-kong, japan, singapore, south korea, and taiwan. an appendix is attached which provides all cohort total fertility rate series depicted in the fi gures organized by countries and regions as listed above. 3 the fertility transition together with the scientifi c, industrial and technological revolutions, and with the fundamental transformation of the systems of governance, including the proliferation of democratic regimes, the two pillars of the demographic transition – the mortality and fertility transitions – rank among the fundamental societal transformations of recent centuries. by the early 21st century, the fertility transition from high to low fertility, from large to small families, had been occurring in most populations around the globe. as will be described and discussed in sections 3 and 4 below, pathways of the fertility transition may acquire distinct characteristics in diverging societal conditions. so far, this does not appear to be the case with the mortality transition. recent research regarding mortality trends (oeppen/vaupel 2002; shkolnikov et al. 2011) has however upended long-lasting accepted perceptions. until recently it was assumed that mortality decline would reach a limit and not decrease any further. new research results have shown that mortality was continuously declining and life expectancy increasing throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries and will continue 2 as will be shown below the czech republic is a special case. its cohort total fertility trends are typical for the western region approximately up to the 1920 birth cohort and fi t the central and east european pathway from thereon. thus the czech republic is included not only in panel c, but also in panel a in figure 6. the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 95 to do so for several decades. this means that the mortality transition has not been concluded yet. as much as i would want to conduct a worldwide analysis using cohort fertility data, there are many populations in asia, latin america and africa for which this cannot be done yet due to the unavailability of long-term data series. for the time being, an examination of the available data shows that such an analysis can be conducted for about 35 populations. within the overall framework of the decline from high to low fertility, four different pathways have materialized: one in western populations, a different one in south european countries, a third one in central and eastern europe, and a fourth one in east and south-east asia. data from a number of different sources have to be combined to elucidate pathways of the fertility transition. for the most part, long-term cohort fertility data series comprising not only 20th century cohorts but also those of the 19th century can be assembled for a considerable number of the populations in northern and western europe, the german-speaking countries, as well as the overseas populations of european origin. these represent the group of western populations in this investigation. for most other countries data are available mainly for 20th century birth cohorts. exceptionally, data are also available for the 19th century, including two out of the four principal south european populations. in the third and fourth groups – the central and east european and the east and south-east asian ones – such cohort fertility series are available only for very few populations. 3.1 the western world cohort total fertility rates (ctfrs) were generally quite steady with between four and fi ve births per woman born in the 1830s-1840s in the western group of populations (fig. 1).3 compared to typical traditional societies where women usually had six to seven life-time births, fertility was relatively low. this was in large part due to the “distinctive marks” of the european marriage pattern with a high age at marriage and where a large proportion of people never married at all (hajnal 1965: 101). fertility started to decline towards the end of the 19th century among women born in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s in a majority of these countries (fig. 1). the meaningful childbearing descent occurred between about 1880 and 1930. in norway, for instance, the ctfr declined from 4.4 births per woman in the 1855-1859 cohorts to 2.0 births per woman in the 1905-1910 birth cohorts. similar cohort fertility declines occurred in most north, west, central and south european countries during this 50 year period. the ctfr declined from between 4-5 births per woman 3 as elaborated in section 2 data and methods, data obtained from festy (1979) for the 19th and early 20th century cohorts in figure 1 are presented in ±5 year birth cohort groups, whereas data in the subsequent figures are single-year birth cohorts • tomas frejka96 in the generations born in the middle of the 19th century to 1.8-2.4 births per woman born early in the 20th century.4 4 there were two exceptions where fertility began to fall earlier, france and the united states. notestein (1945: 40) provided the following explanations: “in france the secularizing infl uence of the french revolution was undoubtedly important. in the united states the birth rate has been dropping since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the rates have moved down from exceptionally high levels which characterized a frontier society that was unusually favorable to high fertility.” fig. 1: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, northern, western, german-speaking countries and southern europe, overseas englishspeaking countries, birth cohorts 1835-1920 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 18 40 -1 84 4 18 45 -1 84 9 18 50 -1 85 4 18 55 -1 85 9 18 60 -1 86 4 18 65 -1 86 9 18 70 -1 87 4 18 75 -1 87 9 18 80 -1 88 4 18 85 -1 88 9 18 90 -1 89 4 18 95 -1 89 9 19 00 -1 90 4 19 05 -1 90 9 19 10 -1 91 4 19 15 -1 91 9 birth cohort denmark finland norway sweden a northern europe cohort total fertility rate 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 18 36 -1 84 5 18 41 -1 85 0 18 46 -1 85 5 18 51 -1 86 0 18 56 -1 86 5 18 61 -1 87 0 18 66 -1 87 5 18 71 -1 88 0 18 76 -1 88 5 18 81 -1 89 0 18 86 -1 89 5 18 91 -1 90 0 18 96 -1 90 5 19 01 -1 91 0 19 06 -1 91 5 19 11 -1 92 0 birth cohort belgium england and wales france netherlands b western europe cohort total fertility rate c german-speaking countries and southern europe cohort total fertility rate d overseas english-speaking countries cohort total fertility rate 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 18 41 -1 85 0 18 46 -1 85 5 18 51 -1 86 0 18 56 -1 86 5 18 61 -1 87 0 18 66 -1 87 5 18 71 -1 88 0 18 76 -1 88 5 18 81 -1 89 0 18 86 -1 89 5 18 91 -1 90 0 18 96 -1 90 5 19 01 -1 91 0 19 06 -1 91 5 19 11 -1 92 0 birth cohort germany switzerland spain italy 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 18 38 -1 84 3 18 43 -1 84 8 18 48 -1 85 3 18 53 -1 85 8 18 58 -1 86 3 18 63 -1 86 8 18 68 -1 87 3 18 73 -1 87 8 18 78 -1 88 3 18 83 -1 88 8 18 88 -1 89 3 18 93 -1 89 8 18 98 -1 90 3 19 03 -1 90 8 19 08 -1 91 3 19 13 -1 91 8 birth cohort canada us white women us black women australia source: festy 1979: 58-65 the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 97 the ctfrs of women born early in the 20th century did not remain this low, i.e. around two births per woman, but started to increase to reach high points among women born in the early 1930s (fig. 2, panels a-d). they created the baby-boom of the late 1950s/early 1960s throughout the western world. the zeniths ranged from ctfrs of 2.2 births per woman in sweden to 3.6 in new zealand. there was a great deal of variation in the ctfr trends for most of the 20th century in this group of populations. it is however remarkable that these trends unfolded along similar paths. the ctfrs increased considerably starting with women born around 1910 through those born around 1930 in northern and western europe, in the german-speaking countries and in the overseas populations of european origin (fig. 2, panels a-d). this was followed by an equally notable ctfr decline which levelled off among the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts at between 1.8 and 2.2 births per woman in northern and western europe and in the united states. the decline config. 2: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, northern and western europe, german-speaking countries, overseas english-speaking countries, birth cohorts 1870-1978 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort denmark finland norway sweden a northern europe cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort belgium england and wales france netherlands b western europe cohort total fertility rate c german-speaking countries cohort total fertility rate d overseas english-speaking countries cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort west germany switzerland austria 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort canada united states australia new zealand source: hamilton/cosgrove 2010 and 2012; heuser 1976; human fertility database; myrskylä et al. 2013; ode 2012; sardon 1991; sobotka 2016 • tomas frejka98 tinued in the 1950s and 1960s generations in australia, new zealand and canada. in the german-speaking countries the ctfrs also continued to fall among the 1950s and 1960s cohorts, reaching levels around 1.6 births per woman (fig. 2, panel c). 3.2 south european populations south european populations experienced a slower cohort fertility decline compared to the other countries among women born in the 19th century (fig. 1, panel c). the ctfr of women born around 1860 in italy and spain dropped from around 5.0 to around 3.0-3.5 births per woman for those born around 1900, compared to a falloff to around 2.0 births per woman in northern and western europe and in the german-speaking countries (fig. 1, panels a-c). the ctfrs then continued to decline among south european women of the 1900s and 1910s birth cohorts to a plateau among the 1920s and 1930s birth cohorts (fig. 3). the decline resumed in the 1940s cohorts to attain a low at around 1.6 births per woman among the cohorts of the mid 1960s (fig. 3). apparently ctfrs continued to descend even further among the 1970s birth cohorts. in spain the women born in the mid-1970s had an estimated ctfr of around 1.4 births per woman. fig. 3: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, south european populations, birth cohorts 1901 -1974 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort italy portugal greece spain cohort total fertility rate source: human fertility database 2016; myrskylä et al. 2013; ode 2012; sardon 1991; sobotka 2016 the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 99 3.3 central and eastern europe cohort fertility data are available for quite a number of central and east european populations, but at times for relatively short series. for the 19th and early 20th centuries data are available for russian, czech and slovak women (fig. 4). zakharov (2008: 910 and 955, and personal communication 2016) assembled cohort total fertility rates for russia starting with the 1841 birth cohort with projections for cohorts born in the late 1960s and the 1970s (fig. 4, panels c and d).5 for a considerable part of the 19th century, i.e. for the women born between 1840 and 1880, ctfrs were around seven births per woman (fig. 4, panel c). in russia fertility started to decline among women born around 1880, however the ctfr was still above four births per woman among those born early in the 20th century (fig. 4, panels c and d), considerably higher than in west european populations. the trends in cohort total fertility rates vaguely resembled those of western countries, particularly among slovak and certainly among czech women (fig. 4, panel a). for instance, the ctfr trends of czech and swedish women of the 1870s through 1910s birth cohorts were close to each other. the swedish 1880 ctfr was 3.2, the czech 1880 ctfr was 3.1 births per woman; both declined to approximately 1.8 for the 1902 ctfr and thereafter increased moderately; sweden’s 1915 ctfr was 2.0, the czech 1915 ctfr was 2.2 births per woman.6 starting with women born in the late 1920s and the 1930s through those born in the 1950s, i.e. those bearing children predominantly during the state-socialist period, ctfr trends in central and eastern europe differed substantially from western countries (fig. 4). ctfr trends were relatively stable, proceeding in a quite narrow band at around two births per woman (sobotka 2004, 2011; frejka/gietel-basten 2016). cohort total fertility rates throughout cee started to decline with women born around 1960 (fig. 4). this was apparently engendered by the collapse of the state socialist systems and the onset of the transition to contemporary capitalism (sobotka 2004, 2011; frejka/gietel-basten 2016). thus far, ctfrs of the late 1960s and the 1970s birth cohorts center around 1.6 births per woman (fig. 5). 5 in figure 4, panel d, the vertical and horizontal scales are identical to all other graphs, but different scales are used in panel c to show the levels of the ctfrs in russia for cohorts born in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 6 differences between crude birth rates (cbrs) for czech and russian women provide additional support for the notion that czech fertility during the 19th century resembled west european patterns. the czech cbr declined from 43 births per thousand inhabitants around 1800 to 35 around 1900. russia’s cbr was around 50 births per thousand inhabitants throughout the second half of the 19th century (pavlík 1964: 94 and 134). • tomas frejka100 fig. 4: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, central, south eastern, eastern europe, baltic countries, birth cohorts 1840-1980 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort czech republic hungary poland slovakia a central europe 1870-1979 cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 bith cohort bulgaria romania serbia b south-eastern europe 1870-1979 cohort total fertility rate c russia 1840-1920 cohort total fertility rate d eastern europe 1870-1980 cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort estonia lithuania e baltic countries 1870-1980 cohort total fertility rate 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 birth cohort russia 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort russia belarus ukraine note: the available ctfr series for russia starts in 1840, therefore panel c has different horizontal (ranging from 1840-1920, rather than 1870-1980) and vertical axis scales (ranging from 2.0-8.0, rather than 1.2-4.0). source: human fertility database 2016; myrskylä et al. 2013; puur 2016; sobotka 2016; stankuniene 2016; spéder 2016; tymicki 2016; zakharov 2016 the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 101 3.4 east and south-east asia ctfr data for women born in the 19th and early 20th century are available only for south korea. these indicate that rates among these women were around 5.0 births per woman (fig. 5). a clear decline started among women of the 1920s birth cohorts in the middle of the 20th century. this steep ctfr descent in south korea continued for several decades. the relatively sparse cohort fertility data available for singapore, taiwan and hong kong indicate a similarly precipitous fertility decline for the birth cohorts of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s (frejka et al. 2010; fig. 5). japan constitutes an exception; there the cohort fertility transition must have been under way several decades earlier. the ctfr of the 1930 birth cohort was already close to 2.0 births per woman and remained at that level through the birth cohorts of the mid-1950s. this was followed by a cohort fertility decline among the women born in the late 1950s and 1960s which was very similar to that of the other east and south-east asian countries. women completing their childbearing early in the 21st century in this region are winding up with ctfrs below 1.6 births per woman, in particular in hong kong where the late 1960s ctfrs were around 1.2 births per woman (fig. 5; fig. 6, panel d). fig. 5: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, east and south-east asia, birth cohorts 1888-1972 1.0 1.4 1.8 2.2 2.6 3.0 3.4 3.8 4.2 4.6 5.0 5.4 5.8 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort japan singapore hong kong south korea taiwan cohort total fertility rate source: frejka et al 2010; myrskylä et al. 2013; zeman 2016 • tomas frejka102 fig. 6: cohort total fertility rates, selected countries, western populations, south european populations, central and east european populations, east and south-east asia populations, birth cohorts 1870-1980 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort denmark finland norway sweden belgium england and wales france netherlands australia canada new zealand united states austria switzerland west germany czech republic cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort greece italy portugal spain cohort total fertility rate a western populations b south european populations the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 103 in sum, within the overall framework of the decline from high to low fertility, using available completed cohort fertility rates i have identifi ed four fertility transition pathways from the 19th through the early 21st century: the western fertility transifig. 6: continuation cohort total fertility rate 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort hong kong japan singapore south korea taiwan cohort total fertility rate c central and east european populations deast and south-east asia populations 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort czech republic hungary poland slovakia bulgaria romania serbia belarus russia ukraine estonia lithuania source: hamilton/cosgrove 2010 and 2012; heuser 1976; human fertility database; myrskylä et al. 2013; ode 2012; sardon 1991; sobotka 2016 • tomas frejka104 tion pathway, the south european fertility transition pathway, the central and east european fertility transition pathway, and the east and south-east asian fertility transition pathway (fig. 6). figure 7 illustrates these four fertility transition pathways in a stylized form. 4 societal conditions shaping fertility trends of the 19th and 20th centuries in this section i will outline the crucial societal conditions that shaped the respective fertility transition pathways in the 19th and 20th centuries. fig. 7: stylized pathways of fertility transitions, cohort total fertility rates, western populations, central and east european populations, south european populations, east and south-east asia populations, birth cohorts 1870-1970 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0 4.4 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort western central and east european south european south and south-east asian cohort total fertility rate source: author’s design the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 105 4.1 western populations economic, social, cultural, political and policy, as well as many other effects7 (notestein 1945, 1953; coale 1973; lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986; lesthaeghe 2010) were instrumental in shaping the most important fertility fl uctuations in western populations (fig. 2 and fig. 6, panel a). the great depression: the principal cause of low completed cohort fertility of women born in the 1900s in at least ten of the 16 populations for which data are available, ctfrs bottomed out among women born in the 1900s with values of 1.8-2.2 births per woman, i.e. considerably below the replacement level given the mortality conditions of the time (fig. 2, panels a-d, and fig. 6, panel a).8 in europe as well as in the united states, the great depression of the late 1920s and the 1930s was identifi ed as the principal cause of this fertility nadir. in his recently published book, labor’s love lost: the rise and fall of the working-class family in america, cherlin (2014) describes in great detail changes in american family life over the past two centuries. he characterizes “the great depression [as] a cataclysmic event in the united states in its depth and duration” (cherlin 2014: 60). based on contemporary sociological research of komarovsky (1940), cherlin discusses the effect of the depression on reproductive behavior. their sex lives often deteriorated: in twenty-two out of thirty-eight families for which adequate information was collected, the frequency of sexual relations declined – including four families in which sex stopped altogether. in some cases, however, couples reduced sexual activity not because of emotional strain but in order to lower the chance that the wife would become pregnant. without modern means of birth control such as the pill or the iud, fi nancially struggling couples did what they could to avoid having another mouth to feed. one parent said, “it is a crime for children to be born when the parents haven’t got enough money to have them properly.” (cherlin 2014:79). hobcraft and kiernan (1995: 53-54) observed that the key element in understanding the low rates of entry into parenthood in several european countries during the 1930s is that times were hard. the prolonged economic depression, with insecurity of employment and often diffi culties in obtaining adequate housing, was a critical factor. the insecurities involved in becoming a parent during the 1930s were of course much greater than today, owing to the poor development of the welfare state as a means of ameliorating and smoothing the 7 notestein (1953: 142) also reminded us that “it is impossible to be precise about the various causal factors”. 8 the ten populations with ctfrs between 1.8 and 2.2 are: denmark, norway, sweden, belgium, france, england and wales, austria, switzerland, west germany, and the czech republic; data are not available for finland, australia, and new zealand. • tomas frejka106 costs and chance variations in the prolonged process of childrearing. […] the low levels of entry into childhood through successful postponement [of conception] of the 1930s are all the more remarkable in the context of the relatively ineffective methods of fertility control available at that time. there must have been many more couples than those who succeeded in avoiding entry into parenthood who experienced accidental pregnancies through inability to control fertility. mid-20th century prosperity: the principal cause of high completed cohort fertility of women born in the 1930s relatively high childbearing is understandable in light of cherlin’s (2014: 115) characterization of the living conditions of american families in the post-world war ii years. why did young couples have so many children? one reason lay in the unique life histories of the generation who were in their twenties and thirties. they experienced the great depression as children or adolescents and then a world war erupted as they reached adulthood. after enduring these two cataclysmic events, the “great generation,” as they are sometimes called, was pleased in peacetime to turn inward toward home and family. […] family life was the domain in which they found […] security. raising children provided a sense of purpose to adults who had seen how fragile the social world could be. […] moreover, conditions were favorable for family formation and fertility: unemployment rates were low, wages were rising, and the government had enacted the gi bill, which offered low-interest home mortgage loans to veterans so that they could buy single-family homes. […] employers in the rapidly expanding american economy were forced to offer higher wages in order to attract new workers because they were in short supply. hobcraft and kiernan (1995: 55-56) portrayed the favorable conditions for family formation and childbearing created by healthy economies and by family policies in the middle of the 20th century in europe as follows. the modern welfare state was established predominantly in the period following the 1939–45 war. this clearly changed the costs of childbearing in substantial ways. the costs of education, health, and welfare of children were increasingly covered by the state rather than directly by the parents themselves. the provision of a security blanket also considerably reduced the uncertainties surrounding the future ability to provide for children. the 1950s and 1960s were also a period of unprecedented economic growth and real wages increased substantially. the advent of keynesian macroeconomic policies appeared to have created an era of sustained permanent employment, thereby adding to the anticipated security for parenthood. moreover, the massive construction of housing following the war ultimately improved quality and access. in the realm of ideas, we would see the widespread continuation of compulsory conscription for males as breaking the nexus of home attachment to their families of origin. this almost certainly played a part in accelerating the establishment of independent living, which usually involved marriage. in turn, this contributed to earlier entry into parenthood. the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 107 as demonstrated in section 3, even though there were striking similarities in the fertility trends among countries of the western fertility transition pathway there was also a signifi cant amount of diversity and variation (cf. fig. 3 and 7). an analysis by van bavel and reher (2013) of the diversity in the timing, length, magnitude and volume of the baby boom led them to conclude that the conventional explanations appear to be only a limited part of the story. they argue that other demographic and policy factors than the enhanced wellbeing and enlightened policies outlined above might have been instrumental in generating the baby boom, such as a rise in nuptiality, the role played by cultural factors like political and family attitudes and religion, and the possible infl uence of pronatalist policies. the complexities surrounding childbearing and family life: the milieu determining low fertility of the 1950s–1970s birth cohorts in most of the western countries the ctfrs for women born during the 1950s and 1960s were very close to two births per woman. in the historical context of the second half of the 20th century this was a low level for these countries. nonetheless, this was close to the replacement level. and it was higher than in any of the other regions, i.e. the south european, central and east european, and the east and south-east asian populations. there is an extraordinary wealth of literature dealing with the economic, social, political, policy, cultural, gender relations, normative, attitudinal and other conditions infl uencing recent and contemporary childbearing and family life (inter alia, bianchi et al. 2006; frejka et al. 2008; goldscheider et al. 2015; kreyenfeld/konietzka 2017; lesthaeghe 2010; mcdonald 2002, 2006; mcdonald/moyle 2010; myrskylä et al. 2013; neyer 2003; rindfuss/choe 2015, 2016; sobotka 2004; sobotka/beaujouan 2014; stock et al. 2013; thévenon 2011). this literature discusses the various circumstances that shaped western childbearing trends. a prominent recent development has been that increasing numbers of women have been entering the public sphere. goldscheider et al. (2015) labeled this as the fi rst half of the gender revolution. not only were women working, they were also the principal managers of the household, and they were taking care of most of the childrearing (in addition to childbearing). even though the second part of the gender revolution (men increasingly getting involved with household and childrearing responsibilities) was progressing, the pressures women were subjected to were apparently having a dampening effect on childbearing. although many other circumstances, such as employment insecurity, working conditions, and the need for education and training, were affecting fertility, it is the gender revolution that has recently attracted special attention. three prominent papers (esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; anderson/kohler 2015) have dealt with this topic, and the authors have concluded that the gender revolution may or will generate a reversal of fertility trends. esping-andersen and billari “posit a return to ‘more family’ as gender egalitarianism gains increasingly dominant normative status” (2015: 3). underlying “more family,” inter alia, is a reversal of fertility trends and a “stabilization of the quan• tomas frejka108 tum of childbearing” (2015: 2). goldscheider et al. are very careful in their formulations regarding the relationship between the ongoing gender revolution and fertility. specifi cally, “there is growing evidence that men’s increasing involvement in homemaking and childcare may potentially increase fertility” (2015: 222). and “this approach, which assumes that committed partner and parental relationships are indeed important to most people further implies that men’s increased involvement in the home, the second half of the gender revolution, has the promise of increasing […] fertility [...]” (2015: 229). a number of references listed by goldscheider et al. indicate an implicit conclusion that a fertility reversal and turnaround [meaning increase] is under way in countries where the gender revolution is advanced. however, skepticism regarding such conclusions is justifi ed because the analysis in the above sections as well as data from additional research (frejka et al. 2016a/b) document that thus far there is no evidence of a fertility reversal in developed countries. a central conclusion of the anderson and kohler (2015) paper is a new portrayal of the “stylized demographic transition extended to show [a] gender equity catchup” illustrated by a turnaround in the birth rate, shown in their figure 4 on page 394. ultimately the death rate and the birth rate equal each other, resulting in an equilibrium. this depiction appears to be misleading on several counts. in the fi rst place, the anderson/kohler figure 4 implies that there is only a single pathway for the fertility transition, whereas the present paper demonstrates that to date there have been four such pathways and that there might be more in the future. the dip in the early 20th century cohort tfrs occurred only in the western fertility transition pattern, but anderson and kohler consider it a universal component of the fertility transition in all countries. secondly, the fertility nadir and subsequent recovery experienced by women born early in the 20th century in northern and western europe, and in the overseas countries with populations mostly of european origin, was mainly caused by the dire economic and social conditions during the great depression of the 1930s followed by the favorable conditions of the 1950s and 1960s. thus to label the fertility dip and subsequent increase of the early 20th century birth cohorts as a “gender equity catch-up” is questionable since it was caused by other factors. thirdly, the anderson/kohler figure 4 implies that toward the end of the demographic transition (end of their phase 5 and in phase 6) mortality and fertility stabilize in a balanced equilibrium in which these rates equal each other. as noted above, life expectancy has been increasing throughout the 20th century and there is a consensus that mortality will continue to decline for several decades to come. and the future of fertility trends is unclear with a declining tendency up to the present time. in sum, a low mortality and low fertility equilibrium has not yet materialized. 4.2 south european populations the fundamental determinants shaping fertility trends in southern europe are analogous to those in the western populations. there are however circumstances powerfully depressing childbearing in recent decades and reinforcing the burdens and pressures women are subjected to in southern europe (delgado et al. 2008; de rose et al. 2008; rindfuss/choe 2016). prominent among them were the following. the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 109 to begin with, these societies have been intensely patriarchal. even though gender inequalities have been weakening during the recent past, they continue to operate, especially in the family. according to de rose et al. (2008: 687-688): in italy during the last 40 years, the public gender system changed in an even sense: women now have access to any profession, they achieve a higher educational level than men, and, when employed, they work almost as hard as men, especially before entering motherhood. at the same time, however, the couple’s sharing of housework is heavily unbalanced – not only when the woman is a housewife (in the traditional logic of ‘job sharing’), but even when she works full-time. women need to and want to work in order to avoid an income reduction as well as a loss of role and identity. at the same time, spending long hours on household chores, without any signifi cant help from the husband, contributes to making low fertility more than a choice. furthermore, many facets of the labor market tend to have a depressing impact on childbearing. in general, unemployment is high, particularly young adult unemployment; work hours tend to be long; those who are employed are signifi cantly protected making it diffi cult for them to be fi red and, at the same time, there is scant room for hiring new, young employees; many employees have inferior working conditions with few protections and benefi ts; there are few possibilities for part-time work. high housing costs are also making it diffi cult for young people to buy a fl at or a house. finally, the persistence of strong ties between parents and children, although apparently counterintuitive, helps to maintain the gap between desired and actual fertility (de rose et al. 2008: 690): parents invest a lot in their (only) child and a very high cost-value is attributed to these children, which in italy is shouldered entirely by the family. not having a second or third child seems to be resulting from the fear of lowering the child’s quality of life, who is highly protected by its parents. moreover, as the children’s prospects of social mobility have been low or nonexistent for a long time, italian families show little enthusiasm to push their children ‘out of the family nest’. 4.3 central and east european populations during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the cluster of the “usual suspects” of social, economic, political, and cultural conditions shaped fertility trends in central and east european populations. the few populations – czech, slovak, russian and estonian – for which trend curves are available attest to that. the czech example is particularly interesting; the dip in the cohort total fertility rate trend below two births per woman from the 1895 to the 1909 birth cohorts is a clear case of the impact of the great depression on childbearing behavior (fig. 4 and fig. 6, panel c). after the second world war political and policy circumstances overwhelmingly affected other societal conditions and engendered the relatively stable fertility trends with ctfrs around two births per woman in the central and east european populations (fig. 4 and 6, panel c). in the words of frejka and gietel-basten (2016: 9): • tomas frejka110 three mutually reinforcing factors – the technologically lagging and labor intensive ineffi cient socialist economies which generated a continuous demand for labor; a pro-natalist ideology and policies; and the authoritarian political system restricting personal freedom – created conditions which were generally conducive for early and universal childbearing. these conditions included job security, low-cost housing, free education, free health care, various entitlements associated with child birth and childrearing, as well as limited career opportunities and leisure activities. the citizenry of the state socialist countries had grown accustomed to a relatively stable and predictable existence, although standard living conditions were worse than in western countries, and there were numerous disturbing concomitants to this lifestyle, such as curtailed civil liberties and shortages of everyday and long-lasting consumer goods (frejka 2008; sobotka 2004, 2011). frejka and gietel-basten (2016: 10) summarized the rather unique conditions following the collapse of state socialism around 1990 as follows: mutually reinforcing features of the transition to contemporary capitalism – the quest for maximizing profi ts and productivity, the employment of advanced increasingly complex technologies, competitive labor markets, a propensity for a low priority for social obligations towards workers and society, as well as the spread of modern contraceptives – created considerably more restraining conditions for childbearing. these included job and income insecurity, an increasing pressure to acquire more education, expensive housing, lesser and declining birth and childrearing entitlements, increased uncertainty of spousal relationships as well as expanded personal freedom, the availability of a variety of career opportunities, consumption attractions and leisure activities. all of a sudden, people were exposed to societal conditions which made it more diffi cult to earn a living, more demanding to reconcile the familywork confl ict, and under which various costs previously borne by the paternalistic state became the responsibility of individuals and families (frejka 2008; sobotka 2011). all told, the balance shifted from circumstances generally encouraging early marriage and childbearing with a distinct propensity for a two-child family, to circumstances postponing union formation and childbearing as well as inhibiting family size. the propensity for two-child families started to weaken, shares of one-child families increased everywhere and even became the most prevalent in the russian federation and ukraine. 4.4 east and south-east asian populations the outstanding characteristic of the conditions infl uencing fertility in east and south-east asia is the fact that modern economic and social development started as late as in the middle of the 20th century. once it did get under way it progressed at an unusually fast pace. economies grew at rates in excess of seven per cent per year between the early 1960s and the 1990s. four of these countries – hong kong, singapore, south korea, and taiwan – deservedly earned the epithet the four asian tigers. japan’s economic development got under way much earlier, in the 1860s, and further expanded during the 1920s. moreover, thanks to its post-world war two economic miracle japan became the world’s second largest economy. these the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 111 economic advances were accompanied by other societal developments, including signifi cant declines in mortality and fertility (fig. 5 and 6, panel d). social and economic factors depressing fertility in east and south-east asia might have been more forceful than elsewhere, explaining the rapid fertility decline of the past half century resulting in the very low cohort fertility rates of the generations born in the 1960s and early 1970s (frejka et al. 2010; jones et al. 2009; rindfuss/choe 2015, 2016). the economies generated a robust demand for labor and single as well as married young women were eager to satisfy this demand. large proportions of women acquired an advanced education and joined the labor force. at the same time, patriarchal gender relationships which dominated family life for centuries hardly changed at all. as a rule, men do not participate in housekeeping activities and leave most of the raising of children to their wives. women are expected not only to run the household, and bear and raise children, but frequently are also expected to care for the elderly. employers are focused on production and profi ts. providing family-friendly work conditions for women is beyond their horizon. consequently, many women are delaying marriage and childbearing. social conditions have not kept pace with changing economic realities (frejka et al. 2010: 602). 5 summary and conclusions available cohort fertility data for the 19th and 20th centuries of 36 populations in europe, in the overseas populations of european origin, and in east and south-east asia have been assembled for this study. the analysis of these data has yielded the following principal fi ndings. the analysis of cohort total fertility rates to date specifi es four fertility transition pathways during the late 19th and the 20th centuries. when suffi cient data become available for other populations, other types of fertility transition pathways might appear. the four pathways are: • the western fertility transition pathway is characterized by major fl uctuations in fertility. the birth cohorts of the mid-19th century experienced ctfrs around 4-5 births per woman, which declined to a nadir of ±2 births per woman among the early 20th century cohorts. the 1920s and early 1930s ctfrs then increased to a broad range of 2.1-3.6 births per woman, followed by another decline to 1.8-2.2 births per woman in the 1950s and 1960s cohorts, which remained fairly stable albeit with a moderate trend of further decline. • the south european fertility transition pathway is characterized by a relatively stable ctfr decline from 5 births per woman, interrupted by a plateau among the 1920s-1930s cohorts, all the way down to ctfrs of 1.4-1.7 births per woman in the late 1960s and early 1970s cohorts. • the central and east european fertility transition pathway is characterized by a ctfr decline among late 19th century cohorts to a stable band of about 1.8-2.1 births per woman in the 1920s-1950s birth cohorts, followed by a ctfr decline to 1.6-1.8 in the 1960s and early 1970s cohorts. • tomas frejka112 • the east and south-east asia fertility transition pathway is characterized by a rapid decline of ctfrs starting as late as the middle of the 20th century from about 5 births per woman in the 1920s birth cohorts to ctfrs equal to 1.2-1.6 births per woman in the late 1960s and early 1970s cohorts. in all four fertility transition pathways a majority of the cohort total fertility rates were below replacement level in the 1960s and early 1970s birth cohorts, and did not indicate a propensity to increase. there were some exceptions, namely norway, new zealand, and the united states with above replacement fertility. the exploration of societal conditions shaping mortality and fertility trends in the 19th and 20th centuries confi rm notestein’s conclusions that it is a complex combination of “technological, social, economic, and political developments” as well as cultural and ideational effects that shape those trends and that it is “impossible to be precise about the various causal factors” (1953: 142) at times the primary factors were economic, as in the great depression of the 1930s or the post-war prosperity of the 1960s in western countries, however these economic factors had numerous political, cultural, policy and other facets that were also important in shaping the fertility trends. in other settings, the primary factors were the political system and social policies, namely in the era of state socialism in central and eastern europe. in other settings, the patriarchal nature of the society was the prime factor, as in southern europe and in east and south-east asia. however, many other factors were in play in these contexts as well. extensive research of other scholars has revealed that since the last third of the 19th century mortality has declined continuously, and life expectancy has globally increased by the end of the 20th century. furthermore, mortality is reliably projected to decline further, and life expectancy to increase till the mid-21st century (oeppen/ vaupel 2002; shkolnikov et al. 2011). this implies that thus far the demographic transition has not led to an equilibrium of relatively stable low mortality and stable low fertility. mortality continues to decline steadily while fertility trends are in fl ux with unclear prospects. if this persists, a consensus might fi nally emerge that this state be regarded as a new type of “equilibrium” – a post-transition regime of low mortality and low fertility variability. the principal fi nding from the cohort fertility data analysis in this study is that to date there have been four distinct pathways of fertility decline. these pathways were apparently generated by fundamental differences in the social, economic, political, cultural and ideational developments in societies that have moved to relatively low mortality and low fertility. considerable work lies ahead: to generate long-term cohort fertility data for additional populations, to discern whether other fertility transition pathways are occurring, to reveal the determinants of these pathways, and what the outcomes of mortality and fertility trends might be. this study can be considered complementary to the fi ndings based primarily on period fertility data of basten et al. (2014: 39-146) in the volume by lutz et al. (2014) on world population and human capital in the twenty-first century, which demonstrated the importance of many different factors shaping fertility. furthermore, it concluded that “…the locus of low fertility is increasingly moving away from ‘old the fertility transition revisited: a cohort perspective • 113 europe’ and towards the rapidly developing economies of east asia, latin america, and the middle east” and that “… a global convergence of fertility around replacement level appears unlikely”. acknowledgements thoughtful comments on earlier drafts from andrew cherlin, michaela kreyenfeld, zdeněk pavlík, john ross, tomáš sobotka, vladimir shkolnikov, claudio stern, charles westoff, and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. the original version of this paper was presented at the mpidr 2nd human fertility database symposium, berlin, june 2016 and was published as an mpidr working paper wp 2016-012, november 2016. references anderson, thomas; kohler, hans-peter 2015: low fertility, socioeconomic development, and gender equity. in: population and development review 41,3: 381-407 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00065.x]. basten, stuart; sobotka, tomáš; zeman, kryštof 2014: future fertility in low fertility countries. in: lutz et al. 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2 may. date of submission: 26.09.2016 date of acceptance: 15.05.2017 dr. tomas frejka (). independent researcher. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany. a retrospective analysis of discourse, local organisation and the emotions involved five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany* a retrospective analysis of discourse, local organisation and the emotions involved kim bräuer abstract: this article examines voluntary refugee aid from 2015 to 2020, investigating the extent to which volunteers and refugee aid recipients have related their perceptions and emotional interpretations to the welcoming discourse and the local organisation of voluntary refugee aid. the analysis was based on contrasting sample of interviews and newspaper articles and includes a comparison of the politicised metropolitan refugee aid in berlin with traditional charity-based aid in braunschweig. it becomes evident that the emotional perceptions of volunteers differ depending on their reason for helping and their previous experiences. in addition, the article suggests that the recipients of refugee aid, most notably shortly after their arrival, do not refer to the welcoming discourse but instead to their own experiences or those of their acquaintances. combining the concepts of governmentality and performativity, i use a critical perspective on power and add an affect-theoretical level in the sense of immersive power. this theoretical view raises awareness of the signifi cance of affects and emotions in voluntary refugee aid. overall, the stance of the article shifts. it sees refugees not only as persons in need of help but contrasts this image with the potential they offer. it takes a critical look at the last fi ve years of voluntary refugee aid and considers the implications for voluntary refugee aid if, indeed, emotions are as signifi cant as they appear in the article. keywords: refugee aid · voluntary work · power · media coverage · emotions comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 389-412 (date of release: 24.08.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-15 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-15en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • kim bräuer390 1 introduction even though many people throughout germany had already been active in voluntary refugee aid before 2015 (karakayali 2018: 9), it only became a central fi eld of civil society engagement in the summer of the so-called “refugee crisis” (e.g. aumüller et al. 2015; baethge/wieck 2016; karakayali/kleist 2015; lewicki et al. 2017: 3; speth/becker 2016). the media and politicians praised the welcoming culture (“willkommenskultur”) and fuelled the so-called welcoming discourse (“willkommensdiskurs”). even though the organisation of voluntary refugee aid in germany is largely the responsibility of the municipalities, many people across the country – whether in global metropoles, in small towns or in the countryside – felt a sense of responsibility. everywhere they took on important tasks to help refugees cope with their everyday lives (aumüller et al. 2015; hamann et al. 2016; karakayali/ kleist 2015; speth 2017: 48). in braunschweig, for example, where no refugees were permanently housed until the end of 2015, the city’s status as the state reception centre for lower saxony meant that broad civil society support for refugees quickly emerged. at times, voluntary refugee aid developed into a social experience, with many public voices giving the impression that volunteers not only helped refugees through their civic engagement, but that they themselves felt joy and satisfaction by helping. voluntary refugee assistance developed into a movement marked by painful experiences and fear, e.g. of deportation, as well as passionate connection and shared joy. in recent years, numerous funding programmes have been set up for voluntary refugee aid. some of these programmes have now come to an end. many of the former volunteers are no longer active and quite a few of the refugees who accepted help in the past are no longer dependent on organised aid or are no longer living in germany. the welcoming discourse has also changed, with media coverage of refugees living in germany having dwindled since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. in light of these developments, the question this article asks is therefore as follows: how did the welcoming discourse and the organisation of voluntary refugee aid in berlin and braunschweig change between 2015 and 2020? how did the aid recipients and the volunteers perceive the aid and the welcoming discourse? and which emotional expressions do they use when reporting on voluntary refugee aid? in examining these questions, there are three underlying assumptions to this paper. first, certain interpretations working on the affective level become particularly catchy through images and expressions of the welcoming discourse and favour certain modes of emotional perception among volunteers and refugee aid recipients. second, the way local voluntary refugee aid is organised also affects their experiences and emotional perceptions. third, as fi rst-hand experience of voluntary refugee aid increases, the relevance of the welcoming discourse and the local organisation wanes. this article expands on the literature by linking media coverage of refugees, volunteer refugee aid and refugee policy, and the local organisation of refugee aid with the (emotional) perceptions of volunteers and refugees. for this purpose, i five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 391 initially present my premises in the context of governmentality and affect theory (2). i follow this by explaining my methodological approach and by elaborating on central assumptions of the grounded theory methodology (3). in the results section, i outline the development of the welcoming discourse and the organisation of voluntary refugee aid in berlin and braunschweig in three periods (4). i then discuss various ways in which volunteers and refugees use differing emotional interpretations and i examine which factors other than the welcoming discourse and local organisation shape their perceptions (5). finally, i raise awareness of what it can mean for voluntary refugee aid, but especially for refugee aid recipients, if the media portray them in an emotionalised way. (6). 2 theoretical considerations and literature review since 2014, there has been a real upswing in research with a fl ood of academic publications, a considerable number of practical reports, press articles and grey literature on voluntary refugee aid. they deal with individual mentoring programmes for refugees (alazar et al. 2014), charitable welcoming initiatives (daphi 2016), volunteer management (lidzba 2018), or municipal structures of voluntary refugee aid (e.g. glorius/schondelmayer 2018; speth et al. 2016; speth/becker 2016). thus, the argument that volunteers are activated not only by political appeals but also by the governance of volunteerism to contribute to the common good is already well established for many areas of volunteering (e.g. ataç 2015: 82; graf 2016; van dyk/ misbach 2016). looking at refugee relief as a voluntary activity, only van dyk et al. (2020) have addressed this aspect to date. but even in their case, it remains unclear how the volunteers or the refugees experienced the welcoming discourse. so far, there is little work systematically developing the relevance of local contexts. even though van dyk et al. (2020) compared the way in which voluntary refugee aid in eastern and/or western german cities or rural municipalities varied in terms of their organisation, the question of how organisation at local level shapes the emotional perception of volunteers and refugees is still unanswered (karakayali 2018: 23). similarly, little research has been done on the affects infl uencing refugees’ and volunteers’ behaviour, which are changed by external impacts and modes of subjectifi cation. but there are some contributions that work with a corresponding understanding of affects (e.g. behnam shad 2021; lindqvist 2013; wettergren 2015). in the context of refugee aid, priority is given to compassion and empathy as key elements that motivate people to support refugees voluntarily (e.g. armbruster 2019; doidge/sandri 2019; kleres 2018). articles on “deservingness” are therefore particularly interesting (casati 2018; kyriakidou 2021; wernesjö 2020). they raise awareness of how the media and political stakeholders distinguish between refugees who deserve help and refugees who do not. there is a lack of consideration that leads to the question of how affective modes of interpretation are mediated in the welcoming discourse. i bring together foucault’s governmentality, butler’s performativity and mühlhoff’s immersive power. in addition to conventional work on the theory of • kim bräuer392 governmentality, i address the infl uence of micro-social dynamics of emotionally moving and being moved in relation to the sense of affective resonance (mühlhoff 2015, 2018). in doing so, i examine emotional perceptions of volunteers and of refugees receiving aid. michel foucault’s governmentality allows for the examination of the subjectifi cation of refugees and volunteers against the background of the welcoming culture as presenting a temporary dominant image of the welcoming discourse. in terms of governmentality theory (e.g., foucault 2003: 50, 238ff.), i focus on the connection between state policies of integration and volunteerism, leading images shaped by the media, and volunteers and refugees. foucault conceptualises government techniques as techniques of guiding others and themselfes. such techniques are intertwined with knowledge regimes and constitute and mediate power relations (e.g. denninger et al. 2014: 25; neumann 2016: 26f.). accordingly, volunteers and refugees in receipt of aid play a role in reproducing the complex of power and knowledge through their refl exive reference and by using discursive knowledge (mühlhoff 2018: 76f.). butler (2006) offers a concept of subjective agency that introduces possibilities of the resistance to subjectifi cation (rose 2015: 328). in keeping with rose, the welcoming discourse pre-structures what can be thought and what can be said. refugees and volunteers are only forced into the position of subject by realising and recognising the discursive foundations (butler 2014: 176). with both butler and foucault, the subjectifi cation of refugees and volunteers can be thought of in terms of the reproduction of inequality and their societal meaning. rainer mühlhoff’s concept of immersive power has thus far barely been considered from a sociological perspective. it looks at affective transformations of subjects and how these are socially embedded. where repression, disciplinary actions or normalisation hardly operate, subjects are fully integrated into a local environment through reciprocal dynamics of affect and are situationally modulated in their thinking, feeling and acting (mühlhoff 2018: 418). mühlhoff thus connects affective action, power and subjectifi cation and promotes a view of the conditions as having an emotional effect on someone or being emotionally moved by someone or something and their inclusive and exclusive character. while foucault and butler focus on discourses, acts of speech, and symbolism, the concept of immersive power complements micro-social, affective arrangements in which subjects continuously establish a self-reference through reciprocal enhancement or weakening (mühlhoff 2018: 422). according to mühlhoff, refugees and volunteers become subjects of their affective agency. he complements foucault by assuming that subjects actualise their emotional impact, their agency and their perception not only in light of societal discourses but with mutual affective relations, and that the mode in which the discourse is perceived or referred to is affectively permeated. 3 empirical basis and methodological procedure i examined newspaper articles to reconstruct central developments in the welcoming discourse. i also conducted a sample of 45 guided interviews of volunteers, fullfive years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 393 time or voluntary organisers and refugees in receipt of aid in berlin (n=19) and braunschweig (n=26) between 2015 and 2020 to capture the local developments and the practical perspective. as a basic principle, i followed the grounded theory methodology. accordingly, i did not arrange the research process sequentially, but instead followed a circular process (strübing 2014: 14f., 30) in the sense of a constant comparison (glaser/strauss 1998: 107). as part of my empirical work, i analysed 29 newspaper articles on voluntary refugee aid,1 refugees and refugee policy from 11 different newspapers published online between 2015 and 2020, as well as eight documents from government organisations and governing parties in order to augment the analyses of akpinar/ wagner (2019), fengler/kreutler (2020) and haller (2017, 2019). while selecting the newspapers, i made sure that a broad range of political tendencies were represented among the country’s newspapers with the largest circulation. with the help of maxqda, i analysed these sources using a simple category-based system, with thematic categories and categories on affective and emotionalising expressions. in this manner, i reconstructed the welcoming discourse and emotional implications. i compared the results of these analyses with statements from the interviews. the starting date for my analysis is august 2015. this marked the point when, from the “long summer of migration” onwards (haller 2017: 18; steinhilper 2017: 77), the issue of voluntary refugee aid was addressed increasingly by political actors in the german government and media coverage of this topic increased signifi cantly too. braunschweig has a population of just under 250,000 inhabitants. in this industry-driven city, voluntary aid for refugees barely existed prior to 2015. even in the years covered by the survey, the aid to be found there was primarily civic-based and traditional in nature. in this mid-sized city in lower saxony, there is no selforganisation of refugees visible to the public and there are only a few grassroots organisations. berlin, on the other hand, has a wide range of organisations and a very clear community that is politically motivated. there are many activist networks in berlin that focus on the equal treatment of refugees and volunteers. in addition, the city has a comparatively large anti-colonial voluntary refugee aid community and self-organisation of refugees is strong. considering that no refugees were permanently accommodated in braunschweig prior to 2015 and that, in contrast, 55,001 refugees were offi cially accommodated in berlin2 in that same year, the sampling sites will undoubtedly display considerable contrasts. in addition to the two sampling sites, i maximised the variability of the interview sample in the institutional context of aid, kinds of aid, and level of refl ection of the interviewees. i selected the participants through a mix of theoretical sampling, snowball sampling and empirical sampling to follow the stimuli of the research fi eld as well as the demands of the theoretical premises. 1 the list of newspaper articles is attached to the list of references. 2 up-to-date statistics on refugees in berlin may be found under the following link: https://www.berlin.de/laf/ankommen/aktuelle-ankunftszahlen/artikel.625503.php • kim bräuer394 the following table lists the fi ve structuring dimensions of the interview sample and its characteristic values. even though i took care when compiling the interview sample to include aid recipients, volunteers and organisers, the division of these roles is to be understood as ideal-typical. this is partly due to the fact that in addition to the many full-time organisers, e.g. at church organisations or municipal aid services, there are many volunteer organisers, especially at local welcome initiatives or smaller associations. moreover, it is not uncommon for individuals in voluntary refugee aid to combine different roles. for example, one interviewee was employed as a pedagogue at four emergency shelters in berlin and simultaneously assisted young refugees in a volunteer programme. furthermore, i noticed how some interviewees transitioned from one role to another. for instance, one interviewee who had fl ed sudan mainly received voluntary help during her fi rst years in braunschweig, whereas she now volunteers in a welcome initiative. moreover, there can be fl uid transitions between organising, providing and receiving help. to interpret the interviews, i then created a second system of categories against which i analysed the interviews in relation to the welcoming discourse, spatial dimension and emotional interpretations or expressions. the system includes categories on the aid context and aid relationships, on volunteers, aid recipients, and their social practices. 4 results: the welcoming discourse, the organisation of voluntary refugee aid and the perceptions of volunteers and refugees receiving assistance i have identifi ed three periods of development which differ in how refugees are addressed in the welcoming discourse, in the high organisational level of aid practices, in the assistance offers and training measures for volunteers, and in the common willingness to help . in each period, i will fi rst outline the welcoming discourse, before giving an insight into the local organisation, and fi nally discussing how refugee aid recipients and volunteers refer to these two factors in their perceptions. i thereby focus on the affective character of their statements. 4.1 first period: 2015 and 2016: from emergency aid to qualifi ed volunteering a key event was the summer press conference of 2015 when angela merkel set a narrative, which was widely picked up by the media: “germany is a strong country. the motive with which we approach these things must be: we have accomplished so much – we can do this! we can do it[...]”3 (merkel 2015). at the same time, the 3 “deutschland ist ein starkes land. das motiv, mit dem wir an diese dinge herangehen, muss sein: wir haben so vieles geschafft – wir schaffen das! wir schaffen das […]”. five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 395 r o le o f le ve l o f r efl e ct io n lo ca tio n o f a id in st it u tio n al c o n te xt k in d s o f a id in te rv ie w ee s o rg an is er s (w it h a ffi r m at iv e/ f av ou ri ng m ig ra ti on b ra u n sc h w ei g (b w ) m un ic ip al a d m in is tr at io n p o lit ic al a ct iv is m , an d w it h o u t re g im e ci vi l s o ci et y/ t ra d it io n al e. g ., jo in t w ri tin g o f re fu g ee tr ad it io n al v o lu n ta ry w o rk ,e .g ., vo lu n ta ry w o rk re fu g ee s el fo rg an is at io n p ub lic s ta te m en ts b ac kg ro un d ) m o ti va te d b y c hr is tia n ch ar it y n o r el ev an t r ef ug ee (o + r ) re fu g ee s w ill in g to “ ad ap t” se lfo rg an is at io n in d iv id u al in d ep en d en t o p en e n co un te rs , e .g ., (o ) fe w g ra ss ro o ts vo lu n te er s cr o ss -c ul tu ra l e ve n ts vo lu n ta ry o r a p ol it ic al o rg an is at io n s fu lltim e w it h o u t i n te re st in t h e p o lit ic al n o n -g o ve rn m en ta l w el fa re ed u ca tio n / t ea ch in g, r re fu g ee s as yl um r eg im e o rg an is at io n s e. g ., la ng u ag e co ur se s re ce iv in g in ex p er ie n ce d v o lu n te er s n o t h el p (r ) w an tin g to p ar tic ip at e in a ch ur ch c o ng re g at io n s d is tr ib u tio n o f g if ts , p o lit ic al d eb at e b er lin (b ) e. g ., cl o th in g b an ks re fu g ee s w h o d es cr ib e w id e ra ng e o f d if fe re n t re g is te re d a ss o ci at io n s th em se lv es a s ap o lit ic al as so ci at io n s co un se lin g / s up p o rt , v o lu n te er s (w it h d is tin ct p o lit ic al s ce n e in d ep en d en t g ro up s o f e. g ., ta n d em fo r w o rk an d w it h o u t cr it ic al o f s oc ie ty / a sy lu m r eg im e o f r ef ug ee s vo lu n te er s o ri en ta tio n re fu g ee vo lu n te er s an d r ef ug ee s w h o b ac kg ro un d ) re fl e ct o n th ei r p o si tio n in t h e so ci al e n te rp ri se s ad m in is tr at io n / c o n tr o l, (v + r ) as yl um r eg im e e. g ., p o w er o f t h e ke ys (v ) co n d it io n al p o lit ic al r es is ta n ce o ve r co m m o n ro o m s ta b . 1 : s tr uc tu ra l d im en si o n s o f t he in te rv ie w s am p lin g s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • kim bräuer396 welcoming culture was celebrated in the media (weltonline1; zeitonline1; zeitonline2; botkas 2015; spiegelonline).4 consequently, during this period, volunteers were described as “useful for integration” (han-broich 2015: 44), as the “backbone and heart of inclusive refugee work” (phineo gag 2016: 9), as a “welcoming movement” (schiffauer et al. 2017: 18). migration-critical voices, such as the parliamentary group leader of the christian social union, hans-peter friedrich, who said, “we are at full capacity”,5 referring to the idea that germany could not manage merkel’s refugee policy (birnbaum 2015), seemed to be almost drowned out. the fi elds of politics, academia and journalism all acknowledged the responsibility that volunteers had taken upon themselves for the basic welfare of the refugees. these statements point to the fact that in 2015, the welcoming discourse conveyed the idea that whatever aid given to refugees was good aid. at this time, hardly any critical refl ection took place in the media on what makes adequate aid or which pitfalls of paternalism voluntary refugee aid might have. after these insights into the welcoming discourse, there remains the question of how voluntary refugee aid was organised during this period. while a broad spectrum of different support services for refugees in berlin already existed at the time, with new initiatives being added almost daily, voluntary refugee support in braunschweig was still in its infancy. this consisted primarily of an association that had been set up to offer legal counsel in the asylum process and a few programmes for people with a migration background. notwithstanding these differences, a fulltime leader of a berlin neighbourhood initiative, as well as the employee of a welfare organisation hired in braunschweig, reported that in 2015, volunteer refugee aid was characterised in both cities by emergency care which was relatively open in nature, unstructured and largely uncontrolled. furthermore, they described how the focus during this period was on providing initial care for refugees, such as medical treatment at health centres, the provision of clothing and food, and organising places to sleep. they also reported a lack of support services for volunteers, who felt overwhelmed and poorly served in refugee volunteer work. but how did volunteers and refugees relate to the welcoming discourse in this period and what were they missing due to the poor organisational conditions? dokor solomon, who himself fl ed rwanda and now works in berlin as a coordinator in a political education association for refugees, reported the following: “i always have in my head what merkel said in 2015, ‘we can do it and we want to help [...] refugees’”. in addition to him, volunteers from both cities also referred to angela merkel’s speech. it awakened their desire to “contribute to the welcoming culture”. one volunteer language teacher even felt a sense of “euphoria” in thinking that she and the other volunteers could manage to master “the situation”. these few insights into the interviews lead to the assumption that the welcoming discourse favoured 4 most of the newspaper articles i used for my analysis cannot be assigned to an author because a press agency is given as the originator. therefore, they can only be labelled by the newspaper’s name. 5 “das boot ist voll”. five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 397 positive affective perceptions among volunteers and motivated some to help. among the refugees interviewed, the so-called welcoming culture was not known in this fi rst period. they reported not having felt particularly welcome when they fi rst arrived in germany. for example, a woman who had fl ed sudan with her three children described how she was afraid when she lived in the mass accommodation centre in braunschweig. moreover, she found it strange when strangers came up to her bringing fruit or clothes for her children or wanting to talk to her. a member of the lower saxony refugee council reported that a volunteer from braunschweig asked him: “[…] give me a refugee [...] i’ll choose a refugee and go for a coffee with him”. this example suggests an unrealistic idea of refugee volunteering, especially among volunteers who had not previously been involved in refugee and migration policy developments and had had no contact with any refugees. one volunteer who helped out in a mass shelter in berlin and an interviewee from braunschweig who worked at a non-profi t institution for adults and accompanied refugees, voluntarily described how their ideas, shaped by the media, had not been fulfi lled in everyday refugee aid. providing daily aid was much more demanding and psychologically stressful than both had assumed. the volunteer mentioned above, who helps out in the mass accommodation centre, spoke of how “[...] the idea promoted in the newspapers and by politicians to help refugees on an equal footing is not at all feasible in practice […] i feel stressed to some extent at how much the refugees depended on me and how few of our relationships are balanced ones”. other volunteers felt overwhelmed by their voluntary work too. they spoke of experiencing “frustration” and “dissatisfaction”. in view of the comparatively poor organisation of voluntary refugee aid in 2015, it is not surprising at all that volunteers felt left alone with to deal with their insecurities, overwhelming challenges and frustrations, and did not know whom to turn to. from 2016 onwards, critical opinions regarding refugees began to grow. some newspaper articles portrayed them as a danger to the societal order (weltonline2). for example, focus online ran the headline “no ‘multikulti’: klöckner calls for sanctions against immigrants unwilling to integrate” on 23 may, 2016.6 meanwhile, more awareness was given to the stresses and strains taking their toll on volunteers. in the spring of 2016, for example, more and more money was being spent nationwide on training programmes for volunteers. a corresponding programme valued at 3.5 million euros was set up by the federal offi ce for migration and refugees in autumn 2015 (bundesregierung 2015). a staff member of the berlin refugee council said that the council members, as well as charities, political associations of selforganised migrants, and the municipal administration were all developing different types of support for volunteers. whereas in braunschweig training for volunteers was offered mainly by church providers, welfare organisations and the municipality, in berlin this was also done by people with experience of working with refugees (e.g. at glokal. e.v.). they focused in particular on making volunteers more aware of the impact of societal and/or colonial power relations in aid. in braunschweig, on the 6 “‘kein ‚multikulti‘: klöckner fordert sanktionen gegen integrationsunwillige“. • kim bräuer398 other hand, there was hardly any public discussion about good aid from a powercritical perspective. even though volunteers in both cities were aware of the growing number of voices that were critical of migration, they did not seem to adopt these judgements of refugees. in fact, volunteers were now less likely to perceive refugees through media narratives. on the contrary, they seem to have related more and more to their individual experiences. for instance, a retired teacher who took on some organisational tasks in a welcome initiative in braunschweig and also personally supported refugees, explained that she would feel “terribly upset” if the refugees she took care of were “picked up by the police in a cloak-and-dagger operation”. she said the bamf “literally put a gun to the refugees’ heads” and she expressed great pity for them, regardless of the countries to which they were deported. however, she felt frustrated by the fact of not being able to do anything to stop the deportations. at the same time, as fi nancial and professional support from the federal government and the municipality or the city increased, volunteers adapted more in line with communal or municipal guiding concepts of good help. volunteers identifying themselves as apolitical seem to have adapted their aid and their perception of refugees. this is shown, for example, by interviewees following the idea of “active integration” and demanding that recipients of aid “make an effort to integrate” themselves. some volunteers were reported to have been irritated because a small number of refugees made barely any effort to improve their living situation. others were angry about the lack of commitment among individual refugees. for example, a volunteer from a church community in braunschweig said the following about a refugee from kosovo: “although the boy was only 16, he always came too late. sometimes he didn’t even show up for our appointments [...] and then he hadn’t done his assignments. it reached the point where it really annoyed me. [...] he didn’t appreciate the opportunities germany offered him. [...] you can’t just take things for granted, if you want to live in germany, you have to do something for it.” on the one hand, this early period (2015/2016) was characterised by a very comprehensive and positively praising welcoming discourse which motivated citizens to help refugees. on the other hand, it is synonymous with a largely unorganised emergency aid operation in which refugees did not seem to feel very welcome. 4.2 second period: ending 2016, 2017 and 2018: the polarisation of the welcoming society towards the end of 2016 and throughout 2017 and 2018, the welcoming discourse was clearly more polarised than before. newspapers increasingly reported a negative social atmosphere with regard to refugees: weltonline (1), for example, reported “welcoming culture in germany is on the wane”, “the majority of the population five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 399 is in favour of refugees returning home at some point”,7 while the headline in the berliner morgenpost on the 31th of december 2016, “how new year’s eve in cologne changed the country. new year’s day was a black day for refugee policy. the half-life of the welcoming culture was short”.8 attacks on refugee shelters and media statements critical of migration were rapidly increasing (akpinar/wagner 2019: 320; beckmann et al. 2017: 2). in addition to the integration narrative, reports on regulated deportation, state security through anchor centres,9 and forced removal to safe countries of origin or third countries were gaining ground during this period (prantl 2018; schuler 2018). one political stakeholder, namely the former spd chairwoman andrea nahles, told the passauer neue presse on 26 may 2018 that “anyone who needs protection is welcome. but we cannot take everyone in”.10 this serves as evidence of the fact that views regarding refugees who deserved help and those who should be denied help vary in germany. very good organisational structures were now emerging in both cities. a braunschweig-based organiser, who also accompanied young refugees voluntarily, reported that new offers of voluntary aid did not address many refugees who had just arrived or those who were in material need, but instead focused on social and societal opportunities for refugees to evolve. for example, there was a social entrepreneurship venture in berlin which aimed to contribute to “cross-border encounters and exchange as equals”,11 and which brought together teams for labour market integration and addressed refugees as individuals with their own. however, new demands were placed on volunteers when it came to aid that both pursued long-term integration and aimed to create a lasting relationship between refugees and volunteers. while needs were met in terms of clothing donations, food distribution or welcoming refugees at train stations at short notice, the new form of refugee aid was much more time-intensive and required a considerable level of personal engagement. in the interviews conducted during this period, volunteers repeatedly expressed their disappointment and anger about how refugee aid was seldom portrayed in a positive light in the media. a full-time employee of a welfare organisation, who also volunteered in braunschweig to match up tandem couples, believed that there had been a “polarisation within society” due to the media’s portrayal of refugees and voluntary refugee aid. the statement of another interviewee from braunschweig, who ran an association full-time while simultaneously volunteering in a welcome 7 “die willkommenskultur in deutschland nimmt ab”, “eine mehrheit der bevölkerung ist dafür, dass die flüchtlinge irgendwann in die heimat zurückkehren”. 8 “wie die silvesternacht von köln das land veränderte. neujahr war ein schwarzer tag für die flüchtlingspolitik. die halbwertszeit der willkommenskultur war kurz”. 9 anchor centres (german: ankerzentren) are accommodation centres specifi cally for asylum seekers. the german term stands for arrival (ankunft), decision (entscheidung), repatriation (rückführung). refugees are to be housed in an anchor centre until they are either assigned to a municipality or deported. 10 “wer schutz braucht ist willkommen. aber wir können nicht alle bei uns aufnehmen“. 11 “zu grenzübergreifender begegnung und austausch auf augenhöhe“. • kim bräuer400 initiative, demonstrated how this perceived polarisation affected her. she said: “i am sometimes afraid, not so much for myself, but more for the younger volunteers and the aid recipients here [...] we have received threatening phone calls here [...] i was insulted on the street during an event with refugees. that was really extreme and the last time we were here we had a swastika painted on the outside.” while no volunteers from berlin reported having been criticised for their commitment to refugees in their social environment, the experience of volunteers from braunschweig seemed to have been altogether different. moreover, they reported that their friends and acquaintances had become more and more critical of their work helping refugees. a volunteer from a church congregation in braunschweig even said that she wasn’t sure “[...] whether all this [her work for refugees] still makes sense”. it seems as if volunteers who weren’t driven by political motives to become active in refugee aid became demotivated and uncertain in the face of increasing criticism coming from their immediate social surroundings and the fall in positive media coverage of refugee aid. overall, the willingness to help waned considerably in 2017, especially among volunteers from community-based welcoming initiatives. more than half of the interviewed volunteers withdrew into their private sphere. most of the volunteers were from braunschweig. in the interviews, the refugees never referred directly to the german media but only to experiences that they or their acquaintances had had. some of the refugees who arrived in germany in 2015 felt that many germans were afraid of them and did not want them to stay in germany. a doctor who had fl ed syria, for example, told me: “it was sometimes really tough. when i was in town... people looked at me as if they were afraid of me [...] i know there was this incident in cologne on new year’s eve. i believe that many people in germany think all arab-looking people are like the ones in cologne.” whereas many of the refugees who were interviewed expressed the desire to interact with the local population in order to “arrive properly”, they experienced rejection. braunschweig in particular suffered from a lack of volunteers. refugees whom i interviewed seemed to have found themselves in an ambivalent position. although many had improved their language skills in recent years and had a recognised legal status, some of them felt rejected. the following three factors might explain the sharp decline in civil aid on behalf of refugees. first, many volunteers reported that their motivation to become involved had been diminished by the increasing degree of negative representation of refugees in the media and the resulting decline in the importance of volunteering in society. second, the pressure many volunteers felt – such as having to justify their engagement to people in their social environment – appeared to have put a strain on their relationships with the refugees. these two factors suggest that the emotional perceptions of the volunteers were shaped by the welcoming discourse and by their social environment. third, many neighbourhoods’ welcoming initiatives disappeared and volunteers ended their activities; they no longer saw any need for their help and didn’t want to provide aid where it wasn’t needed. this happened in particular to volunteers who had not been involved in voluntary refugee aid before 2015 and who started their engagement for humanistic rather than political reasons. some had the feeling that they were no longer doing something relevant and good five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 401 for society. this may also have been due to how aid was organised at the local level. the spirit of equality gained more and more importance and aid programmes became increasingly fl exible. they were supposed to be offered to people with a range of issues and no longer mainly for refugees. in this way, some refugee volunteering transformed in such a way as to blur the roles of those helping and those receiving help. the second period thus reveals how the emotional perceptions of volunteers are partly affected by media coverage and organisational transformation. however, it also shows that the everyday reactions of individuals’ (personal) social environment shape the perceptions both of the volunteers’ and the recipients of refugee aid. 4.3 third period: 2019 and 2020: on the waning welcoming discourse and refugees as individuals with potential despite this period seeing historically unprecedented levels of displacement worldwide (united nations high commissioner for refugees 2020), there was signifi cantly less reporting on refugees and hardly any reporting on voluntary refugee aid in the german media compared with 2015 (fengler/kreutler 2020: 28f., 38). the welcoming culture was now only very rarely addressed and, if so, mostly from a critical perspective. the narrative, which was focused on helping refugees, thus lost much of its impact. while regular reports on european refugee policy and the situation in refugee camps in southern europe continued up to the start of the coronavirus pandemic in february 2020, these topics have received little attention since then. meanwhile, the subject of refugee aid in germany disappeared from the media almost completely. the few articles dealing with voluntary refugee aid published in 2020 often took stock of fi ve years of refugee policy (beisel et al. on 09.03.2020; schiltz on 03.03.2020). for example, the correspondent riegert wrote: “germany is trying to pass on the ‘refugee issue’ to others and is meanwhile proceeding according to the principle of ‘deterring and defending’” (riegert on 03.03.2020) and a headline in focus online (2020) read: ‘dead end’ instead of ‘we can do it!’ europe is sealing itself off”. voluntary refugee aid had declined sharply in quantitative terms as many of the interviewed volunteers from berlin and braunschweig were no longer involved in aid. moreover, many publicly funded projects were terminated, either because the funding ran out or because there was no more demand for them. on the whole, this period showed a deep structural change in which the organisation of voluntary refugee work was decreasing. providing material support for refugees hardly played a role anymore. from 2019, diversity and equal opportunities were addressed on a progressive basis. while these issues had already been the subject of political debate in berlin prior to 2015, now they were increasingly playing a role in voluntary aid in braunschweig. rather than explicit refugee aid, the focus lay on helping socially disadvantaged people. volunteers were supposed to become “opportunity • kim bräuer402 mentors”12 for the refugee they were accompanying and were to contribute to that person’s participation in society. tandem programmes were set up in both cities at universities or football clubs, to encourage refugees and locals to come together. their aim was to create sustainable communities. the new programmes referred to volunteers as locals, which shows that the aid character took a back seat to the goal of promoting community spirit. as part of the focus on a diverse and accepting society, addressing refugees as volunteers who have something to give to society became the focus of attention. this is how the braunschweig volunteer agency addressed refugees as potential volunteers. in berlin, there are some very dynamic and highly professional social entrepreneurship ventures supporting locals and refugees in developing ideas for civil society aid together. they used activating rhetoric such as: “at the end of the programme, you will have set up something unique together: your own encounter project”,13 and thus emphasised their view of refugees as people with their own skills. the small number of volunteers in the sample who were still active in the third period no longer referred directly to the media coverage. however, some seemed to have drawn a conclusion just as the focus article cited above. for example, a volunteer language teacher from berlin mentioned how the “euphoria” she once experienced in her politically oriented aid initiative had now passed and what a pity that was. furthermore, she reported compassionately about a friend with a refugee background whom she had met in one of her language courses: “he lives without any member of his family in berlin… i have the impression that he is struggling badly […] he tried to take his own life with pills. i don’t know how i can help him… i have taken him to the psychiatric ward and am helping him with his appeal against his deportation […] it frustrates me to see how our society treats him badly”. these statements suggest how the everyday challenges of accompanying a refugee in long-term integration fostered emotional perceptions ranging from compassion to extreme anger and impatience. different volunteers from both berlin and braunschweig now described the refugees, whom they had fi rst met as aid recipients, as friends. one volunteer from berlin even said that she was now in a permanent relationship with a refugee she had met while helping in a mass shelter. only rarely were their emotional descriptions “refugee-specifi c”. it is therefore not surprising at all that the volunteers hardly ever referred to the media, as the media now rarely reported on refugee aid. in addition, the volunteers who were still active in the third period had themselves an individual, differentiated, and hugely valuable experience to draw on in their emotional interpretations. it is also noticeable that, especially in politically motivated refugee aid in berlin, attention continued to be drawn to refugees as victims of structural inequalities. they also pointed to the poor living conditions of refugees in shared 12 chancenpat*innen". 13 “durchstarten mit volunteer rockets”, “am ende des programms habt ihr gemeinsam etwas einzigartiges auf die beine gestellt: euer eigenes begegnungsprojekt” (see: the project’s homepage). five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 403 group accommodation and their unequal treatment, e.g. during the coronavirus pandemic, when refugees from shared group accommodation facilities were often obliged to live in forced quarantine (e.g. women in exile, e.v.). overall, the volunteers had a signifi cantly more varied impression of themselves and of the refugee aid recipients than before. in braunschweig, there was no comparable discussion about how the covid-19 pandemic could ostracise refugees. among the refugees who were still taking part in voluntary aid, two different groups seemed to have emerged. some were very grateful and happy to live in germany and emphasised in the interviews just how grateful they were for the help they received. in the interviews, they demonstrated the efforts they were making to integrate into society. for instance, an engineering student who had fl ed afghanistan in 2016 described how he tried to be “just as hard-working as the germans”. another refugee from berlin said that she felt a lot of “female solidarity” in her friendship with a female volunteer. while some expressed their joy, gratitude and satisfaction, others were disappointed by how their lives had developed. moreover, they found their life in germany to be stressful and perceived volunteers as not really being able to help them with many of their problems. the refugee interviewees i would assign to this group expressed their wish to fi nd a decent job or described their disappointment at not having found their own fl at even after years. in fact, one refugee from congo now living in berlin said that he did not feel safe in germany because he was afraid of racist attacks. the 2019-2020 period points to the fact that, besides the local organisation, the welcoming discourse and the experiences in voluntary refugee aid, another factor that increasingly shaped perceptions and emotional interpretations was the intensity of the individual relationships between recipients of refugee aid and volunteers. the assumption that can be drawn in this case is that the less the media reports on voluntary refugee aid and refugees, the more signifi cant their own experiences become for refugees and volunteers. in addition, the programmatic broadening of refugee aid to also encompass people with a range of diffi culties, and the addressing of refugees as volunteers, also seems to inhibit aid-specifi c emotional modes of perception. figure 1 summarises my explanations and illustrates characteristics of the three periods. the individual boxes contain some typical examples of titles by politicians. the grey clouds represent the dominant discourse discussed both in the media and at the level of the local organisation. the blue graph shows, in simplifi ed form, both the increase and decrease in the importance of three issues which have concerned local refugee aid in both cities. 5 discussion analysing the data, it became clear that the media coverage of refugees and voluntary refugee aid between 2015 and 2020 changed from conveying an overwhelming sense of welcome euphoria to articles that were few in number and somewhat critical in nature. overall, the welcoming discourse failed to suffi ciently represent • kim bräuer404 the different circumstances of refugees and instead defi ned many norms that they would need to follow in order to integrate well. many articles in the second period also represented refugees in an exclusionary manner, depicting them as a potential threat to the local population. in both cities, local organising has evolved from a rather disorderly emergency response. even though refugee aid has broadened in scope opened up in these two cities and new services also address other people in need of help, berlin in particular has seen the development of community-based aid projects to address refugees as providers of skills to support a caring community. although voluntary refugee aid in berlin is more diverse in nature and the parties involved have a greater degree of experience, the aid in braunschweig was more thoroughly organised by the municipal authorities. compared with the capital, hardly any refugees or migrants in braunschweig have helped to shape the urban discourse. the differences between the interviewees cannot therefore be attributed solely to the two cities or their organisation of refugee aid. instead, it turns out that among experienced volunteers and volunteers with anti-racist or anti-colonial views, their perceptions, interpretations or the representation of their feelings relate less to the welcoming discourse than is the case for those volunteers who consider themselves apolitical and help primarily out of humanistic values. the latter group were motivated to take action by the “we can do it” narrative, a synthesis of welfare state invocation and individual attitudes to life. they interpret the suffering of refugees portrayed in the media in a way which displays affective compassion and accountability. however, they feel unsettled when the positive coverage diminishes. nevertheless, it seems that as fi rst-hand experience of voluntary refugee aid increases, the relevance of the welcoming discourse and local organisation wanes for these volunteers. their social environment increasingly criticises the commitment and dedication they show to refugees, which is presumably why the volunteers also relate more affectively to the critical reporting than others. this shows how relevant fig. 1: the welcoming discourse and voluntary refugee aid in three periods welcoming culture what is good help? 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 from emergency aid to qualified volunteering polarisation of the welcoming society waning welcoming discourse 31.08.15: merkel: “we can do it” 23.05.16: klöckner: “no multikulti”, “sanctions against unwilling refugees” 31.12.16: berliner morgenpost: “black day for refugees” 26.05.18: nahles: “we cannot take them all” emergency help integration diversity and equal opportunities 05.03.2020: focusonline: "'dead end' instead of 'we can do it!' europe is closing itself off" refugees as individuals with potential source: own design five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 405 the micro-social affective dynamics mentioned at the beginning of the article are. thus, volunteers and aid recipients both refer to the feelings they experience in their individual aid relationships. the interview sample shows that these volunteers are more likely to be found in berlin than in braunschweig, which can presumably be attributed to the fact that a broad range of refugee aid and civil society debates on refugee and migration policy were already underway there prior to 2015. it can therefore be assumed that emotional expressions of the welcoming discourse make a particular impression both on inexperienced and humanistically oriented volunteers and have fostered certain emotional modes of perception among them, while politically motivated and/or experienced volunteers were less emotionally receptive to the welcoming discourse. what also emerged from the interviews is that at the start of their lives in germany, many of the refugees who were interviewed were not able to follow german news coverage on their own. at the same time, there was hardly any reporting that was contributed by the refugees themselves. the recipients of refugee aid became aware of the german media coverage only gradually. in the interviews, for example, they linked their personal experiences in the fi rst few months with their feeling of not having felt welcome in germany at fi rst. these fi ndings indicate that although – or precisely because – the refugees have little knowledge of german welcoming discourse when they fi rst arrive in germany, they are brought into butler’s subject positions by volunteers who have taken these positions from the discourse. some refugees interpret their life situation as very positive and feel satisfi ed while others are rather negative. but i am unable to identify a systematic distinction based on the cities in which they are involved in refugee aid. however, it is much more noticeable that refugees who were already politically active before they fl ed and who fl ed because of political persecution are more likely to express themselves with more negative emotions. it remains open at this point how much their emotional perceptions are shaped by traumatic experiences during their fl ight, or by their experiences in their home country. contrary to the initial assumptions, it seems that the intensity and quality of the aid relationship also infl uences how volunteers and refugees relate to the welcoming discourse. in the interviews, volunteers and refugees whose aid relationship has evolved into a friendship hardly ever refer to the welcoming discourse and have emancipated themselves from organised aid. they hardly use any refugee-specifi c or aid-specifi c interpretations of their relationship. once again, it becomes clear just how important mühlhoff’s consideration on the environment of reciprocal dynamics of affects is in order to sociologically understand the developments both of voluntary refugee aid and aid relationships. my explanations have shown that media coverage has by no means shaped the emotional perceptions of volunteers and refugee aid recipients as effectively as assumed. thus, the results indicate that the way in which volunteers and aid recipients perceive voluntary refugee aid (and themselves as part of it) only partly depends on whether they themselves feel represented in the welcoming discourse or whether they feel accepted by their social environment. on the one hand, these • kim bräuer406 fi ndings emphasise the possibilities of resistance to subjectifi cation as elaborated by butler. on the other hand, they demonstrate mühlhoff’s emotional and /or affective aspects of the subjectifi cation process. looking at the three consecutive periods in the development of refugee aid, this article sketches a diachronic picture of the welcoming discourse. this should not obscure the fact that some processes in these periods partly overlap and were perceived differently by both volunteers and refugees, and that discursive representations can still have an emotional effect even if they have already been replaced in the welcoming discourse by others. the fact that there are organisational structures and modes of subjectifi cation among volunteers and refugees that display a certain level of persistence in defying any discursive change has not yet been addressed either. thus, further research should be used to identify cross-city types of volunteers and refugee aid recipients who differ in their affective relationship with the welcoming discourse or organisation of aid. 6 conclusions this article has shown that different volunteers and refugee aid recipients relate to the welcoming discourse and local organisation in their emotional expressions and affective perceptions to different degrees. furthermore, it shows that the relationship with the discourse changes with ongoing involvement in or withdrawal from voluntary refugee assistance. in addition, the emotional perceptions of volunteers and refugees are shaped by the openly expressed lack of understanding of their social environment. affective imprinting can therefore be problematic because it contributes to the huge emotional gap between the volunteers’ ideas and their feelings in light of what they have experienced through helping. the emotionalising modes of representation through the welcoming discourse pave the way for affective ways of perceiving refugees as people in need of help, with whom volunteers can have fun or from whose potential german society can benefi t. in the process, the precarious situation of those unable to live up to these images is in danger of being pushed to the background. this is fatal because there are reasons why refugees need help that reduce their ability to correspond to these representations. refugee aid misses its target if the only people to benefi t are those to whom the provision of support is a source of pleasure for the volunteers and if it does not reach those people who, due to a lack of resources, tend to behave in a way that is diffi cult to understand (such as appearing lazy). the emotionally charged media praise of volunteering and the idea conveyed in the welcoming discourse that voluntary help is fun, which attracted some citizens to civil society engagement, do not provide a steady basis for voluntary refugee aid because (emotional) modes of perception are fl uid and the desire to help can quickly subside. the one-sided termination of aid relationships threatens to perpetuate the feeling of helplessness among aid recipients. five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany • 407 acknowledgements for their very constructive comments on previous versions of this article, i would like to thank the two reviewers and my colleagues flora brzosa, christian ebner, mareike grund, stefan gründler, nicole holzhauser, katrin stache and dana tholen. references akpinar, leyla; wagner, constantin 2019: die darstellung von flucht und migration in der deutschen presse (2015). in: arslan, emre; bozay, kemal (eds.): symbolische ordnung und flüchtlingsbewegungen in der einwanderungsgesellschaft. wiesbaden: springer vs: 299-323. alazar, timly; kleinekathöfer, edith; tietje, ilka 2014: flüchtlinge durch mentor/inn/en unterstützen! in: gag, maren; 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and (b) different types of residential mobility by migrants’ previous place of residence: “intrametropolitan” movements (between urban cores and peripheries), migration fl ows between the fi ve urban areas and the rest of spain, and international migration. results show that intrametropolitan migration fl ows between the fi ve urban cores and their peripheries were characterised by suburbanisation during the expansion phase. these fl ows were particularly relevant for spanish-born persons and, among foreign-born migrants, for people born in the americas (mainly latin americans). these fl ows to the suburban periphery decreased during the economic crisis, and in 2013 and 2014 net intrametropolitan migration of most foreign groups was characterised by recentralisation. spaniards’ intrametropolitan movements almost reached equilibrium during the recession years: natives decreased their moves from cores to rings, while they were increasingly attracted to urban centres. owing to the incipient economic recovery, suburbanisation is progressively recovering its previous strength. as for other types of residential moves, foreign-born migrants moving from abroad and the rest of spain to the fi ve fuas during the economic expansion phase reversed the direction of their fl ows in the economic crisis years, migrating abroad or dispersing throughout spain in search of jobs. consequently, their stocks declined in some years. currently, due to the incipient comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 317-350 (date of release: 21.04.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-09en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana318 economic recovery, the fi ve fuas are attracting internal and international foreignborn immigrants once again, so their foreign-born population stocks are increasing in both cores and peripheries. spaniards show the opposite behaviour regarding fl ows to and from the fi ve areas analysed – they tended to disperse throughout the rest of spain during the economic expansion phase. this trend continued during the crisis years, but at a slower pace, as natives became increasingly attracted to urban cores. furthermore, this latter trend has strengthened during the post-crisis years. finally, considering foreign-born and spanish populations together, large urban areas are increasingly attractive. this global tendency is to the detriment of rural areas and of non-metropolitan small and medium size towns, which lose population due to negative net migration. keywords: residential mobility · migration · population change · urban areas · spain 1 introduction according to ravenstein’s (1885) infl uential paper the laws of migration, most migrations are economically driven. ravenstein described “a universal shifting or displacement of the population, which produces ‘currents of migration’ setting in the direction of the great centres of commerce and industry which absorb the migrants” (fi rst law;1 ravenstein 1885: 198). today, large urban areas continue to be main poles of attraction for immigrants. most 19th century migrants settling in english cities and towns with vibrant economies made short-distance moves (fi rst law; ravenstein 1885: 198), although others migrated from further places (second2 and fi fth laws;3 ravenstein 1885: 199). currently, metropolises also receive immigrants from nearby municipalities, from the rest of the region or the country, or from abroad. these infl ows make cities 1 this fi rst law continues: “in forming an estimate of this displacement we must take into account the number of natives of each county which furnishes the migrants, as also the population of the towns or districts which absorb them” (ravenstein 1885: 198). according to greenwood (2019: 272), this statement, and the previous reference to distance, clearly contains elements of the gravity law of migration. similarly, ravenstein’s implicit attribution of rural-to-urban migrations to differences in economic opportunities can be interpreted as a reference to "pull" and "push" factors (greenwood 2019: 272). 2 “the inhabitants of the country immediately surrounding a town of rapid growth, fl ock into it; the gaps thus left in the rural population are fi lled up by migrants from more remote districts, until the attractive force of one of our rapidly growing cities makes its infl uence felt, step by step, to the most remote corner of the kingdom” (ravenstein 1885: 199). 3 “migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centres of commerce or industry” (ravenstein 1885: 199). population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 319 grow, decreasing the share of natives and increasing that of immigrants.4 at the same time, other migrants leave these large urban areas, some of them returning to their places of origin, creating counter-fl ows as ravenstein hypothesized in his third5 and fourth laws6 (ravenstein 1885: 199). these inand out-fl ows to or from the metropolitan areas fl uctuate, now as in ravenstein’s times, mainly for economic reasons. this infl uence on residential moves, causing positive or negative net migration, is exerted either directly through the labour market, or indirectly, through the real estate market. therefore, migrations should be very sensitive to changes in the economic cycle. taking this hypothesis based on ravenstein’s thoughts as a starting point, this paper’s aim is twofold. first, it intends to analyse how the different economic phases that spain has undergone in the fi rst two decades of the 21st century (expansion, recession, and recovery) have infl uenced internal and international migrations of both native and immigrant (born abroad) populations in the fi ve largest spanish metropolitan areas: barcelona, bilbao, madrid, seville and valencia (fig. 1). second, the paper aims to study the role of migration as a driver of population change in the core cities and the peripheries of these fi ve urban areas. ravenstein used census data by county of residence and county of birth along with vital statistics records and data on country of birth, to study lifetime placeto-place migration and the net balance of migration (greenwood 2019: 272). the present paper uses stock and fl ow information from ine (the spanish national statistical institute) to carry out the analysis. first, residential change statistics (estadística de variaciones residenciales or evr) fl ow data between 2005 and 2016 are used to describe migratory fl ows (residential changes) from, to, and within the functional urban areas. in addition, the continuous municipal population register or padrón continuo7 provides population stocks on january 1 every year from 2005 to 2016, permitting the calculation of annual growth fi gures. all these data are used to analyse differences between: (a) diverse groups of foreigners, by continental origin, comparing them to natives; and (b) different types of residential mobility according to migrants’ previous place of residence. residential mobility is classifi ed as intrametropolitan (moves between urban cores and peripheries of the fi ve met4 in ravenstein’s words: “there are towns which, either on account of their size or rapid growth, absorb so considerable a number of migrants, that the resources in men of the country immediately surrounding them are not able to supply their wants. in towns like these the native county element, owing to the infl ow of strangers, sinks below what it is in the surrounding country” (ravenstein 1885: 205). 5 “the process of dispersion is the inverse of that of the absorption, and exhibits similar features” (ravenstein 1885: 199). 6 “each main current of migration produces a compensating counter-current” (ravenstein 1885: 199). 7 all the residents of a municipality, including foreigners, have the right and the duty to register with the local padrón, independent of their legal situation. most illegal immigrants do register, as this gives them access to public health and education systems. regarding evr, this database collects changes in the padrón, that is to say, residential moves between spanish municipalities. as for fl ows between spanish municipalities and abroad, they are also included, though the quality of these data is lower. • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana320 ropolitan areas), migration fl ows between the fi ve urban areas and the rest of spain, and international migration. the latter analysis mirrors ravenstein’s 1885 paper, distinguishing the "native county element" from the "border element" (residents of a county who were born in neighbouring counties), to differentiate between shortdistance and long-distance migrants (greenwood 2019). the fi ve metropolitan areas analysed are delimited following the functional urban area (fuas) criteria established by eurostat’s urban audit european database (fig. 1).8 each fua consists of a city or core and its commuting zone or periphery.9 fig. 1: boundaries of the fi ve analysed functional urban areas source: indicadores urbanos, spanish national statistics institute (ine), based on eurostat’s fua defi nition 8 see defi nitions of spatial units used by urban audit at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/cities/spatial-units 9 more specifi cally, functional urban areas consist of a densely inhabited city and a less densely populated commuting zone whose labour market is highly integrated with the city. in other words, a sum of local territorial units (municipalities in the spanish case) in which a signifi cant part of the resident employed population works in the city that gives name to the fua. thus, a municipality belongs to the fua of a certain city if at least 15 percent of its working population commutes to that city for work. however, municipalities under 2,000 inhabitants may also be included according to the following criteria. those with 1,000-2,000 inhabitants are incorporated if 25 percent of those employed commute to the city that gives name to the fua; for those with 500-1,000 inhabitants, the threshold is 35 percent; for those with100-500 it is 45 percent; and, fi nally, for municipalities under 100 inhabitants, the threshold is 50 percent. the percentage of commuters is the main criterion, but there are also others, such as contiguity (eurostat 2017). population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 321 according to the defi nition of functional urban area used in the article, the madrid fua comprises 137 municipalities, while that of barcelona is made up of 129. in madrid, there are 6.5 million people living in the whole fua, 3.2 million of which reside in the core city and the rest in the periphery. the barcelona fua has 4.9 million inhabitants, 1.6 million of which reside in the core and the rest in ring municipalities. the other three areas analysed are smaller and have fewer residents both in the whole fua and in the cores: valencia (1.6 and 0.79 million residents, respectively), seville (1.4 and 0.69 million), and bilbao (1.021 and 0.345 million). in total, 15.5 million people, approximately a third of the spanish population, live in these fi ve fuas. madrid, barcelona and valencia are the most dynamic fuas, and most foreign-born immigrants settled there in the economic boom years. seville and bilbao received fewer born-abroad immigrants during that period. however, while bilbao is situated at the centre of an industrial area which absorbed the impact of the economic crisis somewhat better, seville has a less dynamic economy and has found it harder to recover from the economic recession. this paper also offers further relevant results by differentiating cores and peripheries. we show how migratory fl ows contribute to population concentration (urbanisation) and deconcentration (suburbanisation, counter-urbanisation) in metropolitan areas. we compare intensity and timing differences between native, foreign-born and total population growth, in the fi ve areas analysed. finally, we show differences in internal and international migration patterns between native-born and foreign-born migrant groups, and their responses to economic cycles in the fi rst two decades of the 21st century. these analyses build on recent research undertaken by the authors and their research group. previous results show an increasing population growth and age structure divergence within spanish urban regions since the end of the 20th century. this has caused population growth and rejuvenation in some areas and demographic decline and ageing in others (thiers-quintana/gil-alonso 2019; gil-alonso et al. 2018). the paper is organised as follows. after the introduction, the paper includes a background section, covering the economic context, the theoretical framework, and a literature review. then, the main section, results, describes research outcomes for fl ows and stocks. finally, the conclusions highlight the most relevant fi ndings, situating these contributions within the broader contexts of our current research project – the impact of these residential changes on metropolitan spatial diversifi cation – and links our 21st century analysis to ravenstein’s ideas from the 19th century. 2 background during the strong economic growth period that spain underwent from the end of the 1990s to 2008, millions of jobs were created, with annual employment growth rates of around 4 percent until the third quarter of 2007 (fig. 2). these new jobs, mainly in the construction and services sectors, attracted millions of foreign immigrants, particularly in the early 21st century. therefore, the number of foreign • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana322 employed people, totalling less than half a million in the year 2000, was more than 2 million in 2005 and reached a maximum of 3 million in 2008, according to spanish labour force survey data (fig. 3). the annual infl ow of foreigners from abroad increased from about 300,000 in 2000 to more than 900,000 in 2007 (fig. 4) and the number of foreign-born persons residing in spain peaked at more than 6.5 million (fig. 5), that is to say, around 14 percent of spain’s population, in 2012. the great recession, the global economic crisis that began in 2007, originally affecting only the fi nancial sector, reached spain in 2008, where the "real estate bubble" burst. its consequences – many housing developments remained unfi nished, thousands of workers were laid off – were later felt by other economic sectors, such as industry. therefore, annual employment growth rates quickly became negative (fig. 2), the number of foreigners with a job decreased by half a million in just two years (fig. 3), and the number of unemployed foreigners increased from about 400,000 in 2007 to 1.2 million in late 2010. after the spanish economy slowly recovered from the 2008-2009 global fi nancial crisis in 2010 and quarter 1 of 2011, a monetary debt crisis, lasting from 2011 to 2013, began. it particularly affected southern european countries and led to the implementation of eu adjustment policies, which had an important impact on consumption, the service sector, and public employment (fig. 2). consequently, the number of foreigners in employment in spain fell by nearly 900,000 between quarter 2 in 2011 and quarter 1 in 2014 (fig. 3). hence, since 2008, and because of the fallfig. 2: annual employment growth rates (%), spain, 2005-2016, quarterly data -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 20 05 q 1 20 05 q 3 20 06 q 1 20 06 q 3 20 07 q 1 20 07 q 3 20 08 q 1 20 08 q 3 20 09 q 1 20 09 q 3 20 10 q 1 20 10 q 3 20 11 q 1 20 11 q 3 20 12 q 1 20 12 q 3 20 13 q 1 20 13 q 3 20 14 q 1 20 14 q 3 20 15 q 1 20 15 q 3 20 16 q 1 20 16 q 3 in percent source: spanish labour force survey (epa), spanish national statistics institute (ine) population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 323 ing employment demand, foreign immigrant entries have been rapidly decreasing (fig. 4) and exits increasing, either to return to their countries of origin or to move to a third one. even if foreigners’ emigration fl ows are underreported by spanish sources (gil-alonso 2010), they show that international net migration became negative (fig. 4) and foreign-born population stocks decreased (fig. 5) in some years. however, this reduction of foreign-born population stocks has not been as strong as could be expected given the intensity of the economic crisis. most foreigners remained in spain. in fact, the population of those born in africa and especially asia increased. europeans (bayona/gil-alonso 2016) and latin americans (bayona et al. 2017; quintero-lesmes 2016; prieto/lópez-gay 2015) are the only groups of immigrants that left in large numbers because of the recession (fig. 6). moreover, as a result of another change in the economic cycle since 2014 (fig. 2), international net migration has become positive once more (fig. 4) and the foreign-born population is currently increasing again – particularly that of latin american origin (thiersquintana/gil-alonso 2019). why were there no strong return movements, given the intensity of economic recession? this common feature of european and united states fl ows (castles 2009, 2011; castles/miller 2010) could have several causes. these include the fear of not being able to return if they leave due to increasing migratory controls, and poor labour prospects in their countries of origin. return fl ows could be driven more strongly by economic, political, and social changes in the countries of origin, and fig. 3: employed foreigners in the spanish labour market (in millions), 20022016, quarterly data 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 20 05 q 1 20 05 q 3 20 06 q 1 20 06 q 3 20 07 q 1 20 07 q 3 20 08 q 1 20 08 q 3 20 09 q 1 20 09 q 3 20 10 q 1 20 10 q 3 20 11 q 1 20 11 q 3 20 12 q 1 20 12 q 3 20 13 q 1 20 13 q 3 20 14 q 1 20 14 q 3 20 15 q 1 20 15 q 3 20 16 q 1 20 16 q 3 in millions source: spanish labour force survey (epa), spanish national statistics institute (ine) • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana324 the capacity to circulate between countries, than by the economic situation in the receiving society (papademetriou/terrazas 2009).10 other authors (fielding 2010; awad 2009; fix et al. 2009; castles 2011) have formulated other hypotheses focusing on labour market characteristics in host countries to explain why, in the current phase of post-fordist capitalism, migrants do not return in large numbers. this research suggests a "new immigration model" (king et al. 1997) that requires migrants to fi ll low wage and unstable jobs. most migrant workers are "gap fi llers". that is, they do jobs locals cannot or will no longer do fig. 4: foreign immigrant annual entries, exits, and net migration growth, spain, 2005-2016 -200,000 0 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 1,000,000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year entries exists net growth in units source: residential variation statistics (evr), spanish national statistics institute (ine) 10 therefore, many immigrants prefer to resist the effects of the economic crisis in the receiving country, even if it implies facing strong material deprivation, in the hope that a future economic recovery will generate new jobs. only when the economic situation has substantially improved in their countries of origin, or when migrants are guaranteed future re-emigration, they return in signifi cant numbers (for example, poles who migrated to britain and ireland). if this is not the case, returning is a less popular option (ratha et al. 2009). as examples in spain or the czech republic show, incentives for unemployed immigrants to return have generally not achieved this objective. those who do return are typically immigrants whom host countries would have liked to retain. in other words, they are workers with enough training, skills, prospects, and secure legal status to allow them to once again return to the receiving country when the labour market improves again. population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 325 (abella/ducanes 2009). they are overrepresented in less-regulated sectors such as construction, intensive agriculture, low value-added manufacturing, restaurants, tourism and leisure, domestic service, and the care of elderly and dependant people. however, working in precarious jobs may have allowed foreign immigrants to adjust faster and better than native workers to the novel and changing labour market conditions introduced by the economic crisis, as they may be more willing to take more precarious jobs and to change residence for work-related reasons (fielding 2010).11 fig. 5: foreign and foreign-born population stocks (in millions) in spain on january 1st, 1998-2016 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 year foreigners foreign born 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 in millions source: padrón continuo (continuous municipal population register), spanish national statistics institute (ine) 11 fielding (2010) uses this approach to explain why east asian and southern european countries (highly dual labour markets, with low and high productivity sectors) received so many foreign immigrants until 2008, and why few migrants returned. according to fielding, the growing differences in the type of jobs of local and immigrant workers would play in favour of the latter during economic recession, when jobs become scarce and precarious. fielding and other authors (castles 2011; ghosh 2009; dobson et al. 2009) claim that this argument contradicts the widely accepted buffer theory. the buffer theory proposes that foreign migrants provide labour to host countries during economic expansion and reduce the impact of labour market crisis, by being the fi rst workers fi red, forcing them to return to their origin counties. fielding (2010) claims that the buffer theory, in which migrant workers feel the strongest impact of the economic crisis, could have been true in the former fordist economy, but seems to be less valid in the current neo-liberal capitalist context. • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana326 the large number of migrant entries between 1998 and 2007 not only had a spatial impact on large urban regions and their main settlement areas (bayona/gilalonso 2012), but also on the rest of the country, including rural areas (bayona/ gil-alonso 2013). indeed, immigrants usually migrated from municipalities where they fi rst settled to other areas of the country. they either joined “intrametropolitan" residential mobility fl ows (changes of residence within the same urban area), "intraprovincial" ones (internal migration12 from the province’s urban area to other municipalities of the same province) or "interprovincial" ones (between different province municipalities). fig. 6: foreign-born population stocks by place of birth (in millions). spain, 1998, 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2016 0.0·106 0.5·106 1.0·106 1.5·106 2.0·106 2.5·106 3.0·106 1998 2003 2008 2013 2016 year former european union (eu 15) other european african american asian 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 in millions source: padrón continuo (continuous municipal population register), spanish national statistics institute (ine) 12 this paper uses "residential mobility" and "change of residence" as a synonym of "migration" and more specifi cally, of "internal migration" (residential moves within the borders of a country). however, some authors (for example, palomares-linares et al. 2017) distinguish between "residential mobility" and "migration": the fi rst concept would refer to changes of residence that do not imply a signifi cant change of living space. this is equivalent to "intrametropolitan migration" – which takes place within a metropolitan/urban area/region (concepts which will also be used here as synonyms and equivalent to eurostat’s fua). the second concept, "migration" would imply that migrants do change their living space – in such cases, "migration" can be internal or international. population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 327 these migration fl ows are not random – they follow intensity, direction, and concentration or dispersion patterns which numerous researchers have intended to conceptualise in recent decades. the literature shows, for instance, that foreign immigrants tend to have high internal migration rates compared to the population as a whole. as observed in spain (bayona/gil-alonso 2016; gil-alonso et al. 2015; recaño/de miguel 2012), their sociodemographic characteristics (younger, on average, than natives and living in different family structures than them) and the fact that they tend to change residence more easily than locals, particularly in the period just after their arrival (bélanger 1993; newbold 1996; rogers/henning 1999; zorlu/ latten 2009), create low labour and residential stability. from a geographical point of view, their internal migration patterns are also different from those of the native population, because they change residence more frequently for labour-related reasons (musterd 2005). researchers agree that internal migration shapes human settlement patterns (rees et al. 2017). however, there is disagreement on the spatial and social consequences of foreign migrant settlement patterns. concepts such as concentration versus dispersion, and segregation versus assimilation, have generated much theoretical debate in recent decades, and foreign immigrant’s settlement patterns have even been used to measure their level of integration in the host society (musterd 2003).13 for instance, the spatial assimilation theory (massey/denton 1985) argues that foreign-born immigrants disperse throughout the receiving country from their initial settlement location – where immigrants of certain nationalities or ethnic groups concentrate – towards other areas in which they are less present. as immigrants progress socioeconomically and strengthen their ties with the host society, they increasingly avoid living in ethnic concentrations. this theory has been confronted by others. the segmented assimilation theory (portes/zhou 1993) sustains that different groups of immigrants can integrate in different ways and at different rhythms in the host country. furthermore, the ethnic enclave theory suggests that certain immigrants – including socioeconomically successful ones – may prefer to remain in (or migrate to) areas with high proportions of immigrants, where they obtain benefi ts from existing social networks (damm 2009). in short, the theoretical background, a priori, could justify both dispersion dynamics (involving both the suburbanisation of foreign immigrants14 and their internal net migration from metropolitan areas to the rest of the country) and concentration 13 similarly, some research projects on vulnerable neighbourhoods have considered high percentages of certain groups of foreigners as an indicator of vulnerability (nel·lo et al. 2014). 14 studies by bayona/lópez-gay (2011) and bayona/gil-alonso (2012) on the metropolitan region of barcelona, by pozo-rivera/rodríguez-moya (2018) on the community of madrid, and by pujadas et al. (2015), which also includes the cases of valencia and seville, show that internal migration of foreign immigrants has played a particularly relevant role in deconcentration processes from core cities to peripheries. analyses focusing on the mobility patterns of certain nationalities, such as romanians and bulgarians (viruela 2016), latin americans (gil-alonso et al. 2012), or moroccans (pumares 2005; capote 2012), show that asians and africans have the highest internal mobility rates, while europeans – especially western european eu citizens – have low rates similar to those of spaniards, the least mobile population. • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana328 dynamics (implying urban recentralisation). in addition, the theoretical framework could also explain why different geographical origin groups have opposite trends. focusing now on large spanish urban areas, the literature shows that no ghettos (areas where a single ethnic origin group dominates) emerged in spain during the intense migratory growth years. however, large metropolises do have concentration spaces (sabater et al. 2013) or areas in which the proportion of immigrants is above the metropolitan average. given that the tendency to segregation is not uniform (galeano et al. 2014), certain immigrant groups have created these areas more readily than others have. asians and africans, and to a lesser extent western europeans, have the greatest tendency towards concentration (sabater et al. 2012). by contrast, latin americans have the greatest tendency towards dispersion and, consequently, the least towards segregation (gil-alonso et al. 2012). however, research – especially spanish – has given less attention to how economic crises have affected internal migration, particularly that of foreign immigrants. recaño and cabré (2003) identifi ed two effects of regressive economic cycles on internal migrations: the reduction of interregional fl ow intensity, which is consistent with what courgeau (1985) indicated, and the emergence of regional differences depending on the economic cycle. certain regions that attracted immigrants during the expansion phase subsequently pushed them back in the economic crisis years, and vice versa. based on the existing literature, our hypothesis for this paper is that migration fl ows of natives and immigrants vary when economic circumstances change (expansion, crisis, and recovery phases). this can be observed at different spatial scales, i.e. moves between urban cores and peripheries, between urban areas and the rest of spain, and between the fuas and abroad, affecting each of the migrant group’s concentration and dispersion trends. we consider that changes in population stocks and migration fl ows deserve to be analysed in greater depth and in greater spatial detail, because settlement patterns have multiple relevant implications. as the extensive international literature has shown, some of the most important implications are: the creation and consolidation of migratory networks; immigrant labour, social and cultural integration; growing and shrinking cities; changes in household and population structures; spatial segregation and social polarisation dynamics, and the design and implementation of public policies.15 3 results (i): migration fl ow changes data from the residential variation statistics (evr) are used to describe net migration (the difference between infl ows and outfl ows) by continental origin in the fi ve 15 see, for instance, bélanger (1993), frey (1996), newbold (1996), rogers/henning (1999), borjas (2006), zorlu/latten (2009), kabish/haase (2011), randolph/tice (2014), rérat (2012), sharkey (2012), tyrrell/kraftl (2015), bonvalet et al. (2016); musterd et al. (2016), bailey/minton (2018), hochstenbach/musterd (2017), florida (2017), clark (2017), vale/malheiros (2017), wolff (2018), wolff/wiechmann (2018), smith (2019), or azpitarte et al. (2019), among others. population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 329 fuas under study. net migration is analysed at three different geographical levels, i.e. movements between urban cores and peripheries, those to and from the fi ve fuas to the rest of spain, and fi nally, those between the fuas and abroad. the commonalities and specifi cities of these urban areas will be introduced in the following. 3.1 internal net migration between core cities and periphery municipalities of the fi ve fuas the fi ve core cities lose spanish-born inhabitants moving towards their peripheries (fig. 7). in other words, suburbanisation predominates among spaniards throughout the analysed period (2005-2016). nevertheless, suburbanisation starts to decrease in 2007 because of the economic crisis, reaches its minimum in 2015, and picks up again slightly the following year. initially, suburbanisation is also dominant among foreign migrants, particularly among those born in the americas (fig. 7), who are overwhelmingly latin americans and will be called “(latin) americans” in the following. these fl ows towards fig. 7: net migration between the fi ve fua urban cores and their peripheries (intrametropolitan fl ows) by place of birth, 2005-2016 -70,000 -60,000 -50,000 -40,000 -30,000 -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total net migration flows in units note: negative intrametropolitan net migration growth means that suburbanisation is predominant while positive net migration growth indicates that recentralisation is more signifi cant. net migration fl ows in units, i.e., -20,000 means that, in 2011, twenty thousand net migrants born in spain moved from cores to peripheries (same for fi gures 8 to 11). source: residential variation statistics (ine) • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana330 peripheries slow down, again as a result of the economic crisis. (latin) americans even end up initiating a recentralisation process in 2013 and 2014. nevertheless, from 2015 onwards, as the economy improves, suburbanisation also recovers. 3.2 internal net migration between each of the fi ve fuas and the rest of spain in the following paragraphs, the analysis will focus on internal migration fl ows between these fi ve metropolises and municipalities located in the rest of spain. initially, the paper will examine moves from and to the fi ve core cities (fig. 8, top graph) and then fl ows to and from peripheries (fig. 8, bottom graph). the economic crisis is also a turning point for internal net migration between the fi ve cities and municipalities outside their metropolitan areas. however, it changes in the opposite sense to intrametropolitan moves. indeed, in the case of people born abroad, net migration between the fi ve core cities and the rest of spain is initially positive. in other words, there is an initial concentration phase. then, from 2012 to 2014, fl ows become slightly negative, beginning a dispersion period. migrants probably move in search of mainly low-skilled jobs in other parts of spain less affected by the recession. the only immigrant group that is not affected are asians. their internal net migration is positive throughout the entire period analysed (fig. 8, top graph). by contrast, (latin) american and european fl ows have the strongest fl uctuations caused by economic changes. finally, since 2015, immigrant fl ows between core cities and the rest of spain have once again become positive, indicating that foreigners are concentrating once more. in the case of spaniards, internal net migration between urban cores and the rest of spain is initially negative. therefore, natives have a fi rst dispersion phase similar to suburbanisation, but at longer distances. then, because of the economic crisis, fl ows start to change. in 2009, the internal net migration of the spanish-born reaches equilibrium and, from 2011 onwards, it becomes increasingly positive. in other words, driven by economic recession, spaniards, especially high-skilled ones (gonzález-leonardo et al. 2019), begin to concentrate in large cities, possibly because their labour markets are larger and more diverse, offer more skilled jobs, and have lower unemployment levels than mediumand small-sized towns. surprisingly, the current economic recovery does not seem to affect these fl ows, as natives continue to concentrate in large cities and have not initiated a new dispersion phase. fig. 8 (bottom graph) shows internal net migration between metropolitan peripheries and the rest of spain. immigrants follow similar patterns to those formerly observed in cores. initially, metropolitan peripheries attract foreign immigrants but then, during the 2012-2014 deepest economic crisis phase, internal net migration becomes negative (dispersion). once again, asians are the only exception. more recently, since 2015, foreigners from the rest of spain are once more being attracted by the suburban municipalities of the fi ve fuas. yet, in the case of spanish people, net migration between these peripheries and the rest of spain is initially negative. dispersion then diminishes because of the economic crisis, indicating that metropolitan peripheries become increasingly atpopulation and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 331 fig. 8: net migration between the fi ve fua urban cores and the rest of spain (top) and between the metropolitan peripheries and the rest of spain (bottom) by place of birth, 2005-2016 -0,40·105 -0,20·105 0,00·105 0,20·105 0,40·105 0,60·105 0,80·105 1,00·105 1,20·105 1,40·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year -0,60·105 -0,40·105 -0,20·105 0,00·105 0,20·105 0,40·105 0,60·105 0,80·105 1,00·105 1,20·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total -40,000 -20,000 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 -60,000 -40,000 -20,000 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 net migration flows in units net migration flows in units note: positive internal net migration growth means that population concentration is predominant in large urban areas while negative net migration growth indicates the opposite, that is to say, that population tends to disperse throughout the rest of spain. source: residential variation statistics (ine) • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana332 tractive. nonetheless, unlike for the fi ve core cities, in this occasion, net migration is always negative. 3.3 international net migration between the fi ve fuas and abroad figure 9 shows international net migration between the fi ve core cities and other countries (top graph) and between the fi ve rings and abroad (bottom graph). both patterns are very similar, therefore we analyse them together. once again, people born in spain and those born abroad behave differently. economic expansion attracts foreign-born immigrants to large cities, and subsequently their international net migration becomes extremely positive. however, that of natives becomes progressively negative, despite being initially balanced. not only does the emigration of spaniards continue during the economic crisis years, but certain foreign-born groups such as (latin) americans and europeans (excluding those born in spain) also shift to net emigration. because of the economic crisis, both groups of migrants would be either returning to their countries of origin or moving to third countries. by contrast, international net migration of africans and asians is always positive throughout the entire period analysed. in other words, people from these regions of origin are always attracted to the large spanish urban areas, even during the deepest recession years, and they do not return in large numbers to their countries of origin. finally, from 2015 onwards, because of the economic recovery, international net migration of all foreign-born groups has become positive once again. that of natives remains negative, though less. figure 10 summarises net migration between the fi ve fuas (urban cores and peripheries together) and other areas, adding up fl ows from and to the rest of spain and those from and to other countries. at fi rst glance, it can be observed that total net migration of spanish-born nationals between the fi ve fuas analysed and other areas (the rest of spain and abroad) is always negative, though this population loss becomes less pronounced over time. in 2016, it is almost 10 times smaller than in 2006. it should also be recalled that, despite large cities tending to attract native people from the rest of spain, net fl ows with other countries are still negative. foreigners’ migrant behaviour is strongly conditioned by economic cycles. indeed, during the economic expansion phase, total net migration between the fi ve fuas and other areas outside them is positive – large metropolitan areas tend to attract foreign immigrants. it then becomes negative during the economic crisis (particularly between 2012 and 2014), as foreigners are inclined to leave large urban areas and migrate abroad or to the rest of spain in search of work. however, from 2015 onwards, because of economic recovery, total net migration turns positive once more. fluctuations of (latin) american fl ows are particularly noteworthy as the origin group with the most signifi cant positive total net migration during economic growth phases, and the most relevant negative net-fl ow in recession periods. at the other end of the spectrum, asians are the only other exception to foreigners’ general mobility patterns as their total net migration remains positive throughout the period analysed. they are permanently attracted to spain’s large metropolitan areas. population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 333 fig. 9: net migration between the fi ve fua urban cores and abroad (top) and between the fi ve fua metropolitan peripheries and abroad (bottom), by place of birth, 2005-2016 -0,60·105 -0,40·105 -0,20·105 0,00·105 0,20·105 0,40·105 0,60·105 0,80·105 1,00·105 1,20·105 1,40·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year -60,000 -40,000 -20,000 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 -0,40·105 -0,20·105 0,00·105 0,20·105 0,40·105 0,60·105 0,80·105 1,00·105 1,20·105 1,40·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year -40,000 -20,000 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total net migration flows in units net migration flows in units note: positive international net migration growth means that there are more infl ows to large urban areas from abroad than outfl ows from large urban areas to abroad. negative international net migration growth indicates the opposite. source: residential variation statistics (ine) • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana334 in sum, 2012, 2013, and 2014 are the only years in which total net migration is negative, in the fi ve fuas. before 2011 and after 2015, positive migration growth from the rest of spain and abroad contributes to their population growth. nevertheless, foreigners leaving spain are underreported (gil-alonso 2010). therefore, positive net migratory growth is probably somewhat lower in economic expansion years, and negative net growth higher during crisis years. 3.4 specifi c features of each of the fi ve fuas figure 11 shows the total net migration between each of the fi ve fuas and rest of spain and abroad, allowing for the analysis of each fua’s particularities. in general, they all show similar mobility patterns, though some differences are worth spelling out: fig. 10: net migration between the fi ve fuas (urban cores and peripheries together) and other areas (the rest of spain and abroad), by place of birth, 2005-2016 -2·105 -1·105 0·105 1·105 2·105 3·105 4·105 5·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total -200,000 -100,000 0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 net migration flows in units note: positive total net migration growth means that there are more infl ows to large urban areas from the rest of spain and abroad than outfl ows from large urban areas to the rest of spain and abroad. negative net migration growth indicates the opposite. source: residential variation statistics (ine) population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 335 fig. 11: net migration between each of the fi ve fuas (urban cores and peripheries together) and the rest of spain and abroad, by place of birth, 2005-2016 -0,40·105 -0,20·105 0,00·105 0,20·105 0,40·105 0,60·105 0,80·105 1,00·105 1,20·105 1,40·105 1,60·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year -40,000 -20,000 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 barcelona fua bilbao fua -6,000 -4,000 -2,000 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total net migration flows in units net migration flows in units • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana336 fig. 11: continuation -1,0·105 -0,5·105 0,0·105 0,5·105 1,0·105 1,5·105 2,0·105 2,5·105 3,0·105 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year -100,000 -50,000 0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 madrid fua seville fua -5,000 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total net migration flows in units net migration flows in units population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 337 • barcelona fua: the foreign groups least affected by the economic crisis are asians and europeans. by contrast, (latin) americans were the most affected. however, in 2015-2016, (latin) americans’ total net migration was again strongly positive. for natives, total net migration is always negative. • bilbao fua stands out for its extremely negative total net migration among spaniards. however, it is slowly approaching equilibrium. once again, the group most affected by the economic crisis are (latin) americans, though it is also true that bilbao is the city in which the economic recession has had less dramatic effects, as 2013 is the only year in which total net migration of foreigners is clearly negative. • madrid fua: as opposed to bilbao, madrid is the fua in which total net migration of spanish-born nationals is less negative. in fact, it is the only fua in which total net migration of natives has been positive since 2015. as in barcelona fua, the total net migration of foreigners also recovered after the economic crisis, though not as signifi cantly. • seville fua seems to show some delay with respect to the other four. though the effects of the economic crisis are already visible in 2009 and 2010 in barcelona, madrid and valencia, they do not feature in seville until 2012. in addition, until 2016 seville fua shows little signs of economic recovery. it also stands out for being the only fua in which total net migration of spaniards is positive until 2010; then, it becomes clearly negative. fig. 11: continuation -2·104 -1·104 0·104 1·104 2·104 3·104 4·104 5·104 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 year rest of europe africa america asia, oceania & other territories spain total -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 50,000 60,000 valencia fua net migration flows in units source: residential variation statistics (ine) • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana338 • valencia fua is where the economic crisis lasts longest, affecting fl ows between 2009 and 2013 – valencia and its region was particularly hit when the "housing bubble" burst. recovery starts to be visible in 2014; net migration fl ows grow faster than in seville, but more slowly than in the other three functional urban areas. 4 results (ii): population stock changes as mentioned above, the continuous municipal population register or padrón – which indicates each municipality’s offi cial population on january 1st of each year – has been used as a main data source to analyse stock changes during the 20052016 period both for natives and people born abroad. population stock changes not only incorporate variations due to migration but also those due to natural changes (the balance of births minus deaths). nevertheless, in recent years, the fi ve urban areas analysed – and their respective core cities16 – show minimal natural inand decreases. consequently, population stock changes depend almost exclusively on migratory fl ows – this is particularly true in the case of foreign-born people – and, therefore, growth is very sensitive to economic cycle fl uctuations. indeed, padrón data show that the fi ve main spanish fuas gained population during the economic boom years, but that the economic recession changed this trend. initially, all the fi ve fuas continued to grow, though at a lower rate. in 2012, four started to lose population. barcelona and valencia decreased until 2014, madrid until 2015, and bilbao until 2016. seville is the only exception, as its population remained stable during the years under examination. population fi gures started to recover in 2015 and 2016, with the exception of bilbao, which still had slight negative growth in 2016. if only cores are analysed, the fi ve main cities’ populations decreased during the crisis period, losing inhabitants between 2009 and 2014 in barcelona, until 2015 in valencia, and until 2016 in bilbao. the same occurred in madrid, but from 2010 to 2015, and until 2016 in seville. in other words, in 2016 the cities of barcelona, madrid and valencia were growing once again, while bilbao and seville were not. peripheral municipalities also show changes throughout the period analysed. in madrid and seville fuas, they have not stopped growing, though their population has increased less rapidly since 2010 due to the economic crisis. urban fringe areas in valencia slightly shrank in 2012 and 2013, as did those of barcelona in 2013 and 2014. the only exception is bilbao fua, as its peripheral municipalities lost population since 2013 and have not recovered it since. 4.1 total population stocks in the fi ve fuas in order to capture the impact of economic phases on population growth, we have calculated cumulative annual growth rates for the fi ve fuas under study (fig. 12). 16 for instance, in 2016 the cities of barcelona, bilbao, madrid, seville and valencia show a natural growth of -1554, -1287, 2353, 428, and -686 inhabitants, respectively. population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 339 fig. 12: core city and periphery population changes by place of birth, 20052016: cumulative annual growth rates (cagr) barcelona fua core city -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 periphery bilbao fua core city -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 periphery madrid fua core city -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 periphery in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana340 the rates are divided into three periods, that is to say, from 1st january 2005 to 1st january 2010 (the economic boom), from 1st january 2010 to 1st january 2013 (the deep economic crisis) and from 1st january 2013 to 1st january 2016 (the economic recovery). core cities and peripheries are analysed separately, highlighting the differences between spanish and foreign-born populations (fig. 12). 4.2 the spanish population in the fi ve fuas the fi ve core cities lose spanish-born inhabitants throughout the period analysed, though to a lesser extent during the economic crisis years than in the economic boom years. in other words, recession slowed down spanish-born population loss in the fi ve fuas. furthermore, according to available data, madrid is the only city fig. 12: continuation seville fua core city -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 periphery valencia fua core city -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 -5 0 5 10 15 20 cagr 2005-2010 cagr 2010-2014 cagr 2014-2016 periphery in percent in percent in percent in percent source: padrón continuo (continuous municipal population register) population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 341 that does not lose spanish-born population in the last period analysed – as we have explained, it has both positive internal net migration and positive natural growth. the results for peripheral municipalities are different. four of the fi ve suburban areas gained spanish-born population throughout all periods under study. however, the economic recession had a deep impact on them, largely reducing their growth. the only exception is the bilbao fua, as the spanish population of its suburban municipalities decreased in both the expansion and crisis phases. as a whole (taking cores and rings together), the fi ve fuas show similarities. indeed, four of them gained natives throughout the periods analysed, the exception being bilbao, as its population born in spain constantly decreases. 4.3 population born abroad (by continental origin) in the fi ve fuas during the economic boom years, the foreign-born population increased in both core cities and peripheries in all metropolitan areas examined. asians were the only foreign group that grew consistently, even during the economic crisis period. the other four immigrant groups were, to a greater or lesser extent, affected by economic changes. in this sense, (latin) americans and europeans were the hardest hit, as their numbers decreased during the recession phase. africans in the bilbao fua and europeans in the core cities of barcelona and valencia also show a distinctive behaviour. in the fi rst case, they grew during the entire economic crisis period, and in the latter, they increased from 2014 onwards. 5 discussion and conclusions research results show that suburbanisation (more people moving from cores to rings than vice versa) was the predominant "intrametropolitan" migration fl ow between the fi ve urban cores and their peripheries during the economic expansion phase. this phenomenon was particularly important for natives and for people born in the americas (mainly latin americans). in general, foreign migrant suburbanisation trends are in line with the spatial assimilation theory (massey/denton 1985). however, the fact that suburbanisation intensity is not homogeneous throughout all the groups analysed – africans even tended to increase their segregation levels over time (bayona/lópez-gay 2011) – would instead validate the segmented assimilation theory (portes/zhou 1993). these fl ows to the suburban periphery decreased during the economic crisis, and in 2013 and 2014, net intrametropolitan migration of most foreign groups – latin americans in particular – even became positive (i.e. more recentralisation than suburbanisation). spaniards’ intrametropolitan fl ows were never positive, but they almost reached equilibrium during the recession years – natives decreased their moves from cores to rings, while they were increasingly attracted to urban centres. several elements might explain why core cities lost less and gained more spanish-born and foreign-born residents during the economic crisis. large housing developments in suburban towns stopped being built when the real estate bubble • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana342 burst and banks restricted new mortgages. while access to property ownership became increasingly diffi cult, urban cores became more attractive. they have larger rental housing stocks, more and the best-paying jobs, and better public transport networks, which implies that commuting costs are lower in dense cities than in the periphery. all these factors – and not the ethnic enclave theory (damm 2009) – would in our opinion explain why recentralisation, rather than non-suburbanisation, seems to have been a more logical option for both natives and immigrants during economic recession. owing to the economic recovery from 2015 onwards, intrametropolitan migration fl ows have become negative once again and suburbanisation is progressively returning to its previous levels. if this trend consolidates (as 2017 and 2018 data seem to confi rm), the relative recentralisation during the deepest economic recession years will have basically been a cyclical (or punctual) event. as for other types of residential moves, foreign-born immigrants moving from abroad and the rest of spain to the fi ve fuas during the economic expansion phase inverted the direction of their fl ows in the economic crisis years, migrating abroad or dispersing throughout spain in search of jobs. consequently, their stocks reduced during some years – the only exceptions being europeans in barcelona and asians in all fi ve areas. finally, due to the incipient economic recovery, the fi ve fua are now attracting immigrants once again, so their foreign-born population stocks are currently increasing in both cores and peripheries. spanish-born people show the opposite behaviour regarding fl ows from and to the fi ve areas analysed. they tended to disperse throughout the rest of spain during the economic expansion phase, therefore showing negative internal net migration rates. this negative trend continued during the crisis years, but at a slower pace, as natives became increasingly attracted to urban cores. furthermore, this latter trend has strengthened during the post-crisis years. two cases stand out. first, the city of madrid is the main destination of young native migrants (gonzález-leonardo et al. 2019) and is the only area analysed in which internal net migration of spaniards is currently positive. second, seville fua shows the opposite tendency. in other words, seville fua mostly attracted spanish people during the expansion phase, but spanish-born internal net growth is clearly negative in the crisis and post-crisis stages. considering foreign-born and spanish populations together, large urban areas are increasingly attractive. this global tendency is to the detriment of rural areas and of non-metropolitan small and medium size towns, which lose population because of negative internal net migration. out-migration of (mainly skilled) young people who move to large cities in search of greater educational and employment opportunities is particularly problematic. finally, the fi ve fuas lose spanish-born inhabitants emigrating abroad during the entire period studied, though in comparison to deepest economic recession years, this negative international net migration is currently receding. obviously, these general results contain interesting differences between the diverse geographical origin groups of immigrants, and between the fi ve urban areas analysed. latin american fl ows and stocks have been affected the most by econompopulation and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 343 ic changes: large numbers of these migrants move to or leave spain’s urban areas depending on whether the economic situation is expansive or recessive, respectively. their easy access to spanish citizenship can probably explain their labour and migratory fl exibility.17 therefore, latin american fl ows would, using massey’s (1988) words, “serve as a buffer” for current economic processes. european immigrants – many of them eu citizens – show similar, though less marked, patterns. meanwhile, african fl ows and stocks show the opposite migratory behaviour – they try to remain in spain’s metropolises and their emigration fl ows are never too large, not even during hard times. finally, asian fl ows and stocks are constantly growing, regardless of the period analysed –expansion, crisis or post-crisis – and are the least affected by economic cycles. despite similarities in the population dynamics of the fi ve fuas, certain differences should be pointed out. madrid fua stands out for attracting spaniards while bilbao’s spanish-born population has decreased most drastically. barcelona is particularly attractive for european migrants. the economic crisis started later in seville, which is the fua that currently shows the least signs of economic and population recovery. in addition to this late economic cycle, seville has less foreign population. these specifi cities could probably be explained by seville’s lower economic development in comparison to the other four urban areas. finally, valencia does not stand out in any respect and presents largely average values regarding migration fl ows. these results confi rm previous and recent fi ndings by our research group, underlining the role of migration in shaping present urban population structure and dynamics. indeed, they confi rm the relevance of both internal and international migrations in the rejuvenation of certain neighbourhoods such as the historical centres of the cities analysed (gil-alonso et al. 2018). these processes coincide with other phenomena such as gentrifi cation and "touristifi cation" (judd/fainstein 1999; florida 2002), increasing inequality, social polarisation and segregation (florida 2017), and the concentration of certain foreign groups in some parts of the city and the subsequent replacement of certain nationalities by others – though, as has been explained, there are hardly any ghettos in spain (sabater et al. 2013). interactions between all these phenomena show migration complexity and the diversity of its spatial consequences. moreover, low fertility and increased life expectancy diminish the relevance of natural growth and emphasise the growing importance of migration in the development of the populations of urban regions across spain and europe. however, there are differences according to migrants’ origin. migration fl ows by spanish-born people exhibit relatively low intensity and net effects, as most migration fl ows are balanced by counter-fl ows, resulting in limited 17 latin american immigrations and emigrations are facilitated by the spanish law, which favours the acquisition of spanish citizenship by nationals of spain’s ex-colonies. indeed, latin americans can acquire spanish citizenship much more easily (after two years of regular residence in spain) than other foreigners can. many latin americans have done so, as having spanish nationality favours their migratory movements, especially when the economic cycle changes. consequently, they can adapt more easily to economic circumstances. • fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana344 population redistribution and dynamic equilibrium. this phenomenon is typically observed in highly-developed countries (rees et al. 2017). by contrast, foreign-born migrants’ international and internal fl ows are the main factor currently redistributing spain’s urban population. the higher intensity and effectiveness of their mobility is conditioned by economic phases, which change the direction of the inand out-fl ows and the (positive or negative) sign of their net migration rates. indeed, in the dynamic equilibrium context broadly characterising the analysed urban areas, suburbanisation is the dominant process during economic expansion phases, while recentralisation gained more relative importance during the last crisis period – particularly among foreign-born immigrants, whereas suburbanisation of natives decreased in intensity. therefore, there are multiple causes of migration, but undoubtedly the economic ones are among the most relevant, at least in the case of the fi ve fuas analysed. although the emigration (from spain) of people born in other countries is underregistered, the data are solid enough to conclude that there have been strong changes in migrant stocks and fl ows in the fi ve largest spanish metropolises as a result of economic cycle fl uctuations. this corroborates the paper’s initial hypothesis – that migrations affecting large urban areas are mainly economically driven, either directly through the labour market, or indirectly, through the real estate market – and confi rms the validity of ravenstein’s ideas at the beginning of the 21st century. more specifi cally, migration changes in the last two decades broadly validate ravenstein’s fi rst, second, third and fourth laws. indeed, large urban areas remains migrants’ main attraction poles, and short-distance fl ows (suburbanisation, recentralisation) predominate. in general, migration fl ows still decrease with distance, although transport improvements or “facilities of communication” (ravenstein 1885: 199) can explain, among other factors, the current importance in spain of latin american inand out-fl ows. by contrast, it is currently not true that “the natives of towns are less migratory than those of the rural parts of the country” (sixth law; ravenstein 1885: 199), as a signifi cant part of migratory moves in developed countries now occurs between urban areas: the decreasing and aged population remaining in rural areas is generally less mobile than urbanites (greenwood 2019). finally, the seventh law, that “females are more migratory that males” (ravenstein 1885: 199), was not tested in this paper. however, literature demonstrates that, presently, women are predominant in the remaining rural-to-urban internal migration – at least in spain and other developed countries – and in some international fl ows, though not in others. in spain, for instance, immigration from latin america is predominantly female, whereas immigrants from african and most asian countries are mainly men. however, the present validity of ravenstein’s laws can be corroborated in general terms, demonstrating the precursory and even visionary character of his ideas. acknowledgements research for the present paper was conducted within two r+d projects. the fi rst, desigualdad social, polarización territorial y formación de espacios vulnerables en population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas • 345 las grandes áreas metropolitanas españolas (social inequality, territorial polarisation and formation of vulnerable spaces in the largest spanish metropolitan areas, ref. cso2015-65219-c2-1-r), was directed by dr. isabel pujadas and dr. fernando gil-alonso. the second, nuevas movilidades y reconfi guración sociorresidencial en la poscrisis: consecuencias socioeconómicas y demográfi cas en las áreas urbanas españolas (new mobilities and socio-residential reconfi guration in the postcrisis: socioeconomic and demographic consequences in spanish urban areas, ref. rti2018-095667-b-i00), is directed by dr. fernando gil-alonso and dr. cristina lópez. both projects are funded by the spanish ministry of science, innovation and universities, the spanish research agency and the european regional development fund (aei/erdf, eu). a very preliminary version of this research was presented at the xvi congreso de la población en españa (alicante, 2018). the authors, dr. fernando gil-alonso and dr. jenniffer thiers-quintana, belong to the territori, població i ciutadania (territory, population, and citizenship) research group of the university of barcelona, offi cially recognised by the catalan government (ref. grc_2017sgr1298). the authors are grateful for the comments received from phil 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ethnic sorting in the netherlands. in: urban studies 46,9: 1899-1923 [doi: 10.1177/0042098009106023]. date of submission: 30.08.2019 date of acceptance: 10.01.2020 prof. dr. fernando gil-alonso (), jenniffer thiers-quintana. department of geography, universitat de barcelona. barcelona, spain. e-mail: fgil@ub.edu, jkthiers@gmail.com url: http://www.ub.edu/grptc/index.php/ca/component/content/article/8membres/27-fernando-gil-alonso.html http://www.ub.edu/grptc/index.php/ca/component/content/article/8-membres/34jenniffer-thiers.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents: a case of self-selection? expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents: a case of self-selection? micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel abstract: in recent studies on the association between education and fertility, increased attention has been paid to the fi eld of study. women who studied in traditionally more “feminine” fi elds, like care, teaching, and health, were found to have their children earlier and to have more children than other women. a point of debate in this literature is on the causal direction of this relationship. does the fi eld of study change the attitudes towards family formation, or do young adults with stronger family-life attitudes self-select into educational fi elds that emphasize care, teaching, and health? or do both fi eld of study preferences and family-life attitudes arise before actual choices in these domains are made? we contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between fertility expectations and expected fi elds of study and occupation among 14-17 year-old adolescents. we use data collected in 2005 from 1500 dutch adolescents and structural equation modelling (sem) to examine the associations between expected fi eld of study and occupation and fertility expectations. our results show that expectations concerning fertility and fi eld of study are already interrelated during secondary education. both female and male adolescents who expect to pursue studies in fi elds that focus on care and social interaction (like health care, teaching etc.) are less likely to expect to remain childless. this holds equally for girls and boys. in addition, girls who more strongly aspire to an occupation in which communication skills are important also expect to have more children. we did not fi nd any relationship between expectations of pursuing a communicative fi eld of study and occupation and expectations of earlier parenthood. in addition, among boys, we fi nd that the greater their expectation of opting for an economics, a technical, or a communicative fi eld of study, the less likely they were to expect to remain childless. boys who expected to study in the economic fi eld also expect to have their fi rst child earlier, but boys expecting to pursue a technical course of studies expect to enter parenthood later. we also found that those who expect to pursue cultural studies are more likely to have a preference for no children, or if they do want children, to have them later in life. overall, our fi ndings suggest that the processes of elective affi nity between the communicative fi elds of study and work on the one hand and fertility on the other comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 85-106 (date of release: 21.08.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-11en2 • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel86 hand are more or less comparable for boys and girls. with respect to the other domains, we fi nd, apart from the gender differences in the relation between fi elds of study and childlessness, hardly or no gender differences in the expected timing of parenthood and the number of children. the genders do differ in their level of preference for communicative and economics-related fi elds of study and occupation, but if they do have the same preference, the association with fertility expectations is more or less similar. keywords: education · fertility · field of study · adolescent expectations 1 introduction educational attainment is generally viewed as one of the key factors explaining late and low fertility (blossfeld/huinink 1991; kohler et al. 2006; wood et al. 2014). in the past decade, the attention of research on the impact of education on fertility has shifted in some cases from the level of education to the educational fi eld. the fi eld of study chosen by young adults is thought to infl uence their future labour market options and thus their opportunities to combine employment and family life. women employed in sectors where it is relatively easy to combine employment and family life are likely to have more children and have them earlier than women employed in sectors where it is diffi cult to combine these roles. both country-specifi c (lappegard/rønsen 2005; hoem et al. 2006 a/b; begall/mills 2012; oppermann 2014) and comparative studies (van bavel 2010) have provided evidence for the existence of a relationship between educational and occupational fi elds and fertility behaviour. generally, these studies show earlier and higher fertility among women who have specialised in educational fi elds that prepare for traditionally “feminine” occupational domains, such as caring, teaching, and health than among women who have studied in another educational fi eld (e.g. bagavos 2010; lappegard 2002; begall/mills 2012; oppermann 2014; tesching 2012). two mechanisms have been proposed to explain the relationship between fi eld of study and fertility: fi eld-specifi c socialisation and self-selection. field-specifi c socialisation implies that enrolment in specifi c fi elds of study infl uences students’ family-related attitudes. with respect to fertility, educational fi elds that emphasize “female qualities” lead women to develop attitudes in favour of becoming a mother early in life and having relatively large numbers of children (van bavel 2010). selfselection assumes that girls who have strong preferences for family life would “selfselect” into fi elds of (tertiary) education that emphasize traditionally female qualities like care or teaching (hakim 2003). the key difference between those two explanations is that the fi eld-specifi c socialisation argument suggests a causal infl uence of the fi eld of education on subsequent fertility decisions, whereas according to the self-selection argument, the causal relationship is reversed, with fertility preferences shaping adolescents’ choices concerning the fi elds of education in which they want to study and the sectors in which they seek employment. a more nuanced verexpectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 87 sion of the self-selection argument is that preferences and choices in these two life domains develop in tandem and that there is no clear causal relationship between the two. therefore, both processes have been modelled simultaneously (hoem et al. 2006a/b; martín-garcía/baizán 2006; tesching 2012; lutz 2014). nevertheless, little is known about the potential role of self-selection as this would require data on fertility attitudes prior to enrolment in a specifi c fi eld of study (begall/mills 2012; oppermann 2014). data on expectations about prospective fi elds of study, occupation and fertility among adolescents would provide more information on whether expectations about educational and occupational fi elds on the one hand and fertility on the other hand are already aligned in adolescence, which can be regarded as indicative of self-selection processes. for this reason, we use data from adolescents (14-17 years old) to examine whether the association between expectations about future fi elds of study and occupation on the one hand and future fertility on the other is already present before choices have been made in these domains. therefore, the fi rst research question is how are adolescents’ expectations concerning fertility related to their expected fi elds of education and occupation? almost all studies on the association between fi eld of study and occupation and fertility, with the exception of martín-garcía (2009) and oppermann (2014), focus on women. martín-garcía (2009) found that, contrary to women, men who pursued health and care-related studies did not have a child at an earlier age than men who studied in other fi elds. opperman (2014) found no association between fi eld of study and fertility behaviour among men in germany. yet men also develop expectations about fertility and employment in adolescence and this relationship might differ from that of women. boys are also subject to gender socialisation and might develop different expectations of their role in family formation than girls (guetto/ panichella 2013). therefore, our second research question is to what extent do gender differences exist in the relationship between adolescents’ expectations concerning fertility and their expected fi elds of education and occupation? to answer our questions, we use data from more than 1,500 dutch adolescents aged 14 to 17 who were surveyed in 2005 on their plans for the future, life-course expectations and ambitions. the combination of information on future plans for fertility, education and occupation is unique. furthermore, these respondents, who were surveyed in 2005, are currently (2019) in the prime ages in which they actually make decisions on whether and when to have children, and if so, how many. 2 theory the emergence of females’ preferences concerning professional career and family life one reason to expect that expectations concerning fertility on the one hand and educational and occupational fi elds on the other hand develop early in life is that both sets of expectations are shaped by interactions during childhood and adolescence with family and friends (youniss/smollar 1985). • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel88 the family in which one is raised is viewed as the most important socialising institution which shapes an adolescent. many empirical studies have shown that parental education and occupation affect children’s fi eld of study via a process of intergenerational transmission. these studies fi nd that children’s fi eld of study strongly resembles the occupational fi eld of the parents (goyette 2008; van der werfhorst/luijkx 2010). another set of studies, drawing on cultural reproduction theory (bourdieu 1986), emphasize the role of more general preferences. bourdieu argued that the parental (cultural) environment is important in choosing a fi eld of study, since children’s choices refl ect standards and practices within the social “fi eld” in which one is raised. the parental home is also known to infl uence people’s fertility behaviour (thornton 1980). the similarity between parents’ and children’s fertility patterns is often explained by the transmission of values and preferences from parents to children (barber 2000). axinn et al. (1994) fi nd that parents’ fertility values and preferences to a certain extent infl uence their daughters’ fertility timing and quantum. other studies found evidence for observational learning. for instance, murphy and wang (2001) show that coming from a large family increases the likelihood of children having a large family themselves. based on these processes, expectations concerning both family and career can be assumed to crystallise during adolescence. however, at least two different arguments can be put forward which suggest that this crystallisation process leads to associations between specifi c types of educational and occupational expectations and specifi c types of fertility expectations. the fi rst argument for their interconnectedness is based on gender role theory (stockard 2006; risman/davis 2013), the second one on ideas about the development of personality and social orientation among adolescents (woods et al. 2016; tavares 2016). we will discuss both arguments in turn. stockard (2006) provides an overview of the different theoretical approaches in which socialisation processes lead to the development of gendered identities that infl uence how girls (and boys) refl ect upon their roles in key life domains relating to work and family. charles and bradley (2009) argue that the persistence of gender differences in the choice of educational and occupational fi elds is due to gender as a critical part of self-expression and identity, even in modern societies. however, the actual expression of the gender identity of girls may vary substantially, as is suggested in hakim’s “preference theory” (hakim 2000, 2003), that offers an explanation for the way women combine family life and employment in contemporary societies. hakim (2003) differentiates between three types of identity that are largely shaped during adolescence. first, some women consider family life and children to be their main priority and reduce their employment time to the minimum. a second category of women prioritises work over family life, and these women devote much of their life to work. the majority of women, however, try to balance work and family. hakim (2000) labels these women as adaptive because they have no prevailing preference orientation. if girls develop a preference for such an “adaptive” lifestyle during adolescence, it is likely that they will expect to combine having children and employment. this could lead to the development of an expectation to opt for fi elds expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 89 of education and fi elds of occupation that offer good opportunities for combining both roles. this will favour the development of expectations for studies in fi elds like care, health and teaching that can relatively easily be performed on a part-time basis.1 another explanation for the joint development of expectations concerning occupational and fertility goals in adolescence can be found in the literature on personality development. personality characteristics have been found to be related to fertility outcomes (jokela 2012; skirbekk/blekesaune 2014; tavares 2016), choice of educational fi eld (korpershoek et al. 2010), and occupational choices (wells et al. 2016; woods et al. 2016). a high score on agreeableness, for instance, is related to a higher propensity to have children (jokela 2012; tavares 2016, but not skirbekk/ blekesaune 2012), a low propensity to opt for educational tracks in science and economics (korpershoek et al. 2010) and a lower propensity to opt for managerialtype occupations (wells et al. 2016) and a higher propensity to opt for health care specialties that emphasize social interaction (woods et al. 2016). thus, adolescent girls who score high on agreeableness might be expected to be strongly oriented towards care and social interaction, and thus to be attracted both to caring for children and to fi elds of study and occupation in which care and social interaction are central. based on these theoretical ideas, we expect that, even in adolescence, expectations about the fi eld of study and occupation are related to fertility expectations. this implies that the association between expected fi eld of study and expected fertility is, at least partly, already present before entering tertiary education. the development of expectations in the fi elds of education and occupation on the one hand and in the fi eld of fertility on the other hand could be considered as intertwined, as it is not clear if adolescents opt for a fi eld of study because it accommodates their fertility preference or vice versa. therefore, we view their relationship during adolescence as essentially interdependent rather than causal, and formulate the following three hypotheses: h1a: the greater the preference among female adolescents for fi elds of study and occupation in care, teaching, and health, the less likely they are to expect to remain childless. h1b: the greater the preference among female adolescents for fi elds of study and occupation in care, teaching, and health, the earlier they expect to have children. h1c: the greater the preference among female adolescents for fi elds of study and occupation in care, teaching, and health, the more children they expect to have. to our knowledge, only one study has examined this relationship as yet (kanji/ hupka-brunner 2015). they analysed data of swiss female adolescents at age 16/17 1 in 2017 of all jobs in the netherlands, those in health care and teaching have a relatively low number of working hours [https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/cbs/nl/dataset/81433ned/ table?dl=12c3e, consulted october 18, 2018] • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel90 and at age 23. their results showed that a strong preference for children (which they termed “kinderwunsch” (p. 125)) at age 16 made it more likely for young women to enter highly gender-segregated occupations at age 23 than their female peers with a weak preference for children. women who had a strong preference for children and who were not in employment by the age of 23 were also more likely to be enrolled in fi elds of education which prepare for occupations with higher proportions of women. thus, their results clearly support the view that the association between fi eld of study and fertility develops early in life. however, kanji and hupka-brunner (2015) used rather crude measures of fertility preference and expected occupation. they asked adolescents if they expected having children to be very important in their future life, and asked for no further information on timing and quantum preferences. furthermore, information on fi elds of study and occupation was only ascertained at age 23. male preferences while most research on the association between fertility and fi eld of study has focused on women (exceptions: martín-garcia 2009; opperman 2014, 2017), we examine the relationship between expectations concerning fertility and fi eld of study among both female and male adolescents. are associations between expected fertility and expected fi eld of study and occupation different for male and female adolescents? two diametrically opposed points of view can be put forward. on the one hand, one could argue that, if personality and social orientation are important, boys and girls will show the same level of association. boys with an interest in caring for others and socialisation of the younger generation are more likely to choose to study in the fi eld of care, health and teaching. on the other hand, one could also argue that preferences for traditionally male occupations among male adolescents, such as in technical and analytical fi elds (davies/guppy 1997), are an expression of their male identity (charles/bradley 2009). these fi elds usually lead to jobs with a (higher) stable income and good job security which increase the prospects of men in the partner market (kalmijn 1998). in addition, male earning potential and fertility are often correlated within the traditional breadwinner model (pascall 2006). according to the patriarchal norm, the breadwinner is a male working outside the home to provide the family income. the breadwinner model suggests that male adolescents who prefer this model will combine a preference for traditionally male-dominated fi elds of study, like economics and technical studies, with a preference for earlier and higher fertility transitions. although we are not completely sure which of these lines of reasoning will apply, for the sake of argument we assume that the latter reasoning will be the stronger one, and therefore formulate the following hypotheses: h2a: the greater the preference among male adolescents for educational fi elds and occupations related to economics and technology, the lower their likelihood of expecting to remain childless. expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 91 h2b: the greater the preference among male adolescents for educational fi elds and occupations related to economics and technology, the earlier they expect to have children. h2c: the greater the preference among male adolescents for educational fi elds and occupations related to economics and technology, the more children they expect to have. 3 the dutch case our study is situated in the netherlands. the dutch system of secondary education is markedly stratifi ed. children are sorted at ages 12 and 13 into a number of vertically organised secondary education tracks, and there is relatively little movement between the tracks. first choices for specifi c fi elds of study have to be taken after two or three years in secondary education, leading to horizontal tracking of adolescents as well. the netherlands is an interesting setting for a study on the relationship between fertility and fi eld of study expectations in adolescents, as the reconciliation of employment and family life remains an important issue (lewis et al. 2008). on the one hand, the netherlands is a country with liberal gender attitudes and levels of female labour force participation and fertility that are close to the european average. on the other hand, most women work part-time, the timing of the fi rst birth is very late and the costs of formal child care provision are quite substantial. there is also a strong minority who feels that mothers should not work full-time if they have children under age 12 (liefbroer et al. 2015). thus, in the netherlands, if men and women want children, choosing fi elds of education and occupation that offer good opportunities for part-time work broadens their options for realising their fertility preferences. the opportunities for part-time work are particularly numerous in the public sector (including the health and care sector) and in the service sector (statistics netherlands 2019a). these factors make the dutch case interesting for examining the relationship between adolescents’ expectations regarding fi eld of study and occupation and their fertility expectations. 4 method 4.1 sample the data for this study were collected in 2005 (ganzeboom et al. 2005-2006) as part of the research project youth and culture (ganzeboom/nagel 1998-2002) which includes several studies on students in secondary education in the netherlands. the data were collected in 14 municipalities located throughout the netherlands. the selected municipalities include two major cities, eight medium-sized municipalities, and four small municipalities. within these municipalities, 69 schools were contacted, of which 60 were willing to participate in the research. all of the various levels • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel92 of education of dutch secondary education are represented in the sample. these levels are vmbo-b (lower vocational education), mavo/vmbo-t (lower general secondary education), havo (higher general secondary education) and vwo (preuniversity education). within each school, a sample was drawn from three classes of different level-grade combinations. this procedure resulted in 190 classes of which 148 actually participated in the project. the response rate was 87 percent at the school, and 78 percent at the class level. in each class, the students were asked to complete a survey during a regular lesson (45-50 min). as the data collection was part of a larger project, the classes were randomly divided into two: one half of the class was given a survey on future plans and cultural participation, the other half was asked to complete a survey on computer use. in the end, 1,544 secondary school students (49 percent males and 51 percent females) aged 14-17 (34 percent vmbo, 34 percent havo, 33 percent vwo) fi lled out the questionnaire about future life plans. selective non-response at the student level can be assumed to be limited, as questionnaires were fi lled out during class time and hardly any individuals refused to cooperate. 4.2 measurement instruments fertility measurements fertility expectations of adolescents were measured by asking whether they thought they were going to have children in the future, with possible answers yes or no. in our study, adolescents responding “no” are counted as expecting to remain childless. adolescents who responded “yes” were asked at what age they expected to have a fi rst child and how many children they expected to have. answers to these two questions were used as indicators for expected fertility timing and quantum. expected fi eld of study adolescents’ expectations with regard to their future fi eld of study were measured by asking: “if you are thinking about going into higher education, in which fi eld of study do you think that will be?” a list of thirteen fi elds of study were offered: (1) humanities, languages, history or theology, (2) social and behavioural studies, (3) art, (4) economics, commerce, business administration, (5) law and legal services, (6) teacher training or education, (7) medical, health services, nursing, (8) personal care services, (9) agriculture, (10) mathematics or science, (11) technical & engineering, (12) transport, and (13) public order and safety. the adolescents were asked to indicate the likelihood of each fi eld of study on a 4-point scale (1 = defi nitely not, 2 = probably not, 3 = probably, and 4 = defi nitely). based on these scores, we computed composite scores of preference for four general fi elds of study (cultural, economic, communicative and technical), using a classifi cation developed by van der werfhorst and kraaykamp (2001). various classifi cations are used in the literature on the relation between fi eld of study and fertility and on sex segregation within fi eld of study, but all differentiate between health and/or care, teaching and relational skills expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 93 and other fi elds of study (hoem et al. 2006a/b; charles/bradley 2009; barone 2011; morgan et al. 2013; michelmore/musick 2014). the classifi cation of van der werfhorst and kraaykamp (2001) focuses on the main type of occupation-related skills developed in a fi eld of study and is also used by begall and mills (2012), martingarcia and baizán (2006) and martin-garcia (2009). like these authors, we adjusted the original coding scheme by deeming a preference for becoming a teacher to be communicative rather than cultural. cultural fi elds of study comprise humanities, languages, history, theology, social and behavioural studies and art. economic fi elds of study comprise economics, commerce, business administration, law and legal services. communicative fi elds of study comprise teacher training, education, medical and health services, nursing and personal care. technical fi elds of study comprise agriculture, mathematics or science, technical and engineering, transport and public order and safety. this compressed educational fi eld categorisation gives a better view of which type of skills the adolescent wants/expects to develop in the future. a preference score for each of the four main fi elds of study was calculated by summing the scores of all the constituting specifi c fi elds of studies and dividing by the number of specifi c fi elds. descriptive information on the means and standard deviations for all four expected fi elds of study are presented in table 1. aspired fi eld of occupation to ascertain what kind of occupations adolescents aspired to, the following question was posed: “how much would you like to practise the following occupations?” respondents were presented with a list of 30 different occupations. answers were scored on a four-point scale: absolutely not, rather not, maybe and gladly. examples of occupations that had to be scored were physician, lawyer, teacher, truck driver, and hairdresser. to compress these 30 different occupations, they were classifi ed into fi ve broad categories: cultural, economic, communicative, technical and lower (van der werfhorst/kraaykamp 2001; begall/mills 2012). this classifi cation largely mirrored the one used to classify fi elds of study. the category “lower” was added, as some of the occupations (for instance cleaner, assembly line worker, shop attendant, etc.) asked for few specifi c skills and could not easily be classifi ed into one of the four main fi elds of occupation. using the same procedure as for fi eld of study, a composite score was calculated for the aspiration of each student with regard to each of the fi ve fi elds of occupation (see table 1 for means and standard deviations). educational level adolescents’ current level in secondary school is used as a control variable in all analyses. the educational level was measured on a scale from 1 (lower vocational) to 4 (pre university). subsequently, this level of education was recoded using the newly developed international standard level of education (isled) scoring system (schröder/ganzeboom 2014). isled is an empirically obtained, internationally comparable interval scale for educational level, the value of which can vary between 0 and 100. • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel94 n o te s: s co re s fo r fi e ld s o f s tu d ie s ar e ca lc ul at ed b y ta ki ng th e m ea n sc o re s o f a ll st ud ie s w ith in a s p ec ifi c fi e ld . a ll st ud ie s ar e sc o re d o n a 4p o in t s ca le fr o m 1 (= d efi n ite ly n o t e xp ec t t o e nr o l i n th is s tu d y) to 4 (= d efi n ite ly e xp ec t t o e nr o l i n th is s tu d y) . s co re s fo r as p ir ed ty p es o f o cc up at io ns a re c al cu la te d b y ta ki ng th e m ea n sc o re s fo r al l o cc up at io ns w ith in a s p ec ifi c fi e ld . a ll o cc up at io ns a re s co re d o n a 4p o in t s ca le fr o m 1 (= a b so lu te ly w o ul d n o t l ik e to p ra ct is e th is o cc up at io n) to 4 (= g la d ly li ke to p ra ct is e th is o cc up at io n) . e xp ec ta tio n o f h av in g ch ild re n is th e re sp o ns e to th e q ue st io n “d o y o u th in k yo u w ill h av e ch ild re n? ” (0 = n o , 1 = y es ). e xp ec te d a ge a t fi r st c hi ld b ir th is th e re sp o ns e to th e q ue st io n “a t w ha t a ge d o y o u ex p ec t t o h av e a fi r st c hi ld ?” e xp ec te d n um b er o f c hi ld re n is th e re sp o ns e to th e q ue st io n “h o w m an y ch ild re n d o y o u th in k yo u w ill h av e? ” is le d is a n em p ir ic al ly o b ta in ed , i nt er na tio na lly c o m p ar ab le in te rv al s ca le fo r ed uc at io na l l ev el , t he v al ue o f w hi ch c an v ar y b et w ee n 0 an d 1 00 . ** *t he m ea ns o f g ir ls a nd b o ys a re s ig ni fi c an tly d iff er en t a t p < 0. 01 . v ar ia b le s m ea n s ta n d ar d d ev ia ti o n n (e xp ec te d fi el d o f s tu d y/ a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s o n a sc al e o f 1 t o 4 ) g ir ls b o ys to ta l g ir ls b o ys to ta l g ir ls b o ys to ta l e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 1. 80 ** * 1. 46 1. 63 0. 63 0. 55 0. 62 73 7 70 2 14 39 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 1. 99 2. 02 2. 00 0. 82 0. 81 0. 82 73 0 70 8 14 38 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 2. 08 ** * 1. 60 1. 85 0. 60 0. 55 0. 63 73 8 70 5 14 43 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al 1. 34 ** * 1. 81 1. 57 0. 42 0. 57 0. 55 73 4 71 2 14 46 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 1. 79 1. 72 1. 76 0. 66 0. 70 0. 68 71 2 68 6 13 98 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 2. 00 ** * 2. 15 2. 07 0. 74 0. 77 0. 76 71 2 68 6 13 98 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 2. 06 ** * 1. 69 1. 88 0. 68 0. 64 0. 69 71 2 68 6 13 98 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al 1. 74 ** * 2. 04 1. 88 0. 55 0. 71 0. 65 71 2 68 6 13 98 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s lo w er 1. 49 ** * 1. 56 1. 52 0. 32 0. 46 0. 40 71 2 68 6 13 98 e xp ec ta ti o n o f h av in g ch ild re n 0. 92 ** * 0. 87 0. 89 0. 27 0. 34 0. 31 69 9 66 6 13 65 e xp ec te d a g e at fi rs t c h ild b ir th 26 .7 4* ** 27 .6 3 27 .1 3 3. 23 3. 92 3. 57 57 0 45 0 10 20 e xp ec te d n u m b er o f c h ild re n 2. 32 2. 21 2. 27 1. 02 1. 02 1. 02 66 2 57 3 12 35 a d o le sc en ts ’ c u rr en t l ev el o f e d u ca ti o n (i s le d ) 58 .4 4* ** 54 .9 5 56 .7 1 12 .1 4 13 .9 1 13 .1 6 75 7 74 4 15 01 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e in fo rm at io n o n d ep en d en t a nd in d ep en d en t v ar ia b le s expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 95 analysis strategy structural equation modelling (sem) was used to estimate the relationships between adolescents’ expected fertility on the one hand, and expected fi eld of study and aspired occupational fi eld on the other. to account for item non-response in the data, the models were estimated in mplus using the “full information maximum likelihood” (fiml) method (muthén/muthén 2004), in which a cluster correction was applied at the level of school classes. fiml allows us to make maximum use of all the available data in our dataset. it has comparable statistical properties to multiple imputation, but is more effi cient (allison 2012). all models are evaluated using three widely-used overall goodness of fi t criteria (root mean square error of approximation [rmsea], the comparative fit index [cfi], and the tucker-lewis index [tli]). the fi t of models is deemed good if rmsea < 0.06, and cfi and tli > 0.95 (hu/ bentler 1999). first, a logit model with the expectation of remaining childless as the dependent variable was estimated. next, models with the expected timing of fertility and the expected number of children as the dependent variables were estimated simultaneously among those adolescents who expected to have children. in all analyses, the expectations regarding the educational fi eld and aspirations regarding the occupational fi eld were used as independent variables. in addition, we controlled for the adolescents’ current level of education. to test whether the outcomes varied by gender, interaction effects were added between expectations on fertility and fi eld of education and occupation and gender (hardy 1993). unstandardised parameter estimates are presented for all models in table 2. in additional analyses (results not shown), we examined whether the results would change if we did not include the scores on “lower” aspired occupations in the models. results for other parameters did not differ, suggesting that the results were robust with regard to the inor exclusion of lower aspired occupations. 5 results descriptive fi ndings separately for boys and girls, table 1 shows means, standard deviations and number of responses for the variables used in the analysis. clear gender differences could be observed in the expectations for broad fi eld of study. girls had a stronger expectation to opt for communicative and cultural fi elds, whereas boys had a stronger expectation to opt for technical fi elds. no gender differences were observed for an expectation to opt for economic fi elds. boys most strongly expected to opt for economic fi elds of study, followed by technical, communicative and cultural fi elds, whereas girls expected to opt for communicative, economic, cultural and technical fi elds, in that order. with regard to aspired occupational fi elds, no gender differences were observed for cultural occupations, but girls aspired to communicative jobs more than boys, and boys aspired to economic and technical jobs more than girls. among boys, jobs in the economic fi eld were the strongest preference, whereas • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel96 among girls, jobs in the communicative fi eld were the strongest preference. concerning fertility, most adolescents expected to have children, and fewer girls (8 percent) than boys (13 percent) expected to remain childless (t=-3.22, p<0.01). girls expected that they would have their fi rst child around age 26.7, while boys expected this on average about a year later. the average number of children which adolescents expected to have was a little over two children, and did not differ between boys and girls. clearly, there is a substantial gap between fertility ideals and actual fertility behaviour, because in the netherlands in 2005 the average age of women having their fi rst child was 29.4 years and the average number of children was 1.71 (statistics netherlands 2019b). this gap between “optimistic” expectations and “obstinate” reality is consistent with earlier fi ndings within the so-called fertility gap literature (liefbroer/billari 2010). expectations for educational and occupational fi eld and for childlessness next, multivariate analyses were performed to study the association between fi eld of study and occupation and fertility expectations. the results are presented in table 2. all models show an excellent fi t based on standard goodness of fi t criteria (rmsea, cfi, tli). model 1 presents results for boys and girls together, whereas in model 2, interactions between gender and educational and occupational fi eld are included to test whether the same patterns apply to boys and girls. a logit regression was performed to examine the link between expected fi eld of study and the expectation of remaining childless. model 1 suggests strong associations between expected fi eld of study and childlessness. the greater the expectation among adolescents to study in the fi eld of communication, the more likely they were to expect to have children (b=0.352). the opposite was true for expectations of pursuing cultural studies; this was associated with a lower expectation of having children (b=-0.271). only weak evidence was found for an association between aspired occupational fi eld and expectations regarding childlessness. the greater the expectation among adolescents to work in the fi eld of communication, the more likely they were to expect to have children (b=0.215), whereas the greater their expectation to pursue a lower occupation, the less likely they were to want children (b=-0.325). clearly, preferences regarding childlessness were more strongly related to adolescents’ expected fi eld of study than to their aspired fi eld of occupation. interactions between gender and the other variables in the model were included in model 2. several statistically signifi cant interactions were observed. the upper half of model 2 presents the effects for boys. the bottom half shows the estimates for the extent to which the effects for girls deviate from those for boys. first, the negative association between the expectation of entering a cultural fi eld of study and wanting children among boys was -0.444 (p<.01). to calculate the estimate for girls, the estimate for the interaction variable for a cultural fi eld of study and sex (0.380) was added to the parameter for boys (-.0444), leading to an effect for girls of -0.064. additional analysis revealed that this parameter is not statistically signifi cantly different to 0. thus, the negative association between the expectation of pursuing a cultural fi eld of study and expecting to have children is only observed expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 97 d o y o u th in k yo u w ill h av e ch ild re n? a t w h at a g e d o y o u th in k in d ep en d en t v ar ia b le s yo u w ill h av e ch ild re n? m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 lo g s t. s ig . lo g s t. s ig . s t. s t. s ig . s t. s t. s ig . o d d s e rr o r o d d s e rr o r c o ef f e rr o r c o ef f e rr o r in te rc ep t/ t h re sh o ld -0 .6 22 0. 38 4 -0 .1 62 0. 49 4 22 .8 71 0. 80 7* ** 23 .4 11 1. 23 0* ** e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l -0 .2 71 0. 09 5* ** -0 .4 4 4 0. 13 5* ** 0. 53 0 0. 20 9* * 0. 84 2 0. 43 9* e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 0. 08 6 0. 07 6 0. 22 2 0. 09 8* * -0 .4 06 0. 19 5* * -0 .5 37 0. 35 7 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 35 2 0. 11 8* ** 0. 20 3 0. 17 2 0. 03 9 0. 23 3 0. 04 0 0. 49 2 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al 0. 17 6 0. 12 6 0. 37 3 0. 15 8* * 0. 79 2 0. 27 6* ** 0. 77 4 0. 4 40 * a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l -0 .1 19 0. 07 9 -0 .1 35 0. 12 9 0. 24 8 0. 21 5 0. 06 9 0. 36 5 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 0. 09 6 0. 10 1 0. 18 8 0. 14 5 0. 34 9 0. 23 9 0. 41 0 0. 40 3 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 21 5 0. 12 9* 0. 21 7 0. 18 9 -0 .2 77 0. 21 1 -0 .2 63 0. 45 2 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .1 21 0. 09 7 -0 .1 43 0. 12 6 -0 .0 02 0. 21 7 0. 09 1 0. 33 4 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s lo w er -0 .3 25 0. 17 1* -0 .3 95 0. 24 1 -1 .1 81 0. 49 6* * -1 .3 43 0. 78 7* s ex a d o le sc en t ( fe m al e= 1) 0. 17 4 0. 12 5 1. 27 1 0. 88 3 -0 .8 89 0. 24 4* ** -2 .2 08 1. 58 9 a d o le sc en ts ’ c u rr en t l ev el o f e d u ca ti o n (i s le d ) 0. 00 5 0. 00 4 0. 01 2 0. 00 5* * 0. 08 0 0. 01 1* ** 0. 07 2 0. 01 5* ** in te ra ct io n s ex * c at eg o ry e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 0. 38 0 0. 19 2* * -0 .4 91 0. 51 5 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic -0 .1 93 0. 17 6 0. 23 5 0. 42 9 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 24 7 0. 25 3 0. 00 5 0. 54 5 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .4 75 0. 24 0* * -0 .0 76 0. 58 0 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 0. 10 8 0. 17 5 0. 30 5 0. 42 8 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic -0 .1 89 0. 24 0 -0 .0 89 0. 49 4 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 00 9 0. 24 3 -0 .0 05 0. 51 6 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .0 45 0. 20 9 -0 .1 72 0. 46 9 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s lo w er 0. 17 8 0. 40 3 0. 4 49 0. 96 3 a d o le sc en ts ’ c u rr en t l ev el o f e d u ca ti o n (i s le d ) 0. 01 9 0. 01 0* 0. 01 7 0. 01 7 n= 12 64 n= 10 84 ta b . 2 : u n st an d ar d is ed e ff ec ts o f e xp ec te d fi el d s o f s tu d y an d a sp ir ed fi el d s o f o cc up at io n o n th e ex p ec ta tio n o f h av in g ch ild re n, e xp ec te d a g e o f h av in g ch ild re n an d e xp ec te d n um b er o f c hi ld re n. in m o d el 2 , i n te ra ct io n ef fe ct s w er e ad d ed a s fi e ld o f s tu d y an d o cc up at io na l c at eg o ri es m ul tip lie d b y se x (m al e = 0 a nd fe m al e = 1) . • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel98 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n h o w m an y ch ild re n d o y o u in d ep en d en t v ar ia b le s th in k yo u w ill h av e? m o d el 1 m o d el 2 s t. s t. s t. s t. c o ef f e rr o r s ig . c o ef f e rr o r s ig . in te rc ep t / t h re sh o ld 2. 07 5 0. 17 9* ** 1. 89 4 0. 24 3* ** e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 0. 03 8 0. 04 3 0. 06 8 0. 09 7 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic -0 .0 10 0. 05 1 -0 .0 03 0. 08 1 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e -0 .0 43 0. 06 3 -0 .1 15 0. 11 8 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .0 86 0. 08 3 -0 .0 71 0. 11 9 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l -0 .0 64 0. 06 5 -0 .1 25 0. 10 0 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 0. 03 0 0. 05 9 -0 .0 50 0. 09 6 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 12 1 0. 05 2* * 0. 06 6 0. 08 9 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .0 58 0. 06 3 -0 .0 75 0. 08 6 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s lo w er 0. 15 6 0. 12 2 0. 42 4 0. 18 9* * s ex a d o le sc en t ( fe m al e= 1) 0. 05 7 0. 07 4 0. 42 8 0. 39 3 a d o le sc en ts ’ c u rr en t l ev el o f e d u ca ti o n (i s le d ) 0. 00 3 0. 00 2 0. 00 7 0. 00 3* * in te ra ct io n s ex * c at eg o ry e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l -0 .0 55 0. 12 0 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic -0 .0 04 0. 09 6 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 13 4 0. 13 4 e xp ec te d f ie ld o f s tu d y c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al -0 .0 87 0. 15 0 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c u lt u ra l 0. 13 5 0. 13 1 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s e co n o m ic 0. 15 1 0. 11 4 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s c o m m u n ic at iv e 0. 10 7 0. 11 2 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s te ch n ic al 0. 05 4 0. 13 6 a sp ir ed o cc u p at io n s c at eg o ri se d a s lo w er -0 .5 74 0. 26 3* * a d o le sc en ts ’ c u rr en t l ev el o f e d u ca ti o n (i s le d ) -0 .0 07 0. 00 5 n= 10 84 n o te s g o o d ne ss o f fi t o f al l m o d el s w as e va lu at ed w ith t he f o llo w in g in d ic es : r o o t m ea n s q ua re e rr o r o f a p p ro xi m at io n (r m s e a ), c o m p ar at iv e fi t in de x (c fi ), an d tu ck er -l ew is in d ex (t li ). a ll m o d el s ha ve v al ue s o f r m s e a = 0. 00 , c fi = 1. 00 a nd t li = 1. 00 , s ug ge st in g go o d m o d el fi t ( h u/ b en tle r 19 99 ). ** *p -v al ue < 0. 01 . * *p -v al ue < 0. 05 . * p -v al ue < 0. 1 expectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 99 in boys, not in girls. second, among boys, a stronger preference for having children is associated with a stronger expectation for pursuing an economic fi eld of study (b=0.222) and a stronger expectation for pursuing a technical fi eld of study (b=0.373). no such associations are found among girls (b=0.222-0.193=0.029, n.s.; b=0.373-0.475=-0.102, n.s.). among girls, we only fi nd a positive relationship between expectations of studying in the fi eld of communication and the expectation of having children. the relation between expected studies in the communicative fi eld is equally related to expected childlessness for boys and girls. among boys, all four fi elds of study are related to the desire to have children. boys with stronger expectations for studying in the cultural fi eld are less likely to expect to have children, whereas boys with stronger expectations for studying in economic, communications and technical fi elds of study are more likely to want children. for girls, only an expectation of studying in the communicative fi eld is relevant in this respect. the association between job aspiration and childlessness does not vary signifi cantly between boys and girls. expected educational and occupational fi elds and expected age of entry into parenthood the results in table 2 on the expected age of entering into parenthood suggest that there are no gender differences in the underlying process (see middle panel of table 2, model 2). therefore, only results from model 1 are discussed. for both female and male adolescents, the expected age of entry into parenthood was strongly related to their current level of education and their expected fi eld of education. the higher the adolescents’ current level of education, the later their expected age of having children (b=0.080). stronger expectations of studying in cultural and technical fi elds were associated with a higher expected age of entry into parenthood (b=0.530 and b=0.792, respectively). stronger expectations for studying in the fi eld of economics was associated with a lower expected age of entry into parenthood (b=-0.406). no association was found between the expectation of studying in the communications fi eld and expected age of entry into parenthood. no associations were found between aspired occupational fi elds and expected age of entry into parenthood either, with one exception: boys and girls who “aspired” to a lower type of occupation expected to have their fi rst child earlier (p<0.05). expected educational and occupational fi eld and expected number of children the fi nal panel of table 2 shows the results for the association between educational and occupational fi eld and the number of children that adolescents expect. only few statistically signifi cant associations were observed. model 1 shows that the more strongly adolescents aspired to an occupation in communication, the more children they expected to have (b=0.121). model 2 shows that boys and girls who “aspire” to a lower type of occupation differ in their views on the number of children they expect. among boys, a stronger aspiration for a lower type of occupation is associ• micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel100 ated with a higher expected number of children (b=0.424), whereas no association is found among girls (b=0.424-0.574=-0.150, ns). 6 conclusion the growing literature on the association between fertility, fi eld of study and occupation shows that fertility is higher among women who were educated or are employed in communicative fi elds that emphasize teaching and care. an unresolved issue in the literature is to what extent fi eld-specifi c/occupational socialisation processes infl uence fertility decisions of young adults, or to what extent young adults are selected into specifi c fi elds of study and occupation because of pre-existing preferences concerning family life and employment. the goal of this study was to examine if such a selection effect is likely. we did so by studying the associations between adolescents’ expectations and preferences concerning fertility, fi eld of study and occupation during the life phase before entering tertiary education. in addition to studying this relationship among adolescent girls, we also examined it among boys. our fi rst set of hypotheses stated that girls that expect to enter communicative educational and occupational fi elds were also less likely to remain childless and had a greater likelihood of having more children and having them earlier. several fi ndings are in line with this hypothesis. the greater the expectation among girls to opt for communicative fi elds of study, the more likely they are to have children. in addition, the more likely girls are to prefer jobs in the communicative fi eld, the more children they expect to have. thus, there seems to be an elective affi nity between preferences for studies and jobs that emphasize caring and social interaction and fertility expectations among adolescent girls. the expected timing of having children is not associated with expectations of pursuing a communicative fi eld of study or aspired occupation. what is striking, though, is that this elective affi nity also applies to boys. here, too, a preference for studies and jobs that emphasize care and social interaction goes hand in hand with stronger fertility preferences. rather than showing gender-specifi c patterns, as has been suggested by earlier studies (e.g. van bavel 2010; hakim 2003), both girls and boys who are attracted to studies and jobs in the social domain are also attracted to parenthood. clearly, girls are more likely to feel attracted to studies and jobs in the social domain, but boys who feel drawn to these studies show the same pattern of associations as girls. the second set of hypotheses stated that boys that expect to opt for studies and jobs in the economic and technical domain are more likely to expect to have children, to have more children and to have them earlier. the results only partially confi rmed our hypotheses about this link. the greater the expectation among male adolescents to opt for an economic fi eld of study, the less likely they were to expect to remain childless and the more likely they were to have their fi rst child somewhat earlier. boys who preferred technical fi elds of study and occupation were also less likely to expect to remain childless, but they expected to have children at a later age, which is not in line with the hypothesis. on top of this, similar associations beexpectations about fertility and field of study among adolescents • 101 tween expected fi eld of study and expected timing of entry into parenthood and the expected number of children were observed among both boys and girls, again suggesting that the processes of elective affi nity between domain of study and work on the one hand and fertility on the other hand are more or less comparable for boys and girls. the genders differ in their likelihood of preferring communicative and economic fi elds of study and occupation, but if they do have the same preference, the association with fertility expectations is more or less the same. a result we did not anticipate is that the greater the expectation among male adolescents to opt for cultural studies, the more likely it was that they expected to remain childless and, if they did expect to have children, to have them later in life. this latter result is congruent with van bavel’s (2010) fi nding in the netherlands that people who are trained in arts and the humanities are the most progressive concerning family attitudes. it shows that adolescents opting for these fi elds of study and occupations have signifi cantly different fertility values, suggesting that men with more “traditional/conservative” values are different from men with “artistic/ progressive” values. our results clearly show that expectations regarding fi eld of study and occupation and fertility are already related to each other during the teenage years and this strongly suggests that the association between fi eld of education and actual fertility found among adults is indeed at least partially the result of processes of selfselection occurring at an early stage in the life course. our study could not examine which mechanisms “cause” the association between fi eld of study and fertility preferences among adolescence: for instance whether it refl ects gendered identities, as suggested by charles and bradley (2009), or to what extent these are in turn the result of common causes like early socialisation or personality. future research could, for instance, examine the role of parental (gender) socialisation, personality traits (jokela 2012), and other background variables, such as socioeconomic status or religiosity of the parents (hubert 2014), or the role of schools and peers (driscoll/ abma 2015). the cross-sectional nature of our study did not allow us to study how realistic adolescents’ expectations are. using panel data, it would be interesting to examine to what extent adolescents’ expectations are realised, and whether the same processes infl uence both their expectations and their actual behaviour. in addition, panel data would allow us to study the consistency and development of preferences regarding fertility, fi eld of study and occupation. such a design would be particularly interesting given that it allows the direct disentanglement of causality and self-selection in the relationship between fertility and educational and occupational fi eld, and identifi cation of common causes, e.g. early socialisation and personality traits, that could explain both types of preferences. finally, in line with research on country variation in the association between actual choices in fertility and fi elds of study (van bavel 2010; oppermann 2017), it would be interesting to study country variations in the association between preferences in the professional and the family domain. the degree to which educational systems and labour markets allow for the expression of gendered identities, which was found to be related to gender segregation in fi elds of study (charles/bradley 2009), differs between countries. it • 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luijkx, ruud 2010: educational fi eld of study and social mobility: disaggregating social origin and education. in: sociology 44,4: 695-715 [doi: 10.1177/0038038510369362]. • micha g. keijer, aart c. liefbroer, ineke nagel106 wood, jonas; neels, karel; kil, tine 2014: the educational gradient of childlessness and cohort parity progression in 14 low fertility countries. in: demographic research 31,46: 1365-1416 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2014.31.46]. woods, stephen a. et al. 2016: personality and occupational specialty. an examination of medical specialties sing holland’s riasec model. in: career development international 21,3: 262-278 [doi: 10.1108/cdi-10-2015-0130]. youniss, james; smollar, jacqueline 1985: adolescent relations with mothers, fathers, and friends. chicago: university of chicago press. date of submission: 19.06.2017 date of acceptance: 08.06.2019 dr. micha g. keijer (). amsterdam university of applied sciences, amsterdam school of international business (amsib). amsterdam, the netherlands. e-mail: m.g.keijer@hva.nl url: https://www.amsterdamuas.com/amsib/profi le/k/e/m.g.keijer/m.g.keijer.html?orig in=z%2b1tambtt1gfpljjfzuhxq prof. dr. aart c. liefbroer. netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi). the hague, the netherlands. e-mail: liefbroer@nidi.nl url: https://www.nidi.nl/en/staff/overview/liefbroer dr. ineke nagel. vrije university amsterdam, faculty of social sciences, sociology, social inequality and the life course (silc). amsterdam, the netherlands. e-mail: f.a.nagel@vu.nl url: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/ineke-nagel published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census: was the healthy migrant effect merely an artefact? life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census: was the healthy migrant effect merely an artefact?* felix zur nieden, bettina sommer abstract: the federal statistical offi ce’s 2010/12 general life table is the fi rst to provide results on life expectancy based on census data for reunifi ed germany. this article therefore examines the question of how the revisions of the population fi gures from the 2011 census affected the measured life expectancy. to do so, we analysed both the offi cial life tables based on the old intercensal population updates before the census and those based on the population data from the 2011 census. the method used to calculate the census-adjusted 2010/12 general life table was also transferred to separate life tables drawn up for the german and the foreign population. in this way, fi ndings on the so-called “healthy migrant effect” can be discussed, ruling out possible errors in the intercensal population updates. these errors had previously been cited as the main causes for a distinctly longer life expectancy among the foreign population compared with the german population. as expected, a census-based calculation for the total population and for the german population resulted in only minor revisions to the life expectancy fi gures. the use of the census results does, however, distinctly alter the life expectancy of foreign women and men. an advantage of over 5 years in life expectancy at birth, measured on the basis of the old population data, needs to be revised to about 2.9 years for men and 2.1 years for women based on the 2011 census. the healthy migrant effect therefore cannot be traced back solely to data artefacts from the old intercensal population updates – even with revised data, the foreign population shows marked survival advantages. keywords: life expectancy · life table · mortality · census effects · healthy migrant effect comparative population studies vol. 41, 2 (2016): 145-174 (date of release: 11.07.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-05en0 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2016-06en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/198/226. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer146 1 introduction the data from the 2011 census for the fi rst time enabled demographic analyses for post-reunifi cation germany based on population data as accurate as possible. since the last censuses in former west and east germany were conducted in 1987 and 1981, respectively, analyses of reunifi ed germany’s population fi gures have had to refer to data from the intercensal population updates. these updates were based on the last census in former west germany and an excerpt from the central registry of east germany dated 3 october 1990, which were updated upon taking the statistics on births and deaths as well as immigration and emigration for each calendar year into consideration. inaccuracies in these statistics inevitably lead to inaccuracies in the updated population fi gures. the quality of the data on births and deaths is considered good, but net migration tends to be too high because not all emigrants register their departures and they therefore are missing in the migration records. as a consequence, the number of residents in germany was adjusted downwards by about 1.5 million persons following the 2011 census. in addition, changes to the population fi gures in various demographic categories, such as age, sex or nationality, also have a great impact on demographic analyses. for these dimensions the census was adjusted to varying degrees (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 29-32). this article explores the effects of the 2011 census on the measurement of life expectancy in germany, using the data and the approach of the 2010/12 general life table for germany. a general life table is always drawn up when a census is conducted. in addition, general life tables are smoothed to eliminate random effects in order to use precise population data to reveal fundamental mortality patterns. one special focus of this article is the creation of life tables according to nationality (german/non-german) based on the census data. it was no longer possible to reach plausible results, in particular for the foreign population, based on the data from the intercensal population updates with ever-greater intervals to the previous census. however, reliable data on the mortality of the foreign population is highly relevant, in particular against the background of the rising numbers of this population group. immigration is frequently discussed as an option for lessening germany’s demographic problems, the anticipated decline in population and demographic aging. knowledge of the mortality situation of the foreign population helps to better estimate the associated consequences for the social security system, in particular for the pension, health and long-term nursing care insurances. moreover, reliable life tables broken down by nationality are an initial basis for differentiated projections of the relevant population groups. in addition, mortality parameters such as life expectancy also contribute to describing the “life circumstances” of different population groups. in the relevant academic discourse, reliable results based on the 2011 census enable us to re-evaluate a variety of hypotheses that have been made about the healthy migrant effect for the foreign population in germany. since errors in the population updating procedure can be ruled out when using data from the 2011 census, explanatory hypotheses can be discussed without this caveat. section 2 of this article provides an overview of the relevant state of research. section 3 contains the research questions derived from this research state and section 4 describes the life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 147 data and methods employed. the results of the analysis are then presented in section 5 and discussed in section 6. 2 state of research the main effects of the 2011 census on the creation of the offi cial life tables and the related consequences for measuring life expectancy have previously been discussed in the special report on the 2010/12 general life table (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). it pointed out that life expectancy at birth in germany based on the census is 0.25 years shorter for males and 0.10 years shorter for females than indicated in calculations based on the old updates. the report also delved into the effects of using census data at the age-specifi c level. it showed that the age-specifi c probabilities of death based on the census are consistently higher in contrast to values based on the old population updates. the most distinct revisions to the probability of death were in those age groups in which adjustments of the population data were most extensive following the census: the ages of 20 to 40 years and at the advanced ages of about 85 and older. among the very old, the revisions would have been even more pronounced if an extrapolation method had not been used. this method rectifi ed the implausible progressions in the probability of death based on the old updates for age 91 and above (eisenmenger 2003). the census adjustments were more pronounced in the entire age range among males than females (statistisches bundesamt 2015a: 21-23). with regard to census effects for a separate calculation of life tables for the german and foreign populations, until now results were presented using the preliminary intercensal population updates based on the 2011 census for the year 2013. according to this, the difference between non-germans’ and germans’ life expectancy at birth for men drops from 4.8 to 2.6 years, for women a census-adjusted difference of 1.7 years was ascertained in favour of female foreigners (kohls 2015: 522). the age and sex patterns of the population revised after the 2011 census, which in turn lead to revisions of mortality patterns, are described in kaus/mundil-schwarz (2015) as per 31 december 2011. the same article also shows that the revisions among the foreign population were considerably greater than among the german population. with an adjustment factor of 1.9 percent for the total population, the german population was revised by only 0.6 percent, but the foreign population by 14.4 percent. the revisions among the foreign population also involve larger age ranges than among the total population. also, among the foreign population the male population required far more revisions than the female (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). even in advance, we anticipated that the census would involve a distinct revision to the foreign population data. one reason for this was the implausible mortality pattern for the foreign population that had been ascertained based on the old population updates. using the data from the intercensal population updates, researchers consistently discovered pronounced differences in the mortality of non-germans compared to the german population or the total population in favour of non-ger• felix zur nieden, bettina sommer148 man persons. a large part of this effect was explained with data artefacts such as an excessively high foreign population resulting from an population update error or not accounting for deaths abroad (luy 2007; kibele et al. 2008; kohls 2008a/b, 2011, 2012; mammey/schwarz 2002; robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008). as a consequence, various other data sources were used to quantify the mortality of the foreign population in germany and to show differences to the german or the total population. luy (2007), for example, used the data from the integration survey by the federal institute for population research in order to estimate the life expectancy of foreign persons at the age of 35 using an indirect method (the orphanhood method combined with the brass’s logit model). the result showed far lesser mortality differences than those based on the intercensal population updates, however, also this indirect approach results in a lower mortality of the foreign population. kohls (2008b, 2011, 2012) reached similar results using data from the central register of foreign nationals (ausländerzentralregister). if life expectancy at birth of the foreign population is measured using the central register of foreign nationals, the differences to the german population, for example in the year 2009, are about 0.8 (females) to 1.0 years (males) lower than when calculated using the data from the intercensal population updates. prior to 2005, more distinct differences were found between the german and foreign populations using the data from the central register of foreign nationals, which, however, were greatly reduced as a result of a registry revision conducted in the year 2004 (kohls 2012: 149; opfermann et al. 2006: 484-485). using data from the statutory pension fund (gesetzliche rentenversicherung or grv), kohls (2008b) also detected the effect of a greater life expectancy in the foreign population with regard to remaining life expectancy at the age of 60. although the differences are less pronounced than those based on the population updates, there was still a higher fi gure for the foreign population compared to the german population. the mortality differences between the german and foreign population dropped drastically between 1994 and 2006 according to the results (kohls 2008b: 32-38). in further analyses with grv data, there was an even higher mortality level among the foreign population over age 60 compared to the german population since 2002 (kohls 2008a, 2010, 2011, 2012). between the ages of 20 and 59, a lower mortality level for the foreign population compared to the german population can be identifi ed using grv data (kohls 2010, 2012). the infant, child and juvenile mortality levels in the foreign population tend to be higher than those of the german population (kohls 2011, 2012). in this case, the intercensal population updates are reliable because the biases relevant at higher ages “practically do not exist” for this age group (kohls 2008c: 41). the advantages in the survival conditions of the foreign population are largely ascribed to a so-called healthy migrant effect, which implies that migrating persons are positively selected, i.e. that they are particularly healthy compared to the nonmigrating population and that their mortality is therefore lower. positing such an effect, however, also suggests that the mortality advantage should decrease over time and can cross over, in particular in the case of socioeconomic disadvantages to life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 149 the foreign population, into a mortality disadvantage (razum 2009: 268-269; kohls 2008c: 17). there are numerous indications of a distinctly lower mortality among migrating persons not only in the national studies for germany mentioned above, but also in many international studies for other countries (kohls 2012: 69-70). for their fi ndings on the healthy migrant effect, most studies compare the health or mortality of the native population with the respective immigrant population. for four major immigration countries (usa, canada, united kingdom and australia), kennedy and kidd (2015) show that immigrants also typically exhibit distinct health advantages compared with the natives of their respective countries of origin. we cannot, however, speak of a universal pattern. if we examine self-reported health, multiple european countries’ immigrants exhibit poorer health than the respective native population (cf. nielsen/krasnik (2010) for a detailed review of existing studies). based on harmonized data from health surveys, moullan and jusot (2014) fi nd indications of a health advantage among immigrants in italy, but poorer health among immigrants in france, belgium and spain. the authors ascribe these fi ndings to differing selection effects in the immigration and the integration of immigrants. the health advantage of immigrants in italy is also explained by the fact the natives there exhibit poorer self-assessed health than, for example, in france (moullan/jusot 2014: 84). in the german context, kohls (2011, 2012) classifi es the mortality differences between the german and the foreign population as follows: a mortality advantage in the middle age groups is indubitably verifi able among the foreign population and can be explained by the typical selection effects. the majority of employment-oriented immigrants immigrate between the ages of 25 and 40. accordingly, a greater percentage of the foreign population of working age exhibits a comparatively short duration of stay so far, which is why selection effects which are strongest directly following immigration ensure a lower mortality level among the foreign population. the lesser mortality differences and the higher mortality among the foreign population roughly from age 65 are explained by adaptation effects. over the course of a longer duration of stay, the level of mortality of the german and foreign population approximate and can, accompanied by given mortality-relevant disadvantages for the foreign population, also change suddenly into a higher mortality among nongermans. the comparatively high relative mortality risks for the foreign population at the ages of 65 to 69 can, for example, be explained by the large percentage of former guest workers in this age group. they immigrated over the course of the 1950s to 1970s and were usually subjected to very strenuous working conditions for decades, which can explain the relatively high mortality of the relevant age group (kohls 2012: 181). the causes for the higher mortality of infants, children and adolescents among the foreign population have so far scarcely been explained in theory. weber et al. (1990) demonstrated empirically that the higher infant mortality of children of foreign nationality born in germany is caused primarily by shorter pregnancies compared to german mothers and by an increased occurrence of birth defects and infectious diseases. this could be the consequence of insuffi cient care given to pregnant female immigrants. among children and adolescents, weber et al. (1990) • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer150 identifi ed higher mortality caused by accidents as the chief explanatory factor for the higher overall mortality of the foreign population. for other causes of death, foreign and german children and adolescents exhibit very similar mortality risks. however, using newer data the differences in accident-related mortality between the german and foreign populations of children and adolescents can no longer be identifi ed. between 1999 and 2004, foreign children and adolescents actually exhibited a somewhat lower accident-related mortality compared to germans of the same ages. certain differences between the two groups could only be identifi ed when broken down according to types of accidents (robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008: 71-73). 3 research questions the effects of the census on the creation of the offi cial life tables for the period 2010/12 have already been discussed elsewhere (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). the publication focused on the effects of the census on the calculation of the agespecifi c probability of death. at the level of age-specifi c life expectancy, the census effect has so far only been quantifi ed for the life expectancy at birth. in this article, we aim to analyze these effects for the entire age-span. our fi rst research question for this study is therefore: what effects do the census adjustments of the population have on age-specifi c life expectancy in germany and how can these revisions be classifi ed in the context of the annual changes to mortality levels? we anticipate particularly strong effects from the census adjustments with regard to the creation of life tables for the foreign population. the weaknesses of the offi cial statistics with regard to the analysis of mortality patterns for the foreign population were, in the available publications on the subject, chiefl y blamed on population updating errors due to missing notices of departure since the last censuses in former west and east germany. this article therefore will examine a central second research question: how great are the mortality differences between the german and foreign population based on the data of the 2011 census, i.e. without the population updating errors? methodological aspects are not trivial, in particular when calculating a life table for the foreign population. an extrapolation of the probability of death at an advanced age can have considerable effects on actual measured life expectancy. therefore, in the context of answering the second research question, we will emphasize the signifi cance of various methodological aspects. for instance, we will clarify up to what age the data from the 2011 census allow us to ascertain plausible patterns in age-specifi c mortality and what improvements there are in this regard life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 151 compared with the updated data. hence, the answer to the second research question can inform us at what weight the explanatory factors cited in the literature (selection and adaptation hypotheses) actually contribute to the mortality differences in the german and foreign populations. should the usually reliable census data demonstrate that the mortality differences between the german and the foreign population approximate greatly with age, this would be a distinct indication in favour of the adaptation hypothesis. if the probability of death of the two population groups differs systematically in favour of the foreign population even at advanced ages, this would speak in favour of the selection hypothesis. if, based on the census data, we ascertain no differences between the german and foreign population, then the differences found so far could be entirely based on inaccuracies in the intercensal population updates, and citing hypotheses to explain the differences would be altogether unnecessary. 4 data and methods 4.1 data all calculations were carried out using the data from the offi cial population statistics according to sex and birth cohort, and deaths according to sex, age and birth cohort. for the population on the census reference date for 2011 we use the initial data from the intercensal population updates. the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder optimized the calculation of the initial data resulting for the 2011 census for the intercensal population updates, also with regard to the calculation of demographic metrics (statistisches bundesamt 2015c). these data and the fi nal intercensal population updates based on them are therefore adequate for mortality calculations. the census data also have numerous advantages compared with alternative data sources for ascertaining mortality among the foreign population, such as the central register of foreign nationals or the grv data. although on principle the aim of the central register of foreign nationals is also thorough recording of the foreign population, as with the data from the intercensal population updates, adjustments are always necessary since departures in particular cannot all be recorded (fleischer 1989; opfermann et al. 2006). the most recent comprehensive adjustment to the central register of foreign nationals took place in the years 2000 to 2004, so that at present renewed adjustments are probably necessary. in addition, reports of cases of infant deaths are not mandatory in the central register of foreign nationals (kohls 2012: 148), which impedes the recording of the important component of infant mortality based on this data source. different recording and reporting channels as well as different defi nitions with regard to the residencies of foreigners for the central register of foreign nationals also impede comparisons with the data ascertained in the conventional way for the german population (opfermann et al. 2006; kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). analyses based on the data from the grv are not representative for the total population since they can only consider actively insured persons and exclude, for example, the self-employed and • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer152 civil servants, and therefore do not constitute a total survey of the population (kohls 2008c: 33). comparability of the results by sex is limited due to the lower numbers of employed females. infant, child and juvenile mortality can also not be quantifi ed with data from the statutory pension fund, and adult mortality before retirement only with restrictions, which is why no complete life tables can be drawn up based on these data. 4.2 methodological considerations the analyses in this article are based on the methods used by the federal statistical offi ce to compile the 2010/12 general life table (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). the main approach to drawing up the 2010/12 general life table was to calculate the age-specifi c probability of death with the cohort method according to becker (1874) and zeuner (1869) taking the complete census populations into account. the infl uence of migrations in the period under review was taken into consideration with the aid of the so-called wittstein-balducci hypothesis (wittstein 1862; balducci 1917). the advantage of this methodological approach is that data from the intercensal population updates do not need to be used to calculate the probability of death for a three-year period, but we can use the more precise population fi gures of the census. the infl uence of updating or back-calculation errors – caused, for example, by missing notices of departure in the relevant period – can thus be excluded. using the approach of the federal statistical offi ce for the 2010/12 general life table, separate life tables were drawn up for this article according to nationality for the german and the foreign population. it is important to take various methodological aspects into consideration: the results of a period life table mainly show the mortality conditions of a hypothetical cohort. with regard to life expectancy at birth, period life tables thus answer the question of how long persons of a certain age would live if they were constantly subjected to the survival conditions of the period under review. if we calculate a period life table for subgroups of a total population, we must question whether the measured age-specifi c probability of death of this subgroup is truly representative for the respective age of the group of persons. for a life table on the foreign population, this means that a large percentage of the population included in the calculation immigrated during the course of their lives and therefore we have no information on the mortality of this group prior to their immigration. consequently, when drawing up life tables for the foreign population, in addition to the assumption of a hypothetical cohort, another assumption plays a pivotal role: that the (unobserved) mortality prior to immigration is identical to that of the observed domestic mortality of persons of a corresponding age who immigrated at an earlier age or were born with a foreign nationality. for this reason, the (period) life expectancy of the foreign population should be interpreted as the average lifespan of persons who would have been subjected to the survival conditions of the foreign population that prevailed domestically for the duration of the period under review. the mortality conditions prior to immigration cannot be taken into consideration. the necessary additional assumption refers in particular to the life expectancy at birth and the remaining life life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 153 expectancy at a young age. the remaining life expectancy at an advanced age, for example from age 60, would be less affected by this since migration movements play a lesser role in this age range. the fact that due to changing migration patterns the composition of the foreign population changes far more quickly than that of the german population additionally ensures that the assumption of a hypothetical cohort is more problematic than when drawing up a period life table for the total population (in which the foreign population is only a small percentage) or for the population with german nationality. another point that demands consideration is that of the effects of a so-called “unhealthy re-migration effect” (razum et al. 1998: 302). this is the possible selective remigration (say for treatment purposes) of foreign persons with serious diseases who die abroad (kohls 2008c: 21). deaths among the resident population that occur abroad for other reasons (e.g. while on holiday) can also have a biasing effect if the relevant reports do not reach the statistical offi ces. the probability of death is then infl uenced by effects on the numerator (unreported deaths) or the denominator (unreported departures). for the years 2011 and 2012, there are a little over 3,500 known cases of persons with residences in germany who died abroad per year.1 in these years, a little fewer than 1,000 deaths abroad were reported to the german civil registries and could therefore be included in the mortality data. accordingly, there is still a gap of about 2,500 deaths that occur in europe outside of germany every year but are not included in the mortality statistics (or roughly 0.3 percent of all deaths). it is still unknown how many additional deaths occur abroad, for example of persons who are counted both among the population in germany and in a foreign country. an additional data-related restriction is that separate life tables for germans and foreigners cannot take a change of nationality into account. when, for example, a person held a foreign nationality at the time of the census, changed his or her nationality following the census and then died, the death is registered as a death among the german population and is incorporated into the calculation as such. considering a naturalisation rate of 1.4 to 1.7 percent in the relevant period (statistisches bundesamt 2015b) and the fact that most newly naturalised persons survived the period under review, any possible biasing effect would, however, be negligible. application of ius soli since the year 2000 (whereby under certain conditions children of foreign parents born in germany receive german nationality), can also bias a life table calculation separated by nationalities. in particular, biases can occur when infant mortality is calculated directly from the birth statistics if a birth with foreign nationality is registered but a later attainment of german nationality no longer 1 based on unpublished evaluations by the federal statistical offi ce (table n30) and the table on “causes of death – deaths by country of residence and occurrence” (hlth_cd_aro) in the online database of eurostat (2015). the eurostat table identifi es “all deaths of residents in or outside their home country.” if, from the deaths registered in germany, we subtract those reported from abroad, we reach the number of domestic deaths. the difference between this fi gure and the eurostat fi gure for all deaths in or outside germany in 2011 and 2012 was about 3,500 cases each year. deaths outside europe are not taken into consideration. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer154 infl uences this statistic. using this example, the death of a german child would be referenced to the wrong population group. this constellation would therefore lead to an underestimation of infant mortality among the foreign population and a (probably marginal) overestimation among the german population. when calculating the probability of death based on the census data there should not be any bias as a result of ius soli in the following age years, since the relevant cases were revised during the census (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 31). if it were calculated based on the updated population data prior to the 2011 census, the effect would be relevant even for the calculation of the probability of death in the following age groups. in order to smooth the observed age-specifi c probabilities of death, for the 2010/12 general life table of the federal statistical offi ce a p-spline approach according to eilers and marx (1996) was chosen, which, by incorporating the binomial distribution, is especially tailored to smoothing probabilities of death (zur nieden et al. 2016: 65). smoothing the probabilities of death is necessary in particular when general patterns need to be derived without random infl uences or special effects. such general age-specifi c patterns are suited, for example, as the basis for a mortality projection, in particular since random infl uences are not permanently updated and the derivation of future mortality patterns is more plausible. for the calculations of life tables according to nationality conducted additionally for this study, we also smoothed the age-specifi c probabilities of death using the p-spline method in order to rule out an over-interpretation of random overlaps and restrict ourselves to the analysis of basic patterns. in order to be able to make statements about age ranges in which the probability of death of germans and non-germans signifi cantly differ based on this basic pattern, we additionally calculated confi dence intervals for the age-specifi c probability of death. we assumed that the respective observed age-specifi c probability of death q(x) is the true expected value and calculated the limits in which random samples would lie with a probability of 95 percent (salzmann/kohls 2006: 187-188). as with the 2010/12 general life table, we also extrapolated the probability of death at advanced age on the onset of implausible patterns for the additional life tables drawn up for this study. examples of implausible patterns are overlapping probabilities of death for males and females and/or a distinct fl attening or drop in the probability of death. the extrapolation method used here was the logit model that goes back to the work of perks (1932) and that was assessed as particularly suited for this purpose by thatcher et al. (1998). in order to work out the effects of the census, life tables were also compiled with data from the intercensal population updates based on the 1987 census in former west germany and from the excerpt from the central registry of east germany dated 3 october 1990 (i.e. the old population updates before the census) (statistisches bundesamt 2013). the 2009/11 offi cial life table was also consulted (statistisches bundesamt 2012) in order to be able to put the census effect on the 2010/12 general life table in context with the drop in mortality in comparison with the previous life table. for this, we used the differences in the age-specifi c life expectancy e(x) from the 2009/11 life table and a life table for 2010/12 based on the old updates and based on the census to calculate a mortality effect (me). life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 155 me = e(x)2010/12 based on the old updates – e(x)2009/11 based on the old updates and a census effect (ce) ce = e(x)2010/12 based on the census – e(x)2010/12 based on the old updates the sum of the two effects refl ects the actual change in the age-specifi c life expectancy between the life table for 2009/11 and the 2010/12 general life table. in order to work out the differences in the mortality of germans and non-germans we calculated a relative measure (ux), which relates the difference in the agespecifi c probability of death (qx) of the two groups to the values for the german population: 5 analyses 5.1 effects of the census on the measurement of mortality among the total population according to the 2010/12 general life table, life expectancy at birth in germany was 77.7 years for men and 82.8 years for women. in comparison to the 2009/11 life table, the fi gures for life expectancy at birth are therefore unchanged for men and only slightly changed for women (+0.1 years). figure 1 shows the differences between the 2009/11 life table and the 2010/12 general life table separated according to a census effect, a mortality effect and a combined effect for the entire age course of (remaining) life expectancy. for both men and women, life expectancy at birth and remaining life expectancy until about age 70 would have risen by about 0.2 years compared with the two life tables based on earlier enumerations if no census had been conducted (mortality effect). the drop in mortality and thus the rise in life expectancy would have been somewhat more pronounced for men than for women. for both sexes, the gains in remaining life expectancy decline steadily due to the mortality effect starting at age 70 at the latest and running until age 90. above age 90 practically no change is measurable in remaining life expectancy based on the old update data. we must take into account that to calculate the effect from age 91 onwards, fi gures are compared resulting from the use of an extrapolation model. the drop in the mortality effects observed before age 90 indicates, however, that the lack of a rise in remaining life expectancy above the age of 90 is quite plausible. the census adjustments made during the compilation of the general life table ensure that the remaining life expectancy in the period 2010/12 for the entire age course of both sexes is shorter than that based on the old updates. the adjustments are far greater among men than among women and drop slightly with increasing age (with the exception of women over the age of 90). adding up the mortality effects and the census effects enables us to illustrate the combined effect: the change in age-specifi c life expectancy between the 2009/11 (2) (3)ux = qx, – qx, qx, (1) • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer156 fig. 1: differences in age-specifi c life expectancy between the 2009/11 life table and the 2010/12 general life table according to separated effects for men and women -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age e(x) differences in years men -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age e(x) differences in years women mortality effect combined effect census effect mortality effect combined effect census effect source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 157 life table and the 2010/12 general life table. for men, the mortality and the census effect almost balance one another out until the age of 70, so both life tables show very similar fi gures for the remaining life expectancy. above the age of 70, the drop in mortality can no longer compensate for the census effect. hence, due to the dominant census effect, the remaining life expectancy in this age range is lower in the 2010/12 general life table than in the 2009/11 life table. for females, the lesser census adjustments ensure that remaining life expectancy until age 87 is higher based on the census data in the period 2010/12 than in the 2009/11 life table. only above this age does the census effect dominate the mortality effect among women, hence the remaining life expectancy in the life table based on the census results is shorter than in the previous 2009/11 life table. when considering these effects, we must take into account that remaining life expectancy is a cumulative measure for mortality conditions above the respective age. the effects in the absolute consideration are in part the greatest at younger years of age because all of the infl uences of the older age groups are taken together. even if the census caused relatively extensive revisions of the population fi gures above age 90, they only affect the values of remaining life expectancy in a marginal way. not only is remaining life expectancy in this age range already very short, but the extrapolation method used to calculate life tables on the update basis already balanced out most of the updating errors in the population data with regard to the calculation of probability of death in this age range. 5.2 effects of the census on the measurement of mortality according to nationality 5.2.1 mortality conditions of the german population compared to the total population, the census adjustments to the population fi gures were less than average for the german population – the population of german men was revised by 1.0 percent (-374,398) and that of german women only by 0.2 percent (-74,085) (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). the largest revisions can be identifi ed among advanced ages. the number of german men aged 95 years or older was revised downwards by the census by 64.2 percent (-31,603) and that of german women in this age range by 17.4 percent (-19,689).2 figure 2 shows the age-specifi c probability of death that was calculated with the population fi gures of the old population updates and with the data from the 2011 census. if we look at the pattern of the probability of death based on the old population updates it is clear that they are plausible only until about age 90. above age 90 the probability of death of men and women overlap in a mortality crossover or the patterns begin to drop in an implausible way. in this kind of situation it is common to employ an extrapolation method to generate plausible patterns (eisenmenger 2 calculation on the basis of the population updates of 31.12.2011 based on earlier censuses and on the 2011 census. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer158 2003; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). the extrapolated fi gures are portrayed in figure 2 as a dashed line and the unused observed fi gures of the probability of death as unconnected data points. the use of the extrapolated fi gures had no effect 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) old updates men women 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) census men women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design fig. 2: age-specifi c probability of death 2010/12 among the german population based on the old population updates (incl. extrapolation) and based on the 2011 census life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 159 on the measured life expectancy at birth. for german men, the fi gure for e(0) with and without extrapolation is 77.7 years and for women 82.7 years (see table 1). when the life tables for the german population are calculated based on the 2011 census, then the life expectancy at birth for men is 0.1 years shorter than when based on the old updates (new fi gure: 77.6 years), for women the measured fi gure of 82.7 years remains the same even when based on the census, in spite of the minor revisions to the population fi gures. it is striking that the census-based probability of tab. 1: life expectancy at birth of the german population 2010/12 based on different calculations men women old population updates 77.7 82.7 old population updates inclusive extrapolation 77.7 82.7 census 77.6 82.7 census inclusive extrapolation and smoothing 77.6 82.7 source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations fig. 3: age-specifi c probability of death 2010/12 in the german population based on the 2011 census: observed and adjusted fi gures 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) men women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer160 death until age 100 now results in plausible fi gures so that the use of an extrapolation method is no longer necessary up to this age.3 the next step involved smoothing the census-based probabilities of death for the german population in order to generate a mortality pattern over age not infl uenced by random effects (see fig. 3). due to the high number of cases among the german population, the infl uence of the smoothing method is very low. the most notable difference is that the probability of death of men and women now no longer cross over as they did in the observed pattern at the ages of 4 and 5. the infl uence of the smoothing method is visible on a logarithmic scale until about age 35; above that age the observed and adjusted fi gures are practically identical. the pattern of the adjusted probability of death for the german population and the life table based on these fi gures is used in the following to analyze the fundamental mortality patterns of the german population and compare it with the corresponding results for the foreign population. for example, if we look at the pattern of the age-specifi c (remaining) life expectancy based on these fi gures compared to fi gures based on the old updates it becomes particularly clear how minor the cen3 to calculate a complete life table until the age of 112, an extrapolation method was nevertheless used, as it was used for the compilation of the 2010/12 general life table over age 100. probabilities of death only marginally infl uence the fi gures for life expectancy above the age of 100. fig. 4: differences in the age-specifi c life expectancy between a 2010/12 life table for the german population based on old population updates and the 2011 census (census effect) -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age e(x) differences in years census effect for men census effect for women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 161 sus revisions are with regard to measuring the mortality of the german population. the remaining life expectancy of german women is infl uenced only marginally so that even the fi rst decimal in each year of age based on the census and based on the old updates is identical. for males the remaining life expectancy on the census basis is revised downwards over the entire age course by 0.1 years. 5.2.2 mortality conditions of the foreign population the census adjustments were particularly pronounced for the foreign population. the male population was revised downwards by 15.9 percent (-602,318) and the female by 12.9 percent (-465,042) (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). the greatest revisions at an advanced age were also for the foreign population. above the age of 75, the census reduced the populations by 36.2 percent (-46,008 men) and 38.9 percent (-51,242 women). above the age of 95 the revisions were 94.5 percent for males and 90.6 percent for females. the census-adjusted intercensal population updates for this age group registered only 1,831 persons (547 men and 1,284 women) on 31.12.2011 rather than 23,561 persons, as had been indicated by previous updates. figure 5 shows the age-specifi c probability of death of the foreign population based on the old updates and based on the 2011 census. it is notable that based on the old population updates the pattern of the age-specifi c probabilities of death is already implausible from age 75: the probability of death among males rises to a lower level than the previous age groups would suggest, making a crossover of the male and female probability of death occur at the age of 84. using the extrapolation methods (dashed line), however, we can generate a plausible continuation of the pattern above age 75. since with this method observed fi gures are replaced by (higher) fi gures from the extrapolation model far earlier in the age course compared to the german population, the infl uence on the measured (remaining) life expectancy is accordingly greater. based on the observed fi gures, we would ascertain life expectancy at birth of foreign men of 84.8 years and 88.3 years for women. using the extrapolation method considerably reduces these fi gures to 82.9 years for the newborn males (-1.9 years) and 87.8 years for the females (-0.5 years). based on the 2011 census, we derive more plausible probabilities of death to far higher age groups than based on the old population updates. the census-adjusted life expectancy of foreign men calculated with the observed data is 80.9 years and of women it is 85.0 years. in spite of the greater revisions among the male population fi gures, the census adjustment is greater for females (-2.8 years) than males (-2.0 years). this is only because the extrapolation based on the updates had a far stronger effect for the men than for the women. a comparison of these fi gures is nevertheless advisable since the use of the extrapolation methods based on the old updates would have been urgently necessary to draw up an intrinsically plausible life table for the foreign population. in order to derive a characteristic mortality pattern for the foreign population, even when based on the census, not only is the use of a smoothing method, but also of an extrapolation method necessary before age 100. figure 6 illustrates this pattern and compares it to the observed fi gures. the unused observed fi gures are, • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer162 as in the above fi gures, shown as single data points, while the fi gures included in the smoothing method are connected. the smoothed pattern is shown as a solid line and the extrapolated fi gures as a dashed line. based on the census the smoothed fig. 5: age-specifi c probability of death 2010/12 for the non-german population based on the old population updates (incl. extrapolation) and based on the 2011 census 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) old updates men women 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) census men women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 163 patterns were replaced by extrapolated fi gures for males from age 91 and for females from age 92. the probability of death based on these methodological interventions result in a life expectancy at birth of 80.5 years for foreign men and 84.8 years for foreign women, and the fi gures are therefore again somewhat lower than those based on the observed data (see table 2). if we use the smoothed patterns of the age-specifi c probabilities of death shown in figure 6 to calculate a complete life table and then compare these fi gures with those from the old intercensal population updates, we can establish a census effect of 2.4 years for males and 3.0 years for females for life expectancy at birth. figure 7 shows the pattern of the census effects for the (remaining) life expectancy over fig. 6: age-specifi c probability of death 2010/12 of the non-german population based on the 2011 census: observed and adjusted fi gures 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) men women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design tab. 2: life expectancy at birth of the non-german population 2010/12 based on different calculations men women old updates 84.8 88.3 old updates inclusive extrapolation 82.9 87.8 census 80.9 85.0 census inclusive extrapolation and smoothing 80.5 84.8 source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer164 the entire age range. for males, the fi gures for the e(x)-difference induced by the census up until age 85 are only slightly reduced – at this age the census effect is still 2 years, but the infl uence of the census declines distinctly in the following years of age. even the remaining life expectancy at age 100 is, despite of the use of an extrapolation method for the data from the old population updates, reduced by another 1.2 years if the data from the census are used as the basis for the calculation. for females the infl uence of the census of 3 years on the remaining life expectancy remains nearly constant beyond the age of 70 before it also drops to a fi gure of 1.2 years at age 100. 5.2.3 comparison of the mortality conditions of germans and nongermans in the previous sections, we presented characteristic patterns for the age-specifi c probabilities of death of germans and foreigners based on the data from the 2011 census by using methodological interventions such as smoothing and extrapolating. in figure 8, these patterns are illustrated broken down by sex. the solid lines are the smoothed patterns. figures modelled for the foreign population using the extrapolation method are displayed with dashed lines. fig. 7: differences in the age-specifi c life expectancy between a 2010/12 life table for the non-german population based on updates and the 2011 census (census effect) -3.5 -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age e(x) differences in years census effect men census effect women source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 165 a look at the respective patterns reveals that the mortality conditions differ among the german and non-german population for men and women in a very similar way. for infants, during childhood and early adolescence, persons with foreign nationalities exhibit a higher probability of death than persons of the same ages of fig. 8: age-specifi c probability of death 2010/12 for german and non-german population 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) men germans non-germans 0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000 1.0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 age probability of death (log.) women germans non-germans source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer166 german nationality. for boys the ratio reverses at the age of 16 and for girls at 17. in all ensuing years of age, foreign men and women always exhibit a lower probability of death than germans of the same ages. if we calculate confi dence intervals for the patterns of the probability of death they show that the differences for newborn boys and girls are signifi cant, but not for the following years of childhood and youth. because of the low numbers of cases among the foreign population the confi dence intervals in this age range are correspondingly broad, implying no signifi cant differences with a 5 percent probability of error. signifi cant differences in the probability of death of germans and non-germans are found among males between the ages of 25 and 32 and above age 38. for females the differences are signifi cant at age 31 and all years of age over 41. no confi dence intervals can be calculated in the same manner for the extrapolated fi gures, and therefore no comparable statements can be made about the signifi cance of the differences above age 91 for males and 92 for females. the extrapolated fi gures for the male and female foreign population are, however, outside the confi dence interval of the probability of death calculated for the german population, indicating signifi cant differences. figure 9 additionally portrays the mortality differences between germans and non-germans in percent (measured value ux). the fi gure shows, for example, that infant mortality of children born with foreign nationalities is about 80 to 90 percent higher than that of german children. in ensuing years of age the differences are not signifi cant, even in the three-year period under review, due to the low cases of deaths and should therefore not be overinterpreted. basically, the patterns do fi t in with earlier fi ndings according to which foreign children had an increased mortality compared to the german population until adolescence. above age 25, however, the differences are mostly signifi cant and fl uctuate between a 20 and 35 percent lower probability of death among foreigners compared to germans. based on the census data we cannot recognize a clear pattern as indicated by earlier studies whereby the differences are particularly strong at working age and then decrease at later ages or even reverse into a higher mortality level of the foreign population. no such tendency can be identifi ed for males, and for females only to a very small extent, since the mortality differences between age 65 and 72 drop a great deal but then rise again in the ensuing years of age. the difference between germans’ and non-germans’ life expectancy at birth is 2.9 years for males and 2.1 years for females in the census-based data adjusted for random infl uences. at age 17, the age from which the foreign population consistently exhibits a lower probability of death among men and women, the differences in remaining life expectancy are even 3.3 years for males and 2.3 years for females. even at the age of 65 we ascertain considerable differences: the remaining life expectancy of foreign men is 2.4 years higher and that of women 1.7 years higher compared to german persons of the same ages (cf. table 3). life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 167 fig. 9: age-specifi c differences between the probability of death of the german and the non-german population based on the census for the period 2010/12 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 age in percent women men source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations and design tab. 3: remaining life expectancy in selected age groups for the german and non-german population 2010/12 (based on the 2011 census – life tables with adjusted probability of death and extrapolated fi gures at advanced age) remaining life expectancy men women at the age of … germans non-germans germans non-germans 0 years 77.6 80.5 82.7 84.8 20 years 58.1 61.4 63.1 65.5 40 years 38.8 41.9 43.5 45.8 65 years 17.4 19.8 20.7 22.4 80 years 7.7 9.5 9.2 10.6 source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer168 6 discussion data from the 2011 census have made it possible to analyze basic mortality patterns in germany. the great advantage of the census data is that the population fi gures were surveyed as exactly as possible and they are free of population updating or back-calculation errors. an updating error in the population data was regarded as the main reason that the life expectancy of the foreign population in particular was cited as too high. the results of the 2010/12 general life table already showed for the entire population of germany that based on the census, life expectancy is somewhat lower than on the basis of the old updates. for men, the fi gure for life expectancy at birth on the basis of the census was exactly the same as in the latest life table produced on the basis of the old updates for the period 2009/11. these analyses showed that the census effect on the life expectancy of newborn boys was just as great as the decline in mortality between the two observation periods; therefore the fi gures correspond exactly. due to the less pronounced census-based revisions of population fi gures among women, who had a similar sized decline in mortality between 2009/11 and 2010/12, the life expectancy of newborn girls in the comparison of both mortality tables rose slightly (+0.1 years). not until old age is the remaining life expectancy based on the census slightly lower among both sexes as a result of the large (relative) population adjustments in this age range compared to the last life table, which was calculated based on the old updates (2009/11). at the total population level, the impact of the census was consequently relatively low and provides no evidence for a need to reassess the general view on mortality in germany. the fi gures were revised by approximately the amount of currently observable mortality changes between two calculation periods. a differentiated consideration by nationality, which is subject to the addressed methodological restrictions, shows more distinct effects on the level of life expectancy measured by the census. the life expectancy of the female german population was practically not infl uenced, and that of the male population is 0.1 years lower than when measured on the basis of the old population updates. the revisions for the foreign population were correspondingly greater. the life expectancy at birth of foreign men is 2.4 years lower and that of foreign women 3.0 years lower than fi gures that would have been determined for the same period under consideration on the basis of the old population update data. in this comparison, the infl uence of an extrapolation method must be considered, because its use had already resulted in signifi cant downward corrections of the life expectancy of the foreign population on the basis of the old population updates but more for men than for women. the previously extrapolated fi gures at an advanced age nonetheless underestimated the reliably determinable probability of death ascertained on the basis of the census. the reason for this is that due to the census, the base values of the extrapolation for the probability of death also had to be revised upwards. based on the census, a plausible probability of death of the foreign population can be identifi ed up to signifi cantly higher years of age, so that the necessary extrapolation above age 91 (men) and 92 (women) has recourse to reliable reference values and results in generally more plausible mortality patterns. these results show how great the life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 169 infl uence of the extrapolation method in the preparation of life tables for subpopulations can be. in comparable studies it is therefore elementary to disclose and justify the background information for the extrapolation such as the starting age and the method used. if we compare the characteristic mortality patterns of the german and the foreign populations over the entire age range, there is no fundamentally new result based on the census, but there are signifi cantly reduced differences compared to analyses based on the old population updates. the advantage of the foreign population in the level of life expectancy at birth drops from 5.2 years to 2.9 years for men and from 5.1 years to 2.1 years for women. also above age 65, there is a clear and largely signifi cant mortality advantage among the foreign population. the relative differences in the age-specifi c probability of death differ little at advanced ages from those of working age people. the fi ndings point towards a strong selection effect (healthy migrant effect). evidence of an adaptation effect that would ensure a strong alignment of mortality levels between the german and the foreign population at more advanced ages cannot be found with the census-based results. however, additional selection effects, for example during naturalisation or selective emigration, may play a role. with increasing age, the percentage of naturalised persons among the originally foreign population also rises; however, in recent decades naturalisation behaviours have not been uniform, making it diffi cult to assess this process. it is also possible that people of non-german nationality and increased morbidity tend to migrate back to their country of origin. therefore based on this analysis we cannot rule out an adaptation effect at the individual level, even if it cannot be proven at the macro level. a signifi cantly higher probability of death among non-germans can only be demonstrated for infants in both sexes. however, the results also indicate a higher probability of death in childhood and early adolescence among the foreign population, although the differences in this age range are not signifi cant. overall, the results confi rm that the foreign population, despite given socio-economic disadvantages,4 has a signifi cantly lower mortality than the german population. this constellation can be described as a paradox, since in numerous studies socio-economic disadvantages are associated with higher mortality.5 the results presented do not paint an entirely new picture of mortality conditions in germany. looking at the total population, incorporating the population fi gures from the 2011 census has only minor effects on the measured life expectancy. however, it discloses interesting fi ndings with regard to the mortality of the foreign population and differences between it and the mortality of the population with german nationality. the data from the 2011 census enable us to indeed detect a healthy migrant effect and thus a lower mortality of the foreign population – albeit to a much lesser extent than on the basis of the old population updates – even when errors 4 for a detailed description of the socio-economic situation of the foreign population in germany, cf. for example the 10. bericht der beauftragten der bundesregierung für migration, flüchtlinge und integration über die lage der ausländerinnen und ausländer in deutschland (2014). 5 for a detailed compilation of relevant studies, cf. for example hoffmann (2008), chapter 4. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer170 in the intercensal population updates are excluded. previously, a disproportionate underreporting of the foreign population in the intercensal population updates had been cited as one of the main reasons for the signifi cantly longer life expectancy of the foreign population on the basis of these data (luy 2007; kibele et al. 2008; kohls 2008a/b, 2011, 2012; mammey/schwarz 2002; robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008). to estimate the importance of the healthy migrant effect, in the past researchers therefore resorted to alternative data sources (e.g. the central register of foreign nationals, the grv data or the integration survey). these studies, however, were subjected to other restrictions, as they do not have recourse to a survey of the entire population and of deaths to analyze mortality differences between the german and the foreign population (see section 4.1). based on the census, the fi ndings presented here on the mortality of german and foreign population now permit us – with the largest possible certainty – to rule out that the healthy-migrant effect of previous fi ndings was merely an artefact. future research refl ecting this outcome can again deal more with substantive explanations for the documented mortality differences between the german and the foreign population. the life tables for the german and non-german population made available in the online appendix, for example, allow us to go into age-specifi c differences in more detail. acknowledgements we would like to thank olga pötzsch, michael mühlichen and two anonymous reviewers for important advice on earlier versions of this article. references balducci, gaetano 1917: costruzione e critica delle tavole di mortalità. in: giornale degli economisti e rivista di statistica, serie terza, 55: 455-484. becker, karl 1874: zur berechnung von sterbetafeln an die bevölkerungsstatistik zu stellende anforderungen. berlin. die beauftragte der 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zeuner, gustav 1869: abhandlungen zur mathematischen statistik. leipzig. zur nieden, felix; rau, roland; luy, marc 2016: allgemeine sterbetafel 2010/12 – neue ansätze zur glättung und extrapolation der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten. in: wirtschaft und statistik 1: 63-73. life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census • 173 date of submission: 14.10.2015 date of acceptance: 21.03.2016 felix zur nieden (), bettina sommer. federal statistical offi ce (destatis). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: felix.zurnieden@destatis.de, bettina.sommer@destatis.de url: https://www.destatis.de/en/homepage.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) policy-based population projections for the european union: a complementary approach policy-based population projections for the european union: a complementary approach* philip cafaro, patrícia dérer abstract: we present new population projections out to 2100 for the countries of the european union and for the eu as a whole under a wide range of fertility and migration scenarios. as policy-based projections rather than forecasts, they aspire not to maximize predictive success regarding future demographic developments, but to accurately show the impact of different migration and socio-economic policy choices on population numbers. our chief aim is to clarify those policy choices for european citizens and policymakers. we show that demographic policies have the potential to markedly increase or decrease future populations across the eu. migration policy offers greater scope for infl uencing future population numbers than policies aimed at infl uencing national fertility rates. in countries with particularly low fertility rates or high emigration levels, egalitarian economic and family support policies have the potential to limit future population decreases to a signifi cant extent, especially in combination. in most cases, eu nations are well placed to stabilize or slowly reduce their populations by continuing status quo policies or with moderate changes. thus they are well placed to achieve one of the necessary conditions for creating ecologically sustainable societies. keywords: population projections · european union · fertility · migration · population policy comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 171-200 (date of release: 28.10.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-14en1 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of three online appendices: detailed discussion of projection scenarios (appendix i) doi 10.12765/cpos-2019-15en, projection parameters (appendix ii) doi 10.12765/cpos-2019-16en, and population projections for all eu countries (appendix iii) doi 10.12765/cpos-2019-17en: url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/310/285 url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/310/286 url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/310/287 • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer172 1 introduction in this paper we present new, complementary population projections for the 28 member countries of the european union and for the eu as a whole. these projections, building on the work of eurostat and numerous individual demographers, differ from previous national and region-wide projections primarily in projecting a wider range of fertility and migration scenarios farther out into the future than has typically been done and in linking these scenarios explicitly to policies. as policy-based projections rather than forecasts, they aspire not to maximize predictive success regarding what will happen, but to accurately show the long-range demographic impacts of different policy choices, so as to clarify those choices for europe’s leaders and citizens. our central claim is that these new projections clarify the population impact of a wide range of current policy choices better than recent projections from the un, eurostat, and national statistical bureaus. in addition, we ask these research questions: 1) how much can feasible family-support policies increase or decrease european populations? 2) how much can alternative migration policies do so, particularly over the long term? 3) do changes to family-support policies or immigration numbers have the bigger potential to infl uence future population size within the european union? 4) what regional differences exist among eu countries in terms of population futures and policy choices? 5) what policies might best mitigate excessive population decreases in extra low fertility or high emigration countries? 6) how can migration and fertility policies affect the extent of aging in the eu? these new projections can also show which demographic policies lead toward stable or slowly decreasing populations in the densely populated eu and which toward higher ones – important information for citizens concerned to create ecologically sustainable societies. in what follows, we review recent efforts to project european populations (section 2), describe our own scenario choices (section 3) and projection methods (section 4), present results and discuss answers to our research questions (sections 5 and 6), and offer our main conclusions (section 7). 2 background successful countries need to make well-informed policy decisions. today the nations of the eu face policy choices that will infl uence their long-range demographic development, leading to a wide range of possible population futures. but we live in a rapidly changing world, including sudden fl uctuations in migration levels, with policy-based population projections for the european union • 173 unexpected demographic surprises, such as persistently low fertility rates in some developed nations. aware of this demographic uncertainty, national statistical bureaus tend to be leery of projecting more than a few decades into the future, and their alternative scenarios, if given at all, are usually narrowly constrained. this limits the usefulness of their projections for long-range policy analysis, or for informing their citizens about the full range of policy options. for example, the report presenting the most recent national population projections from germany to a general audience shows only two fertility scenarios (1.4 tfr and 1.6 tfr) and two migration scenarios (annual net migration of 100,000 and 200,000) with higher fertility and migration scenarios relegated to model assumptions beside the main variants (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2015). such a small variation in the total fertility rate arguably does not capture the fertility changes possible through changes to family support programs or other economic policies (see discussion below). similarly, the two immigration scenarios hardly account for the range of policy choices facing a country where annual net immigration has averaged 259,000 over the past twenty years and varied widely (from – 56,000 in 2008 to 1.2 million in 2015) and where there is widespread support both for greatly increasing immigration (social democrats, die grünen) and greatly decreasing it (christian democratic union, alternative für deutschland). the report makes no attempt to explicitly link different fertility rates and immigration numbers to particular policies. in addition, the projections only go out to 2060, with longer-term demographic impacts left unexplored. it is easy to lose sight of the goal of policy clarifi cation while pursuing predictive rigor. probabilistic population forecasts have begun to supplant traditional cohort-component projection methods, based on superior accuracy and their ability to quantify uncertainty (wilson/rees 2005; azose et al. 2016). recently the italian national statistical bureau took this approach, using stochastic models to estimate future fertility, mortality and immigration trends, which they present with 90 percent confi dence intervals (istat 2018). stochastic projection models may provide superior short-term forecasts, but an unremarked consequence of using them is that median scenarios with confi dence intervals tend to displace presentation of a variety of alternative scenarios – thus breaking any explicit connection between future numbers and current policy choices. il futuro demografi co del paese provides readers with a single median projection (with 90 percent confi dence intervals) of italy’s future population out to 2065, with no alternative scenarios (istat 2018). but fertility, mortality and migration trends can develop in different ways due to policy choices, and it would have been helpful to clarify these. when we turn to region-wide projections, their value for policy clarifi cation also may be limited. eurostat’s 2015 eu population projections run to 2080 and helpfully provide several alternative migration and fertility variants. baseline scenarios are projected from recent trends by nowcast, convergence and trend models. tfrs for all countries are assumed to converge moderately to strongly around those of the highest fertility eu members, while net migration levels are assumed to converge relatively quickly around much lower levels (from ½ to ¼ of current levels by 2080) (lanzieri 2017). sensitivity tests are then provided for lower and higher migration • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer174 (+/one third of the baseline net migration level) and for lower fertility (shrinkage of national fertility rates by 20 percent), but not for higher-than-baseline fertility. the projections provided in online tables (eurostat 2019) are not clearly related to particular policy choices, nor do they cover the range of plausible alternatives, nor are the results explained in accessible summary publications. the resulting projections provide readers with little sense of how increases or decreases in net migration or fertility could impact future population numbers. the most recent un projections run to 2100 and use a probabilistic approach, resting on probabilistic fertility and mortality projections but deterministic migration projections (raftery et al. 2014; united nations 2017a). they assume generally constant levels of net migration until 2045-2050, which then gradually decline, reaching 50 percent of 2045-2050 levels by 2095-2100. whatever the merits of this long-term forecast globally, it seems dubious for european countries, where migration pressures are strong and are projected to grow stronger during this century (lutz et al. 2019). only one alternative migration scenario is presented, the zero net migration variant; this allows readers to estimate the impact of status quo migration levels to future population numbers through 2050, but not much more. regarding fertility, the un follows the tradition and adds projections for +/0.5 of base tfr. combined with a “constant fertility” scenario, where fertility rates remain at 20102015 levels, this provides some sense of how future fertility rates might infl uence future national population numbers. however, this information is not presented perspicuously in summary publications (see united nations 2017b). in any case, for low-fertility developed nations like those in the eu, a more fi ne-grained series of fertility and migration projections would be valuable – as well as some attempt to connect particular fertility and migration scenarios to particular policy choices. the public typically regard any population projection as a forecast designed to predict the future (booth 2006). however, several recent efforts helpfully project alternative futures without emphasizing the superior likelihood of any of the alternatives projected. such scenario-based projections emphasize that demography is not destiny and that policies can decisively infl uence demographic outcomes. the demifer project (demographic and migratory flows affecting european regions and cities) is one effort to clearly link policy choices to demographic consequences using scenario designs (de beer et al. 2010; rees et al. 2012). reasoning that future demographic changes would be infl uenced less by specifi c demographic policy choices than by overall economic trends (which in turn infl uence policies), researchers developed four general scenarios. the complex scenarios depict more or less robust economies and more or less economic inequality within and between european regions. researchers then calculated expected changes to fertility and mortality rates and immigration levels under each scenario. their focus on nuts2 regions provides a more fi ne-grained analysis than national projections and their holistic approach arguably captures well potential changes in fertility rates, given the fact that societies’ overall support for family formation infl uences these rates more strongly than one-off policy initiatives (frejka 2008). but the approach fails to model european immigration policy choices, since future immigration levels, like current ones, will be set primarily by european governments rather than by economic trends. policy-based population projections for the european union • 175 the recently updated global projections from the international institute for applied systems analysis provide the most ambitious approach we have seen linking policy choices to future population numbers. building on the “shared socio-economic pathways” developed for climate change analysis, (lutz et al. 2018) develop three scenarios representing slow, medium and rapid socioeconomic development, each with associated fertility, mortality and migration levels. they then split their medium scenario into three based on different migration levels: zero net migration; continuation of the average net migration level between 1960 and 2015; and double that average. all fi ve of the ensuing projections are run out to 2100. the result is the most explicit picture we have seen of the potential for different migration levels to infl uence future eu population numbers. unfortunately, the potential impact of family support policies on future numbers is obscured, since their scenarios assume an implausibly large infl uence for increased education on future eu fertility levels, not taking into account already high european education levels and recent evidence for increased fertility among more educated women (hazan/zoabi 2015). they also mix changing fertility rates with changing migration and mortality levels in such a way as to render the impacts of family support policy choices opaque. 3 scenarios in general contrast to the approaches discussed above, our eu projections disaggregate the demographic impacts of fertility-focused policies and migration policies, presenting separate projections with multiple policy scenarios for each. we set the parameters for fertility rates and annual immigration numbers with reference to recent rates and numbers in status quo scenarios. then we build additional scenarios by phasing in plausible changes to these rates and numbers, directly related to particular policy choices. our scenarios are informed by reference to recent policy choices made or advocated in the political sphere, and by analyses of the effectiveness of these policies in the recent demographic literature. given the wide range of policy proposals currently under discussion in the public sphere, we have opted to consider a wider rather than a narrower range of projections. 3.1 fertility scenarios all european countries have completed the demographic transition to small families with long-lived members (frejka 2008). while there is considerable variation (from a current tfr of 1.34 in italy and spain to 1.92 in france), no european country is at or above replacement fertility (table 1). although a few analysts see low fertility and smaller populations as part of the natural evolution of successful societies (matanle 2017; götmark et al. 2018), most policy-makers see them as problems to be fought (european commission 2014). low fertility rates have induced eu nations to make a variety of attempts to raise them, including bonuses and tax breaks for having more children, and more gener• philip cafaro, patrícia dérer176 ous provision of child care services. such efforts have been extensively studied. despite mixed evidence in the literature (gauthier et al. 2013), by now policy-makers have a fairly clear sense of what works best for permanently raising fertility levels in developed nations: comprehensive nordic-style policies that make work-life balance easier for women and couples, combined with strong economic safety nets and more egalitarian societies (thévenon/gauthier 2011; balbo et al. 2013; pollmann-schult 2018). we have also learned which policies do not work, or which only provide a short-term boost to fertility rates by infl uencing the timing of child-bearing, rather than completed fertility. these include isolated payments to encourage larger families within unchanged contexts of economic or career insecurity (kalwij 2010; kim 2014, although see hong/sullivan 2016 for some contrary evidence for the effectiveness of fertility subsidies.) given this general understanding, we have developed the fi ve family support policy scenarios summarized in table 2 below. in the status quo policy scenario, we imagine nations continuing their existing economic and family support policies. under this scenario, we hold tfr steady for higher fertility countries (see table 1) and phase in small fertility increases for lower and medium fertility countries, in line with prevailing trends and other recent projections. then in our two egalitarian policy scenarios, moderate and strong, we visualize countries enacting policies that make it easier for couples to form and sustain families, or creating more generous economic safety nets and doing more to redistribute wealth, so as to sustain a relatively egalitarian economic structure, or both. in contrast, in our two neo-liberal policy scenarios, moderate and strong, we imagine countries retreating from their tab. 1: fertility rates in 2016 for eu countries according to eurostat, divided into three groups lower fertility countries medium fertility countries higher fertility countries tfr < 1.5 tfr 1.5 < tfr < 1.7 tfr > 1.7 italy 1.34 austria 1.53 latvia 1.74 spain 1.34 hungary 1.53 denmark 1.79 portugal 1.36 bulgaria 1.54 united kingdom 1.79 cyprus 1.37 finland 1.57 ireland 1.81 malta 1.37 slovenia 1.58 sweden 1.85 greece 1.38 estonia 1.60 france 1.92 poland 1.39 germany 1.60 luxembourg 1.41 european union 1.60 croatia 1.42 czech republic 1.63 slovakia 1.48 romania 1.64 the netherlands 1.66 belgium 1.68 lithuania 1.69 source: eurostat database, “fertility indicators” table policy-based population projections for the european union • 177 current levels of family support, cutting their economic safety nets, or encouraging greater economic inequality – or some combination of all three a key question regarding these scenarios is the extent to which policy changes in one direction or the other will infl uence national fertility rates. there is much disagreement among demographers about the effectiveness of policy in infl uencing fertility (luci-greulich/thévenon 2013). yet that they have some infl uence seems undeniable. hilgeman/butts (2009: 113) found that improved access to childcare increased european fertility rates, predicting that if “italy were to increase its enrollment from 6 percent to 64 percent, to match that in denmark, the realized fertility tab. 2: projection assumptions made under different family support scenarios. the impact on fertility is always phased in by 2036 scenario policy changes impact on fertility rates (1) status quo economic and family support policies continue existing level of family support, existing economic safety net, existing levels of economic equality and equality between the sexes lower fertility countries: + 0.2 tfr medium fertility countries: + 0.1 tfr higher fertility countries: no change in tfr (2016 value) (2) moderate egalitarian policy shift improve economic safety net, decrease economic inequality within society, increase policies that support family formation, commit to equality between the sexes all three categories: status quo tfr + 0.15 (3) strong egalitarian policy shift greatly improve economic safety net, greatly decrease economic inequality within society, greatly increase policies that support family formation, strongly commit to equality between the sexes all three categories: status quo tfr + 0.3 (4) moderate neoliberal policy shift reduce economic safety net, accept growing economic inequality within society, decrease support for family formation, ignore inequality between the sexes all three categories: status quo tfr 0.15 (5) strong neo-liberal policy shift greatly reduce economic safety net, accept greatly increased economic inequality within society, greatly decrease support for family formation, ignore inequality between the sexes all three categories: status quo tfr 0.3 source: own design • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer178 per woman would be predicted to increase by an average of 0.97 children.” (adsera 2004) concluded that the gap between desired and achieved fertility was lower for spanish women with more secure public sector jobs than for those with less secure private sector jobs. although gauthier et al. 2013 argue that this “gap” is often overestimated and should not be used as evidence for the potential impact of familyfriendly policies, it is often cited as evidence at least for their possible impact (european commission 2005). one summary found small yet signifi cant increases in developed nations’ fertility rates under a wide range of policy interventions (oecd 2011). acknowledging the uncertainty around this issue, we assume a relatively small but not insignifi cant space for family support and general economic policies to increase or decrease future fertility rates in the eu: plus or minus 0.15 tfr for our “moderate” policy change scenarios and plus or minus 0.30 tfr for our “strong” scenarios. this range is broadly in line both with studies that have looked at the impacts of particular policies in particular eu countries and with the idea that the range of fertility rates exhibited among eu countries is partly but not wholly a function of different national policy choices. see appendix i for additional discussion. 3.2 migration scenarios regarding migration, we develop a similarly wide range of policy-dependent scenarios, recognizing the greater uncertainty around future migration numbers compared to future fertility rates (azose et al. 2016). migration numbers vary widely across the eu, as illustrated by table 3, showing individual countries’ average annual net migration over the past twenty years. in recent decades, many eu countries have evolved from relatively low to relatively high immigration regimes. more recently, high immigration levels have produced a strong populist reaction and some attempts to reduce these numbers, but whether this leads to permanently reduced immigration in the future remains to be seen. on the one hand, many eu citizens would like to see immigration reduced for social, economic, or political reasons (connor/krogstad 2018). they perceive current immigration levels offering few benefi ts and considerable harms. on the other hand, many citizens (sometimes the same ones) feel a humanitarian obligation to help their poorer neighbors to the south and east by allowing more immigration. many business leaders see increased immigration as the solution to the potential problem of shrinking numbers of workers and consumers (legrain 2014; d’albis et al. 2018), a view echoed by eu policy-makers (european commission 2005, 2014). the situation is fl uid and the sheer range of immigration policies advocated by european political parties is impressive. we seek to capture this range in our projections, with the following fi ve migration scenarios for those countries (20 out of 28) that have averaged net positive migration over the past twenty years: we build the status quo net migration scenario by averaging annual net migration into a country for the past twenty years and projecting it out to 2100 (note that our status quo net migration scenario is identical to our status quo fertility policy scenario). such a lookback period roughly mirrors contemporary policies and conpolicy-based population projections for the european union • 179 ditions, while smoothing out yearly fl uctuations. we then build four further scenarios around the status quo scenario: 2x and 4x status quo scenarios, which increase immigration, and a zero net migration scenario and half status quo scenario, which decrease it. see appendix i for further details. we treat the eight eu countries where emigration has exceeded immigration on average over the last two decades somewhat differently. for these countries, which are all in eastern europe, we have built a status quo net migration scenario around continued negative net migration, again taking the average annual net migration level for the past twenty years as a starting reference but linearly increasing it to zero in 2100 (in this way, gradually increasing net migration compensates for a decreasing total population that could not support large constant negative net migration levels). we then project a zero net migration scenario, reaching equal numbers of emigrants and immigrants by 2026, and three positive net migration scenarios built around applying a multiple of the average annual net migration rate for the eu as a whole during the past twenty years to the countries in question, out to 2100. these higher net migration scenarios thus assume convergence in migration patterns across the eu, as eastern countries catch up to western ones by being more open to immigration from outside the eu while fewer of their own citizens emigrate. as with our fertility scenarios, we believe our migration scenarios well capture the range of policy choices facing eu countries today. these two sets of fi ve alternatives present the full gamut of policy choices on immigration: from drastically curtailing it to drastically expanding it; from the sweden democrats to sweden’s green party. several readers of this study in manuscript have questioned the feasibility tab. 3: average annual net migration (1998-2017) of eu countries source: calculated from eurostat database,”population change – demographic balance and crude rates at national level” table countries with positive average annual net migration countries with negative average annual net migration european union 1,188,235 spain 270,112 ireland 21,645 slovakia -305 germany 259,316 czech republic 18,747 estonia -942 united kingdom 230,107 denmark 16,778 croatia -4,259 italy 229,093 hungary 13,652 poland -12,552 france 100,525 portugal 12,262 latvia -14,362 sweden 50,024 finland 11,104 bulgaria -21,052 belgium 42,575 greece 8,390 lithuania -27,212 austria 40,547 luxembourg 6,967 romania -103,807 the netherlands 26,427 cyprus 5,855 slovenia 4,128 malta 3,642 • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer180 of the zero net migration and 4x net migration scenarios for positive net migration countries. we agree that these more extreme scenarios are less likely to occur than the more modest policy changes characterized within the range of our half status quo to 2x status quo scenarios; that is why we graph them with dotted lines rather than straight lines in our projections. yet given the overriding goal of these projections – to clarify the potential demographic impact of current policy choices – we believe these policy options should be included in our analysis. a long-term zero net migration scenario for high-immigration countries in western and northern europe is unlikely. yet “no international migration” scenarios are included in the population projections of many national statistical bureaus and academic demographers, serving as reference scenarios to decompose the impacts of internal population changes and international migration. similarly, migration levels equal to 4x these countries’ recent net migration are highly unlikely to be sustained for many decades. the 4x net migration scenario thus is best seen as a “what if” scenario, allowing us to ask: “what might the demographic results be if a country persisted in allowing very high levels of immigration?” several eu governments allowed unprecedented immigration for a time in 2015 and 2016; in the case of germany, this resulted in even higher net migration in 2015 than would occur under our 4x status quo migration scenario. exploring the possible demographic impacts of persisting in such a course is valuable, even if such tab. 4: projection assumptions under different migration scenarios for countries with net positive migration scenario annual net migration level fertility rate assumptions (1) status quo net migration continuation of the country’s average annual net migration level for the past 20 years for the rest of the century tfr the same as under status quo fertility scenarios (2) 2x status quo net migration 2x average annual net migration level by 2026, held stable for the rest of the century status quo tfr + 0.05 by 2036 (3) 4x status quo net migration 4x average annual net migration level by 2026, held stable for the rest of the century status quo tfr + 0.2 by 2036 (4) half status quo net migration ½ average annual net migration level by 2026, held stable for the rest of the century status quo tfr 0.025 by 2036 (5) zero net migration zero net migration by 2026, held stable for the rest of the century status quo tfr 0.05 by 2036 source: own design policy-based population projections for the european union • 181 persistence is unlikely. similarly, for other countries, the 4x status quo net migration scenario allows us to ask: “what might the demographic results be if a country allowed open borders?” europe’s green parties explicitly advocated an open borders immigration policy in the 2019 european parliamentary elections (european greens 2019a/b), and many eu social democratic parties have joined them in resisting efforts to set numerical limits to refugee admissions into the eu while simultaneously pushing for a much more expansive defi nition of refugees (žižek 2016). truly open borders are hard to model, but the 4x status quo scenario seems to us a good proxy for such an unlikely but possible course of action, showing its possible demographic impact. see appendix i for further discussion. finally, we note that family support and migration policies can and will change simultaneously. for that reason, we also project several combination scenarios in an attempt to better understand the full range of potential demographic futures facing eu countries and the impacts that policy choices may have on them. we describe these combination scenarios in section 5 of appendix i. we present them, along with all our scenario projections, in appendix iii. tab. 5: projection assumptions under different migration scenarios for countries with net negative migration scenario annual net migration level fertility rate assumptions (1) status quo net migration linear increase from average annual net migration for the past 20 years to zero by 2100 status quo tfr (2) zero net migration zero net migration by 2026, held stable for the rest of the century status quo tfr (3) eu status quo net migration rate net migration level equal to the recent average eu net migration rate by 2026, held constant for the rest of the century status quo tfr + 0.05 by 2036 (4) 2x eu status quo net migration rate net migration level equal to 2x the recent average eu net migration rate by 2026, held constant for the rest of the century status quo tfr + 0.1 by 2036 (5) 4x eu status quo net migration rate net migration level equal to 4x the recent average eu net migration rate by 2026, held constant for the rest of the century status quo tfr + 0.2 by 2036 source: own design • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer182 4 methods our population projections employ the deterministic cohort-component method. we used demproj program version 5.71, part of the spectrum policy development and planning tool developed by avenir health (stover/kirmeyer 2007; stover et al. 2010). the program requires information on population numbers by age and sex in the base year (2016 in all scenarios), as well as current year data and future assumptions about total fertility rate (tfr), age distribution of fertility, life expectancy at birth by sex, the most appropriate model life table, and the magnitude and pattern of international migration. in order to calculate dependency ratios, median age and proportion of 65+ population throughout the projections, we also used the demproj module of spectrum. our source for baseline 2016 data on population numbers by sex and single age (0-80+), national tfrs, life expectancy at birth and net migration fi gures, is the european statistical offi ce (eurostat). we use 2016 as our base year because at the time we made the projections, that was the most recent year for which actual tfr fi gures were available. age specifi c fertility rates follow the united nations’ most recent world population projections’ country specifi c fertility distribution data (united nations 2017a). for changes to life expectancy, we use the sex specifi c assumptions of the baseline scenario of the eurostat 2015 population projections until 2080, then hold these constant through the end of the century. in order to work with age-specifi c mortality rates, we use the un’s country specifi c model life tables. to model the impact of changes in migration levels, we constructed status quo scenarios by averaging eurostat’s annual national net migration fi gures for 1998 to 2017, then built alternative scenarios on multiples of that base. as we were not forecasting but building what-if policy scenarios, a model using readily available net migration level data was satisfactory for our purposes, although we are aware that multiregional models such as multipoles (kupiszewski/kupiszewska 2011) based on immigration levels and emigration rates are more accurate and methodologically elegant (rogers 1990). similarly, we did not attempt to model regional, sub-national migration, nor to classify different migration fl ows by motive, such as employment versus asylum seeking, nor did we distinguish between immigrants coming from eu countries or outside the european union. such approaches may provide a more fi ne-grained picture. but our focus in this study was squarely on national net migration levels, since a primary goal was to model the future demographic impacts of migration policy, which is made primarily at the national level. concerning “net migrants,” we assume equal proportions between the sexes and the demproj program uses the un’s country-specifi c migration age distributions. all changes to tfr in our scenarios assume a linear change phased in between 2016 and 2036, while all changes to net migration rates are phased in between 2016 and 2026. appendix ii provides tables showing the projection parameters (life expectancy, fertility rates and net migration levels) set for all scenarios across all countries in the study. appendix iii provides detailed population projections for all eu member states and the eu as a whole, in chart and table form. policy-based population projections for the european union • 183 5 results to begin summarizing our results, consider our projections for the european union as a whole. the current 28 countries in the eu had a combined population in 1950 of 379.8 million and 510.3 million in 2016. the region’s current (2016) total fertility rate is 1.60 and its annual net migration level over the past 20 years (1998-2017) averaged 1,188,235. under a continuation of status quo family support and economic policies and an extension of current immigration levels in every country, we can expect a 3.6 percent decrease in the eu population (fig. 1). this would hardly be overwhelming, spread out over eight decades. a relatively modest turn toward less generous support for family formation, under the moderate neoliberal scenario, would accelerate population decrease, leading instead to a 14.2 percent population decline. on the other hand, more generous support for workers and their families, under the moderate egalitarian scenario, would increase fertility rates suffi ciently to avoid any population decline, even adding 27 million people to the total eu population. given wide disparities among eu countries in economic support systems, commitments to egalitarian relations between the sexes and fi nancial support for having children, there seems suffi cient scope for enacting such policies and thus avoiding a decline if that is desired. the full range of fertility-related policy scenarios (dashed lines on fi gure 1), from strong neoliberal to strong egalitarian policies, leads to populations ranging in 2100 from 396.8 million (a 22 percent decline) to 592.3 million (a 16 percent increase): almost a 200 million spread. fig. 1: european union population projections under fi ve fertility scenarios. all scenarios assume the continuation of the past 20 years average annual net migration on the eu level source: own calculations 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 strong egalitarian moderate egalitarian status quo economic and social policies moderate neoliberal strong neoliberal 379.8 million 510.3 million 592.3 million 537.2 million 491.9 million 439.8 million 396.8 million population in millions • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer184 altering immigration levels provides much greater scope for increasing or decreasing the total eu population, compared to changing fertility-related policies on the country level – an important result that also holds for most individual countries (fig. 2). cutting net average migration in half would reduce the eu population by an additional 70 million people, or an extra 14 percent compared to the population loss under the status quo scenario, for a total drop of 24 percent by 2100. doubling net migration, conversely, would switch the eu’s population from declining by 52.6 million (10 percent) under the status quo to growing by 92.0 million (18 percent). that’s a swing of 214.6 million people across our most likely range of immigration policy changes. the spread across the full range of policy choices is much greater: over 600 million people, from swelling to 933.3 million in 2100 in the case of quadrupling status quo net migration numbers (an 83 percent increase), to contracting to only 318.9 million by reducing net migration to zero (a 38 percent decline). our combination scenarios add further detail to the picture (see appendices i and iii for details). doubling recent average net migration levels across the eu while improving family support through egalitarian social and economic policies leads to a 38 percent population increase by the end of the century. in contrast, cutting immigration in half and cutting back on social and economic support for family formation leads to a population decline of over two hundred million people (a 40 percent decline). interestingly, halving recent net migration levels combined with strong improvements in family support leads to a relatively stable population (decreasing fig. 2: european union population projections under fi ve fertility scenarios. status quo migration is the continuation of the past 20 years average annual net migration level (1,188,235). migration scenarios use total fertility rates varying between 1.65 and 1.90, with higher immigration levels projected to drive higher tfrs source: own calculations 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 4x status quo migration 2x status quo status quo net migration (1,188,235) half status quo zero net migration 379.8 million 510.3 million 933.3 million 602.3 million 457.7 million 387.7 million 318.9 million population in millions policy-based population projections for the european union • 185 only 3.6 percent by the end of the century). this might be a particularly appealing policy combination on a continent where support for mass immigration has waned while concerns about low fertility levels remain strong. 5.1 regional differences despite their shared experience passing through “the second demographic transition,” eu nations all face somewhat different population futures and policy choices. in particular, it is worth highlighting the substantial differences among four regions of the eu. central and eastern europe under status quo policies, many low fertility and/or net emigration countries in this region are on track for steep population declines this century.1 these include romania, facing a 74 percent decline by 2100, bulgaria (60 percent), the baltic states (between 38 percent and 86 percent) and hungary, facing a decline of 29 percent by 2100. however, egalitarian economic and social policies could mitigate population declines among this group by increasing fertility rates and (potentially) decreasing emigration numbers. in tandem with modestly increased immigration, much of the projected depopulation could be avoided. for example, under a combination scenario of zero net migration fused with strong family support policies, romania’s population decline shrinks to 22 percent by 2100, while under the same scenario over the same time-frame, bulgaria’s population only decreases 28 percent. add positive net immigration at the current eu level and these populations would instead increase, romania by 17 percent and bulgaria by 6 percent. hungary, which has had small positive net migration over the past twenty years, could limit its population decline to 11 percent by holding net migration steady and embracing strong family support policies. instead, its current government has proposed the sort of pro-natalist policies that have proven ineffective in the past, such as subsidies to encourage families to have three or four children. more effective, both narrowly in terms of increasing fertility and broadly in terms of social wellbeing, would be policies to help young couples have the one or two children many of them want, without having to sacrifi ce their careers or go into poverty. southern europe low fertility/high net migration countries in this region are propping up population numbers through high immigration levels under status quo policies. without heavy immigration, spain’s and italy’s populations would already be declining, since their tfrs have been below replacement rate since the early 1980s and are now well below it. under zero net migration scenarios, spain’s population decreases by 46 per1 sobotka (2003) argues that the countries of central europe and eastern europe are following somewhat different paths, the former moving toward western european norms of later childrearing and the latter shifting toward larger proportions of one-child families. • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer186 cent and italy’s by over 50 percent by 2100. these countries cannot cut back signifi cantly on immigration without either embracing egalitarian economic and family support policies to increase fertility rates, or accepting signifi cant population declines this century. greece and portugal, averaging more modest positive net migration over the past twenty years, instead face steep population declines in coming decades under status quo scenarios and all projected fertility scenarios. their choices going forward are somewhat similar to italy’s and spain’s, however: accept higher net migration numbers, boost support for family-formation and create stronger economic safety nets for common citizens in order to maintain their populations, or accept rapid population decline. interestingly, for italy and spain, the status quo scenario and a scenario combining half status quo migration and a strong egalitarian shift in family support policies lead to relatively similar results, coalescing around a fairly stable population, while for greece and portugal this combination scenario leads to signifi cantly less population loss. a combination of increased support for family formation and decreased immigration might be appealing to many residents of these countries, especially given relatively high unemployment rates throughout the region. northern european countries with high fertility and high immigration levels these countries will see signifcant population growth this century under status quo policies, and some growth under most plausible policy scenarios. an example is sweden, which is on track to increase its population 52 percent by 2100 under status quo fertility and immigration policies. increases in immigration levels could lead to much larger populations throughout northern europe, as seen in the table below: with wealthy societies, low population densities (by european standards) and a post-war tradition in some countries of taking in large numbers of refugees, signifi cant increases in immigration levels are a real possibility – although there is also considerable opposition to such increases, as demonstrated in recent elections. tab. 6: percentage change from current population by 2100, under different immigration scenarios in northern europe. scenarios leading to > 50 percent population increase are shaded zero net ½ status status quo 2x status 4x status migration quo migration quo quo denmark 19 2 16 54 142 finland 35 22 11 15 71 sweden 9 23 52 124 276 source: own calculations policy-based population projections for the european union • 187 western european countries with medium to high fertility and high immigration levels, these countries are mostly on track for relatively stable to moderately increasing populations under status quo policy scenarios (table 7). while increases in immigration levels could lead to much larger populations, such as increases of 186 percent in belgium and 167 percent in the uk under our highest immigration scenario, decreases could lead to signifi cantly smaller ones, such as a 38 percent decline in germany and a 24 percent decrease in the netherlands at zero net migration. as in the rest of europe, policyinduced changes in fertility rates could also change future population numbers substantially, albeit to a lesser extent. 5.2 impact on population aging fertility and migration policies will have only a moderate infl uence on the pace of future population aging, with migration policy changes having a stronger potential impact. for the eu-28 population, the proportion of the population 65 years and older and the dependency ratio will be higher in 2100 than they are today under all scenarios (table 8), so some aging is inevitable. of all the scenarios, increasing long term average net migration 4 times would do the most to slow the pace of aging, with the dependency ratio increasing 10 percent instead of 17 percent as under the status quo scenario, while increasing the proportion of the population 65 years + by 2.2 percent instead of 7.2 percent. but in exchange for these modest improvements, these immigration policy changes would add an extra 475 million people to the total eu population (933 million instead of 458 million under the status quo scenario). pursuing the strong egalitarian family policy scenario would improve the dependency ratio roughly as much as under the 2x status quo migration scenario. in the other direction, the strong neoliberal family policy scenario would increase the tab. 7: percentage increase from current population by 2100, under different immigration scenarios in western europe. scenarios leading to > 50 percent population increase are shaded zero net ½ status status quo 2x status 4x status migration quo net migration quo quo austria -36 -9 16 72 195 belgium -23 >-1 26 74 186 czech republic -37 -25 -14 8 61 france -9 2 13 35 88 germany -38 -19 -2 37 123 ireland -6 23 51 111 245 luxembourg -33 50 117 267 600 the netherlands -24 -12 -2 25 82 united kingdom -18 3 24 68 167 source: own calculations • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer188 ta b . 8 : t he im p ac t o f fi v e m ig ra tio n an d fi ve fe rt ili ty p o lic y sc en ar io s o n th re e m ea su re s o f s o ci et al a g in g in t he e u a s a w ho le m ig ra tio n sc en ar io s fe rt ili ty s ce na ri o s ye ar s ta tu s q u o z er o n et h al f s ta tu s 2x s ta tu s 4x s ta tu s s tr o n g m o d er at e m o d er at e s tr o n g s ce na ri o m ig ra tio n q uo q uo q uo ne o lib er al n eo lib er al eg al it ar ia n eg al it ar ia n w or ki ng a ge p op u la ti on (% ) 20 16 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 65 .3 20 50 57 .8 56 .4 57 .1 58 .9 60 .4 58 .7 58 .2 57 .4 57 .0 21 00 58 .8 56 .5 57 .9 60 .1 61 .3 57 .3 58 .2 59 .3 59 .6 d ep en d en cy r at io (% ) 20 16 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 53 .2 20 50 73 .0 77 .3 75 .0 69 .7 65 .5 70 .5 71 .7 74 .3 75 .5 21 00 70 .0 76 .9 72 .8 66 .5 63 .2 74 .5 71 .9 68 .6 67 .7 p op u la ti on 6 5 + (% ) 20 16 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 19 .2 20 50 27 .7 30 .0 28 .8 25 .7 22 .5 28 .9 28 .3 27 .1 26 .5 21 00 26 .4 29 .9 27 .9 24 .3 21 .4 30 .8 28 .5 24 .4 22 .7 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns policy-based population projections for the european union • 189 percentage of the population 65+ by an additional 4.4 percent in 2100, comparable to the zero net migration scenario, while it would increase the dependency ratio by an additional 4.5 percent, comparable to cutting immigration to one quarter of current levels. but once again, the impacts on total population numbers would dwarf the impacts on aging. 5.3 comparison with other studies our fertility and migration scenarios give projection results that are roughly comparable to the results from other recent european-wide studies, while linking those results more clearly to available policy choices. compare in this regard our migration scenario projections to recent projections from eurostat (2015), the united nations (2017b) and the wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (2018) in fi gure 3 below. results from our zero net migration, status quo and 2x status quo scenarios are broadly comparable to the no migration, median or “most likely,” and high migration projections from these other studies. the clear outlier is our 4x status quo scenario which graphs a much higher sustained high immigration level than any major study to date. the justifi cation for providing this scenario has already been provided. note that the supply is already in place, with hundreds of millions of young people in the developing world living in rapidly-growing societies that struggle to provide them with the jobs and material well-being they desire. whether eu countries (or the eu as a whole, under a strengthened centralized government) will enact policies that increase immigration this much is doubtful, yet possible. 6 discussion what conclusions can we draw from these projections regarding our main research questions? we would direct attention to fi ve key points. (1) migration policy offers greater scope for infl uencing future population numbers than changes to family support policies, or changes to other fertilityrelated economic policies in the eu. changing fertility does infl uence population size. but in a context of relatively low-fertility regimes where policy changes’ impacts on fertility are often fairly small, changes to national immigration levels could have a much greater impact going forward. for germany, europe’s most populous country, the more likely scenarios for fertility variation range between 1.55 tfr and 1.85 tfr, leading to a potential difference of 15.4 million people in 2100 (72.9 million versus 88.3 million) (fi gure 4). in contrast, the three more likely net migration scenarios generate a 3x greater spread, ranging across 46.6 million people (fig. 5). considering the full range of fertility change scenarios, including less likely but still possible low and high scenarios of 1.4 tfr to 2.0 tfr, doubles the potential range across germany’s 2100 population to 31.1 million. but considering the full range of possible migration scenarios in• philip cafaro, patrícia dérer190 creases the 2100 population spread by over 100 million more. while the full range of fertility scenarios all lead to populations in 2100 that are broadly commensurate with germany’s present population of 82.2 million (80 percent to 118 percent of current numbers), the extreme migration scenarios would lead to much more drastic changes: from 62 percent of the current population under the lowest scenario to 223 percent under the highest. similar results, with much higher ranges across migration scenarios than fertility scenarios, obtain for most eu countries and for the eu as a whole, as we saw earlier. (2) egalitarian economic and family support policies and increased net migration have signifi cant potential to mitigate excessive population decreases in the eu’s lower fertility countries. fig. 3: comparing the policy-based migration scenarios for 28 eu member states in the present study with the migration scenarios in other published region-wide or world-wide studies sources: a – own calculation; b – eurostat database 2015; c – united nations population prospects 2017; d – wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital 2018. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 4x status quo migration in this studya ssp2 double migrationd 2x status quo migration in this studya eurostat higher migration sensitivity testb eurostat baseline projectionsb cepam medium (ssp2)d un medium varian (eu 28)c status quo scenario in this studya half status quo migrationa ssp2 zero migrationd eurostat no migration sensitivity test un zero migration variant (eu28)c zero net migration in this studya millions policy-based population projections for the european union • 191 several eastern european countries with low fertility levels and high emigration rates are on track for rapid depopulation this century. while the dangers of small population decreases are often overblown, too large or too quick decreases could fig. 4: germany population projections under fi ve fertility scenarios: all scenarios assume the continuation of the past 20 years average annual net migration level (259,316) source: own calculations fig. 5: germany population projections under fi ve migration scenarios: status quo migration is the continuation of the past 20 years average annual net migration level (259,316). migration scenarios use total fertility rates varying between 1.65 and 1.90, with higher immigration levels projected to drive higher tfrs source: own calculations 40 80 120 160 200 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 strong egalitarian (2.0 tfr) moderate egalitarian (1.85 tfr) status quo economic and social policies (1.7 tfr) moderate neoliberal (1.55 tfr) strong neoliberal (1.4 tfr) population in millions 69.3 million 82.2 million 97.1 million 88.3 million 80.3 million 72.9 million 66.0 million 40 80 120 160 200 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075 2100 4x status qou 2x status quo status quo net migration (259,316) half status quo zero net migration population in millions 69.3 million 82.2 million 183.6 million 112.8 million 80.3 million 66.2 million 51.2 million • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer192 cause social problems in these societies (rees et al. 2012; jakovljevic/laaser 2015). so it is good to know that part of this potential decrease could be avoided by adopting the economic and family support policies that have proven so successful at boosting fertility rates and improving lives in northern europe. consider poland, the most populous eu country facing signifi cant population decline (see projections in appendix iii). under status quo policies that provide little support for women who want to combine careers with creating a family (mishtal 2009), poland’s population is set to decline 44 percent by the end of the century. combining increased net migration up to the current eu status quo net migration rate with a strong increase in support for family formation would instead increase poland’s total population 4 percent by 2100. similar refl ections apply to romania, bulgaria, italy, portugal, greece and other countries in eastern and southern europe that could see signifi cant population losses over the next 80 years. it is particularly noteworthy that some of the same economic policies that could raise national fertility rates would also increase economic security, possibly decreasing emigration by younger workers. while these policies, such as improved child-care programs and paid family leave for workers, are expensive, they hold out hope for a slow, manageable population decrease rather than a precipitous decline in these countries (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). (3) in most cases, eu nations are well placed to stabilize or slowly reduce their populations–thus achieving one of the necessary conditions for creating ecologically sustainable societies. we can see this in many of the status quo scenarios, which tend to stay relatively fl at throughout the 21st century: often within 10 percent of current population fi gures (holland, italy, germany) and if not, then within 20 percent of current numbers (france, spain, denmark, czech republic). in replenishing their populations, these countries have room to shift the balance somewhat between immigration and births to citizens, either in one direction or the other, while still keeping their populations stable or moderately declining. this can be seen by comparing the status quo fertility and migration scenarios with the ½ net migration/strong family support policy combination scenarios in table 9. a few countries, like belgium and the united kingdom, are set for larger population increases this century under a continuation of status quo fertility and migration policies. such increases could be mitigated by decreasing immigration levels, which would likely be more popular than decreasing fertility rates by cutting economic safety nets or support for family formation. on the other hand, higher net migration levels could lead to much high population growth across the continent. (4) an egalitarian shift in family support policies or increasing immigration levels are not effective remedies for population aging in the eu. in accordance with other recent studies (craveiro et al. 2019; lutz et al. 2019) and contrary to many political discussions, encouraging more immigration from external countries into the eu or increasing fertility rates by means of successful government initiatives will not signifi cantly slow population aging in the eu. even increasing net migration levels 4 times would do little in the long-term to reduce the dependency ratio or the proportion of the population 65 years or older (see policy-based population projections for the european union • 193 table 8). this is due to the fact that immigrants, like non-immigrants, age and retire, requiring social benefi ts and medical care. the fertility scenarios discussed in the present paper show an even smaller impact on aging measures than our migration scenarios. meanwhile fertility and especially immigration increases show a much greater capacity for increasing total population numbers. in exchange for a small improvement in dependency ratios in 2100 (66.5 instead of 70.0 under the status quo), doubling net immigration into the eu over that period would add 145 million more residents to the total population (602 million rather than 458 million). increasing immigration 4x would improve the dependency ratio slightly more, to 63.2. but that would still be a full ten points higher than today’s 53.2 and in exchange the eu would have to support 475 million more people than it would under a status quo migration scenario – with all the increased environmental demands (marques et al. 2019) and social contention (harmon 2018) that such increased numbers imply. the moral is that to the extent aging societies create economic problems, the most effective remedies will involve increasing labor-force participation and other systemic changes, rather than increasing either net migration or fertility rates (götmark et al. 2018). tab. 9: percentage change from current population by 2100, under four policy scenarios, for the eu’s ten most populous countries. scenarios resulting in relatively stable populations (+/15 percent) highlighted status quo ½ status quo 2x status quo 2x status quo migration & migration & migration & migration & status quo strong egalitarian status quo strong egalitarian family support policy shift family support policy shift germany -2 0 37 58 france 13 28 35 59 uk 24 29 68 90 italy -8 -13 34 54 spain 19 5 83 107 poland -26a --12b 36c romania -5a --31b 59c the netherlands -2 11 25 46 belgium 26 23 74 105 greece -36 -25 -25 -11 eu total -10 -4 18 38 a shows the eu status quo migration rate & status quo family support scenario b shows the 2x eu status quo migration rate & status quo family support scenario c shows the 2x eu status quo migration rate & strong egalitarian policy shift scenario source: own calculations • philip cafaro, patrícia dérer194 (5) demographic policies have the potential to signifi cantly raise or lower future populations, and hence to make it harder or easier for eu nations to create ecologically sustainable societies. in a world where the population growth rate is slowing down and most future population growth is projected for the developing world, it is easy to overlook the importance of demographic policies to developed countries’ futures. arguably this is misguided. many western and northern european nations are pursuing population policies that could signifi cantly increase their populations in the coming years and hence increase their countries’ total ecological footprint, which is a function of the size of their population and their per capita consumption of resources (lin et al. 2019). ceteris paribus, more people mean more consumption and pollution, more greenhouse gases emitted, etc. (ipcc 2014; díaz et al. 2019). there is abundant evidence that humanity’s current biophysical demands are already far in excess of what is ecologically sustainable (ripple et al. 2017) and this problem must be tackled both by decreasing overconsumption and ending population growth. other eu countries, whose fertility levels could lead to shrinking populations and hence help lessen their environmental footprints, are instead bolstering their populations through historically high immigration levels. germany, italy and spain are important examples. spain, with a current tfr of 1.34, is on track to increase its population by 8.5 million by 2100. with the same low current tfr, italy’s population will decrease by only 3.5 million people this century under the status quo. accepting rapid population decline is probably not to be expected of any nation’s leaders. but accepting some population decrease in wealthy, crowded societies may be advisable, given the environmental benefi ts of smaller populations (matanle 2017; pilling 2018). 7 conclusion in developing new policy-based population projections, we have shown that some policy choices have the potential to substantially increase future european population numbers. both family support and migration policies will infl uence these numbers, with migration policies likely having the greatest impact. the potential increases under more expansive policy scenarios would not be as large, either as a percentage change or in absolute numbers, as those that occurred in india and china during the past century, or those being predicted for africa during this one. this fact should not mislead us. increasing europe’s population by even 100 million more people would be a very big “ask” on nature; decreasing it by 100 million people would be a substantial gift. as a matter of de facto environmental policy, demographic decisions will be at least as important as any other policy courses charted by eu nations this century, since they impact all aspects of a country’s environmental situation. in a recent working paper, we use these projections to explore population policies’ potential impacts on future efforts to reduce the eu’s greenhouse gas emissions and preserve its biodiversity (cafaro/dérer 2018). policy-based population projections for the european union • 195 precisely how demographic policies impact such efforts demands further study (rust/kehoe 2017). so do population policies’ impacts on economic equality and social solidarity. by tying our population projections more explicitly to actual policy options than previous efforts, we hope to facilitate other researchers’ efforts to ask and answer such questions. by providing a full range of population projections for all the countries of the eu, we believe we have made it easier for concerned citizens from these countries to do so, as well. according to the un human development index, european nations are among the world leaders in terms of health and longevity; in wealth and sharing that wealth equitably; in securing honest governments that serve their citizens and uphold the rule of law; and in promoting tolerance and ensuring human rights (united nations development programme 2018). but the eu’s demographic challenges and opportunities are complex. which population policies will best sustain fl ourishing societies remains to be determined. getting this right is important in europe – and beyond. a world caught up in an economic system built around the uncritical pursuit of growth and bumping up against ecological limits (o’neill et al. 2018) needs to see that the socio-economic challenges of aging and shrinking societies are inevitable but manageable (götmark et al. 2018) and that international solidarity can be combined with demographic responsibility (cafaro 2015). as we have shown, most eu countries are well placed to stabilize or slowly reduce their populations. europeans’ great contribution in the twenty-fi rst century could be to model successful societies that do not depend on continued growth, but that instead prioritize societal well-being and an acceptance of limits (kallis 2018). we hope these population projections are a useful tool for exploring such questions and ultimately for imagining and creating such societies. acknowledgements the authors thank the department of philosophy, colorado state university, the department of biological and environmental sciences, university of gothenburg, and the global challenges foundation, stockholm, for their generous support. references adserà, alicia 2004: changing fertility rates in developed countries. the impact of labor market institutions. in: journal of population economics 17,1: 17-43 [doi: 10.1007/ s00148-003-0166-x]. azose, jonathan j.; 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golsch 2003; sobotka et al. 2011). since the global economic crisis hit europe in 2008/9, there has been an increased interest in comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 245-280 (date of release: 28.11.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-15en1 • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser246 examining the impact of employment uncertainty and material hardship on fertility trends (goldstein et al. 2013; hanappi et al. 2017; kreyenfeld 2015; testa/gietelbasten 2014; comolli 2017). most studies on the effects of economic uncertainty on fertility date from the pre-crisis era and provide a range of arguments. in these studies, unemployment (adsera 2011a; ahn/mira 2002; del bono et al. 2014; kravdal 2002; kreyenfeld 2009; kreyenfeld/andersson 2014; matysiak/vignoli 2008; pailhé/solaz 2012; rondinelli et al. 2006; schmitt 2012)1 and term-limited contracts are in the same way related to fertility postponement as perceived job insecurity, which is in itself an inhibitor to childbearing (golsch 2003; gebel/giesecke 2009; pailhé/solaz 2012). also, female economic uncertainty has received more attention than male economic uncertainty, but the relationship between economic uncertainty and fertility may differ between partners (hanappi et al. 2017; kravdal/rindfuss 2008; schmitt 2008). how economic uncertainty is associated with fertility may also depend on socio-economic resources. often, delayed and fewer births result from economic uncertainty that generates high opportunity costs; both motherhood wage penalties (correll et al. 2007) and lost career advancement opportunities (rindfuss/sweet 2013). stable paid work and responsibly caring for children creates major tensions that were often seen to be responsible for low fertility (barber 2001; barber/axinn 2005; philipov 2009). these fi ndings stand in contrast to the uncertainty reduction argument, which states that insecure jobs and careers boost fertility. in other words, “the impetus of parenthood is greatest among those whose alternative pathways for reducing uncertainty are limited or blocked” (friedman et al. 1994: 383). accordingly, children would compensate for a lack of social integration through paid work by embedding their parents in recurrent social relations. because job loss is an involuntary experience that people cannot control, it increases the role of paid work in people’s perception (goszczynska et al. 1991). consequently, people’s experience of the risk of job loss raises their awareness of the role of work in their lives, which ultimately affects crucial life decisions, including having children. this article, therefore, identifi es the way in which perceived economic insecurity is linked to people’s emphasis on the importance of paid work in fertility decisions (i.e. work salience), to their fertility intentions and behavior over a three-year period. the analysis distinguishes between perceived employment and material insecurity, and examines differences in these associations with work salience, intention formation and its realization. our analysis addresses three universal questions about the reproductive decision-making process: first, what are the effects of perceived employment and material uncertainty conditions on the importance assigned to paid work in the fertility decision process? second, do these conditions impede 1 all studies cited here use pre-crisis data, regardless of their publication date. adsera (2011a), for example, uses 1994-2000 echp and 2006 spanish fertility data, del bono et al. (2014) analyze 1990-1998 data (austrian social insurance data), kreyenfeld (2009) uses gsoep data from 1984-2006, kreyenfeld and andersson focus on the pre-crisis years starting in 1980, pailhé and solaz use the familles and employeur survey 2004/2005 and labor force survey data until 2008, and fi nally schmitt (2012) applies his models to 1994-2001 echp data. when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 247 the formation of fertility intentions and do they have repercussions for subsequent fertility behavior? and third, do these relationships differ by gender? to address our questions, we apply multivariate analyses using the two waves of the austrian generations and gender survey. based on spéder and kapitány’s (2009) analyses, we explicitly focus on short-term fertility intentions, which refer to having a child within three years and follow up on an intention during the respective time period. our analyses focus on partnered men and women of reproductive age. employment insecurity as analyzed here refers to a person’s concerns of how secure his or her job is, which is in line with the defi nition of ‘cognitive’ job insecurity (anderson/pontusson 2007; esser/olsen 2011). material insecurity as analyzed here refers to a person’s concerns about making ends meet and constitutes a nonmonetary measure of material hardship and an important aspect of material wellbeing (brady 2003; sen 2001). 2 theoretical background fertility behavior has been shown to be a result of forward-looking and sequential decisions that individuals or households make in an uncertain context under a variety of institutional and economic conditions (johnson-hanks et al. 2012; morgan/ rackin 2010). economic conditions not only shape couples’ current demand for children, but also their expectations of future resources and, therefore, future demands (butz/ward 1979). a vast amount of country-specifi c studies has revealed signifi cant relationships between economic conditions and fertility in many western nations such as the us (cherlin et al. 2013; grunow et al. 2006; schneider 2015), germany, austria and switzerland (bonoli 2008; gebel/giesecke 2009; hanappi et al. 2017; kreyenfeld 2009, 2015; sobotka 2011; sobotka et al. 2011; vignoli et al. 2012), italy and spain (bernardi 2001; del boca/sauer 2009; golsch 2003; martín garcía 2010), france (pailhé/solaz 2012; thévenon 2010), and the nordic countries (andersson et al. 2009; kravdal 2002). the recent economic recession in 2008/9 fueled unemployment and economic uncertainty across european countries (adsera 2011b; goldstein et al. 2013). by increasing job anxiety (eichmann/saupe 2014; oesch/lipps 2013) as well as material hardship among the population (danziger et al. 2012; treas 2010), it has resulted in a delay of labor market entry and stabilization, hitting younger, less experienced workers and women particularly hard (cherlin et al. 2013). this development was most evident in countries where the rapid feminization of the labor force was coupled with rigid labor market institutions oriented towards the male prime-aged worker (adsera 2011b). in these countries – and austria is no exception to these – childrearing competes substantively for time and energy resources dedicated to paid work (philipov 2009). in austria, economic growth has stalled and unemployment has increased from 4.9 percent in 2012 to 5.8 percent in 2015, although both are still comparably low (oecd 2015: 18). the women’s labor force participation rate (70 percent) is lower than the men’s labor force participation (80 percent; oecd 2017) and with almost every second woman working part-time in 2016 compared to • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser248 only 26 percent in 1994 (statistik austria 2016), austria is the country with the second highest part-time employment rate in the european union (the eu-28 average was 32.2 percent in 2014 according to eurostat 2017). if employment security is threatened at any point in a women’s life cycle – typically early in their career, when most human capital accumulation is occurring – women may postpone childbearing to acquire experience and/or education and facilitate better wage prospects, benefi ts, and future employment (bernardi et al. 2008). also, women may fear that time spent in childrearing – including staying on maternity leave – may impair their ability to return to and progress in their current employment, and as a result may face the risk of future unemployment and lower wage growth. lengthy unemployment spells or part-time employment negatively affect household income. hence, childbearing may become unattractive not only for those directly concerned, but also for those with whom one pools household resources. this relationship has been documented in several single-country studies (del bono et al. 2012; testa et al. 2011; whelpton et al. 2015). moreover, employment uncertainty may increase parents’ investment per child, in order to increase their future opportunities (becker 1981). standard microeconomic models of fertility suggest that the associated lower opportunity costs turn spells of unemployment and female part-time employment into periods favorable for childbearing (butz/ward 1979). also, insecure employment falls short of providing resources like income and benefi ts, as well as a sense of belonging, the structuring of daily activities, and social contacts outside the family (jahoda 1982; selenko/batinic 2013), hence, make childbearing an important strategy for uncertainty reduction. friedman argued that “the impetus of parenthood is greatest among those whose alternative pathways for reducing uncertainty are limited or blocked” (friedman et al. 1994: 383). accordingly, children help compensate parents for a lack of social integration through paid work by embedding them in recurrent activities and a network of social relations. yet, even though children introduce some uncertainties in their parents’ life, the fact that parents can control their children’s fate, risks and uncertainties more than the fl uctuations in labor market conditions makes parenthood the preferable option to struggling on the labor market (friedman et al. 1994). people downplay uncertainties that they experience voluntarily and can control (such as parenthood), whereas involuntarily and uncontrollable uncertainties seem more daunting in their perception (goszczynska et al. 1991). consequently, the risk of involuntary job loss and lower wage growth would increase people’s perception of the importance of paid work in their lives, which would ultimately affect major life decisions including having children (selenko/batinic 2013). in the work-family confl ict literature, the concept of work salience expresses the importance of the work role to a person (greenhaus et al. 1989). independent of the pressures experienced due to characteristics of the job, the role, and the work schedule, work salience relates to confl icts between paid work and family roles. moen (1985; 2008) also argued that the “absorptiveness” of jobs, and one’s emotional involvement in one’s occupation or career constitutes a signifi cant source of intrusion of work into the family domain. highly involved workers who are preoccupied with their jobs and when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 249 achieving success in their work domain are more likely to devote greater effort and energy to the work role, thereby experiencing increased stress levels and tension between work and family (esping-andersen 2009; hakim 2003). empirical evidence is provided in numerous recent studies on well-being (de cuyper/de witte 2006; de cuyper/isaksson 2017; lent/brown 2008) but to a far lesser extent on fertility (buber-ennser/fliegenschnee 2013). in sum, one would expect a positive relationship between employment uncertainty and the importance of paid work for fertility decisions. the fertility response to economic insecurity among persons of reproductive age indicates the existence of a decision-making process (blossfeld/hofmeister 2007). the theory of planned behavior (tpb) by ajzen and fishbein (ajzen 1991; ajzen/fishbein 2005) has been used for analyzing fertility decisions and intentions (billari et al. 2009; dommermuth et al. 2015; mencarini et al. 2015). according to the tpb approach, intentions – in our case, fertility intentions – are described as being directly dependent on three conceptually independent determinants: attitudes towards the behavior, social norms, and perceived behavioral control. for instance, behavioral control is seriously jeopardized in times of employment insecurity and the related threat of involuntary job loss. background factors (e.g. individual factors such as personality, age, and education) infl uence the construction of intentions by affecting attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control (ajzen/ fishbein 2005). intentions are a major element of the decision to have a child or not (johnson-hanks et al. 2012; miller/pasta 1995; miller et al. 2004), though fertility intentions do not always match actual fertility at an individual level (quesnel-vallée/ morgan 2003). that notwithstanding, studying fertility intentions helps us understand why people do or do not develop childbearing plans, and their subsequent behavior (léridon 1995). the better we understand factors in the development of fertility intentions, the better we will understand the corresponding behavior. unlike lifetime intentions (i.e., intended family size) and the intention to have any more children at all, short-term intentions refer to the intention to have a child within a twoto three-year period (philipov/bernardi 2011). over such a timespan, respondents can gauge their life conditions and any obstacles that might hamper them from realizing their intentions more easily. short-term intentions are therefore considered to be strongly linked to external conditions and to the attributed salience of these conditions for childbearing (in our case, the importance of paid work); that is, people may refrain from developing an intention to have a child in the light of unfavorable conditions or not realize a childbearing intention over the course of two or three years. 3 the austrian context this paper focuses on austria, a country where stable low fertility rates (e.g. the 2015 tfr was 1.5) and high rates of childlessness correlate with a highly gendered labor force participation (oecd 2015). the conservative welfare regime has prompted lengthy parental leave periods for women after childbirth, with strong repercussions on their labor market behavior (oecd 2015) and organizations’ hiring practices • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser250 (buber/neuwirth 2009; lalive/zweimüller 2009; wernhart/neuwirth 2007). while men mostly work fulltime, women mostly work part-time (sobotka 2011) in noncareer track jobs that often generate low permanent income through slow income growth and less human capital accumulation (adsera 2011b). in addition, paid maternity leave before and after childbirth was a maximum of 30 (+6) months in 2002, with other options being 15 (+3) and 20 (+4) months (kreimer 2011; prskawetz et al. 2008). the fi gures in brackets indicate the additional months granted if the parents share the leave. further changes in 2017 allow more fl exibility by allotting parents a certain amount of parental leave payments that they are free to spend (bmfj 2016). under current austrian legislation, the leave period is not identical to the job protection period, which ends at the child’s second birthday (see berghammer 2014). benefi ciaries receive fl at-rate payments during the leave period. this particularly benefi ts low-income women, for whom the earnings replacements ratio is relatively high, but the low amount paid does not fully substitute a wage, nor is it enough to live off on its own. shorter variants with higher monthly payments, which were introduced in 2008, are typically taken by higher educated women. entitlements to part-time leave have been in effect since 1990, thereby fostering maternal part-time work. starting from 2004, parents who had been working in a company with more than 20 employees for at least three years have been entitled to work part-time until their child’s seventh birthday (berghammer 2014; kreimer 2011; prskawetz et al. 2008). at the same time, policies for balancing child care and full-time employment are limited: while the public kindergarten system is well established, with 84 to 98 per cent of threeto fi ve-year-olds enrolled in formal care in 2012/13 (oecd 2015), only one third of all childcare places for this age group allow parents to reconcile family demands with full-time work (festl et al. 2010). childcare infrastructure for children under the age of three is underdeveloped, and although the enrolment of children of this age group has increased substantially in the last years, it is at a low level (23.3 percent in 2013) (buber-ennser 2015; oecd 2015). in such a context, perceived employment and material insecurity may be caused by concerns about losing one’s job, or by (especially) women’s concerns about facing diffi culties to balance paid work with childrearing and care duties. 4 hypotheses as outlined above, individuals who experience employment insecurity and material hardship might be less likely to have children, not realize an existing childbearing intention, and not even construct concrete family plans (adsera 2011b; begall/mills 2011; grunow et al. 2006; hanappi et al. 2016; kreyenfeld et al. 2012; spéder/kapitány 2009, 2015). we add to this the consideration that such conditions may have a direct effect on paid work being perceived as important when clarifying intentions. the links that we are interested in are visualized in fig. 1, our hypotheses are formulated accordingly. line 1 presents the link between the perceived employment and material insecurity and the self-rated salience of work for the construction of a fertility intention, line 2 shows the link between these insecurity dimensions and the when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 251 construction of an intention to have a child in the near future, and line 3 illustrates the link between job insecurity and intentional childbearing. we expect these relationships to vary by gender. in the fi rst case, we recall the argument that short-term intentions are strongly linked to external conditions and to the attributed salience of these conditions for childbearing (in our case, the importance of paid work). since research has demonstrated that in the light of unfavorable conditions people refrain from developing the intention to have a child or do not realize childbearing intentions in the course of two to three years (morgan/rackin 2010; philipov/bernardi 2011), we examine whether employment insecurity and material hardship (termed “material insecurity” hereafter) increase the likelihood that paid work matters for developing childbearing intentions. in other words, we examine the role of employment and material insecurity for work being perceived as salient for the construction of short-term fertility intentions (line 1). suppose that individuals want to have a child: in this case, microeconomic models suggest a mobilization of time and energy to improve their economic situation, and to secure material resources. according to adsera (2011b), a shortage of resources can be resolved by prioritizing paid work over childbearing, i.e. by postponing family plans and thus adapting the sequencing of transitions (bernardi et al. 2008). in this case, individuals facing employment insecurity are expected to assign high importance to paid work, because the desire to have secure employment as a favorable condition to fertility is not yet met and efforts to reduce insecurity in the work domain require considerable time and energy. instead, if individuals experience economic security, and have not yet reached their personal fertility goals, their work salience will be low because economic conditions regardfig. 1: schematic presentation of the relationship between job insecurity, work salience, and the formation of concrete childbearing intentions and subsequent behavior work salience for fertility intention childbearing (2) (1) fertility intention (3) perceived employment and material insecurity gender (3) (3) (2) (1) source: own design • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser252 ing developing the intention to have a child are favorable. we therefore formulate the following hypothesis: (1a) employment insecurity increases the likelihood of paid work being valued as important for one’s intention to have a child. as discussed earlier, the threat of future job loss exerts not only direct job strain on individuals but also material insecurity on households, especially when they pool fi nancial resources (del bono et al. 2012; testa et al. 2011; whelpton et al. 2015). in analogy to perceived employment uncertainty, we expect that individuals who experience material insecurity assign a greater importance to employment when developing fertility intentions. given the sequential ordering of events, individuals assign priority to securing material resources. we therefore hypothesize: (1b) material insecurity increases the likelihood of paid work being valued as important for one’s intention to have a child. in the second case, we examine the association between employment and material insecurity and the likelihood of developing a positive fertility intention (line 2). we derive our hypothesis from prior research on major determinants of fertility intentions attributing importance to socio-economic factors (billari et al. 2009; dommermuth et al. 2011; hanappi et al. 2017; kuhnt/trappe 2016). moreover, substantive gender differences in the reaction to declining employment uncertainty have become evident (hanappi et al. 2017). this suggests taking into account differences in gender roles for the following reasons: when men work under employment insecurity or have diffi culties making ends meet, their income may not suffi ce to support the family, and therefore threatens intention formation and realization (modena/sabatini 2012; neyer et al. 2013; sobotka/testa 2008). hence men’s economic uncertainty is likely to discourage them from having children. women’s employment uncertainty may threaten the intention of having a child too, but at the same time, lower opportunity costs make childbearing and the related social rewards an attractive option. accordingly, employment and material insecurity hamper the capacity of men and women (as mostly the secondary earners) to support the family, and thus affect fertility intentions and their realization. we expect the association between employment insecurity and the construction of fertility intentions to be negative among men and positive among women. in contrast, material insecurity – as a major manifestation of material deprivation (castel/dörre 2009) – is a more severe form of uncertainty, which affects entire households and thus both men and women in their fertility decisions. however, women have been shown to be more ambivalent in their fertility response to external conditions, one reason of which is their shorter reproductive life span and existing age norms (mynarska 2010). in the subsequent analysis, we seek to confi rm these gender-specifi c links between perceived employment insecurity and material insecurity and positive fertility intentions with data from austria. these are the corresponding hypotheses: when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 253 (2a) employment insecurity discourages positive fertility intentions among men, and encourages fertility intentions among women. (2b) material insecurity discourages positive fertility intentions among men, and to a lesser extent among women. in the third case, we examine the relationship between employment and material insecurity, and the likelihood of intentional childbearing (line 3). purveyors of the theory of planned behavior (ajzen 1991; ajzen/fishbein 2005; ajzen/klobas 2013) argue that intentions are infl uenced by perceived behavioral control, in our case, the lack of it (i.e. involuntary job loss creates a certain lack of control). in the subsequent empirical analysis, we test whether individuals realize their fertility intentions depending on the above conditions. in other words, we test whether conditions of economic insecurity interfere with subsequent fertility behavior or whether once an intention is set, realization is simply the natural next step. in line with previous literature (jalovaara et al. 2017; neyer et al. 2013), we expect gender effects to point in similar directions as the ones outlined above for fertility intentions. women’s opportunity costs can be compensated by various factors such as social support by family and friends in childrearing; and child allowances or maternal leave could be attractive, particularly to women with lower levels of education (friedman et al. 1994). in these and similar situations, women’s employment insecurity may facilitate rather than constrain behavior. we therefore formulate the following hypotheses: (3a) male employment insecurity decreases the likelihood of the intention to have a child to be realized. female employment insecurity increases the likelihood of the intention to have a child to be realized. (3b) male material insecurity decreases the likelihood of the intention to have a child to be realized. for female material insecurity, we expect this association to be weaker. 5 data and methods 5.1 data the current study is based on the austrian generations and gender survey (ggs) as part of the generations and gender programme. within this programme, largescale representative surveys have been conducted in 17 european countries, as well as in australia and japan, since 2001. the ggs is designed as a panel survey consisting of three waves carried out at intervals of three years. in austria, the fi rst wave was conducted in 2008/9 and the second wave in 2012/13, thus with a period of four years between the waves due to fi nancial reasons. about fi ve thousand respondents were interviewed in the fi rst wave, about 3,900 in the second wave. the data contain complete family and fertility histories and a rich set of socio-economic • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser254 variables. the response rate in wave 1 was 61 percent (statistik austria 2009), available weights adjust for age, sex, employment status, country of birth, living arrangements and parity (buber 2010). in wave 2, panel attrition was rather modest, amounting to 22 percent (buber-ennser 2014). panel data are affected by a small bias towards family-oriented persons as well as a higher attrition of less educated respondents and persons with migration backgrounds, but the data can nonetheless be used without (larger) concerns about selectivity (buber-ennser 2014). for the current study, the fi nal sample included 1,778 women and 1,128 men aged 18 to 44 years who participated in both waves, have a partner (either cohabiting or living apart-together), and with valid information on fertility intentions for the next three years. as the partnership context is important for realizing fertility intentions, we excluded persons with short-term fertility intentions but without a partner. 5.2 measures our hypotheses require three main dependent variables. first, for our hypotheses testing the role of perceived economic insecurity for paid work being considered as important for the construction of the fertility intention (work salience; line 1), the main dependent variable is own work important for plans to have a child measured at wave 1. the exact wording of the question was “how much would the decision on whether to have or not to have a(nother) child during the next three years depend on your work?” the importance was measured by an ordinal scaled variable, where higher numbers indicate higher importance. possible answers were “not at all (1)”, “a little (2)”, “quite a lot (3)” and “a great deal (4)”. answers were coded into a dichotomous variable, distinguishing between “important” (when answering “quite a lot” or “a great deal”) and “not important” (when choosing “not at all” or “a little”). second, for our hypotheses regarding how perceived economic insecurity is related to fertility intentions (line 2) we used information on intentions in wave 1, based on the question “do you intend to have a(nother) child during the next 3 years?” possible answers (defi nitely no, probably no, probably yes, defi nitely yes) were dichotomized between “yes” and “no”. because individuals can anticipate how economic conditions in the short-run will affect their childbearing plans, short-term intentions are effective in capturing the impact of external conditions such as anticipated job loss on fertility behavior. third, for our hypotheses regarding how perceived economic insecurity is related to intended births (line 3), we combined information on intentions in wave 1 and on newborn babies between wave 1 and wave 2. we concentrated on those 473 women and 363 men who intended to have a child within the next three years at wave 1. short-term fertility intentions correlate positively with subsequent childbearing behavior at the individual level (ajzen 1991; miller/pasta 1995). by regressing explanatory variables for intended births only, we avoid overestimating the associations between perceived economic insecurity and behavior. all of the following explanatory variables were assessed in the wave 1 interview in 2008/9. our variables for the respondents’ perceived economic insecurity, here referred to as economic concerns, are: when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 255 • “concerns about job insecurity” built as follows: employed persons2 were asked to rank their satisfaction with job security on a scale ranging from 0 (not at all satisfi ed) to 10 (very satisfi ed). we then grouped respondents into three categories taking into account size of cells and regression coeffi cients of similar size, distinguishing between (1) employed and very low satisfaction (0 to 4), (2) employed and medium satisfaction (5 to 8) and (3) employed and high satisfaction (9 to 10). our models also account for alternative employment statuses including (4) self-employed, (5) unemployed, (6) student (or in education), (7) parental leave, (8) housekeeping, and (9) other. • “concerns about making ends meet” measured by the question “how diffi cult is it to make ends meet?”. answer categories ranged from (1) with great diffi culty, (2) with diffi culty, (3) with some diffi culty, (4) fairly easily, (5) easily, to (6) very easily. because this variable captures perceived fi nancial diffi culties in making a living, we included it in our models to account for existential, material needs in addition to the concerns of job insecurity. previous research has identifi ed factors relevant for fertility decisions and behavior, such as age (gustafsson 2001), parity (berrington/pattaro 2014) and education (korpi 2000; kravdal/rindfuss 2008; neyer/hoem 2008; rindfuss et al. 1996; rossier/bernardi 2009; spéder/kapitány 2015). these socio-demographic factors were included as control variables (measured at wave 1): • “number of children”: (1) childless, (2) one child, (3) two children, and (4) three or more children. firstborn children have the greatest effect on parents’ lives (nomaguchi 2012). moreover, intending to have or having a second child is much more likely in contexts where the two-child norm dominates (goldstein et al. 2003). • “age”: 18-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44 years. • “education”: low (lower secondary), medium (higher secondary) and high (tertiary) level. higher education is a proxy for a higher personal income as well as for stronger personal resources and support networks, particularly among women (bernardi et al. 2008). because educational attainment is a strong marker of socioeconomic status and resources to mitigate job insecurity, including education in our models should reduce the effects of our explanatory variables. • “sex”: it was taken into consideration either as a control variable in the pooled sample including both sexes, or via separate analyses for women and men to allow for different effects according to sex. 5.3 method we start by providing descriptive results on the importance of one’s paid work for the intention to have a child within the next three years and on childbearing plans for the next three years. next, we apply multivariate analyses to examine the factors associated with regarding one’s own work as important for the construction of the fertility intention (line 1), fertility intentions (line 2), and their realization (line 3). in a 2 self-employed persons were not asked for their satisfaction with job security. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser256 fi rst set of analyses, we study the role of paid work in the construction of short-term fertility intentions. we ran probit regressions with the importance of paid work for the intention to have a child during the next three years as a dependent variable (1 if “quite a lot” and “a great deal” and 0 otherwise). in a second set of analyses, we focus on short-term intentions and aim to identify possible associations with employment and material insecurity (line 2). in a last step, we test whether individuals who perceive employment and material insecurity are more likely to have a child or not (line 3), using the longitudinal nature of the ggs. therefore, the dependent variable is the realization of short-term fertility intentions, derived from wave 2 of the survey (equaling 1 if a child was born within the fi rst or second wave or if the respondent was expecting a child at wave 2). a combination of employment status and satisfaction with job security as well as self-perceived material insecurity are the main explanatory variables. multivariate analyses are based on probit models, which can be described as nonlinear regression models with a binary dependent variable y. the variable y is assumed to depend on k observable variables x1,…., xk and on a disturbance term u, written as y=βkxk + u. the question of interest is the probability that y equals 1, mathematically p(y=1) = p(y=1| x1,…., xk), or simply p(y=1|x). the standard probit model is given by p(y=1|x) = φ(βkxk) (aldrich/nelson 1986). the unknowns are the parameters βk and we apply the software stata for their estimation, using a maximum likelihood estimation. the observable variables x1,…., xk represent material and employment insecurity and socio-economic characteristics as control variables. 6 descriptive results we start our analysis with descriptive statistics regarding dissatisfaction with job security, fertility and work intentions, and whether work is important for developing concrete childbearing plans (i.e., work salience) and ultimately realizing these. 6.1 job insecurity and employment status in our sample, roughly seven in ten women and eight in ten men were employed at the time of the fi rst wave (table 1). only four in ten men and women were employed and very satisfi ed with their job security. 28 percent of women and 36 percent of men were employed and perceived some dissatisfaction with job security (table 1, left columns). self-employment was more frequent among men than women (11 percent versus 7 percent), unemployment (2-3 percent) and enrollment in education (5-6 percent) was rare. some of the women were on parental leave (8 percent) or looking after the home and family (6 percent), whereas the share of men on parental leave was less than 1 percent. further activities, such as military or social service, as well as being permanently ill or disabled, amounted to 1 percent among women and 3 percent among men. focusing on employed persons only, we found that women were more often very satisfi ed with their job security than men when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 257 were (60 percent versus 54 percent), and slightly more often reported very high dissatisfaction (7 percent versus 5 percent) (table 1, right columns). as the confi dence intervals overlap, we did not fi nd that women reported very high dissatisfaction signifi cantly more often than men.3 6.2 work salience and economic insecurity we now turn to the importance of one’s paid work for developing a fertility intention in the near future. because perceptions of job insecurity might be mediated by objective conditions (e.g., entitlements to leave or part-time work) and the cognitive evaluations of them, it is vital to grasp how salient paid work is for developing concrete childbearing plans. it turns out that women perceive their paid work to be relevant for family plans more often than men do (table 2): for more than one third of austrian women, their own paid work is relevant for their intention to have a child in the near future, whereas for four in ten it is not at all important. among men, 20 percent perceive the own job to be important for short-term fertility intentions, and full sample employed persons only women men total women men total in % self-employed 7 11 9 unemployed 3 2 3 student 6 5 6 parental leave 8 0 4 housekeeping 6 0 3 other 1 3 2 employed, low satisfaction with job security 5 4 4 7 5 6 employed, medium satisfaction with job security 23 32 27 33 41 37 employed, high satisfaction with job security 41 43 42 60 54 57 total 100 100 100 100 100 100 n (unweighted) 1,788 1,131 2,919 1,106 894 2,000 tab. 1: sample by employment status, satisfaction with job security and sex note: low satisfaction with job security (0-4 on 0-10-scale); medium satisfaction (5-8); high satisfaction (9-10). source: austrian ggs, partnered persons aged 18-44, weighted data 3 in contrast, employed women stated signifi cantly less often than employed men a medium level of satisfaction. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser258 more than half assign no importance at all to the own job (55 percent). the mean level of importance was higher for women than for men (2.1 and 1.7, respectively). we now add the aspect of employment insecurity and differentiate employees by their satisfaction with job security. it turns out that especially for employed women with a low satisfaction with job security as well as for women in education, paid work is important for childbearing plans for the near future (fig. 2). in contrast, women highly satisfi ed with their job security substantially less often rated paid work as an important factor for their short-term family plans. among men, we fi nd a similar but less pronounced pattern for the association between satisfaction with job security and fertility decisions, with employed men who are highly satisfi ed with their job security more often stating that their own work is not important for the decision to have a child (63 percent) as compared to those with medium or low levels of satisfaction (51 percent and 52 percent) (fig. a1). as is the case for women, paid work is relevant for short-term fertility decisions for men enrolled in education. moreover, paid work is rather important for unemployed men, although this group is small in number. enrollment in education and unemployment indicate material insecurity. finally, material insecurity measured via diffi culties in making ends meet is relevant for the likelihood of paid work being valued as important for short-term fertility plans: women and men perceiving (great) diffi culties in making ends meet more often stated that their paid work is important for the decision to have a child, compared to those perceiving only some diffi culties and those making ends meet fairly easily or (very) easily (fig. 2 and a1). tab. 2: importance of one’s own paid work for plans to have a child within the next three years, by sex not at all a little quite a great total mean1 a lot deal in % women 42 22 20 16 100 2.1 men 55 26 14 6 100 1.7 total 48 24 17 11 100 1.9 1 not at all (1), a little (2), quite a lot (3) and a great deal (4) source: austrian ggs, 2,908 partnered persons aged 18-44, weighted data when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 259 6.3 paid work and family planning overall, roughly three out of ten women and men aged 18 to 44 years (and who had a partner) intended to have a child within three years. men and women reporting low satisfaction with job security intended more often to have a child within the next three years compared to their peers who were satisfi ed with their job security (41 percent and 45 percent versus 32 percent and 27 percent) (table 3). this suggests that parenthood might be a valuable alternative to pursuing an insecure occupational career, while stable employment competes with concrete childbearing plans. because motherhood entails a longer absence from the labor market, opportunity costs for women (e.g. missed promotions and forgone salary increases) are substantial. as expected, family plans for the near future are rare among students or persons in other forms of educational or occupational training. an aspect contingent to austria’s employment and parental leave system is that a substantial proportion of women on maternity leave (almost 40 percent) intended to have a fig. 2: importance of one’s own paid work for the decision to have a child during the next three years by employment status and satisfaction with job security and by making ends meet, women note: low satisfaction with job security (0-4 on 0-10-scale); medium satisfaction (5-8); high satisfaction (9-10). the category “other (employment status)” is not shown because of small numbers of cases (n=18). source: austrian ggs, 1,778 partnered women aged 18-44, weighted data 0 20 40 60 80 in % total employed, satisfaction high employed, satisfaction medium employed, satisfaction low housekeeping parental leave student unemployed self-employed (very) easily fairly easily with some difficulty with (great) difficulty 42 22 20 16 49 20 17 15 35 24 26 15 22 23 21 33 63 19 8 9 45 29 15 12 11 13 36 40 43 19 23 15 42 28 18 12 45 25 17 13 41 19 22 17 38 22 22 19 35 18 24 24 definitely not probably not probably yes definitely yes e m p lo ym en ts ta tu s an d sa tis fa ct io n w ith jo b se cu ri ty m ak in g en d s m ee t 100 • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser260 child within the next three years (table 3). further parity-specifi c analyses show that, with a proportion of 75 percent, mothers with one child who were on maternity leave very often intended to have a (second) child within three years. this is in line with a strong two-child norm in austria and a desire to rather closely space fi rst and second children. focusing on men and women intending to have a child within the next year at wave 1, it turns out that 43 percent among them had a newborn at wave 2, or were expecting a child. the remaining group either postponed their fertility intentions and still wanted a child (37 percent), whereas a substantial share (20 percent) had abandoned their further childbearing plans and did not want to have (further) children at wave 2. in this paper, we do not further elaborate on the aspect of postponement or abandonment of short-term fertility intentions and focus on the realization of the latter in a multivariate framework, without providing descriptive results. 7 multivariate results the above mentioned bivariate effects may be driven by factors such as age, education, and family cycle, which impact how individuals rate the salience of work in forming family plans and how they perceive job insecurity. we therefore apply a multivariate approach. first, we examine how economic concerns are related to the importance of paid work for the construction of the fertility intention (line 1). we ran probit regressions with the importance of paid work for the intention to have a child during the next three years as a dependent variable (1 if “quite a lot” and “a great deal” and 0 otherwise) (table 4). second, we analyse whether individuals who tab. 3: intention to have a child within the next three years, by sex women men in % self-employed 27 33 unemployed 27 30 student 18 14 parental leave 39 – housekeeping 14 – other 24 22 employed, low satisfaction with job security 45 41 employed, medium satisfaction with job security 28 32 employed, high satisfaction with job security 27 32 total 28 31 note: due to small numbers of men on parental leave or housekeeping (1 and 2 respectively), the share of those intending a child is not given in the table. source: austrian ggs, 2,919 partnered persons aged 18-44, weighted data when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 261 perceive economic insecurity are more or less likely to intend to have a child in the near future (line 2, table 5). third, we test whether individuals who perceive economic insecurity are more likely to have a child or not (line 3), using the two waves of the ggs (table 6). a combination of employment status and satisfaction with job security as well as self-perceived economic constraints are the main explanatory variables. 7.1 economic insecurity and work salience in fertility decisions analyses testing how employment insecurity (hypothesis 1a) and material insecurity (hypothesis 1b) are related to the perceived salience of paid work for fertility decisions were run for men and women separately (table 4). positive coeffi cients indicate that paid work is considered an important aspect for the decision to have a child. four results are noteworthy: first, the current employment situation and the associated perceived job insecurity are crucial for paid work being valued as important for the decision to have a child in the near future. employed persons who were very satisfi ed with their current job security were the reference group. results show that for employed women who were somewhat or quite concerned about job insecurity (i.e. with a middle or low level of job satisfaction), their paid work was signifi cantly more often important in the fertility decision process. the estimated coeffi cients indicate a negative association: the lower the satisfaction, the higher the importance of their paid work for fertility decisions. for men, satisfaction with job security also has an effect, although it is smaller in size and at a lower level of statistical signifi cance. our multivariate results thus support hypothesis 1a, which assumes that employment insecurity increases the likelihood of work being valued as important for one’s intention to have a child. second, being enrolled in education matters: women and men in education rated their own (future) work as particularly important for their decision to have a child, as the size and statistical signifi cance of the estimated coeffi cient indicate (table 4). third, material insecurity is signifi cantly associated with the relevance of one’s own job for fertility intentions: women and men perceiving major economic constraints more often regarded paid work as important for family plans, whereas those making ends meet easily or very easily were less likely to evaluate their paid work as important for family plans. our results thus support hypothesis 1b that material insecurity increases the likelihood of work being valued as important for one’s intention to have a child. fourth, sociodemographic characteristics matter: one’s own work is important in the fertility decision process among women with two children, among women below the age of 20, and especially among highly educated women. among men, the importance of paid work varies according to age, and is crucial especially below the age of 30. educational level is signifi cantly associated with the importance of work for family plans and effects men in a similar way as women, whereas the number of children has no explanatory power. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser262 tab. 4: estimated coeffi cients for one’s own work being important for plans to have a child during the next three years women men women men n n employment status and satisfaction with job security self-employed -0.18 -0.17 120 120 unemployed 0.21 0.74 65 24 student 1.39*** 2.05*** 101 60 parental leave -0.49* – 218 0 housekeeping -0.92*** – 153 0 other (-0.37) 0.65 18 30 employed, satisfaction low with job security 0.80** -0.01 70 45 employed, satisfaction medium with job security 0.31* 0.46* 368 359 employed, satisfaction high with job security (ref.) 0 0 663 490 concerns about making ends meet with (great) diffi culty 0.46* 0.84** 146 66 with some diffi culty 0.10 0.49* 283 203 fairly easily (ref.) 0 0 614 392 (very) easily -0.47*** -0.15 733 467 control variables parity childless (ref.) 0 0 540 458 1 child 0.03 -0.05 340 227 2 children 0.51** -0.06 619 298 3+ children 0.12 -0.02 277 145 age 18-19 0.98** 1.36** 61 44 20-24 0.30 1.20*** 194 118 25-29 0.17 0.75* 302 205 30-34 (ref.) 0 0 336 192 35-39 0.13 0.20 422 250 40-44 -0.03 0.33 461 319 education low (ref.) 0 0 761 1051 medium 0.32* 0.42* 227 426 high 0.63*** 0.65** 140 299 constant -1.02*** -2.52*** r² 0.0776 0.1229 n 1,776 1,128 1,776 1,128 note: low satisfaction with job security (0-4 on 0-10-scale); medium satisfaction (5-8); high satisfaction (9-10). for spells with low numbers (<20), results are given in parentheses. signifi cance levels: + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. source: austrian ggs, partnered persons aged 18-44 when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 263 7.2 economic insecurity and fertility intentions next, we turn to fertility intentions for the near future (table 5). in basic models, we include employment status and satisfaction with job security as well as concerns about making ends meet as the two single explanatory variables (models 1a, 1w, and 1m). the extended models control for parity, age, education and sex (models 2a, 2w, and 2m). positive coeffi cients indicate a higher likelihood of intending to have a child within the next three years. job insecurity is associated with fertility intentions in the sense that employed persons reporting low satisfaction with job security signifi cantly more often intended to have a child within three years (model 1a). with the inclusion of control variables, the estimated coeffi cient decreases in size and statistical signifi cance, but remains signifi cant in the joint model including women and men (model 2a). in gender specifi c basic models, employed women as well as men dissatisfi ed with job security intend to have a child in the near future signifi cantly more often (models 1w and 1m). when controlling for socio-demographic characteristics (models 2w, 2m), the association is no longer statistically signifi cant among men (p=0.27), and also beyond statistical signifi cance among women (p=0.102). although strict reference to the p-values in the extended models suggests to reject hypothesis 2a – stating that employment insecurity discourages fertility intentions among men and encourages fertility intentions among women – we want to emphasize that this might be due to the small sample sizes for gender-specifi c analyses and that, especially for women, our multivariate analyses point to a positive association between low satisfaction with job security and childbearing intentions for the near future. men perceiving (great) diffi culties in making ends meet less often intend to have a child in the near future (model 1m); however, with the inclusion of control variables, this association is no longer signifi cant. in the regression models for women, material insecurity measured via concerns about making ends meet is not signifi cantly associated with fertility intentions. nevertheless, it must be pointed out that the estimated coeffi cient is positive, suggesting that women perceiving economic constraints more often intended to have a child in the near future. persisting through all models is the observation that students (i.e. those in education) markedly less often intended to have a child in the near future. unemployed individuals also intended to have a child in the near future less often (although coeffi cients for this comparably small group are not statistically signifi cant). as mentioned earlier, enrollment in education and unemployment indicate material insecurity. overall, combining both statistically signifi cant output and non-signifi cant trends – which might partly be due to small sample sizes – our results support hypothesis 2b, stating that material insecurity discourages fertility intentions among men and to a lesser extent among women. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser264 tab. 5: estimated coeffi cients for intending a child within three years all all women women men men model 1a model 2a model 1w model 2w model 1m model 2m employment status and satisfaction with job security self-employed 0.01 0.46* -0.06 0.70* 0.00 0.27 unemployed -0.16 -0.27 -0.26 -0.29 0.16 -0.16 student -0.60** -1.21*** -0.36 -1.21*** -1.00** -1.35** leave 0.47** 0.82*** 0.57*** 0.87*** – – housekeeping -0.99*** -0.01 -0.87*** 0.13 – – other -0.33 -0.76* -0.34 -1.01 -0.44 -0.43 employed, satisfaction low 0.68*** 0.44+ 0.76** 0.53a 0.67* 0.43 employed, satisfaction medium 0.03 0.03 -0.03 -0.12 0.05 0.16 employed, satisfaction high (ref.) 0 0 0 0 0 0 concerns about making ends meet with (great) diffi culty -0.16 0.09 0.03 0.34 -0.55+ -0.42 with some diffi culty -0.17 0.05 -0.13 0.04 -0.25 0.03 fairly easily (ref.) 0 0 0 0 0 0 (very) easily 0.10 0.03 0.02 -0.10 0.22 0.21 control variables parity childless (ref.) 0 0 0 1 child -0.33* -0.37* -0.43* 2 children -2.2*** -2.40*** -2.27*** 3+ children -2.31*** -2.95*** -1.71*** age 18-19 -1.80*** -1.24** -2.79*** 20-24 -0.74*** -0.46* -1.25*** 25-29 0.11 0.34+ -0.26 30-34 (ref.) 0 0 0 35-39 -0.99*** -0.89*** -1.12*** 40-44 -1.83*** -2.19*** -1.61*** education low (ref.) 0 0 0 medium -0.10 -0.23 -0.01 high 0.14 0.08 0.17 sex male (ref.) 0 female -0.19+ constant -0.91*** 0.6*** -1.02*** 0.55* -0.77*** 0.76** r² 0.0178 0.2478 0.0223 0.2873 0.0172 0.2159 n 2,917 2,917 1,786 1,786 1,129 1,129 note: variables refer to wave 1. for the distribution of the variables see table a1. signifi cance levels: + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 a: p=0.102 source: austrian ggs waves 1 and 2 when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 265 7.3 economic insecurity and intentional childbearing as indicated earlier, roughly three out of ten partnered women and men wanted to have a child within the next three years at wave 1 (table 3). we now concentrate on this group and analyze the realization of their fertility plans four years later (table 6). overall, 43 percent realized their short-term fertility intentions. the basic models include employment status combined with satisfaction with job insecurity, as well as concerns about making ends meet (models 1a, 1w, 1m), the extended models additionally control for socio-demographic characteristics (parity, age, education, sex; models 2a, 2w, 2m). employment insecurity is related with the realization of short-term fertility intentions: employed persons with a low satisfaction with their job security realize their intentions more often compared to those who were highly satisfi ed with their job security (model 1a and 2a). gender specifi c analyses reveal that the estimated coeffi cients are positive for both women and men, but not signifi cantly different from zero, which might partly be due to the small sample size (469 women and 362 men intending to have a child at wave 1 and observed at wave 2; among them 30 women and 20 men were employed at wave 1 and reported low satisfaction with job security). accordingly, we have to reject hypothesis 3a, which states that male employment insecurity decreases the likelihood of the intention to have a child to be realized. for women, positive, albeit statistically insignifi cant, coeffi cients hint at the hypothesized link between female employment insecurity and intention realization. material insecurity is associated with intentional childbearing: individuals who intended to have a child in wave 1 and who at the same time reported (great) diffi culties in making ends meet, realized their fertility intentions less often compared to those who made ends meet fairly easily. the estimated coeffi cients are statistically signifi cant in the joint models including both sexes (models 1a and 2a). in the gender-specifi c analyses (models 2w and 2m), the estimated coeffi cients are negative for women and men (-0.63 and -0.97 respectively) and their size indicates a stronger effect among men than women. nevertheless, they fail statistical signifi cance, which might again be due to the small sample sizes. overall, we fi nd evidence to support hypothesis 3b that male material insecurity decreases the likelihood of realizing short-term fertility intentions and that for females this association is weaker. regarding our control variables, age is particularly infl uential. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser266 tab. 6: estimated coeffi cients for realization of short-term fertility intentions all all women women men men model 1a model 2a model 1w model 2w model 1m model 2m employment status and satisfaction with job security self-employed 0.18 0.40 -0.17 0.16 0.44 0.53 unemployed 0.85+ 0.87+ 0.81 1.03 0.96 1.00 student -0.33 -0.56 -0.00 -0.26 -1.18 -1.34 leave 1.05*** 0.74* 1.02*** 0.88* – – housekeeping 0.18 0.22 0.15 0.56 – – other -0.37 -0.68 – – 0.40 0.35 employed, satisfaction low 0.55+ 0.56+ 0.49 0.68 0.68 0.53 employed, satisfaction medium -0.08 -0.10 0.11 0.14 -0.22 -0.30 employed, satisfaction high (ref.) 0 0 0 0 0 0 concerns about making ends meet with (great) diffi culty -0.77* -0.79* -0.58 -0.63 -1.17+ -0.97 with some diffi culty -0.32 -0.27 -0.09 -0.07 -0.61+ -0.58 fairly easily (ref.) 0 0 0 0 0 0 (very) easily 0.21 0.24 0.28 0.23 0.15 0.24 control variables parity childless (ref.) 0 0 0 1 child 0.32 0.10 0.53+ 2 children 0.34 0.03 0.79+ 3+ children 0.15 0.43 0.06 age 18-19 -0.06 -0.28 -0.08 20-24 0.02 0.12 -0.23 25-29 -0.10 0.12 -0.40 30-34 (ref.) 0 0 0 35-39 -1.10*** -1.33*** -0.94** 40-44 -1.94*** -3.67*** -1.70*** education low (ref.) 0 0 0 medium -0.09 -0.04 -0.21 high 0.27 0.32 0.26 sex male (ref.) 0 female -0.07 constant -0.15 0.08 -0.21 -0.07 -0.09 0.20 r² 0.0326 0.0864 0.0358 0.1198 0.0330 0.0845 n 836 836 469 469 362 362 note: variables refer to wave 1. for the distribution of the variables see table a2. signifi cance levels: + p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: austrian ggs waves 1 and 2 when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 267 8 summary and discussion this study has addressed the question of when paid work matters in reproductive decisions, by testing how objective economic conditions and the subjective perception of them are related to the salience of work in childbearing intentions, to the construction of childbearing intentions, and subsequent behavior in the austrian context. results on the relationship between employment and material insecurity and the importance of paid work for developing childbearing intentions indicate that paid work does indeed matter. the cognitive evaluation of how important work is in developing childbearing intentions is subject to the restraining effect of a low satisfaction with job security. this inference is valid for women and men. moderate and high levels of dissatisfaction with job security make employed women more likely to value paid work as important in the decision to have a child. this also holds true for men reporting a medium level of dissatisfaction with their job security. the cognitive evaluation of how important work is in reproductive decisions is subject to greater perceived material insecurity among men than women. for individuals concerned about making ends meet, paid work is important for the construction of childbearing plans. these results provide empirical evidence for goszczynska et al.’s (1991) argument that work and related benefi ts become salient when they are insecure. because respondents became more aware of material and other work-related resources that they have but are likely to lose (involuntarily) in the near future, they assign greater relevance to paid work in the childbearing decision. first, under material insecurity, income from labor is threatened and this is detrimental for a person’s breadwinning capacity, especially for men, when having children. these results corroborate fi ndings for (west) germany by andersson et al. (2009) and for switzerland by hanappi et al. (2016), where women usually reduce their employment activities after childbirth, and thus a female income is not necessarily a pre-requisite for having children. second, our results hint at the idea that childbearing might be an attractive option for individuals who report a low satisfaction with job security. the higher likelihood of employed women who are dissatisfi ed with job security to intend to have a child in the near future refl ects the emotional benefi ts of motherhood prevalent in our study context. third, once people intend to have a child in the near future, those with a low level of satisfaction with job security are more likely to realize their intentions, which supports friedman et al.’s (1994) uncertainty reduction argument. the above fi ndings are also an extension of the pioneering work by philipov (2009), which rested on the argument that work could in some cases be more important than, and thus compete with, having children. the results here show how employment status and level of satisfaction with job insecurity shape the cognitive evaluation of paid work as a factor in reproductive decisions in the fi rst place. it suggests that the perception that one’s job might be lost and fi nancial constraints shape individuals’ awareness of the work-related benefi ts that might be lost when having children; thus insecurities contribute by framing evaluations of work as a factor in reproductive decisions. • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser268 results on the interplay of material insecurity and intentional childbearing reveal that work is relevant for realizing short-term fertility. these results corroborate fi ndings that actual unemployment and perceived economic uncertainty impact the transition to parenthood (andersson 2000; blossfeld et al. 2005; gebel/giesecke 2009; kreyenfeld 2009). some limitations of this study should be mentioned. the empirical analysis on intention realization is based on short-term fertility intentions. it thus remains unclear whether those who did not realize their intentions in the foreseen time frame achieved their fertility goals later on. we are also aware that having only two waves available in our dataset may not be suffi cient to grasp variations in individuals’ intentions in the very short run; nor does it allow an insight into sudden intention changes due to the occurrence of critical events in work and family life (e.g. job changes or family re-composition). we are aware that the sample reporting material insecurity is small, which limits representativity. also, there might be a causal relationship between the importance of work and future childbearing pointing in the other direction: we argued earlier that paid work can be important because current insecure employment conditions are perceived as discouraging childbearing plans. at the same time, a future or ongoing occupational career can be hampered by childbearing. finally, the infl uence of the satisfaction on the employment condition on fertility intentions may be biased because of the possible presence of unobserved variables that have an impact on both. for instance, intrinsically optimistic individuals may be inclined to answer that they are satisfi ed and intend having a(nother) child – thus creating an artifi cial association between employment satisfaction and fertility intentions. despite such limitations, our results have a number of implications for understanding the complex links between work and fertility. although few differences in the effect of employment status and insecurity on intention realization where found by gender, major gender differences in the association of employment status and work salience were found. more precisely, women currently working in insecure employment conditions anticipate the potential risks associated with a long absence from work after childbirth. overall, we show that if reproductive decisions depend on employment and material insecurity, they also vary within groups reporting such insecurities, according to people’s labor market prospects and family and career aspirations. our fi ndings stem from a context in which, despite increased feelings of economic insecurity, unemployment and labor market uncertainty are relatively low compared to the european average. in contexts with higher unemployment and less strict employment protection legislation, economic insecurities may have a larger impact in determining fertility intentions and their realization. therefore, the knowledge of what differentiates people who consider paid work as important for fertility and those who do not, might expand our understanding of why work prevents some groups from realizing their intentions and not others. it is preferable to use this alternative contrast when the state of job insecurity is included in models for fertility analyses. when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 269 acknowledgements we wish to thank jennifer johnson-hanks, caroline berghammer and two anonymous reviewers as well as the editor for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper. this study was conducted with the fi nancial support of the austrian academy of sciences under the grant number 11713 within the austrian program for advanced research and technology and within the project “running against the clock”, fi nanced by the austrian research foundation (fwf28071). references adsera, alicia 2011a: the interplay of employment uncertainty and education in explaining second births in europe. in: demographic research 25,16: 513-544 [doi: 10.4054/ demres.2011.25.16]. adsera, alicia 2011b: where are the babies? labor market conditions and fertility in europe. in: european journal of population 27,1: 1-32 [doi: 10.1007/s10680-010-9222-x]. ahn, namkee; 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(1988-2002). austria in a european comparison. results based on the issp 1998, 2002]. öif working paper 54, vienna: österreichisches institut für familienforschung/austrian institute for family research. whelpton, pascal kidder; campbell, arthur a.; patterson, john e. 2015: fertility and family planning in the united states. princeton: princeton university press. date of submission: 29.06.2016 date of acceptance: 14.09.2017 doris hanappi (). university of california. berkeley, ca, united states usa. research fellow of the austrian academy of sciences (öaw). e-mail: doris.hanappi@gmail.com url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/doris_hanappi http://dorishanappi.info isabella buber-ennser. wittgenstein centre (iiasa, vid/öaw, wu). vienna institute of demography/austrian academy of sciences. vienna, austria. e-mail: isabella.buber@oeaw.ac.at url: http://www.wittgensteincentre.org/en/staff/member/buber-ennser.htm https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/vid/people/staff/isabella-buber-ennser/ when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 277 appendix fig. a1: importance of one’s own paid work for the decision to have a child during the next three years by employment status and satisfaction with job security and by making ends meet, men note: low satisfaction with job security (0-4 on 0-10-scale); medium satisfaction (5-8); high satisfaction (9-10). the categories “leave”, “housekeeping” and “other (employment status)” are not shown because of small numbers (n<30). source: austrian ggs, 1,130 partnered men aged 18-44, weighted data 0 20 40 60 80 in % total employed, satisfaction high employed, satisfaction medium employed, satisfaction low student unemployed self-employed (very) easily fairly easily with some difficulty with (great) difficulty 55 26 14 6 63 23 11 2 52 27 16 5 51 33 11 6 11 12 41 36 31 39 16 14 57 32 7 4 54 28 13 5 58 25 14 4 55 21 17 8 42 27 18 14 definitely not probably not definitely yes probably yes e m p lo ym en ts ta tu s an d sa tis fa ct io n w ith jo b se cu ri ty m ak in g en d s m ee t 100 • doris hanappi, isabella buber-ennser278 tab. a1: distribution of variables for the analyses on intending a child within three years all women men employment status and satisfaction with job security self-employed 241 120 121 unemployed 89 65 24 student 162 102 60 leave 221 220 1 housekeeping 156 155 1 other 50 20 30 employed, low satisfaction with job security 115 70 45 employed, medium satisfaction with job security 729 370 359 employed, high satisfaction with job security 1156 666 490 concerns about making ends meet with (great) diffi culty 214 148 66 with some diffi culty 490 285 205 fairly easily 1007 614 393 (very) easily 1206 739 467 control variables parity childless 1001 542 459 1 child 571 343 228 2 children 922 623 299 3+ children 425 280 145 age 18-19 106 62 44 20-24 313 194 119 25-29 507 302 205 30-34 529 337 192 35-39 676 425 251 40-44 788 468 320 education low (ref.) 1,821 1,059 762 medium 656 428 228 high 442 301 141 sex male (ref.) 1,129 female 1,786 total 2,917 1,786 1,129 source: austrian ggs wave 1 when paid work matters for fertility intentions and subsequent behavior • 279 tab. a2: distribution of variables for realization of short-term fertility intentions all women men employment status and satisfaction with job security self-employed 70 30 40 unemployed 22 14 8 student 29 20 9 leave 86 85 1 housekeeping 20 20 0 other 11 4 7 employed, low satisfaction with job security 50 30 20 employed, medium satisfaction with job security 213 95 118 employed, high satisfaction with job security 335 175 160 concerns about making ends meet with (great) diffi culty 54 39 15 with some diffi culty 124 69 55 fairly easily 290 165 125 (very) easily 368 200 168 control variables parity childless 471 252 219 1 child 241 145 96 2 children 90 61 29 3+ children 34 15 19 age 18-19 16 12 4 20-24 118 80 38 25-29 287 169 118 30-34 216 120 96 35-39 127 65 62 40-44 72 27 45 education low (ref.) 488 255 233 medium 186 113 73 high 162 105 57 sex male (ref.) 363 female 473 total 836 469 363 note: variables refer to wave 1. source: austrian ggs waves 1 and 2 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) transition from cohabitation to marriage. the role of marital attitudes in seven western and eastern european countries transition from cohabitation to marriage the role of marital attitudes in seven western and eastern european countries zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel abstract: using longitudinal panel data from the generations and gender surveys on 2,847 cohabiters from seven countries, we examine the role of marital attitudes in the transition from cohabitation to marriage and compare the strength of this association between western and eastern europe. we expect a positive attitude towards marriage to increase the likelihood of cohabiters marrying. we also expect the association between personal attitudes and marriage formation to be weaker among cohabiters from eastern europe, due to stronger normative pressure to marry in contexts where cohabitation is less prevalent. in both eastern and western european countries, we fi nd a clear positive association between favourable views on marriage among cohabiters and their entry into marriage. contrary to our expectations, we fi nd evidence that this association is weaker in western europe. we discuss this fi nding in light of the greater postponement of marriage among western european cohabiters, even among those with a positive attitude towards marriage, as well as the potentially greater signifi cance of life course events and transitions that infl uence their decision to marry more strongly than is the case for their eastern european counterparts. this study extends the literature on the relationship trajectories of cohabiters by drawing attention to the normative context that may shape cohabiters’ opportunities and constrain behavioural choice in the marriage formation process. ultimately, it contributes to an understanding of the consequences of the societal diffusion of cohabitation in europe. keywords: marriage formation · cohabitation · cross-national comparison · discrete time event history analysis · generations and gender surveys comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 3-30 (date of release: 17.04.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-04en4 • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel4 1 introduction the need to better understand cohabiters’ attitudes, beliefs and values towards marriage, and the association of these with the transition to marriage, has recently been emphasised within life course research (ortyl 2013; perelli-harris/bernardi 2015). the decision to marry may strongly depend on how much cohabiters personally value the institution of marriage, particularly in countries where virtually all unions start as unmarried cohabitation and cohabiters make similar relationshipspecifi c investments to those of married couples. the strong association between positive attitudes towards marriage and marriage formation that has been found among swedish cohabiters (duvander 1999; moors/bernhardt 2009) may, however, not be as evident in contexts where cohabitation is less prevalent and accepted because, regardless of their personal feelings about marriage, cohabiters may not only be stigmatised for cohabiting in the fi rst place but may also be confronted with social pressure to get married. there is great variety in europe regarding the prevalence and acceptance of unmarried cohabitation. in western europe cohabitation has virtually replaced direct marriage as the start of a union and has become the norm in the process of union formation (billari/liefbroer 2010). the group of cohabiters may not only be more diverse in their marital attitudes but also face less normative pressure to marry quickly. in central and eastern europe by contrast, cohabitation is less prevalent and thus entered into by a more selective part of the population, is contested by normative beliefs about the institution of marriage, and is often associated with economic disadvantage (philipov/dobritz 2003). we formulated the following research question: does the strength of the effect of personal attitudes towards the institution of marriage on cohabiters’ transition to marriage differ in high and low diffusion contexts of cohabitation? our study contributes to the literature in three important ways. first, we extend a growing body of literature aimed at understanding the consequences of the societal diffusion of unmarried cohabitation by examining the marriage trajectories of cohabiters. this line of research has predominantly focused on cohabiters’ life course stage (i.e. union duration, age, parental status) or economic opportunities (education, employment, race) and their association with marriage formation (duvander 1999; kennedy/bumpass 2008; kuo/raley 2016; lichter et al. 2006; manlove et al. 2012; manning/smock 2002; mcclain 2011; musick 2007; oppenheimer 2003; perelli-harris et al. 2012; smock et al. 2005). we argue that by drawing attention to the role of attitudes in cohabiters’ marital decisions, we complement the sociodemographic and economic explanations of behavioural choices. second, we add a cross-national perspective and compare this association in countries of low and high diffusion of unmarried cohabitation. we thus learn about how the context shapes the opportunities and constraints of behavioural choice in the process of union formation (liefbroer/billari 2010). third, we make use of prospective survey data on the partnership trajectories of cohabiters. this enables us to capture attitudes towards the institution of marriage prior to the demographic behavioural choice (marriage or continued cohabitation) transition from cohabitation to marriage • 5 and thereby to disentangle the reciprocal association between selection and exposure effects; something that many prior studies could not effectively address due to the cross-sectional or retrospective nature of their data (surkyn/lesthaeghe 2004). our data stem from seven western, central and eastern european countries that participated in two waves of the generations and gender surveys (austria, bulgaria, france, georgia, germany, hungary and russia). we studied 2,847 cohabiting men and women between 18 and 45 years of age. we assessed their attitude towards the institution of marriage in the fi rst wave of data collection and obtained information on their relationship status roughly three years later, when some of them had married and others were still cohabiting or had dissolved their union. 2 theoretical background since the onset of the societal diffusion of unmarried cohabitation as early as in the 1970s in scandinavia and as recently as the early 1990s in central and eastern europe, living together without being married has become an increasingly common experience for european adults. the rising popularity of unmarried cohabitation accompanied the decline in marriage rates and the postponement of marriage to an older age. the increased prevalence of divorce has also been popularly framed within the narrative of the so-called second demographic transition (sdt hereafter, lesthaeghe 1995, 2010; van de kaa 1987, 1993). adherents of the sdt concept see ideational change as the driving force behind demographic shifts in partnerships and family life. at the onset of the diffusion of cohabitation, unfavourable attitudes towards the institution of marriage have been identifi ed as strong predictors of people’s choice to cohabit as an alternative to marriage (axinn/thornton 1992; clarkberg et al. 1995; liefbroer 1991; manting 1996). at later stages of the sdt, cohabitation was increasingly also adopted by people who viewed this union type as a stepping-stone on the way to marriage and thus held more favourable attitudes towards the institution. as a result, relationship trajectories prior to marriage have become more heterogeneous and, in many european countries, most adults have cohabited prior to their fi rst marriage (perelli-harris/lyons-amos 2015). simultaneously, norms concerning cohabitation and marriage relaxed at the societal level, hence larger groups of society approved unmarried cohabitation (treas et al. 2014). cherlin (2004) coined the term “deinstitutionalisation” of marriage to describe these changing cultural perceptions about cohabitation and marriage and the increased complexity of union formation trajectories. building on this thesis that marriage has become a choice rather than a necessity, and that cohabitation is becoming a nearly universal experience, a growing body of literature studying the marriage trajectories of established cohabiting unions emerged in an effort to understand the consequences of the changing composition of the cohabiting population in different normative contexts of partnership and family life. • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel6 2.1 marital attitudes and the transition to marriage symbolic interaction theory (blumer 1969) would suggest that, through interaction with their social environment, people form a personal attitude towards the institution of marriage that infl uences their decision whether to marry or not. attitudes here refl ect a positive or negative disposition towards a given person, object or idea (ajzen 1988). ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour (ajzen 1991) suggests that marital attitudes have both a direct and an indirect effect on the transition (from cohabitation) to marriage. direct, in that individuals tend to exhibit behaviour that is in line with the values they hold, and indirect in that the intention to marry that people form is based on their attitude towards marriage. attitudes towards the institution of marriage have been widely used to explain the choice between cohabitation and marriage as a selection process at the moment of union formation (axinn/thornton 1992; bernhardt 2004; bradatan/kulcsar 2008; clarkberg et al. 1995; gerber/ berman 2010; hoem et al. 2009; liefbroer 1991; puur et al. 2012). this research demonstrated that individuals who hold disapproving attitudes towards the institution of marriage choose cohabitation, whereas individuals who consider marriage an important social institution would rather get married directly. with the unfolding diffusion of unmarried cohabitation, the selection into cohabitation based on marital attitudes has become weaker and premarital cohabitation may even become a normative step in the union formation process (billari/liefbroer 2010), hence also widely adopted by people with a positive attitude towards marriage. it has furthermore been shown that cohabitation is not necessarily a conscious decision but that people “slide” instead into co-residence with their partner (manning/smock 1995; stanley et al. 2006). apart from convenience as a reason to start living with a partner, qualitative work also identifi ed housing needs or the benefi ts of shared fi nances as frequent reasons to start cohabiting (sassler 2004). particularly in cases where cohabiters already benefi t from increased returns to scale, attitudes emerge as an explanation of why some cohabiters marry whereas others stay cohabiting or break up (moors/bernhardt 2009). there is however surprisingly little research on the infl uence of marital attitudes on cohabiters’ transition to marriage that complements explanations of the transition from cohabitation to marriage based on economic and life stage determinants (for exceptions on the marriage formation of swedish cohabiters, see duvander 1999; moors/bernhardt 2009). in accordance with the sdt framework that explains individual behavioural choice between cohabitation and marriage at the moment of union formation as a selection process, we formulate a similar hypothesis on the transition from cohabitation to marriage: cohabiters who hold a positive attitude towards marriage are more likely to marry than their counterparts who hold a negative attitude (hypothesis 1). 2.2 contextual variation in the association between marital attitudes and marriage formation beyond cohabiters’ personal attitudes about marriage, their marital decisions may also be infl uenced by what others consider to be appropriate behaviour. buchmann transition from cohabitation to marriage • 7 (1989) argued that such social norms shape demographic behaviour, particularly in less individualised societies. european countries differ in the degree of individualisation, hence the extent to which individuals experience increased freedom from normative constraints to conform to traditional demographic patterns enforced by their family of origin, the church and society at large (beck/beck-gernsheim 2002). these constraints manifest themselves in the form of norms, more specifi cally social rules regarding the timing and sequencing of life events. these can be formal (i.e. laws that prohibit marriage below a certain age) or implicit (i.e. age norms for marriage). acts which violate these norms, called deviance, result in sanctions (ajzen 1991). there are two forms of sanctions, namely legal consequences and stigmatisation. in a context where cohabitation is not prevalent, married unions are often legally favoured over cohabitation, and cohabiters may also provoke derogatory remarks about not being married. it is argued that norms infl uence demographic outcomes through (anticipated) sanctions (neugarten et al. 1965; settersten/mayer 1997). concerning the transition from cohabitation to marriage, we argue that social norms go beyond regarding unmarried cohabitation instead of marriage as a deviation from expected behaviour; instead there is also social pressure to transform a cohabiting into a married union (ajzen 1991). treas and colleagues (2014) showed that although social norms concerning both premarital cohabitation and cohabitation as a permanent alternative relaxed between the mid-1990 and the early 2000s in all european regions, norms concerning cohabitation in the absence of marital intentions are more disapproving, and more so in eastern than in western europe. hence, in their decision of whether to marry or not, cohabiters also respond to social norms independently of their own attitudes by conforming to widely accepted behaviour in their social environment (liefbroer et al. 1994). countries with different levels of cohabitation prevalence may thus vary in the extent to which conformism is widespread. we would consequently expect that cohabiters in countries with low cohabitation prevalence are more likely to marry even if they have a negative attitude towards marriage. contrary to this, and in line with the deinstitutionalisation of marriage thesis, the marriage norm may be less rigid in countries with a high prevalence of cohabitation, leaving the decision whether or not to marry largely up to the couple themselves. consequently, the extent to which individuals value the institution of marriage may be a strong predictor of the decision to marry. in sum, we hypothesised that the strength of the association between marital attitudes and marriage formation is weaker in central and eastern european countries (hypothesis 2). 2.3 the context of cohabitation in western and eastern european countries selected for this study cohabitation has long historical antecedents in both western and eastern europe (kok/leinarte 2015). the persistent differences in patterns and meanings of cohabitation in eastern and western europe (bradatan 2012) have been linked to historically distinct nuptiality patterns in these two regions since the middle ages (hajnal 1965), as characterised by late and non-universal marriage west of an imaginary • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel8 line running from st. petersburg to trieste, and early and universal marriage east of that line. for the purpose of this study, survey data from seven countries were selected from the generations and gender survey programme (refer to the data section for more information on available survey data and the sample selection): austria, germany (east and west) and france, geographically located in western europe (we), and bulgaria, georgia, hungary and russia, geographically located in central and eastern europe (cee). it is important to note that the selection of countries was not based on theoretical considerations, but on the objective of including all countries for which longitudinal information from two waves of data collection was available. in western european countries, represented in this study by austria, germany and france, unmarried cohabitation has become a common choice for starting a coresident relationship, although childbearing within cohabitation is more prevalent in france compared to austria and germany (heuveline/timberlake 2004; hiekel et al. 2014; sobotka/toulemon 2008). the majority of respondents (18-45 years) who were married in the year when the ggs data were collected had cohabited with their spouse before marriage (austria: 77 percent, france: 81 percent, germany: 69 percent), on average about 34 months in austria and france and 22 months in germany (own calculations based on ggs data). prior to the fall of the iron curtain, but dramatically accelerated by the turmoil of the transition from communism to democracy, unmarried cohabitation also spread across countries in central and eastern europe but was of shorter duration and more rarely involved childbearing compared to western european countries (philipov/jasilioniene 2008; puur et al. 2012). the proportion of respondents aged 18 to 45 in the year of data collection who had cohabited with their spouse prior to marriage varied widely across the set of countries that here represent central and eastern europe, but is lower compared to western europe: whereas in hungary (25 percent) and russia (38 percent) less than half of all married respondents had cohabited prior to marriage, this proportion was larger in georgia (53 percent) and bulgaria (64 percent) (own calculations based on ggs data). the majority of them married within one year of starting to cohabit. hence, the mean duration (in months) of premarital cohabitation was signifi cantly shorter compared to western europe (bulgaria: 6.9, georgia: 8.7, hungary: 7.7, russia: 6.8, own calculations based on ggs data). the east-west differences in the demographic patterns related to cohabitation suggest a different normative context in both regions. among a national representative sample of the entire population in the countries representing western europe in this study, the majority agrees (strongly) that it would be “alright for two people to live together without getting married” (austria: 81 percent, france: 92 percent, germany: 80 percent, own calculations based on data from the 2008 european value study). although norms concerning marriage and cohabitation have also relaxed in cee countries (treas et al. 2014), stankuniene and maslauskaite (2008) reported widespread resistance towards family change. the majority of the population support traditional patterns of family formation, although there is substantial variation transition from cohabitation to marriage • 9 across countries. the acceptance of unmarried cohabitation within a national representative sample of the whole population also varies across cee countries and is lower compared to we countries. in hungary 70 percent of the population agrees that cohabitation is acceptable, in russia and bulgaria it is about 61 percent, and only 32 percent of georgians approve of cohabitation (own calculations, 2008 evs data). there is an ongoing scholarly debate surrounding the question of whether the spread of cohabitation in eastern europe has more to do with the economic crisis and social anomy than with value change (aassve et al. 2006; coleman 2004; kalmijn 2007). cohabitation as a sign of economic disadvantage may have emerged as a result of people coping with increased economic uncertainty during the shift from communism to democracy by replacing hard-to-reverse life events (i.e. marriage) with reversible ones (i.e. cohabitation) (kohler et al. 2006). hence, starting to live together without being married may imply a deviation from the behavioural norm to a lesser extent than it did in the past. however, given the short time horizon between forming a cohabiting union and institutionalising it through marriage, the true deviant behaviour may be violating norms by postponing (or foregoing) marriage. using the same data as in the present study, hiekel et al. (2014) showed that more cohabiters in these countries who considered the institution of marriage as outdated reported plans to marry than their western european counterparts. this suggests that cohabiters may conform more readily to predominant and traditional family (marriage) formation patterns in these countries. there are also major differences within europe in the way in which unmarried cohabitation is treated in the legislation of individual countries. it goes beyond our knowledge and the scope of the paper to provide an exhaustive overview of the legal approaches to cohabitation in the different contexts. broadly speaking, no country gives completely equal status to marriage and cohabitation in all policy dimensions, but also no country privileges marriage vis-à-vis cohabitation in all respects (perelli-harris/sánchez gassen 2012; sanchéz gassen/perelli-harris 2015). since 1999, cohabiters in france have been able to register their union to ensure similar rights vis-à-vis their partner compared to married couples. this is not possible in austria or germany (unless for same-sex couples). all three countries (together with all western european countries) have abolished laws that discriminated against children born outside of wedlock and grant equal rights to children from cohabiting parents (perelli-harris/sánchez gassen 2012). after the break-up of the soviet system, the previously unifi ed legal jurisdiction fragmented. in none of the former soviet countries included in our sample is cohabitation considered a conjugal union under law (lithuania and ukraine are exceptions in the area) and most of the few efforts to achieve legal harmonisation between cohabitation and marriage relate to couples with dependent children (isupova/perelli-harris 2012). • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel10 3 data and sample our sample was drawn from two waves of the generations and gender surveys (ggs). the ggs is a set of comparative surveys of a nationally representative sample of the 18-79-year-old resident population in each of the 19 participating countries (vikat et al. 2007). in the fi rst wave, the overall size of the samples differed in each country but in most cases was about 10,000 respondents. the response rate varied and ranged from 35 percent in lithuania to 84 percent in romania (fokkema et al. 2016). at the time this study was conducted, data from a second wave collected three years after the fi rst wave were available for ten countries: austria, bulgaria, czech republic, france, georgia, germany, hungary, lithuania, the netherlands and russia. three countries were excluded from the sample ‒ the netherlands because the data did not contain a measurement for marital attitudes in wave 1, lithuania and the czech republic because the marginal prevalence of cohabitation and a panel attrition rate of 80 (70) percent made meaningful statistical analyses impossible. this left us with a selection of seven countries located in western, central and eastern europe. we selected individuals who were cohabiting with a partner of the opposite sex in wave 1, were between 18 and 45 years of age in wave 11 and were observed roughly three years later in wave 2 of the panel. our sample thus did not include same-sex couples. we had to exclude n=28 respondents for whom consistency checks based on sex and birth year reported in both waves raised serious doubts as to whether the same respondent had been re-interviewed. moreover, n=492 respondents were excluded because they did not report their partnership and marital status consistently across the waves. it is conceivable that they misremembered when they started living with their partner, got married or whether they had been interviewed before or after these events occurred. this makes it particularly unfortunate that, in wave 2, respondents’ retrospective information on their partnership situation in wave 1 had been used during data collection as fi lters for questions on subsequent marriage or separation. we could not therefore derive any reliable information on what had happened to these relationships, and dropped them from the analytical sample. the total number of our analytical sample was n=2,847 cohabiters from seven european countries. the sample selection process faced two potential biases. first, sample attrition can bias the results if it is non-random but related to characteristics of the respondents. second, cohabiters who marry quickly are less likely to be selected in our sample. in the following sections we elaborate on these potential sources of bias and describe how we dealt with them in the analyses. the panel attrition rate between waves was 32 percent overall; lowest in georgia and hungary (less than 20 percent), higher in austria (26 percent), france and 1 the hungarian sample comprised only individuals aged 21 years and older. the proportion of cohabiters under 21 was, however, very low in all other countries (1 percent of the total sample), meaning that there was no serious underestimation of cohabitation in the hungarian sample. transition from cohabitation to marriage • 11 bulgaria (32 percent) as well as russia (37 percent), and highest in germany (72 percent).2 panel attrition may seriously bias our results, particularly if cohabiters with positive (negative) attitudes towards the institution of marriage are more likely to leave the panel during the observation period and therefore be excluded from our analytical sample. we therefore compared respondents who were cohabiting in wave 1 and participated in both waves of data collection ‒ hence our analytical sample ‒ with their counterparts who dropped out of the panel between the waves regarding their attitude towards the institution of marriage. the t-test of the distributions of the marital attitude measure (not shown) revealed that respondents who dropped out did not differ from respondents who participated in both waves. our analytical sample is thus not selective in terms of our variable of interest. we also examined potential bias due to panel attrition with regard to our control variables. these analyses showed that higher (compared to lower) educated as well as employed (compared to unemployed) respondents were more likely to participate in both waves. compared to their childless counterparts, cohabiting parents were also more likely to participate in both waves. western europeans were more likely to drop out of the panel (caused above all by the high panel attrition in the german survey). besides our substantial interest in controlling for potentially spurious effects between these characteristics and the timing of marriage, we also decided to include these variables in the multivariate analyses for the purpose of controlling for panel attrition selectivity. in line with the survey design, we selected those who were not married from all respondents in a co-residential relationship in wave 1. hence, the sample selection took place at an arbitrary moment in respondents’ relationship trajectory. the vast majority of respondents between the ages of 18 and 45, however, were married at wave 1 and their proportion was higher in eastern european countries (66.5 percent) compared to western european countries (33.5 percent). 39 percent (western europe) and 58 percent (eastern europe) of the married respondents had cohabited previously with their spouse. this suggests that cohabiters in our sample might exhibit certain characteristics that made them choose to cohabit instead of marrying directly on the one hand, and to postpone marriage for longer on the other. we thus used a heckman selection model that is described in further detail in the discussion of our analytical approach. 4 measurements given our event-history analytical framework (elaborated below), the dependent variable was the hazard rate of transition from cohabitation to marriage between 2 since the panel attrition rate was extraordinarily high in the german panel data we repeated these analyses excluding these data. we drew identical conclusions from the model on the reduced sample and therefore decided to include the german sample despite its high attrition rate. • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel12 wave 1 and wave 2. the question from which we derived the information on marriage formation was posed at wave 2 and was as follows: “did you marry your partner after the last interview?” to which respondents answered either “yes” or “no”, providing the date (month and year) of marriage if applicable. marital attitudes were measured at wave 1 by the following question: “to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: “marriage is an outdated institution.”? the level of agreement was measured using a fi ve-point likert scale. respondents who answered 1=strongly disagree or 2=disagree were classifi ed as holding a positive attitude towards marriage and considered it a relevant social institution in modern times. by contrast, respondents who answered 3=neither agree nor disagree, 4= agree or 5=strongly agree were classifi ed as holding an indifferent or negative attitude towards marriage.3 with one exception, the control variables were measured in wave 1 and were treated as time-constant (see table a1 in appendix). these included plans to get married (1=yes), as they were found to be positively correlated with transition to marriage (manning/smock 2002); age at start of the union, which refl ects the norm related to family transitions; union duration and its squared term; gender (1 = female); level of educational attainment (1= lower secondary or lower, 2 = upper secondary and post-secondary, 3 = tertiary) which was found to be positively associated with cohabiters’ transition to marriage in the process of family formation (perelli-harris et al. 2010); employment status (1 = employed, 2 = not employed, including unemployed, enrolled in education) and ability to make ends meet (scale ranging from 1 = with great diffi culty to 6= very easily), which are proxies for economic deprivation often linked to the postponement of marriage (clarkberg et al. 1995; duvander 1999; gibson-davis 2009); and previous partnership (1=no previous partnership, 2=previous cohabitation, 3=previous marriage)4 which is associated with lower odds of marriage (lichter/qian 2008; steele et al. 2005). additionally, in wave 2, respondents reported whether they had had a(nother) child since wave 1 and if so, provided the date of birth (month and year). the birth of a child can be a reason for a cohabiting couple to marry (perelli-harris et al. 2012; perelli-harris et al. 2010). we treated this event as a time-varying covariate. the corresponding dummy variable was given the value 1 nine months prior to the birth to capture the conception, and retained that value until the event or censoring. 3 we also experimented with the categorical operationalisation of the variable that further distinguished between the two negative and the indifferent attitude towards marriage. results indicated that cohabiters with an indifferent attitude towards marriage had very similar transition rates to marriage as cohabiters who (strongly) agreed that marriage was an outdated institution (results available upon request). 4 all respondents who were married to at least one of their prior partners were considered as previously married even though they might have cohabited with the partner they married or with a different partner. transition from cohabitation to marriage • 13 5 analytical strategy two waves of the ggs allowed us to study the association between marital attitudes and marriage formation among cohabiters from a longitudinal perspective. our statistical modelling strategy was based on event-history-analysis because it allowed us to study the association between a set of independent variables and the subsequent timing of marriage formation. specifi cally, a cox regression model (cox 1972) was used to exploit the information of marriage formation, detailed to the month. cox regression is an appropriate tool for modelling the discrete-time data with time-dependent covariates; it allows the inclusion of a correction term for selection bias; and it can be extended to the data with non-proportional hazard (allison 1995). respondents left the risk set at different time points. respondents who married between waves left the risk set in the month of marriage. respondents who dissolved their union between waves left the risk set in the month of separation and respondents who were still cohabiting at the end of the observation period were right-censored at wave 2.5 as discussed in the data section, marriage-prone respondents may be underrepresented in our analytical sample. consequently we had to take potential sample selection into account. mirroring studies with similar selectivity challenges (e.g. billari/liefbroer 2007) and in line with heckman (1976), we employed a two-stage modelling strategy. the fi rst stage of the analysis assessed potential factors for sample selectivity, such as already being married in wave 1. this probit model was applied to all respondents (n=20,365), excluding those who dropped from the panel between waves. the predictors in this model were attitudes towards marriage, age, gender, education, employment, diffi culty making ends meet, and prior co-residential relationship. in order to avoid collinearity of the correction term and predictors in the second step of our analyses, we included two additional variables in the selection model. the fi rst variable indicates the diffusion of cohabitation in the given society (measured by the standardised proportion of all individuals 18-45 who have ever cohabited) and thus addresses potential selection into cohabitation versus direct marriage at the moment of union formation. the second variable, having a joint 5 a potential concern is that specifying a cox-proportional hazard regression of our event of interest may lead to an upward bias in the estimator of the event of interest (i.e. exiting cohabitation via marriage), if the presence of a competing risk (i.e. exiting cohabitation via union dissolution) is not accounted for. from a theoretical perspective, we argue that predicting union dissolution goes beyond the focal interest of our study that aims to explain individual and contextual differences in cohabiters’ marital attitudes and entry into marriage. theoretical arguments predicting marriage cannot be applied to union dissolution in a straightforward manner. from a methodological perspective, we argue that the availability of information on the timing of union dissolution, detailed to the month, implies that cohabiters who split up no longer contributed to the risk set which reduces the risk of biased estimates. however, union dissolution is relatively prevalent, particularly in our eastern european sample. as a robustness analysis, we tested our hypotheses on the transition to marriage, specifying union dissolution as a competing exit route from initial cohabitation (results available upon request). from these fi ndings we drew identical conclusions regarding our hypotheses. • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel14 biological child with the current partner, was chosen because of the strong empirical association between marriage and family formation (musick 2007) and thus addresses potential selection regarding the timing of marriage. both measures were signifi cantly associated with the probability of being selected in our analytical sample but not with the transition from cohabitation to marriage between the waves. the second stage of the analysis comprised two cox regression models which tested our hypotheses, and both included covariate accounting for the selection bias, namely the inverse mill’s ratio derived from the selection model. tests of multicollinearity showed that there was no risk of obtaining incorrect estimates. we used 200 bootstrap replications for each model to account for additional uncertainty stemming from the potential measurement error of the inverse mill’s ratio. the fi rst model assessed the independent statistical association between our key explanatory variables (marital attitude and region) and the cohabiters’ transition to marriage. the second model included an interaction term between marital attitude and region in order to test the hypothesis regarding east-west differences in the effect of marital attitude on marriage transition. we pooled data from the seven countries. preliminary country-specifi c cox regressions (not shown) revealed similar results in all countries but only had low statistical power due to the small sample sizes and number of events of interest. the preliminary analyses nevertheless confi rmed our confi dence in the fact that pooling the data and contrasting two broader regions would not mask important country-specifi c mechanisms. however, as the descriptive analysis shows, the greater heterogeneity in our sample of cohabiters from central and eastern europe is mainly driven by georgia being an outlier on most indicators. georgian demographers have suggested that contemporary young georgians increasingly tend to postpone or forego legal marriage after a religious wedding and are thus not covered by marriage statistics based on the civil registration agency (badurashvili et al. 2008). also, marriage status in the harmonised ggs data refers to legal marriage. using the pre-harmonised data from georgia, we could identify 30 percent of georgian respondents in the 18-45 age group who were not legally married to their current partner in wave 1 but who married that partner in a religious wedding ceremony. virtually none of them made the transition to legal marriage between the waves. given the ambiguity surrounding marital behaviour in georgia, we tested the robustness of our hypotheses-testing models by additionally specifying the same models but omitting the data from georgia. 6 results table 1 shows transitions from cohabitation to marriage between wave 1 and wave 2. in all, we observed 481 marriages, hence 17 percent of all cohabiters married during the observation period. one in seven (we) and one in eight (cee) respondents were still cohabiting at the end of the observation period. 298 cohabiters ended their relationship between both waves (285 separations, 13 partners died) and were considered censored in the month of union dissolution. most marriages occurred among austrian cohabiters, of whom one in four married (26,5 percent). the fewtransition from cohabitation to marriage • 15 est marriages occurred among georgian (5,7 percent) and bulgarian cohabiters (7,4 percent). we thus observed a higher share of marriages among cohabiters in western europe than in central and eastern europe. given the higher prevalence and acceptance of cohabitation in western europe, these results may appear counterintuitive. however, as the selectivity analysis shows, these fi ndings are explained by cee cohabiters marrying faster, which decreases their probability of being part of our analytical sample. in the following, we present separate descriptive results for each of the countries in order to gain further insight into the composition of our analytical sample. the top of table 2 shows the distribution of our main independent variable, i.e. whether marriage is considered an outdated institution, as measured in the fi rst interview. in austria, france and germany, around half of all cohabiters disagreed (strongly) with that statement. in cee countries, we observed large differences: merely 21 percent of bulgarian cohabiters held a positive attitude towards marriage, whereas 83 percent of cohabiters in georgia did so. in hungary, this proportion was 36 percent, and 50 percent in russia. at least half of all cohabiters planned to marry in the near future, and their proportion was larger in cee compared to we. the overall median duration of cohabitating relationships at the time of the fi rst interview was 56 months. it was longest in georgia (79 months) and bulgaria (62 months) and shortest in hungary (39 months). our sample included more women than men in all countries except georgia. most respondents had had a secondary or post-secondary education (58 percent), followed by respondents with tertiary education (26 percent) or lower than secondary wave 1 wave 2 cohabiting married still cohabiting dissolved union n n % n % n % high-cohabitation countries (western europe) austria 604 160 26.5 383 63.4 61 10.1 france 611 101 16.5 465 76.1 45 7.4 germany 128 33 25.8 81 63.3 14 10.9 low-cohabitation countries (central and eastern europe) bulgaria 323 24 7.4 280 86.7 19 5.9 georgia 368 21 5.7 339 92.1 8 2.2 hungary 475 84 17.7 296 62.3 95 20 russia 338 58 17.2 224 66.3 56 16.6 western europe 1,343 294 21.9 929 69.2 120 8.9 eastern europe 1,504 187 12.4 1,139 75.7 178 11.8 total 2,847 481 16.9 2,068 72.6 298 10.5 tab. 1: cohabiters’ relationship transitions during observation period source: generations and gender surveys (ggs 2002-2009). waves 1 and 2, authors’ calculations • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel16 ta b . 2 : d es cr ip tiv e re su lt s o f i n d ep en d en t v ar ia b le s a u s fr a g e r b u l g e o h u n r u s w e c e e to ta l m ar ri ag e is a n ou td at ed in st it u ti on ( m ar it al a tt it u d e) a g re e (s tr o n g ly )/ n ei th er a g re e, n o r d is ag re e 57 .8 48 .1 44 .5 79 .3 16 .9 63 .6 50 .0 52 .1 52 .5 52 .3 d is ag re e (s tr o n g ly ) 42 .2 51 .9 55 .5 20 .7 83 .2 36 .4 50 .0 47 .9 47 .5 47 .7 in te n ti on t o m ar ry w it h in t h re e ye ar s ye s 50 .0 40 .3 40 .6 45 .2 84 .8 64 .4 52 .7 44 .7 62 .6 54 .2 n o 50 .0 59 .7 59 .4 54 .8 15 .2 35 .6 47 .3 55 .3 37 .4 45 .8 m ed ia n re la ti on sh ip d u ra ti on in m on th s 57 .0 58 .0 43 .0 62 .0 79 .0 39 .0 46 .0 56 .0 56 .0 56 .0 m al e 39 .6 39 .4 40 .6 45 .5 52 .2 43 .2 40 .5 39 .6 45 .3 42 .6 fe m al e 60 .4 60 .6 59 .4 54 .5 47 .8 56 .8 59 .5 60 .4 54 .7 57 .4 le ve l o f e du ca ti on a tt ai n m en t (i s c ed ) lo w er s ec o n d ar y o r b el o w 7. 0 14 .1 13 .3 48 .6 7. 6 15 .4 11 .8 10 .8 19 .8 15 .6 s ec o n d ar y, p o st -s ec o n d ar y 71 .7 48 .6 53 .9 40 .9 62 .8 63 .4 57 .4 59 .5 57 .1 58 .2 te rt ia ry 21 .4 37 .3 32 .8 10 .5 29 .6 21 .3 30 .8 29 .7 23 .1 26 .2 em p lo ym en t e m p lo ye d 94 .9 88 .4 80 .5 55 .1 53 .5 90 .5 81 .4 90 .5 71 .8 80 .7 n o t e m p lo ye d 5. 1 11 .6 19 .5 44 .9 46 .5 9. 5 18 .6 9. 5 28 .2 19 .4 m ea n d if fi c u lt y in m ak in g en d s m ee t1 4. 4 3. 3 3. 7 1. 8 2. 4 3. 3 2. 4 3. 8 2. 5 3. 2 c on ce p ti on o f c h ild b et w ee n th e w av es 30 .3 26 .7 21 .1 24 .5 26 .1 28 .0 12 .7 27 .8 23 .3 25 .4 p ri or u n io n s n o p ri o r un io n 64 .4 70 .7 60 .9 76 .5 94 .8 70 .5 49 .4 66 .9 73 .0 70 .1 p ri o r co h ab it at io n 27 .0 20 .8 21 .9 6. 5 1. 9 10 .7 9. 5 23 .7 7. 4 15 .1 p ri o r m ar ri ag e 8. 6 8. 5 17 .2 17 .0 3. 3 18 .7 41 .1 9. 4 19 .6 14 .8 to ta l n 60 4 61 1 12 8 32 3 36 8 47 5 33 8 13 43 15 04 28 47 a u s = a us tr ia ; fr a = fr an ce ; g e r = g er m an y; b u l= b ul ga ri a; g e o = g eo rg ia ; h u n = h un ga ry ; r u s = r us si a; w e = w es te rn e ur o p e, c e e = c en tr al a nd e as te rn e ur o p e; 1 m ea su re d o n sc al e 1 (w ith g re at d iffi c ul ty ) t o 6 (v er y ea si ly ) s o ur ce : g en er at io ns a nd g en d er s ur ve ys , w av es 1 a nd 2 , a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns transition from cohabitation to marriage • 17 education (16 percent). more cohabiters in we countries had higher-level education compared to cohabiters in cee countries; this difference was most pronounced in bulgaria where, together with georgia, the largest proportion of non-employed cohabiters could be found. similarly, on average, cee cohabiters found it more diffi cult to make ends meet in comparison to we cohabiters. about a quarter of the cohabiters conceived a child between wave 1 and wave 2, with a slightly higher proportion of cohabiters doing so in we countries (28 percent) than in cee countries (23 percent). about a quarter of cohabiters had previously lived together with a partner or a spouse. the proportion of previously cohabiting respondents was higher in we countries, whereas the proportion of previously married respondents was higher in cee countries, however we again observed great differences among cee countries. in sum, the descriptive analyses confi rmed the well-documented heterogeneity of cohabiters across societies. also consistent with previous studies was the fact that cohabiters in the selected western european countries were somewhat more homogeneous compared to cohabiters in selected eastern european countries, with georgia being an outlier in many of the selected indicators. table 3 presents results from a probit model that assessed the selectivity of our analytical sample. cohabiters in our sample clearly differ from those who were already married in wave 1. respondents who held a positive attitude towards the institution of marriage were more likely to be married in wave 1 and thus less likely to be included in our analytical sample. please note that the attitude towards marriage of these respondents was assessed after they had married. given the reciprocal association between attitudes and behaviour, we could not deduct exposure effects from the selection and thus have potentially overestimated the difference in cohabiters’ and spouses’ marital attitudes. eastern european respondents were more likely to be married in wave 1 and thus not part of our analytical sample, refl ecting the lower prevalence of cohabitation in these countries but also the fact that cohabiters may be quicker to transform their union into marriage. parents, older and less well educated individuals are more likely already to be married at fi rst interview. although we have not observed selection in the sample based on employment status, individuals with diffi culty in making ends meet are more likely to cohabit than be married in wave 1. respondents who had been cohabiting or married prior to the current relationship are also more likely to be selected, as well as those with shorter union durations. however, as the positive effect of the squared term of union duration indicates, the probability of selecting individuals increases at a given (longer) union duration. table 4 shows the results of the second stage of the statistical modelling, namely cox regression models, with the timing of marriage as the dependent variable. in all models, the inverse mills ratio controlling for sample selection bias is statistically signifi cant. in a fi rst step, we tested the association between an attitude towards marriage and the transition to marriage. a model containing only marital attitude (results not shown) revealed that cohabiters who expressed a positive attitude towards marriage had 3.1 higher odds of marrying than cohabiters who were indifferent or negative about the institution of marriage. model 1 (table 4) shows the results of a model that included other predictor variables. the positive association • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel18 between a positive marital attitude and the timing of marriage remained statistically signifi cant (or=2.27). cohabiters who were positive about marriage in wave 1 were more than twice as likely to be married in wave 2. this estimate is robust when controlling for sample selection and other factors associated with the timing of marriage. this fi nding thus supports hypothesis 1. western european cohabiters had a slightly higher likelihood of entering into marriage than cohabiters from cee countries, but this effect was only marginally statistically signifi cant. we briefl y discuss the effects of other predictor variables on the timing of marriage formation. plans to get married accounted for a substantial decrease in the effect of marital attitude on marriage formation. this is because respondents who were positive about marriage were also more likely to have plans to get married. interestingly, marital attitudes were not strongly correlated with marital intention and instead had their own separate effect. other factors were also associated with marriage formation. individuals with secondary and post-secondary education, or tertiary education had higher odds of entering marriage than cohabiters with lower than secondary education but did not differ signifi cantly from each other. cohabiters who were employed had higher odds of entering marriage compared to their non-employed counterparts, and similarly, the more easily a respondent was able to make ends meet, the more likely (s)he was to make the transition to marriage. prior cohabitation decreased the odds of transition to marriage; union duration and its squared term did not infl uence the transition to marriage signifi cantly. lastly, contab. 3: estimates (odds ratio) for a probit model predicting sample selection (cohabiting instead of married in wave 1) (n=20,365) odds ratio positive about marriage (ref=neutral/negative) 0.48*** proportion of 18-45 year old population that ever cohabited (standardised) 1.19*** age 0.99* female (ref=male) 0.98 education (ref=lower secondary or below) secondary, post-secondary 0.90** tertiary 0.80*** not employed (ref=employed) 1.04 biological child with current partner (ref=no) 0.53*** diffi culty in making ends meet1 0.95*** prior co-resident union (ref=no) 1.47*** union duration 0.91*** union duration (squared) 1.00* constant 3.07*** ***p<.001 **p<.01 *p<.05 +p<0.1 1 measured on scale 1 (with great diffi culty) to 6 (very easily) source: generations and gender surveys, waves 1 and 2, authors’ calculations transition from cohabitation to marriage • 19 ta b . 4 : r es ul ts (o d d s ra tio s) f ro m c ox r eg re ss io n m o d el s p re d ic tin g en tr y in to m ar ri ag e b et w ee n w av e 1 an d w av e 2, w it h co n tr o ls fo r sa m p le s el ec tio n an d w it h b o o ts tr ap p ar am et er e st im at es fu ll sa m p le s am p le e xc lu d in g g eo rg ia m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 p os it iv e ab ou t m ar ri ag e 2. 27 ** * 2. 61 ** * 2. 10 ** * 2. 72 ** * li vi ng in w es te rn e u ro p e (r ef = e as te rn e .) 1. 27 + 1. 44 * 1. 11 1. 40 * in te ra ct io n p os it iv e at ti tu d e* w es t 0. 81 0. 67 * in te n ti on t o m ar ry (r ef = n o) 3. 10 ** * 3. 12 ** * 3. 19 ** * 3. 23 ** * u n io n du ra ti on 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 u n io n du ra ti on (s q u ar ed ) 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 a ge a t th e u n io n fo rm at io n 0. 97 * 0. 97 * 0. 98 * 0. 98 * fe m al e (r ef = m al e) 1. 13 1. 14 1. 08 1. 09 ed u ca ti on (r ef = lo w er s ec o n d ar y o r b el o w ) 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 se co n d ar y, p o st -s ec o n d ar y 1. 86 ** 1. 83 ** 2. 01 ** * 1. 97 ** te rt ia ry 2. 43 ** * 2. 41 ** * 2. 65 ** * 2. 62 ** * n ot e m p lo ye d (r ef = em p lo ye d ) 0. 58 ** 0. 58 ** * 0. 64 * 0. 64 * d if fi c u lt y in m ak in g en d s m ee t1 1. 09 * 1. 09 * 1. 07 + 1. 07 + c on ce p ti on o f c h ild b et w ee n th e w av es (r ef = n o) 1. 66 ** * 1. 66 ** * 1. 68 ** * 1. 68 ** * p ri or u n io n s (r ef = n o p ri o r un io n) 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 p re vi o u sl y co h ab it in g 0. 72 * 0. 72 * 0. 76 + 0. 75 + p re vi o u sl y m ar ri ed 1. 02 1. 02 0. 99 0. 98 in ve rs e m ill s’ r at io 0. 40 ** * 0. 39 ** * 0. 63 * 0. 61 * n 2, 84 7 2, 47 9 ** *p < .0 01 * *p < .0 1 *p < .0 5 + p < 0. 1 1 m ea su re d o n sc al e 1 (w ith g re at d iffi c ul ty ) t o 6 (v er y ea si ly ) s o ur ce : g en er at io ns a nd g en d er s ur ve ys , w av es 1 a nd 2 , a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel20 ceiving a child between waves had a signifi cant effect on the transition to marriage, confi rming the expected link between timing of childbearing and marriage. model 2 (table 4) includes an interaction term between marital attitude and region in order to test hypothesis 2 on expected country differences in the association between the marital attitude and marriage formation. with this interaction term included, the effect of a positive attitude towards marriage increasing the risk of marriage by 2.61 applies to eastern european cohabiters who were thus more than twice as likely to marry compared to their counterparts who held an indifferent or negative attitude towards marriage. the effect of the interaction term indicates that this positive association between marital attitude and transition to marriage was reduced by 0.81 in western european countries. this effect is, however, not statistically signifi cant. the effect of region indicates that the odds of marriage for western european cohabiters increased on average by 1.44, which is not explained by differences in their average marital attitude. this effect may refl ect the stronger recuperation of postponed marriages among western european cohabiters that we discussed in the selectivity analysis. given the particularities in the composition of the georgian population of cohabiters we estimated the same two models omitting the data from georgia (table 4, model 3 and model 4). these analyses lead to almost identical results in model 3 (i.e., the equivalent to model 1), thus providing support for hypothesis 1. differing from the fi ndings in the full sample, model 4 (i.e., the equivalent to model 2) reveals that the negative interaction between marital attitude and region regarding entry into marriage is statistically signifi cant at the 0.05 level in the analysis omitting georgia. this fi nding suggests that the link between a positive attitude towards marriage and marriage formation is weaker in western europe compared to eastern europe. hence, neither the fi nding from the full model nor the model omitting georgia support hypothesis 2 in which we formulated the expectation that the attitudebehaviour link would be weaker in eastern europe because of the stronger societal norms regarding getting married that push cohabiters into marriage beyond their own attitudes towards the institution. we reject hypothesis 2 based on the direction of the effect; this points actually to a weaker association between marital attitudes and transition to marriage among western european cohabiters. based on these analyses we draw two conclusions. first, positive attitudes towards the institution of marriage were associated with higher odds of entering marriage. second, although with great caution because the fi nding is not robust when georgia is included in the eastern european sample of cohabiters, the strength of the association between marital attitude and entry into marriage is weaker in western european countries characterised by high diffusion of cohabitation and less normative pressure to transform cohabitation into a married union. transition from cohabitation to marriage • 21 7 conclusion and discussion this study began by arguing that a comparative perspective on the marriage trajectories of established cohabiting relationships deserves greater academic interest. we argued that the merit of theoretical considerations derived from the sdt framework lies in the attention that is drawn to attitudinal change and its intertwining with social norms in explaining changes and variation in demographic behaviour related to union formation. we reviewed country-specifi c literature which showed that cohabitation in some countries had already become the predominant way of starting a co-resident relationship, whereas in other countries, onset of the diffusion of cohabitation had been more recent. related to the stage of diffusion of cohabitation are predominant social norms about the importance of getting married. the sdt framework suggests cross-national differences in the proportion of cohabiters holding (dis)approving attitudes about the institution of marriage as well as variation in the strength of social norms about marriage. we derived two hypotheses from these theoretical considerations. we expected fi rst, that marital attitudes are associated with cohabiters’ transition to marriage (h1), and second, that the strength of this association is weaker in central and eastern european countries with a low prevalence of cohabitation compared to western european countries with a high prevalence (h2). using panel data from two waves of the generations and gender surveys, we compared two european regions comprised of pooled data from seven european countries and examined cohabiters’ risk of marriage as a function of the extent to which they consider marriage an outdated institution, along with other socio-demographic and economic predictors associated with marriage formation. our fi rst key fi nding was that, in line with studies that have investigated the selection of individuals into either cohabitation or marriage as the start of their union, cohabiters with a favourable attitude towards marriage were more likely to marry than cohabiters with a negative attitude. though the present study only used one indicator, it was, in our view, a particularly interesting attitudinal measure for our research purpose. a cohabiter’s (dis)agreement with a statement such as “marriage is an outdated institution” indicates cohabiters’ motives for living in a non-marital union and (future) relationship expectations but also refl ects societal norms about marriage. our second key fi nding was that we identifi ed country differences in the proportion of cohabiters who agreed with the statement that marriage is an outdated social institution. agreement with that statement was generally higher among cohabiters in three of the four central and eastern european countries compared to cohabiters in the three western european countries we examined. in line with the sdt framework, this suggests that in countries where cohabitation is less prevalent and the cohabiting population is more selective, cohabiters predominantly hold negative attitudes towards marriage, as such attitudes may have selected them into cohabitation in the fi rst place. however, the underrepresentation of central and eastern european cohabiters in our analytical sample due to their transition to marriage prior to the fi rst interview (table 3) also suggests that many cohabiters in cee countries have internalised widely shared ideas about the superiority of • zuzana žilinčíková, nicole hiekel22 marriage over cohabitation (mureşan 2008; sobotka 2008). although more people are increasingly opting for cohabitation, cohabitation is largely viewed as inferior to marriage, and childbearing remains closely linked to the transition to marriage, particularly for individuals with greater socio-economic resources (haragus 2015). moreover, we also found larger cross-country diversity in central and eastern europe compared to western europe in the level of (dis)agreement with the statement that marriage is outdated. this greater country variation within central and eastern europe is usually explained by different challenges in the transition from state socialism to democracy and a market economy. bulgaria and romania experienced a more profound economic collapse and particularly slow recuperation with great social inequalities (haragus 2015; thornton/philipov 2009). this suggests that entry into cohabitation in these countries is associated with economic constraints and particularly long-term cohabitating unions may be understood as a “poor man’s marriage” for those who cannot afford to marry (oppenheimer 1988, 2003). our third and main fi nding was that the multivariate analyses did not reveal the context dependencies of the association between marital attitudes and marriage formation that we expected to fi nd. the interaction effect provided no evidence that association between marital attitudes and transition to marriage is weaker in central and eastern europe where cohabitation is less prevalent and less accepted because of cohabiters’ exposure to strong social pressure to get married, irrespective of their personal attitudes towards the institution of marriage. on the contrary, the direction of the interaction effect suggests that the association between marital attitudes and marriage formation is actually weaker in western europe where cohabitation is more common. this effect does, however, reach statistical signifi cance in a model that omitted the georgian sample. as readers will recall, the georgian data exhibited a large number of particularities in the composition of the cohabiting population and the transition rate to legal marriage compared to other (eastern) european countries in our sample. as noted earlier, research from georgia suggested a stronger reluctance among young georgians to register a church wedding with the legal authorities (badurashvili et al. 2008). the fact that the country comparative ggs surveys consider legal marriage (and not religious marriages) means that they may not fully refl ect actual marital behaviour and the meaning of marriage in the georgian sample. we can envisage three reasonable explanations for the weaker association between marital attitudes and transition to marriage among cohabiters in western compared to eastern europe and invite future research to address them. first, this result might indicate that western european cohabiters – even those with positive attitudes towards marriage – can postpone marrying without being stigmatised. second, the virtual absence of strong social pressure to transform a cohabiting into a marital union could increase the importance of “pragmatic” reasons to marry, such as tax benefi ts or the purchase of residential property given that in many western european countries, cohabiters and spouses are treated similarly in terms of taxation, property and inheritance rights (perelli-harris/sánchez gassen 2012). finally, in such contexts, the relationship history itself may be more predictive of the entry to marriage than people’s general attitudes towards the institution of marriage. for transition from cohabitation to marriage • 23 instance, the conception of a child was more strongly associated with entry into marriage among western european cohabiters compared to their eastern european counterparts (results not shown). ideally, measures which reveal how important respondents view such “pragmatic” reasons or life events for their decision to marry would allow explicit testing of such mechanisms. unfortunately, these measures have not been included in the ggs and we are not aware of any longitudinal, country comparative survey which collects both attitudinal measures and demographic outcomes that includes such measures. of course, there are certain limitations to this study. only a minority of our cohabiting sample entered into marriage during the observation period of roughly three years. keeping the overrepresentation of long-term cohabiting unions in our analytical sample in mind, this indicates the increasing longevity of cohabiting unions, predominantly driven by a postponement of marriage to later in life. it is not caused by the cohabiters not being observed for long enough. the median duration of the relationship was fi ve years at the fi rst interview and we recorded transitions to marriage during the following three years. we identifi ed stark differences in cohabiters’ timing of marriage formation that are explained by differences in their approval of the institution of marriage. we feel that this fi nding underlines the importance of taking marital attitudes into account in order to refl ect heterogeneity in cohabiters’ marital trajectories. we are aware that pooling data from countries in two broad european regions masks the diversity of cohabitation patterns within both regions that have been emphasised in the literature (sobotka 2003; sobotka/toulemon 2008) and have been confi rmed in our descriptive analyses. however, small sample sizes in some of the countries in this study prevented us from conducting statistically meaningful analyses for separate countries, and the number of countries did not permit the application of a multilevel analytical framework either. future analyses should include more european countries to see whether the diversity within eastern europe observed in the current study was predominantly due to the limited and non-random selection of countries for which we had suitable data available. a multilevel analytical framework would also allow testing of the infl uence of country-level indicators in the normative and economic sphere (e.g. unemployment, housing market characteristics, legal arrangements) that reveal such contextual effects and formally test whether they explain country differences in the marriage transition among cohabiters. moreover, a study on regional differences within countries could reveal differences beyond national borders. acknowledgements zuzana žilinčíková’s 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(ed.): population and family in the low countries 1993. lisse: swets and zeitungen. van de kaa, dirk j. 1987: europe’s second demographic transition. in: population bulletin 42,1: 1-59. vikat, andres et al. 2007: generation and gender survey: towards a better understanding of relationships and processes in the life course. in: demographic research 17,14: 389-440 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2007.17.14]. date of submission: 27.06.2017 date of acceptance: 06.03.2018 zuzana žilinčíková (). masaryk university. brno, czech republic. e-mail: zilincikova@mail.muni.cz url: https://www.muni.cz/en/people/333003-zuzana-zilincikova dr. nicole hiekel. university of cologne, germany. e-mail: hiekel@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: http://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/institut/personen/h/dr-nicole-hiekel/ netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi). the hague, the netherlands url: https://www.nicole-hiekel.com transition from cohabitation to marriage • 29 appendix tab. a1: descriptive statistics for variables used in the analyses cases not selected cases selected married in wave 1 cohabiting in wave 1 (n=17,518) (n=2,847) percentage mean (sd) percentage mean (sd) marital attitudes neutral/negative 23.4 52.3 positive 76.6 47.7 geographical location living in eastern europe 66.2 52.8 living in western europe 33.9 47.2 intention to marry yes n.a. 54.2 no n.a. 45.8 union duration in months at wave 1 157.0 (79.8) 73.0 (60.5) age 36.1 (6.1) 31.7 (6.5) male 38.8 42.6 female 61.2 57.4 level of education lower secondary or below 12.1 15.6 secondary, post-secondary 59.7 58.2 tertiary 28.2 26.2 employment employed 78.3 80.7 not employed 21.8 19.4 diffi culty in making ends meet1 3.0 (1.3) 3.2 (1.4) biological child with current partner 87.4 50.0 prior co-resident union 9.6 29.9 note: n.a. = not applicable 1 measured on scale 1 (with great diffi culty) to 6 (very easily) source: generations and gender surveys, waves 1 and 2, authors’ calculations published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden. do patterns of adaptation differ by gender and origin? fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden* do patterns of adaptation differ by gender and origin? erik carlsson abstract: in being representative of individuals’ demographic value orientations, fertility preferences provide information about immigrants’ adaptation to family formation patterns in the destination country at a deeper, ideational level than actual fertility does. using data from wave 1 of the swedish ggs from 2012/2013 (n=3,932), this study compares the fi rst, 1.5, and second generations with either one or two foreign-born parent(s) to swedes without an immigrant background by gender and across origins. binary logistic regression is used to compare the propensity to state a positive fertility intention, and partial proportional odds models are used to analyse differences across four ordinal intention categories (defi nitely/probably yes/no). results show a general tendency towards convergence from the relatively positive intentions of the fi rst generation to levels closer to non-immigrants in later generations, although complete convergence is only found for the second generation with one foreign-born parent. there are gender differences, with women being similar to non-immigrants by the 1.5 generation, while there is no clear intergenerational trend for men. among origin groups, convergence is evident among eastern europeans and “other non-europeans”, while westerners already are similar to nonimmigrants in the fi rst generation, and middle easterners/north africans display no clear intergenerational trend. this study contributes to the understanding of immigrant fertility by showing that there often is intergenerational adaptation at the ideational (i.e. preference) level, that the pace and extent of convergence vary by gender and across origins, and that group-level patterns found for fertility intentions do not always match those found in earlier research on fertility behaviour. keywords: fertility intentions · immigrants · second generation · 1.5 generation · swedish generations · gender survey comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 211-242 (date of release: 05.02.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-02en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility. • erik carlsson212 1 introduction immigrant fertility is a topic of sustained research interest in europe, with work on fi rst-generation patterns (see kulu/gonzález-ferrer 2014 for an overview) being complemented by a growing body of literature dealing with second-generation childbearing (e.g. milewski 2011; scott/stanfors 2011; krapf/wolf 2015; andersson et al. 2017; kulu et al. 2017; pailhé 2017; van landschoot et al. 2017; guarin rojas et al. 2018). an intergenerational perspective on immigrant fertility is particularly informative, since changes from the fi rst to subsequent generations are indicative of immigrant communities’ longer-term integration into the demographic context of the destination country (e.g. de valk/milewski 2011; milewski 2011). earlier research indeed shows that fertility behaviour often tends to approach non-immigrant patterns over immigrant generations, indicating that adaptation to the destination country is an important force in shaping childbearing patterns among immigrant descendants. the aim of this study is to analyse to what extent this trend of intergenerational convergence found for actual fertility also applies to fertility intentions. the gap between preferences and actual fertility that is often found at both the aggregate and individual level in post-transitional societies (e.g. bongaarts 2001; goldstein et al. 2003; liefbroer 2009) clearly shows that the two concepts are not interchangeable. theoretical models on the association between fertility preferences and outcomes describe how the former are closer to underlying norms and ideology, while the latter are mediated by intervening factors to a larger extent (miller/pasta 1995; ajzen/ klobas 2013). thus, only studying fertility outcomes cannot clarify whether behavioural adaptation results from adaptation to the institutional context of the destination country or from adaptation in underlying social norms. in constituting a more direct indicator of an individual’s demographic value orientation, fertility preferences therefore contribute an additional, ideational dimension to the understanding of demographic assimilation among immigrants and their descendants (see holland/ de valk 2013). yet despite the potential contribution of studying fertility preferences among immigrants and immigrant descendants to the understanding of their degree of adaptation to the demographic patterns of the destination country, only a small number of studies have so far dealt with the topic (see de valk 2013; holland/ de valk 2013; kraus/castro-martín 2018). this study analyses how one specifi c type of fertility preference, namely shortterm parity-progression intentions, varies across immigrant generations in sweden.1 non-immigrants (defi ned here as swedish-born individuals with two swedish-born parents) are compared to immigrants and immigrant descendants of four generational categories: the fi rst immigrant generation (foreign-born individuals 1 this study distinguishes terminologically between a fertility preference and a fertility intention, where the former is used in a more general sense, while the latter is used to refer to a specifi c type of fertility preference. see section 2.2 for a discussion of theoretical considerations regarding fertility preferences. fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 213 who immigrated at age 15 or later), the 1.5 generation (foreign-born individuals who immigrated prior to age 15), the second generation (swedish-born individuals) with two foreign-born parents, and the second generation with one foreign-born parent.2 using data from wave 1 of the swedish generations and gender survey from 2012/2013, this study employs binary logistic regression to analyse the propensity to state a positive (as opposed to negative) fertility intention and partial proportional odds models to analyse the propensity to state a more positive intention along a four-category scale (defi nitely no, probably no, probably yes, and defi nitely yes). in addition to aggregate-level trends, intergenerational patterns are also analysed separately by gender. this is an important contribution of the present study, since the gender dimension has received little attention in earlier research on immigrant fertility (see ortensi 2015). as a third analytical step, this study also examines how intergenerational patterns vary by origin (western, eastern european, middle eastern/north african, and “other non-european”) – an important dimension, as earlier studies have found origin to be a central factor in understanding actual fertility among immigrants and immigrant descendants (e.g. andersson 2004; milewski 2007, 2010; scott/stanfors 2011; mussino/strozza 2012; kulu/hannemann 2016; andersson et al. 2017; kulu et al. 2017; pailhé 2017). 2. background 2.1 fertility behaviour among immigrants and their descendants among the different hypotheses on immigrant fertility proposed in earlier research (e.g. milewski 2007, 2010; sobotka 2008; mussino/strozza 2012; baykara-krumme/ milewski 2017), the socialisation and adaptation perspectives are most relevant for this study, since they are also applicable to the longer-term, intergenerational effects of migration. socialisation into the culture of the origin country on the one hand, and adaptation to the culture and institutions of the destination country on the other can be seen as two competing processes that can explain either persistent differences or convergence relative to non-immigrant patterns. within demographic research, the intergenerational transmission of fertility preferences and behaviour is a well-established phenomenon (e.g. murphy/knudsen 2002; eschelbach 2015). findings that such linkages are primarily tied to value transmissions rather than socioeconomic continuities (kolk 2013) indicate that socialisation effects are relevant for analysing fertility in the context of international migration. however, as most immigrants are also exposed to the values and customs as well as the institutional setting of the destination country, there is also reason to expect adaptation. for the fi rst generation, there is support for both the socialisation (sobotka 2008; mussino/strozza 2012; cygan-rehm 2014) and adaptation perspectives in europe 2 see section 4.2 for further information on the defi nition of the generational categories. • erik carlsson214 (e.g. mayer/riphahn 2000; milewski 2007, 2010). this also applies to sweden, where immigrants’ cohort fertility at age 40 is on average and for most origin groups very close to the non-immigrant level, while it is lower for immigrants from non-nordic eu countries and higher for immigrants from non-european low-hdi (human development index) countries (statistics sweden 2014). however, fi rst-generation period fertility in sweden is slightly higher than non-immigrant levels (statistics sweden 2014), which may be explained by the observation that migration is often interrelated with other important life course events, such as marriage and childbearing (andersson 2004; milewski 2007, 2010). it has been shown that immigrants tend to have fewer children than non-immigrants of the same age at arrival to sweden, and then close the gap after arrival, thereby driving up period fertility measures (statistics sweden 2014). andersson (2004) fi nds that most fi rst-generation origin groups in sweden have higher fi rst and third birth transition rates but lower second birth transition rates compared to non-immigrant swedes. however, these differences pertain primarily to the fi rst years following immigration, with the high fi rst and third birth transition rates tending to approach non-immigrant levels with time since immigration, while second birth transition rates do not change substantially. andersson (2004) also shows that these parity-specifi c transition rates vary considerably between high-fertility origins such as somalia, arab countries, ethiopia, and vietnam/indochina, and low-fertility origins such as iran and various eastern european countries. although all groups experience fertility reduction compared to the initial period after immigration to sweden, immigrants from muslim and subsaharan african countries stand out from other origin groups by still having substantially higher transition rates than non-immigrants even after the fi rst fi ve years in sweden. compared to the fi rst generation, the children of immigrants are more likely to have adapted, since they are exposed to destination country patterns during the formative years of childhood and adolescence. indeed, earlier european research fi nds that many groups of immigrant descendants, of both european and nonwestern origin, have similar or somewhat lower fertility than non-immigrants in the destination country (e.g. milewski 2007, 2010; kulu/hannemann 2016; kulu et al. 2017; van landschoot et al. 2017; guarin rojas et al. 2018). generally, adaptation is more evident among the second generation than among the 1.5 generation (scott/ stanfors 2011). however, there are also origin groups that display an alternative pattern, with fertility lying between the fi rst generation and non-immigrants. this pattern of persistent but diminishing differences in relation to non-immigrants across immigrant generations seems to work via the 1.5 generation (see scott/stanfors 2011; krapf/wolf 2015) and has been found for many different origin groups and in many different european destination countries, including turks in germany, the netherlands, belgium, and elsewhere (garssen/nicolaas 2008; milewski 2011), moroccans in the netherlands and belgium (garssen/nicolaas 2008), bangladeshis and pakistanis in the united kingdom (coleman/dubuc 2010), and middle easterners in sweden (scott/stanfors 2011). for these origin groups, it seems that the second generation’s medium position between the fi rst generation and non-immigrants holds across many different aspects of fertility, such as quantum (garssen/nicofertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 215 laas 2008; coleman/dubuc 2010), age at fi rst birth (garssen/nicolaas 2008), parityspecifi c transition rates (milewski 2007, 2010, 2011; kulu/hannemann 2016), and ideals about quantum and the age of entry into parenthood (de valk 2013). these fi ndings suggest that both socialisation and adaptation processes are important in understanding the fertility patterns of these origin groups, a notion that is further supported by milewski’s (2011) fi nding that fi rst birth transition rates among the turkish second generation in europe differ across destination countries, while they are consistently higher than those of non-immigrants. whether the intermediate position of the second generation of some origins should be interpreted as a step on the path towards full convergence or as indications of an emerging high-fertility subculture will become clearer when the third generation reaches childbearing ages in greater numbers. research on the fertility of immigrant descendants in sweden has produced results that are similar to the rest of europe. at the aggregate level, it seems that second-generation period fertility is close to, but slightly lower, than that of nonimmigrants (statistics sweden 2010; andersson et al. 2017). while the nordic-origin second generation is very similar to non-immigrants, the total fertility rate is lower for groups with a parental origin in non-nordic eu countries or in mediumhdi countries outside europe (statistics sweden 2010). when comparing parityspecifi c transition rates among different origin groups of the second generation, many groups, including those with a parental origin in high-fertility countries, have similar or lower transition rates to fi rst and second birth but higher transition rates to third birth compared to non-immigrants (statistics sweden 2010; andersson et al. 2017). among the groups that do not follow this pattern, rates are elevated for the middle eastern second generation (scott/stanfors 2011), or more specifi cally for individuals with an origin in turkey or arab-majority countries in the middle east (andersson et al. 2017), and depressed for the eastern european second generation (scott/stanfors 2011). it is important to distinguish among the second generation between those with two foreign-born parents and those with one foreign-born and one swedish-born parent, since it has been shown that the latter have fi rst birth transition rates that are closer to non-immigrants, a pattern that is especially evident when it is the mother who is swedish-born (scott/stanfors 2011: 198). in understanding what high-fertility socialisation might consist of in the european immigrant context, it seems that religion/religiosity and conservative family arrangements are important elements. kulu and hannemann (2016) have shown that religiosity is positively associated with higher-order parity transitions for both the fi rst and the second generation in the united kingdom. westoff and frejka (2007) fi nd that muslim fertility is higher than non-muslim fertility in most of europe and that this gap can largely be explained by higher marriage rates among muslims and by a higher prevalence of conservative family and gender role attitudes. milewski (2010: 319) suggests that the relatively high fertility of the turkish-origin second generation in germany may be explained by conservative characteristics of the turkish german community: leaving the parental home and getting married often coincide and occur at a young age, there is social pressure to conceive once married, and there is a high frequency of transnational marriages where one of the partners is a • erik carlsson216 german national raised by turkish parents in germany and the other is a turkish national raised in turkey. conservative family values have also been observed and linked to high-fertility behaviour among the second generation of pakistani descent in the united kingdom (hampshire et al. 2012). an important aspect of socialisation effects on fertility is the infl uence of parents’ childbearing behaviour. in fact, brinton et al. (2018) fi nd that the most common motivation for stating a specifi c ideal family size is a wish to replicate the individual’s own or their partner’s family-of-origin experience. earlier research on fertility preferences and behaviour among children of immigrants has shown that individuals’ number of siblings is an important factor in understanding intergroup differences (e.g. de valk 2013; pailhé 2017). when it comes to immigrant groups with lower fertility than non-immigrants in sweden, it is not clear to what extent such patterns should be interpreted as expressions of cultural and socialisation differences. on the one hand, fi ndings that the two-child norm is strong in both highand low-fertility regions within europe (sobotka/beaujouan 2014; testa 2014) suggest that fertility differences among european countries could be attributed more to institutional than to cultural differences. on the other hand, there are indications from both sweden (andersson 2004; scott/ stanfors 2011) and elsewhere (e.g. puur et al. 2017) that some immigrant groups with an origin in countries with lower fertility than the destination country maintain low fertility relative to non-immigrants in the destination country in both the fi rst and later immigrant generations. this suggests that factors other than the institutional context play an important role in understanding low fertility within these origin groups. a possible explanation for low immigrant fertility, at least for the fi rst generation and especially in the early years after migration, is that the migration experience can cause disruption in the life course. such a disruption effect may, for example, appear when migrants are separated from an existing partner or when they experience diffi culties in fi nding a partner in the destination country due to linguistic, cultural, or other barriers. whether or not the disruption effect can contribute to explaining immigrant fertility is clearly linked to the context in which the migration takes place, which is refl ected in the variation across origin groups, destination countries, and reasons for migration that is shown in earlier research. thus, while mussino and strozza (2012) fi nd support for the mechanism, other european studies do not (e.g. mayer/riphahn 2000; andersson 2004; milewski 2007, 2010; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017). in sweden, disruption seems to affect primarily female immigrants with an origin either in lowor medium-hdi non-european countries or in european non-eu countries (persson/hoem 2014). whereas group differences across origin countries have been an important aspect of research on immigrant fertility, less attention has been paid to the potential for gender differences (see ortensi 2015), with most earlier analysis focusing on women’s childbearing experiences. findings on fertility preferences among the general population indicate that there are no substantial differences between men and women (berrington 2004; miettinen/paajanen 2005; hartnett 2014; dommermuth et al. 2015). however, theoretical insights on how minority group status may affect fertility provide reasons to expect gender differences in how fertility preferences change across immigrant generations. goldscheider’s and uhlenberg’s (1969) mifertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 217 nority group status hypothesis suggests that individuals from disadvantaged population groups must spend relatively high levels of resources on education and their labour market career when seeking to advance their social position, and therefore choose to limit childbearing in order to permit a concentration of resources into the achievement of upward social mobility. minority groups may also react to perceived disadvantages by emphasizing differences vis-à-vis the majority culture through cultural maintenance and intragroup loyalty, which may be referred to as “reactive ethnicity” (see rumbaut 2008). this type of coping strategy may have a boosting effect on fertility levels either indirectly through the conservation of traditional family values and gender norms, for example in promoting religion (mcquillan 2004), or directly via explicit attention to achieving increased numerical strength (courbage 1992; sahu/hutter 2012: 530; varley 2012; okun 2016, 2017). it is possible that these two processes affect male and female children of immigrants in sweden differently, which may in turn produce differences in fertility intentions. within the second generation, women have better education outcomes than men, in sweden as well as in other western destination countries (fleischmann et al. 2014). thus, second-generation women have better labour market career prospects than second-generation men and may therefore be more likely to intend to limit childbearing in order to achieve upward social mobility. having weaker labour market prospects, male children of immigrants might be more likely to choose an alternative family-oriented life course, perhaps as part of a reactive ethnicity. the empirical support for this theory is mixed. andersson et al. (2017) fi nd that having three or more years of post-secondary education is positively associated with fi rst, second, and third birth transition rates for second-generation women in sweden. however, scott and stanfors (2011) fi nd that polarisation in fertility behaviour within second-generation origin groups (which has also been observed elsewhere, see kulu/hannemann 2016; kulu et al. 2017) is related to the individual’s level of education, so that lower-educated second-generation individuals have higher fi rst-birth transition rates than non-immigrants and higher-educated second-generation individuals have lower fi rst-birth transition rates than non-immigrants. this pattern is especially pronounced among women. in germany, it has been found that higher education is positively associated with second birth transition rates for non-immigrants, while it is negatively associated with fi rst birth transition rates for 1.5 and second-generation women of turkish origin (krapf/wolf 2015). 2.2 theoretical considerations on fertility intentions the principal contribution of the present study to the research fi eld of immigrant fertility is the incorporation of fertility preferences into the analysis, something that has so far only been done in a small number of studies (see de valk 2013; hartnett 2014; kraus/castro-martín 2018). in general, preferences constitute an important aspect of research on fertility in contemporary, developed societies since it is reasonable to assume ideational factors to be central individual-level determinants of fertility in a context where effective birth control methods can prevent unwanted childbearing and advanced assisted reproductive technologies can reduce unwant• erik carlsson218 ed childlessness (see bongaarts 2001). as earlier work in the fi eld has revealed the complexities of the concept of fertility preferences, a brief summary of some important theoretical considerations is provided below. to start with, it is meaningful to distinguish terminologically between different types of fertility preferences (e.g. thomson 2015). the present study deals with short-term parity-progression intentions, i.e. whether or not an individual plans to have a/another child within a specifi ed timeframe. this type of preference may be contrasted to quantum preferences of different types, such as the desired, ideal, expected, or intended number of children, which are usually expressed without a specifi ed timeframe. while desires and ideals represent more of a vision than a plan for future fertility, intentions are relatively concrete and imply a readiness to act. miller and pasta (1995) describe a sequential process where childbearing motivations and child-timing attitudes and beliefs of either biological or experiential origin shape desires on quantum and timing, which in turn shape fertility intentions. in the theory of planned behaviour, which is a commonly employed theoretical framework for the study of fertility intentions, background factors at the individual, demographic, and societal level shape beliefs about consequences, social support, and enabling and interfering factors in relation to having a child. these different types of beliefs then shape an individual’s attitude toward having a child, their subjective norm for having a child, and their perceived control over having a child, which combine to form an intention to have a child within a specifi ed timeframe (ajzen/klobas 2013). the relationship between the different types of preference has also been described as follows: “desires are ‘internal factors’, such as motivations, attitudes, and beliefs [and if they] become more manifest, they materialize into intentions, which will in turn be translated into behaviour if conditions are favorable” (kuhnt et al. 2017: 237). while earlier research has found that parity-progression intentions do better than quantum preferences in predicting behaviour (see balbo et al. 2013: 5-6), there is also variation among different types of intentions. thus, negative intentions are typically more reliable than positive intentions and intentions expressed with a higher degree of certainty tend to be more reliable than intentions expressed with a lesser degree of certainty (e.g. schoen et al. 1999; toulemon/testa 2005; régnier-loilier/ vignoli 2011; cavalli/klobas 2013). similarly, intentions expressed for the near future are more reliable than intentions expressed for the more distant future, at least among childless individuals (dommermuth et al. 2015). the measure of fertility intentions used here is expressed within a three-year timeframe and may be given as “defi nitely no”, “probably no”, “probably yes”, or “defi nitely yes”, thus allowing for variation in both the positive/negative and the degree-of-certainty dimensions. studying short-term parity-progression intentions rather than longer-term quantum preferences in the immigration context means that attention should be paid to the possibility of short-term effects of the migration experience on fertility, as described by the interrelation-of-events and disruption perspectives on immigrant fertility. fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 219 2.3 demographic and socioeconomic factors that may infl uence fertility intentions in addition to mechanisms discussed in section 2.1, such as socialisation, adaptation, interrelation of events, disruption, etc., it is possible that differences in fertility behaviour and intentions between immigrants, immigrant descendants, and nonimmigrants can be explained by differences in the demographic and socioeconomic composition of the groups. such differences may arise from selection into migration (e.g. bagavos et al. 2008), origin/destination differences in economic and social development, or integration processes. earlier studies on actual fertility among immigrants and immigrant descendants often fi nd that controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors reduces but does not eliminate differences between non-immigrants and high-fertility origin groups (e.g. milewski 2010; statistics sweden 2010; krapf/wolf 2015; kulu/hannemann 2016; kulu et al. 2017; andersson et al. 2017). the set of demographic and socioeconomic factors listed below, i.e. age, parity, partnership status, number of siblings, educational attainment, and labour market status, have been found to infl uence the formation of fertility preferences and are known to vary among immigrants, children of immigrants, and non-immigrants, which makes them appropriate control variables for the analyses of the present study (see appendix table 1 for generational differences in how the sample analysed in this study is distributed across categories). a positive association between age and the propensity to state a positive shortterm fertility intention has been found in norway (dommermuth et al. 2011). there are also fi ndings indicating that the relationship between age and fertility intentions is inversely u-shaped (e.g. hiekel/castro-martín 2014), so that intentions tend to be less positive at younger and older ages and more positive during the prime childbearing ages. parity: it has been shown that childless individuals differ from parents in various respects regarding how they form short-term fertility intentions (e.g. dommermuth et al. 2011). generally, being at higher parities is associated with less positive intentions in contexts of relatively low fertility, such as sweden (balbo/mills 2011). partnership status: singles are much less likely than individuals who are in a partnership to form positive short-term fertility intentions (e.g. philipov et al. 2006; billari et al. 2009). it is likely that differences also exist among different types of partnership. in mainstream swedish culture, the meaning and function of marriage and cohabitation are similar but not fully equivalent (see ohlsson-wijk 2011; wiik et al. 2009). as many children in sweden are born to cohabiting parents who then marry at a later stage, it may be expected that cohabitants are more likely to state a positive intention compared to married individuals, who often are at a more advanced stage of their fertility career. furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the intentions of individuals in a non-cohabiting union are less positive than those of married and cohabitating individuals. however, the association between partnership status and fertility intentions may vary among population groups in sweden. it has been shown that partnership dynamics differ considerably among immigrants and immigrant descendants of various origins and non-immigrants in sweden (an• erik carlsson220 dersson et al. 2015), indicating that there is variation in the meaning attached to different unions. hiekel and castro-martín (2014) have shown both that the meaning attached by cohabiters to their union varies considerably among countries, and that such differences in meaning are associated with the propensity to form different types of fertility intentions. as discussed in section 2.1, an individual’s number of siblings is positively associated with both higher quantum preferences (heiland et al. 2008; berrington/ pattaro 2014) and outcomes (murphy/knudsen 2002). studying family size preferences across ethnic groups in the netherlands, de valk (2013) fi nds that intergroup variation can largely be attributed to differences in the number of siblings that an individual grew up with. while the direction of association between educational attainment and fertility preferences seems to vary between european countries (régnier-loilier/vignoli 2011; testa 2014), the intended number of children seems to be somewhat higher among the higher educated in sweden (testa 2014). research on fertility behaviour among children of immigrants similarly indicates that the effect of educational attainment varies among countries (krapf/wolf 2015, kulu/hannemann 2016; andersson et al. 2017; pailhé 2017, see also section 2.1 for further discussion). labour market status: berrington and pattaro (2014) fi nd that unemployment and economic inactivity is associated with uncertainty about intended family size and intentions to remain childless in the united kingdom. research on actual fertility in sweden shows that being established in the labour market is an important prerequisite for having children, both for immigrants and non-immigrants (andersson/scott 2005, 2007; scott/stanfors 2011; lundström/andersson 2012). unemployed women in sweden are less likely than employed women to have a fi rst and second birth but more likely to progress from a second to a third birth (andersson et al. 2017). regarding students, it has been shown that they are especially unlikely to have positive fertility intentions (e.g. hiekel/castro-martín 2014) and to enter parenthood (scott/stanfors 2011; ni bhrolchaín/beaujouan 2012). 3 hypotheses based on the review of theory and earlier research on fertility behaviour among immigrants and immigrant descendants and on fertility intentions and other types of fertility preferences more generally, the following may be expected regarding intergenerational patterns in fertility intentions among immigrants and immigrant descendants in sweden. general intergenerational patterns in the fertility intentions of immigrants and their children: given the competing processes of socialisation into the culture of the origin country and adaptation to the context of the destination country, the following can be expected: fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 221 h1a: among immigrants and children of immigrants, individuals who have spent more of their formative years in the origin country and less in the destination country are more likely to be socialised into patterns that differ from those of non-immigrants in the destination country. thus, differences compared to swedes without an immigrant background should be greatest for the fi rst generation, smaller for the 1.5 generation, and smallest for the second generation. h1b: since socialisation into a minority culture in the destination country is more likely for the second generation with two foreign-born parents than for the second generation with one foreign-born parent, the latter should differ less from non-immigrants. gender differences in the fertility intentions of immigrants and their children: based on goldscheider’s and uhlenberg’s (1969) minority group status hypothesis and the gender gap in educational performance among the second generation (see section 2.1 for further discussion), the following may be expected: h2: intergenerational patterns should differ by gender, with female children of immigrants being less likely than male children of immigrants to state a positive fertility intention. origin group differences in the fertility intentions of immigrants and their children: given earlier fi ndings on differences across origin groups in actual fertility, the following can be expected for fertility intentions: h3a: immigrants and immigrant descendants with an origin in western countries should be similar to non-immigrants both in the fi rst and subsequent generations. h3b: immigrants and immigrant descendants of eastern european origin should be less likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention in both the fi rst and subsequent generations. h3c: immigrants and immigrant descendants of middle eastern/north african or “other non-european” origin should be more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention in the fi rst generation and display less than full convergence in subsequent generations. 4 research design 4.1 data and sample selection this study uses data from wave 1 of the swedish generations and gender survey (ggs) from 2012/2013. with a 53.8 percent response rate, the number of respondents in the swedish ggs is 9,688, including both men and women aged between 18 and 79 years. information was collected by statistics sweden via telephone interviews, register data, and a follow-up postal/online questionnaire (thomson et al. 2015). • erik carlsson222 the sample used in this study3 consists of 3,932 individuals. out of the 4,060 respondents in the initial sample who were asked about their short-term fertility intentions, 128 respondents were excluded either because they were not able to choose between the four available substantive response alternatives (n=92), had unclear migration histories or for other reasons did not easily fi t into the categories of the main explanatory variables (n=11), or because they had a same-sex partner (n=25). the reason for excluding the latter group is that it is too small to be analysed separately, which would be preferable given its specifi c barriers to realisation of fertility intentions. individuals for whom, or for whose partner, it was not physically possible to have (more) children and those who, or whose partner, were pregnant at the time of interview were not asked about their intentions and are therefore not included. individuals who intend to adopt are not included since the swedish ggs does not allow this to be separated from the intention to take a foster child, which is not easily comparable to the intention to have a biological or adopted child. 4.2 variables the dependent variable of all three analytical steps of this study is the intention to have a/another child within the next three years. the possible categories are defi nitely no, probably no, probably yes, and defi nitely yes. further description of the dependent variable was provided in the previous section. see appendix table 1 for the sample distribution across categories for this and all other variables. the fi rst main explanatory variable is immigrant generation status, which has fi ve categories: non-immigrants (primarily swedish-born individuals with two swedishborn parents, but also some foreign-born individuals who have two swedish-born parents and moved to sweden prior to age 15, thus including adoptees), fi rst generation (foreign-born individuals without swedish-born parents who immigrated at age 15 or later), 1.5 generation (foreign-born individuals without swedish-born parents who immigrated prior to age 15), second generation (i.e. swedish-born individuals) with two foreign-born parents, and second generation with one foreignborn parent (primarily swedish-born individuals, but also foreign-born individuals who moved to sweden prior to age 15). gender is the second main explanatory variable. in the swedish ggs, women were asked about their short-term fertility intention if they were 18-45 years old at the time of interview, while men were asked about their intention if they were either single or had a female partner who was 18-45 years old. the lack of an upper age limit for men means that their age range is considerably wider than that of women. nonetheless, all but 19 men in the fi nal sample are 55 years old or younger. the third main explanatory variable is origin, which has fi ve categories: non-immigrants (see description above), western countries (including western, northern, and southern europe, as well as the united states, canada, australia, and new zealand; the most common national origins in the fi nal sample are finland, germany, 3 hereafter referred to as “the fi nal sample” fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 223 norway, and denmark), eastern european countries (including most of the former state socialist countries in central and south eastern europe and the caucasus, as well as russia and the former soviet union, excluding post-soviet central asia; the most common national origins are the former yugoslavia, poland, bosnia and herzegovina, and estonia), middle eastern/north african countries (mena) (including turkey, afghanistan, and pakistan, but not sudan, post-soviet central asia, and the caucasus; the most common national origins are iraq, iran, turkey, and syria), and other non-european countries (where the most common national origins are chile, somalia, thailand, and the gambia). the origin of the second generation with one swedish-born and one foreign-born parent is categorised according to the origin of the foreign-born parent. individuals with two foreign-born parents with different origins are categorised according to the origin of the mother.4 the control variables included in the further analysis are those discussed in section 2.3, i.e. age (continuous), educational attainment (university education/no university education), labour market status (full-time employed, part-time employed, unemployed, student, or other employment status5), partnership status (married, cohabiting, in a non-cohabiting union, singles), parity (childless, one child, two or more children), and number of siblings (continuous: 0–“4 or more”), plus age squared and gender (only included in the aggregate-level analysis and the analysis of origin differences).6 4.3 method and modelling strategy this study uses binary logistic regression to analyse how the propensity to state a positive vs. negative short-term fertility intention (i.e. probably + defi nitely yes vs. probably + defi nitely no) differs across groups. while the distinction between positive and negative intentions can be seen as most interesting, the degree of certainty (i.e. probably or defi nitely yes/no) also contains meaningful information (see morgan 1982; thomson/brandreth 1995). for example, it has been found that uncertain and certain respondents differ considerably in their realisation of intentions (e.g. toulemon/testa 2005) and that uncertainty levels vary within the population according to factors such as age and labour market status (berrington/pattaro 2014). in order to incorporate the degree-of-certainty dimension into the analyses of this study, the binary yes/no approach is complemented with the partial proportional odds model, which is a variant of the ordered logit model (see o’connell 2006; 4 the opposite approach, i.e. to categorise according to the origin of the father, would result in only 15 individuals switching category. 5 the “other employment status” category is made up of the relatively uncommon employment statuses parental leave, retired, homemaker, and other. 6 twelve individuals in the fi nal sample have missing or unclear information for one of the control variables, see appendix table 1 for information on which variables this concerns. these individuals are maintained in the sample and assigned to a specifi c missing category (which is not presented or discussed in the results section) for categorical variables (eleven cases) and to the mean for continuous variables (one case). • erik carlsson224 williams 2006, 2016). the basic idea of the two models is similar, i.e. to conduct a series of binary logistic regressions by cumulatively combining the categories of the ordinal dependent variable (here: categories 1 vs. 2-4, 1-2 vs. 3-4, and 1-3 vs. 4). however, while the ordered logit model assumes that odds are proportional across all the binary regressions for all independent variables and summarizes the series of regressions into only one set of results, the partial proportional odds model allows the odds to vary for variables that violate the assumption of proportional odds at a given signifi cance level (in this study: 5 percent).7 the analytical strategy is as follows. first, intentions are compared across categories of immigrant generation status to study whether there is a trend of intergenerational convergence towards non-immigrant patterns at the aggregate level. second, a similar analysis is performed separately for men and women in order to study whether intergenerational patterns differ by gender. third, a 17-category variable that combines generational status and origin (non-immigrants + 4 immigrant generational categories × 4 immigrant origin categories) is used to study whether intergenerational patterns differ across origin groups. each of these three analytical steps uses two different binary logistic regression models, while sample size limitations mean that the partial proportional odds model is used only for the fi rst two steps. the fi rst binary model controls for demographic variables that have a clear and strong connection to the formation of fertility intentions: age at interview, age at interview squared, gender (only for the aggregate-level analysis and the analysis of origin differences), parity, and partnership status. in addition to the variables of the fi rst model, the second binary model also controls for socioeconomic status, i.e. educational attainment and employment status, as well as for the number of siblings. the partial proportional odds models include all the demographic and socioeconomic control variables. 5 results 5.1 intergenerational patterns at an aggregate level the analysis of intergenerational patterns in the short-term fertility intentions of immigrants and immigrant descendants in sweden is conducted in three steps: at the aggregate level, by gender, and across origins. starting at the aggregate level, results indicate that a process of intergenerational convergence is indeed taking place (see table 1). while the fi rst generation, 1.5 generation, and second generation with two foreign-born parents are all signifi cantly more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention, odds ratios are highest for the fi rst generation. the differ7 an alternative to the partial proportional odds model would have been linear regression (see billingsley/ferrarini 2014). it is not clear, however, to what extent the continuous approximation of the four-category intention variable is appropriate (see thomson/brandreth 1995). linear regressions were conducted as a robustness check for the partial proportional odds models, with the results being mostly similar. these results are not shown but are available upon request. fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 225 ta b . 1 : t he e ff ec t o f i m m ig ra n t g en er at io n st at u s o n th e p ro p en si ty t o in te nd t o h av e a/ an o th er c hi ld w it hi n th e n ex t th re e ye ar s, e xp re ss ed a s o d d s ra tio s b in ar y lo g is tic r eg re ss io n: y es /n o p ar tia l p ro p o rt io n al o d d s m o d el m o d el 1 m o d el 2 a ll o th er /d ef . n o ye s/ n o d ef . y es /a ll o th er im m ig ra n t ge n . s ta tu s (r ef .: n on -i m m ig ra n ts ) 1s t g en er at io n 2. 44 ** * 2. 29 ** * 1. 5 g en er at io n 1. 68 ** * 1. 57 ** 1. 03 1. 66 ** * 1. 84 ** 2n d g en er at io n, t w o fo re ig n -b o rn p ar en ts 1. 51 ** 1. 56 ** 0. 87 1. 49 ** 1. 04 2n d g en er at io n, o n e fo re ig n -b o rn p ar en t 1. 07 1. 09 a ge a t in te rv ie w 1. 97 ** * 1. 80 ** * a ge a t in te rv ie w s q u ar ed 0. 99 ** * 0. 99 ** * 0. 99 ** * 0. 99 ** * 0. 99 ** * p ar it y (r ef .: c h ild le ss ) 1 ch ild 1. 27 * 1. 11 0. 85 1. 09 1. 45 ** 2+ c hi ld re n 0. 13 ** * 0. 11 ** * 0. 16 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 10 ** * p ar tn er sh ip s ta tu s (r ef .: m ar ri ed ) c o h ab it in g 1. 41 ** * 1. 43 ** * 1. 55 ** * 1. 33 ** 1. 04 n o n -c o h ab it in g 0. 67 ** 0. 68 ** 1. 02 0. 64 ** * 0. 45 ** * s in g le 0. 32 ** * 0. 31 ** * 0. 67 ** * 0. 29 ** * 0. 13 ** * m al e/ fe m al e (r ef .: m al e) 1. 11 1. 16 * 0. 92 1. 19 ** 1. 52 ** * h av in g u n iv er si ty e du ca ti on ( re f.: n o) 1. 12 la b ou r m ar ke t st at u s (r ef .: fu llti m e em p .) p ar ttim e em p lo ye d 0. 87 u n em p lo ye d 0. 97 s tu d en t 0. 43 ** * 0. 52 ** * 0. 40 ** * 0. 47 ** * o th er e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s 1. 58 ** * n u m b er o f s ib lin g s 1. 20 ** * 1. 09 ** * 1. 19 ** * 1. 19 ** * n o te : r es ul ts fo r th e p ar tia l p ro p o rt io na l o d d s m o d el a re o nl y sh o w n w he n th e p ro p o rt io na l o d d s as su m p tio n is v io la te d . d ef . = d efi ni te ly , r ef = r ef er en ce , e m p . = e m p lo ye d . * p < 0. 1, * * p < 0. 05 , * ** p < 0. 01 . n = 3, 93 2. p se ud o -r 2 s : 0. 21 6 fo r m o d el 1 , 0 .2 34 fo r m o d el 2, 0 .1 56 fo r th e p ar tia l p ro p o rt io na l o d d s m o d el . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n w av e 1 o f t he s w ed is h g en er at io ns a nd g en d er s ur ve y (g g s ) • erik carlsson226 ence between the fi rst generation and the second generation with two foreign-born parents is signifi cant in both the binary model without socioeconomic controls and in the partial proportional odds model. the 1.5 generation and second generation with two foreign-born parents are similarly likely to state a positive intention, but results from the partial proportional odds model show that only the former group is more likely than non-immigrants to state a “defi nitely yes” intention. it is possible to interpret this greater uncertainty among the second generation with two foreignborn parents as a further step towards convergence compared to the 1.5 generation. thus, comparing the fi rst generation to subsequent generations provides support for hypothesis 1a, which stated that generations that are socialised to a greater extent in the destination country should be more similar to non-immigrants compared to generations that are socialised to a greater extent in the origin country. however, it should be stressed that the convergence process is not completed, as the second generation with two foreign-born parents is still more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention. in line with hypothesis 1b, the second generation with one foreign-born parent is more similar to non-immigrants than the second generation with two foreign-born parents is. it seems that the group differences described here cannot be attributed to socioeconomic characteristics, since adding educational attainment and labour market status to the analysis has only minor effects on the results. in order to test whether the greater propensity of the fi rst generation to state a positive intention can be attributed to extra high fertility in the period following shortly after migration, as stated by the interrelation-of-events hypothesis on immigrant fertility, additional models excluding individuals who immigrated to sweden less than fi ve years before the ggs interview were estimated. as these results are very similar to those presented in table 1, the interrelation of demographic events in relation to migration does not seem to be a key factor in explaining the greater propensity of the fi rst generation to state a positive fertility intention. 5.2 intergenerational patterns by gender for the second step of the analysis, i.e. whether intergenerational patterns differ by gender, an analytical procedure similar to that applied to the full fi nal sample is performed separately for male and female subsamples. results indicate that while both men and women of the fi rst generation are signifi cantly more likely than nonimmigrants of the same gender to state a positive fertility intention, there are considerable gender differences in subsequent generations (see table 2). for women, convergence to non-immigrant patterns seems to take place relatively quickly, as no other generational category is signifi cantly different from non-immigrant women. for men, on the other hand, both the 1.5 generation and the second generation with two foreign-born parents are more likely than non-immigrant men to state a positive fertility intention, with neither of these two children-of-immigrant groups being signifi cantly different from the fi rst generation (although the fi rst/1.5 generation difference comes close to signifi cance in model 1). even men of the second generation with one foreign-born parent are signifi cantly more likely than non-immigrant men fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 227 m al e fe m al e b in ar y lo g is ti c p ar ti al p ro p o rt io n al o d d s m o d el b in ar y lo g is ti c p ar ti al p ro p o rt io n al o d d s m o d el re g re ss io n: y es /n o a ll o th er / y es /n o d ef . y es / re g re ss io n: y es /n o a ll o th er / y es /n o d ef . y es / m o d el 1 m o d el 2 d ef . n o al l o th er m o d el 1 m o d el 2 d ef . n o al l o th er im m ig ra n t g en er at io n (r ef .: n on -i m m ig ra n ts ) 1s t g en er at io n 3. 52 ** * 3. 04 ** * 1. 68 ** 1. 70 ** 1. 5 g en er at io n 2. 04 ** * 1. 98 ** 1. 16 2. 15 ** * 1. 87 1. 28 1. 19 2n d g en er at io n, t w o fo re ig n -b o rn p ar en ts 2. 37 ** * 2. 41 ** * 1. 04 2. 17 ** * 2. 24 ** 0. 99 1. 02 2n d g en er at io n, o n e fo re ig n -b o rn p ar en t 1. 05 1. 05 1. 06 1. 12 1. 93 ** * 1. 02 1. 06 a g e at in te rv ie w 1. 69 ** * 1. 59 ** * 1. 53 ** * 1. 56 ** * 1. 59 ** * 3. 46 ** * 3. 14 ** * 2. 42 ** * 3. 03 ** * 2. 80 ** * a g e at in te rv ie w s q u ar ed 0. 99 ** * 0. 99 ** * 0. 98 ** * 0. 98 ** * 0. 99 ** * 0. 98 ** * 0. 98 ** * p ar it y (r ef .: c h ild le ss ) 1 ch ild 1. 02 0. 97 1. 63 ** 1. 30 0. 82 1. 49 * 2. 15 ** * 2+ c h ild re n 0. 12 ** * 0. 11 ** * 0. 18 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 11 ** * 0. 17 ** * 0. 13 ** * p ar tn er sh ip ( re f.: m ar ri ed ) c o h ab it in g 1. 31 1. 33 * 1. 49 ** * 1. 22 0. 88 1. 51 ** 1. 48 ** n o n -c o h ab it in g 0. 64 * 0. 65 * 1. 03 0. 61 ** 0. 40 ** * 0. 76 0. 77 s in g le 0. 31 ** * 0. 30 ** * 0. 78 0. 27 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 31 ** * 0. 30 ** * 0. 47 ** * 0. 32 ** * 0. 20 ** * h av in g u n iv er si ty e d u ca ti on ( re f.: n o) 1. 16 1. 01 la b ou r m ar ke t st at u s (r ef .: f u llti m e em p .) p ar tti m e em p lo ye d 0. 85 0. 89 u n em p lo ye d 1. 16 0. 87 s tu d en t 0. 46 ** * 0. 39 ** * o th er e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s 1. 02 1. 54 * n u m b er o f s ib lin g s 1. 22 ** * 1. 07 1. 23 ** * 1. 33 ** * 1. 14 ** ta b . 2 : t he e ff ec t o f i m m ig ra n t g en er at io n st at u s o n th e p ro p en si ty t o in te nd t o h av e a/ an o th er c hi ld w it hi n th e n ex t th re e ye ar s, e xp re ss ed a s o d d s ra tio s, b y g en d er n o te : r es ul ts fo r t he p ar tia l p ro p o rt io na l o d d s m o d el s ar e o nl y sh o w n w he n th e p ro p o rt io na l o d d s as su m p tio n is v io la te d . d ef . = d efi n ite ly , r ef = re fe re nc e, e m p . = e m p lo ye d . * p < 0. 1, * * p < 0. 05 , * ** p < 0. 01 . n = 2, 06 5 fo r th e m al e sa m p le , n = 1, 86 7 fo r th e fe m al e sa m p le . p se ud o -r 2 s : 0. 19 4 fo r m al e m o d el 1 , 0 .2 09 fo r m al e m o d el 2 , 0 .1 46 fo r m al e p ar tia l p ro p o rt io na l o d d s m o d el , 0 .2 88 fo r fe m al e m o d el 1 , 0 .3 07 fo r fe m al e m o d el 2 , 0 .1 98 fo r fe m al e pa rt ia l p ro p o rt io na l o d d s m o d el . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n w av e 1 o f t he s w ed is h g en er at io ns a nd g en d er s ur ve y (g g s ) • erik carlsson228 to state a “defi nitely yes” intention. these fi ndings are in line with hypothesis 2, which stated that female children of immigrants should be less likely to state a positive intention than male children of immigrants. again, it does not seem that group differences can be explained by socioeconomic characteristics, since there are only minor changes to the results from adding educational attainment and labour market status to the analysis. in order to test whether there are gender differences within the generational groups, binary logistic regressions were performed separately for each generational category, using the control variables of model 1. results from these models (which are not shown, but are available upon request) show that non-immigrant men are signifi cantly less likely than non-immigrant women to state a positive fertility intention, while men of the fi rst generation and the second generation with two foreign-born parents are signifi cantly more likely than women of the same generational category to state a positive intention. within the 1.5 generation and the second generation with one foreign-born parent, the fertility intentions of men and women do not signifi cantly differ from each other. thus, the gender differences within these two groups that appear in table 2 are attributable primarily to gender differences within the non-immigrant reference group. the gender differences that are found within some origin groups are not attributable to differences in the age distribution between men and women in the fi nal sample, since excluding men who are above 45 years of age does not change the results. 5.3 intergenerational patterns across regional origin groups the third step of the analysis is to test whether intergenerational patterns differ by origin. since this analysis uses the same sample and mostly the same variables as the aggregate-level analysis, the results for the control variables are very similar to those already presented in table 1 and are therefore neither shown nor discussed. results show that there are considerable differences between the origin groups (see table 3). in line with hypothesis 3a, the western origin group is similar to nonimmigrants in every generational category. however, contrary to the expectations of hypothesis 3b, no generational category of the eastern european origin group is less likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention. instead, both the fi rst and the 1.5 generation of eastern european origin are more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention, while both second-generation groups are similar to non-immigrants. thus, there is support for a trend of intergenerational convergence towards non-immigrant patterns for the eastern european origin group. the intergenerational convergence trend is also observed for the “other non-european” origin group, which is more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive fertility intention in the fi rst generation but not in any other generational category. according to hypothesis 3c, both the “other non-european” and the middle eastern/north african origin group should be more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention in the fi rst generation and display less than full convergence among children-of-immigrant generations. while the former group does not follow this pattern, results for the latter are in line with expectations: individuals of mena origin are fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 229 more likely than non-immigrants to state a positive intention in every generation, except the second generation with one foreign-born parent. 5.4 effects of the control variables on fertility intentions a few comments can be made regarding the results for how the different control variables affect the propensity to state a positive fertility intention. patterns for the demographic variables are largely in line with what could be expected given earlier fi ndings (see section 2.3). it can be noted that cohabiting individuals are more likely than married individuals to state a positive intention, but not a defi nitely positive intention, indicating that uncertainty affects the former more than the latter. the positive effect of age is much more pronounced for women than for men. a positive association between being at parity one and stating a positive intention is found only tab. 3: the effect of immigrant generation status and origin on the propensity to intend to have a/another child within the next three years, expressed as odds ratios binary logistic regression: yes/no model 1 model 2 immigrant origin and generation (ref: non-immigrants) western origin 1st generation 1.52 1.58 1.5 generation 0.79 0.85 2nd generation, two foreign-born parents 1.26 1.24 2nd generation, one foreign-born parent 1.15 1.18 eastern european origin 1st generation 2.11*** 2.24*** 1.5 generation 2.07** 1.91* 2nd generation, two foreign-born parents 1.18 1.40 2nd generation, one foreign-born parent 0.58 0.57 middle eastern/north african origin 1st generation 3.37*** 2.80*** 1.5 generation 2.09** 1.88* 2nd generation, two foreign-born parents 2.89** 2.78** 2nd generation, one foreign-born parent 1.13 1.08 other non-european origin 1st generation 2.82*** 2.52*** 1.5 generation 1.26 1.24 2nd generation, two foreign-born parents 1.46 1.58 2nd generation, one foreign-born parent 1.22 1.20 note: results for the control variables are omitted since they are not of primary interest and since they are very similar to those already presented in table 1. in model 1, the control variables are age at interview, age at interview squared, parity, partnership status, and gender. model 2 also includes educational attainment, labour market status, and number of siblings. * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01. n=3,932. pseudo-r2s: 0.219 for model 1, 0.236 for model 2. source: own calculations based on wave 1 of the swedish generations and gender survey (ggs) • erik carlsson230 for women, and it seems that it is the propensity to state a “defi nitely yes” intention that contributes most to this gender difference. regarding the socioeconomic variables, educational attainment does not have a signifi cant effect on fertility intentions. perhaps surprisingly, neither being employed part-time nor being unemployed is associated with a lower propensity to state a positive intention relative to being employed full-time. the gender difference in the effect of “other employment status” is likely due to the fact that the proportion of parental-leave takers within this category is much greater among women than among men. 6 discussion and conclusions this study examines short-term, parity-progression fertility intentions of fi rst-generation immigrants and their children in sweden. using data from wave 1 of the swedish generations and gender survey from 2012/2013, the study analyses the extent to which intentions tend to converge towards non-immigrant patterns over immigrant generations. intergenerational trends in fertility intentions are analysed at the aggregate level, by gender and across origin groups. the rationale for approaching immigrant fertility from this perspective is that fertility preferences provide information about the degree of adaptation to the fertility patterns of the destination country at an ideational level. compared to only examining actual childbearing, this contributes an additional dimension to the understanding of immigrant fertility. the study shows that the process of convergence towards non-immigrant patterns over immigrant generations which has been observed in the literature on actual fertility is often also refl ected in intentions. thus, it seems that behavioural adaptation does not only consist of adaptation to the institutional context of the destination country, but that there also is adaptation at an ideational level. at the aggregate level, the intentions of the 1.5 generation and the second generation with two foreign-born parents are less positive than those of the fi rst generation, but more positive than those of non-immigrants, indicating that convergence is taking place but is incomplete. the second generation with one foreign-born parent is similar to non-immigrants, which holds both at aggregate level and at almost all other stages of the analysis. however, for the other generational groups, the aggregate-level patterns hide considerable differences both by gender and across origin groups. there is no clear intergenerational trend for male immigrants and children of immigrants, whose intentions are more positive than those of non-immigrants in both the fi rst and subsequent generations. women, on the other hand, have more positive intentions in the fi rst generation and then converge to non-immigrant patterns by the 1.5 generation. among origin groups, a convergence trend is evident only for the eastern european and “other non-european” groups, who start out with more positive intentions in the fi rst generation but are similar to non-immigrants by the second generation with two foreign-born parents and the 1.5 generation respectively. the western origin group is similar to non-immigrants from the outset in the fi rst generation, thereby excluding the possibility of convergence. the middle eastern/north african (mena) origin group has more positive intentions than nonfertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 231 immigrants in both the fi rst and subsequent generations, with no clear intergenerational trend. the absence of a clear intergenerational convergence trend for the fertility intentions of the mena origin group is in line with earlier research on actual fertility among children of middle eastern immigrants in sweden, which has shown that differences in relation to non-immigrants persist in the second generation (scott/stanfors 2011; andersson et al. 2017). since it can be argued that patterns found among immigrant descendants are, in general, indicative of the longer-term integration of immigrant groups into destination societies (see de valk/milewski 2011; milewski 2011) and since childbearing preferences represent fundamental motivations for the life course, high-fertility intentions in the second generation may imply the emergence of a persistent demographic subculture. whether further convergence will occur in the third generation of mena origin in sweden and in other similar groups elsewhere is therefore an interesting topic for future research. however, it should be stressed that group differences in the propensity to state a positive fertility intention do not necessarily translate into corresponding differences in actual fertility. as earlier research has shown that a large set of factors infl uence the realisation of fertility preferences (e.g. régnier-loilier/vignoli 2011; kuhnt/trappe 2016), it is plausible that differences based on ethnicity or national origin also exist. indeed, the fi ndings of this study indicate that group differences in realisation patterns may exist in sweden, as the fertility intentions of the eastern european origin group are not in line with earlier fi ndings on its fertility behaviour. the greater propensity to state a positive intention relative to non-immigrants in the fi rst and 1.5 generation and similarity to non-immigrants in the second generation contrast with fi ndings of depressed actual fertility compared to non-immigrants in sweden among both the fi rst and second generation of eastern european origin (andersson 2004; scott/stanfors 2011). these indications of lower realisation among the eastern european origin group than among other groups in sweden are in line with fi ndings that realisation is lower in eastern than in western europe (spéder/kapitány 2014). spéder and kapitány (2014) suggest that low levels of realisation in eastern europe can be traced back to a “differential pace of structural and cultural change” since the end of state socialism. the argument is that dramatic changes to the economic system and to the design of welfare services have led to general uncertainty and a tendency to prioritise risk aversion among eastern european populations while pro-family ideals have persisted, resulting in relatively high but often unrealised fertility preferences. a similar mechanism could be relevant for understanding how the immigration experience may be related to realisation processes beyond the effect of group differences in demographic and socioeconomic composition. it is likely that nonimmigrants are on average better informed about the institutional limitations and possibilities of the destination country and therefore less likely than immigrants and children of immigrants to over-estimate their fertility intentions. thus, group differences in realisation could arise if the impact of practical constraints on childbearing outcomes work more via the formation of fertility intentions for some groups and more at the level of realisation for others. it is even possible to imagine a social • erik carlsson232 desirability bias towards providing positive answers to survey questions on fertility preferences among groups where there is greater value attached to high-fertility behaviour than is typically the case among non-immigrants in sweden. groups that are more affected by such a bias should have less realistic intentions and thus lower realisation compared to other groups. analysing this type of hypotheses makes the study of how fertility intentions are realised among immigrants and their children an interesting topic for future research. by studying whether fertility intentions vary by gender, this study contributes to an often-overlooked perspective in research on the fertility of immigrants and immigrant descendants (see ortensi 2015). findings that convergence is much more evident among women than among men are in line with the expectations of hypothesis 2. however, the sample size used in this study did not allow for a full analysis of the proposed explanation for the gender gap, i.e. that gender differences in educational performance among children of immigrants may also produce differences in fertility intentions. further exploring the merits of this hypothesis is an interesting topic for future scholarship. it should be noted that the gender gap in convergence is partly attributable to gender differences among the non-immigrant reference group, among whom women are more likely than men to state a positive intention. as earlier studies have not found that women have considerably more positive fertility preferences than men (berrington 2004; miettinen/paajanen 2005; hartnett 2014; dommermuth et al. 2015), this pattern could be specifi c to the swedish nonimmigrant population, which should be considered when generalising these fi ndings to contexts outside sweden. another interesting perspective for future work relating to the gender gap in fertility intentions among immigrants and immigrant descendants is the process of reconciliation between male and female partners in both ethnically homogamous and heterogamous unions. in some contexts, it might prove useful to study fertility decision-making among immigrants and their children beyond the level of the individual, since it is possible that men’s preferences and the preferences of the extended family weigh heavier among some immigrant communities than they typically do in the relatively gender-egalitarian and individualistic swedish majority culture. this study demonstrates the usefulness of not only studying whether a fertility intention is positive or negative, but also of including the degree-of-certainty dimension in the analysis. for some of the variables, most notably parity and partnership status, the partial proportional odds models display interesting patterns that were not detected by the binary models. this study also demonstrates that it is meaningful to distinguish among the second generation between those with two foreign-born parents and those with one foreign-born parent, with the latter often being more similar to non-immigrants. studies that group the two second generation groups together are likely to fi nd more similarities between non-immigrants and the second generation than would otherwise be the case. similarly, the results indicate that it is also meaningful to distinguish among foreign-born individuals between those who migrated as adults and those who migrated as children (referred to in this study as the fi rst and 1.5 generations), since individuals who migrated as children are sometimes closer to those who migrated as adults and sometimes fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 233 to the second generation with two foreign-born parents. while this study focused on intentions, future research should investigate whether similar patterns also apply to other types of fertility preferences. the desired number of children represent an earlier stage in the formation of fertility preferences that is less affected by perceived external constraints, and thereby provide a different type of information about individuals’ demographic value orientation. there are, however, some important limitations to this study, which should be considered in future research. the relatively small sample size in some instances reduced the possibilities of attaining statistically signifi cant results, primarily for the analysis of generational differences among regional origin groups. future research could benefi t from using data sources with larger samples of immigrants and immigrant descendants. larger samples could also allow for analyses of more disaggregated categorisations of origin. the aggregation from national into regional origins is likely to hide many interesting patterns, as lowand high-fertility subgroups probably even each other out. for example, andersson (2004) fi nds that there are important differences among middle eastern immigrant groups in sweden, as iranians tend to have lower fertility than non-immigrants while individuals with an origin in arab countries tend to have higher fertility. it is important to consider the composition of the broad origin groups analysed in this study when aiming to generalise the fi ndings of this study to contexts outside sweden. also, it should be noted that shifts in immigration fl ows over time mean that the national origin composition of the regional origin groups differs to some extent across generational categories, which may affect the possibilities to interpret generational differences as intergenerational change. in addition to national origin, future research could benefi t from studying the effect of subor transnational identities, such as ethnicity, on the formation of fertility preferences. it is reasonable to assume the impact of culture (e.g. in the form of socialisation or reactive ethnicity) to often work at the level of ethnicity rather than nationality. looking exclusively at country of birth is likely to be an especially insuffi cient approach for analysing sweden’s immigrants of middle eastern origin, since two transnational ethnic minorities in the region of origin, i.e. kurds and assyrians/ syriacs, constitute important segments of this group. as kurds in turkey have been found to have higher rates of higher-order births than non-kurds (yavuz 2006), differences are also possible after arrival in the destination country. when information about ethnicity is not available, a possible alternative in some cases could be to use data on language as a proxy. it would also have been interesting to include religious denomination, religiosity, and conservative/liberal attitudes as control variables, given earlier fi ndings on their association with both fertility preferences and actual fertility (e.g. westoff/ frejka 2007; philipov/berghammer 2007; kulu/hannemann 2016). such factors could be important explanations for the observed group differences in the propensity to state a positive fertility intention. however, including these types of variables was not possible since the relevant items in the swedish ggs were part of the follow-up postal/online questionnaire which was only fi lled out by slightly more than half of the respondents in the fi nal sample. • erik carlsson234 finally, the topic of this study is situated within a wider debate on immigrant integration and ethnic relations that constitutes one of the most important confl ict dimensions in contemporary swedish society (demker 2015). as immigrant fertility is an important element of this debate, there is a considerable degree of political salience to the fi ndings. variation across groups in the pace and extent of convergence can be considered controversial since they signal both the persistence of subcultures and possible future shifts in the demographic composition of society. however, since childbearing preferences constitute fundamental motivations for the life course, a general trajectory towards ideational assimilation in this 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date of acceptance: 25.10.2018 erik carlsson (). stockholm university, department of sociology. stockholm, sweden. e-mail: erik.carlsson@sociology.su.se url: https://www.su.se/english/profi les/erca5075-1.219780 fertility intentions across immigrant generations in sweden • 241 1st gene1.5 gene2nd gene2nd genenontotal ration ration ration, ration, immi2 foreign1 foreigngrants born born parents parent intention defi nitely no 36.2 45.2 49.7 44.2 45.9 45.1 probably no 25.5 21.7 20.0 28.3 27.0 26.5 probably yes 17.0 17.8 20.0 13.2 15.6 15.7 defi nitely yes 21.4 15.3 10.3 14.3 11.5 12.7 gender male 51.3 51.6 46.5 52.7 53.0 52.5 female 48.7 48.4 53.5 47.3 47.0 47.5 regional origin western 19.8 15.3 38.7 69.5 10.2 eastern european 27.7 30.6 26.5 13.5 5.7 mena 29.9 31.8 21.3 6.6 5.1 other non-european 22.6 22.3 13.5 10.4 4.2 sweden 100.0 74.7 age at interview 18-24 6.9 43.3 42.6 37.4 28.5 28.7 25-34 31.4 33.1 25.8 28.6 29.3 29.5 35-44 49.7 17.8 28.4 27.2 34.6 34.2 45 or older 11.9 5.7 3.2 6.9 7.6 7.6 educational attainment no university education 57.2 69.4 72.3 69.0 67.3 66.9 university education 42.5 30.6 27.7 31.0 32.7 33.1 missing information 0.3 0.0 0.1 labour market status full-time employed 52.5 40.1 51.0 49.5 54.9 53.5 part-time employed 17.9 14.6 9.0 14.0 16.2 15.8 unemployed 9.1 6.4 6.5 5.8 5.0 5.5 student 10.4 29.3 31.0 25.3 17.6 18.7 other employment status 8.8 8.9 2.6 5.5 6.1 6.3 missing information 1.3 0.6 0.1 0.2 appendix tab. a1: descriptive statistics for the fi nal sample (%), by immigrant generation • erik carlsson242 1st gene1.5 gene2nd gene2nd genenontotal ration ration ration, ration, immi2 foreign1 foreigngrants born born parents parent parity childless 27.0 65.0 59.4 61.5 53.1 52.5 1 child 17.9 8.9 13.5 11.0 11.6 12.1 2 or more children 55.0 26.1 27.1 27.5 35.3 35.5 partnership status married 54.4 22.9 24.5 21.4 26.9 28.3 cohabiting 18.6 14.6 16.1 26.9 32.0 29.1 non-cohabiting 5.3 21.0 16.8 12.6 11.8 12.0 single 21.4 41.4 42.6 39.0 29.3 30.5 missing information 0.3 0.0 number of siblings 0 5.7 6.4 5.2 5.8 5.1 5.2 1 19.8 20.4 34.2 35.7 38.3 35.7 2 17.0 28.0 25.2 31.0 33.0 31.1 3 14.8 15.3 18.7 11.5 12.9 13.2 4 or more 42.8 29.9 16.8 15.9 10.7 14.8 missing information 0.3 0.0 full fi nal sample (n) 318 157 155 364 2,938 3,932 tab. a1: continuation source: own calculations based on wave 1 of the swedish generations and gender survey (ggs) published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) growth-based theories for declining regions? a note on conceptualisations of demographic change for regional economic development growth-based theories for declining regions? a note on conceptualisations of demographic change for regional economic development anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth abstract: this article aims to critically assess the economic growth paradigm, which typically underlies most approaches to regional policymaking for demographic change. while population losses, ageing and outmigration – i.e. phenomena that are addressed as demographic change – have become a matter of urgency for many european regions, most regional economic development theories remain silent about the population decline affecting the economic growth and development prospects of regions. consequently, regional policies usually rely on the concept of economic growth, yet neglect the complexity and importance of demographic change and how it relates to the economic sphere. due to this lack in nuance, we argue that regional policymaking fails to design adequate policy support for regions facing persistent demographic change and economic stagnation or decline as a result. based on these observations, the paper examines a selection of regional economic development theories in search for alternative concepts of growth and development in the context of demographic change. to this aim, globalisation peripheries are introduced as a fruitful conceptual point of reference and, in combination with endogenous regional development theories, discussed as an alternative approach for regional policymaking. keywords: demographic change · economic growth theories · regional economic development · globalisation peripheries · regional policies 1 introduction many countries across europe and elsewhere (e.g. japan or the pr of china) are experiencing profound and long-term demographic challenges, such as population ageing and decline and increasingly heterogeneous populations (goldstein/kluge 2016; niephaus et al. 2016; bloom/canning 2008). in fact, these challenges and processes are the result of decreasing fertility rates and increasing longevity and micomparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 225-254 (date of release: 29.05.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-04en9 • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth226 gration, originating from shifts in lifestyle, attitudes and an ever-rising standard of living. these processes will change the face of many european economies and societies quite dramatically (van der gaag/de beer 2014). for example, as fuchs et al. (2010) or gunkel and henn (2016) show, demographic change in eastern germany signifi cantly alters the long-term economic growth prospects for a region which has already lost part of its workforce due to outmigration and ageing. in this article, “demographic change” refers to population ageing and decline. without a question, demographic change is a major factor of regional economic development across many european regions. however, despite the large public and political debates about the challenges ahead (e.g. an ageing workforce, bottlenecks on labour markets, the public pension system or service provisions), academic discussions on demographic change in economics, regional economics and economic geography only partially touch on these challenges (hanink 2010: 18-23). this observation, as we think, has its roots in the fact that many mainstream theories and conceptual approaches neglect or simplify demographic change and its effects on economic development. consequently, it is hard to fi nd any references to demographic change and stagnation or decline within the established theories of regional growth (sic!) and development in economics and other social science disciplines (martin 2015; schulz 2012). hence, most of the academic literature gives inadequate answers to the question of how demographic and economic processes are interrelated, particularly in the context of stagnation and decline, and what can be learnt from this interrelationship for contemporary demographic challenges. this criticism becomes even more relevant when it comes to economic policymaking. as many approaches focus on the economic success and competitiveness of regional economies without addressing population size and change, they tend to overlook demographic processes as a factor infl uencing the long-term growth prospects of regions and the potential levers for policy interventions. indeed, many regional policy approaches rely on growth-oriented paradigms (haase et al. 2016a; wiechmann/pallagst 2012) that have their origins in economic modelling; meaning that counteracting the challenges associated with regional decline and stagnation, be they in the demographic, economic or both spheres, implies returning to a growth as quickly as possible. often, these approaches and the resulting policymaking do not explicitly consider conditions of stagnation and decline beyond short-term deviations from a pre-determined path of economic growth. accordingly, recommendations that are derived from this ideal-type of – in economic terms – growing and successful regions are made, irrespective of the demographic status quo or outlook of regions. however, it makes little sense to apply “best practice” policy strategies that are drawn from growing regions to demographically changing and therefore declining regions, because such policies are highly likely to fail and neglect the specifi c needs of regions facing decline or stagnation beyond temporary downturn. against the backdrop of these observations, this paper aims to adopt a critical stance towards both the growth-based paradigm in regional economic development theories and the prevailing approaches to policymaking for regions affected by demographic change. the paper therefore addresses how the systemic nexus of demographic-economic change is represented in the main concepts of regional growth-based theories for declining regions? • 227 economic development and establishes points of departure for conceptualising a more adequate understanding of regional economic development for demographic change. this alternative understanding uses the concept of so-called “globalisation peripheries” to link complex phenomena in the demographic-economic spheres, which imply regional stagnation and decline. besides contributing to a more adequate conceptual understanding of the demographic-economic dilemma from a regional perspective, the globalisation peripheries approach is also open to policymaking in that it considers specifi c local development trajectories. the basic premise of this article is therefore that in the light of demographic change as a systemic and long-term process involving stagnation and decline, it is necessary to move beyond strictly growth-based policy approaches and develop open, non-normative ones. a core challenge, then, is that the decline and stagnation associated with demographic change should be accepted as long-term conditions of economies and societies, which can and should be proactively shaped through policymakers. on these grounds, and in line with the arguments proposed by müller (2003) and friedrich and woon nam (2009), we call for paying greater attention to demographic and/or economic stagnation and decline in the practice of policymaking as these conditions become reality in many european regions. this approach, however, is quite different from the usual practice of copy-pasting growth strategies (such as industrial clusters or innovation policies) to regions facing demographic-economic decline. the remainder of this article is structured as follows: after introducing the relationship of demographic and economic growth based on a literature review, the paper critically focuses on the main conceptual approaches that examine this relationship on the level of regional economies, searching for ideas on how to conceptualise stagnation or decline as the opposite of growth. the next section discusses globalisation peripheries as an alternative theoretical approach, which more realistically describes long-term conditions of demographic-economic stagnation and decline. finally, the paper proposes ideas for new policy approaches in the context of demographic change which are associated with the acceptance of decline and stagnation as long-term phenomena, the activation of endogenous local potentials and, to achieve this, proactive coping strategies. 2 demographic change, regional economic development theories and policymaking: state-of-the-art 2.1 on the relationship between demographic and economic change western european economies have long faced what can be described as a postmalthusian growth regime. since the 1960s, fertility rates and population growth have slowed down, while economic standards of living and income levels have risen (feng/yang 2007: 49; poot 2008). in times of demographic change, this relationship has been increasingly challenged, with population ageing and population decline • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth228 becoming manifest. hence, recent contributions by scholars such as batey (2016), van der gaag and de beer (2014), liao (2011), weber (2010), headey and hodge (2009), and the collection of papers in prskawetz and lindh (2007) explore the relationship between demography and economic growth in phases of demographic change in the tradition of macro-economic models for the political economy. generally, poot (2008: 131) observes a striking asymmetry in the research on the potential interdependencies between economic and demographic change: while the infl uence of the economy on the demography of a nation can be explained and modelled well, the opposite does not necessarily hold true (küpper 2015). a general problem occurring in this study is what headey/hodge (2009: 221) describe as follows: “a stylized fact in the macroeconomic literature on population growth is the absence of a robust effect of total population growth on economic growth”. moreover, mainstream economic theories have some diffi culties considering systemic endogenous change. this is partly due to the complexity and the systemic character of internal change processes, which does not fi t the fundamental theoretical assumptions and deterministic thinking of neoclassical or keynesian growth models (aghion/howitt 2009). in addition, different isolated demographic variables might counteract each other in a way that offsets negative and positive effects, a fi nding that has been called the “population neutralist view” in economic modelling (bloom/canning 2008: 26). closely related to the previous and general argument is the fact that neoclassical growth models traditionally consider economic growth as determined by technological growth and change, rather than by population change (ehrlich/lui 1997). however, dalgaard/kreiner (2003) argue that endogenous and particularly “semiendogenous” growth models may well capture population decline and model economic growth prospects, based on an innovation-driven growth path. still, many of the recent macro-economic models focus on the relationship between population and economic growth, but not on decline. for example, headey/hodge (2009) fi nd that a growing working-age labour force is associated with economic growth, whilst the opposite may not necessarily be true. liao (2011) shows that demographic change caused by rapid fertility decline in taiwan has adversely affected the country’s economic growth, but that the negative effect can to a large part be offset by productivity gains. some recent contributions use more sophisticated modelling such as computable general equilibrium (cge) analysis to explore demographic change and its effect on economic growth, yet focus on isolated effects (batey 2016; lisenkova et al. 2010; gaigné/thisse 2009). for example, lisenkova et al. (2010), computing a cge model for scotland, fi nd a negative effect of demographic change on regional economic growth. in contrast, prettner (2013: 831) who computes changes in the size of the population and age structure and their effects on the long-term economic growth in an endogenous growth model through technological progress, observes that increasing life expectancy is associated with higher growth rates in this constellation, while the opposite is true for falling fertility rates. to summarise the results of these cge-based models, the overall impression is that a declining or ageing population has a depressing impact on economic activity, growth-based theories for declining regions? • 229 a fi nding which is neither astonishing nor uncontested, as börsch-supan (2013) emphasises. most empirical analyses illustrate that both the intensity and direction of demographic change on the economy are far from being clear or even unidirectional (küpper 2015). due to the high degree of complexity of translating demographic processes into macro models and because of the specifi c model conditions, it is often diffi cult, and perhaps impossible, to completely grasp the dimensions of the impact that demographic change has on the economy and vice versa without going back to theories and approaches that explain the causal relationships. 2.2 demographic change and its effects on regional economies what seems to be clear is that demographic change affects regional economies in different spheres and through various channels (davoudi et al. 2010). an important transmission mechanism of demographic change on the economy is the public and fi scal sphere. mcmorrow and roeger (2004) show that rising pressures on public expenditures and life-cycle effects on private savings (partly due to a deterioration of public savings) are direct effects on the level of economic activity. age-sensitive areas in which fi scal consequences of demographic change will become evident include the pension, health and educational systems. all other things being equal, reduced tax volumes and public payrolls will be likely to induce growing public expenses (bloom et al. 2003; misoulis 2008). while national public savings will probably be negatively affected by demographic change, depending on the welfare and pension system (mcmorrow/roeger 2004; disney 2000), the impact on private savings can be forecast less precisely. by contrast, the effect of demographic change, particularly the decline in total population, on the provision of public goods and services such as the maintenance of technical and social infrastructures is clearly negative (poterba 1998; prskawetz/ lindh 2007). providers of water supply and sewer systems, schools and educational bodies, libraries, public transport or other services are confronted with decreasing or structurally changing demand (naumann/bernt 2009). as for public infrastructure, such as transport, or water and energy supply, the problems associated with demographic change have been well-analysed and described (steinführer et al. 2014; haase et al. 2016b; haug 2004). a falling demand raises the costs for the provision of services, because fi xed costs must be shared among fewer inhabitants (cost hysteresis). maintenance costs will tend to rise and put a strain on the public budget, unless they are redistributed among the remaining users. demographic change also has direct and strong effects on labour markets (ermisch 1995; bloom/canning 2008; leibfritz/roeger 2008) as the workforce ages or declines due to retirement (poot 2008; brunow/hirte 2006). the most obvious impact will be a decreasing labour supply due to an ageing workforce or outmigration (brown/danson 2003; fuchs et al. 2008). vice versa, large and growing workingage cohorts can improve the economic growth prospects of regions (brunow/hirte 2006; bloom/canning 2008). in theory, a declining working-age population, seen as a shrinking labour force, would induce higher labour costs for fi rms, forcing employers to maintain or raise their productivity level (feyrer 2008). in this case, demo• anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth230 graphic change will challenge enterprises to invest more in research and development (r&d) and human capital formation in order to sustain their competitiveness. as börsch-supan (2008, 2013) and faggian and mccann (2009) argue, r&d and human capital investments are equally important public policies for supporting regional economies in coping with changing labour markets caused by demographic change. particularly for regions facing long-term population decline and outmigration, relying on a positive net inward migration is a rather unrealistic option (see, for instance, lisenkova et al. 2010; or bmvdi 2016). liao (2011) argues that demographic change in fast-growing developing nations can stimulate economic growth through a shrinking dependency ratio, less expenditures for youth and growing human capital accumulation. this scenario is based on benefi ts from the so-called “demographic dividend” (bloom et al. 2003). a likely scenario for economies facing demographic change is the deceleration of innovativeness and technological progress and even a resistance to technological change among ageing and declining populations facing increasing dependency ratios. this effect may be caused by a lack of young, innovative labour force, shrinking market potentials and divestment by fi rms (cutler et al. 1990; dixon 2003; poot 2008). in fact, bönte et al. (2009) and harhoff (2008) point to an age-related decrease in entrepreneurial activities and new fi rm foundations due to demographic change, which negatively affects the innovative potential of demographically ageing economies because the acceptance and adoption of innovation tend to be lower in ageing societies (canton et al. 2002). at the level of the industry structure, new consumer preferences will emerge because of shifts in the demand for goods and services between ageing and young consumers (kohlbacher/herstatt 2011), which will affect the prospects for certain industrial and service sectors (poot 2008). rosenfeld (2003, 2006) has shown for germany that particularly consumer-oriented businesses would be affected by demographic change, depending on price and income elasticities. examples of industries where a strong impact is highly likely are clothing and textiles, pharmaceutical goods, food, and education. firms operating in such sectors and serving local-regional markets might need to adjust their business models towards ageing consumers and changing demand. börsch-supan (2013: 4-5) elaborates that demographic change does not automatically lead to a sinking standard of living for households. however, as kohlbacher/herstatt (2011) highlight, all consumer-oriented industries will have to cope with the preference for higher-quality goods and services shown by wealthy elderly consumers on the one hand, whilst, on the other hand, poverty is on the rise among elderly people in demographically declining nations such as germany (see, for example, goebel/grabka 2011). more generally, there will be demand-side changes due to age-specifi c requirements, particularly in health, leisure, travel and specifi c household services. at the level of individual industries or regions, this might result in an increase in potentials in so-called “silver” niche markets (kohlbacher/herstatt 2011). using the region as the unit of analysis, we can assume that the share of these consumer-oriented sectors in a region’s industrial structure will determine the degrowth-based theories for declining regions? • 231 gree to which demographic change affects the regional economy through shifting consumer preferences (küpper 2015). these examples show how demographic change can have an impact on the economy. particularly in regions that face population decline and aging, these effects will strike far harder than in regions with a growing or stable population. while most economic models do not address the level of the region (with the exception of brunow/hirte 2006; lisenkova et al. 2010; kim/hewings 2013), regional and urban researchers have been exploring the multi-level challenges associated with regional economies and demographic change for a long time (winkel/spiekermann 2014; wirth et al. 2016; haase et al. 2016b). therefore, policies to mitigate the associated challenges are an important element of regional economic adaptation to demographic change. 2.3 policy responses resulting from an exploration of the demographiceconomic relationship clearly, policy is a crucial element in responding to and directing demographic change (ferry/vironen 2011). however, the adequacy of such policy responses – rather than demographic change itself – may be the primary challenge, as bloom et al. (2010: 607) state: “the problem of population ageing is more a function of rigid and outmoded policies and institutions than a problem of demographic change per se”. recent contributions such as the special issue of the oxford review of economic policy (26, 4 2010) thus stress the need for not only describing the outcomes of demographic change in the economic models, but also for devising adequate policies to mitigate these effects on the macro-economy. martin/sunley (1998) provide a summary of the main channels that macro-economic growth models propose as starting points for policymaking: (1) human capital, and (2) technological progress and innovation. this focus of most regional policy approaches is backed by recent contributions suggesting investments in human capital (mason et al. 2016) and public investment in education to offset negative effects of ageing on human capital formation (kim/hewings 2013). replacement migration is another solution for an ageing workforce proposed by some economists and policy-makers, though it faces limitations (bouvier 2001; azarnert 2010). bloom et al. (2010) and hammer et al. (2015) also recommend increasing ageing societies’ labour participation, for example through enhancing engagement of elderly persons and women of working age. many national governments have recently been seeking adequate responses to mitigate adverse effects of demographic change, whilst developing strategies for capitalizing on the potential benefi ts (ferry/vironen 2011). however, despite these recent trends, most development strategies for regions facing demographic change rely on growth-based approaches such as michael porter’s cluster concept (porter 1990), which has been adopted as “the magic bullet” (martin 2015: 266) on different spatial scales, ranging from the european to the national and regional levels. prominent examples are the european cluster strategy, the german national programmes “innoregio” and “bioregio,” as well as local policies in the german federal states of bavaria and north rhine westphalia. conse• anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth232 quently, the prevailing policy of such programmes is to copy-paste an “ideal type” of economic development, e.g. the way silicon valley developed, to other regions, which bristow (2005: 296) comments as follows: “(w)hat is missing is any effort to conceptualise regions as territorially defi ned social aggregations, with very different economic and political structures”. while it is, of course, problematic to imitate economic development processes by applying recipes that are based on very specifi c local contexts and their political-institutional settings, this is even more the case when one keeps in mind that the “miracle” of silicon valley was virtually free from policy interventions. other popular approaches include the concepts of industrial districts, “milieus innovateurs” (camagni 1991), or regional innovation systems (asheim/gertler 2006; nelson 1992), which stress the importance of industry agglomeration and an innovation-based industry, or the creative class (martin 2015; bristow 2005) that focuses on highly skilled migration as a growth inducing factor. indeed, most public policy approaches for dealing with demographic change are based on the idea that the experience of “best practice” cases of prospering regions can be transferred to regions facing demographic change, often coupled with economic decline or stagnation. it is, however, more than questionable to use such policy strategies for regions with starkly different economic, political and institutional conditions or specifi c demographic challenges such as population decline or rapid ageing. additionally, this approach neglects the complexity of demographic processes which unfold on a set of different layers and fi elds in the regional economy (tyers/shi 2012). particularly in the case of regions that face long-term decline or stagnation, innovation-based regional development is hard to achieve, because these regions do not provide the economic structure that such theories emphasise (for instance: agglomeration economies, labour market size and structure, fi rm size and structure, business networks, and institutional thickness, notably r&d-related institutions; küpper/margarian 2010; meng 2013). for example, rural-peripheral areas face long-lasting periods of stagnation or decline in terms of their population and economic growth prospects; often hosting mature or “low-technology” industries and lacking a critical mass of enterprises to provide innovative activities (noronha vaz 2006; copus/skuras 2006; huggins/ johnston 2009; meng 2013). demographic change then exacerbates the economic weaknesses when shortages of labour supply for higher-value-added industries occur due to outmigration and population ageing. meng (2013: 181) points to the fact that innovation taking place in non-agglomeration areas is mainly incremental and not represented in established indicators for innovation (such as patents). in a similar vein, küpper/margarian (2010) stress that process innovations are a more common type of innovation for rural areas. according to fuduric (2012), much of this also holds true for entrepreneurship in regions facing decline or stagnation due to a lack of individual resources and adequate institutional settings for entrepreneurial activities, such as fi nancial intermediaries or consultancies for newly founded fi rms. although local entrepreneurship may foster economic growth in some rural regions (see, for example, meili/mayer 2015 for swiss rural areas), most entrepreneurship analyses such as the global and regional entrepreneurship monitor (sternberg 2005; wagner/sternberg 2005; meng 2013) indicate that regions located outside aggrowth-based theories for declining regions? • 233 glomerations often lag in terms of entrepreneurial activities. thus, changes in entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour associated with demographic change (bönte et al. 2009; harhoff 2008) pose an additional challenge to these kinds of regions. even more radical is the criticism that russell/vinsel (2015) express about the importance of innovation. for them, innovation has become a sort of fetish in western industrialised economies, and concepts such as regional innovation systems or “milieus innovateurs” have fed policy and planning strategies with arguments and measures to mainly support innovation that is associated with technology (oecd 2009a). according to them, it is crucial to understand that technology cannot be equated with innovation and “innovation is only a small piece of what happens with technology” (russell/vinsel 2015: 10). instead, societies should also focus on maintenance of the basic material infrastructures (bridges, roads, railroad tracks, etc.), which are in danger of being neglected in industrialised countries such as the united states, the uk or germany. the maintenance of transport, repair or even laundry services also needs established and traditional technologies and networks, fi rms and workforce providing know-how. taking up this rationale for the issue of demographic change and policy responses, regional policy strategies often neglect the questions of whether and what kind of innovation can be a useful remedy for a given region and context, as the preconditions for innovation-based technological progress strikingly differ between regions (crescenzi/rodriguez-pose 2012; crescenzi et al. 2007; fagerberg et al. 1997). notwithstanding this observation, r&d investments and innovation performance are deemed important indicators and drivers of regional economic growth and development (crescenzi/rodriguéz-pose 2012) and, consequently, the backbone of most policies that aim at enhancing regional competitiveness (bristow 2005). 2.4 demographic change, theories and economic development: a synthesis as we contend, the common arguments used for both growth-oriented regional policymaking and its practice need alternative ideas for addressing economic development in times of demographic change. as an endogenous and systemic process, demographic change has far-reaching, long-term effects on the population size and structure and, consequently, infl uences the development prospects of regional economies and societies on multiple layers over time. moreover, it affects different groups of actors that are embedded in regional economies: private enterprises, the public sector including public corporations and agencies, and civic actors. policy strategies may therefore infl uence demographic change at the national and subnational level in various respects and through different channels. regarding economic development theories and concepts, population change (growing, shrinking or constant population) is seldom directly conceptualised. macro-economic growth models often delimit the relevance of demography to migration processes which function as a mechanism to outweigh disequilibria of income or labour force (aghion/howitt 2009; lisenkova et al. 2010). partly because of the underlying neoclassical paradigm, and partly due to the fact that most re• anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth234 gional development approaches in economics and economic geography rely on the paradigm of economic growth, many theories do not offer points of departure for describing endogenous change processes originating from demographic shifts or social dynamics (martin 2015). moreover, the dynamics of demographic change processes tend to take place in a slowly evolving manner with long-lasting effects that cannot always be identifi ed immediately, which makes timely recognition and immediate political reaction diffi cult (matuschewski/leick 2012). 3 from change to decline and stagnation: a different perspective for conceptualising regional economic development for demographic change based on this criticism, it is argued in this paper that economic development for confi gurations of regional decline and stagnation – as is the case in times of demographic change – should be extended to encompass qualitative improvements paralleling purely economic processes. such an alternative understanding is refl ected in the concept of “globalisation peripheries”. 3.1 notions of decline, stagnation and development searching for a conceptual foundation of these phenomena, however, terms such as “stagnation”, “shrinkage” or “decline” hardly appear in the established regional studies readers for postgraduate students. for example, neither the tables of contents nor the indices of the following textbooks and research volumes mention these terms: bröcker/fritsch (2012), coe et al. (2013), mccann (2013), pike et al. (2011), stimson et al. (2006), armstrong/taylor (2000), clark et al. (2000), liou (1998), storper (1997) and blair (1995). if addressed at all, the most common term is “decline”, which is mentioned in one chapter by capello/nijkamp (2008) and leyshon et al. (2011). lombardini (1996) lists “stagnation” in the index of his book. we can only assume that the omission of these terms in most regional studies textbooks and readers might be due to the fact that the focus of authors and editors is clearly fi xed on growth. in this respect, breinlich et al. (2014: 755) concede that the notion of decline has no fi xed meaning: “regions could be declining in terms of absolute or (more often) relative living standards and welfare indicators, but also in terms of absolute and relative population, since one response to economic decline will be out-migration and diverted in-migration. this second kind of decline is often a symptom of the fi rst, but has interest in itself, as a distinct process”. more recently, notions of “development” have been discussed as useful alternatives to overcome the normative dichotomy of “growth” versus “decline”. pike et al. (2016) illustrate that both the perception and defi nition of the term “development” have undergone signifi cant changes over the past years. a change in perception took place as scholars pushed for a wider defi nition including qualitative, social and environmental aspects to overcome the one-sided fi xation on economic growth as an overarching paradigm (haase et al. 2016a; wiechmann/pallagst 2012). on the growth-based theories for declining regions? • 235 global scale, this trend is, for instance, refl ected in a methodological extension towards more complex and broader indicators measuring development such as the human development index (hdi), the human poverty index (hpi), the gender inequality index (gii) or the sustainable development goals (sdgs) of the united nations. the most important difference is that the notion of “development” embraces sustainable qualitative improvements in economic wellbeing and living standards, which do not solely depend on economic growth, but consider the capabilities and resources of nations or parts of the world (clark 2005). according to these recent changes and our own understanding, “development” primarily refers to qualitative, and perhaps incremental, changes of a system, instead of quantitative change only. accordingly, processes of democratisation or participation, technological modernisation, improved labour conditions, better governance and institutions, or a more even distribution of income and wealth are some of the mechanisms to achieve economic development, without necessarily and immediately materialising in quantitative economic growth (stiglitz 2001; durth et al. 2002; sen 2001). pike et al. (2016) highlight that alternative measures for local development based on qualitative indicators have, however, not yet been established. regarding demographic change, development is associated with change in elements of the system, such as lifestyle, the structure or age composition of a population, social cohesion and inclusion. each element implies a different functioning and direction of the system as a whole. accordingly, a region facing demographic change can experience socio-economic development when (re)distributions of work time and employment or reallocations of wealth take place, or because a change in the local social networks supports qualitative improvements and development despite quantitative decline. given the complexity of such change, it is, however, diffi cult to quantify or measure such processes with the most common macro-economic indicators (for example, a region’s gdp). for example, non-market based voluntary work is not included in the gdp, but often complements or even compensates for stateor market-based services in stagnating or declining regions because of institutional and organizational thinness. examples from eastern germany stress that civic initiatives supplement the public transport and educational system, for instance through small schools or private bus transport organisations operated by local citizens in demographically declining regions. in this case, economic development, which includes broad civic engagement and social networks, will be diffi cult to quantify using the common statistical indicators. thus, factors that support social cohesion and build local social capital form part of the regional human capital stock, each of them representing basic endogenous potentials (hahne 1985). regional development in that sense can contribute to a better resource endowment of regions and support their long-term resilience (bristow/healy 2014; lang 2012). however, these elements are typically not represented in growth-oriented policy approaches. • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth236 3.2 theoretical reference points for conceptualising “decline” and “stagnation” besides the question of what development can mean for regional economies facing demographic change and decline, a general problem with many regional economic development theories is that the importance of demography is limited to labour or human capital endowment and mobility. other effects of demography on regional economies – such as the impact of a falling birth rate and population ageing on regional demand, the distribution and performance of established fi rms as a consequence of (failures of) company succession and lower levels of entrepreneurship – have been hardly addressed to date. even if the fundamental relationship between demographic or social processes on economic development is explicated, stagnation or decline as a phenomenon resulting from demographic change is considered only as short-term transitional deviation from growth periods or as an external, shock-like crisis which disturbs a normatively pre-determined path of economic growth, implying that positive growth will “naturally” return in the future (harrigan et al. 1992; richardson 1973). only a few theories and concepts offer points of departure for explaining confi gurations of lasting decline or stagnation, as opposed to growth and causes of cross-regional disparities in the context of demographic change. among these approaches are post-keynesian theory and myrdal’s theory of regional polarisation, endogenous regional development theories, and the concept of “lock-in” as a path-dependent process. post-keynesian and polarisation theories explicitly describe stagnation and decline as distinct regional development paths, thereby proposing an alternative to economic growth. post-keynesian theory claims that external investment affects regional income and production capacity through direct and complementary effects, which, in turn, lead to a rising differentiation between growing, stagnating or declining regions. the initial trigger is an exogenous force such as investment, whereas endogenous factors, which may also infl uence regional production and income, are not considered. social change, such as lifestyle changes that lead to a dropping fertility rate and result in demographic change (as we can observe in many industrialised nations today), is not addressed in post-keynesian thinking. moreover, it is argued that with higher levels of regional growth and development, intraregional disparities are likely to decrease due to spatial spill-over effects and rising costs of agglomeration. yet, even post-keynesian economists are predominantly focussed on growth paths of the economy (setterfi eld 2010). regional polarisation theory (myrdal 1974) is the only approach that explicitly deals with processes of (long-term) decline. using the notion of “cumulative causation”, the connections between economic and non-economic mutually reinforcing processes of decline are described. indeed, the discussion of the relationship between economic, demographic and fi scal processes is at the very centre of myrdal’s approach. many of myrdal’s fi ndings from 50 years ago can be confi rmed with contemporary examples of regional decline (steinführer 2015). the picture of cumulative causation is highly impressive, because it vividly alludes to the impact and interdependencies of economic and demographic decline (feng/yang 2007). however, it growth-based theories for declining regions? • 237 is, again, an external and random impulse to set a process of cumulative (negative) causation in motion leading to regional decline (myrdal 1974). demography is also limited to migration as both consequence and cause of economic decline. in the thinking of myrdal’s regional polarisation theory, demographic change could imply a downward spiral of regional development, forcing fi rms and households to abandon their home region and move to growing or stable economies (feng/yang 2007). despite these insights into the causes and complexities of decline, the descriptive character of regional polarisation theories suggests that the ultimate consequence of the downturn loop will be deserted regions, because the theory’s adaptive reactions are dichotomous: either “exit” the region or “stay and shrink”. the drastic scenario of the complete depletion of once prospering, and now “sclerotic” regions is a very unlikely one, although it did emerge in the political debates among regional planners discussing eastern germany’s future in the late 1990s, for example (steinführer 2015). regarding policy implications, public intervention serves as the primary means to halt the downturn loop according to myrdal, while endogenous factors to enter a new path towards growth are not addressed. consequently, inspirations for policymaking for non-growing regions drawn from these approaches remain limited. even the extensions and elaborations of myrdal’s theory, such as the “polarisation reversal” or “centre-periphery” approach, which distinguish between “trickling down” versus “polarisation effects”, do not overcome the defi ciencies of the theory (hirschmann 1958; friedman 1966; richardson 1980). endogenous regional development theories are a counter-approach to these concepts. they emerged in the 1980s in response to growing criticism of the oncedominant argument that exogenous forces would be the drivers of regional growth, thus favouring development via “bottom up” channels as explanation (maier/tödtling 2002: 193; hahne 1985; stöhr 1981). the austrian regional researcher walter stöhr (1981) was among the proponents of this (at the time) novel approach to regional development. yet his arguments mainly refer to (under-) developed countries in the global context. nevertheless, the general rationale of the approach can be adapted to the local or regional level (hahne 1985), stating that it is not exogenous investments, but endogenous forces pushing regional economies to grow and develop, as regions do often not experience suffi ciently strong external investment fl ows or other impulses. thus, regions must expand their endogenous potentials when striving for economic development. the term “potential”, however, remains quite vaguely defi ned and needs further interpretation. in a broader sense, the local “potentials” comprise all material and immaterial resources that a region possesses, including infrastructure, population, fi nancial resources, market potential, and social, environmental and cultural assets (harfst/wirth 2014). from a policy perspective, endogenous development approaches aim to activate unused or underused potentials and overcome their limitations (such as poor transport infrastructure, human capital scarcities or an unfavourable local image) to drive economic development by enhancing local capacities. contrary to most economic approaches, this theory is based on a quite different understanding of regional economic policy, one that emphasises development rather than growth, although the latter might be a long-term goal for the • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth238 region. moreover, this approach offers what bristow (2005) advocates, i.e., viewing the individual characteristics, both strengths and weaknesses, of regions. evolutionary concepts offer a complementary perspective on decline, which emphasizes context-specifi c regional settings and understands regional economic development as path-dependent trajectories that are open to future developments and are self-transformed from within (for example, through political and business decisions). local actors, their networks and decisions determine the historical creation of a specifi c regional path and its development over time, leading to either growth, stagnation or decline (mackinnon et al. 2009; boschma/martin 2007; martin/sunley 2006; boschma/frenken 2006). timeand path dependencies are associated with mechanisms through which past decisions infl uence future development processes and decisions by both limiting and guiding them, although contingency and chance may infl uence path-dependent regional development through sudden incidents (boschma/frenken 2006). firms are considered to be key actors, shaping the region with their competitive behaviour and timeand path-dependent economic decisions (boschma/frenken 2006; martin/sunley 2006). in addition, institutional settings, including informal institutions such as social networks, and institutional changes (cortinovis et al. 2016; mackinnon et al. 2009; boschma/frenken 2011) shape these path-dependent trajectories. for the discussion on demographic change, the phenomenon of “lock-in” seems to be especially important (henning et al. 2013; hassink 2010) because it describes and explains the effect of an increasing “crustifi cation” of regional economies due to an over-specialisation in non-competitive industries, overly close local actor networks with tight inter-dependencies, failing economic policies, or other functional, political, technological or cognitive “lock-in” constellations (grabher 1993). from an evolutionary perspective, breaking an established path and “delocking” are important targets to counteract the stagnation or decline of locked-in regions (martin/sunley 2006). 3.3 globalisation peripheries as an alternative approach to understanding decline and stagnation in the context of demographic change the concept of globalisation peripheries complements the conceptual ideas about decline and stagnation emerging from the established regional economic development theories. german development geographer fred scholz (2004, 2007), who stands in the tradition of the global development school, introduced the concept to describe peripheralised and both economically and socially marginalised spaces, ranging from entire nations to regions or even city districts. his multi-scalar idea of “globalisation peripheries” conveys the picture of losing areas, which are being decoupled from global economic dynamics and have no – or at best low – prospects for economic recovery and sustainable economic development. being neither the sites of the majors drivers of economic activities, the locations of key actors (such as transnational companies or global organisations), nor integrated into global production networks and value chains, key actors on the global scale such as large corporations and organisations typically overlook globalisation peripheries. from growth-based theories for declining regions? • 239 their perspective, such regions are either too small as consumer or labour markets or too scarcely endowed with resources, be they natural, infrastructural, or human capital. with this picture, scholz (2004, 2007) paints a drastic image of depleted and marginalised regions or nations that fi ts many developing nations in the global south (scholz 2003). because of its broad perspective on persistent “non-growth” in multiple interconnected spheres, the concept depicts the prospects of demographically declining regions across europe quite appropriately, illustrating demographic change and its inter-relationship with economic change. such complex phenomena can have different origins, such as the former system transformation in eastern europe, the deindustrialisation of former hubs of preand post-war heavy industries and industrial production in germany or the united kingdom, youth outmigration and population ageing in notably rural regions outside the core city regions and agglomerations across europe, or economic downturn in the aftermath of the recent global fi nancial and economic crisis in southern europe, which has led to outmigration of highskilled young workers (see martin 2015; martin et al. 2016). these regions all face continuous economic crises, which go far beyond short-term recessions, with only weak signs of recovery (see doran/fingleton 2016 for eu employment data). thus, in the parlance of scholz’ (2004, 2007) concept, a number of european regions including the ones facing signifi cant demographic decline can be labelled as globalisation peripheries, because they face multiple challenges in the economic, social, political and demographic spheres that cannot be solved through quick fi xes or external stimuli. the concept can be used to explicitly describe the inter-relationship between demography and the economy as a systemic complex of multilayered challenges. peripheralisation is one major characteristic of scholz’ original model that fi ts remote european regions which are located at some spatial distance from the core capitals and major cities and are, in addition, decoupled from substantial economic activities (lang 2015; lang et al. 2015; kühn 2013; kühn/bernt 2013). additionally, many of these regions also suffer from demographic change coupled with long-term economic stagnation or decline, i.e. perspectives of nongrowth in the core sense. as a result, cases of european globalisation peripheries are not affected by isolated problems alone, but are marginalised through their low economic power and dynamics, the structure of their population and its social stratifi cation, and a low degree of global integration (bernt/liebmann 2013; danson/ de souza 2012; wirth/bose 2007; keim 2006). accordingly, using the globalisation peripheries concept can substantially improve the understanding of regional economic development in the light of demographic change. for example, mccann (2008) gives a profound economic-geographic explanation for such development trajectories, based on a bid rent model and the impacts of changing transaction costs. he illustrates how regions lose connection to global markets, thereby turning into what we call “globalisation peripheries”. less evident are ways for policymaking to reverse persistent non-growth, including demographic change. many european examples of globalisation peripheries experience demographic change as a condition that complicates and often exacerbates their economic development prospects, but cannot easily be compensated for • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth240 through a positive migration balance and external investment. yet one important lesson for globalisation peripheries in the context of demographic change is that the basic assumptions for policy interventions are strikingly different, as demographic change is understood as a process that infl uences economic development, but is also affected by economic development itself. 3.3.1 case study: “altenburger land,” a regional globalisation periphery1 the nuts iii level region “altenburger land” in the east german state of thuringia represents an example of different prototypes of demographically declining regions which also suffer from low economic development prospects (see fig. 1). altenburger land has experienced quite a unique economic, social and administrative transformation in the past, but nowadays represents a marginalized and peripheralised region that is experiencing signifi cant demographic change. once a backbone of uranium and coal mining and its downstream industries (machinery and automotive) and farming in the former gdr, the local population grew due to policies aimed at attracting mining workers into the region. this artifi cial expansion of the medium-sized city region held the local economy in boom. as german reunifi cation turned a socialist economy into a market economy, altenburger land faced substantial outmigration and population decline, mainly to west germany. as competitive pressures increased and industries that were formerly shielded by state regulation lost most of their comecon export markets, a shock-like transformation of the local economy led to the breakdown of entire industries, followed by dramatic rises in unemployment. for this region, demographic change is associated with complex challenges in the economic, demographic, social and political spheres (matuschewski et al. 2016; meyer et al. 2016). sharply decreasing fertility rates after reunifi cation exacerbated the exodus of young, skilled persons and intensifi ed the economic-demographic decline and stagnation dilemma of altenburger land. since 1990, it has lost about 30 percent of its population and will continue to do so (1989: 130,000 inhabitants, 2014: 95,000 inhabitants, 2030 projection: 70.000 inhabitants). moreover, the dependency ratio expected to skyrocket to 122.1 percent in 2030 (2012: 69 percent). on top of this, local young adults do not consider altenburger land as a place which offers any economic perspectives whatsoever. although there have recently been signs of demographic and economic decline slowing down, the region has never recovered from the long-lasting periods of mutually reinforcing economic-demographic change and decline since the early 1990s. these negative path-dependencies infl uence the region’s development potentials. 1 the empirical case study of „altenburger land“ stems from a research project „regional development perspectives of altenburger land“, which has been funded by a local public-private transfer organisation and a consortium of public organisations. the project was conducted between 2013 and 2015. see also matuschewski et al. (2016). growth-based theories for declining regions? • 241 inter alia, the region lacks a major or leading industry and competitive business networks that connect fi rms within and across industries (for example, through technologies or a common repository of knowledge). the local economy mainly consists of small and medium sized enterprises (smes) in lowto medium-technology industries such as mechanics, metalworking and processing, plastics, automotive, mechanical engineering, and construction. many fi rms have not been able to fig. 1: “location of altenburger land in east germany” about here source: juergen feilner, cartography, chair of economic geography of the university of bayreuth • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth242 integrate themselves in automotive and mechanics clusters in close geographical proximity. ownership and management structures after the post-socialist transformation partly account for this weak economic base. in the past years, local policy-makers experimented with various mainstream strategies to counteract the region’s decline. most of them have not proven to be success stories. greenfi eld industry development combined with heavy investments in transport infrastructures (motorway and railway connections, a local airport) was one such strategy to boost economic development based on external investment and to attract fi rms and jobs to altenburger land. because of the complex demographic-economic-social and political situation, the resulting historical pathdependencies and also the “lock-in” of local stakeholders (including policy-makers) into established growth-based approaches to combat decline clearly challenge and limit the scope for regional policy interventions in this case. 4 demographic change in globalisation peripheries and the resulting policy implications what are the general lessons for regional policymaking in the context of demographic change, based on the above criticism and using the concept of globalisation peripheries as point of departure? first, it will be important to accept demographic-economic decline or stagnation as a complex process that is, at least partly, associated with demographic change (see bernt et al. 2013; haase et al. 2016a). as a matter of fact, regions facing demographic change undergo long-term systemic changes and cannot simply return to a path of economic growth. in such cases, resource limitations play an important role and preconditions for growth in the context of regional demographic change are strikingly different compared to regions with stable or growing populations, such as large agglomerations with suffi cient net migration. thus, policies for regions affected by demographic change should focus on additional and alternative goals that might not necessarily be in line with growth-oriented targets (see bernt et al. 2013; haase et al. 2016a). economic stabilisation and qualitative development are appropriate adaptive approaches in such constellations to complement policies envisaging quantitative economic growth only (see thurn 2003, and persson 2003). second, and closely related to the fi rst argument, accepting demographic change and “de-problematising” its effects in the practice of policymaking implies acknowledging that globalisation peripheries such as altenburger land cannot realistically hope and wait for “big investors” to initiate signifi cant economic growth qua external investments, jobs and income. in a similar vein, external migration to such regions will be far too insignifi cant in most cases to compensate for population losses due to ageing and outmigration, although return migration might play some role for stabilising the regional economy, as evidence for eastern germany shows (fuchs/weyh 2016; matuschewski/nadler 2013). instead, globalisation peripheries need to rely much more on local endogenous potentials in line with hahne (1985) to shape their future development trajectory. growth-based theories for declining regions? • 243 third, proactive policy approaches are clearly needed to tackle local challenges associated with demographic change (for example, population ageing and outmigration, changing labour markets or problems of family business succession) because local potentials must be identifi ed amongst problems and defi cits such as less people, less investment, less infrastructure or tax income. a proactive stance based on perceiving opportunities instead of problems is closely associated with what steinführer et al. (2014) call “bewaeltigungsstrategien” (coping strategies) in the context of demographic change. coping strategies go well beyond adaptation to a declining regional economy because they include the notion of acceptance of decline and seeking ways to work with a decreasing population, reduced tax incomes and limited opportunities for public service provisions (steinführer et al. 2014). in summary of these lessons, asserting that decline and stagnation in both the demographic and economic realm needs to be accepted as a new, but not necessarily predetermined and unavoidable path for the future of globalisation peripheries offers scope for new ideas in policymaking beyond growth-based approaches (rydin 2013). one important point of reference for such ideas can be the fi nding that the endogenous forces of demographic change matter and should therefore be integrated in the long-term approach to regional policymaking. for example, population ageing as one such endogenous challenge should not be considered as a locational disadvantage only, but as a source of local potentials: making use of senior expertise, supporting high-quality services for the elderly, implementing local initiatives to keep skilled labour and youth in the region through the engagement of elderly residents are ideas that can be developed and capitalised on. for globalisation peripheries, such an approach could also mean that a lack of entrepreneurs and innovation in economic areas – industrial production, service industries, etc. – should not be considered as a defi cit only; instead, such a constellation can also serve as an area where policymaking could foster non-economic entrepreneurial activities and social innovation as potential local assets which aim to achieve qualitative improvements of the local social capital and networks. social entrepreneurship is a fi eld that does not necessarily envision quantitative sales and market growth but includes social targets. as steinführer et al. (2014) emphasize, civic society in demographically declining areas has become part of the local infrastructure. social entrepreneurship can thus complement the range of policy support for corporate entrepreneurship (haugh 2006). more generally, fostering volunteerism and civic engagement of residents can be an important strategy for enhancing activities in culture, leisure and tourism, which may push economic activities “from below”. in all these cases, social innovation may result from these activities, implying tighter local networks among fi rms and private residents and stimulating organisational learning through information and knowledge exchange among a wider circle of stakeholders (see maccallum et al. 2009). policy strategies making use of social entrepreneurship and targeting social innovation in various non-economic fi elds may be appropriate when it comes to enlarging the scope of actors and fi elds of action for achieving socio-economic development despite demographic change. in particular, private and civic society initiatives can give impetus for the local economy, building regional identity through • anke matuschewski, birgit leick, marcel demuth244 dense social networks and fostering “selbstverantwortung,” or local responsibility (aring 2013; steinführer et al. 2014). more generally, supporting endogenous potentials as sources for qualitative improvements and development, coupled with policies targeting economic growth, may enhance local opportunities more than waiting for external growth stimuli (meng 2013; milbert 2015; steinführer et al. 2014), in order to address the goal of regional equivalency which is required by german constitutional law. the stabilisation of the regional economy, even at a lower level, and economic recovery in crisis-ridden times through safeguarding the quality of life for residents can be sustainable and attainable targets for policymaking (see wirth et al. 2016; oecd 2009b). they are far more realistic in contexts of persistent economic decline or stagnation combined with demographic change. such qualitative improvements can have positive repercussions for public transfers, social services and local fi nances in the long term, even if these measures do not necessarily materialise as gdp or job growth immediately. this policy approach is closely associated with what stöhr (1981: 39, translated from german by the authors) claimed over 30 years ago: “development ‘from below’ implies alternative criteria for factor allocation […] and a change in the basic concept defi ned by economic criteria, competitive behaviour, […] to diversifi ed concepts defi ned by broader societal goals, by collaborative behaviour and endogenous motivation”. consequently, policy-makers should strive for achieving qualitative improvements as socio-economic development in the light of demographic change and its complex challenges even if this might not directly materialise in terms of high or above-average economic growth. such a broad approach is supported, inter alia, by the “europe 2020” strategy on cohesion through smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (european commission 2010). references aghion, philippe; howitt, peter w. 2009: the economics of growth. cambridge: the mit press. aring, jürgen 2013: inverse frontiers. selbstverantwortungsräume. in: faber, kerstin; oswalt, philip (eds.): raumpioniere in ländlichen regionen. neue wege der daseinsvorsorge. leipzig: spectorbooks: 42-56. armstrong, martin; taylor, jim 2000: regional economics and policy. oxford: blackwell. asheim, bjorn t.; gertler, meric s. 2006: the geography of innovation: regional innovation systems. in: fagerberg, jan; mowery, david c. 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bose, marc (eds.) 2007: schrumpfung an der peripherie. ein modellvorhaben – und was kommunen daraus lernen können. münchen: oekom. wirth, peter et al. 2016: peripheralisation of small towns in germany and japan – dealing with economic decline and population loss. in: journal of rural studies 47, part a: 62-75 [doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.07.021]. date of submission: 24.02.2016 date of acceptance: 06.02.2017 prof. dr. anke matuschewski (), marcel demuth. university of bayreuth. bayreuth, germany. e-mail: anke.matuschewski@uni-bayreuth.de; marcel.demuth@googlemail.com url: http://www.wigeo.uni-bayreuth.de associate professor dr. birgit leick. østfold university college, faculty of business, languages, and social sciences. norway. e-mail: birgit.leick@hiof.no url: http://www.hiof.no/om-hogskolen/enheter/avdeling-for-okonomi_-sprak-ogsamfunnsfag/om-avdelingen/ansatte published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) living arrangements of young adults in europe living arrangements of young adults in europe* katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder abstract: comparative research suggests that there are great cross-national and cross-temporal differences in living arrangements of young adults aged 18-34 in europe. in this paper, we examine young adults’ living arrangements (1) across several european countries and different national contexts, and (2) by taking into account cross-time variability. in doing so, we pay careful attention to a comprehensive conceptualisation of living arrangements (including extended and non-family living arrangements). the aim of this paper is to deepen our understanding of family structure and household arrangements in europe by examining and mapping the cross-national and cross-temporal variety of young adults’ living arrangements. for our analysis we use data from the integrated public use microdata series international (ipumsi) for the census rounds 1980, 1990, and 2000 for eight european countries (austria, france, greece, hungary, ireland, portugal, romania, and switzerland). we employ log-linear models to ascertain the infl uence of individual and contextual factors on living arrangements. the analyses lend further support to a north/west – south/east divide in living arrangements and general gender differentials in extended family living. other interesting results are the heterogeneity in the living arrangements of single mothers across geographic areas, and the upward trend of extended household living for young men and women between 1980 and 2000. keywords: living arrangements · young adults · ipums-international · transition to adulthood · europe comparative population studies vol. 40, 4 (2015): 367-398 (date of release: 25.11.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-14en5 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2015-15en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/ view/158/216. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/158/216 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder368 1 introduction a high degree of diversity in the living arrangements of young adults has long been a characteristic european feature (kuijsten 1996; blossfeld et al. 2006; fokkema/ liefbroer 2008). empirical research has lent particular support to strong regional patterns across groups of countries in europe. western and northern europe, for example, are generally characterised by small households (consisting of only the nuclear family members), non-familial arrangements (particularly living alone and shared arrangements), and non-residential relationships (iacovou/skew 2011). conversely, southern europe is generally characterised by large households where young adults live with their parents well into their 20s and are likely to leave home to marry rather than to live in cohabitation or as singles. the living arrangements in central and eastern europe are in many respects most similar to southern europe, with large households, late home-leaving, and a high frequency of multi-generational households (ahmed/emigh 2005; iacovou/skew 2011). explanations for these regional patterns in young adults’ living arrangements stress, on the one hand, institutional differences in terms of the mode and scope of welfare state provisions (e.g., esping-andersen 1990) and, on the other hand, long-term, persistent cultural differences (e.g., hajnal 1965; kertzer 1991; reher 1998) between broad geographical regions and along a north-south divide in europe. numerous demographic studies have also revealed that the diversity and destandardisation of family forms, relationship and parenthood patterns in europe has increased even further since the second half of the 20th century (rindfuss 1991; corijn/klijzing 2001; brüderl 2004; elzinga/liefbroer 2007; sobotka/toulemon 2008; sobotka 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010). these changes seem to follow a rather similar trajectory all across europe – in fact so much so that they sparked theoretical discourses on the discontinuation of the family as an institution. europeans are generally marrying later within the life course, and more are remaining unmarried; divorce rates have increased; non-marital cohabitation and non-marital childbearing have become more common; and “new” family forms and households (i.e., stepfamilies, living apart together arrangements) have gained visibility (corijn/klijzing 2001; brüderl 2004; billari/liefbroer 2010). against this backdrop, we focus on (1) how much diversity in living arrangements is observable across european countries and (2) how the living arrangements of young adults have changed between 1980 and 2000, using data from the integrated public use microdata series international (ipumsi) for the census rounds 1980, 1990, and 2000 for eight european countries (austria, france, greece, hungary, ireland, portugal, romania, and switzerland). unlike previous research (e.g., fokkema/liefbroer 2008) – which mainly examined a small set of living arrangements and has not paid a great deal of attention to the prevalence and variations in extended living arrangements – we provide a detailed picture of young adults’ living arrangements (including extended and non-family arrangements) and compare living arrangements between various groups of young adults (men and women; older and younger; people who live in different groups of countries). in doing so, we contribute to the demographic literature on the growing complexity of family forms and living arrangements of young adults in europe • 369 living arrangements across europe by mapping the extent to which young adults are surrounded by their families in a variety of living arrangements in a much more detailed way than previous research did. furthermore, we add to the debate about whether there is an asynchrony of changes in living arrangements between european countries and to what extent european diversity in young adults’ living arrangements remains. 2 background this section presents a recap of what we know so far about young adults’ living arrangements in europe. first, we discuss variation in the prevalence of living arrangements over time and present theoretical frameworks describing the dynamics and bounds of variation for european societies. second, we discuss variation in the prevalence of living arrangements across countries and highlight the way institutional arrangements shape choices of living arrangements. we then synthesise the fi ndings of empirical research to describe more specifi cally how young adults live across contemporary europe and identify knowledge gaps. 2.1 processes of social change europe witnessed profound and sometimes even radical changes in marriage and family life in the second half of the 20th century. in many countries, marriage and fertility rates have declined, divorce rates have increased, and unmarried cohabitation has become more common. in addition, the ways in which families live together have changed, as well. young adults in most western countries, for example, have postponed leaving the parental home, marriage, and parenthood – with various complex living arrangements characterising this trend. at the same time, living alone has increased particularly among working-age adults (e.g., sobotka/ toulemon 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010). some theorists have posited that these weakened traditional family patterns refl ect underlying value changes and an overall shift towards privacy and autonomy, coined the second demographic transition (sdt) (lesthaeghe 1995). while the sdt predicts convergence of living arrangements over time, comparative research has highlighted that there are critical interdependencies between the sdt and social policies and cultural backgrounds thus suggesting persistent cross-national diversity in young adults’ living arrangements (kuijsten 1996; sobotka 2008). other theorists applied a modernisation and globalisation perspective which underlines the increasing structural uncertainties in the domain of labour markets, fi nance, education, and family (blossfeld et al. 2006; mills/blossfeld 2013). from this perspective, globalisation processes – specifi cally the internationalisation of markets, the intensifi cation of competition, the spread of global networks, and the rising importance of markets (blossfeld et al. 2006: 2) – have generated labour market transformations and labour market instability (e.g., risk of unemployment, fi xed-term contracts). this in turn affected family forms and living arrangements as • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder370 young people have tended to remain in education longer, enter the labour market at later ages, and increasingly postpone family formation. the proponents of this globalisation perspective, however, add an important specifi cation to their model by considering country-specifi c and historically grown institutional settings and social structures that modify the impact of structural uncertainties. consequently, young adults across different european countries and regions are not affected uniformly in the same way and a convergence to a new common pattern of living arrangements is empirically not observable (blossfeld et al. 2006; sobotka/toulemon 2008). in this vein, some authors have particularly pointed to the role of welfare regimes shaping the impact of economic and social developments (breen/buchmann 2002). a specifi c case of social change is the transformation in the central and eastern european countries at the beginning of the 1990s, which happened more rapidly, more dramatically (e.g., the restructuring of welfare and policy regimes) and often in directions opposite to developments in western europe. this transformation brought drastic changes to family life: young adults postponed family formation and substituted non-marital cohabitation for marriage, fertility generally declined (while the proportion of extra-marital births increased), and average household size declined (while the proportion of people living alone increased) (e.g., sobotka/toulemon 2008). 2.2 conceptualising european diversity in living arrangements apart from changes across time, cross-national research furthermore suggests a signifi cant impact of relatively stable institutional arrangements – like welfare regimes and policy environments – on young adults’ living arrangements across europe (e.g., daatland/herlofson 2003; aassve et al. 2005; albertini et al. 2007; albertini/kohli 2013; chiuri/del boca 2007; gauthier 2007; steinbach 2012). espingandersen (1990, 1999) developed a typology of welfare regimes which has gained a pivotal role in explaining how qualitatively different welfare state provisions and employment and family policies across countries translate into different family structures and living arrangements. the main argument is that living arrangements are infl uenced by the organisation and provision of social care, namely by the degree to which welfare regimes are either familistic or individualistic. in countries with familistic regimes (such as spain, italy, and greece), care for children or the elderly is mainly provided by the familial household and there are hardly any family policies supporting young adults or parents. conversely, in countries with individualistic welfare regimes (such as denmark, sweden, norway, finland, belgium and france), care for children or the elderly is provided by the state. young adults can thus rely on a number of governmental aids and services in order to live independently from their parents. empirical fi ndings generally underscore the importance of welfare regimes – and their considerable and stable cross-national variation in the nature of provisions and policies – for shaping young adults’ living arrangements across europe (e.g., aassve et al. 2002; breen/buchmann 2002; aassve et al. 2005). however, the literature has also pointed to problems in disentangling the effect of institutional arrangements and longstanding sociocultural differences (kalmijn/ living arrangements of young adults in europe • 371 saraceno 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010). researchers have long pointed to systemic variation in family forms and cultures – which loosely follows a north/west-south/ east divide and remains remarkably resilient – to account for living arrangement patterns as well as patterns of family solidarity and family obligations (hajnal 1965; kertzer 1991; daatland/herlofson 2003; hank 2007; kalmijn/saraceno 2008; albertini/kohli 2013). reher (1998) argues that northern and southern european countries differ with respect to family ties. in countries with strong family ties, there are strong norms of intergenerational support, and people are more responsive to the needs of their family members (reher 1998; kalmijn/saraceno 2008). in addition, prolonged coresidence of children with parents in extended family households is more common (aassve et al. 2002). in countries with weak family ties, adult family members are more strongly committed to residential autonomy, young adults leave the parental home comparatively early, and living alone or living in nuclear households is very common. 2.3 young adults’ living arrangements in europe we know from the literature in family demography that young adults’ living arrangements vary greatly across europe (e.g., kiernan 1986; lesthaeghe/moors 1995; kuijsten 1996; iacovou 2004; hantrais 2006; fokkema/liefbroer 2008; kalmijn/saraceno 2008; sobotka/toulemon 2008; hoem et al. 2009; iacovou/skew 2010, 2011). first, young adults tend to leave the parental home comparatively early in western and northern europe. the mean age at leaving home, for example, varies between 20 years in finland and over 27 years in italy for young women, and between under 22 years in finland and denmark to almost 30 years in italy for young men (iacovou/skew 2010). the share of young adults living with their parents is thus lower in western and northern europe compared to southern and eastern europe; and of those young adults who lived with their parents less than 1 percent in denmark, the netherlands, ireland and luxembourg were in a union which means living with a partner (please note that although using the terms union, relationship and couple interchangeably, we always refer to living with a partner). this proportion rises, however, to 8 percent and more in lithuania, latvia and poland, and even up to 17.8 percent in romania and 19.3 percent in bulgaria (choroszewicz/wolff 2010). second, living as a couple is generally a common living arrangement among young adults all across europe, but again there are substantial differences: relationship formation starts early in the northern and western countries and rather late in the southern european countries. for example, 48 percent of young men (aged 25) in finland are in relationships compared to 8 percent in italy (iacovou 2004). furthermore, young adults in northern and western europe far more often opt for unmarried cohabitation, whereas their counterparts in southern europe tend to live with a partner to whom they are married. in central and eastern europe, relationships – not necessarily married – are formed early and young couples tend to have children early in the course of their relationship. the share of young adults living in relationships with children is thus high in central and eastern europe, but levels of unmarried cohabitation vary across the region (toulemon/sobotka 2008; hoem et • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder372 al. 2009). third, northern and western european households are relatively small, in part because the nuclear family is a dominant household type, but also because the proportion of single households is relatively high. living alone is generally much more common at all ages in northern and western europe than in southern and eastern europe, but particularly so at younger ages. after having left the parental home, many young adults in northern and western europe live alone before cohabiting or marrying and are thus more likely to live alone than their southern and eastern european counterparts (fokkema/liefbroer 2008). in southern and eastern europe, however, households are larger and more often involve forms of the extended family. it is common, for example, that cohabiting or married young adults live with their parents (and possibly other relatives) (ahmed/emigh 2005; toulemon/sobotka 2008; iacovou/skew 2011). in addition, chambaz (2001) showed that between 25 percent and 40 percent of single parents in southern europe live with their parents or other relatives. although the literature has thus illustrated cross-national differences in living arrangements, it is important to note that many (descriptive) studies examined only a limited number of living arrangements in detail. typically studies look at, for example, the prevalence of “young adults living with parents”, “young adults living alone”, and “young adults living in union”, but not at the prevalence of extended or non-family living arrangements – which are grouped together with various other living arrangements (such as living as single parents or living in collective households, for example) in the residual category “other” (e.g., iacovou 2004; fokkema/ liefbroer 2008; sobotka/toulemon 2008). this might be the case because there are few extended-family households in northern and western europe, but also because extended and non-family living arrangements (e.g., living with non-relatives) have only lately garnered scientifi c attention. the challenge is to accommodate extended and non-family living arrangements in family and household demography. more recently, iacovou and skew (2011) used eu-silc data to study the household composition in europe and explicitly included extended family households. this study provides important insight into the different family forms and living arrangements in europe. besides investigating differences in household composition it is, however, also important to investigate individuals in various living arrangements – in order to get a detailed picture of how young adults live and are surrounded by their families across europe and how this has changed over time. 3 data and methods we use pooled census microdata for the census rounds 1980, 1990, and 2000 from eight countries (austria, france, greece, hungary, ireland, portugal, romania, and switzerland) to compare the living arrangements of young adults across europe. (note that we have grouped the exact census date by round, i.e., 1980, 1990 and 2000. table 1 presents the exact census dates). we chose these eight countries on the basis of data availability, but also because comparisons among them illustrate particularly well cross-national differences in living arrangements across major living arrangements of young adults in europe • 373 european regions: north and western (austria, france, ireland, and switzerland), southern (greece and portugal) and central–eastern europe (hungary and romania). for the sake of simplicity, we refer to them as western europe, southern and eastern europe, respectively. this geographic grouping has been used, for example, by iacovou (2013) in previous research on living arrangements. it moreover follows the longstanding sociocultural systems described above, for example by hajnal (1965) and reher (1998), as well as the regional differences of welfare regimes across europe (esping-andersen 1990). the census samples were obtained from the integrated public use microdata series international (ipumsi) data archive (minnesota population center 2011) and consist of approximately 5 percent of the french, hungarian, portuguese, and swiss population, and 10 percent of the austrian, greek, irish, and romanian population. we restrict the data analysis to young adults (i.e., men and women aged 18-34) because across all european countries, it is in this age range that the transition to adulthood unfolds, thus producing variability in living arrangements. it is important to note that there is no clear-cut defi nition of young adults in the demographic literature, mainly because it is diffi cult to identify the exact end of the transition to adulthood. therefore, we make a rather arbitrary choice to set the upper age limit to 34 to account for increases in the time spent in education and trends towards leaving the parental home later. furthermore, we exclude those young adults living in collective households (e.g., student dorms or military barracks) and those with missing values on the dependent variables. missing values (i.e., refusals or don’t knows) are only a minor issue, affecting at most 2 percent of the observations in our sample. the fi nal sample size is 6,119,500. the ipumsi data are a unique source of information for cross-country analyses at the european level due to its standardised methodology and harmonised questionnaires, procedure in data collection, high response rates, and large sample sizes. they include a wide variety of useful and harmonised information, including indicators of household relationships – from which we construct measures of living arrangements – and key demographic and socioeconomic factors (e.g., age and tab. 1: available information and exact census dates for 8 european countries, 1980s-2000s 1980s 1990s 2000s greece 1981 1991 2001 portugal 1981 1991 2001 romania 1977 1992 2002 hungary 1980 1990 2001 ireland 1981 1991 2002 france 1982 1990 1999 switzerland 1980 1990 2000 austria 1981 1991 2001 source: ipumsi • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder374 gender). although the ipumsi data are a useful and rich source to examine differentials and trends in living arrangements across europe, they have certain limitations. first, the ipumsi data are cross-sectional and thus we cannot assess changes in the timing and the frequency of transitions between different living arrangements. second, apart from demographic variables the ipumsi data do not contain other relevant information that might affect young adults’ living arrangements (e.g. preferences, attitudes, and family values). third, the data do not contain information on all european countries – especially information on scandinavian countries is missing – and ipumsi data thus can only be used to identify changes and patterns in a small part of europe. 3.1 measurements we use the “family relationship variables”– harmonised pointer variables that identify the presence of mother, father, spouse, and children for all household members – (sobek/kennedy 2009) in the ipumsi to create nine mutually exclusive living arrangements based on the respective relationship and parental status of the young adult, and the information whether the young adults live in an extended family household: (1) with parents; (2) alone; (3) as a couple; (4) as a couple with parents and/or extended family; (5) as a couple with children; (6) as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family; (7) as single parent; (8) as a single parent with parents and/or extended family; or (9) sharing with others. an extended family household captures multiple generations (such as young adults and their parents), multiple relatives (such as siblings or any other relatives), non-relatives, or a combination of both living together. the category with parents jointly considers cases where young adults only live with their parents as well as cases in which young adults live with their parents and additional extended family members. it is possible that living alone and living with an unmarried partner are underreported in census data, because many young adults in europe do not register address changes when leaving the parental home to live alone or with a partner or continue to report the parents’ household as place of residence if they keep returning to the parental home occasionally (sobotka/toulemon 2008). we do not know how large such a bias is in the ipumsi data. the category sharing with others refers to shared – but noninstitutional – accommodation of non-relatives, such as e.g., young adults sharing a fl at with friends. by using this broad categorisation, we aim to capture a wide variety of young adults’ living arrangements in different stages of their life course. because the ipumsi data do not collect information about absent spouses or partners, our categorisation is, however, limited in regard to non-standard living arrangements (i.e., non-cohabiting couples and living apart together relationships). it is also important to note that we cannot account for multi-residence (i.e., young adults living in more living arrangements of young adults in europe • 375 than one household).1 in addition to living arrangements we use the following categorical variables: (1) country (8 categories: austria, france, greece, hungary, ireland, portugal, romania, and switzerland), (2) year (3 categories: 1980, 1990, 2000), and (3) age (4 categories: 18-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34). the latter variable captures the effects of age-norms and age-graded transitions in the life course. research suggests that important life course events (i.e., leaving the parental home, getting married, or having a child) are guided by specifi c age norms, which in turn affect residential choices and living arrangements (see for example: billari/liefbroer 2007). the four age groupings used refl ect those used commonly in census data. because the scope of this article is already quite broad, we abstain from examining educational, social class or ethnicity differences in young adults’ living arrangements. studies have, however, shown that socio-economic characteristics (e.g., education and economic activity) and ethnicity shape young adults’ residential decisions and living arrangements (stone et al. 2011; zorlu/mulder 2010). 3.2 modelling strategy and method we fi rst calculate the weighted percentage distribution for men and women by age group, year and country in order to examine prevalence and overall change in living arrangements of young adults in europe. subsequently, we specify log-linear models for contingency tables to adjust for the changing marginal distributions of variables (e.g., country, year, or age group) that sort young adults into different living arrangements and to describe the associations between the variables in a standardised way. we assess whether: (1) there are cross-national differences in living arrangements, (2) there are cross-temporal differences in living arrangements, and (3) the age pattern in living arrangements differs across countries. log-linear models are a special case of the general linear model (glm) for poisson – distributed data and are a powerful tool to analyse the relationships among different categorical variables – particularly for multi-way contingency tables (i.e., tables with more than 2 x 2 categorical variables). log-linear models predict the expected frequencies in a contingency table, considering both main effects (that pertain to differences among the marginal distribution of a variable) and interaction effects (that pertain to associations between variables). they are different to other glm’s in that the cell counts are the response and there is thus no formal distinction in dependent and independent variables among the categorical variables in the model (agresti 2013). a particular advantage of log-linear modelling for our purpose is that we can analyse the associations between demographic variables and changes over time net of changes in demographic composition. 1 in most censuses, some rules are applied in order to avoid double-counting of individuals (most often by restricting the observation of individuals to their main dwelling), but these rules do not allow for an accurate description of multi-residence (i.e., individuals living usually in two dwellings). • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder376 in order to identify a best-fi tting log-linear model of living arrangements, we tested, by process of backward elimination, whether any components could be removed from the saturated model (i.e., a model including all interaction and main effects). we rely on the bayesian information criterion to assess the model fi t, because χ2 – based test statistics may be overly sensitive to departures from the null hypothesis due to the large sample size (raftery 1995). our results (table a1) indicate that a more parsimonious model than the saturated model does not fi t well, since the relationship between the four variables is not homogeneous. the log-linear model for a four-way contingency table is thus formulated below. l refers to the respondent’s living arrangement (with i = 1, … 9), c refers to the respondent’s country of residence (with j = 1, … 8), y refers to the year (with k = 1, … 3), and a refers to the age group (with t = 1, … 4). the statistic fijkt represents the number of young adults in each cell of the cross-tabulation of living arrangement, country, year, and age group (9 × 8 × 3 × 4= 864 cells): because we apply effect coding, μ refl ects the grand mean of all observations. in addition to controlling for marginal distributions of the categorical variables ( ), we also account for the four-way interaction between living arrangement, country of residence, year, and age group ( ) and all lower-order interactions. note that we (1) estimate separate but analogous log-linear models for men and women, (2) focus on selected key parameters from the saturated model for women and men, respectively, rather than interpreting all 864 parameters, and (3) enhance substantive interpretations by looking at model parameter estimates with an effect size larger than .10 (corresponding to a 10 percent over-representation compared with a distribution determined by the marginal distributions only) and which are signifi cant at the 5 percent level. we choose a cut-off at .10 in order to simplify the presentation of the results and not to present (negligibly) small effects (tables a2a7 present all parameters for the two-way and three-way interactions for men and women, respectively). note, too, that while the saturated log-linear models do not as such tell us something we do not know from the raw numbers in the descriptive table, they allow better representing higher-order interaction terms and assessing signifi cance and effect size of the parameters. 4 results 4.1 cross-national differences in living arrangements the weighted percentage distributions for men and women (tables 2 and 3, respectively) show that there are considerable regional differences: living as a couple is more common in france and switzerland than in southern (greece and portugal) and eastern (hungary and romania) europe, while southern and eastern europeans (1) living arrangements of young adults in europe • 377 ta b . 2 : d is tr ib u tio n o f l iv in g ar ra ng em en ts o f m en in e ur o p ea n co un tr ie s b y ag e g ro up in 1 98 0, 1 99 0 an d 2 00 0 ty p e o f l iv in g a u st ri a (a t ) s w it ze rl an d (c h ) fr an ce ( fr ) ir el an d ( ie ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 18 -1 9 (n = 13 ,6 34 ) (n = 11 ,0 35 ) (n = 9, 98 6) (n = 3, 51 7) (n = 4, 50 7) (n = 3, 76 8) (n = 42 ,5 46 ) (n = 37 ,6 37 ) (n = 40 ,8 38 ) (n = 5, 30 7) (n = 3, 60 1) (n = 7, 36 7) w it h p ar en ts 94 .1 2 93 .2 3 94 .1 1 89 .2 8 89 .0 6 89 .4 4 88 .8 3 89 .4 5 8 4. 53 92 .8 6 95 .3 3 89 .7 5 al o n e 2. 56 2. 37 3. 66 4. 04 3. 53 4. 86 3. 18 3. 59 6. 97 1. 09 0. 97 0. 56 as a c o u p le 0. 69 0. 61 0. 63 0. 65 0. 36 0. 61 1. 21 0. 94 0. 86 0. 34 0. 08 0. 29 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 25 0. 43 0. 18 0. 03 0. 20 0. 08 0. 17 0. 12 0. 16 0. 13 0. 28 0. 18 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 0. 46 0. 36 0. 24 0. 17 0. 04 0. 13 0. 53 0. 33 0. 33 0. 83 0. 06 0. 11 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 22 0. 30 0. 14 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 11 0. 05 0. 05 0. 19 0. 14 0. 01 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 03 0. 00 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 01 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 02 0. 00 0. 00 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 1. 67 2. 69 1. 04 5. 83 6. 81 4. 86 5. 97 5. 53 7. 09 4. 54 3. 14 9. 11 20 -2 4 (n = 30 ,5 29 ) (n = 33 ,4 34 ) (n = 23 ,9 91 ) (n = 9, 83 2) (n = 13 ,1 50 ) (n = 9, 88 1) (n = 10 2, 89 9) (n = 89 ,3 90 ) (n = 95 ,9 40 ) (n = 11 ,5 61 ) (n = 10 ,9 30 ) (n = 18 ,6 63 ) w it h p ar en ts 69 .7 0 71 .1 2 73 .7 3 58 .5 7 58 .8 1 63 .6 9 55 .6 0 61 .8 5 61 .1 7 75 .1 1 82 .0 2 78 .1 8 al o n e 7. 30 8. 58 12 .0 4 14 .3 1 15 .4 6 17 .5 5 8. 97 10 .6 3 14 .9 1 2. 89 3. 01 1. 75 as a c o u p le 7. 02 6. 40 5. 64 9. 61 10 .8 2 7. 26 16 .0 9 12 .8 4 10 .0 9 5. 82 2. 16 2. 52 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 68 1. 83 1. 17 0. 52 0. 70 0. 66 0. 86 0. 59 0. 60 1. 30 1. 20 0. 87 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 8. 74 5. 27 3. 75 4. 88 2. 87 1. 94 10 .5 0 6. 12 3. 38 9. 97 3. 75 1. 55 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 35 1. 34 0. 99 0. 40 0. 20 0. 21 0. 64 0. 39 0. 24 1. 73 1. 13 0. 21 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 09 0. 05 0. 05 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 03 0. 02 0. 06 0. 01 0. 01 0. 03 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 08 0. 09 0. 05 0. 02 0. 01 0. 02 0. 04 0. 01 0. 03 0. 03 0. 05 0. 05 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 3. 04 5. 31 2. 57 11 .6 8 11 .1 3 8. 66 7. 27 7. 55 9. 52 3. 13 6. 68 14 .8 4 • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder378 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n ty p e o f l iv in g a u st ri a (a t ) s w it ze rl an d (c h ) fr an ce ( fr ) ir el an d ( ie ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 25 -2 9 (n = 25 ,9 91 ) (n = 35 ,9 40 ) (n = 26 ,9 88 ) (n = 10 ,8 20 ) (n = 15 ,0 98 )( n= 11 ,2 35 ) (n = 10 2, 58 8) (n = 89 ,3 31 ) (n = 10 6, 13 1) (n = 10 ,4 60 ) (n = 11 ,1 09 ) (n = 16 ,1 96 ) w it h p ar en ts 31 .4 5 38 .6 3 42 .7 5 20 .6 2 22 .0 4 23 .4 9 17 .5 8 23 .6 4 27 .5 8 34 .4 6 4 4. 38 51 .0 2 al o n e 9. 38 12 .0 8 18 .4 9 16 .5 2 22 .9 1 29 .9 7 9. 70 13 .7 8 17 .6 8 4. 71 5. 60 4. 71 as a c o u p le 12 .4 6 11 .8 6 12 .7 2 21 .2 2 24 .8 8 23 .8 2 18 .7 0 21 .2 4 24 .3 6 13 .9 2 11 .8 7 13 .4 7 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 02 2. 27 1. 99 1. 04 1. 05 1. 07 1. 08 0. 89 1. 02 1. 63 2. 97 2. 72 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 35 .1 0 24 .6 2 17 .7 3 27 .2 8 18 .9 4 12 .7 5 46 .4 6 34 .5 7 23 .5 2 39 .9 3 24 .6 8 10 .2 1 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d e x te n d ed fa m ily 6. 22 4. 47 3. 11 1. 66 1. 02 0. 79 1. 95 1. 37 0. 97 2. 92 3. 49 1. 11 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 24 0. 24 0. 23 0. 05 0. 06 0. 16 0. 18 0. 15 0. 21 0. 16 0. 14 0. 09 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 16 0. 31 0. 16 0. 14 0. 01 0. 04 0. 13 0. 07 0. 15 0. 09 0. 13 0. 09 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 2. 97 5. 50 2. 82 11 .4 8 9. 09 7. 92 4. 22 4. 30 4. 50 2. 18 6. 74 16 .5 7 30 -3 4 (n = 26 ,9 81 ) (n = 31 ,7 71 ) (n = 33 ,6 82 ) (n = 12 ,4 27 ) (n = 14 ,3 22 )( n= 13 ,6 00 ) (n = 10 8, 42 4) (n = 89 ,2 62 ) (n = 10 6, 25 6) (n = 9, 87 1) (n = 11 ,8 97 ) (n = 15 ,0 38 ) w it h p ar en ts 13 .8 4 19 .4 8 22 .0 7 8. 80 8. 94 8. 53 8. 19 10 .5 8 12 .6 2 16 .9 9 20 .2 5 26 .8 3 al o n e 8. 63 11 .0 2 17 .7 9 11 .6 0 17 .4 3 25 .5 5 7. 17 10 .7 1 14 .9 7 4. 54 5. 47 6. 57 as a c o u p le 10 .7 0 10 .2 0 11 .8 6 15 .0 8 19 .4 0 22 .9 9 9. 16 11 .1 9 13 .9 2 7. 46 10 .3 1 17 .5 8 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 32 1. 50 1. 42 0. 80 0. 91 0. 69 0. 60 0. 51 0. 72 0. 74 2. 03 2. 41 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 54 .7 6 45 .8 7 38 .8 5 53 .4 4 4 4. 68 36 .2 4 67 .6 8 61 .3 3 52 .2 9 64 .7 0 51 .8 6 33 .4 0 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d e x te n d ed fa m ily 7. 75 6. 18 4. 79 3. 32 2. 36 1. 26 3. 18 2. 04 1. 77 3. 18 5. 30 3. 25 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 47 0. 60 0. 47 0. 14 0. 29 0. 39 0. 41 0. 38 0. 4 8 0. 53 0. 50 0. 32 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 26 0. 53 0. 29 0. 11 0. 09 0. 06 0. 19 0. 13 0. 23 0. 23 0. 27 0. 23 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 2. 27 4. 62 2. 46 6. 72 5. 90 4. 29 3. 42 3. 13 2. 99 1. 63 4. 02 9. 40 living arrangements of young adults in europe • 379 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n ty p e o f l iv in g h u n g ar y (h u ) r o m an ia ( r o ) p o rt u g al ( p t ) g re ec e (g r ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 18 -1 9 (n = 7, 15 6) (n = 7, 34 8) (n = 6, 90 7) (n = 25 ,3 08 ) (n = 33 ,1 85 ) (n = 29 ,1 02 ) (n = 8, 53 1) (n = 8, 56 3) (n = 7, 42 1) (n = 11 ,3 26 ) (n = 10 ,8 61 ) (n = 12 ,9 91 ) w it h p ar en ts 81 .4 1 85 .0 6 82 .4 2 90 .9 5 95 .4 4 96 .4 8 95 .4 2 96 .7 2 95 .8 9 91 .2 1 93 .7 1 91 .3 1 al o n e 3. 75 3. 28 2. 82 2. 09 0. 92 1. 16 1. 14 0. 69 1. 27 5. 02 3. 95 5. 40 as a c o u p le 0. 95 0. 64 0. 42 1. 56 0. 46 0. 35 1. 04 0. 55 0. 58 0. 27 0. 10 0. 18 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 02 0. 57 0. 74 1. 73 1. 32 0. 96 0. 75 0. 68 0. 4 4 0. 39 0. 18 0. 13 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 0. 91 0. 97 0. 56 0. 97 0. 4 8 0. 40 0. 75 0. 60 0. 47 0. 34 0. 15 0. 22 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 67 0. 60 0. 55 0. 88 0. 88 0. 66 0. 47 0. 39 0. 40 0. 19 0. 13 0. 10 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 07 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 06 0. 08 0. 00 0. 05 0. 05 0. 00 0. 01 0. 02 0. 00 0. 05 0. 00 0. 01 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 11 .1 7 8. 79 12 .4 8 1. 77 0. 45 0. 00 0. 42 0. 36 0. 94 2. 52 1. 78 2. 64 20 24 (n = 20 ,5 60 ) (n = 17 ,2 14 ) (n = 19 ,9 43 ) (n = 73 ,8 89 ) (n = 95 ,0 77 ) (n = 82 ,4 77 ) (n = 19 ,5 13 ) (n = 19 ,5 4 8) (n = 19 ,9 79 ) (n = 23 ,3 83 ) (n = 31 ,5 98 ) (n = 37 ,2 21 ) w it h p ar en ts 57 .7 4 63 .8 7 71 .4 2 64 .8 8 67 .1 8 80 .8 2 68 .7 4 79 .7 4 81 .0 0 74 .4 8 83 .9 5 85 .4 0 al o n e 5. 37 6. 43 5. 46 3. 40 2. 60 2. 90 2. 00 1. 60 3. 60 7. 36 6. 08 6. 21 as a c o u p le 5. 54 5. 98 4. 65 8. 61 5. 37 3. 32 6. 46 5. 38 5. 28 4. 14 2. 60 1. 77 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 4. 60 3. 49 2. 68 5. 81 8. 29 5. 02 4. 33 3. 08 1. 92 2. 13 1. 10 0. 90 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 12 .2 3 8. 93 4. 77 10 .7 2 8. 29 3. 71 12 .0 7 6. 49 4. 93 5. 82 2. 82 1. 43 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 6. 22 3. 26 1. 94 5. 19 7. 30 4. 19 5. 56 3. 03 1. 69 2. 68 1. 05 0. 63 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 40 0. 53 0. 04 0. 06 0. 04 0. 01 0. 03 0. 01 0. 02 0. 04 0. 01 0. 01 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 27 0. 41 0. 08 0. 20 0. 25 0. 04 0. 12 0. 08 0. 11 0. 10 0. 05 0. 02 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 7. 63 7. 10 8. 97 1. 13 0. 70 0. 00 0. 70 0. 60 1. 47 3. 24 2. 34 3. 63 • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder380 ty p e o f l iv in g h u n g ar y (h u ) r o m an ia ( r o ) p o rt u g al ( p t ) g re ec e (g r ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 25 -2 9 (n = 22 ,3 95 ) (n = 15 ,8 32 ) (n = 18 ,6 89 ) (n = 72 ,8 32 ) (n = 61 ,4 91 ) (n = 83 ,6 18 ) (n = 16 ,9 49 ) (n = 17 ,6 78 ) (n = 20 ,3 39 ) (n = 29 ,9 23 ) (n = 31 ,3 83 ) (n = 39 ,3 67 ) w it h p ar en ts 24 .5 3 28 .4 6 43 .6 1 18 .1 6 26 .0 4 40 .9 1 24 .7 2 38 .9 7 46 .8 6 40 .3 7 55 .0 3 66 .1 4 al o n e 5. 46 7. 97 8. 17 4. 11 4. 08 3. 96 2. 49 2. 42 5. 31 6. 08 5. 82 6. 55 as a c o u p le 7. 66 8. 16 12 .5 3 12 .6 7 7. 87 9. 59 9. 85 11 .6 6 16 .2 0 9. 35 9. 03 8. 80 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 4. 16 3. 22 3. 67 5. 05 5. 87 8. 22 3. 68 3. 54 2. 66 3. 07 2. 59 2. 42 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 41 .4 2 38 .5 4 24 .6 0 45 .1 3 38 .6 8 21 .6 5 4 4. 66 33 .4 5 22 .1 0 28 .9 7 19 .8 3 10 .0 8 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 11 .7 6 7. 98 4. 64 13 .5 6 16 .0 6 15 .3 2 13 .5 6 8. 97 4. 77 10 .5 1 5. 37 2. 76 as s in g le p ar en t 1. 03 1. 60 0. 15 0. 26 0. 17 0. 12 0. 06 0. 08 0. 08 0. 09 0. 09 0. 04 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 43 0. 62 0. 16 0. 41 0. 62 0. 23 0. 22 0. 30 0. 25 0. 25 0. 22 0. 13 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 3. 55 3. 46 2. 4 8 0. 64 0. 61 0. 00 0. 77 0. 61 1. 78 1. 31 2. 04 3. 07 30 -3 4 (n = 18 ,9 34 ) (n = 19 ,3 71 ) (n = 16 ,2 66 ) (n = 58 ,6 36 ) (n = 75 ,8 52 ) (n = 95 ,9 78 ) (n = 15 ,2 68 ) (n = 16 ,7 49 ) (n = 19 ,1 18 ) (n = 30 ,5 91 ) (n = 32 ,7 93 ) (n = 40 ,5 52 ) w it h p ar en ts 12 .3 5 17 .2 7 20 .9 0 7. 14 13 .0 1 18 .9 8 9. 20 15 .9 1 22 .3 4 17 .0 3 26 .4 8 38 .3 6 al o n e 5. 03 7. 43 8. 13 3. 00 4. 08 4. 00 1. 93 2. 58 5. 22 4. 42 4. 79 6. 62 as a c o u p le 4. 87 5. 41 8. 93 7. 57 5. 27 7. 07 5. 17 6. 55 11 .7 2 7. 24 8. 51 11 .8 8 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 68 1. 55 1. 28 2. 31 2. 12 3. 96 1. 82 2. 00 1. 78 2. 12 2. 34 2. 78 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 59 .6 1 54 .9 2 53 .3 3 62 .5 7 59 .4 0 4 4. 56 64 .9 8 59 .4 1 49 .3 2 51 .9 4 45 .2 4 31 .3 7 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 12 .0 9 8. 22 4. 71 16 .0 1 14 .3 0 20 .5 9 16 .0 9 12 .2 6 7. 30 16 .0 4 10 .6 6 6. 33 as s in g le p ar en t 1. 32 2. 18 0. 49 0. 45 0. 4 4 0. 33 0. 20 0. 24 0. 26 0. 19 0. 31 0. 18 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 4 4 0. 87 0. 24 0. 52 0. 81 0. 52 0. 21 0. 43 0. 4 4 0. 41 0. 55 0. 39 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 2. 59 2. 14 1. 99 0. 43 0. 56 0. 00 0. 41 0. 63 1. 63 0. 61 1. 12 2. 08 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n n o te : n = 3 ,0 69 ,0 66 . u nw ei gh te d n a nd w ei gh te d p er ce nt ag es . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n ip u m s i. living arrangements of young adults in europe • 381 ta b . 3 : d is tr ib u tio n o f l iv in g ar ra ng em en ts o f w o m en in e ur o p ea n co un tr ie s b y ag e g ro up in 1 98 0, 1 99 0 an d 2 00 0 ty p e o f l iv in g a u st ri a (a t ) s w it ze rl an d (c h ) fr an ce ( fr ) ir el an d ( ie ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 18 -1 9 (n = 13 ,0 51 ) (n = 10 ,6 56 ) (n = 9, 77 5) (n = 3, 20 5) (n = 4, 37 7) (n = 3, 58 8) (n = 41 ,8 37 ) (n = 36 ,0 78 ) (n = 38 ,9 00 ) (n = 4, 85 4) (n = 2, 85 0) (n = 6, 97 2) w it h p ar en ts 80 .0 6 8 4. 16 87 .2 5 73 .3 5 80 .3 5 8 4. 45 75 .8 8 80 .7 9 77 .1 5 87 .0 2 86 .3 9 86 .3 5 al o n e 3. 82 2. 93 4. 46 7. 58 5. 03 6. 33 4. 30 5. 19 9. 19 1. 19 1. 47 0. 53 as a c o u p le 4. 38 3. 81 3. 26 4. 37 3. 61 2. 15 8. 50 4. 99 3. 74 1. 42 0. 28 0. 87 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 4 4 1. 67 0. 88 0. 53 0. 34 0. 47 0. 65 0. 41 0. 47 0. 60 0. 42 0. 26 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 3. 71 1. 91 1. 22 2. 62 0. 89 0. 47 3. 54 1. 45 1. 01 2. 60 0. 74 0. 4 4 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 53 1. 03 0. 51 0. 16 0. 14 0. 06 0. 36 0. 20 0. 13 0. 72 0. 70 0. 06 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 67 0. 52 0. 4 8 0. 00 0. 02 0. 06 0. 27 0. 36 0. 36 0. 06 0. 91 0. 60 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 19 1. 55 1. 00 0. 28 0. 23 0. 14 0. 63 0. 64 0. 4 8 0. 58 0. 63 0. 4 4 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 2. 19 2. 42 0. 93 11 .1 1 9. 39 5. 88 5. 87 5. 98 7. 4 8 5. 81 8. 46 10 .4 4 20 -2 4 (n = 29 ,8 93 ) (n = 31 ,9 60 ) (n = 23 ,1 94 ) (n = 10 ,4 07 ) (n = 12 ,5 07 ) (n = 9, 78 5) (n = 10 2, 10 6) (n = 88 ,1 69 ) (n = 92 ,3 40 ) (n = 10 ,6 16 ) (n = 10 ,5 90 ) (n = 18 ,8 66 ) w it h p ar en ts 41 .2 6 49 .1 4 56 .5 5 30 .3 2 38 .0 6 4 4. 76 32 .9 7 41 .6 7 43 .7 6 55 .7 2 65 .8 5 66 .8 9 al o n e 8. 21 9. 49 12 .1 8 17 .8 3 17 .8 7 20 .4 9 9. 54 11 .9 3 17 .4 0 3. 62 2. 67 1. 23 as a c o u p le 12 .3 2 12 .1 1 11 .1 3 20 .0 0 23 .0 5 16 .7 6 23 .0 9 21 .6 7 19 .7 3 10 .9 7 4. 92 4. 92 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 4 4 2. 73 2. 10 1. 00 1. 14 0. 98 1. 24 0. 96 1. 05 1. 97 2. 29 1. 40 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 22 .1 7 13 .0 8 9. 20 14 .4 0 9. 55 5. 80 25 .2 0 14 .9 8 8. 96 20 .2 7 8. 12 3. 37 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 4. 98 3. 25 2. 39 1. 11 0. 58 0. 41 1. 37 0. 90 0. 58 2. 69 2. 03 0. 47 as s in g le p ar en t 2. 31 3. 04 2. 27 0. 53 0. 54 0. 63 1. 31 1. 75 1. 74 0. 51 2. 55 2. 78 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 3. 79 3. 55 2. 22 0. 62 0. 28 0. 18 0. 91 1. 16 0. 87 0. 80 1. 36 1. 08 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 2. 52 3. 60 1. 97 14 .1 9 8. 92 9. 97 4. 37 4. 99 5. 91 3. 45 10 .2 0 17 .8 6 • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder382 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n ty p e o f l iv in g a u st ri a (a t ) s w it ze rl an d (c h ) fr an ce ( fr ) ir el an d ( ie ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 25 -2 9 (n = 25 ,9 13 ) (n = 34 ,1 26 ) (n = 27 ,2 92 ) (n = 10 ,8 91 ) (n = 14 ,1 85 ) (n = 11 ,2 63 )( n= 10 1, 55 5) (n = 89 ,8 89 ) (n = 10 5, 25 4) (n = 9, 87 9) (n = 11 ,8 08 ) (n = 16 ,2 57 ) w it h p ar en ts 12 .6 5 18 .5 1 21 .5 9 7. 55 9. 31 11 .0 1 8. 32 11 .3 1 14 .0 6 18 .6 7 28 .6 7 37 .0 0 al o n e 7. 61 9. 63 14 .9 9 13 .0 6 17 .3 1 23 .7 4 7. 87 10 .5 6 14 .6 8 3. 36 3. 24 2. 92 as a c o u p le 12 .5 6 12 .9 6 15 .5 0 21 .6 5 28 .0 4 30 .4 7 14 .4 0 17 .9 2 24 .2 0 13 .7 2 13 .4 4 17 .1 1 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 49 2. 05 2. 05 0. 8 4 1. 21 0. 91 0. 78 0. 73 1. 01 1. 37 3. 15 3. 04 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 49 .4 3 39 .2 8 31 .4 9 4 4. 30 34 .9 9 24 .8 2 59 .9 5 50 .4 1 37 .0 3 54 .8 4 34 .5 0 15 .7 3 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 7. 63 6. 09 4. 65 2. 59 1. 87 1. 17 2. 70 1. 80 1. 42 3. 73 4. 26 1. 69 as s in g le p ar en t 4. 08 5. 93 5. 41 1. 78 1. 79 1. 93 3. 31 4. 14 4. 60 1. 4 8 3. 63 4. 97 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 83 3. 20 2. 62 0. 79 0. 42 0. 24 1. 01 1. 20 1. 08 0. 91 1. 45 1. 68 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 1. 71 2. 35 1. 71 7. 45 5. 05 5. 72 1. 66 1. 93 1. 91 1. 93 7. 66 15 .8 5 30 -3 4 (n = 26 ,2 87 ) (n = 30 ,2 27 ) (n = 33 ,0 12 ) (n = 12 ,0 55 ) (n = 13 ,3 31 ) (n = 13 ,7 92 )( n= 10 4, 41 3) (n = 89 ,5 97 ) (n = 10 7, 36 2) (n = 9, 4 4 8) (n = 12 ,1 88 ) (n = 15 ,0 66 ) w it h p ar en ts 5. 11 7. 52 8. 43 3. 36 3. 32 4. 13 3. 98 4. 20 5. 55 8. 81 11 .7 0 16 .9 5 al o n e 5. 65 7. 86 11 .1 5 8. 67 11 .7 7 16 .2 3 5. 47 6. 97 9. 79 2. 73 3. 22 4. 27 as a c o u p le 8. 47 8. 83 10 .8 8 12 .0 9 16 .9 2 20 .4 8 6. 77 7. 79 10 .1 2 5. 33 7. 99 15 .7 2 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 0. 87 1. 09 1. 15 0. 62 0. 77 0. 65 0. 49 0. 37 0. 47 0. 66 1. 51 2. 18 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 61 .9 4 55 .8 0 50 .7 3 62 .8 9 57 .1 9 49 .0 2 72 .5 4 69 .2 9 61 .9 0 74 .0 2 59 .1 7 41 .3 8 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 8. 75 7. 15 5. 54 4. 35 2. 95 1. 73 3. 76 2. 4 4 2. 02 3. 34 6. 41 3. 82 as s in g le p ar en t 5. 97 7. 64 9. 01 3. 78 3. 70 4. 74 5. 16 6. 69 7. 91 2. 33 4. 82 6. 19 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 05 2. 60 2. 09 0. 94 0. 56 0. 40 0. 88 0. 99 1. 12 0. 79 1. 58 1. 79 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 1. 18 1. 52 1. 01 3. 30 2. 8 4 2. 62 0. 96 1. 25 1. 10 1. 99 3. 59 7. 69 living arrangements of young adults in europe • 383 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n ty p e o f l iv in g h u n g ar y (h u ) r o m an ia ( r o ) p o rt u g al ( p t ) g re ec e (g r ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 18 -1 9 (n = 6, 51 8) (n = 6, 72 4) (n = 6, 52 1) (n = 26 ,8 05 ) (n = 32 ,5 28 ) (n = 28 ,2 98 ) (n = 8, 26 4) (n = 8, 09 5) (n = 7, 19 6) (n = 12 ,7 23 ) (n = 13 ,3 24 ) (n = 13 ,4 98 ) w it h p ar en ts 56 .6 7 68 .9 2 75 .7 1 64 .5 0 76 .2 2 81 .5 2 80 .7 4 87 .6 1 88 .0 1 72 .5 2 85 .0 6 8 4. 69 al o n e 5. 72 4. 61 3. 62 1. 62 0. 58 1. 30 0. 91 0. 61 1. 90 3. 4 4 3. 4 8 6. 26 as a c o u p le 6. 32 4. 57 2. 13 8. 86 3. 70 2. 74 4. 21 2. 83 2. 57 5. 02 2. 58 1. 96 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 6. 18 3. 45 2. 13 6. 54 7. 38 5. 09 3. 10 2. 10 1. 35 2. 66 1. 57 1. 25 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 8. 41 4. 57 2. 25 9. 59 4. 51 3. 47 5. 76 3. 14 2. 54 8. 72 3. 22 1. 55 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 5. 26 2. 56 1. 49 5. 45 5. 36 4. 51 3. 28 1. 77 1. 25 4. 50 1. 65 0. 85 as s in g le p ar en t 0. 94 0. 98 0. 37 0. 24 0. 07 0. 12 0. 06 0. 10 0. 08 0. 13 0. 02 0. 04 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 41 1. 23 0. 94 1. 68 1. 40 1. 25 1. 09 1. 07 1. 10 0. 75 0. 16 0. 19 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 9. 08 9. 12 11 .3 6 1. 52 0. 76 0. 00 0. 86 0. 78 1. 20 2. 25 2. 27 3. 22 20 -2 4 (n = 19 ,7 90 ) (n = 16 ,4 70 ) (n = 17 ,8 17 ) (n = 76 ,5 68 ) (n = 95 ,2 15 ) (n = 80 ,8 4 8) (n = 19 ,2 71 ) (n = 18 ,8 24 ) (n = 19 ,5 54 ) (n = 32 ,3 60 ) (n = 34 ,7 50 ) (n = 36 ,6 99 ) w it h p ar en ts 24 .9 2 33 .5 6 54 .2 1 27 .5 4 35 .8 1 51 .7 3 45 .2 7 58 .5 7 65 .4 0 42 .7 9 58 .0 7 70 .9 3 al o n e 5. 34 6. 96 6. 32 2. 22 1. 73 2. 52 1. 31 1. 75 3. 77 4. 20 5. 29 5. 94 as a c o u p le 9. 03 9. 98 9. 82 12 .7 1 7. 78 7. 35 9. 58 9. 36 9. 81 8. 16 7. 37 6. 72 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 5. 75 4. 93 4. 09 6. 19 8. 29 7. 97 4. 63 4. 01 2. 77 2. 87 2. 51 2. 40 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 32 .4 4 25 .5 6 12 .2 9 35 .2 5 26 .3 2 14 .7 5 26 .2 9 17 .0 0 11 .0 3 27 .8 8 17 .2 8 8. 40 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 11 .9 4 7. 23 3. 72 12 .1 4 15 .2 5 12 .6 0 9. 59 5. 67 3. 49 10 .5 5 5. 83 3. 08 as s in g le p ar en t 2. 85 3. 16 1. 33 0. 67 0. 67 0. 49 0. 62 0. 41 0. 58 0. 39 0. 31 0. 21 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 85 2. 94 2. 24 2. 39 3. 35 2. 59 1. 87 2. 33 1. 91 1. 20 0. 68 0. 53 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 4. 87 5. 68 5. 99 0. 89 0. 79 0. 00 0. 8 4 0. 91 1. 24 1. 96 2. 66 1. 80 • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder384 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n ty p e o f l iv in g h u n g ar y (h u ) r o m an ia ( r o ) p o rt u g al ( p t ) g re ec e (g r ) ar ra n g em en t 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 19 80 19 90 20 00 b y ag e g ro u p (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % (n ) % 25 -2 9 (n = 21 ,7 55 ) (n = 15 ,2 41 ) (n = 17 ,8 17 ) (n = 73 ,3 76 ) (n = 60 ,7 99 ) (n = 81 ,9 56 ) (n = 17 ,1 30 ) (n = 18 ,0 06 ) (n = 20 ,1 28 ) (n = 30 ,9 21 ) (n = 33 ,0 74 ) (n = 37 ,8 85 ) w it h p ar en ts 10 .8 2 10 .1 0 22 .7 3 7. 8 4 10 .2 3 20 .3 5 15 .2 4 22 .5 5 30 .2 9 17 .3 9 25 .1 6 40 .7 7 al o n e 3. 8 4 5. 47 6. 90 2. 23 2. 50 2. 90 1. 62 2. 23 4. 73 3. 53 3. 85 5. 66 as a c o u p le 5. 81 6. 57 13 .5 0 8. 35 5. 88 9. 23 6. 4 8 10 .0 2 16 .8 6 7. 52 9. 19 12 .9 0 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 27 1. 63 2. 56 2. 63 2. 72 5. 85 2. 49 2. 79 2. 4 8 1. 90 2. 18 2. 95 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 55 .5 0 55 .4 7 40 .8 0 59 .5 5 57 .0 5 36 .2 4 54 .9 0 46 .2 3 34 .6 3 51 .2 1 45 .2 4 27 .8 8 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 12 .6 7 9. 25 5. 23 14 .9 6 15 .3 9 19 .7 8 14 .4 8 10 .9 5 5. 98 15 .2 8 10 .5 5 6. 50 as s in g le p ar en t 4. 95 6. 63 4. 08 1. 61 2. 36 1. 68 1. 79 1. 59 1. 62 1. 04 1. 30 1. 06 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 68 3. 30 3. 07 2. 32 3. 37 3. 97 2. 20 2. 90 2. 30 1. 37 1. 30 1. 29 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 1. 47 1. 57 1. 13 0. 52 0. 50 0. 00 0. 79 0. 74 1. 12 0. 76 1. 23 0. 99 30 -3 4 (n = 18 ,5 67 ) (n = 19 ,3 08 ) (n = 15 ,5 08 ) (n = 58 ,3 03 ) (n = 75 ,7 42 ) (n = 95 ,6 50 ) (n = 16 ,1 12 ) (n = 17 ,7 38 ) (n = 19 ,0 75 ) (n = 31 ,2 89 ) (n = 34 ,1 20 ) (n = 39 ,8 79 ) w it h p ar en ts 6. 06 5. 40 7. 26 3. 86 4. 07 8. 43 8. 94 9. 4 8 11 .3 4 8. 69 9. 81 17 .1 3 al o n e 3. 22 3. 98 4. 78 1. 79 2. 42 2. 59 1. 59 1. 97 3. 92 2. 52 3. 22 4. 91 as a c o u p le 4. 32 4. 24 6. 40 5. 94 4. 05 5. 70 3. 66 4. 47 8. 71 4. 69 5. 81 9. 56 as a c o u p le w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 1. 20 1. 09 0. 80 1. 60 1. 19 2. 62 1. 22 1. 18 1. 24 1. 41 1. 39 2. 43 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n 62 .7 1 62 .6 3 65 .4 5 66 .5 6 67 .9 6 53 .5 9 63 .3 3 64 .4 4 59 .9 1 61 .0 0 62 .1 0 50 .6 6 as a c o u p le w it h ch ild re n an d ex te n d ed f am ily 12 .7 8 8. 78 3. 71 15 .1 9 12 .6 8 18 .8 1 15 .3 4 11 .9 9 8. 00 18 .2 8 13 .0 7 9. 72 as s in g le p ar en t 6. 33 10 .1 8 8. 49 2. 69 4. 40 3. 94 2. 99 3. 28 3. 4 4 1. 86 2. 61 2. 94 as a s in g le p ar en t w it h ex te n d ed f am ily 2. 50 3. 04 2. 62 2. 07 2. 88 4. 33 2. 22 2. 72 2. 59 1. 30 1. 51 1. 96 sh ar in g w it h o th er s 0. 88 0. 67 0. 49 0. 31 0. 35 0. 00 0. 73 0. 47 0. 85 0. 25 0. 49 0. 70 n o te : n = 3 ,0 50 ,4 34 . u nw ei gh te d n a nd w ei gh te d p er ce nt ag es . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n ip u m s i living arrangements of young adults in europe • 385 are particularly likely to live with members of the extended family – far exceeding levels in france and switzerland. in austria and ireland, however, extended family living arrangements (i.e., couples with children and parents and/or extended family) are quite common, particularly for young adults in the age group of 30-34 years which mirror their southern and eastern european counterparts. similarly, living with parents is considerably more common in southern and eastern europe in the older age groups (i.e., 25-29 years old and 30-34 years old, respectively) than in western europe (austria, france, ireland, and switzerland). we furthermore fi nd that across age groups living alone and sharing with others is generally m distribution of living arrangements of women in european countries by age group in 1980, 1990 and 2000ore prevalent in western european countries and hungary than in southern and eastern europe. living as a couple with children is the most common living arrangement for both men and women and the differences between the countries are relatively small. the parameter estimates for the two-way interaction between living arrangement and country( ) from our log-linear model are shown in figures 1 and 2 (for men and women, respectively); the effect sizes are drawn as country abbreviations along the x-axis for each of the nine living arrangements. positive parameters display overrepresentation and negative parameters underrepresentation with regard to the two-way interaction. for example, we see in figure 1 that the country abbreviation ch (= switzerland) has a positive parameter (i.e., is situated to the right of 0) for the living arrangement alone. this means that living alone is overrepresented among young men in switzerland. the opposite holds if a country abbreviation has a negative parameter. more substantively, we see that there are considerable differences in living arrangements across countries: southern and eastern europeans are particularly likely to live with their parents and/or extended family. a case in point is living as a single parent with parents and/or extended family, which is more common in southern and eastern europe. as a western european country ireland interestingly shows that young adults are more likely to be in the category living with parents, which means that they are in this respect closer to young adults in southern and eastern europe. if we now look at non-family living arrangements (i.e., sharing with others and living alone), we see that these living arrangements are generally more common in western europe. for example, young adults are more likely to live alone in austria, france, and switzerland – but not in ireland. and fi nally, living as a couple is more common in france and switzerland – but not in austria and ireland or southern and eastern europe. 4.2 crosstemporal differences in living arrangements again, we turn fi rst to tables 1 and 2, and see that there is an upward trend of living with parents between 1980 and 2000, but the increase for the age groups 20-24, 25-29, and 30-34 was much stronger in the southern and eastern european countries than in western europe. at the same time, living alone increases in austria, switzerland, and france across all age groups, but only slightly in the southern and eastern european countries and ireland. across all countries there is a decrease in • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder386 the percentages of young adults living as a couple with children. while the change over time for women generally mirrors that of their male counterparts, sex differences have not diminished over time. the importance of the cross-national comparison becomes salient when we examine changes in living arrangements over time in the european countries. to obtain more insight into the changes over time between 1980 and 2000, figures 1 and 2 additionally present two parameter estimates for the three-way interaction between living arrangement, country and year ( ) from our log-linear model. below each two-way interaction, we display over fig. 1: cross-national and cross-temporal differences in young men’s living arrangements. lambda parameters for the two-way (lc) and three-way interaction (lcy) note: at = austria; ch = switzerland; ie = ireland; fr = france; gr = greece; hu = hungary; pt = portugal; ro = romania. source: own calculations based on ipumsi = steady increase 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 = steady decrease 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 = increase 1980-1990/decrease 1990-2000 = decrease 1980-1990/increase 1990-2000 = ns 1980-1990/decrease 1990-2000 = ns 1980-1990/increase 1990-2000 = decrease 1980-1990/ns 1990-2000 = increase 1980-1990/ns 1990-2000 at = ns 2-way interaction living arrangements of young adults in europe • 387 and underrepresentation for the year 1980 and 2000, respectively by a line pointing up or down. for example, in figure 1 we see a line pointing down below the country abbreviation fr (=france) for the living arrangement alone. this means that living alone is underrepresented in both 1980 and 2000 (i.e., steadily decreased between the two time points) among young men in france. more substantively, we see that for both men and women across almost all countries – romania being the exception – there was an upward trend in non-family living arrangements between 1990 and 2000. for example, it was more likely that young adults are sharing with fig. 2: cross-national and cross-temporal differences in young women’s living arrangements. lambda parameters for the two-way (lc) and three-way interaction (lcy) note: at = austria; ch = switzerland; ie = ireland; fr = france; gr = greece; hu = hungary; pt = portugal; ro = romania. source: own calculations based on ipumsi = steady increase 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 = steady decrease 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 = increase 1980-1990/decrease 1990-2000 = decrease 1980-1990/increase 1990-2000 = ns 1980-1990/decrease 1990-2000 = ns 1980-1990/increase 1990-2000 = decrease 1980-1990/ns 1990-2000 = increase 1980-1990/ns 1990-2000 at = ns 2-way interaction • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder388 others in 2000 compared to other years. similarly, we see that between 1990 and 2000 there was a general downward trend across almost all countries in living as a couple with parents and/or extended family, and as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family. in hungary and romania, however, opposite changes occurred in the same period and extended family living arrangements did not become less common over time here. finally, we see that young men and women have become less likely to be living as a couple in france and switzerland in 2000 compared to other years. 4.3 age differences in living arrangements by country figures 3 and 4 present (for men and women, respectively) the parameter estimates for the three-way interaction between living arrangement, country and age group ( ); we display overand underrepresentation for each age group (by country and living arrangement) with big and small circles. for example, we see in figure 3 for the living arrangement alone in hu (= hungary) two small circles for the age groups of 18-19 and 20-24 years and one big circle for the age group 30-34 years. this means that living alone is underrepresented in the two younger age groups but overrepresented in the oldest age group among young men in hungary. the order of circles along the x-axis points to the order of the magnitude of the effects. substantively, the results indicate country patterns for different age groups: it is generally more likely in southern and eastern european countries that young adults in the age groups of 18-19 and 20-24 years are either living as a couple, as a couple with children, as a couple with parents and/or extended family, or as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family, whereas young adults in western european countries are underrepresented among these younger age groups and living arrangements. this pattern is quite similar for men and women, but we note that the age pattern for young men in austria and greece mimics that of southern and eastern europe, and western europe, respectively. the results furthermore indicate that both young men and women in the age groups of 25-29 and 30-34 years are more likely to be in the category living with parents in southern and eastern europe. for young adults sharing with others, however, the age pattern is less clear and we do not see a clear north/west – south/east divide. similarly, the age pattern of young adults living alone in greece is similar to those in western europe, and of young adults living alone in ireland similar to southern and eastern europe. living as a single parent and living as a single parent with parents and/or extended family is least likely for young women in the age groups of 25-29 and 30-34 years in western europe, while it is more likely in the same age groups for their southern and eastern european counterparts. 4.4 sex differences in living arrangements if we compare the descriptive results from tables 1 and 2 with respect to sex differences, we see that living with parents is much more common for men than for women across all countries and age groups. in addition, men are more often sharing living arrangements of young adults in europe • 389 with others or living alone. the results also show that living as a single parent and living as single parent with parents and/or extended family are very much female living arrangements. across all countries a maximum of only 2 percent of the men live in a single parent arrangement. women live more frequently as single parents (and thus without parents or extended family) in austria, france, switzerland, but also in ireland. by comparison, there are no large differences between living as single parent and living as single parent with parents and/or extended family in romania, portugal, and greece. the changes over time are generally similar for men and women, but there are slight differences with respect to the various living arrangements of young couples. here, the changes for women were less strong but did follow a cross-national pattern. figures 3 and 4 illustrate furthermore that there are divergent trends of living as a single parent with parents and/or extended family between men and women. we should be cautious, however, to draw conclusions from this, because the proportion of men living in such a living arrangement is too small. for women, we see a regional pattern that is in line with the other extended living arrangements: in western and southern europe single parents living with parents and/or extended family have become less common over time in all countries but ireland, while it has become more common in romania. 5 conclusions and discussion this paper focuses on variation in young adults’ living arrangements across eight european countries and different national contexts, as well as taking into account cross-time variability. drawing on ipumsi data for the census rounds 1980, 1990, and 2000 for eight european countries (austria, france, greece, hungary, ireland, portugal, romania, and switzerland), we examined associations between young adults’ living arrangements, country, year, and age group, controlling for the changing marginal distributions of these characteristics, for men and women. because we capture a wide variety of young adults’ living arrangements and explicitly include extended family living arrangements and non-family living arrangements, our fi ndings are a unique contribution to the literature on young adults’ living arrangements in europe. furthermore, we add to the debate about changes in living arrangements between european countries and european diversity in living arrangements. methodologically, our analysis builds on saturated models, which do not reduce the complexity of estimating cell counts in the contingency table, but nevertheless provide a straightforward measure to assess cross-national and cross-temporal differences in young adults’ living arrangements differences. because we are primarily concerned with describing regional differences and trends in young adults’ living arrangements, we concentrate on selected key parameters. our fi rst question addressed how much diversity in living arrangements is observable across european countries. we found that there are country differences for almost all nine living arrangements of young adults. the exception is living as a couple with children, which is a dominant living arrangement across all countries particularly among older age groups (i.e., 25-29 years and 30-34 years). but diversity is es• katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder390 fi g . 3 : a g e d if fe re n ce s in y o un g m en ’s li vi ng a rr an g em en ts . l am b d a p ar am et er s fo r th e th re ew ay in te ra ct io n (l c a ) living arrangements of young adults in europe • 391 fi g . 4 : a g e d if fe re n ce s in y o un g w o m en ’s li vi ng a rr an g em en ts . l am b d a p ar am et er s fo r th e th re ew ay in te ra ct io n (l c a ) n o te : a t = a us tr ia ; c h = s w itz er la nd ; ie = ir el an d ; fr = f ra nc e; g r = g re ec e; h u = h un ga ry ; p t = p o rt ug al ; r o = r o m an ia . t he fi g ur e d is p la ys th e p ar am et er e st im at es fo r t he th re ew ay in te ra ct io n b et w ee n fa m ily liv in g ar ra ng em en t, co un tr y an d a ge g ro up ( ). w e o nl y co ns id er ed p ar am et er e st im at es w ith a n ef fe ct s iz e la rg er th an 0 .1 0 an d w hi ch a re s ig ni fi c an t a t p < .0 5. b ig c ir cl es re p re se nt p o si tiv e p ar am et er e st im at es ( o ve rr ep re se nt at io n) a nd s m al l ci rc le s re p re se nt n eg at iv e p ar am et er e st im at es (u nd er re p re se nt at io n) . s o ur ce : ip u m s i, o w n ca lc ul at io ns • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder392 pecially pronounced if we look at extended and non-family living arrangements. net of demographic controls, living alone or sharing with others is signifi cantly more common in western european countries, whereas living with parents, living as a couple with parents and/or extended family, and living as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family is signifi cantly more common in southern and eastern europe. this pattern is generally compatible with longstanding, systemic variation in family forms and cultures that follows a north/west – south/east gradient (hajnal 1965; reher 1998). nonetheless, we note that ireland and austria are much more similar to southern and eastern europe with respect to (some) extended family living arrangements: living with parents and living with parents and/or extended family, respectively. it could be, for example, that a signifi cant proportion of southern and eastern european young adults – namely those at younger ages, without a partner and those being single parents – are living with parents and/or extended family to rely on intergenerational assistance in shared living arrangements, given the smaller provision of institutional support in these countries, as prior research suggests (chambaz 2001; sobotka/toulemon 2008; albertini/kohli 2013). our second question asked how the living arrangements have changed between 1980 and 2000. we found that the changes over time also differed across countries: extended family living arrangements (i.e., as a couple with parents and/or extended family, or as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family) have become less common between 1980 and 2000 in western and southern europe, but not in hungary or romania. furthermore, there has been an upward trend – especially in southern and eastern europe – of both young men and women living with parents between 1980 and 2000. this period also marked an increase in non-family living arrangements in austria, switzerland, and france, but not in ireland and southern and eastern europe. but we also found similar changes across european countries – particularly a decline in young adults living as a couple with children over time (although most young adults aged 25 years or older still live with a partner and children). these results are generally in line with prior research (e.g., fokkema/ liefbroer 2008; sobotka/toulemon 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010) and might suggest that longer time spent in education, later labour-market entry, and postponement of relationship and family formation translates into young adults staying longer with their parents in southern and eastern europe and ireland, while young adults in western and northern europe leave earlier and live at least for some time alone or share a fl at with others before married or unmarried cohabitation. it is important to note that extended living arrangements are quite robust in (parts) of eastern europe. this might suggest that a mix of economic constraints, housing and labour markets as well as the transition to market economy in eastern europe have affected living arrangements of young adults (iacovou 2004; sobotka/toulemon 2008). we furthermore investigated differences in young adults’ family living arrangements by socio-demographic groups. we found that men are more likely to be living with their parents than women across all countries, but while these sex differences are generally similar across age groups in southern and western europe, living with parents is most apparent among men from younger age groups in western europe. both men and women in eastern europe – rather than just living as a couple – seem living arrangements of young adults in europe • 393 to be more likely to live as a couple in an extended family living arrangement (e.g., as a couple with parents and/or extended family, or as a couple with children and parents and/or extended family). the largest differences between men and women, generally, pertain to living as a single parent and living as a single parent with parents and/or extended family. it is well documented in previous research that the age-structuring of life course events is different for young men and women (e.g., fokkema/liefbroer 2008; sobotka/toulemon 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010; iacovou/ skew 2011). young women, in general, make transitions (e.g., forming relationships, having a fi rst child) earlier than men. although early relationship and family formation may also be related to biological limits of fertility, research has highlighted the importance of age norms that capture concepts about the timing, sequencing and duration of life course events and which affect young adults’ demographic and residential choices (billari/liefbroer 2007). in this light, our results are not surprising, but it is nonetheless interesting to note that single young mothers in eastern europe particularly tend to live with parents and/or extended family and not alone. with respect to differences between age groups the results are consistent with previous fi ndings and have been noted before (e.g., kuijsten 1996; fokkema/liefbroer 2008; sobotka/toulemon 2008): in southern and eastern europe it is much more common for young adults at younger ages (18-19 and 20-34) to live with a partner and children and at older ages (25-29 and 30-34) to live with their parents. because our data are cross-sectional we cannot separate whether these differences are due to cohort or age effects. in general, our results on young adults’ family living arrangements match prior research fi ndings regarding regional differences and the north/west – south/east divide (e.g., kalmijn/saraceno 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010). but our results have also shown that, despite regional patterns in family living arrangements, countries remain strikingly different – cases in point in our analysis are ireland and austria. it is a common puzzle of comparative research that studies do not always establish homogeneity in the outcome under consideration between all countries in one regional or welfare type classifi cation. we do not claim that the exceptions we have found justify overturning these classifi cations – more observations like this would be needed – but that an understanding of the variation in family living arrangements across europe also warrants to be cautious about country-specifi c circumstances (including the cultural, religious, socio-economic and policy context). our fi ndings moreover highlight the decrease in extended family living arrangements between 1980 and 2000 in western and northern europe, which is largely absent in eastern europe, and update our understanding of family living arrangements in europe. for future research, we suggest to expand the analysis to more european countries in order to arrive at a more complete picture about cross-national variation in family living arrangements and its determining factors. the choice of data sources is crucial in this respect. although the ipumsi data are of particular value due to their sample sizes and reliable measures across countries, they do not cover the whole of europe. it would be particularly interesting to include the scandinavian and baltic countries into further analysis. • katrin schwanitz, clara h. mulder394 acknowledgements katrin schwanitz’s work was conducted under the remit of the ipops laboratory of excellence, supported by hesam université, under the reference anr-10-labx -0089. the authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments and suggestions, and also wish to acknowledge the statistical offi ces that provided the underlying data making this research possible: austria, national bureau of statistics; france, national institute of statistics and economic studies; greece, national statistical offi ce; hungary, central statistical offi ce; ireland, central statistics offi ce; portugal, national institute of statistics; romania, national institute of statistics; switzerland, federal statistical offi ce. references aassve, arnstein et al. 2002: leaving home: a comparative analysis of echp data. in: journal of european social policy 12,4: 259-275 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http://www.rug.nl/staff/k.v.schwanitz/ institut national d‘etudes demographiques (ined). paris, france. e-mail: katrin.schwanitz@ined.fr url: https://www.ined.fr/en/directory/katrin-schwanitz/512 prof. dr. clara h. mulder. university of groningen, faculty of spatial sciences, department of demography. groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: c.h.mulder@rug.nl url: http://www.rug.nl/staff/c.h.mulder/ published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved impact of regional factors on cohort fertility: new estimations at the district level in germany impact of regional factors on cohort fertility: new estimations at the district level in germany* martin bujard, melanie scheller abstract: incorporating the regional context into fertility research has a long standing tradition. however, in germany, fertility data at the district level only exist for period total fertility rates (tfr), but not for cohort total fertility rates (ctfr). based on the 2011 census and birth statistics, we estimate the ctfr at the district level and analyse factors infl uencing their variation. first, we estimate the ctfr for the 1969-72 cohorts in all 402 german districts. the estimated ctfr differ strongly across german districts ranging between 1.05 and 2.01. further, the estimated ctfr differ substantially from the known tfr values. this is mainly due to biases in the tempo component of the tfr, which are crucial in east german districts, university cities and in urban-rural comparisons. therefore, the estimated ctfr allow for a better assessment of fertility differences across districts. second, we analyse the differences in the newly estimated ctfr employing regression models. composition effects such as a low proportion of highly educated women, a high share of catholics or immigrants are signifi cantly associated with higher ctfr in west german districts. however, regional opportunities are also important: a low population density, the availability of relatively spacious dwellings, a surplus of males, a small service sector and low unemployment rates are associated with higher fertility. overall the analyses show regional factors are highly relevant for fertility. keywords: cohort fertility · population geography · regional context · urbanisation · germany · census comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 55-88 (date of release: 25.07.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-07en7 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online appendix: doi 10.12765/ cpos-2017-08en, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/270/241. • martin bujard, melanie scheller56 1 introduction fertility research can basically be divided into two groups of studies: those that examine individual data and those that compare countries at the macro level. both approaches often exclude regional factors, which, due to considerable regional differences in reproductive behaviour (basten et al. 2011) leads to selection bias or whole-nation bias (rokkan 1970). since variance of fertility at the district level is often very high such as in germany and local opportunity structures also differ with regard to economic, political and cultural factors (bbsr 2015), it is essential to enhance fertility research by including district-specifi c factors. the reasons for regionally divergent fertility rates can be diverse: regional variance can be caused by composition effects (hank 2002; hank/huinink 2015), by different regional opportunity structures (overview: basten et al. 2011), or by historically evolved cultural patterns (klüsener/goldstein 2014). the regional factor most often cited in current research is undoubtedly the negative association between fertility and urbanisation level (kulu et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; trovato/grindstaff 1980), which, however, may incorporate different mechanisms (sharlin 1986); in particular factors such as housing (fiori et al. 2014; kulu 2013) and selective internal migration (courgeau 1989; kulu/milewski 2007). regions with comparatively comprehensive family policies (baizan 2009; rindfuss et al. 2007), a high level of religiosity (sobotka/adigüzel 2002) and low unemployment rates (kravdal 2002) are associated with higher fertility levels. however, the fi ndings in europe are in part contradictory due to country-specifi c differences on the one hand, and the specifi c research designs and data sets on the other. many regional analyses only cover some of the potential infl uencing factors by testing a few regional variables in multilevel event-history models. this research approach may allow for causal interpretation, but often at the cost of a selection bias that masks the diversity of potential regional variables and their interactions. until now, data for quantifying fertility differences at the regional level – and in particular the district level – in germany as well as for analysing their infl uencing factors was limited because of missing data on cohort fertility at the district level. although there is detailed data on period total fertility rates (tfr, also known as ptfr) at the district level (grünheid 2015; bbsr 2015), the tfr is less suited as dependent variable since it is biased by the timing component (bongaarts/feeney 1998; schoen 2004). cohort total fertility rates (ctfr) are superior when regional differences are analysed. the ctfr (or the average number of children per woman per age cohort) at the district level and the analysis of its infl uencing factors are a substantial research gap in demographic and geographical analysis. although the 2011 census did not survey the number of biological children, it does have the potential for closing this research gap by using demographic estimation models. this article has two objectives: • to calculate the average number of children per woman and an estimated ctfr for all 402 german districts based on the 2011 census and impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 57 • to generate a broad overview of regional explanatory factors and to analyse their interactions in the context of socio-structural factors. for the calculation of the ctfr, a large number of cases is needed since suffi cient cases for cohort-specifi c numbers of children need to be available for all districts, including the smaller ones. even the 2012 microcensus, a sample of 688,931 persons, was too small for reliable estimates at the district level. the 2011 census allows us to enter new territory: it has suffi cient observations with 7.9 million persons, or approximately 10 percent of germany’s population, reporting. since the census does not directly collect data on the number of children ever born, we use the information on the number of children in the household (family level) to calculate an estimated value for the ctfr for all 402 german districts. we can generate the most exact possible estimated value for the ctfr at the district level by identifying the female cohorts that have largely come to the end of their reproductive phase and for which the children still largely live in the parents’ household. we calculate the cohort-specifi c underestimation compared to the offi cial population statistics based on multipliers differentiated by east and west germany.1 the ctfr values at the district level are provided in geographical maps and in tables in the appendix as well as in an excel-fi le in an additional online appendix. the infl uencing factors for fertility differences in german districts are operationalised by linear regression analysis at the macro level, whereby the 402 districts are the cases and the previously calculated ctfr is the dependent variable. to investigate composition effects, socio-demographic variables such as education, religion, migration background and living arrangements are aggregated with the census microdata based on our own calculations. district-specifi c data on the labour market, economic structure, women’s employment, prosperity, urbanisation, family policies, housing and gender proportions are taken from the inkar2 database (bbsr 2015) and provide indicators of regional opportunity structures. this enables to consider both regional and socio-demographic infl uencing factors of fertility. 2 research context 2.1 fertility data for the districts in germany the statistical offi ces of the federal states (länder) calculate the tfr at the district level by adding up age-specifi c fertility rates (asfr) for every age in a specifi c year. these values are available for individual years such as 2013 (grünheid 2015; not including thuringia). inkar (bbsr 2015) provides data series on the tfr based on data on births and deaths from the federal statistical offi ce and the statistical of1 east germany covers the six eastern states (länder) and west berlin. 2 inkar is a german acronym for “indicators, maps and graphics on spatial and urban monitoring”. • martin bujard, melanie scheller58 fi ces of the german länder as well as on the eurostat regio database. the inkar calculates the tfr on the basis of fi ve-year age intervals such as 15-19, 20-24 etc. (we use these data for a comparison with the computed ctfr in section 4.1.) so far, there is no cohort fertility data at the district level in germany. offi cial birth statistics calculate the ctfr by adding up asfr for every specifi c year of time and cohort, whereby the age is calculated as the difference between year of birth and year of report (statistisches bundesamt 2014). however, they only provide ctfr for germany as a whole or separately for east and west. sociological surveys and the 2012 microcensus, which collect the number of biological children, do not have suffi cient sample sizes for calculating district-specifi c cohort fertility. the 2012 microcensus covers 688,931 cases, with an average of 4,569 cases in the 1969-72 female cohorts, which corresponds to 13 cases per district. the census includes 7.9 million cases, an average of 48,484 cases for each female cohort from 1969-72, which corresponds to an average of 121 cases per district. if we add up, for example, four cohorts, the average number of cases is 482 per district. the ctfr at the district level is a valuable indicator of regional fertility differences and the regional opportunities that infl uence them, because it measures the fertility over a woman’s reproductive lifetime. by contrast, the tfr is a different concept which measures the timing respective the “speed of travel” of fertility. at the district level the interpretability of the tfr is limited due to the extent of young women’s internal migration – university students, in particular – and the varying degrees of delayed childbearing. the timing effect is problematic (schoen 2004), since the postponement of childbearing and the average childbearing age differ considerably from region to region. university towns such as heidelberg, münster and würzburg with a high number of academics have a mean age at childbearing (mac) of 32.5-33.3 years. by comparison, the 2013 mac in rural regions like the mecklenburg lake district and vorpommern-rügen was 27.0-27.4 years (grünheid 2015). 2.2 state of research on regional fertility differences two fundamentally different explanations are cited for regional differences in fertility: they may either result from composition effects or from regional opportunity structures (basten et al. 2011; boyle et al. 2007; firoi et al. 2014; hank 2002; hank/huinink 2015; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu et al. 2007; trovato/grindstaff 1980). although most authors assume that both explanations complement each other, some consider the composition effects to be more relevant (hank 2002;3 hank/huinink 2015), while others emphasise regional context factors (kulu et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009). this differentiation is important for the signifi cance of regional analysis, because both the whole-nation bias in macroanalysis (rokkan 1970) and selection bias caused by masking regional factors in individual analysis are stronger the greater the effect of regional context factors. 3 nonetheless, hank points out the necessity of further research, e.g. through the use of largescale individual datasets (hank 2002: 296). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 59 composition effects mainly lead to regional fertility differences when people with socio-structural characteristics that exhibit specifi c fertility behaviours are over or under represented in certain regions. in countries in which higher education is associated with lower fertility, fertility is clearly lower in regions where particularly large numbers of highly educated people and fewer women with lower educational levels live (hank/huinink 2015). the situation is similar for socio-economic status (kulu 2013). composition effects can also be based on groups of immigrants or ethnic minorities who are overrepresented in specifi c regions and show different fertility behaviours. fertility rates among immigrants of different countries of origin are quite heterogeneous. in germany and the uk, where the majority of immigrants come from countries with considerably higher fertility rates – such as turkey or pakistan – the immigrants’ effect is positive (hank/huinink 2015; kulu/washbrook 2014). other studies show no infl uence by shares of international immigrants, particularly compared with the distinct effects of internal migration (michielin 2002). individual variables with regard to living arrangements (hank 2003) or employment also prove signifi cant in many analyses (hank/huinink 2015). interpreting them as composition effects, however, is diffi cult since these factors can also be the result of fertility events or at least of varying degrees in the desire to have children. regional context factors are based on local opportunity structures (in detail: basten et al. 2011), which differ with regard to urbanisation, housing, culture, family policies and employment market. one central factor is urbanisation (courgeau 1989; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu et al. 2007; kulu 2013; trovato/grindstaff 1980), which already had negative associations with fertility in historical demography and the fi rst demographic transition (andorka 1978; sharlin 1986; wolf 1912). in an international comparison of 145 countries, population density exhibits a negative correlation with fertility (lutz et al. 2006), although this only applies to europe to a certain extent. interpreting the impact of urbanisation on fertility decisions is complicated, however, because the underlying mechanisms are quite diverse. sharlin (1986: 236) calls urban-rural differences a “code phrase for an array of social, economic, and cultural differences and changes”. the mechanisms behind the urbanisation effect can be differentiated as local opportunity structures, selective internal migration, cultural factors (including the timing of transitional processes) and composition effects: • certain local opportunity structures typically differ between urban and rural regions: in cities, housing is scarcer and more expensive, and the labour market is characterised by a higher level of specialisation and is more knowledge-based; both factors are associated with low fertility. in rural districts, by contrast, access to nature can contribute to local recreation and a healthier lifestyle, and less road traffi c to a more child-friendly living environment. it is, however, worthwhile to analyse the factors individually for two reasons. the fi rst is to isolate the actual infl uencing factors behind urbanisation. secondly, differentiating the local opportunity structures in cities is advisable since there are also urban spaces with family-friendly living environments. a number of studies show that fertility is higher in suburbs than in city centres (boyle et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu/washbrook 2014). • martin bujard, melanie scheller60 • selective internal migration (courgeau 1989; huinink/wagner 1989; kulu/ milewski 2007; michielin 2002) intensifi es urban-rural differences in fertility. frequently, couples move from cities to the countryside shortly before or after having their fi rst child, while childless couples tend to move to cities. for france, courgeau (1989) shows that internal migration from the city to the countryside is accompanied by higher fertility (and vice versa). he does not only prove this for the transition to fi rst birth, but also for transitions to higher parities. some argue that women adapt their behaviours to the new environment or choose an environment according to their childbearing preferences, whereby the housing market plays an important role. since some suburbs belong to a city and others to bordering rural districts, delimitation can cause problems. • cultural differences between urban and rural districts are caused by various socio-cultural milieus. city milieus have urban lifestyles, which are characterised by many options outside family life. urban lifestyles and local opportunity structures interact with one another. the infl uence of these milieus and social learning is greater for starting a family than the transition to other parities (fiori et al. 2014). urban-rural differences can also depict the avantgarde and latecomers to historic transformation processes such as the fi rst demographic transition (coale/watkins 1986). selective internal migration occurs, however, not only in the urban-rural context, but generally between different districts with different regional contexts. kulu and milewski (2007) presented an elaborate system in which they examine four hypotheses for fertility behaviours of migrants: according to the socialisation hypothesis, the fertility rates of adults remain constant after migration because their preferences were formed before migration. by contrast, the adaptation hypothesis postulates that the regional context has a greater infl uence and that fertility adapts to the dominant patterns in the new environment. the selection hypothesis presumes that migration is caused by specifi c fertility preferences (for the uk: kulu/ washbrook 2014). the disruption hypothesis suggests that fertility is lower immediately after migration; this hypothesis is less plausible for internal migration than for international migration (with the exception of family reunifi cation). unlike the fi ndings by courgeau (1989) for france, by huinink and wagner (1989) for germany and by michielin (2002) for italy, more recent analyses show no effect of selective migration for the transition to the second and third child for the uk (fiori et al. 2014) and for the fi rst three parities in finland (kulu 2013). in multiple studies, housing is shown to be a signifi cant regional context factor (fiori et al. 2014; kulu/vikat 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; kulu 2013). for finland, kulu shows that living in detached and row houses during the transition to the fi rst child has a distinct effect that even explains the more frequent transition in rural areas (kulu 2013: 904). a higher probability of transitioning to a third child could also be shown for finland among people living in single-family houses (kulu/vikat 2007). for the uk, fiori et al. (2014) ascertain a positive effect of dwellings with more than fi ve rooms only among people transitioning to their second child. cultural differences at the regional level that evolved historically and often arose prior to the present political system (cf. klüsener/goldstein 2014) can affect regional fertility differences. the signifi cance of culture in relation to socio-economic differimpact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 61 ences is emphasised by the authors of the european fertility project (coale/watkins 1986). while a certain degree of modernisation was a prerequisite for the pretransitional decline in the fertility rate, the point in time when it set in was primarily infl uenced by the regional cultural setting (knodel/van de walle 1986). this is not applicable to the denominational imprint of large prussian cities; additionally, contagious effects between neighbouring geographical regions play a role (goldstein/ klüsener 2014). recent studies also point out the infl uence of regionally different social milieus on fertility (fulda 2015). however, “culture” in terms of fertility-related attitudes is, to a certain extent, infl uenced nationally through language and mass media (lesthaeghe 1995). religious denominations and varying levels of religiosity, measured for instance by weekly church attendance, are a keystone for cultural analysis. a number of studies show that a high rate of frequent church attendance contributes to explaining regional fertility differences (kemper 1991; sobotka/adigüzel 2002). a century ago, higher fertility rates or the low inclination for contraception among catholics were emphasised (wolf 1912; cf. goldstein/klüsener 2014). however, in more recent international comparisons catholicism is associated with lower fertility as a result of family-policy defi ciencies in catholic countries (castles 2003). analyses of 28 oecd countries show that the share of protestants is associated positively with the tfr between 1987 and 2006, whereby the childcare and protestant quotas explain a similar variance in multivariate regressions (bujard 2011). in many countries there is only one dominant denomination. germany is an interesting case since it has districts that are primarily catholic (e.g. in southern bavaria) and others that are primarily protestant (e.g. in schleswig-holstein). the proportions also sometimes differ considerably within individual länder. besides denomination, religiosity is decisive, whereby east germany – not only due to the former gdr regime – is particularly secular (klüsener/goldstein 2014). studies that examine regional fertility differences in germany in the context of churches and religiosity are rare. using a path model, kemper (1991) shows a direct positive infl uence of church attendance rates and an indirect negative infl uence of the share of protestants for 31 west german administrative districts. more recent studies on the infl uence of family policies on fertility on the national level show a positive effect (bujard 2011; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013). although several family policies are national in scope, especially child-care policies have a within variation in some countries. the fi ndings on the infl uence of family policies on regional differences in fertility, in particular with regard to childcare, are mixed. rindfuss et al. (2007) ascertain a positive effect of day-care centres on the transition to the fi rst child for norway. findings for germany (bauernschuster et al. 2013; hank et al. 2004) are varied, whereby a more recent publication by bauernschuster et al. takes the expansion of childcare centres in west germany into consideration and is able to show that this led to a small increase in fertility. for spain, baizan (2009) proves a positive effect of formal childcare, which is intensifi ed by a higher female employment rate in the transition to higher parities. regional labour markets sometimes differ considerably between municipalities with regard to the unemployment rate, the economic structure and women’s • martin bujard, melanie scheller62 employment. the infl uence of unemployment is closely tied to a region’s prosperity. the increasing vocational and economic uncertainty in young adulthood (mills/ blossfeld 2005) is particularly distinct in the service industry and alongside high unemployment rates. for both factors, negative effects on fertility have been identifi ed for norway (kravdal 2002), whereby aggregated regional effects are more decisive than individual effects. hank and huinink (2015) prove mixed fi ndings for germany: a positive effect of unemployment on the number of children and a negative effect on the intention of having a child in the next two years. 3 data, methodology and research design 3.1 data this study is based on the microdata from the 2011 census household survey (bechtold 2016). within this household survey, approximately 10 percent of the german population, namely about 7.9 million people, were asked for additional sociodemographic information that is not contained in the registry data (statistisches bundesamt 2010). the household sample is based on a regionally stratifi ed random sample of addresses drawn from the population registers. all people at a selected address were obliged to provide information. people at sensitive special facilities such as psychiatric or penal institutions, military bases abroad, police departments and the foreign service, as well as their families, are not included in the household survey, since providing information could result in social disadvantages for these population groups. the household and familial relationships of all individuals residing at an address were not requested directly, but were instead produced later as part of a household generation procedure (statistisches bundesamt 2015; kreuzmair/reisch 2013). to do this, traditional household and familial relationships were generated using direct cross-references from the population registers such as marriages, registered same-sex partnerships or descendants’ relationships. information on descendants is usually available until they reach the age of 18. cross-references contained in the register beyond that age were also included in the household generation. in order to associate other forms of living arrangements such as cohabitation, other information from registers was used, for example arrival information or moving addresses. the microdata of the census are structured within a relational data model in which all partial datasets of the census are fi led as individual tables and can be linked to one another using identifi ers. within this study, the individual data from the household survey is used as well as the familial relationships estimated during household generation after national typing. since family information is not available in smaller municipalities, these people were excluded from the analysis. first all women in the household sample were selected. next, the generated relationships regarding family type and family size were used to estimate the numimpact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 63 ber of children of each woman.4 the sample results were extrapolated to the census population using an extrapolation factor to enable comparisons with other data sources. it must be noted that the place of residence of the woman at the time of the census date was used, rather than her residence at the time of childbearing. at the time of the census survey there were 412 districts in germany. as a result of the territorial reforms in mecklenburg-west pomerania in 2011, 18 districts were merged into eight districts. all data for these districts were converted based on kühntopf (2015) so that all the results that are cited here are valid for 402 districts, in line with the district count as per 1 january 2015. 3.2 calculating the multiplier and estimating the ctfr we use census data on the number of children per woman living in the household present in the census to estimate the ctfr. the number of biological children and therefore also the fi nal number of children are not included in the census. the number of children in the household in the census particularly underestimates the fi nal number of children for two reasons: firstly, children who have already left home are not included, whereby the number of children recorded in particular among women over the age of 38 increasingly underestimates the ctfr. secondly, the fi nal number of children is underestimated among female cohorts younger than age 45 because they are still of childbearing age. we identify the cohorts containing the least biases between the number of children in the household and the ctfr. figure 1 compares census values and microcensus values for the number of children in the household to the fi nal number of children based on offi cial birth statistics (1960-70)5 and linear trend extrapolation (1971-75).6 the comparison shows that the deviation is smallest – 6.6 percent to 7.8 percent – for 38to 42-year-old women, namely the 1969-72 cohorts. the difference between the children in the household and the fi nal number of children grows with increasing distance from these cohorts. this underestimation is certainly a disadvantage, but since the census does not provide information on births, there is no alternative to this method. we estimate an average ctfr for all four cohorts 1969-72 in order to have enough cases for computing it for each district. the underestimation is within limits due to the selection of the 1969-72 cohorts. 4 note that for this study, the reproductive behaviour of women in general is relevant and is not modelled at the family level. therefore, women in same-sex partnerships are recorded as two cases. another limiting factor is that due to the methodology of household generation, identifying mothers in multigenerational families may lead to an under-reporting of children. the family concept of the 2011 census refers to direct (fi rst-degree) relationships between ascendants and descendants. 5 for the 1970 cohort, the data from the offi cial birth statistics account for the period cohort fertility rate (pcfr) up to and including age 42. birth rates after this age are very low; their effect adds up to <= 0.01. 6 note the survey-related differences due to the fact that the census – like the microcensus but unlike the birth statistics – includes children of immigrant women that were born abroad (cf. pötzsch 2010). • martin bujard, melanie scheller64 the ctfr of the 1969-72 cohorts is underestimated by the census by 7.17 percent using the number of children in the household. it is plausible that the underestimation is relatively evenly distributed among the districts and that differences are particularly associated with a younger childbearing age and the associated earlier move out of the parental home. this especially applies to east germany, where the age at fi rst childbirth is considerably lower (statistisches bundesamt 2014), meaning that more children of east german mothers in the 1969-72 cohorts had already left their parental home in 2011. accordingly, the underestimation is only 5.86 percent in west germany, while it is much higher in east germany, at 12.20 percent (table 1). a further differentiation between large cities and other regions would further improve the estimated value; however, this is only possible for the federal city-states due to missing data. besides, the complexity of the procedure would be disproportionate to the gains in precision. since the number of children in the households underestimates the ctfr to a much greater degree in east germany, a differentiated multiplier for west and east germany is applied. these multipliers and the district-specifi c values on the average number of children in the household fig. 1: comparison of the average number of children in a household (census and microcensus) and the ctfr (offi cial birth statistics and linear extrapolation) for the female cohorts 1960-75 in germany 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1960 1965 1970 1975 birth cohort ctfr after linear trend extrapolation ctfr, official birth statistics 2014 cfr, official birth statistics 2014 children in the household, census 2011 children in the household, microcensus 2011 average number of children source: own calculations based on 2011 census and 2011 microcensus; also statistisches bundesamt (2014); goldstein/kreyenfeld (2013). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 65 per woman in the census are used to estimate the ctfr of the 1969-72 female cohorts for all 402 districts. 3.3 sensitivity analysis: comparison of the census fi ndings with the microcensus in the following, we check the calculated census values for the average number of children of women in the household (family level) by comparing them with microcensus values from the same year7 (see table 2). a comparison with the 2012 microcensus would have an advantage because questions on biological births were included here; however, the selected cohorts are still of childbearing age. therefore, a comparison of census and microcensus results from the same year and with tab. 1: comparison of the average number of children in the household according to the census and ctfr birth ctfr (birth statistics) 2011 census difference (ctfr – census) cohort east west total east west total east west total total in % 1960 1.80 1.60 1.66 0.56 0.91 0.84 1.23 0.69 0.82 97.3 1961 1.76 1.58 1.63 0.63 0.99 0.92 1.13 0.59 0.71 77.6 1962 1.72 1.56 1.61 0.69 1.08 1.00 1.03 0.48 0.61 61.1 1963 1.68 1.54 1.59 0.75 1.14 1.06 0.93 0.40 0.52 49.3 1964 1.64 1.53 1.57 0.86 1.22 1.15 0.78 0.30 0.41 35.9 1965 1.60 1.52 1.55 0.94 1.30 1.23 0.67 0.22 0.33 26.5 1966 1.56 1.50 1.52 1.04 1.32 1.27 0.52 0.17 0.25 19.8 1967 1.55 1.47 1.50 1.13 1.35 1.31 0.42 0.12 0.19 14.2 1968 1.51 1.47 1.49 1.20 1.37 1.34 0.31 0.10 0.15 11.1 1969 1.49 1.48 1.49 1.28 1.40 1.38 0.21 0.07 0.11 7.8 1970 1.46 1.49 1.49 1.29 1.42 1.39 0.17 0.07 0.10 7.2 1971 1.50 1.51 1.51 1.37 1.43 1.42 0.13 0.09 0.09 6.6 1972 1.51 1.53 1.53 1.38 1.44 1.43 0.14 0.10 0.10 7.1 1973 1.53 1.57 1.56 1.38 1.43 1.42 0.15 0.14 0.14 9.8 1974 1.54 1.57 1.57 1.35 1.39 1.38 0.19 0.19 0.18 13.3 1975 1.54 1.58 1.57 1.33 1.35 1.35 0.21 0.23 0.22 16.6 notes: differences are caused by rounding. the cohorts shaded grey are included in this analysis. source: own calculations based on the 2011 census (extrapolated values) and offi cial birth statistics (1960-70: statistisches bundesamt (2014); 1971-75: goldstein/ kreyenfeld (2013). 7 both surveys took place in 2011. the reference day for the census was 9 may 2011, while the microcensus survey – due to the sub-annual survey methodology – took place at various times. we assume that for the cohorts selected here the monthly differences caused by this lead to an insignifi cant bias. • martin bujard, melanie scheller66 comparable variables is more informative for checking the plausibility of the census analysis. the differences in the average number of children of women for the 1960-75 cohorts and for east and west germany are only minimal, ranging between 0.00 and 0.09. this precision confi rms selection and fi lters described in section 3.1. this is only possible because the case numbers in the microcensus and the census are extremely high and the surveys are less biased by non-response problems due to the obligation to respond. 3.4 research design of the multivariate analysis the multivariate and spatial analysis serves the purpose of generating a broad overview of district-specifi c factors of the ctfr, their interaction and the spatial clusters. in the linear regression analysis the 402 districts function as cases, whereby separate analyses are conducted for germany as a whole as well as for west and east germany. this differentiation has two reasons: (1) the literature refers to great demographic, cultural and structural differences between the two german regions (e.g. goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; schneider et al. 2012), and (2) our own preliminary analysis indicates considerable east-west differences. these differences cannot be well captured through the use of an east-west dummy since it interacts differently tab. 2: average number of children of women in the household: comparison of the census and microcensus 2011 microcensus 2011 census difference (microcensus – census) east west total east west total east west total total in % 1960 0.48 0.86 0.78 0.56 0.91 0.84 -0.08 -0.05 -0.06 -7.1 1961 0.56 0.96 0.88 0.63 0.99 0.92 -0.07 -0.03 -0.04 -4.3 1962 0.62 1.05 0.96 0.69 1.08 1.00 -0.07 -0.03 -0.04 -4.0 1963 0.70 1.12 1.04 0.75 1.14 1.06 -0.05 -0.02 -0.02 -1.9 1964 0.81 1.20 1.12 0.86 1.22 1.15 -0.05 -0.02 -0.03 -2.6 1965 0.90 1.30 1.21 0.94 1.30 1.23 -0.04 0.00 -0.02 -1.6 1966 1.00 1.32 1.26 1.04 1.32 1.27 -0.04 0.00 -0.01 -0.8 1967 1.04 1.34 1.28 1.13 1.35 1.31 -0.09 -0.01 -0.03 -2.3 1968 1.14 1.35 1.32 1.20 1.37 1.34 -0.06 -0.02 -0.02 -1.5 1969 1.25 1.40 1.37 1.28 1.40 1.38 -0.03 -0.00 -0.01 -0.7 1970 1.28 1.44 1.41 1.29 1.42 1.39 -0.01 0.02 0.02 1.4 1971 1.28 1.40 1.38 1.37 1.43 1.42 -0.09 -0.03 -0.04 -2.8 1972 1.38 1.43 1.42 1.38 1.44 1.43 -0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.7 1973 1.40 1.42 1.43 1.38 1.43 1.42 -0.02 -0.01 0.01 0.7 1974 1.32 1.35 1.36 1.35 1.39 1.38 -0.03 -0.04 -0.02 -1.4 1975 1.31 1.35 1.33 1.33 1.35 1.35 -0.02 0.00 -0.02 -1.5 note: the difference in percent is the quotient from the total difference and the total census value. source: 2011 census, 2011 microcensus, own calculation. impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 67 with multiple independent variables. the district level used here has certain limitations since, as in all macro-analysis at the district level, the modifi able areal unit problem (maup) (openshaw 1984) occurs, which can lead to interpretative problems in multivariate analysis (fotheringham/wong 1991). the dependent variable is the district-specifi c ctfr calculated in this study for women of the 1969-72 cohorts. for these cohorts, the census 2011 covers 193,934 cases of women; all those cases were included in the calculation of the 402 districtspecifi c ctfr values. the independent variables are based on district-specifi c aggregations of the microdata from the 2011 census household sample (composition variables) as well as on the inkar database (districts’ opportunities; bbsr 2015). the census aggregations are calculated for the same cohorts (1969-72) as the dependent variable and using the district convertor for the territorial reform in mecklenburgwest pomerania. the following proportions are used as independent composition variables: migration background, low educational level (isced 1-2), high educational level (isced 5a, 6), catholics, protestants, married women, cohabitating women as well as the sum of married and cohabitating women. the average values from 1995-2011 (if available)8 were used to measure districts’ opportunities, since the infl uence of these factors is crucial in the phase of reproductive decisions over the life course. for women who were about 40 years old 2011, this phase comprises the past ten or more years. the following variables are used (metadata see: bbsr 2015): employment rate in the tertiary sector, unemployment rate (as a share of the total civil labour force), employment rate in research and development (r&d), percentage of women working part-time, employment rate of women, labour force participation rate of women, gross domestic product per capita, gross wage and salary, percentage of child poverty, childcare rate for children aged 0-2, care rate of preschool children aged 3-5, all-day care rate of preschoolage children,9 teaching staff in day-care facilities in relation to the number of children, percentage of dwellings with fi ve and more rooms, fl oor area per person in square meters, area closer to nature per resident and the gender proportion of 20 to 39-year-olds (relation of women/men). the natural logarithm (base e) of the population density (inhabitant per square km) is used to capture the urbanisation effect. 8 values from 1995-2011 are available for most of the inkar (bbsr 2015) variables. the data series does not go as far back for the following variables: unemployment rate from 1998, gross salary from 2000, r&d employment rate from 2003, childcare rates from 2007, employment rate in the tertiary sector and women’s employment rate from 2008. this is a disadvantage, but based on the development of the other variables we can assume that the relation of these variables between the districts was relatively similar for the entire time period. 9 this indicator measures the share of threeto fi ve-year-old children in day-care centres supervised for seven and more hours per day. • martin bujard, melanie scheller68 4 results 4.1 ctfr at the district level the results for the average ctfr of the 1969-72 cohorts for all 402 districts are displayed in figure 2. each value and a numbered key to each district name are shown in table a-1 in the appendix and in an excel table in the online appendix. the spectrum ranges from 1.05 in passau to 2.01 in cloppenburg (see fig. 3). the ctfr is below 1.3 in 28 districts, in particular in big cities like cologne, hamburg, stuttgart or munich. it is above 1.7 in 44 districts. many of these districts with a relatively high cohort fertility are located in the allgäu, in the region of the odenwald, in southern franconia, in eastern saxony and in the region between münster and emsland. regarding the question of district-specifi c infl uence on the lifetime fertility of women the estimated ctfr is more informative and easier to interpret than the tfr. due to missing data of ctfr on the district level the tfr is sometimes used to answer such questions but it is often misinterpreted. there are fundamental differences between both concepts which can be illustrated by an age-time lexis diagram (luy 2010). the tfr does not only reveal the quantum, but also a timing effect (bongaarts/feeney 1998). further, womens’ internal migration affects both measures differently in many districts. we illustrate this in the following by comparing the ctfr with available tfr data at the district level. the data basis for the tfr values is estimated by the bbsr (2015). for comparison, we use the tfr of those years in which the mother cohorts 1969-72 reached the mean age at childbearing (mac). in the year 1999 the mac was 30.1 years, or roughly the age of the women born in 1969 (statistisches bundesamt 2012). by 2003 the mac rose to 30.67 years, which corresponds with the 1972 cohort. accordingly, the average tfr values of the years 1999-2003 are used for the comparison with the ctfr values of the 1969-72 cohorts for the districts. using this 5-year average also has the advantage that it smoothens tfr fl uctuations at the district level. comparing the ctfr and tfr is fundamentally problematic. here, the aim is to show how, and why, the ctfr diverges considerably from the previously known tfr values. the correlation between the two fertility indicators at the district level has a pearson correlation coeffi cient of 0.56. the high deviation from 1 demonstrates that it makes a big difference whether a cohort measurement (ctfr) or a period measurement (tfr) is considered. the ctfr is on average 0.12 higher when comparing ctfr (1969-72) and tfr (1999-2003) values; therefore, the tfr underestimates the actual births per woman. this is even more problematic for fertility data at the district level for two reasons: (1) when the postponement of childbearing takes place at a different speed (and therefore the bias diverges due to the timing effect) and (2) due to internal migration between districts. both have considerable effects on the tfr of the districts in germany. the question of how many children women in specifi c districts have cannot be answered appropriately using the tfr at the district level. however, the advantage of the tfr is that it delivers very current data. the data on the fi nal number of children, by contrast, enable us to answer the question of how many children women of a cohort have. temporarily childless impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 69 fig. 2: ctfr at the district level: estimated values for the 1969-72 cohorts note: a map with a numbered key and a list with the names of the districts and each ctfr value are provided in the appendix. further, an excel-sheet with the districts ctfr can be downloaded at: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/270/241 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census. map: © geobasis-de/bkg (2015). ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! kiel mainz erfurt bremen berlin potsdam dresden munich hamburg schwerin hanover magdeburg stuttgart wiesbaden düsseldorf saarbruecken ctfr among women born in 1969-72 < 1,32 1,32 1,46 1,46 1,58 1,58 1,71 > 1,71 • martin bujard, melanie scheller70 women who move to another city for studies have a negative effect on the tfr of that city because they are included in the denominator, which may lead to a considerable underestimation of the fertility of women in university towns. these phenomena lead to a deviation between the ctfr and tfr at the district level of +0.50 in the brandenburg district of elbe-elster and -0.30 in lüchow-dannenberg (lower saxony), a range of more than 0.80. the district-specifi c variation in the tfr bias compared to the ctfr is considerable, whereby three phenomena are of central importance: 1. the timing component of the tfr is particularly distinct in east germany because the delay of mac was exceedingly high following reunifi cation. accordingly, the ctfr in nearly every east german district is at least 0.2 higher than the tfr, and more than 0.3 higher in 37.7 percent of districts. of the 77 east german districts, only gera has a higher tfr. 2. urban-rural migrations following childbirth are visible in several districts, whereby families with young children tend to move from the city to neighbouring rural districts. this phenomenon is especially visible in cologne, düsseldorf, essen and frankfurt/main and particularly distinct in bavaria, where munich, ingolstadt, amberg, weiden, nuremberg, fürth and erlangen have a lower ctfr than their tfr. 3. the ctfr is signifi cantly higher than the tfr in several university cities such as münster (0.33), tübingen (0.23) and heidelberg (0.48), which is largely caused by female students who are only temporarily living in these cities and have a low fertility during this time. fig. 3: estimated ctfr at the district level: top 10 and bottom 10 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 estimated ctfr among women born 1969-72 passau, city kiel, city gera, city würzburg, city weiden i.d.opf., city munich, city düsseldorf, city cologne, city frankfurt/main, city osnabrück, city median daun rottal-inn neckar-odenwald-county straubing-bogen eichstätt freudenstadt vechta mühldorf a.inn günzburg cloppenburg source: own calculations based on the 2011 census. impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 71 4.2 macro-analysis of district-specifi c factors of the ctfr based on the newly generated data on cohort fertility at the district level, we are able to analyse district-specifi c factors at the macro level. table 3 shows the correlations between the ctfr and some socio-structural, economic, political and geographical factors, the fi gures are differentiated for germany as a whole and west and east germany. there are distinct differences regarding the socio-structural factors in west and east germany. for example, the negative correlation between the ctfr and the unemployment rate as well as the ctfr and the share of cohabitating couples is only signifi cant in west germany. the characteristics of the religion variable is notable: while a high percentage of catholics is only signifi cantly associated with higher cohort fertility in west germany, the negative sign associated with the protestant share for the whole of germany conceals a signifi cant positive correlation for east germany. the childcare rates are only signifi cantly negative in west germany. the correlation between the ctfr and all-day childcare is negative, which demands explanation. since both variables correlate with unemployment (r = 0.71 and 0.67 for germany), it might conceal a spurious correlation. in addition, due to the relevant time period they are only informative to a limited extent for the fertility of the selected female cohorts (see 3.4). since urbanisation is cited in the literature as a central factor in regional fertility differences (see 2.2), the negative correlation between population density and number of children per woman is illustrated in figure 4. the population density is logarithmised because of its skewed distribution. the correlation between the two variables is signifi cantly negative; the pearson’s r correlation coeffi cient is 0.54. in the following, we show the results of the linear regression analysis for germany, whereby the 402 districts are the cases (see table 4).10 in model 1 we show the composition variables only, in model 2 and 3 we include the variables of districts’ opportunities infl uenced by social structure, and in model 4 we include the variables of districts’ opportunities. model 5 is the best-fi t model when focussing only on six variables. the negative effect of the employment rate in the tertiary sector, the population density and a gender proportion with few men is robust and highly signifi cant for all models (p<0.001). the share of catholics and the percentage of dwellings with fi ve rooms and more are also signifi cantly positive, whereby the level of signifi cance varies between the models. for example, the t value for the share of catholics drops from 7.1 in model 1 to 2.2 in model 5. the percentage of female immigrants has a signifi cantly negative effect in model 1, but when including the variables of the tertiary sector and population density (models 3-5) the sign reverses – also to a signifi cant level. since immigrants tend to live in cities, the negative cor10 to avoid multicollinearity, variables whose intercorrelations reach values above 0.7 are not included in a common regression model. therefore we use the variable of all-day care of 3-to5-year-olds in place of the care rate for under 3-year-olds as well as the prosperity indicators of the gdp instead of child poverty and salary. • martin bujard, melanie scheller72 tab. 3: bivariate correlations at the district level between the ctfr and selected composition factors and districts’ opportunity factors factors/indicators germany west east c o m p o si ti o n education percentage with low education (isced 1-2) -0.05 -0.12* -0.19 percentage with high education (isced 5a, 6) -0.49*** -0.52*** -0.33** migration percentage with migration background -0.20*** -0.31*** -0.32** religion percentage of catholics 0.30*** 0.33*** 0.18 percentage of protestants -0.03 -0.10 0.38*** civil status percentage of married women 0.64*** 0.73*** 0.66*** percentage of cohabitating women -0.23*** -0.31*** -0.11 percentage of married and cohabitating women 0.67*** 0.68*** 0.67*** employment market employment rate in the tertiary sector -0.56*** -0.57*** -0.49*** d is tr ic ts ’ o p p o rt un it ie s in fl u en ce d b y so ci al s tr u ct u re unemployment rate -0.28*** -0.42*** -0.01 percentage of r&d employees -0.03 -0.05 -0.02 women’s employment percentage of women working part-time -0.44*** -0.47*** -0.29* employment rate of women -0.02 0.01 0.07 labour force participation rate of women 0.21*** 0.31*** 0.29* prosperity per capita gross domestic product -0.36*** -0.41*** -0.45*** gross wage and salary -0.14** -0.23*** -0.33** percentage of child poverty -0.46*** -0.50*** -0.41*** urbanisation logarithmised population density -0.54*** -0.60*** -0.44*** d is tr ic ts ’ o p p o rt un it ie s urban/rural district (dummy) 0.27*** 0.30*** 0.26* family policies childcare rate -0.20*** -0.38*** -0.29* care rate of preschool-age children -0.04 -0.01 -0.19 all-day care rate of preschool-age children -0.33*** -0.55*** -0.16 teaching staff in day-care facilities 0.30*** 0.47*** 0.40*** housing percentage of dwellings with 5 and more rooms 0.59*** 0.65*** 0.48*** floor area per person 0.21*** 0.23*** -0.02 area closer to nature per resident 0.12* 0.11 0.33** gender proportion gender proportion (age 20-39) -0.18*** -0.31*** -0.33** n 402 325 77 notes: *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census and bbsr (2015). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 73 relation in model 1 is an ecological fallacy; it is caused by an overlapping effect of urbanisation. with these six factors, model 5 attains an adjusted determination coeffi cient of 0.47. by contrast, the effects of the unemployment rate, part-time work and the percentage of the highly educated lose their signifi cance in those models in which population density and housing are included (model 4). in case of the regressions for west germany, the structure of some models has to deviate somewhat due to problems with multicollinearity.11 the models show that composition effects and district-specifi c opportunities complement each other (table 5). the best-fi t model – w3 – reaches an explanatory power of 0.51. consequently, the ctfr is higher in districts in which few highly educated people and many catholics live (composition effect) as well as in which a low population density, a relatively high share of men, a more traditional economic structure (small tertiary sector) and a low unemployment level (district-specifi c opportunities) are combined. besides the effect of gender proportions, all of these variables show robust signifi cant levels in modifi ed models (not shown). the variables female employment rate and percentage of catholics explain a similar variance; the latter is only signifi cant when the former is not included (model 11 due to excessive intercorrelations, the gdp, the percentage of dwellings with 5 and more rooms and the fl oor area are not included. further, the immigrant as well as the population density variable are not included in the same models. fig. 4: correlation between the estimated ctfr and the population density in germany’s 402 districts source: own calculations based on the 2011 census and bbsr (2015). • martin bujard, melanie scheller74 w4, w5). two variables that are signifi cant for germany as a whole, which were not included due to higher intercorrelations with population density, were additionally tested (models not shown): the immigration effect is signifi cantly positive when the percentage of immigrants is included together with the population density. the positive coeffi cient of the dwelling size is highly signifi cant when it is used in place of population density. tab. 4: ols regressions on the ctfr at the district level: germany model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 percentage with high -0.0081*** -0.0038*** -0.0015 0.0005 education (0.0009) (0.0011) (0.0011) (0.0013) percentage with -0.0018** -0.0011 0.0024** 0.0022* 0.0021** migration background (0.0006) (0.0007) (0.0009) (0.0009) (0.0008) percentage of 0.0019*** 0.00070* 0.00085** 0.00073* 0.00065* catholics (0.0003) (0.00032) (0.00031) (0.00031) (0.00030) employees in the -0.0037*** -0.0024*** -0.0026*** -0.0026*** tertiary sector (0.0007) (0.0007) (0.0007) (0.0007) unemployment rate -0.0060** -0.0060* -0.0005 (0.0020) (0.0024) (0.0030) percentage of women -0.0045* -0.0029 -0.0025 working part-time (0.0020) (0.0020) (0.0019) gdp -0.0012 -0.0017 -0.0017 (0.0011) (0.0011) (0.0010) logarithmised -0.046*** -0.030** -0.038*** population density (0.010) (0.011) (0.011) gender proportion -0.61*** -0.74*** -0.65*** (0.17) (0.18) (0.15) all-day care rate of -0.00082* preschool-age children (0.00041) percentage of dwellings 0.0025* 0.0035*** with 5 and more rooms (0.0010) (0.0008) constants 1.616*** 1.960*** 2.595*** 2.477*** 2.311*** (0.016) (0.045) (0.165) (0.194) (0.129) r2 0.326*** 0.433*** 0.483*** 0.500*** 0.479*** adj. r2 0.321*** 0.423*** 0.471*** 0.486*** 0.472*** n 402 402 402 402 402 notes: standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coeffi cients. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census and bbsr (2015). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 75 the regressions for east germany12 shown in table 6 reveal that the percentage of protestants is signifi cantly and positively associated with the ctfr in all models. in addition, there is a cluster of four factors that are highly intercorrelated and are each highly signifi cant (p<0.01) (models e2-e5): employees in the tertiary sector, gdp, population density and the percentage of dwellings with 5 and more rooms. in less urban districts the economic structure is more traditional, the gdp lower and more larger dwellings are available. in these districts, there are frequently low shares of young women. unfortunately, we are unable to interpret which of these factors is decisive due to the intercorrelations and the relatively low number of cases in east germany. tab. 5: ols regressions on the ctfr at the district level: west germany model w1 model w2 model w3 model w4 model w5 percentage with -0.0092*** -0.0097*** -0.0062*** -0.0051*** -0.0034** high education (0.0010) (0.0012) (0.0014) (0.0014) (0.0011) percentage with -0.0013 -0.00003 migration background (0.0008) (0.0007) percentage of catholics 0.0020*** 0.0004 0.0005 0.0007* 0.0011*** (0.0003) (0.0024) (0.0003) (0.0003) (0.0003) employees in the -0.0024** -0.0023** -0.0022** -0.0035** tertiary sector (0.0008) (0.0008) (0.0008) (0.0008) unemployment rate -0.026*** -0.020*** -0.013*** (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) female employment -0.0083*** -0.0082*** rate (0.0026) (0.0025) logarithmised 0.030*** 0.032*** 0.050*** population density (0.009) (0.009) (0.007) gender proportion -0.44* -0.40* (0.20) (0.20) constants 1.617*** 2.617*** 3.101*** 2.388*** 2.045*** (0.024) (0.219) (0.289) (0.191) (0.054) r2 0.355*** 0.498*** 0.523*** 0.507*** 0.484*** adj. r2 0.349*** 0.489*** 0.513*** 0.498*** 0.477*** n 325 325 325 325 325 notes: standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coeffi cients. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census and bbsr (2015). 12 the results for east germany must be interpreted carefully due to the low number of cases. • martin bujard, melanie scheller76 5 summary and discussion the objective of this study was to analyse the infl uence of district-specifi c factors of fertility and to generate the data on cohort fertility at the district level in germany. for the fi rst time, we calculated estimated values for the ctfr for all 402 german districts based on the microdata from the household sample of the 2011 census and offi cial birth statistics. we further used linear regression analysis based on census and inkar data to analyse fertility differences on the district level. this analysis revealed that district-specifi c demographic factors such as population density and gender proportions as well as economic variables such as economic structure, dwelling size and unemployment level can contribute to a better understanding of tab. 6: ols regressions on the ctfr at the district level: east germany model e1 model e2 model e3 model e4 model e5 percentage with -0.0026 high education (0.0020) percentage with -0.0051 migration background (0.0038) percentage of catholics 0.0028 0.0026 0.0025 0.0029* 0.0023 (0.0015) (0.0014) (0.0014) (0.0014) (0.0014) percentage of 0.0051** 0.0043* 0.0052** 0.0054** 0.0046* protestants (0.0016) (0.0019) (0.0018) (0.0018) (0.0019) unemployment rate 0.0078 0.0041 0.0054 0.0098* (0.0047) (0.0050) (0.0049) (0.0047) employees in the -0.0039** tertiary sector (0.0012) gdp -0.0096** (0.0032) logarithmised -0.036** population density (0.012) percentage of dwellings 0.0055** with 5 and more rooms (0.0017) constants 1.471*** 1.559*** 1.517*** 1.504*** 1.082*** (0.041) (0.139) (0.135) (0.130) (0.101) r2 0.269*** 0.318*** 0.307*** 0.310*** 0.317*** adj. r2 0.229*** 0.280*** 0.268*** 0.272*** 0.279*** n 77 77 77 77 77 notes: standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coeffi cients. *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census and bbsr (2015). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 77 district-specifi c fertility differences. at the same time, the fi ndings show that composition effects with regard to education, religion and immigration are also associated with district-specifi c fertility differences. the differences in the estimated district-specifi c ctfr for the 1969-72 cohorts are substantial, with the spectrum ranging from 2.01 in cloppenburg to 1.05 in passau. women in large cities have the lowest average number of children. the ctfr is above 1.7 in 44 districts, primarily in the allgäu, in the odenwald region, in southern franconia and in the region between münster and emsland. the district-specifi c distribution of the ctfr differs fundamentally from the distribution of the tfr for comparable years (bbsr 2015); the correlation coeffi cient is only 0.56. a comparison of both indicators at the district level illustrates that the timing effect intrinsic to the tfr underestimates fertility in particular in east germany. in addition, the low tfr in university cities is a statistical artefact, since students temporarily raise the denominator for certain age-related, still childless groups. while, for example, the heidelberg tfr oscillated below 1.0 for many years, the ctfr is 1.36. the fi ndings from the multivariate analysis have a wider international relevance since the analysis considers several factors combined which have been discussed in the current literature. for germany as a whole we have stated that the ctfr is signifi cantly higher in districts • that have a low number of highly educated women, • that have a high percentage of catholics, • that have a more traditional economic structure (small tertiary sector), • where unemployment is lower, • that are more rural, • with housing markets that offer more large dwellings for families and • that exhibit a relative surplus of men. the fi ndings for germany as a whole are, as expected, similar to those for west germany, since a majority of the districts (81 percent) lies in west germany. but they differ between west and east germany, sometimes profoundly. in east germany the ctfr is signifi cantly higher in districts • with large numbers of protestants and • that belong to a cluster of variables measuring a lower population density, a more traditional economic structure, a low domestic product and many large dwellings. thus, the robust fertility-reducing infl uence of a high population density in principle confi rms the urbanisation hypothesis. this effect remains signifi cant even when other factors are considered although the strength of the effect is reduced when we include the educational variables. therefore, the considerable urban-rural differences are caused by the two facts that more highly educated women (who tend to postpone childbirth) live in cities and that fewer families with children live there because of less local recreational opportunities and higher extra-familial lei• martin bujard, melanie scheller78 sure activity options. the migration selection effect contributes to this, which states that women with more career ambitions migrate more often to cities and vice versa. the analysis identifi ed a cluster of variables in the broader context of urbanisation. this is an interesting fi nding with regard to theory building because it is a starting point for further differentiating the urbanisation theory: in urbanised districts, scarcer housing (fiori et al. 2014; kulu/vikat 2007; kulu 2013), a modern serviceoriented economic structure, as well as a surplus of women in some cases, and more modern cultural values coincide. these regional opportunity factors increase the explanatory power if we include them in models with population density. the fi ndings substantiate sharlin’s (1986) assumption for the early 21st century that the urbanisation theory is based on geographical, demographic, economic and cultural factors. education-specifi c composition effects can be added to them.13 this article makes only an initial, tentative approximation. however, additional research could further substantiate the mechanisms in the urbanisation cluster. the high explanatory power of the religion variables is remarkable – considering it is not only valid for the frequently studied share of catholics, but also for the east german protestants. the effect among catholic dominated districts should also be seen in the context of childcare, which is comparatively less extensive in these districts. this fi nding contradicts analysis comparing countries (castles 2003) in which the percentage of catholics has negative associations with fertility rates. one possible explanation is that the extent of childcare at the district level is highly correlated with denominations (bujard 2011), while the low childcare supply at the beginning of the century and its expansion since 2005 are phenomena that apply in a similar way to catholic and protestant districts in west germany. this leads to a fundamental question: does the religious denomination measure a composition effect at all, or is it an indicator of the cultural character of a district that carries a more conservative image of family and envisions large families as something rather desirable (cf. wolf 1912)? in this case, further analysis is needed. the gender proportions are also correlated with the ctfr. in the east german districts in particular, where there are 100 men for 80 to 90 women, this is positive for female fertility. apparently, the favourable situation on the partner market leads to less women remaining without a partner and respectively, the childlessness rate is lower. the extent to which men in such competitive relationship constellations are more prone to have a family in order to keep up the relationship would be an interesting question. an alternative explanation is the migration selection effect. including variables measuring the supply of childcare did not lead to consistent effects; however, this certainly does not mean that these factors, which differ considerably between the districts, have no infl uence. instead, the effects of the childcare supply and unemployment can only be analysed in a meaningful way when changing rates are quantifi ed over the course of time (e.g. bauernschuster et 13 without the migrant effect, according to which disproportionately large numbers of fertile and culturally more traditional immigrant groups live in large cities, the urban-rural differences would be far greater. impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 79 al. 2013). however, a more verifi ed implication for family policy is the high impact of the housing situation on fertility. because the decline of families with three and more children is decisive for 68 percent of the decline of ctfr between the cohorts 1933 to 1968 in germany (bujard/sulak 2016), it is reasonable that the shortage of dwellings with fi ve and more rooms contribute to a lower fertility level. the macro-analysis conducted here offers an overview of the factors of district-specifi c differences for cohort fertility for the fi rst time. they cannot, however, compare the exact variance explanation of the composition effects to that of the regional effects. to do this, multilevel models that adequately use the hierarchical differences of microand macro-variables are necessary. in comparison to the international literature, the literature focussing on germany assigns more dominant roles to composition effects than to regional fertility differences (hank 2002; hank/ huinink 2015). this at fi rst contradicts the infl uence of regional factors seen here. previous multilevel analyses were carried out with individual datasets (e.g. pairfam, dji family survey or soep) adding district-specifi c factors. in these analyses, the case numbers are relatively low considering that on average 20 to 50 individual cases are available per district. this leaves us with the central question of what results multilevel analysis based on the census would offer. but this 500-fold enlargement of cases would have the disadvantage of a cross-sectional research design,14 which, however, is suited for estimating the proportion of explained variance. this study has two implications for further research: firstly, the estimated values of cohort fertility can be used for future research. compared to the periodic tfr, they enable a better understanding of the district-specifi c fertility rate differences. for macro-analysis at the district level, the data enable cohort fertility to be taken into consideration. but they also enable identifi cation of specifi c regional constellations, in particular the identifi ed high-fertility regions in east baden-wurttemberg, southern franconia and in the north-west of north rhine-westphalia. more in-depth and focused case analysis of individual districts is promising for researching their causes. without a doubt, regional fertility analysis supplements the status of research on fertility. secondly, the signifi cant fi ndings about the impact of religions, gender proportions and the urbanisation context cluster bring up new questions with regard to methodology and theory formation. this is especially the case when assessing the shares that composition effects and the district-specifi c context have in the overall explanation of the ctfr. one challenge is the diffi culty to differenciate between variables that can have both individual and structural effects. one example of this is the percentage of catholics, since the catholic denomination is an individual characteristic, but the factor aggregates the effect of catholicism and thus measures an important cultural factor. overall, the study provides several new insights into the nexus between district-specifi c contexts and cohort fertility. 14 this would, for example, not clarify the extent to which the urbanisation effect is caused by internal mobility between urban and rural areas or by the fertility behaviour of women who live in large cities for the long term (boyle et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009). • martin bujard, melanie scheller80 acknowledgements this article has benefi tted from valuable comments by sebastian klüsener, stephan kühntopf, ralina panova, manfred scharein and felix zur nieden as well as by two anonymous reviewers. further we thank kai dreschmitt for literature research and the census team at the federal statistical offi ce, especially sabrina estatico, for support with data specifi c questions. references andorka, rudolf 1978: determinants of fertility in advanced societies. london: methuen & co. baizán, pau 2009: regional child care availability and fertility decisions in spain. in: demographic research 21,27: 803-842 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2009.21.27]. 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sexuallebens in unserer zeit. jena: gustav fischer. date of submission: 15.09.2016 date of acceptance: 15.05.2017 dr. martin bujard (). federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografie.de/bujard_cv melanie scheller. federal statistical offi ce. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: melanie.scheller@destatis.de url: https://www.destatis.de/en/homepage.html • martin bujard, melanie scheller84 appendix fig. a1: numbered key of the 402 german districts source: own graph. map: © geobasis-de/bkg (2015). impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 85 tab. a1: name, numbered key and estimated ctfr for cohorts 1969-72 for the 402 german districts key district ctfr key district ctfr key district ctfr 1 flensburg, city 1.39 51 ammerland 1.63 101 herford 1.48 2 kiel, regional capital 1.11 52 aurich 1.60 102 höxter 1.66 3 lübeck, hanseatic city 1.30 53 cloppenburg 2.01 103 lippe 1.55 4 neumünster, city 1.31 54 emsland 1.82 104 minden-lübbecke 1.66 5 dithmarschen 1.50 55 friesland 1.60 105 paderborn 1.67 6 duchy of lauenburg 1.53 56 county of bentheim 1.67 106 bochum, city 1.36 7 north frisia 1.53 57 leer 1.67 107 dortmund, city 1.42 8 ostholstein 1.43 58 oldenburg 1.47 108 hagen, city 1.59 9 pinneberg 1.42 59 osnabrück 1.72 109 hamm, city 1.63 10 plön 1.48 60 vechta 1.86 110 herne, city 1.58 11 rendsburg-eckernförde 1.53 61 wesermarsch 1.61 111 ennepe-ruhr-kreis 1.39 12 schleswig-flensburg 1.57 62 wittmund 1.55 112 hochsauerlandkreis 1.70 13 segeberg 1.43 63 bremen, city 1.28 113 märkischer kreis 1.45 14 steinburg 1.34 64 bremerhaven, city 1.43 114 olpe 1.76 15 stormarn 1.43 65 düsseldorf, city 1.18 115 siegen-wittgenstein 1.61 16 hamburg 1.27 66 duisburg, city 1.56 116 soest 1.61 17 braunschweig, city 1.37 67 essen, city 1.29 117 unna 1.57 18 salzgitter, city 1.50 68 krefeld, city 1.57 118 darmstadt, city 1.44 19 wolfsburg, city 1.53 69 mönchengladbach, city 1.49 119 frankfurt/main, city 1.20 20 gifhorn 1.63 70 mülheim/ruhr, city 1.37 120 offenbach/main, city 1.41 21 göttingen 1.49 71 oberhausen, city 1.43 121 wiesbaden, city 1.31 22 goslar 1.47 72 remscheid, city 1.47 122 bergstraße 1.42 23 helmstedt 1.51 73 solingen, city 1.52 123 darmstadt-dieburg 1.42 24 northeim 1.67 74 wuppertal, city 1.61 124 groß-gerau 1.48 25 osterode am harz 1.55 75 kleve 1.63 125 hochtaunuskreis 1.49 26 peine 1.60 76 mettmann 1.39 126 main-kinzig-kreis 1.48 27 wolfenbüttel 1.47 77 rhein-kreis neuss 1.49 127 main-taunus-kreis 1.47 28 hanover region 1.40 78 viersen 1.51 128 odenwaldkreis 1.60 29 diepholz 1.59 79 wesel 1.54 129 offenbach 1.38 30 hameln-pyrmont 1.45 80 bonn, city 1.34 130 rheingau-taunus-kreis 1.42 31 hildesheim 1.51 81 cologne city 1.19 131 wetteraukreis 1.46 32 holzminden 1.56 82 leverkusen, city 1.36 132 gießen 1.45 33 nienburg/weser 1.53 83 aachen 1.46 133 lahn-dill-kreis 1.61 34 schaumburg 1.61 84 düren 1.56 134 limburg-weilburg 1.61 35 celle 1.65 85 rhein-erft-kreis 1.56 135 marburg-biedenkopf 1.55 36 cuxhaven 1.51 86 euskirchen 1.50 136 vogelsbergkreis 1.65 37 harburg 1.37 87 heinsberg 1.57 137 kassel, city 1.48 38 lüchow-dannenberg 1.24 88 oberbergischer kreis 1.65 138 fulda 1.64 39 lüneburg 1.48 89 rheinisch-bergisch. kreis 1.55 139 hersfeld-rotenburg 1.51 40 osterholz 1.46 90 rhein-sieg-kreis 1.55 140 kassel 1.43 41 rotenburg/wümme 1.69 91 bottrop, city 1.37 141 schwalm-eder-kreis 1.53 42 soltau-fallingbostel 1.53 92 gelsenkirchen, city 1.59 142 waldeck-frankenberg 1.46 43 stade 1.62 93 münster, city 1.44 143 werra-meißner-kreis 1.64 44 uelzen 1.41 94 borken 1.78 144 koblenz, city 1.35 45 verden 1.54 95 coesfeld 1.65 145 ahrweiler 1.54 46 delmenhorst, city 1.64 96 recklinghausen 1.46 146 altenkirchen (westerwald) 1.57 47 emden, city 1.68 97 steinfurt 1.76 147 bad kreuznach 1.41 48 oldenburg, city 1.37 98 warendorf 1.65 148 birkenfeld 1.44 49 osnabrück, city 1.21 99 bielefeld, city 1.40 149 cochem-zell 1.60 50 wilhelmshaven, city 1.33 100 gütersloh 1.62 150 mayen-koblenz 1.52 • martin bujard, melanie scheller86 tab. a1: continuation key district ctfr key district ctfr key district ctfr 151 neuwied 1.57 201 pforzheim, city 1.75 251 freyung-grafenau 1.61 152 rhein-hunsrück-kreis 1.59 202 calw 1.71 252 kelheim 1.71 153 rhein-lahn-kreis 1.48 203 enzkreis 1.62 253 landshut 1.64 154 westerwaldkreis 1.65 204 freudenstadt 1.86 254 passau 1.65 155 trier, city 1.29 205 freiburg im breisgau, city 1.32 255 regen 1.51 156 bernkastel-wittlich 1.66 206 breisgau-hochschwarzwald 1.63 256 rottal-inn 1.84 157 bitburg-prüm 1.65 207 emmendingen 1.62 257 straubing-bogen 1.84 158 daun 1.83 208 ortenaukreis 1.62 258 dingolfing-landau 1.66 159 trier-saarburg 1.56 209 rottweil 1.70 259 amberg, city 1.31 160 frankenthal (palatinate), city 1.44 210 schwarzwald-baar-kreis 1.63 260 regensburg, city 1.26 161 kaiserslautern, city 1.26 211 tuttlingen 1.77 261 weiden i.d.opf., city 1.16 162 landau in der pfalz (palatinate), city 1.46 212 konstanz 1.47 262 amberg-sulzbach 1.61 163 ludwigshafen/rhein 1.41 213 lörrach 1.60 263 cham 1.64 164 mainz, city 1.42 214 waldshut 1.56 264 neumarkt i.d.opf. 1.74 165 neustadt weinstraße, city 1.54 215 reutlingen 1.60 265 neustadt a.d.waldnaab 1.73 166 pirmasens, dity 1.27 216 tübingen 1.52 266 regensburg 1.54 167 speyer, city 1.60 217 zollernalbkreis 1.67 267 schwandorf 1.52 168 worms, city 1.35 218 ulm, university town 1.42 268 tirschenreuth 1.78 169 zweibrücken, city 1.40 219 alb-donau-kreis 1.76 269 bamberg, city 1.21 170 alzey-worms 1.58 220 biberach 1.81 270 bayreuth, city 1.44 171 bad dürkheim 1.54 221 lake constance district 1.60 271 coburg, city 1.51 172 donnersbergkreis 1.56 222 ravensburg 1.78 272 hof, city 1.38 173 germersheim 1.53 223 sigmaringen 1.66 273 bamberg 1.61 174 kaiserslautern 1.55 224 ingolstadt, stadt 1.41 274 bayreuth 1.59 175 kusel 1.44 225 munich, regional capital 1.18 275 coburg 1.63 176 südliche weinstraße 1.51 226 rosenheim, city 1.39 276 forchheim 1.68 177 rhein-pfalz-kreis 1.37 227 altötting 1.63 277 hof 1.45 178 mainz-bingen 1.39 228 berchtesgadener land 1.51 278 kronach 1.48 179 südwestpfalz 1.52 229 bad tölz-wolfratshausen 1.64 279 kulmbach 1.47 180 stuttgart, regional capital 1.29 230 dachau 1.53 280 lichtenfels 1.78 181 böblingen 1.52 231 ebersberg 1.61 281 wunsiedel/fichtel mountains 1.23 182 esslingen 1.49 232 eichstätt 1.86 282 ansbach, city 1.43 183 göppingen 1.61 233 erding 1.59 283 erlangen, city 1.32 184 ludwigsburg 1.55 234 freising 1.55 284 fürth, city 1.31 185 rems-murr-kreis 1.55 235 fürstenfeldbruck 1.44 285 nuremberg, city 1.26 186 heilbronn, city 1.49 236 garmisch-partenkirchen 1.53 286 schwabach, city 1.34 187 heilbronn 1.70 237 landsberg/lech 1.81 287 ansbach 1.63 188 hohenlohekreis 1.78 238 miesbach 1.57 288 erlangen-höchstadt 1.49 189 schwäbisch hall 1.76 239 mühldorf/inn 1.87 289 fürth 1.40 190 main-tauber-kreis 1.75 240 munich 1.51 290 nürnberger land 1.44 191 heidenheim 1.78 241 neuburg-schrobenhausen 1.60 291 neustadt a.d.aisch-bad w. 1.57 192 ostalbkreis 1.76 242 pfaffenhofen a.d.ilm 1.62 292 roth 1.66 193 baden-baden, city 1.22 243 rosenheim 1.69 293 weißenburg-gunzenhausen 1.73 194 karlsruhe, city 1.26 244 starnberg 1.56 294 aschaffenburg, city 1.50 195 karlsruhe 1.52 245 traunstein 1.67 295 schweinfurt, city 1.77 196 rastatt 1.53 246 weilheim-schongau 1.71 296 würzburg, city 1.16 197 heidelberg, city 1.36 247 landshut, city 1.27 297 aschaffenburg 1.64 198 mannheim, city 1.34 248 passau, city 1.05 298 bad kissingen 1.63 199 neckar-odenwald-kreis 1.84 249 straubing, city 1.60 299 rhön-grabfeld 1.64 200 rhein-neckar-kreis 1.49 250 deggendorf 1.47 300 haßberge 1.64 impact of regional factors on cohort fertility • 87 tab. a1: continuation note: an excel fi le with the 5-digit district code, the district names, the länder and the ctfr-estimations is provided at: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/270/241 source: own calculations based on the 2011 census. key district ctfr key district ctfr key district ctfr 301 kitzingen 1.77 351 vorpommern-greifswald 1.45 401 greiz 1.67 302 miltenberg 1.60 352 ludwigslust-parchim 1.51 402 altenburger land 1.46 303 main-spessart 1.57 353 chemnitz 1.65 304 schweinfurt 1.66 354 erzgebirgskreis 1.71 305 würzburg 1.51 355 central saxony 1.62 306 augsburg, city 1.28 356 vogtlandkreis 1.56 307 kaufbeuren, city 1.54 357 zwickau 1.56 308 kempten, city 1.45 358 dresden 1.52 309 memmingen, city 1.50 359 bautzen 1.61 310 aichach-friedberg 1.59 360 görlitz 1.73 311 augsburg 1.67 361 meißen 1.66 312 dillingen/donau 1.62 362 saxon switzerland-east ore mountains 1.65 313 günzburg 1.88 363 leipzig, city 1.34 314 neu-ulm 1.74 364 leipzig 1.51 315 lindau (lake constance) 1.50 365 north saxony 1.62 316 ostallgäu 1.76 366 dessau-roßlau 1.37 317 unterallgäu 1.80 367 halle/saale 1.40 318 donau-ries 1.65 368 magdeburg 1.45 319 oberallgäu 1.57 369 altmarkkreis salzwedel 1.62 320 stadtverband saarbrücken 1.34 370 anhalt-bitterfeld 1.47 321 merzig-wadern 1.57 371 börde 1.53 322 neunkirchen 1.46 372 burgenlandkreis 1.51 323 saarlouis 1.38 373 harz 1.47 324 saarpfalz-kreis 1.39 374 jerichower land 1.38 325 st. wendel 1.39 375 mansfeld-südharz 1.55 326 berlin 1.37 376 saalekreis 1.48 327 brandenburg/havel 1.24 377 salzlandkreis 1.46 328 cottbus, city 1.44 378 stendal 1.58 329 frankfurt/oder, city 1.34 379 wittenberg 1.52 330 potsdam, city 1.35 380 erfurt, city 1.48 331 barnim 1.47 381 gera, city 1.11 332 dahme-spreewald 1.50 382 jena, city 1.47 333 elbe-elster 1.68 383 suhl, city 1.39 334 havelland 1.59 384 weimar, city 1.41 335 märkisch-oderland 1.49 385 eisenach, city 1.33 336 oberhavel 1.48 386 eichsfeld 1.66 337 oberspreewald-lausitz 1.64 387 nordhausen 1.32 338 oder-spree 1.47 388 wartburgkreis 1.68 339 ostprignitz-ruppin 1.53 389 unstrut-hainich-kreis 1.60 340 potsdam-mittelmark 1.62 390 kyffhäuserkreis 1.52 341 prignitz 1.63 391 schmalkalden-meiningen 1.58 342 spree-neiße 1.52 392 gotha 1.53 343 teltow-fläming 1.53 393 sömmerda 1.63 344 uckermark 1.42 394 hildburghausen 1.54 345 rostock 1.38 395 ilm-kreis 1.44 346 schwerin 1.41 396 weimarer land 1.44 347 mecklenburgische seenplatte 1.53 397 sonneberg 1.33 348 rural district of rostock 1.58 398 saalfeld-rudolstadt 1.43 349 vorpommern-rügen 1.53 399 saale-holzland-kreis 1.48 350 northwestern mecklenburg 1.71 400 saale-orla-kreis 1.49 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş abstract: in his infl uential 1998 study, david s. reher discusses historical differences between countries with strong and weak family ties. he focuses on the “western world”, comparing italy and the iberian peninsula with scandinavia, the british isles, the low countries, germany and austria, together with north america. in this paper, we explore whether romania, in eastern europe, can be characterised as having a strong family system, given the increasingly important role family has played for individual well-being following the end of the socialist regime. we observe a number of similarities between romania and southern european countries in terms of behaviours associated with “strong family ties”, opinions on family care and mutual intergenerational support. differences can be explained in light of romania’s economic and housing crisis. overall, it is likely that the importance of family ties in romania increased after the end of the socialist regime. keywords: romania · strong family ties · living arrangements · intergenerational support · values and attitudes 1 introduction in his infl uential 1998 study on family ties, david s. reher discusses historical differences between countries with strong and weak family ties. he focuses on the “western world”, comparing italy and the iberian peninsula with scandinavia, the british isles, the low countries, germany and austria, together with north america. there has, however, been increasing interest in family models of former socialist states, especially following the enlargement of the european union. scholars such as hajnal (1965, 1982) and laslett (1983) originally described eastern europe and the balkans (the countries east of the “hajnal line”, an imaginary line from st. petersburg to trieste) as characterised by a common historical pattern of early and nearly universal marriage and a “joint household” system. however, this homogeneous comparative population studies vol. 41, 1 (2016): 57-86 (date of release: 19.02.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-01en6 • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş58 pattern has recently been questioned, as different aspects of family life, such as family structure, intergenerational relationships and obligations, and welfare systems are increasingly taken into account. alain blum (2001) argues that former socialist countries encompass a wide variety of family traditions, and that forty years of socialist regimes were unable to affect the culture of private family life. recent macro-level descriptive analyses (which include the newer eu member states) have not been able to identify a uniform behavioural model east of the hajnal line (plakans/wetherell 2005; mandic 2008; fokkema/liefbroer 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010; hoem et al. 2010; iacovou 2011; iacovou/skew 2011), while existing comparative studies are more general and do not differentiate between groups of countries within the region (saraceno et al. 2005). in her analysis of the structural determinants of leaving the parental home in europe, mandic (2008: 634), for example, fi nds that “the new member states from central europe, in spite of geographical proximity and common recent ‘communist’ legacy, were found in all three [european] clusters, indicating a possibility of rather diverging developments”. despite an increased interest in former socialist europe, comparative data on family life remain scarce (manning 2004). important surveys on family choices and behaviours (e.g. survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) and the gender and generations survey (ggs)) still include a limited number of countries1 and results are often not comparable. in a similar vein, cross-national surveys on attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns (e.g. european social surveys and world values survey) may fail to match pertinent topics and countries. this study adopts a different approach. we focus on one country at one point in time, so as to verify whether it fi ts a particular model. in our analyses, we refer to the framework of family ties and attempt to determine whether romania, in the eastern part of europe, can be characterised as having a strong family system, especially in light of the increased importance of the family for individual well-being following the end of the socialist regime.2 identifying the specifi c role of family ties in romania before and after the end of the ceaușescu dictatorship represents a certain challenge. before 1989, family ties were less visible due to the state’s support of families and the independence the system granted to the youth. after 1989 it became unclear whether strong family ties were a preferred way of living, or rather a pragmatic and strategic response to the shock of the post-socialist transition and the unavailability or low quality of welfare services. the second challenge concerns changes in living arrangements and union formation that are increasingly widespread in romania – such as cohabitations and 1 no former socialist country was covered in the fi rst wave (2004-05) of share. in 2006-07, the czech republic and poland were introduced, and in 2011 estonia, hungary and slovenia. unfortunately, romania has not (yet) been included. 2 similar processes have been observed in albania, where the state assumed a primary role during the socialist regime, but the family regained its importance following the end of socialist rule (danaj et al. 2005). the role of the family in post-socialist bulgaria has been documented by ghodsee and bernardi (2012). is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 59 births out of wedlock. multiple interpretations of these behaviours are possible. from reher’s perspective, they are common in countries with weak family ties. other authors (hoem et al. 2009; potârcă et al. 2013) suggest that they are signs of the diffusion of the second demographic transition (sdt) in romania. alternatively, as they are especially visible among the weakest social groups, they may be a consequence of the political transition. nevertheless, the question of how they interact with family ties in practice remains. in the following, we compare romania to italy and spain – two countries representative of strong family ties – as well as to other countries, both in west, north and east europe, highlighting similarities and differences. we focus on family-related demographic behaviour, such as marriage and cohabitation, leaving the parental home, living arrangements of the young and the elderly, values and attitudes towards the family, and intergenerational support among family members. we use macroand micro-level data from offi cial databases and sample surveys. as far as possible, we select comparative data sources in order to strengthen our considerations. 2 the social context of the family in romania the socialist regime in romania (1947-1989) profoundly altered family relationships by imposing standardised life-paths. more specifi cally, this period was one of industrialisation – i.e. of the creation of a large industry sector – and the quasi-realisation of a full-employment programme. this also included the development of mass education, the nationalisation of agriculture (which turned farmers into wage earners) and a process of urbanisation. in 1960, 67.9 percent of romanian inhabitants were living in rural areas, by 1990 this share had decreased to 48 percent. education was seen by the regime as a means of developing an industrial workforce, consequently most high-school graduates were employed in industrial areas located in or near urban areas. individuals from rural areas were given the opportunity to change their residence. young adults who grew up during the communist period had highly predictable and standardised paths of life. more specifi cally, they mostly originated from rural areas, left their parental homes to pursue secondary or tertiary education, and after graduation received jobs and housing, often sharing these with others of a similar social status. marriage and the birth of a fi rst child granted them the right to an individual dwelling. massino (2010) observes that marriage was often a means of freeing oneself from communal living in the dormitories. more generally, the regime smoothed the transition to adulthood due to a lesser need for family involvement and support. early departure from the parental home and independent living did not necessarily represent a personal choice for more independence, but was rather enabled and sometimes imposed by the social context, as graduates were forced to take up certain jobs. a certain share of the rural youth, however, remained in their native regions, choosing instead a life-course that more closely resembled that of their parents. • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş60 more specifi cally, they became wage earners in agriculture and, unlike their urban (or emigrational) counterparts, needed the support of their family, especially in terms of housing. here the family system carried on the tradition of pre-modern rural families which is characterised by neo-local residence for newly formed conjugal couples (the new couple lives in an own residence without other relatives) and (extended) family support. thus, the persistence of kinship networks (blum 2001) can be observed across socialist europe, largely in family structures where young adults or married couples continue to live with their parents. individuals who chose to pursue their education were supported through different policies (e.g. tax-free education or scholarships). graduates then quickly entered the labour force, most of them being sent to places outside their native region. such internal migrations and employment resulted in a greater physical distance between young adults and their parents, making family support both increasingly unnecessary and diffi cult to provide. welfare supply was primarily the responsibility of the state, which in turn ensured the quasi-total absorption of young graduates into the labour force. employment then provided social services, such as housing, family allowances, maternity leave, or other support (popescu 2004). in order to increase the number of working parents in the labour force, the state created a large network of childcare institutions. mothers could thus immediately resume employment after birth and grandparents were not burdened with childrearing. here, family ties did, however, continue to play an important role. for instance, grandparents often remained the primary providers of childcare due to the low quality or scarcity of these public services (popescu 2004). with regard to the elderly population, the introduction of a pay-as-you-go pension system and an increase in labour market participation following the establishment of the socialist regime greatly increased the number of pension receivers. financial benefi ts reduced old age poverty as well as the need for support from the family. individuals were thus no longer burdened with the responsibility of directly caring for the elderly, and were able to meet the requirements of the family code (1954), which stated that descendants have care obligations towards their parents (that could be paid in kind or in cash). the system did not, however, account for special needs, such as sickness and old age disabilities. here, state support was practically non-existent and the number of elderly care institutions was very small (such institutions were commonly called “asylums” and their image was very negative), so that sick and disabled elderly care became almost entirely the responsibility of the family. the socialist revolution constituted a radical break from the past, and families were defi ned as the “depository of traditions” (kerblay 1985: 564) or the “place where cultural traditions were perpetuated” (blum 2001: 236). however, these reforms eventually lost their momentum and, after 1970, were overridden by “a regressive retreat from marxist principles to conservative nationalism” (massino 2010: 38). such reverses in political discourse and in specifi c measures to outwardly preserve families – for example, the prohibition of abortion and restrictions imposed on divorce – (inglot et al. 2011) affected family life. nonetheless, after a period of fl ux, long-term behavioural trends continued (blum 2001). is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 61 after the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the life course of young romanians became far less predictable due to the social and economic changes. with the state reducing its support (ferge 1997) and instituting increasingly limited social policies (popescu 2004), there was much uncertainty, anxiety and fear (genov 1998). graduation no longer ensured secure jobs and housing and employment rates dropped by 20 percent. women in particular left the labour market and turned towards family care, minding their children and parents. parental leave, non-existent during the communist regime, was introduced in 1990. public childcare, however, almost disappeared, and the importance of family support grew (rotariu et al. 2012). participation in early education (for children aged 3-6 years) increased from 72.3 percent in 2002 to 82 percent in 2012 (compared to the eu average of 93.2 percent in 2012). owing to insuffi cient public provision, private childcare services emerged, but for the majority of the romanian population the costs are prohibitive. young adults tended to stay in their parents’ household longer due to socioeconomic insecurity. thus, the importance of family support increased. entrance into the labour market was delayed and became ever more diffi cult, refl ected by a growing youth unemployment rate (under the age of 25). individuals who chose to pursue higher education faced similar issues. education was no longer tuition-free; from 2000 to 2010 approximately half of all students paid tuition (uefiscdi – cnfis 2014) at the same time state support for students was reduced dramatically. following graduation, the transition into employment became increasingly diffi cult. the housing market also underwent a number of changes: home-ownership became predominant, the rental sector became almost entirely privatised and municipal housing was severely marginalised (speder 2005; mureșan et al. 2008).3 these changes were the result of several factors, including the selling of formerly public housing into private ownership soon after the fall of socialism, a sharp decrease in the construction of new dwellings and the share of construction from public funds,4 a decline in the purchasing power of the population during this transition period, combined with a spike in housing prices (dan 1996, 2009). these factors meant that many families needed to extend the period of support for their children (bezrukof/ foigt 2002), which made “leaving the nest” an important step for both children and parents, perceived as a fundamental shift towards adulthood. by the end of the socialist regime, pensions amounted to 60 percent of the mean salary in romania. by 2007, however, they had dropped to 36 percent, leading to increased poverty and a decrease in the standard of living. institutions for elderly care emerged during this period, albeit in limited numbers and with continuing negative connotations. to this day, elderly care remains a concern for many families in romania. 3 law no. 61, 7 february 1990 (decret-lege nr 61/7 feb 1990) constitutes the act that initiated the privatisation of housing stocks; by 2002 only 1.25 percent were publically owned. moreover, that same year, 93.2 percent of dwellings occupied by one family were occupied by their owners (2002 census). 4 public funding accounts for 2 percent of all housing stock in 2000 (dan 2009). • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş62 3 family formation 3.1 departure from the parental home according to reher (1998), countries with weak family ties are generally characterised by an early departure of youth from the parental home, as they seek to start their adult lives and achieve economic independence. housing is often shared with friends or colleagues who are in the same stage of their lives. years may pass until marriage. in countries with strong family ties, patterns of leaving the parental home are quite different: young people continue to live with their parents even after they have found a job, and their fi nal departure tends to coincide with marriage. the european commission report on youth (2012, with 2010 data) shows strong disparities across countries regarding the average age at leaving the parental home, with clear clusters of countries (table 1). in finland, the netherlands and france, both women and men leave the earliest compared to the rest of europe, at an average age of 20.9-22.9 for women and 22.9-24.9 years for men. in eastern and southern european countries, the average age is 25.0-27.9 years for women and 28.0-30.9 years for men. italy stands out with the highest age for women, 28.0-30.2 years, which is very close to that for men. although the age at which young adults leave the parental household has remained quite stable over time, since 2005, there are marked differences across countries (european commission 2012). for instance, eastern european countries – such as bulgaria, hungary and romania – have seen substantial increases, particularly when looking at men in romania. such differences are mainly due to a lack of fi nancial resources and affordable housing (eurostat 2009). studies have associated a delayed departure from the parental home in southern and eastern european countries with high levels of unemployment and low wages of young people, coupled with scarce affordable housing (aassve et al. 2007; iacovou 2001). this makes the parental home a protective shelter from economic hardship. in romania, a large proportion of individuals aged 15-30 cite “constraints” as the primary reason for staying with their parents for a longer period of time, thus confi rming – in a subjective manner – what has been described above (section 2). more specifi cally, 40 percent state that they cannot afford to move out and 37 percent report that affordable housing is scarce (eurostat 2009). these fi gures lend support to mureșan’s (2007) affi rmation that in recent years, “[romanian] youth are not independent in a greater percentage nor earlier in life” (2007: 17) compared with socialist times. as described above, during the socialist era, youth independence was facilitated and supported by the state, but this is no longer the case. with increased diffi culties in fi nding separate accommodation and the worsening economic situation, young people increasingly choose to prolong the stay in their parental homes until marriage, when the newly formed couple receives (fi nancial) support from their families, relatives, or friends for the purchase of a dwelling (mureșan 2007, 2012a): neo-local family formation is encouraged, and wedding guests contribute money to help the young couple buy a home or apartment. this fi nancial help is a form of intergenerational support, and the same help is returned, usually to the is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 63 d en m ar k n o rw ay fi n la n d n et h er la n d s fr an ce g er m an y b ul g ar ia h un g ar y r o m an ia it al y s p ai n a ve ra g e ag e at le av in g th e p ar en ta l h o u se h o ld , 2 01 0 fe m al es --20 .9 -2 2. 9 20 .9 -2 2. 9 20 .9 -2 2. 9 23 .0 -2 4. 9 25 .0 -2 7. 9 25 .0 -2 7. 9 25 .0 -2 7. 9 28 .0 -3 0. 2 25 .0 -2 7. 9 m al es --22 .9 -2 4. 9 22 .9 -2 4. 9 22 .9 -2 4. 9 25 .0 -2 7. 0 31 .0 -3 5. 1 28 .0 -3 0. 9 28 .0 -3 0. 9 28 .0 -3 0. 9 28 .0 -3 0. 9 in d iv id u al s le av in g h o m e b ef o re t h ei r fi r st u ni o n, a s a p er ce n ta g e o f a ll th o se w h o le ft h o m e an d e n te re d a u ni o n (c o h o rt b o rn a ro un d 1 96 0) fe m al es -68 55 -41 e as t: 3 3 -14 28 * 15 15 w es t: 4 5 m al es -72 60 -51 e as t: 4 3 -18 43 * 30 25 w es t: 5 5 ta b . 1 : d ep ar tu re f ro m t he p ar en ta l h o m e in s el ec te d c o un tr ie s * fi gu re s fo r r o m an ia w er e ca lc ul at ed b y c o rn el ia m ur eș an u si ng g g s d at a, fo r co ho rt s 19 50 –1 96 9, w ith le av in g ho m e at fi rs t u ni o n o r en te ri ng th e fi r st u ni o n b ef o re le av in g ho m e as c o m p et in g ri sk s. s o ur ce : eu ro pe an c om m is si on 2 01 2 (e st im at es ); b ill ar i e t al . 2 00 1 • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş64 guests’ children. to live independently of their parents, young people must be able to afford an expensive apartment (especially in large urban areas) or an equally high monthly rent (ahmed/emigh 2005, for eastern european countries). parents with fi nancial resources help their children buy a home or apartment; however, such help is usually associated with marriage (mureșan 2007, 2012a). this can be seen as a means of imposing certain life patterns or as a way to maximise fi nancial help, even from in-laws. young professionals with high incomes can afford renting a house or an apartment and living separately from their parents before entering marriage. however, this is not the case for all young adults, even for those who have entered the labour market (mureșan 2007, 2012a). some youth in romania chose to pursue higher education in a different city – living neither with their parents nor independently. these young adults typically receive fi nancial support from their parents (mureșan 2007, 2012a) and visit them on a regular basis (distance permitting). if, after graduating, they do not fi nd a job in the city, they usually return to the parental home. when parents cannot meet the costs of education, youth will often take up a job to support themselves, and contributions from parents take the form of different goods (such as food). this context substantially differs from the previous regime, when the state assisted youth in pursuing their studies through scholarships that also covered accommodation expenses. in conclusion, many economic constraints affect the path of leaving the parental home. however, young people increasingly choose to relate to their family, as in italy and spain, rather than to follow alternative models (such as leaving early and share an apartment with friends) more similar to those of young people in northern or western countries. differences in leaving the parental home are thus expressions of variances in social norms (aassve et al. 2007). while in southern and eastern european countries, departure most commonly coincides with marriage, in northern countries most of the young people leaving their parental homes do so to live alone or with friends. it is, however, noteworthy that the percentages of men and women born around 1960 who left the parental home before the formation of a fi rst union were higher in romania compared to other eastern or southern countries (table 1). these cohorts made this transition mainly during the socialist regime, refl ecting the role of the state in facilitating departure from the parental home for the pursuit of university education and in providing support for living independently (as described in section 2). after 1989, the state reduced its support and levels of leaving the parental home before the fi rst union dropped. a comparison of data for the period of 19801989 to that of 1996-2005 shows a decrease from 27 percent to 22 percent for women, and from 38 percent to 33 percent for men (mureșan 2007). simultaneously, the percentage of those forming a fi rst union while still living in the parental home increased, especially for men: 13 percent to 14 percent for women and 23 percent to 28 percent for men (mureșan 2007). according to aassve et al. (2007), educational infrastructures play an important role in shaping european differences. for instance, in scandinavian countries and in the uk, young people are expected to leave the parental home to pursue their tertiary education. by contrast, in italy, education policy aims at ensuring geographiis the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 65 cal accessibility of universities, thus enabling the youth to continue living at home during their studies. in post-socialist romania, universities are similarly spread throughout the country, potentially having the same effect on leaving the parental home, but unlike in italy, this diffusion was not explicitly aimed at assisting the youth in undertaking higher studies while living in their parental homes. these patterns of behaviour of the romanian youth are similar to those of their counterparts in other southern and eastern european countries. the collapse of the socialist regime in romania reduced resources and opportunities for independent youth living. departure from the parental home thus came at an increasing age, and was commonly characterised by a transition to adulthood through marriage. in the face of economic constraints, families play a crucial role in shaping the conditions under which children are able to live independent lives. 3.2 first union and fi rst birth according to reher (1998: 215), “societies with strong families tend to have greater social cohesion”; a low incidence of both cohabiting non-married couples and nonmarital childbearing seem to characterise such societies. accordingly, it is important to examine whether the decrease in marriages in romania was accompanied by an increase in non-marital unions (cohabitations), and whether women or couples choose to maintain this alternative living arrangement throughout their life course or shift to marriage when it comes to childbirth and raising children. according to hoem et al. (2009) and mureșan (2007, 2012a), marriages not preceded by cohabitation have decreased in romania since the 1990s, while cohabitation as a fi rst or preliminary form of relationships has steadily grown. for the period of 1996-2005, the proportion of women who cohabited before the age of 40 was 35 percent, compared to 20 percent for the period of 1980-1989 (mureșan 2007). the proportion of non-marital births also increased steadily after the fall of the berlin wall, from 17 percent in the early 1990s to 31 percent in 2012 (table 2). do these fi gures indicate weak family ties in romania? to answer this question, we compare the spread of these behaviours to that observed in other european countries (table 2). in the 1990s, the proportion of non-marital births in romania was already relatively high, particularly in comparison to bulgaria and hungary in eastern europe, and germany and the netherlands in western europe, although still much lower than that observed in northern europe. in the following years, the number of births out of wedlock spread quite rapidly in the countries mentioned above: in 2012, they reached the percentages of the northern countries. romania, on the contrary, has maintained relatively stable levels over the last ten years, comparable to those observed in italy and spain. recent investigations have, however, shown that marriage remains the preferred context for childbearing in many european societies, particularly in eastern europe. comparing data from the generations and gender survey and other comparative surveys for 11 european countries, perelli-harris et al. (2012) investigate how cohabitation as a setting for childbearing and childrearing has differed by country and • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş66 d en m ar k n o rw ay fi n la n d n et h er la n d s fr an ce g er m an y b u lg ar ia h u n g ar y r o m an ia it al y s p ai n % o f l iv e b ir th s o u ts id e m ar ri ag e (2 01 2) 1 50 .6 54 .9 4 4. 5 46 .6 55 .8 (2 01 1) 34 .5 57 .4 4 4. 5 31 .0 28 .0 35 .5 a n al ys in g c a n al ys in g co u p le s w h o h av e ch ild re n (a ro u n d 1 99 5 -2 00 5) 2 % b eg in n in g th ei r u n io n w it h co h ab it at io n 90 78 90 w es t 7 7 e as t 9 3 77 46 29 18 % s ti ll co h ab it in g at c o n ce p ti o n 61 33 51 w es t 4 5 e as t 7 0 45 28 18 10 % s ti ll co h ab it in g at b ir th 56 26 47 w es t 2 8 e as t 5 7 24 18 12 7 % s ti ll co h ab it in g 3 ye ar s af te r b ir th 35 22 33 w es t 1 8 e as t 3 8 20 15 7 4 ta b . 2 : c o ha b it at io n an d c hi ld b ea ri ng in d ic at o rs in s el ec te d c o un tr ie s s o u rc e: 1 e ur o st at ta b le s (h tt p: //e p p .e u ro st at .e c. eu ro p a. eu /p o rt al /p ag e/ p o rt al /s ta ti st ic s/ se ar ch _d at ab as e) , a cc es se d 1 4 d ec em b er 20 13 2 p er el lih ar ri s et a l. 20 12 : ta b le 2 : 17 5 is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 67 year. the records show an increase in the percentage of women who cohabited at the beginning of their fertile unions in all countries, although at different levels: from 1995-2005, this proportion amounted to 18 percent in italy, 29 percent in romania, 46 percent in hungary, 77 percent in bulgaria, 78 percent in the netherlands, and 90 percent in france and norway. of these countries, italy and romania recorded the lowest shares of women who continued to cohabit at conception, birth, or three years after birth (table 2). thus, in italy, romania and hungary marriage continues to be the preferred context for childbearing and childrearing, and the pattern of conception during cohabitation followed by marriage has persisted (perelli-harris et al. 2012). this suggests that in romania and some other eastern countries, many non-marital conceptions must be unplanned pregnancies. according to reher’s framework, cohabitations and births out of wedlock in romania might be interpreted as indicator of weak family ties. however, other studies suggest that women living in rural areas with low levels of education and a low socio-economic status cohabit and/or give birth outside marriage more frequently than urban, well-educated and fi nancially successful women (rotariu 2009; rotariu et al. 2012; hărăguş 2008, 2010; oaneş-faludi/hărăguş 2009). differences within romania do not support a classic interpretation of the process of diffusion of new demographic behaviours. neither is the sudden increase in the 1990s, and stagnation of (since 2004), non-marital births in romania necessarily a symptom of a transition towards a value system that is typical for late or post-modernity, as such a transition would have continued, and not suddenly halted. rotariu et al. (2012) argue that such a pattern is, rather, the result of a revival of certain behaviours that developed over the past centuries in romania. moreover, non-marital births are mostly viewed as socially acceptable behaviour in romania, at least in certain communities.5 in conclusion, patterns of family formation in romania differ from those in northern and western europe. the slow increase of cohabitation and non-marital births is more likely to be the result of economic deprivation than a sign of weakening family ties. 4 living arrangements reher (1998) considers that in contexts with strong family ties, the family takes on many roles (which are largely performed by the state in northern european countries), such as support for the needy and vulnerable. although everywhere in europe parents love their children, the expressions of this love vary (reher 1998). while in regions with weak family ties, young people are encouraged to leave their parental homes early and build their lives on their own, in regions with strong family ties, the 5 kok (2009) observes high levels of births out of wedlock around 1900 in provinces that form present-day romania and associates these results with the region’s family system, arguing that the present-day context of cohabitation and non-marital childbearing seem to be a return to past traditions. • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş68 family is called upon to protect its members against the diffi culties resulting from social and economic hardship. a similar behaviour characterises relationships with the elderly: families with weak ties seek to prolong their independence and typically turn to institutional help when no longer possible; for families with strong ties, the need to provide direct familial support for the elderly is seen as an obligation. greater individualism or solidarity can shape family structure and preferences for nuclear or extended families. distinctions between regions with weak and strong family ties seem to refl ect historical differences in family systems. this section focuses on patterns of living arrangements of young adults (20-34 years) and the elderly (65 years and above), as well as on attitudes towards the living arrangements of the elderly. we consider a high proportion of people living alone as an indicator of weak family ties and co-residence of multiple generations as an indicator of strong ties. co-residence is an important mechanism in the social protection of the elderly and plays a crucial role in poverty alleviation (palloni 2000; lyberaki/tinios 2005). 4.1 living arrangements of young adults data on the living arrangements of young adults show important differences across countries (table 3), highlighting a strong dichotomy between north and west europe on the one hand, and south europe on the other. most of these differences can be linked to varying age patterns when leaving the parental home. romania, bulgaria, and hungary form a distinct group in which a high percentage of young men, and a lower percentage of women live with at least one parent. the proportion of young adults living in an extended household is comparatively high in eastern europe.6 while the literature shows that such behaviour is associated with strong family ties in southern european countries, two elements should be noted with regard to eastern europe and the balkans: there is a historical pattern of family formation with a high incidence of extended or multigenerational households (hajnal 1982; de jong gierveld et al. 2002; de jong gierveld et al. 2012), and a challenging housing situation in terms of availability and affordability (see section 3.1 above; de jong gierveld et al. 2002; robila 2004; de jong gierveld et al. 2012). with specifi c regard to the extended household hypothesis, kaser (1996) conducted a more detailed examination of households and families in the balkans and revealed that a “neolocal-nuclear household formation system” is characteristic of romania: upon marriage, boys traditionally received an equal share of land when leaving the parental home to set up separate residences. the youngest (or the old6 we further investigated this issue for romania and italy using individual-level data from the 10 percent samples from national censuses conducted in 2001 for italy and in 2002 for romania, made available by the minnesota population center (ipums-international). this provided an in-depth understanding of co-residence with one’s parents, which we defi ne as living in the same household with at least one parent or one of the spouses’ parents. data confi rm a high proportion of married children living with their parents in romania. iacovou and skew (2011), who include the new eu member states (besides malta) in their analyses, also confi rm these results; estonia is the only exception among the former socialist countries. is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 69 d en m ar k n o rw ay fi n la n d n et h er la n d s fr an ce g er m an y b u lg ar ia h u n g ar y r o m an ia it al y s p ai n m en li vi n g al o n e 33 39 27 36 40 11 13 6 11 5 li vi n g w it h p ar en ts , a s a ch ild 17 13 36 30 21 50 47 51 67 45 liv in g w it h a p ar tn er (w it h o r w it h o u t c hi ld re n) 48 4 4 31 31 31 26 26 23 19 35 li vi n g in e xt en d ed h o u se h o ld s (a s a co u p le o r as a s in g le p ar en t) 0 1 3 2 2 10 11 16 0 5 o th er 2 3 0 1 6 3 3 4 3 10 w om en li vi n g al o n e 28 29 20 24 26 3 5 11 6 5 li vi n g w it h p ar en ts , a s a ch ild 8 11 22 18 14 23 32 19 60 34 li vi n g w it h a p ar tn er 49 51 47 46 50 38 39 38 32 42 li vi n g in e xt en d ed h o u se h o ld s 2 0 1 2 1 29 17 18 1 6 li vi n g as s in g le m o th er 9 6 10 6 5 4 3 2 0 2 o th er 4 3 0 4 4 3 4 12 1 11 ta b . 3 : li vi ng a rr an g em en ts o f p eo p le a g ed 1 834 in s el ec te d c o un tr ie s, 2 00 3, in p er ce n t s o ur ce : s ar ac en o et a l. 20 05 : ta b le 1 • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş70 est) child remains with the parents (kaser 1996: 381). as such, intergenerational co-residence is not a traditional pattern. in addition, a small proportion of complex or multigenerational households were observed in other countries (kaser 1996; de vos/sandefur 2002, quoting todorova 1996, for bulgaria). this contradicts the idea that eastern europe and the balkans are a homogeneous region with a high prevalence of extended households and moreover, the nuclear family had been the predominant family model in romania. the second explanation suggests that economic diffi culties and uncertainties may increase co-residence (isengard/szydlik 2012), although in former socialist europe an important factor is the housing crisis that emerged after the fall of the communist regime. thus, families use household composition as an economic strategy to pool limited fi nancial resources, especially during periods of economic strain and transition. ahmed and emigh (2005) tested these two hypotheses as explanations for household composition (extended/co-residence versus nuclear) in post socialist eastern europe. they found that extended households represent an adaptive strategy for the poor, especially in countries where the post-socialist transition to a market economy was slow and diffi cult, such as in romania, bulgaria, and russia. in these countries, one possible explanation for the increased spread of co-residence may be the extremely high costs of housing, exacerbated by privatisation. in conclusion, the proportion of young adults living alone or with a partner in romania strongly depends on their age at leaving the parental home. moreover, the high incidence of intergenerational co-residence in romania appears to be a result of an adaptive strategy rather than of preferences. nevertheless, the response to economic diffi culties is parental support, confi rming the importance of family ties in the process of family formation. 4.2 living arrangements of the elderly based on the 2001 national censuses (comparative data for the census round of 2010/11 are not yet available), eurostat data on living arrangements for the elderly (65 years and older) show clear differences between northern or western and southern european countries. for instance, southern european countries recorded lower proportions of individuals living alone and higher proportions of co-residence with children (table 4). romania can be found somewhere in the middle, with the proportion of individuals living alone more similar to italy and spain than to northern or western countries, and co-residence with children higher than in france and finland but lower than in italy and spain. census data have an important advantage compared to survey data: they do not only account for people living in private households, but also for those in institutional settings. table 4 shows that the proportion of elderly individuals living in institutions is higher in northern and western europe than in southern and eastern european countries. among those aged 65 years and above, 0.4 percent were living in institutions at the time of the 2002 census in romania. this proportion was also comparably low in italy and spain (2.1 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively), as is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 71 d en m ar k n o rw ay fi n la n d n et h er la n d s fr an ce g er m an y b ul g ar ia h un g ar y r o m an ia it al y s p ai n li vi n g … ... a lo n e (s in g le ) 43 .9 39 .0 38 .0 33 .1 30 .7 35 .3 24 .2 30 .6 23 .6 26 .8 19 .5 … w it h sp o u se /p ar tn er (n o c hi ld re n) 50 .3 47 .2 43 .3 51 .2 48 .8 53 .8 58 .3 41 .9 46 .8 40 .6 40 .4 … w it h ch ild re n* 7. 0 9. 2 6. 5 8. 7 3. 1 8. 9 13 .7 20 .4 23 .8 … in a n in st it u tio n al h o u se h o ld 3. 3 4. 1 3. 1 6. 5 5. 7 3. 7 0. 4 2. 5 0. 4 2. 1 2. 3 o th er 3. 5 2. 7 6. 4 2. 7 6. 1 4. 1 17 .1 16 .1 15 .5 10 .1 14 .0 ta b . 4 : li vi ng a rr an g em en ts o f p eo p le a g ed 6 5 ye ar s an d o ve r in s el ec te d c o un tr ie s, 2 00 0 ce n su s ro un d , i n p er ce n t * t he d at ab as es w ith c en su s d at a ha ve b ee n th o ro ug hl y re vi se d b y e ur o st at a nd th e ho us eh o ld c la ss ifi ca tio n av ai la b le in 2 01 4 la ck s th e ca te go ry “ w ith c hi ld re n” . s o ur ce : eu ro st at ( ht tp :/ /e p p .e ur o st at .e c. eu ro p a. eu /p o rt al /p ag e/ p o rt al /p o p ul at io n/ d at a/ d at ab as e) a cc es se d o n 7 ja nu ar y 20 11 a nd 2 6 m ar ch 2 01 4. • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş72 well as in bulgaria and hungary (0.4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively). these results refl ect attitudes regarding preferred living arrangements for the elderly in need (see section 4.3). the residual category, “other,” is vague and does not impact the broader observable typologies. the label mainly concerns alternative forms of extended families, such as elderly individuals living with other people in a shared house or fl at. nevertheless, romania, bulgaria, and hungary show the largest diffusion of several forms of co-residence, similar to patterns observed in italy and spain.7 these results for northern, western and southern european countries are in line with the literature in the fi eld. co-residence has been documented to be the highest in mediterranean countries (iacovou 2000a, 2000b; tomassini et al. 2004; kohli et al. 2005; hank 2007), while living alone or only with a partner have been found to be most prevalent in sweden, denmark, and the netherlands (iacovou 2000b). using data from the share survey, kohli et al. (2005) document a weak-strong family dichotomy corresponding to a northern-southern distinction in the family structure of the elderly. iacovou and skew (2011) extend their analysis to new eu member states and fi nd similarities among southern and south-eastern countries, including romania. other post socialist countries follow a more heterogeneous pattern (engelen/wolf 2005; iacovou/skew 2011). data from the ggs (authors’ calculations) similarly support the idea that in eastern and southern europe, rates of intergenerational co-residence are higher than in other industrialised european countries. in italy and russia, the percentage of parents aged 50 and over who coreside with at least one child exceeds 50 percent, followed by bulgaria, hungary and romania, with rates between 40 percent and 42 percent. the percentage of parents living in the same household with at least one child is much lower in western and northern europe: 27 percent in france, 24 percent in germany and norway, and below 20 percent in the netherlands. a similar ranking results from an analysis of women aged 35-44 years with children who co-reside with their own mother, although at lower percentages. romania thus exhibits high proportions of elderly who co-reside with their children or other relatives and correspondingly low proportions of elderly who live alone or in institutions. these shares are similar to those observed for southern european countries but different from those measured in western and northern europe. these proportions have increased in romania compared to the 1992 census (de vos/sandefur 2002: 30; table iv). as is the case for the living arrangements of young adults in romania, the high and increasing proportion of elderly co-residence with their offspring and other relatives may be associated with housing constraints. 7 ipums census data were also employed to study co-residence with children in romania and italy, regardless of their marital status and age. results show that the overall proportion of elderly living with children is more similar than that shown in table 4. more specifi cally, levels are somewhat higher in romania than in italy (32.2 percent compared to 28.9 percent). in romania this phenomenon is more common among the elderly who are not married (mainly widowed), while in italy it is more frequently observed among the married elderly (likely due to children’s delayed departure from the parental home). is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 73 here too, co-residence is more of an adaptive strategy than a preferred choice, though again underlining the fact that people rely heavily on family support. 4.3 attitudes towards living arrangements as argued above, higher proportions of co-residence of the elderly and their children in southern europe, as well as in romania, are indicative of positive attitudes towards intergenerational care. results from the eurobarometer surveys (alber/köhler 2004) confi rm that romanians consider themselves responsible for the care of their parents if they are no longer able to live independently. a total of 68 percent of romanians prefer that their parents co-reside with them, less than 1 percent prefer moving their parents into an institution or a nursing home (table 5). other results on the perception of future responsibilities regarding elderly care in romania similarly show that the proportion of people who advocate extended family responsibilities is much higher than the proportion of those who reject them. in some northern countries, on the other hand, the proportion of those who reject these responsibilities is even higher than that of those who support them (table 5). here, it is worth noting that nordic countries have the highest percentages of elderly living alone or in institutions (table 4). the results for romania described above are similar to those observed in other southern and former communist countries. as tomassini et al. (2004: 32) state, “the contrasts in attitudes between northern and southern european countries mirror the contrast in solitary living among their older populations”. this assertion is similarly applicable to romania. alber and köhler (2004) outline a summarising picture of the living arrangements of the elderly in europe, and show that european countries cannot be treated as a homogenous group. using simple classifi cation analysis, they characterise the group of scandinavian countries as having a preference towards institutional care (high support of institutional care, compared to extended family responsibilities). a second group of countries, southern european countries, shows a preference for family models (higher support of extended family responsibilities, compared to formal institutional care). western european countries fall somewhere in between. preferences in eastern european countries and the balkans are similar to those in southern european countries with respect to caring for one’s parents. alber and köhler (2004: 76) conclude that “there is little doubt that the family support model will become strengthened after [the] enlargement” of the european union. • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş74 5 intergenerational solidarity in all countries – irrespective of strong or weak family ties – intergenerational reciprocity is relevant even if perceived quite differently (reher 1998). several authors argue that proximity and parental support are related to the strength of intergenerational ties, as well as to a welfare system which does not encourage individual autonomy (reher 1998; micheli 2000; dalla zuanna 2001; dalla zuanna et al. 2007). with this in mind, proximity and support can be used as proxies for the strength of such ties, in the sense that different proximity and support patterns correspond with different intensities of family ties (santarelli/cottone 2009). living near to one another facilitates contact and support. the more frequent familial interactions are, the easier it is to give and receive support as well as to identify possible needs. contact frequency is sometimes seen as a form of support in itself because it satisfi es a social need (fokkema et al. 2008: 11, 19). tab. 5: attitudes towards the living arrangements of elderly people in need, in selected european countries. preferred type of care for parents (col. 1 and 2); agreement with a higher personal involvement in elderly parents support (col. 3) preferred type of care for own parents percentage point difference between those advocating and those rejecting higher move in together nursing home family responsibilities (1) (2) (3) denmark 10.9 32.8 11.7 sweden 11.6 43.0 -17.2 finland 17.4 17.1 -2.2 netherlands 15.5 35.5 -6.6 france 37.5 15.1 15.6 germany 48.9 11.4 39.5 bulgaria 62.3 4.8 80.4 hungary 58.6 4.5 74.4 romania 67.7 0.9 82.6 italy 59.0 1.9 75.5 spain 80.7 5.4 51.9 source: col. 1,2 alber/köhler 2004: 75, table 24: answers to the following question: “let’s suppose you had an elderly father or mother who lives alone. what do you think would be best if this parent could no longer manage to live on his/her own?” col. 3 alber/köhler 2004: 67, table 21: percentage point difference between those advocating and those rejecting family responsibilities for higher elderly care. answers to the following question: “if in the future, working adults would have to look after their elderly parents more than they do nowadays, would you say that this would be rather a good thing or rather a bad thing?” is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 75 recently, international comparative surveys such as the ggs and share, have provided useful information for investigating the proximity and frequency of contact between parents and their adult children. unfortunately, the two surveys differ in the formulation of their items and in sample composition. comparable data for romania are not reliable and comparative results are thus too uncertain. the surveys do, however, measure attitudes towards family care obligations. the formulation of items was not identical, therefore percentages may refl ect slightly different aspects. however, variance among countries is very strong and the results provide a general picture of the profound differences between countries (table 6 and 7). in terms of opinions, romanians have strong traditional attitudes towards elderly care, as well as towards the care of children and grandchildren (mureșan 2012b). many believe that the family network should be the main provider of practical help. the reverse, however, is thought of fi nancial support: society, and not the family, should take the primary role in providing monetary support for the elderly, and adults with children who cannot afford a minimum level of subsistence (table 6). generally, romanians also have strong views concerning grandparents’ support towards their adult offspring: grandparents should care for their grandchildren if their parents are unable to do so and should offer fi nancial support if and when their tab. 6: attitudes towards the responsibility of family and governments/society to care for the elderly, in selected countries, percentages per 100 respondents aged 50+ household help for the elderly in need of assistance personal care for the elderly in need of assistance financial support for the elderly in need of assistance totally/mainly the family totally/ mainly the government totally/mainly the family totally/ mainly the government totally/mainly the family totally/ mainly the government italy 36.5 16.7 29.5 20.6 17.5 37.8 spain 36.6 20.8 31.4 23.2 22.2 34.9 germany 43.6 12.0 28.7 16.0 14.8 36.5 france 13.3 48.0 8.7 53.7 8.4 50.6 denmark 4.1 77.7 2.5 88.8 3.7 83.1 netherlands 13.6 45.8 5.5 61.9 5.9 69.1 assistance for the elderly in need of care in their home financial support for the elderly who live below subsistence level mainly the family mainly society mainly the family mainly society romania 45.6 5.9 5.6 26.6 bulgaria 18.8 6.6 3.8 29.2 russia 22.1 7.4 3.4 38.6 norway 0.6 26.3 0.5 61.9 source: for romania, bulgaria, russia and norway: ggs wave 1, conducted around 2005; for other countries: 2004 share data (fokkema et al. 2008: 37, table 4.1) • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş76 adult children face economic diffi culties. elderly people in romania, however, show a much lower level of agreement in terms of adapting their own lives to the urgent needs of their adult children (table 7). in a comparative perspective, romania shows trends that are much more similar to those observed in southern europe than in other countries. in italy and spain, as in romania, the responsibility of caring for the elderly lies primarily with their families, while the government is only considered responsible in situations where the family cannot fulfi l these duties, primarily in terms of fi nancial assistance (table 6). in all countries, the sense of duty on the part of older adults towards their children or their grandchildren is strong. romanians, however, feel they are responsible for the fi nancial security of their adult children and are willing to adjust their lives in order to be able to help them – this pattern resembles the one observed in bulgaria and russia (though at a higher and lower degree than in southern european countries, respectively) (table 7). tab. 7: attitudes towards the duty of parents/grandparents to care for their children/grandchildren, selected countries, percentages per 100 respondents aged 50+ to be there for their grandchildren in case of diffi culty to help the parents of their grandchildren in looking after young grandchildren to do their best for their children even at the expense of their own well-being to contribute towards the economic security of grandchildren and their family agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree italy 89.6 3.3 77.8 7.1 88.6 3.4 63.7 13.4 spain 87.1 2.6 69.1 10.9 89.8 2.8 58.0 14.4 germany 83.5 3.2 74.8 7.4 58.3 21.2 39.8 27.9 france 89.3 2.9 69.4 9.7 72.0 10.7 49.4 17.5 denmark 76.0 10.2 37.5 34.3 70.2 13.6 17.0 50.8 netherlands 74.0 10.7 28.5 42.0 64.9 14.9 25.1 43.2 grandparents should look after their grandchildren if the parents of these grandchildren are unable to do so if their adult children are in need, parents should adjust their own lives in order to help them parents ought to provide fi nancial help to their adult children when the children are having fi nancial diffi culties agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree agree/ strongly agree disagree/ strongly disagree romania 79.9 3.4 47.1 18.7 74.4 4.0 bulgaria 76.8 7.1 51.2 17.1 68.1 7.4 russia 79.1 7.2 64.4 11.8 72.7 6.4 norway 50.9 15.8 23.6 40.5 42.6 19.2 source: for romania, bulgaria, russia and norway: ggs wave 1, conducted around 2005; for other countries: 2004 share data (fokkema et al. 2008: 38, table 4.2) is the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 77 in conclusion, a comparison of attitudes towards family care obligations reveals that romanian opinion are quite similar to italian or spanish views, especially when it comes to caring for elderly parents or caring for grandchildren when adult children fi nd themselves in times of hardship. western and northern european countries hold quite different views. 6 discussion and conclusion in this paper, we explore whether the family system in romania can be considered as a pattern of strong family ties similar to that of southern european countries. to this end, we compare romania to countries from different regions of europe. we observe a number of similarities between romania and southern europe in terms of behaviours refl ecting “strong family ties”: a high proportion of children who only leave the parental home to marry, few individuals who live alone, a low but increasing level of non-marital cohabitation, a relatively high proportion of elderly people living with their children or other relatives and a low proportion living in institutions. attitudes on family care obligations are similar to those observed in southern european countries. in these countries, emphasis is placed on the role of the family, as opposed to the larger society, in terms of providing mutual intergenerational support. although on the rise, the age at leaving the parental home is lower in romania than in south europe. moreover, co-residence of young married couples and their parents is more frequent. according to our assessment, it is not different kinds of family ties that enhance this variance, but rather economic constraints and the diffi cult housing situation in romania. the collapse of the communist regime marked a changing point in family life and the life course of young adults. parents who experienced important life course events during the communist regime wish to provide similarly smooth transitions for their children; the support once received from the state (especially for housing) is now replaced by family contributions. in this respect, family ties might have become more important since the fall of the socialist regime. more generally, we consider whether and how decades of socialist government affected local cultures and changed family systems. ultimately, we agree with alain blum (2001), who argues that socialist regimes were too distant from everyday life and thus unable to adapt themselves to the social contexts they wanted to dominate. consequently, they did not extensively or sustainably modify family systems. more precisely, while they may have facilitated temporary adaptations, they did not alter underlying cultural and behavioural models. danaj et al. (2005) reach the same conclusions for albania. although the behaviour observed in romania is associated with the strong family ties characteristic of southern european countries, the question still remains as to how close these similarities truly are, i.e. whether they are deep-rooted or only temporary. both regions appear to be experiencing the changes in living arrangements and union formation typically associated with the path towards the second • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş78 demographic transition (sdt). the increasing acceptance of new behaviours and a growing proportion of non-marital cohabitations, non-marital births, and divorces (not discussed in this paper) are often considered as indicators of progress in the sdt. one might therefore ask: are strong family ties in this regard simply a residual pattern of traditional behaviours, delaying the general path of the sdt, or a sign that countries with strong family ties follow different paths and time schedules? related to this debate, thornton and philipov (2009) propose a developmental idealism framework for explaining recent changes in marital and fertility behaviour in eastern europe. within their paradigm, western european and north american countries are considered as very modern and developed, so that they also have the power to affect (among others things) beliefs, values and behaviours about marriage and fertility in regions such as eastern europe. along these lines, they suggest that more “traditional” populations have increased their tolerance regarding different family values and behaviour. although thornton and philipov (2009: 146, 150) do not specifi cally consider family ties, they state that “it is also possible that […] the confi dence and authority of parents declined, providing many more alternatives for young adults”, and that “it would also have been diffi cult […] for parents to maintain their infl uence on their children’s beliefs, values, and behaviour”. furthermore, it is possible that some demographic changes, such as the increase in divorce or the diffusion of step-families, have weakened family ties as well. the sdt has not, however, followed the same pattern everywhere. it is possible that this transition may follow specifi c paths or time schedules in countries with strong family ties. potârcă et al. (2013) show that in romania, strong norms about marriage and family shape the sdt pattern in a similar manner as observed in many southern european countries. lesthaeghe (2010) also acknowledges that although the sdt now concerns most european populations, local narratives may affect changes in values and new behaviours, and thus the sdt may differ by context. even reher (1998: 221) emphasizes historical, cultural, geographical and social continuity, stressing that modernisation cannot erase “the deep disparities that have always characterized the family in the different regions and cultures in europe”. at the conclusion of this comparative analysis, many questions remain and warrant further investigation. one of the primary diffi culties we encountered was a lack of available comparable data and indicators for romania and other european countries. occasionally, similar (but not identical) indicators are utilised across surveys, making it diffi cult to draw reliable conclusions. comparative datasets have often been developed within different theoretical frameworks. in fact, the ggs programme was developed within the framework of the sdt, while the share project is more focused on intergenerational solidarity, and eastern european countries and the balkans are not yet well represented. this article can serve as a basis for future comparative studies and progress towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding social and demographic similarities and differences within europe. this study does not take into account another demographic trend that has deeply affected romania in recent years, namely a very relevant out-migration (un population division 2013). out-migration can weaken family networks both in the native as well as the host country. however, it remains uncertain to what extent such moveis the family system in romania similar to those of southern european countries? • 79 ments affect family ties, and empirical evidence is currently insuffi cient to examine the issue. in our opinion, out-migration will not signifi cantly reduce family ties, at least in the short run, thanks to strong migration chains and support of migrants within extended families – families who provide support to both those within romania who do not migrate as well as those within the host country who do migrate. unfortunately, this cannot be tested in the host countries because of a lack data. however, there is one (relatively weak) indicator that might illustrate such support: assistance in fi nding employment in the host country. for example, 76 percent of romanians living in italy found work with the help of relatives or friends, compared to 72 percent of the entire group of foreign citizens (istat 2009). other studies point to the relevance of continuity in migrants’ behaviours and attitudes in native and host countries: see, for example, khoo et al. (2002) on cohabitation among italians who were raised in australia, and carl (2013) on gender role attitudes among fi rst and second-generation immigrants in europe. does this hold for family ties among romanian migrants as well? future research might address this question. this paper considers each country as a homogeneous entity. average behaviours may, however, conceal internal differences. we know, for example, that the socialist regime in romania strongly shaped a process of urbanisation with differences in family-related behaviour in urban and rural areas (see section 2), and that the romanian population is composed of numerous ethnic groups (hărăguș 2009; rada 2013). differences in family ties among sub-populations thus remain unexplored, and more insights into this issue could shed new light on the persistence and dynamics of family ties in romania.8 notwithstanding these important questions, in light of the literature, and the comparison of certain demographic behaviours and values discussed in this paper, we can give a positive answer to the question initially posed: does romania exhibit a pattern of strong family ties? this conclusion may also apply to other post socialist european countries, although it is not, in our opinion, a common trait to this region as a whole. these results encourage a broadening of our view towards all european countries, pushing us to see if the line from the pyrenees to the alps, dividing southern europe with strong family ties from north-western europe with weak family ties, can be lengthened to the carpathians and shed new light on commonalities and differences in other demographic behaviours. funding research for this paper was made possible by funding from the european union’s seventh framework programme (fp7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project familiesandsocieties. 8 differences in family related behaviours have been observed between urban and rural areas and ethnic groups also in albania (hemming et al. 2012). • maria castiglioni, mihaela hărăguş, cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş80 references aassve, arnstein et al. 2007: does leaving home make you poor? 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dept. of statistical sciences, university of padova. italy. e-mail: casti@stat.unipd.it url: http://homes.stat.unipd.it/mariacastiglioni/en/content/home mihaela hărăguş. centre for population studies, babes-bolyai university, cluj-napoca. romania. e-mail: mihaela.haragus@ubbcluj.ro url: http://centre.ubbcluj.ro/csp/mihaela_haragus.html cristina faludi, paul teodor hărăguş. babes-bolyai university, cluj-napoca, faculty of sociology and social work. romania. e-mail: cristina.faludi@socasis.ubbcluj.ro, tpharagus@socasis.ubbcluj.ro url: http://socasis.ubbcluj.ro/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4 &itemid=5 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) the intergenerational transmission of the value of children in contemporary chinese families: taiwan and mainland china compared the intergenerational transmission of the value of children in contemporary chinese families: taiwan and mainland china compared chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen abstract: while fertility has been drastically declining in east asia, mechanisms accounting for the current trend vary. one noticeable mechanism documented is that the changing value of children affects couples’ fertility decisions which in turn affect their subsequent fertility behaviour. this study will examine the intergenerational transmission of the value of children (voc) among grandmothers, mothers and teenagers in two chinese societies: taiwan and mainland china. we assume that cultural homogeneity interacts with political and social heterogeneity and may result in different values regarding having or not having children. data are taken from two corresponding voc surveys from taiwan (2005-2007) and from mainland china (2002-2003). we fi rst compare the value of children for taiwan and mainland china with special attention to cultural aspects. two identifi ed factor solutions are generated for both positive (traditional and emotional) and negative (emotional/psychological and familial/social) voc. analyses show that intergenerational transmission of the voc among three generations is more likely to occur for a positive voc in the chinese mainland sample. we suspect that actual fertility experience results in greater resemblance on the voc between grandmothers and mothers in both research settings. among selected structural mechanisms, only rural-urban background has an effect on patterns of intergenerational transmission. the paper ends with a discussion on the importance of culture in explaining the intergenerational transmission of the voc in chinese societies. keywords: value of children · intergenerational transmission · taiwanese fertility values · chinese fertility values comparative population studies vol. 39, 4 (2014): 679-706 (date of release: 20.10.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-14en1 • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen680 1 research background in the midst of a global fertility decline, a particularly sharp drop has occurred in east asia. in 2011, the total fertility rate in the region ranged from a low of 0.9 in taiwan to 1.5 in mainland china, with japan (1.4), south korea (1.2) and hong kong (1.1) in between. the interaction between rapid social change and its concomitant value changes has been repeatedly documented to result in signifi cant changes in family and demography related behaviours (lu 2011; mcdonald 2000; tu/liao 2005; yeh et al, 2013). hence, this study discusses that embedded in a cultural context of patriarchal practice in the region, the low fertility rate certainly refl ects rapid changes in family values in general and in values toward children in particular. over the last decades, numerous efforts have been made in locating important mechanisms accounting for couples not wanting to have children in this relatively traditional region. in general, three salient factors have been proposed: (1) increased human capital. while both men and women tend to stay longer in a school context than previous generations, women’s’ educational attainment exhibits clearer improvement. hence, marriage is postponed and subsequently, childbearing is delayed or even denied biologically (cai 2010; jones et al. 2009). (2) the rise of dual-earner families. labour force participation is often accompanied by a higher educational attainment, especially for women. the advantage of a dual-earner family includes better family fi nances as well as selffulfi lment (yu 2009). however, the demand of child-rearing becomes costly for couples who are both in the labour market. this problem is aggravated by the sharp decline in three-generational households in recent decades which results in a lack of help with childcare by grandparents (yi et al. 2006). (3) emergence of egalitarian gender ideology. the expectation of husbands actively sharing and engaging in housework has brought about a gender revolution at home (lu 2011). this ideological shift, taking place in the context of a traditional patriarchal system, contributes to the hesitance to marry women with greater resources such as a higher education or a high income (chen/yi 2005). while the above explanation of low fertility tends to be similar to that in reports from the west, the situation is much more acute in east asia due to its strong familial belief as well as its short history of modernisation. signifi cant structural explanations are offered for the continuing low fertility but there may be salient individual mechanisms just as important in explaining the low fertility phenomenon. one noted mechanism documented is the value of children (voc) of couples which may directly affect their fertility decision (nauck 2007). this paper will examine the voc expressed in the low fertility societies in east asia. in order to generate meaningful comparisons two chinese societies, taiwan and mainland china, are selected due to their cultural and historical homogeneity as well as socio-political heterogeneity. specifi cally, .confucian doctrine and practices are shared cultural traditions among different chinese societies in which fi lial piety and the proper order by age were considered the highest values (blitsten 1963; lang 1968; yang 1973). recent historical developments, however, diverge between taiwan and mainland china. taiwan the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 681 with its rapid modernisation process has been under strong western cultural infl uences while mainland china with long years of exclusion has been coping with the one-child policy within the family as well as in the societal context. it is thus important to examine the potential cultural infl uences on individual values from general versus specifi c historical experiences. it should be noted that there is strong empirical support for the confucian value placed upon family as the baseline of social structure in different countries in east asia (hsu 1948; sung 1995; koyano 1996; deutsch 2006; whyte 1995) and it is also confi rmed to manifest its utility across generations (yeh 1997). against this research background, we will explore the potential continuity of the specifi ed family value in mainland china and taiwan. our contention is that even in an era of rapid social change, fundamental cultural beliefs will be somewhat stable and thus, similar patterns of an intergenerational transmission of the voc may be observed in different chinese societies. on the other hand, experiences from heterogeneous social systems may lead to different values on children and family. it is expected that fi ndings will allow us to ascertain the signifi cance of the individual voc shaped by the common cultural as well as changing social context 2 research issues unlike the fi rst voc study which was launched in the 1970s when the threat of a population explosion caught serious attention, the second voc study in the 2000s aimed to explore the emergence of low fertility in many parts of the world. to deal with the diversity of fertility trends in different regions, the value of children was proposed to be a powerful concept contributing to the analysis fertility decisions (trommsdorff/nauck 2005). nauck and klaus (2007), after analysing empirical evidence from 11 countries, conclude that a signifi cant difference exists between lineage-based kinship systems and state-based insurance systems with regard to both actual fertility and preferred value dimensions. however, even within the similar context of a lineage-based kinship system, fertility values and behaviours vary. previous attempts to solve this puzzle have produced seemingly contradictory results. it is obvious that the rapid socioeconomic transformation in east asia has signifi cantly reduced fertility but a relatively strong preference for sons which positively increases the intention to bear children still prevails in this region (das gupta 2009; westley/choe 2007; song/burgard 2008; filmer et al. 2008). it is therefore necessary to compare two societies with similar cultural heritage and different social systems so as to delineate the underlying mechanisms for any potentially varying voc. in this context, taiwan and mainland china are selected for comparison. previous studies on these two societies are conducted in separate analyses with consistent fi ndings (zheng et al. 2005; yi et al. 2008). but the two datasets have never been compared directly. we assume that the interplay between cultural homogeneity and political/social heterogeneity produce important effects on the value of having or not having children. in other words, although chinese cultural heritage emphasizes the positive function of having children, the economic advancement in taiwan as • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen682 well as the national policy in mainland china may result in identical values of not wanting (more) children. in addition, to respond to the important research objective of the second voc study, the value of having or not having children is presumed to reveal intergenerational transmission across three generations. given the strong endorsement and actual practice of three-generational households in chinese societies (yi/chang 2008; chang/yi 2006), the subject above is of particular salience to taiwan and mainland china. hence, there are three major research issues to be explored in this paper: (1) derive factor structure of voc in taiwan and mainland china both positive and negative dimensions of voc will be investigated, and the factor structure across grandmothers, mothers and teenagers will be compared. owing to the normative expectations and practices, an attempt will be made to derive meaningful and parsimonious dimensions of voc for contemporary chinese families across the strait. (2) explore the intergenerational transmission among three generations while grandmothers and mothers have completed their fertility behaviour, their voc expressed are regarded to represent their general attitudes toward children’s utility. since fertility-related experiences occur in the private domain, it is thus more likely that mothers’ generation resemble the grandmothers’ in terms of voc reported. the voc of teenagers, instead, may be affected by both previous generations. (3) identify mechanisms accounting for intergenerational transmission of voc from a structural standpoint, social class often indicated by the educational level and differences in the rural-urban background have been suggested to have pronounced effects on the voc of an individual. gender is another salient factor differentiating the varying voc reported. in brief, this paper will fi rst explore structural components of a positive and negative voc for taiwan and china. after controlling for structure, patterns of an intergenerational transmission of voc among three generations for both taiwanese and chinese samples will be delineated. lastly, potential effects from structural variables such as gender, social class and rural or urban residence will be controlled for to ascertain their infl uence on the intergenerational transmission of voc in two chinese societies. 3 voc in taiwan and mainland china taken from hoffman and hoffman’s (1973) cross-national studies, fertility decisions are determined by economic, normative and psychological factors. similarly, fertility intentions are contended to be the outcome of physical, social and emotional factors (nauck 2010). the signifi cant contribution of the value scheme proposed by hoffman and hoffman is that not only the positive value of having children as well as the negative value of not wanting children are incorporated but underlying cultural factors are also considered (arnold et al. 1975). in cross-societal comparisons, cultural differences have shown to have strong effects on the varying voc expressed. for example, the son preference or the desire for continuation of the the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 683 family name has been documented to maintain its strength, despite the modernisation processes in many parts of the world (filmer et al. 2008). the voc study also confi rms that son preference remains a strong predictor for a positive value of children among east asian families, regardless of their recent rapid economic progress (trommsdorff/kornadt 2003). on the other hand, studies point out that the material or economic value of children often exceeds the traditional psychological reward of having children as a symbol of honour, especially in kinship-based societies (nauck 2007). it is therefore important to examine potential effects of cultural norms on the voc. this study intends to delineate whether the cultural norm or the individual resources generate greater infl uence on the value of having children or not. it is contended that the practice of co-residence and frequent interaction among three generations produce enduring effects and the intergenerational transmission of voc may become more evident among the chinese compared to their western counterpart. in this line of thought, comparing taiwan and mainland china allows us to explore the effect on the voc within similar cultural backgrounds when, however, societal advancement and political systems vary. specifi cally, the comparative analysis will shed light on the potential differentiation of the voc to be explained by various structural factors. 3.1 the context of taiwan taiwan was one of the six countries which participated in the fi rst voc study in the early 1970s. the original report by wu (1977) pointed out that besides the consensus on the emotional value, the most important positive and negative voc are continuing the family name and the respective fi nancial cost. further analyses using the same dataset support the signifi cance of the linkage between ancestors and the future generation in the construct of voc among married women between the age of 20 to 44 (thornton et al. 1994). in other words, the social or normative benefi t of having children (or to be more precisely, a son) was undoubtedly the crucial reason for having children in taiwan at that time. since the external circumstances have changed from overpopulation to underpopulation over the last three decades, the second voc study adds a focus on the intergenerational transmission of values placed on children (trommsdorff/nauck 2005). accordingly, the second voc study in taiwan has two research concerns: to compare fi ndings with those of the early 1970s and to compare the current voc with other participating countries (yi et al. 2008). to generate corresponding datasets, three surveys on adolescents, their mothers and grandmothers had been conducted from winter 2005 until summer 2007. while most core questions and instruments from the questionnaire of the second voc project were utilised, the taiwanese research team also included items from the fi rst voc study as well as relevant questions on important family dynamics within the chinese context (e.g., the interaction between mother-in-law and daughterin-law on childbearing and -rearing). furthermore, in order to derive a meaningful comparison with the fi rst voc study in taiwan, we decided to replicate a similar • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen684 sampling design and expand it to larger metropolitan areas. to be specifi c, the fi rst voc study was done on urban middle class and urban labour class subjects in taipei (the capital city) as well as rural samples in yun-lin and chia-yi (central taiwan) in order to be able to analyse social class effects and rural urban variation. in 2005, similar administrative units were selected to achieve an expansion to adjacent areas. furthermore, two metropolitan areas in central (taichung) and southern (kaohsiung) taiwan were added to our sampling frame with social class and rural urban variation remaining as selection criteria (see fig. 1). for the taiwanese adolescent sample, a total of 1211 fi rst-year students in senior high schools (with an average age of 16 years) were interviewed in 2005. the survey of mothers ended with a response rate of less than 70 percent, or a total of 815 valid responses. but we encountered diffi culties in locating grandmothers because married daughters do largely not co-reside with their own mothers. instead, the major family obligation is directed toward the husband’s parents in the taiwanese context (chien/yi 2001; chien 2001; yang/chen 2002; freedman et al. 1994). concerning the normative authority held by mothers-in-law over their daughters-in-law’s role performance (including bearing sons), we decided to interview paternal grandmothers as well if maternal grandmothers could not be accessed. after laborious and persistent contacts, 347 grandmothers completed the questionnaires, of whom 87 were paternal grandmothers. a total of 260 three-generation triads were thus collected in the taiwan study. for the taiwanese adolescent sample, previous analysis showed that three dimensions are extracted for both a positive as well as a negative voc with the emofig. 1: sampling areas of the voc study in mainland china (left) and taiwan (right) source: own design the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 685 tional value rated the most important followed by the physical and social value (yi et al. 2008). as expected, the physical and social value of having children or not is signifi cantly affected by social class and the rural-urban background. specifi cally, urban middle-class teenagers are more likely to rate the importance of children’s physical and social value as lower, while urban teenagers as a whole tend to report the negative value of physical constraints as a reason for not wanting children (yi et al. 2008). in the research framework of taiwan’s voc study, we added contextual social factors such as network support from friends, community attachment and media exposure which are presumed to infl uence the formation of the voc. the results confi rm that social context does contribute to the positive value of children among taiwanese teenagers. the results thus suggest considering the familial, peer and societal infl uence on individual’s voc (yi et al. 2008). 3.2 the context of mainland china research loci of mainland china’s voc study are composed of four areas, namely beijing, luoyang, kunming and liuzhou covering both urban and rural areas (see fig. 1). in particular, the beijing sample has included so-called fl oating population, which refers primarily to migrants in china without local household registration status through the chinese hukou system. among the 1235 respondents are 312 mothers and their teenage children who completed the questionnaires and 209 grandmothers were interviewed, resulting in a total of 209 three-generation triads in the chinese data set. it should be noted that mainland china’s one-child policy imposes a strong effect on urban areas where 90 percent of families only have one child. in contrast, less than 20 percent of rural families and 22.5 percent of respondents representing fl oating population have one child. the actual fertility rates clearly vary by the respective geographical background in mainland china, as reported by several studies (hsu 1985; hardee-cleaveland/banister 1988; zheng et al. 2004; zheng et al. 2005). previous fi ndings have shown that all three generations agree that the emotional benefi t is the most important reason for having a child (zheng et al. 2005). on the other hand, the one child policy is, as expected, reported as the most important reason for not wanting more children, followed by worrying about the child’s future. among the rural and fl oating samples, the fi nancial support received from children in old age is considered the most important factor explaining the positive voc (zheng et al. 2005). the lack of social insurance coverage is hence proposed to be the underlying reason. as to patterns of intergenerational transmission, data from mainland china point out that economic benefi ts as well as social reward of a positive voc reveal clear value transmission between grandmothers and mothers. however, an important issue emerged from mainland chinese reports: it is a different labelling rather than a different construct that is used repeatedly. to be specifi c, the chinese voc was initially labelled with substantial, emotional and familial components (zheng et al. 2005). zheng and shi (2006) suggested in another related essay that the labels proposed by nauck and klaus (2007), namely comfort, affect and esteem, may be replaced by social/economic, emotional and familial in • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen686 the chinese context. by doing so, zheng and shi actually introduced a new familial dimension into the original construct where physical (corresponding to economic or comfort), emotional (corresponding to affect or psychological), and social (corresponding to normative or esteem) have been distinguished for both positive and negative voc (hoffman/hoffman 1973; nauck/claus 2007; yi et al. 2008). it should be noted that the inconsistent terminology used in previous studies does not necessarily imply different constructs. instead, unlike the varying invented labels resulting from factor analyses, the voc construct may actually be quite similar across different studies. nevertheless, the very fact that different labels continue to appear suggests a potential need to search for the best fi tting construct of voc for different cultural regions (trommsdorff/nauck 2005). in this regard, the comparison between mainland china and taiwan offers a current example to show that different labels or even constructs may be suitable for analyses within similar cultures, in contrast to the effort to derive general labels for studies across cultures. due to the salience of family values in the chinese setting, we agree with zheng and shi that different combinations of items or different components may explain the chinese voc better. however, there are at least two potential problems that need to be addressed. first, there is the relative status of the familial dimension. since the family value of having children partially coincides with the social reward in voc, the difference between the social standing of being parents and the family norm of having descendants may not be distinct enough. secondly, if social and economic dimensions are treated within the same category as producing physical comfort to parents, and if social and familial values may be grouped together (as stated above), then the underlying proposition suggests that there may be only two dimensions of voc (kagitcibasi 2007). the argument of two dimensions was actually initiated by trommsdorff and nauck with a proposition of two components of voc: the economic/utilitarian and the psychological/emotional dimension (2005: 11). however, we suspect that a traditional dimension incorporating both the economic/utilitarian value and the social value of having children may prevail among different chinese societies. further analyses are thus required to confi rm whether our suspected outcome is valid. 3.3 research proposition hence, we propose that there may be common core voc components in two chinese family systems. but the specifi c constituents are likely to be different from their western counterpart and they may also be different for positive and negative voc. given the strong family norms on the son preference and on economic support given to elderly parents (löfstedt et al. 2004; yi/chang 2008; logan et al. 1998; tseng et al. 2006), familial aspects need to be incorporated into the chinese voc construct. furthermore, the emotional reward or the commitment toward family lineage among the chinese may very well mix with the social expectations of being parents or having descendants which requires further delineation. for the negative voc, we suspect that different dimensions unlike the positive voc may be derived. powerful reasons for not having children such as balancing work and family roles, the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 687 the changing image of parenthood and large families, as well as the costs of losing personal freedom or the worry about children’s future arise from contemporary society. while they may pertain to economic or to psychological aspects, these concerns actually represent realistic constraints in contemporary society which prevent people from wanting to have children. in other words, it is likely that the traditional economic or physical costs along with the psychological constraint of having children fall into the same dimension in contrast to the familial or social demands of becoming parents. in brief, we propose that different voc components may be derived for the two chinese societies (taiwan and mainland china) and may vary depending on the positive versus the negative voc construct. in this paper, delineation of the appropriate factor structure of voc in taiwan and in mainland china will be the fi rst aim of analyses. it is possible that the conventional economic, emotional and social dimensions may reveal various linkages given the particular cultural and normative background in these two chinese societies (trommsdorff et al. 2002). furthermore, the salience of family values may correspond to the social expectations and cultural aspects of voc may thus be refl ected by familial/social components. since both grandmothers and mothers have completed their fertility behaviours, we suspect, regarding the intergenerational transmission of voc among three generations, that there will be stronger association between the voc of the two older generations, followed by the infl uence from mothers to teenagers. 4 data, measurements and methods 4.1 data to investigate similarities and differences of voc and patterns of intergenerational transmission between taiwan and mainland china, three-generation samples of both societies will be used for the analyses. 9 and 22 triads are excluded from the original 260 and 209 triads in taiwan and mainland china because of missing data on the voc instrument or education. descriptive statistics of the two samples are presented in table 1. both samples consist of similar birth cohorts making up the three generations under investigation. this adds to our confi dence in conducting the comparative study without being confronted with a possible cohort effect. in terms of education, the mean years of schooling are similar for the two grandmothers’ samples. but taiwanese mothers with teenage children have in general spent signifi cantly more years in education and achieved higher educational levels than their chinese counterparts. with regard to the distribution of residence, the chinese sample is constituted by 52 percent of rural residents as compared to 34 percent of rural respondents in the taiwanese sample. • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen688 4.2 measurements: value of children (voc) scales all respondents were asked to rate reasons for wanting a child and reasons for not wanting a child. two voc instruments, namely the positive voc and the negative voc, were utilized, comprising selections of original items from the fi rst voc study in the 1970s (arnold et al. 1975), items from the family and fertility survey conducted by the unece, and a few newly developed items by a german research team (trommsdorff/nauck 2005). it should be noted that the voc instrument was not identical in all subsamples. the original mothers’ questionnaire includes 27 items for positive voc and 21 items for negative voc. the items used for interviewing mothers were modifi ed for both grandmothers’ and adolescents’ questionnaires. for grandmothers, the total number of items about wanting a child was reduced to 23 items and questions on reasons for not wanting a child were cut to 14 items. since adolescents do not have fertility experience yet, the list of items was reduced further to 18 for positive voc and 13 items for negative voc. all the voc instruments and questionnaires were directly translated and implemented in mainland china’s voc study. a different approach was taken in taiwan. the complete voc scale from the mothers’ questionnaire served as the baseline. after the pilot study, only 16 positive voc items and 14 negative voc items were retained with slight modifi cations of wording in the three taiwanese questionnaires. to conduct a comparative study on the voc, 14 items listing reasons for wanting a tab. 1: descriptive statistics of taiwan and mainland china samples in the voc study * there are 260 and 209 triads in the taiwanese and mainland chinese samples respectively. 9 and 22 triads in each sample were excluded from analysis because reports on voc items or education are missing. source: own calculations taiwan mainland china grandma mother adolescent grandma mother adolescent sample size 260 816 1211 209 312 312 3-generation triad 251* 187* range of birth year 1922-53 1950-75 1988-90 1920-50 1951-72 1983-91 median year of birth 1936 1962 1990 1936 1964 1989 mean year of schooling 3.5 12.1 – 3.9 9.8 – educational level (in %) no schooling 45.4 0 – 38.5 0.5 – primary 36.9 13.1 – 33.7 12.8 – secondary 10.4 26.1 – 20.3 62.6 – vocational college 6.2 33.1 – 6.4 14.5 – university and above 1.1 27.7 – 1.1 9.6 – rural residency 34 % 52 % the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 689 child (table 2) and 9 items for not wanting a child (table 6) were used in the samples from taiwan and mainland china in the following analyses. the detailed description and comparison with regard to specifi c items are presented in the next section. 4.3 methods it has been a common practice to establish equivalent or comparable measurements of relevant constructs across cultures in cross-cultural studies. a variety of methods have been introduced for assessing equivalent forms of cultural measurements. for instance, in major psychological studies, the principal components or factor analysis are adapted to assess metric equivalence of the scales and instruments. factor solutions have been expanded to include congruence/proportionality coeffi cients for assessing structural equivalence across cultures (van de vijver/ leung 1997). using data from 11 countries involved in the voc replication study in 2002 and 2003, nauck and klaus (2007) have attempted to establish the cross-national equivalence for the positive voc measurement. as a result, 12 items for wanting a child were selected and among them, a three-dimensional solution comprising comfort, affect, and esteem was generated for further analyses. since there are fewer voc items to begin with in the taiwan-mainland china comparative study, another strategy to fi nd an appropriate factor solution was adopted. using the covariance structural modelling or confi rmatory factor analysis (cfa) to test for equivalence has been proposed in the literature (jones-farmer et al. 2008; kankaraš/moors 2009). hence, a combination of exploratory and confi rmatory factor analyses was carried out for assessing the structural equivalence of voc dimensions in taiwan and mainland china. before exploring the intergenerational transmission of voc, confi rmatory factor analyses to further evaluate whether grandmothers and mothers share equivalent factor structures on voc were performed. according to the goodness-of-fi t statistics for an invariance test,1 we can assume that grandmothers and mothers from mainland china share a similar factor structure on reasons for wanting a child. but the variation on the voc construct between grandmothers and mothers from taiwan does not produce similar results. it should be noted that by pooling grandmothers’ and mothers’ samples from taiwan and mainland china, our analyses fi nd that only the negative voc has an identical structural factor solution available for conducting a cross-cultural comparison. the factor solutions of positive voc are shown to be different between the taiwanese and mainland samples. possible interpretations regarding different factor solutions for both positive and negative voc are provided in the next section. 1 to simplify the article context, we decide to report the invariance testing results of confi rmatory factor analyses as follows: the positive voc (∆x2 =91.11, df=14, p<.001) and the negative voc (∆x2 =35.93, df=14, p<.001) between taiwanese mothers and grandmothers; the positive voc (∆x2 =35.93, df=9, .01>p>.05) and the negative voc (∆x2 =11.13, df=9, p>.05) between mothers and grandmothers from mainland china. • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen690 5 empirical results 5.1 positive value of children all respondents were asked to rate the importance of a variety of reasons for wanting a child on a 5-point scale ranging from “not important at all” (score 1) to “very important” (score 5). the means of ratings of the 14 items of positive voc and the results of the t-test between samples from mainland china and taiwan are presented in table 2. it is evident that some reasons for wanting a child are considered important to all three generations in these two chinese societies (items 2, 8, 9, 22). grandmothers are more likely to emphasize the importance of economic utilitarian (12, 21, 27) and social/familial reasons (17, 20, 25). for instance, the items “to carry on the family name” (20) and “to have someone to help the family economically” (21) reveal signifi cant generational preference among grandmothers in contrast to the younger generations. on the contrary, mothers’ concerns seem to centre around the emotional benefi ts of parenthood as well as their own self-realisation, e.g. “it’s fun to have young children around the house” (8), “watching children grow” (9), “making family important or complete” (2), and “increasing the sense of responsibility” (5). in general, mainland mothers in comparison to taiwanese mothers tend to rate the emotional dimensions with higher scores. as to economic or old-age security dimensions (e.g. 21 and 27), mothers are likely to indicate less strong endorsement compared to grandmothers. for the youngest generation greater emphasis appears to be placed on the emotional reward of having children (5, 8, 9, 13) while lower scores are given in general. as to economic reasons, teenagers in the two research settings do not rate their importance as high (21, 27), but the youth in mainland china reports even lower scores. the most vivid decrease in positive voc dimensions among the three generations pertains to the normative or family items, including “parenthood improves mother’s standing and reputation among her kin” (11), “to carry on the family name” (20), and “duty to have children” (25). in other words, the positive voc among grandmothers, mothers and teenagers reveals expected generational differences in the conventional economic, emotional and social dimensions. the traditional family value of having children clearly receives greater support among grandmothers followed by mothers and the weakest support among teenagers. table 3 shows the result of the factor solution and internal consistency tests regarding the positive voc. by carrying out exploratory factor analyses, two slightly different two-factor solutions, traditional and emotional, are derived for both threegeneration samples in taiwan and mainland china. similar as voc fi ndings from india, the traditional factor incorporates both the economic as well as the social reward of having children (mishra et al. 2005). in addition, it should be noted that three items, namely (2) “new family member makes family more complete/important”, (17) “life will be continued through your children” and (25) “it’s a duty to have children according to belief” fall into different dimensions for taiwan and mainland china. to better capture the meaning of the value of children in the chinese context, the term of “important” in item (2) is substituted by “complete” in the taiwan questhe intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 691 ta b . 2 : m ea n s o f r at in g s an d tte st o n p os it iv e v o c o f t hr ee g en er at io n s: t ai w an ( t ) v s. m ai nl an d c hi na (m c ) n o te : o ri gi na l v o c it em s: 8 , 1 3, 2 0, 2 1, 2 5, 2 7; n ew ly d ev el o p ed it em s: 1 , 2 , 1 1, 2 2; it em s fr o m t he f am ily a nd f er til ity s ur ve y: 5 , 9 , 12 , 1 7. a ll ite m s b ei ng r at ed o n 5p o in t s ca le s w ith “ 1” r ep re se nt in g “n o t i m p o rt an t a t a ll” a nd “ 5” a s “v er y im p o rt an t” . s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls fo r tte st : ** *p < .0 01 ; ** p< .0 1; * p< .0 5. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns ite m s g ra nd m o th er m o th er a d o le sc en t t m c t-t es t t m c t-t es t t m c t-t es t 1. b ec au se a c hi ld h el p s ar o un d th e ho us e. 2. 71 2. 82 2. 27 2. 17 2. 31 2. 20 2. b ec au se a ny n ew fa m ily m em b er m ak es y o ur fa m ily m o re c o m p le te /im p o rt an t. 3. 83 3. 36 ** * 4. 09 3. 43 ** * 3. 69 3. 44 ** * 5. b ec au se h av in g ch ild re n in cr ea se s yo ur s en se o f r es p o ns ib ili ty a nd h el p s yo u to d ev el o p . 3. 17 3. 64 ** * 3. 81 4. 01 ** * 3. 61 3. 71 8. b ec au se it is fu n to h av e yo un g ch ild re n ar o un d th e ho us e. 3. 96 3. 91 4. 02 4. 15 ** 3. 75 3. 61 9. b ec au se o f t he p le as ur e yo u ge t f ro m w at ch in g yo ur c hi ld re n gr o w . 3. 92 3. 98 4. 13 4. 20 3. 88 3. 88 11 . b ec au se p ar en th o o d im p ro ve s yo ur s ta nd in g an d b et te rs y o ur r ep ut at io n am o ng yo ur k in . 2. 95 3. 16 * 2. 53 2. 76 ** 2. 14 2. 55 ** * 12 . b ec au se p eo p le w ith c hi ld re n ar e le ss li ke ly to b e lo ne ly in o ld a ge . 4. 00 4. 14 3. 34 3. 63 ** * 3. 41 3. 62 ** 13 . b ec au se r ai si ng c hi ld re n he lp s yo u to le ar n ab o ut li fe a nd y o ur se lf. 3. 23 3. 54 ** * 3. 66 3. 77 * 3. 66 3. 79 17 . b ec au se y o ur li fe w ill b e co nt in ue d th ro ug h yo ur c hi ld re n. 3. 81 3. 76 3. 34 3. 66 ** * 2. 69 3. 27 ** * 20 . to c ar ry o n th e fa m ily n am e. 3. 98 3. 14 ** * 2. 98 2. 45 ** * 2. 36 2. 37 21 . to h av e o ne m o re p er so n to h el p y o ur fa m ily e co no m ic al ly . 3. 52 3. 05 ** * 2. 70 2. 24 ** * 2. 77 2. 32 ** * 22 . to h av e so m eo ne to lo ve a nd c ar e fo r. 3. 53 3. 32 * 3. 62 3. 27 ** * 3. 60 3. 36 ** 25 . it is a d ut y to h av e ch ild re n ac co rd in g to y o ur b el ie f. 4. 15 3. 87 ** 3. 82 3. 65 ** 2. 67 3. 19 ** * 27 . yo ur c hi ld re n ca n he lp y o u w he n yo u’ re o ld . 4. 00 3. 89 3. 28 3. 18 3. 24 3. 00 ** • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen692 tionnaire. in fact, this particular item has been repeatedly included in major taiwan social surveys since 1985. we suspect that the wording itself (e.g., make your family more complete versus important) brings different perceptions for respondents in tab. 3: factor solutions and internal consistency of positive voc: taiwan vs. mainland china grandma mother adolescent taiwan traditional voc 1. because a child helps around the house. 0.4431 0.5223 0.5749 11. because parenthood improves your standing and betters your reputation among your kin. 0.3787 0.6001 0.6577 12. because people with children are less likely to be lonely in old age. 0.6903 0.6444 0.5459 17. because your life will be continued through your children. 0.6836 0.7420 0.5267 20. to carry on the family name. 0.6385 0.7501 0.6863 21. to have one more person to help your family economically. 0.6710 0.7726 0.7920 25. when it is a duty to have children according to your belief. 0.5147 0.5246 0.3964 27. your children can help you when you’re old. 0.6787 0.7235 0.6385 cronbach’s coefficient 0.80 0.86 0.83 emotional voc 2. because any new family member makes your family more complete. 0.7964 0.5735 0.7066 5. because having children increases your sense of responsibility and helps you to develop. 0.7118 0.5437 0.8059 8. because it is fun to have young children around the house. 0.8193 0.7906 0.8559 9. because of the pleasure you get from watching your children grow. 0.8146 0.6424 0.7789 13. because raising children helps you to learn about life and yourself. 0.7361 0.4016 0.6909 22. to have someone to love and care for. 0.7648 0.3365 0.5597 cronbach’s coefficient 0.90 0.72 0.88 mainland china traditional voc 1. because a child helps around the house. 0.5058 0.5455 0.5968 2. because any new family member makes your family more important. 0.4715 0.4906 0.5465 11. because parenthood improves your standing and betters your reputation among your kin. 0.4045 0.5286 0.6877 12. because people with children are less likely to be lonely in old age. 0.5941 0.4686 0.6448 20. to carry on the family name. 0.6604 0.7055 0.7065 21. to have one more person to help your family economically. 0.7449 0.6952 0.7383 27. your children can help you when you’re old. 0.7979 0.6058 0.7822 cronbach’s coefficient 0.77 0.79 0.80 emotional voc 5. because having children increases your sense of responsibility and helps you to develop. 0.5377 0.5699 0.7130 8. because it is fun to have young children around the house. 0.6861 0.7060 0.7775 9. because of the pleasure you get from watching your children grow. 0.7279 0.7628 0.8109 13. because raising children helps you to learn about life and yourself. 0.6307 0.6610 0.7673 17. because your life will be continued through your children. 0.5335 0.5312 0.5685 22. to have someone to love and care for. 0.5407 0.6278 0.7409 25. when it is a duty to have children according to your belief. 0.3832 0.5426 0.6316 cronbach’s coefficient 0.82 0.79 0.85 source: own calculations the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 693 the two chinese societies. “life being continued through children”, as well as “one’s duty to bear children” may be considered salient social expectations in taiwan but they lead to important emotional satisfaction in mainland china. despite these differences, the alpha coeffi cients for the three generations in both mainland china and taiwan indicate an overall high internal consistency within factors. a related concern is to examine the differences between generations as well as to ascertain various social strata on the voc dimensions. the mean scores of two dimensions in table 4 show that the emotional reward of having children receives overwhelming support, particularly among mothers (3.86 for mainland china and 3.95 for taiwan). in contrast, the traditional benefi ts of having children not only have lower scores, but also demonstrate a gradual decrease by generations in both tab. 4: mean scores of two positive voc dimensions note: t-test: rural-urban and sex differences; anova: educational difference signifi cance level: ***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05 source: own calculations taiwan mainland china factor dimension grandma mother adolescent grandma mother adolescent traditional voc 3.33 2.85 2.74 3.64 3.06 2.63 residency urban 2.99*** 2.36*** 2.41*** 3.56** 2.83*** 2.53** rural 3.64 3.31 3.04 3.80 3.51 2.84 education no schooling 3.83 -3.52 3.86 primary 3.58 3.49 3.44 3.43 secondary 3.32 3.27 3.02 2.96 vocational college 3.30 3.01 2.77 2.26 university and above 2.83 2.64 2.07 2.20 sex of adolescent boy 2.87 2.78** girl 2.65 2.50 emotional voc 3.70 3.86 3.51 3.61 3.95 3.65 residency urban 3.63 3.73** 3.34* 3.70** 3.98 3.61 rural 3.76 3.97 3.67 3.43 3.89 3.74 education no schooling 3.60 -3.66 4.00 primary 3.54 3.79 3.75 4.04 secondary 3.54 3.88 3.62 3.82 vocational college 4.20 4.07 3.86 3.85 university and above 4.17 3.93 4.07 3.82 sex of adolescent boy 3.58 3.68 girl 3.46 3.63 • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen694 research settings. we should point out that for both taiwan and mainland china rural samples report much higher traditional scores of positive voc than their urban counterparts, as do less educated compared to more highly educated respondents. but with regard to emotional voc, no clear association between educational level and emotional rewards can be ascertained, especially among mothers’ samples. for adolescents in taiwan and mainland china, the only gender difference was found for men in mainland china showing stronger support for the traditional value of having children. to detect a possible value transmission among the three generations, we fi rst look at the correlation coeffi cients of positive voc by using the two factors derived tab. 5: correlation coeffi cients of positive voc across generations, mainland china (in bold) and taiwan (grey-shaded) tra: traditonal voc; emo: emotional voc g1: grandmother; g2: mother; g3: adolescent signifi cance level: ***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05 source: own calculations tra_g1 emo_g1 tra_g2 emo_g2 tra_g3 emo_g3 all sample tra_g1 1.00 0.40*** 0.45*** 0.25*** 0.31*** 0.09 emo_g1 0.45*** 1.00 0.18* 0.29*** 0.11 0.07 tra_g2 0.20*** -0.14* 1.00 0.31*** 0.38*** 0.24*** emo_g2 0.01 0.07 0.26*** 1.00 0.10 0.13* tra_g3 0.10 -0.04 0.13* -0.04 1.00 0.65*** emo_g3 -0.03 -0.01 0.04 0.12* 0.44*** 1.00 urban sample tra_g1 1.00 0.33** 0.28** 0.13 0.33** 0.11 emo_g1 0.53*** 1.00 0.31** 0.18 0.14 0.18 tra_g2 0.16* -0.03* 1.00 0.13 0.29** 0.24* emo_g2 0.06 0.09 0.38*** 1.00 0.06 0.14 tra_g3 0.08 -0.01 0.07 0.05 1.00 0.73*** emo_g3 -0.04 0.02 0.03 0.14 0.47*** 1.00 rural sample tra_g1 1.00 0.46*** 0.20* 0.22** -0.05 -0.16 emo_g1 0.36*** 1.00 0.03 0.36*** -0.01 -0.12 tra_g2 0.10 -0.21* 1.00 0.33*** 0.12 0.10 emo_g2 -0.06 -0.03 0.19 1.00 -0.01 0.04 tra_g3 0.06 -0.02 0.02 -0.16 1.00 0.50*** emo_g3 -0.08 -0.05 -0.04 0.11 0.36*** 1.00 the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 695 above, traditional and emotional dimensions. for mainland samples, table 5 indicates that except the emotional transmission from grandmothers to their teenage grandchildren, there is a strong link of positive voc between generations. signifi cant correlations are found for all three dyads, grandmothers and mothers, mothers and teenagers, and grandmothers and teenagers, on both voc dimensions. on the other hand, for the taiwanese samples, value transmission is evident between mothers and their teenage children for both traditional and emotional dimensions and between grandmothers and mothers for the traditional dimension. in contrast, cross-generational transmission between grandmothers and their teenage grandchildren is less likely and does not reach statistical signifi cance in taiwan. also, the traditional value of having children appears to receive greater endorsement among all samples in both research settings. 5.2 negative value of children the negative voc are constituted by nine items in this study (see table 6). the overall comparison within each generation indicates that taiwanese grandmothers are least likely to report negative attitudes toward having children; while patterns of specifi c reasons for not wanting a child are more similar between mothers in taiwan and mainland china. teenagers do not only express relatively strong negative attitudes but taiwanese adolescents tend to report more negative concerns than their mainland counterparts. with regard to specifi c reasons for not wanting a child, table 6 shows that “the uncertain future for children” emerged as the priority concern across all generations in both research settings (12), followed by “worries toward children in illness” (10). in other words, the concern for children’s potential hardship serves as the main reason for not wanting a child in both chinese samples. the diffi culties of being parents in contemporary society such as “losing personal freedom” (11) or “diffi culty taking care of both family and work” (6) are rated as high negative voc, too. but motherhood (16) as well as large families (8) both being traditional values receive low ratings which suggest that they are not important reasons for not wanting a child in the chinese context. in order to derive appropriate factor structures for negative voc, steps of analyses similar to those for positive voc are applied. unlike the positive voc dimensions, the same two-factor solution was generated for taiwan and mainland china by applying exploratory factor analyses. the results of factor structure and internal consistency of nine negative voc items are presented in table 7. the fi rst factor consists of three items: “worrying about children being ill” (10), “loss of personal freedom when becoming parents” (11), and “concern about children’s future” (12). since these items all refl ect the psychological and emotional cost of not wanting children, the fi rst factor is labelled as the psychological/emotional constraint of voc. there are different dimensions in mainland china, labelled “physical/psychological constraint voc”. the second factor comprises six items including “tensions occurring in interpersonal relations” (3 and 15), “in performing family and work roles” (6 and 7), and “in potential confl ict with traditional family values” (8 and16) which • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen696 n o te : o ri gi na l v o c it em s: 1 1; n ew ly d ev el o p ed it em s: 3 , 8 , 1 0, 1 5, 1 6; it em s fr o m th e fa m ily a nd f er til ity s ur ve y: 6 , 7 , 1 2. a ll ite m s b ei ng r at ed o n fi v e p o in t s ca le s w ith “ 1” r ep re se nt in g “n o t i m p o rt an t a t a ll” a nd “ 5” a s “v er y im p o rt an t” . s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls fo r t-t es t: * ** p< .0 01 ; ** p< .0 1; * p< .0 5. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns ta b . 6 : m ea n s o f r at in g s o n n eg at iv e v o c o f t hr ee g en er at io n s: t ai w an ( t ) v s. m ai nl an d c hi na (m c ) ite m s g ra nd m o th er m o th er a d o le sc en t t m c t-t es t t m c t-t es t t m c t-t es t 3. b ec au se c hi ld re n cr ea te p ro b le m s w ith n ei gh b o ur s an d in p ub lic . 1. 43 1. 86 ** * 1. 80 2. 11 ** * 2. 26 2. 36 6. b ec au se it is h ar d to ta ke p ro p er c ar e o f b o th fa m ily a nd h o us eh o ld . 2. 21 2. 44 * 2. 80 2. 67 3. 11 2. 50 ** * 7. b ec au se it is h ar d er to h o ld a jo b . 1. 86 2. 06 * 2. 20 2. 22 2. 53 2. 37 * 8. b ec au se la rg e fa m ili es a re n o t w el l a cc ep te d in s o ci et y. 1. 66 2. 30 ** * 2. 04 2. 27 ** 1. 95 2. 45 ** * 10 . b ec au se o f t he w o rr ie s th at c hi ld re n ca us e w he n th ey a re il l. 2. 60 3. 17 ** * 3. 46 3. 20 ** 3. 09 2. 78 ** * 11 . b ec au se y o u ar e no t a s fr ee to d o w ha t y o u w an t. 2. 13 2. 70 ** * 2. 93 2. 97 3. 33 2. 77 ** * 12 . b ec au se y o u ar e to o c o nc er ne d a b o ut th e ki nd o f f ut ur e yo ur c hi ld re n w ill h av e. 2. 80 3. 39 ** * 3. 57 3. 42 * 3. 51 3. 00 ** * 15 . b ec au se y o u lo se c o nt ac t w ith y o ur fr ie nd s. 1. 83 2. 07 ** 2. 81 2. 28 ** * 2. 66 2. 45 ** 16 . w he n b ei ng a m o th er is n o t w el l r ec o gn iz ed b y th e p eo p le y o u d ea l w ith . 1. 27 1. 79 ** * 1. 54 1. 79 ** * 1. 72 1. 98 ** * the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 697 result in not wanting to bear children. since these items pertain to the familial and social dimension of negative voc, the second factor is thus labelled as the familial and social demand of voc. the statistical result points out that while each factor meets the requirement of internal consistency lower alpha coeffi cients are shown for both mothers’ samples in taiwan and mainland china. table 8 presents the mean scores of the derived two negative voc dimensions. overall, the emotional/psychological constraints of having children receive greater endorsement than the familial-social demands of being parents. the comparison of three generations regarding these two dimensions shows that taiwanese mothers tab. 7: factor solutions and internal consistency of negative voc: taiwan vs. mainland china source: own calculations grandma mother adolescent taiwan psychological/emotional constraint voc 10. because of the worries that children cause when they are ill. 0.6680 0.6447 0.6248 11. because you are not as free to do what you want. 0.7946 0.7521 0.8053 12. because you are too concerned about the kind of future your children will have. 0.6544 0.7461 0.8760 cronbach’s coefficient 0.83 0.67 0.66 familial/social demand voc 3. because children create problems with neighbours and in public. 0.4739 0.4206 0.6939 6. because it is hard to take proper care of both family and household. 0.8124 0.7473 0.5895 7. because it is harder to hold a job. 0.6830 0.6610 0.7588 8. because large families are not well accepted in society. 0.4326 0.3921 0.6797 15. because you lose contact with your friends. 0.7098 0.6212 0.7489 16. when being a mother is not well recognised by the people you deal with. 0.3578 0.2971 0.5706 cronbach’s coefficient 0.79 0.69 0.76 mainland china physical/psychological constraint voc 10. because of the worries that children cause when they are ill. 0.4493 0.4332 0.7539 11. because you are not as free to do what you want. 0.7652 0.7509 0.8499 12. because you are too concerned about the kind of future your children will have. 0.7032 0.7428 0.8739 cronbach’s coefficient 0.70 0.67 0.77 familial/social demand voc 3. because children create problems with neighbours and in public. 0.6001 0.5236 0.6910 6. because it is hard to take proper care of both family and household. 0.7163 0.7188 0.7170 7. because it is harder to hold a job. 0.5628 0.5177 0.7876 8. because large families are not well accepted in society. 0.3598 0.3517 0.6853 15. because you lose contact with your friends. 0.5454 0.4877 0.7129 16. when being a mother is not well recognised by the people you deal with. 0.4158 0.4156 0.7654 cronbach’s coefficient 0.74 0.64 0.82 • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen698 and teenagers as well as mainland grandmothers and mothers express more similar attitudes in not wanting children. in addition to the lower concern on the emotional/ psychological constraint of teenagers in mainland china, a gradual increase in the cost of having children is observed over generations, with older generations reporting lower scores and younger generations reporting higher scores. this means that grandmothers are less bothered by the constraints imposed on being parents than teenagers who express the most negative attitudes on having children, and mothers are in between these two. in terms of urban-rural differences on negative voc dimensions, a few signifi cant differences are attained while the general mean score resembles the overall tab. 8: mean scores of two negative voc dimensions taiwan mainland china grandma mother adolescent grandma mother adolescent psychological/emotional constraint voc 2.51 3.34 3.35 3.09 3.28 2.95 residency urban 2.41* 3.27 3.40 2.98 3.09** 2.95 rural 2.70 3.29 3.25 3.20 3.46 2.94 education no schooling 2.57 3.13 2.67 primary 2.53 3.15 3.18 3.35 secondary 2.15 3.36 2.86 3.40 vocational college 2.58 3.39 3.08 3.05 university and above 2.89 3.36 3.50 2.83 sex of adolescent boy 3.25 3.00 girl 3.44 2.91 familial/social demand voc 1.71 2.24 2.36 2.12 2.17 2.46 residency urban 1.73 2.21 2.39 2.25* 2.23 2.49 rural 1.67 2.31 2.39 2.00 2.11 2.44 education no schooling 1.69 2.11 2.50 primary 1.73 2.18 2.04 2.09 secondary 1.66 2.33 2.22 2.18 vocational college 2.00 2.23 2.22 2.31 university and above 1.78 2.19 2.17 1.97 sex of adolescent boy 2.37 2.60 girl 2.35 2.37 note: t-test: rural-urban and sex differences; anova: educational difference signifi cance level: ***p<.001; ** p<.01; *p<.05 source: own calculations the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 699 pattern indicated above. rural taiwanese grandmothers as well as mainland mothers compared to their urban counterparts express greater concern about children’s uncertain future than about the cost of having children. urban mainland grandmothers are more likely to indicate the familial/social demands of being parents as reasons for not wanting children. unexpectedly, there is no clear difference across educational groups, or across genders among the adolescents in the two research settings regarding both negative voc dimensions. for the intergenerational transmission of negative voc dimensions, table 9 points out that not only fewer signifi cant correlations are found compared to the positive voc, but there is also no signifi cant effect of value transmission to be found tab. 9: correlation coeffi cients of negative voc across generations, mainland china (in bold) and taiwan (grey-shaded) pe_g1 fs_g1 pe_g2 fs_g2 pe_g3 fs_g3 all sample pe_g1 1.00 0.46*** 0.30*** 0.21** -0.01 -0.04 fs_g1 0.71*** 1.00 0.15* 0.39*** 0.06 0.05 pe_g2 0.06 0.03 1.00 0.38*** 0.14* 0.04 fs_g2 0.04 -0.01 0.61*** 1.00 0.03 0.03 pe_g3 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.05 1.00 0.65*** fs_g3 0.05 -0.01 0.01 -0.02 0.58*** 1.00 urban sample pe_g1 1.00 0.56*** 0.12 0.22* -0.11 -0.18 fs_g1 0.77*** 1.00 0.20* 0.31** 0.10 0.06 pe_g2 0.06 0.03 1.00 0.60*** 0.20* 0.06 fs_g2 -0.06 -0.08 0.62*** 1.00 0.15 0.03 pe_g3 0.01 0.04 0.09 0.06 1.00 0.72*** fs_g3 0.03 -0.01 0.09 0.01 0.57*** 1.00 rural sample pe_g1 1.00 0.42*** 0.43*** 0.23* 0.09 0.12 fs_g1 0.60*** 1.00 0.19 0.44*** 0.01 0.03 pe_g2 0.09 0.04 1.00 0.25* 0.09 0.03 fs_g2 0.20* 0.19* 0.62*** 1.00 -0.09 0.02 pe_g3 0.04 0.02 -0.12 0.03 1.00 0.56*** fs_g3 0.10 -0.05 -0.17 -0.07 0.58*** 1.00 pe: psychological/emotional constraint voc; fs: familial/social demand voc ps: normative/utilitarian voc; e: emotional voc g1: grandmother; g2: mother; g3: adolescent signifi cance level: ***p<.001; ** p<.01; *p<.05 source: own calculations • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen700 among the taiwanese three-generation samples. the taiwanese fi nding implies that when a society has undergone drastic social changes, major constraints related to reproductive values and behaviours tend to be perceived differently across generations. for the mainland sample, however, both negative voc dimensions, emotional/psychological as well as familial/social, were transmitted between grandmothers and their adult daughters. emotional/psychological constraints are also shared by mothers and their teenage children in mainland china. from unreported analysis of rural and urban differences, a strong link between grandmothers and mothers in both negative voc dimensions is particularly salient among the rural samples. urban samples in mainland china are more likely to reveal a value transmission between grandmothers and their adult daughters in familial/social demands, and between mothers and their teenage children in emotional/psychological constraints of having children. in other words, a negative value transmission concerning not having children among the three generations reveals less signifi cant patterns when compared to the positive voc transmission, and is mainly restricted to the older generations in mainland china. 6 conclusion and discussion with the continuing fertility decline in east asia, this paper explores values on having children or not in two chinese societies – taiwan and mainland china. it is assumed that by taken into account the cultural homogeneity and political/social heterogeneity between taiwan and mainland china, fi ndings will allow us to ascertain whether a similar voc construct does exist in the chinese context, and whether the presumed effect of cultural characteristics produce expected outcomes on the voc. furthermore, examining the intergenerational transmission among grandmothers, mothers and teenagers of both positive and negative voc will enable us to delineate the potential infl uence from the family as well as external societal changes on individual values. our fi ndings confi rm that it is meaningful to compare the voc in two culturally homogeneous societies. while separate reports on taiwan and mainland china presented three factors solution on voc, consistent with fi ndings by nauck and his colleagues (2007; nauck/klaus 2007); our direct comparison of taiwan and mainland china reveals different results. two identical factors are generated for both positive and negative voc in taiwan and mainland china. in other words, to echo the earlier speculation by trommsdorff and nauck (2005), a more parsimonious two dimensions of voc is indeed applicable to our research settings. furthermore, the two dimensions of voc derived for the chinese societies clearly reveal the necessity to take into account the dominant familial aspect into the construct in the chinese context. for the positive voc, two extracted factors are traditional and emotional, with the former constituted by traditional utilitarian functions of having children and the latter by the inner psychological reward of having children. while emotional reward receives higher and more consistent ranking across generations for both research the intergenerational transmission of the value of children • 701 settings, a gradual decline is observed from grandmothers to mothers and to teenagers for traditional voc, this trend is more evident in mainland china than in taiwan. as to the negative voc, the psychological/emotional constraint constituted by actual costs of having children is uniformly rated higher than the normative aspect of familial/social demand of raising children across the three generations for both taiwan and mainland china. but unlike the positive voc, the cost of having children reveals a steady increase over generations. in other words, as we move to younger generations, less positive voc and more negative voc are reported for both mainland china and taiwan. this implies that although the two chinese societies face different economic experiences, the modernisation effect is quite similar on the general trend of values toward children. with regard to the intergenerational transmission of voc, three major fi ndings can be reported: it is more evident for positive voc, for adjacent generations (e.g., g1-g2, g2-g3) and for respondents in mainland china. we are able to show that not only fewer signifi cant linkages between generations are found for negative voc but they are also restricted to the older generations in mainland china only. in other words, among all dyads examined, values of not wanting children are more likely to be shared among mainland chinese grandmothers and mothers. if we add fi ndings on structural mechanisms (i.e., only rural-urban residence, not education nor gender, attains some signifi cant effects), it may be concluded that the intergenerational transmission of positive and negative voc is most likely to occur among rural mainland chinese grandmothers and mothers. in contrast, the intergenerational transmission of voc does not reveal clear differences in terms of structural background among the taiwanese counterparts. the reason that intergenerational transmission appears to be more likely among older rural women in mainland china may be attributed to the one-child policy in urban areas which prohibits couples from having more children (lin/yi 2011). hence, rural residents, especially the older generational dyad, reveal stronger endorsement on the value of children. furthermore, more salient generational linkages of traditional voc implies that the traditional reward of having children is embedded in the normative context that may be transmitted through generations. in accordance with our argument, the cultural meaning of descendants remains tenacious in both chinese societies. on the other hand, our fi ndings are unable to support the overall value transmission from grandparents to teenagers. we suspect that the more pronounced linkage of voc between the grandmother-mother dyad is an outcome of the actual fertility experience. in other words, the actual fertility experience of grandmothers and mothers may lead to the greater likelihood of sharing a similar value of children in the family context. in addition, it should be noted that items falling into positive voc factors are not entirely the same for taiwan and mainland china. a plausible explanation offered in the text suggests the importance of taking into account the cultural characteristics which may connote different meanings as society develops. however, the very fact that two parsimonious factor structures are identifi ed for both research settings supports the strong infl uence of cultural homogeneity with regard to family values in general. • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen702 in brief, comparing the voc for taiwan and mainland china results in fi nding more similarities than differences. not only was an identical factor structure attained but a common trend is also confi rmed in that emotional voc has become the shared value across generations. on the other hand, the salience of the normative as well as utilitarian value of children varies in these two chinese societies. benefi tting from a longer history of affl uence, the economic burden of raising children is no longer important in taiwan. in contrast, the social expectation of having children maintains its signifi cance among older rural mainland chinese. since urban fl oating populations and a larger proportion of rural women are included in the mainland chinese sample, this may partially explain why traditional and normative concerns of voc maintain their contemporary tenacity. lastly, it should be noted that since most voc studies are restricted to positive voc only, our study confi rms that it is imperative to incorporate both positive and negative voc in the framework so as to derive a more comprehensive understanding on values of wanting and not wanting children in the contemporary society. the limitation of this paper addresses a general problem of the instruments used to measure positive and negative voc in different societies. this study proposes that an ideal construct of voc in the future should include both positive and negative reasons for wanting and not wanting children. furthermore, to investigate the fertility intentions in low fertility regions, it is necessary to consider the cultural meaning of having children for the targeted society. acknowledgements the original version of this paper was presented at a workshop on the “value of children and intergenerational relations”, held at the university of konstanz, germany, march 29th-30th, 2012. we thank prof. fons j. r. van de vijver and prof. bernhard nauck for their helpful comments on earlier 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(eds.): ongoing themes in psychology and culture (online ed.). melbourne, fl: international association for cross-cultural psychology. zheng, gang; shi, shaihua; tang, hong 2005: population development and the value of children in the people’s republic of china. in: trommsdorff, gisela; nauck, bernhard (eds.): the value of children in cross-cultural perspective: case studies from eight societies. lengerich: pabst science: 239-281. zheng, gang; shi, shaohua 2006: intercultural and intracultural differences in the value of children: comparisons between four countries and the urban, rural, and fl oating populations in china. in: zheng, gang; leung, kwok; adair, john g. (eds.): perspectives and progress in contemporary cross-cultural psychology. beijing, china: china light industry press: 129-148. • chin-chun yi, yu-hua chen706 date of submission: 08.03.2013 date of acceptance: 16.12.2013 dr. chin-chun yi (), institute of sociology, academia sinica. taiwan. e-mail: chinyi@gate.sinica.edu.tw dr. yu-hua chen. department of bio-industry communication and development, national taiwan university. taiwan e-mail: yuhuac@ntu.edu.tw published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved partner market opportunities and relationship stability partner market opportunities and relationship stability ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder abstract: although partner market opportunities are generally considered to be important for relationship stability, they have never been measured accurately. in order to be able to test the anticipated effects of partner market opportunities, this study conceptualises them as individual opportunities for contact and interaction in concrete social contexts, like the neighbourhood, the workplace, leisure activities, etc. using data from the german marriage market survey, we fi rst examine the impact of individual partner market opportunities on the risk of separation. second, we examine to what extend the most frequently studied determinants of divorce and separation depend on partner market opportunities. our results show that the number of opposite sex contacts increases the probability of separation. sharing the same contacts with one’s partner decreases the risk of separation. our results indicate further that reducing opposite sex contacts in the course of the relationship is partly responsible for the higher stability of longer-lasting relationships. having a migration background is associated with fewer opposite sex contacts. this means that having a migration background would be more destabilising if these individuals did not have less opposite sex contacts than individuals without a migration background. in contrast, joint home ownership, church attendance, higher education and residing in western germany would generally be more stabilising if these factors were not connected with more opposite sex contacts. keywords: marriage market · partner market · relationship stability · divorce · separation 1 introduction using a social exchange framework, lewis and spanier (1979) suggested that the stability of a relationship does not only depend on the quality of the relationship itself, but also on external pressures to remain partnered and on alternative attractions (e.g. an alternative partner). low quality relationships may be quite stable as long as there are few alternatives and high barriers to dissolution. in contrast, comparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 229-250 (date of release: 25.06.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-08en4 • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder230 even couples who fi nd their relationship rewarding may separate if their perceived alternatives are better and if the barriers are low (lewis/spanier 1979: 287-288). in a similar way and based on an economic approach, becker, landes and michael (1977: 1142) assumed that “couples separate when the utility expected from remaining married falls below the utility expected from divorcing and possibly remarrying”. again, relationship stability does not only depend on the gain from the current relationship, but also on the perceived costs of separation and on the perceived opportunities on the partner market. to summarise, the most commonly used theories of relationship stability consider partner market opportunities as an important factor in explaining marital and non-marital separations. despite their importance for explaining relationship (in-) stability, only few studies examined the infl uences of partner market opportunities on the risk of separation. previous studies showed that unbalanced sex ratios – which indicate that at least one partner has numerous alternatives – are associated with higher risks of separation. this applies to unbalanced sex ratios in the whole society (klein 1995) as well as to unbalanced sex ratios in local marriage markets (south/lloyd 1995; south et al. 2001) and at the workplace (åberg 2009; mckinnish 2004, 2007; south et al. 2001; svarer 2007). white and booth (1991) reported that better perceived remarriage prospects reduce marital stability. the same applies for measures of perceived alternatives that consider both the prospect of re-partnering and of being single (felmlee et al. 1990; udry 1981). in sum, previous studies underlined the importance of partner market opportunities in explaining relationship stability. however, only crude measures of individual’s opportunities to establish a new relationship (such as perceived remarriage prospects) were used. this study uses data from the german marriage market survey which allows for a more accurate measurement of partner market opportunities. by assessing and aggregating the opportunities for contact and interaction from concrete social contexts in which heterosexual individuals are embedded, the german marriage market survey offers a very detailed picture of (heterosexual) individuals’ partner market opportunities. on this basis, we fi rst examine the impact of various aspects of individual partner market opportunities on the risk of separation. in this regard, the supply of opposite sex contacts and their availability on the partner market will be considered. moreover, the occasions for communication with potential alternative partners and the fl uctuation of contact opportunities will be included. additionally, it will also be taken into account whether contacts are shared with the partner or not. second, our analysis turns to frequently studied determinants of divorce and separation (relationship duration, the existence of children, joint home ownership, relationship status, age at the start of the relationship, employment status, educational attainment and church attendance), and to the question whether and how these factors are linked to partner market opportunities. partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 231 2 a concept of partner market opportunities in this paper, the partner market is conceptualised as a market of potentially suitable partners for intimate (and in our case: heterosexual) relationships. individuals’ opportunities for fi nding a new partner are restricted, fi rst, by the macrostructural distribution of social positions and, second, by mesostructural aspects of individuals’ immediate social environment (stauder 2008). theoretical concepts the basic idea of blau’s macrostructural theory is that the social differentiation of a population forms patterns of individuals’ relationships because the opportunities for contact with other individuals occupying certain social positions are constrained by the macrostructural distribution of these social positions and by relative group sizes (blau 1977a: 40, 1977b). but macrostructural conditions will infl uence real contact opportunities only when the individual’s social environment – the “substructures” (s)he is embedded in – actually represents the macrostructure (blau 1977a: 46-50, 1994: 144-145; schwartz 1990). individuals do not only participate in one substructure, but in many different “foci of activity” (feld 1981). feld (1981: 116) defi nes foci as social, psychological, legal or physical entities around which joint activities are organised (e.g. workplaces, voluntary associations, hangouts, families). since social activities are organised around foci, individuals do not meet completely randomly within the constraints of a given macro-social structure. relative group sizes within substructures will depend heavily on the specifi c organisational needs of the focal social activity. a focal activity may attract individuals with attributes relevant for the respective activity and thus enforce characteristic distributions of attributes within this context (feld 1982; see also fischer et al. 1977; marsden 1990). for example, many jobs require contact with both men and women (as co-workers or clients); by contrast, other jobs and especially many voluntary associations are segregated by sex (popielarz 1999). this concept of contact opportunities is confi ned to an individual’s immediate social environment, i.e. those foci of activity which the individual is actually affi liated with. hence, in contrast to blau’s macrostructural perspective, contact opportunities in an individual’s social environment can be counted and their absolute number will vary across society members. but the sheer (co-) presence of relevant other individuals (the quantitative opportunities for contact) is only a necessary condition for the emergence of relationships within a focus. in addition, the probability of a new relationship between two individuals depends on the extent of positively valued interaction produced within the focus (feld 1981, referring to homans 1950). interaction with other individuals can provide important resources for individual action. in the literature, these resources are conceptualised as social capital. following esser (2000: 241-260), two forms of social capital can be distinguished: “relational capital” and “system capital”. “relational capital” results from those resources controlled by others in a network and may eventually be mobilised in favour of the realisation of ego’s goals. by contrast, “system capital” refers to emergent • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder232 properties of a network or focus, for instance the existence and amount of social control, trust or enforcement and adherence to norms. based on this distinction, blau’s structural theory and feld’s concept of foci of activity, the actor’s social environment can be conceptualised as a set of potential relational capital that forms the space of opportunity for the development of new relationships. against this background, opportunities for contact and opportunities for interaction can be distinguished (stauder 2008, 2014a). opportunities for contact opportunities for contact refer to the total number of regular contacts in the individual’s foci of activity and the social composition of those contacts. they should be regarded as the “potential” relational capital of an actor. although contact opportunities essentially are a macro-sociological concept, it is possible to use this concept within the individualistic model of sociological explanation if we consider contact opportunities as potential relational capital. in order to conceptualise opportunities for contact, fi rst, bridging assumptions about the potential relational capital of the relationships eventually emerging from a focus must be formulated. only with these assumptions it can be determined which dimensions within the so-called blau-space of social positions (blau 1977b: 28) are relevant and shall be analysed. regarding a specifi c goal of interaction, an ego will look for alters1 with desirable traits that are suitable for attaining that goal. all suitable alters sum up to the potential relational capital of ego, the actor. in other words, we have to consider the alters’ relevance regarding the specifi c goal of interaction. in terms of heterosexual intimate relationships, it is clear that only people of the opposite sex are relevant. off course, there might be many other traits of relevance, like age, education or the favourite football team. second, if individuals are looking for a (new) partner, they have to evaluate whether relevant, i.e. opposite sex contacts, are available for an intimate relationship. in many cultures, choosing a partner is the starting point of a highly exclusive relationship. and people who already maintain an exclusive intimate relationship are only available for a new exclusive relationship within narrow limits (stauder 2006). thus, the chance to meet a potential (new) intimate partner varies by the number of opposite sex contacts and by their commitment in intimate relationships. opportunities for interaction whether or not opportunities for contact can turn into opportunities for interaction depends on the foci’s potential to transform mere contact opportunities into interaction. those properties of a focus that foster this transformation task can be called 1 the terms “ego” and “alter(s)” are not used in the usual sense here. “ego” denotes the individual whose action shall be analysed; “alters” are all people sharing at least one focus of activity with ego, regardless of whether there is a tie (a relationship) between ego and alter or not. partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 233 system capital. foci vary to the extent they provide system capital. for example, they vary according to patterns of communication, fl uctuation of participants and norms. the activity organised around a focus may require certain patterns of communication and may impede others. there may be patterns of communication within a focus that foster interaction and the development of a relationship (high effi ciency to transform opportunities for contact into opportunities for interaction). however, there may also be patterns of communication that obstruct interactions (low transformative effi ciency).2 social activities organised around foci require different degrees of regular participation. if there is no fl uctuation of a focus’ participants, the opportunities to establish relationships in this focus are restricted to the current participants. hence, if there is more fl uctuation, the focus provides better opportunities for interaction with novel contacts (high transformative effi ciency). on the other hand, if the participants of a focus change very rapidly, there are fewer opportunities for repeated interaction after the fi rst contact; therefore, the consolidation of interaction and the development of a relationship might be obstructed (low transformative effi ciency). the norms that apply within a focus may encourage or obstruct the development of a special kind of interaction and a resulting relationship. if interaction in the focus is highly regulated and norms obstruct any interaction that is not congruent with the focal activity, the focus is not suitable for establishing a dyadic relationship. when analysing relationship instability, social norms about the exclusivity and stability of intimate relationships will especially obstruct the development of a new intimate relationship if the current partner takes part in ego ś social activities. if a couple mainly shares the same contacts, fl irting with these contacts will not stay secret and is widely controlled and negatively sanctioned by the current partner and by others in the focus. especially, potential new partners might restrain themselves from destroying ego’s relationship with his or her current partner. as shared friends feel committed to both partners, the impact of such norms will particularly obstruct fi nding a new partner within a shared network of friends and acquaintances.3 2 this list is the result of a conceptualisation by stauder (2014a). it does not claim to be exhaustive. 3 visiting online dating portals grows more and more popular in many countries. given this concept of a partner market, online dating portals are virtual foci of activity with special properties that help to fi nd an intimate partner: those portals can be accessed at low cost, people accessing the portal are potentially available for an intimate relationship, relevant information about potential partners is readily available (but not necessarily true), communication of the members is supposed to be focused on relevant information for partner choice, there are no norms that obstruct forming a relationship, and there is little social control from the individuals’ network because the focus is separated from the individuals’ other foci. in total, online dating portals optimise potential relational capital (opportunities for contact) and provide optimal system capital for partner choice (opportunities for interaction). nevertheless, people will only visit an online dating portal when opportunities for contact and interaction in their already existing foci of activity are ineffi cient to fi nd a partner. • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder234 3 further determinants of divorce and separation besides partner market opportunities, there are numerous other factors affecting relationship stability. both the social exchange framework of relationship stability and the economic approach of relationship stability expect that individuals only separate if they expect greater advantages than disadvantages from being separated (and potentially start a new relationship with someone else). if one asks for the determinants of relationship stability, one has, therefore, to look for the factors that affect the gains from being in a relationship and the costs of separation. the costs of separation should increase in particular with investments in the relationship that will be less valuable after a separation (so called “relationshipspecifi c capital”). a prominent example of such investments are common children of both partners (becker et al. 1977: 1152). after a separation, at least one of the partners usually has less contact to his children than before. as expected, numerous studies showed that common children lower the risk of separation, albeit the stabilising effect becomes weaker when the children grow older (andersson 1997; böttcher 2006; heaton 1990; kalmijn et al. 2004; liu/vikat 2004; lyngstad 2004; waite/lillard 1991; wu/penning 1997) and diminishes when the children leave home (hiedemann/suhomlinova 1998; klein/rapp 2010; sauvain-dugerdil 2006). besides referring to their character as “relationship-specifi c capital”, it has been suggested that common children stabilise the relationship because the partners are more mutually dependent (heaton 1990: 56) or because children increase the cohesion of the couple (brines/joyner 1999). moreover, the causality between relationship-specifi c capital and relationship stability may also run in the opposite direction, because couples who anticipate dissolution may hesitate to invest in children (becker et al. 1977: 1142). further examples of relationship-specifi c capital are material investments such as joint home ownership (levinger 1979) as well as immaterial investments such as time spent together (rusbult 1983: 102). it is well documented that the acquisition of joint home ownership is associated with a lower risk of dissolution (booth et al. 1985; brüderl/kalter 2001; south/spitze 1986; south 2001), and virtually all existing studies showed that this also applies to longer marriage and relationship durations (kulu 2014; rapp 2008). again, there are alternative mechanisms which could also be responsible for the observed effects. for example, the higher stability of relationships of home owners may also be caused by reverse causality (brüderl/kalter 2001; south/spitze 1986), and the lower dissolution risk of long-lasting relationships may also be due to learning processes of the partners (diekmann/mitter 1984: 129-130). when not only considering married couples, the establishment of a common household and marriage itself can also be seen as investments in relationship-specifi c capital. previous studies showed that marriages are more stable than non-marital cohabitations and much more stable than dating relationships (asendorpf 2008; boyle et al. 2008; kalmijn et al. 2007; lois 2008). previous research identifi ed numerous other determinants of separation (for a recent overview see arránz becker 2015). among the most widely studied antecedents of dissolution are socio-economic factors such as educational attainment and partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 235 employment. these factors produced inconsistent results, probably because the effects of education and employment changed in the past decades. recent studies indicate that both higher education of men and – this is new – also higher education of women decrease the risk of separation (de graaf/kalmijn 2006; härkönen/ dronkers 2006; rapp 2013). the change in women’s educational effect may have several reasons (rapp 2013: 56-57). due to women’s generally improved chances to earn a living, so-called independence effects may have become less important. additionally, recent societal processes, like the marketisation of housework, weakened the advantage of the traditional male breadwinner and female homemaker model (kraft/neimann 2009: 7; oppenheimer 1997: 450; ott 1998: 70). furthermore, even low educated women may have adopted more liberal attitudes towards divorce and separation with some time lag (klages 1984: 126-127). finally, due to the rising shares of educational participation, the remaining group of low educated women (and their relationships) may be increasingly characterised by other risk factors also relevant to relationship stability, like poor economic conditions or poor social skills (hoem 1997: 25; wagner 1993: 390). turning to the role of the partners’ employment status, most studies showed that men’s employment reduces the probability of divorce and separation, whereas women’s employment increases the dissolution risk. however, it is possible that the effect of women’s employment changes in the same way as women’s educational effect (arránz becker 2015: 541). previous studies consistently showed that early marriages have a higher risk of separation (lyngstad/jalovaara 2010; wagner/weiß 2003). once again various mechanisms may be responsible for this effect. individuals that start a (marital) relationship at a very young age were supposed to be less mature (booth/edwards 1985; jalovaara 2002: 540; lee 1977) or to be less informed about the partner market (becker et al. 1977: 1156). additionally, previous research showed that religiousness (boyle et al. 2008; kalmijn et al. 2004; lehrer/chiswick 1993) and religious practice (amato/rogers 1997; call/heaton 1997) decrease the risk of dissolution, presumably because religiousness increases the threshold to dissolution (lewis/ spanier 1979). as can be seen from the short overview above, previous research has identifi ed numerous factors that affect relationship stability. often there are different mechanisms that could be responsible for the observed effects, and their relative importance is unclear. and there is yet another mechanism that may play a role for all the above mentioned antecedents of dissolution, namely differences in partner market opportunities. for example, it is obvious that being employed may provide additional contacts and therefore may improve partner market opportunities. the same may apply to church attendance. education and age at the start of the relationship might also be connected with partner market opportunities, possibly because higher educated individuals have larger networks (roberts et al. 2009) or because individual’s partner market opportunities may affect the timing of mate choice. and fi nally, it is conceivable that the aforementioned investments in relationship• ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder236 specifi c capital do not only affect the costs of separation, but also affect partner market opportunities.4 4 data and methods data for the empirical analyses we used data of the german marriage market survey (partnermarktsurvey, see klein et al. 2010; woll et al. 2014). this survey comprises a random sample of 2002 heterosexual individuals of the german resident population aged 16 to 55 years. the sample has been stratifi ed by sex, age group and region (western and eastern germany). respondents were fi rst interviewed by telephone in 2009. to account for seasonal variation of the assessed social activities, the fi rst part of the sample was collected in january, february and march 2009, the second part in june, july and august 2009. in 2012, 734 respondents could be surveyed a second time. out of these, 560 individuals had a heterosexual relationship at the time of the fi rst interview and may therefore be at risk of having been separated during the subsequent 3-year period. after excluding 23 cases with missing values for any of the analysed variables the remaining sample contained 537 individuals. based on feld’s (1981) theoretical concept of foci of activity, the german marriage market survey conceptualised partner market opportunities as individual opportunities for contact and interaction in concrete social contexts, like the neighbourhood, the workplace, leisure activities, etc. (woll et al. 2014). by assessing and aggregating the opportunities for contact and interaction from the various foci of activity in which the individual is embedded, the german marriage market survey offers a very detailed picture of the individual’s partner market opportunities. measures the main dependent variable “dissolution of the relationship” indicates if a relationship existing at the time of the fi rst interview has been dissolved within three years (up to the date of the second interview). it must be mentioned that the data do not allow distinguishing between relationships being dissolved by separation or by the death of the partner. nonetheless, the sample-population is aged 16-55 years and therefore exhibits age-specifi c mortality rates much less than one percent (statistisches bundesamt 2012: 17). therefore, “dissolution of the relationship” is a quite reliable measure of separation. all of the following variables were assessed at the time of the fi rst interview. our indicators for the respondent’s partner market opportunities are: 4 there may be more determinants of divorce and separation that may be connected with partner market opportunities, such as income, health and community size. measures of these factors are, however, not available in the data. partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 237 • “log (number of regular opposite sex contacts)” was built by summing the number of opposite sex contacts over all foci of activity of an individual and logarithmising this sum score. thanks to logarithmising, an additional second or third opposite sex contact is given more weight than an additional hundredth-and-second or hundredth-and-third contact, and the indicator is approximately normally distributed (see stauder 2014b). • “most acquaintances are in a relationship” was measured as a dummy-variable and indicates whether the respondent agreed with the statement that most of his opposite sex acquaintances are partnered (=1, 0 otherwise). • “opportunities for communication” were measured by the degree of agreement with the statement “there are opportunities to have a talk with others” (mean over all foci of the respondent, possible responses were 0 = ”completely disagree” to 10 = “completely agree”). • “fluctuation of contact opportunities” was measured by the question “how often do you meet new people” (mean over all foci of the respondent, possible responses were 0 = “never”, 1 = “rarely”, 2 = “sometimes”, 3 = “often”). • “mainly the same acquaintances as the partner” was measured as a dummyvariable and indicates if the respondent agreed with the statement that he/ she and his/her partner have “mainly” the same friends and acquaintances. our measures for frequently studied determinants of separation are: • “relationship duration” was measured in years and indicates the duration since the start of the relationship. • “children” indicates if the respondent cohabited with one or more biological children at the time of the fi rst interview (=1, 0 otherwise). • “joint home ownership” indicates if the partners bought a shared freehold fl at or a joint house (=1, 0 otherwise). • two dummy-variables show whether the couple was “married” (=1, 0 otherwise) or lived in a “non-marital cohabitation” (=1, 0 otherwise). the reference group includes couples who did not live together (“dating relationship”). all married couples were included in the “married” category regardless of whether the partners currently shared a common household or not. • the employment status was measured using a set of three dummy-variables. “part-time employed” indicates that the respondent was employed less than full time (including part-time employed, marginally employed, “one-eurojob” which are public service jobs that do not affect unemployment benefi ts, military or civilian service or voluntary social year, occasionally employed and partial retirement). “not employed” signalises if the respondent was neither in work (including unemployed) nor in education. “still in education” indicates if the respondent was in education. the reference category indicates if the respondent was full-time employed. • “years of education” indicates the years usually required for completing the respective level of education. the degrees of the german general school system were coded as follows: no certifi cate = 8 years, “berufsschulreife” (vocational school certifi cate) = 9 years, “mittlere reife” (equal to general certifi cate of secondary education) = 10 years, “fachhochschulreife” (university of applied sciences entrance certifi cate) = 12 years and “hochschulreife” (university entrance certifi cate) = 13 years. if an individual was still in general education this variable was set to 10, because the respondents were at minimum 16 years old and therefore had usually already obtained “mit• ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder238 tlere reife”. upper secondary or tertiary educational degrees were assessed separately and set as follows: no certifi cate (including those still in the vocational education system) = 0 years; apprenticeship or certifi cate from a vocational school = 3 years; university = 5 years. the variable “years of education” was then calculated by adding both generated metric variables of education. • “age at the start of the relationship” was measured in years and indicates the age of the respondent at the start of the relationship. • “church attendance” indicates if the respondent went to church at least once a month (=1, 0 otherwise). tab. 1: scale, mean values and standard deviations of all analysed variables scale mean (sd) dissolution of the relationship 0/1 0.11 log (number of regular opposite sex contacts) 0 to 6.63 3.48 (1.00) most acquaintances are in a relationship 0/1 0.89 occasions for communication 0 to 10 7.16 (1.94) fluctuation of contact opportunities 0 to 4 2.72 (0.49) mainly the same acquaintances as the partner 0/1 0.76 relationship duration 0 to 39 17.87 (10.86) children 0/1 0.66 joint home ownership 0/1 0.50 relationship status married 0/1 0.74 non-marital cohabitation 0/1 0.12 dating relationship 0/1 0.14 age at the start of the relationship 13 to 55 25.92 (8.65) employment status full-time employed 0/1 0.50 part-time employed 0/1 0.32 not employed 0/1 0.12 still in education 0/1 0.06 years of education 9 to 18 14.60 (2.46) church attendance 0/1 0.20 residing in western germany 0/1 0.78 migration background 0/1 0.12 man 0/1 0.36 sd = standard deviation source: own calculation based on the german marriage market survey partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 239 our control variables are: • “residing in western germany” indicates if the respondent lived in western (=1) or eastern (=0) germany. • “migration background” indicates whether the individual or at least one of his or her parents was born abroad (=1, 0 otherwise). • “man” indicates if the respondent was male (=1) or female (=0). table 1 presents the scale, means and standard deviations of all analysed variables. statistical analyses this study uses logit regression analyses to examine the effects of individual partner market opportunities and the effects of some frequently studied determinants of relationship stability on the probability of separation within a three year period. different models are estimated: the fi rst model only includes some frequently studied determinants of relationship stability; all further models also include measures of partner market opportunities. additionally, logit and ordinary least squares (ols) regression analyses are used to examine the impact of these frequently studied determinants of relationship stability on those individual partner market opportunities that turned out to be signifi cant. 5 results model 1 of table 2 presents the effects of some frequently studied determinants of relationship stability on the risk of separation within a three year period. of all included variables, only relationship duration and relationship status signifi cantly affect the risk of separation. as expected, longer relationship duration and being in a non-marital cohabitation or being married reduce the odds of separation. models 2 to 6 of table 2 additionally account for individual partner market opportunities of the respondent. model 2 shows that the higher the logarithmised number of regular opposite sex contacts, the greater is the risk of separation (or 1,59). whether most acquaintances were in a relationship as opposed to being single does not affect relationship stability (model 3), and the same applies to occasions for communication with the contact opportunities (model 4) and to the fl uctuation of contact opportunities (model 5). the fact whether the respondent had mainly the same friends and acquaintances as his or her partner does not initially affect the odds of separation (model 6). however, the effect turns signifi cant when all partner market indicators are included in the same model (model 7): in this case, the probability of separation is reduced signifi cantly (or 0,47). when comparing the effects of the determinants from model 1 (without controlling for individual partner market opportunities) to the models that control for individual partner market opportunities, most coeffi cients remain similar. nonetheless, some changes are mentionable. the effect of relationship duration on the risk of • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder240 ta b . 2 : d et er m in an ts o f s ep ar at io n w it hi n a th re e ye ar p er io d (l o g it re g re ss io n, o d d s r at io s) m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 r el at io n sh ip d u ra tio n 0. 94 * 0. 95 0. 94 * 0. 94 * 0. 94 * 0. 94 * 0. 95 c h ild re n (r ef .: c h ild le ss ) 1. 47 1. 37 1. 46 1. 4 4 1. 54 1. 37 1. 23 jo in t h o m e o w n er sh ip (r ef .: n o jo in t h om e ow n er sh ip ) 0. 77 0. 70 0. 77 0. 75 0. 75 0. 77 0. 66 n o n m ar it al c o h ab it at io n (r ef .: d at in g re la ti on sh ip ) 0. 11 ** 0. 13 ** 0. 11 ** 0. 12 ** 0. 11 ** 0. 14 ** 0. 15 ** m ar ri ed (r ef .: d at in g re la ti on sh ip ) 0. 08 ** 0. 08 ** 0. 08 ** 0. 08 ** 0. 07 ** 0. 10 ** 0. 10 ** a g e at t h e st ar t o f t h e re la tio n sh ip 0. 97 0. 98 0. 97 0. 97 0. 97 0. 97 0. 98 p ar tti m e em p lo ye d (r ef .: f u llti m e em p lo ye d) 1. 48 1. 50 1. 48 1. 53 1. 55 1. 56 1. 70 n o t e m p lo ye d (r ef .: f u llti m e em p lo ye d) 1. 02 1. 38 1. 01 1. 08 1. 10 1. 04 1. 57 s til l i n ed u ca tio n (r ef .: f u llti m e em p lo ye d) 1. 71 1. 4 4 1. 78 1. 70 1. 82 1. 51 1. 53 ye ar s o f e d u ca tio n 1. 03 0. 99 1. 03 1. 04 1. 04 1. 01 0. 96 c h u rc h at te n d an ce (r ef .: n o ch u rc h at te n d an ce ) 0. 45 0. 37 * 0. 45 0. 46 0. 49 0. 4 4 0. 41 r es id in g in w es te rn g er m an y (r ef .: r es id in g in e as te rn g er m an y) 1. 4 4 1. 18 1. 43 1. 40 1. 50 1. 45 1. 19 m ig ra ti o n b ac kg ro u n d (r ef .: n o m ig ra ti on b ac kg ro u n d) 2. 28 2. 71 2. 28 2. 28 2. 31 2. 07 2. 50 + m an (r ef .: w om an ) 0. 84 0. 79 0. 83 0. 88 0. 85 0. 92 0. 90 lo g (n um b er o f r eg ul ar o p p o si te s ex c o n ta ct s) 1. 59 * 1. 60 * m o st a cq u ai n ta n ce s ar e in a r el at io n sh ip (r ef .: m os t ac q u ai n ta n ce s ar e n ot in a r el at io n sh ip ) 1. 13 1. 50 o cc as io n s fo r co m m un ic at io n 1. 12 1. 08 fl u ct u at io n o f c o n ta ct o p p o rt un it ie s 1. 94 1. 82 m ai n ly t h e sa m e ac q u ai n ta n ce s as t h e p ar tn er (r ef .: m ai n ly ot h er a cq u ai n ta n ce s as t h e p ar tn er ) 0. 52 0. 47 * in te rc ep t 1. 41 0. 37 1. 38 0. 61 0. 20 2. 58 0. 07 n u m b er o f c as es 53 7 53 7 53 7 53 7 53 7 53 7 53 7 n u m b er o f s ep ar at io n s 58 58 58 58 58 58 58 -2 *l og l ik el ih oo d 25 8. 3 25 3. 1 25 8. 2 25 6. 8 25 4. 9 25 5. 2 24 5. 7 *p < .0 5; * *p < .0 1 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n th e g er m an m ar ri ag e m ar ke t s ur ve y partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 241 separation is weaker and no longer signifi cant if the logarithmised number of opposite sex contacts is controlled for (compare model 1 and 2). in contrast, the negative effect of church attendance on dissolution gets stronger and turns signifi cant after controlling for the logarithmised number of opposite sex contacts (compare model 1 and 2). table 3 presents the effects of the determinants of separation from table 2 on the logarithmised number of opposite sex contacts. thus, multiplying the regression coeffi cients by 100 approximately shows the percentage change of the number of opposite sex contacts if the independent variable changes by one unit. for example, each additional relationship year reduces the number of opposite sex contacts by two percent. results further show that being married or being in a non-marital cohabitation, having a lower age at the start of the relationship, being not employed and having a migration background also reduce the number of opposite sex contacts signifi cantly. in contrast, joint home ownership, years of education, church attendance and residing in western germany increase the number of opposite sex contacts. tab. 3: determinants of the logarithmised number of opposite sex contacts (ols-regression, unstandardised regression coeffi cients) relationship duration -0.02** children (ref.: childless) 0.06 joint home ownership (ref.: no joint home ownership) 0.22* non marital cohabitation (ref.: dating relationship) -0.33* married (ref.: dating relationship) -0.37* age at the start of the relationship -0.03** part-time employed (ref.: full-time employed) 0.06 not employed (ref.: full-time employed) -0.52** still in education (ref.: full-time employed) 0.17 years of education 0.09** church attendance (ref.: no church attendance) 0.24* residing in western germany (ref.: residing in eastern germany) 0.40** migration background (ref.: no migration background) -0.26* man (ref.: woman) 0.10 intercept 3.12** n 537 adjusted r-square 0.17 *p<.05; **p<.01 source: own calculation based on the german marriage market survey • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder242 table 4 presents the effects of the determinants of separation from table 2 on the odds of having mainly the same friends and acquaintances as the partner. being in a non-marital cohabitation (or 4,12) or being married (or 6,31) signifi cantly increases whereas being in education (or 0,37) signifi cantly reduces the probability of having mainly the same friends and acquaintances as the partner. 6 discussion the fi rst objective of this study was to investigate the impact of individual partner market opportunities on relationship stability. previous studies have underlined the importance of partner market opportunities in explaining relationship stability but empirical measures have only been rather general so far. as predicted in the social exchange framework (lewis/spanier 1979) and the economic approach of relationship stability (becker et al. 1977) , respondent’s contact opportunities – measured as the (logarithmised) number of regular opposite sex contacts from the various social activities in which the individual is embedded – increased the probability of separation. this result is in line with previous research that used more crude meastab. 4: determinants of having mainly the same friends and acquaintances as the partner (logit-regression, odds ratios) relationship duration 1.01 children (ref.: childless) 0.62 joint home ownership (ref.: no joint home ownership) 1.14 non marital cohabitation (ref.: dating relationship) 4.12** married (ref.: dating relationship) 6.31** age at the start of the relationship 0.97 part-time employed (ref.: full-time employed) 1.16 not employed (ref.: full-time employed) 0.79 still in education (ref.: full-time employed) 0.37* years of education 0.94 church attendance (ref.: no church attendance) 0.85 residing in western germany (ref.: residing in eastern germany) 0.86 migration background (ref.: no migration background) 0.57 man (ref.: woman) 0.92 intercept 6.24* n 537 -2*log likelihood 515.8 *p<.05; **p<.01 source: own calculation based on the german marriage market survey partner market opportunities and relationship stability • 243 ures of individual partner market opportunities (felmlee et al. 1990; udry 1981; white/booth 1991). another central fi nding was that the risk of separation was reduced if both partners had mainly the same friends and acquaintances. once again, this result confi rms previous research (booth et al. 1985; kneip 2008). further aspects of individual partner market opportunities did not signifi cantly affect the risk of separation. in particular, our results do not support the expectation that “system capital” of social contexts, such as patterns of communication and fl uctuation, affect the risk of separation. however, it is important to point out that the sample size was relatively small. therefore, it cannot be ruled out that these factors may have substantial effects on relationship stability in a larger sample. the second objective of this study was to examine to what extend some frequently studied determinants of divorce and separation depend on individual’s partner market opportunities. results showed that the number of opposite sex contacts decreased with increasing relationship duration, with being married or being in a non-marital cohabitation, with age at the start of the relationship, with being not employed and with having a migration background. thus, reducing opposite sex contacts in the course of the relationship is partly responsible for the higher stability of longer-lasting relationships. when controlling for respondents opposite sex contacts, the stabilising effect of relationship duration on separation even loses signifi cance. similarly, a reduction of opposite sex contacts with increasing age contributes to the well-documented higher stability of couples which were older at the start of their relationships. furthermore, the higher stability of marriages and non-marital cohabitations compared to dating relationships is partly due to the fact that married couples and cohabiting couples have fewer contact opportunities. in case of employment, it can be concluded that being not employed would be more destabilising if individuals who are not employed had the same contact opportunities like the employed. the same applies to migration background. that is, the instability of migrants’ partnerships is underestimated if their reduced opposite sex contacts are not taken into account. in addition, results showed that joint home ownership, years of education, church attendance and residing in western germany increased the number of opposite sex contacts. especially in case of joint home ownership and church attendance previous research consistently showed that both factors increase relationship stability (amato/rogers 1997; booth et al. 1985; brüderl/kalter 2001; call/heaton 1997; south/spitze 1986; south 2001). therefore, our results imply that joint home ownership and church attendance would be even more stabilising if these factors were not connected with more opposite sex contacts. as to church attendance, the stabilising effect turned signifi cant after controlling for the respondent’s opposite sex contacts. furthermore, partnerships in western germany and among the higher educated would be more stable if these factors were not associated with more opposite sex contacts. further results showed that being married or being in a non-marital cohabitation increased the probability of having the same friends and acquaintances as one’s partner. apparently, a common household comes along with common contacts and this is another reason why cohabitations and marriages are more stable than dating • ingmar rapp, thomas klein, sebastian fronk, johannes stauder244 relationships. in contrast, being in education reduced the probability of having the same friends and acquaintances as the partner. thus, intimate relationships of pupils and students would be more stable if these couples would not have less shared friends and acquaintances than other couples. remarkably, having children did neither signifi cantly affect the number of opposite sex contacts nor the probability of having the same friends and acquaintances as the partner. thus, the stabilising effect of children, as often found in previous studies with larger samples as ours, cannot be explained by differences in partner market opportunities. the current study has some limitations. first of all, the present study is based on only 537 intimate relationships of which only 58 separated within a three year period. this is the most likely reason that we, in contrast to previous studies with larger samples, did not fi nd signifi cant effects of children, joint home ownership, age at the start of the relationship, employment status and education on the risk of separation. additionally, due to the small number of cases, it was not possible to consider differences between various subgroups that might be important, such as differences between men and women or between marriages, cohabitations and dating relationships. this is particularly problematic when analysing the effect of employment status on relationship stability, because previous research reported different effects between men and women and between marriages and non-marital cohabitations (lois 2008). another shortfall of the current study is that the german marriage market survey only comprises information on the respondent’s partner market opportunities. of course, relationship stability depends on the partner market opportunities of both partners. furthermore, all independent variables were assessed only at the time of the fi rst interview. therefore, the data did not allow including time varying independent variables. nonetheless, at least for germany there are no data available which are better suited for analysing the impact of individual partner market opportunities on relationship stability. in sum, our results underline the importance of individual partner market opportunities for explaining the stability of intimate relationships. moreover, our results suggest that some familiar determinants of relationship stability that were usually discussed in terms of rewards of the current relationship and costs of separation are also connected with individual’s partner market opportunities. in this regard, partner market opportunities may either partially explain effects (as 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herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved fertility intentions and views on gender roles: russian women in estonia from an origin-destination perspective fertility intentions and views on gender roles: russian women in estonia from an origin-destination perspective* allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze abstract: in this article we investigate fertility intentions of russian women in estonia from an origin-destination perspective. russian migrants to estonia and their descendants are compared with women in the sending and host countries in order to identify similarities and differences in intended transitions to first, second and third births. the study is based on the estonian and russian generations and gender surveys, which were conducted in 2004/2005, and employs logistic regression models. the dependent variables are intentions to become a mother, to have a second child, or to have a third child. the hypotheses for the study are mainly derived from the adaptation, cultural maintenance, and selection (characteristics) perspectives. we also incorporate attitudes towards gender roles into the models, which have proven to be a salient factor in shaping childbearing intentions, but have seldom been considered in studies of migrant fertility. our results lend support to both the adaptation and cultural maintenance perspectives. in accord with the latter, the similarity between the childbearing intentions of russian migrants and their descendants in estonia and those of their counterparts in russia suggests that socialisation to the ethnic subculture has prevailed over the influence of the host society. we attribute this outcome to contextual features that have retarded integration processes. by contrast, we observe that proficiency in the host country language, residence in areas where the host population constitutes a large majority and having a native partner significantly contribute to the adaptation of migrants’ intentions to have another child to those of the host population. these results provide support to the adaptation argument. finally, our study reveals a positive association between egalitarian views on gender roles and women’s intentions to have another child. however, variation in gender role attitudes accounts for a relatively minor part of the difference in intended fertility between the groups addressed in this study. keywords: migrant fertility · descendant · gender role attitudes · integration · estonia · russia comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 275-306 (date of release: 25.02.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-04en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility. • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze276 1 introduction for a number of reasons, recent decades have witnessed rapidly growing scholarly interest in migrant fertility. first of all, migrants contribute to an increasing degree to aggregate national fertility levels, thus influencing the demographic prospects of the host society. it is known that the proportion of total births to immigrant parents has increased markedly in many european countries (sobotka 2008; lanzieri 2011). furthermore, in demographic and sociological studies, the childbearing patterns of migrants are regarded as an important indicator of integration into the host society (coleman 1994; algan et al. 2012). studies generally find that migrant fertility gradually converges with levels that are characteristic of the host population, although for some immigrant groups differences may persist across generations (milewski 2007; garssen/nicolaas 2008; scott/stanfors 2011; dubuc 2012; krapf/wolf 2015). descendants of migrants may have depressed, similar or elevated fertility levels compared with the native population of the host countries, depending on the context and country of parental origin (kulu et al. 2017; andersson et al. 2017). last but not least, the experience of international migrants provides valuable insight into the role of structural and cultural factors that are assumed to shape demographic outcomes. for this reason, research on migrant fertility adds to an improved understanding of how economic and cultural factors interact and influence childbearing decisions in contemporary societies. in the 21st century, research on migrant fertility has drawn its evidence increasingly from retrospective surveys. since then, analyses applying event history techniques have generated much valuable knowledge (kulu/milewski 2007; de valk/ milewski 2011). life-course data and new analytical approaches have allowed scholars to disaggregate fertility patterns and investigate the interplay between migration and childbearing with much greater precision than previously feasible. in their review article, kulu/gonzàlez-ferrer (2014) have provided a useful summary of recent individual-level studies and outlined several directions for the further development of research on the fertility of immigrants and ethnic minorities. among other elements, they have pointed to the need to undertake more comparative research, not only across different groups of migrants, but also across different host countries, in order to gain a better understanding of how institutional and policy contexts shape the lives of immigrant families and their descendants. in this article, however, we take a different route. we seek to complement the existing literature on migrant fertility by drawing our evidence from fertility intentions rather than fertility histories. although information on fertility preferences is routinely collected as part of many demographic surveys, and a large body of literature exists on intended fertility, childbearing intentions have seldom been addressed in the immigration context (nedoluzhko 2012; marczak 2013). the motivation to investigate intended fertility stems from the fact that intentions form an important link in the chain leading to the decision to have a child, and are seen as a major determinant of reproductive behaviour (schoen et al. 1999; philipov/bernardi 2011). furthermore, fertility intentions reflect childbearing norms shared and reproduced by various social and cultural groups to which individuals belong. this makes intenfertility intentions and views on gender roles • 277 tions particularly useful for studying adaptation processes by which immigrants and their descendants may switch from the norms of their country of origin to those of the host country. finally, focusing on fertility intentions allows us to incorporate in the analysis covariates pertaining to respondents’ attitudes, which is not feasible in studies based on retrospectively collected childbearing histories because reliable attitudinal information is almost impossible to obtain retrospectively. furthermore, we include in the analysis non-migrants (or “stayers”) in the country of origin. although various researchers have recommended this approach (schoenmaeckers et al. 1999; glick 2010; lessard-phillips et al. 2017), it has been implemented only in a few european studies due to data constraints (nauck 2007; white 2011; baizán et al. 2014; krapf/wolf 2015; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017; klimek 2017; wolf/mulder 2018). more specifically, the aim of this study is to investigate the childbearing intentions of russian emigrants and their descendants in estonia relative to the sending populations (russians in russia) and host populations (estonians). the cohorts included in the study exhibited systematically higher fertility rates in estonia than in russia. we seek evidence regarding the extent to which the intentions of russian women in estonia of having first, second and third births compare with those of the countries of destination and origin. we are also interested in individual and contextual factors that may influence the childbearing intentions of migrants and their descendants. the study adds to research on migrant fertility in multiple ways. the first contribution stems from the use of a bi-national sample based on pooled data from the estonian and russian generations and gender surveys (2004/2005). these data allow us to examine the fertility intentions of migrants and their descendants from the perspective of both the sending and host countries, which is seldom feasible in studies of international migration. these are the only two countries participating in the generations and gender programme for which such analysis is feasible. second, we are able to incorporate into the models variables that have rarely been considered in analyses of migrant fertility. in particular, this contribution relates to attitudes towards gender roles, which have been proven in a number of studies to have a significant influence on childbearing intentions (kaufman 2000; puur et al. 2008; miettinen et al. 2011). in addition, our study provides insights into the role of language proficiency and the spatial concentration of migrants, both of which are important from a policy perspective. finally, with regard to host societies, european research on the fertility patterns of migrants and their descendants has dealt overwhelmingly with the northern, western and southern parts of the continent. in contrast, studies on groups involved in large-scale population movements in eastern europe are relatively rare (jasilioniene et al. 2014), and by focusing on russians in estonia, our study contributes to a more comprehensive account. russians comprise the third largest immigrant group originating from third countries in the context of the eu (eurostat 2018). however, there is substantially less research on their demographic patterns compared with other larger groups (e.g. turks and moroccans). • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze278 2 theoretical considerations and previous findings several theoretical frameworks have been developed to account for fertility patterns among migrants who move from one societal context to another (for an overview, milewski 2010; kulu/gonzáles-ferrer 2014). this study is guided by the adaptation, cultural maintenance, and selection (characteristics) perspectives. our analysis is focussed on fertility intentions among migrants and their descendants, who were either born in the host country or had arrived there several years before our survey data were collected. this renders frameworks that concentrate on the short-term effects of the move (disruption, interrelation of events) largely irrelevant for the purposes of our study, which focuses on the long-term perspective. according to the adaptation perspective, the childbearing behaviour of migrants gradually comes to resemble the dominant behaviour of the destination population (kulu 2005). the adaptation perspective is also applicable to the descendants of migrants if the transition to host country behaviours extends beyond the first generation. the literature identifies several mechanisms that support the process of convergence with the fertility patterns of the host society (rumbaut/weeks 1986; frank/heuveline 2005). through exposure to the host society and social learning, migrants are thought to adopt the norms and values prevailing in the host society (hirschman 1983; alba 2005). in addition, the social and economic conditions in the receiving country are believed to affect the cost of childbearing (hotz et al. 1997), levelling out differences between migrants and the host country natives. abbasi-shavazi and mcdonald (2002) formulated the theory of cultural maintenance, which is based on the assumption that parents of migrants transmit their values, norms and attitudes to their children. if the latter pass the inherited values, norms and attitudes on to subsequent generations, fertility patterns inherited from the country of ancestry may persist in the host country over a considerable period of time. as migrants and their descendants are exposed to the norms and family behaviour of their parents, rather than to those of the host society, intergenerational transmission can be regarded as a central mechanism that enables cultural maintenance. the latter premise makes cultural maintenance similar to the socialisation perspective, which emphasises the importance of the social environment of migrants and their descendants during childhood, and assumes that it has a lasting impact over the life course (andersson 2004; kulu/milewski 2007). furthermore, the idea of cultural maintenance can be connected to family systems as constructs that integrate norms, values and practices associated with the organisation of family ties (reher 1998). in a recent study, for instance, mönkediek and bras (2016) drew attention to a link between family systems and fertility intentions, with the effects of family systems varying between intentions to start and to extend a family. both the cultural maintenance and adaptation perspectives are widely supported by empirical findings. the absence of complete convergence of migrant fertility behaviour with that of the host population, even after controlling for compositional effects, lends support to the cultural maintenance perspective. in europe, larger differences are usually characteristic of migrant groups from high-fertility contexts (andersson/scott 2007; milewski 2011; kulu et al. 2017). evidence in favour of the fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 279 cultural maintenance perspective is also provided by studies that directly incorporate origin-country fertility levels into the models (cygan-rehm 2011; stichnoth/ yeter 2013). in support of the adaptation argument, a number of authors have reported that close similarity to host-country fertility levels may be achieved within a relatively short time after the arrival of migrants in the destination country (ford 1990; mayer/riphahn 2000; andersson 2004). the intermediate position of the descendants of migrants has been corroborated by many studies (abbasi-shavazi/ mcdonald 2000; milewski 2007; parrado/morgan 2008; dubuc 2012; scott/stanfors 2011; krapf/wolf 2015). this suggests that adaptation and cultural maintenance are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, and indicates that childbearing decisions among the descendants of migrants are shaped by both the host society in which they grew up and the values and norms of their ancestors. consequently, the fertility behaviour of the descendants of migrants is dependent on the relative strength of these rival influences. studies of fertility patterns among migrants and their descendants that take the origin-destination approach must also consider the selection and characteristics perspectives. the selection perspective posits that migrants are systematically selected based on various characteristics that may produce fertility patterns that are distinct from those of the sending population and more similar to those of the host society (macisco et al. 1970; goldstein/goldstein 1984). selection can be based on observable characteristics such as education, family background, etc., but migrants may also be selected according to less obvious features. empirical research provides evidence for both types of selection (lievens 1999; lindstrom/saucedo 2002; bagavos et al. 2008; mussino/strozza 2012; wolf/mulder 2018). according to the characteristics perspective, the composition of migrant groups in terms of socioeconomic or cultural characteristics could be partly or wholly responsible for fertility differentials between the former and the latter (bean et al. 2000; hill/johnson 2004). the characteristics of migrants (both observed and unobserved) may be transmitted to the second generation by their parents (frank/heuveline 2005). therefore, in order to properly assess the fertility patterns of migrants and their descendants, their compositional differences in relation to the sending and receiving populations should be considered. although previous research has produced much valuable knowledge on the fertility of migrants and their descendants, there are some noticeable limitations. first of all, the above studies have focussed on family size or timing of births, without considering the childbearing intentions of migrants and their descendants. very few studies have looked into migrants’ fertility plans (klimek 2017, kraus/castro 2018). in the demographic literature, fertility intentions have attracted considerable scholarly attention as they are deemed to be important predictors of future childbearing trends and differentials (westoff 1990; bongaarts 2001). in the 21st century, a new wave of research into fertility intentions has emerged in europe and other western countries due to growing concerns about low fertility rates and the gap between intended and actual fertility (philipov 2009; spéder/kapitány 2009). at the same time, scholars have expressed scepticism about the predictive validity of reproductive intentions, on both the individual and aggregate levels (quesnel-vallée/morgan 2003). • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze280 in industrialised countries, unexpected obstacles, health difficulties, problems with conception, etc. tend to combine so that individuals rarely have as many children as they may have intended. yet, as morgan and rackin (2010) argue, this does not make research on fertility intentions irrelevant; rather, discrepancies between intended numbers of children and observed fertility provide opportunities to study constraints on fulfilling intentions. another significant drawback of existing research on migrant fertility relates to the explanatory variables. as the overwhelming majority of recent studies on migrant fertility have drawn their evidence from retrospective childbearing histories, the authors of these studies have rarely been able to explicitly consider attitudes, norms and values, which are known to play a prominent role in explaining contemporary fertility patterns and other aspects of family dynamics (fernandez/fogli 2006; lesthaeghe 2010). in this study, we seek to contribute to filling this void by incorporating attitudes towards gender roles into the analysis. the consideration of gender role attitudes is motivated by the gender equity theory. according to mcdonald (2000), fertility in contemporary societies is influenced by levels of gender equity experienced by women in the public and private spheres. he regards the perception of two central attributes of equity – fairness and opportunity – as particularly important to the connection between gender equity and fertility (mcdonald 2013). several authors have further developed this framework by introducing the idea of a two-stage gender revolution (billari/esping-andersen 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). according to their view, in the first stage of the gender revolution, families experience considerable pressure, as women increasingly assume roles in the public sphere, while men share caregiving and domestic tasks in the private sphere to a much lesser degree, leading to a severe reduction in fertility rates. in the second stage, however, families are empowered as men begin to contribute to the unpaid work of caring for the family, bringing fertility closer to replacement level. in recent years, a variety of empirical studies have examined the connection between gender equity and fertility intentions. the results vary considerably, not least because of differences in the ways in which gender equity is operationalised (goldscheider et al. 2010; mills 2010; neyer et al. 2013). as regards attitudes towards gender roles, kaufman (2000) found that gender-egalitarian attitudes are associated with an increased likelihood of intention to have a/another child. this finding was corroborated by puur et al. (2008), who, based on evidence from eight european countries, reported that men with egalitarian attitudes have higher fertility aspirations than their traditional counterparts. however, these findings were contested by westoff and higgins (2009), who demonstrated that the positive connection between egalitarian attitudes and fertility intentions depends significantly on the measures employed. miettinen et al. (2011) found a u-shaped association among finnish men, showing that both traditional and egalitarian attitudes raise men’s expected fertility; however, their results for women were somewhat more ambiguous. previous studies have provided evidence of individual and contextual factors that can promote (or hinder) the convergence of the fertility behaviour of migrants and their descendants with that of the host society. factors that have proven to be salient in this regard include proficiency in the host country language (kahn 1988; fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 281 forste/tienda 1996; kulu/hannemann 2016), the spatial concentration of migrants or ethnic minorities (brewster 1994; wilson/kuha 2016), and partnering with host country natives (andersson/scott 2007; scott/stanfors 2011; stichnoth/yeter 2013). we study the extent to which these factors influence fertility intentions. in the following sections, we apply the above theoretical perspectives to the study of childbearing intentions of russian emigrants and their descendants in estonia. in order to set the stage for the formulation of hypotheses, the next section briefly outlines the characteristics of the migrant group and fertility trends in the sending and host countries. 3 the context before the second world war, the historical russian minority constituted 8 percent of the total population of estonia, but war-time population losses that took a particularly heavy toll on minority groups, coupled with the transfer of border areas with an ethnically mixed population from estonia to russia in late 1944, decreased the proportion of russians to less than 3 percent. the annexation of the baltic countries into the soviet union was followed by large-scale migration from russia to estonia, which persisted until the late 1980s. by the end of the 1980s, the proportion of (ethnic) russians had increased to 30 percent (katus et al. 2002). migration to estonia and the other baltic countries was driven to an important extent by soviet economic policies and somewhat higher living standards that made the baltic region attractive to labour migrants, professionals and manual workers (kahk/tarvel 1997). the restoration of estonia’s independence brought large-scale immigration to a halt and resulted in a wave of return migration in the 1990s. since then, the volume of the migration flow between russia and estonia has been moderate, and the proportion of ethnic russians has stabilised at one quarter of the total population (tammur et al. 2017). according to the latest census, post-war migrants to estonia comprised 38 percent of all russians residing in the country, while most of the remaining 62 percent were the descendants of russian migrants born in the host country. as regards fertility trends in the host country and country of origin, until the 1960s early demographic modernisation accounted for noticeably lower fertility levels in estonia relative to the russian federation (katus 2000; zakharov 2003). however, in the late 1960s fertility levels in the two countries converged. in estonia, a moderate rise in fertility rates occurred, which returned fertility close to replacement level, while in russia, the fertility transition came to an end with the total fertility rate (tfr) stabilising slightly below replacement (table 1). as a consequence, the difference in fertility levels between the countries reversed, and in the 1970s and 1980s estonia exhibited slightly higher tfrs than russia. in both countries, a major interruption in fertility trends occurred in the 1990s, when birth rates sharply decreased all over eastern europe. in estonia, the period tfr reached its lowest point in 1998, and one year later in russia. in the early 21st century, however, fertility rates gradually recovered in both countries (puur/klesment 2012; frejka/zakharov 2012). estimates of completed cohort fertility indicate that estonia’s moderate fertil• allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze282 ity advantage over russia extends to the younger generations whose family formation occurred in the 1990s and 2000s (myrskylä et al. 2013). in the period when the data used in this study were collected, the mean age at first birth was 25.2 in estonia and 24.1 in russia; the mean age at any birth was 27.8 and 25.9 years, respectively. evidence from analyses of retrospective childbearing histories suggests that in accord with the cultural maintenance perspective, the fertility pattern of russian migrants and their descendants in estonia is quite similar to that of their country of origin (puur et al. 2017). in particular, this is reflected in a somewhat earlier entry into parenthood and lower progression rates to second and higher-order births relative to estonians. this has been explained by slow integration into the host society, which is to a significant extent the legacy of the soviet era. despite progress made since the 1990s, only two-fifths of russians in estonia reported proficiency in the host country language at the last census. the rates of intermarriage between the migrant and host populations are relatively low, with no marked increase across migrant generations (puur et al. 2018). the degree of integration has been influenced by several factors, including a high concentration of russians in certain regions of the country and the linguistic division of the educational system. nonetheless, the situation is gradually improving among the younger generations. proficiency in the host country language among younger russians exceeds 70 percent, with no marked difference between migrant generations, and shifts towards improved integration are occurring in other domains as well (puur et al. 2016; realo 2017). to the best of our knowledge, no systematic evidence exists with regard to gender role attitudes among russian migrants and their descendants in estonia. howtab. 1: total period fertility rate and completed cohort fertility rate, russians in estonia, estonia and russia period estonia russia birth cohort estonia russians russia in estonia 1955-1959 2.00 2.72 1925-1929 1.78 1.76 2.21 1960-1964 1.95 2.41 1930-1934 1.78 1.69 2.17 1965-1969 1.97 2.06 1935-1939 1.79 1.67 2.04 1970-1974 2.13 2.01 1940-1945 1.83 1.64 1.93 1975-1979 2.04 1.96 1945-1949 1.92 1.63 1.84 1980-1984 2.10 1.99 1950-1954 1.97 1.68 1.89 1985-1989 2.21 2.11 1955-1959 2.02 1.67 1.88 1990-1994 1.69 1.59 1960-1964 1.96 1.59 1.76 1995-1999 1.33 1.25 1965-1969 1.85 1.53 1.64 2000-2004 1.37 1.28 1970-1974 1.83 1.54 1.59 note: reliable long-term time series of period fertility rates for russians in estonia are not available. as the data used in this study were collected in 2004/2005, fertility rates for subsequent years are not included in the table. source: myrskylä et al. 2013, statistical office of estonia 2018, zakharov 2008, 2017 fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 283 ever, a recent study on mixed partnerships by rahnu et al. (2015) reported that ethnic minority women in estonia (more than 90 percent of whom are russians, ukrainians and byelorussians) tend to express less support for gender equality than their majority counterparts.1 it is plausible that this finding can be extended to russians, as they constitute the largest minority group in the country. as regards the comparison of the sending and host countries, recent research based on the european social survey suggests that egalitarian gender role attitudes are more prevalent in estonia than in russia (pessin/arpino 2018). although the two countries shared a similar institutional context with respect to economic and social policies for almost five decades, evidence from comparative studies suggests that noticeable differences in family practices, rooted in cultural norms, persisted (puur et al. 2012; rahnu 2016). russians in estonia tend to have more traditional views on gender roles than estonians. the most recent gender-equality monitoring (turu-uuringute as 2016) shows that while russians in estonia express less support for gender equality, russian women are more often dissatisfied with the status quo, and report a more severe work-family conflict than estonians (espenberg et al. 2013). a few recent studies have examined fertility patterns among migrant groups in estonia (abuladze et al. 2013; billingsley et al. 2014; puur et al. 2017) but there are virtually no analyses of childbearing intentions among these groups. this study seeks to contribute to filling this void by focusing on russians in estonia, and comparing their fertility intentions with the populations of the sending and host countries. 4 research aim and hypotheses a review of the literature and contextual features described in the previous sections lead us to the formulation of the following hypotheses. we begin by considering inter-group differences, including all russian women living in estonia as a single group. our first hypothesis (h1) is that the fertility intentions of russian women in estonia would be more similar to those of their country of origin than to those prevailing in the host society. the hypothesis draws on the cultural maintenance perspective, according to which migrant-origin groups may preserve fertility norms that bear resemblance to those of their country of origin and differ from those of the country of destination. this expectation arises from contextual features, including the large size of the group addressed in our study, its spatial concentration and the linguistically divided school system. in the next step, we address intra-group differences between russian migrants and their descendants in estonia. our second hypothesis (h2) posits that the fertility intentions of the descendants of russian migrants in estonia would resemble those of the first generation, in accord with the cultural maintenance perspective. given 1 for instance, 27 percent of ethnic minority women agreed with the statement that in times of job scarcity, men should be given preference over women in the labour market, whereas only 8 percent of estonian women agreed with the statement. • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze284 their relatively slow integration into the host society and the contextual features discussed above, the descendants of migrants may be socialised into the sub-culture of the migrant group and follow the fertility norms of their parents. further, our third hypothesis (h3) anticipates that differences between the groups included in this study would vary by parity. guided by recent findings pertaining to fertility transitions among russians in estonia (puur et al. 2017), we expect limited or no difference in intentions to enter parenthood among childless women irrespective of the group to which they belong. however, we expect significant intergroup variation in intentions to have a second and third child, with higher likelihood of secondand third-birth risks among the host population, as described in the previous section of the article. our fourth hypothesis (h4) anticipates that controlling for the relationship between more egalitarian views on gender roles and the intention to have a/another child may decrease the fertility differentials between russians in estonia and the host population. this expectation draws on the gender equity theory as well as the empirical findings discussed in the previous sections. our fifth hypothesis (h5) is that increasing integration into the host society would bring about the convergence of the fertility intentions of russian migrants and their descendants in estonia with the host population pattern. finding support for this hypothesis would be important to provide insights into the mechanisms that underpin the adaptation perspective, and to obtain a better understanding of the demographic implications of integration processes. finally, this study is also expected to cast light on the role of selection and the characteristics of migrants and their descendants. the research on migrant fertility reviewed earlier in the article indicates that the socio-economic profiles of migrants and their descendants may be different from those of the sending or host populations. therefore, our sixth hypothesis (h6) expects that the specificity of fertility intentions among migrants and their descendants would be diminished when these differences are taken into account. however, we do not anticipate a change in intergroup differences related to selectivity, or expect that the compositional differences would be substantial. this expectation arises, inter alia, from the large flow of migration from russia to estonia that persisted over several decades and comprised migrants with diverse social backgrounds. 5 data, analytical approach and variables our analyses are based on the national surveys conducted in estonia and russia in 2004-2005 within the framework of the generations and gender programme.2 both surveys applied the life-course approach and collected detailed retrospective histories of childbearing, and formation and dissolution of partnerships. in addition, the 2 our study makes use of the first wave of the russian ggs and the sole wave of the estonian ggs. fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 285 surveys asked questions about the respondents’ intentions in a number of domains, and concerned a variety of issues that are of great importance for explaining demographic behaviour, such as education, economic circumstances, housing, social networks, health, subjective well-being and attitudes (vikat et al. 2007). comparability of the data was achieved through common guidelines for the survey design, and a standard questionnaire and survey instruments (unece 2005). the surveys were based on nationally representative probability samples of the resident population. in the estonian ggs, respondents were selected from the population enumerated in the 2000 census, using a single-stage random procedure; a total of 7,855 women and men born between 1924 and 1983 were interviewed, with a response rate of 70 percent. the russian survey employed a multi-stage sampling procedure resulting in 11,261 interviews with men and women in the 1924-1987 birth cohorts; the overall response rate for the russian ggs was 44 percent. further information on the data sources is available from methodological publications (independent institute for social policy 2004; katus et al. 2008). in this article, we analyse childbearing intentions among russians who have settled in estonia, against the background of estonians in the host country and russians in the country of origin. these sub-groups of our study population were defined according to self-declared ethnicity, which was available from both surveys (unece 2005). russians in estonia were divided into migrants (the first generation), who were born abroad, and the descendants of migrants, who were born in the host country but whose parents (or all grandparents) had migrated to estonia.3 following an approach frequently taken in the study of fertility intentions, we focus on women aged 20-44 (born from 1960 to 1983), whose childbearing decisions are of great importance for contemporary fertility levels. a small number of respondents who were pregnant at the time of the surveys, who declared themselves not fecund, or did not report their fertility intentions, were excluded from the analysis. in total, our working sample comprises 4,117 women, including 1,388 estonians (34 percent of the sample), 535 russian migrants and their descendants living in the host country (13 percent) and 2,194 russians in the country of origin (53 percent). of the russian women in estonia included in our study, 137 were migrants and 398 descendants of migrants born in the host country. in the ggs surveys, fertility intentions were addressed by two questions. respondents were first asked about their desire to have a/another child during the next three years. those who did not intend to have a child in the next three years were asked a follow-up question regarding whether they intended to have any (more) children in the future. the first question is an indicator of short-term fertility intentions; combining the two questions provides an account of lifetime fertility intentions. both short-term and lifetime intentions are used in contemporary fertility research for various purposes (philipov 2009; balbo et al. 2013). short-term intentions 3 in our study, the descendants of migrants consist mostly of second-generation migrants (82 percent), plus a small number of third-generation migrants. second generation migrants were defined as those who were born in the host country and who have at least one parent born in a foreign country. • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze286 mimic the operative decisions that women or couples make. scholarly interest in short-term fertility intentions has increased with the implementation of panel surveys, such as the ggs, in which the actual realisation of short-term intentions can be analysed. by contrast, lifetime fertility intentions allow for the fact that in addition to positive and negative decisions for the next 2-3 years, postponement can be a viable family formation strategy, particularly among younger and non-partnered women. philipov et al. (2006: 293) refer to lifetime fertility and short-term fertility intentions as “intentions on whether and when to have a child”. as we are primarily interested in the differences in the quantum of intended childbearing, we draw on lifetime intentions in constructing our dependent variable.4 table 2 presents the proportions of women according to their childbearing intentions, disaggregated by origin-destination groups and parity. overall, russian women living in estonia exhibit intentions of having a/another child that closely match those of their counterparts in the country of origin (russia) and fall short of the respective intentions of the host population (estonians). the evidence presented in the table further suggests that the observed pattern is wholly driven by differences in childbearing intentions among parous women. by contrast, the proportion of childless women who reported their intention to have at least one child appears to be closely similar across our origin groups. the lower proportion of women intending to have a/another child among first-generation russian migrants (not shown in the table) stems mainly from their older age structure relative to the other groups included in the study. in order to compare childbearing intentions among the origin-destination groups included in the study, we estimated logistic regression models for all women and women with different parities (childless, one child, two children). for each parity, we fitted a series of models to monitor the change in the effect of the main independent variable (origin-destination group) as other covariates were added in a stepwise procedure. the first model (m1) included only the main independent variable, namely the origin groups. in the second model (m2), controls for demographic characteristics such as age of the respondent and partnership status (married/cohabiting, no partner) were added; in the models for all women, m2 also included the number of children already born. model m3 added a control for type of settlement (urban, rural), and model m4 included an additional control for educational attainment distinguishing basic education (isced 1-2), secondary education (isced 3-4) and tertiary education (isced5-6). in the preliminary analysis, we experimented with a few additional control variables (employment status, number of siblings) but none of them noticeably altered the effect of our main independent variable. the selection of control variables was guided by previous studies on fertility intentions (philipov 4 the dependent variable is dichotomous, with answers “definitely yes” and “probably yes” coded as 1, and answers “definitely no” and “probably no” coded as 0. following a conservative approach, the “do not know” answers were merged with negative intentions (code 0). this is a common procedure in analyses of fertility intentions (e.g. puur et al. 2008; miettinen et al. 2011) that prevents overstating the intention to have a/another child. fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 287 et al. 2006; puur et al. 2008; miettinen et al. 2011) and migrant fertility (kulu et al. 2017; puur et al. 2017). table 3 presents descriptive statistics of the socio-demographic control variables by origin-destination group. chi-square tests confirmed that inter-group differences are significant for all the characteristics included in the table (p-values varying from 0.000 to 0.04). the largest contrast is seen in the type of settlement, with only 6-7 percent of russian women in estonia residing in rural areas. with regard to views on gender roles, we use information derived from the ggs module on value orientation and attitudes, which, among other themes, included questions about attitudes towards the roles of men and women. for the purposes of this study, three questionnaire items were used: i) “in a couple it is better for the man to be older than the woman”; ii) “looking after the home or family is just as fulfilling as working for pay”; iii) “when jobs are scarce, men should have more tab. 2: number of respondents and childbearing intentions. russians in estonia, sending and host populations, women aged 20-44 parity and population group number of intention to have respondents a/another child, percent yes no all women russians in russia 2,194 46.1 53.9 russians in estonia 535 46.7 53.3 estonians 1,388 54.3 45.7 parity 0 russians in russia 407 89.2 10.8 russians in estonia 141 90.1 9.9 estonians 377 89.4 10.6 parity 1 russians in russia 989 53.9 46.1 russians in estonia 214 44.4 55.6 estonians 338 70.1 29.9 parity 2 russians in russia 677 15.2 84.8 russians in estonia 159 16.4 83.6 estonians 447 29.1 70.9 note: russians in estonia include first-generation migrants and descendants of migrants. source: estonian and russian ggs 2004–2005, own calculations • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze288 right to a job than women”.5 respondents were asked to express their agreement or disagreement with each statement. the answers were recorded on a five-point likert scale, whereby 1 signified strong agreement and 5 strong disagreement with the statement. in this study, higher values indicate greater support for a more egalitarian sharing of authority and family responsibilities, and provision of income, as opposed to the gender roles characteristic of the more traditional breadwinnerhomemaker model. it should be noted that these statements have a general, impersonal character, which is designed to limit the influence of different life situations, and facilitate comparability across sub-groups of the population. likewise, general attitudes are considered less likely to be biased towards social desirability (turner/ martin 1984; hakim 2005). for the analysis, we created a composite index from the responses to the three abovementioned questionnaire items, with the score ranging from 3 to 15. the minimum score represents complete acceptance of a more traditional division of gender roles; the maximum score indicates that respondents expressed more egalitarian views and stated a strong disagreement with a traditional division of gender roles. based on the index, respondents were classified as having traditional views on gender roles if they scored 7 points or less. if their score amounted to 12 points or more, they were classified as having egalitarian views; respondents with scores ranging from 8 to 11 points were included in an intermediate group. the descriptive statistics presented in table 3 reveal a significant difference in the attitudes between the population groups included in our study. the acceptance of a traditional division of gender roles is strongest among women in the country of origin (russia), while egalitarian views appear to be most prevalent among women native to the host country (estonia). against that background, russian migrants to estonia and their descendants occupy an intermediate position. to ascertain whether the observed variation in attitudes towards gender roles may be associated with differences in fertility intentions between origin-destination groups, we estimated an additional model (m5), which added variables based on our composite index to a complete set of socio-demographic controls. finally, we estimated a few additional models (m6, m7 and m8) in order to investigate whether the degree of integration of russian migrants and their descendants into the host society is associated with convergence of their fertility intentions with those of estonians. these models include proficiency in the host country language, the proportion of ethnic estonians in the municipality of residence, and having an estonian partner. these models are estimated for russian women in estonia who have at least one child, motivated by the fact that the difference in fertility intentions between russians in estonia and the host population mainly relates to the progression beyond first birth, as will be shown in the following section. 5 in preliminary analyses we considered a slightly longer list of attitudinal questions. the final selection was based on two criteria: the extent to which the items differentiated the origindestination groups, and their relationship with fertility intentions. fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 289 6 results 6.1 intentions to become a mother we begin by presenting the results pertaining to childless women. table 4 displays the modelling results in the form of odds ratios, produced as maximum likelihood estimates of parameter effects. the presentation of the findings centres on the main tab. 3: descriptive statistics for control variables included in the models. russians in estonia, sending and host populations, women aged 20-44 variables russians in russians in estonians χ2 test russia estonia age 20-24 15.92 18.50 16.05 0.040 25-29 20.68 19.63 19.68 30-34 22.98 20.00 20.82 35-39 20.82 16.64 19.95 40-44 19.60 25.23 23.50 number of children 0 27.16 26.36 18.64 0.000 1 24.35 40.00 45.09 2 32.20 29.72 30.77 3 or more 16.28 3.93 5.50 partnership status living with a partner 65.2 63.6 69.7 0.006 no partner 34.8 36.4 30.3 settlement type urban 74.5 93.8 64.2 0.000 rural 25.5 6.2 35.8 educational attainment basic 10.8 8.4 9.9 0.000secondary 64.0 75.0 70.0 tertiary 25.5 16.6 20.1 gender role attitudes traditional 26.9 18.8 3.3 0.000intermediate 54.0 30.9 26.9 egalitarian 19.1 50.3 69.8 n 2,194 535 1,388 source: estonian and russian ggs 2004-2005, own calculations • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze290 independent variable. the results for the control variables are presented in detail later in the article (section 6.4). in the upper part of the table, we compare the odds ratios of the intention to become a mother among currently childless russian women in estonia with those of their counterparts in the sending and host populations. in accord with the descriptive measures reported in the previous section, the results indicate that the differences between the three groups are relatively small. in the initial model (m1), russians who have settled in estonia tend to exhibit only slightly higher odds of intention to become a parent than the host population and russians in the country of origin. the pattern reverses as various controls are added, but none of the differences between the groups reach the level of statistical significance. the lower part of table 4 distinguishes between first-generation russians and their descendants who were born in the host country. although a comparison of the odds ratios suggests a moderate shift across generations towards increased convergence with the host population, the difference between migrants and their descendants does not reach statistical significance in any model. however, the analysis is hindered by the small number of childless women among the first-generation migrants. tab. 4: odds ratios for intention to become a mother (logistic regression models). russians in estonia, sending and host populations, childless women, aged 20-44 population groups m1 m2 m3 m4 russians in russia 0.91 1.34 1.37 1.24 russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 0.93 1.12 1.21 1.09 russians in russia 0.78 1.29 1.33 1.18 1st generation russians in estonia 0.31 0.81 0.85 0.75 2nd+ generation russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 0.79 1.08 1.17 1.04 n 925 925 925 925 note: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; * p<0.1. model 1: model without socio-demographic controls. model 2: m1 controlled for age and partnership status. model 3: m2 additionally controlled for type of settlement. model 4: m3 additionally controlled for educational attainment. source: estonian and russian ggs 2004–2005, own calculations fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 291 6.2 intentions to have a second child table 5 presents the modelling results for mothers’ intentions to have a second child. unlike the intended transition to first birth, the odds ratios reveal marked differences between the groups included in the study. russians who have settled in estonia are the least likely to consider having a second child, exhibiting lower intentions of further childbearing than their counterparts in the country of origin. the highest odds of intended transition beyond the first child are characteristic of the host population, in accord with the difference in cohort fertility between estonia and russia (myrskylä et al. 2013). overall, the intention to have a second child for russians in estonia bears much greater resemblance to that of their counterparts in the country of origin. although the odds ratios vary across the models, this general pattern remains basically unaltered as socio-demographic controls are added. the evidence pertaining to migrant generations reveals considerable similarity between migrants and their descendants in the intention to have a second child. following the inclusion of controls for basic demographic variables (age and partnership status) in model m2, the difference between migrant generations loses the statistical significance observed in the initial model. the modelling results indicate no shift towards convergence with the host population in intentions regarding further childbearing among the descendants of russian migrants. tab. 5: odds ratios for intention to have a second child (logistic regression models). russians in estonia, sending and host populations, women with one child, aged 20-44 population groups m1 m2 m3 m4 russians in russia 1.46*** 1.30 1.43* 1.39** russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 2.94*** 2.97*** 3.48*** 3.45*** russians in russia 1.20 1.36 1.50* 1.45* 1st generation russians in estonia 0.46** 1.22 1.21 1.19 2nd+ generation russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 2.41*** 3.13*** 3.65*** 3.61*** n 1,541 1,541 1,541 1,541 note: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; * p<0.1. model 1: model without socio-demographic controls. model 2: m1 controlled for age and partnership status. model 3: m2 additionally controlled for type of settlement. model 4: m3 additionally controlled for educational attainment. source: estonian and russian ggs 2004-2005, own calculations • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze292 6.3 intentions to have a third child given the strength of the two-child family norm in contemporary low-fertility societies (sobotka/beaujouan 2014), having a third child can be regarded as discretionary and dependent on individual circumstances. nevertheless, our results show a noticeable intergroup difference in intentions to have a third child (table 6). similarly to second births, the host population (estonians) exhibits the highest odds of considering a larger family. interestingly, however, russians in estonia and the sending population feature highly similar intentions to go beyond the two-child family. in the final model (m4), with all the socio-demographic controls included, the difference in the odds ratio is only 6 percent. furthermore, the comparison of results across models indicates the robustness of this finding, as the odds ratio for the sending population (russians in russia) does not attain the level of statistical significance in any of them. 6.4 childbearing intentions and views on gender roles the next step was to ascertain whether the differences in fertility intentions between the groups included in the study could be explained by factors other than the socio-demographic controls. guided by previous research on fertility intentions and the descriptive statistics presented earlier in the article, we fitted additional models with attitudes towards gender roles included as an independent variable (m5). these models were not estimated for childless women, who, as mentioned in tab. 6: odds ratios for intention to have a third child (logistic regression models). russians in estonia, sending and host populations, women with two children, aged 20-44 population groups m1 m2 m3 m4 russians in russia 0.92 0.87 0.97 0.94 russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 2.10*** 1.80** 2.03*** 1.98** russians in russia 0.78 0.91 1.02 0.97 1st generation russians in estonia 0.61 1.17 1.18 1.10 2nd+ generation russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 1.79** 1.88** 2.12** 2.04** n 1,283 1,283 1,283 1,283 note: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; * p<0.1. model 1: model without socio-demographic controls. model 2: m1 controlled for age and partnership status. model 3: m2 additionally controlled for type of settlement. model 4: m3 additionally controlled for educational attainment. source: estonian and russian ggs 2004-2005, own calculations fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 293 the previous sections, exhibited no statistically significant difference in childbearing intentions between migrants, the host population and the sending population. the results displayed in table 7 suggest that the shift away from traditional gender role attitudes relates to an increased likelihood of the intention to have another child. for women who have one or two children, the odds ratios for egalitarian gender role attitudes exceed the reference category (traditional view on gender roles) by 43 and 65 percent respectively. the difference between women who exhibit egalitarian views and those who took a more traditional stance towards gender roles appears statistically significant throughout. elevated odds of intended further childbearing are also seen among women who were classified as having an intermediate role orientation. the difference from the reference category reached the level of statistical significance, except in the case of mothers of two children. tab. 7: odds ratios for intention to have a/another child (logistic regression models). russians in estonia, sending and host populations, women aged 20-44 variables m4 m5 all women all women 1 child 2 children gender role attitudes traditional (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 intermediate 1.41*** 1.38* 1.38 egalitarian 1.50*** 1.43* 1.65** population group russians in russia 1.16 1.22 1.48** 1.12 russians in estonia (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 estonians 2.48*** 2.34*** 3.25*** 2.10*** age 0.81*** 0.81*** 0.80*** 0.84*** partnership status living with a partner 1.15 1.16 1.37** 1.19 no partner (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 number of children 0.37*** 0.37*** – – settlement type urban (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 rural 0.72*** 0.72*** 0.63*** 0.75* educational attainment basic 0.85 0.86 0.68* 1.15 secondary (ref.) 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 tertiary 1.39*** 1.36*** 1.26 1.31 n 4,117 4,117 1,541 1,283 note: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; * p<0.1. source: estonian and russian ggs 2004-2005, own calculations • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze294 a significant positive relationship between egalitarian views on gender roles and fertility intentions is also revealed in model m5, which was fitted for all parities combined. a comparison of results obtained from models m4 and m5 suggests that differences in the spread of gender-egalitarian attitudes (see table 3) underlie part of the variation in fertility intentions between the groups included in our study. in particular, this can be seen in the reduction of the odds ratio for estonians from model m4 to model m5. however, as the reduction is moderate, varying views on gender roles are evidently responsible for only a small part of the difference in fertility intentions between russians in estonia, estonians, and russians in the country of origin. finally, table 7 presents the results for the socio-demographic controls included in the models. with a few exceptions, the effects of the control variables are stable across the different models. likewise, they exhibit patterns that are similar to those reported in comparable studies on fertility intentions (e.g. puur et al. 2008; miettinen et al. 2011; nedoluzhko 2012). 6.5 the effects of integration variables in order to investigate the role of the integration variables, we focus on russian women in estonia who have had at least one child. the selection was motivated by the results shown in sections 5.2 and 5.3, according to which the difference in childbearing intentions between russian migrants and their descendants, on the one hand and the host population on the other is most pronounced among parous women. in order to ascertain whether a greater degree of integration is associated with convergence of intentions to have another child, we fitted three additional models based on our final model with socio-demographic controls (m4), to which we added proficiency in the host country language (m6), composition of the population in area of residence (m7), and having an ethnic estonian partner (m8). owing to the small sample size and the correlation between our integration variables, we preferred to include them in the model one at a time. these additional models were fitted solely for migrants and their descendants, as the integration process is not relevant to the sending and host populations. the results displayed in table 8 indicate that all the integration variables considered in our study are associated with statistically significant increases in the intention to have another child. in light of the results presented earlier in the article, this means a shift away from the pattern characteristic of the sending country and towards that of the host country. in addition, the effects can be regarded as relatively strong, with odds ratios ranging from 1.8 in the case of language proficiency to 2.4 for living in areas with a large majority of host country natives. fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 295 7 summary and discussion of the findings in this article, we examined childbearing intentions among russian migrants and their descendants in estonia. although recent studies have generated much valuable knowledge about the fertility behaviour of migrants and their descendants in a number of european countries (mussino/strozza 2012; krapf/wolf 2015; kulu/ hannemann 2016; andersson et al. 2017; pailhé 2017), fertility intentions have rarely been investigated in the immigration context. following arguments put forward in previous research (glick 2010; lessard-philips et al. 2017; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017), our study employed the origin-destination perspective, which, in tandem with a parity-specific approach, allowed a more versatile insight to be gained into the childbearing intentions of migrants and their descendants. aside from the binational sample, the contribution of our study to the literature stems from the incorporation of several variables that allowed us to connect fertility intentions to differences in gender role attitudes and the degree of integration into the host society. finally, unlike much contemporary european research on migrant fertility, our study focuses on migrants who have moved from one low-fertility setting to another. we were particularly interested in whether we could discern differences in childbearing intentions in such a context, given the persistence of below-replacement fertility in both the host country and country of origin. tab. 8: odds ratios for intention to have another child (logistic regression models). russians in estonia, women with at least one child, aged 20-44 variables m6 m7 m8 proficiency in host-country language yes 1.78* no 1.00 living in area with high proportion (70+ percent) of estonians yes 2.38* no 1.00 having an estonian partner yes 2.10* no 1.00 n 373 373 373 note: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; * p<0.1. model 6: m4 (explained in table 7) additionally controlled for host-country language proficiency. model 7: m4 additionally controlled for population composition in the municipality of residence. model 8: m4 additionally controlled for partnering with native estonian. source: estonian ggs 2004–2005, own calculations • allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze296 the hypotheses for our study were derived from theoretical frameworks that are commonly applied in analyses of migrant fertility (milewski 2010; kulu/gonzálezferrer 2014). the findings led us to accept our first hypothesis (h1), according to which the childbearing intentions of russians living in estonia exhibit greater resemblance to those in the country of origin. in all the models, which revealed a significant difference among the groups included in the study, the contrast between migrants and their descendants and the host country natives was noticeably greater than that between migrants and their descendants and their ancestral country. this led to a rejection of the adaptation perspective and lent support to the cultural maintenance argument. socialisation into the ethnic subculture rather than the culture prevailing in the host society can be seen as a mechanism that plausibly accounts for the observed outcome. this process enables norms of the country of origin to persist among migrants, irrespective of the duration of their stay in the destination country. our second hypothesis (h2) anticipated that similarity would be found between first-generation migrants and their descendants born in the host country. the findings confirmed our expectations, as the difference between migrant generations did not reach the level of statistical significance in any of the models, which were estimated separately for childless women and those with one or two children. even if this were due in part to the relatively small sample size, the models that were controlled for socio-demographic characteristics revealed no shift in the odds ratios of intended childbearing that would have brought the migrants’ descendants closer to the host population. this finding adds further support to the cultural maintenance argument, according to which the descendants of russian migrants in estonia were socialised mainly into an ethnic subculture, which has permitted them to retain the norms and values guiding family behaviour that are rooted in their ancestral country. the close similarity between the proportion of russian women in estonia who intended to have a/another child and that observed for russian women in the country of origin supports this explanation. the comparison of model estimates for childless women with those of their counterparts who had one or two children led to the acceptance of our third hypothesis (h3), i.e. that the contrast in intended fertility between the groups included in the study is driven by intentions to have a second or third child. this finding reinforces the notion that the norms shaping individuals’ childbearing plans tend to be parity-specific, a fact that ought to be systematically considered in analyses of intended fertility. in this study, we also examined the influence of gender role attitudes as a factor shaping fertility intentions. despite a noticeable difference in gender role attitudes between estonia and russia, this factor accounted for only a minor part of the variation in fertility intentions between the groups included in the study, lending minimal support to our fourth hypothesis (h4). however, the study did reveal a generally positive relationship between egalitarian views on women’s and men’s roles and the intention to have another child. we ascribe the intergenerational stability of childbearing intentions to contextual features, most importantly the large size of the group (currently one quarter of the total population), its concentration in a limited number of regions, and relatively fertility intentions and views on gender roles • 297 limited proficiency in the host country language. this explanation received support from models with integration variables. confirming our hypothesis that improving the integration of migrants and their descendants into the host society facilitates convergence of their fertility intentions with those of the host population (h5), the models showed that proficiency in the estonian language, residence in municipalities where estonians constitute a large majority of the population, and having a native partner were related to significant increases in the odds of intention to have another child, i.e. closing the gap between migrants and their descendants and the host population. although integration processes have been proceeding relatively slowly due to the reasons explained above, the findings from models with integration variables lend unambiguous support to the adaptation argument. in accord with our final hypothesis (h6), selectivity and compositional differences were found to play a discernible role in shaping childbearing intentions among russian migrants and their descendants in estonia. judging from our results for intended transitions to first, second and third births, changes in intergroup differences associated with the inclusion of socio-demographic controls in the models were relatively moderate. in most cases, these changes did not result in a loss or gain of statistical significance. a systematic decrease in intergroup differences followed the inclusion of basic demographic variables in the models. this likely arose from the fact that the first-generation migrants were on average older than the other groups included in our study. another compositional effect, related to the high concentration of migrants in urban settlements, could be discerned for the intention to have a second child. however, contrary to expectations, the difference in the odds of second birth increased rather than diminished after including a control for settlement type. with regard to educational attainment, the inclusion of the latter control variable slightly for all the intended parity transitions investigated in this study diminished the difference between russians in estonia, on the one hand, and the sending and host populations, on the other hand. somewhat surprisingly, in our analysis the intentions of russians in estonia to have a second child did not fall in the range between those of the sending and host populations. given the less favourable economic position of russian migrants in estonia (lindemann 2013; saar/helemäe 2017), it can be assumed that greater economic uncertainty might have contributed to this pattern. in order to test this assumption we included some additional controls in the models, such as labour market status and income. since these controls did not affect the above pattern, another explanation must be sought in lieu of economic uncertainty. however, delving into this issue is beyond the focus of our article. admittedly, this study is not devoid of limitations, which stem from various sources. a relatively small sample size, particularly for migrants, prevented us from estimating more elaborate models that would have, for instance, allowed us to distinguish those who had arrived in the host country as children (the 1.5 generation) from the rest of the first generation. another limitation of this study relates to the focus on women. previous research has demonstrated that gender equality does not have a uniform effect on childbearing intentions, but rather that the impact varies considerably by gender, parity and the ways in which gender equality is con• allan puur, hanna vseviov, liili abuladze298 ceptualised and measured (goldscheider et al. 2010; neyer et al. 2013). therefore, the omission of men may have provided a one-sided account of the relationship between attitudes towards gender roles and fertility intentions. a further drawback of the study arises from the fact that the empirical data were collected more than a decade ago (from 2004 to 2005). as a consequence, the progress that the younger generations of descendants of russians have made in integrating into the host society is not discernible in our results. finally, we did not investigate the realisation of childbearing intentions among the groups included in the study. these are all worthy topics of future research. in summary, what general conclusions can then be drawn from this study? first, our results suggest that the cultural maintenance and adaptation perspectives, developed and widely used in the context of fertility behaviour, can be employed in the study of fertility intentions as well. likewise, our study confirms that these perspectives are applicable to migrant groups who move from one low-fertility setting to another, with relatively small differences in fertility levels between the sending and host populations. second, the comparison of results with those of a recent study that focussed on transitions to first, second and third births among the same group of migrants (puur et al. 2017) reveals considerable similarity between actual and intended fertility. in a broader framework, the observed similarity lends support to the view that factors influencing fertility intentions largely coincide with those shaping actual childbearing (rindfuss et al. 1988; schoen et al. 1999). third, for the host society (estonia) our study predicts that the difference in fertility rates between russian migrants and their descendants, and the host population is likely to persist in the short term. however, successful integration policies can be expected to increase the rates of second and third births among russians in estonia over the long term and thus have a positive effect on the overall fertility level of the country. fourth, our findings showing a positive relationship between more egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles and intentions to have a second or third child lend support to arguments claiming that the progress of the gender revolution may contribute to the gradual recovery of fertility rates in low-fertility settings (espingandersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). acknowledgement we thank nadja milewski, eleonora mussino, katrin schiefer and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and advice during the writing of this article. this undertaking was supported by the estonian research council (grant prg71). references abbasi-shavazi, mohammad jalal; mcdonald, 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impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe: urbanisation, counterurbanisation or spatial equilibrium?* francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffi ng abstract: the classical foundations of migration research date from the 1880s with ravenstein’s “laws of migration”, which represent the fi rst comparative analyses of internal migration. while his observations remain largely valid, the ensuing century has seen considerable progress in data collection practices and methods of analysis, which in turn has permitted theoretical advances in understanding the role of migration in population redistribution. coupling the extensive range of migration data now available with these recent theoretical and methodological advances, we endeavour to advance beyond ravenstein’s understanding by examining the direction of population redistribution and comparing the impact of internal migration on patterns of human settlement in 27 european countries. results show that the overall redistributive impact of internal migration is low in most european countries but the mechanisms differ across the continent. in southern and eastern europe migration effectiveness is above average but is offset by low migration intensities, whereas in northern and western europe high intensities are absorbed in reciprocal fl ows resulting in low migration effectiveness. about half the european countries are experiencing a process of concentration toward urbanised regions, particularly in northern, central and eastern europe, whereas countries in the west and south are undergoing a process of population deconcentration. these results suggest that population deconcentration is now more common than it was in the 1990s when counterurbanisation was limited to western europe. the results show that 130 years on, ravenstein’s law of migration streams and counter-streams remains a central facet of migration dynamics, while underlining the importance of simple yet robust indices for the spatial analysis of migration. keywords: internal migration · population redistribution · maup · europe · crossnational analysis comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 201-234 (date of release: 06.11.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-18en6 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing202 1 introduction the classical foundations of migration research date from the late 19th century with ravenstein’s “laws of migration” (ravenstein 1885), which represent the fi rst systematic comparative analyses of internal migration. drawing on empirical regularities from the 1871 and 1881 british census, ravenstein proposed seven laws, which have been empirically validated, except perhaps for the observation that urban dwellers are less mobile than their rural counterparts, which refl ects the time when ravenstein wrote. while ravenstein’s propositions have been criticised as descriptive, deterministic and historical (castles/miller 1993), they “provided the hypotheses upon which much future migration research and theorisation was built” (boyle et al. 1998: 5), including gravity and human capital models (greenwood 2019). ravenstein’s theoretical propositions are simple, yet broad ranging as they are concerned with several different aspects of migration behaviour and address a range of questions that remain of relevance today: who migrates? why do they migrate? where do they migrate? and how often do they migrate? ravenstein is also credited with the fi rst cross-national comparison of internal migration. his 1889 paper (ravenstein 1889) extended the search for empirical regularities to over 20 european countries, canada and the united states by examining lifetime net migration aggregates, concluding that migratory movements follow the same principles in all countries. ravenstein wrote at a time of rapid industrialisation when rural-to-urban fl ows dominated migration systems in europe. yet, in reference to his fourth law, ravenstein observed that for “each main stream or current of migrants there runs a counter-current, which more or less compensates for the losses sustained by emigration. this counter-current is strong in some cases, weak in others, and literally compensatory in a few instances” (1885: 187). like many subsequent observers (zelinsky 1971), ravenstein did not anticipate the changes in direction of the net balance between urban and rural fl ows, which led to counterurbanisation in western europe in the 1970s (champion 1989; fielding 1989). nevertheless, his observations encompass all the key elements for understanding the dynamics of contemporary migration fl ows. the 20th century has seen considerable progress in data collection practice and methods of analysis, and a rich comparative literature has progressively developed in europe focussing on the intensity, composition, patterning and spatial impacts of population movement (champion 1989; fielding 1989; rees/kupiszewski 1999; rogers/castro 1983; rowe 2018a). despite these contributions, contemporary understanding of the way migration impacts on settlement patterns remains crude, constrained primarily by reliance on coarse dichotomies into urban and rural, data inadequacies and the perennial obstacles presented by the modifi able areal unit problem (maup) (openshaw 1975). these diffi culties are compounded when seeking to make comparisons between countries and to trace the changing effect of migration on human settlement patterns over time. recent analytical and theoretical advances developed as part of the internal migration around the globe (image) project now provide the means to circumvent these diffi culties. moving beyond the urban-rural dichotomy, rees et al. (2017) adimpact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 203 vanced a theoretical framework which captures the way internal migration redistributes population across the national settlement system during the development process. they also proposed system-wide measures of internal migration impact which are independent of the size and number of spatial units used for measurement and identifi ed systematic links between migration intensity and migration effectiveness. coupled with a global repository of internal migration data (bell et al. 2015a) and bespoke software, the image studio (stillwell et al. 2014), these developments provide the framework and tools to systematically quantify the impact of internal migration on population redistribution within countries, and explore crossnational differences. drawing on the above resources, we compare the impact of internal migration on patterns of human settlement across 27 european countries; determine the direction and pace of population concentration due to internal migration within each country; and examine changes in migration impact over time. in doing so, we aim to assess the relevance of ravenstein’s fourth law of streams and counter-streams to contemporary migration systems. by focusing on europe, we seek to update and extend the work of rees/kupiszewski (1999) who explored cross-national variations in internal migration patterns across 11 european countries between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. profound demographic and economic changes have occurred at the start of the new millennium. open borders and eurozone expansion, coupled with a european debt crisis and the acceleration of population ageing, are likely to have altered the patterns of internal migration within european countries by facilitating international migration and increasing socio-economic inequalities between subnational areas (de beer et al. 2010; dubois et al. 2007; ertur et al. 2006). international migration may have operated to substitute for within-country moves (de beer et al. 2010), while growing sub-national disparities may have redirected the concentration of internal population fl ows towards a handful of destinations (dubois et al. 2007; ertur et al. 2006). the recent and changing nature of these events underpins a need for an update, review and monitoring of internal migration trends. the paper is structured in fi ve sections. in section 2, we review prior work and highlight the extent of cross-national variations in the spatial impact of internal migration. in section 3, we discuss impediments to cross-national comparison arising from differences in data types, observation intervals and geographical frameworks. in subsequent sections, we present the results of our analysis which proceeds in a series of stages. in section 4, we fi rst assess the overall impact of internal migration on population redistribution using the index of net migration impact (inmi), a single system-wide index which transcends national differences in the zonal systems on which migration is recorded. we compare the level of redistribution in european countries to the world average and examine how cross-national differences are driven by the interaction between migration intensity and migration effectiveness. in section 5, we examine how these system-wide differences play out to alter the pattern of human settlement at the local and regional level, moving beyond conventional measures based on the urban hierarchy to identify the overall effects on population concentration and deconcentration within countries, highlighting unusual patterns of population gains and losses. to that end, we set net migration rates • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing204 against population densities across entire national zonal systems and compare the slope of population-weighted regressions for our sample of countries. in section 6, we examine trends over time in the context of the conceptual model proposed by rees et al. (2017) which anticipates a range of trajectories among economically advanced countries. section 7 provides concluding remarks by discussing the longstanding differences in migration processes that distinguish the different regions of europe and identify the need for a more comprehensive view of population movement that recognises the multi-dimensional nature of the migration process. 2 prior work compared with other parts of the world, the level, characteristics and impact of internal migration in many countries of europe are well understood. this is due to sustained research by demographers and geographers but also refl ects good data availability, with records on internal migration in parts of northern european stretching back centuries. comparative studies are less common, refl ecting the diffi culties in harmonising migration data derived from different sources, over varying time intervals, and for different statistical geographies (bell et al. 2015a). a number of cross-national studies have sought to overcome these challenges, to enumerate variations in intensity and the age profi le of migration, and to assess its spatial impact across the continent. cross-national variation in the intensity, or level of migration, is arguably the best-understood dimension of migration but is challenging to establish due to its sensitivity both to the interval over which migration is measured and to the size of the areal units used to defi ne migration. early cross-national studies of internal migration (parish 1973; rogers et al. 1983) were severely hampered by these issues. parish (1973) circumvented the problem by comparing trends, rather than the absolute level of migration, for eight countries in the 19th and early 20th century. the study found modest increases in intensity in all countries, though both the timing and magnitude of the increase varied, highlighting the importance of local context. the international institute for applied systems analysis’ (iiasa) comparative study of migration and settlement was the fi rst to capture regional variations in internal migration for a large sample of countries, including 13 countries in europe. an index capturing the level of retention within regions (rogers et al. 1983) as well as gross migraproduction rates (rogers/castro 1983) were calculated. median values for regions were used as a comparative measure of differences in regional migration intensity between countries. migration intensity was lowest in bulgaria and austria, while high levels of mobility were recorded in regions of hungary, finland and the former members of the soviet union. differences in areal delineation affected the reliability of results, so the authors focused instead on the age profi le of migration (rogers/castro 1983). rees/kupiszewski (1999) were the fi rst to apply a robust single measure of migration intensity, courgeau’s k (courgeau 1973), for the purposes of cross-national comparison. their analysis of 11 countries in europe revealed a gradient of high moimpact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 205 bility in northern and western europe tending to low mobility in southern and eastern europe. sanchez/andrews (2011) using consistent data from the 2007 european union survey of income and living conditions, confi rmed this general pattern, as did bell et al. (2015b) who estimated a novel, system-wide index, the aggregate crude migration intensity (acmi) for 96 countries around the world including 30 countries in europe. esipova et al. (2013) confi rmed the northwest-southeast gradient using data from a standard question in the 2011-2012 gallup world survey. more recently, bernard (2017) adopted a cohort perspective to compare the lifetime number of moves of early baby boomers in 14 european countries, and rowe (2018a) examined shortand long-distance migration patterns for a sample of 27 european countries. both confi rmed a clear spatial gradient of high mobility in the north and west, moderating toward the south and the east. champion et al. (2018) provide a comprehensive account of trends in internal migration intensities in the developed world. this work has revealed for the fi rst time a diversity of trends in internal migration in europe, with some countries recording a decrease while others show stability or increase (bell et al. 2018). the most visible signifi cance of internal migration lies in its effect in redistributing populations, which is heightened under conditions of low fertility and mortality. comparative studies of migration impact in europe stretch back decades, many focusing on the contribution of migration to urbanisation. fielding (1989) explored changes in the direction of population redistribution processes in 14 european countries. population density was used as a proxy for the level of urbanisation in regions and correlated against regional net migration rates. the results revealed a shift in the dominant spatial impact of migration away from urbanisation to counterurbanisation between the 1950s to the 1970s. however, these shifts were neither linear nor ubiquitous and the lack of a comparable summary metric prohibited rigorous comparison of the relative magnitude of population redistribution. champion/vandermotten (1997) drew on estimates of net migration for 557 regions of europe in the three decades from the 1960s. migration was measured as a residual after subtracting natural change (births-deaths) and therefore did not isolate the impact of internal migration on regional populations. this study found strong associations between population density and regional migration gains in the 1970s. however, the relationship was non-linear, with the largest gains recorded in regions with intermediate population densities. in the 1960s and 1980s, regional economic factors accounted for more variance in net migration rates than density, pointing to equilibrating economic forces sitting alongside structural drivers of migration in europe (champion/vandermotten 1997). rees/kupiszewski (1999) building on this earlier work examined the association between urbanisation (again adopting population density as a proxy) and patterns of regional net migration gains and losses. the study identifi ed three main systems of population redistribution in europe: urbanisation (estonia, romania, norway, and poland); intermediate systems (germany, italy, portugal and the czech republic) and counter-urbanising systems (netherlands and the united kingdom). net migration gains and losses were also impacted by regional unemployment in certain countries. unemployment was strongly associated with net losses in the united • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing206 kingdom and poland, while portugal, italy, and the czech republic displayed weak associations. the selectivity of migration with respect to gender and life course stage was also examined, with evidence of differences in the pattern of population redistribution according to the characteristics of migrants especially with respect to life course stage. the cumulative knowledge gained over previous decades, set alongside recent fi ndings from the image project (bell et al. 2015b; stillwell et al. 2016), provides distinctive insights into cross-national variations in internal migration in europe. compared with other parts of the world, the overall intensity of migration is moderate, but variable across countries (rowe 2018b). multiple studies have found evidence of a spatial gradient of high mobility in northern and western europe to low mobility in southern and eastern europe (bell et al. 2015b; rees/kupiszewski 1999; rowe 2018a; sánchez/andrews 2011). the impact of migration on settlement systems also varies across the continent and over time, but with less clarity in spatial patterning. both urbanising and counter-urbanising tendencies are evident. this is overlain by systems of migration fl ows refl ecting the relative economic fortune and function of regions. a lack of comparable system-wide metrics has made the overall impact of migration diffi cult to quantify and compare across countries. 3 internal migration data in europe in a recent global review, bell et al. (2015a) found that 41 of 43 european countries collected data on internal migration. europe is unusual in making signifi cant use of population registers but a roughly equal number of countries drew on registers, censuses and surveys as their principal source of internal migration data, with fully 34 countries using more than one source. differences in collection instruments hinder comparability between countries because registers and censuses measure migration in different ways. population registers record migration events, whereas censuses measure transitions between discrete points in time, therefore counting migrants, rather than migrations (rees et al. 2000). when measured over lengthy intervals, event and transition data provide a different picture of internal migration because registers record multiple moves, which transition data fail to capture. over short intervals, however, such as one year, event and transition data tend to deliver similar results, with the number of migrants closely matching the number of migrations (long/boertlein 1990). fortunately, census collections in most european countries measure migration over a single year interval, which corresponds with the data commonly available from population registers. drawing on migration data from the image repository (bell et al. 2015a), we use information from both population registers and censuses to maximise geographical coverage. our dataset comprises the 27 countries listed in table 1, which accounts for 98.6 percent of europe’s population. excluded are twelve small city states and countries with small populations or for which no data were readily available: albania, andorra, bosnia-herzegovina, iceland, lichtenstein, luxembourg, macedonia, moldova, monaco, montenegro, san marino and serbia. also excluded are fi ve impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 207 countries in which migration is measured over less than 20 administrative units: cyprus, latvia, malta, slovakia and slovenia. since turkey, like russia, straddles the continental divide, we also include them in our dataset. for 20 of our 27 countries, data were drawn from population registers or administrative sources, with the remaining seven coming from censuses. of the latter, just two, france and switzerland, collect data over a fi ve-year transition interval, which calls for some care when making cross-national comparisons. in the analyses which follow, we address this tab. 1: list of country, data types, years and number of regions country year data type no. of regions austria 2010 event 99 belarus 2011 event 130 belgium 2005 event 589 bulgaria* 2006 event 28/264 czech republic 2010 event 77 denmark 2011 event 99 estonia 2010 event 225 finland 2011 event 336 france** 2006 transition 22 germany 2009 event 412 greece 2011 transition 54 hungary*** 2010 event 196 ireland 2006 transition 26 italy 2009 event 107 lithuania 2010 event 60 netherlands 2010 event 431 norway 2013 event 428 poland 2010 event 379 portugal 2011 transition 30 romania 2002 event 42 russia 2010 event 80 spain 2011 transition 52 sweden 2012 event 290 switzerland** 2000 transition 184 turkey 2012 transition 81 ukraine 2010 event 27 united kingdom 2011 transition 404 * origin-destination matrix between 28 provinces and in-migration and out-migration fl ow for 264 municipalities; ** five-year transition data; *** in-migration and out-migration fl ows source: image repository • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing208 by comparing the results for europe against the global mean reported by rees et al. (2017) for which a larger sample of countries is available. comparability between the 27 countries in our dataset is compromised by two further issues: differences in the years for which migration was observed and variations in the spatial scale at which it was measured. for the former, we chose to balance the goals of comparability and need for up-to-date data, and elected to use data for the latest period available in the image repository. although the timing of observation varies across a full decade from 2000-02 (e.g. switzerland and romania) to 2012-13 (e.g. norway), the data in table 1 provide a broad representation of migration patterns at the start of the millennium. as demonstrated below, they also reveal wide variations between countries in the direction and extent of redistribution, although we sometimes fi nd substantial variations in these trajectories from year to year. we hold origin-destination matrices for most countries, with the exception of hungary for which we only have in-migration and out-migration fl ows for each administrative unit separately. similarly for bulgaria we hold in-migration and out-migration fl ows for 264 municipalities but an origin-destination matrix only at a provincial level (n=28). while infl ows and outfl ows are suffi cient to estimate net migration rates in section 5, a full matrix is required to estimate measures used in section 4, which causes the number of case study countries to vary across the paper. comparison of migration patterns based on varying time points may be complicated by the fact that countries follow different trends. the period of analysis encompasses the 2007/08 global fi nancial crisis (gfc) and recent studies have attributed changes in the level of migration to this discrete economic event (bell et al. 2018; lomax/stillwell 2018). yet, changes in migration intensity vary across countries. analysing a time series of annual change in migration rates for a period of up to 39 years across 27 european countries, rowe (2018a/b) revealed that only fi ve countries – iceland, bulgaria, romania, latvia, belarus and croatia – experienced a pronounced decline during the gfc period between 2007 and 2009. the predominant pattern across countries across most countries was of cyclical fl uctuations in the long-term trajectory of migration intensity. yet, these studies have focused on the level of migration, rather than on the direction of migration fl ows. the impacts of the gfc on infl uencing the direction of migration fl ows is diffi cult to anticipate and expected to vary across countries according to the national structure of population distribution and local economic conditions. the second issue that affects comparability arises from variations in the zonal systems across which migration is measured. these zonal systems range in our dataset from less than 30 regions in bulgaria and france to more than 500 in belgium. differences in the number of regions into which a country is divided, and in their shape and size, fundamentally affect the number of migrations captured, and therefore infl uence any derived statistics. this is widely recognised as the maup which affects spatial modelling (openshaw 1975). courgeau et al. (2013) showed that this problem could be overcome by setting migration intensities against the average number of households per zone at a range of spatial scales, to derive an estimate of the aggregate crude migration intensity (acmi), a measure of all moves within each country, irrespective of distance moved, which was directly comparaimpact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 209 ble across nations. compared with the measure devised four decades earlier by courgeau (1973), latterly referred to as courgeau’s k (bell/muhidin 2011, 2009; rees/ kupiszewski 1999), it offered the distinct advantage of having an intrinsic meaning. stillwell et al. (2014) describe the random spatial aggregation software implemented as part of the image project to provide a general solution for countries with migration data available on a fi nely grained spatial framework. rees et al. (2017) subsequently used these routines in the image studio to measure the scale and pattern effects of the maup on two key indicators of migration impact: the aggregate net migration rate (anmr) and the migration effectiveness index (mei). coupling these measures with the acmi, they derived a new index, the index of net migration impact (inmi), as used in this paper, which allows robust, system-wide comparisons between countries in regard to migration redistribution. 4 overall impact of internal migration the inmi is a generalised extension of the anmr originally proposed as one of the key measures of migration impact by bell et al. (2002). algebraically, the anmr is defi ned as half the sum of the absolute net changes across all regions, divided by the population at risk: where di and oi represent in-migration and out-migration fl ows from region i. bell et al. (2002) also show that the anmr is the product of two other key migration measures, the crude migration intensity (cmi) and the migration effectiveness index (mei): where: and m indicates the total number of inter-regional migrants. the cmi measures the overall level or incidence of migration within a country, whereas the mei indicates the degree of symmetry or balance between migration infl ows and outfl ows – a system-wide measure of ravenstein’s observation with regard to the reciprocal nature of migration fl ows. while providing a robust and informative index of population redistribution in a single country, values of the anmr are clearly dependent on spatial scale. since anmrs calculated for differing levels of geography are clearly (1) (2) (3) (4) • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing210 not comparable, the index is unsuitable for cross-national comparisons. rees et al. (2017) devised a general solution by using the random spatial aggregation facility in the image studio (stillwell et al. 2014) to assess the effects of the maup on the cmi and the mei. while the cmi was found to increase linearly with the log of the number of spatial units (courgeau 1973), the mei tends to remain remarkably stable when calculated for geographies of 20 spatial units or more. note that the cmi differs from the acmi which, as explained earlier, is scale independent and measures all changes of address (courgeau et al. 2013). harnessing this fi nding, rees et al. (2017) demonstrated algebraically that the slope of the anmr (measured across multiple levels of scale) is a product of the slope of the cmi and the average mei measured across different levels of aggregation. based on this relationship, which was found to hold empirically across a large sample of countries, rees et al. (2017) proposed the inmi, as a measure which enables robust comparison irrespective of the number of spatial units over which migration is measured. to facilitate cross-national comparison, they advised using the mean across a sample of countries as a benchmark, as follows: as well as providing a reliable basis for cross-national comparison, the inmi retains the particular advantage of the anmr in distinguishing the relative contributions of migration intensity and migration effectiveness in generating the aggregate level of population redistribution. focusing on countries for which data are available for 20 or more spatial units reduces our sample to 26 countries. we calculated the inmi for these countries and set this index against a global sample of 71 countries including all world regions as reported by rees et al. (2017). figure 1 presents a ranking of countries according to their inmi. inmi scores above one indicate the population redistribution impact of internal migration is greater than the global average, with values below 1 denote the opposite. the results indicate that the redistributional impact of internal migration is relatively low in europe. of the 27 countries, 20 show internal migration impacts below the global mean, with spain, ukraine, romania and poland displaying the lowest levels. in contrast, lithuania and belarus display the highest levels of population redistribution, more than twice the global mean. to identify the relative contributions of migration intensity and migration effectiveness to the inmi, figure 2 reports the standardised ratio of the cmi slope and the average mei to the global mean. they are denoted c and r, respectively. the plot surface indicates the inmi and the contour curves represent points of equal migration impact according to different combinations of migration intensity and migration effectiveness. the results highlight the complex interaction of these two forces in shaping population redistribution. belarus stands out with very high levels of redistribution, primarily driven by above average levels of migration effectiveness. migration effectiveness is 2.5 times the international average and is the prin (5) impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 211 cipal contributor to the high inmi overall impact experienced in belarus. for ireland, lithuania and estonia, levels of population of redistribution are also higher than the global mean but underpinned by different mechanisms. in ireland, both migration intensity and migration effectiveness are above the global average, while in lithuania and estonia migration effectiveness is the driving force. as figure 2 shows, four clusters of countries can be identifi ed by performing a k-means cluster analysis on the standardised ratio of the cmi slope and the average mei to the global mean. three, four and fi ve clusters solutions were evaluated and a four cluster solution was deemed as the most satisfactory. these clusters are robust to different random-number seeds. cluster a involves four former member countries of the soviet union: belarus, estonia, lithuania and russia. the main feature differentiating this cluster is very high levels of migration effectiveness with an average standardised mei ratio of 2.23. in belarus, estonia and lithuania, these very high levels of migration effectiveness are supported by global average levels of migration intensity to produce measures of migration impact which are two times the global average, as indicated by the radial grid in figure 2. in russia, however, high levels of migration effectiveness are met by low migration intensity resulting in very modest overall migration impact. cluster b includes a group of countries in southern europe (italy, spain) and eastern europe (bulgaria, czech republic, poland, romania and ukraine). in these fig. 1: index of net migration impact note: hungary is not included here because an origin-destination matrix is required to estimate the inmi. source: image repository, global mean across a sample of 71 countries. • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing212 countries, the average level of migration effectiveness is around the global mean but levels of migration intensity are comparatively low, displaying an average cmi slope ratio of just one third of the global average, resulting in low overall levels of population redistribution. cluster c involves a large number of northern and western countries, including the uk, scandinavian nations, belgium, the netherlands, germany, austria, france, switzerland and turkey. in this cluster, relatively high levels of migration intensity are absorbed in reciprocal fl ows, resulting in low migration effectiveness, which constrains the extent of population redistribution. cluster d includes greece, portugal and ireland where average levels of migration intensity correspond to average levels of migration effectiveness, leading to moderate migration impact. these patterns constitute a signifi cant fi nding. as previously demonstrated (bell et al. 2015b; rees/kupiszewski 1999; rowe 2018a; sánchez/andrews 2011), there is a strong spatial gradient of high migration intensity in northern and western countries, moving to low migration levels in southern and eastern european countries. bell et al. (2015b) found a modest association between the level of economic development and migration intensity across a global sample of countries. this associafig. 2: decomposing the index of net migration impact: the roles of migration effectiveness and migration intensity a bb c d note: differing marker colours and shapes indicate the cluster membership based on a kmeans analysis – see text. a=circle, b=diamond, c=triangle and d=square. hungary is not included here because an origin-destination matrix is required to estimate the inmi – see table 1 for details. source: image repository, global mean across a sample of 71 countries. impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 213 tion is present in this study, with the highest intensities recorded in more economically advanced countries of europe. economic factors are not, however, suffi cient to explain the observed differences. culture also plays a role. bernard (2017) revealed a strong association between the timing of departure from the family home and the number of subsequent migrations, affecting overall migration intensities. early departures from the parental home are common in northern and western europe, while delayed exits are the norm in countries in southern and eastern europe. our results reveal that the spatial gradient observed for migration intensity dissolves in the case of migration effectiveness. countries with relatively low national incomes, such as the baltic states (cluster a), record the highest meis. in contrast, high-income countries in northern and western europe tend to record lower values (in cluster c). this pattern is consistent with rees et al. (2017) which posited that in early stages of development uneven patterns of regional development would trigger high levels of effectiveness, with a return to more symmetrical fl ows as regional disparities eased. it is important to note that spatial clustering across europe is not as strong as it was for intensity. this is likely due to the contingencies of national space economies, refl ecting, for example, the location of natural endowments, as well as regional policy and international migration patterns. in terms of overall migration impact, high migration effectiveness balances low migration intensity in southern and eastern european countries, while low levels of migration effectiveness offset high migration intensity in northern and western nations. 5 net internal migration and population density the system-wide measures used in the previous section indicate the overall impact of migration in redistributing population and help reveal the underlying processes, but provide no insight into their spatial manifestation. prior work has focused particularly on the contribution of rural-urban migration to the urbanisation process. however, the urban/rural dichotomy is problematic for cross-national comparisons because countries differ in the way they defi ne rural and urban areas. moreover, the urban/rural dichotomy represents a very coarse classifi cation of space, and few countries classify the rural/urban status of migrants at the start of the migration interval which precludes rigorous analysis. to sidestep these problems, rees et al. (2017) adopted an alternative approach based on population density. following fielding (1989) and rees/kupiszewski (1999), this aims to capture a continuum in the settlement hierarchy by classifying administrative areas based on their population density. building on the ideas originally advanced by courgeau (1973), area-specifi c net migration rates are then set against the logarithm of population density for each corresponding area. application of population-weighted ordinary least squared regression produces an index (the slope of the regression line) which indicates the direction and strength of redistribution across regions. population-weighted regressions are used to recognise the relative importance of regions within countries and correct for the presence of heteroscedasticity in regression estimates arising from • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing214 systematic variability in net migration rates because of large variations in population size and outliers (gujarati 2004). thus we estimate the following equation: where nmr represents the region-specifi c net migration rate; is the logarithm of population density; ß is the regression slope; and, α is a constant. nmr is calculated as the total migration infl ows minus outfl ows for a region divided by the local total population. population density is measured by the ratio between the local total population and geographical area in km2. the sign of the slope indicates the direction of the association between nmr and population density, while its value denotes the strength of this relationship. a positive slope denotes net migration gains in more densely populated areas and losses from lower density regions, and points to a process of population concentration (or urbanisation). a negative slope indicates the reverse: net migration losses from high density areas matched by gains in more sparsely populated regions, leading to population deconcentration (or counterurbanisation). in a test across selected countries, the resulting index was shown to be scale independent when calculated for 30 or more spatial units (rees et al. 2017) so the analysis presented here is confi ned to the 24 countries in our sample that meet this criterion and for which we have a complete origin-destination matrix building on earlier work on the relationship between urbanisation and internal migration by geyer and colleagues (geyer 1996; geyer/kontuly 1992), rees et al. (2017) elaborated a conceptual model which proposes a systematic relationship between the patterns of net internal migration and population density as a country progresses through fi ve different phases of development, as displayed in figure 3. in the fi rst phase, as countries urbanise, a general pattern of net internal migration from low density or rural areas to high density or urban areas is expected. the second phase involves a slight acceleration in the process of urbanisation which is strengthened in the third stage, with internal migration operating to concentrate population in urban areas. in phase 4, this process might reverse into counterurbanisation, or population deconcentration, with net migration fl ows from more populous areas to less dense regions. the fi nal phase 5 identifi es three alternative scenarios: (a) re-urbanisation, (b) counterurbanisation and (c) spatial equilibrium, the latter indicative of no net impact of internal migration on population redistribution. re-urbanisation may occur where central areas of cities undergo redevelopment. counterurbanisation may occur as people manifest a preference for low density areas and cities shrink. alternatively, migration fl ows across the urban hierarchy may be balanced, resulting in minimal population redistribution, a condition, which rees et al. (2017) described as a state of spatial equilibrium. thus, as countries reach higher stages of development, the impact of internal migration on population redistribution is expected to become more limited, and a diversity of outcomes is predicted. at stage 5, the relationship between net migration and population density can fl uctuate over time depending on housing and job market conditions. we estimate equation (6) to analyse patterns of net migration losses and gains. by way of example, figure 4 plots the relationship between net internal migration (6) impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 215 rates and population density for belarus, lithuania and belgium, and presents population-weighted estimates of linear regression with 95 percent confi dence intervals. a positive regression slope of 0.73 in belarus points to a pattern of population concentration resulting from net migration losses in low density regions and gains in densely populated areas, including the districts of grodno, pinsk and viciebsk, which are large regional centres. the belorussian settlement system stands out by the absence of intermediate cities and the presence of a few urban agglomerations that coexist with a disproportionately large number of low density regions. in our sample, a similar settlement pattern of population settlement is observed only in romania. a negative slope for belgium, -0.88 indicates the reverse pattern, net migration gains in low density areas coexisting with losses in more densely settled areas. the steepness of the slope indicates the pace of population deconcentration refl ecting processes of suburbanisation and counterurbanisation. at the same time, the large dispersion of regions suggests that while the regression line captures the overall tendency, there are in some countries very large residuals from the regression, which point to the fact that the picture is more complex that density alone predicts. finally, the fl at slope observed in lithuania as shown by the absence of an association between net migration rates and population density and low adjusted r2 indicates that migration fl ows across the settlement hierarchy are closely balanced, resulting in minimal population redistribution. results for all countries can be found in appendix figure a1. fig. 3: theoretical framework linking development to population redistribution through net internal migration 1 2 3 4 5 phases of development over time de ve lop me nt sta tus high mid low source: adapted from rees et al. (2017), figure 8. • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing216 table 2 ranks the slopes and reports the corresponding level of signifi cance and adjusted coeffi cient of determination r2 for 24 countries. it shows that the predominant pattern is a process of population concentration. although the strength of population redistribution through migration varies, 12 of the 24 countries display slopes which are positive and statistically signifi cant, pointing to net migration gains in densely populated areas and losses in low-density regions. positive slopes dominate most of northern, central and eastern europe. to the west and south of the continent, however, this pattern is reversed, with negative slopes across belgium, italy and greece. for these countries the predominant process is one of population deconcentration, whereby gains are occurring in less densely populated areas, fuelled by losses from the more densely populated regions. this pattern is particularly pronounced in belgium where the slope of -0.88 is driven by population movement to rural municipalities in the belgium-luxembourg border, including martelange, and léglise, and in the province of liege, involving geer and wasseiges, with corresponding population losses in municipalities within the metropolitan region of brussels, particularly in sint-gillis, sint-joost-ten-node, schaarbeek and etterbeek. six countries – norway, spain, italy, the united kingdom and two baltic countries (lithuania and estonia) – display slopes which are close to zero and are fig. 4: relationship between net internal migration rates and the logarithm of population density in belarus, lithuania and belgium note: linear regressions were estimated at the administrative level in table 1, with robust standard errors using the huber-white sandwich estimator, and were population-weighted to recognise the relative importance of regions within a country. all coeffi cients reported are signifi cant (p-value<0.05). source: image repository impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 217 not statistically signifi cant. these suggest that migration fl ows across the settlement system are closely balanced, resulting in minimal population redistribution. in the united kingdom, this pattern represents a major shift refl ecting a transition of counterurbanisation fuelled by large net migration losses in london to a pattern of limited redistribution across the country – which is consistent with the pattern of weakening counterurbanisation documented by lomax/stillwell (2018). switzertab. 2: estimated slopes capturing the relationship between net migration rate and population density country year slope adjusted r2 concentration or re-urbanisation belarus 2011 0.73*** 0.69 switzerland 2000 0.68 0.03 portugal 2011 0.65*** 0.21 denmark 2011 0.56*** 0.63 bulgaria 2006 0.49** 0.27 germany 2009 0.41*** 0.27 finland 2011 0.33*** 0.24 netherlands 2010 0.31*** 0.10 russia 2010 0.31*** 0.58 sweden 2012 0.28*** 0.23 turkey 2012 0.27** 0.03 austria 2010 0.22*** 0.20 hungary 2010 0.22** 0.14 spatial equilibrium norway 2013 0.17 0.04 lithuania 2010 0.12 0.03 estonia 2010 0.04 0.00 united kingdom 2011 0.02 0.00 spain 2011 0.00 0.00 italy 2009 -0.08 0.02 deconcentration or counterurbanisation poland 2010 -0.09* 0.14 romania 2002 -0.12*** 0.14 czech republic 2010 -0.33*** 0.09 greece 2011 -0.52*** 0.46 belgium 2005 -0.88*** 0.37 note: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. population-weighted regression and robust standard errors were used, based on the huber-white sandwich estimator (huber 1967; white 1980). full estimated regression models are reported in appendix table a1. source: image repository • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing218 land also stands out as an unusual case displaying a large positive but statistically insignifi cant slope and a low r2 value. these results refl ect large migration gains in dense small urban areas – such as in the district of freienbach and lac district in the canton of schwyz and fribourg respectively – and heavy losses in a small number of remote rural locations in the goms and leventina districts but high variability across middle density areas. the model elaborated by rees et al. (2017) suggests three distinctive trajectories for countries at advanced stages at development: urbanisation, counterurbanisation and spatial equilibrium. our fi ndings show all three processes are at work within europe and have operated to form a broad spatial gradient. population deconcentration and spatial equilibrium patterns spread in the west and south of europe, while population concentration is a feature shared by many countries in the north, centre and east of europe where internal migration gains are observed in urban areas. at the same time, the results show wide variations within these broad regions. the czech republic, romania and poland display similar patterns of deconcentration that stand in stark contrast to the predominant pattern of concentration in surrounding countries. similarly, in portugal, the lisbon area has recorded large population gains spurring population concentration which greatly differs from the minimal population redistribution observed in spain. behind these variations lies remarkable similarity in the relatively limited impact of internal migration on population redistribution, which is a feature anticipated by rees et al. (2017) for countries at higher stages of development. positive slopes in our sample ranges from 0.22 to 0.73, on par with japan (0.42), but much lower than many developing countries in asia where china (2.6), vietnam (3.6), nepal (4.4) and mongolia (8.5) are still in the process of the urban transition experiencing substantial population gains in metropolitan areas (charles-edwards et al. 2017), and comparable to more developed countries in latin america, such as brazil (0.59) and mexico (0.86) undergoing population concentration (bernard et al. 2017; rodríguez-vignoli/rowe 2018b). figure 5 exposes the spatial structure of net migration gains and losses underpinning this relationship. here, net migration rates based on administrative areas are superimposed on a base layer showing the major nodes of human settlement, which helps identify the urban areas gaining or losing population from internal migration. based on country-specifi c means and standard deviations, standardised net migration rates (z-scores) are reported to help pinpoint areas of unusually high net migration gains or losses; that is, z-scores two standard deviations outside the mean. the results reveal that diverse migration processes underpin the overall processes of population concentration. in belarus, portugal, denmark and russia, population concentration was driven by unusually high migration gains in a handful of large urban centres, while migration losses were found in sparsely populated areas. signifi cant gains occurred in the cities of pinsk, grodno and polotsk in belarus; in the península de setúbal within the lisbon region in portugal; in the copenhagen metropolitan area in denmark; and in moscow and st petersburg in russia. these patterns refl ect low variability around the regression line, accompanied by relatively high adjusted r2s as shown in table 2. impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 219 fi g . 5 : n et in te rn al m ig ra tio n ra te s (z -s co re s) fo r co un tr ie s w it h 20 r eg io n s o r ab o ve • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing220 n o te : s ta nd ar d is ed in te rn al n et m ig ra tio n ra te s ar e d is p la ye d b as ed o n co un tr ysp ec ifi c m ea n an d s ta nd ar d d ev ia tio n. c o un tr ie s ar e ar ra ng ed in t he s am e o rd er a s th ey a p p ea re d in t ab le 2 a cc o rd in g to t he s ig n an d s ig ni fi c an ce o f t he ir n et m ig ra tio n sl o p e fr o m s ta tis tic al ly s ig ni fi c an t an d p o si tiv e, th ro ug h to s ta tis tic al ly in si gn ifi ca nt a nd c lo se to z er o , t o s ta tis tic al ly s ig ni fi c an t a nd n eg at iv e. s o ur ce : im a g e r ep o si to ry fi g . 5 : c o n tin ua tio n impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 221 by contrast, patterns of population concentration in switzerland, bulgaria, germany, finland, the netherlands, turkey, austria, hungary and sweden are the result of different processes. in turkey and switzerland, signifi cant migration gains in dense small urban areas and heavy losses in a small number of remote rural locations shaped overall patterns of population concentration. in austria, bulgaria, hungary and sweden, population concentration occurred in large cities, and their satellites, most notably in the areas of vienna, sofi a, budapest and gothenburg. in germany, on the other hand, migration gains were concentrated in middle-sized and small cities with widespread losses in more remote areas. for example, signifi cant gains occurred in dresden, leipzig, potsdam (near berlin) and tübingen (near stuttgart), while acute losses were observed in göttingen and around cottbus in the east of germany. patterns of urban sprawl in germany are largely a response to high property prices in large urban agglomerations (sander 2018). moderate migration gains and losses underpin spatial equilibrium outcomes in norway, lithuania, estonia, spain, the united kingdom and italy, although with higher rates in areas of intermediate population density. in spain, estonia, the united kingdom and italy, areas of signifi cant gain were located in proximity to key urban centres (eg. madrid in spain; tallinn, pärnu and tartu in estonia; london in the united kingdom; and, pisa in italy), while the cities themselves underwent moderate population losses refl ecting local patterns of urban sprawl. evidence also suggests that this pattern of spatial equilibrium in italy refl ects substitution of internal migration with other forms of mobility, notably international migration and longdistance commuting (bonifazi et al. 2018). it is notable that figure 5 reproduces the well-established pattern of migration gains in the north and losses in the south of italy (bonifazi/heins 2000). norway and lithuania are distinctive in displaying high migration gains and losses in relatively low density and remote areas. in the fi ve countries experiencing population deconcentrationpoland, romania, czech republic, greece and belgium – net losses have occurred mainly from the larger metropolitan areas. in each case the national capitals – warsaw, bucharest, prague, athens and brussels – recorded large migration losses. in poland, the czech republic and greece, these losses were coupled with strong migration gains on the peripheries refl ecting patterns of urban sprawl, rather than a pattern of population reversal (gordon 1979). in romania and belgium, on the other hand, losses from the capital cities were balanced by migration gains in more remote areas scattered across each country. 6 trends in population concentration and deconcentration as suggested by rees et al. (2017), the direction and scale of population redistribution through internal migration change in a non-linear fashion as countries develop, refl ecting the spatial diffusion of urban development and economic growth. at the upper end of the development spectrum, oscillations may be expected with net migration reinforcing, weakening or reshaping patterns of population concentration or dispersal. as yet however, little is known about the persistence of these patterns. • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing222 champion (2001) demonstrated the pervasiveness of counterurbanisation in the british urban system from the 1950s to the 1990s. he also identifi ed marked variations in the intensity of this process, which started in the 1950s and became more pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s during the post-industrial era, with rural areas recording the largest gains in the settlement system. by the 1970s and 1980s the intensity of this process had weakened, refl ecting patterns of re-urbanisation coupled with urban sprawl. during the 2000s and 2010s, counterurbanisation continued to weaken with a decrease in magnitude in the net gains and losses recorded in major metropolitan areas and in smaller towns and rural areas, respectively (lomax/stillwell 2018) and moved to a pattern of spatial equilibrium (table 2). to identify changes in the impact of migration in shaping settlement patterns since the 1980s, table 3 compares the above fi ndings with those for ten countries reported by rees/kupiszewski (1999). care is needed in comparing results from the two studies because of methodological differences. in particular, rees/kupiszewski (1999) did not treat population density as a continuous variable but grouped it into broad categories and examined population density against the rate of population change rather than net migration rate as done in the present paper. bearing these differences in mind, table 3 suggests continuing population concentration in portugal, germany and poland and a pattern of stable spatial equilibrium in italy, but a transition from concentration to spatial equilibrium in norway and estonia, and from deconcentration to spatial equilibrium in the uk. in romania and the czech republic, the pattern has reversed from population concentration to dispersal while in the netherlands dispersal has been replaced by renewed population concentration. it is notable that rees/kupiszewski (1999) anticipated the shift to population deconcentration in the czech republic. they observed a weak urbanisation process, with areas of medium density gaining migrants from both high and low density areas, refl ecting ongoing rural depopulation and local suburbanisation. from the data presented here, this process of urbanisation appears to have halted with population deconcentration now being driven by net internal migration gains in areas of midrange density. insights into temporal trends in other countries can also be obtained by comparing the slope of the net migration rates against population density over time. such analysis is, however, challenging because time-series data are scarce and, even where lengthy time series are available from population registers or censuses, analysis is not straightforward. comparisons are hindered by changes in administrative boundaries and by the way information is recorded (rowe 2017), but methods have now been developed to produce temporally consistent spatial frameworks to overcome these problems (blake et al. 2000; casado-díaz et al. 2017; rowe et al. 2017). drawing on data from the image repository, we generated temporally consistent geographies to examine temporal changes in the association between net migration rates and the log of population density in four countries – finland, germany, italy and the netherlands. these were the only countries for which temporally consistent time series could be assembled. figure 6 plots the regression slopes for these countries over recent years, revealing wide variation in both the direction and scale of redistribution across the settleimpact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 223 ment system from year to year, except in the case of italy. italy consistently displays a negative coeffi cients pointing to the persistence of limited population redistribution with small-scale counterurbanisation or spatial equilibrium with migration losses from high density areas and gains in less populous regions. finland displays a consistently positive but declining slope from 1995 to 2003, followed by a gradually increasing trend. this suggests a stable but weakening pattern of population concentration, with consistent gains in urban agglomerations and losses from low density regions, transitioning in 2003 to a phase of stronger re-urbanisation. in contrast, germany displays a steady progression from a moderately negative to a positive slope, refl ecting a continuing transition from spatial equilibrium as observed by rees/kupiszewski (1999) to concentration arising from internal migration after reunifi cation. at a lower intensity, a similar trend is observed in the netherlands with a pronounced drop at the start of the 2000s, consistent with the pattern of deconcentration observed by rees/kupiszewski (1999) and later transition to a positive slope. this shift to population concentration is thought to refl ect the increased clustering of economic activity in the randstad region (oecd 2014). tab. 3: population density and internal migration patterns: 10 countries analysed by rees/kupiszewski (1999) 1980s-1990s* 2000s-2010s** country c se d c se d portugal x x germany x x poland x x norway x x estonia x x italy x x romania x x czech republic x x netherlands x x united kingdom x x c: population concentration; d: population deconcentration; se: spatial equilibrium. note: rees/kupiszewski (1999) did not explicitly refer to spatial equilibrium but used the term “intermediate process” to describe countries where most population gains occurred in middle-density areas and population losses in low and high density regions. source: * rees/kupiszewski (1999), ** results from the present paper • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing224 7 conclusion completion of the demographic transition has resulted in migration, both internal and international, becoming the leading agent of demographic change in europe. while international migration plays an important role in adding population to large urban areas, it makes more limited contributions to populations in regions lower down the urban hierarchy. this underlines the importance of internal migration in transforming settlement systems, particularly in terms of population concentration and deconcentration. however, remarkably little progress has been made in understanding the spatial impact of internal migration in europe, mainly because of issues of data comparability, coarse dichotomies between rural and urban areas, and the absence of robust comparative metrics. in this paper, we sought to address this gap by harnessing a unique international dataset of country-specifi c internal migration fl ow matrices, developed as part of the image project, and employing a newly developed suite of scale-independent migration indicators. using the index of net migration impact (inmi), we fi rst quantifi ed the impact of migration on population redistribution at a national level in 26 countries. we decomposed the inmi into its constituent elements to determine the infl uence of migration intensity and migration effectiveness on the resulting level of migration impact. in 24 of the 27 fig. 6: fitted slopes capturing the relationship between the net migration rate and population density over time, selected countries notes: linear regressions were estimated using 336 regions for finland, 412 regions for germany, 107 regions for italy and 40 regions for netherlands. robust standard errors based on the huber-white sandwich estimator and population-weighted were used. source: image repository impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 225 countries in our sample, we then examined regional net migration rates to assess the spatial effects of this redistribution, regressing net migration against the log of population density, as a proxy for urbanisation. our results reveal that the effect of internal migration on population redistribution, as measured by the inmi, is relatively low across europe, with more than 80 per cent of countries in our sample showing a redistributive effect below the global average. this was particularly marked in spain, ukraine, romania and poland. with the exception of lithuania and belarus, which show levels of population redistribution more than twice the global mean, there is limited variation between european countries in the redistributive effect of internal migration. however, decomposition of the inmi into its constituent elements revealed that the intensity and effectiveness of migration follows a marked spatial gradient. in northern and western europe, the low redistributive effect of migration is the result of high migration intensity being absorbed by reciprocal migration fl ows, whereas in southern and eastern europe migration fl ows are highly imbalanced but their effect on population redistribution is offset by low migration intensity. the presence of a clear spatial gradient of high mobility in the north and west of europe moderating toward the south and east is consistent with prior studies, but our results demonstrated that this spatial gradient dissolves in the case of migration impact because migration effectiveness and migration intensities vary in an inverse manner across europe. despite broad similarities in the overall impact of migration in redistributing population, there are signifi cant variations between countries in its effects on the settlement pattern. in the north and east of the continent, population redistribution is directed toward more densely populated regions, leading to population concentration or re-urbanisation, whereas this pattern is reversed in the south and west where population gains are focused on lower-density regions, contributing to population deconcentration or counterurbanisation. this broad spatial gradient is interrupted by a number of countries which have reached a spatial equilibrium under which internal migration alters the existing patterns of population settlement only minimally, as is the case in norway, lithuania, estonia, spain, the united kingdom and italy. these fi ndings lend support to the model advanced by rees et al. (2017), which hypothesised diverse trajectories for countries at the upper end of development ladder, contrasting with earlier phases where migration gains are systematically directed toward more densely populated regions. our time-series analysis confi rmed variability between countries but also revealed variation over time, with an overall trend broadly toward increased population concentration in the four european countries in our sample. in germany and the netherlands, the early 2000s saw a shift from population spatial equilibrium to concentration, whereas finland displayed a persistent pattern of population concentration and italy continued to experience small-scale counterurbanisation (or spatial equilibrium). these fi ndings demonstrate the important variations that existing within and between the regions of europe in population redistribution processes while highlighting the diminishing impact of migration in shaping settlement patterns in highly urbanised countries. these fi ndings underline the importance of simple yet robust indices to tease out commonalities and differences in migration processes between countries. this • francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffing226 global overview provides the foundation for further in-depth analysis of the particular patterns of population redistribution within countries as ravenstein pioneered 130 years ago. since then, the direction of migration fl ows had evolved, with urbanisation being increasingly replaced by deconcentration and spatial equilibrium in many european countries. these diverging processes confi rm the importance of considering fl ows and counter-fl ows as originally suggested by ravenstein in his fourth law (ravenstein 1885: 199), while highlighting the relevance of conceptualising migration as a system-wide process which extends across the entire settlement system. as shown in this paper, progress in data collection practice and in methods of analysis have permitted a rigorous search for empirical regularities, among which the limited redistributive effect of migration appears to be a fundamental underlying similarity shared by most european countries. perhaps more important than commonalities are singularities that differentiate countries: the wide variations found in the effect of migration on settlement patterns confi rm the need for nuanced investigations at a country-specifi c level. the country maps and scatter plots of net migration rates included in this paper offer a starting point to select outlying regions that represent particular cases where population gains (or losses) are higher (or lower) that the regression analysis suggests. new methods (rodríguez-vignoli/ rowe 2018a/b, 2017) and analytical software (rowe et al. 2019) have been developed to extend the analysis beyond exploring net migration balances and measure their impacts on the compositional population structure of areas. additionally, the comparative analysis of migration processes at a local scale would help unravel the social, economic demographic factors that underpin the heterogeneous population dynamics across the countries of europe. acknowledgements the views expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the united nations. the work reported in this article forms part of the “understanding the declining trend in internal migration in europe” funded by regional studies association under the early career research research grant, and it was also supported under discovery project dp110101363, comparing internal migration in countries around the world: measures, theories and policy dimensions, funded by the australian research council. the article draws from several sources, including the ipums database maintained by the minnesota population center and national statistical offi ces. we gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments from two anonymous referees and the editor prof. phil rees on an earlier version of the paper as well as attendees at the european regional science association conference in groningen, 2017 and a seminar at the school of social statistics within the university of manchester. impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 227 references bell, martin et al. 2002: cross-national comparison of internal migration: issues and measures. in: journal of the royal statistical society. series a: statistics in society 165,3: 435-464 [doi: 10.1111/1467-985x.00247]. bell, martin et al. 2018: global trends in internal migration. in: champion, anthony; 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white 1980), and population-weighted to recognise the relative importance of regions within a country. see appendix table a1 for the estimated regression coeffi cients. source: image repository impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe • 233 tab. a1: regression coeffi cients between net migration rate and population density country log10(den) constant observations adjusted r2 coeffi cient t coeffi cient t belarus 0.728*** -12.62 -1.604*** (-14.34) 130 0.689 switzerland 0.678 -1.38 -1.736 (-1.48) 184 0.03 portugal 0.654*** -4.44 -1.534*** (-4.01) 30 0.206 denmark 0.555*** -12.8 -1.367*** (-11.99) 99 0.633 bulgaria 0.491*** -3.62 -1.072*** (-4.49) 264 0.274 germany 0.413*** -10.65 -1.085*** (-10.89) 412 0.268 finland 0.333*** -9.12 -0.597*** (-8.48) 336 0.242 netherlands 0.310*** -6.00 -0.912*** (-6.48) 431 0.095 russia 0.307*** -9.17 -0.503*** (-8.86) 80 0.582 sweden 0.275*** -6.88 -0.574*** (-7.24) 290 0.232 turkey 0.273** -2.67 -0.621* (-2.17) 81 0.031 austria 0.215** -3.31 -0.520*** (-3.76) 99 0.200 hungary 0.220** -2.85 -0.507** (-3.25) 196 0.135 norway 0.172 -1.87 -0.350* (-2.44) 428 0.039 lithuania 0.124 -1.26 -0.277 (-1.34) 60 0.028 estonia 0.040 -0.37 -0.103 (-0.36) 225 0.000 spain 0.002 -0.06 -0.005 (-0.05) 52 0.000 united kingdom 0.020 -2.67 -0.054 (-0.37) 404 0.000 italy -0.077 (-0.75) 0.190 -0.79 107 0.017 poland -0.090* (-2.00) 0.217* -2.05 379 0.014 romania -0.115*** (-4.75) 0.243*** -3.65 42 0.141 czech republic -0.332*** (-5.26) 0.779*** -4.95 77 0.092 greece -0.520*** (-10.55) 1.257*** -8.77 54 0.463 belgium -0.875*** (-8.24) 2.467*** -8.97 589 0.372 note: t statistics in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. population-weighted regression and robust standard errors were used, based on the huber-white sandwich estimator. source: image repository published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård abstract: the two parts of the gender revolution have been evolving side by side at least since the 1960s. the fi rst part, women’s entry into the public sphere, proceeded faster than the second part, men’s entry into the private sphere. consequently, many employed mothers have carried a greater burden of paid and unpaid family support than fathers throughout the second half of the 20th century. this constituted women’s “second shift,” depressing fertility. a central focus of this paper is to establish second shift trends during the second half of the 20th century and their effects on fertility. our analyses are based on data on cohort fertility, male and female labor force particip ation, and male and female domestic hours worked from 11 countries in northern europe, western/central europe, southern europe, and north america between 1960/70 and 2000/2014. we fi nd that the gender revolution had not generated a turnaround, i.e. an increase in cohort fertility, by the end of the 20th century. nevertheless, wherever the gender revolution has made progress in reducing women’s second shift, cohort fertility declined the least; where the second shift is large and/or has not been reduced, cohort fertility has declined the most. keywords: two-part gender revolution · transformation of male breadwinner family model · women in public sphere · men in private sphere · women’s second shift 1 introduction the on-going transformation of the male breadwinner family model has been among the most remarkable societal changes of the past 50 to 60 years. this appears to be occurring in two parts: the fi rst part, the growth of female labor force participation, is accompanied by a second part, the growth in men’s involvement in the tasks at home. these overlapping parts are, in essence, the gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015). comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 99-130 (date of release: 31.10.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-09en8 • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård100 this revolution has not been without consequences. the fi rst part has evidently been unbalancing the family, reducing fertility and disrupting unions as men and women have struggled with women’s new roles that combine responsibilities in both the public sphere of employment and the private sphere of the family (cherlin 2016; rindfuss/choe 2015, 2016; arpino et al. 2015; lesthaeghe 2010; sobotka et al. 2011a; frejka et al. 2008; olah/bernhardt 2008; engelhart et al. 2004; brewster/ rindfuss 2000; hochschild/machung 1989; lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986). the second part might be rebalancing the family, as men’s increased domestic involvement reduces the pressure on women, perhaps stabilizing unions and creating the potential for fertility to increase (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). the size and duration of the gap between the two stages, which has been called women’s “second shift” (hochschild/machung 1989), in which women attempt to meet both work and major home obligations with relatively unimportant involvement of their partners, may thus be very consequential for fertility and family stability. two early analyses of this proposition vis-à-vis fertility thus far did not fi nd fertility turnarounds or reversals (frejka et al. 2016a/b). however, that research focused on the second half of the gender revolution – the increase in men’s involvement in household tasks – and did not examine either the effects of the fi rst half of the gender revolution or those of the gap between the two halves, both of which have varied across countries and over time. this means that it is important to consider, as well, the on-going fertility depressing effects of the fi rst half, as female labor force participation increased, particularly in countries that provide little support to reduce work-family confl ict, such as high quality childcare and job-protected, paid family leave. it is also important to consider the relationship between these two trends and the extent to which their trajectories open up larger or smaller “second shifts,” i.e., to what extent an increase in women’s employment is or is not balanced by increases in men’s domestic contributions. in this paper, we examine the fertility of women born in different birth cohorts, who belong to different generations where fertility decisions have been made within different gender revolution contexts. hence, this paper will examine the connections between these two trends – the growth of female labor force participation relative to men’s and the growth in men’s domestic participation relative to women’s – and their relationships with cohort fertility across a wide range of industrialized countries. we ask: do countries with patterns that minimize the “second shift” experience less drastic declines or even increases in fertility than those seen in countries whose patterns maximize the second shift? the minimizing of the second shift is generated by an increase in men’s domestic share offsetting increases in female labor force participation. our focus is on the impact on fertility of these two parts of the gender revolution, although we will also consider whether state policies that provide support to parents, such as subsidized high quality childcare and paid parental leave, might also help maintain fertility. the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 101 2 background: gender role change and fertility our analysis of cohort fertility change rests on the theoretical perspective that there are two halves of the gender revolution. the fi rst half is women’s increased involvement in the public sphere, predominantly by massively increasing their labor force participation; the second half is men’s increased involvement in the tasks of home and family. while they are related, in that women’s employment encourages men’s increased involvement in the home (evertsson 2014), the prevalence of women’s “second shift” suggests that the relationship is a weak one; men do not respond fully to women’s need for help in the domestic sphere and many women initially did not want them to (goldscheider et al. 2015). hence, they need to be thought about separately. the fi rst half of the gender revolution had major consequences for families as women fi rst took on employment that could be fi t around a life of family care and then increasingly began to plan for employment as a major adult role (goldin 2006). women delayed family formation as they increased their human capital in order to make employment more fi nancially rewarding and they decreased the numbers of children they planned to have and actually had in order to reduce work-family confl ict (macunovich 1996). in the process, unions became more unstable. this produced the package of family changes known as “the second demographic transition” (sdt), delays in union formation and childbearing, the weakening of unions with the growth in cohabitation and union dissolution, increased child bearing and raising outside stable unions, and above all, massive fertility decline (cf. lesthaeghe 2010; lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986), reaching far below replacement fertility levels in many countries. beginning with the 1980s, many studies were undertaken to examine this set of what are often seen as problematic family changes, particularly low fertility. in contrast, during this period the progress and potentially family-friendly consequences of the second half of the gender revolution were largely ignored. however, they have recently attracted considerable attention in a number of papers (e.g., cherlin 2016; anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). “[a]…return to ‘more family’ as gender egalitarianism gains increasingly dominant normative status” (esping-andersen/billari 2015: 3) is a common theme elaborated in these papers. the authors argue that the second half of the gender revolution has the potential for raising the prevalence of marriages, diminishing the frequency of divorces, and, the focus of this analysis, raising fertility, trends that perhaps are already underway. goldscheider et al. (2015: 229) have proposed that “... men’s increased involvement in the home, the second half of the gender revolution ... has the promise of increasing both fertility and the proportions entering and remaining in committed unions.” although taking other theoretical perspectives, primarily that of sdt analysts (e.g., lesthaeghe 2010), there is an extensive literature linking gender role change and fertility change, on which we build. research has examined different aspects of gender role change and different aspects of fertility, and has been conducted at different levels of analysis, focusing either on relationships at the individual level • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård102 or on differences among countries or other geographic/legal units. gender role change has been studied in terms of both behavior (e.g., cooke 2009) and attitudes (e.g., brinton/lee 2016), as well as in terms of country-level gender characteristics (e.g., mills 2010). vis-à-vis fertility, for the individual level, scholars have studied the transition to parenthood (e.g., bernhardt/goldscheider 2006) as well as parity progression (e.g., dommermuth et al. 2017; goldscheider et al. 2013; fiori 2011; brodmann et al. 2007; cooke 2009). at the macro level, similarly, although most studies examine the period total fertility rate, which is a cross-sectional measure (cf. rindfuss/choe 2015, 2016), a few others have looked at cohort fertility (e.g., frejka et al. 2016a/b). in this review, we will focus primarily on macro studies, and on actual behavior rather than attitudes. we distinguish between the gendered behaviors of women and men by considering not only trends in women’s role in the public sphere (female labor force participation) and in men’s roles in domestic activities relating to home and children, but also the gap between trends in these two phenomena (women’s second shift). importantly, although many have studied the effects of the growth of female labor force participation, few examine the fertility consequences of the second half of the gender revolution, much less the weight of women’s second shift. 2.1 female labor force participation and fertility prior to the middle of the 20th century, few married women worked outside the home, at least in sweden and among the white majority in the united states, two countries recognized as leaders in the growth of female labor force participation (stanfors/goldscheider 2017). the late nineteenth century and the fi rst half of the twentieth century were the period of the “separate spheres,” when married women remained in the home if at all possible, even as the growth in industrial and commercial jobs drew men away from the subsistence household economy. during this period women pursued many productive roles, including replacing their husbands’ chores (e.g., drawing water, maintaining kitchen gardens), in addition to their own (e.g., spinning, sewing, washing), together with increased responsibilities for the daily activities of children. these roles evolved over time, and generally became less onerous, with the growth of cities, together with the spread of running water and electrifi cation and children’s education (cowan 1983). nevertheless, preconditions for eventual employment roles were developing, as women’s education increased, as well as their employment experience prior to marriage (stanfors/goldscheider 2017; goldin 1990). the growth of labor force participation by women during the second half of the 20th century, especially by married women and even married mothers, as a result, was rapid. this trend has been frequently documented (pott-buter 1993; rosenfeld 1996; spain/bianchi 1996). in the early years of the increase in female labor force participation, a research consensus emerged that it was the result of the growth in demand for “female” workers (oppenheimer 1970; goldin 1990). more recent studies have highlighted the positive effects of subsidized childcare (e.g., pettit/hook 2005). the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 103 the negative impact of increasing female labor force participation on fertility was widely recognized from the beginning of the surge in the employment of married women (e.g., stycos/weller 1967). there is clearly a two-way relationship: women in couples that for whatever reason have few children are more likely to be employed, and women who plan substantial labor force engagement expect fewer children (waite/stolzenberg 1976). empirical evidence confi rms that the dominant causal arrow is from (plans for) employment to (plans for) childbearing, as a second income has become increasingly important for couples since the 1980s (oppenheimer 1974). it is also possible that the consequences of the growth in female labor force participation have changed (matysiak/vignoli 2008). for instance, in response to this negative impact on fertility, many countries enacted policies that have attempted to alleviate the work-fertility dilemma, such as paid parental leave and expanded, subsidized high quality childcare (thévenon/gauthier 2011; gauthier 2010). but more universally, as employment changed from an occasional or emergency role for women into one that most women (and men) expect to be life-long, there was apparently a massive change in the relationship between female labor force participation and fertility, at least using cross-sectional measures of fertility and country-level data. this appears to have occurred between the 1970s and 1990s. some studies documented a shift from the expected negative relationship to a positive relationship, at least in the cross-section, using period total fertility rates (ahn/mira 2002; brewster/rindfuss 2000); another study using different data and methods found the negative relationship had attenuated to no relationship (engelhardt et al. 2004). others have found a u-shaped relationship, with a negative impact on fertility of attitudes favorable to female labor force participation early in the period of rapid growth followed by a positive impact (arpino et al. 2015). it is clear that this relationship needs further exploration. mcdonald (2000) argues that the strong family-friendly policies in northern europe reduce the confl ict between women’s work and family roles. by providing some combination of excellent childcare and job-protected family leave, women can maintain a strong connection to the labor force and have several children. (this also relieves pressure on their spouses to increase their domestic responsibilities). there is a substantial consensus in cross-national studies that the provision of high-quality, subsidized childcare supports fertility. an examination of 16 european countries fi nds that the most consistent positive effect on fertility is the level of childcare coverage (baizan et al. 2016). a more limited study comparing denmark and spain also cites danish childcare support as an important source of the fertility difference between these two countries (brodmann et al. 2007). a study of canada (beaujot et al. 2013), which now has very different family policies in quebec and the rest of canada, fi nds that childcare has helped quebec experience a stronger recovery from low fertility than was the case in the rest of canada. detailed studies of nordic countries also agree that their childcare programs have helped them maintain fertility (e.g., olah/bernhardt 2008; rindfuss et al. 2010), although some are concerned that public policies alone might not be able to sustain fertility in the longer run (ronsen/skrede 2010). • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård104 unfortunately, this package of policies is rare (oecd 2018). hence, others (e.g., goldscheider et al. 2015) argue that fathers’ increased involvement in caring for their children is necessary to reduce women’s work-family confl ict (while intensifying men’s, although normally to a lesser extent), enabling couples to have the numbers of children they want. does men’s home involvement support fertility? 2.2 men’s domestic involvement and fertility the growth in men’s involvement in the home is much less well documented than the growth of female labor force participation. this is in part because information on domestic activities has been much less regularly collected than labor force information. labor force data became increasingly available after 1940 (durand 1968, 1948); data on hours spent on unpaid productive work did not become even sporadically available until decades later (marini/shelton 1993). further, studies of men’s involvement in housework and with their children are occurring in different disciplines. demographers, sociologists, and economists study time use, distinguishing various household chores, of which “care” is one of many (e.g., hook 2006; kan et al. 2011). social psychologists study “father involvement” focusing on accessibility, warmth, responsibility, engagement, monitoring/ control and rules for behavior, with little if any concern about time (hofferth/goldscheider 2015). most time use studies seem primarily concerned with how much less housework men do than women, and most recently, on “stalls” in such positive trajectories as can be discerned (e.g., england 2010, but see stanfors/goldscheider 2017). in contrast, the fatherhood literature is almost uniformly positive, fi nding increases in father involvement on most dimensions, particularly among the more educated (hofferth/goldscheider 2015; sullivan 2010), a clearly pro-family trend. although studies of men’s and women’s employment in the public sphere of work focus almost entirely on actual behavior (“participation”), much of the work on the private sphere relies on measures of attitudes (likely as a result of the relative scarcity of data), which can give very confusing results. for example, although more educated men report more egalitarian attitudes towards men’s involvement in the home and with children than the less educated, some research suggests that it is less educated men who are more actively engaged in childcare than the more educated (shows/gerstel 2008). further, the effects of various attitudes and behaviors often depend on each other. goldscheider et al. (2013) found that swedish couples least likely to transition to a second birth were those in which the women had premotherhood attitudes that favored an egalitarian arrangement but were experiencing a traditional work-family balance. moving the focus to attitudes also complicates measurement issues, as the range of attitudes that have been used in studies is great. there is a tendency to broaden the analysis to “gender role attitudes,” mixing attitudes towards gender differentiation in public sphere behavior with those on private sphere behavior, with often quite different results (people, and particularly men, are much more positive about women’s employment than men’s housework), and other determinants can also be quite different. westoff/higgins (2009) found that gender role attitudes had the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 105 a negative effect on fertility while puur et al. (2008) found a positive effect, a contradiction that was resolved by focusing on the very different measures of gender role attitudes that were employed in the two studies (goldscheider et al. 2010). but is this trend in male behavior vis-à-vis the second half of the gender revolution enough to have a positive impact on fertility? in particular, will it be enough to offset the negative effects of the fi rst half of the gender revolution? are there nascent characteristics of fertility trends that validate the hypothesis of increasing childbearing in countries in which the gender revolution is most advanced? in the international comparative analysis that follows, the fertility of countries more advanced on one or both halves of the gender revolution is compared with the fertility of a range of countries that have made less progress. in this paper, we will focus only on the implications of the gender revolution for cohort fertility; much more work needs to be done on its impacts on union formation, dissolution and timing and on out-of-union childbearing and child rearing (see the review in goldscheider et al. 2015). first, after reviewing trends in cohort fertility, we will document the progress of both halves of the gender revolution for 11 industrialized countries in europe and north america. second, we will explore whether there are characteristics of fertility trends that support the hypothesis of decreasing fertility linked with the increase in the growth of female labor force participation, and increasing childbearing in periods and places in which the second half of the gender revolution is most advanced. 3 data, measures, and methods 3.1 data in order to analyze the relationship between cohort fertility trends and the two halves of the gender revolution, we use data from three major sources: national information on cohort fertility and labor force participation, which is often available annually; and surveys of time use from various sources, which are collected in many countries (but much more sporadically). based on the availability of at least some data on each of these measures, we were able to analyze trends between approximately 1960 and 2010 for 11 industrialized countries: the northern european countries of finland, norway, and sweden; the western/central european countries of france, germany, the netherlands, and the united kingdom; the two english-speaking countries of north america, canada and the united states; and two southern european countries, italy and spain. 3.2 measures 3.2.1 cohort fertility in this analysis we will employ the cohort total fertility rate as our ultimate dependent variable, covering the fertility of cohorts born starting in 1920. the cohort total • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård106 fertility rate at age 40 (ctfr 40) is used instead of the actual ctfr at the end of the reproductive period at age 50. the considerable benefi t of using the ctfr 40 is that it allows us to follow cohort fertility for ten additional cohorts. this is justifi ed by the fact that only small amounts of childbearing occur when women are in their 40s – 0.6-2.6 percent in the 1940s-1950s birth cohorts in the countries analyzed in this article – although these shares will be increasing in future cohorts. more importantly, the concern is focused mainly on the ctfr trends and these are almost identical at ages 40 and 50 (hfd 2018). information on cohort total fertility rates (ctfr) was obtained from the human fertility database (hfd 2018), a joint project of the max planck institute for demographic research and the vienna institute of demography. the more commonly used measure, the period total fertility rate (ptfr), refl ects not only changes in the quantum of fertility but also changes in the timing of childbearing (frejka 2011; sobotka et al. 2011a; bongaarts/feeney 1998). a ptfr decline might be the result of a decline in the quantum of fertility modifi ed by later childbearing as, for instance, during the world-wide economic crisis late in the fi rst decade of the 21st century across all the countries of europe (comoli 2017; sobotka et al. 2011b), while a ptfr increase might be caused by earlier childbearing or by a slowing down of childbearing postponement due to an economic recovery. in contrast to the ptfr, cohort total fertility rate trends (ctfrs) are a true expression of trends in fertility quantum (frejka 2011; sobotka et al. 2011a; bongaarts/feeney 1998). cohort measures in demography can be identifi ed by the date of birth, a rule we follow in our fertility tables and graphs. however, when ascertaining the fertility effect of the gender revolution and of its components, namely of trends of women’s labor force participation and trends of men’s involvement in domestic tasks, as well as of the trends of the relationship between these two components (see below), we center the cohort fertility values at age 27. this means that when associating trends of the gender revolution components (which are period measures) with fertility levels and trends, we graph the completed cohort fertility rates (to age 40) of the respective cohorts as of when they reach age 27. specifi cally, the gender revolution measures around 1960 are associated approximately with the completed cohort fertility rate of the 1933 birth cohort because this cohort reached age 27 in 1960; analogously for measures around 1970 the 1943 total cohort fertility rate is used as the 1943 birth cohort reached age 27 in 1970, and so on. (this will become clearer as we discuss the tables and graphs relating cohort fertility to period measures of gendered behaviors.) why age 27? it is the age at which most women are in the early career building stages, yet already have enough information about their (likely) male partners to be able to estimate how many children are consistent with their likely second shift of work at home and in the labor force. we realize this is somewhat arbitrary, and women’s decisions about work and family might have been formed earlier (particularly among the older cohorts) and continued to evolve as they moved through their childbearing years. our results, however, were not very sensitive to centering our cohort completed fertility rates at alternate ages, from age 20, when many women may already have plans for their next decades, to age 35, when at least some time the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 107 remains, as these produced little change in the story these data seem to tell. in other words, centering cohort fertility values, for instance, on age 29 instead of age 27 would not have changed the results of our investigation. 3.2.2 gender revolution measures we constructed three gender revolution measures. one focuses on the public sphere (outside the home), the second focuses on the private sphere of the home. the third relates these two measures. for the public sphere, we examine employment and calculate the ratio of the female labor force participation rate to the male labor force participation rate: the lfpsr (labor force participation sex ratio). because the female rate has in no country exceeded that of males, our measure ranges between 0 and 1. this measure is not ideal, as men have on average longer commuting times than women and women are far more likely to be employed part time than men (aguiar/hurst 2007).1 further, the meaning of “part time” varies widely by country, ranging from work weeks of 12 to 30 hours (aisenbrey et al. 2009). nevertheless, the lfp-sr is widely available over a long period of time. we calculate the gender ratio because our theoretical focus is on the extent to which men and women are sharing a given sphere (in this case, the public sphere). some are concerned that this infl ates women’s progress in the public sphere, given that men’s labor force participation has been dropping across most of the industrialized world, but this is exactly what we want to observe. we collected labor force participation rates from several sources. for the most recent period (1990 and later), we accessed the world bank database (2016). the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd 2016) provided information for nine of our eleven countries (all but france and the united kingdom) from 1970 onward (and their values for 1990 closely matched those from the world bank). we were able to obtain data for france and the uk for 1970 from mitchell (1998). individual international labour offi ce (ilo) yearbooks of labour statistics form the basis for our 1960 data, although dating precision was not always possible. the closest we could obtain for our 1960 estimate for norway was 1950, for the uk, 1951, and for the netherlands, 1956, the most extreme cases. while more limited, our data for private sphere activities were more easily obtained. we used table 1 in kan et al. (2011), which included information on total 1 the countries studied here vary both in the proportions of women who work part time and in the number of hours part-time workers currently average (grunow/evertsson 2016). in 2002, most countries are concentrated at about 20-25 percent of employed women working part time but norway (33 percent), germany (35 percent), the united kingdom (40 percent) and most strikingly, the netherlands (59 percent), have considerably higher levels (oecd 2016). unfortunately, we were not able to obtain consistent information on part-time work for our countries over the entire period. • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård108 domestic hours (including childcare) for all men and women aged 20 to 59 years2 on our 11 countries for the period 1961 to 2004.3 we had to be less precise with dates, given the wide variability in when time-use surveys were conducted in these countries, and made liberal use of interpolation to fi ll holes between surveys. again, we created a sex ratio of these hours (but this time: male to female), the tdh-sr (total domestic hours sex ratio). because in no country have men’s average domestic hours exceeded women’s, the tdh-sr, like the lfp-sr, ranges between 0 and 1. finally, we constructed a third gender revolution measure, which we call the “second shift ratio” (ssr). it is the ratio of our labor force participation ratio (the lfp-sr) divided by the domestic hours ratio (the tdh-sr), and normally ranges from 1 to 2, but exceptionally even exceeds 2. if these two ratios were equal, the combined ratio would equal one, meaning that women’s participation in the public sphere relative to men’s is roughly balanced by men’s participation in the private sphere relative to women’s. values above one indicate that the gender gap in the public sphere has closed more than the gender gap in the private sphere, leaving women on average with a second shift of domestic work beyond their involvement in paid employment. 3.3 methods this is a descriptive analysis, which rests on our examination of trends between the 1960s and the early years of the 21st century in these four indicators for these 11 countries. as more data become available (especially for men’s involvement in the private sphere), it might become possible to use more advanced statistical techniques to test what are essentially our hunches about the patterns we see in these trends, as we will spell out in the analysis that follows. at this point, however, we simply describe patterns and make linkages among them for clusters of countries. 4 results we fi rst examine trends in total cohort fertility and then link these trends to overall changes in the three ratio measures for our full set of countries. we group countries 2 hence, the data include those with and without partners, parents and nonparents. with the exception of childcare, it is not clear how country variations in levels of parenthood and union membership would affect our results. it could introduce a small amount of reverse causality, given that gender equality appears to contribute to continued childbearing at the couple level, and contribute, as well, to union formation and retard union dissolution (goldscheider et al. 2015) 3 unfortunately, we were not able to use more recent analyses of private sphere trends (altintas/ sullivan 2016, 2017), as the fi rst focused only on a subset of domestic chores, to the exclusion both of tasks normally done by men and of childcare, where men’s participation has recently been rising rapidly, at least in the united states (aguiar/hurst 2007). the second study, while it did focus on childcare, was restricted to men with at least one child under the age of fi ve. the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 109 into geographic regions. each regional group generally shows similar patterns in these ratios, although with important exceptions. 4.1 completed cohort fertility as of age 40 the levels and trends in cohort fertility evident in table 1 and figure 1 are shown both as of the year these women reached age 27 and the year of birth. for example, the values for 1960 are those for the birth cohort of 1933, who reached age 27 in 1960 (and reached their near complete fertility at age 40 in 1973). similarly, the values for 2000 are those for the birth cohort of 1973, who reached age 27 in 2000 (and age 40 in 2013). in northern europe, the youngest 20 to 30 cohorts in finland and norway, born during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, reached a fairly stable plateau close to replacement of around 2.0 births per woman (fig. 1a). sweden has actually experienced an approximately replacement level of cohort fertility for over 50 cohorts.4 the two countries in north america experienced relatively high fertility in the 1930s birth cohorts, with ctfrs above 3.0 followed by sharp declines between the cohorts born in the early 1930s up to those born around 1950 (table 1 and fig. 1c). they did not approach the replacement level of the north european countries until the birth cohorts of the early 1950s (like norway), after which canada continued a slow decline and the united states, unlike northern europe, experienced a slight increase. somewhat different patterns characterize both western/central europe and southern europe (table 1 and fig. 1b, 1d). these two regions experienced much lower fertility among more recent cohorts than the two previously described regions (except france). france most closely resembles the countries of northern europe, reaching a similarly slightly declining ctfr plateau for the younger 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s birth cohorts at a level around 2.0, after prior declines. cohort fertility in germany, the united kingdom, and the netherlands declined almost continuously among the youngest birth cohorts born between the late 1940s and early 1970s. this was also the case for the two countries in southern europe, except that their cohort fertility declined further and faster, reaching lowest-low ctfrs of 1.4 (italy) and 1.3 (spain) in the early 1970s birth cohorts. an important result of these differing patterns of change is the reversal in country fertility levels that has been so frequently remarked upon. italy and spain had the highest fertility in the 1940s birth cohorts and early in the 21st century have the lowest fertility in the mid-1970s cohorts, as a result of their sharp declines. finland, norway and sweden, which had relatively low fertility among the 1940s cohorts, now have among the highest fertility in the mid-1970s cohorts in this set of countries as a result of their relative stability. 4 for each of these countries, childbearing for women in their late 30s in the most recent cohort might have been depressed by the world-wide great depression, which hit when they were approximately aged 34. • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård110 tab. 1: cohort total fertility rates at age 40, selected countries, birth cohorts, absolute values and rates of change, 1960-2000 (centered on age 27) country and region cohorts year age 27a 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 year of birth 1933 1943 1953 1963 1973 northern europe finland 2.323 1.885 1.817 1.887 1.828 norway 2.4501 2.250 2.010 2.039 1.981 sweden 2.118 1.960 1.986 1.971 1.879 western/central europe france 2.578 2.268 2.086 2.014 1.929 germany 1.815 1.658 1.562 1.525 netherlands 2.4771 2.064 1.844 1.770 1.716 united kingdom 2.3612 2.3192 2.0082 1.876 1.809 north america canada 3.201 2.328 1.848 1.753 1.7324 united states 3.231 2.444 1.937 2.000 2.147 southern europe italy 2.1823 2.115 1.833 1.550 1.365 spain 2.554 2.429 2.006 1.608 1.317 country and region average annual rate of change between centered cohorts on age 27 (in percent) 196019701980199019601970 1980 1990 2000 2000 northern europe finland -2.1 -0.4 0.4 -0.3 -0.6 norway -1.15 -1.1 0.1 -0.3 -0.68 sweden -0.8 0.1 -0.1 -0.5 -0.3 western/central europe france -1.3 -0.8 -0.4 -0.4 -0.7 germany -0.9 -0.6 -0.2 -0.6 netherlands -2.35 -1.1 -0.4 -0.3 -1.08 united kingdom -0.2 -1.4 -0.7 -0.4 -0.7 north america canada -3.2 -2.3 -0.5 -0.17 -1.69 united states -2.8 -2.3 0.3 0.7 -1.0 southern europe italy -0.86 -1.4 -1.7 -1.3 -1.410 spain -0.5 -1.9 -2.2 -2.0 -1.7 notes: a refers to the year the respective cohort reached age 27: for example, the values for 1960 are those for the birth cohort of 1933, who reached age 27 in 1960; 1 1962; 2 england and wales; 3 1966; 4 1998; 5 1962-1970; 6 1966-1970; 7 1990-1998; 8 1962-2000; 9 1960-1998; 10 1966-2000 source: hfd 2018; lappegård 2018 (for norway 1962 & 1970) the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 111 in sum, among the recent youngest approximately 40 cohorts, born between the 1930s and the early 1970s, fertility declined in all the analyzed countries (table 1, last column, lower panel; fig. 1). further, the overall propensity for contemporary fertility to fall off among western countries is confi rmed by the moderate fertility declines among the youngest 15 to 20 birth cohorts, those born in the 1960s and early 1970s, in all countries with the exception of the united states (table 1, column 1990-2000, lower panel; fig. 1). given these various country patterns of cohort total fertility rates, the question we now ask is how these fertility patterns of the late twentieth century relate to changes in our three measures of gender change – labor force participation, domestic hours, and women’s second shift. 4.2 labor force participation: the lfp-sr the massive change in the public sphere gender balance between 1960 and 2010 is evident in table 2 and figure 2, which show, by region and country, the sex ratio of fig. 1: cohort total fertility rates at age 40, northern, western/central europe, north america, southern europe, birth cohorts 1920-1975 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort finland norway sweden a northern europe cohort total fertility rate at age 40 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort france germany netherlands united kingdom b western/central europe cohort total fertility rate at age 40 c north america cohort total fertility rate at age 40 d southern europe cohort total fertility rate at age 40 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort united states canada 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 birth cohort italy spain source: hfd 2018 • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård112 female to male labor force participation, the lfp-sr. clearly, at least at the macrolevel, the bivariate relationship between changing cohort fertility and the changing ratio of female to male labor force participation is inverse. further, in most cases the pattern of change at least loosely follows that for cohort fertility (in reverse), with tab. 2: ratio of female to male labor force participation rates, lfp-sr, selected countries, absolute values and rates of change, 1960-2014 country and ratio of female to male labor force participation rate lfp-sr in year region 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2014 northern europe finland 0.620 0.722 0.862 0.908 0.929 0.946 0.947 norway 0.305 0.549 0.714 0.845 0.899 0.936 0.949 sweden 0.435 0.640 0.832 0.952 0.937 0.931 0.944 western/central europe france 0.471 0.530 0.655 0.760 0.830 0.880 0.890 germany 0.568 0.452 0.559 0.703 0.802 0.860 0.871 netherlands 0.206 0.229 0.367 0.660 0.783 0.867 0.882 united kingdom 0.411 0.579 0.660 0.770 0.820 0.850 0.860 north america canada 0.374 0.531 0.602 0.806 0.859 0.910 0.913 united states 0.475 0.521 0.659 0.795 0.845 0.863 0.855 southern europe italy 0.369 0.297 0.421 0.566 0.628 0.697 0.726 spain 0.210 0.260 0.310 0.521 0.658 0.816 0.855 country and average annual rate of change in period (in percent) region 1960197019801990200020101970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2014 northern europe finland 1.5 1.8 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.0 norway 5.9 2.6 1.7 0.6 0.4 0.3 sweden 3.9 2.6 1.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.3 western/central europe france 1.2 2.1 1.5 0.9 0.6 0.3 germany -2.3 2.1 2.3 1.3 0.7 0.3 netherlands 1.1 4.7 5.9 1.7 1.0 0.4 united kingdom 3.4 1.3 1.5 0.6 0.4 0.3 north america canada 3.5 1.3 2.9 0.6 0.6 0.1 united states 0.9 2.3 1.9 0.6 0.2 -0.2 southern europe italy -2.2 3.5 3.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 spain 2.1 1.8 5.2 2.3 2.2 1.2 source: authors’ calculations based on world bank databank 2016; oecd 2016; mitchell 1998; ilo 1960 the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 113 either early rapid change followed by a near plateau or relatively continuous fairly rapid change (increases in the flp-sr; decreases in cohort total fertility). however, in the early years, the levels were very different, and, as with fertility, the trends changed the relative levels substantially, primarily because of differing intensities of change. there was a wide range among these countries in the lfpsr in 1960. two countries had ratios as low as 0.20 (spain and the netherlands); while finland5 was at the high end (0.62).6 differences were much smaller by the 5 given that germany’s lfp-sr fell substantially between 1960 and 1970, only recovering to its 1960 level in 1980, we do not take the original measure very seriously. 6 as previously noted, several countries’ measures for 1960 are actually from the 1950s. more timely measures for norway and the united kingdom might have registered considerably higher levels, but this seems unlikely for the netherlands, given their very low level in 1970. fig. 2: ratio of female to male labor force participation rates (lfpr-sr), selected countries, 1960-2010 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year finland norway sweden united kingdom france netherlands germany united states canada italy spain ratio: female to male labor force participation rates lfp-sr source: authors’ calculations based on world bank databank 2016; oecd 2016; mitchell 1998; ilo 1960 • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård114 end of the period in 2014. the lfp-sr increased rapidly to settle at a level around 0.90 in 1990 in northern europe; in western/central europe and in north america the process was more gradual, reaching close to 0.90 only in 2010; and in southern europe, levels all along were lower than elsewhere, reaching 0.70 to 0.80 early in the 21st century. hence, in more recent years there has been substantial convergence. this pattern of convergence is even evident within regions. the three northern european countries show quite different lfp-srs in 1960, ranging from finland’s high ratio of 0.62 down to norway’s 0.31, with sweden in between. however, their massive increases after 1960 led to lfp-srs above 0.80 in the 1980s, and essentially to total convergence at about 0.90 around 1990, even reaching 0.95 in 2014. (norway lagged slightly for most of this period.) as these trends suggest, however, there was considerable variation in temporal patterns. in the early part of the period (1960-1970), some countries were rapidly accelerating (norway, sweden), with annual rates of change of 5.9 percent and 3.9 percent (table 2). some were barely increasing (the netherlands, france, and the u.s.), with annual rates of change of around 1 percent; and some were even decreasing (germany,7 italy), with annual rates of change of -2 percent. yet all these countries experienced declines in cohort fertility during that period, and the rates of fertility decline only very loosely matched the rates of increase in the lfp-sr. for example, between 1960 and 1970, finland experienced the slowest increase in the lfp-sr (admittedly from a high base) but the fastest decline in cohort fertility. nevertheless, the overall patterns of fertility change and change in the sex ratios for labor force participation suggest that the fi rst half of the gender revolution is far from complete in many of these countries, and its negative effects on fertility are likely far from complete, as well. 4.3 domestic work hours: the tdh-sr the two-stage approach to the gender revolution posits that change came fi rst in the public sphere, with the increase in female labor force participation, and that this was followed by change in the private sphere, as men, after some delay, increased their engagement in the tasks of the home (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). our results suggest, however, that this is an oversimplifi cation, at least to some extent. from the earliest days of the gender revolution, as early as the 1960s, the general pattern is that men have been increas7 the data for germany combine the former east germany with the former west germany. this is somewhat problematic in this case, as the gender systems in these two (then) countries evolved in very different ways during the 40+ years that they were separated. the former east germany emphasized gender equality (particularly in the public sphere); the proportions of women who were reported to be housewives were very different (klein/nauck 2005). in the former east germany, only 9 percent of women and 10 percent of men prefer that when a couple become parents “one should stay at home” during the preschool years, while in the former west germany, 56 percent of women and 63 percent of men gave that response (dannenbeck 1992). unlike in the us, in west germany most couples are not concerned about domestic equality (bellani et al. 2017). the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 115 ing their share of hours in the private sphere relative to women (table 3 and fig. 3). although much of the increase in the sex ratio of total domestic time (tdh-sr) in the early years refl ects women’s massive decline in housework hours, men did extab. 3: ratio of male to female total domestic hours worked, tdh-sr, selected countries, absolute values and rates of change, 1960-1969 to 2000-2004 country and ratio of male to female total domestic work tdh-sr in period region 1960-69 1970-75 1976-84 1985-89 1990-94 1995-99 2000-04 “central years” 1965 1972.5 1980 1987.5 1992 1997 2002 northern europe finland 0.486 0.578 0.583 0.588 norway 0.341 0.452 0.504 0.556 0.591 0.627 sweden 0.592 0.642 0.693 western/central europe france 0.268 0.310 0.362 0.415 0.467 0.520 germany 0.330 0.368 0.405 0.442 0.480 0.505 0.531 netherlands 0.331 0.350 0.390 0.406 0.472 0.478 united kingdom 0.244 0.300 0.358 0.416 0.458 0.500 0.529 north america canada 0.372 0.502 0.464 0.522 0.574 united states 0.291 0.413 0.472 0.531 0.588 0.671 0.636 southern europe italy 0.184 0.217 0.251 0.284 spain 0.331 country and average annual rate of change in period (in percent) region 19651972.519801987.5199219971972.5 1980 1987.5 1992 1997 2002 northern europe finland 2.3 0.2 0.2 norway 3.8 1.4 2.2 1.2 1.2 sweden 1.6 1.5 western/central europe france 1.9 2.1 1.8 2.6 2.1 germany 1.4 1.3 1.2 1.8 1.0 1.0 netherlands 0.7 1.4 0.9 3.0 0.3 united kingdom 2.8 2.3 2.0 2.1 1.8 1.1 north america canada 4.0 -1.0 2.6 1.9 united states 4.7 1.8 1.6 2.3 2.6 -1.1 southern europe italy 3.7 2.9 2.5 spain note: values in italics are interpolated source: authors’ calculations based on kan et al. 2011 • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård116 perience a non-trivial absolute increase in non-market work in most of these countries. men in the united states increased their weekly non-market work by about three hours (aguiar/hurst 2009; kan et al. 2011); smaller but substantial increases occurred among men in canada, the netherlands, norway, finland, germany and italy; only in france and the united kingdom did men not experience an increase between the fi rst two time-use surveys (and swedish men show a decline; just a smaller one than among swedish women) (kan et al. 2011). figure 3 indicates that the differences between the patterns of change in these two halves of the gender revolution are more about level and pace of change than about timing relative to each other. comparing figures 2 and 3, it is clear that the level is always higher for the lfp-sr than for the tdh-sr. similarly, a comparison of the rates of change shown in tables 2 and 3 shows that the pace of change is, with few exceptions, greater for the lfp-sr than for the tdh-sr, particularly in the fig. 3: ratio of male to female total domestic hours worked (tdh-sr), selected countries, absolute values, 1960-1969 to 2000-2004 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 1965 1972.5 1980 1987.5 1992 1997 2002 "central" year finland norway sweden united kingdom france netherlands germany united states canada italy spain ratio: male to female total domestic work tdh-sr source: authors’ calculations based on kan et al. 2011 the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 117 early years. the timing is similar, however, both beginning to increase as early as the 1960s. although the general level of the tdh-sr remained lower than the lfp-sr throughout the period, the regional variation in tdh-sr trends fairly closely resembles the regional variation we observed for the lfp-sr, with high levels for the north european countries and low levels for the south european countries, with the western/central countries in between. the major differences in regional patterns between these two sets of ratios (lfp and tdh) are for the two north american countries, and most dramatically, for the united states. while these two countries ranked among those in the middle for the lfp-sr, they rank among the north european leaders for the tdh-sr, again, particularly the united states, despite the dip or “stall” (england 2010) in the recent period. hence, the overall patterns of change in gender behavior in the private sphere of the family appear to do little to account for change in cohort fertility. taken together, one could even argue that increasing men’s share (the tdh-sr) reduces fertility, instead of increasing it, given that as with the lfp-sr, the relationships are inverse – increases in men’s share, decreases in cohort fertility. but what might be operating is not the absolute trends in the lfp-sr and the tdh-sr, but their relationships with each other – women’s second shift – to which we now turn. 4.4 relating the two ratios: the second shift for our fi nal measure of gender change, we calculated a “ratio of ratios” for these countries (table 4 and fig. 4), dividing the public sphere ratio by the private sphere ratio for each country and time. this is our indicator of the size of women’s “second shift,” albeit at the macro level, as it relates how close women have come to equality in the public sphere (the numerator) to how close they have come to equality in the private sphere (the denominator). hence, in this case, the “second shift ratio” (ssr) throughout is almost always above one,8 indicating more equal gender sharing in the public sphere than in the private sphere. the higher the value, the greater the second shift. the overall impression of the ssr data shown in table 4 is that women’s burden is considerably greater than men’s. there was little pattern and little change prior to 1990, as shown by the largely random pattern of percent change in the lower part of table 4. thereafter, however, the major trend is (slightly) down, indicating a reduction in women’s second shift. it is worth noting that the ssr in the year 2000 has converged around the value of 1.5 (except for the southern european countries). in an evaluation of the overall picture of combined activities in the public and the private spheres, this might be interpreted as women expending about 50 percent more effort than men towards their families’ well-being. 8 the netherlands’ strange early value (0.691) refl ects women’s unusually low ratio of labor force participation rather than anything unusual in dutch men’s domestic participation. • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård118 tab. 4: second shift ratio, ssr, selected countries, absolute values and rates of change, 1960 to 2000 country and region second shift ratio (lfp-sr/tdh-sr) 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 northern europe finland 1.772 1.565 1.579 norway 1.613 1.578 1.595 1.476 sweden 1.404 western/central europe france 1.757 1.712 1.807 1.723 germany 1.720 1.230 1.379 1.524 1.548 netherlands 0.691 1.048 1.659 1.647 united kingdom 1.687 1.927 1.843 1.763 1.594 north america canada 1.426 1.200 1.636 united states 1.632 1.264 1.396 1.421 1.293 southern europe italy 2.820 2.346 spain 1.994 country and region average annual rate of change in period (in percent) 1960-1970 1970-1980 1980-1990 1990-2000 northern europe finland -1.2 0.1 norway -0.2 0.1 -0.8 sweden western/central europe france -0.3 0.5 -0.5 germany -3.4 1.1 1.0 0.2 netherlands 4.2 4.6 -0.1 united kingdom 1.3 -0.4 -0.4 -1.0 north america canada -1.7 3.1 united states -2.6 1.0 0.2 -0.9 southern europe italy -1.8 spain source: authors’ calculations based on tables 2 and 3 the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 119 three countries show fairly consistent declines throughout the period, indicating overall progress in closing the gap that underlies women’s “second shift.” interestingly, they occurred in three different regions. one is in southern europe (italy), which, while it has begun to close its very large ssr, clearly has a long way to go, with ratios above 2. another country with an overall decline in the ssr is one of the northern european countries (norway), which declined from 1.61 in 1970 to 1.48 in 2000. (finland’s ssr tends to be larger than norway’s; however it evinced a large decline (annual decline = 1.2 percent) between 1980 and 1990.) none of the countries in western/central europe shows an overall consistent decline in the second shift, although two show a dip in the most recent period, after decades of stasis (the united kingdom and france). in this region and overall, germany and especially the netherlands are outliers. germany shows little trend, and what trend appears seems to be a slight increase in german women’s second shift (the 1970 ratio does not seem plausible). the netherlands actually appears to have experienced a substantial increase in the ssr, particularly between 1980 and 1990. fig. 4: second shift ratio (ssr), selected countries, 1960-2000 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 year (approximate) finland norway sweden france germany netherlands united kingdom canada united states italy spain second shift ratio ssr source: authors’ calculations based on tables 2 and 3 • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård120 and then there is the united states, the third country to show an overall decline. it has also declined the most among these 11 countries, and attained the lowest level in 2000, even below sweden: the ssr fell from 1.63 in 1960 to 1.29 in 2000, lower than any of the northern european countries. it is diffi cult to know what to make of these quite noisy data on the second shift, but if the patterns are real, this could be refl ected in their trends in cohort fertility. as we just saw, the ssr in most countries was declining at the end of the 20th century, yet at the same time cohort fertility was also declining. this appears to be contrary to what might be expected, namely that a declining second shift ratio would generate an increase in cohort fertility, because women’s involvement (or burden) is declining. this is also what the papers theorizing about the consequences of the gender revolution assumed would occur (anderson/kohler 2015; espingandersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). clearly, this has not happened in these countries, an outcome that might result from the continuing downward pressure on childbearing of increasing female labor force participation in so many countries, i.e., the fi rst half of the gender revolution, might refl ect a delayed effect, or might refl ect the impact of other factors. four countries, however, do show the expected pattern, although in the case of three, it is somewhat retrograde. as we noted above, both the netherlands and germany not only experienced a decline in fertility, they did so in the context of an actual increase in their second shift ratios over much of the period; this is also the case for canada (fig. 4). only the united states pairs the gender revolution measures in the expected direction. their second shift not only shrank and became the lowest of all (fig. 4), but their cohort fertility rate increased between 1980 and 2000 (ctfr40 centered on age 27 – table 1). perhaps more telling than these trends (and the fact that these regions show distinct patterns of cohort fertility rates), the deviations within regions in the levels of fertility seem to fi t some of the deviations we have observed in the second shift ratio, both in terms of trends and of timing. this is particularly clear in the northern european region. each of the three countries has maintained close to replacement cohort fertility in the recent period, perhaps, as mcdonald (2000) has suggested, because of the strong support for raising children provided by the state. however, generally paralleling the fi ndings for the trends and levels of the second shift, norway has the highest cohort fertility and finland the lowest. the countries of western/central europe have experienced below replacement fertility in the recent period. the netherlands and particularly germany are at the lower end and france at the upper end, with nearly replacement fertility. as with the northern european countries, the order within region again refl ects the signal coming from the ssr trends. moreover, the relatively high fertility in france is associated with its long history of active family policies, particularly early childcare (oecd 2018; toulemon et al. 2008). the second shift ratios also seem consistent with the very low cohort fertility among the southern european countries. their increases in the lfp-sr have taken place in the teeth of very little change in the tdh-sr; women have been carrying the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 121 the family largely on their own, as is apparently also the case in germany and the netherlands. and of course, it almost seems plausible that its relatively low second shift values might account for the unusually high fertility in the united states (frejka 2004). its low ssr refl ects in part its slow increase in the lfp-sr, as the lack of supportive government programs has limited many mothers’ ability to stay in the labor market (daly/rake 2003). given that so many in fact do work, however, the same lack of supportive programs means that women’s burden is not reduced by the presence of high quality, affordable childcare or paid, job protected parental leave. hence, the main way that families can obtain the double earnings of a working couple is for men to lend a hand, more than is the case in europe. the costs are high in terms of family stress, as couples often seek jobs with differing shifts and as a result have to hand off children in complex ways (presser 2000). nevertheless, this may partially contribute to the distinctiveness of the united states on these two dimensions – unusually high fertility and unusually low levels of the second shift. we take the analysis a step further by highlighting the component relationships in four countries (fig. 5). the gender revolution components normally appear in the lower part of each fi gure, with the ratio of household sharing (the tdh-sr) lower than the ratio of labor force participation (the lfp-sr), both below one. in our selected countries, the second shift ratio (ssr) normally occupies the band between 1 and 1.5 or so, and cohort fertility normally fl oats at the upper part of each fi gure. at least, this is the vertical order for norway (fig. 5a), a clear gender revolution leader. as there is little variation in norwegian cohort fertility to be observed among the 1970-2000 birth cohorts, it is diffi cult to make conclusions, except that maintaining replacement cohort fertility may require progress on the second shift, i.e., progress on the second half of the gender revolution, perhaps aided by public policy. the patterns for germany (fig. 5b) reinforce this possibility, given that its ssr actually rose during most of this period, with cohort fertility falling so far that the two upper lines (for cohort fertility and ssr) actually cross over in the most recent period. the italian sub-graph (fig. 5d) further reinforces this interpretation, showing the extreme levels of their second shift actually above their rapidly declining cohort fertility. while unlike germany, italy’s second shift shows some signs of decline, it is at such a high level that their second shift clearly has a long way to go to have anything other than a depressing effect on fertility. finally, the sub-graph for the united states (fig. 5c) not only supports this interpretation, but even suggests that it experienced fl uctuations in fertility that appear to map not only the levels of their second shift, but even its timing. in the fi rst part of the gender revolution, between 1970 and 1980, the united states’ second shift was actually rising, due to the rapid increase in the lfp-sr (as in germany) and the fact that the ratio of men’s to women’s domestic hours was rising at a slower rate. signifi cantly, the fertility of the cohorts born in the late 1940s and 1950s was falling sharply, but after 1980, a second “stage” seems to have appeared for the cohorts born in the late 1950s and 1960s, in which fertility is rising as the second shift falls. • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård122 5 summary, conclusions and discussion the on-going transformation of the male breadwinner family model has been among the most remarkable societal changes of the past 50 to 60 years. this is occurring in two parts: the fi rst part, the growth of female labor force participation, is accompanied by a second part, the growth in men’s involvement in the tasks of the home. these overlapping parts are, in essence, the gender revolution. arguably, the gender revolution is an integral, if late component of societal modernization, emerging out of the demographic transition and the industrial revolution, and their component trends, the technological revolution, the educational revolution, the health transition, and the epidemiological transition. if at fi rst, it disrupted the family, as women experienced the fi rst part by joining the paid labor force more rapidly than fig. 5: gender revolution components and cohort total fertility rates (centered on age 27), selected countries, 1970 to 2000 0.000 0.500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 3.000 1970 1980 1990 2000 year or birth cohort (centered on age 27) ctfr 40 ssr lfp-sr tdh-sr a norway absolute values 0.000 0.500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 3.000 1970 1980 1990 2000 year or birth cohort (centered on age 27) b germany absolute values c united states absolute values d italy absolute values 0.000 0.500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 1970 1980 1990 2000 year or birth cohort (centered on age 27) 0.000 0.500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 3.000 1970 1980 1990 2000 year or birth cohort (centered on age 27) source: authors’ calculations based on world bank databank 2016; oecd 2016; mitchell 1998; ilo 1960; kan et al. 2011; and hfd 2018 the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 123 men took up the tasks of the home, we expect that when men fi nally increase their involvement in housework and childcare, it will strengthen the family. in this paper, we examined the relationship between gender equality and fertility, in order to see whether greater gender equality is linked with increased fertility. we studied the cohort total fertility rate (at age 40) and related it to three measures of gender equality over the period between 1970 and 2000, with some examination of patterns back to 1960 and up to 2014. our focus was on the 11 countries in four regions that had the information we needed. in northern europe, we examined finland, norway and sweden; in western/central europe we examined france, germany, the netherlands, and the united kingdom; in north america we examined canada and the united states; and in southern europe, we examined italy and spain. based on this information, our objective was to advance knowledge on the unfolding of the gender revolution and its possible impact on fertility. we examined how cohort fertility patterns related to progress in the gender revolution. first, we highlighted progress in the public sphere of employment (a ratio of female to male labor force participation), then we examined trends in the private sphere of the home (a ratio of male to female total hours of domestic work). finally, we analyzed the progress of the relationship between these two, what we call women’s second shift. the overarching conclusion is that the gender revolution had not generated a turnaround, i.e. an increase in cohort total fertility rates, by the end of the 20th century, possibly because the fertility depressing effects of the fi rst part of the gender revolution are still operative. nonetheless, in broad terms the evidence suggests that wherever the gender revolution has made signifi cant progress, in particular by reducing women’s second shift, cohort fertility declined the least; in northern europe cohort fertility has essentially stabilized at replacement.9 on the other hand, in countries with the least progress on the gender revolution, and particularly where women’s second shift is greater and not shrinking, cohort fertility has experienced the steepest declines, namely in southern europe, where it was about 50 percent below replacement. the countries of western/central europe and canada were between these extremes. the united states constitutes an exception, as progress on the gender revolution was associated with an increase in cohort fertility to moderately above replacement. it is clear that the impressive and widespread growth of the ratio of female to male labor force participation (lfp-sr) is inversely related to cohort total fertility throughout the period, although the rates of fertility decline did not match the rates of increase in the lfp-sr very closely. it is also clear that this fi rst part of the gender revolution is far from complete, suggesting that it will continue to depress fertility in many of those countries, particularly those in southern europe, unless, perhaps, those women who are employed have partners who share substantially in house9 note that ctfr values at age 40 at the end of the 20th century have to be increased by 2-3 percent to provide ctfr values at the end of the reproductive period, which is likely to offset the small declines observed. • tomas frejka, frances goldscheider, trude lappegård124 hold work (pinnelli/fiori 2006) and childcare and/or effective family friendly policies are introduced that reduce the family/work dilemma. however, it is also clear that progress on the second part of the gender revolution is inversely related to cohort fertility: many of the patterns are similar, both within and between regions, to those for the fi rst part of the gender revolution. our analysis shows that progress on the second part of the gender revolution got under way at about the same time as the fi rst part, during the 1960s, contrary to what has been implied in the literature to date. nevertheless, its progress was clearly much slower than that of the fi rst part of the gender revolution, so that some countries experienced an increase in the second shift, and only recently, during the 1990s, did women’s second shift diminish slightly in a majority of countries. only a few countries showed signs of an overall second shift decline – norway, the united states and possibly italy. further, even though the second shift declined in a number of countries during the second half of the 20th century, only exceptionally was this trend coupled with an increase in fertility, namely in the united states. there were a few countries – the netherlands, germany, and canada – in which an increase in women’s second shift was associated with the decline of fertility, which is what one would expect. the detailed analysis of trends in the components of the gender revolution confi rms the principal conclusion reached in our earlier papers (frejka et al. 2016a/b), namely that progress on the gender revolution has not yet led to an increase in cohort fertility. in those articles we executed a simpler analysis of the relationship between fertility and progress on the gender revolution, focusing only on the ratio of men’s to women’s domestic hours, not including the analysis of trends in the ratio of women’s to men’s labor force participation or the second shift ratio. this analysis allowed us to assess the relatively close connection between trends in the extent of women’s “second shift” and cohort fertility. this also takes us beyond the numerous studies that have examined the relationship between fertility and female labor force participation, which ignore the private sphere totally (e.g., matysiak/vignoli 2008; greulich et al. 2016). nevertheless, the analysis is only suggestive, given its reliance on simple description and the relatively small numbers of cases we could examine. a further weakness is our inability to examine other factors, such as family-friendly policies and varying levels of part-time employment. france and the three countries in northern europe have policies that greatly ease women’s work-family confl ict, particularly high quality, subsidized childcare. similarly, places and times where most employed women work part time (as in the netherlands) or only work a few hours per week (as in the united kingdom) may experience less downward pressure on cohort fertility than in other places and times where few employed women work part time, whatever the level. hence, a larger sample with more information might have allowed a multilevel analysis (e.g., greulich et al. 2016). such an analysis might reveal that the unusual pattern displayed by the united states is less a result of greater gender equality at the couple level, resulting from the need for greater male involvement due to the lack of supportive family policies in that country and the dearth of part-time jobs, but more the result of its limited the two-part gender revolution, women’s second shift and changing cohort fertility • 125 availability of contraceptive and abortion services, leading to much unwanted fertility (frejka 2004; morgan 2015). by focusing on regions, even in this descriptive analysis we are able to control levels of gender essentialism to some extent (e.g., baizan et al. 2016; brinton/lee 2016), but problems of rigidity in the labor market are less regional (matysiak/vignoli 2008). if, however, it encourages more research that focuses on the gender revolution, and in particular, on its two parts (goldscheider et al. 2015) and the relationships between them, it will have made a signifi cant contribution. references aguiar, mark; hurst, erik 2007: measuring trends in leisure: the allocation of time over fi ve decades. in: quarterly journal of economics 122,3: 969-1006 [doi: 10.1162/ qjec.122.3.969]. aguiar, mark; hurst, erik 2009: a summary of trends in american time allocation: 19652005. in: social 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pailhé, ariane; rossier, clémentine 2008: france: high and stable fertility. in: demographic research 19,16: 503-555 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2008.19.16]. waite, linda; stolzenberg, rafe 1976: intended childbearing and labor force participation of young women: insights from nonrecursive models. in: american sociological review 41,2: 235-252 [doi: 10.2307/2094471]. westoff, charles; higgins, jenny 2009: relationships between men’s gender attitudes and fertility: response to puur, et al.’s “men’s childbearing desires and views of the male role in europe at the dawn of the 21st century”. in: demographic research 21,3: 65-74 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2009.21.3]. world bank databank 2016: [http://databank.worldbank.org/, 10.09.2018]. date of submission: 03.04.2018 date of acceptance: 18.09.2018 dr. tomas frejka (). independent researcher. usa. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com. prof. dr. frances goldscheider. university of maryland, brown university. maryland, usa. e-mail: frances_goldscheider@brown.edu url: https://www.popcenter.umd.edu/mprc-associates/fgoldsch prof. dr. trude lappegård. university of oslo, department of sociology and human geography. oslo, norway. e-mail: trude.lappegard@sosgeo.uio.no url: https://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/people/aca/trudelap/ authors appear in alphabetical order published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) from living apart to living together: do children born before the current partnership matter? from living apart to living together: do children born before the current partnership matter? roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk abstract: this study examines the association between having children born before the current partnership and women’s and men’s likelihood of transitioning from living apart together (lat) to co-residing. lat partnerships are common among individuals with pre-partnership children, but have so far been under-researched. our study not only focuses on those in lat relations, but also takes the different pathways to becoming a single parent into account. event-history analysis was performed using waves 14 from the netherlands kinship panel study. the results indicate that separated and widowed mothers were less likely to transition to co-residence with their lat partner than childless women who had previously been in a co-residential union. mothers who had previous out-of-union children were found to be even less likely to enter co-residence. results were mostly similar for men and women. the only exception was the effect of being widowed with children; for men this resulted in higher chances of transitioning to co-residence with a new partner whereas for women the chances were lower. the fi ndings suggest that individuals’ parenthood and union histories are associated with the development of their later partnerships, and that these patterns vary by gender. given contemporary and future patterns of partnership separation, our study provides insights for better understanding how lat relations develop for different sub-populations. keywords: living apart together · transition to co-residence · re-partnering · children · single parents 1 introduction single parenthood has become an increasingly common phenomenon in western countries (bernardi/mortelmans 2018). in the netherlands, almost 15 percent of all children lived in a single-parent household in 2014. however, single parenthood is often a temporary stage in the life course. in most european countries, the majority of single parents enter a new co-residential partnership at some point (bernardi/ comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 115-142 (date of release: 31.03.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-07en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-07en9 • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk116 mortelmans 2018). a parent’s co-residence with a new partner has an undeniable effect on both the parent and the child, for example on the parent’s physical and mental health (e.g. williams et al. 2008) and economic security (e.g. bzostek et al. 2012 on mothers), as well as on the child’s well-being (e.g. bzostek 2008). it is therefore important to understand how the presence of an individual’s own children1 – that is, children who were born either in a previous union or outside a union – are associated with the parent’s likelihood of making the transition from living apart to living together with a new partner (who is not the parent of the children). earlier research has shown that being a parent is associated with decisions about union formation with a new partner (e.g. goldscheider/sassler 2006; ivanova et al. 2013). however, most of the existing research on this topic was developed based on a rather restrictive, tripartite model of relationships (roseneil 2006), whereby people were classifi ed as either single, cohabiting, or married. based on this model, the transition from singlehood to co-residence (bernhardt/goldscheider 2002; ivanova et al. 2013; lichter/graefe 2001) and to marriage (bennett et al. 1995) have been extensively analysed. most studies do, however, not make a distinction between starting a relationship and starting co-residence, even though these are different events (exception: bastin 2019 on partnership transitions of single mothers in germany). furthermore, living apart together (lat) partnerships, and even more so those with pre-partnership children involved, have so far been largely ignored. lat partnerships refer to established, longer-term couple relationships in which the partners live in separate households (see haskey 2005; levin/trost 1999). in general, lat can be a way to combine the intimacy of a partnership with some benefi ts of being alone (duncan et al. 2013 for britain; strohm et al. 2009 for the united states). reasons for living apart rather than co-residing vary with individuals’ life course stages (see, for example, duncan et al. 2013 for britain; liefbroer et al. 2015 for ten european countries; régnier-loilier et al. 2009 for france; strohm et al. 2009 for the united states). these studies show that for younger, childless adults who are not ready to live together yet, lat is often a temporary stage, whereas it is typically a more longterm choice for older adults who wish to maintain their independence – many of whom have experienced divorce or have been widowed. caregiving responsibilities for children are a common reason for lat for single parents. external constraints related to, for example, work locations or housing, are frequently mentioned as a reason to live apart across all stages of the life course. only a handful of studies have distinguished lat as a partnership status and taken being a parent into account in analysing the formation of new co-residential partnerships. these include studies that focused on lat relations after divorce in belgium (pasteels/mortelmans 2013, 2015), the likelihood of living apart versus together with a new partner after divorce or widowhood in the netherlands (de jong gierveld/merz 2013), intentions to live together (lewin 2018; poortman/hewitt 2015), and the transition to co-residence in germany (krapf 2017; wagner et al. 2019) and 1 we use the terms "own children" (as used by goldscheider/sassler 2006) and "pre-partnership children" interchangeably. from living apart to living together • 117 france (régnier-loilier 2016). the results of these studies suggest that being a parent reduces the likelihood that a person will start co-residence with a new partner, or will have the intention to do so. at a time when the number of single parents is increasing, this paper focuses on the association between having own children and the likelihood of an individual making the transition from living apart to living together with a partner. we add to the literature in three ways. first, we take into account the different pathways into single parenthood (separation, widowhood, or out-of-union childbearing).2 the distinctions between these pathways have been largely ignored in previous research, even though they are an important source of diversity among single parents (bernardi/larenza 2018). second, we compare single parents with people who are childless. finally, while most studies have focused exclusively on women, our study examines the gendered nature of these processes by including men as well as women. the inclusion of men in research on this topic is essential given that non-resident father involvement (westphal et al. 2014) and co-parenting arrangements (poortman/van gaalen 2017) are becoming increasingly common in the netherlands. the analyses are based on all four waves of the netherlands kinship panel study (nkps). we performed discrete-time event-history analysis, with the transition from lat to co-residence as the event of interest, and an indicator of union history combined with the pathway to single parenthood as the key independent variable. the nkps data provide detailed information that is rarely available in other datasets, but include relatively few men and women in lat partnerships. our study therefore cannot provide strong tests of hypotheses, but serves as one of the fi rst to explore the potentially gendered transition from living apart to living together, the link with the paths into single parenthood and the role of own children. 2 background drawing upon past research on the subject, we argue that the presence of an individual’s own children may be either negatively or positively associated with their likelihood of making a transition from lat to co-residence. in general, motivations for making a transition to co-residence among those in lat partnerships may be related to a desire for more intimacy and spending time together, the wish to form a family (also given social norms prescribing that co-residence should precede parenthood), and practical considerations such as pooling resources. regardless of motivations, it has been argued that co-residential partnerships generally involve more partner commitment than lat partnerships do (see, for example, kamp dush/ amato 2005; lois et al. 2010). we therefore start from and build upon theoretical 2 we use "partnership" to refer to any type of couple relationship, regardless of whether it is coresidential or lat. co-residential partnerships are also referred to as unions, and include marriage and unmarried cohabitation. separation and widowhood refer to past unions, not to past lat partnerships. • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk118 arguments concerning different levels of commitment in partner relationships and different motivations for making the transition to co-residence between those with and those without own children. 2.1 why parenthood may be negatively associated with the transition to co-residence: different life phases, protection of family life, dyadic power, and costs of co-residence there are different theoretical mechanisms that may explain why partners with own children may be more or less likely to transition from lat to co-residence than those without children. first, those without children are in a different life-course phase than those with children. it is likely that many of them are motivated to become parents and form a family with their partner. this motivation might be even stronger among those with previous union experience, because they might feel a greater urgency to become parents after this did not happen in their previous union. in contrast, many of those with children might not feel the need to have more children. second, the literature suggests that parents’ (perceived) responsibilities for their children can be a reason for refraining from co-residence with a new partner. this reluctance can be fuelled by the wish to maintain a stable family situation, but also, for example, to avoid the interference of a new partner in the parent’s child-rearing practices, to prevent the children from growing too attached to a new partner, or to accommodate the wishes of the children when they do not approve of the new partner (lampard/peggs 1999; levin/trost 1999; levin 2004). these fi ndings suggest that parents prioritise the wellbeing of their own children, and that being in a new partnership may be attractive as long as this relationship does not affect their own children too much. living apart together can be seen as a way of being in a partnership while protecting the home environment of an individual’s co-resident children (levin/trost 1999; levin 2004). in the following, we refer to this reasoning as the “protection of family life” argument. the results of a mixed-methods study by de jong gierveld and merz (2013) in the netherlands confi rmed that parents’ decisions about whether to co-reside with a new partner after divorce or widowhood are infl uenced by such considerations even after children have reached adulthood. indeed, it has been found that compared to childless individuals, both female and male single parents are less likely to have the intention to co-reside with (lewin 2018 for 11 european countries; poortman/hewitt 2015 for the netherlands) or marry (reimondos et al. 2011 for australia) their lat partner. the protection of family life argument may, however, apply to mothers more than to fathers. parents with co-resident children, who are predominantly women, could feel more hesitant about introducing a new partner to the household than parents with non-resident children, who are predominantly men. moreover, gender expectations about work and care may result in women being more inclined than men to prioritise the well-being of their children above their own. in line with this reasoning, the recent work of thomas et al. (2017a/b) has suggested from living apart to living together • 119 that fathers are more likely than mothers to shift their priorities away from their prior family ties when they re-partner. a third argument for why we would expect to observe differences in the likelihood of transitioning to co-residence between lat partners who do and do not have own children is grounded in the greater dyadic power (or the bargaining advantage) of the new partner if they are childless (see guttentag/secord 1983 for a discussion of these concepts). the greater dyadic power of the new childless partner results from their stronger position on the partner market; i.e., compared to single parents, whose desirability and "marriageability" are seen as limited, childless individuals have more potential alternative partners available to them (goldscheider/kaufman 2006 for both fathers and mothers; qian et al. 2005 for mothers; stewart et al. 2003 for fathers). the new childless partner may be reluctant to form a more highly committed partnership with the single parent (guttentag/secord 1983). given the childless partner’s power advantage, the likelihood that the partners will enter coresidence may thus be reduced. a single parent, by contrast, may have a more limited choice of partners, and may thus settle for a sub-optimal partner. uncertainty about whether a match is optimal may also be a reason for postponing co-residence until the parent is more convinced of the partner’s suitability, or for rejecting co-residence with the partner entirely (van der wiel et al. 2018). some evidence suggests that the position of single fathers on the partner market is more favourable than that of single mothers, as women tend to be more willing than men to be a stepparent (bernhardt/goldscheider 2002; goldscheider/kaufman 2006; goldscheider/sassler 2006). again, these fi ndings indicate that the patterns in transitioning from lat to co-residence are different for fathers and mothers. finally, co-residence can be costly for both the parent and the partner. for the new partner, co-residing with someone who has their own children is associated with additional emotional, social, and fi nancial costs (lichter/graefe 2001). in considering whether to accept the role of stepparent, women seem to be more concerned about taking on care responsibilities, while men tend to be more worried about taking on fi nancial responsibilities (lampard/peggs 1999 for great britain). lat can offer an alternative to co-residence that is associated with less commitment and lower costs. moreover, for single parents, the lower demands and expectations of lat arrangements may be seen as desirable, providing conditions that enable them to continue investing resources in their own children, whether coor non-resident (compare also the interview fi ndings by lampard/peggs 1999). it should also be noted that for single parents, the transition from lat to co-residence may come at a cost. for example, in the netherlands, single parents receive tax benefi ts and fi nancial support, which they risk losing when they are registered with a co-residential partner (tweede kamer 2017). the potential loss of welfare income may act as a disincentive to co-residence, although conclusive evidence that this is the case is lacking. kalmijn and monden (2010) found that among single mothers in the netherlands, receiving welfare reduced the likelihood of marriage, but was not associated with the likelihood of cohabitation; possibly because, unlike marriage, cohabitation arrangements do not have to be offi cially registered. in addi• roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk120 tion, in the united states, bennett et al. (1995) found a negative, but non-signifi cant effect of receiving welfare on the likelihood of transitioning to marriage. again, these cost-related arguments may be more important for mothers and their new partners than for fathers, because mothers are more likely than fathers to be co-residing with their own children. overall, these theoretical arguments lead us to expect that women and men with own children are less likely to transition from lat to co-residence than those who are childless. this expectation concerns parents who have younger co-resident own children in particular. ivanova et al. (2013) showed for several countries in europe that a single parent’s chances of re-partnering were less affected when the youngest child was over 18 years old. 2.2 why parenthood may be positively associated with the transition to co-residence: economic needs, family norms, and the opportunity for parenthood there could, however, also be reasons why a single parent would transition more rapidly than a childless person from lat to co-residence with a new partner. it has been suggested that for single parents in poor economic circumstances in particular, co-residence could create a more stable emotional and fi nancial situation. separation, which is the most common pathway into single parenthood, negatively affects the partners’ economic circumstances. this is particularly true for women, in part because the mother generally becomes the custodial parent in the netherlands (poortman 2000). entering a new co-residential partnership can be a strategy for coping with the fi nancial consequences of separation (de regt et al. 2013 for belgium; dewilde/uunk 2008 for eleven european countries). furthermore, a desire to follow the prevailing social norms that a two-parent family is best-suited for raising children may motivate parents to transition from lat to co-residence. this is especially likely in a country like the netherlands, where large shares of the population still hold traditional views on family life. in a 2008 survey conducted in the netherlands, 74 percent of respondents agreed that a child needs a home with a mother and a father to grow up happily, and 35 percent of respondents disapproved of a woman wanting to be a single mother outside of a stable partnership (evs 2010). social norms have considerable infl uence on the formation and the development of partnerships (see, for example, arosio 2010; lewis 1973). thus, pressure from societal norms and parents’ own views on family life could increase parents’ likelihood of transforming a lat partnership into a co-residential one. given the gendered norms regarding work and childcare responsibilities in the netherlands (see, for example, yerkes/visser 2006), we may expect that this argument applies mostly to women. finally, it has been posited that some people may be attracted by the opportunity of "instant parenthood" by entering a relationship with a person who already has own children. bennett et al. (1995) made this argument for the male partners of single mothers. since men have less control than women over the decision to become a parent because they cannot bear children themselves, co-residing with from living apart to living together • 121 a mother and her children can be an alternative way to fulfi lling a desire for (step-) fatherhood (goldscheider/kaufman 2006). goldscheider and kaufman (2006) found some support for this argument, but bennett et al. (1995) did not (both in the united states). similarly, goldscheider and kaufman (2006) speculated that some women may want to have children, but dread the idea of being pregnant and bearing a child. for these women, stepmotherhood could offer an alternative route to becoming a parent, thereby making them more likely to transition from lat to co-residence with a new partner who has own children. based on these theoretical arguments concerning the economic needs, social norms, and opportunities for parenthood, we might expect the opposite of what we argued in section 2.1, namely that women and men with own children are more likely to transition from lat to co-residence than those who are childless. in the empirical part of the paper, we will explore the direction of the relationship between having own children and the transition to co-residence in our sample. furthermore, based on our literature review and the existing empirical evidence, we expect to fi nd that the effect of having own children is gendered. both the negative and the positive effects of having own children may be greater for the transition to co-residence for mothers than for fathers. the effects of having own children are probably also greater when the children are younger than when they are older. 2.3 pathways to single parenthood previous studies have only started to address the role of the diversity of the pathways to single parenthood (bernardi/larenza 2018). however, the theoretical arguments on the factors that stimulate or inhibit the transition from lat to co-residence may depend on how the partners became single parents. we explore this diversity by distinguishing between parents who are separated, widowed, or had a child outside of a union. for separated parents, the desire to avoid another painful separation or problematic co-residential experience – both for themselves and for their children – can be a reason to avoid making a full commitment to a new partner, and to instead remain in a long-term living apart together arrangement (levin 2004 for sweden; van der wiel et al. 2018 for the netherlands). widowed parents may also be afraid or hesitant to commit fully to a new partner by moving in together. having experienced the painful loss of a beloved partner could cause the parent to seek to maintain distance when starting a new relationship. moreover, continued loyalty to a deceased partner can hinder the development of a new partnership (stevens 2002). stevens has suggested that this loyalty may be the reason why some widowed people refrain from co-residing with a new partner. furthermore, in many cases, the partnership preceding widowhood involved intensive caregiving tasks for the partner, especially for women (see, for example, digiacomo et al. 2013; hebert/schulz 2006). hence, there is evidence that widows, but not widowers, perceive being relieved of the responsibility to care for their deceased partner as an advantage of living alone (davidson 2001 for the united kingdom). it has also been shown that widowers are more likely than widows to • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk122 say they want a new partnership, but often feel constrained in fi nding a new partner by their age and poor health (davidson 2001). clearly, the experiences of widowed and separated single parents are very different. it is not immediately obvious how these differences might lead to differences in their likelihood of transitioning to co-residence. for two reasons, it could be easier for widowed parents than for separated parents to introduce a new partner to the household. first, whereas the other parent is likely still involved and enacting a parenting role in the children’s lives when the parents are separated, there could be more room or even a greater need and desire for a new (co-residential) parent fi gure in the lives of the children of widowed parents. second, the children of widowed parents appear to have fewer behavioural problems and higher levels of well-being than the children of divorced parents in the netherlands (spruijt et al. 2001). it should be noted, however, that most of the existing literature on this topic has compared widowed and separated individuals in general, rather than parents specifi cally. wu and schimmele (2005) found that in canada, widowed people had lower chances of re-entering a co-residential partnership than separated people did. it has also been shown that among those in lat relationships, widowed individuals were relatively unlikely to move in together (régnier-loilier 2016). similarly, de jong gierveld and merz (2013) found that widowhood made parents in the netherlands more likely to choose lat over co-residence when re-partnering. the third way of becoming a single parent is through out-of-union childbearing (that is, not with a co-residential partner). this pathway to single parenthood is observed almost exclusively among women. it is rather uncommon in the netherlands; in 2012, only 8 percent of children in the netherlands were born into a singleparent household (loozen et al. 2014). mothers of children born outside of a union may face social stigma (see, for example, wiegers/chunn 2015). because of this stigma, men may try to keep their romantic involvement with these mothers private by maintaining separate households, and they may be reluctant to increase the level of commitment in a relationship. such a reluctance of men to commit to this specifi c group of single mothers would go against a positive effect of social norms on family life leading to conformance to the two-parent family standard (see previous section). moreover, the fact that these women followed an alternative path to family formation could signal that they have a general lack of interest in living with a partner. a recent study by bastin (2019) on single mothers’ partnership and household formation in germany looked at women’s partnership contexts before single motherhood. the author found few signifi cant differences between the pathways into single motherhood, but women who were unpartnered when they became a single mother had a signifi cantly higher hazard of moving in with their lat partner than the other single mothers (but at the same time had relatively low relationship formation rates). it is so far unclear whether this is also true in other contexts, and for men and women alike. based on the literature outlined above, our study aims to explore the potentially different patterns of transition from lat to co-residence based on the origins of single parenthood among women and men. from living apart to living together • 123 2.4 other factors associated with the transition to co-residence we accounted for several other factors that have been found to be associated with the transition from lat to co-residence in earlier research. having co-resided with another partner in the past has been shown to affect people’s current relationships, even though these fi ndings are inconsistent. bernhardt and goldscheider (2002) showed, for example, that having been previously married was a positive, signifi cant predictor of entering a new union. however, poortman (2007) found that the chances of union formation were signifi cantly lower for those who were re-partnering than for those who were forming their fi rst union. the effect of partnership duration on the chances of co-residing has been found to be non-linear. in two german studies, partners who had been living apart for a short time only or for longer than two years were shown to be less likely to start co-residence than those who had been living apart for one or two years (krapf 2017; wagner et al. 2019). previous studies on the transition from lat to co-residence also found a negative (régnier-loilier 2016) or non-linear, inverted u-shaped (krapf 2017; wagner et al. 2019) effect of age. furthermore, the ages of the partners are relevant in this context, as fi ndings from in-depth interviews (van der wiel et al. 2018) and survey data (liefbroer et al. 2015) have suggested that living apart tends to be a transitory stage for younger individuals, but is often a longer-term or permanent state for older individuals. people who are highly educated and employed may be less likely to co-reside with a partner because they have relatively little to gain from such an arrangement, and face higher opportunity costs of co-residence (konietzka/tatjes 2014). furthermore, the literature suggests that it is important to take into account whether an individual lives in an urban or rural area (e.g. bennett et al. 1995; coulter/hu 2017; kalmijn/monden 2010). as the characteristics of the partner may be associated with an individual’s likelihood of transitioning to co-residence, we include information on the partner’s age, educational attainment, and employment status. additionally, we account for whether the partner had own children. bernhardt and goldscheider (2002) found that having co-resident children was negatively associated with women’s likelihood of union formation, unless it was with a partner who had co-resident children himself; whereas for men having co-resident children mattered less. goldscheider and sassler (2006) found that for men, having own children was associated with a lower likelihood of forming a union only if they did not live with their children, and the potential union was with a childless woman. finally, distance between lat partners was found to be negatively associated with the likelihood of entering co-residence in germany in the study by krapf (2017). however, it was not possible to incorporate this predictor in our analyses owing to data limitations. • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk124 3 data, measures, and methods 3.1 data and sample we use the netherlands kinship panel study (nkps) (dykstra et al. 2005; dykstra et al. 2012; hogerbrugge et al. 2015; merz et al. 2012). the nkps is a multi-actor panel study of four waves, each spaced three years apart, which started in 2002/2004 with an initial sample of 8,161 dutch-speaking men and women between the ages of 18 and 79 (dykstra et al. 2005). the response rate of the nkps at wave one was 45 percent. response rates in the netherlands tend to be lower than in other western industrialised countries (de leeuw/de heer 2002). the initial sample size of 8,161 dropped to 2,382 in wave four, after follow-up interviews without refreshment. for more information on non-response in the nkps, see the metadata (e.g., merz et al. 2012). all analyses in this paper are based on unweighted data. we explored the extent to which panel attrition was selective with respect to partnership status, parenthood status, age, and employment status, and concluded that this was not the case (full details available upon request from the fi rst author). for example, respondents in lat partnerships at wave one did not differ signifi cantly from cohabiting respondents in their likelihood of non-response in wave two (dykstra et al. 2012). respondents in lat partnerships were identifi ed in the survey as those who responded affi rmatively to the question “do you have a partner at the moment, that is to say, someone with whom you have had a relationship for at least three months?” and then answered negatively to the question “does your partner live with you here?” for childless women and both childless men and men with own children, lat relationships make up roughly 20 percent of all person-months spent without a co-residential partner – the other 80 percent are spent in singlehood. for women with own children, the share in lat is lower, at 13 percent. given that, once in lat, those with own children spend on average more time in it than those without, this lower percentage suggests that mothers are less likely than childless women to enter lat in the fi rst place. the dependent variable was whether the person started co-residence with their partner in one of the subsequent waves. our sub-sample included all lat partnership spells that existed at the time of wave one, or that started afterwards. the observation window started in the month of the fi rst interview. this implies that some of these spells were left-censored. we kept these spells in the dataset in order to retain as many observations as possible. in the discrete-time analyses with piecewise constant hazards that we perform, left-censored cases can be included without technical diffi culties. we include a time-varying categorical variable indicating the duration of the spell in a piecewise constant way. observations were treated as right-censored after the last interview, the start of co-residence, or the end of the partnership. having a child with the current lat partner was another reason for censoring, but this situation was rare (n=25 previously childless women, n=19 previously childless men, n=11 women with own children, and n=3 men with own children). fathers with out-of-union children were excluded from the analyses because of the very small number of such cases (n=3). furtherfrom living apart to living together • 125 w o m en m en w it h o w n ch ild re n c hi ld le ss to ta l w it h o w n ch ild re n c hi ld le ss to ta l n um b er o f p er so n -m o n th sa 8, 37 2 7 ,9 43 16 ,3 15 3, 98 8 7, 30 3 11 ,2 91 n um b er o f i n d iv id u al sb 26 2 32 9 58 9 13 7 29 7 43 3 n u m b er o f p ar tn er sh ip sc 32 0 43 9 75 9 16 9 38 3 55 2 n um b er o f t ra n si tio n s in to c o -r es id en ce 10 1 21 6 31 7 61 19 4 25 5 % p ar tn er sh ip s ta tu s at e n d o f o b se rv at io n c s til l l a t 6 2 4 5 2 3 e n te re d c o -r es id en ce 44 57 52 53 59 57 s ep ar at ed 50 41 45 42 39 40 % p ar en th o o d s ta tu s an d u ni o n hi st o ry a n ev er in u ni o n an d c hi ld le ss n. a. 58 28 n. a. 63 41 e ve r in u ni o n an d c hi ld le ss n. a. 42 20 n. a. 37 24 s ep ar at ed w it h ch ild re n 82 n. a. 42 80 n. a. 28 w id o w ed w it h ch ild re n 13 n. a. 7 20 n. a. 7 o u to fun io n ch ild re n 5 n. a. 3 n. a. n. a. n. a. % p ar tn er sh ip d ur at io n a < 10 m o n th s 24 30 27 28 30 30 10 -< 25 m o n th s 25 28 26 27 28 28 25 -< 50 m o n th s 27 22 25 25 24 25 50 + m o n th s 24 20 22 19 18 18 m ea n ag ea 48 34 41 54 37 43 % le ve l o f e d u ca tio n a s ec o n d ar y o r le ss 64 52 58 51 56 54 te rt ia ry 36 48 42 49 44 46 % e m p lo ym en t s ta tu sa e m p lo ye d 69 67 68 70 70 70 o th er 31 33 32 30 30 30 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s – nu m b er s, c o lu m n p er ce n ta g es o r m ea n s • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk126 ta b . 1 : c o n tin ua tio n w o m en m en w it h o w n ch ild re n c hi ld le ss to ta l w it h o w n ch ild re n c hi ld le ss to ta l % m un ic ip al u rb an is at io n le ve la m o d er at el y to v er y st ro ng ly u rb an is ed 71 85 78 64 83 77 n o t o r h ar d ly u rb an is ed 29 15 22 36 17 23 % p ar tn er c h ar ac te ri st ic s av ai la b ili ty a k n o w n 90 82 86 90 83 86 u nk n o w n 10 18 14 10 17 14 % p ar tn er h as o w n ch ild re n a ye s 67 26 48 71 22 40 n o 33 74 52 29 78 60 p ar tn er ’s m ea n ag ea 50 37 44 51 34 40 % p ar tn er ’s le ve l o f e d u ca tio n a s ec o n d ar y o r le ss 62 53 58 74 55 62 te rt ia ry 38 47 42 26 45 38 % p ar tn er ’s e m p lo ym en t s ta tu sa e m p lo ye d 72 79 75 61 78 72 o th er 28 21 25 39 22 28 u ni t o f an al ys is : a p er so nm o nt hs ; b in d iv id ua ls – s o m e in d iv id ua ls c o nt ri b ut e w ith b o th a c hi ld le ss p ar tn er sh ip s p el l a nd a s p el l a s a p ar en t; c p ar tn er sh ip s p el ls . s o ur ce : n k p s w av es 1 -4 from living apart to living together • 127 more, the data were truncated after partnership durations of more than 100 months, because the population at risk and the number actually starting co-residence was minimal after this duration. at the end of observation, only a small minority of our population was still living apart together – most had either entered co-residence or separated (see table 1). our analyses covered 27,606 person-months in 1,311 lat partnerships of 1,022 men and women and 572 transitions into co-residence (see the fi rst rows of table 1). the descriptive statistics in table 1 show that, especially among women, individuals with own children made up a signifi cant share of those in lat partnerships (in line with previous studies based on other data and countries: reimondos et al. 2011; upton-davis 2012). 3.2 measures the dependent variable was whether or not a transition from lat to co-residence occurred. no distinction was made between married and unmarried unions because only a few transitions from lat to marriage occurred (n=31 among women and n=28 among men). the key independent variable was a combination of parenthood status and union history, and was updated monthly. respondents were classifi ed as one of the following: never in a union and childless, ever in a union and childless,3 with out-of-union children, separated with children, or widowed with children (only living biological or adopted children were taken into account). although prior research has shown the relevance of distinguishing between co-resident, part-time resident, and non-resident children (e.g. goldscheider/sassler 2006), the small sample size did not allow for such distinctions. the following time-varying independent variables were updated at each wave (but treated as constant between interview waves): educational attainment (0 = up to secondary education or 1 = tertiary education), employed (0) or not employed (1), and residence in a moderately to strongly urbanised (1) or less urbanised (0) municipality. the time-varying control variables, which were updated monthly, are age and duration of the partnership. in addition, we accounted for whether the partners had own children, as well as for the age, educational attainment, and employment status of the partners. see table 1 for the distribution of these variables in the sample as a whole, and by parenthood status. information about the partners’ socio-demographic characteristics was frequently missing. for example, this information was not recorded when a partnership started and ended between waves, when the partnership status was corrected during a later interview, or was missing at random. when the partner information was missing in one wave but available for the same partner in the previous or the next wave, we resorted to the nearest record available. when the age of the partner was missing, it was imputed using the median partner’s age of the women or the 3 given the small number of widowed childless women, it was not possible to distinguish these women from separated childless women. • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk128 men with the same parenthood status and union history. at this point, a remaining 10 percent of person-months had missing values for the partner’s employment status and educational attainment, and 12 percent of person-months had missing values for the partner’s parenthood status (levels were the same for women and men). a dummy variable “partner characteristics unknown" indicates such cases. see appendix 1 for a report on the coding of partnership status, partnership duration, and parenthood status. 3.3 methods kaplan-meier survival analysis was used for the visualisation of the timing of transitions from lat to co-residence. next, discrete-time event-history analysis was performed with the transition from lat to co-residence as dependent variable, employing a logistic regression of person-months (yamaguchi 1991). to adjust for the possible clustering of partnerships within individuals, we calculated robust standard errors. similar analyses were conducted for our sample of women and men separately. 4 results 4.1 descriptive statistics figure 1 shows the estimated proportion of women and men in lat over time, and visualises the differences between those with and without own children in combination with different union histories in terms of the timing of their transition to coresidence. the fi gure shows that women and men with own children were slower to enter co-residence with their lat partner than those who are childless. after two years in the partnership, only 11 percent of widowed women with children, 18 percent of women with out-of-union children, and 26 percent of separated women with children were estimated to have entered co-residence. it should be noted, however, that the numbers of widowed mothers (n=30) and of mothers with out-of-union children (n=14) were small. in comparison, 32 percent of childless women who were never in a union and 44 percent of childless women who were ever in a union had entered co-residence by that point in time. although similar overall patterns are observed for men, the level of diversity among men was lower. however, we still fi nd that those with own children were the slowest to enter co-residence. the estimates show that after two years, 29 percent of widowed and separated men with children were estimated to have entered co-residence, compared with 36 percent of childless men who had never been in a union and 44 percent of childless men who had been in a union before. it should be noted here as well that the number of widowers was small (n=26). from living apart to living together • 129 fig. 1: kaplan-meier estimates of the timing of the transition from lat to coresidence over time, by parenthood status and union history 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 20 40 60 80 100 partnership duration (months) never in union and childless ever in union and childless separated with children widowed with children out-of-union children 0 proportion still lat women 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 20 40 60 80 100 partnership duration (months) 0 proportion still lat men source: nkps waves 1-4 • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk130 4.2 multivariate analyses: the role of own children the results from discrete-time event-history analysis (see table 2) largely confi rm the differences shown in figure 1, and support our expectation based on protection of family life, dyadic power, and costs of co-residence for women. separated women with children were estimated to be 35 percent ((1-0.645)*100 percent) less likely to enter co-residence with their lat partner than childless women who were ever in a union; this difference was statistically signifi cant (p=0.011). widowed women with children (eb=0.423, p=0.087) and women with out-of-union children (eb=0.366, p=0.108) were estimated to be even less likely to start co-residence than childless women who were previously in a union. however, these differences were not or only marginally statistically signifi cant, probably due to the small sample sizes of these categories. women men eb b p eb b p parenthood status and union history (ref. ever in union and childless) never in union and childless 0.792 -0.234 0.112 0.814 -0.206 0.219 separated with children 0.645** -0.439 0.011 0.841 -0.173 0.444 widowed with children 0.423* -0.860 0.087 1.812 0.595 0.161 out-of-union children 0.366 -1.004 0.108 n.a. n.a. n.a. partnership duration (ref. 10-<25 months) <10 months 0.620*** -0.478 0.001 0.696** -0.362 0.026 25-<50 months 0.667** -0.405 0.011 0.829 -0.187 0.285 50+ months 0.668** -0.403 0.026 0.641* -0.445 0.060 age (ref. 35-44) 18-24 0.819 -0.200 0.470 0.863 -0.148 0.639 25-34 1.661*** 0.508 0.006 1.479* 0.392 0.052 45-54 0.772 -0.258 0.202 0.789 -0.237 0.298 55-64 0.766 -0.266 0.465 0.787 -0.240 0.498 65+ 0.182 -1.703 0.110 0.742 -0.299 0.620 tertiary education 0.955 -0.046 0.711 1.166 0.153 0.293 not employed 0.765* -0.268 0.092 0.611** -0.492 0.014 urban residential environment 0.861 -0.150 0.295 0.865 -0.145 0.425 partner characteristics unknown 0.409*** -0.894 0.001 0.346*** -1.061 0.000 partner has own children 0.900 -0.105 0.530 0.812 -0.208 0.299 partner’s age 0.978** -0.022 0.023 0.976** -0.025 0.032 partner tertiary education 1.008 0.008 0.947 0.927 -0.076 0.593 partner not employed 0.964 -0.036 0.842 0.846 -0.168 0.346 tab. 2: transition from lat to co-residence. logistic regression (odds ratios, coeffi cients, p-values) * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 source: nkps waves 1-4 from living apart to living together • 131 the regression results for men suggest that, in line with what we found for women, men who were separated with children may be less likely to start co-residence than childless men who had previously been in a union (eb=0.841, p=0.444). however, the estimated effect is smaller than it is for women and the coeffi cient does not reach statistical signifi cance (please note that we use the term "effect" as a convenient shorthand for statistical associations, without necessarily implying causality). in contrast to their female counterparts, widowed men with children were estimated to be 1.8 times more likely to start co-residence than childless men who were previously in a union (eb=1.812, p=0.161). despite the large effect, this difference was not statistically signifi cant, which is likely because of the small number of widowed men with children (n=26). thus, although the data do not provide the statistical power to draw any fi rm conclusions, our fi ndings do suggest a gradient between different categories of parenthood status and union history. the results from a regression model on pooled data for men and women including an interaction term between sex and parenthood status/union history partly confi rm our expectation on gender differences in the effects of having own children (see table 3). the gender difference in the impact of being widowed with children, as opposed to being childless and previously in a union, which was found in the separate analyses for men and women, is convincingly confi rmed by the interaction model (eb=4.465, p=0.010). the results further provide some indication that being separated with children may indeed have a smaller negative effect for men than for women (eb=1.308, p=0.291). the bivariate and multivariate fi ndings point in different directions. whereas the kaplan-meier estimates suggest that widowed mothers were less likely than women with out-of-union children to enter co-residence, the regression results suggest the tab. 3: transition from lat to co-residence. logistic regression, model with interaction term (odds ratios, coeffi cients, p-values) eb b p parenthood status and union history (ref. ever in union and childless) never in union and childless 0.810 -0.211 0.130 separated with children 0.648** -0.433 0.009 widowed with children 0.435* -0.833 0.083 out-of-union children 0.375 -0.982 0.113 man 0.910 -0.094 0.580 interaction term never in union and childless * man 0.989 -0.011 0.956 separated with children * man 1.308 0.269 0.291 widowed with children * man 4.465** 1.496 0.010 * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 notes: same control variables as in table 2, results not shown. no parameter estimated for men with out-of-union children because the category is empty. source: nkps waves 1-4 • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk132 opposite. stepwise modelling (not shown) indicated that compositional differences in terms of age and employment status explain these contradictory fi ndings: widowed mothers were older and less often employed, and were therefore found less likely to enter co-residence than women with out-of-union children in the kaplanmeier analysis. the kaplan-meier results for men indicated that those who were widowed transitioned to co-residence more slowly than those who were childless and were previously in a union. however, after controlling for the ages of the men and their partners in the regression model, widowed men in fact appear more likely to enter co-residence than any other category in the parenthood status and union history variable. based on our analyses, we cannot draw fi rm conclusions about differences between childless persons with and without prior union experience. the kaplanmeier estimates do however suggest that for shorter partnership durations, those childless persons who were previously in a union are quicker to enter co-residence than those who were not, but that this pattern reverses at longer partnership durations (fig. 1). the regression results show a moderately negative but non-signifi cant effect of being childless and without prior union experiences (women: eb=0.792, p=0.112; men: eb=0.814, p=0.219). the results show little evidence of an effect of the partner having own children, although the coeffi cients point in the expected negative direction (women: eß=0.900, p=0.530; men: eß=0.812, p=0.299). to gain a better understanding of the role of having own children for each partner, we estimated an additional model that investigated whether the likelihood of starting co-residence differed depending on whether only the female partner, only the male partner, both partners, or neither of the partners had own children (not in table; results available upon request from fi rst author). the likelihood of women starting co-residence was not found to be associated with the male partner having own children. furthermore, women who had children and whose partner had own children as well were not found to be signifi cantly more or less likely to start co-residence than women who had own children but whose partner did not (eb=0.948, p=0.821). the likelihood of men starting coresidence was shown to be 45 percent lower when both partners, rather than only the male partner, had own children (eb=0.551, p=0.044). however, whether only the male partner, only the female partner, or both partners had children as opposed to neither partner was not found to make a signifi cant difference in men’s likelihood of entering co-residence. thus, we did not replicate previous fi ndings that the effect of having own children on the likelihood of starting co-residence depended on whether the partner also had children (bernhardt/goldscheider 2002; goldscheider/ sassler 2006). to test whether the effects of having own children on the likelihood of transitioning to co-residence differed between parents of minor and adult children, we ran a model on a sample of parents only (see appendix 2, table a1). mothers whose youngest child was aged 22 or older were estimated to be almost twice as likely to enter co-residence with their lat partner as mothers whose youngest child was aged 10–21 (eb=1.970, p=0.140). given the large effect, the non-signifi cance is likely due to the small sample. for women, children’s age is a reasonable indicator of from living apart to living together • 133 their residence status, given that the vast majority of minor children live with their mothers and it is almost exclusively older children who are non-resident. in line with previous fi ndings by ivanova et al. (2013), our result suggests that when children are older and thus likely to have left the parental home, they matter less for their mother’s partnership choices. of course, the age of the mother partly captures this effect in the main analysis, as her age and that of her children are correlated. the number of children (1 or 2+) and whether the youngest child was under age 22 or under age 10 was not found to make a difference; effects were very small and p-values very large. for fathers, the age of the youngest child (aged 22 or older compared to aged 10-21) was less strongly associated with the transition to co-residence than for mothers (eb=1.305, p=0.572). most fathers’ children are non-resident, regardless of their age. we refer to appendix 2, table a2 for the mean age of the individual and of the youngest child as well as the average number of children, for each group of union history and parenthood status. as one would expect, widowed fathers and mothers are on average about 10-15 years older than their separated counterparts, and so are their children. hardly any difference in the average number of children is found between respondents with different union histories and parenthood statuses. 4.3 control variables we further observe that the likelihood of entering co-residence was strongly associated with the duration of the partnership, and was highest between 10 and 25 months after couple formation (table 2). this fi nding corresponds with the results found by krapf (2017) for germany. as expected, the transition to co-residence was shown to be age-graded. this relationship followed an inverse u-shape, with women and men aged 25-34 being the most likely to make the transition, and those aged 65+ being the least likely. for the age of the partner, we found a modest but signifi cant negative effect (women: eb=0.978, p=0.023; men: eb=0.976, p=0.032). the partner’s age squared made no signifi cant contribution to the model, and using a categorical specifi cation for the partner’s age also yielded no signifi cant results. individuals who were not employed were shown to be less likely to start co-residence than those who were employed (women: eb=0.752, p=0.066; men: eb=0.611, p=0.014). furthermore, we found that when the partner’s information was unknown, the likelihood of starting co-residence was signifi cantly lower. the other control variables for both women/men and their partners were not found to have any sizeable or signifi cant association with the likelihood of starting co-residence. 5 discussion and conclusion we studied the associations between having own children and the likelihood of entering co-residence with a lat partner for both women and men. getting insight into these patterns is crucial given the large and increasing number of single parents in many countries, and the fact that many of these parents will enter a new partnership. this paper contributes to the literature by focusing on individuals in • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk134 lat relationships, which is a common partnership type among women and men with own children. furthermore, we provide in-depth analyses of how parenthood status and union history are associated with the likelihood of transitioning from lat to a co-residential union. it should be noted that we do not make any causal claims, even though in our discussion of the results we sometimes use the term "effect" for readability. the kaplan-meier survival analysis and event-history analysis suggested that women with own children may be less likely to make the transition from living apart to living together with a partner than childless women with prior union experience are. if they did so at all, it took them a relatively long time. this fi nding seems to be in line with the protection of family life argument, which states that mothers may choose to have a new partner, but also want to protect their children from any possible negative effects of the partnership. the results may also refl ect the perceived additional costs of co-residence and the dyadic power advantage of the male partners. our fi ndings echo those of krapf (2017), régnier-loilier (2016) and wagner et al. (2019) for germany and france. it appears that not just the presence of children, but the event at the onset of single motherhood (separation, widowhood, or out-of-union childbearing) is associated with women’s likelihood of transitioning to co-residence. the results suggest that separated mothers are somewhat more likely to start co-residence than widowed mothers. mothers who had children outside of a union before the current partnership had the lowest estimated likelihood of making a transition. this fi nding may indicate that these women were less interested than the other mothers in being in a co-residential partnership. we must note, however, that the differences between mothers with different pathways into single motherhood are not statistically signifi cant. this could be due to our small sample, and calls for future studies including this information to replicate our work. bastin’s (2019) study also illustrated the relevance of pathways into single motherhood for partnership and household formation. her fi nding that single mothers who were unpartnered at the time of birth had a relatively high risk of moving in with a lat partner seems contrary to our fi nding at fi rst. however, being unpartnered is not the same as being out-of-union. the category single mothers with out-of-union children in our study includes women who had a child within a prior lat partnership. this history of living apart from a partner even in the situation of having children together might indicate a particularly strong preference for lat. the example demonstrates the importance of clear defi nitions and terminology in research. using qualitative methods, the partnership preferences of these women having children without a steady or a co-residential partner could be further explored. the results for men were by and large similar to those for women, but did not always reach statistical signifi cance. our fi ndings seem to suggest that men who are separated with children may be less likely to start co-residence than childless men who have also been in a union before; this negative association seems to be smaller for men than for women. widowhood may have a different meaning for men and women, in that this pathway was positively associated with the likelihood of entering co-residence for men, and negatively for women. these fi ndings suggest from living apart to living together • 135 that, similar to what was found in previous studies (e.g. ivanova et al. 2013), having own children matters less in the union formation processes of men than of women. however, the current study could not provide clear evidence for this, due to limited statistical power. our fi nding that women with own children seem less likely to transition from lat to co-residence than their childless counterparts with prior union experience may signify a path of relatively low family stability for themselves and their children, as lat partnerships are generally less stable than co-residential partnerships (asendorpf 2008). family instability has been shown to be associated with negative outcomes for children’s well-being (e.g. osborne/mclanahan 2007). having a new partner is less intrusive for children when the partner does not live in the same household. thus, by living apart from her partner, the relationship between the mother and her child is managed and protected (levin 2004). it would be interesting for future studies to investigate what happens to these mothers when their children have reached adulthood and are no longer living with them. our additional analyses have suggested that there were some differences by the age of the child, but we could not analyse this issue in depth. it may, however, be relevant to learn more about how these mothers catch up and start new or different types of partner relationships later in life, and how these relationships are associated with their wellbeing, and that of their children. while the nkps provided rich data on partnership and fertility histories for our event-history analysis, the desire for a detailed specifi cation of parenthood status and union history resulted in our study having limited statistical power. in this light, we emphasise that non-signifi cant fi ndings must be interpreted with caution and that they can neither be taken as conclusive support for the substantive hypothesis, nor as evidence that the null hypothesis is true. it would be useful to replicate and further develop this exploration using other large datasets or cross-national data collections, such as the generations and gender survey. a larger sample would also allow for a distinction between the transition to cohabitation and the transition to marriage. a further limitation of our data was that they did not allow us to determine whether parents were (re-)entering a relationship with the father or the mother of their children, which could have advanced the transition to co-residence. another limitation is that co-resident children could not be distinguished from non-resident children and part-time resident children. although this information is recorded in the data, we could not use it because of small numbers. with a larger sample and more detailed information on the timing of the start and end of partnerships, it might also be possible to explore how some partnerships start immediately upon the ending of a previous partnership, or even earlier. it would be interesting to investigate the transition from singlehood to a lat partnership, or directly to a co-residential partnership, in further research on the effect of parenthood on union formation. future research could also explore the underlying mechanisms that explain the effect of having own children on union formation and union transitions, for example through in-depth interviews. as with most survey data, we were not able to test these mechanisms using nkps data. despite these limitations and the need for further research, our results suggest that • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk136 individuals’ parenthood and union histories play a part in the ways in which their subsequent partnerships develop, and that there are gender differences in these patterns. in times of increasingly complex and pluriform families, with many men, women, fathers, and mothers experiencing the break-up of a union at least once, living apart together may well offer an attractive alternative to singlehood, cohabitation, and marriage for a growing number of people. future studies should therefore go beyond the standard family typologies to better capture the experiences of people who are in lat partnerships. acknowledgements we thank prof. dr. alessandra de rose for her feedback at the early stages of this paper, as a thesis supervisor of roselinde van der wiel during the european doctoral school of demography. moreover, we thank miriam hils and the language editors of cpos for valuable language editing. the research for this 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(eds.): decent working time – new trends, new issues. geneva: international labour offi ce: 235-262. date of submission: 03.07.2019 date of acceptance: 03.01.2020 roselinde van der wiel (), prof. dr. clara. h. mulder. population research centre, faculty of spatial sciences, university of groningen. groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: r.van.der.wiel@rug.nl, c.h.mulder@rug.nl url: https://www.rug.nl/staff/r.van.der.wiel/ https://www.rug.nl/staff/c.h.mulder/ prof. dr. helga a.g. de valk. netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi)/ knaw/university of groningen. the hague, the netherlands. e-mail: valk@nidi.nl url: https://nidi.nl/en/employees/helga-de-valk/ https://www.rug.nl/staff/h.a.g.de.valk/ from living apart to living together • 141 appendix 1: coding of partnership status, partnership duration, and motherhood status an individual’s partnership status was updated the month after a transition occurred; and an individual’s motherhood status was updated the same month if a child was born, or the next month if a child had died. if a child was born within a partnership, it was assumed that the partner was the other parent. the duration of the partnership was measured in months and categorised. for partnerships that started prior to wave one, only the start year was recorded, and not the month. these partnerships were assumed to start mid-year. in a small number of cases, the start time of the partnership was unknown. if this was the case for partnerships that existed in wave one, the partnership duration was set to the median duration of other cases who were in a lat partnership at wave one. for others, the partnership status change was assumed to occur in the middle month between the two waves. of the handful of respondents who reported having entered a new partnership before ending the previous one, the new partnership was given precedence. only the year and not the month of the birth or death of each child was recorded. we assumed that the impact of having a child was present the whole year regardless of the exact time of birth or death, and coded the presence of children as if the births took place in january, and the deaths took place in december. the only exception was for children who were born after the fi rst interview but in the same year as the interview, who were assigned the month of birth following the month of the interview. if a respondent indicated that they did not know whether their child was still alive, the child was disregarded in the coding of parenthood status, as it was deemed unlikely that the child infl uenced the person’s partnership choices. it was not possible to identify re-partnering with the other parent of a child. appendix 2: additional analyses women men eb b p eb b p parenthood status and union history (ref. separated with children) widowed with children 0.536 -0.623 0.204 2.002* 0.694 0.095 out-of-union children 0.504 -0.684 0.277 n.a. n.a. n.a. age of youngest child (ref. age 10-21) age <10 0.922 -0.082 0.779 0.598 -0.514 0.331 22 or older 1.970 0.678 0.140 1.305 0.266 0.572 two or more children 1.004 0.004 0.987 1.168 0.155 0.730 tab. a1: transition from lat to co-residence among those with own children. logistic regression (odds ratios, coeffi cients, p-values) * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 source: nkps waves 1-4 • roselinde van der wiel, clara. h. mulder, helga a.g. de valk142 tab. a2: additional descriptive statistics, means of person-months never in union ever in union separated widowed with out-of-union and childless and childless with children children children women age 29 41 47 56 44 age youngest child n.a. n.a. 17 30 13 number of children n.a. n.a. 2.0 2.0 2.0 men age 32 43 52 66 age youngest child n.a. n.a. 19 34 number of children n.a. n.a. 2.1 2.8 source: nkps waves 1-4 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies: community norms vs. individual views survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies: community norms vs. individual views konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov abstract: the paper deals with a problem regularly faced by survey studies of patriarchal communities, i.e. communities with a high authority of senior generations and a low level of women’s autonomy. in such communities, female respondents might give untruthful answers to survey questions in order to fi t norms which are treated as obligatory or highly desirable in the community. the situation causes a "community bias" in survey results. the task of the paper is to show using the example of a survey concerning reproductive behaviour that the expected "community bias" can indeed occur in patriarchal communities. for this purpose, we suggest a relatively simple method of discovering "community bias" and apply this method to the results of a qualitative survey which we conducted in the rural part of the north caucasus, a region of russia where patriarchal social norms are quite strong. a characteristic of the north caucasus which is important for our study is that its village communities, inhabited mainly by muslims, differ considerably in the degree to which patriarchal norms are preserved there. the central idea of our method is to study the signifi cance of community parameters of patriarchy for individual answers to survey questions. community parameters are calculated as averages of the individual parameters of women interviewed in the same village community. multi-level regression models are run for both the actual and the desired number of children, which allow us to distinguish between individual and community effects. in agreement with the "community bias" hypothesis, community characteristics are found to be signifi cant for answers on desired, but not on actual, fertility. based on this result, some tasks for future research of the "community bias" effect on answers to survey questions concerning reproductive behaviour are suggested. keywords: ethnic minorities · fertility · desired fertility · surveys · social pressure · rural communities comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 201-228 (date of release: 20.07.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-15en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-15en2 • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov202 1 introduction the paper deals with the survey behaviour of respondents to demographic surveys undertaken in communities with strong patriarchal family norms. by patriarchy, following, lerch (2013), szołtysek et al. (2017), we mean strict asymmetries of gender and generation roles in a family, which support the subordinate position of women and the empowerment of elder generations over younger generations (see section 2.1 for a more detailed treatment of the concept of patriarchy). in patriarchal communities, there are special reasons to assume that respondents to a survey will avoid expressing attitudes to some family matters if their attitudes fail to align with those prevailing in the community to which they belong. this tendency will be called "community bias" in this paper (see krumpal 2013 for a general overview on literature on social desirability and community bias in answering survey questions, milewski and otto 2017 for social desirability of survey behaviour of international migrants, and section 2.1 for further details on this concept). we give empirical evidence that "community bias" is indeed observed in survey answers at least to one demographically important question, which concerns women’s desired fertility. although no studies concentrating on the relation between patriarchy and "community bias" are known to us, there are special reasons to expect this bias in patriarchal communities. it has been shown that if the power of the elderly is present in a community, family behaviour is one of the most probable objects of infl uence of elder generations, so that adherence to behaviour patterns imposed by elders becomes a kind of social duty (mason 2001; kaser 2008). in this context, it may be socially undesirable for a respondent to report facts of his/her family life or his/her attitudes to family issues when they contradict patterns approved by elders. also, strict gender hierarchies and the subordinate position of women in patriarchal communities may put special constraints on the survey behaviour of women, making it especially diffi cult for them to give answers which do not fi t attitudes and values accepted in the community. a considerable number of studies have shown that strong generation and gender asymmetries of power can infl uence actual fertility behaviour, being related to a higher number of children or the mother’s younger age at birth (cf. dyson/moore 1983 and malhotra et al. 1995 for india, lerch 2013 for albania, dommaraju/agadjanian 2008 for some countries of central asia, and some others). if patriarchal norms in a community can be strong enough to infl uence actual family behaviour, it is quite natural also to expect that they can prevent a respondent to a survey from reporting something that does not align with those norms. in this case respondents may be caused to give untruthful answers. our paper attempts to check this expectation. we study signifi cance of community parameters of patriarchy for individual answers to survey questions. expressed in most general terms, the central idea behind our analysis is that the signifi cance of community parameters is an indicator of possible "community bias". for our study, we have chosen a society where the level of patriarchy has been reported by existing studies to differ from one village community to another. as an example of a region with such variety, we take the rural part of the north caucasus, an area of russia mainly inhabited by indigenous peoples of muslim origin (see secsurvey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 203 tion 2.2 for some characteristics of that region). we analyse the results of a survey of women of reproductive age which we conducted in this area in 2016. the analysis has shown a signifi cant positive relation of community patriarchy to desired fertility and a weaker relation to actual fertility. we give reasons why this difference between desired and actual fertility supports the view that "community" bias takes place during the survey. the paper is organised as follows. in section 2.1, the concept of social desirability for survey answers is outlined. in this section, we also discuss the parameters which we use as indicators of patriarchy of a community, and explain why we expect that respondents in patriarchal communities are likely to give untruthful answers regarding desired fertility. in section 2.2, we introduce the area in which our study was undertaken. in section 3, we present our hypotheses, section 4 contains data and a method description, and section 5 demonstrates the results of the models. section 6 discusses the results and suggests some goals for future research. 2 background 2.1 theoretical and methodological assumptions a) sensitivity of survey questions the sensitivity of a survey question which can lead to a bias in survey results can originate from different sources. tourangeau and yan (2007) indicate three major sources of sensitivity. first, a question can be sensitive when it touches upon items which are too private or taboo in the respondent’s culture (such questions are also termed "intrusive"). in the case of "intrusive" questions, it is expected that the proportion of respondents who refuse to answer them is too high and therefore the subgroup of those providing an answer is too "selective" to be representative of the whole population. second, a question can be sensitive due to a "threat of disclosure". in that case, the respondent acknowledges the risk that a truthful answer to a question concerning some aspect of his/her private life could become known to somebody outside the survey setting and this could cause harm, such as job loss, family upset or even prosecution. third, a question can be sensitive when a respondent perceives a particular answer to the question as socially desirable, and some other answer(s) as socially undesirable. a socially undesirable answer reports some attitude or behaviour of a respondent which violates certain norms existing in the society. due to this violation, a respondent may either refuse to answer or give an untruthful answer when the truthful one is considered to be socially undesirable. discussing the concept of social desirability, randall and fernandes (1991) show that two sub-dimensions of this concept can be distinguished. one sub-dimension refers to social desirability as a stable personality characteristic, such as a constant need of a person for social approval and impression management. the second subdimension refers to social desirability as an item characteristic, considering various activities or attitudes to be socially undesirable for someone in a society. in other • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov204 words, the former sub-dimension concerns a way of regular survey behaviour of respondents, whereas the latter concerns behaviour expected from a potentially broad number of respondents answering only certain questions. another important expectation regarding social desirability is that the tendency to give socially desirable responses may vary across cultural orientations. it is more probable in collectivistic cultures, as they emphasise good relationships with other group members and thus strengthen the risks of a negative outcome of reporting a socially undesired attitude (lalwani et al. 2006). b) the concept of patriarchy and its measurement following szołtysek et al. (2017) and lerch (2013) to a large extent, we take two characteristics – unequal gender relations and power of senior generations – as the key characteristics of a patriarchal organisation of a society.1 as indicators of gender hierarchies in a society, parameters can be considered which show to what extent women’s activities outside the family and household are restricted by social norms. such parameters are often considered among indicators of women’s autonomy in a society (morgan et al. 2002; agarwala/lynch 2006). of a broad range of indicators of women’s autonomy suggested in the aforementioned studies, in the present study we use parameters concerning women’s studies after graduating from a secondary school and having a job outside the household. both obtaining post-school education and taking a job are not expected to be common in a society in which a strict gender hierarchy that does not support women’s extra-family activities is active.2 therefore, despite the fact that women’s autonomy and patriarchy are quite separate concepts in current sociological literature, restriction on women’s access to education and work outside the household are obvious indicators of gender asymmetries and therefore also of patriarchy under the defi nition above. it should be noted that the two parameters which we use are by far not the only ones suggested for detecting gender hierarchies. thus, morgan et al. (2002) suggest a much broader list of indicators of what they call woman’s autonomy. these indicators cover several aspects of a (married) woman’s position in her family, including freedom of physical movement without her husband’s permission, a wife’s say in economic decisions in the family, and control upon the woman exercised by her 1 in malhotra et al. (1995) patrilineal transmission of status and property is acknowledged as another characteristic of patriarchy. we do not discuss this in the present study, nor do we discuss one other characteristic suggested by szołtysek et al. (2017), namely son preference. anthropological studies mentioned in section 2.2 report patrilineal transmission as almost ubiquitous in the regions under study, with the result that this parameter was not expected to produce signifi cant community differences. as far as son preference is concerned, measuring its "actual" level was hardly possible in our study, as it would probably require data on sex selectivity in abortions, which is not available for village communities of the north caucasus. 2 in some societies even a lower level of women’s education can be considered as a violation of patriarchal norms. we consider as such only education continued after secondary school because in the society we are dealing with in our study, completing secondary school is almost obligatory (see section 2.2). survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 205 husband. however, we use the education and labour parameters as the most "objective" ones, as the other parameters mentioned may be more dependent upon the woman’s own assessment of her situation in the family and can thus themselves be biased. as far as the generational hierarchies are concerned, we use arranged marriage as their key indicator. it has been argued in many studies that parental arrangement of marriage, or at least active parental involvement in children’s marriage, is characteristic of societies where senior generations are empowered by a high degree of control over younger generations. specifi cally, many scholars relate arranged marriage to patriarchy in muslim societies (see e.g. moghadam 2004; cohen/savaya 2003). although it is widely assumed that arranged marriage will be gradually abandoned in the process of social modernisation, a number of studies demonstrate that arranged marriage may persist in some societies, even despite urbanisation and loss of the traditional economy (see bekker et al. 1996 for muslim migrants in the netherlands and zang 2008 for ethnic uyghurs in a chinese city). an important reservation should be made here that we do not treat arranged marriage as an obligatory characteristic of patriarchy. some recent studies have shown that frequency of arranged marriages may be related to rather complex conditions in different muslim societies (see hamel et al. 2012; milewski/huschek 2015; van zantvliet et al. 2014). however, the complex distribution of arranged marriages across societies does not preclude its treatment as an indicator of empowerment of elder generations in those contexts where arranged marriage is present. also, it must be noted that at least for some societies where arranged marriage has been studied, it has been shown that the arrangement of a marriage is more typical of parents of young women than of men (zang 2008 for uyghurs). given this, arranged marriage can be an indicator not only of generational hierarchies but also of gender hierarchies. however, even when it is restricted to marrying women, it signals authority of senior generations for whom taking decisions for their daughters is culturally acceptable. in our study, we therefore use three indicators of patriarchy: (1) low acceptability for women to get an education beyond a level which is considered obligatory; (2) low acceptability for women to have a job; (3) high acceptability of arranged marriages. c) measurements of community patriarchy since our study concerns respondents’ behaviour in patriarchal communities, we need some procedure to measure community patriarchy. the procedure we suggest seems to be the most straightforward one, as it treats indicators of community patriarchy as proportions of respondents with a given characteristic in a community. given the set of patriarchy indicators introduced above, this would be the proportion of women who have not studied after graduating from secondary school, the proportion of women not working outside the household, and the proportion of women whose marriage was arranged. note that average characteristics of some communities or areas have been applied as explanatory parameters in several stud• konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov206 ies dealing with the relation between family organisation and fertility. thus, lerch (2013) considers some municipally specifi c indicators for albania, including women’s average age at marriage and percentages of economically active women in relation to fertility. malhotra et al. (1995) study the relation between average patriarchy parameters and total fertility rates for regions of india. balk (1994) considers the relation between a woman’s fertility and the average of some parameters of women’s status calculated for the village that she comes from. to calculate community parameters in the proposed way, we need to defi ne the limits of communities. given that our survey was undertaken only in the rural part of the north caucasus, we will consider each rural settlement (village) covered by the survey as a separate community. this seems justifi ed because, as will be pointed out in section 2.2, in the region under study rural settlements, even close to one another geographically, may differ from one another in family norms. d) desired fertility: the concept and its problems in our study we follow the well-known distinction between desired and intended fertility. by desired fertility, following mccleland (1983), we understand “the number of children parents would have if there were no subjective or economic problems involved in regulating fertility”. under intended fertility we understand a decision to have a certain number of births. in the infl uential traits – desire – intentions – behaviour theoretical framework of reproduction (miller 2011), the desire and intentions correspond to different "steps" of the sequential process that begins from non-conscious motivational dispositions (traits) and ends up with actual fertility behaviour. problems with distinguishing between desired and intended fertility in survey data are often acknowledged. for example, hayford and agadjanian (2012) point out that “demographic surveys rarely collect prospective measures of both intentions and desires and frequently use ‘intentions’ as a general term to refer to both concepts” (see also kodzi et al. 2010). in the survey designed for our study, the question of desired fertility was put in a way which made it as separate as possible from the reproductive intentions of respondents, with respondents being asked about the number of children they "generally would like to have" (rather than "plans to have", "agreed to have with the spouse"). in this way an attempt was made to disconnect the question from any practical context and inquire about the number of children the respondent would consider the best one based on values and attitudes rather than relevant circumstances. studies of survey answers about desired fertility have shown that they tend to change over time for the same respondent depending upon age and current number of children (see e.g. williams/abma 2000). in our analysis below, we at least partly deal with this issue by controlling for age and parity of respondents. another important observation on survey answers regarding desired fertility is that desired fertility stated by a woman in a survey can often have a certain dependency on her husband’s views on reproduction, especially in male-dominated cultures (see e.g. oyediran 2006). since only female respondents were involved in our survey, we could not directly control for potential spousal infl uence upon a woman’s desired survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 207 fertility. in this way, our study is limited in that it cannot discover possible "family internal" mechanisms affecting women’s answers on desired fertility. we limit our study to the relation of those answers to community parameters and leave open the question about possible ways in which this relation is implemented at "family internal" level (e.g. whether it is the case that fertility views dominant in a community infl uence women’s survey answers on desired fertility more through their husbands or more in a direct way). 2.2 regional characteristics we have chosen the north caucasus, a region in the southern part of russia bordering with azerbaijan and georgia, for a fi eld study assessing the "community bias" in answers to sensitive questions in a patriarchal society. the north caucasus comprises seven republics within russia, situated to the north of the caucasus mountain chain between the black sea and the caspian lake. its total population is about seven million people, the largest republic in terms of population being daghestan, situated in the most eastern part of the north caucasus, and the smallest republic being adyghea in the most western part of north caucasus. most of the republics are inhabited both by ethnic russians and indigenous local peoples, but the proportion between the former and the latter varies from one republic to the other, ranging from 2 percent of ethnic russians in the republics of chechnya and ingushetia to 67 percent in the republic of adyghea according to the 2010 russian population census. however, indigenous peoples form the majority in all the republics of north caucasus except adyghea. in post-soviet times, the north caucasus has experienced a deep economic crisis and a serious political destabilisation which included a rise of inter-ethnic violence and a long-lasting war in chechnya. beginning in the 2000s, there has been some revival of the local economy, based mainly on subsidies from the russian federal budget, and the political situation appears to have quietened. however, the population of the north caucasus still has lower average incomes than the population of russia as a whole, and registered unemployment in the republics of the north caucasus is considerably higher than in the rest of the country (zubarevich 2011). indigenous peoples of the north caucasus are mostly muslims (apart from ossetians who make up 64.5 percent of the overall approx. 700,000 residents of the republic of north ossetia according to the 2010 russian population census; among these people there is a considerable proportion of christians, more than 50 percent according to some assessments; see filatov/lunkin 2002 for an overview of the religious situation in the north caucasus). local muslim peoples adopted the islamic religion at different historical points between the 10th and 19th centuries. almost only sunni islam is present in the region. following atheistic pressure in the time of the ussr (1930s – early 1980s), a revival of islam has been observed in the north caucasus since the 1990s, when freedom of religion “returned”. although the religious revival took place in all the republics, its intensity was remarkably higher in the north-east caucasus (republics of daghestan, chechnya and ingushetia) com• konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov208 pared to the north-west caucasus (republics of north ossetia, kabardino-balkaria, karachay-cherkessia and adyghea). one possible reason for these contrasts is that in the north-east caucasus the islamic tradition had a longer pre-soviet history and was to some extent preserved "underground" during soviet times. the intensive islamisation of the north-east caucasus was indicated by an increase in the proportion of people observing islamic norms and by a temporary revival of religious institutions such as informal sharia courts (kazenin 2017). at the same time, differences in religiosity are currently observed not just between republics but also between communities in the same republic. for example, it is quite common that rural settlements, even though geographically close to one another, differ considerably in the proportion of residents who attend the mosque and in the actual infl uence of religious leaders in public life (on the variety of religious contexts within one republic of the north caucasus, daghestan, see ware/kisriev 2000). considerable differences in informal norms that dominate community life are also reported for rural settlements (ways of confl ict resolution etc.). at the same time, the north caucasus has recently experienced considerable changes in its overall social organisation, but such changes were neither of the same intensity nor occurred synchronously in all republics. intensive urbanisation fig. 1: location map including villages note: the map was created with qgis 2.18 version package using the layer russia_ geojson_wgs84, from the resource. note that location of the villages was added to the map by the authors. source: own design survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 209 in the republics of the north-west caucasus took place as early as the 1960-1970s, whereas in the north-east caucasus its peak was reached only in the 1990s (for details on rural-to-urban migration in the north caucasus, see eldarov et al. 2007; belozerov 2004). as argued by anthropologists studying the region, rather tight relations between members of rural communities are preserved in the north caucasus despite intensive out-migration processes in many rural communities (see karpov/ kapustina 2011 for a comprehensive analysis of qualitative fi eld data on family and community norms and their dynamics in the recent decades in the north caucasus). this is manifested, for example, in a high proportion of marriages between members of the same rural community, preferences of many people to maintain business relations with members of their rural community even in the case of outmigration, and regular informal meetings of elder community members where decisions on various aspects of life of the community are taken. anthropological studies on the north caucasus have also revealed that patriarchal norms are generally well preserved there, but with noticeable local differences (molodikova/watt 2014). one generalisation that available qualitative surveys permit is that in the north-east caucasus women’s autonomy is lower overall and the authority of senior generations is higher than in the north-west caucasus. however, the qualitative studies summarised in karpov/kapustina 2011 as well as our own unpublished fi eld data suggest a large amount of evidence that even village communities in the same region differ in terms of patriarchal characteristics. specifi cally, village communities may be very different in the proportion of women having a job outside the household, in the average educational level of women and in the frequency of arranged marriages. qualitative surveys have discovered villages that are geographically close to one another but differ considerably with regard to these parameters. to conclude, the north caucasus is a region where relations between members of rural communities generally remain tight, and elements of patriarchy are observed in the rural communities, although to different degrees from one community to another. this makes the region an adequate case for studying "community bias" in answers to sensitive survey questions. given that the "community bias" is expected in patriarchal communities, the north caucasus gives an opportunity to measure it in communities with different degrees of patriarchy. republics of the north caucasus differ considerably in their current fertility. the differences are especially marked between republics of the north-east caucasus (daghestan, chechnya, and ingushetia) and those of the north-west caucasus (north ossetia, kabardino-balkaria, karachay-cherkessia, and adyghea). in the rural part of the north-west caucasus, which is the object of our study, fertility has been below the reproduction level (2.2) for more than two decades, whereas in the northeast caucasus current rural fertility is still well above that level. it can be concluded that the first demographic transition has been completed in the rural part of the north-west caucasus (as in most other parts of russia) but not of the north-east • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov210 caucasus, where signs of the first demographic transition stalling are currently observed (kazenin/kozlov 2016).3 3 the hypotheses we now turn to the hypotheses which we expect to be confi rmed if "community bias" induced by patriarchy is observed in the survey results. we hypothesise that survey answers by women to questions about desired fertility are infl uenced by the degree of patriarchy in the communities to which respondents belong. there are clear reasons to assume that in a patriarchal society a woman may consider it socially undesirable to report her intention to have a number of children which is perceived as low in that society. strong gender asymmetries make children a woman’s main reason to constitute her own social status in a society where such asymmetries are active (see mason 2001; folbre 1983). disclosing a low desired number of children may make a woman an outsider among her relatives and neighbours. this is highly expected particularly when an inclination by women towards education and career is not welcomed in the society. besides, the power of senior generations in patriarchal communities often results in the intensive imposition of the family life norms of elder generations on younger generations. this can also cause a woman to follow the opinions of her senior family members, neighbours and other community members rather than her own opinion when she answers survey questions on family life. the reason why we have chosen answers to the question on desired fertility for our analysis is exactly the expectation that in patriarchal communities "community bias" can be substantial in answers to that question. as mentioned above, to measure community patriarchy we use the percentages of women in a community with education higher than secondary school, of women with a job, and of women whose marriage was arranged. our fi rst hypothesis will be confi rmed if these percentages have a signifi cant negative relation to the desired number of children reported by a woman. furthermore, if the community characteristics infl uence answers to survey questions on desired fertility, we expect that their infl uence will not depend on the respective personal characteristics of respondents as regards the woman’s personal education, job experience and parental role in her marriage. therefore, we additionally hypothesise that the community parameters will remain signifi cant even when these personal parameters of the respondent women are included in the model. 3 another crucial element of the first demographic transition, namely the lowering of mortality levels and the increase of life expectancy, was attested in the north caucasus in the 1950s1960s according to soviet statistics. as far as the second demographic transition in the northwest caucasus and other parts of russia is concerned, we see that fertility levels match its typical development. the questions of marriage/fertility timing shifts and ideational changes essential for the second demographic transition are, however, rather complex for the north caucasus and are not discussed here. survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 211 however, discovering a relation between answers about desired fertility to the community characteristics of patriarchy does not allow us to distinguish between two distinct scenarios which could underlie that relation. one is the scenario we argue for, where a woman may give untruthful answers on the number of children she wants to have because of the social undesirability of having too few children in a patriarchal community. this scenario fi ts the idea of "community bias". the other scenario, however, is that patriarchal values of a community are adopted by a woman as her own personal values and this increases the number of children she actually wants to have. in this case, answers on desired fertility are related to community patriarchy, but they are not expected to be untruthful, thus providing no reasons to support the existence of "community bias". note that the possibility of the latter scenario is strengthened by the fi ndings on social interaction as a possible mechanism for community infl uence on fertility behaviour (bongaarts/watkins 1996; montgomery/casterline 1996; rossier/bernardi 2009). according to these fi ndings, gaining knowledge on the fertility values of people from her network and observing their fertility behaviour can cause a woman to adopt the fertility preferences of her community. this scenario cannot be excluded in patriarchal communities, of course. although it is hardly possible to completely exclude each of these scenarios in any given study, we suggest an approach which can demonstrate a higher probability of the "community bias" scenario over the scenario of social interaction. this involves a study of the relation of the actual fertility of a woman, apart from the desired fertility she reports, to the patriarchal community parameters. if, via social interaction in her community, a woman adopts patriarchal values in her actual fertility behaviour rather than merely in answering survey questions, she is expected not only to report higher desired fertility but also to adjust her actual fertility to those values. in that case, the community parameters of patriarchy will be signifi cant not just for desired fertility but also for actual fertility. if, however, the patriarchy of a community causes a woman who is a member of the community to give untruthful answers about her desired fertility rather than to actually adopt values of the community in her fertility behaviour, the community parameters of patriarchy are expected to be more signifi cant for desired than for actual fertility. to conclude, we assume that the "community bias" is probable in survey answers about desired fertility if the following two hypotheses are borne out: hypothesis 1: level of community patriarchy is positively related to the reported desired number of children. hypothesis 2: level of community patriarchy is insignifi cant for the actual number of children or is less signifi cant than for the desired number of children. 4 the data and methods 4.1 the survey our study is based on a survey conducted among married women aged 16-39 in the north caucasus region between june and december 2016 and covered a to• konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov212 tal of 1555 women in the respective age group. we limited the survey to married women because the gender hierarchy, an essential component of patriarchy, mainly concerns the position of women in marriage. besides, one of the key indicators of patriarchy which we apply − i.e. arranged marriage − is defi ned only for women who have ever been married. before we proceed with the characteristics of the survey, a general note addressing the survey designed for our particular study is needed. obviously, another possibility for studying "community bias" in survey answers was to use existing country-level sample surveys like the dhs or mics. the majority of such surveys randomly choose primary sampling units which include households located close to one another. moreover, studies exist which, similar to the analysis proposed in this paper, measure certain characteristics of dhs sampling units as averages of some individual parameter (e.g. years spent in school) for women of that unit, and then consider the signifi cance of such community parameters for individual answers to other questions of the survey (cf. kravdal 2002). however, we had the following reasons to undertake a separate survey for our study rather than use existing country-level surveys. first, the dhs and other similar surveys usually involve a rather limited number of parameters which are related to gender and generation relations, e.g. they normally do not include information on whether the marriage of a woman was arranged by her elder relatives, which is an important indicator of empowerment of the elder generation in the family. second, primary sampling units in such surveys do not necessarily correlate with settlements. in our survey, we made rural settlements (villages) survey units (see below for the procedure to select villages for the sample). this solution appears justifi ed at least for the region where rural settlements − even those situated in close proximity to one another − may be very different from one another in terms of culture and norms (see section 2.2). the survey was undertaken in two regions of the north caucasus: daghestan and karachay-cherkessia. daghestan is part of the north-east caucasus, and karachay-cherkessia is part of the north-west caucasus. as mentioned in section 2.2, the two parts of the north caucasus differ considerably in current fertility levels. the regions chosen for the survey represent the two contrasting parts of the north caucasus. daghestan (population over 3,085,000 on 1 january 2019 according to rosstat) is the region in the very eastern part of the north caucasus. mountains constitute almost half of its territory and about 25 percent of its population reside there, although migration from the mountains to the valley has been very intensive in the last 3-4 decades, especially migration to the republic’s capital makhachkala (eldarov et al. 2007). daghestan is one of the most multi-ethnic regions of russia: of its approximately 30 indigenous peoples, no single ethnic group constitutes more than 15 percent of the population. karachay-cherkessia (population over 465,500 on 1 january 2019 according to rosstat) is a region in the east of the north caucasus. like in daghestan, nearly half of its territory lies in the mountains, but a large part of its mountains is almost depopulated. migration to the valley and to local towns was already intensive during the soviet time. karachay-cherkessia has a higher proportion of russian populasurvey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 213 tion compared to daghestan (31.6 percent according to the russian census 2010 compared to 5 percent in daghestan). apart from russians, major peoples are karachays (38.5 percent in 2010) and circassians (11 percent in 2010). several ethnic minorities related to one of these peoples are also present in the region. the survey was conducted face-to-face in rural settlements in the two republics. the survey was undertaken in russian (despite the wide linguistic diversity of the north caucasus, russian is known by most of its population along with native languages). women were interviewed in privacy by trained residents of their region, but not of their communities. the survey questions mainly concerned items on women’s biography (date and place of birth, education, job experience, migration history) and marital/reproductive behaviour (current marital status, number of children, age at marriage and at child birth, desired number of children), as well as woman’s personal religiosity (performing daily prayer, practising fasting, attitude to tab: 1: the descriptive statistics of the villages in the survey name of village number of share of share of share of share of respondents studied after respondents respondents respondents school who have been acquainted whose working with their marriage was outside their future husband agreed on by household before their parents after marriage marriage daghestan kalininiaul 81 0.40 0.31 0.28 0.18 kumukh 31 0.87 0.70 0.19 0.17 novotindi 25 0.52 0.67 0.29 0.60 tsadakh 43 0.40 0.44 0.30 0.62 l’vovskoe 39 0.48 0.41 0.23 0.39 mjurego 100 0.57 0.30 0.66 0.76 sulevkent 105 0.42 0.47 0.03 0.67 karabudakhkent 98 0.92 0.82 0.25 0.42 novyj kostek 125 0.05 0.03 0.00 0.40 kubachi 82 0.33 0.49 0.22 0.18 urma 99 0.48 0.52 0.63 0.65 tarki 71 0.68 0.49 0.38 0.57 karachay-cherkessia schastlivoe 100 0.74 0.45 0.95 0.24 novaja dzheguta 109 0.71 0.51 0.80 0.20 krasnyj kurgan 100 0.85 0.68 0.91 0.12 uchkulan 40 0.83 0.59 0.82 0.21 aki-berdukovskij 100 0.95 0.84 1.00 0.01 ersakon 57 0.96 0.88 0.95 0.00 starokuvinsk 62 0.98 0.87 1.00 0.02 source: data of the survey • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov214 practices prescribed or prohibited by islam) and cultural characteristics of her family (as an indicator of the authority of senior generations in their families, women were asked whether they took the decision to get married on their own or whether the marriage was arranged by their senior relatives). our method of discovering "community bias" used community averages of parameters that indicate patriarchy. therefore, the number of respondents in each community had to be large enough to obtain statistically signifi cant averages. we included 12 rural communities of daghestan and 7 of karachay-cherkessia in our survey (the higher number of communities from daghestan corresponds to its higher population). the number of respondents in each community varied between 25 and 125 depending on the number of residents, which ranges from about 800 to 5000. in each republic, rural settlements were selected randomly within three geographical zones (mountains, foothills, valley). if a zone was multi-ethnic (which was the case for all the zones in daghestan and for all the zones except the mountains in karachay-cherkessia), rural settlements in that zone were divided into groups so that in each of the groups one people constituted the majority (this procedure was possible because most of the villages in the region are mono-ethnic or at least have more than 50 percent of residents of one ethnic origin; the groups were only built for 2-3 major peoples of each area). then one settlement was randomly chosen from each of those groups. for each geographical zone, the sample of rural settlements included in the study refl ected the ethnic variety which is present in that zone. 4.2 model design the desired number of children was used as the dependent variable in the fi rst group of models. in the second group of models, the actual number of children was the dependent variable. according to our theoretical assumptions outlined in section 2.1, we involved two groups of independent variables in the model. one group involved parameters which we treat as indicators of the authority of senior generations in a respondent’s family. we use arranged marriage as the indicator of this authority. answers to two survey questions concerning a woman’s marriage were included in the models: whether the woman was acquainted with her future husband before the marriage ceremony and whether it was her own decision to marry that person or a decision of her parents. the second group of independent parameters included indicators of gender hierarchy in the woman’s family. based on our reasoning in section 2.1, we involved answers to questions on the woman’s continuation of education after secondary school and on work outside the household as parameters relevant for this issue. we also included a number of control parameters in our models. these were the woman’s age at the time of the survey and her current parity (the former only in the models for desired fertility). another group of control parameters included the level of wealth of the household to which a woman belongs. it involved a parameter of family wealth (whether a woman reported that incomes of her family are suffi cient for food; for clothing; for purchase of technical items for home use; for purchase survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 215 of a new car; for purchase of a new house) and a parameter of residence (whether a woman’s family lives in their own house, or in a rented house, or owns or rents a fl at). the latter two parameters were insignifi cant in all the models and are therefore not included in the tables for reasons of space. each survey question regarding patriarchal norms produced two parameters in the model: the individual one (dichotomic) and the community one. community parameters were calculated as the mean for the respective individual parameter in a given village community. in this way, each woman included in the sample was ascribed the same number of community parameters as she was ascribed individual parameters. missing values in our survey ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent for different questions. we excluded these cases and calculated the models only for those respondents who had answered all the relevant questions (listwise deletion). as table 2 shows, the question on desired fertility has the highest number of missing answers compared to other questions on which parameters of the model were calculated. therefore, our fi nal sample includes 1248 respondents for all the models. the descriptive statistics for the sample excluding missing variables is presented in table 3. the comparison of table 2 and table 3 shows that there is almost no difference between the means and dispersion of the variables before and after the exclusion of the missing cases. table 3 offers descriptive survey results separately for each of the two regions. the mean actual number of children is almost the same for tab. 2: descriptive statistics of the variables for all respondents. survey results variables observations mean. st. dev for dichotomous variables % of category 1 age 1520 29.64 6.13 number of children – actual fertility 1516 2.17 1.07 number of children by parities, % 0 27 1.8% 1 401 26.5% 2 577 38.1% 3 359 23.7% 4+ 152 9.9% desired fertility 1412 3.36 1.25 study after school (1 – yes, 0 – no) 1521 62% 0.49 working at the time of the survey (1 – yes, 0 – no) 1520 42% 0.49 acquainted before marriage (1 – yes, 0 – no) 1499 54% 0.5 parents’ decision about marriage (1 – yes, 0 – no) 1448 35% 0.48 source: data of the survey • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov216 ta b . 3 : d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s o f t he v ar ia b le s, fo r re sp o nd en ts in cl ud ed in t he m o d el s. s ur ve y re su lt s v ar ia b le s o b se rv at io n s m ea n s t. d ev fo r d ic h o to m o u s va ri ab le s % o f ca te g o ry b o th r eg io n s d ag h es ta n k ar ac h ay b o th r eg io n s d ag h es ta n k ar ac h ay c h er ke ss ia c h er ke ss ia a g e 12 48 29 .4 7 28 .7 7 30 .6 1 6. 07 6. 27 5. 55 n um b er o f c hi ld re n – a ct u al f er til it y 12 48 2. 17 2. 17 2. 18 1. 03 1. 06 0. 98 n u m b er o f c h ild re n by p ar it ie s, % 0 15 1. 2% 1 32 9 24 .6 % 2 48 1 38 .5 % 3 30 7 24 .6 % 4+ 11 6 11 .1 % d es ir ed f er ti lit y 12 48 3. 36 3. 5 3. 12 1. 21 1. 32 0. 96 s tu d y af te r sc h o o l (1 – y es , 0 – n o) 12 48 61 % 46 % 84 % 0. 49 0. 50 0. 37 w o rk in g at t h e tim e o f t h e su rv ey (1 – y es , 0 – n o) 12 48 40 % 32 % 53 % 0. 49 0. 47 0. 50 a cq u ai n te d b ef o re m ar ri ag e (1 – y es , 0 – n o) 12 48 56 % 34 % 93 % 0. 50 0. 47 0. 26 p ar en ts ’ d ec is io n ab o u t m ar ri ag e (1 – y es , 0 – n o) 12 48 34 % 48 % 12 % 0. 48 0. 50 0. 32 s o ur ce : d at a o f t he s ur ve y survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 217 both, while the desired fertility is higher in daghestan than in karachay-cherkessia. also daghestan has higher mean values for the parameters indicating patriarchy. we used linear regression in our models. to assess the effects of individual and community parameters together, we used multi-level regression. we built two-level models and clustered community level (2nd ) and individual level (1st ) parameters. the randomisation for the model is used only for the intercept while the slopes are kept fi xed. to test our hypotheses under the limited number of villages included in the analysis (only 19), we used the markov chain monte carlo (mcmc) estimation with 5,000 iterations for the 2-level model in the statistical package mlwin2.36. before applying the mcmc for diagnostic reasons, we used the iterative generalised least squares (igls) algorithm. the general equation for the models is shown in (1): yij = β0ij + β1 (xij) + β2 (mean.zi) + β3 (wij) + (ui + eij) in this equation β0 is the intercept (or constant in the tables) demonstrating the mean number of children (actual or desired) for all the villages, and β1 represents the estimation of the individual effect. the β2 coeffi cient shows the effects of the community mean on the second level. also, β3 shows the effect of the control variables listed above. finally there are components: ui − random effect at the village level and eij − is the residual error at the respondent level. 5 results the potential of the multi-level analysis for the sample is quite high. for the desired number of children, the variance partition coeffi cient (vpc) that represents the percentage variance explained by the higher level (villages) is 23.6 percent (for more details about vpc, see leckie/charlton (2013)). in our case the fi gure can be interpreted as 23.6 percent of the variation in the child preferences between villages, also the chi-square difference between 2-level and 1-level null-models is 418.66 (p=0.00). the results for the model with the desired number of children as the dependent variable of interest can be found in table 4. as seen from table 4, the community education indicator demonstrates a signifi cantly negative effect on the desired number of children in the models where the actual number of children is controlled for. this means that higher education at the community level ceteris paribus leads to a lower desired number of children. by contrast, the individual effect for education demonstrates a positive, but signifi cant only at the 10 percent level relation with the desired number of children. for labour market participation (work), we fi nd no signifi cant effect on desired fertility at both the community and the individual level. if a woman was acquainted with her future husband before the marriage ceremony, desired fertility drops at both the community and the individual level with a 5 percent signifi cance (for the community level we get this relation only in mcmc models). this means that one of the characteristics of arranged marriage, namely lack of acquaintance of future spouses (1) • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov218 ta b . 4 : tw o -l ev el m o d el fo r d es ir ed n um b er o f c hi ld re n n o te : h er ei na ft er * ** p < 0. 01 , * * p < 0. 05 , * p < 0. 1. f o r m c m c w e us e b ay es ia np . s o ur ce : d at a o f t he s ur ve y c o n st an t 3. 15 ** * 3. 13 ** * 2. 73 1* ** 2. 69 9* ** 3. 35 7* ** 3. 31 8* ** 3. 36 8* ** 3. 38 8* ** 3. 11 1* ** 3. 06 6* ** a g e (i n d iv id u al ) -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 16 ** * -0 .0 18 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * c h ild re n (i n d iv id u al ) 0. 47 6* ** 0. 47 5* ** 0. 47 5* ** 0. 47 4* ** 0. 48 1* ** 0. 48 0* ** 0. 47 9* ** 0. 47 9* ** 0. 47 5* ** 0. 47 0* ** v ar ia b le s o f i n te re st w o rk in d iv id u al 0. 06 2 0. 06 2 -0 .0 35 -0 .0 36 c o m m u n it y 0. 49 0 0. 49 0* 0. 62 1 0. 73 1 p o st -s ch o o l e d u ca ti o n in d iv id u al 0. 08 7 0. 08 9* 0. 09 6 0. 09 6* c o m m u n it y -0 .9 92 ** -0 .9 45 ** * -1 .4 42 * -1 .5 93 ** p ar en ta l d ec is io n o n m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al 0. 07 9 0. 07 8 c o m m u n it y 0. 12 2 0. 20 3 a cq u ai n te d w it h h er h u sb an d b ef o re m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al -0 .1 49 ** -0 .1 47 ** c o m m u n it y -0 .5 57 * -0 .5 47 ** m od el u n it s c o m m u n it y 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 in d iv id u al 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 e st im at io n: ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ic c 0. 21 1 0. 24 9 0. 18 9 0. 22 7 0. 18 9 0. 24 0 0. 19 4 0. 23 2 0. 23 8 0. 28 0 survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 219 ta b . 4 a : tw o -l ev el m o d el fo r d es ir ed n um b er o f c hi ld re n (w it ho u t c o n tr o l f o r ac tu al n um b er o f c hi ld re n) s o ur ce : d at a o f t he s ur ve y c o n st an t 2. 80 3* ** 2. 83 5* ** 3. 16 6* ** 3. 15 2* ** 3. 06 0* ** 3. 03 0* ** 2. 28 2* ** 2. 28 2* ** 2. 83 7* ** 2. 87 2* ** a g e (i n d iv id u al ) 0. 03 4* ** 0. 03 4* ** 0. 03 1* ** 0. 03 2* ** 0. 03 4* ** 0. 03 4* ** 0. 03 0* ** 0. 03 0* ** 0. 03 2* ** 0. 03 2* ** v ar ia b le s o f i n te re st w o rk in d iv id u al -0 .1 35 ** -0 .1 36 ** -0 .1 42 ** -0 .1 42 ** c o m m u n it y -1 .0 26 * -1 .0 16 ** 0. 37 3 0. 4 4 4 p o st -s ch o o l e d u ca ti o n in d iv id u al -0 .0 16 0. 08 9* 0. 02 3 0. 09 6* c o m m u n it y -1 .1 56 ** -1 .2 26 ** * -1 .3 83 -1 .3 93 * p ar en ta l d ec is io n o n m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al 0. 13 2* 0. 13 2* c o m m u n it y 0. 23 9 0. 23 9 a cq u ai n te d w it h h er h u sb an d b ef o re m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al -0 .1 66 ** -0 .1 67 ** c o m m u n it y -0 .7 04 ** -0 .7 01 ** m od el u n it s c o m m u n it y 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 in d iv id u al 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 e st im at io n: ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov220 before marriage, is signifi cantly related to higher desired fertility. parental decision on marriage, another indicator of the marriage being arranged, was not signifi cant for desired fertility neither at the individual nor at the community level. models that did not control for the actual number of children were also fi tted for desired fertility (table 4a). here, most of the effects observed in the models with this control were retained. specifi cally, the signifi cant effect of community education level persisted, as did the effect of the individual and community level of pre-marriage acquaintance of spouses. in addition, both individual and community levels of women working outside their household were signifi cant without control for actual fertility, being related to lower desired fertility. the community effect, however, was signifi cant only at the 10 percent level. we conclude that the community effects attested with control for actual fertility were confi rmed in models without such control. however, we do not touch upon the possible signifi cance of the community level of women’s employment in the discussion below since it was low in the models without the control and non-existent with control for actual fertility. the results for the actual fertility (number of children) are shown in table 5. at the individual level there is a very pronounced negative effect of education on the number of children borne by the respondent. by contrast, at the community level the educational parameter was insignifi cant for the actual number of children. the parameter of labour force participation also showed a negative effect at the individual level. at the community level, this parameter also showed a signifi cant negative effect, but only in the regressions without the education variable. among the indicators of arranged marriage, only the parental decision on marriage was signifi cant at the individual level for actual fertility. none of the indicators of arranged marriage was signifi cant at the community level in the models analysing actual fertility.4 the models were checked for possible bias created by difference between the means calculated for the sampled respondents from a community and the means for all women in that community. the possibility of such bias is considered by kravdal 2006 who shows that in studying community effects on fertility behaviour there is always a risk that the average of some parameter calculated for sample members in a particular community differs from the "true" average for that community. this of course could result in biased assessments of community effects on fertility. the same could be expected for community effects on survey behaviour as well. having analysed simulations based on large-scale sample studies from sub-saharan africa, kravdal argues for some conditions under which the risk of this bias can be considered as non-serious in studies of community effects ("not higher than about 10 percent", in his assessment). he puts forward two conditions for this. first, the number of respondents coming from each community should not be less than 25. second, the intra-class correlation (icc) for the variables for which the community 4 for robustness checks, models with squared age of women were also fi tted, both for actual and desired fertility (not shown here, available on request). for actual fertility, the effect of most individual parameters signifi cant in models with non-squared age was retained. for desired fertility, almost no changes in effects of both individual and community variables was detected compared to models with non-squared age. survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 221 ta b . 5 : tw o -l ev el m o d el fo r ac tu al n um b er o f c hi ld re n s o ur ce : d at a o f t he s ur ve y c o n st an t -0 .6 25 ** * -0 .6 19 ** * -0 .4 82 ** -0 .4 73 ** -0 .6 11 ** * -0 .6 23 ** * -0 .9 09 ** * -0 .9 16 ** * -0 .6 35 ** * -0 .6 25 ** * a g e (i n d iv id u al ) 0. 10 5* ** 0. 10 6* ** 0. 10 1* ** 0. 10 1* ** 0. 10 5* ** 0. 10 5* ** 0. 10 0* ** 0. 10 0* ** 0. 10 1* ** 0. 10 1* ** v ar ia b le s o f i n te re st w o rk in d iv id u al -0 .2 59 ** * -0 .2 60 ** * -0 .2 21 ** * -0 .2 21 ** * c o m m u n it y -0 .5 36 ** -0 .5 58 ** -0 .5 37 -0 .5 71 p o st -s ch o o l e d u ca ti o n in d iv id u al -0 .2 14 ** * -0 .2 14 ** * -0 .1 53 ** * -0 .1 52 ** * c o m m u n it y -0 .3 53 0. 37 5* 0 .1 23 0. 15 6 p ar en ta l d ec is io n o n m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al 0. 11 2* 0. 11 1* * c o m m u n it y 0. 22 8 0. 23 4 a cq u ai n te d w it h h er h u sb an d b ef o re m ar ri ag e in d iv id u al -0 .0 35 -0 .0 36 c o m m u n it y -0 .3 15 -0 .3 42 m od el u n it s c o m m u n it y 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 in d iv id u al 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 12 48 e st im at io n: ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ig ls m c m c ic c 0. 06 9 0. 08 9 0. 07 7 0. 09 7 0. 06 9 0. 09 3 0. 09 4 0. 11 6 0. 08 5 0. 10 6 • konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov222 effects are studied should not be lower than 0.2. the icc is defi ned as the betweencommunity variance of a variable divided by its total variance. in order to study the possibility of this kind of bias for our models, we have calculated the iccs for the models with the community parameters considered above. they are shown in the bottom lines of tables 3 and 4. in the models for the desired number of children, the iccs range between 0.189 and 0.280, being above 0.2 and thus meeting kravdal’s condition in 7 of 10 models. for models with actual fertility as the dependent parameter, the iccs were lower than 0.2 in all the models, thus violating kravdal’s condition. as far as sample sizes for communities are concerned, they were all between 25 and 125 and thus were higher than kravdal’s level of 25 persons in each community. it therefore transpires that, following kravdal’s guidance, the effect of possible difference between sample and "true" community variables is not critical for desired fertility, but can be more serious for actual fertility in our study. given that the community effect which we have identifi ed was more signifi cant and consistent for desired fertility than for actual fertility anyway, the tests suggested by kravdal do not seem to undermine the results of our analysis. 6 discussion our analysis suggests that "community bias" can be real in survey answers to sensitive questions and that it can correlate with community patriarchy. with the example of a survey we have seen that parameters which indicate the level of patriarchy of the village to which a respondent belongs may indeed have a signifi cant infl uence upon answers to sensitive questions in such surveys. moreover, for some parameters of patriarchy the signifi cance at the community level is higher than at the individual level, also when both the individual and the community level parameters are included in the model. at the same time, we have seen that the signifi cance of the community parameters for actual fertility is much lower in the case of our survey. this therefore confi rms both hypotheses which we expected to be true if "community bias" really exists in the survey which we study. our fi ndings also imply that community and individual preferences may be of independent signifi cance for respondents’ answers to sensitive questions. finally, we have seen that particular parameters of community patriarchy may infl uence answers to sensitive questions to different degrees. among the parameters which we treat as indicators of gender hierarchies, desired fertility has been shown to have a strong negative correlation to post-school education. under our assumptions, this means that the less women’s education is approved in a village community where a respondent lives, the higher the desired number of children reported by that respondent. individual parameters concerning women’s education are of low signifi cance for desired fertility when included together with community parameters in the models. community-level labour market involvement also showed signifi cance for desired fertility in one type of the models, but did not outrank the respective individual parameter in its signifi cance. survey responses on desired fertility in patriarchal societies • 223 among the parameters used as indicators of generational hierarchies, the percentage of women who were personally acquainted with their future husband before the marriage ceremony in the village community is negatively signifi cant for reported desired fertility. the same relation was found for the individual parameter indicating acquaintance of the respondent with her future husband. in this case, therefore, the community and individual parameter are quite similar in how they relate to desired fertility. this means that generational hierarchy operating in the village community and in the family of a particular woman both signifi cantly increase the desired fertility reported by the woman. another parameter which we considered as an indicator of arranged marriage − parental decision on respondent’s marriage − is not signifi cant for desired fertility at the community level, but has a weak positive signifi cance at the individual level. the insignifi cance of the marriage decision process accepted in a community must be explained against the background of the signifi cance of acquaintance of future spouses before marriage. one possible explanation could suggest that contacts between future spouses are a public matter in a community and fall under community regulations more than marriage decision-making, which is a more family-internal matter. if so, acceptance of premarital acquaintance of future spouses in a village community is a more effective indicator of the prevalence of arranged marriage and hence women’s dependency upon elder relatives in that community. it does not then come as a surprise that acquaintance of future spouses is of higher signifi cance for answers to sensitive questions at the community level than parental role in marriage decisions. although the results of our analysis agree with the existence of "community bias", an alternative approach must be considered for the parameters concerning women’s education. this approach relates a low educational level of women in a village community to poor economic conditions in that community rather than to gender hierarchies in it. given that parents in today’s north caucasus most often have to pay, either formally or informally, for the post-school education of their children, a low percentage of women receiving post-school education in a village community can be a consequence of poverty rather than of norms accepted in the community. this is in line with the often acknowledged positive relation of higher actual fertility to poverty (see e.g. birdsall et al. 2001). it is less understandable, however, how desired fertility could be related to individual poverty, especially because, to the best of our knowledge, no relation of this kind has been reported in current studies on desired fertility in different parts of the world. another question which arises under this approach concerns the discovered community effects on desired fertility, because it does not seem clear how the economic status of the community could infl uence fertility attitudes independently of the individual economic status. note also that for acquaintance before marriage an explanation viewing it as an indicator of economic conditions rather than of family norms is hardly possible. therefore, possible "economic" explanations for some of the relations discovered in our analysis cannot substitute the "patriarchy" explanation for all the effects observed. the different impact of different community parameters on desired fertility points to the need to treat each such parameter separately as a potential determi• konstantin kazenin, vladimir kozlov224 nant of "community bias". a goal of future research will be to compare the signifi cance of different community parameters for answers to sensitive questions. this comparison would defi nitely be more reliable when it is based on a set of surveys undertaken in different communities where patriarchal norms are expected. in addition, an important question for future research would concern conditions under which the patriarchal features of a community have a stronger or weaker effect on community behaviour. it would be important to know whether parameters making a community more or less "closed" from the outer world (such as the level of temporary out-migration of community members, percentage of inter-marriages between community members among all marriages in the community) infl uence "community bias" in answering survey questions. 7 summary in the present paper we have undertaken an analysis of data of a survey which has demonstrated that "community bias" can indeed be observed in survey answers to sensitive survey questions given by women who belong to patriarchal communities. the central idea of the method we used was to consider the relation of answers to such questions both to individual and community indicators of patriarchal family norms. the individual indicators refl ect gender and generational hierarchies operating in the family of a respondent, and the community indicators are calculated as averages of individual parameters for the community (a village, in our case) to which a respondent belongs. on the basis of a survey undertaken among women of reproductive age in a part of russia where patriarchal family norms are preserved to a large extent, we have shown that individual and community parameters of patriarchy have separate impacts on respondents’ answers to sensitive questions. we have calculated multi-level models with answers to selected survey questions as dependent parameters, individual patriarchy parameters (a woman’s education, her work experience outside her household, and whether her marriage was arranged by her senior relatives) as independent variables of the personal level and the community means of the same parameters as independent variables of the community level. the signifi cance of the community parameters in the multi-level models points to the possibility that community norms can infl uence the behaviour of respondents when answering sensitive questions. we have seen that the community means are more signifi cant for answers to questions concerning a respondent’s attitudes or intentions (desired number of children) than for questions concerning easily verifi able facts (actual number of children). this can be accounted for on the obvious assumption that it is easier to give an untruthful answer to a question of the former than of the latter type. we have also seen that the relative signifi cance of individual mean values and community mean values can vary for different independent parameters. this makes it necessary to study the community effect separately for each parameter for which this effect can be expected. the "community bias" can vary in intensity not just from one survey sample to another, but also for different parameters studied within a single sample. survey responses on desired fertility in 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(ed.): severnyk kavkaz: modernizacionnyj vyzov [the north caucasus: the challenge of modernization]. moscow: izdatel’skijdom “delo”: 11-34. date of submission: 30.07.2019 date of acceptance: 10.03.2020 konstantin kazenin (). russian academy for national economy and public administration. moscow, russia. e-mail: kz@ranepa.ru url: https://www.iep.ru/en/person/kazenin-konstantin-i.html vladimir kozlov. national research university – higher school of economics. moscow, russia. e-mail: vakozlov@hse.ru url: https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/22565310 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011: approaches and impact on demographic indicators adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011: approaches and impact on demographic indicators* sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov abstract: to derive reliable demographic indicators, appropriate data on population exposures are needed. access to such data is becoming increasingly challenging in many countries due to factors such as the growing diversity of international migration patterns and the trend towards replacing full censuses with register-based censuses. germany represents a particularly challenging case in this respect. before germany implemented its fi rst register-based census in 2011, the country had not conducted a census for more than two decades. this census revealed that the number of people living in germany in 2011 was about 1.5 million lower than the previous offi cial post-censal population estimates for that year indicated. it is likely that a large portion of this discrepancy had existed for quite some time prior to 2011. due to the long inter-censal period, the federal statistical offi ce of germany decided not to produce backward-adjusted population estimates by single-year ages and sex for the whole period. the main aim of this paper is thus to make such detailed adjusted inter-censal population estimates available. while we have to take the peculiarities of the german case into account, our evaluation of different strategies offers important insights for developing a generalised methodology to adjust inter-censal population estimates for globalised countries that face challenges in ensuring the proper registration of migration events. we discuss four alternative approaches for deriving adjusted inter-censal population estimates. the results suggest that even for a rather complicated case like germany, a relatively simple approach seems to work reasonably well. finally, we demonstrate to what extent the implemented adjustments affect mortality indicators. the adjusted inter-censal population estimates for germany and its federal states are provided in the online data appendix. keywords: inter-censal population estimates · germany · adjustment methods comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 31-64 (date of release: 14.06.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-05en0 * this article contains supplementary material in the form of an online and a data appendix: doi 10.12765/cpos-2018-06en, doi 10.12765/cpos-2018-07en url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/251/264 url:http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/251/265. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov32 1 motivation, challenges, and defi nitions to obtain reliable and comparable information on demographic phenomena such as mortality, fertility, and migration, it is vital to have access to high-quality data on the population at risk. this issue is particularly relevant for international comparative database projects, such as the human mortality database (hmd) (hmd 2017; barbieri et al. 2015) and the human fertility database (hfd) (hfd 2017; jasilioniene et al. 2016). a number of developments have made obtaining reliable information on population exposures increasingly challenging, even for high-income countries. the inappropriate measurement of international migration is an important source of error in deriving population estimates. the chances that international migration events are measured incorrectly have increased in recent years as international migration has become less dominated by permanent country a to country b relocations than by other forms of migration with more complex migration trajectories. these new patterns are also referred to as super-diversity (meissner/vertovec 2015). within the european union, such tendencies have been fostered by the elimination of almost all restrictions on the movement of people between european union member states (castro-martín/cortina 2015). another reason why obtaining accurate demographic data has become diffi cult is that a growing number of countries, including germany, have transitioned from conducting traditional full censuses to performing registerbased censuses (valente 2010). the question of whether a register-based census is able to deliver results that are similar in quality to those of a traditional census is a matter of dispute (coleman 2013; martin 2006). in light of the increasing challenges population scientists face in obtaining reliable population data for countries subject to substantial (international) migration, it is essential that researchers carefully reassess and seek to enhance existing methodologies to produce backward-adjusted inter-censal population estimates. we believe that germany is particularly well-suited for such an evaluation. the offi cial german population statistics for the last four decades provide us with a multitude of challenges. these challenges largely stem from the fact that, for various reasons, there were long gaps between the censuses of 1981 in east germany1 and of 1987 in west germany, and the most recent census of 2011.2 the 2011 census was not only the fi rst census conducted in germany following reunifi cation in 1990; it was also the fi rst register-based census carried out in germany (see also klüsener/ zagheni 2014). the situation in germany is further complicated by the high internal and international migration rates the country experienced in the late 1980s and the early 1990s surrounding the fall of the iron curtain and german reunifi cation. since large shares of the errors in the offi cial population estimates are attributable to the misreport1 in this paper, the terms east and west germany refer to the territories of the former german democratic republic (including east berlin) and of the federal republic of germany (including west berlin) for the periods both before and after the reunifi cation of germany in 1990. 2 for a discussion of the factors that led to the long inter-censal period, see, e.g., eppmann (2004). adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 33 ing of migration events, it is very likely that substantial distortions occurred at the beginning of this long inter-censal period, and that a non-negligible share of these early errors continued to distort population estimates over the almost two decades that passed before the census of 2011 was fi nally conducted (see also kaus/mundilschwarz 2015). these challenges might explain the decision made by the federal statistical offi ce of germany not to produce corrected population estimates by age and sex for the entire inter-censal period. as these data are needed to derive appropriate population exposures for the hmd and the hfd, we decided to use the german case to evaluate and enhance the methodologies for adjusting inter-censal population estimates. while it is clear that we also need to account for the specifi cities of the german case, our evaluation of different inter-censal population adjustment strategies offers valuable insights that can be used in developing a generalised methodology for obtaining adjusted inter-censal population estimates for globalised countries that are subject to substantial internal and international migration. the applicability of the derived adjusted population estimates is certainly not limited to the aforementioned databases; the adjusted estimates can also be used for other purposes for which reliable estimates of the population at risk are needed. the obtained adjusted population estimates that were required for the hmd are available for download as so-called “input data” from this database (hmd 2017), while complete datasets derived through our preferred adjustment approach are available in a separate online data appendix of this paper. these datasets include data for east, west, and total germany, as well as data for the 16 german federal states and east and west berlin. in this paper, however, we will focus on the adjustments for east, west, and total germany, as data limitations prevented us from implementing all of the considered adjustment methods at the state level as well. a general obstacle researchers encounter in attempting to adjust inter-censal population estimates is the decentralised system of statistics in germany (hölder/ ehling 1991; von der lippe 2006). germany has a federalised structure in which the responsibility for collecting statistics is assigned to the 16 federal states and their statistical offi ces.3 the federal statistical offi ce of germany mainly plays a moderating role, and has only limited access to the raw data collected by the state statistical offi ces. while the population data collection procedures and the defi nitions used are largely harmonised across the federal states, there are vast differences in how each state deals with population data distortions. the statistical offi ces of the german states and the local registry offi ces that are in charge of the population registers were certainly aware that during the long inter-censal period – and especially during the turbulent period around the time of german reunifi cation – substantial biases had been introduced into the population estimates due to misreported migration events. thus, efforts were made as part of state-level and local initiatives to 3 recently, the german states of schleswig-holstein and hamburg as well as the states of brandenburg and berlin have merged their statistical offi ces, which reduced the total number to 14. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov34 identify erroneous cases and to take them out of the population statistics. if, for example, evidence was found that a single individual had been counted in the statistics more than once, the incorrect entries were removed. the standard procedure for such removals is to assign an artifi cial out-migration move abroad to the double entry. unfortunately, in most instances it is not possible to distinguish between real and artifi cial out-migration events. over the course of the last inter-censal period, such correction procedures were implemented at different points in time and with varying degrees of intensity across the german states. this variation in cleaning intensities seems to partially explain why after the last census some of the german states needed to introduce fewer corrections to their population numbers than others. it is important to stress that many of these corrections were introduced in the midto late 2000s, shortly before the 2011 census. but it is reasonable to assume that a considerable percentage of the erroneous entries that were corrected in this period had originated in the period of german reunifi cation (see also below), and had thus caused distortions in the population estimates for long periods of time. the implemented corrections complicated our work, as they made it more diffi cult for us to identify the full volume of errors that had accumulated over the inter-censal period. in this paper, we will use the term accumulated error to refer to the difference between 1.) the old post-censal population estimates (based on the 19814 and 1987 censuses in east and west germany, respectively); and 2.) the new offi cial post-censal population estimates based on the 2011 census, as obtained on 1 january 2012. if we had looked only at the accumulated error based on the 2011 census results, we would have been unable to account for the temporary distortions that were eliminated in the corrections immediately before the census. therefore, we had to develop procedures that allowed us to quantify the magnitude of these corrections. however, such an assessment could only be approximate. the estimated corrected cases were then added to the offi cial post-censal population estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses to derive a so-called prior-cleaning-adjusted accumulated error. in addition to the challenges mentioned above, we had to overcome another obstacle. to ensure data comparability over time, the hmd maintains not just time series on germany (from 1990 onwards), but also time series for the territories of east and west germany into which germany was divided between 1949 and 1990. as a result, east and west berlin are still included in the territories of east and west 4 from the date of german reunifi cation (3 october 1990) until the 2011 census, the offi cial population estimates for east germany had been based on an extract of the population register of the german democratic republic taken at the date of reunifi cation. however, the federal statistical offi ce of germany acknowledged that these register-extracted population estimates were probably too high due to the under-registration of out-migration abroad events from the german democratic republic in the late 1980s (statistisches bundesamt 2006: 30). thus, in our inter-censal adjustment we will use the census of 1981 as the main reference point, and not the register-based extract from 1990. adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 35 germany, respectively (scholz et al. 2017).5 but since 2001, when berlin enacted an administrative reform, it has not been possible to derive data for the former territories of east and west berlin directly from the city’s published statistical data. to deal with this challenge, a method was developed as part of the hmd activities that allows researchers to obtain very precise estimates of demographic events, such as births and deaths, for the former territories of east and west berlin from 2001 onwards (see scholz et al. 2017). since the hmd still recognises the historic division of east and west berlin, our adjustment method should also be able to account for this distinction.6,7 another challenge we faced was that east and west germany had conducted the censuses that preceded the 2011 census at different points in time (1981 and 1987, respectively). this gap was of relevance for our decision about how to defi ne the beginning and the end of the inter-censal adjustment period. given that the german democratic republic (gdr) maintained a highly reliable central population register, and that the levels of international migration to and from the gdr were rather low up to 1988 (statistisches bundesamt 1993), we can assume that the post-censal population estimates for the gdr are highly accurate up to the beginning of 1988. therefore, for east germany we decided to set a so-called pseudo-census point of 1 january 1988. in west germany, the offi cial census date was 25 may 1987. to ensure comparability with the east german estimates, we decided to use for west germany the population estimates for 1 january 1988, rather than the population numbers at the very beginning of the inter-censal period. the fi nal results of the 2011 census were published by the federal statistical offi ce in may 2013. however, the offi cial german population estimates of the current post-censal period are based not on these data, but on modifi ed data published in april 2015 (see kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015).8 these modifi ed data were also em5 the motivation for doing so is to support research that examines the effects of german reunifi cation on the convergence of the large mortality differences that existed between east and west germany in the 1980s. 6 another territorial change that affected the borders of former east and west germany occurred on 30 june 1993, when a small territory of former east germany (amt neuhaus) was transferred to west germany. however, due to the small population size of this territory (app. 4,800 inhabitants), this change is not specifi cally accounted for in the hmd and in our inter-censal adjustment. 7 the hfd applies from 1990 onwards a slightly different territorial defi nition of east and west germany, which is congruent with the defi nition used by the federal statistical offi ce since 2001. according to this defi nition, east and west berlin are, respectively, excluded from east and west germany. download links to data for these subdivisions are also available in the online data appendix. 8 the federal statistical offi ce of germany decided not to use the published fi nal results of the 2011 census as the basis for its future population estimates, as some of these data turned out to be implausible when compared with data from other sources, such as local population and birth registers. these inconsistencies are likely related to the fact that the 2011 census was not a full census, but was instead based on a register-drawn sample. to deal with the inconsistencies identifi ed in the published census results, the federal statistical offi ce decided to use modifi ed census results as the basis for its future population estimates. for the census date, these results provide the same total population number for germany, while the population numbers broken down by age and sex have been adjusted based on additional information. to our knowledge, there is no published detailed documentation on how these adjustments were implemented. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov36 ployed for our adjustment. as the end point for our adjustment, we again did not use the estimates for the census date (9 may 2011), but rather the population estimates for 1 january 2012. the choice of this approach was guided by our intention to produce adjusted population estimates for the former territories of east and west berlin. to derive such estimates, we had to rely on register data for berlin, which we could only obtain for complete years. thus, our adjusted inter-censal population estimates cover the period between 1 january 1988 and 1 january 2012. the remainder of this paper is organised as follows. first, we provide background information on how errors in the population estimates can emerge (section 2). we then present an overview of the available raw data (section 3). next, we describe the fi rst major step of the adjustment procedure we used to identify offi cial corrections to the population estimates implemented in the years prior to the 2011 census (section 4). we then provide an account of the second major step of our adjustment, in which we adjusted the population estimates within the inter-censal period based on assumptions about how the accumulated error identifi ed at the end of the period accrued over time. in total, we considered and tested four adjustment procedures (section 5). this is followed by an assessment of the extent to which the mortality indicators based on our adjusted population estimates differ from those derived by the hmd or national and international institutions on the basis of the originally published population estimates (section 6). a discussion and conclusion is provided in section 7. 2 potential origins of the errors in the offi cial population estimates errors in the population statistics can occur for a number of reasons. among the potential sources of error are problems with how the censuses are conducted. as we mentioned above, the 2011 census was the fi rst register-based census in germany, whereas all of the preceding censuses had been carried out as traditional censuses covering the entire population. details on the methodology of the 2011 census have been provided by kaus and mundil-schwarz (2015). an overview of the potential defi ciencies of the 2011 census has been presented by scholz and kreyenfeld (2016). the challenges associated with implementing register-based censuses (see also coleman 2013) are also refl ected in the federal statistical offi ce’s decision to base its current future population estimates not strictly on the population numbers derived in the 2011 census, but on modifi ed numbers that take additional information into account. nevertheless, compared to the old inter-censal estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses, the 2011 census provided a much more accurate picture of the population living in germany. while the quality of the last full west german census of 1987 has also been criticised (grohmann 2009), we are not aware of any systematic shortcomings of the censuses of 1981, 1987, or 2011 that could be appropriately corrected. thus, we decided not to make any modifi cations to the census data (or to the offi cially adjusted census data in case of the 2011 census). for adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 37 the same reasons, we also chose not to modify the respective offi cial population estimates for the beginning of years that succeeded a census or that were selected as pseudo-census points. in germany, the register data on births and deaths are highly reliable (kreyenfeld/scholz 2009). but like in many other countries around the world, the german statistical offi ces are fi nding it diffi cult to ensure that migration events are measured in a comprehensive manner. the registration laws of germany and the gdr have consistently stipulated that each individual resident is permitted to have only one primary residence. but when migration events are not registered or are registered incompletely, an individual may be registered as having more than one primary residence. moreover, an individual who is no longer living in germany may still be registered as a resident. these erroneous or multiple entries can cause an artifi cial infl ation of the population statistics. one major source of error is the under-registration of out-migration abroad. many foreign (predominantly male) migrants who came to (west) germany as labour migrants in the second half of the 20th century do not register their out-migration when they return to their home country. as a result, such migrants remain in the population estimates, even though they are no longer resident in germany (see also hannemann/scholz 2009). the failure to register a return migration event can become particularly problematic if the individual dies while abroad and the death is not reported to the german authorities; as in such cases the deceased is likely to remain in the statistics as a living resident. the share of these ‘dead souls’ in the reported population estimates increases with age. this phenomenon is mostly concentrated in west germany. east germany, by contrast, attracted relatively few foreign migrant workers after 1950. hence, the east german population estimates have been much less affected by the under-registration of outmigration after retirement than the west german estimates. these east-west differences are also visible in figure 1, which compares by age and sex the accumulated error as of 1 january 2012 in percent, while using as a reference the population estimates based on the offi cially corrected 2011 census outcomes for that date (blue bars; the stacked dark blue bars will be explained below). the impact of the under-registration of out-migration abroad on life expectancy trends at high ages has been well documented (jdanov et al. 2005; scholz/ jdanov 2007; scholz/jdanov 2008). this problem is still relevant today, and is likely to be an important source of distortion in the future. to account for this problem, the hmd applied for germany during the inter-censal period a correction method that relied upon more accurate information from pension data (scholz/jdanov 2007). the comparison of the corrected population estimates at high ages and the population numbers obtained in the 2011 census showed that this methodology was very reliable (scholz et al. 2017). but not all of the shortcomings of the published offi cial post-censal population estimates are related to cohorts of advanced ages. in figure 1, we also observe deviations of up to around fi ve percent among the cohorts born in the 1960s and the 1970s who were aged 31-51 in 2011. for these cohorts, notable deviations can be detected in both east and west germany. again, these patterns are more pronounced among males. the similarities between east and west germany suggest • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov38 fig. 1: deviation of population estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses from population estimates based on the 2011 census in % (1 january 2012) (without and with adjustment for prior cleaning) 0 5 10 35 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 5 10 35 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 5 10 35 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 5 10 35 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 5 10 35 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 accumulated error (%) additional error derived through prior-cleaning adjustment (%) germany males females age age age age deviation, percent age age deviation, percent males females deviation, percent east germany males females deviation, percent west germany deviation, percent deviation, percent 0 5 10 35 note: the population estimates derived from the 2011 census are based on the offi cially corrected census data published by the federal statistical offi ce of germany in april 2015. these numbers are used as a reference to derive the deviation of the old population estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses. the accumulated error refers to the unadjusted deviation between the old and the new population estimates, while the additional error identifi es the further deviation that we obtained when we adjusted for the prior cleaning of the statistics before the 2011 census. in this adjustment, which is described in detail in section 4, we aimed to revoke the prior cleaning by deriving an estimate of the cleaned cases, and adding them back to the population estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses to get closer to the total deviation that emerged during the inter-censal period. source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 39 that the errors among these cohorts originated from a process that affected both parts of germany. to understand this issue, it is important to recognise that people’s mobility levels are highest between ages 18 and 30 (bell/muhidin 2009). for the cohorts born in the 1960s and the 1970s, this age span coincides with the period around 1990, when migration intensifi ed following the fall of the iron curtain and german reunifi cation. it is therefore very likely that a substantial share of the accumulated errors in these cohorts originated during this rather chaotic period (see also kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). between 1988 and reunifi cation, rates of out-migration from east germany increased rapidly. such moves were often irregular in nature, and the gdr authorities were not able to keep track of all migration events. thus, some east german refugees and migrants to west germany remained registered at their former address in east germany. however, problems continued to occur after reunifi cation due to the under-registration of both external and internal migration events, which likely led to erroneous or double entries in the population statistics. to fully understand the east-west migration patterns of the cohorts born in the 1960s and the 1970s, it is important to take into account that there was not only a massive outfl ow of people from east to west germany starting in the late 1980s, but also a continuous wave of migrants returning to east germany starting in the 1990s (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). in the early 1990s, this return migration trend was dominated by males. it is likely that a non-negligible share of these migrants did not report their return to east germany to the local registry authorities in west germany. in addition, some of the errors observed among the cohorts born in the 1960s and the 1970s might have occurred as a result of the incorrect registration of international migration. in the early 1990s, there was a substantial wave of migration into germany from central-eastern, south-eastern, and eastern europe. it is very likely that some of these immigrants left germany without reporting their departure (see also statistisches bundesamt 2016a), and that this under-reporting of out-migration contributed to the errors in the population estimates. in addition, errors can occur if the arrival of a migrant is recorded more than once. these double entries are particularly diffi cult to detect if the information about an individual migrant that is provided in these entries is not consistent. 3 data and methodological strategy in our adjustment, we mainly rely on offi cial statistical data.9 appropriate raw population and demographic events data must be available by sex. since we favour a cohort-based approach, these data should ideally be stratifi ed by both single year of age and birth year (i.e., in lexis triangle format). such an approach is preferable 9 the only exception to this general rule is the estimation of numbers for the former territories of east and west berlin for the 2001-2011 period, for which we use population and demographic register data of the city of berlin. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov40 to an age-based approach, as applying an age-based approach can be particularly problematic when adjacent cohorts differ substantially in size. because of the effects of world war ii and of temporal fertility fl uctuations in (east and west) germany in the subsequent decades, a number of successive cohorts in the german population vary substantially in size. for example, the cohort born in 1945 is much smaller than the cohort born in 1946. thus, the deaths and the migration events that were registered for 55-year-olds in 2001 are more likely to be linked to the 1946 cohort than to the 1945 cohort. in section 1 of the online appendix, we provide an overview of the data that we were able to obtain for the german states, east germany, west germany, and germany as a whole. these data include the population estimates as of 31 december for the years 1987-2011, by sex and single year of age/birth year.10 for the whole inter-censal period, we have annual information on live births and deaths, with the latter being broken down by single year of age and birth year. as statistical data for east and west berlin are only readily available for the period up to 2000, we include in the data for east and west germany from 2001 onwards estimates for the two parts of the city that are based on the procedure described by scholz et al. (2017). we also collected detailed migration data for each of the 16 federal states and for the sub-territories of berlin, as we need these data to detect the corrections of the population statistics implemented in the german states in the years before the census. information drawn from migration data is also used in some of the approaches we are considering for the adjustment of the inter-censal population estimates. while we were able to obtain rich migration data for the 1991-2013 period,11 there are some restrictions on the data we were able to collect. for example, we have to limit ourselves to using migration data that can be broken down by age and sex, but not by birth year, as we were unable to gain access to data that would allow us to use this information in a comprehensive manner for the whole age range. overall, the level of data availability is slightly higher for international migration than for internal migration within germany, as for most of the inter-censal period we were able to obtain data by single-year ages and sex (see online appendix, section 1). when looking at the internal migration data, we focus only on migration events across federal state borders, as it would have been very diffi cult – if not impossible – to obtain information on migration events in which individuals did not cross federal state borders (by age and sex for east and west germany) for the whole inter-censal period.12 information on how the estimates on migration events for east and west berlin were obtained is provided in section 2 of the online appendix. as we are considering some adjustment methods that require detailed migration data, it was our goal 10 based on hmd conventions, we treat these estimates as representing the population on 1 january of the successive year. 11 we also collected data for 2012 and 2013, as having time series that extend beyond the census of 2011 supports us in making our adjustments for prior cleaning. 12 moves between east and west berlin are not considered moves across federal state borders, as the two territories have been part of the same federal state since 1990. adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 41 to obtain migration data by single-year ages at least up to ages 90+. we had to deal with a number of challenges in the collection and the preparation of the data. for example, we only have access to data up to ages 75+ for some years, and the internal migration data we could obtain for 1991-2000 are available for broad age groups only. the assumptions and procedures we used to derive estimates on migration by single-year ages are described in section 3 of the online appendix. another limitation is that we were unable to collect detailed internal and international migration data for east germany for the 1988-1990 period. for this period, we use data on implied migration that we obtained by taking the differences between the offi cial population estimates by single-year birth cohorts at year t+1 and year t, subtracting the registered births among the cohort born between t and t+1, and adding the deaths by cohort. this process allowed us to derive the migration balance by cohort and sex. in east germany during this period, out-migration levels were high and in-migration levels were low (statistisches bundesamt 1993). hence, migration balances appear to represent a good approximation of external migration intensities. for internal migration, we were unable to obtain comprehensive data for east germany for this period. thus, we restrict ourselves to using the implied external migration balances for this period to derive information on migration intensities. as the description of the available migration data shows, our efforts to obtain detailed migration data for the fi rst part of the inter-censal period met with only limited success. these challenges were among the main reasons why we ultimately decided to use for the hmd and the hfd an inter-censal adjustment approach that does not require migration data. the deterministic adjustment methods we selected are in line with hmd and hfd standards. while we also had the option of using model-based approaches (see, e.g., wheldon et al. 2016), we chose to use deterministic approaches instead because they are very transparent and can be limited to a small number of explicit assumptions. model-based approaches allow for greater fl exibility, but are usually based on a large number of explicit and implicit assumptions. if we were performing the inter-censal adjustment for one research project only, a model-based approach would probably have been the better choice, as we would have been able to ensure that the underlying assumptions of the implemented adjustments do not greatly affect the outcomes of the subsequent analyses for which the data are used. we are, however, performing this adjustment for international comparative databases. the adjusted population data might be employed for various purposes, and it would be unfortunate if the outcomes of future analyses of these data were driven primarily by assumptions that we used to implement the inter-censal adjustment. background information on our adjustment methods is provided in the following sections 4 and 5, and in the online appendix. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov42 4 adjustment for the offi cial cleaning of the population statistics prior to the 2011 census 4.1 considerations as we mentioned above, administrative authorities usually erase erroneous individual entries from the population statistics by assigning to them an out-migration abroad event. among the main sources of these erroneous entries are the failure to register and the incorrect registration of international and internal migration events, as we described in section 2. for all time periods over the last inter-censal period, we observe temporal anomalies in the out-migration abroad trends for one or several years in one or several german states (see fig. 2). the evidence of such anomalies provides support for the view that cleaning processes were implemented in different states at various times throughout the whole inter-censal period. we are less concerned about corrections made in the 1990s, as they occurred relatively close to the period in which the errors emerged. therefore, we decided not to make any adjustments for cleaning processes in this period. we are, however, much more concerned about two periods in the 2000s when substantial corrections were made, as there are indications that these modifi cations may have been accounting for errors that emerged in the statistics in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. thus, these modifi cations may have contributed to bias in the offi cial population estimates for longer periods of time. the fi rst cleaning period we want to examine occurred in 2004. it appears that during this period, efforts were made to clean up erroneous entries in the german central register of foreigners (ausländerzentralregister), (opfermann et al. 2006; hannemann/scholz 2009). while the main focus of this process was on making adjustments to this specifi c register, which is independent of the population statistics, the cross-checks with population register data likely resulted in the identifi cation of erroneous cases that were then also taken into account in the production of the population estimates. however, the variation in anomalies across the states, which is visible in figure 2, suggests that the extent of the cleaning undertaken varied considerably across the german states. according to opfermann et al. (2006: 487), many foreigners who were identifi ed in 2004 as no longer living in germany had entered germany during the 1986-1994 period. since recently arrived foreigners are especially likely to make (potentially unregistered) moves within germany or abroad (see also constant/massey 2003), many of these erroneous cases might have already emerged in this period through the under-registration of out-migration abroad events or the double registration of individuals due to incompletely reported internal migration events. if the cleaned cases in the population statistics are indeed related to the cleaning of the central register of foreigners, they are likely to share these characteristics. thus, the statistical offi ces have probably been accounting for bias that had affected the population estimates for a longer period of time. another motivation for correcting the migration data for 2004 is that the west german state of hesse reported for that year large anomalies in the statistics for migration adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 43 fi g . 2 : o u tm ig ra tio n ab ro ad r at es b y ag e an d s ex fo r th e g er m an s ta te s an d w es t a nd e as t b er lin 1 99 120 13 m al es • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov44 fe m al es n o te : m ec kl en b ur gw .po m . r ef er s to m ec kl en b ur gw es te rn p o m er an ia ; fo r w es t a nd e as t b er lin th e d at a fr o m 2 00 0 o nw ar d s ar e b as ed o n es tim at es . t he l eg en d o n th e ri gh tha nd s id e o f th e su rf ac e p lo ts p ro vi d es i nf o rm at io n o n w hi ch c o lo ur s co rr es p o nd t o w hi ch r an ge o f m ig ra tio n ra te s. t he b ri gh te r th e co lo ur , t he h ig he r th e o ut -m ig ra tio n ra te s re co rd ed in a s p ec ifi c ag e an d y ea r. s o ur ce : fe d er al s ta tis tic al o ffi ce , o w n ca lc ul at io ns adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 45 both to and from other countries. these anomalies seem to be largely an artefact of the over-registration of external and internal migration moves among germans (see statistisches bundesamt 2014: 10).13 the second cleaning period is related to the introduction of a unifi ed tax identifi cation number starting in mid-2007 (see also ette/sauer 2010; scholz/kreyenfeld 2016). in order to limit the number of cases in which a person who had registered her or his main residence in two places was issued two identifi cation numbers, efforts were made to identify and eliminate double entries in the registers. according to the federal statistical offi ce, the cleaning of the registers in response to the introduction of the tax identifi cation number affected the published population statistics in the years 2008-2010 (statistisches bundesamt 2014: 10). this statement is in line with the results of our empirical inspections, which identifi ed a clustering of un-usual positive anomalies in these three years in the out-migration abroad trends in many german states. such anomalies are detectable up to high ages, even though out-migration abroad intensities are generally very low among the elderly (see fig. 2). therefore, in our attempt to account for prior-cleaning efforts, we chose to focus on the year 2004 and the 2008-2010 period. as we noted above, in most instances the artifi cial migration events that were entered as part of the cleaning process cannot be distinguished from real international migration events, even using the individual-level migration register data to which we have access through the german research data centres (fdz 2014). we thus have to derive estimates of the extent of the cleaning that was undertaken in a given period from observed irregularities in the out-migration abroad trends. in using this approach, we benefi t from the relative stability of out-migration abroad trends. in rare cases, state statistical offi ces integrated an identifi er into the individual-level migration statistics that makes it easier to distinguish between artifi cial and real migration events. such an identifi er was, for example, used by the state of hesse in adjusting its population estimates in 2004.14 these rare cases provide us with an opportunity to explore the reliability of our estimation approach. we decided to implement our adjustments of the corrections at the level of the 16 german states, with the state of berlin being further subdivided into east and west berlin. our choice was made for two main reasons. the fi rst reason is that the timing and the intensity of the corrections vary across the german states. the second reason is that this approach has an “additive” feature. in an approach in 13 while in the fi rst decade of the 21st century hesse registered around 85,000-90,000 international out-migration abroad events and around 85,000-98,000 in-migration events from foreign countries, the respective numbers for 2004 were 118,000 and 112,000. 14 in this case, hesse marked cleaned entries as out-migration events to unknown destinations abroad, and registered them in december 2004. we cannot rule out the possibility that some of these events are not related to the cleaning, but a comparison of these events with out-migration events to unknown destinations in the preceding and the successive months reassures us that the share cannot be much higher than 25 percent, and that it is likely to be much lower than 25 percent. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov46 which we adjusted the numbers separately for germany as a whole as well as for east and west germany, the numbers for east and west germany would not add up to the numbers derived for germany as a whole. these inconsistencies can be circumvented in our approach, in which we implement this adjustment for the subterritories and then derive the outcomes for the higher-level units by summing up the values of their lower-level sub-units. in order to implement the corrections for the cohorts, we derive estimates of migration events by single birth cohorts by splitting the migration data by age. this splitting procedure is based on the assumption that the period migration rates were constant across the two successive birth cohorts that contributed the migration events of a specifi c age in a given year (e.g., the migration rates of the cohorts born in 1974 and 1975 who contributed migration events at age 20 in 1995).15 this implies that the splitting procedure is based on differences in cohort size only. formulas for this procedure are provided in section 4 of the online appendix. it should be noted that this splitting procedure has implications for the top open-age category, as cohort proportions in specifi c ages can only be derived up to one age below the top open-age category, because we lack information on the older cohort at the end of the year. thus, we can derive cohort proportions only up to age 88. due to the splitting of migration events into lexis triangles, the open-age category changes from 90+ (the last age group for whom the raw data are available) to 89+. our adjustment for corrections prior to the census is based on the assumption that in those years in which corrections were implemented (2004, 2008-2010), all positive anomalies (i.e., sudden spikes) from time trends in external out-migration rates by cohort are due to corrections implemented by the statistical offi ces. we restrict ourselves to positive anomalies, as corrections made by the statistical offi ces can increase, but cannot decrease the external migration rates. with the estimated cohort migration rates, we are able to implement this adjustment in a cohort-wise manner. thus, our focus is on the migration trends among cohorts who reached a specifi c age in a given year (e.g., 35) over the 1991-2013 period. in order to estimate the artifi cial migration events in the years 2004 and 20082010, we use the following procedure. first, we derive the observed migration rates. we then remove the observed rates for the years 2004 and 2008-2010. the removed data points are treated as “missing” values to be interpolated on the basis of the remaining data points (1991-2003, 2005-2007, and 2011-2013). second, we interpolate these missing points using a piecewise cubic hermite interpolation spline (function interp1 from r package signal; see also fritsch/carlson 1980). the obtained values represent the “expected” migration rates. next, in those cases in which the “expected” migration rates are lower than the observed rates (i.e., in which we see 15 this assumption holds true for most of the life course, and is perhaps only problematic for ages 18-20, as migration rates increase substantially immediately after graduation from secondary school. however, even in these cases we believe the distortion is rather small, as the individuals who make up a school cohort are derived from births that took place between the summer of a given year and the summer of the successive year (exact dates vary across german states). hence, a cohort of school leavers is comprised of individuals from at least two birth cohorts. adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 47 fig. 3: graphical representation of selected outcomes of the hermite spline interpolation initial adjusted 26 24 28 30 34 32 36 5 4 6 7 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 10 11 13 12 14 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 note: these plots, which are based on data for bavaria, demonstrate our approach to estimating the scale of the corrections implemented in the population statistics in the years prior to the 2011 census. we focus on the years 2004 and 2008-2010, which we identifi ed as years with substantial corrections. once detected, an erroneous case is typically removed from the offi cial statistics by assigning an out-migration abroad event to it. if, however, the erroneous case did not stem from an unregistered out-migration event in the same year, this practice can increase the risk of artifi cially infl ating the out-migration abroad statistics. with the hermite spline interpolation, we derive for the years with intensive cleaning estimates of the out-migration rates that would have been registered if no corrections had been implemented in these years. this interpolation uses information from the trends in out-migration rates by the age reached at the end of the year in the years without substantial cleaning. each subplot displays the initial and the adjusted out-migration abroad rates for cohorts that reached a specifi c age in a given year. for example, the plot for age 30 shows the initial and the adjusted outmigration rates for cohorts who reached age 30 in a specifi c year (e.g., 1970 in 2000, 1971 in 2001). the initial and the adjusted data only deviate in the years for which we applied the hermite spline interpolation to adjust for cleaning. the plots show that in the years 2004 and 2008-2010, there are indeed frequent anomalies that are quite well captured using the hermite spline approach. source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov48 a positive anomaly), we subtract the former from the latter rates to determine the “excessive” migration rates. these rates are then transformed into our estimates of “artifi cial” migration events due to corrections. finally, we check the plausibility of the obtained results by means of a visual examination of the trends. a graphical representation of this approach is shown in figure 3.16 16 an additional challenge we faced was an inconsistency in the external migration statistics of the german state of hamburg for 2007 and 2008. around 7,000 migration events to unknown destinations abroad that occurred in 2007 were erroneously recorded in the statistics for 2008. this constituted a problem in our attempt to identify artifi cial out-migration events in the cleaning year of 2008 using a spline method, as the misreported cases lowered the 2007 migration statistics and infl ated the 2008 numbers. we thus apply a two-step procedure for hamburg. in the fi rst step, we perform a spline estimation in which we exclude next to the data for 2004 and 2008-2010 also the data for 2007 to derive an estimate of the extent to which the recorded migration events for 2007 deviate from the trend. using this technique, we identifi ed 6,968 cases broken down by cohort and sex; a number that is close to the 7,000 delayed registered cases reported in offi cial statistical publications. these cases are deducted from the hamburg migration statistics for 2008 and added to the statistics for 2007. in addition, we adapt the population estimates for hamburg for 1 january 2008 to account for the migration moves that we shift from 2008 back to 2007, which result in slightly smaller population numbers at the beginning of 2008. in the second step, we implement for hamburg the same procedure used for the other states to derive estimates for 2004 and 2008-2010. fig. 4: hermite spline estimate of cleaned cases vs. an estimate based on an identifi er in migration register data birth cohort 0 200 400 600 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 males 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 females spline estimate persons persons 0 200 400 600 birth cohort out-migration abroad german federal state of hesse note: this graph provides a consistency check for our estimates of cleaned cases as part of the priorcleaning adjustment approach. for hesse in 2004, we are able to derive a relatively accurate estimate of the offi cially cleaned cases through an identifi er available in the individual-level migration register data. this fi gure compares the birth cohort structure of the estimate of the cleaned cases derived from the migration register data (offi cial statistics) with the estimated cleaned cases obtained with the hermite spline approach (spline estimate). source: federal statistical offi ce, fdz (2014), own calculations adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 49 for hesse, we also need (for the reasons outlined above) to apply this procedure to the 2004 statistics on in-migration from foreign countries. this approach is based on the same principles as those we follow in the adjustment of the out-migration statistics. we deduct for hesse the estimated in-migration event artefacts from the estimated out-migration event artefacts. cases in which we obtain negative numbers for specifi c outcomes by cohort and sex are set to zero, as it is unlikely that the cleaning of the population statistics would have created additional person entries in the population statistics. we verify the validity of our approach by comparing our estimates with the generally reliable estimates derived from offi cial information on cleaned cases by cohort in 2004 for the state of hesse. the outcomes shown in figure 4 suggest that our estimation method works reasonably well. 4.2 outcomes of the adjustment for prior cleaning our estimates in the adjustment for prior cleaning suggest that around 145,000 male cases and 117,000 female cases were removed from the offi cial statistics in the years 2004 and 2008-2010. broken down by region, we identifi ed with our estimates 114,000 male cases and 98,000 female cases in west germany, and 31,000 male cases and 18,000 female cases in east germany. if we add these cases to the accumulated error,17 the shares for germany as a whole increase from 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent for males and from 1.3 percent to 1.6 percent for females (for the percentage deviations, we take the estimates based on the offi cially corrected 2011 census data as a reference). in figure 1 (page 38), we plot the cohort distribution of the cases that were identifi ed. we can see that the prior cleaning was particularly intense among the cohorts who were aged 25-40 in 2011 (see dark blue bars). generally, when we adjust for prior cleaning we seem to get a more meaningful deviation pattern in the accumulated error by cohort for the population under age 60 at the end of the inter-censal period (stacked blue and dark blue bars). while the deviations between the population estimates as of 1 january 2012 that are based on the old and the new censuses (denoted by the blue bars) often have a bimodal shape, with humps at ages in the twenties and the forties; the shapes we obtain after accounting for the corrections appear to be closer to a unimodal distribution of the accumulated error. we consider this pattern to be more meaningful, as it is likely that the accumulation and the elimination of errors vary systematically across the life course. while the registration of these cohorts by the state authorities is highly accurate during their school years, errors start to increase when the cohorts become young adults, and thus are leaving home. it is likely that some of these errors can be detected and eliminated as the cohorts grow older, and thus reach ages at which migration intensities tend to be lower. 17 which we defi ned above as the difference between the population estimates on 1 january 2012 based on the old censuses and the new census. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov50 5 testing approaches to adjust the inter-censal population estimates 5.1 considerations while the prior-cleaning adjustment in section 4 dealt with a specifi city of the german case, we turn now to the evaluation of four adjustment strategies. the four approaches considered differ in their underlying assumptions and data requirements. all of the adjustments are carried out separately by sex and region (east, west, and total germany). as the initial population, we take the population on 1 january 1988. we split the open-age category 90+ of this population into data by single-year ages using the survivor ratio method of the hmd (see wilmoth et al. 2007). as population at the end of the inter-censal period, we employ the offi cial population estimates as of 1 january 2012 based on the offi cially corrected 2011 census outcomes. as these data are available up to ages 100+, we again use the survivor ratio method to split the data at ages 100+ into single-year ages. in the following, we will refer to these population numbers as population estimates based on the 2011 census. the fi rst approach is the standard hmd methodology for cases in which population estimates between two censuses are either not available or not reliable (wilmoth et al. 2007). this method, which we refer to as the basic approach, is based on the assumption that the only reliable population data collected outside of the census are data on births and deaths. migration data are not taken into account, as they are either not available or are considered insuffi ciently reliable. the basic approach assumes that migration balances are constant over the inter-censal period, and that the accumulated error detected at the end of the inter-censal period has accrued uniformly over time. however, as it appears that the assumption of constant migration balances is violated in the german case, we expect that the direct application of the basic approach will not yield satisfactory results. nevertheless, we present this method here, as it serves as the basis for developing alternative approaches more appropriate for the german case. in this fi rst approach, we start with the base population at the beginning of the inter-censal period, and estimate the population size incrementally forward over the years by adding births and subtracting deaths in a cohort-wise manner. we then derive for the end of the inter-censal period the accumulated deviation by cohort by obtaining for each cohort the difference between our calculated numbers and the population estimates based on the 2011 census.18 the derived deviation by cohort – which is attributable to unbalanced migration and errors in the statistics – is then assumed to have accumulated uniformly over the inter-censal years, and is added to our incrementally derived population estimates by cohort. a formal description of this method is provided in section 5 of the online appendix. the second approach, the migration-adjusted approach, takes into account variation in migration event occurrences, simultaneously across cohorts and time. unlike in the basic approach, in this approach we relax our assumptions about data 18 for this approach, the prior-cleaning adjustment has no effect, as we do not make use of any migration data and population estimates that were published in the inter-censal period. adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 51 reliability, and assume that in-migration events19(both across national borders and across federal state borders within germany) are adequately measured, and thus can be used for the incremental forward calculation of the population estimates. the only numbers we consider unreliable are those related to out-migration events both across national borders and across federal state borders within germany. as mentioned above, the under-registration of out-migration represents the biggest challenge in deriving migration statistics. nevertheless, we believe that the outmigration data still provide meaningful information on variation in the occurrence of out-migration events over time. we assume in this approach that this registered variation affected the accumulation of errors in the inter-censal population estimates by cohort over time. in other words, in the sub-periods of the inter-censal period in which a cohort had an above-average number of registered out-migration events, we assume that the cohort also experienced a similar above-average contribution to the accumulated deviation, which we detect for this cohort at the end of the period between our forward-calculated prior-cleaning-adjusted population estimates and the population estimates based on the 2011 census. we decided to use the migration events instead of the intensities, as we consider the events more appropriate when seeking to account for the accumulation of errors in cohorts that are subject to big changes in size over time (either due to deaths or due to migration). if, for example, the population size of a cohort shrinks – predominantly due to deaths – from 10,000 to 1,000, while the cohort’s migration intensities stay the same, we would assume based on the intensities that the same absolute amount of error accumulated in the cohort in a year at the beginning and in a year at the end of the period of years in which the cohort experienced this drastic decrease. however, we consider it more realistic to assume that in the initial years, the total accumulation of error was greater as the cohort was bigger. this aspect is better refl ected in the migration event numbers. we will thus redistribute the error proportionally by cohort based on the out-migration events a cohort experienced in a given year relative to the other years of the inter-censal period (for more details see section 5 of the online appendix). as in the prior-cleaning adjustment, we follow a cohort-based approach. this implies that we needed to split the prior-cleaning-adjusted migration events again into lexis triangles following the equations described in section 4 of the online appendix, this time using the prior-cleaning-adjusted population numbers as a reference. by applying the splitting procedure a second time, the top open-age category is further reduced to 88+. migration events at ages 88+ are not taken into account in this second approach, as doing so would have made it necessary to generate an estimate of the distribution of migration events across single-year ages in this 88+ category. since the number of migration events in this category is rather small, we decided not to introduce additional assumptions about how the migration events might be distributed in the open-age category. instead, we assume no (selective) migration at ages 88+. 19 we deduct from the migration data the migration events that our prior-cleaning adjustment estimations identifi ed as artefacts resulting from the data cleaning. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov52 while it might be appropriate in general to believe that accumulated errors detected at the end of the inter-censal period emerged proportionally to temporal variation in out-migration events over the inter-censal period, this assumption does not necessarily apply to all cohorts. if, for example, we consider the cohorts born in the late 1980s in east germany, we see that they experienced above-average numbers of migration events around 1990, when many of them moved with their parents to west germany. however, erroneous entries of small children in the population registers are usually detected when they reach the age at which they have to enter school. thus, it is less likely for these cohorts than it is for older cohorts that the errors which emerged in the early 1990s persisted up to the 2011 census. another limitation of this approach is the lack of detailed migration data for parts of the intercensal period. for example, we have very limited information for east germany for the 1980s. moreover, because the data on internal migration between 1991 and 1999 are provided in broad age categories only, we had to split the data into singleyear ages on the basis of detailed migration data available for germany as a whole. these data availability constraints motivated us to develop a third simplifi ed approach that takes migration information into account, but has less demanding data requirements. in this third strategy, which we refer to as the simplifi ed migration-adjusted approach, we consider both variation in total migration intensities over time and variation in migration intensities by age. the latter information we obtain from a reference year in the middle of the inter-censal period. in our case, the reference year is 2000, for which we have available migration data by single-year ages. another difference between the third approach and the second approach is that for the third we decided to reduce complexity by considering inand out-migration events equally reliable. this implies that for the simplifi ed migration-adjusted approach (as well as for our fourth approach), we do not need to obtain our own population estimates for the inter-censal estimates, but can instead use the offi cially published population estimates that the german statistical offi ces derived based on registered births, deaths, and inand out-migration events. the population estimates and migration counts have, however, been adjusted by us for prior cleaning. a special case is that of the population numbers by single-year ages for the prior-cleaning-adjusted population at ages 88+, for whom we cannot rely on offi cial population numbers. if a cohort reaches the age of 87, we move to an incremental forward calculation in which we are subtracting the death events that are recorded for this cohort in a specifi c year. migration events are not taken into account, which implies that we again assume no selective migration above age 87. at the end of the inter-censal period we then derive the accumulated deviation from the offi cially corrected population estimates based on the 2011 census. the information on variation in migration intensities by age in our reference year is obtained in a cohort-wise manner (i.e., age reached during the year). these calculations are based on the migration data by cohort up to ages 87, which we already used for the second approach. this implies that also in this third approach for the redistribution of the accumulated error by age, migration at ages 88+ is not considered. in order to derive information on how to redistribute the accrual of the adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 53 prior-cleaning-adjusted accumulated error over the years of the inter-censal period across cohorts, we use migration intensities for the total population independent of age. both the migration intensities by age and by year comprise external and internal inand out-migration events. however, as in the second approach, for the information on variation by age we will not use the intensities, as they would not account for the fact that cohort sizes can change substantially over time (particularly at older ages). thus, we transfer for each year our year-2000 migration intensity data by the age reached at the end of the year (i.e., cohort) back into migration events, while taking the cohort size in a specifi c year into account (derived as the mean of the cohort size at the beginning and the end of a year). next, we derive separately for the migration intensities by year and for the migration counts by age (at the end of the year) and year matrices with proportional data for each cohort. we then add these two matrices with proportional data and divide them by two.20 the resulting weights are then used to redistribute the accrual of the detected prior-cleaningadjusted accumulated error (see section 5 of the online appendix for details). the fourth approach, the so-called population-size-adjusted approach, is much less data-demanding than the second and the third approaches, which require migration data. for this approach, we assume that the accumulated error by cohort (as well as by sex and region) is simply dependent on the changes in the population size of cohorts over time. as we do not depend on migration data when using this approach, we do not need to again derive the estimates on migration events by cohort after the prior-cleaning adjustment. this implies that we can work with population data up to ages 89+ instead of up to ages 88+. we use the offi cial population estimates and our own forward-calculated population estimates at ages 89+, which we obtain in a manner similar to that applied in the third approach. the prior-cleaningadjusted error is then, like in the third approach, derived by comparing the population estimates based on the 2011 census, with the population estimates based on the 1981 and 1987 censuses, which are forward-calculated at ages 89+. to obtain the weights according to which the detected error has accrued, we use information how the population size of each cohort (derived as the mean of the cohort size at the beginning and the end of a year) varied over the inter-censal period. as we prefer this approach to be additive across geographic hierarchies, we decided not to calculate these proportional weights for east, west, and total germany separately. instead, we derive the weights for total germany (separately by sex), and then apply these weights to east and west germany as well.21 we believe that this restriction is acceptable, as the population-size weighting is mostly accounting for newly born cohorts in the fi rst year and the changes in the older cohorts, among whom the number of deaths is high. as there is limited regional variation in the steepness of 20 it is in principle also possible to give the age and the year information different degrees of signifi cance in deriving the weights. 21 this approach was also applied in deriving the adjusted population numbers for the 16 german states and east and west berlin, which are presented in the online data appendix. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov54 the increases in mortality risks over age within germany, we believe that it is justifi ed to use the weights for germany as a whole for the german sub-territories as well (see section 5 of the online appendix for details). 5.2 outcomes in presenting the outcomes for the four different approaches, we will fi rst contrast the offi cial population estimates with the estimated adjusted development of the total population of germany by sex (fig. 5). as expected, we fi nd that in this case the application of the basic approach does not yield plausible results. the outcomes for the other three approaches differ only marginally at the level of the total population. for the total population, we can also compare our numbers with the offi cial adjustment published by the federal statistical offi ce. the trends in the two sets of fi gures are very similar, which is reassuring. however, we see slight differences in the levels, as our numbers are lower than the offi cially adjusted numbers for most of the inter-censal period. these differences seem to be mostly attributable to our decision to start the inter-censal period on 1 january 1988, while the offi cial adjustment does not start until 31 december 1990 (see the conclusion for more details). as our approaches two to four produce very similar results at the population level, we decided to take the fourth population-size-adjusted approach into more serious consideration as our potential fi nal choice, as it is the leanest strategy in terms of data demand. a big advantage of this approach is that it is not dependent on the availability of detailed migration data, which we had estimated for the 1980s and the 1990s based in part on some rather bold assumptions. another advantage of the population-size-adjusted approach relative to the other three approaches is that the outcomes at different hierarchies are additive. this implies that if we implement the adjustment for east and west germany separately and add the resulting numbers to derive the total numbers for germany, we obtain the same numbers as we would have if we had applied the adjustment directly to the data for germany as a whole. however, while differences between the second, third, and fourth approaches might be marginal at the level of the total population, there could still be strong deviations for specifi c cohorts. we thus explored how the adjusted population estimates that are derived using the fourth population-size-adjusted approach differ from the estimates that are obtained by applying the second migration-adjusted approach, in which we consider variation in migration over time by cohort, sex, and region (for east and west germany, and for germany as a whole). this comparison is displayed in figure 6, which focuses on the ages for which we have access to migration data by single-year ages (up to age 87). the fi gure shows the deviations of the adjusted population numbers obtained using the second approach from the numbers derived by applying our favoured fourth approach (in percent). the biggest deviations are visible in east germany, where there was substantial outmigration, mostly to west germany. the deviations are greatest among the cohorts born between 1950 and 1990, and are especially large in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. for the cohorts born between 1950 and 1970, the migration-adjusted approach provides lower estimates than the population-size-adjusted approach, as adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 55 the latter does not account for the high migration intensities among these cohorts around 1990. for the cohorts born between 1970 and 1990, the migration-adjusted approach results in higher numbers than the population-size-adjusted approach because the latter does not take into account that these east german cohorts did not enter ages with particularly high migration intensities until the 2000s. however, the deviations are not large. if we consider in combination any time and age/cohort up to age 87 for the six populations (women and men in east and west germany, and germany as a whole) for the years between the censuses (1988-2010), we obtain a mean of -0.05 percent and a standard deviation of 0.62 percent. we detect deviations bigger than 5 percent in 30 cases only, with the largest deviation being 7.6 percent. these elevated deviations above 5 percent are solely concentrated among east german females at ages 18-23 in the 1990s. the rather small overall deviations reassure us that the population-size-adjusted approach is an appropriate choice.22 fig. 5: development of total population 1 january 1988 – 1 january 2014 (offi cial vs. adjusted numbers) 1 basic 2 migration adjusted 3 simple migration adjusted 4 population-size adjusted population in millions 37.5 38.0 38.5 39.0 39.5 40.0 1990 2000 2010 40.5 41.0 41.5 42.0 1990 2000 2010 78.0 79.0 80.0 81.0 82.0 1990 2000 2010 population in millions population in millions year year year males females total note: lines one to four represent the resulting adjusted population estimates based on our four approaches, while line fi ve shows the initially published population estimates. for the graph for the total population on the right, we are also able to add the population development estimates based on the offi cial inter-censal adjustment implemented by the federal statistical offi ce (line six). source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations 22 the differences between the adjusted population estimates derived using the simplifi ed migration-adjusted approach and the migration-adjusted approach are even smaller, but we still prefer to use the population-size-adjusted approach, as it does not rely on migration data that we estimated based on some rather bold assumptions. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov56 fig. 6: comparison of adjusted population estimates: deviation of migrationadjusted numbers from population-size-adjusted numbers in % note: the fi gure shows the deviation of the adjusted population estimates derived using the migration-adjusted approach from those obtained through the population-size-adjusted approach, with the latter serving as the point of reference (in percent). the legend on the right-hand side depicts which deviations in percent correspond to which colours in the surface plot. deviations are shown for 1 january of a given year. the dotted grey diagonal lines denote the ages that the birth cohorts depicted on the y-axis reached in specifi c years (the 1980 cohort, for example, turned 20 in 2000). if the deviation is negative/positive, the migration-adjusted approach derives lower/higher adjusted population numbers than the population-size-adjusted approach. in east germany, for example, the migration-adjusted approach returns higher population numbers for cohorts born between 1975 and 1985 through most of the 1990s. unlike the population-size-adjusted approach, this approach takes into account that these cohorts did not reach ages with high migration intensities until later in the inter-censal period. thus, the migration-adjusted approach assumes that most of the positive error detected in the census accrued in this later period, and applies fewer deductions to the population estimates in the fi rst part of the inter-censal period. source: federal statistical offi ce, own calculations adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 57 6 effects of the adjustment of inter-censal population estimates on mortality measures to assess the impact of our chosen adjustment of inter-censal population estimates on mortality indicators, we compare our newly derived life expectancy estimates for germany23 with estimates from other sources (fig. 7). for this comparison, we use data obtained from the federal statistical offi ce of germany (fso), the who, eurostat, and previously published hmd data.24 as these sources provide data for germany as a whole since 1990 only, we focus on the 1990-2011 period. with the exception of the data from the fso, which publishes three-year averages, all of the other sources provide annual numbers. for our comparison, the data for the fso are centred on the middle of a three-year period. according to our adjusted numbers, the life expectancy at birth (e0) of males increased between 1990 and 2011 from 71.9 to 77.8 years. at the end of the intercensal period, when the accumulated error was highest, this fi gure was around 0.2 years lower than the corresponding fi gures provided by the fso and the old hmd estimates. compared to the numbers cited in international databases, such as the health for all database of the who and the eurostat database, we detect a substantial negative deviation of up to 0.6 years. for females, our adjusted calculations show that the e0 increased from 78.4 to 82.8 years between 1990 and 2011. the deviations from the numbers provided in other databases are somewhat smaller in this case because of the lower levels of accumulated error among females. at the end of the inter-censal period, our adjusted numbers are around 0.1 years lower than the numbers from the fso and our previously published numbers. the data on the female e0 provided by the who and eurostat seem to suffer from some defi ciencies, as they exhibit unreasonable fl uctuations in the period between 2000 and 2006. in the period around 2010, our adjusted numbers are up to 0.45 years lower than the female e0 obtained from the who and eurostat. this gap is also not insubstantial. in the two lower plots of figure 7, we can see the effects of the adjustment on life expectancies at age 90. we were unable to obtain data from the who and eurostat for this age. the comparison with the previously published hmd data provides support for the view that our pension adjustment factor generally performed well in tracking the development of life expectancy at high ages. however, among males from 2005 onwards, we fi nd an increasing negative deviation that amounts to around 0.2 years in 2010. the fso numbers also show a negative deviation for males from our adjusted numbers of the same magnitude; again, of around 0.2 years. the similarities between the fso numbers and our numbers suggest that the fso also implemented adjustments to account for known defi ciencies in the intercensal population estimates. 23 based on hmd methodology. 24 in preparing the previously published hmd numbers, the population at high ages had been adjusted based on information from german pension data (scholz/jdanov 2007). • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov58 fig. 7: deviation of the life expectancies based on our adjusted inter-censal population data from the life expectancies from other sources note: the life expectancies from other sources to which we compare our numbers are always represented by the horizontal black line at level zero. if the lines representing the difference are below/ above zero, this implies that our adjusted life expectancies are below/above the numbers of the life expectancy data from other sources. fso refers to the federal statistical offi ce. with the exception of the data from the fso, which publishes three-year averages, all of the other sources provide annual numbers. for our comparison, the data for the fso are centred on the middle of a three-year period. source: federal statistical offi ce, who, eurostat, hmd, own calculations difference in years 1995 1995 males females year life expectancy at birth difference in years males females 1995 1995 erence to eurostat difference to fso difference to who diff difference to previous hmd difference to fso difference to previous hmd year adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 59 7 discussion and conclusion in this paper, we sought to generate detailed adjusted population estimates for germany over the last inter-censal period by reassessing and enhancing existing approaches. our fi ndings contribute to the existing literature in several ways. first, using the german case as an example, we documented the challenges that globalised countries with relatively open borders face in keeping track of their population numbers. second, our paper contributes to the debate on the challenges associated with the transition from performing full censuses to conducting register-based censuses (coleman 2013; martin 2006; scholz/kreyenfeld 2016; valente 2010). the german case points to issues that may arise from such a transition. it is not clear whether the prior cleaning of statistics we detected in the years before the census was partly motivated by the upcoming enumeration. however, the preparation of the registers for the censuses provided incentives to implement corrections. if undertaking such procedures becomes “good” practise, countries will no longer have a single census date at which corrections are implemented, but rather a census period over several years in which more or less extensive adjustments are applied at different levels of the administrative hierarchy, and at varying points in time. while it is generally desirable to adjust any inaccuracies in the population statistics as quickly as possible, such corrections become problematic if they account for errors that have persisted for longer periods. in this case, a comparison of the census outcomes with the old post-censal population estimates is likely to provide a distorted view of the cohorts, regions, and other subgroups for which it was particularly tricky to keep track of the population numbers during the inter-censal period. we were able to demonstrate this with the outcomes by cohort for east, west, and total germany. accurate information on these distortions is, however, very valuable. in addition to allowing us to identify and address shortcomings in the registration systems, this information is extremely useful for the backward-adjustment of inter-censal population estimates. societies should have an interest in maintaining accurate population statistics, as information on the population distribution within a country is relevant for making decisions regarding public fi nancial transfers and electoral representation. a third contribution of our paper is that our evaluation of different adjustment methodologies offers important insights that can be used to improve generalised methodologies, such as those implemented in the hmd, to derive adjusted intercensal population estimates for globalised countries that are subject to substantial migration. for the german case, it is important to stress that any attempt to adjust the inter-censal population estimates over such a long period of time must be approximate. if we had been able to gain access to detailed migration data for the whole inter-censal period, we probably would have chosen to use one of the two approaches that take into account variation in migration intensities across age/cohort, sex, time, and region. but given the data limitations, we settled for the population-size-adjusted approach, as it seems to provide reasonable results, while it does not require the use of potentially erroneous migration data, some of which we were only able to estimate based on rather bold assumptions. our fi nding that the out• sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov60 comes of the population-size-adjusted approach do not vastly differ from those of other approaches that take variation in migration intensities into account reassures us that we made the most appropriate choice. this observation is also encouraging for the purposes of improving generalised methodologies, as it shows that even for a rather complicated case like germany, a relatively simple approach seems to work reasonably well. in comparing our preferred adjustment approach with the offi cial adjustment approach (statistisches bundesamt 2016b), we previously noted that unlike our approach, the offi cial approach is only carried out for the total population at the level of the german states. our approach considers sex and age by single-year ages. in addition, while our adjustment covers the period between 1 january 1988 and 1 january 2011, the offi cial adjustment covers the period between 31 december 1990 and 31 december 2010. the offi cial estimates as of 31 december 2010 were, on the other hand, derived from backward estimations. in the offi cial inter-censal adjustment, variation in migration intensities over time is taken into account; which is in line with our simplifi ed migration-adjusted approach. if we had decided to focus on the 1990-2010 period only, we probably would have favoured this approach as well, as relatively rich migration data are available for this period. in deriving migration intensities, the prior cleaning is also considered in the offi cial approach through estimation techniques. however, the offi cial adjustment focuses on the 2008-2010 period only, whereas we also cover the cleaning in 2004. in addition, in the offi cial adjustment, these estimates are only used to modify the migration intensities, while the estimated artifi cial migration events are not added to the accumulated error in the population estimates detected in the census. overall, the offi cial approach and our approach are similar in some ways and different in others. it is, however, reassuring that the offi cially adjusted total population estimates and the population numbers derived using our favoured approach do not differ greatly (see fig. 5). the slight differences found in the levels seem to be mainly attributable to the fact that our adjustment starts three years earlier than the offi cial adjustment. although our corrections and adjustments mainly concern cohorts with low mortality rates, their effects on life expectancy levels are not insubstantial. this is especially apparent when we compare our new calculations with the fi gures published in the international databases of the who and eurostat, as it seems that no efforts were made by these organisations to adjust for problems in the population estimates for germany during the 1990s and the 2000s. our adjusted life expectancies at birth are up to 0.6 years lower for males and up to 0.45 years lower for females. the differences between these fi gures and the life expectancies previously published by the hmd and the federal statistical offi ce of germany – both of which seem to have attempted to account for the shortcomings in the german population estimates – are smaller, but are still not negligible. we also integrated our adjusted population estimates into the human fertility database. however, as the population estimates for women were less affected by accumulated errors than those for men, and given the low fertility levels in germany, the effects of the adjustment on total fertility levels were rather small (maximum deviation of the tfr: +0.03 in east germany without east berlin). adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 61 the adjusted population numbers for east, west, and total germany, as well as for the 16 german states and east and west berlin provided in the online data appendix, are expected to facilitate research that requires access to detailed time series of population exposure data. in addition, the lessons learned from the german case should be used to revisit the hmd methodology for dealing with the adjustment of population estimates in inter-censal periods. nevertheless, an inter-censal period of more than two decades is problematic, and we hope that periods of this length remain exceptional in the decades to come. acknowledgements we would like to thank vladimir m. shkolnikov and domantas jasilionis for their important input in the development of the inter-censal adjustment method, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions. furthermore, we are very grateful for the data support we received from sigrid gellers-barkmann, karolin kubisch, and the student assistants at the laboratory of demographic data at the max planck institute for demographic research. we would also like to acknowledge support from olga pötzsch and other contact persons at the german statistical offi ces, and to thank miriam hils for language editing. the study has been partly funded by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg) (germany) (ja 2302/1-1), the agence nationale de la recherche (anr) (france) (anr-12-fral-0003-01), and the russian academic excellence project «5-100». references barbieri, magali et al. 2015: data resource profi le: the human mortality database (hmd). in: international journal of epidemiology 44,5: 1549-1556 [doi: 10.1093/ije/ dyv105]. bell, martin; muhidin, salut 2009: cross-national comparisons of internal migration (no. hdrp-2009-30). human development research paper series 2009/30. new york: human development report offi ce (hdro), united nations development programme (undp). castro-martín, teresa; cortina, clara 2015: demographic issues of intra-european migration: destinations, family and settlement. in: european journal of population 31,2: 109-125 [doi: 10.1007/s10680-015-9348-y]. coleman, david 2013: the twilight of the census. in: population and development review 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[doi: 10.1080/01419870.2015.980295]. opfermann, heike; grobecker, claire; krack-roberg, elle 2006: auswirkung der bereinigung des ausländerzentralregisters auf die amtliche ausländerstatistik. in: wirtschaft und statistik 2006,5: 480-494. adjusting inter-censal population estimates for germany 1987-2011 • 63 scholz, rembrandt; kreyenfeld, michaela 2016: the register-based census in germany: historical context and relevance for population research. in: comparative population studies 41,2: 175-204 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-08en]. scholz, rembrandt d.; jdanov; dmitri a. 2007: nutzung der daten des forschungsdatenzentrums der rentenversicherung zur wissenschaftlichen mortalitätsanalyse: verfahren zur korrektur der bevölkerungsbestände der amtlichen statistik im hohen alter in deutschland. paper presented at the third workshop of the data research centre of the pension insurance from 26-28 june 2006 in bens-heim, germany. scholz, rembrandt; jdanov, dmitri 2008: weniger hochbetagte als gedacht: korrekturen in der amtlichen statistik für westdeutschland notwendig. in: demografi sche forschung aus erster hand 5,1: 4. scholz, rembrandt et al. 2017: about mortality data for germany (last update: april 21nd, 2017). berkeley/rostock: university of california, berkeley/max planck institute for demographic research [http://www.mortality.org/hmd/deutnp/inputdb/ deutnpcom.pdf, 19.02.2018]. statistisches bundesamt 1993: bevölkerungsstatistische übersichten 1946-1989. heft 3, sonderreihe mit beiträgen für das gebiet der ehemaligen ddr. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2006: statistisches jahrbuch 2006 für die bundesrepublik deutschland. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2014: bevölkerung und erwerbstätigkeit: wanderungen. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2016a: wanderungen: qualitätsbericht. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. statistisches bundesamt 2016b: bevölkerung und erwerbstätigkeit: rückgerechnete und fortgeschriebene bevölkerung auf grundlage des zensus 2011. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. valente, paolo 2010: census taking in europe: how are populations counted in 2010? in: population & societies 467: 1-4. von der lippe, peter 2006: brauchen wir noch selbständige statistische landesämter neben dem statistischen bundesamt in deutschland? in: jahrbuch für wirtschaftswissenschaften/review of economics 57,2: 190-211. wheldon, mark c. et al. 2016: bayesian population reconstruction of female populations for less developed and more developed countries. in: population studies 70,1: 21-37 [doi: 10.1080/00324728.2016.1139164]. wilmoth, john r. et al. 2007: methods protocol for the human mortality database: version 5. berkeley/rostock: university of california, berkeley/max planck institute for demographic research. • sebastian klüsener, pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz, dmitri a. jdanov64 date of submission: 24.01.2017 date of acceptance: 22.01.2018 sebastian klüsener (). max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany; vytautas magnus university. kaunas, lithuania. e-mail: kluesener@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/sebastian_ kluesener_1644.htm pavel grigoriev, rembrandt d. scholz. max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. e-mail: grigoriev@demogr.mpg.de, scholz@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/pavel_ grigoriev_1578.htm url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter_1899/rembrandt_d_scholz_663. htm dmitri a. jdanov. max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany; national research university higher school of economics. moscow, russia. e-mail: jdanov@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/dmitri_a_ jdanov_516.htm published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? evidence from china how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? evidence from china dianxi wang abstract: existing research has found that since the late 1960s, the pathway to adulthood in western countries has undergone complex changes, but few studies have investigated such changes and the effect of childhood family background on the transition to adulthood within the chinese context. this study aims to examine the role of childhood family background in the transition to adulthood among chinese youth born between 1930 and 1979. we identifi ed four clusters of trajectories to adulthood in both the family and occupational domain. in the occupational domain, more than a quarter of respondents fall into the cluster of high studies & nonagricultural employment and in the family domain, nearly one-third of the sample follows the clusters of marriage & one child and staying single longer, refl ecting the increasing diversity and delay in transition to adulthood. parents’ occupations during childhood had a signifi cant effect on both occupational trajectory and family trajectory. higher occupational status of parents delayed the transition to adulthood, while lower occupational status of parents promoted the transition to adulthood. family economic status during childhood had a greater effect on occupational trajectories. young people with worse family fi nancial situations in childhood were more likely to enter the labour market earlier, while those with better family fi nancial situations were more likely to receive long-term education and delay entering the workforce. the mother’s religious belief had a more signifi cant effect on the family life course. youths with non-religious mothers were more likely to fall into the unmarried or childless cluster. in the chinese context, the political status of the father played an important role in adult transition. a father’s communist party membership in childhood was positively correlated with the likelihood that individuals would follow the pattern of trajectory to adulthood characterised by long-term education. keywords: transition to adulthood · life course · childhood family background comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 263-286 (date of release: 11.07.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-11 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-11en8 • dianxi wang264 1 introduction regarding transition to adulthood, sociological research usually emphasises the markers of the transition to adulthood, such as completing education, starting employment, getting married and becoming a parent (goldscheider/goldscheider 1999; hogan/astone 1986; modell 1989; arnett 2001), focusing in particular on the historical changes in the timing of these transitions, as well as the interrelationships between the transitions of different roles and the resulting transition patterns (hogan 1980; marini 1984; arnett 2001). these roles or events represent the transition from the typical role of youth to that of adulthood and are considered signs of adulthood. since the late 1960s, scholars have found that the transition to adulthood of young people in western countries has undergone signifi cant changes, manifested in the delay of life events in the transition of young people to adulthood and more frequent transitions between life roles or states during adulthood (aassve et al. 2002; salmelaaro et al. 2011; shanahan 2000; sironi/furstenberg 2012; widmer/ritschard 2009). within the shaping mechanism of delayed and diversifi ed trajectories to adulthood, in addition to structural factors such as social changes, education systems reforms and labour market contexts (billari 2004; blossfeld et al. 2005; danziger/ratner 2010; mayer 2004; modell et al. 1976; iacovou 2002), background of the family of origin in the timing and sequence of events in the transition to adulthood have also received extensive attention and have been shown to play an important role in adulthood (elzinga/liefbroer 2007; sironi et al. 2015). since the founding of the people’s republic of china in 1949, with the rapid modernisation of chinese society, profound changes have also taken place in the transition to adulthood, which may be mainly refl ected in different life-course fi elds, such as increased years of education, delays in starting a family and having children. these phenomena suggest that there may be a new pattern in the pathway to adulthood (wang/zhao 2021). according to the relevance of the social background, the changes in the transition to adulthood that occurred in the west, does the adult transition of chinese youth also show such changes after experiencing the modernisation trend? this study also focuses on whether family factors that lead to the transition to adulthood in the west also play a role in the process of adult transition in china. therefore, based on retrospective empirical data from china, the current study examines the pattern of trajectories to adulthood of chinese youth and the infl uence of childhood family background. 2 theoretical background the various changes presented in the pathway to adulthood are often explained under the macro-structural framework. the concept of social norms is used to explain the regularities observed during the transition to adulthood and it is assumed that the degree of people’s compliance with social norms has an impact on adulthood. when there is a major deviation from the prescribed social timetable, it will cause the loss of consistency in the adult transition, such as role transitions occurring too how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 265 early or too late (settersten 2003; mortimer et al. 2005). another perspective used to explain changes in trajectories to adulthood is the individualisation theory. scholars believe that since the middle of the twentieth century, the modern transformation of society has increased the individual’s autonomy in their life arrangements while also increasing uncertainty (beck 1992; beck/beck-gernsheim 2002). young people have greater personal freedom than ever, which gives them greater autonomy in the choice of pathways to adulthood (mills 2007; strickland 2012), thereby enabling young people to make the transition to adulthood more autonomously. meanwhile, the increasing insecurity and uncertainty of modern society also impels young people to choose increasingly diverse and unstable life trajectories (beck 1995; blossfeld/hofmeister 2006). institutions and policies also play an important role in accumulating advantages or disadvantages for individuals, infl uencing the likelihood of delaying or accelerating adulthood (iacovou 2002; lee 2014). scholars describe the transition to adulthood as an aspect of the life course constructed by social institutions and emphasises that the inequality of later life-course consequences is the result of social construction processes and assumes that the formation of advantages and disadvantages is a long-term process of social structuring and institutionalisation (kohli/meyer 1986; dannefer 2020). since 1970s, the reform of the welfare system oriented to neoliberal policies and the changes in the labour market in western countries have further increased the instability and insecurity of individual careers (billari 2004), leading the transition to adulthood of young people in a more fl exible way. for example, scholars found that changes in the labour market over past decades in united states, such as labour-saving technological changes, increased globalisation, reduced unionisation and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with infl ation, have made it more diffi cult for young people to achieve economic stability (danziger/ratner 2010). these changing economic conditions have led to a decline in the social status of young people, contributing to increasingly precarious trajectories (côté/bynner 2008). in addition, the adult transition of youth is obviously affected by historical events. for example, the division and reunifi cation of east and west germany had a signifi cant effect on events that marked adulthood, such as leaving education and training, entering the labour market, leaving home and forming unions and families (hillmert 2005). the changes of entering adulthood are also regarded as part of the second demographic transition (sdt) theory (lesthaeghe 1995; lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986). this theory argues that as demographic phenomena such as cohabitation, divorce, celibacy and late marriage become more common, the distribution of demographic events has also become more complex and diverse (lesthaeghe 1995; ferrari/pailhé 2017; billari/liefbroer 2010). the expansion of the education system and the changes in the labour market have also caused delays in the transition of young people. for example, the rise in youth unemployment, the prevalence of limited-term work contracts and unstable employment are regarded as the main reasons for the postponement of departure from the parental home and family formation (blossfeld et al. 2005; ferrari/pailhé 2017). in addition, cultural factors • dianxi wang266 such as religion and customs may cause differences in the timing of adult transitions in different regions (iacovou 2002; barry/nelson 2005). in terms of micro factors, more scholars pay attention to the impact of the characteristics of individuals and families on the trajectories to adulthood. at the individual level, people’s education level is considered to be the most important determinant of the sequence of role changes during adult transition (pallas 2003; schoon 2008). military service also has a signifi cant effect on economic independence from parents and family formation (including the time of marriage and childbirth and family structure); compared with civilians of the same age, the transition of soldiers to adulthood is more stable and orderly (kelty et al. 2010). at the family level, some scholars have observed that well-educated parents can provide suffi cient economic, cultural and social resources to ensure that their children receive a good education (walsemann et al. 2008). sirniö, kauppinen and martikainen (2017) also observed that parental resources, especially parental income, provide useful support for young people’s pathway to adulthood. young people with higher social and cultural capital coped more easily with individual role transitions (stauber/walther 2006). conversely, the disadvantaged status of the childhood family has an adverse effect on the specifi c outcome of the individual in adulthood. aquilino (1996) found that the experience of single-parent families infl uenced the likelihood of high school completion and enrolment in postsecondary school, the timing of residential independence and entry into the labour force. in addition, the experience of poverty in childhood is a powerful predictor of various adverse health outcomes in middle and late adulthood. children living in poverty are more likely to die earlier than their peers as adults (raphael 2011; evans/kim 2007). for example, some scholars have found that lower socioeconomic status in childhood is signifi cantly related to the relative mortality of scottish men (smith et al. 2000) and severe socioeconomic deprivation (sed) is also signifi cantly associated with neurological diseases in adulthood (morris et al. 2019). meanwhile, the effect of parental social class on the transition to adulthood varies from country to country (sironi et al. 2015). in north america, higher family status tends to reduce the complexity of the trajectory (hogan 1981; rajulton/burch 2010; ravanera et al. 2003), while the opposite effect was found in southern europe (galland 1997; marini 1984). since the founding of the people’s republic of china, the period of transition to adulthood has undergone signifi cant changes, which are refl ected in different domains of life. in the fi eld of education, the structural transformation of the education system has improved the education level of the chinese population. the population with junior college degrees and above per 100,000 rose from 416 in 1964 to 15,467 people in 2020 (national bureau of statistics 2021). from the family life course, the timing of fi rst marriage and fi rst childbirth continues to be delayed. the mean age at fi rst marriage increased from 19.55 in 1960 to 26.3 in 2016 and the mean age at fi rst birth increased from 22.20 in 1960 to 26.9 in 2016, (chen 1991; zhuang/zhang 2003; he et al. 2018), which indicates the delay and suppression of population events during adulthood. in the fi eld of employment, the labour market environment has undergone obvious changes, the mobility of labour has become more common and how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 267 the number of fl exible employees has continued to increase. some scholars estimate that china’s urban informal employment accounts for 33.2 percent to 44.7 percent of total urban employment and the number of informal employments reaches 138 million to 155 million (chen et al. 2021). in the past ten years, china has begun to experience the second demographic transition. some demographic phenomena, such as cohabitation, late marriage and divorce, are becoming more pervasive and gradually accepted by society. for example, the divorce rate rose from 2.0 percent in 1978 to 31 percent in 2020 (yang/he 2014; ministry of civil affairs 2021). a national survey concerning childbearing history shows that more than 20 percent of chinese women born since 1957 have had unmarried pregnancies (li 2020). in the 1990s birth cohort, more than 30 percent had cohabited with their partners before their fi rst marriage (zhang 2020). in the domain of work, the social heterogeneity in work trajectories between urban and rural areas and between men and women is associated with wider economic and institutional contexts, such as changes in the labour market and public pension systems (xu et al. 2021). since the 1980s, when a large number of rural people moved into cities for work, groups of migrant children emerged and their number continued to increase. for example, from 2000 to 2010, the number of migrant children increased from 19.82 million to 35.81 million (lv et al. 2018). some scholars pointed out that childhood migration signifi cantly affects the time and pattern of life events in early adulthood of chinese youth, that is, the delay of marriage and parenting among young people who experienced migration in childhood (liu 2013). in the chinese context, the transition to adulthood of adolescents is obviously affected by historical events and policy factors. some scholars have found that historical events such as the great leap forward and the cultural revolution delayed the transition of chinese youth to adulthood (yeung/hu 2013; wang/zhao 2021). among them, the family planning policy also has a particularly signifi cant effect on the adulthood of chinese youth. the family planning policy stipulates that eligible families can only have one child, which reduces the number of birth events in their life course and affects their pathway to adulthood. meanwhile, as many families are only allowed to have one child, this further underscores the importance of children to the family. the family has always played a central role in the social and cultural life of china and is valued as the cornerstone of society (lin et al. 1994; nelson et al. 2004). the fact that the family has to devote all its resources to this one child, including emotional and fi nancial intergenerational support, highlights the increasingly important role of the family in the development of the child. families with good family backgrounds can provide more resources for the growth of their children, while families with poor family backgrounds cannot provide strong support for their children’s growth (duan/su 2020). in other words, with the implementation of the family planning policy and the miniaturisation of family size, children have actually become a scarce resource for families and families have to devote all their resources to their children to provide better support for their growth. in china, this emphasis on the strong connectedness between individuals and family may be refl ected in the construction of the pattern of trajectories to adulthood. in other words, in the process of postponement and de-standardisation of trajectories to adulthood, the • dianxi wang268 patterns and smoothness of transition to adulthood are strongly associated with family background. however, the correlation between family background and subsequent life course may begin before birth and continue through adolescence and can shape the trajectories to adulthood and psychological development of young adults in their later life. analyses of the infl uence of family factors on the transition to adulthood should extend to individual childhoods, because childhood family background is not only an important condition for individual socialisation, but also determines the amount of resources or social capital that the individual could obtain during their growth. therefore, we assume that chinese youths with advantaged childhood family conditions (such as family economic status, political status) have delayed and diversifi ed trajectories to adulthood and investigate the changes in trajectories to adulthood of chinese youth and the role of childhood family background in the observed changes. in order to achieve this purpose, we consider transition to adulthood as a multifaceted process marked by a series of events and that these events mutually infl uence each other in terms of timing, which may result in different trajectories to adulthood (gauthier/furstenberg 2002). thus, focusing on single events makes it diffi cult to understand the interrelationships of different life events. we solve this problem by adopting sequence analysis approach, which provides a “holistic” perspective, allowing us to view transition to adulthood as a multi-dimensional and long-span trajectory sequence (billari 2001; sironi et al. 2015). 3 method 3.1 data the data used in this research was derived from the third wave of the china health and retirement longitudinal study (charls) conducted by national school of development at peking university in 2014. the survey used a multistage probability proportionate to size sampling (pps) method to select samples and was conducted in 150 counties and 450 communities (villages) in 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. the subject of this survey is the life course of chinese people and 20,948 people were interviewed. the main events of an individual’s life course such as demographic backgrounds, marital history, childbearing history, education history, health history, wealth history and work history were collected. this comprehensive life history retrospective survey provides a reliable data source for us to study the life course of transition to adulthood for chinese people. since the youngest cohort in the sample was also born in the late 1970s and there were few respondents born before 1930, this research did not include the sample born before 1930 and divided the remaining respondents into fi ve cohorts: 19301939 (cohort 1), 1940-1949 (cohort 2), 1950-1959 (cohort 3), 1960-1969 (cohort 4) and 1970-1979 (cohort 5). for the treatment of missing data, this study deleted the how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 269 cases with information errors and missing values and only retained and analysed the complete cases. the fi nal valid sample included 15,777 respondents. 3.2 analytical plan the method used in this study is multi-channel sequence analysis. multi-channel sequence analysis can effectively describe the overall changes in life-course trajectories, measure the dissimilarity of life-course trajectories between different individuals and explore the structure and pattern of life-course trajectories. the results obtained can be used for further statistical analysis. first, we operationalise the life course of transition to adulthood in a multidimensional life-course states trajectory of individuals from the age of 16 to 35, that is, a multi-dimensional state trajectory sequence based on life events and roles in the four domains of education, marriage, childbearing and employment. second, we construct a sequence of states during the transition to adulthood based on the age at which an individual has experienced events or roles that mark entry into adult life, with each year of age contributing one observation. the realisation of this aim mainly includes the following two steps. first of all, the life-course states of transition to adulthood are identifi ed. this study selects the life-course state within the life domains of education, marriage, childbearing and employment during transition to adulthood. in the marriage fi eld, there were four possible states: single (s), partnered (p), married (m) and divorced or widowed (d). in the childbearing fi eld, there were also four states: no children (nc), one child (1c), two children (2c) and three or more children (3c+). we merged the state of marriage and childbearing (4 marital states × 4 childbearing states) to form a family lifecourse trajectory. we also merged education and employment into one fi eld that had six states: education (ed), agricultural work (ag), non-agricultural work (na), no paid work (np), military service (ms)1 and not employed (nu), to form the education and employment trajectory (see table 1). furthermore, according to the life-course states defi ned above and the respondent’s education history, employment history, marriage history and childbearing history information, this study uses years as the unit of time to respectively construct the education and employment trajectories and family life-course trajectory sequences of chinese people born between 1930 and 1979 from 16 to 35 years of age. these trajectory sequences are made up of the multi-dimensional states of individuals at different ages during the transition to adulthood. third, we use the optimal matching (om) method to calculate the distance between the paired sequences and then perform cluster analysis based on the distance matrix to form the type of state sequence. specifi cally, we performed a 1 in 1955, china began to implement a compulsory military service system, requiring all chinese citizens to perform military service; by 1978, a system of combining compulsory military service and voluntary military service was implemented. the period of compulsory military service is two years. • dianxi wang270 sequence analysis by applying optimal matching, which calculates the matrix of dissimilarities between pairs of individual trajectories, setting a 1-unit of insertion and deletion costs and transition rate between states of substitution cost in order to match different multidimensional sequences. after completing the optimal matching, this study uses the ward algorithm method to perform hierarchical clustering analysis to achieve the dimensionality reduction of the data to organise the sequence of life-course trajectories into groups so that the similarity of the sequences within the groups is maximised and minimised between the groups. the validity of clustering is tested through a series of indicators and the optimal number of clusters is found according to the test indicators of hg (hubert’s gamma), pbc (point biserial correlation), asw (average silhouette width), r2 (share of the discrepancy explained by the clustering solution). finally, we use the clusters of trajectories to adulthood as dependent variable and estimate a multinomial logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between childhood family background and the probability of belonging to each of the selected clusters. all data processing is done using the r software package traminer and weightedcluster. education and family life course trajectories employment trajectories (1) education (ed) (1) single with no children (snc) (2) agricultural work (ag) (2) single with one child (s1c) (3) non-agricultural work (na) (3) single with two children (s2c) (4) no paid work (np) (4) single with three+ children (s3c) (5) military service (ms) (5) partner with no children (pnc) (6) not employed (nu) (6) partner with one child (p1c) (7) partner with two children (p2c) (8) partner with three+ children (p3c) (9) married with no children (mnc) (10) married with one child (m1c) (11) married with two children (m2c) (12) married with three+ children (m3c) (13) divorced/widow with no children (dnc) (14) divorced/widow with one child (d1c) (15) divorced/widow with two children (d2c) (16) divorced/widow with three+ children (d3c) tab. 1: life course states defi ned in this study source: own design how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 271 3.3 variables the dependent variable in our study is the clusters of trajectories to transition formed by cluster analysis. the independent variable is childhood family background, mainly including parent’s ethnicity, parent’s religious belief in childhood, family fi nancial situation in childhood, not having enough food to eat in childhood, parent’s occupation and politics status in childhood. parent’s ethnicity includes the han2 ethnic group and minority ethnic groups; parent’s religious belief in childhood has two options of “no” or “yes”; family fi nancial status in childhood includes three categories of “worse,” “much the same” and “better”; not having enough food to eat in childhood covers two options of “no” or “yes”; parents’ occupations in childhood includes agricultural employment and non-agricultural employment; parent’s politics status involves two categories of communist party members and non-communist party members. the control variables include gender, urban-rural, birth cohorts, ethnicity and political status of respondents. gender is a dummy variable with male as the reference category. urban-rural is also a dummy variable, where 0 indicates rural and 1 indicates urban.3 we also include fi ve birth cohorts: 1930-1939, 19401949, 1950-1959, 1960-1969 and 1970-1979. ethnicity includes two categories with the minorities as the reference category. the politics status includes non-party membership and party membership. the descriptive statistics of the variables are shown in table 2. 4 results 4.1 four trajectories pattern of transition to adulthood sequence analysis identifi ed four patterns of trajectories to adulthood in the fi elds of education-employment and family life course, respectively (see figures 1 and 2).4 the four clusters of education-employment trajectories include: (1) low education & agricultural employment, which is characterised by the relatively low level of education of members and early entry into agricultural work (mainly at the age of 16). (2) high studies & agricultural employment, which is characterised by the fact that at different ages, agricultural employment occupies a dominant proportion of the sample and members undergo a transition from education to agricultural work. 2 the han ethnic group is the largest among the 56 ethnic groups in china. according to china’s seventh census, the han ethnic group accounts for 91.11 percent of the total population. 3 we divide urban and rural areas based on respondents’ residence at the time of the survey. 4 the validity of cluster analysis results of education-employment trajectories: hg (hubert’s gamma) = 0.890, pbc (point biserial correlation) = 0.725. the validity of cluster analysis results of family life-course trajectories: hg (hubert’s gamma) = 0.743, pbc (point biserial correlation) = 0.595. • dianxi wang272 variables frequency percent (%) gender male (=1) 7541 47.80 female (=2) 8236 52.20 birth cohorts 1930-1939 (=1) 1035 6.56 1940-1949 (=2) 3063 19.41 1950-1959 (=3) 5163 32.72 1960-1969 (=4) 5384 34.13 1970-1979 (=5) 1132 7.18 urban-rural rural (=1) 12506 79.27 urban (=2) 3271 20.73 ethnicity minorities (=1) 1240 7.86 han (=2) 14537 92.14 politics status non-party member (=1) 14182 89.89 party member (=2) 1595 10.11 mother’s ethnicity minorities (=1) 1203 7.63 han (=2) 14574 92.37 father’s ethnicity minorities (=1) 1173 7.43 han (=2) 14604 92.57 mother’s religious belief in childhood no (=1) 14468 91.70 yes (=2) 1309 8.30 father’s religious belief in childhood no (=1) 14748 93.48 yes (=2) 1029 6.52 mother is communist party member in childhood no (=1) 15463 98.01 yes (=2) 314 1.99 father is communist party member in childhood no (=1) 13622 86.34 yes (=2) 2155 13.66 mother’s occupation in childhood agricultural (=1) 14653 92.88 non-agricultural (=2) 1124 7.12 father’s occupation in childhood agricultural (=1) 12902 81.78 non-agricultural (=2) 2875 18.22 tab. 2: descriptive statistic of the sample (n=15777) how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 273 (3) high studies & non-agricultural employment, characterised by a relatively high level of education of members and a late entry into the labour market and most of members are in the state of stable non-agricultural work. in early adulthood, the proportion of the state of “education” in this cluster is relatively high. for example, at the age of 16, 44.02 percent of the cluster members are receiving education, indicating that compared with other clusters, members of this cluster have a longer period of education. (4) not employed, wherein, at different ages, the proportion of “not employed” is relatively high and many members are in not engaging in work. four clusters of family life-course trajectories are also identifi ed: (1) marriage & one child, which is dominated by married individuals with one child. individuals in this cluster experience a gradual change from being single without children, to being married without children, to being married with one child. therefore, this cluster is characterised by fewer children, as most members had only one child and the family structure is dominated by nuclear families. (2) marriage & two children, having the largest proportion of married people with two children. this cluster is characterised by early marriage, early childbirth, but the family size of members in this cluster has begun to shrink. (3) marriage & large families, which has the largest proportion of married individuals with three or more children. it is characterised by early marriage, early childbirth, many births, large family sizes and early timing of transitions to adulthood. (4) staying single longer, which is dominated by singles who have no children. a certain percentage of members in this cluster are still single and childless at the age of 35, so this group is characterised by late marriage, late childbirth and the delay of transition to adulthood. 4.2 childhood family background and transition to adulthood table 3 shows the average probability of belonging to each cluster of educationemployment trajectories. males, urban residents and han chinese youth are more likely to fall into the cluster of high studies & non-agricultural work, showing that they have a higher likelihood of long-term education during adulthood, which in turn can delay individuals’ transition to adulthood. the cohorts of 1940-1949 and 19501959 are more likely to belong to the cluster of low education & agricultural work and variables frequency percent (%) family fi nancial situation in childhood worse (=1) 5995 38.00 much the same (=2) 8237 52.21 better (=3) 1545 9.79 not having enough food to eat in childhood no (=1) 5220 33.09 yes (=2) 10557 66.91 tab. 2: continuation source: china health and retirement longitudinal study (charls) in 2014 • dianxi wang274 the cohorts of 1960-1969 and 1960-1979 are more likely to belong to the cluster of high studies & non-agricultural work. regarding the effect of childhood family background on the probability of belonging to the clusters of education-employment trajectories, we found that, in terms of the politics status of parents in childhood, father’s communist party membership is negatively correlated with the probability of belonging to low education & agricultural employment and is positively associated with the possibility of belonging to high studies & non-agricultural employment; that is, young people whose fathers are not communist party members may complete the transition to adulthood earlier. with respect to parent’s usual occupation during the interviewee’s childhood, those having a parent who engage in agricultural work are more likely to enter the cluster of low education & agricultural employment and those who engage in non-agricultural work are more likely to enter high studies & non-agricultural employment as well, indicating that higher occupational status of parents may delay the transition to adulthood of young people. as far as the childhood family economic situation is concerned, young people with better family economic conditions in childhood are more likely to fall into the cluster of high studies & non-agricultural employment, those who have enough food to eat in childhood are also more likely fig. 1: distribution of states in each cluster of education-employment trajectories low education & agricultural employment fr eq . ( n= 79 41 ) age16 age18 age20 age22 age24 age26 age28 age30 age32 age34 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 high studies & agricultural employment fr eq . ( n= 28 58 ) age16 age18 age20 age22 age24 age26 age28 age30 age32 age34 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 high studies & non−agricultural employment fr eq . ( n= 41 96 ) age16 age18 age20 age22 age24 age26 age28 age30 age32 age34 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 not employed fr eq . ( n= 78 2) age16 age18 age20 age22 age24 age26 age28 age30 age32 age34 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 education agricultural work non−agricultural work no paid work military service not employed source: china health and retirement longitudinal study (charls) in 2014 how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 275 m ar ria ge & o ne c hi ld freq. (n=2381) ag e1 6 ag e1 8 ag e2 0 ag e2 2 ag e2 4 ag e2 6 ag e2 8 ag e3 0 ag e3 2 ag e3 4 0.00.20.40.60.81.0 m ar ria ge & tw o ch ild re n freq. (n=5597) ag e1 6 ag e1 8 ag e2 0 ag e2 2 ag e2 4 ag e2 6 ag e2 8 ag e3 0 ag e3 2 ag e3 4 0.00.20.40.60.81.0 m ar ria ge & la rg e fa m ili es freq. (n=5817) ag e1 6 ag e1 8 ag e2 0 ag e2 2 ag e2 4 ag e2 6 ag e2 8 ag e3 0 ag e3 2 ag e3 4 0.00.20.40.60.81.0 st ay in g si ng le lo ng er freq. (n=1982) ag e1 6 ag e1 8 ag e2 0 ag e2 2 ag e2 4 ag e2 6 ag e2 8 ag e3 0 ag e3 2 ag e3 4 0.00.20.40.60.81.0 si ng le n o ch ild re n si ng le o ne c hi ld si ng le tw o ch ild re n si ng le th re e+ c hi ld re n pa rtn er n o ch ild re n pa rtn er o ne c hi ld re n pa rtn er tw o ch ild re n pa rtn er th re e+ c hi ld re n m ar rie d no c hi ld re n m ar rie d on e ch ild m ar rie d tw o ch ild re n m ar rie d th re e+ c hi ld re n d iv or ce d/ w id ow n o ch ild re n d iv or ce d/ w id ow o ne c hi ld d iv or ce d/ w id ow tw o ch ild re n d iv or ce d/ w id ow th re e+ c hi ld re n fi g . 2 : d is tr ib u tio n o f s ta te s in e ac h cl u st er o f f am ily li fe -c o ur se t ra je ct o ri es s o ur ce : c hi na h ea lth a nd r et ir em en t l o ng itu d in al s tu d y (c h a r ls ) i n 20 14 • dianxi wang276 lo w e d u ca ti o n & h ig h st u d ie s & h ig h st u d ie s & n o n n o t e m p lo ye d ag ri cu lt u ra l ag ri cu lt u ra l ag ri cu lt u ra l em p lo ym en t em p lo ym en t em p lo ym en t m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 m o d el 8 g en d er ( r ef : m al e) 0. 19 8* ** 0. 20 4* ** -0 .0 57 ** * -0 .0 57 ** * -0 .1 86 ** * -0 .1 92 ** * 0. 04 5* ** 0. 04 5* ** u rb an -r u ra l ( r ef : r u ra l) -0 .4 41 ** * -0 .3 67 ** * -0 .1 01 ** * -0 .0 75 ** * 0. 51 6* ** 0. 40 8* ** 0. 02 6* ** 0. 03 5* ** c o h o rt s: (r ef :1 93 0 -1 93 9) 19 40 -1 94 9 0. 09 1* ** 0. 08 5* ** -0 .0 40 ** -0 .0 38 ** -0 .0 18 -0 .0 16 -0 .0 34 ** * -0 .0 31 ** * 19 50 -1 95 9 0. 03 8* 0. 04 3* * -0 .0 16 -0 .0 13 0. 01 1 -0 .0 01 -0 .0 33 ** * -0 .0 30 ** * 19 60 -1 96 9 -0 .0 61 ** * -0 .0 43 ** -0 .0 28 * -0 .0 26 † 0. 11 2* ** 0. 08 9* ** -0 .0 23 ** -0 .0 21 * 19 70 -1 97 9 -0 .1 91 ** * -0 .1 66 ** * -0 .0 33 † -0 .0 30 † 0. 21 7* ** 0. 18 8* ** 0. 00 7 0. 00 8 e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) -0 .0 52 ** * -0 .0 15 -0 .0 00 2 -0 .0 26 0. 03 6* ** 0. 02 9† 0. 01 6* * 0. 01 3 p o lit ic s st at u s (r ef : n o n -p ar ty m em b er ) 0. 06 6* ** 0. 06 0* ** 0. 01 5 0. 01 6 -0 .0 86 ** * -0 .0 81 ** * 0. 00 4 0. 00 4 fa th er ’s e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) 0. 03 4 -0 .0 11 -0 .0 32 0. 00 9 m o th er ’s e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) -0 .0 78 * 0. 03 7 0. 04 4† -0 .0 03 fa th er ’s r el ig io u s b el ie f i n ch ild h o o d (r ef : n o) 0. 00 3 -0 .0 16 0. 00 9 0. 00 3 m o th er ’s r el ig io u s b el ie f i n ch ild h o o d (r ef : n o) -0 .0 35 0. 00 8 0. 02 4 0. 00 3 fa th er is c o m m u n is t p ar ty m em b er (r ef : n o) -0 .0 50 ** * 0. 02 3* 0. 02 2* 0. 00 4 m o th er is c o m m u n is t p ar ty m em b er (r ef : n o) 0. 01 8 0. 00 7 -0 .0 13 -0 .0 12 fa th er ’s u su al o cc u p at io n in c h ild h o o d (r ef : a g ri cu lt u ra l) -0 .0 82 ** * 0. 01 0 0. 07 4* ** -0 .0 01 m o th er ’s u su al o cc u p at io n in c h ild h o o d (r ef : a g ri cu lt u ra l) -0 .2 29 ** * -0 .0 60 ** * 0. 27 6* ** 0. 01 4 n o t h av in g en o u g h fo o d t o e at in c h ild h o o d (r ef : n o) 0. 02 5* * -0 .0 02 -0 .0 19 ** -0 .0 04 fa m ily fi n an ci al s it u at io n in c h ild h o o d: (r ef : w o rs e) m u ch t h e sa m e -0 .0 41 ** * 0. 00 6 0. 03 4* ** 0. 00 2 b et te r -0 .1 14 ** * 0. 03 0* 0. 07 5* ** 0. 00 9 o b se rv at io n s 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 ta b . 3 : m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n s o n th e p ro b ab ili ty o f b el o ng in g to e ac h cl u st er o f e d uc at io n -e m p lo ym en t tr aj ec to ri es . a ve ra g e m ar g in al e ff ec ts n o te : † p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1. s o ur ce : c hi na h ea lth a nd r et ir em en t l o ng itu d in al s tu d y (c h a r ls ) i n 20 14 how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 277 ta b . 4 : m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n s o n th e p ro b ab ili ty o f b el o ng in g to e ac h cl u st er o f f am ily li fe -c o ur se t ra je ct o ri es . a ve ra g e m ar g in al e ff ec ts n o te : † p < 0. 10 , * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0. 01 , * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : c hi na h ea lth a nd r et ir em en t l o ng itu d in al s tu d y (c h a r ls ) i n 20 14 m ar ri ag e & o n e ch ild m ar ri ag e & t w o c h ild re n m ar ri ag e & la rg e s ta yi n g si n g le lo n g er fa m ili es m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 m o d el 8 g en d er ( r ef : m al e) 0. 00 1 -0 .0 01 0. 02 6* ** 0. 02 7* ** 0. 07 9* ** 0. 08 0* ** -0 .1 05 ** * -0 .1 07 ** * u rb an -r u ra l ( r ef : r u ra l) 0. 15 2* ** 0. 10 4* ** -0 .0 66 ** * -0 .0 30 ** -0 .1 63 ** * -0 .1 19 ** * 0. 07 7* ** 0. 04 5* ** c o h o rt s: (r ef :1 93 0 -1 93 9) 19 40 -1 94 9 -0 .0 09 † -0 .0 01 † 0. 04 4* ** 0. 04 7* ** -0 .0 07 -0 .0 12 -0 .0 28 * -0 .0 26 * 19 50 -1 95 9 0. 08 9* ** 0. 08 9* ** 0. 19 2* ** 0. 19 5* ** -0 .2 60 ** * -0 .2 57 ** * -0 .0 21 † -0 .0 27 * 19 60 -1 96 9 0. 22 3* ** 0. 21 1* ** 0. 27 4* ** 0. 27 8* ** -0 .4 30 ** * -0 .4 16 ** * -0 .0 67 ** * -0 .0 73 ** * 19 70 -1 97 9 0. 33 6* ** 0. 31 8* ** 0. 25 0* ** 0. 25 7* ** -0 .5 45 ** * -0 .5 31 ** * -0 .0 40 ** -0 .0 4 4* * e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) 0. 04 7* ** 0. 02 7† 0. 03 3* 0. 00 8 -0 .0 4 4* ** -0 .0 07 -0 .0 36 ** * -0 .0 28 † p o lit ic s st at u s (r ef : n o n -p ar ty m em b er ) 0. 03 5* ** 0. 02 9* * -0 .0 00 1 0. 00 2 -0 .0 32 ** -0 .0 30 * -0 .0 03 -0 .0 01 fa th er ’s e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) -0 .0 03 0. 03 2 -0 .0 37 0. 00 8 m o th er ’s e th n ic it y (r ef : m in o ri ti es ) 0. 03 9* -0 .0 14 -0 .0 06 -0 .0 18 fa th er ’s r el ig io u s b el ie f i n ch ild h o o d (r ef : n o) 0. 01 8 0. 01 3 -0 .0 21 -0 .0 11 m o th er ’s r el ig io u s b el ie f i n ch ild h o o d (r ef : n o) -0 .0 01 -0 .0 58 * 0. 02 6 -0 .0 33 † fa th er is c o m m u n is t p ar ty m em b er (r ef : n o) 0. 01 9* 0. 01 4 -0 .0 23 * -0 .0 10 m o th er is c o m m u n is t p ar ty m em b er (r ef : n o) -0 .0 07 -0 .0 11 -0 .0 31 0. 04 9* fa th er ’s u su al o cc u p at io n in c h ild h o o d (r ef : a g ri cu lt u ra l) 0. 03 0* ** 0. 01 0 -0 .0 38 ** * -0 .0 01 m o th er ’s u su al o cc u p at io n in c h ild h o o d (r ef : a g ri cu lt u ra l) 0. 08 8* ** -0 .0 93 ** * -0 .1 37 ** * 0. 14 2* ** n o t h av in g en o u g h fo o d t o e at in c h ild h o o d (r ef : n o) -0 .0 26 ** * -0 .0 05 0. 03 6* ** -0 .0 05 fa m ily fi n an ci al s it u at io n in c h ild h o o d: (r ef : w o rs e) m u ch t h e sa m e 0. 00 1 0. 01 7* 0. 02 1* * -0 .0 38 ** * b et te r -0 .0 17 0. 00 4 0. 01 8 -0 .0 02 o b se rv at io n s 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 15 77 7 • dianxi wang278 to enter the category of high studies & non-agricultural employment. in other words, young people with higher family economic status in childhood are more likely to delay the transition to adulthood. table 4 presents the probability of belonging to each cluster of family life-course trajectories. females, rural residents and non-party members are more likely to fall into the cluster of marriage & large family, indicating that they tend to accelerate their acceptance of adult social roles. the cohorts of 1940-1949 and 1950-1959 are more likely to belong to the cluster of marriage & two children; the cohorts of 19601969 and 1970-1979 are more likely to be classifi ed into the clusters of marriage & two children and marriage & one child and less likely to be included to the cluster of marriage & large families. with regard to the relationship between childhood family background and the likelihood of belonging to a certain cluster of family life-course trajectories, we found that youths whose mothers have religious beliefs are less likely to fall into the clusters of marriage & two children and staying single longer. the identity of fathers as communist party members is negatively associated with the possibility of belonging to the cluster of marriage & large family and is positively associated with the possibility of belonging to marriage & one child, thus their children may adopt adult social roles more slowly. the identity of mothers as communist party members is positively associated with the possibility of belonging to staying single longer. as far as parent’s occupation is concerned, those having parents who engage in non-agricultural work are more likely to be classifi ed under the cluster of marriage & one child and staying single longer, suggesting that those with high occupational status of parents may have a delayed transition to adulthood. those who not have enough food to eat as a child are more likely to fall into the cluster of marriage & large families, while those who have enough food to eat are more likely to belong to the clusters of marriage & one child. in other words, youths who experience childhood malnutrition are more likely to accelerate their transition to adulthood. 5 conclusion and discussion in the context of china, based on retrospective life history data, this study constructs respondents’ trajectories to adulthood involving four domains of education, marriage, childbearing and employment in order to investigate the patterns of pathways to adulthood of chinese youth born from 1930 to 1979 and the role of childhood family background in these transitions. first, we used multi-channel sequence analysis to identify four clusters of trajectories to adulthood. the education-employment trajectories can be divided into the following four clusters: low education & agricultural employment, high studies & agricultural employment, high studies & non-agricultural employment and not employed. more than a quarter of individuals belong to the pattern of high studies & non-agricultural employment, refl ecting growing diversity and delay in patterns of transition to adulthood. the family life-course trajectories can also how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 279 be organised into four clusters: marriage & large family, marriage & two children, marriage & one child and staying single longer. more than 50 percent of individuals belong to the traditional and ordered types of marriage & large families and marriage & two children. nearly one-third of individuals in the sample follow the types of marriage & one child and staying single longer and these two types represent the changes in transition to adulthood, namely the delay of life events in adulthood. this result shows that the new patterns in pathways to adulthood found by scholars in western countries (billari/liefbroer 2010; robette 2010) are also confi rmed in the chinese context, which contributes to the discovery of the delay of transition to adulthood in different contexts, such as revealing that the transition to adulthood has also changed in the chinese context, thereby further illustrating that the changes in adult transitions seem to be an irreversible trend. why would factors of social background leading to the change of transition to adulthood in the west also work in china? at least two factors may help illuminate these similar changes between western countries and china in terms of the delay of transition to adulthood. first, the processes of demographic transition in china can provide some context. with the process of industrialisation, most western countries already completed their fi rst demographic transition in the nineteenth century and are now undergoing sdt, characterised by single, cohabitating and divorced adults (van de kaa 1987). china’s fi rst demographic transition began in the 1950s and was completed quickly within decades, but demographic phenomena represented by the sdt began to emerge (yu/xie 2019). since demographic transition may have a considerable impact on the family life course by changing the timing and transitions of demographic events, the demographic transition process that china and western countries experienced may explain the similarities in their adult transitions, especially in the familial domain. furthermore, in western countries, universal education ensures that each cohort moves through the early life course in lockstep and is fed into the labour market within a fairly narrow span of years (brückner/mayer 2005; shanahan 2000). in other words, mass education in western countries promotes a high degree of consistency from school to work and delays the transition to adulthood. the same story also happened in china, where with the introduction of nine-year compulsory education and the expansion of higher education since the 1980s, people have enjoyed longer years of education and then entered relatively stable career trajectories. therefore, the popularisation and expansion of education may help to delay the adult transition of chinese and western youth. third, regarding the role of childhood family background in adulthood, we found that the political status of parents during respondents’ childhood played an important role in the transition to adulthood of the chinese youth. the fathers’ communist party membership is positively associated with the likelihood that individuals would follow the modern cluster of trajectories to adulthood, possibly delaying their adoption of adult social roles. higher occupational status of parents delayed the transition to adulthood, while lower occupational status of parents promoted the transition to adulthood, perhaps due to the “protective” role of family, promoting individuals to stay longer in their family of origin. family economic status in childhood has a signifi cant impact on the transition to adulthood. young people • dianxi wang280 with low family economic status in childhood are more likely to enter the labour market earlier, while those with higher family economic status are more likely to receive long-term education and delay entering work. in addition,, people with low family economic status during childhood (such as experiencing hunger in childhood) are more likely to have more children. existing studies found that the socio-economic status of the family affects the trajectories to adulthood (rijken/liefbroer 2009; blaauboer/mulder 2010). the social class of one’s family and the resources or social capital it has may have intergenerational effects in the transition to adulthood of their children (sironi et al. 2015; yuan/ngai 2016). our fi ndings further support that childhood family background has a signifi cant effect on the transition to adulthood. the lower the socioeconomic status of the family in childhood, the higher the possibility of experiencing an early transition to adulthood. this result can be explained by two mechanisms. on the one hand, children with fewer family resources have more constraints that result in lower levels of education and earlier entry into the labour market; on the other hand, lower-class children are also more likely to leave their parents’ homes and start a family earlier. as a chinese proverb says, “the children of the poor are in charge of the house early.” in other words, children with poor family fi nancial conditions in childhood are more likely to start a family and assume family roles in early adulthood. the higher the socioeconomic status of the family in childhood, the higher the possibility of experiencing a delayed transition to adulthood. a more affl uent family constitutes a “golden cage” (castiglioni/dalla zuanna 1994), which provides a protective factor for the transition to adulthood of children, thereby delaying the formation of the family. the infl uence of family and patriarchal clan on the trajectories to adulthood is particularly obvious in china. as scholars have found, the chinese family and clans have been so far resilient to societal transformation due to their deeply rooted traditions and current structural constraints. these have made intergenerational reciprocity attractive and prevented the chinese family from decline (yang/he 2014). family and patriarchal clan not only provide intergenerational support for adulthood of children, but close ties with family also hinder the process leading to residential autonomy and promoting the standardisation of pathway of adulthood of children. in addition, the political status of parents is a unique dimension that supports the adult transition of chinese youth and the parental communist party membership, as a representative indicator of socio-economic status, can also provide a protective effect for transition to adulthood. this study has several limitations. first of all, respondents’ retrospective responses to childhood family background may have reminiscence bias and subjective evaluations of family fi nancial status may also change over time, which may affect the accuracy of the results. in addition, this study analysed the impact of childhood family background on the trajectories to adulthood, but failed to examine the pattern of this effect with cohorts. subsequent research can continue to examine this. how does childhood family background affect trajectories to adulthood? • 281 abbreviations charls: china health and retirement longitudinal study; pps: multistage probability proportionate to size sampling; om: optimal matching. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the project of “china health and retirement longitudinal study (charls)” for providing data open services. references aassve, arnstein et al. 2002: transitions from home to marriage of young americans. in: journal of applied econometrics 17,1: 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.636 arnett, jeffrey jensen 2001: conceptions of the transition to adulthood: perspectives from adolescence through midlife. in: journal of adult development 8,2: 133-143. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1026450103225 aquilino, william s. 1996: the life course of children born to unmarried mothers: childhood living arrangements and young adult outcomes. in: journal of marriage and family 58,2: 293-310. https://doi.org/10.2307/353496 barry, carolyn m.; 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[in chinese] date of submission: 21.05.2021 date of acceptance: 09.05.2022 dianxi wang, phd (). beijing sport university. beijing, china. e-mail: wangdianxigod@sina.com published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) reflecting on the margins: socio-spatial stigmatisation among adolescents in a peripheralised region refl ecting on the margins: socio-spatial stigmatisation among adolescents in a peripheralised region frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg abstract: based on the project “discourse and practices in shrinking regions”, we analyse the subjective relevance of derogative discourses using the example of the district of altenburger land (germany). the article combines three aspects: first, it focuses on how young people’s representations of practices of social differentiation are informed by regionalised discourses about and conditions of shrinkage. second, it identifi es two rhetoric strategies by which young people distance themselves from perceived deviance. finally, it asks how perceptions and rhetoric strategies are connected to desires to out-migrate. we assume that stigmatisation is a powerful means of producing and circulating socio-spatial differentiation, especially under conditions of socio-economic crisis and deprivation. our principal hypothesis is that socio-spatial stigmatisation is effective (and destructive) in terms of how people perceive themselves within their home region, in relation to other inhabitants and regarding their prospective future plans. in order to address this aspect methodologically, we compose an epistemological framework to grasp how socio-spatial stigmatisation is articulated and circulates in the light of specifi c socioeconomic conditions. here, we conceptually draw from social psychology and social geography. our empirical fi ndings, which stem from a series of focus groups, show that – while sharing some widely spread notions about the altenburger land – our respondents make use of two rhetoric strategies: they defl ect derogative stigmas by, fi rstly, further specifying these groups in order to distinguish themselves from the stigmatised groups, and, secondly, by localising deviant behaviour within almost uncontested socio-spatial boundaries. additionally, they construct causal connections between these aspects in order to re-affi rm the validity of such stigmas. keywords: shrinkage · stigmatisation · peripheralisation · identity · group-focused enmity comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 285-320 (date of release: 23.11.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-10en6 • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg286 1 situating stigmatisation geographically: shrinking regions in eastern germany discursive phenomena with regard to peripheralisation have long been neglected and are still deliberately left out of relevant studies (e.g. kühn 2015: 369). however, questions addressing entwinements of material and discursive phenomena have emerged in the wake of the recent rejuvenation of the debate about peripheralisation. in this context, several scholars advocated elucidating discursive dynamics (e.g. barlösius/neu 2008), processes of labelling (beetz 2008) and subjective perceptions and reactions in practice following spatial representations related, for example, to shrinkage (meyer/miggelbrink 2013, 2015). contemporary scholars have elaborated the presence of such territorial stigmatisation with regard to socio-economic marginality, peripheralisation or shrinkage. moreover, some of the same have underlined the necessity to include this discursive dimension, such as placeand group-related labelling, into the research of marginality, peripheralisation or shrinkage (beetz 2008; meyer/miggelbrink 2013) as labelling may infl ict – when exerted in derogative ways – considerable damage. numerous studies (e.g. wacquant 2007; dando 2009; bürk 2013; wiest 2015) have emphasised that circulating stigmas fi nd their way into the lives and practices of individuals and groups within the addressed regions, cities and communities, eventually infl uencing the ways they make sense of their surroundings. in consequence, these perceptions can lead to several reactions such as opposition or resignation (bürk 2013) and thus are able to catalyse or mitigate prevalent socio-economic precarity. moreover, labels may also be incorporated into everyday communication within the respective region. they may be proliferated, intermediated and altered in complex and interactive ways. the perception and refl ection of stigmatisation can thus lead to further social stigmatisation within the region addressed and fuel existing processes of negotiating identities, life courses and norms. in other words, stigmatisation is an effi cacious process exerting infl uence in several social contexts, guided by (biased) proliferation, (selective) perception and (subjective) interpretation. the empirical data available so far remains ambiguous regarding precise accounts at the subject level. our focus lies on tracing the effects and the paths of the reproduction of socio-spatial stigmatisation within those groups potentially affected by the respective stigmas. arguing against any reductionist causal assumptions about socio-spatial stigmatisation determining people’s mentality, self-awareness and attitudes against others, we instead advocate using a conceptual focus that investigates the roles of socio-spatial representation within subjectively perceived everyday life. therefore, our own focus for understanding impacts of stigmatisation will be twofold. on the one hand, we address how existing socio-spatial stigmatisation in young people’s perceptions is related to denigrating attitudes, i.e. how territorial stigmatisation coincides with derogative statements against other people or groups. on the other hand, we focus on possible impacts of stigmatisation on how young people imagine their own future in terms of leaving or staying in their home region, i.e. their potential migratory decisions. at fi rst glance, this might be considered two different questions. however, we will argue theoretically as well as prove refl ecting on the margins • 287 empirically how both attitudes towards certain groups or people and consideration on future decisions concerning “staying or leaving” are intertwined in young people’s refl ections on representations of their home region. we want to pursue this aim through a discussion of a social-geographical approach towards young people’s perception of their hometown and region. the socio-geographical, socio-psychological and sociological embeddedness of our research are discussed in section 2. our empirical data consists of 15 focus groups with pupils of secondary schools within the german district of altenburger land.1 from 1998 to 2014, the population of this thuringian district decreased from 117,000 to roughly 98,000 people, a decline of more than 20 percent. moreover, the population between the ages of 15 and 18 dropped by more than 57 percent. the thuringian statistical offi ce projects that these developments will continue in similar ways at least until 2035.2 based on the alleged everyday presence of these remarkable fi gures and the possibility that discussions may focus too much on them, we avoided mentioning the population development ourselves. instead, our conversations aimed at gathering the adolescents’ orientations towards their home region and their future plans. however, it soon became apparent that these focus groups – despite our original thematic intentions – revealed strong negative opinions about the district of altenburger land, reproducing derogatory representations about the region and its inhabitants. these fi ndings are discussed in section 3. the concluding section 4 summarises our main results and discusses them against the background of our theoretical and conceptual assumptions. 2 theoretical perspectives on stigmatisation, disintegration and perceived devaluation 2.1 spatial formation and the role of territorial stigmatisation social geographers have underlined the necessity to understand the formation of regions and cities as being relationally produced through a multitude of processes that neither originate from the respective place nor are immutable and stable (see massey 1993; paasi 2013). amin (2004: 34), for instance, states that ”...cities and regions as spatial formations (...) must be summoned up as temporary placements for ever moving material and immanent geographies, as ‘hauntings’ of things that have moved but left their mark (as thrift (1999) puts it), as situated moments in distanciated networks, as contoured products of the networks that cross a given place.” 1 the research was carried out under the auspices of the project “discourse and practices in shrinking regions”, funded by the german research foundation (2013-2016, mi725/2-1). 2 all fi gures: statistical offi ce of thuringia 2015: http://www.statistik.thueringen.de/. • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg288 “temporary placements”, thus, not only emerge through physical structures and their remnants but also through circulating gossip, stories and memories. placerelated images and stigmas, as shields points out (1991), are always part of national and cultural systems of meaning. hence, images and stigmas can be seen as generated within discursive frames based on what weichhart et al. (2006: 98-99) describe as cognitive structures of place-related identity formations. these formations – entangled at the intersection of both individual and group-related concepts of place and identity (weichhart et al. 2006: 37) – serve to stabilise social systems by reducing social complexity as well as establishing consistency (weichhart et al. 2006: 61-63). following this notion, spatial categories like regions and cities are not only discursively and thus temporarily identifi ed but also consistently identifi ed with. such assumed constitutive interrelations between (socio-psychological) aspects of identity and (socio-geographical) concepts of space can be seen as crucial insights when looking at stigmatisation. coming from a sociologist’s perspective, wacquant (2007) similarly conceptualises territorial stigmatisation as part of “advanced marginality” meaning that grouprelated stigmas associated with poverty, for example, may also entail a more general “blemish of place” (wacquant 2007: 67). spatial and social aspects of stigmatisation therefore need to be considered as inseparably intertwined (cohen 2013: 116). consequently, focusing on socio-spatial stigmatisation calls for a perspective that is sensitive to the mediating role of space, i.e. a perspective that expands its analytical and empirical scope to encompass not only processes of social identifi cation of places, individuals and groups but, moreover, their mutual impacts. drawing on these foundations, bürk has defi ned stigmatisation as an act of communication-based construction (bürk 2013: 171). using the example of perceived “danger zones” or “spaces of fear” (bürk 2012), he refers to “discursive formations” that scandalise specifi c locally signifi cant and negatively connoted issues like unemployment, drug abuse or crime and utilise certain “iconic markers of urban decay” (bürk 2013: 171). those “symbolic frames of stigmas” provide the stigmatised social group with a thematic spatial reference (bürk 2013: 171). hence, such frames can be understood as semantic fi elds that powerful actors make use of in order to infl uence the perception of groups and places through subtle processes of sociospatial labelling (bürk 2012: 91). however, schreiber acknowledges that spatially ascribed meanings have neither a causal effect, nor are invariable, but are rather the products of the discursive production of knowledge (schreiber 2005: 86). hence, stigmatisation can be regarded as outcomes of socially – and as such discursively – constructed derogative categories, distinguishing and demarcating spaces and groups of people. images and stigmas ascribed to places are often intimately linked to symbolic orders and categorisations such as “high/low” or “central/marginal” (shields 1991: 4) imposing productive as well as destructive capacities on people, practices and policies. however, this is, of course, not a relationship of cause-and-effect. in order to tackle the complexities of how (certain) people, practices and policies are affected by ascribed place-related images, stereotypes and stigmas and how they deal with refl ecting on the margins • 289 them specifi cally in a non-deterministic way, we see the necessity to go beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries. the foundation of this fi eld of research is inextricably linked to the american sociologist erving goffman who has generally defi ned a stigma as “[…] an attribute that is deeply discrediting […]” (goffman 1974: 4). a stigma often – though not necessarily – takes bodily markers or physical characteristics as signifi ers by which people are identifi ed as belonging to a certain group, category or kind. according to goffman, characteristics ascribed to a person or a group may constitute a “virtual social identity” (goffman 1974: 3). those ascribed characteristics often differ signifi cantly from a so-called “actual social identity” (goffman 1974: 3). implicitly or explicitly emerging from social norms and a hegemonic understanding of normality, such categories are based on deviance. with specifi c regard to stigmatisation, hohmeier (1975: 11) points out the use of a deviant “other” as the foundation for constructing normality. this thought indicates a vast relativity of the concept of normality, since one person’s stigma can be another person’s normality and vice versa (goffman 1974: 4). however, this conceptual ambiguity serves – as klauer states – to simplify heuristics of perceiving and to assess the complexity of the social (klauer 2008: 23-24). bearing this mode of simplifi cation in mind, hannem and bruckert have highlighted the alluring nature of stigmas: “how can we, individually and collectively, resist stigma: resist the temptation to fall back on prevailing cultural stereotypes as shortcuts to interpreting the world around us?” (hannem/ bruckert 2012: 176). as we will show later on, we assume that although people often acknowledge the reifying and simplistic nature of stigmas (and often feel forced to defend them), they still work as shortcuts of the social world. in the following sections, we deal with a number of arguments from sociology, social psychology and social geography carving out two main lines of reasoning. one (2.2) focuses on subjects’ experiencing peripheralisation in terms of social, political and economic marginalisation (see poscopp 2015). this presumably leads to (feelings of) disintegration and exclusion and, as a potential effect, brings about stigmatisation of other groups and places that are seen as being even “weaker”, “lower” or “more problematic” than one’s own peer group or one’s own place. here, we draw especially on the work of german social scientist heitmeyer and others on group-related enmity. the other line of reasoning (2.3) refers to literature mainly from social psychology and aims at tracing individual and group-related effects on existing and widely circulating stigmas and stereotypes that people feel subjected to, especially under conditions of socio-economic crisis. both strands refer to the concept of stigma located at the intersection of anthropological, social psychological and psychiatric studies of roles, expectations and deviant behaviour. in order to empirically investigate stigmatisations that are articulated during conversations with young people, we apply both strands of research: the fi rst one helps to understand why “feeling stigmatised” and “stigmatising others” often coincide under precarious conditions. the second one illuminates potential coping strategies. • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg290 2.2 stigmatisation and devaluation as symptoms of disintegration we will fi rst have a look at the literature on stigmatisation in the context of socioeconomic crisis. conceptual groundwork concerning this context can be found in the analytical theory of disintegration by wilhelm heitmeyer and reimund anhut. they elaborated three distinct dimensions of social integration – namely individual-functional system integration, communicative-interactive social integration and cultural-expressive social integration – each of which are connected to corresponding integrative aims like participating in socially relevant subsystems, political and public institutions as well as socio-emotional relations (anhut/heitmeyer 2000: 48). furthermore, following the notion of a distinct socio-spatial disparity concerning the accumulation of (dis)integration (anhut/heitmeyer 2000: 59), a fourth aspect – spatial integration – was subsequently pointed out, highlighting the possible infl uence of socio-spatial conditions on individual attitudes and behaviours (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 3-4). thus, a disruption in one or more out of these dimensions, i.e. the failure to meet the corresponding aims of social integration (anhut/heitmeyer 2000: 51-52), can be understood as disintegration in terms of a refused institutional and collective service to secure livelihood, social recognition and personal integrity (anhut 2008: 381). such disruptions tend to be intensifi ed by framing social processes and phenomena of crises like polarisation, eroding solidarity or ambivalent individualisation, which can take on the form of social inequality, exclusion, feelings of injustice, lack of social support and/or social isolation (anhut 2008: 381). this conceptualisation of individual (dis-)integration is further used to illuminate the formation of confl icts that are articulated through derogative processes. depending on the steering infl uence of moderating variables like political culture, social networks, social climate, political control or intergroup relations (anhut/heitmeyer 2000: 60), individual disintegration can indirectly nurture the desire to defend oneself against and devaluate the deviant other (anhut/heitmeyer 2000: 63). thereby, one’s own rejected institutional and collective perspectives on integration can likewise lead to withholding integration possibilities from weaker, marginalised groups (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 2). more precisely, experiences of disintegration may cause irritation, thus leading to compensatory behaviour (mansel/kaletta 2009: 76-77). empirical research has shown that this behaviour is often manifested as prejudices towards other groups (mansel/kaletta 2009: 76-77). moreover, a lack of integration can coincide with an insuffi cient feeling of control, likewise inducing processes of devaluation (mansel/spaiser 2010: 51-53). in sum, experiences and feelings of disintegration are considered breeding grounds for so-called ideologies of inequality (mansel/spaiser 2010: 74). “ideologies of inequality” refers to the idea that humans are constantly differentiated in social groups and thereby implicitly evaluated through particular ascribed character traits (heitmeyer 2008: 37) whereas inequality often becomes evident through the devaluation of certain groups (heitmeyer 2008: 38). in his long-term study “deutsche zustände” (german conditions), heitmeyer considered this concept a key to understanding group-focused enmity as a syndrome that combines different forms of sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious devaluation based on the discurrefl ecting on the margins • 291 sive legitimacy of inequality (see heitmeyer 2006, 2012). thus, it is necessary to differentiate between (unchallenged) disparities – in the sense of socio-economically grounded and normalised distinctions – and unequal valuations as a result of the semantic categorisation of those disparities (heitmeyer 2008: 39-40). hence, socioeconomic disparities are often loaded with ascriptions and negotiated against the background of a specifi c understanding of normality (heitmeyer 2008: 39-40). the particular groups addressed may vary but are equally targets of (de)valuating communicative practices with regard to the thematic interests of those in charge of defi ning this label (heitmeyer 2008: 39). this entails the phenomenon that in addition to “traditional” groups of victims, new stigmatised groups are continuously constructed on the basis of them not meeting expectations within societal discourse regimes (heitmeyer 2008: 40). notwithstanding the fact that heitmeyer did not employ the concept of “stigmatisation” in his investigation of group-focused enmity, his approach shows some parallels with fi ndings from research on stigmatisation. experiences and fears of disintegration as breeding grounds for ideologies of inequality allegedly give way to processes of stigmatisation. there is evidence, for instance, of a correlation between disintegration, unemployment, poor economic performance and a bad public image coinciding in rural regions in eastern germany (mansel/kaletta 2009: 73-74). petzke et al. (2007), for instance, have found a signifi cant tendency towards group-focused enmity in rural areas of eastern germany struggling with severe outmigration. in this regard, they point out a negative dynamic due to observed conformist behaviour (petzke et al. 2007: 60) and peer-pressure in those areas (petzke et al. 2007: 68). furthermore, hüpping and reinecke revealed that residents of regions struggling with economic decline are more likely to report a general uncertainty and loss of orientation as a result of negative experiences and perceptions (hüpping/ reinecke 2007: 80), while especially fearing social decline (hüpping/reinecke 2007: 95). these experiences and fears are understood as a structural basis for devaluating behaviour against other groups (hüpping/reinecke 2007: 95). they are further shown to be particularly strong among young people on the verge of their working life (endrikat 2006: 108). these predispositions are further served by what wolf et al. (2006: 68) call “relative deprivation”, i.e. a perceived discrimination resulting from comparing one’s own situation with that of another person’s or group’s. these subjective comparisons are accompanied by compensatory devaluation of others (wolf et al. 2006: 67). therefore, individual deprivation is reinforced in the context of socio-economic crises, potentially resulting in an increased tendency towards misanthropic attitudes in the sense of group-focused enmity, as the authors of the study explicitly underline (wolf et al. 2006: 82). analogically, decker et al. have shown that even the sole fear of becoming stigmatised and excluded due to economic deprivation (e.g. loss of employment) can nurture the willingness to devaluate marginal groups (decker et al. 2009: 3). in 2009, a study based on 500 telephone interviews carried out in the district of altenburger land proved how closely socio-economic peripheralisation, (dis)integration and group-related devaluation are related (heitmeyer et al. 2009). many of • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg292 the local residents who feel strongly disintegrated in terms of labour market participation articulated fears of social and economic decline while expressing feelings of both individual and regional discrimination and deprivation (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 13) which analytically correlate with group-focused enmity (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 34). in addition, experiences of socio-emotional as well as spatial disintegration due to precarious employment opportunities have been documented (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 20), likewise reinforcing a tendency towards group-focused enmity (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 37). the study also diagnosed distinct individual disorientation and a perceived absence of local infl uence on the political level (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 16-19, 25) among the district’s residents – both potentially nurturing misanthropic attitudes as described above (heitmeyer et al. 2009: 41). in sum, socio-economic aspects of peripheralisation echo at the psychological level of the subject: experiences and fears of disintegration, whether they are articulated through a general uncertainty, a loss of orientation or a feeling of deprivation, have been revealed as particular conditions – though by no means determining factors – that fuel group-focused enmity and thus derogative practices in the sense of (socio-spatial) stigmatisation. as such, these processes of devaluation are by no means a mere causal or determined result of socio-economic conditions, but are rather a structuring and constitutive element of the social (attia 2013: 4-5). 2.3 sociological and socio-psychological approaches to understanding experienced stigmatisation and its potential effects stigmas are understood as easily becoming unchallenged, ultimately leading to a sense of social and spatial phenomena that matches one’s expectation and may resist empirical adjustment (greitmeyer 2008: 80). thereby, stigmatising representations contribute to the consolidation of the reality they symbolise (howarth 2002: 250) and become persistent. using goffman’s vocabulary, the gap between a virtual and actual social identity becomes increasingly hard to dissolve. since those discursively sedimented practices of devaluation are intertwined with spatial labelling processes, the negative ascriptions concerning related places may likewise become persistent. bürk underlines that once certain labels and frames fi nd their way into popular discursive regimes it is very diffi cult to replace them (bürk 2012: 91). very often then, stigmatised people are in fact not the bearers of the stigma anymore, but rather act as representatives of a stigmatised region (bürk/beißwenger 2013: 128). wacquant (2007: 68) therefore concludes: “whether or not these areas are in fact dilapidated and dangerous, and their population composed essentially of poor people, minorities and foreigners, matters little in the end: the prejudicial belief that they are suffi ces to set off socially noxious consequences.” however, as stigmas have been subject to different disciplines, understandings of how they allegedly affect people and places differ remarkably according to theoretical and methodological approaches to the social and the psychological. in its broadest understanding, a territorial stigma equals a poison permeating everything. refl ecting on the margins • 293 in his seminal study of the american ghetto, wacquant highlights the general presence of a “symbolic taint and territorial stigmatisation, contaminating every area of social endeavour, from friendship and housing to schooling and jobs” (wacquant 1997: 346). the potential of stigmas to reach a state of omnipresence is considered one of the “structural and strategic constraints that bear on the racialised enclaves of the city as on no other segment of america’s territory” (wacquant 1997: 346). analogically, in her study of adolescents in a stigmatised south london community howarth underlines that “(h)ow others recognize us has an impact on how we recognize ourselves. this is particularly true for the adolescent. […] for those from marginalized and stigmatized communities, the gaze of the other is all the more inescapable.” (howarth 2002: 240) however, not every stigma exerts such severe infl uence. some stigmas may be ignored, some may not be perceived at all and some may be refl ected only within certain epistemic groups. coming back to socio-spatial stigmatisation, nevertheless, the omnipresence – and thus hegemonic nature – of a territorial stigma does not “simply” mean a communicative demarcation of the region, city or quarter in question but has real consequences for those who feel the stigmatising gaze settled on them, for example local residents. “when a child grows up in a stigmatised neighbourhood […], the socio psychological consequences of such neglect can be severe” (howarth 2002: 251). this mode of rejection may infl ict psychological strain and, thus, interfere with the (re)construction of identity (howarth 2002: 249) up to the point where “for those stigmatised, questions of identity are painfully inescapable” (howarth 2002: 246). in the same line of reasoning, schooler et al. (2004) argue that a stigma can become relevant for self-identifi cation when an individual imagines her or himself as a member of a stigmatised group. membership, in turn, is based on preceding and repeatedly performed social categorisation and identifi cation. for instance, when it comes to impacts of idealised body images in mass media, “(a)s fellow members of a stigmatised group (crocker/major 1989), black women may see other black women as allies, not as competitors, and may therefore fi nd comparisons with other black women, even with ideal media images, inspiring” (schooler et al. 2004: 44). feelings of belonging to a certain group might thus be based on ethnic, racial, age or gender-related signifi ers but could also refer to a shared socio-territorial abode. however, the fact that one considers oneself – sometimes subconsciously – part of the group addressed may lead to certain reactions. an important strand of socio-psychological research to which we refer has tackled the question on how far experiences of belonging to a stigmatised group have an impact on a person’s self-esteem (e.g. crocker/major 1989; crocker 1999; camp et al. 2002; major et al. 2003) and are related to objective self-awareness (e.g. pinel/ bosson 2013). studies in this fi eld have underlined that there is no linear or causal relation between stigmatisation and low self-esteem as one would probably expect. instead, crocker and major and, later on, others have argued that people who identify as members of a stigmatised group often feel uncertain whether a certain • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg294 reaction to them is due to their individual abilities or behaviour or due to generalised expectations deriving from stigmatisation. this “attributional ambiguity” (crocker/ major 2003 refering to crocker/ major 1989) may cause positive as well as negative feedbacks in terms of self-esteem. consequently, situational aspects and “stigma consciousness” (pinel 1999) play a crucial role in this debate. pinel and bosson (2013: 56), for instance, emphasize that “stigma-relevant components of social identity may or may not attract one’s attention” depending on whether the respective component is scorned or esteemed in a certain situation (e.g. gay identifi cation in a homophobic environment versus gay identifi cation in the context of a gay pride event). thus, being stigmatised does not necessarily undermine self-esteem. based on an observed lack of difference in the level of self-esteem between stigmatised and non-stigmatised groups, it has been discussed that blaming the stigma – i.e. attributing negative outcomes to existing stigmas and stigmatisation – may serve as a protection for one’s self-esteem. “when prejudice is overt, people blame negative outcomes on discrimination rather than themselves, and their self-esteem is buffered as a result of this discounting process” (major et al. 2003: 229). furthermore, self-esteem can be protected by “paradoxical contentment” (crocker/major 2003: 233), i.e. “the tendency to make in-group social comparisons and the tendency to devaluate certain domains that one’s group doesn’t tend to succeed in might also protect self-esteem” (crocker/major 2003: 233). thus, stigmatisation does not necessarily have an impact on people in terms of lowering self-esteem or undermining self-awareness. in addition, it has been observed that people who apply a stigmatising representation to themselves tend to play down or even negate their ties to the stigmatised group in question and thereby potentially devaluate elements of their social identity (e.g. howarth 2002: 250). for instance, people living in a stigmatised area may claim to be different from the object of stigmatisation, invoking – in a defl ecting attitude – a certain social difference or distance between those “rightfully” stigmatised and themselves (howarth 2002: 251). this in turn can paradoxically lead to further devaluating practices within the originally labelled region. based on the arguments above, these acts can be interpreted as coping strategies in order to preserve selfesteem. in sum, we claim that studies from social psychology contradict popular notions of stigmas as externally introduced labels negatively affecting people – a notion that is nevertheless common within the fi elds of politics. instead, stigmatisation has to be understood as a regime consisting of discursive and embodied practices of labelling an entity in potentially devaluating ways and thus affecting both the relationship the person addressed builds to her or himself as well as relationships to others. this notion allows for the possibility of alterations – intentional or not – and acknowledges the dimension of social negotiation. as such, stigmatisation has to be seen as a highly complex, multi-lateral social phenomenon that is able to exert considerable infl uence on various aspects of human behaviour. refl ecting on the margins • 295 2.4 socio-spatial stigmatisation and out-migration this leads us to the question, if and to what extent the structuring power of stigmatisation materialises in (young) people’s decisions to out-migrate. besides analysing the impact of stigmatisation on self-esteem and on devaluating attitudes against others, studies of coping with stigmatisation have also discussed the role of sociospatial stigmas in (young) people’s decisions to out-migrate. though not assuming a determining, causal relationship, studies on peripheralised rural regions or rural regions under depopulation pressure in particular have repeatedly postulated close links between stigmatisation and out-migration (wiest 2015; wiest/leibert 2013; wiest 2015). referring to kühn and weck (2013) and beetz (2008), wiest (2015: 2) writes, “the stigmatisation of areas due to the production of negative self and public images must be treated as an important aspect since negatively connoted semantics not only have a descriptive character, but also produce relevant expectations that have an infl uence on human behaviour.” a regional narrative of out-migration has become so dominant that – as wiest (2015: 2) assumes – the “fear of missing the boat and being left behind” leads to a situation in which “staying in a home region is no longer taken into a young person’s consideration”. if socio-spatial stigmatisation is both an outcome of social marginalisation and exclusion and can be seen as a medium through which marginalisation and exclusion are performed, out-migration could be regarded as a logical consequence that is already included in local narratives. out-migration furthermore involves the negotiation of socio-spatial identities (jones 1999). the cumulative and mutually boosting impacts of omnipresent ascriptions, feelings of being identifi ed by stigmatisation in processes of social and discursive reproduction are conveyed by the term “culture of out-migration” (wiest 2015: 6). although this notion of “culture” may have an essentialist undertone, it serves to point out a discursive regime as a subjectively shared socio-symbolic order of knowledge produced and reproduced through everyday actions, perceptions, emotions and decisions. we assume the (re-)production of regional images of out-migration to be a decisive element of how potential decisions to out-migrate are negotiated. 3 socio-spatial stigmatisation among adolescents: empirical fi ndings 3.1 dissecting logics of stigmatisation: methodological notes to specify the methodological embedment of our empirical fi ndings it seems necessary and useful to refl ect on the main reasons that we initially selected the altenburger land district as a case study region. for one thing, it mirrors a set of criteria applied to a sample of german districts that are characterised by persistent problematisations with regard to socio-economic parameters such as purchasing power, unemployment, out-migration and a signifi cant demographic shift towards an aging population (see e.g. bbsr 2015: 8). but more decisively – bearing in mind our • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg296 epistemological focus on discursively negotiated (negative) representations – altenburger land is constantly identifi ed as a “problem-region.” for instance, experts’ interest in its demographic development can be observed. the district has become the subject of political programmes aiming at countering population decline and marginalisation. regarding media coverage, the case study region has persistently received bad results in so-called regional rankings (e.g. iwconsult 2014). such representations mainly focus on the aforementioned socio-economic criteria and draw on conditions of shrinkage, but – as stigmas – also involve further criteria of social deviance. this situation is, however, not specifi c for this district but applies to a number of other regions facing the same demographic and economic challenges both in germany and beyond its borders. based on focus groups with adolescents from altenburger land, we aim at witnessing how such conditions of stigmatisation inform adolescents’ modes of social differentiation. stigmatisations, as we have shown above, not only affect individuals in terms of self-awareness and may infl uence individual decisions widely regarded as “personal”, but also have further structuring effects on social and inter-group relations. researching stigmatisation, thus, raises methodological issues concerning the full range of circumstances in which stigmatising moments as well as potential effects and the ways both are related through practices can be observed (see miggelbrink/ meyer 2015a). hacking argues that external ascriptions, for example by institutions, experts or a general regime of knowledge (tekin 2014: 240), are indeed perceived and refl ected by the respective person addressed and that, as a consequence, we may notice not only changes in the respective subject’s self-concepts but also behavioural changes known as looping effects (hacking 1995). the “effects of stigma on the self”, as crocker (1999: 91) more generally puts it, are negotiated, created, and acted upon in the situation. although hacking remained quite ambiguous about the precise subjective processes, conclusions have to be drawn for research on stigmatisation as socio-spatial phenomenon. we consequently have to involve not only representations, their respective sources and the subjective reactions, but should incorporate insights into the changing practices of the addressed subjects (see meyer/miggelbrink 2013). moreover, we by necessity have to be sensitive to the ways these subjects constitute their actuality: “however, thinking through what people do, it can be seen that these positionings are not necessarily articulated, nor even articulable. they are therefore better witnessed, better understood through the ways in which people produce or turn over places and spaces for their own uses.” (pile 2008: 201) focusing on these subjective reactions in practice – and more specifi cally in the context of peripheralisation – undoubtedly entails an epistemological as well as methodological shift. given that peripheralisation as social phenomenon can only be understood by incorporating socio-economic as well as discursive criteria (beetz 2008: 13), researchers have to take their own dual nature into consideration: (1) with regard to the fact that empirical social research often makes use of reactive methods (such as: interviews of varying nature, focus groups), methodologies have to be elaborated that aim at dissecting the traces of socio-spatial representations refl ecting on the margins • 297 (such as stigmatisation) from the respondent’s statements (see miggelbrink/meyer 2015a; schwarzenberg 2016) and focus on the role of stigmatisation on the respective decision-making process – of whatever rational or irrational nature it may be. (2) given that shrinkage-related topics are highly infl uenced by scientifi c knowledge production (e.g. in the form of policy counselling), forming the basis for spatial representations and supposedly co-informing stigmatisation, scientifi c observers should acknowledge their own impact on this fi eld of research and adjust their methodologies accordingly (see miggelbrink/meyer 2015b). drawing on the aforementioned conceptualisations of stigmatisation, groupfocused enmity, disintegration as well as subject theory, we conclude that sociospatial stigmas are collectively shared representations of groups and/or places. they are informed by assumptions about normality and deviance, of generalising and derogative nature and devaluate the ascribed entities. from a constructionist point of view, such deviance can, however, not be attributed to concrete behaviour, but refers to overlapping subjective and collective notions of what is regarded as normal. furthermore, stigmatisation as an interactive process cannot be reduced to unilateral processes of labelling but instead has to be understood as socially negotiated fl oating semantics, potentially prone to perception, reproduction but also irrelevance. those aspects may bear importance for those ascribed according to the respective subjective signifi cance. methodologically, we conducted 15 focus groups with pupils from intermediate and upper secondary schools as well as vocational schools in the district altenburger land – most of them between the ages of 15 and 19. under the supervision of one teacher, we talked about their perception of their home region and their future plans, with conversations lasting up to roughly 90 minutes. afterwards, additional interviews with the respective teachers were conducted in order to contextualise the pupils’ statements. given the respective school-related and organisational constraints, the focus groups consisted of 5 to 25 pupils. therefore, usually two moderators organised the discussion while the teachers remained in the background and were only occasionally active. after transcription and anonymisation, the conversations were codifi ed within the software maxqda in order to inductively elaborate central concepts. however, stigmas were rarely precisely explicated. remarkably, although many of our respondents highlighted the presence of certain stigmas and stressed their artifi cial nature, they still – when describing their own perception of the district altenburger land – tended to stick to those same logics. moreover, our respondents usually did not distinguish between collective representations (such as misfi t’s quarter), subjective perceptions (such as perceptions of drunk people) and statistical data (such as a high number of unemployed people within a given area). only occasionally did some discussants mention that a place’s image may not entirely fi t their respective perception of it. consequentially, this had analytical implications for our study. for every quote and particular derogative ascription in relation to groups or places, we had to elaborate whether specifi c collective representations were used, for example by searching for generalising assumptions, claims about collective notions, etc. if, however, • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg298 no indication of such direct adoptions of stigmas were present, we continued to look for statements that used specifi c descriptions in a similar manner, subsequently leading us to the conclusion of shared representations. during our focus groups, we usually left acts of stigmatisation uncommented. occasionally, our respondents used paradoxical descriptions of the situation (e.g. when complaining about today’s youth, despite being that youth). such incidents provided us with the opportunity to dig into the processes of negotiation, explicate implicit assumptions and problematise the emergence and usage of stigmas. in the following sections, we will dissect several stigmas that proved to be of importance across most of our focus groups. although our conversations took place all across the district, in different school types and also in different age groups, we were able to distinguish a number of narrative strategies – namely defl ective strategies of specifi cation and localisation – involved in the reproduction of stigmas that are applied when young people talk about deviant behaviour, despised areas and about their own future prospects. although they do represent adolescents’ sensemaking of their surroundings, they do not necessarily coincide with actuality. yet, they do provide traces of stigmatisation prevalent in the region. firstly, we aim at elaborating stigmas regarding their ascribed characteristics and the respective places associated with them as well as their connection to the socio-economic circumstances of the altenburger land district. in a second step, we assemble common patterns of localised social deviance and its emergence and then, in a third step, we illuminate the impact of such representations on migratory decision-making.3 such a systematic account, however, runs the risk of reducing the communicative complexity involved. the stigmas we identifi ed share common patterns and permeate each other to some extent. we decided to especially include those stigmas drawing (1) on a common notion of deviant behaviour and (2) on notions of a proper way of life under conditions of shrinkage. 3.2 dystopian representations: narrative fragments on the city and district of altenburg during quite a number of group discussions, we were confronted with narrative fragments evoking the idea that either the whole district of altenburg or the city of altenburg or at least parts of it are highly problematic, disgusting places beyond what is going on elsewhere. in a longer discussion about “today’s youth”, a number or respondents – though themselves belonging to this age-group – draw a negative picture of young people in the city of altenburg as smoking cigarettes and pot, drinking alcohol and consuming crystal meth (methamphetamine), even in front of the school. later on, one of them shows that he is convinced these problems are specifi c for altenburg: 3 the sources given for the statements relate to transcripts of the audiotaped conversations. the respective sources refer to focus groups (fg_x), for which the specifi c cipher and position within the transcript is given. refl ecting on the margins • 299 “there are too many prepubescent adolescents in the city of altenburg who think they have to impress others. of course, there are some cool people as well. [...] but there are also some folks that you wouldn’t want to meet again. [...] they behave in pretty disgusting ways. and if there is something they don’t like, they’ll totally freak out. that’s altenburg; it’s not in every city.” (fg_21:455)4 accordingly, a classmate expresses relief that “we don’t live in the city of altenburg” (fg_16:466ff.), seconded by a third student who offers a clarifi cation for the moderator, “to put it this way: we think of ourselves as being relatively normal. but there are these others.” (fg_16:466ff.) in a nutshell, these and similar quotes present narrative elements that were repeatedly used throughout our discussions. first, narratives frequently employ visual arguments to illuminate the precarious conditions of the respective region, town or village. what is regarded as problematic materialises in people and places that exhibit the problem and, in turn, places and behaviour that are identifi ed as differing from normality and thus serve as an indicator of the bad condition of the whole socio-spatial entity. a second, more specifi c narrative topic unfolds around drugs and drug abuse. although this topic is diffi cult to grasp and thus to validate using “offi cial” fi gures, almost all people we talked to during our research – including experts in the fi eld of drug prevention – assured us that the consumption of crystal meth is a rising problem in altenburger land. drugs – alcohol and crystal meth were regularly mentioned – are the epitome of what is considered “problematic”, “bad” or “deviant” with regard to people and places here. altenburg, in turn, is considered the epitome of drugs: “the stronghold of drugs! just go anywhere, leipzig or gera: where do you come from? the city of altenburg! altenburg is associated with drugs. people know what’s going on here.” (fg_23:441) although this perception is not devoid of any empirical evidence in terms of quantitative numbers (e.g. härtel-petri/haupt 2014), pupils use the topic primarily to underline the rather dystopian nature of the city of altenburg and even the whole region as the quote above demonstrates. moreover, pupils feel they are perceived by outsiders through the lens of this widely known image of the region that is directed as stigma on them. one might ask if drugs are an arbitrary marker to both indicating the current situation and building the image of the region (e.g. haegeler 2015), however, it was the marker used through almost all group discussions. drug abuse was one of the recurrently applied markers of difference – despite the fact that few of our respondents were assumed to take drugs themselves, as teachers mentioned in feedback interviews. and drug abuse was one of the recurrently applied markers of the image of the region people from outside are assumed to have. moreover, we found several strategies to somehow encircle the problematic elements and locate 4 the quotes from the focus groups were translated by us. the german versions have been amended. • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg300 them elsewhere – both in terms of locating them at “another” place or associating them with “other” people and groups. in the following section, we concentrate on this strategy. 3.3 encircling stigmas: defl ective strategies of specifi cation and localisation 3.3.1 students in intermediate secondary schools among those in upper secondary schools (gymnasium), our respondents often applied a defl ective strategy of specifi cation, used to transform a very general pejorative label for the regional population into a more specifi c stigma for the group of pupils on the intermediate level of secondary school education (in contrast to the upper secondary education: the gymnasium): a: and the förderschulen [special schools] get closed so the förderschüler learn with the regelschüler [pupils in intermediate secondary education], and everything becomes even more catastrophic. […] occasionally, we have physical education together – how they talk the teachers down! moderator: [...] so what’s the difference between regelschule and gymnasium? talking teachers down? b: that – at fi rst – and second, the regelschule is really asocial. there are exceptions, but only a few. most of them are really asocial, swearing at each other. there are fi ghts quite often. (fg_17:441ff.) widely shared notions of school type-specifi c deviance serve the practice of reinforcing social boundaries already introduced by the german school system. being federally organised, the 16 different school systems in germany (and the corresponding terminology for the respective school types) usually distinguish between different levels of performance but are often seen as reproducing social inequalities to a certain extent (e.g. schneider 2008). evidence has been found of germany-specifi c effects of tracking pupils too early on (jürges/schneider 2011); furthermore, boys seem to be affected the most by this (jürges/schneider 2011). other studies have pointed out that a low socio-economic background as well as living in rural areas leads to a lower probability of being admitted to upper secondary education (schnepf 2002). such inequalities are transposed into the system of vocational education and training and thus may have long-term career ramifi cations (beicht/ walden 2015). in this regard, our respondents linked pupils in intermediate secondary schools with social decline. however, this differentiation also serves as the basis for a broader chain of association. deviant behaviour from the “regelschüler” is not only associated with a somewhat general notion of underperformance, staying behind (in the sense of not leaving the region) or a lack of determination regarding one’s self-fulfi lment. these pupils also seem to be associated with a variety of criminal behaviour (doing drugs), often socially stigmatised acts (drinking in public, yet not in restaurants) as well as socially stigmatised conditions (unemployed, welfarerefl ecting on the margins • 301 dependent). occasionally, such relations are further specifi ed by distinguishing “regelschüler” from those attending a special school – i.e. pupils with (learning) disabilities. of course, this generalisation is not always based on experiences but often is passed on as a visual association between different subjects and groups. this in turn serves feelings of relative deprivation such as when pupils from a gymnasium complain about the local regelschule being more technically advanced than their gymnasium. intermediate secondary schools – beyond mere performance in the context of school marks – can therefore be seen as a widely shared stigma, often used to distinguish oneself from lower-class groups. it is furthermore informed by conditions of scarcity and a prevalent regime of out-migration. 3.3.2 identifying problems “elsewhere”: shabby blocks and sweatpants in “a crap city” besides these attempts to draw clear and derogative distinctions between pupils from different schools, references to social misfi ts – a strategy of defl ective localisation – became a common talking point after mentioning the northern parts of the city of altenburg. almost any kind of social problems were literally located in the city of altenburg’s northern parts (“altenburg-nord”). though we do not want to play off subjectively and collectively intelligible understandings against assumed objective realities, some additional information should be provided. altenburg nord is an urban district built during the 1980s for about 10,000 people. after re-unifi cation, it shared the fate of other modern urban quarters erected during gdr times. it faced strong out-migration followed by vacancy, decay, and – later on – by the razing of abandoned buildings and reconstruction of others. mainly owned by a public housing company and a cooperative, it is still associated with downgrading and social deviance. in the following quote, the architectural quality of the environment was taken as a starting point to refl ect the “asocial” nature of the area; spatial and social ascriptions were combined: moderator: what’s your impression of altenburg and other places? a: well, it’s kind of asocial, especially when looking at those housing blocks. b: and take a look at those kids there, they ain’t good at anything. a: they are pretty shabby! moderator: the building blocks? a: yeah. it has gotten better. […] c: i think it’s because of all these foreigners living there. and others that receive less money than those who can afford stuff. maybe, some don’t get the support to live in some nicer places, or to provide their kids with better education. d: yeah, you often get to see some asocial kids, or youngsters walking around with bottles of beer. just shabby. e: and the walls are full of graffi ti! (fg_24:630ff.) • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg302 the association between the architectural environment and the social composition of altenburg’s north is seen as being structurally connected, though the connection itself is not clearly specifi ed. two dimensions of deviance are amalgamated by the participants: unpleasant architecture and (correspondingly) people that are ascribed negative characteristics, both converging within a particular part of the city of altenburg. interestingly, foreigners were in general quite rarely mentioned as an indicator for deviance and social decline. however, altenburg’s north was the most frequently mentioned place in the district altenburger land during our discussions and equally often described as being the worst one as well. at the same time, altenburg-nord epitomises and exemplifi es “the other” opposed to a good life, and assembles the respective most despised traits. its usage often implies an unspecifi ed causality. however, altenburg-nord is just one example of localised stigmas that combine social and spatial characteristics. the whole city of altenburg can also serve as the entity to blame, being – from the perspective of a pupil from a vocational school – a “crap city! [...] altenburg should know that it is a crap city, a dirt city” (fg_12:205ff.). statements like this were frequent in our material; especially among those seeking more cultural and political diversity. many of them felt attracted by the city of leipzig, 50 kilometres away, a city of more than 500,000 inhabitants – in contrast to the 33,000 inhabitants of altenburg – that is regionally known for its abundant cultural offerings and believed to be politically left-leaning. furthermore, adolescents from the small towns of altenburger land looked down on the city of altenburg for presenting their everyday problems in an aggravated dimension. however, the logic of despising “the other” – socially and spatially – is also echoed in statements about other small towns in our research area such as gößnitz and its inhabitants – suggesting that this is widespread rhetorical logic of establishing socio-spatial order: “when we drive through gößnitz, most people wear sweatpants, all day long, many are drunk. i don’t want to call them misfi ts, but – yeah – kind of. when driving through gößnitz, it’s kind of a dirty city, as if – since twenty years ago – somebody has stopped taking care of it, as if gößnitz – now – just vegetates.” (fg_20:302) however singular the respective observation is, the label “gößnitz” entailed numerous ascriptions especially for adolescents from schmölln, a small town near gößnitz: an architectural environment perceived as particularly dull as well as the widespread description of social deviance in the altenburger land district that we heard quite often. the previous quote from a 16-year old is striking insofar as it presents a rather “standardised” and “sedimented” narrative about small towns that symbolises the social nature of negotiating such stigmas and includes elements beyond his own experience. however, although some respondents acknowledged that “prejudice” informs the narrative, the overall constructed nature does not surface. paradoxically, the conditions in gößnitz are not generally questioned but usually interpreted on the basis of singular – often not necessarily one’s own – observations or hear-say, again reproducing the lack of distinction between representation and perceived actuality. refl ecting on the margins • 303 instead the adolescents insist that their descriptions do indeed match the respective situation. paradoxically, they anticipate accusations of prejudice and instantaneously reject them: “i am in altenburg quite often. you’ll see folks, 16, 17 years old, running around with sweatpants and a 12-year old girlfriend. i just wouldn’t want to end up like that. there aren’t just a few of them. just walk through the city. i don’t have any prejudices, but you can actually see such folks and tell yourself: i don’t want to end up like this.” (fg_21:334) such localisations of social deviance often served as anchors for more general elaborations on alleged differences between cities and small villages. while the former were associated with noisiness, crimes, anonymity but also leisure activities, the latter was strongly seen to correspond to the need for order, courtesy, rest, a nice environment and family. the city of altenburg in particular was despised by adolescents from small villages on the basis of more general differentiations between villages and cities: a: in villages, parents help, it’s more about the family. in the city, it’s more like, you have your child, but it shouldn’t be there, i don’t care for it anymore, therefore, it is forced to do everything on its own. many people live like this, it’s getting more and more like that. […] it’s more often in the city, it is more concentrated. [...] b: if you grow up in a village, you can actually let your child – at 15 or 16 – walk the streets after 9 pm without having to be afraid that it has to crawl back to you after being stabbed. (fg_31:655ff.) given its exaggerated nature, the latter statement in particular generated intense laughter during the respective discussion. while it was not taken as authentic representation of everyday life in the city of altenburg, it nevertheless draws on less infl ated assumptions about general differences between cities and villages. in sum, social deviance – as articulated in widely shared stigmas – is frequently connected to specifi c places; they are not only seen as the places where such behaviour happens. instead, they persistently coalesce with such ascriptions and – as seen in the examples of gößnitz and schmölln – are able to retain those associations beyond a specifi c group or age band. furthermore, stigmatised places inherit the properties of the stigma, which itself feeds on authentic and remote conveyed experiences. these aspects, however, are only occasionally and partially refl ected by the adolescents. again, “the drug problem” that was identifi ed as a main marker of “the outsider’s image” of altenburg was actualised when the discussion turned to altenburg-nord, the place that was repeatedly identifi ed as the hive of drug users: a: that’s an area nobody wants to go to. [...] all these freaky kids [...] folks who just blunder all day long. b: there are druggies! a: folks that destroy everything. drugs and everything. that’s nord; it’s the worst. • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg304 b: people are getting killed there! a: you can even hear gunshots at night. (fg_31:590ff.) in the eyes of young people, nord has become the (clearly) defi ned projection screen for what is going wrong with some of the youth. yet, not everyone had authentic experiences with nord. instead, discussants often relied on hearsay. however, some of our respondents identifi ed the whole city as “plagued by drugs and stuff” and thus in turn as a place where young people feel latently criminalised – just because they are visible in the streets: a: and most people, especially the youth, suffer from this situation. for example, if you drive through the streets on your mopeds at 11 pm – you will most often get stopped and searched. moderator: by the police? a: yeah. they defi nitely get tough with that! and many have to suffer from it, many who don’t do drugs. (fg_31:608ff.) such incidents catalyse processes of projection, epitomising the inevitability of grappling with the ubiquitous presence of drugs in one’s everyday life. on the one hand, our respondents identify drug abuse and abusers in their everyday lives. on the other hand, they also feel the power of stigmatising representations on themselves. drug abuse, as such, has become more than a localised narrative apart from social actuality; it becomes everyday reality. this, of course, involves assumptions about the mechanisms leading to drug abuse that in turn reveal prevalent stigmas: “you have to demonstrate that – you know – it could make you die at a younger age, or that you lower yourself, that you aren’t able to make progress in life. […] you know, i think that it’s especially the dumber people, who are not that intelligent.” (fg_23:655) in this view, doing drugs means a lack of progress. such attempts to make causal sense of what they know reveal logic of defl ection; the stigma of abusing drugs is seen to involve only specifi c groups. characterising druggies against this background illuminates the associations involved in the social negotiation of causality related to drug abuse. thus, not only what one does or represents is judged as being deviant, but also what one aspires to do – and this is understood as being closely linked to one’s abode. for instance, one of our respondents pointed to a close and almost causal relation between social deviance, drug abuse and specifi c – though not clearly named – places: “the unemployed parental home is the reason. it’s in those parts of the city where many welfare-dependent people live […] the under-privileged families with disadvantaged children slipping off into certain groups, and getting their infl uence from them.” (fg_23:675) here, deviant conditions are not only socially specifi ed but enclosed in specifi c areas. furthermore, this narrative represents widely shared and articulated convicrefl ecting on the margins • 305 tions about alleged connections of cause and effect. quite frequently, adolescents discussed the lack of leisure and job opportunities in the region, especially highlighting ever-present boredom and a lack of prospects for those living and staying in the region, contributing to a generally negative image of the situation in the altenburger land district: “you just have to smoke pot to bear all this here” (fg_16:997). however, it also mirrors hegemonic narratives about peripheralised regions lacking the ability to compete against – mostly – cities that are able to offer jobs and activities satisfying a variety of interests and orientations. narratives of boredom are thereby incorporated into intra-regional stigmas about specifi c groups of people and the places they are assumed to live. 3.3.3 “i didn’t know that.” negotiating the dangerous nord as shown above, stigmatisation is a hierarchical condition; although there are a number of negative stigmas referring to the region and to the city of altenburg, the northern part of the city serves as a projection screen for the most negative phenomena. it is not only associated with drugs but also with crime in general reaching so far as to pose an everyday threat to anyone. social and spatial characteristics both constitute the stigma and contribute to a – sometimes fuzzy – feeling of being threatened. astoundingly, the following quote shows a rare but important contestation as nobody seems to agree on the everyday presence of knives in nord: a: for example altenburg-nord. everyone knows it. […] many call it misfi t’s quarter, because in nord really everyone carries knives. moderator: really? everyone carries knives? a: well, no idea … b: i didn’t know that. c: me neither! a: well, for example a friend of mine was severely threatened with a knife and a weapon. and he lives there, and he often hears gunshots in the evening. (fg_24:588ff.) while such a claim seems to be exaggerating singular hearsay, it follows a consistently extreme perspective on altenburg-nord. nevertheless, opposition to a manifest stigmatisation as in the quote above allows space not only for legitimising narratives but also provides insights into the mechanisms of negotiating stigmas. we occasionally encountered pupils debating whether or not the negative depiction of altenburg-nord fi tted their own experiences. however, they often ignored each other’s comments about “the north” as a general socio-spatial category. instead, it has led them to re-entitise their comments – from a negative area to specifi c inhabitants – allegedly in order to create compatibility. generally, there were numerous occasions where differing associations clashed but underwent re-interpretations using the aforementioned defl ective strategies of specifi cation and localisation. often, such incidents had to be explicitly enforced by the moderator, encouraging • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg306 the participants to discuss each other’s perspective. this way, a somewhat causal connection between social and spatial ascriptions was dissected. nevertheless, it always seemed forced and provided just a temporary differentiation as shortly after both dimensions were often re-associated. social negotiation in this sense doesn’t mean that people interact and deliberately argue with each other. instead, the negotiation of stigmas consists of repetitive statements, only occasionally taking note of each other if confl icting. the logic of convergent narratives based on social as well as spatial topoi is not restricted to altenburg-nord but, instead, a general pattern that has been observed especially in declining neighbourhoods and towns (e.g. howarth 2002). once (and as long as) accepted as true, some of our respondents started to explain why deviant behaviour and social problems necessarily coincide in this place and how it is reproduced again and again. assumed causal mechanisms working behind the scenes – as articulated by a female pupil from a rural intermediate secondary school with regard to altenburg-nord – are part of a narrative that legitimises socio-spatial stigmatisation:5 “well, it is the upbringing, because, i think, the parents living there. i don’t want to claim that everybody’s that way in nord, that everybody is violent and stuff, but if you grow up there, and the parents, i mean, are welfare dependents and never leave for work, only yell at their child, or beat the child, then, i think, it will not become a really nice person like us.” (fg_31:623) negotiations of stigmas in such a way involve converging pejorative narratives that include a set of generalised negative social characteristics, a place to which these traits are attributed and sometimes diverging, yet frequently implied, assumptions about possible explanations. such self-consistent narratives seem to be remarkably persistent in their general logic. apparently, the moderator’s occasional attempts to address its particular and paradoxical nature couldn’t break the logic of stigmatisation: moderator: this place doesn’t sound like i would want to go there! […] a (quietly): but it is just another image! moderator: i’d like to hear that. a: well, it is just another image. because normal people do live there, in normal houses. it’s not that everyone is like that. [...] moderator: i assume that we can all agree that not everyone runs around in altenburg-nord carrying knives or a gun. a (laughing): right! b: [...] my granny lives in nord. 5 for a discussion of corresponding perspectives on the impact of one’s upbringing for future orientations see meyer/miggelbrink 2015. refl ecting on the margins • 307 moderator: well, from a scientifi c perspective, let’s check: has your granny got knives or a gun? [...] b: no. (fg_24:601ff.) while the moderator interrogated a discussant’s statement and pressed the group to differentiate such generalising statements, it didn’t have much impact. although the topic changed further on – from weapons to deviance – the logics of defl ective specifi cation and localisation did not. the moderator’s provocation had led to attempts to re-validate aforementioned statements. still, the association between generalised social ascriptions and the place proves to be hegemonic, only giving way to detailing the location regarding its architectural characteristics. correspondingly, the cause of the asocial nature of nord is now attributed to the housing blocks. apparently, the underlying conditions of stigmatisation are remarkably persistent in the face of contrasting views as – to our astonishment – such incidents did not induce refl ections about the validity of prevalent representations. 3.4 stigmatisation and migratory decision-making given the ubiquitous negative ascriptions of the altenburger land district and some of its cities, it seems important to illuminate the everyday relevance of such discourses: considering the age of our respondents, the most urgent and inevitable decision emerging in their near future is related to the respective career path. while some mention their determination to stay in the district and take up a job or pursue an abitur (equalling an “a-level”), others are undecided and grapple with the decision. some even present themselves stoically as logical beings, determined to walk their career path, regardless of what sacrifi ces might come. as heterogeneous such individual perspectives are, for those who are inclined to migrate elsewhere a repetitive association between leaving and self-fulfi lment can be observed: “it is quite an easy decision: i always have the feeling that if i returned to this place, i would have failed a bit.” (fg_20:161) notwithstanding such pointed statements, it is by no means a simple but rather a highly complex decision with many career paths to choose from, and with respect to how the decision-making process unfolds individually. despite the above discussed negative representations of the district, we met adolescents who were not eager to leave their home, but were indeed determined to stay. however, these cases were often related to actual job-offers from local or regional companies, or to the emotions with regard to leaving their family, their friends or the environment the adolescents are used to. staying, as it were, happens due to what satisfi es the personal needs of those on the verge of taking off into adulthood. and as mentioned before, a general sense about a preferred concept of life usually resonates: • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg308 “if you have no one, no friends and everything, but lots of money, what kind of life is that? would you be happy if you had, for example, three cars there but no contact to your family and no friends? i don’t think so.” (fg_14: 497ff.) the most interesting aspect of comparing (potential) stayers and leavers is that they all ponder their migratory considerations on similar aspects: family, friends, job, wages, perception of the altenburger land and perceptions of the respective place they consider relocating to. however, how they weigh these criteria in the face of migratory considerations remains highly subjective, yet ultimately decisive. for instance, most adolescents contemplating staying did indeed acknowledge the aforementioned negative depictions of the altenburger land. yet, they decided to disregard them in favour of other factors (e.g. social ties, nature and quiet environment). on the other hand, for those determined to leave the region, the widely shared negative impressions about the altenburger land district do seem to dominate migratory considerations: “the whole environment [...] decays more and more. [...] there are so many folks not having any work. they belong to an underclass, the lowest level. and that is a level which – i think – is not something i would want to witness everyday on my way to work.” (fg_17:225). there is, however, a multitude of criteria that seem to inform our respondents’ considerations. this manifold has been tackled by accounts of migration happening in a specifi c “social, economic and political context which is largely common to all members of the community” and that ultimately informs adolescent migration (see carling 2002: 17). for our example, most of these criteria match the specifi cs of the main stigmas fl oating around in the region, such as unemployment, drugs, crime, asocial folks as well as the perception of architectural characteristics: “you just have to walk through the town twice, and you’ve virtually seen it all. from then on, you can make up your own mind: here, it is grey and dull; there, it is grey and dull. there are druggies everywhere. and that is why you just want to leave!” (fg_12:478) such negative statements and contrasting examples expressed elsewhere in the discussions exist in different shapes, often unconnected, leading to the assumption that they are of different signifi cance to the adolescents. there is, however, a quite similar, repetitive logic of how decision-making is made intelligible: it does not seem to be crucial negative traits associated with specifi c places are weighted. instead, perceptions and experiences, that have been continuously repeated, collectively reinforced and thus became fi rmly established, quite frequently provided the grounds and the rationalisation for a particular decision (especially to out-migrate). migratory decisions, so it seems, are often closely tied to assumptions about a good life and depend on the subjective signifi cance of specifi c criteria that may or may not prove to be pivotal for the ultimate decision whether to migrate or not. furthermore, they are in one way or another informed by general discourses related refl ecting on the margins • 309 to their home region. these fi ndings mirror similar empirical accounts of migratory decision-making under the impression of regional discourses about poverty (e.g. carling 2002) or the expectation that students gain international experience by studying in certain countries (e.g. collins et al. 2014). 4 discussion and conclusion in sum, we conclude a widely shared practice of drawing mental boundaries in a region facing socio-economic decline and negative demographic prospects. here, places and people are not only constructed as distinct and different but are, moreover, clearly defi ned as the deviant others that differ substantially from one’s own social and spatial normality. specifi cally, this normality is strongly related to achievements that defy regional precarity. three conclusions can be extrapolated from this: first, socio-economic circumstances inform regional processes of stigmatisation, ultimately leading to further devaluating processes. however theoretically grounded such a claim is, we found empirical evidence in defl ective strategies of specifi cation and localisation of deviance that correspond to the conceptual assumptions elaborated on in section 2.2. second, these rhetoric strategies have to be understood as symptoms of attributional ambiguity: though young people felt “somehow” addressed by a negative image, they eagerly tried to – socially and spatially – identify the problems “elsewhere.” hence, these strategies are ways of transforming general pejorative labels for groups and people into intra-regionally assignable labels that specify and localise deviance and reassure belonging and non-belonging to the labelled entities. third, the practice of blaming the stigma is not always directly observable as the refl ection of stigmatisation has not reached the point of questioning the validity of its logic. however, the perceived – stigmatised – social condition did indeed play a role. especially for adolescents, it is not about facts and fi gures when it comes to the decision whether to migrate or not. rather, their family, their friends and acquaintances constitutes a particular regime of knowledge. we cannot, however, conclude that socio-spatial stigmas determine the wish to migrate. as a hegemonic narrative about assumed social conditions, stigmatisation has a potential effi cacy for the respective subjects. stigmas may infl uence decisions, stigmas may be ignored and be irrelevant, but they may as well be identifi ed as not matching one’s individual perceptions. however, stigmas are part – although allegedly not the driver – of out-migration, entangled in such collective practice regimes. furthermore, they are symptoms of peripheralisation as they draw on socio-economic criteria but simultaneously entail discursive concomitants (see meyer/miggelbrink 2013) – namely rhetorical logics, defl ective specifi cations and localisations. our fi ndings provide the grounds for stressing the need to consider the sociogeographic and socio-psychological implications of peripherality. when integrating the economic, demographic as well as discursive aspects of regional precarity, the need to fathom its social ramifi cations – for example regarding social boundary • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg310 making – becomes inevitable. furthermore, knowledge about such regimes of stigmatisation is able to illuminate the complex dynamics of migratory decision-making. insofar, our fi ndings contribute to debates on territorial and socio-spatial stigmatisation, and, specifi cally, to research on the structural aspects of social boundary making accompanied by logics of inclusion and exclusion (see e.g. bude 2008: 53). moreover, we are able to elaborate further on the role of discursive phenomena in processes of peripheralisation (see e.g. meyer/miggelbrink 2013), a dimension that has not gotten much attention in debates on the relational making of place and regions so far. finally, in the wake of supplying further insights into the role of stigmatisation in migratory considerations, we are able to supplement existing empirical fi ndings in the debate on post-rational migration (e.g. collins et al. 2014). references amin, ash 2004: regions unbound: towards a new politics of place. in: geografi ska annaler: series b – human geography 86,1: 33-44. anhut, reimund 2008: konfl ikttheorie der desintegrationstheorie. in: bonacker, thorsten (ed.): sozialwissenschaftliche konfl ikttheorien. eine einführung. wiesbaden: springer-vs: 381-408. anhut, reimund; heitmeyer, wilhelm 2000: desintegration, konfl ikt und ethnisierung. eine problemanalyse und theoretische rahmenkonzeption. in: heitmeyer, wilhelm; anhut, reimund (eds.): bedrohte stadtgesellschaft. soziale desintegrationsprozesse und ethnisch-kulturelle konfl iktkonstellationen. konfl iktund gewaltforschung. weinheim und münchen: juventa: 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[…] die sind von der art ekelhaft und die sind, wenn, weiß ich nicht, wenn denen etwas nicht passt, dann sind die total kirre und drehen frei. also in altenburgdas ist nicht in jeder stadt so. fg_16:466ff. a: wir wohnen aber nicht in altenburg. b: ich sag aber mal, also wir sehen uns noch halbwegs als die normale schicht. da gibt es aber noch die anderen. fg_23:441 drogenhochburg. geh irgendwo nach leipzig […] gera. wo kommst du her? altenburg. und dann wird halt altenburg auch ein bisschen so in die richtung drogen gedrängt. also man weiß schon, was hier drinnen abgeht. chapter 3.3.1 fg_17:441ff. a: und dann werden auch die förderschulen zugemacht, da sind dann die förderschüler mit bei den regelschülern und dann ist das dort noch katastrophaler. […] also manchmal haben die mit uns sportunterricht und wie die dann die lehrer runtermachen … moderator: […] was ist da der unterschied, zwischen regelschule und gymnasium hier? wie die lehrer runtergemacht werden? b: erstens das und zweitens ist regelschule sehr sehr asozial. also es gibt ausnahmen, aber das sind ganz wenige. der großteil ist wirklich sehr asozial und pöbelt sich gegenseitig an. da gibt es auch schon öfters mal prügeleien. refl ecting on the margins • 317 chapter 3.3.2 fg_24:630ff. moderator: was ist denn so euer eindruck von altenburg oder von anderen orten? a: naja, es ist teilweise asozial, wenn man da manchmal die wohnblöcke halt auch sieht. b: wenn du die kinder siehst, die haben doch auch nix drauf. a: wie die übelst heruntergekommen sind. moderator: die wohnblöcke? a: ja. das ist schon ein bisschen besser geworden. c: naja, ich bin der meinung es liegt halt eher daran, dass da viele ausländer leben. auch viele, die nicht so viel geld haben wie vielleicht manch andere, die sich das leisten können. vielleicht kriegen manche auch nicht so die unterstützung für irgendetwas, dass sie halt besser wohnen können, oder dass die kinder vielleicht bessere schulische ausbildung haben. d: naja da sieht man halt auch öfter mal naja eher so asoziale kinder, oder dann laufen die kleineren mit einer bierfl asche rum. oderdas ist halt einfach heruntergekommen. e: ich fi nde halt auch, das ist angesprayt, die hauswände und alles. fg_12:205ff. kackstadt halt. […] das kann altenburg so wissen, dass es eine kackstadt ist. es ist eine drecksstadt. fg_20:302 … wenn wir so durchfahren, also die meisten leute haben irgendwelche jogginghosen an, den ganzen tag, und viele sind betrunken. ich will jetzt nicht assis sagen, aber so ein bisschen doch schon. wenn man da durchfährt, es ist irgendwie so eine dreckige stadt, es ist als ob vor zwanzig jahren da jemand aufgehört hat sich darum zu kümmern, als ob die jetzt einfach vor sich hinvegetiert. fg_21:334 also ich bin jetzt auch viel in altenburg und wenn man da so leute sieht, so 16, 17 und die rennen mit jogginghosen herum mit einer zwölfjährigen freundin. ich will einfach nur nicht so enden. da gibt es wirklich nicht wenige. und man muss einfach nur durch den ort laufen. also ohne jetzt irgendwie vorurteile zu haben, aber du siehst leute, da sagst du dir einfach, so willst du nicht enden. • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg318 fg_31:655ff. a: auf dem dorf, da ist man mehr, die eltern helfen mit und so, mehr familiär. aber in der stadt ist es mehr zum beispiel so, man hat halt das kind, aber es sollte ja nicht da sein, ich kümmere mich nicht darum, dann muss es halt alleine machen. und das ist halt bei vielen so und das häuft sich dann mehr und mehr. […]es gibt halt in der stadt, ist es mehr so weit konzentriert. […] b: wenn wenn man jetzt zum beispiel auf dem dorf aufwächst, dann kannst du halt mal dein kind nach 21 uhr, wenn es so 15, 16 ist, auch mal auf die straße lassen, ohne dass du halt angst haben musst, dass es hier halb abgestochen wieder zurückkriecht. fg_31:590ff. a: na das ist so ein gebiet, wo eigentlich keiner hin will. […] da rennen die ganzen behinderten kinder rum. […] na es sind halt die, die den ganzen tag nur scheiße machen. b: und drogenopfer sind da! a: die alles kaputt machen, vor allen dingen drogen und alles möglich. da ist nord halt das, was gerade am schlimmsten betroffen ist. b: da werden auch welche umgebracht auf der straße. a: da hörst du auch schon mal schnell paar schüsse oder so nachts. fg_31:608ff. a: und die meisten, halt gerade so jugendmäßig, haben halt darunter zu leiden. also gerade wenn du mit den kumpels halt so nach 23:00 uhr halt mit den mopeds noch rumfährst, wirst du eigentlich immer angehalten und dann halt durchsucht. moderator: von der polizei? a: ja. die gehen halt da sehr scharf. und da haben halt viele darunter zu leiden, die da eigentlich gar nicht beteiligt sind. fg_23:655 …halt zeigen, dass man da, was weiß ich, schneller stirbt beziehungsweise total runterkommt, dass man nichts erreicht im leben. […] weil ich denke mal jetzt, dass eher so die ich sage mal dumme bevölkerung, die nicht so schlau sind refl ecting on the margins • 319 fg_23:675 das arbeitslose elternhaus sehe ich als grund. das sind halt die stadtbezirke, wo man weiß, da sind viele hartzer […] die sozial schwachen familien, wo die kinder ziemlich benachteiligt sind, in bestimmte gruppen abrutschen und da von dort halt auch den einfl uss bekommen fg_16:997 da kannst du bloß noch kiffen, dass du hier halbwegs alles verträgst. chapter 3.3.3 fg_24:588ff. a: na zum beispiel altenburg nord, also das viertel da, das kennt man ja auch. […] viele nennen es halt auch schon assiviertel, weil da rennt halt auch wirklich jeder mit irgendeinem messer rum da. moderator: da rennt jeder mit einem messer rum? a: naja, keine ahnung. b: das wusste ich nicht. c: das wusste ich auch nicht, nein. a: naja, zum beispiel ein freund von mir wurde da auch schon mal sehr stark bedroht mit einem messer und einer waffe undder wohnt da in der nähe, der hört auch abends öfter mal schüsse. fg_31:623 ja, na auch die erziehung, weil wenn ich, denke ich mal, jetzt so die eltern halt mit dort wohnenich will jetzt nicht sagen, dass dort alle so sind, das die halt übelst gewalttätig sind und alles, aber wenn man dort halt jetzt aufwächst und die eltern halt so, sag ich mal, hartz 4-empfänger sind und dann halt nie arbeiten gehen, die ganze zeit nur ihr kind anbrüllen beziehungsweise schlagen, dann denke ich mal auch, dass das nicht so ein wirklich netter mensch wie wir jetzt werden wird. fg_24:601ff. moderator: das hört sich nach einem ort an, wo ich nicht gern hingehen würde. […] a: ((leise)) das ist auch bloß nur ein image. moderator: das würde ich gerne hören! a: na das ist auch bloß nur ein image, weil da wohnen auch normale leute in normalen häusern, das ist nicht so, dass jeder da so rumrennt. […] • frank meyer, judith miggelbrink, tom schwarzenberg320 moderator: also ich gehe davon aus, dass wir uns alle einig sind, dass nicht jeder in altenburg nord mit einem messer oder einer waffe im anschlag rumrennt. a: ((belustigt)) richtig! b: […] meine oma wohnt da. moderator: okay, und dann müssten wir jetzt aus wissenschaftlicher sicht testen, hat deine oma ein messer oder eine waffe? […] b: nein. chapter 3.4 fg_20:161 und ich habe immer so das gefühl, wenn ich später mal wieder hier bin, dass ich dann irgendwie so ein bisschen gescheitert bin. fg_14: 497ff. aber wenn du niemanden hast, keine freunde und alles und hast aber übelst viel geld, was hast du denn dann für ein leben? bist du dann glücklich, wenn du dort, was weiß ich, drei autos hast und hast aber zu deiner familie keinen kontakt und hast keine freunde? glaub ich nicht unbedingt. fg_17:225 die ganze umgebung hier […] verfällt immer mehr. […] weil es gibt mittlerweile so viele, die gehen hier einfach nicht arbeiten. die fallen wirklich mehr in die untere schicht rein und in die untere schiene und das ist dann ein niveau, wo ich mir denke, dass muss ich mir nicht tagtäglich auf einer arbeit hier irgendwo ansehen. fg_12:478 hier gehst du zweimal durch und dann hast du da im prinzip schon alles gesehen, weil du kannst dir dann eigentlich denken, ja, dort ist es grau und eintönig, dort ist es grau und eintönig, es rennen überall drogenleute rum. und da will man einfach nur weg. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock a demographic analysis based on church records michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer abstract: the article examines the historical development of infant mortality in the hanseatic city of rostock, with a special focus on the question of how socio-economic factors infl uenced infant mortality in the early 19th century. compared with the rest of germany, the city exhibited an exceedingly low infant mortality level, in particular in the fi rst third of the century. our analyses show that the occupation of the father had a signifi cant infl uence on the survival probability of a child in the fi rst year of life in the early 19th century. newborn children of fathers in lower ranked occupations exhibited a greater mortality risk in the fi rst year of life than the offspring of fathers with occupations of higher status. the analyses are based on the registries of burials and baptisms of st. james’s church (jakobikirche) in rostock, which are largely preserved and much of which has been digitalised. based on these individual data, this is the fi rst event history analysis model conducted in the context of infant mortality in a german city in the 19th century. this article is also the fi rst to reveal rostock infant mortality rates for the entire 19th century according to sex, thus closing two research gaps. keywords: infant mortality · rostock · historical demography · church records · event history analysis 1 introduction the analysis of infant mortality is an important element of mortality research. in the late 19th century, in some german regions more than one third of all live births did not survive the fi rst year of life (würzburg 1887, 1888; prinzing 1900). thus, infant mortality substantially determined the overall mortality rate. today, according to the federal statistical offi ce (31.12.2013), the infant mortality rate in germany is only 3.3‰. due to its low level and minor variation, infant mortality has largely lost its infl uence on the average life expectancy. the rise in life expectancy in the fi rst half of the 20th century in germany was mainly caused by the decline in infant morcomparative population studies vol. 40, 2 (2015): 191-216 (date of release: 20.03.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-03en4 • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer192 tality and was signifi cantly responsible for the introduction of the fi rst demographic transition. there are many studies about the development and the determinants of infant mortality in the 19th century. nonetheless, some german regions have not yet been suffi ciently covered by research and not all infl uencing factors and causes for regional differences have been clarifi ed (imhof 1981; gehrmann 2000, 2011; kloke 1997). this is mainly due to the focus of interest in research and differing methods and defi nitions. while today there are internationally comparable classifi cations for stillbirths and live births,1 this was not always the case in the past. a number of questions have been left unanswered. what role does the documentation of deaths and births before and after baptism play? how do different levels of education and different religions affect registration? when is a stillbirth documented? since when have what variables been recorded in the context of infant mortality? mecklenburg-schwerin is a region that was distinguished in the 19th century by particularly low infant mortality and high life expectancy compared to other regions in germany (dippe 1857). the historical demographic data for the region of mecklenburg-schwerin is very favourable. historical population data have been registered going back to the 19th century as individual data in the form of household lists for a number of censuses for the entire region. church records have also been almost completely preserved. this provides us with individual data to document demographic events. however, using this kind of data for research requires considerable effort since the existing sources must fi rst be digitalised.2 sources of information on infant mortality in the respective local context have existed since the introduction of church records. analyses on mortality on the basis of church records were conducted, for example, by halley (1693), kundmann (1737), süßmilch (1761), blayo (1975), wrigley and schofi eld (1981), schultz (1991), gehrmann (2000, 2011), johansson (2004, 2009) and breschi et al. (2014), whereby gehrmann not only uses church records as a data basis, but also all other available sources concerning population statistics. only the introduction of offi cial statistics makes comprehensive statistical statements possible for entire regions. the fi rst country to begin to document demographic events at the national level was sweden in the year 1751. the other european countries followed its lead beginning in the mid-19th century (westergaard 1932; hollingsworth 1969; rödel 1990; ehling 1996). comparable data for germany 1 classifi cations in germany: a live birth means that at least one of three vital signs occurs (breathing, pulsation of the umbilical cord or heartbeat). if none of these are observed, but the birth weight is at least 500 g the birth is considered a stillbirth. if none of the characteristics occurs and the birth weight is under 500 g, the birth is considered a miscarriage, which is not registered (deutsche verordnung zur ausführung des personenstandsgesetzes (kapitel 5, § 31)). 2 notable for mecklenburg-schwerin is the census of 1819, including the city of rostock and its analysis. this is the pilot project mecklenburg in the demographic transition of the 18th and 19th centuries (title translated by cpos). in addition, various research fi ndings on the urban population and social history at the beginning of the 19th century were provided by rostock historians (krüger/kroll 1998; krüger 1998, 2000, 2003; manke 2000, 2005a/b). social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 193 on regional infant mortality rates cannot be obtained until 1875 through the foundation of the empire and the establishment of the imperial statistical offi ce (westergaard 1932: 239). the development of infant mortality rates for selected countries is shown in figure 1. in scandinavia, a decline in infant mortality can be observed throughout the entire period. in the other countries the decline did not begin until the late 19th century, since industrialisation and accompanying urbanisation at fi rst caused a decline in the survival probability of infants. the 20th century brings a strong decline and levelling off at a very low level. figure 1 also shows the rise in infant mortality during the two world wars and the post-war period. the difference in infant mortality rates between prussia and the south of germany also indicates the considerable north-south divide that existed in the 19th century in germany. generally, the baltic sea region had a comparatively low infant fig. 1: infant mortality in selected european countries, 1800-2010 (moving 5-year average) notes: scandinavia consists of the countries of sweden (from 1800), denmark (from 1835) and norway (from 1846); great britain consists of england and wales (from 1841) and scotland (from 1855); southern germany consists of bavaria (from 1819), saxony (from 1831), baden (from 1852), württemberg (from 1859 as well as 1819-1822 and 1847-1856) and the grand duchy of hesse (from 1863); prussia (from 1816) in its 1866 borders. source: human mortality database (for austria from 1947, france, scandinavia and great britain), federal statistical offi ce (for germany), gehrmann 2002 and 2011 (for prussia), gehrmann 2011 (for southern germany) and mitchell 2007 (for austria until 1946); own calculations using the calendar year method. germany prussia southern germany austria france great britain scandinavia 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 infant deaths per 1,000 live births year • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer194 mortality rate. this applies not only to countries like sweden and denmark, but also to the german baltic regions of schleswig, holstein, mecklenburg and pomerania. the survival rates of small children in the 19th century were not only better in the north than in the south, but also tended to be better in the west than in the east. infant mortality was lowest in the northwest and highest in the southeast. the primary cause is assumed to be the frequency and duration of breastfeeding which was differently distributed across the regions, both between northern and southern germany as well as between the urban and rural areas (gehrmann 2000, 2011; imhof 1981; kintner 1985; knodel 1968, 1988; prinzing 1900). the fi rst regional studies by the imperial statistical offi ce on infant mortality (fig. 2) in germany in the period of 1875 until 1877 reveal an infant mortality rate of over 30 percent in bavaria and swabia, while it was below 15 percent in east frisia and schleswig-holstein. fig. 2: regional infant mortality rates in germany 1875-1877 including selected places: hesel, leezen, zachow, altdorf, philippsburg, schwalm and gabelbach 1780-1899 (micro study) source: offi cial regional data: würzburg (1887), micro study: imhof (1981); diagram: imhof (1981) social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 195 one factor often mentioned in the literature with regard to regional infant mortality differences is confessional affi liation and the related differences in value orientation. the north of germany was largely protestant whereas the south is predominantely catholic. it is interesting that infant mortality in mostly protestant franconia was considerably lower than in neighbouring catholic bavaria (imhof 1981; prinzing 1900). seasonal weather events were also different from region to region and thus had different impacts on infant mortality, particularly with regard to non-breastfed children (prinzing 1899; stöckel 1986). moreover, in many parts of germany infant mortality was higher in the cities than in rural regions (spree 1988; gehrmann 2002; prinzing 1900). while infant mortality in rural areas was signifi cantly correlated with living and working conditions there, the higher level in the cities was caused by the arising processes of urbanisation and industrialisation. these differences declined, however, towards the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century shifted in favour of the cities, which can be ascribed to the improvements to nutritional, hygienic and housing conditions that began in the cities (gehrmann 2011; imhof 1981; prinzing 1899, 1900; stöckel 1986). the rostock paediatrician hermann brüning rendered outstanding services to the analysis of infant mortality rates in rostock and mecklenburg. he ascertained an infant mortality rate of 15.1 percent for legitimate and 24.2 percent for illegitimate live births in the city of rostock between 1901 and 1905 (brüning 1908: 375). he also discovered a correlation between social class and infant mortality, with a higher mortality in low social classes. our study examines the extent to which social differences are revealed in infant mortality rates in rostock’s st. james’s church congregation at the beginning of the 19th century. a systematic investigation of the historic demographic sources of births and deaths in the church records in the 19th century enables us to conduct analyses that were not possible until now3 due to the lack of digitalised sources.4 we specifi cally focus on the infl uence of a birth’s legitimacy and that of the father’s occupation. we assume that the infant mortality rate of children born within marriage is lower than those born illegitimately and that those infants whose fathers have a low occupational status exhibit an increased mortality risk compared to newborns with occupationally better situated fathers. the infl uencing factors of mortality change over the fi rst year of life (brüning 1928; brüning/mahlo 1929; imhof 1981). while mortality in the fi rst thirty days after birth is still greatly determined by the development of the foetus during the mother’s pregnancy and problems during childbirth, environmental infl uences be3 mühlichen (2011), master’s thesis, university of rostock. 4 for two years, the state of mecklenburg-western pomerania funded the rostocker forschungsverbund historische demografi e, a cooperation of the university of rostock and the max planck institute for demographic research. the project digitalised the original handwritten sources of the mecklenburg-schwerin censuses of the years 1867 and 1900 as well as selected demographic events (births, deaths, marriages) from rostock church records in the period between 1800 and 1900. • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer196 come increasingly important in the following eleven months. therefore, all analyses are conducted separately for the fi rst thirty days of life and for the ensuing eleven months. 2 historical fi ndings on the infl uence of socio-economic differences on infant mortality rates the infl uencing factors on infant mortality in the 19th century are manifold and diffi cult to distinguish from one another since they are sometimes mutually dependent. regional differences in infant mortality were far greater in the 18th and especially in the 19th century in germany than they are today; however a comprehensive explanation of these differences has not yet been satisfactory because of the diffi culties regarding the source material and the complexity of the causes which reach far beyond the fi eld of historical demography (ehmer 2004: 92-94). in an article based on his own extensive research as well as studies by bluhm (1912), krieg (1890), prinzing (1899, 1900, 1931), würzburg (1887, 1888) and others as well as offi cial data, imhof (1981) cites the primary infl uencing factors. these are the season of birth, region of birth, frequency and duration of breastfeeding, times of crisis, birth legitimacy, birth weight, birth order, family size, child spacing, sex, age of the mother, social class, working, housing, nutritional and hygienic conditions as well as the parents’ confession and value orientation. in the following, we will specifi cally highlight socio-economic factors, although the behavioural patterns responsible for differences in infant mortality cannot be solely explained by social factors (spree 1980). imhof (1981) and gehrmann (2011), for example, provide a more comprehensive overview of the state of research on other infl uencing factors in germany in the 19th century. our socio-economic factors include birth legitimacy, social class and working conditions. birth legitimacy differentiates between whether an infant was born within or outside of marriage. this factor is highly signifi cant since a far higher mortality rate in infancy among children born out of wedlock is proven by the contemporary population statistics and medical literature (e.g. prinzing 1900; 1911; saul 1909) than among legitimate children. although some of the unmarried women later legitimized the birth through marriage, they are, however, not the majority (prinzing 1902: 44). the main cause for higher mortality among illegitimate infants was a lack of care caused by the comparatively unfavourable fi nancial situation that forced mothers to go to work and leave the child in the care of confi dants or an institution (vögele 1994: 411; preston/haines 1991: 30). nevertheless, the infl uence of legitimacy on infant mortality was rather low compared to the infl uence of nutritional, working and hygienic conditions (kintner 1994; spree 1998). the national and international fi ndings differ regarding the infl uence of the working conditions of fathers and mothers – their occupational class, income and workload – on the mortality of their children in the fi rst year of life. bengtsson and lundh (1994) were unable to fi nd evidence of an effect of real wages on infant mortality in scandinavia, while for sweden, sundin (1995) specifi cally sees the upper class as social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 197 profi ting at least in times of a particularly rapid decline in infant mortality. by contrast, woods et al. (1988, 1989) and haines (1995) ascertain an infl uence of social class and income for england and wales, at least on the rate of infant mortality but less on the time and extent of infant mortality decline in the late 19th and early 20th century. compared with france, woods (1994) however sees the reasons for the lesser infant mortality rates in england specifi cally in the more pronounced breastfeeding habits, lower fertility and illegitimacy rates as well as the extensive absence of times of crisis. german contemporaries such as prinzing (1899) and hanssen (1912) also see greater explanatory power in breastfeeding practices than in socioeconomic factors, although prinzing (1899: 588) considers the better economic and structural conditions in western provinces the cause at least for the west-east differences in prussia. hanssen (1912: 8) writes that for schleswig-holstein an infl uence of social class is only measureable for non-breastfed infants. however, observing the neighbouring region of mecklenburg-schwerin, saul (1909: 38) fi nds that infant mortality was higher for children of workers with lower economic status such as day labourers, factory workers and servants compared to fi nancially better situated workers. women’s workloads are also signifi cant. specifi cally, infants whose mothers worked in factories showed a lower survival probability, however in 19th century mecklenburg this was hardly ever the case compared to germany’s industrialised regions. nonetheless, a mother’s involvement in farm work also had negative effects (gehrmann 2011; heller/imhof 1983; prinzing 1899). socio-economic factors thus have an indirect effect on infant mortality rates by infl uencing the breastfeeding behaviour and the quality of nutrition as well as care and welfare (imhof 1981: 359; kloke 1997: 76). value orientation is another infl uencing factor manifested in “regionally, denominationally, socially divergent attitudes of the population towards fertility, towards sexuality, towards health and disease, towards dying and death” (imhof 1981: 366; translated by cpos). wars and times of crisis, for example, presumably had a rather negative infl uence on the appreciation of life and hence infant mortality was relatively high in particular in regions with a high frequency of crises and war (imhof 1981: 367). imhof (1981: 375) identifi es two contrary dispositions: the “system of conservation of human life” and the “system of wastage”. the former is distinguished by a general appreciation of life, expressed, for example, in lengthy breastfeeding of an infant, while the latter – marked by trauma and times of crisis – meets life with a certain indifference and was more characteristic of the south of germany than the north. “this indifference was a direct and inevitable consequence of the demography of the period.” (ariés 1975: 99; translated by cpos) looking at religious denomination, protestant regions in southern germany often feature far lower infant mortality rates than catholic ones. a good example in this context is the kingdom of bavaria (prinzing 1900: 620). as an attempted explanation, imhof (1981: 378-379) cites the notion widespread among catholics at that time, expressed in the imagination of the so-called “himmeln”: in order to safeguard the survival of at least the older siblings, poor families with many children sometimes neglected the youngest child and even resigned themselves to its death in order to spare it from suffering under the humble circumstances and give it, as • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer198 offspring without sin, a place in heaven where it could in turn safeguard a place for its family. then again, in regions of mixed religions no signifi cant differences could be found in infant mortality rates between the two christian denominations (kloke 1997: 266). the differences found in bavaria ought to be seen in the light of the german north-south divide that dominated at that time. in addition, the protestant town of laichingen in württemberg exhibited particularly high rates of infant mortality at a level of at times 40 to 50 percent (medick 1997: 359-365). in the late 19th century there was a similar north-south divide in the netherlands as well, to the disadvantage of the largely catholic regions in the south, which can be explained with a considerably lower propensity to breastfeed and greater scepticism towards new ideas for fi ghting disease and hygienic improvements compared to the protestantdominated north (wolleswinkel-van den bosch et al. 2000). therefore, the literature ascribes far greater infl uence to the regionally different nutritional and breastfeeding habits. for example, imhof (1981: 347-349, 353354), kloke (1997: 54, 157, 266) and gehrmann (2002: 546) highlight that the survival probability of infants was distinctly better in regions where they were breastfed frequently and for a long time than in regions where this was not the case. “in the northern german villages with low infant mortality rates it appears that almost all mothers breastfed their infants, and did so for a relatively long time; at least for the entire fi rst year. in southern german communities with a high infant mortality, by contrast, the contemporaries already complained that many mothers did not breastfeed their children or only very briefl y.” (ehmer 2004: 94; translated by cpos) especially in the summers, infant mortality increased considerably due to gastro-intestinal diseases caused by the poor supplemental foods that spoiled more quickly in warm weather (kloke 1997). lee and marschalck (2002) ascertained a rise in the mortality of newborns in the city of bremen between 1861 and 1863 and between 1870 and 1872 in the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth months of life, which they explain by the fact that infants were often weaned at exactly these ages. according to imhof (1981: 373), mothers at that time were often quite aware that breast milk was the healthiest food for infants. the fact that many nonetheless did not breastfeed their babies in many regions could have something to do with a lack of time to care for the child, specifi cally if the mother was single and working or involved in her husband’s work, for example on the farm. the above-mentioned “system of wastage” could also be an explanatory approach, according to imhof. at the end of the 19th century, nutritional, as well as hygienic and housing conditions began to improve, leading to a rise in the survival probability of infants, particularly due to the accompanying decline in gastro-intestinal diseases (gehrmann 2011; imhof 1981). social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 199 3 data and methods5 this study is based on the newly digitalised registries of burials and baptisms from st. james’s church records, which provide the necessary data on births and deaths. st. james’s church was by far the largest of the four rostock parishes at the time alongside st. mary’s, st. nicholas’s and st. peter’s (szołtysek et al. 2010: 10).6 in 1905 more than half of rostock’s inhabitants were members of st. james’s church, which led in that same year to the division of the congregation due to the insuffi cient ability to care for them all, and fi nally the 1908 completion of the church of the holy spirit in the kröpeliner-tor district (schulz 2008: 24). the study is based on a complete survey of all births and deaths in st. james parish in rostock. both the baptism and the burial registry contain full names making individuals identifi able and enabling us to merge the baptism and burial data set to one complete data set. this data merging was conducted for the period between 1815 and 1829 and serves as the data basis for the following analyses. the example in figure 3 shows the baptism registry entry for emma krüger on the left in the second line. she was born in 28 january 1815 and baptised the same year on 5 february. on the right, the burial registry contains an entry in the second line showing that she died on 31 december 1815 and was buried on 5 january 1816. the baptism registry contains further information: the occupation and name of the father and the name of the mother as well as the godparents present at the baptism. in addition to the name and occupation of the father, the burial registry also contains the age upon death and the cause of death. the birthplace is also sometimes cited but only if it was not rostock. information about any employment pursued by the mother is not included in the registries. the population at risk for the mortality analyses includes all births registered in rostock for st. james parish as live births in the studied periods. in-migrating infants who are not included in the baptismal registry of st. james parish, but are listed in the burial registry, are excluded from the analyses (20 cases; 6 percent). we cannot ascertain whether and how many newborns left the city or changed parishes and died in the fi rst year of life. this makes an under-recording of infant mortality possible. moreover, since there were no uniform procedures in the 19th century how to classify live births and stillbirths we can also not exclude biases based on this. the mortality intensity in the fi rst year of life is analysed using event history analysis (allison 1984; diekmann/mitter 1984; blossfeld et al. 1986), whereby the analysis time is measured by the age in days. it begins at the time of birth at the age of 0 days and ends with the death in the fi rst year of life or – in the case of censored 5 see mühlichen/scholz (2015) for detailed descriptions of the sources and data. 6 as most of northern germany, the city of rostock was largely protestant in the 19th century. not until 1909 was a catholic church re-established. st james’s, rostock’s largest church at the time, no longer exists. most of the church was destroyed in 1942 by a british air raid. the remaining structure was razed in 1960 (köppe 2010; kuzia 2004). • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer200 data – with the fi rst birthday and thus exclusion from the population at risk. the age of newborns who survive the fi rst year of life is set at the censored time of 365 days. cox proportional hazards models of the form h(t | x)=ho(t)∙eβx are calculated to ascertain the infl uence of the newborns’ characteristics on their mortality risk. in the calculation, h0(t) is the semi-parametric baseline hazard, β is the parameter to be estimated and x the covariates. the power eβ is the hazard ratio calculated from the ratio of two compared hazard rates and is considered the relative risk in the interpretation. the covariates are sex, season of the birth, birth legitimacy and occupation of the father. when the data processing is complete, the data set contains 2,768 live births in the period 1815 to 1829, of which 331, or 12.0 percent, died in the fi rst year of life. there are also 124 stillbirths. the share of stillbirths among all births between 1815 and 1829 is 4.3 percent. stillbirths are, however, excluded from all analyses and tables. sex is categorised as male or female, the seasons of birth are distinguished into spring, summer, autumn and winter. the meteorological categorisation of seasons is used here with spring lasting from march until may, summer from june until august, autumn from september until november and winter from december until february. the legitimacy of birth is either classifi ed as legitimate or illegitimate. legitimacy does not have its own column in the registries, but an illegitimate birth can be recognized from notes such as “illegitimate” or “allegedly […] is the father.” in order to operationalise the occupations, we established a new classifi cation based on those of the north atlantic population project (napp 2013) as well as studies on historical occupational and social structures in the german baltic sea region (brandenburg et al. 1991; brandenburg/kroll 1998, lorenzen-schmidt 1996; manke 2000). our classifi cation allows us to both count the frequencies of various types of occupations and to categorise them by employment groups or by social classes (mühlichen/scholz 2015). broken down by social class, we have the following main fig. 3: excerpts from the registries of baptisms and burials of st. james parish, rostock source: baptismal register 1815 and burial register 1816 of the church records of st. james parish, rostock. social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 201 groups for the fathers’ occupations: 1) high status occupations, 2) medium status occupations, 3) low status occupations and 4) other occupations or unknown. the fi rst category includes merchants, traders, jurists, upper grade civil servants, nobility, physicians, teachers, professors, clergymen, pensioners, brewers and master craftsmen. the second category contains craftsmen, bailiffs, innkeepers and mariners. the third group consists of apprentice craftsmen, servants, porters, fi eld workers, gardeners, fi shermen, musicians, sailors, seamen, steersmen, soldiers and the unemployed. the fourth group mostly includes labourers – who are a very heterogeneous group with regard to type of work and fi nancial situation – and fathers of whom nothing is known. fathers who died prior to the birth as well as “illegitimate” or “alleged” fathers are also included in this category. almost half of this fourth group therefore coincides with the category “illegitimate” of the legitimacy variable. illegitimate fathers who married the mother of the child within the observation period are exceptions to this and are recognizable from other mutual birth tab. 1: deaths, censors, person-years and mortality rate according to the independent variables in the event data set for infant mortality in rostock in the period 1815-1829 variable deaths censors personmortality total 1st month 2nd to 12th month years rate sex male 175 67 108 1292 1339 0.1307 female 156 53 103 1145 1191 0.1310 total 331 120 211 2437 2530 0.1308 season of birth spring 84 23 61 602 626 0.1341 summer 80 35 45 591 612 0.1307 autumn 85 33 52 599 621 0.1368 winter 82 29 53 645 670 0.1224 total 331 120 211 2437 2530 0.1308 father’s occupation high status 51 16 35 455 469 0.1087 medium status 113 43 70 738 768 0.1472 low status 81 32 49 452 474 0.1707 other, unknown 86 29 57 792 819 0.1051 total 331 120 211 2437 2530 0.1308 legitimacy legitimate 290 107 183 2063 2144 0.1353 illegitimate 41 13 28 374 386 0.1063 total 331 120 211 2437 2530 0.1308 source: burial and baptismal registers of the church records of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer202 entries in the data set. these men are to be found in the class allocated to their occupation (12 cases in total). table 1 contains an overview of the covariates and their respective distribution, the number of deaths, censors, risk times and mortality rates. we differentiate between mortality in the fi rst thirty days and between the second and twelfth month. the mortality rate is calculated from the number of deaths in the fi rst year of life divided by the person-years. all data entries, error corrections and the merging of the baptism and burial data were conducted using microsoft excel. we used the statistical programme package spss 20 to process the data for the survival analysis. the event history analysis was done using stata 11. 4 results figure 4 shows the development of infant mortality in rostock’s congregation of st. james in the 19th century. the study period of the event history analysis model (1815-1829) is highlighted.7 until 1840 the mortality of newborns remains at a roughly constant to slightly declining level. it fl uctuates in the studied period of 1815 until 1829 between 104 and 143 deaths per 1,000 live births and is 127.7 for boys and 127.9 for girls, a total of 127.8 for both sexes. notable sex differences can only be identifi ed from 1830 onwards to the disadvantage of boys. in addition, the level of infant mortality rises considerably from 1840, reaching 219 deaths per 1,000 live births in the year 1858. the causes for this are possibly related to the growth of the population and its consequences on the living, working, nutritional and hygienic situation. after 1858, the infant mortality rate drops again somewhat and fl uctuates between 1880 and 1902, stagnating at about 170 deaths. figure 5 illustrates the kaplan-meier survival curves for the two independent variables legitimacy and father’s occupation. illegitimate births exhibit a better survival curve than legitimate births. 90 percent of the illegitimate-born and 88 percent of the legitimate-born survive their fi rst year of life. we will discuss the causes of this fi nding in the next chapter. there are more distinct differences for the fathers’ employment groups. in the fi rst year of life, the survival curve for children whose fathers pursue a low-status occupation is clearly poorer compared to the other employment groups (85 percent). the share of survival for children of fathers with a medium-status occupation is 87 percent and for children of fathers with a high-class occupation is 90 percent. the category of infants for whom the father’s occupation is unknown or unassignable or the father himself is unknown is also 90 percent. almost half of the members 7 the 20 in-migrating deaths in the period of 1815 until 1829 are included in this fi gure in order to portray a continuous time series (no similar data processing was yet done for the years from 1830 onwards, which might allow for the exclusion of further in-migration). these cases are excluded in the ensuing analyses. social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 203 of this group coincide with the “illegitimate” category of the legitimacy variable. because of this multi-collinearity, we examined the two variables in separate models. low case numbers are to blame for the irregularity of the survival curves. since the curves of the employment groups intersect a number of times, we also assume they do not fulfi l the proportionality assumption of the cox proportional hazards model. the log-log survival plot (fig. 6) confi rms this assumption since the curves do not run parallel to each other. for the sake of comparability, the fi rst step is to ascertain the infl uence of the covariates on mortality in the entire fi rst year of life (table 2). fig. 4: infant mortality* in st. james parish rostock by sex, 1800-1902 (moving 3-year average) * for the analysed period 1815-1829, we were able to calculate the infant mortality rate according to the birth year method used by becker (1874) and zeuner (1869). the calendar year method by böckh (esenwein-rothe 1982: 241-248) was employed for the remaining years. the deaths in a year t were, however, not assigned to 100 percent, but to 70 percent of the births of the year t and to 30 percent of the births of the year t+1. this weighting appears more realistic after a corresponding evaluation of the years 1815 to 1829. the at times quite sizeable sex differences (e.g. in 1847) may partly be a result of the less precise calendar year method. because of its cohort approach, the birth year method is more precise, in particular for smaller case numbers. source: burial and baptismal registers from the church records of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 male female total infant deaths per 1,000 live births year • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer204 the comparison of the four models for the fi rst year of life reveals that gradually adding new independent variables does not alter the relative risks. legitimacy and the father’s occupation are integrated in separate models since half of the category of illegitimate births is identical with the category “other/unknown” occupation of the father. the employment groups confi rm the impression gained from the kaplan-meier survival curves (fig. 6). compared to the reference group consisting of children of fathers with a high-status occupation, the relative risk of not surviving the fi rst year of life is 34 percent higher for the children of fathers in the medium employment class and 55 percent higher for the children of fathers with a low-status occupation. these differences are signifi cant. the residual category does not differ signifi cantly from the reference group. going beyond these main groups, the risk among the employment groups of bailiffs, musicians, fi shermen, innkeepers, sailors and seamen and fi eld workers is the highest, while it is lowest among the higher ranked civil servants and academics, merchants, labourers and porters. the large group of craftsmen, both master craftsmen and apprentices, can be found in the middle. fig. 5: kaplan-meier survival curve for the fi rst year of life of infants born in rostock to the st. james congregation between 1815 and 1829 according to legitimacy (left) and father’s occupation (right) fig. 6: test of the assumption of proportionality (log-log survival plot) for the independent variables legitimacy (left) and father’s occupation (right) source: burial and baptismal registers from the church records of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) 0.86 0.88 0.90 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98 1.00 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 days of life legitimate illegitimate 0.84 0.86 0.88 0.90 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98 1.00 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 days of life high status medium status low status other/unknown 2 3 4 5 6 -ln[-ln(survival probability)] 0 2 4 6 ln(analysis time) legitimate illegitimate 2 3 4 5 6 7 -ln[-ln(survival probability)] 0 2 4 6 ln(analysis time) high status medium status low status other/unknown social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 205 the relative risk of not surviving the fi rst year of life is 21 percent lower for illegitimate live births than the reference group of the legitimately born. this difference is, however, not signifi cant. for the control variables sex and season of birth the differences between the characteristics are small and not signifi cant. in the following, we again illustrate the cox model separately for the fi rst 30 days of life and for the remaining second to twelfth months of life (tables 3 and 4). both tables show increased risks for the medium and low employment classes. however, this fi nding is far more distinct and signifi cant during the fi rst month (table 3). the hazard ratio is 62 percent higher for the medium class and 92 percent higher for the lower class compared to the reference group. the residual category does not differ signifi cantly from the reference group in the two periods. with regard to birth legitimacy, the hazard ratio for the illegitimate-born infants in the fi rst 30 days of life is 31 percent lower than that of the legitimate-born and 15 percent lower in the following period. this difference is, however, not signifi cant. * p ≤ 0.1; ** p ≤ 0.05; *** p ≤ 0.01. rg = reference group source: burial and baptismal registers of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) tab. 2: relative mortality risks for live births in st. james parish, rostock 18151829 (population at risk); event: death in the 1st year of life; analysis time: age in days variables and model 1: occupation model 2: legitimacy distribution only father’s occupation with control variables only legitimacy with control variables father’s occupation high status (rg) 1 1 medium status 1.35* 1.34* *** *** low status 1.55** 1.55** other, unknown 0.97 0.97 legitimacy legitimate (rg) 1 1 illegitimate 0.79 0.79 sex female (rg) 1 1 male 1.00 1.00 season of birth spring (rg) 1 1 summer 0.97 0.98 autumn 1.01 1.02 winter 0.92 0.92 number of cases (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 events (e) 331 331 331 331 risk time (t) in days 923404 923404 923404 923404 • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer206 the sex differences are also not signifi cant, but it can be seen that the hazard ratio slightly favours girls in the fi rst and boys in the second period. the seasonal differences are more pronounced in the two chosen periods than in the entire fi rst year of life. for example, the relative risk is signifi cantly increased by 56 percent for the fi rst 30 days for infants born in the summer (table 3, model 2) compared to those born in the spring, while the summer births exhibit the lowest risk in the ensuing period. tab. 3: relative mortality risks for live births in st. james parish, rostock 18151829 (population at risk); event: death in the 1st month of life; analysis time: age in days * p ≤ 0.1; ** p ≤ 0.05; *** p ≤ 0.01. rg = reference group source: burial and baptismal registers of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) variables and model 1: occupation model 2: legitimacy distribution only father’s occupation with control variables only legitimacy with control variables father’s occupation high status (rg) 1 1 medium status 1.62* 1.65* *** *** low status 1.92** 1.89** other, unknown 1.04 1.06 legitimacy legitimate (rg) 1 1 illegitimate 0.68 0.69 sex female (rg) 1 1 male 1.13 1.12 season of birth spring (rg) 1 1 summer 1.56* 1.56* autumn 1.43 1.44 winter 1.21 1.20 number of cases (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 events (e) 120 120 120 120 risk time (t) in days 923404 923404 923404 923404 social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 207 5 discussion in st. james, one of the four parishes of the city of rostock, infant mortality at the beginning of the 19th century was signifi cantly linked to the occupation of the father. the correlation is particularly strong during the fi rst thirty days of life, but tends to remain detectable in the following eleven months. children of fathers with lower ranked occupations such as lower administrative employees, seamen, fi shermen and fi eld workers have the highest risk of dying during their fi rst year of life, while those from the group of higher ranked civil servants, merchants and lawyers, who formed rostock’s elite (manke 2000: 369-370), have the lowest mortality risk. according to the literature cited in the second section, these differences may be linked to the family’s economic situation, the mother’s nutrition during pregnancy as well as that of the newborns during their fi rst months. in addition, mothers were also * p ≤ 0.1; ** p ≤ 0.05; *** p ≤ 0.01. rg = reference group source: burial and baptismal registers of st. james parish, rostock (own calculations) tab. 4: relative mortality risks for live births in st. james parish, rostock 18151829 (population at risk); event: death in the 2nd to 12th month of life; analysis time: age in days variables and model 1: occupation model 2: legitimacy distribution only father’s occupation with control variables only legitimacy with control variables father’s occupation high status (rg) 1 1 medium status 1.22 1.20 low status 1.38 1.39 other, unknown 0.93 0.92 legitimacy legitimate (rg) 1 1 illegitimate 0.85 0.85 sex female (rg) 1 1 male 0.93 0.93 season of birth spring (rg) 1 1 summer 0.75 0.76 autumn 0.85 0.86 winter 0.82 0.82 number of cases (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 events (e) 211 211 211 211 risk time (t) in days 923404 923404 923404 923404 • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer208 more involved in work on farms and thus had less time to devote to their offspring. the children of seafaring workers also exhibit a comparatively high risk, which can be explained by low incomes and long and frequent absence of the fathers. our results with regard to legitimacy are unusual. the literature always provides evidence of increased infant mortality rates among illegitimate births both for rostock as well as for germany as a whole, at least in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g. brüning/balck 1906 and brüning/josephy 1928 for rostock as well as prinzing 1902 and 1911 for the german empire). we could not, however, identify this effect for st. james parish; illegitimate births even tend to have a higher survival probability, even though the effect is not statistically signifi cant. it is possible that some of the unmarried mothers are domestic servants who handed their children over to grandmothers living in the countryside or other intimates or an institution after the baptism or perhaps even returned to the country themselves. vögele (1994) as well as preston and haines (1991) explain this phenomenon with the unfavourable fi nancial situation that forced single mothers to return to work and surrender their child to relatives or institutions. this would mean that respective infant deaths would not have been recorded in st. james. the high numbers of domestic servants among the female population of rostock would also substantiate this speculation. in the year 1800, at least 30 percent of the age group between 21 and 30 (manke 2000: 336) fi t this description. if we further calculate the cox model only for stillbirths, illegitimate births exhibit a 28 percent higher mortality risk than legitimate births. although this difference is also not signifi cant, this would be another indication for an underreporting of illegitimate infant deaths caused by out-migration. the season of birth has a signifi cant infl uence on survival in the fi rst thirty days, whereby infants born in june, july and august exhibit the highest mortality risk. breschi/bacci (1997) were able to show for fi ve countries that in the 19th century mortality in the fi rst two years is linked to the month of birth and that this pattern differs between the countries. in italy, for example, children born in the summer and infants born in the winter in switzerland had a lower mortality rate. a comparable pattern to that of switzerland and st. james parish can also be seen in the fi rst year of life in denmark of the 19th century (doblhammer/vaupel 2001; doblhammer 2004). since the effect of the birth month in st. james parish is highly signifi cant in the fi rst thirty days of life, this indicates endogenous factors for infant mortality, which have more to do with the development of the foetus during pregnancy than with exogenous factors such as infectious diseases. since breastfeeding was more widespread in northern germany than in the south, the newborns in st. james parish were better protected by the defensive substances in breast milk from seasonal gastro-intestinal and respiratory infections. we found no signifi cant differences with regard to sex, although the boys have an increased mortality risk in the fi rst 30 days of life, a circumstance in which endogenous factors – specifi cally the birth weight and the general physical constitution at birth – play decisive roles. this effect reverses, however, in the ensuing months. baptism is one of the factors that could not be taken into consideration in this study. generally, it is one of the strengths of the data set that it contains both information about baptisms as well as dates of births. cases of unbaptised children were social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock • 209 also recorded in the studied period of 1815 to 1829, but these only include stillbirths. jews, for example, are also not included in these registries. while the time span between birth and baptism is always only a few days in the studied period, it becomes ever greater towards the end of the 19th century stretching to a few weeks or even months as later cohorts in the church records of st. james parish show. however, children who were expected to die soon after birth were baptised in extremis, usually by the midwife, as notes in the burial and baptismal registers illustrate – this applies to both the early as well as the late 19th century. it is, however, questionable whether the registered stillbirths were actually correct. in the 19th century there had been no fi xed defi nitions for live births and stillbirths. the pastor decided whether a deceased infant had shown any previous signs of life, but we do not know the criteria for such a decision. looking at the available data set for the period 1815 to 1829 we cannot exclude a correlation with baptism. it is likely that a new-born was only considered a live birth once it has been baptised and when it died without being baptised, it was described as a stillbirth. this could be analysed using other rostock church records from the same period. this is not, however, verifi able as conventional practice in the second half of the 19th century, at least not for st. james, since the deaths of unbaptised live births are also included in the registries during this time. in summary, we can state that the available individual data from st. james parish offers new insights into infant mortality of a largely urban population in northern germany in the early 19th century. this closes a research gap. for further analyses, the studied period would have to be enlarged, both to generate larger case numbers and to be able to examine the chronological development of social differences in infant mortality rates. the latter is of particular interest since infant mortality rates rise again from about 1840 onwards and it is unknown to which extent all social groups are affected by this increase. further promising analyses would be possible by merging the data from st. james parish with the 19th century rostock censuses and the marriage and confi rmation registries of st. james. in doing so, additional factors in infant mortality could be added to the analysis, such as those at the household level (scholz 2013). we would thereby gain more information about the parents, such as the date of birth of the mother as well as the father, which was recorded in rostock’s marriage registries from 1853 onwards. there is also 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dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte) 2: 208-222. würzburg, arthur 1888: die säuglingssterblichkeit im deutschen reiche während der jahre 1875 bis 1877. arbeiten aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte (=beihefte zu den veröffentlichungen aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte) 4: 28-108. zeuner, gustav a. 1869: abhandlungen zur mathematischen statistik. leipzig: arthur felix. translated from the original text by the federal institute for population research, for information only. the reviewed and authors’ authorised original article in german is available under the title “soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert. eine demografi sche analyse anhand von kirchenbuchdaten”, doi 10.12765/cpos-2015-03de or urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-03de4, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. date of submission: 16.05.2013 date of acceptance: 30.07.2014 michael mühlichen (). federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: michael.muehlichen@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografie.de/muehlichen_cv dr. rembrandt d. scholz. max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. e-mail: scholz@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/rembrandt_d_ scholz_663.htm prof. dr. gabriele doblhammer. university of rostock, chair of empirical social research and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: gabriele.doblhammer@uni-rostock.de url: http://www.wiwi.uni-rostock.de/en/soziologie/esf/doblhammer/ published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany: the role of immigration policy differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany: the role of immigration policy philipp ueffi ng, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder abstract: this paper investigates the connection between national immigration policy and a society’s attitudes towards immigration. it argues that a country’s immigration policy framework plays an important role in the formation of attitudes towards immigration by shaping the local national context of the receiving country. it examines the infl uence of a country’s immigration policy framework by contrasting two countries – australia and germany – that developed remarkably different immigration policies in response to large immigration movements during the postwar period. we explore attitudes towards immigration on four dimensions: (1) the national economy, (2) the labour market, (3) the national culture, and (4) the level of immigrant infl ux. the analyses reveal three main fi ndings. first, people in australia tend to display more positive attitudes towards immigration than in germany. second, in both countries, attitudes towards immigration tend to be infl uenced in a similar way by an individual’s socio-economic background and feelings of national identity (in the form of nationalism and patriotism). third, immigration policy represents a strong indicator of attitudes towards immigration. we found that the planned integrative immigration policy in australia supports the formation of more positive attitudes towards immigration by infl uencing people’s perception on the economic and socio-cultural impacts of immigration. keywords: immigration · policy · attitudes · australia · germany 1 introduction with immigration increasing in size and complexity, there has been lively public debate about the impacts of immigration in western countries (castles/miller 2008). on the one hand, immigration is considered a welcome source of labour and cultural diversity, as a foundation for new ideas and a strategy for addressing contemporary demographic processes such as population decline, decreasing fertility levels and population ageing. on the other hand, immigration raises concerns about detrimencomparative population studies vol. 40, 4 (2015): 437-464 (date of release: 14.12.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-18en9 • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder438 tal effects on national welfare systems, increasing job competition and undermining national culture (joppke 1999). these confl icting views vary within and across countries and result in diverse attitudes towards immigration among local populations. previous research has investigated differences in attitudes towards immigration from micro and macro perspectives. by using a micro approach, individual characteristics have been found to exert a strong infl uence on attitudes towards immigration. residing in an urban area, high educational attainment and being born in a foreign country have all shown to increase the tendency to hold positive attitudes towards immigration. however, cross-country differences in the importance of these variables are less clear (davidov/meuleman 2012). from a macro perspective, studies have sought to explain attitudes towards immigration based on the national socio-economic conditions of countries by using aggregate economic and social variables (e.g. gross domestic product, the proportion of foreign-born members of a country’s population, or the unemployment rate). while evidence for a link between economic conditions and the size of the immigrant population has been found (mayda 2006; o’rourke/sinnott 2006), the majority of these studies has either established no relationship (brenner/fertig 2006; card et al. 2005; sides/citrin 2007), or only weak effects (meuleman et al. 2009; rustenbach 2010) of these macro socio-economic variables on attitudes towards immigration. thus, rather than observable socio-economic country characteristics, less easily measurable factors, such as countries’ migration histories have been argued to underpin cross-country differences in attitudes towards immigration (brenner/fertig 2006). however, these factors have received little attention in prior work. the role of the national socio-political and institutional contexts within which attitudes towards immigration are formed are considered as important factors to better understand cross-national differences in these attitudes (ceobanu/escandell 2010). based on this argument, we explore the role of a country’s immigration policy framework as an indicator of cross-national differences in attitudes towards immigration. in other words, attitudes towards immigration are argued to refl ect a countries’ immigration policy. bauer et al. (2001) suggest that an immigration policy focusing on skilled migrants does a better job at assimilating immigrants into the labour market, which in turn results in more positive views on immigration. schlueter et al. (2013) demonstrate that permissive immigrant integration policies improve attitudes towards immigrants by diminishing perceptions of immigration as a threat to the interests of the native population. to explore the relationship between immigration policy and attitudes towards immigration, we analyse differences in attitudes towards immigration in australia and germany using data from the 2003 international social survey program (issp). the methodological approach of this paper differs from previous research. rather than using a micro-level analysis to identify determinants of individual attitudes or a macro-level analysis to detect cross-country differences, we integrate both analytical approaches by examining the differences in attitudes towards immigration in two countries in a framework that considers the infl uence of national immigration policy. australia and germany offer a unique setting to explore the infl uence of immigration policy on attitudes toward immigration, as these countries represented differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 439 “opposite poles on the migration spectrum” (castles 2008: 1) from the early 1970s until the onset of substantial immigration policy reforms in germany in 2005. the timing of the issp survey in 2003 allows us to examine attitudinal differences between germany and australia at the end of the long-standing contrast in policy frameworks. this is important, as attitudes towards immigration are shaped over time (card et al. 2005) through “legacies of past migrations and migration policies” (godenau et al. 2012). as immigration is perceived to impact the social, cultural and economic environments of a country, we capture differences in attitudes towards immigration emerging from these different perspectives. the question we seek to address is: how are the contrasting immigration policy frameworks established in australia and germany related to cross-country differences in attitudes towards immigration? 2 theoretical framework immigration policy is refl ected in attitudes towards immigration (bauer et al. 2001; schlueter et al. 2013). controlling for the size of the migrant population, economic conditions and political-ideological circumstances, schlueter et al. (2013) identifi ed immigration policy as a key contextual factor for understanding cross-country differences in attitudes towards immigration. however, the relationship between immigration policy and attitudes towards immigration is not straightforward. the causal direction of the link between policy and attitudes likely goes both ways. bauer et al. (2001) point out that “policy and sentiments recursively infl uence each other and the direction of causality is hard to disentangle” (2001: 20). on the one hand, politicians and policymakers respond to what they think the general public perceives as the right direction of policy. on the other hand, immigration policy shapes attitudes towards immigration by infl uencing people’s perceptions of the impact of immigration (schlueter et al. 2013). these perceptions are formed based on the “belief” in the impact of immigration, rather than on real effects of immigration (card et al. 2005; gang et al. 2002). hence, immigration policy is related to attitudes towards immigration, which are in turn infl uenced by the perceived consequences of immigration. immigration policy plays a role in the formation of attitudes towards immigration through the regulation and management of the infl ux of immigrants and their settlement. immigration policy channels the ethnic and skill composition of countries’ immigrant fl ows, designs the service and support for those who have settled, and manages the ethno-cultural changes of national populations resulting from immigration (jupp 2007). these different targets of immigration policy link more closely to specifi c perceptions of the local population on immigration and particular ties can be constituted. the manner in which immigration is regulated, i.e. through a designed immigration programme, is associated with people’s views on the size of the immigrant infl ow. at the same time, immigration policies based on economic considerations relate to how people perceive the impact of immigration on the economy or the labour market, while policies concerning the incorporation of im• philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder440 migrants and their distinctive cultures into society infl uence the perception of the socio-cultural impact of immigration. hence, to examine the relationship between policy and attitudes towards immigration, four dimensions of attitudes corresponding to the different perceptions on impacts of immigration are defi ned: (1) the national economy, (2) the labour market, (3) the national culture, and (4) the level of immigrant infl ux. this approach differs from previous studies, which have focussed on understanding attitudes towards one of these four dimensions (the level of immigrant infl ux). meanwhile, attitudes towards the economic and cultural consequences of immigration for a country have only been examined as factors infl uencing attitudes towards the level of immigration (malchow-møller et al. 2009). in this paper, we explore the infl uence of immigration policy across these four dimensions to capture distinct associations between immigration policy and attitudes towards immigration. 2.1 australia and germany: opposing immigration policies australia and germany have displayed stark differences in their immigration policies since the 1970s, when opposite policy frameworks emerged from different responses to mass immigration movements following world war ii (castles 2008). concerning the period in germany prior to reunifi cation in 1990, the focus is on developments in west germany. after the end of the german democratic republic, east germany was incorporated into the federal republic of germany with all its cultural, social, and political institutions. as a result, concerning attitudes towards immigrants, stereotypes held by west germans were “adopted” by the east german population (meier-braun 2002). furthermore, germany has begun to make signifi cant changes to its immigration policy since the ratifi cation of a new immigration act in 2005. however, our analysis focusses on policy developments preceding the issp survey in 2003. australia has been following an immigration policy of planned immigration that aims at increasing the country’s population and stimulating economic growth. under a multicultural principle, the country operates an immigration programme that focusses on skilled immigration. integrative measures assist immigrants’ settlement process while also supporting the practice of their cultural customs and traditions (birrell 2009; hugo 2004, 2009; jupp 2007; markus et al. 2009). the country has achieved considerable “capacity to formulate, develop, introduce and operate sound and effective policy” (hugo 2004: 3). in contrast to australia, germany did not establish an explicit immigration policy. despite a signifi cant and growing immigrant population, german policymakers have failed to develop consistent migration and integration legislation. throughout the second half of the 20th century, the central theme of germany’s immigration policy has been the perception that germany is not “a country of immigration” and immigration has been “uncontrolled” in the past (zimmermann et al. 2007). policymakers have been operating under a narrative portraying germany as a culturally homogenous country uninterested in permanent immigrants (joppke 1999; meierbraun 2002; meyers 2007; suessmuth 2001; zimmermann et al. 2007). differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 441 2.2 policy and attitudinal differences in this study, we expect the opposing policy paradigms of australia and germany to result in differences in attitudes towards immigration between the countries’ populations. operating under a multicultural principle, australia’s planned immigration policy is thought to be associated with greater acceptance of immigration and its socio-cultural and economic consequences than in germany, where, instead, policy focussed on the overall restriction and reduction of immigration. hence, we expect more positive attitudes in australia than in germany towards immigrant infl ux and the impact of immigration on the economy, the labour market, and national culture. with regard to the economic impacts of immigration, more positive attitudes are expected in australia for two reasons. first, the immigration policy of australia is economically driven. the government specifi cally defi nes its skilled immigration programme as “designed to target migrants who have skills or outstanding abilities that will contribute to the australian economy” (dima 2010). thus, australia’s immigration policy supports the perception that immigration benefi ts the national economy. second, the country’s immigration policy mitigates the perceived threat of increased labour market competition due to immigration. australia has increasingly focussed on a skilled immigration programme based on labour force shortages. governments have continuously involved unions and employers’ associations in the labour market evaluation process identifying these shortages. by including non-governmental organisations, australian policymakers have mediated public opposition and eased fears about increased job competition resulting from immigration (jupp 2007). in contrast, we expect less favourable sentiments towards the economic impact of immigration in germany. a comprehensive economy-oriented migration programme has not been instituted in germany, despite advocacy for skilled immigration from the german employer lobby. the absence of such a programme is coupled with a different political response to the perceived threat of increased competition on the labour market through immigration. german policymakers, for example, stopped a large recruitment programme for foreign labour in 1973 due to an increase in unemployment, although there was still a demand for migrant workers in specifi c sectors of the industry (joppke 1999). in contrast to australia, there has not been a consensus between major political parties on the economic benefi ts of immigration for the country. in combination with the more favourable perceptions of the economic impacts of immigration in australia, the country’s multicultural policy is also expected to be associated with more positive attitudes towards the cultural impact of immigration than in germany. under the multicultural paradigm, australian policymakers eliminated national origin as a selection criterion for immigration, installed support systems for migrants to maintain their cultural ties, and implemented a liberal citizenship law that allows migrants to naturalise within a relatively short period of time while keeping multiple citizenships. german immigration policy is thought to relate to less favourable attitudes towards such cultural impacts, as policy has been developed based upon the view • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder442 of germany as a culturally homogenous country, defi ned by a shared language, tradition, and descent (levy 2002). this is particularly evident in german citizenship law. while resettlers are granted citizenship if considered “ethnically german”, naturalisation for immigrants without german descent is a long and diffi cult process. in fact, germany did not depart from its ethnic concept of nationality until the late 20th century. naturalisation became easier for immigrants not considered “ethnically german” and their german-born children after a reform of the citizenship law in 2000 (zimmermann et al. 2007). while the immigration policy framework provides some of the context within which attitudes towards immigration are formed, these behavioural responses depend in part on individuals’ positions in various domains in life. hence, after discussing alternative contextual factors that might infl uence attitudes towards immigration in australia and germany in section 2.3, section 2.4 will review personal characteristics that potentially infl uence attitudes towards immigration. 2.3 other contextual factors besides immigration policy, other country-level structural conditions have been suggested to infl uence attitudes towards immigration and might explain differences between australia and germany. the size of migrant populations, fl uctuations in the level of immigration, economic conditions, media coverage and the national discourse on immigration and political-ideological traditions have been linked to the formation of attitudes towards immigration within countries (ceobanu/escandell 2010). overall, the presence of migrants is higher in australia than in germany. around the time of the issp survey in 2005, both countries were home to some of the largest immigrant populations in the world, with 10.1 million migrants in germany and 4.1 million migrants in australia (undesa 2006). this corresponds to 12 percent of the german and 23 percent of the australian population. furthermore, the economic climates in the two countries were different at the turn of the century. in the decade preceding the survey, australia experienced a period of strong economic growth with an annual gdp growth rate of around 4 percent between 1995 and 2004, while economic growth in germany was much weaker (the world bank 2015). however, there is a lack of consistent evidence for the size of migrant population and the state of the economy infl uencing attitudes towards immigration (sides/ citrin 2007). 2.4 the infl uence of individual characteristics a set of individual, personal characteristics has been shown to infl uence attitudes towards immigration. individual socio-economic background and feelings of national identity and belonging have consistently been found to impact the formation of such attitudes (ceobanu/escandell 2010). based on economic self-interest, people generally tend to oppose immigration when they perceive immigrants as competitors for resources (card et al. 2005; mayda 2006; o’rourke/sinnott 2006; scheve/slaughter 2001; sides/citrin 2007). differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 443 since immigrants are predominantly considered to be less qualifi ed, lower skilled persons are more likely than higher skilled persons to perceive migrants as competitors on the labour market in the context of developed countries. hence, people in low-skill professions hold more negative attitudes concerning the labour market impact of immigration, and prefer lower numbers of immigrants (mayda 2006; scheve/slaughter 2001). place of residence and migration history represent two key factors infl uencing personal attitudes towards immigration. living in an urban area, and being an immigrant or descendant of immigrants are related to favourable attitudes (bauer et al. 2001; hainmueller/hiscox 2007; malchow-møller et al. 2009; mayda 2006; o’rourke/sinnott 2006). the exposure to the cultural heterogeneity of cities is suggested to drive more positive attitudes (hayes/dowds 2006; wilson 1991). stronger pro-immigration sentiments among persons with a migration background has been linked to self-identifi cation with immigrants (hayes/dowds 2006). furthermore, increasing age has been correlated with negative sentiments on immigration (bauer et al. 2001; brenner/fertig 2006; mayda 2006; scheve/slaughter 2001). older people tend to be more conservative and sceptical about change, and thus hold less positive attitudes towards immigration. effects of gender are less clear. mayda (2006), for example, demonstrated that females were more opposed to immigration, while bauer et al. (2001) found males to have more negative sentiments towards immigration. at the same time, brenner and fertig (2006) did not fi nd any relationship between gender and attitudes towards immigration. feelings of national belonging and identity also infl uence attitudes towards immigration (card et al. 2005; davidov et al. 2008; sides/citrin 2007). sides and citrin (2007: 479) argue that “beliefs about the nation and its cultural make-up” are particularly important for the formation of attitudes towards immigration. persons with strong feelings of national belonging have been commonly found to be less open to immigration (o’rourke/sinnott 2006; sides/citrin 2007). recent work by jeong (2013) investigated different types of national feelings and found that feelings of national superiority provoke negative attitudes towards immigration, while feelings of national pride led to more positive attitudes towards immigration. while the relationship between personal characteristics and attitudes towards immigration is grounded, differences in the infl uence of personal characteristics on attitudes across countries are left largely unexplained (brenner/fertig 2006; davidov et al. 2008; sides/citrin 2007). the contrasting policies in australia and germany are expected to relate to these personal characteristics. specifi cally, the attitudinal difference between skill levels is expected to be less pronounced in australia, as the australian immigration policy has increasingly focused on skilled immigration. highly skilled workers in australia might be more likely than their german counterparts to perceive immigration as an increase in labour market competition. in contrast, german policy makers have largely disregarded skill-oriented immigration, and migrants have mainly arrived through family reunifi cation, immigration of ethnic germans from the successor states of the former soviet union and asylum requests. hence, australia’s skills-based policy is thought to evoke a relatively strong perception of immigrants as competitors for jobs requiring higher qualifi cations. • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder444 3 data and measures 3.1 international social survey programme data we use nationally representative survey data of the australian and german population aged 18 and older from the 2003 national identity (ni) module, maintained by the international social survey programme (issp). to enable cross-national comparability, the issp works in collaboration with governments to develop standardised topic-specifi c questions that are integrated into national surveys. for the 2003 ni issp module, australia and germany incorporated a set of questions on national identity in the australian survey of social attitudes (aussa) and german general social survey (allbus), respectively. data collected using these questions offer information on attitudes towards immigration, national identity and belonging, as well as the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. we focused the analysis on 2,130 individual records for australia and 1,198 for germany. these records comprise the cases for which information on relevant variables used in our analysis was available. 3.2 measures of attitudes towards immigration using the issp data, we constructed four indicators of attitudes towards immigration for australia and germany. as discussed in section 2, we use four alternative approaches to measure individuals’ attitudes towards immigration: people’s perceptions of the impact of immigration on (1) the national economy, (2) the labour market, and (3) culture, and (4) people’s preferred level of immigration infl ux. data on these four dimensions were collected in the issp module on a fi ve-point ordinal scale, representing the attitudes of the host population towards immigration. measurement comparability was assessed by comparing response distributions in australia and germany and other english-speaking (great britain, usa) and germanspeaking (austria, part of swiss sample) countries available in the issp dataset. while cross-country differences in respondents’ understanding of survey questions have been found for some variables in issp modules due to language particularities (harkness et al. 2004; scholz et al. 2005), systematic differences between the two language groups were not apparent for the four measures of attitudes towards immigration, supporting measurement comparability. we then recoded the fi ve-point ordinal data to create four binary variables with one indicating positive attitudes towards immigration (for infl ux: a preference for increasing levels) and zero otherwise (table 1). the “neutral” category, coded as zero, accounted for about a quarter of responses across the four measures (response distributions over the original fi ve categories are shown in appendix table a2). the dichotomisation of the response categories was necessary for technical reasons (see methodology section). differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 445 4 methodology the methodological strategy involves a two-step approach. first, we seek to establish the extent of the difference in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany by employing a chi-square test of proportions. by using this test, we evaluate the null hypothesis of equality of proportions of positive attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany, concerning each of the dimensions in table 1. the outcomes of this test are a chi-square statistic and a p-value. these indicators are then used to evaluate the statistical signifi cance of the difference in attitudes towards immigration between the two countries. p-values below 1 percent tab. 1: construction of the four measures of attitudes towards immigration from issp data measures issp data questions and scheme codes binary indicator (= issp data codes) economy immigrants are generally good for [country’s] economy: 1: positive attitudes toward immigration (= 4 and 5) 1. strongly disagree 0: otherwise (=1, 2 and 3) 2. disagree 3. neutral 4. agree 5. strongly agree labour market immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in [country]: 1: positive attitudes toward immigration (= 1 and 2) 1. strongly disagree 0: otherwise (=3, 4 and 5) 2. disagree 3. neutral 4. agree 5. strongly agree culture immigrants improve [country nationality] society by bringing in new ideas and cultures: 1: positive attitudes toward immigration (= 4 and 5) 0: otherwise (=1, 2 and 3) 1. strongly disagree 2. disagree 3. neutral 4. agree 5. strongly agree infl ux do you think the number of immigrants to [country] nowadays should be … 1: positive attitudes toward immigration (= 1 and 2) 1. increased a lot 0: otherwise (=3, 4 and 5) 2. increased 3. remain the same 4. reduced 5. reduced a lot • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder446 provide statistical evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis of equality, suggesting that there are signifi cant differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. we performed fisher’s exact tests, which are appropriate for small sample sizes (fienberg 1980). the results provided by these tests were consistent with those from standard chi-square tests. second, we seek to determine the key factors leading to the difference in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. to this end, we estimate probit regression models per country, the results of which are used to perform a blinder-oaxaca type decomposition analysis. we argue that cross-national differences in attitudes towards immigration can be the result of differences in two broader components: (1) population composition (composition effects) and (2) the perceived impacts of immigration (behavioural effects). composition effects are related to how cross-national differences in the distribution of individual characteristics impact the difference in attitudes towards immigration between countries. for instance, highly-skilled people are more likely to view immigration positively. hence, countries with a larger share of highly-skilled persons can be expected to have more positive attitudes. behavioural effects relate to how cross-national differences in behavioural responses infl uence differences in attitudes towards immigration between countries. differences between australia and germany in behavioural responses to immigration are argued to refl ect the effect of differences in the established immigration policy frameworks of the two countries. the long-standing existence of a coherent, multicultural policy framework regulating immigration settlement and intake in australia is expected to have contributed to the formation of positive attitudes towards immigration. in the regression model, the probability of a person (i) displaying positive attitudes towards immigration is considered as a function of a set of individual determinants (x) and associated parameters (β): pi = f(xiβ) the difference between australians (a) and germans1 (g) in the average probability of having pro-immigration attitudes (pa – pg) can be decomposed into two components, representing composition and behavioural effects: equation (2) provides estimates of the overall compositional and behavioural effects. the fi rst term on the right-hand side of equation (2) accounts for crossnational differences in population composition (i.e. composition effects), while the second term accounts for cross-national differences in coeffi cients (i.e. behavioural effects). these terms can then be used to determine the relative contribution of each explanatory variable associated to the two sets of effects. (1) 1 we refer to “australians” and “germans” to describe residents of these countries. (2) differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 447 to implement the decomposition analysis, we applied binary probit regression models following the methodology of yun (2008). eight regression models were run, one per country for each of our four measures of attitudes towards immigration. ideally, we would have preserved the original ordered categorical variable from the issp, and employed ordered probit or logit regression models rather than binary models to implement the decomposition analysis. however, as madden (2010: 104) notes, while oaxaca-blinder type decompositions can be performed on ordered categorical variables to estimate the overall effects, it is not possible to estimate the individual contribution of each explanatory variable. although we only report the results from binary regression models, we also conducted decomposition analyses using ordered regression models to estimate the overall compositional and behavioural effects (following bauer and sinning (2008)). the results of these analyses were consistent with the results presented in this paper. eight sets of independent variables were included in the regression models. these variables were meant to capture the individual infl uences of age, age squared (to represent the non-linear effect of age), sex, migration background (at least one parent being foreign-born), area of residence (village, town, outer area of a major city, and inner area of a major city), educational attainment (university graduate versus other levels), occupation (elementary, manual, technical, professional, and managerial occupations), nationalism, and patriotism on the probability of displaying pro-immigration attitudes. age, age squared, nationalism, and patriotism were added to the model as continuous variables, while the remaining variables were categorical. nationalism and patriotism were constructed as indexes from a set of questions. they describe two distinct concepts of national identity. nationalism is understood as an uncritical idealisation of the nation and a feeling of superiority over other nations. patriotism is defi ned as a feeling of national pride which develops from a conscious evaluation of one’s own country, regardless of other nations (blank/schmidt 2003; mummendey et al. 2001). appendix a1 details the defi nitions of the independent variables and table 2 shows their means and percentages. to evaluate the representativeness of the sample, we compared our data with offi cial census and national survey data on the population composition of australia and germany.2 except for the variables of migration background and age, no serious underor overrepresentations were found and the differences between australia and germany were consistent with those found in the population data. compared to germany, australia showed higher shares of people with a university degree, living in major cities; and engaged in professional and managerial occupations. both countries presented similar sex ratios; and although the sample share of the population with a migration background was underrepresented in both countries, the results were consistent with the fact that this share is larger in australia than in germany. contrary to what could have been expected due to the generally younger 2 data for the evaluation of our sample were obtained from: australian bureau of statistics (www.abs.gov.au), german federal statistical offi ce (www.destatis.de), international labour organisation (www.ilo.org). • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder448 age structure of the australian population, the mean age of australians (50) in the issp sample turned out to be higher than that of germans (47). this is likely due to the issp survey targeting only the segment of the population aged 18 and older and sampling error (scholz et al. 2005). tab. 2: percentages and means of explanatory variables variable australia germany percentages sex male 46 51 female 54 49 migration background no foreign-born parent 69 87 at least one foreign-born parent 31 13 area of residence village 18 36 town 18 32 outer area of major city 36 12 inner area of major city 28 20 university education no university degree 78 86 university degree 22 14 occupation (isco88)1 elementary occupations 8 8 qualifi ed occupations 46 55 technicians and associate professionals 13 19 professionals 20 11 legislators, senior offi cials and managers 14 7 means age 50.46 47.08 nationalism (range 1 to 5) 4.00 3.19 patriotism (range 1 to 4) 3.29 2.79 1 issp uses the 4-digit 1988 international standard classifi cation of occupations (isco 88) codes of the international labour organisation. we aggregate these to represent the four isco 88 skill level categories and the occupation category of legislators, senior offi cials and managers. members of armed forces were excluded. source: authors’ calculations using data from issp 2003 differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 449 5 results 5.1 differences in attitudinal responses between australia and germany as expected, australians show more positive attitudes towards immigration than germans do (table 3). across our four dimensions, statistically signifi cant differences in attitudes towards immigration can be observed (p < 0.05). the largest disparity between australia and germany is found in people’s attitudes towards the impact of immigration on the national economy. while 70.5 percent of the australian sample saw immigration as having positive effects on the national economy, only 26.3 percent of germans shared this view. across the remaining three dimensions, the difference in pro-immigration attitudes between australia and germany was around 20 percentage points. the gap in positive attitudes towards the impact of immigration on the national economy is especially consistent with the stark contrast between the australian active immigration programme – organising skilled immigration based on labour market demands – and the german policy that primarily focused on reducing immigration. differences in attitudes towards immigration also appear to exist within each country. more than 70 percent of australians considered the impact of immigration on the national economy and culture as positive. with respect to the labour market impact of immigration, positive attitudes are held by about half of the australian population. the share of the population preferring increased levels of immigration was less than a quarter. in germany, the largest proportion of pro-immigration sentiments was found in the dimension of culture (54.4 percent). positive attitudes towards the impact of immigration on the economy and on the labour market were held by 26.3 and 29.2 percent of the population, respectively. only 4.5 percent of germans preferred an increasing infl ux. the diverse preference patterns underline the multi-dimensional character of attitudes towards immigration. australians appear to acknowledge the contribution of immigration to the economy and culture, while in the case of germany, culture is the single dimension where a majority held pro-immigration attitudes. at the same time, regardless of the dimension of attitudes towards immigration, australians tend to be more positive than germans. 5.2 individual determinants of immigration attitudes table 4 shows the results of the eight regression models. while nagelkerke’s r squared is below 0.2 for seven of the eight models, the log likelihood statistics indicate that full model specifi cations (containing all the explanatory variables) provide a better fi t to the data than models with only an intercept across all models. consistent with previous research, the results suggest that people tend to be more positive towards immigration if they have a migration background themselves, live in inner-city areas, earned a university degree, work in higher-skilled jobs and hold less nationalist views. at the same time, gender does not seem to have an effect. • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder450 ta b . 3 : m ea su re s o f a tt it ud es t o w ar d s im m ig ra tio n (% ) a nd c hi -s q ua re t es ts o f d if fe re n ce s in p ro p o rt io n s s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns u si ng d at a fr o m is s p 2 00 3 e co no m y la b o ur m ar ke t c ul tu re in fl u x a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y p ro -i m m ig ra tio n 70 .5 26 .3 49 .6 29 .2 74 .7 54 .4 23 .4 4. 5 n eu tr al o r ag ai n st im m ig ra tio n 29 .5 73 .7 50 .4 70 .8 25 .3 45 .6 76 .6 95 .5 c hi -s q u ar e te st s ta ti st ic 59 4. 26 12 9. 93 14 4. 77 19 2. 86 p -v al ue 0. 00 0 0 .0 00 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 451 ta b . 4 : p ro b it re g re ss io n an al ys is o f a tt it ud es t o w ar d s im m ig ra tio n in a u st ra lia a nd g er m an y d ep en d en t v ar ia b le e co n o m y la b o u r m ar ke t c u lt u re in fl u x le ve l e xp la n at o ry v ar ia b le s (b as e ca te g o ry ) a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y a u st ra lia g er m an y a g e 0. 03 3* * 0. 01 9 0. 01 8 0. 00 4 0. 01 4 0. 03 0 0. 00 6 0. 05 6 a g e sq u ar ed -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 0. 00 0* -0 .0 00 -0 .0 01 m al e 0. 10 1 0. 10 9 0. 04 6 -0 .0 29 -0 .1 16 0. 00 4 0. 27 9* ** 0. 32 0 m ig ra ti o n b ac kg ro u n d 0. 31 7* ** 0. 58 2* ** 0. 51 3* ** 0. 53 2 ** * 0. 35 6* ** 0. 42 2 ** 0. 34 0* ** 0. 52 2* a re a o f r es id en ce (i n n er a re a m aj o r ci ty ) v ill ag e -0 .1 58 -0 .2 35 -0 .2 4 4* -0 .1 46 -0 .3 65 ** * -0 .0 30 -0 .2 95 ** -0 .5 05 * to w n 0. 02 2 -0 .4 87 ** * -0 .2 12 * 0. 19 5 -0 .3 26 ** -0 .2 31 -0 .2 26 * -0 .4 4 4* o u te r ar ea m aj o r ci ty -0 .0 28 -0 .4 40 * -0 .1 4 4 -0 .0 39 -0 .2 21 * -0 .3 56 * -0 .2 36 ** 0. 01 3 u n iv er si ty e d u ca ti o n 0. 40 8* ** 0. 35 0 0. 42 8* ** 0. 26 9 0. 37 1* ** 0. 07 7 0. 35 9* ** 0. 66 2* o cc u p at io n (e le m en ta ry o cc u p at io n s) m an u al o cc u p at io n s -0 .0 32 0. 39 0 0. 20 9 0. 32 2 0. 09 8 -0 .0 89 -0 .2 90 * 0. 84 8 te ch n ic al o cc u p at io n s 0. 19 9 0. 61 3* * 0. 39 9* * 0. 54 2* 0. 24 1 0. 20 0 0. 01 2 0. 63 6 p ro fe ss io n al o cc u p at io n s 0. 21 0 0. 47 7 0. 59 2* ** 0. 55 9* 0. 46 4* * 0. 57 3* 0. 11 2 0. 82 2 m an ag er ia l o cc u p at io n s 0. 28 3 0. 57 8* 0. 62 6* ** 0. 62 6* 0. 39 7* -0 .0 02 -0 .0 35 1. 01 7* n at io n al is m -0 .3 02 ** * -0 .1 46 * -0 .5 52 ** * -0 .4 33 ** * -0 .3 82 ** * -0 .2 79 ** * -0 .4 76 ** * -0 .2 76 ** p at ri o ti sm 0. 33 4* ** 0. 15 8 0. 36 8* ** 0. 07 6 0. 32 9* ** 0. 20 2* 0. 16 6* -0 .0 38 c o n st an t -0 .6 46 -1 .6 02 ** 0. 14 3 0. 32 6 0. 47 1 -0 .1 67 0. 33 8 -3 .0 80 ** a ka ik e in fo rm at io n c ri te ri o n 20 23 .7 10 94 .7 21 98 .9 11 16 .1 18 48 .2 13 18 .5 17 12 .6 32 5. 9 n ag el ke rk e’ s r 2 0. 13 0. 11 0. 23 0. 17 0. 16 0. 12 0. 18 0. 21 lo g lik el ih o o d in te rc ep t o n ly ( i) -1 08 0. 8 -5 72 .5 -1 25 5. 9 -6 08 .0 -1 01 0. 6 -6 90 .3 -9 50 .6 -1 81 .3 lo g lik el ih o o d f u ll m o d el ( ii) -9 96 .8 -5 32 .4 -1 08 4. 5 -5 43 .1 -9 09 .1 -6 4 4. 2 -8 41 .3 -1 48 .0 im p ro ve m en t ( ii – i) 83 .9 56 40 .1 10 17 1. 4 40 64 .9 40 10 1. 53 2 46 .0 15 10 9. 23 2 33 .3 42 n o te : * p < 0 .0 5, * * p < 0 .0 1, * ** p < 0 .1 p er ce nt , r o b us t s ta nd ar d e rr o rs s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns u si ng d at a fr o m is s p 2 00 3 • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder452 also in line with recent research, we do not fi nd evidence indicating that the perception of increased labour market competition resulting from immigration leads to negative attitudes towards immigration (hainmueller/hiscox 2007; o’connell 2011). evidence for this argument would have been larger differences in the effects associated with skill level, occupation and education, particularly in the labour market dimension. however, we found only small differences between the two countries for occupational effects. it seems that immigration policy is not related to economic self-interest in such a way that a skilled immigration programme evokes a different pattern of sentiments towards immigration across occupational categories between the two countries. our results on the effect of age differ from previous fi ndings. whereas brenner, fertig (2006) documented a linear negative effect of age on attitudes towards immigration, our results point to a non-linear infl uence. while the effect of age is positively associated with the probability of displaying positive attitudes towards immigration at young adult ages, it appears to lessen or to turn negative at older ages. this turning point occurs between the ages of 45 and 65 for the dimensions of labour impact and infl ux in australia, and culture and infl ux in germany, indicating that people at older ages tend to have less positive attitudes towards immigration. supporting recent fi ndings of jeong (2013), our results show that people with strong patriotic sentiments tend to have more positive attitudes towards immigration. although this effect is not signifi cant for germany, the coeffi cient of patriotism is positive across all eight regression models. the positive infl uence of patriotism on attitudes towards immigration underlines the ambiguous relationship between feelings of national belonging and identity and attitudes towards immigration shown by jeong (2013). devotion to a country appears to be associated with pro-immigration attitudes if it is in the form of patriotism, without the nationalist connotation of superiority over other nations or cultures. while our results generally point to a similar pattern in the infl uence of individual characteristics on the probability of holding positive views towards immigration, they also reveal signifi cant differences between germany and australia in terms of the magnitude of effects. the major difference is observed in the effects of nationalism and patriotism, which are both stronger in australia, indicating that notions of belonging and identity in the form of patriotic and nationalist dispositions play a more important role in attitude formation in australia, although in opposite directions. australia’s multicultural policy might encourage positive attitudes towards immigration among people with patriotic feelings, while strengthening negative sentiment among people with nationalist feelings. another key difference is the effect of age. while the infl uence of age on attitudes towards immigration is stronger in australia than in germany for the economy and labour-market dimensions, it plays a larger role in germany in the dimensions of culture and infl ux. older people in australia appear more concerned about the economic impact of immigration, while in germany, age is a stronger factor regarding immigration numbers and foreign cultures. furthermore, having a migration background has a stronger positive effect in germany than it does in australia. differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 453 ta b . 5 : b in ar y re g re ss io n -b as ed d ec o m p o si tio n o f t he d if fe re n ce in t he p ro b ab ili ty o f h av in g a m o re p o si tiv e at ti tu d es to w ar d s im m ig ra tio n b et w ee n a u st ra lia a nd g er m an y, p er ce n ta g es d ep en d en t v ar ia b le e co n o m y la b o u r m ar ke t c u lt u re in fl u x le ve l c o m p o si ti o n ef fe ct s b eh av io u ra l ef fe ct s c o m p o si ti o n ef fe ct s b eh av io u ra l ef fe ct s c o m p o si ti o n ef fe ct s b eh av io u ra l ef fe ct s c o m p o si ti o n ef fe ct s b eh av io u ra l ef fe ct s to ta l 6. 5 93 .5 -2 .0 10 2. 0 11 .2 88 .8 -1 8. 3 11 8. 3 in d iv id u al c h ar ac te ri st ic s a g e 1. 0 50 .0 0. 6 74 .1 1. 0 6. 6 0. 3 -7 6. 7 m al e -0 .3 -0 .9 -0 .2 3. 3 0. 5 -5 .9 -1 .3 -2 .4 fa m ily m ig ra ti o n b ac kg ro u n d 4. 7 -2 .4 15 .9 -1 .0 8. 6 -2 .0 9. 5 -2 .2 a re a o f r es id en ce 1. 2 20 .2 6. 8 -9 .0 8. 0 -2 2. 0 4. 5 14 .9 u n iv er si ty e d u ca ti o n 3. 0 0. 9 6. 6 3. 3 4. 5 5. 2 5. 0 -3 .8 o cc u p at io n 2. 4 -2 6. 6 8. 4 -9 .2 5. 7 17 .4 5. 5 -5 2. 7 n at io n al is m -1 8. 0 -3 8. 9 -6 8. 6 -4 7. 6 -3 7. 0 -5 6. 9 -5 3. 4 -6 3. 4 p at ri o ti sm 12 .4 35 .2 28 .5 12 0. 7 19 .9 37 .0 11 .6 51 .4 c o n st an t 56 .0 -3 2. 8 10 9. 5 25 3. 1 s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns u si ng d at a fr o m is s p 2 00 3 • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder454 5 explaining differences in immigration attitudes between australia and germany compared to germans, australians tend to hold more positive attitudes towards immigration across our four dimensions: national economy, labour market, culture and infl ux levels of immigration. table 5 summarises the decomposition analysis of these attitudinal differences and displays the contribution of compositional and behavioural effects. a positive sign indicates a positive contribution of a particular factor to the difference in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. a negative sign points to an offsetting effect, that is, a contribution of a factor to reducing cross-national differences in the probability of holding positive attitudes towards immigration. in the fi rst row, table 5 shows the total contribution of compositional effects (differentials in population composition) and behavioural effects (differentials in coeffi cients) to differences in attitudes, while the rows below contain the additive contributions of individual explanatory variables to these totals. the results indicate that behavioural effects represent the main source of the difference between australia and germany in the probability of being more positive toward immigration, whereas compositional effects account for a modest share. this fi nding is robust. it is persistent across our four measures of attitudes towards immigration. however, there are some variations in the contribution of behavioural effects across these measures of attitudes towards immigration. while behavioural effects contribute 89 percent to the difference in likelihood of having positive attitudes towards immigration from the perspective of national culture, they contribute over 118 percent when the perspective of preferred level of immigration infl ux is considered. this large share associated with the latter perspective indicates that, in the absence of counteracting compositional effects, the difference in shares of positive attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany would have been 18 percent larger. the dominant role of behavioural responses in explaining the differences in attitudes towards immigration between australians and germans points to the importance of the national contexts in which these attitudes emerge. specifi cally, coupled with other country-specifi c factors, we argue that the comprehensive immigration programme of australia has played an important role in infl uencing the formation of positive attitudes towards immigration by facilitating the planned infl ux and settlement of foreigners as discussed in section 2.1. in contrast, the lack of such a programme in germany for most of the 20th century is thought to be related to less positive views on the impacts of immigration. this signifi cance of policy frameworks in explaining cross-national differences in attitudes towards immigration is consistent with recent evidence on the relationship between permissive policies and more positive attitudes in the context of greater approval of homosexuality (kuntz et al. 2015). behavioural effects associated with patriotism, age composition and the constant term represent the main contributors to the difference in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. the effect associated with patriotism differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 455 appears to explain more than 35 percent of this difference in each of the four attitudinal dimensions. this percentage is particularly large (121 percent) if we consider people’s attitudes towards immigration concerning its impacts on the national labour market. the large contribution of behavioural effects of patriotism on the difference in attitudes towards immigration between the two countries appears to refl ect that the positive association between being patriotic and having more favourable sentiments toward immigrants is stronger in australia – as shown by the large and positive coeffi cient associated with patriotism in that country (table 4). australians seem to be more patriotic than germans (see table 2), and with australia’s commitment to immigration and multiculturalism, australians with patriotic sentiments are more likely to support their country’s policy and show greater acceptance of people with different cultural backgrounds. differences in behavioural effects associated with age also explain a signifi cant share of the difference in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. they contribute between 6.6 percent and 74 percent of the difference of people’s perceptions on the impacts of immigration on the national economy, labour market and culture. however, these effects appear to reduce the gap in the probability of being positive towards a greater infl ux of immigrants between australians and germans. this appears to be because germans at young-adult ages tend to be more favourable towards an increase in immigration numbers than australians, as is indicated by a larger positive coeffi cient of age on the probability of holding more positive views of greater immigration levels. the more positive attitudes towards immigration among young germans might refl ect the onset of changes to the country’s immigration policy framework at the beginning of the 21st century (see suessmuth 2001). specifi cally, the arguments for a change in policy – immigration as a remedy for future population decline, labour force shortages and population ageing – were more relevant to younger generations. behavioural effects associated to the regression constant represent another major contributor to the difference in attitudinal responses towards immigration between australia and germany. when the impacts on the national economy, culture and level of infl ux are considered, these effects appear to account for more than 50 percent of the difference. while the effects captured by the regression constant may represent the infl uence of a series of measurement errors and contextual factors not included in the regression models, they are also likely to represent structural differences in the perception of immigration between the australian and german population, and hence to refl ect the role of the contrasting immigration policy frameworks in the two countries. it appears that australia has created a more favourable setting for positive attitudes towards immigration to emerge. balancing the behavioural effects of patriotism, age and the regression constant, there was a major offsetting individual effect associated with nationalism. in the absence of this effect, differences in the likelihood of displaying positive attitudes towards immigration between australians and germans would have been larger. behavioural effects associated with nationalism appear to have reduced these differences by about 37 percent. the regression results suggest that these offsetting effects linked to nationalism refl ect the negative infl uence that holding a nationalist • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder456 disposition exerts on the probability of displaying more positive attitudes towards immigration, and their larger magnitude in australia. that is, individuals with nationalist sentiments in australia tend to be less positive towards immigration than their german counterparts. hence, germans with a nationalist disposition can be seen as less negative towards immigration, which diminishes the overall differences in the likelihood of displaying positive attitudes towards immigration. the stronger negative effect of nationalist sentiments on attitudes towards immigration in australia might link to australia’s policy. the country’s concepts of active recruitment and multiculturalism might foster more accentuated negative perceptions of immigration among people with nationalist beliefs. 6 conclusion in this paper, we have explored the relationship between immigration policy and attitudes towards immigration. we argue that a country’s immigration policy framework plays an important role in shaping the national context in which attitudes towards immigration are formed, and hence it is likely to be a major driver underpinning cross-country differences in the perceived impact of immigration. to provide evidence for this argument, we investigated the factors underlying differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany. to this end, we distinguished four dimensions of attitudes towards immigration that capture different but complementary perceptions of immigration. we thus defi ned four measures of attitudes towards immigration concerning the impact of immigration on (1) the national economy, (2) the labour market, (3) culture, and (4) the level of infl ux. we compared australia and germany because these countries established contrasting policy frameworks during the 1970s following a period of large-scale immigration in the post-war decades. australia developed a proactive immigration programme, organising the intake and settlement of immigrants under a multicultural principle. this contrasts with the german policy framework, which focused on reducing the intake and stock of immigrants. our analysis of attitudes towards immigration in australia and germany revealed three fi ndings. first, there are signifi cant differences in attitudinal responses towards immigration between the two countries. people in australia tend to be more positive towards immigration than people in germany. this fi nding is consistent across the four dimensions in which we measured immigration, but australians are markedly more positive about the impact immigration has on the national economy. second, our fi ndings show a similar pattern of individual determinants of attitudes towards immigration in australia and germany. in both countries, people tend to be more favourable towards immigration if they have a migration background themselves, live in inner-city areas, hold a university degree, work in higher-skilled jobs and are less disposed to nationalist sentiments; while gender does not appear to have a signifi cant infl uence. an unexpected fi nding was the effect of patriotism on infl uencing positive attitudes towards immigration. most previous studies found that strong feelings of national identity are associated with less favourable attitudes differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 457 towards immigration. in our models, only nationalism showed a negative effect, while the effect of patriotism was found to be positive. both effects were larger in magnitude in australia. a permissive immigration policy might encourage positive attitudes towards immigration among people with patriotic feelings who sympathise with their country’s actions. however, if attachment to a country is associated with nationalist feelings of cultural superiority and opposition to ethnic diversity, a permissive immigration policy might stimulate negative perceptions of immigration. third, our results show that, rather than cross-national differences in population composition, differences in behavioural responses comprise the main factor explaining the more positive attitudes towards immigration found in australia compared to germany. together with cross-national differences in the effects of age and patriotic sentiments, structural differences in the perception of immigration in australia and germany represent the main behavioural responses that shape more positive attitudes towards immigration in australia. the australian multicultural and skill-targeted policy framework has operated to create a more favourable context for the formation of positive attitudes towards immigration by shaping people’s perception on the economic and socio-cultural impacts of immigration. it should be noted, however, that the causal direction of the link between policy and attitudes likely goes both ways. politicians and policy-makers generally respond to what they think the general public perceives as the right direction of policy. furthermore, the study design (as an in-depth examination of the infl uence of immigration policy on different dimensions of attitudes towards immigration) did not allow a systematic testing of alternative explanations. it may be the case that other contextual factors infl uence the attitudinal differences between australia and germany to some extent. at the same time, our fi ndings are in line with recent empirical research, strongly indicating that policy indeed shapes attitudes. this link between policy and attitudes is of major concern regarding increasing global competition for migrant talent (shachar 2006). a proactive immigration policy that offers a legal framework for immigration pathways and also provides a substantial support system for the social and economic settlement process of immigrants is an important mechanism for increasing the societal acceptance of immigrants by positively infl uencing the perception of the local population about the impacts of immigration on the local economy and culture. policy not only sets out the legal pathways for entering and settling in a country, but plays a role in shaping a tolerant and permissive environment for immigration – an important factor for migrants when choosing a destination country (paas/halapuu 2011). at the same time, negative attitudes towards immigration, coupled with discrimination, low education and lack of self-confi dence represent key barriers to the social and economic integration of immigrants (constant et al. 2009). with the new immigration act of 2005, german policy-makers laid the foundation for major reforms towards a proactive immigration policy, targeting the admission of skilled migrants and improving the support for migrants’ settlement processes. future research could investigate whether attitudes towards immigration have changed as a reaction to this shift in policy. such research could be based on data from the third round of the issp national identity module, which was carried out in 2013. • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder458 references bauer, thomas k. et al. 2001: immigration policy, assimilation of immigrants, and natives’ sentiments towards immigrants: evidence from 12 oecd countries. 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and germany • 461 date of submission: 10.04.2015 date of acceptance: 04.09.2015 philipp ueffi ng (), dr. francisco rowe. queensland centre for population research, the university of queensland. australia. e-mail: p.ueffi ng@uq.edu.au, f.rowegonzalez@uq.edu.au url: https://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/philipp-ueffi ng https://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/francisco-rowe prof. dr. clara h. mulder. university of groningen, faculty of spatial sciences, department of demography. groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: c.h.mulder@rug.nl url: http://www.rug.nl/staff/c.h.mulder/ • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder462 appendix tab. a1: defi nition of exploratory variables variable defi nition sex sex of respondent male male female female migration background parents citizens of country at time of respondent’s birth no foreign parent neither parent citizen of another country at time of births at least one foreign parent at least one parent citizen of another country at time of birth area of residence self-assessed area of residence village aus: farm or small country town (<10,000); ger: farm or village town aus: larger country town (>10,000) or large town (>25,000); ger: smallor medium-sized city outer area major city aus: outer metropolitan area of major city (>100,000); ger: fringe or suburbs of major city inner area major city aus: inner metropolitan area of major city (>100,000); ger: major city university education highest educational level no university degree no university degree completed university degree university degree completed (bachelor’s and above) occupation occupation by isco88 classifi cations elementary occupations elementary occupations (isco 1) manual occupations plant and machine operator and assemblers, craft and related trades workers, skilled agricultural and fi shery workers, service workers and shop market sales workers, clerks (isco 2) technical occupations technicians and associate professionals (isco 3) professional occupations professionals (isco 4) managerial occupations legislators, senior offi cials and managers age age in years age squared age squared nationalism person’s belief that his/her country is better than others. constructed as index from three issp questions (cronbach’s alpha = 0.76), each measured on a fi ve point scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. coded in the way that higher value depicts stronger nationalist feelings. questions: • “generally speaking, [country] is a better country than most other countries” • “i would rather be a citizen of [country] than of any other country in the world” • “the world would be a better place if people from other countries were more like [country nationality]” differences in attitudes towards immigration between australia and germany • 463 variable defi nition patriotism person’s pride in being a member of the own nation without notion of superiority over other countries. constructed as index from three issp questions (cronbach’s alpha = 0.72), each measured on a four point scale from “not proud at all” to “very proud”. coded in the way that higher value depicts stronger patriotic feelings. questions: “how proud are you of [country] in each of the following?” • “[country’s] economic achievements? • its scientifi c and technological achievements? • its achievements in sports? • its achievements in the arts and literature? tab. a1: continuation source: issp 2003 • philipp ueffing, francisco rowe, clara h. mulder464 tab. a2: measures of attitudes towards immigration – response distribution over original answer categories response economy labour market culture infl ux category1 australia germany australia germany australia germany australia germany 1 0.01 0.09 0.06 0.13 0.01 0.06 0.18 0.46 2 0.07 0.26 0.19 0.30 0.07 0.14 0.21 0.26 3 0.21 0.38 0.25 0.27 0.17 0.25 0.38 0.23 4 0.60 0.26 0.42 0.22 0.58 0.49 0.17 0.04 5 0.10 0.01 0.08 0.08 0.17 0.07 0.06 0.01 1 recoded so that categories 1 and 2 correspond to negative attitudes towards immigration, 3 to neutral, and 4 and 5 to positive attitudes towards immigration source: authors’ calculations using data from issp 2003 published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology tim winke abstract: in times of ageing baby boomer cohorts and increasing regional disparities, residential choice in later life is important regarding family relations and the provision of social services. in this study, a new typology of later life moves is developed based on observed patterns and characteristics of residential changes. for this purpose, the german socio-economic panel data has been linked to uniquely detailed neighbourhood information to study how aspects of both later life movers and moves are structured. the results suggest four types of moves, namely: residential improvement, family, residential adaptation and care moves. the typology expands rigid classifi cations based on age, health status or distance moved, and highlights intergenerational family ties, housing concerns and fragmented forms of partnership as key aspects. family moves to one’s children are associated with the existence of grandchildren, showing that elderly people take on roles as both care-takers and care-providers. the residential consequences of being widowed or divorced are socially stratifi ed and can lead to residential and economic instability. keywords: later life migration · residential mobility · life course · germany · nonnegative matrix factorisation 1 introduction with a median age of 46.2 years in 2015, germany’s population has become the second oldest in the world and is forecast to age further in the upcoming decades (united nations 2015). demographic ageing is not distributed equally across regions. from 2001 to 2006, rural areas in germany have experienced the largest increase in the share of elderly people, while urban areas mostly gained in the share of younger cohorts (goll 2010). this is refl ected in the geographic distance between family members. the share of adult children living in the same town as their parents has decreased signifi cantly from 38 percent in 1996 to 26 percent in 2014 (mahne/ comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 3-24 (date of release: 09.02.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-01en1 • tim winke4 huxhold 2017). a concentration of ageing and population decline in rural regions may alter family relations and poses challenges regarding the provision of social services and health care (swiaczny 2010). the questions of who moves where, and why, during later life are pressing in times of ageing baby boomer cohorts and increasing regional disparities. however, residential behaviour of the elderly differs from employment-related migration in terms of its determinants and spatial patterns (litwak/longino 1987). this study provides insights into the heterogeneity of later life migration in germany. in an exploratory part, non-negative matrix factorisation is employed as a cluster method to fi nd patterns in later life moves. next, multinomial logistic regression helps assess the relative importance of household characteristics for each type of move. the wide range of socio-economic and demographic information of the representative household survey, the german socio-economic panel (soep), permits a deep understanding of the features of elderly movers and the characteristics of their moves. distance measures to children and grandchildren enable an exploration of the role of intergenerational aspects, while small-scale neighbourhood characteristics show the infl uence of the regional context on the decision to move. the analysis reveals four types of later life moves: (i) residential improvement moves toward house-ownership and to higher status neighbourhoods in 2-50 km distance from the previous home, (ii) long-distance family moves towards children and grandchildren, (iii) residential adaptation moves within urban neighbourhoods to rental apartments and social housing and (iv) care moves to nursing homes or accessible housing usually linked to a decrease in neighbourhood and housing satisfaction. this analysis adds to previous work and structures later life moves in several ways. first, a representative household panel survey – rather than aggregated data – is employed, including detailed intergenerational and neighbourhood information. life course and neighbourhood factors have been found to be interrelated in the decision to move (feijten/van ham 2009; boschman/van ham 2015). changes in either context might lead to residential stress and a mismatch between locational preferences and the environment (rossi 1955; brown/moore 1970). second, nonnegative matrix factorisation as a novel clustering algorithm allows for the exploration of patterns in the observed data without pre-specifying moving types ex-ante. third, the two-step analytical approach helps to relate patterns of later life moves with characteristics of households. this way, a comprehensive picture is provided about who is likely to move in a specifi c way. 2 background research on later life migration studies the relocation behaviour and migration patterns around and during retirement. this has yielded varying concepts and terminologies over the past decades (see sander et al. 2010; goll 2010). in their seminal work, litwak and longino (1987) structure later life moves into three types: first, a long-distance move around retirement age to benefi t from lolater life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 5 cal amenities, e.g. warmer climate, fostering friendship networks or living closer to one’s place of birth. such moves are associated with individuals close to leaving the workforce who are rather healthy, fi nancially independent, and married. the second type of move involves relocating to a place closer to children as primary care-giver. they are associated with older, and often widowed, retirees in deteriorating health conditions that make everyday tasks diffi cult. institutional substitutes, neighbours or same-age friends are essential at this stage, but might lack commitment and expertise to provide adequate long-term care. the third type is triggered by severe disabilities and a high level of required assistance. very old people at this stage are likely to move to institutional care facilities. the three-stage model summarises regularities found in later life migration and has become one of the most prominent taxonomies in this regard. despite its consecutive nature, a specifi c household must neither go through all three stages, nor follow the timing of moves. rather, the model embeds the migration decision of elderly households in health, partnership and family developments over life stages. empirical assessments of the three-stage model have mainly focused on u.s. contexts and employed aggregated census data (litwak/longino 1987; bradley 2011). they fi nd a higher share of widowers, disabled and very old people who leave prominent retirement destinations compared to those who enter. the three-stage model by litwak and longino (1987) can be criticised for its lack of insights into the actual decision-making process, e.g. migration as a household decision (brown/moore 1970), the role of gender and power (de jong 2000), and the interdependencies among moving opportunities, social networks and life course events (kley 2011). as argued by bloem et al. (2008), there is no single way from one life event to a particular mobility outcome. for example, health problems in the second stage might themselves be less important for a move but could be mediated by the loss of a spouse (mulder/hooimeijer 1999). the life course perspective explicitly incorporates the interconnected role of life trajectories within and between individuals (elder et al. 2003). life events in one domain might trigger changes in other domains, such as a job opportunity in another city or the birth of a child. in life course studies, residential behaviour of individuals is embedded in the socio-historical context and the timing of life events (rindfuss et al. 1987). for example, changes in the career or family domain might trigger moves conditional upon the prevailing norms and economic situation in a household’s region (dieleman et al. 2000). life course events of individuals affect the decisions of family members and friends, which implies an adaptation and synchronisation of life plans. the relation of life events and living contexts has also been highlighted for retirement moves, i.e. moves around the time individuals leave the workforce. for australia, sander and bell (2014) found that the effect of entering retirement as a trigger for moving is mitigated if the spouse has not exited the workforce. mulder and hooimeijer (1999) attempt to disentangle determinants of migration by distinguishing triggers and conditions of moving. triggers describe changes in life domains such as a divorce or an empty nest stage. life domains such as education, the labour market, household composition, housing situations and health are assumed to interact with and moderate triggers. for example, the birth of a child • tim winke6 might trigger a move in the family domain, but the move is hampered by fi nancial constraints. an advantage of the model is its fl exibility regarding the interactions of life domains and life events leading to the decision to move. however, this comes at the cost of not providing testable narratives on how socio-cultural circumstances specifi cally infl uence individuals and how they shape the meanings of triggers and conditions. this paper examines patterns and determinants of later life moves and movers in germany. the underlying theoretical approach rests on earlier typologies, most notably the lifestyle, comfort and care move framework by litwak and longino (1987) and fi ndings from life course research on mobility (i.a. mulder/hooimeijer 1999). the three-stage model is not explicit about the range of applicability in space and time, but is largely shaped by the u.s. experience in the 1970s and 1980s. in contrast to the u.s., the geographical size of germany is much smaller and the country has less climatic differences. germany is regarded as having a more egalitarian and conservative welfare regime, which implies stronger workers’ rights, lower income imbalances and universal health and care provision (hall/soskice 2001). the above factors are likely to have a dampening effect on later life migration. for example, friedrich (1995) shows that germany’s elderly population shows a stronger attachment to their place of living and less locational fl exibility than in the u.s. germany shares socio-demographic trends apparent in many western countries with respect to marriage, fertility and societal change (cherlin 2010; lesthaeghe 2010). referring to the literature on life course transitions, the concepts of destandardisation and pluralism describe a shift towards heterogeneous and individualistic trajectories in the family and career domains (amrhein 2004; frick et al. 2012). partnerships have become more fragmented, along with the heightened postponement of marriages and increasing divorce rates and unmarried cohabitations (bumpass/ lu 2000; cliquet 2003). liberal gender roles have led to more diverse career paths of women while the male breadwinner model has become less and less common (simonson et al. 2011). with respect to the life course approach on mobility, the notion of individuals’ agency is emphasized in this study, while constrained by norms, institutions and the local environment. further, the idea of linked lives states that decisions of individuals are affected by, and can in turn affect, other people’s life courses (elder et al. 2003). for the analysis, this implies (i) that households are taken as the primary unit of analysis, (ii) that the socio-demographic context of households is considered, including their neighbourhood and extended family and (iii) that recent partnership events are distinguished from long-term partnership conditions as triggers for moving. 3 analytical approach the aim of the study is to structure the heterogeneity of later life movers and to examine their determinants for moving. for this purpose, representative longitudinal survey data for germany is merged with detailed regional information. later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 7 the analytical strategy of the paper is twofold. first, the cluster analysis aims at fi nding patterns solely in the characteristics of moves. for this, subjective and objective measures that characterise moves are clustered. in a second step, multinomial regression analysis evaluates the relative importance of household characteristics for each type of move. the approach allows for a fl exible assessment of empirical moving patterns without classifying moves ex-ante. the dependent variable is the type of move as derived from the cluster analysis. employing the resulting cluster as moving outcomes enables linking characteristics of households to specifi c moving types. the base outcome is no change in address between two survey years. because relocation is generally regarded as a household decision (brown/moore 1970; de jong/ fawcett 1981), the household is the level of analysis for this study. 3.1 data and measures the soep is a longitudinal household survey which started in west germany in 1984 and was extended to east germany in 1990, after reunifi cation. it is the largest panel survey in germany, with yearly interviews of around 20,000 individuals in 12,000 households (kroh 2014). for this study, the waves from 2001 to 2013 are employed, covering a total of 10,267 households aged 55 and older. a person drops out of the soep study if he or she dies, refuses participation or leaves germany. individuals are not excluded if they move within germany or enter institutionalised care. individuals enter the sample population when they join an existing household by birth or cohabitation, if a new subsample is initiated or a previous subsample is extended. for this study, small-scale neighbourhood information is linked to the soep panel data. the micromarketing company microm provides geographic information about a neighbourhood’s socio-economic structure, construction types and migration patterns. street-level data is generated by aggregating information of neighbouring households from different public and proprietary data sources. the starting points for the selection of variables for the cluster and regression analysis are the three-stage model of later life migration and the life course perspective on mobility. the former emphasizes the partnership and health contexts of a household in the decision to move. the latter acknowledges the inter-dependencies of life trajectories within and between family members. trajectories are shaped by past events – such as the residential place of childhood – while being embedded in current institutional, historic and spatial contexts (courgeau 1995). two different sets of variables are used for each step of the analysis. while the fi rst part incorporates variables that characterise a move subjectively and objectively, the second part focusses on attributes of households. tables 1 and 2 list all variables used in the cluster and regression analysis. the fi rst part aims at determining types of later life moves. a later life move is defi ned as a change in address between two survey years of households whose head or spouse, if any, is age 55 or older. the subsample for the cluster analysis consists • tim winke8 of 1,654 later life moves made by 1,145 households between 2001 and 2013. the considered cluster variables characterise the moving behaviour both structurally and subjectively. structural characteristics include moving distance, changes in fl oor space, moving closer to family members, buying a house, renting an apartment, moving back to the place of childhood, to an elderly home or social housing as well as moving to or from urban/rural regions. subjective measures include reasons for moving such as family, housing or job reasons as well as a household’s housing and neighbourhood situation before and after a move. the distance of moves is available in kilometres and split into three classes: short-distance moves of 2 km and less, medium-distance moves between 2 km and 50 km and long-distance moves of 50 km and more. daily interactions with people in the former place of residence are presumably diffi cult to maintain beyond 50 km (see lundholm 2015). external neighbourhood information derives from microm data and covers an upgrade or downgrade in the neighbourhood status and its share of migrants. for the analysis, a neighbourhood has a high share of migrants if it exceeds 25 percent (approx. at the 80th percentile). the number of and spatial distance to parents, children and grandchildren are recorded every fi ve years starting from 1991. downward cascading is employed to fi ll in missing values while taking residential changes into account. having family members nearby equals one if either the household head or partner or both have parents, children or grandchildren living in in the same town, and zero otherwise. a move to children occurs if a household has not lived in the same town as their children but does so after a move. the second part of the analysis focusses on how characteristics in the life domains of family, career, housing and health of a household are related to each type of move. it includes (a) demographic variables such as the age of the oldest household partner, migration background and partnership status, (b) variables related to the professional background such as years of education, household income and long-term unemployment experience of any household partner, (c) inter-generational variables such as the existence of children and hours spent on childcare on an average weekday, (d) the previous housing situation such as home-ownership and years lived in the current residence and (e) health indicators. the partnership and workforce status were retrospectively surveyed and cover the time before a person entered the survey. partnership status can either be married (reference group), married in the past two years, divorced, divorced in the past two years, widowed, widowed in the past two years or unmarried. this way, conditions and recent changes in the partnership domain can be assessed as triggers for moving. the workforce indicator has three levels: (a) household head or partner employed (reference group), (b) household head and partner unemployed/retired in the last two years and (c) household head and partner unemployed or retired for more than two years. the health condition is captured in two ways: fi rst, as a statement about perceived health ranging from 0 to 10, and second, by the level of being legally disabled ranging from 0 to 100 percent. in the case of cohabitation with a spouse, the maximum disabled value of the two partners and the minimum value in perceived health is used. the net household income is adjusted by the yearly purchasing power and weighted by household size (grabka 2012). later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 9 the sample for the regression consists of 64,214 yearly observations of 10,267 households aged 55 and older. year-specifi c household weights are applied to capture the probability of being selected into the soep sample and to account for attrition over time (kroh 2014). attrition in longitudinal surveys is sensitive to residential changes. households might be diffi cult to contact due to residential moves in the year of their move. missing values for years where no data was collected (n=40) are replaced by information from the following survey year. 3.2 methods non-negative matrix factorisation (nmf) is an unsupervised learning technique that has been applied successfully in text analysis, market research, face recognition and bioinformatics (see wang/zhang 2013). the idea of nmf is to factorise the target matrix v with n observations and o covariates into two matrices of lower rank, the basis matrix w and the mixture effect matrix h (see fig. 1). in an iterative process starting from a random assignment, the latter two matrices are chosen such that their product approximates the target matrix v best. nmf has been shown to perform very well in the identifi cation of clusters (hutchins et al. 2008; frigyesi/höglund 2008) and has some key advantages over other clustering algorithms: first, the resulting components have an intuitive interpretation. the k columns of the basis matrix can be interpreted as latent groups that derive from the observed data, for example, individuals who share similar dispositions and preferences. this results from the constraint that the original data is only allowed to have non-negative values. second, nmf allows clusters to overlap. observation and covariates can both be associated with several clusters at once. fig. 1: non-negative matrix factorisation target matrix v basis matrix w mixture effect matrix h rows: n households rows: n households rows: k clusters columns: o covariates columns: k clusters columns: o covariates x notes: illustration of non-negative matrix factorisation when 2 clusters are assumed (rank k=2): the target matrix v is factorised into matrix w – indicating by how much households are represented in each cluster scaled from 0 to 1 – and matrix h – holding the mixture effect coeffi cients which indicate how strong covariates are associated with each cluster scaled from 0 to 1. the objective of the algorithm is to fi nd w and h such that their product approximates the target matrix v best. source: own design • tim winke10 the n*k elements of the basis matrix w indicate the extent to which observations are represented in each cluster. the k*o mixture effect matrix h provides a profi le showing how strongly covariates are associated with each cluster. for this study, nmf is implemented using r statistical software 3.1.1 and the nmf package 0.20.5 by gaujoux and seoighe (2010). the subsample employed consists of households aged 55 and older in the year of their move (n = 1,654). a critical step in the analysis is to specify the number of clusters ex-ante. a large number of clusters might result in better data approximation, but with the risk of overfi tting. a small number of clusters reduces the complexity of the model but might neglect informative structures in the data. a common approach is to try a set of values and decide on the optimal number of cluster based on quality measures. a prominent measure for nmf analysis is the cophenetic correlation coeffi cient. it measures how stable observations are reassigned to the same clusters when running nmf multiple times. a coeffi cient of one indicates strong similarities while zero suggests completely scattered reassignments. to prevent overfi tting, brunet et al. (2004) recommend selecting the number of clusters before the cophenetic coeffi cient begins to fall. the analysis is run with the number of clusters k ranging from 3 to 7. the cophenetic coeffi cient peaks at 4 clusters, which is the number of clusters presented below. this cluster analysis helps to structure the characteristics of later life moves. in the second part of the analysis, the relative importance of household characteristics to move is evaluated using a multinomial regression model. the dependent variable equals the type of move as derived from the cluster analysis. the base outcome is no change in residence from one survey year to the next. the regression results are summarised as average marginal effects. conditional on the observed predictors in the model, they depict the average difference in the predicted probability of moving with respect to the reference category. the effects are multiplied by 100 and interpreted as percentage point changes. stata 14.0 is used for the analysis. 3.3 descriptive statistics figure 2 displays the migration propensity over age for germany between 2001 and 2013, based on weighted soep data. offi cial german migration statistics are within the confi dence interval of migration rates derived from the soep sample. the distribution replicates earlier fi ndings of life course migration patterns in other countries (rogers 1988; clark/onaka 1983; yee/van arsdol 1977). in particular, early-life migration has often been explained by family moves toward more spacious housing, while moves after adolescence are mostly associated with educational and lifestyle choices. residential changes in the 30s and 40s are typically related to family formation and career aspirations, while care needs often trigger moves at later stages in 1 for offi cial statistics on moves over german municipalities by age and gender in 2014 see: http://www.bib-demografi e.de/en/facts_figures/internal_migration/figures/a_10_03_wanderungshaeufi gkeit_gemeindegrenzen_alter_geschl_d_2014.html?nn=3215792 later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 11 life (mulder/hooimeijer 1999). retirement moves seem to occur not exclusively at the offi cial retirement age of 65, but also several years before and after. early retirement schemes and diffi culties to re-enter the labour market for unemployed elderly people have led to an observed retirement age of 61 in 2010 (drv 2015). on the other hand, pensioners might wait for their spouse to retire before moving (sander/ bell 2014). later life migration for germany is highest for the age groups 50-59 and 80+ (angelini/laferrere 2012). table 1 summarises the household variables used in the regression analysis for stayers and movers between two survey years over the observed period from 2001 to 2013. means and shares are widely comparable between the two groups while differences exist in the partnership, housing and health domain. almost half the stayers are married for more than two years; this is only the case for 36 percent of movers. movers are 10 percentage points more likely to be divorced, 1 percentage points more likely to be recently separated, and 2 percentage points more likely to be recently widowed. regarding the housing domain, movers are more likely to be tenants than owners before they move, and have typically spent fewer years in their previous residence. on average, movers are signifi cantly younger according to a two-sided t-test (not shown) and have a higher degree of disability than stayers. this is independent of the cross-sectional year chosen for stayers and even applies if only movers in 2007 (n=141) are considered. fig. 2: residential changes over life-span for germany 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0 25 50 75 100 age d en si ty notes: generalised additive model with cubic smoothing of residential changes over age source: own calculation, based on soep household members 2001-2013 (399,265 observations, personand year-specifi c soep weights applied) • tim winke12 tab. 1: descriptive statistics stayers movers min max mean (sd) or shares mean (sd) or shares age 55 103 69.67 (9.17) 67.70 (9.79) migration background 0 1 0.19 0.24 married 0 1 0.49 0.36 married in past two years 0 1 0.01 0.01 divorced 0 1 0.14 0.24 divorced in past two years 0 1 0.01 0.02 widowed 0 1 0.25 0.22 widowed in past two years 0 1 0.03 0.05 unmarried 0 1 0.08 0.09 hours spent with childcare 0 24 0.23 (1.10) 0.27 (1.21) never had children 0 1 0.14 0.13 annual household income (euro) 5 2,041,514 20,576 (14,480) 19,547 (15,220) years of education 7 18 11.84 (2.63) 11.66 (2.62) years of unemployment 0 37 0.68 (1.97) 1.01 (2.46) exit workforce 0 1 0.62 0.55 exit workforce in past two years 0 1 0.05 0.08 domicile owner prev year 0 1 0.53 0.20 years lived in residence 0 96 25.48 (18.40) 16.73 (16.02) disability degree 0 100 20.24 (32.42) 23.62 (34.68) perceived health 0 10 5.29 (2.26) 5.22 (2.41) n (households) 10,205 1,361 n (household-years) 62,560 1,654 n (moves) 0 1,654 notes: the entire data set comprises 10,267 soep households and 64,214 observations. for continuous variables, means (standard deviations) are displayed. for binary variables, shares are displayed with the reference category ‘does not apply’ (=0). the columns stayers and movers provide descriptive statistics for households who did (not) change their residence from one year to the next between 2001 and 2013. source: own calculation, based on soep households 2001-2013 aged 55 or older (householdand year-specifi c weights applied) later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 13 4 results cluster analysis table 2 summarises the results of the nmf cluster analysis. the resulting clusters reveal a comprehensive picture on how later life moves are structured in terms of their motivation, distance and destination. it shows the variables which are most associated with the respective clusters. as described in section 3.2, covariates with high mixture effect coeffi cients are more relevant in the formation of a cluster than those with lower coeffi cients. the standardised mixture effect coeffi cient range from 0 to 1. in table 2 they are grouped into high (1 to 0.8), medium (0.8 to 0.6) and low coeffi cient levels (0.6 to 0.4). four clusters are suggested by the cophenetic correlation coeffi cient, which measures the reproducibility of the cluster assignment. the cophenetic correlation coeffi cients when three to seven clusters are chosen are 0.859; 0.873; 0.867; 0.867 and 0.859. brunet et al. (2004) recommend selecting the number of clusters before the cophenetic coeffi cient begins to fall. this is the case when moving from four to fi ve clusters. residential improvement moves are defi ned by several objective and subjective measures that indicate an upgrade in a household’s housing satisfaction. for example, the previous home could have been evaluated as too small or insuffi ciently equipped, while the new home is larger in size and located in a more suitable neighbourhood. moves are related to inheritance and home-ownership. the common moving distance of this cluster is 2 to 50 km. family moves are defi ned by moving for family reasons, often closer to children, grandchildren or parents. they are long-distant in nature and correspond to a change in regional structure either from rural to urban or from urban to rural. they also include moves back to one’s childhood hometown. residential adaptation moves are defi ned as short-distance moves of less than 2 km, often within urban neighbourhoods with high migrant shares. they are commonly directed towards social housing or other rental apartments as part of a series of moves. moves due to a notice given by the landlord also fall in this cluster. care moves are mainly directed to care facilities or to housing of smaller size accessible to people with disabilities or the elderly. they usually lead to a perceived downgrade in the relation to neighbours and in the satisfaction with the surrounding. care moves are associated with the former residence being too large or too expensive. figure 3 visualises the share of each moving type among all later life moves across age. while residential improvement and family moves contribute more than 50 percent of all later life moves at younger ages, they play a decreasing role at older ages. at age 90, more than half of all residential changes are care moves. family moves peak at around age 65, the offi cial retirement age in germany. family moves and residential adaptation moves peak around age 80. while the share of family moves decreases after age 65, residential adaptation moves gain in importance. their share is highest between age 75 and 80 with around one fourth of all later life moves. • tim winke14 tab. 2: results of the nmf clustering algorithm for four clusters mixture effect co-effi cients residential improvement moves family move residential adaptation move care move with 426 associated moves with 398 associated moves with 471 associated moves with 359 associated moves high (0.8;1] increase in neighbourhood status; increase in living space; moved for job reasons; previous housing too small; previous location not appealing; previous surrounding not appealing; moved because of an inheritance long distance move (>50km); from rural to urban region; from urban to rural region; move back to place of childhood; move to children; move to grandchildren; move to parents; moved for family reasons short distance move (<2km); from urban to urban region; multiple moves within the past two years; notice given by landlord perceived downgrade in surrounding; perceived downgrade in relation to neighbours; decrease in living space; move to care facility; previous housing too expensive; previous housing too big medium (0.6;0.8] move to ownership; previous housing had low standard previous neighbourhood had a high migrant share; moved to social housing housing accessible to elderly or disabled people needed low (0.4;0.6] medium distance move (2-50 km); from rural to rural region; perceived upgrade in surrounding; perceived upgrade in relation to neighbours move to apartment (vs. house) from rural to rural region notes: clustering results of 1,654 later life moves between 2001 and 2013 with 100 nmf iterations and four clusters (ranks) specifi ed ex-ante. covariates with high mixture effect coeffi cients are more relevant in defi ning a cluster. all variables are binary with reference category ‘does not apply’ (=0). source: own calculation, based on soep households 2001-2013 aged 55 or older at the year of a residential move (n=1,654, unweighted) later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 15 regression analysis the regression results in table 3 reveal general determinants for later life moves. in line with earlier fi ndings, home-owners are less likely to change residence (tatsiramos 2006). the effect is highly signifi cant and predicts a decrease in moving probability by 0.50 to 1.24 percentage points, holding other predictors constant. spending more years in the same residence also reduces the probability of moving. households who moved in the past seem more likely to move in the future. further drivers include recent widowhood and recent divorce, which increase the probability signifi cantly for almost all types of moves. residential improvement moves show no signifi cant effect for partnership status, apart from the reference group of being married. they further relate to households at a younger age and to healthier stages in their later life. this corresponds to the description of amenity moves by litwak and longino (1987). in contrast, residential fig. 3: distribution of type of later life moves over age 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 age of oldest household member p ro po rti on o f l at er −l ife m ov es residential improvement move family move residential adaptation move care move notes: proportion of move types among all later life moves. residential moves are classifi ed according to their strongest association with one of the derived clusters: residential improvement, family, residential adaptation and care. see table 2. source: own calculation, based on soep households 2001-2013 aged 55 or older at the year of a residential move (n=1,654, unweighted) • tim winke16 tab. 3: multinomial logistic regression model residential improvement move family move residential adaptation move care move age -0.037*** -0.020*** -0.006 0.009+ migration background 0.001 -0.077 0.200* 0.004 married (ref.) married in past two years 0.570 0.442 -0.183 0.682 divorced 0.125 0.288** 0.136 0.540*** divorced in past two years 0.716 1.269* 0.874+ 0.954+ widowed -0.057 0.361** -0.002 0.466*** widowed in past two years 0.313 0.527* 0.472+ 1.502*** unmarried 0.140 0.188 0.193 0.487* hours spent with childcare -0.019 0.058*** -0.008 0.016 never had children 0.023 -0.312*** -0.105 -0.142 household income 0.000 0.000*** 0.000 -0.000 years of education 0.007 0.010 -0.031* 0.003 periods of unemployment -0.039* -0.006 0.005 0.009 exit workforce (ref. employed) 0.159 0.066 -0.121 -0.216* exit workforce in past two years 0.256+ 0.479** 0.230 -0.051 home-owner prev year -0.833*** -0.516*** -1.243*** -0.498*** years in residence prev year -0.013*** -0.010*** -0.015*** -0.005* disability degree 0.001 0.002* -0.000 0.003*** perceived health 0.016 -0.001 -0.007 -0.031* lr chi 1474.35*** mcfadden’s adj r2 0.074 n (observations) 64,214 n (moves) 1,654 notes: average marginal effects (*100) of multinomial logistic model with households as the primary survey unit. the base outcome is no residential move between two survey years. residential moves are classifi ed according to their strongest association with one of the derived clusters: residential improvement, family, residential adaptation and care. post-estimations are computed without weights applied. intercept and indicator variables which capture missing values enter the regressions but are not shown here. the data set comprises 10,267 soep households and 64,214 observations. + p<0.1, * p<0.5, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: own calculation based on soep households 2001-2013 aged 55 or older (64,214 observations, householdand year-specifi c weights applied) later life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 17 improvement moves are not long distance in nature, and are primarily supposed to improve the environmental surrounding. with residential improvement moves, people aim at housing and neighbourhood upgrades within the same region. family moves seem to incorporate two lines of motivation. on the one hand, they are a reaction to recent partnership disruption and health decline. widowhood as a driver for moving closer to one’s family has been suggested by litwak and longino (1987). according to the three-stage model, comfort moves are related to initial health problems of elderly people who have lost their partner. in the regression model, this can be confi rmed, as widowhood and the degree of disability increase the likelihood for family moves signifi cantly. on the other hand, family moves on the other hand, family moves are positively related to a recent exit from the workforce andare positively related to a recent exit from the workforce and to hours spent with childcare. this suggests that planned retirement moves are related to the intention to spend more time with. the importance of intergenerational proximity has been highlighted in previous studies (van der pers et al. 2014; michielin et al. 2008; lundholm 2015). postponed fertility, extended longevity and larger distances between adults and their parents might have led to new moving patterns. for the netherlands, smits et al. (2010) found that care needs of grandchildren increase the chance of grandparents moving closer. residential adaptation moves are barely affected by long-term singlehood and only weakly signifi cant for recent partnership changes. they are positively related to having a migration background, as well as a lower level of education. households related to residential adaption moves are the most disadvantaged group in terms of their average level of income, education and unemployment experience (not shown). earlier research found that they are also the most susceptible groups for (urban) housing stress related to fi nding apartments, gaining access to social housing, as well as dependence on social welfare (gestring et al. 2006; bosch et al. 2010). for belgium, smetcoren et al. (2015) argue that voluntary and involuntary moves are bound to social inequalities. moving stressors are therefore more prevalent among low-income respondents in poor health, while high-income respondents and home-owners are pulled towards more attractive locations. the types of moves seem to be socially stratifi ed via education, income and employment stability in the past. while the latter factors increase the probability for residential improvement and family moves, education rather hampers residential adaptation moves.2 care moves are positively related to higher ages, furthermore being desabled and reporting lower levels of perceived health are the main factors associated with this type of move. they are further associated with being widowed and being divorced which adds to the high psychological toll preceding a move at very old ages found in earlier studies (choi et al. 2015). in such cases, health problems often interact with sudden changes in life (such as partnership losses) which require residential adjustments. 2 in a sensitivity analysis (not shown), recent income changes are added to the regression model. no signifi cant effect is estimated as income changes are likely captured by other variables, such as a recent exit from the workforce, widowhood or a divorce. • tim winke18 5 discussion the analysis reveals regularities in moving behaviour of elderly people which cannot easily be classifi ed according to age, health status or distant moves. in general, ageing in place is still the most common residential form in germany, as shown in figure 2. if moves are driven by pull factors, the results show that they mainly take place around retirement with the goal of upgrading a household’s housing situations (residential improvement moves) or being closer to children and grandchildren (family moves). residential improvement moves are classifi ed as remaining within the same region, which permits the maintenance of social networks (lundholm 2015). long distance moves are usually directed towards family members and are related to higher income and a recent retirement. for the german context, amenity-driven moves seem to encompass being close to children and grandchildren, as well as fulfi lling longer-term housing aspirations. a second aspect concerns the importance of linked lives. the concept of linked lives highlights the synchronisation of life trajectories across partners and family members (elder 2001). trends towards more liberal gender roles in partnerships and an increased female labour force participation make childcare more dependent on external facilities (simonson et al. 2011). earlier research suggests that moving closer to adult children is more likely among elderly parents (lundholm 2015) in the case of a recent partnership change or childbirth (michielin et al. 2008). this is in line with the fi ndings of this study. grandparents may also be willing to provide additional support when employment, income or housing conditions are problematic. social needs seem to run in two directions, which corresponds to the interpretation of elderly people as both care-givers and care-receivers (smits 2010). a third major fi nding of the analysis are that partnership disruptions can be both triggers and conditions for later life moves. partnership breakups and widowhood are critical life events which trigger housing and location changes (bonnet et al. 2010). their residential implications for a household depend on the socio-economic situation, a household’s moving history and the existence of a functional family network. for example, care moves and residential adaptation moves often seem involuntary. households express lower housing and neighbourhood satisfaction after a care move and after tenancy cancellations by their landlords. in terms of policy recommendations, the results point towards providing adequate long-term care at home, particularly in rural areas (rudel et al. 2015) as well as ensuring housing security in urban areas. there are several weaknesses of the analysis which should be discussed. one point of concern is the construction of variables on the distance to children, grandchildren and parents, which are asked every 5 years starting in 1990. missing values between two survey years are imputed taking the last valid value in case no move took place and the next valid value in case a move took place. this results in a conservative estimation of the importance of having (grand)children nearby as the measure can remain 0 even if (grand)children are already around. the soep does not track how much time german households spend in other countries during a year if they are still registered in germany. for the european conlater life moves and movers in germany: an expanded typology • 19 text, the role of amenity-rich retirement destinations such as the mediterranean sea has been discussed (breuer 2001). second homes and lower living expenses give people the opportunity of alternating between houses. elderly people can spend several months at retirement destinations and stay at the place of residence in germany for the remaining months of the year. future research should assess how widespread seasonal residential changes are and if they replace one-time amenity moves within the european context. for this study, moves to foreign countries are not considered, as such households are not part of the survey. in addition to the 1,654 later life moves considered in this study, 96 households moved to foreign countries, with 79 of them having a migration background. future research should focus on whether the life course approach on mobility and the synchronisation of life trajectories for elderly movers also apply to return migration by former immigrants. 6 conclusion later life migration is a comprehensive term which is often sub-classifi ed according to age, marital status or distance moved. this study argues that such divisions do not fully account for today’s patterns of later life migration. a new typology of elderly moves is developed based on observed patterns of move characteristics. four types are suggested by the results: residential improvement, family, residential adaptation and care moves. the life course paradigm on mobility facilitates an understanding of the observed patterns. it emphasizes the role of linked lives and the interdependence of life trajectories in the decision to move. more concretely, it embeds the residential choice in a wider social, historical and spatial context. this is valuable when interpreting the effects of partnership disruptions and family ties. divorced households make up a signifi cant share of later life movers, which relates to a cultural shift towards more independence in the choice of partners. however, partnership disruptions are socially stratifi ed, with diverging effects on residential satisfaction and stability. the fi ndings reveal that family moves towards children are not necessarily health-driven but can also be associated with the existence of grandchildren. improvements in healthy longevity, urbanisation and increased female labour force participation have led to a situation in which grandparents move closer to their children to act as care-givers, rather than to receive care. the paradigm’s fl exibility comes at a cost of not providing clear narratives regarding how changes in the life course translate into residential behaviour. the twofold approach of clustering and regression techniques in the present study derives frequent patterns in later life moves and links them to life course characteristics of households. this helps to reduce the complexity of potential moving behaviour and provides a valuable direction for future research on later life migration. • tim winke20 references amrhein, ludwig 2004: der entstrukturierte lebenslauf? zur vision einer “altersintegrierten” gesellschaft. in: journal of social policy research 50,1-2: 147-169. 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kibele, eva u.b.; mulder, clara h. 2014: intergenerational proximity and the residential relocation of older people to care institutions and elsewhere. in: ageing & society 35,7: 1429-1456 [doi: 10.1017/s0144686x14000300]. wang, yu-xiong; zhang, yu-jin 2013: nonnegative matrix factorization: a comprehensive review. in: ieee transactions on knowledge and data engineering 25,6: 13361353 [doi: 10.1109/tkde.2012.51]. yee, william; van arsdol, maurice d. 1977: residential mobility, age, and the life cycle. in: journal of gerontology 32,2: 211-221. date of submission: 15.12.2015 date of acceptance: 19.12.2016 tim winke (). humboldt-universität zu berlin, graduate school of social sciences (bgss). berlin, germany. e-mail: tim.winke@hu-berlin.de url: https://www.bgss.hu-berlin.de/de/bgss/people/students/tim_winke published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) what about the urban periphery? the effects of the urban renaissance in the mersey belt what about the urban periphery? the effects of the urban renaissance in the mersey belt* sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes abstract: cities in the uk have undergone an urban renaissance since the late 1990s, when new labour started an initiative of the same name. however, the effects of urban growth have been limited mainly to the cores of second-tier cities, creating new challenges in the urban fringe of city regions and for cities outside the major agglomerations. in this article, we examine the process of reurbanisation in the manchester and liverpool city regions and to take a closer look at on one of the local authorities in the fringe of these city regions which is trying to grapple with the challenges posed by a new urban age. we fi nd increasing evidence that places in the spatial in-between of urban regions face particular challenges as a result of the urban renaissance, with the already problematic areas requiring increased attention to avoid structural urban problems similar to that of the inner urban areas in the past. keywords: urban renaissance · reurbanisation · urban periphery · city regions · small and medium towns 1 introduction certainly since the start of the new millennium, evidence has amassed that the economic resurgence of cities increasingly translates into demographic growth, even in those cities most heavily affected by the change towards post-industrial urban economies. this process is commonly referred to as reurbanisation. already in the mid-2000s a major study in the uk suggested “bright demographic prospects for urban england, especially its larger cities” (parkinson et al. 2006: vol. 2, 111). this outlook was confi rmed in the 2011 census, showing that cities have indeed regained population over the previous decade, and in many cases substantially. more imporcomparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 219-244 (date of release: 24.11.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-14en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-14en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on reurbanisation. • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes220 tantly, growth is not restricted to booming london and the wider southeast, but has also reached second-tier cities. for instance, manchester grew by almost 20 percent over the period 2001-2011 (rae 2013). however, while all of britain’s large urban areas have gained population, not all of them have grown as strongly as the uk population (mccann 2016: 125). similar evidence can be found for germany, the netherlands and switzerland (brake/herfert 2012; rérat 2012; van gent/musterd 2016). however, the literature has by and large focussed on the pronounced rebirth of the urban core; the suburban hinterland is mainly left out of the equation (salet et al. 2015; savini 2014). many authors have pointed to the dark side of the urban renaissance, criticising its strong focus on the middle-class and offi ces (porter/shaw 2009). whether such critique is fully-grounded in an appreciation of the longer-term trajectories of growth and decline of certain places (shaw/sykes 2015), and the achievement for public policy and investment that variants of the “urban renaissance” in different international contexts represent, is perhaps a moot point. another feature of such “critical” literature is that, whilst it extensively explores such “social ills” as the proliferation of chain-owned coffee shops, city centre retail development, and “gentrifi cation” of abandoned industrial areas, sites and buildings through the installation of new “profi t-seeking” uses, it is largely silent on the wider transformation of the periphery of urban regions where most people live. meanwhile, the literature on shrinking cities has been mainly concerned with the decline of urban regions as a result of deindustrialisation and suburbanisation (e.g. wiechmann/pallagst 2012; couch et al. 2005) and more recently their re-growth (e.g. rink et al. 2012), but only occasionally addresses the role of suburbs and small towns within urban areas (e.g. albecker/fol 2014; audirac et al. 2012; blanco et al. 2009). the periphery has been mainly considered from the perspective of urban sprawl (e.g. siedentop/fina 2012) and from discussing the role of peri-urban areas and the rural-urban fringe (e.g. gallent et al. 2006; hoggart 2005). in this paper, we follow the plea of soja (2015) to take a regional perspective on urban issues. so far, what is largely lacking from the parallel tracks of investigation outlined above, are accounts that refl ect on how dynamic processes of change in urban cores and those in the “edge territories” of urban regions might be related and problematized. taken together with the observed phenomenon of reurbanisation, we might wonder how reurbanisation effects play out. put simply the questions might be: what happens with the urban periphery when growth is very strong in the centre? and what policy options do places in the periphery have in relation to reurbanisation? the mersey belt, consisting of the manchester and liverpool city regions and adjacent areas, forms an excellent study ground to investigate the process mentioned above as both cities have regrown after decades of urban decline. half of the population growth of greater manchester occurred within manchester. similarly, liverpool was the main driver of population growth of the city region, mainly because the other local authorities had very low growth rates or even declining populations. we will review the policy responses of one of those towns in the spatial in-between of the manchester and liverpool city-regions, the former mining town of st. helens. what about the urban periphery? • 221 in the remainder of the article, we cast light on the changing periphery in urban regions over the past decades. we then concentrate on the manchester and liverpool city regions and the changes that have taken place since the turn of the millennium in terms of demographic, economic and social indicators. in the next section, we elaborate on the challenging situation of a local authority in the urban fringe and how it is trying to fi nd its role in the context of two big neighbours. the paper calls for renewed attention to the role of the urban fringe in an urban age and refl ects on the policy implications for places in the fringe. 2 the changing relationship between centre and periphery in urban regions the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a fundamental restructuring of urban form, resulting in the emergence of polycentric urban regions (champion 2001; hall/pain 2006). many scholars have attempted to conceptualise the urbanisation process in developed countries as a cyclical process (for an overview see parr 2012). most contributions look at the functional urban region, distinguishing between a core city and a subordinate ring of dependent urban development. in the literature, we can distinguish two important dimensions in analysing urban development (parr 2012): the overall demographic development of the functional urban region (concentration/deconcentration) and the dynamics within the functional urban region (centralisation/decentralisation). van den berg et al. (1982) defi ne four stages of urban development: urbanisation, suburbanisation, counterurbanisation and reurbanisation, each distinguished into two sub-phases where centralisation and decentralisation is either relative (i.e. corresponding trend but different intensity) or absolute (i.e. diverging trends) (see table 1). parr (2012) has refi ned this model by introducing different growth rates instead of absolute population growth. for most of the second half of the twentieth century many cities in western europe and the us experienced centrifugal development patterns, fi rst benefi tting the suburbs and later resulting in counterurbanisation (berry 1980; champion 1989; fuguitt 1985). deindustrialisation and deconcentration resulted in population decline of most large cities, though the picture is far from being uniform (turok/ mykhnenko 2007). it is only towards the end of the century that we observed the resurgence of cities, not just economically but also demographically (cheshire 2006; turok/mykhnenko 2007). this demographic recovery was picked up as a possibility as the last stage of development by van den berg et al. (1982). according to their model, reurbanisation was thought to occur in a context of a declining functional urban region, but nowadays the term is used to denote a wider range of transformative processes in cities, often without reference to the functional urban region (for an overview, see rérat 2012). the model of van den berg et al. (1982) is important, not because of its predictive value or historical accuracy (for a critical appraisal, see rérat 2012 and parr 2012), but because they hinted at a new phase in the urbanisation cycle with a (relative) resurgence of the core city, at a time that was in the grip • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes222 of counterurbanisation and because their defi nition of reurbanisation emphasises the relationship between cities, suburbs and their wider hinterland. this urges us to defi ne our take on reurbanisation, in particular its substance and how it plays out geographically. substantially, the question is whether reurbanisation is purely about demographic growth for a defi ned area (e.g. rérat 2012) or whether it is about a qualitative change of the urban population and the built environment, particularly of the inner city (e.g. buzar et al. 2007; haase et al. 2010). demographic growth is an essential criterion, but much of the literature on urban economy and gentrifi cation suggests an ongoing “restratifi cation of metropolitan society” and “changing physical appearance of the city” (scott 2008: 62), which deserves our attention as one of the processes that sit within the reurbanisation family. geographically, there is a related debate whether reurbanisation refers to the core city (usually the administrative city) or inner urban areas. the debate about reurbanisation would probably not have had the same resonance if it were not for an increase in urbanity through the physical and demographic renaissance of the inner cities. for our purpose, both geographies are legitimate as they focus on different processes at different levels of scale. we expect to fi nd that centralisation tendencies, simply defi ned as higher growth rates (parr 2012), within a city and the city region take place in parallel. finally, the issue remains whether reurbanisation can be seen in isolation or whether it is related to wider developments in the city region. for van den berg et al. (1982), reurbanisation was clearly a process that would be detrimental to the urban ring. it is exactly this last issue that we feel receives insuffi cient attention in the academic debate. the current evidence base on the effects of reurbanisation on the urban periphery is rather thin and inconclusive. in switzerland, reurbanisation had no overall negative effects on suburban areas, but this was partly alleviated by a positive net migration and continued suburbanisation (rérat 2012). a german study found tab. 1: stages of urban development: population change stage of classifi cation type population characteristics development core ring fur1 i urbanisation 1 absolute centralisation ++ – + 2 relative centralisation ++ + +++ total ii suburbanisation 3 relative decentralisation + ++ +++ growth 4 absolute decentralisation – ++ + iii counter5 absolute centralisation – – + – urbanisation 6 relative centralisation – – – – – – total iv reurbanisation 7 absolute centralisation – – – – – – decline 8 relative centralisation + – – – 1 functional urban region note: the + and – signs indicate the strengths of population change. source: adapted from van den berg et al. 1982: 36 what about the urban periphery? • 223 that demographic shrinkage will particularly affect the housing markets in suburban areas, including single-family homes (berndgen-kaiser et al. 2014). there is an emerging body of literature focussing specifi cally on the suburbanisation of poverty. a study by kavanagh et al. (2016) on scottish cities discovered decentralisation trends, but only included data for the core city and thus neglected large parts of the urban area. dutch studies confi rm changing residential patterns within urban regions and an increasing tendency towards suburbanisation of low-income and migrant households, though described as an important undercurrent rather than a dominant trend (hochstenbach/musterd 2017; van gent/musterd 2016). however, there is emerging evidence and experience to warrant further investigation of what happens to the urban periphery in an era where many core cities experience reurbanisation. our concern is that smalland medium-sized towns in less prosperous urban regions might not benefi t signifi cantly from any overspill effects of reurbanisation and that established strategies attracting traditional suburban households, particularly young families, might not be suffi cient to address this issue. so far, this section has principally discussed observable trends and conceptualisations of change in city regions, but clearly spatial development does not occur in an institutional and policy vacuum. urban planning policies and strategies and given “planning cultures” can infl uence processes such as reurbanisation. recognising this, the following paragraphs consider the context within which change in the spatial in-between of the manchester and liverpool city regions takes place. it is worth remarking fi rst that urban containment has been a cornerstone of english planning since the 1940s as a reaction to an interwar period marked by rapid housing development and concern at the rate of urbanisation and “ribbon development” (williams-ellis 1928). in the decades after the 1947 town and country planning act, a number of substantive planning goals were pursued, including urban containment, protection of the countryside and urban renewal. the state also sought to channel and structure planned dispersal of what was termed “overspill” urban population into “new towns”. the suburban and quasi-rural imaginary promoted by british planning doctrine (taylor 1998) and housing developers in the twentieth century; the (perceived) obsolescence of many existing urban environments and their demolition; the planned rehousing of urban population beyond central city limits; and technological changes, such as the rise of private transport, also played their role in the hollowing out of core areas of cities (for an account of this process in liverpool see sykes et al. 2013). decentralisation of population on such a massive scale, contributed to a vicious circle of urban economic and physical decline, which encouraged more of those who could to leave the city. meanwhile, due to strict urban containment commuters were having to travel further from home to work (hall 1974). increasingly in the 1970s and into the 1980s, wider structural changes led to economic turbulence, mass unemployment and urban unrest in a number of major cities. in response, state spatial policy took on an increasingly urban focus. attention to inner-cities grew under margaret thatcher, who famously stated something needed to be done about “those inner cities” (jacobs 1988), but it was only under new labour after 1997 that the notion and in many respects reality of an “urban re• sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes224 naissance” gained real traction. under the conservatives, government-led urban regeneration policy emphasised property and “physically”-led project planning with arguably a lack of strategic overview at the urban scale. these governments also favoured liberal deregulation which contributed to continued outward dispersal of development activity, away from urban cores sustaining the processes of decentralisation described earlier by hall (1974). some researchers evoked the notion of a counterurbanisation cascade to describe the trend of urban-rural migration (champion 2005; mitchell 2004), and it was only in the 1990s that the pace of urban decline slowed down and in some cases even showed signs of a reverse. alarmed by the sustained decline of cities, the new labour government in 1997 set up an urban task force (1999) whose fi nal report towards an urban renaissance paved the way for new investment in britain’s cities (colomb 2007). this agenda was allied with investment in regenerating the big cities (especially the centres), “town centre fi rst” policies for retail development and targets to increase the amount of new housing built on “brownfi eld” land to push regeneration and limit sprawl (schulze bäing/wong 2012). this policy approach was seen generally as a success which has led to a “return of” and “return to” the city (rae 2013). in a culture which has often been characterised as having anti-urban traits (taylor 1998), there has been a slow shift of perceptions about cities, from them being viewed as a source and locus of problems to a recognition of their economic, social and cultural importance. from the mid-2000s, city-regions were increasingly conceived as drivers of change in a more knowledge-based economy, though british cities were still underperforming in comparison with those in many other european countries – an issue often linked by researchers to institutional design and the need to fi nd an appropriate scale at which to conceive and deliver development strategies (parkinson 2016). this led to renewed attention on “functional” urban areas and the favouring of city-regions constituted of groupings of local authorities representing a coherent area larger than the “local” to generate critical mass. in the 2010s, “combined authorities” with a varying suite of powers and responsibilities for the local areas within their jurisdiction have been created with the fi rst elections of metro mayors for these taking place 2017 (sykes/nurse 2017). this shift in emphasis and further institutionalisation of city regions generates new trade-offs between different areas within a city region, e.g. between the core city and secondary towns, peri-urban and rural areas. in greater manchester, the city-regional mayor campaign in 2017 become politicised around the issue of the emerging greater manchester spatial framework for the city region and its potential impacts on the city region’s greenbelt (fitzgerald 2017). in england, the transition through the stages of the model proposed by van den berg et al. (1982) has thus partly been driven by a policy framework and planning culture which has had both decentralising effects on urbanisation (new towns and later the development of mostly private, mostly suburban, housebuilding) and certain centralising/reurbanising effects (strong urban containment, and urban regeneration policy). the reurbanisation tendencies which have gathered pace in the fi rst decades of the 21st century, and new processes of rebuilding institutional capacity what about the urban periphery? • 225 to act at city regional scale thus, in many ways, mark a notable departure from the previous trends and experience outlined above, but they are not unproblematic raising issues such as: • does this agenda privilege the largest cities and city regions at the expense of development beyond these?; • how can shared agendas and solidarities be established between thriving urban cores and peripheries?; • will the “devolution/decentralisation” of powers by the state be accompanied by adequate resourcing?; • how will political processes work and consensus be built across new, or strengthened metropolitan territories?; will we witness rising political confl icts in the core-periphery relationship?; and, • what happens to places on the peripheries, or those which lie on the edge of or even outside the ambit of such new territorial groupings? it is to the consideration of one such area located between the city regions of liverpool and greater manchester that the paper now turns. 3 data and methods the research combines a quantitative approach displaying regional spatial trends in the mersey belt with a qualitative approach analysing the policy options for a specifi c local authority in the spatial in-between of an urban region and how it addresses these spatial trends in a context of an urban renaissance. the article looks at changes in the spatial distribution of population, jobs and deprivation to assess the implications of reurbanisation across the manchester and liverpool city regions in the north west of england since the beginning of the millennium. measuring change is not easy as many indicators refl ect only a specifi c moment in time, while being highly volatile and susceptible to external factors. yet, starting with the early 2000s makes sense as for most cities in the uk the 2001 census marked a turning point after decades of sustained population decline (parkinson et al. 2006). due to data availability, it is not possible to choose the same time period for each indicator, unless we want to rely on relatively dated census records of 2011. the following indicators have been used: • small area population estimates 2002 and 2015 for middle layer super output areas; • workplace population based on the national statistics socio-economic classifi cation (ns-sec) 2001 and 2011 for middle layer super output areas; • index of multiple deprivation 2004 and 2015. there are limitations regarding data availability for spatial units and moments in time. the census of population is only held every decade and the last one already dates from 2011. therefore, we have used mid-year population estimates instead of census records. in addition, for manchester a signifi cant undercount in the 2001 • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes226 census has been reported (ons 2004; simpson 2007). data has been collated for super output areas, which are comparable in population size. middle layer super output areas (msoa) have a population range of 5,000-15,000, which makes them suffi ciently abstract as they are not distorted by small-scale change, while providing suffi cient level of detail. the index of multiple deprivation has been specifi cally designed to measure deprivation at small-area level and therefore uses lower level super output areas, which have a population range of 1,000-3,000 (noble et al. 2006). while stability of the census geography has been a priority, population dynamics required the modifi cation of boundaries. most output geographies have simply been split or merged, depending on the direction of population change. this poses a minor challenge to calculate changes when the geographical unit has changed and data refl ecting the new boundaries has not been released. fortunately, only a small percentage of areas are affected by boundary changes; values have been manually calculated, refl ecting the combined input values in the case of a merger or using the combined output values in the case of a boundary split. boundary splits tend to be concentrated in the inner-city areas, while mergers occurred more often in the urban fringe. the policy case study of st helens is based on fi ndings from the pure hubs project which involved two student planning projects focussing on st helens in 2013 and 2014, a two-day workshop with st helens council in 2013 and two follow-up interviews in 2014 and 2015 with the development plans manager and the countryside development offi cer of st helens council to explore in more detail the current situation and future development prospects of st helens in its wider regional context. in addition, the st helens case study is based on the analysis of policy documents, in particular a close reading of st helen’s local plan documents. 4 manchester, liverpool and the spatial in-between manchester and liverpool are the two principal cities in the north west of england with a combined population in the conurbation of more than 5 million. despite having two strong urban centres, the mersey belt is characterised by a polycentric urban structure with many sub-centres, notably the former new town of warrington. administratively the region is divided into three sub-regions since the abolition of regional structures in 2010. greater manchester and liverpool city region both have combined authority status, including a metro mayor granting them powers amongst others in the fi eld of transport and strategic planning (nurse et al. 2017). warrington, although having strong functional linkages with both city regions, belongs to neither of those and forms a partnership with cheshire. nevertheless, it makes sense to look at them together as their urban areas are strongly interwoven (green 2008) and the reframing of the manchester and liverpool city-regions as atlantic gateway is just the latest of a series of attempts to bring the two cities together (dembski 2015). both manchester and liverpool have been what is generally considered a shrinking city (couch/cocks 2013; oswalt 2005). initially, there were internal movements from the cities into the suburbs (suburbanisation), but from the what about the urban periphery? • 227 fi g . 1 : u su al r es id en t p o p ul at io n in t h e m er se y b el t, 2 00 220 15 (b as ed o n sm al l a re a p o p ul at io n es tim at es ) • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes228 late 1970s onwards, the city regions as a whole declined (counterurbanisation) (dorling/atkins 1995), mirroring the stages of urban development. so, what happened in the northwest in the age of the urban renaissance? the mersey belt provides clear evidence of reurbanisation, with the strongest population growth in the core cities and relatively stronger growth in the urban centres (fig. 1). both core cities have been clearly the drivers of population growth in their respective city regions, with manchester being one of the fastest growing cities in the uk (rae 2013). the position of manchester as the economic powerhouse of the north is also mirrored in the much higher population growth of greater manchester compared to liverpool city region, where growth is on balance almost entirely confi ned to the core (tab. 2). the urban renaissance is most visible in the central areas of liverpool and manchester, the latter extending into parts of salford and trafford, which witnessed population growth close to or above 100 percent. both city centres have been targeted by a range of regeneration schemes from the 1980s onwards (harding et al. 2010; sykes et al. 2013), fi nally resulting in new residential developments in the almost deserted inner urban areas. this trend towards reurbanisation, although on a much smaller scale, can also be observed in the town centres, which tend to have higher population growth than the rest of the town. what we observe is a dual process of reurbanisation, with concentration at the scale of the city region and local authorities. despite the growth of smaller town centres, there is evidence that the periphery has comparatively lost out. this is evident in the very moderate population growth in the urban periphery of liverpool (+0.4 percent), but also in the much lower population growth of the manchester periphery (6.2 percent) compared with the core. taken into account that during the same period 2002-2015 the uk’s population had grown by almost 10 percent (5.7 percent in the northwest region), driven by a comtab. 2: population change in different parts of the mersey belt, 2002-2015 2002 2015 2002-2015 in % greater manchester 2,485,283 2,748,280 +9.2 manchester 428,221 530,292 +23.8 ring 2,094,993 2,225,870 +6.2 liverpool city region 1,485,289 1,524,558 +2.6 liverpool 443,117 478,580 +7.8 ring 1,041,505 1,045,978 +0.4 cheshire and warrington 867,620 917,004 +5.7 mersey belt 4,876,123 5,197,724 +6.6 northwest region 6,784,880 7,173,835 +5.7 united kingdom 59,365,677 65,110,034 +9.7 source: own calculations based on the ons mid-year population estimates for local authorities what about the urban periphery? • 229 fi g . 2 : w o rk p la ce p o p ul at io n in t h e m er se y b el t, 2 00 120 11 • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes230 paratively high fertility rate and immigration, we can see a blueand yellow-coloured ring of “underperforming” areas around both core cities. only a few areas outside town centres show high growth rates, usually indicating large-scale house building schemes, which in the case of warrington forms part of the legacy of the uk’s new towns policy. the reasons for their decline are varied. in particular in many suburban areas, this is simply the result of an ageing population and changing household structure, rather than the visible deterioration of a neighbourhood. many cities still struggle with the effects of deindustrialisation, particularly in the northern part of greater manchester (harding et al. 2010). in a few cases, rapid population decline is the result of clearances through urban renewal programmes (couch/cocks 2013; leather/nevin 2013; sykes et al. 2013). the suburban ring is far from being homogeneous and each colour on the map has its own story to tell. regarding the number of jobs, urban cores have fared well again, but job growth is more dispersed (fig. 2). first of all, the number of jobs has generally increased between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, mainly driven by population growth due to immigration (dustmann/frattini 2014). some caution is required as the 2011 census was still overshadowed by the aftermath of the 2008 fi nancial and economic crisis and the economy only started to pick up again (mccann 2016). the central urban areas had already by far the highest concentration of jobs and substantially expanded their employment base. areas with high job losses tend to be dominated by industrial activities, including the port of liverpool, and are usually located in the urban fringe. however, other areas in the urban fringe are economically very dynamic, not least the two airports, both at the southern edge of the administrative boundaries of manchester and liverpool respectively, and some of the strategic regional sites located in out-of-town locations such as the omega and birchwood business parks in warrington (wray 2011). yet it is not just absolute numbers, but also the types of jobs. the three-class national statistics socio-economic classifi cation (fig. 3) provides a simplifi ed labour market hierarchy of “higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations”, “intermediate occupations” and “routine and manual occupations” (ons 2010). focussing on the lower end of the labour market, we unsurprisingly fi nd that the city centres have a relatively low share of employees in routine and manual occupations. these tend to concentrate in less central areas, particularly in the less affl uent northern part of the mersey belt. the mersey belt is home to some of england’s most deprived communities, with severe pockets of deprivation in the two core cities but also in smaller towns such as birkenhead, kirkby and rochdale (fig. 4). the index of multiple deprivation (imd) is a composite index measuring deprivation for small areas and ranks all neighbourhoods (lsoa) in england from most to least deprived.1 it is important to stress that it is a measure of deprivation and is unsuitable to indicate prosperity. deprivation in 1 the index of multiple deprivation measures deprivation across seven domains (weightings in brackets): income deprivation (22.5 percent), employment deprivation (22.5 percent), education, skills and training deprivation (13.5 percent), health deprivation and disability (13.5 percent), crime (9.3 percent), barriers to housing and services (9.3 percent), and living environment deprivation (9.3 percent). a detailed technical report is available (dclg 2015). what about the urban periphery? • 231 fi g . 3 : w o rk p la ce p o p ul at io n w it h ro u tin e an d m an ua l o cc up at io n s in t h e m er se y b el t, 2 01 1 (in % ) • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes232 fi g . 4 : in d ex o f m ul tip le d ep ri va tio n 20 15 , m er se y b el t what about the urban periphery? • 233 this part of england tends to be concentrated in urban – as opposed to rural – areas. large parts of the cities and towns in the mersey belt are amongst the 20 percent of the most deprived areas in england. while structural deprivation is traditionally concentrated in the core cities, some of the most deprived neighbourhoods of england are also located in smaller towns in the urban fringe (e.g. rochdale). while the index of multiple deprivation is not designed to compare absolute levels of deprivation, it allows us to compare the relative position of areas between different editions (dclg 2015). comparing deprivation between 2004 and 2015 underlines the narrative of reurbanisation. the liverpool and manchester city regions have more areas that comparatively improved their position. while the city centres have never been the most deprived areas anyway, they have clearly improved their relative position through the advent of city-centre living and more up-market residential units (allen 2007). again, the effect of manchester’s city centre regeneration radiates further than liverpool’s, refl ecting the head start of urban regeneration in manchester (harding et al. 2004). nevertheless, both cities continue to have large areas with persistent deprivation, particularly to the north, which have seen only marginal improvements, if at all, despite being targeted repeatedly through various area-based regeneration initiatives (batey/brown 2007). again, we can notice a considerably higher number of areas that have stagnated or lost ground in the fringes of the city regions, particularly east of greater manchester (e.g. rochdale, oldham and stockport), but also places like ellesmere port and st. helens near liverpool. the real “losers” of the urban renaissance in the north west, however, can be found in places like blackpool, blackburn and burnley, which are just off the map. while the index of multiple deprivation provides no conclusive evidence – there is also the theoretical possibility that all neighbourhoods have improved, albeit at different degrees – suburban towns seem to face increasing challenges. having said this, despite all the reports on its buoyant economy, manchester is currently the local authority with the highest levels of deprivation. our brief analysis of key indicators confi rms the wider trend of a renaissance of the inner cities, but also points at emerging evidence that it might come at a cost of concentrating a new “problem zone” in working-class suburbs in the innerurban fringe of city-regions. it is here that we fi nd the unfavourable mix of population decline, loss of industrial employment and increasing deprivation. with few exceptions, the small and medium towns in the spatial in-between, i.e. neither city nor countryside, seem to suffer. this is not only a problem for the local authorities and neighbourhoods in question, but increasingly proves to be a national problem, as the recent vote to leave the european union has demonstrated: the vote for remain was generally stronger in the core cities and the prosperous hinterlands of london than in the suburbs and peripheral regions (los et al. 2017). we will now look closer into one of them: the metropolitan borough of st helens, 15 kilometres east of liverpool. • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes234 fi g . 5 : r el at iv e ch an g e o f p o si tio n o f a re as fo r th e in d ex o f m ul tip le d ep ri va tio n in t h e m er se y b el t, 2 00 420 15 n o te : o nl y sh o w in g ar ea s th at b el o ng ed t o t he 5 0 p er ce nt o f th e m o st d ep ri ve d a re as in 2 00 4 o r 20 15 . w he re a re as h av e b ee n sp lit , th e ch an ge in p o si tio n is b as ed o n th e o ri gi na l b as e va lu e; w he re a re as h av e b ee n m er ge d , t he c ha ng e is b as ed o n th e ar ith m et ic m ea n o f t he a re as th at h av e b ee n m er ge d . a lth o ug h no t co m p le te ly a cc ur at e, t he re w er e fe w m er ge d a re as w ith s ub st an tia lly d iff er en t ra nk in gs , an d w he re t hi s w as t he c as e th es e b el o ng ed to th e le as t d ep ri ve d a re as in e ng la nd . what about the urban periphery? • 235 5 st helens: finding its place in the periphery st helens, a local authority district located in the northern part of the mersey belt with a population of about 175,000, represents a typical case of a town on the urban periphery of a large conurbation. the district is named after its largest town, st. helens, but includes a number of smaller independent settlements. the borough’s area covers about 135 km2, of which more than half is open space, protected by greenbelt designation. st helens’ population grew rapidly following the industrial revolution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (a vision of britain through time 2017) owing to its location in the south lancashire coalfi eld, which enabled other heavy industries to thrive, most notably glass manufacturing. the decline of major industries, in particular manufacturing and coal mining, has created longlasting structural problems for the borough, facing high unemployment and population decline in the 1980s and 1990s. while the borough has successfully overcome the trend of population decline – since 2007 the population has been growing at a modest rate – it is still struggling with the aftermath of deindustrialisation. it is now facing the typical challenge of an industrial town in a major metropolitan area: how to regenerate and grow the borough with neither the major assets of a thriving city centre economy nor the attraction of the english countryside. the example of st helens illustrates how the problems are perceived and discusses the responses of the borough to these trends. the key challenge for st helens is to grow the economy and the population. while population decline was brought to a halt by 2007 (st helens council 2016), growth has been only very modest and primarily driven by a few large suburbanstyle housing developments following on from the designation of the area as midmersey growth point in 2008, a government-funded regeneration initiative. from a city-regional perspective, one could see this as reurbanisation, although considering the form and density of the new housing, it could also be described as an example of suburbanisation within the conurbation. in england’s major cities including liverpool and manchester, reurbanisation mainly took the form of high-density, compact developments in the form of blocks of fl ats in and around the city centres, complemented by in-fi ll developments on previously developed land (schulze bäing/wong 2012). towns like st helens also saw some development of fl ats in the centre in the early 2000s. but unlike in nearby liverpool or manchester, these blocks of fl ats are fairly low-priced, and being occupied by many short-term renters facing a big churn of population. in terms of demographic developments, ageing population and young people leaving have been identifi ed as a key challenge. hence, a particular concern for the borough is the cost of housing an elderly population. the loss of many manufacturing jobs also contributed to a growth of areas characterised by multiple deprivation, particularly in the neighbourhoods adjacent to the former industries. st helens is the 36th most deprived local authority district in england (total 326) and its relative position has deteriorated compared to previous editions of the index (st helens council 2016). some areas are among the worst 1 percent in the country and 24 percent of the population live within the 10 percent of the most deprived lsoas according to the imd 2015 (fig. 4). unlike some of the deprived areas • sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes236 in larger cities with a high share of transient populations, the more deprived areas in st helens are fairly stable, and it is therefore going to take a long time to change the patterns of deprivation. there is a legacy of derelict land which is unsuitable for the location preferences of new businesses and costly to redevelop for housing. the unemployment rate is above the regional and national average (st helens council 2016) and st helens is the local authority with the highest share of routine and manual occupations in the north west (2011 census). a key challenge is to connect employment sites with deprived areas, where car ownership rates are low. these problems are long recognised and st helens was targeted by several regeneration initiatives from the eu under the merseyside objective 1 programmes and under new labour’s drive for an urban renaissance in the 1990s and 2000s, but most of these initiatives focussed on the deprived inner neighbourhoods of england’s major cities as part of the so-called sustainable communities agenda (odpm 2003). this has led to a temporary improvement in deprivation levels, both for the whole borough and in some of the most deprived neighbourhoods between 2004 and 2007 (st helens council 2008). however, st helens was not included in the multi-million pound schemes of the housing market renewal (hmr) initiative addressing failed housing markets, as it did not face the same level of challenges of poor quality housing stock and dereliction to be found in some other cities and towns of northern england. a particular problem for st helens results from the increasing emphasis on city regions and its central, yet peripheral geographical location. this seemingly paradoxical situation stems from the fact that st helens is located at the interface of manchester and liverpool. st helens is part of the liverpool city region combined authority, while its eastern neighbour wigan is part of the greater manchester combined authority. before 2010, the regional spatial strategy for the north west of england provided a structure for local development, including housing designations. since the abolition of regional institutions following a change in government in 2010, intra-regional cooperation on planning matters has been a challenge. the revocation of the regional strategy means that there is no regional guidance, for instance regarding housing development. this was meant to be provided as part of the localism act 2011, which introduced the legal duty to cooperate in planning matters between planning authorities, but this only implies engagement in a constructive dialogue, not necessarily reaching agreement. st helens leads the housing theme within liverpool city region, but the relationship with the greater manchester area, including neighbouring wigan, has hardened since the start of the new city-regional combined authority for greater manchester. apart from bi-annual meetings as part of the legal duty to cooperate, there is little contact. warrington is not part of these new regional bodies. many of the local policy responses are quite conventional, aiming to drive growth. the borough is currently developing a new local plan, which proposes the release of greenbelt land for new residential and employment development. most neighbouring districts have undertaken their own greenbelt reviews, or are in the process of doing so, with a similar outcome. warrington, one of the third-generation new towns to the south, is one of the key competitors for inhabitants and investwhat about the urban periphery? • 237 ments with large sites under development. new residential development is seen as the primary driver of population growth in st helens, with a planned net completion rate of 570 dwellings per annum. the current core strategy, the key strategic local planning document, aims to focus on locations in the core settlement area of st helens, with particular focus on the more deprived neighbourhoods (st helens council 2012). in terms of future housing growth executive housing is seen as an option to attract more affl uent residents. these types of development are likely to be in the outer parts of the borough, increasing pressure on greenbelt land. on the one hand, st helens offers an affordable alternative for those looking for suburban housing locations in the middle of the mersey belt. on the other hand, many of those new residents may have jobs elsewhere and may prefer to use retail destinations in neighbouring towns or in suburban shopping centres. most of the new employment sites are located near the major motorways, focussing on so-called “big shed” developments such as warehouses for logistics. while there seems to be demand for these sites, the employment effects of such developments tend to be modest and at the lower end of the labour market. many of the brownfi eld sites that were relatively easy to develop have already been reused or converted, while others are regarded as unsuitable for the type of large-scale uses that are currently in demand (st helens council 2016). the ambition remains, however, to continue the pre-2010 national policy to deliver locally 60 percent of housing on previously developed land. one initiative which demonstrates the effort of places in the urban periphery like st helens to defi ne a new role within wider regional territories is the eu interreg ivb project pure hubs. this project aimed to capitalise on what is distinctive about the borough’s geographic context, in particular the fact that unlike the core urban areas of manchester and liverpool, large parts of urban st helens are in close proximity to open countryside. the project aimed at enhancing the social and economic relationships between urban communities and adjacent rural areas. within the pure hubs project st helens council worked with the university of liverpool to transform a rural-urban fringe area of open spaces, agricultural land, woodland and former industrial sites in the south of the town, into a community-supported leisure destination. this was branded as bold forest park, within the wider regional mersey forest initiative. the aim was for the area to be attractive to locals, but also tourists given its accessibility by rail and road from liverpool and manchester. an area action plan for the area referred to options including developing mountain bike tracks and horse riding trails (st helens council 2015). large parts of the area have been converted from former industrial use into open countryside as an investment in st helens’ natural capital, but the hope was also that developing a leisure destination would have additional positive social, economic and health effects for the relatively deprived southern neighbourhoods of st helens. initiatives such as the “path to employment” scheme by the environmental charity groundwork try to encourage households with a history of multiple generation unemployment in deprived areas to get out every day and work on a regular basis, by helping to develop and maintain the park. this also responds to health, another key concern in st helens, partly due to its past of heavy industries. another interest• sebastian dembski, andreas schulze bäing, olivier sykes238 ing scheme in st helens mentioned by the local planners is that a member of the borough’s planning team is a travel trainer who goes to areas working with unemployed people, showing them how to use public transport, cycling and walking to link to jobs, particularly in the growing omega development south of the borough in warrington. in this context, there are also plans for new cycle links through the area of bold forest park to this area of employment in warrington located south of st helens. the case study of st helens is emblematic for the challenges faced by numerous towns during the urban renaissance and an increasingly city-centric policy focus. it is a balancing act between the needs of communities experiencing long-term deprivation and raising the socio-economic profi le. like many other towns, st helens has severe pockets of deprivation, which could potentially benefi t from the new employment opportunities in logistics and similar sectors arising in the borough. at the same time, these developments reinforce an economic structure centred on routine and manual employment. attracting more affl uent households to the borough is clearly the intention of local planners, even if this might turn parts of the borough into dormitory settlements and not benefi t the wider local economy as jobs and retail destinations for these new residents might be outside of the borough. the bold forest park initiative in the south of the borough is one attempt to broaden the appeal of st helens, both for its existing and potential new residents, while potentially also providing the base for a new visitor economy. 6 what futures for the urban periphery? this article started with an appreciation of the urban renaissance of second-tier cities, in particular those in economically less prosperous regions that followed in the shadow of world cities such as london, and refl ected how the urban renaissance unfolds on the scale of the wider urban region. we have carried out a simple geospatial analysis using demographic, social and economic indicators to map changes in the mersey belt since the beginning of the millennium, which was marked by strong urban policies focussing on the regeneration of english cities, and explored the consequences for st helens, a typical town in the fringe of an urban region. there is strong evidence of reurbanisation in the mersey belt, but not if we apply the exact defi nition of spatial-cycle models such as by van den berg et al. (1982). both core cities experience higher growth rates than surrounding local authorities and within cities the highest growth rates are usually found in the centre. notwithstanding all defi nitional issues of core and ring based on relatively arbitrary municipal boundaries, reurbanisation manifests itself as a relative concentration of population in a context of growing functional urban regions in the mersey belt, which would concur with the idea of urbanisation. population data suggests that the reurbanisation phase was either very short or has been passed over. reurbanisation in this sense might simply denote that a new stage in the spatial cycle has begun, highlighting the social, cultural and economic importance of cities fuelling demographic growth. what about the urban periphery? • 239 yet, the analysis of the manchester and liverpool city-regions warns us that despite a general context of sustained population growth in the uk and a general climate of an urban renaissance, urban shrinkage and further socio-economic decline pose a serious risk for a large number of places in the urban periphery. this is not to say that deprivation is to disappear from cities, nor that all places in the urban periphery are affected in the same way. both core cities still rank amongst the most deprived local authorities in the country. similarly, the exclusiveness of certain rural communities in the vicinities of cities is protected by green belt, keeping urban development at bay and house prices high (sturzaker/mell 2016). many dormitory and industrial towns, however, are struggling as they lack the character and attractiveness of affl uent villages and the vibrancy of big cities. are these becoming the potential overspill locations for the “victims” of the gentrifi cation of inner cities (hochstenbach/musterd 2017)? what we have observed so far, is a process of levelling out the difference between core and ring, but with very marked socio-spatial differentiation within both the cities and the urban fringe. this article highlights the potential issues arising in the urban fringe as a downside of reurbanisation it corroborates fi ndings in other studies suggesting changes in the demographic composition of cities and their hinterland (e.g. hochstenbach/ musterd 2017; van gent/musterd 2016). it requires further and more detailed research on the effects of reurbanisation, for instance using census fl ow data to investigate the migration patterns of population according to their socio-economic and demographic properties. it also urges us to critically examine the policy options for places in the periphery like st helens and to investigate the institutional conditions under which policies are being pursued. the current trend of suburban housing estates and warehouse developments offering mainly routine jobs may exacerbate the already existing divide between cities and their hinterland, or between urban and non-urban lifestyles, potentially giving rise to 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https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/environmental-sciences/staff/sebastian-dembski/ https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/environmental-sciences/staff/olivier-sykes/ dr. andreas schulze bäing. school of environment, education and development, the university of manchester. united kingdom. e-mail: andreas.schulze.baing@manchester.ac.uk url: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/andreas.schulze.baing/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) decline, adaptation or transformation: new perspectives on demographic change in resource peripheries in australia and sweden decline, adaptation or transformation: new perspectives on demographic change in resource peripheries in australia and sweden dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld abstract: many sparsely populated resource peripheries in developed countries are perceived to suffer from periods of demographic decline due to loss of employment opportunities and services, youth out-migration and population ageing. while these trends tend to apply at broad regional scales and for particular time periods, diverse patterns of demographic change may be apparent if different spatial, temporal and social scales of analysis are taken into consideration. comparing the experiences of two case study regions in northern sweden and inland south australia, this paper proposes an alternative conceptual framework to the “discourse of decline”, which could be used to examine the nuances of demographic change within resource peripheries. the framework includes spatial scale considerations that contrast broader regional demographic patterns with the experiences of sub-regions and individual settlements. it also includes temporal scale aspects, examining demographic change over different time periods to understand the pace, duration and frequency of population growth and decline. the framework fi nally includes social unit considerations, emphasising that demographic change affects different social groups in different ways. the results of the case studies suggest that considering demographic change as adaptation or transformation rather than decline may be more useful for identifying new – and qualitatively different – demographic pathways that emerge over time. keywords: demographic decline · resource peripheries · population ageing · youth out-migration · female fl ight · mid north (australia) · western lapland (sweden) comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 379-406 (date of release: 14.12.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-11en2 • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld380 1 introduction this paper examines some of the nuances of demographic change in “resource peripheries” of developed countries, drawing on case studies from northern sweden and inland south australia. resource peripheries are rural or remote regions which are, or have traditionally been, economically dependent on large-scale exploitation of minimally processed natural resources (e.g. minerals, oil/gas, lumber, grain, fi sh, and livestock). they are distant from both markets and major centres of political and economic power, and are located beyond the rural-urban fringe zones (nelson/ mackinnon 2004). such resource peripheries are found (among other places) in the vast, sparsely populated areas of canada, the us, australia, and the arctic and subarctic parts of europe. they are known to be demographically dynamic, subject to rapid and dramatic changes in both population size and composition as a result of fl uctuating resource commodity markets and changing technologies and labour needs (carson et al. 2011). quantitative forecasting of demographic change in these areas is challenging because even apparently long term “trends” can be violated as a result of unforeseen or unforeseeable circumstances (taylor 2011a). understanding demographic dynamics in these sorts of regions requires attention to local detail and heterogeneity, fl uctuations and variability over time, and diversity of experiences among different population groups (koch/carson 2012; carson/koch 2013). specifi c local settlements may have experiences of demographic change that are dramatically different to even their nearest neighbours; population growth viewed over the long term may conceal periods of population loss; and different demographic or social groups may have very different experiences, as seen in the case of indigenous people in the remote north of australia (wilson 2009) or young women working in the forestry sector in northern canada (reed 2008). in other words, changing the spatial, temporal and social scales of analysis may reveal different but important insights into processes of demographic change. in recent decades, certain resource peripheries – typically those affected by resource depletion or a reduced demand for resources and labour – have become subjects of an academic and political “discourse of decline”. this discourse generalises demographic change as a process of persistent population loss, population ageing, and the out-migration of young adults, particularly young adult females. decline is seen as problematic for service delivery and the prospects for ongoing economic development, and declining regions are commonly urged to identify strategies to promote population growth and retain young people. this research focuses on two resource peripheries which have been subject to the “discourse of decline”: western lapland in northern sweden (fig. 1) and the mid north of south australia (fig. 2). some aspects of demographic development of these regions are examined from different spatial, temporal and social unit perspectives (koch/carson 2012) to provide alternative insights into the processes and consequences of demographic change. the paper does not intend to provide a detailed or comprehensive analysis of demographic change in the case study regions, rather it lays the foundation for such future analyses by alerting researchers to the need to consider the various decline, adaptation or transformation • 381 spatial, temporal and social scales at which demographic change can occur, and the risks of basing analysis on “accepted wisdom” that is often insensitive to spatial, temporal and social diversity. 2 background 2.1 demographic discourse in resource peripheries: a growth-decline dichotomy academic discussion of demographic change in resource peripheries tends to either focus on periods of population “growth” or periods of population “decline”, often in isolation from one another. growth is seen as economically benefi cial in the long term, although challenging in the short term when it comes to managing services and infrastructure. decline is seen as an inherent challenge to the economic viability and social strength of a region. it is now generally acknowledged that growth and decline are characteristics of resource cycles over time (barnes et al. 2001; tonts 2010), but there has been very little demographic research which considers the relationships between those characteristics (carson et al. 2016). typically, individual regions attract a label as either “growth” or “decline”, and that label helps determine how they are treated in continuing academic research and in regional development policy. this is apparent in parts of rural northern sweden, where the discourse of decline has dominated academic, political and public thinking since the middle of last century (enequist 1960; eriksson 2008; nilsson/ lundgren 2015). a similar discourse has emerged in parts of rural australia, where issues around rural restructuring, recurring periods of drought, and a change in the national economic focus from agriculture to mining has led to concerns about the demographic futures of many rural communities, with those on the fringes of arable land deemed most at risk (connell/dufty-jones 2014; argent et al. 2010; race et al. 2010). during the last mining boom in australia in the early 2000s, resource peripheries which were previously seen as problematic because of their relative isolation from major population centres and the poor living conditions of indigenous inhabitants, very quickly became growth regions with long term prospects for increased population and economic prosperity. this adoption of the growth perspective led to substantial investment in new infrastructure, and planning for urban expansion (e.g. brueckner et al. 2013; jones 2011; chapman et al. 2014). the unanticipated end to the mining boom in recent years, brought about by reduced global demand for raw minerals and the end of the construction phase for many of the larger mining projects, saw communities having to deal with new demographic realities which were not refl ected in plans and developments. collapsing house prices, underutilised social and physical infrastructure, empty shops and offi ce buildings, and the disappearance of industries which had been crowded out by the demands of mining have become common experiences in many previously labelled “growth” regions (carson/carson 2014; maxwell 2015). • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld382 the strategies now being proposed to address the negative impacts of population loss in recently booming regions mirror those that have long been proposed for regions seen to be subject to more persistent decline. these include transitioning from dependence on a single or small number of resource related industries to become more multi-functional and economically diverse, particularly through embracing attractive industries such as tourism and lifestyle migration (carson/carson 2014; eimermann 2015; lundmark 2006). numerous strategies have been proposed to aid in the recruitment and retention of economically active and/or structurally important residents such as entrepreneurs, health and education professionals, transactional workers (lawyers, accountants and the like) and young adults (vuin et al. 2016; kilpatrick et al. 2011; wilson et al. 2009). that there are few examples of declining resource peripheries achieving long term demographic “success” from these strategies suggests that our understanding of “decline” may be as limited as our understanding of “growth” (taylor et al. 2011). 2.2 the problematic problematisation of demographic decline in resource peripheries decline regions are typically characterised by a loss of young adults, population ageing, and the inability of particular sub-populations (such as retirees, women, indigenous people) to address economic and social challenges (taylor et al. 2011). out-migration of young adults or skilled workers from these regions is considered a negative impact, as is any proportional increase in older, indigenous or economically disengaged populations. this “demography of disadvantage” means that research and policy-making is directed by assumptions of negativity, making decline more obvious whilst also taking attention away from other demographic resilience processes such as adaptation and transformation. adaptation in this context refers to changes or re-organisations within a (demographic, social, economic) system in response to shocks or disturbances, whilst essentially retaining the same systemic structure, function or identity. transformation, on the other hand, leads to the emergence of new and functionally different systems (walker et al. 2004). out-migration of young adults, sometimes called “youth fl ight”, continues to be portrayed as the key marker of decline (stone/tyrrell 2012), despite clear evidence that young adults have always been highly mobile, and in net terms tend to leave rural areas whether they are declining or not (seyfrit et al. 2010). recently, particular alarm has been raised about the gendering of youth fl ight, with “female fl ight” depicted as a substantial new challenge for resource peripheries (martin 2009; rasmussen 2009). yet, recent research in northern sweden (johansson 2016) reminds us that the process of such rural female fl ight is much more complex, as out-migration of young females may coincide with in-migration of slightly older women, thus calling for a more nuanced analysis that considers youth fl ight and female fl ight at different social unit scales. another limitation in this fi eld of research is the lack of long-term comparisons. while contemporary patterns of migration are well considered in many youth fl ight and female fl ight studies, they are rarely compared to historical patterns, particularly those that may have existed during times of population decline, adaptation or transformation • 383 growth. as a result, there is the risk that “what is known” in rural demography is in fact only a small part of what could be known. literature on population ageing in resource peripheries also tends to problematisation. older people are seen as less economically active than younger people, more likely to be a burden on public services, and ultimately represent a demographic defi cit (by dying) with no prospects of demographic gain (through reproduction). however, research in rural scotland, for example, has shown how rural populations can be “refreshed” through in-migration of older people who are nonetheless younger than those who they replace (skerratt et al. 2014). ageing communities may become attractive to new older (retired or semi-retired) in-migrants who strengthen social and cultural capital in rural communities (vuin et al. 2016; stockdale/macleod 2013; thulemark 2011). older people may also provide economic stimulus through creating service and other jobs that would not otherwise exist (ryser/halseth 2013). population ageing, therefore, can accompany multi-faceted economic and demographic restructuring processes. another important aspect of problematisation is that decline in resource peripheries is typically considered a regional problem. resource peripheries remain relatively sparsely populated even during periods of growth, and public, private and third sector services continue to operate across large geographic areas. the threat of population loss, even if it occurs in specifi c locations, therefore becomes a regional threat (carson/carson 2014; robertson/blackwell 2016). the rural geography literature thus far has only poorly examined the ways in which regional demographic processes refl ect or are distinct from local processes (carson/koch 2013; koch/carson 2012). this is somewhat in contrast to urban geography, which is replete with studies on demographic change in different parts of cities, and their varying experiences of segregation, gentrifi cation and suburbanisation for example (grundström/ molina 2016). the subregional analyses which do exist focus primarily on the extent to which tourism and “attractive” industries compete with the resource “extractive” sectors for access to particular rural locations (farstad/rye 2013; hughes 2014; luke 2003). however, tourism locations are not necessarily the same as resource extractive locations (hedlund 2016), and tourism in remote areas may also experience booms and busts similar to resource industries (schmallegger/carson 2010). consequently, “favoured” locations in resource peripheries can change over time, and favoured and non-favoured locations will have vastly different demographic experiences. not all locations are expected to survive cycles of booms and busts from a demographic perspective, with demographically adaptable locations being most likely those which are able to be inhabited and re-inhabited as the cycles demand, even if this requires phases of change to the nature and composition of local populations. in sum, the dynamic and diverse nature of settlements in resource peripheries requires attention to a more detailed analysis of demographic change that can identify the nuanced experiences of changing population trajectories at the local level. generalising local trajectories at a broader regional level, over a short and fi xed period of time, and without considering the experiences of different sub-populations, runs the risk of painting a simplifi ed homogenous picture of demographic • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld384 change that does not refl ect the experienced realities of individual settlements. it may further conceal localised and small-scaled processes of adaptation and transformation, thus re-generating and perpetuating the general regional discourse of decline. this research will, thus, analyse indicators of demographic change in two case study resource peripheries by considering different temporal perspectives, the experiences of different social units and sub-populations, and the experiences of localities and regions at different spatial scales. 3 introducing the cases: western lapland (northern sweden) and the mid north (south australia) the two cases examined in this research are interesting examples of resource peripheries, with economies that have experienced some transition from minimally processed resources (minerals, wool and grain in the mid north, and minerals and timber in western lapland) to different forms of agriculture, and public and private services. their economic foundations, however, remain in the “staples” that have defi ned resource peripheries in the literature (cashin/mcdermott 2002; carson/carson 2011; carson et al. 2016; howlett/brownsey 2008; schedvin 1990). while some of the resources are “native” (primarily minerals), others (wool, much of the timber) have been imported to take advantage of the large land area available for resource production. the resources are minimally processed locally, and exported to distant markets. both regions have been subject to impacts of fl uctuations in demand and pricing – driven by these external markets. the two cases have been considered as declining areas in academic and grey literature for several decades. in sweden, professor erik bylund and colleagues were examining the “advance and retreat” of settlements in the north by the end of the 1950s (enequist 1960; bylund 1960). in much of the subsequent swedish literature, the focus has been primarily on “retreat”. in south australia, the work of dr peter smailes and professor graeme hugo has dominated rural geography research since the 1970s (e.g. smailes/hugo 1985; hugo/smailes 1992). smailes was particularly interested in the impact of changing farm and agricultural economies on the towns and villages of the mid north of south australia. hugo documented the changing patterns of human settlement across south australia, with a focus on the relationships between the metropolitan and rural areas. both were concerned about the demographic threats to the social and economic wellbeing of the mid north. the two regions offer interesting comparisons for the purpose of this paper, as they have a number of similarities when it comes to their demographic histories. they were both colonised quite late in their respective national processes. in sweden, the northwestern regions between jokkmokk in the north and vilhelmina in the south were the last to be settled by non-sami people, with major development beginning only during the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century. figure 1 shows the odlingsgränsen (literally the “cultivation border”) which was created in the mid-19th century as a division between non-sami settlement (to the east) and traditional sami economic activity (to the west) (weinstock 2013). a harsh decline, adaptation or transformation • 385 fig. 1: western lapland (sweden) case study region note: showing localities with populations of more than 50 persons in 2015; local government names are in capital letters source: own design • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld386 climate, poor soils and slow growing forest made the new human occupation of the north inherently fragile, and it remained dependent on political interest in colonising the north and continued international demand for northern forestry and mineral resources. in turn, these factors led to a period of rapid development in the early and mid-20th century with the construction of railways, roads, hydro-electric power stations, farming settlements and sawmills. the corresponding rise of the swedish social democracy movement in the mid-20th century meant that much of the social infrastructure and governance processes were developed as these projects reached their peak. by the 1960s, however, new construction projects were not so numerous, and the political interest in developing the north had begun to wane. additionally, industrialisation of the forestry sector reduced the need for locally resident labour and encouraged labour that did remain to reside in larger towns to reduce costs of transport (remröd et al. 1990). within the context of this history, the resident population of the region grew from around 15,000 people in 1880 to nearly 50,000 people in 1960. between 1960 and 1970, the region lost nearly one quarter of its population, and currently has just over 25,000 residents (statistics sweden, www.scb.se). south australia was only proclaimed as a british colony in 1836, some 50 years after the establishment of the new south wales colony at sydney. settlers pushed north from the capital city adelaide into the mid north throughout the mid-19th century, but many towns and villages were not established until the 1870s. there was substantial government interest in agricultural industries in the mid north, with settlers given land under favourable fi nancial conditions in return for promises to establish agricultural businesses and contribute to the construction of towns and villages. however, conditions for broad-acre grain farming were poor. figure 2 shows an approximate location of goyder’s line, which was declared in 1865 as a border between viable (to the south) and non-viable agricultural land (sheldrick 2013). the region’s distance from the coast and from the river murray further marginalised prospects for economic development through shortage of water and isolation from transport infrastructure. however, the region attracted substantial investment throughout the late 19th century as a result of a copper mining boom based at the town of burra. at various times, the burra mine was the largest mine of any kind in australia, and produced over one third of the world’s copper (evans/saunders 2015). mining stimulated investment in roads and railways, which in turn allowed the agricultural activities to thrive during a period of relatively high rainfall through the fi rst part of the 20th century. by the middle of the 20th century, various droughts, changes in world sheep and wool markets, the negative impacts of the world wars, and the continuing industrialisation and globalisation of farming heralded economic and demographic decline. within this context, the resident population of the mid north grew from about 18,000 people in the early 1870s to a peak of nearly 35,000 in the 1930s. population declined by nearly one fi fth by the mid-1950s, and there are currently around 20,000 residents (australian bureau of statistics, www.abs. gov.au). both western lapland and the mid north of south australia are distant from larger regional population centres, yet not so distant as to be considered beyond decline, adaptation or transformation • 387 fig. 2: mid north (australia) case study region note: showing localities with populations of more than 150 persons in 2011; local government names in capital letters source: own design • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld388 the reach of those centres. the mid north is within a few hours’ drive of metropolitan adelaide (currently approximately1.3 million residents), and western lapland is similarly distant from the coastal centres of umeå in västerbotten (approximately 120,000 residents) and luleå in norrbotten (population of approximately 75,000). as a result of this proximity, and the concentration of political and public services in these larger cities, there is no clear “regional capital” in either case. the largest town in the mid north is clare, with nearly 3,500 residents, and while clare has a bigger hospital and more schools than other towns, it is by no means a regional service centre. the case is similar in western lapland, with vilhelmina (population of approximately 3,700) being the only town of more than 3,000 residents. it is important to note that while these regions are proximate to larger population centres, they remain very distant from the markets for their resources, marking them clearly as “peripheries” for the purposes of this research. nevertheless, the regions internally have some heterogeneity when it comes to remoteness and accessibility. in australia, several indices have been developed to describe degrees of remoteness, including the recently described modifi ed monash model (mcgrail/humphreys 2009) which is used to determine aspects of health funding. the model includes seven “zones” of remoteness. the entire mid north region is classifi ed within zone 5 (essentially covering small rural towns and their hinterlands) of the modifi ed monash model, and zone 3 (“outer regional”) of the australian bureau of statistics remoteness areas classifi cation.1 there is no similar index used in sweden, although the entire western lapland region is within the northern periphery and arctic region as defi ned by the european commission. in general, the southern parts of the mid north are closer to adelaide and the city’s northern commuting belt, while the eastern parts of western lapland are closer to the larger population centres of northern sweden. both regions contain very large jurisdictional units. they include some of the spatially largest local government districts with the smallest populations (actual and per unit of land area) in their provinces. both regions are distant from major transport networks, particularly since the downgrading of railway networks over the past 20-30 years. though a limited number of major roads exists, these are not nationally signifi cant in terms of volumes of traffi c. air transport is very fragile in western lapland (there are two small commercial airports, both considered fi nancially at risk, with a third airport recently closed). there are no commercial air services to the mid north. neither region was particularly associated with the global mining boom of the fi rst decade of the 21st century. apart from some small-scale mining operation and exploration activity, both regions continue to have their economic foundations in other resource activities which underpinned their periods of growth – agriculture 1 this classifi cation draws on the accessibility/remoteness index of australia (aria+ and aria++), which is based on the road distance between populated localities and their nearest service centres. settlements in the southern part of the mid north (closer to adelaide) generally have a lower aria score (i.e. they are less remote) than settlements further north. decline, adaptation or transformation • 389 and pastoralism in the mid north, and forestry and hydropower generation in western lapland. hydropower developments have been particularly important in the municipalities of jokkmokk and storuman. the end of the main period of hydro development in jokkmokk in the 1970s-80s coincided with the planned closing down of several villages and workers camps that were located throughout the region (granström et al. 1994; hallin 2004). new economic developments have since taken place in both regions involving wind power generation and tourism. there is a small number of tourism focused resort developments in the high mountains in western lapland (e.g. hemavan-tärnaby in storuman municipality, or klimpfjäll and kittelfjäll in vilhelmina municipality), along with multiple smaller scale developments servicing both winter (husky farms, skiing and snowmobiling) and summer (camping and fi shing) tourism markets. the mid north has two well-developed tourism centres in clare (focusing on wineries) and burra (known for its mining heritage), and some smaller developments elsewhere focused on caravan and camping tourism. there are very important differences in the cultural landscapes of the regions. western lapland has a strong sami presence, with reindeer herding still an important cultural and economic activity, and non-reindeer herding sami also playing important roles in local, regional, national and international political processes. in contrast, most indigenous inhabitants were forcibly removed from the mid north by the end of the 19th century and relocated to distant government missions, so that indigenous people comprise less than 1 percent of today’s resident population in the mid north. summing up, the regions are similar when it comes to their relatively peripheral location, their sparse populations, their relatively harsh climates and fragile environments, their experience of demographic growth and decline, and even their areas of new economic activity. they are, however, different in terms of the timing of the growth and decline periods, the type of established resource industries, their political organisation, and their indigenous populations. for the purpose of this paper, they are most importantly similar in having attracted the “decline” label in academic and policy literature. that literature in sweden tends to focus on the period since the 1960s, both because of the bylund legacy (making the decline and retreat of settlements in the north a prominent issue in sweden), but also because of the framing of a lot of swedish social research around the social democracy era. there are also practical reasons for such a time period focus, with detailed demographic data sets (e.g. umeå university’s astrid database) covering the period from 1960 onwards, with more limited access to data from the fi rst half of the 20th century. the particular data context in australia may have similarly infl uenced the temporal research focus of australian demographic studies, with the national census having substantially improved in quality and coverage since the late 1960s, allowing for more detailed regional analyses. as well as the coincidence of hugo and smailes’ work commencing in the 1970s, contemporary rural research in australia has often been concerned with developments since the beginning of the trade liberalisation period in the 1970s, when government protections for australian rural industries began to be removed (thorpe/leitão 2014). • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld390 consequently, there exists a particular set of social, temporal and spatial units of analysis which have dominated the literature and which have defi ned how demographic change is viewed in these regions. the question for this research is the extent to which analysing change from different scale perspectives can offer new insights into the processes of demographic decline in resource peripheries. the intention is not to suggest that the regions have not been subject to decline in a collective sense, nor to suggest that population loss is not a problem for political and community stakeholders. instead, we suggest that a more nuanced understanding of the social, temporal and spatial characteristics of demographic change in resource peripheries can lead the discourse away from a “demography of disadvantage” toward some fresh thinking about what the future might hold. 4 methods the research used similar social unit indicators to those which are typically problematised in the decline literature. those indicators were then examined at different temporal and spatial scales. the indicators were: • total resident population; • age and sex distribution (using fi ve-year age groups with the highest value being 65 years and over);  “youth” or “young adults” were considered to be people aged between 15 and 24 years;  “older” people were those aged 65 years and over; • child-woman ratio (the number of living children aged 0-4 years divided by the number of living women aged 15-49 years); • volumes and rates of in-migration, out-migration and net-migration for each age and sex class. rates were calculated as percentages of the total population at the end point of the migration period being examined (e.g. migration rates between 2006 and 2011 were calculated as a percentage of the 2011 resident population). migration data were not available in most of the datasets used in this research. consequently, the methods most recently described by taylor (2011b) were used to infer the presence and extent of youth and female fl ight. for youth fl ight, the number of people aged 15-24 years is compared with the number aged 5-14 years and the number aged 25-34 years. low proportions of 15-24 year olds indicate youth fl ight. high ratios of men to women in the 15-24 year age group was used as an indicator of female fl ight. population ageing was assessed as the changing volume and proportion of older people in the population over time. data were available for different spatial units at different times. the core of the analysis for the western lapland case was the period 1865-2015, while for the mid north case it was 1861-2011. data for the mid north were drawn exclusively from the various south australian (up until 1901) and australian census. census records with suffi cient geographic and demographic detail were available for 1861, 1871, 1876, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1921, 1933, 1947, 1954 and every fi ve years between 1961 decline, adaptation or transformation • 391 and 2011. data prior to 1921 were accessed from the historical census and colonial data archive (hccda.ada.edu.au). data between 1921 and 2001 were accessed from the public digital archives of the australian bureau of statistics (www.abs.gov.au). data for 2006 and 2011 were accessed using the subscription tablebuilder online database. census data allowed exploration at a range of spatial scales, with a focus here on contemporary local government areas, and urban centres and localities. data for western lapland were drawn from the demographic database at umeå university (www.cedar.umu.se) covering the period 1860-1880, and from the 1890 and 1900 swedish census records stored with the north atlantic population project (www.nappdata.org). data for the period 1910 to 1960 were drawn from the historical census database of statistics sweden (www.scb.se). data for 1970, 1980 and 1990 were drawn from the swedish riksarkivet (national archives) (webbutik. riksarkivet.se), and data from 1970 to 2014 were drawn from the statistics sweden statistical database (www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se). additional data for 2015 for the vilhelmina, storuman, sorsele and arjeplog local government areas shown in figure 1 were provided by the respective local government authorities. the data were analysed with the intent of identifying different indicator values for different units of analysis at different scales. for example, rates of population growth or decline were analysed at different temporal and spatial scales, and for different sub-populations. indicators of youth and female fl ight and population ageing were calculated for different spatial units and at different points in time. the results reported in this paper cover just a small part of the total possible analysis, and are used to highlight cases where changing scales and units of analysis resulted in substantially different interpretations of demographic processes. 5 results 5.1 examining demographic change from different temporal scale perspectives figure 3 shows the population development in the two case regions since the 1860s (in black lines). four periods of population development can be ascertained for the mid north region. the fi rst is a rapid growth period between 1861 and 1881 when the population neared its peak at 285 percent of the 1861 population. population was relatively stable during the period 1881 to 1933, remaining at between 250 percent and 290 percent of the 1861 population (“stable period”). from 1933 until 2001, there was a steady loss of population (“decline period”). the 2011 population was slightly larger (157 percent) than the 2001 population (155 percent) (“current period”). otherwise, the 2011 population was greater than only the 1861 and 1871 populations. the two middle periods of stability and decline included intervals where the population grew, declined, or was relatively stable. in contrast, the periods for western lapland were more linear. there was a growth period between 1870 and 1960 (to a peak of 410 percent of the 1865 population), and a decline period from 1960 to 2014 (215 percent of the 1865 population). nevertheless, the 2010 population was • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld392 higher than populations before 1910. thus, when using a long-term temporal unit for analysis, the net result over the 150 year period has been population growth in both regions. 5.2 examining demographic change from different spatial scale perspectives the major spatial sub-units are the contemporary local government areas (lgas) in each region. three particularly interesting examples of lgas have been plotted (in grey) in figure 3. in the mid north, the clare and gilbert valleys lga experienced an initial growth period similar to the total region, but then declined quickly until 1901. population was relatively stable between 1901 and 1986, when a growth perifig. 3: population development in the case study regions from 1865/1-2010/1 0% 50% 100% 150% 200% 250% 300% 350% 400% 450% 18 65 /1 18 70 /1 18 80 /1 18 90 /1 19 00 /1 19 10 /1 19 20 /1 19 30 /3 19 40 /7 19 50 /4 19 60 /1 19 70 /1 19 80 /1 19 90 /1 20 00 /1 20 10 /1 year western lappland (sweden) vilhelmina (sweden) mid north (australia) clare and gilbert valleys (australia) northern areas (australia) population size relative to 1865/1 note: the measurement years are shown fi rst for western lapland, then for the mid north (1870/1 means data for lapland from 1870 and data for mid north from 1871). measurement years align closely except for 1865/1, 1940/7 and 1950/4. the base population is 1865/1, and the populations for other years are expressed as a percentage of the base population. source: own design based on census and register data (refer to section 4 for further details) decline, adaptation or transformation • 393 od began. the neighbouring northern areas (australia) lga was fi rst settled as part of the overall growth period in the mid-1870s, but lost population from 1881 to 1986. there was a brief period of growth between 1986 and 1996, but the population then declined until 2001. in western lapland, vilhelmina lga experienced lower growth than the total region up until 1960 (due to the relative absence of large industrial construction projects), and since 1970 has also declined more slowly. its population was relatively stable between 1970 and 1990, while the total region continued to decline, emphasising that demographic trajectories may differ according to different spatial scales used for analysis. spatial scale differences were also observed within local government areas at the town and village level. five of the six municipal capitals in western lapland experienced an increase in population during the 1960 to 2010 “decline period” (the exception being sorsele, which declined by 12 percent during this period). a number of other villages also grew during this period, with more of these villages being in the western mountain areas (e.g. klimpfjäll and marsfjällen in vilhelmina lga as shown in fig. 1) than in the eastern forest areas (e.g. malgovik and meselefors, to continue with examples from vilhelmina). in the mid north, 22 towns and villages lost population during the 1860-1880 regional growth period, including larger towns like burra (from about 3,000 residents in 1860 to 2,500 in 1880), laura (from 950 to 800), and terowie (from 800 to 700). likewise, 24 towns and villages grew during the decline period from 1947 to 2001, including two of the municipal capitals (clare and jamestown) as well as laura. of the 30 villages in the mid north with populations between 50 and 200 people in 1947, only six had fewer than 50 residents in 2011. in contrast, seven villages that were not recorded in the 1947 census had populations larger than 50 persons in 2011. towns and villages that grew during the decline period were distributed mainly across the southern and central parts of the region, with no growth towns in orroroo-carrieton or peterborough lgas. in western lapland, of the 42 villages in vilhelmina lga with populations between 20 and 100 people in 1890, only six had populations of fewer than 20 persons in 2015. four new villages had emerged during this time. the experience of jokkmokk has been rather different, with a number of villages located in close proximity to the hydro-electric power stations declining substantially and even disappearing during the decline period (such as the village of messaure, which had nearly 3,000 residents in 1960 and none by 1990). the relationship between demographic change and remoteness/accessibility is quite different for each of the case study regions. in the mid north, populations have generally (but not always) grown more in the southern parts of the region, correlating with proximity to adelaide. however, in western lapland, populations have generally (but not always) grown more in the western mountain parts of the region, most distant from the larger urban centres of northern sweden. this relationship was also observed for variables which are discussed in the proceeding section of the paper, with lower youth out-migration, lower rates of population ageing, and more balanced sex ratios apparent more often in southern parts of the mid north and western parts of western lapland. however, there were important exceptions to this rule, including very high young adult sex ratios in clare in the mid north (one • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld394 of the most southerly towns) and arjeplog in western lapland (one of the most westerly towns). 5.3 examining demographic change from different social unit perspectives in the mid north, the ratios of young adults and the immediately younger and older cohorts were the same in 2011 (at the end of the decline period) as in 1921 (in the middle of the stable period). this fi nding suggests a persistent pattern of youth fl ight independent of the overall population development (tab. 1), and thus emphasises the value of examining social sub-units across different time periods. these ratios have been similar for much of the period, with the exceptions of the post-war period around 1947 and 1954 when the young adult population was substantially smaller. young adult populations were also smaller in 1996 and 2001. in western lapland (tab. 2), changes in these ratios as measured in 1900 and in 2010 indicate a decrease in youth fl ight over the long term. throughout the decline period, the young adult population was about the same size as both the younger and older cohort. young adult sex ratios have been consistently high in western lapland across the entire period. sex ratios were higher in 1970, but lower in 1980, when most of the hydro-energy construction activity (typically associated with male labour) had fi nished. sex ratios were also high across the period for people aged 15-19 years. the situation was similar in the mid north for both the 15-19 and 20-24 year age groups, with the exception of the 1947 and 1954 post-war period when there were fewer males. in the mid north, female net out-migration was larger than male net out-migration in the 15-19 and 20-24 year age groups in the periods 2001-2006 (around 20 percent net out-migration for males and nearly 35 percent for females) and 2006-2011. however, female net in-migration for the 25-29 and 30-34 year age groups (at around 20 percent) was double that of males. in western lapland, at least for the period 2010-14, male and female net out-migration for the 20-24 year age group was both around 25 percent. women aged 15-19 years had net out-migration of 12 percent, but there was a net in-migration of 5 percent of males in this age group. women aged 30-34 years had a net in-migration of 5 percent, while there was 0 percent net migration for males. such small-scale growth in particular social sub-units over particular periods of time appears to have previously been overlooked in research on female fl ight from rural areas. in western lapland, the proportion of the population aged 0-4 years declined from 15 percent in 1900 to just over 5 percent in 1970, but has remained at about that level since. the child-woman ratio declined from 0.71 in 1900 to about 0.25 at each time since 1980, except in 1990, when it was substantially higher (0.33). in the mid north, the proportion of the population aged 0-4 years was 10 percent in 1971, but had declined to 6 percent by 1996 and has remained at that level. the childwoman ratio peaked at 0.56 in 1954 and 1961, and was 0.29 in 2001 and 2006. there has been substantial temporal variability in this indicator (0.33 in 1933, 0.32 in 2011, decline, adaptation or transformation • 395 for example), as well as spatial variability, with rates in clare lga being typically lower than elsewhere. the mid north region as a whole had a lower proportion of young adults in 2011 (10 percent of the total population) compared to the capital city adelaide (14 percent), australia (13 percent) and south australia as a whole (13 percent). it also had a very high young adult sex ratio (123 men for every 100 women aged 15-24) compared with these other places (around 103). however, seven towns and villages had young adult populations of similar proportion to australia, including relatively large towns like clare and robertstown, and small settlements like tarlee and manoora. similarly, 13 towns and villages had lower young adult sex ratios than australia, including smaller settlements such as georgetown, orroroo and booberowie. larger towns in the south like stockport, armagh, riverton and auburn also had relatively low young adult sex ratios, although clare (119) and burra (106) did not. in western lapland, vilhelmina, sorsele and jokkmokk lgas had the same proportion of young adults (12 percent) as sweden in 2014, along with larger towns like storuman, and small villages like barsele and slussfors. the total region also had 12 percent young adult population. however, the region had a young adult sex ratio of 124 compared to 106 for sweden. interestingly, the arjeplog lga had a ratio of 145, although two of its neighbouring small villages – slagnäs and mellanström – had very low young adult sex ratios (57 and 86). mountain “growth” villages such as hemavan (200), tärnaby (118) and laisvall (200) also had high young adult sex ratios. between 1900 and 2010, the proportion of the population of western lapland aged 65 years and over increased from 5 percent to 26 percent (tab. 2), whereas 19 percent of sweden’s population were aged 65 years and over in 2010. all spatial units had relatively high proportions of older people, except the town of arjeplog (known today for its booming winter car testing industry) which had just 4 percent of its population aged 65 years and over. the actual number of older people in the region increased between 1900 and 1990, but has since declined. in contrast, while the proportion of older people in the mid north region also increased between 1901 and 2011, the actual number of older people has continued to grow (tab. 1). the growth has been driven in part by net in-migration rates of between 5 percent and 10 percent for this age group during that period. conversely, there has been slight net out-migration of older people from western lapland (around 2 percent since 2010, for example). there is again great spatial variability in the mid north when it comes to the older population. older people were more than one quarter of the population of towns like saddleworth, orroroo, peterborough and riverton in 2011, but less than one seventh of the population in stockport, georgetown, tarlee and farrell flat. in general in the mid north, larger towns had higher proportions of older people, while the older population was more evenly distributed and marginally favoured smaller villages in western lapland. • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld396 6 discussion the results suggest substantial spatial and temporal diversity in demographic change between and within the two case study regions, even when only focusing on two social unit groups (young adults and older people). in terms of overall population development, the research reveals that it is possible for spatial sub-units such as clare and gilbert valleys (local government area) and laura (a town/village within that same lga) to experience almost opposite patterns of development to the broader mid north region across much of the time period under investigation. tab. 1: young adult and older people indicators for the mid north indicator 1921 1933 1947 1954 1961 1971 1991 2001 2011 15-24 year olds: 5-14 year olds 0.77 0.89 0.87 0.67 0.57 0.72 0.62 0.60 0.77 15-24 year olds: 25-34 year olds 1.03 1.26 0.99 0.84 1.02 1.30 0.73 0.92 1.13 sex ratio 15-19 years 111 110 95 98 111 102 116 123 125 sex ratio 20-24 years 103 107 102 121 123 108 96 116 121 number aged 65 years and over 1831 2258 2531 2671 2748 2391 2581 3319 4027 percentage aged 65 years and over 5% 7% 9% 9% 10% 10% 12% 17% 20% source: own calculation based on census and register data (refer to section 4 for further details) tab. 2: young adult and older people indicators for western lapland indicator 1900 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 15-24 year olds: 5-14 year olds 0.74 0.75 0.91 0.95 1.09 0.98 0.82 1.30 15-24 year olds: 25-34 year olds 0.93 0.92 1.06 1.21 0.94 1.08 0.98 1.01 sex ratio 15-19 years 102 109 119 120 107 107 115 116 sex ratio 20-24 years 106 126 134 138 125 131 112 123 number aged 65 years and over 1257 3467 4076 5451 6633 7263 7105 6994 percentage aged 65 years and over 5% 7% 8% 14% 18% 21% 23% 26% source: own calculation based on census and register data (refer to section 4 for further details) decline, adaptation or transformation • 397 similarly, while the western lapland region and its constituent local government areas have experienced population loss since the 1960s, this is not the experience of the municipal centres which have, with the exception of sorsele, experienced growth. this recent trend of growth and micro-urbanisation in municipal centres and amenity-rich locations emphasises one of the substantial fallacies of analysing population change at broader regional scales (e.g. local government areas or even larger administrative or functional regions), essentially hiding localised growth outliers within the aggregated picture of regional decline. in some cases, the specifi c characteristics of locations help explain different development paths. for example, the different timing of mining and agricultural development cycles explain why burra (a former mining town) lost population during the major growth period for the rest of the mid north region. recent substantial investments in mountain based tourism in western lapland explain growth in specifi c towns and villages in the mountain area. in other cases, however, such as laura in the mid north or meselefors in western lapland, the localised reasons for differentiated demographic development are not as clear. the total population analysis also suggests that it is relatively rare for towns and villages to disappear during periods of decline, and that new towns and villages are as likely to emerge as old ones are to disappear. the exceptions again involve localised explanations, such as the planned village closures in jokkmokk municipality associated with the completion of hydro-electric power station construction. of course, localised explanations are typically diffi cult to obtain from analysing secondary datasets without a thorough understanding of local histories and socio-economic contexts. using a more comprehensive temporal perspective (including long-term views and focussing on intermittent periods of growth and decline) can help identify bifurcation points in the villages’ population trajectories, and provide hints as to where to start “digging” for local historic or contextual explanations. overall, there were recognisable changes in patterns of settlement throughout the decline periods. in western lapland, settlement concentration moved from smaller villages and the eastern parts of the municipalities to larger towns and the western mountain areas. in the mid north, settlement has become more concentrated in the south, which is closer to the gentrifying rural-urban fringe and commuting belt. even within these broad patterns, however, there are exceptions at the local level. consequently, while relative remoteness or accessibility within the region is likely to be important in determining demographic differences, the impacts are not universal and remoteness/accessibility is not the only intervening factor. in terms of the comparison between the two regions, it is apparent that lower remoteness and higher accessibility (assessed purely by distance) is somewhat linked to growth and more “balanced” demographic characteristics in the mid north, while the opposite applies in western lapland. the markers of demographic change in the mid north were perhaps clearer than those in western lapland, despite the latter having a very clear “turning point” around 1960. in the mid north, the very different state of key indicators in 1947 and 1954 refl ect the impact of world war two on the region. a single specifi c explanation for the dramatic change in western lapland is not so apparent, although the • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld398 1950s and 1960s saw the end of some of the major construction projects related to transport and hydro-electric development, as well as increased labour effi ciencies through industrialisation of forestry (enequist 1960). this “multi-factored” demographic environment may also help explain why western lapland experienced comparatively small changes in the values of key indicators even during the time of dramatic change from growth to decline. while the increasing proportion of older people in regional and sub-regional populations was common to the two regions, the growth in actual numbers of older people in the mid north as a result of migration was not refl ected in western lapland. the recent arresting of population decline in the mid north can at least partially be credited to its increasing attractiveness for older people, pointing towards a gradual transformation from traditional agricultural to retirement and lifestyle communities. thus, combining different temporal and social unit considerations to understand changes in population size and composition can yield useful insights into the importance of particular population sub-groups in shaping local demographic trajectories. the values of the youth indicators over time were particularly interesting. while the literature generally tends to present “youth fl ight” and “female fl ight” as a relatively new phenomenon linked to rural decline, the evidence suggests that these patterns have been persistent characteristics of at least these two case study regions, even during periods of population growth. there is also some evidence that the impact of “female fl ight” is tempered by a net in-migration of women just slightly older than the “young adult” cut-off age used in this research. so, while these areas lose young women in their teens and early 20s, irrespective of the overall pattern of demographic development, they also regularly gain women in their late 20s and early 30s. this may explain why youth fl ight, at least since the 1970s, has not dramatically impacted the proportion of infants or the child-woman ratio, although the latter in particular appears subject to some variability. the causes and consequences of young adult female in-migration to resource peripheries, as well as their impacts on changing sex and child-woman ratios, have so far been largely overlooked in the literature on rural demographic change. as with overall population development, specifi c localities and regional subunits had different experiences of age and sex specifi c demographic change. when benchmarked against the region as a whole, or even against other units of analysis (such as the country, province or larger cities), some rural “decline” areas have smaller older populations, larger young adult populations, and higher proportions of young adult women. again, this emphasises the need to more systematically consider different social units and sub-populations when trying to understand demographic change across different settlements in a region, and over time. 7 conclusion rural demographic decline is not a universal experience that can be applied as a label to entire regions and used as a pretext for centrally designed regional policy, decline, adaptation or transformation • 399 funding and service responses. instead, this research suggests that a more nuanced and integrated examination of demographic change is required that considers different spatial, temporal and social scales when analysing the particular experiences and needs of different settlements, communities and groups of people in resource peripheries. spatial, temporal and social units of analysis are each, to a greater or lesser extent, artifi cial constructs. this is, of course, a factor to be considered in assessing the contribution of this research. different spatial boundaries for the mid north and western lapland could easily have been selected for this research. arbitrary boundaries have different levels of relevance compared with bureaucratic borders or functional boundaries that refl ect some other historical sense of connectivity, yet they may generate different results when analysing regional demographic change. there is no particular reason for the temporal boundaries used in this research apart from the relative ease of accessing data at specifi c points in time but not at others. in this way, the research here is limited in the same ways as other studies criticised above. what has been done here, however, is at least an attempt to extend and change the units of analysis to identify the impacts of arbitrary selection. likewise, defi ning “young adults” as a particular age group is an arbitrary decision, and key indicators such as “female fl ight”, for example, would likely be differently interpreted if the young adult age group was extended even a few years (also see johansson 2016). the point of the research has not been to declare the “ideal” spatial, temporal and social parameters for investigating rural decline, but to demonstrate that the selection of such parameters is an important part of the process of describing and interpreting rural decline. the most outstanding examples of this are in the re-interpretation of the role of youth (and female youth) migration in the demographic development of these regions, and the identifi cation of exceptions to the rules of population loss, ageing and defi cits of youth at a variety of spatial scales. the key conclusion is therefore that research into demographic processes in rural areas needs to have a more nuanced view of the objects of study, and of the impacts that the selection of units for analysis may have on the interpretation of results. this is not to say that loss of population over a relatively long period of time is unproblematic. in both cases, the continuing delivery of services and the opportunities for future economic and social development have clearly been affected by the broad processes of demographic change particularly in the second half of the 20th century. in both of the cases examined here, the structures for service delivery and development were set up during (and in response to) growth periods. that they are no longer as well suited for the context as they once might have been is a function of the unpredictability of the demographic changes that were experienced, and a function of the frameworks for development that have emerged around the very different processes of demographic change (population growth and centralisation) that have occurred in other urban parts of the respective jurisdictions. whereas in western lapland, for example, villages of 20 to 100 residents were seen as an integral part of the process of growth in the fi rst half of the 20th century, they are now seen as markers of decline. clearly, the frameworks for (particularly public) support of these villages have not been able to adapt to their persistence. • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld400 the case studies refl ect localised examples of demographic persistence, adaptation and transformation. most of the small villages continue to survive, despite the challenges they pose to service delivery and new models of development. whether this demonstrates positive or negative resilience is a value judgement that is also infl uenced by perceptions of scale. for example, the key processes of adaptation at a municipal level have included centralisation of population in the municipal capitals and in selected areas which are currently subject to more positive economic conditions. this has meant localised population growth or stabilisation during times of broader regional decline, yet at the expense of smaller settlements in the region. this may signify a re-organisation of populations which may help peripheral municipalities absorb unfavourable socio-economic circumstances whilst essentially maintaining the same or similar function and identity at a municipal level. yet, it may also mark the start of a new transformation process, converting the municipal centres into increasingly urbanised environments (e.g. characterised by urban-style housing, infrastructure, and service provisions) to be able to compete with larger urban centres for human and other resources. another form of demographic adaptation and re-organisation within the migration system has been the substitution of particular social groups for others, as evidenced by the strong in-migration of middle aged women replacing young women leaving rural communities. this suggests that the highly problematised discourse around female youth fl ight from rural areas may be less of a problem, so long as communities manage to attract slightly older women as new or return migrants to compensate for demographic imbalances. such adaptive changes may not necessarily be recognised (and consequently pursued) as such by rural communities, thus highlighting the importance of more nuanced social unit analyses in studies on demographic change. for how long these locations and social units will retain their advantage is diffi cult to judge, but the indicators are that there is suffi cient diversity of locations and populations within the regions for new demographic patterns to emerge over time. continuing spatial and social adaptation may result in continuing overall population loss (as evidenced in western lapland) or transition to a new period of growth (as may be the case in the mid north in very recent times). a critical example of transformation has been population ageing. in this regard, the two regions have very different experiences. the mid north appears to have taken advantage of this transformation, becoming an increasingly attractive place for older people as evidenced by in-migration and growth in the actual number of older people. many communities in the mid north have thus transformed themselves from traditional agricultural or pastoral communities into attractive retirement and lifestyle communities. though such change is not without challenges, for example when considering the provision of adequate services and infrastructure for the elderly (see ryser/halseth 2013), it also presents communities with a range of opportunities for new development pathways. in the case of the mid north, such change seems to represent the starting point for new – qualitatively and functionally different – growth patterns that are separate from the region’s historic resource industries. in contrast, western lapland has consistently experienced net out-migration of its older population, meaning that ageing has contributed to, rather than decline, adaptation or transformation • 401 mitigated, demographic decline. the reasons for these diverging experiences are not immediately clear from this research, but may be linked to different climatic, historic, and socio-cultural circumstances, thus requiring further comparative and in-depth research into different ageing experiences. the diversity of experiences of demographic change in declining resource peripheries such as the two regions covered in this paper makes it diffi cult to anticipate what the future might hold. some trends, such as the defi cit of females in younger age groups and the growing proportion of older populations, seem quite persistent. others, such as micro-urbanisation within rural municipalities and the favouring of “high-amenity” locations, also appear likely to continue for a relatively long period. however, it is the nature of resource peripheries that the resources (minerals, forests, water and wind) are not always found in the locations most attractive to tourists and lifestyle seekers. should either of these regions be caught up in future resource booms, the geographic distribution of the population (as well as its size and composition) could change dramatically and within a relatively short period of time. the processes of demographic change in resource peripheries are complex and scale dependent. the natural resources themselves are fi xed in location, and their value fl uctuates over time. due to their sparse populations, isolated settlements, and entrenched dependence on external economic and political centres, localised cycles of “boom and bust”, along with dramatic and dynamic changes in the nature and composition of populations, are very common. the relative merits of different sorts of populations (young, old, male, female, resident, visiting) also changes over time as regions adapt to the vagaries of resource economies. the challenge for demographers and geographers is to understand that complexity and scale dependence are central forces, and to try and look more deeply into the nuances of demographic growth and decline, adaptation and transformation. it is also important to note that it is often combinations of attributes which may be unique to particular points in time and space that are important in determining the future. for example, a combination of high but “normal” levels of female youth out-migration with unusually low levels of fertility at a point in time could be the trigger for a period of extended population decline. this paper has largely ignored how some of the attributes discussed interact with each other over time, and a more detailed understanding of these specifi c cases would require more research. the extent to which this framework may be applicable to other types of rural peripheries (e.g. areas closer to the urban fringe; manufacturing peripheries; or pleasure peripheries) has yet to be examined. peripheries that are less remote and less dependent on externally dominated resource industries may be less dynamic, less fragile and less affected by fl uctuating change over time, in part because they have closer and more stable (demographic and economic) linkages with larger population centres (carson et al. 2011). nevertheless, the consideration of different temporal, spatial and social scales, along with examinations of the specifi c historic, political and institutional contexts, may yield equally valuable insights into the nuanced experiences of demographic change in other types of rural peripheries (carson/ koch 2013). • dean b. carson, doris a. carson, rob porter, celia yoshida ahlin, peter sköld402 acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge the support received from the mistra arctic sustainable development project and the swedish research council formas for the swedish case study. access to the swedish demographic database and north atlantic population project databases were funded by the arctic research centre at umeå university. access to australian census data through tablebuilder was funded by charles darwin university. references argent, neil; walmsley, jim; sorensen, tony 2010: something old, something new, something borrowed, something...? rediscovering the comparative advantage of the ‘new’ pastoral economies of northern new south wales, australia. in: halseth, greg; markey, sean; 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model for projecting regional populations by indigenous status: an application to the northern territory, australia. in: environment and planning a 41,1: 230-249. date of submission: 21.03.2016 date of acceptance: 25.11.2016 prof. dean b. carson. the northern institute, charles darwin university. australia. arctic research centre at umeå university (arcum), umeå university. sweden e-mail: dean.carson@cdu.edu.au url: http://www.cdu.edu.au/northern-institute/our-teams/dean-carson dr. doris a. carson (). department of geography and economic history, umeå university. sweden. the northern institute, charles darwin university. australia. school of natural and built environments, university of south australia. australia e-mail: doris.carson@umu.se url: http://www.geoekhist.umu.se/om-institutionen/personal/doris-carson/ rob porter. the northern institute, charles darwin university. australia e-mail: robert.porter@cdu.edu.au url: http://www.cdu.edu.au/northern-institute/our-teams/robert-porter celia yoshida ahlin. department of geography and economic history, umeå university. sweden e-mail: cayoshida@hotmail.com peter sköld. arctic research centre at umeå university (arcum), umeå university. sweden e-mail: peter.skold@umu.se url: http://www.arcum.umu.se/affi lierade-forskare/arcum/peter-skold/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children faruk keskin, alanur çavlin abstract: this study examines birth registration for children of adolescent mothers based on family and citizenship concepts, and discusses the negotiation of registration practices between state and family in turkey. the study is based on two data sources: offi cial turkish birth statistics from january 2009 to december 2015, and the turkish demographic and health survey from 2013 (tdhs-2013). we used tdhs-2013 to estimate birth registration completeness and timeliness in turkey as of 2015. the results show 99 percent completion for birth registration of children under 5 years for the 2011-2015 period. for the same period, 98 percent of births to adolescent mothers were registered, but only 78 percent of all births to adolescent mothers were registered on time – within 30 days. results indicate that the birth registration system is complete for turkey in general, even for adolescent mothers, since their offspring are eventually registered, however the timeliness of registration is low for adolescent births. late registration periods are shortening with time but the rights of unregistered children of adolescent mothers are slow to be recognized in cases where modern regulations of birth registration and traditional family practices collide. keywords: turkey · birth registration · completeness · adolescent birth · citizenship · family 1 introduction a child’s right to a name and nationality from birth is contained in the convention on the rights of the child (crc), and birth registration under these guidelines provides the basis for fulfi llment of the child’s other rights. article 7 of the crc establishes that each child “shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality” (unicef 2001). turkey became a signatory to the crc in 1990. in the second half of that decade, promoting comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 179-200 (date of release: 13.05.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-11en8 • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin180 the right of children to birth registration became a major focus of the united nations children’s fund (unicef) agenda. unicef’s seminal article, the progress of nations (1999), highlighted birth registration as the "fi rst right" upon which access to other rights was dependent, and the article supports unicef’s current work on birth registration (unicef 2013b). the right to birth registration is crucial not only because it is a self-benefi tting human right, but also because it enables each child to assert a broad range of other human rights, such as economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights (unicef 1999). vital registration systems can confer citizenship rights and transfer certain characteristic properties to newborns. furthermore, the sustainable development goals (sdg), the successor of the millennium development goals (mdg), highlight the importance of registration in the new development agenda of the united nations (un). target 16.9 of the sdg is to provide a legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030 (un 2015). a key component of the vital registration system is birth registration, whereby the state authority fi rst recognizes the existence of a human being. aggregate data for the population is updated with every entry, thus an effective system of birth registration ensures accurate population data. in theory, the completeness of any registration system is therefore tied to the effective completion of birth registrations. methods exist to compare birth registrations directly with census data and sample surveys conducted for the particular purpose of calculating completeness; however, some studies use indirect estimation techniques based on inadequate or limited data (shryock/siegel 1976; unicef 2005). birth registration and its level of completeness have been studied by demographers and statisticians primarily as a data quality issue (mikkelsen et al. 2015). even when the subject has been examined from a human rights perspective, the relationship between the individual and the state during the registration process has not been discussed separately (szreter 2007; todres 2003). regardless of modern civil registration methods, considerable portions of the global population are not covered by birth registration systems (bhatia et al. 2017). the least developed countries share a larger proportion of unregistered births. several un and world health organization (who) reports and publications have addressed the poor state of birth registration in impoverished countries (setel et al. 2007). in the least developed nations, 45 percent of births are unregistered (un 2015). most of the unregistered births are accounted for by developing regions; south asia and sub-saharan africa together account for 79 percent of all unregistered births (unicef 2008). apart from the importance of birth registration completeness as a statistic, the registration of a birth is a complex bilateral visibility issue encompassing state regulations and parental infl uence. 2 previous research birth registration, identifi cation, and citizenship status are inextricably linked. in the contemporary literature, the effect of citizenship status on migrants’ ability to access basic rights and services is widely discussed (baban et al. 2017; isin/nyers unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 181 2014; shachar 2014; turner 2016). the circumstances and the fragile situation of children within such migrant populations are highlighted. research confi rms the relative disadvantages of noncitizen populations (mainly unregistered children) with regard to poverty (de trinidad young et al. 2018), school enrollment (patler 2018), and health care access (oropesa et al. 2016). children, especially girls, are at the lowest social level in patriarchal family systems. they are considered dependents and not full individuals; therefore, their individual manifestation is not completely acknowledged in many countries. for instance, li et al. (2010) refer to a father-focused family dynamic as one of the key factors in the low levels of birth registration in china. awareness of the importance of birth registration and its completeness grew both internationally and in turkey in the 1990s. in 1997, the “working group report on birth and death registration in turkey” was published by the state statistical institute (ssi). the report found that birth registration completeness was around 40 percent in 1984, and that the total number of births was estimated by comparing distributed identity cards with census results (state statistical institution 1997). this was the fi rst attempt to investigate the completeness of the registration system in turkey. the timeliness and completeness of the birth registration system have improved over the last decade in turkey, but there have been no studies on completeness since the last full census in turkey was held in 2000. starting with the 1993 turkish demographic and health survey (tdhs), the survey results of 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 provided statistics on the completeness of birth registration of children under 5 through information collected from the mother. tdhs results show that the birth registration rate of children under 5 in turkey was 74 percent in 1993, increasing to 94 percent in 2008 (hacettepe university institute of population studies 1994, 2014). this period, from the 1990s to 2008, was the most progressive period for the registration system. koç’s work (2004) showed registration completeness levels were lower amongst children with less-educated mothers, as well as among those with mothers whose mother tongue was kurdish, those who were living in poor households and those whose parents were in religious marriages only. koç and eryurt’s work (2010) was based on tdhs-2008 and showed that the percentage of unregistered children had decreased radically compared to previous years. according to their study, only 6 percent of children under 5 years of age were unregistered as of 2008. hoşgör’s (2008) study applied feminist methodology to investigate the identity card and citizenship issues, and found that women and girls were the main groups to experience problems related to a lack of birth registration. recent improvements have led to fewer births now being excluded from the registration system. however, in the last decade, access to civil services has increased for excluded individuals, as all civil rights have been linked to registration (çavlin bozbeyoğlu 2011; çavlin bozbeyoğlu/rittersberger tiliç 2011). more recently, another study (keskin 2016) showed that the majority of unregistered births in turkey originates from deceased infants and the children of adolescent mothers. the sex of the child does not affect its registration status. this study attempts to understand the birth registration patterns for children of adolescent mothers in turkey in terms of family and citizenship concepts, and • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin182 to understand the practical negotiations that take place between state and family. it will also fi ll the gap in the literature on the completeness of the birth registration system in turkey and provide up-to-date results on registration completeness and timeliness by directly analyzing birth registration information with a special focus on the age of the mothers. the study will contribute to the assessment of the completeness and timeliness of birth registration information as of 2015 by analyzing administrative registration data and data from tdhs-2013. 3 settings in turkey, an exclusively religious marriage is not legally binding; however, the act of dual marriage – religious marriage accompanying a civil one – is the most common type of family formation. ninety-four percent of all married women (age 15-49) in turkey have both civil and religious marriage ceremonies (hacettepe university institute of population studies 2014). the legal age for civil marriage in turkey is 18, but it is possible to marry at 17 years of age with the permission of the family. moreover, the courts have the right to approve marriage at age 16 under specifi c conditions. consequently, a civil marriage before the age of 18 is not a regular legal act, but an extraordinary event that requires justifi cation in the form of familial and formal approval. in order to prevent child marriage, the turkish juridical system prohibits religious before civil marriages, yet a signifi cant proportion of couples start their married life with a religious ceremony. according to tdhs-2013, 53 percent of dual-ceremony marriages started with a religious ceremony (hacettepe university institute of population studies 2014). in practice, early marriages commonly start with a religious ceremony and are legalized with civil marriage when both spouses come of age (yüksel-kaptanoğlu/ergöçmen 2014). tdhs-2013 results also show that only 18 percent of 15-19-year-old married women use modern contraceptives, so early motherhood is one of the likeliest consequences of adolescent marriage – a fact compounded by the various health risks such as maternal and infant mortality and morbidity, pre-term births and abortion associated with early pregnancies (chinyere anozie et al. 2018; dethloff 2018; raj 2010; yüksel-kaptanoğlu/ergöçmen 2014). when the parents have had a civil marriage ceremony, it is suffi cient for one of the spouses to apply for birth registration (law no: 5490 article:15). if the parents are not married to someone else, or if they are over the age of 18, the birth registration process is unproblematic for out-of-wedlock parents. however, the registration of a child to an underage mother may trigger criminal proceedings. for this reason, underage couples who have only had a religious marriage may avoid registering their child until the mother’s 18th birthday, at which time they usually report a fabricated date of birth. under these circumstances, there are no delays in the offi cial birth registration statistics, yet the problem of age misreporting remains. thus, the actual fi gure of adolescent mothers is quite possibly higher than the estimated value. unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 183 in turkey, citizenship is mainly defi ned based on the leges sanguinis principle – the law of blood. according to the constitution, turkish citizenship can be obtained at birth or later in life. everyone born to parents with turkish citizenship automatically becomes a citizen of turkey, and citizens are obliged to register themselves (turkish civil registration services law). it is also mandatory for every child to be identifi ed to the population director within thirty days of birth. upon learning about the existence of unregistered children, the civil registration offi ces are authorized to invite the parents to make a declaration. however, administrative fi nes are not imposed on those who did not register at birth within the specifi ed time with the amendment made in the relevant population law in 2017. the process of gaining legal citizenship is thus entrusted to the families of these children. yeğen (2004) defi nes turkish citizenship as passive, republican, and as infl uencing the private sphere, as opposed to active, liberal or public-oriented. indeed, although the label of citizen is created upon registration, the emphasis has been on duties rather than rights, and citizenship is considered to be a social practice rather than a mark of social status (keyman/i̇çduygu 2003). it is incumbent upon the citizen to overcome the obstacles in the way of becoming a registered citizen. this “pacifi es” the individual by giving him/her a function within the process. as keyman and i̇çduygu (2003) argued, this creates a picture of a militant/virtuous form of citizenship in which duties come fi rst and rights can be postponed until these duties have been performed. the state ultimately holds the family responsible for constructing the individual side of the citizenship relationship. sirman (2005) discusses the gendered citizenship discourse and describes the prevalent form of citizenship in turkey as "familial citizenship". this discourse is even more powerful in the case of children’s citizenship. families are responsible for registering their newborn as a citizen, and it is their role to establish the fi rst contact between the citizen and the state. the general understanding of the concept of “family” in turkish society is no different to its defi nition in the constitution: law no. 41 states that family is the foundation of turkish society and the state shall take the necessary measures and establish the necessary systems to protect the peace and welfare of the family, especially for mothers and children. as emphasized in the law, marriage is the legal basis of family, and forming a family is a common practice in turkey. the median age of marriage for women 25-49 in turkey is 21, according to tdhs-2013. the crude marriage rate in turkey is 7.1 per thousand as of 2017 (turkstat 2018a). according to tdhs-2013, 68 percent of women aged 15-49 are currently married and 2.5 percent of married women only had a religious ceremony. early marriage is not common practice in turkey, but it is still a notable factor, with some 89,852 women aged 16-19 and 9,867 men aged 16-19 marrying in 2017, according to civil registration results for fi rst marriages (turkstat 2018b). while only 2 percent of women in the 15-17 age group are currently married, all of them had religious marriage ceremonies (hacettepe university institute of population studies 2014). the majority of families are nuclear in turkey. the extended family has been shrinking rapidly over the last 20 years, and dissolved families are increasing (koç et al. 2015). • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin184 4 layers of legalization: citizenship, family and registration unicef (2013a: 11) has argued that: “birth registration may signify the beginning of the legal contract between the individual and the state known as citizenship (...). while birth registration does not itself confer citizenship upon the child, it is often essential for its acquisition based on each country’s law.” in that respect, this contract and the relationship that starts with birth registration can be perceived and defi ned differently by the state and the individuals concerned. this relationship, which may be defi ned as a type of bond, can engender a sense of personal pride, one that arises from being a member of a specifi c nationality, or from the close connections and feelings toward both individuals and groups within a state, in some cases with the state even being denoted as "father". by contrast, the state’s relationship with its people is more rational. the state has several layers of manifestation, some of which are well-known, conventional institutions like the education system, marriage, military service, motherhood, religion, and labor. each of these layers takes on different characteristics and an image of the person arises from the state’s interpretation of these layers. in the end, every individual conveys to the state a different image for each layer of information, and the collection, intersection or combination of these images results in a conclusive relationship between the individual and the state. based on these perceptions, the state can interpret men, women, the young and old in different ways, and collectively denote any individual or group of people as it pleases, such as mother, student, divorced or retired. while some of these layers are extensively acknowledged, like the sex or religious layers, others are less well recognized, like spending habits or professions. in addition, overlying these layers of human interpretation is a blanket fi lter that completes the framework; namely, citizenship. these different ways of understanding the individual function best on those with citizenship, a condition defi ned by the state. the concept of citizenship is often defi ned through the rights and obligations of the individual. authority over rights and regulations of citizenship, and the type of state that wields those powers, defi nes the type of citizenship. in this sense, liberal, corporatist and social democratic states all interpret citizenship differently (isin/turner 2002). while liberal states empower the free market, social-democratic states distribute rights and control obligations through their institutions. marshall, in his seminal essay, examined citizenship within three dimensions; civil, political and social (marshall/bottomore 1950). the civil element is composed of the rights of freedom and the political component is associated with participation, while the social factors include rights that minimize poverty and inequality. the rights and obligations constructed within a family become more apparent during adolescence (demo 1992). a sense of citizenship is constructed related to these rights and obligations through the process of socialization. this takes place within the family – mainly by traditions and everyday social practice (bier 2010; galston 1993). this experience of family in childhood determines the individual’s behavior later and shapes other rights and obligations. unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 185 5 data and methods the two data sources used for the study are the offi cial birth statistics from january 2009 to december 2015, combined and disseminated by the turkish statistical institute (turkstat), and turkey demographic and health survey 2013 (tdhs-2013) for individual women’s data.1 the birth statistics are compiled from two data sources: fi rst the central civil registration system (ccrs), administered by the general directorate of population and citizenship affairs which covers registered births; and second the death notifi cation system (dns), governed by the ministry of health. the latter records infant deaths not previously registered as a live birth. the registered births from ccrs and captured unregistered births from dns are combined by turkstat to form overall birth statistics. birth registration data is available in ccrs, starting from 2001 when the system was fi rst established. however, since we used tdhs-2013 data to estimate the completeness of birth registration of children under age 5, analyses of this study are concentrated between the years 2009 and 2015. the turkey demographic and health survey 2013, from which the birth registration information is gathered, is a nationally representative sample survey designed to provide information trends on fertility, infant mortality, family planning, and mother and child health. tdhs-2013 was conducted in 81 provinces and 641 clusters. the target sample size of the tdhs-2013 was 14,496 households, with a 93 percent response rate for households and a 90 percent response rate for women2 (hacettepe university institute of population studies 2014). for the tdhs-2013, the fi eld study took place in september 2013-january 2014, and interviews were undertaken with 11,794 households and 9,746 women in the 15-49 age group. the registration status data in tdhs-2013 is collected directly from the mothers of children born in 2003 and later. in the pregnancy and fertility section of tdhs-2013, the questions of “is (child’s name) recorded in the population registry?” and “how much time elapsed between (child’s name)’s birth and registration?” were asked of women who have had a live birth since january 2003, including both surviving and deceased children. in tdhs-2013, the registration information was based on the declaration of the mother, as women were not asked to produce birth certifi cates or an identity card for their children. concerning the collection of data about the registration date of their children, women may have diffi culty in remembering the exact month or year interval in which their children were registered. this could produce a bias, especially for older women and former births. this bias is avoided by collecting data for recent births; specifi cally, 3,326 children under 5 years of age.3 the 1 this study has applied the ethical principles of the turkish statistical institute, which is why aggregate rather than individual data tables from the registration system are employed to maintain privacy. furthermore, tdhs-2013 has ethical approval from hacettepe university academic ethics board. 2 for more information on survey design, sampling errors and data quality of tdhs-2013 see appendix b, c and d of tdhs-2013 main report. 3 only 8 cases had missing registration dates. • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin186 tdhs sampling frame was chosen from the national registration system, namely the address based population registration system (abprs) and those households not covered by the abprs can remain unreported in tdhs (çavlin bozbeyoğlu/ rittersberger tiliç 2011). although the tdhs listing operation minimized coverage problems, the estimations represented here could not provide information on the coverage of the registration system but they do approximate completeness and timeliness within a period. however, the percentages not registered in the last ten years based on three dhs results are coherent: these are respectively 6.3 percent in tdhs-2008, 1.2 percent in tdhs-2013 and 2 percent in tdhs-2018. the nature of the birth registration data permits simultaneous calculation of the completeness and timeliness of the registration system, since the backbone of the birth registration information consists of the time interval between the date of birth and the date of birth registration. the time interval between these two events will be referred to as the registration interval. two separate cross tables of birth registration data were used for the analysis. the fi rst one is the total number of births sorted by the month of birth for each year on the x-axis, and month of registration on the y-axis. birth registrations were available from january 2009 until february 2016 for up to 84 months of birth cohorts. assigning an index to every month starting with january 2009, this yields an 84x86 matrix where the entry in the i-th row and j-th column (ai,j where j > i) is the number of births registered in month j which are born in month i. since registration cannot happen before birth, all entries where i > j are zero (equation 1). for example, entry a2,13 refers to the february 2009 births registered in january 2010. the second table is the total number of births sorted by the registration interval categories for each separate year. the registration interval consisted of four categories. the fi rst category are “timely registered” births, referring to births registered in the fi rst 30 days after birth in accordance with the law. the second category refers to “early late registered” births, meaning births registered between 31 days to 90 days postpartum. the third category are “late registered” births, which refers to births registered between 91 days and 1 year postpartum. finally, the fourth category are “very late registered” births, which refers to births registered after 1 year postpartum, but before the child’s 5th birthday. the analysis of the registration interval was carried out in three steps. the fi rst step was projecting the late registration numbers for rows with less than 60 months of registration information in matrix a for up to 60 months from birth. in order to do so, late registration is modeled with logarithmic regression functions using existing data. since we already had three months of information for every row, late registration is projected starting from the 4th month after birth. the late registration to timely registration ratios (bi,n) were calculated for every late registration month between 4 and 60 (equation 2). (1) unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 187 using (bi,n) sequences, logarithmic regression functions are calculated. for example, for the 5th month of registration, (bi,4) sequence consisted of 82 values . the logarithmic regression function is calculated using these 82 values as input. the regression function is then used to calculate and ratios, thus a83,87 and a84,88 values, since a83,83 and a84,84 values are present in the data. we projected future registration numbers with the help of 57 regression functions, one for every late registration month. the second step was combining the results of projection and birth statistics for comparison and matching those results to the tdhs birth registration results. to make this comparison, unregistered births were handled in three components. the fi rst component of unregistered births consists of calculated late registrations from the regression function above. this number covers the currently unregistered births that will be registered by their 5th birthday. the second component consists of unregistered births captured by turkstat from the dns. among 2009 and 2013 dns fi gures, the year 2011 was defi cient, so the number of unregistered births captured by dns for 2011 is interpolated in order to keep a steady trend. the last component, unregistered births that remain unregistered for longer than 5 years postpartum, was calculated from tdhs birth registration results. births between 2009 and 2013 were selected in the tdhs data and compared with submatrix a where i ≤ 60 and j ≤ 60. the total unregistered birth percentage in the selected tdhs data is used to estimate the total number of unregistered births between 2009 and 2013. the fi rst two components are subtracted from this total estimate, and the remaining number becomes the estimated unregistered births that will remain unregistered longer than 5 years postpartum. the total number of unregistered births of the last component was distributed to each year between 2009 and 2013 using the percentage distribution of the second component of unregistered births to the same years. then, the percentage distribution of the second component was used to calculate the 2014 and 2015 values of the third component. the last step was preparing a full birth enumeration table to cover both registered and unregistered births, including their completeness and timeliness. with all groups either rearranged, calculated or estimated, the timely registration, late registration and unregistered birth fi gures are calculated. these estimates are presented for all births and births with adolescent mothers between 2009 and 2015 for each year. 6 results table 1 contains information for birth statistics according to the age of the mother between 2009 and 2015, as of february 2016. the number of births of adolescent mothers has fallen by nearly half in 7 years. despite the reduction, these statistics (2) • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin188 include 18,033 births by mothers younger than 18 years old, making up 14 per thousand of all births in 2015, while this ratio was 26 per thousand with 32,556 births in 2009. note that the registration information is updated every year for the preceding 5 years. for this reason, the numbers in the table indicate the known births in turkey as of february 2016, and the registration data for recent years will continue to be updated. births to mothers of unknown age are also a challenge for the registration system. in the birth registration database, each individual birth matches up with the mother’s registration information, including age, based on the identifi cation number. in other words, unless the mother of an individual is unknown, there should be a defi ned age in all cases. however, the age may be missing in the system in the case of births to foreign mothers. in addition to births to unknown and foreign mothers, some births are accounted for by women who are outside the reproductive age limits, i.e. they are either too young or too old. in these cases, women are possibly mismatched with the data, or the age of the women is wrong. these unknown cases are excluded from the analysis. table 2 shows the birth statistics of mothers under 18 years old. since the system is updated for the 5 years prior to each year, the numbers are almost complete for the fi rst few years, while the very late registration period is missing for recent years. more specifi cally, late registration and very late registration of birth cohort 2015 and very late registration of birth cohort 2016 are still censored. regardless, the decrease in timely registrations is an important sign of a reduction in the number of adolescent births. here, the number of unregistered births refers to infant deaths of adolescent mothers captured by the death notifi cation system. table 3 shows the total estimated births including the late registration projections from the birth statistics and the unregistered proportion estimation from tdhs-2013. model estimates of late registration confi rm the decrease in total births to adolescent mothers between 2009 and 2015. moreover, results also show that the timeliness of the registration has also improved over the years. in this stage of the analysis, we introduced the number of births estimated to remain unregistered for at least 5 years after birth. if we focus on the most recent estimates, the model tab. 1: birth statistics of turkey by age of mother, 2009-2015 age of mother year of <18 18+ unknown total birth number percent number percent number percent number percent 2009 32,556 2.6 1,225,759 96.8 8,436 0.7 1,266,751 100.0 2010 30,165 2.4 1,222,165 96.9 8,839 0.7 1,261,169 100.0 2011 26,804 2.1 1,212,126 97.1 9,620 0.8 1,248,550 100.0 2012 24,516 1.9 1,256,682 97.2 11,182 0.9 1,292,380 100.0 2013 22,181 1.7 1,259,665 97.3 12,242 0.9 1,294,088 100.0 2014 20,599 1.5 1,313,617 97.6 11,070 0.8 1,345,286 100.0 2015 18,033 1.4 1,297,312 97.9 10,438 0.8 1,325,783 100.0 source: turkstat birth statistics data unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 189 estimates for the year 2015 show that an additional 11 births in the early late registration period, 400 births in the late registration period, and 382 births in the very late period will be registered. in addition to these late registration cases, 57 births are not registered at all and 21 births remain unregistered at the time of their 5th birthday. in the next stage, we limit our analysis to under-5s based on records as of dec. 31, 2015 (table 4). according to this framework, some of the very late registered births in all 5 calendar years and some births in each registration status category are calculated and redistributed. consequently, we take a snapshot of the birth registration completeness and timeliness for a 5-year period at the end of 2015. since the cutoff point was selected as dec. 31, 2015, births registered after that date and projected births with date of registration later than that are taken as unregistered. accordingly, table 4 presents the number of unregistered births in two categories tab. 2: birth statistics of adolescent mothers in turkey, 2009-2015 timely early late late very late year of registered registered registered registered unregistered total birth (0-30 days) (31-90 days) (91-365 days) (>1 year) infant deaths births 2009 19,111 2,127 4,654 6,506 158 32,556 2010 20,337 1,792 3,832 4,082 122 30,165 2011 19,572 1,845 2,877 2,510 * 26,804 2012 18,880 1,792 2,177 1,585 82 24,516 2013 17,951 1,516 1,684 943 87 22,181 2014 17,048 1,571 1,447 451 82 20,599 2015 15,782 1,391 789 14 57 18,033 * data of unregistered infant deaths are not available for the year 2011 source: turkstat birth statistics data tab. 3: estimation of adolescent births in turkey, 2009-2015 timely early late late very late not year of registered registered registered registered unregistered registered at total birth (0-30 days) (31-90 days) (91-365 days) (>1 year) infant deaths 5th birthday births 2009 19,111 2,127 4,654 6,486 158 59 32,595 2010 20,337 1,792 3,832 4,071 122 45 30,199 2011 19,572 1,845 2,877 2,520 105 39 26,958 2012 18,880 1,792 2,177 1,631 82 30 24,592 2013 17,951 1,516 1,684 1,029 87 32 22,299 2014 17,048 1,571 1,447 670 82 30 20,848 2015 15,782 1,404 1,189 396 57 21 18,849 source: own calculation based on birth statistics and tdhs-2013 • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin190 ta b . 4 : r ed is tr ib u tio n o f a d o le sc en t b ir th s in t ur ke y, 2 01 120 15 r eg is te re d w ill b e re g is te re d w ill r em ai n un re g is te re d ye ar o f t im el y e ar ly la te la te v er y la te r ec o rd ed in e st im at ed n o t r eg is te re d u n re g is te re d to ta l b ir th re g is te re d re g is te re d re g is te re d re g is te re d b ir th s ta ti st ic s at 5 th b ir th d ay in fa n t d ea th s b ir th s (0 -3 0 d ay s) (3 190 d ay s) (9 136 5 d ay s) (> 1 ye ar ) (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) 20 11 19 ,5 72 1, 84 5 2, 87 7 2, 50 3 6 11 39 10 5 26 ,9 58 20 12 18 ,8 80 1, 79 2 2, 17 7 1, 56 2 23 46 30 82 24 ,5 92 20 13 17 ,9 51 1, 51 6 1, 68 4 90 6 37 86 32 87 22 ,2 99 20 14 17 ,0 48 1, 57 1 1, 4 47 34 5 10 6 21 9 30 82 20 ,8 48 20 15 15 ,5 72 1, 27 7 42 8 0 69 8 79 5 21 57 18 ,8 49 to ta l 89 ,0 23 8, 00 1 8, 61 3 5, 31 6 87 0 1, 15 7 15 2 41 3 11 3, 54 7 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n b ir th s ta tis tic s an d t d h s -2 01 3 unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 191 and four different sub-categories: for births that will be registered after the cut-off point, (1) those that are recorded in birth statistics, and (2) estimated births that will be registered. then, for births that will remain unregistered, we show (3) estimated unregistered births at 5th birthday, and (4) unregistered infant deaths. table 5 presents the fi nal stage of the analysis for the total births as well as adolescent births. according to the results of the calculation, 99 percent of all births between 2011 and 2015 had been registered by the end of 2015 (table 5). in other words, the birth registration system for children under 5 years is 99 percent complete as of 2015. of all births, 95 percent were registered in a timely fashion, within 30 days following the birth, and 4 percent of births were registered late. the results show that only 1 percent of all births (69,141) between 2011 and 2015 were unregistered at the end of 2015. projections estimated that more than half (57 percent) of the currently unregistered children will be registered before their 5th birthday, but they will still be counted as late registers. calculations show that almost 1 out of 3 (31 percent) unregistered births were infant deaths captured by dns. both unregistered births of deceased infants captured via dns and the percentage of unregistered births of deceased children in tdhs-2013 data indicate that there is a considerable number of unregistered cases in this group. although we have the quantity information about the vast majority of children in this group, they are not registered in the civil registration system. the remaining 12 percent of unregistered births will be unregistered, even 5 years following their birth. in total, 4.5 per 1,000 births between 2011 and 2015 will still be unregistered by the child’s 5th birthday. while completeness and timeliness of registration are promising for all births, the picture is slightly different for births to adolescent mothers. the results show that 98 percent of births to adolescent mothers between 2011 and 2015 were regtab. 5: estimation of completeness and timeliness of the birth registration system in turkey, 2011-2015 registration status adolescent births (under 18) total birth registration registration number percentage number percentage registered births 110,954 97.72 6,470,042 98.94 timely 89,023 78.40 6,239,585 95.42 early late (31-90 days) 8,001 7.05 137,334 2.10 late (91-365 days) 8,613 7,58 64,025 0.98 very late (more than 1 year) 5,316 4.68 29,098 0.44 total late registration 21,931 19.31 230,457 3.52 unregistered births 2,593 2.28 69,141 1.06 remain unregistered 566 0.49 29,694 0.45 will be registered 2,027 1.79 39,448 0.60 total 113,547 100.00 6,539,183 100.00 source: own calculation based on birth statistics and tdhs-2013 • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin192 istered by the end of 2015. completeness of registration seems high for children of adolescent mothers, however only 78 percent of all births to adolescent mothers were registered on time. some 19 percent of these births were registered late. in addition, almost 10 percent of late-registered children have adolescent mothers. estimated results show that 2 percent of adolescent births (2,593) between 2011 and 2015 were unregistered at the end of 2015. while most of the unregistered births to adolescent mothers (2,027) are expected to be registered within a year, 22 percent (566) will remain unregistered. the number of children of adolescent mothers who will remain unregistered until their 5th birthday is lower than the total unregistered births, but that percentage is still elevated. the completeness of this group also seems high, but timeliness was conspicuously low compared to the registration of all births. together, the percentage of timely registration and the portion of births remaining unregistered indicate resistance to registration in the case of adolescent mothers. in addition to the 5-year registration data, we can also construct the births of the 2009-2015 period with birth cohorts according to birth registration groups. figure 1 represents the percentages of births in turkey between 2009 and 2015, with estimates of unregistered births and late registrations that are calculated for 5 years following the birth year (early, late and very late registration). as expected, the majority of births are registered in time, as legally specifi ed. improvements in completeness and timeliness are readily apparent, since the total of late registrations and unregistered births account for more than 10 percent of births in 2009, dropping to under 4 percent in 2015. the improvement for adolescent mothers was even more remarkable, with late registrations falling from 40 percent to 16 percent over 7 years. the late registrations that occurred between 31 days and 5 years seem to decrease over time for both adolescent mothers and total births. the registration interval was signifi cantly shortened; each group of late registrations improved, with the exception of the early late registration group of adolescent mothers’ births. the decrease in late registration for turkey mostly originated from this early late registration group: those who registered between 31-90 days. in 2009, 4.9 percent of the births were in this group, declining to 1.6 percent in 2015. this improvement in early late registered births implies an improvement in timeliness in the registration system. although the number of adolescent births has signifi cantly decreased, the early late registration group was slow to follow this trend. in fact, the percentage of births that fell into the early late registration group increased from 2009 to 2015. the timely registration group increased, there were visible improvements in very late registrations and the early late registration group grew, meaning that there was a shift in the late registration groups toward shorter intervals of late registration. the total of late registration and unregistered births was above 40 percent and nearly half were the very late registrations in 2009, falling to 16 percent in 2015. this shift is a signal of the dissolution of resistance. mirroring the improvements in the registration system, timely registration increased from 89.3 percent in 2009 to 96.9 percent in 2015. the increases were sharper in the early years but slowed as the system improved. timely registration of adolescent mothers’ births rose from 58.6 percent to 83.7 percent in 7 years. unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 193 although the increase over such a short period is noteworthy, it is still very far from the timeliness of total birth registration. 7 conclusion besides having human rights, children also have extended rights which derive from certain international documents. international laws aim to protect every person, particularly every child, and states are legally responsible for upholding these special provisions (unicef 2001). however, this protective shield is only available when the children concerned are visible to the state. without the relevant information about each child, the state cannot provide the customary protections. in order to be seen by the state, a child must be registered at birth and the family has a primary duty of initiating the citizenship process through timely birth registration. unfortunately, the fulfi llment of these parental responsibilities suffers when the parents are children themselves. the unregistered child of an adolescent mother does not enjoy fig. 1: estimation of timely registration, distribution of late registration and unregistered births in turkey, 2009-2015* 0 10 20 30 40 50 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 year early latelatevery lateunregistered late registration all all all all all all all<18 <18 <18 <18 <18 <18 <18 0 20 40 60 80 100 all < 18 timely registration * line graphs show registered births and bar graphs show late registrations and unregistered births. source: own calculation based on birth statistics and tdhs-2013 • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin194 full rights, even if the mother is an acknowledged citizen. without offi cial status, a child is effectively nonexistent, legally invisible in the eyes of the state. the centennial registration system in turkey is a good example of a recently improved registration system. birth registration details are now becoming available and can serve as the basis for studying completeness and timeliness. this study estimates birth registration completeness and timeliness in turkey with a special focus on births to adolescent mothers. this is the very fi rst attempt to evaluate the civil registration and vital statistics system itself by using the 2013 turkey demographic and health survey and the turkey national death notifi cation system as secondary data sources. the method we use in this study allows us to comment on the completeness and timeliness of the registration system with the help of secondary sources. the main results underline the disadvantages of adolescent birth, in spite of a general advancement in birth registration. the results show that turkey had 99 percent under-5 birth registration completeness for the 2011-2015 period, and 95 percent of all births were registered in time. estimates show that 1 percent of births were unregistered and 0.05 percent of all births will remain unregistered for 5 years. the calculations for adolescent mothers showed that birth registration completeness was slightly lower than the results for all of turkey, with 98 percent of all births to adolescent mothers being registered. however, the difference in timeliness was signifi cant, with the level of timely registration of births to adolescent mothers at 78 percent between 2011 and 2015. the late registration of adolescent births improved during the period in question, however there was a slight increase in early-late registration. these observations indicate a decrease in the waiting interval until adolescent mothers turn 18 and register their births. in other words, the increase in early late registration rates confi rms that adolescent marriages in turkey occur mostly in the late adolescent age group. overall, we can state that the birth registration system is complete for turkey and for adolescent mothers, since the children of adolescent mothers are eventually registered; however, the timeliness of the birth registration is low for adolescent births. low timeliness causes the children of adolescent mothers to live without identifi cation longer than the children of adults. those children spend the most fragile period of their lives, biologically speaking, as invisible persons. since we can only identify the births of adolescents if they are registered before the mother turns 18, this means the numbers obtained through birth registration underestimate the total births of adolescent mothers. furthermore, since the reporting of a birth to an adolescent opens a criminal case, adolescent mothers may misreport the child’s birth date. this can cause further underestimation. this issue may lead to risks such as inaccurate follow-up of vaccinations and delayed school enrollment. unfortunately, neither data source included information on births registered with a false date. thus, the numbers and percentages presented here should be seen as a best-case scenario. in addition, the study is limited by the absence of a census for matching and comparing the administrative birth registration data. civil law determines the minimum age of marriage in turkey; however, social norms and perceptions regarding sexual activity and marriage continue to be strong and stable, as is also observed in the middle east and north african countries (pretunregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 195 titore 2015). one of the reasons for this confl ict is the cultural strength of the early marriage tradition, despite the changes to civil laws in turkey with the proclamation of the republic more than 90 years ago. women were at the heart of the modernization project of the republic of turkey, yet not with regard to their individual rights (kadıoğlu 1994). women’s rights and regulations were accepted as a national mission or a kind of national symbol in turkey, but at the same time women were defi ned within the family as non-individuals. therefore, the customs regarding family and kinship formation, including marriage, have not evolved. without a change in the perception of family foundation in society, top-down legislation can only have a limited impact on practices. this shows that the acceptance of marriage by society is still more important than acceptance by the state. regardless of the differences in their socio-economic status, families in turkey have traditionally tended to restrict adolescent sexual activity and motivate or force young people into marriage with their very fi rst signs of sexual interest (yüksel-kaptanoğlu/ergöçmen 2014). sexual activity is directly linked to marriage and also correlated with pregnancy. married adolescents become strong candidates for having births that are within wedlock from the parents’ point of view, but out of wedlock and illegal in the eyes of the state, this multiplies the risks for their children, since they are then kept out of the citizenship framework. unregistered children in this setting are invisible and, furthermore, the underage mother of the unregistered children does not participate actively in any discourse with the state. the state defi nes citizenship as the fi rst duty of a citizen and aims to improve the registration of births, yet the fact that it ignores the unregistered children of more vulnerable groups highlights the disconnect between offi cial regulations and cultural norms. the temporary period during which the children of underage women remain unregistered represents an unspoken agreement, rather than a confl ict, between state and family wherein the state turns a blind eye and loosens its age restrictions for marriage, with eventual compliance being assumed. the strong family ideology means that the sanctity of family surpasses both the construct of citizenship and the regulating power of the state. as an indicator of this, it is not the state but the families themselves which are responsible for registering newborns. the agreement between state and family also emphasizes the true nature of citizenship dominant in turkey in which political and civil concepts are so often eclipsed by the country’s strong traditional outlook. legal immunity based on the sanctity of the family is indeed observed mostly in religious families in cases where marriages take the form of traditional religious ceremonies. while the state rejects this agreement, both verbally and legally, the actual practice and the number of the family formations that occur before the age of 18 are refl ected in the contradictory reality. strong cultural norms have shaped citizenship in turkey and its perception. for this reason, the citizenship fi lter and the layers of the state are constructed upon this traditional cultural foundation and family is kept as the focus of society, not the individual. following the launch of the address based population registration system, this confl ict became more visible and measurable. the number of unregistered people has decreased due to the increased need to register through integrated electronic systems with id numbers. however, many have increasingly been • faruk keskin, alanur çavlin196 denied basic civil services since the state began to recognize only those who are registered. before, unregistered children could receive health care, become vaccinated and even be enrolled in schools. now, none of these services are available for unregistered children (koc/eryurt 2010). the requirement for an id number in order to access health services is the main reason for the increase in birth registrations in turkey over the last 20 years. however, there is resistance to such a basic regulation as the registration of birth in traditional or religious circles. thus, the unregistered births of adolescent mothers do not represent a challenge for the registration system, rather they are related to the ongoing cultural permission of early marriage, despite its offi cial condemnation. since this is a type of cultural resistance, 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citizenship and ethnicity in turkey. in: middle eastern studies 40,6: 51-66 [doi: 10.1080/0026320042000282874]. unregistered births of adolescent mothers in turkey: invisible children • 199 yüksel-kaptanoğlu, i̇lknur; ergöçmen, banu akadli 2014: early marriage: trends in turkey, 1978-2008. in: journal of family issues 35,12: 1707-1724 [doi: 10.1177/0192513x14538025]. date of submission: 25.04.2019 date of acceptance: 31.01.2020 faruk keskin (), dr. alanur çavlin. hacettepe university, institute of population studies. ankara, turkey. e-mail: farukkeskin@hacettepe.edu.tr, alanurcv@hacettepe.edu.tr url: http://www.hips.hacettepe.edu.tr/eng/kadro/faruk_keskin.pdf https://hacettepe.academia.edu/alanurcavlinbozbeyoglu published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india: 1950-2015 fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india: 1950-2015 aalok ranjan chaurasia abstract: this paper compares the population transition in china and india during 1950-2015 by decomposing population growth into the growth attributed to the changes in fertility and mortality (intrinsic growth), and the growth attributed to the change in population age composition (momentum growth). the analysis reveals similarities and differences in the population transition path followed by the two countries and suggests that india lags behind china by about 30 years in terms of population transition. the population transition in china has been rapid and inconsistent, while india’s population transition has been slow and consistent. the momentum for growth intrinsic to respective populations has been the main contributor to population growth in both countries. the demographic dividend resulting from population transition in india has been substantially smaller than that in china because of differences in population transition paths. unlike in china, population transition appears to have contributed only marginally to economic growth in india. this paper emphasises the importance of focussing population policy on the relative contribution of different demographic drivers to population growth. keywords: population transition · china · india · demographic dividend · fertility · mortality · age composition 1 introduction china and india together account for almost 37 percent of the world population (united nations 2015a). the two countries have also accounted for 37 percent of the world population growth between 1950 and 2015. population transition in the two countries has, however, been different. china’s population transition is nearing completion, with an average annual population growth rate of around 0.52 percent per year during 2010-15; a total fertility rate of 1.55; and an expectation of life at comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 149-186 (date of release: 27.09.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-12en3 • aalok ranjan chaurasia150 birth of more than 75 years. india’s population, on the other hand, is still in the middle of the transition, with average annual population growth rate hovering around 1.3 percent per year; the total fertility rate remaining well above the replacement level; and an expectation of life at birth of less than 68 years. between 2010 and 2015, more than 80 million people were added to india’s population, compared to only 35 million in china. india’s population is likely to surpass that of china by 2022 according to the medium variant of the 2015 revision of un population projections (united nations 2015a). the 2017 revision of un population projections, however, suggests that india’s population will surpass china’s population in 2024 (united nations 2017). it is well known that population transition has important implications for economic growth. the decrease in fertility and the associated decrease in the dependency ratio, in turn lead to an increase in the share of the population concentrated in the working ages and hence in the ratio of the working age to the non-working age population (bloom/williamson 1998; bloom/canning 2004, 2005; bloom et al. 2003; bloom et al. 2000; cai/wang 2005; mason 2007). the increased concentration of the population in the working ages suggests that even if there is no change in the output per worker, labour force participation rates, and unemployment rates, an increase in the share of the working age population will lead to an increase in the output per capita attributed purely to demographic changes – hence the name “demographic dividend”. the impact of population transition on economic growth is, however, policy dependent (mason 2007). a growth strategy that can facilitate creation of additional jobs to productively utilise the rapidly growing work force is necessary to benefi t economically from demographic changes; otherwise, the demographic dividend cannot accelerate economic growth. the available evidence suggests that the demographic dividends resulting from population transition in china and india have been different. china’s gdp per capita (ppp) quadrupled between 1982 and 2000 (wang/mason 2007), with the demographic dividend accelerating economic growth by 2.3 percent per year, on average (vermeer 2006). however, cai and wang (2005) projected way back in 2005 that china’s demographic dividend would come to an end in 2015. similarly, keck (2013) speculated that china’s demographic dividend could end by 2015. recently, roubanis (2016) has observed that china’s demographic dividend has come to end, an observation which is supported by the present analysis. meanwhile, india’s demographic dividend has never been large enough to have a noticeable impact on the economic growth (chaurasia/gulati 2008). it is argued that much of india’s potential demographic dividend lies ahead (golley/tyers 2012). india’s per capita income was 66 percent higher than that of china in 1980 but, by 2008, china’s per capita income was twice that of india. this cross over has been attributed to the very different demographic trajectories followed by the two countries (bloom 2011). china’s rapid population transition may, however, pose many future development challenges that may not be experienced by india. china will have far less time to prepare its social and economic infrastructure to deal with the effects of the rapid ageing of its population resulting from swift population transition (wang 2010). population ageing will proceed at a much slower rate in india, and population growth will continue for a fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 151 longer period. it is expected that future population dynamics will have a positive effect on economic growth in india, but a negative effect in china (choudhry/elhorst 2010). it has also been emphasised that the demographic dividend will offer the single biggest hope for india to catch up with china in the coming years (kelkar 2004). in this paper, we present a comparative perspective of population transition in china and india during the 65 years from 1950 to 2015. the objective of the analysis is to identify distinctive features of the population transition path followed by the world’s two most populous countries. more specifi cally, we analyse how fertility and mortality transition and the associated changes in the population age composition have contributed to the change in the population stock – the size and age composition – of the two countries. there are many studies that have carried out comparative analyses of population dynamics of china and india in different contexts, including economic growth (bloom et al. 2006; da vanzo et al. 2011; bloom 2011; golley/tyers 2012); migration (white/subedi 2008); savings and economic growth (joe et al. 2015), macroeconomics (wolf et al. 2011), political economy (desai 2003), and competitiveness (schmidt 2011). however, there are few studies that have carried out a comparative analysis of the population dynamics of the two countries in the context of population transition – transition in fertility and mortality, and transition in population age composition (coale 1983; roy 1993; adlakha/banister 1995). this paper is organised as follows. the next section of the paper outlines the methodology. section three describes the data source. we have used the 2015 revision of population estimates prepared by the united nations population division along with estimates of total fertility rate, expectation of life at births and estimates of net migration. section four presents an outline of population growth in china and india from 1950 to 2015. section fi ve decomposes the change in the natural population growth rate into the change attributed to fertility, mortality and population age composition. section six decomposes population growth in the two countries into the growth attributed to fertility, mortality, age composition and population size. transition in the age composition of the population is analysed in section seven of the paper. findings of the analyses are discussed in a further section of the paper to highlight how population transition differed in the two countries. the last section discusses the lessons learnt from the population transition in the two countries and their policy implications. the analysis of the key drivers of population growth has always been an area of interest to demographers. a number of studies have analysed future population growth under a set of assumptions about future trends in factors that affect population growth (andreev et al. 2013; bongaarts 2009, 1994; bongaarts/bulatao 1999; frejka 1973, 1981). for example, andreev, kantorová and bongaarts (2013) have compared four variants of population projections to estimate how future changes in different components of population growth will infl uence the future growth of the world population. such analyses can inform policies and programmes aimed at balancing impending demographic changes and social, economic, health and environmental objectives (bongaarts 1994; bongaarts/bulatao 1999). notestein (1960) has used this approach to explore how changes in different factors affecting popu• aalok ranjan chaurasia152 lation growth were related to the change in the us population stock between 1930 and 1955. there are also studies that have analysed demographic factors responsible for past changes in the population stock (smith/ahmed 1990; horiuchi 1992, 1993; kandiah/horiuchi 1995). horiuchi (1992, 1993) has analysed the stagnation in the decline of the world population growth rate during the 1980s, and kandiah and horiuchi (1995) have analysed trends and prospects of world population growth. they identifi ed three main factors for stagnation: age structure, fertility trends in china and india, and the fact that in many developing countries, the decrease in fertility slowed down during the 1980s compared to the 1960s and 1970s. alternatively, population growth can also be considered as the sum of the increase in population of different ages (horiuchi 1995). this approach refl ects the cohort replacement view of population growth, as opposed to the entrance-exit view of population growth according to which population is a group of individuals with two entry points (birth and immigration) and two exit points (death and emigration). horiuchi (1995) has used this approach to analyse the determinants of the change in population growth rates in sweden. he has shown that the growth rate of the population is a weighted sum of past changes attributed to the change in population size, age distribution, fertility, mortality, and migration. horiuchi calls this decomposition the “retrospective decomposition” of growth rate, distinguishing it from the synchronous decomposition based on the growth balance equation of relative population change. the difference between the two is rooted in the period versus cohort approach of demographic analysis. a consistent theme in research on population transition is related to the change in the population stock as population moves from the preto the post-transition phase. a synthetic index that refl ects the change in population size during transition is the transition multiplier, which is the number by which population is multiplied when it moves from the preto the post-transition phase (chesnais 1979, 1986). the population multiplier can be calculated theoretically as well as empirically. the theoretical approach involves approximation either through an analytical model (keyfi tz 1971) or by numerical simulation (frejka 1973). the empirical approach involves an examination of historical evidence complemented by long range population projections (chesnais 1990). on the other hand, the change in population age composition during transition is measured in terms of the change in the dependency ratio or, equivalently, the potential support ratio. the dependency ratio is defi ned as the ratio of children (0-14 years) and old persons (65 years and above) to the working age population (15-64 years), while the potential support ratio is reciprocal to the dependency ratio. population transition has three phases with specifi c characteristics of population age composition. at the early stage of transition, the dependency ratio is high or the potential support ratio is low because of a high proportion of the young population. at the middle stage of the transition, the dependency ratio decreases or the potential support ratio increases. at the late stage of transition, the dependency ratio is again high or the potential support ratio is low because of a high proportion of the old population (williamson 1977). during the period when the defertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 153 pendency ratio decreases or the potential support ratio increases, the demographic benefi ts (window of opportunity) can be reaped to accelerate economic growth. 2 methodology “population transition” refers to the change in population stock, i.e. the size and age composition of the population (schoen 2002). a live birth results in an increase in the population, while a death results in a decrease. a birth always increases the population at age zero, while death can occur at any age. therefore, changes in the size of the population are always associated with changes in its age composition. the population may also decrease or increase, and its age composition may change because of migration – if a member of the population leaves it, population decreases and if a person from outside enters the population, the population increases. if p(0) denotes the population at time 0; b(0,t) denotes the number of live births during the time interval (0,t); d(0,t) denotes the number of deaths; i(0,t) denotes the number of in-migrants; and o(0,t) denotes the number of out-migrants, then the population at time t, p(t) can be obtained from the simple identity known as the balancing equation of population change (preston et al. 2001: 2). p(t) = p(0) + b(0,t) − d(0,t) + i(0,t) − o(0,t) if inward and outward movement of individuals is ignored, then the change in the size of the population during a given period depends upon the number of births and deaths during that period so that p(t) − p(0) = b(0,t) − d(0,t) dividing both sides of equation (2) by the person-years lived during the interval (0,t), py(0,t), we get r = b − d. where r is termed as the (crude) rate of natural increase (preston et al. 2001: 8) or the natural population growth rate, b is the (crude) birth rate and d is the (crude) death rate. thus, there are four factors in the absence of migration that determine the change in the population stock: 1) initial population size; 2) birth rate; 3) death rate; and 4) the period during which given birth and death rates apply (vallin 2006). it is obvious that when r=0, size of the population stock remains unchanged; when r>0, population stock increases; and when r<0, population stock decreases. the larger the magnitude of r, the larger the change in the population stock. in this way, r serves as a useful indicator of population transition. demographic transition theory (notestein 1945) says that as population moves from the pre-transition phase – characterised by a high birth rate and a high death rate – to the post-transition phase – characterised by a low birth rate and a low death rate – the size of the population (1) (2) (3) • aalok ranjan chaurasia154 increases, and its age composition changes. the reason is that there is a time gap between the onset of the decrease in the death rate and the onset of the decrease in the birth rate, so that r fi rst increases and then decreases. the primary determinant of the birth rate is the actual birth performance or fertility of individual woman. however, not all women are biologically capable of giving birth. most of the births are confi ned to women aged 15-49 years which is also known as the reproductive age group. moreover, the probability of conception also varies by age. in other words, the birth rate has two components, one age independent and the other infl uenced by population age composition. if f denotes the birth rate independent of age, then we can state that b = f × (b/f) = f × ab where ab = b/f is a multiplier which refl ects the effect of age composition on the birth rate. similarly, the death rate also has two components. if l denotes the age independent death rate, then, we can state that d = l × (d/l) = l × ad equation (3) may now be written as r = f × ab − l × ad following kitagawa (1955), r can be decomposed into two components as follows r = (f − l) × (ab + ad)/2 + ((f + l) × (ab − ad)/2 = i + a the fi rst component on the right of equation (6) is the intrinsic component which is determined by the prevailing regimes of fertility and mortality as measured by the age independent birth rate, f, and the age independent death rate, l, and may be termed as the intrinsic rate of population growth (espenshade 1975). the second component is the age component, a, which refl ects the age composition effects on the birth rate, ab, and the age composition effects on the death rate, ad, and hence on r. it is obvious from equation (6) that r will not be zero, even if f=l or when i=0. the change (increase or decrease) in the population stock therefore depends not only on the change in fertility and mortality, but also on the change in population age composition. the age component of the natural population growth rate is closely related to the concept of population momentum (keyfi tz 1971; schoen/ kim 1991) which, in its narrowest formulation, refers to the fact that a population closed to migration may continue to increase even when fertility decreases to the replacement level (preston et al. 2001: 136). population momentum measures the cumulative contribution of age composition to population change in all future years after fertility has been set at the replacement level. it is usually measured in relative terms as the ratio of the size of the longrun stationary population to that of the ob(4) (5) (6) fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 155 served population when replacement fertility is fi rst attained (espenshade/tannen 2015) and can be both greater than or less than the limiting value of 1. when the age composition of the population is younger than the age composition of the stationary population, the momentum factor exceeds 1. in this case, population continues to increase even after the replacement fertility is reached. if the age composition of the population is older than that of the stationary population, the momentum factor is less than 1. in this case, population decreases after the replacement fertility is reached. when the population age composition is the same as that of the stationary population, the momentum factor is 1. in this case, the natural population growth rate is determined solely by the intrinsic population growth rate (preston/ guillot 1997). it is however clear from equation (6) that the concept of momentum is not confi ned to reaching the replacement fertility only. it applies to any change in the population stock. when the population is closed with respect to migration, the change in the population stock depends upon the change in fertility and mortality and change in the population age composition, which is the legacy of past fertility and mortality dynamics (preston et al. 2001: 136). when the population is open for migration, both the size and the age composition of net migrant population also contributes to momentum growth (espenshade/tannen 2015). equation (6) suggests that the change in the natural population growth rate, r, should be analysed in terms of the change in the age independent birth rate, f, age independent death rate, l, age composition effects on the birth rate, ab, and age composition effects on the death rate, ad. now ∆ r = r2 − r1 = (b2 − d2) − (b1 − d1) = (b2 − b1) + (d2 − d1) = ∆ b − ∆ d and ∆ b = (b2 − b1) = f2 × ab2 − f1 × ab1 = [(f2 − f1) × (ab1 + ab2)/2] + [(ab2 − ab1) × (f1 + f2)/2] = ∂f + ∂ab similarly, ∆ d = (d2 − d1) = l2 × ad2 − l1 × ad1 = [(l2 − l1) × (ad1 + ad2)/2] + [(ad2 − ad1) × (l1 + l2)/2] = ∂l + ∂ad substituting from (8) and (9) in (7), we get ∆ r = (∂f + ∂ab) – (∂l + ∂ad) = (∂f − ∂l) + (∂ab − ∂ad) = ∆ i + ∆a the fi rst term on the right of equation (10) is determined by the change in the age independent birth rate, f, and the age independent death rate, l, or the change (7) (8) (9) (10) • aalok ranjan chaurasia156 in the intrinsic rate of population growth while the second term is determined by the change in the age composition of the population as it affects the birth rate and the death rate. it also follows from equation (10) that ∆r will not be zero but will be equal to ∆a even when there is no change in fertility and mortality so that ∆ i =0. equation (10) takes into account both the change in the intrinsic rate of population growth and the change in the population age composition in explaining the change in the population stock. it addresses the controversial issue of which demographic indicators are more effi cient in analysing population transition. in the absence of migration, the logical choice of the indicator refl ecting population transition is the natural population growth rate, i.e. the difference between the birth rate and the death rate. however, both birth rate and death rate are crude measures respectively of fertility and mortality which are affected – in addition to the level of fertility and mortality – by the population age and sex composition. using only crude rates to measure population transition, therefore, may obscure the change in fertility and mortality. birth and death rates may stay at a relatively high level despite low levels of fertility and mortality because population age composition contributes to keeping them high. on the other hand, fertility and mortality indicators such as the total fertility rate and the expectation of life at birth have limitations in analysing population transition. first, both indicators are based on a hypothetical rather than the actual population. second, changes in the total fertility rate and in the expectation of life at birth do not necessarily lead to change, respectively, in the birth rate and the death rate and hence in the natural population growth rate because birth rate and death rate are also infl uenced by changes in population age and sex composition. analysis of population transition requires that changes in both fertility and mortality and changes in population age composition are taken into account. equation (10) provides this analytical framework. it essentially weighs the differences in the levels of fertility and mortality by the average levels of the age structure effects on birth and death rates while the difference in the age structure effects on birth and death rates is weighed by average levels of fertility and mortality. there are other decompositional procedures also, but they introduce a residual or interaction term which is often diffi cult to interpret (preston et al. 2001). decomposing the change in the natural population growth rate, r, into its components also has policy relevance. if the change in the age component accounts for, for example, 80 percent of the change in the natural population growth rate, then there is little relevance of policies and programmes directed towards reducing fertility and mortality in the context of population transition. in such a scenario, population policies and programmes should be directed towards addressing the age component of the natural population growth rate, which is the result of past fertility and mortality dynamics (bongaarts 1994). for example, bourgeois-pichat and taleb (1970) had demonstrated that the target set by mexico to achieve a population growth rate of zero by 2000 was unrealistic because the age composition of the population of mexico was conducive to positive population growth. the application of equation (10) requires measurement of the age independent birth rate, f, and the age independent death rate, l. a measure of f can be derived from the total fertility rate (tfr) which is actually the sum of the age-specifi c birth fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 157 rates of reproductive-age (15-49 years) women. dividing the total fertility rate (tfr) by 35 – the length of the reproductive period – gives the age independent birth rate per woman of reproductive age. finally, multiplying the age independent birth rate per woman of reproductive age by the proportion of reproductive age women (w) in the population gives an estimate of the age independent birth rate, f. thus, the age independent birth rate, f, may be calculated from the total fertility rate as f = w × (tfr/35) it may be noticed that f is actually a scalar multiple of the total fertility rate (tfr). horiuchi (1991) has shown that the ratio of the birth rate to tfr is a measure of the age structure effects on the birth rate. as such, the ratio b/f is also a measure of the age structure effects on the birth rate. similarly, the expectation of life at birth (e0) is a measure of mortality which depends only upon age-specifi c probabilities of death and is not infl uenced by the age composition of the population. the reciprocal of e0, the life table death rate, may therefore be taken as a measure of the age independent death rate, l and the ratio d/l may be argued to be a measure of the age composition effects on the death rate in the same manner as the ratio b/f is a measure of the age composition effects on the birth rate. it may however be noticed that the interpretation of the ratio d/l as a measure of the age composition effects on the death rate is not as straightforward as the interpretation of the ratio b/f as a measure of the age composition effects on the birth rate (horiuchi 1992), as it depends on the stage of mortality transition (united nations 2006). at the early stage of transition, the decline in mortality is primarily confi ned to infancy and early childhood, which exerts an infl uence on population change similar to the increase in fertility. therefore, initial stages of mortality transition tend to make the population as a whole younger, even as the probabilities of survival to middle and older ages increase. as the mortality transition advances, the decrease in mortality is increasingly confi ned to older ages, so that the late stage of mortality transition tends to make the population as a whole grow older by increasing the proportion of old persons in the population. we have used two indicators to measure the change in the population age structure resulting from population transition: 1) the potential support ratio or the ratio of the working age population (15-64 years) to the non-working age population (0-14 years and 65 years and above); and 2) the difference between the growth rate of the working age population and the growth rate of the non-working age population in a given time period. these two indicators have been selected to capture the transition in the population age structure in place of the proportionate age distribution of the population. the reason is that the two indicators are also used to quantify the demographic dividend that is generated as the result of population transition and that has implications for economic growth. the demographic dividend is accrued in a given period when the growth rate of the working age population is relatively more rapid than the growth rate of the non-working age population, so that the difference between the two growth rates is positive. when the growth rate of the working age population is slower than the growth rate of the non-working age population, the (11) • aalok ranjan chaurasia158 difference between the two growth rates is negative and no demographic dividend is accrued. it is also obvious that the larger the difference between the two growth rates, the larger the demographic dividend generated as the result of population transition, and hence the larger the potential contribution of population transition to accelerating economic growth even if other determinants of economic growth remain unchanged. 3 data source the present analysis uses estimates of population and selected demographic indicators for china and india prepared by the united nations population division in its 2015 revision for different quinquennial during the period 1950-2015 (table 1). united nations population division provides estimates of population after adjusting for net migration. at the same time, estimates of net migration in a quinquennial are also provided by the united nations population division. based on these two data, we have estimated population of the two countries which is not adjusted for net migration and these estimates are used in the present analysis. a comparison of the population estimates adjusted for net migration and not adjusted for net migration suggests that net migration accounts for only a small proportion of the population of the two countries. between 1950 and 2015, around 11 million people in china and around 6 million people in india are estimated to have emigrated. the average annual birth rate, average annual death rate and the average annual natural population growth rate used in the present analysis have been calculated for different quinquennial based on the population estimates unadjusted for net migration. we have chosen to use the un population estimates rather than the offi cial population estimates of the two countries for two reasons. first, estimates prepared by the united nations population division are based on a set of uniform assumptions and estimation methodology. these estimates, therefore, permit inter-country comparison. second, offi cial population estimates for both countries are not available for various periods between 1950 and 2015. therefore, comparing the transition paths followed by the two countries would require interpolation. there is however a possibility that the un population estimates differ from offi cial population estimates for the two countries. 4 population growth in china and india the un population division estimates that china’s population increased from 544 million in 1950 to 1376 million in 2015, while india’s population increased from 376 to 1311 million (table 1). if net migration is taken into account, china’s population is estimated to have increased to 1387 million in 2015 compared to india’s 1317 million (fig. 1). population increase in both countries has been associated with a decrease in fertility and mortality. the decrease in fertility in china has, however, not been consistent as tfr increased, rather than decreased, between 1955-60 and 1965fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 159 70 and again between 1980-85 and 1985-90. in india, fertility decrease has been consistent once it started decreasing after 1970. fertility in india decreased even tab. 1: population, birth rate, death rate, total fertility rate and expectation of life at birth in china and india, 1950-2015 year population (million) birth death total fertility expectation of rate rate life at birth per 1,000 inhabitants (years) adjusted for not adjusted migration for migration china 1950 544.113 544.113 1955 598.574 598.740 42.242 23.101 6.107 43.389 1960 644.450 644.624 36.491 21.719 5.476 44.041 1965 706.591 707.824 39.740 21.027 6.150 44.125 1970 808.511 809.756 39.930 13.002 6.300 55.051 1975 905.580 907.939 32.157 9.256 4.850 61.320 1980 977.837 980.624 22.564 7.157 3.014 65.192 1985 1052.622 1055.667 21.342 6.591 2.520 67.446 1990 1154.606 1157.805 25.153 6.675 2.750 68.630 1995 1227.841 1231.864 18.955 6.553 2.000 69.386 2000 1269.975 1274.504 13.244 6.438 1.480 70.587 2005 1305.601 1312.275 12.059 6.218 1.500 72.852 2010 1340.969 1349.845 12.084 6.438 1.530 74.438 2015 1376.049 1386.725 12.329 6.938 1.550 75.432 india 1950 376.325 376.325 1955 409.280 409.386 43.629 26.783 5.903 36.622 1960 449.662 449.772 42.657 23.834 5.896 39.658 1965 497.920 498.115 41.530 21.103 5.891 42.733 1970 553.943 554.384 39.885 18.469 5.723 46.026 1975 621.704 620.026 38.522 16.130 5.411 49.399 1980 697.230 694.420 36.784 14.109 4.975 52.557 1985 782.085 778.792 35.691 12.745 4.683 54.947 1990 870.602 867.263 33.155 11.625 4.266 56.746 1995 960.875 958.214 30.163 10.209 3.833 59.202 2000 1053.481 1051.537 27.696 9.102 3.483 61.588 2005 1144.326 1144.589 25.365 8.401 3.141 63.569 2010 1230.985 1234.077 22.923 7.864 2.797 65.463 2015 1311.051 1316.741 20.354 7.384 2.480 67.473 source: united nations (2015) • aalok ranjan chaurasia160 when there was a setback to india’s offi cial family planning programme after 1977, although there was some slowdown in the pace of decrease in fertility (government of india 2013). mortality also decreased in both countries, but the decrease has again been faster in china than in india. most of the decrease in mortality in china was confi ned between 1965 and 1975. in india, mortality decrease has been slow and the pace of decrease appears to have slowed down after 1980 (chaurasia 2010). in both countries, the average annual natural population growth rate was the highest during 1965-70 (table 2; fig. 2). after 1965-70, the natural population growth rate decreased very sharply in china, although the trend reversed during 1985-90. the rate decreased slowly in india, so that the gap between the two countries widened until 1995-2000. the natural population growth rate in china was consistently lower than that in india, except during 1950-55 and 1965-75. the faster decrease in the natural population growth rate in china has been due to faster decrease in both fertility and mortality. the intrinsic population growth rate in china turned negative after 1995, but it has always been positive in india. the age component of the natural population growth rate, on the other hand, always contributed to increasing the natural population growth rate in both countries. the contribution of the age component increased in both countries, up to 1985-90 in china and up to 1990-95 in india and decreased thereafter, although the decrease has been very slow in india. in both countries, the relative contribution of the intrinsic and the age components of the natural population growth rate reversed over time. in china, the positive natufig. 1: population growth in china and india, 1950-2015 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year 37 6 40 9 45 0 49 8 55 4 62 0 69 4 77 9 86 7 95 8 1, 05 2 1, 14 5 1, 23 4 1, 31 7 54 4 59 9 64 5 70 8 81 0 90 8 98 1 1, 05 6 1, 15 8 1, 23 2 1, 27 5 1, 31 2 1, 35 0 1, 38 7 china india population million source: own calculations based on estimates prepared by the united nations (2015) fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 161 ral population growth rate since 1995 has been due to its positive age component, whereas in india almost 80 percent of the natural population growth rate during 2010-15 is attributed to the age component. tab. 2: natural population growth rate (r); age independent birth rate (f); age independent death rate (l); age structure effects on birth rate (ab) and death rate (ad) in china and india: 1950-2015 * note: the period 1950-55 refers to the years 1950 until 1954 and 1955-60 refers to the years 1955 until 1959 and so on: meaning the lower limit is always included and the upper limit is excluded. source: own calculations period* (from … below …) natural population growth rate components of natural population growth rate age independent age composition effects on intrinsic age birth death birth death component rate rate (r) (b) (d) (f) (l) (ab) (ad) per 1,000 inhabitants per 1,000 inhabitants china 1950-55 19.141 17.840 1.301 40.490 23.047 1.043 1.002 1955-60 14.771 12.123 2.648 34.798 22.706 1.049 0.957 1960-65 18.712 15.363 3.350 38.295 22.663 1.038 0.928 1965-70 26.928 18.377 8.551 39.428 18.165 1.013 0.716 1970-75 22.901 11.670 11.232 30.785 16.308 1.045 0.568 1975-80 15.406 3.675 11.731 19.938 15.339 1.132 0.467 1980-85 14.751 2.615 12.136 18.040 14.827 1.183 0.445 1985-90 18.477 5.235 13.242 20.865 14.571 1.206 0.458 1990-95 12.403 0.875 11.527 15.454 14.412 1.227 0.455 1995-2000 6.806 2.082 8.888 11.564 14.167 1.145 0.454 2000-05 5.841 1.303 7.144 11.945 13.726 1.010 0.453 2005-10 5.646 0.850 6.496 12.273 13.434 0.985 0.479 2010-15 5.391 0.987 6.378 11.986 13.257 1.029 0.523 india 1950-55 16.846 13.800 3.046 40.761 27.306 1.070 0.981 1955-60 18.823 14.621 4.202 39.692 25.216 1.075 0.945 1960-65 20.427 14.975 5.452 38.530 23.401 1.078 0.902 1965-70 21.415 14.821 6.594 37.131 21.727 1.074 0.850 1970-75 22.392 14.359 8.033 35.505 20.243 1.085 0.797 1975-80 22.675 13.045 9.630 33.111 19.027 1.111 0.742 1980-85 22.946 12.151 10.795 31.440 18.199 1.135 0.700 1985-90 21.530 10.150 11.380 28.843 17.622 1.149 0.660 1990-95 19.954 8.232 11.722 26.290 16.891 1.147 0.604 1995-2000 18.594 6.944 11.650 24.435 16.237 1.133 0.561 2000-05 16.964 5.601 11.362 22.467 15.731 1.129 0.534 2005-10 15.059 4.072 10.987 20.215 15.276 1.134 0.515 2010-15 12.970 2.632 10.338 18.059 14.821 1.127 0.498 • aalok ranjan chaurasia162 table 2 shows that, in general, age composition effects have infl ated the age independent birth rate, f, in both countries. the age composition induced infl ation increased very rapidly in china between 1960-65 and 1990-95. for example, these effects infl ated the age independent birth rate, f, by almost 23 percent in china during 1990-95. however, they decreased sharply after 1990-95, dipping below 1 during 2005-10, which implies that age composition defl ated, rather than infl ated the age independent birth rate, f. in india, the age composition induced infl ation increased until 1985-90, when they infl ated the age independent birth rate, f, by almost 15 percent. by contrast, the age composition effects defl ated the age independent death rate, l, in both countries except in china during 1950-55. thus, the age composition contributed to increasing the natural population growth rate in both countries with only two exceptions, both specifi c to china. 5 decomposition of the change in natural population growth rate the average annual natural population growth rate in china decreased by almost 72 percent between 1950-55 and 2010-2015, but by 23 percent in india over the same period (table 3). the decrease in fertility induced a decrease of almost 164 percent in the natural population growth rate in china (fig. 3) and around 151 percent in fig. 2: average annual natural population growth rate in china and india, 19502015 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1950-1955 1960-1965 1970-1975 1980-1985 1990-1995 2000-2005 2010-2015 period china india natural population growth rate per 1,000 inhabitants source: own calculations fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 163 ta b . 3 : d ec o m p o si tio n o f t he c ha ng e in t he n at ur al p o p ul at io n g ro w th r at e (p er 1 00 0) in c hi na a nd in d ia p er io d * (f ro m … b el o w … ) c h an g e in c h an g e in r a tt ri b u te d to t h e ch an g e in c h an g e in b a tt ri b u te d to t h e ch an g e in c h an g e in d a tt ri b u te d t o th e ch an g e in n at u ra l b ir th d ea th in tr in si c a g e fe rt ili ty a g e m o rt al it y a g e p o p u la tio n ra te co m p o n en t co m p o si tio n c o m p o si tio n g ro w th r at e ∆ r ∆ b ∆ d ∆ i ∆ a ∂f ∂a b ∂l ∂a d c hi n a 19 50 -5 5/ 19 55 -6 0 -4 .3 70 -5 .7 52 -1 .3 82 -5 .6 20 1. 25 0 -5 .9 54 0. 20 2 -0 .3 34 -1 .0 47 19 55 -6 0/ 19 60 -6 5 3. 94 1 3. 24 9 -0 .6 92 3. 68 9 0. 25 2 3. 64 8 -0 .3 99 -0 .0 41 -0 .6 51 19 60 -6 5/ 19 65 -7 0 8. 21 6 0. 19 0 -8 .0 25 4. 85 8 3. 35 7 1. 16 2 -0 .9 72 -3 .6 96 -4 .3 29 19 65 -7 0/ 19 70 -7 5 -4 .0 27 -7 .7 73 -3 .7 47 -7 .6 99 3. 67 2 -8 .8 90 1. 11 7 -1 .1 92 -2 .5 55 19 70 -7 5/ 19 75 -8 0 -7 .4 95 -9 .5 93 -2 .0 98 -1 1. 30 2 3. 80 7 -1 1. 80 2 2. 20 9 -0 .5 01 -1 .5 97 19 75 -8 0/ 19 80 -8 5 -0 .6 55 -1 .2 22 -0 .5 67 -1 .9 64 1. 30 9 -2 .1 97 0. 97 6 -0 .2 34 -0 .3 33 19 80 -8 5/ 19 85 -9 0 3. 72 6 3. 81 1 0. 08 5 3. 48 9 0. 23 7 3. 37 4 0. 43 7 -0 .1 15 0. 20 0 19 85 -9 0/ 19 90 -9 5 -6 .0 75 -6 .1 97 -0 .1 23 -6 .5 08 0. 43 3 -6 .5 80 0. 38 3 -0 .0 72 -0 .0 50 19 90 -9 5/ 19 95 -2 00 0 -5 .5 96 -5 .7 11 -0 .1 14 -4 .5 01 -1 .0 95 -4 .6 13 -1 .0 98 -0 .1 11 -0 .0 03 19 95 -2 00 0/ 20 00 -0 5 -0 .9 65 -1 .1 85 -0 .2 20 0. 61 0 -1 .5 75 0. 41 0 -1 .5 95 -0 .2 00 -0 .0 20 20 00 -0 5/ 20 05 -1 0 -0 .1 95 0. 02 5 0. 22 0 0. 46 4 -0 .6 59 0. 32 7 -0 .3 02 -0 .1 36 0. 35 7 20 05 -1 0/ 20 10 -1 5 -0 .2 55 0. 24 5 0. 49 9 -0 .2 00 -0 .0 54 -0 .2 89 0. 53 4 -0 .0 89 0. 58 8 19 50 -5 5/ 20 10 -1 5 -1 3. 75 0 -2 9. 91 3 -1 6. 16 3 -2 2. 06 1 8. 31 1 -2 9. 52 9 -0 .3 84 -7 .4 68 -8 .6 95 * n o te : t he p er io d 1 95 055 r ef er s to t he y ea rs 1 95 0 un til 1 95 4 an d 1 95 560 r ef er s to t he y ea rs 1 95 5 un til 1 95 9 an d s o o n: m ea ni ng th e lo w er li m it is a lw ay s in cl ud ed a nd th e up p er li m it is e xc lu d ed . • aalok ranjan chaurasia164 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n * n o te : t he p er io d 1 95 055 r ef er s to t he y ea rs 1 95 0 un til 1 95 4 an d 1 95 560 r ef er s to t he y ea rs 1 95 5 un til 1 95 9 an d s o o n: m ea ni ng th e lo w er li m it is a lw ay s in cl ud ed a nd th e up p er li m it is e xc lu d ed . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns p er io d * (f ro m … b el o w … ) c h an g e in c h an g e in r a tt ri b u te d to t h e ch an g e in c h an g e in b a tt ri b u te d to t h e ch an g e in c h an g e in d a tt ri b u te d t o th e ch an g e in n at u ra l b ir th d ea th in tr in si c a g e fe rt ili ty a g e m o rt al it y a g e p o p u la tio n ra te co m p o n en t co m p o si tio n co m p o si tio n g ro w th r at e ∆ r ∆ b ∆ d ∆ i ∆ a ∂f ∂a b ∂l ∂a d in d ia 19 50 -5 5/ 19 55 -6 0 1. 97 7 -0 .9 71 -2 .9 49 0. 86 7 1. 11 1 -1 .1 47 0. 17 5 -2 .0 13 -0 .9 36 19 55 -6 0/ 19 60 -6 5 1. 60 4 -1 .1 27 -2 .7 31 0. 42 4 1. 18 0 -1 .2 51 0. 12 4 -1 .6 76 -1 .0 55 19 60 -6 5/ 19 65 -7 0 0. 98 8 -1 .6 46 -2 .6 34 -0 .0 38 1. 02 6 -1 .5 04 -0 .1 41 -1 .4 67 -1 .1 67 19 65 -7 0/ 19 70 -7 5 0. 97 7 -1 .3 62 2. 34 0 -0 .5 34 1. 51 2 -1 .7 56 0. 39 4 -1 .2 22 -1 .1 18 19 70 -7 5/ 19 75 -8 0 0. 28 3 -1 .7 38 -2 .0 21 -1 .6 93 1. 97 6 -2 .6 28 0. 89 0 -0 .9 36 -1 .0 86 19 75 -8 0/ 19 80 -8 5 0. 27 1 -1 .0 93 -1 .3 64 -1 .2 80 1. 55 1 -1 .8 77 0. 78 4 -0 .5 97 -0 .7 67 19 80 -8 5/ 19 85 -9 0 -1 .4 16 -2 .5 36 -1 .1 20 -2 .5 74 1. 15 8 -2 .9 66 0. 43 0 -0 .3 92 -0 .7 28 19 85 -9 0/ 19 90 -9 5 -1 .5 76 -2 .9 92 -1 .4 16 -2 .4 70 0. 89 4 -2 .9 32 -0 .0 60 -0 .4 62 -0 .9 54 19 90 -9 5/ 19 95 -2 00 0 -1 .3 60 -2 .4 67 -1 .1 07 -1 .7 35 0. 37 5 -2 .1 16 -0 .3 51 -0 .3 81 -0 .7 26 19 95 -2 00 0/ 20 00 -0 5 -1 .6 31 -2 .3 31 -0 .7 01 -1 .9 49 0. 31 8 -2 .2 26 -0 .1 05 -0 .2 77 -0 .4 24 20 00 -0 5/ 20 05 -1 0 -1 .9 05 -2 .4 42 -0 .5 37 -2 .3 09 0. 40 4 -2 .5 48 0. 10 6 -0 .2 39 -0 .2 99 20 05 -1 0/ 21 01 0 -1 5 -2 .0 89 -2 .5 69 -0 .4 80 -2 .2 07 0. 11 8 -2 .4 38 -0 .1 31 -0 .2 30 -0 .2 49 19 50 -5 5/ 20 10 -1 5 -3 .8 76 -2 3. 27 5 -1 9. 39 9 -1 5. 71 0 11 .8 33 -2 4 .9 43 1. 66 8 -9 .2 33 -1 0. 16 5 fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 165 india (fig. 4). the change in the age composition effects on the birth rate induced an increase of 8 percent in china and 13 percent in india. similarly, the decrease in mortality and the change in the age composition effects on the death rate induced an increase of 35 percent and 49 percent, respectively, in china, and 59 percent and 56 percent, respectively, in india. in other words, the change in the intrinsic component induced a decrease of around 129 percent in the natural population growth rate in china and 92 percent in india, but the age component induced an increase of 57 percent in china and 69 percent in india. in both countries, the change in the intrinsic component and the change in the age component of the natural population growth rate have tended to offset each other, with only a few exceptions. in china, the change in the two components contributed to increasing the natural population growth rate from 1955-60 to 1965-70 and again from 1980-85 to 1985-90. similarly, change in both components contributed to decreasing the natural population growth rate from 1990-95 to 1995-2000 and again from 2005-10 to 2010-2015. in india, change in both components contributed to increasing the natural population growth rate from 1950-55 to 1960-65. table 3 explains why population transition reversed in china during 1955-70 and again during 1980-90. the reversal during 1955-60/1960-65 and during 1980fig. 3: decomposition of natural population growth rate (r) in china during 1950-2015 into growth rate attributed to fertility (r_f), mortality (r_l), age composition effects on birth rate (r_ab) and age composition effects on death rate (r_ad) -20 -10 0 10 20 30 1950-55 1960-95 1970-75 1980-85 1990-95 2000-05 2010-15 period r r_f r_ab r_l r_ad growth rate per 1,000 inhabitants source: own calculations • aalok ranjan chaurasia166 85/1985-90 was due to the increase in fertility, whereas the reversal during 196065/1965-70 was primarily due to a very rapid decrease in mortality, although fertility also increased marginally during this period. in india, the natural population growth rate started decreasing only after 1985, but there has been no reversal, as the decrease in fertility has been large enough to compensate for the decrease in mortality and changes in the age structure effects on birth and death rates. 6 decomposition of the change in population size china’s population increased by 55 million between 1950 and 1955. if this increase had remained constant in every quinquennial from 1950 to 2015, china’s population would have increased by 710 million to reach 1254 million in 2015, as opposed to the actual count of 1387 million, or an additional increase of 133 million (table 4). this additional increase is the result of a decrease of 1049 million due to the decrease in fertility; an increase of 79 million due to the change in the age composition effects on the birth rate; an increase of 239 million due to the decrease in mortality, an increase of 364 million due to the change in the age composition effects on the death fig. 4: decomposition of natural population growth rate (r) in india during 1950-2015 into growth rate attributed to fertility (r_f), mortality (r_l), age composition effects on birth rate (r_ab) and age composition effects on death rate (r_ad) -20 -10 0 10 20 30 1950-55 1960-95 1970-75 1980-85 1990-95 2000-05 2010-15 period r r_f r_ab r_l r_ad growth rate per 1,000 inhabitants source: own calculations fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 167 ta b . 4 : c o m p o n en ts o f p o p ul at io n g ro w th in c hi na a nd in d ia 1 95 020 15 (i n m ill io n) ye ar c o n st an t in cr ea se a tt ri b u te d t o t h e ch an g e in p o p u la tio n in cr ea se p o p ul at io n a g e in d ep en d en t a g e co m p o si tio n ef fe ct s o n to ta l i n cr ea se d u ri n g si ze b ir th r at e d ea th r at e b ir th r at e d ea th r at e th e p er io d c hi n a 19 50 54 4. 11 3 19 55 54 .6 27 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 54 .6 27 59 8. 74 0 19 60 54 .6 27 4. 28 0 -1 7. 74 3 0. 99 6 0. 60 2 3. 12 1 45 .8 84 64 4. 62 4 19 65 54 .6 27 8. 81 9 -5 .9 16 1. 12 8 -0 .6 92 5. 23 3 63 .2 00 70 7. 82 4 19 70 54 .6 27 18 .1 29 -1 .7 55 14 .3 66 -4 .1 71 20 .7 36 10 1. 93 3 80 9. 75 6 19 75 54 .6 27 30 .6 32 -3 7. 63 9 19 .1 76 0. 33 8 31 .0 48 98 .1 83 90 7. 93 9 19 80 54 .6 27 38 .8 82 -9 0. 78 0 21 .4 31 10 .2 85 38 .2 41 72 .6 85 98 0. 62 4 19 85 54 .6 27 4 4. 45 1 -1 01 .5 53 22 .5 76 15 .0 68 39 .8 73 75 .0 43 10 55 .6 67 19 90 54 .6 27 51 .7 70 -8 3. 64 6 23 .1 89 17 .3 87 38 .8 11 10 2. 13 8 11 57 .8 05 19 95 54 .6 27 58 .6 18 -1 21 .4 81 23 .6 05 19 .5 89 39 .1 01 74 .0 59 12 31 .8 64 20 00 54 .6 27 61 .4 39 -1 49 .7 02 24 .2 87 12 .8 71 39 .1 19 42 .6 40 12 74 .5 04 20 05 54 .6 27 62 .7 11 -1 47 .0 91 25 .5 59 2. 71 6 39 .2 48 37 .7 70 13 12 .2 75 20 10 54 .6 27 63 .7 93 -1 4 4. 94 5 26 .4 54 0. 73 2 36 .9 09 37 .5 70 13 49 .8 45 20 15 54 .6 27 64 .8 20 -1 46 .8 96 27 .0 53 4. 33 6 32 .9 40 36 .8 80 13 86 .7 25 19 50 -2 01 5 71 0. 15 1 50 8. 34 4 -1 04 9. 14 7 22 9. 82 0 79 .0 63 36 4 .3 80 84 2. 61 2 • aalok ranjan chaurasia168 ta b . 4 : c o n tin ua tio n ye ar c o n st an t in cr ea se a tt ri b u te d t o t h e ch an g e in p o p u la tio n in cr ea se p o p ul at io n a g e in d ep en d en t a g e co m p o si tio n ef fe ct s o n to ta l i n cr ea se d u ri n g si ze b ir th r at e d ea th r at e b ir th r at e d ea th r at e th e p er io d in d ia 19 50 37 6. 32 5 19 55 33 .0 61 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 33 .0 61 40 9. 38 6 19 60 33 .0 61 3. 26 3 -2 .3 55 4. 13 5 0. 36 0 1. 92 2 40 .3 86 4 49 .7 72 19 65 33 .0 61 7. 60 3 -5 .1 78 7. 91 5 0. 64 0 4. 30 3 48 .3 4 4 49 8. 11 5 19 70 33 .0 61 13 .0 60 -8 .9 35 11 .5 78 0. 28 7 7. 21 8 56 .2 68 55 4. 38 4 19 75 33 .0 61 19 .7 18 -1 3. 81 6 14 .9 73 1. 38 1 10 .3 25 65 .6 42 62 0. 02 6 19 80 33 .0 61 27 .5 91 -2 1. 98 0 17 .8 79 4. 14 6 13 .6 97 74 .3 94 69 4. 42 0 19 85 33 .0 61 36 .6 28 -2 8. 51 0 19 .9 54 6. 87 4 16 .3 65 84 .3 72 77 8. 79 2 19 90 33 .0 61 46 .2 39 -4 0. 05 7 21 .4 82 8. 54 8 19 .1 99 88 .4 72 86 7. 26 3 19 95 33 .0 61 55 .5 49 -5 2. 76 3 23 .4 84 8. 28 8 23 .3 32 90 .9 51 95 8. 21 4 20 00 33 .0 61 64 .4 33 -6 2. 89 4 25 .3 09 6. 60 7 26 .8 07 93 .3 23 10 51 .5 37 20 05 33 .0 61 72 .7 25 -7 4. 58 5 26 .7 64 6. 05 3 29 .0 34 93 .0 52 11 4 4. 58 9 20 10 33 .0 61 80 .0 4 4 -8 9. 14 2 28 .1 28 6. 65 7 30 .7 41 89 .4 88 12 34 .0 77 20 15 33 .0 61 86 .0 87 -1 04 .1 54 29 .5 47 5. 84 8 32 .2 75 82 .6 64 13 16 .7 41 19 50 -2 01 5 42 9. 78 9 51 2. 94 0 -5 04 .3 70 23 1. 14 8 55 .6 90 21 5. 21 8 94 0. 41 6 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 169 rate and an increase of 508 million due to the increase in population size (fig. 5). in india, the net addition to the population between 1950 and 1955 was 36 million. at this constant increase, india’s population would have increased by 430 million to reach 806 million in 2015, as opposed to the actual count of 1317 million, or an additional increase of 511 million. this additional increase is the result of a decrease of 504 million because of the decrease in fertility, an increase of 56 million due to the change in age composition effects on the birth rate, an increase of 231 million due to the decrease in mortality, an increase of 215 million due to the change in the age composition effects on the death rate and an increase of 513 million due to the fig. 5: decomposition of population growth (p) in china during 1950-2015 into growth attributed to different components of population growth 0 200 400 600 800 1.000 1.200 1.400 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year p_f+l+ab+ad+s p_f+l+ab+ad p_f+l+ad p_f+l p_f no change population (million) note: p_f change attributed to change in fertility only p_f+l change attributed to change in fertility and mortality p_f+l+ab change attributed to change in fertility, mortality and age composition effects on birth rate p_f+l+ab+ad change attributed to change in fertility, mortality, age composition effects on birth rate and age composition effects on death rate p_f+l+ab+ad+s change attributed to change in fertility, mortality, age composition effects on birth rate, change in age composition effects on death rate and population size source: own calcula ons • aalok ranjan chaurasia170 increase in population size (fig. 6). population increase due to the change in age composition and the increase in population size are essentially momentum effects. this means that momentum built in the population stock resulted in an increase of around 952 million in china’s population and around 784 million in india’s population, whereas the change in fertility and mortality accounted for a decrease of around 819 million in china’s population and about 273 million in india’s population. as the result, the actual increase in population in china was 133 million, while that in india was almost 511 million more than the projected increase if the 1950-55 average annual net addition to the population would have been maintained. fig. 6: decomposition of population growth (p) in india during 1950-2015 into growth attributed to different components of population growth 0 200 400 600 800 1.000 1.200 1.400 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year p_f+l+ab+ad+s p_f+l+ab+ad p_f+l+ad p_f+l p_f no change population (million) note: p_f change attributed to change in fertility only p_f+l change attributed to change in fertility and mortality p_f+l+ab change attributed to change in fertility, mortality and age composition effects on birth rate p_f+l+ab+ad change attributed to change in fertility, mortality, age composition effects on birth rate and age composition effects on death rate p_f+l+ab+ad+s change attributed to change in fertility, mortality, age composition effects on birth rate, change in age composition effects on death rate and population size source: own calcula ons fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 171 alternatively, following bongaarts and bulatao (1999), china’s population multiplied by 2.55 times between 1950 and 2015. increase in population size alone multiplied china’s population by 1.58 times, change in the age composition effects on the death rate multiplied the population by 1.71 times, change in the age composition effects on the birth rate multiplied the population by 1.18 times, the decrease in mortality multiplied the population by 2.12 times, and the decrease in fertility multiplied the population by 0.38 times. thus, the momentum built in china’s population stock multiplied china’s population by almost 3.20 times, whereas the decrease in fertility and mortality multiplied the population by 0.80 times. india’s population multiplied by almost 3.5 times during the period in question. the increase in population size multiplied the population by 1.64 times, change in the age structure effects on the death rate multiplied the population by 1.37 times, change in the age structure effects on the birth rate multiplied the population by 1.10 times, the decrease in mortality multiplied the population by 1.77 times, and the decrease in fertility multiplied the population by 0.80 times, so that the momentum built in the population stock multiplied the population by 2.47 times while the decrease in fertility and mortality multiplied the population by 1.42 times. 7 changes in the age composition population transition has also resulted in signifi cant changes in the age composition of the population of the two countries. the ratio of the working age to the non-working age population decreased in both countries until 1965 (table 5; fig. 7). after 1970, this ratio increased in china until 2010, with more than 90 percent of the increase confi ned to the periods 1975-85 and 1995-2005. the increase in this ratio from 1965 to 2010 was, however, not uniform, as the ratio almost stagnated between 1990 and 1995. in india, on the other hand, the ratio of the working age population to the non-working age population has increased slowly but consistently after an all-time low in 1965. as the result of the differential rate of growth of the working age and the nonworking age population, the difference between the growth rate of the working age population and the non-working age population was negative in both countries in the periods 1950-55 and 1960-65 (fig. 8). the difference in the growth rates of the working age population and the non-working age population in china was exceptionally large during 1980-85, and during 2000-05 as the result of both the increase in the working age population and the decrease in the young population. between 1980 and 1985, china’s population aged less than 15 years decreased by around 28 million, whereas the decrease between 2000 and 2005 was 56 million. at the same time, the working age population increased by around 94 million between 1980 and 1985 and by around 78 million between 2000 and 2005. as the result, the potential support ratio increased from 1.458 in 1980 to 1.778 in 1985 and from 2.153 in 2000 to 2.626 in 2005. however, this ratio decreased from 2.987 in 2010 to 2.734 in 2015 due to a rapid increase in the old-age population by around 21 million. the young popu• aalok ranjan chaurasia172 ta b . 5 : a g e st ru ct ur e tr an si tio n in c hi na a nd in d ia , 1 95 020 15 y ea r w o rk in g ag e in cr ea se in w o rk in g ag e p o p u la ti o n (in m ill io n) r at io * d if fe re n ce ** p o p u la ti o n 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 (in m ill io n) c h in a 19 50 33 2. 93 7 1. 57 7 19 55 34 8. 09 8 1. 12 0 4. 89 3 3. 88 5 -0 .7 97 2. 08 3 1. 39 9 0. 38 3 2. 45 8 -0 .7 01 0. 43 8 1. 39 0 -0 .0 25 19 60 36 3. 43 4 0. 74 4 1. 24 3 4. 85 9 3. 81 1 -0 .7 39 2. 13 3 1. 66 7 0. 47 5 1. 87 4 -0 .7 31 1. 29 3 -0 .0 14 19 65 39 1. 07 1 12 .8 4 4 0. 57 7 1. 14 0 4. 65 0 3. 59 4 -0 .7 15 2. 00 7 1. 52 1 0. 41 4 1. 60 5 1. 23 9 -0 .0 09 19 70 45 0. 05 2 24 .1 80 13 .5 53 1. 41 4 1. 95 9 5. 36 2 4. 33 7 0. 31 9 3. 01 5 2. 81 0 2. 03 2 1. 25 6 0. 00 3 19 75 50 5. 89 8 -3 .7 48 24 .2 52 13 .6 63 1. 74 5 2. 37 6 5. 77 1 4. 73 9 0. 82 8 3. 26 7 2. 95 3 1. 26 6 0. 00 2 19 80 57 9. 96 4 19 .1 78 -3 .4 95 24 .3 12 13 .7 27 1. 93 2 2. 59 0 5. 97 4 4. 94 8 1. 29 1 3. 60 9 1. 45 8 0. 02 8 19 85 67 3. 78 8 23 .2 48 19 .1 48 -3 .3 82 24 .2 35 13 .6 84 1. 99 3 2. 64 2 5. 94 0 4. 89 0 1. 42 6 1. 77 9 0. 04 0 19 90 75 9. 91 5 -6 .0 21 23 .1 87 19 .0 80 -3 .3 05 24 .0 93 13 .5 89 2. 05 4 2. 74 8 5. 93 6 4. 76 6 1. 92 5 0. 01 6 19 95 81 4. 58 7 -2 5. 37 6 -6 .0 86 22 .9 80 18 .9 07 -3 .2 88 23 .8 47 13 .4 05 2. 02 7 2. 64 1 5. 61 5 1. 97 1 0. 00 5 20 00 86 7. 19 1 3. 58 9 -2 5. 18 7 -5 .9 60 22 .9 28 18 .8 47 -3 .1 56 23 .6 06 13 .1 99 2. 06 8 2. 67 0 2. 15 3 0. 01 8 20 05 94 5. 49 8 29 .0 90 3. 37 0 -2 5. 26 2 -6 .0 59 22 .6 83 18 .6 43 -3 .0 35 23 .3 71 13 .1 25 2. 38 1 2. 62 6 0. 04 0 20 10 99 6. 86 4 -2 3. 85 8 29 .0 36 3. 39 1 -2 5. 09 5 -5 .9 62 22 .5 77 18 .5 01 -2 .8 52 22 .9 12 12 .7 16 2. 89 7 0. 02 0 20 15 10 07 .5 04 -2 7. 78 7 -2 3. 67 9 29 .0 59 3. 49 5 -2 4. 81 3 -5 .7 46 22 .5 07 18 .3 28 -2 .6 68 21 .9 4 4 2. 73 4 -0 .0 12 * o f w o rk in g ag e to n o nw o rk in g ag e p o p ul at io n ** b et w ee n gr o w th r at e o f w o rk in g ag e an d n o nw o rk in g ag e p o p ul at io n fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 173 ta b . 5 : c o n tin ua tio n y ea r w o rk in g ag e in cr ea se in w o rk in g ag e p o p u la ti o n (in m ill io n) r at io * d if fe re n ce ** p o p u la ti o n 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 (in m ill io n) in d ia 19 50 22 3. 42 7 1. 46 1 19 55 23 7. 74 7 2. 07 1 2. 19 1 2. 06 0 1. 52 6 1. 51 0 0. 92 8 2. 08 9 0. 26 2 2. 17 8 -0 .4 95 1. 38 6 -0 .0 11 19 60 25 4. 68 0 1. 05 9 2. 32 7 2. 43 3 2. 25 7 1. 70 2 1. 63 7 1. 06 0 2. 05 6 0. 43 6 1. 96 6 1. 30 6 -0 .0 12 19 65 27 5. 61 1 4. 53 8 1. 40 2 2. 62 7 2. 65 7 2. 42 7 1. 85 6 1. 73 7 1. 16 3 1. 99 4 0. 53 0 1. 24 0 -0 .0 10 19 70 30 9. 28 0 11 .8 03 4. 70 8 1. 67 3 2. 87 1 2. 89 5 2. 65 4 2. 06 6 1. 87 4 1. 26 7 1. 85 8 1. 26 4 0. 00 4 19 75 35 0. 87 0 6. 93 1 12 .1 42 5. 20 2 2. 20 3 3. 30 2 3. 25 2 2. 95 1 2. 30 4 1. 98 8 1. 31 5 1. 29 6 0. 00 5 19 80 39 8. 28 3 7. 37 9 6. 81 1 11 .9 04 5. 16 1 2. 29 9 3. 38 3 3. 32 5 2. 98 4 2. 28 4 1. 88 3 1. 33 2 0. 00 6 19 85 45 0. 01 5 7. 10 4 7. 26 9 6. 70 4 11 .7 25 5. 12 3 2. 33 0 3. 36 2 3. 24 3 2. 82 2 2. 05 0 1. 35 5 0. 00 3 19 90 50 7. 01 7 8. 54 3 7. 00 0 7. 14 8 6. 60 6 11 .5 28 5. 04 5 2. 30 7 3. 24 6 3. 04 7 2. 53 2 1. 39 4 0. 00 6 19 95 56 9. 83 5 9. 04 5 8. 45 2 6. 89 7 7. 05 2 6. 53 4 11 .3 39 4. 98 9 2. 34 0 3. 20 4 2. 96 6 1. 45 7 0. 00 9 20 00 64 1. 15 7 11 .8 30 9. 06 2 8. 4 41 6. 87 6 7. 00 7 6. 48 7 11 .1 24 4. 93 3 2. 39 6 3. 16 6 1. 55 5 0. 01 3 20 05 71 4. 48 2 7. 00 3 11 .5 74 8. 79 2 8. 20 8 6. 69 1 6. 83 9 6. 33 7 10 .7 53 4. 76 9 2. 35 9 1. 66 2 0. 01 3 20 10 78 7. 73 6 3. 62 8 6. 95 4 11 .4 53 8. 70 8 8. 10 9 6. 59 5 6. 72 0 6. 21 9 10 .3 14 4. 55 4 1. 77 7 0. 01 3 20 15 85 9. 99 3 3. 95 0 3. 89 4 7. 09 5 11 .4 32 8. 68 1 8. 07 2 6. 56 3 6. 67 1 6. 15 0 9. 74 9 1. 90 7 0. 01 4 * o f w o rk in g ag e to n o nw o rk in g ag e p o p ul at io n ** b et w ee n gr o w th r at e o f w o rk in g ag e an d n o nw o rk in g ag e p o p ul at io n s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns • aalok ranjan chaurasia174 lation in the country also increased – albeit marginally – during this period whereas the working age population increased by just about 10 million. the increase in the working age population in china has however not been distributed evenly across all working ages. almost 25 percent of the increase in the working age population between 1980 and 1985 was confi ned to the age group 15-19 years and another 20 percent to the age group 20-24 years. a rapid increase in the population aged 15-19 years between 1980 and 1985 may be attributed to the increase in the population aged 0-4 years between 1965 and 1970 while the increase in the population aged 20-24 years may be attributed to the increase in the population aged 0-4 years between 1960 and 1965. the increase in the population aged 0-4 years between 1960 and 1965 is attributed primarily to the increase in fertility. while the increase in the population aged 0-4 years between 1965 and 1970 may be attributed primarily to the decrease in mortality, although fertility also increased – albeit marginally – during this period. similarly, more than 37 percent of the increase in the working age population between 2000 and 2005 may be attributed to the increase in the population aged 0-4 years between 1985 and 1990 as the result of the increase in fertility during this period. this shows that the increase in fertility between 1960 and 1965 and between 1985 and 1990 and the decrease in mortality between 1965 and 1970 contributed signifi cantly to the rapid increase in the pofig. 7: demographic dividend (ratio of working age population to non-working age population) in china and india, 1950-2015 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year china india demographic dividend source: own calcula ons fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 175 tential support ratio in china between 1975 and 1980 and between 2000 and 2005, yielding a very large demographic dividend. however, the demographic window of opportunity in china appears to have closed now as the working age population grew slower than the non-working age population between 2010 and 2015 primarily because of the rapid increase in the old age population, (65 years and above). the working age population in china increased by less than 11 million between 2010 and 2015, compared to an increase by over 24 million in the non-working age population. more than 85 percent of the increase in the non-working age population in this time period is attributed to the increase in the old population from about 111 million in 2010 to more than 131 million in 2015. in india, the transition in the age composition of the population has been more tempered because both transition in fertility and transition in mortality were slow and fertility never increased meaning the population aged 0-4 years never increased. the potential support ratio in india was higher than that in china from 1960 to 1975. similarly, the difference between the growth rate of working age and nonworking age populations in india was smaller than that in china – particularly during the periods 1980-85 and 2000-05. therefore, the demographic dividend in india does not have a telling impact on india’s economic growth. however, unlike china, the difference between the growth rate of working and non-working age populafig. 8: demographic dividend (difference between the growth of working age population and growth rate of non-working age population) in china and india, 1950-55 through 2010-15 -0.030 -0.020 -0.010 0.000 0.010 0.020 0.030 0.040 1950-55 1960-65 1970-75 1980-85 1990-95 2000-05 2010-15 period china india demographic dividend source: own calcula ons • aalok ranjan chaurasia176 tions continues to increase in india, which implies that the demographic window of opportunity will continue in the near future. it may therefore be postulated that the demographic dividend in india is likely to enfold its potential. 8 discussion: population transition in china and india compared population transition is implicit in the process of social and economic development. the experience of the european countries suggests that as social and economic development advances, death rate decreases, and so do birth rate – usually after a time lag. therefore, the natural population growth rate fi rst increases and then decreases. the time lag between the onset of the decrease in the death rate and the onset of the decrease in the birth rate determines the increase in the population size and the change in the population age composition, which have economic implications. although, it is diffi cult to ascertain the “normal” pace of transition, yet, the pace of population transition can be accelerated through explicit birth rate reduction policies as social and economic development induces a decrease in the death rate. in line with the above arguments, both china and india made specifi c efforts to accelerate the pace of population transition. today, china can claim to have been successful in these efforts, while india’s results have been mixed. population transition in china has been unique in its pace, as its population moved from the state of high fertility and high mortality to a state of low fertility and low mortality in roughly 50 years. there are only two countries – cuba and iran – where the pace of population transition matches with that of china (madsen 2012). the rapid population transition in china has been the subject of intensive research, primarily in the context of the dramatic decrease in fertility attributed to very “strong” family planning efforts (bongaarts/greenlagh 1985; mauldin 1982; chen 1984; coale 1984; wolf 1986; poston/gu 1987; whyte/gu 1987; lavely/freedman 1990). population transition in india has not been the subject of such intensive research, as it has been far slower. nonetheless, there are studies that have analysed fertility transition in some parts of india where higher than average decrease in fertility has been observed (caldwell et al. 1982; zacharia 1984; rao et al. 1986; bhat/rajan 1990). there are also studies which have compared fertility transition in the two countries (chaurasia 1999; kulkarni/ rani 1995). mason (1997) has argued that studying fertility transition in isolation from mortality transition is a fl awed approach – without mortality transition, fertility transition is highly unlikely. hirschman (1994) has also argued against the singleminded focus on fertility transition in explaining population transition. there are, however, few studies that have attempted to explain population transition by taking into account transition in both fertility and mortality, and the associated change in population age composition (chaurasia 2007). the population transition in china can be divided into four distinct phases. between 1950-55 and 1955-60, it was primarily the result of the decrease in fertility, whereas the reversal between 1955-60 and 1965-70 was the result of a rapid decrease in mortality, although fertility also increased during this period. from 1965fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 177 70 to 1995-2000, population transition in china was dictated largely by changes in fertility, irrespective of whether the natural population growth rate decreased or increased. since the period 1995-2000, population transition in china has been driven primarily by the changes in age composition, as very low levels of fertility and mortality were achieved by the year 2000 and the intrinsic rate of population growth turned negative, although the natural population growth rate remained positive due to positive age composition effects. in india, the natural population growth rate began to decrease only after 1985 due to an accelerated decrease in fertility and a deceleration in the decrease in mortality. chaurasia (2010) has also observed that mortality transition in india has slowed down, particularly after 1980. the slow mortality transition in india may also be judged from the fact that between 1990 and 2015, the under-fi ve mortality rate in india decreased by only about 62 percent, compared to an almost 80 percent decrease in china (united nations children’s fund 2015). had the pace of mortality transition in india not decelerated after 1980, population transition would have been even slower. the slow mortality transition in india also appears to be a reason behind the slow fertility transition. an important distinction between population transition in the two countries is the timing of transition in fertility and mortality. rapid fertility transition in china after 1970 was preceded by rapid mortality transition in the 1960s. the very low level of mortality achieved in china around 1970 appears to have served as the necessary impetus for the rapid decrease in fertility in the 1970s, as argued by mason (1997). in india, the decrease in mortality has never been substantial enough to act as a catalyst for accelerating the decrease in fertility. the achievement of replacement fertility is widely used as an indicator of fertility transition. however, espenshade et al. (2003) have shown that the key determinant of cross-national variation in replacement fertility is the difference in mortality. in countries where mortality is high, replacement fertility is much higher than the widely assumed global average of 2.1 lifetime births per woman, which means that the proportion of young population remains large, and the demographic dividend therefore small. even today, accelerating mortality transition remains a major public health challenge to india. the typical nature of population transition in china has led to a pronounced demographic dividend. this has not been the case in india. however, the demographic dividend in china was basically confi ned to two short periods 1975-85 and 2000-05. if these two time periods are excluded, then china’s demographic dividend has been very similar to that in india. the demographic window of opportunity in china is now closed, and the country is likely to enter a long period of decrease in labour supply and a rapid increase in the elderly population which will be diffi cult to be reversed quickly (wang/mason 2007). india has not yet benefi tted from the demographic dividend, but the window of opportunity is widening, which suggests that much of the country’s potential demographic dividend lies ahead (golley/tyers 2012). population transition in china appears to be sensitive to the country’s population and development policies, while this does not seem to be the case in india. the de• aalok ranjan chaurasia178 crease in the natural population growth rate in china in the 1950s may be attributed to the fi rst birth planning campaign (1956-58), whereas the increase in the natural population growth rate (1955-65) appears to be attributed to the great leap forward programme (1958-62), which focused on the decentralisation of the industry and collectivisation of agriculture (chen/kols 1982). although there was no change in the offi cial policy towards birth planning, yet the malthusian perspective was denounced throughout the great leap forward (chen 1976). the increase in the natural population growth rate during this period would have been even more rapid had the mortality not nearly stagnated because of a large number of famine deaths associated with the programme (ashton et al. 1984; yang 2008). there was virtually no increase in the expectation of life at birth in china between 1955-60 and 1960-65. similarly, the increase in the natural population growth rate between 1960-65 and 1965-70 may be attributed to a very rapid decrease in mortality to pre-leap levels as the result of the new economic policy (1960-65) which restored the downward trend in mortality that had begun in 1955 (coale 1984). on the other hand, very rapid population transition between 1965 and 1980 may be attributed to the third birth planning campaign, popularly known as the “later, longer, fewer” campaign (197179), which focused on later marriage, longer spacing between births, and fewer children (chen 1972). it was explicitly stated at the policy level that modernisation of agriculture, industry, defence and science would be contingent upon achieving zero population growth in the near future, and the target of reducing the natural population growth rate to 10 per 1000 by 1980 was set (hua 1978). however, the transition reversed during 1985-90, despite the launch of the one child policy in 1979, largely because of the increase in fertility which has been attributed to women born during the baby boom period of 1960s and the inability of the birth planning efforts to control unplanned births (yang 1991). in india, population and development policies have had little visible impact on population transition, although the commitment to reducing fertility and curtailing population growth has explicitly been stated in all five-year development plans, and population and health policies of the country since independence. nonetheless, the country has always been an under-achiever in terms of demographic goals and targets set at the policy level. for example, the target of achieving a crude birth rate of 25 live births per 1,000 population by the year 1972 was set in 1962, but could be achieved only in 2002 – 30 years later (chaurasia/gulati 2008). similarly, the 2000 target of achieving replacement fertility by 2010 is yet to be achieved. the observed insensitiveness of population transition to offi cial population and development policies appears to be a major reason behind the slow population transition in india. in both countries, the momentum for growth intrinsic to the population stock – size and age composition – has increasingly become important in determining population growth. in china, the intrinsic rate of population growth – the difference between the age independent birth and death rates – turned negative after 2000, but the age structure effects on birth and death rates kept the natural population growth rate positive. in india, the relative importance of the age component in deciding the natural population growth rate has increased from less than 20 percent during 1950-55 to almost 80 percent during 2010-15. this observation has imporfertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and india • 179 tant implications for population and development policies. the age component of the natural population growth rate refl ects the age composition effects on birth and death rates, which are essentially arithmetic accounting effects. they do not affect the level of fertility and mortality, but rather infl uence birth and death rates. they also refl ect the level of fertility and mortality in the past. according to the medium variant of the 2015 revision of un population projections, india’s population is projected to increase up to the year 2068, when it will most likely cross 1.754 billion (united nations 2015a). the increase in india’s population will account for more than 414 million, or roughly 16 percent, of the 2.637 billion projected increase in the world population between 2015 and 2050. by contrast, china’s population is projected to start decreasing after 2028 and is projected to decrease to 1 billion by the turn of the century, so that around 2100, india’s population will be almost 60 percent larger than that of china. both countries require an appropriate policy response to the current state of population transition, so that the change in the population stock in the coming years remains in tune with sustainable development which is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. sustainable development has two key concepts, the concept of needs and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the ability of the environment to meet present and future needs (united nations 1987). sustainability requires living with the regenerative capacity of biosphere (wackernagel et al. 2002). the 2030 agenda for sustainable development adopted by the united nations general assembly defi nes sustainable development in terms of the balance between economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection (united nations 2015b). although, population is not explicitly mentioned in the 2030 sustainable development agenda, yet it matters greatly in achieving the sustainable development goals. population dynamics affect not only the development objectives but also have a strong impact on social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. it is argued that efforts to promote sustainable development without addressing population dynamics will continue to fail (united nations population fund 2012). china has already responded to its current state of population transition by amending its population and family planning law of 2001. the article 18 of the 2001 law was amended in 2015 and now provides that the state advocates that every married couple have two children and that more children may be allowed where requirements specifi ed by law and regulations are met. the new law also does not encourage late marriage and late childbearing. the law, popularly known as the universal two-child policy, is a policy response to the state of population transition in the country and an effort to maintain the demographic balance necessary for sustainable development. this policy-level initiative has been deemed timely, necessary and inevitable for social and economic development of the country (zheng 2016). others, however, have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the changes introduced, as the effect of the new policy on the shrinking work force and rapid population ageing will not be evident for another two decades (wang et al. 2016; padmadas 2017; zeng/ hesketh 2016). by contrast, india remains largely insensitive to the current state of • aalok ranjan chaurasia180 population transition, even at the policy level. it continues to uphold the national population policy 2000 despite the fact that the policy goal of achieving replacement fertility by 2010 could not be reached and the medium-term goal of stabilising population growth by 2040 appears only a distant possibility. the total fertility rate in india still continues to hover around 2.2-2.3 life time births per woman of reproductive age (government of india 2016, 2017a), but the fertility of married women remains very high at 4.6 life time births per married women of reproductive age (government of india 2016). at the same time, the expectation of life at birth remains well below 70 years (government of india 2016). recently, the government of india has announced a new health policy which aims at reducing the total fertility rate to replacement level and increasing the expectation of life at birth to 70 years by the year 2025 – about 25-30 years later than china (government of india 2017b). on the other hand, in response to a question in the parliament in 2015, the health minister of india argued that the 2000 national population policy was uniformly applicable to the entire population, irrespective of religious or community affi liations and that there was no proposal under consideration by the government to formulate new population policy (government of india 2015). 9 conclusion the main objective of this paper was to show how changes in different demographic drivers contributed to population transition in china and india, the world’s two most populous countries, and to identify the demographic causes which have been responsible for the different population transition path followed by the two countries. our analysis shows that changes in both the intrinsic and the age component of population growth have contributed to population transition in both countries. the analysis also suggests that the relative contribution of the age component of the natural population growth is becoming more dominant in deciding the natural population growth rate than the intrinsic component. this observation is important from the policy perspective. the momentum of growth generated by the change in population age composition cannot be eliminated. it can, at best, be delayed by increasing the age at fi rst birth and extending the interval between successive births (andreev et al. 2013; bongaarts 1994). from the policy perspective, the present analysis suggests that priorities for addressing population trends should partly be informed by the relative contribution of different demographic drivers of population growth. since the relative contribution of different demographic drivers on population growth is different at different stages of population transition, it is imperative that formulation and adoption of population policy should be conducted in a dynamic manner, and should be adapted as the population transition advances. fertility, mortality and age composition effects of population transition in china and 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(1982) classic work “urban europe: a study of growth and decline” introduced the cyclic urbanisation model with its fourth phase of “reurbanisation” following after urbanisation, suburbanisation and disurbanisation. but shortly thereafter evidence of an urban resurgence during the 1980s was provided by empirical studies for both europe and north america (cheshire 1995; bourne 1992; frey 1993; nowlan/stewart 1991; siebel/häußermann 1987). whereas most north american cities kept on growing during the 1990s, the delicate signs of urban recovery in parts of europe have been washed away by world history shortly after they occurred. in the aftermath of the fall of the iron curtain, the european migration and urban development patterns have substantially changed compared to the 1980s. especially in germany, the urban development debate of the 1990s turned to a renewed suburbanisation phase. also the issue of heavily shrinking cities entered the discourse around the turn of the century (see for example müller/siedentop 2004). but already in the second half of the 1990s, the urban task force around the british architect richard rogers started reasoning about the challenges of english cities and the means of an “urban renaissance” (urban task force 1999). and then, like phoenix from the ashes, reurbanisation raised again to become one of the most controversial topics amongst urban researchers from the mid-2000s until recently. even though the discussion gained momentum on both sides of the atlantic (for the us see i.e. sohmer/lang 2001; fishman 2005; landis 2009; and for europe i.e. buzar et al. 2007; turok/mykhnenko 2008; lambert/boddy 2010; brake/herfert 2012; rérat 2012), discourses seemed to take place separated from each other. however, the fragmentation of the reurbanisation debate is not only caused by the separation between a north american and a european point of view, but also by diverging concepts that have been employed to analyse and explain the reurbanisation phenomenon (glatter/siedhoff 2008; engler 2013). at least four approaches can be distinguished: (1) quantitative concepts of reurbanisation as a process of demographic change in metropolitan regions, (2) qualitative concepts of reurbanisation focussing on consumer-preferences of private households or (3) on emerging new urban economies as predominant driver, and fi nally, (4) normative concepts of policy-driven reurbanisation. in many contributions more than one of these approaches is presented as essentially interconnected. (1) the quantitative dimension of reurbanisation can be addressed as a process of population concentration within the urban core of a metropolitan region (van den berg et al. 1982). alternatively, reurbanisation can be quantifi ed as a central city’s positive migration balance with its suburbs (schmitz-veltin 2014) or as the growth of cities or city centres after a period of population decline (rérat 2012; sohmer/lang 2001; birch 2005; jessen et al. 2012; turok/ mykhnenko 2008). the impact of shifting demographic structures and migration patterns on urban population dynamics is highly complex and multifacdemographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 283 eted. nonetheless two strong trends can be identifi ed which lead towards a demography-driven reurbanisation. one trend is the international immigration towards large cities (fishman 2005; rérat 2012). following this line of argumentation, major cities are particularly attractive for in-migrants because of the larger labour market for nonor little qualifi ed workers and because of the larger rental housing markets. the other one is the positive internal migration balance of cities for the age group of young adults (moos 2015; growe/münter 2010). this phenomenon is related to the concentration of education facilities and broader job opportunities in large cities. (2) reurbanisation is also discussed as a qualitative improvement of the urban environment that meets the consumer preferences of certain sought after population groups, such as the creative class (florida 2002). this understanding is part of many urban regeneration policies. via fl agship projects, the upgrading of public infrastructure such as transit, or increased private sector investment in inner city housing, young, well-educated and affl uent population groups are attracted to recapture the cities (lever 1993; helbrecht 1996; van criekingen 2009). additionally, certain types of private households like singles, childless couples or single-parents that always have prioritised living in central locations are growing due to social change (glasze/graze 2007; ogden/hall 2004; siebel 2008). some urban researchers focus on the growing demand for urban amenities (glaeser/gottlieb 2006; clark et al. 2002) that is closely related to the increase of private income. highly qualifi ed employees from service or knowledge industries apparently prefer inner city areas with easy access to a broad range of urban amenities. if so, the ever increasing number of high-educated persons will enlarge the population potential of city dwellers. (3) nevertheless, urban environments are not only appealing to private households but form also ideal settings for knowledge-based economic activities. in a knowledge economy, locational advantages and locally effective spillovers are expected to become more and more important (brake 2012; storper/ scott 2009). it is argued that a tight network and close collaboration between actors in the knowledge-based economy increase the competitiveness on a supra-regional level. according to this argument, major cities offer more opportunities for contact and exchange, they boast of more universities and research institutions, they are interconnected with global business networks and they offer a higher portion of highly qualifi ed labour force (geppert/ gornig 2010). the creation of new jobs in the knowledge-based economy stimulates demographic growth; thus, economyand demography-driven reurbanisation processes are closely interrelated. yet, as it is fairly unlikely that every city can participate in a job growth driven by the knowledge economy, the reurbanisation model only applies to a limited number of places. • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski284 (4) finally, we fi nd approaches that stress urban policies as a driving factor of reurbanisation processes. thus, reurbanisation can be seen as a normative concern which unfolds as a set of hard or soft policies aiming at strengthening cities in general or certain fi elds of the urban realm, especially housing. the municipalities have reacted on trends of urban decline and stagnation by pursuing active policies to increase the cities´ competitiveness. in doing so, they were in parts supported by national urban policy programmes. vast investments into prestigious urban infrastructure like sports or cultural facilities are meant to be catalysts for brownfi eld regeneration. according to this understanding, reurbanisation is at least in parts a product of local and national urban policies. but as some studies from the us (danielsen/lang 2010), england (lambert/boddy 2010) and switzerland (koll-schretzenmayr/kramp 2010) have shown, the population growth in inner city areas does not always correspond with increased housing production, although such a correspondence is highly plausible (jessen/mayer 2010). probably, in some cases, recent market development has benefi tted from, boosted and sometimes overtaken long-term planning and regeneration strategies. the debate on reurbanisation has been confronted with some fundamental critique for largely neglecting its social consequences. in this perspective it is argued that the reurbanisation discourse suffers from a hidden normative bias by ignoring the results of the gentrifi cation research (holm 2012; van criekingen 2009). this shift is also refl ected in recent urban practice as municipalities have conducted studies on processes of gentrifi cation that they experienced. at present, reurbanisation is still intensely debated in urban and regional research. there are multifaceted fi ndings on the variations in urban systems and processes of change for selected cities. the evidence of reurbanisation – seen as the population growth in major cities following a longer period of population losses and paralleled by structural change – is hardly questioned any longer. however, there is considerable uncertainty about how these tendencies both in north-american and in european metropolitan regions can be explained, how long they will last and if all cities will be exposed to them in the long run. this comparative urban study contributes to the overall debate on divergence or convergence of trends in urban development in the united states and europe (le galès/zagrodzki 2006). the overall research question is whether universal forces of economic and social change lead to new population growth in urban cores and how urban policies as well as market forces intervene in this process. thus it is very much about similarities and differences and how they can be explained (nivola 1999; gordon/cox 2012). we present some major fi ndings of the reurban research project funded by the german research foundation that focused on processes of reurbanisation in major metropolitan regions in germany and the us. it pursued two goals: first, we wanted to generate hypotheses that allow for a well-founded social and spatial differentiation of reurbanisation and its driving forces. second, we conceptualised our analysis as a contribution to the debate on convergence/ divergence of european and north american urban development and urban policy. demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 285 we consider german and american urban regions as suitable for such a comparison, since renewed population growth in urban centres is evident in both countries, but stark differences have been put forward in signifi cant contextual conditions such as demographic development, housing preferences, path-dependent urban structures and the institutional framework of urban planning. we ask why a particular phenomenon such as reurbanisation has taken place even under strikingly different regional framework conditions. comparative research thus allows the evaluation of concepts across national (or in this case even continental) boundaries. we believe that comparative research on a particular phenomenon like reurbanisation sharpens our view on generalisable and specifi c, context-related patterns and processes as well as their respective driving forces (bourne 2008). to date, there are relatively few empirical urban studies with an international comparative approach. one of the reasons lies in the tremendous methodological pitfalls of cross-cultural comparative urban research (kantor/savitch 2005). pierre (2005) has rightly stressed the gap between the methodological challenges of comparative research and the evenly demanding conceptual requirements of urban research in general: “urbanists tend to emphasise the importance of adopting a holistic and context embracing approach to understand the contemporary city or the historical trajectory of urban development. embarking on a comparative research agenda entails by necessity some degree of reductionism as a step in preparing empirical observations for comparative assessment” (pierre 2005: 447). this holds also true for the complex concept of reurbanisation, where highly ambitious conceptual frameworks have been developed (among others: engler 2013); comparative studies on this subject are necessarily more “parsimonious” in character than “in-depth, context-embracing, idiographic studies that one sees much in urban politics“ (pierre 2005: 445). in order to address methodological pitfalls we decided for a multi-level case study approach. the comparison takes place on two levels that are interconnected. on the regional level, eight metropolitan areas in germany and the us were examined in terms of population change patterns over the 1990s and 2000s (see for the results siedentop et al. 2018). the selection of case regions was based on a comparative statistical analysis of population change in the 50 largest us american and 14 largest german metropolitan regions (section 2). on the local level, smallscale spatial characteristics of reurbanisation and their driving forces were examined with two case studies: the metropolitan areas of portland (oregon) and stuttgart (baden-württemberg), taken from the sample analysed on the regional level (as “embedded” case studies). thus, we wanted to identify in more detail diverging and converging trends of reurbanisation in the us and germany by investigating the modes of urban population growth on neighbourhood level and how they were materialised in the local built environment. moreover, we tried to fi nd out how this growth was stimulated, channeled, protected or restricted through local planning strategies (section 3). • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski286 2 reurbanisation trends in metropolitan regions in germany and the us 2.1 selection of regions and data sources in this section we examine patterns of population change at metropolitan scales in four german and four american regions: dresden, frankfurt/main, munich and stuttgart as well as atlanta, ga, boston, ma, philadelphia, pa and portland, or. this sample is selected from a comparative statistical analysis on population change in the 50 largest us and 14 largest german metropolitan regions that we conducted for the time period of 1990 to 2010 based on us census data and on german municipal statistics. the choice of regions is based on the most-different systems design because a range of specifi c contextual conditions should be met: divergent patterns in urban form, demographic and economic dynamics or governance structures. to neutralise the statistical effects of formally defi ned regional boundaries and subdivisions of the region we employed a ring zone model using rings with a defi ned radius from a given centre (the townhall). ring zone models are an established method for analysing spatial structures and developments; they are especially appropriate for showing core-edge relationships and developmental gradients within urban areas (estiri et al. 2015; juday 2015). in this case, the outer ring zone (representing the outer boundary) has a radius of 50 km around a defi ned regional centre and the internal structure is defi ned by ring-zones with a width of 5 km in the inner regional areas and 10 km in the outer areas. based on census tracts or municipal boundaries (0-5 km, 5-10 km, 10-20 km, 20-30 km, 30-40 km, 40-50 km) these six rings, were aggregated to three areas of analysis: the “core area” formed the innermost ring zone, with a maximum distance of 5 km from the regional centre. an “inner suburban zone” comprised of statistical spatial units at a distance between 5 and 20 km, while the “outer suburban zone” represented spatial units at a distance of at least 20 km. thus, equivalent analytical regions were created with largely circular form and approximately the same dimensions. for the study regions in the united states, data from the company geolytics were used covering the results from the census of 1990, 2000 and 2010. the data are available in a homogenised form for the territorial boundaries from the year 2000, which means that the census data from 1990 and 2010 are projected onto the territorial boundaries of 2000. the german data originate from the respective statistical offi ces of the federal states. to detect intra-city developments in german core cities we included data at the district level for the respective cities that the statistical offi ces also provided. 2.2 convergent and divergent patterns of population change a comparison of population change patterns in american and german metro regions during the 1990s and 2000s initially – unsurprisingly – reveals marked differences that express the divergent demographic growth pressure in both countries. demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 287 disparities particularly arise in regard to the intensity of population growth, but also in relation to its spatial distribution. table 1 displays the population growth rates in american metropolitan statistical areas and german city regions with a population of more than one million (2010) in the 1990s and 2000s. the respective regions are geographic entities delineated by the offi ce of management and budget (omb) and the german federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bundesinstitut für bau-, stadtund raumforschung bbsr). the principal cities in the united states consistently showed population growth, while in germany this was only the case since the 2000s. in the united states, the data bring out an uninterrupted dominance of suburbanisation, fueled by a tremendous overall population growth, while in germany a transition into a phase of intraregional (re-) concentration is apparent in the 2000s. an evaluation differentiated according to ring zones in the eight selected metropolitan regions shows that the highest growth rates in the american regions during both decades were predominantly focused on the outer suburban zone, which – as mentioned above – suggests sustained suburbanisation (fig. 1a/b); an interesting outlier is the boston region in the 2000s. yet, it would be oversimplifi ed to diagnose an ongoing trend of deconcentration for the us regions. the inner areas of the american regions almost invariably experienced population growth during the 1990s and this trend continued (and accelerated in many cases) during the last decade. even the core area of the philadelphia region, a city exposed to fundamental economic and structural change, turned from population losses during the 1990s to population gains during the 2000s. when the changes in population within the ring zones are normalised according to land area (change in population per km2 of land area) surprisingly powerful densifi cation processes can be identifi ed for areas close to the centre. the population density of the core of boston rose by around 450 residents during the 2000s, while philadelphia and portland still registered 210 and 140 residents per square kilometer, respectively. only in atlanta, the core area population stagnated during this decade. tab. 1: population change in us metro and german city regions (with more than one million inhabitants) in the 1990s and 2000s (percentage) (own calculation based on census data) 1990s 2000s principal suburbia region principal suburbia region cities cities us metropolitan statistical areas (n=50) 9.4 19.1 15.0 4.7 14.6 10.7 german city regions (n=14) -1.2 7.4 3.2 3.0 0.6 1.7 source: own calculation • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski288 in germany, the focal points of growth during the 1990s were also located in a certain distance to the urban cores. during the 2000s, however, the highest growth rates were achieved within the inner areas of the regions. a process of suburbanisation that stretched far into rural areas was therefore supplanted by an intraregional concentration of population. all regions considered here were characterised by strong densifi cation processes during the 2000s within the core areas. the munich region, with a value of 880 residents per square kilometer, stands out in particular. to interpret the identifi ed demographic reurbanisation processes in more detail, additional analysis differentiating age groups was conducted.1 we calculated the location quotients (lq) of different age groups indicating the structural composition fig. 1a: population change in ringzones of us metropolitan regions (percentage, 1990-2000, 2000-2010) -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 atlanta in percent -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 boston in percent philadelphia in percent portland in percent -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 1 further desirable analysis of population changes taking income and social status of residents into account could not be conducted due to lack of comparable data on census tract, neighbourhood and municipal level. source: own calculation demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 289 of populations according to age and its change over time. the location quotient relates the share of a demographic group (here: age group) within a territorial unit to the share of the same group across the entire region (estiri et al. 2015). a value of 1.0 indicates that the share equals the regional mean. values greater than 1.0 indicate a statistical overrepresentation, while values lower than 1.0 display an underrepresentation of the respective group within the considered territorial unit. figure 2a/b displays the calculated values for the core areas in the us and germany. in all of the eight regions, similar as well as divergent structures and processes of age-based segregation are revealed. our analysis fi rst demonstrates that younger adults at an age of higher education and career starters are continuously overrepresented in the core areas. this is expressed in high and even rising lq values for the 18to 24-year-olds (with the exception of portland and stuttgart) and 25to 29-year-olds. yet, a striking result is an increasing lq value for the 30to 44-year-olds in the core areas of all eight regions. at the same time it becomes obvious that families with children, however, are underrepresented, as the values for the fig. 1b: population change in ringzones of german metropolitan regions (percentage, 1990-2000, 2000-2010) -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 2000-2010 dresden in percent -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 frankfurt in percent munich in percent stuttgart in percent -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 distance in km 1990-2000 2000-2010 source: own calculation • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski290 0to 17-year-olds show. during the last two decades, this trend intensifi ed in the us regions, but extenuated in the german regions. the elder population (people over 64) is underrepresented in core areas of all regions in 2010 and the lq values have consistently decreased over time. in sum, our analysis yields similar basic patterns on both sides of the atlantic. starting from a much younger population in the us than in germany, the core areas experienced signifi cant rejuvenation (also referred to as “young-ing” according to the brookings institution 2010: 83) during the 1990s and 2000s, which can primarily be attributed to gains in migration (juday 2015; estiri et al. 2015). reurbanisation therefore does not just take place as residential densifi cation in the regional centres, but is also a process of increasing age segregation. in both the american and the german context, young adults at an age of higher education (18to 24-year-olds) and career starters (25to 29-year-olds) are participating demographic groups in the demographic revival of inner-city areas. our fi ndings show, however, divergent trends for families with children. while families in the german regions appear to fig. 2a: location quotients of different age groups for 1990 and 2010 in core areas (0-5 km), usa atlanta age boston age philadelphia age portland age 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 source: own calculation demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 291 play a role in the population growth of the inner regional areas, a strong negative trend can be discerned for the american regions, based on an underrepresentation in the regional cores that was already strong in 1990. in addition to the change of population we also analysed dynamics of housing production. reurbanisation – according to our understanding – can only take place if new housing units are added or if existing housing units are used more effi ciently (for more detail see section 3). due to limited availability of equivalent data, we had to confi ne the comparison to housing construction activities as derived from changes in the housing stock. while this data does not allow differentiation between new construction and housing losses (i.e. by demolition), it is suitable to provide a rough overview on the intraregional dynamics of the housing market. our empirical fi ndings cannot be described in detail here due to space restrictions. but according to a main fi nding the core of the examined german regions only experienced moderate increases in housing units – compared to what could have been expected from the population increases –, while “over production” of housing fig. 2b: location quotients of different age groups for 1990 and 2010 in core areas (0-5 km), germany dresden age frankfurt age munich age stuttgart age 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 >64 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 >64 1990 2010 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 0-17 18-24 25-29 30-49 50-64 65-74 >74 1990 2010 source: own calculation • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski292 took place in the more suburban zones (table 2). especially for the core areas, a mismatch of demographic growth and housing production can be diagnosed. in these regions, reurbanisation processes to the extent pictured above could only rendered possible by a reduction in fl oor area consumption. in contrast, reurbanisation in american metro regions is stronger linked to expanding housing markets in core areas. here, the real estate market dominated by private enterprises responded to the obviously growing demand for inner city living. additionally, signifi cant planning interventions during the 1990s (such as up-zoning, introduction of rail-based transport, master planning for inner city conversion sites) paved the way for these developments. yet, these fi ndings do not explain the phenomenon of “childless reurbanisation” (siedentop et al. 2017) that we found in the us regions and the fact that families obviously took part in the process of inner-city densifi cation in german metro regions. it can be assumed that the regional housing markets in the us and germany offer varying options for “family living“, and that cultural differences in acceptance of these options appear, that may be interlinked with questions of price and affordability. the poor reputation of public schools in american central cities might also play a role here. some authors also point to the small unit sizes of new inner city housing that makes them more suitable for childless households (moos 2015), whereas others found evidence for a more family-friendly housing construction in german cities, especially in the owner-occupied segment (frank 2016). further inquiry on the background of these divergent patterns is presented in the following chapter. 3 comparing reurbanisation in stuttgart (germany) and portland (us) the previous section provided evidence for a general trend towards reurbannisation in us and german metro areas – here understood as population growth in tab. 2: additional housing units per additional inhabitant in ringzones, 20002010 zone atlanta boston philadelphia portland dresden frankfurt munich stuttgart 0-5 5.0 0.6 -1.1 0.7 0.0 0.6 0.3 0.4 5-10 -1.6 1.0 3.8 0.6 1.8 1.0 0.6 0.5 10-20 1.6 0.9 0.9 0.5 -* 1.3 0.7 1.3 20-30 0.7 1.1 0.8 0.5 -* 1.4 0.7 1.2 30-40 0.5 0.9 0.6 1.0 0.0 -* 0.7 3.2 40-50 0.4 0.8 0.6 0.9 0.0 -* 0.8 3.7 region 0.6 0.9 0.7 0.6 -* 1.2 0.5 1.2 * negative population change source: own calculation demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 293 urban cores and densifi cation. at the same time, we observed a large variety of demographic and housing trajectories in terms of spatial and temporal manifestations. in the following section we will analyse the interrelation of demographic trajectories and housing production in two (re-) growing cities – stuttgart and portland – in more detail. 3.1 reurbanisation and housing our case studies focus on the relation between reurbanisation and housing production and its small scale manifestations within the inner city areas. we chose the cities of portland (oregon, usa) and stuttgart. the reasons for this case selection will be unfold in the next section (3.2). the analysis is driven by the following questions which have so far largely been ignored in empiricial research on reurbanisation: how is population growth connected with housing construction activities in central city neighbourhoods (section 3.3)? how do regional and municipal governance and policies contribute to the emergence of reurbanisation (section 3.4)? what kind of changes in the built environment can be seen at neighbourhood level (section 3.5)? our quantitative analysis was based on a small-scale examination of census data (from 1980 to 2010, with an update for more recent developments). we supplemented this data part by analysing city-specifi c research literature, market research literature as well as policy documents and by conducting expert interviews and site visits in both cities. 3.2 selection of case studies and methodology as shown above, a considerable number of city regions in germany and metropolitan areas in the us experienced population growth in their core areas during the 1990s and 2000s, but the degree as well as the spatial and temporal patterns of urban growth widely varied. therefore, the panel for selecting single case studies is per se confi ned and the selected cases do by no means represent the development trajectories of the entire country, yet they cover an important section. comparing development trends in two cities may contribute to understanding local expressions of the supposedly global trend of reurbanisation, to identifying driving forces, and to reviewing the scope of policy and planning efforts. stuttgart and portland qualifi ed for further examination because they are not only part of the panel of conurbations that currently witness population growth and a large demand for housing in their cores, but also because they both look back on a long history of a comparably strict regional and local regulatory setting that focuses on the reduction of land consumption and revitalisation of the urban core (abbott 2004; harlander/jessen 2001; jessen/mayer 2010). it can therefore be expected that reurbanisation is, at least partly, the desired outcome of planning, governance and regulation efforts in both cities, or as engler (2013: 23) puts it, reurbanisation was “planned”. we are fully aware that the national contexts of both case studies vary considerably. comparative studies on national contexts (among others: digaetano/strom 2003; sellers 2005) have stressed that urban governance • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski294 in the us is predominantly characterised by its “privatist”, and in germany by its “statist” culture (digaetano/strom 2003: 375). though the overall cultures of urban governance contrast sharply due to different historical paths, there are very important common characteristics that lie in the “devolved intergovernmental systems” (digaetano/strom 2003: 375). in both national contexts, the municipalities, representing the local level of the national governmental system, boast a high degree of political autonomy, compared to other western countries like france or the united kingdom. therefore, municipalities can adopt individual modes of urban governance even within the same national context. these essentials of urban comparative research are not subject of our in-depth study in the sense of a full-fl edged comparative analysis of urban governance in both countries, but they form the basis for our selection of case studies and the interpretation of the fi ndings. in contrast to the choice of metro regions in section 2, the two study regions were selected according to the logic of the most similar systems. the idea is to compare objects (in this case, regions) that share important characteristics (in this case: population size, economic and spatial characteristics), which allows for controlling explanatory context factors (pierre 2005: 454-455). in sum, this part of the study focuses on fi nding out why reurbanisation processes are different in two rather similar regions. the major similar traits of the selected case study regions that are relevant for the phenomenon under examination are: • size and regional importance: both, the city of portland (583,776 inhabitants in 2011) and the city of stuttgart (585,890 inhabitants in 2010) are the largest cities in the state they are located in (oregon/baden-wuerttemberg). they both form the centre of a surrounding metropolitan region of similar size (greater portland: 2.07 m inhabitants in 2011, greater stuttgart region: 2.62 m inhabitants in 2010). • economic base and development perspectives: both metro regions are known for a strong, manufacturing-based, export-oriented economy (machine building, wood processing, electronics, and sportswear in portland; car industry and machine building in stuttgart) with a dynamic and stable development of jobs during the last decades. • early adoption of pro-active spatial regulation of urban and regional development: since 1972 (downtown plan), the city of portland undertakes substantial inner city regeneration efforts. since 1979, the regional planning alliance portland metro steers regional development via an urban growth boundary and other tools. since 1974, the city of stuttgart institutionalised and formalised inner city regeneration efforts. in 1976, an inter-municipal cooperation for land use planning was established between stuttgart and the neighbouring municipalities. it was replaced by a regional planning alliance verband region stuttgart and a regional parliament in 1994 that steer development via a regionalplan. 3.3 reurbanisation and housing market development in portland and stuttgart first, it has to be stated that reurbanisation – understood as an increase in inner city population – has been reported for both portland (abbott 2004; birch 2005; lewis demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 295 et al. 2013) and stuttgart (haußmann 2007; brachat-schwarz 2008; schmitz-veltin 2014; brombach et al. 2014) during the last decade. recent studies show that labour and education driven migration seems to have the most substantial impact on reurbanisation in both portland (schrock/jurjevich 2012) and stuttgart (schmitz-veltin 2014: 10). in both cities, dynamics of housing markets play a crucial role in fostering (and in some cases also slowing down) processes of reurbanisation. at the same time, structural differences in terms of homeownership rates (much lower in stuttgart) and dominating housing types (apartments in stuttgart, single family homes in portland) have to be taken into account. in our research, in a fi rst step, population and housing developments were compared for both cities by using small-scale census data for the years 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2015. in analogy to the ring-zone model used in section 2, fi gures were analysed for three spatial units (fig. 3): (1) the entire municipality (borders as of 2010), (2) the core area, a circle with 5 kilometres radius around the city hall, and (3) the central city, as it was outlined in important planning documents of both cities.2 in a second step, the calculated numbers were set in context to fi ndings that were derived from qualitative interviews, document analysis and site visits in order to interpret the developments against the background of local urban policies, planning and regeneration efforts. the fi gures in table 3 show the absolute and relative population changes for the entire municipality, the core and the central city of stuttgart and of portland between 1980 and 2010/15. although both, portland and stuttgart, since 2000, report similar population sizes within their city borders, the number of residents in the core of portland (160,000 inhabitants in 2010) is substantially smaller than in stuttgart (270,000 inhabitants in 2010). whereas almost half of the city population (48.4 percent) of stuttgart live in the core area in 2010, only 27.3 percent do so in portland. only 6.4 percent of portland’s citywide population live in the central city of portland, whereas in stuttgart 26.4 percent do so (2010). when looking at the population development rates in both cities, a fi rst obvious interpretation is that reurbanisation – defi ned as population growth in the inner areas of the city – occurred earlier and more pronounced in portland, with a clear lead of the central city, where growth rates exceeded citywide growth rates in each decade. in stuttgart, the classic pattern of “inner city fl ight” prevailed during the 1980s and 1990s. during the 2000s, a trend reversal towards a citywide population increase took place, yet on a level of very modest growth rates compared to portland and not pioneered by developments in the central areas of the city. only during the last half-decade (2010-15) the modest population increases witnessed after 2000 clearly intensifi ed both citywide and in the core areas of stuttgart. yet, when look2 statistical sub-units (census tracts for portland, stadtteile and stadtviertel for stuttgart) were merged to approximately rebuild these perimeters for data analysis. both cities exceeded the number of 600,000 inhabitants after 2010, with portland starting from a much lower population number. constant growth of population occured in portland during each decade, whereas in stuttgart the process of population decrease only reversed during the 2000s and gained momentum after 2010. • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski296 fi g . 3 : m un ic ip al it ie s o f s tu tt g ar t a n d p o rt la n d a n d s p at ia l a na ly si s ca te go ri es s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 297 ta b . 3 : p o p ul at io n d ev el o p m en t i n s tu tt g ar t a n d p o rt la n d 1 98 020 15 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 20 15 ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. 19 80 = 10 0 19 80 = 10 0 19 80 = 10 0 19 80 = 10 0 s tu tt ga rt m un ic ip al it y 57 9, 94 4 (1 00 % ) 10 0. 0 56 8, 86 5 98 .1 55 1, 74 1 95 .1 56 5, 90 9 (1 00 % ) 97 .6 60 2, 29 9 10 3. 9 c o re 30 1, 14 3 (5 1. 9% ) 10 0. 0 28 7, 96 2 95 .7 27 0, 12 4 89 .7 27 4, 17 0 (4 8. 4% ) 91 .0 29 3, 14 4 97 .3 c en tr al c it y 16 7, 73 8 (2 8. 9% ) 10 0. 0 15 9, 99 4 95 .4 14 6, 01 6 87 .1 14 9, 15 6 (2 6. 4% ) 88 .9 15 9, 66 9 95 .2 p or tl an d m un ic ip al it y 48 6, 01 3 (1 00 % ) 10 0. 0 49 4, 36 9 10 1. 7 53 8, 22 5 11 0. 7 59 2, 90 3 (1 00 % ) 12 2. 0 63 2, 30 9* c o re 13 7, 58 2 (2 8, 3% ) 10 0. 0 13 7, 15 1 99 .7 14 4, 39 0 10 4. 9 16 2, 14 3 (2 7. 3% ) 11 7. 9 c en tr al c it y 21 ,3 01 ( 4, 4% ) 10 0. 0 22 ,7 78 10 6. 9 27 ,6 31 12 9. 7 38 ,0 50 (6 .4 % ) 17 8. 6 no d at a av ai la b le * es tim at ed s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski298 ing at the latest developments in each city, it has to be stated that while portland’s central city had an impressive population growth rate of 37.7 percent during the 2000s, the absolute population gain of around 10,000 inhabitants almost equals the population gain stuttgart’s central city has experienced later and in shorter time, between 2010 and 2015. comparing the development of both cities, portland appears as a growing city since the 1990s, with peak growth rates in its centre. stuttgart joined the growth path later – after 2000 – and experienced much more modest population growth rates during the 2000s than portland. while portland’s central city faced impressive growth of residents of more than 37 percent, the growth rates in stuttgart’s central city only slightly exceeded the citywide ones during the last half-decade (2010-15), before that, they mostly remained under 5 percent. the development of portland’s less populated but rapidly growing central city seems to disconnect from citywide trends as growth rates here exceed the citywide growth rates by far. on one hand, this growth mirrors a “residentialisation” of the urban core that had previously not been dominated by housing, but rather by businesses and other uses (central business district (cbd)). similar observations have been made in other large downtown areas in the us like atlanta, miami and others (sohmer/lang 2001; birch 2005: 5). the most striking difference between the two cities is the population density (calculated as residents per hectare; fig. 4): in 1980, stuttgart’s population density is almost three times higher than in portland; even after 2000 it is still almost twice as high as in portland. while portland has started from a very low population density level compared to stuttgart, it has seen constant densifi cation since 1980,3 whereas for stuttgart, densifi cation could only be witnessed after 2000, but the density value of 2010 even exceeded the one of 1980. although both city cores are denser than the respective entire municipality, the density level in portland’s city core did not reach stuttgart’s citywide density levels at any time. the patterns of housing development in both cities resemble those of the population increases, but there are also striking differences: in stuttgart, a loss of housing units never occured, while portland’s central city experienced a 5.8 percent loss of housing units during the 1980s.4 while portland’s population growth, since the 1990s, was accompanied by equally high increases in housing units for each analy3 in our research, we used the municipal borders of 2010 as a constant spatial delineation for analysis. in reality, portland had incorporated large areas of land during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, so the actual densifi cation effect must be assumed to have been less dramatic than these calculations suggest. 4 according to the municipal statistical offi ce of stuttgart (interview 06/10/2015), there may be undercounted losses of housing units in the data for stuttgart, because there is no obligation to report cases that do not require an offi cial legal permit, such as small scale changes of use (i.e. transforming an apartment in a larger building into an offi ce space). on the other hand, the methods of how to count vacant residential buildings seem not to be entirely consistent between different us census generations and counties (the territory of the city of portland covers three different counties), which may have infl uenced the housing data for portland. it is more likely though that the housing losses in portland mirror the comprehensive transformation processes in the pearl district that started with demolition during the 1980s. demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 299 sis phase (citywide, core, central city), this was by no means the case in stuttgart. especially in the central city, the development of population and housing seem to drift apart with the highest population growth rates and the lowest housing unit development rates between 2010 and 2015. this seemingly paradox pattern was also observed in other large german cities and it characterises the entire german housing market (see section 2 and henger et al. 2015). in 2010, 51 percent of stuttgart’s housing stock is located in the core area, but only 33.5 percent of portland’s housing stock. in both city cores, housing units were on average occupied by fewer users than in the entire municipality, which indicates smaller household sizes in these centrally located areas. at the same time, 28.8 percent of stuttgart’s citywide housing units are located in the central city, but only 9.5 percent of portland’s citywide housing units. comparing the housing occupancy rate (fig. 5) describing the average number of persons living in one housing unit in a certain area, portland city’s housing units are occupied by slightly more persons than stuttgart’s. this is in line with average american household sizes being larger than german ones. during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, decreasing occupancy rates (calculated average number of residents per housing unit) were an overall continuous trend for portland and stuttgart that fig. 4: development of population density in stuttgart and portland 1980-2015 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 20152010200019901980 stuttgart stuttgart stuttgart stuttgart stuttgartportland portland portland portland m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity population density per hectare source: own design • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski300 ta b . 4 : h o u si ng d ev el o p m en t i n s tu tt g ar t a n d p o rt la n d 1 98 020 15 no d at a av ai la b le s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10 20 15 ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. ab s. re l. 19 90 = 10 0 19 90 = 10 0 19 90 = 10 0 19 90 = 10 0 s tu tt g ar t m u n ic ip al it y 26 8, 62 9 (1 00 % ) 10 0. 0 28 9, 54 7 10 7. 8 29 8, 30 7 (1 00 % ) 11 1. 0 30 8, 37 6 11 4. 8 c o re 14 0, 08 9 (5 2. 1% ) 10 0. 0 14 7, 67 8 10 5. 4 15 2, 03 0 (5 1% ) 10 8. 5 15 5, 30 3 11 0. 8 c en tr al c it y 79 ,2 74 ( 29 .5 % ) 10 0. 0 83 ,0 10 10 4. 7 86 ,0 58 ( 28 .8 % ) 10 8. 6 87 ,6 97 11 0. 6 p or tl an d m u n ic ip al it y 21 7, 36 7 (1 00 % ) 98 .2 22 1, 32 4 10 0. 0 24 0, 92 3 10 8. 9 26 9, 27 1 (1 00 % ) 12 1. 7 c o re 71 ,8 58 ( 33 .1 % ) 10 0. 8 71 ,3 01 10 0. 0 77 ,7 14 10 9. 0 90 ,1 86 ( 33 .5 % ) 12 6. 5 c en tr al c it y 16 ,0 80 ( 7. 4% ) 10 6. 2 15 ,1 40 10 0. 0 18 ,7 25 12 3. 7 25 ,6 51 (9 .5 % ) 16 9. 4 demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 301 resulted from increasing fl oor space area consumption and decreasing household sizes. but recently, the persistently declining housing production seems to have led to increasing occupancy rates in stuttgart. here, city dwellers seem to “close ranks” – a phenomenon that cannot be observed in portland and was not observed in stuttgart before 2010. to sum up fi ndings, stuttgart is “lagging behind” in development compared to portland, as population gains did not set in sooner than during the 2000s and gained momentum after 2010. development rates in the central areas of the city are more modest and more or less congruent with citywide development rates. one can interpret the development of stuttgart as experiencing a “renaissance” in the sense that the city is “returning” to some of its characteristics of the 1980s in regard to population size, density and housing occupancy rates. yet, a notably opposing trend is the decrease in housing construction efforts in stuttgart’s centre since 1990. in portland, since the 1990s, central city development dynamics outperform the citywide ones, with a development of occupancy rates and population density that clearly deviates from citywide values after 2000. fig. 5: development of occupancy rates in stuttgart and portland 1980-2015 0 1.25 2.50 20152010200019901980 stuttgart stuttgart stuttgart stuttgartportland portland portland portland m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity m un ic ip al ity c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c o re c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity c en tr al c ity occupancy rate person/housing unit source: own design • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski302 3.4 regulatory setting and contribution of planning in this section, we examine wether public policies have contributed to the partly convergent and divergent patterns of reurbanisation in both cities. in order to analyse the governance settings and the contribution of planning policies in both regions, we used a multi-scalar approach, as recommended by getimis (2012). in interviews with local experts we refl ected the relevance and effectiveness of the planning authorities, strategies and projects and therefore critically evaluated “the reality” of the two planning systems (stead/nadin 2009). in both cities, the political goal of reducing land consumption and reviving the central city as a place for living was voiced very early (1960s and 1970s). for both regions, important legal foundations became enacted on state level during the 1970s that allowed for subsequent implementation of comprehensive regional and municipal growth management strategies. powerful institutions were established that are responsible for regional planning and development (metro in portland, verband region stuttgart in stuttgart). yet, it was a complex interplay between different levels of governance (local, municipal, regional, state) and constant adjustment of goals, policies and foci were necessary to steer this process during the following 40 to 50 years. in both city regions, counter fl ow principles between local, regional and state level helped to harmonise planning and development strategies. in stuttgart, municipal efforts in regaining a high quality of life for inner city dwellers set in very early, were continuously funded (mainly by state programmes for urban regeneration) and focussed on redesigning oversized traffi c infrastructures and promoting in-fi ll development. in 1994, a clear rejection of further greenfi eld development was stipulated in the municipal land use plan and led to prioritisation of redevelopment and densifi cation of built-up areas. this political course has since then not been fundamentally changed even though it was challenged many times by the delays, funding problems and controversies around the major inner city redevelopment project “stuttgart 21”, the restructuring of stuttgart’s main station and its surroundings. in portland, the demolition of an inner city highway was the starting point for a long-term city development process that centred on comprehensive downtown revitalisation by waterfront redevelopment and the re-introduction of rail-based public transport. municipal regeneration efforts were backed up by regional growth management (introduction of an urban growth boundary ugb), state-initiated funding opportunities (via tax increment financing tif) and a pro-active involvement of citizens (f.e. via neighbourhood associations). investment was mainly concentrated in the so-called “pearl district”, a centrally located former railyard and warehouse district. analysing the governance and planning efforts of the two case study regions revealed that an abundance of tools, concepts and programmes were being applied during the last decades that focused on improving the structure, quality and connectivity of the central city and increasing residential offers here. in this sense, reurbanisation cannot be seen as a predominantly market-driven phenomenon like some authors suggest (krätke 2014; van criekingen 2009). in stuttgart and portland, demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 303 public authorities, during each decade, “prepared the ground” for development and, today, fi nd themselves in the sometimes contradicting role of – simultaneously or consecutively – promoting, stimulating, permitting, distributing and controlling central city growth and the related socio-demographic, economic and environmental aspects (tab. 5). 3.5 reurbanisation on neighbourhood level – modes of growth most theories on reurbanisation point out that various social groups, differing in age, status, and income, contribute to the population growth in the core city: inmigrants, young urban professionals, silver agers, students and others. though it is highly plausible that these groups fi nd themselves in different parts of the innercity, empirical research on reurbanisation has given only little notice to the fact that urban districts may participate in or contribute very differently to the process of reurbanisation, both in intensity and in form. only very few empirical studies adressed the small-scale manifestation of reurbanisation or even came up with some kind of typology on a neighbourhood level (for exceptions see heinig/herfert 2012 for the city of leipzig; meng et al. 2008 for the city of mannheim; mulherin/howell 2012 for the city of los angeles). obviously, the large scale urban regeneration projects on former industrial wasteland were very important drivers of reurbanisation processes, but detailed analyses have shown that built-up districts – even suburban in tab. 5: intervention modes of public authorities stimulating investment providing public subsidies, tax and fee charge exempts, density and height bonuses, improvement of infrastructure, levering resources via tax increment financing (tif) or städtebauförderung directing investment prioritisation of selected areas by overall plans and concepts, e.g. “metro growth concept“, “central city plan“ (portland) “gebietstypenplan“, “grünes u“ (stuttgart), upzoning of selected areas. skimming investment skimming of increment and appropriation of funds for public interests such as affordable housing, eg. via “sim“ (stuttgarter innenentwicklungsmodell) and “tif housing set aside“ (portland). qualifying investment safeguarding spatial quality standards (e.g. provision of playgrounds and child care facilities) of new urban development, e.g. via concept selection procedures and municipal contracting criteria, state building codes, urban development contracts, charettes, citizen participation. confi ning investment restricting new development in order to protect public interests, e.g. by downzoning selected areas, limiting building heights, mandatory quotas for affordable housing, securing ways of right and preserving view axes, nature and monument protection, development freezes, preservation statutes. source: own design • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski304 character – experienced population growth as well, as koll-schretzenmayr/kramp (2010) proved for the city of zurich. stuttgart’s and portland’s central cities obviously differ from each other, not only in regard to size and density as mentioned above, but also in regard to building structure, functional and land use patterns. both central cities contain the downtown and immediately adjacent neighbourhoods that developed in the pre-war era: in portland, this is the cbd with its southwestern settlement expansions and the so-called “streetcar-suburbs” stretching out to the eastern border of the willamette river. stuttgart’s much older historic city centre expanded into urban extensions around the city centre called “gründerzeitgebiete“ and less dense and more noble hillside construction called “halbhöhenlagen“. today, both central cities encompass large urban redevelopment areas. in case of portland, the so-called “pearl district“ at the northwestern tip of the cbd is a former warehouse and railway area that underwent major transformation since the 1990s. “stuttgart 21” is a major urban redevelopment and infrastructure project to restructure stuttgart’s main train station and its surroundings. it is expected to produce more than 7,000 new housing units until 2020. it has been shown that in portland and stuttgart, an increasing number of people live in the central city since 2000 and that new housing construction has layed the foundation for this development. during our small-scale analysis it became apparent that neighbourhoods in both cities contribute in very distinct ways and degrees to central city growth: for example, urban transformation areas accounted for substantial population gains, driven by massive housing production. in contrast, built-up neighbourhoods experience growth on a middle-range scale either by accomodating more inhabitants within the existing housing stock or by expanding the housing offer via smaller “patches” of infi ll development. local growth rates may outperform the city average or stay below it, which is an indicator for the “speed” of growth taking place. sometimes, the housing stock is growing faster than the local population, sometimes it is the other way round. and some areas in the central city, even if they are bordering hotspots of development, do not experience any population nor housing unit increases at all. in order to attain a differentiated picture of the relationship between population development and housing production, growth rates of both core areas (5 km radius circle around the city hall) were analysed for the decade 2000-2010 on a small-scale level.5 five different “calculational” modes of growth have been identifi ed, that are 5 for portland, the analysis is based on 27 neighbourhoods as spatial units (by using the values for the underlying census tracts), in stuttgart, 70 “stadtteile” (urban districts) are taken into account (by using municipal data). demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 305 illustrated in the following by local spatial impressions, development projects and housing types (fig. 6):6 (1) population-led growth: here, population growth rates exceed housing growth rates and occupancy rates increase. for example, in both cities, the universities experienced an increase in student numbers that were partly accommodated in new dorms7 in downtown neighbourhoods such as “university district” in portland or “kernerviertel” in stuttgart. population-led growth is more common in stuttgart than in portland (24 districts versus 10 neighbourhoods). most of the neighbourhoods in this mode experience “fast growth” (population growth rates above city average), only a minority “slow growth” (population growth rates below city average). (2) construction-led growth: in this mode, the increase in housing units exceeds population growth rates while occupancy rates decrease. this is true for 15 districts in stuttgart and 12 neighbourhoods in portland that partly experience “fast growth”, partly “slow growth”. in stuttgart, neighbourhoods in this mode cannot be found in the immediate centre, but at the outer edge of the core. in portland, large centrally located urban regeneration areas converted into new mixed-use neighbourhoods such as the “pearl district” or “south waterfront”. here, exclusive residential high-rise developments emerge on former brownfi elds. in portland’s historic “streetcar-suburbs“, densifi cation becomes visible along the major commercial arterials in the neighbourhood. here, former single-storey commercial buildings or a row of small single-family homes are replaced by 5-storey apartment buildings, often containing several small housing units (studios, 1-2 bedrooms). the new buildings clearly differ from the existing fi ne-grain building structure; often there are shops or restaurants at ground level. (3) growth without construction: in four districts in stuttgart and in one neighbourhood in portland, population increases while the total number of housing units decreases – therefore, occupancy rates increase. these areas are mostly built-up areas such as the heusteigviertel in stuttgart or laurelhurst in portland, where residents are “closing ranks”. in stuttgart’s dense inner city 6 these fi ndings are based on a comprehensive review of around 150 new housing projects with more than 15,000 housing units that have been built, were under construction or approved between 2000 and march 2014 in the core cities of stuttgart and portland. they were collected by analyzing real estate listings (local newspaper and websites), market reports, developers’ and city planning websites as well as documents and evidence from experts during interviews. most of these projects were visited on site and documented by photographs. the average project sizes were considerably larger in portland (146 units per project) than in stuttgart (65 units per project). 7 dorms are not counted as “housing units“ in municipal housing statistics. • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski306 fi g . 6 : m o d es o f g ro w th d ur in g th e 20 00 s in n ei gh b o ur ho o d s 5 ki lo m et re s ar o un d c it y ha ll in s tu tt g ar t a n d p o rt la n d s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 307 neighbourhoods, some smaller building annexes can be identifi ed visually. but other measures such as attic conversions, changes of use (i.e. former offi ce unit is turned into an apartment), or splitting a large housing unit into two smaller units are hardly visible from the outside. often, the population gain is accompanied by no construction measures at all. in portland, small-scale residential development can also be observed in the form of additional small housing units on existing residential lots (the so-called adus – accessory dwelling units, sometimes also called “granny fl ats“). they are encouraged by municipal regulation, as they are seen as a non-obtrusive and sustainable form of accomodating population growth in built-up neighbourhoods. (4) construction without growth: in these areas, the number of housing units increases, but the number of inhabitants decreases, therefore, occupancy rates drop (true for 14 districts in stuttgart, 3 neighbourhoods in portland). here, predominantly “slow growth” takes place. in both city cores, most of these areas can be found at the outer edge of the core. in some cases, this growth mode indicates an ageing population, which leads to decreasing household sizes. in others, it is an expression of new spacious but pricey housing offers. (5) no growth: neither population nor housing units are on the increase in these neighbourhoods. 13 districts in stuttgart are in this mode compared to only one neighbourhood in portland. even though these areas are spatially close to hotspots of growth, they seem to lack development potential and/or demand. in case of stuttgart’s europaviertel, an increase in population and housing is expected in the near future due to large urban transformation projects in preparation. already today, one new inner city residential high-rise building is under construction in the stuttgart 21 redevelopment area, an exclusive 18-storey building called cloud no.7 that contains apartments on top of a hotel. this small-scale analysis of population and housing growth confi rmed the fi ndings presented in section 2 indicating divergent trends of housing production in u.s. and german metro regions. we provided evidence for population-led growth patterns in the stuttgart core area and a rather construction-led growth mode in the portland core area. while the stuttgart core area also shows large areas without any growth, this is not the case in portland. yet, fast growth is mainly concentrated in the central city of portland and more distributed across the core in stuttgart. 3.6 built expressions of reurbanisation in comparison it has been shown that reurbanisation can be, but is not necessarily, a result of comprehensive building activity. the relevance of housing for the central cities of portland and stuttgart is rooted in different traditions. in germany, urban housing has a long tradition and makes for a substantial part of the land uses present in central cities. in built-up areas, population growth happens at rather modest rates • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski308 fi g . 7 : g ra in s iz es o f e xi st in g (b la ck ) a n d n ew h o u si ng (r ed ) i n co re n ei gh b o ur ho o d s in s tu tt g ar t a n d p o rt la n d t ha t ex p er ie n ce d p o p ul at io n g ro w th b et w ee n 20 00 a n d 2 01 0 s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 309 and is merely organised within the existing housing stock and at a small scale. the attractiveness of central living is also a product of ongoing, widely distributed regeneration efforts in built-up neighbourhoods. in the us, the concept of creating “mixed use zones” is a relatively new effort to reconcile the traditional separation of land uses that is much stricter than in germany (hirt 2013: 220, 226). in areas that experience substantial urban transformation, as in the pearl district of the portland case study, reurbanisation eventually means a residentialisation of areas previously not known or designated as urban living destinations. it is the result of substantial public investment into a spatially confi ned downtown area, in order to improve walkability and access to public transit. here, it leads to strong densifi cation in and change of character of these areas, whereas in urban mixed-use neighbourhoods that were dominated by housing before, only weak densifi cation, little change of character or change in the social composition of residents takes place. also cultural differences become apparent when comparing the two cities: while there is a wide acceptance among families in germany and especially in stuttgart to raise their children in apartments in multi-family buildings, the concept of expensive, inner city high-rise living is still very new in stuttgart and it is not yet clear who actually buys these apartments. while the standard housing situation for families in the us and in portland is still the single-family home, residential high-rises are moving to the front in the centre of portland since the 1990s, however, more accepted by smaller households than by families – an observation that confi rms our interpretation of a “childless reurbanisation” in us cities as noted in section 2 (see also greenblatt 2015 and modarres/kotkin 2013). for both cities, it can be expected that the process of reurbanisation may continue at least for the next 10 to 15 years, as, in varying degree, local development potential is already being tapped today. yet, this process is also limited by local availability of land and market dynamics. during the process of reurbanisation, a predominance of expensive residential development and neglect of affordable housing provision became apparent in both cities and was publicly criticised. yet, substantial counteraction by means of planning and urban policy is generally confi ned, at least in inner city locations and under the market pressure currently witnessed. 4 conclusions and outlook to sum up, our analysis at the regional level shows that a residential “rediscovery of the city” can be posited for all eight analysed regions, although this began much earlier in the united states than in germany. in addition, the processes in both countries became more dynamic over time: in the us, the positive trend of the 1990s accelerated during the 2000s, in germany, a shift from strong suburbanisation during the 1990s to concentration occurred in the 2000s. however, reurbanisation in both countries is taking place under strongly contrasting demographic development contexts. in germany, the population growth which took place in regional cores and parts of the suburban surrounding was embedded in a national trend of population • karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski310 decline. in contrast, the growth of urban cores in the american regions under consideration was part of a process of dynamic population growth in the regions and the entire country. demographic growth of the urban cores was superimposed by far stronger suburban growth. the geography of reurbanisation also reveals differences. in the american regions, reurbanisation appeared as a location-selective process according to which relatively few census tracts displayed very high relative growth rates (see for example dong/zhu 2015 for portland), which hints at a resettlement of vacant areas or areas that had previously not been used for residential purposes (“residentialisation”). comprehensive building activity was the prerequisite for the onset of a more intense population increase. in germany, these developments are spatially more diffuse; growth is more evenly distributed across the region’s built-up central areas and the growth rates are comparatively low. it is therefore evident that reurbanisation processes in both countries differ in their degree of location selectivity. the empirical fi ndings illustrate that reurbanisation must be assessed as a strongly context-dependent development with distinctly varying socio-spatial characteristics and built manifestations of urban forms. the partially enormous growth rates in core areas may be seen as evidence for universal economic and social changes that have led to an increase in the signifi cance of dense residential areas with a high degree of centrality and above-average accessibility. at the same time, locally and regionally specifi c contextual conditions lead to a broad variety of sociospatial changes and structural developments. here, the mechanisms of the land and real estate markets as well as urban and regional planning appear especially relevant. in other words, the space and image producing local modes of reurbanisation demonstrate a large variety so that “reurbanisation” should be understood as an umbrella concept encompassing a huge range of potential spatial outcomes and context-specifi c causal mechanisms. this fi nding has been further confi rmed by our two case studies. we observed convergent patterns of development in general and comparable policy schemes in favour of a central city densifi cation. however, the spatial manifestation of reurbanisation processes in terms of distributional patterns of growth and urban form differ tremendously, partly as a result of path-dependent urban structures. in both cities, we found a “planned reurbanisation” insofar as the revaluation of central city locations is clearly the result of comprehensive public investment and policy action started around four decades ago that centred on the provision of urban infrastructure and urban amenities. both case study municipalities succeeded in attracting new residents to their central cities and stimulating private investment there, even during and after the fi nancial crisis. but since then, during the last couple of years, market dynamics have accelerated so much that, today, the persisting demand for centrally located housing drives up real estate prices and rents. the provision of affordable housing is a major struggle for both cities and they only recently started to tackle the social and regional dimensions of this challenge (see davidson/lees 2010 and atkinson 2004 for a general debate on the relationship of reurbanisation and gentrifi cation). even though both cities had, beforehand, installed instruments and mechanisms to secure affordable housing for households demographic patterns of reurbanisation and housing in metropolitan regions ... • 311 with average and below average income, they do not succeed in providing enough of it. in portland, the negative consequences of the downtown rebound such as gentrifi cation, displacement and racial discrimination moved to the front of public debate (coalition for a livable future 2007; bates 2013; goodling et al. 2015). in stuttgart, the overall shortage of housing is in the centre of current political debate (strauß 2016), a development that is connected to a decade-long neglect of provision of social housing and has recently been superimposed by the arrival of a wave of refugees from the near and middle east. comparing reurbanisation processes in the two case study cities has shown that neighbourhoods may contribute in very different modes and degrees to central city population growth. housing production is an important factor, but it varies signifi cantly in quantity and quality due to different historic and structural backgrounds. whereas in the city of stuttgart inner city housing has a long tradition and sites for new housing construction are very scarce, in portland, like in other us-american cities, extensive derelict land gave way to major schemes of urban regeneration with high-density housing. while our main intention was not to make forecasts on future trends of population change in us and german metro areas, we nevertheless see some evidence for a certain revival of suburbanisation. in recent years, the core cities’ housing markets have increasingly priced out low and middle-income households. “the urban revival has been so thoroughgoing that it has even engendered a new crisis of success, whose symptoms are runaway gentrifi cation, soaring housing prices and a widening income gap between newcomers and longtime residents” (florida 2017). in both countries, declining population growth rates of the core cities and a rising amount of city-to-suburb migration have been recently observed (maciag 2017; busch 2016). although we do not think that reurbanisation might manifest itself as a short-term anomaly in the light of a longer-term transformation towards greater decentralisation, it becomes clear that the residential densifi cation of the urban cores is a fi nite process. the cities’ ability to further grow in the future will depend on the amount of land resources and infi ll potential, the implementation of policies for a more socially inclusive housing production and – last but not least – on a consensus among policy makers, investors, stakeholders and citizens on the aims and forms of urban development in general and growth in particular. our case studies on reurbanisation show some specifi c limitations of comparative international urban research. apart from the familiar methodological problems with generalising the results of case studies, it should be considered that portland is often seen as an “exceptional” case even within the us (variables such as inner city job and population growth rates; smart growth management and sustainability policies). it therefore does not represent “average” trends in us metropoles. the same holds true for the city of stuttgart, as it belongs to the few german urban regions with a polycentric structure that were not hit by economic decline and structural change and still boasts of a prospering regional economy. nevertheless, we believe that a comparative approach is especially useful in its qualitiative aspects. our housing market analysis has shown that the “built expression“ of reurbanisa• karoline brombach, johann jessen, stefan siedentop, philipp zakrzewski312 tion covers a wide range of possible building types, intervention depths and project sizes, design styles – and even the absence of construction measures. in closing, we believe that more comparative in-depth and context sensitive research on the local drivers and outcomes of reurbanisation is needed. our knowledge on the causal factors of growth in some cities/neighbourhoods and stagnation or even decline in others is still limited. this also hampers future scenarios and forecasts of the persistence of inner-city densifi cation. moreover, future research efforts should aim at better understanding the social implications of regional and local development policies (such as “compact cities”, “urban sustainability” or “smart growth”). this could pave the way towards a more inclusive mode of (re-)urbanisation in cities of the global north. references abbott, carl 2004: centers and edges. reshaping downtown portland. in: ozawa, connie p. 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städtebauinstitut. stuttgart, germany. e-mail: kb@brombach.me, johann.jessen@si.uni-stuttgart.de url: https://www.researchgate.net/project/reurbanisierung-in-deutschlandund-den-usa-eine-vergleichende-untersuchung-der-ursachen-und-raeumlichenauspraegungen-von-demographischen-reurbanisierungsprozessen-in-denstadtregionen-portland-usa-un url: https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/si/orl/orl_forschung/projekte/forschung_laufend.htm prof. dr. stefan siedentop. research institute for regional and urban development (ils). dortmund, germany. e-mail: stefan.siedentop@ils-forschung.de url: https://www.ils-forschung.de/index.php?lang=de&s=siedentop philipp zakrzewski. ministerium für landesentwicklung und verkehr des landes sachsen-anhalt. magdeburg, germany. e-mail: philipp.zakrzewski@mlv.sachsen-anhalt.de url: https://mlv.sachsen-anhalt.de/themen/raumordnung-und-landesentwicklung/ interreg-projekte/greenersites/ date of submission: 27.03.2017 date of acceptance: 01.11.2017 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies – a pilot study among migrant minorities and non-migrants in germany women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies – a pilot study among migrant minorities and non-migrants in germany* sonja haug, nadja milewski abstract: this study examines attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies (art) among immigrant women and non-migrants in germany. the social relevance of art is increasing in western countries due to overall low birth rates, a high rate of childlessness, and a gap between the desired and the actual numbers of children. previous literature has been scarce, however, on attitudes toward art, and immigrant minorities have rarely been included in studies on art. our working hypotheses are drawn from theoretical considerations on political socialisation and cultural integration. the analysis is based on data collected in a pilot study in 2014 and 2015. the sample includes 960 women aged 18 to 50 living in germany. about 81 percent of the sample are immigrants who originate from turkey, poland, the balkan countries, or countries of the (russian) commonwealth of independent states (cis). we study the social norm to use art to have a child, the personal attitude of whether a woman would use art herself, and the methods that they would consider for their own use. our results show that art is overall socially acceptable, and the majority of women said that they would use it if necessary. there is significant variation between the origin groups, however. non-migrants show the lowest acceptance rates and migrants from poland and turkey the highest approval. there is also variation in the art procedures considered for use with the migrants more approving of heterologous methods than non-migrants. the differences between the origin groups diminish only partly when controlling for further explanatory variables, i.e. gender-role attitudes, religiosity, and socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. we conclude that attitudes toward art are shaped less by socio-demographic characteristics, but rather by cultural factors and the socialization in the migrants’ countries of origin. the diversity in attitudes toward art by cultural background should be acknowledged in research and public discourses on art as well as in regulating policies. keywords: art · family norms · women’s social status · migrant women · germany comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 343-370 (date of release: 10.04.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-06en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility. • sonja haug, nadja milewski344 1 introduction our paper investigates attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies (art) in the multicultural context of germany. we ask about attitudes and norms toward art of immigrant women from four regions as compared to non-migrants, which is a novelty both in research on migrant integration and in studies on art. our work is motivated from three perspectives. first, we are interested in norms and attitudes toward the use of art. previous research has focussed on public discourses on bioethics, religious doctrines, social concepts, and legal frameworks (schenker 2005; serour 2008). demographic research has paid attention to the prevalence of art treatments and the contribution of art-related births to overall fertility. naturally, aspects of need, access to, and effectiveness of art have been studied in infertile persons (e.g. trappe 2017) as well as knowledge of art (e.g. bunting et al. 2013). almost nothing is known, however, about the social dimension among individuals, whether or not they themselves are affected by fertility problems. exceptions are the recent country-comparative study by djundeva/szalma (working paper/ 2017) and single-country analyses by stöbelrichter et al. (2009, 2012) as well as by daniluk and koert (2012) and by heikkilä et al. (2006) on medical students. social and cultural aspects, such as attitudes, are important for policies regulating art, which in the long run influence the usage and the supply of art (präg/mills 2017a). secondly, we focus on immigrants because the scarce previous research has suggested that the attitudes and the behaviour related to art vary by cultural factors (djundeva/szalma 2017; präg/mills 2017a). cultural diversity has been addressed in previous studies, however only between countries, not within countries. due to continuing immigration and a growing share of immigrants at the host populations, european countries show increasing cultural diversity (coleman 2006), which is also accompanied by differential fertility trends. the topics of art, fertility problems, or a gap between the desired and the actual number of children have hardly been raised in research on immigrant fertility in europe thus far, whereas for the majority populations, childlessness has become an important topic in and of itself. this discrepancy in scholarly interest may be attributed to an overall societal concern with “hyper-fertility” of women from non-western countries, as inhorn and van balen already pointed out in 2002. two exceptions are a book edited by culley, hudson, and van rooij (2009a), which showed how culture shapes the interaction between infertile individuals in the west and their experience with art (culley et al. 2009b), and a review on the international state of the art by weblus et al. (2014), which showed implications of cultural diversity in patients for reproductive medicine. thirdly, we are interested in variation within migrant groups. other attitudes related to reproductive behaviour have been shown to vary not only between migrants and non-migrants, but also among migrant origin groups and generations (e.g. carol/milewski 2017). our empirical study is based on a data collection from 960 women in germany, which was initiated to investigate attitudes toward art among immigrants of different origins and non-migrants (haug et al. 2018). due to the pilot character of the women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 345 research project and the sample size, the analyses are exploratory in nature. our main research question is whether norms and attitudes toward art differ by origin group and migrant generation, i.e. by the socialization context of the migrants. our sample includes the four largest groups of immigrant women in germany, comprising women from poland, the balkan countries, the (russian) commonwealth of independent states, and turkey as well as non-migrants living in germany. these countries/regions vary in legal regulations and implementation of art as well as in attitudes (präg/mills 2017a/b). we include individual cultural and socio-demographic control variables in multivariate analyses because the countries of origin in our study also vary with regard to religious traditions and attitudes toward gender equality (norris/inglehart 2012), wich correlate with fertility, family planning, and reproductive health. 2 background 2.1 societal context and attitudes toward art during the second demographic transition, marriage, sexual activity, and childbearing became increasingly disconnected. modern contraception has made it possible for women to exert control over their fertility career by separating sexual activity and fertilisation. these developments were preceded by an attitudinal change, i.e. growing individualism and declining religiosity (van de kaa 1987; lesthaeghe 2010). with the rise of art, in particular since the very first live birth of a baby conceived by art in 1978, persons or couples who are biologically incapable of having children, such as in cases of infertility (be it permanent or temporary), single women, or same-sex couples, can increase their chances of becoming parents. the approaches to the regulation of art range from the perspective of the patients as their right to reproduce to the rights of the unborn child/embryo1 (serour 2008; čartolovni et al. 2014). thus, the major changes in family formation and fertility as well as in art touch on the core values of any society and religion. secular societies have been more likely to experience the developments of the second demographic transition than societies in which religion plays a major role; this coincides with greater acceptance of gender equality. by contrast, more religious societies continue to show a strong bond between sexual activity and marriage on one hand and marriage and childbearing on the other; at the same time, gender inequality is greater (van de kaa 1987; norris/inglehart 2012). in both types of societies, however, art has raised bio-ethical concerns because it separates 1 note: our paper studies attitudes toward art from the viewpoint of family planning and therefore we focus on individuals who may or may not consider using art for their own family formation. we omit discourses on the status and rights of the embryo/child, such as the question of surplus embryos, on the status of donors, which are admittedly crucial in the bio-ethical debates surrounding art, or on the question whether and what aspects should be regulated by law (heikkila et al. 2006). • sonja haug, nadja milewski346 the sexual act from conception. the question is posed as to when a beginning life should be considered an individual person. the major world religions vary in their doctrines in their permission on methods of procreation (serour 2001). intertwined with religious and cultural traditions, the legal regulations also vary greatly among countries (präg/mills 2017a/b). art comprise a wide range of third-party assisted conception as well as diagnostics. the methods of assisted conception can be distinguished as homologous methods, i.e. methods where the social parents are also the two biological parents (e.g. in-vitro fertilization (ivf), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (icsi)), and heterologous methods, where a third party is one of the biological parents (such as third-party sperm donation, egg cell donation, and surrogacy). among infertile persons, art are often considered the final option to achieve the goal of having their own biological child, while alternative methods such as adoption or fostering are considered only after reproductive medicine has failed (onnen-isemann 2000a). stöbel-richter et al. (2012) found that german women and men generally accept the use of art. asked about the social norm, half of the respondents agreed that childless couples should try all available art to have a biological child; while about 18 percent disagreed with this statement (stöbel-richter et al. 2012). regarding their own attitude, almost a third of the respondents would use art if they were not able to have a child of their own the “natural” way (for comparison: only 22 percent would consider an adoption). whereas the general acceptance of art seems rather widespread in cases of bio-medical fertility problems, the individual methods have different levels of acceptance. individuals are more likely to approve of homologous methods, such as ivf, than technologies involving third parties, like heterologous sperm and egg cell donation, embryo donation, or surrogacy (stöbel-richter et al. 2009 for germany; daniluk/koert 2012 for canada). 2.2 country variation and cultural assimilation among migrants the context of our study is germany. more than 18.5 million persons who were immigrants themselves or who were born to one or two immigrant parents live in germany, comprising about 21 percent of the general population. the migrant population in germany is heterogeneous with respect to country of origin, legal status, period of residence, and population composition. the largest immigrant groups originating from a single country are from turkey (about 3.4 percent of the total population) and poland (about 2.3 percent). two immigrant groups, those from the countries belonging to the former soviet union, now the commonwealth of independent states (cis) and ukraine, and those from the balkan countries formerly belonging to yugoslavia, contribute 3.8 and 2 percent respectively to the population, thus accounting for about half of the migrant population in germany (destatis 2018). our first working hypothesis concerns the influence of the migrants’ country of origin. there is not much literature on the ideational or cultural dimension of integration among immigrants in germany or in other european countries, with minorities from muslim countries being an exception. most literature on attitudes and values among women from countries with a muslim tradition indicates that it is women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 347 particularly mostly first-generation immigrants who are likely to maintain the attitudes and values dominant in their country of origin during their socialization phase abroad. this has been shown for attitudes on abortion (carol/milewski 2017), religiosity (van tubergen/sindradottir 2011; milewski/otto 2016), and attitudes toward gender equality (röder 2014). these findings are in line with almond and verba’s (1989) theory of political socialization through school, work, or the media according to which the societal climate, e.g. what is created by public discourse, policies and their implementation, is reflected in public attitudes. as the immigrants in our study originate from countries that differ in their prevalences and legal regulations of art, we include a rough summary of the legal conditions in the countries/regions of origin in our study at the time of data collection for our analyses (2014/2015) in this section. reproductive medicine is a growing health care sector in germany. compared to other european countries, the treatment rate is comparatively low, however. in 2010, germany was ranked 19th of 30 countries in europe, with about 4000 art treatments per 1 million women aged 15-45. there is large variation in the immigrants’ countries of origin in our study. the lowest prevalences were recorded in moldova (less than 1000 treatments). ukraine, a republic that was formerly a part of the soviet union and the cis included in this statistics, ranked 20th. also rather lower prevalences were found for macedonia (rank 26), montenegro (27), and poland (29). the same statistics ranked serbia at 11 and croatia at 17 – indicating (much) higher prevalences of art than in germany (präg/mills 2017b). the practice of and access to art can be regulated in three ways: 1) guidelines contain a set of rules practitioners are expected to follow on a voluntary basis. 2) governmental legislation refers to rules that are inscribed in law to which violation is subject to penalty. 3) insurance coverage regulates the reimbursement of the expenses to patients. almost all european countries regulate access to art in their legislation. however, there is variation in the existence of additional guidelines and in insurance coverage. moreover, a couple’s marital status and sexual orientation are often additional requirements for art, with the majority of european countries stipulating that only married (heterosexual) couples can have access to art treatment (präg/mills 2017b). in germany, legislation regulates access to art. whereas all homologous techniques are allowed, there are various regulations regarding heterologous techniques: the donation of a sperm cell is permitted only if the name of the donor is known. by contrast, egg cell donation, surrogacy, or the use of egg or sperm cells after the death of the owner is considered a misuse of art. art is limited to married heterosexual couples. health insurance covers the costs only up to the age of 40 for women and 50 for men (trappe 2017). russia appears to be the most liberal european country regarding access to and coverage of art. it offers homologous and heterologous techniques, such as surrogacy as well as gamete and embryo donation. the costs are covered by the national health plan, commercial arrangements are possible, and single women can have access to art (svitnev 2010; präg/mills 2017b). in contrast, the most restrictive case is poland (krawczak 2016). until 2015, art had been neither legal nor regulated by • sonja haug, nadja milewski348 state law. due to non-regulation, this health care sector was commercialised and the owners of the respective treatment clinics decided what methods were offered, e.g. egg and sperm cell donation are possible. only in 2015 did the infertility act move art into legislation and introduce a reimbursement plan. access is granted only to married couples as in most european countries. the access to information on the supply of art is limited, however, coinciding with a reluctance among polish politicians to engage with the topic (krawczak 2016). the other immigrants’ countries of origin included in our study lie somewhere between liberal russia and conservative poland. turkey allows the use of art for married couples only, costs are partially covered, and only homologous methods are approved (gürtin 2011). croatia and slovenia also grant access to couples in a stable relationship. furthermore, croatia provides access for single women; costs are, however, only partially covered. slovenia provides patients of art treatments with a full reimbursement. in croatia, heterologous methods are allowed (čartolovni et al. 2014; präg/mills 2017b). because the societal climate regarding art varies between the countries of origin, we assume the migrant groups from these regions in our study will also show differences in their attitudes toward art after migration. as compared to germany, we assume that migrants from poland may be the least approving of art because the long resistance of the polish government to legally regulating art. the various access restrictions may have also fostered a negative perception of art (despite the wide range of methods supplied), and the treatment rate is the lowest in europe. by contrast, we would expect persons from the former soviet union to be more accepting of art due to the laws and practices there, which are more liberal than in any other country included in our pilot study. for migrants from turkey and the balkan countries, we expect them to show attitudes that differ from those from the “extreme” cases of cis and poland because the legal framework and the usage also ranges in the middle, i.e. rather similar to germany. our first working hypothesis on the country of origin of the migrants thus is: women from russia and other cis countries are expected to be more likely to approve of art while women from poland are expected less likely than germans and migrants from turkey and the balkan countries (h1). our second working hypothesis concerns the role of cultural integration across migrant generations. previous empirical studies have provided mixed evidence on other attitudes toward sexuality and family as well as religiosity in the second generation (diehl/könig 2009; carol/milewski 2017; kalmijn/kraaykamp 2017). classical assimilation theory (gordon 1964) would propose that subsequent migrant generations gradually adapt to the destination society. the second generation has been described as being between two cultures, in particular when the cultural distance between their parents’ origin and the destination is rather large, as in the case of muslims migrating to europe. on the one hand, descendants of immigrants may be influenced by channels of political socialization at destination and the institutional context for larger parts of their life course. thus, their attitudes may rather resemble those of non-migrants than those of their parents. on the other hand, additional women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 349 factors may also play a role in the descendants’ attitudes, such as intergenerational transmission of the parents’ culture and the socialization into a minority group. thus, our second working hypothesis: if the attitudes toward art in the first migrant generation differ from that of germans, we assume that the attitudes of the women of the second migrant generation range between those of the first generation and the non-migrants (h2). 2.3 religion and gender roles our third working hypothesis concerns the role of further explanatory variables in shaping attitudes toward art. we are interested in cultural factors, which have been shown to influence the usage of art (präg/mills 2017a). family and reproduction are an essential part of all religions, hence research on bio-medical ethics discourses about the influence of religion has a long tradition among scholars worldwide. in collectivistic societies and in religious communities, having children is important for intergenerational transmission and support for old age as well as for the continuity of the lineage. whereas most world religions see marriage as an essential part of the life course, their doctrines perceive fertility and infertility differently (serour 2008). the christian churches – the traditionally dominant religions in europe – vary in their allowance of art in general and in the methods used in particular. the roman catholic doctrines (influential in poland, croatia, serbia, bosnia-herzegovina, and parts of germany) perceive conception as depending on sexual intercourse of the spouses. therefore, the vatican rejected assisted reproduction as early as 1956 (a declaration of pope pius xii). tolerable exceptions may be made in cases where natural intercourse is not substituted and where the unit of the married couple is preserved. the doctrines of the eastern orthodox church (represented in russia and also in croatia) are similar, allowing only medical, hormonal, corrective or reconstructive surgical treatment of infertility and rejecting methods of third-partyassisted conception. the protestant denominations in germany are more liberal in their stance toward the use of art. preferably, homologous rather than heterologous methods may be used because the former preserve the unit of the marriage (schenker 2000, 2005). in islam (dominant in turkey, parts of bosnia-herzegovina, albania, kosovo), despite the existence of various schools, the importance of marriage, family formation, and procreation is a common feature in the doctrines. islam permits the use of art as long as they are used for married couples who have bio-medical fertility problems. in sunni islam, the authenticity of the lineage must be ensured. this means only homologous techniques are permitted as long as the marriage is valid and both spouses are still alive (serour 2008). despite these differences between the religious doctrines, previous research on art usage suggests that religious affiliation may not matter as such (präg/mills 2017a), but rather personal religiosity. religiosity can take different forms (believing, bonding, behaving and belonging) (saroglou 2011), and the influence of religion in daily life may vary by life domain. the personal implementation of religion in daily • sonja haug, nadja milewski350 life may exert an independent effect on attitudes, independent of the country of origin and the religious affiliation as shown for other attitudes toward gender, family, and sexuality. the religious perceptions of marriage, fertility, and family are highly intertwined with gender roles, in particular with the status of women. people in more religious societies show attitudes leaning toward gender inequality and more conservative family values (norris/inglehart 2012). this association is particularly strong in the muslim religions. therefore, infertility treatment is considered important in islam. “the social status of muslim women, their dignity and self-esteem are closely related to their procreation potential, both for the family and society as a whole. childbirth and rearing are regarded as family commitments of both partners and not just biological and social functions” (serour 2008: 35). by contrast, in the christian churches, the suffering of persons who are involuntarily childless is perceived as natural and is to be accepted (schenker 2005). thus, infertility or childlessness may have greater social consequences and may cause greater personal suffering for religious people and people in collectivistic cultures, where family is the main source of pride, or in cultures where the birth rate is high and childlessness is rare (culley et al. 2009b). the immigrants in our study come from countries where the social status of a woman largely depends on her motherhood status and where – unlike germany – childlessness in particular is rare. at more than 20 percent, germany has the highest level of childlessness in europe (sobotka 2017). immigrant groups in germany – as in other european countries – have higher fertility levels than the native population, in particular the first generation from countries with replacement fertility levels or above. for the countries of origin included in our study, this pertains mainly to women from turkey, who exhibit higher fertility transitions in germany than both nonmigrant germans and those staying in turkey (milewski 2010; baykara-krumme/ milewski 2017). women from countries where fertility rates are similar to germany (such as former yugoslavia) show a rather similar or lower fertility compared to non-migrant germans. the rates of childlessness, however, are on average lower as compared to non-migrant germans (milewski 2010). this indicates that immigrant women maintain the family values from their countries of origin, which see motherhood as central for women. a possible gap between desired and actual numbers of children, which may suggest a demand for art, has not yet been investigated in work on migrant fertility. our third working hypothesis is based on the assumption that immigrants of different origins and non-migrants in germany may vary in their gender-role attitudes and their religiosity from and between each other. our third hypothesis: we expect that controlling for gender-role attitudes and individual religiosity reduces the main effects (if any) of the origin groups in attitudes toward art (h3). women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 351 3 empirical material 3.1 data the data we used in this paper were drawn from a data collection carried out in 20142015 as part of a research project on the influence of social networks on knowledge transfer regarding reproductive health (newire) carried out by a project team at the eastern bavarian technical university (oth) regensburg. the data were collected via a standardised telephone survey (cati) of women living in germany who were between 18 and 50 years old. the targeted sample size was 1000 respondents. some parts of the questionnaire of our data collection replicated a survey dating from 2003 (stöbel-richter et al. 2009). unlike stöbel-richter’s project, one specific goal of the newire survey was to include, in addition to german native-born women, immigrants of the first and second generations. the target groups were the four largest immigrant groups living in germany based on the criteria “migrant background” as used in official statistics and in the microcensus, meaning either foreign citizenship, own migration experience, or having at least one parent who had immigrated to germany (destatis 2018). the sample for the newire survey (haug et al. 2018) was drawn by humpert & schneiderheinze gbr and prof. dr. rainer schnell, using disproportionally layered random sampling by means of an onomastic (namebased) procedure. potential participants’ landline numbers or mobile phone numbers were selected from the german telephone directory based on an index of first or family names (humpert/schneiderheinze 2000; schnell et al. 2013).2 as a result of this sampling method, 1001 interviews were conducted.3 the questionnaire was available in german, turkish, polish, russian, and serbo-croatian; the interviews were carried out by bilingual interviewers in order to allow respondents to switch between german and their respective mother tongue or second language at any point during the interview.4 2 a screening procedure was conducted preceding the interviews. respondents were asked about their native country (i.e. country of birth), the native countries of their mother and their father, their first and any second citizenship to define their migrant background according to the definition used in german official statistics. the application of the onomastic method worked very well for persons of turkish descent, where about 88 percent of the respondents were correctly identified, as well as for persons from poland (86 percent) and from the cis (94 percent). the correct identification of the migrant background was rather modest in the case of people originating from the balkan countries (61 percent), resulting in a lower coverage rate of this group. the response rate was higher for the sample group of cis (37 percent), poland (29 percent), and turkey (25 percent), but relatively low for the balkan countries (18 percent) and nonmigrants (17 percent). 3 18 percent with non-migrant women, 25 percent had a migrant background from cis countries, 19 percent from poland, 19 percent from turkey, and 15 percent from balkan countries formerly belonging to yugoslavia and albania. 4 in the groups from “turkey,” “the cis,” and “poland,” more than half of the interviews were conducted in the respective native languages compared to only 9 percent of the interviews in the group of “the balkan countries” (haug et al. 2018). • sonja haug, nadja milewski352 the final sample used consisted of 960 women (41 respondents were excluded from the analyses due to missing or unreliable information on their migrant background). about 81 percent of the women in our sample belonged to a migrant minority group and 19 percent were non-migrants. among the immigrants, we distinguished the generations by the respondents’ country of birth. about two-thirds of them had migrated to germany themselves or with their parents (the mean length of stay was 24 years), while the remaining third was born in germany. 3.2 variables and method our analyses consist of three parts. the first dependent variable is the social norm on the use of art (models a). we used the statement reading “involuntarily childless couples should make use of all possibilities of reproductive medicine to have biological children” (960 respondents answered this question). the answers were collected on a 5-item likert scale ranging from “completely disagree” to “completely agree.” we used linear regression models and display these results as beta coefficients. second, we analysed the more personal attitude by using the question “if you wanted to have children but were unable to have children ‘naturally,’ would you in principle make use of medical procedures to be able to have a biological child?” (947 respondents answered this question) (models b). three answers were possible (“yes, definitely,” “yes, maybe,” and “no”). for the analysis, the categories “yes, definitely” and “yes, maybe” were combined to yes (1) versus “no” (0). we used binary logistic regression models and display these results as odds ratios. these two variables, i.e. the social norm and the personal attitude, correlate significantly (spearmans’s rho=0.35), but are no substitutes for each other. we investigate both outcomes because the question on the norm specifically addresses infertility in childless couples whereas the question on the attitude is phrased more generally using the word “naturally.” thirdly, we analysed the methods of art that would be considered for use (models c). the respondents who indicated that they would “in principle make use of medical procedures to be able to have a biological child” were asked in a follow-up question which methods they would use (864 respondents answered this question). the questionnaire listed six procedures that belong to three basic types. first, hormone treatment influences the preconditions of a possible conception. second, insemination and ivf are homologous methods. third, sperm and egg cell donation as well as surrogacy are heterologous methods. the respondents could either agree or disagree to each of these six procedures; multiple answers were possible. in clinical practice, hormone treatment is not only a stand-alone treatment, but also a component of other technologies. similarly, ivf is a homologous method, but also a component of heterologous methods. in addition, heterologous methods are more controversial because they involve a third party; and they are – to date – not legal in germany, or only under certain conditions. therefore, we distinguished between those respondents who would use at least one heterologous method (1) and those who would use only homologous methods (0) and carried out a binary logistic regression on the type of art. women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 353 in order to account for cultural differences between the main groups, we used a variable for individual religious behaviour related to family planning by querying the degree of agreement with a statement on family-planning methods: “i practise family planning conforming to religious rules.” as an indicator for gender-role attitudes, the respondents were asked how much they agreed with the statement “a woman needs her own children to live a fulfilled life.” the answers to the questions on religious family planning and gender-role attitudes were possible on a five-item likert scale. further independent variables captured the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents in order to control for compositional differences between the groups under study. age and age-squared were used as metric variables. the variable “union status” measured whether the respondents had a cohabiting partner (be it either a marriage or a non-marital cohabitation) or not. a parenthood variable indicated whether the respondents had children or not. the level of educational attainment was measured by the highest school degree obtained (none/lower secondary education (corresponding to hauptschule), intermediate secondary education (corresponding to realschule or mittlere reife), upper secondary education (corresponding to abitur or fachhochschulreife)). 3.3 the sample and data quality the sample consisted of five country groups of origin. table 1 gives a descriptive overview of the sample by country of origin, which also enables evaluation of the data quality of our pilot project. about 19 percent were german non-migrants, 26 percent of the women came from the cis countries, about 20 percent from poland, and another 20 percent from turkey, and 16 percent originated from a country in the balkan region. if we take country of origin and migrant generation into account simultaneously, the share of the second generation was about 2 percent in the group from the women from cis countries, about 10 percent among polish respondents, 32 percent among turks, and 27 percent among those from the balkan countries.5 according to the german microcensus, the share of the second generation is about one third; their share is, however, much lower for the relatively new immigrant groups from poland or cis countries (destatis 2018). despite a similar age structure, we found significant differences between the groups by country of origin in the explanatory variables: the percentage of single women and childless women was significantly lower among the immigrants than for non-migrant germans. the groups in our sample also varied significantly regarding their schooling with the migrant groups on average lesser educated than the german non-migrants. there was, however, a substantial difference between the 5 in the migrant groups coming from turkey and from the balkan countries, we distinguished between the first and the second migrant generations; due to the small sample size of the second generation in the groups from the cis countries and poland, no distinction could be made there in the multivariate analyses. • sonja haug, nadja milewski354 tab. 1: description of the sample, by country of origin (%) non-migrants migrants germany cis poland turkey balkan countries countries migrant generation 1st generation na 98.4 89.9 67.9 74.0 2nd generation 1.6 10.1 32.1 26.5 age (mean) 39 38 38 36 38 union status** single and no cohabitation (not married/ divorced/ widowed) 35.4 18.7 27.1 22.5 19.9 married or non-marital cohabitation 64.6 81.3 72.9 77.5 80.1 parenthood*** no, childless 25.8 8.7 20.7 20.3 13.2 yes, children 74.2 91.3 79.3 79.7 86.8 school education*** none, primary, lower secondary 9.3 10.3 4.8 35.3 20.5 intermediate secondary 42.3 57.5 31.4 33.2 38.4 upper secondary 47.3 30.2 56.9 27.3 39.1 mv 1.1 2.0 6.9 4.3 2.0 religious affiliation*** roman catholic 40.1 11.5 92.6 0.5 34.4 protestant 29.1 38.1 0.5 1.1 1.3 muslim 2.2 0.4 0.0 92.5 39.7 christian orthodox 0.0 24.2 0.0 1.1 12.6 none 23.1 17.9 4.8 1.6 9.3 mv 5.5 7.9 2.1 3.2 2.6 family planning conforming to religious regulations*** “completely disagree” 53.8 34.1 14.4 5.3 31.1 “disagree” 21.4 26.2 22.3 8.6 10.6 “neither nor” 11.0 12.7 9.6 3.2 15.2 “agree” 8.2 16.7 30.3 26.7 23.8 “completely agree” 3.8 9.5 21.8 54.5 17.9 mv 1.6 0.8 1.6 1.6 1.3 women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 355 migrants’ by their country of origin, i.e. women from poland were the highest educated on average in our sample, with a low share of low education and a rather high share of upper secondary schooling. the group from turkey had the lowest education with the highest shares of lower secondary (or less) schooling and the lowest share of upper secondary schooling in our sample. the groups from cis and balkan countries were in the middle. regarding their religious affiliations, the groups from poland and from turkey were dominated by one religious affiliation; more than 90 percent of the polish belonged to the roman catholic church and more than 90 percent of the turks indicated a muslim affiliation. the groups from the balkan, from cis countries, and from germany each showed a composition of two religious denominations, but also rather high shares of non-religious persons. as the variable “religious affiliation” correlates highly with the country of origin, we could not use this indicator in our multivariate analyses, however. personal religiosity, measured as the role of religion in contraception, differed significantly between the german non-migrant group and the migrant groups. only 12 percent of the german respondents said that they pracnon-migrants migrants germany cis poland turkey balkan countries countries “a woman needs her own children to live a fulfilled life.”*** “completely disagree” 17.6 2.4 8.0 4.3 8.6 “disagree” 13.7 8.7 12.2 7.5 8.6 “neither nor” 19.8 8.3 12.2 5.9 10.6 “agree” 28.0 21.0 23.4 27.8 27.2 “completely agree” 20.9 58.7 43.6 53.5 45.0 mv 0.0 0.8 0.5 1.1 0.0 reproductive treatment experience yes 8.2 6.0 8.5 6.4 7.9 no 91.8 94.0 91.0 93.6 91.4 mv 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.7 n 182 252 188 187 151 % at total sample 19.0 26.3 19.6 19.5 15.7 tab. 1: continuation note: significance for bivariate association between variable and migrant status (chi2 or t-test); *p<=.05; **p<=.01; ***p<=.001. cis: armenia, belarus, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, russian republic, tadzhikistan, turkmenistan, uzbekistan, ukraine; balkan countries: bosnia, croatia, kosovo, macedonia, montenegro, serbia, albania. mv=missing values, na=not applicable. source: newire survey 2014-2015. n=960 • sonja haug, nadja milewski356 tised family planning conforming to any religious regulations, but 83 percent of the turkish migrants and 53 percent of the polish migrants agreed to this statement. the statement measuring gender-role attitudes “a woman needs her own children to live a fulfilled life” received much more agreement among migrants, in particular women from cis countries and turkey, with about 80 percent or more each, compared to 49 percent among non-migrants. women from poland and from balkan countries were in the middle with about 70 percent agreement to this gender-role item. when we compare the socio-demographic structure of the sample in our pilot project to previous literature and data on the population of germany, we believe that the quality of our sample is rather good. as an additional indicator of the data quality, we can use the prevalence of art usage. in our sample, the percentage of women who had ever received any reproductive medical treatment was about 7 percent. the rate was even higher in the german sub-sample (8 percent) than among the migrant groups. this is a much higher rate than what has been stated in the scarce literature to date (2 percent, stöbel-richter et al. 2012). this increase, however, seems not implausible considering the rise in the number of children born after medical treatment according to the german in-vitro fertilization register (ivf register) in the recent decades (haug et al. 2018; trappe 2017; passet-wittig 2017). the rate that we estimated is similar, however, to 8 percent in a sample of childless migrants in smidt/wippermann’s study (2014). the willingness to use art is much higher in our sample than that of stöbelrichter (2009, 2012); a plausible reason may be measurement issues. the first question in our study referred to art in general and then to different methods separately (see table 5), whereas stöbel-richter’s study asked for “all reproductive options.” 4 results social norm on the use of art figure 1 displays the bivariate results for the social norm to use art by origin group. in the total sample, almost 80 percent agreed (strongly) that involuntarily childless couples should make use of all available art; 10 percent disagreed (strongly). there was variation by migrant background: the approval rates were higher among migrants, with at least 80 percent in each origin group, than among the non-migrants, of whom only 66 percent agreed. the disagreement was 12 percent among germans and 15 percent among turks; women of the other origin group showed disagreement rates below 10 percent. table 2 displays the result of the multivariate analyses of the social norm to use art. in model a1, we distinguished between the countries of origin and between the migrant generations when possible, testing our working hypotheses 1 and 2 on the role of the country of origin and the migrant generation. the lowest agreement to the norm was estimated for the germans (who were in the reference category). the highest agreement was found for women from cis countries and poland women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 357 (which consisted in both groups mainly of first-generation migrants). women of the first generation from the balkan region and from turkey ranged between the polish women and those from cis countries on one hand and the german respondents on the other. by contrast, women of the second migrant generation from turkey and the balkan countries did not show significant differences compared to germans, but significantly lower levels than their first-generation counterparts. then we tested our third working hypothesis on the role of differences in the cultural and sociodemographic composition of the groups by inserting the control variables in the models a2 (adding age, age-squared, union status, parenthood, education) and a3 (adding gender attitudes and religiosity). the pattern of significant country differences in the first generation and the significant differences between the migrant generations remained, and the coefficients only slightly changed despite these controls, however. fig. 1: social norm on the use of art, by country of origin (%) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 germany cis countries poland turkey balkan countries 6 6 22 43 23 0 6 11 29 54 3 5 7 29 56 9 6 4 29 51 3 5 12 31 49 4 6 11 32 47 "completely disagree" "disagree" "neither nor" "agree""completely agree" non-migrants migrants total in percent note: differences by country background are significant on the 0.001 level. source: newire survey 2014/2015. n=945 • sonja haug, nadja milewski358 ta b . 2 : d et er m in an ts o f s o ci al n o rm s to w ar d a r t m o d el a 1 m o d el a 2 m o d el a 3 b et a ci lo w er ci u p p er b et a ci lo w er ci u p p er b et a ci lo w er ci u p p er c ou n tr y b ac kg ro u n d (r ef = g er m an y) b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 1 st g en er at io n 0. 16 ** * 0. 29 0. 79 0. 15 ** * 0. 25 0. 76 0. 14 ** * 0. 20 0. 72 b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 2 n d g en er at io n 0. 04 -0 .1 5 0. 57 0. 04 -0 .1 5 0. 58 0. 04 -0 .1 7 0. 56 tu rk ey /1 st g en er at io n 0. 15 ** * 0. 22 0. 71 0. 14 ** * 0. 18 0. 69 0. 12 ** 0. 11 0. 66 tu rk ey /2 n d g en er at io n 0. 02 -0 .2 2 0. 41 0. 03 -0 .1 9 0. 48 0. 03 -0 .2 2 0. 46 p o la n d 0. 23 ** * 0. 39 0. 82 0. 23 ** * 0. 40 0. 83 0. 22 ** * 0. 37 0. 81 c is c o u n tr ie s 0. 24 ** * 0. 39 0. 79 0. 22 ** * 0. 34 0. 75 0. 19 ** * 0. 27 0. 68 a g e 0. 34 -0 .0 3 0. 12 0. 4 4 -0 .0 2 0. 13 a g e2 -0 .3 4 0. 00 0. 00 -0 .4 2 0. 00 0. 00 m ar ri ed /c oh ab it io n (r ef = s in g le ) -0 .0 5 -0 .3 2 0. 07 -0 .0 5 -0 .3 3 0. 06 p ar en th oo d (r ef = c h ild le ss ) 0. 07 -0 .0 7 0. 45 0. 03 -0 .1 7 0. 36 s ch oo l e d u ca ti on ( r ef = n on e/ p ri m ar y/ lo w er s ec on d ar y) u p p er s ec o n d ar y -0 .0 5 -0 .3 0 0. 09 -0 .0 3 -0 .2 7 0. 13 in te rm ed ia te s ec o n d ar y 0. 01 -0 .1 6 0. 22 0. 02 -0 .1 5 0. 23 “a w om an n ee d s h er o w n ch ild re n … ” “c o m p le te ly a g re e” /” ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” /” d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) 0. 14 ** * 0. 16 0. 48 “. .. fa m ily p la n n in g co n fo rm in g to r el ig io u s re gu la ti on s” “c o m p le te ly a g re e” ”/ ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” /” d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) -0 .0 3 -0 .2 3 0. 09 r 2 0. 22 0. 26 0. 29 n o te : *p < = .0 5; * *p < = .0 1; * ** p < = .0 01 . li ne ar r eg re ss io n (o ls ), d ep en d en t va ri ab le : “i nv o lu nt ar ily c hi ld le ss c o up le s sh o ul d m ak e us e o f al l p o ss ib ili tie s o f re p ro d uc tiv e m ed ic in e to h av e b io lo gi ca l c hi ld re n” ; 1= co m p le te ly d is ag re e to 5 = st ro ng ly a gr ee . m o d el s a 2 an d a 3 co nt ro lle d fo r a r t tr ea tm en t e xp er ie nc e. s o ur ce : n ew ir e su rv ey 2 01 4/ 20 15 . n = 94 3 women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 359 personal attitudes toward the use of art figure 2 displays the bivariate results for the personal attitude toward the use of art by origin group. the willingness to use reproductive medicine if faced with an inability to conceive in order to have biological children is rather high in the total sample: 69 percent of the women would “definitely” use art, and another 21 percent said that they would “maybe” use it. accordingly, only 10 percent rejected the possibility of art usage. the size of the non-users corresponded with those who did not share the norm on the use of art. similar to the analyses of the norm, the attitude toward the use of art was the lowest in the group of german natives, of whom only 55 percent would “definitely” use art and another 30 percent answered “maybe.” accordingly, 14 percent rejected personal use of art. among migrant women, there was variation by country of origin: the highest share of “definite” use was found for women from poland (79 percent), followed by those from turkey (75 percent) and cis countries (71 percent). women from the balkan countries ranged with 64 percent “definite” use in the middle between germans and the other migrant groups, but their share of non-intention to use art was equal to that of germans (10 percent). the share of those who rejected art treatment was the lowest in the cis group (6 percent). fig. 2: personal attitude toward the use of art, by country of origin (%) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 germany cis countries poland turkey balkan countries 14 30 55 6 23 71 10 12 79 8 17 75 14 23 64 10 21 69 "no" "yes, maybe" "yes, definitely" non-migrants migrants total in percent note: differences by country background are significant on the 0.05 level. source: newire survey 2014/2015. n=947 • sonja haug, nadja milewski360 m o d el b 1 m o d el b 2 m o d el b 3 o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er ra ti o ra ti o ra ti o c ou n tr y b ac kg ro u n d (r ef = g er m an y) b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 1s t g en er at io n 1. 30 0. 62 2. 70 1. 42 0. 67 3. 03 1. 64 0. 74 3. 64 b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 2n d g en er at io n 1. 06 0. 38 2. 97 0. 89 0. 31 2. 56 0. 95 0. 33 2. 76 tu rk ey /1 st g en er at io n 2. 72 * 1. 14 6. 51 3. 31 * 1. 32 8. 28 4, 63 ** 1. 71 12 .5 7 tu rk ey /2 n d g en er at io n 1. 42 0. 55 3. 64 1. 05 0. 38 2. 94 1. 40 0. 48 4. 13 p o la n d 2. 27 * 1. 10 4. 67 2. 25 * 1. 08 4. 68 2. 80 1. 28 6. 13 c is c o u n tr ie s 2. 36 * 1. 22 4. 57 2. 42 * 1. 22 4. 78 2. 37 ** 1. 17 4. 79 a g e 0. 97 0. 75 1. 24 0. 97 * 0. 76 1. 26 a g e2 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 m ar ri ed /c oh ab it io n (r ef = s in g le ) 0. 65 0. 32 1. 31 0. 66 0. 33 1. 34 p ar en th o o d (r ef = c h ild le ss ) 1. 45 0. 63 3. 35 1. 24 0. 53 2. 87 s ch oo l e d u ca ti on ( r ef = n on e/ p ri m ar y/ lo w er s ec on d ar y) in te rm ed ia te s ec o n d ar y 1. 32 0. 68 2. 53 1. 34 0. 69 2. 6 u p p er s ec o n d ar y 1. 22 0. 64 2. 33 1. 21 0. 63 2. 31 “a w om an n ee d s h er o w n ch ild re n … ” “c o m p le te ly a g re e” /” ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” / “ d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) 1. 76 * 1. 04 2. 98 “. .. fa m ily p la n n in g co n fo rm in g to r el ig io u s re gu la ti on s” “c o m p le te ly a g re e” /” ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” /” d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) 0. 49 ** 0. 28 0. 84 n ag el ke rk e r ² 0. 03 0. 05 0. 07 ta b . 3 : d et er m in an ts o f p er so na l a tt it ud es t o w ar d t he u se o f a r t n o te : *p < = .0 5; * *p < = .0 1; * ** p < = .0 01 . b in ar y lo gi st ic r eg re ss io n, d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : “i w o ul d m ak e us e o f m ed ic al p ro ce d ur es to h av e a b io lo gi ca l c hi ld ”; 1 = ye s, 0 = no . m o d el s b 2 an d b 3 co nt ro lle d fo r a r t tr ea tm en t e xp er ie nc e. s o ur ce : n ew ir e su rv ey 2 01 4/ 20 15 , n = 94 7 women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 361 table 3 displays the results of the multivariate analyses of personal attitudes toward the use of art. similar to the social norm, the chances to approve of art was elevated in the groups from poland and the cis countries as well as in the first migrant generation from turkey and the balkan region (but, due to a large confidence interval, not significantly in the balkan group). again, no significant differences were found between women of the second generation and non-migrants (model b1). the pattern of country differences and generational differences remained when we inserted the socio-demographic controls (model b2). model b3 controlled for the indicators of gender-role attitudes and religiosity, without causing much effect on the group differences by migrant origin and generation. women from turkey in the first generation were about 4 times more likely to say that they would use art than germans; the likelihood among women from poland and those from the cis countries was more than double that of the germans. although not significant, the first generation from the balkan countries were 60 percent more likely to say that they would use art compared to germans (model b3). methods of art considered for personal use table 4 displays the descriptive results of the methods of art that the respondents would use themselves. hormone treatment and insemination received the highest acceptance rate with about 82 to 89 percent in the whole sample and rather modest variation by country of origin. the lowest acceptance was found in the group from cis countries (about 67 percent). ivf was met with lower acceptance, but still received about 70 percent in the whole sub-sample with only little difference by country of origin. the lowest acceptance was estimated among women from the balkan countries (about 65 percent). the respondents were much less open to heterologous procedures. note that egg cell donation and surrogacy are currently not allowed under german law, and sperm cell donation only when the donor is disclosed (see section 2.2). in the total sub-sample, sperm and egg cell donation received about 15 percent acceptance, and surrogacy was approved in only about 8 percent in the total sample. the non-migrants were the least accepting followed by women from the balkan countries and turkey. approval of the three heterologous methods was the highest among women from the cis countries and poland. among them, about 17 to 22 percent would utilise sperm or egg cell donation (which are legal in russia and poland), and about 10 percent would apply surrogacy (which is allowed in russia). table 5 displays the results of the multivariate analyses of the possible use of heterologous methods. similar to the results on the determinants of the norm and the attitude toward the use of art in general, women from poland, the cis countries as well as first-generation migrants from turkey and the balkan region showed higher chances of approving of heterologous methods than germans (model c1). we again found the pattern of differences between the first and second generations from turkey and the balkan countries, with the migrant descendants showing lower acceptance than their mothers’ generation. at the same time, the odds ratios of the second generation were not different or even lower than that of the germans. we • sonja haug, nadja milewski362 should note here, however, that the sample size is rather small and the confidence intervals rather large, which rendered most of the group differences insignificant at the 5 percent level. another similarity to the analyses of the norm and the general attitude is that the insertion of the socio-demographic controls (model c2) and of the cultural variables (model c3) did not alter the pattern of the group differences by region of origin and migrant generation. effects of the cultural indicators and further control variables the control variables used showed similar effects in the three analyses. significantly elevated approval rates were found among women who believe that a woman should have a child to have a fulfilling life as compared to those who did not support this statement. in other words, gender-role attitudes have a significant effect on the social norm and the personal attitude toward the use of art as well as on the method considered for use. regarding religiosity, the women in our sample who said that they practised family planning conforming to religious regulations did not show significant differences in their approval rate of the social norm to use art and were significantly more likely to consider art for their own use than those who did not follow religious guidelines. whereas religiosity did not play a significant role in the general norm and attitude, it had a significant impact on the method considered for personal use. the religious women in our sample were less likely than the nonreligious women to approve of heterologous methods. this result corresponds with the somewhat restrictive view on the use of reproductive medicine of not only the catholic, but also the protestant and islamic religious communities. germany cis poland turkey balkan total countries countries hormone treatment*** 91.0 66.9 94.7 84.3 80.8 82.3 homologous methods insemination*** 92.9 86.0 94.7 88.4 83.8 89.1 in-vitro fertilization*** 71.8 71.6 71.2 75.6 64.6 71.3 heterologous methods sperm cell donation 12.8 18.2 18.8 14.0 12.3 15.6 egg cell donation*** 9.6 17.4 21.8 12.2 12.3 15.0 surrogacy** 6.4 10.2 10.0 5.2 5.4 7.8 at least one heterologous method 18.6 27.1 28.8 22.1 20.0 23.8 n 156 236 170 172 130 864 tab. 4: procedures of art considered for potential own use, by country background (%) note: significance for bivariate association between variable and migrant status (chi2 test); *p<=.05; **p<=.01; ***p<=.001. source: newire survey 2014/2015 women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 363 m o d el c 1 m o d el c 2 m o d el c 3 o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er o d d s ci lo w er ci u p p er ra ti o ra ti o ra ti o c ou n tr y b ac kg ro u n d (r ef = g er m an y) b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 1s t g en er at io n 1. 21 0. 65 2. 27 1. 30 0. 68 2. 48 1. 32 0. 68 2. 57 b al ka n co u n tr ie s/ 2n d g en er at io n 0. 78 0. 28 2. 20 1. 01 0. 35 2. 90 1. 03 0. 36 2. 97 tu rk ey /1 st g en er at io n 1. 35 0. 75 2. 42 1. 48 0. 80 2. 76 1. 58 0. 80 3. 12 tu rk ey /2 n d g en er at io n 1. 02 0. 46 2. 26 1. 85 0. 78 4. 38 1. 95 0. 81 4. 73 p o la n d 1. 77 * 1. 05 2. 99 1. 94 * 1. 14 3. 31 2. 01 * 1. 15 3. 52 c is c o u n tr ie s 1. 63 0. 99 2. 67 1. 67 * 1. 00 2. 79 1. 64 0. 97 2. 75 a g e 1. 25 * 1. 03 1. 52 1. 26 * 1. 04 1. 53 a g e2 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 1. 00 m ar ri ed /c oh ab it io n (r ef = s in g le ) 0. 90 0. 57 1. 42 0. 91 0. 57 1. 43 p ar en th o o d (r ef = c h ild le ss ) 0. 65 0. 35 1. 22 0. 62 0. 33 1. 18 s ch oo l e d u ca ti on ( r ef = n on e/ p ri m ar y/ lo w er s ec on d ar y) in te rm ed ia te s ec o n d ar y 1. 16 0. 71 1. 91 1. 17 0. 71 1. 93 u p p er s ec o n d ar y 1. 54 0. 95 2. 49 1. 54 0. 95 2. 50 “a w om an n ee d s h er o w n ch ild re n … ” “c o m p le te ly a g re e” /” ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” /” d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) 1. 19 0. 80 1. 76 “. .. fa m ily p la n n in g co n fo rm in g to r el ig io u s re gu la ti on s “c o m p le te ly a g re e” /” ag re e” (r ef = “ co m p le te ly d is ag re e” /” d is ag re e” /” n ei th er n o r” ) 0. 86 0. 58 1. 26 n ag el ke rk e r ² 0. 02 0. 05 0. 05 ta b . 5 : d et er m in an ts o f p er so na l a tt it ud es t o w ar d t he u se o f a h et er o lo g o u s tr ea tm en t n o te : *p < = .0 5; * *p < = .0 1; * ** p < = .0 01 . b in ar y lo gi st ic r eg re ss io n, d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : 1= at le as t o ne h et er o lo go us tr ea tm en t/ 0= no ne o f t he se tr ea tm en ts m en tio ne d . m o d el s c 2 an d c 3 co nt ro lle d fo r a r t tr ea tm en t e xp er ie nc e. s o ur ce : n ew ir e su rv ey 2 01 4/ 20 15 . n = 86 4 • sonja haug, nadja milewski364 no significant effects were found in the three analyses for the socio-demographic controls age, union status, parenthood, and education. the only exception was the age in the analysis of the type of methods. heterologous methods were more approved the older the women were. 5 discussion and conclusion our paper examined norms and attitudes toward the use of various methods of art, comparing women of several migrant origins and generations to natives in germany. our first working hypothesis (h1) concerned the role of the country of origin. in line with theoretical considerations on the political socialization and the lasting impact of socialization in migrants even after their international move, we expected the societal climate in the migrants’ countries of origin and in germany to be reflected in the individual attitudes toward art. in detail, we assumed that migrants from poland would be the least approving of art and persons from the cis countries the most approving. for germans as well as women from the balkan countries and turkey we expected a position in the middle between these positions. our results, however, only partially supported this hypothesis. contrary to our hypothesis, the least approving origin group were the non-migrants, which we had expected to be found in between the various migrant groups. they had the lowest approval rates in all three outcome variables, i.e. the norm that childless people should make use of art and their personal attitude whether they would use art themselves, and the question if they would use heterologous methods. confirming our hypothesis, persons from the cis countries had much higher approval rates in all three outcomes. not in line with our hypothesis, the attitudes of women from poland, turkey, and the balkan region were significantly elevated as compared to germans and rather similar to that of the women from cis countries. the results of our study suggest therefore that it may be an overall societal climate where having children is valued that may support the acceptance of art. in all other country groups in our study, the women more strongly supported the statement that childless couples should use art. thus, the legal regulations in a country are only one determinant of attitudes toward art; liberal laws – as in russia – are associated with high approval of art. but also women from poland, which has a long period of non-regulation, restricted access to information, and a more negative discourse, as well as women from countries with stricter regulations and limited access (turkey, balkan countries) showed higher approval than germans. this also means that attitudes and prevalences do not necessarily coincide; germany ranks in the middle of european art usage, poland at the end of the treatment ranking – yet the attitudes of women from these countries are opposite. we turn to our second working hypothesis (h2): we investigated possible differences between the migrant generations. according to classical assimilation theory, we expected women of the second migrant generation to show lower acceptance levels of art than those in the first generation. our results delivered evidence for women’s attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies • 365 this hypothesis (although we must acknowledge that we were only able to test this hypothesis for the groups from the balkan countries and from turkey; the numbers in the second generation of the other two immigrant groups were too low, up to only 10 percent). the norms and attitudes toward art did not vary much from those of the non-migrants in our sample and not significantly so; but they were much lower than that of the first generation in all three outcomes. when we compare the results of our study to other papers on attitudes, norms, and values of immigrants, they are similar with respect to differences between migrants and non-migrants, and they also depict the in-between position of the second generation compared to the first generation and to non-migrants. previous research found more traditional values – i.e. supporting gender inequality – among migrants, but large differences were found between immigrants from muslim countries and those with other religious predominance. the variation between women from countries with muslim and christian minorities was not significant in our study. as suggested above, we see the reason for this common feature between women from countries with different religious traditions in their joint characteristics of placing a central role on motherhood for women’s status. in order to investigate the causes for the differences between the origin groups, we formulated a third working hypothesis on the role of cultural and socio-demographic control variables, whereby controlling for group differences in composition would account for differences in attitudes toward art (h3). we included individual agreement whether a woman needs a child in order to have a fulfilled life and an indicator for personal religiosity in our analyses, in which the women stated whether they practiced contraception according to their faith. the inclusion of the two controls did not significantly affect the main patterns of group variation; therefore our working hypothesis was rejected. another difference to previous research is that the norms and attitudes in our study are of an innovative nature, whereas previous research has focused instead on topics where the dividing line between the religious east and the non-religious west is apparent and where the migrants’ maintenance of the cultural traditions of their origin was demonstrated. in our study, all migrants, in particular those of the first generation, appear to be more “open minded” in their norms and attitudes toward the use of art. the remaining question, however, is why these respondents approved or disapproved of art. the norm-variable that we used referred specifically to “childless couples” who are the people using art. using art in order to treat infertile couples also is linked to “traditional” family attitudes and gender-role models – despite the innovative nature of the conception method. the norm of bearing children is so established that these “modern” art are seen as a way of supporting age-old expectations. perhaps these attitudes would differ if the question was about subsequent parities or about single women or same-sex couples, which are also contested topics in the legal debates and are not tolerated by most religions included here. it seems that religiosity played a rather minor role, indicating that private religious practice does not necessarily follow theoretical religious doctrines in norms and values. an alternative explanation is that art seem not in contradiction to most • sonja haug, nadja milewski366 religious regulations as long as the unit of the couple is preserved, which is the case in the phrasing of the item we used for the norm. when they were asked about heterologous methods, the respondents with higher religiosity were far more reluctant than the non-religious women in our sample to consider them for use. this is again an indication of the continuation of traditional family values in attitudes toward art. another aspect that may play a role is the treatment of information in heterologous methods, where a third party comes into play. questions such as whether the donors should be anonymous or not, should the surrogate mother’s name appear on the birth certificate, or would the donors have any obligations to the potential children may play a role in shaping these individual attitudes. future research will need to investigate this more thoroughly in order to understand the comparatively low attitudes toward art among non-migrants in our sample, which at first sight suggest a more traditional attitude. it is known from research on the childless population in germany that most people do not use fertility treatment, even when they have a diagnosis of impaired fertility and have heard of different methods (wippermann 2014). would the ethical arguments as well as the financial and emotional costs of art weigh more? or might it be that childlessness and small numbers of children are more common in germany, and that the social consequences of having no children or not as many as desired are not as detrimental as in “traditional” societies – as suggested by the rather low share of german respondents in our survey who said that having biological children is important for a woman? acknowledgements the research project newire 2015 (der einfluss sozialer netzwerke auf den wissenstransfer am beispiel der reproduktionsmedizin) was funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf, grant number 1gp1304). the authors thank karsten weber, matthias vernim and edda currle for their contributions to this research project and renée a. lüskow for english language editing. the telephone survey was conducted by infas institut für angewandte sozialwissenschaft. references almond, gabriel; verba, sidney 1989: the civic culture: political attitudes and democracy in 5 nations. newbury park, californien: sage publication. baykara-krumme, helen; milewski, nadja 2017: fertility patterns among turkish women in turkey and abroad: the effects of international mobility, migrant generation, and family background. in: european journal of population 33,3: 409-436 [doi: 10.1007/ s10680-017-9413-9]. bunting, laura; tsibulsky, ivan; boivin, jacky 2013: fertility knowledge and beliefs about fertility treatment: findings from the international fertility decision-making study. in: 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consequences. cham: springer: 269-287 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_13]. van de kaa, dirk j. 1987: europe’s second demographic transition. in: population bulletin 42,1: 1-59. van de kaa, dirk j. 1997: options and sequences: europe’s demographic patterns. in: journal of the australian population association 14,1: 1-29. van tubergen, frank; sindradóttir, jórun i. 2011: the religiosity of immigrants in europe: a cross-national study. in: journal for the scientific study of religion 50,2: 272288 [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01567.x]. weblus, anna j.; david, matthias; kentenich, heribert 2014: paare mit migrationshintergrund in der reproduktionsmedizin. in: kentenich, heribert et al. (eds.): leitlinie psychosomatisch orientierte diagnostik und therapie bei fertilitätsstörungen. gießen: psychosozial-verlag: 113-121. wippermann, carsten 2014: kinderlose frauen und männer. ungewollte oder gewollte kinderlosigkeit im lebenslauf und nutzung von unterstützungsangeboten. berlin: bundesministerium für familie, senioren, frauen und jugend (bmfsfj). • sonja haug, nadja milewski370 date of submission: 03.08.2018 date of acceptance: 20.02.2019 prof. dr. nadja milewski (*). university of rostock, institute of sociology and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: nadja.milewski@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/isd/lehrstuhl/jp-demo/milewski/ prof. dr. sonja haug. ostbayerische technische hochschule regensburg (oth). regensburg, germany. e-mail: sonja.haug@oth-regensburg.de url: https://www.oth-regensburg.de/professoren-profilseiten/professoren-s/prof-drhabil-sonja-haug.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011: war der healthy-migrant-effekt nur ein artefakt? lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011: war der healthy-migrant-effekt nur ein artefakt?* felix zur nieden, bettina sommer zusammenfassung: die allgemeine sterbetafel für 2010/12 des statistischen bundesamtes liefert für das vereinte deutschland erstmals ergebnisse zur lebenserwartung auf basis von zensusdaten. der vorliegende artikel widmet sich deshalb der frage, wie sich die korrekturen der bevölkerungsbestände im rahmen des zensus 2011 auf die messung der lebenserwartung ausgewirkt haben. hierfür werden sowohl die amtlichen sterbetafeln auf basis der alten bevölkerungsfortschreibung vor dem zensus als auch auf basis der bevölkerungsdaten des zensus 2011 analysiert. die vorgehensweise zur berechnung der zensusbereinigten allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 wird zudem auf eine separate erstellung von sterbetafeln für die deutsche und die ausländische bevölkerung übertragen. befunde zum sogenannten healthy-migrant-effekt können somit unter ausschluss möglicher fehler in der bevölkerungsfortschreibung diskutiert werden. diese waren zuvor als hauptursache für eine deutlich höhere lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung angeführt worden. für die bevölkerung insgesamt und für die deutsche bevölkerung zeigen sich erwartungsgemäß nur sehr geringfügige korrekturen der werte für die lebenserwartung durch eine berechnung auf basis des zensus. die lebenserwartung von ausländischen frauen und männern wird durch die nutzung von zensusergebnissen jedoch deutlich korrigiert. ein auf basis der alten bevölkerungsdaten gemessener vorteil in der lebenserwartung bei geburt von über 5 jahren, muss zensusbasiert auf etwa 2,9 jahre bei den männern und 2,1 jahre bei den frauen korrigiert werden. der healthy-migrant-effekt kann somit nicht ausschließlich auf datenartefakte der alten bevölkerungsfortschreibung zurückgeführt werden, da sich auch zensusbereinigt deutliche überlebensvorteile der ausländischen bevölkerung zeigen. schlagwörter: lebenserwartung · sterbetafel · sterblichkeit · zensusauswirkungen · healthy-migrant-effekt federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-05de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-05de8 * dieser artikel enthält ergänzende materialien in einem online-anhang: doi: 10.12765/cpos2016-06de, url: http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/276/248. comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 41 (2016): 35-66 (erstveröffentlichung: 22.08.2017) • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer36 1 einleitung die daten des zensus 2011 ermöglichen es erstmalig, für deutschland nach dem derzeit gültigen gebietsstand demografi sche analysen auf basis von möglichst genauen bevölkerungsdaten durchzuführen. da die letzte volkszählung im früheren bundesgebiet im jahr 1987 und in der ehemaligen ddr im jahr 1981 durchgeführt wurde, mussten sich analysen für das vereinte deutschland mit bezug auf bevölkerungszahlen bislang auf daten aus der bevölkerungsfortschreibung beziehen. bei der bevölkerungsfortschreibung wurden die ergebnisse der letzten volkszählung im früheren bundesgebiet sowie ein auszug des zentralen registers der ddr vom 03.10.1990 für die neuen länder unter berücksichtigung der statistiken über geburten und sterbefälle sowie der zuund fortzüge für einzelne kalenderjahre fortgeschrieben. ungenauigkeiten in diesen statistiken führen zwangsläufi g zu ungenauigkeiten in den fortgeschriebenen bevölkerungszahlen. die qualität der angaben zu geburten und sterbefällen wird dabei als gut eingeschätzt. der wanderungssaldo wird dagegen tendenziell zu hoch ausgewiesen, da sich nicht alle fortziehenden abmelden und deshalb in der wanderungsstatistik fehlen. infolgedessen wurde die einwohnerzahl deutschlands durch den zensus 2011 um etwa 1,5 millionen personen nach unten korrigiert. großen einfl uss auf bevölkerungswissenschaftliche analysen haben zudem veränderungen der bevölkerungszahlen in der jeweils zu berücksichtigenden demografi schen untergliederung – beispielsweise nach alter, geschlecht oder staatsangehörigkeit. im hinblick auf diese dimensionen hat es zensuskorrekturen in unterschiedlichem ausmaß gegeben (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 29-32). der vorliegende artikel setzt sich mit den auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die messung der lebenserwartung in deutschland auseinander. hierfür werden die daten und die vorgehensweise der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 für deutschland herangezogen. eine allgemeine sterbetafel wird immer dann erstellt, wenn es eine volkszählung oder einen zensus gab. dabei werden allgemeine sterbetafeln durch glättung von zufallseffekten befreit, um die genauen bevölkerungsdaten zur offenlegung grundlegender mortalitätsmuster zu nutzen. ein besonderer schwerpunkt wird in diesem artikel auf die erstellung von sterbetafeln nach staatsangehörigkeit (deutsch/nichtdeutsch) auf basis der zensusdaten gelegt. insbesondere für die ausländische bevölkerung ließen sich auf basis der daten aus der bevölkerungsfortschreibung mit größer werdendem abstand zur vorangegangenen volkszählung keine plausiblen ergebnisse mehr ermitteln. verlässliche kenntnisse zur sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung sind jedoch insbesondere vor dem hintergrund des steigenden anteils dieser bevölkerungsgruppe von hoher relevanz. zuwanderung wird häufi g als eine option zur minderung der demografi schen probleme deutschlands, dem zu erwartenden bevölkerungsrückgang und der demografi schen alterung, thematisiert. kenntnisse zu den sterblichkeitsverhältnissen der ausländischen bevölkerung helfen, die damit verbunden konsequenzen für das sozialversicherungssystem, insbesondere für die renten-, krankenund pfl egeversicherung, besser abschätzen zu können. darüber hinaus liefern zuverlässige, nach staatsangehörigkeit untergliederte, sterbetafeln eine erste grundlage für differenlebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 37 zierte vorausberechnungen der entsprechenden bevölkerungsgruppen. zusätzlich tragen sterblichkeitsparameter wie die lebenserwartung auch zur beschreibung der „lebenslagen“ unterschiedlicher bevölkerungsgruppen bei. im entsprechenden wissenschaftsdiskurs ermöglichen es belastbare ergebnisse auf basis des zensus 2011 verschiedene hypothesen, die in bezug auf den healthy-migrant-effekt für die ausländische bevölkerung in deutschland aufgestellt wurden, neu zu bewerten. da bei ergebnissen, die ausschließlich auf zensusdaten zur bevölkerung basieren, ein fortschreibungsfehler zur erklärung der befunde ausgeschlossen werden kann, können erklärungshypothesen mithilfe der vorgelegten ergebnisse ohne diese einschränkung diskutiert werden. einen überblick zum entsprechenden stand der forschung liefert abschnitt 2 dieses artikels. in abschnitt 3 werden die aus diesem forschungsstand abgeleiteten forschungsfragen dargelegt und in abschnitt 4 die verwendeten daten und methoden beschrieben. die ergebnisse der analyse werden dann in abschnitt 5 präsentiert und abschließend in abschnitt 6 diskutiert. 2 stand der forschung im fachbericht zur allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 (statistisches bundesamt 2015a) wurde bereits über die zentralen auswirkungen des zensus 2011 auf die erstellung der amtlichen sterbetafeln und die damit verbunden konsequenzen für die messung der lebenserwartung berichtet. es wurde aufgezeigt, dass die lebenserwartung bei geburt in deutschland auf basis des zensus für männer um 0,25 jahre und für frauen um 0,10 jahre geringer ist, als wenn sie für den gleichen zeitraum auf basis der alten fortschreibung berechnet worden wäre. zudem wurde auch auf die auswirkungen der berücksichtigung von zensusdaten auf altersspezifi scher ebene eingegangen. dort hat sich gezeigt, dass die altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auf basis des zensus durchweg höher sind als auf basis der alten fortschreibung. die am stärksten ausgeprägten korrekturen der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten gab es in den altersbereichen, in denen auch die bevölkerung durch den zensus relativ gesehen am stärksten korrigiert wurde – etwa im alter 20 bis 40 jahre und im hohen alter ab etwa 85 jahren. bei hochbetagten wären die korrekturen noch deutlicher ausgefallen, wenn nicht ein extrapolationsverfahren eingesetzt worden wäre. dieses verfahren korrigierte die nicht plausiblen verläufe der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auf basis der alten fortschreibung im alter ab 91 jahren (eisenmenger 2003). die zensuskorrekturen waren im gesamten altersbereich bei den männern ausgeprägter als bei den frauen (statistisches bundesamt 2015a: 21-23). im hinblick auf zensusauswirkungen für eine separate berechnung von sterbetafeln für die deutsche und die ausländische bevölkerung wurden bislang ergebnisse unter verwendung der vorläufi gen bevölkerungsfortschreibung auf basis des zensus 2011 für das jahr 2013 vorgelegt. demnach geht die differenz zwischen nichtdeutschen und deutschen in der lebenserwartung bei geburt für männer von 4,8 auf 2,6 jahre zurück, bei frauen wird eine zensuskorrigierte differenz von 1,7 jahren zugunsten der ausländerinnen festgestellt (kohls 2015: 522). • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer38 die hinter den zensuskorrekturen der sterblichkeitsmuster stehenden korrekturen der bevölkerung nach alter und geschlecht durch den zensus 2011 sind in kaus/ mundil-schwarz (2015) zum stichtag 31.12.2011 dargelegt. an selber stelle wurde auch herausgearbeitet, dass die korrekturen bei der ausländischen bevölkerung erheblich größer waren als bei der deutschen bevölkerung. bei einem korrekturfaktor von 1,9 % für die gesamtbevölkerung wurde die deutsche bevölkerung nur um 0,6 % korrigiert, die ausländische bevölkerung jedoch um 14,4 %. die korrekturen bei der ausländischen bevölkerung betreffen dabei breitere altersbereiche als bei der gesamtbevölkerung. auch bei der ausländischen bevölkerung wurde die männliche bevölkerung stärker korrigiert als die weibliche (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). eine deutliche korrektur der ausländischen bevölkerung durch den zensus war bereits im vorfeld zu erwarten. ein grund hierfür waren die nicht plausiblen mortalitätsmuster, die man auf basis der alten fortschreibung für die ausländische bevölkerung ermittelt hat. mit den daten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung fanden forscher stets ausgeprägte unterschiede in den überlebensverhältnissen von nichtdeutschen im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung bzw. der allgemeinbevölkerung zugunsten der nichtdeutschen personen. ein großteil dieses effekts wurde dabei mit datenartefakten wie einer überhöhten ausländischen bevölkerung infolge eines fortschreibungsfehlers bzw. der nichtberücksichtigung von sterbefällen im ausland erklärt (luy 2007; kibele et al. 2008; kohls 2008a/b, 2011, 2012; mammey/ schwarz 2002; robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008). als konsequenz wurden verschiedene andere datenquellen herangezogen, um die überlebensverhältnisse der ausländischen bevölkerung in deutschland zu quantifi zieren und unterschiede zur deutschen bevölkerung bzw. der allgemeinbevölkerung aufzuzeigen. luy (2007) hat beispielsweise die daten des integrationssurveys des bundesinstituts für bevölkerungsforschung genutzt, um mit einer indirekten methode (der orphanhood methode in kombination mit dem logit-brass-modell) die lebenserwartung von ausländischen personen im alter 35 zu schätzen. im ergebnis zeigen sich viel kleinere sterblichkeitsunterschiede als auf basis der bevölkerungsfortschreibung. eine geringere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung fi ndet sich jedoch auch mit dieser indirekten herangehensweise. zu ähnlichen ergebnissen kommt kohls (2008b, 2011, 2012) mit daten des ausländerzentralregisters (azr). misst man die lebenserwartung bei geburt der ausländischen bevölkerung mithilfe des azr, so sind die differenzen zur deutschen bevölkerung beispielsweise im jahr 2009 um etwa 0,8 (frauen) bis 1,0 jahre (männer) geringer, als wenn diese mit daten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung berechnet werden. vor 2005 fand man auch mit den daten des azr deutlichere unterschiede zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung, die sich jedoch infolge einer registerbereinigung im jahr 2004 erheblich reduziert haben (kohls 2012: 149; opfermann et al. 2006: 484-485). mit daten der gesetzlichen rentenversicherung (grv) fand kohls (2008b) ebenfalls den effekt einer höheren lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung in bezug auf die fernere lebenserwartung im alter 60. die differenzen sind zwar kleiner als auf basis der fortschreibung des bevölkerungsbestandes, ein höherer wert der ausländischen bevölkerung im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung bleibt jedoch bestehen. die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen deutscher und ausländilebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 39 scher bevölkerung gehen den ergebnissen zufolge zwischen 1994 und 2006 stark zurück (kohls 2008b: 32-38). bei weiteren analysen mit daten der grv zeigt sich sogar eine höhere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung über 60 jahre im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung seit 2002 (kohls 2008a, 2010, 2011, 2012). im alter zwischen 20 und 59 lässt sich auch mit daten der grv durchweg eine geringere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung ausweisen (kohls 2010, 2012). die säuglings-, kinderund jugendsterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung ist tendenziell höher als die der deutschen bevölkerung (kohls 2011, 2012). hier gilt die bevölkerungsfortschreibung als verlässlich, weil die in höherem alter relevanten verzerrungen in diesem alter „praktisch nicht bestehen“ (kohls 2008c: 41). die vorteile in den überlebensverhältnissen der ausländischen bevölkerung werden dabei überwiegend auf einen sogenannten healthy-migrant-effekt zurückgeführt. dieser besagt, dass wandernde personen positiv selektiert, d.h. besonders gesund im vergleich zur nicht wandernden bevölkerung sind und folglich eine geringere sterblichkeit haben. das postulieren eines solchen effektes suggeriert jedoch auch, dass der sterblichkeitsvorteil mit steigender aufenthaltsdauer abnehmen sollte und sich insbesondere bei vorhandenen sozioökonomischen benachteiligungen der ausländischen bevölkerung in einen sterblichkeitsnachteil wandeln kann (razum 2009: 268-269; kohls 2008c: 17). zahlreiche hinweise für eine deutlich verringerte gesamtsterblichkeit von wandernden personen fi nden sich durchweg nicht nur in den bereits erwähnten nationalen studien für deutschland, sondern auch in zahlreichen internationalen studien für andere länder (kohls 2012: 69-70). die meisten studien vergleichen dabei für ihre befunde zum healthy-migrant-effekt die gesundheit bzw. sterblichkeit der einheimischen mit der jeweils zugewanderten bevölkerung. kennedy und kidd (2015) zeigen gleich für vier verschiedene große einwanderungsländer (usa, kanada, großbritannien und australien), dass zuwanderer auch im vergleich zu den einheimischen des jeweiligen herkunftslandes typischerweise deutliche gesundheitsvorteile aufweisen. dennoch kann nicht von einem universellen muster gesprochen werden. betrachtet man den selbst berichteten gesundheitszustand, so lässt sich für mehrere europäische länder zeigen, dass zuwanderer einen schlechteren gesundheitszustand aufweisen als die jeweilige einheimische bevölkerung (siehe nielsen und krasnik (2010) für eine ausführliche review der vorliegenden studien). moullan und jusot (2014) fi nden auf basis harmonisierter daten von gesundheitssurveys hinweise für einen gesundheitsvorteil von migranten in italien, jedoch eine schlechtere gesundheit von zugewanderten in frankreich, belgien und spanien. die autoren führen diese befunde auf unterschiedlich wirkende selektionseffekte bei der einwanderung und bei der integration von migranten zurück. der gesundheitsvorteil von migranten in italien wird unter anderem auch damit begründet, dass die einheimischen dort in ihrer selbsteinschätzung einen schlechteren gesundheitszustand aufweisen als beispielsweise in frankreich (moullan/jusot 2014: 84). im deutschen kontext ordnet kohls (2011, 2012) die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung folgendermaßen ein: ein sterblichkeitsvorteil in den mittleren altersgruppen ist bei der ausländischen • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer40 bevölkerung zweifelsfrei nachweisbar und kann mit den typischen selektionseffekten erklärt werden. der überwiegende anteil der arbeitsmarktorientierten migranten wandert in einem alter zwischen 25 und 40 jahren zu. entsprechend weist ein hoher anteil der ausländischen bevölkerung im erwerbsalter eine vergleichsweise geringe bisherige aufenthaltsdauer auf, weswegen selektionseffekte, die direkt nach der zuwanderung am stärksten wirken, für eine niedrigere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung sorgen. die geringeren sterblichkeitsunterschiede bzw. eine höhere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung etwa ab alter 65 erklären sich durch adaptionseffekte. im zuge einer längeren aufenthaltsdauer nähern sich die sterblichkeitsverhältnisse von deutscher und ausländischer bevölkerung an und können bei gegebenen sterblichkeitsrelevanten benachteiligungen der ausländischen bevölkerung auch in eine höhere sterblichkeit bei nichtdeutschen umschlagen. die vergleichsweise hohen relativen sterblichkeitsrisiken der ausländischen bevölkerung im alter von 65 bis 69 jahren können beispielsweise durch den hohen anteil von ehemaligen gastarbeitern in dieser altersgruppe erklärt werden. diese wanderten im laufe der 1950er bis 1970er jahre ein und waren in der regel über jahrzehnte stark belastenden arbeitsbedingungen ausgesetzt, wodurch die relativ hohe sterblichkeit der entsprechenden altersgruppe begründet sein kann (kohls 2012: 181). die ursachen für die höhere sterblichkeit von säuglingen, kindern und jugendlichen unter der ausländischen bevölkerung sind bislang kaum theoretisch begründet worden. weber et al. (1990) haben empirisch aufgezeigt, dass die erhöhte säuglingssterblichkeit der mit ausländischer staatsbürgerschaft in deutschland geborenen kinder vorwiegend durch eine im vergleich zu deutschen müttern verkürzte schwangerschaftsdauer sowie durch ein erhöhtes auftreten von fehlbildungen und infektionskrankheiten begründet ist. dies könnte die folge einer unzureichenden betreuung schwangerer migrantinnen sein. bei kindern und jugendlichen haben weber et al. (1990) die höhere sterblichkeit durch unfälle als haupterklärungsfaktor für die höhere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung identifi ziert. bei anderen todesursachen wiesen ausländische und deutsche kinder bzw. jugendliche sehr ähnliche sterblichkeitsrisiken auf. mit neueren daten lassen sich unterschiede in der unfallsterblichkeit zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung bei kindern und jugendlichen allerdings nicht mehr nachweisen. ausländische kinder und jugendliche wiesen zwischen 1999 und 2004 sogar eine etwas niedrigere unfallsterblichkeit im vergleich zu gleichaltrigen deutschen auf. lediglich in der verteilung der unfallarten konnten noch gewisse unterschiede zwischen beiden gruppen nachgewiesen werden (robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008: 71-73). 3 forschungsfragen die auswirkungen des zensus auf die erstellung der amtlichen sterbetafeln für den zeitraum 2010/12 wurden bereits an anderer stelle thematisiert (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). dabei wurde ein fokus auf die auswirkungen des zensus auf die lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 41 berechnung der altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten gelegt. auf ebene der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung wurde der zensuseffekt bislang nur für die lebenserwartung neugeborener quantifi ziert. im vorliegenden artikel sollen diese effekte für den gesamten altersverlauf analysiert werden. die erste forschungsfrage dieser arbeit lautet demnach: welche auswirkungen haben die zensuskorrekturen der bevölkerung auf die altersspezifi sche lebenserwartung in deutschland und wie lassen sich diese korrekturen im kontext der jährlichen sterblichkeitsveränderungen einordnen? besonders starke auswirkungen durch die zensuskorrekturen werden im hinblick auf die erstellung von sterbetafeln für die ausländische bevölkerung erwartet. die schwächen der amtlichen statistik in bezug auf die analyse von mortalitätsmustern der ausländischen bevölkerung wurden in den vorhandenen publikationen zum thema im wesentlichen auf den durch unterlassene abmeldungen entstandenen fortschreibungsfehler seit den letzten volkszählungen im früheren bundesgebiet und der (ehemaligen) ddr zurückgeführt. der vorliegende artikel widmet sich deshalb einer zentralen zweiten forschungsfrage: wie hoch sind die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen deutscher und ausländischer bevölkerung ohne fortschreibungsfehler auf basis der daten des zensus 2011? insbesondere bei der berechnung einer sterbetafel für die ausländische bevölkerung sind methodische aspekte nicht trivial. eine extrapolation von sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten im hohen alter kann erhebliche auswirkungen auf die tatsächlich gemessene höhe der lebenserwartung haben. deswegen sollen im kontext der beantwortung der zweiten forschungsfrage verschiedene methodische aspekte in ihrer bedeutung hervorgehoben werden. so sollen unter anderem die fragen geklärt werden, bis zu welchem alter die daten des zensus 2011 eine ermittlung von plausiblen mustern der altersspezifi schen mortalität erlauben und welche verbesserungen es diesbezüglich im vergleich zu den fortschreibungsdaten gibt. die beantwortung der zweiten forschungsfrage kann somit aufschluss darüber geben, in welcher gewichtung die in der literatur angeführten erklärungsfaktoren (selektionsund adaptionshypothese) tatsächlich zu den sterblichkeitsunterschieden von deutscher und ausländischer bevölkerung beitragen. lässt sich mithilfe der als verlässlich geltenden zensusdaten nachweisen, dass sich die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung mit dem alter stark angleichen, wäre ein deutlicher hinweis für ein wirken der adaptionshypothese erbracht. unterscheiden sich die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten beider bevölkerungsgruppen bis ins hohe alter systematisch zugunsten der ausländischen bevölkerung, würde dies für die selektionshypothese sprechen. lassen sich auf basis der zensusdaten keine unterschiede zwischen deutscher und ausländischer bevölkerung fi nden, könnten die bislang gefundenen unterschiede komplett auf ungenauigkeiten in der bevölkerungsfortschreibung zurückgeführt werden und das anführen der hypothesen zur erklärung der unterschiede wäre hinfällig. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer42 4 daten und methoden 4.1 daten alle berechnungen wurden mit den daten der amtlichen statistik zur bevölkerung nach geschlecht und geburtsjahr und zu den gestorbenen nach geschlecht, alter und geburtsjahr durchgeführt. als bevölkerung zum zensusstichtag 2011 dienen dabei die ausgangsdaten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung aus dem zensus. die statistischen ämter des bundes und der länder haben dazu die berechnung der aus dem zensus 2011 resultierenden ausgangsdaten für die bevölkerungsfortschreibung optimiert, auch im hinblick auf die berechnung demografi scher maße (statistisches bundesamt 2015c). diese daten und die darauf aufbauende endgültige bevölkerungsfortschreibung sind deshalb für sterblichkeitsberechnungen adäquat. auch im vergleich mit alternativen datenquellen zur ermittlung von sterblichkeitsverhältnissen der ausländischen bevölkerung wie dem azr oder den daten der grv haben die zensusdaten zahlreiche vorteile. das azr hat zwar prinzipiell ebenfalls die vollständige erfassung der ausländischen bevölkerung zum ziel, jedoch sind ähnlich wie bei den daten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung immer wieder bereinigungen notwendig, da insbesondere abgänge nicht vollständig erfasst werden können (fleischer 1989; opfermann et al. 2006). die letzte umfassende bereinigung des azr hat in den jahren 2000 bis 2004 stattgefunden, sodass gegenwärtig wahrscheinlich erneuter bereinigungsbedarf besteht. zudem ist die meldung von säuglingssterbefällen im ausländerzentralregister nicht verpfl ichtend (kohls 2012: 148), was die ermittlung der wichtigen komponente säuglingssterblichkeit auf basis dieser datenquelle erschwert. unterschiedliche meldeund berichtswege sowie unterschiedliche defi nitionen im hinblick auf den aufenthalt der ausländerinnen und ausländer zur pfl ege des ausländerzentralregisters erschweren zudem den vergleich zu den auf üblichem wege ermittelten daten für die deutsche bevölkerung (opfermann et al. 2006; kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). analysen auf basis der daten der grv sind nicht repräsentativ für die gesamtbevölkerung, da nur die aktiv versicherten personen berücksichtigt werden können und beispielsweise selbständige oder beamte ausgeschlossen sind und somit keine vollerhebung der bevölkerung vorliegt (kohls 2008c: 33). auch die vergleichbarkeit der ergebnisse zwischen den geschlechtern ist durch die geringere erwerbsbeteiligung der frauen eingeschränkt. die säuglings-, kinder und jugendsterblichkeit lässt sich mit daten der gesetzlichen rentenversicherung ebenfalls nicht und die erwachsenensterblichkeit vor renteneintritt nur mit einschränkungen quantifi zieren, weswegen auf basis dieser daten keine vollständigen sterbetafeln aufgestellt werden können. 4.2. methodische überlegungen die in diesem artikel durchgeführten analysen basieren auf der vom statistischen bundesamt zur erstellung der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 angewandten methodik (statistisches bundesamt 2015a). zentraler ansatzpunkt zur erstellung der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 war es, die altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 43 lichkeiten mit der geburtsjahrmethode nach becker (1874) und zeuner (1869) unter vollständiger berücksichtigung der zensusbestände zu berechnen. der einfl uss von wanderungen im betrachtungszeitraum wurde dabei unter zuhilfenahme der sogenannten wittstein-balducci-hypothese berücksichtigt (wittstein 1862; balducci 1917). der vorteil dieses methodischen ansatzes liegt darin, dass zur berechnung der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten für einen dreijahreszeitraum nicht auf daten aus der bevölkerungsfortschreibung zurückgegriffen werden muss, sondern die möglichst genauen bevölkerungszahlen des zensus vollständig genutzt werden können. der einfl uss von fortschreibungsoder rückrechnungsfehlern – beispielsweise verursacht durch unterlassene abmeldungen von fortzügen im relevanten zeitraum – kann somit ausgeschlossen werden. mit der herangehensweise des statistischen bundesamtes für die allgemeine sterbetafel 2010/12 wurden für diesen artikel separat sterbetafeln nach staatsangehörigkeit für die deutsche und für die ausländische bevölkerung erstellt. dabei gilt es verschiedene methodische aspekte zu berücksichtigen: die ergebnisse einer periodensterbetafel bilden grundsätzlich die überlebensverhältnisse einer hypothetischen kohorte ab. im hinblick auf die lebenserwartung bei geburt liefern periodensterbetafeln somit die antwort auf die frage, wie lange personen eines bestimmten alters noch leben würden, wenn sie dauerhaft den überlebensverhältnissen des betrachtungszeitraums ausgesetzt wären. berechnet man eine periodensterbetafel für untergruppen einer gesamtbevölkerung, gilt es die annahme zu hinterfragen, ob die gemessenen altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten dieser untergruppe tatsächlich repräsentativ für das jeweilige alter der personengruppe sind. bei einer sterbetafel für die ausländische bevölkerung bedeutet dies, dass ein großer anteil der in der berechnung berücksichtigten bevölkerung erst im laufe des lebens zugewandert ist. für diese personengruppe liegen somit keine informationen zur sterblichkeit vor der zuwanderung vor. folglich spielt bei der aufstellung von sterbetafeln für die ausländische bevölkerung zusätzlich zur annahme einer hypothetischen kohorte eine weitere annahme eine wichtige rolle: nämlich, dass die (unbeobachtete) sterblichkeit vor der zuwanderung mit der beobachteten sterblichkeit im inland von personen entsprechenden alters, die bereits in früherem alter zugewandert oder mit einer ausländischen staatsbürgerschaft geboren wurden, identisch sei. deshalb sollte die (perioden-)lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung als durchschnittliche lebensdauer von personen interpretiert werden, die dauerhaft den im inland herrschenden überlebensverhältnissen der ausländischen bevölkerung im betrachtungszeitraum unterworfen wären. sterblichkeitsverhältnisse vor der zuwanderung können dabei nicht berücksichtigt werden. die notwendige zusätzliche annahme betrifft insbesondere die lebenserwartung bei geburt und die fernere lebenserwartung in jungen altersjahren. die fernere lebenserwartung in höherem alter, beispielsweise ab alter 60, dürfte davon weniger betroffen sein, da wanderungsbewegungen in diesem altersbereich nur noch eine untergeordnete rolle spielen. dass sich die zusammensetzung der ausländischen bevölkerung durch sich verändernde wanderungsmuster deutlich schneller ändert als die der deutschen bevölkerung, sorgt zusätzlich dafür, dass die annahme einer hypothetischen kohorte problematischer ist als bei der aufstel• felix zur nieden, bettina sommer44 lung einer periodensterbetafel für die gesamtbevölkerung (in der die ausländische bevölkerung nur einen kleinen anteil hat) oder für die bevölkerung mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit. ein weiterer punkt, den es zu bedenken gilt, sind die auswirkungen eines sogenannten „unhealthy re-migration effects“ (razum et al. 1998: 302). damit gemeint ist die möglicherweise selektive rückwanderung (etwa zu behandlungszwecken) von ausländischen personen mit einer schweren krankheit, die nach ihrer ausreise im ausland sterben (kohls 2008c: 21). auch sterbefälle der wohnbevölkerung, die aus anderen gründen im ausland stattfi nden (z.b. im urlaub), können sich verzerrend auswirken, wenn die entsprechenden meldungen die statistischen ämter nicht erreichen. die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten werden dann durch effekte auf den zähler (nicht gemeldete sterbefälle) bzw. den nenner (unterlassene abmeldung eines fortzugs) beeinfl usst. für die jahre 2011 und 2012 sind jeweils etwas über 3.500 fälle von personen mit wohnsitz in deutschland bekannt, die im ausland starben.1 bei den deutschen standesämtern wurden in beiden jahren etwas unter 1.000 von diesen sterbefällen aus dem ausland gemeldet und konnten somit in der statistik der sterbefälle berücksichtigt werden. demnach verbleibt eine lücke von etwa 2.500 sterbefällen jährlich, die im europäischen ausland passieren, in der sterbestatistik jedoch keine berücksichtigung fi nden (was einem anteil von etwa 0,3 % an allen sterbefällen entspricht). unbekannt bleibt, wie viele sterbefälle es darüber hinaus im ausland gibt, etwa von personen, die sowohl in deutschland als auch im ausland zur bevölkerung zählen. eine zusätzliche datenbedingte einschränkung besteht darin, dass wechsel von staatsangehörigkeiten bei einer separaten erstellung von sterbetafeln für deutsche und ausländer nicht berücksichtigt werden können. wenn beispielsweise eine person zum zeitpunkt des zensus eine ausländische staatsangehörigkeit besaß, nach dem zensus die staatsangehörigkeit gewechselt hat und danach gestorben ist, dann wurde der sterbefall als sterbefall der deutschen bevölkerung registriert und ist als solcher – in bezug auf die deutsche bevölkerung am zensusstichtag – in die berechnung eingegangen. unter berücksichtigung einer einbürgerungsquote von 1,4 bis 1,7 % im relevanten zeitraum (statistisches bundesamt 2015b) und der tatsache, dass die meisten eingebürgerten personen den betrachtungszeitraum überleben, dürfte ein eventuell verzerrender effekt allerdings vernachlässigbar sein. auch die anwendung des ius-soli-prinzips seit dem jahr 2000 (nach dem in deutschland geborene kinder von ausländischen eltern unter gewissen voraussetzungen die deutsche staatsbürgerschaft bekommen), kann sich verzerrend auf eine 1 basierend auf unveröffentlichten auswertungen des statistischen bundesamtes (tabelle n30) und der tabelle zu „todesursachen – absolute zahl im berichtsland und für einwohner“ (hlth_ cd_aro) der online-datenbank von eurostat (2015). in der eurostat-tabelle werden „alle todesfälle von einwohnern in oder außerhalb ihres heimatlandes“ nachgewiesen. zieht man von den in deutschland registrierten sterbefällen diejenigen ab, die aus dem ausland gemeldet wurden, erhält man die sterbefälle im inland. die differenz zwischen dieser zahl und der zahl von eurostat zu allen todesfällen in oder außerhalb von deutschland betrug in 2011 und 2012 jeweils etwa 3.500 fälle. sterbefälle im nichteuropäischen ausland bleiben dabei unberücksichtigt. lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 45 nach staatsangehörigkeit getrennte sterbetafelberechnung auswirken. insbesondere bei der direkt aus der geburtenstatistik berechneten säuglingssterblichkeit kann es zu verzerrungen kommen, wenn eine geburt mit ausländischer staatsbürgerschaft registriert wird, eine spätere feststellung der deutschen staatsbürgerschaft diese statistik jedoch nicht mehr beeinfl usst. ein etwaiger sterbefall eines deutschen kindes würde in diesem beispiel auf die falsche bevölkerung bezogen werden. diese konstellation würde somit für eine unterschätzung der säuglingssterblichkeit bei der ausländischen bevölkerung und eine – aller wahrscheinlichkeit marginale – überschätzung bei der deutschen bevölkerung sorgen. bei einer berechnung der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auf basis der zensusdaten dürfte es in den folgenden altersjahren keine verzerrung infolge der anwendung des iussoli-prinzips geben, da die entsprechenden fälle im rahmen des zensus korrigiert wurden (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 31). bei einer berechnung auf basis der fortschreibungsdaten vor dem zensus 2011 wäre der effekt auch bei der berechnung für sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten in den folgenden altersstufen relevant. um die rohen altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten zu glätten, wurde für die allgemeine sterbetafel 2010/12 des statistischen bundesamtes ein p-splineansatz nach eilers und marx (1996) gewählt, der durch die berücksichtigung der binomialverteilung speziell auf die glättung von sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten zugeschnitten ist (zur nieden et al. 2016: 65). eine glättung von sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten ist insbesondere dann notwendig, wenn generelle muster ohne zufallseinfl üsse oder sondereffekte abgeleitet werden sollen. solche generellen altersspezifi schen muster eignen sich beispielsweise in besonderem maße als basis für eine vorausberechnung der sterblichkeit, da zufallseinfl üsse somit nicht dauerhaft fortgeschrieben werden und die ableitung zukünftiger mortalitätsmuster plausibler ist. bei den zusätzlich für diesen aufsatz durchgeführten berechnungen von sterbetafeln nach staatsangehörigkeit wurden die zugrundeliegenden altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten ebenfalls mit dem p-spline-ansatz geglättet, um eine überinterpretation von zufälligen überschneidungen auszuschließen und sich auf die analyse von grundlegenden mustern zu beschränken. damit auf basis dieser grundlegenden muster aussagen darüber getroffen werden können, in welchen altersbereichen sich die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten von deutschen und nichtdeutschen signifi kant unterscheiden, wurden zusätzlich konfi denzintervalle für die altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten berechnet. hierfür wurde angenommen, dass die jeweils beobachtete altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeit q(x) den wahren erwartungswert abbildet und errechnet, in welchen grenzen zufallsstichproben mit einer 95 %igen wahrscheinlichkeit liegen würden (salzmann/kohls 2006: 187-188). wie bei der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 wurden auch bei den für diesen aufsatz zusätzlich erstellten sterbetafeln die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten im hohen alter bei einsetzenden unplausiblen verläufen extrapoliert. nicht plausible verläufe können dabei sich überschneidende sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten von männern und frauen und/oder eine deutliche abfl achung bzw. ein absinken der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten sein. zum einsatz als extrapolationsverfahren kam hierbei das lo• felix zur nieden, bettina sommer46 gistische modell, welches auf arbeiten von perks (1932) zurückgeht und in thatcher et al. (1998) als für diesen zweck besonders geeignet bewertet wurde. um die effekte des zensus herauszuarbeiten, wurden auch sterbetafeln mit daten aus der bevölkerungsfortschreibung auf grundlage der volkszählung 1987 im früheren bundesgebiet bzw. des auszugs des zentralen registers der ddr vom 03.10.1990 in den neuen ländern (der alten fortschreibung vor zensus) durchgeführt (statistisches bundesamt 2013). zudem wurde auch die amtliche sterbetafel 2009/11 herangezogen (statistisches bundesamt 2012), um den zensuseffekt auf die erstellung der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 mit dem rückgang der sterblichkeit zur vorangegangen sterbetafel in kontext stellen zu können. hierfür wurden mithilfe der differenzen in der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung e(x) aus der sterbetafel 2009/11 und einer sterbetafel für 2010/12 auf basis der alten fortschreibung und auf basis des zensus jeweils ein sterblichkeitseffekt (se) se = e(x)2010/12 auf basis der alten fortschreibung – e(x)2009/11 auf basis der alten fortschreibung und ein zensuseffekt (ze) ze = e(x)2010/12 auf basis des zensus – e(x)2010/12 auf basis der alten fortschreibung berechnet. die summe der beiden effekte bildet die tatsächliche veränderung in der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung zwischen der sterbetafel für 2009/11 und der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 ab. um die unterschiede in der sterblichkeit von deutschen und nichtdeutschen herausarbeiten zu können wurde eine relative maßzahl (ux) berechnet, die die differenz der altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten (qx) der beiden gruppen ins verhältnis zu den werten für die deutsche bevölkerung setzt: 5 analysen 5.1 auswirkungen des zensus auf die sterblichkeitsmessung der gesamtbevölkerung die lebenserwartung bei geburt in deutschland betrug im zeitraum 2010/12 laut der allgemeinen sterbetafel 77,7 jahre für männer und 82,8 jahre für frauen. im gegensatz zur vorangegangen sterbetafel 2009/11 sind die werte für die lebenserwartung bei geburt somit bei den männern unverändert und bei den frauen nur leicht verändert (+ 0,1 jahre). in abbildung 1 sind die unterschiede zwischen der sterbetafel 2009/11 und der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 separiert nach einem zensus-, einem sterblichkeitsund einem gesamteffekt für den gesamten altersverlauf der (ferneren) lebenserwartung dargestellt. bei den männern wie auch bei den frauen wäre die lebenserwartung bei geburt sowie die fernere lebenserwartung bis etwa alter 70 im vergleich der beiden sterbetafeln ausgehend von früheren zählungen um etwa 0,2 jahre angestiegen, wenn es keinen zensus gegeben (1) (2) (3)ux = qx, nichtdeutsche– qx, deutsche qx, deutsche lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 47 abb. 1: differenzen in der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung zwischen der sterbetafel 2009/11 und der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 nach einzeleffekten für männer und frauen -0,5 -0,4 -0,3 -0,2 -0,1 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter e(x)-differenzen in jahren männer -0,5 -0,4 -0,3 -0,2 -0,1 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter e(x)-differenzen in jahren frauen sterblichkeitseffekt gesamteffekt zensuseffekt sterblichkeitseffekt gesamteffekt zensuseffekt quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer48 hätte (sterblichkeitseffekt). der rückgang der sterblichkeit und somit der anstieg der lebenserwartung wäre bei den männern dabei etwas ausgeprägter gewesen als bei den frauen. bei beiden geschlechtern gehen die gewinne an verbleibender lebenserwartung durch den sterblichkeitseffekt spätestens ab alter 70 bis alter 90 kontinuierlich zurück. oberhalb von alter 90 ist praktisch keine veränderung in der ferneren lebenserwartung auf basis der alten fortschreibungsdaten messbar. dabei muss berücksichtigt werden, dass zur berechnung des effekts ab alter 91 jeweils werte verglichen werden, die aus der anwendung eines extrapolationsmodells resultieren. der vor alter 90 beobachtete rückgang des sterblichkeitseffekts deutet jedoch darauf hin, dass der ausbleibende anstieg der ferneren lebenserwartung oberhalb von alter 90 durchaus plausibel ist. die zensuskorrekturen bei der erstellung der allgemeinen sterbetafel sorgen dafür, dass die fernere lebenserwartung im zeitraum 2010/12 im gesamten altersverlauf bei beiden geschlechtern geringer ist als auf basis der alten fortschreibung vor dem zensus. die korrekturen sind bei den männern dabei durchweg größer als bei den frauen und nehmen mit steigendem alter (mit ausnahme der frauen über alter 90) leicht ab. durch eine zusammenfassung des sterblichkeitsund des zensuseffekts lässt sich der gesamteffekt – die veränderung der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung zwischen der sterbetafel 2009/11 und der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 – darstellen. bei den männern gleichen sich der sterblichkeitsund der zensuseffekt bis alter 70 nahezu aus, sodass beide sterbetafeln sehr ähnliche werte für die fernere lebenserwartung ausweisen. oberhalb von alter 70 kann der rückgang der sterblichkeit den zensuseffekt nicht mehr kompensieren, sodass die fernere lebenserwartung in diesem altersbereich aufgrund des dominierenden zensuseffekts in der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 geringer ist als in der sterbetafel 2009/11. bei den frauen sorgen die geringeren zensuskorrekturen dafür, dass die fernere lebenserwartung bis alter 87 auch auf basis der zensusdaten im zeitraum 2010/12 höher ist als in der sterbetafel 2009/11. erst oberhalb von diesem alter dominiert auch bei den frauen der zensuseffekt den sterblichkeitseffekt, sodass die fernere lebenserwartung in der sterbetafel auf basis der zensusergebnisse geringer ist als bei der vorangegangen sterbetafel 2009/11. bei der betrachtung dieser effekte muss berücksichtigt werden, dass es sich bei der ferneren lebenserwartung um eine kumulative maßzahl für die sterblichkeitsverhältnisse oberhalb des betreffenden alters handelt. die effekte in der absoluten betrachtung sind unter anderem deswegen in jungen altersjahren am größten, weil alle einfl üsse der darüber liegenden altersstufen zusammengefasst werden. auch wenn relativ gesehen große korrekturen der bevölkerungsbestände oberhalb von alter 90 durch den zensus stattgefunden haben, sind diese in ihrer absoluten auswirkung auf die lebenserwartung marginal. zum einen ist die fernere lebenserwartung in diesem altersbereich bereits sehr gering, zum anderen hat das eingesetzte extrapolationsverfahren bei der berechnung von sterbetafeln auf fortschreibungsbasis einen großteil des fortschreibungsfehlers in den bevölkerungsdaten im hinblick auf die berechnung der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten in diesem altersbereich bereits ausgeglichen. lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 49 5.2 auswirkungen des zensus auf die messung der sterblichkeit nach staatsangehörigkeit 5.2.1 sterblichkeit der deutschen bevölkerung die zensuskorrekturen der bevölkerungszahlen waren für die deutsche bevölkerung im vergleich zur gesamten bevölkerung unterdurchschnittlich – die bestände der deutschen männer wurden insgesamt um 1,0 % (-374.398) nach unten korrigiert, die der deutschen frauen sogar nur um 0,2 % (-74.085) (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). die stärksten korrekturen gab es dabei im hohen alter – die anzahl der deutschen männer im alter von 95 jahren oder älter wurde durch den zensus um 64,2 % (-31.603) korrigiert, die der deutschen frauen in diesem altersbereich um 17,4 % (-19.689).2 in abbildung 2 sind die altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten abgebildet, die zum einen mit den bevölkerungsbeständen der alten fortschreibung berechnet wurden und zum anderen mit den daten des zensus 2011. betrachtet man die verläufe der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auf basis der alten fortschreibung wird deutlich, dass die verläufe nur bis etwa alter 90 plausibel sind. oberhalb von alter 90 überschneiden sich die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten von männern und frauen (mortality crossover) bzw. die kurven beginnen unplausibel zu sinken. in einer solchen situation ist es üblich, ein extrapolationsverfahren einzusetzen, um plausible verläufe zu generieren (eisenmenger 2003; statistisches bundesamt 2015a). die extrapolierten werte sind in abbildung 2 als gestrichelte linie dargestellt, die nicht genutzten rohen beobachtungswerte der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten als unverbundene datenpunkte. eine auswirkung auf die gemessene lebenserwartung bei geburt hat die verwendung der extrapolierten werte dabei nicht: bei deutschen männern beträgt der wert für e(0) mit und ohne extrapolation 77,7 jahre, bei frauen 82,7 jahre (siehe tab. 1). werden die sterbetafeln für die deutsche bevölkerung auf basis des zensus 2011 berechnet, dann ist die lebenswartung bei geburt für männer um 0,1 jahre geringer als auf basis der alten fortschreibung (neuer wert: 77,6 jahre), bei den frauen bleibt trotz der geringen korrekturen der bevölkerungsbestände ein gemessener wert von 82,7 jahren auch auf basis des zensus bestehen. auffällig ist, dass die zensusbasierten sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten nun bis alter 100 plausible werte ergeben, sodass bis zu diesem alter der einsatz eines extrapolationsverfahrens nicht mehr notwendig ist.3 2 berechnung auf grundlage der bevölkerungsfortschreibung zum 31.12.2011 auf basis früherer zählungen und auf basis des zensus 2011. 3 zur berechnung einer vollständigen sterbetafel bis zum alter 112 wurde wie bei der vorgehensweise zur allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 über alter 100 dennoch ein extrapolationsverfahren eingesetzt. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten oberhalb von alter 100 beeinfl ussen die werte für die lebenserwartung dabei nur marginal. • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer50 abb. 2: altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten 2010/12 der deutschen bevölkerung auf basis der alten fortschreibung (inkl. extrapolation) und auf basis des zensus 2011 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten alte fortschreibung männer frauen 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten zensus männer frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 51 in einem nächsten schritt wurden die zensusbasierten sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten für die deutsche bevölkerung geglättet, um einen von zufallseffekten bereinigten mortalitätsverlauf über das alter zu generieren (siehe abb. 3). aufgrund der hohen fallzahlen bei der deutschen bevölkerung ist der einfl uss des glättungsverfahrens dabei sehr gering. der auffälligste unterschied besteht darin, dass sich die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten von männern und frauen nun nicht mehr überschneiden, wie es im rohen verlauf im alter 4 und 5 der fall ist. der einfl uss des glättungsverfahrens ist auf der logarithmischen skala etwa bis alter 35 sichtbar, oberhalb von diesem alter sind rohe und ausgeglichene werte praktisch identisch. männer frauen alte fortschreibung 77,7 82,7 alte fortschreibung inklusive extrapolation 77,7 82,7 zensus 77,6 82,7 zensus inklusive extrapolation und glättung 77,6 82,7 tab. 1: lebenserwartung bei geburt der deutschen bevölkerung 2010/12 auf basis verschiedener berechnungsgrundlagen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene berechnung abb. 3: altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten 2010/12 der deutschen bevölkerung auf basis des zensus 2011: rohe und ausgeglichene werte 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten männer frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer52 der verlauf der ausgeglichenen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten für die deutsche bevölkerung und die auf diesen werten aufbauende sterbetafel wird im folgenden genutzt, um die grundlegenden sterblichkeitsmuster der deutschen bevölkerung zu analysieren und mit den entsprechenden ergebnissen der ausländischen bevölkerung zu vergleichen. betrachtet man beispielsweise den verlauf der altersspezifi schen (ferneren) lebenserwartung auf basis dieser werte im vergleich zu werten auf basis der alten fortschreibung, wird noch einmal besonders deutlich, wie gering die korrekturen durch den zensus im hinblick auf die sterblichkeitsmessung für die deutsche bevölkerung sind. die fernere lebenserwartung der deutschen frauen wird nur marginal beeinfl usst, sodass selbst die erste nachkommastelle in jedem altersjahr auf basis des zensus und auf basis der alten fortschreibung identisch ist. bei den männern wird die fernere lebenserwartung über den gesamten altersverlauf hinweg auf zensusbasis um 0,1 jahre nach unten korrigiert. 5.2.2 sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung die zensuskorrekturen der ausländischen bevölkerung waren besonders ausgeprägt: die bestände der männer wurden insgesamt um 15,9 % (-602.318) nach unten korrigiert, die der frauen um 12,9 % (-465.042) (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015: 30). auch bei der ausländischen bevölkerung gab es die stärksten korrekturen im hohen abb. 4: differenzen in der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung zwischen einer sterbetafel 2010/12 für die deutsche bevölkerung auf fortschreibungs und auf zensusbasis (zensuseffekt) -0,5 -0,4 -0,3 -0,2 -0,1 0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter e(x)-differenzen in jahren zensuseffekt männer zensuseffekt frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 53 alter. bereits oberhalb von alter 75 wurden die bestände um 36,2 % (-46.008 männer) bzw. 38,9 % (-51.242 frauen) durch den zensus reduziert. oberhalb von alter 95 betrugen die korrekturen sogar 94,5 % bei den männern und 90,6 % bei den frauen. die zensuskorrigierte bevölkerungsfortschreibung hat in dieser altersgruppe zum 31.12.2011 statt 23.561 personen auf alter basis nur 1.831 personen ermittelt (547 männer und 1.284 frauen). abbildung 5 zeigt die auf basis der alten fortschreibung und auf basis des zensus 2011 ermittelten altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der ausländischen bevölkerung. auffällig ist, dass auf grundlage der alten fortschreibung bereits ab alter 75 eine nicht plausible entwicklung im verlauf der altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auftritt: die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der männer steigen auf einem niedrigeren niveau als es die vorangegangen altersstufen suggerieren würden, sodass es bereits im alter 84 zu einer überschneidung der männlichen und weiblichen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten kommt. durch einsatz des extrapolationsverfahrens (gestrichelte linie) lässt sich jedoch eine plausible fortsetzung des verlaufs oberhalb von alter 75 generieren. da bei diesem vorgehen im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung viel früher im altersverlauf rohe werte durch (höhere) werte aus dem extrapolationsmodell ersetzt werden, ist der einfl uss auf die gemessene (fernere) lebenserwartung entsprechend größer. auf basis der rohen werte würde man eine lebenserwartung bei geburt der ausländischen männer von 84,8 jahren ermitteln, für frauen von 88,3 jahren. durch den einsatz des extrapolationsverfahrens reduzieren sich die werte auf 82,9 jahre bei männlichen (-1,9 jahre) und 87,8 jahre bei weiblichen neugeborenen (-0,5 jahre) erheblich. auf basis des zensus 2011 lassen sich plausiblere sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten bis in deutlich höhere altersstufen ableiten als auf grundlage der alten fortschreibung. die zensuskorrigierte lebenserwartung der ausländischen männer, berechnet mit den rohen daten, beträgt 80,9 jahre, die der frauen 85,0 jahre. trotz der größeren korrekturen bei den bevölkerungszahlen der männer ist die zensuskorrektur bei den frauen (-2,8 jahre) größer als bei den männern (-2,0 jahre). dies ist lediglich darauf zurückzuführen, dass die extrapolation auf basis der fortschreibung bei den männern deutlich stärker gewirkt hat als bei den frauen. ein vergleich dieser werte ist trotzdem sinnvoll, da ein einsatz des extrapolationsverfahrens auf basis der alten fortschreibung zwingend notwendig gewesen wäre, um eine in sich plausible sterbetafel für die ausländische bevölkerung aufzustellen. um ein charakteristisches mortalitätsmuster für die ausländische bevölkerung abzuleiten, ist auch auf zensusbasis nicht nur der einsatz eines glättungsverfahrens, sondern auch der eines extrapolationsverfahrens vor alter 100 notwendig. in abbildung 6 ist dieser verlauf dargestellt und den rohen beobachtungswerten gegenübergestellt. die ungenutzten rohen beobachtungswerte sind dabei wie in den vorangegangenen abbildungen als einzelne datenpunkte dargestellt, während die in das glättungsverfahren eingefl ossenen werte miteinander verbunden sind. der geglättete verlauf ist als durchgezogene linie dargestellt, die extrapolierten werte als gestrichelte line. auf basis des zensus wurden die geglätteten verläufe der männer ab alter 91, die der frauen ab alter 92 durch extrapolierte werte ergänzt. die auf grundlage dieser methodischen eingriffe ermittelten sterbewahrscheinlich• felix zur nieden, bettina sommer54 keiten resultieren in einer lebenserwartung bei geburt von 80,5 jahren bei den ausländischen männern und 84,8 jahren bei den frauen und sind somit noch einmal etwas geringer als die auf basis der rohen daten ermittelten werte (siehe tab. 2). abb. 5: altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten 2010/12 der nichtdeutschen bevölkerung auf basis der alten fortschreibung (inkl. extrapolation) und auf basis des zensus 2011 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten alte fortschreibung männer frauen 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten zensus männer frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 55 zieht man die in abbildung 6 dargestellten geglätteten verläufe der altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten zur berechnung einer kompletten sterbetafel heran und vergleicht diese werte mit denen der alten bevölkerungsfortschreibung, lässt sich ein zensuseffekt von 2,4 jahren bei den männern und von 3,0 jahren bei den frauen für die lebenserwartung bei geburt konstatieren. abbildung 7 zeigt den verlauf des zensuseffekts für die (fernere) lebenserwartung im gesamten altersbereich. bei den männern reduzieren sich die werte für die e(x)-differenz bis alter 85 infolge des zensus nur leicht – in diesem alter beträgt der zensuseffekt immer noch 2 jahre, bevor der einfl uss des zensus deutlich abnimmt. selbst die fernere lebenserwartung im alter 100 ist trotz des einsatzes eines extrapolationsverfahabb. 6: altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten 2010/12 der nichtdeutschen bevölkerung auf basis des zensus 2011: rohe und ausgeglichene werte 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten männer frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung tab. 2: lebenserwartung bei geburt der nichtdeutschen bevölkerung 2010/12 auf basis verschiedener berechnungsgrundlagen männer frauen alte fortschreibung 84,8 88,3 alte fortschreibung inklusive extrapolation 82,9 87,8 zensus 80,9 85,0 zensus inklusive extrapolation und glättung 80,5 84,8 quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene berechnung • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer56 rens bei den daten der alten fortschreibung noch um 1,2 jahre reduziert, wenn die daten des zensus der berechnung zugrunde gelegt werden. bei den frauen bleibt der einfl uss des zensus von 3 jahren auf die fernere lebenserwartung bis über das alter 70 hinaus nahezu konstant, bevor er ebenfalls bis auf einen wert von 1,2 jahren im alter 100 abnimmt. 5.2.3 vergleich der sterblichkeit von deutschen und nichtdeutschen in den vorangegangen abschnitten wurden durch methodische eingriffe wie die glättung und den einsatz eines extrapolationsverfahrens charakteristische verlaufsmuster der altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten für deutsche und ausländer auf basis der daten des zensus 2011 vorgestellt. in abbildung 8 sind diese verläufe getrennt nach geschlecht abgebildet. bei den durchgezogenen linien handelt es sich um die geglätteten verläufe. werte, die bei der ausländischen bevölkerung mithilfe des extrapolationsverfahrens modelliert wurden, sind gestrichelt dargestellt. bei betrachtung der jeweiligen verläufe wird deutlich, dass sich die sterblichkeit zwischen deutscher und nichtdeutscher bevölkerung bei männern und frauen auf sehr ähnliche art und weise unterscheidet. bei säuglingen, im kindesalter sowie im frühen jugendalter weisen personen mit ausländischer staatsangehörigkeit eine abb. 7: differenzen in der altersspezifi schen lebenserwartung zwischen einer sterbetafel 2010/12 für die nichtdeutsche bevölkerung auf fortschreibungsund auf zensusbasis (zensuseffekt) -3,5 -3,0 -2,5 -2,0 -1,5 -1,0 -0,5 0,0 0,5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter e(x)-differenzen in jahren zensuseffekt männer zensuseffekt frauen quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 57 höhere sterblichkeit auf als gleichaltrige personen mit deutscher staatsbürgerschaft. bei den jungen kehrt sich das verhältnis im alter 16 um, bei den mädchen im alter 17. in allen folgenden altersjahren weisen ausländische männer und frauen stets geringere sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten auf als gleichaltrige deutsche. berechabb. 8: altersspezifi sche sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten 2010/12 für deutsche und nichtdeutsche bevölkerung 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten männer deutsche nichtdeutsche 0,0000 0,0001 0,0010 0,0100 0,1000 1,0000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 alter log. sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten frauen deutsche nichtdeutsche quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer58 net man konfi denzintervalle für die verläufe der sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten, lässt sich nachweisen, dass die unterschiede bei den neugeborenen jungen und mädchen signifi kant sind, bei den darauffolgenden altersjahren im kindesund jugendalter jedoch nicht. durch die geringen fallzahlen bei der ausländischen bevölkerung sind die konfi denzintervalle in diesem altersbereich entsprechend breit, sodass mit einer 5%igen irrtumswahrscheinlichkeit nicht auf signifi kante unterschiede geschlossen werden kann. signifi kante unterschiede in den sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten von deutschen und nichtdeutschen fi nden sich jedoch bei männern in den altersjahren 25 bis 32 und oberhalb von alter 38. bei den frauen sind die unterschiede im alter 31 signifi kant und in allen altersjahren oberhalb von alter 41. für die extrapolierten werte lassen sich keine konfi denzintervalle in gleicher weise berechnen, sodass oberhalb von alter 91 bei den männern bzw. alter 92 bei den frauen keine vergleichbaren aussagen über die signifi kanz der unterschiede getroffen werden können. die extrapolierten werte für die ausländische bevölkerung liegen bei männern und frauen jedoch außerhalb des für die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der deutschen bevölkerung berechneten konfi denzintervalls, was auf signifi kante unterschiede hindeutet. in abbildung 9 sind die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen deutschen und nichtdeutschen noch einmal prozentual dargestellt (maßzahl ux). aus der darstellung lässt sich beispielsweise ablesen, dass die säuglingssterblichkeit der mit ausländischer staatsbürgerschaft geborenen kinder um etwa 80 bis 90 % höher ist als die der deutschen kinder. in den darauffolgenden altersjahren sind die unterschiede selbst bei einem dreijährigen betrachtungszeitraum aufgrund der geringen fallzahlen bei den sterbefällen nicht signifi kant und sollten entsprechend nicht überinterpretiert werden. grundlegend passen die verläufe jedoch zu früheren befunden nach denen ausländische kinder bis ins jugendalter hinein eine erhöhte sterblichkeit im vergleich zur deutschen bevölkerung haben. oberhalb von alter 25 sind die unterschiede jedoch weitestgehend signifi kant und schwanken zwischen 20 und 35 % niedrigeren sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der ausländerinnen und ausländer im vergleich zu den deutschen. ein klares muster, nach dem die unterschiede im erwerbsalter besonders stark sind und mit höherem alter abnehmen bzw. sich sogar in eine höhere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung umwandeln, wie es frühere untersuchungen nahegelegt haben, lässt sich auf basis der daten des zensus nicht ableiten. bei männern ist eine solche tendenz nicht zu erkennen, bei den frauen nur ansatzweise, da die sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen alter 65 und 72 deutlich zurückgehen, in den darauffolgenden altersjahren jedoch wieder zunehmen. der unterschied in der lebenserwartung bei geburt zwischen deutschen und nichtdeutschen beläuft sich bei den zensusbasierten und von zufallseinfl üssen bereinigten daten auf 2,9 jahre bei den männern und 2,1 jahre bei den frauen. im alter 17, dem alter, ab dem die ausländische bevölkerung bei männern und frauen durchweg niedrigere sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten aufweist, betragen die unterschiede in der ferneren lebenserwartung sogar 3,3 jahre bei den männern und 2,3 jahre bei den frauen. auch im alter 65 sind noch erhebliche unterschiede festzustellen – die lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 59 fernere lebenserwartung der ausländischen männer ist um 2,4 jahre höher, die der frauen um 1,7 jahre im vergleich zu gleichaltrigen deutschen personen (siehe auch tab. 3). abb. 9: altersspezifi sche unterschiede zwischen den sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der nichtdeutschen und der deutschen bevölkerung nach geschlecht auf basis des zensus für den zeitraum 2010/12 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 alter in prozent frauen männer quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene darstellung und berechnung tab. 3: fernere lebenserwartung in ausgewählten altersstufen für deutsche und nichtdeutsche bevölkerung 2010/12 (auf basis des zensus 2011 – sterbetafeln mit ausgeglichenen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten und extrapolierten werten in hohem alter) ferne lebenserwartung männer frauen im alter von … deutsche nichtdeutsche deutsche nichtdeutsche 0 jahren 77,6 80,5 82,7 84,8 20 jahren 58,1 61,4 63,1 65,5 40 jahren 38,8 41,9 43,5 45,8 65 jahren 17,4 19,8 20,7 22,4 80 jahren 7,7 9,5 9,2 10,6 quelle: statistisches bundesamt, eigene berechnung • felix zur nieden, bettina sommer60 6 diskussion die daten des zensus 2011 haben es ermöglicht, grundlegende sterblichkeitsmuster in deutschland zu analysieren. der große vorteil der zensusdaten liegt darin, dass die bevölkerungsbestände möglichst genau erhoben wurden und diese frei von einem fortschreibungsbzw. einem rückrechnungsfehler sind. ein fortschreibungsfehler in den bevölkerungsdaten galt als hauptursache dafür, dass insbesondere die lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung als überhöht angegeben wurde. die ergebnisse der allgemeinen sterbetafel 2010/12 haben bereits für die gesamte bevölkerung deutschlands gezeigt, dass die lebenserwartung auf basis des zensus etwas geringer ist auf basis der alten fortschreibung. bei den männern entsprach der wert für die lebenserwartung bei geburt auf grundlage des zensus genau dem wert, den auch die letzte sterbetafel auf basis der alten fortschreibung für den zeitraum 2009/11 hervorgebracht hat. die vorliegenden analysen haben gezeigt, dass der zensuseffekt auf die lebenserwartung neugeborener jungen dabei genau so groß war wie der rückgang der sterblichkeit zwischen beiden betrachtungszeiträumen und sich die werte deswegen genau entsprechen. durch die geringeren zensusbedingten korrekturen der bevölkerungsbestände bei den frauen bei einem ähnlich großen rückgang der sterblichkeit zwischen 2009/11 und 2010/12 ist die lebenserwartung neugeborener mädchen im vergleich beider sterbetafeln leicht angestiegen (+ 0,1 jahre). erst im hohen alter ist die fernere lebenserwartung auf zensusbasis bei beiden geschlechtern infolge der großen (relativen) bevölkerungskorrekturen in diesem altersbereich etwas geringer als in der letzten sterbetafel, die auf basis der alten fortschreibung berechnet worden ist (2009/11). auf ebene der gesamtbevölkerung waren die auswirkungen des zensus folglich relativ gering und bieten keinen anhaltspunkt für eine generelle neubewertung der sterblichkeit in deutschland. die werte wurden in etwa um das ausmaß der derzeit beobachtbaren sterblichkeitsveränderungen zwischen zwei berechnungszeiträumen korrigiert. deutlichere auswirkungen auf die höhe der gemessenen lebenserwartung durch den zensus zeigen sich bei einer differenzierten und den thematisierten methodischen einschränkungen unterworfenen betrachtung nach staatsangehörigkeit. die lebenswartung der deutschen bevölkerung wurde bei den frauen praktisch überhaupt nicht beeinfl usst, die der männer ist um 0,1 jahre geringer als auf basis der alten fortschreibung. entsprechend größere korrekturen gab es bei der ausländischen bevölkerung. die lebenserwartung bei geburt von ausländischen männern ist um 2,4 jahre, die ausländischer frauen um 3,0 jahre geringer als werte, die für den gleichen betrachtungszeitraum auf basis der alten fortschreibungsdaten ermittelt worden wären. bei diesem vergleich ist der einfl uss eines extrapolationsverfahrens zu berücksichtigen, dessen einsatz die lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung bereits auf basis der alten fortschreibungsdaten deutlich nach unten korrigiert hat – bei den männern stärker als bei den frauen. die zuvor extrapolierten werte im hohen alter haben die auf grundlage des zensus zuverlässiger ermittelbaren sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten dennoch unterschätzt. der grund hierfür liegt darin, dass die sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten im stützbereich der extrapolation zensusbedingt ebenfalls nach oben korrigiert werden mussten. auf basis des zensus lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 61 lassen sich bis in deutlich höhere altersjahre plausible sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten der ausländischen bevölkerung ermitteln, sodass auch die dennoch notwendige extrapolation oberhalb von alter 91 (männer) bzw. 92 (frauen) auf zuverlässigere stützwerte zurückgreifen kann und sich insgesamt plausiblere mortalitätsmuster ergeben. diese ergebnisse zeigen, wie groß der einfl uss des extrapolationsverfahrens bei der aufstellung von sterbetafeln für teilpopulationen sein kann. entsprechend elementar ist es, bei vergleichbaren studien die hintergrundinformationen zur extrapolation, wie das startalter und das verwendeten verfahren, offenzulegen und zu begründen. vergleicht man die charakteristischen sterblichkeitsmuster der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung über den gesamten altersbereich hinweg, zeigt sich kein grundlegend neues bild auf basis des zensus, es werden jedoch deutlich reduzierte unterschiede im vergleich zu analysen auf basis der alten fortschreibung sichtbar. der vorteil der ausländischen bevölkerung in der höhe der lebenserwartung bei geburt reduziert sich von 5,2 jahren auf 2,9 jahre bei den männern und von 5,1 jahren auf 2,1 jahre bei den frauen. auch oberhalb von alter 65 bleibt ein deutlicher und in weiten teilen signifi kanter sterblichkeitsvorteil der ausländischen bevölkerung bestehen. die relativen differenzen in den altersspezifi schen sterbewahrscheinlichkeiten unterscheiden sich dabei in hohem alter kaum von denen im erwerbsalter. die befunde deuten dabei auf einen starken selektionseffekt (healthy-migrant-effekt) hin. hinweise auf einen adaptionseffekt, der für eine deutliche angleichung der sterblichkeitsverhältnisse zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung in höherem alter sorgen würde, lassen sich mit den zensusbasierten ergebnissen nicht fi nden. dabei können allerdings zusätzliche selektionseffekte beispielsweise bei der einbürgerung oder einer selektiven abwanderung eine rolle spielen. mit zunehmendem alter steigt auch der anteil an eingebürgerten personen an der ursprünglichen ausländischen bevölkerung an. allerdings hat es in den letzten jahrzehnten kein gleichmäßiges einbürgerungsverhalten gegeben, was die bewertung dieses prozesses erschwert. zudem besteht die möglichkeit, dass personen mit einer nichtdeutschen staatsangehörigkeit und einer erhöhten morbidität tendenziell eher zurück in das jeweilige herkunftsland wandern. deswegen lässt sich auf basis der vorliegenden analysen nicht ausschließen, dass es auf der individualebene durchaus einen adaptionseffekt gibt, auch wenn er sich auf der makroebene nicht nachweisen lässt. eine signifi kant höhere sterbewahrscheinlichkeit von nichtdeutschen lässt sich nur für die säuglingssterblichkeit bei beiden geschlechtern nachweisen. die ergebnisse deuten jedoch auch auf eine höhere sterbewahrscheinlichkeit im kindesund frühen jugendalter unter der ausländischen bevölkerung hin, auch wenn die unterschiede in diesem altersbereich nicht signifi kant sind. insgesamt bestätigen die ergebnisse damit, dass die ausländische bevölkerung, trotz gegebener sozio-ökonomischer benachteiligun• felix zur nieden, bettina sommer62 gen,4 eine deutlich geringere sterblichkeit als die deutsche bevölkerung aufweist. diese konstellation kann als paradox bezeichnet werden, da sozio-ökonomische benachteiligungen in zahlreichen studien mit einer höheren sterblichkeit in verbindung gebracht werden.5 die vorgelegten ergebnisse zeichnen kein völlig neues bild der sterblichkeitsverhältnisse in deutschland. bei betrachtung der gesamtbevölkerung zeigen sich nur geringe effekte auf die gemessene lebenserwartung durch die berücksichtigung der bevölkerungsbestände des zensus 2011. dahinter verbergen sich jedoch interessante befunde im hinblick auf die sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung und deren unterschiede zur sterblichkeit der bevölkerung mit deutscher staatsangehörigkeit. ein healthy-migrant-effekt und damit eine geringere sterblichkeit der ausländischen bevölkerung – wenn auch in deutlich geringerem ausmaß als auf basis der alten fortschreibung – kann auch unter ausschluss von fehlern in der bevölkerungsfortschreibung mithilfe der daten des zensus 2011 nachgewiesen werden. eine überproportionale untererfassung der ausländischen bevölkerung in der bevölkerungsfortschreibung war zuvor als eine der wesentlichen ursachen für die deutlich höhere lebenserwartung der ausländischen bevölkerung auf basis dieser daten angeführt worden (luy 2007; kibele et al. 2008; kohls 2008a/b, 2011, 2012; mammey/schwarz 2002; robert koch institut/statistisches bundesamt 2008). um die bedeutung des healthy-migrant-effektes abzuschätzen, haben forscher in der vergangenheit deshalb auf alternative datenquellen (z.b. das azr, die daten der grv oder den integrationssurvey) zurückgegriffen. diese studien waren jedoch anderen einschränkungen unterworfen, da sie nicht auf eine erhebung der gesamten bevölkerung und der sterbefälle zurückzugreifen, um sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung analysieren zu können (siehe abschnitt 4.1). die hier vorgelegten befunde zur sterblichkeit der deutschen und ausländischen bevölkerung ermöglichen es nun auf basis des zensus mit größtmöglicher sicherheit auszuschließen, dass es sich bei den bisherigen befunden zum healthy-migrant-effekt nur um ein artefakt gehandelt hat. zukünftige forschung kann sich unter berücksichtigung dieses ergebnisses wieder stärker mit inhaltlichen erklärungen für die nachgewiesenen sterblichkeitsunterschiede zwischen der deutschen und der ausländischen bevölkerung auseinandersetzen. die im online-anhang zur verfügung gestellten sterbetafeln für die deutsche und die nicht-deutsche bevölkerung ermöglichen es, dabei auch auf altersspezifi sche unterschiede genauer einzugehen. 4 für eine ausführliche beschreibung der sozio-ökonomischen situation der ausländischen bevölkerung in deutschland siehe beispielsweise den 10. bericht der beauftragten der bundesregierung für migration, flüchtlinge und integration über die lage der ausländerinnen und ausländer in deutschland (2014). 5 für eine ausführliche zusammenstellung entsprechender studien siehe beispielsweise hoffmann (2008), kapitel 4. lebenserwartung in deutschland auf basis des zensus 2011 • 63 danksagung wir bedanken uns bei olga pötzsch, michael mühlichen und bei zwei anonymen gutachtern für wichtige hinweise zu früheren versionen dieser arbeit. literatur balducci, gaetano 1917: costruzione e critica delle tavole di mortalità. in: giornale degli economisti e rivista di statistica, serie terza, 55: 455-484. becker, karl 1874: zur berechnung von sterbetafeln an 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https://www.destatis.de/de/startseite.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) editorial on the special issue "the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe" editorial on the special issue "the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe" philip rees, nikola sander 1 introduction europe has experienced a growing divergence of trends in population growth and age structure across cities and regions. a key driver of this divergence is internal migration, which also drives disparities in labour markets and economic development. this special issue focuses on the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe, and relates current research to the early works on the “laws of migration” by ernst georg ravenstein. the topic of internal migration and regional population change is important and timely, given the ongoing social scientifi c and political debate within europe about the causes and consequences of regional disparities and the design of appropriate policies to reduce inequalities. the european union, for example, has the goal of reduction of inequalities across member states and across regions within them. the instruments for achieving this goal are the cohesion policy (european commission 2020a), the regional development fund (european commission 2020b) and the social fund (european commission 2020c). previous research on the role of internal migration on past and future population dynamics within the context of regional disparities has largely focussed on population projections at regional and national scales. this includes a project on demographic and migratory flows affecting european regions and cities (demifer) (espon 2013). one task in demifer was to forecast regional populations and therefore the component fl ows (births, deaths and internal, inter-member state and extra-european migration), with specifi c scenarios showing outcomes under different policies (rees et al. 2012). because of time constraints, the scenarios for migration assumed convergence, divergence or stasis in the attractiveness of regions to the three spatial categories of migrants, uninformed by an analysis of trends over space and time. more recent projections of european country populations have adopted either high, medium and low scenarios (cafaro/derer 2019) or combinations of high, central and low with differing levels of human capital of migrants (lutz et al. 2019). however, eurostat have not published regional population projections since 2008. there is therefore a gap in our knowledge of migration trends across europe which could inform population projections under plausible policy comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 533-544 (date of release: 08.09.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-17en4 • philip rees, nikola sander534 assumptions and a lack of an update-to-date, europe-wide set of projected regional populations for 2020 to use in monitoring infections and mortality rates during the covid-19 pandemic, across the european union. this special issue of comparative population studies (cpos) fi lls a serious gap in our understanding of the migration components of population change, which would also facilitate a more effective response to crises such as the covid-19 pandemic. this special issue presents new fi ndings and insights into the role of migration in the development of the populations of cities and regions in europe. all papers link their fi ndings about contemporary migration fl ows with the “classic” papers by ernst georg ravenstein, who studied internal migration in the british isles and in a selection of european countries in the nineteenth century. one hundred and thirty years ago, ravenstein studied the role of migration as a driver of regional population change and published two seminal papers on the laws of migration (ravenstein 1885, 1889). ravenstein’s fi rst paper describes the spatial patterns of internal migration in the british isles, while the second discusses internal and international migration and population change in europe and north america. the remainder of this editorial is structured as follows: section 2 lists the papers that constitute this special issue and describes their features, so that readers can choose the paper closest to their interests or organize their reading of all papers in a sensible order. section 3 links the papers to the work of ravenstein, showing which “laws” are evaluated and how. section 4 summarises the contribution of the special issue to scholarship in internal migration studies and refl ects on what the current covid-19 pandemic might mean for migration intensity, migration distances, migration directions, migration variation by life course stage and migration impact. in this editorial, when we refer to “migration”, we normally mean “internal migration” or place to place changes of usual residence within the borders of a nation state. occasionally, reference is made to international migration between countries. throughout the text, we use author names in italics to make reference to the special issue papers. 2 papers in the special issue the eight papers that are included in this special issue either focus on multiple countries in europe and beyond to adopt a cross-nationally comparative perspective, or on a specifi c country (england and wales, germany, spain, italy and russia). table 1 sets out details of the papers in the special issue. all papers belong to volume 44 (2019), but because cpos is an online open-access journal that publishes articles on a continuous rolling basis, some of the papers were published in 2020. table 2 summarises the content of each paper in terms of spatial patterns, contribution to population change and the characteristics of the data sets employed. the fi rst column of the table lists the family names of the authors. the second to fourth columns give descriptions of the data used in each paper, identifying the country or countries studied, the spatial zones used, and the time periods for which data were available. the fi fth to seventh columns describe the key themes of each paper, in the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe • 535 tab. 1: the special issue papers philip rees, nik lomax 2020: ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now. comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 351-412. date of release: 07.05.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-10en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/369/310 francisco rowe, martin bell, aude bernard, elin charles-edwards, philipp ueffi ng 2019: impact of internal migration on population redistribution in europe: urbanisation, counterurbanisation or spatial equilibrium? comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 201-234. date of release: 06.11.2019. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2019-18en] https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/324/288 joseph day 2020: the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911: updating ravenstein and the step-migration hypothesis. comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 447-496. date of release: 08.06.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-13en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/374/313 tony champion 2020: updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change in the wider south east of england. comparative population studies, 44(2019): 269-290. date of release: 20.03.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-05en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/333/305 nico stawarz, nikola sander 2020: the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany over the period 1991-2017. comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 291-316. date of release: 23.03.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-06en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/356/306 fernando gil-alonso, jenniffer thiers-quintana 2020: population and economic cycles in the main spanish urban areas: the migratory component. comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 413-446. date of release: 21.04.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-09en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/361/309 liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan 2020: age-specifi c migration in regional centers and peripheral areas of russia comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 317-350. date of release: 27.05.2020. [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-12en] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/372/312 federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci 2020: population change and international and internal migration in italy, 2002-2017: ravenstein revisited comparative population studies, 44 (2019): 497-532. date of release: 08.09.2020. [https://doi.org./10.12765/cpos-2020-16] https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/389/315 • philip rees, nikola sander536 tab. 2: themes in the analysis of internal or international migration in the special issue papers authors data themes country or spatial time spatial contribution population countries zones period(s) directions to populagroups or patterns tion change rees, lomax wide range scale and recent distance covers age of countries zonation decades density relameasuregroups, (focus on issues tionship; ment of genders, uk) reviewed functional internal and education, urban international ethnicity, regions migration nativity groups rowe, bell, 28 eu basic years gradients migration all groups bernard, member spatial around of net impacts together charles states units: 2000/2010 migration measured edwards, 22 to 431 versus using ueffi ng density; summary concentraindexes tion or de(cmi, mei, conceninmi) tration day england parishes, 1851-1911 tests step focusses age and wales counties, by step on internal groups, metro migration migration genders classes hypothesis for individuals champion england lgas in 2001-2016 tests step direction of all groups rings by step migration together around migration outwards london; hypothesis from ttwas for aggrelondon to gate fl ows rings stawarz, germany counties 1991-2017 temporal relationship six age sander change in varies groups nimr vs depending population on labour/ density housing relationship markets the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe • 537 terms of migration patterns, contributions to population change and whether different population groups were considered in the analysis. the migration data used in the special issue papers vary in spatial and temporal scale due to cross-country variations in the defi nition and measurement of migration fl ows (see table 2). rees and lomax review measurement and analysis approaches adopted by ravenstein and contemporary researchers. illustrations of the main arguments are drawn mainly from the united kingdom and decades from 1990-91 onwards. maps of net internal migration at local government district scale are used to illustrate changes in spatial variation over a recent decade. rowe et al. analyse migration patterns in 28 european union member states (only 27 since 31 january 2020), using the smallest spatial unit available in each country. day uses census microdata for england and wales. he employs scales ranging from parishes authors data themes country or spatial time spatial contribution population countries zones period(s) directions to populagroups or patterns tion change gil-alonso, spain the fi ve 2005-2016 metropolitan contribution native-born thierslargest concenof nativeand quintana metro tration born and foreignregions, and de-conforeignborn rest of centration born spain internal migrants karachurina, russia municipal 2010, 2012migration focusses on age groups mkrtchyan formations 2016 from internal periphery to migration regional centres benassi, italy local 2002-2017 contribution native-born foreignbonifazi, labour of interand foreignborn and heins, licari, markets national born native-born tucci and internal internal migration to migrants population change tab. 2: continuation notes: eu = european union, lga = local government areas, ttwa = travel to work area, uk = united kingdom cmi = crude migration intensity, mei = migration effectiveness index, inmi = index of net migration impact nimr = net internal migration rate • philip rees, nikola sander538 through counties to metropolitan regions by population size class. champion uses local government areas at various scales in england and wales, the part of the british isles studied most intensively by ravenstein. stawarz and sander use data on migration fl ows between 401 counties in germany for the period 1991 to 2017 to study the impact of migration on regional population change. gil-alonso and thiersquintana aggregate municipal level migration data to the fi ve largest urban regions of spain (barcelona, bilbao, madrid, seville and valencia, and the rest of spain) to analyse net migration fl ows and population changes by native and foreign residents. karachurina and mkrtchyan employ a spatial framework of regions divided into centres and peripheries, based on aggregating data for municipalities, to track the change over time in migration fl ows by broad ages. benassi et al. aggregate municipal register migration data by year to labour market areas to demonstrate the vital contribution of foreigners to italian internal migration and the relationship of net internal migration and international net infl ows and outfl ows by age in italy. mapping these fl ows demonstrates the continuing differences between the south of italy with a strong outfl ow of internal migrants and italy’s centre and north to where native internal migrants move. 3 themes of the special issue papers we provide a brief summary of the rich seams of analysis and fi ndings presented in the eight papers. we do this by commenting on the relationships between paper fi ndings and ravenstein’s “laws of migration” (empirical generalisations), using the interpretation of these in grigg (1977). 3.1 how does migration analysis in recent decades differ from that of ravenstein? rees and lomax review how migration is defi ned, how it is measured, and through what instruments the data are collected (censuses, surveys, registers, telecommunication and internet sources). the paper identifi es the type of migration measure used by ravenstein: tables of counties of birth and residence at a census, collectively termed “lifetime migration”. because these data do not pin-point when the migrants moved, they have been rarely used in analysis subsequently. the paper discusses methods developed recently for inferring between country migration for fi xed time periods from collections of census and survey tables of the population classifi ed by country of birth and country of residence, triggered by key papers by abel (2013) and abel and sander (2014). 3.2 migration and distance ravenstein: the majority of migrants move only over short distances (grigg 1977, law 1) the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe • 539 the development of gravity models of migration embodying distance decay functions post-dates ravenstein’s papers. however, it is diffi cult to compare the decay parameters between countries because they are highly dependent on how many regions are used and what their size is. rees and lomax review fi ndings by stillwell et al. (2016) on distance decay parameters standardized to be comparable across countries with different numbers and size of regions, using methods developed in the university of queensland’s image1 project. lower distance frictions are characteristic of large, high migration intensity countries. 3.3 migration and settlement hierarchies ravenstein: migration proceeds step by step (grigg 1977, law 2) ravenstein’s generalisation that migration proceeds step by step has been interpreted and investigated in two different ways. the fi rst interpretation is that it represents the hypothesis that migrants, over the course of their lifetime, make a chain of migrations through a sequence of successively larger settlements. the second interpretation is that the sequence of fl ows occurs at an aggregate, not an individual scale. for example, there might be a net fl ow from county a to county b and from county b to county c. county a might be highly rural, county b might consist of mixed urban and rural settlements and county c would be highly urban. but different people would be involved in each step of the fl ow sequence. ravenstein coined his generalisation by mapping selective chains of migration fl ows. day provides an insightful review of understandings of the step by step migration hypothesis and demonstrates, using census microdata and parish registers and other evidence, that most migrants in 19th century england and wales took only one step from starting home to a bigger place. champion uses aggregate migration fl ow data from patient registers to demonstrate that internal migration fl ows to and from the major metropolitan area of london constitute an outward, step by step downward cascade, providing evidence that migration fl ows not only proceed up the settlement hierarchy but can also point downwards. 3.4 migration, urbanisation and economic development we group the following ravenstein generalisations together, because of their close relationships. • migrants proceeding long distances generally go to the great centres of commerce and industry (grigg 1977, law 2) • towns grow more by migration than natural increase (grigg 1977, law 8). • migration increases as industries develop and the means of transport improves (grigg 1977, law 9). 1 the image project compares internal migration around the globe. • philip rees, nikola sander540 • the major direction of migration is from the rural areas to the towns (grigg 1977, law 10). • the main causes of migration are economic (grigg 1977, law 11). the discussion about the aggregate form of the step by step hypothesis is closely linked to the debate about the extent to which migration leads to urban concentration/urbanisation (driven in part by net migration gains in urban centres) or de-concentration/counter-urbanisation (driven in part by net migration losses in urban centres). urbanisation has been the dominant global trend through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, but de-concentration was observed in some countries in western europe from the 1970s onwards. because it is diffi cult to defi ne urban, rural and intermediate regions in a comparable way across countries, researchers have used an indirect method to track the phenomenon: measuring net migration rates for territorial units and tabulating or regressing them against the units’ population density (rees et al. 2017). stawarz and sander examine the degree to which internal migration in germany has been “to the great centres of commerce and industry” (ravenstein 1885: 199) or away from them, using a regression method. they show that in recent decades, the patterns of internal migration have swung back and forth between urbanising and counter-urban tendencies, causing population gains in either the inner cities or their hinterlands. these swings are related to changes in urban and rural labour markets, the rise in the higher education industry in cities and the role that rising housing prices have on preferences for urban, suburban or rural residence among families and older adults. the impact of internal migration on population change varies over time and country: that is, it is context-dependent. rowe et al. produce a summary graphic of changes in net internal migration rate and population density relationships for four european countries over the 1995 to 2010 period. each country follows its own path. their table for 10 countries in the 1980s-1990s and 2000s-2010s shows the same mixed picture as stawarz and sander. 3.5 migration differences across population groups ravenstein: most migrants are adults; families rarely migrated (grigg 1977, law 7). ravenstein: the natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural districts (grigg 1977, law 5). ravenstein: females are more migratory than males within the kingdom of their birth, but males move more frequently abroad (grigg 1977, law 6). ravenstein did not have access to census migrant tables disaggregated by migrant characteristics. this was the era of counting of the census returns by hand. it was not until 1884 that herman hollerith patented his punched card tabulator (wikipedia 2020). this made production of multiple census tables possible before the 1960s, when mainframe computers took over, to be replaced by mini and personal computers and servers from the 1990s. analysis of population behaviour by life course the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe • 541 variables such as sex, age, birth cohort and status within the household are now the foundation of much demographic and health analysis. internal and international migration are routinely classifi ed by these demographic attributes. the papers in the special issue naturally refl ect their importance. for example, rees and lomax show for great britain in 1990-91 that the strength of the net internal migration-density relationship varied by life course stage, with de-concentration the dominant process in the family and working ages, with urbanward migration important only in the late adolescent and young adult ages. karachurina and mkrtchyan demonstrate that, for russia, inter-regional migration fl ows are dominated by young adults migrating to regional centres and large metropolises, particularly moscow, for higher education and training. gil-alonso and thiersquintana and benassi et al. fi nd, for spain and italy respectively, that foreigners are much more active in internal migration to and between metropolitan areas than are natives. 3.6 effectiveness of migrant fl ows ravenstein: every migratory current has a counter current (grigg 1977, law 7) rowe et al. use the migration effectiveness index (mei), which is the scaled absolute value of a given directional migration fl ow minus its counter-fl ow divided by the sum of fl ow and counter-fl ow. high values of mei indicate a substantial imbalance in fl ow volumes and that internal migration is altering the population distribution. the mei is a building block along with the crude migration intensity (cmi) of an overall index of net migration impact (inmi). the authors show that the same amount of impact can be generated by a high cmi and low mei as a low cmi and high mei. for example, both russia and finland have almost the same inmi values. russia’s inmi derives from a low cmi and a very high mei, while finland’s derives from a high cmi and low mei. the analysis thus confi rms ravenstein’s observation that every fl ow has a counter-fl ow, although the counter-fl ow may be much smaller in size, leading to population redistribution. 3.7 the relationship of internal and international migration some papers focus on internal migration, such as rowe et al. and karachurina and mkrtchyan. other papers include a consideration of international migration into and out of the country being studied, such as gil-alonso and thiers-quintana and stawarz and sander. in particular, the role of people with foreign origins in internal migration is analysed by benassi et al. for italy and gil-alonso and thiers-quintana for spain. rees and lomax review the fi elds of internal and international migration in terms of concepts, measurement techniques and analysis methods, comparing current practice with methods available to ravenstein. they explain the methods developed to estimate international migration between countries in a sequence of papers starting with abel (2013). the suggestion is made that lifetime internal migration data, available in many countries but not much used because the timing of • philip rees, nikola sander542 the migration captured is uncertain, could be used to make estimates of periodspecifi c migration trends. 4 discussion we hope that the outline of the contents of this special issue demonstrates the usefulness of looking back at a classic study to make sense of a complex phenomenon such as internal migration. of course, we have only described a small part of the richness of analysis to be found in the eight papers. how might this knowledge be used? at the start of this editorial, we pointed to the need to develop new projections of regional populations in europe, using a multi-country and multi-region framework. such projections were implemented up to 2008 by eurostat but have since been abandoned. if the opportunity arose to construct such projections, the special issue papers would suggest the projection model needed to take into account the shifts over time in the spatial structure of internal migration fl ows, and to be made operational for a hierarchy of cities, their immediate surrounds and rural areas. we have prepared this overview of the special issue in spring 2020, a time of severe crisis due to the covid-19 pandemic affecting all countries of europe. human mobility plays a key role in this pandemic because infectious disease spreads through human contact. based on current knowledge, covid-19 originated in the city of wuhan in china in late 2019 (ma 2020; davdison 2020), and spread to other countries, particularly those in europe, in early 2020. governments throughout europe took action to reduce social contact. as a result, human mobility was rapidly reduced, spanning from daily mobility patterns (e.g. travel to work), to commuting fl ows and international (labour) migration. india, for example, took the step, with only a few hours notice, to “lock down” the country’s 1.3 billion population and precipitated a reverse internal migration from the cities to the countryside in chaotic travel conditions (the economist 2020a). the covid-19 pandemic has, in effect, radically altered patterns and intensities of internal and international migration. however, we cannot yet quantify the ways in which covid-19 has changed migration due to lags in data publication. neither we as the guest editors nor the authors of the special issue papers envisaged the virtual disappearance in 2020 of the fl ows under study. however, we trust that all forms of human mobility and migration will eventually resume, if only in subdued form to begin with, and that the fi ndings of this suite of research papers will provide some guide to the future study of migration and its role in regional population change. references abel, guy 2013: estimating global migration flow tables using place of birth data. in: demographic research 28,18: 505-546 [https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2013.28.18]. the role of internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe • 543 abel, guy; sander, nikola 2014: quantifying global international migration flows. in: science 343: 1520-1522 [https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1248676]. cafaro, philip; dérer, patrícia 2019: policy-based population projections for the european union: a complementary approach. in: comparative population studies 44: 171-200 [https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2019-14en]. davidson, helen 2020: earliest case detected on 17 november, weeks before authorities acknowledged new virus, say chinese media [https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/mar/13/fi rst-covid-19-case-happened-in-november-china-governmentrecords-show-report, 22.07.2020]. espon 2013: demifer − demographic and migratory flows affecting european regions and cities [https://www.espon.eu/demifer, 22.07.2020]. espon 2020: european spatial planning observatory network [https://www.espon.eu/, 22.07.2020]. european commission 2020a: cohesion fund [https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/ funding/cohesion-fund/, 22.07.2020]. european commission 2020b: european regional development fund [https://ec.europa. eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/, 22.07.2020]. european commission 2020c: european social fund [https://ec.europa.eu/esf/home. jsp?langid=en, 22.07.2020]. grigg, david 1977: e. g. ravenstein and the “laws of migration”. in: journal of historical geography 3,1: 41-54 [https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-7488(77)90143-8]. lutz, wolfgang et al. 2019: demographic scenarios for the eu − migration, population and education. luxembourg: publications offi ce [https://doi.org/10.2760/590301]. ma, josephine 2019: coronavirus: china’s first confi rmed covid-19 case traced back to november 17. in: south china morning post, 13 march 2020 [https://www.scmp. com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-fi rst-confi rmed-covid19-case-traced-back/, 14.07.2020]. marois, guillaume; sabourin, patrick; bélanger, alain 2019: how reducing differentials in education and labor force participation could lessen workforce decline in the eu28. in: demographic research 41,6: 125-160 [https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2019.41.6]. marois, guillaume; bélanger, alain; lutz, wolfgang 2020: population aging, migration, and productivity in europe. in: pnas 117,14: 7690-7695 [https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1918988117]. ravenstein, ernst 1885: the laws of migration. in: journal of the statistical society of london 48,2: 167-235 [https://doi.org/10.2307/2979181]. ravenstein, ernst 1889: the laws of migration. in: journal of the royal statistical society 52,2: 241-305 [https://doi.org/10.2307/2979333]. rees, philip et al. 2012: european regional populations: current trends, future pathways, and policy options. in: european journal of population 28,4: 385-416 [https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10680-012-9268-z]. rees, philip et al. 2017: the impact of internal migration on population redistribution: an international comparison. in: population, space and place 23,6: 1-27 [https://doi. org/10.1002/psp.2036]. stillwell john et al. 2016: internal migration around the world: comparing distance travelled and its frictional effect. in: environment and planning a 48,8: 1657-1675 [https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x16643963]. • philip rees, nikola sander544 the economist 2020a: under pressure: migration and the virus. in: the economist 04.04.2020: 43-44. the economist 2020b: briefi ng: creating immunity to covid-19. the economist 18.04.2020: 13-16. wikipedia 2020: herman hollerith [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/herman_hollerith, 14.07.2020]. prof. dr. philip rees (). school of geography, university of leeds. leeds, united kingdom. e-mail: p.h.rees@leeds.ac.uk url: https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/geography/staff/1094/professor-philip-rees dr. nikola sander. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: nikola.sander@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/sander/sander.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) residential location choices of couples considering both partners’ residential biographies and family ties residential location choices of couples considering both partners’ residential biographies and family ties janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner abstract: we investigate couples’ residential decisions by considering variables capturing elements of both partners’ residential biographies and family ties. we focus on the family formation stage because decisions made in this stage are rather long-term. we are particularly interested in the hometown as individuals have spent a great amount of time and an important life phase there. our research questions are: (1) to what extent do people live in their hometown at family formation? (2) which factors infl uence this choice? we consider previous residential experiences, social ties, socio-demographic and spatial variables in binary logit regressions. the data was collected from a sample of students at tu dortmund university, their parents, and grandparents. in this paper, the parent couples’ residential location choices are analysed considering family ties to the grandparents. we apply a rigorous split half method for internal model validation. recent research on residential decisions mostly considers either the partners or the life-course or social ties. due to our unique dataset, we include all these factors. this allows us to draw conclusions on gendered residential choice. we fi nd the length of residence to be positively and number of moves negatively associated with living at the hometown, two factors that have not been disentangled in previous research. we could not confi rm the often proven male dominance. on the contrary, we found that the female’s family ties were more relevant. the hometown has not received the attention it deserves to date and has the potential to enrich demographic research and related fi elds. the rigorous split half method for internal validation has rarely been undertaken previously. the results point to the importance of model validation and thus present an innovative approach. keywords: residential location · residential biography · life-course · family formation · family ties · split half comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 107-136 (date of release: 11.09.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-12en8 • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner108 1 introduction the importance of the life-course for residential decisions and migration has been acknowledged in much previous research. there are various studies on residential decisions and migration focusing on certain stages of life and key events (kley 2009; feijten 2005), as well as interdependencies between the housing trajectory and other life-course trajectories (de bruijn 1999; willekens 1991). fewer studies investigate how residential experiences made over the life-course infl uence later residential choices (blaauboer 2011; feijten et al. 2008). moreover, there has been much more research on moves, their triggers and related destination choices than on residential inertia or return migration (except at the international level) and residential ties, although moves and particularly long-distance migration are relatively rare events. this paper investigates how residential experiences over the lifecourse infl uence later residential choices. in particular, we focus on the hometown, where most of childhood and adolescence is usually spent and which may have great meaning for an individual. we examine to what extent, and under which conditions, the hometown is chosen for residence at the time of family formation. this is of particular interest, as the location choice in this phase is made very consciously and is considered to be a long-term decision (thomas et al. 2016: 587; feijten et al. 2008: 156). what is more, the location chosen at family formation will be the hometown for the upcoming generation and may infl uence the future residential location choices of that generation, too. our research questions are: (1) to what extent do people live in their hometown at family formation? (2) which factors infl uence this choice? we mainly focus on variables capturing elements of the residential biography and family ties. by hometown we refer to the municipality level. there are some studies revealing the importance of social ties and life-course factors on international migration (yahirun 2014; haas/fokkema 2011; heering et al. 2004), while other studies look at neighbourhood choices (clark et al. 2017). but less is known about staying at or returning to places on a local level. returning to or staying at a place of residence allows for the use of location-specifi c capital built up over the life-course. to a large extent this includes social capital in terms of frequent contact with friends and family. family ties in particular can be seen as typically being strong and lasting a whole lifetime. moreover, people may feel emotionally attached to places where they have experienced memorable events. this paper reveals the importance of the hometown, where most of childhood and adolescence is spent, for residential decisions at the family formation phase. the paper contributes to recent research, as it analyses household residential decisions by considering both partners, which has rarely been done before (notable exceptions are blaauboer et al. 2011 and løken et al. 2013). this also allows us to draw conclusions on gendered residential choice. what is more, we distinguish between variables capturing elements of (both partners’) residential biographies and the infl uences of family ties, which are often neglected in other studies. we focus on the local level of municipalities, which has not been the spatial unit of interest residential location choices of couples ... • 109 in previous studies. additionally, we apply a rigorous split half method for internal validation, which is rarely done in related research. the paper is structured as follows. the next section deals with the theoretical framework and provides a literature review. we discuss the life-course approach, draw on the concepts of location-specifi c capital and place attachment, and focus on the infl uences of parental residence for their adult children’s residential choices. this is followed by a description of the data and method. the results encompass descriptive fi ndings and regression models. we also refl ect on the limitations of our study. finally, we discuss theoretical, empirical and methodological conclusions. 2 theoretical framework and literature review 2.1 residential locations and life-course following the life-course approach, an individual’s biography1 can be seen as consisting of several trajectories, such as mobility, employment, residential and household (de bruijn 1999: 156; willekens 1991: 19-21). in life-course approaches to residential choice, two aspects receive the most attention. first, key events and life transitions in one trajectory may induce a change in the residential biography, thus a residential move. at the same time, the other parallel trajectories restrict residential choice (mulder/hooimeijer 1999: 163). for instance, a child’s birth, a key event in the family and household biography, causes an increased need for living space and may trigger a residential move. at the same time, the new residence must be located close to the place of work, which means that the residential choice is conditioned by the employment biography. hence, the life-course approach focuses on the interdependencies between different biography trajectories. second, it is assumed that residential experiences over the life-course affect subsequent residential choices (blaauboer 2011: 1646; feijten et al. 2008: 153-156; van dam et al. 2002: 467). our study mainly contributes to further understanding the second aspect, which has been less studied than the fi rst. 2.2 hometown the hometown is usually the place where an individual has spent an important life phase and a great amount of time, and from where an independent residential biography often starts. regarding this place, we draw on the two theoretical concepts of place attachment and location-specifi c capital. these concepts are often discussed separately even though they are closely related (lewicka 2011: 226). location-specifi c capital is understood as “assets that are more valuable in their current location than they would be elsewhere” (davanzo 1981: 46). growing up in 1 we are aware of the conceptual difference between life-course and biography, but here we use these terms interchangeably. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner110 a certain place, children and adolescents build such assets. this primarily refers to friendships and family relations (social capital which has a large portion of locationspecifi c capital). but it also includes any kind of local knowledge, such as of the local labour market, housing market, or leisure or shopping facilities. residential decision-making within an independent household is usually biased towards the hometown, as the greatest assets are located there. these were built in the childhood and adolescence and are tied (mostly) to the parents and depend on their past residential decisions. leaving the place of childhood and adolescence often means forgoing the benefi ts of proximity to parents and other kin, and the economic and social value of hometown networks (løken et al. 2013: 286). a move to a new place can be seen as an investment involving transaction costs, including information costs and uncertain outcomes (davanzo 1981, 1983). in contrast, moving back to or within the hometown may imply faster adjustment after the move, as previous activity patterns can be easily re-established. thus, moving but staying in proximity to the hometown also means lower transaction costs. in contrast to this socio-economic point of view, place attachment deals with affect, emotion and feeling (low/altman 1992: 4). psychological processes based on individual experiences in places during childhood, adult life or signifi cant events in life may create place attachment (low/altman 1992: 4). those individual experiences often involve social interactions with others, e.g. family members, kin, partners, friends, schoolmates, colleagues and neighbours, creating lasting memories and linking individuals to places and people.2 place attachment interrelates with the individual’s place identity (hernandez et al. 2007: 317) and may foster self-esteem, self-worth, and self-pride (low/altman 1992: 10). regarding the spatial level, tuan (1975) describes cities as “centers of meaning” (p. 156). he expects cities to be very likely targets of attachment, as they are clearly delineated and worth labelling (tuan 1975: 157; lewicka 2011: 212). several studies prove a strong place attachment to cities rather than to the intermediate neighbourhood and city district level (hernandez et al. 2007: 317; hidalgo/hernandez 2001: 279; lewicka 2010: 42). both location-specifi c capital (especially social capital) and place attachment are mostly built through social interactions. having resided at a place often (but not necessarily) leads to high location-specifi c capital and strong place attachment, as evidenced by bonaiuto et al. (1999: 344-345) and brown et al. (2003: 268). thus, from an economic and emotional point of view, living in the hometown seems to be benefi cial despite possible limitations in the labour market. nonetheless, there is no unidirectional causality, which means that place attachment and location-specifi c capital may also lead to a longer length of residence and fewer moves. 2.3 union formation and residential locations of couples union formation (cohabiting or marital) is a signifi cant event in both partners’ residential biographies. unions are often formed around the same time as other life 2 note that negative experiences may create negative place attachment, too. residential location choices of couples ... • 111 events, e.g. graduating from school, fi rst or new employment, or a child’s birth. while it is argued that cohabitation is chosen in uncertain or unstable life situations with an unclear immediate future, marrying seems to be more strongly associated with stability and certainty (guzzo 2006: 402; duvander 1999: 712-713). from this point on, residential decisions are made jointly, depending on the bargaining power of both partners. this power depends on socio-economic status, associated with level of education, employment and age, as well as gender role beliefs (cooke 2008: 172; smits et al. 2003: 611-612). research has confi rmed the male partner’s dominant bargaining position in residential decisions (bielby/bielby 1992: 1256-1259). especially dual-earner households face the challenge of residential decisions involving a trade-off between both partners’ employment and income opportunities (smits et al. 2003: 611-612; abraham et al. 2010: 889). even though we do not mainly focus on the gendered perspective of residential decisions, we briefl y introduce bargaining theory here as it helps understand and interpret the decisions jointly made by both partners. 2.4 the birth of a child and residential location at family formation the birth of a child, especially of the fi rst child, is a signifi cant event in an individual’s and couple’s family and household biography and is strongly associated with residential decisions (michielin/mulder 2008: 2787-2788). with the anticipation of a child’s birth, housing requirements often change and residential aspirations become more important. even though residential decisions are always constrained by economic circumstances, the housing and labour market and other life-course trajectories, the residential decision at family formation is considered to be more self-determined, conscious and rather long-term (thomas et al. 2016: 585; feijten et al. 2008: 156). it is associated with an increased demand for housing space (lersch 2014: 141) and home ownership (beer/faulkner 2009: 47-48). requirements regarding the neighbourhood environment may change and lead to a residential decision towards a suburban environment (gerber 2011: 273-274). social ties, especially to the partner’s parents, become more important, as they commonly provide caregiving (blaauboer et al. 2011: 608; michielin/mulder 2007: 673). especially dual-earner families face the challenge of childcare and employment. 2.5 adults’ parents’ residential location the infl uence of parental residential locations on an adult individual’s residential location has been studied widely, mostly by focusing on the geographical distance between parents and their adult children. in most studies the units of analysis are individuals (chudnovskaya/kolk 2017; kolk 2017; van den broek et al. 2014; isengard 2013; mulder/van der meer 2009; michielin et al. 2008; michielin/mulder 2007; mulder/cooke 2009; rogerson et al. 2007). only very few studies have examined the residential distance between couples (as the unit of analysis) and both partners’ parents (blaauboer 2011; løken et al. 2013). some studies focus on the distance between elderly parents and their adult children as a function of the elderly parents’ • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner112 care needs (lundholm 2015; van der pers et al. 2014; van der pers/mulder 2013; bordone 2009; malmberg/pettersson 2007; hank 2007). less attention has been paid to the role of young parents’ need for childcare, with the exception of løken et al. (2013). close proximity is a precondition for face-to-face contact and for the provision of support such as childcare. in line with the hypothesis of male dominance in residential choice, it has been shown that heterosexual (married) couples live closer to the man’s parents than to the woman’s (løken et al. 2013: 292; blaauboer et al. 2011: 603). having children increases the proximity to parents (lawton et al. 1994: 63; løken et al. 2013: 302). generally, this refers to both sets of parents (blaauboer et al. 2011: 604). however, having young children decreases the distance to the female’s parents, but not to the male’s parents (blaauboer et al. 2011: 604-607). this may mean that couples rely more on the support of the woman’s parents when it comes to childcare. higher education is associated with greater intergenerational distance (kolk 2017: 9, 12; lawton et al. 1994: 63). for couples, higher education of either partner increases the distance to both sets of parents. men’s education is found to be more relevant than women’s and more relevant for the distance to men’s parents (blaauboer et al. 2011: 604-606; løken et al. 2013: 302). a higher age of the couple is also associated with longer distances. the distance increase is larger to the male’s parents than to the female’s parents. this indicates that after an initial dominance of the socio-economic position of the male partner, the female’s family ties get more important and females seem to gain more bargaining power in residential decisionmaking (blaauboer et al. 2011: 607). kolk (2017: 6) shows that after the child leaves the parental home, distance increases between the parents and the child gradually, fl attening out when the child reaches the age of 27. couples living in an urbanised area have been found to be more distant to both parents (blaauboer et al. 2011: 606). couples move farther from their parents living in rural locations than from parents living in urban locations3 (løken et al. 2013: 302). while lawton et al. (1994: 63) found that homeowners are more likely to live within a one-hour distance from their parents than non-homeowners, blaauboer et al. (2011: 607) did not fi nd homeownership to have a signifi cant effect on the distance to parents. considered overall, we expect the following from the literature. residential location choices should be infl uenced by both partners’ residential biography and life events, marital status, employment, age, education (and income), the bargaining positions of both partners, social and especially family networks. externally, this is constrained by the labour and housing markets (pricing and political conditions). 3 this holds for women and highly educated men. residential location choices of couples ... • 113 3 data 3.1 survey design and data collection the data used in this study was collected through a paper-based questionnaire. the survey focus is on daily travel and holiday trips, but rich information on residential, employment and family biographies was included as well. the information was retrospectively collected from a sample of fi rst-year students in spatial planning at tu dortmund university, their parents and grandparents. the data encompasses unique information on both the life-course and family members outside the household, which is not provided by other panel surveys such as soep and pairfam.4 first-year students were asked to fi ll out the questionnaire for themselves and, if possible, to interview their parents and one maternal and one paternal grandparent.5 from 2007 onwards, the survey has been carried out every year (scheiner et al. 2014). the data used is in trend form, with retrospectively collected information on the life-course. this paper considers the data gathered from 2007 to 2012. in the fi rst fi ve years, participation in the survey was compulsory, with a response rate of over 90 percent. in 2012, students participated voluntarily (due to a change in the examination regulations), and the response rate thus dropped to around 20 percent (döring et al. 2014). see footnote 6 for more information. 3.2 information collected on residential biographies the information on the residential biography can be divided into two parts. the fi rst part contains the data relevant until setting up a household of one’s own. it includes information on the place where childhood and adolescence were mainly spent, more precisely the municipality name (free text response), its size (number of inhabitants classifi ed in seven categories, self-rated by the respondent) and country. it is important to highlight that the respondents had to defi ne this place subjectively. thus it is unclear what age the respondent was when they lived there, how long they lived there and which other characteristics the place had. in the interest of simplifi cation, the main location of childhood and adolescence is hereafter referred 4 soep (german socio-economic panel) does not provide information on family members outside the household. pairfam (panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics) does not encompass such rich information on the residential biography of the couples’ parents. 5 the students were asked to choose the grandparent to be interviewed by applying the lastbirthday method. we nevertheless expect the interviewed family members to be biased towards married and younger parents and grandparents, who live closer to the student and to whom the student feels more emotionally tied. hence, there should be selection bias in the data we use towards those members of a generation whom the student feels more emotionally tied to. these ties are, however, not directly relevant, as our analysis considers the ties between parents and grandparents. what is more, the events our study refers to happened decades prior to the data collection. nontheless, there may be bias to the extent the students‘ ties depend on ties between parents and grandparents, and affect the sample selection. this may lead to slightly overestimated family tie effects. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner114 to as the hometown. moreover, the place of birth, the number of moves in childhood and adolescence and the main person(s) with whom a respondent grew up are recorded. the second part starts from the last residential location before setting up a household of one’s own and ends at the time of data collection. for a maximum of 12 residences, the year of relocation, the municipality name and municipality size are gathered, along with other attributes not relevant here. 3.3 sample the dataset contains information on 960 families. each family consists of up to fi ve persons from up to three generations. the youngest generation in the dataset is represented by students (954 individuals). the middle generation encompasses 926 females and 861 males. the oldest generation is made up of 812 females and 482 males6 (döring et al. 2014). in this paper, the analysis is limited to the family formation phase. the units of analysis are couples of the middle generation, as most of the students have not yet reached the family formation stage. hereafter they are referred to as the couple (cohabitating or married), female/male partners or just females and males. the family ties included in the analysis refer to ties between the middle generation and the oldest generation, hereafter referred to as the couples’ parents (i.e. students’ grandparents). on average, the investigation period is the late 1980s, when the middle generation started a family. the females are born in 1959 on average (std. dev. 4.8), the males in 1956 (std. dev. 5.8). the couples’ parents’ average year of birth is 1931 (std. dev. 7.0), with mothers and the females’ parents being slightly younger. a descriptive analysis of sociodemographics shows differences from the national averages in age distribution, level of education and nationality. these deviations could be attributed to the survey design, which defi nes the sample based on the students. however, despite these differences, general social developments in german society such as the expansion of education, barriers in the educational system and increasing female participation in the labour force can also be observed in the dataset (döring et al. 2014). due to the survey design, the respondents’ residential locations are biased towards the ruhr area (and north rhine-westphalia) compared to the german population. the ruhr area is characterised by high population density, accessibility, a high density of educational facilities, large job and housing markets which may increase the likelihood of staying in the place of origin compared to more remote regions. for this region, our dataset shows characteristic residential biographies.7 even though 6 88 percent of all participating students interviewed both parents, 8 percent interviewed only their mother, 2 percent only their father and 2 percent did not interview any parent. 58 percent of the students interviewed two grandparents, 20 percent interviewed one grandparent, and 23 percent did not interview any grandparent. 7 encompassing flight and displacement from today’s poland during wwii and labour migration in the subsequent decades. residential location choices of couples ... • 115 it is not representative of the german population as a whole, it covers a large population in a highly populated region. 4 method 4.1 logistic regression and split half method we use logistic regression models to estimate the following two dependent variables: a) couple lives in female’s hometown at family formation (yes=1/no=0) b) couple lives in male’s hometown at family formation (yes=1/no=0) for model validation, we rigidly apply the split half method. for this purpose, the sample is randomly divided into two halves based on the families at the beginning of the project (n = 480 families for each sample). the fi nal model presented is developed with one half of the sample (training sample, trained model) as a result of an iterative process. the second half of the sample is used to test the previously developed model (validation sample, validation model). in the social sciences, this approach is not widely used. it is more common practice to develop a model step by step, adjusting it to the data used. as the model building process is often not accurately documented, it remains unclear whether the model presented was strictly derived from the theory or was chosen out of a great number of model variations. models may vary by the way the included variables were processed in advance, the type and set of independent variables or other model specifi cations. researchers may tend to choose the model which confi rms their hypotheses or/and allow model building to be strongly driven by data. such procedures are statistically incorrect (if not validated with an independent sample), and may lead to a signifi cance bias in published results (arlot/celisse 2010; steyerberg et al. 2001; snee 1977: 420). we present the trained models (see models a in table 3 and table 4) and validation models (see models b in table 3 and table 4) for each of the abovementioned dependent variables. 4.2 variables as noted above, the unit of analysis is the couple and thus information on both partners is required. moreover, both partners’ parents’ residential locations are included, so only cases with one female’s parent and one male’s parent are considered in the analyses. this reduces the number of cases from 960 to 317 (169 in the training sample and 148 in the validation sample). the strong reduction is mainly due to deceased or otherwise inaccessible grandparents and (to a lesser extent) parents. identifying joint children most of the couples in the dataset have joint children (at least the student who interviewed them). some of them formed their union later in life, e.g. in a second mar• janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner116 riage after having children with other partners. each respondent individually stated their number of children and year of birth. we used this information combined with the years of marriages and divorces to identify whether the couple has joint children and when they were born. this ensured that both partners were linked in a particular point in time and that the event of a child’s birth appeared in both partners’ lives at the same time. defi ning the family formation phase defi ning a point in time as the family formation phase is not as easy as it seems. we carried out descriptive analyses on the number of moves and length of residence in relation to the fi rst joint child’s birth. relocations are most commonly made in the year of the fi rst joint child’s birth or shortly before, rather than after, the fi rst joint child’s birth. the number of moves decreases rapidly after the fi rst child’s birth. similar results are found by michielin/mulder (2008) and kulu (2008). households with small children (up to the age of 7 years) on average remain in the place of residence more than 10 years after a relocation, which is rather long compared to moves made without children and with older children. similar results have been found by feijten et al. (2008: 153-155). combining these results, we defi ne the family formation phase as a point in time two years after the fi rst joint child’s birth. we assume that by this time most households have relocated as they have adapted to a child’s birth and stay at the location they have moved to for a long period. furthermore, a two-year-old infant needs intensive childcare, which can be provided by family members outside the household. identifying joint households and residential location a couple with a two-year-old joint child does not necessarily live in a joint household. unfortunately, there is no information on household size and composition in the residential biographies collected. we assume that two non-divorced partners stating the same municipality lived in the same joint household.8 in case a residential relocation was carried out in the year of family formation, the location to which the household moved is defi ned as the location at family formation. out of 317 cases, 290 couples are identifi ed as having at least one joint child and living in the same household two years after their fi rst joint child was born (158 in the training sample and 132 in the validation sample). coding the residential locations the respondents stated a great number of different locations that required coding. this was undertaken within the federal republic of germany at the municipality level using the territorial status of 31 march 2011 and the 12-digit offi cial municipality key (regionalschlüssel) from the federal statistical offi ce. places abroad were 8 this can be further supported by correlations between two partners‘ attributes of residential location (location within the municipality and location within the municipality district). residential location choices of couples ... • 117 coded as far as possible on the nuts-3-level. the dependent variables were created based on the coded places. variables on residential biography residential biography infl uences can have multiple facets. we basically consider the length of residence in the hometown and the number of moves made in the past. we calculated the respondent’s length of residence in their own hometown (table 1; l4, l7 and l10, l13). in addition, we consider the respondent’s length of residence in their partner’s hometown (l5, l6; l8 l11, l12, l14) as we assume both partners’ place attachment and location-specifi c capital are taken into account in the couple’s residential location choice. we are aware that length of residence does not directly measure place attachment and location-specifi c capital. we rather use these two theoretical concepts to interpret and understand the found effects. as stated in section 2.2, we expect direct links between place attachment and locationspecifi c capital on the one hand, and length of residence on the other. the length of residence9 in the hometown over the whole life-course until family formation (l4, l5, l10, l11) is comprised of the length of residence until setting up a household of one’s own (l6, l12) and the length of residence from setting up a household of one’s own until family formation (l7, l8, l13, l14),10 as residential decisions are made differently in these two time periods (dependent on parental decisions vs. independently with a household of one’s own). the respondent’s length of residence in their hometown until setting up an independent household is not included in the analyses, and thus not listed in table 1 as these variables show low variances. the corresponding partner’s variables (l6 and l12) are strongly associated with the couple growing up in the same hometown. as described above, less information has been collected on the respondents’ residential biographies before they set up an independent household. however, due to the survey design some of this information can be reconstructed using the complementary information of the parents as they shared a household with their child during this time period. the procedure and the quality of the reconstructed data are addressed in albrecht et al. (2017).11 9 we calculated the absolute length of residence in years. we also tested the relative length of residence by calculating the share of the years spent in the hometown of all years possible (i.e. the age at family formation, the age at setting up a household of one’s own and the years from setting up a household of one’s own until family formation. 10 l4 = female’s length of residence in female’s hometown (not in table 1) + l7 l5 = l6 + l8 l10 = male’s length of residence in male’s hometown (not in table 1) + l13 l11 = l12 + l14 11 the minimum number of years spent in the own hometown (l4 and l10) is zero, which may be surprising. this is due to the complementary data used for the reconstruction and applies only to very few cases. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner118 the number of moves (l15, l16) is generally associated with a higher probability of having moved to another place and the gained ability of dealing with new circumstances after a move. family tie variable all respondents were asked to state with whom they predominantly grew up. we assume family ties between the respondents and their parents even in cases where respondents did not state that they predominantly grew up with the parent who participated in the questionnaire. this refers to a very small number of cases (4 out of 290 both for the females and males). the parents mostly (still) live in the respondent’s hometown (86 percent of the female’s parents and 88 percent of the male’s parents). in some cases, parents-inlaw live in a respondent’s hometown. the vast majority of these cases also have their own parents living in the same place. hence, we created one variable considering both partners’ parents (l17, l18). it should be noted that the variable “female’s and male’s parents live in female’s hometown” (l17) is related to the male’s length of residence in the female’s hometown until setting up a household of his own (l6). conversely, the variable “female’s and male’s parents live in male’s hometown” (l18) is related to the female’s length of residence in the male’s hometown until setting up a household of her own (l12). socio-demographic variables the age and level of education strongly correlate between both partners. hence, we merge both partners’ information into one variable for a couple’s average age and maximum level of education (l19 and l20). we expect age to have a negative effect on living in someone’s hometown, as it implies having more time for moving to another place. it may also be linked to a more advanced occupational career and thus more moves made for job reasons. respondents with high levels of education are more likely to relocate for job reasons due to the highly specialised labour market, and thus they are less likely to live in their own or their partners’ hometown.12 spatial variable due to the small number of cases, the original seven categories of the hometown population size are summarised into three according to municipality population types by bbsr (2015). we assume growing up in a major municipality leads to a higher probability of living there at a later life phase, as short-distance moves do not involve leaving the municipality due to its larger area. please note that municipality size is associated with greater labour market access and a tighter housing market. 12 note that level of education is measured at the time of the survey and not at family formation. residential location choices of couples ... • 119 li n e n m in m ax m ea n / s td . % d ev . l1 d ep en d en t: c o u p le li ve s in f em al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n 15 5 0 1 0. 50 l2 d ep en d en t: c o u p le li ve s in m al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n 15 2 0 1 0. 58 l3 .. . l en g th o f r es id en ce [ ye ar s] in f em al e’ s h om et ow n … l4 fe m al e’ s … o ve r th e lif eco u rs e u n ti l f am ily f o rm at io n 14 1 0 37 22 .0 7 7. 94 l5 m al e’ s … o ve r th e lif eco u rs e u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 12 2 0 39 13 .1 4 13 .5 2 l6 m al e’ s … u n ti l s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h is o w n 13 0 0 37 9. 93 11 .6 9 l7 fe m al e’ s … f ro m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h er o w n u n ti l f am ily f o rm at io n 15 2 0 15 3. 84 4. 11 l8 m al e’ s … f ro m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h is o w n u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 13 2 0 18 3. 38 3. 95 l9 .. . l en g th o f r es id en ce [ ye ar s] in m al e’ s h om et ow n … l1 0 m al e’ s … o ve r th e lif eco u rs e u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 11 8 0 40 23 .5 2 9. 34 l1 1 fe m al e’ s … o ve r th e lif eco u rs e u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 13 8 0 35 13 .1 0 12 .2 7 l1 2 fe m al e’ s … u n ti l s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h er o w n 14 0 0 30 9. 29 10 .3 9 l1 3 m al e’ s … f ro m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h is o w n u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 12 9 0 18 3. 88 3. 90 l1 4 fe m al e’ s … f ro m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h er o w n u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 14 8 0 15 4. 06 4. 01 l1 5 fe m al e’ s n u m b er o f m o ve s fr o m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h er o w n u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 15 8 0 9 2. 55 1. 68 l1 6 m al e’ s n u m b er o f m o ve s fr o m s et ti n g u p a h o u se h o ld o f h is o w n u n ti l f am ily fo rm at io n 14 9 0 10 2. 56 1. 99 l1 7 fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s p ar en ts li ve in f em al e’ s h o m et o w n 14 2 0 1 0. 4 4 l1 8 fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s p ar en ts li ve in m al e’ s h o m et o w n 14 1 0 1 0. 43 l1 9 fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s ag e o n av er ag e at f am ily fo rm at io n 15 8 21 41 30 .4 0 3. 74 l2 0 co u p le h o ld s at le as t o n e u n iv er si ty e n tr an ce q u al ifi ca ti o n 15 8 0 1 0 .5 4 si ze o f f em al e’ s h o m et o w n l2 1 < 2 0, 00 0 in h ab it an ts 0 1 0. 33 l2 2 20 ,0 00 t o 1 00 ,0 00 in h ab it an ts 15 7 0 1 0. 22 l2 3 > 1 00 ,0 00 in h ab it an ts 0 1 0. 45 si ze o f m al e’ s h o m et o w n l2 4 < 2 0, 00 0 in h ab it an ts 0 1 0. 34 l2 5 20 ,0 00 t o 1 00 ,0 00 in h ab it an ts 15 3 0 1 0. 26 l2 6 > 1 00 ,0 00 in h ab it an ts 0 1 0. 41 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s o f a ll va ri ab le s u se d in t he lo g is tic m o d el s (t ra in in g sa m p le ) s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e in te rg en er at io na l m o b ili ty b io gr ap hi es d o rt m un d (v p l 20 13 ) d at as et • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner120 5 results 5.1 descriptive results before answering the research questions, we introduce some fi ndings which help us interpret and contextualise the follow-up results. the following descriptive results cover the entire sample (training and validation sample). females set up an independent household at the age of 21 (std. dev. 3) and males at 23 (std. dev. 4). compared to the german population in the same cohort, this is slightly younger (hullen 1998). as mentioned above, the time of investigation is around 1989 (std. dev. 3, range 1972 to 1995), when the couple formed a family (two years after the fi rst joint child’s birth). at this time, the couple is around 30 years old (std. dev. 4, range 21 to 41), females are on average 2 years younger than their partners. 2 percent of the females and 7 percent of the males stated that they did not set up an independent household until family formation, i.e. they were probably living in the parental home. the others moved twice on average before they resided at the location where they formed a family. about a quarter stated that they formed a family at the fi rst location they moved to with an independent household. at the time of investigation, on average the female’s parents are 58 years old whereas the male’s parents are 60. table 2 shows the results for answers to the fi rst research question. 181 out of 270 couples (67 percent) live in the hometown of at least one partner. 137 of all couples live in the female’s hometown and 146 live in the male’s hometown. 51 percent (n=138) of the couples face a potential location confl ict as they have different hometowns (see table 2). a similar number of married couples with their parents in different municipalities is stated in løken et al. (2013). 43 percent of these do not live in the hometown of either of the partners. for those living in the hometown of one of the partners, the male’s hometown is more likely to be chosen (32 percent compared to 25 percent). again, this result resembles other studies (løken et al. 2013: 295; blaauboer et al. 2011). couples with the same hometown are less likely to live in neither of the partner’s hometowns (23 compared to 43 percent). seven percent of the females (n=21) and 10 percent of the males (n=27) state dortmund as their hometown. 66 percent (females n=186 and males n=182) call another municipality in north rhine-westphalia their home. 18 percent of the females (n=52) and 16 percent of the males (n=45) grew up elsewhere in (mostly former west) germany and 8 percent (females and males) abroad. the shares of the couples who live in either the female’s or male’s hometown are the highest for dortmund, followed by elsewhere in north rhine westphalia. the shares for other municipalities in germany and places abroad are comparably low. this result is due to the sampling of students in dortmund. residential location choices of couples ... • 121 5.2 models to answer the second research question, we show the results of logistic regression models. building and choosing the fi nal models was challenging for several reasons. the sample size shrank enormously from 480 (each sample) to 158 (training sample) and 132 (validation sample). when testing multiple independent variables, the sample size fell below 100 cases. moreover, the independent variables highly correlate with each other. this applies to various variables of the same respondent (e.g. age at family formation and level of education) and to the same variables measured for respondents and their partners (e.g. level of education or length of residence). in this case, including numerous independent variables led to low model stability. consequently, high priority is given to model parsimony and stability. hence, in the following, we show several parsimonious models (rather than one comprehensive model).13 all models in table 3 and table 4 were developed with the training sample (models a) and tested afterwards with the validation sample (models b).14 for the validation model, the results of the signifi cance tests are presented without showing exp(b), as all models (except model 7 in table 3) indicate the effect in the same direction as the training models. all signifi cance tests were carried out one-tailed as couple lives in male’s hometown at family formation no yes total couple has different hometowns couple lives in female’s hometown at family formation no count / % 59 / 43 44 / 32 103 / 75 yes count / % 35 / 25 / 35 / 25 total count / % 94 / 68 44 / 32 138 / 100 couple has the same hometown couple lives in female’s hometown at family formation no count / % 30 / 23 / 30 / 23 yes count / % / 102 / 77 102 / 77 total count / % 30 / 23 102 / 77 132 / 100 total couple lives in female’s hometown at family formation no count / % 89 / 33 44 / 16 133 / 49 yes count / % 35 / 13 102 / 38 137 / 51* total count / % 124 / 46 146 / 54* 270 / 100 tab. 2: couples with different/same hometowns and living in the female’s/ male’s hometown (training and validation sample) * please note that the percentages do not match with table 1, as this table shows the numbers for the entire sample (traning and validation sample) and table 1 only for the training sample. source: own calculations based on the intergenerational mobility biographies dortmund (vpl 2013) dataset 13 please note that we use pooled data from six waves of a trend survey. we do not include the year of data collection as a control variable as there was no signifi cant effect of the year of survey on our outcome. what is more, the kruskal-wallis test does not show statistically signifi cant differences between the years in any variable. 14 models with the whole sample size will be provided by the authors on request. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner122 ta b . 3 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n m o d el s fo r liv in g in t he fe m al e’ s ho m et o w n m o d el s fo r fe m al es d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : co u p le li ve s in f em al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n si g . m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 te st † a) b) a) b) a) b) a) b) e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . ... l o r a t f em al e’ s h o m et o w n … fe m al e’ s … o ve r th e lc u n ti l f f + 1. 14 5 ** * ** * m al e’ s … o ve r th e lc u n ti l f f + 1. 11 4 ** * ** * m al e’ s … u n ti l s u h o f h is o w n + 1. 07 0 ** * 1. 06 4 ** 0. 97 0 fe m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h er o w n un ti l f f + 1. 50 3 ** ** * 1. 59 3 ** * ** * 1. 50 2 ** * ** * m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h is o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 32 9 ** ** 1. 28 8 * 1. 36 3 ** ** fe m al e’ s n u m b er o f m o ve s fr o m s u h o f h er o w n u n ti l f f 0. 63 3 ** ** * fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s p ar en ts li ve in f em al e’ s h o m et o w n + 10 .0 68 * n (y = 1) / n 54 /1 15 4 9/ 10 0 58 /1 22 52 /1 05 58 /1 22 52 /1 05 55 /1 18 49 /1 01 -2 ll 95 .4 40 74 .9 04 70 .8 19 45 .7 13 66 .9 73 37 .5 73 66 .2 98 4 4. 34 4 p se u d o r ² (c o x & s n el l) 0. 42 5 0. 47 1 0. 55 2 0. 61 4 0. 56 6 0. 64 2 0. 56 0 0. 61 2 p se u d o r ² (n ag el ke rk e) 0. 56 7 0. 62 8 0. 73 7 0. 81 8 0. 75 5 0. 85 7 0. 74 7 0. 81 6 p er ce n ta g e c o rr ec t 81 .7 83 .0 89 .3 92 .4 87 .7 93 .3 88 .1 92 .1 residential location choices of couples ... • 123 m o d el s fo r fe m al es d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : co u p le li ve s in f em al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n si g . m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 te st † a) b) a) b) a) b) e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . .. . l o r a t f em al e’ s h o m et o w n … m al e’ s … u n ti l s u h o f h is o w n + 1. 06 4 ** 1. 07 0 ** * 1. 06 9 ** * fe m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h er o w n un ti l f f + 1. 59 6 ** * ** * 1. 53 1 ** ** * 1. 53 9 ** * ** * m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h is o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 29 4 * * 1. 29 9 * ** 1. 35 4 ** * fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s ag e o n av er ag e at f f 0. 86 5 ** * co u p le h o ld s at le as t o n e u n iv er si ty e n tr an ce q u al ifi ca ti o n 0. 61 6 si ze o f f em al e’ s h o m et o w n < 2 0, 00 0 in h . 1. 48 5 ** ‡ 20 ,0 00 t o 1 00 ,0 00 in h . 6. 05 2 ** ‡ > 1 00 ,0 00 in h . re f n (y = 1) / n 58 /1 22 52 /1 05 58 /1 22 52 /1 05 58 /1 22 50 /1 02 -2 ll 67 .6 45 42 .8 04 70 .2 30 45 .2 04 65 .4 29 39 .6 74 p se u d o r ² (c o x & s n el l) 0. 56 4 0. 62 4 0. 55 4 0. 61 5 0. 57 2 0. 63 1 p se u d o r ² (n ag el ke rk e) 0. 75 2 0. 83 2 0. 74 0 0. 82 1 0. 76 3 0. 84 1 p er ce n ta g e c o rr ec t 89 .3 92 .4 88 .5 90 .5 87 .7 91 .2 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n a) tr ai n ed m o d el ( tr ai n in g sa m p le ) b) va lid at io n m o d el (v al id at io n sa m p le ) lo r le n g th o f r es id en ce ff fa m ily f o rm at io n re f re fe re n ce c at eg o ry lc lif eco u rs e in h . in h ab it an ts ‡ th e ef fe ct r ev er se s; e xp (b ) < 1 s u h se tt in g u p a h o u se h o ld ** * p < = 0 .0 10 ** p > 0 .0 10 a n d p < = 0 .0 50 * p > 0 .0 50 a n d p < = 0 .1 00 † fo llo w in g th e hy p o th es is t h e si g n ifi ca n ce t es ts a re c ar ri ed o u t o n eta ile d; a cc o rd in g to t h is , t h e si g n ifi ca n ce s ta te d in t h e ta b le d er iv ed fr o m a o n eta ile d t es t; d u e to t h e sm al l s am p le s iz e , α = 0 .1 is s p ec ifi ed s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e in te rg en er at io na l m o b ili ty b io gr ap hi es d o rt m un d (v p l 20 13 ) d at as et • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner124 m o d el s fo r m al es d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : co u p le li ve s in m al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n si g . m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 te st † a) b) a) b) a) b) a) b) e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . … l o r a t m al e’ s h o m et o w n … m al e’ s … o ve r th e lc u n ti l f f + 1. 06 2 ** ** * fe m al e’ s … o ve r th e lc u n ti l f f + 1. 10 3 ** * ** * fe m al e’ s … u n ti l s u h o f h er o w n + 1. 03 4 ** * 1. 01 7 ** * 0. 96 5 m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h is o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 32 9 ** * 1. 47 1 ** * ** 1. 30 5 ** ** fe m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h er o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 37 9 ** ** * 1. 40 7 ** * ** * 1. 38 7 ** ** * m al e’ s n u m b er o f m o ve s fr o m s u h o f h is o w n un ti l f f 0. 40 4 ** * ** * fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s p ar en ts li ve in m al e’ s h o m et o w n + 5. 38 6 * ** n (y = 1) / n 60 /1 10 42 /9 5 67 /1 20 43 /9 8 67 /1 20 43 /9 8 64 /1 16 42 /9 4 -2 ll 11 1. 94 4 73 .3 38 90 .0 27 61 .0 38 70 .3 69 43 .6 55 87 .0 62 54 .9 30 p se u d o r ² (c o x & s n el l) 0. 30 3 0. 45 2 0. 46 3 0. 52 7 0. 54 4 0. 60 4 0. 46 5 0. 54 6 p se u d o r ² (n ag el ke rk e) 0. 40 5 0. 60 5 0. 62 1 0. 70 6 0. 72 9 0. 80 9 0. 62 2 0. 73 1 p er ce n ta g e c o rr ec t 73 .6 80 .0 82 .5 84 .7 89 .2 89 .8 82 .8 88 .3 ta b . 4 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n m o d el s fo r liv in g in t he m al e’ s ho m et o w n residential location choices of couples ... • 125 m o d el s fo r m al es d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : co u p le li ve s in m al e’ s h o m et o w n at f am ily f o rm at io n si g . m o d el 5 m o d el 6 m o d el 7 te st † a) b) a) b) a) b) e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . e xp (b ) s ig . s ig . ... l o r a t m al e’ s h o m et o w n … fe m al e’ s … u n ti l s u h o f h er o w n + 1. 02 7 ** * 1. 03 0 ** * 1. 02 2 ** * m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h is o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 34 8 ** ** 1. 31 5 ** * 1. 36 4 ** * fe m al e’ s … f ro m s u h o f h er o w n u n ti l f f + 1. 42 5 ** * ** * 1. 37 9 ** ** * 1. 55 3 ** * ** * fe m al e’ s an d m al e’ s ag e o n av er ag e at f f 0. 84 2 ** * co u p le h o ld s at le as t o n e u n iv er si ty e n tr an ce q u al ifi ca ti o n 0. 39 0 ** si ze o f m al e’ s h o m et o w n < 2 0, 00 0 in h . 5. 53 0 ** 20 ,0 00 t o 1 00 ,0 00 in h . 9. 08 7 ** * > 1 00 ,0 00 in h . re f n (y = 1) / n 67 /1 20 42 /9 7 67 /1 20 43 /9 8 66 /1 19 42 /9 6 -2 ll 84 .6 58 58 .2 57 87 .0 87 59 .3 95 81 .1 50 58 .6 47 p se u d o r ² (c o x & s n el l) 0. 48 7 0. 53 6 0. 47 6 0. 53 5 0. 50 0 0. 53 2 p se u d o r ² (n ag el ke rk e) 0. 65 2 0. 71 9 0. 63 8 0. 71 7 0. 66 9 0. 71 3 p er ce n ta g e c o rr ec t 85 .8 84 .5 85 .0 85 .7 84 .9 86 .5 ta b . 4 : c o n tin ua tio n a) tr ai n ed m o d el ( tr ai n in g sa m p le ) b) va lid at io n m o d el (v al id at io n sa m p le ) lo r le n g th o f r es id en ce ff fa m ily f o rm at io n re f re fe re n ce c at eg o ry lc lif eco u rs e in h . in h ab it an ts ‡ th e ef fe ct r ev er se s; e xp (b ) < 1 s u h se tt in g u p a h o u se h o ld ** * p < = 0 .0 10 ** p > 0 .0 10 a n d p < = 0 .0 50 * p > 0 .0 50 a n d p < = 0 .1 00 † fo llo w in g th e hy p o th es is t h e si g n ifi ca n ce t es ts a re c ar ri ed o u t o n eta ile d; a cc o rd in g to t h is , t h e si g n ifi ca n ce s ta te d in t h e ta b le d er iv ed fr o m a o n eta ile d t es t; d u e to t h e sm al l s am p le s iz e , α = 0 .1 is s p ec ifi ed s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e in te rg en er at io na l m o b ili ty b io gr ap hi es d o rt m un d (v p l 20 13 ) d at as et • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner126 all hypotheses (derived from the literature and theoretical framework) were formulated in a one-sided manner (see table 3 and table 4, column sig. test). considering the small sample size, we reject the h0 hypotheses up to p < 0.1. please note that results on gendered aspects are obtained by comparing the models for females and models for males and the males’ and females’ variables included in the models. residential biography we started building the models with both partners’ lengths of residence in their hometown until family formation (see table 3 and table 4, models 1) as we expect residential biographies to be very inert. the effects are in the expected direction (+) and roughly equal in size. the longer both partners lived in the female’s/male’s hometown, the more likely the couple was to live in the female’s/male’s hometown at family formation. even though only two independent variables are included in the models, the pseudo-r² are quite high. this indicates strong bonds to the hometown over the life-course. the model fi t of the model for females (model 1 in table 3) is higher than of the model for males (model 1 in table 4). next, we replaced the total length of residence in the hometown with the length of residence at this place until and from setting up a household of one’s own (models 2 in table 3 and table 4). in the models for females, the female’s and male’s length of residence from setting up a household are signifi cant (model 2a and 2b in table 3). in the model for males, only the female’s length of residence from setting up a household shows a signifi cant effect in the training and validation models (model 2a and 2b in table 4). it is important to note that the details on one partner’s length of residence in the other’s hometown are unclear. due to the questionnaire design, it is not clear from the reported moves whether the partner moved to this place with an independent household (for example for work or educational reasons) and met their partner later, or the partner moved there in order to form a union with the other. but we can draw some conclusions from the stated reasons for relocation. these indicate that females are slightly more likely to move for partnership reasons.15 yet the male’s place attachment and location-specifi c capital may depend on the length of residence at that place, as the male’s variable almost achieves signifi cance in the validation model (model 2b in table 4), and shows signifi cance in all follow-up models. from the training models, it appears that for a couple living in the male’s hometown, the female’s length of residence at that place until setting up 15 20 percent of both males and females state a child‘s birth as the reason to move. other commonly reported reasons are partnership (marriage or cohabitation), homeownership and increased demand for housing space, which seem appropriate for the family formation phase. females state partnership reasons more often (25 percent compared to male’s 19 percent), whereas males report homeownership reasons more often (17 percent compared to female’s 13 percent). furthermore, the results indicate that males not living in their hometown are less likely to report partnership reasons than the same females. this may hint that females are more likely to be tied movers. it must be noted that a couple’s move may be reported with different reasons by the female and the male partner. social desirability bias may be relevant in this context as well. residential location choices of couples ... • 127 an independent household is insignifi cant (model 2a in table 4), while the male’s is signifi cant for living in the female’s hometown (model 2a in table 3). this would support the idea of a male-dominant bargaining position in the household’s residential decision-making process. but this interpretation is not supported by the validation models (models 2b in table 3 and in table 4), which show divergent signifi cance compared to the trained models. this points to the importance of the split-half approach. the model fi ts of models 2 are 0.1 higher than those of models 1. this indicates that the differentiation between lengths of residence in different life phases is reasonable. we take this as a basic model (model 2) to introduce one variable at a time (models 3 to 7). the number of moves from setting up an independent household is found to have a signifi cant effect for both males and females (models 3a in table 3 and in table 4) and is confi rmed in the validation models (models 3b table 3 and in table 4).16 the effect is as expected. the more moves the female has made, the less likely it is that the couple lives in her hometown (model 3 in table 3). the same applies to the models of males using the male’s number of moves (model 3 in table 4).17 although the number of moves and the length of residence in the hometown from setting up a household of one’s own weakly correlate with each other,18 length of residence remains signifi cant in models 3 (compared to models 2). this suggests two distinct effects from the length of residence and the number of moves. moves seem to weaken the tie to the hometown. experiencing and coping with moves may increase confi dence in being able to deal with future moves, leading to new residential locations outside the hometown. family ties in order to consider family ties, the variable on whether the female’s and male’s parents live in the female’s/male’s hometown was included. it is signifi cant in both trained models (models 4a in table 3 and in table 4) but is only confi rmed in the model for males (model 4b in table 4). the female’s family ties seem to have an infl uence on couples living in the male’s hometown, whereas no signifi cant effect of the male’s family ties is shown for living in the female’s hometown. this suggests that the female’s family ties are more important at the family formation stage, perhaps because the female’s parents are more likely to be trusted with childcare. adding these variables to the models leads to insignifi cant (and reverse) effects of the length of residence until setting up a household of one’s own. as mentioned before, this is due to a high correlation of these two variables. basically, the questionnaire used allows us to distinguish between the hometown (where the childhood 16 the number of moves was tested as a categorical variable to investigate how many moves matter. due to the small number of cases which are unevenly distributed in categories and unclear results, the number of moves was not implemented as a categorical variable. 17 the partner’s number of moves is not tested as there are no expected effects. 18 this is only signifi cant for the male’s variables. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner128 and adolescence was predominantly spent) and the parents’ residential location, but in most cases the data collected show the same place for both. although the question of how people make residential choices when their parents have left their hometown may be of interest, it cannot be answered here due to the small number of such cases in the dataset. age in line with the hypotheses, the couple’s average age at family formation19 has a negative signifi cant effect in all four models (models 5a and 5b in table 3 and in table 4). the older the couple is at family formation, the less likely it is that they live in the female’s or male’s hometown. this result fi ts the effects shown for the number of moves (models 3). it may be related to the more advanced occupational career of older couples who have previously moved away from their hometown for job reasons. it may also point to a smaller need for family support as an older couple might be more (fi nancially) independent. education it could be assumed that age refl ects another effect. people with a high level of education tend to be older at the birth of their child(ren) and are more likely to have left their hometown for educational or employment reasons. this interpretation, however, is not likely, as we tested the level of education at the couple level. holding at least one university entrance qualifi cation20 indicates an infl uence in the expected direction, but reaches signifi cance only in the trained model for males (model 6a in table 4). this is somewhat surprising, as we would expect highly skilled labour to need to move in order to meet labour market requirements. hometown population size an interesting result is observed for the hometown population size. the trained models (models 7a in table 3 and in table 4) indicate that growing up in mediumsized municipalities (20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants) leads to a higher probability of living there at family formation (compared to growing up in bigger municipalities). this is surprising and does not confi rm the hypothesis. this is even more surprising as dortmund has a population size of about 600,000 and thus falls into the category of the biggest population size. we would expect the results to be biased towards growing up in dortmund, leading to a higher probability of couples living there. in the females’ model, the effects reverse and thus support the hypothesis – even 19 we tried to include both partners’ ages, the age difference between partners and young age (here: the youngest 25 and 10 percent of couples), but none of these variables showed signifi cant and stable effects. 20 we attempted to include various variables such as level of education (categorical) for each partner, each partner’s university degree and one partner being more highly qualifi ed in the analyses. the variable “couple holds at least one university entrance qualifi cation” appeared to be the most stable. residential location choices of couples ... • 129 though they are not signifi cant.21 in the males’ model, the effects point in the same (positive) direction as those in the initial model (also not signifi cant). overall, we fail to reject the h0 hypotheses. one possible explanation is the infl uence of housing prices at the time or a strong wish for homeownership which could not be fulfi lled through residence in a large municipality such as dortmund. it could also indicate suburbanisation and families preferring smaller and less industrial municipalities due to the more child-friendly environment, especially at the time of family foundation for the data in question, which was around 1990.22 all follow-up models (models 3 to 7) show slightly higher pseudo-r² (higher increase in the models for males). all models for females show higher model fi t than models for males (except for percentage correctly predicted in model 2a). thus, females’ residential decisions are more predictable than males’. the model accuracies of the validation models are all greater than those of the corresponding trained models. the -2ll decreases in all models compared to the basic model indicate that the additionally added variable in every model has additional explanatory power. the signifi cances of the length of residence variables vary slightly between the models, but stay roughly at the same level as in the basic model. these seem to be stable effects in all model variations. comparing the female’s and male’s lengths of residence from setting up a household of one’s own among all models (models f and m), the female’s variable shows a stronger effect. on the one hand, this could speak against the male dominance hypotheses. on the other hand, it has to be noted that it is unclear which partner moved to form a union. 5.3 bias and missing information several factors could not be considered in our analysis due to the questionnaire design or small numbers of cases. as mentioned above, we could not provide deeper insight into the event of union formation. it is uncertain which of the partners moved (both, only female, only male), where they lived when they started a relationship, and how long they have been a couple. we did not collect data on marital status, as we found that the vast majority of the couples were married and the variable thus did not show enough variance. we did not consider the couple’s employment. it was not clear for the respondents whether maternity leave should be stated in the questionnaire. this mostly applies to the females and makes it impossible to identify dual-earner households for the time of family formation. we did not analyse the chronology, timing and sequences of other life events, which would be of great 21 we assume that the deviating results in both samples are caused by signifi cantly different variances of one covariate and multicollinearity. 22 due to the characteristics of the ruhr area (see section 3.3.) we would expect a positive effect of the ruhr area on living in one of the partner‘s hometowns. unfortunately, the survey design does provide a distinction between different regions. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner130 interest, but could not be considered due to the questionnaire design and number of cases. we also did not have any information on income. as described above, the residential locations are biased towards the ruhr area, a highly populated, polycentric metropolitan region. as such, it has a large labour and housing market, a wide range of educational facilities and high transport accessibility. 6 conclusions this paper studied residential location choices with respect to two questions. 1.) to what extent do people live in their hometown at family formation? we found that one-third of all couples live in neither of the partners’ hometowns. more than half of the others live in both partners’ hometown. if the couple lives in only one partner’s hometown, it is more likely to be the male’s hometown. 2.) which factors infl uence the choice of the hometown at family formation? the results show the high relevance of the life-course perspective. people maintain a strong bond to their hometown over the life-course. they are very inert, even over generations. the results provide evidence that the length of residence and number of moves have distinct and signifi cant effects, which have not been untangled in previous research. this suggests that place attachment and location-specifi c capital increase with length of residence and decrease with the number of moves, although we do not have direct evidence on emotional and economic ties. we conclude that more attention should be paid to life-course infl uences (e.g. places of origin or childhood roots) in demographic research. this may be relevant for other disciplines as well, such as the social sciences or even transport research. transport research places much emphasis on the residential environment (e.g., urban/suburban/rural), but neglects ties to particular places whose relevance emerges from the life-course and from social networks, although the social networks have gained importance in the fi eld in recent years (kim et al. 2018). we believe that this perspective could enrich discussions in this fi eld. what is more, age at family formation is negatively associated with living in the hometown. this may indicate more advanced occupational careers, higher levels of independence and less need for family support. the infl uence of the level of education and municipality size cannot be identifi ed. we assume that this is due to the study region, the ruhr area. in a polycentric metropolitan region with very high accessibility, it may be possible to stay in the hometown and still make use of higher education facilities and a large labour market within commuting distance. from a gendered perspective, on the one hand, living in the female’s hometown seems to be more pre-determined and less likely. on the other hand, the female’s experience with places of residence has a stronger infl uence on a couple’s residential choice. we do not fi nd clear evidence of the often-discussed male dominance on residential location choice despite the fi nding that couples more frequently choose the male partner’s place of childhood than the female partner’s. regarding this, we need to keep in mind that the respondents in our dataset are highly educated residential location choices of couples ... • 131 and mostly from an urban region and may therefore have less traditional lifestyles. another contributing reason may be the investigated life stage. previous research found the residential location in this life stage was more strongly dominated by females. we confi rm that the female’s parents’ residential location is more important than the male’s, proving women’s strong family ties at family formation. it is of further research interest how place attachment, location-specifi c capital and social ties interact and infl uence residential location choices. these concepts have been neither theoretically brought together and conceptualised nor empirically disentangled and analysed in depth. further light needs to be shed on union formation, as it often precedes family formation. other life-course trajectories and key events need to be considered too, such as employment and commuting needs, health, and social networks. the infl uence of the chronology, timing and sequences of other life events on residential decisions would be of great interest. analysis could be extended to other life phases (educational phases, children leaving home, retirement) and spatial levels (neighbourhood, region). the housing and labour market could be included as external factors infl uencing residential decisions as well. the split-half approach proved to be useful and meaningful to the results. some of the effects found in the training sample are not confi rmed by the validation sample. this shows how data-driven and misleading the models and hence the interpretation would have been without internal validation. the split-half approach and other model validation procedures (such as cross-validation, bootstrapping, jackknife etc.) are not standard practice in the social sciences. based on our experience with this method, we strongly endorse the application of statistical validation processes (döring 2018). more detail in the documentation of model development would also be helpful for the critical appraisal of results. even though we strongly recommend validation, we experienced its limitations: both samples are small in size. this, among other challenges, led to parsimonious models rendering it impossible to include all tested variables in one comprehensive model. small sample sizes make it necessary to trade off between model validation and higher levels of model complexity. acknowledgements this paper presents some results of the project “mobility biographies: a lifecourse approach to travel behaviour and residential choice”, which involves cooperation between three universities in germany and switzerland (tu dortmund university, goethe university frankfurt and eth zurich). this project was supported by the german research foundation (dfg – deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft, funding numbers sche 1692/1-1/2 and ho 3262/5-1/2). the corresponding author’s stay at the university of connecticut was supported by a research scholarship from the german academic exchange service (daad – deutscher akademischer austauschdienst). • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner132 references abraham, martin; auspurg, 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parallel careers. in: siegers, jacques j.; jong-gierveld, jenny; imhoff, evert (eds.): female labour market behaviour and fertility. a rational-choice approach. population economics. berlin/heidelberg: springer berlin heidelberg: 11-31 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-765506_2]. yahirun, jenjira j. 2014: take me “home”: return migration among germany’s older immigrants. in: international migration 52,4: 231-254 [doi: 10.1111/imig.12009]. • janna albrecht, lisa döring, christian holz-rau, joachim scheiner136 date of submission: 11.09.2018 date of acceptance: 29.04.2019 janna albrecht (). ils – research institute for regional and urban development, research group mobilities and space. dortmund, germany. e-mail: janna.albrecht@ils-forschung.de url: https://www.ils-forschung.de/en/the-ils/ils-staff/albrecht-janna/ lisa döring, prof. dr. christian holz-rau, prof. dr. joachim scheiner. tu dortmund university, faculty of spatial planning, department of transport planning. dortmund, germany. e-mail: lisa.doering@tu-dortmund.de, christian.holz-rau@tu-dortmund.de, joachim.scheiner@tu-dortmund.de url: http://www.vpl.tu-dortmund.de/cms/en/folder_with_phd_studies/lisa/index.html http://www.vpl.tu-dortmund.de/cms/en/staff/department_head/holz-rau.html http://www.vpl.tu-dortmund.de/cms/en/staff/scientifi c_staff/scheiner.html http://www.vpl.tu-dortmund.de/cms/en/staff/scientific_staff/scheiner.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation: a projection to 2060 german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation: a projection to 2060 david gutmann, fabian peters abstract: the problem of declining membership in germany’s churches has been apparent for almost half a century. however, few scientific studies have investigated the respective influences of demographic and church-specific phenomena, as well as the potential impact if present trends continue. to answer these questions, we use a cohort component model and project the membership of each german catholic diocese and protestant regional church until 2060. thus, for the first time we present a projection of church members for each of the 27 catholic (arch-) dioceses and the 20 protestant regional churches, as well as for the entire evangelical church and the roman catholic church in germany. we collected data from dioceses, protestant regional churches and the federal statistical office. under the assumptions made, the results suggest a continued decline in membership and that by 2060 the number of church members would be half the number of 2017. protestant church membership would have shrunk slightly more than catholic church membership. we can conclude that church-specific factors (baptisms, leaving, and joining the church) would have a stronger influence on declining numbers than demographic factors. moreover, demographic change would have a greater impact on registered church membership than on the total population. the proportion of christians in the population would sharply decrease. although in 2017 54.4 percent of the population belonged to one of the two major churches, according to the projection model, only 31.1 percent would be church members in 2060. as our results are not predictions but projections using trend analysis, we show how changed conditions would affect the projected development in five scenarios. keywords: church membership · demographic change · multi-region cohortcomponent model · multi-state population projection · christianity · roman catholicism · protestantism comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 3-34 (date of release: 22.01.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-01en3 • david gutmann, fabian peters4 1 introduction since the early 1970s, protestant regional churches and roman catholic dioceses in germany have continuously lost members. at the same time, the share of the population that is not a member of either church is increasing. from 1995 to 2017, it has risen from 32.0 to 45.6 percent (sekretariat der deutschen bischofskonferenz 2018, table 7.24, own calculation). the number of church members fell during the same period by a total of 10.79 million, from 55.64 to 44.85 million.1 the development of church membership not only influences the churches’ organisation of pastoral care and services, but also the development of church revenue, in particular the church tax. it also raises the question of the long-term financial viability of church personnel and real estate. moreover, the question of how the number of catholics and protestants in germany will develop in the long term is not only a concern to the churches. in addition to their ecclesiastical duties, churches have taken on numerous social tasks instead of the state, in accordance with the so called subsidiarity principle provided for in the german basic law (constitution). they operate kindergartens, adult education institutions, hospitals and care facilities. including their charities caritas and diakonie, the churches are among the largest employers in germany. if the proportion of the population who are members of one of the two churches continuously decreases, the institutional relationship between society as a whole and the churches will have to be redefined in the long term. against this background, we present a projection of the number of members for the evangelical church2 and roman catholic church in germany, and for the first time, for each of the 27 catholic (arch-) dioceses and the 20 protestant regional churches. assuming present trends continue, we analyse the impact of demographic as well as church-specific factors, such as baptisms, leaving, and joining the church on future membership development. in the past 10-15 years, membership figures either for all of germany or for individual protestant regional churches or catholic dioceses were occasionally analysed, projected and published (for example, see hackett et al. 2015; benz/raffelhüschen 2013; benz et al. 2011 or eicken/ schmitz-veltin 2010). thus far, however, there has been no overview of nationwide developments, which take into account regional and denominational characteristics, as well as the development of the total population. to ensure comparability with the state population projection, we mainly considered the assumptions concerning the demographic development from the federal government’s 13th coordinated population projection (statistisches bundesamt 2015). we structure this article as follows: in section 2, we describe the institutional background and the recent development in church membership in germany, and place them in the european context. specifically, we address the demographic as 1 this article refers exclusively to the members of the 20 protestant regional churches and 27 catholic dioceses in germany. 2 the association of the 20 german lutheran, reformed and united regional churches (landeskirchen) forms the evangelical church in germany (evangelische kirche in deutschland; ekd). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 5 well as church-specific determinants on which the number of church members depends, and derive from their previous development the hypotheses that we want to test. in section 3, we present the methodology for the projection model. we describe our cohort component model and explain the data used, as well as the underlying assumptions. in section 4, we present the results. in section 5, to illustrate the impact of individual determinants on the overall development, we examine five scenarios with changed assumptions. in section 6, we discuss the hypotheses, and conclude the article. 2 church membership in germany 2.1 religious affiliation and religiosity in 2017, slightly more than half of the german population was a member of either the catholic or protestant church. the two denominations are almost the same size: 23.31 million germans are catholic; 21.54 million are protestant. about 2.40 million germans were members of other christian denominations (kirchenamt der ekd 2018a: 4). beyond christianity, the second-most widespread faith is islam, with an estimated 4.7 million followers in 2017.3 registered church membership is brought about by baptism. although in germany baptisms predominantly take place during childhood, they can take place at any age. moreover, not all parents who are church members baptize their children. furthermore, church members may leave the church of their own volition. people also have the option of switching their registered church membership to another denomination, or to rejoin after deregistration.4 in germany, rules on membership are within the constitutionally protected autonomy of the churches. therefore, internal church law regulates joining and leaving the church, as well as exclusion from the church. deregistration from church membership does not affect baptism as an ecclesiastical act. this is why people who rejoin the church are not baptized again (petersen 2017: 91-92). a baptized individual is registered in the records of the local parish, and this parish informs the state-run registration office about the individual’s membership. because state laws give churches the status of public corporations, they enjoy some privileges, such as establishing religious education at state schools or offering diaconal services in the public welfare system. a particular feature of being a public corporation is the right to levy church taxes on members, which is an income tax surcharge regulated by the state income tax law.5 therefore, paying church tax is compulsory for every church member in germany with a taxable 3 the number of muslims in germany is not recorded statistically. estimates vary from 4.4 to 4.7 million people. see halm and sauer (2017: 16) and hackett et al. (2015: 237, own calculation). 4 in the following, we use the term joining the church for both types of registration. 5 depending on the federal state in germany, the tax rate amounts to 8 percent or 9 percent of the income tax (petersen 2017: 157-161). the state authority collects the church tax revenue and forwards this money to the christian churches (petersen 2017: 11-14). • david gutmann, fabian peters6 income. if an individual resigns from church membership, the state tax authority stops levying the church tax. the proportion of catholics and protestants in the total population varies widely by region for historical reasons (sekretariat der deutschen bischofskonferenz 2018, table 1.11). in 2017, three out of four church members of a catholic diocese or a protestant regional church lived in western or southern germany.6 because of the anti-church communist regime in the former german democratic republic, only 7.2 percent of all church members live in eastern germany. overall, the members of protestant regional churches are distributed more evenly throughout germany. in contrast, 88.7 percent of catholics live in southern or western germany. with a lower proportion of christians in the total population, the share of people leaving the church from all churches tends to be higher, and the baptism rate (i.e., the ratio of baptisms of children to births) is lower than in regions with a high christian share in the total population. the church register shows that the number of catholic diocese and protestant regional church members in germany dropped steadily from 1995 to 2017, from 55.64 to 44.85 million. this decrease corresponds to an overall decrease of 19.4 percent, or 0.9 percent per year since 1995. the share of registered catholics or protestants in the total german population decreased from 68.0 percent in 1995 to 54.4 percent in 2017. in europe, the absolute christian population increased from 1910 to 2010. however, the proportion of the total population fell from 94.5 to 76.2 percent (hackett et al. 2011: 15). pollack and rosta (2015: 93) used the european values study to investigate the development of religious affiliation in various western european countries. the authors show that religious affiliation declined between 1981 and 2008. burkimsher (2014: 442-443) examined the available data on trends in religious attendance across 24 european countries, with different methods for assessing current trends. she concluded that depending on the method, the indicators “often do not fully agree on whether there is growth, decline, or stability.” for some years, there has been disagreement among scientists about the continuous decline in religiousness. the increase in the number of members actively leaving the church, the decrease in (predominantly catholic) priestly ordinations and the loss of social relevance have been interpreted as clear signs of secularisation (pollack/rosta 2015: 89). beyond advocates of the secularisation theory, some scholars do not foresee a continuous decline in the future, but rather a revival of religion (pollack/rosta 2015: 89-97). the pew research center has calculated that the number of christians in europe7 would decline from 553.28 million in 2010 to 454.09 million in 2050 (hackett et al. 2015: 147), and for germany from 56.55 million in 2010 to 41.64 million in 2050 6 we give a tabular overview of the regional assignment of (arch-)dioceses, protestant regional churches and federal states in the appendix. 7 the pew research center’s list of european states includes 50 countries and territories. these are countries that, according to the definition of the united nations, belong to the geographical region “europe” and for which the united nations population division provides general population estimates. german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 7 (hackett et al. 2015: 237, own calculation). according to their calculations, the proportion of christians in the european population will fall from 74.5 to 65.2 percent, and the christian share of the german population from 68.7 to 59.3 percent (hackett et al. 2015: 147, 237). for the present study it is important to distinguish between registered church membership and religiosity. based on the 2005 generations and gender survey, hackett et al. (2011: 80, own calculation) estimated that there were approximately 56.55 million catholics and protestants8 in 2010. this number corresponds to a share of 68.7 percent of the german population. that same year, 48.55 million people were officially registered as members of the two major churches, so that the registered share made up 59.4 percent of the total german population. the difference between the survey-based estimate and the church registers of 8.00 million people reveals the empirical weakness of survey data. this is why we use the churches’ register data for our projection and focus on the registered membership of the roman catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches in germany, not on religious trends in society. this difference becomes clear when looking at church attendance: the proportion of service attendees in all registered church members is 4.7 percent for the protestant churches (kirchenamt der ekd 2018a: 8, 15, own calculation) and 9.8 percent for the catholic dioceses (sekretariat der deutschen bischofskonferenz 2018: table 7.3). 2.2 determinants in 2017, the two major christian churches in germany lost 660,000 registered members. the decline was based on demographic factors (births,9 deaths, and the migration of church members) and church-specific factors (baptisms, leaving, and joining the church). 2.2.1 fertility and mortality fertility and mortality are important variables in the calculation of future population figures. similarly to other western european societies, germany is experiencing a double ageing process: low birth rates since the 1970s and a steadily increasing life expectancy (fetzer 2005: 3). the current total fertility rate – measured per calendar year – in germany has risen since 1995, from about 1.4 to about 1.6 children per woman. the relationship between religion and childbearing varies across european countries, as peri-rotem (2016) analysed for britain, france and the netherlands: “these findings suggest that fertility differences by religion also depend on the particular social context of religious institutions in each country.” frejka and westoff (2008) showed differences 8 according to the 2005 generations and gender survey, there are another 1.14 million orthodox christians and more than 550,000 other christians in germany (hackett et al. 2011: 80). 9 i.e. children born by a protestant or catholic mother. • david gutmann, fabian peters8 in fertility between christians and non-christians according to the european values study results. in general, they show that religiosity is associated with higher fertility, with religiousness measured by the frequency of church attendance and the importance of religion in daily life (frejka/westoff 2008: 27-28). the authors found higher fertility for christian (especially protestant) women than for women with no religion, as well as for those with an orthodox affiliation (frejka/westoff 2008: 22). our findings based on the german state income tax statistics (statistisches bundesamt 2018d), however, show virtually no difference among protestants, catholics and people who are not registered church members. the income tax statistics are a census, and contain information on the taxable income of 52.68 million inhabitants of germany, who are referred to as tax cases (statistisches bundesamt 2018e). thus, these statistics include almost the entire population aged 20-65 years. as table 1 shows, the average number of children of non-denominational tax cases is higher than that of denominated tax cases. this evaluation shows that registered church membership does not necessarily allow statements about religiousness. the higher value of tax-admissible children for non-denominational tax cases can probably be explained by deregistrations of catholic and protestant parents predominantly aged 25 to 35 and thus an older age structure of the churches compared to the total population. for our projection model, we therefore assume no fertility differences between church members and the total population. concerning mortality, several studies do not support differences between members of the two major churches and the total population in europe. lerch et al. (2010: 235) show for switzerland that members of the catholic and protestant churches have an intermediate level of mortality. non-members of a christian church have the lowest life expectancy. in contrast, life expectancy among members of other christian churches is highest (lerch et al. 2010: 235). goujon et al. (2017: 56) also do not assume any differences in mortality between church members and nonmembers for their study on church membership in austria until 2046. they justify their approach with unavailable data. in the case of germany, there is also no data available. tab. 1: average number of tax-admissible children per tax case, 2014 number of tax cases tax cases number of average number tax-admissible with admissible without tax cases of tax-admissible children children admissible children children protestants 4,798,539 2,934,018 8,166,401 11,100,419 0.43 catholics 5,326,062 3,222,269 8,784,843 12,007,112 0.44 others 7,958,377 5,003,949 12,064,516 17,068,465 0.47 total 18,082,977 11,160,235 29,015,760 40,175,995 0.45 source: own calculation based on statistisches bundesamt (2018d). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 9 2.2.2 migration in a special evaluation for the two major churches, the federal statistical office calculated confessional migration flows from the local-level migration statistics to the church organisational structures (statistisches bundesamt 2018c). we distinguish between internal and external migration. internal migration refers to migration of catholics (and protestants) within germany from one diocese (and protestant regional church) to another. external migration refers to migration beyond the borders of germany. for germany as a whole, internal inflows equal internal outflows. depending on the catholic diocese or protestant regional church, internal migration flows can lead to either gains or losses in membership. for catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches with a lower denominational share than others, internal migration flows lead to a positive migration balance because immigrants are more likely to belong to the corresponding denominations than emigrants. figure 1 shows the differences between the protestant and catholic churches with respect to their external migration balance.10 10 the difference between protestant or catholic church members who move to germany and those who move away from germany, and officially register their church membership. to what extent non-germans who are not aware of a church tax liability from their country of origin state their confession upon entry is not the subject of this study. for christian internal migration, it cannot be ruled out that, at least in the past, before joining the state-automated reporting system (osci xmeld), religious registration was not, or was not stated correctly, in the framework of relocations within germany. fig. 1: balance of catholic and protestant external immigration and emigration, 1991-2015 -50.000 0 50.000 100.000 150.000 200.000 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 year protestant church roman catholic church balance of immigration and emigration source: own calculation based on statistisches bundesamt (2018c). • david gutmann, fabian peters10 the high external migration numbers for protestant christians before the turn of the millennium was due to the migration of german descendants from countries of the former eastern bloc (so-called russia germans). these migratory movements are now completed, and should not play a role in the long-term projection (eicken/ schmitz-veltin 2010: 582). migration from southern and eastern europe has strongly influenced catholic external migration flows since 2011. these migrants are mainly from the predominantly catholic countries of italy, croatia, poland, and spain. however, as demographic trends in these european countries are similar to those in germany, the potential for people of migrant age will also decline in the coming decades (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 38). strong refugee migration in 2014 and 2015, and changes in the survey method in 2016, limit the comparability of the database in these years. for this reason, we consider the period between 2000 and 2013 without the year 2008, which was affected by a statistical adjustment. in this period, the external migration surplus of germany amounted to 2.22 million people. of these individuals, 0.13 million (5.9 percent) were members of the protestant church, and 0.51 million (23.0 percent) of the catholic church. 2.2.3 baptisms as baptism establishes church membership, baptism behaviour is crucial to the development of registered membership. in the early 1990s, almost 300,000 catholic and 300,000 protestant baptisms took place in germany each year; in 2017, there were only 170,000 catholic and 176,000 protestant baptisms. however, the absolute number of baptisms is not very meaningful. a more meaningful indicator is the ratio of the number of catholic (protestant) baptisms of children and the total number of children a catholic (protestant) mother gives birth to in one year.11 if this indicator is 100 percent, the development of baptisms of children corresponds to that of the live births by catholic or protestant mothers. if the indicator is lower, subsequent age cohorts of catholics (protestants) are smaller than they would be simply due to the demographic trend. if it is higher, subsequent age cohorts are larger than the number of children female church members give birth to in one year. this indicator varies regionally between the 27 catholic (arch-)dioceses and 20 protestant regional churches, between 40 percent and 106 percent.12 although these regional baptism rates vary widely, they have been constant since the beginning of the 2010s in the respective catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches (verband der diözesen deutschlands 2018; kirchenamt der ekd 2018b; own calculation). 11 according to german law, children up to the age of 14 are not allowed to choose their own membership in a church. this is why we understand baptisms up to the age of 14 as baptisms of children. 12 we compare all children a protestant or catholic mother gives birth to with all baptisms of children up to the age of 14 which take place in the same year. thus, the numerator and the denominator do not relate to the same time, but form a good benchmark. german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 11 compared to the baptisms of children, baptisms of adults have less influence. in 2017, 85.9 percent of all baptisms took place during the first six years of life. the two denominations show differences in baptism behaviour. although 93.8 percent of all catholics are younger than six when they are baptized, only 78.2 percent of all protestants are baptized before the age of six. another 14.7 percent of protestant baptisms take place in the 10 years thereafter until the 16th birthday – 9.7 percent between the ages of 12 and 15, around the age of confirmation. in the catholic church, we observe a slight increase in baptisms at the age of communion, around the ninth year of life. in total, 4.5 percent of all catholic baptisms take place between the ages of 7 and 15. however, catholic confirmation, which takes place at about the same age as protestant confirmation, does not lead to an increase in baptisms (verband der diözesen deutschlands 2018; kirchenamt der ekd 2018b; own calculation). 2.2.4 joining and leaving the church in addition to baptisms, the balance of people who join or leave the church also influences membership development. in both denominations and in all german regions, more people leave the church than join. annually, about 30,000 people join the protestant church and 10,000 people join the catholic church. in both denominations, the number of people joining the church has hardly changed over time. in contrast, figure 2 shows that the number of members leaving the church deviates from year to year. however, it follows similar trends in both churches, and in all regions of germany at different levels. the number of members leaving the church is higher in the protestant church than in the catholic church. the balance of people joining and leaving the church is crucial for the development of registered membership. if we also take baptisms of adults into consideration, the results of the two denominations are more similar. the almost 20,000 protestant baptisms of adults clearly outweigh the approximately 3,000 catholic baptisms of adults, so that the balance of people leaving the church and those joining the church, including baptisms of adults, is about the same. the ratio of members leaving the church and church members fell steadily from the early 1990s (protestant: 1.3 percent, catholic: 0.7 percent) until 2005 (0.5 percent, 0.4 percent), but has been rising again since then, peaking in 2014 (1.2 percent, 0.9 percent; sekretariat der deutschen bischofskonferenz 2018, tables 7.24 and 7.25). since 2014, the ratio has remained relatively high. particular events strongly influenced the development: the introduction of the solidarity surcharge in 1991, debates regarding the history of sexual abuse in the catholic church in 2010,13 the public controversy around the generous lifestyle of the bishop of limburg in 2013, and the introduction of the amended deduction of the church tax on capital gains in 2014. in addition, there are regional disparities. the church-leaving ratio is particularly high in large cities, such as berlin, hamburg and munich, but the ratio is lower 13 the sexual abuse scandal in 2010 only led to an increase in catholics, but not of protestants, leaving the church. • david gutmann, fabian peters12 in regions with a high proportion of registered church members among the total population. if we calculate the ageand gender-specific number of members leaving the church in relation to the respective cohort strength, we observe differences in deregistration behaviour. for the whole of germany, figure 3 shows an above-average likelihood during the working life between the ages of 20 and 60. the highest likelihood of leaving the church is approximately between the 25th and 35th year of life. in all catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches, more men than women leave the church (riegel et al. 2019: 182). 2.2.5 summary: effects of determinants if we consider the influence of the individual determinants coherently, we can intuitively explain the proportion of catholic and protestant church members in the total population by age. in 2017, 54.4 percent of the overall german population was a member of one of the two major churches. however, figure 4 shows that church affiliation varies greatly between the different age cohorts. the increasing church affiliation up to the age of 15 is based on a biographical effect. the denominational fig. 2: development of people joining and leaving the church, 1991-2017 -400,000 -350,000 -300,000 -250,000 -200,000 -150,000 -100,000 -50,000 0 50,000 100,000 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 year baptisms of adults catholic church people joining catholic church members leaving catholic church baptisms of adults protestant church people joining protestant church members leaving protestant church people joining and leaving the church source: kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 13 shares grow due to baptisms in childhood and adolescence. as most baptisms take place not by birth, but during infancy, we see a particularly strong increase to about 40 percent during the first three years of life. by the age of 15, additional baptisms lead to a slower increase to approximately 60 percent of the total population. up to the age of 25, the proportion of church members stagnates. in the following 15 age cohorts, the level decreases to about 50 percent of the total population. this change is mainly due to deregistration. especially in the case of protestant regional churches, the decline would be even stronger if joining and baptisms of adults did not counteract the decline. from the age of 40, the share of people registered as members of one of the two churches continuously rises again. at the age of about 70 years, the proportion reaches the level of 15-25-year-olds. more than two-thirds of the people older than 70 in 2017 were members of one of the two major churches, and three quarters of those older than 80. the high proportion of church members in the older population is because these age cohorts were almost all baptized as infants, and only very few left the church. 2.3 hypotheses we examine whether and how the decline in membership will evolve in the long term and how it would affect the overall population if present trends continue. if fig. 3: ageand gender-specific ratio of leaving the church in 2017 ratio of members leaving the church 0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 + age groups average ratio of members leaving the churchmen women source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018). • david gutmann, fabian peters14 we follow the argument of the churches, the decline in membership is mainly due to the general population development, that is, demographic changes. thus, in a 2018 press release, the ekd calculated that more people joined the church than actively left. it compared the number of people who were baptized or joined the church with the number of people leaving the church (i.e. deregistering). however, the high number of protestant deaths is responsible for the overall membership decline (kirchenamt der ekd 2018c). this argument establishes connections between different factors which we must disentangle. in addition to natural effects of demographic changes (i.e., the difference among deaths, births, and the migration balance) at the individual decision-making level, church-specific factors, such as baptisms and people joining and leaving the church, play a role. registered church membership does not begin at birth, but at baptism. consequently, church-specific factors compound the decline due to demographic changes. this is why we test hypothesis 1: hypothesis 1: if the trend of recent years continues, the protestant and catholic churches in germany will continuously lose members by 2060 in both absolute terms and relative to the total population of germany. if we distinguish between demographic and church-specific decreases in membership, the following picture emerges in absolute numbers for 2017: 651,000 deaths of protestant or catholic church members, compared to 415,000 children given birth to by a protestant or catholic mother (verband der diözesen deutschlands 2018; fig. 4: proportion of registered church members in the population by age in 2017 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 age proportion of protestant and catholic church members source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 15 kirchenamt der ekd 2018b; own calculation). we add to this number the external migration of church members, who made up a positive balance of 28,000. thus, due to demographic factors, the decline in membership was 208,000 in 2017. this decrease represented 0.5 percent of all church members. concerning the total population, there were 785,000 births and 933,000 deaths (statistisches bundesamt 2018a). we additionally observe a positive external migration balance of 415,000. this leads to a population increase of 267,000 people, or 0.3 percent of the total population. while the churches are facing a demographic loss, the overall population has a demographic surplus. the contrary development is mainly because only a fraction of migrants registers as members of one of the two christian churches. from this finding, we derive hypothesis 2: hypothesis 2: even if we only take into account the development of demographic factors in recent years, the decline in membership of christian churches will be greater than the decline in the total population. concerning the decline in church membership, we must also pay attention to church-specific influences. for illustrative purposes, we use the data for 2017: 365,000 members leaving the church are up against 36,000 people joining and 21,000 baptisms of adults. in addition, despite 414,000 confessional births, only 324,000 baptisms of children took place. due to church-specific influences, the protestant and catholic churches in germany lost 398,000 members (0.9 percent). church-specific factors had nearly twice as much impact in 2017 as demographic factors, which leads us to hypothesis 3: hypothesis 3: if the trend of recent years continues, church-specific factors will have a greater impact on membership development than demographic factors. finally, for the varying intensity of church-specific factors, the distribution of church members throughout germany in particular depends on internal migration flows of church members. we observed the highest losses because of internal migration in catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches with a high share of the population belonging to the corresponding denomination. moreover, we can show that catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches which benefit from high internal migration (such as the dioceses of hamburg and berlin) have the highest losses due to church-specific influences. thus, the catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches benefit only to a limited extent. from this finding, we derive hypothesis 4: hypothesis 4: if the trend of recent years continues, regional disparities in the distribution of protestants and catholics in germany will weaken by 2060. 3 data and method we project the membership of each protestant regional church and roman catholic diocese in germany, as well as the remaining total population, from the base year 2017 until 2060. in line with the multi-state population projection by the federal statistical office of germany, our projection is based on the cohort-component method with deterministic assumptions (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 27). this is the most • david gutmann, fabian peters16 widely-used method, based on the work of cannan (1895), bowley (1924) and whelpton (1928) (george et al. 2004: 571). leslie (1945) developed the component method in matrix notation as it is used today. the cohort-component method, along with trend extrapolation and structural models, are among the objective population projection methods that are to be distinguished from subjective methods. these objective methods, which are also used together, make a selection necessary, for example with regard to the data source, projection method, and assumptions (george et al. 2004: 562). rogers (1967, 1975) further developed the cohort-component model into a multi-regional model. rees and wilson (1977) complemented this system and introduced a model that describes population stocks and flows based on accounts, thereby using the benefits of accounting principles. based on this work, we use a multi-region cohort-component model. in addition to the demographic factors, we supplement the church-specific factors. due to the large number of subpopulations – 27 catholic dioceses and 20 protestant regional churches – that are in interaction with each other, we develop a multi-church cohort component model with interregion rates and regional immigration and emigration flows. 3.1 data we use data from the federal statistical office, as well as from the protestant regional churches and roman catholic dioceses. we calculate the total population of germany in the base year 2017 with help of the population update from the federal government (statistisches bundesamt 2019). we use assumptions on fertility, external migration balance and further life expectancy from the 13th coordinated federal population projection. we choose a middle-case scenario of the variants containing fertility and external migration balance, and assume a combined permanent total fertility rate of 1.5 and a total external migration balance of 150,000 (statistisches bundesamt 2015). we assume a linear increase in life expectancy for men from 78.3 to 84.8 years from 2017 to 2060, and for women from 84.6 to 88.8 years.14 according to the findings described in section 2.2.1, we assume no differences in fertility and life expectancy between members and non-members of the two churches. church-specific data on the ageand gender-specific distribution of members who were baptized, joined, and left the church in the dioceses and protestant regional churches come from the registries of the 20 protestant regional churches and 27 catholic dioceses. the technical procedures and data collection of these registries are very different. therefore, the nationwide coordinated data collection was associated with complex data processing. nearly all of the 47 dioceses and regional churches provided an ageand gender-specific distribution of their members and of the people who left, joined, and were baptized in the years 2013-2017. therefore, the present data are unique in scope and level of detail. 14 further life expectancy at birth corresponds to variant l1 of the multistate population projection by the german federal statistical office. german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 17 3.2 projection model the starting point is the genderand age-specific structure of the total population pt in the base year t : the exponent f (m) describes the female (male) population. pt,α represents the number of people in period t who are α years old. the maximum age to reach is 100, so that the row vector pt contains 202 entries. we divide the total population pt at time t into the sum of the members of the 28 roman catholic dioceses rci,t, the 20 protestant regional churches pci,t and the remaining population rpt. 15 the remaining population represents the share of the total population of germany who belongs to neither of the two major churches: the membership of the catholic church in germany is the sum of the members in the 28 catholic dioceses . the nationwide protestant membership corresponds to the sum of the members of the 20 regional protestant churches we project each subpopulation until the year 2060. the procedure is the same for the catholic dioceses and the protestant regional churches. for calculating the membership of a diocese rci in the following year, we correct for baptisms (brci,t), mortality, people joining the church (erci,t), members leaving the church (drrci,t) and migration (mrci,t) during the year so that: brci,t, erci,t, drrci,t and mrci,t are row vectors, structured correspondingly to pt. lmt is the valid leslie matrix in t that contains the ageand gender-specific fertility ratios (fr) and survival probabilities (sp).16 the 202x202-matrix is structured as follows: �∑ ���������� ) �∑ ���������� ��� 15 concerning the catholic church in germany, we consider the official district of oldenburg, which actually belongs to the diocese münster, separately along with addition to the 27 (arch-) dioceses. this is why we handle 28 catholic subpopulations. 16 the technical procedure we follow is based on bonin (2001: 245-249). �� � ������ � � � ����� � � � ������� � ����� � � � ����� � � � ������� �. 1 �� ������� �� ��� ������� �� ��� � ���. 2 ������� � ����� � ����� � ������ � ������ � ������ � �������. 3 • david gutmann, fabian peters18 let sp�i,t,α be the probability that a woman belonging to diocese i and aged α years in period t survives until the beginning of period t + 1. �r�t,α is the number of girls a woman aged α years gives birth to during period t and who survive until the beginning of period t + 1. accordingly, is the survival probability for men and �rmt,α is the fertility rate for boys. as we set all fertility rates to zero, no zero-year church members initially live in period t + 1. by multiplying by the leslie matrix, we automatically correct rci,t+1 for deaths. for survival probabilities, we use federal state-specific values (statistisches bundesamt 2018b).17 if a protestant regional church or a diocese is located in several states, we weigh the survival probability according to the respective proportion of members in the federal states. the course of the catholic dioceseand protestant regional church-specific likelihood of leaving the church is very similar nationwide, albeit as described in section 2.2.4 at a different level. for the projection, we assume that the catholic dioceseand protestant regional church-specific likelihood of leaving the church remains constant at the increased level of 2013-2017 in the long term. to calculate deregistrations, we use the arithmetic mean of the deregistration rates of 2013-2017. we weigh these deregistrations with the ageand gender-specific distribution of deregistrations in 2017, so that: drrci,s is the total number of members leaving the church in diocese i in year t, i.e. rci,t is the total number of members of diocese i in year t. we calculate the number of people joining the church accordingly. ����� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 0 ������0� 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 0 0 ��������� 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 ������� 0 ⋯ 0 ��������� 0 0 ⋯ 0 ������� 0 0 ⋯ 0 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ������� 0 ⋯ 0 0 ��������� 0 ⋯ 0 ������� 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 �������0� 0 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ��������� 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ �������00� 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ������0� 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 �������� 0 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋱ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 0 ��������� 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 ⋯ 0 0 0 0 ⋯ �������00� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � . 4 17 upon reaching the maximum age, we assume a survival probability of 0 percent. see bonin (2001: 245). ������� � ����� ∗ ����� ∗ ���������� �������������� ∗ � � ∑ �������������������� � ���������� . 5 german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 19 for the calculation of baptisms, we distinguish between those of children up to the age of six and those of people older than seven. for baptisms up to the age of six, we use the number of births (crci,t+1), calculated with age-specific fertility: let �r� be a column vector with 101 entries, which contains the age-specific fertility rates for girls , where is greater than zero only for women of childbearing age between 15 and 49 years. we construct �rm accordingly for male live births. let rc�i,t be a row vector containing, according to the structure of rci,t, only the first 101 entries (and thus, only the female share) of the membership structure. we calculate baptisms of 0 to 6 year olds as genderand age-specific shares in the total fertility rates within a diocese. as in the case of people joining and leaving the church, we use a five-year average of baptisms. because there are no actual figures for births, we provisionally use only the calculated births of the base year to determine the proportion of baptized births, so that: for male baptisms, we proceed accordingly. the ratio of baptisms of children to the total number of children a catholic (or protestant) mother gives birth to seems to be relatively stable over the course of time (see section 2.2.3). therefore we assume that the ratio is permanently constant. to determine the number of baptisms after the age of seven, we calculate them according to the procedure for people joining and leaving the church. we divide the total migration into internal and external migration, so that: for internal migration of catholics (and protestants), we use the migration flows of 2013 between the 28 catholic dioceses (and 20 protestant regional churches). these flows were measured in a special evaluation of the federal statistical office for the two major churches. this evaluation provides the migration flows of catholics (and protestants) between catholic dioceses (and protestant regional churches). the internal migration of a diocese corresponds to the difference between immigration from other dioceses and emigration to other dioceses, so that ��������� =���* ������ , ��������� =���* ������ . 6 7 ������� � � �∑ ����� ������� ∑ ��������� ���������� � ����� . q�� ����� 8 . 9 ������ ��� � �∑ � ��������� ∑ �������������� � ����������� ������ ∑ � ��������� ∑ �������������� � ���������������� � � ����. 10 • david gutmann, fabian peters20 represents the absolute number of migrations from diocese j to diocese i in 2013. we construct mint as a row vector according to pt. it represents the ageand gender-specific distribution of the internal migration flows. to determine external migration, we adopt a multi-year average from 2000-2013 without 2008, which was affected by a statistical adjustment. for the calculation of immigration into the protestant church, we assume the arithmetic mean permanently. as described in section 2.2.2, the potential of catholic migrants will decline over the coming decades, so that for catholic immigration, we expect a linear decrease of 65 percent of the baseline between 2025 and 2040. we divide the absolute figures according to the age and gender of external migration to the federal republic of germany in 2015. to project the remainder of the total population, we first multiply rpt by the valid leslie matrix for the entire german population in t, and then adjust for church-specific factors such as baptisms and people joining and leaving the church. thus, the remaining population results in the following year as: mrp,t describes external migration, which we adjust for denominational migration flows, so that: 4 projection results 4.1 membership development if the trend of recent years continues in the future, by 2060, the number of church members in germany will be almost half that of today. figure 5 shows how the number of protestants, catholics and the remaining population might develop in the long term. from 1995 to the mid-2020s, the number of the total population, with slight fluctuations, remains relatively stable at around 82 million. until 2060, we observe a continuous decline to 72.95 million. the picture is different for registered church members. although they numbered 55.64 million in 1995, by 2017, they reduced by 10.79 million (to 44.85 million). until 2060, the number would continue to decrease to 22.65 million. thus, the absolute number of church members in 2060 would be about 50.5 percent of the 2017 count. for the catholic church, this would mean a decrease from 23.30 million church members in 2017 to 12.15 million in 2060 (a decrease of 11.15 million). in the same period, the number of protestants would fall from 21.53 million to 10.50 million (a decrease of 11.03 million). the decline in the absolute number of registered church members is reflected in the proportion of protestants and catholics in the total population. due to demographic changes, the number of the total population would also decrease, but much ����� � ��� � ��� ���������� � ������ � ������� �� ��� ���������� � ������ � ������� �� ��� ������. 11 ����� � ����� ��� � ∑ ������ �������� � ∑ ������ �������� . 12 german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 21 less dramatically. due to church-specific factors such as baptism, deregistration, and joining the church, the share of registered church members in the total population would continue to decline steadily. in 2060, only 31.1 percent of the population would be registered as protestant or catholic. in 1960, however, the proportion of registered church members in the total west german population was about 93.7 percent (sekretariat der deutschen bischofskonferenz 2018, table 7.24, own calculation). 2024 marks a turning point in terms of church membership in germany: from then on, it is no longer a majority of the people living in germany registered with either of the two major churches. by 2030, the annual relative losses would amount to about 1.4 percent of the total members. thereafter, the relative loss would grow to 1.8 percent annually by 2060. looking at the decline of church members in the year 2060, we observe only minor differences between the two denominations. compared to 2017, the catholic church would lose 47.8 percent by 2060, a slightly lower share than the protestant church, with 51.2 percent. the slower decline is due to the greater catholic immigration from abroad. when external migrations are not taken into account, the difference in membership decline between the catholic church (-51.2 percent) and the fig. 5: projected development of total population and church members in germany, between 1995-2060 0 10.000.000 20.000.000 30.000.000 40.000.000 50.000.000 60.000.000 70.000.000 80.000.000 90.000.000 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055 2060 year roman catholic church members protestant church members remaining population 50% of the total population 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 34% 32% 31% 29% 27% 25% 23% 22% 20% 19% 18% 17% 15% 14%34% 33% 31% 30% 29% 27% 26% 25% 23% 22% 21% 19% 18% 17% 32% 35% 38% 41% 44% 48% 51% 54% 57% 59% 62% 64% 67% 69% 81.8 82.3 82.4 81.8 82.2 82.4 82.0 81.2 80.1 78.9 77.6 76.1 74.5 73.0 population in millions source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). percentages describe the corresponding proportion of the total population. • david gutmann, fabian peters22 protestant church (-52.9 percent) decreases. the different age structure is another distinguishing feature. as the average age of church members increases, there are less members of younger age cohorts. because young people between the ages of 25 and 35 have a higher likelihood of leaving the church, the annual proportion of people leaving the church in all registered members would subsequently fall from 0.8 percent to 0.7 percent during the projection period. the rate of people joining the church would remain almost constant until 2060. a larger decline can be observed in baptisms. while 42.3 percent of all children born in germany in 2017 were baptized, this rate would be only 22.5 percent in 2060. the absolute number of baptisms would decrease by almost 60.3 percent. due to the greater life expectancy and the lower tendency to leave the church, the proportion of women among church members would increase slightly, from 53.8 percent to 54.4 percent, during the projection period. 4.2 age structure in 2017, church members were older than the total population. moreover, the more recent birth cohorts are also relatively small. with reference to the total population, we find that fewer church members are under the age of 20 (15.9 vs. 18.3 percent of the total population), there are fewer church members between the ages of 20 and 64 (58.2 vs. 60.2 percent) and more are older than 65 years (25.9 vs. 21.5 percent). this distribution varies greatly between the individual catholic dioceses and protestant regional churches. figure 6 shows the projected changes in age structure of church members in germany up until 2060. in the base year 2017, the largest age cohorts are the baby boomers between the ages of 45 and 65 years old. these age cohorts will shift up in the coming years. three bulges of the membership structure stand out: baby boomers age 45 to 65, their parents age 75 to 85 and their children age 20 to 35. at the beginning of the projection period, these children are in their reproductive ages. this explains the currently increased number of births in germany (the baby boomers’ grandchildren). between 2025 and 2035, baby boomers will reach retirement age. then there is the strongest shift between the working population aged 20 to 64 and the age group over 64. the age structure for the year 2040 illustrates the long-term nature and persistence of population-dynamic processes (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 5). not only the children, but also the grandchildren of the baby boomers are visible. another 20 years later, in 2060, the children of today’s baby boomers will be around 70 years old. due to the assumed baptism and deregistration behaviour (fig. 6), we can no longer detect the grandchildren of the baby boomers who would be about 40 years of age in 2060; in the state population of 2060, we can clearly observe these cohorts. to reveal the expected age process, we divide the age distribution in figure 6 into three age groups. in 2017, 25.9 percent of church members were over the age of 64; this share was higher among the protestant church (28.0 percent) than among the catholic church (24.1 percent). at the end of the projection period, 40.4 percent of german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 23 registered church members would be older than 64 years. the difference between the denominations would continually decrease. in 2060, 41.1 percent of catholics and 39.5 percent of protestants would be older than 64 years. consequently, the catholic church would lose relatively more members after 2060. we estimate a similar, but less pronounced, increase in the total population for the over-64 age group, from 21.5 percent in 2017 to 32.5 percent in 2060. the number of working age people in germany between the ages of 20 and 64 would fall by 25.7 percent, from 49.67 million in 2017 to 36.86 million in 2060. the number of church members of working age would fall from 26.08 million to 10.66 million during the same period (-59.1 percent). these changes in membership structure would influence the churches’ pastoral services. the changes would also have an impact on church tax revenue, and from the perspective of the churches as employers, on the labour supply. fig. 6: projected age structure of protestants and catholics in germany, 2017, 2040, and 2060 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 0 200,000 300,000 400,000 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2017 men 2040 men 2060 men 2017 women 2040 women 2060 women age 100,000 source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). • david gutmann, fabian peters24 4.3 regional distribution in 2017, more than three-quarters of catholics and protestants in germany lived in a catholic diocese or protestant regional church in western or southern germany. this general distribution within germany would also persist over the projection period. all four regions will lose church members. losses would be somewhat lower in southern germany and strongest in eastern germany. according to our calculations, in the year 2060 only 1.49 million christians would live in eastern germany (see table 2). based on the state population in this region of germany, this number would correspond to a christian share of about 12.4 percent in the total population.18 the starting point and the development is different for the two denominations. in 2017, the members of the protestant church in germany are spread evenly with the exception of eastern germany. in contrast, only 2.63 million of the 23.30 million catholics belong to a diocese in northern or eastern germany, respectively. the remaining 20.66 million catholic church members live in western or southern germany. because of this unequal distribution, the losses would be lower in the 18 as we do not project the total population in the federal states but only in the whole of germany, we refer to variant 2 of the state population projection for regional analysis of the total population in 2060. see statistisches bundesamt (2015). tab. 2: projected regional distribution of church members in germany, 2017 and 2060 north east west south total 2017 2060 2017 2060 2017 2060 2017 2060 2017 2060 church members in millions 7.59 3.71 3.21 1.49 17.30 8.45 16.73 9.00 44.83 22.65 in relation to 2017 (in percent) 48.9 46.4 48.9 53.8 50.5 in percent of the total population 51.5 29.1 22.3 12.4 67.0 36.9 62.4 35.4 54.3 31.0 protestant in millions 5.77 2.66 2.40 1.01 7.30 3.58 6.06 3.25 21.53 10.50 in relation to 2017 (in percent) 46.1 42.1 49.1 53.6 48.8 in percent of the total population 39.1 20.8 16.7 8.4 28.3 15.6 22.6 12.8 26.1 14.4 catholic in millions 1.82 1.05 0.81 0.48 10.00 4.87 10.66 5.75 23.30 12.15 in relation to 2017 (in percent) 57.6 59.1 48.7 54.0 52.2 in percent of the total population 12.4 8.2 5.7 4.0 38.7 21.2 39.8 22.6 28.2 16.7 source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 25 regions with fewer catholics in northern and eastern germany than in southern and western germany. this would be mainly due to internal migration. anyone moving from southern or western germany to northern germany (hamburg in particular) or eastern germany (berlin in particular) would be more likely to be catholic than those who move in the opposite direction. in relative terms, protestant regional churches would lose most members in eastern germany. this is due to the age structure. in 2017, 35.2 percent of all protestants living in eastern germany were 65 years or older. the corresponding value for all protestants in germany is 28.0 percent. at the end of the projection period, this difference would be balanced (40.4 percent and 39.5 percent). 5 scenarios the results show a trend of how membership could develop in the coming years, but are not a one-to-one prediction (pötzsch 2016: 38). we assume that the trend of recent years is also representative of the future. if the value of individual influential factors changes in the long term, the results will differ from the actual development. therefore, in this section, we show how changes in the framework conditions affect the projection results. we show an overview of the scenarios “no external migration”, “only demography”, “higher fertility”, “secularisation” and “evangelisation” in figure 7 and table 3. 5.1 no external migration the projection is based on annual external migration to the two major churches of about 50,000 people, which would decrease to 24,000 between 2025 and 2040. due to immigration from the predominantly catholic countries of croatia, italy, and poland, the catholic church, with an external migration balance of 40,000 persons in 2017, would benefit considerably more than the protestant church. in contrast to fertility and mortality, migration is subject to strong fluctuations. therefore, deriving a trend for the future is difficult (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 37-41). this 2017 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055 2060 baseline 44.85 43.08 40.23 37.46 34.79 32.20 29.69 27.23 24.85 22.65 no external migration 44.85 42.93 39.84 36.86 34.02 31.31 28.68 26.11 23.64 21.34 higher fertility 44.85 43.08 40.25 37.52 34.91 32.38 29.93 27.54 25.24 23.13 only demography 44.85 44.32 43.48 42.57 41.55 40.37 39.09 37.80 36.57 35.42 secularisation 44.85 43.02 39.93 36.76 33.59 30.44 27.34 24.29 21.36 18.65 evangelisation 44.85 43.11 40.42 37.91 35.58 33.38 31.30 29.31 27.42 25.72 tab. 3: scenarios for projected church memberships, 2017-2060 source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). • david gutmann, fabian peters26 is why we calculate a scenario without external migration. if we ignore external migration flows, both churches will lose another 1.31 million members by 2060. the number of registered church members would be 21.34 million, 11.27 million of which would be catholic (-0.89 million) and 10.08 million protestant (-0.42 million).19 5.2 higher fertility although relevant studies have suggested a higher fertility of religious people compared to non-religious people (peri-rotem 2016; frejka/westoff 2008: 23), we were able to show that the fertility of registered church members is not higher than that of non-members. if we continue to assume that people who are no longer religious leave the two churches (riegel et al. 2018: 187-189), this could lead to a steadily increasing proportion of religious people among the remaining church members. accordingly, the total fertility rate of church members could rise in the coming dec19 deviations result from rounding. 0 10,000,000 20,000,000 30,000,000 40,000,000 50,000,000 60,000,000 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055 2060 year actual values baseline no external migration only demography higher fertility secularisation evangelisation 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 church members in million fig. 7: scenarios for projected church memberships, 2017-2060 source: own calculation based on kirchenamt der ekd (2018b); verband der diözesen deutschlands (2018); statistisches bundesamt (2015, 2018b/c). german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 27 ades, and in the long run, equal the observed level of religious people. therefore, we examine how a continuously increasing total fertility rate would affect membership development. moreover, it is likely that the likelihood of leaving the church would decrease if religion among church members is higher. however, to isolate the impact, we only consider a higher fertility in this scenario. we expect a linear increase in the combined total fertility rate, from 1.5 in 2017 to 1.7 in 2060. that would mean 0.48 million more church members (+2.1 percent) than calculated in the baseline scenario. consequently, an increase in fertility would have only a small impact on declining membership. 5.3 only demography to examine how strong demographic changes affect the membership of both churches, we assume a scenario with no people actively joining or leaving the church. moreover, we assume that every child a protestant or catholic mother gives birth to is baptized at birth. consequently, this scenario includes only demographic factors, that is, the number of children a protestant or catholic mother gives birth to, the deaths of registered church members and the external migration balance of protestants and catholics. demographic changes alone lead to a decrease in membership from 44.85 million to 35.42 million (21.0 percent). consequently, declining registered membership would be only about one third due to demographic change. two-thirds would be due to church-specific factors. if we also take these into account, i.e. baptism and people leaving and joining the church, the membership of both churches would be 22.65 million in 2060. the difference in the demography-related development of 12.77 million church members is due to 5.31 million fewer baptisms of children, a negative balance of 8.87 million people joining and leaving the church and 1.41 million deaths of church members who have left the church since the base year.20 of the total membership decline, 28.5 percentage points are attributable to churchspecific factors. therefore, church-specific factors would influence the overall decline more strongly than demographic factors. especially in the first years of the projection, the children of the baby boomers would be between 20 and 35 years old, when the likelihood of leaving the church is highest. therefore, deregistration would be particularly high, and fewer births and baptisms would take place. in the 15 years between 2025 and 2040, the births by protestant and catholic mothers would fall by 33.7 percent. because the deaths of church members would also fall by 14.6 percent during the same period, the impact of demographic factors would steadily increase. these opposing trends would intersect around the year 2040. subsequently, the annual demographic decline would be stronger than the church-related decline. the churches can only address the issue of declining membership through influencing baptism behaviour, as well as the tendencies to join or leave the church. 20 church members who left the church since 2017 and died by 2060. • david gutmann, fabian peters28 5.4 secularisation and evangelisation nevertheless, many pertinent studies suggested that the likelihood of leaving the church may continue to increase, and the trend toward secularisation of society will continue (pollack/rosta 2015: 223; voas/doebler 2011: 59-60; voas/crockett 2005: 24; ebertz 2005: 42; norris/inglehart 2004: 24-27). in a secularisation scenario, therefore, we gradually double the ageand gender-specific likelihood of leaving the church until 2060. at the same time, we suggest a continuously decreasing ageand gender-specific likelihood of being baptized as an adult and joining the church to 50 percent of the value in 2017. with these assumptions, 4.00 million fewer people would be registered church members in 2060. compared to the baseline scenario, this corresponds to a further decrease of 8.9 percent. during the projection period, about 0.48 million fewer people would be baptized as adults or join the church, and 3.39 million more people would leave the church. in contrast to the secularisation theory, fewer scientists postulate a revival of religion (riesebrodt 2000; graf 2004). we consider this thesis unlikely, but theoretically possible. therefore, we analyse the reverse case in an evangelisation scenario: a gradually decreasing ageand gender-specific likelihood of leaving the church until 2060 by 50 percent, and at the same time, a continuously doubling ageand gender-specific likelihood of being baptized as an adult and joining the church until 2060. in this scenario, 3.07 million more people would be registered as catholic or protestant, and thus, 6.9 percent more than the baseline scenario. about 2.00 million fewer people would leave the churches, and 0.97 million more people would be baptized as an adult or join the church. for the two denominations, the effects are different. in the secularisation scenario, 54.3 percent of the total decrease of 4.00 million christians would be attributable to the protestant church, and 45.7 percent to the catholic church. however, the protestant church would also gain significantly more members in the evangelisation scenario: 61.1 percent of the 3.07 million members in this scenario would be protestant, and 38.9 percent catholic. the fact that the protestant church is more affected by these two scenarios is linked to the higher number of people joining and leaving the church, which are church-specific factors. there is more movement between the members of the protestant church and non-members. 6 conclusion with the present projection of members for the protestant and catholic churches in germany, we have shown that by the year 2060 both churches would lose almost half of their registered members if present trends continue. protestant church membership would shrink slightly more than catholic church membership, which is essentially due to less external migration and an older age structure. the proportion of church members in the total population would decrease nationwide from 54.4 percent in 2017 to 31.1 percent in 2060. thus, hypothesis 1 is supported. german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 29 the reasons for decline include demographic and church-specific influences. demographic changes would more severely affect the two churches than the total population. although the number of inhabitants in germany is projected to decrease by 11.6 percent by 2060, the decline due to demographic factors in the churches would be 21.0 percent of the 2017 membership. this deviant development has two reasons. the total population is more likely to benefit from external migration. although the confessional migration balance would continue to be around 0.1 percent of all members, the share of total population would increase from 0.3 to 0.6 percent. in addition, the relative decline due to the excess of deaths over births in the two churches would be, on average, more than twice as large as that of the total population. thus, hypothesis 2 is also supported. the question of whether church-specific influences would play a greater role than demographic influences results in a more differentiated picture. overall, churchspecific factors would have a greater impact on the decline in membership than demographic ones. although there would be 9.42 million fewer church members (-21.0 percent) by 2060 for demographic reasons alone, the drop due to church-specific factors would total an additional 12.77 million (-28.5 percent). in particular, the development of the number of people leaving the church has been very volatile over time. therefore, it is conceivable that the parameterisation of the baseline scenario would not be achieved in the long term. we were able to show in a secularisation scenario and in an evangelisation scenario that continuously changing behaviour in leaving and joining the church can lead to significant changes in membership development. there is a difference of 7.07 million registered church members in the year 2060 between the scenarios we chose. if there are any promising approaches for churches to slow down membership decline, then they should look at these three factors.21 looking at the influence of both categories (demographic and churchspecific influences) over time, we remark that the impact of church-specific factors is decreasing. from the mid-2040s onwards, demographic factors would have a greater impact on membership decline. therefore, hypothesis 3 is only partially supported. an ambiguous picture also emerges in the case of hypothesis 4. higher deregistration and lower baptism rates in regions with a lower proportion of christians in the total population would exacerbate regional disparities. however, internal migration would counteract these church-specific effects, as the denominational internal migration flows to diaspora regions tend to be stronger than in regions with a high proportion of christians. of course, such a long-term projection based on what-if assumptions is not a precise prediction (pötzsch 2016: 38). nonetheless, it provides new, deep insights into the structure and development of church membership in germany. from the present projection results, the two churches could derive processes for dealing with the cost-intensive areas of staff and infrastructure. in addition, this project clarifies 21 to what extent strategic decisions made by the church management can actually influence church-specific factors is not the subject of this study. • david gutmann, fabian peters30 the relevance of church-specific factors, and identifies the influence of baptism, joining and leaving behaviour as ultimately the only strategic starting points for longer-term planning by the churches. due to the many subsidiary maintained facilities, decisions by church management have consequences for the state. these decisions will affect citizens and decision-makers at the federal, state and local levels. finally, demographic changes would hit the churches even harder than the total population. however, demographic changes would not be the main reason for the long-term development. instead, church-specific factors, such as the number of baptisms, and members leaving and joining the church, and therefore, the longterm declining number of children born to a catholic or protestant mother would be responsible for the decline in membership reported in this article. acknowledgements we are grateful to the anonymous referees of cpos and professor philip rees, 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1928: population of the united states. 1925 to 1975. in: american journal of sociology 34,2: 253-270. german churches in times of demographic change and declining affiliation • 33 date of submission: 27.02.2019 date of acceptance: 17.10.2019 david gutmann (*), fabian peters. university of freiburg, research center for generational contracts and institute for public finance and social policy. freiburg, germany. e-mail: david.gutmann@vwl.uni-freiburg.de, fabian.peters@vwl.uni-freiburg.de url: http://www.fiwi1.uni-freiburg.de/ueber-uns/team/david_gutmann.shtml url: http://www.fiwi1.uni-freiburg.de/ueber-uns/team/fabian_peters.shtml • david gutmann, fabian peters34 appendix tab. a1: regional assignment of catholic (arch-)dioceses, protestant regional churches, and federal states catholic (arch-)dioecese protestant regional church federal state north hamburg braunschweig bremen hildesheim bremen hamburg osnabrück hannover mecklenburg-vorpommern offizialatsbezirk oldenburg nordkirche niedersachsen oldenburg schleswig-holstein reformierte kirche schaumburg-lippe east berlin anhalt berlin dresden-meißen berlin-brandenburgbrandenburg görlitz schlesische oberlausitz sachsen erfurt mitteldeutschland sachsen-anhalt magdeburg sachsen thüringen south bamberg baden baden-württemberg eichstätt bayern bayern speyer pfalz saarland würzburg württemberg rheinland-pfalz (50%) freiburg rottenburg-stuttgart münchen and freising augsburg regensburg passau west köln hessen und nassau hessen aachen kurhessen waldeck nordrhein-westfalen essen lippe rheinland-pfalz (50%) limburg rheinland münster without offizialatsbezirk westfalen oldenburg trier mainz paderborn fulda source: own representation published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the end of reurbanisation? phases of concentration and deconcentration in migratory movements in north rhine-westphalia the end of reurbanisation? phases of concentration and deconcentration in migratory movements in north rhine-westphalia frank osterhage abstract: for some time now, there has been a lively debate about reurbanisation in germany with regard to trends in spatial development. at the same time, the consequences of spatially imbalanced development can be observed in many regions. in large metropolitan areas in particular, the renewed appeal of cities has made living space scarce and expensive. there is extensive investment in residential construction and infrastructure, yet the fi rst signs of a further shift in the trend are starting to emerge. it is against this background that this paper investigates migratory movements in the state of north rhine-westphalia, covering a period of more than four decades. the resulting change in the distance between place of residence and the nearest major centre is calculated for each case of migration in the time period under investigation. by aggregating the individual values, an indicator is generated that can be used to identify different phases of spatial concentration and deconcentration. the results remind us that for a long time the predominant forces in migratory movements were centrifugal. this makes the transition to the spatial concentration phase that took place in the past decade, and that can be precisely traced from the values obtained, all the more striking. in the fi nal years of the period under investigation, the results are signifi cantly infl uenced by the handling of the publicly-directed migration of refugees and asylum-seekers within the state. if municipalities with admission facilities for these groups that exhibit anomalous migration data are excluded from the analysis, deconcentration processes appear in fact to be gaining the upper hand again in north rhine-westphalia. renewed momentum in residential suburbanisation in the areas surrounding the major centres is behind this current development. deceleration of the migratory losses from more peripheral municipalities can also be observed, however. keywords: reurbanisation · suburbanisation · internal migration · trends in spatial development · north rhine-westphalia comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 131-156 (date of release: 13.11.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-10en5 • frank osterhage132 1 introduction as a rule, population development does not occur homogeneously in a region, a federal state or a country. migratory movements in particular can result in differing developmental dynamics in different areas. these lead in turn to redistribution of the population as a whole and of individual population groups. among other reasons, such trends are signifi cant because they have an impact on the local demand for everyday goods and services. hence, living space can become scarce and expensive in particularly popular destination regions, whereas falling prices and vacancies arise in regions experiencing emigration. in the second half of the 20th century in western germany, and then following german reunifi cation also in eastern germany, spatial development was characterised by various stages of demographic deconcentration (siedentop et al. 2003). toward the middle of the past decade, however, a debate about a noticeable change in the trend began, which in subsequent years was demonstrated in a series of empirical studies. the positive migration balances and – comparatively – favourable population development in many cities and urban agglomerations led researchers to speak of a phase of reurbanisation (e.g. brake/herfert 2012; herfert et al. 2010; siedentop 2008). the rapid increase in the number of inhabitants in some places and the associated growth pressures gave rise to considerable policy and planning challenges with respect to the creation of new residential space or the adaptation of available infrastructure, for example. at the same time, there was increasingly intense discussion about possible depopulation and peripherisation of rural areas (e.g. berlin-institut für bevölkerung und entwicklung 2011). it remains an open question whether and how long this reurbanisation trend will persist. first indications have recently been found in the press that suggest a renewed tendency toward spatial deconcentration in population development (kollenbroich et al. 2016; ochs 2016). the present article examines the phases of spatial concentration and deconcentration that have occurred in recent years. the analysis puts the focus on migratory movements, which represent numerous individual decisions for or against a place of residence. as a contribution to the debate about current trends in spatial development, the objective is to show changes over time as precisely as possible and, in doing so, to differentiate based on attributes such as the age and nationality of the persons who have migrated. the salient question of when it is appropriate to speak of an “end of reurbanisation” is also discussed. the study uses the example of north rhine-westphalia. with a population of around 17.9 million people (on 31/12/2015), north rhine-westphalia is germany’s most populous state by far. and even though 29 of germany’s 80 largest cities containing over 100,000 inhabitants are located in north rhine-westphalia, there are relatively few studies on the subject of “reurbanisation” for this state. the available data for north rhine-westphalia offers particular opportunities for analysing migratory movements and was also decisive in the choice of area to be studied. the current state of research on internal migratory movements in germany is presented at the beginning of this article. in the following section there is a discusthe end of reurbanisation? • 133 sion of the methodological approach, in which detailed information is given on the data basis used for the examination. the results of the data analysis are then presented with the aim of identifying different phases of spatial development in north rhine-westphalia. in the fi nal section the fi ndings are summarised and discussed in relation to the durability of the current reurbanisation trend. 2 current state of research understanding of reurbanisation in the search for a defi nition of reurbanisation, a large degree of uncertainty and a wide range of interpretations are encountered. a series of attempts has thus been made to impose a structure and to elaborate different dimensions of meaning (e.g. brake/urbanczyk 2012; glatter/siedhoff 2008; bourne 1996). many of these proposals distinguish between a normative and an analytical approach. the analyticallyoriented perspective can be sub-divided in turn into qualitatively and quantitativelyoriented approaches. the present paper belongs to the analytical-quantitative studies. the aim of these studies is to observe reurbanisation empirically using statistical indicators. in most cases, population development is the object of observation, which is also supported by the availability of the required data. in part, however, the focus is on development in other domains such as employment or the retail trade. it should, moreover, be noted that differing measurement concepts are used in identifying and describing demographic reurbanisation processes, and this has considerable infl uence on the results presented (osterhage 2011). the prominent phase model of urban development, which emerged in the context of a european study of cities at the beginning of the 1980s (van den berg et al. 1982), is still an important point of reference. this model is used to establish the change in the population number in the core and the ring of a functional urban region in order to determine differing phases or stages of spatial development. over the years, different variations of the original model have been developed and applied (parr 2012). in many analytical-quantitative studies, overall population development is no longer the focus, but rather, with differing emphases, migratory movements (e.g. rérat 2012; sander 2014; busch 2016). it is argued that the new growth of cities depends mainly on a surplus of in-migration and that the separate consideration of different migration types promises deeper insights into trends in spatial development. spatial migratory patterns in germany since the 1960s in the 1960s, once the main reconstruction phase following the destruction of the second world war had passed, migratory movements from the city centres to the surrounding outskirts were increasingly observed in west german metropolitan areas (kemper 1999). in combination with the widespread desire to own property in a leafy neighbourhood, the triumphant rise of the private car as well as the expansion of public commuter transport led in the following years to a peak phase of residential • frank osterhage134 suburbanisation (häußermann et al. 2008: 85-89). in somewhat diminished form, this phase persisted into the 1980s in many regions (bucher/kocks 1987). indeed, in the period between 1978 and 1984, there is evidence of inter-regional deconcentration in west germany that led, by way of internal migration, to a population shift to less densely-populated areas (vogelsang/kontuly 1986; kanaroglou/braun 1992). in the second half of the 1980s, however, a reversal of this trend became apparent. concentration processes in favour of urban agglomerations took hold and some researchers speculated about the beginning of a reurbanisation phase (kontuly/schön 1994; kemper 1999; gans 2000). the turbulent period of german reunifi cation or “wendezeit” (1989-1990) represented a special historical situation that had immense consequences for migration (kemper 2003; kontuly et al. 1997). extensive migratory movements from east to west predominated, and this, in combination with the immigration of resettlers (“aussiedler”, i.e. descendants of german settlers in eastern europe), refugees and asylum-seekers, led to strong pressure on housing markets in western german metropolitan areas. in the 1990s, a veritable surge in suburbanisation could be observed in the “new states” of eastern germany (herfert 1998; aring/herfert 2001). following reunifi cation, massive public housebuilding subsidies along with the new possibilities of property ownership resulted in a construction boom in the surroundings of the eastern german core cities and hence in widespread intra-regional deconcentration. but a new peak phase of residential suburbanisation, which lasted into the second half of the decade, also occurred in the “old states” of western germany. this phase was characterised by spatial expansion in some metropolitan areas (schlömer 2004: 101-104) and an unprecedented variety of household types among the new suburbanites (aring/herfert 2001). in contrast to the situation in eastern germany, rural areas recorded constant gains in internal migration in this period (kemper 2003: 14-15; böltken et al. 1997: 38). toward the end of the decade, a weakening of the centrifugal forces became apparent amidst the migratory movements. this concerned both the suburbanisation processes (herfert 1998: 774; hallenberg 2002: 134-136) and the large-scale deconcentration (mai/schlömer 2007). after the turn of the century, reurbanisation was discussed in migration analyses as a continuation of this development: initially with a certain degree of reserve (köppen et al. 2007; hirschle/schürt 2008) and then, somewhat later, more assertively (herfert/osterhage 2012). as the outcome of a detailed study of internal migration, sander (2014: 229) fi nds that the patterns of migratory gains and losses changed completely between 1995 and 2010. overall, upward migration fl ows within the urban hierarchy have gained in importance. thus, the proportion of people who move to other large cities has increased, whereas the number moving from cities to their surrounding areas has decreased. while there are considerable regional differences, the fact that the core regions are able to achieve high migratory gains while gains are decreasing or losses even being seen in many of the other regions outside the urban agglomerations is recognised as the overriding trend (sander 2014: 233). milbert and sturm (2016), who undertook an analysis of migratory movements in germany between 1975 and 2013, arrive at a very similar assessment. in their conthe end of reurbanisation? • 135 clusion, the authors prefer not to speak of a “rural exodus”, but they point to the fact that emigration from rural areas to large cities has increased. recently, however, there have been signs that the trend toward spatial concentration is coming to an end. busch (2016) fi nds that many large cities now exhibit a clearly negative migration balance from internal migratory movements – a development that is obscured by heavy immigration from abroad. he regards the main cause to be the fraught urban property market in many places, which leads to a process of displacement in favour of suburban and rural municipalities. however, he sees no signs of a general loss in the attractiveness of urban living (busch 2016: 93-96). similar shifts in the internal migration balance also emerge in the study conducted by milbert (2017). she distinguishes between different groups of large cities and points to the fact that the migratory gains achieved by the cities began to decline in 2011, and in 2014, for the fi rst time, almost fell back to zero again or were even negative. in her analysis of the causes she emphasises that higher rental and property prices alone cannot explain the renewed tendency toward intra-regional deconcentration (milbert 2017: 14-16). a life-course perspective on migration studies conducted on the basis of aggregated migration data have repeatedly shown that there are striking differences between age-groups with respect to the frequency and the predominant direction of migration. the needs, preferences and resources of individuals – and hence also of households – evidently change over the course of a life and this can cause people to move house and change their place of residence. these sorts of considerations led to the application of the sociological family-cycle concept to issues in migration research (rossi 1955) – and later to the extension of this somewhat rigid model beyond the narrow focus on the nuclear family (e.g. kemper 1985). subsequently, numerous studies emerged that were conducted from the life-course perspective and that focussed on a systematic analysis of the connections between spatial mobility and biographical events (e.g. wagner 1989; kley 2011, 2009; gerber 2011). typical age-specifi c patterns of internal migration in germany emerge from people’s many individual decisions about where to live, and they display a high degree of temporal stability. these patterns reveal that the educational migrant age-group, in particular, moves to cities, whereas family migrants, as well as senior migrants, tend to prefer the surrounding areas of the core cities, or more rural regions (bucher/schlömer 2012: 70; schlömer 2009: 115-122). the predominant direction of migration in the different age-groups has not fundamentally changed in recent years. nonetheless, a reurbanisation trend has come about as a result of level changes. thus, sander (2014) fi nds that there has been a further clear increase in moves to urban centres among young adults and, at the same time, moves out of the core cities have decreased among the 30to 49-yearolds. in keeping with this, according to milbert and sturm (2016), the signifi cance of emigration of educational migrants from rural areas to cities has increased. like simons and weiden (2016), they also point to the fact that the orientation toward cities • frank osterhage136 persists in the subsequent phase of starting a career and deciding on a profession. instead of returning home, college graduates increasingly move on to other cities (simons/weiden 2016). busch (2016), however, asserts that in the recent past the migratory gains of cities among young people have not been suffi cient to compensate for the losses due to family migration, which are growing again in the context of a very competitive housing market. migration and nationality overall, differentiation based on nationality has only played a subordinate role in the studies of internal migration within germany that have been conducted in recent years. as an exception to this rule, busch (2016) consciously treats the migratory movements of german nationals separately. as a result of this approach he determines that between 2008 and 2014 there was a transition toward suburbanisation among the group of non-foreigners and, in individual regions, even de-urbanisation (busch 2016: 90-92). although the internal migratory movements of foreigners are not, as a rule, directly considered, there is a larger number of studies on the regional distribution of foreign nationals and/or people with immigration backgrounds (e.g. gans/schlömer 2014; korcz/schlömer 2008; kemper 2006; bamf 2016). the fi ndings presented on this subject make two points clear: fi rstly, there are large differences among the various sub-groups comprising the immigrant population. secondly, distinctive spatial patterns can be detected for many of these groups. in light of such fi ndings, korcz and schlömer rightly speak of a “systematicity amidst the diversity” (2008: 165). keeping in mind the existing specifi cities, it can be said that immigrants are concentrated in urban agglomerations in the western part of germany (worbs et al. 2005: 44). hence, it is not surprising that immigrants – in particular, those with limited income – are mentioned as a central pillar of the current reurbanisation trend (kabisch et al. 2012: 122-123; haase et al. 2010). the great signifi cance of social networks and the importance of access to rental markets for many people with immigrant backgrounds are cited as causes of this pronounced affi nity with cities (gans/schlömer 2014). alongside the direct infl ow from other countries and the natural development of the population, the precise contribution of internal migration to the emergence of the existing patterns of distribution is, however, largely unclear. the complex inter-connections between external migration and related internal migration, which have hitherto rarely been the subject of systematic study, need also to be taken into account here (korcz/schlömer 2008: 168). this includes the numerous special cases of publicly directed migratory movements of groups like asylum-seekers, refugees and (late) resettlers (schlömer 2012: 50-51; worbs et al. 2005: 45). the end of reurbanisation? • 137 3 data basis and methodological approach in the reurbanisation debate of recent years, various approaches have been employed in order to identify different phases of spatial development. this paper is based on the analysis of migration data and hence looks at active changes in the place of residence. this approach is distinguished by the fact that all cases of migration within the geographical area of a federal state are included in the statistical analysis. based on this indicator, a phase of reurbanisation can be identifi ed in which spatial concentration, i.e. a shift towards the existing major centres, is present in the migratory movements. measurement of concentration and deconcentration the subject of this paper is migration within north rhine-westphalia and the trends in spatial development that accompany it. all cases of migration that extend beyond the boundaries of a municipality and where the municipality of origin as well as the municipality of destination are within the state boundaries of north rhinewestphalia were considered for the period from 1975 to 2015. data from the migration statistics served as the basis for the analysis. the migration statistics represent an exhaustive data collection that is based on the registrations recorded by the municipal registration offi ces. moves within a municipality are not included in the migration statistics. the statistics contain the old and new place of residence, but also other attributes like the age and nationality of the person who has migrated. the federal statistical offi ce rates the quality of the data as good (statistisches bundesamt 2017: 7-8). the available migration data was used to identify phases of spatial concentration and deconcentration, and a signifi cant indicator of spatial development was created as a result. the value yielded by this indicator was meant to reveal whether the migratory movements in north rhine-westphalia are more directed toward the existing centres or rather toward the inner and outer fringes of the state territory. thus, the distance to the nearest major centre of the old and new places of residence was determined using a geo-information system for each case of migration. how this distance, and hence the proximity to a major centre, changed as a result of the migratory movement could then be calculated. the straight-line distance (“as the crow fl ies”) between the middle points of both of the municipalities in question was used for the measurement. all cities that are classifi ed in the “oberzentrum” category by the federal state planning authority, and thus fulfi l important regional functions, were defi ned as major centres. the resulting particularity of the analysis can best be illustrated using the example of a move from a domicile on the periphery of the state of north rhine-westphalia to the neighbouring municipality of a city with the status of major centre. although this move is not to the major centre itself, in the approach described it is considered as a case of migration that decreases the distance to the nearest major centre and thereby contributes to spatial concentration. • frank osterhage138 study area and transferability of the findings two points were decisive for the choice of area to be studied. firstly, a data basis is available for north rhine-westphalia that facilitates special analysis of migration data and that is not available for any other german state. secondly, various reasons relating to the size of north rhine-westphalia and the diversity of its regions favour this choice. thus, not only local migrations can be taken into account, but also migrations over intermediate and longer distances thanks to the expanse of the state territory. in addition, the differences between regions, cities and villages ensure coverage of a large range of migration types and associated motives for migration. finally, north rhine-westphalia is germany’s largest state by far in terms of population size, and comprises a signifi cant proportion of all migratory movements in the country as a whole. the data used from the migration statistics was made available by the information und technik nordrhein-westfalen (it.nrw) state agency, which acts as the statistical offi ce of the federal state of north rhine-westphalia. the data available from it.nrw is characterised by certain particularities that make a study of north rhinewestphalia especially interesting. principal among these is the exceptionally long period of available reporting years. this period goes back to 1975, which makes statistical analyses covering more than four decades possible. in contrast, comparable data for the whole national territory made available by the research data centres (rdc) of the federal statistical offi ce and the regional statistical offi ces of the federal states only starts in 2000. it should be emphasised, moreover, that it.nrw publishes complete data sets with two-dimensional migration data covering movements between all the municipalities in the state of north rhine-westphalia. this makes complex analyses possible on a very localised level without information being lost due to data aggregation in the provision of the data. the agency also refrains from blocking weakly-occupied cells for reasons of confi dentiality. the settlement structure and system of centres in north rhine-westphalia exhibit certain peculiarities that are of signifi cance for this study. the core area of the state – along the rhine and in the ruhr region – has been strongly marked by far-reaching processes of urbanisation. in these areas of high population density, many cities are found in close proximity to each other. in addition, there are several “freestanding” centres like münster, bielefeld, paderborn, siegen, and aachen. at the same time, it should be noted that there are also some less densely populated areas, mainly on the periphery of north rhine-westphalia. the central place concept (“zentrale-orte-konzept”) that was established at the end of the 1970s in the state development plan (der ministerpräsident des landes nordrhein-westfalen 1979) and that still applies unchanged today, classifi es 16 cities across the state as major centres (fig. 1). centres in the neighbouring states of lower saxony, hesse and rhineland-palatinate were also taken into account in determining the distance to the nearest major centre. the shortest distance in the case of a few municipalities is indeed to the major centres of hannover or osnabrück in lower saxony. centres in the neighbouring countries of belgium and the netherlands, on the other hand, were not taken into consideration. available studies clearly show that interconnecthe end of reurbanisation? • 139 tions that transcend national borders are still relatively weakly developed (münter/ osterhage 2017). the calculations show that the straight-line distance to the nearest major centre is less than 20 kilometres for 46 percent of all municipalities in fig. 1: distances of municipalities in north rhine-westphalia to the nearest major centre cologne münster essen bielefeld dortmund bonn duisburg hagen aachen düsseldorf krefeld hannover bochum paderborn siegen wuppertal kassel marburg osnabrück mönchengladbach nearby surrounding areas in kilometresn = 396 geodata source: geobasis-de / bkg 2015 distance to the nearest major centre major centres (“oberzentrum“) more distant areas peripheral municipalities 0 50 100 150 0 under 10 16 24 142 66 102 37 9 10 to less than 20 20 to less than 30 30 to less than 40 40 to less than 50 50 and over number of municipalities { { { source: own calculations • frank osterhage140 north rhine-westphalia; for nine out of ten localities, the distance remains under the threshold of 40 kilometres. the greatest distances, of over 40 kilometres, are for some municipalities in ostwestfalen-lippe, in the sauerland and on the lower rhine. with respect to the transferability of the study fi ndings to the situation and development in germany as a whole, the size of north rhine-westphalia and the diversity of its regions should again be emphasised. this ensures that many different cases of migration are included in the study, lending the results a high degree of robustness. nonetheless, the well-founded reservations regarding generalising fi ndings from case studies in spatial-scientifi c research apply to a certain extent. this is particularly the case for the transferability to spaces that are unique and clearly diverge from the conditions in north rhine-westphalia with regard to features like the number and accessibility of major centres, the settlement structure or the housing and property markets. examples include study areas that are more rural in character or display a pronounced monocentric settlement structure. identifi cation of outliers a major challenge involved in considering internal migration lies in the treatment of publicly-directed movements of people who previously immigrated from abroad. after entering germany, groups like asylum-seekers, refugees and (late) resettlers are fi rst sent to places with central admission facilities. then, in a second step, the new arrivals are distributed to the other municipalities in north rhine-westphalia and these publicly-directed movements are registered as internal migration. but since the actual starting point for the migratory process is outside the area under consideration, the treatment as internal migration can be regarded as an artefact of the registration system and hence of the migration statistics. furthermore, due to the fact that the persons migrating have no free choice, they are only comparable to other migratory movements to a limited extent. consequently, there are good substantive arguments for not taking into account this form of migration in analysing migratory movements, or for treating it separately. the statistics, however, do not permit the clear recognition of cases of migration that have been infl uenced by public measures or their direct exclusion. instead, municipalities, where central admission facilities are located, are entirely excluded from analyses on internal migration in most studies. but this approach also carries certain diffi culties. the number and locations of these facilities do not remain constant over time, and are sometimes subject to considerable change. particularly in phases of high immigration, numerous larger and smaller facilities are in operation, making it retrospectively very diffi cult to determine which facilities were used, how intensively, and at what point in time. apart from this information defi cit, it should also be borne in mind that complete exclusion of all the municipalities in question will inevitably result in many non-publicly-directed migratory movements also being excluded from the analysis. for this reason, it is indeed questionable whether such fi ltering does in fact lead to better interpretability of the research fi ndings (schlömer 2009: 32). the end of reurbanisation? • 141 after the advantages and disadvantages had been weighed up, particularly anomalous migration data was excluded at the municipality-level. in a fi rst step, outfl ow rates (number of departures per 1,000 inhabitants) were calculated for all municipalities in the state of north rhine-westphalia as the basis for identifying outliers. in terms of internal migratory movements, municipalities containing actively used admission facilities generally have a conspicuously high number of people who have moved away. outfl ow rates were determined separately based on nationality (germans and foreign nationals) for the 41 reporting years in the period under investigation. in a second step, appropriate threshold values were established for the classifi cation of outliers. here it proved useful fi rst to sub-divide the dataset into three groups based on municipality size (fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, 20,000 to less than 100,000 inhabitants, 100,000 and more inhabitants). the median of the outfl ow rates for the individual groups was then found in order to serve as a point of departure for determining the threshold values. if the outfl ow rate of a municipality was a multiple of this average value, it was classifi ed as an outlier, and both the moves away from and the moves to the municipality in question were excluded from the data set. at the same time, intensive documentary research was conducted in order to obtain a detailed overview of the admission facilities in north rhinewestphalia over the last four decades. the results of this research were used to validate the threshold values from the statistical derivation and to determine the multipliers that were fi nally used. the infl uence of publicly-directed migratory movements for the greater part of the period under investigation, just a few municipalities were excluded from the analysis. these are municipalities that are known to have served for many years as the location of a large admission facility (e.g. unna, schöppingen and hemer). in contrast, the reporting year 2015 has an exceptional status. after checking the migration data for 2015, a total of 16 municipalities were classifi ed as outliers – by far the highest number of all years under consideration. a sharp increase in the number of immigrating refugees and asylum-seekers created a need to expand the existing capacities in north rhine-westphalia to provide accommodation for the newly arrived people (ministerium für inneres und kommunales des landes nordrhein-westfalen 2016). publicly-directed migratory movements can considerably infl uence the patterns of internal migration. despite the moderate number of outlier municipalities, the excluded migration cases are remarkably large in some years (fig. 2). around 98,000 migration cases of people with foreign nationality were excluded in 2015, which corresponds to almost 15 percent of all internal migrations in north rhinewestphalia. during the period from 1988 to 1990 the number of excluded migration cases was similarly high. the causes of this can be traced back to the city of unna, which was the location of a central state facility for resettlers, immigrants and foreign refugees at that time and registered an extremely high number of outfl ows to other municipalities in north rhine-westphalia. • frank osterhage142 bearing in mind the objective of the data analysis, it is important to realise that the admission facilities are not evenly distributed over the state territory. the outlier municipalities tend to be of medium or small size and to be of above-average distance to a major centre. as a consequence, the infl uence of publicly-directed migration on migratory movements in north rhine-westphalia favours spatial concentration. such effects can be substantial in years of high immigration. indeed, in the late 1980s the inclusion or exclusion of migration cases determined whether the indicator values were positive or negative. 4 presentation of the findings the focus of this paper is the extent to which different phases of concentration and deconcentration can be identifi ed for north rhine-westphalia in the recent and more distant past on the basis of migratory movement data. before going into the results of the data analysis, the relevance of internal migratory movements during the investigation period (1975-2015) is examined (fig. 3). in the period under consideration, the number of statistically recorded cases of migration within the state was around 532,000 persons per year on average. for comparison’s sake, figure 3 also includes the numbers of infl ows from other parts of germany and from abroad fig. 2: publicly-directed migratory movements: number of excluded migration cases 1975-2015 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 19 75 19 77 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 year number of excluded migration cases source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it.nrw) – wanderungsstatistik the end of reurbanisation? • 143 – and hence for all other migratory movements with destinations in north rhinewestphalia. over the entire period of the investigation, the volumes of the infl ows from other parts of germany and from abroad turn out to be considerably lower, thereby underscoring the quantitative signifi cance of internal migration. with respect to the evolution of the volume of migration, it is not possible to identify a continuous trend toward more or less internal migration in the period under investigation. however, appreciable fl uctuations in the number of migratory movements occurred again and again. the clear increase of migratory movements within north rhine-westphalia at the end of the period under investigation, beginning in 2013 at the latest, is particularly striking. what stands out here is that there was a sharp increase in infl ows from abroad at roughly the same time. indeed, there are frequent references in the literature to the connections between international migratory movements and internal migration (e.g. kemper 2003; schlömer 2012). 4.1 phases of concentration and deconcentation after establishing the signifi cance and infl uence of publicly-directed migratory movements in the methodology section, the subsequent presentation of the fi ndings focuses on the calculations without the municipalities that have been classifi ed as outliers. for each reporting year in the period under investigation, figure 4 highlights how the internal migration changed the distance between place of residence fig. 3: migratory movements within nrw, infl ows from other parts of germany to nrw, and infl ows from abroad to nrw 1975-2015 0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 19 75 19 77 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 year migratory movements within nrw inflows from other parts of germany inflows from abroad to nrw number of migration cases source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it. nrw) – landesdatenbank nrw • frank osterhage144 and the nearest major centre. the values are calculated averages, since the sum of all the changes-in-distance has been placed in relation to the total number of internal migratory movements that took place in a given year. the bar chart makes strikingly clear that centrifugal forces were for a long time the predominant migratory movement in north rhine-westphalia. during the period under investigation, there was uninterrupted spatial deconcentration up to and into the new century, which is expressed by values that lie clearly above the zero line. despite fl uctuations between the individual values, three different phases can be identifi ed: up until the middle of the 1980s, deconcentration processes remained at a relatively high level; they were then clearly attenuated for a few years, before new record levels were reached during the course of the 1990s. for the fi rst time since the start of the period under investigation, however, 2005 sees the start of a longer time segment in which overall migratory movements are more strongly directed toward the major centres. according to the measurement system used in this paper, this can be regarded as a phase of reurbanisation. based on the values obtained, the spatial concentration is most pronounced in 2011. the distance between place of residence and the nearest major centre was reduced, on average, by 0.75 kilometres per case of migration in this year. such a value is certainly signifi cant bearing in mind that the phenomenon of migration generally fig. 4: average change in distance to the nearest major centre between old and new place of residence: all migratory movements within nrw without outliers 1975-2015 -1.25 -1.00 -0.75 -0.50 -0.25 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 19 75 19 77 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 year kilometres source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it. nrw) – wanderungsstatistik the end of reurbanisation? • 145 comprises a large number of individual movements in different directions. what are initially seemingly inconspicuous imbalances can, over a longer stretch of time, bring about considerable changes in the spatial structure. with respect to current debates, it is particularly interesting to note that the concentration processes have continually weakened again in recent years – and in 2015 the values even switched over to increasing distances. 4.2 findings for different age-groups the data basis of it.nrw that was used in this study distinguishes between six different age-groups. the divisions are based on life-cycle phases that are often employed in analyses of migration data in this or similar forms (e.g. schlömer 2009): family migration of children and adolescents (0 to less than 18 years old), educational migration (18 to less than 25 years old), career-start migration (25 to less than 30 years old), family migration of adults (30 to less than 50 years old), early phase of senior migration (50 to less than 65 years old), and late phase of senior migration (65 years old and more). the calculated values vary greatly for the different age-groups (fig. 5). this is in keeping with the fi ndings of other studies on life-cycle migration. on the one hand, there is a tendency toward spatial deconcentration among the family migration groups (both age-groups) and the senior migrants (early and late phase) over the whole period under investigation. in contrast, the educational migration pattern is characterised by a pronounced tendency toward concentration. a change in the prevailing direction of migration can only be observed for one age-group, namely the 25 to less than 30 years olds: at the beginning of the period under investigation, the distances to the nearest major centre were still increasing for career-start migration. this remained the case until the second half of the 1990s, when a tendency to spatial concentration emerged. this tendency strengthened over many years and persists to this day. the variation in the intensity of the concentration and deconcentration processes in the case of the other age-groups is, however, also instructive. it is thus striking that although the orientation of educational migrants toward the centres was already pronounced, there was a further considerable increase after the turn of the century. in addition, as has often been emphasised in the literature, the temporary weakening of the centrifugal forces at work in family migration contributed to the reurbanisation trend that appeared in the last decade. this development was even more pronounced in the case of senior migrants. in the “65 years and older” group, the average distances to the nearest major centre are still growing more than in any other age-group. at the same time, however, this increase in distance has diminished to a particularly notable extent over the course of the last two decades. it is also surprising that the values for the entire period under investigation have changed the most for persons aged between 50 and less than 65 years. according to the calculations, the migration-related increase in distances has diminished for this age-group from decade to decade. • frank osterhage146 fig. 5: average change in distance to the nearest major centre between old and new place of residence: results by age group 1975-2015 -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year 0 to less than 18 years kilometres 18 to less than 25 years kilometres 25 to less than 30 years kilometres 30 to less than 50 years kilometres 50 to less than 65 years kilometres 65 years and older kilometres -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year -5.00 -4.00 -3.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it. nrw) – wanderungsstatistik the end of reurbanisation? • 147 concerning a possible end of reurbanisation, the detailed analysis allows us to ascertain that, in the case of most of the age-groups, at least a temporary peak of this trend has evidently been passed. in both of the family migration age-groups, there has been a strong return to outward migratory movements, and the indicator values are now at unprecedented levels in the new century. furthermore, the orientation of the career-starters toward the major centres has also noticeably decreased since 2012. 4.3 findings for germans and foreigners the data made available by it.nrw from the migration statistics allows for differentiation by nationality, whereby the two categories identifi ed are “germans” and “foreign nationals”. this differentiation is interesting because various publications presume that immigrants from abroad tend to move to western german urban agglomerations or to the larger cities as soon as they can freely decide their place of residence (worbs et al. 2005: 44; berlin-institut für bevölkerung und entwicklung 2016: 65). when analysed separately, it is in fact apparent that the values for people with german and foreign nationality differ considerably (fig. 6). the tendency toward spatial concentration in migratory movements is clearly not a new phenomenon for the “foreign nationals” group. since the beginning of the period under investigation, the calculated values have, for the most part, been negative, which signifi es a migration-related reduction of the distance to the nearest major centre. the result for all the reporting years in the period under consideration is an average value of -0.33 kilometres per case of migration. this confi rms the existing suppositions in the literature regarding a central orientation in the internal migratory movements of foreigners. on closer inspection, however, it is also notable that the centripetal forces have been continually losing their dominance since 2005. this observation could potentially be interpreted as convergence of the migratory behaviour among foreigners and germans. in light of the extensive exclusion of outliers from the data set at the end of the period under investigation, such conclusions are, however, to be treated with some caution. over many years, there are large differences in the picture of the migratory movements of germans. up until the middle of the last decade, centrifugal forces predominated for this group without exception. for the fi rst time in the period under consideration, a phase of spatial concentration is then to be observed from 2005 to 2013. nonetheless, during the 41-year-long period under investigation, the distance to the nearest major centre increased on average by 0.54 kilometres with each move for german internal migrants. • frank osterhage148 4.4 migratory movements between different territorial categories in order to better understand the concentration and deconcentration processes behind the indicator values, the last part of the data analysis considers the migration fl ows between different territorial categories in north rhine-westphalia. building on the previous analytical steps, the examination is based on four types of municipalities with different distances to the nearest major centre. the major centres themselves constitute the fi rst category. the second and third types comprise municipalities in the nearby or more distant surroundings: at distances of less than 20 kilometres for category two and from 20 to less than 40 kilometres for category three. the fourth group consists of municipalities on the inner or outer periphery of the state that are located 40 or more kilometres from the nearest major centre. figure 7 shows how the migration balances between these territorial categories have changed over the years. the reporting years 1994, 2011 and 2015 were chosen for the purposes of the presentation, bearing in mind the results discussed so far. they constitute distinctive high points in spatial concentration or deconcentration phases that were identifi ed in the data analysis. migratory movements in 1994 are characterised by extensive deconcentration processes that affected all the relations between the types of municipalities. in particular, larger migration losses vis-à-vis the next less centrally-located territorial category emerged in a cascade-like patfig. 6: average change in distance to the nearest major centre between old and new place of residence: results by nationality 1975-2015 -1.25 -1.00 -0.75 -0.50 -0.25 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 19 75 19 77 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 year germans foreign nationals kilometres source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it. nrw) – wanderungsstatistik the end of reurbanisation? • 149 fig. 7: spatial patterns of migration between different territorial categories in north rhine-westphalia 1994, 2011 and 2015 major centres nearby surrounding areas more distant areas peripheral municipalities 21.473 1994 4.271 908 6.962 1.107 1.814 major centres nearby surrounding areas more distant areas 12.569 2015 2.192 1.370 3.834 118 99 peripheral municipalities nearby surrounding areas more distant areas 1.865 2011 10.374 2.836 625 25 191 peripheral municipalities major centres high gains small gains balanced small losses high losses migration balance related to the population size 10.000 2.500 1.000 net migration flows within north rhine-westphalia population size of the territorial categories 4.000.000 2.000.000 500.000 source: own calculations based on information and technik nordrhein-westfalen (it. nrw) – wanderungsstatistik und landesdatenbank nrw • frank osterhage150 tern. in this sense, the substantial losses of the major centres in favour of the municipalities in the nearby surrounding area are striking. but the intensity of emigration to the more peripherally-located areas from the other categories is also notable. overall, there is a less one-sided pattern of migration in 2011, which represents the peak year of the recent reurbanisation phase. the analysis of the migration fl ows makes clear that the spatial concentration in this phase is predominantly the result of extensive migratory gains by the major centres at the expense of municipalities in the more distant surrounding areas or on the margins of north rhine-westphalia. at the same time, there are ongoing migration losses in favour of surrounding municipalities in the immediate vicinity of the centres – albeit at a comparatively low level. just a short time later, in 2015, the balances between the different territorial categories have again changed considerably. residential suburbanisation has clearly increased, with stronger migratory movements from the major centres to the nearby surroundings observable. it can be assumed that the main reason behind this shift is the increasingly tense situation on the housing markets in many core cities – and not diminishing interest in urban living. furthermore, the migration gains of the major centres at the expense of the other parts of the state have also weakened, which can be interpreted as normalisation of the spatial migration patterns. overall, the municipalities in the “nearby surrounding area” category exhibit the most favourable internal migration balance in 2015. 5 conclusion and discussion the study presented in this paper is based on the idea of determining the change in distance to the nearest major centre that results from migratory movements, and developing an indicator of spatial development trends from this. based on the indicator values, it is possible to identify different phases of spatial concentration and deconcentration. in light of the current state of research, the fi ndings can be regarded as plausible and instructive. thus, the phenomenon of reurbanisation, which has been intensively discussed in recent years, is also clearly apparent in the migratory movements in north rhinewestphalia. between 2005 and 2014, there was a persistent tendency toward spatial concentration, which was unique in the more than four decades under investigation. moreover, this phase of concentration is also manifest if only german nationals are included in the analysis. based on the measurement approach employed here, which is deliberately directed only toward internal state migration, the reurbanisation trend was most pronounced in 2011. weakening of the spatial concentration then followed for several years in a row until 2015 when the centrifugal forces among the migratory movements came to predominate again. in the case of certain subgroups – such as both family migration age-groups – the renewed shift in the trend began even earlier. further analysis reveals migratory losses from the major centres in favour of the nearby surroundings and shows that the current development goes hand-in-hand with strengthening residential suburbanisation. it can also the end of reurbanisation? • 151 be observed that the migratory gains of the major centres vis-à-vis the more peripherally-located regions have recently resumed at a lower level. the treatment of publicly-directed migratory movements – such as the accommodation in north rhine-westphalia of refugees and asylum-seekers who have recently immigrated from abroad – is of great signifi cance for the results of the investigation at the end of the period under consideration. more specifi cally, the renewed shift toward spatial deconcentration is only apparent if the particularly anomalous migration statistics for certain municipalities are excluded from the data analysis. nonetheless, in light of the numbers presented here, it is clear that the (temporary) peak of the reurbanisation phase has already passed and that the relative importance of the forces in migratory movements has shifted noticeably in recent years. considering the complexity of migratory movements and of the population development as a whole, the simultaneity of processes of reurbanisation and suburbanisation – of spatial concentration and deconcentration – has been repeatedly underscored in the literature (e.g. milbert 2017; hesse 2010; hirschle/schürt 2008). this is already correct due to the simple fact that migration balances as well as other aggregate indices are composed of a large number of migratory movements in different directions. in addition, there are considerable differences in migratory behaviour and the resulting spatial development trends if individual population groups or areas of investigation are considered. this became apparent in the present study when the results were differentiated by age-group or by nationality. nonetheless, based on an overview of all migratory movements, the “change in distance from major centre per case of migration” indicator provides a reliable gauge of the extent to which centrifugal or centripetal forces predominate in migration fl ows in a given area at a given time. finally, is it now possible – to return to the title of this paper – to speak of the “end of reurbanisation”? recently, the tendency in migratory movements in north rhine-westphalia has in fact shifted again towards spatial deconcentration. it can be shown that the overall nrw-wide internal migratory movements are no longer contributing to a reurbanisation trend. to assess this fi nding correctly, various points have to be kept in mind. the indicator used allows us to include all migratory movements within the boundaries of the state and to summarise the spatial orientation of those migrating in a single value. however, migration over the borders of north rhine-westphalia or of germany is not considered. the recent preponderance of centrifugal forces thus applies only to internal migrations within the state and will probably be relativised if other migratory movements are taken into account. worthy of particular mention here are the high number of infl ows from abroad that have substantially infl uenced migratory movements in recent years. in addition, it is important to reiterate that this is an analytical-quantitative study involving a specifi c investigative approach. this approach has been chosen in the awareness that the rich debate concerning reurbanisation also includes many other facets. in conclusion, it can be noted that the analysis of migratory movements provides informative fi ndings for the study of trends in spatial development and the phenomenon of reurbanisation. there are three main aspects that should constitute essential elements of further research in this fi eld: • frank osterhage152 • firstly, giving greater attention to different types of migration (local migration, long-distance migration, international migration) and how they interact promotes our understanding of demographic development. it is thus worthwhile exploring changes over time in detail and thereby revealing the backgrounds to shifts in population development trends. • secondly, city region case studies represent important building blocks of migration research. closer understanding of the causal interrelationships can be derived by placing the observable migratory movements in relation to local conditions. this is particularly the case when the study design calls for comparison between different regions. • thirdly, 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https://www.ils-forschung.de/index.php?lang=en&s=osterhage&sub= published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) reurbanisation in postsocialist europe – a comparative view of eastern germany, poland, and the czech republic reurbanisation in postsocialist europe – a comparative view of eastern germany, poland, and the czech republic* annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski abstract: since the 1990s, reurbanisation has become an increasingly frequent trajectory for urban development. many formerly shrinking cities have been able to stabilise their population or even see new growth. especially prominent in regions like germany and the uk, but also observed across the whole continent, a lively debate on reurbanisation has developed as a reality of today’s, and a potential trajectory for tomorrow’s, cities in europe. postsocialist europe has not so far been central in the reurbanisation debate, either empirically or theoretically. subsequently, the postsocialist experience is missing in the discourse and the existing body of evidence. there is, however, some evidence that czech and polish cities are also seeing signs of new inner-city growth and a trend towards core city stabilisation. against this background, the paper scrutinises the issues of reurbanisation and new growth after the shrinking of postsocialist cities. the paper uses the approach of a contrastive comparison between cities in eastern germany, where reurbanisation has developed as the predominant trajectory for many large cities, and for cities in poland and the czech republic, where this trend is considerably less prominent. it analyses the development of reurbanisation in these cities and their urban regions over the last few decades, its characteristics and the determinants triggering or impeding it. the paper includes data on a national scale as well as from relevant case studies of cities and their urban regions. it argues, among other things, that there is no “postsocialist model” with regard to infl uencing factors for reurbanisation. eastern germany, due to its specifi c postsocialist situation and transformation trajectory, can be viewed as an “outlier” or “hybrid” which exhibits characteristics typical of postsocialist and western welfare contexts and which is seeing especially dynamic reurbanisation after a phase of extreme shrinkage. although there are clear signs of inner-city reurbanisation in polish and czech cities as well, it seems relatively unlikely that this process will reach the same high levels as in east german cities within the coming years. keywords: reurbanisation · large cities · postsocialist europe · poland · czech republic · eastern germany comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 353-390 (date of release: 23.03.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-02en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-02en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on reurbanisation. • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski354 1 introduction across europe, reurbanisation has evolved as a new trajectory for urban development. in different regions of the continent, formerly shrinking cities have either stabilised their population after a phase of decline or are seeing new population growth. this has manifold impacts both on their economic development and on jobs, but also on land use and housing markets as well as on the quality of life of the residents. prominent examples of reurbanisation within the last few decades include cities in the uk and germany, but also cities in other countries in western, central and southern europe. reurbanisation is much less well-known and discussed with regard to cities in the postsocialist sphere, with the exception of eastern germany, where many large cities have experienced new growth after a longer period of shrinking. there is, however, some evidence that czech and polish cities, despite continuously expanding suburbanisation, are also showing signs of new inner-city revitalisation, new in-migration to these areas, and a trend towards stabilisation of the core city (steinführer et al. 2010). set against this background, the paper discusses whether reurbanisation also represents an issue or evolving trend of urbanisation in postsocialist cities. it focuses on the following guiding questions: • how did reurbanisation evolve in the postsocialist contexts of poland, czech republic and eastern germany? • which factors infl uence the emergence and development of reurbanisation? • how can the postsocialist reurbanisation perspective contribute to the general debate? the paper includes data on the national sample of cities and their urban regions as well as on relevant case studies of the cities concerned. taking a comparative perspective, the paper presents analogies and differences between the three national contexts and discusses the role and impact of reurbanisation in the postsocialist realm/context. in this regard, the role of the hinterland has been investigated in this paper as an explanatory factor for the development of the central city (e.g. suburbanisation as a reason for shrinking). some data from the case studies, including the urban region, are presented in the annex. however, this paper focuses primarily on the development of cities and, therefore, does not explicitly address core-hinterland relations. the paper is structured as follows: after theoretical refl ections focusing on the three countries, and presentation of the materials and methods used, the development is discussed at the national scale with reference to the ten largest cities per country. subsequently, two local case studies per country/region are analysed in greater depth with respect to meso-scale developments, interactions between city and region, as well as drivers of reurbanisation. finally, the relevance and impact of reurbanisation are assessed for postsocialist cities, and the fi ndings related to the international debate. reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 355 2 reurbanisation in the postsocialist sphere: discussions and debates reurbanisation: some comments on the general debate before dealing with reurbanisation in the postsocialist sphere, the following paragraphs expand briefl y on the general debate about the phenomenon which has largely been dominated by western scholarly work. reurbanisation (or “regrowth after shrinking”) is not a new issue in the debate surrounding urbanisation or urban population development. the idea of a revival of (inner or core) cities within the context of former decline has already been discussed by urban researchers and planners (in the 1960s and 1970s). reurbanisation as a phase or stage of the urbanisation process appeared in urban life cycle models that were established in the late 1970s and in the fi rst half of the 1980s (berry 1977; berg et al. 1982). at the time when the models were established, reurbanisation, was treated at a more theoretical or hypothetical level (because cities were mainly characterised by suburbanisation at that time), and reurbanisation only occurred when the core city, in contrast to its hinterland, displayed a relative or even absolute population (re)gain. the models, although still in use today, have been subjected to several improvements (lever 1993) and criticism (nyström 1992; kabisch/haase 2011). another strand of discussion deals with the reconcentration of population in (large) cities within the overall (regional) context of shrinkage. (core) cities are seen as “islands of growth or stabilisation” within a largely shrinking urban landscape (herfert 2007, on eastern germany) or as winners in a context of continuous decline (couch et al. 2009). according to these studies, (large) cities either remain as the only places with no decline, or initially recover, or become (in contrast to their hinterland and/or rural surroundings) destinations for in-migration due to their amenities and infrastructures. the fi rst comparative studies on this topic discuss impact factors, drivers and lessons that can be learnt from these cities about the reasons for the change they have been undergoing (power et al. 2010; carter et al. 2016; rink et al. 2012; kabisch et al. 2012). other scholarly work on reurbanisation relates more to the impact of reurbanisation on the residential and economic level, as well as on housing changes in (inner) cities. these studies look at the foundations of reurbanisation and demographic, household, or housing change (haase et al. 2010; myers 1990; mulder/dieleman 2002; karsten 2014) or the role of (inner-city) revival in the context of urban renaissance policy or neoliberal urban development (kujath 1988; brühl et al. 2005; cheshire 1995, 2006; colomb 2007; helbrecht 1996; storper/manville 2006). generally, the debate on “resurgent cities” (cheshire 2006) and the impact of (new) population growth on different “arenas” of urban development is unfocused and, to date, such systematisations (e.g. haase et al. 2005; brake/urbanczyk 2012) have merely compiled a variety of associations and contexts that relate to regrowth or reurbanisation. • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski356 reurbanisation as a topic in postsocialist europe hitherto, the debate on reurbanisation has remained by and large a western debate. the postsocialist perspective on reurbanisation, which is the focus of this paper, is generally underrepresented in the international discourse except for the east german case. in the following, we briefl y specify how reurbanisation has been discussed in our three case study countries/regions, identifying similarities and differences in the national debates. how did reurbanisation evolve as a topic of the national urban debate? in eastern germany, reurbanisation was initially discussed against the background of the shrinking that affected most of the urban sphere during the 1990s. reurbanisation became an issue when large university cities were facing new in-migration; these cities have become trailblazers for reurbanisation. leipzig represents the most prominent example of this development because it experienced a phase of extreme shrinking and dynamic reurbanisation in just 25 years (rink 2015). in germany, reurbanisation has been discussed since the 1980s (kujath 1988). since the 2000s, the debate has focused on, amongst other aspects, the shift of eastern german cities away from shrinking towards new growth (herfert 2007; haase et al. 2010). recently, the discussion has increasingly concentrated on the new “boom of cities” in germany and, thus, more on a new trend towards spatial development than about reurbanisation itself. reurbanisation, in particular with regard to compaction, also emerges as an issue in the debate on urban sustainability and resource-friendly development. the situation is different in poland. reurbanisation has emerged in the urban debate there, but no distinct focus has evolved so far. during the postsocialist period, the population trajectories of major cities have diversifi ed, but either shrinking or stabilisation was observed in most cases, (steinführer et al. 2010). generally, suburbanisation has been the dominant trend within urban development and a key issue in urban debates. new growth of cities and/or inner-city districts is being discussed more in terms of a potential development; the use of the term reurbanisation is still relatively uncommon (radzimski 2015). instead, papers tend to focus on revitalisation (i.e. urban regeneration) or gentrifi cation processes; both terms are sometimes used in conjunction with each other (grabkowska 2015). the situation in the czech republic shows greater similarities with that in poland. whereas urbanisation was the prevailing trajectory under socialism, urban regions have been experiencing deconcentration tendencies in the postsocialist period due to the shrinking of core cities (sýkora/posová 2011; klusáček et al. 2009; rumpel/ slach 2012; krejčí et al. 2011). apart from recognisable but essentially weak counterurbanisation (šimon 2014), the process of suburbanisation was the most signifi cant urbanisation process in the czech republic, observed since the mid-1990s and peaking during the mid-2000s (špačková/ouředníček 2012; sýkora/mulíček 2014). recent studies point to the decline of housing construction in the hinterland of large cities due to the economic crisis and a certain degree of saturation in the demand reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 357 for this type of housing (kubeš 2015; kährik et al. 2016). reurbanisation was thus explicitly mentioned in only a few studies and to a limited extent in this context (klusáček/vaishar 2008; ouředníček et al. 2015). which topics/aspects are discussed and which are not? in the eastern german case, research topics focused on the emergence and development of reurbanisation, its scope and speed, (mainly young and non-traditional) households driving inner-city reurbanisation, as well as inner-city neighbourhoods and housing (haase et al. 2010, 2012; haase/rink 2015); topics such as the effects of reurbanisation on housing markets and inner-city regeneration/upgrading as well as the urban economy and cities as educational hubs received less attention (holm 2012; kujath 2012; gerhard 2012). topics addressed include comparisons with other national contexts (rink et al. 2012; haase et al. 2010 for a cross-european sample of four cities), land use and density issues (wolff et al. 2016) as well as compilations of indicators for detecting inner-city reurbanisation (kabisch et al. 2010). after 2010, the debate turned to focus on the recent “boom of cities”, with reurbanisation being perceived as part of this larger-scale process. the debate in poland has largely focused on the specifi c features of gentrifi cation in polish cities (górczyńska 2015), the fragmentary and micro-scale character of the concentration of wealthier people in inner-city locations (marcinczak/sagan 2011; marcinczak et al. 2013), or studentifi cation in the polish/cee context (murzynkupisz/szmytkowska 2015). however, authors like to refer to the “marginal” (gądecki 2013) nature of gentrifi cation in polish cities, pointing out that there are “no typical gentrifi ers” (beim/tölle 2008). some authors interpreted in-fi ll developments as evidence of reurbanisation running parallel to the dominant process of suburbanisation (parysek/mierzejewska 2005). also, drawing on international debates, reurbanisation is sometimes placed in opposition to the process of gentrifi cation (grabkowska 2015). while reurbanisation often tends to be associated with the cyclical model of berg et al. (1982), some recent contributions have also treated the new growth of cities as an empirical issue (radzimski 2015) and noted rising dissatisfaction with the quality of suburban housing among younger age groups (kajdanek 2012). urban planning and policies still favour suburbanisation (radzimski 2014). in the czech debate, studies more often drew attention to inner-city regeneration. although neglected under socialism, inner-city neighbourhoods have attracted investment and been targeted by new in-migrants in the postsocialist period. numerous studies either discuss the general development of inner-city neighbourhoods (špačková et al. 2016a) or elaborate in greater detail on processes such as revitalisation, gentrifi cation and brownfi eld regeneration (sýkora 2006; kunc et al. 2014; frantál et al. 2015). or they discuss the conditions for, or actors involved in, inner-city change (steinführer 2006; klusáček/vaishar 2008), or the development of particular neighbourhoods and their driving forces (temelová 2007; ilík/ouředníček 2007; kubeš 2009). some authors anticipate the development of reurbanisation and the weakening of suburbanisation in the future (čermák 2009; kubeš 2015). qualitative investigations have revealed evolving residential preferences for inner-city • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski358 housing by some population groups, so-called transitory urbanites (steinführer et al. 2010; haase et al. 2012; kährik et al. 2016). in addition, ouředníček et al. (2015) emphasise the potential of the “back-to-the city” movement of representatives of the second generation of suburbanites (ouředníček et al. 2015) in contrast to their parental generation (špačková et al. 2016b). concluding and cross-referencing, it is apparent that the fact that reurbanisation has not been discussed to any great extent in the postsocialist realm is due to the lack of evidence or importance attached to the subject, and that other issues like suburbanisation remain the prevailing processes of urbanisation. eastern germany is an exception due to its distinct and specifi c trajectory after 1990. clearly, no common “postsocialist debate” on reurbanisation has developed. while the german debate developed dynamically and had an international orientation, the polish and czech debates remain at an initial, “incipient” stage of describing potential or smallscale new developments. in its empirical sections, the paper provides an overview of evidence on reurbanisation at the national level and selected cities of the three countries. 3 defi nitions, materials and methods for the purpose of this paper, reurbanisation is understood as a signifi cant increase of the population of a city (in administrative terms), following a longer phase of decline/shrinking. in line with the urban life cycle models mentioned above, we use population development as the main indicator in order to identify where and when reurbanisation occurs. with reference to other scholarly work dealing with urbanisation trajectories in general and shrinking cities in particular, we consider population change to be a simple and frequently used indicator for representing a complex process. moreover, it is readily accessible and comparatively easy to interpret, allowing conclusions to be drawn about adjacent processes such as household change (beauregard 2009), or economic growth, and/or the attraction of new investment (turok/mykhnenko 2007). in order to clearly distinguish reurbanisation from “simple growth as such” (cheshire 2006: 1232), our defi nition focuses on a longer phase of shrinking that predates the period in which shrinking comes to a halt and the population increases (again). for our analysis, this means that regrowth has to be interpreted within the context of previous shrinking/decline. we are well aware that the phenomenon of reurbanisation is much more complex and affects the fi elds of economic and job growth, public and private investment, and funding/ support schemes at supra-local levels. the relationships between (new) population growth and these factors will be expanded on in the second part of our empirical section, based on case studies in the three regions. in order to meet the research objectives, we follow a two-step approach: a) firstly, we use quantitative data to show the development of the ten largest cities per country/region, incorporating the population development of cities and their urban regions as well as the dominance of natural and/or migratory growth (data are presented in the appendix); we thus obtain a typology of trajectories that generalise reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 359 the population development of 30 cities into 5 types (fig. 7). b) secondly, we provide a more in-depth analysis of two selected case studies per country, including an examination of intra-urban developments, patterns of migration, and driving forces of reurbanisation. using this two-dimensional approach, we believe we adequately refl ect the different ways in which regrowth emerges and develops in our case study regions. a) for the quantitative analysis at the national level, we focused on the ten largest cities per country in order to refl ect the different urban systems in poland, the czech republic and eastern germany, covering various city sizes and the diverging signifi cance of the cities within each country. in order to investigate reurbanisation phenomena and to shed light on the trajectories of each city, we used population data from 1970 to 2015 (every fi ve years; from 1990: yearly). however, some variations occur, caused by changes in the defi nition of the population during a census round that have not been recalculated by the national statistical offi ces. this is, for example, the case in poland (especially in warsaw), where, from 1999 onwards, a recalculation of population numbers by the statistical offi ce followed the 2002 population census defi nition), leading to variations between 1998 and 1999.1 in germany, this is not the case because all data before the 2011 census are based on estimations. following the 2011 census, poland recalculated its fi gures which led to variations between 2009 and 2010. in germany and the czech republic, variations occurred between 2010 and 2011. total population data were collected for the core cities and the surrounding hinterlands, which were defi ned by the merging of all adjacent municipalities (nuts4; poland: powiat, czech republic: okres, germany: erweiterter verfl echtungsraum2). all boundaries of the spatial units have been frozen in the most recent status (2015) for which recalculations have been made. this allows comparisons over time and helps explain the role the hinterland plays in the core city development, in line with urban life cycle models (berg et al. 1982; cheshire 1995; hall/hay 1980). finally, data on the natural evolution and migratory balance were used in order to allow conclusions to be drawn about the driving forces behind population growth and decline and, especially, about the turning points of development paths. we develop a typology of trajectories, including continuous population loss, reurbanisation, etc., for all 30 cities within the three countries in a cross-national comparison. this makes it possible to test our working defi nition because we take into account the previous development and compare it to the current situation. 1 this was the fi rst census since 1988, and it revealed that, in some cases, the resident population differed signifi cantly from the actually recorded numbers. 2 http://www.bbsr.bund.de/bbsr/de/raumbeobachtung/raumabgrenzungen/grossstadtregionen/grossstadtregionen.html • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski360 b) for the in-depth case studies, we chose two cities per country/region that are typical of some overarching trends and that are in line with the typology developed earlier. we chose two cities per country/region in order to a) compare and/or contrast two cases and b) detect possible anomalies which may upset the comparative picture if just one city per country/region is selected. for the selection, we applied the following criteria: a) measurable population loss of the city in the 1990s/early 2000s over at least 10 years; b) move towards reurbanisation within the last 5-10 years or at least visible potential for reurbanisation; c) signifi cant role for the country/region and d) existing expert knowledge and research expertise on the selected cities. for eastern germany, we chose leipzig and dresden to demonstrate the prominent change from shrinking towards reurbanisation within only a few years in a number of larger university cities. in the czech republic, we consider the case of the capital of prague because it represents a valid example that explains the character and driving forces behind population regrowth in the czech context, and the city of brno which represents a major, non-capital city with fewer dynamics and without the role and features of a capital city. for poland, we present the cases of wroclaw which shows emerging reurbanisation, and poznań which, due to the population development of the inner city, is still shrinking but has exhibited potential reurbanisation of the core city within the last few years. for all six cities, we collected population data on the intra-urban level (districts) in order to answer the questions whether and to what extent reurbanisation is spreading homogenously over the city or not. moreover, in order to better understand the stage and emergence of reurbanisation as well as driving and hindrance processes, we present information on housing trends and preferences, local economic developments, large-scale investments and revitalisation projects and policies which is based on previous academic work, strategic documents, municipal statistics and analyses. described trends are supported by fi gures where helpful or necessary, with no claim to their completeness. the type and structure of information given per case study follow a common scheme and logic without being completely identical. the main idea behind the case study descriptions is to provide comparable storylines that go beyond a national-scale quantitative analysis and illustrate the emergence and development of reurbanisation at the local level within specifi c city contexts, in a qualitative and explorative manner. 4 empirical results 4.1 national scale poland in the case of poland, considerably divergent urban population developments can be observed in the postsocialist period. while cities like łódź or katowice experienced longer periods of shrinking, cities like warsaw and cracow experienced reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 361 growth. with an increase of 63,000 residents, warsaw was the outstanding leader in terms of growth for the period 1990-2015, whereas łódź encountered the strongest decline (of 147,000 people). in a number of cities, including wrocław, poznań, gdańsk, szczecin and bydgoszcz, we observe a moderate trend towards shrinking with or without growth interruptions. wrocław and gdańsk have been experiencing an episode of regrowth since 2010. lublin, by contrast, continued to grow up to the late 1990s, when most other cities were already shrinking, but after 2000, it shifted from growth to decline. the natural balance contributed negatively to the population development of most cities, with the exception of lublin (+7,400 persons) and, to a smaller extent, gdańsk. this was mainly due to the very low birth rates which prevailed in poland throughout the postsocialist period (1.32 in 2015). the birth defi cit reached its nadir between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. several cities, including warsaw, cracow and poznań, recently achieved a birth surplus. the increase was driven by the effect of demographic waves, with baby boom cohorts entering childbearing age. in absolute terms, łódź lost by far the largest number of residents due to the negative natural balance (-122,600 inhabitants). the overall effects of migration in polish cities were mixed. while warsaw, cracow, wrocław and szczecin took advantage of an infl ow surplus, the six other cities were confronted with a net loss. warsaw was clearly ahead of all the other cities, with a net gain of +128,900 people. poznań, by contrast, experienced the greatest net loss of -26,100 people. in most cities, out-migration started to predominate from the late 1990s onwards, and its negative effect tended to accumulate over time. more recently, this trend has been reversed, but for a number of cities (bydgoszcz, katowice, lublin, łódź and poznań) the net effect was still negative. looking at the urban regions, in most cases the decline of the core cities was accompanied by a population increase in the hinterlands, resulting in a positive net overall change for the region. however, in łódź and katowice, the population declined also at the agglomeration level. the urban region of warsaw experienced the largest gain of over 330,000 people. a substantial increase of almost 100,000 residents also took place in poznań’s agglomeration which is particularly striking given the ongoing shrinking of the core city. while a number of factors are likely to have affected the postsocialist demographic trajectories of polish cities, the role of several key factors including the economy, education, consumption patterns, planning and policies should be underlined here. in the early 2000s, the poor performance of the polish economy, with unemployment rates peaking at 20 percent, triggered a wave of migration following the opening of labour markets in a number of eu countries. more recently, however, more favourable economic conditions again increased the incentives for migration to cities. the positive effects are, however, unevenly distributed. while cities like warsaw and poznań are actually facing a workforce defi cit, old industrialised cities like łódź and katowice are still struggling to restructure their economy (marcińczak/ sagan 2011). the economic success of polish cities is strongly related to their performance in higher education. as an outcome of social change and a higher reputation of university education, the number of university students in poland increased • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski362 between 1990 and the late 2000s from 400,000 to almost 2,000,000, leading to a substantial migration towards cities hosting high-ranked universities like warsaw, cracow, poznań, wrocław and gdańsk (sojkin et al. 2012). in short, a solid base of knowledge-intensive economy combined with educational opportunities has been one of the key determinants of rural-to-urban migration in postsocialist poland. more recently, foreign migration has also become an important factor. approximately one million migrants from the ukraine were counted in poland in 2016, making them by far the largest group of foreign migrants. most of these migrants have arrived in the last few years following the outbreak of war in eastern ukraine as well as the related economic depression. it is, however, diffi cult to estimate the impact of foreign migration at the city level, as offi cial data are only provided at the regional level. the positive migration effects of rural-to-urban migration were counterbalanced by a prevailing trend towards suburbanisation at the urban agglomeration level. suburbanisation could be regarded as a spatial refl ection of changing consumption patterns. for instance, the amount of outstanding mortgage debt in poland has quadrupled in just a few years, refl ecting the strong demand for home ownership (radzimski 2014). this trend, coupled with the increasing motorisation rate and a fig. 1: population development of poland’s ten largest cities 1970-2015 (1970/71 = 100) 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 1970/71 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year warszawa kraków ód wroc aw pozna gda sk szczecin lublin bydgoszcz katowice source: own calculation reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 363 deregulated land use planning system (halleux et al. 2012), created favourable conditions for the growth of urban hinterlands. summing up, it can be concluded that only some of the largest polish cities demonstrate shrinking followed by regrowth (fig. 1). reurbanisation tendencies are not as clearly visible as in eastern germany. while in some cities, like warsaw and cracow, growth has prevailed for most of the post-transition period, other cities have encountered longer periods of shrinking. recently, the migration balance has improved in a number of cities. however, in only two cases (wrocław and in gdańsk) this increase has caused a change from shrinking to regrowth. while economically motivated rural-to-urban migration creates a potential for reurbanisation, this trend is counterbalanced by (continuous) residential suburbanisation. czech republic in the last half decade, czech cities have experienced a variety of urbanisation processes. under socialism, strong state-led urbanisation related to the extensive construction of housing estates was dominant in urban regions (fig. 2). cities gained population mainly through internal migration but also as a result of the positive natural balance (primarily in the 1970s due to propopulation measures). suburbanisation was practically non-existent and only little investment reached municipalities in the hinterlands of large cities; both processes resulted in population losses in these areas, especially during the 1980s. after the breakdown of state socialism, almost all of the ten largest cities experienced population decline between 1990 and 2005 and lost between 2 percent and 8 percent of their 1990 population, with ostrava and ústí nad labem suffering the most severe losses. the decline was driven by negative natural and migration balances alike. two main reasons caused losses by migration. first, some cities found themselves in an unfavourable economic situation; economic decline primarily affected the cities previously dependent on heavy industry or mining (ostrava, ústí nad labem). second, the suburbanisation process was responsible for out-ofcity migration fl ows; it started in the region around prague but also around many second-tier cities in the second half of the 1990s. signifi cant suburbanisation arose as a result of several factors. at the level of national policies, the state focused on supporting new housing construction through several measures (e.g. building savings, mortgages). the revitalisation of the pre-war housing stock was not a priority in the fi rst years. also, the formerly strict planning system weakened, and every municipality gained considerable planning power. as a result, the rules for housing construction were, in most cases, more fl exible outside the core cities. finally, the preference for a particular type of housing (e.g. a house with garden), which was a scarce resource under state socialism, was signifi cant on the demand side. since the second half of the 2000s, some of the large cities have shown reurbanisation tendencies. the population gains were mainly driven by migration, more specifi cally by positive migration balances of foreigners (mostly ukrainians, slovaks, russians, and vietnamese) while ethnic czechs continued to leave for suburbia. furthermore, some of the cities’ population increase can also be ascribed to positive natural balance, although its importance and duration varied among the cit• annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski364 ies. in the last decade, the urban population has experienced a “population boom”, connected to strong cohorts, born in the 1970s, reaching their childbearing ages. at the same time, however, suburbanisation even increased in intensity in this period, resulting in population growth in most of the urban regions. however, a few years after the start of the economic crisis in 2008, the growth trend was interrupted and the number of in-migrants (especially of foreigners) sharply decreased. in some cases migration losses only led to a reduction of population gains (e.g. in prague), while other cities began to lose population again (e.g. olomouc). suburbanisation also slowed down as a result of lower demand for new housing. recently, a slow reversal of trends associated with the recovery following the economic crisis can be observed. the population development of cities that previously lost population seems to have stabilised: their losses became increasingly marginal (e.g. brno) and some of them even turned towards reurbanisation (e.g. plzeň). as already indicated, the population growth in cities was mainly connected to their economic performance and the need for additional workforce which brought international immigrants to the cities (čermák 2009). almost all large cities exhibfig. 2: population development of the czech republic’s ten largest cities 1970-2015 (1970/71 = 100) source: own calculation 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 1970/71 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year praha brno ostrava plze liberec olomouc ústí nad labem hradec králové eské bud jovice pardubice reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 365 ited a positive migration balance for the group of foreigners in the postsocialist period; its intensity was highly dependent on the economic development. apart from job-related migration, it was the specifi c housing preferences of the nascent middle classes that were responsible for continuous suburbanisation. these tendencies prevailed in most cities and their intensity was linked to the housing market dynamics (suburban housing construction). in the last few years, however, some cities also experienced stagnating out-migration juxtaposed with an increase in the number of in-migrants which led to a modest yet overall gain of population in recent years (especially in prague, plzeň, and liberec). this could be considered a sign of changing housing preferences towards city-mindedness. in sum, it should be stressed that both suburbanisation and emergent reurbanisation have coexisted in most of the czech urban regions in the last ten years. from the regional perspective, a variegated picture of population development can be observed in the ten largest czech cities. prague, plzeň, and liberec represent exceptional examples of (almost) continuous growth during the past ten years, followed by a shorter period of decline. ostrava has been constantly losing population since the early 1990s and is likely to see this trend continue in the future. other cities (olomouc, české budějovice, hradec králové) experienced episodic decline. a fourth group of cities exhibited stabilisation of population development (brno, pardubice, ústí nad labem). eastern germany reurbanisation in eastern germany is clearly a product of the exceptional population losses of its cities. most of the large cities in the gdr (except potsdam and rostock) had already ceased to grow in the 1980s; leipzig even began to shrink in the 1960s (fig. 3). the reasons are basically decreasing birth rates since the 1970s, out-migration due to bad housing conditions in city centres as well as out-migration as a consequence of national industrial planning policies and environmental pollution. since 1985, seven of the ten largest eastern german cities have lost population. the exceptions are the capital berlin and nearby potsdam, and rostock. with the exception of berlin, 1990 saw the continuation and reinforcement of shrinking in every city – now dominated by east-west migration, state-funded suburbanisation and country-wide job-driven out-migration due to industrial erosion – all accompanied by a sharp decrease in (already low) birth rates to the lowest levels. shrinking had become the predominant trajectory of urban development in eastern germany, exhibiting dramatic dynamics. some cities lost more than 10 percent of their populations (e.g. chemnitz, leipzig, halle, magdeburg, erfurt). around 2000, the trend started to change towards reurbanisation (fig. 3). while in many core cities the population shrinking came to a halt and the population even started to grow again, suburbanisation nearly stopped and suburban communities even began to shrink. the reasons are basically rooted in changing national policies. first, housing and living conditions have been improved due to state benefi ts (tax relief). second, state funded programmes such as stadtumbau helped to stabilise the housing market. both interventions led to affordable and attractive housing conditions which pulled in new immigrants. third, a lot of money was invested in the • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski366 infrastructure together with the increased relevance of universities as a guarantee of high earnings. in contrast to the shrinking, however, reurbanisation was very heterogeneous during the 2000s. analysis of the trajectories of all cities reveals that, despite the general shrinking trends in the 1990s and stabilisation/reurbanisation in the 2000s, and even more so in the 2010s, the population dynamics of east german cities differ considerably. the most prominent examples of the new stabilisation and growth (albeit at moderate yearly rates until the late 2000s) were cities such as dresden and leipzig, but also smaller university cities such as jena, erfurt, and potsdam (which have regrown, not at the rates, e.g., of leipzig, but nevertheless steadily). subsequently, these three cities now exceed their 1970 population by 125/140 percent, whereas the most prominent examples of reurbanisation, dresden and leipzig, exceed the 1970 population by only 8 percent (dresden) or reached the 1970 level only in 2016 (leipzig). however, other cities faced an even longer period of shrinking and only experienced low growth rates during the 2000s. the reasons are rooted in structural problems of the cities’ economies, the lack of births and the lack of available inner-city housing; relevant examples are rostock (ship building) and magdefig. 3: population development of eastern germany’s ten largest cities 19702015 (1970/71 = 100) source: own calculation 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 1970/71 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year berlin potsdam chemnitz dresden leipzig halle an der saale magdeburg erfurt jena rostock reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 367 burg (machine construction). in contrast, shrinking rates declined in the second half of the 2000s, also in cities such as halle that had belonged, europe-wide, to the most dynamically shrinking cities until then. this shows that the duration and severity of shrinking have a considerable combined impact on how recovery takes place. in the fi rst half of the 2010s, reurbanisation became the overarching trajectory for all large cities in eastern germany. yearly growth rates differed; whilst some cities, such as halle, chemnitz, or magdeburg, exhibited either stabilisation or very modest growth from 2011 onwards, rates have skyrocketed in leipzig (2.5 percent since 2011) and in dresden (1.3 percent until 2015). whereas cities such as jena and potsdam – but also berlin and erfurt – saw a comparatively short interruption of growth through shrinking, the cities of halle, chemnitz, and magdeburg have stabilised only recently at rates of approximately 80 percent of their 1970 population. the migration patterns of germans are important for the reurbanisation currently being observed, but so, too, is legal international immigration – especially in larger cities – and refugees. chemnitz is the initial arrival point for refugees entering the federal state of saxony, which might have an impact on recent growth rates. thus, for some cities it is not clear if reurbanisation is currently taking place as we have seen in leipzig or dresden, or if these are short-term stabilisation phenomena arising from national trends (e.g. distribution of refugees). thus, while the general trend towards reurbanisation is clearly due to a national trend in germany as a whole, the differences in the time at which reurbanisation emerged and how modest/prominent the process was, depend to a marked extent on the specifi c situation of a city and show a clear connection to the previous period of shrinking. 4.2 zooming in: detecting the development in urban regions (case studies) poland (poznań and wrocław) two contrasting case studies in poland are discussed: wrocław as an example of a recent shift towards regrowth, and poznań where there appears to be potential for reurbanisation but where suburbanisation remains the predominant trend. the population of wrocław started to decline in the early 1990s, reaching its nadir in 2010 (631,000 residents). subsequently, the number of residents increased again to 636,000 by 2015. the population increase due to migration between 1990 and 2015 amounted to 20,000 people, i.e. more or less equal to the loss caused by natural decline. an increase in migration combined with an improving but still negative natural balance jointly contributed to the recent episode of regrowth which can be observed from 2010 onwards. against the background of this change the local economy is thriving which has earned wrocław a reputation as one of the most prosperous urban regions, not just in poland but in central and eastern europe as a whole. recently, wrocław’s agglomeration attracted a number of important investors including amazon, google, lg and volvo. in 2015, the registered unemployment rate was 3.3 percent. the role of the city as a centre of higher education • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski368 is important and growing, with 120,000 students enrolled at universities, making wrocław the third largest academic city in poland after warsaw and cracow. looking at the intra-urban structure of the city, we fi nd continuous shrinking in the inner city contrasted by ongoing growth in peripheral districts (fig. 4). it appears that in wrocław, a substantial proportion of the suburbanisation is taking place within the boundaries of the city, which comprises an area of 293 km2. wrocław was particularly successful in fostering regulatory planning: 57 percent of the city area is covered by regulatory plans, compared to 30 percent at the national level. with 104,000 housing units approved between 2000 and 2016, the increase in housing supply in wrocław was twice that of poznań. at the same time, the population of the hinterlands increased by 60,000 which confi rms the importance of the suburbanisation process as the predominant tendency in the wrocław agglomeration (książek/ suszczewicz 2017). however, the suburbs of wrocław grew less dynamically than those of cracow or gdańsk, not to mention poznań where the increase was two times higher. as for the inner-city districts, the lack of urban regeneration measures seems to be a major factor in the continuous out-migration. an urban revitalisation programme was launched in wrocław in 2005. however, in 2016, the city spent roughly 2.5 million euros on revitalisation projects;this is a considerable amount but far from what could be regarded as necessary for achieving comprehensive regeneration of the inner-city districts. in poznań, the population has declined continuously in the postsocialist period, with a tendency to accelerate over time. despite a birth surplus in the early 2000s, the overall contribution of the natural balance was negative (-14,000 people). the birth defi cit was coupled with a prevailing out-migration tendency which resulted in a loss of 26,000 people. in absolute terms, poznań had the highest rate of outmigration among the ten largest polish cities. between 2007 and 2010, the annual net loss due to migration exceeded 3,000 people per year. recently, the migration balance has improved somewhat, but the loss still remains substantial. in terms of the economy and the labour market, poznań ranks comparable to or even somewhat better than wrocław, with a registered unemployment rate of 2.4 percent in 2015. amazon, glaxosmithkline, solaris and volkswagen are among the most important investors in the urban region. with 116,000 students, poznań continues to be one of the major academic hubs in poland, although recently it surrendered its third position to wrocław. poznań shows a similar pattern of change in the intra-urban structure to wrocław, with growth occurring in the outskirts and shrinking continuing in the core districts (fig. 4). in contrast to wrocław, however, the overall effect of these changes remains negative. the peripheral districts of poznań appear to have absorbed a comparably low proportion of suburban migration. with a 42 percent share of the city area covered by regulatory plans, poznań performed better than the national average, but signifi cantly worse than wrocław. the city also faces certain infrastructural defi ciencies in the peripheral districts (radzimski 2011). the number of housing units approved between 2000 and 2015 amounted to 51,000, which is less than one would expect in comparison to other large polish cities. in the same period, the population of the hinterland increased by 146,000 people, placing poznań only behind warreurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 369 saw in terms of suburban growth. among the ten largest polish cities, poznań has the highest rate of suburban out-migration. this is probably caused by an insuffi cient supply of new housing on the one hand, and inadequate urban regeneration in the core districts on the other. poznań adopted its fi rst revitalisation programme in 2006, but for years the regeneration process was neglected on the political agenda. in 2016, the city assigned 1.5 million euros to revitalisation projects. comparing the two cases, we conclude that the main difference between the population trajectories of poznań and wrocław was due to migration. with regard to the natural balance, both cities followed a similar trajectory, refl ecting the waves of the population pyramid, with the baby-boom cohorts of the 1980s entering childbearing age around the mid-2000s and boosting the number of births. the development of migration was more differentiated and probably more dependent on local factors, as is also the case for suburbanisation. the currently prevailing demand on the housing market is driving further suburbanisation, which is likely to continue in the coming years. as we have shown for wrocław, the proportion of suburbanisation a city accommodates within its boundaries might be a key factor shaping population trajectories. considering reurbanisation in the inner-city districts, much will depend on the progress of urban regeneration policies and the measures taken. also, international migration has recently emerged as an issue of potential importance for urban contexts, but little is known as yet about its spatially disaggregated effects, and its long-term signifi cance is diffi cult to predict. czech republic (prague and brno) whereas the reurbanisation process has not been generally strong in the last few decades, prague represents a unique situation and can be considered a prominent example of a city which is regrowing after a short period of shrinking in the 1990s. fig. 4: population development in wrocław and poznań at the district level 2000/2001-2015 wrocław 2001-2015 poznań 2001-2015 0 5 102,5 kmmin = -2.3 (rejon ulicy krakowskiej) max = 28.0 (jagodno) min = -2.1 (jeżyce) max = 11.0 (strzeszyn) average annual population change (in %) -0.5 10 42 source: own calculation • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski370 brno, on the other hand, represents “an average city” that exhibits some reurbanisation tendencies but which are regularly interrupted by periods of population losses. after the completion of the last housing estates in the early 1990s, prague started to lose population in 1993. the population loss was driven mainly by the negative natural balance (due to low fertility rates) and, from the late 1990s onwards, also by suburbanisation processes. the population decline continued until 2002 and prague lost 57,000 inhabitants (almost 5 percent of the 1992 population). since 2002, prague has experienced relatively continuous population growth, with the most intensive gains occurring during the late 2000s. in total, prague gained 107,000 people over the last 13 years. this development is primarily connected to the economic boom that attracted new residents (from both other regions of the country as well as from abroad) and to the positive natural balance evident since 2006. even though prague’s economy underwent a considerable transformation, related to deindustrialisation in the postsocialist period, the city held an exclusive position. as a capital city, prague represents a gateway to the czech republic and serves as a (central east) european centre for selected global fi rms (e.g. microsoft, hewlett-packard, ibm, the siemens group). the intensive concentration of progressive economic activities makes the local labour market very attractive and the unemployment rate has traditionally remained very low (feřtrová/temelová 2011); it reached 4.1 percent in 2016. in addition, prague is the largest higher education hub with about 150,000 university students in 2014. at the intra-urban level, the character of the population change has been rather varied (see fig. 5). some inner-city neighbourhoods started to gain population after the late 2000s, following an extended period of shrinking that was particularly intensive in the late socialist era and also continued under postsocialism due to the process of commercialisation. population growth is recorded mainly in neighbourhoods with new housing construction. indeed, the city’s planners have recently been articulating the need for brownfi eld conversion and support housing developments within the compact city (e.g. metropolitní plán 2016). in addition, considerable suburban development took place within prague’s loosely delimited administrative boundaries (comprising an area of 496 km2) and resulted in a dynamic population increase of 58,000. in the case of brno, the population development was very similar to that of prague under socialism and also during the 1990s. however, regrowth tendencies appeared later than in prague and have been less stable. brno started to gain new population only between 2008 and 2011. subsequently, the city began to lose population again, although with less intensity, and, only from 2014 onwards did the population decrease seem to stabilise. since the natural balance has been positive since 2006, the changes in population development are due to varying migration patterns. first, the lower ability to retain a positive migration balance is attributable to the poor economic situation. even though brno was able to attract many companies from progressive economic sectors (e.g. imb, honeywell) its economy, which was dominated by industry at the end of the state socialist period, had diffi culties in reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 371 coping with restructuring. in addition, brno was also more seriously hit by the economic crisis that started in 2008. this is refl ected in the higher unemployment rate which has varied between 7.5-9 percent since 2010. second, suburbanisation is also responsible for population losses, resulting in brno’s hinterland growing constantly over the past 15 years. compared to prague, suburbanisation within administrative boundaries has been less intensive and only accounts for approximately 15 percent of the new housing construction since 2000 (cf. 29 percent in prague). in addition, the intensity of new housing construction is slightly lower compared to prague; approximately 21,000 new housing units were completed between 2000 and 2015 in brno compared to 84,000 units in prague. third, because of the problem of (non)registration for permanent residency among certain sociodemographic groups, population gains may remain hidden in the offi cial statistics (steinführer et al. 2010). indeed, experts estimate that the actual number of new inhabitants in brno – including those not registered – amounts to almost 50,000, most of them unregistered persons without permanent residency and foreigners staying illegally (seidenglanz et al. 2013). in addition, with almost 80,000 university students, brno is the second largest academic hub in the country. similarly to prague, the planning authorities see potential future residential development in the revitalisation of the inner city brownfi elds. comparing the two cases, the similarity in population development derives from relatively high fertility rates. this has resulted in gains since the mid-2000s because of the positive natural balance. this is connected to the strong cohorts born in the 1970s entering childbearing age. the main differences in the demographic trajectories result from diverse migration patterns: (i) suburbanisation processes were mainly responsible for the negative migration balance of the (ethnic) czechs in both cities. whereas brno still continues to exhibit a negative migration balance, prague has started to experience a positive migration balance in the last two years, with fig. 5: population development in prague and brno at the district level prague 2001-2015 brno 2001-2011 0 5 102,5 kmmin = -2.3 (josefov) max = 57.4 (pitkovice) min = -1.4 (veveří) max = 9.6 (kníničky) average annual population change (in %) -0.5 10 42 source: own calculation • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski372 in-migrants more often coming to the inner and outer city neighbourhoods. (ii) in the case of foreigners, the migration patterns were much more dynamic and highly dependent on the economic situation. both cities gained foreign population during the economic boom in the mid-2000s. this changed after the economic crisis in 2008. whilst prague remained a relatively attractive destination for foreigners, brno appears to have been affected more severely by the economic situation and migration gains have been only moderate. given the favourable economic development during the past few years, the gradually increasing rate of housing construction and many ongoing and upcoming inner-city revitalisation projects, it is expected that reurbanisation tendencies will become more evident and dynamic in both cities in the near future. eastern germany (leipzig and dresden) in eastern germany, reurbanisation has to be described against the background of long-term shrinking in most of the larger cities. large university cities such as leipzig and dresden are the most prominent examples of reurbanisation. massive public and private investment in the built environment and infrastructure created the preconditions for new in-migration and growth. leipzig saw a continuous population decline from the 1960s onwards, due to both negative natural development and out-migration. out-migration was frequently prompted by gradual decay of the industrial base, combined with poor housing conditions and ecological degradation (rink et al. 2012). after 1989, out-migration rates skyrocketed. from 1989 to 1998, leipzig lost about 100,000 inhabitants. this dramatic drop in population numbers was reinforced in particular by out-migration (to western germany) that was caused by extensive deindustrialisation. simultaneously, leipzig saw marked, state subsidised suburbanisation of its surrounding areas between 1994 and 1997 (nuissl/rink 2005). out-migration, in total, resulted in a dramatic drop of fertility rates (as in the rest of eastern germany). the impact of urban shrinking then became clearly visible in the vast number of brownfi eld sites and the large amount of vacant housing (approximately 20 percent of the total stock in 2000, rink et al. 2012). shrinking came to a halt in the late 1990s and migration balances started to turn positive again due to modest but continuous in-migration throughout the whole decade of the 2000s. this occurred, fi rst, because leipzig underwent an administrative reform in 1999 and “regained” some of the suburbanites who had left the city years before. second, since tax policies changed after 1997, suburbanisation declined and remained at a very modest level after 2000 (nuissl/rink 2005). third, large scale refurbishment in the 1990s and early 2000s drew 80 percent of the inmigration, which led to strong population growth of these inner-city districts, while districts in the outer city continued to lose population (fig. 6). most of these inmigrants were young people aged 30 or less who were attracted by the availability of cheap housing (haase et al. 2010). leipzig’s reurbanisation was supported by massive public investment in transport, green and social infrastructures, housing, higher education, and the labour market, as well as subsidies for private investment in industries and services. largereurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 373 scale investment by dhl, bmw and porsche, which all settled in leipzig, were generously supported by public money; in addition, creative industries began to emerge. the city also expanded its role as a higher education hub: a bioscience park was established and existing science parks enlarged. reindustrialisation, new economic growth, and the creation of more than 50,000 new jobs can be viewed as the main causes of regrowth and can be interpreted as the outcomes of massive public intervention. moreover, in the 2010s, after years of stagnation and demolition, new (upmarket) housing has been built; currently (2016) vacancies have dropped to 5 percent or less, and the housing market has moved from a supply-surplus towards a demand-surplus market (haase/rink 2015; wolff et al. 2016). since 2011, leipzig has attracted more than 10,000 new residents yearly due to in-migration. in 2014, for the fi rst time in decades, the city also registered a positive birth rate (see appendix). in addition, since 2015, the city has experienced an additional infl ux of refugees. currently, almost all the leipzig districts are growing or remain stable (fig. 6), and the population was roughly 580,000 at the end of 2016. leipzig, which was called the “capital of housing vacancy” in the early 2000s, is today amongst the fastest growing cities in germany; the title “city of extremes” that was coined by rink (2015) now seems very apt. similar to leipzig, dresden experienced rapid changes after reunifi cation in terms of its economy and demography but differs from leipzig in terms of its economic stabilisation, the role of the hinterland, and birth rates. between 1989 and 1999, the city lost more than 46,000 residents, basically due to out-migration and decreasing birth rates. however, 25,000 housing units were refurbished at the same time and 38,000 new housing units were built, mostly on the outskirts of the city (wiechmann 2008). additionally, dresden saw intense suburbanisation during the fig. 6: population development in the leipzig and dresden districts 2000-2015 dresden 2000-2015 leipzig 2000-2015 0 5 102,5 kmmin = -6.0 (dresdner heide) max = 168.0 (flughafen/industriegebiet klot) min = -1.7 (grünau-nord) max = 5.1 (plagwitz) average annual population change (in %) -0.5 10 42 source: own calculation • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski374 1990s (see appendix). as described for leipzig above, the combination of these processes led to high housing vacancy rates of more than 20 percent at the end of the 1990s (wiechmann 2008). economically, after some diffi cult years in the early 1990s, dresden regained the specifi c role it played during the gdr era, namely as the primary location of the electronic industry, by establishing a highly competitive, high-tech industry known as the “silicon saxony” microelectronics cluster (wiechmann 2008). this industry, including fi rms such as infi neon technologies, together with semiconductor and component manufacturers, was supported by state subsidies; more than 760 companies were established in the region, with about 20,000 employees. from 2000 onwards, the city experienced dynamic growth, with more than 45,000 residents being added to the statistics by 2010. this is rooted in the renewed attractiveness of the inner city in terms of housing and public space. in dresden’s early reurbanisation phase, growing and shrinking neighbourhoods had been located side by side. in contrast, figure 6 shows that, by the late 2000s, most of the districts experienced strong or even very strong population growth, particularly the historic neighbourhoods around the city centre. only some districts at the fringe or with a predominance of prefabricated housing built during the gdr period still exhibited population losses. from the mid-2000s onwards, dresden has benefi ted from both immigration and, for the fi rst time since the early 1980s, rising birth rates (see appendix). by the late 2000s, dresden’s housing market came under increasing pressure with rising prices for land and rents, shortages in certain housing segments and symptoms of gentrifi cation. it is thus not surprising that, in contrast to leipzig, dresden has a negative migration balance in terms of families who are pushed away from or pulled towards the hinterland of the city, which remains attractive. when comparing the two cities, one can conclude that reurbanisation occurred when a) suburbanisation passed its peak and decreased in importance in the late 1990s and b) the core cities offered old, refurbished housing stock at moderate prices and became attractive as housing locations for city-minded (young) people. reurbanisation started in inner-city districts with good infrastructure and valuable housing stock and spread gradually over larger areas of the cities. in eastern germany, reurbanisation was greatly supported and boosted by investment in innercity housing stock and infrastructure. some of these cities, including dresden, had previously already showed signs of a stressed housing market. leipzig, due to its large oversupply of housing, had a supply-surplus housing market until very recently and is only now slowly returning to a more stressed market. this was one of the reasons why in-migration rates in leipzig rose dramatically after 2011, whereas the scale in dresden remained at the 2006-10 level. in recent years leipzig has attracted more residents from its hinterland than it has lost to it; the trend in dresden is not as obvious due to the continuously negative migration balance for families in the hinterland. in both cities, regrowth is also expected to continue within the coming years. the potential for in-migration has increased because of more long-distance and international in-migration in recent years. however, the availability of both jobs and affordable housing will be crucial if reurbanisation is to continue. reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 375 5 discussion and conclusion coming back to our initial research questions and using them as a guiding principle, we summarise the results of our study in the following section and link them to the current research knowledge presented in section 2. how did reurbanisation evolve in the postsocialist contexts of poland, czech republic and eastern germany? the cross-national view of the city trajectories shows that reurbanisation, understood as population growth after a longer phase of decline, can be found in postsocialist europe. however, we observe some important variations in terms of a) the speed of the urban dynamics with regard to both previous shrinking and new growth, and b) the linear or episodic character of reurbanisation, thereby confi rming previous studies (wolff/wiechmann 2017). as figure 7 shows, which generalises the trajectories of the 10 largest cities between 1970 and 2015, we fi nd fi ve types of trajectories, none of which is represented in all three countries. in eastern germany, we see an overwhelming reurbanisation trend, especially in larger cities. in addition, the trajectory of stabilisation after extreme shrinking (e.g. madgeburg, chemnitz, halle) is quite typical. in contrast, shrinking is still much more widespread in poland and the czech republic, even though we also fi nd some evidence for reurbanisation tendencies in these countries (more often in the czech republic than in poland). furthermore, the three capital cities (warsaw and prague on the national level, dresden at the federal state level) represent different types of trajectories. from this, we conclude that national and local contexts matter more than any “capital effects”. remarkably, we fi nd different city sizes throughout all types. thus, reurbanisation does not represent a phenomenon that is primarily typical of second-rank cities; it also applies for smaller ones (e.g. jena, liberec). in addition, there is no clear infl uence of a certain city type on an urban trajectory: we fi nd university, serviceoriented, and postindustrial cities throughout all types (reurbanising, stagnating, and shrinking). whilst reurbanisation has always been the overarching trend of development in larger cities in eastern germany, the developments in poland and the czech republic do not show this linearity. there are several reasons behind this differentiated development. first, shrinking has tended to be longer and more pronounced in some industrial cities, e.g. katowice, łódź, or ostrava. second, in contrast to poland and the czech republic, considerable public and private investment was targeted at cities in eastern germany. this has led to the creation of new jobs, as well as attractive housing and living conditions. third, people in germany are less clearly oriented towards suburban housing, compared to their polish and czech counterparts. germans, however, have a preference for urban neighbourhoods that are able to offer acceptable housing and living conditions. consequently, the intensity of suburbanisation is different in the three countries. whilst this has had a smaller effect on the population development of core cities in eastern germany in the past 15 years, it still plays an important role in poland and the czech republic. in poland, • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski376 residential suburbanisation has contributed to a situation where the economic performance and population development of a city (e.g., poznań or, to a lesser extent, łódź) seem to be increasingly de-coupled. this is partly due to the relative scarcity of housing supply in cities and partly to the fact that most newly built housing can be found in the suburbs. we conclude that reurbanisation in eastern germany has been supported by active funding and investment or by pro-active internal policy, possibly combined with restrictions on suburban developments (e.g. abolition of the state/federal subsidy for builders of private housing in germany in 2006). when looking at the case studies, we found both commonalities and differences. first, there are variations in the profi les of in-migrants. generally, reurbanisation is driven by younger age groups in their early twenties who, however, might leave the cities after completing their education. therefore, career starters and families are considered much more signifi cant for (long-term) reurbanisation. however, they play a different role in the individual case studies which is due to different housing histories, as well as to the availability and affordability of inner-city housing and its alternatives (e.g. in the suburbs). moreover, reurbanisation, measured simply by fig. 7: typology of population development of the ten largest cities in eastern germany, the czech republic, and poland 1970-2015 source: own calculation reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 377 population growth, might be unstable. in the czech case, the evidence shows that reurbanisation (in terms of population) is closely linked to international population inand outfl ows, which, in turn, are dependent on economic developments. in contrast, this aspect plays a minor role in poland. this shows the important role of different types of inand immigration fl ows for reurbanisation and indicates the need for further in-depth research. second, national-scale developments are refl ected differently within the cities. in all three countries we see inner-city neighbourhoods as starting points for reurbanisation. overall trends of changing housing preferences and rising city-mindedness, especially among middle-class urban dwellers, are emerging. in the case of poland and the czech republic, this is still not particularly evident in terms of (long-term) data, but it is clearly underway in cities in these countries (see also earlier studies on transitory urbanites by haase et al. 2011, 2012; kährik et al. 2016). generally, there are two factors driving inner-city reurbanisation in eastern germany and slowing it down or delaying it in poland and the czech republic: different tenure structures and different urban/suburban housing history orientations. reurbanisation in eastern germany was fostered by high residential mobility rates, which are more likely to be found in a tenants’ market. by contrast, the housing markets in poland and the czech republic are shaped by a preference for owner-occupied housing. in addition, housing histories in these two countries are more often suburboriented, which is connected to the long-term preference for a family house with a garden, the lack of affordable, family-oriented housing in core cities, and the absence of effective internal development policies. another factor that indirectly impacts the level of in-migration to cities, at least in the czech republic, is the economic situation because in-migration is driven to a large extent by (labour) immigration. the effect of, e.g., the 2008 crisis was, thus, to interrupt in-migration into large cities. which factors are infl uencing the emergence and development of reurbanisation? table 1 summarises the factors that we identifi ed as decisive/relevant with respect to their infl uence on the emergence and development of reurbanisation in the three countries. we identifi ed four main complex factors or bundles of factors that are driving the emergence and development of reurbanisation in the three countries and that allow conclusions on its duration and persistence. 1. population growth and its components: population growth of the core cities is evident in the emergence and development of reurbanisation in all cases, and is especially prominent in eastern germany. both domestic and international migration plays a role, although more prominently in eastern germany and the czech republic.3 while in eastern germany the majority of in-migrants target the core city, in poland and the czech republic in-migration is concentrated 3 in poland, foreign immigration has only emerged as a factor since 2014, mainly through migration from (eastern) ukraine. • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski378 rather on the suburbs, mainly due to a lack of affordable housing in the core city. within recent years natural growth has become a factor that could have a greater impact in the long run; in poland and the czech republic, however, much of the natural growth is “moving” with young families to the suburbs. 2. strategic policy orientations including control of suburbanisation: the case of eastern germany shows that a combination of support for inner-city housing and delimitation of suburbanisation may foster reurbanisation. the lack of consistent policies for the support of cities both at the national and the local level in poland and the czech republic is clearly one of the factors hindering core city growth. eu-funding may have different effects here: while respective funds were used in east german cities to strengthen urban neighbourhoods, in the other two cases, selective measures aimed at supporting suburban housing construction have been fi nanced. in poland and the czech republic, there is a connection between ongoing suburbanisation and the lack of affordable inner-city housing. 3. investment-economy-job nexus: investment is a factor in all cases but has different sources, magnitudes and effects. while in the two east german case studies a combination of public and private investment basically into infrastructure and service economies led to the creation of new jobs (after heavy losses in the 1990s) that allowed in-migrants to stay, the czech and polish cities attract people with their job opportunities; many of those residents, however, live in or go to the suburbs. support schemes also differ – and range from large public subsidies and support for the settlement of private business in eastern germany to special economic zones with infrastructure and tax relief in poland and the czech republic. 4. supply of inner-city housing: while investment in inner-city housing in eastern germany led to moderately priced rented housing which meets the needs of in-migrants, investment into housing in the other two countries led mostly to gentrifi cation and not to a decrease in the lack of affordable housing. therefore, investment in the housing stock combined with a different tenure structure has led to quite different outcomes: as a “push factor” in eastern germany, on the one hand, and as a “hindering factor” in the two other examples, on the other, at least up to the present. in summary, it is obvious that there is no “postsocialist model” with regard to the infl uencing factors of reurbanisation. at the same time, it is apparent that eastern germany, due to its specifi c postsocialist condition and transformation, should be viewed as an “outlier” or “hybrid” showing characteristics typical of postsocialist and western welfare contexts, plus the specifi cs of extreme shrinking and especially dynamic reurbanisation. we did not subdivide “amenities” into educational and cultural/tourist facilities, open spaces and infrastructures in the table since it is almost impossible to single out general aspects of their impact apart from local specifi cs. we wish to underline, however, that those amenities also infl uence reurbanisation, since they are more (as in the german case) or less (as in the czech republic and poland) directly connected with housing and quality of life. reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 379 tab. 1: factors infl uencing the emergence and development of reurbanisation in the three countries factor eastern germany poland czech republic migration reurbanisation almost exclusively driven by in-migration, until 2010 largely regionallybased, since 2010 with increasingly national and international background; in-migration has led to rejuvenation; reasons are education and, after 2010, increasingly migration by professionals; since 2010 new suburbanisation as a by-product of core city growth out-migration to the suburbs remains predominant; it is accompanied by incipient (localised) reurbanisation (in terms of in-migration); from 2015 onwards, international migration has emerged as an issue in employment statistics in-migration during mid2000s and mid-2010s mostly job-based, partly domestic and partly international migration; suburbanisation remains predominant trend natural population development 2010s: natural growth becomes a factor (combination of increased birth rates and higher likeliness of young in-migrants to stay) no substantial effect of natural growth as families continuously move out to the suburbs moderate natural growth since the second half of 2000s (cohort effect); suburbanisation “moves” part of this growth out of the cities public investment indispensable for creation of reurbanisation-friendly conditions, long-term, substantial, including direct investment and subsidies (e.g. for housing, transport and infrastructure) substantial eufunded infrastructural investment, but favoured suburbanisation no major public investment focused on core/inner cities; subsidies for mortgage loans and building savings (suburban housing) private investment important in some sectors (e.g. economy, housing), often in combination with public investment and subsidies, or for exploiting their results/ conditions new, mostly suburban, housing construction, some high-profi le projects in inner-city locations important; new housing construction in all parts of the cities and urban regions jobs and economic development (various sectors) considerable job creation in various sectors decisive for the settlement and retention of potential families in the city; large-scale economic investment decisive for job creation job opportunities attract new residents to the urban regions but, due to inadequate/expensive supply in the core city, many go to the suburbs job opportunities decisive for domestic and international inmigration; some new in-migrants leave for suburbs after starting family • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski380 how can the perspective on postsocialist reurbanisation fertilise the general debate? from our study, we conclude that reurbanisation exists as a phenomenon in all three countries. however, we have not identifi ed a common postsocialist type of reurbanisation and there are considerable differences between cities that can be partly explained by national differences. whilst we see a “city boom” in eastern germany and a general “turn from shrinking towards reurbanisation” of large cities, we could not detect similar developmental patterns/processes in poland and the czech republic. considering the sum of factors infl uencing the development of reurbanisation, it seems relatively unlikely that reurbanisation will reach prominent levels in poland and the czech republic within the coming years. however, we currently observe a “de-coupled” development of economic performance and population development: some cities are economically successful and simultaneously continuing to lose population (e.g. in the polish cases). this raises two major questions for further research: is this specifi c to postsocialist cities or can we also detect such a trend outside the postsocialist realm? and: is it appropriate only to use population data to detect or explore reurbanisation? can we rely solely on this indicator or is there a need for a more complex, multi-dimensional measure? when refl ecting on the specifi city of the postsocialist condition, we see that eastern germany plays a special role. the country has been experiencing very strong regrowth since 2010, subsequent to a sharper decline than in many western eurofactor eastern germany poland czech republic housing market – a) supply b) demand, preferences availability of refurbished inner-city housing for moderate rents decisive for new in-migration; tenure (rental) eased high residential mobility; city-based housing preferences and dominance of rental housing support reurbanisation: made people stay and attracted new residents shortage and costly refurbishment of old established housing; dominance of home ownership limits residential mobility; predominant focus on meeting needs and saving costs; home ownership preferred long-term rent regulation (until 2012) and home ownership limit residential mobility; shortage of affordable inner-city housing; continuity of suburban housing preference; home ownership preference; preference change towards city-centre strategic policy orientations local pro-reurbanisation policies since early 2000s, cancellation of national subsidies for housing suburbanisation in 2006 lack of general policy orientation towards cities on national and local level; selective “prosuburbani-sation” policies such as subsidised mortgage loans lack of general policy orientation towards cities; selective “prosuburbanisation” policies such as subsidised mortgage loans and buildings savings source: own calculation tab. 1: continuation reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 381 pean regions, including western germany. the decline was inevitably connected to the postsocialist condition of eastern germany. in none of the non-postsocialist regions of europe has there been a break or turn around like the one that occurred in 1989/90 in the state socialist countries. at the same time as welfare policies and public investment in eastern germany were supporting reurbanisation, the strong orientation towards neoliberalism, privatisation, and a suburb-oriented consumption model (expansion of the mortgage market, the rise in motorisation rates) privileged suburbanisation in poland and the czech republic and slowed down reurbanisation tendencies. whereas most policies supporting suburbanisation were phased out by the mid-2000s in eastern germany, such policies are still being pursued in the two other countries. a more neoliberal orientation and withdrawal of the state from the support of local development highlights a clear distinction between regions in the uk, or even in the us and postsocialist europe (except eastern germany). bearing these developments in mind, we argue that eastern germany represents a specifi c (“hybrid”) case of postsocialist development. in sum, reurbanisation in our three countries exhibits many underlying factors and dynamics that are identical or very similar to those we know from western europe. given this context, we conclude that there is no specifi c “postsocialist reurbanisation” type. however, the postsocialist history of a country, as an impact factor on long-term developments, has to receive more attention within the general debate, because it explains certain divergences from western models of the developments in the three countries as well as differences between the countries. our contribution provided a description, analysis, and synthesis based on national-scale and case study data. to gain deeper insights, more in-depth research is needed which would require at least one additional investigation. future research should, in particular, shed more light on cause-effect relationships between the drivers mentioned and should enhance knowledge on the role of framework developments and the roles/effects of policies. in addition, it should consider the interplay of multiple scales and multi-scalar effects on local developments in greater detail. future research should also take a more systematic view of analogies and differences between postsocialist cases, e.g. by means of a contrasting comparison. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, and the editors for their support with the manuscript. petra špačková thanks for support to the czech science foundation under project no. 1620991s and also to charles university research centre program unce/hum/018. manuel wolff would like to thank the charles university, prague, for a research grant which enabled him to contribute to this paper. • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski382 references beim, michał; 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thorsten 2008: errors expected – aligning urban strategy with demographic uncertainty in shrinking cities. in: international planning studies 13,4: 431-446 [doi: 10.1080/13563470802519097]. wolff, manuel et al. 2016: the impact of urban regrowth on the built environment. in: urban studies 54,12: 2683-2700 [doi: 10.1177/0042098016658231]. reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 387 wolff, manuel; wiechmann, thorsten 2017: urban growth and decline: europe’s shrinking cities in a comparative perspective 1990-2010. in: european urban and regional studies [doi: 10.1177/0969776417694680]. ziobrowski, zygmunt; jarczewski, wojciech 2010: rewitalizacja miast polskich: diagnoza. cracow: institute of urban development. date of submission: 24.03.2017 date of acceptance: 23.01.2018 dr. annegret haase (). helmholtz centre for environmental research – ufz, department of urban and environmental sociology. leipzig, germany. e-mail: annegret.haase@ufz.de url: http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=1650 manuel wolff. humboldt universität zu berlin, department of geography/lab of landscape ecology. berlin, germany. e-mail: manuel.wolff@hu-berlin.de url: http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=38796 helmholtz centre for environmental research – ufz, department of urban and environmental sociology. leipzig, germany. e-mail: manuel.wolff@ufz.de url: http://www.geographie.hu-berlin.de/members/wolff_manuel dr. petra špačková. charles university, faculty of science, department of social geography and regional development. prague, czech republic. e-mail: petra.spackova@natur.cuni.cz url: http://urrlab.cz/en/profi le/petra-spackova dr. adam radzimski. adam mickiewicz university in poznań, faculty of geographical and geological sciences, institute of socio-economic geography and spatial management. poznań, poland. e-mail: adam.radzimski@amu.edu.pl url: http://igsegp.amu.edu.pl/pracownicy/dr-adam-radzimski-adiunkt/ • annegret haase, manuel wolff, petra špačková, adam radzimski388 a p p en d ix : b as ic fi g u re s fo r p o p u la ti o n d ev el o p m en t o f ci ti es a n d s u b u rb an a re as b y co m p o n en ts a n d d if fe re n t p er io d s c o re c it ie s s u b u rb an a re as ty p e/ c it y 19 90 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 8/ 00 20 00 -2 00 5 20 05 -2 00 9/ 10 20 10 /1 120 15 19 90 -1 99 8/ 00 20 00 -2 00 9/ 10 20 10 /1 120 15 p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c r eg ro w th d re sd en -0 ,4 2 / -0 ,5 6 / 0, 86 / + 1, 13 + / + + 1, 26 + / + + 0, 15 -0 ,5 0 0, 05 e rf u rt -0 ,8 4 / + -0 ,8 7 / 0, 34 / + 0, 21 / + 1, 01 / + + 2, 04 -0 ,8 4 -0 ,0 9 je n a -0 ,5 8 / 0, 02 / 0, 34 / + 0, 51 + / + 0, 73 + / + 0, 51 -0 ,5 7 -0 ,1 3 le ip zi g -1 ,0 6 / -0 ,8 5 / 0, 49 / + 0, 81 / + 2, 47 + / + + 1, 29 -0 ,4 7 0, 05 li b er ec -0 ,0 2 / + -0 ,3 7 / -0 ,1 1 / 0, 69 + / + 0, 25 + / + 0, 28 0, 54 0, 68 p lz eň -0 ,1 7 / + -0 ,6 6 / -0 ,3 7 / 0, 47 + / + 0, 31 / + 0, 04 1, 01 0, 39 p ra h a -0 ,1 5 / + -0 ,6 8 / 0, 46 / + 0, 85 + / + + 0, 42 + / + 0, 67 5, 34 1, 18 r o st o ck -1 ,6 6 / -2 ,0 9 / 0, 04 / + 0, 35 / + 0, 52 / + 3, 66 0, 08 0, 13 r eg ro w th /s ta b le b rn o 0, 03 / + -0 ,6 7 / -0 ,4 4 / 0, 55 + / + -0 ,1 0 + / 0, 14 1, 35 0, 87 g d ań sk -0 ,1 9 + / + -0 ,0 4 / -0 ,2 1 / 0, 09 + / 0, 09 / + 1, 08 1, 81 1, 57 p ar d u b ic e -0 ,3 3 / + -0 ,5 9 / -0 ,5 2 / 0, 20 + / + 0, 02 / + 0, 24 1, 13 0, 65 ú st í n ad l ab em 0, 39 + / -0 ,4 1 / -0 ,4 6 + / -0 ,1 4 + / + 0, 13 + / 0, 03 0, 15 0, 57 w ro cł aw -0 ,0 6 / + -0 ,0 3 / + -0 ,1 9 / + -0 ,1 2 + / + 0, 18 / + 0, 34 1, 50 1, 52 s ta b le a ft er s tr o n g d ec lin e c h em n it z -1 ,2 9 / -1 ,8 8 / -0 ,9 0 / -0 ,2 7 / + 0, 87 / + + 0, 05 -0 ,9 2 -0 ,2 5 h al le -1 ,3 4 / -2 ,3 4 / -0 ,6 0 / -0 ,3 6 / 0, 70 / + 2, 59 -0 ,7 9 -0 ,2 2 m ag d eb u rg -1 ,3 2 / -1 ,8 6 / -0 ,0 7 / + 0, 21 / + 0, 74 / + 1, 03 -0 ,8 5 -0 ,1 5 e p is o d ic g ro w th b er lin 0, 15 / + -0 ,4 0 / 0, 05 / + 0, 39 / + 1, 73 + / + + 2, 73 1, 24 0, 29 k ra kó w -0 ,2 1 / + 0, 29 / + -0 ,0 4 / + 0, 06 + / + 0, 06 + / + 0, 47 0, 92 0, 91 p o ts d am -0 ,3 2 / -0 ,2 6 / 1, 00 + / + 1, 26 + / + 1, 61 + / + + 2, 86 0, 50 0, 29 w ar sz aw a -0 ,2 9 / + 0, 37 / + 0, 08 / + 0, 08 / + 0, 51 + / + 0, 90 1, 39 1, 14 reurbanisation in postsocialist europe • 389 a p p en d ix : c o n tin ua tio n p c = p o p ul at io n ch an ge = a ve ra ge a nn ua l p o p ul at io n ch an ge in % nc = n at ur al c ha ng e = p o si tiv e (+ )/ ne ga tiv e () b al an ce b y na tu ra l c ha ng e, v er y p o si tiv e (+ + )/ ne ga tiv e( -) w ith b al an ce e xc ee d in g 50 p er so ns p er 1 ,0 00 in ha b ita nt s m c = m ig ra tio n ch an ge = p o si tiv e (+ )/ ne ga tiv e () b al an ce b y m ig ra tio n ch an ge , v er y p o si tiv e (+ + )/ ne ga tiv e( -) w ith b al an ce e xc ee d in g 50 p er so ns p er 1 ,0 00 in ha b ita nt s s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n c o re c it ie s s u b u rb an a re as ty p e/ c it y 19 90 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 8/ 00 20 00 -2 00 5 20 05 -2 00 9/ 10 20 10 /1 120 15 19 90 -1 99 8/ 00 20 00 -2 00 9/ 10 20 10 /1 120 15 p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c n c/ m c p c e p is o d ic d ec lin e b yd g o sz cz 0, 16 + / + -0 ,5 1 / + -0 ,5 5 / -0 ,1 4 / -0 ,5 1 / 0, 79 2, 26 1, 33 č es ké b u d ěj o vi ce 0, 36 + / + -0 ,5 0 / -0 ,5 4 / -0 ,1 8 + / -0 ,0 2 + / 0, 61 1, 43 0, 99 h ra d ec k rá lo vé 0, 08 + / + -0 ,6 8 / -0 ,5 1 / -0 ,1 7 + / -0 ,0 5 / -0 ,0 9 0, 09 0, 06 k at o w ic e -1 ,0 5 / -1 ,1 1 / -0 ,8 3 / -0 ,4 2 / -0 ,7 6 / -0 ,1 7 0, 15 0, 10 łó d ź -0 ,6 4 / + -0 ,6 4 / -0 ,7 6 / -0 ,9 2 / -0 ,8 3 / 0, 00 0, 26 0, 14 lu b lin 0, 15 + / + 0, 12 + / + -0 ,1 5 + / -0 ,3 0 + / -0 ,5 6 + / 0, 03 0, 56 0, 35 o lo m o u c -0 ,2 0 / + -0 ,3 9 / -0 ,1 5 / -0 ,0 1 + / -0 ,2 9 + / 0, 10 0, 22 0, 65 o st ra va -0 ,2 0 + / -0 ,4 8 / -0 ,4 3 / -0 ,5 6 + / -0 ,4 6 / -0 ,1 0 -0 ,4 5 0, 18 p o zn ań -0 ,3 6 / + -0 ,0 5 / + -0 ,5 0 / -0 ,4 2 + / -0 ,5 1 + / 1, 55 2, 68 2, 17 s zc ze ci n 0, 24 + / + -0 ,1 0 / + -0 ,2 8 / -0 ,0 6 / -0 ,2 4 / + 0, 38 0, 55 0, 19 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 comparative population studies vol. 41, 1 (2016): 3-56 (date of release: 23.05.2016) federal institute for population research 2016 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-03en8 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten contributing authors liga abolina (university of latvia), liili abuladze (estonian interuniversity population research centre), svitlina aksyonova (mykhailo ptukha institute of demography and social research, kiev), anďelko akrap (university of zagreb), ekaterina antipova (belarusian state university), mirjana bobic (university of belgrade), ivan čipin (university of zagreb), liudmila fakeyeva (belarusian state university), ionut foldes (babes-bolyai university), aiva jasilioniene (mpidr), dora kostova (mpidr), irena kotowska (warsaw school of economics), boris krimer (mykhailo ptukha institute of demography and social research, kiev), elena von der lippe (robert koch institute, berlin), iryna kurylo (mykhailo ptukha institute of demography and social research, kiev), ausra maslauskaite (demographic research centre of vytautas magnus university, kaunas), julia mikolai (university of liverpool), cornelia muresan (babes-bolyai university), vasic petar (university of belgrade), michaela potančoková (vienna institute of demography), tatyana pronko (unfpa in belarus), allan puur (estonian interuniversity population research centre), mirjana rasevic (institute of social sciences), anna rybińska (university of north carolina at chapel hill), luule sakkeus (estonian interuniversity population research centre), jože sambt (university of ljubljana), tomáš sobotka (vienna institute of demography), branislav šprocha (slovak demographic research centre), rebecca staddon (university of oxford), vlada stankuniene (demographic research centre of vytautas magnus university, kaunas), anna šťastná (research institute for labour and social affairs, prague), marin strmota (university of zagreb), nada stropnik (institute for economic research, slovenia), krzysztof tymicki (warsaw school of economics), anatoly vishnevsky (institute of demography, higher school of economics, state university, moscow), sergei zakharov (institute of demography, higher school of economics, state university, moscow), kryštof zeman (vienna institute of demography), peteris zvidrins (university of latvia) • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten4 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 abstract: this paper examines fertility and family policies in 15 central and east european (cee) countries to establish fi rstly, likely directions of cohort fertility trends for the coming decade; and secondly, to provide an overview and analysis of family policies in cee countries, and to assess their impact on cohort fertility trends. demographic analysis suggests that the cohort fertility decline of the 1960s cohorts is likely to continue at least among the 1970s birth cohorts; stagnation cannot be ruled out. births that were postponed by women born in the 1970s were not being replaced in suffi cient numbers for cohort fertility to increase in the foreseeable future, and shares of low parity women (childless and one child) were larger than shares of high parity women among the late 1960s cohorts than in older cohorts. also, childbearing postponement which started in the 1990s is refl ected in dramatic changes of childbearing age patterns. as period fertility rates have been increasing in the late 2000s throughout the region an impression of a fertility recovery has been created, however the fi ndings of this project indicate that no such widespread childbearing recovery is underway. for the fi rst time ever an overview and analysis of cee family policies is conceptualized in this paper. it demonstrates that fertility trends and family policies are a matter of serious concern throughout the region. the following family policy types have been identifi ed: comprehensive family policy model; pro-natalist policies model; temporary male bread-winner model; and conventional family policies model. the majority of family policies in cee countries suffer from a variety of shortcomings that impede them from generating enhanced family welfare and from providing conditions for cohort fertility to increase. the likely further decline of cohort fertility, or its stagnation, may entail long-term demographic as well as other societal consequences, such as continuous declines in total population numbers, changes in age structures, as well as implications for health and social security costs. keywords: fertility · family policies · central and eastern europe · international comparative analysis · family policy typology fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 5 1 introduction the demise of state socialism throughout central and eastern europe had immediate demographic repercussions. arguably changes in childbearing during the quarter century since 1990 were among the most palpable and substantial. these fertility trends attracted a great deal of interest in the scientifi c literature (e.g. billingsley 2010; frejka et al. 2008; kohler et al. 2002; kotowska/jóźwiak 2003; macura 2000; sobotka 2004, 2011) and the present paper provides an up-to-date, comprehensive description and analysis of these developments. this is done in conjunction with a fi rst systematic attempt to describe and analyse family policies in cee countries during this period. our fi ndings are the result of an international comparative project of 40 scholars (appendix 1) from 15 cee countries1 conducted under the aegis of the department of social policy and intervention, university of oxford, uk (basten/frejka 2015). the two main sections of the study – section 4 discussing fertility trends and section 5 focusing on family policies – are intrinsically linked and continuously interact. it was the substantial decline in total period fertility rates (tpfrs) during the 1990s and beyond which generated a great deal of concern among governments about possible consequences. governments feared the fertility decline could lead to an eventual serious lack of human and fi nancial resources to support societal development, including rising health and social security costs of an aging population. such fears were among the reasons for expanding, formulating and implementing family and related policies. at the same time, fertility trends are central among the indicators which illustrate the success or lack of extant policies. in section 5 the evolution of the institutional settings for developing family policies during the societal transformation of the past quarter century, the family policy measures and their effects on family life and reproductive behaviour, and the challenges of implementing family policies are described, discussed and evaluated. the experience of individual countries, which is also briefl y outlined, is indispensable for understanding the generalizations and fi ndings regarding the contemporary history of cee family policies. the interaction of fertility trends and family policies takes place within the context of broader social economic, political and cultural trends. arguably important ones are briefl y discussed in the next section. 1 in this paper, similarly as in other analytical demographic literature (sobotka 2011), central and eastern europe is comprised of four regions, namely “central” europe, “south-eastern” europe, the “baltic states” and “eastern” europe. the basic criterion for congregating countries into these regions is geographic, while historical, linguistic, cultural, economic, political and other reasons also play a role. the 15 countries that were included in the project listed by region were: central europe: croatia, the czech republic, hungary, poland, slovakia, slovenia; southeastern europe: bulgaria, romania, serbia; baltic states: estonia, latvia, lithuania; and eastern europe: belarus, the russian federation, ukraine. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten6 2 background the societal transformations from communism to capitalism taking place in cee which started in 1989-19911989-1991 are unique in human history. these transitions entail radical, complex and extremely rapid political, social and economic changes (ekiert/ hanson 2003). the communist types of centrally planned economies, which had never before existed in history, had to be transformed into capitalist economies at the same time as the authoritarian systems attempted conversions into democracies. under such conditions experiences of countries have understandably been uneven and varied. nonetheless, all cee countries have more or less progressed in reforming their societies towards open, market-based, capitalist economies, coupled with changes of political institutions, and with notable improvements in living standards in most countries. economic reforms have been the most successful in the countries of central europe and the baltic states while those of eastern europe made the least progress (ebrd 2015 and appendix table 1). central european and baltic countries have also made the most progress in improving political conditions and developing democratic institutions (ekiert et al. 2007 and appendix table 2). signifi cant political progress had already been achieved by 2004. in contrast, a few countries have experienced nationalistic authoritarianism that mimics democracy. this is particularly the case in russia, where it has been labelled putinism, and to a lesser degree in some other cee countries (nemtsov/ milov 2008; rahn 2007; albanese 2006; zakharov 1999). changes in living standards since the demise of communism are another feature refl ecting the fundamental societal restructuring in cee. in most countries living standards increased signifi cantly by 2013 compared to 1990 (appendix table 3, last column). with the exception of albania, moldova and ukraine living standards as measured by the per capita gross domestic product based on purchasing power parity (gdp per capita based on ppp) grew by between 2.3 times (czech republic) to 4.0 times (poland). in almost all cee countries growth has been faster than in the west in the past quarter century. despite the relatively fast growth in per capita gdp, cee countries have not caught up with western countries. as of 2013, average gdp per person in central europe and the baltic states ranged between 21 and 30 thousand international dollars per year, however in all western countries, except for portugal, gdp per capita was considerably higher than that (appendix table 3).2 the disintegration of the state socialist system had a momentous impact on basic demographic developments. by 2014 almost every cee country experienced population decline (table 1). in contrast, almost no country throughout the remainder of europe lost population during the past quarter century. all baltic states, as well as the other countries of the former soviet union, had an excess of deaths over 2 data in appendix table 3 also illustrate the extremely diffi cult times experienced immediately after the beginning of the transition during the 1990s, and the signifi cant progress made in the 2000s. fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 7 ta b . 1 : po p ul at io n ch an g e, n at ur al c ha ng e, e st im at ed n et m ig ra tio n (in t ho u sa nd s) , s ha re s o f 1 99 1 p o p ul at io n lo st o r g ai n ed d ue t o n at ur al c ha ng e an d d ue t o n et m ig ra tio n (in % ), se le ct ed c en tr al a nd e as t e ur o p ea n co un tr ie s, 19 91 -2 01 4 r eg io n, c o u n tr y p o p u la ti o n 1 ja n u ar y 19 91 p o p u la ti o n c h an g e 19 91 -2 01 4 (1 j an ) n at u ra l c h an g e 19 91 -2 01 3 e st im at ed n et m ig ra ti o n (in cl . ad ju st m en ts ) 19 91 -2 01 3c s h ar e o f 1 99 1 p o p u la ti o n lo st o r g ai n ed d u e to n at u ra l ch an g e (in % ) s h ar e o f 1 99 1 p o p u la ti o n lo st o r g ai n ed d u e to n et m ig ra ti o n (in % ) c en tr al e u ro p e 70 ,9 54 -8 22 -2 52 -5 71 -0 .4 -0 .8 c ro at ia 4, 78 2 -5 35 -1 48 -3 87 -3 .1 -8 .1 c ze ch r ep u b lic 10 ,3 05 20 8 -1 43 35 1 -1 .4 3. 4 h u n g ar y 10 ,3 73 -4 96 -8 27 33 1 -8 .0 3. 2 p o la n d 38 ,1 83 -1 65 70 1 -8 66 1. 8 -2 .3 s lo va ki a 5, 31 1 10 5 15 2 -4 7 2. 9 -0 .9 s lo ve n ia 2, 00 0 61 14 47 0. 7 2. 4 s ou th -e as te rn e u ro p e 35 ,1 21 -5 ,5 23 -1 ,4 48 -4 ,0 75 -3 .4 -9 .6 a lb an ia 3, 26 0 -3 64 71 6 -1 ,0 80 22 .0 -3 3. 1 b u lg ar ia 8, 66 9 -1 ,4 24 -8 74 -5 49 -1 0. 1 -6 .3 m o n te n eg ro a 63 3d -1 1 71 -8 2 11 .1 -1 3. 0 s er b ia a 7, 62 5d -4 79 -5 31 53 -7 .0 0. 7 r o m an ia 23 ,1 92 -3 ,2 45 -8 29 -2 ,4 16 -3 .6 -1 0. 4 ea st er n eu ro p e 21 4 ,6 64 -1 2, 73 3 -1 5, 26 6 2, 53 3 -7 .1 1. 2 b el ar u s 10 ,1 90 -7 31 -7 14 -1 7 -7 .0 -0 .2 m o ld o va 4, 36 6 -8 07 36 -8 43 0. 8 -1 9. 3 r u ss ia 14 8, 16 4 -4 ,4 97 -8 ,6 07 4, 11 0 -5 .8 2. 8 u kr ai n e 51 ,9 4 4 -6 ,6 98 -5 ,9 81 -7 17 -1 1. 5 -1 .4 b al ti c s ta te s 7, 92 8 -1 ,6 67 -4 91 -1 ,1 76 -6 .2 -1 4 .8 e st o n ia 1, 56 8 -2 52 -8 6 -1 66 -5 .5 -1 0. 6 la tv ia 2, 65 8 -6 57 -2 52 -4 05 -9 .5 -1 5. 2 li th u an ia 3, 70 2 -7 58 -1 53 -6 05 -4 .1 -1 6. 4 c en tr al a n d ea st er n eu ro p eb 32 8, 67 7 -2 0, 74 5 -1 7, 45 7 -3 ,2 88 -5 .3 -1 .0 n o te s: a 1 99 520 13 ; b t o ta ls a re n o t ex ac t d at a fo r 19 91 o r fo r th e 19 91 -2 01 3 p er io d b ec au se f o r so m e co un tr ie s th e st ar tin g d at e is n o t 19 91 , b ut 19 95 ; c t he e st im at es o f ne t m ig ra tio n in s o m e ca se s ar e fa r fr o m a cc ur at e. t he se w er e d er iv ed a s th e d iff er en ce b et w ee n to ta l p o p ul at io n ch an ge an d n at ur al c ha ng e. in m o ld o va th is n um b er in cl ud es th e se ce ss io n o f t ra ns ni st ri a w hi ch h ad 6 54 th o us an d in ha b ita nt s in 1 99 7 w he n it w as n o lo ng er in cl ud ed in m o ld o va s ta tis tic s (c ou nc il of e ur op e 20 06 ); d 1 99 5. m in o r d is cr ep an ci es a re d ue to r o un d in g. s o ur ce : eu ro st at d at ab as e 20 15 ; c ou nc il of e ur op e 20 06 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten8 births, as did croatia, the czech republic, hungary, bulgaria, serbia and romania between 1991 and 2014 (table 1). many countries experienced considerable emigration which in some cases was alleviated by return migration. taking individual countries as well as the four cee regions, natural change and net migration losses were important factors generating the declines in total population numbers. taking the cee region as a whole, it appears as though the main reason for the loss of population was negative natural change, the excess of deaths over births. the migration losses in the majority of countries were offset by substantial immigration to the russian federation3 and to a lesser degree by immigration to the czech republic and hungary (table 1). obviously, table 1 provides the overall picture and it has its limitations. it depicts only basic changes, and it does not inform about various serious issues, such as that proportionately many more economically active people left a number of countries, and that a share of the emigres have not left permanently. 3 data sources the human fertility database (hfd 2015) provides the majority of data required for the description and analyses of the fertility trends in cee countries in section 3. this source is supplemented by the eurostat database and by data provided by country co-authors from national statistical institutions’ data banks. in addition some data were gleaned from the data bank of the observatoire démographique européen (ode 2012). it is considerably more diffi cult to assemble data that can be used for the description and analysis of family policies, particularly for formerly socialist countries of central and eastern europe. several data banks which include family policy indicators have sprouted in recent years, but only a few of them include some cee data. frequently such data banks contain data only for a few cee countries or they do not include any of these countries. an example of the former was the original version of the oecd family database (adema et al. 2009) which was used by thévenon (2011) to conduct an analysis of family policies in oecd countries; it included data for a mere four cee countries. an example of the latter is the comparative family policy database (gauthier 2002) which covers 22 oecd countries, but none of the cee countries. the present version of the oecd family database (2016) contains data for 11 cee countries. appendix tables 9, 10 and 11 use these data and they are supplemented with data provided by country co-authors. the main source of information for the description and analysis of country family policies in our study are comprehensive country reports composed by co-authors. these cover a wider range of information than merely the statistical indicators: the institutions formulating and implementing family policies, policy documents, 3 most of this was a quasi-type of international migration consisting almost entirely of russians that were returning to the russian federation from countries that had emerged as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union. fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 9 an overview of the instruments, conditions for implementation, the challenges encountered in implementing family policies, and an evaluation of the impact of policy measures. the country family policy profi les in section 4.3 are an abbreviated version of country reports.4 some tables and fi gures do not contain data for all 15 countries. two reasons account for these omissions. either the respective data were not available for all countries (e.g. fig. 3) or we decided to include data only for selected countries as examples because including more countries would be redundant (e.g. fig. 4). 4 fertility trends in central and east european countries the updated overview and analysis of cee fertility trends illustrates some of the reasons why governments are concerned and why they attempt to modify these trends. we start with a brief description of societal conditions shaping cee fertility. 4.1 a concise characterization of societal conditions shaping cee fertility the implosion of state socialism in cee in 1989-91 and the ensuing highly differentiated transition to capitalist political and economic conditions entailed a radical and rapid transformation of childbearing incentives and deterrents. three mutually reinforcing factors – the technologically lagging and labour intensive ineffi cient socialist economies which generated a continuous demand for labour; a pro-natalist ideology and policies; and the authoritarian political system restricting personal freedom – created conditions which were generally conducive for early and universal childbearing. these conditions included job security, lowcost housing, free education, free health care, various entitlements associated with childbirth and childrearing, as well as limited career opportunities and leisure activities. the citizens of the state socialist countries had grown accustomed to a relatively stable and predictable existence, although standard living conditions were worse than in western countries, and there were numerous disturbing concomitants to this lifestyle, such as curtailed civil liberties and shortages of everyday and longlasting consumer goods (frejka 2008; sobotka 2004, 2011). in contrast, mutually reinforcing features of the transition to contemporary capitalism – the quest for maximizing profi ts and productivity, the employment of advanced increasingly complex technologies, competitive labour markets, a propensity for a low priority for social obligations towards workers and society, as well 4 more detailed information will be available in country overviews. these will be published as “university of oxford cee family policy country studies” which will contain a breadth of information concerning family policies [fps] in individual cee countries. they will be available for download from http://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/oxpop/about-us/cee-family.html nb ceefamily.info, and will be regularly updated to refl ect the latest developments in the respective country’s family policies. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten10 as the spread of modern contraceptives – created considerably more restraining conditions for childbearing. these included job and income insecurity, an increasing pressure to acquire more education, expensive housing, lesser and declining birth and childrearing entitlements, increased uncertainty of spousal relationships as well as expanded personal freedom, the availability of a variety of career opportunities, consumption attractions and leisure activities. all of a sudden, people were exposed to societal conditions which made it more diffi cult to earn a living, more demanding to reconcile the family-work confl ict, and under which various costs previously borne by the paternalistic state became the responsibility of individuals and families (frejka 2008; sobotka 2011). all told, the balance shifted from circumstances generally encouraging early marriage and childbearing with a distinct propensity for a two-child family, to circumstances postponing union formation and childbearing as well as inhibiting family size. the propensity for two-child families started to weaken; shares of one-child families increased everywhere and even became the most prevalent in the russian federation and ukraine (cf. fig. 3). 4.2 fertility trends facets 4.2.1 period total fertility rate trends in cee period total fertility rates in cee countries declined precipitously during the 1990s from levels centred around 2.0 in 1990 to previously unexperienced low levels mostly within the range of 1.1 – 1.4 births per woman around the year 2000 (fig. 1). this ptfr decline was similar to what had happened earlier elsewhere in europe. it was preceded by the ptfr declines during the late 1960s and the 1970s in northern and western europe, and in the german-speaking countries; and in southern europe where the pronounced period fertility decline occurred in the 1980s (appendix fig. 1). while the period fertility decline was a common occurrence in cee during the 1990s, there was a great deal of variation between countries, most notably in southeastern europe (fig 1, panel c). as supported by the evidence presented below, the period fertility decline of the 1990s was engendered by the postponement of childbearing into higher ages (sections 4.2.2 to 4.2.4) combined with a continued decline in cohort total fertility rates (section 4.2.5 and 4.2.6). the 2000s were marked by a recovery of ptfrs which was in part shaped by a considerable slow-down in childbearing postponement (section 4.2.7). with the exception of a few countries, especially the russian federation, ukraine and lithuania, the recovery stalled in the 2010s. practically everywhere in cee the period fertility recovery of the 2000s was incomplete, i.e. the ptfrs in the 2010s were signifi cantly below the levels of around 1990. the stalling of the ptfrs around 2010 was most likely also caused by the economic recession in the late 2000s (sobotka et al. 2011: 287-290). it was predominantly the childbearing of young women that was affected by the recession. fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 11 fig. 1: period total fertility rates, central & east european region, central, south-eastern, eastern europe and baltic states, country populations within regions, 1970-2014 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year central europe south-eastern europe eastern europe baltic states a central and eastern europa period total fertility rate 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year croatia czech rep hungary poland slovakia slovenia b central europe period total fertility rate 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year bulgaria montenegro serbia romania c south-eastern europe period total fertility rate 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year belarus russia ukraine d eastern europe period total fertility rate 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year estonia latvia lithuania e baltic states period total fertility rate source: human fertility database 2014, eurostat 2014, warsaw school of economics 2015 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten12 4.2.2 period mean age of women at fi rst birth5 women tended to have their fi rst birth quite early during the communist era, on average between 22 and 24 years of age. with the beginning of the transition in the early 1990s women started to postpone childbearing and the mean age of women at fi rst birth (mafb) started to rise and did so throughout the remainder of the 1990s and the 2000s (appendix fig. 2). the increase in the mafb was most pronounced in central europe but slow in eastern europe. for instance, in the czech republic the mafb grew from age 22.5 in 1990 to 27.6 in 2010; in the russian federation the mafb increased from 22.7 only to 24.8 during the same period. the growth in the mafb was putting downward pressure on the period tfr trend not only during the1990s but also during the recovery of the ptfr in the 2000s. in most countries the mafb rate of growth slackened in the early 2010s (appendix fig. 2). 4.2.3 period fertility rates of young and older women the analysis of period fertility rates of young and older women presents an illuminating way to follow the progress of childbearing postponement and recuperation. at the same time, this analysis demonstrates the impact of childbearing trends of young and older women on trends of the period total fertility rate. in bulgaria, for instance, during the 1970s and especially during the 1980s the trends in the period age-specifi c fertility rates of young and of older women were essentially fl at which resulted in a reasonably steady ptfr trend of around 2.0 births per woman (appendix fig. 3, panel b). a decline in the period age-specifi c fertility rate of women aged 15-26 (pasfr 15-26) during the 1990s illustrated that numbers of births of these women were decreasing. the assumption that at least some of these births were being postponed is justifi ed. specifi cally, the pasfr 15-26 declined from 1.5 births per woman in 1988 to 0.8 in 1997. this was refl ected in the decline of the ptfr from 2.0 to 1.1 births per woman as also a minor decline in the childbearing trend of older women occurred during those years. some of the births that were presumably postponed during the 1990s were subsequently borne by the same women when they were older during the 2000s. the pasfr 27-49 increased from 0.3 births per woman in 1998 to 0.7 in 2009. this was refl ected in a rise of the ptfr from 1.1 births per woman in 1997 to 1.6 in 2009. variations of these trends of the period age-specifi c fertility rates of young (15-26) and of older (27-49) women were occurring in all the cee countries as illustrated by the additional examples of the czech republic, the russian federation and lithuania in appendix figure 3. declines of the pasfrs 15-26 in the midto late 2000s and early 2010s in most countries are proof that childbearing postponement was continuing, with the exception of bulgaria and eastern europe (appendix table 4). in the latter countries, however, the potential for further childbearing postponement is large, because the 5 it might be preferable to use cohort mean ages of women at fi rst birth for this analysis, but long enough series for cee are not yet available. fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 13 shares of the pasfrs 15-26 around 2010 were high, i.e. young women were still bearing about half of all births. 4.2.4 cohort age patterns of childbearing changes in cohort age patterns of fertility demonstrate the rapid pace of childbearing postponement into older ages that occurred during the main years of the societal transformations in cee. in the czech republic, for instance, there was a sharp decline of childbearing of women in their early to mid-twenties from the 1965 to the 1970 birth cohort. the next phase was a collapse of the early fertility pattern peaking at age 20 in the 1970 birth cohort into a later childbearing pattern of the 1975 cohort with a peak at age 29. birth postponement did not stop at that point but continued in subsequent cohorts born in the mid to late 1970s (appendix fig. 4, panel a). the childbearing data for women in their twenties of the 1980 cohorts indicate that the new regime of late childbearing was stabilizing. such a rapid pace of conversion from an early to a late fertility pattern was typical for all cee populations. the majority of births of the cohorts born during the late 1960s that started their childbearing during the early to mid-1980s was concentrated in their teens and twenties, whereas the women who started childbearing in the 1990s were having most of their children later (appendix fig. 4). the rapid pace of change in cee cohort age patterns of fertility stands out in comparison to what had occurred in western countries. typically the conversion from an early to a late childbearing pattern started with cohorts born in the late 1940s and early 1950s as, for instance, in the netherlands (appendix fig. 4, panel e). the peak of the age fertility pattern in the 1945 cohort was age 24. from there on, changes in the age pattern of fertility occurred gradually with the peak age in the 1965 cohort ranging between 29-31 years. among the next 20 cohorts, i.e. for women born between 1965 and 1985, the cohort age patterns of fertility in the netherlands remained virtually unchanged (not shown). in austria changes in fertility age patterns were even more gradual and continued among the cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s (appendix fig. 4, panel f). in western countries changes from one cohort to the next were relatively orderly and smooth. in contrast, changes in childbearing age patterns in cee during the societal transformations of the 1990s and 2000s were dramatic and tumultuous (appendix fig. 4). 4.2.5 cohort total fertility trends at the same time as the radical changes in the timing of childbearing were taking place, the quantum of fertility as measured by cohort total fertility rates (ctfrs) started to decline. this was apparently also triggered by the societal transformations in cee around 1990. ctfr levels among the birth cohorts of the late 1940s and the 1950s had been quite stable, close to the replacement level (fig. 2). a turning point occurred among women born around 1960. without exception the ctfrs at age 40 fell among the 1960s cohorts throughout cee (fig. 2 and table 2). • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten14 fig. 2: cohort total fertility rates at age 40, central & east european region, central, south-eastern, eastern europe and baltic states, country populations within regions, birth cohorts 1935-1975 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 birth cohort central europe south-eastern europe eastern europe baltic states a central and eastern europa cohort total fertility rate at age 40 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 birth cohort croatia czech rep hungary poland slovakia slovenia b central europe cohort fertility rate at age 40total 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 birth cohort bulgaria serbia romania c south-eastern europe cohort fertility rate at age 40total 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 birth cohort belarus russia ukraine d eastern europe cohort fertility rate at age 40total 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 birth cohort estonia lithuania e baltic states cohort fertility rate at age 40total source: human fertility database 2014, observatoire démographique européen 2012, warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 15 an investigation of sobotka and zeman (2014)6 demonstrated that the cohort fertility decline continued among the 1970s cohorts in most cee countries. these authors calculated completed cohort fertility rates for 26 european countries for the 1965 to 1974 birth cohorts, including eight cee countries.7 on average, the 1965 ctfr of 1.93 births per woman for the eight cee countries declined to 1.71 births per woman in the 1974 cohort: an 11 percent decline. myrskylä et al. (2013) prepared a new set of ctfr forecasts for 37 developed countries for the 1970s cohorts which included 11 cee countries. an increase was estimated for lithuania, russia, east germany, slovenia, estonia and bulgaria. on the other hand, decreases were estimated for romania, the czech republic, poland, slovakia and hungary. as the declines were larger than the increases, the average tab. 2: cohort total fertility rates at age 40, selected central and east european countries, birth cohorts 1957 and around 1970 region, country cohort total fertility rate at age 40 1957 latest recorded around 1970 cohort birth cohort percent change 1957 to circa 1970 cohort central europe croatia 1.92 1.82 1966 -5 czech republic 2.06 1.84 1971 -11 hungary 2.00 1.87 1969 -7 poland 2.17 1.66 1972 -24 slovakia 2.19 1.77 1973 -19 slovenia 1.93 1.65 1973 -15 south-eastern europe bulgaria 2.03 1.67 1969 -18 serbia 1.81 1.55 1975 -14 romania 2.23 1.80 1966 -19 eastern europe belarus 1.91 1.56 1972 -19 russia 1.86 1.57 1970 -16 ukraine 1.83 1.52 1971 -17 baltic states estonia 2.01 1.75 1972 -13 lithuania 1.95 1.69 1970 -13 source: human fertility database 2015, observatoire démographique européen 2012, warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication 6 sobotka, tomáš; zeman, kryštof 2014: personal communication 10 october. 7 the eight cee countries are the czech republic, hungary, latvia, lithuania, poland, romania, slovakia and slovenia. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten16 1970 ctfr of 1.75 for these countries declined to 1.68 births per woman for the 1979 birth cohort. other evidence validates the assumption of continued declines in ctfrs in most cee countries. in countries with available data for analysis,8 results show that only a part of postponed births were being recuperated among the 1970s birth cohorts. such a sequence virtually guarantees that ctfrs of subsequent cohorts will be smaller than in preceding cohorts. table 3 provides an overview of recuperation indices (ri), i.e. of the amounts of childbearing that have been recuperated relative to the fertility decline at younger ages9 between the 1970 and the 1975 birth cohorts. the recuperation index is usually computed for cohorts that have (almost) completed their childbearing periods. in table 3 the ris are computed for incomplete cohorts and the highest ages these cohorts have reached are listed. in other words, the ris are merely an indication of whether eventually the respective cohort might recuperate the full amount of postponed births. taking the example of poland, if by age 36 the 1975 birth cohort has recuperated only 35 percent of the postponed births compared to the 1970 cohort, it is almost certain that women born in 1975 will not recuperate 100 percent of the postponed births by the time they reach the end of their reproductive period. the numbers in table 3 and the graphs in figure 4 illustrate that the probability of women in the 1975 birth cohorts recuperating all the postponed births in the listed countries is low.10 8 the analysis was carried out only when cohort fertility was registered at least up to the age of 35. 9 for instance, in the czech republic minus 0.433 births per woman at age 25 was the difference of the cumulated asfrs between the 1970 and the 1975 cohorts (fig. 4, panel a). by age 35 the difference between the two curves was –0.155, which means that 0.278 births per woman had been recuperated, thus only 64 percent of the births that were postponed by age 25 were recuperated by age 35 [0.433-0.155=0.278/0.433= 0.64] (table 3). 10 there were two exceptions when the ris for the 1980 cohort were high, namely in estonia (101 percent) and belarus (127 percent), and thus in these countries completed cohort fertility rates for the 1980 cohort will eventually exceed those of the 1975 cohorts (fig. 4). tab. 3: recuperation indices (in percent) between birth cohorts 1970 and 1975, 1970 ctfr (40), selected central and east european countries country recuperation index between birth cohorts 1970 and 1975 1970 ctfr at ri at age age 40 czech republic 64 35 1.85 poland 35 36 1.78 estonia 77 36 1.82 belarus 47 36 1.64 note: the recuperation index (ri) measures the degree of fertility recuperation relative to the fertility decline at younger ages. source: human fertility database 2014, warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 17 4.2.6 cohort parity distributions the palpable fertility quantum decline during the cee societal transitions is also illustrated by trends in cohort parity distributions in nine countries (fig. 3). there was a distinct decline in the share of women with two children and an increase in the share of women with one child among the 1960s cohorts. second order parity women still dominated in almost all countries in the 1970 birth cohort, although there were already more women that had had one rather than two births in russia and ukraine. it should also be emphasized that shares of women remaining childless even in the 1970 cohort remained low, i.e. at around ten percent or less. the notable fertility quantum decline between the 1960 and the 1970 cohorts in these nine countries is refl ected in a dramatic increase of the ratio of shares of low order parities (childless and women with one birth) compared to high order parities of women who had borne three or more children (appendix table 5). in the czech republic, for instance, there were about as many low parity women as there were women with 3+ children in the 1960 cohort, and this ratio increased to 1.7 in the 1970 cohort. in bulgaria, belarus, russia and ukraine among the 1970 cohorts there were around four or more times as many women of low order (0 and 1) parity compared to those of high order parity (3+). 4.2.7 the recent slowdown in childbearing postponement some evidence indicates fertility postponement was slowing down in the 2010s and in the birth cohorts of the 1970s and early 1980s. to begin with, the mean age of women at fi rst birth was no longer increasing or had tapered off in south-eastern europe, the baltic states, and in some other countries (appendix fig. 2). further, the cohort age patterns of childbearing were no longer changing very much among the 1980s birth cohorts (appendix fig. 4). the clearest evidence of a slowdown in childbearing postponement is apparent in figure 4. a comparison of the curves of differences between cumulated asfrs of young birth cohorts fi ve years apart shows that the lowest points in the curves are diminishing. for instance, the nadir in the difference between the 1970 and the 1975 cohorts in the czech republic was over -0.4 births per woman, whereas for the difference between the 1975 and the 1980 cohorts it was less than -0.3 births per woman. except for lithuania, the same pattern is repeated in all populations in figure 4, as well as in those not included in figure 4. furthermore, the downward slope of the beginning of the curves of differences between the 1975 and the 1980 cohorts, as well as differences between the 1980 and the 1985 cohorts are less steep than the downward slope for the preceding curves. the slowdown in childbearing postponement should pose upward pressure on the ptfr. one could hypothesize that the petering out of the ptfr recuperation around 2010 was due to a countervailing effect of declining fertility quantum, i.e. of the declining ctfrs (cf. section 4.2.5). • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten18 fi g . 3 : c o ho rt p ar it y d is tr ib u tio n s, s el ec te d c en tr al a nd e as t e ur o p ea n co un tr ie s, b ir th c o ho rt s 19 60 -1 97 0 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 2. 02 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 94 19 70 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 86 a c ze ch r ep ub lic p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 2. 01 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 98 19 68 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 91 b h un ga ry p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 2. 16 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 2. 03 19 68 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 98 c s lo va ki a p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 95 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 81 19 68 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 75 d b ul ga ri a p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 2. 04 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 87 19 70 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 83 e e st o ni a p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 90 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 72 19 70 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 72 f li th ua ni a p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 87 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 68 19 70 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 65 g b el ar us p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 84 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 67 19 69 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 60 h r us si a p er ce nt 0102030405060 0 1 2 3 4 5+ p ar ity 19 60 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 83 19 65 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 67 19 68 c t fr (4 0) : 1. 59 iu kr ai ne p er ce nt s o ur ce : h um an f er til ity d at ab as e 20 14 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 19 4.2.8 national population projections as discussed in section 2 (background), populations were shrinking in almost all cee countries during the societal transformations of the 1990s and 2000s. this was due to low fertility, often reinforced by emigration and relatively high mortality. according to offi cial population projections prepared by national statistical offi ces, population decline is projected to continue in the future11 (appendix table 6). 11 specifi c data in the medium variant projections prepared by the united nations population division (2015) differ, however by the middle of the 21st century decline is projected in all 15 countries. fig. 4: differences in cumulated age-specifi c cohort fertility rates between moving benchmark cohorts and subsequent cohorts fi ve years apart, czech republic, poland, estonia, and belarus, birth cohorts 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1970 1970-1975 1975-1980 1980-1985 a czech republic births per woman -0.35 -0.30 -0.25 -0.20 -0.15 -0.10 -0.05 0.00 0.05 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1970 1970-1975 1975-1980 1980-1985 b poland births per woman -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1970 1970-1975 1975-1980 1980-1985 c estonia births per woman d belarus births per woman 1970 ctfr(40) = 1.85 1970 ctfr(40) = 1.78 1970 ctfr(40) = 1.81 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1970 1970-1975 1975-1980 1980-1985 1970 ctfr(40) = 1.64 source: human fertility database 2014; warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten20 these projections illustrate the implications of assumptions made by national experts about future fertility and migration trends. although methods used differ from one country to another, the projected numbers for the near future (up to 20 years) indicate the direction of growth reasonably well. a brief discussion of fertility and migration assumptions enables a better understanding of the projections. nonetheless, as is well known from historical experience, caution is in place when dealing with population projections. fertility assumptions necessarily begin with levels from the early 2010s and do not change rapidly. it is more likely that migration assumptions do not materialize, if for no other reason than that knowledge about actual migration trends is questionable. belarus, bulgaria and estonia assume net emigration, which means that projected population decline is reinforced by migration assumptions. the projections for the czech republic, the russian federation, serbia, slovakia and ukraine assume net immigration. these assumptions would partly offset the effect of low fertility assumptions on future population trends. with this knowledge in mind, if immigration is weaker or emigration stronger than assumed, projected population numbers for the latter countries would be smaller than indicated in appendix table 6. as it stands, the only population where the projections show any population increase is slovakia. slovakia is, however, one of the countries assuming considerable immigration inherent in the population projections. similarly, projections for russia and the czech republic assume considerable immigration. in other words, all the medium variants of offi cial population projections for the countries in appendix table 5 indicate the possibility of declining populations in the future, even though migration assumptions could prove to be unrealistic. slovakia might be the exception because its population age structure contains a growth momentum driven by past high fertility. in sum, the projections suggest that declining populations can be expected in almost all cee countries while keeping in mind the hypothetical nature of projections. 5 family policies in central and eastern europe 5.1 the forming of post-communist family policies post-communist family policies in cee were formed at a time of historic vicissitudes in the “indirect and proximate” determinants of fertility (davis/blake 1956; bongaarts 1978). these were the tumultuous two decades after 1990 of major economic, social, political and cultural change discussed in preceding sections. accordingly, the “indirect” fertility determinants of that time exerted a strong downward pressure on childbearing. at the same time, the means being employed to modify childbearing were also undergoing major changes. it was the time when the “abortion culture” was being replaced by a rapid introduction of modern contraceptives which in most cee countries were considered a bourgeois feature by the communist establishment. contraceptive prevalence of modern methods was on the rise, prevalence of fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 21 traditional methods was declining throughout cee (appendix table 7), and induced abortion rates were abating (appendix table 8). period and cohort fertility were declining rapidly (cf. sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.5). in the immediate aftermath of the demise of state socialism governments were preoccupied with economic and political reforms and did not pay much attention to social and family policies. a part of the pro-natalist communist policy measures, such as parental leaves and child benefi ts remained in place, but effectiveness was waning due to infl ation. relatively high costs were causing restrictions of child care facilities. other policies were being abandoned altogether, most notably the infl uential housing policy of preferential assignment of apartments to families with children (frejka 2008; sobotka 2011). as fertility was rapidly declining governments increasingly turned their attention to social and family policies. as documented below in section 5.3 country family policy profi les, in several cee countries governments intended to design and implement comprehensive family policies that would minimize the employmentchildrearing dilemma. documents were formulated, commissions and ministries founded to achieve this goal. an examination of the status of family policies around 2013-2015 in cee countries points to four types of family policies. 1. comprehensive family policy model governments have managed to create reasonably favourable conditions for women and men to ameliorate the diffi culties associated with taking care of children and households, as well as being employed. not only are fi nancial and material benefi ts available for mothers and fathers, but also institutional childcare is adequate as are working conditions for mothers. gender relationships are improving, although a lot still remains to be desired. the overall picture indicates that estonia and slovenia qualify for this model. interestingly, cohort fertility around the 1970 cohort in these two countries was not higher than the average in the baltic and central european countries. 2. pro-natalist policies model the pro-natalist model comprises countries in which the main objective of family policies is to raise fertility and the principal tools to reach this goal are fi nancial. the countries which in one form or another have introduced large birth allowances, possibly in combination with increasing other benefi ts and with well remunerated parental leaves fi t into this category: the russian federation, belarus, ukraine and possibly bulgaria as well as latvia. 3. temporary male bread-winner model well-remunerated long parental leaves were common under the state-socialist regimes. in some countries, these were retained and prolonged while childcare for small children under age three has dissipated and is virtually non-existent. employers tend to discriminate against mothers and potential mothers, and their working conditions make it diffi cult to balance employment and household responsibilities with scarce possibilities for part-time work. this situation is typical in the czech republic and slovakia. this model might have developed unintentionally, but has become a reality. 4. conventional family policies model. the conventional model consists of a combination of maternal leaves, child benefi ts, and child care facilities which provide some support for childrear• tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten22 ing, however the extent of assistance is not suffi cient to alleviate the employment-childrearing dilemma. that state of affairs persists in croatia, lithuania, poland, romania, and serbia, and to some extent in hungary. the specifi c confi guration differs from one country to another. also the principal circumstances that have generated the respective conditions differ. 5.2 a brief historical perspective family policies were fi rst comprehensively elaborated in a 1934 book crisis in the population question by alva and gunnar myrdal (1934). their ideas played a major role in designing welfare policies in scandinavia, and after the second world war in western europe. since then numerous authors have dealt with population and family policies in industrialized countries, including eastern europe (for instance, besemeres 1980, 24 scholars in berelson 1974, david and mcintyre 1981, 14 scholars in david 1999, neyer 2003, about 50 scholars in frejka et al. 2008). mcdonald (2002) and stock et al. (2013) devised frameworks to guide the formulation of contemporary family policies. family policies of contemporary, mainly western developed countries have also been thoughtfully and thoroughly investigated and categorized by gauthier (2002) and thévenon (2011). however, not a single cee country was included in gauthier’s analysis and only four cee countries were included in thévenon’s. the present overview and analysis of family policies in the formerly socialist countries of cee constitutes a complement to the extant literature on this subject matter. 5.3 country family policy profi les the cee family policies typology is derived from a thorough analysis of family policies in the individual countries by teams of country collaborators. concise descriptions and analyses of family policies in these 15 central and east european countries12 follow. 5.3.1 belarus low fertility is a high priority in both the political and public discourse in belarus. concern is refl ected in offi cial documents as well as in opinion surveys. the national programme of demographic security of belarus for 2011 – 2015 is the most recent in a series promulgated by the government. in it “the demographic situation in the country is characterized by a steady depopulation since the early 1990s. the main factor of depopulation in the republic of belarus is a low birth rate.” specifi c policy measures are centred on child and birth allowances. a lump sum payment 12 more information is available in barnett papers in social research 15-01 (basten/frejka 2015) and detailed descriptions of country family policies will be available in the university of oxford ceefamily working papers (see ceefamily.info). fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 23 is made for each birth. as of 2014, this payment amounts to the equivalent of€828 for the fi rst birth; for the second and subsequent births it rises to €1159. a universal care benefi t for a child under three years is paid at 35 percent of the average wage (€408) for the fi rst child (€143 in 2014) and at 40 percent for the second and subsequent children (€163). these measures possibly entailed an increase in the period tfr which increased from 1.23 in 2004 and 1.50 in 2010 to 1.66 in 2013. the main emphasis of family policies is on fi nancial incentives. little attention is devoted to other important family policy issues, such as amelioration of the work/ household responsibilities dilemma of women; gender equity at home and at work; institutional child-care; and housing conditions. altogether family policies in belarus are of a relatively narrowly conceived pro-natalist nature. 5.3.2 bulgaria bulgaria’s population strategy was set out in a 2005 document national strategy for demographic development in the republic of bulgaria for the period 2006 – 2020. the goals include: to encourage fertility through providing facilities necessary for raising children; to discourage reproductive-aged people from emigrating; to improve reproductive health and to prevent sterility. the following measures were considered: further development of gender equality; fi nancial support for raising children, especially for a second child; better opportunities for work-family reconciliation; the introduction of services that support raising children in the family environment; improvements to the educational system; better infrastructure and living environments; family planning consultations free of charge; and cultivating the two-child family model. fertility policies in bulgaria aim to increase second births. payments at birth differ by parity: 2nd child 600 bgn/€300, €125 for the 1st and €100 for the 3rd child. monthly childcare allowances are higher for the second child than for fi rst or third child. students are encouraged to combine studies with parenting via a high birth allowance of €1,440 (for comparison, the average monthly salary in january-september 2014 was 807 bgn/€404). maternity leave is 410 days during which mothers who worked for at least 12 months prior to the birth receive 90 percent of their gross salary. following that, mothers are entitled to leave with an allowance equal to the minimum monthly wage until their child is two years old. mothers have the legal right to an additional year of parental leave without allowance until the child’s third birthday. institutions of childcare consist of public crèches for children aged 10 months – 3 years, and kindergarten for children aged 3 to 6. pre-school education is obligatory for children above age 5 and is free of charge. in the view of the team of country collaborators family policies in bulgaria are directed towards fi nancial help for families with children in need. it is questionable whether the monetary measures fulfi l the aim of increasing fertility in bulgaria. not enough is done to improve the institutional support for parents. in most cities, there are fewer places in nurseries and kindergartens than are needed. very little is done to reconcile family and work. when mothers return to work they work full time. other work schedules are not tolerated. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten24 in sum, the rhetoric of family policies is comprehensive. in reality the focus is limited to fi nancial support, including a long maternal and parental leave. bulgarian family policy can therefore be labelled as pro-natalist. little attention is devoted to numerous unresolved issues: insuffi cient infrastructure of childcare; limited attention to ameliorate the work-family dilemma; high unemployment and low incomes. 5.3.3 croatia since 1995, croatia has formally ratifi ed several documents concerning demographic policy with the goal to encourage an increase in fertility. the national population policy was introduced in 2006. this document was formulated in the spirit of familyfriendly policies with many lofty goals, such as facilitating housing and employment for young families, and licensing of trained and available babysitters. the majority of these goals proved to be unrealistic. extant family policy measures include: a maternity leave of 180 days; child benefi ts which are somewhat higher for third and fourth births; and childcare facilities that are attended by over 40 percent of children of preschool age. economic diffi culties are believed to be among the challenges people are facing when deciding about having a child, and these are also limiting the government’s resources for social policies. a high unemployment rate, uneven regional development and a challenging investment climate are the main economic problems. gender equality is advancing at a slow pace. housework and child-care are still considered mostly women’s responsibilities and women indeed perform most of the housework regardless of their employment status. ilišin et al. (2013) conducted an extensive study focusing on young people’s lives. respondents were aged 14 to 27, most of them still in school. the share of unemployed (approximately one fourth) is almost equal to those with a job (approximately one third). for the most part, young people live with their parents because of insuffi cient fi nancial resources. the main professional goal of young people is to fi nd a secure job and many are looking for employment abroad. in sum, the croatian government has published several family policy documents in recent years, but the majority of policy recommendations proposed have not been implemented. this inaction has been attributed to a lack of fi nancial resources for families and institutions. 5.3.4 czech republic in the czech republic, three periods of implementing family policies after 1989 can be distinguished. 1. policy reorientations in the 1990s: the pro-natalist nature of family policies was abandoned. policies became mostly based on broader social welfare concerns aimed at reducing income inequality, and preventing poverty. special attention has been devoted to parental leave policies. the czech republic has one of the longest parental leave periods. it was expanded fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 25 until a child’s 4th birthday in 1995, although it does not align with the length of the job protection period fi xed at three years. low priority was given to women’s employment with some strengthening of the male breadwinner model and a preference for mothers of small children to perform childrearing at home. public childcare for children below age three collapsed in the 1990s as expensive-to-operate crèches faced a declining demand and became a rising fi nancial burden. there was also a huge expansion in the availability of contraception. a payment was introduced for induced abortions and these declined sharply. housing was partly privatized and was in short supply. 2. 1998-2008: gradually increased attention to family policies: the establishment of the department of family policy and social work at the ministry of labour and social affairs demonstrates the czech republic’s concern to support the eu agenda to promote family policies and gender equality. birth and parental leave allowances were doubled in 2006-7. 3. 2009-2013: cuts and reforms of family support: the amount of birth allowance was curtailed in 2008. subsequently, it became means tested and since 2010 provided only for the fi rst child. on the positive side, parents gained more fl exibility in parental leave. since 2012, they can decide about its duration and leave payment period (19-48 months), with a fi xed total sum of 8,000 eur (2014) distributed in monthly installments. the current family policies combine an entitlement for a long period of parental leave with a low availability of early childcare, nurturing a de facto male breadwinner model among families with children aged 0-3. there are limited options for parents to reduce work hours or work part-time. the policy of equal opportunities for men and women has only minor political and public support. altogether, this creates a paradoxical dichotomy for most women experiencing a complete withdrawal from the labour market for 3 years after childbirth followed by a return to full-time labour participation thereafter. this cycle is typically repeated when another child is born and leads to the loss of skills and income among working mothers. 5.3.5 estonia a policy document smart parents, great children, strong society: strategy of children and families 2012-2020 was ratifi ed in estonia in 2011. it demonstrates the government’s thorough understanding of modern comprehensive family policies. the document lists basic demographic challenges: the population is aging; the working-age population is decreasing; and the number of births is small. one approach to cope with these challenges is to make estonia a family-friendly country. the strategy of children and families focuses on prevention and early intervention at all levels, which requires an agreement between political parties about the main principles that guarantee the wellbeing of children and families. the main objective of the strategy is to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of children and fami• tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten26 lies, thereby promoting the birth of children. the strategy aims to narrow the gap between the desired and actual number of children born. estonia has a universal family benefi ts system. it includes birth allowances, child allowances, maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave, childcare allowances, a variety of targeted family benefi ts, a tax allowance, and childcare facilities. spending on social protection benefi ts for families amounted to 2 percent of gdp in 2011, slightly less than the eu average of 2.2 percent. in recent years, there has been increasing recognition that universal measures should be supplemented with a stronger package of means-tested measures to reduce child poverty. in the system of policy measures some stand out as being particularly helpful: child care facilities: in 2012, 20 percent of 1-year-olds, 70 percent of 2-yearolds, 90 percent of 3-4-year-olds and more than 90 percent of 5-6-year-olds attended public childcare. children typically attend on a full-time basis, i.e. 35-40 hours per week. parental leave: new provisions include benefi ts equalling 100 percent of income earned during the calendar year preceding childbirth; the maximum amount is three times the average salary. in 2004, the duration of benefi t payment was set at 11 months following childbirth. in 2006, it was extended to 14 months, and in 2008 up to 18 months. 5.3.6 hungary hungarian family policies originated in the pre-transition period. frequent changes in regulations and benefi t levels have occurred, because political parties alternating in government had contrasting family policy philosophies. as of 2013, hungary had a complex system of birth and child allowances, as well as a comprehensive system of maternity and parental leave. the total entitlement of paid leave for mothers was 160 weeks, which consisted of 24 weeks of maternal leave and 136 weeks of parental leave. the following specifi c universal benefi ts are available: birth grant: a one-off payment of 64,125 huf/€209. “baby bond”: a one-off payment of 42,500 huf/€168 into a bank account kept until the 18th birthday of the child by the hungarian state treasury with the option for parents and the government to make further payments into this account. child home care allowance: 28,500 huf/€93 per child per month, claimed until the third birthday. child raising support: 28,500 huf/€93 per month for mothers (or fathers) who raise three or more children under the age of 18 until the youngest child is three to eight years old. family allowance: a monthly family allowance until the end of a child’s school education, at most up to child’s 20th birthday – 12,200 huf/€40. family tax allowance: is subtracted from the tax base; for one or two children a deduction of 10,000 huf/€33 per child, for 3+ children a deduction of 33,000 huf/€107 per child. public childcare: for children under the age of 3, nursery is available, although coverage barely exceeds 10 percent and facilities tend to be overcrowded. family day care, where a maximum of fi ve children can be taken care of, is for children between 20 weeks and 14 years. moreover, several insurance based benefi ts (e.g. maternity benefi t and parental benefi t) are available to women who have been employed for at least fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 27 365 days in the two years preceding the birth of the child. in recent years, eligibility criteria for parental benefi t have been extended to include women in higher education and those who go back to work after the fi rst birthday of the child. spéder and kamarás (2008) observed that “population policy was basically zigzagging in the 15 years following the change of political regime in 1989/1990, and it often became the key issue of political struggles (…) a signifi cant fl uctuation characterized hungarian family policy after 1990; the basic principles of support changed often and profoundly. (…) therefore, family policy and levels of child-related supports were highly unpredictable.” and continue to be so. 5.3.7 latvia a systematic concern for family policies is evident in latvia’s recent history. in 2004 a ministry for children and family affairs was established and the government adopted an action plan “state family policy”. the focus on demographic issues was strengthened when a council on demographic affairs, chaired by the prime minister was established in 2011. family state policy guidelines for 2011 – 2017 were adopted in 2011. the government aims to facilitate family formation, to fortify their stability and wellbeing, to increase fertility, as well as to strengthen marriage as the best form of family and to improve the value of marriage. in 2014 a focus on family policies was strengthened within the framework of the 2015 – 2017 budgetary planning. latvia has a universal family benefi ts system. in 2013 public fi nancing for family policies in latvia was 2 percent of gdp, and this is expected to increase to 2.252.5 percent of gdp by 2015. the main benefi ts consist of: a child birth benefi t of € 421.17; a monthly family state benefi t of € 11.38 for each child aged 1-15 and 15-19 if in school, twice this amount for the second child and three times for subsequent children; a child care benefi t of € 171/month up to age 1.5; € 42.69/month for ages 1.5-2; a parental benefi t paid to an insured person who is taking care of a child younger than 1 or 1.5 years provided this person is employed on the day the benefi t is approved and is on leave for child care (the average amount in 2014 was € 501.50); a maternity leave granted to expectant mothers who are employed and receive a salary, are self-employed, or are spouses of a self-employed person and have voluntarily joined the social insurance, the length of maternity leave is 112-140 days. early childhood education which includes safe and quality childcare services is provided by local municipalities free of charge for children from 1.5 years until compulsory school age (7), but availability does not meet the needs of all parents. a variety of fl exible childcare services have been introduced such as private childcare institutions. more than 90 percent of the total number of children aged 3–6 were enrolled in pre-school education institutions in recent years. childcare services have been provided for more than 23 percent of children under the age of 3. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten28 5.3.8 lithuania for the past 25 years, the design and implementation of family policies in lithuania has been marked by a struggle of competing ideologies. the support for the malebreadwinner family model and corresponding fi nancial measures have been supplemented by family policy instruments that reinforce gender equality, work-family balance and better employment opportunities. often the ideological positions and implemented policies did not correspond to the traditional political right and left wing divide. while there is no clear family policy strategy, a parental (maternity/paternity) leave benefi t, which has been subject to multiple modifi cations in recent years, continues to be the principal measure supporting families with children. since july 2011 parents are granted a choice between a oneand a two-year payment period. the former provides a benefi t covering 100 percent of the compensatory wage, the latter covers 70 percent of the compensatory wage during the fi rst year and 40 percent during the second year. a 2012 survey revealed that the availability and quality of formal childcare services, particularly for children under 3 years of age, remains a very important territorially highly differentiated issue. nonetheless, over 30 percent of children under the age of three were attending crèches and over 80 percent of children aged 3-6 were enrolled in formal childcare. findings from surveys conducted between 1994 and 2010 show that not only has fertility decreased in lithuania but citizens’ desires to have children have declined. during the 15 years since the mid-1990s the mean desired number of children among the 18-49 year-olds (both men and women) who already have and/or desire to have children has fallen from 2.09 in 1994-1995 to 1.99 in 2010. the mean number of intended children declined from 1.91 in 2001 to 1.75 in 2010. as the actual number of children is usually smaller than the intended number, positive fertility changes are hardly to be expected. as parties have alternated in government and economic conditions have been unstable, family policy measures have been subject to frequent adjustments. the discontinuity and instability of family policies limited the chances to achieve a positive effect of the adopted family policy measures. 5.3.9 poland in the 1990s the polish government’s involvement in family policy regulations was to delegate responsibility for family’s wellbeing to parents; to delegate responsibilities for social policies to local governments; and to commercialize social services. the fertility decline was initially perceived as a temporary reaction to the transformation process. government family policy programmes did not stop the downward fertility trend, neither did the reversal of the liberal induced abortion legislation in 1993 which implied a de facto ban of abortions for most women. financial support was largely restricted to low-income households and family benefi ts were primarily a tool to prevent poverty rather than to assist families with their child-related costs. fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 29 during the 2000s, low fertility became a concern addressed in public debate, however, there was no common political understanding how to respond to ongoing family changes. policy changes after 2003 can be viewed as a gradual shift towards more generous fi nancial support and towards helping dual-earner families. especially, since 2008 revisions in leave schemes, tax reductions and regulations on early education and care provision slightly improved parents’ possibilities to combine work and care obligations. in 2013, an additional family leave of 26 weeks to be used after maternity leave, paid at 60 percent of salary, extended possibilities for working parents to provide care during the fi rst year of childrearing. further amendments to the parental leave scheme implemented in july 2015 also aim to make it more fl exible for parents and thus easier to reconcile work and care. despite these recent changes in family policy, poland still lacks a stable comprehensive family policy that matches the aspirations of its citizens and the needs of young people. the family policy programme announced by the president’s offi ce in 2013 and the population-related policy proposed by the government population council in 2012 haven’t been discussed by the government. however, some measures implemented by the government recently refl ect their policy recommendations. referring to the existing fertility gap, scholars identifi ed the main obstacles to achieving fertility intentions: • diffi culties to reconcile work and family duties due to shortages in early childhood education and care services for children aged 0-5; high costs of these services which are ill-adjusted to parent’s needs; the way teaching and nonteaching activities are scheduled in primary schools; non-fl exible work patterns; • increasing direct costs of children, affected by both quality shifts in parent’s aspiration and rising costs of education; • income instability, unemployment threats and diffi culties faced by young people in obtaining employment as well as low fi nancial transfers to families; • diffi culties obtaining housing; • gender gaps in sharing household duties between men and women; • insuffi cient knowledge about reproductive health, including lack of support for couples facing troubles to become parents. altogether, parents are confronted with high direct and indirect costs of children while the state’s contribution towards parenthood is still low despite its notable increase over the most recent eight years, i.e. since the late 2000s. moreover, family policy is exposed to political instability due to a strong ideological component involved in the family policy debates. 5.3.10 romania romania has been experiencing serious political and economic instability. during the past six years, i.e. since 2010, there were seven different governments. in this environment only limited attention has been devoted to family policy issues. more• tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten30 over, because childbearing was previously enforced with drastic measures, namely the prohibition of contraceptives and induced abortions, the state is reluctant to deal with family policy issues. the majority of social benefi ts aim to alleviate poverty. the economic decline caused a reduction in government revenue and spending. consequently, funds for social policy not oriented towards poverty reduction or economic development are scarce. nonetheless, a range of birth and child allowances are in place, including two different ways of receiving parental leave and benefi ts for raising a child. parents can decide whether they wish to obtain parental leave until the child is either 12 or 24 months old with a child raising allowance adjusted according to the length of the leave. in 2012, 56.5 percent of mothers with children under six were employed. formal childcare, however, was available in 2011 to merely 2 percent of children under the age of three and to 41 percent of children between three and the minimum compulsory school age. childbearing intentions are low. according to the generations and gender survey of 2005, among respondents that already have more than one child, only 2.6 percent of women and 4.6 percent of men want another child. altogether, the existing family policy measures are not suffi ciently effective to act as an inducement to childbearing, since they cover only a minor share of the costs. also, adequate attention is lacking to the various issues of a more comprehensive substance of family policies, such as gender equality, fl exibility of working conditions and dealing with the work/care dilemma. 5.3.11 russian federation traditionally, material incentives, especially monetary ones, have been and continue to be the main tool of pro-natalist endeavours within the russian federation since they were fi rst adopted in the 1930s. as period fertility rates plummeted in the 1990s, once again, concern for low fertility led president putin to implement pronatalist policies that came into effect on 1 january 2007: • a substantial increase in pregnancy, birth, and child benefi ts progressively graded by child order; • a parental leave of over 5 months at 100 percent of annual salary; up to 18 months of leave partially remunerated; up to 3 years of unpaid leave; • a “maternal capital” granted to mothers of second and higher-order children for the acquisition of housing, the education of children, and to augment the mother’s pension. initially 250,000 rubles, indexed to infl ation which grew to 387,640 rubles in 2012, approximately us$12,000 at the then-current exchange rate. the share of family support in gdp roughly doubled, approaching 1 percent. the policies did have an immediate effect. the ptfr grew from 1.31 in 2006 to 1.75 in 2014. the real effect will only become evident in 15-20 years when data become fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 31 available for cohorts that were in the midst of their childbearing in the 2000s, i.e. mainly women born during the late 1970s and the 1980s. there are some signs indicating these policies had only a limited effect: an analysis of the 2006–14 ptfrs illustrates that the effects appear to be wearing off over time; intentions to have additional children did not change in the three waves of the generations and gender survey (2004, 2007, 2011); alternative scenario methods indicated that the number of births per woman for the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts is likely to remain stable rather than resulting in a desired increase; analyses revealed that the ptfr growth was due to a slowdown in childbearing postponement (frejka/zakharov 2013). the overall tentative conclusion is that the 2007 policy measures did not raise cohort fertility. the offi cial position of the putin administration is that measures to stimulate the birth rate have been an unqualifi ed success. however, even experts involved in policy making have expressed caution. one of these, rybakovsky (2012) expressed doubt that current pro-natalist measures can continue to deliver results. he proposed to increase the grant for the third child, to introduce measures to lower the age at marriage, and to encourage the early birth of the fi rst child. 5.3.12 serbia in serbia, low fertility has been an enduring concern of the government, the media, and the public. the government espoused a pro-natalist strategy in 2008 stipulating the goal of reaching a “total fertility cohort rate at the level of 2.1 children per woman.” the document outlined a comprehensive programme but it remained a declaration and few of the policy recommendations were adopted in practice. similarly, a council for population policy was established but it never functioned in reality. although the leading party is in a fi rm political position, the government is confronted with many challenges and a dire economic situation. a range of family policy measures are in place: full compensation of salary of working mother/father during parental leave for a period of one year for the fi rst and second child, and two years for the third and every following child; a parental allowance for the fi rst to fourth child; a child allowance for families in need of social protection; reimbursement for the cost of preschool establishments for children lacking parental care; abortion is available on request up to ten weeks gestation, and beyond ten weeks with the approval of a medical commission for women aged 16 or over; free contraceptive counselling once per year and free pregnancy care four times for normal pregnancies. gender relations are improving, but are still laden with male predominance, especially regarding employment. young women are signifi cantly hindered in their access to the labour market and are the fi rst to be dismissed. private companies have been known to ask potential female employees to sign a declaration they will not marry or have a child. attention to reproductive health has been lacking. only one in fi ve women (18.4 percent) at risk of unplanned pregnancy used modern contraception in 2014. the estimated total abortion rate was approximately 2.80 abortions per woman. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten32 finally, no policies have been implemented to improve social and economic conditions of young people. the unemployment rate of young people aged 24-35 was 33.2 percent in 2012. many young families reside with parents even after they got married and are expecting a child. as many as one in three households contain more than one family. 5.3.13 slovakia in slovakia, family policies are marked by two distinct characteristics: recurrent changes by parties alternating in power, and a long maternal leave combined with a substantial parental leave. the focus is more on fi nancial transfers than on indirect measures of parental support. persistent changes to various family benefi ts have made the system extremely complex. low levels of stability have made it diffi cult for families to plan for the future. throughout the years of independence since 1993, the principal family policy measure was the combined long maternal and parental leave. as of 2014, the typical duration was up to 3 years of age. after frequent changes, there was only one amount of the parental allowance for all: €204 per month. parents can decide to return to work earlier but in so doing forfeit the parental allowance, and might become eligible for a childcare allowance. the refunded amount for documented costs is up to €230, however, private childcare institutions are much more expensive than that. this policy effectively discourages women from gradually returning to the labour market and instead encourages them to remain at home for three or more years if they have more than one child. there is also a shortage of childcare facilities for young children up to three years of age and, moreover, these facilities are expensive. employers often discriminate against mothers of small children and against young women because of the expected three-year break associated with childbearing. furthermore, unemployment of mothers after parental leave is high. these contributing factors lead many women to stay at home when they do have children or even discourages them from childbearing. 5.3.14 slovenia family policies have attracted considerable attention in slovenia since independence in 1990. the national committee on demographic policy was established in 1994 and a programme for children and youth 2006-2016 adopted in 2006. there are three main components of family policy in slovenia: an extensive and very well paid parental leave; a network of childcare facilities and highly subsidised programmes, and a relatively high child allowance for children in low-income families. parental leave consists of 105 days of maternity leave, 260 days of parental and 90 days of paternity leave. pre-school childcare almost completely meets the demand for children from age one to age six. the child allowance is received by a majority of children up to age of 18 and even up to age of 26 for those who are still in full-time education. in addition there is a birth grant, textbook funds, scholarships, fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 33 subsidized transport for pupils and students, and subsidized school meals. there is also a system of child tax allowances which are progressive according to the number of dependent children. despite improvements in recent years, the traditional division of gender roles in slovenian families persists, which leads to a “double burden” for employed women (stropnik/šircelj 2008). even though slovenia has a relatively well-developed comprehensive family policy, research has not revealed any impact of individual family policy measures on people’s fertility behaviour, except for a short-term effect related to a considerable prolongation of parental leave. at the same time, it is questionable what the fertility trend would have been in the absence of family policy. undoubtedly, family policy has alleviated poverty in many families with children. 5.3.15 ukraine since the mid-1990s a series of laws in ukraine provide evidence that successive governments have been concerned with population issues and family policies. a key document which systematized and coordinated political and demographic undertakings the strategy of demographic development of ukraine for 2005-2015 was adopted in 2006. the birth allowance has been the principal family policy measure. it was increased from an insignifi cant amount in 2001-2002 to heights not seen in any other country. in 2014 the birth allowance for a fi rst birth was uah 30,960 (us$3,259), for a second birth uah 61,920 (us$ 6,441) and for a third birth uah 123,840 (us$ 13,067). this was 40 percent higher than the per capita gdp at purchasing power parity in 2013. increases in the birth allowance along with some improvement in the socioeconomic situation and the recuperation of births that were delayed in the 1990s did have an effect on the period tfr; it increased from 1.21 births per woman in 2004 to 1.53 in 2012. it remains to be seen whether there will also be an effect on cohort fertility. the recuperation rates for young cohorts born in 1975 and 1980 (table 3 and fig. 4) indicate there might not be a further decline in cohort tfrs; however any increase compared to the 1970 birth cohort, when the ctfr(40) was 1.56 births per woman, is also unlikely. preschool childcare in public institutions has also been increasing steadily. in 2013, 62 percent of children attended crèches and kindergartens up from 41 percent in 2001. an observation generally shared by ukrainian professionals was formulated by perelli-harris (2008) who states that “ukraine has one of the most generous but least effective family policies in the world.” an important circumstance for the low impact of family policies appears to be the emphasis on material incentives, insuffi cient attention to work and family initiatives, and broad social change supportive of children and parenting. moreover, the economic collapse and the grave conditions caused by internal strife and the russian intervention are also being felt in the area of social and family policies. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten34 6 summaries and conclusions meaningful observations and conclusions can be drawn from the above analysis of fertility trends and family policies in cee. 6.1 fertility trends • in the majority of cee countries births that were postponed by women born during the 1970s were not being replaced in suffi cient numbers for cohort fertility to increase in the foreseeable future. a further decline is likely, stagnation is possible. • shares of low parity women (childless and one child) have become considerably larger than shares of high parity women with three or more children among the 1960s birth cohorts and there is no reason to believe this trend might be reversed. • shares of two-child families gradually declined, shares of one-child families increased and there were few childless women among the 1960s birth cohorts. • cohort childbearing age patterns in all cee countries have been changing dramatically starting with the mid-1960s birth cohorts. these changes are continuing albeit at a more moderate pace among the 1970s and early 1980s cohorts. • the slowdown in childbearing postponement indicates the possibility of cohort fertility stagnation. overall, cohort fertility in the majority of cee countries is likely to decline among the 1970s birth cohorts. there might be some exceptions and stagnation is possible. the outlook for a fertility increase in the long run is not favourable. this constitutes a topic of serious concern for governments in the region and as such is among the reasons that motivate them to devise and implement family and other policies to counteract this development. 6.2 family policies: discussion and conclusions fertility levels and trends are indeed a matter of serious concern throughout the cee region. often the concern with inadequate fertility levels is within a broader framework of concern for the wellbeing of families and children, or with the objective of alleviation of poverty. governments tend to adopt offi cial programme documents outlining strategies how to deal with these issues. sometimes institutions such as ministries, and committees, have been established to design and implement family policies. in some countries governments are pursuing at least a partial implementation of the enunciated policies. in others the proposed policies were not implemented and the intentions have remained unfulfi lled due to political instability, ideological disagreements, lack of resources, or competing government priorities. issues related to child benefi ts, parental leaves and child care have been discussed above in the context of individual countries in section 5.3 (country famfertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 35 ily policy profi les). in addition, appendix tables 9, 10 and 11 provide overviews of parental leaves, and of participation rates in child care for 0-2 and for 3-5 year old children. the formulation and implementation of worthy family policies is subject to numerous challenges. quite frequently parties alternating in power have different views on what should constitute a family policy. one party advances measures tainted by patriarchal attitudes with an emphasis on fi nancial support to enable women to stay at home while the man provides for the family. other political parties in principle promote family policies associated with gender equality, work-life balance, convenient employment conditions for women, and adequate institutional childcare. as parties alternate in power governments change policy measures adopted by previous administrations thus creating an atmosphere of uncertainty. such situations were typical in hungary and lithuania, although other countries also suffered from this syndrome. in poland the government did not declare an offi cial government policy, but since 2008 gradually implemented some measures easing tensions between being employed and family care obligations. in a number of countries family policies have been of low priority for governments. in particular, in romania, an unstable political environment with frequently changing administrations, combined with a poorly performing economy are among the reasons why the government neglected family policies. some countries suffer from a lack of resources available for family policies. governments in serbia and croatia expressed great concern about low fertility and the wellbeing of families and children. offi cial documents were drafted and committees formed, but policies were not implemented. the economies were performing poorly in part as a consequence of the wars which followed the disintegration of former yugoslavia. apparently, suffi cient resources were not available for family policies to be implemented. frequently political instability has affected family policies. this has been the case not only in hungary, lithuania and poland where it was identifi ed as an important feature shaping family policies, but also in romania, slovakia, and ukraine, and possibly to some extent elsewhere. although conclusive fi ndings regarding the effect of family policies on fertility trends can only be made with a certain lapse of time, preliminary fi ndings are emerging. in countries with recent prominent pro-natalist policies – belarus, the russian federation, and ukraine – period tfrs have increased more than in most other countries. in bulgaria and latvia, however, even the period tfr trend stalled around 2010. looking ahead, if the pre-1990 experiences are an indication of what is transpiring, the period fertility increases might turn out to be temporary, caused largely by the advancement of childbearing from future years as usually happened in the past. in this case a cohort fertility steadying at a relatively low level or a decline is likely to continue. in countries with the male breadwinner models – the czech republic and slovakia – any notable effect on preventing a cohort fertility decline has not been apparent so far. however, the family policies might well have had other benefi cial effects, such as a more just income distribution or poverty alleviation. • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten36 in almost all the remaining countries that for different reasons have weak family policies – poland, romania, croatia and serbia – even period tfrs have experienced only modest growth. lithuania is the exception with a period tfr at 1.6 in 2012 which had been increasing since the mid-2000s and with a relatively stable and high estimated cohort fertility rate. in sum, these fi ndings indicate that there are merely two countries in which family policies may have created favourable conditions for cohort fertility to stabilize – estonia and slovenia. on the other extreme, there are at least fi ve – croatia, hungary, poland, serbia and romania – possibly nine populations, if the czech republic, slovakia, bulgaria and latvia are included, in which family policies have not prevented a continued cohort fertility decline. in four populations, if lithuania is added to those with strong pro-natalist policies – belarus, russia, and ukraine –, some immediate effects of family policies on period fertility trends have been noted however when the respective cohort fertility data will become available, these increases may turn out to have been temporary. 6.3 overall observations and conclusions our research yields two main fi ndings. 1. cohort fertility is not likely to increase in the foreseeable future – i.e. among the 1970s birth cohorts and possibly beyond – in almost all cee countries; it is more likely to decline; there are some indications of a possible stagnation of cohort fertility levels. 2. the majority of extant family policies in cee countries are facing a variety of challenges that impede them from helping to generate optimal family welfare and to provide conditions for cohort fertility to increase. there are only two countries in which family policies are apparently conducive for a considerable advancement of family wellbeing and may have a positive impact on cohort fertility trends: estonia and slovenia. in addition, in four or fi ve countries, immediate effects of family policies on period fertility trends have been noted, however these may turn out to be temporary with a limited effect on cohort fertility. 6.4 why are these fi ndings important? period fertility rates have been increasing in the late 2000s and in some countries up until the early 2010s. this has created the impression of a fertility recovery. findings of this project indicate that no such widespread recovery of childbearing appears to be underway. even though it cannot be proven conclusively at the present time, cohort fertility does not appear to be increasing. in addition, what exactly will happen with period fertility trends depends on trends in childbearing timing. the rise in period fertility rates might have been temporary if it turns out that the ptfr increases of the late 2000s and early 2010s were driven by a slowing down of childbearing postponement or by childbearing advancement. in this case a stagnation or period fertility decline can be expected in the mid to late 2010s. however, as there are some signs that childbearing postponement is merely slowing down, period fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 37 fertility stagnation or decline might not occur soon, but in a number of years. also, periodic increases in material incentives to childbearing, provided governments can afford to do so, might manage to maintain relatively high period fertility rates for a few years. the likely future decline of cohort fertility (or its stagnation at relatively low levels) may entail long-term demographic as well as other societal consequences, such as continuous declines in total population numbers, changes in age structures, as well as implications for health and social security costs. this is the fi rst time that a relatively comprehensive analysis of the nature and performance of family policies in cee countries after the collapse of state socialism has been performed. we hope that this study will provide governments with a realistic overview of existing policies, and what more can be done to tackle the abovementioned issues. recent research on differences between actual family size and the number of children women desire – or consider ideal – provides evidence that fertility could increase if appropriate conditions were generated. this would require improved general societal conditions for childbearing as well as effective comprehensive family policies. sobotka and beaujouan (2014: 407) have documented that “a two-child ideal has become nearly universal among women in europe.” taking the data for eight cee countries in their paper and for fi ve additional ones there is a difference of 0.49 children per woman between the completed cohort fertility rate (1.64) and the mean ideal family size (2.13). if conditions for childbearing 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united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division 2015: trends in contraceptive use worldwide 2015. st/esa/ser.a/349. world bank 2015: international comparison program database, 2015. zakharov, sergei 1999: fertility, nuptiality, and family planning in russia: problems and prospects. in: demko, george j.; ioffe, grigory; zaionchkovskaya, zhanna [eds.]: population under duress: the geodemography of post-soviet russia. boulder-oxford: westview press: 41-58. date of submission: 21.10.2015 date of acceptance: 29.03.2016 dr. tomas frejka (). independent consultant and department of social policy and intervention, university of oxford. oxford, united kingdom. e-mail: tfrejka@aol.com url: https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/people/profi le/frejka.html dr. stuart gietel-basten. department of social policy and intervention, university of oxford. oxford, united kingdom. e-mail: stuart.basten@spi.ox.ac.uk url: https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/people/profi le/basten.html fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 41 country collaborators belarus ekaterina antipova, tatyana pronko, liudmila fakeyeva bulgaria elena von der lippe, dora kostova croatia ivan cipin, anđelko akrap, marin strmota czech republic tomáš sobotka, kryštof zeman, anna šťastná estonia luule sakkeus, allan puur, martin klesment, liili abuladze hungary julia mikolai latvia peter zvidrins, liga abolina lithuania vlada stankuniene, aiva jasilioniene poland irena kotowska, krzysztof tymicki, anna rybińska romania cornelia muresan, ionut foldes russian federation anatoly vishnevsky, sergei zakharov serbia mirjana rasevic, mirjana bobic, vasic petar slovakia michaela potančoková, branislav šprocha slovenia jože sambt, nada stropnik ukraine iryna kurylo, svitlana aksyonova, boris krimer project coordinators stuart gietel-basten, tomas frejka appendix participating countries and collaborators working on project: prospects for a fertility increase in the formerly socialist countries of central and eastern europe • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten42 tab. a1: ebrd economic transition indicators index, central and eastern europe, 1995, 2005 and 2012 region, country ebrd economic transition indicators index 1995 2005 2012 central europe croatia 3.0 3.6 3.7 czech republic ebrd donor country as of 2006 hungary 3.7 4.0 4.1 poland 3.4 3.9 4.0 slovakia 3.5 4.0 4.1 slovenia 3.2 3.6 3.6 south-eastern europe albania 2.8 3.3 3.5 bulgaria 2.6 3.6 3.7 montenegro 1.6 2.9 3.3 serbia 1.6 2.8 3.2 romania 2.6 3.4 3.7 eastern europe belarus 2.2 1.9 2.2 moldova 2.9 3.2 3.3 russia 2.9 3.2 3.3 ukraine 2.4 3.2 3.3 baltic states estonia 3.6 4.0 4.1 latvia 3.1 3.8 3.9 lithuania 3.2 3.9 3.9 note: the measurement scale for the indicators ranges from 1 to 4+, where 1 represents little or no change from a rigid centrally planned economy and 4+ represents the standards of an industrialized market economy. source: ebrd 2015 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 43 tab. a2: political rights index and civil liberties index, central and eastern europe, 2004 and 2014 region, country 2004 2014 pr cl status pr cl status central europe croatia 2 2 f 1 2 f czech republic 1 1 f 1 1 f hungary 1 1 f 2 2 f poland 1 1 f 1 1 f slovakia 1 1 f 1 1 f slovenia 1 1 f 1 1 f south-eastern europe albania 3 3 pf 3 3 pf bulgaria 1 2 f 2 2 f montenegro .. .. .. 3 2 f serbia .. .. .. 2 2 f romania 3 2 f 2 2 f eastern europe belarus 7 6 nf 7 6 nf moldova 3 4 pf 3 3 pf russia 6 5 nf 6 6 nf ukraine 4 3 pf 3 3 pf baltic states estonia 1 1 f 1 1 f latvia 1 2 f 2 2 f lithuania 2 2 f 1 1 f notes: pr – political rights; cl – civil liberties; f – free; pf – partially free; nf – not free numerical ratings from 1 to 7 – 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free source: freedom house 2015 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten44 tab. a3: annual gross domestic product per capita based on purchasing power parity, central and eastern europe, and selected western european countries, 1990-2013 region, country gdp per capita based on ppp in $$ average annual growth rate of gdp per capita based on ppp in percent gdp per capita based on ppp 2013/ 1990 1990 2000 2013 2000/1990 2013/2000 central europe croatia n.a. 11,057 21,351 n.a. 5.1 n.a. czech republic 12,731 16,287 29,018 2.5 4.4 2.28 hungary 8,257a 12,073 23,334 4.2 5.1 2.83 poland 6,003 10,600 23,690 5.7 6.2 3.95 slovakia 6,997b 11,160 26,497 5.8 6.7 3.79 slovenia n.a. 17,882 28,859 n.a. 3.7 n.a. south-eastern europe albania 2,844 4,249 9,931 4.0 6.5 3.49 bulgaria 5,410 6,445 15,732 1.8 6.9 2.91 montenegro n.a. 6,548 14,132 n.a. 5.9 n.a. serbia n.a. 5,778 13,020 n.a. 6.2 n.a. romania 5,193 5,707 18,974 0.9 9.2 3.65 eastern europe belarus 5,230 5,786 17,620 1.0 8.6 3.37 moldova 4,153 1,840 4,671 -8.1 7.2 1.12 russia 8,014 6,825 25,248 -1.6 10.1 3.15 ukraine 6,798 3,818 8,790 -5.8 6.4 1.29 baltic states estonia n.a. 9,709 25,823 n.a. 7.5 n.a. latvia 7,829 8,061 22,568 0.3 7.9 2.88 lithuania 9,324 8,619 25,454 -0.8 8.3 2.73 selected western european countries norway 17,914 64,406 3.60 united states 23,955 53,042 2.21 netherlands 18,740 46,162 2.46 austria 19,514 45,079 2.31 portugal 11,198 27,804 2.48 a 1991; b 1992. gdp per capita based on purchasing power parity (ppp). gdp is gross domestic product converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates. an international dollar has the same purchasing power over gdp as the u.s. dollar has in the united states. source: world bank, international comparison program database 2015 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 45 tab. a4: period total fertility rates, increase or decline of period age-specifi c fertility rates, ages 15-26 and ages 27-49, specifi ed periods in 20002012, central and east european countries by region region, country period increase or decrease of period age-specifi c fertility rate (in percent) ptfr at end of period share of period agespecifi c fertility rate at end of period (in percent) ages 15-26 ages 27-49 ages 15-26 ages 27-49 central europe croatia n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. czech republic 2004-2012 -14 41 1.45 28 72 hungary 2003-2009 -18 21 1.32 34 66 poland 2004-2011 -13 19 1.29 37 63 slovakia 2003-2012 -14 58 1.46 36 64 slovenia 2003-2010 -1 49 1.57 26 74 south-eastern europe bulgaria 2003-2009 8 60 1.57 53 47 romania n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. serbia 2000-2012 -30 33 1.44 40 60 baltic states estonia 2003-2010 -11 47 1.63 36 64 latvia n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. lithuania 2002-2011 -19 82 1.55 36 64 eastern europe belarus 2004-2012 7 70 1.62 50 50 russia 2006-2012 10 58 1.69 47 53 ukraine 2004-2012 3 66 1.53 52 48 source: human fertility database 2014, warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten46 tab. a5: parity distributions, selected central and east european countries, birth cohorts 1960-1970 parities share (in percent) parities ratio parities share (in percent) parities ratio cohort 0+1 2 3+ 0+1/3+ cohort 0+1 2 3+ 0+1/3+ czech republic hungary 1960 22 56 23 1.0 1960 27 49 23 1.2 1965 26 55 19 1.3 1965 30 46 24 1.3 1970 29 53 17 1.7 1968 34 42 23 1.5 slovakia bulgaria 1960 23 45 32 0.7 1960 25 59 16 1.6 1965 28 46 27 1.0 1965 33 54 13 2.5 1968 31 45 25 1.3 1968 40 49 11 3.5 estonia lithuania 1960 29 48 23 1.3 1960 33 49 18 1.9 1965 37 42 21 1.7 1965 39 44 17 2.3 1970 40 38 22 1.8 1970 40 43 17 2.4 belarus russia 1960 30 56 14 2.1 1960 34 49 16 2.1 1965 40 49 11 3.5 1965 44 43 13 3.3 1970 45 44 11 4.1 1969 50 38 12 4.1 ukraine 1960 34 52 14 2.4 1965 43 46 11 3.8 1968 49 40 10 4.8 note: all calculations performed with unrounded base data. results may seem inaccurate when ratios are calculated with listed numbers, and totals of shares in rows for cohorts may not add exactly to 100. source: human fertility database 2014 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 47 ta b . a 6: po p ul at io n g ro w th 1 99 020 10 , p o p ul at io n p ro je ct io n s fo r 20 30 , 2 04 0, 2 05 0 an d 2 06 0, m ed iu m v ar ia n ts , c en tr al an d e as te rn e ur o p e, s el ec te d c o un tr ie s p o p ul at io n p ro je ct io n – m ed iu m v ar ia n t ye ar p o p ul at io n in m ill io n s b el ar u s b ul g ar ia c ze ch r ep ub lic e st o ni a h un g ar y r u ss ia n fe d er at io n p o la n d s er b ia s lo va ki a u kr ai n e 19 90 10 .1 90 8. 76 7 10 .3 63 1. 56 9 10 .3 74 14 7. 66 5 38 .0 31 7. 80 6 5. 29 8 51 .8 38 20 00 9. 98 8 8. 17 0 10 .2 73 1. 40 1 10 .2 11 14 6. 89 0 38 .2 56 7. 51 6 5. 40 1 49 .4 29 20 10 9. 49 1 7. 53 4 10 .5 17 1. 33 3 10 .0 00 14 2. 84 9 38 .5 17 7. 29 1 5. 43 1 45 .9 62 20 20 9. 27 3 6. 95 0 10 .5 32 1. 30 2 9. 61 1 14 3. 89 2 38 .1 38 6. 99 5 5. 50 3 44 .6 42 20 30 8. 82 2 6. 51 9 10 .3 97 1. 27 3 9. 20 9 14 1. 61 2 37 .1 85 6. 83 6 5. 55 8 43 .1 52 20 40 8. 29 4 6. 11 6 10 .1 26 1. 23 7 8. 77 1 35 .6 68 6. 81 8 5. 53 2 41 .2 09 20 50 7. 72 5 5. 74 8 9. 81 3 8. 33 6 33 .9 51 5. 47 0 39 .3 57 20 60 5. 38 4 5. 34 5 37 .1 20 c h an g e in d ex (2 01 0 = 1 00 .0 ) 19 90 10 7. 4 11 6. 4 98 .5 11 7. 7 10 3. 7 10 3. 4 98 .7 10 7. 1 97 .6 11 2. 8 20 00 10 5. 2 10 8. 4 97 .7 10 5. 1 10 2. 1 10 2. 8 99 .3 10 3. 1 99 .4 10 7. 5 20 10 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 10 0. 0 20 20 97 .7 92 .2 10 0. 1 97 .7 96 .1 10 0. 7 99 .0 95 .9 10 1. 3 97 .1 20 30 93 .0 86 .5 98 .9 95 .5 92 .1 99 .1 96 .5 93 .8 10 2. 3 93 .9 20 40 87 .4 81 .2 96 .3 92 .8 87 .7 92 .6 93 .5 10 1. 9 89 .7 20 50 81 .4 76 .3 93 .3 83 .4 88 .1 10 0. 7 85 .6 20 60 71 .5 98 .4 80 .8 s o ur ce : n at io na l s ta tis tic al o ffi c es 2 01 4 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten48 tab.a7: contraceptive prevalence, selected central and east european countries, 1976-2015 country year contraceptive prevalencea (percentage) any method modern methods traditional methods bulgaria 1976 75.1 6.0 69.1 1994 80.1 45.6 34.4 1995 85.9 45.6 40.3 1997 41.5 25.6 15.9 2015 67.4 47.7 19.7 czech republic 1977 95.0 49.0 46.0 1993 68.9 44.9 24.0 1994 69.6 48.6 21.0 1997 72.0 62.6 9.4 2015 74.8 69.1 8.7 hungary 1986 73.1 62.3 10.8 1992/1993 77.4 68.4 9.0 poland 1977 75.0 26.0 49.0 1991 49.4 19.0 30.4 romania 1978 58.0 5.0 53.0 1993 57.3 14.5 42.8 1994 60.5 16.3 44.3 1999 63.8 29.5 34.3 2015 69.0 53.7 34.3 serbia & 1976 55.0 12.0 43.0 montenegro 2000 58.3 32.8 25.5 a percentage of women of reproductive age in a marital or consensual union using contraception source: united nations 2002 and 2015 fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 49 tab. a8: legal abortions, selected central and east european countries, 1996 and 2003 country abortion ratea 1996 2003 average annual percent change belarus n.a. 35 n.a. bulgaria 51 22 -11.7 czech republic 21 13 -6.9 hungary 35 26 -4.2 russian federation 69 45 -6.0 slovak republic 20 13 -6.1 estonia 56 36 -6.1 latvia 44 29 -6.0 lithuania 34 15 -11.0 a abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 source: sedgh et al. 2007 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten50 tab. a9: paid leave entitlements: full-rate equivalent paid maternity, parental and father-specifi c leave, in weeks, selected central and east european countries, 2014a country paid maternity leave paid parental and home care leave available to mothersd total paid leave for mothers paid leave reserved for fatherse 1 2 3=1+2 4 belarus 23.0 144.0 167.0 0.0 ukraineb 10.0 (18.0) 156.0 166.0 0.0 slovak republic 34.0 130.0 164.0 0.0 estonia 20.0 140.3 160.3 2.0 hungary 24.0 136.0 160.0 1.0 bulgaria 58.6 51.9 110.4 2.1 czech republic 28.0 82.0 110.0 0.0 latvia 16.0 78.0 94.0 1.4 russian federation 20.0 68.2 82.2 0.0 lithuaniac 18.0 44.0 (96.0) 62.0 (114.0) 4.0 romania 18.0 43.0 61.0 1.0 croatia 30.0 26.0 56.0 8.7 slovenia 15.0 37.1 52.1 2.1 serbia 16.0 36.0 52.0 0.0 poland 26.0 0.0 26.0 2.0 oecd average 17.0 36.7 53.7 9.0 a entitled weeks of paid leave as of april 2014. b in ukraine the “total paid leave for mothers” (col. 3=166 weeks) consists of 10 weeks of “paid maternity leave” (col. 1) prior to birth plus 156 weeks of monthly payment of birth grant. the total paid maternity leave is 18 months as noted in parentheses in col. 1. c in lithuania parental leave is available not only for mothers but also for fathers, i.e. they are equally eligible to take it (not at the same time). additionally, parents can choose between a 44-week parental leave with a benefi t covering 100 percent of the compensatory wage and a 96-week parental leave with a benefi t covering 70 percent of the compensatory wage in the fi rst 44 weeks and 40 percent in the remaining 52 weeks (see also section 5.3.8). d parental leave and subsequent periods of paid home care leave to care for young children. e parental leave that can be used only by father and cannot be transferred to mother. source: oecd 2015, country co-author reports fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 51 tab. a10: participation rates in childcare and pre-school servicesa for 0-2 year olds, selected central and east european countries, 2006 and 2013 country participation rate (in percent) 2006 2013 slovenia 32.5 45.4 estonia 18.1 24.3 latvia 20.0 23.4 russian federation 21.2 17.8 serbia 11.3 16.2 hungary 10.5 16.1 ukraine 15.2 15.3 belarus 11.9 (2005) 15.2 (2012) romania 7.9 14.5 bulgaria 8.7 12.1 lithuania 8.1 12.1 croatia n.a. 12.0 poland 8.6 9.6 czech republic 2.6 4.3 slovak republic 4.9 3.1 oecd 30 average 28.1 32.9 a children in daycare centers and pre-school (private and public) and those that are cared for by licensed childminders source: oecd 2015, country co-author reports • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten52 tab. a11: participation rates for 3-5 year olds in pre-primary education or primary school,a selected central and east european countries, 2002 and 2012 country participation rate (in percent) 2002 2012 estonia n.a. 89.6 slovenia n.a. 88.8 hungary 86.4 87.7 latvia 64.3 87.7 belarus 84.7 (2005) 83.9 (2012) russian federation n.a. 81.0 bulgaria 73.1 79.6 ukraine 58.0 78.4 romania 61.9 77.6 czech republic 82.4 76.4 lithuania 52.8 74.4 slovak republic 69.5 72.0 poland 33.1 69.2 croatia 41.5 57.7 serbia 20.2 28.9 oecd 29 average 72.2 82.0 a children in pre-primary education (public and private), but also in some countries children in compulsory primary education source: oecd 2015, country co-author reports fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 53 fig. a1: period total fertility rates, central and eastern europe, northern, western, southern europe and german-speaking countries, 1970-2013 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 year northern europe western europe german speaking countries southern europe central & eastern europe period total fertility rate 2015 regions consist of following countries central and eastern europe: croatia, czech republic, hungary, poland, slovakia, slovenia, albania, bulgaria, montenegro, serbia, romania, belarus, russian federation, ukraine, estonia, latvia, lithuania northern europe: denmark, finland, norway, sweden western europe: belgium, france, netherlands, united kingdom german-speaking countries: austria, germany, switzerland southern europe: greece, italy, portugal, spain source: human fertility database 2015 and eurostat 2015 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten54 fig. a2: mean age of mother at fi rst birth, central and eastern europe, central, south-eastern, eastern europe, and baltic states, country populations within regions, 1960-2013 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0 29.0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year central europe south-eastern europe baltic states eastern europe a central and eastern europa mean age of mother at first birth 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0 29.0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year croatia czech republic hungary poland slovakia slovenia b central europe mean age of mother at first birth 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0 29.0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year bulgaria montenegro serbia romania c south-eastern europe mean age of mother at first birth 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0 29.0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year belarus russia ukraine d eastern europe mean age of mother at first birth 21.0 22.0 23.0 24.0 25.0 26.0 27.0 28.0 29.0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year estonia latvia lithuania e baltic states mean age of mother at first birth source: human fertility database 2014, eurostat 2015, warsaw school of economics 2014: personal communication fertility and family policies in central and eastern europe after 1990 • 55 fig. a3: period total fertility rates (ptfr), period age-specifi c fertility rates of young women (pasfr 15-26), and period age-specifi c rates of older women (pasfr 27-49), selected central and east european countries 1970-2014 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year ptfr pasfr 15-26 pasfr 27-49 a czech republic fertility rate 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year ptfr pasfr 15-26 pasfr 27-49 b bulgaria fertility rate 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year ptfr pasfr 15-26 pasfr 27-49 c russian federation fertility rate 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year ptfr pasfr 15-26 pasfr 27-49 d lithuania fertility rate source: human fertility database 2015, eurostat 2015, national statistical offi ces 2015 • tomas frejka, stuart gietel-basten56 fig. a4: cohort age-specifi c fertility rates, czech republic, bulgaria, russian federation, lithuania, and austria, birth cohorts, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985, and netherlands, birth cohorts, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1960 and 1965 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 a czech republic 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 b bulgaria 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate c russian federation 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate d lithuania 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 e netherlands 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate f austria 1965-1985 age-specific fertility rate 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 age 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 source: human fertility database 2015, eurostat 2015, national statistical offi ces 2015 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2016 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (köln) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions kerstin ruckdeschel, anne salles, sabine diabaté, laurent toulemon, arnaud régnier-loilier abstract: the neighbouring countries france and germany show very different levels of fertility. differences also exist between the two regions of east and west germany. the aim of this paper is to help close a remaining gap in explaining these differences by applying a cultural concept of role models. data is based on the german survey “family-related role models” (2012) and the french survey “situation de couple, intentions de fécondité et opinions sur la famille”, elipss (2013) offering a new approach to measuring the impact of social norms. the analysis uses multinomial logistic regression. we identifi ed role models regarding the acceptance of childlessness on the one hand and large families on the other, as well as regarding the link between marriage and parenthood and the importance of fi nancial security, suggesting different fertility-related cultures in france and germany. there is a strong predominance of one general role model in france – that of having at least two children. in germany, in contrast, there is a dominant role model – the two child family – but there are also several less central role models. the dominant model in france even leads to a sort of self-stigmatisation of individuals who want to stay childless, whereas childlessness is generally accepted in germany. role model differences between east and west germany show a lower acceptance of large families and a higher acceptance of single-child families in the east. our results highlight the importance of role models for fertility intentions as well as the relevance of cultural dimensions when studying the impact of the institutional framework on fertility. keywords: france · germany · role model · intended family size · norms · values · fertility · family policy comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 187-210 (date of release: 10.01.2019) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-12en7 • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.188 1 introduction with regard to fertility, france and germany are often cited as two unequal neighbours (e.g. salles et al. 2010; fagnani 2002). france is a country with one of the highest fertility rates in europe, while germany has one of the lowest. this gap is usually explained by structural factors, especially work-life balance measures such as childcare facilities. signifi cant research has revealed a link between family policy aimed at reconciling work and family life, and the comparatively higher fertility levels in france and the nordic countries (gauthier 2007; mcdonald 2005; hantrais 2004). however, structural factors alone cannot explain the gap between france and germany. the german government has implemented various reforms to help women combine work and family starting with the expansion of day-care for children under the age of three in 2004 (bujard 2011). even though the fertility rate has increased in germany in recent years, it still remains at a comparatively low level. germany is one of the few countries in europe with a relatively high labour market participation of mothers, a rate of small children in day care which is eu average, and a low fertility level. in fact, several studies observe a limited effect of policy measures on fertility (luci-greulich/thévenon 2013; toulemon et al. 2008). as research shows, cultural aspects additionally explain why the two neighbours differ in their fertility structure (ruckdeschel 2012; salles et al.2010; fagnani 2002) and could perhaps shed some light on the limited effect of family policy reforms in germany. while there is strong social pressure to become a parent in france (debest/mazuy 2014), a culture of childlessness seems to be emerging in germany (dorbritz 2008; sobotka 2008). to a lesser extent, such cultural differences can be found within germany as well, i.e. between east and west germany. especially regarding norms and practices concerning the work-life balance, east germany seems to have more in common with france than with west germany (bmfsfj 2015). in other words, the differences in fertility outcomes between france, west and east germany might also be linked to “fertility-related norms” (liefbroer et al. 2015; liefbroer/billari 2010). social infl uence, defi ned here as the disposition to comply with widely accepted social norms, does indeed explain why attitudes towards fertility do not keep pace with social reforms or economic changes. this in turn explains why it may take time for family policy reforms to have an impact on fertility outcomes (salles et al. 2010; rossier/bernardi 2009). however, examining the link between social norms and fertility has proven to be diffi cult because of a lack of available data. the aim of this paper is to close remaining gaps in explaining fertility differences by applying a cultural concept of role models.1 in order to analyse the impact of social norms and social context, we operationalised the concept on both the individual and the societal levels. the societal level is included by the new concept of “individual perceptions of general opinion”. in the survey we carried out, respondents 1 these role models refer to “guiding principles”. unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 189 were not only asked about their personal opinion on social norms, but also what they believe the broader population expects, in order to compare personal with perceived general opinion and to link these opinions to fertility intentions. using this concept, we compare fertility-related role models for childlessness, large families, partnership and traditional role models in france and east and west germany on the individual and societal levels. in a second step, we analyse how these different role models on the individual and societal levels correlate with intended fi nal parity. 2 fertility trends and family policy in germany and france fertility trends since the end of world war ii, fertility has continuously remained at a higher level in france than in germany. while the gap was widening between 2000 and 2010, it is now decreasing with the total fertility rate (tfr) rising slightly in germany and seeming to be slightly declining in france.2 nevertheless, the total fertility rate is currently about 30 percent higher in france than in germany (see fig. 1). while the total fertility rate was very low in east germany after reunifi cation, it is now slightly fig. 1: total fertility rates in france and (unifi ed) germany, 1960-2016 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 19 60 19 64 19 68 19 72 19 76 19 80 19 84 19 88 19 92 19 96 20 00 20 04 20 08 20 12 20 16 france germany (gfr) tfr source: own calculations (destatis 2017, 2018; insee 2018) 2 the decline in the number of births seems to have been accelerating in france since the second half of 2014. according to preliminary data, the total fertility rate fell to 1.88 in 2017, compared to 2.00 in 2014, the lowest level since 1999 (papon/beaumel 2018). • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.190 higher than in west germany. it is worth pointing out that the tfr is quite volatile in the short term, and therefore we avoid statements about future trends. we use tfr as a measure because it is the most up-to-date indicator of developments in fertility available. among other factors, the tfr gap between germany and france can be explained by lower childlessness rates and a higher incidence of large families in france (köppen et al. 2017; kreyenfeld/konietza 2017; bujard/sulak 2016; hornung 2011; prioux 2007). of all women born between 1968 and 1972, nearly 30 percent have three children or more in france, compared to less than 17 percent in germany (see fig. 2). france also has a lower share of women with a single child. while the total fertility rate is nearly the same in both parts of germany, the distribution of mothers by parity remains quite different. 36 percent of women born between 1968 and 1972 have a single child in east germany, compared to 22 percent in west germany (and 18 percent compared to france in the case of women born in 1970). in east germany, there are nearly as many women with a single child as with two children, but large families with three and more children are rarer. nevertheless, the total fertility rate is actually slightly higher in the eastern part of the country, since childlessness is less common than in west germany. non-marital births are least frequent in west germany: in 2015, less than 30 percent of births occurred out of wedlock compared to 58 percent in east germany (bib 2017) and 59 percent in france (eurostat 2017). this discrepancy may partly be fig. 2: distribution of german and french women born between 1968 and 1972 by parity (in %) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0 1 2 3 or more germany west germany east france % number of children source: statistisches bundesamt 2009; köppen et al. 2017 unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 191 related to family policy. in germany, fi nancial advantages linked to marriage – e.g. tax benefi ts – are much higher than in france. as many women reduce working hours after birth or even stop working for some time, marriage provides an important factor of fi nancial security for them. however, this also leads to more traditional gender roles and income gaps within a relationship. therefore, we fi nd a strong link between marriage and having children, and also between having children and adherence to traditional gender roles (salles 2016; klärner 2015). in france, married couples benefi t from the same incentive (quotient conjugal), but this is softened by a family tax splitting rule that includes children (quotient familial), and is not limited to married couples, which means that the incentive to marry is lower (eidelman 2013). in east germany on the other hand, family policy supporting unmarried mothers has encouraged parents to have their fi rst child outside marriage and to postpone marriage. this trend weakened the link between children and marriage in the long term (klärner 2015; dorbritz 2008). family policy the differences in the demographic situation in the two countries have often been linked to family policies, which differ signifi cantly. french family policy has a long tradition of supporting large families, which can be related to the low fertility prevailing in france from the late 18th century until the end of world war ii. financial support for families increases with the number of children and is especially high from the third child onwards. parental leave is only one year for parents with one child, but three years for parents with at least two children,3 whereas there is no difference by parity in germany. similarly, in france only parents with at least two children are entitled to family allowance, which is notably higher for the third child, whereas in germany the allowance is nearly the same for each child. likewise, the french tax-splitting system benefi ts large families as it takes into account the number of children in the household and assigns greater weight from the third child onwards. large families are also entitled to further child-related fi nancial benefi ts. furthermore, both countries support family-work balance, albeit with some differences. france has a long tradition of promoting the reconciliation of work and family life through diversifi ed childcare, fi nancial support for external childcare, and all-day schooling. but for germany, this is relatively new – until the mid-2000s it was quite diffi cult for western german mothers to combine work and family. this was partly due to low childcare provision for children under the age of three, combined with three years of parental leave, and half-day schooling (périvier 2004; fagnani 2002). this situation is changing gradually. following the recommendation of the european union, the german government decided in 2005 to develop external 3 in france, parental leave is six months for each parent with one child. for parents with at least two children, parental leave is two years for one parent and one year for the other. as only 4 percent of fathers take parental leave in france, in practice this amounts to six months for the fi rst child and two years starting from the second child, for the vast majority of families (data for 2013, oecd 2016). • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.192 childcare and to encourage mothers to work. parental allowance is only paid for one year so as to attract mothers back to the workforce after one year (rather than three). this requires the availability of childcare provision. therefore, the german government extended fi nancial support for daycare services for children under the age of three in 2005. in conclusion, structure – defi ned here as laws and political reforms, resulting from a given cultural setting, and formed over decades – matters in both countries. the process of stabilisation or change of a given cultural setting is caused by its strong interaction with politics and behaviour. these settings in turn establish a certain gender culture and family conceptions. 3 theoretical considerations and hypotheses 3.1 theoretical background recently, the most popular approach in trying to explain changes and differences in family lives has been the rational choice framework. despite successfully explaining some patterns, such as high fertility in countries with good public childcare as a result of low opportunity costs, other fi ndings remain unclear in the context of this theory, such as persistant gender differences in the distribution of housework despite equal contributions to the household income (e.g. aassve et al. 2014). institutional approaches (e.g. pfau-effi nger 2004, 1996) offer explanations for crossnational differences complementing structural with cultural arguments. we fi nd this useful, and therefore employ the concept of role models for our comparison. the term “role model” is used in the sense of a “guiding image”, derived from the german “leitbild”, meaning “an idea or a conception of how things in a certain context should be, work, or look like.” (lück et al. 2017: 64). the “role model” concept develops existing approaches further by describing cultural characteristics as sets of collectively shared conceptions and images of a “normal” status or process, in the sense that these are widespread, socially expected or personally desired. in this context, role models are to be seen as a “bundle of socially shared (mental or verbalised) conceptions of a desired or desirable and principally achievable future which are supposed to be realised by corresponding action” (giesel 2007: 245; translated by the authors). role models may thus refer to family issues, such as the “normal” composition of a family or the “perfect” timing of when to have children. they are “typical societal ideal representations, norms and values regarding the family and the societal integration of women and men” (pfau-effi nger 2004: 382). as we show, this defi nition is applicable in empirical research. a role model can affect individual behaviour in three ways (lück et al. 2017): (1) by the actor’s motivation to put personal desires into practice (such as attitudes, preferences, or values), (2) by the motivation to fulfi l social expectations and to avoid social exclusion (such as prescriptive norms referring to social pressure), and (3) by the unrefl ected following of routines or social practices in order to save time and effort (such as frames and scripts taken as common and self-evident; reducing unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 193 complexity in decision-making). however, the concept of role models assumes that conceptions of normality mostly fulfi l all three criteria simultaneously and that the criteria are interdependent. in this sense, the “role model” framework is more complex than most cultural concepts. this also implies that role models take hold on both the micro and macro level. they are micro-level phenomena, because every individual has their own role models, which might differ from the role models of others. therefore, differences in family-related behaviour can be explained on the micro level, referring to personal or individual role models. however, role models also tend to be shared by individuals within a society or a social group, and therefore can explain differences in behaviour on the macro level as collective or cultural role models. these two types of role models simultaneously infl uence behaviour alongside rational refl ection and decision-making, as well as in interaction with each other. however, individuals are not necessarily aware that they are following role models. they may well consider their behaviour to be the result of a personal decision (rossier/bernardi 2009). the infl uence of role models reproduces and stabilises the common patterns of family life and decelerates social change (such as the convergence of gender roles). their infl uence is similar to norms which are one aspect of role models. prescriptive and proscriptive norms – rigid expectations about how to behave and how not to behave, respectively – stabilise a social situation whereas permissive norms – allowances of certain behaviour – favour social change (bernardi 2013). the wide acceptance of births outside marriage in france is an example of the latter. in our comparison, we assume that role models at the individual and societal level differ between france and germany and between the two german regions – east and west. explanations for these differences arise from structural differences and historical developments, which affected role models through different norms of childlessness, large families, gender, and partnership. the policy settings and their facets of pronatalism, conservatism and individualism in france and germany should help to explain the differences in family-related norms. therefore, we focus on individual role models on the one hand, and on perceived opinions in society on the other. 3.2 hypotheses 3.2.1 family size-related factors differing family sizes are one cause of the different fertility levels in france and germany. regarding the distribution by parity, the most striking differences between france and the two parts of germany involve the occurrence of childlessness and of large families. based on our theoretical concept, there should be particular role models within each region. it is not possible to relate role models and fertility outcomes over time with the available data, thus we focus on individual fertility intentions instead. this allows us to relate role models and the intended number of children in the current structural context in which these intentions are formed. • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.194 we assume that in all three regions individuals are convinced of their personal role models and live according to them, which leads to the psychological effect of a reduction of dissonance between ideals and real life. therefore, individuals who wish to remain childless are assumed to consider childlessness as something normal, while individuals who want to have at least three children see large families in a positive light. conversely, the respective opposing intention is rejected (h1a). we further expect that intended childlessness is perceived as being accepted on a societal level in west germany and to a lesser extent also in east germany, but not socially accepted in france (h1b). conversely, we assume that large families are socially accepted in france, whereas in west germany and even more so in east germany they are not (h1c). 3.2.2 partnership-related factors traditional values (attitudes towards marriage and gender roles) another differentiating factor between the regions under study is the lower share of births out of wedlock in west germany compared to france and east germany, pointing to a higher appreciation of traditional values within partnerships. in west germany, we therefore expect intended childlessness to be closely correlated with a rejection of marriage and traditional gender role models on the individual level. in france and east germany on the other hand, no correlation should be visible (h2a). we further assume that the appreciation of marriage and traditional gender role models is combined with a higher intended fi nal parity, i.e. three or more children, as having many children matches the traditional way of life in all three regions (h2b). financial security the impact of family policy is explored by accounting for the importance given to fi nancial security in the context of partnership. with this indirect and rather crude measure, we attempt to capture the fact that fi nancial security should be less important if families can rely on government support. in france, when individuals consider whether or not they want to have children, and if so how many, we expect less weight attached to their fi nancial situation due to generous state aid. nevertheless, the start of a family is a crucial point, because fi nancial aid is only paid from the second child onwards. if there is any impact of fi nancial security, it should take hold at the transition to the fi rst child. in germany, aid is less generous, and we therefore expect individuals to attach greater importance to personal fi nancial security (h3a). these two expectations should also hold as societal opinions in the respective countries (h3b). unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 195 4 data, methods and operationalisation the german survey “family-related leitbilder” (flb) was carried out in 2012 by the federal institute for population research (bib) as a telephone survey.4 the target population were people living in germany between the ages of 20 and 39. it was designed to explore cultural aspects related to family issues and consisted of 5,000 respondents (3,986 in west germany, 1,014 in east germany). the french survey “marital status, fertility intentions and family opinions” was conducted in 2013 as a pilot study carried out on tablets, as part of the elipss panel (longitudinal internet studies for social sciences).5 the sample was far smaller, 340 cases for the age group of 18-40-year-olds. the comparability of the two surveys is challenging with regard to sampling methods and general aims. nevertheless, we have the advantage of similar questions on role models in both surveys, because parts of the original german survey were directly translated and implemented into the french panel. both samples are weighted for socio-economic factors (lück et al. 2013; pilorin/legleye 2018). our data offer new perspectives for comparing france and germany regarding their family-related role models. they also offer a new method to operationalise the measurement of general opinion. for this purpose, we asked questions on two different levels: fi rst, personal opinions of the respondent on family-related topics, and then the perception of societal norms on the same topic. in practice, this means that respondents were fi rst asked about their personal opinion on an item, e.g. “nowadays it is normal not to have children, do you personally agree?”6, and in a second step, they were asked “and what does the general public think about this topic?” the same response scale was used for both questions (lück et al. 2013). we chose items covering the issues of childlessness, large families, and partnership for our research question on the impact of family-related role models on fertility intentions. these items will be introduced in detail in the next section. in our operationalisation, we linked role models to fertility intentions and thereby compare groups with different fi nal intended parity. following hagewen and morgan (2005), we interpreted fertility intentions as a “proximate determinant” of actual behaviour, fully aware of the fact that it is not certain whether intentions will ultimately be realised. since the data only offer a limited number of items to compare, we used single items as proxies for role models. we defi ne fi nal intended parity as the number of children a respondent already has plus the number of (additional) intended children plus pregnancies at the time of the interview (see e.g. sobotka 2009; liefbroer 2009). the non-response rate was high in the french survey, which reduced our sample size further.7 this might be due to the tablet survey design in france or 4 http://www.bib.bund.de/en/research/fb1_family/fg11_leitbild/fg11_node.html 5 https://cdsp.sciences-po.fr/en/ressources-en-ligne/ressource/fr.cdsp.ddi.elipss.2013.11.familles/ 6 we used 4-level likert items with the following choice of answers: “fully agree; rather agree; rather disagree; totally disagree”. 7 see respective models. • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.196 due to the fact that the items were originally designed for german respondents only. therefore, we decided to analyse strongly reduced multivariate models controlling only for age, sex, partnership, and educational level. furthermore, we dichotomized the opinion items in order to keep the number of cells in the model small enough to obtain stable results. we compared childless persons who wish to remain childless, persons with fi nal intended parity one, and persons with fi nal intended parity three or more with the most widely-intended two-child family. the french data allow for the exclusion of infertile persons, while this is not possible for the german data. as the sample size for germany is much larger, the distortions due to this lack of information should be smaller than if it would have been the case for france. due to the small sample size of the french survey, we calculated two models, one for the infl uence of family-related items and one for partnership-related items. 5 descriptive comparison – cultural dimensions of childlessness, large families and partnership our fi ndings (table 1) confi rm that childlessness seems to be accepted by individuals and perceived as unexceptional on the societal level in germany. surprisingly, we do not fi nd great differences between the two german regions, although they differ greatly in the occurrence of childlessness (fig. 2). in france on the other hand, it seems that respondents accept childlessness to a greater extent on the individual level than on the perceived societal level. however, the acceptance is signifi cantly lower than in germany in each case. the picture changes for the other extreme, the evaluation of large families (defi ned as three or more children), which was probed using the statement “it is wonderful to have many children.” in france, large families seem to be widely accepted as something normal, not extraordinary. about half of the population agrees that having many children is wonderful. in germany, on the other hand, there is a wide gap between individual and perceived societal acceptance. large families are viewed positively on the individual level but are perceived to be not accepted at the societal level, and are moreover only regarded as an acceptable option for those parents who can cover the expenses. indeed, large families are often stigmatised as being fi nancially needy and for living on social welfare (diabaté et al. 2015). in france, large families may be more widely accepted due to signifi cant and long-standing institutional support. we also fi nd differences within germany. larger families are more common in west than in east germany. this fact is mirrored by the appreciation at the individual level: approval of large families is greater in west than in east germany. finally, fi nancial constraints for large families matter in germany, whereas in france the notion of equal opportunities places the fi nancial burden on the state in the eyes of the respondents. the fi nancial situation is also important when it comes to partnership. a good fi nancial situation is more commonly perceived as a key to the success of a partnership in germany than in france. however, the most prominent difference between the two countries is the importance given to children in the context of partnerships. partnership seems to be much more strongly linked to children in germany (both unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 197 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e re su lt s (in p er ce n t, s um : fu lly /r at he r ag re e/ d is ag re e, e xc lu d in g no n -r es p o n se s) fr an ce (f ) g er m an y (g ) w es t ( g w ) e as t ( g e ) c hi ² c hi ² % (f – g ) (g w – g e ) n o w ad ay s it is n o rm al n o t t o h av e ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 45 .4 58 .6 58 .2 60 .0 ** * n .s . so ci et al le ve l 26 .5 64 .8 65 .2 63 .4 ** * n .s . it is w o n d er fu l t o h av e m an y ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 41 .3 72 .6 73 .8 66 .7 ** * ** * so ci et al le ve l 50 .5 37 .1 37 .9 34 .3 ** * * o n ly f am ili es w h o h av e en o u g h m o n ey s h o u ld h av e m an y ch ild re n (o n ly s o ci et al le ve l) 62 .2 78 .6 79 .0 77 .0 ** * n .s . p ar tn er sh ip f un ct io n s w el l, if th e co u p le … … is fi n an ci al ly s ec u re in d iv id u al le ve l 65 .6 86 .1 86 .2 85 .8 ** * n .s . so ci et al le ve l 80 .6 93 .0 92 .7 94 .0 ** * n. s. … h as c hi ld re n to g et h er in d iv id u al le ve l 31 .8 62 .5 62 .0 64 .3 ** * n .s . so ci et al le ve l 65 .0 70 .7 70 .1 73 .3 * ** … in c as e o f d o u b t t h e m an s h al l m ak e d ec is io n s. in d iv id u al le ve l 11 .6 22 .7 23 .1 21 .4 ** * n .s . so ci et al le ve l 36 .3 47 .4 47 .4 47 .4 ** * n .s . m ar ri ag e is a n o u td at ed in st it u tio n (o n ly in d iv id u al le ve l) 32 .4 35 .1 34 .6 37 .0 n .s . n .s . n 34 0 50 00 39 86 10 14 c hi ² te st : st at is tic al s ig ni fi c an ce = * ** : p < 0. 00 1; * *: p < 0. 01 ; *: p < 0. 05 . s o ur ce : e li p s s 2 01 3; f lb 2 01 2; p er so ns a ge d 1 840 (f ra nc e) a nd 2 039 (g er m an y) ; d at a w ei gh te d • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.198 parts) than in france. furthermore, there seems to be no strong difference between the countries when taking the acceptance of marriage as an indicator of traditionalism. however, the question of whether the man should take decisions in case of doubt reveals strong differences on the individual level, indicating that there is more equality in couples’ decision-making in france. 6 associations between role models and fertility intentions in our next step, we link role models to fertility intentions using fi nal intended parity as the dependent variable, and compare these groups to their role models. due to different sample sizes, we fi nd more signifi cant effects for germany than for france when comparing the infl uence of family-related items (table 2). the data are crosssectional, so no causal effects can be deduced. the correlations relate current fertility intentions to current role models and show that there is an interrelation, though we cannot tell if there is a temporal aspect, i.e. whether one determines the other. 6.1 family size-related factors we expected to fi nd a strong link between individual intentions and the corresponding opinion on role models. for germany, this hypothesis is confi rmed, i.e. individuals who wish to stay childless perceive childlessness as normal, while those who wish to have larger families perceive this as an acceptable route. contrary to this, in france individuals who wish to remain childless do not consider childlessness as normal and also perceive their own intentions as being contrary to the broader social norm. this fi nding is similar to the outcomes of a qualitative study conducted by charlotte debest (2014, see also debest/mazuy 2014). the fact that we do not fi nd any signifi cant differences between the groups with different fertility intentions when it comes to the general norms about childlessness in france further confi rms this fi nding. there seems to be a general social consensus that childlessness is undesirable, which is related to negative external circumstances, i.e. not having a partner, job-related constraints, or medical problems (salles et al. 2010). the results are very different for germany. in east and west, childless persons regard their life plan as normal, but perceive childlessness as not accepted in society more broadly. the same applies to persons with fi nal intended parity one in west germany. however, we fi nd a different situation in east germany, where one-child families are more frequent and are not seen as violating an accepted norm or role model. regarding the appreciation of large families, our hypotheses on the individual level are confi rmed in all three regions. the desire to have a large family is strongly correlated with the individual appreciation of children. in germany, this hypothesis is also confi rmed the other way around, i.e. persons not wanting to have children or only one child are personally not in favour of large families. we already found this relationship in the descriptive results (table 1), where large families seem to be a highly controversial topic in both parts of germany. persons wanting large families see no societal support for their intentions, whereas those who do not want any children think large unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 199 d im en si o n s/ c at eg o ri es fr an ce w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild re n ch ild re n e xp (b ) e xp (b ) e xp (b ) c h ild le ss n es s n o w ad ay s it is n o rm al n o t t o h av e ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 0. 26 0* 1. 16 5 0. 57 5 6. 01 2* ** 1. 54 7* * 0. 68 3* ** 4. 41 3* ** 1. 41 4 0. 70 7* so ci et al le ve l 0. 87 8 1. 16 5 1. 09 1 0. 47 9* ** 0. 75 3* 1. 29 2* * 0. 45 8* * 0. 79 2 1. 40 2* la rg e fa m ili es it is w o n d er fu l t o h av e m an y ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 0. 80 2 3. 35 2 7. 33 9* ** 0. 34 3* ** 0. 54 7* ** 4. 01 4* ** 0. 34 1* ** 0. 55 2* * 3. 41 9* ** so ci et al le ve l 2. 90 7 0. 62 4 1. 24 4 1. 62 9* ** 1. 19 6 0. 81 4* 1. 90 0* * 1. 25 7 1. 00 8 o n ly f am ili es w h o h av e en o u g h m o n ey s h o u ld h av e m an y ch ild re n (s o c. .) 0. 42 1 3. 43 3 0. 51 5 1. 04 4 1. 32 5 0. 85 4 1. 64 3 1. 00 6 1. 03 5 c o n st an t -8 .1 40 ** -6 .0 40 ** 0. 95 3 -3 .6 64 ** * -4 .3 74 ** * -0 .8 01 ** -3 .3 50 ** * -4 .0 28 ** * -1 .4 08 * n 14 9+ (3 40 ) 38 00 + (3 91 0) 10 65 + (1 09 0) p se u d o r ² n ag el ke rk e 0. 46 0 0. 22 7 0. 23 2 ta b . 2 : p er so n s b y in te nd ed f am ily s iz e an d fe rt ili ty -r el at ed o p in io n s (r ef . fi n al in te nd ed p ar it y tw o c hi ld re n; m o d el co n tr o ls fo r ag e, s ex , p ar tn er , a nd e d uc at io n) + v ar ia b le s in cl ud ed i n th e m o d el , i.e . ex cl ud in g no nre sp o ns es ; si gn ifi ca nc e = * ** : p < 0. 00 1; * *: p < 0. 01 ; *: p < 0. 05 ; r ef . o p in io n ite m s (d ic ho to m iz ed ): to ta lly /r at he r d is ag re e; m o d el c o nt ro ls fo r ag e, s ex , p ar tn er , e d uc at io n. s o ur ce : e li p s s 2 01 3; f lb 2 01 2; p er so ns a ge d 1 840 (f ra nc e) a nd 2 039 (g er m an y) ; un w ei gh te d d at a • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.200 d im en si o n s/ c at eg o ri es fr an ce w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild re n ch ild re n e xp (b ) e xp (b ) e xp (b ) c ri te ri a fo r “g oo d p ar tn er sh ip ” g en d er r ol es p ar tn er sh ip f u n ct io n s w el l, if th e co u p le … … in c as e o f d o u b t l et t h e m an t ak e d ec is io n s in d iv id u al le ve l 3. 64 3 0. 64 0 0. 54 6 1. 04 9 1. 25 1 1. 22 0* 0. 64 2 0. 94 8 1. 30 6 so ci et al le ve l 1. 04 9 3. 76 3* 0. 95 0 1. 09 4 1. 18 3 0. 89 7 1. 22 4 1. 14 4 1. 13 8 fi n an ci al s ec u ri ty … a re fi n an ci al ly s ec u re in d iv id u al le ve l 3. 82 7* 0. 24 6* 1. 08 7 0. 97 1 0. 89 6 0. 67 0* * 0. 76 0 1. 24 9 0. 73 8 so ci et al le ve l 0. 62 1 0. 61 1 1. 06 1 0. 78 4 0. 78 3 1. 03 5 0. 65 8 1. 83 8 1. 87 5 c h ild re n … h av e ch ild re n to g et h er in d iv id u al le ve l 1. 06 3 0. 83 9 1. 36 2 0. 21 7* ** 0. 63 3* ** 1. 20 6* 0. 33 8* ** 0. 91 1 1. 34 7 so ci et al le ve l 1. 32 2 2. 18 8 0. 86 4 1. 48 9* * 1. 07 5 0. 94 7 4. 36 1* ** 1. 02 1 0. 79 1 a tt it u d e to w ar d s m ar ri ag e m ar ri ag e is a n o u td at ed in st it u ti o n (o n ly in d iv id u al le ve l) 1. 28 7 1. 30 9 0. 54 2 2. 47 1* ** 1. 20 0 0. 91 9 1. 86 2* * 1. 76 4* * 1. 14 2 c o n st an t -9 .9 25 ** * -4 .2 27 * -0 .5 62 -2 .8 01 ** * -3 .8 38 ** * 0. 27 9 -3 .3 04 ** -5 .4 46 ** * -0 .9 04 n 18 2+ (3 40 ) 37 25 (3 91 0) 10 49 (1 09 0) p se u d o r ² n ag el ke rk e 0. 35 3 0. 14 9 0. 15 7 ta b . 2 : (c o n tin ua tio n) p er so n s b y in te nd ed f am ily s iz e an d p ar tn er sh ip -r el at ed o p in io n s (r ef . fi n al in te nd ed p ar it y tw o ch ild re n) + v ar ia b le s in cl ud ed in t he m o d el , i .e . e xc lu d in g no nre sp o ns es ; si gn ifi ca nc e = * ** : p < 0. 00 1; * *: p < 0. 01 ; *: p < 0. 05 ; r ef . o p in io n ite m s (d ich o to m iz ed ): to ta lly /r at he r d is ag re e; m o d el c o nt ro ls fo r ag e, s ex , p ar tn er , e d uc at io n. s o ur ce : e li p s s 2 01 3; f lb 2 01 2; p er so ns a ge d 1 840 (f ra nc e) a nd 2 039 (g er m an y) ; un w ei gh te d d at a unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 201 families are rather appreciated. while our fi ndings support hypotheses h1b and h1c on the acceptance of childlessness and large families, h1a on the conformity of individual intentions and role models can only be confi rmed for germany. 6.2 partnership-related factors regarding the infl uence of partnership-related items on fertility decisions, we again fi nd different cultures in france and germany. the belief that fi nancial security is important for the functioning of a partnership closely correlates with not wanting children in france. in contrast, individuals with fi nal intended parity one reject the importance of fi nancial security. this also applies to west german respondents who want three or more children. this may be explained as a statement of attaching greater importance to the goal of having children than to fi nancial security in both regions. in west germany, the same group, i.e. people wanting a large family, opts for the man to take the leading role in a partnership, which can be interpreted as a more traditional idea of partnership. another important difference between both countries is that children and partnership are less strongly linked in france than in germany. this is observable in both the descriptive results and the control variables, where having no partner is a strong determinant for intending to remain childless in both parts of germany, but not in france. in east and west germany, we fi nd a strong rejection by individuals who want to stay childless of the idea that a partnership needs children in order to stabilise. conversely, the reference group, i.e. respondents wanting two children, support the notion of children contributing to stable partnerships. this is also what individuals who want to stay childless perceive as a social norm in society. if having children is closely linked to the societal notion of a “good” partnership, then the preconditions for having children are different from france. if the connection between partnership and parenthood was seen as less strong by germans, individuals might have children with a partner despite not being sure whether the partnership will last. an explanation for this different situation may be found in the fact that some parental benefi ts were legally linked to marriage in germany for a long time. this legal link has been removed in recent years, i.e. children born out of wedlock now have the same rights as children born in a marriage, but the link remains strong as a role model. the strong link between partnership and children in germany also reveals that fi nancial constraints may be stronger than in france. the risk of falling into poverty when raising children as a single parent is higher in germany than in france (jaehrling et al. 2011). finally, in both parts of germany the group of intentionally childless persons is also characterised by their rejection of marriage, which supports the assumption of a strong link between marriage and children. here, we fi nd a signifi cant difference between east and west germany. individuals wanting only one child reject marriage in east germany, whereas in west germany the dividing line seems to be that of wanting to have children at all. we interpret this as confi rmation of the historically stronger separation of marriage and children in east germany, where having one child does not necessarily imply marriage, as we explained in section 2.1. • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.202 the results concerning the importance of marriage in west germany compared to france and east germany support h2a, but h2b is only confi rmed for west germany. we also did not fi nd any well-founded evidence for the greater importance of fi nancial security in germany, i.e. for h3a and h3b. however, as hypothesized, fi nancial problems seem to be an obstacle for parenthood in france, as fi nancial aid only starts from the second child onwards. 7 discussion in this study, we aimed to close a research gap in explaining differences in fertility between france and germany by applying a cultural concept of role models on a personal as well as societal level. in line with our hypotheses, we found role models suggesting different fertility cultures in france and germany, whereas the differences between the two german regions were less pronounced than expected. in both countries, we fi nd a strong two-child family norm. furthermore, family formation in france seems to be easier and more self-evident, with fewer structural and cultural barriers than in germany. however, the decision to start a family at all seems to be easier in germany. we did not fi nd many differences between east and west germany, except for a higher rejection of large families and greater support for singlechild families in east germany, which we expected because of a longer tradition of smaller families in the former gdr. regarding key features of fertility, the recognition of childlessness as a role model varies widely between the two countries. in germany, childlessness seems to be an accepted way of living, unlike in france. although there seems to be some acceptance at the individual level, childlessness is perceived as being contrary to the broader societal norm. this even leads to a sort of self-stigmatisation of individuals who do not intend to have children themselves. another demographic key factor showing opposing results in the examined countries are large families. there seems to be general acceptance in france, whereas in germany the situation is highly controversial. large families are individually accepted as a role model, but are perceived as stigmatised in society. as a common feature in both countries, the intention to have a large family is mainly based on strong individual convictions which, in the case of germany, even outrank fi nancial concerns. financial security is broadly associated with having a family in germany and therefore is one basis of the role model. another german peculiarity in comparison to france is the strong link between partnership and parenthood. the notion that parenthood must be embedded in a well-functioning, stable partnership seems to be stronger in germany than in france. this interdependence may pose a barrier to start and extend a family. this also applies to the fact that having a family seems to be strongly associated with a traditional living arrangement for some groups, for whom this traditional arrangement is an unattractive option. to avoid this situation, they may prefer to remain childless. exploring these role models helps us understand the demographic situations in france and germany, because they may infl uence personal decisions. furthermore, unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 203 they demonstrate the interdependence of cultural and structural factors. we are speaking of interdependence insofar as there is no direction in terms of cause and effect between incidence and social acceptance but a clear mutual dependency. a high percentage of large families in a society enhances their acceptance and makes them an eligible choice, as in france. a lower percentage has the opposite effect, which is true for east germany, where the low occurrence of large families is connected to a negative image. the same applies to childlessness in france. another aspect in this context are preconditions individuals associate with having a family, namely a solid fi nancial basis and a stable partnership. while an uncertain fi nancial situation may be a hindrance for founding a family in france, in germany an unstable partnership could play this role. we differentiated between role models on the individual and on the societal level. usually, individuals are familiar with the role models of the society they live in and accept and follow them. when societal norms and individual behaviour differ, there are various ways to react: individuals may be convinced of their personal role models and act on them. in west germany, this concerns all groups who are outside the two-child-norm, i.e. individuals who want to remain childless, who want one child or three children or more. their intentions are consistent with their personal role models, but they believe that society in general thinks differently. the same holds true for east germany, except for individuals wanting one child, which can be explained by a strong general role model of one-child families in this region. generally, these attitudes reveal a signifi cant discrepancy between role models at the individual and at the societal level, but there is also a strong link between fertility intentions and individual perceptions. individuals consider themselves as acting against the social norm, but nonetheless appreciate their own role models. in france, the situation is different: for individuals with no fertility intentions, role models at the individual and at the societal level are consistent, but oppose their personal intentions, which seems to be contradictory. this highlights the prominence of one overarching role model of having at least two children (in france), in contrast to one dominant and several less central role models (in germany). the way individuals react to non-corresponding role models shows signifi cant cultural differences between germany and france. in germany, there seems to be a more individualistic approach. individual role models are stronger than societal role models, which leads to a higher occurrence and consequently a higher acceptance of different family forms in general. however, it also leads to a higher distinction on the individual level, as everyone has to justify their choice of living arrangement in light of many possibilities. this results in more exclusive subgroups in society which may be an indicator for a segmentation of german society into separate family milieus, with little mutual appreciation. by contrast, we fi nd a rather homogenous picture in france, indicating a more socialistic attitude. there seems to be one comprehensive dominating role model, namely that having children is self-evidently a good thing: childlessness is considered contrary to the societal norm; hence this role model may put pressure on people who are not sure whether they want to have children or not. • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.204 this study highlights the importance of role models in fertility intentions and outcomes. furthermore, it emphasizes the relevance of family role models prevailing in a given society when studying the link between institutional frameworks and fertility decisions. thus, we provide new deep insights into the fertility cultures in france, east and west germany. however, as our databases were two crosssectional surveys which differ in size and implementation, further research is necessary. international comparable panel data is needed to further investigate the causal relationships between role models and fertility behaviour. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions during the review process. references aassve, arnstein; fuochi, giulia; mencarini, letizia 2014: desperate housework: relative resources, time availability, economic dependency, and gender ideology across europe. in: journal of family issues 35,8: 1000-1022 [doi: 10.1177/0192513x14522248]. bernardi, laura 2013: from mothers to daughters: intergenerational transmission of fertility norms. in: ellingsaeter, anne lise; jensen, an-magritt; lie, merete (eds.): the social meaning of children and fertility change in europe. london/new york: routledge: 153-169. bib (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung – federal institute of population 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high and stable fertility. in: demographic research 19,16: 503-556 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2008.19.16]. unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 207 date of submission: 24.05.2018 date of acceptance: 25.10.2018 kerstin ruckdeschel (), dr. sabine diabaté. federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: kerstin.ruckdeschel@bib.bund.de, sabine.diabate@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/ruckdeschel/ruckdeschel.html url: https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/diabate/diabate.html dr. anne salles: université paris-sorbonne. paris, france. e-mail: anne.salles@paris-sorbonne.fr url: http://sirice.eu/membre/anne-salles dr. laurent toulemon, dr. arnaud régnier-loilier. institut national d’études démographiques. paris, france. e-mail: toulemon@ined.fr, arnaud.regnier-loilier@ined.fr url: https://www.ined.fr/en/research/researchers/toulemon+laurent url: https://www.ined.fr/en/research/researchers/r%c3%a9gnier-loilier%20arnaud • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.208 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: c o m p le te t ab le 2 : p er so n s b y in te nd ed f am ily s iz e an d fe rt ili ty -r el at ed o p in io n s w it h al l v ar ia b le s d im en si o n s/ c at eg o ri es fr an ce w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild re n ch ild re n e xp (b ) e xp (b ) e xp (b ) a ge 1. 27 8* ** 1. 11 0 0. 98 5 1. 03 1* 1. 09 3* ** 0. 98 5* 1. 01 0 1. 08 9* ** 0. 99 5 s ex m al e (r ef . f em al e) 0. 27 7* 0. 71 9 0. 42 9 1. 30 7* 0. 62 5* ** 0. 76 2* 1. 10 2 0. 4 40 ** * 0. 88 2 p ar tn er y es (r ef . n o) 0. 91 5 3. 53 1 0. 65 2 2. 47 3* ** 0. 70 9* 0. 85 5 2. 4 46 ** * 1. 23 6 0. 54 4* * ed u ca ti on h ig h (r ef . l o w ) 4. 40 8* 4. 55 9* 1. 20 7 1. 18 6 1. 23 9 0. 84 2* 1. 17 8 1. 90 7* 0. 91 3 c h ild le ss n es s n o w ad ay s it is n o rm al n o t t o h av e ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 0. 26 0* 1. 16 5 0. 57 5 6. 01 2* ** 1. 54 7* * 0. 68 3* ** 4. 41 3* ** 1. 41 4 0. 70 7* so ci et al le ve l 0. 87 8 1. 16 5 1. 09 1 0. 47 9* ** 0. 75 3* 1. 29 2* * 0. 45 8* * 0. 79 2 1. 40 2* la rg e fa m ili es it is w o n d er fu l t o h av e m an y ch ild re n in d iv id u al le ve l 0. 80 2 3. 35 2 7. 33 9* ** 0. 34 3* ** 0. 54 7* ** 4. 01 4* ** 0. 34 1* ** 0. 55 2* * 3. 41 9* ** so ci et al le ve l 2. 90 7 0. 62 4 1. 24 4 1. 62 9* ** 1. 19 6 0. 81 4* 1. 90 0* * 1. 25 7 1. 00 8 o n ly f am ili es w h o h av e en o u g h m o n ey s h o u ld h av e m an y ch ild re n (s o c. .) 0. 42 1 3. 43 3 0. 51 5 1. 04 4 1. 32 5 0. 85 4 1. 64 3 1. 00 6 1. 03 5 c o n st an t -8 .1 40 ** -6 .0 40 ** 0. 95 3 -3 .6 64 ** * -4 .3 74 ** * -0 .8 01 ** -3 .3 50 ** * -4 .0 28 ** * -1 .4 08 * n 14 9+ (3 40 ) 38 00 + (3 91 0) 10 65 + (1 09 0) p se u d o r ² n ag el ke rk e 0. 46 0 0. 22 7 0. 23 2 unequal neighbours? a french-german comparison of family size intentions • 209 d im en si o n s/ c at eg o ri es fr an ce w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild re n ch ild re n e xp (b ) e xp (b ) e xp (b ) a ge 1. 29 9* ** 1. 08 7 1. 03 9 1. 02 8* 1. 08 9* ** 0. 99 0 1. 02 1 1. 09 5* ** 0. 99 5 s ex m al e (r ef . f em al e) 0. 31 1 0. 49 0 0. 77 3 1. 46 5* * 0. 59 7* ** 0. 75 5* ** 1. 16 3 0. 47 6* ** 0. 84 4 p ar tn er ye s (r ef . n o) 0. 48 9 1. 71 4 1. 25 8 1. 99 0* ** 0. 68 3* 0. 84 7 2. 17 2* * 1. 22 9 0. 58 0* * ed u ca ti on h ig h (r ef . l o w ) 2. 40 2 3. 42 0 1. 04 6 1. 18 0 1. 22 0 0. 80 0* * 1. 28 6 1. 92 4* * 0. 86 6 c ri te ri a fo r “g oo d p ar tn er sh ip ” g en d er r ol es p ar tn er sh ip f u n ct io n s w el l, if th e co u p le … … in c as e o f d o u b t l et t h e m an t ak e d ec is io n s in d iv id u al le ve l 3. 64 3 0. 64 0 0. 54 6 1. 04 9 1. 25 1 1. 22 0* 0. 64 2 0. 94 8 1. 30 6 so ci et al le ve l 1. 04 9 3. 76 3* 0. 95 0 1. 09 4 1. 18 3 0. 89 7 1. 22 4 1. 14 4 1. 13 8 fi n an ci al s ec u ri ty … a re fi n an ci al ly s ec u re in d iv id u al le ve l 3. 82 7* 0. 24 6* 1. 08 7 0. 97 1 0. 89 6 0. 67 0* * 0. 76 0 1. 24 9 0. 73 8 so ci et al le ve l 0. 62 1 0. 61 1 1. 06 1 0. 78 4 0. 78 3 1. 03 5 0. 65 8 1. 83 8 1. 87 5 ta b . a 1: c o m p le te t ab le 2 (c o n td .): p er so n s b y in te nd ed f am ily s iz e an d p ar tn er sh ip -r el at ed o p in io n s w it h al l v ar ia b le s • kerstin ruckdeschel et al.210 d im en si o n s/ c at eg o ri es fr an ce w es t g er m an y e as t g er m an y n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r n o o n e th re e o r ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild m o re ch ild re n ch ild re n ch ild re n e xp (b ) e xp (b ) e xp (b ) c h ild re n … h av e ch ild re n to g et h er in d iv id u al le ve l 1. 06 3 0. 83 9 1. 36 2 0. 21 7* ** 0. 63 3* ** 1. 20 6* 0. 33 8* ** 0. 91 1 1. 34 7 so ci et al le ve l 1. 32 2 2. 18 8 0. 86 4 1. 48 9* * 1. 07 5 0. 94 7 4. 36 1* ** 1. 02 1 0. 79 1 a tt it u d e to w ar d s m ar ri ag e m ar ri ag e is a n o u td at ed in st it u ti o n (o n ly in d iv id u al le ve l) 1. 28 7 1. 30 9 0. 54 2 2. 47 1* ** 1. 20 0 0. 91 9 1. 86 2* * 1. 76 4* * 1. 14 2 c o n st an t -9 .9 25 ** * -4 .2 27 * -0 .5 62 -2 .8 01 ** * -3 .8 38 ** * 0. 27 9 -3 .3 04 ** -5 .4 46 ** * -0 .9 04 n 18 2+ (3 40 ) 37 25 (3 91 0) 10 49 (1 09 0) p se u d o r ² n ag el ke rk e 0. 35 3 0. 14 9 0. 15 7 ta b . a 1: c o m p le te t ab le 2 (c o n td .): p er so n s b y in te nd ed f am ily s iz e an d p ar tn er sh ip -r el at ed o p in io n s w it h al l v ar ia b le s + v ar ia b le s in cl ud ed i n th e m o d el , i.e . ex cl ud in g no nre sp o ns es ; si gn ifi ca nc e = * ** : p < 0. 00 1; * *: p < 0. 01 ; *: p < 0. 05 ; r ef . o p in io n ite m s (d ic ho to m iz ed ): to ta lly /r at he r d is ag re e; m o d el c o nt ro ls fo r ag e, s ex , p ar tn er , e d uc at io n. s o ur ce : e li p s s 2 01 3; f lb 2 01 2; p er so ns a ge d 1 840 (f ra nc e) a nd 2 039 (g er m an y) ; un w ei gh te d d at a published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) sailing against the law tides. implications of the 2018 refugee reception reform in small-medium towns and rural areas in italy sailing against the law tides* implications of the 2018 refugee reception reform in small-medium towns and rural areas in italy magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto abstract: over the past decade, asylum seekers and refugees arriving in italy were accommodated in reception facilities located not only in large metropolitan centres but also in small-medium towns and rural areas (stras). italy’s reception system evolved quickly to face the peaks of asylum applications, especially in the 2015-2017 period. at the same time, the changes in italy’s reception policies were pushed by the increased polarisation in the asylum debate, which, in turn, has led to great heterogeneity in the development of reception practices. this paper argues that the reception-territory nexus is a critical dimension to focus on when investigating the implications connected to the arrival and establishment of asylum seekers and refugees. this appears particularly true in stras where the reception system provided new resources that, when well-managed, showed transformative potential, developing virtuous interconnections with the local territories and communities. these virtuous interconnections have, however, been affected by the continuous changes in reception policies and came to a critical juncture in 2018, when the so-called security decree entered into force. while further modifi cations are currently underway, such legislation profoundly affected the italian reception system’s functioning and working principles, creating new frictions and tensions among institutional actors and within the local governance of the reception system itself. we argue that the reform contributed to disrupting, both materially and symbolically, the previous virtuous combination of refugee inclusion and local development, especially in stras. our situated qualitative analysis – carried out between 2019 and 2020 through discursive in-depth interviews – investigates the interconnections between territory and reception in three small to medium-sized towns and rural areas before and after this regulatory shift. it does so by introducing a novel analytic framework, focusing on symbolic and material aspects within and around reception. the analysis suggests that the stress and disruptions connected to the regulatory changes have comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 233-262 (date of release: 29.06.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-10 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-10en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto234 had a negative impact on the internal organisation of the reception as well as on the refugees’ inclusion and on the chances of local development. keywords: migrant reception and local transformations · asylum seekers and refugees · italian asylum system · dispersal policies · material and symbolic dimensions 1 introduction following the sudden increase of asylum applications in 2015, italy, like other eu countries, has increasingly adopted a dispersal policy allocating reception facilities in small-medium towns and rural areas (henceforth called stras). this recent dynamic has promoted studies on the implications that the reception of forced migrants may have for local territories. although research has revealed discrepant reactions from local communities, the presence of refugee reception initiatives has also shown transformative potential, especially for non-urban territories where the arrival of forced migrants is a relatively new and challenging phenomenon. in the italian context, some stras communities have been responsive settings in terms of activating and experimenting with innovative solutions for asylum seeker and refugee inclusion. what is surprising is that such virtuous interconnections between stras and the reception initiatives have also emerged as unplanned outcomes, enabled, but not intended, by the national laws. we are, of course, aware that this is only one part of the story, considering that public expenditures and the social risks of reception are highly debated in the political discourse and represent a controversial issue. however, the nexus between territory and the asylum-reception system has been scarcely addressed so far, especially outside large cities and in non-urban settings. moreover, we believe the transformative potential of such a nexus should be further investigated and taken into account when analysing (and reforming) the reception system. the so-called security decree, released at the end of 2018, steered the reception system in a different direction, putting its actual functioning at the local level and the virtuous interconnections that were emerging under pressure. these interconnections were neither recognised nor addressed by the regulatory changes. we consider the 2018 decree not only a turning point in which the transformative potential of reception for stras territories and communities was jeopardised, but also as an analytical device: by putting under pressure, and sometimes disrupting, the existing interconnections between territory and reception, the 2018 decree contributed to making these interconnections visible. on this basis, this paper proposes a qualitative analysis of three refugee reception experiences in stras across italy to highlight the virtuous interconnections that were emerging between reception and territory and how the decree has put them in jeopardy. the paper contains seven sections. following the introduction, the second section presents the legal and socio-political framework in which italy’s reception sailing against the law tides • 235 system has evolved, while the third discusses the territory-reception nexus through literature, underlining the importance of exploring it in depth, especially outside large urban centres. the fourth introduces the analytical framework of the paper, proposing a model to analyse those interconnections that emerged from the virtuous management of reception in some stras and were then jeopardised by the 2018 decree. the framework can be understood as a matrix consisting of the intersection of two pairs: material-symbolic, regarding the aspects that are observed, and withinaround, concerning the orientation of the observation. the fi fth section describes the methodology adopted and presents the case studies, while the sixth analyses the interconnections between territory and reception before and after the decree in each of the case studies in the light of the analytical framework previously described. finally, the conclusions summarise the main fi ndings and propose a refl ection on the paradox created by the 2018 decree in which the need to cut expenses and promote security instead created further insecurity and fragmentation. 2 italian reception system italy’s reception system for asylum seekers and refugees1 has a troubled, twentyyear history, constantly evolving under the pressures of increasing asylum applications (e.g., the peak in asylum applications following the arab spring, with 37,350 applications in 2011, and the syrian crisis, reaching 128,850 applications in 2017)2 and the high level of politicisation of asylum issues. indeed, in the absence of a permanent organic view, italy’s reception system has evolved from being imagined as a locally managed and nationally organised system for both refugees and asylum seekers, aiming to provide high-level integration services, into a patchwork system in which reception standards differ for asylum seekers and people with recognised status of international protection (i.e., refugees) and are inconsistent across italy (giannetto et al. 2019; omizzolo 2019; semprebon/pelacani 2019; openpolis/ actionaid 2021). this situation has not been particularly impacted even by the transposition of asylum reception conditions directive 2013/33/eu3 (substituting directive 2003/9/eu), which left broad margins of discretion on the defi nition of national reception conditions. today, italy’s reception system is sailing through troubled waters, still in search of a national organic (and stable) approach, often 1 the term “asylum seeker” refers to a person awaiting the determination of her/his legal status after applying for asylum. a person who has already obtained recognition of international protection is instead called an “international protection holder.” while we are aware of the different implications, the terms refugee(s) and protection holder(s) are used interchangeably in this article, including in the defi nition: international protection holders with refugee status, subsidiary protection holders and people holding any national (in this case italian) form of protection (i.e., protezione umanitaria, “humanitarian protection”). 2 data of the italian minister of the interior (available at: http://www.libertaciviliimmigrazione. dlci.interno.gov.it/it/documentazione/statistica/i-numeri-dellasilo). 3 transposed into italian law through legislative decree 143/2015. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto236 leaving local stakeholders and their territories to fi nd local solutions to an (inter) national issue. several phases can be distinguished in the history of italy’s reception system (marchetti 2016; campomori/ambrosini 2020). launched in 2002, it was initially inspired by bottom-up experiments in asylum-seeker reception implemented at the local level by third-sector organisations in cooperation with local authorities. they often emerged in response to the arrival of asylum seekers fl eeing the yugoslav and kosovo wars. the fi rst decade of the 2000s (fi rst phase) was thus devoted to experimentation and the defi nition of a national reception system, which had at its core the sistema di protezione di richiedenti asilo e rifugiati (henceforth sprar – protection system for asylum seekers and refugees).4 sprar was based on the voluntary participation of municipalities in planning and implementing local reception projects that could then be managed by third-sector organisations. the sprar reception projects scattered across italy created a national network of reception projects (partly) funded by the national fund for asylum policies and services, with high standards of reception conditions and integration services (giovannetti et al. 2019). sprar was designed as an integrated reception system, supporting asylum seekers and refugees on their path towards autonomy by involving not only different levels of government and stakeholders, but also the local population. this was also ensured by the dispersal of asylum seekers and refugees in small reception facilities (i.e., apartments), both in large urban centres as well as in stras. the peaks in arrivals of asylum seekers following fi rst the arab spring uprisings of 2011 and then the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015 marked a second phase in which an emergency approach to reception prevailed (campomori/ambrosini 2020). especially after 2014, the need for immediate accommodations for the newly arrived triggered chaotic experimentation with emergency reception facilities controlled directly by the ministry of the interior. such reception facilities were named centri di accoglienza straordinaria (henceforth cas – extraordinary reception centres). in these centres, the quality of reception and integration services was defi ned by the public procurement procedures issued by the local branches of the ministry of the interior (i.e., prefectures) and by the winners of said procurement procedures. this system triggered the creation of reception practices that vary from being ill-managed or plagued by criminal infi ltrations (libera, cittadinanzattiva and lasciatecientrare 2016), to innovative and inspiring (galera 2018), presenting a highly variable level in terms of quality of services and being managed by a wide range of actors, from hotel owners to third-sector organisations already involved in refugee reception (openpolis 2019). overall, the cas system became widespread and covered around 80 percent of all the available reception places in italy in the period 2014-2018. for example, in 2017, while 148,502 people were hosted in cas facilities, only 24,741 people were hosted in sprar.5 at the same time, however, it 4 law 89/2002. 5 for an overview of the numbers of accommodations in the italian reception system between 2014 and 2020 see: https://www.openpolis.it/numeri/le-presenze-nei-centri-di-accoglienzatra-il-2014-e-il-2020/. sailing against the law tides • 237 is important to stress that in 2015 the media and political discourse was still focused on the need to offer the best reception conditions to people fl eeing confl icts and crossing the mediterranean sea, and the cas system itself offered willing thirdsector organisations the opportunity to provide high-quality services and to experiment in combining the reception and integration of forced migrants with territorial development, similarly to the sprar system, triggering social innovation. in sum, in this phase the vision at the basis of italy’s reception system was still to have a system where sprar and an integrated approach to reception had a central role, whereas cas was an emergency appendix, deemed to disappear. this changed in the third phase with the entry into force of the so-called “security decree” of 5 october 2018, signed by the then minister of the interior, matteo salvini, leader of the league party, and transposed into law 132/2018. the transformations were anticipated by a backlash of anti-immigration and anti-ngo rhetoric (castelli gattinara 2017). the 2018 decree translated this rhetoric by (apparently) cutting expenditures, de facto fi nancing bigger reception centres and reducing integration services. in this framework, the cas system became a structural part of italian reception but devoted only to the reception of asylum seekers who could not access sprar (renamed siproimi6 due to the target change) anymore. as a consequence, the underlying idea of a reception system in which every stage of reception had the purpose of supporting the benefi ciaries’ path towards autonomy was dismantled. in this phase, the system imposed a physical separation between asylum seekers and refugees, a consistent reduction of funds allocated to reception7 and the cancellation of integration services for asylum seekers. in addition, the decree cancelled from italy’s body of law a form of national protection called protezione umanitaria (“humanitarian protection,” widely granted to asylum applicants in the 2014-2018 period) and determined the expulsion of the holders of this form of protection from the reception system. these changes proved to be particularly vexing to virtuous practices of reception and integration (omizzolo 2019; openpolis/actionaid 2021). moreover, the cancellation of national humanitarian protection implied a signifi cant increase in numbers of irregular migrants, with an estimated 600,000 people living in an irregular situation in italy as of january 2020 and with an estimated increase of 70,000 people in this situation due to the 2018 reform, people often working and living in rural and peripheral areas, in informal settlements, without basic services and in precarious conditions (villa 2018; roman 2020). overall, since 2018, asylum seekers and refugees cannot enjoy the same reception conditions: only protection holders and other vulnerable categories (e.g., unaccompanied minors) have been allowed to access sprar/siproimi, its integration services and the dispersed accommodation model (giovannetti et al. 2019). as also illustrated by the research, 6 siproimi stands for sistema di protezione per titolari di protezione internazionale e minori stranieri non accompagnati (protection system for international protection holders and unaccompanied foreign minors). for the sake of simplifi cation, henceforth we refer to these realities as sprar/sirpoimi. 7 for a thorough analysis of the cuts in resources made by the 2018 decree, see omizzolo 2019. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto238 this decree constituted a watershed for many stakeholders involved in italy’s reception system. the presence of refugees and asylum seekers in stras has become increasingly consistent from 2014 onwards, when a dispersal policy was implemented in italy through the “national operational plan to deal with the extraordinary fl ow of noneu citizens” (agreement between the government, regions and local authorities, july 2014). while large urban areas still host the vast majority of asylum seekers and refugees in italy, in 2019, around 20 percent of cas (i.e., around 1,000 facilities) were placed in territories such as stras, remote from main urban areas and facing demographic, social and economic challenges (openpolis/actionaid 2021).8 moreover, almost half of the 1,189 municipalities that in 2018 formed the sprar/siproimi network had less than 5,000 inhabitants (servizio centrale 2019). dispersal policies have been implemented in italy, as elsewhere in europe, to ensure a certain level of “burden” sharing among regions and between urban and non-urban areas (campomori 2018; semprebon/pelacani 2019). while the cas system grew disproportionately in some areas due to the emergency approach of the fi rst years of the “refugee crisis,” with collective centres with high numbers of refugees appearing suddenly in abandoned hotels in remote areas with few residents, the sprar/siproimi has always followed the logic of dispersed and small-scale accommodation, usually in apartments. the logic of dispersal (and of dispersed accommodation in small-scale facilities) is also implemented to promote more effective socio-economic integration of forced migrants (campesi 2018) by facilitating opportunities for interaction between residents and newcomers and by supporting the autonomy and self-organisation of benefi ciaries (giovannetti et al. 2019). several cas were established following the same logic of sprar centres thanks to the commitment of third-sector organisations (for tuscany see berti et al. 2017; for trentino see boccagni et al. 2020; for liguria see gianfreda 2021). the distribution of reception facilities and the quality of housing are crucial aspects that reveal the close interconnections between the philosophy by which a reception model is inspired (marchetti 2016) and the role the “local” can play (giovannetti et al. 2019; omizzolo 2019; herslund 2021; meer et al. 2021). 3 migrations and the reception-territory nexus: a literature review in italy, as in other european countries (doomernik/glorius 2016; oecd 2018; glorius et al. 2019), the attention to the reception-territory nexus has only recently shifted to extra-urban areas, after a period in which the “local turn” in migration studies – giving emphasis on sub-national governance, policies and implementation – had favoured the focus on medium-large cities (scholten/penninx 2016; caponio et al. 2018) and, more importantly, rarely considering the asylum issue. 8 further data are available at https://www.openpolis.it/numeri/la-presenza-dei-richiedentiasilo-in-rapporto-alla-popolazione-residente/ sailing against the law tides • 239 the considerable fl ow of forced migrants to the eu in the last decade and the situation of national asylum systems continuously under stress have, on the one hand, encouraged scholars to more deeply explore reception policies and their implications for the local level (hinger et al. 2016; mcareavey/argent 2018; haselbacher 2019; ambrosini 2020; gauci 2020). on the other hand, the permanent state of emergency characterising governmental responses, especially in italy (castelli gattinara 2017), has undermined the potential for the emergence of a debate about the places where asylum seekers are hosted (crawley et al. 2019; omizzolo 2019). major urban areas have always played an attractive function for migratory fl ows, even if – especially after the 2008 fi nancial crisis – they increasingly represent problematic and impoverished social contexts. but small and medium-sized towns and rural and peripheral areas – often isolated, with limited public transport access, poor in services, unprepared to welcome migrants and without previous relevant experiences of intercultural dialogue – have recently gained the limelight in studies about asylum seekers and refugee reception. the recent regulatory changes (i.e., the 2018 security decree), moreover, have introduced transformations in the receptionterritory nexus that have yet to be fully investigated. in many extra-urban italian territories, the arrival of forced migrants is a relatively new phenomenon, taking place in contexts often characterised by economies in distress or with ongoing projects for a reconversion of historical production activities, traditionally not interested in nor attractive for foreign labour. furthermore, italian small-medium municipalities and territorial authorities have faced a welfare state retrenchment, with a reduction of funds for local-level policies in a regime of dramatic cuts in public spending (citroni et al. 2019). also, for these reasons, refugee reception in stras constitutes a particularly challenging issue (glorius 2017) that needs to take into account multiple elements, from attitudes of local communities towards the newcomers (zorlu 2017) to initiatives aimed at turning rural areas into welcoming spaces for migrants (ponzo 2020). stras communities have sometimes emerged as responsive contexts in terms of activating and experimenting with innovative solutions (galera et al. 2018), processes that could be more problematic for large cities where responses are usually more anchored to political legacy and to the specifi c political orientation of the local government (darling 2017). no a priori assumption should be made on the interconnections between the reception of forced migrants and territory based on the scales of the context (i.e., cities vs. stras). preconceived distinctions between solidaristic small towns and hostile cities or between adverse extra-urban communities and more tolerant urban contexts are misleading and unfruitful. however, there is no doubt that in italy reception in extra-urban areas has followed different trajectories and has attracted the interest of scholars. the result is a varied and original body of literature, which mainly revolves around three interrelated issues: the presence of (forced) migrants in small-medium towns and rural areas; local governance of the reception of forced migrants and policy implementation in stras; the transformative potential of reception initiatives with respect to the territories in which they are located, in terms of socio-economic change. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto240 the fi rst stream highlights that many foreigners come to settle in municipalities often not exceeding a few thousand inhabitants (balbo 2015; bonizzoni/marzorati 2015). scholars have observed, for example, how the small size of municipalities affects interactions between residents and foreigners, even without integration policies (ostanel/fioretti 2017; semprebon et al. 2017). another interesting argument is that in stras, given proximity and frequent opportunities for contacts, the resolution of confl icts and the positive conversion of initial aversion seem to be more likely because separation and opposition show a lower tendency to crystallise compared to urban contexts (natale et al. 2019; ponzo 2017). the second stream is rooted in the literature on the governance of migration at the local level (see for example caponio/borkert 2010; scholten/penninx 2016; zapata-barrero et al. 2017) and looks at both the vertical and the horizontal dynamics between different levels of governance and different actors. in italy, after the 2015-2017 period, the reception of forced migrants has become an increasingly contentious policy issue, involving a plurality of local actors, both public and private, and various bodies and levels of government (ambrosini 2020; campomori/ ambrosini 2020). regarding governance, scholars have paid much attention to the actual functioning of reception systems at the local level, in particular looking at the development of collaborative relationships between municipalities and third sector (marzorati et al. 2017), the emergence of new forms of inter-municipal cooperation as a response to the emergency frame in which national strategies are adopted, the fragmentation of initiatives on the same territory and the lack of supra-municipal coordination (martini/bartolini 2020), the role of mayors and the mechanisms of convergence/divergence between different local experiences of decision-making and policy implementation (giannetto et al. 2019; haselbacher/segarra 2021). the third stream, to which this paper aims to contribute more directly, focuses on the implications that the reception of forced migrants may have for local societies. in this perspective, the reception of asylum seekers is considered a powerful social phenomenon that can activate adjustments or more signifi cant changes in the local territory where it unfolds. unlike other studies that are more focused on migrant reception conditions and trajectories, some recent work has analysed the impact on and the evolution of hosting communities, taking into consideration some emerging positive effects triggered by the arrival of forced migrants due to dispersal policies. although the question of the costs of reception is often present in the political debate as an extremely controversial and unpopular matter (see section 2), the economy of reception also includes some “benefi ts, such as the creation of jobs, the socio-economic (and cultural) contributions for local communities and host society as a whole” (ricard-guay 2019: 2). in particular, recent studies emphasise that rural and marginal areas usually benefi t from the setting up of reception facilities (see also arfaoui 2019 on france), not only because they bring new job opportunities and revive the private rental market, including the recovery of underused shelters (e.g. old and abandoned hotels), but above all because the presence of migrants can sustain local public services (e.g. post offi ces, schools, transport) and economic activities at risk (e.g. small shops, handicrafts). this is true especially in those areas experiencing a strong demographic decline, such as some rural and mountain areas sailing against the law tides • 241 (ostanel/fioretti 2017; ponzo 2017; caroli/tortia 2018; dematteis et al. 2018; perlik/ membretti 2018; omizzolo 2019). furthermore, recently in extra-urban contexts there has been an active mobilisation of civil society, a return to citizens’ protagonism and a new will to actively contribute to the challenges of one’s own territory (fontanari/ borri 2017). this partial awakening of civil conscience has in some cases resulted in the creation of regeneration and renewal programmes of small, disappearing towns (elia/jovelin 2017; sokoll 2018; driel 2020). these interconnections between reception and territory are at the centre of the analytical framework introduced in the next section. by referring to the transformative potential of refugee reception for stras, in the next paragraph we propose a matrix to frame and address such interconnections, both in terms of (unexpected) positive effects as well as disruptions connected to the security decree. it is important to stress that we do not imply that the experiences of reception in stras before the decree were all positive; examples showing critical issues along different dimensions have indeed emerged across the country and have been differently tackled (see among others in migrazione 2017; openpolis/ actionaid 2021). moreover, the positive outcomes of reception in stras have often emerged not as a result of the national reception policy but rather thanks to the combination of vision and practices of different actors (i.e., managing institutions, reception operators, civil society, third-sector organisations, representatives of municipalities and public local actors), able to do so within the regulatory setting existing before the 2018 security decree. in this view, we consider as virtuous interconnections those developing through synergies and collaborations between reception management/organisation and various stakeholders of stras, favouring dynamics of local change. the security decree appears to have then challenged, if not disrupted, these positive trends. 4 analytical framework – a proposal the matrix we propose allows us to offer an analytical framework to examine both the positive implications of reception for stras and the critical outcomes of the regulatory changes introduced by the 2018 decree. this framework is grounded in both a deductive and an inductive process. it emerges both from a review of the literature, as seen above, and from an empirical exploration of practices in different areas of italy in the period following the so-called “refugee crisis” (see also section 5, footnote 9). the matrix is formed by the intersection of two pairs: within-around and material-symbolic (fig. 1). the fi rst pair (within-around) refers to the orientation that our look takes, the setting in which we observe the elements at the centre of our analysis, distinguishing between the internal setting of the reception structures and the territorial setting in which such structures are embedded. the second pair (material-symbolic) helps us categorise the aspects of a (positive) reception system and its interconnections with the local context by considering a material, concrete dimension and a symbolic, immaterial one. this matrix should be seen as • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto242 an analytical device to structure and organise the analysis of the interconnections between reception and territory, keeping in mind that the dimensions are not mutually exclusive, but rather often overlapping, insomuch that a certain reception practice may present both material and immaterial aspects and may be observed within or around the reception managing organisation. the fi rst box (within + material) concerns the internal characteristics of the reception structures in terms of organisation, functioning and services supplied. this dimension is the main focus of the offi cial evaluations of the reception facilities (badella et al. 2019) and it has also been at the centre of their academic analysis throughout time in italy (among others accorinti 2015; omizzolo 2019; semprebon/ pelacani 2019). the second box (within + symbolic) refers to the meaning assigned to the concepts of reception and integration by the people working in and managing reception facilities and to the overall philosophy of the managing institution, which structures and is expressed through the material aspects of the fi rst box (accorinti/ spinelli 2019; bontempelli 2020; giacomelli 2021; giudici 2021; marchetti 2016). in our analysis, these two dimensions allow us to shed light on the attempt of institutions that have been acting not only as food and shelter providers but also as humanitarian organisations, following an approach focusing on the integration and autonomy of benefi ciaries and, more concretely, adopting the guidelines of the ordinary reception system (sprar/siproimi) as point of reference also for the emergency ones (cas projects). this means, for example, a broad and diversifi ed staff, with a low workers-benefi ciaries ratio and multidisciplinary and transversal teams to tackle the different challenges connected to reception and integration. before the 2018 decree, a number of services were offered by several cas to all benefi ciaries hosted, following the sprar/siproimi model, such as legal aid, italian language courses, linguistic and cultural mediation, job counselling and fig. 1: interconnections between reception and territory source: own design aspects orientation material symbolic within staff and organisational structure philosophy and vision of of the managing institution reception and integration (internal) services and activities worker-benefi ciary relationship of the managing institution form of accommodation around local economy and job market community self-perception as reuse of accommodation welcoming space (civic society) facilities and lodgings/housing empowerment and sense of local networks and relationships belonging civil society engagement sailing against the law tides • 243 training. also, several cas in stras embraced the small-sized and dispersed accommodation model of sprar/siproimi. the lower half of the matrix focuses on the interconnections between the reception and the local context, addressing implications and possible outcomes. the third box (around + material) brings attention to the material side of such interconnections, ranging from the implications for the local economy and services to the development of networks of public-private actors. especially in remote areas, as previously seen, the emergence of a “reception economy” (bartolini et al. 2020) revolving around the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees may be particularly meaningful and may boost the local economy. first, the reception system creates a new job market for local workers and/or workers coming from outside the territory, usually qualifi ed, and attracts funds and investments that are then spent locally (bock 2018). second, the foreign newcomers, usually working age or younger, potentially bring new labour force to the area in the long run and increase consumers for local shops and craft businesses. also, dispersed accommodation in apartments fuels the rental market of private houses that are often left empty, with a direct benefi cial impact, especially relevant in depressed peripheral areas. these positive implications have been (in some cases) and might still be vital for areas characterised by isolation, economic stagnation, depopulation and aging (marchesini/giovannetti 2019; bartolini et al. 2020; boccagni et al. 2020; gauci 2020). in such contexts, the arrival of new inhabitants may also create the basis for a (re)opening of welfare services and public provisions, also thanks to the support and involvement of locally rooted third-sector organisations (elia/jovelin 2017; galera et al. 2018; martini/bartolini 2020). moreover, the establishment and functioning of a reception project, as well as the multifaceted challenges and implications that it may pose, demand the involvement of a number of local actors (e.g. public institutions, third-sector associations, municipalities, businesses and local population). the need for a “local governance of reception” can be the starting point for the creation or strengthening of (new) local networks between the involved actors based on collaboration and trust. these networks can be then mobilised and used beyond refugee reception, becoming in itself a relevant asset and a driver of local change and social cohesion in stras (ricard-guay 2019). finally, the last box of the matrix (around + symbolic) focuses on the immaterial implications that the presence of reception may bring in stras. whether planned (sprar) or initially unexpected (cas), the arrival of migrants forces the local community to face the issue of diversity, but it also challenges the local community’s self-perception, identity and vision of the future. even if tensions and confl icts may arise from the arrival of forced migrants (and indeed, examples of this are not scarce), on the positive side this may also create the basis for encounters with diversity, allowing a wider and multicultural understanding of social cohesion and the creation of a “welcoming community” (sanò 2018; whyte et al. 2019; ponzo 2020). although counterintuitive, the re-discovery of traditional identities and activities may be supported by the presence of newcomers, too. finally, the new challenges, people, funds, networks that reception quite necessarily brings into the local setting may translate into the development of forms of empowerment of • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto244 different actors, especially civil society and local stakeholders who can fi nd new opportunities for engaging in the revitalisation of their territories (fontanari/borri 2017; caponio et al. 2022). 5 methodology and case studies despite its many weaknesses, the reception system in some stras has been able not only to promote social inclusion of refugees, but also civic engagement, cooperative networking and the revitalisation of local economies. building on recent literature on the transformative potential of reception initiatives for stras territories and communities (see section 3), we take into consideration forms of virtuous interconnections between reception and territories, namely the positive (although often unplanned) effects that emerged after the setting up of reception facilities in stras. these positive effects emerged not only where sprar/siproimi projects were set up – which could be expected to a certain extent considering that they are based on a cooperation between municipalities and third-sector organisations (bottom-up approach) – but sometimes (and more surprisingly) also around cas, which instead follows a top-down process. nonetheless, among the discourses in support and legitimisation of the reception system reforms by the 2018 decree, the need to reduce public expenditure/costs for integration services and general accusations of receptions’ poor (if not criminal) management and outcomes were very common, while its positive implications for local communities and territories were scarcely thematised. our argument is that despite examples of poor management and critical issues, a positive combination of reception systems, refugee socio-economic inclusion and positive transformation of stras often emerged. such a trend has, however, been challenged and possibly disrupted – both materially and symbolically, according to our analytical framework (see section 4) – by the regulatory changes. to address these issues (i.e., the positive combination of reception and local transformations in stras and this trend’s disruptions following the regulatory changes), we propose a multi-situated analysis of exemplifi cative and “eloquent” cases (bruschi 2005), focusing on three cases of reception in stras in italy. we start our analysis from organisations that have been managing reception projects for several years in order to investigate their transformative role and the local interconnections before and after the 2018 decree. the case study approach allows us to explore a phenomenon in the context in which it is generated and reproduced, providing in-depth understanding of its characteristics (yin 2003). the three cases, all located in stras, are, respectively, in the north, centre and south of italy: ivrea and eporediese in piedmont, pistoia and valdinievole in tuscany, irpinia and sannio in campania (fig. 2). italy is historically characterised by territorial differences with regard to models of economic development and social cohesion (bagnasco 1977). considering our interest in the reception-territory nexus, this choice was relevant to account for italy’s territorial variety. these three cases were investigated within a broader research project focusing on the implications sailing against the law tides • 245 of the 2018 decree on examples of virtuous reception-territory interconnections.9 they have been selected on the basis of suggestions collected during a fi rst round of interviews of key informants in the exploratory phase of the research. moreover, the three managing institutions of the selected cases also belong to a national network of asylum rights advocacy.10 the research – carried out between 2019 and 2020 – is qualitative in nature and includes the analysis of offi cial documents (websites of the organisations managing reception, planning of their activities and composition of their staff) and discursive in-depth interviews (in person or online) with actors fig. 2: location of the three case studies source: own design 9 the research, funded by fondazione migrantes, aimed at investigating the implications of the 2018 decree for the reception system in different italian localities. a total of six cases were analysed, two for each geographical area in which italy is traditionally divided, i.e., north, centre, south. more specifi cally, the research involved trieste, valle di comino and the salento area. a more detailed illustration of the whole study is available in bolzoni et al. (2020). while we thank fondazione migrantes and fieri (international and european forum of immigration research) for the support that made the research possible, all of the opinions and analysis presented here are that of the authors only. 10 we do not disclose the name of the managing institutions involved in the research to ensure anonymity. for further details on the national advocacy network and its work, see www. europasilo.org. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto246 involved in reception project management (managers and operators), associations and public offi cials (see the appendix for the list of interviews). before delving into the analysis, in the following paragraphs we briefl y describe the three cases selected, focusing particularly on the managing institutions involved and highlighting elements concerning the reception-territory nexus in each case. the fi rst reception initiative in ivrea was launched in 2000 and was prompted by the arrival of people fl eeing the kosovo confl ict. the managing organisation analysed here, a cooperative, was founded in the same period, immediately applying to become part of the sprar system. after that fi rst experience, the cooperative undertook other reception initiatives in the wider area surrounding ivrea (i.e., eporediese area). by the end of 2019, the cooperative was managing three sprar/siproimi (with about 100 benefi ciaries) and three cas (150 asylum seekers). as for these reception initiatives, the managing cooperative developed synergies with local actors over time (i.e., the ivrea municipality, the local social welfare consortium and the employment centre). thanks to the vast network of relationships with key players in the area, the cooperative was able to adapt the reception conditions and services provided in cas to those of sprar/siproimi (despite cas lower economic endowment), organising small reception facilities distributed throughout the territory and guaranteeing assistance to migrants in order to support the achievement of autonomy and their socio-economic integration in the local context. the case of pistoia and valdinievole refers to reception initiatives led by a cooperative active in the social services since 1995 whose fi rst sprar experience dates back to 2014. the sprar/siproimi projects managed by this cooperative at the time of the research were three (with around 130 benefi ciaries in total), all through a consortium specifi cally created with other cooperatives in the same area. in 2015, the management of cas facilities was added, reaching a peak of over 200 benefi ciaries. the cooperative has an integrated plan to organise reception, which involves accommodation in small structures spread throughout the valdinievole territory, initiatives functional to the social integration of benefi ciaries, job placement services and opportunities for traineeships. the same approach was adopted for people hosted in cas. in cas facilities, a numerically consistent presence of operators was granted to ensure benefi ciaries’ access to the local community and adequate support to their socio-economic inclusion process. the case of irpinia and sannio refers to a local network of third-sector organisations managing, at the time of the research, eleven reception projects (sprar/siproimi) in as many different municipalities scattered among benevento and avellino provinces. by choice, they never managed cas facilities and they started operating in the reception system with sprar projects in 2014, also in response to the poor management of existing cas in the area (cresta/greco 2018). the network adopts the small-sized, dispersed reception approach, renting out (mostly private) apartments where a maximum of 5 people each are hosted, for a total of 249 available spots. the area is classifi ed as “remote” by the italian government; an area characterised by depopulation, lack of services and jobs, signifi cant distance from main urban centres and, as such, eligible for specifi c funds and place-based interventions sailing against the law tides • 247 related to the national strategy for remote areas (snai), part of the eu programme 2014-2020 (uval 2014). the associations and cooperatives previously working in the fi eld of social inclusion proposed the inclusion of asylum reception projects within a broader plan of integrated local welfare supporting a network of “small welcoming municipalities.” 6 from virtuous to disrupted? a situated analysis of regulatory changes’ implications drawing from the qualitative research and referring to the analytical framework previously illustrated, in this section we analyse the virtuous interconnections between refugee reception and stras as well as the challenges and disruptions following the 2018 regulatory changes. we bring each case as exemplifi cative of material/symbolic aspects within and around reception, as illustrated in our analytical framework. as we have focused our attention on virtuous cases, elements of the four pairs are present in each of them; however, every case allows us to more precisely highlight specifi c interconnections between reception and territory and their changes after the security decree released at the end of 2018. 6.1 ivrea and eporediese (piedmont) the cooperative managing reception in the area developed over time several collaborations with the municipality of ivrea, the local social welfare consortium, the job centre and various training and employment agencies. thanks to collaborations with local stakeholders, the cooperative was able to adapt the services offered in the cas to those of the sprar/siproimi. as for the around + material dimension, a social agricultural project was also launched – with the launch in 2017 of a second independent cooperative dedicated to this agricultural entrepreneurial activity – which provided the opportunity for some protection holders to get jobs in the agricultural sector as skilled farmers and the possibility to offer internships to over 50 asylum seekers. the trainees were able to acquire skills through specifi c training and then complete their professionalisation through a “learning by doing” experience. this economic activity reveals the virtuous interconnections between reception and the local community, in particular addressing issues such as territory management and enhancement: when the agricultural social farm was born in 2017, people called us to offer their uncultivated land for management: it is a project still ongoing and through which we have built a network. the goal is to create a sort of district of municipalities that have a fruit and vegetable tradition and with specifi c products to promote. [...] private citizens involved had personal relationships with the cooperative, in fact a public tender was never necessary to obtain the land: we only used word of mouth [...]. we invested in agriculture because the benefi ciaries’ competences • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto248 could be used in this fi eld: we did it fi rst through the provision of socially useful jobs (e.g. a social vegetable garden in a small town), then we took another path [business] because it is known that this is an area with a lot of unexploited agricultural land. [int_2_ie] this proactive approach had to deal with the economic axe of the 2018 decree. concerning the within + material dimension, the budget cuts for the reception of asylum seekers forced a rethinking of the internal services provided, which also implied a signifi cant reduction in operators’ actions supporting the social and economic integration of benefi ciaries. among the services that had to be downsized were job placement, professional training, workshops with stakeholders for the development of relational and soft skills and paid internships. in the past we could think of proposing a training internship funded by the company [identifi ed through a scouting activity in the area] and then it was no longer possible: so, we strengthened collaborations with external training agencies to include benefi ciaries in other projects but turning to them we could only involve people who already knew the language... so those who had more diffi culties were excluded. [int_3_ie] in addition, the budgetary cuts affected the possibility for the cooperative to buy public transport tickets, therefore limiting benefi ciaries’ opportunities of movement. this mobility limitation has had, in turn, an impact on the ability of benefi ciaries to reach and attend vocational training courses. yet one of the most obvious effects of the 2018 decree concerns the around + material dimension and, in particular, the potential increase in burden and expenditure for local public services. indeed, the removal of national humanitarian protection holders from the reception system and the cuts of integration services for asylum seekers left local authorities (municipalities, job centres, health and social services) to cope with an increased demand for social assistance, low-threshold and services for the most vulnerable, also in absence of cultural mediators. within this problematic post-2018 framework and thanks to the engagement of the local civic society over time, the cooperative tried to address this shortage through the involvement of local associations and volunteers (around + symbolic). this involvement seems, however, not able to counterbalance the downsizing: volunteers have always participated, even because in diffi culty we always do a little more. they were already there before and now even more. they had built relationships with the benefi ciaries, there were those who hosted asylum seekers on sunday for lunch, those who took them on trips ... ties persist but the benefi ciaries are very, very disturbed, they do not feel free, there is a feeling of closure, about the why of this … “why is this happening in italy? we came here to feel free ...” [int_1_ie] sailing against the law tides • 249 the new restrictions also had an impact on a within + symbolic dimension. a sense of frustration has spread among operators as they have been witnesses of the failure of a reception model developed in synergy with local economic and social actors. moreover, the regulatory changes undermined the notion of a sort of ideal path from reception to integration that had developed over many years of experience, especially for cas. rather than going along with this downward repositioning of the service, the cooperative decided to abandon the management of cas (it has not participated in the prefecture’s latest calls for bids) and to only continue management of sprar/siproimi. 6.2 pistoia and valdinievole (tuscany) in the case of pistoia and valdinievole, we examined the case of a local cooperative with long-lasting relations with other key players in the area and part of a larger local consortium of organisations managing reception locally. in the past, the consortium was able to maintain a common approach among sprar and cas facilities and to support a model based on synergies between local cooperatives managing reception and municipalities, training institutions, employment centres, social welfare services and civil society associations. virtuous interconnections between reception and territory emerged, especially with regard to the design of socio-economic integration and autonomy paths for benefi ciaries. this was possible thanks to the small scale and dispersed accommodations for benefi ciaries, language courses, professional training, job placement activities, organisation of intercultural dialogue events and opportunities for contact with the resident population. this approach to reception not only benefi ted benefi ciaries but also the hosting territory and its community, favouring the creation over time of a “welcoming space.” this approach is in line with the model adopted by the tuscany region, which, since the early 1990s, has been trying to address migration through a model of integration alternative to the national one (see bracci/valzania 2016), more recently proposing an integrated reception model to host refugees and asylum seekers on the whole regional territory (berti et al. 2017; pettrachin 2022). to raise the quality of reception standards, the cooperative set up work teams with differentiated profi les and skills, providing benefi ciaries with a composite package of services and guaranteeing continuous accompaniment by the operators. at least, this was the approach until the entry into force of the 2018 decree. as regards the material aspects (with intertwined implications both within and around), the cuts in funds for cas according to 2019 tender specifi cations caused a budget revision that required a reorganisation of the staff (through dismissals and non-renewal of contracts) with a consequent loss of skills. believing these material conditions not compatible with the quality standards adopted in the past, the cooperative supported a shared political action for which no one belonging to the consortium took part in the new calls for bids of prefecture (at the time of investigation, the extension of the mandate continued, with a reduction of the pro die per person quota of about 20 percent): this also reveals a deterioration in the relations – previously very collaborative – with this territorial government body. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto250 the interviewees agree that the decree of 2018 heavily impacted the role of operators and therefore the relations with benefi ciaries. in particular, in cas reception, the content of the work carried out with benefi ciaries changed: our interviewees emphasise this aspect, specifying that the operators not only had their duties modifi ed but also experienced a change in the deeper meaning of their role, which we can refer to the within + symbolic dimension. as for cas, the salvini decree has changed the content of our job, there are no more resources for integration, but only basic services can be provided: that is not our job. for the organisation it was necessary to review (downwards) number of hours, employment levels grading, tasks of work teams ... it is clear that the needs of benefi ciaries are the same and have not changed. they are still living in the same area. they have more diffi culties now to interact with people and institutions without learning the language as they could before, as well as with the labour market integration support of course […] management has changed radically, and we have serious diffi culties with benefi ciaries who are used to those standards of services. (int_1_pv) moving away from their original mission, the operators feel they have become a sort of guards, an unwanted reconversion which, moreover, adds to the stress and uncertainty. working in reception facilities becomes more and more bureaucratic and less and less relational, imposing the logic of providing accountable services through careful control over the benefi ciaries. the prefecture has not reduced or downsized requests, the bureaucratic burden is the same but with a 20-30 percent cut of resources! it has become a kind of surveillance: schedules, signatures, declarations, forced shifts ... sometimes we feel like police, too, then we remember that we are social workers and that we actually have another type of role. (int_3_pv) finally, if we consider the around + symbolic dimension, some negative implications seem to have emerged as a consequence of the politicisation of reception and anti-immigrant rhetoric, with an intensifi cation of mistrust and hostility that were previously rare. episodes that make steps backwards clear from the point of view of the integration perspective of migrants. as in the view of social worker interviewed: i was with a friend of mine in a square but we didn't know the way well; we met a lady: “hello lady, excuse me ...” and suddenly she said, “don’t talk to me! don’t talk to me! you steal our money, go home!” (int_5_pv) sailing against the law tides • 251 6.3 irpinia and sannio (campania) the reception projects in the irpinia and sannio case were developed by a network of third-sector cooperatives and associations that included these projects in a broader (strategic) plan of local welfare. in this process, public funds for refugee reception and for local redevelopment were combined. a manifesto was elaborated and a network of municipalities sharing such a vision was created. the associations’ network also promoted the development of community co-ops involving both national and refugee residents as ideal output of the reception projects. five community co-ops in fi ve different municipalities have been created already, involving former guests and national residents and operating in sectors relevant for the local economy. more generally, regarding the around + material dimension, the establishment of reception projects contributed to reinforcing the local job market, allowing young residents to stay put and fi nd a job in their hometown, to changing the shrinking demographic trend, with new residents that stayed in the area even after the end of the reception project, to inhabiting previously empty buildings and to supporting and developing the establishment of new services (i.e., small markets in remote municipalities). moreover, it was the spark that ignited the creation of a network of public and private actors, within and across small municipalities, which then focused not only on the refugee reception but on a broader strategic plan of local welfare and re-development (see cresta/greco 2018; euricse 2020). referring to an around + symbolic dimension, this has led to the chance to develop a discussion, led by the associations’ network, among public and private actors, local stakeholders and residents on the local identity and vision for the future that has created the basis for playing a more active role in the local transformations. two dreams have met that never would have imagined to meet: the youth of ***, who were ready to leave already, and those coming from abroad, who would have never imagined arriving here. [...] so we worked on the idea of the future life in europe of those who arrived here, because the risk was that they would see us only as a transit. [...] and we worked on the sprar operators too, so they would consider themselves longterm local development operators rather than short-term welfare social workers. we hired locally, as much as possible, exactly where sprar were established, and [...] we said ‘you are not a sprar operator who has to work for refugee reception and when the project fi nishes11 everything fi nishes, you are an operator of local development, who has to work for a project of local development that is activated thanks to refugee reception’. (int_1_is) 11 the reference is to the fact that sprar projects used to be funded for 3 years, then requiring a new application. • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto252 the 2018 decree disrupted this emerging combination between refugees inclusion and local transformation. having only sprar/siproimi projects, the associations’ network didn’t register job losses or team variation among its workers, even though the services and goals of each have changed (within + material). however, as siproimi projects could host only refugees (and therefore asylums seekers and those with the former humanitarian permit couldn’t stay and wouldn’t arrive any longer), the number of presences in each project decreased and empty spots (already funded) were recorded, with implications for the local economy, too (around + material): “in this last year we haven’t reached the critical number [of presences], the threshold we needed for activating a change” (int_1_is). also, a few of those already hosted in the projects or present in the area apparently fl ed overnight towards large and more anonymous cities. the change of direction introduced by the regulatory change, the transformation of the rights and possibilities linked to the different status, together with a rhetoric generically criminalising migrants and the reception projects, produced a climate of uncertainty and precariousness within and around the reception (symbolic dimension). up until last year we considered it as a form of, as a tool in support of our population. some of the initiatives have been useful and relevant for us, but with the reform we have no certainty anymore. yes, that’s the sensation, not having any certainty, therefore you no longer plan, you no longer programme even [...] we had managed to create this community co-op [...] they renewed the old communal villa [...], the public soccer fi eld that had been abandoned for twenty years [...] so the sprar has been a tool to meet some needs of the territory that would otherwise remain unaddressed. while today it’s... we just don’t know what it will be, this thing that had instead become an integral part of our territory. (int_3_is) such a climate appeared to have weakened the positive trend of local transformation, networking and protagonism that was circulating among the public and private actors of these small municipalities. rather than a loss for asylum seekers and refugees the major loss here seems to be for the remote areas that were initiating a process of transformation through reception projects. everything stopped. the municipalities that have believed in the manifesto, everything stopped. [...] a positive chance that was emerging was just stopped, because an ideological decision of disinvestment was made. all of the positive things that were moving just stopped. (int_1_is) 7 conclusions italy’s reception system has sailed through rough waters in the last decade. changes in asylum application numbers have been met by the italian governments sailing against the law tides • 253 with abrupt changes in asylum policies. the local actors involved in the reception system had to adapt not only to the changing norms and fl ow of resources, but also to the polarisation of (national) political positions on the issue. in particular, public and private actors of stras, territories which have been at the forefront in hosting asylum seekers and refugees, identifi ed and made use of the opportunities created by these changes and then struggled to ensure the survival of reception practices, bringing together social inclusion of asylum seekers and refugees and local transformations. this paper has aimed to address the territory-reception nexus and to contribute to the literature by shining a light on the virtuous interconnections that can and did emerge (under certain conditions) in small-medium towns and rural areas (stras). we have done so by considering the 2018 security decree a turning point that disrupted such emerging virtuous interconnections and, in so doing, contributed in making them visible. to approach the analysis, we proposed an analytical framework to investigate the material-symbolic aspects of the territory-reception nexus that can be observed both within and around reception practices. we then grounded this framework into the analysis of the empirical material collected in reception cases located in three stras: ivrea and eporediese, pistoia and valdinievole, irpinia and sannio. while all the dimensions of the analytical framework were investigated, we can here summarise that each of these cases is exemplifi cative of specifi c combinations. the case of ivrea and eporediese reveals how the 2018 decree’s budget cuts for the integration services for asylum seekers, coupled with the cancellation of the national “humanitarian” form of protection had a strong impact on the around + material dimension, leaving local authorities with the burden of assisting the former benefi ciaries who were excluded from reception. the case of pistoia and valdinievole instead highlights the effects on the within + symbolic dimension: the 2018 decree indeed gave the fi nal blow to the relationship between benefi ciaries and reception operators. particularly within cas, operators express their disappointment not only for the material changes they had to endure (e.g., reduced salaries, less working hours, downgrading), but also for the new role of “guards” and providers of only essential services, not having the time or resources to follow the paths of each benefi ciary. the case of irpinia and sannio more explicitly shows that the transformative potential of the reception facilities and of the asylum seeker and refugee presence was recognised and integrated in a broader process of local transformation that brought together different public and private actors around the reception and gave a boost to local development. similarly, it underlines that the decree affected this process from both a material and symbolic point of view, disrupting a positive trend that was taking shape. in conclusion, the constant changes and the absence of an organic view of italy’s reception system has brought not only chaos, corruption and poor management of reception, but also – under certain conditions – leeway to experiment with new and virtuous interconnections between reception and territory, especially in stras. the 2018 security decree, with the goal of reducing expenses and ensuring security, de facto burdened local administrations by excluding a signifi cant number of forced migrants from reception and integration services, cancelled or jeopardised the • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto254 chances of stras to benefi t from the positive transformative potential of wellmanaged reception, and, overall, left an impoverished and more fragile reception system, which is not able to guarantee the rights and security it sought to ensure. references accorinti, marco 2015: centri di accoglienza: varietà tipologica e dibattito collegato. in: la rivista delle politiche sociali 2-3: 179-200. accorinti, marco; 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the ‘local turn’ in a multi-level governance framework of analysis: a case study in immigrant policies. in: international review of administrative sciences 83,2: 241-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852316688426 zorlu, aslan 2017: attitudes towards asylum seekers in small local communities. in: international migration 55,6: 14-36. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12296 sailing against the law tides • 259 dr. magda bolzoni (), dr. davide donatiello. university of turin, department of cultures, politics and society. turin, italy. e-mail: magda.bolzoni@unito.it, davide.donatiello@unito.it url: https://www.socialsciences-cps.unito.it/do/docenti.pl/show?_id=mbolzoni#tabprofi lo https://www.socialsciences-cps.unito.it/do/docenti.pl/show?_id=ddonatie#tabprofi lo dr. leila giannetto. migration policy center, european university institute. florence, italy. e-mail: leila.giannetto@eui.eu url: https://migrationpolicycentre.eu/team/leila-giannetto/ date of submission: 09.06.2021 date of acceptance: 03.06.2022 • magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, leila giannetto260 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: in te rv ie w ee s: c as e st ud ie s (iv re a an d e p o re d ie se ; p is to ia a nd v al d in ie vo le ; ir p in ia a nd s an ni o) a nd k ey in fo rm an ts c as e ty p e o f a ct o r fo rm p h as e m ai n fo cu s in te rv ie w c o d e iv re a an d e p o re d ie se in t_ 1_ ie m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 2_ ie p ro je ct m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 3_ ie w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 4_ ie w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n p is to ia a n d v al d in ie vo le in t_ 1_ p v p ro je ct m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 2_ p v w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 3_ p v w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 4_ p v w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 5_ p v w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n sailing against the law tides • 261 ta b . a 1: c o n tin ua tio n c as e ty p e o f a ct o r fo rm p h as e m ai n fo cu s in te rv ie w c o d e ir p in ia a n d s an n io in t_ 1_ is m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 2_ is p ro je ct m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 3_ is m ay o r o f s m al l t o w n o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 4_ is c o n fe ss io n al o rg an is at io n o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 5_ is w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 6_ is w o rk er – c o o p er at iv e o n lin e fi el d w o rk m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n a ll in t_ 1_ a ll r ep re se n ta ti ve o f n at io n al in p er so n e xp lo ra ti ve c h an g es w it h in /a ro u n d r ec ep ti o n an d co n fe ss io n al o rg an is at io n ca se c h o ic e in t_ 2_ a ll m ay o r o f s m al l t o w n in p er so n e xp lo ra ti ve r ec ep ti o n /t er ri to ry n ex u s in t_ 3_ a ll r ep re se n ta ti ve o f n at io n al r ef u g ee o n lin e e xp lo ra ti ve c as e ch o ic e ri g h ts a d vo ca cy o rg an is at io n in t_ 4_ a ll e xp er t/ r es ea rc h er o n lin e e xp lo ra ti ve m at er ia l c h an g es w it h in /a ro u n d re ce p ti o n in t_ 5_ a ll e xp er t/ r es ea rc h er in p er so n e xp lo ra ti ve – a n al ys is m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n in t_ 6_ a ll r ep re se n ta ti ve o f i n te rn at io n al in p er so n e xp lo ra ti ve – a n al ys is v al id it y o f t h e an al yt ic al f ra m ew o rk o rg an is at io n in t_ 7_ a ll p ro je ct m an ag er – c o o p er at iv e in p er so n e xp lo ra ti ve m at er ia l/s ym b o lic c h an g es w it h in / ar o u n d r ec ep ti o n s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) population change and international and internal migration in italy, 2002-2017: ravenstein revisited population change and international and internal migration in italy, 2002-2017: ravenstein revisited* federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci abstract: in 1885, ravenstein formulated his “laws” of migration, based on the experience of the british isles. in a further 1889 paper, he extended his analysis as a tour d’horizon of migration and population changes in other nations, including italy. even if social and economic processes including globalisation and rising mobility have changed the world since then, ravenstein’s “laws” remain a point of reference today. harnessing theoretical and methodological advances made since the 19th century, this paper describes and seeks to explain the role of international and internal migration in regional population change in italy from 2002-2017. this paper provides the fi rst geographically detailed migration analysis for the country’s 611 local labour market areas (llmas), using register-based migration and population data. our contribution focuses on several of ravenstein’s “laws” relating to gender (differences between men and women), natives and non-natives (differences between the italian and the foreign population), distance migrated from origin to destination, and the role of the economy in shaping push and pull factors of migration. the results show that international migration is more prominent among men than women. in the case of internal moves, the rates of migration among men and women are similar, and internal migration is more prominent among the foreign than the native italian population. overall, international migration gains contribute substantially more to population change than internal migration gains and losses do. in italy, the effects of persistent economic imbalances and of distance on migration patterns are not in line with ravenstein’s hypotheses: not all areas with high unemployment show an effect of dispersion, nor does distance always act as a deterrent to migration. the geographically detailed analysis presented here illustrates the temporal and spatial coexistence of diverse international and internal migration processes depending on local characteristics, as well as the importance of the economic or administrative centres as the driving force behind national patterns. our results show that, even 130 years after their formulation, ravenstein’s migration “laws” (more accurately comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 497-532 (date of release: 08.09.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-16en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci498 called “hypotheses” today) are still a valuable starting point in assessing and understanding migration processes and their role in regional population change. keywords: internal migration · international migration · population redistribution · socio-economic factors · italy · local labour market areas 1 introduction ernst georg ravenstein’s work (1876, 1885 and 1889) laid the foundations for many of the theories of migration we know today. whereas ravenstein formulated the “laws” in his 1885 paper using data for the british isles, his 1889 paper attempted to verify whether these “laws” also held in the context of the contemporary political entities of continental europe and north america. ravenstein’s work continues to be infl uential and can be found in most of the theoretical approaches and interpretative models on internal and international migration (for example, lee 1966; tobler 1995; piché 2013; stillwell/thomas 2016). the gravitational approach, rural-urban migration and urbanisation, the relationship between migration and development, the two-way dynamics of migration (net migration and return migration), the gendering of migration, and the economic determinants of migration are only some of the most relevant issues that are based on ravenstein’s seminal works (king 2012). ravenstein also understood that the forces underlying migratory movements were “complex and include the quality of the public infrastructure, such as roads, climate, taxation and more” (greenwood 2019: 269). the validity of ravenstein’s laws has been tested in numerous contributions. macisco and pryor (1963), for example, used the laws to provide a framework to review the many studies of migration in the usa. more recent studies have focused on some points directly related to ravenstein’s hypotheses, such as the differentials in mobility between women and men, underlining the importance of available data and the historical context in the formulation of the “laws” of migration. for example, alexander and steidl (2012) show that ravenstein’s affi rmation that women are more migratory is based on, for ravenstein, hidden age structure differences for men and women due to differences in mortality and out-migration. however, ravenstein himself answered his critics: “of course i am perfectly aware that our laws of population, and economic laws generally, have not the rigidity of physical laws, as they are continually being interfered with by human agency.” (1989: 241). the direct and indirect presence of ravenstein’s “laws” and ideas in the actual academic discussion show that empirical migration studies are not imaginable without the foundations laid by ravenstein in his contributions. clearly, after more than 130 years and fundamental changes in social and economic processes, as well as increasing globalisation and mobility, not all of ravenstein’s observations can be confi rmed, and it seems easy to fi nd exceptions to the “rules”. population change and international and internal migration in italy • 499 in this paper we investigate whether the pioneering statements by ravenstein remain relevant for the analysis of migration in italy from a geographically detailed perspective, focussing on the period 2002-2017. in italy, internal and international migration contributed decisively to demographic change and population growth. nevertheless, partially brought on by the great recession after 2008, the role of international migration diminished and, as a consequence, total population decreased slightly after 2014. the relation between migration and population change has become complex and diversifi ed at the geographic level, especially when focussing on local labour market areas (llmas) as units of analysis. in the italian context, a subset of the ravenstein “laws” (1885) is particularly relevant: the differences between men and women and the differences, between the italian and the foreign population regarding international and internal migration processes, as well as his observations regarding the role of distance and the importance of economic context. in italy, differences in the roles and opportunities of women and men remain important. similarly, the presence of foreigners in italy is a current and relevant phenomenon, not least because of the signifi cant sociodemographic differences between foreigners and italians. finally, italy continues to be characterised by a high degree of heterogeneity in socio-economic regional development and accessibility. the paper will examine these premises in four further sections. first, it gives an overview of the post-war international and internal migration trends in italy (section 2). it then presents the data and methods (section 3) and puts some of ravenstein’s “laws” through an italian checklist, underlining the nexus between migration and population change (section 4). the concluding section summarises the fi ndings (section 5). 2 post-war international and internal migration trends in italy internal migration has always played a major social and economic role in italy, but the peak of its importance was certainly achieved in the years of the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, with important long-distance migration fl ows originating in the northeast and the south of italy and directed to the industrial areas of the northwest and to rome (bonifazi 2013a; gallo 2012; golini 1974). the internal movements of the period after the second world war are linked to the massive economic and demographic growth of urban areas. this growth was to the detriment of rural areas, including the apennines (the 1,200 km mountain range that stretches from the northwest to the south), and the mezzogiorno (the southern regions of italy including the islands of sardinia and sicily). it was partly determined by the fordist economic model that generated a strong demand for a young workforce in the factories of the industrial triangle of the northwest. in this period the migration fl ows between the mezzogiorno and the centre-north and the resulting net migration balance in favour of the centre-north became one of the most important characteristics of the italian internal migration pattern, attracting the attention of • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci500 academic and political debate with many analyses focusing on the subordinate position of the mezzogiorno (bonifazi 2013b; impicciatore/strozza 2016, for example). with the decline of the fordist model and with the oil price crises of the 1970s, internal mobility decreased and net migration patterns changed. the economic recovery of the 1980s and the development of the third italy led to a shift of the net migration patterns away from the industrial triangle of the northwest to the third italy with its smaller and often family-led companies. this created economic well-being in extended areas of central and northeastern italy, such as the cities along the via aemilia, a roman road in northern italy from rimini on the adriatic coast to piacenza. however, this did not cause a new rise in internal migration fl ows, since the production processes were not particularly labour-intensive and local labour supply increased, especially through the higher labour market participation of women. the slight increase in internal migration in the 1990s was mainly driven by short-distance movements, even though the fl ows between the south and the other italian territorial divisions continued to be important. however, the main novelty of italian internal mobility in the last thirty years has been the growing role of the foreign population (bonifazi et al. 2009, 2016, 2017, 2020, gallo 2012) with its higher propensity to change residence (bonifazi et al. 2012; de filippo/strozza 2011), even if immigration has declined in recent years. the higher internal mobility of the foreign population is probably due to the intertwined dynamics of their international and internal migration and to being exposed to greater uncertainty regarding housing and employment. as matter of fact, in the last decades, foreign immigration was unexpectedly the main novelty of italy’s demographic profi le and the most important characteristic of the italian migration system. the growth of the foreign population has been substantial: from 0.22 million in 1981 to 5.26 million at the end of 2018. as a result of this considerable migratory infl ow, the total population continued to grow until reaching 60.8 million in early 2015, notwithstanding the low fertility. at the regional level, the foreign population is mainly concentrated in the affl uent centre-north, which has also continued to benefi t from internal migration from southern italy. this paper follows a long tradition of studying a wide range of aspects of italian internal migration processes and patterns in different academic disciplines, including demography, geography, sociology and economics. bonifazi and heins (2000) gave an overview of internal migration from a demographic point of view including also geographic aspects. since then, several reviews of internal migration in italy have been published. for example, panichella (2012) offers a detailed review of the sociological contributions to the study of internal migration in italy, confi rming a selection process regarding education and social extraction of the migration fl ows between the south and the centre-north. several analyses of specifi c sociological aspects are found in bubbico et al. (2011). results of interregional migration analysis of the italian situation and the theoretical approaches from an economic point of view are presented, for example, by biagi and dotzel (2018) and faggian et al. (2015). an econometric analysis of the italian situation is offered by biagi et al. (2011), analysing the internal migration fl ows between the 103 provinces in 2001-2002 and including economic, social and population change and international and internal migration in italy • 501 environmental variables. distinguishing between shortand long-distance fl ows, biagi et al. (2011) fi nd different models and state that short-distance migration fl ows do not seem to be determined by economic variables, while in the case of longdistance migration fl ows, “economic/labour market variables play a dominant role” (biagi et al. 2011: 123). piras (2017) offers a further review of the empirical economic literature on regional patterns of internal migration in italy and fi nds that most studies confi rm the role played by per capita gdp and unemployment rates as push and pull factors. the analysis covers a longer timeframe (1970-2005), uses the 20 italian regions, and considers the push and pull factors separately since the variables could have different effects if considered at the origin or at the destination of the migration fl ow. already in the 1990s, the absence of a geographic relationship between unemployment rates and internal migration was found “puzzling” (faini et al. 1997), with a recent contribution elaborating on this aspect (faggian et al. 2017). several analyses focus on the relationship between international immigration in general and on foreign and italian internal migration (see for example mocetti/porello 2010; benassi et al. 2019). basile et al. (2018) probe whether international migrants are complements or substitutes to the italian workforce. they identify a displacement effect of foreign immigration for 2003-2011 regarding the foreign-born and the low-qualifi ed (with a lower secondary, and especially primary, level of education) italian population, as well as a complementary effect to the more highly educated italian population. the last twenty years have been characterised by a slight upturn of internal mobility that has been halted by the recent economic and fi nancial crisis (bonifazi et al. 2017). notwithstanding the low internal migration intensities and the reduction of the positive international migration balance, the geographic net migration patterns of foreigners and italians seem to have changed markedly over recent years. 3 data and methods in his work, ravenstein used migration data by place of birth from the 1871 and 1881 british censuses, along with similar data from censuses in north america and europe (grigg 1977). the defi nition of the person as a migrant is taken from the information on the place at birth and the place of residence at the census dates. if the two places differ, the person is considered a migrant, though there is no data on when the migration actually took place. the data available to ravenstein allowed a distinction to be drawn between international migration and an internal move. ravenstein defi ned movements between adjacent counties as “short-distance” and showed that the majority of migrants only migrated in this manner. the present analysis is based on data from the italian population registers, using offi cial statistics on migratory movements occurring from 2002-2017. the population registers are organised at the municipal level. italy has almost 8,000 municipalities and every movement between them is counted in these registers. the population registers provide the information on migration fl ows that are recorded when an individual or a family registers a change of residence to the municipality • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci502 of destination. this registration is obligatory and gives access to many administrative advantages (local or regional differences in taxes, fees, insurance rates etc.), so it is likely that the vast majority of individuals indeed register their migration. on the other hand, particular subgroups, such as students, are less inclined to communicate their (temporary) residence to the new municipality. for each change of address, information on the municipalities of origin and destination as well as the main socio-demographic information of the individual that changes residence (citizenship, place and date of birth, sex, marital status and educational attainment) is also available. in 2012, a specifi c law (decree-law february 9th, 2012 n. 5, converted into law april 4th 2012 n. 35) led to the processing of the information on changes of residence in the municipal population registers almost in real time, with a noticeable reduction of the time elapsed between the request by the citizen and the fi nal transmission of the information to the registers. this change in registration methods resulted in an overcount of moves in 2012, which is why the data for 2012 should be interpreted with great caution. to provide spatially detailed analyses of the structure of migration fl ows in italy, we use fl ow data for 611 local labour market areas (llmas) or sistemi locali del lavoro. these areas were defi ned by istat (2015) and express the organisation of the italian national territory based on the relationships between individuals and the social and economic context. the llmas are based on the daily commuting patterns between the municipalities of residence and the place of work and defi ne the urban systems where most of the daily activities and movements of people are concentrated, providing a grid whose boundaries derive from actual social and economic processes and not historic or geographic ones. the information on the daily commuting fl ows for work were collected in the 15th population and housing census, carried out in 2011 (istat 2015). until march 2018, italy was divided into 611 lllmas: 225 in the north, 105 in the centre, and 281 in the south and the islands (or mezzogiorno). to facilitate the comparison of geographic patterns over time, the contribution focuses on two different periods: 2004-2008 and 2013-2017, divided by the effects of the great economic recession after 2008. in italy, a second economic downturn followed in 2012 and 2013 and the country does not seem to have recovered fully in the years thereafter. whereas the fi rst period is characterised by a (slowly) growing economy, the second period is characterised by high unemployment in the aftermath of the economic crisis. we omit the years 2009 to 2012 in this comparison, since these are years of transition without clear regional patterns and because 2012 presents the abovementioned data situation. the analysis of the role of migration for population change is based on net migration rates at the regional level and aggregate net migration rates (anmrs) at the national level. the latter is used for the comparison of internal net migration over the entire study period (2002-2017). the aggregate rate is defi ned as anmr = 100 * 0.5 σi |di – oi| /p (i), where the variables di and oi are infl ows to and outfl ows from region i, and p(i) is the population at risk in region i (bell et al. 2002; rees et al. 2017). the anmr thus measures the impact of migration on population redistribution: it identifi es the net shift of population between regions per hundred persons resident population change and international and internal migration in italy • 503 in the country. in a second part of the analysis, we focus on geographic differences and compare the two periods (2004-2008 and 2013-2017) based on net migration rates. annual citizenship, sex and age data by istat and updated after the 2011 population census serve as the denominator for calculations of the rates (see http://demo. istat.it/ and http://demo.istat.it/ricostruzione2013/index.php). the net migration rates nmr (nmr = 100 * (di – oi) /p(i), with the variables di and oi denoting infl ows to and outfl ows from region i, and p(i) as the average population at risk in region i) are calculated for the total population and by citizenship, sex and age groups. it should be noted that since the fi rst years of the study period, the foreign population resident in italy has grown signifi cantly, growing from 1.5 million in 2003 to more than 5.2 million in 2019; 8.7 percent of the total population. this process goes hand in hand with an increasing number of naturalisations. throughout this paper, the terms “italian population” or “italians” and “foreign population“ or “foreigners“ are used to distinguish the resident population by citizenship. in recent years, the number of naturalisations increased considerably, with a maximum of 185,000 in 2016. when discussing distance, one important point is certainly the way distance is measured. whereas in the past the geographic distance was the point of reference, distance can today be expressed in many other ways, including expenditures in money and time. we nonetheless prefer the distance between the geographic centres of the llmas for simplicity’s sake. socio-economic indices were used to test the possible factors that infl uence the internal and international net migration rates (for a complete list, see annex 2). the rates of economic activity and unemployment rates are annually estimated by istat (see https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/217437). other and more detailed socioeconomic information is drawn from the 2011 population census. in general, the geographic patterns of the indices are stable over time and a high collinearity is observed between indices. for example, the geographic differences of economic activity, unemployment, and the share of foreign population are very similar. this is not surprising given that italy is a country divided into two macro-areas of economic well-being. a further dimension includes population density, which is generally used to defi ne settlement characteristics of the llmas and to describe processes of urbanisation (champion 2001; bonifazi/heins 2003). population density is the ratio between resident population of a territorial unit (here the llmas) and their surface area (expressed in square kilometres). in the italian context, population density does not describe settlement characteristics and the process of urbanisation very effectively, as rural areas can also have a relatively high population density. additional socio-economic information is therefore used to systematically describe the territorial differences in the italian context. regarding llma age structure, our main focus is on the share of the 20-44-year-olds, the age group with the highest migration intensities. the geographic differences in the age structure are the result of past patterns of demographic change, e.g. lower fertility rates in the centre-north and higher ones in the mezzogiorno, and more recent international immigration. the age structure patterns are only partially related to socio-economic disparities. urbanity (defi ned • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci504 as high proportions of university degree-holders and employment in sectors such as it or fi nancial services) is a less decisive socio-demographic and socio-economic aspect. the same holds for the late departure from the parental home, a specifi cally southern european and italian cultural aspect infl uencing internal migration patterns of the local population, is represented through the share of the 20-44-yearolds living in the same household as their parents. population-weighted correlation coeffi cients are used to test for links between international and internal net migration patterns and these socio-economic indices. inspired by ravenstein’s work, this paper aims to provide further insights into the recent migration patterns in italy by analysing the socio-demographic and geographic detail of international and internal net migration patterns. the analysis of internal migration considers the distance migrated and the abovementioned factors linked to the italian settlement system and the economic situation that are hypothesised to infl uence the migration patterns at the level of the llmas. 4 ravenstein’s seven “laws”: an italian checklist our analysis of migration fl ows at the nation-wide scale and for selected case study regions aims to verify some of the “laws” observed by ravenstein over the past 20 years for the italian context. ravenstein’s seven “laws” (1885: 198-199) are: 1. “... the great body of our migrants only proceed a short distance” forming “ ‘currents of migration’ setting in the direction of the great centres of commerce and industry which absorb the migrants.” 2. migration is leading to population gain through a process of single short distance migration fl ows towards attractive areas. the areas of absorption are areas of positive net migration. 3. migration is leading to population loss in the areas that are feeding the process of absorption. the areas of dispersion are areas of negative net migration. in these processes the communication facilities are offsetting the deterrence effect of distance or “facilities of communication may frequently the disadvantage of distance.” in fact the second and third “laws” are mirror images of one other: areas of population gain depend on areas of population loss. ravenstein associates the former with industry and commerce, and the latter with agriculture. migrations from the areas of dispersion to the areas of absorption were expected to occur in a cascading manner. 4. “each main current of migration produces a compensating counter-current.” 5. “migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centres of commerce and industry”, or towards today’s larger metropolitan areas. population change and international and internal migration in italy • 505 6. the natives of towns are less migratory than those of the rural parts of the country.” or, residents of urban areas have a lower propensity to migrate than rural residents. 7. “females are more migratory that males.” or, women have a higher propensity to migrate. needless to say, due to the lack of data, the statements about the different inclinations (being “less” and “more migratory”) were not based on detailed demographic analysis, but on the observation of frequencies. nonetheless, ravenstein argued for a demographic approach taking both the population at origin and destination into account. of the seven “laws” put forward by ravenstein, this paper focuses specifi cally on the role of two socio-demographic variables: citizenship and sex. we analyse the differences between men and women and between italians and foreign nationals in relation to international and internal migration and the impact on regional population change. further items on our checklist are the distance mentioned in several of ravenstein’s “laws” and the socio-economic characteristics of the areas of origin and destination. even though ravenstein does not explicitly mention the predominant role of the economic drivers of migration, several references are made to the “great centres of commerce and industry” as well as to rural areas when discussing the direction of migration fl ows and the processes of absorption and dispersion. before discussing the case studies, however, we will give a brief overview of recent trends in international and internal migration and population change in italy, and the regional relationship between international and internal migration and population change when comparing the two periods 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 by citizenship, sex, and age group. from 2002 through 2017, the total population resident in italy grew from 56.996 to 60.484 million. this increase is entirely due to the foreign component, since the italian population slightly decreased from 55.646 million at the beginning of 2002 to 55.340 million at the end of 2017. international migration has shaped national and regional demographic change in italy over the past two decades. figure 1 presents annual international net migration in relation to the respective population. the foreign population grew from 1.357 million at the beginning of 2002 to 5.144 million at the end of 2017 (5.256 at the end of 2018). for the foreign population, the years when measures to legalise irregular migrants were enacted clearly stand out. for example, the years 2002-2003 – after the bossi-fini law (law 189/2002) came into force – saw the legalisation of the legal status of about 650,000 irregular foreigners who presumably immigrated before 2002-2003. the 2007 eu enlargement brought another important migratory infl ux, especially from romania. the decrease of immigrants after the start of the economic crises and especially after 2010 brought the increase of the number of the foreign nationals resident in italy to a halt by 2014. only the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers after 2014 once again led to a slight increase in the international net migration rates. linked to the immigration fl ows, the high internal aggregate net migration rates of the foreign population are indicated in figure 2. until 2008, their total internal • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci506 migration change was signifi cantly higher than the italian one and only thereafter values declined to around 3 per mille. between 2013 and 2017, rates fl uctuated between 2 and 3 per mille. as mentioned earlier, the 2012 values are primarily infl uenced by the changes in administrative procedure, rather than by the economic downturn. the consistently decreasing internal mobility rate of the foreign population brings the total internal aggregate net migration rates to levels more similar to those recorded for the italian population. international net migration change is dominated in the fi rst years by the age groups 20-34, whereas in more recent years they have been superseded by the 15-19-year-olds, with increasing migration gains for the 15-19-year-olds and relative decreasing ones for the 30-34-year-olds (fig. 3). in fact, since 2014, the characteristics of immigration have changed profoundly: there has been a shift from work-related to family-related immigration. in addition, it should be noted that humanitarian emergencies have played an important role for the migratory infl ows. these changes are obviously refl ected in the international net migration rates by sex and age. however, it should also be noted that emigration fl ows might not always be registered properly due to a lack of incentives for people leaving italy to formally de-register (unece/eurostat 2010). until 2014, generally (slightly) more foreign women immigrated to italy than foreign men did (52.6 percent in 2002, 55.4 percent in 2010), but since then their share in immigration fl ows has declined to 41.6 percent in 2017. in the cases of the immifig. 1: international net migration rates, italy 2002-2017 (per 1,000) -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 year italians foreigners total international net migration rate (per 1,000) 2018 source: authors’ calculations based on istat: “iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] population change and international and internal migration in italy • 507 gration and emigration of the italian population, the shares of women are lower than those of men in all years. the internal net migration dynamics are dominated by the 20-34-year-olds, with the highest aggregate net migration rates for the age group 25-29. whereas an increasing trend is observed for the 25-34-year-olds, the trend for the younger age group (20-24) is decreasing. this is in line with the observation of the continuous postponing of life course events by young adults in italy (istat 2014). the overall internal aggregate net migration declined after 2008, most clearly for the young adults, and recovered in the last years. this paper examines a total of 22 cases in four groups. the fi rst contains the most important italian metropolitan areas: milan, genoa, bologna, rome, naples, bari and palermo, with the fi rst four central-northern metropolitan areas (except genoa) being areas of attraction (or “absorption”). the second covers mezzogiorno llmas characterised by migration loss: isernia, torre del greco, foggia, melfi , reggio calabria, vibo valentia, caltanissetta and gela. third, the tuscan llmas of florence, livorno (“leghorn”), pisa and prato is taken into account because ravenstein (1889) referred to them explicitly. fourth and fi nally, three “outliers” are considered: desenzano del garda on the shores of lake garda and meran in south tyrol show special patterns of net migration gain over recent years, since they are important tourist destinations, and l’aquila is of particular interest because it was hit by an earthquake in 2012. fig. 2: internal aggregate net migration rates, italy 2002-2017 (per 1,000) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 year italians foreigners total internal aggregate net migration rate (per 1,000) source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci508 table 1 gives an overview of the case studies, drawing on some basic indicators regarding the settlement structure and the demographic and socio-economic situation. for several indicators, the contrast between central-northern and southern italy is clearly visible. these include the presence of foreigners, the level of economic activity, and unemployment rates. another factor that leads to similarities between some of the selected llmas is the role of universities. the llmas with the highest ratio of enrolled students to the general population are by far pisa (254 to 1,000) and l’aquila (171), as well as bologna (96), florence (77), and bari (72). this is particularly important for the tuscan llmas, as is the very high share of foreign population. florence is an international centre attracting many different nationalities, while prato is one of the centres of chinese clothing manufacturing in italy. whereas ravenstein’s observations refer to migration fl ows in a historical period characterised by industrialisation and urbanisation, today’s regional patterns of socio-economic disparities in italy are more varied. the economy is characterised by the continual growth of the service sector rather than manufacturing, whereas the urbanisation process is substituted by locally differentiated processes of suband re-urbanisation. the geographic pattern of international net migration 2004-2008 refl ects the consistent infl ow of migrants in this period and shows that most areas of central-northern italy gained population (fig. 4), compared to the less attractive southern areas. the maps presented in figures 4 and 5 are cartograms in which land area is proportionally rescaled to match each llma’s 2011 census population, consequently “distorting” their shape. fig. 3: international net and internal aggregate net migration rates by age, italy 2002-2017 (per 1,000) source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 year 0-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-44 45-54 55+ international migration international net migration rate (per 1,000) internal migration internal aggregate net migration rate (per 1,000) 0 2 4 6 8 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 year population change and international and internal migration in italy • 509 a re a p o p u la ti o n a n n u al p o p u la ti o n p o p u la ti o n fo re ig n e co n o m ic u n em p o p u la 20 -6 4 p o p u la ti o n (in 1 ,0 00 ) p o p u la ti o n d en si ty 20 -4 4 p o p u la ti o n ac ti vi ty p lo ym en t ti o n 20 -6 4 ye ar -o ld s 20 -4 4 g ro w th , (p er k m 2 ) (% ) (% ) ra te , r at e, w it h a u n iem p lo ye d liv in g 20 02 -2 01 7 20 -6 4 20 -6 4 ve rs it y in t h e se ras s o n o r (% ) (% ) d eg re e vi ce s ec to r d au g h te r (% ) (% ) (% ) m et ro p ol it an l lm a s m ila n c -n 3, 68 2. 6 + 0. 63 7 20 04 32 .5 10 .0 76 .6 6. 6 21 .0 30 .1 27 .4 g en o a c -n 67 9. 5 -0 .2 69 74 9 28 .1 7. 0 72 .9 7. 5 20 .1 23 .9 29 .7 b o lo g n a c -n 84 7. 1 + 0. 61 8 33 8 31 .6 9. 8 78 .8 6. 2 23 .3 22 .8 23 .1 r o m e c -n 3, 47 7. 0 + 0. 93 5 89 4 32 .9 8. 8 72 .6 9. 8 23 .8 29 .9 32 .3 n ap le s m ez z. 2, 50 9. 6 + 0. 13 3 31 05 35 .3 2. 3 57 .1 26 .2 13 .3 19 .2 38 .9 b ar i m ez z. 73 6. 6 + 0. 23 3 45 8 34 .1 2. 3 63 .0 16 .0 15 .7 18 .7 39 .1 p al er m o m ez z. 87 9. 5 + 0. 15 8 75 8 34 .4 2. 5 60 .6 24 .1 14 .7 20 .5 37 .1 ll m a s w it h m ig ra ti on lo ss is er n ia m ez z. 79 .6 -0 .2 19 62 33 .1 2. 5 65 .6 13 .1 17 .6 13 .0 42 .4 to rr e d el g re co m ez z. 25 1. 7 -0 .1 93 26 34 34 .6 1. 7 56 .5 24 .5 12 .3 14 .5 39 .9 fo g g ia m ez z. 26 3. 1 -0 .2 01 12 4 33 .3 2. 5 60 .7 17 .4 14 .4 14 .6 40 .0 m el fi m ez z. 65 .0 -0 .0 85 58 34 .0 2. 9 66 .1 17 .0 11 .6 11 .0 37 .5 r eg g io c al ab ri a m ez z. 21 7. 4 -0 .0 01 46 3 34 .1 4. 3 63 .8 21 .8 20 .8 17 .9 41 .0 v ib o v al en ti a m ez z. 10 2. 8 -0 .0 54 19 3 34 .4 3. 5 61 .4 17 .8 15 .0 12 .8 40 .4 c al ta n is se tt a m ez z. 11 2. 3 -0 .1 55 16 4 32 .6 2. 5 61 .2 18 .7 14 .4 15 .3 38 .2 g el a m ez z. 10 3. 7 + 0. 08 6 27 6 35 .0 1. 3 54 .0 23 .5 9. 0 9. 4 34 .3 tu sc an l lm a s fl o re n ce c -n 68 6. 6 + 0. 4 41 56 9 30 .2 10 .3 76 .3 6. 4 22 .6 24 .2 29 .8 li vo rn o c -n 17 8. 6 + 0. 11 7 60 9 30 .7 5. 5 73 .0 10 .3 16 .6 19 .3 31 .5 p is a c -n 17 9. 1 + 0. 31 7 40 0 31 .9 7. 2 74 .7 8. 0 26 .2 22 .9 30 .0 p ra to c -n 27 2. 8 + 0. 70 3 66 6 33 .1 12 .8 76 .4 9. 1 11 .4 16 .7 31 .8 “o u tl ie r” l lm a s d es en za n o d el g ar d a c -n 85 .6 + 1. 45 1 31 3 34 .3 12 .4 75 .2 6. 5 14 .0 16 .4 25 .2 m er an c -n 80 .3 + 1. 01 1 12 0 33 .3 9. 2 80 .3 2. 9 14 .4 13 .5 29 .5 l’ a q u ila m ez z. 96 .3 + 0. 17 0 61 32 .8 6. 0 71 .8 7. 4 24 .6 19 .7 41 .7 it al y 59 ,1 32 .0 + 0. 37 2 19 7 32 .8 6. 8 70 .0 11 .0 15 .8 18 .1 33 .6 ta b . 1 : s el ec te d it al ia n ll m a s – b as ic in fo rm at io n, 2 01 1 c -n = c en tr en o rt h, m ez z. = m ez zo gi o rn o . f o r th e d efi n iti o n o f v ar ia b le s se e a nn ex 2 . s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n is ta t: p o p ul at io n es tim at es b y ci tiz en sh ip , se x an d a ge [ ht tp :/ /d em o .is ta t.i t/ ], 15 th p op ul at io n an d h o us in g c en su s 20 11 • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci510 internal net migration shows the north/south divide of italy, with most areas of the mezzogiorno losing population due to internal migration in 2004-2008 and, consequently, most of the northern llmas gaining. some metropolitan llmas of central-northern italy such as florence, milan, and turin also lost population in this period due to internal migration processes, whereas llmas adjacent to the metropolitan areas, as well as areas of central italy, show positive internal net migration rates. from 2013-2017, the geographic pattern of international net migration changes (fig. 5) was dominated by large net gains in the metropolitan llmas such as milan and adjacent areas, bologna, florence, and rome, and even some smaller llmas in the mezzogiorno. specifi c cases such as the llmas of crotone, isernia, and ragusa, where some of the reception centres for refugees and asylum seekers are located, appear clearly on the map because they often represent their fi rst residence. somewhat surprisingly, some smaller llmas closer to the austrian border as well as in the south have lost population due to a negative migration balance. these areas are especially losing young italian adults because of a lack of economic opportunities. before the great recession, this trend was hardly observed. internal net migration continues to divide italy, with the llmas of the mezzogiorno losing and those of central-northern italy almost homogenously moderately gaining population. only fig. 4: international and internal net migration rates, italian llmas 2004-2008 (per 1,000) > source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] � � international internal population change and international and internal migration in italy • 511 the llmas of bologna and parma, as well as smaller touristic or scenic areas continue to have a positive net migration above 3 per mille. the general decrease in regional disparities of international and internal net migration between the two periods 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 is worth highlighting. we give an indication of the similarity between the geographic patterns of the net migration rates by llma, sex, and international/internal migration by comparing population-weighted correlation coeffi cients (2011 census llma population data). regarding geographical patterns of international and internal migration, it can be noted that the correlation coeffi cients between the net migration rates in 2004-2008 are close to +0.450 for the general population as well as for men and women, and in 2013-2017 reach +0.368 in total, +0.186 for men and +0.516 for women. seemingly the attractiveness of areas is similar comparing the processes of international and internal migration, but by no means identical. interestingly, the similarity increases between the two periods for women, but diminishes for men. comparing the two periods, we note a more intense change in the geographical patterns than expected, since the net rates in the case of international migration for 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 correlate by +0.520 (+0.331 for men and +0.655 for women) and those for internal migration by +0.618 (+0.590 for men and +0.637 for women). it would be too easy to attribute these changes solely to the great recession, nevertheless it is an indication that changes (but not reversals of geographic patterns) occurred during the study period. fig. 5: international and internal net migration rates, italian llmas 2013-2017 (per 1,000) source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] � � international internal • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci512 in general, men and women have very similar geographical patterns of net migration rates: in the case of the internal migration balance, the coeffi cients are +0.958 in the fi rst and +0.943 in the second period. the patterns are also similar in the case of international moves in the fi rst period (+0.945), but less so in the second one (+0.678) due to the already mentioned relative decrease of the share of women in immigration fl ows after 2014. whereas for 2004-2008 a generally high similarity between the internal net migration rates and the age group-specifi c ones is observed (over +0.600 for all age groups), in all other cases (international net migration rates of the two periods and internal net migration rates for 2013-2017), the differences in the patterns of the age group-specifi c net migration rates and the total one are more accentuated and close to zero at the age of retirement. since most migrants are young adults, their geographic patterns should determine the patterns of the total. whereas internal net migration in the pre-crises period did show less geographic variability, the geographic patterns of international net migration by age group and for 2013-2017 show a great variability, indicating a variety of factors infl uencing these patterns. the migration patterns of the case study llmas are summarised in table 2 and show the existing geographic disparities and the persistence as well as the dynamics of the migration patterns of the llmas and over time. all central-northern llmas have a positive internal migration balance in the second period, except for the fig. 6: correlation coeffi cients of international and internal net migration rates by age group, 2004-2008 and 2013-201 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-4 15-19 30-34 45-49 60-64 75+ age groups 2004-08 internal 2013-17 internal 2004-08 international 2013-17 international correlation coefficients source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] population change and international and internal migration in italy • 513 ta b . 2 : s el ec te d it al ia n ll m a s – in te rn at io na l a nd in te rn al in -, o u t a nd n et m ig ra tio n ra te s, 2 00 420 08 a nd 2 01 320 17 (p er 1 ,0 00 ) s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n is ta t: ” is cr iz io ni e c an ce lla zi o ni a ll’ an ag ra fe p er t ra sf er im en to d i r es id en za ”; p o p ul at io n es tim at es b y ci tiz en sh ip , s ex a nd a ge [h tt p :/ /d em o .is ta t.i t/ ] 20 04 -2 00 8 20 13 -2 01 7 in te rn al m ig ra ti o n in te rn at io n al m ig ra ti o n in te rn al m ig ra ti o n in te rn at io n al m ig ra ti o n in o u tn et in o u tn et in o u tn et in o u tn et m et ro p ol it an l lm a s m ila n 29 .0 31 .2 -2 .2 9. 5 1. 1 + 8. 3 27 .7 25 .4 + 2. 3 7. 3 2. 8 + 4. 5 g en o a 13 .5 14 .9 -1 .4 7. 1 1. 0 + 6. 1 13 .6 14 .0 -0 .4 5. 0 2. 1 + 3. 0 b o lo g n a 35 .9 32 .2 + 3. 7 9. 2 0. 9 + 8. 2 32 .4 27 .9 + 4. 5 6. 8 2. 7 + 4. 1 r o m e 18 .6 19 .5 -0 .9 10 .1 1. 2 + 8. 9 17 .7 16 .0 + 1. 7 6. 7 2. 2 + 4. 4 n ap le s 21 .6 28 .0 -6 .4 2. 4 0. 3 + 2. 1 20 .6 24 .0 -3 .4 3. 2 1. 3 + 1. 9 b ar i 12 .6 15 .9 -3 .3 2. 4 0. 6 + 1. 8 13 .2 15 .6 -2 .3 3. 1 1. 6 + 1. 5 p al er m o 18 .0 21 .6 -3 .6 2. 2 0. 9 + 1. 3 17 .0 19 .5 -2 .5 2. 3 2. 2 + 0. 1 ll m a s w it h m ig ra ti on lo ss is er n ia 16 .5 17 .9 -1 .4 4. 5 0. 8 + 3. 6 18 .0 20 .2 -2 .2 5. 9 2. 4 + 3. 4 to rr e d el g re co 18 .2 26 .8 -8 .6 2. 3 0. 3 + 1. 9 18 .2 22 .4 -4 .2 1. 9 1. 0 + 0. 9 fo g g ia 8. 8 14 .8 -6 .1 3. 5 0. 4 + 3. 1 8. 1 12 .8 -4 .7 4. 0 1. 0 + 3. 0 m el fi 8. 6 13 .1 -4 .5 3. 8 0. 8 + 3. 0 9. 6 13 .2 -3 .6 3. 8 1. 7 + 2. 0 r eg g io c al ab ri a 9. 4 12 .5 -3 .2 5. 0 0. 5 + 4. 5 9. 0 13 .4 -4 .4 4. 3 1. 8 + 2. 5 v ib o v al en ti a 14 .3 19 .7 -5 .5 5. 2 0. 9 + 4. 3 15 .6 19 .6 -4 .0 4. 6 1. 1 + 3. 5 c al ta n is se tt a 8. 7 12 .8 -4 .1 3. 0 1. 5 + 1. 6 9. 8 14 .4 -4 .6 8. 0 2. 2 + 5. 9 g el a 8. 5 14 .8 -6 .3 2. 7 2. 8 + 0. 0 6. 6 12 .0 -5 .4 2. 8 3. 0 -0 .2 tu sc an l lm a s fl o re n ce 23 .8 26 .6 -2 .8 9. 3 0. 9 + 8. 4 26 .0 23 .1 + 2. 8 7. 8 2. 1 + 5. 8 li vo rn o 14 .5 14 .4 + 0. 1 5. 8 0. 6 + 5. 2 15 .9 14 .3 + 1. 6 4. 7 2. 1 + 2. 6 p is a 29 .0 26 .4 + 2. 6 7. 4 1. 0 + 6. 4 29 .0 27 .2 + 1. 8 6. 3 2. 3 + 4. 0 p ra to 22 .6 22 .8 -0 .2 10 .2 0. 6 + 9. 5 21 .6 21 .1 + 0. 5 8. 4 2. 0 + 6. 4 “o u tl ie r” l lm a s d es en za n o d el g ar d a 43 .9 35 .0 + 8. 9 11 .9 1. 0 + 10 .9 35 .8 31 .2 + 4. 7 5. 9 3. 7 + 2. 2 m er an 27 .8 24 .2 + 3. 6 9. 8 2. 6 + 7. 2 28 .5 23 .6 + 4. 9 7. 2 5. 4 + 1. 8 l’ a q u ila 17 .1 16 .9 + 0. 2 6. 5 0. 7 + 5. 8 19 .2 22 .3 -3 .2 6. 3 1. 9 + 4. 5 it al y 6. 9 0. 9 6. 0 5. 0 2. 4 + 2. 6 • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci514 old industrial city of genoa. it seems that the economic crises amplifi ed the economic weaknesses of the mezzogiorno, leading to migration gains in the north. the special cases are two attractive tourist destinations and the llma of l’aquila, which was hit by an earthquake in 2009. regarding international migration, the gains decreased but continued to play an important role in regional population change, contributing to population growth or at least limiting losses due to negative internal net migration. when observing the single case studies, it is obvious that a great geographic variability exists regarding the impact of internal and international migration on regional population change. among the selected metropolitan areas, the high migration gain of milan in 2013-2017 for young adults (fig. 7a), a turnaround from the internal losses of the earlier period due to sub-urbanisation processes, contrasts with the consistent losses of the llma of naples (fig. 7c). bari and palermo, the other two southern metropolitan llmas, show similar patterns of the process of age selectivity of internal migration. in the region of rome, similarly to milan, internal migration gains increased for most age groups between 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 (fig. 7b). however, migration losses for younger and older persons hint at the persistent selectivity of migration fl ows. the international migration gains of the rome llma diminished during the study period in all age groups. university towns such as pisa and bologna show high migration gains for young adults. foggia is an example of the other side of the coin: an llma that consistently loses young adults and does not even seem to take advantage of return migrants (fig. 7d). while international immigration leads to a generalised migration gain in all categories, the demographic effect is most impressive in the metropolitan areas of central-northern italy, with extremely high gains for the young foreign adults. in the two periods, all selected llmas show a gain from international migration. in some cases the co-location of institutions for persons in search of international protection leads to extremely high, if often only temporary, net migration gains. regarding the observation that women have a higher propensity to migrate, we already mentioned that ravenstein seems not to have conducted his analyses using a reference population or a population at risk. when analysing age-specifi c patterns of migration intensities (bonifazi et al 2020), it becomes clear that women anticipate many life events including migratory moves, but that over a lifetime it seems diffi cult to postulate higher propensities for women in the case of italy. only in the case of foreign women an exception was noted in recent years: higher propensities to migrate of older adult women due to their engagement as care providers for individuals and families. however, focusing on the change of residence from and to the selected seven metropolitan llmas, we observe an overall higher propensity to migrate for men (fig. 8). however, the differences between men and women vary between the llmas, between the in-migration and out-migration fl ows, and between the two periods considered. italian men consistently seem to migrate more than italian women. regarding the foreign population, the patterns completely change between 20042008 and 2013-2017. in the fi rst period, foreign men show a clearly higher propensity to migrate (even though surprising exceptions such as the infl ows to the llmas population change and international and internal migration in italy • 515 of bari and genoa are observed). in the second period, the situation changes, as the sex differences are less strong, and women seem to migrate more than men (with the exception of in-migration to naples and out-migration from naples and palermo). as for the international migration fl ows (fig. 9), italian men migrate more than italian women. for the foreign population, the immigration rates completely change between 2004-2008 and 2013-2017. the sex distribution varied greatly between llmas for 2004-2008 in particular. in the second period, the situation changed and the differences between women and men are more apparent and always in favour of the latter. regarding the international emigration of foreigners, the llmas of the centre-north show a higher propensity of women, while the opposite is true for the llmas of the south in both periods. fig. 7: international and internal net migration patterns by age-group of selected italian llmas, 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 (per 1,000) -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0-4 10-14 20-24 30-34 40-44 50-54 60-64 70-74 age groups 2004-2008 internal 2004-2008 international 2013-2017 internal 2013-2017 international a milan net migration rates (per 1,000) -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0-4 10-14 20-24 30-34 40-44 50-54 60-64 70-74 age groups 2004-2008 internal 2004-2008 international 2013-2017 internal 2013-2017 international b rome net migration rates (per 1,000) -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 0-4 10-14 20-24 30-34 40-44 50-54 60-64 70-74 age groups 2004-2008 internal 2004-2008 international 2013-2017 internal 2013-2017 international c naples net migration rates (per 1,000) -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 0-4 10-14 20-24 30-34 40-44 50-54 60-64 70-74 age groups 2004-2008 internal 2004-2008 international 2013-2017 internal 2013-2017 international d foggia net migration rates (per 1,000) source: authors’ calculations based on istat: “iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci516 the development of the communication and transportation infrastructure and the existing migration networks between the south and the administrative and economic centres of the centre-north certainly offset the deterrent effect of distance. however, most migrants within italy still only move a short distance. since italian data on changes of residence refer to the municipality as smallest territorial unit, not all changes of residence over short distances are included in the present analysis. as for ravenstein, the main focus is on longer-distance migration fl ows. in 2013-2017, 34 percent of migratory fl ows took place below the 10km threshold (distances of intra-llma migration fl ows are estimated: 1/2 of the radius of the circle with the llma’s surface area), 72 percent below 50km, 79 percent below 100km, and only 13 percent exceed 300km. this leads to an average migration distance of 115km in the 2013-2017 period in total (slightly down from 121km in fig. 8: internal in-migration and out-migration of the metropolitan italian llmas by citizenship and sex, 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 (per 1,000) in-migration 2004-2008 internal in-migration rates 2004-2008 (per 1,000) in-migration 2013-2017 internal in-migration rates 2013-2017 (per 1,000) out-migration 2004-2008 internal out-migration rates 2004-2008 (per 1,000) out-migration 2013-2017 internal out-migration rates 2013-2017 (per 1,000) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo italian men italian women foreign men foreign women 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo 0 20 40 60 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo 0 20 40 60 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] population change and international and internal migration in italy • 517 2004-2008), 120km for italians and 92km for foreign citizens. when excluding the migration fl ows between municipalities within a single llma, the respective values roughly double, leading to an average migratory distance of 211km, down from 224km. the average migratory distances range between 95km and 135km (179km and 244km when excluding intra-llma changes of residence). distances increase with age for young people, reaching their highest values for the 25-29-years-olds, then decreasing until the 50-54 age group, followed by another rise, except for 75-year-olds and above. between 2004-2008 and 2013-2017, the average distances migrated diminished for the under-30-year-olds. it is certainly true for italy that most migrants proceed only a short distance, with the important exception of migration fl ows from the mezzogiorno to some metrofig. 9: international immigration and emigration rates of the metropolitan italian llmas by citizenship and sex, 2004-2008 and 2013-2017 (per 1,000) immigration 2004-2008 international immigration rates 2004-2008 (per 1,000) immigration 2013-2017 international immigration rates 2013-2017 (per 1,000) emigration 2004-2008 international emigration rates 2004-2008 (per 1,000) emigration 2013-2017 international emigration rates 2013-2017 (per 1,000) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 milan genoa bologna rome naples bari palermo italian men italian women foreign men foreign women source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/] • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci518 politan areas of the centre-north, e.g. turin, milan, bologna, or rome. this confi rms ravenstein’s observation that long-distance migrations are usually directed towards the larger metropolitan areas (“great centres of commerce and industry”). for italy, this observation can be confi rmed – at least for the industrial and commercial centres of the centre-north and for the llma of milan in particular. however, the ubiquity of information and the existence of migratory networks make it easier for internal as well as international migrants to choose the destination they desire, so the concept of the great centres of commerce and industry has to be adapted to the present day realities. specifi c functions of an llma (higher education, for example) might be of greater importance for attracting long-distance migrants, as well as the presence of specifi c sub-divisions of the tertiary sectors. finally, we analyse socio-economic aspects of italian international and internal migration patterns following the implicit comments of ravenstein regarding the drivers of migration when mentioning the “great centres of commerce and industry”. rural areas no longer play a signifi cant role in the migration system due to the decreasing importance of the italian agricultural sector (bonifazi/heins 2000) and the ensuing out-migration from rural areas. table 3 reports selected results and confi rms the importance of the socio-economic dimension (represented by the incidence of the foreign population (%) and other information of economic wellbeing) for the geographical patterns of net migration rates. figure 10 shows the two most telling examples: the international net migration rates in 2004-2008 and the internal net migration rates in 2013-2017. both show a positive relationship between economic activity rates (for the 20-64-year-olds) and net migration rates. the activity rates show a clear difference between the mezzogiorno (with lower values) and the, on average, economically better-off central-northern italian llmas (with higher ones). international migration gains in the years preceding the economic crises are clearly determined by the economic and labour situation of the llmas, although important local variations are observed. these are attributable to the important immigration fl ows of this period and local labour market specifi cities regarding, for example, caregiving and the agricultural sector, where many foreigners are employed. in the more recent period (2013-2017), characterised by lower immigration fl ows, the correlation coeffi cients are lower. (clearly, the correlation analysis only assesses a linear relationship between the distributions, a limitation when considering the relationship between net migration rates and socio-economic variables.) regarding internal net migration, the positive relationship with the activity rates (+0.580) in 2004-2008 intensifi ed in 2013-2017 (+0.788), probably due to lower variability and a clearer linear relationship. in general, the combination of different socio-economic information does not increase the share of the geographic differences of the net migration rates “explained” by them. based on the role played by population density in the italian settlement system, it is not surprising that the correlation coeffi cients are relatively low. in the pre-crises period, a positive migration balance could be observed for mid-sized llmas to the detriment of highand low-density llmas. however, the geographical variability is so high that it would be incorrect to defi ne this period as counter-metropolitan or characterised by movement away from population change and international and internal migration in italy • 519 ta b . 3 : c o rr el at io n co ef fi c ie n ts b et w ee n n et m ig ra tio n p at te rn s an d s o ci o -e co no m ic v ar ia b le s, 6 11 it al ia n ll m a s, 2 00 420 08 a n d 2 01 320 17 e co n o m ic e co n o m ic e co n o m ic p o p u la ti o n p o p u la ti o n fo re ig n 20 -6 4 -y ea ro ld s p o p u la ti o n ac ti vi ty ac ti vi ty ac ti vi ty d en si ty , 20 -4 4, p o p u la ti o n em p lo ye d 20 -4 4 ra te s, 2 0 ra te s 15 + , ra te s 15 + , 20 11 20 11 (% ) (% ) in t h e se rv ic e liv in g as 64 , 2 01 1 20 06 -2 00 8 20 13 -2 01 7 (l o g1 0) se ct o r, 20 11 so n o r (% ) (% ) (% ) (% ) d au g h te r (% ) in te rn al n et m ig ra ti o n ra te s (p er 1 ,0 00 ) to ta l p o p u la ti o n 20 04 -2 00 8 + 0. 58 0* * + 0. 63 1* * + 0. 57 5* * -0 .2 26 ** -0 .1 88 ** + 0. 48 6* * -0 .0 63 -0 .4 81 ** to ta l p o p u la ti o n 20 13 -2 01 7 + 0. 78 8* * + 0. 76 7* * + 0. 76 4* * + 0. 17 9* * -0 .3 46 ** + 0. 65 2* * + 0. 49 9* * -0 .7 36 ** in te rn at io n al n et m ig ra ti o n ra te s (p er 1 ,0 00 ) to ta l p o p u la ti o n 20 04 -2 00 8 + 0. 73 8* * + 0. 75 3* * + 0. 77 7* * + 0. 11 5* * -0 .2 52 ** + 0. 90 3* * + 0. 37 9* * -0 .7 18 ** to ta l p o p u la ti o n 20 13 -2 01 7 + 0. 34 4* * + 0. 31 6* * + 0. 34 7* * + 0. 22 0* * -0 .0 99 * + 0. 46 9* * + 0. 48 2* * -0 .4 15 ** ** s ig ni fi c an t a t t he 0 .0 1 le ve l a nd * s ig ni fi c an t a t t he 0 .0 5 le ve l. s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio n fr o m is ta t: ” is cr iz io ni e c an ce lla zi o ni a ll’ an ag ra fe p er tr as fe ri m en to d i r es id en za ”; p o p ul at io n es tim at es b y ci tiz en sh ip , s ex a nd a ge [h tt p :/ /d em o .is ta t.i t/ ]. is ta t: 1 5t h po p ul at io n an d h o us in g c en su s 20 11 a nd is ta t: “ o cc up at i r es id en ti e p er so ne in c er ca d i o cc up az io ne n ei s is te m i l o ca li d el la vo ro ” [h tt p s: // w w w .is ta t.i t/ it/ in fo rm az io ni -t er ri to ri al i-e -c ar to gr afi c he / si st em i-l o ca lid el -la vo ro ] • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci520 metropolitan areas. rather, employment in the private service sector (along with a general higher level of educational attainment), which is higher in the metropolitan areas of the centre-north, is positively correlated with net migration rates in 20132017. this is probably an indication that the llmas with a higher share of employment in the private service sector were more resilient in the face of recent economic crises, compared to manufacturing-dependent llmas. (in a certain way, the discussion regarding population density does apply.) as with the economic variables, the data regarding young adults living with their parents is characterised by a north/ south gradient, with a higher share of 20-44-year-olds living with their parents in the mezzogiorno and with a lower or negative migration balance (although regional specifi cities do exist). finally, in lieu of a summary, some results of a simple regression analyses of net migration fl ows between the case study llmas and all other llmas are discussed. these population-weighted regression analyses for net migration rates for single migration fl ows use the independent variables listed in annex 2. the analyses of the single net migration fl ows confi rm the general patterns already discussed. the quantitatively most important net migration fl ows and the most unbalanced ones are those to neighbouring llmas. for the milan llma, these include como, bergamo, busto arsizio, pavia, crema, lodi, lecco, vigevano; for the rome llma, pomezia (bordering rome to the south, it gained 16,200 individuals through the migratory exchange with rome in 2004-2008, but only 2,000 in 20132017; in total it has the highest volume and net migration in the italian case), viterbo, and rieti; but the same is true also for the tuscan llmas and the other larger llfig. 10: two examples of the relationship between net migration rates (per 1,000) and economic activity rates (per 100), italian llmas source: authors’ calculations based on istat: ”iscrizioni e cancellazioni all’anagrafe per trasferimento di residenza”; population estimates by citizenship, sex and age [http://demo.istat.it/]. istat: 15th population and housing census 2011 -5 0 5 10 15 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 economic activity rates of 20-64 years old, 2011 (%) 10,000 residents or less 10,001 to 50,000 residents 50,001 to 100,000 residents 100,001 to 500,000 residents 500,001 or more residents international net migration rates 2004-2008 (per 1,000) international net migration rates 2004-2008 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 economic activity rates of 20-64 years old, 2011 (%) internal net migration rates 2013-2017 (per 1,000) internal net migration rates 2013-2017 desenzano del garda rome bologna florence prato milan torinovenezia busto arsizo comopadova livorno genoa cagliari melfi isernia reggio calabria catania palermo gela naples vibo valetia barifoggia bologna merandesenzano del garda livorno florence como bergamo busto arsizo padova prato rome venezia genoa cagliari l'aquila catania bari palermo vibo valentia melfi isernia foggiacalttanissettanaplesgela torre del greco population change and international and internal migration in italy • 521 mas. between the two periods (2004-2008 and 2013-2017), the net migration loss of the metropolitan llmas diminished signifi cantly, leading to a slowdown of the suburbanisation process. however, in the case of the southern llma of naples, the net migration loss to rome and milan is far more important than the suburban net migration losses to the neighbouring llmas of caserta and nola. interestingly, some of the long-distance net migration losses towards the metropolitan llmas of central-northern italy increased after the economic downturn. this is especially true for the net migration fl ows to the advantage of milan, but also turin, florence, and rome as the largest llmas. the interesting case of the net migration fl ow between rome and milan increased in its volume and changed from a quite balanced fl ow with a slight gain for milan in the entire fi rst period (about 500 persons) to a net gain of more than 3,100 in the second period. in general, the internal net migration gains increased for milan between the two periods and the italian migration system seems to be more focused on milan today than before the great economic recession, when fl ows were more balanced and general net migration losses of the metropolitan llmas to their surroundings could be observed. the metropolitan llmas of the mezzogiorno generally only have few net migration fl ows leading to a net migration gain, mostly these are fl ows that are linked to their function as regional capitals (naples, bari, palermo, and reggio calabria). llmas such as vibo valentia (calabria), caltanissetta and gela (sicily) only have negative net migration fl ows. all these llmas have been losing population – especially after the start of the crises – to milan, turin, rome, and the other economic centres of central-northern italy. traditional links between origins and destinations, such as a preference for the adriatic corridor for areas in apulia to bologna and the northeast, or rome and lombardy for the sicilian areas, seem to have played a smaller role in 2013-2017. for the tuscan llmas, we observe a net migratory loss only for neighbouring or suburban llmas, or even between the llmas included here as case studies, such as the net fl ows between florence and prato or pisa and livorno, where a turnaround in net gains (or net losses) is observed between the two periods. in the case of pisa in particular, the presence of installations of the military marine could explain the migratory exchange with places such as la spezia and taranto. the two special cases of desenzano del garda and meran are gaining population from their local or regional migration fi eld and through positive net migration fl ows from milan, rome, and naples. for l’aquila, an increasing net migration loss to pescara, as well as milan and rome, is observed. the results of regression models for net migration patterns of single llmas are partially inconclusive (table 4). the adjusted r2 of the regression models seems to be too low for drawing reliable conclusions in the great majority of instances. only in the cases of milan and rome do the results seem to be more robust, because their migration fi eld spans the entire nation and the remotest and smallest llmas are connected to these centres by some migratory fl ows. the differences in the results of the two case studies are certainly due to their geographic locations, for which the differences in the results for the distance parameter are an obvious indication. moreover, while milan and rome are important centres, their roles in the italian economic and migratory system are different. • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci522 r2 d is ta n ce p o p u la ti o n p o p u la ti o n p o p u la ti o n fo re ig n e co n o m ic u n em p lo y p o p u la ti o n 20 -6 4 p o p u la ti o n (l o g1 0) g ro w th , d en si ty 20 -4 4 (% ) p o p u la ti o n ac ti vi ty r at e m en t r at e 20 -6 4 w it h ye ar -o ld s 20 -4 4 liv in g 20 02 -2 01 7 (l o g1 0) (% ) 20 -6 4 (% ) 20 -6 4 (% ) a u n iv er si ty em p lo ye d as s o n o r d eg re e (% ) in t h e d au g h te r se rv ic e (% ) se ct o r( % ) m ila n 20 04 -2 00 8 to ta l 0. 52 6 -1 .0 88 0. 38 9 -0 .1 90 -0 .3 86 -0 .2 55 0. 13 7 0. 17 4 m en 0. 53 1 -1 .1 01 0. 39 5 -0 .1 99 -0 .3 78 -0 .2 68 0. 14 3 0. 18 9 w o m en 0. 50 5 -0 .9 48 0. 36 1 -0 .0 96 -0 .4 67 0. 15 8 it al ia n s 0. 51 7 -1 .0 19 0. 38 7 -0 .2 17 -0 .3 96 -0 .1 84 0. 13 7 0. 16 5 fo re ig n er s 0. 50 5 -1 .0 06 0. 27 6 -0 .1 84 -0 .2 12 -0 .1 89 0. 13 7 0. 20 1 20 13 -2 01 7 to ta l 0. 66 4 -0 .6 46 0. 47 9 -0 .2 86 -0 .2 89 0. 25 1 -0 .2 16 0. 20 8 m en 0. 64 7 -0 .6 13 0. 43 4 -0 .1 20 -0 .2 33 -0 .2 59 0. 24 7 -0 .2 85 0. 15 2 0. 17 7 w o m en 0. 65 5 -0 .6 61 0. 45 2 -0 .2 63 -0 .2 92 0. 24 6 -0 .2 95 0. 10 9 0. 21 7 it al ia n s 0. 66 8 -0 .6 49 0. 45 9 -0 .2 64 -0 .2 59 0. 25 7 -0 .2 19 0. 21 8 fo re ig n er s 0. 20 7 -0 .2 03 0. 29 0 -0 .2 57 -0 .1 01 r om e 20 04 -2 00 8 to ta l 0. 47 0 -0 .5 08 0. 45 5 -0 .3 05 -0 .1 80 -0 .4 30 0. 46 8 m en 0. 47 9 -0 .5 30 0. 43 5 -0 .3 27 -0 .1 59 -0 .4 16 0. 46 8 w o m en 0. 45 7 -0 .4 80 0. 47 4 -0 .2 79 -0 .2 04 -0 .4 42 0. 46 5 it al ia n s 0. 46 7 -0 .4 96 0. 52 1 -0 .3 08 -0 .2 30 -0 .1 01 -0 .4 51 0. 48 2 fo re ig n er s 0. 4 45 -0 .5 42 0. 38 7 -0 .3 05 -0 .1 30 -0 .3 31 -0 .3 19 0. 41 6 20 13 -2 01 7 to ta l 0. 62 2 0. 45 4 -0 .4 16 0. 28 4 -0 .4 50 0. 36 9 m en 0. 58 6 -0 .1 21 0. 43 2 -0 .1 20 -0 .3 91 0. 27 9 -0 .4 82 0. 46 6 w o m en 0. 61 0 0. 37 4 0. 09 3 -0 .3 47 -0 .1 65 0. 38 1 -0 .4 25 0. 26 7 -0 .1 75 it al ia n s 0. 59 4 -0 .0 48 0. 43 4 -0 .4 10 0. 29 7 -0 .4 31 0. 34 9 fo re ig n er s 0. 23 0 -0 .1 18 0. 20 9 -0 .1 63 -0 .2 35 s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio n fr o m is ta t: ” is cr iz io ni e c an ce lla zi o ni a ll’ an ag ra fe p er tr as fe ri m en to d i r es id en za ”; p o p ul at io n es tim at es b y ci tiz en sh ip , s ex an d a ge [ ht tp :/ /d em o .is ta t.i t/ ]. is ta t: 1 5t h po p ul at io n an d h o us in g c en su s 20 11 . o nl y si gn ifi ca nt r eg re ss io n co ef fi c ie nt s at t he 0 .0 5 le ve l ( fu ll m o d el ) a re r ep o rt ed . t he s o ci o -e co no m ic v ar ia b le s re fe r to th e si tu at io n in th e o th er l lm a s. f o r th e d efi n iti o n o f v ar ia b le s se e a nn ex 2 ta b . 4 : r eg re ss io n re su lt s o f i n te rn al n et m ig ra tio n fl o w s o f t he l lm a s o f m ila n an d r o m e w it h th e o th er 6 10 it al ia n ll m a s, 2 00 420 08 a nd 2 01 320 17 population change and international and internal migration in italy • 523 rome has a more administrative and political, milan a more economic function. in fact, distance plays a smaller role in the case of rome. however, the distance parameter is systematically lower in the second period and also has a negative effect (lower migratory gains or losses to areas of high population density disappear in the second period). the regression results linked to population growth and age structure, as well as the presence of the foreign population and the activity rates, refl ect general characteristics of areas of migration gains or losses. they do not suggest direct determinants of net migration patterns. interestingly, the presence of foreign population seems to infl uence the net migration patterns most strongly in the case of milan. at the same time, unemployment does not emerge in any case as a factor of migration gains or losses. in general, no fundamental differences between the results for women and men are observed. however, the results for the foreign population seem to indicate different factors that determine the net migration patterns, factors that are not captured through the set of socio-economic variables here. as observed in another context (greenwood 2019), individuals, families, and places are heterogenous, and the increasing segmentation of society and the housing and labour markets makes observing generalised migratory behaviour more diffi cult. the challenge is not only one of analytical precision, but also in the fact that social (and migratory) processes are less “standardised”. greenwood (2019: 273) also offers an interesting discussion regarding the role of differential economic opportunities, such as those in italy today. however, in the italian context, the set of potential motivations for internal mobility is so varied and complicated that it seems to have escaped the attention of modellers. 5 summary of fi ndings ravenstein’s empirical approach seems absolutely valid and useful today when applied to present-day italy, although some of his observations are – naturally – a product of the demographic and socio-economic situation of his times, the geographical setting, and data availability. regarding migration patterns, italy seems to present a special case not easily comparable to other european countries. therefore it would seem inappropriate to expect ravenstein’s 130-year-old “laws” to fully hold when applied to present-day italy. this contribution attempted to focus on the empirical method followed by ravenstein, for which he had great sense and sensibility. two specifi c factors predominantly affected recent aspects of italian migration trends: first, around the turn of the millennium, international migration fl ows completely changed the italian setting. increasing immigration and the specifi c migration patterns of the foreign population due to their socially and economically more precarious living conditions (e.g. higher migration intensity, shorter average distance) continue to drive a general change in migration patterns. in addition with the great economic recession, the emigration of italians is once again playing a role as an alternative to internal migration fl ows, because internal migration is associated with relatively high indirect and direct costs due to the rigidities of the housing and la• federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci524 bour markets. these circumstances make emigration to study and work in another eu country attractive, while freedom of movement in the eu makes it widely feasible. in recent years, the number of italian emigrants both less and highly qualifi ed increased, following existing networks of italians abroad that were created by earlier waves of emigration as well as new destinations. second, the growth of the metropolitan llmas of central-northern italy seems to have picked up in the wake of the great recession, even if this growth is generally more directed to the centres than the peripheries. after an apparent stagnation of internal migration gains, or even losses, in the years up to the crises, these metropolitan areas now again show internal migration gains. our results show that more men than women migrate internationally; in the case of internal moves the rates of migration by men and women are similar; internal migration is more important for the foreign than the italian population; and international migration gains contribute substantially more to overall population change than internal migration gains and losses do. not all areas in italy characterised by high unemployment show an effect of dispersion, and distance does not seem to be a deterrent to migrate. the geographically detailed analysis illustrates the temporal and spatial coexistence of many diverse international and internal migration processes according to local socio-economic characteristics. notwithstanding the geographic heterogeneity we observe regarding the nexus between the international and internal migration patterns and regional population change, we must acknowledge the importance of the economic and administrative centres of italy (e.g. milan, rome, naples, and turin) as the driving force behind the national patterns. however three main fundamental differences between england in the 1870/1880s and italy in the 2000s and 2010s exist: first, the type and detail of migration data are markedly different. ravenstein could not analyse migration fl ows in great demographic detail (greenwood 2019: 276) because the necessary data simply did not exist. for italy, we were able to show how selective migration fl ows are – not only regarding sex, but also regarding citizenship and age. unfortunately, other socio-demographic characteristics of the migrating individuals and families are not so accurate and continue to be diffi cult to obtain. obviously the differences between place of birth and register data, discussed in section 2, play a role. second, today’s demand for labour in italy is more segmented and specialised, or, in some cases, weaker and more diffuse. the openings of mines or of manufacturing sites that created a demand for unspecifi c labour in ravenstein’s analysis has long been supplanted regarding international migration by the demand for labour in caregiving, agriculture, and manufacturing – all of which in the italian case often imply the “3 d’s”: dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. in the case of internal migration, labour demand seems to play a minor or less specifi c role: since the great recession, the low-wage sector has been the only sector with a certain dynamic, but it hardly offers opportunities that would infl uence internal migration decisions. third and fi nally, knowledge about potential opportunities is now widely available at one’s fi ngertips though modern communication and information technology. population change and international and internal migration in italy • 525 this includes information about areas of destination and alternatives for internal and international migration. even 130 years after their formulation, ravenstein’s migration “laws” are still a valuable starting point in assessing and understanding migration processes and their role in regional population change in italy. the authors agree with greenwood’s conclusion (2019: 277): “thus, in general we can conclude that ravenstein provided a remarkable study of internal migration, the likes of which few have come close to matching.” – including this study. acknowledgements the authors are very grateful to the editors of the special issue (prof. philip rees and dr. nikola sander) for their support, help and 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european union (eurostat) 2010: guidelines for exchanging data to improve emigration statistics. prepared by the task force on measuring emigration using data collected by the receiving country. geneva: united nations [http://www.unece.org/fi leadmin/ dam/stats/publications/guidelines_improve_emigration_statistics.pdf, 05.08.2020] date of submission: 28.01.2020 date of acceptance: 22.06.2020 dr. federico benassi, francesca licari, dr. enrico tucci. italian national institute of statistics. rome, italy. e-mail: benassi@istat.it, licari@istat.it, tucci@istat.it url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/federico_benassi https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/francesca_licari https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/enrico_tucci dr. corrado bonifazi, frank heins (). institute for research on population and social policies (irpps). rome, italy. e-mail: corrado.bonifazi@irpps.cnr.it, frank.heins@irpps.cnr.it url: https://www.irpps.cnr.it/en/staff/corrado-bonifazi-3/ https://www.irpps.cnr.it/en/staff/frank-heins-en/ • federico benassi, corrado bonifazi, frank heins, francesca licari, enrico tucci530 appendix fig. a1: map of the case study areas � source: based on istat population change and international and internal migration in italy • 531 tab. a1: variables used in the analysis and in tables 1, 3, and 4 indicator defi nition source net migration rates see section 3 data and methods population registers economic activity rate 20-64, 2011 (%) share of the 20-64-yearolds employed and unemployed (%) 2011 population and housing census economic activity rate 15+, 2006-2008 (%) share of the over-14year-olds employed and unemployed (%) istat estimates of the employed and unemployed in the llmas economic activity rate 15+ share of over-14-year-olds employed and unemployed in (average values of yearly) istat estimates of the employed and unemployed in the llmas [https://www. istat.it/it/informazioniterritoriali-e-cartografi che/ sistemi-locali-del-lavoro] or [https://www.istat.it/it/ archivio/217437] population density (per km2) population per surface area per km2 2011 population and housing census population 20-44 (%) share of the 20-44-yearolds in the total population (%) 2011 population and housing census foreign population (%) share of the foreign population in the total population (%) 2011 population and housing census 20-64-year-olds employed in the service sector (%) share of the 20-64-yearolds employed in service sector (services for information and communication, as well as fi nancial and insurance activities) (%) 2011 population and housing census population 20-44 living as son or daughter (%) share of the 20-44-yearolds living in a household as child (%) 2011 population and housing census annual population growth 2002-2017 average population growth from 01.01.2002-31.12.2017 (%) population registers unemployment rate 20-64 (%) share of the 20-64-yearolds unemployed as a share of those that are employed and unemployed (%) 2011 population and housing census population 20-64 with an university degree (%) share of the 20-64-yearolds with an university degree (%) 2011 population and housing census published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey serap kavas abstract: it is increasingly acknowledged that gender (in-) equality is one of the most signifi cant factors underlying change in fertility behavior. researchers have extensively studied the link between gender (in-) equality and fertility decisionmaking in various settings. however, most of these studies have focused on industrialized countries in north america, europe, and east asia, while very few examine this relationship in a non-western, developing country context. employing individual-level survey data, this paper examines the relationship between parents’ gender role attitudes and their fertility intentions for an additional child in urban turkey, surveyed in 2014. the fi ndings of this study show that parents’ attitudes toward gender roles were not an important predictor of fertility decision-making in turkey. this study suggests that the lack of signifi cant fi ndings supporting the expected association may be related to the measurement of gender role attitudes, suggesting a need to construct a measure that addresses culture-specifi c aspects of gender roles. this study contributes to the literature by providing a new data point, turkey, and bringing a comparative perspective to the existing research. keywords: gender (in-) equality · fertility decisions · survey data · turkey 1 introduction fertility rates have fallen dramatically over recent decades in many countries across the world. for example, the phenomenon of “lowest-low fertility levels” has surfaced in central and eastern european countries (kohler et al. 2002), and east asia has also become a region marked by low fertility. moreover, examples of nonwestern low-fertility patterns can be extended to the middle east. countries in this region of the world are at different stages of a transition from high to low fertility, with total fertility rates hovering around replacement level, such as in lebanon and tunisia (assaad/roudi-fahimi 2007). comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 503-532 (date of release: 24.11.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-18 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-18en5 • serap kavas504 many theories have been offered to explain low fertility, including increasing individual autonomy and increasing age at fi rst marriage (e.g., caldwell/schindlmayr 2003); postponement of childbearing due to economic uncertainty, and the opportunity costs of childbearing (e.g., kohler et al. 2002). recent research has drawn increasing attention to the relationship between gender equality and fertility behavior. mcdonald’s (2000a/b) gender equity theory in particular postulates that the decline in fertility is largely related to the inconsistency between increased gender equality in institutions of education and labor markets on the one hand and relatively low levels of gender equity in family and family-related settings on the other. building on the gender equity framework, gender revolution theory has suggested that gender egalitarianism in both the public and private spheres will increase fertility in low-fertility countries. in particular, as men increasingly participate in domestic chores and childcare, and thus share the burden of work and family life, women will be willing to have more children (goldscheider et al. 2015). an extensive literature has studied the association between gender equality and fertility behavior in various settings, reporting mixed fi ndings (e.g., arpino et al. 2015; brinton/lee 2016; miettinen et al. 2011; mills et al. 2008; oláh 2003; puur et al. 2008; torr/short 2004). the previous literature exploring this association has focused largely on the european context, though there is also an emerging literature on non-western settings, most of which focuses on low-fertility countries in east asia (e.g., brinton et al. 2018; freeman et al. 2018; kan/hertog 2017; yang 2017). there is a gap in the literature with regard to examining the gender equality-fertility relationship in more diverse settings with “nation-specifi c contextual explanations” (mills et al. 2008). this study builds on the previous literature and expands the research on the gender equality-fertility relationship by examining turkey; a new socio-cultural setting and understudied context. this study provides an empirical analysis of the association between gender (in-) equality and low fertility in turkey, a muslim country with persistent yet highly variable gender equality problems. while there have been many political reforms since the founding of the republic to change women’s societal circumstances, when it comes to public attitudes on gender roles, turkey represents a quintessential example of “the stalled revolution.” the country has had idiosyncratic gender relationships and declining fertility for the past several decades. fertility rates are currently below replacement level, with the western parts of the country already having experienced below-replacement fertility for the past decade. the persistent fertility decline has sparked considerable concern among politicians and the public, leading the current government to expend considerable efforts on encouraging higher fertility (kavas 2019). this study focuses on fertility intention, which is an important motivational antecedent of the fertility-related behaviors of individuals (miller 2011: 76). this study contributes to this literature by testing the gender equality-fertility relationship in an understudied socio-cultural setting, offering a comparative perspective. gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 505 2 background there has been growing interest in the gender ideology-fertility relationship since becker’s (1985) “new home economics” paradigm, which pointed to a strong interaction between women’s increasing labor force participation coupled with changes in the sexual division of labor and declining fertility. more recently, mcdonald (2000a/b) has provided an explanation of the link between unequal gender norms and fertility outcomes. in oft-cited works, mcdonald suggests that the decline in fertility to replacement level is linked to an improvement of equity in the family sphere, where women have achieved the right to control their parenthood decisions. however, further declines in fertility below replacement levels is related to the imbalance between high gender equity in institutional settings and the lack of a corresponding increase of equality in family settings, with the result that women respond to the disproportionate burden of the “double shift” by limiting their fertility. mcdonald’s theory (2006) sheds some light on the issue of desired/ideal fertility versus completed fertility, arguing that due to the unintended consequences of changing social and economic institutions, individuals may not be able to achieve their ideal fertility. forgoing their ideal family size, women in particular state that “in a different institutional setting, they believe they would have had more children” (mcdonald 2006: 485). 2.1 previous works gender equity theory has increasingly attracted demographers’ attention, with numerous studies testing this theory using either a macroor micro-level empirical approach. in general, studies have used survey data to investigate the association between gender equality and fertility outcomes. these approaches either focus on the household division of labor or on people’s gender role attitudes, and have reported mixed fi ndings (e.g., arpino et al. 2015; brinton/lee 2016; cooke 2009; miettinen et al. 2011; mills et al. 2008; mills 2010; oláh 2003; puur et al. 2008; torr/short 2004; westoff/higgins 2009). of special interest to demographers in this tradition has been the variation in the impact of gender equality on fertility by gender. for example, using the population policy acceptance study for eight european countries, puur et al. (2008) explored the impact of men’s role orientations on their fertility intentions, fi nding that men with an egalitarian attitude both had a higher desire to have children and a higher number of children than men with traditional views did. for women, egalitarian attitudes may yield higher fertility if it is combined with men’s increasing participation in household tasks. cooke (2009) examined two countries, italy and spain, analysing the likelihood of having a second child within married couple households. the author suggests that when women receive help from their partner with household chores and childcare tasks, the likelihood of having a second child increases, although this effect was only signifi cant in italy. numerous other studies have focused on the impact of men’s changing roles in the family, both on their fertility aspirations as well as their partners’. overall, these scholars • serap kavas506 draw attention to the notion of “fertility recovery,” which indicates that when there is equality in the family, with husbands sharing both domestic chores and childcare, partner relationships become more fulfi lling and consequently partners have an increased desire to continue childbearing (brinton et al. 2018; freeman et al. 2018; goldscheider et al. 2015; kan/hertog 2017; oláh 2003). while ample evidence suggests a positive correlation between egalitarian gender role attitudes and fertility rates, other studies have found no signifi cant relationship between the two. chief among these works is philipov’s study (2008), which examined ten european countries and employed three dimensions of genderegalitarian attitudes. he found no clear association between the three gender dimensions and fertility intentions for the second or higher-order parity. moreover, some of these studies present contrasting fi ndings, despite largely using the same data sets and measurement. for example, puur et al. (2008)’s fi nding that egalitarian attitudes among men in eight european countries are positively correlated with higher fertility desire and realization was countered by westoff and higgins’s (2009) recent work, in which the authors designed a similar study yet found a diametrically opposed relationship between the egalitarian attitudes of men and their actual fertility outcomes. 2.2 measuring gender equality and fertility empirical studies have provided mixed or confl icting evidence concerning gender equality and fertility relationship (e.g., arpino et al. 2015; goldscheider et al. 2010; miettinen et al. 2011). the measurement of gender equality seems to be the most widely-stated challenge in the literature (arpino et al. 2015; brinton/lee 2016; davis/greenstein 2009; goldscheider et al. 2010; knight/brinton 2017; miettinen et al. 2011; puur et al. 2008; torr/short 2004; westoff/higgins 2009). some scholars suggest that widely-used survey indicators may not be measuring gender equality thoroughly (e.g., brinton/lee 2016; knight/brinton 2017; mills 2010), while others argue that the survey indicators may in effect function as a “surrogate” of the concept (arpino et al. 2015). others draw attention to the complexity and multidimensionality of gender equality, noting that commonplace approaches of classifying gender role attitudes as a linear continuum from traditionalism to egalitarianism may not adequately depict the historical trajectory of change or the cross-cultural distinctions in gender norms (knight/brinton 2017; brinton/lee 2016). as hudde (2018) argues, there is no reason to construct gender ideologies as binary concepts of either traditional or egalitarian while societies adopt various gender relations ranging from gendersymmetric models to alternative forms such as “the one-and-a-half earner model” or “the returning to the more traditional norms of gender roles”. in line with this, in a study, grunow et al. (2018) constructed fi ve gender ideology profi les and found multidimensional gender ideologies to be more prevalent among the respondents than unidimensional constructs. the authors also found that egalitarian ideologies, which refl ect joint spheres of earning and caring, intensive parenting and egalitarian gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 507 essentialism were more prevalent in all the european countries examined in this study. measuring gender equality by attending to cross-cultural variations is crucial in that it helps us better understand distinctions in gender-role attitudes. for one, not all countries have the same gender systems; no matter how close geographically or culturally they are to each other, their norms and practices may still be highly variable (goldscheider et al. 2010; mills et al. 2008). much evidence exists regarding the varying nature of gender equality across societies, including its differential effects on fertility behavior (arpino et al. 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; knight/brinton 2017; mills 2010; mills et al. 2008). for example, using data from two countries with very low fertility (japan and spain) and two countries with slightly higher fertility (the united states and sweden), brinton et al. (2018) investigated how gender inequality may generate a gap between women’s fertility ideals (hypothetical aspirations) and intentions (realistic aspirations) in all four countries. they found that while american and swedish female interviewees were more likely than those in japan and spain to mention unequal gender roles as a reason for their fertility ideals and intentions gap, gender inequality was more signifi cantly associated with low fertility intentions among highly educated interviewees in japan and spain. studies operationalize fertility outcomes differently. while most research focuses on continued childbearing for different parities (e.g., cooke 2009; miettinen et al. 2011; torr/short 2004), a large body of literature also examines fertility intentions (e.g., brinton et al. 2018; kan/hertog 2017; mills et al. 2008; mills 2010; okun/razyurovich 2019; tazi-preve et al. 2004; yang 2017). brinton et al. (2018) draw a fi ne line between fertility ideals and intentions. the authors describe fertility ideals as more hypothetical aspirations without consideration of one’s specifi c family situation, whereas intentions are more realistic plans that include the constraints that individuals perceive in reaching their ideals. thus, “fertility intentions lie inbetween family size ideals and completed fertility” (brinton et al. 2018: 281). 2.3 gender roles and family life in turkey family relationships and demographic patterns are key areas that clearly display the continuity and change that characterize social life in turkey. since the founding of the republic in 1923, turkey has undergone an intensive modernization experience, which persists to date with turkey’s ongoing bid to join european union. the stateled modernization project led to many changes in demographic and family behaviors, including increases in the age at fi rst marriage, divorce rates, declines in fertility, more egalitarian gender roles, and more independence among young people. regarding women’s status, in particular, republican reformers staunchly supported improving women’s circumstances through increasing education, employment, and political participation. after the founder of the turkish republic, mustafa kemal atatürk, successive governments maintained his legacy by implementing this modernization/ secularization agenda, which included policy actions aiming to reduce gender inequalities (aksoy/billari 2018). legal reforms in particular continued in line with turkey’s efforts to align with european union standards. substantial amendments • serap kavas508 were made to the civil code in 2003, bringing about signifi cant changes with respect to gender equality. for example, the amended civil code increased the legal age of marriage to 18 for both sexes, which had previously been 17 for men and 15 for women. it also introduced the legal basis for the sharing of marital assets in case of divorce, and adopted the legal measures to ensure equal status of wife and husband in the family (ilkkaracan 2007). importantly, reforms related to gender roles and family life faced severe opposition from conservative circles and despite all legal changes and reforms, traditional and authoritarian family practices remain widespread in the country (cindoğlu et al. 2008), making hybridity an important feature of family life in turkey (kavas/thornton 2013). moreover, the current conservative government’s efforts to “protect and strengthen families” contributed to this hybridity (yılmaz 2015; kaya 2015; yazıcı 2012; also see aksoy/billari 2018). for almost two decades, conservative discourse and political debates about the need to increase fertility, eliminate abortion and family planning, and traditional norms about women’s roles in the family featured prominently current government’s policy agenda. in turkey, marriage and having children are important pillars of family formation, and couples without a child do not fi t into the mainstream defi nition of “family” broadly accepted by the population. turkish family norms equally denounce being unmarried and being married and childless, and thus voluntary childlessness is almost non-existent in turkey (huips 2014). the notion of a strong family bond, interdependence among family members, and a strong generational hierarchy are deeply entrenched, positively valued, and remain highly prevalent in turkish society (sunar/fisek 2005). turkish parents are generally protective of and expect obedience and dependence from their children (kağıtçıbaşı 1982), and stay continuously involved in adult children’s decision-making concerning important family issues (nauck/klaus 2008). parent-child relationships, particularly in urban middle-class turkish families, are characterized by emotional closeness and relatedness, especially between mothers and daughters (ataca/ sunar 1999). in turkey, young women are socialized into normative gender roles according to which women are expected to be embedded into a family setting through marriage and childbearing and play the roles of mothers and wives, while husbands are the head of the family. in fact, before the 2003 civil code reforms, the traditional gender roles classifying men as breadwinners and heads of families and women as homemakers were even legally supported (ilkkaracan 2012). marriage is almost universal, and although the minimum legal age at which marriage can take place is 18, young people can get married at the age of 17 with parental consent, and at the age 16 with the approval of a judge. with respect to gender roles, social class and urban-rural variations matter. therefore, given the institutional changes over the decades and the great variability and heterogeneity of women’s status, it would be a mistake to consider women in turkey as passive victims of patriarchal norms and social rules (kağıtçıbaşı 1986; cindoğlu et al. 2008). for example, educated and high-income women tend to have more liberal attitudes toward gender roles, tend to be more resistant to patriarchal gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 509 norms, and more willing to embrace changing social norms. moreover, studies reveal that there are changes in attitudes to gender roles, particularly in the urban, middle-class, and professional population of turkey (e.g. aycan 2004; aycan/eskin 2005). a study reports that a higher number of men than before share domestic responsibilities in turkey (aycan 2004). 2.4 statement of the problem and research questions this study aims to shed light on the gender ideology-fertility relationship in turkey. it uses the gender-equity framework, which suggests that the imbalance between the higher gender equity in the public sphere and lower improvements of equality in family life leads to fertility decline, with women responding to the disproportionate burden of domestic works by limiting their fertility (mcdonald 2006). the persistent fertility decline since the 1950s is the central theme in turkish demographic discourse (yavuz 2006). the total fertility rate (tfr) fell from a high of 7.1 children per woman in 1930 to 4.3 in 1978, 3.1 during the late 1980s, 2.1 in 2009, and most recently below replacement level, at 1.88 in 2019 (turkish statistical institute (turkstat) 2020). according to the demographic and health survey (2008), western regions of the country have already been experiencing below-replacement fertility for many years, with a tfr of 1.7 in 2008. the reasons for the decline in tfr over the years are generally explained with the socio-economic development the country has experienced for the past several decades and the changing status of women, especially regarding education (akadlı-ergöçmen 1997; d’addato et al. 2007; yavuz 2006; koç et al. 2014). for example, akadlı-ergöçmen (1997) highlighted a strong relationship between women’s status and fertility decline. using demographic and health survey data, she found that women with fi ve or more years of education, a job with social security, and a say in their marriage arrangement, as well as increased age at fi rst marriage, tend to have fewer children. moreover, a recent study found a connection between gender inequality and fertility outcomes in turkey (kavas 2019). using in-depth interviews with mothers, kavas (2019) found that women’s shouldering larger shares of housework and childcare seemed to be an important reason for decreasing fertility in turkey. in yet another study, the division of housework was found to be a signifi cant indicator of women’s fertility intentions in turkey; using demographic and health survey data berktaş (2016) found that when having a higher share of housework responsibilities, women in the 25-34 age group had a lower desire for more children. therefore, given its persistent fertility decline over the years and women’s status that is replete with ambivalence and paradoxes, turkey seems to be a relevant place to study the relationship between gender equity and fertility. moreover, since much of the literature on gender equality and fertility focuses on industrialized countries in the west, where more egalitarian gender roles characterize social life, it would be interesting to explore this relationship in a non-western developing country context where there is great variability concerning gender roles, with considerable continuity and change. • serap kavas510 toward this end, the fi rst research question of this study is whether there is an association between parents’ gender role attitudes and their fertility intentions for an additional child in turkey. in particular, the study aims to explore the role that gender egalitarianism plays in fertility decline. as discussed, this study argues that despite the efforts made since the founding of the republic to improve women’s status in society, gender inequality persists, most palpably in the family sphere. with respect to access to education, girls’ primary schooling is universal, and secondary and tertiary net enrolment rates were 66 and 32 percent respectively in 2011 (world bank, gender equality report, 2012). however, when it comes to the provision of social policy measures to facilitate workfamily balance, turkey cannot claim to have a particularly supportive labor market environment (ilkkaracan 2012). housework and childcare are largely women’s responsibilities, with the most recent nationwide family structure survey reporting that 86 percent of mothers are the main childcare providers (turkstat 2016). in this context, parents with egalitarian attitudes may expect a more supportive environment with respect to equality in role sharing and public policy and may have a lower desire to have children than those with traditional views, who tend to take unequal gender roles for granted. the second research question asks whether or not the infl uence of gender role attitudes on fertility persists once background factors are controlled for. according to kandiyoti (1995), male dominance in turkey was redefi ned and renegotiated over the past decades, with changes depending on geography and socioeconomic status. as a result, turkey has become a country where multiple family gender cultures have coexisted. parents’ levels of education, employment status, ethnicity, etc. may play a role in their gender role attitudes. therefore, it is important to know how these structural factors interact with gender norms and infl uence fertility decisionmaking. the third research question concerns the extent to which these structural factors, which are known to affect fertility decision-making generally, infl uence fertility intentions independently of gender role attitudes in turkey. 3 method 3.1 data the data used in this study are drawn from a larger survey project titled “fertility, family life and developmental idealism in urban turkey”, designed to study views about fertility and family life in turkey, which includes a module on gender ideology. data were collected in 2014 through face-to-face interviews with randomly selected men and women of reproductive age (18-49). a multi-stage stratifi ed sampling gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 511 procedure was employed to attain samples in 17 cities.1 interviews were held with individuals residing in households located in randomly selected neighborhoods, with the selected blocks consisting of 20 households. the main rationale for limiting the sample to cities was the very high costs of national surveys that include rural areas. this means that the results of this study can be extrapolated only to urban turkey and not to the country as a whole. furthermore, under the assumption that people in cities likely have more egalitarian attitudes than those in rural areas, the exclusion of the latter would refl ect higher endorsement of egalitarianism in the urban sample compared to a national sample. however, it is important to note that with the current geographical distribution of the population, turkey’s urban areas are becoming increasingly heterogeneous by including substantial rural communities. in turkey, a massive rural-to-urban migration has characterized the population structure of the country since the 1950s. it continued for several decades, increasing the percentage of the population that is urban (erder 2002). in 2012, the proportion of the population living in the cities was 77 percent, and currently it is 93 percent (turkstat 2020). so, given this heterogeneous geographical distribution of the population, it may be diffi cult to predict how different the urban results would be from results with a national sample. a sample of 2034 individuals from all regions of the country was successfully interviewed, yielding a response rate of 51 percent. however, due to the research focus of this study, the sample is limited to married parents between the ages of 18 and 49, reducing the study sample to 1120 respondents. after this restriction, an analytical sample of 444 men and 676 women was included in the regression analyses, with slightly fewer observations in the multivariate analyses due to missing data (table 4 and 5). based on the specifi c research questions, the study prioritized the inclusion of men and women with at least one child. the reason for not including childless married couples is that the transition to parenthood happens almost as a matter of course in turkey. as noted above, lifetime childlessness is very rare in turkey, with family norms denouncing childlessness. parents are infl uential in reproductive decision-making, typically wanting grandchildren and exerting pressure on adult children to produce offspring soon after marriage (kavas/de jong 2020; nauck/klaus 2008). thus, as in many other social settings, in turkey “the normative pressure to become a parent” (rindfuss et al. 1988) obliges married individuals to have a fi rst child early, which obscures other factors that should shape fertility decision-making. thus, in a social environment in which couples are expected to have a child quickly, it is diffi cult to disentangle the effects of people’s attitudes on gender roles on their fertility decision-making for the fi rst birth. however, the transition to second or higher-order births is the stage when the cost and benefi t of having additional children are considered more carefully (olah 2003), and therefore this life-course transition is more conducive to examining the 1 the sampled cities from different regions of the country are as follows: adana, ankara, antalya, bursa, diyarbakir, erzurum, istanbul, izmir, kayseri, kocaeli, konya, malatya, manisa, samsun, şanliurfa, tekirdağ,trabzon • serap kavas512 infl uence of gender role attitudes on the decision to have a child. moreover, because in turkey childbearing almost universally takes place within marriage (huips 2014), the sample consists entirely of married parents. 3.2 measures the dependent variable, fertility intention, was measured by asking whether or not the respondent planned to have (a/another) child sometime in the future, with the answers categorized as no = 0 and yes = 1. pregnant couples were excluded. gender role attitudes were measured with twelve statements presented below. these attitudinal questions on gender ideology evince respondents’ views on gendered roles in the spheres of work and family, and have been used in several surveys including the world values survey, european values study (e.g., 1999), and other research (e.g., brinton/lee 2016; westoff/higgins 2009). an exploratory factor analysis was performed on these twelve categorical variables (table 1). the analysis of factor loadings and the conceptual overlap between items led to the conclusion that there are two main gender ideology clusters, with the items in each group loading together signifi cantly. the fi rst gender role attitudes scale (gra-1) was measured with six statements, with cronbach’s alpha for these items being .61. the fi rst three items in the fi rst set of questions seem to address individualism in general rather than gender equality in particular, they address a women’s independence as a single mother and whether an individual should be able to choose to be unmarried and childless. therefore, they are relevant to women and men living in society without fi tting a mainstream defi nition of family life, so i believe they still assess some aspects of gender equality (see westoff/higgins 2009). the remaining items in this scale capture respondents’ gender role attitudes toward husbands’ and wives’ work roles, including the importance of a job for a woman’s independence, women’s ability to shoulder both family and work commitments, and whether men and women should equally contribute to family income. the second set of questions in the second scale (gra-2) (all reverse coded) focuses more on men’s and women’s roles in family life and contains the following items, with a cronbach’s alpha score of .51. (table 1). these questions address gender roles in family life and stress, for example, women’s “innate” role as caregivers and housewives, the necessity of having a child to be fulfi lled, the primacy of parenthood over individual choices, and perceptions of women’s desires to stay at home rather than work. also, given the framing of these questions, it seems that these items tend to measure traditionalism more directly than egalitarianism, in that agreement with any of these statements will refl ect a traditional attitude (knight/brinton 2017). in sum, while questions in the fi rst gender role attitudes scale (gra-1) include items that tap individual choices and gender roles in the public sphere and particularly women’s labor force participation, the questions in the second gender role attitudes scale (gra-2) covers attitudes to familial roles and the private sphere. moreover, the fi rst gender role attitudes scale seems to refl ect statements of egalitarianism directly, while the second gender role attitudes scale measures gender-egalitarianism indirectly by measuring the degree of adherence to traditional norms. gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 513 while the answers of these questions were categorized with a fi ve-point likert scale ranging from (1) “strongly agree” to (5) “strongly disagree,” i recoded the variables into three answers: (1) “disagree”, (2) “neither”, and (3) “agree”. for each of the gender role attitudes scales, the range of scores goes from a minimum of 6 (those with the most traditional gender role attitudes) to a maximum 18 (those with the most egalitarian views on gender roles). the scales in the second set were reversed so that higher scores also indicate more egalitarian attitudes . for the analysis, the gender role attitudes measure was divided into three categories: traditional, intermediate, and egalitarian using k-mean cluster analysis. for the fi rst gender role attitude scale (gra-1), cluster one represents “traditional” with the threshold scores being 6-11, cluster two is labelled “intermediate” with scores ranging from 12-14, and cluster three is “egalitarian” with scores from 15-18. for the second gender role attitude scale (gra-2), the fi rst cluster is “traditional” from 6-9, the second cluster, “intermediate”, ranging from 10-13 and the fi nal cluster, “egalitarian”, from 14-18. tab. 1: factor loadings for gender role attitudes items in individualism and family oriented categories gender role attitude 1, individualism/work orientation if a woman wants to have a child as a single parent and she does not want to have a stable relationship with a man, she should be able to have the child. .347 it is ok for a person to decide not to marry. .836 it is ok for a person to decide not to have children. .795 a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work. .598 having a job is the best way for a woman to be an independent person. .421 both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income. .344 cronbach’s alpha .61 gender role attitude 2, family orientation a married couple should have at least one child. .383 a person has to have at least one child in order to be fulfi lled. .389 when there are children in the family, parents should stay together even if they do not get along. .471 being a housewife is just as fulfi lling as working for pay. .520 a preschool child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works. .611 a job is all right, but what most women really want is a home and children. .694 cronbach’s alpha .51 source: author’s analysis of survey data from “fertility, family life and developmental idealism in urban turkey” (2014) • serap kavas514 other variables in the model include standard controls such as age, education, employment, age at fi rst marriage, having a son, sibling size, number of children, ethnicity, and religiosity. the education variable (that of respondents and their spouses) was constructed by dividing education in to three categories based on the number of years of schooling; 0-8, 9-12, and 13 years and above. employment status was created as a binary variable (0 = does not have a job; 1 = has a job). age, along with age at fi rst marriage, were included in the analyses as interval variables coded in years. the number of children is grouped into three categories: one, two, and three and more children. religiousness was measured with a single question asking whether or not the respondents think of themselves as a religious person, with the answer categories of “no” and “yes” (coded no = 0 and yes = 1.) two main ethnic categories were identifi ed, turks and non-turks, with non-turks representing mainly the kurdish population which constitutes the largest ethnic minority in turkey. in turkey, fertility patterns vary to a great extent by ethnic identity. in eastern turkey, where kurdish populations predominate, the tfr is on average 3.41 births per woman (huips 2014). also included in the model are the number of siblings and a binary variable for having a son. the number of siblings is known to correlate with fertility, as individuals’ family background, i.e. coming either from a large or small family, may infl uence their family size preferences (miettinen et al. 2011). the number of siblings is asked with a question on how many siblings the interviewee had in their household while growing up (including themselves; the answers are categorized as fewer than 2 siblings = 0; 2 and more siblings = 1). studies show that there is a strong correlation between son preference and fertility intention and behavior. for example, parents with a son preference may want to have additional children until the desired gender composition is reached (park/cho 1995). this variable is included in the analyses as a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent has a son. 4 results and discussion 4.1 descriptive statistics the descriptive table of the sample (table 2), shows that close to half of the mothers and slightly more than half the fathers fi t into the egalitarian category. over onethird of mothers and one-fourth of fathers are intermediate, while over one-fi fth of both female and male parents are traditional. in the second gender role attitudes scale, covering family orientation, the traditional category contains the majority of respondents. half of the female parents and more than one-third of the male parents fi t into the intermediate category and less than 10 percent are egalitarian. with regard to the demographic variables, table 2 shows that the mean age of female interviewees was 35.7 and that of male respondents was 37.8, most likely because women marry younger than men do. while mothers commonly have primary education, fathers have secondary and tertiary education more often than mothers do. regarding spouses’ education, a similar picture can be observed: gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 515 female parents’ spouses have a higher share of secondary and tertiary education, and male parents’ spouses have a lower level of higher education. in sum, men on average have higher education than women, which is consistent with the general patterns in turkey. almost all of the fathers have a job, as opposed to only one-fi fth tab. 2: sample characteristics (% or mean) female parents male parents intention to have another child yes 30.2 35.6 no 69.5 64.4 missing 0.3 – gra-1. individualism/work orientation traditional 20.9 22.5 intermediate 32.5 26.1 egalitarian 46.6 51.4 gra-2. family orientation traditional 41.4 58.6 intermediate 49.6 35.6 egalitarian 9.0 5.9 age (years) 35.7 37.8 age at fi rst marriage (years) 20.3 24.2 missing % 0.9 2.9 education (years) 0-8 66.4 48.0 9-12 25.1 34.0 13+ 8.4 18.0 spouse’s education (years) 0-8 57.5 58.1 9-12 27.4 27.3 13+ 14.5 14.0 missing 0.6 0.7 has a job yes 16.1 88.1 no 83.9 11.9 spouse has a job yes 87.9 19.1 no 12.1 80.9 number of children 1 24.1 27.5 2 42.3 41.0 3+ 33.6 31.5 has a son yes 78.1 77.7 no 21.9 22.3 • serap kavas516 of mothers being employed, and this gender gap in employment rates also holds true when the mothers’ and their spouses are considered. while around one-fourth of parents have one child, over two-fi fths have two children, and slightly over onethird have three or more children. the childbearing patterns of the parents in the study are consistent with the country’s fertility trends, where the two-child norm has prevailed for the past several decades. around four-fi fths of both men and women have at least one son. an overwhelming majority have more than two children. almost every third parent in the sample is not turkish, with the non-turks being predominantly kurdish since kurdish people are the largest ethnic minority in turkey, constituting 14 percent of the country’s population, (konda 2011). a vast majority of fathers describe themselves as religious and an even higher share of mothers do so. table 3 shows descriptive statistics for the distribution of gender role attitudes and fertility intentions. the descriptive statistics display no association between gender role attitudes and the intention to have a child. in the fi rst gender role attitudes scale (individualism/work orientation), intermediate men seem to intend to have more children, somewhat more often than traditional and egalitarian men do. in the second gender role attitudes scale (family orientation), a slightly higher share of egalitarian men intends to have an additional child. among female parents across both gender role attitudes scales, it is somewhat more common that intermediate mothers intend to have more children than other mothers. tab. 2: continuation female parents male parents sibling fewer than 2 14.9 10.4 2 and more 84.0 89.2 missing 1.1 0.4 ethnicity turks 70.3 73.0 kurds and others 29.7 25.7 missing – 1.4 religiosity religious 84.8 76.1 not religious 14.6 23.6 missing 0.6 0.2 total n 676 444 source: author’s analysis of survey data from “fertility, family life and developmental idealism in urban turkey” (2014) gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 517 fig. 1: basic descriptions of relevant key variables: intention of having one more child and gender role attitudes for female and male parents 0 100 200 300 400 no yes male parents intention for one more child 0 100 200 300 400 no yes female parents 0 100 200 300 400 traditional intermediate egalitarian gra-1. individualism / work orientation gra-2. family orientation male parents gender role attitudes 0 100 200 300 400 traditional intermediate egalitarian female parents source: author’s analysis of survey data from “fertility, family life and developmental idealism in urban turkey” (2014) • serap kavas518 4.2 regression analyses this study draws on cross-sectional data observing individuals at a single point in time. the study sample included currently married men and women with at least one child, leading me to use a model that does not censor data. given that the dependent variable (intention for one more child) is binary, i used binary logistic regression models to examine the association between gender role attitudes and fertility intentions separately among male and female parents. the binary logistic regression model estimates the probability that parents intend to have an additional child. the dependent variable takes a value of 1 if the respondent intends to have another child and a value of 0 if the respondent does not. pregnant women are excluded from the sample, so the beginning of pregnancy is not considered while constructing the dependent variable. results are expressed as average marginal effects (ame); i.e. as the difference in the predicted probability of the variable of interest relative to its reference category. as a robustness check, estimations are repeated using a linear probability model (lpm), the results of which are presented in the appendix. in line with the fi rst research question of this study, which asks whether there is an association between parents’ gender role attitudes and their fertility intentions for an additional child in turkey, the fi rst three models of table 4 and table 5 present the estimates from the logistic regression models for mothers and fathers. the fi rst and second models are bivariate analyses with the gender role attitudes scales included in the models in a stepwise manner. the third model includes a combined tab. 3: descriptive statistics of effects of gender role attitudes on intensions to have more children for both male and female parents intends to have a or another child male parents female parents n % n % gra-1. individualism/work orientation traditional 100 34.0 141 30.5 intermediate 116 41.4 219 35.2 egalitarian 228 33.3 314 26.8 χ 2(2) 2.313 4.326 p-value 0.315 0.115 gra-2. family orientation traditional 260 35.0 279 28.0 intermediate 158 36.1 334 32.3 egalitarian 26 38.5 61 29.5 χ 2(2) 149 1.399 p-value 0.928 0.497 source: author’s analysis of survey data from “fertility, family life and developmental idealism in urban turkey” (2014) gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 519 model of the two gender role attitudes scales, which cover individualism/work and family orientations. examining the gender role attitudes scale on individualism/work orientation (gra-1), the notable results for male interviewees concern the intermediate category; intermediate men tend to have a 7.2 percentage point higher likelihood of wanting more children than men with traditional values do (p-value = 0.266). the results do not reveal an infl uence of egalitarianism on fertility intention, with egalitarian men being 0.7 percentage points less likely to intend to have more children (p-value = 0.906), with both results statistically nonsignifi cant. examining the gender role attitudes scale on family orientation (gra-2), the associations are positive, although they still do not reach statistical signifi cance. intermediate men tend to a have 1.1 percentage point higher likelihood of choosing additional childbirth than traditional men do (p-value = .823), while egalitarian men are 3.4 percentage points more likely to intend to have more children (p-value = 0.725). similar results were obtained when the two gender role attitudes scales were combined in a third model. neither the separate analyses nor the combined model of gender role attitudes for fathers yield substantively and statistically signifi cant results. however, caution is advised when interpreting the results, since the confi dence intervals preclude any defi nitive conclusions from these estimations. for mothers, being egalitarian seems to be negatively associated with fertility intentions in the fi rst gender role attitudes scale in model 1 (ame = -.038, p-value = .410) and model 3 (ame = -.036, p-value = .438). intermediate mothers, in all three gender role attitude scales (m1-m3), have a 4 percentage point higher likelihood of planning for more children than traditional women do. however, none of these estimates reach statistical signifi cance. moreover, the width of confi dence intervals for these key variables is notably large and includes zero, suggesting that one should be cautious to draw a precise conclusion as to the association between gender role attitudes and fertility intentions. overall, the most noticeable result in these estimates is that both egalitarian men and women tend to have a lower desire for having more children than the traditional parents do. this is an expected fi nding, which is likely linked to the particular issues asked of respondents in each gender role attitudes question. i surmise that the items related to individualism/work orientation, including single parenting, voluntary childlessness, and women’s independence through employment correspond with liberal and egalitarian values associated with a modern/western lifestyle. in the turkish context, research shows that late and low fertility is also understood as an attribute of a modern family lifestyle considered prevalent in western countries (kavas/thornton 2019). so, it is likely that people holding egalitarian attitudes may not have a positive view of a large family and thus they may have a lower intention for continued childbearing. taken together, while egalitarian parents’ lower desire for more children partly supports the outlined expectations, the statistically nonsignifi cant results coupled with the width of confi dence intervals are contrary to the study hypothesis predicting a strong association. nevertheless, even though the data do not provide the statistical power to draw any fi rm conclusions, fi ndings • serap kavas520 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -1 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te 0. 07 2 0. 26 3 -0 .0 5 4 0. 19 8 0. 07 0 0. 28 0 -0 .0 57 0. 19 8 0. 05 1 0. 38 0 -0 .0 63 0. 16 4 e g al it ar ia n -0 .0 07 0. 90 6 -0 .1 20 0. 10 7 -0 .0 08 0. 89 5 -0 .1 21 0. 10 6 -0 .0 10 0. 83 5 -0 .1 09 0. 08 8 g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -2 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te 0. 01 1 0. 82 3 -0 .0 8 4 0. 10 5 0. 0 01 0. 97 9 -0 .0 9 4 0. 09 7 0. 0 4 8 0. 25 4 -0 .0 35 0. 13 1 e g al it ar ia n 0. 03 4 0. 72 5 -0 .1 56 0. 22 4 0. 02 4 0. 80 3 -0 .1 66 0. 21 5 0. 0 0 6 0. 93 9 -0 .1 4 3 0. 15 5 a g e (y ea rs ) -0 .0 22 0. 0 0 0 -0 .0 28 -0 .0 16 -0 .0 22 0. 0 0 0 -0 .0 28 -0 .0 16 a g e at 1 st m ar ri ag e (y ea rs ) 0. 01 4 0. 01 4 0. 0 03 0. 02 5 0. 01 4 0. 01 6 0. 0 02 0. 02 5 h av in g a so n (r ef . n o so n ) at le as t o n e so n -0 .1 0 0 0. 02 6 -0 .1 89 -0 .0 12 -0 .0 92 0. 0 42 -0 .1 81 -0 .0 03 e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -0 .0 22 0. 65 6 -0 .1 18 0. 07 4 -0 .0 33 0. 50 6 -0 .1 29 0. 0 6 4 13 + y ea rs -0 .0 21 0. 75 1 -0 .1 53 0. 11 1 -0 .0 3 4 0. 62 0 -0 .1 66 0. 09 9 s p o u se ’s e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -0 .0 93 0. 07 4 -0 .1 9 4 0. 0 09 -0 .1 03 0. 05 0 -0 .2 05 0. 0 0 0 13 + y ea rs -0 .0 98 0. 20 1 -0 .2 49 0. 05 2 -0 .1 0 0 0. 19 6 -0 .2 52 0. 05 2 r el ig io si ty ( re f. n o t re lig io u s) r el ig io u s 0. 09 1 0. 0 4 6 0. 0 02 0. 18 0 0. 10 7 0. 02 3 0. 01 5 0. 19 9 e th n ic it y (r ef . t u rk s) n o n -t u rk s 0. 13 6 0. 0 0 6 0. 03 9 0. 23 4 0. 13 5 0. 0 07 0. 03 7 0. 23 3 h av in g jo b (r ef . n o jo b ) h as a jo b 0. 03 2 0. 6 49 -0 .1 07 0. 17 1 0. 03 2 0. 6 4 8 -0 .1 0 6 0. 17 0 s p o u se ’s jo b (r ef . n o jo b ) h as a jo b 0. 08 4 0. 11 5 -0 .0 21 0. 18 9 0. 09 0 0. 09 2 -0 .0 15 0. 19 6 n u m b er o f c h ild re n (r ef o n e ch ild ) 2 ch ild re n -0 .2 25 0. 0 0 0 -0 .3 17 -0 .1 3 4 -0 .2 26 0. 0 0 0 -0 .3 18 -0 .1 3 4 3+ c h ild re n -0 .3 31 0. 0 0 0 -0 .4 5 4 -0 .2 08 -0 .3 37 0. 0 0 0 -0 .4 61 -0 .2 14 s ib lin g si ze ( re f. fe w er t h an 2 s ib lin g s) m o re t h an 2 s ib lin g s 0. 08 6 0. 10 8 -0 .0 19 0. 19 0 0. 07 8 0. 14 6 -0 .0 27 0. 18 3 n 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 41 8 41 8 ta b . 4 : in te n tio n to c o n tin ue c hi ld b ea ri ng fo r m al e p ar en ts a g ed 1 849 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n m o d el s: a ve ra g e m ar g in al ef fe ct s an d s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls s o ur ce : au th o r’ s an al ys is o f s ur ve y d at a fr o m “ fe rt ili ty , f am ily l ife a nd d ev el o p m en ta l i d ea lis m in u rb an t ur ke y” (2 01 4) gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 521 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] a m e p -v al u e [9 5% c i] g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -1 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te 0. 0 4 4 0. 35 9 -0 .0 50 0. 13 9 0. 0 45 0. 35 4 -0 .0 50 0. 14 0 0. 03 9 0. 36 4 -0 .0 45 0. 12 2 e g al it ar ia n -0 .0 38 0. 41 0 -0 .1 30 0. 05 3 -0 .0 36 0. 4 38 -0 .1 28 0. 05 5 -0 .0 10 0. 80 9 -0 .0 91 0. 07 1 g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -2 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te 0. 0 4 4 0. 23 9 -0 .0 29 0. 11 7 0. 0 41 0. 27 0 -0 .0 32 0. 11 4 0. 0 4 0 0. 21 5 -0 .0 23 0. 10 4 e g al it ar ia n 0. 01 6 0. 80 7 -0 .1 12 0. 14 4 0. 02 0 0. 75 5 -0 .1 08 0. 14 9 0. 0 03 0. 96 2 -0 .1 11 0. 11 7 a g e -0 .0 16 0. 0 0 0 -0 .0 20 -0 .0 12 -0 .0 16 0. 0 0 0 -0 .0 20 -0 .0 11 a g e at 1 st m ar ri ag e 0. 0 01 0. 85 3 -0 .0 08 0. 01 0 0. 0 01 0. 83 1 -0 .0 08 0. 01 0 h av in g a so n (r ef . n o so n ) at le as t o n e so n -0 .0 36 0. 33 9 -0 .1 09 0. 03 8 -0 .0 38 0. 30 7 -0 .1 11 0. 03 5 e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -0 .1 86 0. 0 0 0 -0 .2 74 -0 .0 97 -0 .1 8 4 0. 0 0 0 -0 .2 73 -0 .0 95 13 + y ea rs -0 .0 08 0. 91 0 -0 .1 38 0. 12 3 -0 .0 0 6 0. 92 7 -0 .1 37 0. 12 5 s p o u se e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s 0. 0 0 6 0. 8 87 -0 .0 74 0. 08 6 0. 0 07 0. 87 3 -0 .0 75 0. 08 8 13 + y ea rs 0. 07 0 0. 18 6 -0 .0 3 4 0. 17 4 0. 07 2 0. 17 5 -0 .0 32 0. 17 6 r el ig io si ty ( re f. n o t re lig io u s) re lig io u s 0. 12 4 0. 01 0 0. 03 0 0. 21 8 0. 12 2 0. 01 2 0. 02 7 0. 21 6 e th n ic it y (r ef . t u rk s) n o n -t u rk s 0. 0 68 0. 05 2 -0 .0 01 0. 13 7 0. 0 63 0. 07 5 -0 .0 0 6 0. 13 3 h av in g jo b (r ef . n o jo b ) h as a jo b -0 .0 58 0. 19 5 -0 .1 4 6 0. 03 0 -0 .0 6 4 0. 16 0 -0 .1 52 0. 02 5 s p o u se jo b (r ef . n o jo b ) h as a jo b -0 .0 4 0 0. 4 4 6 -0 .1 42 0. 0 63 -0 .0 47 0. 36 8 -0 .1 50 0. 05 5 n u m b er o f c h ild re n (r ef . 1 c h ild ) 2 ch ild re n -0 .2 38 0. 0 0 0 -0 .3 14 -0 .1 63 -0 .2 39 0. 0 0 0 -0 .3 14 -0 .1 6 4 3+ c h ild re n -0 .3 47 0. 0 0 0 -0 .4 38 -0 .2 57 -0 .3 51 0. 0 0 0 -0 .4 41 -0 .2 60 s ib lin g si ze ( re f. fe w er t h an 2 s ib lin g s) m o re t h an 2 s ib lin g s 0. 05 3 0. 31 5 -0 .0 50 0. 15 7 0. 05 8 0. 27 5 -0 .0 4 6 0. 16 3 n 67 4 67 4 67 4 65 8 65 8 ta b . 5 : in te n tio n to c o n tin ue c hi ld b ea ri ng fo r fe m al e p ar en ts a g ed 1 849 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n m o d el s: a ve ra g e m ar g in al ef fe ct s an d s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls s o ur ce : au th o r’ s an al ys is o f s ur ve y d at a fr o m “ fe rt ili ty , f am ily l ife a nd d ev el o p m en ta l i d ea lis m in u rb an t ur ke y” (2 01 4) • serap kavas522 suggest slight variations between the categories of gender role attitudes and their relations to fertility intentions. model 5 estimates the infl uence of the control variables in line with the second research question which asks whether the infl uence of gender role attitudes on fertility persists once background factors are controlled for. for both men and women, the fully controlled model does not yield substantively or statistically signifi cant results concerning parents’ gender role attitudes and fertility intentions. however, the results highlight the importance of some of the characteristics of parents included in these full models (table 4 and table 5). for example, fertility intention was shown to be associated with respondents’ age for both fathers and mothers, with older parents having a lower desire to have more children (men: ame = -.022, p-value = 0.000; women: ame = -.016, p-value = .000). marital timing seems to be a predictor of fertility intentions, as parents who delayed marriage seem to plan the transition to higher-order birth 1.4 percentage points more frequently than early marrying parents do (p-value = .016). interestingly, this association is particularly signifi cant for fathers, which may be because men delay marriage more often than women in turkey (turkstat 2020). for fathers, the sex composition of children appears to be signifi cant; parents who have at least one son tend to lower their intention for an additional child and this association seems to be strong (ame = .092, p = .042). this observed association is consistent with recent work which found that turkish parents show a strong son preference through “son-biased fertility behavior,” and are more likely to discontinue childbearing after a male birth (altındağ 2015). for mothers, as expected, parents with mid-level education are 18.4 percentage points less likely to intend for more children than parents with lower education (p = .000); in an additional analysis that only controls for age, this negative association becomes even stronger, indicating that part of the association can be explained with the infl uence of age on respondents’ fertility intentions. however, having a high level of education does not seem to have a similar infl uence on fertility (ame = .006, p-value = .927), although this surprising fi nding may be due to the small sample size for the category (n = 57). religiosity is positively associated with higher fertility for both sexes (men: ame = 107, p-value = .023; women: ame = .122, p-value = .012), which is consistent with the literature (see adsera 2006; philipov/berghammer 2007 for similar fi ndings). islam has explicit rules related to getting married and having children, with large families and multiple children being encouraged. these discourses permeate norms and values about family and fertility. being non-turk (this predominantly refers to the kurdish population) is associated with higher fertility intentions for both fathers and mothers (men: exp (b) = .135, p-value = .007; women: exp (b) = .063, p-value = .075), although caution is needed when interpreting these results for women, as the estimate is imprecise. the association between being non-turk and having a large family is expected, as kurds on average have a higher total fertility in general and the highest third birth risk (yavuz 2006). as expected, the number of children is signifi cantly and negatively correlated with a plan to have more children. for both fathers and mothers, compared to one-child parents, parents with two children are 22.6 and 23.9 percentage points, gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 523 respectively, less likely to desire more children (p-value = .000) and parents with three and more children are 33.7 and 35.1 percentage points, respectively, less likely to plan to continue childbearing (p-value = .000). this result is conceivable for turkish parents, as having a large family with three and more children is not very common. clearly, for turkish parents, the fi rst child having a sibling is a more important determinant for continued fertility than having a larger family, and this pattern seems to hold for the study sample (see miettinen et al. 2011 for an example in finland). the third research question of this study is tested in a separate model (model 4) where demographic variables are explored independently of the gender role attitudes. the results are largely similar to the fully controlled model (model 5). the results in model 4 further provide some indication that parents’ individual and family characteristics such as age, marital timing, education, religiosity, ethnicity, number, and the sex composition of children tend to shape parents’ fertility decision-making independently of their gender role attitudes. as further robustness checks, i ran linear regression models, (i.e., a linear probability model) separately for men and women, estimating both bivariate and multivariate analyses. these estimations yield almost identical results, which suggests that the estimates from the logistic models are robust. tables for the robustness checks are presented in the appendix. 5 conclusion in this paper, the relationship between turkish parents’ gender role attitudes and their fertility intentions for an additional child is examined. the empirical expectations were drawn from the theoretical contributions of mcdonald (2000a/b, 2006), who proposed that as societies move from traditional to egalitarian, people’s reproductive choices change. the timeframe in which gender equality in the institutional sphere is achieved yet societal adaptation to new changes is ongoing is of particular interest, with an expectation of fertility decline. in this study, i attempted to investigate this relationship using individual-level data and studied turkey, where changes toward gender equality in the public sphere have not been adopted in the private sphere with persistent fertility decline accompanying these changes. overall, the fi ndings of this study do not provide strong evidence that turkish parents’ gender role attitudes are associated with their fertility intentions. in particular, the results of this study neither support nor contradict the theoretical framework by mcdonald (2000a/b, 2006) about the nexus between gender equity and fertility in the turkish setting. the results of this study are consistent with a previous work by philipov (2008) who examined gender role-fertility relationships in ten european countries and found no relationship between the various dimensions of gender roles and intentions to have or not to have a secondor higher-order child. the lack of signifi cant fi ndings supporting the expected effects may be related to the small sample size used in the regression analyses, moreover, it may also be related to measurement issues, a concern which has been raised in previous • serap kavas524 research (e.g., arpino et al. 2015; brinton/lee 2016; knight/brinton 2017; miettinen et al. 2011; mills 2010; westoff/higgins 2009). the questions used to measure gender role attitudes are frequently used in other surveys and have been proven to be reliable and valid (davis/greenstein 2009). however, it might be that these survey items measure gender role attitudes broadly, without addressing relevant aspects of gender roles in the turkish setting. since inequality is particularly evident within the family in turkey, survey items that capture attitudes about gender equality in the family sphere could reveal more relevant aspects of gender roles in turkey than those examining the public sphere. these could include questions related to the division of housework and care between mothers and fathers. moreover, questions that tap the degree of adherence to the traditional norms about marriage timing, divorce, and beliefs regarding “honor” and virginity could unravel a more nuanced depiction of attitudes about men’s and women’s roles in family and social life. in this sense, using vignettes that introduce cases closely tailored to the study setting, for instance, may be a better approach for measuring gender roles and their connection to fertility decisions in turkey. moreover, in line with the multidimensionality discussions in the literature (e.g. brinton/lee 2016; knight/brinton 2017; hudde 2018), constructing a diverse range of gender ideology profi les could better measure attitudes regarding gender roles in turkey. for example, in a recent work, lee and brinton identifi ed “pro-work conservatism,” which prescribes that women participate in the labor market while maintaining their primary role in the home. even though the authors argue that pro-work conservatism is prevalent in low-fertility countries such as japan, south korea, and several societies in southern and eastern europe, i speculate that a spectrum of more nuanced gender ideology profi les such as pro-work conservatism could refl ect gender relations in turkey more closely. importantly, the regression analysis suggests that structural factors were more important driving forces of turkish parents’ childbearing plans than their gender role attitudes. the decision to have an additional child may not be an easy one for turkish parents, as the cost of childbearing in turkey is considerable. most people are concerned about providing a decent education, clothing, and food for their children, given turkey’s economic uncertainty. moreover, the current turkish welfare system does not reach all strata of society and does not meet peoples’ expectations (grütjen 2008). therefore, under these socio-economic conditions, planning for a larger family requires a very careful cost-benefi t calculation. on the other hand, turkey is a patriarchal society with a diverse ethnic population; therefore, the consistent and signifi cant impact of ethnicity and son preference on parents’ fertility decision-making is not surprising. finally, the observed effect of religiosity on fertility intention is to be expected, since the conservative muslim community in turkey – especially the recent government’s discourses and policy efforts to return to the traditional family – certainly infl uence in turkey today (kaya 2015; yazıcı 2012). this study has a number of limitations. the most relevant one is that the data come from a sample of urban residents rather than a nationally representative sample. this limits the generalizability of the study’s results to the entire country. to the extent that attitudes to gender roles are different in rural and urban contexts, gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 525 the sample results would diverge from national results. however, i argue that the rapid urbanization in recent decades and currently the substantial rural elements in urban centres may mediate these limitations to some extent. another limitation is that the data used for this study is restricted to currently married parents at parity 1, 2, 3 and above, aged between 18 and 49. while this data restriction is based on the research question, a larger sample including people with different parental and marital status could yield different results. a third limitation is that the study had to omit variables such as respondents’ income and childcare arrangements. living in a society with persistent economic insecurity and a high rate of unemployment, individuals with low income and precarious job conditions will likely prefer lower fertility than individuals without these diffi culties. also, it would have been useful to include the childcare arrangement as a predictor; it is likely that a lack of affordable and quality public childcare provision for the employed population forces parents to limit their fertility, particularly when they don’t have strong support networks (such as grandparents and other relatives), as is the case with most employed parents in turkey. finally, data for this study was collected from the respondents but not their spouses, which restricts the empirical analysis in two ways. first, as previous research has found, fertility decisions are usually taken at the couple level; for example, when there is no consensus regarding fertility decisions, the likelihood of having a or another child decreases (e.g. thomson/hoem 1998). second, discrepant gender role attitudes between partners may infl uence fertility decisions (aassve et al. 2014; arpino et al. 2015; hudde/engelhart 2020). for example, similar or discordant gender role attitudes between partners may lower the risk of the transition to parenthood (hudde/engelhart 2020) as well as having a second child (aassve et al. 2014). future research should expand on the link between gender relations and fertility intentions by considering couple-level dynamics and their gender-related attitudinal characteristics. acknowledgements this study was supported by a grant from the scientifi c and technological research council of turkey (tubitak), (sobag 3501, grant #113k073). i appreciate the staff including the interviewers and supervisors of research fi rm, frekans, for their work in the collection and processing of the data. i thank dr. hüseyin kavas for his input into the data analysis. special thanks to alice sage and sue peters for their editorial help during the preparation of this article. 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https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2006.15.15 yazıcı, berna 2012: the return to the family: welfare, state, and politics of the family in turkey. in: anthropological quarterly 85,1: 103-140. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2012.0013 yilmaz, zafer 2015: “strengthening the family” policies in turkey: managing the social question and armoring conservative-neoliberal populism. in: turkish studies 16,3: 371-390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2015.1067863 date of submission: 16.10.2020 date of acceptance: 06.08.2021 serap kavas, phd (). independent scholar. istanbul, turkey. e-mail: serapkavas@gmail.com gender role attitudes and parents’ intention to continue childbearing in turkey • 531 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: in te n tio n to c o n tin ue c hi ld b ea ri ng fo r m al e p ar en ts a g ed 1 849 : lin ea r p ro b ab ili ty m o d el s, c o ef fi c ie n ts a nd si g ni fi c an ce le ve ls m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -1 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te .0 74 .2 60 -. 05 5 .2 02 .0 72 .2 77 -. 05 8 .2 03 .0 47 .4 28 -. 0 69 .1 62 e g al it ar ia n -. 0 07 .9 08 -.1 20 .1 0 6 -. 0 08 .8 96 -.1 21 .1 0 6 -. 01 7 .7 4 0 -.1 16 .0 83 g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -1 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te .0 11 .8 24 -. 08 4 .1 0 6 .0 01 .9 79 -. 09 5 .0 98 .0 38 .3 80 -. 0 47 .1 23 e g al it ar ia n .0 35 .7 26 -.1 60 .2 29 .0 25 .8 0 4 -.1 70 .2 20 -. 0 02 .9 80 -.1 72 .1 67 a g e (y ea rs ) -. 02 4 .0 0 0 -. 03 0 -. 01 7 -. 02 4 .0 0 0 -. 03 0 -. 01 7 a g e at 1 st m ar ri ag e (y ea rs ) .0 14 .0 13 .0 03 .0 26 .0 14 .0 16 .0 03 .0 25 h av in g a so n (r ef . h as n o so n ) h av in g at le as t a s o n -.1 12 .0 27 -. 21 1 -. 01 3 -.1 05 .0 39 -. 20 6 -. 0 05 e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -. 02 7 .5 8 8 -.1 23 .0 70 -. 03 7 .4 56 -.1 35 .0 61 13 + y ea rs -. 03 1 .6 59 -.1 70 .1 07 -. 0 41 .5 67 -.1 80 .0 99 s p o u se 's e d u ca ti o n (r ef . 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -. 08 7 .0 96 -.1 89 .0 15 -. 09 1 .0 83 -.1 9 4 .0 12 13 + y ea rs -. 08 9 .2 62 -. 24 6 .0 67 -. 08 7 .2 80 -. 24 4 .0 71 r el ig io si ty ( re f. n o t re lig io u s) re lig io u s .0 87 .0 60 -. 0 0 4 .1 77 .0 97 .0 4 3 .0 03 .1 91 e th n ic it y (r ef . t u rk s) n o n -t u rk s .1 24 .0 15 .0 24 .2 24 .1 27 .0 14 .0 26 .2 28 h av in g a jo b (r ef . h as n o jo b) h as a jo b -. 0 02 .9 74 -.1 31 .1 27 -. 0 01 .9 87 -.1 30 .1 28 s p o u se 's jo b (r ef . h as n o jo b) sp o u se h as a jo b .0 86 .1 3 4 -. 02 7 .1 99 .0 87 .1 31 -. 02 6 .2 0 0 n u m b er o f c h ild re n (r ef . o n e ch ild ) 2 ch ild re n -. 29 5 .0 0 0 -. 4 01 -.1 8 8 -. 29 3 .0 0 0 -. 39 9 -.1 86 3 an d m o re c h ild re n -. 37 9 .0 0 0 -. 51 2 -. 24 5 -. 38 5 .0 0 0 -. 51 9 -. 25 1 n u m b er o f s ib lin g (r ef . f ew er t h an 2 s ib lin g s) m o re t h an 2 s ib lin g s .1 19 .0 42 .0 0 4 .2 33 .1 09 .0 63 -. 0 0 6 .2 24 (c o n st an t) .3 4 0 .0 0 0 .2 4 6 .4 3 4 .3 50 .0 0 0 .2 91 .4 0 9 .3 39 .0 0 0 .2 41 .4 37 .9 51 .0 0 0 .5 3 3 1. 37 0 .9 47 .0 0 0 .5 16 1. 37 8 n 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 41 8 41 8 s o ur ce : au th o r’ s an al ys is o f s ur ve y d at a fr o m “ fe rt ili ty , f am ily l ife a nd d ev el o p m en ta l i d ea lis m in u rb an t ur ke y” (2 01 4) • serap kavas532 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] b p -v al u e [9 5% c i] g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -1 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te .0 47 .3 47 -. 05 1 .1 4 4 .0 47 .3 4 3 -. 05 0 .1 45 .0 49 .2 63 -. 03 7 .1 36 e g al it ar ia n -. 03 7 .4 21 -.1 29 .0 5 4 -. 03 5 .4 50 -.1 27 .0 56 -. 0 0 6 .8 87 -. 08 8 .0 76 g en d er r o le a ti tu d es -2 ( re f. tr ad it io n al ) in te rm ed ia te .0 4 4 .2 41 -. 02 9 .1 17 .0 41 .2 72 -. 03 2 .1 14 .0 35 .2 9 4 -. 03 0 .1 0 0 e g al it ar ia n .0 16 .8 11 -.1 12 .1 4 3 .0 20 .7 59 -.1 08 .1 4 8 .0 0 0 .9 98 -.1 16 .1 16 a g e (y ea rs ) -. 01 7 .0 0 0 -. 02 2 -. 01 3 -. 01 7 .0 0 0 -. 02 2 -. 01 2 a g e at 1 st m ar ri ag e (y ea rs ) .0 01 .8 97 -. 00 9 .0 10 .0 00 .9 22 -. 00 9 .0 10 h av in g a so n (r ef . h as n o so n ) h as a t l ea st a s o n -. 03 2 .4 3 4 -.1 11 .0 4 8 -. 03 5 .3 86 -.1 14 .0 4 4 e d u ca ti o n (r ef : 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s -.1 91 .0 0 0 -. 27 8 -.1 0 4 -.1 90 .0 0 0 -. 27 8 -.1 03 13 + y ea rs .0 03 .9 61 -.1 37 .1 4 4 .0 0 6 .9 35 -.1 3 4 .1 4 6 s p o u se e d u ca ti o n (r ef : 0 -8 y ea rs ) 9 -1 2 ye ar s .0 07 .8 72 -. 07 5 .0 8 8 .0 09 .8 35 -. 07 4 .0 91 13 + y ea rs .0 79 .1 55 -. 03 0 .1 8 8 .0 82 .1 4 3 -. 02 8 .1 91 r el ig io si ty ( re f: n o t re lig io u s) r el ig io u s .1 28 .0 05 .0 38 .2 17 .1 26 .0 0 6 .0 36 .2 16 e th n ic it y (r ef . t u rk s) n o n -t u rk s .0 73 .0 4 8 .0 01 .1 45 .0 69 .0 61 -. 0 03 .1 42 h av in g jo b (r ef . h as n o jo b ) h as a jo b -. 07 1 .1 14 -.1 58 .0 17 -. 07 5 .0 97 -.1 6 4 .0 14 s p o u se jo b (r ef . h as n o jo b ) h as a jo b -. 0 49 .3 30 -.1 49 .0 50 -. 05 8 .2 55 -.1 58 .0 42 n u m b er o f c h ild re n (r ef . o n e ch ild ) tw o c h ild re n -. 30 2 .0 0 0 -. 39 0 -. 21 4 -. 30 2 .0 0 0 -. 39 0 -. 21 4 t h re e an d m o re c h ild re n -. 42 0 .0 0 0 -. 52 5 -. 31 6 -. 42 4 .0 0 0 -. 52 9 -. 31 9 n u m b er o f s ib lin g s (r ef . f ew er t h an 2 s ib lin g s) m o re t h an 2 s ib lin g s .0 66 .2 28 -. 0 41 .1 73 .0 66 .2 28 -. 0 41 .1 74 (c o n st an t) .3 05 .0 0 0 .2 29 .3 81 .2 8 0 .0 0 0 .2 26 .3 3 4 .2 82 .0 0 0 .1 9 4 .3 70 1. 0 4 6 .0 0 0 .7 0 0 1. 39 3 1. 01 9 .0 0 0 .6 63 1. 37 5 n 67 4 67 4 67 4 65 8 65 8 ta b . a 2: in te n tio n to c o n tin ue c hi ld b ea ri ng fo r fe m al e p ar en ts a g ed 1 849 : lin ea r p ro b ab ili ty m o d el s, c o ef fi c ie n ts a nd si g ni fi c an ce le ve ls s o ur ce : au th o r’ s an al ys is o f s ur ve y d at a fr o m “ fe rt ili ty , f am ily l ife a nd d ev el o p m en ta l i d ea lis m in u rb an t ur ke y” (2 01 4) published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) urban population development in germany (2000-2014): the contribution of migration by age and citizenship to reurbanisation urban population development in germany (2000-2014): the contribution of migration by age and citizenship to reurbanisation* paul gans abstract: the increase of the population of large german cities between 2000 and 2014 indicates a reurbanisation process in line with the concept of the “growing city”. this exploratory investigation will analyse the infl uence of internal and external migration on the population development of the german urban system by applying descriptive and statistical methods, going beyond the mere observation of selected cities. this paper shows that reurbanisation in germany has resulted from various age and citizenship-dependent combinations of spatial population movements, which in turn express different location advantages and disadvantages. the structural change towards a knowledge economy, the expansion of education, and changing living concepts on the demand versus new urbanistic planning concepts on the supply side strengthen the affi nity of different population groups for urban living. this new attractiveness of cities seems to be most distinct among young adults’ motives for living in cities or not. furthermore, the dynamics of these processes are also dependent upon conditions on the national and international levels. thus, before the economic and fi nancial crisis 2009 the balances of internal migration of the german as well as foreign population had a decisive infl uence on the dynamics, in-migration surpluses from abroad rose considerably after 2009. with the rising numbers of asylum seekers, state-controlled residence allocations as well as migrant networks are increasingly important for the population development of cities. at the same time, especially in cities with at least 500,000 inhabitants, ongoing growth is creating shortages on the housing and real estate markets, which tend to counteract the population growth. keywords: urban population development · germany · urban system · reurbanisation · suburbanisation · internal migration · external migration · german citizens · foreign citizens · age groups · housing market · labour market comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 319-352 (date of release: 21.02.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-01en6 * this article belongs to a special issue on reurbanisation. • paul gans320 1 introduction around the turn of the millennium, a reversal in the population development trends of german cities took place (siedentop 2008: 193). after years of suburbanisation and counterurbanisation with declining population fi gures in large cities, the tendency changed: in the period between 2000 and 2014, urban populations increased by 3.8 per mille annually, and that of all district-free cities (“kreisfreie städte”,1 e.g. stuttgart or heidelberg) by one per mille (table 1). compared to this, the increase in urban districts (0.8 ‰) – predominantly belonging to the surrounding areas of the large cities – is smaller. rural districts are characterised by population declines (those with higher population densities by -2.1 ‰, those with lower population densities by -3.7 ‰), and the total population of germany is stagnating. in table 1, the increase of the average annual growth rate by size of district-free cities, the considerable differences in the development in each size category and the decreasing amplitudes with the increasing population of the cities are particularly remarkable. these varied population developments suggest interand intra-regional concentration processes. however – as a result of the simultaneous growth of urban districts – these processes are opposed by a deconcentration within agglomerations, at least to a certain extent. based on the concept of the “growing city”, a quantitative defi nition of reurbanisation (matthes 2014) is used here, which describes a spatial approach to an increasing proportion of the population in the large or core cities in relation to their surrounding areas (siedentop 2008; herfert/osterhage 2012). from a dynamic perspective, reurbanisation is understood here in the sense of the model of cyclic urban development by van den berg et al. (1982) as is defi ned as a temporary spatial concentration process. in the wake of the positive developments of population and employment in large cities since the turn of the century (geppert/gornig 2010), researchers from various disciplines forecast a slowdown of the ongoing suburbanisation processes (gans/ kemper 2002). these suburbanisation processes had led to extensive urban sprawl 1 since 2011, germany has been administratively divided into 402 districts, 107 of which are district-free cities, cities not attached to an administrative district, and 295 administratively denominated rural districts. rural districts are made up of several municipalities, some of which can also be cities. these so-called district towns are not considered in the survey due to data availability. district-free cities are divided into large cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants and medium-sized cities with less than 100,000. large cities are the functional and economic centres of urban agglomerations in germany and are further divided into categories of 100,000 to 199,999, 200,000 to 499,999, 500,000 to 999,999 and at least 1,000,000 inhabitants. in this study, metropolitan cities are those cities with at least 500,000 inhabitants. regardless of that, the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) distinguishes four types of settlement structures for all german districts. here, the classifi cation is based on the population density of the districts, taking into account the density in the region in which the district is located: district-free cities, administratively denominated rural districts as urban districts (population density of at least 150 inhabitants/km²) mostly in the surrounding areas of large cities, rural districts with a great proportion of densely populated areas (less than 150 inhabitants/km²) and sparsely populated rural districts (less than 100 inhabitants/km²). therefore, district-free medium-sized cities can be classifi ed as urban districts, rural districts with a great proportion of densely populated areas, or as sparsely populated rural districts. urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 321 with negative ecological consequences and intensifi ed intra-regional segregation and economic disparities between the core city and the surrounding region (gans 2005). however, the growth of urban districts by 0.8 per mille suggests – at least to a certain extent – a deconcentration of the population within agglomerations, thus indicating that processes of suburbanisation are still underway. following the stages of urban development by van den berg et al. (1982), one can assume simultaneous processes of reand suburbanisation, as well as growth and shrinkage, in german district-free cities between 2000 and 2014. this exploratory study aims to analyse these processes, which are largely determined by internal and external migration. here, a spatial as well as temporal perspective must be provided. on the one hand, there are signifi cant differences in population development within the urban system (table 1), as well as questions about site-specifi c characteristics of district-free cities, which have a positive or negative impact on the development of population fi gures. on the other hand, economic distortions shape the dynamics of spatial population movements during the sample period. since the fi nancial and economic crisis of 2009, the attractiveness of germany as a migrant destination has increased signifi cantly (gans/pott 2018). whilst until 2010, the external or international migration balance decreased continuously with negative values in the years 2008 and 2009, by 2014, the number of immigrants had doubled to just under 1.5 million, leading to a net migration of approximately 550,000 (statistisches bundesamt 2017). ongoing population growth in many large cities since the year 2000 combined with low construction activity until 2010 has led to an increasingly tense situation on the residential housing market in several large cities (rohland 2017: 32-33). in the coming years, rapidly rising land prices and rental property costs – additionally driven by favourable construction loans – could lead to deconcentration processes and relocations from district-free tab. 1: population development of district-free cities in germany by city size, 2000-14 district-free cities by annual average growth rate (per 1,000) number of number of inhabitants min lower median upper max districts as of 31 december 2011 quartile quartile large cities 1,000,000 and more 4.4 4.6 5.2 10.7 12.5 4 500,000 to 1,000,000 -2.7 -0.1 4.7 8.2 9.4 8 200,000 to 500,000 -6.7 -3.7 0.9 4.9 10.9 25 100,000 to 200,000 -7.3 -1.2 3.6 5.8 10.7 29 medium sized cities 50,000 to 100,000 -15.9 -7.7 -1.1 2.3 8.8 23 20,000 to 50,000 -19.6 -3.9 0.1 1.2 5.9 18 all district-free cities -19.6 -3.1 1,0 4.7 12.5 107 germany -19.6 -4.4 -0.1 2.8 12.5 402 source: bbsr 2016a; own calculations • paul gans322 cities to the surrounding areas, despite the development of new housing areas or the building of new housing on vacant plots in the core cities, thus counteracting reurbanisation. the main focus of this paper is to examine the dynamics of internal and external migration – further differentiated by age and citizenship – and the development of cities of different sizes. a main impetus for this article is the fact that many studies show that some population groups function as a motor for reurbanisation, whereas others counteract this trend (kabisch et al. 2012; gans 2015; matthes 2014; milbert/ sturm 2016). overall, from 2000 to 2014, district-free cities achieved a migration surplus of 9.3 per mille, clearly exceeding the birth defi cit of -6.1 per mille. the estimate of births and deaths for district-free cities from 2010 to 2014 is almost balanced at -0.5 per mille, for metropolitan cities it is slightly positive at 1.0 per mille. however, these values are surpassed by the migration surpluses of both district-free (+7.8 ‰) and metropolitan cities (+9.7 ‰). the key questions therefore are: how important has internal and external migration been for these population trends? which age groups and nationalities are increasing and decreasing urban growth? first, the paper outlines the causes of population growth in cities. this is followed by the presentation of the data for the subsequent empirical analysis, which – in comparison to herfert and osterhage (2012), sander (2014) or busch (2016) – examines district-free cities as elements of the urban system in germany. additionally, the study differentiates internal and external migration by migrants’ age and nationality. 2 theoretical background signs of a reversal from urban population decline to urban growth have been evident in western european countries and the united states since the 1980s (frey 1988; cheshire 1995). ogden and hall (2000) found a similar change in france in the 1990s for lyon, toulouse, nice and nantes. in this decade, the population developments of chicago and new york also turned positive (fishman 2005), and in england, those cities particularly affected by deindustrialisation – such as manchester and liverpool, but also leeds, newcastle and sheffi eld – recorded population increases between 2001 and 2011 (rae 2013). in switzerland, rérat (2012) observed urban population growth starting in 2000. a number of factors have caused this urban growth since 2000. it can be ascribed to a social change over the past years which, according to brühl et al. (2005: 11), provides “the basis for a rediscovery of living in the city”.2 the various dimensions that contribute to the renaissance and population growth of cities are based on, among other things, the changing needs of private households, economic restructuring as well as the knowledge economy and municipal strategies for strengthening the attractiveness of urban locations: 2 direct quotes from german texts have been translated into english by the author. urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 323 social change social change and its diverse impacts on household formation, employment and work relations as well as gender norms has modifi ed the guiding principles and requirements for housing and living environments in favour of cities, thus weakening the process of suburbanisation (brühl et al. 2005; siebel 2008; jessen/siedentop 2018). a driving force behind this change is the pluralisation of living arrangements (ogden/hall 2000; buzar et al. 2007; haase et al. 2010). this development is characterised by an erosion of the “traditional” family and the increasing relevance of smaller household sizes, whether due to later marriage, increasing divorce rates or the increasing proportion of unmarried people and household forms with fewer members. at the same time, for young adults, the phase between moving out of their parents’ house and possibly starting their own family (as well as the parents’ “empty nest” phase) is becoming longer (siebel 2010). therefore, the period in which people live in growing or relatively large households is becoming shorter. due to this, the timeframe in which they may be more open-minded to buying or building a house or moving to a residential suburban area is being reduced. with the growing importance of the knowledge economy, working relationships are changing to more temporary projects, fi xed-term contracts, irregular working hours and high workplace mobility. brake (2012: 24) characterises this change as follows: “it is becoming less common to have the one profession, the one workplace, the one job location, the one marriage, the never-changing working hours or shop opening hours”. this destandardisation of the life course (siebel 2010) changes the needs of private households, which are most likely met by the advantages of urban locations. urban amenities – such as easy access to transport infrastructure, proximity to social and cultural scenes, retail facilities (hesse 2010), educational institutions and workplaces – are important location factors for working couples with and without children, students, singles, single parents and the elderly (häußermann/siebel 1987; brake 2012). it is of upmost importance to have a living environment that provides the possibility for an effi cient organisation of everyday life, a certain degree of tranquillity, safety and environmental quality as well as a living environment that fulfi ls the need for infrastructural and social integration (gans et al. 2008). economic change the change and restructuring in economy since the early 1980s resulting from globalisation and new communication and information technologies have promoted an emerging recentralisation in the united states, which, according to frey (1988: 263), can be explained by “periphery-to-core” or “up the size hierarchy” migration streams from economically weak to economically strong regions or from small to large cities. however, this reversal of urban population development trends, which began in the 1980s, is not only dependent on the size of a city. using the example of europe, cheshire (1995: 1058) emphasises the quality of life in cities, the importance of urban amenities and asks whether the growing knowledge economy will be able to attract highly qualifi ed workers. the main prerequisites for this are access to • paul gans324 research, higher education and training institutions as well as close collaboration of these institutions with corporations and companies from the same and other sectors. in this respect, cities have urbanisation as well as localisation advantages due to their functional diversity. these advantages increase with city size and enable the expansion and intensifi cation of communication and information fl ows (glaeser et al. 2001; florida 2002; storper/scott 2009; geppert/gornig 2010; brake 2012: 2425). the options described above form the basis of urban creative milieus, which place particular emphasis on specifi c areas or districts within large cities, despite globalisation and digitalisation (brake 2012: 26). these places are particularly attractive for highly qualifi ed and creative workers, including start-up entrepreneurs, and thus have a migration surplus of younger people such as 25to 30-year-olds searching for their fi rst job after graduating. educational expansion another factor that has a positive effect on urban growth are institutions for further education. between 2000 and 2015, the overall number of students in germany increased from 1.8 million to 2.8 million (statistisches bundesamt 2016a). from the late 1990s to 2013, the percentage of freshmen at universities increased from 29 percent of the fi nal grade of secondary schools to 53 percent (simons/weiden 2016: 264). temporary spikes of student numbers resulted from the suspension of compulsory military service in 2011, and, after 2012, from a reduction of secondary school years in several federal states. the number of students who acquired their higher education entrance qualifi cation abroad also increased by about 75 percent to almost 220,000 between 2000 and 2014 (bmi 2016: 75). this interaction of various factors led to an increase – at least temporarily – of the internal migration surplus of 18-25-year-olds in cities with universities, and, as a consequence, to a signifi cant increase in the demand on the housing markets in those cities (gans 2015; simons/ weiden 2016; sander 2018). the infl ux of students and graduates causes changes in the composition of urban populations, as shown by various studies of eu member states and the united states (z.b. ogden/hall 2000; birch 2005; haase et al. 2010). typically, the age structure rejuvenates, educational attainment increases, small household sizes gain in prominence, and alternative living arrangements such as shared fl ats or the cohabitation of young couples spread. this, in turn, can displace long-established low-income households (schindler et al. 2012). foreign population international migrants are much more likely to move to metropolitan cities than internal migrants are. in 2013, the proportion of foreigners in metropolitan cities was 15.3 percent (13.9 percent in large cities), clearly outnumbering that of the rest of germany, where it was 8.7 percent. in 2013, almost 27 percent of all foreigners in germany lived in metropolitan cities (45 percent in the remaining large cities), and their share of the total population in metropolitan cities reached 15.2 percent (30 percent for large cities). this concentration results from the size of the urban laurban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 325 bour market, differentiated employment opportunities irrespective of qualifi cation requirements, the size, diversity and affordability of urban rental housing markets, and migrant networks which tend to be more effective in the case of ethnic diversity among foreign residents in large cities (gans/schlömer 2014; jessen/siedentop 2018). birch (2005), fishman (2005) or rérat (2012) also refer to the importance of international migrants for urban growth and the related increasing diversity of the population. fishman (2005) argues that immigration gives a positive impetus to the development of inner-city neighbourhoods which have experienced devaluation through deindustrialisation, suburbanisation and counterurbanisation of the 1960s and 1970s. immigrants make use of the location advantages of these neighbourhoods (e.g. affordable living space and proximity to the core of the regional labour market), and by improving their economic situation invest in the quality of their neighbourhood. “these initial improvements encourage landlords to improve their rental properties, thus keeping older residents in the area and bringing in others” (fishman 2005: 359). small businesses open up close to the downtown economy, partly in formerly fallow areas, thus laying the foundations for a fl exible urban economy with highly qualifi ed workers, “whose jobs are replacing the lost world of urban mass production” (fischman 2005: 359). in this case, urban development can be seen as a response to reurbanisation (haase et al. 2010). urban development policy public policy and municipal strategies for urban development also strengthen the attractiveness of urban residential areas as opposed to living in the surrounding suburban or rural areas. in 1971, a law promoting urban development (städtebauförderungsgesetz) was implemented, aiming at improving the housing conditions for inhabitants of socially disadvantaged and structurally underdeveloped urban neighbourhoods (harlander 2007). as a consequence, private property owners and the real estate industry started investing in housing stock outside of the designated housing programme areas. since the 1980s, cities have pursued urban development policies aimed at increasing the attractiveness of urban areas in terms of living, working and leisure activities. the reason behind this was that cities were facing a tightening of their fi nancial scope due to relocation trends of high-income households and businesses to surrounding suburban areas. up until today, cities have set up urban planning projects at varying levels, investing in undeveloped and conversion areas as well as developing industrial, transport or harbour areas, which had been falling into increasing disrepair since deindustrialisation in the 1970s. this strategy of cities with the aim of providing new areas for housing development primarily depends on whether such areas are available and by whom they are owned. it also depends on the guiding principles of urban planning in the city in question, such as “inner development before outer development” in the case of stuttgart (scholl 2003: 12) or liverpool (rink et al. 2012: 172). in the uk, for example, strategic revitalisation objectives in urban development policy have had a long-term impact on urban growth since the 1970s. similar to germany, measures such as the modernisation of the housing stock, improvements of the living environment quality or • paul gans326 the allocation of new development areas on brownfi eld land increase the attractiveness of urban residential locations (rink et al. 2012; rae 2013). major events also serve as a catalyst for urban renewal. the olympic games in barcelona in 1992 or in london in 2012, for example, had the aim to revitalise socially and economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods (braun/viehoff 2012: 6). at the same time, the cities hoped to permanently strengthen their attractiveness, e.g. through a higher degree of prestige and name recognition. in this sense, urban development policy is seen as the cause of reurbanisation (haase et al. 2010). increasing real estate prices the decision to live in a city or its surrounding area is principally dependent on the monthly costs for rentals and on income (matthes 2014; jessen/siedentop 2018). expenses for the mobility of household members, such as higher taxation of fuel or the loss of government grants for owner-occupied residential property purchases lower the incentives for home ownership in dispersed locations. declining interest rates since 2000 and the fi nancial and economic crises have also increased the attractiveness of cities. with regards to real estate acquisition, low interest rates weaken the relative price advantage of surrounding areas compared to cities (aring 2005). however, these points indicating a reurbanisation are opposed by rising prices, especially on the residential housing markets in large cities. since 2009, rental costs in large cities have shown greater increases than elsewhere in germany, especially in the so-called “a-cities” (berlin, munich, hamburg, cologne, frankfurt/ main, düsseldorf, stuttgart) (rohland 2017; schürt 2017: 7). here, the demand for apartments exceeds the supply. building plots have become a scarce and expensive good in large cities with population growth. in addition, extensive planning and approval procedures, staff shortages in building authorities, building regulations and civil society resistance movements make construction projects more expensive (schürt 2017: 19). oftentimes, private households in cities can neither afford an apartment nor a house that fulfi ls their requirements. might the growing strain on the residential housing markets in large cities since 2010 increase the trend toward suburbanisation? in the following, the above list of factors forms the basis for explaining the role of internal and external migration – differentiated by age and citizenship – in the rising population fi gures observed in district-free cities in germany. however, the data availability sets a certain limit, which is why various aspects such as the infl uence of social change on reurbanisation cannot be considered to the same extent. therefore, the main focus will be the consideration of location-specifi c conditions of cities, such as the structure of employment according to economic and professional sectors, the qualifi cation of employees, educational institutions and the housing market. urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 327 3 data and method this investigation focuses on district-free cities in germany, according to the territorial boundaries at the end of 2011. the empirical study is based on a special data set of the “continuous spatial observation” (“laufende raumbeobachtung”, i.e. a long-term data set of the general living conditions in germany across time and space), undertaken by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) between 1 january 2000 and 31 december 2014. the dataset – published in 2016 – covers population fi gures from 31 december 1999 to 31 december 2014. the analysis of the population, differentiated by citizenship and age group (which roughly correspond with stages within the life course such as childhood, adolescence, family formation or retirement), is possible for the years 2000-13. in addition, the following annual data are available: inand out-migration, differentiated by internal and external migration, the total amount for the time period from 2000-14, differentiated by age groups (2000-13), german and foreign citizenship (2003-13), and differentiated by both features (2005-13). the dataset also provides statistical information on key topics in spatial development (bbsr 2016b). the available indicators on the labour market, employment, education and housing market are the basis for the analyses in section 4. however, the corresponding data are not available for every year in the period from 2000 to 2014 and not for every district-free city. consequently, for characterisation – such as, for example, the proportion of employees in the creative industries who are subject to social insurance contributions in a district-free city – the average of the fi rst available value and that of 2014 is calculated. however, the census of 9 may 2011 makes it more diffi cult to carry out a thorough time series analysis because the determined population of 80.2 million for germany was below the offi cial forward projection of about 81.7 million based on the 1987 census. the census also delivered new population numbers at the district level, with some corrections being greater than others. thus, the information on the number of inhabitants from 2000-11 is not fully comparable with the corresponding fi gures from 2012-14, in which the new census was taken into account. in order to be able to describe the population development, including internal and external migration, there are two possible approaches for every district-free city: 1. calculating the respective rates per calendar year in the time period 2000-11 on the basis of the census of 1987, and from 2012 onwards on the basis of the 2011 census, or 2. retroactively calculating population fi gures from the end of 2011 on the basis of the 2011 census. however, it is not possible to carry out a meaningful back-calculation, as, for example, the information on births and deaths cannot be differentiated by nationality. with the application of the back-calculation, a corresponding analysis of urban population development would not be possible. therefore, this paper uses the fi rst • paul gans328 procedure. in the case of ten district-free cities, this approach leads to a positive mean annual growth rate for the time period 2000-14, although the population size at the end of 2014 is lower than in 2000 which had been a consequence of comprehensive corrections following the 2011 census results. using descriptive methods, the exploratory study illustrates population development by size and temporal sequence, each differentiated by age and nationality, and captures the relationships between the trends and site-specifi c characteristics of the district-free cities with the help of correlation and regression analyses. 4 population development of district-free cities (2000-14) 4.1 reurbanisation and metropolitanisation most large cities have higher growth rates than the national average (see table 1). the resulting spatial concentration process is especially noticeable in east germany, where cities such as leipzig and dresden stand out in otherwise rather rural surroundings characterised by high population losses (see table 2). in the case of berlin, the sprawl is limited to a rather narrow strip of wealthy suburbs around the capital. a less prominent core-periphery structure – and thus a reurbanisation process according to van den berg et al. (1982) – can also be found in the conurbations of west germany (see table 2). an absolute concentration in favour of the large cities is recorded as relatively high in the agglomerations of frankfurt/main and cologne, but quite low for hamburg and bremen, where growth rates of the core city and the suburban area hardly vary. the region of munich achieves its enormous population growth with very high external migration gains. here, the surrounding region has an annual growth rate of 9.4 per mille, which is only surpassed by the increase of the number of inhabitants in the core city of munich. in contrast, cities in the ruhr area register a population decline. in the case of dortmund, population development is stagnating but better than in the surrounding areas, thus, one can assume a relative concentration or reurbanisation. in essen, however, the phase of reurbanisation does not apply (see table 2). a population development in favour of the larger cities – a metropolitanisation in favour of the large cities with at least 500,000 inhabitants in the sense of an “up the size hierarchy” trend according to frey (1988: 263) – cannot be found in table 2, nor can it be derived from the correlation between the size of district-free cities and the rate of internal migration balance. the corresponding coeffi cient is not signifi cant (+0.017), because other factors, such as the city size, have – in different combinations and thus locationand/or region-specifi c characteristics – a high infl uence on inand out-migrations within germany (gans/schlömer 2014). such factors include good to very good economic development (e.g. munich, stuttgart, frankfurt/main), unemployment rates of more than 10 percent (e.g. bremen, dortmund, essen), noticeable improvements on the labour market in combination with simultaneously relaxed housing markets (dresden, leipzig) or the existence of universities and research institutions with a national reputation (e.g. berlin, munich, hamburg, urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 329 cologne, dresden). in comparison to internal migration, the rate of external migration balance shows at best a weak positive correlation (+0.327). accordingly, the respective rates of external migration balances tend to increase with the size of the district-free cities, which can be interpreted as a consequence of the large, differentiated labour and housing markets as well of the effectiveness of migrant networks. large cities, with their high numbers of foreign nationals, function as hubs in migrant networks. their effectiveness also depends on the location of the large cities in regard to the most important countries of origin, e.g. munich towards southeast europe, berlin towards poland, or cities in southern germany with a high proportion of people with a southern european migration background (gans/schlömer 2014). the correlation between the population development of all district-free cities (2000-14) and selected variables relating to employment structure confi rms the importance of economic structural change for urban growth (see table 3). district-free cities with a high proportion of employees who pay social securitycontributions, work in business-related services and in creative industries and have academic degrees tend to grow in population. cities with a high proportion of employees without a degree, with occupational activities in manufacturing and/or with higher unemployment rates are more likely to register population losses. district-free cities with institutions for further education show above-average growth rates. furthertab. 2: population development of the 12 large cities with at least 500,000 inhabitants (2011) and their surrounding areas, 2000-141 core city ranked according annual growth rate rate of migration balance to size, 31 december 2011 per 1,000 per 1,000 (agglomeration) core city suburban area1 internal external total berlin 5.1 2.8 1.3 3.7 5.0 hamburg 5.3 4.6 3.4 2.3 5.7 munich 12.7 9.4 2.6 7.6 10.2 cologne 5.8 0.9 4.3 0.7 5.0 frankfurt/main 8.8 2.3 3.1 3.1 6.2 düsseldorf 4.4 -0.4 2.8 2.5 5.3 stuttgart 5.9 3.4 2.3 2.8 5.1 dortmund -0.0 -3.8 -0.6 3.4 2.8 bremen 1.9 1.1 0.9 3.5 4.4 essen -2.0 0.5 0.8 1.9 2.7 dresden 9.5 -6.7 7.4 1.8 9.2 leipzig 9.5 -8.3 9.2 1.5 10.7 1 the surrounding areas of large cities include the districts of the respective so-called spatial planning region (“raumordnungsregion”), excluding district-free cities. in the case of the city-states, the bordering districts of the neighbouring spatial planning region are taken into account. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculations • paul gans330 more, one can begin to see the negative side of the continuing population growth in district-free cities: the change in living space per person (2000-14) correlates negatively with the average annual growth rate, although many residential properties have been built in those district-free cities which have had above-average growth since 2011. the increasing occupancy rate can be interpreted as the replacement tab. 3: correlation (spearman’s rho1) between the annual average growth rate (per 1,000) of large cities (2000-14) and selected variables regarding employment structure, education, housing market, household structure and city size variable annual average growth rate (per 1,000) employment structure (proportion of employees who are subject to social insurance contributions in) business-related services (in %)2 +0.551** creative industries (in %)3 +0.563** knowledge-driven industries (in %)2 +0.063 occupational activities in manufacturing (in %, 2014) -0.397** labour market unemployment (in %)4 -0.601** unemployment (in %, 2014) -0.559** education employees without a qualifi cation (in %; 2014) +0.043 employees with an academic degree (in %; 2014) +0,565** number of students per 1,000 inhabitants4 +0.447** number of students per 1,000 inhabitants (2000) +0.480** number of students per 1,000 inhabitants (2014) +0.425** housing market change in living space per person (in %; 2000-14) -0.665** residential properties completed (in %; 2011-14) +0.742** building land prices (2013/14) 0.677** change in building land prices (2008/09-2013/14) 0.424** private household structure medium household size (2014) -0.208* proportion of single-person households (2014) +0.423** city size +0.312** 1 level of signifi cance: ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; 2 average of 2009 and 2014; 3 average of 2008 and 2014; 4 average of 2000 and 2014 source: bbsr 2016b; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 331 of smaller household forms by larger ones, as well as a replacement of a singleperson household by shared households. this explanation could be ascribed to the positive correlation between the annual growth average and the proportion of single-person households (see table 3), which reaches almost 50 percent in cities with higherend land prices of more than €365/m² (2013/14, upper quartile) and signifi cantly exceeds the corresponding value of 45 percent for all district-free cities. in addition, table 3 shows that up until 2014, neither rising nor already high land prices had a dampening effect on urban growth. over time, the population development of district-free cities confi rms a spatial concentration process in favour of large cities (see fig. 1). their annual growth rates are continuously higher than those of district-free cities with less than 100,000 inhabitants. figure 1 also shows that the population growth of district-free cities after 2009 is signifi cantly higher than before. medium-sized cities registered a population decline up until 2009, while large cities were continuously growing (with the exception of 2000). after 2009 there was a remarkable turnaround in the up to then rather even population development (see fig. 1). in all types of district-free cities, the rates started increasing continuously, whereas growth rates for large cities were fig. 1: population development of district-free cities according to settlement structure, 2000-14 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 large cities: district-free cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density of at least 150 inhabitants/km2 medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density below 150 inhabitans/km2 medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density below 100 inhabitants/km2 20142012201020082006200420022000 per 1,000 year source: bbsr 2016a; own calculations • paul gans332 still above those of medium-sized cities. table 4 illustrates the striking differences of the population development in both periods by city size and settlement structure: 1. after 2009, the average growth rates for all district-free cities have risen, sharply for some. 2. district-free cities show higher population growth than any of the other district types. 3. the urban concentration process is intensifying, as the growth rates for large cities are noticeably higher than for urban districts in surrounding areas, and rural districts even show a decline in population fi gures. adding to this, cities with at least 500,000 inhabitants show particularly high growth rates. in summary, population development in germany can be characterised as a reurbanisation process, especially in favour of the metropolitan cities. considering table 4, there is certainly evidence of frey’s (1988) “up the size hierarchy” trend. this result, however, requires a differentiated interpretation from city to city, as the differences in the population development of dortmund, bremen and essen on the one hand, and frankfurt/main, dresden and leipzig on the other in the group with a size of 500,000 to less than 1 million inhabitants illustrate (see table 2). here, the respective economic and job market situations contribute to the trend, as does the relaxed housing market in the cases of leipzig and dresden (hirschle/schürt 2008). local conditions also play a role in the cities with 200,000 to 500,000 inhabitants, which show comparatively low growth (see table 4). five cities in the ruhr area belong to this category – duisburg, bochum, wuppertal, gelsenkirchen and oberhausen. their population has been declining by an annual average of 5.3 per mille tab. 4: population development of district-free cities and other administrative districts by settlement structure in germany, 2000-14 district categories annual growth rate per 1,000 2000-09 2010-14 district-free cities by size 1,000,000 and more 4.0 11.5 500,000 to 1,000,000 2.3 9.3 200,000 to 500,000 -0.4 4.7 100,000 to 200,000 0.7 5.5 below 100,000 -3.8 1.0 all district-free cities 1.2 7.3 urban districts 0.5 1.4 rural districts -3.2 -0.2 germany -0.4 2.2 source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 333 (2000-09) and 1.6 per mille (2010-14), mainly due to ongoing economic problems. the unemployment rates in these fi ve cities changed only slightly between 2000 (median: 12.1 percent) and 2014 (median: 12.0 percent). the persistent challenges on their labour markets – compared to all district-free cities – are refl ected by consistently higher unemployment rates than elsewhere in germany, despite the ongoing favourable conditions in the country (2000: median 10.0 percent; 2014: median 7.9 percent). the results so far are comparable to those of other studies (glaeser et al. 2001; florida 2002; storper/scott 2009; brake 2012: 24-25). large cities in particular are experiencing above-average growth. these cities’ employment structure suggests that the knowledge economy plays an important role – they host centres for research and further education institutions, and their labour market is relatively relaxed. major cities benefi t greatly from these urbanisation advantages, so that in terms of the total population – analogous to frey (1988) – one can refer to it as a development “up the size hierarchy” (see table 3). the signifi cant increase in momentum after 2009 points to the infl uence of further factors. 4.2 different trends of internal and external migration by citizenship the population development of district-free cities in figure 1 results from changing national and international frameworks that – over time – have an effect on the different trends of internal and external migration, for german or foreign nationals (see fig. 2).3 for german citizens, the balance between inand out-migration was consistently slightly negative, hitting a minimum in 2004/06, when unemployment reached a peak in germany at around 11 percent. however, the balance is quite low and only plays a subordinate role for the population development of district-free cities. for foreign nationals, external migration decreased in all types of districtfree cities until 2009, with slight losses in some cities in 2008 and 2009. as of 2010, the trend started reversing: the immigration surplus rose almost exponentially and reached about ten times its 2010 value in 2013. the internal migration balances of the german population were positive throughout (2003-13) for large cities (see fig. 2a). the gains continuously surpass the balances of the other district-free cities, which show a high fl uctuation from year to year, and thus indicate a very high attractiveness of the residential areas in large cities, even though the balance of internal migration of the german population decreased signifi cantly after 2011. the balances of foreign inhabitants are comparatively stable on a comparatively low level. as of 2010, very different trends can be seen in district-free cities independently of size or settlement structure. if one is to take into account the factors that determine the differences described above – differences in intensity and time trends of internal and external migration balances relating to citizenship – economic and political changes at national and 3 figure 2 a and b show signifi cantly higher rates for foreign and german citizens, however, the effect of this difference on the development of the urban population is markedly reduced by the considerably larger number of german inhabitants overall. • paul gans334 international levels must be taken into account. until 2009, the situation on the german labour market was rather tense compared to other eu member states. germany was thus not very attractive for migrant workers. this changed fundamentally with the fi nancial and economic crisis (gans/pott 2018: 31; rohland 2017: 36-37). as a result of the competitiveness of companies in germany and labour market reforms, the demand for labour increased, as did the number of employees. employment in germany was particularly interesting for young adults from southern fig. 2: internal and external migration balances in district-free cities according to citizenship and to settlement structure, 2003-13 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 year large cities: district-free cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density of at least 150 inhabitants/km2 medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density below 150 inhabitans/km2 medium-sized cities: district-free cities with a population density below 100 inhabitants/km2 a german population per 1,000 -1,6 -1,4 -1,2 -1,0 -0,8 -0,6 -0,4 -0,2 0,0 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 year per 1,000 per 1,000 per 1,000 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 year -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 year internal migration external migration b foreign population internal migration external migration source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 335 europe. however, a much stronger factor in immigration numbers has been the eu’s freedom of movement for workers for people coming from the countries of the 2004 and 2007 enlargement. in 2014, immigration from poland was highest with 197,908 people, followed by romania (191,861), bulgaria (77,790), italy (73,361), hungary (57,820) and spain (41,091; statistisches bundesamt 2016b: 47). as confl icts in the middle east and africa have grown since 2011, by the end of 2014, the number of asylum applications in germany had risen to about 202,000, the highest level in 15 years (bamf 2017: 3). asylum seekers are offered accommodation at reception centres upon arrival and are then distributed to other districts after their registration. therefore, district-free cities with reception centres for asylum seekers have relatively high external migration gains and high internal migration losses at the same time. due to their relatively small population, this reverse trend is particularly pronounced for district-free cities with a population density of less than 150 inhabitants/km², but negligible in terms of the impact on population size. the population development of district-free cities differs considerably in 200009 and 2010-14 (see fig. 1 and table 4) due to a change in spatial population movements when looking at migrants’ citizenship (see fig. 2). from 2000-09, internal migration balances of german and foreign nationals determine the increase in population fi gures in district-free cities, whereas the balance of the german population is most important according to the regression analysis in table 5. while germans’ external migration balance might correlate negatively with the average annual growth, it does not increase the variance explained signifi cantly and is thus not taken into account due to heteroscedasticity. from 2010-14, only the internal migration balance of germans has a statistically signifi cant impact on population development, although the balances of external migration are weakly linked to the trend of number of inhabitants (foreign nationals: +0.285; germans: -0.261). the clear decline in the variance explained for the time period between 2010 and 2014 also indicates that in this phase, the causalities regarding population development are differentiated on the basis of migration balances. in both time periods, higher positive internal migration balances are to be expected where the job market favours the creative industries and company-related services, if the skills of employees were above average, if the number of available places for students in higher education was high and if the land prices increased between 2008/09 and 2012/13. the migration balances included in the calculations result from the sum of agespecifi c balances, whose temporal dynamics and spatial differentiation in turn give a deeper insight into motives for migration and into the attractiveness of districtfree cities for various age groups. thus, migration balances show the following motives (milbert/sturm 2016): • under 18-year-olds: mainly housing-oriented motives, meaning members of private households in the expansion phase which are striving for home ownership or at least an increase in their living space and – due to rising land prices – are also driven by price-sensitive aspects in their migration decisions. • 18to under 25-year-olds: education-oriented motives, meaning educational migrants who are predominantly looking for district-free cities with further education institutions and/or opportunities for vocational training. • paul gans336 • 25to under 30-year-olds: workplace-oriented motives, meaning labour migrants who are looking for a job after graduation and prefer cities with good job markets and differentiated employment opportunities. • 65-year-olds and older: retirement motives, meaning a tendency to leave district-free cities in favour of less densely populated districts after retirement. 4.2.1 internal and external migration of the german population by age in both timeframes (2005-09 and 2010-13), population growth in district-free cities was driven by the internal migration gains of german citizens (see table 5). this positive development can be attributed to the in-migration surpluses of young adults aged 18 to 30 (correlation coeffi cient of at least +0.6). the internal migration balances of older people, however, do not have any effect on the population development, neither in the fi rst nor in the second timeframe, whereas the internal migration balances of under-18-year-olds changed from ambivalent in the fi rst phase (coeffi cient: -0.122) to signifi cantly negative in the second phase (coeffi cient: -0.406). the internal migration balances of different age groups are illustrative of the appeals of cities of different sizes (see table 6). for people aged 18-25, the larger the city, the greater the migration surplus, even more so between 2010 and 2013. it can tab. 5: regression model for population growth of large cities (2000-14)* dependent variable average annual population growth of district-free cities in ‰ independent variable* regression coeffi cient β-coeffi cient n (2000-09) constant -0.204 98 internal migration balance of germans per 1,000 german inhabitants (2003-09) 0.110 0.818 internal migration balance of foreigners per 1,000 foreign inhabitants (2003-09) 0.010 0.168 variance extracted 77.3% (2010-14) constant 0.275 100 internal migration balance of germans per 1,000 german inhabitants (2010-13) 0.088 0.659 variance extracted 43.5% * heteroscedasticity is neither present when following the method of glesjer (backhaus et al. 2016: 104), nor is there a signifi cant correlation between the estimated values for regression and residuals. the number of district-free cities varies as a result of the exclusion of those cities from the analysis which show extreme values due to reception centres for asylum seekers. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 337 be assumed that this recent development was mainly infl uenced by the suspension of compulsory military service in 2011, by the reduction of secondary school years and, as a consequence, by double graduation classes in almost all federal states after 2012 (see chapter 2). the introduction of the secondary residence tax in several university cities since around 2005 also increased the number of inhabitants, simply due to the fact that many students re-registered their secondary residence in the university city as their primary residence in order to avoid tax payments, and were thus registered as new inhabitants. consequently, the urban population grows, although no “real” immigration has occurred (engler 2013: 16). universities in cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants benefi ted in particular from the noticeable increase in the number of freshmen. the distribution of the balances according to size categories indicates a metropolitanisation process, which has been weakening since 2010 (see table 6). compared to this age group, the balance of labour migrants aged 25-30 is characterised by a much higher tendency “up the size hierarchy”. only the metropolitan cities had in-migration surpluses in both time periods, whereas since 2010, some district-free cities of other sizes have been experiencing increasing migration losses. due to heteroscedasticity, it is diffi cult to determine the infl uence of specifi c characteristics of district-free cities on the internal migration balances of 18-to-25 and 25-to-30-year-olds. nevertheless, correlation analyses for both time periods show that with increasing migration rates in both age groups (see table 7, 8), the proportion of employees in the business service sector and creative industry who district-free internal migration rate per 1,000 n cities, number less than 18 18 to 25 25 to 30 65 years and all age of inhabitants years years years older groups 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 large cities  500,000 -6.7 -8.3 60.9 61.2 37.4 31.5 -3.2 -2.5 4.5 3.5 12 200,000 < 500,000 -4.6 -5.9 51.6 60.8 2.6 -3.2 -2.4 -1.5 1.5 1.9 22 100,000 < 200,000 -2.7 -4.6 40.3 46.7 -1.3 -1.8 -1.9 -1.4 1.2 1.1 28 cities < 100,000 -1.5 -3.0 18.5 29.7 -16.0 -16.5 0.7 1.5 -0.0 0.7 40 all districtfree cities -4.9 -6.6 50.4 55.4 17.9 13.5 -2.3 -1.6 2.7 2.4 102 1 district-free cities with extreme values on migration balance are not considered. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation tab. 6: balance of internal migration rates of german nationals by city size and age group (2005-09, 2010-13)1 • paul gans338 contribute to social insurance and the importance of highly-skilled workers with academic degrees rise. such cities are also characterised by high land prices. district-free cities with relatively high numbers of places at universities for students compared to their number of inhabitants attract many young people, whereas for 25-to-30-year-old labour migrants, cities with low unemployment rates and high construction activity are particularly attractive. the parallel classifi cation of district-free cities by internal migration gains and losses regarding both age groups within the time period of 2005-13 provides further insights into the factors infl uencing the balances. all metropolitan cities – except for bremen – achieve in-migration surpluses for educational and labour migrants (e.g. berlin, dortmund, dresden, essen, frankfurt/main, hamburg, cologne, munich, stuttgart) due to their large and differentiated labour markets as well as educational facilities and thus their diverse workplace opportunities, not only for university graduates. there are a number of university cities belonging to this variable balance of internal migration rate per 1,000 less than 18 years 18 to 25 years 25 to 30years employment structure (proportion of employees who are subject to social insurance contributions in) business-related services (in %, 2009) -0.402** +0.516** +0.496** creative industries (in %)2 -0.430** +0.617** +0.391** knowledge-driven industries (in %, 2009) labour market unemployment (in %)3 -0.222* -0.448** education highly qualifi ed employees per 1,000 employees aged 30-354 -0.506** +0.840** +0.504** number of students per 1,000 inhabitants3 -0.477** +0.762** housing market residential properties completed (in %)3 -0.233* +0.315** building land prices (2008/09) +0.243* +0.440** tab. 7: correlation (spearman’s rho1) between the balance of internal migration by selected age groups and variables characterising specifi c dimensions of district-free cities, 2005-09 1 level of signifi cance: ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; 2 average of 2008 and 2009; 3 average of 2000 and 2009; 4 average of 2005 and 2009 source: bbsr 2016a/b; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 339 group of district-free cities which host numerous research facilities of national and international prominence, company headquarters, knowledge-driven industries or business-related services (e.g. bonn, brunswick, coburg, darmstadt, erlangen, karlsruhe, mainz, münster, ulm, wolfsburg). some district-free cities located close to a metropolitan city are attractive residential locations for commuters to major cities (e.g. fürth, offenbach/main, potsdam). district-free cities with infl ows of educational migrants and outfl ows of labour migrants are relatively heterogeneous. they stand out with their combination of higher education institutions and a regional labour market which cannot provide enough workplaces for the graduates. these include district-free cities in east germany that experienced an expansion of student place capacities, such as erfurt, jena, magdeburg or rostock. in west germany, examples include bayreuth, flensburg, kaiserslautern, kassel or passau, where universities were built in the 1960s and 70s as catalysts for regional development. this group also includes district-free cities with comparatively high unemployment (e.g. bremen, duisburg, schweinfurt, wuppertal) or with very tight housing markets variable balance of internal migration rate per 1,000 less than 18 years 18 to 25 years 25 to 30years employment structure (proportion of employees who are subject to social insurance contributions in) business-related services (in %)2 -0.494** +0.527** +0.414** creative industries (in %)2 -0.476** +0.580** +0.367** knowledge-driven industries (in %)2 -* labour market unemployment (in %)2 education highly qualifi ed employees per 1,000 employees aged 30-352 -0.700** +0.843** +0.330** number of students per 1,000 inhabitants2 -0.599** +0.782** -0.217* housing market residential properties completed (in %)2 -0.236* +0.427* +0.333** building land prices (2013/14) -0.433** +0.322** +0.527** change in building land prices (2008/09-2013/14; in %) -0.228* +0.355** +0.234** tab. 8: correlation (spearman’s rho1) between the balance of internal migration by selected age groups and variables characterising specifi c dimensions of district-free cities, 2010-13 1 level of signifi cance: ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; 2 average of 2010 and 2013 source: bbsr 2016a/b; own calculation • paul gans340 (heidelberg, freiburg). the balances in both age groups are particularly negative for cities with high unemployment, such as the ruhr area (e.g. gelsenkirchen, hagen, herne, oberhausen), frankfurt/oder, pirmasens or salzgitter. only six cities, including baden-baden, leverkusen, mühlheim, had losses of educational migrants and increases of labour migrants, as they are home to relatively large employers from the media, chemical and food retail industry. the balances of internal migration rates of germans below the age of 18 describe a countertrend towards the metropolitanisation process of people age 18-30 (see table 6). this “down the size hierarchy” development (see table 6) is verifi ed by signifi cantly negative correlations in both time periods with variables (see table 7, 8), which – according to economic structure and qualifi cation of employees – become more and more evident with growing population numbers. the signifi cant losses of the german population below the age of 18 in metropolitan cities and growing balances with decreasing size of the cities indicates a suburbanisation process, which has intensifi ed since 2010 (see table 6). reasons for this intensifi cation can be found in increasing building land prices, whose median value rose moderately by 20 percent between 2008/09 and 2013/14 to 193 €/ m² in all district-free cities, compared to a doubling of land prices to 369 €/m² in the metropolitan cities (bbsr 2016b, own calculations; waltersbacher 2017: 5-8). it is noteworthy that in the period between 2005 and 2009, there is no signifi cant correlation between 2008/09 building land prices and the balance of internal migration of germans younger than 18 as an indicator for housing-oriented migration (see table 7). in the 2010-13 time period, the balance of this age group is correlated negatively with 2013/14 land prices and their changes from 2008/09 to 2013/14. the accelerated increase in prices means that private households in the expansion phase, which want to rent or buy property in large cities, often cannot achieve their living requirements in cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants, as they cannot afford properties on offer, and this despite favourable conditions such as low loan rates and an increase in real earnings since 2010. one alternative is the purchase of property in surrounding areas. even though large cities have the advantage of accessible infrastructure for older people due to agglomeration advantages and mobility offers, they experienced internal migration losses in the age group of 65 years and older between 2005 and 2013, compared to gains in smaller district-free cities (see table 6). there are various reasons for this development, such as returning to one’s place of origin or moving to scenically attractive areas with a low population density – such as the alpine foreland or coastal areas –, but also to urban areas with a high living standard, which have all location advantages of larger cities, especially if they are adapted to the specifi c needs of older people. baden-baden, potsdam and weimar all show consistently high in-migration surpluses in the time period between 2005 and 2013. in the investigated time periods, district-free cities consistently experienced external migration losses of german citizens (see table 9), which were halved in the wake of the fi nancial crisis in 2009 as a result of higher immigration rates in combination with simultaneously declining out-migrations (2005-09: -0.9‰; 201013: -0.4‰). here, the age group of 25-to-30-year-olds show the lowest rates, their urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 341 negative balance lessened after 2009 (2005-09: -2.9‰; 2010-13: -2.1‰), but is still far from that of the other age groups. an explanation could be that highly-qualifi ed young adults with a migrant background emigrate to their other country of citizenship. consequently, the balance of germany with turkey has been negative since 2006, certainly also because of the positive economic developments in turkey up until 2013 and the good employment opportunities for skilled workers of turkish origin from german companies (hanewinkel 2012: 3). overall, the negative effects of external migration losses on urban population development are negligible, especially in comparison to the rates of internal migration balances, irrespective of the time period or the size of cities. 4.2.2 internal and external migration of the foreign population by age district-free cities predominantly register internal migration gains of foreign citizens (see table 10). the in-migration surpluses of under-30-year-olds were overproportionately high in both time periods, while older people tended to give up their place of residence in the city. in the period of 2005-09, metropolitan cities were highly attractive for foreigners age 18-30, not so, however, for children and adolescents or for people age 65 and older. from 2010 to 2013, the in-migration surpluses for the age groups under 30 in large cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants increased considerably, in particular, small district-free cities became more attractive. at the same time, internal migration increases of foreigners in metropolitan cities decreased in all age groups. for young adults, the metropolitanisation process in the tab. 9: balance of external migration rate by city size and selected age group (2005-09, 2010-13)1 district-free rates per 1,000 n cities, number less than 18 18 to 25 25 to 30 65 years and all age of inhabitants years years years older groups 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 large cities  500,000 -1.1 -0.1 -0.0 +0.6 -3.0 -2.1 -0.2 -0.1 -1.0 -0.4 12 200,000 < 500,000 -0.9 -0.3 -0.5 -0.2 -2.8 -2.1 -0.1 -0.1 -0.8 -0.5 22 100,000 < 200,000 -1.0 -0.2 -0.7 +0.1 -2.9 -2.0 -0.2 -0.1 -0.9 -0.4 28 cities < 100,000 -1.2 -0.4 -1.1 -0.5 -3.1 -2.2 -0.2 -0.1 -0.9 -0.5 40 all districtfree cities -1.1 -0.2 -0.4 +0.2 -2.9 -2.1 -0.2 -0.1 -0.9 -0.4 102 1 district-free cities with extreme values on migration balance are not considered. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation • paul gans342 time period between 2005 and 2009 started changing to a “down the size hierarchy” trend, which grew for the under 18-year-olds in 2005-09, and subsequently became increasingly clear. a further stone in the mosaic of metropolitanisation is added by the distribution of external migration balances of the foreign population (see table 11). in districtfree cities, irrespective of their size, the gains for the under-30-year-olds were almost seven times higher in 2010-13 than in 2005-09, and even higher than that for some age groups and city size categories. only for older foreigners, a relocation beyond german borders is likely, a trend that has strengthened since 2010. in both periods, a concentration process can only partially be identifi ed, as the balances of the under 30-year-olds were overproportionately high for metropolitan cities. but also in district-free cities with less than 100,000 inhabitants, the balances increased strongly. this development indicates a combination of migration both down and up the “size hierarchy”. these fi ndings on migration balances of the foreign population give rise to a number of different explanatory approaches which, however, cannot be proven adequately with the data available due to factors such as multicollinearity. in the time period from 2005 to 2009, the correlations between external migration balances of foreigners and location-specifi c characteristics of district-free cities are quite weak. 18-to-30-year-olds are the only age group for which there is an indication that they predominantly prefer to move to district-free cities whose economic structure promises a relatively good labour market. the economic recovery in germany since 2010 has stimulated a signifi cant increase in immigration from abroad. it can be tab. 10: balance of internal migration of foreign citizens by city size and age group (2005-09, 2010-13)1 district-free rates per 1,000 n cities, number less than 18 18 to 25 25 to 30 65 years and all age of inhabitants years years years older groups 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 large cities  500,000 2.8 1.0 14.5 9.7 11.7 7.3 -0.5 1.1 4.5 1.0 12 200,000 < 500,000 4.9 14.4 11.7 21.1 0.7 4.5 0.1 -0.5 2.6 5.2 22 100,000 < 200,000 3.1 14.5 12.9 19.6 1.4 8.3 -0.8 0.5 2.4 5.8 28 cities < 100,000 3.1 21.7 8.7 25.0 -6.0 8.6 -0.7 1.2 1.0 9.2 40 all districtfree cities 3.4 7.6 13.2 14.9 6.7 6.9 -0.4 -0.6 3.5 3.2 102 1 district-free cities with extreme values on migration balance are not considered. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 343 assumed that immigration from the 2004/07 eu accession states were most likely aimed at the large regional labour markets with their differentiated demand for economic sectors and qualifi cation of employees. consequently, the correlation coeffi cients of 18-to-25-year-olds are signifi cantly positive – and a little less pronounced for the 25-30 age group – with the proportion of employees in the creative industry who are subject to social insurance contributions (+0.318), highly-skilled workers (+0.568) and employees with an academic degree (+0.615). this concentration in favour of metropolitan cities is mitigated by the effectiveness of social networks. the positive development on the labour market in germany certainly is a crucial pull factor for potential labour migrants from other eu member states. however, the correlation between external migration balances of foreigners and the average unemployment rate in 2010-13 is not signifi cantly different from zero. for example, bochum, dortmund and essen in the ruhr area, frankfurt/main, nuremberg and stuttgart in southern germany registered in-migration surpluses of 30 to 44 per mille in 2010-13, but the unemployment rate in the ruhr area ranged from 9 to almost 13 percent, whereas in the southern german cities it amounted to less than 5.5 percent. the less important the situation on the labour market is as a factor directly infl uencing the spatial distribution of international migration, the greater the importance of social networks for immigration, for example by means of chain migration. this leads to a persistence of spatial patterns – in the case of italians, for example, especially in the south-west of germany (gans/schlömer 2014: 150) or in the case of turks in the ruhr area –, which even more than 40 years after tab. 11: balance of external migration of foreign citizens by city size and age group (2005-09, 2010-13)1 district-free rates per 1,000 n cities, number less than 18 18 to 25 25 to 30 65 years and all age of inhabitants years years years older groups 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 200509 201013 large cities  500,000 13.9 58.0 88.8 156.3 24.0 91.9 -17.0 -16.4 6.8 43.8 12 200,000 < 500,000 8.9 50.4 58.4 108.2 9.5 65.5 -9.6 -11.8 5.1 34.7 22 100,000 < 200,000 9.5 47.9 61.4 117.3 15.8 72.1 -12.0 -11.5 5.1 38.4 28 cities < 100,000 9.3 50.0 67.8 136.8 6.6 73.3 -7.3 -10.1 6.3 40.4 40 all districtfree cities 11.6 54.1 75.3 137.5 18.5 82.2 -13.7 -14.1 6.1 40.7 102 1 district-free cities with extreme values on migration balance are not considered. source: bbsr 2016a; own calculation • paul gans344 the recruitment stop refl ect peculiarities of former but not necessarily of current labour markets and economic structures. changes in places of residence linked to the distribution of asylum seekers follow certain criteria, such as availability of housing, access to social infrastructures etc. and structures of the labour market that are statistically hard to capture. for example, district-free cities with reception centres for asylum seekers are characterised by high external migration gains, such as neumünster with +725 per mille, trier with +629 per mille, chemnitz with +626 per mille, karlsruhe with +327 per mille or eisenach with 120 per mille. at the same time, however, they are also characterised by high internal migration losses as a result of the relocation of asylum seekers to other municipalities, which is handled differently from one federal state to the next. the allocation of asylum seekers is formally recorded as in-migration. in the time period between 2005 and 2009, the internal migration of foreign citizens was predominantly motivated by labour market trends. the rate for all foreigners as well as the rate for the respective age group of the under 30-year-olds correlates signifi cantly negatively with the average unemployment rate in this phase. this correlation is no longer verifi able for the 2010-13 time period. the correlation coeffi cients indicate that foreign citizens leave district-free cities with a corporate structure fostering economic development (high importance of business-related services, creative industries, highly-skilled workers), and households with foreign members in the expansion phase leave district-free cities due to high building land prices in particular. this is accompanied by the observation that for 2010-13 in comparison to 2005-09, cities with a declining population are gaining in importance as internal migration destinations for foreign nationals. the reason behind this development could be the decentralised distribution of asylum seekers after their registration in the reception centres. irrespective of this, taking into account the high external migration gains of metropolitan cities, one could expect a saturation effect on the regional labour and housing markets, following light and von scheven (2006). the extraordinary increase in immigration from abroad to metropolitan cities (see table 11) reduces the employment opportunities for foreigners in specifi c labour market segments over time, and at the same time reduces supply in those urban housing markets, for which households with members of foreign origin have increased access opportunities. in addition, accommodation costs rise as the growing demand for low-cost/affordable living space meets limited supply. the resulting bottlenecks could ultimately lead to a situation in which mobile foreign jobseekers divert to smaller district-free cities and thus initiate a “down the size hierarchy” trend (see table 10). it should be considered that the economic recovery after 2010 not only had a positive effect on the labour markets of metropolitan cities, but was also measurable in the urban system as a whole, even in the smaller district-free cities. households with members of foreign origin who have been living in germany for a long time, have – on the basis of their social networks – information advantages over those only just arriving from abroad. they orient themselves locally and are less dependent on information about the metropolitan cities with their large regional markets and numerically large minorities (see table 11). urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 345 5 conclusion overall, this paper shows that reurbanisation results from the superimposition of differently combined spatial population movements – further differentiated by age and citizenship –, and these express different motives for living in cities or in more rural areas. migration gains are particularly evident in cities in which the economic transition towards the knowledge economy has progressed (florida 2002; storper/ scott 2009; geppert/gornik 2010), in which the labour market is relaxed and in which a wide range of educational opportunities are available (buzar et al. 2007). young people are drivers of population growth (haase et al. 2010), when looking at internal migration, it is the 18-to-30-year-olds, when looking at external migration, it is the under-30-year-olds (birch 2005; fisherman 2005; rérat 2012). since the economic and fi nancial crisis, the latter have noticeably reinforced urban population growth in germany. the dynamics of these migration processes are not only dependent upon location advantages and disadvantages, but also upon conditions that play a role at the national and international levels , such as the signifi cantly improved economic situation in germany compared to other eu member states or the political crises in the middle east and africa. the results of this study also demonstrate the high complexity of urban systems, whose elements follow their own logic in their development and at the same time, the balanced urban system in germany forms the framework (sander 2018). due to federalism with its historical roots and the division of germany after the second world war, there is no central metropolis in germany, but rather several metropolises, which compete with one another for the establishment of corporate headquarters or high-level state functions. accordingly, development “up the size hierarchy” (frey 1988) within the urban system is rather weak. besides the different dynamics of migration balances by age and citizenship, the fact that there are cities of medium size with a high standard of living, such as darmstadt, freiburg im breisgau, osnabrück or postdam, also contributes to this. there are some aspects that this paper could not deal with, as the necessary data bases were unavailable. this applies to the effects of social change on urban growth in particular. furthermore, the role of urban development projects were beyond the scope of this paper. looking at the results, the following selected further questions can be asked: one aspect refers to the interdependence between internal and external migration, differentiated by age and citizenship. questions essentially relate to decisions about residential locations in the course of life, especially at the turning points between individual life cycle phases. regarding immigration from abroad, the effects of immigrant networks are of interest, as newly arriving immigrants orient themselves toward existing ethnic or familial structures, which are often located in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods with an above-average proportion of foreigners and high proportions of households receiving welfare support (bbsr 2017). with regard to questions on the integration of migrants, it would be interesting to know whether immigrants who have recently moved into such neighbourhoods move out again after a certain period of time. can this be explained by the satura• paul gans346 tion concept of light and von scheven (2006)? for asylum seekers, there are certain restrictions upon arrival in germany with respect to decisions about the residential location. they are fi rst allocated to a federal state, and then assigned to reception centres. which factors, e.g. the location of the centre or migrant networks, affect the subsequent residential choices when the asylum seeker leaves the centre? can these in any way be compared to residential choices of late resettlers, who came to germany from russia in the early 1990s? in the context of this paper, an intensifi cation of suburbanisation – dependant on the size of the cities – could be expected for the german citizens in the future (milbert/sturm 2016; simons/weiden 2016), a primary cause being, among others, bottlenecks on the housing market. according to florida (2017), excessive housing prices and the construction of micro-apartments threaten “urban revival” in the united states. this leads to the question of which concepts growing cities are planning to implement in order to cope with the challenges of displacement among low-income households. one could summarise this with some bullet points as follows: vacant plots in cities are not suffi cient for building new housing, high-rise buildings are not in demand, the designation of new housing development areas is environmentally questionable and limited in scope. in addition, investing in affordable housing for fi nancial reasons is not very attractive despite government grants. municipal housing associations, for example, take on an important function in this context. solutions might also be found in regional co-operations between core cities and surrounding districts or municipalities. in suburban areas, there might still be space available, however, environmental concerns should also be raised here, and thus, settlement areas with a social and technical infrastructure as well as good transport connections should be regionally defi ned. there is a need for cross-municipal cooperation in order to meet the changing demands of housing supply, social and cultural services and infrastructures (peter 2010). when setting strategies to achieve these goals, securing affordable living space should be of high importance so as to counteract the displacement of low-income groups. how these strategies are set also depends on local circumstances in municipalities, as brombach et al. (2015) show using the examples of stuttgart, mannheim and freiburg. a further consequence of population growth is that large cities need to invest further in their social infrastructures. on the one hand, since 2010, migrants with foreign citizenship have increased in all urban neighbourhoods, but overproportionately in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. on the other hand, the birth defi cit has been reversing since 2010 in district-free cities, in some cases with high migration gains, there are birth surpluses due to age-related reasons. this implies that education and care facilities must be expanded as of 2015, especially in view of the great challenges of integration following the large infl ux of approximately 2.1 million immigrants and an external migration gain of 1.1 million people with a simultaneously growing diversity of the population structure regarding country of origin, ethnicity, education, legal status and social situation (vertovec 2007). since 2010, urban population growth has been strongly driven by external migration. at the same time, a growing suburbanisation process among german inhabitants can be observed (see table 5, busch 2016), which could more than cancel out migration urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 347 gains, especially those of the 18-to-30-year-olds in the face of demographic change (schmitz-veltin 2015). references aring, jürgen 2005: bodenpreise und raumentwicklung. in: geographische rundschau 57,3: 28-34. backhaus, klaus et al. 2016: multivariate analysemethoden. eine anwendungsorientierte einführung. berlin/heidelberg: springer gabler [doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-46076-4]. bamf (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge) 2017: aktuelle zahlen zu asyl. ausgabe september 2017 [http://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/anlagen/de/downloads/ inothek/ statistik/asyl/aktuelle-zahlen-zu-asyl-september-2017.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 23.10.17]. bbsr (bundesinstitut für bau, stadtund raumforschung) 2016a: laufende raumbeobachtung des bbsr. spezifi scher datensatz. bonn. bbsr (bundesinstitut für bau, stadtund raumforschung) 2016b: laufende raumbeobachtung des bbsr. bonn. bbsr (bundesinstitut für bau, stadtund raumforschung) 2017: zuwanderung fi ndet überall in der stadt statt – aber ungleich. in: informationen aus der forschung des bbsr 5: 4 [http://www.bbsr.bund.de/bbsr/de/veroeffentlichungen/bbsrinfo/2017/ bbsr-info-5-2017-dl.pdf?__blob=publicationfile&v=2, 05.02.2018]. birch, eugenie l. 2005: who lives downtown. the brookings institutions. living cities census series. washington. bmi (bundesministerium des innern) (ed.): 2016: migrationsbericht des bundesamtes für migration und flüchtlinge im auftrag der bundesregierung. migrationsbericht 2015. berlin: konzeptquartier. brake, klaus 2012: reurbanisierung – interdependenzen zum strukturwandel. in: brake, klaus; herfert, günter (eds.): reurbanisierung. materialität und diskurs in deutschland. wiesbaden: springer vs: 22-33 [doi: 10.1007/978-3-531-94211-7_2]. braun, boris; viehoff, valerie 2012: london 2012: olympische spiele als nachhaltiger umpulsgeber für die stadterneuerung. in: geographische rundschau 64,6: 4-11. brombach, karoline; fricke, axel; jessen, johann 2015: kommunale strategien im vergleich. urbanes wohnen in stuttgart, mannheim und freiburg. in: fricke, axel; siedentop, stefan; zakrzewski, philipp (eds.): reurbanisierung in baden-württembergischen stadtregionen. beiträge zur stadtentwicklung in deutschland. arbeitsberichte der arl 14. hannover: verlag der arl: 118-170. brühl, hasso et al. 2005: wohnen in der innenstadt – eine renaissance? 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herausforderung für politik und wohnungswirtschaft. in: gans, paul; westerheide, peter (eds.): wohnungspolitik angesichts angespannter städtischer wohnungsmärkte. mannheimer schriften zu wohnungswesen, kreditwirtschaft und raumplanung 17. mannheim: selbstverlag des lehrstuhls für wirtschaftsgeographie der universität mannheim: 31-44. sander, nikola 2014: internal migration in germany, 1995-2010: new insights into eastwest migration and re-urbanisation. in: comparative population studies 39,2: 217246 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-04en]. • paul gans350 sander, nikola 2018: germany. internal migration within a changing nation. in: champion, tony; cooke, thomas; shuttlewort, ian (eds.): internal migration in the developed world. are we becoming less mobile? abingdon (oxfordshire)/new york: routledge: 226-241. schindler, felix et al. 2012: wohnungsmarktbeobachtung 2011. karlsruhe [https:// www.l-bank.de/lbank/download/dokument/203280.pdf, 14.11.2017]. schmitz-veltin, ansgar 2015: reurbanisierung im kontext einer neuen unübersichtlichkeit regionaler entwicklungsmuster – das beispiel der stadtregion stuttgart. in: fricke, axel; siedentop, stefan; zakrzewski, philipp (eds.): reurbanisierung in baden-württembergischen stadtregionen. beiträge zur stadtentwicklung in deutschland. arbeitsberichte der arl 14. hannover: verlag der arl: 77-95. scholl, bernhard 2003: innenentwicklung vor außenentwicklung. einführung in das thema des kongresses. in: baden-württemberg, wirtschaftsministerium; baden-württemberg, ministerium für umwelt und verkehr; universität karlsruhe, institut für städtebau und landesplanung (eds.): innenentwicklung vor außenentwicklung. strategien, konzepte, instrumente. dokumentation des fachkongresses am 15./16. mai 2003 in karlsruhe. stuttgart: selbstverlag: 11-14. schürt, alexander 2017: zwischen mangel und überangebot – zunehmende herausforderungen auf den wohnungsund immobilienmärkten. in: gans, paul; westerheide, peter (eds.): wohnungspolitik angesichts angespannter städtischer wohnungsmärkte. mannheimer schriften zu wohnungswesen, kreditwirtschaft und raumplanung 18. mannheim: selbstverlag des lehrstuhls für wirtschaftsgeographie der universität mannheim: 3-21. siebel, walter 2008: wohnen in der innenstadt. in: deutsche zeitschrift für kommunalwissenschaften 47,1: 37-46. siebel, walter 2010: die zukunft der städte. in: apuz – aus politik und zeitgeschichte 17. bonn: 3-9. siedentop, stefan 2008: die rückkehr der städte? zur plausibilität der reurbanisierungshypothese. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 3/4: 193-210. simons, harald; weiden, lukas 2016: schwarmverhalten, reurbanisierung und suburbanisierung. in: informationen zur raumentwicklung 3: 263-273. statistisches bundesamt 2016a: zahlen und fakten. gesellschaft & staat. bildung, forschung, kultur [https://www.destatis.de/de/zahlenfakten/zahlenfakten.html, 02.12.2016]. statistisches bundesamt 2016b: statistisches jahrbuch. deutschland und internationales. wiesbaden. statistisches bundesamt 2017: zahlen & fakten. migration, wanderungen [https://www. destatis.de/de/zahlenfakten/gesellschaftstaat/bevoelkerung/wanderungen/tabellen/wanderungenalle.html, 02.05.17]. storper, michael; scott, allan j. 2009: rethinking human capital, creativity and urban growth. in: journal of economic geography 9,2: 147-167 [doi: 10.1093/jeg/lbn052]. van den berg et al. 1982: urban europe. a study of growth and decline. volume 1. 162 s. oxford u.a.: pergamon press. vertovec, steven 2007: super-diversity and its implications. in: ethnic and racial studies 30,6: 1024-1054 [doi: 10.1080/01419870701599465]. waltersbacher, matthias 2017: bauland als engpassfaktor für mehr bezahlbaren wohnraum. analyse der baulandpreise aus den kaufpreissammlungen der gutachterausschüsse. bonn. urban population development in germany (2000-2014) • 351 west, christina; gans, paul; schmitz-veltin, ansgar 2008: cities in space and city as place – rethinking reurbanisation: urban, semi-urban and suburban orientiations and their impact on the choice of residence. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 33,3-4: 381-408 [doi: 10.1007/s12523-009-0021-6]. date of submission: 09.05.2017 date of acceptance: 18.12.2017 prof. dr. paul gans (). university of mannheim. mannheim, germany. e-mail: paulgans@uni-mannheim.de url: http://gans.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/1461.0.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) das modell des zensus 2011 das modell des zensus 2011 sabine bechtold 1 der zensus 2011 im überblick das grundprinzip der traditionellen volkszählungen, wie sie vor dem zensus 2011 in deutschland stattfanden, ist sehr leicht zu verstehen. für jede am jeweiligen stichtag in deutschland lebende person wurden mit hilfe eines papierfragebogens alle informationen erhoben, die im rahmen der jeweiligen volkszählung zu erfassen waren. dies fand entweder als persönliche befragung durch erhebungsbeauftragte statt, oder durch selbstausfüllung des fragebogens, den erhebungsbeauftragte persönlich abgegeben hatten, wobei für die volkszählungen jeweils teilnahmepfl icht bestand. das ergebnis war ein einzeldatenbestand, der für jede person einen datensatz mit allen volkszählungsmerkmalen enthielt. wie jede statistische erhebungen waren auch diese volkszählungen nicht fehlerfrei, allerdings gab es nur systematische fehler und keine zufallsfehler, welche nur bei stichprobenerhebungen auftreten. beim zensus 2011 wurden im gegensatz zu diesem sehr gradlinigen ansatz viele verschiedene datenquellen und methoden herangezogen, um ergebnisse zu personen, haushalten sowie gebäuden und wohnungen zu erhalten. das modell umfasst sowohl registerdaten als auch erhebungsdaten aus schriftlichen und persönlichen befragungen, die als volloder als stichprobenerhebungen – jeweils mit auskunftspfl icht – konzipiert waren, sowie datenzusammenführungen und verfahren der maschinellen datengenerierung. grundidee des zensus 2011 war, zunächst von den in den melderegistern enthaltenen demografi schen grunddaten auszugehen und diese dann mit daten aus anderen registern oder aus primärerhebungen zu ergänzen und ggf. zu korrigieren.1 im ergebnis gibt es für jede mit dem zensus zu erfassende person sowie für jedes gebäude mit wohnraum und jede wohnung einen eindeutigen datensatz mit allen geforderten zensusmerkmalen. das gleiche gilt für jeden haushalt, der im zuge des maschinellen generierungsverfahrens gebildet wurde. dabei sind lediglich die ergebnisse zu gebäuden und wohnungen nicht mit einem comparative population studies jg. 41 (2016): d1-d10 (erstveröffentlichung: 22.08.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-07de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-07de4 1 eine detaillierte beschreibung des zensusmodells ist zu fi nden unter statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2015. • sabine bechtoldd2 zufallsfehler, sondern lediglich mit dem bei jeder statistischen erhebung auftretenden systematischen fehler behaftet. bei den personen trifft dies nur auf die demografi schen grunddaten spezieller teilpopulationen zu, deren daten im rahmen einer vollerhebung erfasst wurden. um die daten aus den verschiedenen erhebungsteilen verbinden zu können, wurde als erster schritt ein basisregister aufgebaut, das alle anschriften mit wohnraum enthielt, die es am zensusstichtag (9. mai 2011) in deutschland gab. dieses anschriftenund gebäuderegister (agr) war das bindeglied für alle erhebungsteile während des gesamten zensusablaufs und gleichzeitig die grundgesamtheit für die stichprobenerhebung bei privaten haushalten und für die gebäudeund wohnungszählung. den umfangsreichsten adressdatenbestand für das agr lieferten die vermessungsbehörden, die sowohl gebäude mit wohnraum als auch rein gewerblich genutzte gebäude verzeichnen. hinzu kamen adressdaten aus melderegisterauszügen und aus den registerdaten der bundesagentur für arbeit. um sicherzustellen, dass alle am stichtag zensusrelevanten gebäude im agr enthalten waren und damit einer systematischen unterschätzung der einwohnerzahl vorzubeugen, wurden alle anschriften, die nur in einem der drei datenbestände vorkamen, explizit daraufhin überprüft, ob an ihnen wohnraum vorhanden war. darüber hinaus wurde das agr durch mehrere datenlieferungen und durch erkenntnisse aus den primärstatistischen zensuserhebungen aktualisiert (kleber et al. 2009). die registerdaten der dezentral in den gemeinden geführten meldebehörden zu allen am zensusstichtag gemeldeten personen bildeten den kern sowohl für die ermittlung der einwohnerzahl der gemeinden als auch für die daten über die demografi sche struktur nach geschlecht, alter, familienstand und nationalität für die in privaten haushalten lebende bevölkerung. sie wurden zum zensusstichtag sowie nochmals drei monate danach erhoben, um alle am stichtag relevanten eintragungen auch dann zu erfassen, wenn sie erst zeitlich verzögert im register aufgenommen worden waren. die daten aus den meldebehörden wurden zu einem gesamtdeutschen datenbestand zusammengefasst und zunächst daraufhin überprüft, ob er fälle enthielt, bei denen personen am stichtag mit mehr als einer alleinigen wohnung oder hauptwohnung gemeldet waren. wurden solche mehrfachfälle gefunden, wurden diese maschinell bereinigt, indem die jeweils aktuellsten zensusrelevanten informationen übernommen wurden, sofern diese mehrfachwohnsitze der betroffenen personen nur in gemeinden mit mindestens 10.000 einwohnern (große gemeinden) vorkamen. war jedoch eine mehrfach gemeldete person in mindestens einer kleineren gemeinde (mit weniger als 10.000 einwohnern) gemeldet, fand die bereinigung mit hilfe der schriftlichen befragung zur klärung des wohnsitzes statt, die auch immer dann eingesetzt wurde, wenn personen nur mit nebenwohnung gemeldet waren (diehl 2012). für bewohnerinnen und bewohner an anschriften mit gemeinschaftsunterkünften, anstalten, wohnheimen und ähnlichen einrichtungen wurden angaben im rahmen einer vollerhebung ermittelt, da für sie die melderegisterangaben aufgrund sehr hoher fluktuation und unzureichendem meldeverhalten zu viele fehler enthalten. dabei wurde unterschieden in einrichtungen, bei denen die kenntnis über diesen wohnort für die betreffenden personen die gefahr einer sozialen stigmatidas modell des zensus 2011 • d3 a b b . 1 : m o d el l d es z en su s 20 11 er w er bs da te n vo n b un de sa ge nt ur fü r a rb ei t r ef er en zda te nb es ta nd er w er bs da te n au s p er so na ls ta nd st at is tik h au sh al te ge ne rie ru ng d at en z u pe rs on en , h au sh al te n, g eb äu de n, w oh nu ng en ze ns us da te nb an k g eb äu de -u nd w oh nu ng sz äh lu ng statistikinternes anschriftenund gebäuderegister pe rs on en da te n au s m el de re gi st er n fe st st el lu ng de r m el de re gi st er fe hl er be fra gu ng en a n so nd er be re ic he n (s en si be l u nd n ic ht -s en si be l) m eh rfa ch fa llpr üf un g in d at en a us m el de re gi st er n in k le in en g em ei nd en : be fra gu ng z ur k lä ru ng v on u ns tim m ig ke ite n be fra gu ng z ur k lä ru ng d es w oh ns ta tu s h au sh al te st ic hp ro be in g ro ße n g em ei nd en : er m itt lu ng v on k ar te ile ic he n un d fe hl be st än de n in a lle n g em ei nd en : er he bu ng e rg än ze nd er v ar ia bl en pe rs on en da te n au s m el de re gi st er n w ie de rh ol un gs be fra gu ng a ns ch rif te nd at en v on b un de sa ge nt ur f. a rb ei t a ns ch rif te nd at en v on m el de re gi st er n a ns ch rif te nd at en v on ve rm es su ng sb eh ör de n r ec he rc he v on s on de ra ns ch rif te n q ue lle : ei ge ne d ar st el lu ng • sabine bechtoldd4 sierung enthielt – sogenannte sensible sonderbereiche wie z.b. psychiatrische kliniken – und einrichtungen, für die das nicht der fall war – sogenannte nicht-sensible sonderbereiche wie z.b. studierendenwohnheime. auch die in den sonderbereichserhebungen erfassten personen wurden in die oben angesprochene mehrfachfallüberprüfung einbezogen. eine stichprobenerhebung in privathaushalten bei knapp 10 % der bevölkerung sicherte die qualität der um die mehrfachfälle bereinigten melderegisterdaten in gemeinden mit mindestens 10.000 einwohnern, indem gemeindespezifi sch die rate der melderegisterfehler (karteileichenund fehlbestandsraten) festgestellt und diese bei der ermittlung der bevölkerungszahl der gemeinden berücksichtigt wurden. außerdem wurden in dieser stichprobenerhebung – in gemeinden unter 10.000 einwohnern und in den nicht-sensiblen sonderbereichen – ergänzende angaben über die bevölkerung ermittelt, die nicht aus registerangaben gewonnen werden konnten.2 hierbei handelt es sich u.a. um angaben zum bildungsstand, zum migrationshintergrund, zu religion und weltanschauung und zur erwerbstätigkeit. ausgewertet werden können diese ergänzenden angaben aber nur bis zur ebene der großen gemeinden und für kreise (nuts-3-regionen). um durch die haushaltebefragung nicht nur karteileichen, sondern auch fehlbestände feststellen zu können, wurden in der zufallsstichprobe jeweils ganze anschriften ausgewählt und der wohnstatus aller dort lebenden personen mit den melderegisterangaben zu dieser anschrift verglichen. auswahlgrundlage für diese stichprobenziehung waren alle anschriften aus dem agr mit ausnahme derjenigen, an denen es sensible sonderbereiche gab. bei der entwicklung des stichprobenauswahlplans war anzustreben, dass die durch den zensus festgestellten einwohnerzahlen in großen gemeinden mit 95 %iger sicherheit nur um 1 % von der tatsächlichen einwohnerzahl abweichen. zur optimierung der stichprobenauswahl wurden die anschriften der grundgesamtheit mehrstufi g geschichtet und ein verfahren der aufteilung des im gesetz festgelegten stichprobenumfangs auf die einzelnen schichten eingesetzt, das die höchstmögliche präzision für die einwohnerzahlermittlung erwarten ließ. hierbei konnte jedoch nur auf die vor dem zensus vorliegenden informationen über die variabilität von karteileichen und fehlbeständen aus dem zensustest von 2001 zurückgegriffen werden (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2004). die tatsächliche variabilität, die einen großen einfl uss auf die tatsächlich durch den zensus 2011 erreichte präzision hatte, wurde erst durch den zensus selbst ermittelt. das optimierungsverfahren ergab für jede gemeinde einen maßgeschneiderten auswahlsatz, der zwischen 2,1 % und 45,6 % lag und sich auch bei vergleichbar großen gemeinden deutlich unterscheiden konnte. 2 das stichprobendesign und das hochrechnungsmodell für die haushaltebefragung wurden in einem eigenen forschungsprojekt durch die universität trier und gesis – leibniz-institut für sozialwissenschaften in mannheim entwickelt (siehe hierzu münnich et al. 2012). die daraus für den zensus 2011 abgeleiteten verfahren sind beschrieben unter berg/bihler 2011 und berg/ bihler 2014a. das modell des zensus 2011 • d5 registerdaten der bundesagentur für arbeit zu sozialversicherungspfl ichtig beschäftigten sowie registerdaten zum personalbestand der öffentlichen arbeitgeber ergänzten auf personenebene die demografi schen merkmale, die aus den melderegistern resp. der stichprobenbefragung in privaten haushalten und in nichtsensiblen sonderbereichen erhoben wurden, und bildeten mit diesen und dem anschriftenund gebäuderegister den referenzdatenbestand (rdb) (hirner/stiglmayr 2013). durch die bildung des rdb konnten die angaben aus allen datenquellen erhebungsteilübergreifend geprüft werden und erhielten ihren räumlichen bezug, der nicht nur administrative einheiten umfasst, sondern auch eine deutschlandweite gittereinteilung mit einer rastergröße von 100 mal 100 metern. die personenscharfe zusammenführung der datensätze aus den verschiedenen datenquellen war eine der großen herausforderungen beim zensus 2011, da sie ohne bereits vorhandene identifi kationsnummern durchgeführt werden musste. die identifi kation von zusammengehörenden datensätzen erfolgte maschinell über personenund anschriftenbezogene merkmale, also mit hilfe von namen, geschlecht, geburtsdatum, amtlichem gemeindeschlüssel, postleitzahl, straße und hausnummer. nur etwa 1 % der datensätze konnten maschinell nicht verknüpft, sondern mussten manuell nachbearbeitet werden. angaben zur anzahl und struktur von wohngebäuden und wohnungen wurden durch eine postalische befragung bei allen eigentümern erhoben. zu den gebäuden wurden fragen nach der art des gebäudes, dem baujahr, der zahl der wohnungen und der heizungsart gestellt, bei wohnungen wurde unter anderem nach der größe, der zahl der räume und der wohnungsnutzung gefragt (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2014). gab es in gemeinden mit weniger als 10.000 einwohnern aus dem vergleich der angaben aus der gebäudeund wohnungszählung und der angaben aus den melderegistern hinweise auf unteroder übererfassungen, wurde diesen mit der schriftlichen befragung zur klärung von unstimmigkeiten nachgegangen. dieses erhebungsinstrument kam jedoch nur bei einfamilienhäusern zum einsatz, da nur dort ein günstiges verhältnis von bereinigungseffekt und befragungsaufwand zu erwarten war und da diese maßnahme eine vergleichbare qualitätssicherung der aus den melderegistern stammenden daten versprach, wie sie bei gemeinden ab 10.000 einwohnern durch die stichprobe erreicht wurde. um auch ergebnisse darüber zu erhalten, wie personen in haushalten zusammenleben und wie deren wohnsituation aussieht, wurden mit einem maschinellen verfahren der haushaltegenerierung personendaten zu statistisch generierten haushalten von zusammenwohnenden personen verknüpft. hierzu wurden für jede anschrift meldedaten, die auch informationen über familienzusammenhänge enthielten, mit angaben aus der gebäudeund wohnungszählung automatisiert zusammengeführt. zur bewertung der für gemeinden ab 10.000 einwohnern ermittelten einwohnerzahlen gab es schließlich noch eine wiederholungsbefragung, die durch erhebungsbeauftragte bei etwa 5 % der anschriften aus der haushaltebefragung durchgeführt wurde (klink/bihler 2015). • sabine bechtoldd6 2 besonderheiten der zensusdaten die daten des zensus wurden mit auskunftspfl icht erhoben, lediglich eine frage zur weltanschauung war nicht verpfl ichtend zu beantworten. trotzdem mussten die daten überprüft und ggf. korrigiert oder ergänzt werden, wenn sie als unplausibel erkannt wurden oder ganz fehlten. hierzu wurden sowohl cold-deckund hot-deck als auch deterministische imputationsverfahren eingesetzt. bei der gebäudeund wohnungszählung lagen nach dem dateneingang 31 % aller fragebogen vollständig plausibel vor. das ausmaß der notwendigen imputationen war insbesondere für das merkmal eigentumsverhältnis hoch, das für 18,5 % der gebäude und für 45,3 % der wohnungen ersetzt werden musste.3 bei den übrigen wohnungsfragen lagen die imputationsraten unter 16 % (grundwald/krause 2014). bei der haushaltebefragung war die hälfte aller fragebogen plausibel beantwortet. bezogen auf die einzelnen themen hatten die fragen zur erwerbstätigkeit mit 25 % unplausibler datensätze die höchsten imputationsraten (statistisches bundesamt 2016: 31). die freiwillige frage zur weltanschauung wurde nur von 48 % derjenigen personen beantwortet, die angaben, keiner öffentlich-rechtlichen religionsgemeinschaft anzugehören. da angesichts dieser hohen item-nonresponse-rate von einer großen verzerrung ausgegangen werden muss, hat das statistische bundesamt darauf verzichtet, diese frage auszuwerten. die mit dem zensus 2011 ermittelten einwohnerzahlen der großen gemeinden ergeben sich aus zwei teilen. die an anschriften mit sonderbereichen durch eine vollerhebung ermittelten einwohner wurden ausgezählt (auszählungsteil). für alle übrigen anschriften wurde der um mehrfachfälle bereinigte melderegisterbestand um die aus der stichprobe hochgerechneten überund untererfassungen korrigiert (korrekturteil) (berg/bihler 2014b). für diese anschriften wurde zunächst die zahl der zur stichtagsbevölkerung gehörenden personen und die zahl der personen, die im melderegister korrekt verzeichnet waren, geschätzt und mit diesen beiden werten die karteileichen und fehlbestände der jeweiligen gemeinden abgeleitet. stichprobenmethodisch war dieses vorgehen günstiger als die direkte schätzung der unterund übererfassung, da es sich hierbei um seltene ereignisse handelt und hierfür der schätzfehler größer wäre. die schätzung des korrekturteils der einwohnerzahl erfolgte mit einem verallgemeinerten regressionsschätzer jeweils simultan für alle auswahlschichten der einzelnen gemeinden. summiert mit dem auszählungsteil ergibt sich so die einwohnerzahl der großen gemeinden. teil des hochrechnungsverfahrens war auch die varianzschätzung um zu überprüfen, inwieweit das angestrebte präzisionsziel für die einwohnerzahlermittlung erreicht werden konnte. tatsächlich konnte das ziel nur in 37 % der gemeinden erreicht werden, der mittlere wert lag bei 0,56 % einfachem relativem standardfehler . ursache hierfür 3 bei der frage nach dem eigentumsverhältnis der wohnung wurde häufi g nicht verstanden, dass diese frage nur für eigentumswohnungen auszufüllen war, d.h. der hohe wert ist durch die filterführung im fragebogen zu erklären, die auf die qualität der übrigen erhebungsmerkmale keinen einfl uss hat. das modell des zensus 2011 • d7 war, dass die annahmen, die der entwicklung des stichprobendesigns zugrunde lagen, zu positiv waren (statistisches bundesamt 2016: 7). für die kleinen gemeinden ergeben sich die aus dem zensus 2011 ermittelten einwohnerzahlen ebenfalls aus der auszählung der an anschriften mit sonderbereichen wohnenden personen, die auch in diesen gemeinden vollständig erhoben wurden, sowie aus der auszählung des bereinigten melderegisterbestands, der um die überund untererfassungen korrigiert wurde, die mit der befragung zur klärung von unstimmigkeiten festgestellt worden waren. um die personenbezogenen zensusdaten richtig interpretieren zu können, müssen jeweils die datenquellen berücksichtigt werden, aus denen sie stammen. die merkmale, die nicht aus registern, sondern nur aus der haushaltebefragung gewonnen werden konnten, liegen nur für personen in privathaushalten und für personen in nicht-sensiblen sonderbereichen vor. werden diese stichprobenmerkmale zusammen mit demografi schen grundmerkmalen ausgewertet, stammen letztere auch aus den stichprobendaten und können daher in den randsummen von denjenigen ergebnissen abweichen, die aus den registermerkmalen ausgewertet werden. die erwerbsstatistischen ergebnisse stammen zum teil aus registern und zum teil aus der haushaltestichprobe und der erhebung an anschriften mit nicht-sensiblen sonderbereichen. die merkmale erwerbsstatus, stellung im beruf und wirtschaftszweig werden für sozialversicherungspfl ichtig beschäftigte und alle beschäftigten des öffentlichen dienstes ausgezählt und für alle übrigen erwerbstätigen aus der stichprobe hochgerechnet. werden die genannten merkmale mit anderen merkmalen aus der stichprobe gemeinsam ausgewertet, werden alle ergebnisse aus den stichprobendaten geschätzt, was zu unterschieden zu den rein registerbasierten ergebnissen führen kann (sedmihradsky et al. 2012). die daten, die aus vollerhebungen oder aus registern stammen, können zur ergebniserstellung ausgezählt werden, während die daten aus der haushaltestichprobe hochgerechnet werden müssen. damit ergeben sich auch unterschiedliche anforderungen an diejenigen verfahren, die zur statistischen geheimhaltung dieser daten angewandt werden. die ergebnisse der gebäudeund wohnungszählung und der haushaltegenerierung sowie die daten aus den melderegistern und aus der erhebung an anschriften mit nicht-sensiblen sonderbereichen werden durch das datenverändernde verfahren safe geheim gehalten (gießing et al. 2014). dabei wird für jede gemeinde und für berlin und hamburg für die jeweiligen stadtteile sichergestellt, dass jede personenbezogene merkmalskombination und jede merkmalskombination aus der gebäudeund wohnungszählung und der haushaltegenerierung jeweils mindestens dreimal auftritt. abweichend von diesem vorgehen werden die gesamteinwohnerzahlen der gemeinden ohne datenveränderung ermittelt. auch verhältniszahlen, die von den statistischen ämtern veröffentlicht werden, werden aus unveränderten daten berechnet. die statistische geheimhaltung erfolgt erst anschließend durch vergröberung des divisionsergebnisses. die hochgerechneten ergebnisse werden keinem gesonderten geheimhaltungsverfahren unterzogen. haben einzelne ergebnisse einen relativen standardfehler von mehr als 15 % und sind damit unzuverlässig, werden sie nicht veröffentlicht. setzen sich ergebnisse aus einem ausgezählten und einem hochgerechneten teil • sabine bechtoldd8 zusammen, wird bei der sperrung eines ergebnisses berücksichtigt, welchen anteil des ergebnisses die ausgezählten und die hochgerechneten ergebnisteile haben. alle ergebnisse, die hochgerechnet wurden oder einen hochrechnungsanteil haben, werden auf ein vielfaches von 10 gerundet, um deutlich zu machen, dass es sich um keine exakten werte handelt. durch die kombination von stichprobenzufallsfehler, sperrung von unzuverlässigen ergebnissen und rundung ist die statistische geheimhaltung gewährleistet. die demografi schen ergebnisse des zensus 2011 bilden in ihrer untergliederung nach geschlecht, altersjahren, familienstand und staatsangehörigkeit für jede gemeinde die grundlage für die ermittlung des bevölkerungsstandes bis zum nächsten zensus. für die berechnung der fortschreibungsrelevanten untergliederungen der einwohnerzahlen wurde ein spezifi sches verfahren verwendet, das zu abweichungen in den demografi schen strukturen gegenüber dem zensusergebnis für die einzelnen gemeinden führen konnte. die einwohnerzahl insgesamt der einzelnen gemeinden wurde dadurch jedoch nicht verändert. notwendig wurde dieses vorgehen, da das hochrechnungsverfahren des zensus 2011 auf eine möglichst präzise ermittlung der gesamteinwohnerzahl der gemeinden ausgerichtet war. für die tiefe demografi sche untergliederung führte dieses verfahren jedoch in einigen gemeinden zu auffälligen ergebnissen in einigen kombinationen von altersstufe und geschlecht. wären diese auffälligkeiten nicht bereinigt worden, hätte dies nicht nur die laufende bevölkerungsfortschreibung bis zum nächsten zensus belastet, sondern auch die berechnung demografi scher maße wie geburtenund sterbeziffern (statistisches bundesamt 2015). literatur berg, andreas; bihler, wolf 2011: das stichprobendesign der haushaltsstichprobe des zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 04/2011: 317-328 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistaapril11.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. berg, andreas; bihler, wolf 2014a: der auswahlplan für die ziehung der neuzugänge der haushaltsstichprobe des zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 03/2014: 151154 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/ wistamaerz2014.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. berg, andreas; bihler, wolf 2014b: das hochrechnungsverfahren zur ermittlung der einwohnerzahl im zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 04/2014: 229-235 [https:// www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistaapril2014.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. diehl, eva-maria 2012: methoden der mehrfachfallprüfung im zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 06/2012: 473-484 [https://www.zensus2011.de/shareddocs/downloads/ de/publikationen/aufsaetze_archiv/2012_06_destatis_methoden_der_mehrfachfallpruefung_im_zensus_2011.pdf?__blob=publicationfile&v=14, 25.07.2016]. gießing, sarah et al. 2014: geheimhaltung beim zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 11/2014: 641-647 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/ monatsausgaben/wistanovember2014.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. das modell des zensus 2011 • d9 grundwald, sven; krause, anja 2014: umgang mit fehlenden angaben in der gebäude und wohnungszählung 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 08/2014: 437-449 [https:// www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistaaugust2014.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. hirner, stephanie; stiglmayr, susanne 2013: der referenzdatenbestand im zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 01/2013: 30-41 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/ wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistajanuar2013.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. kleber, birgit et al. 2009: aufbau des anschriftenund gebäuderegisters für den zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 07/2009: 629-640 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistajuli09.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. klink, steffen; bihler, wolf 2015: die wiederholungsbefragung beim zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 02/2015: 42-54 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/ wirtschaftstatistik/2015/02/wista_2_2015.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. münnich, ralf; gabler, siegfried et al. 2012: stichprobenoptimierung und schätzung in zensus 2011. statistik und wissenschaft band 21. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/statistikwissenschaft/band21_stichprobenoptimierungzensus1030821129004.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. sedmihradsky, dirk; eisenmenger, matthias; burmeister, friederike 2012: erhebung, aufbereitung und zusammenführung der erwerbsregisterdaten im zensus 2011. in: wirtschaft und statistik 12/2012: 1052-1064 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/ wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistadezember12.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2004: ergebnisse des zensustests. in: wirtschaft und statistik 08/2004: 813-833 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/ wirtschaftstatistik/monatsausgaben/wistaaugust04.pdf?__blob=publicationfile, 25.07.2016]. statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2014: zensus 2011 – gebäude und wohnungen. übersicht über merkmale und merkmalsausprägungen, defi nitionen [https:// www.zensus2011.de/shareddocs/downloads/de/merkmale/merkmale_gwz.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile&v=13, 25.07.2016]. statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2015: zensus 2011 – methoden und verfahren. wiesbaden 2015 [https://www.zensus2011.de/shareddocs/downloads/ de/publikationen/aufsaetze_archiv/2015_06_methodenundverfahren.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile&v=6, 25.07.2016]. statistisches bundesamt 2015: ausgangsdaten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung aus dem zensus 2011 [https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/thematisch/bevoelkerung/bevoelkerungsstand/datenbevoelkerungsfortschreibungzensus.html, 25.07.2016]. statistisches bundesamt 2016: qualitätsbericht nach § 17 zensg2011. wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt [https://www.zensus2011.de/shareddocs/downloads/ de/publikationen/aufsaetze_archiv/2016_05_zensus2011_qualitaetsbericht.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile&v=8, 25.07.2016]. dr. sabine bechtold (). statistisches bundesamt. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: sabine.bechtold@destatis.de url: https://www.destatis.de/de/startseite.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) journeys of violence: trajectories of (im-)mobility and migrants’ encounters with violence in european border spaces journeys of violence: trajectories of (im-)mobility and migrants’ encounters with violence in european border spaces* rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold abstract: on their journeys to and through europe, refugees and other migrants are commonly subjected to violence in its multifaceted forms. we argue that these “journeys of violence” are a direct effect of a fundamentally uneven and asymmetric global mobility regime that creates frictions and fragmentations in the european border space and beyond. our argument is based on: (1) a state-of-theart literature review on refugees’ mobilities towards europe and new patterns of involuntary immobilisation through border regimes, (2) a secondary analysis of recent quantitative data from the socio-economic panel (soep), which includes a large data set on refugee’s journeys to germany, and (3) original qualitative interviews that were conducted with migrants in germany and bosnia-herzegovina. we will fi rst show that mobility in the context of violence is highly selective and that trajectories of mobility signifi cantly depend on mobility capital. second, we consider the fortifi cation of european borders and the externalisation of control regimes as facets of structural violence and demonstrate their effects on refugees’ mobility, namely the fragmentation of journeys and the systemic production of situations of protracted immobility at multiple border sites. third, we provide insights into refugees’ exposure to and experiences of direct violence on their journeys, which must be understood as immediate consequences of the structurally violent conditions that govern their mobility and the cultural violence of delegitimising and illegalising refugees’ movements. keywords: refugee journeys · encounters with violence · european border regime · fragmentation · immobilisation · stratifi ed mobility comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 211-232 (date of release: 09.06.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-09 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-09en4 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold212 1 introduction since 1993, more than 50,000 people have lost their lives or have gone missing while migrating en route to or in europe, particularly in the mediterranean sea.1 in libya, tens of thousands of migrants are arbitrarily detained under dismal conditions. there is ample evidence of beatings, torture, forced labour, malnutrition, rape, and other forms of direct violence by the state and other armed and criminal groups (ohchr 2018). from 2017 to 2021, the border violence monitoring network (bvmn) has documented almost 25,000 pushbacks of migrants across borders on europe’s fringes. pushbacks are a violent and unregulated form of deportation by state actors that violates national, eu, and international law.2 in greece, around 103,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in reception and identifi cation centres on the aegean islands or in refugee camps on the mainland, severely constrained in their rights, including their freedom of movement.3 the journeys of refugees and other migrants to and through europe are much debated in policy circles and in the public, and are also subject of an increasing body of scholarly inquiry. in these contexts, the conditions of refugees’ journeys sometimes seem to fall out of sight. in this article, we focus on these conditions to highlight how refugees’ journeys have become fragmented and decelerated and how they have been marked by drastic experiences of violence. the “journeys of violence” to europe are, we argue, a direct effect of a fundamentally uneven and asymmetric global mobility regime (glick schiller/salazar 2013) that creates frictions and fragmentations in the european border space and beyond. we base this argument on a recent literature on refugees’ mobilities towards europe and new patterns of involuntary immobilisation (etzold 2019), secondary analysis of quantitative data from the socio-economic panel (soep), which also includes a large data set on refugees’ journeys to germany, and qualitative interviews with refugees we spoke to in germany and bosnia–herzegovina. in this contribution, we will fi rst show that mobility in the context of violence is highly selective and that trajectories depend to a large extent on refugees’ mobility capital. second, we consider the fortifi cation of european borders and the externalisation of control regimes as facets of structural violence and demonstrate its effects on refugees’ mobility, namely the fragmentation and deceleration of journeys and the systemic production of protracted immobility at multiple sites. third, we provide insights into refugees’ exposure to and experiences of direct violence on their journeys, which must be understood as an immediate consequence of the structurally violent conditions that govern their mobility. finally, we discuss migrants’ vulnerability to 1 this calculation by benjamin etzold is based on the available data from the following sources: http://www.unitedagainstracism.org (1993-1999), http://www.themigrantsfi les.com/ (20002013) and https://missingmigrants.iom.int (2014-2021). 2 according to https://www.borderviolence.eu/statistics/, see also bvmn (2020) for detailed information. 3 according to https://migration.iom.int/europe/migrants-presence, for conditions see (tazzioli/ garelli 2020). journeys of violence • 213 violence, particularly regarding violent encounters with the state and armed actors in two different regions that are an integral part of the european border regime; the western balkan region and libya. 2 journeys of violence to europe 2.1 refugees’ journeys the actual experience of displacement and the journeys of people seeking protection are not given the necessary attention within research on (forced) migration that they deserve. according to gadi benezer and roger zetter (2015), refugees’ journeys and thus the pathways of becoming and being a refugee need more systematic examination. first, the journey into exile is much more than a simple movement from a place of origin via intermediate stations to a place of arrival. rather, the journey marks a signifi cant turning point in the life course of displaced people. second, social resentments towards migrants and asylum seekers grow and more restrictive political decisions are made when migration “fl ows” or “waves” are presented as abstract dehumanised problems. research on these journeys can contribute to making refugees’ experiences – here, their encounters of violence – and perspectives better understood in public debates. third, a more comprehensive understanding of refugees’ routes, life trajectories, and decision-making processes could be used to improve policies and migration control in light of human rights and refugee protection (benezer/zetter 2015: 302-304). a growing number of scholars has investigated refugees’ journeys, most notably with a regional focus on movements to europe (collyer 2010; crawley et al. 2018; schapendonk et al. 2020; etzold 2019). the drastic experiences of different forms of violence during these journeys are highlighted in many academic contributions (martin 2011; baird 2014; krause 2015; freedman 2016; vries/guild 2019) and documented in numerous ngo reports. from the perspective of critical border studies, violence and death en route are direct consequences of a highly uneven global mobility regime (glick schiller/salazar 2013) that manifest itself in states’ bordering and ordering practices in border landscapes on the one hand, and in migrants’ subversive border-crossings but also their immobility on the other hand. violence against migrants disturbingly shows that territories, borders, and mobile subjects are constantly contested. even more so, the – oftentimes violent – acts of bordering and the (im)mobilised subjects that are thereby produced are part and parcel of a global capitalist order (tsianos/karakayali 2010; mezzadra/neilson 2013; andersson 2014). 2.2 violent encounters en route a concise analysis of refugees’ journeys of violence requires an explanation of what we understand as violence. scholars in peace and confl ict studies consider violence as an inherent part of societal power relations (imbusch 2003). following galtung • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold214 (1969, 1990), we apply a three-dimensional approach to violence on refugees’ journeys. first, violence is understood as practices by actors aimed at harming or hurting an individual or group by physical and/or verbal means. assaults, killings, rape, torture, and detention are forms of such direct violence. displaced people not only fl ee from the direct violence that they experienced in their countries of origin, but they and other migrants also face direct violence at multiple sites along their journeys; in the hands of smugglers, attempting to cross borders, encountering state agents or armed groups, or living in camps (krause 2015). this observation led bank et al. (2017) to the conclusion that displacement, which is commonly conceptualised as a linear migration out of violence, must also be understood as a violent process. second, structural violence manifests itself through injustice, exploitation, deprivation, and marginalisation that refl ect unequal economic structures and power relations. structural violence is a continuous process, rather than a singular event, in which the involved actors are often not immediately visible (galtung 1969). structural violence is evident in insecure livelihoods, exploitative labour relations, and the unequal distribution of rights and privileges between different groups. unequal access to mobility, which manifests itself in highly selective visa regimes and borders that are porous for some, yet insurmountable barriers for others, and the fragmentation of journeys as a result of coercive migration management are prime examples of structural violence (vries/guild 2019). third, cultural violence refers to ideologies, discourses, and institutions that produce, maintain and renew violent actions and processes and “justify or legitimise direct or structural violence” (galtung 1990: 291). this legitimisation of violence can result in the perception of existing patterns of both direct and structural violence as normal and inevitable. in the context of migration, cultural violence manifests itself in alarmist chaos-and-crisis-narratives of cross-border movements, which lead to the justifi cation of ever-stricter controls and enhanced security at the external borders of the european union in the name of reducing illegal migration and fi ghting smugglers whilst no legal and safe pathways to protection are open for refugees and other migrants (mountz/hiemstra 2014). in this article, we not only apply the conceptual lens of refugees’ journeys, but also use empirical evidence to highlight that refugees and other migrants who embark on journeys to and through europe encounter violence in its multifaceted forms at multiple places en route, which in turn leaves deep traces in their lives. journeys of violence are a direct result of a fundamentally uneven and asymmetric global mobility regime that creates frictions and fragmentations in the european border space and beyond. 2.3 the eu’s migration management and border regimes border regimes work in divergent ways, smoothing “the mobility of some, while stigmatising and hindering the mobility of others” (schapendonk et al. 2020: 2). besides being rooted in certain discourses and institutionalised through policies and laws, border regimes include multiple actors and apparatuses of governance journeys of violence • 215 and surveillance that are nominally designed to manage migration and to improve border control. over the past 30 years, the eu and its member states have developed a complex system of migration management, which fi rst and foremost seeks to regulate immigration into its territory and maintain states' sovereignty. the primary strategies are the militarisation of borders through high-security fences, increased numbers of border personnel, more sophisticated surveillance technologies, and the registration of arrivals with biometrical identifi ers and in databases (andersson 2014; shields 2015). the tightening of controls and the militarisation of the eu’s external borders is one side of the coin. the other is the extension of borders beyond the eu’s territory. this externalisation has been implemented through policies such as carrier sanctions for transport companies, bilateral agreements with states of origin and with transit countries to take back asylum-seekers that come from or passed through their territory, and comprehensive multilateral dialogues. the rabat and khartoum processes between european and african states have, for instance, resulted in an increase in border surveillance and mobility controls on the african continent. moreover, libyan militia groups have been trained and equipped by the eu and its member states to stop “irregular migrants” from leaving for the eu (andersson 2014). the eu’s policies have been criticised for “seek(ing) to limit irregular migration regardless of the moral, legal and humanitarian consequences (… and for) reducing migration at all costs” (villa et al. 2018). migrants’ greater vulnerability to violence is one of the inhumane costs of the fortifi cation of the eu’s borders and the externalisation of its migration management. while violence has become a systematic element of the european border regime, migrants do not automatically fall prey to ever-new techniques of panoptical control, border fortifi cation, and externalisation. from the perspective of critical border studies, migration is a movement “that possesses knowledge, follows its own rules, and collectively organises its own praxis” (tsianos/karakayali 2010: 378). people on the move are thus neither easily immobilised by multiple mobility restrictions as a facet of structural violence, nor are they helpless victims of acts of violence in borderlands. they are often able to subvert mobility controls, cross borders, and resist violent encounters based on collective action, shared knowledge, and mutual support (hess 2017). while focussing on the factual reality of direct violence on journeys to europe, the following sections nonetheless hint at migrants’ agency and the collective power of the autonomy of migration in withstanding both immobilisation and violence. 3 data and methods we use both quantitative and qualitative empirical material to better understand the effects of the increase in border controls and migration management on refugees’ journeys. the quantitative data stems from an annual household survey, the socioeconomic panel (soep), conducted by the german institute for economy – diw berlin (kroh et al. 2016a; liebig et al. 2021). to account for demographic changes in • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold216 germany, in 2016, the soep added a sub-sample of 4,527 adult refugees who arrived in germany between january 2013 and january 2016. based on the german central register of foreigners, a stratifi ed sampling design was used to include displaced persons who had different asylum statuses: 55 percent were asylum seekers, 35 percent had received a protection status, while 10 percent had been rejected but received a toleration or temporary ban from deportation (kroh et al. 2016b: 6). while the soep interview focussed mainly on issues of arrival and integration, the survey also included questions regarding the journey to germany and experiences of violence, upon which we draw for this article.4 the qualitative data is based on individual and group interviews with refugees in germany and bosnia-herzegovina. in spring 2019, rahel lorenz conducted two focus group discussions with thirteen refugees from turkey each and two in-depth interviews with syrian refugees living in a city in western germany as part of her master’s thesis at the university of copenhagen (lorenz 2019). all respondents were male, between 18 and 65 years old, and had gone to university in their home country. benjamin etzold has been involved in the eu-funded project trafig, in which 50 semi-structured interviews and eight biographical interviews were conducted with adult refugees from syria, afghanistan, and eritrea, who are now living in western parts of germany (see christ et al. 2021 for details on the methodology and results).5 moreover, our analysis draws on four semi-structured interviews and participant observations in the canton una-sana in bosnia-herzegovina, where migrants are frequently subject to state violence and have experienced pushbacks from croatian authorities (themann 2021).6 due to the very sensitive nature of the topic, in all three projects only few respondents wanted to speak openly about the journeys and their encounters of violence, although some interviewees shared their experiences quite openly. our empirical material provides insights on refugees’ journeys of violence in times of increasing migration management. but refugees are not a homogenous group, and pre-migratory positionality impacts experiences en route. our quantitative analysis therefore differentiates its fi ndings by gender, as well as respondents’ origins and fi nancial background. the qualitative interviews add depth to the general trends by highlighting individuals’ narratives. together, the quantitative and 4 we thank diw berlin – deutsches institut für wirtschaftsforschung e.v. – for permitting the use of the “refugee sample” (m3) and the “refugee family sample” (m4) data sets (liebig et al. 2021) under data use agreement no. 4674. we used the data from 10/2018-02/2019 in our study “pathways of forced migration to germany: social networks, mobility, and experiences of violence” at bicc, germany. at the beginning of our analysis in 2018, only subsample m3/m4 was available. 5 benjamin etzold acknowledges funding for the project transnational figurations of displacement (trafig) by the european union’s horizon 2020 programme under grant no. 822453. besides interviews conducted by benjamin etzold himself, we used protocols of interviews conducted by gizem g. güzelant and mara puers in this analysis and gratefully acknowledge their contribution to our paper. 6 we thank philipp themann for his permission to use transcripts of his interviews and observations so that we could relate them to our own fi ndings from germany. journeys of violence • 217 qualitative fi ndings show how border regimes and individual strategies interact and shape refugees’ (im-)mobilities and their journeys of violence. 4 results 4.1 the stratifi cation of mobility for forcibly displaced people, external migration is often the last resort, as well as a response to the fear for one’s life (etzold 2019). but the potential for mobility is not equally distributed. different degrees of mobilities and various governance regimes that structure mobility refl ect highly unequal power relations across the globe (glick schiller/salazar 2013; weiss 2005). therefore, “differential mobility empowerments refl ect structures and hierarchies of power and position by race, gender, age and class, ranging from the local to the global” (tesfahuney 1998: 501). these hierarchies of power and mobility are also refl ected in our empirical material: the destination, conditions, and duration of refugees’ journeys are shaped by their origin, access to travel documents, and in particular by their socio-economic position and available fi nancial resources, i.e. their mobility capital (van hear 2004; urry 2012). the soep survey covers information regarding transportation, accommodation, and smuggling expenses. transportation was reportedly the most common expense, with a mean sum of 4,700€, followed by costs for smuggling with a mean sum of 5,800€. accommodation was the least reported matter of expenditure, with a mean sum of 2,300€. in total, the mean cost of all three matters of expenses was 8,100€ for an individual. this highlights the necessity of having suffi cient funds for travelling to europe in the fi rst place. suffi cient money is essential for being able to fl ee at all. this was explained to us by two refugees who spoke about their journeys and their families’ situations in turkey and syria, respectively. kamal,7 a syrian who came to germany in 2015 as an unaccompanied minor with his two brothers, explained that his family organised their departure from turkey through the “mafi a”, paying $2,000 for each of them. after the three brothers arrived in germany, they wanted to bring their parents and other family members who remained in turkey to germany via family reunifi cation. as the procedure took too long, the relatives also embarked on an irregular journey through greece and the western balkan states. kamal reiterated that money was the deciding factor for their ability to quickly move on. only the comparatively “rich” were able to leave syria in the fi rst place, then leave turkey, and eventually come to europe: “it cost a lot for us. (...) for all of us to come to germany, almost $30,000 were spent. because if we had not had the money, we would not be here.” khalid, another syrian who moved to germany via clandestine pathways, also tried to 7 we are grateful to our respondents for sharing their time and experiences with us. all names used in this article are pseudonyms. other details that would allow for an identifi cation of the respondents, such as place of origin or residence, age, refugee status, or family relations are not shared to protect the participants. • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold218 organise his family members’ moves to germany. in contrast to kamal, they did not have the fi nancial means to pay smugglers for their journey and a legal pathway was not available. “we don’t have money. until now (april 2019), there are ways. but it is expensive. if someone decides now and would be willing to spend 10,000€, then they would make it to germany.” in consequence, khalid remained separated from his family, who now remain in northern syria under diffi cult conditions. these two anecdotes point to the different socio-economic positions of kamal and khalid, as well as their families, prior to initial displacement. data from the soep survey clearly shows socio-economic differences among the displaced. the journeys of refugees with an above-average fi nancial background were almost twice as expensive as of those with below-average funds. those from a higher fi nancial background primarily relied on their personal savings and other assets to fi nance the journey, while respondents with lower socioeconomic status reported comparatively higher rates of funding by family and friends (fig. 1). the different means of available funding point to stratifi ed mobilities that depend on fi nancial background and social networks. ahmad, an afghan man who arrived in germany in 2015 after he travelled to europe via turkey, greece, and the balkan route, spent about 6,000€ for his journey. the actual costs of the journey are not fi xed, but rather depend on where you go, who supports you, and “who you escape with”. he could only afford his journey with the fi nancial support of his relatives from both germany and afghanistan (see also christ et al. 2021 on the role of refugees’ networks for their journeys to germany). fig. 1: sources of funding by respondents’ fi nancial background 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 savings assets family friends jobs loans other above average average below average in percent source: soep panel data, n=4,527 journeys of violence • 219 whoever does not possess the required resources runs the risk of getting stuck in situations of protracted displacement, i.e. in refugee camps and/or in “countries of transit”. if support networks cease to exist, contacts are lost, or people travelling together are separated and fi nancial resources are depleted, making a living and saving up to fi nance the next leg of the journey becomes diffi cult. ironically, it is common that people are fi rst forced into mobility and then get stuck and are forced to be immobile. 4.2 fragmentation and deceleration of journeys the eu border regime excludes forcibly displaced migrants from legal and safe networks of transportation and forces them onto much more dangerous routes to travel undetected and clandestinely (martin 2011), often facilitated by the evergrowing migration industry (andersson 2014). routes are rarely straightforward or linear, and are instead made up of different stages, detours, rerouting, times of waiting, detention, deportations, and pushbacks, followed by renewed attempts to cross borders and complete one’s journey (collyer 2010; schapendonk et al. 2020). indirect travel with longer stays in third countries is an indicator of fragmented journeys. according to the soep data, 39 percent of respondents stayed in one or several countries of transit for more than three months on their journeys to germany. the main country of prolonged transit (more than three months) was turkey with 15 percent of respondents who did not travel directly, followed by lebanon, libya, greece, iran, and italy. for the majority of travellers, these stays were involuntary and not intended: 63 percent of the respondents wanted to move to another country as quickly as possible and 12 percent wanted to return to their country of origin as soon as possible. the remaining 25 percent had indeed planned on staying there for longer. the differences in time spent en route once again point to different degrees of fragmentation. the soep data shows that durations of journeys varied greatly. some respondents took one day, while others took more than eight years. almost half of the respondents arrived within one month, among them substantially more women than men. the survey data does not contain information on ir/regular modes of the journey, but it can be assumed that amongst those who travelled faster, the share of people who arrived through legal channels, particularly family reunifi cation, is also higher. this would also explain the gendered mobility pattern.8 we see clear differences in the duration of journeys according to countries of origin: comparing the major countries of origin in the sample, iraqis travelled the fastest; 68 percent needed up to one month for their journey to germany, while 5 percent took two years or more. syrians were also comparatively quick, with 8 this is in line with offi cial data on granted visas for family reunifi cation. according to germany’s foreign offi ce, 38 percent and 31 percent of people who entered germany through family visa in the year 2015 were women reuniting with their husbands and children reuniting with a parent, respectively (bamf/bmi 2016: 109). • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold220 46 percent arriving in germany within one month of their departure, but 16 percent spending more than two years on the move. 35 percent of afghans could complete the journey within one month and 18 percent needed more than two years. eritreans needed the longest amongst all groups; only 8 percent travelled to germany within a month, while 24 percent needed two years or more. while we see a correlation between the duration of refugees’ journeys with the covered geographical distance and number of borders crossed, there was no direct link with the respondents’ self-reported fi nancial background. to some extent, this stands in contrast to the conventional argument that socio-economic class-positions are the most central factor determining the distance a displaced person can travel, but also the duration of their journeys (van hear 2004). refugees' own narratives point to an ambivalent relationship between the duration, the costs, and the risks of these journeys. on the one hand, several interviewees strategically chose longer and indirect routes – thus requiring much more time – to avoid being detected at the border or by the police in the countries of transit, and to mitigate other risks, such as life-threatening sea passages. on the other hand, most tried to avoid longer journeys, as they can become much more expensive. the longer a journey takes, the more money must be spent en route for accommodation, food, and transportation. if journeys are interrupted repeatedly, for instance due to detection, detention, or encampment, or because of dwindling fi nancial resources, the more diffi cult it becomes to re-start and to continue the journey, especially if no additional funds can be mobilised through one’s transnational social network to pay for smuggling services. ultimately, the route chosen and the distance to be covered, the costs for border crossings and the available funds to fi nance the journey – sometimes irrespective of one’s actual fi nancial background – all infl uence the journey duration. the (im-)permeability of borders in a highly stratifi ed global migration regime shapes the duration and degree of fragmentation of refugees’ journeys most decisively. states, however, not only exert power over displaced persons and other migrants by preventing mobility through visa regimes and border controls, but also by strategically decelerating journeys through externalised controls, encampment, and delays in bureaucratic procedures such as the (non-)processing of applications for asylum or family reunifi cation (tsianos/karakayali 2010; tazzioli/garelli 2020; vries/guild 2019). 4.3 violent journeys only few legal pathways to europe – such as family reunifi cation, resettlement, or humanitarian admission – are available for forcibly displaced migrants. most refugees who nonetheless aim to reach a destination in europe cross borders by irregular means and are thereby confronted with different forms of violence. forced migration occurs out of the fear or experience of a violent act and in search for safety, but refugees are likely to experience violence en route as their journeys are continuously shaped by violent encounters (bank et al. 2017). as spelt out above, the fragmentation of journeys, the irregular status during the journey, and the “politics of exhaustion” (vries/guild 2019: 1) in borderlands creates an increased journeys of violence • 221 vulnerability and exposure to violence and violent actors, at the hands of fellow travellers, smugglers, or authorities such as border guards (baird 2014). the illicit nature of the journey and the clandestine routes expose refugees to unsafe means of transportation and routes (martin 2011), e.g., across the sahara or the mediterranean. they then face elementary physical dangers such as dehydration as well as potential death in case of a breakdown of the vehicle in the desert or shipwrecks at high sea. criminality, human rights abuses such as physical or sexual violence, robbery and blackmail, exploitation of labour or forced labour, and the death of other travellers are frequently recounted (ohchr 2018, 2016). as refugees depend on the migration industry to reach their destination, illicit networks exploit these vulnerabilities as a business opportunity, at times kidnapping and detaining migrants until they receive ransom from relatives who are blackmailed (rmms east africa and yemen 2017). most cannot expect any support from the state – neither from the authorities of the country they are in nor by their country of origin – regarding access to basic human rights or the fulfi lment of basic needs. quite to the contrary, encounters with the state oftentimes are encounters with the border regime and its actors meting out further violent acts such as beatings, pushbacks, and detention (ohchr 2016). due to the lack of protection mechanisms and the implicit cooperation of some state actors in countries of transit with the migration industry, there are hardly any chances for migrants to pursue justice for such human rights abuses. this exposure to violence is mirrored in the quantitative data. half of the respondents who answered the respective questions in the soep survey reported to have had violent experiences en route to germany. 43 percent of female and 55 percent of male respondents encountered violence on their journeys. however, a larger share of female respondents (40 percent vs. 31 percent of men) chose not to answer the questions regarding own experiences of violence. the survey measured several types of violence and multiple answers were possible. figure 2a tabulates the frequency of seven types of violence experienced by migrants by gender. fraud (25 percent) and imprisonment (19 percent) were the most frequently reported experiences of violence. physical abuse, robbery, shipwrecks, and blackmail range between 12-15 percent, while 2 percent experienced sexual violence. as sexual violence carries a strong social stigma, the number of unreported cases is likely to be higher. while women experience sexual violence more frequently, men report higher shares of all other types of violence. figure 2b breaks down the seven types of violence by migrants’ fi nancial resources. refugees with higher fi nancial status experienced physical and sexual abuse and imprisonment less frequently, while fraud and blackmail were more common than among those with lower fi nancial status. only the experience of shipwrecks during a boat crossing is not infl uenced by the respective socio-economic position. put simply, those who are better off are a more likely target for fraud, robbery, and blackmail, but they also seem to be able to afford ways to circumvent violent encounters. those from a lower fi nancial background are more often subject to imprisonment, physical violence, and sexual violence. this clearly indicates that • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold222 fig. 2: violence experienced by refugees on their journeys according to gender and fi nancial background 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 fraud jail physical violence blackmail robbery shipwreck sexual violence male female in percent a) gender 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 fraud jail physical violence blackmail robbery shipwreck sexual violence above average average below average in percent b) financial background source: soep panel data, n=4,527 journeys of violence • 223 violence is experienced differently depending on one’s socio-economic position or gender. the directness of the route – whether one travelled directly to germany (61 percent of respondents) or stayed in a country of transit for more than three months (39 percent) – correlates to violence experienced en route. 58 percent of those travelling indirectly report violence, while 46 percent of those travelling directly did. a fast journey also decreased reports of violence. 58 percent of those who reported no violence arrived in germany within a month, while those who did experience violence took much longer on average. 4.4 violence in borderscapes 4.4.1 violence along the balkan route the qualitative material shows that avoiding danger, staying safe, and fi nding protection are central concerns for refugees, and that the journey is considered to be highly dangerous. the form of violence that was most reported in the qualitative interviews was direct violence by state agents, i.e. border guards, police offi cers, or soldiers who embody the border regime, and by smugglers. encampment was also feared, often considered as a direct result of police encounters. interviewees sought to avoid the prison-like conditions in some camps and the start of asylum procedures in certain countries, fearing that they would not receiving adequate treatment and severely limit their future opportunities. several refugees we interviewed did not want to stay in greece in particular, even though the country is an eu member. in 2015, the greek government provided hardly any humanitarian support and no incentives to stay, and indeed ushered refugees to move on. hence, most refugees continued their journey north across the western balkan to reach another eu member state. different routes existed at the time. arif, for instance, chose to leave greece and crossed through macedonia, serbia, hungary, and austria to arrive in germany – a journey that took him around 17 days. he recounted that after they had managed to cross the greek-macedonian border, his group did not dare to stop walking: “we walked all night. maybe ten hours. it never stopped raining. it was very cold. and now we (were) maybe 20 km away from the border.” in macedonia, they rested in an abandoned house, but while they were asleep “the police came. they shouted at us. the other two were like dead (tired) and didn’t hear them. the police beat them, so they would go up. i was only beaten once, but the others were beaten several times until they got up. (...) we were taken by car back to greece.” after this incident, arif and a travel companion again crossed the greek-macedonian border, passed through the country and reached serbia, where they feared being detected and deported all the way back to greece by the serbian police. however, they managed to take a bus to belgrade, where they felt safer and from where they could eventually move on. khalid travelled the greek-macedonian-serbian route in august and september 2015. he recounted that after arriving in hungary, “we were scared that the police would wait for us there. you cannot know where they will wait for you. you defi nitely • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold224 cannot make any sounds, otherwise the dogs come. when the dogs come, it is over.” khalid had feared hungary because of possible encampment and imprisonment. “hungary, it is really different. the prisons there are really like in syria. you have to stay in prison for a month, you get beaten, you don’t get a lot of food. that’s why people are scared. they let the dogs loose on people. it’s horrible there.” an alternative route to cross into eu territory emerged around 2017 after both the serbian-hungarian and the serbian-croatian borders became almost impenetrable. migrants then tried to enter croatia via bosnia-herzegovina, but often faced diffi culties in the latter. in the european borderscape stretching from bosnia– herzegovina to croatia, slovenia, and italy, refugees are frequently apprehended after having clandestinely crossed one or several borders and are then forcibly removed from the schengen area (minca/collins 2021). police and border guards use excessive force against migrants in these pushbacks, such as beatings, dog attacks, torture, sexual assault, theft, and the destruction of personal belongings (bvmn 2020). boxer, a 19-year-old pakistani who was interviewed in the bosniancroatian border region reported: “i tried ten times (to cross the border from bosnia into the eu). two times i was deported from trieste (an italian town close to slovenian border) (…) the border guards caught us in the night, the people were sleeping and didn’t recognize that the police came. the croatian police beat us everywhere, with sticks, kicks, tear gas, and pushed us back to the bosnian border. one of them hit me in the face with his bare hand. my friend had his arm broken. another broke his nose. when i saw that the border guards were going to beat me, i tried to protect my face and body. we didn’t fi ght back, because they might have gotten angrier. (…) croatian police took our sleeping bags, money, mobiles, shoes, jackets, everything. i don’t know what they do with the mobiles and money, but they burned the jackets, bags, and shoes in a fi re near the border” (themann 2021; the quote has been lightly copyedited for clarity). violent pushbacks by croatian border offi cials and the confi scation of personal items contribute greatly to the protracted immobilisation of forced migrants in bosnia. under these precarious conditions, it usually takes migrants weeks or months to equip themselves for another attempt at crossing the border. many reported that they were stuck in the border region of una-sana for one to two years, and frequently subjected to state violence. 4.4.2 violence along the central mediterranean route stays in libya were described by eritrean respondents who came through the central mediterranean route as particularly diffi cult and “very, very dangerous” – if they wanted to talk about this phase of their journey at all. many experienced violence, labour exploitation, and imprisonment, or witnessed sexual violence and the disappearance or death of friends. most seemed to know about the horrendous journeys of violence • 225 conditions for migrants and human rights violations in libya (ohchr 2018) and thus did not initially plan to go there, but later came to see it as the only path to europe. however, not all migrants necessarily remained in libya for longer periods of time. one reason for protracted immobility is the practice of imprisoning migrants in libya and demanding ransom from their relatives in other countries – a violent form of how criminals aim to exploit the transnational social networks in which migrants are embedded (rmms east africa and yemen 2017). dawit and his partner were detained in an apartment with 30 people, where nobody was allowed to leave, only minimal food rations were provided, and the sanitary conditions were dismal. unprotected and unaccompanied women were sexually abused. the smugglers tried to extract as much money from each migrant under their control as possible. it took dawit one and half months until he was able to collect enough money from of his parents in eritrea and a cousin in the united states. only after 6,000€ were transferred, they were freed and “passed on” to other smugglers for the boat journey to europe. despite the traumatic memory, dawit still considers himself lucky because he had relatives in other countries who could support them fi nancially by paying the ransom in a comparatively short time. others remained in libya for much longer. “three months, six months, some even a year and more, they stay there and cannot leave until they have money and fi nd others to leave with”, dawit explained (see also christ et al. 2021). indeed, others waited much longer: dan, a young eritrean migrant who arrived in germany in 2018 as an unaccompanied minor, also experienced such a dramatic phase of forced detainment locked in with other migrants in libya. while he was on the move to his aunt in the uk, it was his uncle in israel who bailed him out with $4,000. after an unbearable ten months of waiting, the smugglers received the money, and he was able to leave libya in an overcrowded ship to italy. 4.4.3 dangers en route irrespective of the route taken and the experiences made, many interviewees feared robberies, theft, betrayal, and exploitation. kamal described the situation as follows: “things like that happen, (people steal) organs or something and sell (them), (we heard) way too much.” according to kamal, money was the most important factor during the journey, which is why people often committed thefts: “many people took advantage of us. it was too much. some people, on the way, had no more money left, so they stole. (...) it was bad. really.” khalid also explained that “there are many thieves en route. (...) we were all scared that we would be robbed. that they would steal our money. (...) you can’t do anything about that.” and arif told a similar story: “they take your money. they won’t kill you, but they take everything you have and leave you behind”. such experiences and fears of violence en route – direct violence, pushbacks, encampment, robbery and fraud, shipwrecks – led malek, a young man in his twenties from afghanistan to conclude that he did not want his family members to travel irregularly as well. while he wanted them to come and reunite with him in germany, he says: “i don’t want (...) my family to come here now illegally. i wouldn’t • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold226 do that. (…) look, i have experience coming from afghanistan to germany (...) i told them no matter how much money you must spend; it is best to not come illegally (...) but to come normally.” the presented narratives of individuals are largely in line with fi ndings by other scholars (martin 2011; baird 2014; shields 2015; vries/guild 2019), human rights organisations (ohchr 2016, 2018) and witness accounts (bvmn 2020). both the quantitative and the qualitative data clearly show that violent experiences en route to europe are the rule rather than the exception. direct violence is pervasive, with state actors and smugglers being the main perpetrators. but structural forms of violence also shape these journeys, as only certain clandestine and dangerous modes of mobility are available to refugees. 5 discussion of central findings this paper has aimed to trace the impacts of the eu border regime on refugees’ lives and their journeys. we took individual refugees’ journeys as the focus of analysis, rather than abstract fl ows along routes or the potential impacts that displaced people’s presence has at certain places. this change of perspective allows for deeper insights into refugees’ own experiences of mobility, of the places through which they pass, of the local interactions and transnational networks that shape their trajectory, and of the violent encounters that have – often literally – left a mark in their lives. from this angle, the lived experience of “being on the move” and of “becoming a refugee” can be dissected as well as the dialectic relationship of (im-)mobility and fragmentation and the extent to which refugees’ journey can be considered as violent processes in themselves (benezer/zetter 2015; bank et al. 2017). based on the presented empirical fi ndings, we argue that refugees’ journeys to and through europe must be understood as journeys of violence. a fundamentally uneven and asymmetric global mobility regime has created frictions and fragmentations in the european border space and beyond. we interpret this as a manifestation of structural violence. in this context, people who are on the move to and within europe are frequently and systematically exposed to direct violence and must cope with its devastating consequences. the wider european border space is thereby not only a site of human rights violations and encounters with direct violence, but also a particularly contested space that systemically reproduces structural violence (tsianos/karakayali 2010; shields 2015). four central features of violent journeys emerge from our analysis. first, we found that access to mobility is unevenly distributed and inherently stratifi ed according to socio-economic positions (see van hear 2004; weiss 2005; urry 2012). access to mobility is strongly infl uenced by political discourses of who can travel smoothly and whose movements are and should be restricted, which refl ects the “cultural violence” inherent to global mobility regimes. accessing mobility requires resources such as travel documents and fi nancial means, whoever does not possess these is unlikely to be able to leave in the fi rst place or can only cross the border to a neighbouring state and cannot embark on a long-distance journeys of violence • 227 journey. the soep data that we analysed showed that “class positions” shape trajectories and thereby refl ect the stratifying effects of one's fi nancial background. our qualitative interviews also point to the fact that available capital is decisive for family members’ capacity to follow others, which relates to the risk of displacement situations becoming protracted for those who cannot afford to move on. the experience of “involuntary stillness” (martin 2011) in the sense of becoming stuck en route, whether this is in a turkish city, a libyan detention centre, or at the bosnian border to croatia, is thus also largely an effect of the stratifi cation of mobility, which is built into the structures of global migration systems (glick schiller/salazar 2013). second, and closely related to the sketched economic dimensions, refugees’ journeys to europe – be they irregular or regular – are increasingly fragmented. migration trajectories evolve gradually, they are dynamic and non-linear processes. forced migrants must constantly adapt to the circumstances into which they are thrown. their multi-directional step-by-step-movements are frequently – sometimes violently – halted and re-routed. and oftentimes, people end up in a very different place than originally planned (collyer 2010; schapendonk et al. 2020). in the soep database, germany is framed as the fi nal place of arrival. however, many interviewees were in a weak legal position where arrival and longer-term settlement are legally obstructed and “voluntary return”, forced deportation, and onward movements are quite likely. others such as kamal ended up in germany by chance, while their desired destination was somewhere else. hence, even when a journey seemingly comes to an end, this may well be continuously infl uenced by the border regime and its structural violence. border regimes do not only operate at the physical border itself. they also affect life in the destination country and people’s living conditions even after they have decided to stay in one place. third, 2015 was exceptional in the sense that not only a record number of people on the move reached european territory via irregular pathways, but also that the journeys were comparatively fast – half of the respondents in the soep study arrived within one month. this refl ects the unique conditions of organised journeys across the eastern mediterranean and the western balkan route in that year. with the eu-turkey deal and the subsequent (publicly declared) closure of the balkan route in march 2016, refugees’ mobilities to europe were again decisively decelerated. since then, long-term encampment in the eu borderscape has become the norm, leading to refugees’ enhanced precarity and protracted situations in which the entrapped people can neither move back nor forth. the infamous camp moria on the greek island of lesvos stands as a prime example of this disturbing trend of immobilising refugees in border spaces with the aim of discouraging further mobilities (tazzioli/garelli 2020; vries/guild 2019). the increased risks of immobilisation and fragmentation of journeys with longer and more dangerous routes is a clear consequence of structural violence against refugees and, in turn, immediately linked to frequent encounters with direct violence. fourth, in the wake of increasingly controlled, partially externalised and militarised border regimes, the access to safe pathways to asylum in europe has not only become more restricted, but direct violence against people on the move is increasing and normalised. refugees need to travel clandestinely, they rely on • rahel lorenz, benjamin etzold228 others’ knowledge about illicit border crossings, and they are forced to draw on and pay for the support of the migration industry. this “illegalisation” of migration leads to unsafe routes and is the prime reason why more than 50,000 individuals have lost their lives or gone missing en route to europe in the past 30 years. it has also contributed to increasing the costs of journeys, which enhances the prevalence of fraud and stealing en route and indirectly leads to stranded migrants’ greater exposure to labour exploitation. moreover, social, political, and legal marginalisation make refugees more vulnerable to exploitation and mistreatment at the hands of offi cial as well as private actors who embody the border regime. direct violence may be infl icted by border guards, the police, or detention offi cers in europe, as well as in the context of illegal pushbacks from croatia or arbitrary imprisonment in hungary. other perpetrators of violence are not part of european states’ authorities, but are also connected to the eu border regime. the case of libya shows the normalisation of violence against migrants quite drastically. the eu and libyan warlords have co-created a regime of migration control, with cooperation between the libyan coast guard and human traffi ckers. practices of border control go hand in hand with violence and crimes against migrants such as forced return, arbitrary detention, slavery, and sexual violence. overall, refugees’ journeys to europe are fundamentally shaped by violent encounters. while we need to differentiate the types of violence that are infl icted, we also need to acknowledge that different individuals and groups are exposed to violence to different degrees and have developed diverse coping strategies to circumvent and deal with violent encounters. we see a clear trend emerging: the degree of fragmentation of refugees’ journeys correlates with the degree of violence encountered. we argue that the experiences of fragmented journeys with non-linear back-and-forth movements, forced immobilisation, and experiences of direct violence along the journey are deeply rooted in the border regimes that european governments have made great efforts to establish and consolidate inand outside of the eu’s territory. references andersson, ruben 2014: illegality, inc. clandestine migration and the business of bordering europe. california series in public anthropology 28. oakland, calif.: univ. of california press. baird, theodore 2014: human smuggling and violence in the east mediterranean. in: international journal of migration, health and social care 10,3: 121-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmhsc-06-2013-0010 bamf (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge); 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garelli, glenda 2020: containment beyond detention. the hotspot system and disrupted migration movements across europe. in: environment and planning d: society & space 38,6: 1009-1027: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818759335 tesfahuney, mekonnen 1998: mobility, racism and geopolitics. in: political geography 17,5: 499-515. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0962-6298(97)00022-x themann, philipp 2021: infrastrukturen der flucht: (im)mobilität in bosnien und herzegowina. universität bonn, geographisches institut. unpublished master’s thesis. tsianos, vassilis; karakayali, serhat 2010: transnational migration and the emergence of the european border regime. an ethnographic analysis. in: european journal of social theory 13,3: 373-387. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431010371761 urry, john 2012: social networks, mobile lives and social inequalities. in: journal of transport geography 21: 24-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.10.003 van hear, nicholas 2004: ‘i went as far as my money would take me .́ confl ict, forced migration and class. working paper 04-06. oxford: centre on migration, policy and society. villa, matteo; gruijters, rob; steinhilper, elias 2018: outsourcing european border control: recent trends in departures, deaths and search and rescue activities in the central mediterranean. in: border criminologies blog [https://www.law.ox.ac. uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/ blog/2018/09/outsourcing, 09.05.2022]. vries, leonie ansems de; guild, elspeth 2019: seeking refuge in europe: spaces of transit and the violence of migration management. in: journal of ethnic and migration studies 45,12: 2156-2166. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2018.1468308 weiss, anja 2005: the transnationalization of social inequality. conceptualizing social positions on a world scale. in: current sociology 53,4: 707-728. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392105052722 journeys of violence • 231 date of submission: 30.08.2021 date of acceptance: 15.03.2022 rahel lorenz. cologne, germany. e-mail: rahel.lorenz@posteo.de dr. benjamin etzold (). bonn international center for confl ict studies gmbh (bicc). bonn, germany. e-mail: benjamin.etzold@bicc.de url: https://www.bicc.de/about/staff/staffmember/member/513-etzold/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) predicting the timing of social transitions from personal, social and socio-economic resources of german adolescents predicting the timing of social transitions from personal, social and socio-economic resources of german adolescents jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger abstract: social transitions are characterized by an increased heterogeneity in western societies. following the life course perspective, individual agency becomes central in shaping one’s life course. this article examines social transitions of adolescents using individual resource theory to explain differences of the timing of fi ve transitions in partnership and family formation: the fi rst sexual experience, the fi rst intimate relationship, the fi rst cohabitation, the fi rst marriage, and the birth of the fi rst child. since little is so far known about how individual characteristics interact and infl uence the social transition to adulthood, we focus on the varying impacts of personal, social and socio-economic resources across the social life course. we use longitudinal data from the german life-study, which focuses on the birth cohort of individuals born between 1965 and 1967. using event history analysis, we fi nd that the timing of the fi rst sexual experience and fi rst partnership transitions are mainly infl uenced by personal and social ressources, whereas socio-economic resources offer better explanations for the timing of entering marriage and parenthood. most striking are the different explanatory models for women and men. keywords: social transitions · partnership and family formation · resources · life course · youth 1 introduction on the way to adulthood most people experience social transitions: they have sexual experiences, form romantic relationships, begin living with a partner in a shared household, marry and start a family of their own (meulemann 1999). in western societies, the sequence and timing of these transitions is characterized by an increased heterogeneity (dommermuth 2008; ross et al. 2009). even, there is considerable variance regarding the timing of these transitions: some people experience transitions early, others rather late. for example, the beginning of the fi rst romantic comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 157-186 (date of release: 12.12.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-11en1 • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger158 relationship varies from age 17 to age 23 for individuals born in 1965. the youngest 25 percent of women born between 1965 and 1969 were younger than 22 years old when they married, the oldest 25 percent entered marriage being older than 30 years of age. among men of the same birth cohort, the interquartile range is even 30 years (scherger 2007: 161). there is also a signifi cant range regarding the length of time between the fi rst sexual contact and the birth of the fi rst child. while most young adults experience their fi rst sexual contacts before the age of 20 (bode/heßling 2015), the average ages at marriage and at birth of the fi rst child do not occur until they reach their fourth decade (marriage: women 31 years, men: 34 years; birth of fi rst child: women: 30 years (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2016b: 36, 54)). thus, social transitions on the way to middle adulthood stretch over a long period of time over the life course (mayer 2009). at the same time, the transitions are very age-heterogenous: some pass the mentioned transitions quite quickly at an early age, others to the contrary much more slowly at an older age. what we also fi nd is that men and women experience these transitions at different points in time, women being more quickly than men. transitions that occur during the life course are determined by institutional contexts (the educational system, labour market or legal requirements) as well as individual resources (konietzka 2010). social norms, however, have largely ceased to be effective in orienting and planning individual life stages (beck 1999). young adults themselves have become central in planning and organizing their transition to adulthood, embedded in institutional contexts (beck 1986; mayer/müller 2009). they are themselves responsible for beginning romantic partnerships, for the number of relationships over their life course, and whether and when to start a family. the individual is the “active agent”: “individuals construct their own life course through choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstance” (elder et al. 2004). thus, individual agency becomes central in shaping one’s life course and making decisions to pass through certain life stages. adolescents and young adults decide, based on their own resources, when the time is “right” for these transitions (neyer 1999). this explains the empirically “mixed age picture” with regard to social transitions. in this paper, we present a resource perspective of social transitions to middle adulthood in germany for the birth cohort 1965-1967. the objective of this contribution is to analyse the varying explanatory power of individual resources, which we differentiate between personal, social and socio-economic resources. a number of studies have focused on the latter type of resources and showed how partnership and family formation in germany is infl uenced by, e.g., the educational attainment (e.g. kreyenfeld/konietzka 2008; schaeper et al. 2013), labour force participation (huinink 1989; seyda 2003) and educational homogamy (bauer/jacob 2010; blossfeld/timm 1997). however, little is known about the question of how individual characteristics interact and infl uence the social transition to adulthood. how do resources infl uence sexual experiences, partnership formation, cohabitation, marriage and the birth of the fi rst child? particularly the varying effects of personal, social and predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 159 socio-economic resources on these transitions are unknown. does the infl uence of some factors change over time? and does the infl uence differ for women and men? to address these questions, we outline the changes of social transitions since the latter half of the twentieth century (section 2.1.). we proceed with the differences of the transitions analysed in this study (section 2.2.). next, we offer a model that represents the changing infl uences of individual resources on a sequence of fi ve social transitions in the second, third and fourth decade of life (section 2.3.). next, we describe the data, measurements and analytical procedures employed (section 3). finally, we present the results (section 4) and discuss our central fi ndings (section 5). 2 theoretical considerations and state of research 2.1 social transitions and their timing over the life course becoming socially independent from the parental home and forming an own social identity as well as entering into relationships are major steps on the way to middle adulthood. on this way, adolescents and young adults are faced with decisions regarding the timing of the fi rst sexual contact, the fi rst partnership, cohabitation or marriage. this process is understood as a “pathway through the age-differentiated life span, to social patterns in the timing, duration, spacing, and order of events […]” (elder 1978: 21). this pathway is divided into individual points in time, that represent life stages marked by transitions (elder et al. 2004). transitions such as entering marriage or parenthood indicate a change from one status to another (e.g. from unmarried to married). since the late 1960s, however, the transition to adulthood has changed in most western societies, which also applies to germany. whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving the parental home was directly linked with entering marriage, usually followed by the birth of the fi rst child, nowadays these events have been increasingly decoupled. for example, the share of nonmarital births has more than doubled in the last 25 years in germany, from 15 percent of all births in 1990 to 35 percent in 2015. for fi rst births, the percentage is even higher reaching 44 percent (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2016a). furthermore, hayford et al. (2014) show for u.s. women throughout the second half of the 20th century that the link between marriage and parenthood has weakened: women who married in the 1970s or later show more variation in the timing of birth of their fi rst child compared to women of earlier birth cohorts who had children more immediately after marriage. not least because adolescents and young adults remain longer within the educational system, transitions to adulthood have decoupled and postponed. thus, events which occurred within a short time span, are now considered over a longer stretch of time (mayer 2009). moreover, it becomes increasingly unclear which events defi ne the status of adulthood, since there is an increasing number of individuals who (permanently) remain unmarried and/or childless. in germany, for instance, the percentage of permanently childless women amounts to around 21 percent in the 1967 cohort, • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger160 comparable to the cohort in our analysis. in the 1937 cohort, the share was around 11 percent (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2017). therefore, we suggest no longer to speak of becoming an adult but rather only of status transitions that occur during the life course within the fi rst four decades (see also konietzka 2010). 2.2 differences of social transitions over the life course the social transitions examined here are: the fi rst sexual contact, the fi rst romantic relationship, the fi rst cohabitation, the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child. these transitions differ in terms of the investments, commitments and liabilities required in friendships and partnerships. the fi rst sexual contact and the fi rst relationship are usually experienced in youth or young adulthood and are associated with rather low investments in a relationship. by marriage and especially by the birth of the fi rst child, partnerships become highly committed and institutionalized. an intermediate stage is cohabiting with a partner (lauterbach 2006). cohabitation has become more and more relevant, since the number of cohabitating unions considerably increased since the 1970s (1972: 137,000, 1996: 1,382,000, 2014: 2,920,000 (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2002; krack-roberg et al. 2016)). this living arrangement is especially popular among young adults between the ages of 18 and 35, and represents the beginning of partnership and family formation (peuckert 2012). cohabitation resembles marriage, since it involves an intimate and time-intensive relationship with a partner, a joint household and a merger of personal economies (thornton et al. 1995). one main difference between cohabitation and marriage can be seen in the absence of a formally recognized status (nock 1995). cohabitation is more binding than fi rst partnership experiences but does not have the same obligations and institutionalized status as a marriage or especially the birth of a child. partnerships can break up without any legal consequences, whereas being married or having children makes partners legally obligated to one another – even after divorce. moreover, unlike the fi rst sexual and partnership experiences, economic security is necessary for establishing a shared household and even more so marriage and parenthood. even if normative regulations regarding the timing and sequencing of status passages have generally decreased, fi nancial independence from the parental home or a certain economic status is still highly signifi cant especially for entering into marriage and starting a family. following family economics, entering long-term relationships and starting a family is not desirable as long as individuals are in education (institution effect), because achieving a certain educational level requires a lot of time that cannot be invested in an intimate relationship or family. furthermore, there are normative expectations that married men and women have to be economically independent (brüderl/diekmann 1997; huinink 2000). therefore, “fi nishing one’s education (…) counts as one of the important prerequisites for entering into marriage and parenthood” (blossfeld/huinink 1991). for 58 percent of participants of the population policy acceptance study 2003 a low income was the reason for postponing marriage (bib 2009). several studies have shown the infl uence of the level of education, which is itself strongly connected with the timing of economic inpredicting the timing of social transitions ... • 161 dependence, on delays in marriage and family formations (blossfeld/huinink 1991; dommermuth 2008; kreyenfeld 2015; kreyenfeld/konietzka 2015; schaeper et al. 2013). thus, individuals want to achieve economic security before they establish long-term intimate relationships (huinink 2000). consequently, we expect that with increasing investments and commitments in relationships and thus an increasing instutionalization of relationships, the individual’s educational and economic situation becomes more important for the timing of social transitions. 2.3 resource model from a life course perspective, we argue, that different resources become important at different stages in the fi rst four decades: the personal, social and socio-economic resources (diewald/mayer 2009). thus, the pathway to middle adulthood is a co-determined process of individual action, based on a framework of institutional settings and individual resources (asendorpf/neyer 2012). resources formed and stabilised during childhood and youth serve as guiding scripts to master the stages to middle adulthood (huinink/feldhaus 2009). the resource model of life management assumes that the (social) transitions (t1t5) in the fi rst four decades of the life course, represented here by the fi ve transition markers, are infl uenced by early life conditions and resources. we argue that social transitions are infl uenced by personal, social and socio-economic resources formed in youth, and are embedded in institutional settings and historical opportunities. figure 1 illustrates this assumption and provides examples for indicators of the different resources which will be described in the next section. however, passing through the social transitions and reaching middle adulthood is different for male and female adolescents. as studies show, men experience various transitions later than women (bode/heßling 2015; dommermuth 2008; grünheid 2017; marbach/tölke 1996; müller et al. 1999), and they also have a higher risk of never experiencing specifi c transitions, since they more often remain permanently single or childless (schmitt/winkelmann 2016; sprenger 2014). therefore, we assume that personal, social and socio-economic resources have different meanings for male and female young adults in terms of the fi ve social transitions under study. 2.4 personal resources personal resources include cognitive, emotional and social competences which characterize people’s individual agency (raithel 2011), or rather their coping capacity (hurrelmann/quenzel 2012). personal resources comprise both cognitive skills and the perceived capacity for self-regulation (emotion control, impulse control, as well as temper and personality) (petermann/schmidt 2006). research fi ndings have proven the link between personal resources, including the personality factors neuroticism and extraversion, such as shyness, self-control or sociability, and partnership characteristics. for example, partnership status differs by personality: singles are often much shyer than persons who live in a steady partnership. people committed to a partner show higher levels of extraversion and • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger162 fi g . 1 : r es o ur ce m o d el o f l ife m an ag em en t s o ur ce : o w n p re se nt at io n, b as ed o n fe nd e t al . 2 00 9 predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 163 lower levels of neuroticism than singles (neyer 1999). having a fi rst relationship is linked with decreases in neuroticism (lehnart et al. 2010; neyer/lehnart 2007). sociability is associated with an increased probability of fi nding a partner (neyer/ lehnart 2007), and high extraversion and low neuroticism are linked to a high number of children (jokela et al. 2011) and a probability of encountering the fi rst romantic experiences between the ages of 23 and 25 (but not at other ages analysed in the study) (wagner et al. 2015). additionally, stavrova and ehlebracht (2015) show the connection between extraversion and an increased probability of entering a romantic relationship. furthermore, the infl uence of childhood and adolescent characteristics and resources has been revealed in longitudinal studies which also point to gender differences: it has been found that men’s shy behaviour in childhood is related to delayed entry into marriage and fatherhood. in contrast, shy girls are more likely to adopt a traditional female role, but in this case shyness is not associated with the timing of marriage and parenthood (caspi et al. 1988). similarly, a german longitudinal study shows that personality types in childhood predict the timing of entering the fi rst stable romantic relationship for men but not for women. men with personalities characterized as resilient enter into their fi rst romantic partnerships earlier than men described as “over-“ or “under-controlled” (dennissen et al. 2008). the timing of the fi rst sexual relationship is also associated with personal resources. individuals characterized as “under-controlled” in childhood fi nd it hard to maintain social contacts, and experience their fi rst sexual contacts earlier than those characterized as “over-controlled” or “resilient”; gender differences were not tested (atkins/hart 2008). another longitudinal study demonstrates that women with a low self-control in childhood tend to enter motherhood earlier (kokko et al. 2009). a further important personal resource which becomes salient in youth is the self-perceived physical attractiveness. adolescents develop a specifi c idea of their own appearance and attractiveness (in comparison to others (see fend 2005)). with respect to partner selection and behaviour in social interactions, these concepts of one’s own appearance are especially relevant in western cultures. this applies in particular to young women (smolak 2004), who learn that they have to pay attention to their appearance, how to judge their body image and how it is judged by others (brown/gilligan 1994; müller 2006). girls are more worried about body fat and invest more in their body than boys and are more likely to act according to their body satisfaction (see smolak 2004 for a review). research has also shown that the body image is related to the perceived relationship quality for both, men and women (ambwani/strauss 2007; van den brink et al. 2018). this association is mediated by greater sexual satisfaction of those satisfi ed with their bodies (van den brink et al. 2018). however, it is yet unknown how body image infl uences the timing of partnership transition markers. overall, personal resources seem to infl uence social transitions from the fi rst sexual experience to the fi rst birth. regarding gender differences, we fi nd no clear picture from the literature as we described above. but, due to gender-specifi c socialization processes which expect young girls more than young boys to control their emotional and behavioural reactions in social situations (davis 1995; weis et • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger164 al. 2013), and the fact that women put more importance on their body image (smolak 2004), we expect personal resources to genereally be more important for females than for males. 2.5 social resources theories on the explanatory power of resources designate networks in which adolescents are integrated as social resources that they can draw on. these are primarily relationships to parents, but also to peers inside and outside of school (hurrelmann 2002; oerter/dreher 2002). in this article, we focus on two indicators of social resources: the peer group integration and the experience of parental divorce. particularly the integration into peer groups is a decisive factor infl uencing the transitions to middle adulthood. in peer groups, adolescents learn to form, to maintain and also to terminate social relationships. the peer group is a place where adolescents test their ability to engage in important relationships (mccormick et al. 2011). thus, the peer group serves as an early model for romantic relationships in emerging adulthood (reitz et al. 2014). we therefore expect that a strong peer integration – and tied with this a testing of one’s own ability to form and maintain relationships – should speed up the transition to adulthood. furthermore, the infl uence of peer groups in the cohort analysed in this paper (individuals born in the middle of the 1960s) should be stronger for young men than for young women, because girls are raised to be more emotionally attached to the parents and stay longer within the protected environment of the family (naudascher 1978; white 1994; goldscheider/ goldscheider 1999) in contrast to boys of whom it is expected to be more emotionally independent and self-suffi cient earlier (shulman/seiffge-krenke 1996; beckerstoll et al. 2000). a well-known fi nding is that children who experience their parents’ divorce have themselves a higher risk of divorce (e.g. amato/patterson 2016; berger 2009; diekmann/engelhardt 1995; diekmann/schmidheiny 2013; feldhaus/heintz-martin 2015). therefore, it is plausible that experiencing parental divorce also has effects on the timing of other partnership events. according to the economic deprivation theory, a parental divorce infl uences the economic situation of the parents and possibly leads to an earlier entry of adolescents into the labour market as well as to an earlier age at fi rst marriage, less commitment to intimate partners, and a higher prevalence of union dissolutions. in addition, socialization theory supposes that parental divorce is connected to a reduced control behaviour of parents and hence leads to earlier sexual contacts and earlier partnership formation (berger 2009; diekmann/engelhardt 1995). in sum, the theory proposes that a parental divorce is linked to an acceleration in the childrens’ own partnership and family formation process. as raab (2017) shows for germany, experiencing an alternative family structure (not living with both biological parents) up to the age of 18 is associated with earlier cohabitation and parenthood. regarding gender differences, previous fi ndings for germany are rather ambivalent (berger 2009; diekmann/engelhardt 1995; engelhardt 1998; schulz 2009). predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 165 2.6 socio-economic resources socio-economic factors also have a powerful infl uence on the transitions to middle adulthood. educational attainment, for example, infl uences the transitions from adolescence to adulthood, as especially one’s educational level is considered to be a deciding factor in the timing of marriage and the birth of the fi rst child. according to economic theory, higher educated people tend to delay marriage and family formation into higher ages, the effects being stronger for women than for men. highly educated women tend to delay marriage and motherhood, while for men a u-shaped effect is observed (bauer/jacob 2010; diekmann 1990; dommermuth 2008; huinink/kreyenfeld 2004; lauterbach 2004). women with high educational levels tend to gain less from marriage, since they are economically independent. in contrast, highly educated men have higher income prospects and are therefore attractive marriage partners. so far, there has been insuffi cient longitudinal examination of the infl uence of the education level on the timing of the fi rst cohabitation: do people with a university degree who stay longer within the educational system delay cohabitation with a partner? uncertainty in one’s life situation might have a negative effect on the timing of cohabitation. however, cohabitation requires less fi nancial commitment and has lower opportunity costs than marriage (berrington/diamond 2000). thus, the effect of the level of education should be stronger for marriage than for cohabitation. müller et al. (1999) found gender-specifi c effects of the educational level on the timing of cohabitation and marriage. while highly educated men enter into marriage more quickly, highly educated women cohabit earlier. the most important socio-economic resource for adolescents and young adults is, however, economic independence. from a historical point of view, the underlying normative concept indicates that young men must become economically independent before they can responsibly form a shared household, marry, and have their fi rst child (huinink 1995). historically, individual fi nancial independence is of less importance for women. according to the traditional female life course pattern, economic independence from the parental home was achieved by establishing a household with a marriage partner, rather than by becoming gainfully employed. however, the old male breadwinner model has been shaken (blossfeld/drobnic 2001; janssens 1997; lauterbach 2006). high educational levels and gainful employment at the beginning of the working life, have increased women’s fi nancial independence. today, fi nancial independence is not only expected for men but also for women before entering into long-term intimate relationships and starting a family (huinink 2000). one can therefore conclude that the later young adults achieve fi nancial independence, the later they start a joint household and enter into marriage and parenthood. in addition, socio-economic resources from the family of origin can also be seen as resources for adolescents. it has been shown that adolescents growing up in families with lower socio-economic backgrounds tend to enter into their fi rst relationships, cohabitation and marriage earlier than their counterparts from an advantaged background (berrington/diamond 2000). social background may directly affect the timing of these transitions through class-specifi c norms and perceptions • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger166 about the “right” timing of cohabitation or marriage. indirectly, the social background can have a mediating effect through one’s own educational qualifi cations (berrington/diamond 2000; blossfeld/huinink 1991). 2.7 hypotheses in sum, theoretical considerations and previous fi ndings suggest that personal, social and socio-economic resources do infl uence social transitions experienced by adolescents. nevertheless a systematic, concurrent examination of different transition markers and their prediction by personal, social and socio-economic resources is still missing. thus, the varying explanatory power of these resources over the life course is unclear. hence, our fi rst research question reads as follows: question 1: how does the explanatory power of personal, social and socio-economic resources for different social transitions vary over the life course? as described above, the transitions studied here differ in terms of investments and commitments in partnerships. initial sexual and romantic experiences are usually experienced in different living situations than the fi rst cohabitation and especially the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child, which all have different demands on individual resources. thus, our fi rst hypothesis assumes the following: hypothesis 1: due to different investments and commitments in partnerships, personal and social resources should have a strong effect on early transitions and thus on the fi rst sexual and partnership experiences. in contrast, with increasing institutionalization of relationships (cohabitation, fi rst marriage and birth of the fi rst child) socio-economic resources should become more important. additionally, our literature review showed that men and women experience different transitions at different points in time and previous studies found that the importance of resources is gender-specifi c. thus, the following research question and hypotheses were addressed: question 2: are there gender differences in the varying infl uences of personal, social and socio-economic resources? hypothesis 2: the impact of personal resources should be stronger for women than for men. hypothesis 3: the impact of social resources (peer group integration) should be stronger for men than for women. hypothesis 4: economic independence infl uences both, men and women. the later young adults achieve fi nancial independence, the later they will enter their fi rst cohabitating union, marriage and especially parenthood. hypothesis 5: the higher the educational level, the later young adults will marry, especially in the case of highly educated women. predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 167 3 method 3.1 data and sample the analyses conducted to test the assumptions above are based on data from the german life study (pathways from late childhood to adulthood). the study is one of a small number of studies worldwide, providing information on adolescents’ life courses from age 12 to the age of 45 (1979-2012). thus, a range of more than 30 years is covered by the dataset. the life study is a sample of men and women in germany born between 1965 and 1967, which was fi rst surveyed from 1979 to 1983, and again in 2002 and 2012 (lauterbach et al. 2016). initially, the study was conducted as a school survey (adolescence study) comprising 12-year-old adolescents who were interviewed annually until the age of 16. the study focused on adolescents growing up in both urban and rural environments, as well as in different school contexts. thus, an urban area of former “west” germany (frankfurt am main) and two adjacent rural areas (odenwald, bergstraße) with different types of schools were chosen. the study was, therefore, conducted in a “quasi-experimental design”. the research focused on adolescents coping with developmental tasks and on the development of personality. analysing these developments required using a longitudinal design. the fi rst data collection was carried out in 1979. 1,830 children in the 6th grade, which is equivalent to the age of 12, were interviewed. the survey – conducted as a panel study – was retaken fi ve times in one-year intervals. the data collection was completed when the adolescents attended the 10th grade. panel mortality and non-response were controlled by two parallel studies. data from parents and teachers were also collected twice in 1980 and 1982. in 2002 and 2012, data of the former students were collected again, investigating the conditions for a productive life development in young and middle adulthood. life course data are now available for 1,359 persons. external validation in 2012 using two german representative datasets (the socio-economic panel (soep) and the microcensus) proved that the life data are reliable, especially regarding family and partnership characteristics. however, the life data show a lower divorce rate for women and a higher number of families with two children (lauterbach et al. 2016). an important component of the life study are retrospectively sampled partnership biographies from the ages of 16 to 45. only partnerships that lasted longer than six months were taken into account. subjects were also asked whether their partnerships led to a shared home and marriage. thus, we have data on the partnership and family formation process over a period of almost thirty years. data on personality characteristics as well as on socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the contexts of origin are also available. for the analyses, we draw on data from 1983, when subjects were 16 years old. when information was lacking, data from 1982 and 1981 were imputed. only men and women with full information on the dependent as well as independent variables were included in our study. thus, after restricting the sample to persons with full information on partnership and family transitions, the case number • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger168 reduced to 1,008 (74 percent). dropping cases with incomplete data on childhood and youth resources further reduced the sample to 695 cases (51 percent),1 leaving 388 women and 307 men in the sample. robustness checks showed that even though the sample includes more women than men (50 percent baseline, 56 percent analysis sample), less respondents who experienced parental divorce during childhood and adolescence (12 percent baseline sample, 9 percent analysis sample) and more individuals with a university degree (23 percent baseline sample, 26 percent analysis sample), there exist no systematic differences between the baseline sample and the analysis sample. 3.2 measures dependent variables five events were investigated as factors infl uencing the social transitions: fi rst sexual contact, age of fi rst partnership, fi rst cohabitation, fi rst marriage and birth of the fi rst child. all variables are measured in years. information on the partnership and family history were collected in 2002 and 2012 retrospectively from age 16 to age 45. if events had not taken place until the age of 45, the respective case was treated as right censored. information about the fi rst sexual contact was only collected in 2002, when subjects were approximately 35 years of age. therefore, analyses on this topic are limited up to this age. a personal resources we used three indicators to measure personal resources: emotional stability, outgoingness and body image (a in fig. 1). the scale emotional stability is comparable to the big five factor of neuroticism and asks how individuals deal with their feelings and emotions, which is an important aspect of neuroticism. the scale was operationalized by eight items from the youth study2 (e.g. “i sometimes get upset about every little thing”). the possible responses are “true” vs. “not true”. high values of the emotional stability scale indicate a high emotional stability. the internal consistency of the items was satisfying (α=0.79). second, we used the scale outgoingness, which is comparable to the big five characteristic of extraversion. this scale was also operationalized by eight items (e.g. “i enjoy making new acquaintances”). the variables are dichotomous as well (“true” vs. “not true”). high values of the outgoingness scale indicate a high interest in establishing and maintaining contacts. cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.65. 1 even though some missing information from age 16 could be replaced by information from the two previous waves, the share of missing values among the independent variables was still 8 to 15 percent, meaning that of the 1,008 individuals with complete social life course information another 313 cases had to be dropped by listwise deletion. 2 all items are presented in the appendix. for a detailed documentation of all scales and items of the youth study, see fend/prester (1986). predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 169 the third personal resource used is body image which refers to a person’s generalized perception of his or her physical attractiveness. a person’s own perception and evaluation of his or her appearance is signifi cant for this study because it is associated in western culture with greater social success and especially with better chances on the “partner market” (fend 2005: 239). the scale used here includes six items (e.g. “compared with others, i really look very good.”), coded the same way as emotional stability. high values point to a positive body image. cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.71. b social resources in order to measure social resources, we used two indicators: integration in a peer group and the experience of parental divorce during childhood or youth (b in fig. 1). the scale peer group integration consists of eight items (e.g. “do you belong to a group of youths who meet regularly or often and have a sense of belonging together? we do not mean a club or association”) and shows the extent to which pupils were integrated into networks of social relationships with peers. cronbach’s alpha was 0.66. the experience of parental divorce in childhood and youth is used as a second indicator of social resources. it is assumed that experiencing a parental divorce leads to an earlier acquisition of adult roles and an acceleration of the timing of social transitons. the dummy-coded variable indicates whether a parental divorce or separation had been experienced up to the age of 16 or not. c socio-economic resources in this study, the highest achieved individual level of education was included as socio-economic resource. due to the small number of respondents with a low educational level, low and medium qualifi cations had to be combined into one category. two different variables were included in our analyses. since the events fi rst sexual contact and fi rst partnership were usually experienced from ages 16 to 20, the highest educational attainment for these events was indicated by the type of school attended (lower secondary school track (hauptschule and realschule) (0) vs. higher secondary school track (gymnasium) (1)).3 for the other three further events (cohabitation, marriage, fi rst child), the highest individual level of education was indicated by a variable containing the two categories “vocational training” (0) and “higher educational or technical college degree” (1). in the life study, low educational levels such as “no vocational training” were under-represented (lauterbach et al. 2016). in order not to violate the cox model proportionality assumption (see section 3.3), pupils from hauptschule and realschule were combined into one group, and pupils with no vocational qualifi cation (n=14) were not included at all in the 3 depending on the level of courses attended, pupils from integrated comprehensive schools (integrierte gesamtschule) were assigned to the three different types of schools. this procedure is appropriate as it appears that pupils largely remain at the level of their courses. change occurs above all with pupils assigned to the realschule. • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger170 analysis. because the level of education violates the proportional hazard assumption (see section 3.3), this variable was included as time-varying variable. in 2002 respondents were asked when they fi rst earned enough money to fend for themselves. this variable was included in the analyses as timing of economic independence (coded as a time-dependent variable). the study focuses on adolescents’ own resources. to control for effects of social origin, we included the socio-economic background of the family of origin as robustness check in the regression models. therefore, we used the hisei (“highest international socio-economic index of occupational status”) as a measure for the parental socio-economic status. the hisei has a metric range from 16 (janitor, cleaning personnel) to 90 (medical doctor, judge). for the analyses, the hisei was coded into three categories (16-40=low, 41-65=middle, 66-90=high). 3.3 methods of analysis to study the timing of the fi ve partnership status transitions, event history analysis was applied. on a descriptive level, survival curves are presented based on the kaplan-meier estimator. to measure the infl uence of personal, social and socio-economic resources on the timing of different status changes, cox models were estimated. effects in the cox models can be read as ß-coeffi cients. the hazard ratio (hz) represents the antilogarithm of the ß-coeffi cient (hz=exp(ß)) and (hz-1)*100 can be interpreted as the percentage effect of a covariate on the occurrence rate of a respective event (weick 1993: 97). a hazard ratio of 1.50 can thus be interpreted as an increase in the probability of the occurrence by 50 percent. we can thus speak of an acceleration of the event. in contrast, a hazard ratio of 0.75 signifi es a reduction in the probability of the occurrence of a specifi c event by 25 percent ((0.75-1)*100). thus, one can speak of a deceleration of the transition. variables that do not change their value over time (e.g. sex, social background) are considered as time-independent variables. covariates that change their values over time are time-dependent variables. thus, the effects of these variables are not constant, but rather unfold (increase or decrease) with the appearance of a specifi c event. in the study, the commencement of economic independence is modelled as a time-dependent covariate. this is done by episode splitting, whereby the data are transferred to a person-period format. the observation period is divided into annual intervals from the fi rst occurrence4 of the event until the end of the period of observation in 2012. the cox model assumes that the hazard function for different levels of a covariate is proportional over time, which means that effect sizes of covariates are 4 for the fi rst sexual experience, the age of 12 was chosen to exclude involuntary sexual experiences. the age of the fi rst partnership was set at 16 years based on questionnaire items. the same holds for age at fi rst cohabitation. the possible start of the fi rst marriage was set at 18 years (legal marriage age), fi rst birth at 12 years. predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 171 constant over time. this proportionality assumption was tested both graphically as well as by using the zero slope test developed by therneau and grambsch (2000). if the proportionality assumption is violated, this can be corrected by introducing interaction terms of the relevant variables with time (blossfeld 2010: 1005; windzio 2013: 112). in the following analyses, the effect of educational attainment changes over time and thus is modelled as time-varying variable. to correct for violation of the proportionality assumption, we included the main effect as well as an interaction term in the model. for example, a main effect of 0.05 means that the effect was negative immediately after the beginning of the observation: highly educated people severely delay the event. however, a coeffi cient of the interaction term of 1.10 would suggest that the two educational levels under consideration converge over time by a factor of 1.10 each year, thus 10 percent a year. modelling not only time-independent covariates but also time-dependent variables and time-varying effects is a special advantage of the cox model. a further advantage of event history analysis is that so-called “right censored cases” (subjects who have not yet experienced the respective event by age 45) can be included in the analyses as well (blossfeld 2010). based on suspected differences between women and men, separate models are estimated. in addition, all scales that display random metrics were z-transformed in order to compare effect sizes in the cox regressions 4 findings in a fi rst step, we present descriptive fi ndings, followed by cox regression models to estimate the impact of time-independent and time-varying resources on the timing of transitions. the descriptive results in table 1 show for each status change that more men than women had not yet experienced the respective event by age 35 or 45 respectively. while the share of censored cases for fi rst sexual contact is less than 2 percent, it increases with subsequent events. in total, 2.3 percent of women did not have a partnership by the age of 45. for men, this share is nearly the same with 2.9 percent. the shares of unmarried women and men are also similar (17.0 percent/18.2 percent). likewise, up to the age of 45, slightly more men (22.2 percent) than women (19.6 percent) remained childless, which is comparable with representative data for germany (reported in section 2.1.) examining the average age at the events in table 1, it is apparent that they occur earlier among women than among men. the t-tests show that these differences are all statistically signifi cant, even though the difference in the age of fi rst sexual contact between men and women is rather low. differences in timing can be observed in the age differences between men and women as well as in the age range from 16 to 45 years across almost the entire observation period. figure 2 graphically shows the transition rates for the fi ve events separately for men and women based on kaplan-meier estimators (for better readability, only from ages 16 to 35). the survival distributions of all events differ signifi cantly between men and women (see log-rank test in table 1). • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger172 until the age of 18, the proportion of young women who experienced their fi rst relationship is slightly higher than the proportion of those who had their fi rst sexual intercourse. hence, especially young women seem to make their fi rst experiences within a partnership. after the age of 18, the situation is reversed and the proportion of women who had their fi rst sexual contact is higher than the proportion of those who ever had a partnership. on average, the fi rst cohabitation takes place later. more than three-quarters of women had lived together with a partner at the age of 25. up to the age of 35, 6 percent of women had never entered a cohabitation. these three transitions (fi rst sexual experience, fi rst partnership, fi rst cohabitation) are mainly experienced during late adolescence and young adulthood. the situation is different, however, in the case of the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child. not surprisingly, these events mainly occur towards the end of the third decade of life. on average, the curves show a traditional pattern: women fi rst get married and then have a child. in contrast to women, the proportion of men who had their fi rst sexual experiences is always higher than the proportion of men who had a partnership that lasted six months or longer. furthermore, for men, moving in with a partner for the fi rst time takes place later in life. 60 percent had lived together with a partner at the age of 25. similar to women, men also marry before they have children. altogether, women seem to experience the investigated transitions earlier than men. the reason can be seen in the earlier physical maturation of girls who thus enter into relationships more quickly (wendt 2010). an additional explanation for tab. 1: first sexual contact, partnership, cohabitation, marriage, and fi rst child. average age (and standard deviation) and shares of men and women without experiences average age no experience, log-rank in % test transition women men t (df) n women men chi² first sexual 18.2 18.7 -2.0* (383, 301) 1.3 2.0 4.6* experience (2.8) (3.5) (682) (5) (6) first partnership 18.6 20.2 -5.1*** (379, 298) 2.3 2.9 21.9*** (3.7) (4.7) (675) (9) (9) first cohabitation 21.1 23.9 -7.5*** (364, 288) 6.2 6.2 22.0*** (4.1) (5.3) (650) (24) (19) first marriage 27.2 29.2 -4.8*** (322, 251) 17.0 18.2 6.5* (5.0) (5.2) (571) (66) (56) first birth of child 28.8 30.9 -5.3*** (312, 239) 19.6 22.2 8.5*** (4.7) (4.8) (549) (76) (68) level of signifi cance: *** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05 source: life 2012, own calculations predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 173 fig. 2: percentages of women and men, who experienced the fi ve transitions until the age of 35 source: life 2012, own calculations 0 20 40 60 80 100 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 age first intercourse first relationship first cohabitation first marriage first birth in percent women men 0 20 40 60 80 100 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 age first intercourse first relationship first cohabitation first marriage first birth in percent • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger174 the gender differences might be that women often choose older partners while men select younger ones (wendt 2010). moreover, it seems that for young women fi rst sexual experiences are more often associated with a relationship than in the case of men. in the german youth report on sexuality, women reported more often than men that their fi rst sexual partner was well known or a very good friend of them (64 percent vs. 58 percent). 11 percent of men reported that their fi rst sexual partner was not well known to them or was a casual acquaintance (women: 4 percent; federal centre for health education 2010). next, using cox regression, we examined the timing of the fi ve partnership and family transitions. table 2 summarizes the results for the complete models. it turns out that personal and social resources infl uence the timing of early transitions such as the fi rst sexual experience, the fi rst partnership and the fi rst cohabitation with a partner. a high degree of emotional stability increases the probability of these events by 11 percent to 19 percent per standard deviation. a high degree of outgoingness, a positive body image and a high degree of peer group integration accelerate the timing of the fi rst sexual experience and the fi rst partnership by 9 percent to 16 percent per standard deviation. the experience of a parental divorce tab. 2: cox regression of timing of fi rst sexual experience, fi rst partnership, fi rst cohabitation, fi rst marriage and family formation (hazard ratios) first sexual first first cohafirst first birth experience partnership bitation marriage men (ref. women) 0.88 0.72*** 0.76** 0.91 0.83 a1: personal resources emotional stabilityz 1.19*** 1.15*** 1.11* 1.01 1.04 outgoingnessz 1.09* 1.09* 1.07 1.09 1.01 body imagez 1.12** 1.09* 1.05 1.00 0.99 a2: social resources peer group integrationz 1.16*** 1.13** 1.05 0.98 1.05 parental divorce 1.83* 1.31 1.18 1.05 1.26 b: socio-economic resources individual level of education: low/medium (ref.) high 0.47 0.84 0.13*** 0.07*** 0.02*** economic independenceb 1.08 1.09 1.54*** 5.23*** 2.91*** education*timec 1.04 1.01 1.09*** 1.09*** 1.13*** n subjects 695 695 695 695 695 n events 684 677 652 573 551 chi² 79.15*** 64.81*** 85.64*** 89.10*** 70.80*** level of signifi cance: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 z z-standardized continuous covariates; b time-dependent covariates; c time-varying effect robustness check: controlled for parental socio-economic status (hisei) source: life 2012, own calculations predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 175 or separation in childhood or youth appears to have a strong infl uence on the timing of the fi rst sexual experience (acceleration rate of 83 percent). in contrast, the timing of the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child are not signifi cantly infl uenced by personal or social resources. socio-economic resources show no signifi cant infl uences on the timing of the fi rst sexual experience and the fi rst partnership. however, the fi rst cohabitation, fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child can signifi cantly be predicted by young adults’ education level and the timing of their economic independence. educational attainment is modelled as a time-varying variable. this means that the transition rate for highly educated men and women is at fi rst much lower than for men and women with a vocational degree (hazard ratio: 0.13). but, the difference in the hazard ratio declines by 9 percent (factor of 1.09) each year. this pattern is repeated for fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child. highly educated people delay marriage and childbirth but converge with lower educated people over time. furthermore, achieving economic independence leads to a clear acceleration of the fi rst cohabitation (increase of 54 percent), fi rst marriage (423 percent) and the timing of family formation (191 percent). overall, results show that the timing of the fi rst sexual experience and partnership is infl uenced by personal and social resources. in contrast, the timing of the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child are infl uenced by socio-economic resources. entering the fi rst cohabitation is infl uenced by personal and social as well as socio-economic resources. table 3 summarizes the results for women. we see that personal resources signifi cantly infl uence the timing of women’s fi rst sexual experience, their fi rst partnership and their fi rst cohabitation. a high emotional stability increases the probability of the fi rst sexual experience and fi rst partnership by 26 percent and 17 percent respectively. an increase of one standard deviation on the outgoingness scale leads to an increase in the probability of the fi rst sexual experience, fi rst partnership and fi rst cohabitation by 12 percent to 19 percent. for women, a favourable body image accelerates the timing of the sexual debut and the fi rst partnership: the higher the evaluation of their own appearance, the more likely women are to begin these events (acceleration of 10 percent to 12 percent per standard deviation). the timing of the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child are not signifi cantly infl uenced by personal resources. further social resources do not have a strong infl uence on any transitions studied. only the fi rst sexual experience is strongly infl uenced by divorce experiences in childhood and youth (acceleration rate of 52 percent per standard deviation). for women, personal resources seem to exert a greater infl uence than social resources on the timing of social transitions. socio-economic resources have no signifi cant infl uences on the timing of the fi rst sexual experience and the fi rst partnership. for the timing of the fi rst cohabitation, only women’s economic independence is signifi cant (acceleration of 57 percent). major infl uences on the timing of the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child are exerted by the level of education and economic independence. since educational attainment is modelled as a time-varying effect, at fi rst, the marriage rate for highly educated women is much lower than for women with a vocational degree • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger176 (hazard ratio: 0.05). but, the effect declines by 10 percent each year (factor of 1.10). this pattern is repeated for the timing of the fi rst birth. women with a university degree have their fi rst child later but converge with lower educated women over time. table 4 presents the results for men. here, the highest level of education is also modelled as time-varying effect. in contrast to women, personal resources do not appear to have a strong infl uence on the timing of partnership events. only body image has a strong infl uence on the timing of men’s fi rst sexual experiences: the more attractive they feel, the earlier they experience their fi rst sexual contact (acceleration of 17 percent per standard deviation). while for women social resources have relatively little infl uence, men are strongly infl uenced by their integration in a peer group as well as by the experience of a parental divorce in childhood or youth. a high peer group integration accelerates the sexual debut, the fi rst relationship and the fi rst cohabitation by 20 percent to 30 percent per standard deviation. moreover, the timing of these three events is strongly accelerated (74 percent to 140 percent) by the experience of a parental divorce in childhood or adolescence. tab. 3: cox regression of timing of fi rst sexual experience, fi rst partnership, fi rst cohabitation, fi rst marriage and family formation for women (hazard ratios) first sexual first first cohafirst first birth experience partnership bitation marriage a1: personal resources emotional stabilityz 1.26*** 1.17** 1.10 0.97 1.07 outgoingnessz 1.19** 1.12* 1.14* 1.09 1.07 body imagez 1.10* 1.12* 1.04 0.99 0.96 a2: social resources peer group integrationz 1.06 1.08 0.96 0.94 1.02 parental divorce 1.52* 1.11 0.87 0.82 1.21 b: socio-economic resources individual level of education: low/medium (ref.) high 0.30 0.89 0.29 0.05** 0.02** economic independenceb 0.95 0.97 1.57** 4.31*** 1.97* education*timec 1.07 1.01 1.05 1.10** 1.12** n subjects 388 388 388 388 388 n events 383 379 364 322 312 chi² 44.91*** 22.42* 35.29*** 53.54*** 32.41*** level of signifi cance: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 z – z-standardized continuous covariates; b time-dependent covariates; c time-varying effect robustness check: controlled for parental socio-economic status (hisei) source: life 2012, own calculations predicting the timing of social transitions ... • 177 with respect to socio-economic resources, results show that achieving economic independence leads to a profound acceleration of the fi rst cohabitation, the fi rst marriage and the birth of the fi rst child (acceleration of 45 to 506 percent). furthermore, highly educated men experience these events later. however, their timing converges over the course of time with that of men who have a vocational degree. 5 discussion the purpose of this contribution was, fi rst, to determine how personal, social and socio-economic resources infl uence the timing of fi ve transitions on the way to middle adulthood and, second, whether there are varying infl uences of personal, social and socio-economic resources among women and men. for this purpose, we applied a resource model of life management, assuming that people pass different transitions drawing back on these resources. in line with hypothesis 1, we found that personal and social resources predominantly infl uence the timing of events that occur in late youth or early adulthood, tab. 4: cox-regression for timing of fi rst sexual experience, fi rst partnership, fi rst cohabitation, fi rst marriage and family formation for men (hazard ratios) first sexual first first cohafirst first birth experience partnership bitation marriage a1: personal resources emotional stabilityz 1.12 1.10 1.11 1.06 1.00 outgoingnessz 1.01 1.01 0.99 1.09 0.94 body imagez 1.17* 1.06 1.07 1.00 1.05 a2: social resources peer group integrationz 1.30*** 1.30*** 1.20** 0.99 1.10 divorce experience 2.40*** 1.74*** 1.89*** 1.48 1.33 b: socio-economic resources individual level of education: low/medium (ref.) high 0.51 0.69 0.11*** 0.16* 0.03*** economic independenceb 1.14 1.23 1.45* 6.06*** 5.25** education*timec 1.03 1.02 1.09*** 1.06* 1.12*** n subjects 307 307 307 307 307 n events 301 298 288 251 239 chi² 66.52*** 44.86*** 47.99*** 33.27*** 30.00*** level of signifi cance: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 z z-standardized continuous covariates; b time-dependent covariates; c time-varying effect robustness check: controlled for parental socio-economic status (hisei) source: life 2012, own calculations • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger178 such as the fi rst sexual intercourse and the fi rst long-term relationship. at this stage of partnership formation processes individuals obviously draw on their own personal and social resources, whereas socio-economic resources are less relevant. however, with increasing institutionalization of the partnership, i.e. the sharing of a household, marriage and the birth of the fi rst child, socio-economic resources become dominant. at these stages of partnership and family formation, commitments, responsibilities, and economic investments increase. as the descriptive fi ndings showed, the fi rst sexual experiences and fi rst romantic relationships occur in late adolescence and early adulthood, whereas marriage and childbirth take place later in life. thereby, partnerships in youth do not only differ from those in adulthood in terms of timing and duration but also concerning the role, investment and expectations placed on them (walper et al. 2008). with marriage and parenthood, mutual support, stable emotional bonds and fi nancial security become more important. overall, it turns out that in terms of personal, social and socio-economic resources the social life course from late adolescence to middle adulthood consists of two phases: the fi rst phase is predominantly infl uenced by personal and social resources, while the second phase is determined by socio-economic resources. while early events like the fi rst sexual contact and fi rst partnership more strongly depend on personal and social resources, educational attainment and especially economic security become more important with increasing institutionalization of partnerships (marriage and birth of the fi rst child). the fi rst cohabitation seems to play an intermediate role in the process of partnership and family formation. the timing is infl uenced by personal and social resources as well as socio-economic resources. as very important result we found different effects on the timing of transitions among men and women. while women are strongly infl uenced by personal resources (hypothesis 2), such as emotional stability, high outgoingness, and self-perceived appearance, male adolescents are strongly infl uenced by their integration in a peer group and the parental support system in their family of origin (hypothesis 3). a parental divorce proved to accelerate the transition to adulthood for men but not for women (except for the timing of the fi rst sexual experience). the results indicate that those men tend to begin their own romantic relationships at an earlier age than men with (structurally) intact families. it can be supposed that young men are particularly infl uenced by the lack of (mostly) father fi gures, because the father as male role model is absent. not only the absence of the role model, but also the reduction in parental control caused by a divorce which may lead to an earlier orientiation to peers and partnerships (diefenbach 1999), seems to affect men in particular. in addition, integration in a social network seems to be much more important for men than for women. young men, who are part of a network are more likely to carry out transitions earlier. peer group integration is not related to the timing of transitions among women. overall, young men seem to be much more closely orientated to others while young women tend to be more interested in close female friends (fend 2005; steinberg 2010). furthermore, the greater importance of the peer group for men compared to women can be explained by the different meaning of socialization agents for men and women. it can be argued that girls are socialized to a greater extent within the family; boys, however, are more oriented to further agents of sopredicting the timing of social transitions ... • 179 cialization besides the family (erzinger 2009), such as the peer group which has a greater impact on men’s romantic development than on girls’. in line with our expectations (hypothesis 4), economic independence accelerates the timing of social transitions for both men and women: not only men are supposed to achieve economic independence before marriage and having children, but also women. changes in women’s life course structure are obvious. women and men postpone events like marriage and having children in times of economic uncertainty. thus, economic independence seems to enhance the chances of partnership formation for both men and women (brose 2008). in common with previous studies (bauer/jacob 2010; dommermuth 2008) and in line with hypothesis 5, our results show that highly educated women and highly educated men tend to delay marriage and parenthood. however, the effect of educational attainment is stronger for women than for men. furthermore, the retarding effect of the educational level is stronger for family formation than for marriage, for both men and women. this fi nding indicates that the most important transition marker in a partnership history is no longer marriage but the birth of the fi rst child. however, the infl uence of the educational level is stronger for men than for women. moreover, the individual educational level only infl uences men’s timing of a cohabitation but not women’s. contrary to our expectations, cohabitation is even more strongly infl uenced by men’s educational attainment than marriage. this indicates the increased acceptance and importance of cohabitation in the last decades. in summary, earlier 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[https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev. so.20.080194.000501]. windzio, michael 2013: regressionsmodelle für zustände und ereignisse. wiesbaden: springer vs. date of submission: 09.08.2017 date of acceptance: 05.09.2018 jana gläßer (), prof. dr. wolfgang lauterbach. university of potsdam. potsdam, germany. e-mail: glaesser@uni-potsdam.de, wolfgang.lauterbach@uni-potsdam.de url: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/sozbildung/lehrstuhl/jana-glaesser.html https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/sozbildung/lehrstuhl/wolfang-lauterbach.html prof. dr. fred berger. university of innsbruck. innsbruck, austria. e-mail: fred.berger@uibk.ac.at url: https://www.uibk.ac.at/iezw/mitarbeiterinnen/univ.-professorinnen/berger/index/ • jana gläßer, wolfgang lauterbach, fred berger186 n o te : fo r d et ai le d in fo rm at io n ab o ut s in gl es it em s, s ca le c o ns tr uc tio n an d c ha ra ct er is tic v al ue s, s ee f en d/ pr es te r (1 98 6) . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n s ca le it em s a n sw er c ro n b ac h’ s al p h a e m o ti o n al s ta b ili ty i s o m et im es g et u p se t o ve r lit tl e th in g s. ( ) tw o -p o in t r es p o n se s ca le : tr u e (2 ) o r n o t t ru e (1 ), su m s co re 0. 79 o ft en , i c an n o t g et o u t o f m y m o o d s. ( ) i b el o n g to t h o se w h o s o m et im es c an n o t c o n tr o l t h ei r an g er . ( ) s o m et im es i d o n ’t ev en k n o w w h at ’s w ro n g w it h m e. ( ) t h er e ar e d ay s w h en e ve ry o n e an n o ys m e. ( ) s o m et im es i am v er y sa d fo r n o r ea so n . ( ) w h en s o m et h in g an n o ys m e, i so m et im es lo se m y te m p er . ( ) s o m et im es i d o n ’t ca re a b o u t a ny th in g . ( ) o u tg o in g n es s i l ik e b ei n g ar o u n d p eo p le . tw o -p o in t r es p o n se s ca le : tr u e (2 ) o r n o t t ru e (1 ), su m s co re 0. 65 i f ee l c o m fo rt ab le b ei n g al o n e. ( ) i e n jo y m ak in g n ew a cq u ai n ta n ce s. i a lw ay s lo o k fo rw ar d t o m ee ti n g w it h m y fr ie n d s. i d o n ’t lik e b ei n g w it h a lo t o f p eo p le . ( ) i e n jo y m ee ti n g n ew p eo p le . i d o n ’t m in d b ei n g al o n e fo r d ay s. ( ) d u ri n g th e sc h o o l b re ak s i p re fe r to b e al o n e. ( ) b o d y im ag e s o m et im es i en vy c la ss m at es w h o lo o k b et te r th an m e. ( ) tw o -p o in t r es p o n se s ca le : tr u e (2 ) o r n o t t ru e (1 ), su m s co re 0. 71 if i lo o ke d b et te r, i w o u ld h av e m o re f ri en d s. ( ) c o m p ar ed t o o th er s, i am r ea lly g o o d lo o ki n g . i h av e al re ad y b ee n te as ed a b o u t m y ap p ea ra n ce . i h av e al re ad y w is h ed i w o u ld lo o k co m p le te ly d if fe re n t. ( ) t h e w ay i lo o k, i am p o p u la r w it h g ir ls /b o ys . p ee r g ro u p in te g ra ti o n h o w m an y fr ie n d s d o y o u h av e? va ri o u s re sp o n se c at eg o ri es ; va lu es w er e st an d ar d iz ed a n d ca lc u la te d t o a w ei g h te d su m s co re 0. 66 h o w m an y o f y o u r fr ie n d s ar e in y o u r cl as s? h o w o ft en d o y o u m ee t w it h yo u r fr ie n d s af te r sc h o o l? d o y o u h av e th e o p p o rt u n it y to m ee t w it h yo u r fr ie n d s af te r sc h o o l? d o y o u b el o n g to a g ro u p o f y o u th s w h o m ee t r eg u la rl y o r o ft en a n d h av e a se n se o f b el o n g in g to g et h er ? w e d o n o t m ea n a cl u b o r as so ci at io n . d o y o u so m et im es o r o ft en f ee l l o n el y? ( ) d o s ch o o lm at es c o m e to y o u r p la ce s o m et im es ? d o y o u h av e a b es t f ri en d ? a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: it em s an d s ca le s published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrhundert. soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert eine demografi sche analyse anhand von kirchenbuchdaten michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer zusammenfassung: der beitrag untersucht die historische entwicklung der säuglingssterblichkeit in der hansestadt rostock und widmet sich im speziellen der frage, inwieweit sozioökonomische faktoren die höhe der säuglingssterblichkeit im frühen 19. jahrhundert beeinfl ussten. es lässt sich für die stadt ein im deutschlandweiten vergleich äußerst niedriges säuglingssterblichkeitsniveau feststellen, besonders für das erste drittel des jahrhunderts. dabei kann ein signifi kanter einfl uss der berufl ichen schicht des vaters auf die überlebenschancen des kindes im ersten lebensjahr für das frühe 19. jahrhundert nachgewiesen werden: neugeborene von berufl ich schlechter gestellten vätern weisen ein größeres sterberisiko im ersten lebensjahr auf als die nachkommen berufl ich besser gestellter väter. als datengrundlage dienen die beerdigungsund taufregister der rostocker jakobikirche, welche weitgehend erhalten und zu einem großen teil digitalisiert sind. auf der basis dieser individualdaten wird erstmals ein ereignisdatenanalysemodell im zusammenhang mit der säuglingssterblichkeit in einer deutschen stadt im 19. jahrhundert untersucht. des weiteren zeigt dieser beitrag erstmals die säuglingssterbewahrscheinlichkeit der stadt rostock für das gesamte 19. jahrhundert nach geschlecht und schließt damit in zweifacher hinsicht eine forschungslücke. schlagwörter: säuglingssterblichkeit · rostock · historische demografi e · kirchenbücher · ereignisdatenanalyse 1 einleitung die untersuchung von säuglingssterblichkeit ist ein wichtiger bestandteil der mortalitätsforschung. ende des 19. jahrhunderts starben in manchen deutschen regionen über ein drittel der lebendgeborenen im ersten lebensjahr (würzburg 1887, 1888; prinzing 1900). damit bestimmte die säuglingssterblichkeit zu einem wesentlichen teil die höhe der gesamtsterblichkeit. heute beträgt die säuglingssterbeziffer comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 40 (2015): 87-114 (erstveröffentlichung: 20.03.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-03de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-03de4 • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer88 in deutschland laut statistischem bundesamt nur noch 3,3‰ (31.12.2013). wegen des geringen ausmaßes und der geringen variation hat sie ihren einfl uss auf die lebenserwartung weitgehend verloren. der anstieg der lebenserwartung in der ersten hälfte des 20. jahrhunderts in deutschland ist wesentlich auf den rückgang der säuglingssterblichkeit zurückzuführen und auch maßgeblich für die einleitung des ersten demografi schen übergangs verantwortlich. über die entwicklung und die determinanten der säuglingssterblichkeit im 19. jahrhundert gibt es eine vielzahl von studien. dennoch sind einige regionen in deutschland von der forschung bislang nur unzureichend erfasst und nicht alle einfl ussfaktoren und ursachen der regionalen unterschiede sind geklärt (imhof 1981; gehrmann 2000, 2011; kloke 1997). das liegt vor allem an dem fokus des interesses in der forschung und unterschiedlichen methoden und defi nitionen. während heute international vergleichbare abgrenzungen von totgeburt und lebendgeburt1 existieren, trifft dies für die vergangenheit nicht immer zweifelsfrei zu. eine reihe von fragen sind ungeklärt: welche rolle spielt die dokumentation von sterbefällen und geburten vor und nach der taufe? wie wirken sich unterschiedliche bildung und religion auf die registrierung aus? wann wird eine totgeburt dokumentiert? seit wann werden welche merkmale im zusammenhang mit säuglingssterblichkeit erhoben? mecklenburg-schwerin ist eine region, die sich im 19. jahrhundert durch besonders niedrige säuglingssterblichkeit und hohe lebenserwartung im vergleich zu anderen regionen in deutschland auszeichnete (dippe 1857). die historische demografi sch-statistische datenlage ist für das gebiet mecklenburg-schwerin sehr gut. historische bevölkerungsdaten sind bis ins 19. jahrhundert zurück als individualdaten in form von listen der haushalte für mehrere volkszählungen fl ächendeckend für die gesamte region vorhanden. ebenfalls sind die kirchenbücher fast vollständig erhalten. dadurch stehen individualdaten zur dokumentation der demografi schen ereignisse zur verfügung. diese art von daten für die forschung zu nutzen, erfordert jedoch einen erheblichen arbeitsaufwand, da die existierenden quellen erst digitalisiert werden müssen.2 informationsquellen zur säuglingssterblichkeit im jeweiligen lokalen kontext gibt es mit der einführung von kirchenbüchern. analysen zur mortalität auf basis 1 abgrenzung in deutschland: eine lebendgeburt liegt vor, wenn mindestens eines von drei lebenszeichen auftritt (einsetzen der natürlichen lungenatmung, pulsieren der nabelschnur oder schlagen des herzens). wenn keines der merkmale beobachtet werden konnte, das geburtsgewicht aber mindestens 500g beträgt, spricht man von einer totgeburt. wenn sich keines der merkmale gezeigt hat und das geburtsgewicht weniger als 500g beträgt, handelt es sich um eine fehlgeburt, die nicht registriert wird (deutsche verordnung zur ausführung des personenstandsgesetzes (kapitel 5, § 31)). 2 zu nennen ist für mecklenburg-schwerin die aufnahme der volkszählung 1819, einschließlich der stadt rostock und deren analyse. hierbei handelt es sich um das pilotprojekt mecklenburg in der demographischen transition des 18. und 19. jahrhunderts. von rostocker historikern sind außerdem verschiedene forschungsergebnisse zur städtischen bevölkerungsund sozialgeschichte zu dem beginn des 19. jahrhunderts vorgelegt worden (krüger/kroll 1998; krüger 1998, 2000, 2003; manke 2000, 2005a/b). soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 89 von kirchenbüchern stammen u.a. von halley (1693), kundmann (1737), süßmilch (1761), blayo (1975), wrigley/schofi eld (1981), schultz (1991), gehrmann (2000, 2011), johansson (2004, 2009) und breschi et al. (2014), wobei gehrmann neben kirchenbüchern auch sämtliche anderen verfügbaren bevölkerungsstatistischen quellen als datenbasis heranzieht. flächendeckende statistische aussagen für ganze regionen können erst mit der einführung der amtlichen statistik gewonnen werden. als erstes land begann schweden ab dem jahr 1751 mit der dokumentierung demografi scher ereignisse auf nationaler ebene. die anderen europäischen länder folgten ab mitte des 19. jahrhunderts (westergaard 1932; hollingsworth 1969; rödel 1990; ehling 1996). durch die reichsgründung und die bildung des kaiserlichen statistischen amts werden vergleichbare daten für deutschland zur regionalen säuglingssterblichkeit erstmals ab 1875 gewonnen (westergaard 1932: 239). die entwicklung der säuglingssterblichkeit für ausgewählte länder zeigt abbildung 1. in skandinavien ist ein rückgang der säuglingssterblichkeit über den gesamten zeitraum beobachtbar. in den anderen ländern setzt der rückgang erst zum ende des 19. jahrhunderts ein, da die industrialisierung und die damit einhergehende verstädterung zunächst eine verschlechterung der überlebenschancen von säuglingen mit sich brachten. im 20. jahrhundert kommt es zu einem starken rückgang und der nivellierung auf sehr niedrigem niveau. die abbildung 1 zeigt auch den anstieg der säuglingssterblichkeit in den beiden weltkriegen und der nachkriegszeit. die differenz der säuglingssterblichkeit zwischen preußen und dem süden deutschlands weist auch auf das beträchtliche nord-süd-gefälle hin, das im 19. jahrhundert in deutschland bestand. generell wies der ostseeraum eine vergleichsweise geringe säuglingssterblichkeit auf. dies betrifft nicht nur länder wie schweden oder dänemark, sondern auch die deutschen ostseeanrainergebiete schleswig, holstein, mecklenburg und pommern. die überlebensverhältnisse von kleinkindern im 19. jahrhundert waren aber nicht nur im norden besser als im süden, sondern auch im westen tendenziell besser als im osten. so war die säuglingssterblichkeit im nordwesten am geringsten und im südosten am höchsten. als wichtige ursache wird die regional sehr unterschiedlich verteilte häufi gkeit und dauer des stillens angenommen, sowohl zwischen nordund süddeutschland als auch zwischen stadt und land (gehrmann 2000, 2011; imhof 1981; kintner 1985; knodel 1968, 1988; prinzing 1900). erste regionale untersuchungen des kaiserlichen statistischen amts zur säuglingssterblichkeit (abb. 2) in deutschland im zeitraum 1875 bis 1877 zeigen für bayern und schwaben eine säuglingssterblichkeit von über 30 %, während sie in ostfriesland und schleswig-holstein unter 15 % lag. ein in der literatur oft erwähnter faktor in bezug auf regionale säuglingssterblichkeitsunterschiede ist die konfessionszugehörigkeit beziehungsweise mit ihr zusammenhängende mentalitätsunterschiede. so war der norden deutschlands überwiegend evangelisch, der süden mehrheitlich katholisch. interessant ist, dass die säuglingssterblichkeit im überwiegend evangelischen franken deutlich geringer war als im benachbarten katholischen bayern (imhof 1981; prinzing 1900). auch saisonale klimatische ereignisse fi elen regional unterschiedlich aus und hatten einen • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer90 einfl uss auf die säuglingssterblichkeit speziell von nicht-gestillten kindern (prinzing 1899; stöckel 1986). des weiteren war die säuglingssterblichkeit in vielen teilen deutschlands in den städten höher als auf dem lande (spree 1988; gehrmann 2002; prinzing 1900). während die säuglingssterblichkeit auf dem land wesentlich mit den dort herrschenden lebensund arbeitsverhältnissen zusammenhing, ist das höhere niveau in den städten mit dem einsetzenden urbanisierungsund industrialisierungsprozess zu begründen. diese unterschiede nahmen jedoch zum ende des 19. jahrhunderts und mit dem beginn des 20. jahrhunderts zu gunsten der städte ab, was auf die zuerst in den städten erfolgten verbesserungen der ernährungs-, hygieneund wohnbedingungen zurückzuführen ist (gehrmann 2011; imhof 1981; prinzing 1899, 1900; stöckel 1986). abb. 1: säuglingssterblichkeit in ausgewählten europäischen ländern, 18002010 (gleitender 5-jahres-durchschnitt) deutschland preußen süddeutschland österreich frankreich großbritannien skandinavien 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 anmerkungen: skandinavien besteht aus den ländern schweden (ab 1800), dänemark (ab 1835) und norwegen (ab 1846); großbritannien besteht aus england und wales (ab 1841) und schottland (ab 1855); süddeutschland besteht aus bayern (ab 1819), sachsen (ab 1831), baden (ab 1852), württemberg (ab 1859 sowie 1819-1822 und 1847-1856) und dem großherzogtum hessen (ab 1863); preußen (ab 1816) basiert auf dem gebietsstand von 1866. quelle: human mortality database (für österreich ab 1947, frankreich, skandinavien und großbritannien), statistisches bundesamt (für deutschland), gehrmann 2002 und 2011 (für preußen), gehrmann 2011 (für süddeutschland) und mitchell 2007 (für österreich bis 1946); eigene berechnung nach der kalenderjahrmethode säuglingssterbefälle je 1.000 lebendgeborene jahr soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 91 hinsichtlich der analyse der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock und mecklenburg machte sich der rostocker pädiater hermann brüning verdient. für die hansestadt rostock stellte er im zeitraum 1901-1905 eine säuglingssterblichkeit von 15,1 % für die ehelichen bzw. von 24,2 % für die unehelichen lebendgeburten fest (brüning 1908: 375). auch fand er einen zusammenhang zwischen sozialer schicht und säuglingssterblichkeit, mit einer erhöhten sterblichkeit in niedrigen sozialen schichten. unsere studie untersucht, inwieweit zu beginn des 19. jahrhunderts soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in der rostocker kirchgemeinde st. jakobi bestanden. die systematische erschließung von historisch-demografi schen quellen über die kirchenbuchaufzeichnungen der geburtsund sterberegister des abb. 2: regionale säuglingssterblichkeit in deutschland 1875-1877 mit ausgewählten orten: hesel, leezen, zachow, altdorf, philippsburg, schwalm und gabelbach 1780-1899 (mikrostudie) quelle: amtliche regionaldaten: würzburg (1887), mikrostudie: imhof (1981); grafi k: imhof (1981) • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer92 19. jahrhunderts ermöglicht es, analysen vorzunehmen, wie sie mangels digitalisierter quellen3 bislang nicht möglich waren.4 ein besonderer schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf dem einfl uss der legitimität der geburt und des berufes des vaters. es wird von den hypothesen ausgegangen, dass die säuglingssterblichkeit ehelich geborener kinder im vergleich zu unehelich geborenen verringert ist und dass säuglinge, deren väter eine niedrige berufl iche stellung innehaben im vergleich zu neugeborenen mit berufl ich besser gestellten vätern ein erhöhtes sterberisiko aufweisen. die einfl ussfaktoren der sterblichkeit wandeln sich über das erste lebensjahr (brüning 1928; brüning/mahlo 1929; imhof 1981). während die sterblichkeit in den ersten dreißig tagen noch stark durch die entwicklung des fötus während der schwangerschaft der mutter wie auch durch probleme während der geburt bestimmt ist, treten in den folgenden elf monaten immer mehr umwelteinfl üsse in den vordergrund. alle analysen werden daher separat für die ersten dreißig lebenstage und die darauffolgenden elf monate durchgeführt. 2 historische befunde zum einfl uss sozioökonomischer unterschiede auf die säuglingssterblichkeit die einfl ussfaktoren auf die säuglingssterblichkeit im 19. jahrhundert sind vielfältig und schwer voneinander zu trennen, da sie sich zum teil gegenseitig bedingen. gerade die regionalen unterschiede der säuglingssterblichkeit waren im 18. und vor allem im 19. jahrhundert in deutschland wesentlich größer als heutzutage; eine umfassende erklärung dieser unterschiede ist jedoch in anbetracht der schwierigen quellenlage und der komplexität der ursachen, die weit über das fachgebiet der historischen demografi e hinausgehen, bislang nicht zufriedenstellend erfolgt (ehmer 2004: 92-94). imhof (1981) führt in einem artikel, der sich auf jahrelange eigene forschung sowie arbeiten von bluhm (1912), krieg (1890), prinzing (1899, 1900, 1931), würzburg (1887, 1888) u.a. sowie amtliche daten stützt, die wichtigsten einfl ussfaktoren an. diese sind saisonalität, regionalität, häufi gkeit und dauer des stillens, krisenzeiten, legitimität der geburt, geburtsgewicht, geburtsrang, familiengröße, geburtenabstände, geschlecht, alter der mutter, schichtenzugehörigkeit, arbeits-, wohnungs-, ernährungsund hygienebedingungen sowie konfession und mentalität der eltern. 3 das land mecklenburg-vorpommern förderte für zwei jahre den rostocker forschungsverbund historische demografi e – eine kooperation der universität rostock mit dem max-planckinstitut für demografi sche forschung. dabei wurde die digitalisierung von handschriftlichen urquellen der volkszählungen mecklenburg-schwerins aus den jahren 1867 und 1900 sowie ausgewählten demografi schen bewegungsmengen (geburten, sterbefälle, eheschließungen) von rostocker kirchenbüchern in dem zeitraum 1800 bis 1900 durchgeführt. 4 mühlichen (2011), masterarbeit, universität rostock. soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 93 im folgenden sollen speziell die sozioökonomischen faktoren näher beleuchtet werden, wenngleich für säuglingssterblichkeitsunterschiede verantwortliche verhaltensmuster nicht allein sozial erklärt werden können (spree 1980). ein umfassenderer überblick über den forschungsstand zu anderen einfl ussfaktoren in deutschland im 19. jahrhundert fi ndet sich u.a. bei imhof (1981) und gehrmann (2011). zu den sozioökonomischen faktoren zählen wir die legitimität der geburt, schichtzugehörigkeit und arbeitsbedingungen. die legitimität der geburt unterscheidet, ob ein säugling innerhalb einer ehe oder außerehelich geboren wurde. dieser faktor ist von großer bedeutung, da bei unehelichen kindern in der zeitgenössischen bevölkerungsstatistischen und medizinischen literatur (z.b. prinzing 1900; 1911; saul 1909) eine wesentlich höhere sterblichkeit im säuglingsalter nachgewiesen wird als bei ehelichen kindern. zwar würde ein teil der unverheirateten frauen die geburt nachträglich durch eine hochzeit legitimieren, jedoch treffe dies nicht auf die mehrheit zu (prinzing 1902: 44). ursächlich für die höhere sterblichkeit illegitimer säuglinge war insbesondere der mangel an fürsorge durch die vergleichsweise ungünstige fi nanzielle situation, welche die mütter zwang, arbeiten zu gehen und das kind an vertraute oder eine institution zu geben (vögele 1994: 411; preston/haines 1991: 30). allerdings war der einfl uss der legitimität auf die säuglingssterblichkeit im vergleich zum einfl uss der ernährungs-, arbeitsund hygienebedingungen eher gering (kintner 1994; spree 1998). zum einfl uss der arbeitsbedingungen von vätern und müttern – in form von berufl icher schicht, einkommen und arbeitsbelastung – auf die sterblichkeit ihrer kinder im ersten lebensjahr gibt es national wie international unterschiedliche ergebnisse. bengtsson und lundh (1994) können für skandinavien keine wirkung des reallohns auf die säuglingssterblichkeit nachweisen, während sundin (1995) für schweden zumindest in zeiten eines besonders raschen rückgangs der säuglingssterblichkeit speziell die oberschicht als profi teure sieht. woods et al. (1988, 1989) und haines (1995) können für england und wales hingegen einen einfl uss der sozialen schicht und des einkommens feststellen, zumindest auf die höhe der säuglingssterblichkeit, aber weniger auf den zeitpunkt und das ausmaß des säuglingssterblichkeitsrückgangs im späten 19. und frühen 20. jahrhundert. im vergleich zu frankreich erkennt woods (1994) jedoch speziell in den stärker ausgeprägten stillgewohnheiten, niedrigeren fertilitätsund illegitimitätsraten sowie dem weitgehenden ausbleiben von krisenzeiten die gründe für die geringere säuglingssterblichkeit englands. auch deutsche zeitgenossen wie prinzing (1899) und hanssen (1912) sehen in den stillpraktiken größere erklärungskraft als in sozioökonomischen faktoren, wenngleich prinzing (1899: 588) zumindest für die west-ost-unterschiede preußens die besseren ökonomischen und strukturellen bedingungen in den westlichen provinzen als ursache sieht. hanssen (1912: 8) schreibt, dass ein einfl uss der sozialen schicht in schleswig-holstein nur für ungestillte säuglinge messbar sei. bei betrachtung der benachbarten region mecklenburg-schwerin stellt saul (1909: 38) jedoch fest, dass die säuglingssterblichkeit für kinder von ökonomisch schlechter gestellten arbeitern wie tagelöhnern, fabrikarbeitern oder knechten höher war im vergleich zu den fi nanziell besser gestellten erwerbstätigen. von bedeutung ist auch die arbeitsbelastung der frauen. speziell die fabrikarbeit von frauen hatte • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer94 einen negativen einfl uss auf die überlebenschancen der säuglinge, fand jedoch im mecklenburg des 19. jahrhunderts im vergleich zu den industrialisierten gebieten deutschlands praktisch nicht statt. aber auch die einbindung der mütter in landwirtschaftliche arbeit wirkte sich negativ aus (gehrmann 2011; heller/imhof 1983; prinzing 1899). sozioökonomische faktoren üben also insofern einen einfl uss auf die säuglingssterblichkeit aus, dass sie das stillverhalten und die qualität der ernährung sowie pfl ege und fürsorge beeinfl ussen (imhof 1981: 359; kloke 1997: 76). ein weiterer einfl ussfaktor ist die mentalität in form von „regional, konfessionell, sozial unterschiedliche[n] einstellungen von bevölkerungen zur fruchtbarkeit, zur geschlechtlichkeit, zu gesundheit und krankheit, zum sterben und tod“ (imhof 1981: 366). kriege und krisenzeiten z.b. haben die wertschätzung des lebens vermutlich eher negativ beeinfl usst und so war die säuglingssterblichkeit gerade in gebieten mit einer hohen krisenund kriegshäufi gkeit verhältnismäßig hoch (imhof 1981: 367). imhof (1981: 375) macht zwei zueinander konträre mentalitäten aus: das „system der bewahrung menschlichen lebens“ und das „system der verschwendung“. ersteres ist durch eine allgemeine wertschätzung des lebens geprägt, die beispielsweise durch das lange stillen des säuglings zum ausdruck kommt, während letzteres – durch traumata und krisenzeiten geprägt – dem leben eine gewisse gleichgültigkeit entgegenbringt und für den süden deutschlands kennzeichnender war als für den norden. „diese gleichgültigkeit war eine direkte und unausweichliche konsequenz der demographie der epoche.“ (ariés 1975: 99) im hinblick auf die konfession konnten in süddeutschland für die protestantischen regionen oft deutlich niedrigere säuglingssterbeziffern ausgemacht werden als in katholischen gebieten. ein gutes beispiel ist in diesem zusammenhang das königreich bayern (prinzing 1900: 620). als erklärungsversuch führt imhof (1981: 378-379) die unter katholiken zur damaligen zeit verbreitete vorstellung vom so genannten „himmeln“ an: um in armen, kinderreichen familien das überleben wenigstens der älteren geschwister zu sichern, wurde mitunter eine vernachlässigung des jüngsten kindes und somit auch dessen tod in kauf genommen, auch um ihm das leid unter den ärmlichen verhältnissen zu ersparen und ihm als noch sündlosem nachkommen zudem einen platz im himmel zu ermöglichen, von dem aus es wiederum seiner familie einen platz dort sichern könne. andererseits konnten in religiös gemischten gebieten keine signifi kanten unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit zwischen den beiden christlichen konfessionen festgestellt werden (kloke 1997: 266). die unterschiede in bayern sind auch eher im zusammenhang mit dem damaligen deutschen nord-süd-gefälle zu sehen. zudem wies gerade das evangelische laichingen in württemberg mit einem niveau von zeitweise 40 bis 50 % besonders hohe werte für die säuglingssterblichkeit auf (medick 1997: 359-365). auch in den niederlanden konnte ein solches nord-süd-gefälle im späteren 19. jahrhundert gefunden werden, zu ungunsten der mehrheitlich katholischen gebiete im süden, welches mit einer deutlich geringeren stillneigung und einer größeren skepsis gegenüber neuen ideen zur krankheitsbekämpfung und hygieneverbesserung im vergleich zum evangelisch dominierten norden erklärt werden kann (wolleswinkelvan den bosch et al. 2000). soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 95 ein weitaus größerer einfl uss wird in der literatur daher den regional nachweislich unterschiedlichen ernährungsund stillgewohnheiten zugeschrieben. so stellen beispielsweise imhof (1981: 347-349, 353-354), kloke (1997: 54, 157, 266) und gehrmann (2002: 546) heraus, dass die überlebenschancen von säuglingen in regionen, in denen häufi g und lange gestillt wurde, deutlich besser waren als in gebieten, in denen das nicht der fall war. „in den norddeutschen dörfern mit einer geringen säuglingssterblichkeit scheinen nahezu alle mütter ihre säuglinge gestillt zu haben, und dies auch relativ lang, zumindest für das ganze erste lebensjahr. in süddeutschen gemeinden mit einer hohen säuglingssterblichkeit wurde dagegen schon von den zeitgenossen darüber geklagt, dass viele mütter ihre kinder nicht oder nur ganz kurz stillen würden.“ (ehmer 2004: 94) gerade im sommer war die säuglingssterblichkeit aufgrund von magenund darmerkrankungen, die auf schlechte, durch die wärme schneller verderbliche ersatznahrung zurückzuführen waren, stark erhöht (kloke 1997). lee und marschalck (2002) konnten für die stadt bremen im zeitraum 1861 bis 1863 und 1870 bis 1872 in den lebensmonaten 3, 6, 9 und 12 einen anstieg der mortalität der neugeborenen feststellen, den sie damit begründen, dass genau zu diesen zeiten häufi g das stillen beendet wurde. laut imhof (1981: 373) war unter den müttern zu der zeit durchaus nicht unbekannt, dass die muttermilch das gesündeste nahrungsmittel für den säugling ist. dass in vielen regionen dennoch wenig gestillt wurde, könne mit mangelnder fürsorgezeit für das kind zusammenhängen, speziell wenn die mutter ledig und berufstätig war oder in die arbeit des mannes, z.b. in einem landwirtschaftlichen betrieb, eingebunden war. auch das o.g. „system der verschwendung“ könne nach imhof ein erklärungsansatz sein. zum ende des 19. jahrhunderts setzte schließlich eine verbesserung der ernährungs-, aber auch der hygieneund wohnbedingungen ein, die zu einem anstieg der überlebenschancen der säuglinge führte, insbesondere aufgrund des damit einhergehenden rückgangs der magenund darmkrankheiten (gehrmann 2011; imhof 1981). 3 daten und methode5 die vorliegende studie basiert auf den neu digitalisierten beerdigungsund taufregistern der kirchenbücher von st. jakobi, welche die notwendigen informationen zu den geburten und sterbefällen liefern. die jakobi-kirche war die mit abstand größte der damaligen vier rostocker kirchspiele, zu denen auch st. marien, st. nikolai und st. petri gehörten (szołtysek et al. 2010: 10).6 im jahr 1905 waren sogar mehr 5 ausführliche beschreibungen zu den quellen und daten siehe mühlichen/scholz (2015). 6 wie der großteil norddeutschlands war auch die stadt rostock im 19. jahrhundert überwiegend evangelisch. eine katholische kirche gab es erst ab 1909 wieder. st. jakobi, rostocks damals größte kirche, existiert inzwischen nicht mehr. große teile der kirche wurden im jahr 1942 durch einen britischen bombenangriff zerstört. die noch vorhandene bausubstanz wurde 1960 abgerissen (köppe 2010; kuzia 2004). • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer96 als die hälfte von rostocks einwohnern mitglieder der jakobikirche, woraufhin noch im gleichen jahr aufgrund der ungenügenden betreuungsmöglichkeit die teilung der gemeinde und 1908 schließlich die fertigstellung der heilig-geist-kirche in der kröpeliner-tor-vorstadt vollzogen wurden (schulz 2008: 24). grundlage der studie ist eine vollerhebung aller geburten und sterbefälle in rostock-st. jakobi. da sowohl die taufals auch die beerdigungsregister die vollständigen namen enthalten und die einzelpersonen somit identifi zierbar sind, ist eine zusammenführung von taufund beerdigungsdatensatz zu einem gesamtdatensatz möglich. diese zusammenführung ist für den zeitraum 1815 bis 1829 erfolgt und dient den folgenden analysen als datengrundlage. das beispiel in abbildung 3 zeigt links in der zweiten zeile den eintrag im taufregister zu emma krüger, die am 28. januar 1815 geboren und am 5. februar des gleichen jahres getauft wurde. rechts, im beerdigungsregister ist in der zweiten zeile der eintrag zu lesen, dass sie am 31. dezember 1815 gestorben ist und am 5. januar 1816 beerdigt wurde. weitere informationen aus dem taufregister sind der beruf und name des vaters und der name der mutter sowie die bei der taufe anwesenden gevattern. das beerdigungsregister enthält neben dem namen und beruf des vaters auch das alter bei todeseintritt und die todesursache. auch der geburtsort wird zum teil angegeben, sofern es sich hierbei nicht um rostock handelt. informationen über eine erwerbstätigkeit der mutter sind nicht in den registern enthalten. als risikopopulation für die sterblichkeitsanalysen gelten alle geburten, die in rostock zu st. jakobi in den entsprechenden untersuchungszeiträumen als lebendgeburt registriert wurden. zugewanderte säuglinge, die nicht im taufregister von st. jakobi erfasst sind, aber im beerdigungsregister, sind aus den analysen ausgeschlossen (20 fälle; 6 %). ob und wie viele neugeborene die stadt verlassen oder das kirchspiel gewechselt haben und im ersten lebensjahr verstorben sind, kann nicht überprüft werden. eine untererfassung der säuglingssterblichkeit ist hierdurch möglich. da es weiterhin im 19. jahrhundert noch keine einheitlichen abb. 3: ausschnitte aus den taufund beerdigungsregistern von st. jakobi, rostock quelle: taufregister von st. jakobi, rostock, 1815 und beerdigungsregister von st. jakobi, rostock, 1816 soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 97 regeln zur abgrenzung von lebendund totgeburten gab, sind auch hierdurch verzerrungen nicht auszuschließen. die sterbeintensität im ersten lebensjahr wird mittels methoden der ereignisdatenanalyse analysiert (allison 1984; diekmann/mitter 1984; blossfeldet al. 1986), wobei das alter in tagen die prozesszeit misst. diese beginnt zum zeitpunkt der geburt im alter von 0 tagen und endet mit dem eintritt eines sterbefalls im ersten lebensjahr oder – im fall einer zensierung – mit dem ersten geburtstag und dem dadurch bedingten ausscheiden aus der risikopopulation. das alter der neugeborenen, die nicht innerhalb des ersten lebensjahres sterben, wird auf den zensierungszeitpunkt von 365 tagen gesetzt. um den einfl uss der charakteristiken der neugeborenen auf ihr sterberisiko zu ermitteln, werden cox-modelle mit proportionalem hazard der form h(t | x)=ho(t)∙eβx gerechnet. dabei kennzeichnet h0(t) den semiparametrischen baseline hazard, β die zu schätzenden parameter und x die kovariaten. die potenz eβ ist der hazard ratio, welcher sich aus dem verhältnis zweier zu vergleichender hazardraten berechnet und zur interpretation als relatives risiko betrachtet wird. als kovariaten gehen geschlecht, jahreszeit der geburt, legitimität der geburt und beruf des vaters ein. nach abgeschlossener datenaufbereitung enthält der datensatz 2.768 lebendgeburten im zeitraum 1815 bis 1829, von denen 331 im ersten lebensjahr verstorben sind, was einem anteil von 12,0 % entspricht. des weiteren gibt es 124 totgeburten. der anteil der totgeburten an allen geburten zwischen 1815 und 1829 beträgt 4,3 %. totgeborene sind aber aus allen analysen und tabellen ausgeschlossen. das geschlecht ist männlich und weiblich kategorisiert, die saisonalität bei geburt hat die ausprägungen frühling, sommer, herbst und winter. für die einteilung der jahreszeiten wurde auf die meteorologische kategorisierung zurückgegriffen mit frühling von märz bis mai, sommer von juni bis august, herbst von september bis november und winter von dezember bis februar. die legitimität der geburt ist unterteilt in ehelich und unehelich. die legitimität taucht nicht als eigene spalte in den registern auf. ob eine geburt unehelich ist, kann an vermerken wie „unehelich“ oder „angeblicher vater ist […]“ erkannt werden. zur operationalisierung der berufe haben wir basierend auf der klassifi zierung des north atlantic population project (napp 2013) sowie den studien zur historischen erwerbsund sozialstruktur im deutschen ostseeraum (brandenburg et al. 1991; brandenburg/kroll 1998; lorenzen-schmidt 1996; manke 2000) eine neue klassifi zierung entworfen, die es sowohl ermöglicht, die häufi gkeiten verschiedenartiger tätigkeiten auszuzählen als auch diese nach berufsgruppen oder nach sozialer schicht zusammenzufassen (mühlichen/scholz 2015). nach sozialer schicht aggregiert, ergeben sich folgende obergruppen für den beruf des vaters: 1) tätigkeiten mit gehobener stellung, 2) tätigkeiten mittlerer stellung, 3) tätigkeiten niedriger stellung und 4) sonstige tätigkeiten oder unbekannt. die erste kategorie umfasst kaufmänner, händler, juristen, gehobene beamte, adlige, mediziner, lehrer, professor, pfarrer, pensionäre, bierbrauer und handwerksmeister. in der zweiten ausprägung sind handwerker, rathausund gerichtsdiener, gastwirte und schiffer vertreten. die dritte gruppe bilden handwerksgesellen, lohndiener, träger, • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer98 ackersmänner, gärtner, fischer, musikanten, seefahrer, matrosen, steuermänner, einfache soldaten und erwerbslose. in der vierten ausprägung sind vor allem arbeitsmänner enthalten, die eine im hinblick auf die art der tätigkeit und in fi nanzieller hinsicht sehr heterogene gruppe darstellen, und väter, über die nichts bekannt ist. auch vor der geburt verstorbene väter sowie „uneheliche“ oder „angebliche“ väter sind in dieser kategorie enthalten. diese vierte gruppe stimmt daher auch fast zur hälfte mit der kategorie „unehelich“ der legitimitätsvariable überein. eine ausnahme stellen uneheliche väter dar, die die mutter des kindes innerhalb des beobachtungszeitraums geheiratet haben, was an weiteren gemeinsamen geburtseinträgen im datensatz erkennbar ist: sie sind in der jeweils ihrem beruf zuzuordnenden schicht anzutreffen (insgesamt 12 fälle). tabelle 1 enthält eine übersicht der kovariaten nach ihren ausprägungen, der anzahl der sterbefälle, zensierungen, risikozeiten und sterberaten. es wird nach sterblichkeit in den ersten dreißig lebenstagen sowie zwischen dem zweiten und tab. 1: sterbefälle, zensierungen, personenjahre und sterberate je nach ausprägung der unabhängigen variablen im ereignisdatensatz zur säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im zeitraum 1815-1829 variable sterbefälle zensierungen personensterberate gesamt 1. monat 2.-12. monat jahre geschlecht männlich 175 67 108 1292 1339 0,1307 weiblich 156 53 103 1145 1191 0,1310 gesamt 331 120 211 2437 2530 0,1308 saisonalität bei geburt frühling 84 23 61 602 626 0,1341 sommer 80 35 45 591 612 0,1307 herbst 85 33 52 599 621 0,1368 winter 82 29 53 645 670 0,1224 gesamt 331 120 211 2437 2530 0,1308 beruf des vaters gehobene tätigkeit 51 16 35 455 469 0,1087 mittlere tätigkeit 113 43 70 738 768 0,1472 einfache tätigkeit 81 32 49 452 474 0,1707 sonstige, unbekannt 86 29 57 792 819 0,1051 gesamt 331 120 211 2437 2530 0,1308 legitimität der geburt ehelich 290 107 183 2063 2144 0,1353 unehelich 41 13 28 374 386 0,1063 gesamt 331 120 211 2437 2530 0,1308 quelle: taufund beerdigungsregister der kirchenbücher von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 99 zwölften lebensmonat unterschieden. die sterberate berechnet sich aus der sterbefallzahl im ersten lebensjahr geteilt durch die personenjahre. die komplette dateneingabe, die fehlerkorrektur und die zusammenführung der taufund beerdigungsdaten wurden mit microsoft excel durchgeführt. für die datenaufbereitung zur survivalanalyse wurde das statistische programmpaket spss 20 verwendet. die ereignisdatenanalyse wurde mit stata 11 ausgeführt. 4 ergebnisse abbildung 4 zeigt die entwicklung der säuglingssterblichkeit in der rostocker kirchgemeinde st. jakobi im 19. jahrhundert. der untersuchungszeitraum des ereignisdatenanalysemodells (1815 bis 1829) ist darin umrandet.7 bis 1840 ist die mortalität der neugeborenen auf einem in etwa gleich bleibenden bis minimal sinkenden niveau. sie schwankt im untersuchungszeitraum 1815 bis 1829 zwischen 104 und 143 sterbefällen je 1.000 lebendgeborene und beträgt 127,7 für jungen und 127,9 für mädchen, für beide geschlechter insgesamt 127,8. nennenswerte geschlechterunterschiede lassen sich erst ab 1830 zu ungunsten der jungen ausmachen. ab 1840 steigt außerdem das niveau der säuglingssterblichkeit erheblich an, bis auf 219 todesfälle je 1.000 lebendgeborene im jahr 1858. die ursachen hängen vermutlich mit der gestiegenen bevölkerungszahl und deren folgen auf die wohn-, arbeits-, ernährungsund hygienesituation zusammen. die säuglingssterblichkeit geht in der folge wieder leicht zurück und schwankt zwischen 1880 und 1902 stagnierend um den wert 170. in abbildung 5 sind die kaplan-meier-überlebensverläufe für die unabhängigen variablen legitimität der geburt und beruf des vaters dargestellt. im hinblick auf die legitimität der geburt weisen die unehelichen geburten einen günstigeren überlebensverlauf auf als die ehelichen geburten. das erste lebensjahr überleben 90 % der unehelichen und 88 % der ehelich geborenen. die ursachen hierfür werden im nächsten kapitel diskutiert. für die berufsgruppen der väter ergeben sich deutlichere unterschiede. so gestaltet sich der überlebensverlauf im ersten lebensjahr für kinder, deren väter einer einfachen tätigkeit nachgehen, mit 85 % deutlich schlechter im vergleich zu den anderen berufsgruppen. der anteil überlebender liegt für kinder von vätern mittlerer berufl icher schicht bei 87 % und bei kindern von vätern mit gehobener tätigkeit bei 90 %. ebenfalls 90 % erreicht auch die kategorie von säuglingen, bei denen die tätigkeit des vaters nicht bekannt oder nicht zuordenbar ist oder der vater selbst unbekannt ist. diese gruppe stimmt in ihrer zusammensetzung fast zur hälfte mit der kategorie „unehelich“ der legitimitätsvariable überein. wegen dieser multikollinearität werden die beiden variablen in getrennten modellen untersucht. 7 die 20 sterbefälle zugewanderter im zeitraum 1815 bis 1829 sind in diese darstellung einbezogen, um eine kontinuerliche zeitreihe darzustellen (für die jahre ab 1830 erfolgte noch keine entsprechende aufbereitung, die den ausschluss von zuwanderung ermöglicht). in den folgenden analysen sind diese fälle ausgeschlossen. • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer100 niedrige fallzahlen sind für den unregelmäßigen verlauf der überlebenskurven verantwortlich. da sich die kurven der berufsgruppen mehrfach schneiden, liegt zudem die vermutung nahe, dass die proportionalitätsannahme des cox-proportionalen-hazard-modells nicht erfüllt ist. der loglogsurvival-plot (abb. 6) bestätigt dies, da die kurven nicht parallel verlaufen. in einem ersten schritt soll aus gründen der vergleichbarkeit der einfl uss der kovariaten auf die sterblichkeit im gesamten ersten lebensjahr ermittelt werden (tab. 2). abb. 4: säuglingssterblichkeit* in rostock-st. jakobi nach geschlecht, 18001902 (gleitender 3-jahres-durchschnitt) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 männlich weiblich gesamt säuglingssterbefälle je 1.000 lebendgeborene jahr * für den analysezeitraum 1815 bis 1829 konnte die säuglingssterblichkeit nach der geburtsjahrmethode von becker (1874) und zeuner (1869) berechnet werden. für die übrigen jahre wurde die kalenderjahrmethode von böckh verwendet (esenwein-rothe 1982: 241-248). die sterbefälle eines jahres t wurden jedoch nicht zu 100 %, sondern zu 70 % den geburten des jahres t und zu 30 % den geburten des jahres t+1 zugeordnet. diese vorgenommene gewichtung erscheint nach entsprechender auswertung der jahre 1815 bis 1829 realistischer. die zweitweise sehr großen geschlechterunterschiede (z.b. im jahr 1847) können zum teil ein resultat der ungenaueren kalenderjahrmethode sein. die geburtsjahrmethode ist insbesondere bei kleinen fallzahlen wegen ihres kohortenansatzes genauer. quelle: taufund beerdigungsregister der kirchenbücher von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 101 beim vergleich der vier modelle für das erste lebensjahr fällt auf, dass sich durch das schrittweise hinzufügen neuer einfl ussgrößen die relativen risiken nicht ändern. die legitimität der geburt und der beruf des vaters werden in separaten modellen betrachtet, da die kategorie der unehelichen geburten zur hälfte identisch ist mit der kategorie ‚sonstige/unbekannt’ des berufs des vaters. bei den berufsgruppen wird der eindruck aus den kaplan-meier-überlebensverläufen (abb. 6) bestätigt. im vergleich zur referenzgruppe, den kindern von vätern mit gehobener tätigkeit, ist das relative risiko, das erste lebensjahr nicht zu überleben, für die kinder von vätern mittlerer berufsschicht um 34 %, für die kinder von vätern niedriger berufl icher tätigkeit um 55 % erhöht. diese unterschiede sind signifi kant. die restkategorie unterscheidet sich nicht signifi kant von der referenzgruppe. über diese obergruppen hinaus ist das risiko bei den berufsgruppen der rathausund gerichtsdiener, musikanten, fischer, gastwirte, matrosen und seefahrern sowie ackersmännern am höchsten, während es bei höheren beamten und akademikern, kaufl euten, arbeitsmännern und trägern am geringsten ist. die große gruppe der handwerker, sowohl der meister als auch gesellen, befi ndet sich im mittelfeld. abb. 5: kaplan-meier-überlebensverlauf für das erste lebensjahr der zwischen 1815 und 1829 in rostock zu st. jakobi geborenen säuglinge nach legitimität der geburt (links) und beruf des vaters (rechts) abb. 6: test der proportionalitätsannahme (loglogsurvival-plot) für die unabhängigen variablen legitimität der geburt (links) und beruf des vaters (rechts) quelle: taufund beerdigungsregister der kirchenbücher von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) 0,86 0,88 0,90 0,92 0,94 0,96 0,98 1,00 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 lebenstage ehelich nicht ehelich 0,84 0,86 0,88 0,90 0,92 0,94 0,96 0,98 1,00 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 lebenstage gehoben mittel niedrig sonstige/unbekannt 2 3 4 5 6 -ln[-ln(überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit)] 0 2 4 6 ln(prozesszeit) ehelich nicht ehelich 2 3 4 5 6 7 -ln[-ln(überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit)] 0 2 4 6 ln(prozesszeit) gehoben mittel niedrig sonstige/unbekannt • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer102 für die unehelichen lebendgeburten ist das relative risiko, das erste lebensjahr nicht zu überleben, im vergleich zur referenzgruppe der ehelichgeborenen um 21 % geringer. dieser unterschied ist jedoch nicht signifi kant. im hinblick auf die kontrollvariablen geschlecht und saisonalität sind die unterschiede zwischen den ausprägungen minimal und nicht signifi kant. im folgenden wird das cox-modell noch einmal getrennt für die ersten 30 lebenstage und für die verbleibende zeit vom zweiten bis zum zwölften lebensmonat dargestellt (tab. 3 und 4). beide tabellen zeigen bei den berufsgruppen erhöhte risiken für die mittlere und niedrige berufsschicht. dieser befund ist im 1. lebensmonat (tab. 3) jedoch viel stärker ausgeprägt und signifi kant. für die mittlere schicht ist der hazard ratio tab. 2: relative risiken der sterblichkeit für lebendgeborene in rostock-st. jakobi 1815-1829 (risikopopulation); ereignis: tod im 1. lebensjahr; prozesszeit: alter in tagen variablen und modell 1: beruf modell 2: legitimität ausprägungen nur beruf des vaters mit kontrollvariablen nur legitimität mit kontrollvariablen beruf des vaters gehobene tätigkeit (rg) 1 1 mittlere tätigkeit 1,35* 1,34* einfache tätigkeit 1,55** 1,55** sonstige, unbekannt 0,97 0,97 legitimität der geburt ehelich (rg) 1 1 unehelich 0,79 0,79 geschlecht weiblich (rg) 1 1 männlich 1,00 1,00 saisonalität bei geburt frühling (rg) 1 1 sommer 0,97 0,98 herbst 1,01 1,02 winter 0,92 0,92 fallzahl (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 ereignisse (e) 331 331 331 331 risikozeit (t) in tagen 923404 923404 923404 923404 * p ≤ 0,1; ** p ≤ 0,05; *** p ≤ 0,01. rg = referenzgruppe quelle: beerdigungsund taufregister von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 103 um 62 % im vergleich zur referenzgruppe erhöht, für die niedrige schicht sind es 92 %. die restkategorie unterscheidet sich in beiden perioden nicht von der referenzgruppe. hinsichtlich der legtimität ist der hazard ratio für die unehelich geborenen säuglinge in den ersten 30 lebenstagen um 31 %, im folgezeitraum um 15 % im vergleich zu den ehelich geborenen geringer. dieser unterschied ist aber nicht signifkant. auch die geschlechterunterschiede sind nicht signifi kant. es fällt aber auf, dass sich der hazard ratio im ersten zeitraum ein wenig zu gunsten der mädchen, im zweiten zeitraum zu gunsten der jungen darstellt. die saisonalen differenzen sind in den beiden teilzeiträumen stärker ausgeprägt als im gesamten ersten lebensjahr. so ist für die ersten 30 lebenstage das relative risiko für im sommer geborene signifi kant um 56 % (tab. 3, modell 2) im vergleich zu den im frühling geborenen erhöht, während die sommergeburten im folgezeitraum das vergleichsweise geringste risiko aufweisen. tab. 3: relative risiken der sterblichkeit für lebendgeborene in rostock-st. jakobi 1815-1829 (risikopopulation); ereignis: tod im 1. lebensmonat; prozesszeit: alter in tagen variablen und modell 1: beruf modell 2: legitimität ausprägungen nur beruf des vaters mit kontrollvariablen nur legitimität mit kontrollvariablen beruf des vaters gehobene tätigkeit (rg) 1 1 mittlere tätigkeit 1,62* 1,65* einfache tätigkeit 1,92** 1,89** sonstige, unbekannt 1,04 1,06 legitimität der geburt ehelich (rg) 1 1 unehelich 0,68 0,69 geschlecht weiblich (rg) 1 1 männlich 1,13 1,12 saisonalität bei geburt frühling (rg) 1 1 sommer 1,56* 1,56* herbst 1,43 1,44 winter 1,21 1,20 fallzahl (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 ereignisse (e) 120 120 120 120 risikozeit (t) in tagen 923404 923404 923404 923404 * p ≤ 0,1; ** p ≤ 0,05; *** p ≤ 0,01. rg = referenzgruppe quelle: beerdigungsund taufregister von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer104 5 diskussion in st. jakobi, einem der vier kirchspiele der stadt rostock, hängt die säuglingssterblichkeit zu beginn des 19. jahrhunderts signifi kant von der berufl ichen tätigkeit des vaters ab. dieser zusammenhang ist besonders stark in den ersten dreißig lebenstagen ausgeprägt, bleibt aber auch tendenziell in den folgenden elf monaten erhalten. kinder von berufl ich schlechter gestellten vätern wie niedrigere verwaltungsangestellte, seefahrer, fischer und ackersmänner, haben das höchste risiko, im ersten lebensjahr zu versterben, jene der gruppe der höheren beamten, händler und juristen, die die elite rostocks bildeten (manke 2000: 369-370), haben das niedrigste sterberisiko. entsprechend der im 2. abschnitt aufgeführten literatur können diese unterschiede mit der wirtschaftlichen situation der familie, der ernährung der mutter während der schwangerschaft aber auch des neugeborenen tab. 4: relative risiken der sterblichkeit für lebendgeborene in rostockst. jakobi 1815-1829 (risikopopulation); ereignis: tod im 2.-12. lebensmonat; prozesszeit: alter in tagen variablen und modell 1: beruf modell 2: legitimität ausprägungen nur beruf des vaters mit kontrollvariablen nur legitimität mit kontrollvariablen beruf des vaters gehobene tätigkeit (rg) 1 1 mittlere tätigkeit 1,22 1,20 einfache tätigkeit 1,38 1,39 sonstige, unbekannt 0,93 0,92 legitimität der geburt ehelich (rg) 1 1 unehelich 0,85 0,85 geschlecht weiblich (rg) 1 1 männlich 0,93 0,93 saisonalität bei geburt frühling (rg) 1 1 sommer 0,75 0,76 herbst 0,85 0,86 winter 0,82 0,82 fallzahl (n) 2768 2768 2768 2768 ereignisse (e) 211 211 211 211 risikozeit (t) in tagen 923404 923404 923404 923404 * p ≤ 0,1; ** p ≤ 0,05; *** p ≤ 0,01. rg = referenzgruppe quelle: beerdigungsund taufregister von st. jakobi, rostock (eigene berechnungen) soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 105 in den ersten lebensmonaten zusammenhängen. hinzu kommt, dass in der landwirtschaft auch die mütter stärker in die arbeit involviert sind und somit weniger zeit für die nachkommen haben. auch die kinder von arbeitern aus der seefahrt weisen ein vergleichsweise hohes risiko auf, das durch geringe einkünfte und lange und häufi ge abwesenheit der väter erklärt werden kann. ungewöhnlich ist das ergebnis zur legitimität der geburten. in der literatur wird für uneheliche geburten sowohl für rostock als auch für ganz deutschland stets eine erhöhte säuglingssterblichkeit nachgewiesen, zumindest im späten 19. und frühen 20. jahrhundert (z.b. brüning/balck 1906 und brüning/josephy 1928 für rostock sowie prinzing 1902 und 1911 für das deutsche reich). dieser effekt ist jedoch in st. jakobi nicht auszumachen, tendenziell haben unehelich geborene sogar höhere überlebenschancen, auch wenn der effekt statistisch nicht signifi kant ist. möglicherweise handelte es sich bei den unverheirateten müttern zum teil um dienstboten, die ihre kinder nach der taufe den auf dem land lebenden großmüttern oder anderen vertrauten oder einer institution übergaben oder vielleicht auch selbst auf das land zurückgingen. vögele (1994) sowie preston und haines (1991) begründen dieses phänomen mit der ungünstigen fi nanziellen situation, welche alleinstehende mütter zwang, weiter arbeiten zu gehen und ihr kind an verwandte oder eine einrichtung abzugeben. auf diese weise wären säuglingssterbefälle nicht in st. jakobi verzeichnet worden. anlass zu dieser spekulation liefert auch der hohe anteil von dienstboten an der weiblichen bevölkerung rostocks. dieser betrug im jahr 1800 immerhin 30 % in der altersgruppe 21 bis 30 (manke 2000: 336). wenn man zudem das cox-modell nur für totgeburten rechnet, weisen unehelich geborene ein um 28 % erhöhtes sterberisiko gegenüber den ehelich geborene auf. wenngleich der unterschied auch hier nicht signifi kant ist, ist dies dennoch ein weiteres indiz für eine abwanderungsbedingte untererfassung unehelicher säuglingssterbefälle. die jahreszeit der geburt hat einen signifi kanten einfl uss auf das überleben in den ersten dreißig tagen, wobei im juni, juli und august geborene das höchste sterberisiko aufweisen. breschi und bacci (1997) zeigen für fünf länder, dass im 19. jahrhundert die sterblichkeit in den ersten beiden lebensjahren vom geburtsmonat abhängt und sich das muster in den einzelnen ländern unterscheidet. so hatten z.b. in italien die im sommer geborenen eine niedrigere sterblichkeit, in der schweiz die im winter geborenen. ein der schweiz und st. jakobi vergleichbares muster fi ndet sich für das erste lebensjahr auch im dänemark des 19. jahrhunderts (doblhammer/vaupel 2001; doblhammer 2004). da in st. jakobi der effekt des geburtsmonats vor allem in den ersten dreißig lebenstagen von bedeutung ist, weist dieser auf endogene faktoren der säuglingssterblichkeit hin, die eher mit der entwicklung des fötus während der schwangerschaft zusammenhängen als mit exogenen faktoren wie infektionserkrankungen. da im norden deutschlands die stillbereitschaft stärker ausgeprägt war als im süden, sind in st. jakobi die neugeborenen durch die protektiven substanzen der muttermilch besser vor saisonalen infektionserkrankungen des magen-darmtraktes, aber auch der atemwege geschützt. • michael mühlichen, rembrandt d. scholz, gabriele doblhammer106 bezüglich des geschlechts lassen sich keine signifi kanten unterschiede feststellen, auch wenn jungen in den ersten 30 lebenstagen, wenn endogene faktoren, speziell das geburtsgewicht und die allgemeine körperliche verfassung bei geburt, eine entscheidende rolle spielen, ein erhöhtes sterberisiko haben. in den folgemonaten dreht sich dieser effekt jedoch um. ein faktor, der in dieser studie nicht berücksichtigt werden konnte, ist die taufe. grundsätzlich ist es eine stärke des datensatzes, dass darin sowohl informationen über das taufals auch über das geburtsdatum enthalten sind. es sind auch ungetaufte fälle im modellzeitraum 1815 bis 1829 zu verzeichnen, wobei es sich dabei ausschließlich um totgeburten handelt. juden sind beispielsweise nicht in den registern enthalten. während die zeitspanne von der geburt bis zur taufe im untersuchungszeitraum stets nur wenige tage beträgt, wird sie zum ende des 19. jahrhunderts immer größer, bis hin zu einigen wochen oder gar monaten, wie spätere jahrgänge der kirchenbücher von st. jakobi zeigen. jedoch gilt im frühen 19. jahrhundert ebenso wie im späteren: wenn abzusehen war, dass ein kind nach der geburt bald sterben würde, wurde die nottaufe vorgenommen, in der regel durch die hebamme, wie anmerkungen in den taufund beerdigungsregistern deutlich machen. fraglich ist, ob es sich bei den registrierten totgeburten tatsächlich um solche handelt. im 19. jahrhundert gab es noch keine festen defi nitionen für lebendund totgeburt. ob ein toter säugling zuvor lebenszeichen hatte, war vom pfarrer zu entscheiden. die kriterien hierfür sind jedoch nicht bekannt. ein zusammenhang mit der taufe scheint bei betrachtung des vorliegenden datensatzes im zeitraum 1815 bis 1829 nicht ausgeschlossen. möglich wäre, dass ein neugeborenes erst ab der taufe als lebendgeburt betrachtet wurde und es, wenn es ungetauft verstarb, als totgeburt verzeichnet wurde. dies könnte mit anderen rostocker kirchenbüchern aus der gleichen zeit überprüft werden. für die zweite hälfte des 19. jahrhunderts ist dies als gängige praxis der abgrenzung jedoch nicht belegbar, zumindest nicht für st. jacobi, da in dieser zeit auch ungetauft verstorbene lebendgeburten in den registern enthalten sind. zusammenfassend kann festgehalten werden, dass die vorliegenden individualdaten von st. jakobi neue einblicke in die säuglingssterblichkeit einer mehrheitlich städtischen bevölkerung norddeutschlands im frühen 19. jahrhundert bieten. damit wird eine forschungslücke geschlossen. für weitere analysen wäre eine ausweitung des untersuchungszeitraumes notwendig, einerseits um größere fallzahlen zu generieren, andererseits um die zeitliche entwicklung der sozialen unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit betrachten zukönnen. letzteres ist von besonderem interesse, da etwa ab 1840 die säuglingssterblichkeit wieder ansteigt und es offen ist, inwieweit alle sozialen gruppen von diesem anstieg betroffen sind. weitere studienmöglichkeiten würden sich durch die verknüpfung der daten von st. jakobi mit den rostocker volkszählungen des 19. jahrhunderts und den kopulationsund konfi rmationsregistern von st. jakobi ergeben. zusätzliche faktoren der säuglingssterblichkeit, unter anderem auf der haushaltsebene, könnten so in die analyse mit einfl ießen (scholz 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in: international journal of epidemiology 29,6: 1031-1040 [doi: 10.1093/ije/29.6.103]. woods, robert i. 1994: la mortalité infantile en grand-bretagne. un bilan des connaissances historiques. in: annales de démographie historique 1994: 119-134. woods, robert i.; watterson, patricia a.; woodward, john h. 1988: the causes of rapid infant mortality decline in england and wales, 1861–1921 part i. in: population studies 42,3: 343-366 [doi: 10.1080/0032472031000143516]. woods, robert i.; watterson, patricia a.; woodward, john h. 1989: the causes of rapid infant mortality decline in england and wales, 1861–1921 part ii. in: population studies 43,1: 113-132 [doi: 10.1080/0032472031000143876]. wrigley, edward a.; schofi eld, roger s. 1981: the population history of england 15411871. london: edward arnold. würzburg, arthur 1887: die säuglingssterblichkeit im deutschen reiche während der jahre 1875 bis 1877. arbeiten aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte (=beihefte zu den veröffentlichungen aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte) 2: 208-222. würzburg, arthur 1888: die säuglingssterblichkeit im deutschen reiche während der jahre 1875 bis 1877. arbeiten aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte (=beihefte zu den veröffentlichungen aus dem kaiserlichen gesundheitsamte) 4: 28-108. zeuner, gustav a. 1869: abhandlungen zur mathematischen statistik. leipzig: arthur felix. soziale unterschiede in der säuglingssterblichkeit in rostock im 19. jahrh undert • 113 eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und von den autoren autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „social differences in infant mortality in 19th century rostock. a demographic analysis based on church records“, doi 10.12765/cpos-2015-03en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-03en4, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 16.05.2013 angenommen am: 30.07.2014 michael mühlichen (). bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. wiesbaden, deutschland. e-mail: michael.muehlichen@bib.bund.de url: http://www.bib-demografi e.de/muehlichen dr. rembrandt d. scholz. max-planck-institut für demografi sche forschung. rostock, deutschland. e-mail: scholz@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter_1899/rembrandt_d_scholz_663.htm prof. dr. gabriele doblhammer. universität rostock, lehrstuhl für empirische sozialforschung und demographie. rostock, deutschland. e-mail: gabriele.doblhammer@uni-rostock.de url: http://www.wiwi.uni-rostock.de/soziologie/esf/doblhammer/ published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways uta brehm, norbert f. schneider abstract: in this theoretical contribution, we propose a comprehensive and integrative heuristic model to explain fertility, the model of dyadic pathways (mdp). we show how existing models such as the theory of planned behaviour often do not withstand empirical challenges, especially not individual self-reports in qualitative studies. furthermore, existing models vary in their premises and foci, resulting in a collection of models which do not necessarily align with or supplement one another. for these reasons, these heuristic models have been widely criticised and, in practice, pieced together according to the research question and tradition of the researcher. against this backdrop, we establish the mdp to reconnect theory with reality and to unify a variety of approaches. the mdp is grounded on the dyad of partners as the prevalent basis of fertility. it integrates reasoned and unreasoned fertility behaviour, the impact of individualand couple-level life course, soci(et) al conditions, and the body as an “actor”. the model explicitly accounts for the variety of different real-life pathways that lead to fertility. it thereby encourages researchers to, first, consider all potentially relevant factors and their mechanisms and, second, think of fertility and its measurement as a multilinear process. based on the presented elements a comprehensive model of fertility must cover, we suggest ways to improve surveys accordingly. furthermore, we elaborate on the contributions and challenges the mdp presents to future fertility research. keywords: fertility behaviour · theory of planned behaviour · decision-making heuristic · dyadic relationship · life-course analysis 1 introduction the challenge of understanding individual fertility behaviour and aggregated fertility trends has kept demographers, sociologists, and economists busy for decades. recent years have brought about a new peak in fertility research, both empirically and theoretically. empirically, researchers have set quantitative landmarks in the comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 3-36 (date of release: 05.02.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-01en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-01en6 • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider4 field, particularly research groups around vienna’s wittgenstein center and milan’s bocconi university (e.g. morgan et al. 2011; balbo et al. 2013; philipov et al. 2015b). at the same time, theoretical approaches to fertility research have attracted increasing, and at times quite polarised, attention. this is especially true for the most prominent paradigm in the field, the theory of planned behaviour (tpb, ajzen 1991), which attributes fertility to reasoned intentions. the theory, or rather the heuristic model – as liefbroer (2011) rightly argues to label it1 – has dominated the field for decades, influencing surveys such as the generation and gender survey (ggs, vikat et al. 2007) and acting as a go-to theoretical framework for many empirical studies. beyond this dominance, there are other excellent heuristic models, such as the dyadic traits-desires-intentions-behaviour model (tdib, miller/pasta 1995) and the cognitive-social model, also known as theory of conjunctural action (tca, morgan/bachrach 2011; bachrach/morgan 2013), which was developed to account for automatic cognition processes disregarded by the tpb. beyond these tidily formulated models, there is of course a battery of ever-relevant utility-oriented approaches to explain and understand human fertility in terms of cost and benefit considerations (becker 1960; hoffman/hoffman 1973). the result is a range of heuristic models2 with different premises, arguments, elements, and foci. quantitative researchers draw upon these models and select them and their elements separately or complimentarily to frame their fertility research projects – depending on their data set, their specific research question, and their own or their topic’s research tradition (see, for example, for the tpb: billari et al. 2009; kuhnt/trappe 2013; dommermuth et al. 2015; philipov et al. 2015b; for the tdib: thomson/hoem 1998; rijken/knijn 2009; rosina/testa 2009; stein et al. 2014; for the tca: rackin/ bachrach 2016; shreffler et al. 2018; for utility-oriented approaches: ekert-jaffé et al. 2002; klein/eckhard 2007; nauck 2007; schippers 2011). consequently, the field of quantitative fertility research is wide, diverse, and dispersed. interestingly, qualitative fertility research is only affected by this intricacy to a lesser extent. qualitative research has traditionally ventured beyond merely assessing problems against heuristic models. thus, it has added relevant explanations and interrelationships to the understanding of fertility. these, however, have only rarely diffused into theoretical or quantitative approaches. measured against elements which are taken to be essential to understanding fertility – such as the dyad of partners, reasoned and unreasoned behaviour, the life course, social and societal conditions, and the body – each of the prominent heuristic models has several blind spots. in this article, we introduce the model of dyadic pathways (mdp) as a decisionmaking heuristic and, as such, as a comprehensive foundation to fertility research. 1 liefbroer (2011) evaluates the tpb with a set of characteristics, a theory must have, and concludes that the tpb is, instead, a heuristic model. we follow this approach and apply it to the other dominant fertility “theories”. 2 there are, of course, more potentially relevant heuristic models which could be consulted to explain fertility. however, we limit our focus to these four dominant models, which have been well-received internationally, and have been adapted specifically to fertility research. towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 5 first, the mdp aims to reconcile the frayed research strands of fertility studies by untangling the knots of existing models and neatly braiding them into one integrative model of fertility. the mdp thereby merges separate bodies of knowledge; it connects the dots and calls attention to unexplored areas. second, we show that the mdp is firmly grounded in quantitative and, particularly, qualitative evidence: it pays due regard to the elements and perspectives that have been found to be relevant to fertility. thereby, the mdp overcomes established yet rigid approaches of modelling fertility. third, we illustrate that the mdp is a comprehensive as well as specific basis for all steps in fertility research: it provides links for several theories of decision-making and action, for different decisional pathways and logics, and thus for both testable hypotheses and counter-hypotheses. due to this theoretical comprehensiveness, the mdp also offers a frame to survey development and methodological approaches. we proceed as follows: first, we revisit the prevailing heuristic models, namely the theory of planned behaviour, the traits-desires-intentions-behaviour model, the theory of conjunctural action, and utility-oriented approaches. we discuss the critiques of these models and extract concepts essential to understanding fertility: the dyad of partners, reasoned and unreasoned behaviour, the life course, social and societal conditions, and the body. in a second step, we reflect upon these essential concepts in light of empirical, mostly qualitative, fertility research, based on which we identify a variety of different pathways to fertility. in a third step, we assemble the established arguments and, step by step, integrate them into one comprehensive fertility model, the model of dyadic pathways. drawing upon this model, we illustrate, in a fourth step, how it integrates the pathway-variety by tracing example trails through the model. we make a point to use the emerging model not as a unilineal straitjacket, but rather to venture disaggregate it in order to cover the multitude of pathways that lead human beings to their resulting fertility. we conclude by assessing the model of dyadic pathways’ potential for fertility research as well as the challenges it poses to survey and analysis methodology. 2 a critical discussion of heuristic models of fertility 2.1 heuristic models of fertility – an overview the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) the dominant model in fertility research, the tpb, regards behaviour as a direct result of fertility intentions. intentions, on the other hand, are contingent upon their antecedents, namely behavioural attitudes (i.e. beliefs about expected outcomes of a behaviour), social norms (i.e. beliefs about relatives’ and peers’ expectations and approval), and perceived behavioural control (i.e. beliefs about the capability and ability to pursue a behaviour). perceived control is furthermore influenced by individuals’ actual behavioural control, which also independently impacts the outcome. these three beliefs exert influence upon one another and are concurrently • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider6 influenced by background factors such as socio-demographics, societal contexts, personal dispositions, and situational conditions (ajzen 1991). the tpb was developed as a social-psychological contribution to explaining behaviours and is not domain-specific to fertility research. rather, it aims to offer a universal, individualistic, social-psychological model to understanding behaviour (miller 2011; philipov et al. 2015a). the tpb’s wide application has, however, also lead to wide critical discussions of the framework. though ajzen has repeatedly and elaborately dismissed criticism (ajzen 2011a, 2011b, 2014), some of the arguments die hard and will be taken up below. the traits-desires-intentions-behaviour model (tdib) a model which was explicitly developed to understand fertility behaviours is the tdib (miller/pasta 1995, 1996; miller et al. 2004). similar to the tpb, it regards fertility behaviour as the result of intentions, and it in turn takes intentions to be the result of the desire to have children. it thus adds a relevant category which cannot be substituted by the tpb’s behavioural attitudes (miller 2011). furthermore, by explicitly considering desires, the model allows for ambivalence, i.e. for individuals’ simultaneous desires to have and not to have a child, as well as indifference in that regard (miller/pasta 2002; barber et al. 2010; miller 2011). the desires to have children are contingent upon motivational traits such as the feelings evoked by babies and childcare, which can be ambivalent. the motivational traits themselves are shaped by background factors similar to the ones considered in the tpb. early on, the tdib was adapted to all three manifestations of fertility behaviour: to have or not to have a child, when to have a child, and the number of children (miller/pasta 1994, 1995). the theory of conjunctural action (tca) contrasting tpb’s premise of reasoned actions, morgan and bachrach (2011) offered an alternative by explicitly modelling unreasoned behaviours and automatic, unconscious cognition in the theory of conjunctural action (tca), also known as the cognitive-social model of fertility (morgan/bachrach 2011; johnson-hanks et al. 2011; bachrach/morgan 2013). the tca considers behaviour to be a result of the interplay of material or schematic structures on the one hand (i.e. observable behaviours or conditions and shared values, beliefs, norms, or conventions, respectively), and cognitive processes which happen automatically or are reasoned along these schemas, on the other. the material or schematic structures can impact behaviour in two ways: first, they constitute the situation in which people act, and second, they contribute to the formation of automatic cognitive schemas, together with individual schemas of semantic interpretation, of self-image, and of affect which develop across the life course. reasoned cognition, in contrast, is only activated when necessary, e.g. in the face of inconsistencies or conflicts, because they are relatively costly and demanding. towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 7 utility-oriented approaches lastly, the literature offers many utility-oriented approaches to explain fertility. comparable to the evolution of theories of decision-making and action theories,3 utility-oriented approaches have developed from the assumption of the actor as a strictly rational, utility maximising homo oeconomicus to actors with conditional, bounded rationality, personal preferences, and satisficing strategies. accordingly, economic cost–benefit analyses contrast the direct financial, temporal, and immaterial costs as well as opportunity costs with the financial, material, and immaterial benefits of having children (becker 1960; leibenstein 1974). these arguments have been transferred to the aforementioned manifestations of fertility behaviour: having children at all, timing them, and deciding on their number – though the former and the latter are often considered simultaneously. in this respect, becker and lewis (1973) hypothesised a trade-off between child quality in terms of investments in their education, health, and upbringing, and child quantity with regard to the number of children. concerning their timing, considerations of the time to accumulate human capital and to seize its returns come into play, as well as the extent and speed of a possible human capital devaluation in the case of employment interruptions, and the respective opportunity costs (becker 1991; gustafsson 2001). advancing these notions, the value of children (voc) approach considers children’s benefit to parents in terms of economic utility (work and insurance utility), psychological satisfaction (stimulation, affection, and interaction), and social approval (social esteem, status attainment) (hoffman/hoffman 1973; nauck 2014). in line with this argument, the anticipated number of children is, on the one hand, advanced by an increasing economic utility by child, followed by a subsequent saturation point of social approval and psychological satisfaction. on the other hand, it is confined by parents’ opportunity structure and both economic and psychological costs. the development of voc’s implications for the timing of childbirth are, in large part, in the early stages (nauck 2014), though kağıtçıbaşı and ataca (2005) discussed children’s utility for social approval to accelerate childbirth among parents who face little economic or occupational prospects of social approval. 2.2 requirements for heuristic models of fertility the presented heuristic models of fertility behaviour have been widely applied in fertility research. with wide use comes great disapproval, however: the research community has identified a battery of additional requirements which a comprehensive model would have to meet. following an in-depth literature review, we revisit the five aspects which we find to be essential. we summarise and systematise them and assess whether the previously presented heuristic models merit the criticism. 3 consider, for example, the advancements of the homo oeconomicus by, e.g. lindenberg (1985), coleman (1990), esser (1996), and breen and goldthorpe (1997). • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider8 the dyad of partners one line of criticism demands the integration of the dyad of partners, i.e. potential parents. the linked lives (elder 1994) of partners influence one another in their thoughts and behaviours: they communicate needs and negotiate decisions, and, centrally, both contribute their fair share to the existence of a child. some researchers thus argue that analysing the dyad is imperative to fertility research and requires explicit modelling (miller/pasta 1995, 1996; miller 2011; philipov 2011). the tdib accordingly implements that notion. under the terms of the model, partners influence one another in their inner desires to have children and their intentions to act upon these desires prior to pursuing a joint fertility behaviour – directly as well as moderated by the perceived desires of the other person (miller et al. 2004). similarly, the dyad of partners has attracted extensive attention in utility-oriented approaches: fertility decisions have been regarded as the result of bargaining construed from cooperative game theory. bargaining models assume that each partner shapes the decision-making process to some degree, depending on threat points, interests, and resources. accordingly, bargaining models address patriarchal and matriarchal rules, spheres of interest, power or joint utility rules, egalitarian or golden mean rules, veto player or social drift rules (corijn et al. 1996; jansen/ liefbroer 2006; lundberg/pollak 2007). for the tpb, in contrast, ajzen and klobas (2013) stress that partners are already embedded in the existing model and therefore do not merit explicit mention – on the one hand, as important normative referents and, on the other hand, through indicators for an individual’s behavioural control. empirically, they treat the existence of partners as a prerequisite to fertility research. similarly, the tca also lacks an explicit integration of partners into its modelling of behaviour. in sum, the dyad of partners, which is at the centre of fertility behaviour, is modelled explicitly only in the tdib and in utility-oriented approaches. it is regarded only very marginally in the tpb and the tca. unreasoned behaviour another pivotal criticism voiced by fertility researchers claims that not all fertility behaviour is preceded by clear reasoning and intentions, requiring fertility models to allow for unreasoned behaviour: miller (2011; miller/pasta 2002) refers to “subintended” pregnancies that are neither intended nor unintended but rationalised posthoc. barber (2011) calls “the heat of the moment” to attention, i.e. sexual arousal that leads to unintended conception. morgan and bachrach (2011; bachrach/morgan 2013) stress the importance of automatic cognition in situations that activate pre-existing mental schemas – and construct a new heuristic model around it. thus, the primary addressees of the critique are approaches that solely assume rational or at least reasoned behaviour, particularly the tpb and utility-oriented approaches. for the tpb, ajzen (2011b) claims that emotions, irrationality, impulsivity, and automatic processing can be easily integrated into the model as background factors in the evolution of beliefs or indications of actual control. nonetheless, critique towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 9 remains that the model is thereby highly dependent on proxies, very much subject to researchers’ interpretation, and thus relatively vague. in the realm of utility-oriented approaches, in contrast, automatic cognition and unreasoned behaviour are barely considered. at their centre is rational thinking which directly opposes any behaviour that bypasses preceding intentions. this premise is one of the most crucial shortcomings of utility-oriented approaches when it comes to fertility behaviour. even in the tdib, the process of translating desires into behaviour encompasses reasoned intentions – even though miller and pasta (2002) explicitly elaborate on unintended pregnancies. this might reflect imprecise phrasing in surveys (philipov 2011) – is “trying not to get pregnant” an indicator of intentions or of contraceptive behaviour? – but it might also reflect the conceptually undesignated direct, unconscious impact of, for example, desires on behaviour. automatic cognition following pre-set schemas is only considered as a proxy in individuals’ motivational traits (miller et al. 2004). thus, the (in our view) substantiated critique of neglecting unreasoned fertility behaviour is directed at the tpb and utility-oriented approaches, but also at the tdib. the tca, in contrast, meets the requirement for automatic cognition and behaviour that bypasses reasoning. the life course furthermore, there is a set of recurrently postulated requirements, model specifications, or extensions which, in our view, feature remarkable resemblances to mayer’s (2001) perspective on the life course. a first argument is that fertility behaviour can be a side effect of other concurrent behaviours. morgan and bachrach (2011; bachrach/morgan 2013) and barber (2011) stress that childbirth-invoking behaviours can be individually perceived as acts of relationship maintenance or continuation, as inattentiveness to contraception, or as anti-abortive behaviours. adapting mayer’s (2001) life course perspective, fertility behaviour is thus a multidimensional process: different areas of life – partnerships, sex, childbirth behaviour – develop alongside and in interdependence of one another. a second recurring argument is that past as well as anticipated future behaviours crucially affect current fertility behaviours. prominent examples are the impacts of the “age and stage” of individuals, the child parity at the time in question, individuals’ experiences in previous and current relationships, and the balancing of births with a professional career (ajzen/klobas 2013; spéder/kapitány 2015). similarly, fertility intentions have been argued to change, to potentially “zig-zag” across time (morgan/ bachrach 2011; liefbroer 2011; philipov 2011; bachrach/morgan 2013). in terms of mayer’s (2001) life course perspective, this argumentation reflects the self-referentiality of the life course: the actions of a person are shaped and influenced by their accumulated experiences and resources (and not-cumulated resources such as the lack of contraceptive knowledge) as well as their future plans. a third set of arguments refers to the relevance of societal contexts to fertility decisions (liefbroer et al. 2015; philipov et al. 2015b; klobas/ajzen 2015). in the light • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider10 of mayer’s (2001) life course perspective, this conceptualises the life course as a multi-level process which is influenced by and itself influences its social and societal conditions. these conditions’ impact on fertility behaviour requires, however, more extensive and explicit consideration in the next section. facing the critique of neglecting the concurrent multidimensionality and sequential self-referentiality of the life course, ajzen and colleagues (fishbein/ajzen 2010; ajzen/klobas 2013) argue that the tpb does provide links to these features. namely, previous behaviours or those induced by different intentions start feedback loops by serving as background factors which influence the beliefs preceding the fertility behaviour in question. in the very same vein, the tdib accounts for life course features mainly through background factors which shape motivational traits (miller/ pasta 1995). the authors of the tca have elaborated quite extensively on how past behaviours and behaviours with different intentions can influence fertility behaviour (bachrach/morgan 2013). accordingly, the tca considers past behaviours or behaviours induced by other notions as shaping a new base structure and mental schema. thus, the modelled path to fertility behaviour starts anew as soon as the modelled path to another behaviour is completed. temporally, these two processes can happen any time – separately as well as concurrently. past behaviours, resources, and experiences can influence not only the material and schematic structure, but also the evolution of previously reasoned intentions into automatic schemas. concurrent non-fertility behaviours can induce a situation in which fertility behaviour happens as an automatically processed by-product. in the full heuristic model, however, these elaborations are boiled down to an element of structure or only serve as background information. thus, the authors of the tca also refrain from explicitly modelling behaviours as products or by-products of other behaviours. utility-oriented approaches extensively cover self-referential processes underlying fertility behaviours, i.e. behaviours that are influenced by previous experiences and resources, at least in terms of the ideal embedding and succession of childbirth(s) (gustafsson 2001). less utilitarian experiences and resources are, however, neglected. similarly, fertility behaviour as an outcome of other notions such as relationship maintenance is ignored completely because it bypasses rational and immediately intentional behaviour. thus, an explicit modelling of the concurrent multidimensionality of the life course is missing in all four models; sequential self-referentiality is mostly regarded as a loop in all models (save for utility-oriented approaches). the recognition of life courses’ features is thus mainly in the hands of the researcher. in our view, however, a heuristic model of fertility should describe interconnections of behaviours more explicitly. social and societal conditions the argument of social and societal conditions encompasses several influencing factors relevant to societies or social groups. top down, these include, first, policies, economic conditions, and institutions, but also the historical and current context such as the development of reproductive technology. second, fertility behaviour towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 11 is embedded into a leitbild, a cultural image of an ideal family, which also influences the interpretation of political and economic conditions (schneider et al. 2015; lück et al. 2017). for individuals, there may be several different leitbilder in place, for instance, on the societal level, the regional level, within the own social group (helfferich 2008), and on the level of a reference, role-model social group. third, peers and relatives affect the fertility behaviour of both individuals and couples by serving as references for social learning, by exerting social pressure, by offering social support, and by acting as “vectors” for social contagions (bernardi/klärner 2014; pink 2017). of course, all these aspects are, in turn, shaped by the cumulated fertility behaviour of the individuals in questions, though that perspective exceeds the scope of this article. the tpb covers the presented social and societal conditions by considering normative beliefs and social and institutional background factors (fishbein/ajzen 2010), though almost exclusively through the lens of social pressure. furthermore, to account for macro-micro transmissions, recent research (liefbroer et al. 2015) has embedded the tpb into a model inspired by coleman (1990). in contrast, the tdib incorporates social and societal conditions far less explicitly. the personal value system which is conceptualised to influence desires acts as a mere proxy to a leitbild, similar to the role of social networks as background factors in the formation of intentions and the implementation of behaviour (miller/ pasta 1994, 1995; miller et al. 2004). thus, the tdib lacks explicit links to social and societal conditions which, in our view, are crucial to fertility behaviour. in the tca, social and societal conditions, such as social networks, institutions, and leitbilder, are considered as cognition-influencing material and schematic structures. the model correctly pays attention their interconnection and their cohesiveness as structure. in our view, it thereby offers the most promising approach in terms of accounting for social and societal conditions, though it achieves this by extracting only the very essence of the effects, and not the mode of operation. in utility-oriented approaches, social and societal conditions are included rather ambivalently. institutional and economic conditions influence the costs and benefits which behaviours entail and thereby shape considerations (e.g. leibowitz et al. 1992). normative conditions are included through the study of the social-normative value of children (nauck 2014). the diffusion of behaviours through social networks, in contrast, is not included in utility-oriented approaches. in sum, all models except for the tdib offer one or two promising links to account for social and societal conditions’ impact on fertility behaviour. because of the complexity of the soci(et)al world, however, the models either miss aspects of the exerted influence or remain relatively vague. the body another aspect for which heuristic models explaining fertility have been criticised is downplaying the role of the body. as mentioned earlier, this includes, on the one hand, sexual arousal and biology that can cause fertility behaviour to bypass intention (barber 2011; klobas 2011). on the other hand, an infertile body can hinder intentions and procreative behaviour from being transformed into a measurable out• uta brehm, norbert f. schneider12 come; the body acts as an “antagonist” to the goals of its bearer (heimerl/hofmann 2016). one main reason for the neglect is that while the heuristic models concern (proor contraceptive) behaviours, they are more often than not operationalised by measurable childbirth. ajzen and klobas (2013) argue that these bodily aspects can be integrated in the tpb as outcomes of other behaviours with different intentions, i.e. as a lack of actual behavioural control. once again, the advocates of the tpb argue that this is a question of the operationalisation and interpretation of the model: accommodating the body as an important element in fertility therefore lies solely in the responsibility of the researcher. similarly, the role of the body is included in the tdib as a proxy at best. though (perceived) fecundity has been considered in the tdib (miller/pasta 1995, 2002), the body as a potential antagonist in translating behaviour into childbirth is limited. similarly, the body as direct antecedent of behaviour, e.g. as host to sexual arousal, is neglected. in the tca and utility-oriented approaches, the body is completely ruled out as potential actor. the tca does not raise the issue at all, whereas, in utility-oriented, especially economic approaches, infertility as a hindrance to fertility intentions runs contrary to the premise of actors’ perfect information. fertility behaviour as sideeffect of, for example, sexual arousal contradicts the notion that all behaviour is cognitively reasoned and controlled. thus, the body is rarely really accounted as a proor antagonist in fertility behaviour. in the addressed heuristic models, only tpb and tdib offer links to allow for proxies. to some extent, it is not within the scope of the models because their aim is to explain behaviour, i.e. proor contraception or indifferent sexual behaviour. since this behaviour is in most cases operationalised by the (more easily measurable) outcome of childbirth, however, a theoretical ignorance of the role of the body grossly neglects the body as important factor. 2.3 interim conclusion in sum, the four models vary greatly in their integration of the five aspects discussed above – the dyad of partners, unreasoned behaviour, the life course, social and societal conditions, and the body. only the tdib and utility-oriented approaches pay specific attention to the dyad of partners; only the tca explicitly models unreasoned behaviour. the life course perspective is addressed in some ways by all four models, but a more explicit integration may contribute greatly to comprehending fertility behaviours. societal conditions such as institutions and normative leitbilder (cultural conceptions of family) are considered more or less explicitly in all four models. the impact of social networks beyond the argument of social pressure is, in contrast, only accommodated through proxies at best. similarly, the body as a potential actor is merely reflected in control and perception proxies in tpb and tdib. as a consequence of this jigsaw puzzle of strengths and weaknesses, two or more of these models are regularly used concurrently in research to account for the towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 13 relevant elements of fertility behaviour (billari et al. 2009; testa 2012; balbo et al. 2013; bernardi et al. 2015). as a result, researchers not only bear the responsibility to interpret the existing models and to laboriously translate their points of interest into proxies, but also to select and piece together full models or specific model elements, aiming to compensate for shortcomings and to balance their different foci. therefore, the field of fertility research is varied and not necessarily a neat sequence of research questions and projects to answer them. a model that incorporates all relevant elements may be able to unify extant and future research. 3 what we know from empirical research the discussed heuristic models closely guide quantitative research. on the one hand, they form the basis for survey construction (e.g. the tpb for the ggs, vikat et al. 2007). as a result, the theoretically derived items pre-empt the replies of respondents and even their wording, thereby crucially impairing the reliability of the data (barrett/wellings 2002; maher/dever 2004). on the other hand, the heuristic models are consulted to formulate and operationalise hypotheses and to interpret results (e.g. rosina/testa 2009; billari et al. 2009; bauer/jacob 2010; balbo et al. 2013; stein et al. 2014; testa et al. 2014). therefore, much quantitative fertility research is bound to replicate potential shortcomings of the heuristic models. thus, in the following, we compile evidence, mainly from qualitative research, and identify the multilinear, complex pathways that have been found to factually precede fertility. some studies – mainly qualitative ones, but very few quantitative ones – address the issue of explaining fertility openly and from the research subjects’ perspective, thereby fuelling the criticism directed at the presented heuristic models. indeed, they find that the general desire to have children is not nearly as often the result of a big “lifestyle choice” as is commonly assumed (rijken/knijn 2009). instead, a considerable share of respondents report that they could easily do without children – but could also be easily persuaded to have them, if, for instance, their partnership depended on it (maher/dever 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). furthermore, many reason their desires to have children not with excogitated arguments but with biological urges and intuition, with desires to repeat or ameliorate their own experiences, with a natural progression of their relationship, or with the feeling to be ready for the experience (chen 2015). it is mainly people who are childless by choice and thus regularly confronted by society, who consciously reflect on their decision. but even in the decision of this select group, relational, instrumental, material, and career-orientated reasoning is of minor importance. instead, they emphasise their biological and psychological disposition, their responsibility towards the potential child, as well as the experiences in their family of origin (maher/dever 2004; maher et al. 2004; chen 2015; also hayford 2009). in fact, parenthood mostly seems to be so self-evident that, before the “right time” has actually come, even dyadic agreements stem from the communicative standard repertoire in the early relationship and nonverbal exchanges thereafter. therefore, each partner’s (particularly the man’s) general desire to have children is rather a litmus test for the relationship; • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider14 the actual question of having children is only due when (or if) one partner feels the “right time” has come and advances the conversation. if this conversation unveils discrepancies, the couple either breaks up, one partner waits for the readiness of the other, or accepts the concluding childlessness (rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). thus, the more interesting question in fertility research is that of childbirth timing. in the life course, the ideal timing lies at the intersection of biological, psychosocial, relational, occupational, and intergenerational “right times” (perrier 2013). interestingly, biological constraints are relevant to all women and increasingly also to men. the interpretation of the female “biological clock” ranges between deadlines of approaching infertility and of approaching self-set age limits (rijken/knijn 2009). analogically, men increasingly consider the age of 40 years to be a limit to an ideal, bodily fit and agile fatherhood (maher et al. 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; shirani 2013). psycho-social aspects, in contrast, often limit the ideal childbearing years at the lower age range. childbearing requires maturity, and maturity is a moving target encompassing completed personal fulfilment, a stabilised self, suitable living arrangements, and an inner readiness (maher et al. 2004; hobcraft/kiernan 1995). relationally, the ideal timing of childbearing requires a stable, lasting relationship with the right partner who is also at their “right time”. at the same time, the timing is constrained occupationally by a completed educational and stable and adequate professional career. in this respect, however, educational groups may vary widely. for highly educated people, the prospect of a career itself serves as a kind of contraceptive (perrier 2013): rijken and knijn (2009) observe that the very emergence of desires to have a child highly depends on the achievement of personal fulfilment and having established a satisfactory career. for less educated people, in contrast, early parenthood is a source of pride and social status which they might not achieve otherwise (kağıtçıbaşı/ataca 2005; hayford 2009; perrier 2013). prior to childbirth, people with lower educational attainment hardly report any practical concerns; the desire and the readiness for a child are the main factors (rijken/knijn 2009). as a result, the less educated typically rearrange their life course and pursue an education and a career after family formation. the post-hoc rationalisation of feeling like they have not been at a professional disadvantage is supported by quantitative findings, which cannot find a consistent long-term career effect of the age at first birth (duncan 2005; brehm/buchholz 2014; putz/engelhardt 2014). arguably, the most important aspects to respondents is, however, the intergenerational “right time” which has been neglected somewhat in research. an intergenerationally ideal childbearing enables parents and children to enjoy many years together, it allows the grandparents to spend many healthy years with their grandchildren, and it maintains the possibility of the parents themselves enjoying their own grandchild later on (perrier 2013). obviously, these different “right times” counteract one another: some strive for a fairly early childbirth, others seek to postpone it. as a result, the majority of childless people attribute their childlessness to not ever having found their personal “right time”. interestingly, they seldomly report regretting their resulting and eventually final delays (maher et al. 2004). as opposed to reconciling all these different “right times,” however, between one quarter and half of all first births result from unplanned pregnancy (maher et towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 15 al. 2004; schneider 2016). the reasons for women to carry these pregnancies out only rarely originate from their aversion for abortions, but rather from dyadic decision-making and a familiarisation with the facts (maher/dever 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). some respondents define such unplanned pregnancies as simultaneously wanted and unwanted because they generally want children, but not at the particular time or with the particular partner (barrett/wellings 2002). some respondents even reject the idea of “planning” altogether when it comes to childbearing; particularly some men consider dealing with unexpected challenges when they occur as a reflection their masculinity (barrett/wellings 2002; helfferich 2008; rijken/knijn 2009). following the first child, the intrinsic motivation to have a second is conventionally very high. having an only child is associated with loneliness and selfishness in many cultures; respondents with only children often refer to external constraints, such as age, to deny responsibility for their choice (chen 2015). the decisions for any further births beyond the second are then mostly made sequentially and ever more consciously, since the precise costs and reconciliation issues are known already. in fact, most mothers of three or more children do not identify as particularly motherly, but ascribe their sequential decisions to their reconcilable jobs and occupational opportunities, according to a study carried out in australia. beyond that, economic considerations are of less importance to parents of many children, they value the joy and love associated with a family more highly, and tend to reject idealised notions of motherhood (maher et al. 2004; chen 2015). the short review of qualitative literature emphasises the validity of the five essential concepts for heuristic models to explain fertility. though the review suggests that the dyad of partners, both well-reasoned and unreasoned behaviour, the life course, social and societal conditions, and the body all play a relevant part in fertility behaviour, the individual elements are hardly separable and require a considerable level of abstraction. for instance, the life courses of both partners and their social environment are tightly interconnected, and their reasoned or unreasoned cognitions can interact with “age and stage” in their life course. in order to develop a heuristic model, however, some abstractions must be made, albeit still allowing for complex interaction. furthermore, the review highlights that fertility behaviour does not follow a single heuristic model, but rather a variety of different pathways. for some people, conscious reasoning on childbirth in their stage of the life course plays a central role; others decide to have a child subconsciously to pursue their partnership; still others have an unplanned child. the pathways can differ between individuals, even between partners within one couple, as well as within individuals: the pathways to fertility typically differ by parity, but can even change due to new decisional framework conditions. to meet the challenges of constructing a comprehensive model of fertility resulting from this variety of pathways, one must first understand the pathways themselves. in the literature, different pathways to fertility have now and again been addressed (klobas 2011; philipov 2011; spéder/kapitány 2015; cf. also hakim 2000) or explicitly studied (earle 2004; hayford 2009; bernardi et al. 2015). the identi• uta brehm, norbert f. schneider16 fied pathways therein are further supplemented by reports in qualitative interviews. thus, the literature on pathways is multifaceted and its results are scattered. to obtain an overview of their variety, we compile the derivable pathways below. while the compilation attempts to be all-encompassing, it certainly does not claim to be so. besides the theoretically most relevant and common “ideal-typical” pathway, the list is roughly ordered by eventual parenthood and its intentionality. • “ideal-typical”: this is the pathway most other heuristic models target. the time is reasoned to be right or adjusted accordingly, and the pregnancy is intrinsically motivated and intended by both partners. the reasoned postponement of childbirth falls within this pathway (earle 2004). • “early articulated childlessness”: these individuals have been very certain of not wanting children early on, for reasons of perceived unsuitability to be parents or prioritisation of independence and personal fulfilment. this is an individual decision, but a decisive factor for a relationship (maher et al. 2004; hayford 2009; bernardi et al. 2015). • “childless careerist”: they prioritise their career over having children and thus want to remain childless for the sake of their career. this is an individual decision which is decisive for a relationship. the pathway is mainly substantiated by theoretical arguments (hakim 2000). • “childless postponers”: the “right time” to have children never arose, for reasons of psycho-social, relational, occupational, and, lastly, (perceived or real) biological constraints (maher et al. 2004; hayford 2009; henwood et al. 2011; bernardi et al. 2015). • “infertile”: they are involuntarily childless for reasons of their (or their partners’) insurmountable infertility or unsuccessful alternatives. • “infertile postponers”: they (or their partners) struggle with conceiving or carrying the pregnancy full term. they overcome it eventually, but later than originally anticipated. • “late articulators”: their desire to have children is very strong, but comes relatively late in life; they worry about missing out on the last chance. thus, their childbirth intention is a prerequisite to taking up or continuing a relationship, they communicate it clearly and forcefully (rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). • “natural parents”: they are highly family-oriented and aim for a (large) family early on. thus, they pursue the first childbirth very early and sequential births soon after that (hakim 2000; hayford 2009). • “counter-ideal”: conditions are not ideal, but the intrinsic motivation to have children is so strong that they pursue childbirth anyway (earle 2004). • “alternative role”: parenthood is a source of pride and social status. thus, they don’t consider practical challenges before pregnancy. possibly, they consciously feel ready (hayford 2009; rijken/knijn 2009; perrier 2013). • “proceeders”: they closely connect being in a long-term relationship with having children. a child is thus a natural continuation of their relationship, a legitimisation of their marriage, or a completion of their family (e.g. according to a two-child norm; maher et al. 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 17 • “flexible”: the individual is flexible or indifferent about having or not having a child; the decision is contingent upon the partner (earle 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; bernardi et al. 2015). • “laissez-faire”: they consider a child welcome but not (yet) planned; they don’t have any reason to use contraception, but no reason to actively pursue childbirth either (earle 2004). • “sliders”: their pregnancy is unplanned or unintended, but upon acknowledging it, they adjust their conditions and mindsets to accommodate the child. possibly, they reject abortions (generally or for themselves); otherwise, they might decide that the time is never right until you make it so (earle 2004; rijken/knijn 2009; chen 2015). these pathways are abstract; it must be kept in mind that partners can individually follow different pathways which merge asymmetrically into a joint path. also, the presented pathways differ in length: while some are spread out across several years, others take hold within days or weeks. furthermore, individuals may follow a succession of different patterns themselves. specifically, they may be stringed together by childbirths of different parities or by changes in dispositions, situations, or behaviours – for example, with regard to relationship stability, life plans, health and wellbeing, as well as structural or cultural conditions. this literature review has shown that pathways to fertility are indeed multi-layered and multifaceted: not all potentially relevant aspects always play a role in fertility behaviours; they differ in their prevalence, their strength and their timing of influence. if aspects do, however, play a role at all, disregarding them distorts the comprehensibility of fertility. thus, the discrepancy between fairly unilinear heuristic models on the one hand and multi-path reality on the other is, first, theoretically implausible. second, neglecting this variety of pathways is potentially detrimental to the results of empirical research: analysing pooled pathways cannot differentiate overlays and, as a result, can lead to their empirical neutralisation or diminishment. it is therefore high time to establish a heuristic model that accounts for these different pathways to fertility. 4 towards a comprehensive fertility model the previous sections have shown that existing heuristic models of fertility fall short of explaining fertility in many respects, especially in terms of considering all relevant elements and allowing for the empirical variety of pathways preceding fertility. in the following section, we propose a heuristic model, the model of dyadic pathways, which shall provide an integrative and thereby more realistic approach to fertility research. more specifically, the model aims, first, to be composed of the elements that have been suggested and found to matter, and, second, to incorporate all relevant pathways to fertility. in the following, we introduce the different layers of the model step by step. in doing so, we aim for better comprehension, not a hierarchically reasoned presentation. it is also crucial to understand that not all presented • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider18 elements and processes are essential to fertility, but rather only potentially involved in the multilinear complex leading to childbirth. 4.1 the composition of the model of dyadic pathways the centre of our comprehensive fertility model, the model of dyadic pathways (mdp), resembles miller’s and pasta’s (1995, 1996) tdib, yet with one major difference. instead of desires, it incorporates, more broadly, the motivational frame of each partner (f = female, m = male),4 based on which each forms an actual intention to act. mutually, they pursue a behaviour which precedes childbirth (fig. 1). by motivational frame, we mean a multifaceted element of partners’ individual, intrinsic motivation regarding generally having or not having a child, childbirth timing, and the number of children: attitudes, values, preferences, personal leitbilder (cultural conceptions of family), scripts, and desires. potentially, these motivational frames can range on a continuum between child-positive and child-negative, they can be very dynamic and fluctuate between both poles, and they can be ambivalent, i.e. consist of both child-positive and child-negative motivational frames simultaneously (miller/pasta 2002; barber et al. 2010). these motivational frames precede the intentions of both partners. intentions, in turn, range on a scale between childpositive and child-negative but can be indifferent, too (miller 2011). the motivational frames and intentions of partners may – given their verbal or non-verbal communication – influence one another: on the one hand, we follow and extend the argument of miller and colleagues (2004) that the motivational frame of each partner influences the other’s as well as their own intention. on the other hand, we add reciprocal influences of partners’ intentions. this, first, reflects the reports of some respondents that they themselves might be indifferent about having children but if their partner was not, they would agree to act according to the notion of their partner. this process clearly bypasses the (indifferent) motivational frame of one partner and arguably also a notable exchange about it since the child-positive person – knowing about the indifference of their partner – may reach out directly once the own intentions are set. second, the intentions of one partner may be influenced by the other’s due to their greater bargaining power. we will elaborate on this issue in greater detail below. furthermore, we add a direct connection between motivational frames and behaviour, bypassing the intentions. by doing so, we pay regard to what earle (2004) calls a “laissez-faire pregnancy”: a child is welcome, but neither intended nor unintended. there is, for example, no time squeeze yet, but no reasons to use contraception either. thus, the motivational frame leads straight to the behaviour of the couple and, potentially, to a child. surrounding this core are elements required to understand fertility which influence, moderate, or bypass motivational frames and intentions which we will intro4 aside from pathways that are premised on spontaneous fertilisation, the dyad is gender-unspecific. towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 19 duce step by step in the following. in line with most existing heuristic models, a central element is conscious reasoning. it reflects on the benefits of having children on the one hand, which can be measured, for instance, using the value of children approach (hoffman/hoffman 1973; nauck 2014), and the costs and opportunity costs of having children according to utility-oriented approaches on the other hand (becker 1960; see also reasons for and against children in langdridge et al. 2005). this reasoning exerts influence on the motivational frames of both partners as well as their intentions. motivational frames are mostly shaped by partners’ reasoning on the benefits of having children. if, for example, the personal or relational psychological utility of having children is assumed to be particularly positive, the motivational frames are child-positive, too – and vice versa (cf. miller/pasta 2002). in assumedly fewer cases, reasoning on (opportunity) costs contributes to suppressing motivational frames to have children. intentions, in contrast, can be presumed to be the result of weighing all costs and benefits against one another – given that reasoning plays a role at all. as seen from the qualitative research, however, there can be much more to motivational frames and intentions than reasoning. the life course in its concurrent multidimensionality and sequential self-referentiality plays a particular role in that regard – often in interaction with the conscious reasoning of a person. for example, the “right time” to have children is highly contingent upon the previous and current life course stage, but also on the anticipated future one. more specifically, the “right time” can be influenced by the resources and opportunities a person has accumulated over the life course. it can be shaped by previous and current experiences in the family of origin and particularly in the current relationship (including intimate behaviours) and the family composition (e.g. parity, gender, and health of previous children). furthermore, the “right time” can be affected by living arrangements and occupational satisfaction, by the stage of personal fulfilment and maturation, and by the perception of a biological time squeeze (which, in our view, is principally distinct from the body since the time squeeze is mostly based on statistical perceptions or normative preferences). additionally, ideas of the future can play a role, such as the anticipated parental role (e.g. being a fit, active, partaking parent and grandparent) fig. 1: the core of the model of dyadic pathways 1 towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the motivational frames and intentions of partners may – given their verbal or non-verbal communication – influence one another: on the one hand, we follow and extend the argument of miller and colleagues (2004) that the motivational frame of each partner influences the other’s as well as their own intention. on the other hand, we add reciprocal influences of partners’ intentions. this, first, reflects the reports of some respondents that they themselves might be indifferent about having children but if their partner was not, they would agree to act according to the notion of their partner. this process clearly bypasses the (indifferent) motivational frame of one partner and arguably also a notable exchange about it since the child-positive person – knowing about the indifference of their partner – may reach out directly once the own intentions are set. second, the intentions of one partner may be influenced by the other’s due to their greater bargaining power. we will elaborate on this issue in greater detail below. furthermore, we add a direct connection between motivational frames and behaviour, bypassing the intentions. by doing so, we pay regard to what earle (2004) calls a “laissez-faire pregnancy”: a child is the intentions of both partners. figure 1: the core of the model of dyadic pathways motivatl. frame f intention m childbehaviour intention f source: own design. motivatl. frame m source: own design • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider20 or alternative life plans. the weights of reasoned arguments change and shift along these life course aspects, both with regard to (opportunity) costs and anticipated benefits. thus, the interaction of reasoning and the life course exerts impact on each partner’s motivational frame to have children as well as on their translation of it into an intention. beyond that, the interaction of reasoning and the life course forms the individual bargaining power of each partner when it comes to differing intentions. at that point, one person might exert influence over the other, resulting in the intention of one partner affecting the other’s, despite or against their differing motivational frames. in the model, this particular dyadic perspective is reflected in the two-way interchange between the intentions of both partners. in addition to the impact exerted by the individual-level life course, we explicitly integrate the couple-level life course and the intersections of both levels. thus, we build upon but go beyond the concept of “linked lives” (elder 1994). the couplelevel life course covers aspects that only emerge and exist in the couple: the shared experiences of a couple, their joint resources and behaviours, common modes of interaction and communication, and unified schemes, meanings and notions. the couple-level life course is thus more than the sum of its parts. furthermore, we argue that both individual-level life courses and the mutual couple-level life course influence one another in all directions. on the one hand, the two individual life courses reciprocally affect one another. on the other, the couple-level life course is shaped two-sidedly by the individual-level life courses and, in turn, reverberates back into them. this multifaceted life course complex shapes the motivational frames and intentions of both partners. beyond this, the life course complex may influence fertility behaviour directly, bypassing explicit motivational frames or intentions, let alone conscious reasoning. for example, an active sex life increases the chances of contraceptive failures – and so does lacking contraceptive knowledge or resources. furthermore, upon having reached the right “age and stage” in both personal and relationship life, conscious perceptions of motivational frames and assessments of intentions may be bypassed; the life course exerts direct impact on behaviour. this is one way in which the previously proposed automatic cognition and unreasoned behaviour is reflected in the model. as a result from the preceding elaborations, figure 2 supplements the mdp’s core with the interacting influences of reasoning on the one hand and the complex of individual-level (white) and couple-level (dark grey) life courses and their interactions on the other hand. in a next step, we introduce the role of social and societal conditions – short: the soci(et)al world (cf. fig. 3). as already established, the societal world in our definition includes macro level policies and institutions, the economy and the labour market, historical context and further influencing conditions such as the state of reproductive technology. interrelated with these elements is the societal, social-group, or reference-group leitbild as cultural conception of a family (helfferich 2008; schneider et al. 2015; lück et al. 2017). on the micro level, the social world includes the influence of the social network, be it through social support, learning, pressure, or contagion (bernardi/klärner 2014). towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 21 the soci(et)al world exerts its influence on fertility in manifold ways. a fairly straightforward way is the impact it has on reasoning, which has been paid more or less sufficient attention in existing models. for example, the assessment of the costs and benefits of having a child is framed and shaped by the current institutional, cultural and social contexts. similarly, the life course is, in some ways, stamped by social and societal conditions, for instance when it comes to options of acquiring knowledge and resources, the typical progression of a life course, as well as perceptions of “ideal” prerequisites, timing, and family composition. this encompasses the assessment that parenthood is “part of the natural progression of [a] relationship” (chen 2015: 83). as such, the soci(et)al world completes the triad that consists of an interaction of reasoning, the life course, and the soci(et)al world itself. the majority of exogenous impact factors of fertility originate from this triad: restrictions and opportunities, barriers and stimuli. beyond that, the soci(et)al world can directly influence motivational frames and intentions and even behaviour, though the boundaries are not always clear-cut. with regard to motivational frames, social and societal conditions contribute to whether having a child is a central aim in life, and to defining the identity of “mother” or “father”. debatably, we as social scientists would also subsume respondents’ classification of such motivational frames to be “natural” and “intuitive” (chen 2015) under the wide roof of “normativity”. to understand the impact the soci(et)al world has on intentions and, similarly, behaviour, one ought to recall the public stir produced by orna donath’s (2015) qualitative study about israeli women “regretting motherhood”. in that study, mothers stressed that if had it not been for normative expectations, they would not have had children – and might have been happier that way. clearly, the motivation was not to have children, but rather to fit in or to live up to expectations. childbearing intentions and behaviour thus bypassed the respective fig. 2: the mdp’s core with influences of conscious reasoning and the life course 2 in addition to the impact exerted by the individual-level life course, we explicitly integrate the couplelevel life course and the intersections of both levels. thus, we build upon but go beyond the concept of “linked lives” (elder 1994). the couple-level life course covers aspects that only emerge and exist in the couple: the shared experiences of a couple, their joint resources and behaviours, common modes of interaction and communication, and unified schemes, meanings and notions. the couple-level life course is thus more than the sum of its parts. furthermore, we argue that both individual-level life courses and the mutual couple-level life course influence one another in all directions. on the one hand, the two individual life courses reciprocally affect one another. on the other, the couple-level life course is shaped two-sidedly by the individual-level life courses and, in turn, reverberates back into them. this multifaceted life course complex shapes the motivational frames and intentions of both partners. beyond this, the life course complex may influence fertility behaviour directly, bypassing explicit motivational frames or intentions, let alone conscious reasoning. for example, an active sex life increases the chances of contraceptive failures – and so does lacking contraceptive knowledge or resources. furthermore, upon having reached the right “age and stage” in both personal and relationship life, conscious perceptions of motivational frames and assessments of intentions may be bypassed; the life course exerts direct impact on behaviour. this is one way in which the previously proposed automatic cognition and unreasoned behaviour is reflected in the model. as a result from the preceding elaborations, figure 2 supplements the mdp’s core with the interacting influences of reasoning on the one hand and the complex of individual-level (white) and couple-level (dark grey) life courses and their interactions on the other hand. figure 2: the mdp’s core with influences of conscious reasoning and the life course motivatl. frame f intention m childbehaviour intention f life course f life course m reasoning f reasoning m source: own design. motivatl. frame m source: own design • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider22 intrinsic motivational frame; possibly, the pathway might not even include intentions. on the contrary, the pathway is yet another way in which fertility behaviour might be the result of automatic cognition and unreasoned behaviour. lastly, the soci(et)al world itself can exert direct impact on the successful birth of a child. depending on a society’s or social group’s technological and legal state, but also its infrastructure and its culture, preand perinatal medicine can or cannot work its wonders. the final element required in a full heuristic model of fertility is, as we have argued, the body as a “teammate” or “antagonist” (heimerl/hofmann 2016; cf. fig. 3). its most obvious role is, first, to allow or hinder a pregnancy upon proceptive behaviour, depending on its fecundity or infertility. it thereby influences the connection between behaviour and childbirth. in this regard, the body itself can be influenced by other elements of the model, namely the life course and the soci(et)al world: previous (health) behaviours and experiences can impair fertility. the technological, legal, infrastructural, and cultural state of a society or social group, in turn, can amplify or compensate for reproductive weaknesses of the body. second, the body can act as a catalyst for sexual arousal (barber 2011). thus, it might be a driver of behaviour itself, independent of any other behaviour-influencing element, let alone reasoning. as a consequence of such pathways which bypass clear intentions, a comprehensive model of dyadic pathways furthermore needs to allow actors to either decide to have the child post-hoc, or to intervene, i.e. to abort. this is included in the mdp by drawing a connection between childbearing intentions and the pathway between behaviour and childbirth (which, formally, proceeds via exogenous, abortive behaviour). when abortion comes into play, however, the soci(et)al world gains a role, too: the normative or structural rejection of abortions fig. 3: the model of dyadic pathways 3 in a next step, we introduce the role of social and societal conditions – short: the soci(et)al world (cf. figure 3). as already established, the societal world in our definition includes macro level policies and the final element required in a full heuristic model of fertility is, as we have argued, the body as a “teammate” or “antagonist” (heimerl, hofmann 2016; cf. figure 3). its most obvious role is, first, to allow or hinder a pregnancy upon proceptive behaviour, depending on its fecundity or infertility. it thereby influences the connection between behaviour and childbirth. in this regard, the body itself can be influenced by other elements of the model, namely the life course and the soci(et)al world: previous (health) behaviours and experiences can impair fertility. the technological, legal, infrastructural, and cultural state of a society or social group, in turn, can amplify or compensate for reproductive weaknesses of the body. second, the body can act as a catalyst for sexual arousal (barber 2011). thus, it might be a driver of behaviour itself, independent of any other behaviour-influencing element, let alone reasoning. as a consequence of such pathways which bypass clear intentions, a comprehensive model of dyadic pathways furthermore needs to allow actors to either decide to have the child post-hoc, or to intervene, i.e. to abort. this is included in the mdp by drawing a connection between childbearing intentions and the pathway between behaviour and childbirth (which, formally, proceeds via exogenous, abortive behaviour). when abortion comes into play, however, the soci(et)al world gains a role, too: the normative or structural rejection of abortions can lead to childbirth, even though peoples’ motivational frame, reasoning and life course might demand the opposite. this decision is likely to cross intentions, figure 3: the model of dyadic pathways motivatl. frame f intention m childbehaviour intention f body f life course f life course m reasoning f reasoning m so ci (e t)a l w or ld body m source: own design. motivatl. frame m source: own design towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 23 can lead to childbirth, even though peoples’ motivational frame, reasoning and life course might demand the opposite. this decision is likely to cross intentions, but it might also bypass them and connect the soci(et)al world directly to (passive) behaviour, e.g. when norms are so deeply rooted in a person that abortion is, in fact, unthinkable. 4.2 different pathways to fertility differently from most other models, the proposed heuristic model of dyadic pathways covers a multitude of pathways to fertility. some of them have been addressed to explain the model composition. the literature review in the last section, however, suggests many more pathways (cf. pages 16-17). to exemplify the properties of the model, we select three typical or particularly interesting dyadic pathways and describe their progression through the model. namely, we chose (1) an “ideal-typical” well-reasoned dyadic pathway, (2) a union of a “flexible,” i.e. child-indifferent, and a “counter-ideal” partner who is child-positive against all odds, as well as (3) the pathway of “sliders” who become pregnant without any prior intrinsic motivation, let alone intention. to characterise these pathways and their reflection in the mdp, we disassemble the comprehensive model and emphasise only the elements and connections which are relevant to the respective pathway. the “ideal-typical” pathway to fertility the “ideal-typical” pathway to fertility is illustrated in figure 4. according to this pathway, both partners communicate their motivational frames; the exchange mutually influences their motivational frames and intentions. both elements are, furthermore, the result of a reasoning on (opportunity) costs and benefits, such as the fig. 4: the “ideal-typical” pathway to fertility 4 but it might also bypass them and connect the soci(et)al world directly to (passive) behaviour, e.g. when norms are so deeply rooted in a person that abortion is, in fact, unthinkable. 1.1 different pathways to fertility differently from most other models, the proposed heuristic model of dyadic pathways covers a multitude of pathways to fertility. some of them have been addressed to explain the model composition. the literature review in the last section, however, suggests many more pathways (cf. page fehler! textmarke nicht definiert.f.). to exemplify the properties of the model, we select three typical or particularly interesting dyadic pathways and describe their progression through the model. namely, we chose (1) an “ideal-typical” well-reasoned dyadic pathway, (2) a union of a “flexible,” i.e. child-indifferent, and a “counter-ideal” partner who is child-positive against all odds, as well as (3) the pathway of “sliders” who become pregnant without any prior intrinsic motivation, let alone intention. to characterise these pathways and their reflection in the mdp, we disassemble the comprehensive model and emphasise only the elements and connections which are relevant to the respective pathway. the “ideal-typical” pathway to fertility the “ideal-typical” pathway to fertility is illustrated in figure 4. according to this pathway, both partners communicate their motivational frames; the exchange mutually influences their motivational frames and intentions. both elements are, furthermore, the result of a reasoning on (opportunity) costs and benefits, such as the assumed value of children, in interaction with their specific stage in the life course, including their educational and occupational maturation, their completed adolescent selffigure 4: the ‘ideal-typical’ pathway to fertility motivatl. frame f intention m childbehaviour intention f life course f life course m reasoning f reasoning m so ci (e t)a l w or ld source: own design. motivatl. frame m source: own design • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider24 assumed value of children, in interaction with their specific stage in the life course, including their educational and occupational maturation, their completed adolescent self-fulfilment, the suitability of living arrangement, their intergenerational position, and, of course, their stable and satisfactory relationship. this reasoning on the “right time” translates motivational frames into intentions. the soci(et)al world exerts its impact on the motivational frames of both partners, e.g. the desirability of parenthood and a parent identity, as well as their reasoning (e.g. on the nature and weight of costs and benefits) and the life course (e.g. the normative requirements to reaching the “right time,” the role of the intergenerational “right time”). upon forming intentions, both partners jointly pursue proceptive behaviour which soon translates into a successful pregnancy. the body acts as a “team player” instead of an antagonist and does not require further attention. the pathway of one “flexible” and one “counter-ideal” partner figure 5 exemplifies the seemingly simple pathway of a couple of one “counter-ideal” and one “flexible” partner. strikingly, the soci(et)al world, conscious reasoning, and the life course do not play a role for either of the partners. for the “counterideal” partner, this reflects that the strong child-positive motivational frame and particularly its translation into an intention occur irrespective of any constraints. the child positivity is so strong that the partner pursues a proceptive behaviour irrespective of normative or social boundaries, irrespective of any reasoned cost-benefit analysis, and irrespective of any timing concerns in the light of the life course. the “flexible” partner, on the other hand, is not influenced by these elements. he (in our example, it is a man) does not show any motivational frame on his own and his intentions are completely and unidirectionally preceded by the motivational frames and intentions of his partner. as a result, they act jointly, which, again, unimpededly leads to a pregnancy. fig. 5: the pathway of a “flexible” and a “counter-ideal” partner 5 fulfilment, the suitability of living arrangement, their intergenerational position, and, of course, their stable and satisfactory relationship. this reasoning on the “right time” translates motivational frames into intentions. the soci(et)al world exerts its impact on the motivational frames of both partners, e.g. the desirability of parenthood and a parent identity, as well as their reasoning (e.g. on the nature and weight of costs and benefits) and the life course (e.g. the normative requirements to reaching the “right time,” the role of the intergenerational “right time”). upon forming intentions, both partners jointly pursue proceptive behaviour which soon translates into a successful pregnancy. the body acts as a “team player” instead of an antagonist and does not require further attention. the pathway of one “flexible’ and one “counter-ideal” partner figure 5 exemplifies the seemingly simple pathway of a couple of one “counter-ideal” and one “flexible” partner. strikingly, the soci(et)al world, conscious reasoning, and the life course do not play a role for either of the partners. for the “counter-ideal” partner, this reflects that the strong childpositive motivational frame and particularly its translation into an intention occur irrespective of any constraints. the child positivity is so strong that the partner pursues a proceptive behaviour irrespective of normative or social boundaries, irrespective of any reasoned cost-benefit analysis, and irrespective of any timing concerns in the light of the life course. the “flexible” partner, on the other hand, is not influenced by these elements. he (in our example, it is a man) does not show any motivational frame on his own and his intentions are completely and unidirectionally preceded by the motivational frames and intentions of his partner. as a result, they act jointly, which, again, unimpededly leads to a pregnancy. figure 5: the pathway of a “flexible” and a “counter-ideal” partner. motivatl. frame f intention m childbehaviour intention f source: own design. motivatl. frame m source: own design towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 25 the pathway of “sliders” in figure 6, we illustrate a couple that has no intrinsic motivation or intention to become pregnant, but rather “slides into” parenthood following a pregnancy that results from an active intimate life. the pathway exemplifies ways in which the mdp can convey processes that do not follow the linear path of decisions preceding behaviours. instead, “sliders” illustrate how the mdp can be disand reassembled without breaking its general structure. for better readability, we have relocated the impregnating behaviour and its direct antecedents to the left-hand side of figure 6, while the decision-making process to keep the child is moved between behaviour and childbirth. by simply swapping the behavioural for the decision-making complex, one would retain the original shape of the mdp. since the pregnancy of sliders occurs as a by-product of an active intimate life rather than as the result of a decision-making process, the life course makes its first appearance on the left-hand side of figure 6. possibly, the influence of the life course originates from partners’ lack of contraceptive knowledge or, on the contrary, their knowledge of the relatively small odds of becoming pregnant per ovarian cycle and therefore taking a chance (even under ideal conditions, only up to 35 percent of women become pregnant; gnoth et al. 2005). this situation is further fuelled by sexual arousal that defeats further reasoning. as a result, the behaviour and the pregnancy are, in this example, antecedents to the intention-building of partners. following the discovery of the pregnancy, the partners enter the likely difficult conversation about how to proceed (chen 2015). it is only at that stage, on the righthand side of the model, that cost-benefit reasoning in interaction with life course assessments and soci(et)al influences, such as the assurance of social support or the normative rejection of an abortion, contribute to the pathway. as a result, the actual fig. 6: the pathway of “sliders” 6 the pathway of “sliders” in figure 6, we illustrate a couple that has no intrinsic motivation or intention to become pregnant, but rather “slides into” parenthood following a pregnancy that results from an active intimate life. the pathway exemplifies ways in which the mdp can convey processes that do not follow the linear path of decisions preceding behaviours. instead, “sliders” illustrate how the mdp can be disand reassembled without breaking its general structure. for better readability, we have relocated the impregnating behaviour and its direct antecedents to the left-hand side of figure 6, while the decisionmaking process to keep the child is moved between behaviour and childbirth. by simply swapping the behavioural for the decision-making complex, one would retain the original shape of the mdp. since the pregnancy of sliders occurs as a by-product of an active intimate life rather than as the result of a decision-making process, the life course makes its first appearance on the left-hand side of figure 6. possibly, the influence of the life course originates from partners’ lack of contraceptive knowledge or, on the contrary, their knowledge of the relatively small odds of becoming pregnant per ovarian cycle and therefore taking a chance (even under ideal conditions, only up to 35% of women become pregnant; gnoth et al. 2005). this situation is further fuelled by sexual arousal that defeats further reasoning. as a result, the behaviour and the pregnancy are, in this example, antecedents to the intention-building of partners. figure 6: the pathway of ‘sliders’ intention m child intention f behaviour life course f life course m reasoning f reasoning m so ci (e t)a l w or ld body f body m source: own design.source: own design • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider26 conscious fertility decision is made by not aborting the child but carrying the pregnancy full term, i.e. by continuing the connection between behaviour and childbirth. this pathway can plausibly also be asymmetrical. this would apply in cases in which the “sliding” does not occur in a romantic long-term relationship but in a mainly sexual short-term one. in these instances, the decision-making process would be predominantly on the part of the woman, possibly even without any male contribution. hence, the lower half of the decision-making process would be empty, and the life course would, of course, be only relevant on the individual level. 4.3 interim conclusion in the previous section, we presented our model of dyadic pathways and its properties with regard to comprehending a number of widely differing pathways to fertility. our presentation outlined, first, how only a complex and multi-layered model can truly explain the great variety of dyadic processes to having a child. second, we demonstrated how the full model must be disassembled reflectively in order to accommodate and distinguish the pathway variety which, if pooled, may veil weaker trajectories, neutralise opposing ones, and even suggest sequences of steps that do not align with reality. beyond these technical properties, the mdp succeeds in incorporating a number of real-life peculiarities of pathways to fertility. first, it accounts for the dyad of two individuals which potentially have very distinct motivations, notions, and decisional processes that lead to childbirth. the mdp allows for asymmetrical dyadic trajectories that merge into a joint pathway. second, the mdp is, like reality, dynamic and flexible. it is open to linear as well as to swaying decisional processes, to neatly aligned pathways of high and low speeds as well as to detours, roundabouts, and dead ends. third, the mdp integrates not only variability between couples and between individuals, but also within individuals. for example, fertility pathways can differ widely for child parities one, two and three: the first child marks the substantial transition to being a family; the second child pursues the normative ideals; the third child is unplanned or, on the contrary, consciously planned in full knowledge of what goes with it. similarly, fertility pathways can also vary between relationships: a new partner can imply a completely different set of individualand couple-level life courses, of arguments in reasoning, of social conditions. but even less obvious incisions than childbirths and new partnerships can redirect pathways to fertility: occupational or personal reorientation, health issues or diagnoses, societal changes – to name only a few. along these lines, the mdp captures the complex, dynamic, and multidimensional nature of fertility in a single model. 5 the mdp’s contributions and challenges to fertility research in the previous sections, we have measured prevailing heuristic models against unpre-empted evidence and, hence, identified several blind spots of the tpb, the tdib model, the tca, and utility-oriented approaches. as an integrative alternative, we towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 27 have suggested the model of dyadic pathways, and have elaborated on its features and utilities. in the following, we will locate the mdp in existing fertility research by accentuating its contributions and by assessing the challenges to successfully applying it to fertility research. 5.1 contributions the mdp’s contribution to fertility research is threefold: first, its comprehensive perspective on fertility explicitly prompts researchers to take into account all relevant antecedents of fertility. it thus challenges fertility research to move beyond researchers’ selective employment of heuristics, their subjective interpretation of proxies, and different research traditions. instead, the model of dyadic pathways offers a single comprehensive heuristic to understand fertility. at the same time, it offers links to theories of decision-making and action theories. in fact, it prompts their integration, including their differences regarding pathway premises and behavioural logics. the mdp thereby systematically facilitates the simultaneous testing of hypotheses and counter-hypotheses, enabling scientific advancement. second, the mdp reintegrates and connects existing, partly widely varying strands of fertility research. due to different foci and traditions, findings in fertility research are often highly diversified and scattered. the model of dyadic pathways explicates the multifaceted interconnections between these strands. it thereby combines their individual yet complementary and interactive contributions to a conjoint picture to understand fertility. this way, it also exposes missing links to understanding fertility in its complexity, and offers guidance in areas researchers have not yet explored. third, it integrates the multitude of different pathways of fertility. inductive research has shown that fertility can be the result of a wide variety of reasons, conditions, and behaviours. explaining it against the backdrop of a single, linear heuristic model therefore necessarily neglects, veils, or even overwrites relevant pathways to fertility. the model of dyadic pathways, in contrast, prompts their separate acknowledgement and analysis, enabling an assessment of the composition and relevance of each pathway. 5.2 challenges finding the novel pathways described in the mdp, however, crucially depends on the data and thus, in a very first step, on the operationalisation of the model’s elements. this poses a fundamental challenge to research, particularly to survey methodology. while many of the model’s requirements are met in existing surveys and datasets, many other operationalisations are inadequate, outdated, or only occasionally represented at all. some criticism has already been voiced by the scientific community. in the following, we broadly contour and respond to the critique. the focus on dyads is central not only to our mdp but to fertility research in general. to understand fertility, it is crucial to understand partners and their interaction, their similarities, disagreements, and conflicts. eight to fourteen per cent of • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider28 couples report differing family plans, a surprisingly low number (testa et al. 2011; kuhnt 2013). these relatively small numbers may indeed reflect reality, or may be the result of measurement biases such as broad-brush questions or forced dichotomisation. either way, it is worth examining through which pathways partners in disagreement pursue their plans, if and how they differ in their pathway structures, their relevant elements, and what it takes to reconcile their approaches. when it comes to actual questions, qualitative studies suggest that many of the established, sometimes decades-old questionnaire items anticipate the answers of the respondents. beyond that, they are often too simplistic in view of the complexity of fertility, and also in view of the heterogeneity of respondents. thus, to obtain reliable items, it would be worthwhile to take a step back: there is much promise in utilising existing qualitative studies or in conducting targeted new ones as the basis for survey construction. in some respect, the necessary reform of questionnaires is already underway, with a new elicitation of motivational frames, intentions and behaviour at the vanguard. with regard to motivational frames, proposals include two unipolar scales to allow for simultaneous child-positive and child-negative desires (miller 2011), inquiries about several preferences regarding the anticipated number of children (maher et al. 2004; chen 2015), and the operationalisation of a sequential “discovery” of the final number of children since it is often a residual from sequential and dyadic reconcilement after each child (ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2015). beyond that, the leitbild approach (schneider et al. 2015; lück et al. 2017) recommends individual ideals concerning the image of a family, and scripts to mothering and fathering. the operationalisation of intentions, in contrast, should be clearly distinguishable from items measuring desires (testa 2012). furthermore, barber and colleagues (2010) suggest asking people both how much they want to have children and how much they want to avoid them. on all accounts, it is most relevant to also assess how each person perceives the motivational frame and intention of her/his partner and identify the impact on their own notions (miller et al. 2004). with regard to behaviour, questionnaires need to allow not only for contraception and proception, but also for laissez-faire behaviour. in another vein, it is necessary to allow motivational frames and intentions to change over the course of time. this goes beyond the well-known fact that intentions lose their sharpness the further the anticipated decision is in the future (morgan 1985). the matter is of particular interest in observing dyads: although respondents firmly endorse gender equality when it comes to having a say in reproduction, women are granted more decision-making power in the case of dissonances (chen 2015). this seeming contradiction is just one of many that deserve further attention in the pathways to fertility. reasoning as one framing condition that leads to fertility behaviour is well covered in existing surveys – though the selection of questionnaire items is often driven by theoretical considerations (e.g. (opportunity) costs: becker 1960; value of children: nauck 2014) rather than by verified influential ones (cf. reasons for and against having a child: langdridge et al. 2005). unreasoned behaviour remains widely understudied and -measured in this respect. to unveil unreasoned pathways, batowards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways • 29 chrach and morgan (2013) suggest focusing on underlying mental schemas. we would add that surveys should explicitly allow for alternative routes driven by life course events, normative notions, and bodily factors. furthermore, it might be feasible to inquire directly after the actual role of practical or emotional reasoning in individual fertility and to what extent people consciously reflect on their desires, intentions, and behaviours at all. hitherto, quantitative fertility research depends on a number of bridge hypotheses that attribute reasoning to fertility decisions. however, qualitative research implies that these bridges are not built on firm ground. to understand the impact of the life course, we recommend paying detailed attention to both individual-level and couple-level life courses, and their interaction. in terms of individual-level life courses, we suggest operationalising concurrent trajectories, as well as the individual “age and stage” and anticipated future. this concerns, for example, their psycho-social state, including their reproductive knowledge and beliefs, their professional standing, their intergenerational notions, their perceived biological conditions, and, lastly, their relational life courses (cf. details in section 3). the latter overlaps with the couple-level life course which requires particular attention. it represents the shared relationship of the couple, their previous and anticipated biography, the joint resources and reciprocity, and the unified behaviour, interaction, notions, and meanings. beyond that, the impact of the soci(et)al world on fertility pathways deserves further attention. while structural conditions are usually easily identified, the cultural and normative framework is mostly imputed from the knowledge of researchers. as a substitute to mere imputations, a concept such as the leitbild (schneider et al. 2015; lück et al. 2017) would benefit our understanding immensely by measuring cultural conceptions of family on the societal, social-group, and reference-group level. questions about family ideals and beliefs deserve further probing with questions about what relationship progression, sexuality and measures of family planning respondents consider “normal” and “right” (cf. helfferich 2008). similarly, with all we know about influences of social learning, contagion, pressure, and support, these aspects deserve systematic operationalisation in surveys. this incorporates collecting data on, for example, fertility and support in the wider social network. lastly, a quite underrepresented yet pivotal actor to understand fertility is the body (heimerl/hofmann 2016). thus, on the one hand, we need to extend our knowledge about sexual arousal which overrules intentions to use contraception. research on discrepancies between child intentions and contraceptive behaviour shows that there are blind spots which are yet to be examined and systematised (e.g. sassler et al. 2009). similarly, we need data on people’s actual struggles with the wide range of infertility, both acutely and as a process, with regard to personal perceptions (on the individual and couple level) as well as true biological barriers. in fact, the perception of infertility depends on respondents’ exposure, the rate at which observations enter their consciousness, and individual problematisation. the clinical diagnosis of infertility also involves a long, dyadic process bristling with uncertainties, and is accompanied by a wide variety of medical treatments and advice (cf. johnson/johnson 2008; passet-wittig et al. 2018). • uta brehm, norbert f. schneider30 once the model of dyadic pathways is, in a first step, supported by reliable and thorough panel data, the identification and comprehension of pathways to fertility, as a second step, is feasible. this particular strength of the model of dyadic pathways is, at the same time, a particular challenge to empirical application. different from linear models, the multilinear mdp requires researchers to delve more profoundly into the research issue and into its measurement. as the very basis to any analysis, researchers are tasked with identifying the relevant pathways in a specific sample. this requires a targeted analysis of tightly clocked panels (barber et al. 2010 argue for a weekly survey) which reflect the described elements of the model. the identification of pathways is undoubtedly a most interesting one as it can be expected to offer valuable insight into processes, associations, and causalities leading to fertility. the most suitable methodology to facilitate this step is, however, yet to be identified by the research community. but with recent developments in longitudinal methods, such as sequence and cluster analysis, we are confident that an appropriate or suitably adapted methodology is on the horizon. thereafter, in a third step, researchers are encouraged to seize these pathways as variables in their respective research questions and methodologies. for example, pathways can be employed as dependent variables for historic, international, or structural and cultural comparisons, as well as for group-specific analyses regarding education and migration background. and since the underlying mdp aims for comprehensiveness, chances 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editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) _ctvp001ae719dce9f0c40dab1e5d1b0c816f2a4 _ctvp00133688f87565846d0b48245502d939b1e _ctvp0018f042a3f66094190b67876bab71dc69f _ctvp001331543dd68a14ef58dcbd56dcc06d89e _ctvp001a2d77aa7629e4e8cb33644d5bbb62fe4 _ctvp001ce69234ec1614c6b8619b7bfbc985ce2 _ctvp001a571354d3a944b20a632f3c2e1d31375 _ctvp0019f3edaa4a5b9429bbcc6733bf7ee4a50 _ctvp001cf1bfa308260485b87c3e85887165a62 _ctvp001f6a0267d09dc413a8b4a23f0849ee1ef understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions: the role of men’s and women’s education understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions: the role of men’s and women’s education niels kooiman, marjolijn das abstract: numerous studies have demonstrated that men’s educational profi les dominate couple migration decisions. however, most of these investigated the us context or were conducted in the previous century. this study examines the role of both partners’ educational attainments in couple migration in recent years in a new context: the netherlands. the netherlands is one of the countries in which women surpass men in educational attainment. we take a geographical perspective and test costa and kahn’s (2000) hypothesis that power couples – two partners with university degrees – are more likely than other couples to migrate to metropolitan areas with dense labour markets in order to solve their “colocation problem.” data are derived from the dutch labour force survey between 2006 and 2015. the research population consists of all opposite-sex married and unmarried couples aged 1845 (n = 90,314 couples). by linking the respondents to integral register data, we tracked all couples until three years after the interview date. the results show that both men’s and women’s human capital increases migration propensities, although effect sizes are relatively small. social factors such as the geographical distance to birthplace and parents appear to play a signifi cant role in couple migration. we found only partial support for costa and kahn’s (2000) colocation hypothesis. power couples who live in the core region are less likely than other couples to migrate to more peripherally located regions. however, periphery-to-core migration is only affected by the male partner’s human capital, not by hers. hence, the concentration of power couples in dutch metropolitan areas probably stems from highly educated, single, young, urban adults who migrated there individually and who tend to stay there after union formation. keywords: internal migration · family migration · human capital · core and peripheral regions · gender (in)equality comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 287-320 (date of release: 13.07.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-12 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-12en4 • niels kooiman, marjolijn das288 1 introduction in many countries, younger generations of women have strengthened their relative socio-economic position vis-à-vis their male partners during recent decades. this is best illustrated by women’s closure – and in some countries even reversal – of the gender gap in education. as a result, the number of couples of which both partners have a degree in tertiary education is on the rise and women increasingly have an educational advantage over their partners in newly formed unions, especially in europe (esteve et al. 2016). women’s labour market participation has increased accordingly (cipollone et al. 2014), which caused the gender gap in fulltime equivalent (fte) employment rates to narrow in most european countries between 2005 and 2017 (eige 2020). as a result, dual-career couples have become increasingly common. these trends might have important implications for family migration patterns. for dual-career couples a work-motivated migration for the sake of one partner’s career likely involves sacrifi cing the other’s, which is referred to as the “two-body problem” (benson 2014). earlier, as many women were lesser educated than their partners and were either secondary earners or not active on the labour market at all, women were more likely to end up as tied movers following their husbands’ careers (cooke 2008). from a human-capital perspective on couple migration, women’s increased educational position compared with their partners can be expected to strengthen women’s voices in family migration decision-making (mincer 1978). in addition, when women are more highly educated than their male partners, they are more likely to be the household’s main breadwinner (esteve et al. 2016), which may increase their bargaining position (lundberg/pollak 2003) in couple migration decision-making processes. still, it remains unclear whether these trends have altered patterns of couple migration. numerous studies based on twentieth century data drawn predominantly from the united states underline the dominance of men’s income and education on family migration (boyle et al. 2003, 2009; cooke et al. 2009; shihadeh 1991; bielby/ bielby 1992; mckinnish 2008; shauman/noonan 2007; shauman 2010; compton/ pollak 2007). in contrast, more recent scandinavian-based studies indicate that highly educated women increasingly infl uence family migration decisions in the twenty-fi rst century (brandén 2013; foged 2016; tano et al. 2018). examining interregional migration of dual-earner couples in the netherlands between 2006 and 2018, the aim of this paper is to analyse the role of men’s and women’s educational attainments in couple migration. the study contributes to the literature in two respects. first, this study adds contemporary empirical evidence from another european, non-scandinavian country. in terms of gender equality, the netherlands has an intermediate position in europe. although women have surpassed men in tertiary education among younger generations, gender equality in terms of labour force participation and the allocation of time spent doing care and domestic work is lower than in scandinavian countries (eige 2020). second, this study takes a geographical perspective on family migration and distinguishes between three potential destinations based on labour market density: understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 289 the core area (randstad, the main metropolitan area), peripheral regions (mainly rural areas) and semi-peripheral regions (the intermediate zone). two decades ago, costa and kahn (2000) argued that the two-body problem is most severe for couples in which both partners are highly educated because of their specialised careers. therefore, these “power couples” were argued to be most likely to migrate to metropolitan areas that offer large, dense labour markets. to date, only limited evidence for costa and kahn’s colocation hypothesis was found in the us (compton/ pollak 2007; cooke 2011; chen/rosenthal 2008). in europe, studies that approach couple migration from a geographical perspective are scarce (but see tano et al. 2018). for urban and regional housing market policies and planning it is important to gain better insights into internal migration patterns of couples and families, which consist more and more of dual earners with equal educational attainments. furthermore, distinctive migration patterns of power couples might exacerbate socio-economic disparities between regions and between urban and rural areas and even enhance social polarisation. this study therefore aims not only to analyse the effect of women’s and men’s education on couple migration in general, but also to explore whether distinctive patterns take place for periphery-to-core and coreto-periphery migration. 2 background 2.1 internal migration and education internal migration can be defi ned as a long-distance move in which people change the area in which their daily activities take place (dieleman/mulder 2002) and which likely entails the severance of local social ties (kan 2007) and location-specifi c capital (davanzo 1981). from a micro-economic perspective, internal migration is conceptualised as an investment in the human agent with the intention to generate future returns in the form of accumulated human capital, increased wages or labour career progression (sjaastad 1962; becker 1962; fielding 1992; böheim/taylor 2007). long-distance moves are therefore predominantly driven by economic motives (niedomysl 2011). employment and education are the most cited motives for moves over distances longer than 40 kilometres, although family motives are also often mentioned (thomas et al. 2019). among couples near retirement, consumer amenities become more important (chen/rosenthal 2008). migrating towards family can also be benefi cial from an economic perspective as proximity to family members may protect people – women in particular – from precarious labour market positions (mulder et al. 2022) and increase their labour force attachment (compton/pollak 2014). a consistent fi nding among industrialised countries is that highly educated individuals are more likely to migrate than their lesser educated counterparts (bernard/bell 2018). several mechanisms underlying the positive relationship between educational attainments and internal migration have been proposed • niels kooiman, marjolijn das290 (faggian et al. 2015). the most important factor concerns the occupations for which highly educated workers are qualifi ed. it is argued that highly educated individuals are more prone to migrate because they hold occupations for which job change and migration is benefi cial: they can expect higher returns. furthermore, the more prestigious and specialised jobs they compete for tend to be more sparsely distributed across space (halfacree 1995; moretti 2012). hence, in order to fi nd suitable employment and to enable career progression, highly educated individuals often need to expand their geographical search area (van ham et al. 2001). empirical studies have indeed demonstrated that internal migration of the highly educated is most often motivated by employment (niedomysl 2011; thomas 2019) and that they experience the strongest rise in income after migration (morrison/clark 2011). other mechanisms that are suggested to fuel the positive relationship between education and migration include a stronger reliance on local networks of family and friends among the lesser educated, which increases their psychological costs of migration (davanzo 1983). an important reason that more highly educated individuals tend to have weaker local ties is that they often already left their home region and migrated towards university towns to enrol in higher education (faggian/ mccann 2009; kooiman et al. 2018). 2.2 couple migration, education and gender role theory migration propensities peak during young adulthood – a phase in which only a minority is restricted by life commitments such as home-ownership, a partner or children – and remain relatively high when people are in their early thirties (dennett/ stillwell 2010). this is especially true among the more highly educated (kooiman et al. 2018). for couples, the decision on whether or not to migrate is more complex than for singles, as the interests and desires of one partner may well confl ict with those of the other partner. couple migration typically benefi ts the career of one partner to the detriment of the other (cooke 2008). if both partners have a professional career, both are more tied to their current location. indeed, dual earners are found to be more likely to stay put than single-breadwinner couples (vidal et al. 2017; cooke 2013a). therefore, the rise of dual-earner couples is argued to be one of the causes of declining migration rates (cooke 2013b; kalemba et al. 2020). more recently, scholars have argued that internal migration is not only restricted by other household members, but also by linked lives outside the household (coulter et al. 2016; vidal/huinink 2019), especially family ties (mulder/malmberg 2014; thomas 2019; thomas et al. 2019). empirical studies that are mainly based on data from the last decades of the twentieth century demonstrated how family migration was predominantly a function of men’s education whereas highly educated women had less or no infl uence (shihadeh 1991; smits et al. 2004; nivalainen 2004; compton/pollak 2007; swain/garasky 2007; mckinnish 2008; boyle et al. 2009). this gendered effect of educational attainments on migration is introduced after couple formation: single men and women exhibit identical migration patterns and are equally responsive understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 291 to better job opportunities elsewhere (jürges 2006; venhorst et al. 2011; geist/ mcmanus 2012; abraham et al. 2019) and female university graduates are even more mobile than their male counterparts in the uk and italy (faggian et al. 2007; coniglio/prota 2008). human capital theory conceptualises family migration as a joint decision-making process in which migration occurs if the total expected benefi ts of all family members exceed the total expected costs (sandell 1977; mincer 1978). this approach is essentially rational and assumes that potential benefi ts for men and women are equally weighted in family migration decision-making. in contrast, sociological gender role theorists argue that men’s careers are prioritised and emphasise the importance of traditional societal norms on family roles, which prescribe men to be the main breadwinner and women to take responsibility for domestic work and childcare (bielby/bielby 1992; shihadeh 1991; jürges 2006; lersch 2016). these gender-role beliefs are still present in attitudes of partnered men and women on employment-driven migration. recent european survey studies have demonstrated that partnered women are less willing than partnered men to migrate for equally attractive hypothetical job offers and that they are more willing to migrate for the sake of their partner’s career progression. this gendered effect enters the scene after union formation – single men and women are equally prone to migrate for hypothetical job offers (abraham et al. 2019). instead, human capital theory provides a structural explanation for the empirical evidence of male-dominated patterns of couple migration by indicating gender differences in potential wage growth due to segregation and inequality in the labour force (mincer 1978). even among equally highly educated men and women, women are more likely than men to work in occupations for which migration is less benefi cial: lower wages, lower prestige, less opportunities for career advancement, greater geographic ubiquity and smaller wage differentials across regions (halfacree 1995; shauman/noonan 2007; brandén 2013; perales/vidal 2013). hence, it is argued to be less likely that women’s potential gains from remote career opportunities outweigh their male partners’ losses and less likely that women’s lost earnings outweigh their male partners’ potential wage benefi ts elsewhere. in addition, spatial ubiquity of female-dominated occupations facilitates the search for comparable employment among female-tied migrants (shauman 2010). some empirical studies on family migration consider more sound measures of both partners’ earnings potentials, which do justice to the possibility that men and women segregate into spatially constrained and fl exible occupations. results regarding the weights attributed to men’s and women’s career opportunities are mixed. in the us, men’s careers tend to be prioritised (mckinnish 2008; shauman 2010), although benson (2014) found gender neutrality, supporting the human capital approach. recent research based on two scandinavian countries – denmark and sweden – is also consistent with gender-neutral family migration (brandén 2013; foged 2016). these are leading countries in terms of gender equality (eige 2020). in this study, we measure both partners’ earnings potential by their educational attainments and the migration rates associated with their occupations observed among “unconstrained” singles. derived from human capital theory and gender • niels kooiman, marjolijn das292 role theory and based on recent empirical evidence from scandinavian countries and the somewhat more traditional gender practices in the netherlands (see below), it is hypothesised that: h1: both partners’ earnings potential will positively affect interregional mobility of couples (h1a) and the effect of men’s will be stronger than the effect of women’s (h1b). 2.3 the geographical dimension of the colocation problem as dual-career couples migrate primarily for the sake of the career of one partner, labour market characteristics of the destination region shape the opportunities for the secondary migrant to fi nd adequate employment within an acceptable commuting distance. costa and kahn (2000) postulated that the necessity for dualearner couples to facilitate two careers from one residential location – the colocation puzzle – was most severe among couples made up of two highly educated partners because of their specialised careers and that this puzzle would be best solved in large metropolitan areas. based on cross-sectional data they argued that a distinct migration pattern of these so-called “power couples” is the primary explanation for their increased concentration in metropolitan areas between 1940 and 1990. analyses of longitudinal data, however, found only limited support for costa and kahn’s colocation hypothesis in the us. compton and pollak (2007) demonstrated that not the joint educational profi le of the couple but only the husband’s education affected the likelihood of couples to migrate to large metropolitan areas. not migration patterns but assortative mating among highly educated singles was found to be the primary explanation for the clustering of power couples in large metropolitan areas. chen and rosenthal (2008) did fi nd partial support for costa and kahn’s colocation hypothesis, but only among young, highly educated couples. in europe, empirical studies testing costa and kahn’s colocation hypothesis are scarce. in sweden, tano et al. (2018) recently showed that female partners exert a substantial positive impact on the propensity to move towards large cities, although it is smaller than that of males (tano et al. 2018). based on costa and kahn’s (2000) colocation hypothesis and the fact that the dutch core region functions as a hub of highly specialised knowledge work (see below), it is hypothesised that: h2: couples with highly educated (male or female) partners selectively migrate to the core region (h2a) and this effect is stronger if both partners are highly educated (h2b). 2.4 the dutch case this study examines internal migration patterns of married and unmarried couples in the netherlands between 2006 and 2018. from the 1990s onwards, women reversed the gender gap in education among younger generations and narrowed the gender employment gap. in terms of educational equality, the netherlands is ranked second within the european union (eige 2020). labour force participation of women is high and has increased in the netherlands, but still most women work part-time (statistics understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 293 netherlands/scp 2018). as a result, among parents in particular, the “one-and-a-half earner” model prevails with one partner (usually men) working full-time and the other (usually women) part-time. in terms of the full-time equivalent employment rate, the netherlands is ranked 19th on the work participation domain of the gender equality index, which is only slightly above the average of all eu member states and below the scores of scandinavian countries (eige 2020), indicating gender practices that are more traditional than those of scandinavian countries. geographically, the netherlands is a relatively small and densely populated country. most economic activities are concentrated in the polycentric core region in the western part of the country, called the randstad (kloosterman/musterd 2001). this region experienced the strongest population growth in recent decades and comprises the four largest cities (amsterdam, rotterdam, the hague and utrecht) and several medium-sized cities. the randstad includes the political capital, the fi nancial capital, a world port and a world airport. it offers the densest labour market (van ham et al. 2001) and access to specialised jobs and knowledge-based industries (tordoir et al. 2015; statistics netherlands 2020). beyond the randstad, the region of eindhoven in the southern part of the country also comprises a knowledge-based economy (brainport eindhoven). housing prices are generally lower outside the core region. although – or maybe because – the country is quite small, the tolerance for daily travel within the country is low. on average, a one-way commute of dutch workers is 18 kilometres (ritsema van eck/hilbers 2018), but large differences exist between social groups. highly educated workers, full-time employees and men commute over longer distances than lesser educated workers, part-time employees and women (burger et al. 2014; ritsema van eck/hilbers 2018). highly educated full-time workers commute 28 kilometres on average (ritsema van eck/hilbers 2018). daily commutes predominantly take place within urban regions, but for highly educated workers interurban networks have gained importance, although most of them commute between neighbouring cities. commuting fl ows between the four largest cities in the randstad and between neighbouring cities in the southern province of north-brabant have intensifi ed among highly educated workers, while commutes at a higher spatial scale remain relatively rare (tordoir et al. 2015). workers tend either to change their workplace or to migrate as distances between home and workplace extend their urban region or neighbouring urban regions. hence, among moves over at least 40 kilometres, the most cited motive for moving was work-related (feijten/ visser 2005). the social costs of migration in terms of family relations are also signifi cant. proximity to family is an important determinant for support exchange and relatively short distances can already form a barrier for practical support. for instance, parents helping their adult children with childcare is signifi cantly less common when they live at a distance of more than 20 kilometres (knijn/liefbroer 2006). we identifi ed regions within which the vast majority of workers is assumed to both work and live and distinguished three macro-zones based on the number of jobs accessible within a 50-kilometre distance: a core region (which corresponds largely to the randstad), a semi-periphery and a national periphery. • niels kooiman, marjolijn das294 3 data and methods 3.1 data data were drawn from two sources: the dutch labour force survey (ebb) and the system of social statistical datasets (ssd) (bakker et al. 2014). the labour force survey provides detailed information for both partners on educational attainments and labour market characteristics, including occupations (isco). it is a rotating household panel with 5 samples per household over 15 months (i.e., one every quarter). the ssd is a set of integral and longitudinal administrative government registers that cover the entire population of the netherlands. the ssd adds longitudinal information on place of residence, residential mobility, household characteristics, primary income and distances from family members. we pooled all labour force surveys between 2006 and 2015 (fi rst quarter samples) and linked the respondents to the ssd based on person unique identifi ers. we used the moment of the lfs interview as the start of the observation window (t0). subsequently, we took information from the ssd on the sampling moments exactly one (t1), two (t2) and three (t3) years after the interview date. units of analysis are couples. we selected all couples of which both partners were between 18 and 45 years old (n = 113,956). we excluded same-sex couples, couples who separated between t0 and t31 and couples of which one or both partners were enrolled in education between t0 and t3. we conducted separate analyses on dualearner couples because the colocation puzzle only applies to couples in which both partners belong to the labour force and because we also want to include information on occupational characteristics that are not available for respondents who are not (self-) employed. dual earners were defi ned in a broad sense since small jobs of only a few hours per month are enough to meet this criterion. couples with jobs in the armed services were excluded because mobility of military personnel is often externally imposed.2 this resulted in a research population of 90,314 couples of which 73,044 (81 percent) were dual earners at t0. 1 excluding couples who separate after a joint migration might bias our results if couples who separate are more or less likely to have migrated in the recent past and especially if this relationship is associated with educational profi les. we found no signifi cant effect of internal migration on the likelihood of separation after internal migration. among internal migrants (4.1 percent) the separation rate between t1 and t3 was even slightly lower than among stayers (4.6 percent). as a robustness check, we included couples who eventually broke up in our models to examine whether this would alter our results. the overall model fi t and the parameter estimates remained highly identical, also those of our main interest (education and occupation). hence, we conclude that no selectivity problems arose by dropping the separated couples. 2 we excluded 943 couples because one or both partners were employed in armed forces occupations. we dropped these couples since military personnel are much more likely than other employees to have no “free” location choice; they often migrate as a result of a transfer of armed services. our study focuses on deliberate couple migration decisions. we tested whether our models are sensitive to including couples with armed forces occupations. including this group yielded identical results. understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 295 3.2 analytical strategy to study determinants of long-distance couple migration in general we performed a binary logistic regression analysis. in these models, the dependent variable is internal migration: whether couples have moved long distance (40 kilometres or more) between t0 and t3, yes (1) or no (0). the threshold of 40 kilometres was selected because among moves over at least 40 kilometres the most cited motive for moving was work-related (feijten/visser 2005).3 euclidean distances were measured between the centroids of the municipalities in which a couple lived at t0 and t3. of 90,314 couples, 3,612 (4.0 percent) moved to another municipality at a short distance (< 40 km) and 1,050 (1.2 percent) migrated (> 40 km) during the fi rst three years following the interview. the 3-year time span was chosen based on a trade-off between collecting a substantial number of migrations and the gradual devaluation of information gathered at t0. multiple migrations within three years (onward and return) were neglected, but this only concerns a very small number of cases (n = 41). subsequently, we modelled couple migration as a choice set of three destinations and performed a multinomial logistic regression analysis to get insights into the determinants of couple migration towards specifi c destinations. the dependent variable in this analysis is destination region: whether couples have moved long distance to the national periphery (1), the intermediate zone (2) or the core region (3) between t0 and t3. these macro zones were created based on the number of jobs accessible within a radius of 50 kilometres and are depicted in figure 1. we ran separate analyses for couples living in the national periphery, the intermediate zone and the core region at t0. the reference category consists of couples that did not move or moved within 40 kilometres. independent variables the independent variable of main interest is the couple’s human capital profi le, expressed in the educational attainments of both partners. we aligned with the compound measure also used in earlier studies, for instance by compton and pollak (2007), which distinguishes four categories based on partners holding a university degree (isced 7-8, referring to master’s, doctoral or equivalent level) (unesco 2011): couples with no university graduates (low-power couples, 79 percent of our sample), couples with only a female university graduate (female-power couples, 7 percent), couples with only a male university graduate (male-power couples, 7 percent) and couples with two university graduates (power couples, 7 percent). about 14 percent of men and women in our research population hold a university degree. men are more often the highest educated partner among the older couples in our sample (aged > 35), whereas female-power couples outnumber male-power 3 as a robustness check we estimated the same models with a distance threshold of 30 and 50 km. these models yielded highly comparable results. • niels kooiman, marjolijn das296 couples among younger couples (< 35). this is in line with the reversed gender gap in education among younger generations in the netherlands (statistics netherlands/ scp 2018). we decided to set the threshold value on university degrees because university graduates stand out with regard to internal migration propensities in the netherlands (venhorst et al. 2010; kooiman et al. 2018). to examine to what extent the differential effects of men’s and women’s human capital can be explained by the occupations they hold, we included the migration propensities related to specifi c occupations (isco, 1 digit at t0) based on migration fig. 1: geographical macro-zones based on job density (2017) source: authors’ design from statistics netherlands (cbs) understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 297 behaviours of single workers. these were derived from an analysis of migration behaviours of single (self-)employed lfs-respondents over the 2006-2015 period. these single workers are considered “unconstrained optimisers” (jürges 2006) and hence the migration propensities of singles with specifi c occupations can be argued to be an expression of the potential benefi ts of migration for workers with these occupations. almost 4 percent of the singles migrated, which underlines their greater mobility compared to couples. among high-mobility occupations are health professionals, business and administration professionals and ict professionals. among low-mobility occupations are crafts and related trade workers and elementary occupations. table a1 in the appendix provides information on singles’ migration rates disaggregated by occupation in more detail. we controlled for several factors, which have been demonstrated to be related to (couple) migration (faggian et al. 2015). the mean age of the couple was controlled for because, in line with the human capital perspective, migration propensities tend to decrease with age (dennett/stillwell 2010). in the netherlands spatial mobility starts to drop when people reach their mid-twenties (kooiman et al. 2018). since migration is costly, a lack of economic resources might prevent couples from migrating (lee 1966). therefore, we included economic resources measured by the standardised disposable household income in percentiles. as a measure of the bargaining power of both partners and to distinguish equal dual earners from one-and-a-half earners and single earners, we included a measure of the income equality within couples. we also added a dummy indicating whether or not the female partner is the main breadwinner (yes (1) or no (0)). marital status at t0 and marriages between t0 and t3 are controlled for since unmarried cohabiters are more likely than married persons to have egalitarian gender role attitudes (liefbroer 1991). we controlled for the presence of children in the household (including the age of the oldest child) because children tend to strengthen the ties to a location, especially when they have reached school age (clark/davies withers 2007). in addition, we included a dummy variable that indicates whether or not a child was born between t0 and t3 since the event of childbirth is related to increased residential mobility (kulu/milevski 2007), especially towards rural destinations (kulu 2008). as a proxy for local economic ties, we included the current job duration in months and the housing tenure. the year of interview is controlled for because internal migration rates are associated with economic business cycles. because migration rates fi rst decreased and then increased during the observation period, a squared term of the time variable was added. to control for local social ties outside the household, we included the geographical distance to both partners’ place of birth and their parents. we measured euclidean distances based on geographical coordinates of the municipalities of residence. with regard to the location of parents, we measured the distance to the nearest parent. we created a distinct category for those partners who had no parents living in the netherlands. except for the binary variables measuring childbirth and marriages, all independent variables were measured at t0. descriptive statistics of the variables included in the models and migration rates across the categories of the independent variables are provided in the appendix (table a2). • niels kooiman, marjolijn das298 the binary logistic regression analysis aims to test the fi rst hypothesis. it consists of fi ve models. the fi rst and second model include all couples regardless of the labour market position of both partners. in the fi rst model, we included all control variables except for the geographical distance to both partners’ birthplace and parents. in the second model, we added these geographical controls to be able to assess how they infl uence the effect of education on couple migration. as the highly educated tend to live farther away from their birthplace and parents, inclusion of these variables might decrease the effect of education (mulder/malmberg 2014). the third, fourth and fi fth model are estimated for the sub-population of dual earners for whom we can include occupational information. model 3 includes control variables only, in model 4 the geographical controls were added and in model 5 the occupational migration propensities were added. the multinomial logistic regression analysis tests the second hypothesis and refl ects the full binary model. 4 results 4.1 descriptive fi ndings power couples are highly overrepresented in the dutch core region and underrepresented in peripheral regions (table 1). whereas couples of which neither partner holds a university degree are distributed equally across the three macro zones, more than 60 percent of the power couples live in the core region and only 14 percent live in peripheral regions. the spatial distribution of couples with one university graduate is between that of low-power couples and power couples, regardless of which partner holds a university degree. moves, especially those over longer distances, are strongly associated with the educational profi le of couples (table 2). regardless of gender, a couple’s migration rate increases with any university graduate partner. couples with two university tab. 1: spatial distribution of couples with different educational profi les, t0 (column percentages) region of residence, t0 university degree neither only female only male both total partner partner partner partners national periphery 33.4 24.0 23.0 14.2 30.7 intermediate zone 33.3 29.2 31.0 25.4 32.3 core region 33.3 46.9 46.0 60.4 37.0 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 n 71,445 5,854 6,813 6,202 90,314 source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 299 graduates are more mobile than couples with one university graduate and those are more mobile than couples with no university graduate partner. these low-power couples migrated more than six times less often than power couples. short-distance moves are less related to a couple’s educational profi le. 4.2 binary logistic regression on migration average marginal effects of the binary logistic regression analyses are given in table 3. model 1 includes all couples and contains control variables except from the geographical controls. it demonstrates that couples are more likely to migrate if partners are highly educated and that couples’ migration propensities increase with any university graduate partner, regardless of whether the female or the male partner. the baseline migration propensity of low-power couples is 0.7 percent. the estimated migration propensity of power couples is 3.5 percent, which is fi ve times as large. estimated migration propensities for female-power couples (2.0 percent) and male-power couples (2.2 percent) are between those of low-power and power couples and are not statistically different from each other. the inclusion of geographical controls in model 2 strongly reduced the effect size of a couple’s educational profi le. controlled for distance to birthplace and parents, power couples are 40 percent more likely to migrate than low-power couples. couples with one university graduate partner – whether the female or the male partner – are equally likely to migrate as power couples. the strong reduction of the effect size of education after including geographical controls indicates that greater migration propensities among highly educated couples are largely attributed to the fact that these couples are less constrained by family ties or other local ties. the highly educated more often live further away from their parents and their place of birth and proximity to parents and birthplace strongly constrain migration. additionally, living closer to family and friends may be a motive for migration. migration, t0…3 university degree neither woman man both total partner only only partners did not move between municipalities 95.9 90.8 92.5 88.5 94.8 moved < 40 km 3.4 6.9 5.3 7.2 4.0 moved >= 40 km 0.7 2.4 2.2 4.3 1.2 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 n 71,445 5,854 6,813 6,202 90,314 tab. 2: moves of couples with different educational profi les, t0..3 (column percentages) source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) • niels kooiman, marjolijn das300 furthermore, model 2 indicates that a couple’s educational profi le is not among the most important predictors for couple migration. not only distance to parents and place of birth, but also age, family status and housing tenure appear more important. as expected, young couples, couples without children or with only preschool-aged children and couples in rental dwellings are more likely to migrate than older couples, couples with school-aged children and couples who own their dwelling. in addition, dual earners migrate less often than single-breadwinner couples and unemployed couples. married couples migrate more often than unmarried couples, especially the recently married. couples of which both partners have an international migration background are less likely to migrate. household income is not related to couple migration, which indicates that a low income does not constrain couples from migrating. models 3, 4 and 5 include dual earners only, which allows for the introduction of work-related variables. predicted probabilities disaggregated by educational profi les are derived from these models and depicted in fi gure 2 (a-c). also, among dual earners the inclusion of geographical controls (model 4) strongly reduces the effects of both partners’ education on couple migration compared to the model with control variables only. if geographical controls are not taken into account (model 3), power couples are almost four times more likely to migrate than low-power couples, whereas both female-power and male-power couples are more than twice as likely to migrate than low-power couples. after the inclusion of distance to birthplace and distance to parents, the estimated migration propensity of dual-earner couples with one or two university graduates is 30 percent higher than that of dual earners without university degrees. there is no statistically signifi cant difference between dual earners with one and two university graduates. effects of control variables largely resemble those in the models among all couples. the effect of job duration matches expectations: as male or female partners hold the same job for a longer period of time the likelihood of couple migration is signifi cantly reduced. dualearner couples with an unbalanced income ratio are slightly more likely to migrate than couples with more equal incomes, regardless of which partner earns a higher income. the inclusion of occupational migration propensities in model 5 hardly improves the model fi t, but does further reduce the effects of both partners’ education. if both male and female partners hold a high-mobility occupation, couples are more likely to migrate. the estimated effect of the male partner’s occupation is slightly stronger but not signifi cantly different from the estimated effect of the female partner’s occupation. after including occupational migration propensities, the educational attainments of both women and men are no longer signifi cantly related to couple migration. this indicates that the small positive effect of education that was left after adjusting for the geographical distance to birthplace and parents can be explained by the different occupations held by university graduates and their lesser educated counterparts. in sum, the results of the binary logistic regression analysis support hypothesis 1a as both men’s and women’s human capital are positively related to family migration. this is true for both the total population and for the subgroup of dual earners, but understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 301 fig. 2: predicted probabilities (and 95 percent confi dence interval) of dualearner couple migration disaggregated by a couple’s educational profi le 0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 neither partner female partner only male partner only both partners university degree internal migration propensity 2a. controlled for control variables only (model 3) 0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 neither partner female partner only male partner only both partners university degree internal migration propensity 2b. controlled for control variables and geographical controls (model 4) 0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 neither partner female partner only male partner only both partners university degree internal migration propensity 2c. controlled for control variables, geographical controls and occupational migration propensities (model 5) source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) • niels kooiman, marjolijn das302 ta b . 3 : b in ar y lo g is tic r eg re ss io n re su lt s o n m ig ra tio n (> 40 k m ), av er ag e m ar g in al e ff ec ts . r ef er en ce c at eg o ry is n o m o ve o r a m o ve w it hi n 40 k m a ll co up le s d u al -e ar n er s m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 t (s u rv ey y ea r) -0 .0 03 ** -0 .0 03 ** -0 .0 03 ** -0 .0 03 ** -0 .0 03 ** t ² 0. 00 0* * 0. 00 0* * 0. 00 0* * 0. 00 0* * 0. 00 0* * p ar tn er s w it h u n iv er si ty d eg re e, t= 0 n ei th er p ar tn er r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . o nl y fe m al e p ar tn er 0. 01 3* * 0. 00 3* * 0. 01 0* * 0. 00 3* 0. 00 2 o nl y m al e p ar tn er 0. 01 5* * 0. 00 4* * 0. 01 0* * 0. 00 2* 0. 00 1 b o th p ar tn er s 0. 02 8* * 0. 00 4* * 0. 02 1* * 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 2 m ea n ag e p ar tn er s, t= 0 -0 .0 00 ** -0 .0 01 ** 0. 00 0 -0 .0 00 ** -0 .0 00 ** m ar ri ed , t = 0 0. 00 1 0. 00 2* * 0. 00 2* 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 3* * w ed d in g, t= 0… 3 0. 00 2* 0. 00 3* 0. 00 3* 0. 00 3* 0. 00 3* a ge o ld es t ch ild , t = 0 n o c hi ld re n r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . < 4 y ea rs o ld -0 .0 01 0. 00 0 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 411 y ea rs o ld -0 .0 07 ** -0 .0 05 ** -0 .0 06 ** -0 .0 05 ** -0 .0 05 ** 12 -1 8 ye ar s o ld -0 .0 09 ** -0 .0 06 ** -0 .0 09 ** -0 .0 07 ** -0 .0 06 ** c h ild b ir th , t = 0… 3 0. 00 2* 0. 00 1 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 0. 00 1 in te rn at io n al m ig ra ti on b ac kg ro u n d n ei th er p ar tn er r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . o nl y fe m al e p ar tn er 0. 00 1 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 o nl y m al e p ar tn er 0. 00 1 -0 .0 01 0. 00 1 0. 00 0 -0 .0 00 b o th p ar tn er s -0 .0 03 * -0 .0 04 ** -0 .0 03 * -0 .0 04 * -0 .0 03 understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 303 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n a ll co up le s d u al -e ar n er s m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 h ou si ng t en u re r en ta l r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . r ef . o w n er -o cc up ie d -0 .0 09 ** -0 .0 07 ** -0 .0 08 ** -0 .0 06 ** -0 .0 06 ** (s el f)e m p lo ye d b o th p ar tn er s r ef . r ef . n ei th er p ar tn er 0. 02 1* * 0. 01 3* o nl y fe m al e p ar tn er 0. 00 4 0. 00 3 o nl y m al e p ar tn er 0. 00 5* * 0. 00 3* h ou se h ol d in co m e (p er ce n ti le s) 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 0. 00 0* * 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 in co m e d if fe re n ce b et w ee n p ar tn er s (d ec ile s) 0. 00 1* * 0. 00 0* 0. 00 0* fe m al e p ar tn er h ig h er in co m e 0. 00 1 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 ye ar s in c u rr en t jo b , f em al e p ar tn er -0 .0 01 ** -0 .0 00 ** -0 .0 00 ** ye ar s in c u rr en t jo b , m al e p ar tn er -0 .0 01 ** -0 .0 00 ** -0 .0 00 ** w om an ’s r el at iv e co n tr ib u ti on t o h ou se h ol d in co m e 030 % r ef . r ef . r ef . 30 -4 0% -0 .0 02 -0 .0 02 -0 .0 01 40 -5 0% -0 .0 03 * -0 .0 03 -0 .0 02 50 -1 00 % -0 .0 01 -0 .0 02 -0 .0 01 • niels kooiman, marjolijn das304 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n a ll co up le s d u al -e ar n er s m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 d is ta n ce t o w om an ’s p ar en t( s) < 2 k m r ef . r ef . r ef . 25 km -0 .0 00 -0 .0 01 -0 .0 01 510 k m 0. 00 2* 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 10 -2 5 km 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 3* 0. 00 3* 25 -5 0 km 0. 01 1* * 0. 00 9* * 0. 00 9* * > = 5 0 km 0. 01 8* * 0. 01 6* * 0. 01 6* * n o p ar en ts in t h e n et h er la n d s 0. 00 7* * 0. 00 6* * 0. 00 6* * d is ta n ce t o m an ’s p ar en t( s) < 2 k m r ef . r ef . r ef . 25 km 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 4* * 0. 00 4* * 510 k m 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 3* * 10 -2 5 km 0. 00 5* * 0. 00 5* * 0. 00 4* * 25 -5 0 km 0. 01 0* * 0. 01 0* * 0. 01 0* * > = 5 0 km 0. 01 7* * 0. 01 6* * 0. 01 5* * n o p ar en ts in t h e n et h er la n d s 0. 00 9* * 0. 00 8* * 0. 00 8* * d is ta n ce t o w om an ’s p la ce o f b ir th li ve s in s am e m un ic ip al it y r ef . r ef . r ef . o th er m un ic ip al it y, < 1 0 km 0. 00 3 0. 00 3 0. 00 3 o th er m un ic ip al it y, 1 025 k m 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 o th er m un ic ip al it y, 2 550 k m 0. 00 5* * 0. 00 6* * 0. 00 6* * o th er m un ic ip al it y, > = 5 0 km 0. 00 6* * 0. 00 6* * 0. 00 6* * p la ce o f b ir th u nk n o w n 0. 00 4* 0. 00 4* 0. 00 5* understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 305 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n a ll co up le s d u al -e ar n er s m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 d is ta n ce t o m an ’s p la ce o f b ir th li ve s in s am e m un ic ip al it y r ef . r ef . r ef . o th er m un ic ip al it y, < 1 0 km -0 .0 01 -0 .0 02 -0 .0 02 o th er m un ic ip al it y, 1 025 k m -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 o th er m un ic ip al it y, 2 550 k m 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 0. 00 1 o th er m un ic ip al it y, > = 5 0 km 0. 00 3 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 p la ce o f b ir th u nk n o w n 0. 00 3 0. 00 3 0. 00 2 m ig ra ti on r at e w om an ’s o cc u p at io n 0. 00 1* m ig ra ti on r at e m an ’s o cc u p at io n 0. 00 1* * o b s. 90 ,3 14 90 ,3 14 73 ,0 44 73 ,0 44 73 ,0 04 p se u d o r -s q u ar ed .0 9 .2 0 .1 1 .2 1 .2 1 b ic 10 43 7. 78 96 52 .1 94 82 90 .8 82 76 35 .5 76 76 53 .1 95 ** p < 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns fr o m s ta tis tic s n et he rl an d s (c b s ) • niels kooiman, marjolijn das306 only if not adjusted for their occupations. furthermore, effect sizes of both partners’ education are relatively small. we need to reject hypothesis 1b, because we found no signifi cant differences between couples with a male university graduate and couples with a female university graduate. we also found gender equality with regard to the effect of contribution to the household income and occupation. 4.3 multinomial logistic regression on destination region next, we investigated the destination of migrating couples and their determinants in a multinomial logistic regression using the same independent variables as in the binary logistic regression. we estimated separate models for couples who lived in the core region, the intermediate zone and the national periphery at t0. among couples who already lived in the core region, power couples are less likely than low-power couples to migrate to the national periphery (table 4). this effect was found both among all couples and among the subgroup of dual earners. couples with one university graduate were equally likely as low-power couples to migrate from the core region to the national periphery, regardless of the gender of the university graduate. in addition, power couples were also more likely to move over long distances within the core region than low-power couples. to a lesser extent, this also holds true for female-power and male-power couples, but these effects were statistically insignifi cant among dual earners. these results indicate a stronger tendency among power couples to stay in the core region if they already live there and, if they migrate, to choose other destinations within the core region. tab. 4: multinomial regression analysis on destination region (origin = core region), average marginal effects. reference category is no move or move within 40 km all couples (n = 33,400) dual-earners (n = 26,841) periphery semicore periphery semicore periphery region periphery region university degree, t=0 neither partner ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. only female partner -0.000 0.001 0.003* -0.002 -0.000 0.002 only male partner -0.001 -0.001 0.004** -0.002 -0.001 0.002 both partners -0.003** -0.001 0.005** -0.003** -0.001 0.004** migration rate woman’s occupation -0.000 0.000 0.000 migration rate man’s occupation 0.000 0.000 0.000 pseudo r2 .17 .18 ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 307 among couples who lived in the semi-periphery, power couples were more likely than low-power couples to migrate to the core region (table 5). educational attainments of the male partner are more important than those of the female partner: whereas couples with only a male university graduate migrated more often to the core region than low-power couples, there was no difference between couples with only a female university graduate and low-power couples. we found this effect both among all couples and among the subgroup of dual earners. among couples who lived in the national periphery those with only a male university graduate were more likely than low-power, female-power and power couples to migrate to the core region (table 6). among dual earners living in the national periphery, those with a man holding a high-mobility occupation more often migrated towards the core region, whereas her occupation had no effect. these results indicate that the likelihood for couples to migrate to the core region depends mainly on his earnings potential, not on hers. hence, our results provide only partial support for our hypothesis that power couples tend to migrate to the core region. if power couples already live in the core region, they are more likely than other couples to stay there or to migrate within the core region. however, among couples who live in semiperipheral or peripheral regions, predominantly his educational attainments and occupation infl uence the likelihood of migration towards the core region. the effect estimates of control variables are all comparable to those in the binary model. we limit the description to one marked difference with respect to destination regions. notably, couples with an international migration background appear to be oriented more towards the core region. they are equally likely to migrate to or tab. 5: multinomial regression analysis on destination region (origin = semiperiphery). reference category is no move or move within 40 km all couples (n = 29,180) dual-earners (n = 23,712) periphery semicore periphery semicore periphery region periphery region university degree, t=0 neither partner ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. only female partner 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.001 -0.001 0.001 only male partner -0.000 0.000 0.003* -0.000 -0.001 0.003* both partners 0.001 0.001 0.004** 0.001 -0.000 0.004** migration rate woman’s occupation 0.000 0.001* -0.000 migration rate man’s occupation 0.000 0.000 0.000 pseudo r2 .23 .25 ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) • niels kooiman, marjolijn das308 within the core region but less likely to leave the core region than their counterparts with a dutch background. 5 conclusion and discussion the aim of this study was to analyse the role of men’s and women’s educational attainments in couple migration in the contemporary dutch context, where younger generations of women have reversed the gender gap in education to their advantage. by analysing couple migration between 2006 and 2015, we found that both men’s and women’s human capital increases migration propensities in the netherlands, although effect sizes are relatively small. among dual earners, the small effect of educational profi les became non-signifi cant if adjusted for their occupations. we found no gender differences in the effect of education on couple migration in general. this absence of gender asymmetry contradicts a wide array of empirical studies indicating the dominance of men’s human capital while women are in the position of the “trailing wife” (cooke 2008). these studies, however, were based on twentieth century data and mainly on the us context. in the meantime, women have increased their labour market participation and closed or even reversed the gender gap in education in many countries. these trends seem to have strengthened the position of women in couple migration decision-making. our results are more in line with recent empirical evidence from sweden demonstrating only very minor gender differences in the effect of education on couple migration (brandén 2013; tano et al. 2018). however, we did fi nd some signs that men’s careers are still attributed tab. 6: multinomial regression analysis on destination region (origin = national periphery). reference category is no move or move within 40 km all couples (n = 27,734) dual-earners (n = 22,419) periphery semicore periphery semicore periphery region periphery region university degree, t=0 neither partner ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. only female partner 0.002 -0.000 0.001 0.002 0.000 0.001 only male partner 0.001 0.001 0.006** 0.000 0.001 0.002 both partners 0.000 0.002 0.002 -0.001 0.001 0.001 migration rate woman’s occupation 0.000 0.000 -0.000 migration rate man’s occupation -0.000 0.000 0.001** pseudo r2 .23 .27 ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 source: authors’ calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 309 more weight in couple migration decision-making than women’s. first, migration propensities of dual earners are slightly stronger related to men’s occupation than to women’s. second, migration towards the core region increases with his education, but does not respond to hers. a second aim of this study was to take a geographical perspective on couple migration and to test costa and kahn’s (2000) colocation hypothesis, which postulates that power couples – couples with two highly educated partners – are more likely to migrate to large metropolitan areas because of their dense labour markets that allow them to accommodate two specialised careers from one place of residence. we demonstrated that power couples are indeed overrepresented in the dutch core region. however, we found only partial support for the hypothesis that power couples migrate disproportionally towards the core region. on the one hand, power couples are more likely than other couples to stay in the core region or to migrate within the core region if they already live there. on the other hand, however, among couples who live in semi-peripheral or peripheral regions, power couples are not more likely to migrate to the core region. propensities of peripheryto-core migration are only related to the male partner’s human capital. these results align with earlier fi ndings from the us (compton/pollak 2007). given these fi ndings and the low migration rate among partnered individuals in general it is likely that the concentration of power couples in the dutch core region stems from highly educated single young adults who migrate to the core region individually in order to achieve upward mobility (fielding 1992; kooiman et al. 2018) and later on fi nd a partner who is also highly educated (gautier et al. 2010). power couples formed in the core region thereafter tend to stay in their region. our study puts the infl uence of educational attainments on couple migration in perspective and supports the notion that migration is a social practice and strongly related to linked lives outside the household (coulter et al. 2016; vidal/huinink 2019). in line with evidence from sweden (mulder/malmberg 2014), we showed that couple migration is highly constrained if parents of both the male and the female partner live nearby. furthermore, the effect of human capital was strongly reduced after adjusting for the distance to parents. this indicates that the more highly educated are more likely to migrate partly because they tend to live farther away from their parents. importantly, from this study we cannot say whether the family ties are a pull factor – do people tend to move back to their family? – or merely that there are less constraints for a long distance move in any direction if the family lives far away. in a future study we aim to fi nd answers for these questions by studying the destinations in more detail. increasing regional urban-rural contrasts are a concern for policymakers around the world. young people with high potentials migrate to cities and generally do not return to their place of origin later in life, leading to a potential brain drain in rural areas (kooiman et al. 2018). kooiman et al. (2018) showed that long-distance migration of young individuals for purposes of education and career progression plays a large role in the “geographical sorting” of human capital within the netherlands. this study shows that couple migration for labour market reasons may play only a minor role in this respect given the limited effects of human capital and the low migration • niels kooiman, marjolijn das310 propensities among couples in general. the low migration rates among couples and the tendency for power couples to stay in the core region tends to maintain the geographical segregation of human capital that is driven by the selective migration of highly educated young adults to the core region. one limitation of this study is that register data do not include stated intentions to move. although work is the most-cited motive for long-distance mobility in the netherlands (feijten/visser 2005) and our analyses included robustness checks with different distances, we may well have missed some short-distance job-related moves. furthermore, at this point we do not know whether couples’ mobility truly benefi ted either partner’s career. a future study aims to gain more insights by studying the development of both partners’ careers after the migration. the “take-home message” of this study, as well as the recent swedish studies, is that a crucial change may be taking place in recent years with respect to women’s human capital and labour market positions and their perceived importance within the household. women have surpassed men in higher education, their labour participation is increasing and their weight in couples decision-making around migration appears to be increasing accordingly. for future research, it would be worthwhile to focus on comparative research on the role of men and women in couple migration in different countries, both in europe and beyond. in addition, this study is based on pre-covid 19 data. during the pandemic, working from home has become a widespread phenomenon. if this leads to a more permanent shift towards working from home after the pandemic, this may alter patterns of internal migration among workers for whom working from home is most realistic – that is highly educated, white collar workers. it might enhance the attractiveness of peripherally located regions and decrease the necessity for power couples to be located in expensive, large and diverse labour markets. references abraham, martin; bähr, sebastian; trappmann, mark 2019: gender differences in willingness to move for interregional job offers. in: demographic research 40: 15371602. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2019.40.53 bakker, bart f. m.; van rooijen, johan; van toor, leo 2014: the system of social statistical datasets of statistics netherlands: an integral approach to the production of register-based social statistics. in: journal of the international association for offi cial statistics 30: 1-14. becker, gary s. 1962: investment in human capital: a theoretical analysis. in: journal of political economy 70,5: 9-49. https://doi.org/10.1086/258724 benson, alan 2014: rethinking the two-body problem: the segregation of women into geographically dispersed occupations. in: demography 51,5: 1619-1639. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0324-7 bernard, aude; bell, martin 2018: educational selectivity of internal migrants: a global assessment. in: demographic research 39: 835-854. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2018.39.29. understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 311 bielby, william t.; bielby, denise d. 1992: i will follow him: family ties, gender-role beliefs and reluctance to relocate for a better job. in: the american journal of sociology 97,5: 1241-1267. https://doi.org/10.1086/229901 böheim, rené; taylor, mark p. 2007: from the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road? 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date of acceptance: 05.05.2022 niels kooiman (). statistics netherlands. the hague. the netherlands. university of amsterdam. amsterdam, the netherlands. e-mail: c.kooiman@cbs.nl prof. dr. marjolijn das. erasmus university rotterdam. rotterdam, the netherlands. e-mail: das@essb.eur.nl url: https://www.eur.nl/people/marjolijn-das • niels kooiman, marjolijn das316 appendix tab. a1: migration rates of employed singles aged 18-45 in the three years following the interview date (2006-2015), disaggregated by occupation n moved > 40 km (%) managers 2,395 3.72 clerical support workers 5,034 2.82 service and sales workers 6,730 3.24 skilled agricultural, forestry and fi shery workers 632 1.27 craft and related trades workers 3,293 1.64 plant and machine operators, and assemblers 1,629 2.46 elementary occupations 2,565 2.11 science and engineering professionals 1,387 5.91 health professionals 1,405 7.05 teaching professionals 2,167 5.03 business and administration professionals 3,266 5.97 information and communications technology professionals 2,180 5.60 legal, social and cultural professionals 2,149 5.96 science and engineering associate professionals 1,338 2.91 health associate professionals 1,340 3.66 business and administration associate professionals 3,597 4.53 legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals 1,576 4.00 information and communications technicians 251 5.18 occupation unknown 573 4.71 total 41,813 3.89 source: authors' calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 317 tab. a2: descriptive statistics of the variables used in the analyses % in sample (n = 90,314) % migrants (n = 1,050) total 100 1.2 partners with paid work, t0 neither partner 0.9 2.4 female partner only 2.6 1.4 male partner only 15.6 1.2 both partners 80.9 1.1 year of interview 2006 10.8 1.4 2007 10.3 1.3 2008 10.2 1.1 2009 8.1 1.1 2010 12.5 0.8 2011 8.5 0.8 2012 13.2 1.0 2013 9.5 1.3 2014 8.5 1.4 2015 8.4 1.6 marital status, t0 unmarried 30.9 1.6 married 69.1 1.0 marriage, t0...3 no 93.1 1.1 yes 6.9 2.2 family status, t0 no children 23.3 2.0 age oldest child < 4 20.3 1.7 age oldest child 4-11 37.3 0.7 age oldest child >= 12 19.1 0.4 childbirth, t0…3 no 74.4 0.9 yes 25.6 1.9 migration background neither partner 75.5 1.1 female partner only 8.6 1.6 male partner only 6.7 1.4 both partners 9.2 1.1 • niels kooiman, marjolijn das318 % in sample (n = 90,314) % migrants (n = 1,050) area of residence, t0 national periphery 30.7 0.9 intermediate zone 32.3 0.9 core region 37.0 1.6 distance to woman's municipality of birth, t0 in municipality of birth 29.3 0.3 < 10 km 12.5 0.4 10-25 km 18.9 0.5 25-50 km 9.9 1.8 >= 50 km 17.7 3.5 birthplace unknown 11.8 1.4 distance to man's municipality of birth, t0 in municipality of birth 32.3 0.4 < 10 km 12.37 0.4 10-25 km 18.19 0.6 25-50 km 9.4 1.7 >= 50 km 17.42 3.3 birthplace unknown 10.32 1.3 distance to woman's parent(s), t0 < 2 km 28.0 0.2 2-5 km 15.11 0.2 5-10 km 11.93 0.4 10-25 km 12.6 0.6 25-50 km 7.7 2.3 >= 50 km 13.7 4.5 no parent in the netherlands 10.9 1.3 distance to man's parent(s), t0 < 2 km 30.5 0.3 2-5 km 15.7 0.5 5-10 km 11.3 0.5 10-25 km 11.6 0.8 25-50 km 7.4 2.1 >= 50 km 13.2 4.4 no parent in the netherlands 10.3 1.2 dwelling owner-occupied, t0 no 20.7 2.2 yes 79.3 0.9 tab. a2: continuation understanding couple migration towards core and peripheral regions • 319 % in sample (n = 90,314) % migrants (n = 1,050) relative contribution woman to household income, t0 < 30% 25.7 0.9 30-40% 27.0 0.8 40-50% 28.9 1.3 >= 50% 18.4 1.7 partners with university degree, t0 neither partner 79.1 0.7 female partner only 6.5 2.4 male partner only 7.5 2.2 both partners 6.9 4.3 all couples mean migrant couples mean age partners (18-45), t0 35.8 33.6 standardised household income (0-100), t0 55.6 59.4 job duration woman (in years), t0 7.2 4.8 job duration man (in years), t0 8.0 5.0 migration rate woman's occupation, t0 4.1 4.8 migration rate man's occupation, t0 3.7 4.9 tab. a2: continuation source: authors' calculations from statistics netherlands (cbs) published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient daniela klaus, arun tipandjan abstract: son preference is widespread in india and deep-rooted in its history. it is a matter of concern because it produces an imbalanced juvenile sex ratio. there are far fewer girls than boys. the fi gures vary greatly among the indian states suggesting a major north-south gradient in son preference accompanied by a minor westeast gradient. the aim of this paper is to explain the regional pattern. we provide an application of the value of children-approach according to which the decision to have children is made on the calculus of benefi ts and costs related to children. in the light of the socioeconomic and sociocultural background in india, we propose that (potential) parents’ expectations of benefi ts and costs are biased in favour of sons. this is suggested, therefore, as the key motivation for the preference for male offspring. however, region-specifi cs in the level of affl uence, the educational level, the mode of production, the meaning and importance of religion, and the kinship regime are assumed to produce stronger son preference in north india compared to south india. this mediation-model is tested using the indian sub-sample of the international value of children-study. data were collected in uttar pradesh (northcentral india) and puducherry (south-east india). mothers aged 16 to 65 were interviewed in 2002 and 2010. based on 1,173 respondents, a structural equation model was carried out to test the hypothesised composition effects related to the region and the mediating position of sex-specifi c benefi ts and costs. initial fi ndings confi rm that the national son preference pattern is more likely to be found among north indian mothers than south indian mothers. as assumed, the sex-specifi c balance of benefi ts and costs contributes to the explanation of son preference. however, there is little evidence that the benefi ts and costs mediate between the region-specifi c socioeconomic and sociocultural profi les and son preference. son preference is most pronounced among mothers of the north-urban sample after controlling for region-specifi c distributions of socioeconomic and sociocultural background variables. variations in son preference across the regional sub-samples are partly explained by the respective background variables and the benefi t and cost-structure. but independent regional effects continue to be signifi cant and thus, a considerable part of the north-south gradient remains unclear. keywords: son preference · india · value of children · kinship regime · dowry comparative population studies vol. 40, 1 (2015): 77-102 (date of release: 18.12.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-18en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-18en5 • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan78 1 introduction son preference is widespread in india and deep-rooted in its history. although it is common in the middle east, north africa, and in south and east asia, it is most pronounced in india and china. there is great public concern about this issue for at least two reasons: first, it is widely argued that son preference is slowing the transition to low levels of fertility as couples might continue to bear children until the desired number of sons is reached. but empirical evidence is mixed and suggests a complex interplay (arnold et al. 1998; basu 1999; bhat/zavier 2003; clark 2000; das gupta/bhat 1997; mutharayappa et al. 1997; pande 2003; srinivasan 2005). the spread of the preference for smaller families might add to the pressure to prevent the birth of daughters because the probability of having a son decreases with the lower overall number of preferred children (unfpa 2012: 42-43) second, son preference implies gender discrimination which is manifested in a broad range of sex-selective behaviour (basu 1999; behrman 1988; borooah 2004; das gupta/bhat 1997; oster 2009; pande 2003; pande/astone 2007; rosenzweig/ schultz 1982; sengupta/agree 2002; srinivasan 2005): sex-selective investments in education, autonomy, and self-determination reproduce the subordinate social and economic position of women. sex-selective rates of abortion and infanticide and sex-specifi c health care and nutrition produce sex-selective mortality and thus distorted sex ratios. india, like some other asian countries, faces the problem of “missing women” (sen 2005: 225) which implies, among other things, a shortage of women on the marriage market – termed a “marriage squeeze”. within the last decades, the juvenile sex ratio, defi ned as the number of boys aged 0 to 6 per 100 girls of the same age, became increasingly disproportional: it has increased from 102 in the middle of the 20th century to 110 in 2011 with an accelerated increase in the 1980s (bhaumik 2012). this rise does not indicate an intensifi cation of the son preference but its stronger manifestation, supported by the growing availability of methods of sex diagnosis technology. the development of prenatal diagnostics is the driving factor behind the shift from the traditional postnatal discrimination to the more effective practice of female abortion (goodkind 1996). a harmful side effect of such a rigid avoidance of giving birth to a female child may be the impairment of women’s mental and physical health due to (multiple) abortions. the alarming development of the sex ratio in india can largely be attributed to the north-western states. latest fi gures for the juvenile sex ratio suggest a major north-south gradient which is accompanied by a minor west-east gradient. apart from few exceptions, states in the northern plains and in the central upland show ratios that are well above 110. ratios in south-east india reach around 105. in some selected states like kerala and puducherry they are almost balanced (bhaumik 2012; government of india 2011; unfpa 2012). this uneven distribution of the sex ratio across the regions is accompanied by a similar distribution of son preference (bhat/ zavier 2003: 639, 644; international institute for population sciences (iips)/macro international 2007: 106). in fact, the alleged north-south divide is an imprecise refl ection of india’s diversity which needs to be refi ned: son preference is prevalent in son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 79 north-west india and is less common in south-east india. for reasons of simplifi cation, we talk about north-south differences in the following. the aim of this paper is to contribute to the explanation of this regional pattern, which in turn implies understanding the rationale behind the son preference. we apply the revised value of children (voc)-approach (nauck 2001) which is grounded in the rational choice tradition. accordingly, we argue that gender bias is caused by the sex-specifi c expectations of benefi ts and costs on the part of (potential) parents. these child-related expectations arise from the respective mix of parents’ socioeconomic characteristics and the cultural setting in which they live. prominent regional variations in these background variables imply a favourable cost-benefi t balance of sons compared to daughters in north india. we test the developed theoretical model using data from the international value of children-replication study (trommsdorff/ nauck 2005). we use a sample of 1,173 mothers collected in the north-central indian state of uttar pradesh in 2002 and in puducherry, which is located on the east coast in south india in 2010. son preference is captured by an attitudinal measure. since the study neglects the male perspective, the prevalence of son preference may be underrated but the interrelations between the explanatory variables and the outcome should not be biased. the remainder of our article is organised as follows: in the next section, the theoretical model is outlined. its major implications are discussed in the light of the research on son preference in india in section three. this is followed by a sketch of the theoretical model and the presentation of the hypotheses. section fi ve provides the data and measures employed for the analyses. findings are shown in section six and are discussed in the fi nal conclusion. 2 theoretical background: the value of children-approach numerous studies are dedicated to son preference in india but most of them focus on its drastic consequences for society in general, and for girls and women in particular. much less research explores son preference as an outcome. the few exceptional studies conclude that son preference is deeply entrenched in india’s economic, social, and religious structure (chamarbagwala 2011; das gupta et al. 2003; diamond-smith et al. 2008; dyson/moore 1983; gaudin 2011; nasir/kalla 2006; pande/astone 2007; probst 2009; unfpa 2012; vlasoff 1990). more precisely, the sexspecifi c value of children in india stems from widespread agricultural (wheat) production, the great importance of religion, the persistence of the caste system, the patrilineal and patriarchal organisation of society and the related custom of dowry. yet a theoretically driven and stringent conceptualisation which relates signifi cant background characteristics, child related benefi ts and costs, and the corresponding sex bias, is rarely provided. moreover, previous empirical work did not aim at disentangling the explanatory power of the socioeconomic and cultural variables stressed (except the study by pande/astone 2007) and also omitted quantifying the sex-specifi c benefi ts and costs. • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan80 to fi ll the theoretical gap, we apply the revised (voc)-approach (nauck 2001). some theoretical traditions argue that the decision on the number of children is made on the calculus of child-related benefi ts and costs (becker 1996; friedman et al. 2007; leibenstein 1975; liefbroer 2005). so does the voc-approach. it is built on the idea that individuals strive to optimise their wellbeing. for this purpose they invest in their personal resources like educational attainment, money, professional career, leisure time activities, or in social relationships such as the relationship to offspring. relying on the theory of social production functions (ormel et al. 1999) the value of children comprises children’s potential to provide comfort, social esteem, and affection as main aspects of wellbeing. this analytical distinction basically matches what the initial value of children research calls the economic, the socialnormative, and the emotional value of children (e.g., arnold et al. 1998; kagitcibasi 1982). in addition to the benefi t-side, direct and (indirect) opportunity costs arising from child-rearing are taken into account. the degree to which children are linked to benefi ts and costs depends on the characteristics and resources of the (potential) parents as well as the contextual setting in which they are embedded. it is argued that child-related preferences and fertility behaviour are determined by the childrelated benefi ts and costs. even though relying on this rationale we are aware of the individual’s bounded rationality (simon 1982) as we assume a subjective perception of costs and benefi ts based on incomplete information. the voc-approach has been successfully applied to explain cross-national variations in fertility rates (e.g., nauck 2007) and the historical decline in fertility (e.g., klaus 2010). because it is reasonable to assume that boys and girls differ in their benefi ts and costs in many countries worldwide, it seems to be promising to adopt this approach for the investigation of sex preference. thus, in this paper, we follow the theoretical proposition of the voc-approach and the corresponding view formulated elsewhere: “the calculus of preferences for children of a particular sex can be understood by extending the concept of the value of children to the two sexes separately. if the net utility of having a son outweighs that of having a daughter, parents are likely to prefer sons to daughters. a complex interplay of economic and sociocultural factors determines the benefi ts and costs of a child” (arnold et al. 1998: 301). 3 the value of sons and daughters in india against india’s socioeconomic and sociocultural background, existing studies emphasise the children’s economic-instrumental value, the marriage transaction costs due to the custom of dowry payment, and children’s social-normative value rooted in the dominant patrilineal kinship system and traditional beliefs (e.g., arnold et al. 1998; vlasoff 1990). we observe a widespread consensus that daughters are less valuable to parents than sons. moreover, a strong socially and economically motivated pressure to bear at least one son and to limit the number of girls is emphasised. in the following, the relevant research literature is reviewed in the light of son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 81 the voc-propositions. the focus will be on potential inter-individual variations and variations across regions. 3.1 the economic-instrumental benefi t of children agriculture still plays an important role in india’s economy. today the agricultural sector contributes to only around 17 percent of the gross domestic product of india (reserve bank of india 2012: table 3) but engages around half of the country’s manpower. strong dependence of agrarian production on the climate and the weather implies an economically hazardous environment for a large part of the population. this is aggravated by the overall lack of public old age security and other insurance schemes covering the risks of life. as a consequence and in line with the key propositions of the voc-approach, economic incentives to have children are prevalent in india. however, the economic-instrumental utility fl ow is usually in favour of sons (e.g., cain 1986; chen et al. 2011; probst 2009; vlasoff 1990) for at least two reasons: first, india is a patrilineal society in which patrilocal household formation is inherent (e.g., dyson/moore 1983; singh 2005). daughters are absorbed into their husband’s line once they are married. although very valuable for their husbands’ family, women are of limited long-term value for their own parents. usually the son and his family of procreation are obliged to take care of his elderly and frail parents. second, the son’s responsibility is accompanied by his higher productive potential. having a son means a reliable source of labour in farming where manual labour is still important despite the growing spread of modern technology. men also have greater opportunities for gainful employment since they are higher educated and qualifi ed than women, who have gained in education and paid labour participation within the recent decades but “are still not encouraged to work outside the home” due to persisting patriarchal norms which restrict their presence in the public sphere (singh 2005: 150). men’s superior economic status is reinforced by the dominance of patrilineal inheritance rules which ensure their ownership of productive assets like the land, farm, or the family business. nevertheless, regional variations can be assumed, fi rst of all, due to the varying strength of the patrilineal kinship regime across the country. in their seminal work dyson and moore (1993, see also das gupta et al. 2003) identifi ed two systems that meet in india and which are part of larger sociocultural areas. the north indian system as part of the west asian model is very rigid as patrilineality is the rule and thus, prevailing gender discrimination is reinforced. daughters are largely seen as an economic drain on their families. this differs from the south indian system, which belongs to the south and east asian kinship model. here, the logic of patrilineality is still dominating but is more fl exible. endogamy is practiced which refers to the custom to marry within a certain (social) group similar to that of the own family. the newly married couple usually reside separately from the husband’s family (neolocality) which enables daughters to remain (physically) close to their parents after their marriage. women may inherit and transfer property rights (agarwal 1988). as a consequence both sons and daughters might render help for their families • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan82 and parents in south india. this coincides with women’s higher contribution to the family subsistence in the rice-growing agriculture which dominates in south india. women play a major role in the rice-production from weeding to harvesting. thus, they are of relatively high economic value in contrast to central and north india where wheat production is widespread (reserve bank of india 2012: table 23) and basically requires male ”muscle power“ (pande/astone 2007: 5). economic prosperity and educational attainment are also argued to contribute to a smaller gender gap because of a lower overall economic-instrumental benefi t of children. parents gain fi nancial independence from their offspring if their socioeconomic resources increase. on the other hand, impoverished households and low educated segments of the population depend on (minor) children’s contribution to the family’s living. in this respect, again, noteworthy regional differences can be observed. in the southern states (as well as a few states in northernmost india) a great part of the population can read and write (around 80 percent) whereas literacy is much lower in the states of the northern central upland (government of india 2011). a similar pattern is found for affl uence: the north-central strip of india exhibits the lowest gross domestic product, embracing uttar pradesh with 1,586 usd per capita in 2009. this contrasts with the much higher gdp in south india, which amounted to up to 6,602 usd in puducherry in 2009, for instance (the economist 2012). to summarise, the widespread gender gap in terms of the economic-instrumental benefi t is assumed to be smaller in south india. here we observe a unique setting where attenuated patrilineality, rice production, and trends of economic prosperity and educational expansion converge. 3.2 the high-cost custom of dowry the majority of child-related costs are of a fi nancial nature. this comprises expenditures for children’s upbringing (nutrition, investments in health care), their education and their marriage (direct costs) but also covers the loss of a mother’s contribution to the household’s subsidence or income when she takes care of her children (indirect costs). whereas the latter is assumed to be of the same value regardless of the child’s sex, higher investments into (the income potential of) sons may cause higher son-related direct costs. this sex-related ratio, however, might be reversed if marriage transaction costs are taken into account. whereas the practice of a bride price raised by the husband’s family dominates worldwide, india is one of the few societies to feature the payment of a dowry. dowries entail a transfer from the bride’s family to the groom and his family at the time of marriage. studies widely agree that the custom of dowry is a key issue in the understanding of the persistent son preference in india (e.g., diamond-smith et al. 2008; jaggi 2001). in the literature, several interrelated reasons are discussed that may account for the existence of dowry (e.g., dalmia/lawrence 2005). it is common where women’s productive input to the household is low and where patrilineal and patriarchal structures prevail (dyson/moore 1983; jejeebhoy/sathar 2001; singh 2005). the dowry payment aims at maintaining the status of the bride’s family since it is considered as a symbol of prestige. its absolute amount “increase[s] with both the wealth and son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 83 social status of both sides of the marriage bargain” (anderson 2007: 163). moreover, high dowry payments are a strategy for social upward mobility. this is related to the caste-based structure of india which implies that social status is independent of fi nancial capital and is inherited through caste. this motivates hypergamy, i.e. the marriage to a husband of a higher status than the bride’s family. high dowry payments used to be an upper class phenomenon but have been increasingly adopted by lower status and low caste families within the last decades (miller 1981; singh 2005). this trend might be triggered by the growing affl uence and welfare dispersion among the indian population which has enabled a growing share to make use of dowry as a means of increasing status and a rise in family’s prestige (anderson 2003). even in traditional bride-price regions in south india like tamil nadu, a spread of dowry has been observed (anderson 2003; caldwell et al. 1982; rao 1993; singh 2005). since in south india the preference for one child of each sex is common due to the high benefi ts attached to boys and girls, the growing practice of dowry started to raise concern among families about the immense fi nancial pressures, at least after having two daughters (diamond-smith et al. 2008: 697). to summarise, dowry is mandatory in north india and rural areas due to stronger patrilineality and stronger patriarchial norms and payments are argued to be highest among the upper class. 3.3 the social-normative benefi t of children depending on the social and cultural context in which the family is embedded, children enhance parent’s status attainment (nauck 2007: 617). in social structures where the continuance of the lineage is a highly salient goal, the birth of a child increases the parental status and provides behavioural confi rmation. in patrilineal societies like india, only male offspring can carry on the family name, continue the family line and therefore, reproduce the family’s social status. moreover, religious customs and traditions in india bear a high religious bias towards sons. a son provides prestige not only during parents’ lifetime but above all, after their death (caldwell et al. 1984; das gupta et al. 2003; probst 2009; vlasoff 1990). for hindus, who make up the majority of indians (81 percent), having a son is imperative (singh 2005: 131). he is the only one who can light the funeral pyre of his deceased parents, offer ancestral worship and thus ensure the salvation of their souls. therefore, in terms of the social-normative value of children, the sex gap is most evident. but since patrilineality and the aim to achieve immortality are most prominent in northwest india (das gupta et al. 2003), the social-normative value of sons should be more pronounced here than in south india. to sum up, there is strong evidence that the cost-benefi t balance of children is generally in favour of sons and it is argued that this is the main reason for a widespread son preference. nevertheless, regional differentials can be expected which come into effect due to region-specifi cs in terms of the kinship regime, the signifi cance of religiosity, and the socioeconomic profi le of the inhabitants. the access to (higher) education and monetary resources as well as sociocultural identity depend on the individual’s place of residence. • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan84 4 theoretical model and hypotheses figure 1 provides a sketch of our theoretical model. whether sons or daughters are preferred or no preference at all exists depends on the respective combination of sex-specifi c benefi ts and costs attached to children by their (potential) parents. the cost-benefi t structure is, however, not arbitrary but a result of the individual’s socioeconomic status and its sociocultural embedding – both systematically varying across regions. the review provided has exposed the educational and the welfare levels as meaningful facets of individual’s socioeconomic status. the strength of patrilineality and the magnitude of religiosity are found to be the most relevant factors characterising the individual sociocultural background. the model suggests a complex path dependency of our major outcome variable. the explanation of son preference in india includes the aim of shedding light on regional variations by means of the explanatory components in between. this implies a multiple mediator model as illustrated in figure 1. a set of subsequent hypotheses can be derived. as a starting point, we assume regional variations in the prevalence of son preference. (h1) son preference is more prevalent in north india than south india. (h2) the regional variations in son preference are mediated by individual characteristics rather than being independent (mediation effect). the mediation is assumed to be based on multiple mediators. first of all, regions differ in terms of socioeconomic and sociocultural characteristics (composition effects). (h3) the socioeconomic status is higher in south india than north india. (h4) patrilineality and religiosity are stronger in north india than south india. the benefi ts and costs related to sons and daughters are the core of the mediation. they are assumed to depend on the individual’s background variables and, at the same time, to predict the son preference directly (benefi t-cost effects). fig. 1: theoretical model region sex preference socioeconomic factors sociocultural factors sexspecific costs sexspecific benefits source: own design son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 85 (h5) son preference is more likely the higher the relative benefi ts related to sons. (h6) son preference is more likely the higher the relative costs related to daughters. (h7) the higher the socioeconomic status, the lower the relative benefi ts related to sons. (h8) the higher the socioeconomic status, the higher the relative costs related to daughters. (h9) the higher the level of patrilineality and religiosity, the greater the costbenefi t structure of children in favour of sons. 5 method 5.1 data analyses were made using data from the international value of children-replication study (trommsdorff/nauck 2010; trommsdorff/nauck 2005). data were collected in 17 countries worldwide. within this research program, an indian sub-sample was realised in two geographical areas that are prototypical for north and south-east india in respect of our outcome and the potential predictor variables. in 2002, the north indian sample was carried out in the state of uttar pradesh which is located in the central upland. interviews were conducted in varanasi city and in several villages of the naugarh block of the chandauli district. in 2010 a south indian sample was realised at the south-east coast inside the state of tamil nadu. an urban sample was conducted in the city of puducherry and a rural sample in some villages nearby in the districts villupuram and cuddalore. the 8-year gap in fi eldwork might produce biased fi ndings with respect to the prevalence of son preference. an underestimation of the gap between the north and south indian sample can be expected since the juvenile sex ratio has slightly increased between 2001 and 2011 in uttar pradesh but not in tamil nadu (government of india 2011). nevertheless, the bias should be small and regression coeffi cients are not affected. respondents were interviewed face-to-face with a standardised questionnaire. the questionnaires were available in hindi (north india) and tamil (south india). in fact, the study has realised a three-generation sample design of mothers, grandmothers and adolescents. for the present analysis we have selected the subsample of mothers. fathers were not included in this study. convenience sampling method was applied: mothers were recruited in institutions like schools, kindergartens, and self-help groups. rural families were approached directly in their homes. altogether 1,173 valid interviews are available that are equally distributed over four regions we differentiate in order to capture the hypothesised north-south gradient but also to control for possible urban-rural differences: north-rural, north-urban, south-rural, and south-urban. the surveyed mothers are in different stages of their life: they are aged between 16 and 65 years with an average age of 32 years. mothers in north india are somewhat older (rural = 33; urban = 35) than their southern counterparts (rural = 32; urban = 33). this corresponds to the higher number of • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan86 children in the north indian sample (rural = 3.0; urban = 2.3) compared to the south indian sample (rural = 2.0; urban = 2.0). 5.2 measures son preference is covered by an attitudinal indicator. respondents were asked for their sex preference: “if you had exactly one child, would you prefer it to be a boy or a girl or is it all the same to you?” a more implicit measuring was realised in the indian national family health survey (nfhs) where sex preference was assessed by asking for the ideal number of children and its distribution on both sexes (international institute for population sciences (iips)/macro international 2007: 103). the forced choice questioning applied here may provoke higher rates of hidden sex preference but obviously does not as demonstrated later (fig. 2). overall, the majority state no preference (75 percent). apart from that, son preference is more prevalent (20 percent) than daughter preference (6 percent). to mitigate adverse consequences of a potential answer bias due to the fact of varying sex-compositions of children already born to the respondent, the number of sons is included as control variable (gaudin 2011). for the multivariate analysis the indicator is dichotomised: son preference (score 1) versus daughter or no preference (score 0). the sex-specifi c costs of children are measured by a single question asking: “who costs the most fi nancially: sons or daughters or do they cost about the same?” corresponding to the distribution of the sex preference, the share of those who declare that child’s sex does not matter in terms of expenditures is highest (71 percent). only 6 percent of the respondents assess sons to be more expensive and 23 percent vice versa. again, the categorical variable is recoded into a dummy indicator with score 1 indicating relative higher costs attached to daughters. two scales are available asking for the benefi ts expected from grown-up daughters and grown-up sons. among others, they cover instrumental and fi nancial aspects by two items which refer to care in old age and fi nancial assistance provided by the adult child. respondents rated them using a response-scale ranging from “not very important” (score 1) to “very important” (score 5). both items are signifi cantly interrelated (p < 0.01) which applies with respect to sons (r = 0.56) and with respect to daughters (r = 0.45). they were summed separately for daughters and sons. to obtain a measure of the relative benefi t expectations, both sex-specifi c scores were subtracted and then respondents were classifi ed: mothers with a value within the range of one standard deviation were assigned to the group with no sex-specifi c benefi ts. they have provided nearly the same level of benefi t-expectations towards daughters and sons. again, this applies to the majority of our sample (55 percent). mothers beyond one standard deviation were classifi ed either as higher daughter-benefi ts (10 percent) or as higher son-benefi ts (34 percent). in our multivariate model higher son-benefi ts (score 1) are contrasted to any other expectations (score 0). the benefi t indicator just presented is restricted in two ways: expectations towards minor children are not covered nor are social-normative benefi ts. the fi rst issue is less harmful as the relevant sex gap in instrumental and fi nancial terms son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 87 only starts to widen when children marry. thus, the focus on long-term benefi ts should cover a large part of the expected sex differences. the second objection is more precarious because the gendered social-normative benefi ts are assumed to account for the son preference to a great deal. to alleviate this weakness, we rely on another scale asking for a number of reasons for having children. the item “a duty according to belief” is employed as a proxy to capture a son’s relevance to carry on the family name and maintain parents’ afterlife. the same fi ve-point response scale is used as for the sex-specifi c benefi ts. the overall mean score amounts up to 2.7 (sd = 1.50). the respondent’s socioeconomic position is captured by two indicators: the household’s welfare level and the educational level of the surveyed mother. the welfare is measured by a cumulative count of the actual property held by the household in which the respondent lives. it covers a summer house, gold, jewellery, stocks, and car. home ownership and the holding of a plot of land were intentionally excluded. they are the rule for the rural population and we suspect them to be an indication of production means and the rural mode of living rather than a measure of affl uence. on average, households possess one of the fi ve items (m = 0.9; sd = 1.12). education comprises four groups. the group of respondents with no degree (score 0) is the largest (32 percent). respondents who have completed primary (score 1) and secondary school (score 2) are found in equal shares: 26 percent. the remaining 17 percent of respondents have a tertiary degree. assuming that respondents can convert their education into a corresponding career and salary, this indicator provides approximate information about their wage potential and thus, their dependency on children’s fi nancial support. the sociocultural setting is described by patrilineality and religiosity. an attempt to measure the fl exibility of the patrilineal rules was made by using the respondent’s contact pattern to the affi nal (husband’s) kin in relation to the consanguineous (own lineage’s) kin. the data provide the contact frequency for the oldest brother, the oldest sister, the mother, the father and the four in-law pendants. contact comprises face-to-face contact and contact mediated by letter, email, and phone. a fi ve-point answer scale was applied ranging from “daily” (score 1) to “less than once a month” (score 5). separately for every four positions, a relative contact rate was computed. a positive score indicates more frequent contact with the affi nal family member and a negative score indicates more contact with the consanguineous family member. the four single indicators were then aggregated by computing an average score. this fi nal indicator stretches from “low fl exibility of patrilineal rules” (score +4) to “high fl exibility of patrilineal rules” (score -4). the score zero indicates a balanced contact rate to the members of both lineages. overall, respondents tend to pronounced patrilineality (m = 1.0; sd = 1.81). nearly all of our respondents are affi liated to hinduism (96 percent). regardless of their belief, they were asked to rate how important their religion is to them on a fi ve-point scale ranging from “not important at all” (score 0) to “very important” (score 4). the mean value proves a very high level of religiosity for our sample (m = 3.4; sd = 0.79). • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan88 to control for the different stages of life in which respondents were surveyed and for the diverse experiences they have with sons, we include in the analysis the respondent’s age (range = 16-65; m = 33; sd = 8.06) and the number of sons born (range = 0-8; m = 1.2; sd = 0.99). 5.3 analytical approach structural equation modelling (sem), specifi cally path analysis, is applied to test for the hypothesised composition effects related to the respondent’s regional location as well as to test for the suggested mediating position of the costand benefi tstructure. direct and indirect effects are computed simultaneously and the sobeltest (z-score) is provided to test for the statistical signifi cance of the indirect effects. weighted least square estimations (wlsmv) are carried out to account for the combination of binary and continuous indicators. linear regressions are obtained in case of continuous dependent variables and probit regressions are obtained in case of binary dependent variables. basically, standardised probit coeffi cients can be interpreted much the same way as ols-regression coeffi cients. positive coeffi cients indicate positive effects of the predictor variable on the outcome and vice versa. 6 results 6.1 bivariate findings figure 2 illustrates differences in the sex preference across the regions. as hypothesised (h1), the percentage of mothers who state a preference for a son is signifi cantly higher in the north indian sample (32 percent in the rural and the urban sample) compared to the south indian sample (7 percent in the rural and 6 percent in the urban sample). apparently, sex preference is the exception in south india: for a great majority of respondents, having a son or a daughter is all the same (82 percent in the rural and 88 percent in the urban sample). in fact, having no preference dominates throughout our sample, which contradicts the widespread view of a common son preference in india. this may result from the sample selection (mothers in two selected areas of india) and the use of an attitudinal measurement of sex preference instead of using a behavioural outcome. using a similar measurement, the indian nfhs reports very similar distributions for uttar pradesh and tamil nadu which promotes our results (international institute for population sciences (iips)/macro international 2007: 106). at the same time, this fi nding may also indicate (the onset of) a change toward greater gender equality starting with changing attitudes. it is also noteworthy that only a few more southern respondents prefer a daughter to a son compared to their northern counterparts and the likelihood for son preference does not vary between urban and rural mothers, neither in north nor in south india. at this aggregate-level, the region-specifi c pattern of sex preference revealed corresponds to the regional costand benefi t-structure in the way we have proson preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 89 posed. the four columns in the left part of figure 3 prove that signifi cantly more respondents attribute a relatively higher benefi t level to sons in north india than in south india. the percentage is highest in the urban sample of north india (41 percent) and lowest in the urban south indian sample (16 percent). it is remarkable that the lower prevalence of higher son benefi t in south india does not result in a higher percentage of balanced benefi t expectations but in a higher daughter benefi t: 39 percent of the rural and even 50 percent of the urban respondents in south india attribute higher fi nancial assistance and old-age support to daughters. this even exceeds the percentage of mothers who expect higher son benefi ts. the widespread expectation of higher benefi ts linked to a daughter is in line with the relatively high percentage of daughter preference found in our southern sample (fig. 2). the higher benefi t of sons to care for their elderly parents (fi nancially) in north india is complemented by their social-normative benefi t (not shown in fig. 3): it is rated highest among mothers in urban north india (m = 3.2) and lowest in urban south india (m = 2.0). both rural sub-samples range in between (m = 2.7). the mean differences are signifi cant (p < 0.001). altogether, the overall son-benefi t is found to be lowest in our urban south indian sample and the highest in urban north india. regional differences are less pronounced in terms of child related costs but still match the sex preference pattern (see right four columns in fig. 3). the vast majority of respondents in south india make no distinction between sons and daughters with respect to monetary expenses: 75 percent (rural) and as many as 83 percent (urban) of the respondents in south india assess both cost the same, coinciding with fig. 2: region-specifi c sex preference (in percent) source: voc-data india, n = 1,173 0 20 40 60 80 100 rural urban rural urban daughter same son north south • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan90 their widespread lack of sex preference. in north india, equal costs are reported most often as well – by around two thirds. higher costs attached to daughters form the second largest group in every considered region but with the highest share among village mothers in north india (35 percent). this may point to high dowry payments in relation to fairly limited fi nancial resources. based on the bivariate observation, we can draw a preliminary conclusion. whereas females’ relatively high economic and instrumental value in south india together with predominately equal costs attributed to sons and daughters may produce a high rate of those who have no sex preference at all, in north india the stronger son preference may be triggered by high benefi ts related to sons accompanied by high costs related to daughters. comparing rural and urban locations, no systematic variations are found. these initial comparisons of group-means only provide a rough picture and supply no information on associations at the individual level. the subsequent multivariate test provides an in-depth analysis of the internal structure considering additional potential predictors. fig. 3: region-specifi c costs and benefi ts attached to children (in percent) 0 20 40 60 80 100 rur al urb an ru ra l urb an ru ra l urb an ru ra l urb an daughter higher same son higher north southnorthsouth relative benefits relative costs source: voc-data india, n = 1,173 son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 91 6.2 multivariate findings the theoretical model was applied to the data by sem. in the full baseline model (not shown) the respondent’s degree of religiosity is found to be of marginal explanatory power which contradicts our hypotheses (h4 and h9). religiosity is related neither to sex-specifi c child-related costs nor to benefi ts. less prevalent son preference among south indian respondents does not stem from their lower religiosity. instead, mean values of religiosity are found to be high across the regional sub-samples with minor differences (m = from 3.3 to 3.5). as a consequence, we exclude religiosity from the fi nal model which is illustrated in figure 4. in table 1 the standardised coeffi cients and the z-statistics of the fi nal model are provided. we report all direct effects and the indirect effects related to the respondent’s regional residence. two common fi t indices are provided to assess how good the fi nal model matches to our data: cfi = 0.970, rmsea = 0.052. following the cutting points suggested by hu and bentler (1999) values higher than 0.95 for cfi and lower than 0.06 for rmsea indicate a relatively good fi t. accordingly, our hypothesised model is found to be of reasonable quality. mediation effect whereas the bivariate test has already identifi ed the hypothesised north-south difference in the prevalence of son preference (fig. 2), the multivariate model adds some enlightening information: the overall region effect splits up in signifi cant difig. 4: explanation of son preference (fi nal model) property higher costs of daughter social-normative son-benefit son preference higher instrumentaleconomic son-benefit education patrilineality region source: own design • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan92 rect and signifi cant indirect effects. the indirect effects of respondent’s residence on the son preference are provided in section iv of table 1: mediated by regionspecifi c background variables and the cost-benefi t structure of children respondents in north urban (-0.165), south rural (-0.140), and south urban india (-0.199) have signifi cant lower rates of son preference than mothers in north rural india (reference group). basically, this confi rms our hypothesis (h2). the region effect is, however, only partly mediated because signifi cant direct effects remain in existence (section i, table 1): corresponding to the indirect effects, south rural (-0.232) and south urban respondents (-0.210) are revealed as having a lower rate of son preference than respondents in north rural india (reference group). but remarkably, when controlling for the indirect paths, respondents in north urban india show the most pronounced son preference. the combination of their positive direct (0.159) and their negative indirect effect (-0.165) on son preference obviously levels out and thus, was masked in the bivariate test. these fi ndings suggest regionspecifi c characteristics beyond the socioeconomic status and the kinship structure to be responsible for north urban respondents’ higher probability of son preference compared to their southern and even rural counterparts. in general, as direct region effects diminish but do not disappear in the mediation-model, unobserved factors or mechanisms relevant for son preference exert infl uence. composition effects still, a substantial part of the variation in son preference over the regions stems from region-specifi c distributions of the respondents’ characteristics considered – yet, some of the effects are unexpected or were not anticipated. for a detailed look we focus on section ii in table 1. respondents in the urban sample in north india turn out to be upper class members. they live in the most affl uent households (0.520) and are the highest educated (0.895). respondents in south india are middle educated with no substantial rural-urban differences (0.475 for rural and 0.564 for urban respondents) and northern village respondents are least educated (reference group).the latter live in the most pronounced patrilineal environment as signifi cantly lower levels of patrilineal strength are found for the other three subsamples: -0.374 for north urban, -0.452 for south rural, and -0.486 for south urban respondents. these fi ndings call for a refi nement of our composition hypotheses: there is no simple north-south gap but a rather complex rural-urban distinction has to been added: whereas in south india, urban and rural respondents are fairly alike, we observe a great difference in north india. in line with our hypotheses, villagers in north india have a lower socioeconomic status (h3) and stronger patrilineality than respondents in south india (h4). this, however, does not apply for urban respondents in north india: in contrast to their rural counterparts, they have a higher socioeconomic status and do not differ in terms of patrilineality from respondents in south india. nevertheless, the regional profi les contribute to the explanation of the regional variations in son preference. the region-specifi c levels of affl uence and education son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 93 are linked to son preference although somewhat different from our hypotheses. whereas affl uence is found to be positively related to son preference, education is negatively related. this is evident for both variables’ direct impact (section i, table 1: 0.083 for property and -0.148 for education) but also applies for their indirect impact via the individually held benefi t-and cost-expectations (see the following section). benefi t-cost effects if we focus on the explanatory contribution of the benefi ts and costs attributed to children, we learn fi rst that they signifi cantly predict son preference in the expected way (section i, table 1): respondents are more likely to prefer a son if they perceive relative higher daughter-costs (0.186), relative higher instrumental-economic son-benefi ts (0.128), and higher social-normative son-benefi t (0.144). this is in line with hypotheses (h5 and h6). at the same time, one of the key propositions of the voc-approach is confi rmed: the preference for children of a certain sex is at least partly based on a consideration of the benefi ts and costs expected from both sexes. if (potential) parents perceive a higher net-benefi t of a son, they wish to have a son instead of a daughter. this is reasonable in the light of the limited pool of (fi nancial and time) resources people have and the assumption that they tend to spend the resources with the objective of optimising personal profi t. however, the socioeconomic background variables show a fairly inconsistent prediction of the child-related costs and benefi ts and the sociocultural variables do not even add to their explanation at all (section iii, table 1). neither child-related costs nor benefi ts are related to the degree of patrilineality (and religiosity, which has been already omitted from the fi nal model). this fi nally disproves hypothesis (h9). if we inspect the socioeconomic variables in more detail, we discover that respondents from affl uent families are more likely to expect that daughters cost more than sons (0.143). this confi rms the hypothesis (h8) which was informed by the assumption of large dowry payments in upper class families. at the same time, an unexpected fi nding emerges: upper class respondents expect higher son-benefi ts of both kinds: instrumental-economic (0.079) and social-normative (0.199). this disproves hypothesis (h7) which was basically built on the idea of lower reliance on child-related (old-age) support and a less adherence to religiously-motivated benefi ts provided by sons among affl uent families. the fi nding might indicate that we have overestimated the greater independence of upper class families on child related benefi ts and the related levelling effect on the gender gap. the unexpected higher son benefi ts in the upper class may be caused by persistently strong patriarchal norms. they may, in turn, imply that women are more likely to be excluded from labour market and are subordinate in religious ceremonies like the funeral. in total, the level of affl uence has a positive effect on son preference which challenges the few studies that proved minor but negative wealth effects on son preference (bhat/zavier 2003; gaudin 2011; pande/astone 2007). • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan94 tab. 1: explanation of son preference (regression coeffi cients based on sem) standard coeffi cient z-score (sig.) i direct effects on son preference (probit) region (ref.: north-rural): north-urban 0.159 2.192* south-rural -0.232 -3.596** south-urban -0.210 -2.997* property 0.083 1.821+ education -0.148 -2.170* patrilineality 0.115 2.146* higher costs of daughter 0.186 3.287** higher instrumental-economic son-benefi t 0.128 2.422* social-normative son-benefi t 0.144 2.884** ii direct effects on socioeconomic and sociocultural variables property (linear) region (ref.: north-rural): north-urban 0.520 15.795*** south-rural 0.101 3.295** south-urban -0.131 -3.333** education (linear) region (ref.: north-rural): north-urban 0.895 22.981*** south-rural 0.475 13.228*** south-urban 0.564 15.456*** patrilineality (linear) region (ref.: north-rural): north-urban -0.374 -9.278*** south-rural -0.452 -11.851*** south-urban -0.486 -12.804*** iii direct effects on costand benefi t variables higher costs of daughter (probit) property 0.143 3.236** education -0.291 -5.675** patrilineality -0.019 -0.414 higher instrumental-economic son-benefi t (probit) property 0.079 1.767+ education -0.045 -0.895 patrilineality -0.023 -0.489 son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 95 in line with previous fi ndings, women’s education has an overall negative effect on son preference (bhat/zavier 2003; pande/astone 2007). our fi ndings add to the existing research because they demonstrate that the negative effect is partly mediated by sex-specifi c costs and benefi ts: the higher the education, the lower the probability of stating higher daughter-costs (-0.291) which is found to promote son preference. this fi nding challenges hypothesis (h8). it suggests that women’s education is less an indication of socioeconomic class and thus linked to the need and amount of dowry (as we have assumed). instead, high education obviously refl ects less gendered investment strategies in children and the same educational aspirations for any offspring regardless of the sex. it might indicate a more egalitarian environment in which women enjoy higher status and are less constrained by rigid patrilineal and patriarchal norms. this might also be applicable to the fi nding that social-normative reasons for sons become less important with better education of mothers (-0.128). sex-specifi c attitudes and attributions might be less dominant among well educated women and thus, implying wider role defi nitions and opportunities for them. standard coeffi cient z-score (sig.) social-normative son-benefi t (linear) property 0.199 5.220*** education -0.128 -3.174** patrilineality -0.019 0.577 iv indirect effects on son preference (probit) region (ref.: north-rural): north-urban -0.165 -2.764** south-rural -0.140 -3.527*** south-urban -0.199 -4.083*** r² son preference 0.330 chi² (df) 63.690 (13)*** rmsea / cfi 0.052 / 0.970 tab. 1: continuation note: wlsmv estimation. ***<.001; **<.01; *<.05; +<.1. controlled for age, number of sons, and interrelations between the cost and benefi ts aspects and between the socioeconomic and sociocultural variables. source: vocdata india. n = 1,173 • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan96 7 discussion in this article, we aimed to explain son preference in india and its variations across the country. state-wise juvenile sex-ratios and individual sex preferences based on the indian nfhs strongly suggest a persistent north-south gradient in son preference. this national pattern was confi rmed by our two indian sub-samples which are exemplary for north and south-east india (compare fig. 2). to shed light on the underlying mechanisms that may be responsible for these variations, we proposed a theoretical model following the voc-approach. as implicitly done by most of the research on this issue, we explicitly relied on a costbenefi t rationale behind the sex preference. we argued that son preference refl ects a cost-benefi t balance in favour of sons which in turn is triggered by a specifi c combination of individual characteristics. hence, extending the previous research, the major purpose of our analysis was to provide empirical evidence for the explanatory power of the sex-specifi c costs and benefi ts and the region-specifi c distribution of relevant socioeconomic and cultural factors. the complex theoretical model was translated by sem that is most adequate to disentangle direct and indirect effects. a unique opportunity was provided by the voc-data because they cover attitudes towards the costs and benefi ts separately for daughters and sons. moreover, data were gathered in two distinct regions of india. some hypotheses were confi rmed whereas others were disproved: son preference was indeed more probable among mothers with higher expectations of son-benefi ts and daughters-costs. this signifi cantly adds to the empirical state of research as, to our knowledge, this has not been demonstrated by any other study. however, respondents’ affl uence, educational level, patrilineal contact patterns, and their degree of religiosity hardly affected their cost-benefi t-structure in the expected way. in fact, the direct effects of these background variables on son preference dominated. the almost complete insignifi cance of cultural aspects is one of the most puzzling fi ndings because almost all work in this fi eld underlines the patrilineal structures and the hindu code as vital determinants for the pronounced son preference in india. at this point it cannot be ruled out that data limitations account for the small or even missing effects, at least to some extent. this especially applies to the measurements of the benefi t-concept of children. the social-normative facet is underrepresented fi rst, because it is restricted to motivations based on religious grounds. it ignores children’s alternative value such as for the intergenerational transfer of the family’s wealth, the continuance of social approval and status (even beyond parents’ death), and thus the reproduction of the social order by the offspring. second, it is not measured separately for daughters and sons. the indicators are thus suboptimal and do not pay enough attention to indian’s specifi cs. this shortcoming results from the fact that the indian voc-data were collected within a larger international project with a somewhat different focus, namely the provision of countryequivalent data and the exploration of the overall fertility instead of gender biased preferences. this might also adversely affect the coverage of the respondents’ cultural background. the strength of the patrilineality – as a very complex concept – son preference in india: shedding light on the north-south gradient • 97 was only indicated by a signifi cant but single aspect: the intergenerational contact pattern. marriage and inheritance practices are also highly relevant facets of the kinship regime but were not available in the present data. one explanation for the surprising insignifi cance of religiosity is related to its attitudinal indicator which poorly differentiates between the respondents. as argued elsewhere (glock 1954), it is more effective to add religiously-motivated behaviour such as attendance at religious ceremonies. this might be less sensitive towards response biases such as social desirability. given these shortcomings, our fi ndings should be interpreted with caution. the effects might be underestimated. validating the cost-benefi t argument based on a broader and more comprehensive array of measurements is strongly recommended. at the same time, however, the theoretical perspective on son preference needs to be revisited. we come to a similar conclusion when we review the composition effects. prominent variations in son preference across the regional sub-samples emerged. as expected, a signifi cant part of the variance could be interpreted in terms of socioeconomic and cultural specifi cs, but a substantial proportion remained unexplained. highly remarkable is the most pronounced son preference in the north-rural sample when controlling for the background variables considered. a more detailed inspection reveals that the majority of these respondents are married to husbands who work in well-paid positions, mainly as white collar workers (51 percent) and in the public or fi nancial sector (59 percent). we observe a quite homogeneous urban sample which is very modern and affl uent in socioeconomic terms but adheres to traditional, sex-segregated attitudes and norms, especially when compared to their southern counterparts. on the one hand, facets of costs and benefi ts that were not adequately considered in our study might help to dissolve the strong direct effects that emerged. on the other hand, the substantial amount of unexplained variance in son preference (r² = 0.33) calls for a critical review of the widely held set of arguments which are cited to produce son preference. for a satisfactory explanation, future research should pay more attention to mechanisms beyond the cost-benefi t argument. in this respect it might be fruitful to consider son preference separately for men and women and to discuss the marital decision making process in case of spouses’ disagreement. one major limitation of our sample is its restriction to mothers. the high percentage of respondents without any sex preference shown might be overestimated since no men or childless women were available. it is reasonable to assume that male family members are more concerned about lineage related benefi ts like the continuation of the family and thus have a stronger interest in male offspring. moreover, patriarchal structures imply that men are more powerful and therefore in a better position to assert their interests in terms of family planning. thus, the exploration of sex-specifi c mechanisms and dyadic dynamics might add to existing knowledge. this also applies to the analysis of the development of preferences along the life course. a childless woman’s preference may change after her transition to motherhood and following every subsequent birth as an adaptation either to personal experiences with children of a certain sex (as a kind of correction) or to the present sex-composition (as an attempt to establish consistency). • daniela klaus, arun tipandjan98 a fi nal issue is related to the measurement of son preference: in general, sex preference is a strong motivator for sex-specifi c fertile behaviour which fi nally manifests in a more or less corresponding sex-composition of the children. but because of, inter alia, unequal access to sex diagnosis technology and abortion or potential spousal disagreement on preferences, individual sex preferences and the resulting behaviour do not necessarily correspond. thus, attitudinal and behavioural measures are interrelated but distinct aspects of sex preference. whereas the attitudinal measure may be subjected to response biases due to social desirability during the interview the behavioural measure may be biased due to unequal abilities to achieve individual sex preferences. to improve the understanding of sex preference and sex-ratios, we thus suggest an extension of the present research by exploring the behavioural side and the link between both. acknowledgment this study is part of the research project “value of children, fertility and intergenerational relationships in cross-national comparison”. the principal investigators are bernhard nauck (chemnitz university of technology, germany) and gisela trommsdorff (university of konstanz, germany). the indian collaborators in the study are ramesh mishra (banaras hindu university, varanasi, india) and arun tipandjan (international centre for psychological counseling and social research, puducherry, india) who organised the fi eldwork. the project was supported by the german research foundation (dfg). we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. references agarwal, bina 1988: who sows? who reaps? women and land rights in india. in: the journal of peasant studies 15,4: 531-581 [doi: 10.1080/03066158808438377]. anderson, siwan 2003: why dowry payments declined with modernization in europe but are rising in india. in: journal of political economy 111,2: 269-310 [doi: 10.1086/367679]. anderson, siwan 2007: the economics of dowry and brideprice. in: the journal of economic 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bernhard 2010: value of children: a concept for better understanding crosscultural variations in fertility behavior and intergenerational relationships. in: journal of cross-cultural psychology 41: 637-651 [doi: 10.1177/ 0022022110373335]. unfpa 2012: sex imbalances at birth: current trends, consequences and policy implications. bangkok: unfpa. vlasoff, carol 1990: the value of sons in indian village: how widows see it. in: population studies 44,1: 5-20 [doi: 10.1080/0032472031000144356]. date of submission: 12.02.2013 date of acceptance: 02.06.2014 dr. daniela klaus (). german centre of gerontology. 12101 berlin, germany. e-mail: daniela.klaus@dza.de url: http://www.dza.de/en/about-the-dza/staff/klaus.html dr. arun tipandjan. international center for psychological counseling & social research. 605011 puducherry, india. e-mail: aruneps73@gmail.com url: www.icpcsr.org published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? a study of the personal ideal family size among immigrant women in italy the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? a study of the personal ideal family size among immigrant women in italy* eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi abstract: the role of the personal ideal family size for international migrants has rarely been studied in the current debate on fertility and migration in the european context. it is not known to which extent the reduction of fertility observed among immigrants who settle in a country where fertility is lower than in their country of origin is the result of a change in fertility norms among those immigrants. the study of migrants’ ideals family size has the potential to shed light on fertility norms without the interference of economic conditions and migration-related disruptive phenomena. due to the complexity of its migration context, italy is an interesting destination country for studying changes in migrants’ ideal family sizes. this paper uses data from the survey of the italian national institute of statistics (istat) on immigrant families conducted in 2011-12. we compare the personal ideal family size of women of reproductive age with the prevalent norm in their country of origin, applying a multinomial logistic regression analysis. results show that the country of origin has an important role in the determination of immigrants’ ideal family sizes. women from countries where large families are the ideal are more likely to show a lower personal ideal family size compared to their non-migrant co-nationals, while women from countries where two children are considered ideal mostly share the same norm. the occurrence of fertility preferences expressed in a non-numeric form (e.g. “up to god”) changes between women with different countries of origin. this study confi rms that conformity with the ideal of the country of origin is more likely among women who migrated as adults. at the same time, the number of years spent in the destination country is not signifi cantly associated with a shift away from the norms prevalent in the country of origin. finally, female empowerment and gender equity show their effects mainly on the reduction of non-numeric responses. keywords: ideal number of children · fertility · migrants · italy · gender norms comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 243-274 (date of release: 07.02.2019) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-03en9 * this article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi244 1 introduction the importance of norms has long been recognised in both sociology and demography (bulatao et al. 1983). many scholars assigned a key role to fertility norms in explaining essential processes such as the historical fertility transition and the process of fertility decline in developing countries (liefbroer/billari 2010). among fertility norms, personal ideal family size is considered to be a good indicator of individual values and attitudes towards childbearing, though it has been established that it cannot be used to predict actual or fi nal fertility (testa/grilli 2006). testa/grilli (2006) emphasised the lack of scholarly refl ection on the personal ideal family size of native populations in europe. this same conclusion can be drawn today regarding the study of the personal ideal family size of international migrants. in the last decades, migration fl ows have determined the relocation of a considerable number of women who grew up and were socialised in a context where fertility ideals are remarkably different from those observed in their country of destination. current theories about the migration-fertility nexus consider the role of fertility ideals as key, but due to the scarcity of specifi c data, research has so far mostly been based on migrants’ actual behaviour. while some migrants move between areas that share similar ideals of relatively small families, others move from countries at different stages of the demographic transition. thus they may have been socialised in contexts where large families are common and idealised (fargues 2007). in the latter case, migrants may show fertility ideals and preferences similar to natives of the country of destination because they belong to select groups sharing ideals more similar to those in destination countries than in their origin country, a position known in the literature as the selection hypothesis (white et al. 1995). alternatively, they may have different ideals upon arrival and then converge or adapt to the fertility norm of the country of settlement (rindfuss 1976; nauck 1987; mayer/riphahn 2000). finally, they may instead preserve their ideals while showing fertility behaviour similar to destination-country natives due to transformations of their living conditions, including constraints and trade-offs typically related to migration – such as weak labour market attachment – which have an impact on both the timing and the number of births (fargues 2007). however, the extent to which the reproductive behaviour observed among immigrants is consistent with fertility norms or instead differs as a consequence of fi nancial restrictions or other disruptive phenomena is unknown. the study of migrants’ ideals has the potential to shed light on fertility norms without the interference of migration-related disruptive phenomena. the few existing studies on the ideal family size of foreign-born citizens, which are mostly descriptive in their approach, show the presence of broad differences among ethnic or migrant communities, identifi ed as people who share the same foreign background. individual factors such as religion, education, and the number of siblings emerge as signifi cant in shaping the ideal number of children in great britain, france, and germany (penn/lambert 2002). to fi ll this gap in the literature, we compare individual personal ideal family size among migrant women in italy with the prevalent norms in the respective countries of origin as a proxy for the normative environment in which migrants were socialthe same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 245 ised. we also focus on the role of gender equity and female empowerment among migrants, as several studies have underlined a direct relationship between these two dimensions and fertility in both developed and developing countries (genereux 2007; arpino et al. 2015; blau 2015), which may also signifi cantly shape migrant fertility (kulu et al. 2017). even though italy has a less expansive history as a country of immigration than other european states do, six million of its residents – 10 percent of the total population in 2017 – are foreign-born (eurostat 2018). due to the complexity of its migration context (king 2000), which is characterised by the presence of migrant communities from countries with different fertility behaviours, italy emerges as an interesting country in the study of ideal family sizes of migrants. what furthermore makes italy a compelling case is the persistence of the two-child family norm among native italians, despite having de facto “lowest-low” fertility rates (testa 2012). this paper aims to answer the following research questions: how many children would immigrant women in italy like to have? do their preferences differ from the norms in their origin country? and what is the impact of country of birth, migration-related characteristics, female empowerment, and gender equity? to address these questions, we analysed data on 7,307 immigrant women of reproductive age residing in italy in 2011-12 from 101 countries1 and compared their personal ideal family size with the national average ideal size in their origin country. 2 background 2.1 actual fertility, family size preferences, and ideals the analysis of fertility among migrants has so far been mostly based on data related to their actual behaviour, typically the number of children born after migration (e.g. ortensi 2015), the transition to different parities (e.g. andersson 2004; milewski 2010; mussino/strozza 2012a, 2012b), or the contribution of migrants to the total number of births (sobotka 2008). differences between cultural norms in the countries of birth and destination have also been studied by looking at immigrants’ ac1 africa: algeria, angola, benin, burkina faso, burundi, cameroon, cape verde, democratic republic of congo, egypt, eritrea, ethiopia, the gambia, ghana, guinea, ivory coast, kenya, madagascar, mali, morocco, nigeria, republic of congo, senegal, sierra leone, south africa, togo, tunisia. americas: argentina, bolivia, brazil, canada, chile, colombia, dominican republic, ecuador, el salvador, guatemala, honduras, mexico, peru, usa, venezuela. asia and oceania: armenia, australia, azerbaijan, bangladesh, china, georgia, india, indonesia, iran, iraq, israel, japan, jordan, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, pakistan, philippines, south korea, sri lanka, thailand, turkey, uzbekistan, vietnam. europe: albania, austria, belarus, belgium, bosnia-herzegovina, bulgaria, croatia, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, ireland, kosovo, latvia, lithuania, luxemburg, macedonia, moldova, montenegro, netherlands, norway, poland, portugal, romania, russia, serbia, slovakia, slovenia, spain, sweden, switzerland, uk, ukraine. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi246 tual fertility (algan et al. 2012). cultural adaptation has been conceptualised as the convergence to the fertility norms of the destination country (andersson 2004). the selection hypothesis argues that many migrants’ behaviour may indeed not change at all – rather, people who choose to migrate in the fi rst place are a self-selected group, whose fertility preferences are different – usually lower – than than the general average in their country of origin (kulu 2005). the maintenance of country of origin fertility behaviors after migration has been interpreted in the logic of the socialisation hypothesis, which similarly builds on the premise that the fertility behaviour of migrants primarily refl ects the fertility preferences dominant in their childhood environment (kulu 2005; baykara-krumme/milewski 2017). nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that the timing and the number of births are not only shaped by norms and preferences, but also refl ect constraints and inequalities, such as precarious economic conditions, diffi culties in reconciling family life and demanding jobs, the unavailability of a suitable partner, poor health, infertility, or unplanned pregnancies (martin 2004; philipov/bernardi 2011; sedgh et al. 2014; finer/zolna 2016). in the case of migrants, the relation between norms, preferences, and actual fertility is even more complicated because – as with all life course events – fertility behaviours are sensitive to the act of migration (holland/de valk 2013). consequently, the study of migrants’ ideals, is crucial to explain the possible change in fertility norms without the interference of personal, fi nancial or health-related trade-offs and migration-related disruptive phenomena. differently from the analysis of actual and intended fertility, the study of concepts such as the “ideal family size”, the “personal ideal family size”, and the “desired/preferred family size” builds on evaluations made under “ideal conditions” (philipov/bernardi 2011), and it has been shown that societal norms concerning demographic behaviours are relevant, even in a society where the individualisation process is fairly advanced (liefbroer/billari 2010). fertility ideals and desires have nevertheless been subject to criticism for being relatively “soft”, abstract, and poorly defi ned concepts (toulemon 2001; van de kaa 2001; quesnel-vallée/morgan 2003; sobotka/beaujouan 2014). however, family size desires are conceptually and empirically distinct from ideals: desires refl ect more “internal” factors, such as motivations, attitudes, and beliefs and have, therefore, been considered as a personal norm (testa/grilli 2006; kuhnt et al. 2017). desires are often uncertain and subject to change over the life course in response to new experiences and conditions (thomson 2015). personal ideals have instead been interpreted as refl ecting the normative context; they are shaped by the larger society after predominant societal pronatalist or antinatalist norms and, therefore, change more slowly than desires do (trent 1980; testa/grilli 2006; thomson 2015). the analysis of migrants’ personal ideal family size is not a trivial one: analyses of social distance between migrant groups and natives are at the core of academic and public discourses (holland/de valk 2013). while integration in some sectors such as the labour market and education can be relatively fast, changes in the private domain and the normative sphere, to which life course events are deeply related, are slower to occur and may require far more than a generation to be internalised (gordon 1964; lesthaeghe 2002). ideals have the potential to provide insight into the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 247 the balance between the persistence of norms from the country of origin and the processes of family change and socialisation after migration. the few studies on fertility ideals carried out on ethnic groups or migrants in different destination countries suggest the existence of differences between different ethnic groups in both the preferred timing for family formation and the ideal family size (penn/lambert 2002; holland/de valk 2013). however, socialisation seems to play an important role. in the netherlands, de valk (2013) found intergenerational differences among all ethnic groups: usually children prefer smaller families than their parents did. penn and lambert (2002), who conducted a cross-national analysis of the ideal number of children among different ethnic groups and nationalities, found substantial differences between ethnic groups in britain, germany, and france. indian and pakistani respondents in britain expressed signifi cantly larger ideal families than native brits; at the same time maghrebians in france also valued large families, but the difference to french natives was less evident. the study also found a preference for ideal families of two children among turkish and former-yugoslav migrants in germany, and no signifi cant differences with german natives. these fi ndings suggest that ethnic group differences are essential to understanding fertility norms among migrants. 2.2 what determines the ideal family size? evidence from previous research previous research in the fertility domain, mainly building on evidence from western countries’ natives, has suggested a link between ideal family size and a set of potential explanatory variables. age is one of them: attitudes and norms are more relevant at the beginning of the reproductive career, while perceived behavioural control plays a stronger role after the birth of the fi rst child (e.g. testa/grilli 2006; mills et al. 2008; billari et al. 2009). age also has the potential to capture cohort effects and shape ideal family size according to respondents’ own experiences of childbearing and parenthood (weston et al. 2005; kuhnt et al. 2017). some studies have suggested that fertility ideals are adjusted in line with the size of the respondent’s current number of children; for this reason, it is important to control for this item (weston et al. 2005; kuhnt et al. 2017). family size ideals are also likely infl uenced by the respondent’s socioeconomic status. the infl uence of socioeconomic status here does not take hold through economic limitations that may affect childbearing, because ideals by defi nition are expressed regardless any current circumstance (iacovou/tavares 2011; kuhnt et al. 2017). rather, the role of socioeconomic deals with social norms of childbearing found within the social networks or categories which the respondents belong to and that are considered as their reference groups (liefbroer/billari 2010). partnership status does not seem to alter fertility ideals (kuhnt et al. 2017). ideals are consequently more stable than intentions or desires, because they are related to a social norm rather than to a shorter-term personal preference or contingencies (thomson 2015). • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi248 the role of education also needs to be discussed when examining fertility ideals. while in developing countries, higher education is usually related to lower ideal fertility (doepke/tertilt 2018), in the european setting, a diverging trend has occasionally been observed. in some countries, a positive relationship between education and fertility has been observed after experiencing a period of low fertility related to educational expansion (oecd 2016). education and human capital are often interpreted as a proxy for female empowerment, according to the idea that more educated women have more bargaining power in marriage (mills et al. 2008; doepke/ tertilt 2018). higher levels of education allow women to question traditional roles (mcdonald 2006) and are often associated with a more equal division of household chores (e.g. mencarini/tanturri 2004). scholars have repeatedly pointed out a signifi cant and complex link between unbalanced gender roles (in the form of unequal divisions of household labour) and fertility intentions and behaviour (mills 2010; tazi-preve et al. 2004; neyer et al. 2013). consistently, gender equity, which captures perceptions of fairness rather than the strict equality of observed outcomes (mc donald 2013), may signifi cantly impact fertility ideals. however, the results of the few studies that have considered the link between female empowerment and the ideal number of children in developing countries are mixed. a 2002 study based on demographic and health survey (dhs) data in eritrea found that women having the fi nal say in decisions regarding day-to-day household purchases was associated with a smaller ideal family size (woldemicael 2009). at the same time, a more recent study based on data on guinea, mali, namibia and zambia found women’s empowerment (measured as participation in household decision making, attitudes towards domestic violence, and attitudes toward refusing sex with one’s husband) is not consistently associated with a desire for smaller families (upadhyay/karasek 2012). job participation is similarly related to gender roles: homemaker mothers may be more likely to have traditional attitudes than employed mothers (fan/marini 2000; zuo/tang 2000; bolzendahl/myers 2004), but, more generally, gender equality and fertility have a u-shaped relationship (e.g. mcdonald 2013; upadhyay et al. 2014; esping-andersen/billari 2015). religion has also proven to be an important factor relating to fertility. in many contexts, women who describe religion as “very important” have higher fertility than others, especially those who declare they are unaffi liated with any religion (frejka/westoff 2008; berghammer 2012; peri-rotem 2016). however, just as for education and female labour force participation, it has been argued that the fertility-religion nexus expresses a widespread association between religiosity and family behaviour, rather than specifi cally pronatalist views held in specifi c religions. in fact, it appears that factor at play is less religiosity per se, but rather certain more specifi c notions of family life often associated with religiosity, which include ideas about the importance of marriage and parenthood, the acceptability of non-marital sexual relations, and gender roles (hayford/morgan 2008). previous studies on migrants have found that ideal family sizes are different among different ethnic groups (penn/lambert 2002; de valk 2013). however, for fi rst-generation migrants, age at arrival emerges as a crucial dimension. socialithe same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 249 sation studies assert that family (size) values formed in late childhood and early adolescence are retained throughout life (e.g. westoff/potvin 1967; kulu 2005). according to this theory, people who migrated after having spent their childhood and early adolescence in their country of origin should preserve family ideals typical of the countries where they were socialised, even if after migration they may choose adaptive strategies to deal with the new context of settlement. by contrast, according to classical theories on immigrant assimilation (gordon 1964), a long residence abroad implies a growing infl uence of the dominant family formation patterns in the destination country, which may also be internalised as family ideals (holland/de valk 2013). the relation between socialisation and adaptation at the individual level, therefore, may be associated to immigrants’ duration of residence in the settlement country (lieberson/waters 1988; alba/nee 2003). a factor potentially related to the effect of migration on ideal formation is language, which is a functional factor positively associated with aspects of social integration at the destination country (ager/strang 2008; kearns/whitley 2015). to be fl uent in the host country’s language is a precondition for communication across cultural boundaries (statham/tillie 2016). however, studies on the effect on internalisation of norms are discordant. when analysing the association with fertility, unger and molina (1997) identifi ed language as an infl uential factor amongst hispanic women in the united states: those who spoke spanish at home with their mother were far more likely to have a higher personal ideal number of children (particularly sons) than those who spoke english. by contrast, penn and lambert (2002) found no support for this “cultural” hypothesis in their study in great britain, france, and germany. a fi nal remark is needed about the occurrence of non-numerical responses. women sometimes provide their ideal number of children in terms of words rather than numbers, for example, “it’s up to god”, “as many as possible”, or simply ”i don’t know”. the occurrence of this kind of answer has recently been declining in fertility surveys, suggesting that “numeracy about children” (van de walle 1992) is increasing across the developing world. a recent study based on dhs carried out in 32 countries in asia, latin america, and sub-saharan africa underlined that non-numerical responses are indicative of high fertility and pre-transitional contexts. their occurrence declines with lower fertility rates. at the individual level, non-numerical responses are indirectly related to higher education and fertility-specifi c knowledge (frye/bachan 2017). other studies suggest that women who provide non-numeric responses share traditional pronatalist cultural norms that imply preferences for “many” children rather than encouraging women to select a specifi c number as their ideal (olaleye 1993). other scholars have suggested that non-numeric responses are an indication of women’s perceived lack of control over their fertility (hayford/ agadjanian 2011; van de walle 1992). 2.3 working hypotheses based on the literature discussed above, the hypotheses tested in this study are the following: • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi250 • h1: the personal ideal number of children is associated with the ideal number of children in the country of origin (h1a), even when we control for migratory and socio-economic factors (h1b). • h2: consequently, people arriving as adults are more likely to have a personal ideal number of children similar to that of their origin country, compared to those who migrated as children or young adults. • h3: at the same time, a long and uninterrupted presence in italy might be associated with a deviation from the prevalent norms of the country of origin. • h4: higher levels of female empowerment (education and labour market participation) and support for gender equity imply higher numeracy about children, and therefore a lower proportion of non-numeric responses. in summary, this study analyses ideal family sizes of migrant women in italy and how they differ from the prevalent norms in their countries of origin, thereby underlining the role of the country of origin, migratory characteristics, and gender roles in fertility ideals – three specifi c points that are currently under-researched in the fi eld of fertility and migration. 3 empirical analyses 3.1 measures of fertility intentions and attitudes the norms observed in migrants’ countries of origin has been defi ned as the mean ideal family size observed in national surveys available worldwide on this topic. this means that we must rely on different sources and slightly different wording of questions on the ideal family size in the country of origin. the fi rst survey that included a question on ideal family size was carried out in 1936 (blake 1966). since then, hundreds of surveys around the world have collected information about family ideals in different countries and contexts (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). the 2011-12 italian national institute of statistics’ (istat) survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” formulated the question to measure personal ideal family size as follows: “how many children would you like to have in your life?” to account for the personal ideal family size norm in the immigrants’ countries of origin, we assembled information from different surveys. unfortunately, not all the surveys were run in the same year, so, in order to allow comparability with our survey and between countries, we rely on the most current version available. in these surveys, the questions did not always focus on the personal ideal family size – some focused on the general ideal family size (e.g. “what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family?”). to provide maximum comparability with the istat survey, we collected the information on personal ideal family size when it was possible; otherwise, we used the information on general family size ideals (table 1). in a previous study, testa (2012: 9) compared the relationship between responses to general and personal ideal family size using the 2011 eurobarometer. she found a very close agreement between these two dimensions (see also sobotka/ the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 251 tab. 1: measures of personal ideal family size from different surveys used to calculate the norm in the country of origin survey question measure countries eurobarometer (2011) [and] for you personally, what would be the ideal number of children you would like to have or would have liked to have had? personal ideal family size austria, belgium, bulgaria, czech republic, cyprus, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, ireland, latvia, lithuania, luxemburg, nederland, poland, portugal, united kingdom, romania, slovakia, spain, sweden, hungary world values survey (1981-2008) what do you think is the ideal size of a family – how many children, if any? general ideal family size algeria, belarus, bosniaherzegovina, el salvador, iran, iraq, macedonia, moldova, montenegro, serbia demographic health survey (dhs), reproductive health survey (rhs) 19972011; 2003 unfpa demographic, social and reproductive health situation in kosovo (2003); multiple indicators cluster survey (mics) 20062016, pap-fam 2001 women with children: if you could go back to the time you did not have any children and could choose exactly the number of children to have in your whole life, how many would that be? personal ideal family size albania, angola, armenia, azerbaijan, bangladesh, benin, bolivia, brazil, burkina faso, burundi, cameroon, cape verde, colombia, ivory coast, dominican republic, ecuador, egypt, philippines, eritrea, ethiopia, the gambia, georgia, ghana, jordan, guatemala, guinea, honduras, india, indonesia, kazakhstan, kenia, kirgizstan, kosovo, madagascar, mali, morocco, nigeria, pakistan, peru, senegal, sierra leone, sri lanka, south africa, thailand, togo, tunisia, ukraine, uzbekistan, vietnam childless women: if you could choose exactly the number of children to have in your whole life, how many would that be? international social survey 2012 all in all, what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have? general ideal family size argentina, australia, canada, chile, china, south korea, croatia, japan, israel, mexico, norway, russia, usa, switzerland, turkey, venezuela source: overview based on eurobarometer, world values survey, demographic health survey (dhs), reproductive health survey (rhs) unfpa demographic, social and reproductive health situation; multiple indicators cluster survey (mics), pap-fam and international social survey. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi252 beaujouan 2014). we rely on the original data set in the case of the eurobarometer and the demographic health survey (dhs), while for the countries that were not included in these two surveys, we collected the information from other sources. we report the original questions for comparison in table 1. for each country survey we calculated the mean ideal family size applying individual survey weights, according to sobotka and beaujouan’s (2014) approach. data are always provided for women aged 15-49 except for countries covered by the world values survey, which is based on women aged 18-49. 3.2 data and methods this paper uses data from the istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens”. the survey was conducted in 2011-12 with families that have at least one member with foreign citizenship. families were randomly sampled from the civil registry. the fi nal sample survey is made up of 12,000 households in 800 municipalities of different demographic sizes. for this study, only foreign-born women were selected from the original sample. our fi nal sample consists of 7,307 foreignborn women aged 15 to 49. they come from 101 countries for which information on the individual family size is available. about 37 percent of the foreign-born women in the sample were childless, 27 percent had 1 child, 26 percent had 2 children, and the remaining 10 percent had 3 or more children. we study the personal ideal family size by comparing the individual ideal number in italy with the norm in the country of origin, by different origin groups. we plot and map personal ideal family size in italy and in the countries of birth of migrant women. through a set of multinomial logistic regression analyses, we investigate the factors that infl uence the (dis)agreement between the personal ideal family norm and the norm in the origin country. (dis)agreement is categorised into 5 groups: the same personal ideal number of children as in the country of origin (–0.5 < x ≤ 0.5); a lower personal ideal number of children than in the country of origin (x ≤ –0.5); a larger personal ideal number of children than in the country of origin (x > 0.5); “as many as i may have” (as this category is generally translated as “up to god”, we will also use this phrase); and “i don’t know”. the reference category is the one in which the personal ideal family size matches the country of origin norm. to show the substantive and practical signifi cance of the fi ndings, we present population marginal means (e.g. searle et al. 1980; williams 2012) while holding the covariates fi xed at the population means for the main independent variables. additional results are in table a3 in the appendix. our study focuses on the (dis)agreement between the personal ideal number of children and the mean value observed in the country of origin. in analysing our data, we control for demographic and socioeconomic factors. to test hypotheses h1a, h1b, h2 and h3, in addition to country of birth,2 we examine the age at migra2 we aggregate countries with fewer than 50 women sampled into geographical macro areas. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 253 tion and distinguish if the women arrived before age 16, between 16 and 20, or after age 20; time since migration (up to 5 years in italy, between 6 and 10, more than 10 years); and the stability of their presence (stable/uninterrupted vs. unstable/discontinuous). to test hypothesis h4 we examine labour market participation, education, and gender equity3 (no support for gender equity vs. support for gender equity). additionally, we control for the frequency of religious-service attendance (sometimes, never, often) and italian profi ciency (good vs. bad) (see appendix table a1 for details). because one of the aims of our study is to evaluate the importance of the country of birth for the difference between the personal ideal number of children in italy versus the origin norm, we compare the estimation power of the models using akaike’s information criterion (aic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic). these two tests allow for comparing non-nested models if the results come from the same data (results are in table a2 in the appendix). 4 results 4.1 how many children would immigrant women in italy like to have? figure 1 illustrates the mean number of children that immigrant women in italy would like to have, by country of origin. among the migrants residing in italy, the majority of groups would like to have 2 children. the mean ideal personal number of children for women from ireland, israel, the gambia, pakistan, bolivia, guinea, senegal, and burkina faso is 3, and for women from the democratic republic of congo and mali, it is more than 4. the average for most of the women from eastern europe (latvia, belarus, estonia, ukraine, czech republic, poland, bulgaria, georgia, romania, croatia, lithuania, slovenia), southern europe (greece, portugal), africa (south africa, madagascar, angola, ethiopia), the middle east and asia (iraq, iran, vietnam, japan, thailand, indonesia, kazakhstan), western europe (austria, switzerland, belgium, denmark), and the americas (honduras, venezuela, brazil, mexico) is less than 2 children. the data for italian natives – 1.95 according to the 2011 eurobarometer survey – is also included in figure 1. 4.2 do their preferences differ from the norms in their origin country? for each country of origin, or area (in the case of small communities in the sample), table 2 shows the percentage of women who express same, lower or larger personal ideal numbers of children than their country of origin average, and the incidence 3 we measure equity by agreement (“completely agree”) with the statement that men should help with domestic work. we tested different indicators; the survey contains seven questions related to gender norms. we ran separate models for each indicator and while the direction of the coeffi cients was the same for each indicator, the signifi cance level and the contribution in the model was signifi cantly higher for the selected indicator. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi254 of non-numerical answers. 32.8 percent of the women in the sample have the same ideal number of children as the norms in their country of origin, while 33.5 percent have a lower ideal. women who have a larger ideal number of children than their non-migrant peers make up only 11.9 percent of the sample. non-numerical responses indicating an undefi ned desired number of children (7.5 percent of the sample) are most common among women from nigeria, senegal and sri lanka. at the same time, women who are undecided (14.3 percent of the sample) are most common among those born in macedonia, nigeria and bulgaria. figure 2 shows the association between the prevalent norm among emigrants and non-migrants by origin country. we plot the mean personal ideal number of children in italy for the main migrant groups (i.e. those with more than 50 women in the sample) alongside the mean calculated among women aged 15-49 in the respective origin countries. the points near the 45° line represent the migrant groups living in italy that have a preference close to the norms in their origin country. the greater the distance between the points and the line, the higher the difference in the expressed ideal family size between the immigrant group in italy and their counterparts in the origin country. few immigrant groups seem to share the same exact preference as that of their country of origin; namely, romania, bulgaria, and ukraine have a desired number of children below 2 in both groups and bosnia herzegovina 2.5. most of the groups living in italy report a lower personal ideal family size than the one in their origin country, with the largest distances observed for women from nigeria, senegal, pakistan, and ghana, where the mean ideal family size at the national level is above 4 fig. 1: personal ideal family size of immigrants to italy by country of origin source: own design based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 255 tab. 2: personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin average norm by country of origin and areas. percentages and absolute sample sizes (n = 7,307) lower same larger up to god i don’t absolute personal personal personal know numbers ideal ideal ideal family size family size family size bulgaria 12.2 52.2 7.7 8.0 19.9 85 india 6.5 50.4 19.2 11.5 12.4 156 russia 19.9 47.4 16.6 7.2 8.9 85 eu15 and odcs1 21.5 44.9 12.7 7.2 13.7 204 poland 20.3 44.8 10.3 9.7 14.9 263 germany 13.4 44.6 23.6 6.6 11.8 58 romania 19.8 44.2 14.0 6.7 15.3 1808 bangladesh 5.0 43.1 29.2 9.0 13.7 84 brazil 21.3 42.8 18.4 5.2 12.3 126 ukraine 25.7 41.4 10.1 4.1 18.7 384 other latin america 27.5 41.0 14.5 8.5 8.5 127 peru 15.8 37.5 27.8 2.6 16.3 187 other europe 31.8 36.0 9.9 5.4 16.9 294 france 18.4 34.9 31.4 3.2 12.1 79 china 13.0 32.4 30.4 10.7 13.5 267 tunisia 39.8 32.0 5.6 8.2 14.4 109 dominican republic 38.6 31.1 13.5 3.1 13.7 69 morocco 39.7 25.7 10.9 10.8 12.9 618 macedonia 36.4 24.8 5.8 11.4 21.6 117 kosovo 44.0 21.7 11.9 10.8 11.6 75 other asia 53.8 19.5 7.8 10.1 8.8 201 ghana 62.9 18.8 3.1 9.7 5.5 57 albania 57.3 18.7 5.1 7.3 11.6 673 senegal 52.2 17.5 5.6 13.2 11.5 67 other africa 53.9 17.2 6.6 5.1 17.2 299 moldova 64.1 16.4 2.8 4.7 12.0 269 ecuador 59.8 15.8 6.3 3.1 15.0 167 philippines 57.5 11.7 5.8 8.3 16.7 187 sri lanka 61.4 11.5 1.6 13.0 12.5 105 nigeria 60.3 3.1 0.0 16.0 20.6 86 total 33.5 32.8 11.9 7.5 14.3 7307 1 australia, austria, belgium, canada, denmark, finland, greece, ireland, israel, luxembourg, netherlands, norway, portugal, sweden, switzerland, united kingdom, united states. source: own calculations based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12 and nationals surveys (most recent year available). frequencies are ordered by having the same preferences. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi256 children. interestingly, women from china and bangladesh have on average an ideal number of children slightly higher than that in their countries of birth. 4.3 and what is the impact of country of birth, migration-related characteristics, female empowerment, and gender equity? because we aim to identify the control variables with high predictive values in explaining differences with the norm in the origin country, we fi rst run aic and bic tests. these two statistical tests follow a similar approach that allows us to see the predictive power of different covariates when the models are not nested. bic is more susceptible to the degree of freedom, which is why the results are not always identical. results are presented in table a2 (in the appendix) and show that the information with the largest predictive value is the parity; however, despite the large degree of freedom, the second-most important variables are the country of birth and gender equity. for graphical reasons, we present the adjusted predictions at the means obtained from the multinomial logistic regression analyses of having the same, a lowfig. 2: personal ideal family size in italy compared to the country of origin norm for groups with at least 50 women sampled source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12; eurobarometer 2011; world values survey (1981-2008); dhs (1997-2011); mics (2006-2016); papfam (2001); rhs (2003). the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 257 er, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or “up to god” (utg), or “i do not know” (idk), by country of birth (fig. 3), by age at arrival (fig. 4), by duration of stay (fig. 5), education (fig. 6), labour market participation (fig. 7) and by gender equity (fig. 8). for each fi gure, the controls that were set to the population means are specifi ed in the notes. the details about relative risk ratios obtained from the model for the independent variables are presented in table a3 and a4 (in the appendix). figure 3 shows the adjusted predictions of (dis)agreement between the personal ideal family size and the prevailing norm in the origin country. on the left side of the graph, we have the nationalities for which we observed larger proportions of women who have the same or larger ideal numbers of children norms than those prevalent in their origin country. these are all women from countries with ideal fertility norms of around 2 children. women from peru, brazil, germany, france, bangladesh, and china are among the group showing non-negligible shares (between 21 and 30 percent) of women with an ideal number of children higher than their non-migrant co-nationals. women from india, bulgaria, poland, russia, ukraine, romania, other eu15, and other developed countries (odc) for the most part share the same personal ideal family size of their country of birth (two children). similar results were shown in the descriptive statistics (see table 2). conversely, shares of women with a personal ideal number of children lower than their non-migrant co-nationals are found among natives of ghana, senegal, nigeria, tunisia, morocco, other african countries (residual category), albania, moldova, kosovo, macedonia, ecuador, sri lanka, the philippines, and other asian countries (residual category). those who are unsure about their ideal number of children are mostly women from the philippines, nigeria, other african countries (residual category), macedonia (fyrom), eu15 and odc citizens, other european countries (residual category), the dominican republic, and ecuador. finally, larger shares of women who do not quantify an ideal number of children by leaving it to “fate” or “god” (between 10 and 14 percent) are found among women born in nigeria, morocco, senegal, other latin american countries (residual category), sri lanka, and india. we therefore observe a signifi cant effect of the country of origin even after controlling for other covariates (h1a and h1b). while agreement is more likely among women that move from a country characterised by the same average ideal fertility of italy (two children), a deviation from the national norm towards a lower ideal number of children than the country of origin is more likely among women socialised in countries where large families are the norm. however, a non-negligible proportion of women who have a larger ideal than their country of origin (and also higher than the italian norm) exists among women from countries characterised by the two-child norm. in our second hypothesis, we assume that arriving as an adult might strengthen the preference for a personal ideal number similar to the origin country, compared to migrating as a child or young adult (h2). figure 4 shows that, according to the adjusted predictions at the means obtained from the multinomial logistic regression analyses, the largeest share of women with a personal ideal family size matching • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi258 the country of origin is estimated to be among those who migrated at an older age (41 percent). this proportion decreases among those who came as a young adult (37 percent) and even more among those who arrived as children (28 percent). among the latter group, the share with an ideal number of children lower than the fig. 3: predicted probabilities of having the same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or non-numeric responses, by country of origin 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 ba ng la de sh bu lg ar ia in di a g er m an y pe ru ch in a po la nd ro m an ia br az il fr an ce ru ss ia u kr ai ne eu 15 an dd c o th er eu ro pe la tin a m er ic a d om in ic an re pu bl ic m or oc co m ac ed on ia tu ni si a ph ili pp in es o th er a si a ko so vo sr i l an ka ec ua do r m ol do va a lb an ia o th er a fri ca n ig er ia se ne ga l g ha na lower than in the home country equal than in the home country larger than in the home country up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at the interview, age at interview squared, age at arrival, duration of stay, circular migration, education, gender equity, church attendance, labour market participation, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries, adjusted predictions at the means (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 259 norm in the country of origin or who were unsure increases considerably. the effect of the time spent in the country of origin on the match of personal ideals with fertility ideals of the country of origin is, therefore, signifi cant. although the effect of age at migration is signifi cant, almost no differences in the adjusted predictions at the means exist among groups with different durations of stay in italy (h3). therefore, once other variables are controlled for, no sign of divergence from the origin norm due to the time spent in italy emerges from the analysis. the proportions of women who have the same preferences as their birth-country peers were 37 percent for women who arrived less than 6 years ago, 38 percent for women who migrated between 6 and 10 years ago, and 40 percent for those who have spent more than 10 years in italy (fig. 5). fig. 4: predicted probabilities of having same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or nonnumeric responses, by age at arrival notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at the interview, age at interview squared, country of birth, duration of stay, circular migration, education, gender ideology, church attendance, labour market participation, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 <16 16-20 21+ lower than in the country of origin same of the country of origin larger than in the country of origin up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children age at arrival • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi260 finally, we hypothesised an effect of variables related to female empowerment (education and labour market participation) and gender equity on holding fertility preferences typical of the country of origin (h4). the main effect we observe is mostly a reduction of non-numeric responses. in particular, among women with high secondary school and post-secondary education, the proportion of “i don’t know” decreases signifi cantly compared to other women. labour market participation shows a similar effect of education: the share of non-numeric responses is higher among women not in the labour force. these women are also less likely to express a lower ideal than the country of origin. the effect of variables related to empowerment (education and job participation) is similar to that observed regarding gender equity. strong differences emerge in fig. 5: predicted probabilities of having the same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or non-numeric responses, by duration of stay 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 <6 years 6-10 years 11+ years lower than in the home country equal than in the home country larger than in the home country up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children duration of stay notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at the interview, age at interview squared, age at arrival, country of birth, circular migration, education, gender ideology, church attendance, labour market participation, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 261 the proportions of adjusted predictions at the means by support for gender equity (fig. 8). the effect of support for gender equity is most evident regarding a reduction of the share of women who are unsure about their ideal family size, or who leave fertility to fate or god, thereby indicating a preference for having as many children as possible. data show that women who support gender equity also have a clearer idea of their fertility ideals, showing that they have internalised the idea that fertility can be legitimately controlled and personal ideals matter (5 percent vs. 13 percent utg and 13 percent vs. 20 percent idk, respectively, for women with equal gender equity vs. no equity). our main interest is to compare migrants’ ideal number of children with the typical ideal number of children of people remaining in the country of origin – by fig. 6: predicted probabilities of having the same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or non-numeric responses, by education 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 low secondary school vocational school high secondary school post-secondary education lower than in the country of origin same of the country of origin larger than in the country of origin up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children education low secondary school vocational school high secondary school post-secondary education notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at the interview, age at interview squared, country of birth, duration of stay, age at arrival, circular migration, gender ideology, church attendance, labour market participation, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi262 country of birth, age at arrival, duration of stay, woman empowerment and gender ideology. relative risk ratios (rrr) for individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of immigrant women in italy are shown and commented in table a3 in the appendix. fig. 7: predicted probabilities of having the same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or non-numeric responses, by labour market participation 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 working looking for a job out of labour force lower than in the country of origin same of the country of origin larger than in the country of origin up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children labour market participation working looking for a job out of labour force notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at the interview, age at interview squared, country of birth, duration of stay, age at arrival, circular migration, gender ideology, church attendance, education, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 263 5 conclusion and discussion the study of the personal ideal family size of immigrants has a promising and so far underdeveloped potential to disclose the relationship between migration and fertility. in this study, we compared the personal ideal family size of migrant women in italy to the prevailing norm of stayers in their respective countries of origin and analyse determinants of agreement and disagreement between these norms. despite fi lling an unexplored gap in the current literature related to the migration-fertility nexus, our study has a limitation that should be taken into consideration when reading our results. the lack of information about personal fertility ideals before migration prevents us from explicitly testing two fundamental hypotheses fig. 8: predicted probabilities of having the same, lower, or larger personal ideal number of children compared to the country of origin norm, or non-numeric responses, by support for gender equity 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 no yes lower than in the country of origin same of the country of origin larger than in the country of origin up to god i don't know in percent personal ideal number of children support for gender equity no yes notes: we control for parity, marital status, age at interview, age at interview squared, age at arrival, duration of stay, circular migration, education, country of birth, church attendance, labour market participation, and italian profi ciency. the controls are set to the population margins in destination countries (apms). source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12. • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi264 about migrant fertility – namely, the selection and the adaptation hypotheses. while analysing (dis)agreement with the country of origin norm, we cannot infer whether migrants shared that norm before migration. when analysing women who show a different ideal compared to their country of origin average, it is unknown whether they held such ideals even before migration (i.e. self-selection; the selection hypothesis) or if living in italy changed their ideals (adaptation hypothesis). we cannot even a priori exclude, despite the hypothesis being highly unlikely, that a minority of women might have “reactivated” their “ethnicity” and adopted the country ideal due to phenomena of reactive ethnicity (diehl/schnell 2006), despite having a different fertility ideal before migration. bearing this limitation in mind, our paper shows that among migrants residing in italy, the majority would like to have two children. one woman out of three in the sample shares the norm of their country of origin, and another one in three has a lower ideal than the country of origin average. women who have a higher ideal number of children than their non-migrant peers represent only 11 percent of the sample. the agreement between personal ideal family size at the moment of the survey and the average country norm is associated with women’s specifi c country of origin background (h1a), even when we control for socio-economic and demographic factors (h1b). our results confi rm that the country of birth has a large predictive value in explaining the occurrence of agreement with the country of origin norm and the possible direction of shift in the ideal family size. agreement with the national fertility ideal is typical of women from countries where two children are the fertility norm. a deviation towards a lower ideal number of children than in the country of origin is more likely among women who grew up in countries where large families are idealised. however, women with larger ideal families than those in the country of origin are also observed. the country of origin background also has an overall effect on the prevalence of non-numeric responses. the share of women unsure or expressing a preference for a maximum number of children, leaving its determination to fate or god, varies signifi cantly by country of origin. relations and social networks between members of the same origin community in the destination country might build and reinforce fertility norms shared within a community, explaining the role of country of origin. even more interestingly, our results show that the correspondence between the personal ideal and the ideal of the country of origin is mostly related to socialisation in the country of origin: arriving as an adult is related to the overall agreement with the country of origin ideal (h2). few differences exist between women who migrated at 21 and over and between age 16 and 20. this fi nding suggests that, in the likely event that women whose ideals match their average country norm had that same ideal even before migration, ideals are imprinted during the early years of a woman’s life and retained during adulthood according to the socialisation hypothesis. moreover, the 1.5 generation has a higher share of “i don’t know” answers. despite model’s controls, this might still be affected by a younger age at the interview among these women, since fertility ideals of adolescents and young adults tend to be more uncertain compared to those of older women (berrington/pattaro 2014; kraus/castro-martín 2017). the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 265 another crucial result underlined by our study is that time since migration has no signifi cant impact on the match between personal ideals and the average family ideals of the country of origin, rejecting the hypothesis that a longer time spent in the country of migration might cause a shift away from the ideals imprinted during childhood and adolescence (h3). in other words, we cannot say whether women whose ideal stated in the survey does not match their country average formed that ideal before migration (selection) or changed it because of migration. however, we can say that if migration drove the change, the effect is not time-dependent. this result is entirely in line with the literature affi rming that personal ideal family size is more of an assimilated social norm than a personal preference, and for this reason does not change over time (thomson 2015). our study further confi rms the association between support for gender equity and empowerment and fertility ideals. the effect observed is most evident in the occurrence of non-numeric responses (family size is “up to god” or “i don’t know”). higher support for gender equity, education, and participation in the job market results in a lower proportion of non-numeric responses. support for gender equity and empowerment is related to a reduction in uncertainty, implying that more empowered women who support gender equity are also more likely to consider fertility as a sphere in which they can have an opinion and express ideals. finally, our results raise the question of whether a possible replication of this study in a more gender-equal country (e.g. those in northern europe), compared to the rather traditional italy, would result in an even stronger effect of gender beliefs on fertility ideals. acknowledgements this research was supported by the linnaeus center on social policy and family dynamics in europe – spade (grant registration number 349-2007-8701); the swedish research council for health, working life and welfare (forte), grant number 2016-07105 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authors appear in alphabetical order. the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 271 appendix tab. a1: sample description in absolute values and percentages (n = 7,307) absolute % absolute % values values country of birth: previous children: albania (ref.) 673 9.2 0 (ref.) 2520 34.5 eu15 and odcs 204 2.8 1 1857 25.4 other europe 294 4.0 2 1933 26.5 other africa 299 4.1 3 996 13.6 other latin america 127 1.7 age at arrival: other asia 201 2.8 <16 years (ref.) 864 11.8 bulgaria 85 1.2 16-20 years 1229 16.8 france 79 1.1 21 + years 5214 71.4 germany 58 0.8 duration of stay: poland 263 3.6 <6 years (ref.) 2135 29.2 romania 1808 24.7 6-10 years 2796 38.3 ukraine 384 5.3 11 + years 2376 32.5 russia 85 1.2 gender equity: macedonia (fyrom) 117 1.6 no (ref.) 3548 48.6 moldova 269 3.7 yes 3759 51.4 kosovo 75 1.0 marital status: bangladesh 84 1.1 never been married (ref.) 2304 31.5 sri lanka 105 1.4 married 3999 54.7 china 267 3.7 separated/widowed/ philippines 187 2.6 divorced 1003 13.7 india 156 2.1 age interview 33.7 ghana 57 0.8 circular migration: morocco 618 8.5 stable (ref.) 7108 97.3 nigeria 86 1.2 circular 199 2.7 senegal 67 0.9 labour market: tunisia 109 1.5 working (ref.) 3840 52.6 dominican republic 69 1.0 looking for a job 1155 15.8 brazil 126 1.7 out of labour force 2312 31.6 ecuador 167 2.3 education: peru 187 2.6 low secondary school (ref.) 2796 38.3 vocational school 1207 16.5 high secondary school 2259 30.9 post-secondary education 1045 14.3 italian profi ciency: good 6368 87.1 bad 939 12.9 religious-service attendance: sometimes (ref.) 2228 30.5 never 2928 40.1 often 1828 25.0 missing 323 4.4 source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12 • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi272 tab. a2: akaike’s information criterion and bayesian information criterion for models including only one variable model obs ll(null) ll(model) df aic bic previous children 7,307 -10,650 -9,917 16 19,866 19,977 country of birth 7,307 -10,650 -9,930 120 20,100 20,928 gender equity 7,307 -10,650 -10,522 8 21,061 21,116 marital status 7,307 -10,650 -10,548 12 21,119 21,202 religious-service attendance 7,307 -10,650 -10,566 16 21,165 21,275 age interview 7,307 -10,650 -10,577 8 21,171 21,226 age interview squared 7,307 -10,650 -10,583 8 21,183 21,238 education 7,307 -10,650 -10,577 16 21,187 21,297 age arrival 7,307 -10,650 -10,601 8 21,218 21,274 labour market 7,307 -10,650 -10,605 12 21,233 21,316 duration of stay 7,307 -10,650 -10,619 8 21,255 21,310 language profi ciency 7,307 -10,650 -10,628 8 21,272 21,327 stability of presence 7,307 -10,650 -10,636 8 21,288 21,344 note: obs: observations; ll(null): log likelihood for the null model; ll(model): log likelihood for the full model; df: degree of freedom; aic: akaike’s information criterion; bic: bayesian information criterion. source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12 the same fertility ideals as in the country of origin? • 273 tab. a3: relative risk ratios (rrr) of personal ideal number of children compared to origin country. the reference category is “equal”. in the model we control for age at arrival, duration of stay, gender beliefs, and country of birth lower than higher than up to i don’t in the origin in the origin god know country country previous children: ref = 0 1 1.22* 1.04 0.67** 0.61*** 2 0.24*** 1.22 0.27*** 0.15*** 3 0.02*** 16.09*** 0.18*** 0.14*** marital status: ref = never been married married 0.76** 0.72* 0.64** 0.58*** separated/widowed/divorced 0.84 0.98 0.68* 0.75* age at interview 1.17*** 1.09 1.31*** 1.27*** age at interview squared 1.00* 1.00* 1.00*** 1.00*** stability of the presence: ref = stable circular 0.69* 1.13 1.29 0.83 education: ref = low secondary school vocational school 1.00 0.82 0.72* 1.22* high secondary school 1.10 0.84 1.04 0.75** post-secondary education 0.86 0.64** 0.73* 0.48*** italian profi ciency: ref = good bad 1.10 1.20 1.16 0.96 religious-service attendance: ref = sometimes never 0.78** 0.82* 0.89 1.05 often 0.87 1.23 1.02 1.21 missing 0.92 0.82 1.38 3.49*** labour market condition: ref = working looking for a job 1.05 1.02 0.75* 1.15 out of labour force 0.81* 0.86 1.06 1.42*** age at arrival: ref =<16 16-20 0.728* 0.778 0.658* 0.580** 21 + 0.607* 0.719 0.665 0.463*** duration of stay: ref =<6 years 6-10 years 1.035 1.009 0.796* 0.939 11 + years 0.880 1.174 0.762 0.877 gender equity: ref =no yes 0.828** 1.154 0.270*** 0.503*** country of birth: ref albania eu15 and odcs 1.31 0.59* 1.41 1.31 other europe 2.37*** 0.73 1.08 1.77** other africa 26.86*** 0.20*** 3.70*** 7.27*** other latin america 2.35*** 0.66 2.11* 1.11 other asia 13.99*** 0.43* 4.94*** 2.49** bulgaria 16.78*** 0.26*** 4.01*** 3.11*** france 0.47* 0.60 0.85 0.86 • eleonora mussino, livia elisa ortensi274 lower than higher than up to i don’t in the origin in the origin god know country country germany 1.19 1.47 0.63 1.13 poland 0.76 1.54 1.51 1.32 romania 0.91 0.63* 1.15 0.86 ukraine 1.12 0.85 0.61* 1.24 russia 1.08 1.25 0.92 0.55 macedonia 11.35*** 0.15*** 4.49*** 3.81*** moldova 17.34*** 0.21*** 3.73*** 4.00*** kosovo 13.52*** 0.42* 4.50*** 1.87 bangladesh 0.45 1.53 1.30 1.14 sri lanka 21.88*** 0.10** 9.47*** 4.39*** china 0.96 1.34 1.75* 1.03 philippines 21.03*** 0.39* 6.42*** 6.74*** india 0.56 0.79 1.56 0.84 ghana 42.16*** 0.06*** 8.39*** 2.56 morocco 9.87*** 0.28*** 4.14*** 2.54*** nigeria 197.47*** 0.00 85.46*** 48.38*** senegal 27.95*** 0.18** 8.90*** 3.97** tunisia 10.25*** 0.10*** 2.52* 2.55** dominican republic 4.93*** 0.35* 0.90 1.93 brazil 1.08 1.44 0.80 0.86 ecuador 16.61*** 0.24*** 2.09 4.36*** peru 0.90 1.98** 0.42* 1.06 constant 0.48 0.02*** 0.04*** 0.07*** log likelihood -8,503.53 tab. a3: continuation *** p<0.001 ** p<0.005 *p<0.05 note: up to god (utg), i don’t know (idk) source: own calculation based on istat survey “social condition and integration of foreign citizens” 2011-12 table a3 show that women with parity 0 have a higher rrr of giving non-numeric responses compared to the women that have a similar personal ideal family size in italy compared to their origin country. the rrr of having lower ideals decreases with the increases of the parity and, conversely, the risk of having larger ideals than the origin country average increases if the women already have three or more children. never-married women have a higher rrr of having the same personal ideal family size of their origin country. women with a more dynamic (circular/interrupted) pattern of migration have a lower rrr of having fewer children than the norm in their origin country. no statistical effect is found for italian language profi ciency. lack of religious service attendance decreases both the risk of having lower or higher numbers of children than the norm in the origin country. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.4 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /cmyk /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true /embedjoboptions true /dscreportinglevel 0 /emitdscwarnings false /endpage -1 /imagememory 1048576 /lockdistillerparams false /maxsubsetpct 100 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/hrv (za stvaranje adobe pdf dokumenata najpogodnijih za visokokvalitetni ispis prije tiskanja koristite ove postavke. stvoreni pdf dokumenti mogu se otvoriti acrobat i adobe reader 5.0 i kasnijim verzijama.) /hun 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe abstract: childbirth registration in zimbabwe has decreased over the years, yet the risk factors associated with this incompleteness have not been explored. this study investigates the trends in birth registration completeness and factors associated with the decrease in birth registration among children aged 0-5 years from 20052015. we use data from the, 2005-06, 2010-11 and 2015 zimbabwe demographic and health survey. trends in birth registration completeness based on survey year were calculated and multivariable logistic regression models were used to estimate the predictors of birth registration. birth registration completeness was 75.4 percent, 47.3 percent, and 43.8 percent in 2005, 2010, and 2015, respectively. inequities in birth registration completeness become apparent when examined by wealth, urban/rural location, geographical region, maternal education, healthcare utilisation, and marital status. child age, maternal education, marital status, household wealth status, residence, province, and delivery place were signifi cant predictors of birth registration. efforts to improve birth registration in zimbabwe should target children born at home, children born to single and young mothers, and children whose mothers are poor and reside in rural areas. keywords: child · birth registration · completeness · zimbabwe 1 background globally, the births of one in four children under age 5 (166 million) are not formally registered, and 237 million are without a birth certifi cate (unicef 2020b). birth registration establishes the legal existence of the child and provides the basis for safeguarding many of the child’s rights. birth registration has long been recognised as a fundamental human right under the un convention on the rights of the child and other international treaties (african union 2012). however, birth registration remains incomplete in many lowand middle-income countries (lmics), particularly comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 1-18 (date of release: 10.01.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-01 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-01en7 • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe2 in asia and sub-saharan africa (bhatia et al. 2019). almost all unregistered births occur in lmics, and fi ve countries – the democratic republic of the congo, ethiopia, india, nigeria, and pakistan – account for 50 percent of these births (unicef 2020b). estimates of birth registration completeness show that only 45 percent of children under 5 years of age are registered in sub-saharan africa (unicef 2020b). eastern and southern africa are the regions with the lowest birth registration completeness rates in the world, estimated at 40 percent (unicef 2020b). birth registration is very important as shown by sustainable development goal (sdg) target 16.9, which aims to provide universal birth registration by 2030 (müller 2015). however, if current trends persist, coupled with a rapidly growing population, 115 million children will be unregistered in sub-saharan africa by 2030 (unicef 2020b). a birth certifi cate facilitates access to essential services, such as health care, social services, and education (world bank 2016). without birth registration, children are unable to prove their age and therefore more vulnerable to violence, abuse, and exploitation (unicef 2020a). unregistered children face an uncertain future since they may be cut off from routine immunisation, social assistance, inheritance, attending school, or registering for exams (unicef 2020a). inequities in birth registration coverage exist both across and within countries, and for the latter, inequities are most pronounced by wealth and urban/rural location (bhatia et al. 2019; world bank 2016). compounding barriers among the poorest and most marginalised populations means births are less likely to be registered, increasing children’s vulnerability to being missed by essential services (world bank 2016). some concrete consequences of not having a birth registered include a greater likelihood of early marriage (bhabha 2013; jayaraman et al. 2016), poor health outcomes (comandini et al. 2016), poor education outcomes (corbacho et al. 2012), poor physical growth and development outcomes (jeong et al. 2018) and child traffi cking and exploitation (dunning et al. 2014). various structural and contextual factors determine birth registration completeness. household wealth status, maternal education, marital status, the child’s sex, age, health-care provider, ownership of a radio or mobile phone, region of residence, religion and women’s autonomy are among the predictors of birth registration (abay/gebre-egziabher 2020; candia 2019; garenne et al. 2016; isara/atimati 2015; juma et al. 2016; kumari 2019; makinde et al. 2016; nascimento et al. 2015; wodon/yedan 2019). in ghana, birth registration is infl uenced by several socio-demographics including the child delivery place (amo-adjei/annim 2015; dake/fuseini 2018). similarly, in laos, birth registration is determined by ethno-geographic factors such as geographic remoteness (nomura et al. 2018). in india, women who reported more autonomy were signifi cantly more likely to register their children’s births (mohanty/ gebremedhin 2018) while wealth and urban/rural inequities also determined birth registration (bhatia et al. 2019). the completeness of birth registration; the process of recording a child’s birth in zimbabwe remains low. furthermore, the issuance of birth certifi cates, the legal document to prove identity is still far from being comprehensive. current estimates show that 49 percent of children under age 5 are registered, with 45 percent of them possessing a birth certifi cate (zimstat/unicef 2019a). in zimbabwe, birth trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 3 registration is compulsory and free under the 1986 births and deaths registration act [chapter 5:02] (department of registrar general zimbabwe 2005). additionally, the government has undertaken measures such as decentralising birth registration, the issuance of birth records in vernacular languages, and annual outreach programmes in the form of mobile registrations to remove barriers associated with costs and to encourage birth registrations by bringing these services closer to people. despite these measures, birth registration in zimbabwe is far from comprehensive. barriers to birth registration in zimbabwe include insuffi cient staff at registering offi ces, time and fi nancial costs associated with travelling to the registration centres, lack of awareness of the existing laws on birth registration, and a long list of requirements (justice for children trust 2007; kidia 2018; mashumba et al. 2004; zimbabwe human rights commission 2020). despite these low levels of birth registration, there is little empirical evidence on why birth registration completeness is low in zimbabwe. chereni (2016) examined the underlying dynamics of birth registration success but only focused on a single district. this paper presents trends in the completeness of birth registration from 2005-2015 in zimbabwe and assesses differences in registration completeness among different groups of children. the paper also identifi es factors that can predict the birth registration status of a child. 2 data and methods this study uses data from the 2005-2006, 2010-2011 (hereafter 2005 and 2010), and 2015 zimbabwe demographic and health survey (zdhs). the zdhs is a nationally representative sample survey conducted every fi ve years since 1988. the survey provides current demographic and health information for policy and programmatic purposes, such as monitoring progress in sustainable development indicators. specifi c topics covered in the survey include information on (1) housing characteristics and household population; (2) characteristics of respondents; (3) marriage and fertility; (4) family planning; (5) maternal and child health; (6) birth registration; and (7) hiv/aids. the survey design of the zdhs is a stratifi ed twostage cluster sampling method based on census enumeration areas (eas) and household samples. the fi rst stage covers the selection of eas with probability proportional to the size. the second stage involves household selection, which was based on the ea. the analysis was limited to de jure resident children under fi ve years of age with complete information on their birth registration status. the household fi le containing the birth registration module, children, and women datasets were retrieved for data analysis. these datasets were linked to assess birth registration completeness by socio-demographic characteristics of the child, mother, and household. children with invalid or missing information were dropped from the analysis. as a result, the analysis was limited to a sample of children aged 0-5 years who had data on birth registration and demographic characteristics (2005; n = 4,438), (2010; n = 4,660) and (2015; n = 5,184). • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe4 2.1 variables outcome variable the outcome variable in this study is the birth registration status. this variable was derived from the question asking if children aged 0-5 on the household roster have a birth certifi cate: does (name) have a birth certifi cate? responses to this question have four categories: (1) has a certifi cate, (2) is registered, (3) neither, or (4) don’t know. the responses “has a certifi cate” and “is registered” were combined as one category while “neither” remained a separate category. for this study, children with the “don’t know” response were dropped from the analysis since it was considered an invalid response. children registered without a birth certifi cate or registered with a birth certifi cate were categorised as registered and coded “1”, while those neither registered nor having a birth certifi cate were categorised as not registered and coded “0.” explanatory variables the independent variables used in this study were categorised into fi ve groups: the child’s socio-demographic, maternal, household, geographical, and delivery characteristics. the child’s characteristics include sex (male, female) and age (< 1 year, 1-2 years, and 3-4 years). the main household characteristic is wealth status (poorest, poorer, middle, richer, and richest). the mother’s characteristics include: age (15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35+); level of education (none, primary, secondary, and higher); and marital status (never in a union, currently in union, and formerly in a union). geographical characteristics include the place of residence (rural or urban), and region/province. administratively, zimbabwe has been divided into ten regions/ provinces. delivery characteristics cover the place of delivery (home, public health facility, private health facility, and others). 2.2 analytical approach descriptive and multivariable regression analyses are used in this study. first, we show the frequency distributions of the sample population’s characteristics. second, cross-tabulations describe the trends and completeness in birth registration across the years. differences in the completeness of birth registration between the three survey years are then examined using the chi-squared test (p < 0.05). in the fi nal analysis, binary multivariable logistic regression models are fi tted to examine the associations between the explanatory variables and the outcome variable. adjusted odds ratios (aors), 95 percent confi dence intervals (ci), and p-values are calculated with a statistical signifi cance level set at p < 0.05. survey weights and clustering within primary sampling units (psus) were included in these analyses, and they were carried out with stata 14.0. trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 5 3 results table 1 depicts the distribution of the sample’s characteristics. birth registration decreased from 75.4 percent in 2005 to 47.3 percent in 2010, and then to 43.8 percent in 2015. the mean age of the newly registered children was 1.9 years in 2005 and 2015, while it was 1.7 years in 2010. the sample was evenly distributed between males and females from 2005-2015. almost one-quarter of the children across the surveys belong to the poorest households, and most were living in rural households. regarding maternal factors, most mothers were aged 25-29 years, attained secondary education, and were currently in a union. nearly twothirds of the children (65 percent) were delivered in public health facilities in 2015. manicaland (15.3 percent) and harare (14.3 percent) had the most children, with bulawayo (3.9 percent) having the lowest number of children in 2015. table 2 shows the proportion of registered children by various background characteristics in the 2005, 2010, and 2015 surveys. overall, birth registration completeness signifi cantly decreased by 32 percentage points from 75 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2015 (p < 0.05). age showed a marked and continuous decrease in the proportion of registered births across all surveys. the decline in birth registration completeness was higher among children younger than one year between 2005 and 2015 (from 69 percent to 32 percent). regarding household wealth status, while completeness of birth registration decreased slightly among the richest quintile between 2005 (85 percent) and 2015 (80 percent), it decreased substantially among the poorest over the same period; from 69 percent to 24 percent. completeness of birth registration was higher in urban than in rural areas between 2005 and 2015. in rural areas, birth registration completeness more than halved during the same period (72 percent vs. 32 percent) compared to an 18 percent decrease in urban areas. the decline in birth registration completeness was higher among children of young mothers compared to old mothers (37 percent vs. 30 percent). birth registration completeness tends to be higher among children of women with higher educational attainment. for instance, in 2015, the birth registration completeness among mothers with higher education was higher than that of those with no education (86 percent vs 13 percent). similarly, the largest decrease was among children with mothers with no education (54 percent), compared to higher education (6 percent). considering the mother’s marital status, the completeness of birth registration was higher among children from currently married women. while birth registration completeness showed a substantial decrease from 44 percent in 2010 to 28 percent in 2015 among children of women, not in a union, it remained stable (2010: 48 percent; 2015: 46 percent) among those currently in a union. similar observations were made when stratifying data by geographical regions, with manicaland and midlands reporting less than a third of registered births (28 percent vs. 32 percent). in addition to masvingo, the two regions recorded the greatest decreases in the completeness of birth registration between 2005 and 2015. birth registration completeness was highest in the two urban provinces of harare (66 percent) and bulawayo (67 percent), followed by 51 percent in mashonaland central. birth registration showed a striking • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe6 tab. 1: distribution of the characteristics of the sample, zimbabwe, 2005-2015 variables 2005 2010 2015 birth registration status not registered 1,092(24.6) 2,454(52.7) 2,916(56.2) registered 3,346(75.4) 2,206 (47.3) 2,628(43.8) child sex male 2,220(50.0) 2,328(50.0) 2,537(48.9) female 2,219(50.0) 2,331(50.0) 2,648 (51.1) child age (years) mean age 1.9 1.7 1.9 < 1 1,058(23.8) 1,317(28.3) 1,104 (21.3) 1-2 1,755(39.6) 1,849(39.7) 2,075(40.0) 3-4 1,625(36.6) 1,494 (32.1) 2,006(38.7) household wealth poorest 1,073(24.2) 1,118(24.0) 1,266(24.4) poorer 983 (22.1) 1,010 (21.7) 1,035(20.0) middle 830 (18.7) 902 (19.4) 869(16.8) richer 888(20.0) 958(20.6) 1,173(22.6) richest 664 (15.0) 671 (14.4) 841 (16.2) place of residence urban 1,190(26.8) 1,285 (27.6) 1,570(30.3) rural 3,248(73.2) 3,375(72.4) 3,614(69.7) maternal age 15-19 296 (6.7) 347 (7.5) 326 (6.3) 20-24 1,363(30.7) 1,343(28.8) 1,151(22.2) 25-29 2,077(46.8) 2,210 (47.4) 2,643 (51) 30-34 425 (9.6) 539 (11.6) 706 (13.6) 35+ 276 (6.2) 221 (4.8) 359 (6.9) maternal education no education 171 (3.9) 82 (1.8) 60 (1.2) primary 1,624(36.6) 1,544 (33.1) 1,645 (31.7) secondary 2,544 (57.3) 2,910(62.5) 3,206(61.8) higher 99 (2.2) 123 (2.7) 274 (5.3) marital status never in union 174 (3.9) 157 (3.4) 184 (3.6) currently in union 3,765(84.8) 4,102(88.0) 4,580(88.3) formerly in union 500 (11.3) 401 (8.6) 420 (8.1) trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 7 difference in the delivery place: completeness was higher among children born in public and private health facilities than at home. children born at home and in other places had the lowest completeness of birth registration, which decreased drastically between 2005 and 2015. table 3 shows the logistic regression results for the predictors of birth registration in zimbabwe. age was the only signifi cant child-level predictor of registration, while the sex of the child was not associated with birth registration in any survey. children over two years of age had better odds of being registered than those below the age of one for instance, in 2010, children aged 3-4 years were three times as likely to be registered compared to children aged less than one (2010; aor = 3.14; 95 percent ci = (2.63-3.76). at the household level, wealth was a signifi cant predictor of birth registration. while wealth did not predict birth registration in 2005, the odds of getting registered increased with increased household wealth in subsequent years. in 2015, children from the richest households were 9 times as likely as children from the poorest households to get registered (2015; aor = 9.17; 95 percent ci = (5.8914.28). the place of residence was only a predictor of birth registration in 2010, remaining insignifi cant in the other years. children from urban areas had better odds of being registered than rural children (2010; aor = 0.70; 95 percent ci = (0.490.99). furthermore, children from different parts of the country had different odds of being registered. these odds were much higher in the south and southwestern tab. 1: continuation variables 2005 2010 2015 place of delivery home 1,367(30.8) 1,590 (34.1) 1,027 (19.8) public health facility 2,450(55.2) 2,550 (54.7) 3,379(65.2) private health facility 584 (13.2) 453 (9.7) 632 (12.2) other 37 (0.8) 67 (1.4) 146 (2.8) region of residence manicaland 589(13.3) 691 (14.8) 794(15.3) mashonaland central 546 (12.3) 515 (11.0) 513 (9.9) mashonaland east 338 (7.6) 483 (10.4) 488 (9.4) mashonaland west 434 (9.8) 583 (12.5) 670 (12.9) matabeleland north 322 (7.2) 225 (4.8) 244 (4.7) matabeleland south 217 (4.9) 231 (5.0) 191 (3.7) midlands 692 (15.4) 603 (13.0) 693 (13.4) masvingo 589(13.3) 536 (11.5) 650 (12.5) harare 514 (11.6) 620 (13.3) 742(14.3) bulawayo 199 (4.5) 172 (3.7) 201 (3.9) total 4,438 4,660 5,184 source: zdhs 2005-06, 2010-11 and 2015 • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe8 tab. 2: trends in birth registration completeness by child’s, maternal, household, geographical and delivery characteristics in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 (in %) variables 2005 2010 2015 % change (n = 4438) (n = 4660) (n = 5184) 2005-2015 child sex male 75.2 46.1 43.4 -31.8 female 75.6 48.1 44.1 -31.5 child age (years) < 1 69.2 34.8 31.5 -37.7 1-2 78.1 45.6 43.3 -34.8 3-4 76.5 60.6 50.9 -25.6 household wealth poorest 68.8 34.0 24.3 -44.5 poorer 72.1 41.0 30.3 -41.8 middle 75.2 44.4 39.4 -35.8 richer 79.9 53.4 54.1 -25.8 richest 85.2 74.3 79.7 -5.5 place of residence urban 83.7 63.9 65.8 -17.9 rural 72.4 41.0 34.2 -38.2 maternal age 15-19 64.6 28.2 27.9 -36.7 20-24 74.2 42.6 36.3 -37.9 25-29 77.1 51.8 46.6 -30.5 30-34 77.6 50.0 51.2 -26.4 35+ 76.2 55.6 46.6 -29.6 maternal education no education 66.7 42.2 12.7 -54.0 primary 69.0 35.7 30.0 -39.0 secondary 79.4 52.6 47.8 -31.6 higher 91.6 73.6 85.8 -5.8 marital status never in union 63.4 43.7 27.5 -35.9 currently in union 75.8 48.3 45.8 -30.0 formerly in union 76.9 39.2 28.5 -48.4 place of delivery home 64.2 31.9 24.2 -40.0 public health facility 79.7 54.4 47.6 -32.1 private health facility 84.7 62.6 57.9 -26.8 other 59.7 40.3 30.6 -29.1 trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 9 provinces compared to other parts of the north and eastern provinces. for instance, in matabeleland and bulawayo, children had higher odds of getting registered than children living in manicaland in 2010 and 2015 (aor ranging from 1.62 to 3.6). it is noteworthy that, in 2005, the odds of birth registration were highest in manicaland, and the relationship pattern changed signifi cantly between 2010 and 2015. other predictors of birth registration include maternal age, education, and marital status. generally, the odds of registration increased with maternal age. for example, birth registration odds were highest for children of mothers who were aged 35 years and above in 2005 and 2015. although not signifi cant in other years, the mother’s education increased the odds of childbirth registration in 2015. children of mothers with higher educational attainment were 7.2 times as likely to get registered as children of mothers without any education (aor = 7.18; 95 percent ci = (2.57-20.07). similarly, maternal marital status was strongly associated with birth registration; women currently in a union had higher odds of childbirth registration across all years (aor ranging from 1.55 to 2.32) compared to never-married women. birth registration was also signifi cantly associated with the child delivery place across all the surveys. the odds of registering the birth of a child delivered in a health facility were higher than children born at home. children born in private health facilities were approximately 3 times as likely to get registered when compared to children born at home across all surveys (aor = 3.11; 95 percent ci = 1.55-2.88; aor = 2.59; 95 percent ci = 1.85-3.62; aor = 2.38; 95 percent ci = 1.71-3.31). tab. 2: continuation variables 2005 2010 2015 % change (n = 4438) (n = 4660) (n = 5184) 2005-2015 region of residence manicaland 83.2 43.0 28.3 -54.9 mashonaland central 63.8 45.8 51.3 -12.5 mashonaland east 58.8 51.2 44.7 -14.1 mashonaland west 66.1 36.6 42.0 -24.1 matabeleland north 70.4 56.1 46.1 -24.3 matabeleland south 65.1 54.8 40.7 -24.4 midlands 83.7 46.6 32.2 -51.5 masvingo 83.1 33.9 37.3 -45.8 harare 81.6 58.5 66.3 -15.3 bulawayo 83.7 77.9 67.0 -16.7 overall 75.4* 47.3* 43.8* -31.6 note: * signifi cantly different between the surveys at p < 0.05. source: zdhs 2005-06, 2010-11 and 2015 • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe10 ta b . 3 : m ul tiv ar ia b le a ss o ci at io n s b et w ee n ch ild ’s , m at er na l, ho u se ho ld , g eo g ra p hi ca l, an d d el iv er y ch ar ac te ri st ic s an d b ir th r eg is tr at io n, z im b ab w e, 2 00 520 15 v ar ia b le s 20 05 20 10 20 15 ao r (9 5 p er ce n t c i) ao r (9 5 p er ce n t c i) ao r (9 5 p er ce n t c i) c h ild s ex m al e (r ef .) fe m al e 0. 97 (0 .8 31. 12 ) 1. 06 (0 .9 21. 21 ) 0. 98 (0 .8 41. 14 ) c h ild a ge ( ye ar s) < 1 (r ef .) 12 1. 47 (1 .1 71. 83 )* ** 1. 6 (1 .3 41. 92 )* ** 1. 78 (1 .4 32. 21 )* ** 34 1. 30 (1 .0 61. 59 )* * 3. 14 (2 .6 33. 76 )* ** 2. 42 (1 .9 43. 01 )* ** h ou se h ol d w ea lt h p o o re st (r ef .) p o o re r 1. 18 (0 .8 91. 55 ) 1. 43 (1 .1 31. 80 )* * 1. 23 (0 .9 61. 58 ) m id d le 1. 18 (0 .8 51. 63 ) 1. 38 (1 .0 51. 83 )* * 1. 88 (1 .4 52. 43 )* ** r ic h er 1. 35 (0 .8 72. 08 ) 1. 67 (1 .2 32. 25 )* * 3. 48 (2 .4 44. 96 )* ** r ic h es t 1. 49 (0 .7 92. 81 ) 3. 22 (2 .2 74. 58 )* ** 9. 17 (5 .8 914 .2 8) ** * p la ce o f r es id en ce u rb an (r ef .) r ur al 0. 74 (0 .3 91. 39 ) 0. 70 (0 .4 9 –0 .9 9) ** 1. 20 (0 .8 31. 72 ) m at er n al a ge 15 -1 9 (r ef .) 20 -2 4 1. 34 (0 .9 81. 83 )* 1. 34 (0 .9 31. 91 ) 1. 01 (0 .7 01. 47 ) 25 -2 9 1. 51 (1 .0 92. 08 )* * 1. 81 (1 .2 62. 60 )* ** 1. 28 (0 .9 11. 81 ) 30 -3 4 1. 59 (1 .0 82. 35 )* * 1. 93 (1 .2 92. 90 )* * 1. 49 (1 .0 22. 19 )* * 35 + 1. 78 (1 .1 12. 88 )* * 2. 61 (1 .6 54. 11 )* ** 1. 33 (0 .8 72. 03 ) trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 11 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n v ar ia b le s 20 05 20 10 20 15 ao r (9 5% c i) ao r (9 5% c i) ao r (9 5% c i) m at er n al e du ca ti on n o e d u ca tio n (r ef .) p ri m ar y 0. 89 (0 .5 61. 40 ) 0. 84 (0 .4 71. 49 ) 2. 4 (0 .9 46. 11 )* s ec o n d ar y 1. 16 (0 .7 31. 84 ) 1. 18 (0 .6 42. 15 ) 3. 1 (1 .2 17. 96 )* * h ig h er 2. 09 (0 .8 35. 25 ) 1. 45 (0 .6 63. 19 ) 7. 18 (2 .5 720 .0 7) ** * m ar it al s ta tu s n ev er in u ni o n (r ef .) c ur re n tl y in u ni o n 1. 75 (1 .0 82. 82 )* * 1. 55 (1 .0 32. 34 )* * 2. 32 (1 .5 93. 37 )* ** fo rm er ly in u ni o n 1. 78 (1 .0 43. 06 ) 0. 99 (0 .6 21. 60 ) 0. 97 (0 .6 11. 55 ) p la ce o f d el iv er y h o m e (r ef .) p ub lic h ea lt h fa ci lit y 1. 67 (1 .3 52. 08 )* ** 1. 85 (1 .5 42. 21 )* ** 2. 01 (1 .5 92. 54 )* ** p ri va te h ea lt h fa ci lit y 2. 11 (1 .5 52. 88 )* ** 2. 59 (1 .8 53. 62 )* ** 2. 38 (1 .7 13. 31 )* ** o th er 0. 57 (0 .2 61. 27 ) 1. 62 (0 .9 62. 71 )* 1. 28 (0 .8 12. 02 ) r eg io n of r es id en ce m an ic al an d (r ef .) m as h o n al an d c en tr al 0. 38 (0 .2 20. 64 )* ** 1. 48 (1 .0 02. 19 )* * 3. 60 (2 .4 15. 39 )* ** m as h o n al an d e as t 0. 25 (0 .1 60. 40 )* ** 1. 52 (1 .0 12. 28 )* * 1. 93 (1 .2 62. 96 )* * m as ho na la nd w es t 0. 38 (0 .2 40. 62 )* ** 0. 75 (0 .5 21. 09 ) 1. 78 (1 .1 82. 69 )* * m at ab el el an d n o rt h 0. 59 (0 .3 50. 98 )* * 2. 36 (1 .5 63. 58 )* ** 3. 09 (2 .0 14. 76 )* ** m at ab el el an d s o u th 0. 39 (0 .2 50. 62 )* ** 2. 04 (1 .3 83. 02 )* ** 1. 81 (1 .1 62. 83 )* * m id la n d s 1. 00 (0 .6 71. 48 ) 1. 18 (0 .8 01. 76 ) 0. 99 (0 .6 91. 41 ) m as vi ng o 0. 99 (0 .6 31. 55 ) 0. 67 (0 .4 31. 03 )* 1. 32 (0 .9 01. 96 ) h ar ar e 0. 40 (0 .2 10. 78 )* * 0. 75 (0 .4 91. 14 ) 1. 64 (1 .0 92. 46 )* * b ul aw ay o 0. 47 (0 .2 40. 94 )* * 2. 07 (1 .2 83. 37 )* * 1. 62 (1 .0 92. 4) ** n o te : o r , o d d s ra tio , * ** p < 0 .0 01 , * * p < 0 .0 5, * p < 0 .1 s o ur ce : z d h s 2 00 506 , 2 01 011 a nd 2 01 5 • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe12 4 discussion our analysis showed a low national birth registration completeness of 44 percent in 2015, comparable to the recent estimates from the multiple indicator monitoring survey (zimstat/unicef 2019a). birth registration completeness decreased substantially by 31.6 percent between 2005 and 2015. estimates in other lmics have reported a decrease in birth registration completeness over the same period (bhatia et al. 2019). in zimbabwe, the decrease in completeness rates experienced across the years is a signifi cant observation that may result from the socio-economic and political environment. the decrease in registration coincides with a period of rapid socio-economic challenges, resulting in the near collapse of the social services sector in zimbabwe (nyazema 2010). as the economic crisis peaked in 2008, birth registration sharply declined from 2005 to 2015. birth registration is still low in zimbabwe, 19 percent of children aged 0-1 year are currently registered (zimstat 2022). our analysis shows that the decline in birth registration completeness was more pronounced among the poorest households and rural households. this points to the role of poverty in accelerating the decrease in national birth registration completeness rates since 76 percent of rural residents in zimbabwe are poor (zimstat/unicef 2019b). while offi cially, birth registration is free, previous studies in zimbabwe showed that indirect costs associated with transport to registration centres, food, and accommodation remain a barrier to registration (justice for children trust 2007; mashumba et al. 2004; zimbabwe human rights commission 2020). the poorest and most marginalised populations face multiple barriers, which might have been exacerbated by the economic crisis, resulting in unregistered births (world bank 2016). people living in poverty make decisions focused on coping with present stressful circumstances, often at the expense of future goals (sheehyskeffi ngton/rea 2017). in the context of hyperinfl ation in zimbabwe, this means birth registration was less likely to be prioritised by households. the reasons for the decline in birth registration completeness in zimbabwe are multifaceted. poor governance, systems issues, poor infrastructure, limited capacity, and limited funding may all have caused a sharp decline in registration. for example, insuffi cient and unmotivated personnel at registering offi ces contribute to slow and poor service delivery, which may discourage people from registering births (justice for children trust 2007; mashumba et al. 2004). system challenges were exacerbated by the economic crisis, since most public sector employees either left their jobs permanently, were absent, or were on frequent strikes, compromising service delivery (nyazema 2010). economic hardships resulting in systematic corruption in the form of demands of “informal payments” such as bribes may explain why registration fell in this period and most steeply among the poor. furthermore, the incompleteness of birth registrations is linked to poor political commitment, inadequate policies, and a historical lack of investment in crvs systems. political interests in the polarised environment from 2000-2008 may have resulted in the government failing to implement the provisions of the births and deaths registration act [chapter 5:02]. additionally, responsibility for managing the national vital registration system cuts across several government institutions, trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 13 each with their own bureaucratic bottlenecks. while childbirth registration is managed by the registrar general, which falls under the ministry of home affairs, other components of child protection issues are housed at the ministry of social welfare and the ministry of health. to our knowledge, no policy document details how these institutions should interact and harmonise their operations. as a result, a poor policy environment and lack of coordination have resulted in gaps in birth registration completeness. the decline in completeness rates experienced over the years was higher among younger children than older ones, as multivariable analyses showed older children having better odds of being registered. this may be attributed to a shorter registration opportunity in young children compared to older children. consequently, births are not registered immediately when children are born in zimbabwe. births are registered when children are about to enter school or sit for their primary education examinations. one implication of late registration is that it may be associated with increased errors and the falsifi cation of birth dates (makinde et al. 2016). the lack of explicit punitive measures or penalties for late birth registration within six weeks under the law means that late birth registration in zimbabwe will likely continue. however, a late penalty fee can also lead to unintended consequences through falsifi cation of dates of birth if people know they will be charged when their children are registered late. our study demonstrated that household wealth status is likely the most powerful predictor of birth registration. consistent with the fi ndings of previous studies (bhatia et al. 2019; dake/fuseini 2018; duff et al. 2016; wodon/yedan 2019), the present study showed that children from wealthier households were more likely to be registered. economically well-off households have greater access to information, money, and other resources needed for birth registration and acquiring a birth certifi cate (chereni 2016). as shown in this study, poor households were less likely to register their children, suggesting that poverty is a barrier to birth registration. while our results show rural-urban differentials in the decline in birth registration, place of residence was only a predictor of birth registration in 2010. past studies have also reported rural-urban differentials in the completeness of birth registration (bhatia et al. 2019; nomura et al. 2018). this fi nding may point to the height of the crisis in 2008, when differences between urban and rural areas in zimbabwe were more pronounced in terms of access to public services. for rural residents, birth registration is linked to fi nancial and opportunity costs associated with travelling to the registration centres (justice for children trust 2007; mashumba et al. 2004). the effect of residence may have been moderated by wealth quintiles which tend to classify urban households as wealthier than rural ones in the dhs. however, this fi nding is worrying, since 61.4 percent of the population lives in rural areas and new rural resettlements are being developed in farming communities across the country (zimstat 2022). a signifi cant regional difference in birth registration was also found in our study. the results show lower levels of birth registration in the matebeleland provinces in 2005 compared to the other provinces. this was largely due to parents themselves not having registered births either, leading to a cycle of non-registration due to the strict requirements of providing the father’s details • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe14 when registering. however, in 2015 children from the matebeland provinces had higher odds of being registered. this change may be attributed to government and civil society efforts to ensure that all children, especially those from matebeleland regions, are registered (zimbabwe human rights commission 2020). manicaland province recorded the largest decrease in birth registration completeness over the reference period. this may be due to the fact that the population has a high total fertility rate and that the region is home to the majority of conservative apostolic christian sects that do not use health services or register the births of their children (maguranyanga 2009; zimstat 2022). women’s use of modern healthcare facilities is another major predictor of birth registration. in this study, children’s birth registration was higher among those born in health facilities. studies conducted in ghana and uganda found a similar association between delivery place and birth registration (candia 2019; dake/fuseini 2018). this relationship may explain in part the decline in birth completeness rates observed over the years, as institutional deliveries decreased in the same period (zimstat/ icf international 2016). women who use maternal health services may be provided with information on the benefi ts of birth registration, and linked to the registration centres after delivery (world health organization 2013). thus, improving maternal healthcare services, besides directly affecting the health of the women and children concerned, can contribute toward raising birth registration completeness in zimbabwe. children delivered in health facilities receive birth confi rmation records to facilitate birth registration. the government has set up registration centres at major hospitals (department of registrar general zimbabwe 2022). nevertheless, the government has also designed a birth confi rmation record for children born within the community to reduce the obstacles to registration. the mothers’ socio-demographic characteristics make a signifi cant difference for the birth registration status of their children. for instance, married women had higher chances of registering their children compared to never-married women. unlike single women, married women may receive support from their partners in registering their children. while legally women can register their children’s births, cultural values place greater importance on the child taking up the father’s last name, limiting single women from registering births without the consent of the father. furthermore, our study demonstrated that the odds of birth registration increase with the increasing mother’s age, although not consistently. this fi nding is, however, at odds with fi ndings in ghana, where registration decreased with increases in the mother’s age (dake/fuseini 2018). furthermore, educated women were more likely to register their children’s births. this fi nding is consistent with several other studies conducted in lowand middle-income countries (nascimento et al. 2015; nomura et al. 2018; wodon/yedan 2019). mothers’ education may also infl uence childbirth registration in several ways. educated women have better access to birth registration information and are aware of the negative consequences of not registering their children. moreover, education creates better economic outcomes for women, eliminating the fi nancial obstacles associated with birth registration. additionally, educated women have greater autonomy and decision-making abilities, facilitating trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015 • 15 birth registration. as observed, women’s autonomy in india signifi cantly increased the chances of birth registration (mohanty/gebremedhin 2018). the dhs and mics provide the best estimates for the completeness of birth registration in zimbabwe. this study used these nationally representative estimates to explore the level, trends, and predictors of birth registration in zimbabwe. this is the fi rst analysis of its kind in zimbabwe and the fi ndings are nationally representative and can be generalised to the whole country. although this study reached its aims and important policy implications can be drawn from the results, it has some limitations. first, data on birth registration in the zdhs was collected at the household level and may have been provided by an individual other than the parents, raising the possibility of recall bias. second, most births were recorded as registered without presenting the birth certifi cate. therefore, we cannot be certain that all those who stated that their child had been registered but did not present a birth certifi cate had indeed registered the child. since secondary data was used, information on other important factors such as service satisfaction and distance to registration centres that could have explained non-registration could not be ascertained. further investigations of birth registration should collect detailed community-based data that can contribute to improving accessibility to birth registration in zimbabwe and increase people’s willingness to register births. additionally, more evidence is required to ascertain the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on birth registrations in zimbabwe. the registration offi ces in the country were closed for more than a year, resulting in births occurring during the pandemic not being registered by the civil registration systems. 5 conclusions birth registration in zimbabwe declined between 2005 and 2015, with more than half of childbirths currently unregistered. the decline in birth registration can be attributed to the socioeconomic conditions prevailing in the country. furthermore, poor governance, systems issues, poor infrastructure, limited capacity, and limited funding may have contributed to the sharp decline in registration rates. age and household wealth continue to signifi cantly affect whether a child’s birth is registered. in addition, location infl uences the chances of registration, as children in the southwestern part of the country had higher registration chances. urban children had signifi cantly higher registration chances than their rural counterparts. improving birth registration completeness in zimbabwe should be a key priority for the government and other stakeholders. this may include strategies to eliminate barriers, especially among poor and rural households, and to increase awareness of the benefi ts of birth registration to avoid late registration. efforts should be made to improve the linkages between birth registration and maternal healthcare services for the mutual benefi t of the mother and child. the government should develop policy directions to harmonise the activities of different departments to eliminate bottlenecks in the provision of birth registration services. birth registration remains • ronald musizvingoza, naomi. n. wekwete, kudzaishe mangombe, garikai zinumwe16 an important right to protect children, which should be prioritised in achieving the 2030 agenda. references abay, shishay tadesse; gebre-egziabher, ataklti gebreyesus 2020: status and associated factors of birth registration in selected districts of tigray region, ethiopia. in: bmc international health and human rights 20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12914-020-00235-x african union 2012: 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wodon, quentin; yedan, ali 2019: obstacles to birth registration in niger: estimates from a recent household survey. in: journal of health, population and nutrition 38,26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41043-019-0185-1 world bank 2016: incentives for improving birth registration coverage: a review of the literature. in: a review of the literature: 1-32. world health organization 2013: counselling for maternal and newborn health care: a handbook for building skills. world health organization. zimbabwe human rights commission 2020a: national inquiry on access to documentation in zimbabwe. zimbabwe human rights commission 2020b: national inquiry on access to documentation in zimbabwe. zimstat 2022: zimbabwe 2022 population and housing census. pleriminary report. zimstat; icf international 2016: zimbabwe demographic health survey 2015: final report. rockville, maryland usa: zimbabwe national statistics agency and icf international. zimstat; unicef 2019a: multiple indicator cluster survey (mics) 2019, survey findings report. zimbabwe national statistics agency (zimstat). zimstat; unicef 2019b: zimbabwe child poverty report 2019. harare, zimbabwe: zimbabwe national statistics agency and unicef. date of submission: 03.01.2022 date of acceptance: 26.10.2022 dr. ronald musizvingoza (), dr. naomi n. wekwete, dr. kudzaishe mangombe. university of zimbabwe, department of demography settlement and development. harare, zimbabwe. e-mail: ronaldmusi@gmail.com, nwekwete@gmail.com, kudzimangobee@gmail.com url: https://orcid.org/orcid-search/search?searchquery=0000-0003-0313-5907 https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/naomi-wekwete https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/kudzaishe-mangombe-2 garikai zinumwe. university of zimbabwe, department of analytics and informatics. harare, zimbabwe. e-mail: gzinhumwe@gmail.com published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries: coherence across data sources trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries: coherence across data sources kristen jeffers, albert esteve abstract: educational expansion and the closing of gender gaps in education are key objectives in national and international policy agendas. monitoring progress towards these goals requires comparable data across countries and over time. the availability of international census and survey microdata allows for crossnational comparisons of education participation and completion. however, we lack systematic analyses of how trends vary across data sources and of the extent to which these data sources offer a consistent account of progress in education. in this paper, we examine coherence in estimates of educational attainment among women aged 25 to 29 in 75 countries across the three main repositories of international population microdata: ipums international, the demographic and health surveys (dhs) and the multiple indicator cluster surveys (mics). coherence analysis of 535 census and survey observations from 1960 to 2017 shows high levels of consistency overall but also identifi es observations misaligned with trends. results provide practical information to the research community about the validity of comparative investigations using three important data sources for demographic studies. the data also serve as benchmarks for assessing the quality of education information obtained in data sources not included in our analysis and the trend alignment of future estimates. keywords: educational expansion · census microdata · dhs · mics · data coherence 1 introduction education is widely recognised as a vehicle for individual agency, social change and economic growth. it is also considered an important policy instrument for development in many lowand middle-income countries (lmics), where enrolment in primary and secondary schooling is not universal and gender disparities in education remain. as a result, national and international policy agendas include as comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 349-388 (date of release: 08.08.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-14en6 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve350 key objectives expanded access to schooling and the closing of the gender gaps in education (see united nations 2013; unicef 2019; unesco 2016, 2018). monitoring progress towards these goals requires comparable data across countries and over time. the availability of international census and survey microdata allows for crossnational comparative assessments of education participation and completion. however, we lack systematic analyses of how trends in education vary across these data sources and of the extent to which these trends offer a consistent account of progress in education in recent decades. do the multiple rounds of census and survey microdata available for lmics provide a coherent picture of trends in educational expansion? are there systematic differences across data sources? which specifi c censuses or surveys stand apart from the trend presented by other census and survey observations in the country? to answer these questions, we pooled individual-level data from 535 censuses and surveys from 75 lowand middle-income countries to monitor trends in educational attainment and examine coherence across data sources. the data cover 1960 to 2017 and come from three sources: population censuses from the ipums database, the demographic and health surveys (dhs) and the multiple indicator cluster surveys (mics).1 all censuses available from ipums as well as all dhs and mics surveys collect information on school attendance and educational attainment. we examine trends in educational attainment among females aged 25 to 29. while gender gaps in education have reversed in most highand middle-income countries, women trail men in school enrolment and completion in many developing countries, particularly in sub-saharan africa and south asia (ilie/rose 2016; kebede et al. 2019). accordingly, international policy agendas include specifi c targets to address gender disparities in education. we fi nd strong coherence across data sources overall with heterogeneity by data source and region. our results provide practical information to the research community about the validity of comparative investigations using the data sources we examine. our analysis focuses on young women, but sensitivity analyses examining trends in male educational attainment yield similar results and conclusions. 2 background the contribution of basic education to economic growth is widely recognised (schultz 1961; becker 1994; barro/lee 1994; cohen/soto 2007). its importance is not, however, confi ned to economic progress. education has intrinsic positive effects for people and societies. education imparts knowledge and skills that provide access to better paying jobs, alleviating poverty and increasing the availability of cultural and economic resources for households (becker 1994). highly educated 1 to access international census data from ipums, visit international.ipums.org. dhs data are available for download from the dhs program, dhsprogram.com, and ipums-dhs, idhsdata. org. mics data are available for download at mics.unicef.org. trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 351 individuals tend to have better health and live longer lives (hannum/buchmann 2005; kc/lentzner 2010; lutz et al. 2014; masquelier/garbero 2016). the children of highly educated parents are also more likely to have better health and cognitive outcomes (caldwell 1981; cochrane et al. 1982; lutz et al. 2014; bicego/boerma 1993; rosenzweig/wolpin 1994; mellington/cameron 1999; wang 2003; schady 2011; abuya et al. 2011; vikram et al. 2012; grépin/bharadwaj 2015). due to the link between female education and demographic outcomes, educational expansion has the potential to signifi cantly infl uence population growth (lutz/skirbekk 2014). based on this evidence, policymakers and development practitioners view access to and completion of education as key policy instruments for development in low and middle-income countries. the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development includes educational expansion and gender parity in schooling as primary goals, challenging lmics to ensure universal and equal access at all levels of education. many of these countries trail high-income countries in quantitative and qualitative progress in education. enrolment in primary and secondary education is far from universal and college graduates represent less than fi ve percent of the population in much of sub-saharan africa (unesco institute for statistics 2019). moreover, the expansion of primary, secondary and tertiary education has not been gender-neutral (grant/behrman 2010; dorius/firebaugh 2010; dorius 2013; unesco 2019). during the millennium development goals (mdgs) era, countries with better performance monitoring made better progress towards targets (jacob 2017). to track progress towards new education targets, accurate measures of school participation and completion are fundamental. policymakers and researchers worldwide have traditionally relied on offi cial reports and statistics from international agencies and some scholarly databases (barro/lee 2013, for example) to obtain macro level indicators on educational attainment. these statistics were compiled from censuses and surveys, resources for which microdata were rarely available to researchers. only recently have researchers gained access to census and survey microdata from lmics upon which to build new and large comparative analysis. these microdata come from three main sources: the ipums international database for population censuses and household surveys (minnesota population center 2019), the demographic health surveys program (icf 2004-2017) and the multiple indicators cluster surveys (unicef 2020). among these sources, censuses have served as the underlying source for global databases on educational attainment like those maintained by the united nations. they also provide the benchmark observations for modelled estimates and projections of educational attainment produced and used by the scholarly community (barro/lee 2013; bauer et al. 2012; cohen/soto 2007; kc et al. 2010; lutz et al. 2014; de la fuente/doménech 2012; jordá/alonso 2017). for many countries, especially lmics, population censuses represent the only available source for educational data. compared to surveys, censuses offer some advantages – most importantly universal coverage of the population – which contribute to reliable and consistent trends over time. however, in the best of cases, censuses are conducted every ten years. in low-resource and/or confl ict settings, more than ten years may • kristen jeffers, albert esteve352 elapse between censuses. furthermore, access to census microdata has been limited until recent years. the ipums international project has simplifi ed access to census microdata by collaborating with national statistical offi ces to compile, integrate and harmonise representative samples of census microdata from around the world. at the time of writing, harmonised microdata from more than 500 censuses and surveys and more than 100 countries were available to researchers free of charge through ipums international. nearly every country in south and central america disseminates microdata through ipums. twenty-seven of 54 african countries disseminate data through ipums. twenty-three of 60 lowand middle-income countries in asia, the middle east and the pacifi c disseminate through ipums. prior to the publication of international census microdata through ipums international, cross-national research on the expansion and implications of education in lmics mostly relied on surveys. compared to censuses, surveys provide more timely data and cover a broader range of topics in greater depth. data from two global survey programs are most frequently used to monitor development progress in lmics: the demographic and health surveys (dhs) and the multiple indicator cluster surveys (mics). the demographic and health surveys are nationally representative household surveys that collect data on a number of topics related to population, health and nutrition (icf 2019). dhs surveys are conducted about every 5 years. since 1984, more than 400 dhs surveys have been completed in over 90 countries in africa, latin america, asia, oceania and eastern europe. data on literacy, school attendance and educational attainment are collected for all household members in every dhs survey. dhs surveys primarily target women in reproductive years and they have been the main source for large cross-national studies in trends in women’s education and their infl uence on family transitions and health (e.g. castro martín 1995; lloyd 2005; grant/behrman 2010). a complement to dhs, the unicef mics surveys provide data on the wellbeing of women and children in lmics. more than 300 surveys have been fi elded in 116 countries covering the period 1993 to the present (unicef 2020). most mics surveys are also nationally representative and collect education information similar to that collected in dhs surveys. dhs and mics are important sources for measuring progress towards the sustainable development goals (sdgs). likewise, the data are used extensively by social scientists and policy and health researchers to study a wide range of topics related to child health and wellbeing and human development (e.g. pace et al. 2019; kang et al. 2018; jeong et al. 2018). dhs and mics surveys use similar multi-stage cluster sampling strategies. primary sampling units (psu) typically correspond to census enumeration areas and are stratifi ed by administrative regions and urban and rural areas before selection. a complete household listing is conducted in each selected psu and households are selected for the survey by equal probability systematic sampling (icf international 2012). this type of probability sampling relies on updated and reliable sampling frames. censuses are considered the most suitable sampling frames for dhs and mics surveys. for this reason, we expect strong coherence between census-based estimates and survey-based estimates. when a census has not been conducted recently, alternative sampling frames such as electoral rosters are used. trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 353 used together, ipums, dhs and mics constitute a vast repository of individuallevel data for cross-national research on population dynamics, development and health in lmics. despite the nearly limitless potential of these data, cross-national studies combining census, dhs and mics microdata are still rare because microdata for a critical mass of countries only became available in the last decade. this paper – a fi rst attempt in this direction – examines the feasibility of combining these sources to examine trends in and implications of educational expansion. while the topical coverage and policy purposes of these data collection instruments differ, censuses and dhs and mics surveys share basic features that make them suitable for large comparative studies. the collection of information on basic educational attainment is one of these common features. in theory, comparing educational attainment across countries and data sources should be straightforward. most education systems are organised around three distinct levels: primary, secondary and tertiary. systems within regions and among countries with shared colonial histories are usually quite similar. moreover, the international standard classifi cation of education (isced) provides clear guidelines for measuring educational attainment in censuses, surveys and population registers. in practice, accurate comparisons across countries are diffi cult because the defi nition of educational levels varies signifi cantly across countries. scholars considering education at the global level have grappled with comparability across data sources. in their work to produce population projections disaggregated by level of education, researchers at the wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital have relied on microdata from censuses, dhs, mics and other household surveys to construct global datasets on educational attainment (bauer et al. 2012; goujon et al. 2016; lutz et al. 2014, 2018; speringer et al. 2019). bauer et al. (2012) and speringer and colleagues (2019) document the comparability issues and harmonisation challenges encountered in the construction of the base-year datasets used across these education and population projections, including discrepancies between national education systems and isced categories, changes over time in national education systems, inconsistencies across data sources in the treatment of complete versus incomplete levels, age-heaping in survey data and a lack of detail at the lowest and highest levels of education in developed and developing countries, respectively. results of validation exercises confi rm that different data sources lead to different educational compositions and that census or register data are generally the most reliable. the few examples provided of discrepancies between dhs surveys and censuses and intra-country inconsistencies across dhs surveys support the need for further investigation of coherence across these important sources of population data. this paper seeks to fi ll this gap by providing a systematic evaluation of trends in educational attainment across the three primary sources of demographic data in lowand middle-income countries: population censuses, demographic and health surveys (dhs) and unicef multiple cluster indicator surveys (mics). we aim to identify coherence and inconsistencies in the empirical measurement of education within and across data sources and to contribute to a better understanding of the validity of a critical independent variable in development research. • kristen jeffers, albert esteve354 3 data and methodology we use individual-level data from 210 ipums census samples,2 219 dhs surveys and 106 mics surveys to assess coherence in the measurement of education across data sources in 75 lowand middle-income countries. for a robust picture of trends over time, we include in the analysis all countries with four or more censuses and/or surveys across two or more data sources. the data were collected during the period 1960 to 2017 and cover more than half of the 138 countries designated as low or middle income by the world bank. a plurality of countries studied are represented in all three data sources: ipums, dhs and mics (table 1). ipums census samples vary in size but typically include 10 percent of the population. sample sizes for dhs and mics surveys typically cover 20,000 to 50,000 households. see table a1 in the appendix for analysis sample sizes. dhs and mics data used in the analysis were collected in household questionnaires and come from corresponding household-member microdata fi les. dhs and mics surveys collect basic demographic information on all usual residents and visitors in surveyed households via the household questionnaire. from these census and survey samples, we select women aged 25 to 29. in many lowand middle-income countries, women trail men in access to and completion of secondary education. development agendas focus on confronting barriers to girls’ schooling and require accurate information on female educational attainment. women in this age range represent the population that recently completed formal education, more accurately refl ecting the educational context in the country at the time of the survey compared to older cohorts. coherence analysis based on men yield similar results. most ipums census samples and dhs and mics surveys include retrospective questions on years of schooling and highest level of education attended and/or completed. our analysis focuses on the population completing secondary and higher education. existing literature suggests secondary education is an important threshold for individual outcomes and development (caldwell/mcdonald 1982; ainsworth et al. 1996; desai/alva 1998; abuya et al. 2012; makoka/masibo 2015). 2 certain microdata samples disseminated by ipums come from large-scale household surveys rather than censuses. see appendix for more information. tab. 1: number of analysis countries by data source and world region africa asia europe latin americ /caribbean total dhs, mics, ipums 17 5 1 3 26 ipums, dhs 7 8 – 7 22 ipums, mics 2 4 1 9 16 dhs, mics 8 2 – 1 11 total 34 19 2 20 75 source: own design trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 355 we generate a dichotomous educational attainment variable that distinguishes women who have completed secondary education or higher from those who have not. for census samples, we recode the ipums edattain variable. dhs survey data were accessed directly from the dhs program and from ipums dhs. for dhs surveys, we use the educational attainment summary variable constructed by the dhs program during data processing (hv109 or edsumm in ipums). the mics datasets do not include a summary educational attainment variable. we construct a summary measure of educational attainment for mics samples according to each country’s educational system using variables indicating the highest education level attended and highest grade completed at level. we calculate the percentage of women aged 25 to 29 who have completed secondary education for each census or survey, yielding 535 country-year observations in total. the mean number of census and survey observations among countries examined is 7.7. we use polynomial regression to fi t trends over time in educational attainment within each country. more specifi cally, we have specifi ed a second-degree polynomial (quadratic) regression model to account for the curvilinear nature of the relationship between female educational attainment and time. previous studies of global educational expansion during the time period of interest identifi ed a sigmoidal pattern in most countries, with initially slow growth, a phase of rapid expansion and then a slow approach towards universal participation (barakat/durham 2014). we explored both quadratic and cubic specifi cations, but found the quadratic model to provide the most parsimonious fi t to the data for the developing countries included in our analysis, many of which have not yet reached the fi nal phase of educational expansion. in the model specifi ed above, p is the proportion of women aged 25-29 completing secondary or higher education. each observation of p is weighted by sample size. by doing this, we give more importance to census observation over dhs and mics. census microdata samples are usually drawn from complete-count census databases. results derived from census samples are therefore extremely close to those derived from complete-count databases. we use the parameters estimated by the model to generate predicted values of p. we then compare observed and predicted values, calculating and summarising absolute differences between the two and classifying observations based on absolute deviance from the predicted trend. we disregarded the use of confi dence intervals as samples vary greatly in size and large samples usually yield very narrow confi dence intervals such that even a tiny deviation from that value represents an outlier. on the contrary, small sample sizes generate wider confi dence intervals and relatively large deviations may fall within the interval. ln 1 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve356 4 results 4.1 observed trends in educational attainment figure 1 presents, by country and world region, estimates of the percent of women aged 25 to 29 completing upper secondary education or higher for the 75 countries included in our analysis (see also table a1 in the appendix). each line represents a country, showing change over time based on multiple data sources. the colour and shape of the symbol marking each point estimate indicates the data source: census, dhs or mics. this fi gure corroborates trends well-known to researchers and policymakers. over the last several decades, there has been a general upward trend in all world regions in the proportion of young women completing at least secondary education in lmics. the percentage of women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary education or higher has increased between the earliest census or survey observation and the most recent in nearly every country examined. however, levels of secondary or higher completion vary widely across countries and regions. educational attainment is lowest in africa. less than 10 percent of women aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary education according to the most recent census or survey in burkina faso, burundi, benin, central african republic, chad, ethiopia, mali, mozambique, niger, senegal and togo. levels of secondary completion are much higher in latin america. since 2010, in two-thirds of the latin american countries studied, more than 50 percent of women complete secondary or higher. levels of completion were highest in cuba (2014) and trinidad and tobago (2011), where more than 80 percent of young women complete secondary or higher, and lowest in haiti (2016) and guatemala (2014), where less than 25 percent of young women complete secondary or higher. recent levels of secondary completion vary within asia, where the most heterogeneity is observed. female educational attainment remains low in several of the southern and southeast asian countries studied according to recent surveys. less than 30 percent of women aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary or higher in cambodia (2014), bangladesh (2014), laos (2017), india (2015) and pakistan (2012). in contrast, educational attainment is high in central asia and eastern europe: more than 95 percent of women aged 25 to 29 complete secondary education or higher in armenia, belarus, kazakhstan, kyrgyz republic and ukraine according to recent surveys. the rate of increase in secondary completion in lmics during the last several decades also varies across countries and regions, as refl ected in the variation in the slope of country trend lines in figure 1. change has been slowest in africa, where the median annual increase in the percentage of women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary or higher among the countries examined is 0.43 percentage points. by comparison, the median annual increase in the percentage of women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary or higher is 0.66 percentage points among asian countries examined is 1.1 percentage points among latin american countries studied. the dominant trend of increasing female educational attainment over time and the relative levels of educational attainment we observe in recent censuses and surveys refl ect what we understand about access to education across and trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 357 fi g . 1 : p er ce n t o f w o m en a g ed 2 529 c o m p le tin g se co nd ar y ed uc at io n o r hi gh er b y ye ar , c o un tr y, d at a so ur ce a nd w o rl d r eg io n s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • kristen jeffers, albert esteve358 within world regions. a closer look at country-specifi c patterns, however, reveals inconsistencies within and across data sources, even among observations that are only a few years apart. we do not expect that educational expansion is linear in all countries. this expectation is refl ected in the data. in some countries, secondary or higher completion has expanded more rapidly in recent decades and we see this trend refl ect in a j-shaped curve for many countries. in other countries, educational attainment increased rapidly during the mdg era but has slowed in recent years as countries approach universal secondary participation. this trend is refl ected in an inverse j-shaped curve. we do, however, expect that in most countries educational attainment among young women will always be non-decreasing. as clearly visible in figure 1, this is not the case. in 49 of 75 countries examined, at least one point estimate of secondary completion among women aged 25 to 29 is lower than the previous point estimate. in 11 countries, we observe a decline of 10 percentage points or more between adjacent point estimates. 4.2 generating new trends: country examples to address incoherent trends over time, we calculate adjusted estimates of female educational attainment. providing adjusted estimates poses some challenges. the application of inferential models to correct biases due to poor data quality and to fi ll in missing values are commonplace in international research databases (bauer et al. 2012; barro/lee 2013; cohen/soto 2007; kc et al. 2010; de la fuente/doménech 2012; jordá/alonso 2017) and not only for data on education but also for databases measuring mortality, fertility and various economic indicators. the variety of methods used to carry out these estimations makes it diffi cult to pool or compare data across sources. a parsimonious yet effi cient approach is to infer trends from as many observations as possible within a country. thanks to the availability of international census and survey microdata, we can now perform such an analysis. in our analysis, we use weighted regression to infer trends in educational expansion based on observations from the same country. figure 2 presents observed point estimates of educational attainment among young females for nine illustrative countries. for each of these countries, at least 8 observations from censuses, dhs surveys and/or mics surveys are available. all nine countries experienced an increase in the proportion of females aged 25 to 29 completing secondary education or higher between the earliest and most recent census or survey observations, but no country experienced a monotonic increase during the observed period. in benin, for example, 1.8 percent of females aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary or higher according to the 1992 census but only 0.3 percent of females aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary or higher according to the 1996 dhs survey. in nepal, 27.5 percent of females aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary or higher according to the 2011 census, but only 15.9 percent in 2014 according to that year’s mics survey. to identify which and to what extent observations diverge from overall countrylevel trends, we specify polynomial regression models for each country that estimate the best-fi tting trend line according to the survey and census observations, weighted trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 359 fig. 2: percent of women aged 25-29 completing secondary education or higher in nine countries source: own design • kristen jeffers, albert esteve360 by sample size. as the dependent variable, we use the logit of the proportion of women aged 25 to 29 with secondary or more education (ln(p/1-p)) to account for non-linearity in educational expansion. the grey regression line in each country graph depicts the fi tted relationship between time and the percent of females aged 25 to 29 completing secondary or higher. by design, regression lines favour census observations, which are based on sample sizes much larger than those provided by dhs and mics surveys. we use regression parameters to produce predicted values of the percentage of females aged 25 to 29 completing secondary education or higher that align with expected trends (results in appendix 1). 4.3 adjusted trends figure 3 plots predicted values of educational attainment among young females for all countries studied. adjusted data show a monotonically increasing pattern of educational expansion in nearly every country. the few exceptions might refl ect actual population trends or lack of observations, in particular from censuses. to assess coherence in the measurement of female educational attainment across censuses, dhs surveys and mics surveys, we produced figure 4 and table 2. figure 4 plots observed and predicted values of the percentage of women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary education or higher for all countries studied. table 2 summarises the absolute difference between observed and predicted values by data source, region and time period. overall, coherence across data sources is strong: the mean absolute difference between observed and predicted values is 2.2 percentage points. of 535 census and survey observations, two-thirds deviate from expected trends by less than two percentage points. only 11 percent of observations deviate from expected trends by fi ve or more percentage points. the difference between observed and predicted values is 10 or more in 19 of 535 observations (labelled in fig. 4). as expected, census-based estimates deviate least from expected trends. at the global level, predicted values for dhs-based estimates deviate from observed values by 2.7 percentage points on average compared to 3.2 percentage points for mics-based estimates. mics and dhs are similar in terms of the number of observations diverging from predicted estimates by 0 to 2 percentage points, but the plurality of observations with large deviations – 10 percentage points or more – are derived from mics data. in relative terms, the percent of observations deviating more than 10 percentage points from predicted values for mics is more than twice (8.5 percent) the number than for dhs (3.2 percent). in terms of regional differences, africa, asia and eastern europe show the highest levels of conformity between observed and expected patterns and across data sources. in africa, nearly 80 percent of observed point estimates deviate from predicted values by less than 2 percentage points. the share of african observations that diverge 10 or more percentage points is 2 percent or less for all data sources. compared to mics-based observations in other regions, mics surveys in africa are more in line with expected country trends. in asia, 70 percent of observations fall within the minimum deviation category (0 to 2 percentage points). mics surveys in asia show higher levels of deviation than dhs surveys trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 361 fi g . 3 : p re d ic te d p er ce n t o f w o m en a g ed 2 529 c o m p le tin g se co nd ar y ed uc at io n o r hi gh er b y ye ar , c o un tr y, d at a so ur ce a nd w o rl d r eg io n s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • kristen jeffers, albert esteve362 in the region. finally, coherence across data sources in latin america are lowest than in other regions. more than half of all survey and census observations from the region deviate from predicted values by 2 or more percentage points. results for latin america are infl uenced by the predominance of census samples for the region compared to surveys. there are three times as many census samples as dhs surveys and four times as many census samples than mics surveys available for latin america. the relative quantity of large census samples means the model demands higher precision from both census and survey observations for most latin american countries. accordingly, survey observations perform particularly poorly fig. 4: percent of women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary or higher, observed versus predicted values source: own design trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 363 in the region. thirty percent of dhs observations and more than 40 percent of mics observations deviate from predicted values by 5 percentage points or more. our results do not reveal signifi cant differences in the coherence of observations from the year 2000 or earlier compared to observations after 2000. we also considered the temporal proximity of surveys to censuses. there is no discernible relationship between the number of years elapsed since the previous census and the magnitude of the difference between observed and predicted values for survey observations (pearson correlation coeffi cient = -0.06). tab. 2: distribution of samples based on the gap between the observed and predicted percentages of women aged 25-29 with secondary or more gap between observed and predicted values 0-1.9 2-4.9 5-9.9 10+ n all countries 67.9 20.7 7.9 3.6 535 census (ipums) 76.2 19.5 2.9 1.4 210 dhs 61.6 24.2 11.0 3.2 219 mics 64.2 16.0 11.3 8.5 106 africa 79.1 14.8 4.9 1.2 244 census (ipums) 91.7 6.9 0.0 1.4 72 dhs 71.9 19.8 7.4 1 121 mics 78.4 13.7 5.9 2.0 51 asia & eastern europe 69.9 17.8 8.2 4.1 146 census (ipums) 87.3 10.9 1.8 0.0 55 dhs 56.1 28.1 12.3 3.5 57 mics 64.7 11.8 11.8 11.8 34 latin america 46.9 33.8 12.4 6.9 145 census (ipums) 55.4 36.1 6.0 2.4 83 dhs 39.0 31.7 19.5 9.8 41 mics 28.6 28.6 23.8 19.0 21 2000 or earlier 68.3 23.8 5.0 2.9 240 census (ipums) 75.4 20.8 2.3 1.5 130 dhs 54.9 32.9 7.3 4.9 82 mics 75 10.7 10.7 3.6 28 2001 or later 67.5 18.3 10.2 4.1 295 census (ipums) 77.5 17.5 3.8 1.3 80 dhs 65.7 19 13.1 2.2 137 mics 60.3 17.9 11.5 10.3 78 samples are classifi ed by data source, region, and time period. source: own design • kristen jeffers, albert esteve364 5 conclusion and discussion improved access to census and survey microdata for lmics has opened new opportunities for large-scale comparative investigations based on multiple sources of data. used together, these data sources provide more comprehensive temporal and geographic coverage than any single source used in isolation. yet this type of comparative work is still rare in socio-demographic analysis. researchers tend to work with a single data source, shying away from the challenges of harmonisation and coherence across sources. in this paper, we challenge perceived limitations of cross-national research to examine the measurement of educational expansion across data sources. literature from a variety of disciplines documents the role of education in personal and social development. many studies considering this relationship use data from a single country; those studies that do offer a crossnational perspective typically use only one of the three data sources utilised in this paper: censuses, dhs or mics. as a result, our understanding of the links between education and individual, household and societal outcomes has been informed by studies using different datasets. whether these datasets yield similar results was previously unknown. to address this gap, we carried out a simple coherence exercise to measure the consistency of trends in female educational expansion across data sources. we focus on women aged 25 to 29 completing secondary education because gender gaps persist in post-primary education in many lmics. analyses of men and other categories of educational attainment produced similar results. we pooled nearly 20 million individual-level observations from 535 censuses and surveys and 75 countries from ipums, dhs and mics. to maximise comparability across data sources, we use a dichotomous measure of education to identify females completing upper secondary education or higher. these data confi rm previously observed patterns of educational expansion: access to education is increasing in all regions, but levels of educational attainment among young women remain low in the majority of lmics. less than half of women aged 25 to 29 had completed secondary education or higher in the most recent survey or census available in 51 of 75 countries studied. our coherence analysis, however, shows that the general upward trend in educational attainment among young females conceals erratic trajectories in the majority of countries studied. our model smooths these trajectories. to assess the accuracy of each point estimate, we compared observed estimates to predicted values. overall, coherence across data sources is high. twothirds of observed point estimates differ from predicted point estimates by two or fewer percentage points. still, thirty percent of observed point estimates diverge from predicted values by two or more percentage points. censuses perform better than dhs and mics. coherence across data sources is strongest in africa. coherence across data sources is lowest in latin america, where nearly 20 percent of observed point estimates deviate from predicted values by 5 or more percentage points. discrepancies across data sources may originate during survey design, data collection and/or data processing. while dhs and mics use similar sampling trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 365 strategies and typically rely on recent censuses as sampling frames, practices vary across countries to adapt to national circumstances. in cases where surveys are fi elded soon after the most recent national census, an updated census-based sampling frame may not yet be available, producing discrepancies between data sources even when collected during the same year. for example, in nepal, the 2001 dhs survey uses the 1991 census as its sampling frame and 2011 dhs survey uses the 2001 census (though there was a census fi elded in 2011). this may explain gaps between dhsand census-based estimates for these years in nepal (see fig. 2). non-response and other non-sampling errors occur in both censuses and surveys, but there may be systematic differences by data source. for example, refusal to participate may contribute more to non-response for surveys than for censuses, which are obligatory or well-promoted in many countries. likewise, depending on the cultural context, the reporting of educational attainment among female household members might vary depending on the characteristics of interviewers and perceived use of collected information, which is likely to differ by data source. as indicated in previous studies (bauer et al. 2012; speringer et al. 2019), discrepancies related to data processing are particularly likely with education data due to varied treatment of complete versus incomplete levels of education. in countries where secondary completion rates are still low, the distinction between secondary attendance and completion may not be reported or recorded consistently across sources. our results identify the countries for which further investigation of these sources of discrepancies may be required for analyses that combine census and survey data. results presented here have other practical applications. adjusted estimates of the percent of women aged 25 to 29 completing at least secondary education can be used in a variety of demographic and economic investigations. the data also serve as benchmarks for assessing the accuracy of estimates reported in international databases, the trend alignment of future dhs, mics and census-based estimates and the quality of education information obtained in other sources not included in our analysis such as household surveys with small sample sizes. in future research, we will evaluate consistency across data sources based on other dimensions captured in censuses and household surveys such as demographic composition of the population, family structure and living arrangements. when data are scarce, as is the case for many lmics, pooling data resources can be a useful strategy. still, in the interest of reliable empirical evidence for policymaking, we should not take the coherence of data within and across sources for granted. our analysis provides empirical validity for most analyses that combine census, 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size2 argentina 1970 census (ipums) 18.10 15.76 2.34 17162 1980 census (ipums) 28.58 28.94 0.36 100336 1991 census (ipums) 40.47 42.52 2.05 153473 2001 census (ipums) 53.92 50.14 3.78 136778 2010 census (ipums) 50.47 52.24 1.77 156901 2011 mics 68.20 52.20 16.00 3317 armenia 2000 dhs 95.39 93.24 2.15 849 2001 census (ipums) 92.63 92.10 0.53 11471 2005 dhs 28.13 89.83 61.70 953 2010 dhs 95.02 93.79 1.23 943 2011 census (ipums) 95.87 94.98 0.89 13888 2015 dhs 95.51 98.57 3.06 1111 bangladesh 1991 census (ipums) 4.89 4.89 0 471616 1993 dhs 7.08 5.75 1.33 2208 1996 dhs 9.56 7.22 2.34 2166 1999 dhs 12.28 8.89 3.39 2371 2001 census (ipums) 10.03 10.10 0.07 602539 2004 dhs 12.55 12.06 0.49 2303 2006 mics 18.06 13.44 4.62 12378 2007 dhs 14.49 14.14 0.35 2252 2011 dhs 17.67 17.01 0.66 3851 2011 census (ipums) 16.96 17.01 0.05 362601 2012 mics 17.27 17.74 0.47 10765 2014 dhs 19.57 19.16 0.41 3771 belarus 1999 census (ipums) 97.16 97.16 0 34310 2005 mics 95.93 96.64 0.71 1252 2009 census (ipums) 96.94 96.91 0.03 36923 2012 mics 97.08 97.38 0.30 1358 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 371 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 benin 1979 census (ipums) 0.45 0.52 0.07 15000 1992 census (ipums) 1.78 1.18 0.60 21115 1996 dhs 0.33 1.59 1.26 1092 2001 dhs 1.28 2.41 1.13 1314 2002 census (ipums) 2.20 2.63 0.43 29520 2006 dhs 2.33 3.77 1.44 4079 2011 dhs 5.61 6.08 0.47 3417 2013 census (ipums) 8.32 7.42 0.90 42883 2014 mics 4.59 8.20 3.61 2859 bolivia 1976 census (ipums) 7.91 7.88 0.03 17702 1992 census (ipums) 24.56 24.98 0.42 24420 1994 dhs 29.98 27.79 2.19 1496 1998 dhs 37.75 33.57 4.18 1834 2000 mics 44.74 36.48 8.26 771 2001 census (ipums) 37.91 37.92 0.01 31187 2003 dhs 39.42 40.77 1.35 2877 2008 dhs 46.69 47.52 0.83 2928 botswana 1981 census (ipums) 4.21 3.88 0.33 3696 1991 census (ipums) 9.67 11.30 1.63 5470 2000 mics 23.22 22.96 0.26 1188 2001 census (ipums) 26.86 24.47 2.39 7424 2011 census (ipums) 39.18 39.90 0.72 10408 brazil 1970 census (ipums) 7.25 8.43 1.18 175630 1980 census (ipums) 17.83 14.89 2.94 242723 1991 dhs 4.87 26.12 21.25 1108 1991 census (ipums) 27.25 26.12 1.13 362413 1996 dhs 28.84 32.73 3.89 2291 2000 census (ipums) 34.21 38.57 4.36 407987 2010 census (ipums) 56.35 54.27 2.08 416354 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve372 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 burkina faso 1985 census (ipums) 0.54 0.53 0.01 33016 1993 dhs 1.25 1.28 0.03 1296 1996 census (ipums) 1.62 1.67 0.05 38956 1998 dhs 1.41 1.95 0.54 1171 2003 dhs 2.23 2.71 0.48 2145 2006 mics 1.81 3.16 1.35 1451 2006 census (ipums) 3.40 3.16 0.24 56225 2010 dhs 2.01 3.68 1.67 3064 burundi 2000 mics 3.63 3.16 0.47 721 2005 mics 1.96 2.38 0.42 1501 2010 dhs 2.94 2.51 0.43 1689 2016 dhs 4.02 4.12 0.10 3023 cambodia 1998 census (ipums) 2.48 2.46 0.02 45814 2000 dhs 2.98 2.96 0.02 2193 2004 survey3 (ipums) 3.37 4.40 1.03 2990 2005 dhs 3.58 4.89 1.31 2320 2008 survey3 (ipums) 6.96 6.80 0.16 62643 2010 dhs 8.60 8.56 0.04 3396 2013 census (ipums) 12.29 12.21 0.08 6015 2014 dhs 12.28 13.77 1.49 3111 cameroon 1976 census (ipums) 0.69 0.66 0.03 27308 1987 census (ipums) 2.43 2.60 0.17 34447 1991 dhs 4.14 3.99 0.15 754 1998 dhs 5.33 7.71 2.38 1033 2000 mics 4.92 9.10 4.18 975 2004 dhs 6.70 12.29 5.59 1933 2005 census (ipums) 14.31 13.17 1.14 72900 2006 mics 8.45 14.08 5.63 1595 2011 dhs 11.18 18.94 7.76 2859 2014 mics 16.02 22.00 5.98 1854 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 373 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 central african rep. 1994 dhs 1.72 1.77 0.05 1098 2000 mics 2.39 2.32 0.07 3255 2006 mics 3.16 3.34 0.18 2257 2010 mics 4.62 4.51 0.11 2290 chad 1996 dhs 0.17 0.18 0.01 1480 2000 mics 0.62 0.56 0.06 1130 2004 dhs 1.34 1.33 0.01 1179 2010 mics 2.88 2.99 0.11 3305 2014 dhs 3.76 3.69 0.07 3579 colombia 1964 census (ipums) 2.05 2.72 0.67 12319 1973 census (ipums) 7.48 7.55 0.07 70229 1985 census (ipums) 25.36 21.66 3.70 122574 1990 dhs 33.99 30.00 3.99 1786 1993 census (ipums) 31.57 35.35 3.78 152653 1995 dhs 37.99 38.94 0.95 2045 2000 dhs 43.02 47.67 4.65 1919 2005 dhs 56.03 55.52 0.51 6363 2005 census (ipums) 55.75 55.52 0.23 153211 2010 dhs 65.37 62.15 3.22 8165 2015 dhs 74.93 67.46 7.47 6322 congo 2005 dhs 8.47 8.49 0.02 1399 2009 dhs 11.55 11.36 0.19 1237 2011 dhs 13.80 13.94 0.14 2101 2014 mics 20.20 20.14 0.06 1926 congo dr 2000 mics 7.53 7.64 0.11 2188 2007 dhs 12.96 11.50 1.46 1782 2010 mics 11.86 13.50 1.64 2299 2013 dhs 16.20 15.71 0.49 3590 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve374 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 costa rica 1963 census (ipums) 8.34 9.65 1.31 2641 1973 census (ipums) 14.16 15.60 1.44 6271 1984 census (ipums) 30.36 24.00 6.36 10629 2000 census (ipums) 31.57 37.75 6.18 15029 2011 mics 43.35 46.54 3.19 985 2011 census (ipums) 49.01 46.54 2.47 19652 cote d'ivoire 1994 dhs 0.86 1.37 0.51 1534 1998 dhs 5.46 2.40 3.06 569 2000 mics 5.87 3.07 2.80 1926 2005 dhs 3.63 5.18 1.55 1067 2006 mics 3.83 5.66 1.83 2268 2011 dhs 8.12 8.15 0.03 2123 2016 mics 11.46 10.34 1.12 2325 cuba 2002 census (ipums) 59.00 58.91 0.09 43868 2006 mics 60.62 69.74 9.12 1274 2010 mics 83.03 78.59 4.44 1791 2014 mics 84.15 85.28 1.13 1961 dominican republic 1960 census (ipums) 2.37 2.55 0.18 7222 1970 census (ipums) 4.88 6.01 1.13 9222 1981 census (ipums) 17.92 13.53 4.39 17021 1991 dhs 38.93 24.62 14.31 1424 1996 dhs 35.32 31.44 3.88 1564 1999 dhs 37.75 35.78 1.97 224 2000 mics 41.60 37.25 4.35 653 2002 census (ipums) 34.35 40.21 5.86 35614 2002 dhs 39.78 40.21 0.43 3894 2007 dhs 46.35 47.54 1.19 4434 2010 census (ipums) 53.86 51.79 2.07 38209 2013 dhs 59.06 55.85 3.21 1474 2014 mics 63.22 57.15 6.07 5545 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 375 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 egypt 1986 census (ipums) 23.83 23.76 0.07 261427 1992 dhs 30.48 30.58 0.10 2419 1995 dhs 37.42 34.85 2.57 3293 1996 census (ipums) 36.03 36.41 0.38 226212 2000 dhs 44.21 43.29 0.92 3424 2005 dhs 54.86 53.11 1.75 4658 2006 census (ipums) 55.44 55.19 0.25 323772 2008 dhs 59.54 59.39 0.15 4029 2014 dhs 66.28 71.79 5.51 5593 eswatini 2000 mics 25.62 25.94 0.32 882 2006 dhs 34.12 32.33 1.79 809 2010 mics 32.68 34.63 1.95 897 2014 mics 35.91 35.11 0.80 803 ethiopia 1984 census (ipums) 1.41 1.44 0.03 117671 1994 census (ipums) 3.81 3.70 0.11 192189 2000 dhs 5.21 5.08 0.13 2907 2005 dhs 5.94 5.74 0.20 2791 2007 census (ipums) 5.20 5.82 0.62 55486 2011 dhs 6.59 5.65 0.94 3490 2016 dhs 9.79 4.86 4.93 3185 ghana 1984 census (ipums) 5.60 5.58 0.02 54221 1993 dhs 4.43 8.72 4.29 903 1998 dhs 7.03 11.38 4.35 940 2000 census (ipums) 12.92 12.69 0.23 78720 2003 dhs 12.09 14.99 2.90 1058 2006 mics 16.81 17.73 0.92 1019 2008 dhs 20.18 19.83 0.35 1968 2010 census (ipums) 22.06 22.17 0.11 110632 2011 mics 24.68 23.44 1.24 1701 2014 dhs 30.98 27.64 3.34 1678 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve376 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 guatemala 1964 census (ipums) 0.63 0.88 0.25 7460 1973 census (ipums) 3.50 2.64 0.86 10147 1981 census (ipums) 6.83 5.65 1.18 11083 1994 census (ipums) 11.94 12.69 0.75 29376 1995 dhs 12.30 13.22 0.92 1947 1998 dhs 12.49 14.72 2.23 1026 2002 census (ipums) 15.70 16.35 0.65 41847 2014 dhs 24.25 17.61 6.64 4206 guinea 1983 census (ipums) 4.53 4.52 0.01 20630 1996 census (ipums) 1.52 1.54 0.02 31379 1999 dhs 2.44 1.60 0.84 1383 2005 dhs 1.75 2.38 0.63 1332 2012 dhs 8.77 6.37 2.40 1677 2016 mics 11.94 13.79 1.85 1964 guyana 2000 mics 34.65 34.16 0.49 814 2005 dhs 37.73 39.02 1.29 418 2006 mics 38.59 40.41 1.82 769 2009 dhs 48.24 45.46 2.78 763 2014 mics 56.12 56.66 0.54 976 haiti 1971 census (ipums) 0.76 0.74 0.02 16771 1982 census (ipums) 3.17 3.56 0.39 6648 1994 dhs 5.37 11.10 5.73 902 2000 dhs 4.80 15.73 10.93 1589 2003 census (ipums) 20.08 17.81 2.27 36205 2005 dhs 11.59 19.02 7.43 1769 2012 dhs 13.80 21.60 7.80 2403 2016 dhs 22.22 21.72 0.50 2256 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 377 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 honduras 1961 census (ipums) 3.21 2.44 0.77 700 1974 census (ipums) 5.40 6.08 0.68 9166 1988 census (ipums) 14.39 12.54 1.85 15661 2001 census (ipums) 18.07 19.58 1.51 22690 2005 dhs 19.91 21.58 1.67 3566 2011 dhs 29.42 24.17 5.25 3981 india 1983 survey4 (ipums) 8.72 7.86 0.86 24520 1987 survey4 (ipums) 9.64 9.77 0.13 27059 1992 dhs 8.92 12.51 3.59 22344 1993 survey4 (ipums) 13.01 13.10 0.09 23612 1998 dhs 20.38 16.24 4.14 22949 1999 survey4 (ipums) 17.98 16.90 1.08 24926 2004 survey4 (ipums) 22.54 20.30 2.24 24527 2005 dhs 15.39 20.99 5.60 23759 2009 survey4 (ipums) 29.96 23.78 6.18 19333 2015 dhs 27.50 27.88 0.38 124239 indonesia 1971 census (ipums) 2.65 2.62 0.03 26274 1976 survey5 (ipums) 4.86 4.74 0.12 9953 1980 census (ipums) 7.28 7.25 0.03 283374 1985 survey5 (ipums) 9.51 11.54 2.03 26639 1990 census (ipums) 17.10 17.07 0.03 41494 1991 dhs 18.78 18.29 0.49 5832 1994 dhs 24.07 22.14 1.93 6739 1995 survey5 (ipums) 27.03 23.47 3.56 31556 1997 dhs 28.12 26.15 1.97 6860 2000 mics 31.59 30.15 1.44 1834 2000 census (ipums) 30.13 30.15 0.02 951041 2002 dhs 32.27 32.76 0.49 6744 2005 survey5 (ipums) 34.27 36.47 2.20 48676 2007 dhs 37.52 38.77 1.25 7956 2010 census (ipums) 41.94 41.90 0.04 1059239 2012 dhs 45.21 43.74 1.47 7682 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve378 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 iraq 1997 census (ipums) 20.61 20.60 0.01 79448 2000 mics 19.12 19.68 0.56 3759 2006 mics 18.82 18.49 0.33 4452 2011 mics 18.04 18.10 0.06 9025 jamaica 1982 census (ipums) 31.80 27.76 4.04 8181 1991 census (ipums) 34.04 44.08 10.04 10401 2001 census (ipums) 82.02 72.92 9.10 8461 2005 mics 69.20 83.32 14.12 492 2011 mics 72.77 93.53 20.76 736 jordan 1990 dhs 45.51 46.88 1.37 2089 1997 dhs 57.83 54.09 3.74 1971 2004 census (ipums) 57.12 57.18 0.06 21753 2007 dhs 54.49 57.27 2.78 3167 2009 dhs 57.72 56.92 0.80 2874 2012 dhs 56.84 55.77 1.07 3145 kazakhstan 1995 dhs 87.13 86.84 0.29 592 1999 dhs 85.58 87.36 1.78 734 2006 mics 91.83 90.05 1.78 1943 2010 mics 90.39 92.17 1.78 2059 2015 mics 95.10 94.81 0.29 2215 kenya 1969 census (ipums) 1.79 1.66 0.13 26558 1979 census (ipums) 5.18 5.98 0.80 45921 1989 census (ipums) 16.97 14.43 2.54 42454 1993 dhs 22.44 18.41 4.03 1338 1998 dhs 25.40 23.09 2.31 1412 1999 census (ipums) 22.99 23.92 0.93 60253 2000 mics 25.87 24.72 1.15 1853 2003 dhs 24.13 26.78 2.65 1539 2008 dhs 25.09 28.98 3.89 1497 2009 census (ipums) 28.99 29.22 0.23 167262 2014 dhs 35.13 29.30 5.83 6334 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 379 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 kyrgyz republic 1997 dhs 88.07 91.01 2.94 598 1999 census (ipums) 90.72 90.46 0.26 18992 2005 mics 70.27 89.60 19.33 1019 2009 census (ipums) 90.24 89.76 0.48 23637 2012 dhs 90.65 90.26 0.39 1331 2014 mics 87.59 90.75 3.16 1191 laos 2000 mics 7.70 7.20 0.50 1488 2005 census (ipums) 11.54 11.59 0.05 21626 2006 mics 10.57 12.56 1.99 1157 2011 mics 18.75 17.50 1.25 3884 2017 mics 22.18 22.58 0.40 4260 lesotho 1996 census (ipums) 12.34 12.34 0 6976 2000 mics 13.82 14.42 0.60 1102 2004 dhs 17.21 17.22 0.01 1456 2006 census (ipums) 19.49 18.96 0.53 8026 2009 dhs 19.44 22.07 2.63 1789 2014 dhs 29.72 28.82 0.90 1572 liberia 1974 census (ipums) 2.83 2.83 0 6725 2007 dhs 11.24 11.10 0.14 1296 2008 census (ipums) 12.18 12.20 0.02 15151 2013 dhs 20.04 20.01 0.03 1718 malawi 1987 census (ipums) 1.85 1.85 0 30849 1992 dhs 2.76 3.06 0.30 887 1998 census (ipums) 5.09 5.10 0.01 39520 2000 dhs 6.52 5.92 0.60 2479 2004 dhs 8.62 7.69 0.93 2301 2006 mics 6.07 8.63 2.56 5007 2008 census (ipums) 9.87 9.58 0.29 57404 2010 dhs 10.94 10.52 0.42 4538 2013 mics 9.97 11.87 1.90 4502 2016 dhs 13.84 13.11 0.73 4225 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve380 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 mali 1987 census (ipums) 1.98 1.89 0.09 30491 1995 dhs 0.27 0.90 0.63 1903 1998 census (ipums) 0.84 0.89 0.05 35398 2001 dhs 2.10 1.04 1.06 2492 2006 dhs 1.26 1.86 0.60 2774 2009 mics 4.83 3.21 1.62 4935 2009 census (ipums) 3.42 3.21 0.21 54723 2012 dhs 3.32 6.34 3.02 2335 2015 mics 9.24 13.88 4.64 3523 mexico 1960 census (ipums) 1.70 1.77 0.07 18860 1970 census (ipums) 2.61 4.71 2.10 17035 1990 census (ipums) 22.55 19.96 2.59 337284 1995 census (ipums) 21.58 25.58 4.00 13721 2000 census (ipums) 30.57 31.41 0.84 430071 2005 census (ipums) 35.15 37.10 1.95 440673 2010 census (ipums) 41.19 42.35 1.16 458103 2015 survey6 (ipums) 49.08 46.94 2.14 440085 2015 mics 47.80 46.94 0.86 2290 mongolia 1989 census (ipums) 40.60 40.81 0.21 8623 2000 mics 73.75 64.35 9.40 1863 2000 census (ipums) 63.52 64.35 0.83 10967 2005 mics 60.68 68.14 7.46 1387 2010 mics 67.31 68.19 0.88 1489 2013 mics 68.10 66.46 1.64 2103 morocco 1982 census (ipums) 4.01 4.01 0 38493 1992 dhs 10.10 10.92 0.82 1562 1994 census (ipums) 12.22 12.16 0.06 53354 2003 dhs 10.06 13.97 3.91 2852 2004 census (ipums) 13.88 13.71 0.17 64611 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 381 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 mozambique 1997 dhs 0.25 0.76 0.51 1887 1997 census (ipums) 0.78 0.76 0.02 65059 2003 dhs 1.47 1.32 0.15 2542 2007 census (ipums) 2.42 2.44 0.02 83801 2008 mics 3.50 2.93 0.57 2882 2009 dhs 3.30 3.56 0.26 1076 2011 dhs 5.52 5.41 0.11 2424 nepal 1996 dhs 5.69 5.64 0.05 1838 2001 dhs 7.72 12.49 4.77 1863 2001 census (ipums) 12.66 12.49 0.17 82787 2006 dhs 12.27 20.78 8.51 1841 2011 dhs 21.47 27.05 5.58 2219 2011 census (ipums) 27.45 27.05 0.40 142388 2014 mics 15.86 28.69 12.83 2461 2016 dhs 34.24 28.73 5.51 2210 nicaragua 1971 census (ipums) 4.68 4.67 0.01 6485 1995 census (ipums) 19.29 19.64 0.35 17001 1998 dhs 25.82 22.29 3.53 2367 2001 dhs 25.41 25.01 0.40 2245 2005 census (ipums) 28.55 28.68 0.13 21272 niger 1992 dhs 0.45 0.49 0.04 1443 1998 dhs 0.79 0.69 0.10 1388 2000 mics 0.97 0.76 0.21 996 2006 dhs 0.74 0.95 0.21 1847 2012 dhs 1.17 1.09 0.08 2432 nigeria 1990 dhs 15.29 14.55 0.74 1836 1999 dhs 22.16 24.11 1.95 1637 2003 dhs 27.06 28.95 1.89 1471 2006 survey7 (ipums) 31.73 32.68 0.95 3674 2007 mics 31.87 33.93 2.06 5394 2007 survey7 (ipums) 35.49 33.93 1.56 3679 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve382 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 2008 survey7 (ipums) 34.19 35.17 0.98 4748 2008 dhs 34.67 35.17 0.50 6815 2009 survey7 (ipums) 38.74 36.41 2.33 3385 2010 survey7 (ipums) 42.51 37.64 4.87 3121 2011 mics 44.54 38.87 5.67 6342 2013 dhs 36.15 41.27 5.12 7381 2016 mics 45.24 44.75 0.49 6201 pakistan 1973 census (ipums) 2.10 2.87 0.77 49036 1981 census (ipums) 3.34 3.06 0.28 340212 1990 dhs 4.92 4.37 0.55 1974 1998 census (ipums) 7.15 7.60 0.45 469545 2006 dhs 24.72 15.88 8.84 29428 2012 dhs 27.87 29.24 1.37 3982 palestine 1997 census (ipums) 35.19 35.20 0.01 9101 2007 census (ipums) 44.28 44.12 0.16 8145 2010 mics 52.50 53.14 0.64 2743 2014 mics 68.96 68.72 0.24 2065 panama 1960 census (ipums) 9.12 8.11 1.01 1926 1970 census (ipums) 13.81 15.97 2.16 5335 1980 census (ipums) 28.66 26.98 1.68 7740 1990 census (ipums) 41.70 39.37 2.33 10055 2000 census (ipums) 47.93 50.77 2.84 12097 2010 census (ipums) 59.78 59.67 0.11 13446 2013 mics 67.27 61.78 5.49 1497 paraguay 1962 census (ipums) 5.95 5.65 0.30 2896 1972 census (ipums) 8.53 7.40 1.13 7511 1982 census (ipums) 7.89 11.00 3.11 11577 1990 dhs 23.46 16.28 7.18 1054 1992 census (ipums) 21.74 18.11 3.63 15747 2002 census (ipums) 30.22 31.40 1.18 18117 2016 mics 59.26 61.82 2.56 1372 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 383 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 peru 1991 dhs 53.41 45.41 8.00 2848 1993 census (ipums) 49.22 49.49 0.27 92731 1996 dhs 54.24 54.72 0.48 5309 2000 dhs 57.16 59.94 2.78 4644 2004 dhs 63.28 63.19 0.09 6546 2007 census (ipums) 65.06 64.43 0.63 116384 2009 dhs 46.83 64.70 17.87 3792 2010 dhs 63.75 64.68 0.93 3576 2011 dhs 64.27 64.55 0.28 3502 2012 dhs 67.00 64.30 2.70 3650 philippines 1990 census (ipums) 51.82 52.56 0.74 249175 1993 dhs 58.95 54.64 4.31 2614 1995 census (ipums) 58.12 56.28 1.84 286916 1998 dhs 63.88 59.11 4.77 2420 2000 census (ipums) 59.56 61.22 1.66 292832 2003 dhs 67.38 64.67 2.71 2221 2008 dhs 72.56 70.98 1.58 2279 2010 census (ipums) 73.94 73.60 0.34 375739 2013 dhs 74.74 77.52 2.78 2461 2017 dhs 76.59 82.51 5.92 4133 rwanda 1992 dhs 1.56 1.71 0.15 1131 2000 dhs 4.14 3.47 0.67 1647 2000 mics 2.88 3.47 0.59 739 2002 census (ipums) 4.21 4.17 0.04 30290 2005 dhs 5.28 5.54 0.26 1820 2010 dhs 6.48 8.96 2.48 2567 2012 census (ipums) 11.01 10.88 0.13 46952 2014 dhs 13.47 13.21 0.26 2352 senegal 1988 census (ipums) 1.85 1.87 0.02 28965 1992 dhs 3.09 2.52 0.57 1181 2000 mics 3.31 4.13 0.82 2434 2002 census (ipums) 4.87 4.58 0.29 38821 2005 dhs 3.06 5.26 2.20 2646 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve384 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 2010 dhs 5.59 6.37 0.78 2974 2012 dhs 5.30 6.77 1.47 1648 2014 dhs 5.99 7.15 1.16 1624 2015 dhs 7.98 7.33 0.65 1713 2016 dhs 8.00 7.49 0.51 1657 2017 dhs 9.06 7.65 1.41 3016 sierra leone 2000 mics 1.41 0.82 0.59 980 2004 census (ipums) 1.63 1.73 0.10 22401 2005 mics 2.22 2.08 0.14 2070 2008 dhs 5.04 3.55 1.49 1811 2010 mics 5.01 5.01 0 2679 2013 dhs 9.04 8.21 0.83 2891 2017 mics 14.05 15.09 1.04 3103 south africa 1996 census (ipums) 32.41 33.31 0.90 158301 1998 dhs 36.84 35.61 1.23 1907 2001 census (ipums) 41.74 39.19 2.55 166246 2007 survey8 (ipums) 35.31 46.71 11.40 42443 2011 census (ipums) 52.91 51.86 1.05 209390 sudan 2000 mics 25.35 24.83 0.52 6951 2008 census (ipums) 10.95 11.05 0.10 212414 2010 mics 25.62 13.55 12.07 3444 2014 mics 27.07 30.63 3.56 3718 tajikistan 2000 mics 47.57 46.88 0.69 936 2005 mics 43.98 45.02 1.04 1503 2012 dhs 48.61 47.67 0.94 1676 2017 dhs 53.00 53.33 0.33 1938 tanzania 1988 census (ipums) 3.36 3.36 0 98157 1992 dhs 3.85 4.09 0.24 1737 1996 dhs 5.65 5.07 0.58 1554 1999 dhs 6.59 6.03 0.56 818 2002 census (ipums) 7.24 7.23 0.01 165233 2003 dhs 7.4 7.7 0.30 1365 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 385 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 2004 dhs 9.3 8.21 1.09 2009 2007 dhs 10.02 9.99 0.03 1697 2010 dhs 11.18 12.23 1.05 1774 2012 census (ipums) 13.97 114.04 0.07 183634 2015 dhs 23.1 17.32 5.78 2307 thailand 1970 census (ipums) 2.83 2.97 0.14 27739 1980 census (ipums) 8.92 8.12 0.80 15679 1990 census (ipums) 20.67 18.62 2.05 24278 2000 census (ipums) 30.70 34.73 4.03 27316 2012 mics 63.07 55.96 7.11 3072 2015 mics 65.36 60.65 4.71 3625 togo 1960 census (ipums) 0.99 0.49 0.50 805 1970 census (ipums) 0.17 0.37 0.20 1181 1998 dhs 1.19 1.31 0.12 1751 2000 mics 3.60 1.61 1.99 960 2006 mics 3.36 3.27 0.09 1275 2010 mics 4.85 5.60 0.75 1242 2010 census (ipums) 5.73 5.60 0.13 26741 2013 dhs 5.71 8.60 2.89 1768 trinidad and tobago 1970 census (ipums) 28.90 24.92 3.98 2115 1980 census (ipums) 34.12 38.76 4.64 4336 1990 census (ipums) 55.40 55.02 0.38 5262 2000 mics 75.63 70.56 5.07 527 2000 census (ipums) 72.84 70.56 2.28 4263 2006 mics 82.56 78.31 4.25 666 2011 mics 86.14 83.60 2.54 756 2011 census (ipums) 82.07 83.60 1.53 5449 türkiye 1985 census (ipums) 13.64 13.66 0.02 98502 1990 census (ipums) 16.46 16.40 0.06 118632 1993 dhs 17.32 18.52 1.20 1577 1998 dhs 21.70 23.01 1.31 1587 2000 census (ipums) 25.16 25.20 0.04 146356 2003 dhs 31.63 28.96 2.67 2043 • kristen jeffers, albert esteve386 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 uganda 1991 census (ipums) 1.28 1.30 0.02 63199 1995 dhs 8.21 2.58 5.63 1462 2000 dhs 5.69 5.14 0.55 1494 2002 census (ipums) 6.40 6.43 0.03 94313 2006 dhs 7.20 9.25 2.05 1649 2011 dhs 10.63 12.52 1.89 1792 2016 dhs 15.98 14.47 1.51 3392 ukraine 2001 census (ipums) 90.55 90.56 0.01 170044 2005 mics 94.75 86.67 8.08 1358 2007 dhs 70.48 88.71 18.23 1087 2012 mics 97.72 97.48 0.24 1985 uruguay 1963 census (ipums) 9.68 11.07 1.39 9449 1975 census (ipums) 21.63 18.93 2.70 9735 1985 census (ipums) 33.35 26.29 7.06 10917 1996 census (ipums) 22.62 33.83 11.21 10898 2006 survey9 (ipums) 41.85 39.18 2.67 8300 2011 census (ipums) 43.76 41.13 2.63 11590 2012 mics 42.03 41.45 0.58 478 venezuela 1971 census (ipums) 7.38 7.82 0.44 39993 1981 census (ipums) 21.66 19.57 2.09 62069 1990 census (ipums) 30.99 33.28 2.29 71554 2000 mics 27.70 46.14 18.44 745 2001 census (ipums) 47.81 47.11 0.70 96038 vietnam 1989 census (ipums) 15.75 15.79 0.04 125526 1997 dhs 22.58 17.58 5.00 1336 1999 census (ipums) 18.59 18.50 0.09 102748 2000 mics 21.05 19.05 2.00 1336 2002 dhs 19.65 20.33 0.68 1256 2005 dhs 20.75 22.77 2.02 992 2006 mics 27.15 23.74 3.41 1245 2009 census (ipums) 27.07 27.16 0.09 621601 trends in female education in lowand middle-income countries • 387 tab. a1: continuation country/year data source observed predicted difference1 sample p p size2 2010 mics 42.60 28.50 14.10 1853 2013 mics 49.02 33.13 15.89 1423 zambia 1990 census (ipums) 10.24 9.99 0.25 29844 1992 dhs 7.31 9.77 2.46 1285 1996 dhs 3.98 9.92 5.94 1427 1999 mics 10.51 10.60 0.09 1780 2000 census (ipums) 11.22 10.95 0.27 37791 2001 dhs 10.08 11.36 1.28 1465 2007 dhs 13.96 15.65 1.69 1479 2010 census (ipums) 19.77 19.42 0.35 54052 2013 dhs 20.01 24.80 4.79 3049 zimbabwe 1994 dhs 4.07 8.50 4.43 1026 1999 dhs 38.01 9.81 28.20 1088 2005 dhs 5.61 10.66 5.05 1664 2009 mics 10.57 10.68 0.11 2238 2010 dhs 7.85 10.62 2.77 1858 2012 census (ipums) 10.58 10.41 0.17 30674 2014 mics 9.96 10.10 0.14 2519 2015 dhs 11.04 9.91 1.13 1800 1 absolute value of observed value less predicted value 2 number of females aged 25 to 29 (unweighted) 3 cambodia intercensal population survey 4 national sample survey organisation socio-economic survey of india 5 indonesia intercensal population survey 6 intercensal survey 7 nigeria: national bureau of statistics general household survey 8 south africa community survey 9 uruguay extended national survey of homes 2006 source: own design published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association: evidence from rural south africa variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association: evidence from rural south africa lori m. hunter, stefan leyk, galen j. maclaurin, raphael nawrotzki, wayne twine, barend f.n. erasmus, mark collinson abstract: scholarly understanding of human migration’s environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around “climate migrants”. the research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its methodological approach. we examine temporary rural south african outmigration as related to household-level availability of proximate natural resources. such “natural capital” is central to livelihoods in the region, both for sustenance and as materials for market-bound products. the results demonstrate that the association between local environmental resource availability and outmigration is, in general, positive: households with higher levels of proximate natural capital are more likely to engage in temporary migration. in this way, the general fi ndings support the “environmental surplus” hypothesis that resource security provides a foundation from which households can invest in migration as a livelihood strategy. such insight stands in contrast to popular dialogue, which tends to view migration as a last resort undertaken only by the most vulnerable households. as another important insight, our fi ndings demonstrate important spatial variation, complicating attempts to generalize migration-environment fi ndings across spatial scales. in our rural south african study site, the positive association between migration and proximate resources is actually highly localized, varying from strongly positive in some villages to strongly negative in others. we explore the socio-demographic factors underlying this “operational scale sensitivity”. the cross-scale methodologies applied here offer nuance unavailable within more commonly used global regression models, although also introducing complexity that complicates story-telling and inhibits generalizability. keywords: migration · climate · environment · natural resources · livelihoods · south africa · scale · operational scale sensitivity comparative population studies vol. 42 (2017): 117-148 (date of release: 29.08.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-11en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-11en7 • lori m. hunter et al.118 1 introduction scholarly understanding of human migration’s environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, largely in response to public and policy dialogue about “climate refugees”. as gray and bilsborrow (2013) have noted, the more public “conventional narrative” of millions of climate-driven international migrants misses the mark; most research places environmental drivers among a host of other forces shaping migration, with environmentally induced migration tending to cover shorter distances and remaining within national borders (e.g., beine/parsons 2015; gray/mueller 2012a/b). in this way, migration can be seen as an adaptive livelihood strategy used historically by human populations responding to environmental shifts (e.g., mcleman 2013a). even so, given the rising political tensions surrounding migration, understanding its determinants is particularly timely. the research presented here on the migration-environment connection offers both new interpretations and a geographically refi ned and nuanced analytical approach. we examine temporary outmigration in the agincourt health and demographic surveillance site in rural south africa, especially as related to householdlevel availability of proximate natural resources. this “natural capital” is central to livelihoods in the region, both for sustenance and as input for market-bound products (e.g., thondhlana et al. 2012). but beyond this paper’s overall examination of the migration-environment connection in this context, we also contrast the results across spatial scales demonstrating the importance of considering both regional and more localized patterns. in general, our results align with the “environmental surplus” hypothesis that contends temporary livelihood migration is more likely when households have relatively secure access to environmental assets such as natural resources or productive agricultural land. in this way, livelihood security may fuel temporary migration in pursuit of labor diversifi cation. this association contrasts with that of the “environmental scarcity” hypothesis which would alternatively contend that temporary migration occurs more often in times and places characterized by resource strain. in this way, our results counter the popular narrative of environmentally-induced migration by the most vulnerable households. yet beyond our general results in support of an “environmental surplus” fueling temporary migration, our fi ndings also demonstrate that the association between environmental factors and outmigration is highly localized – in our study setting, the association varies across neighboring rural villages. we characterize this empirically as “operational scale sensitivity” since the process under examination “operates” at the household scale where temporary migration decisions are made, yet the statistical signifi cance of various predictors is sensitive to analytical scale (maclaurin et al. 2015). the paper proceeds as follows. we fi rst offer an overview of recent research on the migration-environment connection, followed by the presentation of our specifi c research objectives. we next describe the rural south african research setting as well as our data and analytical approach. the results are presented in two phases – fi rst, the fi ndings of global models are reviewed which represent results variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 119 of models estimating temporary migration for the agincourt study site as a whole. this is followed by the presentation of the fi ndings when estimated for each village individually, including overall environmental effects on temporary migration as well as interactions which explore variation in these effects according to key household characteristics. we conclude with a discussion of the overall substantive contributions of the work along with a discussion of methodological implications of operational scale sensitivity. overall, we argue that the methodological framework applied here offers more detailed insight than available through global regression models. even so, the complexity introduced also complicates interpretation and inhibits generalizability regarding the environmental dimensions of temporary migration. 2 environmental dimensions of migration population scholars have long explored the socioeconomic dimensions of migration, but the contemporary era of climate change has brought increasing research attention to migration’s environmental aspects (e.g., hunter et al. 2015). a wide variety of empirical case studies have emerged offering important theoretical and methodological advancements (e.g., aksakal/schmidt 2015; nawrotzki et al. 2015; thiede et al. 2016). also, recent research syntheses offer summary lessons (e.g. hunter et al. 2015; mcleman 2013a), with most studies fi nding that environmental factors do indeed affect migration – although in different ways across settings and through interactions with economic, political, and cultural forces (e.g., black et al. 2011). as the literature on migration-environment connections has emerged and become more sophisticated, theoretical perspectives have also become more refi ned. “maximalists” argued that environmental factors exhibited a strong and direct causal link with migration. this perspective generally predicted millions of “climate refugees” (myers 2002). in contrast, the “minimalist” perspective provided more nuance – with environmental factors interacting with political, economic, and cultural processes to shape migration patterns (e.g. morrissey 2012; the “maximalist” vs. “minimalist” debate is outlined by suhrke 1994). migration theory, such as the new economics of labor migration perspective (nelm), have proven useful in working through this debate. nelm argues that temporary migration in particular is often used by households as a strategy to diversify livelihoods by spreading risk through engagement in geographically distinct labor markets (stark/bloom 1985). although not developed explicitly for research on the environmental aspects of temporary migration, nelm has proven useful in examining migration, particularly for households in regions vulnerable to environmental strain and environmental change, since temporary migration can spread environmental risk through movement to areas with different risk profi les (e.g. nawrotzki et al. 2015). the nelm introduces another important consideration in migration-environment research – the utility of a regional perspective. this argument has recently been made by hillmann and colleagues (2015: 2) in a collection presenting the “region” • lori m. hunter et al.120 as the “place where the local, the national and the global scales meet”. the research presented here illustrates their emphasis on “bottom up” perspectives through its explicit consideration of spatial variation. other perspectives beyond migration theory have also proven useful in disentangling environmental effects, including the sustainable livelihoods framework (slf). the slf outlines the variety of assets (i.e. “capitals”) households have at their disposal for the development of livelihood strategies (e.g. temporary migration) intended to reach particular livelihood goals (e.g. food security). the assets include human, fi nancial, social, and physical capital, while sla also integrates natural capital or elements of the local environment that households use toward livelihood goals (scoones 1998, 2009). the central integration of natural capital into livelihood theory is especially useful when examining temporary migration strategies for natural resource-dependent households. our research team has long made use of this framework in the agincourt context (e.g. hunter et al. 2007; hunter et al. 2014; leyk et al. 2012). using these theoretical perspectives and a wide variety of environmental measures, quantitative migration-environment research has been undertaken in a wide variety of settings across the globe (bilsborrow 2009). examples of such measures include rainfall and temperature patterns (e.g., gray/wise 2016; nawrotzki/dewaard 2016), vegetation coverage (hunter et al. 2014), and indicators of environmental extremes such as fl ooding (gray/mueller 2012a). in addition, qualitative case studies have examined the environmental dimensions of migration in “hotspots” including egypt, mozambique, and vietnam (warner 2011). several methodological overviews have also been published, which offer, for example, descriptions of applications of survey research, use of secondary data, and different data sources used to refl ect environmental conditions and change (e.g., fussell et al. 2014; kniveton et al. 2008; mcleman 2013b; piguet 2010). all in all, several key fi ndings are emerging from the myriad migration-environment studies undertaken over the past two decades. first, much environment-associated temporary migration is domestic, short-term, and often cyclical. in burkina faso, for example, rain-fed agriculture is a dominant livelihood strategy, although a south-north rainfall gradient, combined with poor soils, limits the long-term viability of agricultural livelihoods, particularly in the nation’s north. residents of relatively dry regions are generally more likely to migrate, but short-term rainfall defi cits and harvest failures limit households’ ability to invest in long-distance moves. rather, short-distance, cyclical temporary migration is a common strategy in times of environmental stress (henry et al. 2004). similar fi ndings emerge in other settings, including several nations in south asia (bhatta/aggarwal 2016). such migration may be seen as aligned with the “environmental scarcity” hypothesis, which argues that households are more likely to engage in temporary migration as a strategy during environmentally stressful times. in ghana, north-south migration has been linked to land scarcity in sending regions – another example of “environmental scarcity,” although regional structural differences in economic opportunities also act as an important pull factor for internal migrants (van geest 2011). outside of ghana, research reveals similar support for “environmental scarcity” in a number of settings variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 121 as varied as mexico (nawrotzki et al. 2015), bangladesh (etzold et al. 2014) and pakistan (mueller et al. 2014). second, longer-distance temporary migration, often (but not always) across international borders, tends to be associated with heightened resource availability, likely refl ecting the cost of such migration. this fi nding has been demonstrated in the research on burkina faso reviewed above, as well as in rural ecuador, where land provides capital that can facilitate longer-term temporary migration (gray 2010). although such fi ndings are less common than “environmental scarcity,” they align with the “environmental surplus” hypothesis which argues that households are more likely to engage temporary migration as a livelihood diversifi cation strategy when acting from a foundation of relative security. a different pattern emerges in mexico, however, where rainfall shortages predict international, but not internal, migration – although research suggests that this distinction is related to the existence of long-running migration networks between mexico and the u.s. (nawrotzki et al. 2016). third, several studies have illustrated gendered distinctions in the migrationenvironment association. of course, migration – as a social process – is clearly a gendered phenomenon in general (hunter/david 2011; debnath 2015). in rural ecuador, for instance, age and education tend to predict male temporary migration streams, but female streams are more likely to be permanent and associated with changes in family structure (i.e., marriage) (barbieri/carr 2005). migration streams are also shaped by gendered norms regarding participation in agriculture, which is in turn linked to environmental factors. again in rural ecuador, access to agricultural land facilitates international migration for men, but not women – poor agricultural productivity tends to keep women at home (gray 2010). fourth, as with migration in general, a key factor shaping migration-environment linkages is the existence of migrant social networks (nawrotzki et al. 2015). in mexico, as noted, short-term rainfall defi cits are associated with international, temporary migration from rural villages, but only from regions with long-standing mexico-u.s. migration networks (hunter et al. 2013). finally, while environmental factors play a discernible role in migration, particularly from rural regions, there are also close interactions with political, economic, and cultural forces that need to be taken into account (black et al. 2011, and references therein). this informative collection of new research fi ndings could not have been possible without substantial methodological innovation. for example, migration-environment researchers have been quick to integrate advancements in multilevel modeling (e.g., nawrotzki e al. 2012), and to explore the utility of approaches such as agent-based modeling (abm). in fact, some researchers have used abm and sociodemographic correlates of migration to simulate streams as far forward as 2045 (kniveton et al. 2012). even so, spatial methodologies represent an important approach that remains under-represented in migration-environment scholarship. such approaches are essential as migration-environment researchers aim to “put people in place” (entwisle 2007: 687). spatially-refi ned analytical approaches are particularly relevant to this area of study because while political and economic forces clearly shape broader migration • lori m. hunter et al.122 probabilities and directions, environmental infl uences and forces are likely even more strongly localized, especially in areas where residents are highly dependent on proximate resources. in our south african study setting, for example, villagers rely heavily on the productivity of bordering communal landscapes for fuelwood and sustenance. in such areas, regressions refl ecting average associations across the entire study setting may mask localized associations (e.g., leyk et al. 2012). such may be the case with a broad regional perspective as well and, as such, attention must be paid to the scale at which the processes under study operate. this concern can be situated more generally in the dialogue regarding global and local modeling approaches (e.g. fotheringham 1997; fotheringham/brundson 1999; leyk et al. 2012). our models refl ecting all agincourt households combined – the “global models” – seek to identify regularities across the setting as a whole. in contrast, village-scale estimates – the “local models” – demonstrate differences across space (fotheringham 1997). the difference between global and local model results illustrate the impact of decisions regarding geographic scale – impacts related to the boundaries used to defi ne the importance of the location, as well as the size and extent of the population in question. we distinguish the geographic scale from the scale at which the processes under study actually unfold – the operational scale – and describe this as “operational scale sensitivity”. the methodological concern demonstrated here is distinct from, but related to, both the ecological fallacy and the modifi able areal unit problem (maup). the ecological fallacy is well known among human ecology scholars, arising from making conclusions regarding individual or household-level processes based on the analysis of aggregate units (robinson 1950; waller/gotway 2004). the interpretive leap is problematic due both to potential confounding effects not represented at the aggregate scale, as well as aggregation bias where model associations could shift and thus provide a very different picture of the process of interest (e.g., greeland/ morgenstern 1989). similarly, the more geographic perspective on the ecological fallacy – called the modifi able areal unit problem (openshaw 1983) – also takes into consideration that analyzing aggregate data can yield differing conclusions depending on the level of this aggregation. more specifi cally, the maup entails two subproblems: (1) the scale effect suggests that results will differ when analyzing the same data at different aggregation levels, and (2) the zoning effect suggests that the form or shape in which spatial analysis units are aggregated will produce different results (wong 1995). in the migration context, recent research on the maup effect examines the performance of different predictive variables in models of varying aggregation. this concept – termed operational scale sensitivity (oss) – provides a framework for the examination of how model associations change with increasing levels of aggregation (when the analytical scale departs from the operational scale which in the case of temporary migration decisions is often made at the household level) (maclaurin et al. 2015). within the analyses presented here, the analytical focus remains at the household level – the appropriate operational scale given that migration represents a household-level decision in the rural south african setting. yet we alter the geovariation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 123 graphic scale and thus the spatial extent or population size at which the models are estimated (lam/quattrochi 1992). differences in household-level analysis results across different population sizes raise the issue of sensitivity where the explanatory power of certain variables depends on the spatial extent or population size for which the statistical relationship of interest is estimated. 2.1 research objectives this project adds both nuance to substantive understanding of migration-environment connections while also emphasizing caution regarding generalization when analyzing this association. the recommended caution results from the distinctions between the outcomes of “global” and “local” models within our exploration of operational scale sensitivity. our specifi c objectives were to (1) identify the overall “global” association between temporary migration and proximate natural resource availability in our rural south african study site; (2) explore variation in this association across “local” models (i.e., for individual villages); and (3) identify household characteristics that differentially shape the migration-environment association at each geographic scale. 2.2 research setting the study site – situated in the far northeast of south africa – is that of the agincourt health and socio-demographic surveillance system (agincourt hdss), operated by the rural public health and health transitions research unit (agincourt unit) of the south african medical research council (mrc) and university of the witwatersrand (wits) (fig. 1). the 450 sq. km. area encompasses 31 villages, home to approximately 110,000 residents in 18,000 households. since 1992, the agincourt unit has conducted an annual census, including the collection of migration information, in the entire agincourt hdss population. a “homeland” area for black south africans during the era of apartheid, the study site is characterized by high population densities (~170 persons per sq. km), high poverty, and a longstanding lack of development and access to state services. two paved roads, one north-south and the other east-west, provide access to nearby mid-sized cities. the study site’s eastern border is fenced by private game reserves that themselves border world-renowned kruger national park, famous for wildlife tourism. the agincourt study site’s settlement pattern is fairly typical of rural communities across south africa, and socioeconomically it is characterized by a high reliance on remittances from the large proportion of adults who are migrant laborers on commercial farms and in towns and cities across the country. a substantial portion of households also depend heavily on the state pensions of elderly members (collinson 2010). the area is generally dry (annual rainfall of 550-700 mm), although an east-west rainfall gradient shapes locally varying resource availability. household plots are typically too small to fully support subsistence agriculture; some households farm • lori m. hunter et al.124 assigned plots in the surrounding communal lands. residents are typically quite dependent on the natural environment for a range of uses, including grazing livestock and collecting fuelwood, wild foods, thatching grass, construction timber, and other domestic products both for household consumption and for generating income (shackleton/shackleton 2000). 3 data in the south african context, a household can be loosely defi ned as “a group of people living on the same property who eat from the same pot of food” (madhavan et al. 2009: 39). in many rural regions of developing areas, including the agincourt study site, such households – which often include extended kinship networks – act as the primary unit of production and consumption, reaching decisions regarding livelihood activities based on household needs. migration represents one such livelihood decision. indeed, in rural south africa, migration decision-making occurs primarily at the household level, as opposed to representing a decision made solely by an individual (cohen 2004; collinson et al. 2006; taylor 1999). as such, the household is our analytical unit, and all variables are aggregated to this level. in some cases, we use information about the household head as representative of the fig. 1: study area, agincourt health and demographic surveillance site, mpumalanga province, south africa source: own design variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 125 larger household unit, since the household head often dominates decision-making about livelihood strategies. we use demographic data from the agincourt health and demographic surveillance system (agincourt hdss) for the year 2007. for this year, the sample comprised 9,625 households located in 21 villages (see fig. 2).1 the agincourt hdss dataset includes geo-referenced location information for each household, allowing information about the availability of natural resources to be appended through a geographical information system (gis). details are given below. fig. 2: village names and identifying numbers, agincourt health and demographic surveillance site, mpumalanga province, south africa 1 the agincourt hdss site has expanded geographically and now includes 31 villages, although we make use only of 21 villages that have been included in the study site for much of its history. source: own design • lori m. hunter et al.126 3.1 dependent variable a measure of temporary migration represents our dependent variable. temporary migration is a well-established phenomenon with a long tradition in agincourt (see tollman et al. 1999), with 60 percent of men and 14 percent of women aged 30-49 years recorded as migrants each year (collinson et al. 2006). in this way, the region can be said to have a “culture of migration” as has been identifi ed in mexico (kandel/massey 2002). our measure of temporary migration status is based on “resident months,” which record the amount of time each person is physically present in the household during the year preceding the census interview. in the agincourt context, a temporary migrant is defi ned as a household member who is away for more than 6 months in that year but retains a livelihood connection (e.g. through remittances) to the sending household (agincourt hdss 2011; collinson 2010).2 we consider only the temporary migration of adults (age 15+), since we are interested in livelihood migration, which is predominantly labor-related. for modeling purposes, instead of dichotomizing the variable to represent migrant vs. nonmigrant households, we employ a count measure allowing for the maximum use of information available within the data, a common strategy in migration research (bohara/krieg 1996; leyk et al. 2012). descriptive statistics can be found in table 1, demonstrating that across agincourt, households had 1.2 temporary migrants on average in 2007, with a range of 0 to 12.3 3.2 independent variables 3.2.1 primary predictor the environmental data were derived from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (modis) remote sensing imagery (http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov) provided by the national aeronautics and space administration (nasa), and locally processed by the institute for soil, climate and water (iscw) of south africa’s agricultural research council (arc). our primary predictor refl ects a satellite-derived index indicating the availability, and recent changes in the availability, of proximate natural resources. the normalized difference vegetation index (ndvi) is one of a number of commonly used indicators that enable the evaluation of environmental change’s impact on vegetation greenness (roerink et al. 2003; wang et al. 2003; 2 agincourt hdss employs a de jure household defi nition that retains links between temporary migrants and their rural household (collinson 2010). 3 it is important to acknowledge that our analytical focus on temporary migration neglects considerations of permanent movement out of the agincourt study area. in fact, our use of data from only the 2007 round of the agincourt annual census precludes consideration of permanent migration of full households since they would not be observable. even so, as noted, temporary migration, taken as a household livelihood decision, is a common phenomenon within this context (collinson et al. 2006) and most aligns with research in other settings on the environmental correlates of migration processes and patterns. variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 127 zhou et al. 2003). chlorophyll absorbs red light and the mesophyll tissues in plants scatter near infrared light; the ndvi is the difference between the values in the red and near-infrared spectral bands divided by the sum of these same values (tucker 1979). this ratio has a theoretical range from -1 to 1, with negative values indicating senescent or dead vegetation. positive values refl ect actively growing green vegetation. ndvi values saturate at high biomass (huete et al. 2002), but preliminary fi eld work shows that agincourt, which falls in a semiarid savanna region, does not contain areas with high enough biomass to approach this saturation point. thus, ndvi can be used as an effective proxy for vegetation cover in this region. tree biomass (e.g., fuelwood) and non-timber productivity (e.g., seed production, stem growth) are also positively correlated with ndvi (foody et al. 2001; mutanga/skidmore 2004a/b; wang et al. 2004). therefore, this greenness proxy effectively maps the availability of natural resources used directly by agincourt residents (fuelwood, wild foods). ndvi has also been successfully employed in livelihood-focused studies of the environment-migration association elsewhere in southern africa (nawrotzki et al. 2012). we created ndvi grids for the years 2005-2007 by calculating the annual ndvi mean of 16-day composites obtained from modis satellite imagery (250-meter resolution). to refl ect more general patterns of resource availability during this period, we take the average of these three grids at each pixel to produce a greenness grid. we then generated 2-kilometer buffers around each household, as this represents a maximum typical walking distance for natural resource collection in this region (cf. fisher et al. 2011; giannecchini et al. 2007). we excluded productive areas within village boundaries, since these are typically private homestead gardens unavailable for communal collection. to generate a single measure of available natural resources, we then calculated the sum of all pixels from the greenness grid outside the village boundaries and inside the 2-kilometer buffer for each household. the number of pixels representing communal land varies across households, thus the sum (rather than the mean) is calculated. this difference in pixels refl ects, in a substantive sense, the ease with which households can access communal lands. households with fewer pixels within their 2-kilometer buffer will need to travel further for the same access as a household on a village edge and, therefore, with more communal landscape available within their 2-kilometer buffer. finally, the measure was scaled to the range of ndvi. the “ndvi mean” variable represents our central measure of natural resource availability. as noted above, a clear west-east rainfall gradient shapes spatial variation in natural capital. villages in the northwest are surrounded by communal lands with the densest vegetation cover – in figure 2, see xanthia and agincourt (the village from which the study site took its name). however, the communal landscapes surrounding eastern villages receive less rainfall and therefore are less productive, while also experiencing higher collection pressures given the higher concentration of villages. • lori m. hunter et al.128 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e s ta tis tic s an d g ro up m ea n c o m p ar is o n (t -t es t) fo r s el ec te d v ar ia b le s fo r th e a g in co ur t s tu d y s ite an d f o ur il lu st ra tiv e v ill ag es , 2 00 7 n o te : v ill ag es a re p re se nt ed in o rd er o f d ec re as in g m ea n n d v i. h h = h o us eh o ld . o rd in ar y tte st p er fo rm ed to e va lu at e d iff er en ce s b et w ee n in d iv id ua l v ill ag e an d c o lle ct iv e gr o up o f r em ai ni ng v ill ag es . a n um b er r ef er s to h o us eh o ld u ni t. b d ea th s w ith in th e la st th re e ye ar s. *p < .0 5; * *p < .0 1; * ** p < .0 01 s o ur ce : a gi nc o ur t h ea lth a nd d em o gr ap hi c s ur ve ill an ce s ite (a gi nc o ur t h d s s ). g lo b al x an th ia a g in co ur t v ill ag e ir ea gh ju st ic ia m ea n (s .d ) m ea n m ea n m ea n m ea n o u tc om e c o un t: t em p o ra ry m ig ra n ts a 1. 19 -1 .3 6 1. 38 ** * 1. 54 ** * 1. 40 ** * 0. 87 ** * p ri m ar y p re d ic to r n d v i m ea n 0. 53 -0 .0 8 0. 63 ** * 0. 58 ** * 0. 52 0. 42 ** * s ec on d ar y p re d ic to rs n d v i s lo p e 0. 61 -0 .1 6 0. 56 ** * 0. 58 ** * 0. 85 ** * 0. 40 ** * a g e o f h h h ea d 52 .2 7 -1 5. 09 53 .8 3* * 54 .6 1* ** 51 .7 5 51 .0 9* fe m al e h h h ea d 0. 39 -0 .4 9 0. 43 0. 38 0. 41 0. 44 ** p ro p o rt io n m al e 0. 44 -0 .2 5 0. 45 0. 45 0. 46 0. 43 p ro p o rt io n e ld er ly 0. 10 -0 .2 1 0. 11 0. 11 * 0. 09 0 .1 0 0. 10 p ro p o rt io n em p lo ye d 0. 29 -0 .2 7 0. 26 ** 0. 27 * 0. 31 0. 29 h h e d uc at io na l l ev el 6. 64 -3 .2 6 7. 05 ** 7. 57 ** * 6. 05 ** * 6. 40 * s e s 2. 43 -0 .4 4 2. 46 2. 53 ** * 2. 36 ** * 2. 40 * p ri m e a g e m o rt al it yb 0. 09 -0 .2 9 0. 12 * 0. 09 0. 10 0. 11 n (h o u se ho ld s) 96 25 58 7 96 9 49 0 74 0 variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 129 3.2.2 secondary predictors (control variables) a host of sociodemographic variables that are known determinants of migration (white/lindstrom 2006) represent a variety of livelihood capitals and serve as controls.4,5 beyond being controls, however, these sociodemographic variables also serve as secondary predictors of substantive interest. we use interaction terms in statistical models to shed light on the types of households most likely to demonstrate signifi cant migration-environment connections at both global and local geographic scales. additional detail is provided in the methods section below. human capital. arguably the most important measure of human capital is educational attainment (saenz/morales 2006), which generally exhibits a positive association with migration. to capture the overall household educational level, we include a per capita measure of years of schooling, considering only adult household members (age 15+). a household’s stage in the life cycle also shapes the likelihood of migration (nivalainen 2004; white/lindstrom 2006) as well as the level and patterns of natural capital use (de sherbinin et al. 2008; vanwey et al. 2007). in line with previous research, we use the household head’s age to capture differences in life-cycle stage (edmeades 2008; carr et al. 2006). a third measure of human capital is elder dependency proportion: the percentage of adult household members age 65 and above. elder dependency may shape migration probabilities in two ways: (1) by decreasing household potential to engage in the labor force (juelich 2011) and (2) by enhancing fi nancial security through state-funded pensions, small but stable sources of income in south africa (collinson 2010). research also frequently fi nds substantial gender differences in the environment-migration association (henry et al. 2004; gray 2010; gray/mueller 2012b). in agincourt, males have a tradition of labor migration and are more likely to be the primary household breadwinners, but young women are increasingly migrating to pursue opportunities and gain freedom from traditional rural society (collinson 2010). we incorporate two measures to examine gender effects: (1) a dichotomous 4 within the agincourt hdss, different modules are fi elded annually, so that some information is collected only every second, third, or fourth year. consequently, we use some data collected before our study year as proxies. for example, educational data collected in 2006 were used in the 2007 models, as was labor status information from 2004. 5 in preliminary analyses we included marital status and mozambican background in the estimations. they are not, however, included in the fi nal presentation for the following reasons. marital status was represented by a set of dummy variables (married 53 percent, divorced 12 percent, widowed 18 percent and missing 17 percent). except for the missing category, there was no evidence for differences in temporary migration based on marital status. on ethnicity, during the 1990s, agincourt experienced a high infl ux of refugees from neighboring mozambique as a result of the 1983-1992 mozambique civil war (hargreaves et al. 2004; madhavan et al. 2009). in our sample, 27 percent of households are headed by individuals of mozambican background. although citizenship was made available to refugees in 1996, this remains a marginalized population, as social and cultural barriers prevent equal access to resources (collinson 2010). however, owing to a high level of segregation (two villages are composed almost entirely of households of mozambican background), this variable lacks the necessary variation to be included. • lori m. hunter et al.130 measure for the gender of the household head (1=female) (in agincourt, poorer female-headed households send migrants as a means of escaping poverty; see collinson 2010), and (2) a masculinity proportion, which captures the overall gender composition of adult household members. finally, an important factor shaping household human capital and livelihood strategies in the study area is prime age adult mortality due to the hiv/aids pandemic (e.g., hunter et al. 2011). a dummy variable indicates whether the household experienced the death of an adult aged 15-49 in the past three years. financial and physical capital. classic migration frameworks stress the importance of income differentials, relative deprivation, and living conditions as important migration motivators (massey et al. 1993). in agincourt, these aspects of socioeconomic status, encompassing both fi nancial and physical livelihood capitals, are most usefully refl ected through an asset index (agincourt hdss 2011; mberu 2006). as in rural regions of many developing areas, income is challenging to measure because there is a signifi cant informal economy and much employment is seasonal (montgomery et al. 2000). to measure socioeconomic status (ses) more generally, the agincourt hdss collects data on fi ve categories of physical capital: modern assets (e.g., cell phones, refrigerators, televisions); livestock (e.g., cattle, goats, pigs); power supply (e.g., electricity, gas, fuelwood); water and sanitation (e.g., toilet type, private water supply); and dwelling structure (e.g., roof and fl oor material, number of rooms).6 we anticipate a positive association between household temporary migration and ses, as has been shown in recent agincourt-based scholarship (collinson 2010). better-off households can more likely afford the costs of migration and may have destination connections that facilitate relocation and/or employment. in turn, migrant remittances reinforce the higher socioeconomic status of migrantsending households (taylor et al. 1996). of course, socioeconomic status is clearly associated with employment status, so we include a measure of the proportion of adult household members employed in 2007. agincourt residents tend to be employed locally, primarily in the public sector (teaching, clerical work, or police work) or in the informal sector (selling fruit, cooked food, and snacks) (collinson 2010). however, residents may also seek employment outside the study area, predominantly in the tourism sector (binns/nel 2002), agricultural production, or mining (wilson 2001). some of these opportunities require temporary migration, while others do not.7 6 to construct the asset index, each variable was coded such that increasing values correspond to higher ses and are also effectively given equal weight through rescaling to comparable ranges. the asset values within a group were added and then rescaled to yield a group-specifi c value in the range 0 to 1. finally, for each household, the fi ve group-specifi c scaled values were summed to yield an overall asset score whose values could range from 0 to 5 (agincourt hdss 2011). 7 as in most migration research, questions of endogeneity also arise because of potential correlation between outcome and predictor variables, although none of our predictors exceed a correlation of 0.21 with the household count of temporary outmigrants. correlations with the count of temporary migrants that exceed 0.10 include those for asset index (0.19), average household education (0.21), and proportion male household members male (0.13), elderly, (-0.17), and in the labor force (0.10). tests of the impact of specifi c predictors on the estimations suggest no substantial change in estimation results or errors. variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 131 natural capital, recent change. our central measure of natural capital, described above, refl ects mean natural resource availability for the three years (2005-2007) before the migration outcome (2007). since recent shifts in availability may confound the impact of this measure, we also include an indicator of recent change in natural resource availability. in general, the study site experienced a slight increase in “greenness” during 2005-2007. to account for spatial variation in this upward trend, we include a measure of “ndvi slope” as a control variable based on the same underlying greenness pixels used for calculating the average ndvi measure. for each pixel in the 2km buffer, the slope was computed by simply fi tting a regression line through the ndvi values of the three years. 4 methods the modeling process includes “global” estimates across the entire study site as well as “local” village-scale models, allowing for contrast across the estimated coeffi cients. we also focus on interaction terms, allowing the effect of all sociodemographic capital variables to vary by a household’s mean ndvi, 2005-2007. global and local village-scale modeling we compute poisson generalized linear models (glm) (mccullagh/nelder 1989) of temporary household migration using the full set of predictive variables: the primary environmental predictor variable (natural capital: ndvi mean), livelihood capital secondary predictors/controls (human, physical, and fi nancial capitals, and change in natural capital [slope]), and interactions between ndvi mean and the secondary predictors/controls.8 the global model has the form where log() represents the link function, the natural logarithm, to transform the outcome variable ηij to linearity based on the set of secondary predictors, μij indicates the predicted counts of migrants in household i, and β0 constitutes the intercept (mean log migrant count), while β1-j are the regression coeffi cients of the central predictor variable (ndvi mean), secondary predictors/control variables, and interactions between the environmental predictor and secondary predictors x1i to xji. since households vary in size, a measure of per-capita migrants is a more objective way of representing the outcome variable than an absolute number. we therefore use household size φi as an offset to convert the number of migrants in house8 poisson models have been successfully applied in a variety of models with count-dependent variables (e.g., boyle/flowerdew 1993; congdon 1993; leyk et al. 2012). )(...)( )/(log 110 jijii iiei xx • lori m. hunter et al.132 hold i to the rate of migrants per household member. to avoid overdispersion, we tested whether the variance equaled the mean of the values – a fundamental assumption for poisson distributions. we computed household-level poisson glms for the study site as a whole – the global model – as well as for each village individually. at the local scale, we ran 21 village-scale models. table 3 summarizes these village-scale results by simply indicating the number of positive and negative statistically signifi cant coeffi cient estimates across the 21 villages for the ndvi mean measure and each secondary predictor/control. to present specifi c coeffi cient estimates at the local scale, we chose four illustrative villages for the presentation of the glm village-scale results as contrasted with the global model (table 2). the chosen villages represent the west-east gradient of natural capital within communal lands. finally, we mapped model coeffi cients (and their signifi cance levels) at the village scale to represent both the coeffi cients for ndvi mean (fig. 3) and the most substantive and statistically signifi cant interaction terms between ndvi and the secondary predictors (fig. 4). 5 results 5.1 global model estimates a key fi nding is that, considering the agincourt study site as a whole, the level of natural resource availability (2005-2007) within a household’s 2km buffer is positively associated with temporary outmigration (2007) – offering support for the “environmental surplus” hypothesis. the estimated coeffi cient is statistically signifi cant at the 0.01 level, net of the suite of secondary migration predictors within the models. the ndvi slope, 2005-2007, exhibits a positive association with temporary outmigration as well, suggesting that households with higher (and increasing) levels of natural capital are more likely to send temporary migrants. virtually all of the secondary predictors obtain statistical signifi cance (with the exception of prime age mortality), no doubt partly due to the relatively large number of observations. in line with previous research, human capital and other forms of assets are important correlates of temporary migration. households with relatively higher human capital in the form of overall higher education are more likely to have sent a temporary migrant, while such migration was less likely in households with lower levels of human capital in the form of more members of pension age. temporary migration was also more common among households with more employed members, testifying to the importance of employment as a foundation for fueling migration as a further diversifi cation strategy. recall that the pairwise correlation between household temporary migration and proportion employed is 0.01, lessening concerns of endogeneity between migration and employment measures. in addition, the fi ndings suggest that households with a larger proportion of male members and those with higher overall wealth levels/asset position are more likely to have sent a member elsewhere. variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 133 ta b . 2 : g lm m o d el s p re d ic tin g te m p o ra ry o u tm ig ra tio n, h o u se ho ld -l ev el , a g in co ur t h ea lt h an d d em o g ra p hi c s ur ve ill an ce s ite , m p um al an g a p ro vi n ce , s o u th a fr ic a, 2 00 7 *p < .0 5; * *p < .0 1; * ** p < .0 01 s o ur ce : a gi nc o ur t h ea lth a nd d em o gr ap hi c s ur ve ill an ce s ite (a gi nc o ur t h d s s ). fo ur il lu st ra ti ve v ill ag es g lo b al , a g in co ur t s tu d y s it e x an th ia a g in co ur t v ill ag e ir ea g h ju st ic ia p ri m ar y p re d ic to r n d v i m ea n 0. 43 0* ** 0. 07 2 -0 .0 42 * -0 .0 52 -0 .2 64 s ec on d ar y p re d ic to rs n d v i s lo p e 0. 24 1* ** -0 .0 50 -0 .0 10 -0 .0 09 0. 31 2 a g e o f h h h ea d 0. 00 4* ** 0. 08 2* 0. 01 5 0. 08 8* -0 .0 12 fe m al e h h h ea d 0. 05 2* 0. 04 1 0. 01 6 -0 .0 27 -0 .0 04 p ro p o rt io n m al e 0. 43 4* ** 0. 01 8 0. 05 5* * 0. 01 3 0. 16 1* * p ro p o rt io n e ld er ly -0 .7 02 ** * -0 .1 50 * -0 .0 71 -0 .1 90 ** -0 .0 09 p ro p o rt io n e m p lo ye d 0. 79 3* ** 0. 17 6* ** 0. 11 2* ** 0. 12 9* ** 0. 26 5* ** h h e d u ca tio n al l ev el 0. 04 2* ** 0. 15 0* ** 0. 12 6* ** 0. 01 4 0. 21 5* ** s e s 0. 11 4* ** -0 .0 34 0. 00 9 0. 02 2 0. 01 1 p ri m e a g e m o rt al it y -0 .0 19 0. 01 9 0. 00 3 0. 05 2* 0. 01 2 in te ra ct io n s (e ac h ru n in d iv id u al ly ) n d v i* a g e h ea d 0. 16 0* * 0. 02 0 0. 10 3 0. 02 1 0. 02 1 n d v i* fe m al e h ea d 0. 08 0 -0 .2 25 0. 08 1 -0 .0 12 0. 16 8 n d v i* p ro p o rt io n m al e -0 .1 10 * -0 .1 69 -0 .2 75 1. 35 1 -0 .2 47 n d v i* p ro p o rt io n e ld er ly -0 .0 30 0. 11 3 -0 .0 87 -0 .5 51 -0 .1 66 n d v i* p ro p o rt io n e m p lo ye d -0 .0 20 0. 43 6 -0 .0 90 0. 38 7 -0 .4 87 n d v i* h h e d u ca tio n al l ev el 0. 10 0 0. 12 7 -0 .1 50 0. 15 5 -0 .1 21 n d v i* s e s 0. 05 0 0. 15 8 0. 32 5* -0 .0 01 0. 23 2 n d v i* p ri m e a g e m o rt al it y 0. 05 0 0. 09 7 0. 05 0 -0 .0 47 -0 .1 99 n (h o u se h o ld s) 96 25 58 7 96 9 49 0 74 0 • lori m. hunter et al.134 at the global geographic scale, interactions are explored to offer insights on the types of households potentially able to tap into natural capital to fuel temporary migration – yet only two reach statistical signifi cance. the positive estimated effect of ndvi mean on temporary outmigration is magnifi ed for relatively old households as well as those with proportionately fewer men (likely because male members migrated). in this way, the results may suggest that natural capital enables migration by offering livelihood diversifi cation strategies particularly for households with higher levels of human capital in the form of age and male members. 5.2 village-scale model estimates the poisson glm coeffi cient estimates by village suggest that the processes indicated by the global models operate quite differently at more local scales – which we suggest refl ects operational scale sensitivity. table 3 summarizes village-scale results and illustrates that natural resource availability displays a range of effects, only some of which reach statistical signifi cance. figure 3 maps the substantively and statistically strongest effects of ndvi mean by village; statistical signifi cance is represented by hatching. in two villages (kildare a #11 and kildare b #13), consistent with the global estimates, the coeffi cients refl ect a positive, statistically signifi cant association between temporary outmigration and natural resource availability, net of the control variables. yet in two other villages, the opposite association emerges. in the villages of agincourt (#2) and newington (#4), a negative, temporary outmigration exhibits a negative, statistically signifi cant association with natural resource availability. interestingly, these latter villages (in which lower levels of natural capital constrains migration) tend to have relatively high levels of resource availability in general and are on the study site’s northern edge, proximate to roads leading to slightly larger neighboring towns (e.g. thulamahashe, ~11,000 residents). here, the potential exists for households to make use of local natural resources as livelihood strategies while also tapping into the market and/or employment potential of nearby communities without necessarily engaging in migration. on the other hand, the villages in which ndvi facilitates migration (kildare a and b) tend to be in the study site’s southeastern corner, more distant from larger neighboring towns and bounded by fenced game reserves. these villages have relatively low levels of resource availability in general while also being further from larger-scale markets and other employment opportunities. in this way, within these resource-poor contexts, households with relatively higher levels of proximate natural capital may be engaging those resources as well as temporary migration as livelihood strategies. however, in 17 of the 21 villages (81 percent), the infl uence of natural resource availability on temporary migration did not reach statistical signifi cance net of the other included secondary predictors/controls (see table 3) – a result quite different from the positive, statistically signifi cant effect of ndvi at the global scale. overall, a far less consistent migration-environment narrative emerges when using village boundaries to defi ne study areas. on the secondary predictor/control variables, at the village scale the most consistent positive predictors of temporary outmigration include measures of human variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 135 capital such as household proportion employed (signifi cant in 18 villages), level of education (signifi cant in 9 villages), and the male proportion (signifi cant in 8 villages). on the other hand, households with relatively more elderly members are consistently less likely to send temporary migrants (signifi cant in 6 villages). household age composition, female headship, and mortality experience exhibit virtually no association with migration at the village scale (signifi cant in no more than 2 of the 21 villages). interaction terms at the village scale allow us to dive deeper into the mechanisms potentially underlying village-scale variation in the migration-environment association. figure 4 maps the substantively and statistically strongest interactions with ndvi mean, by village. statistical signifi cance is again represented by hatching. the lack of predictive power among ndvi interactions at the village-scale is notable. among the eight sociodemographic variables combined with ndvi to predict temporary outmigration across the 21 included villages (21 * 8 = 168 interactions, not shown), only three (1.7 percent) reached statistical signifi cance, and no distinct patterns emerged. households in agincourt (village #2) have relatively high access to natural resources and the probability of temporary outmigration exhibits a signifi cant positive interaction with the asset index (see table 2). on the other hand, households in rholane (village #15) have relatively low access to natural resources and they exhibit the same pattern – a signifi cant positive interaction between the asset index and ndvi as related to temporary outmigration (not shown). this interaction sugtab. 3: summary of village-level coeffi cients predicting temporary outmigration at the household-level, agincourt health and demographic surveillance site, mpumalanga province, south africa, 2007 source: agincourt health and demographic surveillance site (agincourt hdss). positive sig. negative sig. not sig. primary predictor ndvi mean 2 2 17 secondary predictors ndvi slope 1 2 18 age of hh head 2 0 19 female hh head 0 0 21 proportion male 8 0 13 proportion elderly 0 6 15 proportion employed 18 0 3 hh educational level 9 0 12 ses 3 2 16 prime age mortality 1 1 19 • lori m. hunter et al.136 gests that natural capital may fuel migration particularly for those households that already have diverse and stable livelihoods – even in natural resource-poor settings. interestingly, households in justicia b (village #17) exhibit a strong negative interaction between the proportion of elderly household members (the dependency measure), natural capital, and temporary outmigration. this village has particularly low levels of natural resources given its proximity to private, fenced game reserves. in this natural resource-poor village, monthly pensions, albeit low levels of income, may provide suffi cient security to constrain temporary migration. another interpretation could relate to care-giving, as more elderly household members may suggest others have caregiving responsibilities, also constraining migration. fig. 3: ndvi coeffi cient estimates predicting temporary outmigration by household, village-level models, agincourt health and demographic surveillance site, mpumalanga province, south africa source: own design variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 137 6 conclusion the results for both the global and local scales offer multi-faceted contributions to the literature on migration-environment connections, particularly the literature on temporary migration as a livelihood strategy. in rural south africa, we fi nd support for the “environmental surplus” hypothesis in that households experiencing less environmental stress or scarcity are more likely to send temporary migrants. such fi ndings stand in contrast to the large fl ows of refugees converging upon europe, who are often fl eeing from socio-political pressures potentially exacerbated by environmental scarcity. yet an important distinction is relevant – most migrants from our rural south africa study site are moving within south africa and often doing so as a voluntary livelihood strategy. in contrast, the current refugee crisis faced by europe is fueled by a complex mix of confl ict, impoverishment, desperation and environmental challenges – and such movement entails crossing international boundaries. fig. 4: largest standardized coeffi cients for interactions between ndvi and secondary predictors, village-level models, agincourt health and demographic surveillance site, mpumalanga province, south africa1 1 “dependency” = proportion elderly source: own design • lori m. hunter et al.138 still, our fi nding of “environmental surplus” migration parallels prior work in ecuador where migration was facilitated by more productive agricultural lands (gray 2010). in rural south africa, households rely heavily on natural resources for both daily sustenance as well as materials for products sold at market (e.g. ofoegbu et al. 2016). in this way, access to natural capital may provide a safety net of sorts, from which livelihoods may be further diversifi ed – including through temporary migration. the safety net function of local resources has been demonstrated in other research in the agincourt hdss setting focused on household coping strategies in the face of adult mortality (hunter et al. 2007). our results in support of the “environmental surplus” hypothesis are usefully considered within the sustainable livelihoods framework in that natural capital intersects with human capital to shape the use of migration as a livelihood strategy. importantly, however, the results also are distinct from those fi nding migration associated with the push of “environmental scarcity”, as evidenced in settings such as burkina faso and ghana (henry et al. 2004; van der geest 2011). our global results of temporary migration linked with “surplus” contributes to the many empirical studies that have been added to the migration-environment literature over the past several years, fueled in part by public and policy concern with the potential for climate change to spur migration by increasing livelihood vulnerability. indeed, some speculation has been made as to the european refugee crisis being, at least in part, related to climate pressures (e.g., brzoska/fröhlich 2016). such concern certainly warrants intensifi ed scientifi c inquiry with the aim of ultimately generating conclusions about the connection between migration and environmental conditions/change. even so, the research presented here also yields a cautionary tale. the coeffi cient estimates yielded from the analysis of all agincourt hdss households combined may not best refl ect the optimal geographic scale to investigate the household-level process under study. in this setting, migration is typically a household-level decision (collinson et al. 2006). furthermore, since 85.4 percent of agincourt households do not own a car, it is likely that the opportunities and constraints within the local village setting may particularly infl uence livelihood strategies. as such, we tested differences in coeffi cient estimates across geographic scales to better understand how the migration-environment connection might differentially unfold if the study area is partitioned into individual administrative units. differences do unfold. at the village scale, the models identify two villages in which households exhibit a particularly strong positive association between local natural capital and temporary outmigration – where households with higher levels of natural resources within a 2km buffer of the homestead were more likely to have sent a temporary migrant within the past year – a fi nding in line with the overall results from the global model. even so, the local models also identifi ed two villages with the opposite association – where households with lower levels of natural resources were more likely to have sent a temporary migrant within the past year. natural capital’s negative association with temporary outmigration is intensifi ed for households in resource-poor regions and with access to elderly pensions. variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 139 the incongruent results across models fi t to different geographic scales (or geographic extents) leave researchers with a puzzle; and although we raise the question of operational scale sensitivity – we do not propose to have an answer yet. unlike the ecological fallacy, the example presented here has retained the household as the analytical unit and it is, therefore, justifi able to interpret the coeffi cients as related to the household level. unlike the modifi able area unit problem (maup), our models do not operate at aggregate units of different size and shape. instead, we have simply shifted the boundaries of the study areas, focusing fi rst on all agincourt hdss households together (global) and then on distinct clusters of households as defi ned by village borders. models fi t to each individual village show high levels of predictive power (leyk et al. 2012) and thus provide an objective picture of existing (or non-existing) relationships. the distinction between scales results from variation in the statistical distributions of incorporated variables due to the different boundaries and, therefore, different study populations. the global model masks associations that are apparent when using statistical distributions as defi ned by village scale boundaries, yet the village scale analyses do not allow for identifi cation of broader scale migration-environment associations that more generally characterize the entire agincourt hdss. given this high scale sensitivity, the question remains: what represents a “meaningful” geographic scale to model migration-environment associations? we offer the unsatisfactory answer that “it depends”. on the one hand, researchers often aim to identify overarching conclusions that represent broad patterns in migration-environment connections. in this case, the global model, covering a broader geographic region, offers an understanding of how this linkage operates at the scale of a small region. yet, since households represent the locus of migration decision-making, village scale models may represent a more appropriate vantage point since these decisions are likely infl uenced by localized livelihood options (including availability of natural capital) especially given low levels of vehicle ownership. in addition, examination of goodness-of-fi t measures suggest the village-scale models offer better prediction of household-level migration as contrasted with the global, regional estimates (leyk et al. 2012). in summary, our results suggest that, generally, natural resource security provides a foundation from which households may engage in temporary livelihood migration from rural south africa. even so, in some highly localized village settings, local scarcity also fuels temporary livelihood migration. of central importance in future research will be the investigation of temporal variation in the migration-environment connection and, in particular, under conditions of more chronic and/or prevalent environmental change across the villages in rural south africa’s agincourt health and demographic surveillance site. acknowledgements supported by nih r03 hd061428, “environmental variability, migration, and rural livelihoods”. this research has also benefi ted from the nichd-funded university of colorado population center (project 2p2chd066613-06) for research, administra• lori m. hunter et al.140 tive, and computing support. the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the offi cial views of the cupc, nih, or nichd. this work was also indirectly supported by the wellcome trust (grant 085477/z/08/z) through its support of the agincourt health and demographic surveillance system. references agincourt hdss (agincourt health and socio-demographic surveillance system) 2011: agincourt health and population unit: data defi nitions. johannesburg. south africa: university of the witwatersrand [http://www.agincourt.co.za/datasection/datadocumentation.htm, 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(ed.): practical handbook of spatial statistics. boca raton: crc press: 83-106. zhou, liming et al. 2003: relation between interannual variations in satellite measures of northern forest greenness and climate between 1982 and 1999. in: journal of geophysical research 108,d1: acl 3-1–acl 3-16 [doi: 10.1029/2002jd002510]. variation by geographic scale in the migration-environment association • 147 prof. dr. lori m. hunter (). university of colorado boulder, usa. mrc/wits rural public health and health transitions research unit (agincourt), school of public health, university of witwatersrand, south africa. e-mail: lori.hunter@colorado.edu url: http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/es/hunterl/ prof. dr. stefan leyk. university of colorado boulder, usa. e-mail: stefan.leyk@colorado.edu url: http://www.colorado.edu/geography/stefan-leyk-0 dr. galen j. maclaurin. university of colorado boulder, usa. e-mail: galen.maclaurin@colorado.edu dr. raphael nawrotzki. university of colorado boulder, usa. e-mail: raphael.nawrotzki@colorado.edu prof. dr. wayne twine. school of animal, plant and environmental sciences, university prof. dr. wayne twine. school of animal, plant and environmental sciences, university of the witwatersrand, south africa. e-mail: wayne.twine@wits.ac.zaof the witwatersrand, south africa. e-mail: wayne.twine@wits.ac.za url: https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/t/waynetwinewitsacza/url: https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/t/waynetwinewitsacza/ prof. dr. barend f.n. erasmus. global change institute, university of the witwatersrand, prof. dr. barend f.n. erasmus. global change institute, university of the witwatersrand, south africa. e-mail: barend.erasmus@wits.ac.zasouth africa. e-mail: barend.erasmus@wits.ac.za url: https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/e/barenderasmuswitsacza/url: https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/e/barenderasmuswitsacza/ dr. mark collinson. mrc/wits rural public health and health transitions research dr. mark collinson. mrc/wits rural public health and health transitions research unit (agincourt), school of public health, university of witwatersrand, south africa. unit (agincourt), school of public health, university of witwatersrand, south africa. department of science and technology/ medical research council, south african department of science and technology/ medical research council, south african population research infrastructure network (saprin). indepth network, ghana.population research infrastructure network (saprin). indepth network, ghana. e-mail: mark@agincourt.co.zae-mail: mark@agincourt.co.za url: http://www.agincourt.co.za/index.php/about/staff/mark-collinson/url: http://www.agincourt.co.za/index.php/about/staff/mark-collinson/ date of submission: 14.01.2016 date of acceptance: 04.07.2017 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) affection and conflict in intergenerational relationships of women in sixteen areas in asia, africa, europe, and america affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women in sixteen areas in asia, africa, europe, and america bernhard nauck abstract: studies of intergenerational solidarity in affl uent societies suggest that relationships between generations consist simultaneously of both emotional closeness and confl icts. this analysis extends the standard model of intergenerational relationships, which until now has been applied only to countries with bilineal kinship systems, to culturally and economically diverse areas with varying kinship systems. latent class analysis was applied to measure affection and confl ict in the ongoing relationships of young and middle-aged women with their mothers (7,522 relationship pairs) and fathers (5,338 relationship pairs). the empirical analysis was based on standardised oral interviews with mothers from areas in china, indonesia, north and south india, south africa, palestine, israel, turkey, russia, estonia, poland, east and west germany, france, jamaica, and the united states (n = 8,756). the best fi tting model of relationship differences consisted of four latent classes: „amicable“ (45 percent), “detached“ (28 percent), “ambivalent” (22 percent), and “disharmonious“ (5 percent). based on a cross-culturally largely invariant measurement model, results revealed signifi cantly different distributions for fathers and mothers and across areas. multinomial three-level regression analysis was used to analyse the complex cross-level interdependence of area effects, individual characteristics, and the respective relationship on class membership. in patrilineal societies, relationships of women with their biological parents are more likely to be ambivalent, less likely to be detached, and very likely to become disharmonious in case of spatial proximity. in affl uent societies, the relationships are less likely to be disharmonious and most likely to be harmonious. whereas the frequency of contact decreases the likelihood of detached or disharmonious relationships in affl uent societies, functional exchange with the parents increases the likelihood of disharmonious relationships. keywords: intergenerational relationships · emotional closeness · confl ict · solidarity · cross-cultural comparative population studies vol. 39, 4 (2014): 647-678 (date of release: 30.10.2014) © federal institute for population research 2014 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2014-16en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2014-16en3 • bernhard nauck648 1 introduction the intergenerational solidarity paradigm – a comprehensive scheme for describing sentiments, behaviours, attitudes, values, and structural arrangements in adult intergenerational relationships – has become the “gold standard” model for assessing intergenerational relationships (silverstein et al. 2010: 1007). the initial model postulated that intergenerational solidarity consists of six distinct components: emotional (closeness), associational (social contact), structural (geographic proximity), functional (supportive behaviour), normative (fi lial obligations), and consensual (attitudinal agreement) (bengtson/schrader 1982; bengtson/roberts 1991). in acknowledgment of the fact that intergenerational relationships can be simultaneously warm and antagonistic, the model was extended recently to include “ambivalence” (luescher/pillemer 1998; luescher 2002). originally developed for the description and better understanding of intergenerational relationships in the united states, the model subsequently demonstrated considerable explanatory power in other countries and, more recently, in cross-national comparisons that have included the united states, the united kingdom, norway, germany, spain, and israel (silverstein et al. 1998; daatland/herlofson 2003; lowenstein et al. 2005; lowenstein/daatland 2006; lowenstein 2006; gans et al. 2009; silverstein et al. 2010). thus, the scope of cross-national comparisons so far has been limited to affl uent societies with a similar cultural heritage. moreover, most of the empirical knowledge available is based on a very limited number of data sets, and only one of these was designed using the intergenerational solidarity paradigm (oasis (old age and autonomy: the role of service systems and intergenational family solidarity; lowenstein et al. 2002). given this situation, there is legitimate reason to question the external validity of the intergenerational solidarity paradigm when applied to societies of varying cultural heritage. all societies so far included in cross-national comparisons based on the intergenerational solidarity paradigm have similar institutions of bilineal kinship. in these societies, the intergenerational relationships of married women are relatively free of institutional regulations that restrict choices regarding residence, social contact, mutual support, control rights, or inheritance. as a result, women have much latitude to live out their individual preferences and choices. unilineal kinship systems, be they patrilineal or matrilineal, are quite different as they impose restrictions that can impinge strongly on intergenerational relationships. in patrilineal kinship systems, for example, parents-in-law may have the same responsibilities to their daughters-in-law that parents have to their daughters in bilineal kinship systems. these responsibilities are expected to be reciprocated by fi lial obligations of functional solidarity. this situation challenges the relationship with the family of origin and can provoke feelings of ambivalence. extending the intergenerational solidarity paradigm to culturally diverse societies has far-reaching conceptual and methodological consequences. “research within single societies often fails to reveal the infl uence of culture as a social force [...]. norms and values distinguish family and state responsibilities in meeting the needs of the aged. future research must recognise the relationship between culaffection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 649 tural belief systems and individual understandings of roles and obligations” (bengtson/putney 2000: 281). this challenge can be resolved adequately only through a multi-level approach (kohli 2005: 270) that takes into account both the variability of intergenerational relationships within individual societies and the institutional variability of family and kinship systems across societies that differ in terms of control rights, descent, and belonging. the following empirical analysis contributes to research based on the intergenerational solidarity paradigm in two respects. first, it applies the model to 16 cultural areas in china, north and south india, indonesia, palestine, israel, turkey, south africa, russia, estonia, poland, east and west germany, france, jamaica, and the united states. the empirical analysis thus comprises widely varying economic conditions and diverse kinship systems and their institutions. second, it complements cross-national comparative research on intergenerational solidarity and ambivalence (silverstein et al. 2010) with the perspective of young and middle aged women towards their biological fathers and mothers. the model of silverstein et al. (2010) focusses on the perspective of parents towards their children and is based on samples from six countries (england, germany, israel, norway, spain, and the united states). it suggests a typology, derived from latent class analysis, of four distinct relationship types: “amicable” (high level of emotional closeness and low level of confl ict), “detached” (low levels of both), “disharmonious” (low level of emotional closeness, high level of confl ict), and “ambivalent” (high levels of both). for extending the intergenerational solidarity and ambivalence paradigm to culturally diverse contexts, a strategy of replication and controlled extension was chosen. replication follows the design of categorical measurement models that are able to identify meaningful types of intergenerational relationships using measures of affection and confl ict derived from the solidarity-confl ict paradigm (silverstein et al. 2010: 1007). in the analysis below, the paradigm is extended through a) the investigation specifi cally of the relationships of young and middle-aged women with their mothers and fathers, b) the question of whether the distribution of relationship types varies across areas with diverse institutional settings and economic conditions, and c) the question of how much variance can be accounted for by individual resources and opportunity structures (nauck/arránz becker 2013). 2 intergenerational relationships in cross-cultural comparison 2.1 theoretical background by itself, the typology of intergenerational relationships based on the solidarityconfl ict model provides no argument regarding which conditions favour which combination of affection and confl ict. this theoretical gap can be addressed using models of reactions to given relationship states. one model, with striking similarities to that of silverstein et al. (2010), was developed by rusbult et al. (1982, 1986, 1991; rusbult/van lange 2003). these authors take up the distinction between exit, voice, and loyalty originally developed by hirschman (1970) to distinguish possible • bernhard nauck650 reactions of members to decline in formal organisations. to this they add a fourth type, neglect, and apply it to the analysis of partnerships, marriages, and other intimate relationships. they postulate that their four types of reactions to a (dissatisfactory) relationship state are distributed in a two-dimensional space defi ned by the axes of active versus passive and constructive versus destructive. relating this typology to interdependence theory, they conclude that the reaction is determined by (a) the level of previous satisfaction with the relationship, (b) the extent of previous investments in the relationship, and (c) the quality of alternatives to the relationship (rusbult et al. 1986). previous satisfaction and investments are positively related to loyalty and also to accommodation in case of confl ict; they are lower in less interdependent relationships (rusbult et al. 1991). the likelihood of exit increases with the quality of alternatives. dependency, especially mutual dependency, increases exit costs. it thus decreases the likelihood of exit and increases the likelihood of voice or neglect (drigotas/rusbult 1992). whereas the model of rusbult et al. (1982) describes individual reactions to states of social relationship, the solidarity-confl ict model of silverstein et al. (2010) describes the social relationship itself (as a result of the previous actions of its participants). from their perspective, amicable relationships are the product of high investments accompanied by high relationship satisfaction, resulting in a high gain – low cost situation of relationship maintenance. detached relationships are the result of a previous exit, resulting in a low gain – low cost situation of maintaining a “non-relationship.” disharmonious relationships are those with low gains – high costs, which may arise when there is no exit option. ambivalence characterises a relationship that is close and rewarding, based on high previous investments, but at the same time confl ictual because of normative disagreement or distribution confl icts; this results in a high gain – high cost situation. ambivalent relationships are not negative; they are in fact the richest and most demanding kind of relationship because they imply frequent and intense contact and intergenerational exchange in combination with ongoing confl ict management as long as the exit option is not chosen. however, ambivalence also “calls for a resolution either in the direction of a mutually supportive tie or in the direction of drifting apart” (schenk/dykstra 2012: 124), i.e. a shift toward an amicable or detached relationship. these assumptions are supported by the fi nding of van gaalen et al. (2010) that ambivalence increases in intergenerational relationships if adult children have few exit options, for example when they are socially isolated or have few siblings. additionally, differences between types of social groups and formal organisations should be considered. in the case of intimate relationships, active exit or passive neglect usually equates to destroying the relationship or waiting for its termination. in the case of formal organisations, they usually survive the exit of (some) members. kinship relationships, in which those of adult married women with their parents are embedded, are located somewhere in between intimate relationships and formal organisations. the kinship system as such “survives” the exit of single members, especially if it has the size of large clans, but is more sensitive to individual reactions than formal organisations, as the relationships are based on complex exchange patterns. affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 651 the challenging task of cross-cultural research in this realm is to develop bridging hypotheses that relate properties of the macro-level, i.e. variations between societies or cultural areas, to properties on the micro-level, i.e. systematic variations of affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships. previous studies of intergenerational relations relevant for the countries selected for this paper have analysed intra-societal variations in a single country or have compared a small number of countries. these included india (datta et al. 2003; mishra et al. 2005; singh 2005), china (chen/silverstein 2000; chu et al. 2011; chu/yu 2010; cong/silverstein 2008, 2011, 2012a/b; guo et al. 2009, 2012; nauck 2009; silverstein et al. 2006), indonesia (nauck/suckow 2006; schwarz et al. 2010; trommsdorff/schwarz 2007), israel and palestine (kagitcibasi et al. 2010; katz/lavee 2005; lowenstein et al. 2005; silverstein et al. 2013), and turkey (kagitcibasi/ataca 2005; kagitcibasi et al. 2010; nauck/klaus 2008). most approaches in this domain, especially if only a small number of countries are compared, identify pecifi c socio-structural or cultural characteristics of the societies included and relate them to outcome variables on the individual level. the empirical analysis of silverstein et al. (2010: 1009) is guided by “knowledge of the political economies and family cultures of nation-states to speculate about the nature of cross-national variations in the emotional ties between older parents and their adult children.” this approach becomes unfeasible – and to some extent unnecessary – when analysing multiple societies, because a larger number of country cases makes it possible to test cross-level assumptions about the effects of societal characteristics on intergenerational relationships. analyses of helping, care, and living arrangements between generations using data sets that include larger numbers of european countries (hank 2007) often group countries together using typologies such as esping-andersen’s (1990) typology of welfare states, or they introduce quantitative indicators for the description of societal-level variables in multi-level approaches (brandt et al. 2009). the following empirical analysis does not seek primarily a better understanding of the specifi c conditions of solidarity and confl ict in intergenerational relationships “within” individual societies using an “emic” approach. instead, it follows an “etic” approach in looking for differences “between” societies, posing the research question of whether general characteristics of societies explain some of the variation in intergenerational relationships 2.2 hypotheses this analysis focusses on two macro-level dimensions: the institutional structure of the kinship system and the opportunity structure of the society, measured in terms of its welfare level. it is assumed that intergenerational dependence decreases as the welfare level in the respective area increases. it is also assumed that more alternatives to a specifi c relationship – both within and outside the kinship system – are available in a bilineal than in a unilineal kinship system. accordingly, expected societal differences in kinship relationships are formulated as a lineage hypothesis (a) and a welfare hypothesis (b). • bernhard nauck652 (a) an important characteristic of social institutions is related to whether kinship relationships are organised unilinearly or bilinearly. unilinear kinships systems provide a clear structure of belonging, as all individuals are members of just one lineage. these systems are also based on relatively strong expectations of normative solidarity. in patrilineal kinship systems, intergenerational wealth fl ows only between male members of the kinship system as part of functional solidarity; associational and affective solidarity is also primarily lineage based. unilinear kinship systems also provide clear (typically highly ritualised) rules of inclusion. for females in patrilineal societies in case of marriage, this implies that they will have to leave their lineage of origin and will be wholly included in the lineage of their husbands and are then part of it. thus, for women relationships with the lineage of origin may become detached after marriage. previous research found that this detachment was only related to obligations and duties and thus to functional solidarity, whereas emotional bonds were not affected (nauck/ arránz becker 2013; nauck 2012). however, whether strong normative solidarity toward the husband’s lineage results in confl ictual or ambivalent sentiments toward biological parents remains an open empirical question. a different pattern of intergenerational solidarity should be observable in matrilineal kinship systems, where normative obligations are allocated most clearly within the motherdaughter dyad and intergenerational wealth is transmitted between females. as this relationship is lifelong, it should be associated with strong emotional bonds, but because of the lack of exit options it should also be prone to confl ict and thus also to emotional ambivalence. bilinear kinship systems provide a balanced loyalty to both lines of descent; thus, individuals are not tied to a specifi c lineage, but rather have their own, “individual” kindred. this reduces normative solidarity toward parents specifi cally and the signifi cance of intergenerational relationships generally because it makes the marriage unit and the nuclear family the primary unit of solidarity. this may then result in a higher proportion of detached intergenerational relationships or – especially in the case of expected functional help – in high proportions of ambivalent or disharmonious relationships. lineage hypothesis: unilineal kinship systems provide clear borderlines and thus fewer alternatives outside the lineage than bilineal kinship systems. emotionally unrewarding relationships are maintained as confl ictual and not transformed into detached relationships because exiting the relationship is rarely possible. in conjunction with high investments, emotionally rewarding relationships are more likely to be transformed into ambivalent ones than in bilineal kinship systems. (b) societies also differ considerably in terms of alternatives to the functional solidarity of the kinship system. in societies in which all welfare production is kinship based and intergenerational relationships are the only source of insurance against the risks of life, investments in and maintenance of functional solidarity is a very salient part of kinship relationships and may also have a strong impact on emotional bonds and intergenerational confl icts. silverstein et al. (2010: 1009) argue that fi lial obligations tend to vary inversely with the degree of welaffection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 653 fare development and that family values are generally stronger in societies “in which the state assists citizens only when they have exhausted their personal resources” than in societies, “in which all citizens are incorporated under a single universal insurance system.” “for that reason,” they continue, “older parents in nations with more evolved welfare systems may also have less confl ict with their children than those in nations with more residualist policies. in contrast, older parents in nations with weaker social policies may exhibit both more affection and more confl ict because of their greater involvement with and dependence on adult children in such nations.” these arguments were developed to differentiate between welfare regimes within relatively affl uent societies. it is uncertain whether they apply also to poor societies with weak or non-existent welfare institutions, where the state has no means to compensate exhausted personal resources and individuals have “no choice” but to rely on their relatives. this situation should give rise to a more frequent combination of strong emotional bonds and confl icts, and hence ambivalence. welfare hypothesis: affl uence and well-developed welfare states provide alternatives to functional solidarity within intergenerational relationships. relationships in affl uent societies “survive” as amicable, if based on long-term rewarding emotional closeness, or as ambivalent, if long-term investments are not met by emotional rewards. disharmonious intergenerational relationships are “opted out” and transformed into detached relationships. additionally, interaction effects between the societal and the relational characteristics may be hypothesised. high levels of functional exchange between women and their family of origin might result in a much more confl ictual situation in patrilineal kinship systems as compared to bilineal ones, as such exchanges might be perceived as a signal of disloyalty to the patrilineage to which they belong after marriage. however, this challenge may be reduced if both kinships live very close to each other and have frequent contact. mutual functional intergenerational exchange may also have different effects on affection and confl ict depending on whether it takes place in a poor or affl uent society. whereas functional intergenerational exchange is normatively favoured in less affl uent societies, it is much less favoured in affl uent societies, where the generations primarily rely on their own resources. accordingly, disharmony and confl ict should increase with functional exchange in affl uent societies. although the mechanisms covered by the two broad “lineage” and “welfare” hypotheses are theoretically independent, it may be diffi cult to separate them empirically. lineage-based societies tend to have a strong tendency to rely on kinship with regard to the production of welfare and especially with regard to security against the risks of life. bilinear societies, for obvious reasons of decreased normative solidarity and ambiguous modes of belongingness, provide strong incentives to look for alternatives to the kinship system for insurance and welfare. these theoretical considerations underscore that, depending on societal conditions, intergenerational relationships are very different intermediate goods in the social production function for the maximisation of individual welfare (lindenberg 1989, 1996; nauck • bernhard nauck654 2001, 2007a/b; nauck/klaus 2007; ormel et al. 1999). intergenerational relationships in affl uent societies are means for the pursuit of welfare benefi ts primarily in the realm of social esteem, as they provide communication, exchange of emotions, and behavioural confi rmation. in contrast, intergenerational relationships in less affl uent societies are means to obtain substantial welfare benefi ts also in the realm of physical well-being, as they are an essential resource for mutual services and the production and distribution of material goods. accordingly, one may speculate that intergenerational ambivalence has different causes in both societal types. in welfare societies, its likelihood increases when normative obligations to have a “good” emotional relationship are undermined by personal confl ict; in poor societies its likelihood increases when normative obligations to have a “good” functional relationship are undermined by shortages in individual resources. 3 method 3.1 samples data for the following empirical analysis were gathered in a larger research project on the value of children in cross-cultural comparison (trommsdorff/nauck 2005, 2010). the overall goal of the project was to better understand cross-cultural variations in the perceived benefi t of having children and its impact on fertility and intergenerational relationships. data for the study were collected through standardised face-to-face interviews with mothers of preschoolers and mothers of young adolescents. data collection was undertaken in cooperation with academic teams from local universities and was based on a common sampling design. area sampling, a well-established strategy in cross-cultural psychology (whiting 1968), was applied to enhance cross-national comparability. as nationally representative samples were neither feasible nor intended, variance within otherwise culturally sometimes quite heterogeneous societies was minimised by collecting data from three similar geographic-demographic areas in each country: an urban middle-class area, an urban lower-class area, and a rural area. in two countries, multiple regions were included because of important historical legacies. included separately were east and west germany because of their long political division (szydlik 1996) and north and south india because of differences in the institutionalisation of kinship regimes (klaus/ tipandjan in press). sampling was based on register data, where possible, or on multi-stage cluster sampling with random walk. data were collected in 2002/04 in the people’s republic of china (n = 614), indonesia (n = 600), north india (n = 600), palestine (n = 499), israel (n = 408), turkey (n = 622), south africa (n = 688), east germany (n = 204), west germany (n = 409), and france (n = 200), in 2005/08 in russia (n = 548), poland (n = 678), and the united states (n = 337), in 2009/10 in estonia (n = 300) and south india (n = 599), and in 2011 in jamaica (n = 615). a total of 8,756 interviews were conducted. because “culture,” as captured by the respective area, is an important unit of analysis, the sub-samples for each area are weighted to adjust for size differences in the multivariate parts of the analysis. affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 655 an important strength of our data is that each respondent evaluates relationships with both father and mother, if they are alive, summing to a total of n = 12,860 relationships of 7,882 respondents with at least one parent alive. as the information is based on female respondents, the data are especially suitable for identifying institutional differences. in patrilineal societies, women are affected by patrilocal residence and the resulting increased interaction with the lineage of their husbands. in matrilineal societies, women remain in their relationship with their mothers. in bilineal societies, neolocal residence prevails. 3.2 measures of affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships the women in the sample were asked a series of questions about the nature of their relationship with their biological mother and father. questions were originally developed in english and translated for use in non-english-speaking countries. the accuracy of translations was ensured through back-translation, extensive pre-testing of the instruments, and controls for measurement equivalence (nauck/klaus 2007). the key measures in this analysis captured affectual and confl ictual dimensions of the solidarity-confl ict model. for this purpose, sub-scales of the network of relationships inventory (nri), developed by furman and buhrmester (1985) and assessed by furman and buhrmester (1992) and schwarz (2000), were used. furman and buhrmester (1992) reported a mean alpha of .81 for the nri subscales. in a german study on divorced mothers, the scales confl ict and affection revealed internal consistencies between .76 and .86 (schwarz 2000). respondents were asked to rate the respective relationship from (1) “never” to (5) “always”. “confl ict” was rated with three items (how often do you and your father/mother disagree and quarrel? how often do you and your father/mother argue with each other? how often do you and your father/mother get upset with or mad at each other?). “affection” was also rated with three items (how often does your father/mother let you know that you’re good at many things? how often does your father/mother like or approve of the things you do? how often do you feel that your father/mother admires you?). 3.3 statistical procedures 3.3.1 correction for culture-specifi c response styles one well-known issue in cross-cultural research is cultural variation in response styles to attitude items (van de vijver/leung 1997; fischer 2004; smith/fischer 2008). whereas especially east asian respondents show a “modesty bias” in preferably using middle categories, respondents from the near east and central and south america, for example, tend to show “strong opinions” and preferably use the extreme categories. in order to correct for response styles, the proportion of extreme responses for all 126 attitude items with various contents was calculated and used to correct for individual response styles. in fact, while an unbiased use of the extreme categories would have been 40 percent, the found proportion of an• bernhard nauck656 swers on extreme categories ranged from 67 percent in south india, 57 percent in south africa, 52 percent in jamaica, and 49 percent in israel to 32 percent in china, 27 percent in estonia, and 25 percent in russia. extensive checks revealed that the correction for response styles changed level-differences between areas, but did not have any substantial effect on the multivariate results. 3.3.2 factor analysis a fi rst attempt to replicate the intergenerational solidarity and confl ict model with data from culturally diverse areas was made with regard to the underlying factor structure. in fact, the two-dimensional structure previously found for relationships between parents and their adult children (silverstein et al. 2010) was largely confi rmed for father and mother relationships in the sixteen samples studied: disagreement ( .88), arguing ( .86) and being upset ( .87) loaded on the fi rst factor; appraisal ( .87), approval ( .87), and admiration ( .87) loaded on the second independent factor (r = .15), with 76 percent explained variance by these two factors. this result suggests that the underlying theoretical dimensions of the solidarity-confl ict model were captured by the chosen indicators and that both dimensions were independent of each other. additionally, the cross-cultural validity of the constructs was checked. the ultimate aim was to compare in pairs the pooled solution with the respective country solutions. the computation of target rotation (van de vijver/leung 1997: 88-99) was performed, which provides factor-specifi c agreement coeffi cients. the proportionality coeffi cient was used to assess structural equivalence. the results revealed that the structural equivalence of the measurement of both “affection” and “confl ict” across areas was extremely high. the square root of mean squared difference per factor only rarely exceeded .10, namely for both constructs in france (.11) and the united states (.11) and for “confl ict” in south india ( .13). the proportionality coeffi cient, tucker’s phi, for “affection” was lowest for france and the united states with .98, the proportionality coeffi cient for “confl ict” was lowest for south india, france, and the united states ( .98). thus, based on the factor structure of the multiple measurement of the constructs, cross-cultural equivalence was decisively established. 3.3.3 latent class analysis the next step in testing the solidarity-confl ict model in culturally diverse areas was to replicate the types of relationships by latent class analysis. the basic idea of this approach is that “relations can be characterized as a circumscribed set of ‘ideal’ types that are empirically manifested by combinations of observed variables” (silverstein et al. 1997: 437). for the purpose of replication, the six indicators were dichotomised along the median value to achieve highest comparability. a series of latent class analyses was run to test whether the same set of unobserved classes accounted for the association of the same categorical variables in culturally diverse intergenerational relationships. considerably more variation in the relationships affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 657 was expected. higher variation would imply that a multitude of associations exist between the manifest variables and thus would present a strong challenge to the measurement model. in the test, latent classes were added successively until an acceptable fi t to the data was reached. the selection of an acceptable model was based on the inspection of the likelihood ratio chi-square test statistic (l²), the bayesian information criterion (bic), the dissimilarity index (di), and the proportion of classifi cation errors (ce). results revealed that the l² values dropped from 23,267 for a one-class model to 30 for a six-class model, whereas the bic-values went from 22,727 to -206 in the four-class model and then increased again, when allowing for more classes, thereby confi rming the superiority of the four-class model. from this perspective and following the “elbow criterion” (collins/lanza 2009), the four-class model was selected as the most acceptable, with a di of .019 and a ce of .055. thus, lca based on dichotomous variables reproduces the reported factor structure based on ordinal scales, which indicates some robustness of the measurement. the next step in the analysis was to test which class solution also results in “a well-defi ned, descriptively meaningful, and generalizable typology” (silverstein et al. 2010: 1012) of kinship relationships. the upper panel of table 1 shows the resulting measurement model in terms of the conditional item probabilities constituting the four-class solution, computed across mother and father relationships and countries, along with their respective prevalence. the response probabilities on the six indicators closely matched the theoretical class defi nitions, thus supporting the underlying latent class measurement model. the fi rst class, prevalent in one-fi fth of the relationships, was characterised by a high probability of both affection and confl ict, i.e. “ambivalence.” it should be tab. 1: latent class probabilities and average latent class distribution across all areas and both relationships (corrected data; respondents n = 8,756; relationships n = 12,860) * latent class probabilities greater than .75 are considered relatively high and are shown in bold. source: voc-study latent class probabilities* ambivalent amicable disharmonious detached appraisal .96 .89 .10 .11 approval .97 .94 .21 .26 admiration .96 .89 .16 .14 disagreement .93 .10 .88 .06 arguing .93 .11 .82 .04 being upset .82 .05 .76 .04 total 22 % 45 % 5 % 28 % • bernhard nauck658 noted that this measurement of ambivalence differs from approaches that directly assess perceptions of ambivalence by asking respondents the degree to which their feelings toward their parents are mixed (pillemer/suitor 2002). it also differs from approaches that capture ambivalence by separately measuring positive and negative feelings toward individuals (fingerman et al. 2004; ferring et al. 2009). it resembles most the approach of van gaalen and dykstra (2006), silverstein et al. (2010), and schenk and dykstra (2012) because it focuses on contrasting dimensions of intergenerational relationships, wherein ambivalence refl ects “high levels of both solidarity and confl ict (the intense ties)” (van gaalen/dykstra 2006: 949). the second class had high probabilities on affection items and low probabilities on confl ict items, thus suggesting an amicable type of relationship. the third class was characterised by low affection and high confl ict probabilities and was labelled disharmonious. finally, the fourth type had low probabilities on both affection and confl ict items, implying an emotionally detached type of relationship. although based on different sets of items, the latent class analysis revealed the same types of intergenerational relationships as the analysis provided by giarrusso et al. (2005) for a us sample and by silverstein et al. (2010: 1014) based on data from “six developed nations” from the parental perspective. signifi cant differences, however, were apparent in the relative importance of the respective types. in the study of giarrusso et al. (2005) with parents under 65, ambivalent relationships ranked fi rst, followed by disharmonious and amicable ones. in silverstein et al.’s study of parents (2010), amicable relationships prevailed with 61 percent and ambivalent ones ranked last (8 percent). in the data summarised in table 1, which refl ects the daughters’ perspective, amicable relationships also ranked fi rst, but only for 45 percent of the sample. detached relationships ranked second, but ambivalent relationships ranked ahead of disharmonious ones. this fi nding confi rmed the “intergenerational-stake hypothesis” (bengtson/kuypers 1971; giarusso et al. 1995, 2004; kopp/steinbach 2009; trommsdorff/schwarz 2007), suggesting a more amicable evaluation of intergenerational relationships by the older generation and a more distant evaluation by the younger generation. the fi nding also refl ects the different levels of affection and confl ict in the respective stages of the life course: as the average age of both daughters and parents is younger as compared to those in the study of silverstein et al. (2010), a higher level of confl ict is to be expected (aquilino 1999). 3.4 predictors of relationship types in subsequent multivariate regression models predicting types of relationships, a number of theoretically important covariates were considered. table 1 and table 2 of the appendix display the descriptive characteristics of the sixteen samples. signifi cant cross-area differences were found in the distribution of all variables. affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 659 3.4.1 individual level on the individual respondent level, several social characteristic variables captured individual variation in resources and opportunities. to differentiate between the opportunity structures of rural and urban settings, a measure of rural background was used, indicating whether the respondent lived in a village during her schoolage years, at time of her wedding, or at the time of the interview (0 = never lived in rural areas; 3 = lived in rural areas at all three time points). following the research tradition of the demographic health and fertility surveys, the welfare level of the household was measured using an eleven-point index based on the possession of durable consumer goods and property (0 = lowest, 10 = highest). this provides a larger degree of cross-cultural comparability than measures of monetary income. the educational level was coded with fi ve categories: no schooling at all (1), some schooling without a primary school degree (2), a primary school degree but no secondary degree (3), a secondary degree with or without some additional vocational training (4), and a tertiary degree or at least some college or university training (5). low levels of education characterised the indian samples, whereas the highest proportions of women with tertiary education were in the israeli, the eastern and western european and the us samples. a seven-point index measured formal inclusion in the labour force, based on items such as the respondent’s gainful employment (at the time of her wedding and at the time of the interview), voluntary work, workplace outside the home, employment by a non-family member, monetary payment, bluecollar versus white-collar worker, and full-time versus part-time work. the mothers in the indian samples had the lowest employment status, the mothers in eastern and western europe and in the united states had the highest. relevant individual attitudes of the respondents were captured with three variables. value of children (voc) was measured in two dimensions, namely the instrumentality of children for increasing the parent’s comfort and the instrumentality of children for providing stimulation and affect. the measurement itself was based on a well-validated instrument (nauck 2007a; nauck/klaus 2007). the fi rst factor contained four items, such as “to have one more person to help the family economically” or “children can help you when you are old,” and was interpreted as comfort benefi ts through children. the internal consistency of the resulting additive scale across all countries was a = .84. the second factor contained four items, such as “it is fun to have young children around the house” or “the pleasure you get from watching your children grow,” and was interpreted as affection benefi ts through children. the reliability of the scale was a = .82. a 10-item scale of normative family obligations was constructed based on selected items from the family value scale of georgas (1989, 1991; georgas et al. 1996), and a short version of the self-construal scale (singelis 1994) was used after modifying the wording (schwarz et al. 2005) to make the items refer to the respondent’s family. participants indicated on a 5-point scale how strongly they disagreed (1) or agreed (5) with the statements. the reliability of this scale was á = .80, and thus superior to the interdependence subscale (á = .71) and the family value scale (ranging from á = .56 to .77). • bernhard nauck660 3.4.2 relational level on the relational level, the age of the parents is considered to be an indicator of vulnerability and need for personal assistance. proximity indicates the spatial distance between the respondent and the respective parent, ranging from 1 (overseas) to 5 (in the same household). especially the matrilineal society of jamaica showed signifi cant differences between mothers and fathers, which also resulted in signifi cant differences in the frequency of contacts and mutual help. contacts ranged from 1 (less than once a month) to 5 (daily). mutual help is a combined index of receiving help with daily chores and providing help with daily chores, measured on a threepoint scale each, ranging from 1 (almost never) to 3 (regularly). high levels of mutual help were found in the south african sample, whereas relatively low levels (with the biological parents of married women) were found in patrilineal societies like india (nauck 2010; nauck/arránz becker 2013), and in germany and the united states. 3.4.3 area level three societal-level indicators were considered. following the basic theoretical assumptions in the lineage and welfare hypotheses, the type of kinship system in the respective area and the societal welfare level were expected to be central determinants. the gross national income per capita (gni) of 2005 in the purchasing power of 2000 was taken as a proxy indicator for each area’s welfare level. the united states (37,206 usd), france (23,688 usd), germany (23,747 usd) were by far the most affl uent societies, whereas india (409 usd) and indonesia (910 usd) ranked last. patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilineal kinship systems have different consequences for women’s relationships with their family of origin. whereas matrilineal and bilineal kinship systems do not limit access, patrilineal kinship systems may draw a clear demarcation between married women and their family of origin. an attempt to measure the prevalence of lineages within the respective area was made by comparing the relationships of the respondents with their biological parents and their in-laws. the comparison was based on proximity, the frequency of contact, and mutual help. the sum of indicators for the in-laws was subtracted from those for the biological parents within each area. if the relationships are balanced, the resulting indicator equals zero, a value above zero indicates a higher prevalence of matrifocal relationships, whereas a value below zero indicates a higher prevalence of patrilineal relationships (within the lineage of the husband). the areas with the strongest prevalence of patrilineages were found in india, palestine, and china. the areas with a strong orientation toward the family of origin were in south africa, indonesia, and jamaica. accordingly, these areas are labelled as having a high prevalence of matrifocal kinship systems. individual attitudes are related to the respective cultural background. for shaping intergenerational relationships, culturally institutionalised normative expectations toward children are central, with instrumental utilities of children showing the highest variation between countries (nauck 2006). moreover, multi-level analyaffection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 661 ses have demonstrated that whereas fertility intentions are negatively related to a comfort utility value of children on the cultural level, they are positively related to comfort utility expectations on the individual level (mayer/trommsdorff 2010). in order to capture this dynamic, the area mean of comfort utility voc of individual responses was introduced as culture of comfort utility of children on the area level. 4 results 4.1 latent class distribution table 2 shows gender-specifi c and area-specifi c distributions of the four latent classes. relationships with mothers and fathers were characteristically different. whereas the relationship with the mother was much more likely to be ambivalent or amicable than the relationship with the father, the reverse was true for detached relationships. no gender-specifi c differences were found for disharmonious relationships. this fi nding refl ects the closer and much less “avoidable” mother-daughter relationship, which entails greater investments in contact and mutual help and thus more opportunities for confl ict, whereas the relationship with fathers is more likely to be distant and on a low level of interaction. areas in table 2 are ranked according to their gni (gross national income per capita) in 2005. the most amicable relationships between daughters and their mothers were in the united states, palestine, germany, and russia. the lowest levels were in south india, china, and jamaica. detached relationships with mothers were most common in china, estonia, and indonesia and least common in south africa, india, palestine, and israel. disharmonious relationships were most common in estonia, russia, and france and least common in south africa, palestine, china, and south india. ambivalent relationships were most prevalent in india, south africa, jamaica, israel, turkey, and palestine but rare in china, estonia, russia, and germany. these results showed some signifi cant differences to analyses by silverstein et al. (2010: 1014) based on the oasis (old age service systems and intergenerational solidarity) and lsog (longitudinal study of generations) data, as the most extreme cases in the cross-area comparisons were not to be found in the western european and north american context but rather in east asia, africa, and the near east, whereas the countries, which were included in both studies, turned out to be rather “moderate”. smaller differences in the relationships with mothers and fathers in individual areas were largely overshadowed by general trends. for example, relationships with fathers were more likely to be detached in all areas. other signifi cant differences were to be found in ambivalent relationships. without exception, the mother relationship was more likely to be ambivalent than the father relationship, but there was large variance in degree among the areas. whereas the percentage differences were low in indonesia, china, france, estonia, and poland, they were high in jamaica (16 percent), israel (13 percent), turkey (10 percent), india (8 percent), and south africa (8 percent), indicating strong gender differences in intergenerational relationships in these countries. • bernhard nauck662 tab. 2: estimated latent class distribution for relationships and areas (percent) ambivalent amicable disharmonious detached mother (m) 24.9 47.7 4.6 22.9 father (f) 19.2 41.7 5.1 34.0 north india m 50.9 40.0 2.6 6.6 f 42.0 38.7 1.8 17.5 south india m 69.7 26.8 1.8 1.6 f 62.4 32.4 2.4 2.7 palestine m 26.7 64.8 1.2 7.3 f 22.1 64.1 2.5 11.3 indonesia m 12.9 47.7 2.8 36.4 f 13.7 42.1 2.7 41.4 china m 3.7 30.7 1.8 63.8 f 3.2 24.4 1.3 71.1 jamaica m 44.6 36.0 5.8 13.5 f 28.5 32.6 10.6 28.2 russia m 11.9 58.7 9.9 19.5 f 8.6 45.0 10.0 36.4 turkey m 29.7 49.0 5.6 15.7 f 19.7 47.6 5.7 26.9 south africa m 43.7 51.6 0.9 3.8 f 35.5 52.7 0.9 10.9 poland m 14.0 50.9 7.3 27.8 f 11.1 45.1 10.6 33.1 estonia m 9.0 42.9 10.2 38.0 f 4.5 24.0 9.7 61.7 israel m 34.8 51.7 4.8 8.7 f 21.5 56.3 2.6 19.6 france m 15.4 47.8 9.9 26.9 f 12.1 37.1 10.9 40.5 east germany m 11.7 64.2 3.9 20.1 f 6.3 52.1 6.3 35.2 west germany m 13.4 60.9 6.6 19.1 f 7.0 47.6 7.4 38.0 united states m 15.9 67.2 4.4 12.5 f 9.6 60.1 3.8 26.4 source: voc-study (respondents n = 8,756; relationships n = 12,860) affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 663 with regard to the initial research questions, even the descriptive results indicated that relationships of adult daughters with their biological parents were strongly infl uenced by institutionalised kinship systems and their implications for gender relations. the inspection of area differences revealed that detachment is a result of “opting out,” especially in bilineal kinship systems, where disharmonious relationships were relatively uncommon and amicable relationships were relatively frequent. the clear differences among the sample’s strongest patrilineal societies (india and china) are puzzling. whereas ambivalent relationships were extremely frequent in north and south india, they were relatively rare in china, where amicable or detached relationships prevailed. these differences could not be explained well by systematic socio-structural differences among the respondents (appendix, table a1) or by differences in the intergenerational interaction patterns (appendix, table a2). although the highest proportion of women living in an extended household (with their in-laws) was found in north india (49 percent), the share in south india was lower (37 percent) and not much different from china (30 percent). however, the share of women with less than primary education was much higher in north india (29 percent) and south india (29 percent) than in china (7 percent), which – together with their much lower labour force participation – may indicate a much weaker position in the joint household with the in-laws. an analysis of the effect of relational characteristics was similarly inconclusive. of all areas studied, the north indian women had the lowest proximity, the lowest contact level, and the lowest level of mutual help with their parents; however, south indian women did not differ signifi cantly from their chinese counterparts on these variables. these inconsistencies in the fi ndings could be related to specifi c aspects of the institutionalised patrilineal kinship system favouring both high levels of ambivalence (in india) and high levels of detachment (in china). uncovering why the effects vary unexpectedly between countries requires more detailed analyses from an “emic” perspective (which would be beyond the scope of this paper), i.e. taking an immanent culture specifi c perspective. it needs to be investigated whether low negotiation power, which is most likely to be associated with low educational level, results in low interaction with biological parents in combination with high levels of both affection and confl ict. 4.2 multinomial logistic regression a series of three-level multinomial logistic regression analyses was undertaken to test the relationship between class membership and relational, individual, and societal characteristics. amicable relationships as the most common class were chosen as the reference. as the number of areas included (level 3) was limited, separate analyses were run with either only the “matrifocal kinship system” (and related interaction terms on level 1) or the “gross national income per capita” (and related interaction terms) included. however, results diverged only marginally from the analysis that included both variables, with the coeffi cients never exceeding a difference of >.05 and with no changes in the signifi cance tests. • bernhard nauck664 tab. 3: three-level multinomial logistic regression predicting latent class membership of intergenerational relationships (n = 12,860) relationship class (reference: amicable) exp (b) detached disharmonious ambivalent fixed effects level 3 (areas) matrifocal kinship system 1.09 1.07 .94 gross national income per capita .88 .70* .83 culture of comfort utility of children .72 .38** 1.06 level 2 (respondents) rural background 1.06* 1.01 .90*** education .94 .99 .94 workforce inclusion .97*** .98 .99 family welfare level .93*** .90*** .99 comfort voc .85** .81* 1.36*** affection voc .79** .86 .61*** normative family obligations .94 .28*** .13*** level 1 (relationship) parent’s age .99** .97*** .99*** parent’s sex (reference: father) .55*** .83* 1.36*** parent’s proximity 1.22*** 1.55*** 1.05 contact to parent .77*** .77*** .95 functional exchange with parent .91*** .85*** 1.09** matrifocal * proximity .98 .94*** .99 matrifocal * contact .99 1.04* 1.01 matrifocal * exchange 1.00 1.00 .99 gni * proximity .98 .95 .94* gni * contact .91*** .93* .99 gni * exchange 1.00 1.10** 1.01 random effects variance components m0 a m1 m0 m1 m0 m1 relationships (n = 12,860) π²/3 π²/3 π²/3 π²/3 π²/3 π²/3 respondents (n = 8,756) 1.29 1.45 1.42 1.35 1.46 1.35 areas (n = 16) .79 .88 .46 .42 .74 .38 interclass correlation icc (null/full model) level 2 .24 .26 .27 .27 .27 .27 level 3 .15 .16 .09 .08 .13 .08 * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 a refers to a three-level random intercept model without covariates, m1 refers to the threelevel model with level 3 covariates source: voc-study affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 665 the fi rst block of variables in the fi nal model (table 3) contains the societal-level characteristics: predominant kinship system, welfare level measured as gni, and the culture of the instrumentality of children as indicated by aggregated variations in the comfort utility of children (level 3). the second block contains personal characteristics of the daughter such as her position in the social structure, her personal expectations toward children, and her self-perceived normative family obligations (level 2). additional tests revealed that neither the household structure (i.e., whether the daughters lived in an extended household or not) nor the number of their children had an additional effect on class membership; both variables were omitted. the third block contains the characteristics of the relationship between the daughter and her parents as well as interaction terms between societal characteristics and relationship characteristics (level 1). additional tests revealed no interaction effects between the parents’ age and sex and societal characteristics. table 3 displays the odds ratios for detached, disharmonious, and ambivalent relationships with parents in relation to an amicable relationship as the reference category. this analysis revealed the following general empirical regularities within the broad cross-cultural context, providing the kind of empirical evidence previously available only for a limited number of countries located mostly in europe and america. relationship characteristics and characteristics of the parents the older the parents were in this study, the more likely it was that the relationship was amicable and not ambivalent, detached, or disharmonious. as already shown in the bivariate results, the relationship with the mother was more likely to be ambivalent or amicable, whereas the relationship with the father was more likely to be disharmonious or detached. living in close proximity to the biological parents and high contact frequency were counteracting forces with regard to affection and confl ict in the relationship. whereas proximity as such increased the risk of a disharmonious or even a detached relationship, this was counterbalanced by the frequency of contact, which generally varies positively with opportunity. thus, if the contact with parents was frequent, the relationship was less likely to be disharmonious or detached. a higher level of functional exchange in the intergenerational relationship decreased the likelihood that the relationship was disharmonious or detached, but it increased the likelihood that the relationship was ambivalent. this was a further indication that intergenerational dependence is a strong predictor of loyalty and amicable relationships but also for confl ict (“voice”) and ambivalence if returns on high and complex investments in the relationship do not meet expectations. it also confi rmed fi ndings of silverstein et al. (2010: 1015) that parents who received help with household chores from a child were more likely to have ambivalent relationships with that child. individual characteristics of the daughters compared to institutionalised relationship characteristics, individual expectations and perceived normative obligations, the socio-structural positioning of the women had relatively small effects on the quality of intergenerational relationships.women • bernhard nauck666 with a rural background were more likely to have detached relationships with their parents and were less likely to have ambivalent relationships because they were more likely to have moved to an urban environment and to have had less opportunity for frequent contact. respondents’ educational level had no effect on class membership. their formal involvement in the labour force reduced the likelihood of detached relationships, as did the welfare level of the household in which they were then living. in other words, if a woman had secure economic resources, the relationship with her parents is more harmonious and rewarding. on the other hand, relative poverty in the societal context made confl icting or detached relationships more likely. in contrast, expectations about intergenerational relationships had a strong impact on the quality of intergenerational relationships. the expectation that children are instrumental for increasing physical well-being signifi cantly increased the likelihood of ambivalent intergenerational relationships and decreased the likelihood of detached or disharmonious relationships. this, again, underscores the dependency effects on ambivalence. having the expectation that children are instrumental for receiving affection was strongly related to amicable intergenerational relationships and reduced the likelihood of ambivalent and detached relationships. the same effect was associated to an even greater degree with perceived strong normative family obligations, reducing the likelihood of ambivalent and disharmonious intergenerational relationships. this fi nding contradicts previous research on intergenerational ambivalence, which has suggested that ambivalence is strongly related to normative obligations. this contradiction in fi ndings may, however, stem from differences in theoretical constructs. whereas ambivalence research focuses on moral dilemmas and contradictory normative structures (lüscher/pillemer 1998; pillemer et al. 2007), the self-construal scale (singelis 1994) used here seemed to refl ect more the affective dimension of belongingness (nauck/arránz becker 2013). societal characteristics central for the guiding hypotheses is the relationship between societal characteristics and relationship types. although low case numbers reduced the chances of achieving statistical signifi cance, some of the observed differences were strong enough to test societal effects aftercontrolling for relational and individual characteristics. • bilineal and matrilineal kinship systems, which allow for the maintenance of relationships with the woman’s family of origin, were associated with a higher prevalence of detached and disharmonious intergenerational relationships and with a lower prevalence of ambivalent relationships (relative to amicable relationships). in other words, ambivalent relationships with biological parents are more likely for women in patrilineal kinship systems. this fi nding supports existing arguments that patrilineal kinship systems affect primarily functional solidarity, wealth fl ows, and inheritance while leaving emotional relationships with the family of origin untouched (nauck 2010; nauck/arránz becker 2013). affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 667 • intergenerational relationships of adult women also varied with affl uence on the societal level, as a higher welfare level decreased the likelihood of detached, ambivalent, and especially disharmonious relationships even if all the relationship and individual characteristics of the women were controlled for, i.e., intergenerational relationships in affl uent societies were very likely to be more harmonious than in poor societies. this fi nding supports the general assumptions about “opting out” of disharmonious relationships under affl uent conditions, which are in turn related to issues of decreased dependency and increased choice regarding the resulting relationship characteristics. • a counterbalancing force to the effects of the societal welfare level was a culture of instrumentality in intergenerational relationships as indicated by collectively shared high comfort utility expectations toward children. in areas where comfort utility voc was generally high, the likelihood of disharmonious intergenerational relationships was very low. because high comfort utility expectations on the individual level also signifi cantly decreased disharmonious intergenerational relationships, societal and individual level effects reinforced each other. signifi cant interaction effects between societal and relationship levels provided additional insight into the preconditions of affection and confl ict in the intergenerational relationships of women. whereas functional exchange generally decreased the likelihood of disharmonious relationships ( .85***), they became more likely in affl uent societies ( 1.10**). intergenerational support is generally accepted under conditions of scarce resources, but it indicates a precarious situation in affl uent societies, which increases the likelihood of confl icts (in the absence of affection). frequent intergenerational contact made detached and disharmonious relationships especially unlikely in affl uent societies and thus again boosted effects on the individual level. similar reinforcing effects were found with regard to the institutionalised kinship system. as mentioned before, proximity and contact generally counterbalanced each other. the counterbalancing effect was stronger in patrilineal societies and weaker in matrifocal kinship systems. thus, in patrilineal kinship systems, there is an especially high potential that women’s relationships with their family of origin will become confl ictual. 5 discussion silverstein et al. (2010: 1019) concluded in their analysis that “the evidence in this investigation points to the importance of national context in structuring emotional ties between older parents and their adult children. identifying the ecological conditions responsible – welfare state structure, economic development, and/or cultural values – will require a larger sample of nations on which to map these multiple pathways.” the present investigation was designed to help fi ll this gap. the latent class structure of two core dimensions of intergenerational relationships – affection and confl ict – were examined in an analysis of the quality of the emotional ties of adult women to their fathers and mothers. respondents lived in eighteen different areas in asia, africa, europe, and north america and were thus embedded in diverse eco• bernhard nauck668 nomic development contexts and in a variety of institutionalised welfare regimes and kinship systems. the analysis demonstrated that the four-class model of ambivalent, amicable, disharmonious, and detached relationships was also suitable for describing the perceptions of the younger generation regarding their relationships with their mothers and fathers and that the model can be extended to the analysis of intergenerational relationships in a much larger variety of ecological conditions. this provided further empirical evidence that the structure of emotional ties between generations is robust not only within affl uent societies, but also across levels of economic development and institutionalised kinship systems. the results of this study complement previous fi ndings about exchange patterns within the kinship systems of mothers from work related to the functional and structural dimensions of the solidarity model. among economically developed societies, previous studies found the lowest level of kinship usage in countries like the united states and germany, resulting in a high proportion of detached relationships. this study confi rmed these fi ndings. however, an even more relevant observation from previous work was that cross-societal differences were most clearly notable in the proportions of “obligatory” kinship relationships: “these were widely absent in israel, the united states, and germany, whereas they were signifi cantly more prevalent in countries like russia, turkey, and palestine” (nauck/arránz becker 2013: 589). this suggests a self-selection effect in kinship relationships: under affl uent conditions relationships “survive” only, if based on strong emotional bonds, whereas in the absence of emotional bonds, opting out is much more likely. in less economically comfortable situations, relationships will be maintained regardless of their emotional quality in order to secure survival through the maintenance of functional exchange. in kinship relationships generally, individuals have the freedom to opt out and therefore to have the relationship classifi ed as “detached”. yet, in the special case of intergenerational relationships this choice is restricted, especially when strong norms of intergenerational obligations are imposed and internalised. only in the case of patrilineal systems, women can take the (unlikely) choice of shifting intergenerational obligations from their family of origin onto the in-laws. thus, intergenerational relationships are much less likely to be detached (“exited”) but much more likely to be characterised simultaneously by strong emotional bonds, confl icts, and disputes (“voice”) and, hence, ambivalence. however, women’s mother relationships are much less “avoidable” for them than their father relationships, a fact refl ected in different gender-specifi c distributions of ambivalent and detached relationships. if the intergenerational stake hypothesis holds, then the level of ambivalence should be higher as compared to the older generation. in fact, the main result of the descriptive analysis was that, although two thirds of the intergenerational relationships of the women were affectionate, about one half of these are “ambivalent”. this simultaneous inclusion of affection and confl ict thus adds additional insights into their cross-cultural comparison (trommsdorff/mayer 2012: 326-327), within which the general prevalence of closeness was stressed, especially with regard to societies with collectivistic family cultures. affection and confl ict in intergenerational relationships of women • 669 the latent class analysis revealed that the highest prevalence of ambivalent relationships with mothers (from the perspective of the daughter) were to be found in india, jamaica, south africa, israel, turkey, and palestine (in that order) and were thus less common to the affl uent and individualised societies of the west. multinomial regression revealed that the likelihood of ambivalence in intergenerational relationships increases the more intense the functional exchange and the stronger comfort expectations toward children are, whereas the likelihood decreases with stronger affective expectations toward children and feelings of strong family obligations. finally, interaction effects between societal and relational levels revealed that confl icting relationships with biological parents increase with proximity in patrilineal societies and when functional exchange is performed in affl uent societies. the fact that only mothers were included in the sample may limit the fi ndings. it remains unclear how intergenerational relationships are structured before the transition to parenthood and how exactly parenthood or marriage impacts intergenerational solidarity in different contexts. it is also unlikely that the fi ndings would be similar for fathers, especially because intergenerational relationships interact strongly with gender in kinship systems, be they matrilineal, patrilineal, or bilineal. possibly, men’s relationships with their fathers are less detached than women’s father relationships, especially in patrilineal kinship systems. without a doubt, including male respondents would make for a more comprehensive test of the lineage hypothesis, but it would also increase the complexity of analyses considerably. a further potential limitation stems from the use of area sampling. whereas this approach is appropriate for cross-regional comparison, which was the primary aim of the study, it cannot yield accurately representative pictures of the countries to which the regions belong. moreover, the analysis could not rely on independent measurements on the area level. instead, country level measures were used to measure the welfare level, and aggregated individual data were used to measure the institutionalised kinship system. despite these limitations, the replication of the solidarity-ambivalence model across very different cultures proved to be analytically fruitful. its integration in a multilevel framework is promising because it not only takes immediate individual opportunities into account but also long-standing, historically rooted institutional regulations and cultural beliefs concerning the relevance of intergenerational solidarity. acknowledgements this study is part of the research project “value of children, fertility and intergenerational relationships in cross-cultural comparison” (p.i.: bernhard nauck, chemnitz and gisela trommsdorff, konstanz, germany), supported by the german research foundation. the regional collaborators in the voc-study include: gang zheng (people’s republic of china), ramesh mishra and arun tipandjan (india), lieke wisnubrata (indonesia), karl peltzer (south africa), asher ben arieh (israel), muhammad m. haj-yahia (palestine), cigdem kagitcibasi (turkey), zaretkhan m. saralieva (russia), kairi kasearu (estonia), katarzyna lubiewska (poland), colette sabatier (france), • bernhard nauck670 annekatrin bock (jamaica), wolfgang friedlmeier (united states). the author thanks fons van de vijver (tilburg), boris mayer (bern) and two anonymous reviewers for 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o ne si a c hi na ja m ai ca r us si a tu rk ey a ge o f r es p o nd en t 33 .0 31 .8 33 .1 33 .0 35 .4 33 .1 34 .1 35 .4 n um b er o f c hi ld re n 2. 6 2. 1 3. 7 2. 3 1. 4 2. 3 1. 6 2. 2 r ur al b ac kg ro un d (0 -3 ) 1. 7 1. 6 1. 7 1. 6 1. 5 1. 2 2. 1 1. 2 e xt en d ed h o us eh o ld (% ) 48 .7 37 .1 3. 5 45 .5 30 .2 18 .8 26 .9 11 .2 e d uc at io n < p ri m ar y (% ) 51 .3 20 .3 4. 0 4. 2 6. 6 1. 2 0. 2 8. 1 e d uc at io n te rt ia ry (% ) 28 .9 8. 8 23 .4 7. 6 12 .6 10 .6 45 .9 24 .6 la b o r st at us (0 -6 ) 0. 7 0. 8 1. 2 1. 6 3. 3 2. 8 4. 1 1. 6 h o us eh o ld s e s (0 -1 0) 4. 2 2. 8 4. 3 3. 7 3. 4 3. 2 5. 0 4. 6 n o rm at iv e o b lig at io ns (1 -5 ) 4. 4 4. 7 4. 6 4. 7 4. 2 4. 3 4. 2 4. 3 c o m fo rt v o c (1 -5 ) 3. 8 3. 6 3. 7 4. 0 2. 4 3. 0 2. 8 2. 5 a ff ec tio n v o c (1 -5 ) 4. 2 4. 8 4. 5 4. 4 4. 2 4. 2 4. 4 4. 6 s o ut h a fr ic a po la nd e st o ni a is ra el fr an ce g er m an y e as t g er m an y w es t u ni te d s ta te s a ge o f r es p o nd en t 32 .7 41 .7 41 .0 35 .8 44 .3 36 .1 39 .1 44 .7 n um b er o f c hi ld re n 2. 6 2. 3 2. 4 2. 6 2. 7 1. 8 2. 0 3. 2 r ur al b ac kg ro un d (0 -3 ) 2. 8 1. 5 1. 4 0. 3 0. 3 0. 5 1. 6 1. 5 e xt en d ed h o us eh o ld (% ) 21 .2 18 .0 10 .0 1. 4 2. 7 1. 1 1. 4 2. 1 e d uc at io n < p ri m ar y (% ) 10 .9 0. 3 0. 4 0. 0 0. 5 1. 1 0. 3 0. 0 e d uc at io n te rt ia ry (% ) 26 .0 48 .5 33 .3 66 .5 64 .6 37 .2 44 .6 54 .6 la b o r st at us (0 -6 ) 2. 3 3. 9 4. 9 3. 6 3. 7 4. 0 3. 2 4. 8 h o us eh o ld s e s (0 -1 0) 2. 8 5. 1 4. 9 4. 9 7. 0 4. 1 4. 9 6. 9 n o rm at iv e o b lig at io ns (1 -5 ) 4. 7 4. 3 4. 0 4. 3 4. 0 4. 0 3. 8 4. 2 c o m fo rt v o c (1 -5 ) 3. 7 2. 5 2. 6 2. 9 1. 7 1. 7 1. 6 1. 8 a ff ec tio n v o c (1 -5 ) 4. 0 4. 3 3. 8 4. 4 4. 3 4. 0 4. 0 4. 3 s o ur ce : va lu e o f c hi ld re n s ur ve y • bernhard nauck678 ta b . a 2: d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s fo r th e st ud ie d s am p le s fr o m 1 6 ar ea s: r el at io na l c ha ra ct er is tic s in d ia n o rt h in d ia s o ut h pa le st in e in d o ne si a c hi na ja m ai ca r us si a tu rk ey a ge m o th er 60 .2 60 .1 62 .4 59 .4 65 .1 58 .9 58 .6 64 .0 a ge f at he r 61 .5 61 .6 63 .6 61 .6 65 .7 60 .3 61 .2 64 .8 pr o xi m ity to f at he r (1 -5 ) 2. 6 3. 0 3. 1 4. 1 3. 3 2. 9 3. 4 3. 1 pr o xi m ity to m o th er (1 -5 ) 2. 6 3. 3 3. 0 4. 2 3. 4 3. 8 3. 8 3. 1 c o nt ac t t o f at he r (1 -5 ) 2. 0 3. 1 3. 1 3. 7 3. 1 3. 2 3. 5 3. 0 c o nt ac t t o m o th er (1 -5 ) 2. 0 3. 4 3. 3 3. 9 3. 2 4. 3 4. 1 3. 4 m ut ua l h el p fa th er (1 -6 ) 2. 9 3. 3 3. 5 3. 4 3. 9 3. 2 3. 6 3. 3 m ut ua l h el p m o th er (1 -6 ) 3. 1 3. 6 3. 6 3. 8 4. 1 4. 2 4. 3 3. 5 s o ut h a fr ic a po la nd e st o ni a is ra el fr an ce g er m an y e as t g er m an y w es t u ni te d s ta te s a ge m o th er 60 .9 68 .3 67 .5 63 .2 72 .3 61 .9 67 .3 80 .0 a ge f at he r 63 .7 69 .9 68 .6 64 .8 73 .0 62 .7 68 .1 80 .9 pr o xi m ity to f at he r (1 -5 ) 4. 1 3. 3 3. 0 2. 8 3. 1 2. 9 2. 9 3. 0 pr o xi m ity to m o th er (1 -5 ) 4. 2 3. 5 3. 2 3. 1 3. 3 3. 0 3. 0 3. 0 c o nt ac t t o f at he r (1 -5 ) 3. 3 3. 4 2. 8 3. 9 3. 2 3. 0 3. 2 3. 1 c o nt ac t t o m o th er (1 -5 ) 3. 5 3. 7 3. 6 4. 3 3. 6 3. 7 3. 6 3. 6 m ut ua l h el p fa th er (1 -6 ) 4. 1 3. 6 3. 3 3. 0 3. 2 2. 8 2. 7 2. 6 m ut ua l h el p m o th er (1 -6 ) 4. 4 3. 8 3. 7 3. 4 3. 6 2. 9 2. 9 2. 8 s o ur ce : va lu e o f c hi ld re n s ur ve y published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer language & copy editor (english) / lektorat & übersetzungen (englisch) amelie franke copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) dimiter philipov (wien) tomáš sobotka (wien) heike trappe (rostock) © federal institute for population research 2014 – all rights reserved intergenerational solidarity revisited: migrant families in the dilemma of providing family or elderly care in the context of the covid-19 pandemic and its challenges intergenerational solidarity revisited: migrant families in the dilemma of providing family or elderly care in the context of the covid-19 pandemic and its challenges* magdalena ślusarczyk abstract: the assumption that people live in one place with their lives guided by a singular set of national and cultural norms no longer holds true. the same applies for migrating due to various reasons with the aim of fi nding a better place to live. instead, contemporary transnational migrants are accustomed to operating in several contexts of employment, leisure and political interests that extend beyond national borders. yet, state borders still cut through the very core of the family life, forcing migrants to take diffi cult decisions about leaving, separation or arranging care of children and elderly, but also creating a certain degree of choice between two or more socio-political social and cultural contexts. events of recent years have shaken established beliefs about the potential of transnational care networks. as the experience of the covid-19 pandemic has shown, what once seemed to be enduring rules can be suspended for long periods of time. for poland, one of the countries affected by intense mobility to and from the country, discussions about the effects of migration on care networks are of paramount importance. as a direct consequence of mobility, the expectations and obligations that migrants (especially women) have towards the family they leave behind may change, shift or even remain unrestricted in spite of living abroad. yet, establishing family care strategies for elderly family members in ageing societies is also based on the assumption of availability of migrant labour. drawing on two sets of data, this article asks how intergenerational obligations were negotiated during the covid-19 pandemic and whether the associated long-term restrictions on crossing national borders caused changes in patterns of care provision. keywords: transnational care · migration · pandemic · care strategies comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 99-116 (date of release: 21.02.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-05 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-05en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • magdalena ślusarczyk100 1 introduction keith halfacree (1995) emphasises that just as it is important to recognise the ability of migrants and their families to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by crossing borders, it is also necessary to simultaneously identify the anchors that hold them back. and one such anchor (grzymała-kazłowska 2013) that signifi cantly affects the sense of mobility is the family remaining in poland and the commitment to care. until recently “invisible in theories of migration” (ackers 2004: 390), today transnational care for children or the elderly is part of the global fl ow of goods, capital and labour. it signifi es changes in the labour market (the sphere of care work), the emergence of new dimensions of global inequalities (abrego 2014), transforms family structure through the emergence of transnational care chains, transnational motherhood and changes in intergenerational relations or the renegotiation of gender roles (cf. ehrenreich/hochschild 2002; krzyżowski et al. 2017; pustułka/ ślusarczyk 2016; merla et al. 2020; radziwinowiczówna et al. 2018). there is plenty of literature on migrants’ care obligations towards relatives remaining in the country, as well as on supporting migrant families in caring for young children (baldassar 2016; baldassar/merla 2013; kilkey/merla 2014; madianou/ miller 2013). it dates back to the work of baldassar, wilding and baldock (2007) and their analysis of the ways in which adult migrants in perth, western australia, manage to care for their ageing parents across vast distances. this issue is also important for central and eastern european countries, including poland, where the period of transformation and accession to the european union have resulted in a signifi cant increase in mobility. this was largely the result of changes in the country, restructuring of the economy and economic crises causing unemployment. on the other hand, the transition period brought about a slowdown or withdrawal of the state from many social obligations. in this situation, there were no conditions for changing the so-called “familialism by default” model in the care of the elderly into a mixed or predominantly state-owned model. the institutional solutions were still scarce compared to the needs (perek-białas/racław 2014; radziwinowicz/rosińska 2022; baranowska 2017; krzyżowski 2013), moreover, we are aware that these needs will only increase in the coming years due to the ageing of the population. however, the last two years have been a period of unprecedented change, an abrupt suspension of many previous caregiving strategies based on the possibility to travel to the country of origin or to invite relatives to the country of immigration. since 2020, the expectations of transnational caregiving obligations and maintenance of relationships and cultural ties were particularly heightened. thus, i am interested in the question of how family relations and solidarities were impacted by the scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. the aim of this article is to consider whether, and if so how, the pandemic affected the (re)defi nition of care strategies among polish migrants in europe, how migrants reacted to this new situation, whether new transnational care practices emerged and or how existing ones were transformed. radziwinowiczówna and colleagues (2020: 475) point out that, “research on care intentions not only helps to predict future care arrangements, but also enhances our understanding of the meaning of intergenerational solidarity revisited • 101 care for the people engaged in it.” it is also worth mentioning that it can also support us in forecasting both migration processes and diagnosing potential care needs. 2 care – expectations, commitments and hopes as indicated above, the issue of providing care for older family members in situations in which the younger generation has emigrated is the subject of research in many countries. referring to the situation of poland in the post-transformation period, attention should be paid fi rst of all to the assumptions concerning the family and the norms of intergenerational solidarity (kwak 2017). this norm is strongly rooted in polish culture and it is facilitated by the lack of institutional care provided by the state, which i refer to in the section on research results. the key assumptions mentioned concerning the family are specifi c social relations within the so-called family network, which are a source of social capital based on “strong” ties (fihel/okólski 2014; granovetter 1983). these ties presuppose close contacts, trust (with common distrust of public institutions, the state or the media; lewenstein 2006) and support when needed. this applies both to caring for ageing parents and supporting young migrant families. the norms of solidarity and reciprocity arising from these assumptions and social practices still rooted in the legacy of the communist and transition periods are in turn the basis for transnational care theories such as the concept of ethno-morality of care (radziwinowiczówna et al. 2018) or kinship morality (finch/mason 2003). höpfl inger (1991) emphasises that even in late modern society, intergenerational relations and social networks between relatives are stronger than the values of individualism and independence. höpfl inger refers to this as intimacy at a distance, the maintenance of ties between family members who live separately or even at a considerable distance. intergenerational transfers have changed with modernisation and the nuclearisation of the family leading to the exclusion of distant relatives from intergenerational exchange. this leads – at least in the context of poland – to a partial limitation of the solidarity norm and its application mainly to close family members, but it does not abolish it (krzyżowski 2013). in the migration context, this norm is increased by the widespread acceptance of departure and the conviction that migrants have chosen the best strategy for socially supporting the whole family. therefore, grandparents (e.g., the so-called fl ying grandmothers) support their children and grandchildren and migrants have a sense of responsibility for the parents, in-laws and sometimes even other relatives left behind (ślusarczyk 2019). as for the commitment of care itself, there are also specifi c social expectations about how it should be carried out, so called “ideologies of caring” (dowling 2021: 38). one important expectation is a physical presence. as this is diffi cult for migrants, it is compensated for through frequent, often regular visits and contacts via information and communications technologies, which include the affective dimension, emotional availability and expressed concerns. this responsibility infl uences declarations and intentions to be engaged in care as a morally appropriate • magdalena ślusarczyk102 activity (radziwinowiczówna et al. 2018) and research indicates that, under the infl uence of the country of immigration, ideas about types and providers of care may change (e.g. in favour of including institutional care, grabowska et al. 2017), but the socially-embedded sense of obligation is very strong (pustułka/ślusarczyk 2016). however, it is important for family members to take action (make care arrangements) and to decide on their level of commitment and strategies. it should be also emphasised that caregiving is primarily an obligation for women (hondagneu-sotelo/avila 1997) even extending to the family of the husband or partner (ehrenreich/hochschild 2002; parreñas 2005; sørensen 2005). the specifi city of the migration situation also means that there is an additional cause of potential tension between those who stayed (and may be, as it were, designated to care by virtue of geographical proximity) and those who left. as a result, the family needs to negotiate the responsibilities and commitments (keller 2006; radziwinowiczówna et al. 2018). a second area of potential tension is the adverse accumulation of liabilities. krzyżowski (2013) points out that the time when aging parents increasingly need care often coincides with the time when their children already have children of their own, to whom they must also provide assistance. the onset of the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting health care and social distancing measures of governments worldwide have brought to the fore the centrality of care and care labour (craig 2020; power 2020). the pandemic suspended one of the key assumptions mentioned above: the possibility of physical contact, contributing to what merla and colleagues (2020) refer to as “immobilizing regimes.” the term itself was coined earlier and refers to policies of closing countries off, making it diffi cult to enter labour markets or obtain refugee status. in the case of the uk, the fi nal decision on brexit also contributed to the “immobilisation” of migrants by introducing uncertainty about further conditions of their stay (radziwinowicz et al. 2020). not being allowed to travel led to feelings of guilt because migrants were unable to show support in the ways they had before. research conducted during the pandemic has revealed concerns about whether relatives in the home country were well cared for, particularly when they became ill with covid-19 (joseph et al. 2022). restrictions suspended the possibility – almost taken for granted before – of turning up in a crisis situation or even saying last goodbyes to loved ones who died. studies from this period, however, point fi rstly, as baldassaar (2021) underlines, to the maintenance of social contact using information and communications technologies in which transnational families are profi cient and, in the case of older people, more competent than the general population of that age group. using technology as a conduit to stay connected with relatives as migrants were unable to travel overseas, positively contributed to the sense of wellbeing (seligman 2018). secondly, migrants sought to employ “reparation” or “compensation” strategies (skrbiˇs 2008). in an autoethnographic study, joseph et al. (2021) point out attempts to provide help and support in a different way than before: “i played the piano to my parents through a video call which made them feel loved and cared for. (…) through music, we felt spiritually connected, intergenerational solidarity revisited • 103 supported, and fulfi lled relying on >god, family, and friends<“. (joseph et al. 2022: 3-4). 3 methods this article is based on several sources of data. the fi rst was data collected within the project transfam (doing family in transnational context. demographic choices, welfare adaptations, school integration and every-day life of polish families living in polish-norwegian transnationality,1 2013-2016), enhanced with additional data collected in 2016. 31 in-depth interviews were conducted, assuming maximum inclusiveness in order to cover the diversity of polish migrant families and their lives. on this basis the criteria for inclusion in the purposive sample were defi ned as mobility, family and socio-economic diversity and length of stay. the research was conducted in the norwegian capital, oslo, and surrounding towns (up to about 200 km). additionally, 8 in-depth interviews were conducted in 2016 with, among others, parents (mothers) of migrants remaining in poland. the scope of the research covered a wide range of topics related to migration and family life: from the decision to leave through settlement to any potential decision on staying longer or permanently. i was also interested in the process of entering the labour market, role division in the family and child raising. the last part of the interview – the part that was used for this article – posed the research question: how do migrants establish care strategies and plan to address this challenge in the future? the second source of data is my own research project “care strategies during and after the pandemic” conducted in october 2021 at jagiellonian university on migrant families’ perceptions of the current situation and (re)defi nition of care strategies. again, a diverse sample was drawn, taking into account fi rstly migration within europe, length of stay (from a few to several years) and maintaining family ties in poland. respondents (10) were recruited from the united kingdom, sweden, the czech republic, germany and islands in the atlantic ocean. both studies employed qualitative strategies of data collection and analysis. the objectives of both studies were to learn about strategies for shaping family practices and sustaining relationships in the everyday lives of transnational families (cf. glick schiller et al. 1995). in the fi rst project, this concerned all areas of life of migrant families, in the second project, i asked what care and support strategies migrants had and what changes the covid-19 pandemic had triggered. in planning the 2021 research, i used part of the questionnaire of the transfam project to obtain a narrative ranging from the decision to leave through organising life in the new 1 the research leading to these results received funding from the polish-norwegian research programme operated by the national centre for research and development under the norwegian financial mechanism 2009-2014 in the framework of project contract no. polnor/197905/4/2013. • magdalena ślusarczyk104 country to maintaining transnational ties and shaping care strategies. i then added a set of questions about their experiences and perceptions of the covid-19 pandemic period and its impact on their decisions to migrate and care for relatives in poland. in the fi rst study, due to the assumptions of the project, the criteria assumed that the sample would include persons staying outside poland for at least 6 months or having migrants in the family. the sample was differentiated according to family type, place of residence and socio-economic status. the research was conducted using the face-to-face method. in the second study, i applied the same criterion of a minimum of 6 months of residence, but calculated before the onset of the pandemic in poland (march 2020). again, i tried to obtain a diverse sample. due to pandemic restrictions, recruitment was conducted using remote working tools: i contacted people from the previous study and recruited respondents through social media networks. interviews were conducted online. finally, ten interviews, in which respondents confi rmed having permanent ties with their families in poland, were included in the database. i report the characteristics of both samples in table 1. among the weaknesses of both samples, i can include the over-representation of people with higher education, despite efforts to diversify. i am also aware that it was easier to reach respondents whose migration narratives were success stories (charmaz 2009), but in the course of the narrative migrants also shared painful experiences, feelings of guilt or fears about the future. women are overrepresented in both samples, confi rming fi ndings that caregiving is primarily the domain of women. the samples varied in terms of education, age of migrants and length of stay abroad. the data analysis process entailed a systematic approach to the use of analytical grids and the transcribed interviews subjected to open-coding and textual organisation. i used the fi rst dataset to establish the status of care plans, decisions or strategies and provided a baseline for analysing the narratives of the pandemic period using the second dataset. 4 results polish culture is strongly linked to both nuclear family and family networks, which are believed to safeguard stability and the sense of security of individuals and communities. it fi ts primarily into the fi rst of three types of ideal eldercare systems: the deep-rooted and taken-for-granted family model (familialism by default), the externally-supported family model (supported familialism) and the non-family model (de-familialisation, saraceno/keck 2010; krzyżowski 2012; perek-białas/ racław 2014). polish intra-family transfers result both from cultural norms of intergenerational solidarity, from the attitude that care has a qualitative dimension as an ethical social relationship based on feelings of affection and an orientation towards the satisfaction of needs (finch/groves 1983) and from a sense of lack of state support in this area. state policy also assumes the primacy of family care and is characterised by low investment in elderly care. the gap is partly fi lled by ngos, faith-based organisations, migrant work as well as the private sector, but there are not enough places, some of which are only available to people with higher incomes intergenerational solidarity revisited • 105 (kałuża-kopias 2018). as radziwinowicz and rosińska (2022) state, the current situation is best described as the neo-liberalisation of the family-by-default model. in recent years, we have also seen reforms resulting in cuts in public spending on elderly care (isaksen/näre 2019), which cannot be offset by social support in the form of supplementary pension payments. coupled with rather low regular pensions (szczepański 2015), this leads to further re-traditionalisation and dependency on and ceding of care to the family. among migrants, this is still the main solution, hence they have to plan solutions and strategies. the changes suggested in research reports, for example by the world bank (2015), such as supporting the development of inpatient and semi-permanent care, developing technology to promote “ageing overall characteristics of respondents study 1 (2014, 2016) study 2 (2021) number of interviews: 31 (10 couples, 2 men, 18 10 (9 women, 1 man) women) + 8 in 2016 (7 women, 1 man) marital status 24 married, 3 civil partnerships, 5 married, 2 civil partnerships, 3 divorced 3 single length of stay abroad from 6 months to 20 years from 3 to 16 years age 29-53 21-40 country norway, poland uk, ireland, sweden, czech republic, germany, an island in the atlantic ocean education vocational – 4 high school degree – 1 high school degree – 14 university degree – 9 university degree – 31a employment very diverse: non-working, all respondents were employed, unemployed, businesspeople, most of them in skilled industrial service and trade workers, and service jobs, 2 persons in corporate employees (expats), unskilled labour positions, skilled and unskilled workers 1 person was self-employed. children no children – 3 no children – 2 1 – 10 1 – 2 2 – 21 2 – 2 3 and more – 5 3 and more – 4 tab. 1: respondents’ characteristics a ten interviews were with couples; here i provide the level of education for each person, so for a total of 49 respondents. source: own elaboration • magdalena ślusarczyk106 at home” or shaping local support networks, have so far been implemented in only a few places in poland (radziwinowicz/rosińska 2022). both migrants researched in 2013-2016 and in 2021 most often indicate that the topic of caring for parents, in-laws or other elderly relatives is an issue that is neglected in conversations. specifi c strategies are only brought up when necessary, moreover the topic is avoided – not necessarily by themselves; often the older generation is reluctant to face the thought of old age and the problems associated with it: “this is a topic that i try to bring up all the time. and my sister. and even my brother. my mother, on the other hand, doesn’t want to talk about it at all. i would like to sell our house. i would buy her a smaller fl at, so that she could manage (...) so that she could live without a car. but mum absolutely does not want to talk about the issue.” (agnieszka, 34, 9 years in uk, 2021)2 agnieszka, cited above, sees a difference here to her mother-in-law, an englishwoman, who has a very different approach and, with her family, refl ects, for example, on her choice of where to live and have support if she becomes less independent. regarding their declarations, migrants do not avoid responsibility in any way. in only one case the respondent did not plan to take care of her father, explaining it by his leaving during her childhood and poor relations. migrants tend to indicate solutions that partly or fully involve them in care, as it is the case of cyril or martyna, who declared they would return (temporarily or permanently) to poland: – “you sometimes think, what will it be like if your parents need help, do you talk about such things? c.: one of us will probably come back home [cyril’s brothers also live abroad] or we will come in turns. – yes, so that’s the plan... – yhym” (cyril, 32 years old, 14 years in norway, 2014). “this topic hasn’t been touched on yet... because they are still young, mum is already retired, dad not yet. mum is now taking care of my greatgrandmother. well, in so many years, we think we’ll already be in poland. i’m sure a solution will be found... it’s hard to say... a solution will be found!” (martyna, 36, 8 years in northern ireland, 2021) these plans to return to poland are usually hypothetical and concern the distant future. however, when commitments do have to be fulfi lled, there are excuses 2 the following interview coding scheme was used: [respondent’s name – changed to preserve anonymity], [age], [length of emigration], [country], [year of the study]. intergenerational solidarity revisited • 107 and justifi cations explaining why they should not take on the care and who can do it. magda and karolina envisioned their younger siblings in this role, but this assumption was based solely on their belief that since they were close by, it would be obvious to them: “mum does everything she can not to talk. ... but i’m glad i have a sister there; i know that she’ll take care of her. i’m more worried about my husband’s mum because she’s alone there.” (magda, 40 years old, 16 years in uk, 2021) “i mean, i think it’s like that, because my sister doesn’t plan to move out of poland and my sister is also the youngest and she is also strongly connected to my mum. (...) so i guess it will be more like that. because my mum cannot imagine moving out of poland. it’s also possible that i’ll spend some time there or she’ll come to us, because we’re planning to renovate the house and make one room a guest room, so it will be like that.” (karolina, 36 years old, 5 years in norway, 2014) magda felt grateful for her sister’s presence and counted on her to take care of their mother when needed, but also considered a possible return. the negotiations were not defi nitive; they changed depending on the phase of the family life cycle and the needs of the loved ones. in the case of mona, who has lived in sweden for 9 years, there was a plan to persuade her mother to move and buy her a fl at close to anna and her sister, also living in sweden, while she planned to invite her mother-in-law to live with her. only one interviewee mentioned the possibility of institutional care, but it would have to be in germany, where she lived, and she looked at such centres. however, she was afraid to suggest such a solution as she thought it would be diffi cult to accept: “my mother’s family, so my mother’s family, is a very traditionalist family with the idea that you cannot leave your parents, that you cannot provide care by employing a stranger, and certainly you cannot put her in any kind of institution [a retirement home]. although i would gladly take her here, because here these institutions are completely different than in poland. in poland, a retirement home is associated with some kind of nightmare. here it is a kind of co-living of seniors with 24-hour care. and in poland... it’s like being sent to prison.” (ewa, 36, 3 years in germany, 2021) finally, in the case of zosia and maciek (41 and 43 years old, 7 and 11 years in norway, 2014), some plans have already been made and are being put into practice. as they do not plan to return to poland, their children also want to stay in norway and maciek’s mother refuses to move to norway, they decided to delegate her care to neighbours and a female cousin, but hope that a young couple of relatives will take over her care in exchange for being able to benefi t from the family’s estate. • magdalena ślusarczyk108 the older generation also expects to receive care directly from their children. brygida (65 years old, lives in poland, 2016) has adapted her life to her children’s migration decisions – she has twice spent over a year in norway looking after her daughter’s children and at the time of the interview was preparing to leave to spend a year and a half in the united states to take over the care of her son’s child. she had not worked in poland for years, she was entitled only to the minimum retirement pension. she had not looked for work for a long time because she was always ready to leave and help her children. when asked about her plans for the future, she hoped that her children would care for her; that she might move in with one of them. while strategies for returning or taking parents or in-laws back home remain rather uncertain as they mostly still concern the distant future, many caring practices already in place can be identifi ed. these include frequent visits, fi nancial support, constant contact and help with various arrangements. in the case of pre-pandemic research, visits or short visits were obvious and were part of the transnational family’s life plan: “thus far we have been going [to poland] very often, every summer, we’ve been there for four weeks every summer” (magda 36 years old, norway, 2014), “so, honestly, we saw our grandparents as often as before we left, 1-2 times a month” (alicja, 38 years old, 10 in czech republic, 2021). this strategy compensates for absence on a daily basis (pustułka/ślusarczyk 2016). i collected similar narratives about the time before the pandemic when talking to migrants in 2021. most migrants had both permanent plans to visit and were also willing to come in case of any emergencies, such as illness in the family: “my mother had a stroke... quite suddenly. i got a call from my sister around 5 a.m. that they were in the hospital, so within two days i was on a plane with my daughter, who was even not yet a year old. (...) my sister doesn’t have a car, she can’t drive. i stayed for a week to help them and then i came back.” (agnieszka, 34, 9 years in uk, 2021) the pandemic interrupted this opportunity and it was very diffi cult for all the people i spoke to. it was a little easier to cope with the fact that visits were postponed, although the longing of the migrants themselves, but also of the grandparents and grandchildren, was heightened. most families then intensifi ed their contacts using technology (ict). it must be stressed, however, that although the possibility to connect online helped a great deal to maintain ties or to try to care for the psychological well-being of the relatives in poland, the solution worked mainly where these forms were already in use. mona (33, 9 years in sweden, 2021) points out that while this social proximity was fully maintained with her mother or mother-in-law despite a longer period of physical distance, the family bonds weakened with her father, who does not like to use social media and additionally lives in a place with poor telephone coverage, and so far they have not been able to change this situation. she feels that her father expects face-to-face contacts and these are still somewhat limited, which makes her feel guilty. agnieszka (age 34, 9 years in the uk, 2021) has similar thoughts: intergenerational solidarity revisited • 109 “i know that in different families some special time on skype or whatsapp is cultivated. only in person.” thus, regardless of the belief that they did what they could to maintain contact and a sense of being looked after, when the restrictions were reduced they came for longer stays or gave up other holiday trips for additional stays in poland: “due to the fact that there was a pandemic, our only goal was to fl y to our family in poland. we didn’t want to travel or anything, just the closest family, and here the countryside, the lake. it was boring, but that’s what we wanted. i can’t imagine a holiday without family.” (martyna, 36, 8 years in northern ireland, 2021) at the same time, migrants note that these visits are becoming more diffi cult; there is no certainty as to when the restrictions will reappear, tests or quarantines are still necessary for some destinations, which increases the costs of the trip, here the diffi culties related not only to the pandemic, but also to brexit, were particularly noted by migrants from the uk. an additional problem is a possible lack of vaccinations, as in the case of paweł (37 years old, 6 years in the uk, 2021), which ultimately led to the decision to return to poland witin the next year. much more diffi cult were the situations of being blocked from arriving quickly, which undermined one of the key justifi cations for migration (“we are leaving, but we can be together in a few hours”). martyna and lena experienced the death of a loved one during a period of high restrictions and were unable to attend the funeral: “funerals are the worst. (...) during the pandemic we had such a situation and it was impossible to fl y. there were no fl ights and there were bans, so i knew i couldn’t fl y. there was also no possibility to get in a car and drive. it was terribly hard.” (martyna, 36, 8 years in northern ireland, 2021) “(...) it’s hard i’ll tell you, i’ve been through it a lot, well i can’t cope with it. there was one option to come, my husband found it... but such combinations... the fl ight would be 300 pounds (normally i pay about 20-30). my mum said absolutely not...(...) i asked my sister to record the funeral but she said no..., how would it be.” (lena, 40, 16 years in uk, 2021) the second form of support is regular or occasional fi nancial transfers and this was cited by most families. they support both parents or in-laws and sometimes siblings and they also try to fi nance renovations or holiday trips. as already mentioned, they are ready to co-fi nance the employment of a caregiver in case of illness or the need for constant support in old age. finally, the third strategy is the practice of helping during visits. here, it is important that these are personal activities, minor repairs, help in renovations, assistance dealing with offi cial matters, taking them • magdalena ślusarczyk110 shopping during their stay in poland. these practices are regular (“there’s always a long list of things to fi x waiting for me... i need to plug in the tv or get some letters done,” alicja, 37 years old, 11 years in the uk, 2021) or ad hoc, in emergencies, as happened with mona: “my grandmother fell ill with pneumonia. (...) she was a very old person; we knew that when she came out of the hospital it would be very hard, that she would be a bed-ridden person. so, from there i made contacts with some physiotherapists, so that someone would come to her home, so that she would be well looked after.” (mona, 33 years old, 9 years in sweden, 2021) migrants point out that some of these matters could have been dealt with by the parents themselves, but they see this as a way of compensating. during the pandemic these expectations were suspended, some matters, such as the organisation of the care by mona mentioned above, were arranged remotely, but others had to be ceded to the siblings in poland or were arranged by the parents/ in-laws themselves. 5 discussion summarising the fi ndings, the narratives of migrants interviewed during the pandemic and before indicate that, fi rstly, norms of intergenerational solidarity and care are very strong and their intentions to help do not change. certain strategies were suspended or changed slightly, but there is not much refl ection on lasting change in the migrants’ narratives. several factors seem to infl uence this. the fi rst factor that i consider important in deciding whether or not to redefi ne the care strategy is time. in the fi rst months of the pandemic (spring 2020), we were led to believe that it would be a diffi cult but short period. the following months brought a change in expectations, with the expectation that the pandemic would last but would be defeated fairly defi nitively with the introduction of vaccinations (winter 2020/spring 2021). now the level of uncertainty is much greater, with further mutations pushing back the expected “return to normal.” however, another factor that weakens the propensity to revise accepted practices is the short distance (compared to other migration routes), lower arrival or transit costs and living in the european union or schengen countries. even with the additional costs associated with testing or possible quarantine, migrants declare that they are likely to maintain their current visiting patterns and that borders will no longer be closed as tightly as they were in the fi rst months of the pandemic. any changes in strategy are more likely to be infl uenced by brexit for migrants in the uk. finally, the third factor is the strong belief expressed for years by transnational migrants that communication technologies will help them to carry out care strategies and look after the well-being of their ageing parents. the development of mobile telephony, the internet and so-called instant messaging, the signifi cant reduction intergenerational solidarity revisited • 111 in the price of telephone calls, including landline calls, have all changed the face of migration to such an extent that steven vertovec (2004) called these tools “social glue,” appreciating their role in binding families together and maintaining bonds between migrants and their relatives in the countries of origin. during the pandemic, remote forms of work, cultural participation and social life have further reinforced these beliefs, although, as indicated, migrants are aware of certain limitations, whether due to diffi culties of access, lack of skills or the rejection of this form by some family members. however, for the fi rst time, migrants found themselves in a similar situation to family members (e.g., siblings) remaining in the country – where in many cases there was a suspension of face-to-face contacts for months in favour of online meetings. 6 conclusion in the context of the data collected, we must return to the question of potential changes in care strategies for older people. these changes may concern both transnational practices, that is care at a distance, as well as changes in life plans and returns to the home country. it is necessary to emphasise here that the research was qualitative, exploratory towards potential change, so it cannot be generalised for the whole migrant community. moreover, it is important that the fi rst research was conducted in the context of, at times, long years of establishing the specifi c transnational care strategies. the second study, on the other hand, was carried out during the pandemic, when decisions were often made emotionally, without the opportunity for deeper refl ection. therefore, the results of the study should, in my opinion, be seen as a starting point for further research of possible changes in the fi eld of transnational care. for the time being, polish migrants seem to believe that transnational care can be maintained in its current form or with slight modifi cations and that the pandemic will become a diffi cult but eventually closed period. the migrants’ narratives suggest that signifi cant change is possible in two situations / sets of factors. in the fi rst case, we have a situation where return was certain or likely within an assumed time frame, and the pandemic provided the stimulus to accelerate the decision. the second set of factors that emerged in the statements was the situation of a person with signifi cant resources. this not only refers to material resources, but also to cultural or social capital (networks of contacts), enabling, for example, an easy change of job, to start one’s own business or to move one’s business to poland. the dominant solution, however, seems to me to be an extension of the strategy that eade and colleagues (2008) have described as “intentional unpredictability.” this strategy basically does not exclude any outcome of migrants’ mobility, staying, returning or migrating to another country. however, in our case it also means accepting a suspension of fi xed rules and trying to fl exibly adapt to changing conditions and build new practices without abandoning the migration project. to this hypothesis, which undoubtedly requires further investigation, we should add the fundamental acceptance of migration in the context of poland. migrants usually have the support • magdalena ślusarczyk112 of their families in their plans. also in care planning, parents or in-laws try to fi nd solutions avoiding returning or, as i have also indicated in this article, avoid the topic for as long as possible. finally, due to the weaknesses in the polish elderly care system, it seems unlikely to me that the collapse of existing transnational care practices will lead to their complete abandonment. even if in some municipalities local care solutions are created or telecare is developed, there are still not enough of these solutions, as well as places in social welfare homes. the family commitment to care (ślusarczyk 2019) and the disapproval of “handing over” an elderly person to a care institution is also still strongly entrenched. however, i am convinced that subsequent waves of the pandemic (data were collected before the fourth wave in poland and before the appearance of the next mutation of the virus – omicron) may lead to further “immobilisation” of countries and migration regimes, which will force migrants to adopt new transnational strategies or decisions to return, so the issue certainly remains open for further research. it has become increasingly evident that the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the existing crisis of care (dowling 2021). more refl ection on this issue will be necessary in the coming years; all the more so as the covid-19 pandemic has long-term effects in terms of deteriorating health status (gus 2021), so that the care needs of older people are likely to increase more rapidly, but may not be met by families alone. in the case of poland, where, as mentioned, the assumption of family care is dominant, this can be a huge challenge and should be discussed as soon as possible at the level of local and national social policies. in conclusion, i would like to emphasise that i am aware of the limitations of the sampling for both data sources and thus of my conclusions. in addition to the limitations indicated in the methodology section and related to demographic characteristics or the predominance of interviews on migrant success stories, it is necessary to critically emphasise that there are limitations of research conducted solely through online tools, without face-to-face contact, even if it is benefi cial in overcoming temporal and spatial barriers or pandemic restrictions. i am convinced that, fi rstly, the form of the research has an impact on the decision to participate or not. moreover, despite good preparation for the interview, lack of personal contact may also cause diffi culties to incorporate and work with non-verbal cues in their interactions with participants. without a camera or in the face of poor connection quality, it is extremely diffi cult to react to sometimes very subtle displays of emotion or body language (moore et al. 2015). on the other hand, the fact that there is a form of “veil” or “cut-off” (that is, the screen and the lack of personal contact) may help some 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in: the journal of positive psychology 13,4: 333-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1437466 • magdalena ślusarczyk116 skrbiš, zlatko 2008: transnational families: theorising migration, emotions and belonging. in: journal of intercultural studies 29,3: 231-246. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256860802169188 sørensen, nina n. 2005: transnational family life across the atlantic: the experience of colombian and dominican migrants in europe. paper presented at the international conference on migration and domestic work in a global perspective, in wassenar, the netherlands. szczepański, marek 2015: ryzyko ubóstwa osób starszych a konstrukcja zreformowanego systemu emerytalnego w polsce. in: zeszyty naukowe uniwersytetu szczecińskiego. finanse. rynki finansowe. ubezpieczenia 73: 441-451. ślusarczyk, magdalena 2019: transnarodowe życie rodzin: na przykładzie polskich migrantów w norwegii. cracow: jagiellonian university press. vertovec, steven 2004: cheap calls: the social glue of migrant transnationalism. in: global networks 4,2: 219-224. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2004.00088.x vilog, ron bridget t.; piocos iii, carlos m. 2021: community of care amid pandemic inequality: the case of filipino migrant domestic workers in the uk, italy, and hong kong. in: asia-pacifi c social science review 21,2: 184-201. world bank 2015: stan obecny i przyszłość opieki długoterminowej w starzejącej się polsce. uwagi na potrzeby opracowania polityki dotyczącej opieki długoterminowej [ht tps://niesamodzielnym.pl/uploads/bank%20%c5%9awiatowy%20opieka_ dlugoterminowa.pdf, 31.05.2022]. date of submission: 16.12.2021 date of acceptance: 04.01.2023 dr. magdalena ślusarczyk (). jagiellonian university, faculty of philosophy, institute of sociology. cracow, poland. e-mail: magdalena.slusarczyk@uj.edu.pl url: https://socjologia.uj.edu.pl/en_gb/instytut/pracownicy/magdalenaslusarczyk published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation: comparing cohorts from pairfam’s (2008-09) and freda’s (2021) baseline waves disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation: comparing cohorts from pairfam’s (2008-09) and freda’s (2021) baseline waves* karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen abstract: signifi cant expansion of legal rights and recognition of sexual minority populations triggered expectations that structural stigma, sexual minority stress and, consequently, previously well-documented disadvantages in health and wellbeing may decline over time. the empirical evidence on this issue is, however, still sparse and inconclusive. we contribute to this research by comparing baseline data from the german family panel (pairfam; 2008-09) and the german family demography panel study (freda; 2021). these data allow us to assess disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation and potential changes therein after legalisation of same-sex marriage in germany in two adult cohorts interviewed more than a decade apart. we focus on two specifi c outcomes, namely life satisfaction and self-rated health. two main fi ndings emerged from our analysis: first, minority sexual orientation is associated with signifi cantly lower subjective well-being, specifi cally lower life satisfaction. second, there are no statistically signifi cant changes in the sexual orientation-health nexus between cohorts. our study, thus, neither lends support to “optimistic” expectations regarding the contribution of (further) reductions in institutional discrimination and structural stigma to (further) reductions in remaining disadvantages, nor does it lend support to “pessimistic” expectations suggesting that younger cohorts of sexual minority adults may experience an even larger gap in health and well-being than previous cohorts. we propose that the stability of sexual minorities’ disadvantages in subjective well-being during the fi rst two decades of the 21st century in germany be interpreted as the result of two opposing forces working in parallel: reduced institutional discrimination and increased exposure to continued stigma. the legal recognition of same-sex relationships appears to be a necessary but not suffi cient condition for the acceptance of sexual minorities. remaining disparities by sexual orientation will thus not simply disappear when institutional discrimination of sexual minorities is eliminated. currently, we may therefore fi nd ourselves in a “transitory comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 217-230 (date of release: 05.06.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-09 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-09en9 * this article belongs to a special issue on “family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)”. • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen218 period” whose further evolution is diffi cult to predict. freda – with its evolving longitudinal dimension and the inclusion of self-reported measures of respondents’ sexual orientation – will constitute a powerful resource for future investigations of inequalities in yet understudied but increasingly visible sexual minority populations. keywords: sexual minorities · structural stigma · health inequalities · social change 1 introduction a plethora of studies indicate disadvantages in health and well-being among people with minority sexual orientations (see hsieh/shuster 2021; national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine 2020: chapter 11 for reviews). while there are several theoretical frameworks aiming to explain these disparities, one common approach refers to stigmatising and stress processes (see hsieh/shuster 2021: 323f.; national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine 2020: chapter 2). accordingly, signifi cant expansions of legal rights and recognitions of sexual minority populations – such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage – triggered expectations that structural stigma (hatzenbuehler 2016; national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine 2020: chapter 6), sexual minority stress (leblanc et al. 2015; meyer 1995) and, consequently, disadvantages in health and well-being may have declined. however, whereas hatzenbuehler et al. (2018) found that sexual orientation-related mental health disparities present in swedish gay men and lesbian women in 2005 had disappeared ten years later, liu/reczek (2021) provide evidence of increasing disadvantages in health and well-being among gay, lesbian, and bisexual-identifi ed people across three us cohorts, suggesting that “lgb health disparities may be a result of more insidious and deeply embedded factors in us society that are not eradicated simply with changes in marriage or discrimination laws” (liu/reczek 2021: 1468; also see dotti sani/quaranta 2022). against the background of these sparse and ambiguous empirical fi ndings, it seems worthwhile to assess changes over time in sexual minorities’ health disparities in further contemporary “western” societies. the present study focusses on the german context, a yet understudied case that is characterised by steadily increasing numbers and proportions of cohabiting same-sex couples (lengerer/ bohr 2019), a notable increase in positive attitudes towards gays and lesbians (dotti sani/quaranta 2022), as well as much improved opportunities to formalise samesex relationships (from the adoption of the “lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz” in 2001 to the legalisation of same-sex marriages in 2017; waaldijk 2020); see fischer/de vries (2023) for an overview. to date, only very few studies drawing on population-based samples investigated health disparities in germany’s sexual minority populations. compared to the general population, sattler et al. (2017) observed more mental health problems in gay and bisexual men, partly attributing this difference to minority stress (also see disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation • 219 sattler et al. 2016). similarly, kasprowski et al. (2021) identifi ed signifi cant physical health disadvantages as well as a three times higher risk of suffering from depression among lgbtq+ people than in the general population, whereas buczak-stec et al. (2021) found no signifi cant association between sexual orientation and depressive symptoms among community-dwelling older adults. these previous german studies merely provide a descriptive snapshot taken at a single point in time, however. we extend this research by comparing baseline data from the german family panel (pairfam; huinink et al. 2011) and the german family demography panel study (freda; hank et al. 2023; schneider et al. 2021). whereas the pairfam sample was fi rst interviewed in 2008-09, freda’s baseline wave was collected in 2021. this allows us to assess health disparities by sexual orientation and potential changes therein after the legalisation of same-sex marriage in two cohorts of adults aged 24 to 38 at the time of the respective interviews, which were conducted 13 years apart. in other words, we are interested in possible changes over time across cohorts due to period effects: within the same age range, our two cohorts were exposed to different societal conditions, therefore we can rule out age effects. both surveys provide partnership-inferred information on respondents’ sexual orientation (see hank/wetzel 2018 for an exemplary previous study using pairfam) as well as various indicators of subjective well-being. with regard to the latter, we focus on two specifi c outcomes, namely life satisfaction (e.g., boertin/ vignoli 2019; meyer et al. 2022; tornello et al. 2018) and self-rated health (srh; e.g., carpenter et al. 2021; reczek et al. 2017; solazzo et al. 2020). while srh is mostly used as a proxy for respondents’ more objective health characteristics, we are particularly interested in srh answers as indicators of respondents’ perceptions of health, emphasising the subjective component of the concept (see gabarski 2016). the remainder of this article is structured as follows: section 2 briefl y discusses the relationship between structural stigma, sexual minority stress, and well-being. section 3 introduces our data and methods, followed by a description of results in section 4. the fi nal section 5 provides conclusions. 2 structural stigma, sexual minority stress, and well-being according to minority stress theory (leblanc et al. 2015; meyer 1995), sexual minorities are exposed to specifi c stressors (such as discrimination and internalised homophobia), which have been associated with higher risks to engage in unhealthy behaviours (e.g., smoking, excessive drinking, illicit drug use) and poorer health outcomes. physiologically, for example, minority stress contributes to the dysregulation of cortisol, which adversely affects metabolism, immune function, cardiovascular health, cognition, and mood (e.g., hsieh/shuster 2021; also see hatzenbuehler 2009). a recent consensus study report of the us national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine (2020: 8) thus concludes that “disparities affecting [sexual and gender diverse] populations are driven by experiences of minority stress, which include both structural and interpersonal stigma, prejudice, discrimination, violence, and trauma”. • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen220 importantly, structural stigma is explicitly acknowledged here. whereas previous research on stigma and its consequences for health and well-being focussed on the individual and interpersonal levels, macro-social forms of stigma have only been addressed more recently, eventually leading to a conceptualisation of stigma “as a multilevel construct […], ranging from individual (e.g., self-stigma) and interpersonal processes (e.g., discriminatory treatment) to structural factors (e.g., laws and policies, institutional practices)” (national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine 2020: 131; see link/phelan 2001). referring to this conceptual framework, structural stigma has been defi ned as “societal-level conditions, cultural norms, and institutional policies that constrain the opportunities, resources and wellbeing of the stigmatized” (hatzenbuehler 2016: 743). this broad defi nition allows for different approaches to measure structural stigma, focusing on single components (e.g., laws and policies or social attitudes) or using composite indicators. geographic variation in different dimensions of structural stigma (e.g., hatzenbuehler et al. 2009; perales/todd 2018) as well as changes therein over time (e.g., boertin/vignoli 2019; hatzenbuehler et al. 2018) provide researchers with opportunities to employ observational or even (quasi-)experimental designs to assess associations between different levels of structural stigma and health disparities in sexual minority populations (see hatzenbuehler 2016). structural stigma resulting from institutional discrimination – especially samesex marriage bans – seems particularly relevant (and has received particular attention) for at least two reasons: first, aksoy et al. (2020) showed that legal relationship recognition was associated with improvements in attitudes toward sexual minorities (also see ofosu et al. 2019).1 even though “changes in public opinion occur at a slower pace compared with institutional changes [… and …] state-level recognition of same-sex relationships […] appears to be a necessary but not a suffi cient condition for the acceptance of homosexuality” (dotti sani/quaranta 2022: 135), abolishing specifi c elements of institutional discrimination might thus contribute to reducing structural stigma in both direct and indirect ways. second, institutional discrimination affects the well-being of entire minority groups and not just those directly involved (e.g., hatzenbuehler et al. 2009). conversely, the effect of abolishing an institutional source of discrimination may also extend beyond the target group. specifi cally, same-sex marriage legalisation has been suggested to have had a benefi cial effect on sexual minorities’ health regardless of union status, presumably resulting from a general reduction in structural stigma (e.g., boertien/ vignoli 2019; carpenter et al. 2021; chen/van ours 2022). in germany, the detrimental effects of structural stigma on sexual minorities’ health and well-being may already have declined following the adoption of the “lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz” (allowing for same-sex registered partnerships) in 2001 and parallel to continuously improving public attitudes towards gays and 1 obviously, the reverse causal relationship – that changing attitudes affect social and legal practices and, eventually, result in de jure changes – also needs to be considered (see hank/ steinbach 2019 for a more general discussion). disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation • 221 lesbians over the past two decades (dotti sani/quaranta 2022). one might still expect to observe further reductions in health disparities after germany legalised same-sex marriages in 2017. however, despite an overall tendency towards greater liberalism and tolerance of sexual minority rights, homonegativity at the individual level continues to persist and public attitudes towards homosexuality are less positive in germany than in the scandinavian countries, albeit more positive than in southern and eastern europe (e.g., dotti sani/quaranta 2022; waaldijk 2020: table 2.2). it might therefore just as well be the case that sexual minorities’ health disadvantage in germany did not decrease across recent cohorts (as observed in swedish gay men and lesbian women; hatzenbuehler et al. 2018), but remained stable or even increased (as reported by liu/reczek 2021 for the us), because younger cohorts – coming out more openly and thus being potentially more exposed to remaining stigma – may react more sensitively (that is, with greater declines in subjective wellbeing) to experiences of homophobia, etc. 3 data & method 3.1 data our empirical analysis is based on two independent samples: the fi rst was derived from the german family panel (pairfam; see brüderl et al. 2022), which was funded by the german research foundation until 2022 but is now fully integrated into the german family demography panel study. respondents in this sample are nationally representative of two cohorts – born in 1971-73 and in 1981-83 – and were fi rst interviewed in 2008-09 (annual follow-up interviews have been conducted since then, but were not included in our study). because our identifi cation of sexual minority respondents depends on self-reported same-sex partnerships prior to or at the time of the baseline interview, we only considered respondents who ever had a partner for at least six months (or shorter if they cohabited or had a child while in that relationship). this applies to only half of pairfam’s youngest cohort born in 1991-91 (aged 15-17 at baseline) versus 95 percent in the two older cohorts. following hank/wetzel (2018), we therefore decided to exclude the entire cohort from our study. this leaves us with a total of 7,628 respondents aged 24 to 38, of whom 96 (= 1.3 percent) reported to have had one or more same-sex relationships. (note that the number of respondents identifi ed as having had sameand differentsex partners was far too small to consider them as a distinct category of bisexuals in our analysis; also see hank/wetzel 2018.) the second sample was derived from the fi rst wave of the german family demography panel study (freda; see hank et al. 2023; schneider et al. 2021). the freda-ggs sample, which constitutes the german contribution to the generations and gender surveys, was drawn from the population aged 18 to 49 living in germany and was fi rst interviewed in 2021. the data used for our analysis come from freda’s wave 1a (bujard et al. 2023), comprising 8,986 web-based and 1,436 paper-based self-administered interviews with respondents aged 24 to 38 at the • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen222 time of the interview who ever had a partner for at least three months. of these, 325 (= 3.1 percent) reported to have had one or more same-sex relationships. this means that the proportion of sexual minority respondents in the freda-ggs sample is substantially larger than in the pairfam sample. this difference between samples might be explained by younger cohorts (1) being actually more likely to experience same-sex relationships (e.g., lengerer/ bohr 2019), (2) being more willing to disclose minority sexual orientations in social surveys, and (3) by differences in interview modes: whereas pairfam conducted faceto-face interviews, freda implemented a more “anonymous” mixed-mode design with self-administered interviews. moreover, freda’s respondents are, on average, more highly educated (see below) and lgbt people tend to be better educated than the total adult population (e.g., pew research center 2013: chapter 1). importantly, the estimates from both our samples are within the range of estimates of sexual minority population prevalence derived from recent us surveys, for example (see pdr 2022: table 1). 3.2 measures we employ two measures of individuals’ subjective well-being as dependent variables: the fi rst, general life satisfaction, was assessed by the question “all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your life at the moment?” referring to an 11-point answer scale ranging from “very dissatisfi ed” (0) to “very satisfi ed” (10). the second, self-rated health, was assessed by the question “how would you describe your health status [during the past 4 weeks; pairfam], generally speaking?”, with answer categories ranging from “poor” (1) to “very good” (5) in the pairfam questionnaire and from “very good” (1) to “very poor” (5) in the freda questionnaire, respectively. following common practice (e.g., reczek et al. 2017; solazzo et al. 2020), we dichotomised self-rated health: the resulting binary indicator equals 1 if respondents described their health status as good or better (the two top categories in both surveys), 0 otherwise. for simplicity and ease of interpretation we run linear (ols) regressions for both outcome variables, but results are not sensitive to this choice. our main explanatory variable is a binary indicator of individuals’ partnershipinferred sexual orientation, which takes the value of 1 if respondents reported having had any same-sex relationship prior to or at the time of the interview. this frequently employed measure (1) tends to exclude singles and makes it diffi cult to identify bisexuals (e.g., kühne et al. 2019), (2) is sensitive to sex-coding errors (e.g., régnier-loilier 2018), and (3) captures only one specifi c dimension of the individual’s sexual orientation (e.g., bailey et al. 2016). one would thus ideally complement partnership-inferred information with self-reports of respondents’ sexual orientation (e.g., kühne et al. 2019), which, however, were not collected in pairfam’s and freda’s baseline waves. moreover, we accounted for a set of standard socio-demographic control variables (e.g., liu/reczek 2021): age, sex (a binary indicator that equals 1 if the respondent was (self-)identifi ed as female), relationship status (three binary disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation • 223 indicators distinguishing singles (ref.) from those living apart together and married/ cohabiting respondents), parental status (a binary indicator that equals 1 if the respondent has any children), highest school degree (a binary indicator that equals 1 if the respondent achieved “(fach-)hochschulreife”), employment status (a binary indicator that equals 1 if the respondent is gainfully (self-)employed), as well as country of birth (a binary indicator that equals 1 if “germany” was reported as country of birth). comparing (unweighted) descriptive sample statistics for both of our samples reveals major similarities in basic demographic characteristics (such as average age, sex, proportion of singles, country of birth), but also some noteworthy exceptions (see table 1): alongside a larger proportion of sexual minority respondents in the freda-ggs sample (see above), we observe a higher average level of general life satisfaction (7.48 vs 7.06), but somewhat lower self-rated health (good or better: 66.7 percent vs 71.2 percent) in the pairfam sample.2 moreover, the proportion of parents is about ten percentage points larger in the pairfam sample, whereas the freda-ggs sample is, on average, substantially more highly educated. 2 we cannot determine whether the lower average level of life satisfaction in freda’s baseline wave is due to a survey mode effect (e.g., sarracino et al. 2017) or a result of the covid-19 pandemic (e.g., möhring et al. 2021). tab. 1: descriptive sample statistics (unweighted percentages or means with standard errors in parentheses) pairfam freda life satisfaction 7.48 (1.79) 7.06 (1.84) self-rated health (good or better) 66.7 % 71.2 % minority sexual orientation 1.3 % 3.1 % age 31.3 (5.1) 31.5 (4.2) sex (female) 53.8 % 56.9 % living apart together 14.9 % 12.0 % married/cohabiting 65.1 % 73.2 % respondent has child(ren) 54.1 % 44.3 % education (“fh/abitur”) 40.3 % 71.4 % gainfully (self-)employed 71.2 % 72.2 % country of birth (germany) 83.3 % 88.3 % observations 7,628 10,429 source: own calculations based on pairfam (wave 1) and freda (wave 1a) • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen224 4 results our multivariate analysis (see table 2) revealed generally lower life satisfaction in sexual minority respondents, but provides no indication of a statistically signifi cant disadvantage in self-rated health by sexual orientation. in the pairfam sample, life satisfaction is substantially lower if respondents reported to have (had) a samesex partner: -0.66 without controls and -0.56 if control variables are included in the regression. even though the coeffi cients in the freda-ggs sample are almost two-thirds smaller – and only marginally signifi cant (at the 10 percent level) when controlled for socio-demographic characteristics – a wald test does not indicate statistically signifi cant differences between the coeffi cients in both samples. this is also true if we compare the sexual orientation coeffi cients in the regressions for self-rated health; importantly though, if we employ a continuous measure of self-rated health, we fi nd indication of a statistically signifi cant disadvantage in subjective well-being in sexual minority respondents from the freda-ggs sample (details not shown). the coeffi cients of the control variables provide a picture of overall lower subjective well-being in older and female respondents, whereas those with a partner or a higher educational degree reported higher levels of subjective well-being than their counterparts. we observe some statistically signifi cant differences (results of wald test not shown) – or changes over time – between samples, however: whereas women in the pairfam sample exhibit a higher life satisfaction than men, the association between sex and life satisfaction reversed in the freda-ggs sample. moreover, having children does not have a statistically signifi cant association with life satisfaction in the pairfam sample, but is positively associated with life satisfaction in freda. finally, gainful (self-)employment is positively correlated with both life satisfaction and self-rated health in pairfam, whereas the coeffi cients became much smaller and insignifi cant in the freda-ggs sample. one possible explanation for these latter fi ndings – which we can only speculate, however – is that the observed differences result from partly gender specifi c effects of the covid-19 pandemic on work and family life (e.g., möhring et al. 2021). 5 conclusions against the background of signifi cant expansions of legal rights and recognitions of sexual minority populations as well as yet sparse and inconclusive empirical evidence of how such developments may have affected sexual minorities’ health disadvantages, the current study set out to investigate potential changes in subjective well-being disparities by sexual orientation in two adult cohorts that were interviewed more than a decade apart in the respective baseline waves of the german family panel (pairfam) and the german family demography panel study (freda). two main fi ndings emerged from our analysis: first, minority sexual orientation is associated with signifi cantly lower subjective well-being, specifi cally lower life disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation • 225 satisfaction. whereas this result is consistent with other research indicating health disadvantages in germany’s sexual minority populations (e.g., kasprowski et al. 2021; sattler et al. 2017), it is important to note that self-rated health differentials by sexual orientation were only statistically signifi cant in the freda-ggs sample when employing a continuous operationalisation. second, we did not observe any statistically signifi cant changes in the sexual orientation-health nexus between tab. 2: linear regression results for life satisfaction and self-rated health in the pairfam and freda baseline samples (standard errors in parentheses) life satisfaction self-rated health pairfam freda pairfam freda minority sexual orientation -0.66*** -0.22* -0.02 -0.04 (w/out controls) (0.18) (0.10) (0.05) (0.03) minority sexual orientation -0.56** -0.19 -0.03 -0.04 (w/controls) (0.18) (0.10) (0.05) (0.03) age -0.01*** -0.01 -0.01*** -0.00*** (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) sex (female) 0.08* -0.17*** -0.05*** -0.05*** (0.04) (0.04) (0.01) (0.01) relationship status (ref.: single) living apart together 0.77*** 0.80*** 0.03 0.07*** (0.07) (0.07) (0.02) (0.02) married/cohabiting 1.19*** 1.09*** 0.07*** 0.11*** (0.05) (0.05) (0.01) (0.01) respondent has child(ren) -0.02 0.18*** -0.03* -0.01 (0.05) (0.04) (0.01) (0.01) education (“fh/abitur”) 0.35*** 0.40*** 0.07*** 0.12*** (0.04) (0.04) (0.01) (0.01) gainfully (self-)employed 0.28*** 0.06 0.04** -0.01 (0.05) (0.04) (0.01) (0.01) country of birth (germany) -0.05 -0.04 -0.02 0.00 (0.05) (0.06) (0.01) (0.01) constant 6.73*** 6.18*** 0.79*** 0.73*** (0.14) (0.17) (0.04) (0.04) observations 7,622 10,275 7,616 10,296 r-squared 0.08 0.06 0.02 0.02 note: respondents with missing values on any of the variables included in the regression model (< 1 percent in both samples) were excluded from the multivariate analysis. *** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 source: own calculations based on pairfam (wave 1) and freda (wave 1a) • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen226 cohorts. therefore, our study neither lends support to very “optimistic” expectations regarding the contribution of (further) reductions in institutional discrimination and structural stigma to (further) reductions in sexual minorities’ health disadvantages (e.g., hatzenbuehler et al. 2018), nor does our study lend support to “pessimistic” expectations suggesting that younger cohorts of sexual minority adults – being potentially more exposed to remaining stigma, for example – may even experience a larger gap in health and well-being than previous cohorts (e.g., liu/reczek 2021). our study aimed to assess possible differences between two cohorts due to their exposure to different societal conditions (period effects). we propose that the stability of sexual minorities’ disadvantage in subjective well-being during the fi rst two decades of the 21st century in germany be interpreted as the result of two opposing forces working in parallel: reduced institutional discrimination and increased exposure to remaining stigma. the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017, for example, may have contributed to a (further) decline in structural stigma (thereby prohibiting a widening of health disparities), whereas the persistence of internalised homonegativity and ambiguous public attitudes towards homosexuality may have prohibited (further) progress in closing the disadvantage gap. the legal recognition of same-sex relationships thus appears as a necessary but not suffi cient condition for the acceptance of sexual minorities and health disparities by sexual orientation will not simply disappear when the institutional discrimination of sexual minorities is eliminated (see dotti sani/quaranta 2022; liu/reczek 2021). currently, we might therefore fi nd ourselves in a “transitory period” whose further evolution is diffi cult to predict. two main limitations of our study deserve consideration. we, fi rstly, cannot rule out mode effects on some of our core variables: the risk of sex-coding errors might vary by interview mode and participants might also respond differently to the same questions regarding their subjective well-being depending on whether they were asked by an interviewer (pairfam) or fi lled-out a self-administered questionnaire (freda). we should therefore be cautious when directly comparing, say, the levels of life satisfaction in our two study samples (see sarracino et al. 2017 for a related discussion). however, as we are primarily interested in relative differences in wellbeing between groups within the same sample and whether the size of these relative differences changed over time, possible mode effects on levels in the outcome variables should not be a relevant issue. a second and, arguably, more important shortcoming is that our identifi cation of respondents’ sexual orientation is based on a one-dimensional, partnership-inferred measure. this also limits our ability to distinguish gay and lesbian respondents from bisexuals. the latter have been shown to experience the largest sexual minority health disadvantages (e.g., liu/reczek 2021; ross et al. 2018) and to be excluded from the benefi ts of reduced structural stigma for gay men and lesbians observed in the swedish study by hatzenbuehler et al. (2018). fortunately, future waves of freda will include more refi ned selfreported measures of respondents’ sexual orientation, similar to those recently implemented in other surveys (e.g., fischer et al. 2022). together with its evolving longitudinal dimension, freda will then constitute a powerful resource for further disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation • 227 investigations of social, economic, and health inequalities in yet understudied but increasingly visible sexual minority populations. acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge funding by the federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) under grant # 01uw2001c (“freda: integration und fortführung der pairfam-stichprobe”) as well as grants # 01uw2001a and # 01uw2001b. references aksoy, cevat g. et al. 2020: do laws shape attitudes? evidence from same-sex relationship recognition policies in europe. in: european economic review 124: 103399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103399 bailey, j. michael et al. 2016: sexual orientation, controversy, and science. in: psychological science in the public interest 17,2: 45-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100616637616 boertien, diederik; 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riillo, cesare fabio antonio; mikucka, malgorzata 2017: comparability of web and telephone survey modes for the measurement of subjective well-being. in: survey research methods 11,2: 141-169. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2017.v11i2.6740 sattler, frank a.; franke, gabriele h.; christiansen, hanna 2017: mental health differences between german gay and bisexual men and population-based controls. in: bmc psychiatry 17,267. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1435-7 sattler, frank a.; wagner, ulrich; christiansen, hanna 2016: effects of minority stress, group-level coping, and social support on the mental health of german gay men. in: plos one 11,3: e0150562. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150562 schneider, norbert f. et al. 2021: family research and demographic analysis (freda): evolution, framework, objectives, and design of “the german family demography panel study”. in: comparative population studies 46: 149-186. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-06 • karsten hank, franz j. neyer, carolin thönnissen230 solazzo, alexa; gorman, bridget; denney, justin 2020: does sexual orientation complicate the relationship between marital status and gender with self-rated health and cardiovascular disease? in: demography 57,2: 599-626. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-020-00857-9 tornello, samantha l.; ivanova, katya; bos, henny m.w. 2018: same-sex and mixed-sex couples in the netherlands: the association between life satisfaction and relationship dynamics. in: journal of family issues 39,6: 1443-1464. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513x17710771 waaldijk, kees 2020: what fi rst, what later? patterns in the legal recognition of same-sex partners in european countries. in: digoix, marie (ed.): same-sex families and legal recognition in europe. in: european studies of population 24. cham: springer: 11-44. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37054-1_2 date of submission: 19.09.2022 date of acceptance: 05.01.2023 prof. dr. karsten hank (), dr. carolin thönnissen. university of cologne. institute of sociology and social psychology (iss) cologne, germany. e-mail: hank@wiso.uni-koeln.de; c.thoennissen@uni-koeln.de url: https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/h/prof-dr-karsten-hank https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institut/personen/t/dr-carolin-thoennissen prof. dr. franz j. neyer. friedrich schiller university jena. jena, germany. e-mail: franz.neyer@uni-jena.de url: https://www.perpsy.uni-jena.de/en/team/prof-dr-franz-j-neyer published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) editorial on the special issue “new aspects on migrant populations in europe: norms, attitudes and intentions in fertility and family planning” editorial on the special issue “new aspects on migrant populations in europe: norms, attitudes and intentions in fertility and family planning” nadja milewski, eleonora mussino abstract: this paper reviews the most recent literature on the fertility of migrant populations in europe. in a systematic review of 21 peer-reviewed journals, we found that the literature has focused almost exclusively on actual behaviours related to the quantum and timing of births; it primarily investigates the determinants of demographic behaviour related to the structural integration of migrants. previous literature on the demographic behaviour of migrants in europe used factors related to culture more as a residual explanation for group differences, but it barely addressed their role specifically. the aim of our special issue is to draw attention to the normative side of fertility and to include aspects of reproductive health and family planning in the picture – both aspects are related to culture. this paper includes a short introduction to the articles contained in this special issue and proposes recommendations for future research. keywords: fertility norms · family planning · immigrants · second generation · cultural integration 1 introduction and background this paper is the introduction to the special issue on “new aspects on migrant populations in europe: norms, attitudes and intentions in fertility and family planning”. the papers in our special issue strive to answer the following research question: what are the patterns of the ideational dimension in fertility and family planning among immigrants? in order to do so the papers use different comparative perspectives, such as different immigrant generations, immigrant groups in different destination countries, or between emigrants and stayers at origin. in summarising their findings together with the literature overview, this introductory chapter deals with the challenge of answering the overarching question: what can research on fertility comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 371-398 (date of release: 09.07.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-10en6 • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino372 and family planning contribute to our knowledge of cultural integration processes of immigrants and their descendants in europe? the first section describes the general motivation behind the special issue. in the second section, we summarise the literature on migrant fertility based on a systematic review of 21 international, peer-reviewed and ssci-listed journals on population studies, journals related to migration/integration, and journals on family and family planning published between 2010 and early 2018. the second section also introduces the papers of our special issue. in the third section, we draw conclusions from previous research and from the papers included here, leading to suggestions for future research. 1.1 immigration and minorities in europe recent years have seen the heterogeneity of populations in europe increase as a result of continuing immigration. the share of foreign citizens (i.e. persons holding foreign citizenship) had increased to 11.5 percent of the population living in the eu member states on 1 january 2017 (eurostat 2018). in the western european and nordic countries, which had attracted migrant workers from the 1950s to the early 1970s, the second generation is currently at the end of the family formation phase, while a third generation is coming of age. southern europe has evolved from a region of emigration to a destination for international migrants. here, first-generation migrants are of family formation age and members of the second generation will soon fall under this category. while eastern european countries are destinations both for new immigrant groups and return migrants, they also have a long tradition of ethnic, cultural, and/or religious diversity (triandafyllidou/gropas 2007). all of these factors are contributing to a growing ethnic diversity between and within european countries. this has led to an increase in the share of births to foreign-born mothers relative to the total number of births in european countries. consequently, the percentage figures for descendants of eu and non-eu migrants have increased, to 11.8 percent and 33.4 percent respectively, in the short period from 2008 to 2014 (eurostat 2016). on the one hand, these developments help to mitigate the demographic challenges facing european societies, such as ageing and shrinking populations (eurostat 2002). on the other hand, this change in the population composition has also altered the cultural composition of the “old” continent. in terms of religious diversity, for instance, the proportion of muslims has increased from 3.8 percent in 2010 to 4.9 percent in 2016 (pew 2017); this in turn fuels public debate on cultural differences and social cohesion between immigrant groups and non-migrant majority populations, as well as on problems related to growing social inequalities which might arise (holland/de valk 2013). 1.2 previous empirical approaches to and analytical perspectives on immigrant fertility in order to understand how the overall fertility trend in european countries will develop, it is necessary to understand the fertility puzzle with respect to ethnic/culturnew aspects on migrant populations in europe • 373 al/religious diversity, in particular the fertility differences between host populations (which are ageing and shrinking) and migrant groups (which are on average younger and increasing). migrant fertility is a complex and interdisciplinary topic, both in terms of research on immigrant integration as well as policies related to family or/ and integration. demographers only began to focus on migrant fertility in europe at the start of this century. until then, there had been very few papers examining the childbearing behaviour of foreigners (kahn 1994; carlson 1985). from around the year 2000 onwards, european demographers and family sociologists have increased their interest in the fertility of international migrants, narrowing the gap with the north american literature, where this had long been a topic for both immigrant and ethnic/racial minorities. a decade ago, kulu/milewski (2007) argued that the increased interest in this subject was in part due to the application of the life course approach (elder 1985) to demography. fertility behaviour is, on the one hand, the result of the degree to which individuals are embedded in their institutional context and of their socio-structural conditions. therefore, some authors have suggested that fertility behaviour should also be framed as an (indirect) indicator of structural/socio-economic integration (kulu/ gonzalez-ferrer 2014). on the other hand, individual fertility behaviours are strongly influenced by norms shared by the social/cultural collective(s) to which the individuals belong as well as her/his own personal experiences (fernandez/fogli 2006). as a result, fertility behaviours have been used to measure the adaptation process of immigrants in the destination countries, and have been framed as one indicator of cultural integration (algan et al. 2012). given the relatively short time span of research interest and the fact that the available data on international migrants in europe is rather meagre (kulu/gonzalezferrer 2014), the amount of published work on migrant fertility is impressive and the variation of the research perspectives is relatively rich. some of the previous literature has addressed migrant fertility in a truly demographic style, i.e. at the macro/aggregate level, looking at total fertility rate (tfr) (e.g., sonnino 2003; toulemon 2004; mussino et al. 2012) and the migrants’ contribution to the overall tfr (e.g., sobotka 2008). some authors focused on aspects of quantum using summary measures, such as the completed fertility at the end of the reproductive period (e.g. mayer/riphahn 2000; wilson 2018). others concentrated on fertility at the individual level, applying a life course perspective to transitions to parenthood and subsequent births (andersson 2004; kulu/gonzalez-ferrer 2014). adopting the theoretical framework from fertility of internal migrants, research on international migrant fertility started out by comparing immigrants arriving at one destination. as awareness of differences in socio-economic compositions, cultural traditions, and legal conditions (amongst other aspects) of international and internal migrants grew, the question of within-group variation by migrant generation and country of origin arose (milewski 2007). the intergenerational comparison became even more important as the second generation entered the phase of adulthood and their share of the total populations increased (de valk/milewski 2011). the approaches mentioned used the majority population in a given country as the • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino374 point of reference for the processes of adaptation, working with the implicit assumption that immigrants may become similar to the non-migrant population, as has been proposed ever since the start of classic assimilation theory (gordon 1964). a rather recent approach is to ask about processes of becoming dissimilar within a migrant-origin group, whether that be due to different societal conditions at different destinations (milewski 2011) and/or the impact of the migration process which may cause differences between emigrants compared to stayers at origin (baykarakrumme/milewski 2017). consequently, the comparison between international emigrants from one country to stayers at origin and to non-migrants at their destination has emerged (puur et al. 2017). these approaches in studying the fertility of migrants and their descendants became possible because the dissimilation perspective (fitzgerald 2012; güveli et al. 2016) and the comparative integration context theory (crul et al. 2012) were developed in other topics related to the consequences of international migration. hence, data collections such as “the integration of the european second generation” (crul et al. 2012), the “migrations between africa and europe” project (beauchemin 2018), the “2000 families study” (güveli et al. 2016), or eurislam (hoksbergen/tillie 2015) were initiated and offered new opportunities for analysis. kulu/gonzalez-ferrer (2014) gave a comprehensive overview of the theoretical approaches and the empirical research carried out to date on migrant fertility in europe, thereby opening up a discussion of opportunities for future research. they concluded that the fertility behaviour of international migrants and their descendants differs from that of the populations at both destination and origin. however, controlling for demographic and socio-economic characteristics mitigates differences between non-immigrants and immigrants from high-fertility countries. as a result, they suggested concentrating on the impact of the institutional context. 1.3 the ideational dimension in minority fertility interestingly and surprisingly, however, almost all papers on migrant and minority fertility in europe study this topic in the very strict sense of demographic behaviour, i.e. the timing and quantum of births. actual fertility behaviour may be the result of family preferences, but also of the actual socio-economic conditions in which fertility decisions are embedded. changes over time or in the life course, or differences in fertility behaviour between groups may reflect social inequalities and these may or may not be accompanied by differences or (preceding) changes in norms. when investigating fertility behaviour, it is hard to draw conclusions as to whether the cause of fertility differentials between migrants and non-migrants or between migrant groups is related to socio-economic or cultural factors, and the interaction between culture and structure (glick 2010). cultural differences, cultural entrenchment (forste/tienda 1996), socialisation into a “sub-culture” (milewski 2010), or “cultural maintenance” (abbasi-shavazi/mcdonald 2000) are often given as a residual explanation of remaining differences between different ethnic or migrant origin groups (kulu/hannemann 2016). accordingly, in the case of similarities between different origin groups the conclusion drawn indirectly from the results is “cultural” integranew aspects on migrant populations in europe • 375 tion. but a true test for the hypothesis of cultural diversity in migrant fertility is still lacking. in this special issue, we include two aspects in which culture and fertility are intertwined: 1) there are the norms and attitudes related to the number of children a person should have in her/his lifetime, i.e. the ideational dimension of fertility. studies of demographic behaviour faces the question how to include immigrants with children born prior to the move into the analyses because the can obviously not adapt to the destination context or only in higher parities. usually, the exposure time and births that occurred before the move are excluded from the analyses. the study of the ideational dimension, however, allows to include immigrants with premigration births into the picture. 2) culture shapes how norms and attitudes are translated into intentions and how fertility intentions are realised; i.e. methods of reproductive health and family planning. this includes the questions of whether the arrival of a child should be planned or not and under what conditions a child should be born. today, people in the west are used to the notion of planned parenthood. this requires a conscious decision to have a child and is regarded as the only responsible way in which children should arrive. the link between marriage and childbearing has become less strong. by contrast, in less industrialised countries, there are major differences in the use of family planning. particularly in rural areas, in poorer contexts, and among those persons with a lower level of education, children may “just arrive” in the absence of (effective) contraception, and do so mostly within the framework of marriage. such cultural aspects, which may be highly intertwined with socio-economic factors and the availability of reproductive health care services – methods of reproductive health and family planning as well as norms and attitudes – have hardly been investigated in the previous literature on migrant and minority fertility in europe. for international migrant groups, norms, attitudes and values regarding sexuality and family are seen as indicators of cultural integration processes (kalmijn/ kraaykamp 2017). consequently, rather than focusing solely on socio-economic determinants – regardless of whether this is the desired number of children, the ideal family size, childbearing intentions or expectations – attitudes should give us a better understanding of the cultural embeddedness of migrant fertility. already 10 years ago, testa/grilli (2006) emphasised the lack of reflection on the ideal family size for the majority populations in europe. fertility ideals and desires may be relatively “soft” predictors (sobotka/beaujouan 2014) of the actual fertility behaviours, but they may be a better reflection of personal norms than of actual behaviour (testa/grilli 2006; kuhnt et al. 2017) and may also allow for a better conclusion on the role of the normative context for fertility behaviour (testa/grilli 2006; thomson 2015). furthermore, many of the studies of the majority populations’ desired number of children justified their research interest by assuming there to be a gap between the number of children that are desired and realised respectively in the context of european welfare states, which are characterised by population ageing and do not reach replacement fertility levels. this assumed gap between desired and actual numbers is also given as a reason to implement social policies directed at gender equality and the reconciliation of family and work life (touleman/testa • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino376 2005). such a fertility gap and potential policy implications have only been scientifically studied for members of the majority populations in european welfare states and not for immigrants. one reason for the omission of migrants from these research questions may be that immigrants were shown to have higher average fertility than non-migrants and that researchers may think that migrants therefore do not require further support. another reason for this omission of migrants may be that the percentage of immigrants in european countries is increasing and there is growing concern about social inequalities in both politics and public discourse. this may, in turn, pose a challenge to social cohesion and increase conflicts between the groups. measures that are designed not to hinder the realisation of fertility for the immigrant population may therefore seem a very sensitive topic. accordingly, much of the previous literature on migrant integration has focused on human capital (i.e. education) and on economic aspects such as labour market participation, wages or poverty (e.g. kogan 2003; van tubergen et al. 2004; penninx 2005; kesler 2006). in the past few years, however, the political debate as well as research on structural integration has begun to include cultural aspects (algan et al. 2012). yet, the question as to what constitutes “cultural integration” remains open. the concept of cultural integration has been used to frame actual behaviour, such as intermarriage, language spoken at home, or educational achievement (e.g. gordon 1964; coleman 1994; wilson et al. 2011), or to measure the difference between immigrants and native-born persons in terms of cultural habits, values, and beliefs, such as religiosity (diehl/koenig 2009), attitudes toward gender equality (diehl et al. 2009; spierings 2015; mussino et al. 2018), or language proficiency (e.g. caselli 2015; mussino et al. 2014). the main goal of this special issue is to focus on cultural aspects in the study of demographic behaviour among migrant and minority groups in europe. we extend the literature first by adding the ideational or normative dimension, i.e. childbearing intentions and ideal family size, to the topic of fertility. second, we include aspects of family planning in the picture, i.e. attitudes towards abortion and assisted reproduction. we use different comparative perspectives to explore the within-group variation among migrant populations by including the first and second generations, by comparing stayers at origin to emigrants at destination, and migrants in different destinations in order to disentangle the roles of selection, disruption, and adaptation. while most of the previous studies have focused on women, we also devote attention to both sexes. the regional focus of the special issue is europe. these papers examine new immigration contexts (e.g. italy) and include eastern europe (russia, estonia), where ethnic and religious minority groups have a longer tradition than the comparatively young immigrant minorities in western europe. this allows us to extend theoretical considerations over a longer timeframe and to generalise from migrant minorities to minorities of any particular ethnic/cultural origin. new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 377 2 previous literature and the contributions of this special issue 2.1 review summary our literature review spanned the period from 2010 to the beginning of 2018 and looked at 21 peer-reviewed journals (see appendix tab. a1). these cover subjects in demography and population studies in general, or focus explicitly on migrants and ethnic minorities, or on family and family planning. in selecting the journals, we followed the example of kulu/gonzalez-ferrer (2014) but extended the list by adding journals on family planning. the time span covered a part of the review of kulu/gonzalez-ferrer, but the years since the publication of their work were added. we found and explored 111 papers, about two thirds of which investigated topics of migrant fertility, while the remaining third addressed topics relating more to family planning, sexual behaviour and reproductive health. most of these papers were empirical studies based on quantitative data and methods. our literature also covered migrant and ethnic/racial minorities in the traditional countries of immigration, not only europe. the subject of immigrant fertility in a demographic sense (i.e. the timing and quantum of births) is treated primarily in those journals that cover population developments; about 80 percent of the papers appeared in these journals. migration journals and general family journals each accounted for only about 10 percent of the papers on migrant fertility. migrant fertility has become a “european” topic; about three quarters of the papers focus on western europe and to a very small extent on eastern europe, whereas only one quarter focus on the united states, canada, or australia. in accordance with this finding, the analytical groupings being studied are mainly “migrants and their descendants”, and, to a lesser extent, “minorities”, be they racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. in europe, canada, and australia, the origin groups being studied are mainly work migrants and their descendants, in particular those from non-western countries, minorities from former colonial regions (as in france, the netherlands, and the united kingdom), or from neighbouring countries (such as in the nordic countries or the states belonging to the former soviet union). in the united states, these are mainly racial or ethnic minorities, i.e. blacks and latinos. in terms of migrant fertility subjects, around 90 percent of the papers investigated behaviour; in this literature review we found only 10 papers that dealt with the ideational dimension of the subject. among the topics covered, birth transitions stand out in terms of fertility behaviour. interestingly, the application of the life course approach and techniques of event history analysis are a “european” approach because this is found mainly in studies on european destination countries; this coincides with the emphasis on the migration process with both childbearing and moving as life course events. this also shows that minorities are framed mainly by their migrant origin in the european context. by contrast, macro measures (tfr, period tfr) were analysed mainly in the north american context. summary measures (completed number of children) were a subject in both regions. unlike migrant/minority fertility, the subject of migrant family planning is a topic mostly covered in family journals (about three quarters of the papers were pub• nadja milewski, eleonora mussino378 lished in such journals), to a limited extent in demographic journals, and hardly at all in migration journals. it is an overwhelmingly north american topic and deals primarily with ethnic/racial groupings. among the topics covered, contraception ranks highest, featuring in about 55 percent of the articles, followed by studies related to sexual activity, including sexual partnership histories (50 percent). other topics covered were induced abortions and unexpected/unwanted pregnancies (both less than 10 percent each). in this area of study, the percentage of papers focusing on attitudes is about one third as opposed to two thirds that investigate behaviours. when we consider these two fields of research topic – fertility and family planning – as well as the behavioural and the ideational dimension together, fertility behaviour clearly dominates the literature. while this is not surprising, we want to point out that the topic of family planning is almost a blind spot in the current literature on migrant and minority groups in europe. 2.2 fertility intentions and family size/number of children actual fertility behaviours may be mediated by or appear as the result of different socio-economic factors (miller/pasta 1995; ajzen/klobas 2013). in this special issue, we therefore promote the idea that fertility preferences may be a more appropriate indicator of cultural integration because these are more representative of underlying norms and ideology. when addressing the topic of “fertility preference”, however, we need to consider the variety of concepts, such as the desired number of children, personal ideal family size, intentions, or expectations. fertility intentions, usually measured as short-term parity-progression intentions, are generally considered to be relatively concrete, even if they are susceptible to change over time and based on previous experiences (namboodiri 1983). although fertility intentions have been considered the most accurate measure of predicting fertility (van de kaa 2001), the fertility intentions of immigrants and their descendants have been the subject of hardly any studies, either theoretical or empirical. there are a small number of exceptions in the form of us studies that look at fertility intentions and outcomes, including unintended pregnancy or fathering, in particular for latinos (sorenson 1985; rocca et al. 2010; hartnett 2014; daugherty 2016). on the one hand, hartnett (2014) looked at aggregate measures and found that hispanics come closer to achieving parity intentions compared to non-hispanic whites. on the other hand, at the individual level, latinos are not more likely to meet their intentions. our special issue includes two papers on fertility intentions in two european contexts. erik carlsson uses data from the swedish generations and gender survey (ggs) to investigate the short-term fertility intentions of immigrants and their descendants in sweden (carlsson 2018). his study sought to test whether immigrants adapt their fertility intentions towards the swedish level over generations, and whether such intergenerational patterns vary by gender and regional origin. the results of carlsson’s study suggest that the pattern of adaptation across migrant generations, which is usually found in the literature on actual birth behaviours, also appears with respect to the ideational level of fertility. whereas the first generanew aspects on migrant populations in europe • 379 tion’s fertility intentions are increased as compared to non-migrant swedes, the intentions of persons belonging to the generations 1.5 or 2 are rather similar to those of swedes. however, this process varies among origin groups. cultural proximity seems to play an important role in the process of generational change: the greater the cultural difference between the migrants’ country of origin and the destination (i.e. sweden), the slower the process of cultural integration. the second paper on fertility intentions included in this special issue looks at the estonian context; allan puur, hanna vseviov and liili abuladze use an origindestination perspective to compare the fertility intentions of russian emigrants and their descendants in estonia relative to non-migrants in estonia and to stayers in russia (puur et al. 2018). they use data from the estonian and russian ggs and focus on women. their research question is which individual and contextual factors may promote or hinder the convergence of the fertility levels of migrants and their descendants with those of the host society. unlike the swedish case, puur et al. find evidence of cultural maintenance among the russian emigrants and their descendants in estonia, who have fertility intentions which are more in line with those of their counterparts in russia and different to the respective intentions of the non-migrants at destination, i.e. estonians. however, convergence of the fertility intentions of immigrants and their descendants with those in the host country is greater if the immigrants and their descendants are also integrated into other aspects of the host society, such as being proficient in the host country language and having a partner belonging to the majority population. as was the case with the paper by carlsson on sweden, this finding indicates that cultural embeddedness does matter. unlike the measures of fertility intentions, the more normative aspect of fertility preferences can be measured by “softer” indicators, such as the desired or the ideal number of children (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). these indicators generally express quantum preferences without a specified timeframe (e.g. thomson 2015). desires have been linked to more internal and personal norms (testa/grilli 2006; kuhnt et al. 2017), because by their nature they are often uncertain and subject to change over the life course (thomson 2015). in our systematic literature review, the only paper that we found since 2010 which referred to migrants is that by kraus/castro-martín (2018) on the latin american 1.5 generation in spain. the authors investigated fertility expectations and did not find any difference in the expected family size between adolescents of migrant and non-migrant origin. with regard to the expected age at childbearing, however, they found that fertility timing preferences of latin american adolescents were influenced by the society of origin; their expected age at first birth was between that of their spanish peers and that prevailing in their country of origin in latin america. these findings point to a relatively rapid adaptation of migrant children to the childbearing norms in the host society. personal ideals, which are expressed under “ideal conditions”, are another indicator used to measure the ideational dimension of fertility. these are assumed to be unaffected by other constraints and are also assumed to be more stable over time (philipov/bernardi 2011; thomson 2015). consequently, fertility ideals have been interpreted as reflecting the normative context (trent 1980; testa/grilli 2006). this is why the study of the personal ideal family size of immigrants presents a promising • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino380 and (to date) underdeveloped opportunity when it comes to disclosing the relationship between migration and fertility. in a descriptive paper, penn/lambert (2002) showed how different ethnic groups or migrants in different destination countries exhibit differences in their preferred timing for family formation. differences were also found in the netherlands in both the ideal age at childbearing and the family size among ethnic group origins (de valk 2013), which suggests that the migrants’ childhood socialisation at origin has a lasting effect on fertility ideals. at the same time, there were significant intergenerational differences in the ideal family size among all the groups, with migrant children preferring a smaller family size than their parents, indicating that adaptation processes are at work. some evidence of a socialisation effect by country of origin was found for sub-saharan african migrants to france regarding their fertility ideals (afulani/asunka 2015). in the british context, berrington (2018) looked at expectations for marriage and parenthood and confirmed the persistence of large ethnic differences in expectations for family transitions, with important divergences within the south asian communities. holland/ de valk (2013) looked at ideal ages for marriage and parenthood among immigrants from over 160 countries of (parents’) origin living in 25 european countries. they found that origin influences the ideal of only the most recent migrants in terms of age of parenthood. one paper in our special issue focuses on fertility preferences, using the personal ideal family size among immigrant women in italy. eleonora mussino and livia ortensi estimate the personal ideal family size of immigrant women in italy using data from the istat survey entitled “social condition and integration of foreign citizens”, which was conducted in 2011-12, and they compare it with the prevailing norm of stayers in their country of origin (mussino/ortensi 2018). they analyse determinants of agreement and disagreement with the italians’ norm testing of the hypothesis of cultural socialisation being maintained against the hypothesis of adaptation. the authors find that the country of origin plays an important role in the determination of immigrants’ ideal family sizes. they conclude that cultural socialisation, measured both with the effect of country of origin and age at arrival, explains the persistence of the personal ideal family size norm. furthermore, they suggest that the processes of convergence observed in actual fertility among firstgeneration migrant women in italy might be due primarily to financial restrictions or other disruptive phenomena rather than to a real and deeper change in fertility ideals. in line with this result, the time since migration has no significant impact on the match between personal and average family ideals of the country of origin. the authors conclude that it is hard to understand whether or not migrant’s ideals were inconsistent with those of their country at the migration stage (selection) already or whether they changed in the destination country, but they conclude that if migration drove the change, the effect is not time-dependent. 2.3 birth control and abortion in our systematic review of literature since 2010, contraception was the second major topic addressed in the field of migrant and minority fertility. about a third of the new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 381 papers included topics on attitudes towards, utilisation of, satisfaction with, and knowledge about contraceptives. by contrast, the number of publications on induced abortions was three in absolute terms out of approximately 100 papers, all of which dealt with actual behaviour and none on attitudes towards abortion. some of the papers on contraception, however, mention the connection with abortion as they conclude that the use of (effective) contraception may prevent abortions (kusunoki et al. 2016). however, other papers relate the absence of (effective) contraception to higher risks of sexually transmitted diseases (e.g., deardorff et al. 2010), higher fertility (white/potter 2013), higher risks of unintended pregnancies and related social problems (jacobs/stanfors 2013), or barriers in health care service access (dehlendorf et al. 2011). almost all of the papers on contraception focused on the north american context; only one study investigated a european context looking at contraception and abortion (agadjanian/hyun yoo 2018). empirical evidence on abortion is scarce because any research on the subject requires sensitive questioning, and because abortion is not permitted at all in some countries (bankole et al. 1998). in general, the incidence of abortion is higher in east asian countries than in europe and north america. within each of the continents, there is considerable variation between countries, however. in europe, the abortion rates are lowest in countries in the west and north of the continent, but they are higher in southern europe, with the highest rates estimated for countries in eastern europe (sedgh et al. 2016). attitudes towards abortion are most conflicting in regions where induced abortions are illegal or legal only on specific grounds, which coincides with higher incidence rates in these regions (who 2005). hence, certain immigrant groups in europe originate from regions where the risks of an induced abortion are higher than in the majority population at destination, while at the same time the immigrants may hold less liberal attitudes towards abortion. two studies by helström et al. (2003 and 2006) showed that the abortion rate was significantly higher among various immigrant groups in sweden. they explained this finding as the sum of various risk factors, such as low education, a weak social network, poverty, unemployment, and being outside common pathways to health care (helström et al. 2003). they reached a similar conclusion for teenage girls (helström et al. 2006). both studies showed that the utilisation of contraceptive methods was lower in immigrant groups. by contrast, immigrants to russia – a societal context with rather high abortion rates overall – were found to have lower abortion rates, but there was variation by their legal status (agadjanian/hyun yoo 2018). the findings regarding contraceptive use and abortion risks in relation to migrants to europe are similar to the large body of empirical evidence on migrant and racial minorities in the us – even though the minority and majority groups in both continents are different in terms of their ethnic composition, their religious composition and adherence to religious beliefs, and even though the policies regulating access to birth control and abortion and the access to the health care systems are different too. the minority groups are found to use contraception to a lower extent (poncet et al. 2013) and to have induced abortions more often than women of the majority populations. • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino382 the low degree of contraceptive use is, however, not the only reason for elevated rates of abortion in immigrant groups. in a qualitative study, based on in-depth interviews, puri et al. (2011) found for indians in the us that induced abortions were a means of sex selection. indian immigrants maintained their son preference after migration. indirect evidence of sex-selective abortion among immigrant populations has also been found in other contexts, indicating elevated skewed sex ratios at birth, especially for higher-order births (see dubuc/coleman 2007 for the uk; almond/edlund 2008 and abrevaya 2009 for the us; singh et al. 2010 for norway; verropoulou/tsimbos 2010 for greece; ray et al. 2012 and almond et al. 2013 for canada; gonzález 2014 for spain; ambrosetti et al. 2015 for italy; mussino et al. 2018 for sweden). almost all of the articles included in our systematic review of 21 journals that dealt with abortion were on aspects of behaviour and prevalences, and focused on the north american context. only one paper investigated attitudes towards abortion among international migrants in europe. carol/milewski (2017) showed that both religious affiliation and individual religiosity influence muslims’ attitudes towards abortion. moreover, many of these attitudes are maintained from one generation to the next. the paper by nadja milewski and sarah carol included in this special issue investigates attitudes towards abortion among descendants of turkish migrants and descendants of non-migrant parents in six european countries (milewski/carol 2018). the authors used data from the project on the integration of the european second generation (ties). unlike in other surveys, the question regarding attitudes towards abortion in the ties questionnaire distinguished between “medical” and “non-medical” reasons for abortion. their results show that both groupings that formed the subject of the study expressed a range of attitudes, and that abortion for medical reasons was more accepted than abortion for non-medical reasons. however, the turkish descendants were more likely than the non-migrants to say that they would never accept abortion, and there was variation by country of residence. the authors conclude that attitudes toward abortion among turkish descendants are influenced by their family backgrounds, but also by their socialisation experiences in receiving countries in europe. these findings suggest that processes of cultural integration are occurring, but not the point where the attitudes of migrants have converged with the attitudes of non-migrants in the respective destination country. 2.4 assisted reproduction a topic that has not entered the migrant/minority fertility literature yet is the question of unfulfilled fertility intentions. in our literature review, we did not find any papers on assisted reproductive technologies (art) in the context of international migrants or ethnic minorities, neither on the ideational nor the behavioural dimensions. in the research carried out on the general populations, art plays an increasing role in work on health care policies and fertility (präg/mills 2017a). this is due on the one hand to growing possibilities in the reproductive health care sector. on the new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 383 other hand, the assumed gap between fertility intentions and realisation plays a role in a general societal climate where fertility seems to be too low and may be viewed as needing to be increased at the level of the population. accordingly, the literature focuses on legal conditions, cross-country variation in use, and on the question of the contribution of art-related births to the tfr (präg/mills 2017a). previous literature on cross-country variation in art use brought up cultural factors as one of the possible explanations for these differences. beliefs about the moral status of an embryo may play a role. in countries where fewer people think that the embryo becomes a human being immediately after fertilisation, the rates of art use are higher (präg/mills 2017b). if there are cultural differences in the use of art, the question arises as to whether attitudes regarding art would also vary between immigrants and the majority population in a given country. previous research on attitudes towards art has been scarce, however. the study by sonja haug and nadja milewski in this special issue examines attitudes towards art among immigrant women and non-migrants in germany (haug/ milewski 2018). the analysis is based on data collected in a pilot study conducted in 2014 and 2015. the sample includes 960 women aged 18 to 50 who originate from turkey, poland, the balkan countries, countries of the (russian) commonwealth of independent states (cis), or germany. the authors study the social norm to use art to have a child, the personal attitude of whether a woman would use art herself, and the methods that they would consider for their own use. the results show that the majority of women would use art if necessary. there is significant variation between the origin groups, however. non-migrants show the lowest acceptance rates and migrants from poland and turkey the highest approval. there is also variation in the art procedures considered for use with the migrants more approving of heterologous methods than non-migrants. the differences between the origin groups diminish only partly when controlling for further explanatory variables, i.e. gender-role attitudes, religiosity, and socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. haug/milewski conclude that attitudes towards art are shaped less by socio-demographic characteristics, but rather by cultural factors and socialisation in the migrants’ countries of origin. 3 discussion: conclusions and implications for future research our special issue extends the research field of migrant fertility in europe to include the thematic aspects of ideals, attitudes, and intentions in fertility and family planning in europe. in this section, we draw conclusions from the papers in our special issue and discuss implications for future research. first, we showed that the ideational dimension in fertility deserves scholarly attention. if conclusions are drawn only from fertility behaviour, the previous research leads us to deduce that immigrants on average adapt quite quickly (i.e. within one generation) to the behaviour of the respective majority population at destination. the main factors behind the rather fast process towards convergence were attributed to socio-economic conditions (e.g. andersson/scott 2005, 2007), and conver• nadja milewski, eleonora mussino384 gence in fertility behaviour was interpreted as an indicator of adaptation, assimilation, or cultural integration. cultural factors – although often unobserved – were put forward as an explanation for persisting gaps between certain immigrant groups and the majority populations. the papers included in this special issue confirm, on the one hand, the role of socio-economic conditions too, because controlling for such factors also reduces the differentials in fertility attitudes between immigrants and the majority population. on the other hand, substantial differences between these groupings remained, and these gaps seem somehow persistent in attitudes more than in studies on actual behaviour. in general, it seems that there is also a gap between the desired and the realised number of children, as far as migrants are concerned. moreover, converging levels in actual fertility behaviour seem to be the result of socio-economic processes, which might not be accompanied by changes in cultural attitudes or customs. the question arises as to why such gaps between intention and realisation occur and whether the reasons differ between migrants and members of the majority populations. possible answers here include the longer time it takes to find a partner due to the discrimination of certain immigrant groups (elwert 2018), higher opportunity costs for minority group members, in particular women, who have achieved a higher level of education and an above-average occupation; this has been proposed in the literature as the minority status hypothesis (milewski 2010). in order to address the question of the fertility gap properly, future research needs to study both intentions and realisation in one sample, not in separate studies. since the papers included in this special issue examined different institutional contexts, we can also conclude that this gap between immigrant/minority and majority groups varies depending on the institutional context of the countries of residence. in a country where social policies are geared heavily towards fertility, family life, and labour market activity (sweden), the minority-majority gaps seem narrower than in a country where there is a relative absence of welfare policies (russia). however, it should be noted that immigrants from countries with higher fertility rates show a convergence with majority fertility levels (actual behaviour) somewhat sooner in countries with higher fertility levels than in those countries with lowestlow fertility. this is because the difference between origin and destination is smaller, e.g. when immigrants move to a nordic country as compared to the mediterranean. the same logic applies to the study of the ideal or desired numbers of children or fertility intentions. as a result, the comparison between emigrants and the stayers at origin is important in order to gain a full picture of processes of adaptation to destination and dissimilarity from origin. the paper by puur et al. showed that fertility intentions among emigrants are quite similar when compared to the stayers at origin, with little difference between the migrant generations. this suggests a high degree of cultural maintenance and intergenerational transmission of the norms and attitudes acquired during socialisation in the country of origin. it should also be noted that other aspects of fertility and family behaviour, such as the timing of births, birth spacing, or the association between marriage and childbearing, were shown to vary by immigrant origin group, societal context of destination, and migrant generation. at the same time, the pace of adaptation varies for new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 385 these aspects. in general, the conclusion that can be drawn from the literature is that adaptation processes occur faster in the behavioural dimensions of fertility and family dynamics, whereas the impact of cultural socialisation may be longer lasting. hence, socio-economic factors serve as adaptation channels – while diversity in attitudes towards culture persists. second, planned vs. unplanned fertility: another aspect arising from the work presented in this special issue is the question regarding the extent to which fertility is the result of rational family planning, which is also related to cultural socialisation. mussino/ortensi analysed not only the numbers given for the question on the ideal size of the family, but also the occurrence of non-numeric responses (“family size is up to god”; “don’t know”). the share of such responses is rather high, especially among some immigrant groups. hence, this finding poses another question, namely whether women originating from different settings express numeric preferences in the same way? early surveys (i.e. those conducted in the 1970s) in high-fertility contexts had prompted concern about the usefulness of asking questions about intentions and preferences. in countries that had not yet undergone the transition to controlled fertility, demographers hypothesised that childbearing was not normally the subject of individual decision-making, especially for women. in such settings, it was unclear whether women would be able to formulate preferences or to consider childbearing goals under hypothetical conditions. a series of studies reacting to these concerns examined and largely confirmed the overall validity of reported family size preferences (hayford/agadjanian 2011). this leads to the conclusion that the numeric answers are also valid for women from “transitional” fertility contexts. however, the categories “i don’t know” or “it’s up to god” may reflect the notion that respondents choosing these answers do not “plan” parenthood. these respondents are usually excluded from the analyses, which focus on the gap between desired and realised numbers of children. if the share of respondents who are unable to attach a number to their fertility ideals or desired family size is higher among migrants than among non-migrants, the results for the group differences are likely biased. future research should be aware of such a bias and try to estimate how many children these people had at the end of their reproductive life span. third, other cultural aspects: like the work on actual fertility behaviour, the papers included in this special issue showed variation within the migrant populations. the papers that compared migrant generations delivered evidence of the “in-between position” of the migrant descendants – depending on the cultural distance and the differences in fertility between origin and destination contexts. one of the crucial issues will be whether a certain immigrant group in a certain country develops into a minority group and how cultural and structural/socio-economic factors interact with each other (glick 2010). minority groups and immigrant groups may overlap or be distinct from each other; or a group of migrants may develop gradually into a minority group over time and generations (coleman 1994). bean and tienda (1990) listed four criteria, which together characterise minority groups. these are as follows: 1) each of the sub-groups constitutes only a small proportion of the total population of a country; 2) members of the particular group experience a sense of self-awareness as belonging to the group; 3) members of the particular • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino386 group experience a degree of discrimination by members of the majority group; and 4) the members of the particular group are to some extent discernible in their appearance as its members. from a demographer’s point of view, a distinct demographic behaviour is the fifth characteristic of a minority group. the question is which migrant groups turn into a minority, with distinct patterns of fertility and family formation (and which do not) and why? what constitutes such a sub-culture, and how is this sub-culture transmitted from one generation to the next? in this regard, the papers in this special issue suggest that attitudes and intentions in fertility and family planning matter. future research should therefore include more measures of culture in order to estimate its impact on demographic behaviour. the papers by haug/milewski and milewski/carol suggest that religious affiliation and religiosity may be better predictors of group differences than a category that accounts for the rather broad “migrant background” or “country of origin”. the question of which indicator is useful will become more important in the next migrant generations, i.e. generation 3+, when migration-related variables such as the country of birth or the year of the international move will no longer work because these generations are not affected by the migration event of their ancestors anymore. instead, they are affected by socialisation into a minority culture and/or the experience of discrimination and inherited socio-economic inequalities. other items that deserve attention in order to understand the cultural side of migrant and minority fertility are norms and attitudes towards the relationship between marriage and sex. non-marital childbearing was shown to be less common in certain migrant groups than in the respective majority populations in europe (carlson 1985), mainly in groups originating from countries where marriage is almost universal and childbearing is exclusive to marriage, such as countries with a muslim tradition. few studies, however, focus on migrants from countries where matriarchal family traditions persist (such as in the caribbean) or where the connections between marriage, sexual intercourse and childbearing are not as strong (such as for migrants from sub-saharan africa). they suggest that the patterns of marriage and childbearing continue, at least to a certain extent, even after migration (kulu/ hannemann 2016). in addition, literature on minority groups in the us focuses on early sexual debut, the below-average use of contraceptives, and high teenage birth rates, which result in a rather high risk of unintended pregnancies and lone motherhood in the absence of a strong marriage norm. by contrast, in minority groups that emphasise the norm of virginity at marriage and where marriage is the dominant living arrangement, an early entry into motherhood would be less associated with social problems. in order to understand the association between marriage and family formation, such as the age at first childbirth, it is necessary to look at the norms regarding the relationship between sexual activity and marriage, the interplay with other processes in the transition to adulthood – such as leaving the parental home and marriage (milewski 2010) – as well as the age norm at first childbirth (holland/ de valk 2013). fourth, aspects of gender roles and gender-role attitudes: the papers included in this special issue address the role of “gender” – which is also highly intertwined new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 387 with culture and cultural differences – in fertility and family planning in several ways. the inclusion of both women and men in carlsson’s paper is of additional value, not only for research on fertility intentions, but also for research on immigrant fertility in general as hardly any attention has been paid to men’s fertility in previous literature. carlsson shows that men and women of the first migrant generation do not significantly differ in their higher-than-non-migrant intentions. by contrast, gender differences appear in the generations 1.5 and 2; while migrant women state similar intentions to the majority group, migrant men are more likely than majority group men to state a positive fertility intention. this suggests that migrant women adapt to the socio-demographic context at destination more quickly than men. the question remains as to why these gender differences occur. we may speculate here that the (opportunity) costs for children are higher for women than for men, and therefore adaptation appears faster among migrant women than men. mussino/ ortensi and haug/milewski illustrated that attitudes towards gender equality also shape fertility attitudes and account for differences between immigrants and nonmigrants in europe. sex preferences for children is another aspect worth studying. signs of support for traditional ideals related to fertility have also been found regarding sex preference for children: an example in this sense is the persistence of a preference for having a boy, as evidenced by the imbalance in sex birth ratios among immigrants from selected backgrounds (e.g. ambrosetti et al. 2015; mussino et al. 2018). moreover, the topic of sex preferences for children should also be implemented in questions on attitudes. the “european” preference seems to be to have one child of each sex; families who have two children of the same sex were found to be more likely to have a third child even if in some nordic countries there is a shift towards a preference for having a girl (andersson et al. 2006, 2007; miranda et al. 2018). however, certain immigrants originating from countries where the norm is to have at least one son, exhibit a higher and faster transition rate to having a third child if the first two children were daughters (hampshire et al. 2012; lillehagen/lyngstad 2018; mussino et al. 2019). so far, previous research in europe investigated the actual sex ratio in a given population or the transition to a subsequent child controlling for the sex of the previous child(ren). the conclusions drawn still remain somewhat speculative; the gap between preferences and actual offspring composition may be greater than measured in behaviour. the decision of parents to have another child may be driven not only by their preferences and by the sex composition of the previous children, but may also be influenced by socio-economic conditions, union/family history, biological ability and the experiences of previous births (to give just a few examples). hence, the direct question on preferences would reveal the extent of the gap in the sex preferences for children between minorities and majority populations, but also within the immigrant population. the question of sex preferences is central to attitudes towards gender roles – gender equality is one of the core elements with which european societies identify themselves and differential sex preferences for children seem to contradict this identity and the notion of gender equality. • nadja milewski, eleonora mussino388 fifth, family planning methods: another research topic that is interesting to study is the question of family planning methods, i.e. what methods of contraception are used and how unintended pregnancies are perceived. it seems likely that persons who do not “plan” to have children do not use contraceptives or start using them only after a certain parity. we think it likely that this heterogeneity will also lead to growing disparities in unintended pregnancies and the resulting consequences, such as negative health and developmental outcomes for mothers, children and families (hayford/guzzo 2013). studies on the us showed that the rates of unintended pregnancies and induced abortions are disproportionally higher among blacks than among whites, and that racial and ethnic differences in fertility persist even after socio-economic characteristics and relationship status are accounted for (barber et al. 2015). this is largely because, relative to white women, black women had higher rates of sex without contraception in adolescence and partly because they are more likely to have grown up with a single parent (barber et al. 2015). in order to understand the processes, meanings, and motivations for cultural maintenance or changes in demographic behaviour of immigrants, it is not sufficient to count numbers, be it either the desired or the realised number of children. it is also necessary to understand how these numbers are “achieved”. in this regard, birth control arises as a topic. future research on migrant fertility and cultural integration should also look at attitudes towards and the use of contraception because contraception and abortion are interrelated (miller/valente 2016). access to both contraception and abortion are reproductive rights that are central to women’s self-determination and gender equality. if migrant women in the new destination context are to gain access to equal opportunities (even gradually over generations), this topic deserves special attention in policies, education, and research on gender equality and public health. related to the attitudes towards family planning and the use of contraception is the question of knowledge and access. clearly, methods of contraception, assisted reproductive technologies, or health care services for induced abortion can only be used when there is knowledge about the availability thereof and when there is access thereto. it is now clear that the heterogeneity of migrants to europe as well as between european countries is already quite substantial and is growing. as we emphasised the importance of cultural assimilation and specifically attitudes, norms, and intentions on fertility as well as on family planning practices, the respective questions obviously need to be included in data collections as well. to date, some of the topics that we suggested for study are barely included in data collections at all, such as attitudes towards abortion or assisted reproduction. these topics would be interesting for both minority and majority groups because huge variations in attitudes are also apparent among the majority populations. other topics, such as the question of planned parenthood or contraception, seem to have disappeared from the european research agenda. as far as immigrants from countries where modern contraception is not available are concerned, the question arises as to whether they adapt to reproductive health issues in europe. an effort should therefore be made to also include such items in data collections. new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 389 coming back to our research question, we end this introductory chapter by concluding that fertility can serve as a good indicator of immigrants’ integration only if both socio-economic and cultural aspects are taken into account. first, studies on fertility behaviour with respect to timing and numbers should be complemented by the ideational dimension, such as norms, attitudes and intentions, the possible gaps between behaviour and intention as well as the reasons for such gaps. second, the practice of family planning and family formation should be investigated in more detail, e.g. the association between marriage and childbearing and contraception. third, future research – not only demographic studies – needs to discuss appropriate indicators regarding what constitutes a “minority culture”, especially if integration processes over more than two generations are to be investigated, and it needs to develop theoretical frameworks for demographic processes and change in multicultural societies. acknowledgments we are thankful to erik carlsson and martin radtke for their contributions to the literature overview. this research was supported by the linnaeus center on social policy and family dynamics in europe (spade), grant registration number 349-2007-8701; the swedish research council for health, working life and welfare (forte), grant number 2016-07105 and 2018-00310; and the swedish research council (vetenskapsrådet), grant number 2017-01021. we thank the cpos editorial board for their support in planning and developing this special issue as well as all the anonymous reviewers that improved this introductory chapter and the articles included in this collection. references abbasi-shavazi, mohammed jalal; mcdonald, peter 2000: fertility and multiculturalism: immigrant fertility in australia, 1977–1991. in: international migration review 34,1: 215-242 [doi: 10.1177/019791830003400109]. abrevaya, jason 2009: are there missing girls in the united states? evidence from birth data. in: american economic journal: applied economics 1,2: 1-34 [doi: 10.1257/ app.1.2.1]. afulani, patience a.; asunka, joseph 2015: socialization, adaptation, transnationalism, and the reproductive behavior of sub-saharan african migrants in france. in: population research and policy review 34,4: 561-592 [doi: 10.1007/s11113-015-9360-2]. agadjanian, 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2005. make every mother and child count. geneva: world health organization. wilson, ben 2018: the intergenerational assimilation of completed fertility: comparing the convergence of different origin groups. in: international migration review [doi: 10.1177/0197918318769047]. wilson, deborah; burgess, simon; briggs, adam 2011: the dynamics of school attainment of england’s ethnic minorities. in: journal of population economics 24,2: 681700 [doi: 10.1007/s00148-009-0269-0]. new aspects on migrant populations in europe • 397 date of submission: 23.01.2019 date of acceptance: 25.06.2019 prof. dr. nadja milewski (*). university of rostock, institute of sociology and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: nadja.milewski@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/isd/lehrstuhl/jp-demo/milewski/ eleonora mussino. stockholm university. stockholm, sweden. e-mail: eleonora.mussino@sociology.su.se url: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/emuss-1.189704 appendix tab. a1: journals included in our literature review covering general demography/ population studies advances in life course research demographic research demography european journal of population journal of population economics population population and development review population and environment population research and policy review population studies population, space and place covering migration/migrant-related topics international migration review journal of ethnic and migration studies journal of refugee studies covering family/ fertility/ sexuality related topics international perspectives on sexual and reproductive health journal of biosocial science journal of family issues journal of marriage and family perspectives on sexual and reproductive health studies in family planning social science and medicine published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) _goback marital status, partnership and health behaviour: findings from the german ageing survey (deas) marital status, partnership and health behaviour: findings from the german ageing survey (deas) regina hilz, michael wagner abstract: numerous empirical studies have confi rmed that married people have a lower risk of morbidity and mortality than unmarried people. however, there is relatively little existing research on the impact of marital status and partnerships on the health behaviour of elderly people in europe. this study examines the association between partnership status and health-related behaviour among the german population in the second half of life (aged 40-85). we focus on four indicators of health behaviour: smoking, physical activity, body weight, and health check-ups. the data used in the analysis come from the 2008 (n=6,205) and 2014 (n=6,002) waves of the german ageing survey (deas). we applied logistic regression models with average marginal effects (ame). the results of our analysis are in line with the fi ndings of previous studies, which indicated that being married has a protective effect on smoking and a negative effect on body weight. crisis effects are found to be limited primarily to smoking by recently widowed people. our study provides new empirical insights into the extent to which being married has protective effects on the use of health care, as people who are separated, divorced, or never married are found to be less likely to have regular health check-ups compared to married people. furthermore, our results for physical activity are contrary to previous fi ndings for younger adults, according to which being married is associated with a lower likelihood of participating in physical activities. the results of the data analyses show that at ages 40 and older, unmarried individuals, especially those who are not in a partnership, are at higher risk of physical inactivity than their married counterparts. our fi ndings on marital status and partnership status therefore demonstrate that being married is strongly associated with positive health behaviours. the results may be useful for designing health programmes or prevention measures. keywords: marital status · partnership · protection effect · health behaviour · german ageing survey comparative population studies vol. 43 (2018): 65-98 (date of release: 04.07.2018) federal institute for population research 2018 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2018-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2018-08en8 • regina hilz, michael wagner66 1 introduction a very large number of empirical studies have demonstrated that being married is associated with a wide range of health benefi ts (hughes/waite 2009; joung et al. 1994) and longevity (hu/goldman 1990; klein 1993; manzoli et al. 2007; robards et al. 2012). previous research on the relationship between health and marital status has shown that, on average, divorced and separated people are in the worst health condition, with the highest rates of acute and chronic diseases (grundy/tomassini 2010); widowed people are in the second-worst health condition (grundy/sloggett 2003; perkins et al. 2016); and never-married people are in the third-worst health condition (grundy/tomassini 2010). it has also been found that the experience of marital dissolution negatively affects health over a long period. based on data from the health and retirement study (hrs), hughes and waite (2009) found evidence of a long-term effect of marital disruption on the health of people aged 50 and older. their results showed that compared to people in their fi rst marriage, people who are currently married but have ever been divorced have a worse self-rated health, more chronic conditions, more mobility limitations, and more depressive symptoms (hughes/waite 2009). they also found that people who are divorced and widowed and do not remarry have worse mental and physical health than people who are currently married (hughes/waite 2009). recent meta-analyses have also indicated that never-married (roelfs et al. 2011), widowed (moon et al. 2011), and divorced people (manzoli et al. 2007; sbarra/nietert 2009) have higher mortality risks than married people. in turn, the evidence that married people have lower morbidity and mortality risks than unmarried people has been attributed to lifestyle factors. however, the relationship between marital status and health behaviour remains unclear. on the one hand, recent research has suggested that being married is associated with engaging in healthier behaviours, such as consuming less nicotine (cho et al. 2008; peltonen et al. 2017) and alcohol (duncan et al. 2006; reczek et al. 2016). however, studies have consistently shown that being married can have negative effects on body weight (averett et al. 2008; klein et al. 2013; sobal et al. 2003; umberson et al. 2009) and physical activity (kaplan et al. 2001; rapp/schneider 2013). only a few existing studies have examined the infl uence of partnership or marriage biographies on the health behaviour of elderly people in europe (e.g., grundy/ tomassini 2010). there are, however, a number of studies conducted in the u.s. that have looked at the effects of partner-specifi c characteristics on the health behaviour of elderly people (bulanda 2006; reczek et al. 2016; wilcox et al. 2003). but as european populations age and demographic and social changes continue, research on the health behaviour of elderly people is becoming increasingly important . compared to other age groups, older people who are married face a higher risk of losing their partner. moreover, divorce and separation are becoming increasingly common life events among older people (nowossadeck/engstler 2013). taking into account the point in time when marriage dissolution occurs allows for the analysis of longterm and short-term effects on health behaviour (see generally chase-lansdale/ hetherington 2014), and for the control of selection mechanisms. marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 67 this work broadens the research landscape by focusing on older unmarried cohabiters in germany. our analysis considers the effects of being an unmarried cohabiter and the timing of marriage dissolution on different dimensions of health behaviour. in addition to examining the role of marital status in health behaviour, we investigate the partnership status of unmarried people to identify differences in the health behaviour patterns of married people and unmarried cohabiters (fuller 2010). we take into account four indicators of health behaviour: smoking, physical activity, body weight, and having regular health check-ups. smoking, physical inactivity, and high a body weight can be considered health-related risk behaviours because they are associated with increased risks of morbidity and mortality (see committee on health and behavior 2001: 87-137; world health organization 2009: 9). additionally, body weight is a useful indicator of patterns of physical inactivity and unhealthy nutrition (psouni et al. 2016). the fourth behaviour, having regular health check-ups, is used here as an indicator for engagement in health-related prevention measures. studying the health behaviour of older adults is important because having a healthy lifestyle in old age is positively related to reduced morbidity and mortality risks (haveman-nies et al. 2003). accordingly, the present study deals with the questions of whether and, if so, how marital status, partnership status, and the timing of marriage dissolution are associated with smoking, physical activity, body weight, and having regular health check-ups in late adulthood. 2 theoretical perspectives on partnership and health behaviour based on the model developed by house, umberson, and landis (1988), figure 1 shows the relationship between marital and non-marital partnership, stress, healthrelated behaviour, and health. three explanatory approaches have been established to disentangle the relationship between marital status, partnership status and health behaviour: protective effects, selection effects, and crisis effects. the assumption that a partnership has protective effects on health behaviour is based on the concept of social support, social control, and social regulation (goldman et al. 1995; umberson 1992). according to the concept of social support, a partnership is a close social relationship that has a health-promoting effect through different types of supportive behaviour by the partners (heaney/israel 2008: 190; umberson et al. 2010: 144-145). emotional support is expressed as empathy, love, trust, care, appreciation, and acceptance. instrumental support includes the provision of material assistance and services that help a person in need (heaney/israel 2008: 190). a typical example of material assistance is the pooling of money to share the costs of the home. services for the partner could be e.g. cooking a meal, arranging medical appointments, or taking care of the child(ren). informational support is provided within couples through the exchange of information that facilitates decision-making. these different types of support may lead to the positive regulation of health-related behaviours among (married) partners (grundy/tomassini 2010: 1472; umberson et al. 2010). for example, the lifestyle of a couple is generally • regina hilz, michael wagner68 characterised by having a regulated and communal daily life, including having regulated and organised leisure time; eating healthy and regular meals; and providing and receiving care and assistance in diffi cult life situations, including illness (burke et al. 1999; rapp/klein 2015). partners may benefi t from the emotional, instrumental, and informational support they receive from each other in stressful situations (böhr 2015; cohen 2004). according to the stress-buffering hypothesis (cohen/wills 1985), the social support provided within partnerships has positive effects on the physical (uchino 2004) and the psychological health (soulsby/bennett 2015) of the partners. the buffering effect of being married or in a partnership, also shown as an arrow in figure 1, moderates the effect of stress on health behaviour. men in particular are more likely to engage in positive health behaviour if they receive social support from a wife or partner (böhr 2015; waite/gallagher 2000). health behaviour is also infl uenced by social control. the protective effect of partnerships is based in part on the tendency of partners to monitor each other, and to sanction adverse health behaviours (umberson 1992). thus, the health-related behaviours are regulated through the support and motivation they receive from their partner to engage in a health-conscious lifestyle and to limit their risk-taking behaviours. partners may have a strong interest in discouraging each other from acting in self-harming ways, both out of a sense of responsibility for the other person and out of self-interest. by encouraging each other to remain healthy, the partners are seeking to avoid fi nancial losses and the restrictions they would experience in caring for a disabled or ill spouse. this tendency to regulate the behaviour of the partner can be called social regulation (duncan et al. 2006). accordingly, the protective effect of partnerships involves a complex set of mechanisms that promote fig: 1: relationship between partnership, health behaviour, and health source: own design based on house et al. 1988 marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 69 health behaviour through ecological, social, and psychological factors (see goldman et al. 1995: 1717; rapp/klein 2015: 776; williams/umberson 2004). the protective effect of living in a marital or non-marital partnership can, however, disappear if the partnership quality is low. a relationship marked by confl ict can cause the partners to feel stressed (bulanda et al. 2016; floyd et al. 2006), suffer from poor health (choi/marks 2008), and engage in unhealthy behaviour (reczek et al. 2016). furthermore, if a relationship is of low quality, the risk of separation or divorce increases. the confl icts in the relationship and the dissolution of a partnership are thus said to have a crisis effect (see fig. 1). the crisis-based approach emphasises that health behaviour may not only be explained by marital or partnership status, but by critical life events, such as marriage dissolution like a separation, divorce, or widowhood (booth/amato 1991; bulanda et al. 2016; wilcox et al. 2003; williams/umberson 2004: 81-82; wyke/ford 1992: 524). contrary to the protection and selection approaches, the crisis model assumes that health and health behaviour are determined by the economic, physical, and psychological burdens associated with marital dissolution (see booth/amato 1991; wyke/ ford 1992). in addition to having negative economic effects (see bröckel/andreß 2015), the stress-triggering circumstances of a marriage dissolution have physiological, psychological, and social consequences (umberson 1992; williams/umberson 2004). under these negative circumstances, the partners may develop risky health behaviours, such as increased nicotine or alcohol consumption (see reczek et al. 2016; tamers et al. 2014). according to the crisis model, a person’s marital history, such as the time since separation or widowhood, has important effects on his/her health behaviour (grundy/tomassini 2010). the longer the period since the dissolution of the marriage, the more likely it is that the individual will have adapted to the situation, and the less severe will be the effects on his/her health behaviour. it is therefore assumed that patterns of risky health-related behaviour will be observed more frequently among individuals who are recently separated or widowed than among people who have lived without a partner for many years. thus, when investigating the relationship between health behaviour and marital status, it is important to take into account the shortand long-term effects of marriage dissolution. in contrast, the selection theory calls into question the protective effect of marriage, and suggests instead that there is a reversed cause-and-effect chain (see goldman 1993; waldron et al. 1996). according to the selection approach, healthy people have a higher probability of getting married (lipowicz 2014; unger 2007; waldron et al. 1996) and of staying married (hughes/waite 2009), whereas less healthy people either do not marry or are more likely to separate or divorce (cheung 1998; joung et al. 1998; rapp 2012). furthermore, a person’s health status can infl uence his/her health-related behaviours (committee on health and behavior 2001). for example, unhealthy people are less likely than healthy people to be physically active. other infl uencing factors related to health behaviour, marital status, and stress are characteristics of the external environment and determinants of social inequality, such as socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) and socio-economic characteristics (e.g., education, income, occupation) (hedwig et al. 1999; schmidtke/meyer • regina hilz, michael wagner70 2011). health and health behaviour are also affected by cultural factors and regional conditions, such as housing conditions and access to quality health care (wilkinson/ marmot 2003). one important socio-demographic factor is the age of the individual, as a person’s biological age can infl uence his/her health and health behaviour, as well as his/her marital status and stress levels. being older can negatively affect a person’s mental and physical health, as the risk of disease and the risk of death increases with age. the likelihood that stressful events such as the death of one’s partner will occur also rises with age. thus, age-dependent effects should be taken into account when determining health behaviour. in the perspectives we present in the following sections, health behaviour is viewed as the product of protective and crises effects, as well as environmental conditions. 3 state of research partnership and smoking a number of empirical studies have focused on the effect of marital status on smoking behaviour among young adults and middle-aged people. the results of these studies clearly show that the prevalence of cigarette smoking varies considerably according to marital status. german cross-sectional studies have confi rmed that married people have lower smoking rates than people who are divorced (helmert et al. 2001; schulze/lampert 2006) or have never been married (schmidtke/meyer 2011). data from the 2003 health survey confi rmed that compared to people who are divorced or widowed, people who are married are less likely to smoke; and that if they do smoke, they smoke less (gross/groß 2008: 260-261). the effects of social control and social regulation on smoking behaviour within marriages were confi rmed by two european studies. one of them found higher rates of smoking cessation among married couples than among unmarried individuals based on longitudinal data from the british household panel survey (bhps) (chandola et al. 2004). a cross-sectional study from the netherlands confi rmed that older people as well as married people had a higher likelihood of quitting smoking, both for men and women (van loon et al. 2005). schoeppe et al. (2018) investigated with cross-sectional data the frequency of healthy lifestyle factors in 15,001 australian singles (never married, widowed, divorced), and couples (married and unmarried). the authors identifi ed trends in these healthy lifestyle factors between 2005 and 2014. compared to singles, couples were signifi cantly more likely to be non-smoker (schoeppe et al. 2018). moreover, a longitudinal study of middle-aged adults in the u.s. by homish and leonard (2005) showed that an individual’s smoking status tends to infl uence the smoking behaviour of his/her partner, but that the spousal infl uence is greater on relapse than on cessation. a finnish prospective study found that getting and staying married over a nine-year follow-up period was associated with smoking cessation among men, but not among women (broms et al. 2004). a swedish longitudinal study also revealed that married women have a stronger infl uence on the smoking behaviour of their husbands than vice versa (nystedt 2006). marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 71 these fi ndings indicate that in marriages, men are the main benefi ciaries of social support, while women are the key providers of social support. while the focus of most of these studies has been on the marital status of young and middle-aged people, there is comparatively little evidence on the smoking behaviour of older people in non-marital partnerships. one of the few studies that analysed the smoking behaviour in middle and older age is by margolis and wright (2016). using longitudinal data of the health and retirement study, they found evidence of the association between partnership status and smoking changes which greatly depends on the health behaviour changes of the partner. a smoker who is partnered with a smoker is less likely to stop smoking, while a smoker who is partnered with a non-smoker is more likely to stop smoking. those recently widowed, divorced, or repartnered have similar smoking changes like the consistently unpartnered. partnership, physical activity, and body weight contrary to the assumption that a marital or non-marital partnership has protective effects, cross-sectional studies have found that physical inactivity and body weight levels are higher among married and unmarried couples than among never married, divorced and widowed people (averett et al. 2008; klein 2011; klein et al. 2013;). the reasons why couples tend to weigh more include their tendency to consume more calories by eating more frequent and more regular meals (see jeffrey/rick 2002), and to have lower activity levels (averett et al. 2008). in addition, people tend to consume larger and more generous quantities of food when in company than when alone (castro 2002). finally, marriage dissolution is often accompanied by changes in behaviour, which may lead to changes in body weight (greeno/wing 1994; umberson et al. 2009; williams/umberson 2004). having a lower body weight, for example, might improve a single person’s chances on the partner market (averett et al. 2008; klein 2011). the stress and grief that are typically associated with divorce or widowhood may also lead to weight loss (umberson et al. 2009). a number of studies have also confi rmed that there is a negative relationship between physical activity and marriage. using longitudinal data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep), rapp and schneider (2013) found evidence of reduced levels of physical activity among people in all types of relationships (unmarried cohabiting, married, and dating).1 the effects were shown to be strongest for married couples and weakest for dating couples. the analysis further showed that for married men, the negative effects of living together on physical activity became weaker with increasing age; while for women, the negative effects on physical activity decreased and became negative with increasing age. in line with the fi ndings for body weight, leaving the partner market has been shown to have negative effects on physical activity (see rapp/schneider 2013). however, an american longitudinal 1 here, a dating relationship is defi ned as a partnership with separate households; also called living apart together (lat) partnership. • regina hilz, michael wagner72 study found that the transition from single life to marriage resulted in a signifi cant positive change in physical activity (king et al. 1998). based on a retrospective survey of 50-70-year olds in germany, klein (2009) found that a partnership favours the dissemination of physical activities, but the beginning of a partnership also increases the exit rate of sport activities. another cross-sectional study supported these fi ndings for older adults in the u.s., as it found that older couples (aged 70-79) had higher physical activity levels than older unmarried adults (pettee et al. 2006). these fi ndings may be explained by the effects of social control of and social support for physical activity by partners in old age. as a consequence, unmarried cohabitation or marriage may become a more positive predictor of physical activity in older age. partnership and health check-ups very few previous studies have examined the extent of a partnership’s or marriage’s impact on having regular preventive health check-ups. health check-ups have been available to people aged 35 and older in germany since 1989. during a health checkup, the physician examines cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as raised cholesterol levels and high blood pressure; as well as signs of diabetes mellitus type 2 and kidney disease. according to verbrugge (1979: 269), married people rarely use health services because their day-to-day lives and leisure time are constrained by the responsibilities of family life and by the pressure to meet role-specifi c expectations. verbrugge (1979: 269) therefore concluded that unmarried people have more fl exibility and leisure time to use health care services. recent cross-sectional studies, however, show just the opposite. being married is a positive factor for visits to specialist doctors (yom din et al. 2014) and for increased utilisation of cancer screening (hanske et al. 2016). the infl uence of marital status was greater among men relative to woman eligible for cancer screening (hanske et al. 2016). however, according to the hypothesis of social support and social control, the motivation and the pressure to take advantage of health care services should be more prevalent among couples. hence, a married/partnered person may encourage his/her partner to have the recommended health screenings in order to avoid the multiple burdens that would arise if the partner had a disease that was diagnosed or treated too late. accordingly, married/partnered people should be more likely to participate in health screenings than people without a partner. in addition, people in partnerships tend be in a better fi nancial position than single people, and can thus more easily afford to spend money on health services. if a person is ill, consulting with his/her partner could be a coping strategy as well. results from the healsee project “healthcare-seeking by older people in germany” (2012-2015) showed that when respondents feel sick, they usually fi rst seek advice from their partner, regardless of the level of medical competence they attribute to the partner (böhr 2015). a cross-sectional study based on the 2010 korean national health and nutrition examination survey showed that the health screening rate was higher among men living with a partner than among men without a partner (yim et al. 2012). in women, no signifi cant relationship was found between the likelihood of undergoing health screenings and marital status (yim et al. 2012). findings from prigerson et al. (1999) marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 73 indicated that widowhood was associated with worsened health, but not with greater health service use. separated women and women divorced from a discordant marriage were not more depressed but made more excessive use of mental health services. according to these results marital harmony appears protective against doctor visits. in light of the current fi ndings, there is sparse evidence of the relationship between partnership status and health check-ups among older people. furthermore, little is known about the impact of marital dissolution on the likelihood of using health care services. 4 hypotheses based on the conceptual framework of house, umberson, and landis (1988), we investigate the extent to which being in a married or an unmarried partnership has a protective or buffering effect among older adults on the probability of smoking, being physically inactive, being overweight, and avoiding regular health check-ups. in addition, we seek to shed light on the crisis effects of health behaviour by considering the shortand the long-term effects of divorce, separation, and widowhood. our fi rst hypothesis suggests that compared to their married counterparts, elderly people who are not married have signifi cantly higher probabilities of smoking, being physical inactive, being overweight, and avoiding regular health check-ups. these assumptions are based on the expectation that married people are more likely than unmarried people to be infl uenced by high-quality social support, regulation, and control. a marriage represents an institutionalised relationship between a man and a woman that is associated with certain rights and duties that “simple” partnerships lack. accordingly, a married person’s infl uence on and interest in his/ her partner’s behaviour are likely to be greater than an unmarried person’s: hypothesis 1: being married has protective health effects, whereas unmarried people with and without a partner are signifi cantly more likely than married people to engage in unhealthy behaviours including smoking, being physical inactive, being overweight, and avoiding regular health check-ups. the second hypothesis predicts that there are signifi cant differences in the health behaviour patterns of unmarried people depending on their partnership status. there is, for example, a buffering effect when entering a new partnership after a marital dissolution, which reduces the negative consequences of the stressful life event. in addition, unmarried partners (who have not been married before and thus have not experience divorce or the like) are likely to experience forms of social support and control through the partnership that contribute to a health-conscious lifestyle: hypothesis 2: people who are not in a partnership experience no protective effects on their health behaviour. consequently, people who are not in a partnership are at higher risk of engaging in unhealthy behaviour (including smoking, being physical inactive, being overweight, and avoiding regular health check-ups) than people who are in a partnership. • regina hilz, michael wagner74 the third hypothesis assumes that adjustment processes occur over time. according to the crisis concept, people who have recently been divorced, separated, or widowed should be more likely to smoke, have higher levels of physical inactivity, be overweight, and avoid regular health check-ups than their counterparts who were divorced, separated, or widowed long ago: hypothesis 3: marital dissolution is a stressful life event that has a negative impact on health behaviour. thus, people who have recently been divorced, separated, or widowed are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviours (including smoking, being physical inactive, being overweight, and avoiding regular health check-ups) than people who have been separated or widowed for a long period of time. 5 data and methods this study uses data from the german ageing survey (deutscher alterssurvey; deas). the deas is a nationwide representative cross-sectional and longitudinal survey of the german population aged 40 and older. the fi rst deas survey took place in 1996, and further waves were conducted in 2002, 2008, 2011, and 2014. the surveys in 2002, 2008, and 2014 considered a cross-sectional sample as well as a panel sample of study participants who had entered the deas earlier (klaus/engstler 2016). in 2011, only respondents who had participated in the previous waves were interviewed. a computer-assisted personal interview (capi) was used as the main data selection instrument, and was implemented by means of a standardised questionnaire. after participating in a personal interview, respondents received an additional paper-and-pencil “drop-off” questionnaire that they were expected to fi ll out on their own. the questions about health behaviours were asked in different waves but only sport activities were collected in all waves. body mass index (bmi) and smoking was part of 2002, 2008, 2011, and 2014. the health check-up variable (2008, 2011, 2014) is only available for a period of six years. therefore, all health behaviours are part of the 2008, 2011, and 2014 waves. in addition to the health behaviour variables, we are interested in information on marital status and non-marital partnerships. marital status and partnership status have been recorded since 1996 by the main interview. due to the repeated questioning of the persons over a long time period, the deas would qualify for a longitudinal analysis. in order to examine the impact of marital status on health behaviour, it is important to compare the health behaviour during marriage (t1) and after marriage (t2). in wave 2008, 2011 and 2014 all variables that indicate different types of health behaviour are included. thus, we have to search for persons who were married in 2008 or 2011 and experienced a separation, divorce or widowhood between 2008 and 2014. table a1 in the appendix gives an overview of the number of persons who experienced a marriage dissolution during the deas waves 2008, 2011, and 2014. only 44 people experienced a change from married to separated or divorced and 94 persons were widowed. in addition, not all of these persons provided information on the dependent variables. only 27 of the 44 separated/divorced persons and only 60 of the 94 widowed provided information marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 75 about their smoking behaviour and health check-ups. furthermore, in the longitudinal data only a few intrapersonal changes in the health behaviour variables can be observed, if a small amount of time and few cases are available (see table a1 in the appendix). for a test of the second hypothesis, partnerships of unmarried persons are relevant. however, the number of people in non-marital partnerships that experienced a separation is extremely low in the longitudinal data set (n=101). a small sample size has a higher risk of biased fi xed effect estimates. for this reason, we decided to perform a cross-sectional analysis to compare the health behaviour of married and unmarried people and of people according to their partnership status. the data used in the present study stems from the baseline samples of 2008 and 2014. the pooled dataset comprises in total 12,207 individuals aged 40 to 85, of whom 6,205 came from the base sampling of 2008, and 6,002 came from the base sampling of 2014 (see table 1).2 our fi nal sample consists of individuals who were living in a private household and were born between 1923 and 1974. the survey response rate was 39 percent for the sample in 2008 and 27 percent for the sample in 2014 (infas 2009: 49-54; engstler/hameister 2016: 9). the major strength of our dataset is that it contains a large amount of information on partnership status and health behaviours, which are described in more detail in the following section. table 1 shows the unit and mean values of the examination variables, as well as the numbers of missing values. health behavioural indicators the dependent variables are four different indicators of health behaviour: smoking status, physical activity, bmi, and having regular health check-ups. the data on smoking and having regular health check-ups were collected via the drop-off questionnaire. the information on physical activity, self-reported body size and body weight for calculating the bmi were collected within the main interview (capi). in line with criteria of the world health organization, thresholds were defi ned for the health behavioural indicators associated with increased risks of morbidity and mortality (world health organization 2009). we assigned the value of one for a behaviour that is defi ned as harmful to health, and we otherwise assigned the value of zero. smoking of cigarettes is defi ned as harmful to health because it has been linked to increased risks of certain diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes (mathers 2012: 9). the survey participants were asked: “do you currently smoke – even if it’s only occasionally?” the possible answers were: (1) “yes, daily”, (2) “yes, occasionally”, (3) “no, not anymore”, and (4) “i have never smoked”. current smokers were assigned the value of one, while non-smokers and ex-smokers were assigned the value of zero. 2 the analysis refers to the following datasets: suf deas 2008, version 3.0, doi: 10.5156/ deas.2008.m.003; suf deas 2014, version 1.0, doi: 10.5156/deas.2014.m.001. • regina hilz, michael wagner76 2008 2014 n (%) n (%) total 6,205 (100) 6,002 (100) health behaviour indicators smoking status never-smoker 2,182 (50.1) 1,888 (44.4) ex-smoker 1,352 (31.1) 1,487 (34.8) smoker 816 (18.8) 884 (20.8) missing values 92 112 no drop-off 1,763 1,640 physical activity several times a week 1,694 (27.3) 2,010 (33.5) once a week 1,027 (16.6) 1,026 (17.1) 1 to 3 times a month 444 (7.2) 450 (7.5) rarely or never 3,037 (48.9) 2,512 (41.9) missing values 3 4 classifi cation of body weight underweight (bmi < 18.5) 46 (0.8) 53 (0.9) normal weight (bmi 18.5-24.9) 2,288 (37.9) 2,210 (37.8) overweight (bmi 25.0-29.9) 2,611 (43.3) 2,394 (40.9) obese (bmi ≥ 30.0) 1,089 (18.0) 1,199 (20.5) missing values 171 146 having regular health check-ups yes 2,987 (68.2) 2,650 (63.7) no 1,393 (31.8) 1,508 (36.3) missing values 62 204 no drop-off 1,763 1,640 partnership-specifi c variables marital status and partnership married 4,290 (69.4) 4,086 (68.2) separated or divorced without new partner 388 (6.3) 454 (7.6) with new partner 134 (2.2) 180 (3.0) widowed without new partner 634 (10.3) 483 (8.1) with new partner 60 (1.0) 70 (1.2) tab. 1: characteristics of study participants from the german ageing survey (deas) marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 77 physical activity was measured by asking: “how often do you do sports such as hiking, soccer, gymnastics, or swimming?” the possible answers were: “daily” (1), “several times a week” (2), “once a week” (3), “1-3 times a month” (4), “less often” (5), and “never” (6). participants who gave the “less often” and “never” responses were assigned the value of one. 2008 2014 n (%) n (%) never married without partner 326 (5.3) 320 (5.3) with partner 352 (5.7) 403 (6.7) missing values 31 7 time since divorce or separation (in years) longer than 5 years 471 (72.4) 593 (76.6) less or exactly 5 years 180 (27.6) 181 (23.4) missing values 23 18 duration of widowhood (in years) longer than 5 years 478 (65.3) 397 (66.5) less or exactly 5 years 254 (34.7) 200 (33.5) missing values 9 8 covariates gender female 3,072 (49.5) 2,937 (48.9) male 3,133 (50.5) 3,065 (51.1) age (in years) 40 to under 55 years 2,072 (33.4) 1,788 (29.8) 55 to under 70 years 2,151 (34.7) 2,247 (37.4) 70 to 85 years 1,982 (31.9) 1,967 (32.8) level of education (isced) low 716 (11.5) 497 (8.3) medium 3,374 (54.4) 3,138 (52.3) high 2,112 (34.1) 2,366 (39.4) missing values 3 4 self-rated health (srh) good 3,368 (54.4) 3,197 (53.3) fair 2,079 (33.5) 2,081 (34.7) poor 748 (12.1) 716 (12.0) missing values 10 8 tab. 1: continuation source: german ageing survey base sample from 2008 and 2014, own calculation, unweighted. • regina hilz, michael wagner78 the bmi was calculated as weight in kilogrammes, divided by height in square metres (kg/m2).3 bmi values were classifi ed into four groups: underweight (bmi <18.5), normal weight (bmi 18.5-24.9), overweight (bmi ≥ 25), and obese (bmi ≥ 30.0) (see world health organization 2000: 9). bmi values of 30 and over were defi ned as risky to health because of the increased risk of disease with the presence of obesity (world health organization 2000: 6-11) and were thus assigned the value of one. regarding health check-ups, participants were asked: “doctors often recommend vaccinations and various types of health screening. in the past years, did you regularly have a health check-up?” the value of one was assigned to those who did not have regular health check-ups. partnership-specifi c variables the variable partnership status contains information on the partnership-based living arrangements (engstler/hameister 2016: 35). we distinguish between people who are living in a household without a partner (singles) and those living with a partner partnerships with separate households (living apart together; or lat) are not taken into account because of the relatively small number of older couples who do not share a household (about 4 percent). the marital or partnership status is operationalised as follows: married (1), separated, or divorced with a new partner (2) and without a partner (3); widowed with a partner (4) and without a partner (5); and never married with a partner (6) and without a partner (7). these categories were recoded as dummy variables. married people serve as the reference category. due to the relatively low number of separated people in our sample (n=206), this group was merged with divorced people (n=1,218). to capture shortand long-term effects on health behaviour, the time since marriage dissolution is considered using four categories: people who have been widowed for at least fi ve years (1) or less than fi ve years (2); people who have been divorced or separated (3) for fi ve or more years; and people who have been separated or divorced for less than fi ve years (4). married people again served as the reference category. covariates4 we consider a number of control variables that are likely to be related to health behaviour and partnership status (hedwig et al. 1999; schmidtke/meyer 2011). gender and age are related to smoking, utilisation of health care services, physical activity, and body weight. studies have confi rmed that marriage is more benefi cial for men 3 it should be noted that studies have established that the level of the self-reported weight is often inaccurate. thus, relying on self-reported weight can lead to an underestimation of the prevalence of overweight (dauphinot et al. 2009). 4 we tested the covariates for multicollinearity using the variance infl ation factor (vif) method. multicollinearity was not detected (vif values <10). marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 79 than for women (e.g., umberson 1992). it has been shown that men in particular are less likely to engage in risky health behaviour through the social support of their wife. there is, for example, evidence that, on average, a wife has a greater infl uence on her husband’s smoking behaviour (by, for example, promoting smoking cessation) than vice versa (nystedt 2006). age is also a relevant factor in the relationship between health behaviour and marital status. with increasing age, the probability of being married, divorced, or widowed rises. health-conscious behaviour is observed more frequently among older than younger people. to measure respondents’ socioeconomic status, the international standard classifi cation of education (isced) is applied. the following three groups are considered: low educational level (isced 0, 1, and 2), medium educational level (isced 3 and 4), and high educational level (isced 5 and 6) (oecd 1999). it is likely that a higher socioeconomic status is related to a more positive health-related behaviour. less educated persons may have a lack of knowledge and access to information about health risks. in addition, people in disadvantaged social positions experience more stress through negative life events such as unemployment and fi nancial loss. under these circumstances, smoking, overeating, and inactivity help to cope with negative emotions among the disadvantaged (pampel et al. 2010). as health status is strongly associated with health-related behaviour (committee on health and behavior 2001), we control for self-rated health (srh) as well. methods logistic regression is applied to test whether participation in the drop-off questionnaire depended on gender, age, health status, marital status, and region. a signifi cantly lower probability of participation in the drop-off questionnaire is found among divorced and unmarried people than among married couples. the probability of participating in the drop-off questionnaire increases with age, and is much higher among those with poor than with good self-rated health. thus, elderly, married, and sick people were more likely than other people to have answered the questions about smoking and health check-ups in the written questionnaire. given the selection effects in data collection based on the survey method, we control for age, gender, and health in the analyses. following allison (1999) and mood (2010), we conduct logistic regression models with average marginal effects (ame). average marginal effects indicate “by how many percentage points the probability of the event of interest changes on average across all (group-specifi c) observations if the explanatory variable increases by one unit” (auspurg/hinz 2011: 66; translation by the author). thus, we compare the health behaviour between different partnership types and investigate the question, whether the infl uence of being in a partnership is greater than the infl uence of being partnerless on risky health behaviours. the underlying equation of marginal effects (ame) for dummy variables (xj) reads as follows (auspurg/hinz 2011: 66): (1) • regina hilz, michael wagner80 the summed distribution function for all observations is marked with the character f. the linear predictor is noted for the observation i by zi. ame express the average effect of xij on p(y=1) by taking the logistic probability distribution function at each observation’s estimated logit, multiplying this function by the coeffi cient for xij, and averaging this product over all observations (mood 2010: 75). the assessment of the infl uence on health behaviour is carried out separately for the different types of partnerships. from these estimates, the squared difference of the average marginal effects (ame) is calculated to sum the variances of the marginal effects. the calculated result is compared with the critical value for the respective signifi cance level via the χ2 distributions with a degree of freedom. the extent of partnership-specifi c differences in smoking behaviour, physical activity, body weight, and the use of health check-ups are subsequently tested by applying logistic regression.5 to identify the infl uence of partnership-specifi c variables on health behaviour, we have calculated three different regression models for each dependent variable. the fi rst model shows the infl uence of marital status on health behaviour under the control of covariates. in model 2, the category of never married is further differentiated according to the respective partnership status. the time since marriage dissolution is considered in model 3. 6 results table 2 shows the results of the logistic regression on the probability of being a smoker and of being physically inactive. model 1a reveals that separated, widowed, and never-married people have a signifi cantly higher risk of smoking than married people. separate analyses (not shown) reveal that the widowhood effect depends on the inclusion of the age variable. widowed people under age 70 are much more likely to smoke than widowed people over age 70. if age is not controlled for, the low proportion of smokers in the age group 70 to 85 dominates the overall effect. if age is controlled for, the high proportion of smokers among the widowed between ages 40 and 69 dominates the widowhood effect. the results of model 1a are in line with hypothesis 1, which states that married people are less likely to smoke than unmarried people. model 2a shows that separated (or divorced) people without a partner have a 17 percent higher probability of smoking than married people. separated people with a partner also have a signifi cantly higher probability of smoking (10.6 percent, model 2a) than married people. widowed people without a partner are more likely to smoke than those with a partner (model 2a). compared to married people, never-married people with a partner have an 8.6 percent higher probability of smoking, while never-married people without a partner have a 5.8 percent higher probability of smoking. 5 we use the listwise deletion as a procedure for dealing with missing values, according to which only individuals with valid values are integrated into the analysis (graham et al. 2003). marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 81 ta b . 2 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n w it h m ar g in e ff ec ts fo r p ar tn er sh ip -s p ec ifi c ch ar ac te ri st ic s an d t he p ro b ab ili ty o f s m o ki ng an d p hy si ca l i na ct iv it y (9 5 p er ce n t c o n fi d en ce in te rv al s ar e g iv en in b ra ck et s) s m o ki ng p hy si ca l i na ct iv it y m o d el 1 a m o d el 2 a m o d el 3 a m o d el 1 b m o d el 2 b m o d el 3 b m ar it al s ta tu s an d p ar tn er sh ip m ar ri ed (r ef .) s ep ar at ed /d iv o rc ed 0. 14 2* ** 0. 03 0* (0 .1 10. 17 ) (0 .0 00. 05 ) n o p ar tn er 0. 17 0* ** 0. 05 7* * (0 .1 30. 20 ) (0 .0 20. 09 ) w it h p ar tn er 0. 10 6* ** 0. 03 1 (0 .0 50. 15 ) (0. 02 -0 .0 8) w id o w ed 0. 06 9* ** 0. 03 7* (0 .0 30. 10 ) (0 .0 00. 06 ) no p ar tn er 0. 06 2* * 0. 05 4* * (0 .0 20. 10 ) (0 .0 20. 08 ) w it h p ar tn er 0. 04 6 0. 01 9 (0. 03 -0 .1 2) (0. 06 -0 .1 0) n ev er m ar ri ed 0. 06 0* ** 0. 05 9* ** 0. 06 2* ** 0. 06 1* ** (0 .0 30. 08 ) (0 .0 20. 08 ) (0 .0 30. 09 ) (0 .0 20. 09 ) n o p ar tn er 0. 05 8* * 0. 08 2* ** (0 .0 20. 09 ) (0 .0 40. 12 ) w it h p ar tn er 0. 08 6* ** -0 .0 15 (0 .0 50. 12 ) (0. 05 -0 .0 2) ti m e si n ce m ar it al d is so lu ti on s ep ar at ed /d iv o rc ed > 5 y ea rs 0. 15 6* ** 0. 04 6* * (0 .1 20. 19 ) (0 .0 10. 07 ) ≤ 5 y ea rs 0. 10 4* ** -0 .0 19 (0 .0 50. 15 ) (0. 07 -0 .0 3) w id o w ed > 5 y ea rs 0. 06 7* * 0 .0 46 * (0 .0 2 0. 10 ) (0 .0 10. 08 ) ≤ 5 y ea rs 0. 07 6* * 0. 02 3 (0 .0 20. 13 ) (0. 02 -0 .0 6) • regina hilz, michael wagner82 s m o ki ng p hy si ca l i na ct iv it y m o d el 1 a m o d el 2 a m o d el 3 a m o d el 1 b m o d el 2 b m o d el 3 b g en d er fe m al e (r ef .) m al e 0. 07 1* ** 0. 07 2* ** 0. 07 1* ** 0. 08 0* ** 0. 08 3* ** 0. 08 1* ** (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 60. 09 ) (0 .0 60. 10 ) (0 .0 60. 09 ) le ve l o f e du ca ti on ( is c ed ) lo w 0. 08 5* ** 0. 08 5* ** 0. 08 5* ** 0. 32 8* ** 0. 32 5* ** 0. 32 8* ** (0 .0 40. 12 ) (0 .0 40. 12 ) (0 .0 40. 12 ) (0 .2 90. 36 ) (0 .2 90. 35 ) (0 .2 90. 35 ) m ed iu m 0. 07 3* ** 0. 07 4* ** 0. 07 3* ** 0. 18 4* ** 0. 18 3* ** 0. 18 4* ** (0 .0 50. 09 ) (0 .0 50. 09 ) (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .1 60. 20 ) (0 .1 60. 20 ) (0 .1 60. 20 ) hi g h (r ef .) a ge (i n ye ar s) -0 .0 08 ** * -0 .0 08 ** * -0 .0 08 ** * 0. 00 4* ** 0. 00 3* ** 0. 00 3* ** (0. 01 -0 .0 0) (0. 01 -0 .0 0) (0. 01 -0 .0 0) (0 .0 00. 00 ) (0 .0 00. 00 ) (0 .0 00. 00 ) s el fra te d h ea lt h (s r h ) g o o d /f ai r (r ef .) p o o r 0. 06 6* ** 0. 06 6* ** 0. 06 6* ** 0. 19 4* ** 0. 19 2* ** 0. 19 4* ** (0 .0 30. 09 ) (0 .0 30. 09 ) (0 .0 30. 09 ) (0 .1 60. 22 ) (0 .1 60. 21 ) (0 .1 60. 22 ) s u rv ey y ea r 20 08 (r ef .) 20 14 0. 02 6* * 0. 02 6* * 0. 02 5* * -0 .0 59 ** * -0 .0 58 ** * -0 .0 60 ** * (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0. 07 -0 .0 4) (0. 07 -0 .0 4) (0. 07 -0 .0 4) n 8, 57 1 8, 57 1 8, 57 1 12 ,1 37 12 ,1 37 12 ,1 37 m cf ad d en ’s r 2 0. 10 15 0. 10 21 0. 10 19 0. 07 43 0. 07 52 0. 07 46 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n s ig ni fi c an ce li m its : ** * p < 0. 00 1; * * p < 0. 01 ; * p < 0. 05 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e b as ic s am p le s o f 2 00 8 an d 2 01 4 o f t he g er m an a ge in g s ur ve y (d e a s ), un w ei gh te d . marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 83 o b es it y (b m i ≥ 3 0) a vo id in g re g ul ar h ea lt h ch ec kup s m o d el 1 c m o d el 2 c m o d el 3 c m o d el 1 d m o d el 2 d m o d el 3 d m ar it al s ta tu s an d p ar tn er sh ip m ar ri ed (r ef .) s ep ar at ed /d iv o rc ed -0 .0 11 0. 03 6* (0. 03 -0 .0 1) (0 .0 00. 06 ) no p ar tn er -0 .0 01 0. 05 8* * (0. 02 -0 .0 2) (0 .0 10. 09 ) w it h p ar tn er 0. 00 2 0. 01 2 (0. 04 -0 .0 4) (0. 05 -0 .0 7) w id o w ed 0. 01 1 0. 05 7* * (0. 01 -0 .0 3) (0 .0 20. 09 ) n o p ar tn er 0. 01 6 0. 06 7* * (0. 01 -0 .0 4) (0. 02 -0 .1 0) w it h p ar tn er 0. 03 7 -0 .0 04 (0. 03 -0 .1 1) (0. 09 -0 .0 8) n ev er m ar ri ed -0 .0 27 * -0 .0 27 6* ** 0. 08 7* ** 0. 08 7* ** (0. 12 -0 .0 0) (0. 05 -0 .0 0) (0 .0 40. 12 ) (0 .0 40. 12 ) n o p ar tn er -0 .0 23 0. 10 9* ** (0. 05 -0 .0 0) (0 .0 60. 15 ) w it h p ar tn er -0 .0 48 ** 0. 01 7 (0. 07 -0 .0 2) (0. 02 -0 .0 5) ti m e si n ce m ar it al d is so lu ti on s ep ar at ed /d iv o rc ed > 5 y ea rs -0 .0 17 0. 04 7* (0. 04 -0 .0 0) (0 .0 10. 08 ) ≤ 5 y ea rs 0. 00 8 0. 00 4 (0. 03 -0 .0 5) (0. 05 -0 .0 6) w id o w ed > 5 y ea rs 0. 02 0 0. 05 0* (0. 00 -0 .0 5) (0 .0 00. 09 ) ≤ 5 y ea rs -0 .0 05 0. 07 2* (0. 04 -0 .0 3) (0 .0 10. 12 ) ta b . 3 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n w it h m ar g in e ff ec ts fo r p ar tn er sh ip -s p ec ifi c ch ar ac te ri st ic s an d t he p ro b ab ili ty o f b ei ng o b es e (b m i ≥ 3 0) a nd a vo id in g re gu la r he al th c he ck -u p s (9 5 p er ce n t c o n fi d en ce in te rv al s ar e g iv en in b ra ck et s) • regina hilz, michael wagner84 o b es it y (b m i ≥ 3 0) a vo id in g re g ul ar h ea lt h ch ec kup s m o d el 1 c m o d el 2 c m o d el 3 c m o d el 1 d m o d el 2 d m o d el 3 d g en d er fe m al e (r ef .) m al e 0. 02 8* ** 0. 02 9* ** 0. 02 9* ** 0. 01 0 0. 01 2 0. 01 0 (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .1 40. 04 ) (0. 01 -0 .0 3) (0. 01 -0 .0 3) (0. 01 -0 .0 3) le ve l o f e du ca ti on ( is c ed ) lo w 0. 13 2* ** 0. 13 2* ** 0. 13 1* ** 0. 07 1* * 0. 06 9* * 0. 07 1* * (0 .1 00. 16 ) (0 .1 00. 16 ) (0 .1 00. 16 ) (0 .0 30. 11 ) (0 .0 20. 11 ) (0 .0 30. 11 ) m ed iu m 0. 07 3* ** 0. 07 3* ** 0. 07 3* ** 0. 02 1* 0. 02 0 0. 02 1 (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 50. 08 ) (0 .0 00. 04 ) (0. 00 -0 .0 4) (0. 00 -0 .0 4) hi g h (r ef .) a ge (i n ye ar s) -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 00 -0 .0 04 ** * -0 .0 05 ** * -0 .0 04 ** * (0. 00 -0 .0 0) (0. 00 -0 .0 0) (0. 00 -0 .0 0) (0. 00 -0 .0 0) (0. 01 -0 .0 0) (0. 01 -0 .0 0) s el fra te d h ea lt h (s r h ) g o o d /f ai r (r ef .) p o o r 0. 11 1* ** 0. 11 0* ** 0. 11 1* ** 0. 02 1 0. 01 9 0. 02 1 (0 .0 80. 13 ) (0 .0 80. 13 ) (0 .0 80. 13 ) (0. 01 -0 .0 5) (0. 01 -0 .0 5) (0. 01 -0 .0 5) s u rv ey y ea r 20 08 (r ef .) 20 14 0. 03 1* ** 0. 03 1* ** 0. 03 1* ** 0. 04 9* ** 0. 05 0* ** 0. 04 9* ** (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 10. 04 ) (0 .0 20. 06 ) (0 .0 30. 07 ) (0 .0 20. 06 ) n 11 ,8 38 11 ,8 38 11 ,8 38 8, 51 0 8, 51 0 8, 51 0 m cf ad d en ’s r 2 0. 02 50 0. 02 57 0. 02 52 0. 01 69 0. 01 74 0. 01 70 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n s ig ni fi c an ce li m its : ** * p < 0. 00 1; * * p < 0. 01 ; * p < 0. 05 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e b as ic s am p le s o f 2 00 8 an d 2 01 4 o f t he g er m an a ge in g s ur ve y (d e a s ), un w ei gh te d . marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 85 in model 3a (table 2), we consider the time since marriage dissolution to test hypothesis 3, according to which recently separated and widowed persons have a higher probability of risky health behaviour than people who have been separated or widowed for a long period of time. the results show that both types, people who have been recently or longer separated or widowed, are signifi cantly more likely to be smokers than married people. thus, the results from model 3a do not suggest that marriage dissolution has a crisis effect. we further observe a decreasing probability of being a smoker with increasing age. men are more likely to smoke than women. finally, less educated people are more likely to smoke than highly educated people, and people in poor health are more likely to smoke than people in good health. models 1b to 3b (table 2) summarise the results for physical inactivity. a signifi cantly higher probability of being physically inactive is found for separated (3.0 percent), widowed (3.7 percent), and never-married (6.2 percent) people than for married people. these results confi rm our fi rst hypotheses, which state that married couples tend to have healthier lifestyles. we also fi nd that separated, widowed, and never-married people without a partner have a signifi cantly higher risk of being physically inactive than married people. looking at the time since marriage dissolution, we observe that people who have been separated or widowed for a longer period of time have a higher risk of physical inactivity than married couples. for recently separated and widowed individuals, we found no signifi cant associations for physical inactivity. again, it is important to keep in mind that time since marriage dissolution and age are correlated. in particular, gender, age, education, self-rated health, and survey year are shown to have high levels of explanatory power for physical activity levels among older people. in contrast to the results of smoking, age increases the risk of being physically inactive. regarding the survey year, we note a lower probability of physical inactivity in 2014 than in 2008. table 3 fi rst shows the results for the outcome “obesity” (bmi ≥ 30). it can be observed that never-married people (-2.7 percent) have a signifi cantly lower probability of being obese than married people (model 1c). for separated and widowed people, no signifi cant margin effects are found. for never-married people with and without a partner, model 2c indicates a signifi cantly lower likelihood of being obese after controlling for covariates. in this case, only never-married people are found to be less likely to suffer from obesity than married people. in line with hypothesis 1, these results confi rm that marriage has no protective effect on obesity. the results for marital status are in line with those of other studies that postulated a connection between marriage and body weight gain (averett et al. 2008; klein 2011; klein et al. 2013; sobal et al. 2003). furthermore, there is a signifi cantly higher risk of obesity in males compared to females, in lower educated people compared to higher educated people, in poor health compared to good health, and the 2014 survey year compared to 2018. evidence for a protective effect of marriage is, however, found in the analysis of having regular health check-ups (table 3). the results of the logistic regression showed for model 1d that the probability of avoiding regular health check-ups was signifi cantly higher for separated (3.6 percent), widowed (5.7 percent), and never• regina hilz, michael wagner86 married people (8.7 percent) without a partner than for married people. accordingly, hypothesis 1 on the marriage and partnership protective effect can also be confi rmed in case of the indicator of having regular health check-ups. compared to married people, signifi cantly higher marginal effects are identifi ed for recently widowed and people who had been separated and widowed for more than fi ve years (model 3d). given these results, the presence of a crisis effect on the likelihood of having regular health check-ups can be demonstrated for recently widowed people only. in addition, a higher probability of avoiding regular health check-ups could be confi rmed for lower educated people compared to higher educated people and for the survey year 2014 compared to 2008. with age, the probability of not taking part in check-ups decreases. in tables 2 and 3, married people are chosen as the reference category to test the protective effect of marriage on health behaviour (hypothesis 1). the results of models 1a, 1b, and 1d are in line with hypothesis 1, according to which unmarried have higher probabilities of smoking, physical inactivity, and avoiding regular health check-ups than married people. hypothesis 2 assumes that unmarried people without a partner are signifi cantly more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviour than unmarried people with a partner. thus, hypothesis 2 suggests that being in a(n unmarried) partnership can have a protective effect on health behaviour. in order to test this hypothesis, a logistic regression was calculated that compared the probabilities of smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, and having regular health check-ups in individuals who are and are not in a (non-marital) partnership. the corresponding results are shown in table 4. in the fi rst model, we can see the results for people who are and who are not in a (non-marital) partnership. in model 2, the marital status was taken into account. control variables were included in all models (gender, education, age, self-rated health, and survey year). compared to unmarried people, a signifi cantly higher probability of being a smoker could only be confi rmed for separated people without a partner (see model 2). for physical inactivity and having regular health check-ups, we could confi rm hypothesis 2. thus, the results show that people in non-marital partnerships are at lower risk of physical inactivity and of avoiding regular checkups than unmarried people without a partner. hypothesis 3 focused on the crisis effect of marriage dissolution on health behaviour. according to hypothesis 3, people who have recently been divorced, separated, or widowed have a higher probability of engaging in unhealthy behaviour than people who lost their partner a long time ago. the results for hypothesis 3 are displayed in table 5. contrary to our assumptions, we fi nd that people who have been separated or widowed for a short period of time (≤ 5 years) have higher levels of physical activity. for smoking, obesity, and having health check-ups, the results are not signifi cant. thus, hypothesis 3 could not be confi rmed with the data available. marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 87 s m o ki n g p hy si ca l i n ac ti vi ty o b es it y n o h ea lt h ch ec ku p s m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m ar it al s ta tu s an d p ar tn er sh ip u n m ar ri ed w it h p ar tn er (r ef .) u n m ar ri ed w it h o u t p ar tn er 0. 02 1 0. 06 3* ** 0. 02 6 0. 07 0* * (0. 01 -0 .0 5) (0 .0 20. 09 ) (0. 00 -0 .0 5) (0 .0 20. 11 ) s ep ar at ed /d iv o rc ed w it h o u t p ar tn er 0. 08 3* ** 0. 05 8* * 0. 02 6 0. 04 9 (0 .0 30. 12 ) (0 .0 10. 10 ) (0. 00 -0 .0 6) (0. 00 -0 .1 0) w id o w ed w it h o u t p ar tn er -0 .0 07 0. 05 0* 0. 05 5* * 0. 06 9* (0. 05 -0 .0 4) (0 .0 0 -0 .0 9) (0 .0 10. 09 ) (0 .0 10. 12 ) n ev er m ar ri ed w it h o u t p ar tn er -0 .0 28 0. 07 9* * 0. 00 4 0. 09 4* * (0. 07 -0 .0 1) (0 .0 30. 12 ) (0. 03 -0 .0 4) (0 .0 30. 15 ) n 2, 55 7 2, 55 7 3, 77 6 3, 77 6 3, 64 8 3, 64 8 2, 54 7 2, 54 7 m cf ad d en ’s r 2 0. 12 02 0. 12 77 0. 09 17 0. 09 19 0. 02 60 0. 02 74 0. 02 41 0. 02 47 ta b . 4 : lo g is tic r eg re ss io n w it h av er ag e m ar g in e ff ec ts fo r p ar tn er sh ip -s p ec ifi c ch ar ac te ri st ic s an d t he p ro b ab ili ty o f un he al th y b eh av io ur (9 5 p er ce n t c o n fi d en ce in te rv al s ar e g iv en in b ra ck et s) c o nt ro lle d fo r ge nd er , e d uc at io n, a ge , s el fra te d h ea lth , a nd s ur ve y ye ar . s ig ni fi c an ce li m its : ** * p < 0. 00 1; * * p < 0. 01 ; * p < 0. 05 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n th e b as ic s am p le s o f 2 00 8 an d 2 01 4 o f t he g er m an a ge in g s ur ve y (d e a s ), un w ei gh te d . • regina hilz, michael wagner88 7 conclusions the focus of this study was to investigate whether being in a married or unmarried partnership and having experienced marriage dissolution are associated with health behaviours of elderly people. some scientists have identifi ed a causal link between marital status and health in the form of a protective or a crisis effect (goldman et al. 1995: 1717; williams/umberson 2004). however, other scientists have found no evidence of such a causal relationship, and have instead highlighted selection effects for marital status-specifi c differences in health behaviour (joung et al. 1998; waldron et al. 1996). against this background, we examined the extent to which marriage has protective effects for smoking habits, physical activity, body weight, and having regular health check-ups among people aged 40 to 85. our fi ndings confi rm that married individuals tend to have healthier lifestyles than non-married individuals (hypothesis 1) with regard to the likelihood of smoking, engaging in physical activity, and having regular health check-ups. regarding body weight, we found that married people are more likely to be obese than unmarried people who are not in a partnership (contrary to hypothesis 1). this result is challenging, because married people were shown to be more physically active than non-married people. regarding the confl icting fi ndings, body weight does not necessarily decrease with more physical activity (fogelholm/kukkonen-harjula 2000), especially not with light physical activities, such as housework or gardening among couples (pettee et al. 2006). an important factor could be the age of the subjects. studies that also examined older people, reported higher physical activity levels among couples than among people without partnerships (klein 2009; pettee et al. 2006). these associations may be explained by the effects of social control of and social support for physical activity smoking physical obesity no health inactivity check-ups time since marital dissolution long term (> 5 years) separated, divorced, widowed (ref.) short term (≤ 5 years) separated, -0.037 -0.040* -0.000 -0.002 divorced, widowed (-0.07-0.00) (-0.07-0.00) (-0.03-0.03) (-0.05-0.04) n 1,858 2,735 2,645 1,858 mcfadden’s r2 0.1363 0.0975 0.0225 0.0161 tab. 5: logistic regression with average margin effects for the time since marital dissolution and the probability of unhealthy behaviour (95 percent confi dence intervals are given in brackets) controlled for gender, education, age, self-rated health, and survey year. signifi cance limits: *** p <0.001; ** p <0.01; * p <0.05 source: own calculations based on the basic samples of 2008 and 2014 of the german ageing survey (deas), unweighted. marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 89 by partners in old age. for example, pettee et al. (2006) found that the husband’s physical activity participation status was related to the physical activity participation status of his wife. another possible explanation for the contradictory fi ndings is the tendency of married people to engage in shared leisure time activities that can lead to weight gain, e. g. shared meals at home or in a restaurant (jeffrey/rick 2002), and watching television (voorpostel/gershuny 2009). further, we found only partial support for a protective effect of non-marital partnerships (hypothesis 2). for physical activity and having regular health check-ups, we could confi rm our assumption. people in non-marital partnerships were found to have a lower risk of physical inactivity and of avoiding regular health check-ups than unmarried people without a partner. we also investigated the crisis effect of marriage dissolution on health behaviour (hypothesis 3). according to the assumptions of the crises concept, higher probabilities of smoking, physical inactivity, obesity and avoiding regular health checkups should be found for people who were recently divorced, separated, or widowed than for individuals who were separated, divorced, or widowed a long time ago. the results do not, however, support this assumption. if we compare the present research results with the fi ndings of other studies, some differences and some new insights can be highlighted. our results for physical inactivity are contrary to previous fi ndings for younger adults, according to which couples are less likely than singles to engage in sports activities (rapp/schneider 2013; schoeppe et al. 2018). we found, however, that unmarried people – and especially those not in a partnership – have a higher risk of physical inactivity than married people aged 40 and older. these fi ndings are in line with those from studies conducted in the u.s. (king et al. 1998; pettee et al. 2006), according to which older couples have higher physical activity levels than older unmarried adults. higher levels of social control and support in older couples may be responsible for the age differences in physical activity levels. the negative effect of marriage on body weight has mainly been demonstrated for younger people (klein 2011; klein et al. 2013) or found in non-european countries (averett et al. 2008; sobal et al. 2003). this study provides new insights into the relationship between body weight and marital status for the older population in germany by showing that the negative relationship between marriage and body weight can be confi rmed for people of middle and older adult ages as well. the fi ndings for health care are similar. the probability of avoiding regular health check-ups was shown to be signifi cantly higher for single, separated, and widowed people than for married couples. on the basis of these results, a protective effect of marriage can be confi rmed for the risk of avoiding regular check-ups among people in middle and older adulthood. theoretically, this relationship is linked to assumptions about the effects of social support and social control. little is known about the protective effect of marriage on health care behaviour in particular. to extend the evidence in this research area, we investigated the relationship between health care behaviour and marital status. when comparing our fi ndings on marital status and partnership status, we see that being married has a stronger impact on positive health behaviour than being in • regina hilz, michael wagner90 a non-marital partnership. we can therefore assume that the effects of social support, control, and regulation on health behaviour increase with the institutionalisation of a partnership. as cross-sectional analysis has limited power, we recommend that future investigations conduct longitudinal evaluations of the effectiveness of protective and crisis effects under the control of selection mechanisms (see unger 2007). furthermore, there is a need for research on gender-specifi c differences in the health behaviours of elderly people, as this type of analysis has so far seldom been done. the aim of this study was to stimulate further empirical studies that focus on the lifestyles of elderly people in european countries, as more comprehensive evidence is needed in this research fi eld. the results of this study may be helpful in designing behavioural prevention measures and health promotion programmes intended to prevent the development of lifestyle-related risk factors for serious diseases. for example, scientifi cally-based recommendations could be defi ned for possible target groups to reduce levels of tobacco consumption and overweight, and to encourage people to have regular health check-ups. references allison, paul d. 1999: comparing logit and probit coeffi cients across groups. in: sociological methods & research 28,2: 186-208 [doi: 10.1177/0049124199028002003]. auspurg, katrin; hinz, thomas 2011: gruppenvergleiche bei regressionen mit binären abhängigen variablen – probleme und fehleinschätzungen am beispiel von bildungschancen im kohortenverlauf. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 40,1: 62-73. averett, susan l.; sikora, asia; argys, laura m. 2008: for better or worse: relationship status and body mass index. in: economics and human biology 6,3: 330-349 [doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2008.07.003]. böhr, dorothea 2015: ratschläge in der partnerschaft – zum einfl uss des sozialen netzwerks auf das gesundheitsverhalten. in: das gesundheitswesen 77,08/09 [doi: 10.1055/s-0035-1563261]. booth, alan; amato, paul 1991: divorce and psychological stress. in: journal of health and social behavior 32,4: 396-407. bröckel, miriam; andreß, hans-jürgen 2015: the economic consequences of divorce in germany: what has changed since the turn of the millennium? 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hughes, mary elizabeth; brooks, tracy l. 1996: marriage protection and marriage selection − prospective evidence for reciprocal effects of marital status and health. in: social science & medicine 43,1: 113-123 [doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(95)003479]. wilcox, sara et al. 2003: the effects of widowhood on physical and mental health, health behaviors, and health outcomes: the women’s health initiative. in: health psychology: offi cial journal of the division of health psychology, american psychological association 22,5: 513-522 [doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.22.5.513]. • regina hilz, michael wagner96 williams, kristi; umberson, debra 2004: marital status, marital transitions, and health: a gendered life course perspective. in: journal of health and social behavior 45,1: 81-98 [doi: 10.1177/002214650404500106]. wilkinson, richard; marmot, michael 2003: social determinants of health: the solid facts. copenhagen: world health organization, regional offi ce for europe. world health organization 2000: obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic. report of a who consulation. who technical report series 894. geneva. world health organization 2009: global health risks. mortality and burden of disease attributable to selected major risks. geneva: who press. wyke, sally; ford, graeme 1992: competing explanations for associations between marital status and health. in: social science & medicine 34,5: 523-532 [doi: 10.1016/02779536(92)90208-8]. yim, hyun ji et al. 2012: marital status and health behavior in middle-aged korean adults. in: korean journal of family medicine 33,6: 390-397 [doi: 10.4082/kjfm.2012.33.6.390]. yom din, gregory; zugman, zinaida; khashper, alla 2014: the impact of preventive health behaviour and social factors on visits to the doctor. in: israel journal of health policy research 3: 41 [doi: 10.1186/2045-4015-3-41]. regina hilz (). university of cologne, doctoral programme grow-gerontological research on well-being. cologne, germany. e-mail: rhilz@uni-koeln.de, url: http://www.hf.uni-koeln.de/37539 prof. dr. michael wagner. university of cologne, institute of sociology and social psychology (iss). cologne, germany. e-mail: mwagner@wiso.uni-koeln.de, url: http://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/w/prof-dr-michael-wagner/ marital status, partnership and health behaviour • 97 appendix deas 2008, 2011, 2014 after separation/divorce after widowhood smoking status change from smoker to non-smoker 3 (11%) 1 (2%) change from non-smoker to smoker 3 (11%) 1 (2%) no change 21 (78%) 58 (96%) n 27(100%) 60(100%) physical activity reduction of physical activity 5 (11%) 7 (7%) increase in physical activity 15 (34%) 29 (31%) no change 24 (55%) 58 (62%) n 44(100%) 94(100%) check-up participation before the event 2 (7%) 2 (5%) participation after the event 2 (7%) 10 (16%) no change 23 (86%) 48 (79%) n 27(100%) 60(100%) bmi lost weight 43 (98%) 94(100%) gained weight 0 (0%) 0 no weight change 1 (2%) 0 n 44(100%) 94(100%) source: own calculations based on the samples of 2008, 2011 and 2014 of the german ageing survey (deas), unweighted. tab. a1: number of intrapersonal changes in health behaviour after marriage dissolution published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2018 managing editor dr. katrin schiefer copy editor dr. evelyn grünheid dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (wiesbaden) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki abstract: as is the case in western countries, more japanese are marrying later or remaining unmarried and are postponing childbearing or staying childless. previous studies revealed that those individuals who were unable to secure regular employment due to the serious recession between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, labelled a “lost generation,” had a very low marriage rate. but what about subsequent cohorts? using a discrete-time logit model to analyse japanese life course panel survey data, this study investigates the effects of employment on fi rst marriages between 2007 and 2015, including cohorts after the lost generation. the results indicate that: (a) among men who are classed as non-regular employees, unemployed, or low-income regular employees, the likelihood of fi rst marriage is low due to their weak economic position; and (b) women have a low likelihood of fi rst marriage if they are non-regular employees or unemployed, not because of their employment status but because they have less chance of meeting a romantic partner and also because of their values regarding work and marriage. these explicit gender differences in the fi ndings contradict observations made in contemporary europe and north america, where a trend towards gender convergence in the effects of employment and earnings on marriage has been identifi ed. the ambivalence towards gender equality in family and the workplace will be discussed to understand why many young japanese remain single. keywords: marriage · low fertility · employment · romantic partner · values 1 introduction during the last half century, there have been dramatic changes in family formation behaviour in most developed countries. as is the case in western countries, more japanese are marrying later or remaining unmarried and are postponing childbearing or staying childless. according to census data, the mean age at fi rst marriage was 26.9 for men and 24.2 for women in 1970, with the fi gures jumping to 31.1 for men and 29.4 for women in 2015. in 1970, 11.7 percent of men and 7.2 percent of comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 395-416 (date of release: 24.11.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-22 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-22en0 • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki396 women aged 30 to 34 years had never been married. by 2015, those numbers had reached 47.1 percent and 34.6 percent respectively. in the mid-1970s, the japanese total fertility rate (tfr) sank below replacement level and has remained low ever since. in 2005, this fi gure reached a record low of 1.26. it recovered slightly the following year but has now plateaued at 1.36 as of 2019. unlike western countries, however, premarital cohabitation and extra-marital childbirths have not become common among japanese. the percentage of childbirths outside marriage in japan is only 2 percent, and is signifi cantly lower than the oecd average of 40 percent in 2016 (oecd family database 2018). in japan, strong social norms link marriage with childbirth (ochiai 2013), and cohabitation or out-of-wedlock births are not accepted as valid alternatives to the institution of marriage, as is the case in western countries (raymo et al. 2015). it is therefore important to examine whether factors associated with the retreat from marriage among japanese are similar/dissimilar to what has been found in other countries. there are multiple factors that determine the timing of marriage. among them, the individual economic circumstances of young people have been found to be associated with family formation. as the economic power of women rises, however, the opportunity costs of marriage and parenting would increase. the purpose of the present study is to investigate whether existing theories in the west can apply to japan, where social and cultural backgrounds are different. the signifi cance of targeting japan for this research is as follows. first, japan is undergoing a rapid trend toward late marriage that is linked closely to the circumstance of youth employment. since the burst of the bubble economy in the 1990s, unique employment practices in japan have caused employment conditions to deteriorate, especially for young people. in addition, unlike western countries, the traditional gender role of women in the home (bearing responsibility for housework and childcare) is still emphasised in japan. we will shed light on the nature of marital process differences by focusing on employment practices and gender equality both in the family and at the workplace. specifi cally, we examine how unstable jobs and low economic resources affect marriage timing among japanese men and women, and discuss why gender differences, if there are any, exist. 1.1 theoretical considerations in western countries, economic circumstances have long been identifi ed as an important predictor of family formation (thornton et al. 2007) as a secure fi nancial foundation is one of the conditions that young people need before starting family formation. when their income level falls due to recession, their marriage timing tends to be delayed (sobotka et al. 2011). the timing of a couple’s marriage is affected in particular by the man’s income level. indeed, a large body of literature has almost universally highlighted that men’s economic resources, such as earnings and employment status, are strong predictors of a transition to fi rst marriage in europe (blossfeld et al. 2005; kalmijn 2011), in the united states (burstein 2007; mcclendon et al. 2014), in israel (raz-yurovich 2010) and in egypt (salem 2016). in east asian countries, economic stagnation and growing economic inequality foldeteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 397 lowing the asian economic crisis in the 2000s was one of the factors that delayed family formation among the younger generation, especially those at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum (raymo et al. 2015). women’s economic circumstances have a much more complex impact on marriage. according to becker’s theoretical model of marriage (1973, 1981), individuals are assumed to rationally choose whether or not to marry based on the gain that can be maximised from the decision. thus, women’s economic independence could discourage women from entering into marriage because marriage and parenthood would increase their opportunity costs. oppenheimer (1988, 1994) questioned this economic perspective and found that highly educated women may delay marriage to pursue their own careers but are more likely to fi nd potential partners. in other words, women with economic resources were not expected to forego marriage but postpone it. empirical results in western countries often showed that the link between women’s economic resources and marriage had been negative in older cohorts (burgess et al. 2003), but has become positive for more recent cohorts (kuo/raley 2016; schneider et al. 2019). the magnitude of this association is, however, relatively weak compared with that for men (burstein 2007; shafer/james 2013). one explanation for this dramatic turnaround is related closely to a social trajectory towards gender equality. if women were not provided with opportunities equivalent to those of men in education and the labour market, marriage would be less attractive for highly educated women with a promising career. as inglehart and his colleagues (inglehart/baker 2000; inglehartet al. 2002) and lesthaeghe (1983) predicted, we have witnessed that beliefs regarding gender roles have become more egalitarian, life course decisions have been subject to individual needs as well as weakening social and institutional constraints, and the division of labour has become less gendered than in the past. in such egalitarian settings, the costs of family formation can be shared between both men and women. furthermore, those who have stable employment and earnings, regardless of gender, may possess stronger marriageability. this rationale has been supported by cross-national studies (blossfeld 1995; ono 2003). in countries with a large gender gap, women’s economic resources have been found to decrease the likelihood of marital transition. in contrast, women’s economic resources have been found to increase the likelihood of marital transition in countries where gender roles are less rigid. matsuda (2019) compared the relationship between marital status and employment conditions among men in six countries using cross-sectional data (japan, korea, singapore, uk, france, and sweden), and found that non-regular employment, low income, and unemployment are associated with being unmarried. the magnitude of the association was much stronger in asia, especially in japan, than in europe. this fi nding suggests that persistent social norms about male breadwinning roles are deeply instilled among japanese. considering that gender disparity in japan is among the highest in the world (world economic forum 2019), the process of transition to marriage is expected to differ depending on gender. • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki398 1.2 labour market and marriage in the japanese context traditionally, japanese companies simultaneously hired new graduates once a year in accordance with a japanese employment practice that emphasised senioritybased promotion and lifetime employment. due to the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, however, japanese companies were forced to change this practice in order to reduce labour costs. because the labour standards law restricts employee dismissal for the purpose of reorganisation, many japanese companies limited the number of young regular employees hired during the recession (genda 2004). in response to labour market conditions, employment regulations became more fl exible, and the number of non-regular employees increased. in 1990, the share of workers aged between 25 and 34 who were non-regular employees stood at just 3.2 percent for men and 28.2 percent for women, before soaring to 16.6 percent for men and 40.9 percent for women in 2015 (japan cabinet offi ce 2019). non-regular employees receive signifi cantly lower wages than regular employees and have fewer chances of obtaining regular employment status due to the very low level of career mobility in japan. japanese companies continued to hire regular employees through the bulk recruitment of new graduates and minimised mid-career recruitment (kosugi 2010). furthermore, regular employees’ income has decreased since the 1990s. in 1997, the percentage of regular employees with annual incomes of less than three million yen was 43 percent among workers in their 20s and 11 percent among those in their 30s, but these fi gures had increased to 50 percent and 19 percent respectively a decade later (matsuda 2013). brinton (2011) called this change in employment condition “lost in transition” as the increase in non-regular employees and a decline in income made it diffi cult for japanese young people to transition to a stable career and marriage. considering these unique conditions in the japanese labour market, the present study tests “the employment deterioration hypothesis” (matsuda 2019, 2020), which posits that deteriorated employment conditions due to globalisation, service industrialisation, and industrial sophistication result in lower marriage rates. it is important to disentangle the impact of income and employment status although both refl ect employment deterioration. earnings emphasise the fi nancial aspects of employment, with a focus on whether individuals are able to fulfi l the role of provider. on the other hand, employment status encompasses a vague sense of uncertainty about the future because non-regular employees often lack proper social security protection and conversion to the status of regular employees is rare in japan. raymo et al. (2015) argues that the tension between rapid changes in the socioeconomic spheres and limited changes within the family sphere underlies the hesitation for family formation in east asia. japanese women’s labour participation rate in 2017 was 67.4 percent, above the oecd average and even higher than that of us and france. however, almost half of fi rst-time mothers who held a job before pregnancy quit their job following the birth of a child while their husbands remained part of the labour force during the transition to parenthood (nipssr 2016). many mothers return to the labour market after several years of parenting but in the form of non-regular employment. while the employment rate of women increased, women deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 399 are also often responsible for the lion’s share of housework and childcare. in japan, where gender roles are highly asymmetric, female hypergamy remains strong because there are social and institutional constraints that limit women’s opportunities (jones et al. 2009; raymo et al. 2015). when never-married individuals are asked what they look for in marriage partners, a large gender difference emerges in that twice as many women as men consider earnings, occupation, and academic background when selecting a potential partner (nipssr 2016). several attempts have been made to clarify the temporal context in japan using longitudinal data. men’s fi rst jobs and women’s education have often found to be linked to their fi rst marriage. sakai and higuchi (2005) used the retrospective data from the fi rst wave of the keio household panel survey and showed that both men and women who were unemployed or had a non-regular job one year after completing their education were less likely to get married or more likely to delay their fi rst marriage. this trend was especially true for those who graduated after 1992. tsuya (2011) studied a sample of individuals born between 1955 and 1986 and found that the likelihood of fi rst marriage was low among men whose fi rst job was non-regular and women whose educational level was high. when looking at a sample born between 1935 and 1954, however, men’s employment status was not a predictor of the likelihood of fi rst marriage (tsuya 2018). this suggests that men’s employment status at their fi rst job has a stronger impact on family formation among the younger cohorts. in addition to the fi rst job, individuals’ work history has found to be associated with family formation. using detailed life history data of a cohort born between 1966 and 1980, sasaki (2012) investigated how the effects of individuals’ employment status on their fi rst marriage changed as they age. the results revealed that men who were unemployed, self-employed, or non-regularly employed in the previous year were far less likely to get married than regularly employed individuals; the gap was especially wide when the men were in their late 20s and early 30s. using the same data, mugiyama (2017) discovered that transition to fi rst marriage occurred less frequently among both men and women when one consistently had a non-regular job in the previous three years. piotrowski et al. (2015) analysed another set of retrospective life history data of a cohort born between 1970 and 1973 and found that having a non-regular job hampered family formation even after fi ve years, and that the effect for men is much stronger than for women. overall, existing studies have provided evidence that the likelihood of fi rst marriage is signifi cantly low if japanese men have a non-regular job, regardless of when it occurred in his work history. historically, japanese women’s employment conditions seem to play a less vital role in determining marriage, but studies with more recent cohorts suggest a possible increase in the impact of women’s employment on fi rst marriage ( mugiyama 2017; piotrowski et al. 2015; sasaki 2012). however, these studies were based on retrospective data; subjective data as well as objective data that are hard to recall were therefore not collected. one exception is a study conducted by fukuda (2007), who used prospective data with a female sample born between 1960 and 1983. although he did not include employment status in the model, he found that women whose annual income is around the national average • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki400 are most likely to get married, compared with other women. this study may be indicative of the changing gender roles in japan, but this is unknown without comparing men and women. the present study makes a major contribution to the literature by investigating the effects of employment on fi rst marriage in japan, for both men and women, using prospective longitudinal data collected annually since 2007. through this data, we can test whether the nature of the relationship between employment and fi rst marriage has remained the same in recent years by considering important predicting factors such as annual income, the presence of a signifi cant other, and values about work and marriage. and more importantly, how social and cultural contexts would affect family formation will be discussed. 1.3 research questions rq 1: is the likelihood of fi rst marriage low among men and women who have a regular job if their income is low? whereas extensive research has shown robust fi ndings that employment status has a major infl uence on family formation, it is still unclear whether employment status per se can give rise to a decision to get married, since the nature of employment status is multifaceted. non-regular employees may feel insecure about their future due to their uncertain career path and low income with few opportunities for pay rises, which may lead them to remaining unmarried. while it is true that the proportion of non-regular employment has increased dramatically in recent decades, and with it the percentage of never-married men and women, this explains only part of the causal relationship. although the proportion of non-regular employees among young men has undoubtedly risen sharply in the last quarter of a century, the fi gure remains at just 16.6 percent for men in 2015. given that regular employees’ income has fallen in that same period in japan, regular employees with a low annual income may feel that they are unable to fulfi l a providing role even though their job status instils a sense of security thanks to permanent employment contracts and welfare benefi ts. the division of labour by gender is often rigid among japanese married couples, especially after the birth of their fi rst child. because there is a strong expectation on japanese men to play the role of breadwinner, those men who lack economic resources are less likely to be chosen as a potential husband. in cross-sectional data, an annual income of three million yen has been found to be a clean-cut threshold as to whether a man will marry (japan cabinet offi ce 2011; matsuda 2019, 2020), but the effect of income on marriage for women is not well known because many married japanese women have already withdrawn from the labour market. the prospective nature of the present study allows us to test whether the effects of earning power on fi rst marriage differ by gender even after the effects of employment status are controlled. deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 401 rq2: is the likelihood of fi rst marriage low among men and women who have an unstable job because they have less chance of encountering a potential spouse? traditionally, japanese marriages were facilitated by an arrangement of families, kin, or matchmakers rather than by love or mutual attraction. it is only in recent decades that a majority of young men and women have been able to choose their own partner. at the same time, the lack of a suitable partner) has continuously been cited as the primary reason why japanese young men and women remain unmarried (nipssr 2016). oppenheimer (1988) argues that individuals look for potential spouses until they fi nd one who satisfi es the minimum qualifi cations needed to have an acceptable married life. using a name generator approach to assess personal networks, matsuda (2015) found that the proportion of regular employees in a respondent’s daily contacts was much smaller if respondents themselves were non-regular employees, and non-regular employees were less likely to have a romantic partner than those individuals who were regularly employed. this suggests that individuals with unstable employment are not only less likely to marry, but also that their chances of meeting a romantic partner are smaller. a deterioration in the employment situation due to macroeconomic conditions greatly reduces the absolute number of available single men who can afford to fulfi l the role of provider. this may have a major impact on women with a precarious job because the chance to meet a potential marital partner with a stable employment status within the range of daily contacts is small (matsuda 2015). the present study investigates whether the effects of employment status on fi rst marriage would be sustained, even after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner to test if the mate selection process is different for men and women. rq3: do attitudes towards work and/or marriage predict the likelihood of fi rst marriage among men and women? attitudes and values are important mechanisms affecting individual life events, including employment, marriage, and childbirth (easterlin 1980; van de kaa 1987; lesthaeghe 2002, 2010). ajzen and his colleagues (ajzen 2012; ajzen/kobas 2013; fishbein/ajzen 1975) built a theoretical framework to delineate how attitudes towards a particular behaviour, along with social pressure, predict intentions and how intentions then predict behaviour. barber et al. (2002) empirically tested the framework and found that positive attitudes towards marriage and childbearing lead to earlier family formation. they also found that positive attitudes towards educational attainment and career pursuits have a negative impact on family formation because these individuals see a confl ict between their career or educational goals on the one hand and the requirements of a family on the other. although eight waves of a longitudinal study were used for the analysis above, neither the effects of employment status nor income level were included in the model. this study will examine to what extent attitudes regarding work and/or marriage affect the decision to marry, after considering the effects of employment conditions. the vast majority (around 90 percent) of never-married japanese men and women have continuously reported that they intended to marry at some point in the future (nipssr 2016), but fewer and fewer japanese are actually able to fulfi l this • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki402 wish. this implies that personal as well as contextual obstacles prevent them from enacting their intended goal (i.e. marriage). given that family obligations and expectations are still strong in japan, the opportunity cost of marriage is high, especially for economically independent women (bumpass et al. 2009). similarly, attitudes towards work and/or marriage may act differently for men and women and the association may differ depending on individuals’ employment stability. rq4: have the effects of employment status on fi rst marriage persisted over recent years? in addition to individual employment conditions, macro-level economic conditions can exert an infl uence on family formation (sobotka et al. 2011). in particular, men and women whose position in the labour market is precarious are likely to forgo or postpone family formation during economic recession (blossfeld/mills 2005). in japan, those who entered the labour market between the mid-1990s, when japan’s bubble economy burst, and the mid-2000s are often labelled as the “lost generation” (asahi-shimbun “lost generation” shuzai-han 2007) given the extreme diffi culty experienced by these individuals in fi nding a regular job in the deteriorating labour market. increasing numbers of young people had to settle for non-regular jobs with low income, leading to their economic dependence on ageing parents as well as to delayed marriages (brinton 2011). as mentioned above, the existing body of empirical research using japanese longitudinal data (e.g. mugiyama 2017; piotrowski et al. 2015; sasaki 2012; tsuya 2011, 2018) focused on the relationship between employment and marriage in the 1990s and established that non-regular employees were less likely than regular employees to marry, particularly in the case of men. however, whether such fi ndings continued to remain valid through the 2010s requires further investigation. after the fi nancial crisis in 2008, the japanese economy was relatively stable. thus, the present study aims to examine the effects of young adults’ employment conditions on their marriage status in post-economic recession japan using prospective longitudinal data. 2 methods 2.1 data the data used for this study are derived from the japanese life course panel survey (jlps) conducted by the institute of social science at the university of tokyo. a nationally representative sample of men and women aged between 20 and 40 years in 2007 was asked about the timing of their major life events, including education, employment, and family formation, as well as their attitudes and values towards such events. individuals have since been followed on an annual basis. this study is based on the fi rst nine waves of their ongoing panel study. men and women aged between 20 and 34 years who were unmarried at wave 1 in 2007 (926 men and 861 women) were the focus of the present study. by examining this sample, we can investigate the mechanisms of family formation in japan for both men and deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 403 women among more recent cohorts than those used in previous studies. existing japanese research examining marital union retrospectively collected the detailed life course trajectories, including academic background and work history; however, it is diffi cult to assess circumstantiated states, thoughts, and beliefs in the past. thus, another important strength of this data is that pivotal time-variant predictors, such as annual income and attitudes and values towards marriage and work, can be incorporated into the analysis. 2.2 measures the dependent variable in the present analysis is a dichotomous indicator equal to 1 if a respondent experienced their fi rst marriage in the survey year, and 0 otherwise. employment status is our primary independent variable of interest and is categorised into four different employment statuses: regular employment, non-regular employment, self-employed, and not in the labour force. regular employment is a permanent employee with no fi xed term of employment. typical employment statuses for non-regular employment include part-time workers, contract workers, dispatched workers and temporary workers, and their term of employment is normally fi xed. given that income is decreasing even among those who have a regular job, and those whose annual income is less than three million yen are likely to remain unmarried (japan cabinet offi ce 2011; matsuda 2019, 2020), it is important to distinguish between regularly employed individuals whose income is high and those whose income is low. we therefore use three million yen as a cut-off point for the following analysis. each year, respondents are asked whether they have an ongoing romantic partner, which is used to create a dummy variable representing the presence of a romantic partner. attitudes towards work and marriage are assessed biannually by asking to what extent “success in work” (= importance of work) and “marrying and living a happy family life” (= importance of married life) are important to respondents on a three-point scale (1 = very important, 2 = a little important, 3 = not important). the values are reverse-coded so the higher scores represent a higher degree of importance. data are complemented by entering the same value with one wave ahead. respondents’ age, age-squared (centred by men’s and women’s age separately) and educational attainment are also included as control variables. 2.3 analysis strategy discrete-time event history analysis will be conducted to estimate the conditional probability of marriage occurring, given that it has not yet done so. we set 2007, wave 1 of the survey, as the beginning of the observation and examine how the hazard rate depends on time (survey year) and the explanatory variables. alternatively, one could set a certain age as a starting point of the risk period. however, the age range of the current sample was 20 to 34 at wave 1 and no information is available before those ages, except several time-invariant variables including last school attended, fi rst job, and childhood conditions and so forth. we give more priority to • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki404 examining the effects of time-variant variables on marriage than to examining the age at which marriage is likely to happen. for the time-varying explanatory variables, a two-year lag will be given. piotrowski et al. (2015) compared the robustness of different lags from zero to fi ve years using a japanese sample and found that the two-year lag fi t the model well. this is quite reasonable considering the marital situation in japan, where it often takes more than a year for a marriage to be completed after the decision to marry is made. some people go through multiple rituals and ceremonies that involve both the husband’s and wife’s families. logit function will be used for the parameter estimation. we adjusted their standard errors using a heteroscedastic robust procedure (white 1980). 3 results descriptive statistics for variables used separately in the analysis for men and women are shown in table 1. the event of fi rst marriage occurred for 9 percent of men and 16 percent of women between wave 1 and wave 9. the mean age at the time of the fi rst marriage was 29.5 for men and 28.3 for women. the breakdown of the most important explanatory variable, namely the employment status for men was as follows: 60 percent were regular employees, 17 percent were non-regular employees, 17 percent were not part of the labour force, and less than one percent were selfemployed. the percentage of male regular employees who earn three million yen or more and those who earn less than three million yen was about the same (29 percent vs 32 percent). on the other hand, the proportion of female regular employees whose annual income is three million yen or more was much smaller than that of men (17 percent) even though there was no salient difference in the percentage of regular employment by gender. the proportion of non-regular employment among women was much higher than that among men (27 percent vs 17 percent), which indicates that men’s employment position is more stable than women’s. with regard to the presence of a romantic partner, another important independent variable, the proportion was 28 percent for men and 42 percent for women. there was no signifi cant gender difference in mean values as far as the importance of work and married life are concerned. table 2 presents the results of the discrete-time event history analysis for men estimating fi rst marriage. model 1 shows the effect of employment status after controlling for educational attainment. compared with regular employees (= reference group), the hazard-odds ratio of fi rst marriage for self-employed individuals in any given year was not signifi cantly different, but it was 0.44 times less for non-regular employees and 0.14 times less for those who were not in the labour force. the results of model 2, which divided regular employees into two groups by annual income, show that regular employees with annual income of less than three million yen had a signifi cantly lower likelihood of fi rst marriage compared with regular employees with annual income of three million yen or above (= reference group); the hazard-odds ratio of the former was about half that of the latter. in addition, compared with the results of model 1, the hazard-odds ratio of non-regular employees deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 405 m al e fe m al e m s d m s d e ve n t o f fi r st m ar ri ag e (2 -y ea r la g) .0 94 .1 62 e d u ca tio n al a tt ai nm en t h ig h sc h o o l o r le ss .2 60 .1 83 ju ni o r te ch ni ca l c o lle g es .1 96 .3 82 u ni ve rs it ie s an d g ra d u at e sc h o o ls .5 45 .4 35 e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t .5 96 .5 62 r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f 3 m ill io n ye n o r ab o ve a .2 85 .1 71 r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f l es s th an 3 m ill io n ye n .3 24 .3 99 n o n -r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t .1 71 .2 69 s el fem p lo ym en t .0 66 .0 26 n o t i n th e la b o ur fo rc e .1 67 .1 44 p re se n ce o f a r o m an tic p ar tn er .2 80 .4 23 im p o rt an ce o f w o rk 2. 30 3 .6 74 2. 12 7 .6 77 im p o rt an ce o f m ar ri ed li fe 2. 44 5 .7 18 2. 55 0 .6 80 a g eb 29 .4 77 5. 13 3 28 .3 01 4. 93 6 n 92 6 86 1 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s a p er ce nt ag e o f th is v ar ia b le d o es n o t m at ch t ha t o f re gu la r em p lo ym en t, as t he v ar ia b le w as c re at ed b y ex cl ud in g th e sa m p le f o r w hi ch n o a ns w er w as g iv en to th e q ue st io n o f a nn ua l i nc o m e b ag e w as g ro up -m ea nce nt re d fo r th e an al ys is s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n jl p s w av es 1 -9 • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki406 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 e d u ca tio n al a tt ai nm en t ( r ef . h ig h sc h o o l o r le ss ) ju ni o r te ch ni ca l c o lle g es 1. 40 0 1. 28 3 1. 63 5 1. 62 9 u ni ve rs it ie s an d g ra d u at e sc h o o ls 1. 90 0 * * 1. 57 4 * 1. 58 8 * 1. 58 3 * e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s (r ef . r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t f o r m o d el 1 ) (r ef . r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f 3 m ill io n ye n o r ab o ve fo r m o d el 2 , 3 , a n d 4 ) r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f l es s th an 3 m ill io n ye n 0. 56 0 * ** 0. 53 3 * ** 0. 53 7 * ** n o n -r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t 0. 43 6 * ** 0. 30 0 * ** 0. 36 9 * ** 0. 40 6 * ** s el fem p lo ym en t 0. 71 9 0. 63 4 0. 77 2 0. 91 3 n o t i n th e la b o ur fo rc e 0. 13 5 * ** 0. 10 5 * ** 0. 09 6 * ** 0. 09 8 * ** p re se n ce o f a r o m an tic p ar tn er 21 .2 37 ** * 19 .2 71 ** * im p o rt an ce o f w o rk 0. 70 5 * im p o rt an ce o f m ar ri ed li fe 1. 93 1 * ** a g e 0. 99 4 0. 98 5 1. 01 4 1. 01 7 a g e sq u ar ed 0. 99 9 1. 00 0 0. 99 8 0. 99 8 r is k p er io d 1. 00 4 1. 00 9 1. 03 6 1. 03 7 r is k p er io d x a g e 0. 99 2 0. 98 8 0. 99 3 0. 99 4 n um b er o f p er so n -y ea rs 3, 97 5 3, 71 0 3, 67 9 3, 62 2 -2 ll 23 38 .2 22 08 .5 16 40 .9 15 81 .4 χ2 71 .5 ** * 75 .5 ** * 39 6. 5 * ** 38 6. 0 * ** d .f. 9 10 11 13 ta b . 2 : d is cr et e tim e lo g it es tim at es fo r m en e st im at in g fi r st m ar ri ag e (o d d s ra tio ) *p < 0. 05 * *p < 0. 01 * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n jl p s w av es 1 -9 deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 407 decreased. this indicates that the low likelihood of fi rst marriage of non-regular employees is not only due to their unstable employment situation but also their low income level. the presence of a romantic partner was added in model 3, and greatly increased the likelihood of fi rst marriage. of all the independent variables, the presence of a romantic partner had the greatest effect on whether marriage actually occurred. what should be noted in this model was that factors such as individuals who are regular employees with annual income of less than three million yen, non-regular employees and those not in the labour force continued to have signifi cant effects on marriage rates even after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner. individual attitudes towards work and marriage were added in model 4. while attitudes that emphasise career goals signifi cantly reduced the likelihood of marriage, the attitudes emphasising married life led to a distinct increase in the chances of getting married. placing importance on marital life had a stronger effect on the fi rst marriage than placing importance on career goals. the effects of employment status remained signifi cant and the coeffi cients did not change much after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner and attitudes towards occupational life and married life. table 3 shows the results for women. although the magnitude of the effects was relatively small compared with the results for men, the hazard-odds ratio of fi rst marriage for non-regular employees and those not in the labour force was signifi cantly lower than that of regular employees. this is consistent with fi ndings in the west (e.g. burstein 2007; shafer/james 2013) and in line with oppenheimer’s argument (1988, 1994) that women’s economic resources should increase marriage probability. unlike men, however, the difference between regular employment with annual income at or over three million yen versus income that is less caused no signifi cant difference in the probability of fi rst marriage for women (model 2). that is, there is no signifi cant difference in the probability based on the level of income among regular employees. the hazard-odds ratio for non-regular employees and those not in the labour force in model 2 are almost the same as those in model 1, suggesting that income level has little impact on marriage for women. in addition, women’s educational level was not signifi cant (albeit junior technical college graduates were less likely than high school graduates to marry in model 2). taken together, women’s educational attainment and economic power were not linked to marriage in japan, which contradicts contemporary fi ndings in the west. similar to men’s results, the presence of a romantic partner signifi cantly increased the occurrence of fi rst marriage, and its effect was the most signifi cant variable for women as well (model 3). however, a gender difference did emerge in the results of employment status. for women, the signifi cant difference between regular employees with a high level of income and non-regular employees in terms of the likelihood of marriage disappeared after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner. the effect of attitudes on the likelihood of fi rst marriage among women was similar to the results obtained for men in model 4. again, there was a signifi cant gender difference. the effects of employment status remained signifi cant for men whereas none of the different types of employment status was signifi • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki408 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 e d u ca tio n al a tt ai nm en t ( r ef . h ig h sc h o o l o r le ss ) ju ni o r te ch ni ca l c o lle g es 0. 75 8 0. 69 5 * 0. 75 2 0. 75 2 u ni ve rs it ie s an d g ra d u at e sc h o o ls 0. 82 8 0. 76 7 0. 92 6 0. 89 3 e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s (r ef . r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t f o r m o d el 1 ) (r ef . r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f 3 m ill io n ye n o r ab o ve fo r m o d el 2 , 3 , a n d 4 ) r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t w it h an nu al in co m e o f l es s th an 3 m ill io n ye n 0. 95 5 1. 03 2 1. 05 3 n o n -r eg ul ar e m p lo ym en t 0. 69 7 * * 0. 67 8 * 0. 76 7 0. 82 3 s el fem p lo ym en t 0. 60 6 0. 64 2 0. 67 6 0. 82 9 n o t i n th e la b o ur fo rc e 0. 33 0 * ** 0. 35 5 * ** 0. 52 3 * 0. 56 5 p re se n ce o f a r o m an tic p ar tn er 11 .3 26 ** * 10 .2 34 ** * im p o rt an ce o f w o rk 0. 76 2 * * im p o rt an ce o f m ar ri ed li fe 2. 12 0 * ** a g e 1. 02 0 1. 02 0 1. 06 7 * 1. 08 0 * * a g e sq u ar ed 0. 98 3 * ** 0. 98 3 * ** 0. 98 0 * ** 0. 98 0 * ** r is k p er io d 1. 02 8 1. 02 7 1. 03 5 1. 03 1 r is k p er io d x a g e 1. 00 7 1. 00 8 1. 01 0 1. 01 1 n um b er o f p er so n -y ea rs 3, 75 6 3, 51 1 3, 48 2 3, 44 5 -2 ll 31 89 .0 30 39 .3 24 91 .2 23 90 .3 χ2 74 .3 ** * 70 .3 ** * 32 9. 7 * ** 33 0. 6 * ** d .f. 9 10 11 13 ta b . 3 : d is cr et e tim e lo g it es tim at es fo r w o m en e st im at in g fi r st m ar ri ag e (o d d s ra tio ) *p < 0. 05 * *p < 0. 01 * ** p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n jl p s w av es 1 -9 deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 409 cant after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner and attitudes toward work life and married life among women. additionally, age was the decisive factor in fi rst marriage likelihood for women, but not for men. to test these gender differences, samples were pooled and interactions between each variable and gender were estimated (table not shown). for men, employment status and income were signifi cantly linked to marriage , but this was not the case for women. while the presence of a romantic partner had a signifi cant effect on marriage for both men and women, the magnitude was signifi cantly stronger among men. the effects of attitudes towards work and marital life were not statistically different by gender. neither did the effects of attitudes vary by employment status. we also tested if there is a period effect by entering interaction terms between each variable and risk period (i.e. survey year), but none of them was signifi cant. 4 discussion and conclusions the present study investigates the effects of employment for both men and women on the likelihood of their fi rst marriage in japan using prospective longitudinal data. the answers to the four research questions are as follows. first, the likelihood of fi rst marriage is low if men’s income is less than three million yen, even when they are regularly employed (rq1). this fi nding is not observed among women. this study confi rms that men’s earning power, even after controlling for employment status, is an important determinant for marriage in japan where there is a rigid division of gender roles. for japanese men, having a stable job is not enough to get married but being able to fulfi l the role of the breadwinner is critical. with respect to rq2, there is a signifi cant gender difference. for men, economic diffi culties are the reason why a deterioration in employment will affect whether or not they marry. regardless of the presence of a romantic partner, the likelihood of marriage among men without a stable job and higher income is remarkably low. for women, in contrast, no matter how much they earn and irrespective of whether their employment status is regular or non-regular, there is no statistically signifi cant difference in the likelihood of marriage after controlling for the presence of a romantic partner. this suggests that opportunities to meet potential partners with a regular employment status and a high level of income are limited if women have an unstable job. because individuals in non-regular employment have a smaller share of regular employees in their daily contacts (matsuda 2015), it is more diffi cult for women than for men to meet their potential marital partners who satisfy marriage conditions (i.e. higher income and stable employment). the third research question sought to examine the effects of attitudes on marriage. similar to the fi ndings of barber et al. (2002), this study reveals that individual work-oriented attitudes reduce the likelihood of fi rst marriage, while married lifeoriented attitudes increase the likelihood of fi rst marriage. given that both effects are very strong for men and women, it seems that an individual can achieve a life course that suits their values to some extent. however, the results give a distinctive insight for each gender. whereas men’s employment conditions remain a strong • shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki410 determinant of marriage, women’s employment conditions are no longer signifi cant after the presence of a romantic partner and their attitudes are considered. for women, willingness to give up career success and willingness to form a warm family environment (mainly by providing a caring role) are more important than fi nancial contribution to the family for marital union. this matches earlier observations that there is less of an emphasis on the fi nancial contribution to a household among women than there is among men. the answer to rq4 is apparent among men. in line with previous studies, the negative impact on family formation of having an unstable job has persisted in young adults from those who married in the 1990s up until the 2010s. data from several sources have indicated that macro-level economic conditions can exert an infl uence on family formation, especially for those who have an unstable job (blossfeld/ mills 2005; sobotka et al. 2011). it is quite possible that marriage-inhibiting effects of precarious jobs could have weakened given that the japanese economy was relatively stable in the 2010s. because current data only cover marriages that took place between 2007 and 2015, we are not able to test directly whether the effects of employment status changed when compared with the 1990s. however, the likelihood among non-regular employees and those not in the labour force compared with regular employees in this study (the magnitude of the coeffi cient) was almost the same as the result of previous studies focusing mainly on marriage in the 1990s and 2000s using different samples (sasaki 2012). in terms of its extent, therefore, the low likelihood of men in non-regular employment and those not in the labour force actually transitioning to marriage did not change very much until the mid-2010s. at the same time, however, whether the effects of women’s employment on marriage have changed over time is unclear. previous japanese studies often found that the likelihood of marriage among women who have university degrees or a higher qualifi cation is small (mugiyama 2017; sasaki 2012; tsuya 2018), but the results linking women’s employment status and marriage have been mixed. some (fukuda 2007; sasaki 2012) argue that the stability of women’s employment may have been more important for marital union than in the past because women have increasingly been expected to contribute to family fi nances in response to the deterioration in the labour market. indeed, in 1992, 30.4 percent of unmarried men wanted their potential partner to be a housewife but this fi gure had dropped to 10.1 percent by 2015. similarly, while 10.8 percent of unmarried men wanted their potential partner to continue to work during the transition to parenthood in 1992, the fi gure had jumped to 33.9 percent by 2015 (nipssr 2016). in contrast, the fi ndings from the present study suggest that neither women’s income nor stable employment necessarily increase marriageability, even among those who married in more recent years compared with samples in past studies. these explicit gender differences in the fi ndings contradict what has been observed in contemporary europe and north america, where a trend towards gender convergence in the effects of employment and earnings on marriage has been identifi ed (burstein 2007; kuo/raley 2016; schneider et al. 2019; shafer/james 2013). this discrepancy could be attributed to the ambivalence towards gender equality in japanese society. as is the case in western countries, the last 50 years have seen deteriorating employment and marriage decline in japan • 411 gender ideology become more egalitarian, with more and more japanese believing that men and women should be treated equally. even so, beliefs about the importance of women’s employment outside of the home was an exception, possibly because of the symbolic value of the housewife role as well as social and institutional constraints on married women’s full participation in the labour market (lee et al. 2010). changes in the roles of men and women in the home are much slower than socio-economic development in japan (raymo et al. 2015). according to the international social survey programme (2012), a majority of japanese men and women agree that being a housewife is as fulfi lling as working for pay whereas the opposite is true for most european countries. lee et al. (2010) mentions that the role of the housewife in japan may not be viewed as oppressive and may have a different signifi cance than in many western countries. firm norms of intensive maternal investment in the family persist, together with traditions of intergenerational exchange of support, sometimes by living together with own parents or in-laws. such strong expectations and obligations for mothers are likely to be seen as unattractive to japanese women who have more life options outside of the family (bumpass et al. 2009). social and economic sanctions against married women’s full-time employment also encouraged the gendered division of labour, while the basic principle of ensuring gender equality has been advocated. by limiting a wife’s annual income, she will be exempt from having to pay resident tax and income tax, pension premiums and health insurance premiums, and her husband can receive a stepwise tax deduction in stages if his wife is a dependent. consequently, many women often give up their regular job once they give birth to their fi rst child because diffi culties they face in reconciling work and family life become more of a burden rather than a form of liberation. considering the low career mobility in employment, it is extremely diffi cult for women to pursue a career with promotion opportunities. all of the above make japan a country with one of the largest wage gaps by gender as well as the smallest share of female managerial positions in developed countries (oecd 2017). although more japanese men and women believe that women should continue to work during the transition to parenthood in order to share the role of provider (nipssr 2016), social and institutional barriers prevent such lifestyles. in that context, women, regardless of their economic resources, are likely to seek a husband who has a stable job with a high level of income because japanese women can clearly see the glass ceiling. thus, the fi ndings from the present study suggest that gender gaps in the family and the workplace have a strong impact on mate selection in japan. 4.1 limitations and challenges to the future this paper has clarifi ed that non-regular employment and low income in recent years have reduced the likelihood of fi rst marriage for young people. however, the unmarried rate and fertility rate in japan vary widely from region to region. for example, although income levels are highest in tokyo and lowest in okinawa, these two prefectures have among the highest lifetime unmarried rates in japan. therefore, the effects of employment conditions on marriage may vary from region to re• shigeki matsuda, takayuki sasaki412 gion. data limitations prevented us from exploring regional difference in this study, but future studies should consider how regional factors infl uence the way in which employment affects marriage. further study is required in order to clarify whether the employment deterioration hypothesis applies to other countries. matsuda (2019) analysed the relationship between employment status and marriage using cross-sectional data from japan, south korea, singapore, and three european countries. although the causal relationship between variables is ambiguous due to restrictions on the data used, marriage probability is affected by employment status and income level in south korea and singapore, as it is in japan. further work is required to establish the validity of the employment deterioration hypothesis by using longitudinal data with more detailed working conditions, such as working schedules, fringe benefi ts, and various welfare benefi ts for employees. moreover, the effects of macro-level composition in employment status should be compared cross-nationally. if differences in the effects of working conditions on marriage becomes clear, it will be possible to provide policy suggestions for governments in other countries so they can take effective measures against their low fertility. finally, the effects of precarious employment and low incomes not only reduce the likelihood of young adults’ marrying but might also reduce the number of children they have. in future, we will study the impact of early employment on the overall declining unmarried and birth rates. acknowledgements this study was supported by the japan society for the promotion of science, kakenhi grant numbers 18h00936 and 18k02054. the data for this secondary analysis, japanese life course panel survey conducted by the institute of social science, the university of tokyo, were provided by the social science japan data archive, center for social research and data archives, institute of social science, the university of tokyo. references ajzen, icek 2012: the theory of planned behavior. in: lange, paul a.m.; 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(eds.): shosi koureika jidai no josei to kazoku: panel data kara wakaru nihon no gender to oyako kankei no henyo [women and families in the age of low fertility and aging: transforming japanese gender and parent-child relationships from panel data]. tokyo: keio university press: 59-69. van de kaa, dirk j. 1987: europe’s second demographic transition. in: population bulletin 42,1: 3-55. white, halbert 1980: a heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. in: econometrica 48,4: 817-838. https://doi.org/10.2307/1912934 world economic forum 2019: global gender gap report 2020 [http://www3.weforum. org/docs/wef_gggr_2020.pdf, 21.07.2020]. date of submission: 30.04.2020 date of acceptance: 25.09.2020 prof. shigeki matsuda (). chukyo university, school of contemporary sociology. toyota, japan. e-mail: matsuda_z113@yahoo.co.jp url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/shigeki_matsuda takayuki sasaki. associate professor. osaka university of commerce, faculty of public affairs. higashi osaka, japan. e-mail: tsasaki@daishodai.ac.jp url: https://ouc.daishodai.ac.jp/profi le/educational_research/teacher/public_affairs/ teacher242.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods janna bergsvik abstract: geographical variations in fertility and the diffusion of fertility across space and social networks are central topics in demographic research. less is known, however, about the role of neighborhoods and neighbors with regard to geographical variations in fertility. this paper investigates spatial variations in family size by analyzing third births in a neighborhood context. using unique geo-data on neighbors and neighborhoods, this paper introduces a new geographical dimension of fertility variation and contributes to our understanding of geographical variations in fertility. flexible, ego-centered neighborhoods are constructed using longitudinal geodata taken from administrative registers (2000-2014). data on inhabitants’ residential address, their housing, family situation and fi xed effects for statistical tracts are used to account for sorting into housing and urban versus rural districts. the analysis shows that the likelihood of two-child couples having another child increases with the share of families in the neighborhood that have three or more children. this relationship remains unchanged, even after controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics of couples, the educational level attained by neighboring women as well as time-constant characteristics of neighborhoods. results are consistent across various neighborhood defi nitions ranging from the 12 to the 500 nearest neighbors. however, the association between neighbors’ fertility becomes stronger as the number of neighbors increases, suggesting that selective residential sorting is an important driver. consequently, this study indicates that transitions to third birth may be linked to social interaction effects among neighbors, in addition to well-known processes of selective residential sorting. keywords: spatial fertility · k-nearest neighbors · fertility diffusion · family size · third births comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 359-394 (date of release: 27.10.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-21 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-21en4 • janna bergsvik360 1 introduction declining family sizes and, in particular, fewer women having a third child, are principal causes of overall fertility decline worldwide (zeman et al. 2018). research on higher parity birth progressions is thus once more a focus of attention in several countries, such as france (breton et al. 2005), germany (diabaté/ruckdeschel 2016), and turkey (greulich et al. 2016). the link between the declining number of three-child families and declining total fertility rates has traditionally been considered important in norway (kravdal 1992), and while the number of large families is falling, almost half of the norwegian issp respondents in 2012 continue to regard three or more children as the ideal number for a family (issp research group 2016). young people’s fertility preferences have been shown to vary considerably by their regional childbearing context (testa/grilli 2006), and research on local geographical patterns of childbearing highlight potential normative (ruckdeschel et al. 2018) and cultural infl uences (fulda 2015). the spatial diffusion of fertility behavior is an inherent part of demographic transition theories (bongaarts/watkins 1996; lesthaeghe/neels 2002), and the importance of compositional and contextual factors in shaping fertility variation is increasingly acknowledged (vitali et al. 2015). geographical variations in fertility are well recognized at the level of regions, nation states, and along the urban-rural dimension. for instance, they are documented for the nordic countries (kulu et al. 2007), the netherlands (de beer/deerenberg 2007), austria, switzerland, and germany (basten et al. 2011), italy (vitali/ billari 2015), great britain (fiori et al. 2014), and australia (gray/evans 2018). however, there is little research that considers the importance of different geographical scales or focuses on neighborhoods (logan 2012). neighborhoods can form arenas where neighbors interact and infl uence each other’s childbearing behavior through emotional contagion, social learning and social pressure (bernardi/klarner 2014), and studies have shown that neighbors become more important for couples’ networks when entering parenthood (rözer et al. 2017; kalmijn 2012). however, because neighborhoods are important contexts of childrearing, couples may also sort geographically based on their fertility preferences. using unique geo-data drawn from norwegian registers, this study aims to provide an insight into spatial variations in family sizes by analyzing third births in neighborhood context. in order to acknowledge the dimensionality and complexity of neighborhood defi nitions (sharkey/faber 2014), it also analyzes how the correlation of neighbors’ fertility varies depending on the chosen neighborhood scale. in this paper, neighborhoods are defi ned as networks of neighbors using k-nearest neighbor measures and are couple-centered and scalable (östh et al. 2015). while other fi elds increasingly use individualized neighborhoods to capture the residents’ environment (türk/östh 2019), fertility research focusing on families’ immediate residential context is sparse (but see malmberg/andersson 2019). given that there is considerable interest in geographical variations in fertility and the diffusion of fertility across space and social networks, neighborhoods and neighbors are potentially important but understudied drivers of the observed larger geographical variations. furthermore, comparing results for individualized neighborhoods of different sizes linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 361 has the potential to shed light on the explanatory importance of neighborhood context, residential sorting and social infl uence among neighbors and might therefore increase our knowledge on the spatial diffusion of fertility behavior (logan 2012). at the same time, family transitions and residential relocations remain highly interrelated (kulu/steele 2013; wagner/mulder 2015). this means that geographical clustering of fertility, even at small scales and net of many important area-level infl uences, may refl ect both residential sorting and social interaction (manski 1993). the present analyses use detailed longitudinal data from norway (2000-2014), covering inhabitants’ residential address, their housing, family situation and fi xed effects for statistical tracts, thus accounting for central sorting mechanisms related to housing and sorting into urban districts or villages. the questions posed are: (i) are couples in neighborhoods with many large families more likely to also have a third child? (ii ) at what neighborhood scale do we observe the strongest association? (iii) to what degree is the association weakened when controls for other individual and arealevel infl uences are included? 2 the case of norway in the european low-fertility context, norway and the other nordic countries are known for relatively high birth rates. in 2014, the last year of observation in the current study, the total fertility rate (tfr) for norway was 1.76, but it has since declined to 1.53. as is the case in many european countries, there seems to be a two-child family ideal (frejka 2008; sobotka/beaujouan 2014), and 40 percent of all norwegian women above the age of 45 had given birth to two children (dommermuth et al. 2015). in stark contrast to other european countries, a deviation from the twochild norm results in women having more than two children, rather than fewer children. in 2014, 14 percent of all women aged 45 were childless, another 14 percent had one child, and 32 percent had three or more children (dommermuth et al. 2015). however, across norway this pattern is not evenly distributed geographically. figure 1 illustrates the distribution of large families across norway in 2014, by plotting the proportion of women aged 20-44 with three or more children. primarily, an east-west divide regarding family sizes is visible. the number of women in the southwestern parts of norway, also called the norwegian bible belt, having at least three children is greater than that in the more metropolitan southeast. this fi nding is consistent with regional variations that have been documented for previous decades (lappegård 1999), and reveals persisting regional fertility cultures. besides these regional patterns, fertility rates also differ between neighborhoods. for example, within the capital city of oslo, the difference in total fertility rates between urban districts stood at 0.8 children in 2015 (tfr of 2.08 in bjerke versus 1.29 in st. hanshaugen) (syse et al. 2016). in contrast, the difference between counties is 0.3 children (syse et al. 2016). while the association between sociodemographic characteristics and third births in norway is relatively well-studied (kravdal/rindfuss 2008; hart et al. 2015), the origin of the uneven spatial distribution of large families is less explored. • janna bergsvik362 fig. 1: map of regional variations in third births in norway, 2014. basic statistical units (n=14,000) n few obs. source: map from the geodatabase at statistics norway. data from norwegian administrative registers. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 363 3 third births: why should the context matter? as for all parity transitions, having a third child depends on having the resources, the partner, and the ability to continue childbearing (see also balbo et al. 2013). whereas a woman’s education is less important for completed fertility in relatively high-fertility countries such as the nordic nations and france, becoming a mother at a later age is well known to lower a woman’s probability of having many children (breton et al. 2005; andersson et al. 2009). beyond individual determinants, in post-transitional societies too recent studies also relate the number of children in families to social interaction, e.g. social pressure from network members (balbo/ mills 2011) or social infl uence by role models (ruckdeschel et al. 2018). in line with this, couples alter their family size intentions during the life course due to changing circumstances, new information, reference groups, and perceived norms (iacovou/ tavares 2011; clay/zuiches 1980; thomson 2015; liefbroer 2009).1 to the extent that socially embedded preferences drive third birth probabilities, one may expect to see geographical clusters of large families. this could emerge because neighbors sort residentially by lifestyle and fertility preferences, and/or because neighbors infl uence each other’s fertility preferences. empirically, several studies corroborate such geographical clustering, e.g. meggiolaro’s (2011) study of milanese neighborhoods. moreover, fertility intentions have been shown to vary with regional fertility contexts in europe (testa/grilli 2006). however, planning or having many children is also often linked to intergenerational transmission and rather stable religious values (adsera 2006; cools/hart 2017). these are factors known to be unevenly distributed across space (mönkediek et al. 2017). at the same time, early internalized family values and religious orientations are less likely to change with contemporary living contexts, or if so, rather slowly. so, why might we observe similar fertility behavior among neighbors? correlated fertility behavior within neighborhoods and variations in the number of children between neighborhoods may emerge through similar channels as for other geographical aggregates. theoretical divisions are often made between explanations focusing on: (i) population composition and residential sorting; (ii) contextual effects; and (iii) social interaction and diffusion, although these often prove diffi cult to distinguish empirically. (i) population composition and residential sorting national, regional, and local fertility dynamics can, in part, be understood through the compositions of the inhabitants and the residential sorting of individuals into 1 in the contemporary norwegian context, there is broad access to contraception and early medical abortion. unintended pregnancies are therefore assumed to be a minor issue and are not discussed further. also, this paper makes no strict distinction between the desired or intended number of children versus the actual number, because desires and intentions are interrelated and subsequently revised to match possibilities and constraints (e.g. iacovou/tavares 2011). • janna bergsvik364 places (hank 2002; dribe et al. 2017). with regard to population composition, one typical notion is that cities have a tfr below the national tfr because of the overrepresentation of highly educated women in urban areas, who are more likely to remain childless (kulu/washbrook 2014). however, this relation could likewise emerge from a so-called contextual effect if the cities’ universities and labour markets not only attract highly educated individuals but also foster a career-oriented culture – also resulting in lower fertility rates, not only for highly-educated women. the migration patterns of families additionally infl uence the population composition. importantly, families do not move at random, and residential relocations often coincide with family expansion (kulu/steele 2013). couples who intend to have many (more than two) children may tend to favor the same residential areas, either because these provide playmates for their children or offer other goods preferred by families. such residential sorting tends to be empirically diffi cult to disentangle from contextual effects, but in most cases, population composition and residential sorting alone is not a suffi cient explanation for spatial patterns in fertility (de beer/ deerenberg 2007; kulu/washbrook 2014; kulu et al. 2007; kulu/boyle 2009; fiori et al. 2014; basten et al. 2011; gray/evans 2018). (ii) contextual factors different places provide unique economic and social conditions for families which may infl uence moving and childbearing patterns and may be particularly salient and important to families with many children. in the norwegian context, the propensity of having a third child has previously been associated with contextual factors such as settlement size or opportunity structures for families in a municipality. for instance, living in a rural area or a smaller town increases the probability of a third birth compared to living in larger cities (kulu et al. 2007), whereas aggregate unemployment decreases the number of higher-order births (kravdal 2002). childcare availability has shown positive effects on all parities (rindfuss et al. 2010), highlighting opportunities for having a large family as an important contextual factor. within neighborhoods, proper and affordable housing is another crucial aspect (clark 2012). usually, home ownership and/or living in a single-family house is seen as the best option for families, but what is perceived as proper housing varies within and between countries (mulder 2013). in addition to a family-friendly infrastructure and housing opportunities, broader cultural differences related to place-specifi c traditions or local social norms may play a role in the existence and persistence of local fertility patterns (de beer/deerenberg 2007; fulda 2015). several studies examine the relationship between local social norms and fertility, including linkages between neighborhood disadvantage and early childbearing (lupton/kneale 2012) as well as living in elite neighborhoods and late childbearing (malmberg/andersson 2019). linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 365 (iii) social interaction and diffusion the pace and spread of new fertility behaviors, such as nonmarital births, has led to the recognition of fertility diffusion as an important mechanism (bongaarts/watkins 1996; casterline 2001). such diffusion of fertility behavior between neighboring regions has been documented in several european contexts, for instance in france, belgium, and switzerland (lesthaeghe/neels 2002), italy (vitali/billari 2015), historical prussia (goldstein/klüsener 2014), and norway (vitali et al. 2015). as family dynamics are found to spread across regions, it can be expected that they also spread within neighborhoods. neighborhoods can form arenas where neighbors interact and infl uence each other’s childbearing behavior through mechanisms such as emotional contagion, social learning, and social pressure (bernardi/klarner 2014). this may be especially true for parents, as couples’ networks have been shown to shift to more local ties after becoming parents (rözer et al. 2017; kalmijn 2012). parents have many opportunities to interact with neighbors in a similar family situation, and such interaction might be particularly relevant. in line with this, results from a swiss panel study show that after having a child, respondents feel closer to more neighbors and report more neighborly contact and support than before the childbirth (kalmijn 2012). neighboring families may infl uence each other’s fertility through similar channels as other networks (bernardi/klarner 2014). they may share knowledge, provide information, and behavioral examples, and social contagion may be apparent. social contagion among neighbors has been documented among welfare recipients for instance (mood 2010a; markussen/røed 2015). previous studies fi nd fertility contagion among friends (balbo/barban 2014), siblings (lyngstad/prskawetz 2010), and colleagues (pink et al. 2014), though these tend to be potentially confounded by self-selection and contextual effects. furthermore, the likelihood of becoming a parent has been found to be greater among individuals in cases where many network members have young children (lois/becker 2014). drawing on similar mechanisms, neighbors’ fertility (ideals) have been associated with family sizes and fertility limitation in several high-fertility contexts, for example in nepal (axinn/yabiku 2001; jennings/barber 2013) and cairo (weeks et al. 2004). in low-fertility countries, however, theneighborhood dimension appears to be understudied when it comes to fertility behavior. in summary, geographical variations in family size might be rooted in different opportunity structures of places, but they may also refl ect local culture and/ or norms. these contextual drivers may infl uence local fertility patterns through attracting certain couples or through infl uencing those already living there. above that, social interaction may reinforce existing patterns. hence, the phenomenon that couples with many children tend to live in similar neighborhoods may emerge due to a combination of compositional effects and residential sorting, specifi c characteristics of the residential context, and possibly social interaction. • janna bergsvik366 4 hypotheses based on the theoretical background and previous research, a strong association between the share of neighbors with more than two children and the probability of two-child couples of having another child is expected (hypothesis 1). however, because of residential sorting, it is also expected that this relationship will be moderated and in part explained by individual characteristics of couples (hypothesis 2a), and by enduring observed and unobserved characteristics of the residential context (hypothesis 2b). more specifi cally, the following individual characteristics are considered: age, global region of birth, union status, education, employment and income. other factors that are also taken into consideration are housing, time since the last move, and neighborhood characteristics such as the share of highly educated women, centrality and region. lastly, unobserved characteristics of administrative neighborhoods are captured using fi xed effects for statistical tracts. next, the relationship between neighbors’ family sizes and a couple’s probability of having another child depends on and varies with the chosen scale of the neighborhood fertility measure (hypothesis 3). spatial analysis always suffers from the modifi able areal unit problem (maup) where decisions about unit scaling and zoning infl uence the results one obtains (openshaw 1984). the question is therefore not only whether neighbors’ fertility behavior is related (sharkey/faber 2014), but also at what scale neighborhoods are relevant. in previous studies, regions, municipalities and census tracts have most commonly been examined as fertility contexts beyond the nation state (petrović et al. 2018). weeks (2004: 389) says: “the only real solution to both aspects of the maup is to begin with individual level data that are geocoded to specifi c locations, and thus, be able to aggregate the data to any scale that the researcher desires, and delimit any set of boundaries that the researcher believes is appropriate to the data.” the neighborhood scales that this study considers range from the closest 12 to the closest 500 households and may represent families’ local activity spaces. with fewer neighbors, each neighbor’s family size is given more weight. andersson and musterd (2010) argue that a grid of 100 x 100 metres, comprising on average 30-40 neighbors, is most relevant if social interaction among neighbors is of interest. restricting the focus to very few neighbors increases the possibility of relevant neighbors being excluded, with the risk that couples’ perception of their neighborhood is not captured. at the same time, it is common to attribute correlated behavior at small scales to social interaction among neighbors (e.g. andersson/musterd 2010), while the infl uence of unmeasured confounding characteristics and self-selection grows with neighborhood scale. consequently, comparing the association at different scales might also indicate the relative importance of social interaction versus residential sorting and other contextual effects. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 367 5 data and measures this study uses high-quality longitudinal data from several norwegian administrative registers covering the entire population of norway in the years 2000 to 2014. using universal personal identifi cation numbers and detailed address codes, time series on individual information from registers were linked and connected to individuals’ residential information, the nationwide housing stock, and other geocoded information. geographical coordinates for each inhabitant’s place of residence were used to fi nd couples’ (k-)nearest neighbors in each year of observation. the study sample consists of 257,527 married and unmarried co-residential couples. to identify them, information from norwegian population registers was used and women who gave birth to their second child in the study period were selected, provided they were aged between 20 and 44 when their second child was born and lived in the same household as the child’s father. selection was based on the woman’s parity since she is most involved with childbearing and childrearing. for almost 10 percent of couples, the birth of the second child represented the couples’ fi rst joint child. whether the father or mother had children from previous partners was included as a control variable. couples were censored when they moved abroad, one partner died, the woman turned 44 or the observation period exceeded 10 years. as periods in which couples did not share an address were excluded, separation also led to their removal from the risk set. quarters of years are the time units, and process time (time since second childbirth) was included in the models using linear and quadratic terms. thus, 5,413,443 couple-quarter observations were included in the regression analysis. outcome: the event under study is a woman’s third childbirth, backdated to the start of pregnancy2 a range of individual and couple characteristics that are known to impact childbearing and that are unevenly distributed across neighborhoods were included as control variables in the models. they were measured yearly and for both partners, if relevant. all couples in the study sample were registered at the same address and were therefore co-residential. whether they were married is included as a timevarying measure for their union status. stepchildren were documented using the following categories: (i) no children from previous partners; (ii) both partners had children from previous partners; (iii) only the woman had children from previous partners; (iv) only the man had children with previous partners; and lastly (v) couples had more complicated prehistories or missing information. global region of birth was measured for both partners, distinguishing between those born in asia, africa, south, and central america, and those born in any other region, including norway. furthermore, both partners’ age when entering the risk set was included. 2 originally, the event of interest is a couple’s decision to have a third child. because register data do not provide information about when that decision was taken, i use the fi rst trimester of the pregnancy leading to the live birth of the female partner’s third child. the analyses thus capture individual and neighborhood circumstances at the time the female partner becomes pregnant with her third child. note that abortions and miscarriages are not captured by these data. • janna bergsvik368 next, a woman’s employment status was defi ned as active if her annual income exceeds the social security base income. educational enrollment was documented for both partners using a dummy measure that is updated annually. each partner’s highest educational level was measured using the following categories: (i) primary education (≤ 10 years); (ii) secondary education (11-13 years); (iii) short university education (14-17 years); and (iv) long university education (≥ 18 years). moreover, the annual household income from wages and salaries (infl ation-adjusted to 2013nok) was included using fi ve categories: (i) no income; (ii) < 600,000 nok; (iii) 600,000-800,000 nok; (iv) 800,000-1,000,000 nok; and (v) > 1,000,000 nok. housing: to indicate whether couples’ current housing had room for another child, a variable combining the number of rooms and dwelling type in six different categories was used; distinguishing between single-family houses, terraced/ row houses, and apartments, and comparing whether each house type had up to 4 rooms, or 5 rooms and more. residential relocations: addresses and dates on residential relocations exist for the whole study period and couples continued to be followed even after moving. the point at which the couple moved to the current neighborhood was measured as a time-varying covariate with the following categories: (i) moved to the neighborhood during the last year; (ii) lived in the neighborhood for up to 5 years; (iii) up to 10 years; or (iv) more than 10 years. neighborhood defi nition: the geographical coordinates of a couple’s residential address form the center of their individual neighborhood. through calculating straight-line distances to surrounding residents using the modeclus procedure in sas, the geographically nearest neighbors were selected up to the desired number (k = 12, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500). since population density varies across norway and perceptions of personal neighborhoods are spatially limited, maximum distances between neighbors were defi ned (ranging between 15 and 100 km, respectively, see appendix table a1). consequently, couples residing in remote places were given smaller numbers of potential neighboring peers. neighborhoods were defi ned at 31 december for each study year. neighborhood fertility: this is the percentage of female neighbors with at least three children out of all female neighbors aged between 20 and 44. the neighbor’s number of children was obtained from individual-level population registers and, for each year, aggregated at the defi ned scales. clear overrepresentation or underrepresentation of large families in the neighborhood may have had greater impact on couples’ further childbearing. to detect such nonlinearity or thresholds, the measure was divided into fi ve categories: (i) < 10 percent; (ii) 10 up to 15 percent; (iii) 15 up to 20 percent; (iv) 20 up to 25 percent; (v) ≥ 25 percent. neighboring women’s educational level: using the same strategy, the percentage of neighboring women with a university education was calculated for each study year and included as a continuous control variable. municipal centrality: the centrality of a couple’s residential municipality was included in the models without fi xed effects since the rural, urban, and suburban dimensions have been emphasized in previous studies. centrality describes a municipality’s geographical position in relation to urban settlements and the populinking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 369 lation size of these settlements (see statistics norway standard classifi cation of centrality at http://stabas.ssb.no/, 2014 classifi cations). this study used the following fi ve categories: (i) municipality with a regional center; (ii) municipality within 35 minutes’ commuting time to a regional center; (iii) municipality within 36 to 75 minutes’ commuting time to a regional center; (iv) relatively central municipalities; and (v) less and least central municipalities. regions: to catch dynamics at higher spatial levels (“regional cultures”), dummies for the seven main regions in norway were included. these are: oslo and akershus (capital region), south eastern norway, hedmark and oppland, agder and rogaland, western norway, trøndelag, and northern norway. 6 statistical models linear probability models (lpm) were implemented with robust standard errors, adjusting for potential heteroscedasticity due to the binary dependent variable, and the correlation of observations over time or within units (mood 2010b; snijders/ bosker 2012: 197).3 results from discrete-time hazard regression models produced similar conclusions and can be found in appendix table a5 and figure a1. in the fi rst part of the analysis, the following models are estimated: yit = β0 + βnbors xnbors,it + βtime ztime,it + βtimesq (ztime,it x ztime,it) + εit where yit is a couple’s predicted probability of becoming pregnant with the third child during a certain quarter of the year and the subscripts denote the ith couple in the tth quarter of the year. xnbors,it represents the percentage of neighbors with at least three children among couple i’s k-nearest neighbors in year t in intervals (0-10, 10-15, 15-20, 20-25 and 25+ percent). ztime,it is a continuous counter variable (process time) where the fi rst couple-quarter for each couple is coded as 0, and each subsequent quarter of year incremented by 1. model 2 additionally includes sociodemographic characteristics of couples, where zsociodem,i represents time-constant couple-characteristics as the woman’s and man’s age at second childbirth, the presence of stepchildren and global region of birth, while zsociodem,it represents time-varying characteristics such as the cou3 mood (2010b: 78f.) presents the use of lpm as a valid solution to avoiding comparability issues in logistic regression. according to mood, main reservations against using linear regression with binary dependent variables stem from the fear of: (1) getting predicted probabilities out of range; (2) heteroscedastic and non-normal residuals which could lead to invalid standard errors; and (3) a misspecifi ed functional form. while (1) is not a problem here, (2) is solved by using robust standard errors, and (3) is of minor relevance because nearest neighbors’ fertility is measured in categories. hence, no continuous probability function is modeled but discrete probabilities associated with each neighborhood fertility category. lpm coeffi cients are closely related to the often-used average marginal effects from logit models (breen et al. 2018: 50). (model 1) • janna bergsvik370 ple’s union status, the woman’s employment status, educational enrolment, highest educational level and annual household income: yit = β0 + βnbors xnbors,it + βtime ztime,it + βtimesq (ztime,it x ztime,it) + βsociodem zsociodem,it + βsociodem zsociodem,i + εit the next model adds covariates measuring residential characteristics (zresidchar,it) such as housing, time since last move and neighboring women’s educational level, all of which are time-varying: yit = β0 + βnbors xnbors,it + βtime ztime,it + βtimesq (ztime,it x ztime,it) + βsociodem zsociodem,it + βsociodem zsociodem,i + βresidchar zresidchar,it + εit in model 4, zregion,it denotes dummies for region of country and zcentrality,it the centrality of the municipality where the couple lived using fi ve categories. both varied over time only if the couple had relocated during the observation period. yit = β0 + βnbors xnbors,it + βtime ztime,it + βtimesq (ztime,it x ztime,it) + βsociodem zsociodem,it + βsociodem zsociodem,i + βresidchar zresidchar,it + βregion zregion,it + βcentrality zcentrality,it + εit with the k-nearest neighbor approach the “neighborhoods” of interest were egocentered and thus, in essence, a characteristic of the couple. as a result, clustering observations within neighborhoods was neither possible nor needed in this study.4 however, the risk remained that the main estimates capture other unmeasured neighborhood characteristics which had infl uenced predominant family sizes. additional models with fi xed effects based on administrative neighborhood boundaries were therefore utilized in model 5. fixed effects take account of all time-constant features of these neighborhoods, which may be the built environment, childcare facilities, and other opportunity structures for families that were shared at this or a higher neighborhood level and that remained constant over the observation period, including relatively time-stable values or norms. yit = β0 + βnbors xnbors,it + βtime ztime,it + βtimesq (ztime,it x ztime,it) + βsociodem zsociodem,it + βsociodem zsociodem,i + βresidchar zresidchar,it + βstattract zstattract,it + εit (model 2) (model 3) (model 4) 4 because observations over time are nested within couples, but not necessarily nested within one (higher level) geographical unit, the data are non-hierarchical or cross-classifi ed when it comes to neighborhoods. this makes them less suitable for multilevel models, which would become computationally demanding (snijders/bosker 2012: 207). hence, the infl uence of other neighborhood factors besides the nearest neighbors’ fertility is treated as “disturbance” rather than the phenomenon to be studied in this paper. (model 5) linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 371 as the data cover the whole country – containing both densely populated cities and sparsely populated rural regions – the chosen administrative unit was statistical tracts. zstattract,it are dummies for the approximately 1,550 statistical tracts in norway (statistical tract fi xed effects). statistical tracts represent a level between the smallest statistical unit and municipalities and were constructed to comprise naturally coherent units of communication and space. in urban areas they ideally comprise 3,000-6,000 inhabitants, in rural areas around 1,000-3,000 inhabitants.5 in the models with statistical tract fi xed effects, associations at lower scales will be better identifi ed. to the extent that associations are found, these capture how individual neighborhoods deviate from the statistical tract where the couple lived. 7 descriptive statistics in total, 29.5 percent of the 257,527 couples in the study sample got pregnant with their third child during the years 2000 to 2014 (see appendix table a2). the average spacing between a second childbirth and the pregnancy was 10.6 quarters of years, which corresponds to 2.7 years; the whole study sample was observed for 4.6 years on average. men and women in couples who conceived a third child were, on average, 1.6 years younger than the sample average when the second child was born and were more often found among those who were born abroad and who were married. in addition, when the woman’s fi rst child was from a previous relationship, couples more often had another child (see appendix table a2). table 1 gives descriptive statistics about couples’ residential contexts. two-child families in norway most commonly lived in relatively spacious single-family houses, regardless of whether they were expecting another child or not. over 40 percent of all fi nal observations were on couples who lived in a single-family house with 5 rooms or more. furthermore, in the last year of observation, most of the families (40.3 percent) had lived in their respective neighborhood for up to 5 years; couples expecting a third child were overrepresented among those with shorter residencies. as previously shown (fig. 1), descriptive statistics confi rm that couples conceiving their third child more often lived in the least central municipalities and were overrepresented in certain regions of norway. also, the share of neighboring women with a university education was somewhat lower among women expecting their third child. looking at neighbors’ family sizes, we see from table 2 that among most couples, 10 to 20 percent of the nearest neighbors had three or more children. as expected for neighborhoods which referred to the 50 nearest neighbors or fewer, observations are more dispersed and are more often found in the lower, but also in the highest categories. however, irrespective of whether the neighborhood fertility measure refers to the 12 or the 500 nearest neighbors, third births are most com5 consequently, in rural regions in particular, statistical tracts may overlap with a neighborhood size of 500 neighbors. • janna bergsvik372 tab. 1: descriptive statistics of residential context variables (last coupleobservation) sample total couples with a 3rd birth n (total) mean n (total) mean neighbor women with a university education % of 500 nearest neighbors 257,527 43.0 75,847 39.2 250 nearest neighbors 257,527 43.0 75,847 39.1 100 nearest neighbors 257,527 43.3 75,847 39.2 50 nearest neighbors 257,527 43.6 75,847 39.4 25 nearest neighbors 257,527 43.9 75,847 39.5 12 nearest neighbors 257,526 44.2 75,846 39.7 n (cell) pct (col) n (cell) pct (row) dwelling type and number of rooms single-family house, 5 rooms or more 109,203 42.4 30,593 28.0 single-family house, 4 rooms or less 73,845 28.7 20,062 27.2 terraced/row house, 5 rooms or more 11,388 4.4 2,974 26.1 terraced/row house, 4 rooms or less 18,739 7.3 5,275 28.1 apartment, 5 rooms or more 1,691 0.7 514 30.4 apartment, 4 rooms or less 20,253 7.9 6,621 32.7 missing housing information 22,408 8.7 9,808 43.8 residential time in current neighborhood moved during the last year 35,701 13.9 16,658 46.7 last relocation up to 5 years ago 103,746 40.3 39,243 37.8 last relocation up to 10 years ago 75,646 29.4 17,487 23.1 last relocation more than 10 years ago 42,434 16.5 2,459 5.8 centrality of residential municipality municipality with regional center 67,620 26.3 19,605 29.0 travel time to regional center < 36 min 69,825 27.1 19,011 27.2 travel time to regional center 36-75 min 43,648 17.0 11,965 27.4 relatively central 41,544 16.1 12,344 29.7 less and least central 34,890 13.6 12,922 37.0 region of norway oslo and akershus (capital region) 63,887 24.8 16,107 25.2 hedmark and oppland 17,173 6.7 4,505 26.2 south eastern norway 46,310 18.0 11,277 24.4 agder and rogaland 41,373 16.1 14,424 34.9 western norway 45,148 17.5 16,067 35.6 trøndelag 22,522 8.8 6,652 29.5 northern norway 21,114 8.2 6,815 32.3 total 257,527 100 75,847 29.5 source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. descriptive statistics for the last year of observation for each couple. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 373 tab. 2: descriptive statistics of the independent variable (last coupleobservation) sample total couples with a 3rd birth n (cell) pct (col) n (cell) pct (row) neighbors with at least 3 children out of 500 nearest neighbors 0-10% 33,788 13.1 7,454 22.1 10-15% 94,597 36.7 19,253 20.4 15-20% 72,579 28.2 22,208 30.6 20-25% 39,281 15.3 15,643 39.8 25+% 17,282 6.7 11,289 65.3 250 nearest neighbors 0-10% 37,102 14.4 7,941 21.4 10-15% 88,831 34.5 18,999 21.4 15-20% 70,077 27.2 20,637 29.4 20-25% 40,365 15.7 15,707 38.9 25+% 21,152 8.2 12,563 59.4 100 nearest neighbors 0-10% 44,815 17.4 9,678 21.6 10-15% 72,399 28.1 16,330 22.6 15-20% 68,175 26.5 19,194 28.2 20-25% 41,515 16.1 14,885 35.9 25+% 30,623 11.9 15,760 51.5 50 nearest neighbors 0-10% 51,335 19.9 11,582 22.6 10-15% 74,634 29.0 17,891 24.0 15-20% 48,740 18.9 13,917 28.6 20-25% 47,460 18.4 15,998 33.7 25+% 35,358 13.7 16,459 46.5 25 nearest neighbors 0-10% 75,642 29.4 17,727 23.4 10-15% 44,586 17.3 11,406 25.6 15-20% 41,970 16.3 11,791 28.1 20-25% 35,932 14.0 11,297 31.4 25+% 59,397 23.1 23,626 39.8 12 nearest neighbors 0-10% 116,797 45.4 29,546 25.3 10-15% 1,997 0.8 700 35.1 15-20% 62,676 24.3 18,063 28.8 20-25% 1,778 0.7 680 38.2 25+% 74,278 28.8 26,857 36.2 total 257,527 100 75,846 29.5 source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. neighbors updated yearly. descriptive statistics for the last year of observation for each couple. • janna bergsvik374 mon among two-child couples who live in neighborhoods with the greatest proportion of (25+ percent) large families. this is consistent with the fi rst hypothesis claiming that there is a positive relationship between the percentage of neighbors with more than two children and the probability among two-child couples of having another child. so far, the more neighbors the neighborhood fertility measure refers to, the clearer the pattern. 8 results from the regression models to address the research questions and test the previously posed hypotheses, several regression models as described in chapter 6 were estimated where the outcome is a third birth and the predictor of interest is the share of women with three or more children among each couple’s 250 nearest neighbors. first, a basic model including the neighbors’ fertility and process time (model 1) is shown. then, sociodemographic characteristics of couples are included (model 2). next, a model with individual residential characteristics, such as housing (model 3), and a model including observed area-level characteristics (model 4) is discussed, before unobserved neighborhood characteristics at the level of statistical tracts are held constant (model 5). finally, to analyze the impact of neighborhood scaling (maup) and to test hypothesis 3, results for neighborhood measures referring to couples’ 12, 25, 50, 100, and 500 nearest neighbors are compared. 8.1 stepwise models results from the fi rst models with stepwise inclusion of sociodemographic, residential and area-level variables, as well as fi xed effects, are illustrated in figure 2 and shown in appendix table a3. as seen in the fi rst baseline model, including only the neighborhood fertility measure and process time, having a third child was most likely among couples who lived in neighborhoods with many other large families (25+ percent). the predicted probability of being pregnant with a third child three years after the second childbirth was about 66 percent higher for these couples compared to couples who lived in neighborhoods where the proportion of large families was less than 10 percent. this is consistent with hypothesis 1. however, hypothesis 2a states that this association exists either partly or fully because couples with initially different probabilities of giving birth to a third child sort into different neighborhoods. comparing couples living in different neighborhoods, while controlling for partners’ age, global region of origin, union status, the presence of stepchildren, the man’s or woman’s level of education and educational enrolment, the woman’s labor force participation and household income (model 2), the positive association between neighbors’ family sizes and a couple’s likelihood of having another child persisted. in fact, the predicted probabilities do not appear to be substantially different from the previous model (see fig. 2). surprisingly, adding residential characteristics such as couples’ dwelling type and size, residential time in the neighborhood, and the share of neighboring women linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 375 with a university education (model 3) did not impact the main relationship either. usually, housing as well as women’s average education represent important sorting dimensions and are assumed to explain much spatial correlation of fertility behavior (e.g. kulu/boyle 2009). indeed, families who lived in apartments, row houses, or in houses with four rooms or less were less likely to increase their family size than couples who lived in spacious single-family houses (see appendix table a3). it is also evident that couples who had remained in place for a while were less likely to have a third child than couples who had relocated during the last year. hence, the fi ndings confi rm that anticipatory moves and appropriate housing were important predictors of third births. however, including these variables did not alter the relationship between neighbors’ family size and third births. taken together, results from model fig. 2: model comparison using predicted probabilities with 95 percent cis for being in the 1st trimester of pregnancy with the subsequent live-born 3rd child, at the time the 2nd child turns 3 years of age, by neighborhood fertility (250 nearest neighbors) .0 15 .0 17 5 .0 2 .0 22 5 .0 25 .0 27 5 0-10% 10-15% 15-20% 20-25% 25+% share of neighboring women with 3+ children m1: base m2: sociodem. m3: context m4: all controls m5: fe note: all models include process time and process time squared. additional covariates included in models 2 to 5 are: both partners’ age at start, global region of birth, union status, stepchildren, both partners’ educational attainment and enrolment, the woman’s employment status and household income. models 3 to 5 additionally include measures for housing, residential time in current neighborhood and neighboring women’s education. model 4 includes dummies for country region and municipal centrality, while model 5 includes fi xed effects for statistical tracts (see also chapter 6). source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. • janna bergsvik376 2 and 3 therefore consolidate hypothesis 1 but provide only limited support for hypothesis 2a, claiming that parts of the association between neighbors’ family sizes are moderated and explained by individual characteristics of couples that were included in these models. the main relationship appeared noticeably different fi rst when indicators for the centrality of a couple’s municipality and country region dummies were added (model 4). as the share of neighboring women with three or more children increases, the variance in the predicted probability of having a third birth was less when these area characteristics were taken into account (see fig. 2). consequently, results from the fourth model support hypothesis 2b, stating that parts of the association between neighbors’ family sizes and a couple’s probability of having another child were explained by other characteristics of the residential context. however, note that area variables had more impact on the relationship of interest than individual measures such as housing and the education of couples’ nearest neighbors. moreover, the characteristics that could be included in model 4 were limited to those available in the dataset. introducing neighborhood fi xed effects at the level of statistical tracts, the fi fth model controls for unobserved variation between these tracts. the model with fi xed effects replaces the controls for municipal centrality and region with a fi xed term that captures all time-constant features at the level of statistical tracts and higher levels. consequently, residential sorting at larger scales, into regions and larger "neighborhoods", is accounted for, and the main estimates capture remaining variation in third birth probabilities between the smaller individual neighborhoods. when applying these fi xed effects, the predicted probability of having a third child for couples living among many large families (25+ percent) was reduced in particular. in this model, their predicted probability of being pregnant with a third child three years after the second childbirth was only about 20 percent higher compared to couples who lived in neighborhoods where the share of large families was less than 10 percent. generally, the remaining variation between the different neighborhood categories was much lower. the fi fth model therefore also supports hypothesis 2b and shows that parts of the association between neighbors’ family sizes and a couple’s probability of having another child were explained by unobserved characteristics of the neighborhoods. nonetheless, results from the regression models using neighborhoods which refer to couples’ 250 nearest neighbors still support the fi rst hypothesis claiming that the family size of neighbors was positively related to a couple’s propensity to have a third child. parts of this relationship were (slightly) moderated by individual characteristics of couples and their housing situation, but even more so by observed and unobserved characteristics of the broader residential context. these fi ndings support hypothesis 2b in particular and indicate that residential sorting at larger spatial scales is important for the spatial clustering of fertility. however, the relationship of interest remained, even after controlling for these characteristics of couples and their larger neighborhoods, and was thus relatively consistent. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 377 8.2 scale comparison to show how sensitive results are for the scaling of the individual neighborhoods, results for fertility measures of a couple’s nearest 12, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 neighbors are presented in figure 3 (see also appendix table a4). overall, the association between the share of neighbors with more than two children and the probability of two-child couples having another child was weaker as the number of neighbors to which the neighborhood fertility measure referred decreases. this was especially true for the predicted probability of third births among couples who were surrounded by a high percentage of large families (25+ percent). on the other hand, for couples living in neighborhoods where large families were scarce (0-10 percent), the predicted probabilities for third births were relatively similar regardless of how many neighbors the measure referred to. fig. 3: neighborhood scale comparison using predicted probabilities with 95 percent cis for being in the 1st trimester of pregnancy with the subsequent live-born 3rd child, at the time the 2nd child turns 3 years of age, models 4 and 5 .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ .0 16 .0 18 .0 2 .0 22 .0 24 .0 26 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ model 4 model 5 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ 0-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25+ note: covariates included are: process time, both partners’ age at start, global region of birth, union status, stepchildren, both partners’ educational attainment and enrolment, the woman’s employment status, household income, housing, residential time, neighbors’ education, centrality and region (last two only in model 4). model 5 additionally includes fi xed effects for statistical tracts. for k-12, few observations fell in the categories 10-15 and 20-25 percent (see also table 2). source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. • janna bergsvik378 from figure 3, we also notice that the estimates with increasing neighborhood scale also differ more between model 4, which includes all previously mentioned control variables, and model 5, which uses fi xed effects for statistical tracts.6 this confi rms that the infl uence of unmeasured confounding neighborhood characteristics grows with neighborhood scale. meanwhile, with decreasing numbers of neighbors, the variation in predicted third birth probabilities by neighborhood fertility generally decreased. given the observed variation, the results confi rm the previously discussed maup and thus support the third hypothesis, which states that (the strength of) the relationship between neighbors’ family sizes varies with the chosen neighborhood scale. specifi cally, the strength of the relationship between neighbors’ fertility increased with neighborhood scale, which might emphasize the relative importance of other contextual effects over social interaction effects. nevertheless, a correlation between the percentage of neighboring families with many (3+) children and a couple’s transition to having a third child is apparent, even if only the twelve nearest neighbors were considered. 9 conclusion and discussion previous research has found that couples’ decisions about fertility behavior are infl uenced by their social context, in which immediate neighborhoods and neighbors may also play a signifi cant role. neighborhoods are important contexts of childrearing. families may therefore sort geographically based on their fertility preferences, but they may also increasingly interact with neighboring families (kalmijn 2012). even so, with few exceptions (e.g. malmberg/andersson 2019), neighborhoods and neighbor networks have to date been severely understudied in fertility research. this study indicates that fertility behavior is sociogeographically situated through potential social interaction effects among neighbors as well as well-known processes of selective moves. the analyses showed that two-child couples who lived in neighborhoods with a higher share of families with more than two children were more likely to have a third child than were other two-child couples. conversely, two-child couples who lived in neighborhoods where families with at least three children were scarce were less likely to have a third child. in previous studies, spatial variations in fertility have often been explained by population composition and residential sorting, regional cultures and specifi c characteristics of the residential context, such as housing and centrality (hank 2002; kulu et al. 2007; de beer/deerenberg 2007; fulda 2015). in this study, observed and unobserved characteristics of the residential context and, to a lesser degree, sociodemographic characteristics of couples, moderated the relationship between 6 because the fi xed effects are at the level of statistical tracts regardless of the scale of the individual neighbourhood, they might impact individual neighbourhoods differently, as discussed earlier (e.g. note 2). as a result, it may not be the ideal model for a scale comparison. however, because the fi xed effect model remains a stronger model than model 4, both are presented. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 379 fertility in the neighborhood and a couple’s probability of continued childbearing. accounting for broader area-level variables had more impact on the relationship of interest than individual measures such as housing and the education of couples’ nearest neighbors. this indicates that residential sorting at larger spatial scales is important for the spatial clustering of fertility, aligns well with regional variations that have been documented for previous decades (lappegård 1999), and underlines the persistent regional fertility cultures. moreover, the results also confi rmed previous fi ndings that the propensity to have many children is highest among couples living in spacious single-family houses in rural regions. but beyond these characteristics, the fertility of nearest neighbors also seems to matter. this correlation has never been shown at such a small scale. the neighborhood scales that were considered in this study range from the nearest 12 to the nearest 500 neighbors and may all reasonably represent families’ everyday activity spaces. the more neighbors referred to in the neighborhood measure, however, the stronger the correlation between neighbors’ family size and couples’ continued childbearing became. this was especially true for couples living in neighborhoods where large families were overrepresented. the analyses also revealed that the infl uence of unmeasured confounding neighborhood characteristics grew with neighborhood scale. in sum, these results might emphasize the relative importance of other contextual effects and selection over social interaction effects. family events and residential relocations are highly intertwined processes. the positive association that was found between third births and recent residential relocations may also point towards selective or anticipatory relocations, or perhaps towards new neighborhoods and neighbors stimulating couples’ child desires. while the latter is not completely unlikely if one assumes that desired family size is subject to change (thomson 2015), the mechanisms cannot be distinguished empirically. 9.1 limitations and strengths the aim of this paper was to gain more insight into spatial variations in family sizes by ascertaining the importance of the family behavior of couples’ nearest neighbors relative to those of other neighborhood characteristics. it is notoriously diffi cult to distinguish between self-selection into neighborhoods and causal effects of neighborhood contexts, and studies rarely succeed in this endeavour. importantly, families do not move at random, and couples who intend to have many (3+) children may tend to favor the same residential areas. even if very small neighborhood scales were used and a range of traits and fi xed effects could be included in the models, shared unmeasured confounders among neighbors are likely to remain. in future studies, it might be interesting to elaborate further on the residential segregation of families, including by dimensions such as country of origin and socioeconomic status. such segregation is particularly prevalent in larger cities and is most likely important because contact with neighbors might depend on more commonalities than simply sharing the children’s playground. the study was also limited to current neighborhoods and thus did not address couples’ neighborhood histories. there could be cumulative (or contradictory) effects over the life course, • janna bergsvik380 which call for an inclusion in future studies of time lags, the upbringing context, and the family of origin (miltenburg/van der meer 2018). to test whether there are any discrepancies or changes over the life course, it would also be interesting to analyze how fertility ideals, and not only actual fertility behavior, are interrelated among neighbors and within neighborhoods. unfortunately, such data are not available for norway. nevertheless, this study brought together both the spatial and social context by introducing small-scale neighborhoods using k-nearest neighbor measures. by defi ning individual neighborhoods of different sizes, this study introduced a new dimension of spatial fertility variation and has contributed to an emerging awareness of scale sensitivity. the correlation between neighbors’ fertility behavior could be shown even at the very small scale of the 12 nearest neighbors. as such, this paper contributes to a broadening of spatial and network thinking in fertility research to include neighborhoods and neighbors. above all, this study has shown that neighborhoods and neighbors matter – through attracting couples and inducing selective moves and potential social interaction effects. acknowledgements this work was supported by the research council of norway through the famgen project (grant #236926). i am grateful to lars dommermuth, rannveig hart, trude lappegård, astri syse and michael thomas for valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper and torbjørn skardhamar for help with data preparation. this research was presented at the population association of america annual meeting 2016 in washington, d.c., and at the 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(eds.): spatially integrated social science. oxford: oxford university press: 381-399. weeks, john r. et al. 2004: the fertility transition in egypt: intraurban patterns in cairo. in: annals of the association of american geographers 94,1: 74-93. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.09401005.x zeman, krystof et al. 2018: cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: decomposition using parity progression ratios. in: demographic research 38,25: 651-690. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2018.38.25 östh, john; clark, william a. v.; malmberg, bo 2015: measuring the scale of segregation using k-nearest neighbor aggregates. in: geographical analysis 47,1: 34-49. https://doi.org/10.1111/gean.12053 date of submission: 20.12.2019 date of acceptance: 30.07.2020 janna bergsvik (). statistics norway, research department. oslo, norway. e-mail: janna.bergsvik@ssb.no url: https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte/janna-bergsvik • janna bergsvik386 appendix tab. a1: distances and number of neighbors included after different choices of neighborhood size defi ned neighborhood size (k-nearest neighbors): k= 500 250 100 50 25 12 number of neighbors actually included† minimum 499 66 66 1 1 1 maximum 890 645 500 416 416 416 mean 500 250 100 50 25 12 sd 3 3 3 3 3 3 max. distance to a neighbor (in meters) defi ned max. 100,000 50,000 50,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 final max. 98,830 50,000 49,978 25,000 19,999 14,980 mean 3,497 2,154 1,149 710 444 265 sd 6,237 3,888 2,266 1,474 988 614 median distance to neighbors (in meters) mean 2,077 1,349 721 457 290 177 sd 3,840 2,579 1,513 1,008 670 426 † values above the defi ned “k” are due to housing block coordinates making it impossible to identify exactly the desired number of nearest neighbors. values below the defi ned “k” stem from the distance cut-off. source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 387 tab. a2: descriptive statistics of sociodemographic control variables (last couple-observation) sample total couples with a 3rd birth n (total) mean n (total) mean process time: quarters of years (max. 40) 257,527 18.2 75,847 10.6 age at 2nd childbirth woman (min. 20, max. 44) 257,527 31.1 75,847 29.4 man (min. 17, max. 77) 257,527 33.9 75,847 32.3 n (cell) pct (col) n (cell) pct (row) country of birth: asia, africa, south or central america female partner 23,406 9.1 7,941 33.9 male partner 19,695 7.7 7,510 38.1 marital status (married) 182,313 70.8 59,390 32.6 children from previous partners neither of the partners 211,150 82.0 60,776 28.8 both partners 5,936 2.3 1,813 30.5 only woman 16,952 6.6 7,997 47.2 only man 18,593 7.2 3,756 20.2 complex/missing 4,896 1.9 1,505 30.7 highest educational level attained, woman compulsory or unknown 37,395 14.5 12,717 34.0 high school 77,800 30.2 21,729 27.9 short university 107,962 41.9 32,272 29.9 long university 34,370 13.4 9,129 26.6 highest educational level attained, man compulsory or unknown 39,395 15.3 12,199 31.0 high school 112,695 43.8 32,179 28.6 short university 67,659 26.3 20,123 29.7 long university 37,778 14.7 11,346 30.0 women in education 19,329 7.5 5,164 26.7 man in education 11,072 4.3 4,095 37.0 woman in labor force† 234,697 91.1 66,385 28.3 annual household income‡ none 1,294 0.5 583 45.1 up to 600,000 nok 37,192 14.5 17,792 47.8 600,000 – 800,000 nok 52,551 20.4 20,451 38.9 800,000 – 1,000,000 nok 65,599 25.5 17,738 27.0 1,000,000 + nok 100,706 39.1 19,282 19.1 total 257,527 100 75,846 29.5 note: means are given for continuous measures, percentages are given for categories. † defi ned as active if annual income exceeds social security base income. ‡ from wages and salaries, infl ation-adjusted to 2013-nok, nok 1000 ~ € 135 (in 2013). source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. descriptive statistics for the last year of observation for each couple. • janna bergsvik388 ta b . a 3: c o m p ar in g m o d el 1 t o 5 : li n ea r p ro b ab ili ty m o d el s fo r ha vi ng a t hi rd c hi ld , 2 00 020 14 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 n ei g h b or s w it h at le as t 3 ch ild re n 0 -1 0% o f 2 50 n ea re st -0 .0 01 6* ** -0 .0 01 7* ** -0 .0 01 8* ** -0 .0 01 2* ** -0 .0 01 5* ** 10 -1 5% o f 2 50 n ea re st -0 .0 01 9* ** -0 .0 01 6* ** -0 .0 01 7* ** -0 .0 01 0* ** -0 .0 00 6* ** 15 -2 0% o f 2 50 n ea re st re f. re f. re f. re f. re f. 20 -2 5% o f 2 50 n ea re st 0 .0 03 3* ** 0 .0 03 0* ** 0 .0 03 0* ** 0 .0 01 6* ** 0 .0 00 4* 25 + % o f 2 50 n ea re st 0 .0 08 9* ** 0 .0 08 1* ** 0 .0 08 2* ** 0 .0 06 0* ** 0 .0 02 3* ** p ro ce ss t im e (q u ar te rs o f y ea rs )† 0 .0 01 1* ** 0 .0 01 2* ** 0 .0 01 3* ** 0 .0 01 3* ** 0 .0 01 4* ** d w el lin g ty p e an d n u m b er o f r oo m s si n g le -f am ily h o u se , 5 r o o m s o r m o re re f. re f. re f. si n g le -f am ily h o u se , 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .0 01 2* ** -0 .0 01 2* ** -0 .0 01 1* ** te rr ac ed /r o w h o u se , 5 r o o m s o r m o re -0 .0 01 8* ** -0 .0 02 0* ** -0 .0 01 7* ** te rr ac ed /r o w h o u se , 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .0 02 1* ** -0 .0 02 4* ** -0 .0 02 2* ** ap ar tm en t, 5 r o o m s o r m o re -0 .0 00 1 -0 .0 00 1 -0 .0 01 1 ap ar tm en t, 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .0 00 7* * -0 .0 01 0* ** -0 .0 01 9* ** m is si n g h o u si n g in fo rm at io n 0 .0 00 6* * 0 .0 00 4* 0 .0 00 1 r es id en ti al t im e in c u rr en t n ei g h b or h oo d m o ve d d u ri n g th e la st y ea r re f. re f. re f. la st r el o ca ti o n u p t o 5 y ea rs a g o -0 .0 00 9* ** -0 .0 00 9* ** -0 .0 01 0* ** la st r el o ca ti o n u p t o 1 0 ye ar s ag o -0 .0 04 5* ** -0 .0 04 5* ** -0 .0 04 5* ** la st r el o ca ti o n > 1 0 ye ar s ag o -0 .0 04 1* ** -0 .0 04 2* ** -0 .0 04 3* ** n ei g h b or in g w om en w it h a u n iv er si ty e d u ca ti on % o f 2 50 n ea re st n ei g h b o rs 0. 00 00 ** * 0. 00 00 -0 .0 00 2* ** c en tr al it y of r es id en ti al m u n ic ip al it y m u n ic ip al it y w it h re g io n al c en te r -0 .0 02 4* ** tr av el t im e to r eg io n al c en te r < 3 6 m in -0 .0 03 0* ** tr av el t im e to r eg io n al c en te r 36 -7 5 m in -0 .0 03 0* ** re la ti ve ly c en tr al -0 .0 02 8* ** le ss a n d le as t c en tr al re f. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 389 ta b . a 3: c o n tin ua tio n m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 r eg io n of n or w ay o sl o a n d a ke rs h u s (c ap it al r eg io n) re f. h ed m ar k an d o p p la n d -0 .0 00 3 s o u th e as te rn n o rw ay -0 .0 01 4* ** a g d er a n d r o g al an d 0 .0 02 1* ** w es te rn n o rw ay 0 .0 02 4* ** tr ø n d el ag -0 .0 00 6* * n o rt h er n n o rw ay -0 .0 00 1 in d iv id u al a n d co u p le c ov ar ia te s n o y es y es y es y es fi xe d ef fe ct s fo r st at is ti ca l t ra ct s n o n o n o n o y es fva lu e 51 53 .0 15 43 .2 11 58 .9 92 7. 1 10 78 .3 c o u p le -q u ar te r o b se rv at io n s 5, 41 3, 4 43 n o te : ta b le s ho w s b et a co ef fi c ie nt s an d s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls : * p < 0. 05 ; ** p < 0. 01 ; ** * p < 0. 00 1. c o va ri at es in cl ud ed in m o d el s 2 to 5 ar e: b o th p ar tn er s’ a ge a t s ta rt , g lo b al r eg io n o f b ir th , u ni o n st at us , s te p ch ild re n, b o th p ar tn er s’ e d uc at io na l a tt ai nm en t a nd e nr o lm en t, th e w o m an ’s e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s an d h o us eh o ld in co m e. † pr o ce ss ti m e sq ua re d (n o t s ho w n) w as in cl ud ed a nd n eg at iv e b ut c lo se to z er o in a ll m o d el s. s o ur ce : d at a fr o m n o rw eg ia n re gi st er s o n a q ua rt er ly /y ea rl y b as is 2 00 020 14 . • janna bergsvik390 tab. a4: comparing different neighborhood scales: linear probability models for having a third child, 2000-2014 k=12† k=25 k=50 k=100 k= 250 k=500 model 4 with covariates neighbors with 3+ children 0-10 % -0.0006*** -0.0008*** -0.0010*** -0.0011*** -0.0012*** -0.0007*** 10-15 % 0.0005 -0.0004** -0.0006*** -0.0008*** -0.0010*** -0.0013*** 15-20 % ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. 20-25 % 0.0013 0.0006** 0.0007*** 0.0012*** 0.0016*** 0.0022*** 25 + % 0.0015*** 0.0022*** 0.0033*** 0.0043*** 0.0060*** 0.0069*** f-value 921.5 923.0 924.1 925.4 927.1 928.5 model 5 with tract fi xed effects neighbors with 3+ children 0-10% -0.0004*** -0.0007*** -0.0010*** -0.0013*** -0.0015*** -0.0013*** 10-15% 0.0004 -0.0003 -0.0004** -0.0005*** -0.0006*** -0.0010*** 15-20% ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. 20-25% 0.0010 0.0004* 0.0003 0.0005** 0.0004* 0.0012*** 25+% 0.0008*** 0.0010*** 0.0012*** 0.0016*** 0.0023*** 0.0038*** f-value 1073.5 1074.6 1075.3 1076.2 1078.3 1077.5 couple-quarter observations 5,413,443 note: table shows beta coeffi cients and signifi cance levels: * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. covariates included but not shown are: process time, both partners’ age at start, global region of birth, union status, stepchildren, both partners’ educational attainment and enrolment, the woman’s employment status, household income, housing, residential time, neighbors’ education, centrality and region (last two only in model 4). source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 391 ta b . a 5: d is cr et e tim e ev en thi st o ry m o d el s o n ha vi ng a t hi rd b ir th , 2 00 020 14 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 n ei g h b or s w it h at le as t 3 ch ild re n 0 -1 0% o f 2 50 n ea re st -0 .1 25 ** * -0 .1 39 ** * -0 .1 54 ** * -0 .1 10 ** * -0 .1 41 ** * 10 -1 5% o f 2 50 n ea re st -0 .1 55 ** * -0 .1 40 ** * -0 .1 43 ** * -0 .0 94 ** * -0 .0 63 ** * 15 -2 0% o f 2 50 n ea re st re f. re f. re f. re f. re f. 20 -2 5% o f 2 50 n ea re st 0. 22 5* ** 0. 20 2* ** 0. 20 4* ** 0. 10 9* ** 0. 02 7* 25 + % o f 2 50 n ea re st 0. 50 8* ** 0. 45 4* ** 0. 45 9* ** 0. 31 0* ** 0. 09 8* ** p ro ce ss t im e (q u ar te rs o f y ea rs ) 0. 15 8* ** 0. 16 6* ** 0. 17 0* ** 0. 17 1* ** 0. 17 4* ** p ro ce ss t im e sq u ar ed -0 .0 07 ** * -0 .0 07 ** * -0 .0 07 ** * -0 .0 07 ** * -0 .0 07 ** * d w el lin g ty p e & n u m b er o f r oo m s si n g le -f am ily h o u se , 5 r o o m s o r m o re re f. re f. re f. si n g le -f am ily h o u se , 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .0 85 ** * -0 .0 84 ** * -0 .0 77 ** * te rr ac ed /r o w h o u se , 5 r o o m s o r m o re -0 .1 39 ** * -0 .1 51 ** * -0 .1 28 ** * te rr ac ed /r o w h o u se , 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .1 63 ** * -0 .1 79 ** * -0 .1 66 ** * ap ar tm en t, 5 r o o m s o r m o re -0 .0 17 0. 01 5 -0 .0 78 ap ar tm en t, 4 r o o m s o r le ss -0 .0 40 * 0. 05 3* * -0 .1 25 ** * m is si n g h o u si n g in fo rm at io n 0. 03 4* * 0. 02 3* 0. 00 0 r es id en ti al t im e in c u rr en t n ei g h b or h oo d m o ve d d u ri n g th e la st y ea r re f. re f. re f. la st r el o ca ti o n u p t o 5 y ea rs a g o -0 .0 58 ** * -0 .0 59 ** * -0 .0 60 ** * la st r el o ca ti o n u p t o 1 0 ye ar s ag o -0 .2 71 ** * -0 .2 73 ** * -0 .2 79 ** * la st r el o ca ti o n > 1 0 ye ar s ag o -0 .5 21 ** * -0 .5 30 ** * -0 .5 4 4* ** n ei g h b or in g w om en w it h a u n iv er si ty e d u ca ti on % o u t o f 2 50 n ea re st n ei g h b o rs 0. 00 2* ** -0 .0 01 ** * -0 .0 11 ** * c en tr al it y of r es id en ti al m u n ic ip al it y m u n ic ip al it y w it h re g io n al c en te r 0. 03 2* tr av el t im e to r eg io n al c en te r < 3 6 m in -0 .0 19 tr av el t im e to r eg io n al c en te r 36 -7 5 m in -0 .0 10 re la ti ve ly c en tr al re f.le ss c en tr al 0. 17 7* ** • janna bergsvik392 ta b . a 5: c o n tin ua tio n m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 r eg io n of n or w ay o sl o a n d a ke rs h u s (c ap it al r eg io n) 0. 01 5 h ed m ar k an d o p p la n d re f. s o u th e as te rn n o rw ay -0 .0 99 ** * a g d er a n d r o g al an d 0. 17 0* ** w es te rn n o rw ay 0. 18 3* ** tr ø n d el ag -0 .0 04 n o rt h er n n o rw ay 0. 03 2 in te rc ep t -4 .7 93 -1 .7 15 -1 .8 89 -1 .9 11 in d iv id u al a n d co u p le c ov ar ia te s n o y es y es y es y es fi xe d ef fe ct s fo r st at is ti ca l t ra ct s n o n o n o n o y es c ou p le -q u ar te r o b se rv at io n s 5, 41 4, 4 43 n o te : ta b le s ho w s b et a co ef fi c ie nt s fr o m a lo gi st ic r eg re ss io n an d s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls : * p < 0. 05 ; ** p < 0. 01 ; ** * p < 0. 00 1. c o va ri at es in cl ud ed b ut n o t s ho w n in m o d el 2 to 5 a re : b o th p ar tn er s’ a ge a t s ta rt , g lo b al r eg io n o f b ir th , u ni o n st at us , s te p ch ild re n, b ot h p ar tn er s’ ed uc at io na l a tt ai nm en t a nd e nr o lm en t, th e w o m an ’s e m p lo ym en t s ta tu s, h o us eh o ld in co m e. s o ur ce : d at a fr o m n o rw eg ia n re gi st er s o n a q ua rt er ly /y ea rl y b as is 2 00 020 14 . linking neighbors’ fertility: third births in norwegian neighborhoods • 393 fig. a1: results from discrete-time hazard regression models for being in the 1st trimester of pregnancy with the subsequent, live-born 3rd child. neighborhood scale comparison using average marginal effects with 95 percent cis at all observation points, 2000-2014 note: neighborhoods with 15-20 percent neighboring women with 3 or more children serve as reference. covariates included are: both partners’ age at start, global region of birth, union status, stepchildren, both partners’ educational attainment and enrolment, the woman’s employment status, household income, housing, residential time, neighbors’ education, centrality and region. comparable to results from linear probability model 4. source: data from norwegian registers on a quarterly/yearly basis 2000-2014. 500 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 250 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 100 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 50 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 25 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 quarters of years since 2nd birth 12 nearest neighbors -.0 05 0 .0 05 .0 1 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 0-10% 10-15% 20-25% 25+% share of neighboring women with 3+ children published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) der registergestützte zensus in deutschland: historische einordnung und bedeutung für die bevölkerungswissenschaft der registergestützte zensus in deutschland: historische einordnung und bedeutung für die bevölkerungswissenschaft rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld zusammenfassung: im jahr 2011 führte deutschland nach mehr als zwanzigjähriger pause wieder einen zensus durch. die vorgaben der vereinten nationen, nach der länder mindestens alle zehn jahre eine volkszählung veranlassen sollten, waren längst überschritten und von seiten der bevölkerungswissenschaft wurde schon länger eine neue zählung gefordert, um die berechnung demografi scher indikatoren wieder auf eine solide basis stellen zu können. mit dem zensus 2011 kam deutschland der forderung einer aktuellen zählung nach und beschritt zugleich mit einem registergestützten zensus einen neuen weg. im gegensatz zu den skandinavischen ländern, die auf eine lange tradition der registerdatenanalysen und der verknüpfung von registerdaten zurückblicken können, stellte in deutschland, wo die zusamme nführung von registern durch die gegebenen rechtlichen rahmenbedingungen stark eingeschränkt ist, ein registergestützter zensus ein ambitioniertes projekt dar. dieser beitrag diskutiert nach einer historischen einordnung die bedeutung des zensus 2011 für die generierung zentraler demografi scher daten. insbesondere werden die fortgeschriebenen ergebnisse des alten zensus 1987 mit den ergebnissen des zensus 2011 verglichen, um mögliche systematische fehlerquellen zu eruieren, welche die demografi schen indikatoren und analysen verzerren. schlagwörter: demografi sche kennziffern · registerdaten · zensus 1 einleitung die bedeutung des zensus für die demografi sche forschung ist unumstritten. der zensus liefert schätzungen zum bevölkerungsbestand nach alter, geschlecht und region. diese informationen fl ießen in die berechnungen von demografi schen maßzahlen, wie den mortalitäts-, migrations-, nuptialitätsund fertilitätsziffern, ein. zudem beeinfl ussen die zensusdaten unmittelbar die ergebnisse von amtlichen und nicht-amtlichen befragungsdaten. der zensus gibt den auswahlrahmen für die stichprobenziehung des mikrozensus vor, welcher wiederum den hochrechnungsfederal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-08de urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-08de2 comparative population studies selected articles in german vol. 41 (2016): 3-34 (erstveröffentlichung: 22.08.2017) • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld4 rahmen für sozialwissenschaftliche befragungsdaten darstellt. die bedeutung des zensus geht jedoch weit über diese enge demografi sche und sozialwissenschaftliche relevanz hinaus. zum einen liefert der zensus die räumlich gegliederte einwohnerzahl, die für die planung kommunaler infrastruktur essenziell ist. zum anderen werden auf grundlage der zensusergebnisse der länderfi nanzausgleich und der kommunale finanzausgleich festgesetzt, nach dem die umverteilung der öffentlichen mittel zwischen den einzelnen bundesländern und den kommunen erfolgt. zensusergebnisse sind ebenfalls für die bestimmung der wahlkreise für die bundesund landtagswahlen, für die sitzverteilung in gemeinde-, kreisund landräten und in gewissem maße auch für die sitzverteilung im bundesrat relevant. der deutsche zensus ist damit, ähnlich wie die zensen anderer länder, weniger eine datenerhebung für die zwecke demografi scher und sozialwissenschaftlicher analysen, sondern vor allem ein politikum oder wie es prewitt (2003: 1) formuliert: „... census is a drama at the very center of our political life.“ die politische dimension des zensus dürfte sich in kaum einem anderen land stärker manifestiert haben als in deutschland. gezeichnet von den auseinandersetzungen um den volkszählungsboykott 1983 und die verschiebung der zählung in das jahr 1987 setzte sich deutschland mehr als eine dekade später dafür ein, dass die leitlinien der europäischen gemeinschaft zur durchführung eines zensus im jahr 2001 unverbindlich blieben (grohmann 2011). deutschland war das einzige eu-land, welches diese unverbindlichkeit nutzte und zur jahrtausendwende keinen zensus durchführte. im jahr 2008 ratifi zierte die eu eine neue verbindliche durchführungsverordnung zum zensus 2010/11, der sich diesmal auch deutschland anschloss. deutschland entschied sich, im unterschied zu den bisherigen „traditionellen“ zensen, für einen registergestützten zensus. dieser schritt war angesichts der erfahrung mit der volkszählung 1987 verständlich, dennoch beachtlich, da in deutschland, anders als in den skandinavischen ländern, wo standardmäßig registerdaten für zensuszwecke genutzt werden, kein zentrales bevölkerungsregister besteht und dessen etablierung bis heute nicht ernsthaft zur diskussion steht. auch eine einheitliche identifi kationsnummer für personen wie z.b. eine sozialversicherungsnummer, die in den skandinavischen ländern genutzt wird, um die verschiedenen register zu verbinden, existiert in deutschland bis heute nicht.1 dazu kam eine rechtliche situation, festgelegt in § 21 des bundesstatistikgesetzes, welches strenge aufl agen bei der verknüpfung der register der bundesstatistik vorsah (siehe bstatg (1987) und zensg (2011)). ziel dieses beitrags ist es, den registergestützten zensus 2011 aus sicht der demografi schen forschung zu diskutieren. nach einer historischen einordnung des zensus 2011 (abschnitt 1) versuchen wir in abschnitt 2 die genauigkeit der populationszahlen des zensus 2011 zu eruieren. abschnitt 3 befasst sich mit den sys1 2007 wurde eine einheitliche steueridentifi kationsnummer eingeführt, die bislang jedoch keine bedeutung für die systematische zusammenführung der registerdaten hat. allerdings wurden im zuge der einführung der steueridentifi kationsnummer korrekturen und vervollständigungen von adressen in den einwohnermelderegistern durchgeführt. der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 5 tematischen fehlerquellen der fortschreibung und der bedeutung des zensus für demografi sche kennziffern. im abschließenden abschnitt 4 setzen wir uns kritisch mit der frage auseinander, welchen gewinn der zensus 2011 für die bevölkerungsforschung gehabt hat und welche potenziale möglicherweise ungenutzt blieben. 2 volkszählung in deutschland: eine historische einordnung 2.1 die entwicklung des modernen zensus in deutschland bis 1939 zensusdaten sind neben kirchenbüchern seit jeher die zentrale basis für demografi sche analysen. dieser umstand kann nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass nicht das genuine interesse an demografi schen oder sozialen prozessen hinter der entwicklung des modernen zensus stand. die geschichte der statistischen erfassung von bevölkerung wie auch die erhebung ausgewählter strukturmerkmale der bevölkerung sind unmittelbar mit der entwicklung der öffentlichen verwaltung verbunden und können dementsprechend kaum von den interessen der politischen akteure getrennt werden. zunächst galt das augenmerk der erhebung der größe der bevölkerung, der anzahl der steuerzahler und der wehrfähigen bevölkerung. erst später wurden auch die haushaltsstruktur sowie merkmale der haushaltsmitglieder wie beruf, bildung, familienstand oder staatsangehörigkeit in den zensusdaten erfasst (gehrmann 2009; grohmann 2000, 2011; rothenbacher 1997). volkszählungen im gebiet des heutigen deutschlands gibt es seit dem mittelalter. allerdings wurden die ersten zählungen zumeist nur durch einzelne städte durchgeführt. systematische zählungen für ganze regionen fanden, mit unterschiedlicher zielsetzung und regelmäßigkeit, seit dem beginn des 19. jahrhunderts statt. im zentrum des interesses standen die feststellung der bevölkerung am wohnsitz (de jure) und später dann die tatsächlich ortsanwesende population (de facto) zu einem zeitpunkt (gehrmann 2009). demografi sche ereignisse wie geburt, heirat und tod wurden lange zeit vornehmlich durch die kirchen erfasst. im zuge der reformation wurden zudem von den kirchen so genannte protestantische „seelenregister“ oder „martinilisten“ und katholische „status animarum“ geführt, aus denen sich teilweise die zusammensetzung der haushalte bzw. die familien rekonstruieren lassen. diese zählungen wurden von geistlichen in vielen regionen vorgenommen und sind, wenn auch sehr bruchstückhaft, bis heute erhalten (siehe bspw. baten/szołtysek 2014). anfänglich waren es in erster linie städte, die in unregelmäßigen abständen zählungen durchführten. mit dem wiener kongress und der gründung des deutschen zollvereins wurden jedoch systematische, einheitliche und regelmäßige zählungen zur erhebung der bevölkerung vorgenommen (grohmann 2000; zahn • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld6 1900).2 der hintergrund für diese entwicklung war vor allem, dass der beitritt der einzelnen staaten zum deutschen zollverein eine kostenbeteiligung der mitglieder an den militärausgaben vorsah, welche entsprechend dem bevölkerungsanteil proportional zu den jeweiligen staaten berechnet wurde. damit ergab sich für die mitgliedsstaaten des zollvereins die notwendigkeit regelmäßig zählungen durchzuführen, um den bevölkerungsbestand feststellen zu können. darüber hinaus dienten die erhebungen dazu steuerlisten zu erstellen, um die kopf-, grundbesitz-, gewerbe-, einkommen-, feuerstellen-, haushalt-, armen-, kriegsund nicht zuletzt die kirchensteuer zu erheben. eine beteiligung aller einwohner an den gemeinkosten, wie der waisenund armenfürsorge, wurde über bürgerlisten bzw. einwohnerlisten realisiert. die etablierung des vereins für deutsche statistik 1846 und des statistischen zentralbureaus in frankfurt nach 1848 gaben wichtige weitere impulse für die entwicklung der unabhängigen statistik mit einheitlichen standards. mit dem zensus 1864 wurde bspw. der haushalt als erhebungseinheit eingeführt (gehrmann 2009). die letzte volkszählung des deutschen zollvereins von 1867 gilt zudem als vorbild für alle nachfolgenden volkszählungen in deutschland und anderen europäischen staaten. es war eine volkszählung mit haushaltslisten, die die ortsanwesende defacto-bevölkerung und die zum stichtag nicht anwesenden einwohner umfasste.3 die trennung der aufgaben von kirche und staat und die gründung des deutschen kaiserreichs 1871 haben den amtlichen volkszählungen in deutschland einheitliche qualitätsstandards und eine einheitliche systematik gegeben (michel 1985). mit diesem prozess ging auch einher, dass nicht mehr die kirchen, sondern nunmehr auch staatliche institutionen demografi sche ereignisse wie geburt, tod und eheschließung dokumentierten und diese informationen an die statistischen ämter weitergaben. die amtliche statistik wurde als unabhängiger teil der verwaltung entwickelt und musste für die erfüllung vielfältiger verwaltungsaufgaben die datengrundlagen zur verfügung stellen. ab 1871 wurde in regelmäßigen abständen von vier bzw. fünf jahren in allen regionen deutschlands eine zählung durchgeführt, deren abstände ab 1900 auf zehn jahre ausgeweitet werden sollten (für einen überblick über die zensen in deutschland siehe tabelle a1 im anhang). 2 mit dem bundesmatrikel 1818 wurden die impulse für eine einheitliche bemessung der kosten des landsturms gesetzt. 1834 wurde von preußen, bayern, hessen-darmstadt, hessen-kassel und württemberg der deutsche zollverein gegründet und zählungen wurden alle drei jahre durchgeführt (gehrmann 2009). sie erstreckten sich zunächst über vier wochen, ab 1843 über drei tage und ab 1858 auf einen bestand am stichtag. es handelte sich um die zollabrechnungsbevölkerung, welche oft mit der erhebung der polizeilichen melderegister oder steuerlisten verbunden wurde. die zählungen wurden zudem teilweise gekoppelt mit gebäudezählungen, viehzählungen und der erhebung der personen im wehrdienstalter. 3 die ältesten bis in die heutige zeit vollständig erhaltenen volkszählungsunterlagen in deutschland sind jene des herzogtums mecklenburg-schwerin (großherzogliches statistisches amt 1898; manke 2005; scholz 2013). für das herzogtum mecklenburg-schwerin existieren urbelege der handschriftlich ausgefüllten erhebungsbögen, die haushaltslisten nach den gemeinden mit angaben zu namen, alter, geschlecht, familienstand, konfession und tätigkeit/beruf des haushaltsvorstandes und weiteren merkmalen für die zählungen der jahre 1819, 1867, 1890 (teilweise) und 1900 enthalten. der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 7 durch den ersten weltkrieg wurden die zählungsmodi unterbrochen, und es wurden in den kriegsjahren nur notzählungen durchgeführt, die vor allem zur verwaltung der notversorgung der bevölkerung mit nahrungsmitteln dienten. ein unrühmliches kapitel nimmt in den folgenden jahren die für 1938 geplante und 1939 durchgeführte volkszählung ein (siehe dazu ausführlich wietog 2001). zwar gehen historiker mittlerweile davon aus, dass die volkszählung 1939 nicht für die identifi kation und deportation von juden verwendet wurde, was allerdings in erster linie darauf zurückgeführt wird, dass die daten der zählung relativ spät aufbereitet worden waren und andere quellen zur identifi kation von jüdischer abstammung und glauben zur verfügung standen. allerdings weist ehmer (2013: 74) darauf hin, dass von seiten des statistischen reichsamtes durchaus publikationen existieren, in denen auf basis der volkszählung 1939 die anzahl der in deutschland verbliebenen juden generiert und auf die „effektivität antisemitischer verfolgung“ verwiesen wird. 2.2 volkszählung im getrennten deutschland nach dem zweiten weltkrieg führten die vier besatzungsmächte bereits im jahr 1946 eine zählung durch (siehe tabelle a1 im anhang). bis 2011 sollte es jedoch die letzte einheitlich durchgeführte volkszählung in deutschland bleiben. ab 1949 wurden in der amtlichen statistik in den beiden teilen deutschlands getrennte wege beschritten. während in westdeutschland ein föderales system der verwaltung und statistik auf länderebene eingeführt wurde, setzte die ddr das zentrale statistiksystem fort (fischer 1994; oettel 2006; statistisches bundesamt 1999). in der ddr erfolgte die erhebung von volkszählungsdaten dezentral, die aufbereitung zentral in der zentralverwaltung für statistik (später „statistisches amt der ddr“). die regionalen daten der bezirke, kreise und gemeinden wurden nach zentraler zusammenführung und auswertung der verwaltung wieder zur verfügung gestellt. seit mitte der 1970er jahre wurde in der ddr nach dem vorbild der skandinavischen länder ein zentraler einwohnerdatenspeicher etabliert. dieses bevölkerungsregister umfasste alle einwohner und war mit den bewegungsmengen geburt, tod und wanderung verbunden. die letzte traditionell durchgeführte volkszählung der ddr des jahres 1981 zeigte eine nur geringfügige abweichung des fortgeschriebenen registers von der stichtagsbevölkerung der volkszählung (20.000 personen bei 16,7 mio. einwohnern). die letzte registerzählung des zentralen einwohnerdatenspeichers wurde am 3. oktober 1990 durchgeführt. die einwohnerzahlen des registerabzugs wurden als anfangsbestand der bevölkerungszahlen der „neuen länder“ in die nun gemeinsame bundesdeutsche bevölkerungsstatistik eingepfl egt.4 im gegensatz zur ddr wurden (und werden) in der bundesrepublik die erhebungen und die aufbereitung der amtlichen daten dezentral auf ebene der län4 die daten des einwohnerdatenspeichers (bevölkerungsregister) der ddr und die fortschreibungsdaten der bundesrepublik konnten weitgehend problemlos zusammengeführt werden, da die beiden datensätze relativ gut vergleichbar waren. beispielsweise waren die einschlusskriterien von ortanwesender bevölkerung und die einbeziehung von ausländischen militärangehörigen in den beiden teilen deutschlands gleich. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld8 der durchgeführt. die zusammenfassung der ergebnisse auf bundesebene erfolgt durch das statistische bundesamt. allerdings existiert kein zentrales einwohnermelderegister.5 die populationszahlen für die bundesrepublik werden allein auf basis der volkszählungen, die in der vergangenheit als klassische haushaltbefragungen konzipiert waren, erhoben und mit hilfe von bevölkerungsfortschreibungen aktualisiert. eine zäsur stellt zweifelsfrei die volkszählung 1987 dar, die nicht nur auf grund des so genannten „volkszählungsurteils“ verfassungsrechtliche konsequenzen hatte (grohmann 2000). der volkszählungsboykott wie auch die nach 1983 folgende klagewelle gelten als wesentliche gründe, warum sich die bundesrepublik deutschland nicht an dem eu-weit geplanten zensus 2001 beteiligte (eppmann 2004). gleichwohl wurde unmittelbar nach der volkszählung 1987 damit begonnen, konkrete möglichkeiten eines registergestützten zensus zu erörtern (bierau 2001; eppmann 2004; eppmann/schäfer 2006). 2.3 zensus 2011 im jahr 2011 führte deutschland schließlich nach mehr als zwanzigjähriger pause einen zensus durch. im unterschied zu den vorangegangenen zensen wurde dieses mal der weg eines registergestützten zensus beschritten. für die bestimmung der populationszahlen wurden vor allem die daten aus den dezentral geführten kommunalen einwohnermelderegistern verwendet. ein problem stellten insbesondere die übererfassungen (karteileichen) und untererfassungen (fehlbestände) in den einwohnermelderegistern dar, wobei die ursachen der fehler vielfältiger natur sind. neben problemen der erfassung von personen mit mehreren wohnsitzen sind fortzüge von personen ins ausland eine der zentralen fehlerquellen in den registern. im gegensatz zu binnenwanderungen, bei denen die einwohnermeldeämter seit etwa dem jahr 2000 zuund fortzüge automatisch untereinander abgleichen und es gesetzlich vorgeschriebene pfl ichten gibt, beim umzug eine ummeldung bei den ämtern vorzunehmen, unterliegen fortzüge ins ausland keiner „amtlichen kontrolle“ (bucher 2014: 150).6 auch das verhalten und die praxis in den einzelnen einwohnermeldeämtern bedingt die qualität der register. in den einwohnermelderegistern des bundeslandes rheinland-pfalz bestehen bspw. relativ geringe unterschiede zwischen fortschreibung und neuen zensusdaten, da dieses bundesland bereits in den 1970ern ein „landesinternes rückmeldeverfahren bei den binnenwanderungen“ einführte (bucher 2014: 150). zudem führt und pfl egt rheinland-pfalz ein landeseinwohnerregister.7 5 zwar wurde die etablierung eines zentralen einwohnermelderegisters durch wolfgang schäuble (cdu) im jahr 2008 in die diskussion gebracht (der spiegel 2008), seitdem aber nicht wieder ernsthaft aufgegriffen. 6 im jahr 2000 wurde das verfahren sukzessive umgestellt. seit etwa 2004 wurde das verfahren der automatischen abgleichung von abund anmeldungen fl ächendeckend angewandt. 7 weitere länder mit zentralen einwohnerregistern sind die stadtstaaten berlin, hamburg und bremen wie auch das bundesland thüringen. der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 9 in einem komplexen mehrstufi gen korrekturverfahren wurde für den zensus 2011 versucht, fehler in den daten, die von den meldeämtern an die statistik übermittelt wurden, zu bereinigen (berg 2011; diehl 2012; michel 2004).8 zur überprüfung der qualität der einwohnermelderegister wurde zudem eine haushaltsstichprobe gezogen, die u.a. dazu diente, die informationen aus den melderegistern durch eine mündliche befragung abzugleichen. allerdings wurde die haushaltsstichprobe nur für gemeinden mit über 10.000 einwohnern genutzt, um die qualität der registerdaten zu eruieren. begründet wurde die entscheidung damit, dass der zensustest gezeigt hatte, dass „es in großen gemeinden mehr ungenauigkeiten in den melderegistern gab als in kleinen gemeinden“ (statistisches bundesamt 2015: 27). in kleinen gemeinden wurde nur bei unstimmigkeiten zwischen den angaben aus den melderegistern und den angaben aus der gebäudeund wohnungszählung korrekturen vorgenommen, sodass tendenziell weniger fehler korrigiert wurden. zudem bedingt das verfahren generell, dass eine übererfassung eher aufgedeckt werden konnte als eine untererfassung, da bei der untererfassung personen nicht erfasst sein können, für welche keine angaben zum abgleich vorliegen und die daher nicht systematisch gesucht wurden. auf grund des fortschreibungsfehlers in den bevölkerungszahlen wurde vermutet, dass insbesondere die mortalitätsziffern im höheren alter, die sterberaten der ausländischen population und die fertilitätsziffern der ausländischen bevölkerung, die auf basis der fortschreibung generiert wurden, verzerrt waren (kibele et al. 2008). entsprechend gespannt wurden die neuen populationszahlen des registergestützten zensus 2011 erwartet. diese erwartung wurde auf grund des langen zeitraums, der zwischen erhebung und veröffentlichung der daten verstrichen ist, jedoch getrübt. der stichtag des zensus war der 9. mai 2011. die ersten zum teil vorläufi gen und hoch aggregierten ergebnisse standen im mai 2013 zur verfügung. die ersten daten nach alter und geschlecht wurden jedoch erst im januar 2014 publiziert. im april 2015 wurden schließlich die endgültigen ausgangsdaten der bevölkerungsfortschreibung des zensus 2011 veröffentlicht. zwischen erhebung und publikation der endgültigen ergebnisse lagen damit vier jahre. obwohl klar war, dass die verwendeten daten eine nettoabweichung der bevölkerungszahlen von etwa 1,5 millionen zum stichtag beinhalteten, musste entsprechend noch bis zu vier jahre nach dem zensus mit den daten der fortschreibung auf basis der volkszählung 1987 gerechnet werden, da den neuen daten „ein inhaltlicher oder juristischer vorbehalt“ (bucher 2014: 149) anhing. auch das statistische bundesamt musste für die 13. koordinierte bevölkerungsvorausberechnung und für die sterbetafeln 2010/12 auf die endgültigen zensusdaten warten, die nach alter, geschlecht und staatsbürgerschaft sehr spät zur verfügung standen. in internationalen demografi schen datensätzen, wie der human fertility database (hfd) und der human morta8 auf grund des so genannten „rückspielverbots“ wurden die vom statistischen amt durchgeführten korrekturen jedoch nicht an die einwohnermelderegister zurückgegeben, sodass die bevölkerungszahlen des zensus von jenen in den einwohnermelderegistern zum zensus-stichtag abweichen können (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld10 lity database (hmd), wurden ebenfalls bis vor kurzem noch die „alten“ fortschreibungsergebnisse verwendet.9 3 wie genau sind die populationszahlen des zensus 2011? nach der aktuellen zählung belief sich die amtlich festgestellte bevölkerungszahl der bundesrepublik deutschland am stichtag des 9. mai 2011 auf 80.219.695 personen (statistisches bundesamt 2014c). die genauigkeit der angabe der bevölkerungszahl kann jedoch kaum darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass die bevölkerungszahl in deutschland – ebenso wie dies für die meisten anderen länder auch der fall ist (hillygus et al. 2000: 17) – das produkt einer komplexen schätzung darstellt.10 während es aus sicht der forschung naheliegen würde sensitivitätsanalysen durchzuführen, um die robustheit der schätzung zu eruieren, verlangt die politische dimension des zensus eine eindeutige, amtlich festgestellte und möglichst unanfechtbare bevölkerungszahl. trotz (oder vermutlich gerade aufgrund) des komplexen logistisch anspruchsvollen verfahrens und der vordergründigen genauigkeit der angaben werden die zensusergebnisse besonders von jenen gemeinden in frage gestellt, die sich durch den zensus benachteiligt sehen. angriffsfl äche lieferte der aktuelle zensus vor allem durch die systematisch unterschiedliche behandlung von kleinen und großen gemeinden (christensen et al. 2015; rendtel 2015; statistisches bundesamt 2015). für die demografi sche forschung stellt sich die frage, inwiefern der zensus 2011 die populationszahlen präzise abbildet. obwohl die verfahren der datengenerierung in diversen publikationen des statistischen bundesamtes beschrieben wurden (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2004; statistisches bundesamt 2015) und in verschiedenen kommissionen, wie der zensuskommission und ihren unterarbeitsgruppen, mit vertretern der wissenschaft im vorfeld diskutiert wurden, sind die möglichkeiten der wissenschaft, die qualität der zensusdaten zu überprüfen, äußerst begrenzt. aufgrund der komplexität des verfahrens und aufgrund der tatsache, dass die wissenschaft letztendlich nur die endgültigen zahlen analysieren und das verfahren, das diese zahlen generiert, nur über sekundäre quellen rekonstruieren kann, kommt die validierung des zensus einer „detektivarbeit“ (rendtel 2015) gleich. 9 in der hfd (http://www.humanfertility.org/) und hmd (http://www.mortality.org/) werden demografi sche daten von verschiedenen ländern der erde vergleichbar aufbereitet und der wissenschaftlichen gemeinschaft und der interessierten öffentlichkeit zum „download“ zur verfügung gestellt. da ein hoher anspruch an die vergleichbarkeit der daten nicht nur zwischen den einzelnen ländern, sondern auch über die zeit gelegt wird, wird angestrebt, die durch die fortschreibungsfehler in deutschland entstandenen verzerrungen über eine rückrechnung auszugleichen. auf grund der relativ späten bereitstellung der neuen zensusergebnisse konnte erst kürzlich mit der rückrechnung begonnen werden. 10 eine zensuszahl ist eine schätzung der bevölkerung, die von der zeitlichen erfassung der bewegungsmengen, also der meldung von geburt, zuzug, wegzug und tod, abhängt. die bewegungsmengen, welche die bevölkerungszahl im register zum stichtag beeinfl ussen, benötigen teilweise einen zeitraum von bis zu einem halben jahr, bis sie vollständig gemeldet und bearbeitet sind (hannemann/scholz 2009). der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 11 im folgenden unternehmen wir den versuch, die bevölkerungszahlen des zensus 2011 zu „eruieren“. eine komplette validierung der daten ist nur bedingt möglich, da verlässliche externe daten fehlen (siehe jedoch abschnitt 4.2: externe validierung von zensus 2011 und fortschreibung am beispiel der hochaltrigen). auch können sensitivitätsanalysen nicht durchgeführt werden, da hierzu ein zugang zu den daten der einwohnermeldeämter und der haushaltsbefragung nötig wäre, auf deren basis die bevölkerungszahlen generiert wurden. zwar hat das statistische bundesamt die haushaltsbefragung mittlerweile für wissenschaftliche analysen zugängig gemacht und plant ebenfalls die zensusdaten als individualdatensatz verfügbar zu machen. da alle hilfsmerkmale aus datenschutzgründen zum frühestmöglichen zeitpunkt gelöscht wurden, ist es jedoch unmöglich, selbst wenn die individualdaten des zensus einmal der wissenschaft vorliegen werden, die berechnung der einwohnerzahlen nachzuvollziehen. uns liegt zur bewertung des zensusergebnisses 2011 lediglich das fortschreibungsergebnis auf der grundlage des vorangegangenen zensus 1987 vor. aus mangel an besseren alternativen schließen wir uns im folgenden dem vorgehen von bucher (2014), rendtel (2015), christensen et al. (2015) und kaus/mundil-schwarz (2015) an, die die bevölkerungszahlen des zensus 2011 mit denen der fortschreibungsergebnisse des zensus 1987 verglichen haben. zwar haben wir kein valides externes maß, um die qualität des einen oder anderen datensatzes abzuschätzen. jedoch können wir aus der systematik der abweichungen gewisse rückschlüsse darüber ziehen, welche faktoren es sind, die die zensusergebnisse verzerren. als datenbasis dienen die vom statistischen bundesamt veröffentlichten zahlen des zensus 2011 zum 9. mai 2011 und die daten des fortschreibungsbestandes des zensus 1987 zum jeweiligen jahresende (statistisches bundesamt 2013b, 2014a/b). im rahmen des zensus 2011 wurde eine befragung durchgeführt, die 10 % der haushalte in deutschland umfasste, um zusätzliche informationen, die in den registern nicht verfügbar waren, zu erhalten. zudem diente die stichprobe dazu fehler in den melderegistern zu identifi zieren. bisherige evaluationen haben im wesentlichen gezeigt, dass für die kleineren gemeinden, für die korrekturen im geringeren umfang vorgenommen wurden, das zensusergebnis weniger von der fortschreibung abweicht und große gemeinden im durchschnitt stärkere abweichungen zu verzeichnen haben (bucher 2014; christensen et al. 2015). in abbildung 1 haben wir dieses ergebnis in form eines scatterplots repliziert. jeder der in der grafi k abgebildeten punkte entspricht einer gemeinde. insgesamt sind es etwa 11.000 gemeinden, die in der abbildung dargestellt sind. die ordinate bildet die differenz zwischen zensus 2011 und den „alten“ fortschreibungsergebnissen ab. die abszisse umfasst die bevölkerungszahl in der jeweiligen gemeinde. aus der abbildung wird ersichtlich, dass die relative variation für kleinere gemeinden deutlich höher ist als für größere gemeinden. auch wird erkennbar, dass die variation sprunghaft mit einer einwohnerzahl von 10.000 personen zurückgeht. abbildung 2 stellt das ausmaß der abweichungen zwischen zensus 2011 und fortschreibung systematisch für kleine und große gemeinden gegenüber. die abszisse gibt die relative differenz zwischen zensus und fortschreibung wieder. auf der ordinate ist die anzahl der gemeinden dargestellt. die abbildung zeigt, dass • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld12 große gemeinden deutlich weniger abweichung zu verzeichnen haben. im durchschnitt ergibt sich für große gemeinden eine relative differenz zwischen fortschreibung und zensus von 2,27 %, bei den kleinen gemeinden von 0,48 %.11 politisch brisant an diesem befund ist, dass der länderfi nanzausgleich von der bevölkerungszahl abhängig ist und kleine und größere gemeinden unterschiedlich stark in den einzelnen bundesländern vertreten sind. rheinland-pfalz hat bspw. relativ viele kleine gemeinden; nordrhein-westfalen im gegensatz dazu relativ wenige gemeinden mit unter 10.000 einwohnern (für eine darstellung der abweichungen nach bundesländern siehe abbildung a1 im anhang). dadurch, dass große und kleine gemeinden unterschiedlich auf die länder verteilt sind, könnte es sein, dass abb. 1: relative differenz (in prozent) zwischen fortschreibung 1987 und zensus 2011 nach der größe der gemeinden am 09.05.2011 quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b 11 die mittelwerte wurden berechnet, indem für die populationszahlen der jeweiligen gemeinde, laut zensus 2011, gewichtet wurde. der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 13 bundesländer mit einem größeren anteil von kleineren gemeinden eine geringere korrektur der bevölkerungszahl durch den zensus erfahren haben (siehe dazu ausführlich christensen et al. 2015; rendtel 2015). der sprunghafte rückgang der variation bei 10.000 einwohnern spricht dafür, dass die methode einen systematischen einfl uss auf die bevölkerungszahlen hatte. eine entscheidung, ob die unterschiedlichen abweichungen zwischen fortschreibung und zensus nach gemeindegröße nur an dem verfahren liegen oder auch die qualität der fortschreibung eine rolle spielt, die mitunter in kleinen gemeinden besser sein könnte, kann an dieser stelle nicht getroffen werden.12 davon unabhängig ist davon auszugehen, dass durch abb. 2: anzahl der gemeinden (ordinate) nach relativer differenz zwischen zensus 2011 und fortschreibung 1987 (abszisse), nach kleinen gemeinden (unter 10.000 einwohner) und großen gemeinden (10.000 und mehr einwohner), in % 0 500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden alle gemeinden anmerkung: die einteilung in große und kleine gemeinden erfolgte nach der einwohnerzahl der fortschreibung. quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2013b 12 die altersstruktur und der ausländeranteil sind wesentliche aspekte, die die qualität der einwohnermelderegister der gemeinden beeinfl ussen. da der ausländeranteil in den kleinen gemeinden im durchschnitt niedriger ist als in großen gemeinden, sind die register der kleinen gemeinden weniger durch nicht dokumentierte wegzüge von ausländern beeinträchtigt. zudem ist die hoch mobile altersklasse der 20bis 39-jährigen personen in den kleinen gemeinden schwächer besetzt als in großen gemeinden (siehe abb. a3 im anhang). auch dieser aspekt dürfte die qualität der register der kleinen gemeinden positiv beeinfl ussen. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld14 das angewandte verfahren die bevölkerung insgesamt in deutschland etwas überschätzt wurde, da in den kleineren gemeinden die bevölkerungszahlen nicht nach unten korrigiert wurden.13 4 qualität der bevölkerungsfortschreibung 4.1 unterschiede zwischen zensus und fortschreibung nach alter, geschlecht und staatsangehörigkeit obwohl der zensus 2011 nur ein schätzwert der populationszahlen für das jahr 2011 ist, der möglicherweise die populationszahlen der kleinen gemeinden leicht überschätzt, ist er dennoch die einzige messlatte, um die qualität der fortschreibung zu bestimmen. mortalitätsziffern im höheren alter konnten in der vergangenheit nicht mehr auf basis der bevölkerungsfortschreibung geschätzt werden, da bekannt war, dass die populationszahlen in der fortschreibung im höheren alter deutlich verzerrt waren (kibele et al. 2008). eine wesentliche ursache für die überschätzung der populationszahlen sind fortzüge in das ausland, die nicht verbucht, damit in der wanderungsstatistik nicht erfasst und in der bevölkerungsfortschreibung somit nicht berücksichtigt wurden. vor diesem hintergrund geben die abbildungen 3a und 3b die differenzen zwischen zensus und fortschreibung nach geburtsjahr und geschlecht für ausländer und deutsche wieder. auf der abszisse sind die abweichungen zwischen fortschreibung und zensus für männer dargestellt und auf der ordinate für frauen. jeder einzelne punkt in der grafi k gibt einen geburtsjahrgang wieder. je näher die werte in der nähe des nullpunkts des koordinatensystems liegen, umso besser passen fortschreibung und zensusergebnisse zusammen. positive werte bedeuten, dass der zensus 2011 die populationszahlen nach unten korrigiert hat. negative werte zeigen entsprechend eine korrektur nach oben an. werte auf der diagonalen bedeuten, dass die verzerrungen bei frauen und männern gleich sind (siehe auch abbildung a2 im anhang für eine zweidimensionale darstellung). betrachtet man zunächst die muster für deutsche (abb. 3a), ist bemerkenswert, dass bei den jüngeren jahrgängen eine korrektur nach oben vorgenommen wurde. bspw. wurde der jahrgang 2009 durch den neuen zensus leicht (um 0,5 %) nach oben korrigiert. der jahrgang 2009 war zum zeitpunkt des zensus etwa zwei jahre alt, sodass der fortschreibungsfehler eigentlich gering sein sollte. vermutlich erklärt sich die negative abweichung für die jungen geburtsjahrgänge in der nicht eindeutigen erfassung des merkmals staatsangehörigkeit für personen mit doppelter staatsangehörigkeit. abbildung 3a zeigt zudem eine stärker zu den män13 allerdings wurde auch nicht systematisch nach nicht registrierten personen gesucht, was eine unterschätzung bedingen könnte. nach unserem kenntnisstand gibt es keinerlei anhaltspunkte, um das ausmaß einer möglichen unterschätzung durch nicht registrierte personen einzuschätzen. ein weiterer grund für eine unterschätzung der populationszahlen im zensus könnten noch nicht verbuchte wanderungen und geburten sein (siehe dazu auch fußnote 10). der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 15 nern verschobene abweichung, welche sich nicht symmetrisch im koordinatensystem einordnet. für die geschlechterunterschiede gibt es unterschiedliche gründe. zum einen spricht die nicht proportionale veränderung der abweichung der zensusergebnisse für geschlechtsspezifi sche unterschiede im wanderungsverhalten. zum anderen mag es sein, dass frauen und männer eine andere „disziplin“ bei der behördlichen umund abmeldung an den tag legen. des weiteren ist auch nicht auszuschließen, dass eine unterschiedliche korrektur nach geschlecht bei der „registerertüchtigung“ erfolgt ist. abbildung 3b gibt die ergebnisse für die ausländische population wieder. zu beachten ist hier, dass für ausländer eine achse mit einem anderen wertebereich verwendet wurde als für die deutsche population (abb. 3a), da die abweichung zwischen zensus und fortschreibung für ausländer deutlich größer ist als für deutsche. bei den ausländern weichen die zensusund fortschreibungsdaten insbesondere abb. 3a: darstellung der relativen abweichung des zensus 2011 von der fortschreibung auf basis des zensus 1987 bei männern und frauen nach geburtsjahrgängen für deutsche quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld16 im hohen alter voneinander ab. eine derartig auffallende schiefl age können wir bei der deutschen population nicht feststellen. ähnlich wie bei der deutschen population ergeben sich auch bei der ausländischen population bei den männern höhere abweichungen als bei den frauen. beispielsweise ergibt sich für den geburtsjahrgang 1950 für ausländische männer eine abweichung zwischen fortschreibung und zensus 2011 von 12 %. beim geburtsjahrgang 1940 beträgt der unterschied 17 %, und beim geburtsjahrgang 1930 sind es fast 50 %. für die hochaltrigen personen, die 1921 oder früher geboren worden sind, ergeben sich abweichungen von über 600 %, die in der abbildung nicht mehr dargestellt sind. in der zusammenschau kann man feststellen, dass die neuen zensusergebnisse vor allem die populationszahlen der ausländischen bevölkerung im hohen alter korrigiert haben. zudem sind die werte für männer stärker verändert worden als jene für frauen. für die fertilitätsund mortalitätsforschung hat der neue zensus damit abb. 3b: darstellung der relativen abweichung des zensus von der fortschreibung auf basis des zensus 1987 bei männern und frauen nach geburtsjahrgängen für ausländer quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2014a/b der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 17 eine sehr unterschiedliche bedeutung. für die berechnung von fertilitätsindikatoren werden in der regel nur die bevölkerungszahlen von frauen im alter von 15 bis 49 jahren verwendet. für diese gruppe ergeben sich die geringsten abweichungen zwischen zensus und fortschreibung, sodass der einfl uss des neuen zensus auf die maße der fertilität gering sein sollte. verzerrt waren in erster linie die fertilitätsziffern nach staatsangehörigkeit, die auf basis der fortschreibung generiert wurden (siehe dazu pötzsch 2016; zur nieden/sommer 2016). in der mortalitätsforschung führen die neuen zensusergebnisse zu einer erheblichen korrektur der sterbeziffern im höheren alter. zudem dürften sich die pfl egeraten deutlich verändern (siehe dazu tabelle a2 im anhang). da das statistische bundesamt keine rückrechnungen zur korrektur der populationszahlen nach alter anvisiert, müssen sprünge in den zeitreihen der demografi schen indikatoren hingenommen werden, die nach geschlecht und vor allem nach staatsangehörigkeit unterschiedlich ausfallen. 4.2 externe validierung von zensus 2011 und fortschreibung am beispiel der hochaltrigen prinzipiell liefern nur zensus und fortschreibung informationen über die bevölkerungszahlen in deutschland. allerdings existieren indirekte verfahren, auf basis derer man aus alternativen datenquellen populationszahlen generieren und somit die qualität von zensus und fortschreibung plausibilisieren kann. eine derartige quelle sind die sterbefälle im höheren alter. da die sterbefälle nach alter sich relativ sicher aus der sterbefallstatistik herleiten lassen, kann indirekt aus dem sterbealter auf die anzahl der personen nach geburtsjahrgängen und geschlecht in den vorjahren geschlossen werden. dies ist ein indirektes verfahren, welches auf der annahme beruht, dass in sehr hohem alter die internationale wanderungsaktivität gering ist. allerdings kann diese methode nur für jene jahrgänge angewandt werden, die bereits verstorben sind, und muss damit auf das sehr hohe lebensalter begrenzt bleiben. trotz dieser einschränkungen haben sensitivitätsanalysen für verschiedene länder gezeigt, dass diese methode qualitativ bessere bevölkerungszahlen liefert als die daten von fortschreibungsergebnissen (jdanov et al. 2005). in abbildung 4 haben wir die differenz der fortschreibung von der auf basis der sterbefälle berechneten anzahl der personen im alter 90 und älter dargestellt. die werte des zensus sind mit einem kreuz eingezeichnet. wie aus der abbildung ersichtlich, sind die werte des zensus und der auf basis der sterbefälle berechneten population fast deckungsgleich, was prinzipiell für die qualität der zensusergebnisse im höheren alter spricht. im umkehrschluss bedeutet dies, dass sich hier erneut die schiefl age der „alten“ fortschreibung bestätigt. im alter 90 und älter ergeben sich im jahr 2008 abweichungen zwischen fortschreibung und den „tatsächlichen“ werten von über 30 %. abbildung 4 gibt auch die differenz zwischen fortschreibung und der auf basis der sterbefälle berechneten population für die zurückliegenden jahre wieder. zu den zeitpunkten der volkszählungen sind die abweichungen sehr gering, um dann mit zunehmendem abstand zum vorangegangenen zensus steil anzusteigen. bei den männern steigen die differenzen bspw. von 0,6 % im zensusjahr 1987 auf etwa • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld18 25 % im jahr 2011 an. allerdings zeigt sich auch eine sehr uneinheitliche entwicklung über die zeit. vor allem reduzieren sich im jahr 2008 schlagartig die unterschiede. diese erratische entwicklung erklärt sich sehr wahrscheinlich durch die bereinigungen der register. zum einen wurden in den jahren 2007 bis 2010 im zusammenhang mit der einführung der steueridentifi kationsnummer die einwohnermelderegister bereinigt (kaus/mundil-schwarz 2015). zudem wurden im rahmen der zensus-tests in den jahren 2001 bis 2004 so genannte „registerertüchtigungen“ durchgeführt, die wahrscheinlich mit der bereinigung des ausländerzentralregisters in den jahren 2001 bis 2003 in zusammenhang stehen. die registerertüchtigungen dürften vor allem registerüberhänge von personen, die nicht mehr in deutschland leben, aufgedeckt haben. diese personen wurden im zeitraum 20012004 und 2007-2010 aus den registern entfernt, indem sie als „verzug unbekannt“ (für deutsche) und „verzug in das ausland“ (für ausländer) gekennzeichnet wurden. um zu verstehen, warum die bereinigungen die fortschreibungsergebnisse beeinfl usst haben, muss man berücksichtigen, dass die wanderungsstatistik, die für die fortschreibung verwendet wird, auf den einwohnermelderegistern beruht. die abb. 4: relative differenz im alter 90 jahre und älter (in %) zwischen der fortgeschriebenen bevölkerung und der berechneten bevölkerung aus den sterbefällen bei bezug auf die fortschreibungsbevölkerung 0 10 20 30 40 50 19 87 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 jahr in prozent frauen männer x x zensus 2011 (männer) zensus 2011 (frauen) quelle: eigene berechnung nach human mortality database (http://www.mortality.org/) der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 19 korrektur hat daher die wanderungsstatistik beeinfl usst.14 problematisch ist zum einen, dass die korrektur der register zu einem bestimmten zeitpunkt nach 2001 durchgeführt wurde, obwohl der registerabgang durch nicht verbuchte wanderungen, die wahrscheinlich in den 1990er jahren erfolgt waren, entstanden war. darüber hinaus ist besonders unglücklich, dass die korrekturen nicht als solche ausgewiesen wurden, sodass für die jahre 2008/2009 nicht mehr rekonstruiert werden kann, ob in deutschland tatsächlich die nettozuwanderung negativ gewesen ist oder diese allein durch die korrektur „produziert“ wurde. da die wanderungsstatistik auch in die fortschreibung einfl ießt, wurden durch die korrektur zudem indirekt die bevölkerungszahlen der fortschreibung verändert und damit die basis zur berechnung von demografi schen kennziffern. 5 fazit ähnlich wie in anderen ländern auch erfüllt der zensus in deutschland multiple funktionen. für die öffentliche verwaltung sind der zensus und die fortschreibungsergebnisse grundlage für die planung der lokalen infrastruktur, die wohnstandortund verkehrsinfrastrukturentwicklung, verkehrsplanung, versorgung mit medizinischer und pfl egeinfrastruktur, schulplanung, bildungsund kulturförderung, kostenplanung von sozialleistungen, energieversorgung etc. (siehe zensg 2011 § 1).15 für die demografi sche forschung sind die populationszahlen des zensus zentral, da mit diesen mortalitätsund fertilitätsziffern generiert werden können. darüber hinaus kommt dem zensus für die sozialwissenschaftliche survey-forschung eine wichtige bedeutung zu. zum einen haben die einwohnerzahlen nach gemeinde, geburtsjahr und geschlecht eine unmittelbare relevanz bei der ziehung von einwohnermeldestichproben. zum anderen liefert der zensus den auswahlplan, auf basis dessen die zählbezirke für den mikrozensus eingeteilt werden. dieser wiederum liefert den rahmen für die generierung von so genannten „post-stratifi cation weights“, die standardmäßig in sozialwissenschaftlichen surveys zur verfügung gestellt werden, um die befragungsdaten an die im mikrozensus vorgegebene bevölkerungsstruktur anzupassen. ist der zensus über die oben genannten aspekte hinaus von bedeutung für die demografi sche und sozialwissenschaftliche forschung? das potenzial des zensus für weitergehende wissenschaftliche forschung ergibt sich vor allem durch die gro14 in der beschreibung der migrationsstatistiken heißt es dazu: „für die jahre 2008 und 2009 ist zu berücksichtigen, dass aufgrund der bundesweiten einführung der persönlichen steuer-identifi kationsnummer im jahr 2008 umfangreiche bereinigungen der melderegister in diesen beiden jahren vorgenommen wurden, die zu zahlreichen abmeldungen von amts wegen geführt haben. da der umfang dieser bereinigungen aus den meldungen der meldebehörden statistisch nicht ermittelt werden kann, bleiben der tatsächliche umfang der fortzüge in den jahren 2008 und 2009 sowie die entwicklung gegenüber den vorjahren unklar“ (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge 2015: 13). 15 gesetz über den registergestützten zensus im jahre 2011 (zensusgesetz 2011, zensg 2011) in der fassung vom 8. juli 2009. • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld20 ßen fallzahlen, die es erlauben würden, regionalisierte analysen durchzuführen. da bis dato (und damit fünf jahre nach zensus) jedoch noch nicht geklärt ist, wie und ob regionalisierte individualdaten des zensus zur verfügung gestellt werden, dürften mit zunehmender dauer die zensusdaten für die wissenschaftliche forschung unattraktiver werden. gleiches gilt für die zusätzliche haushaltsbefragung, die ebenfalls für wissenschaftliche mikroanalysen erst kürzlich zugängig gemacht wurde. mittlerweile liegen aktuellere mikrozensus-ergebnisse vor, die ein ähnliches bzw. zum teil größeres potenzial für familiendemografi sche fragestellungen liefern als die haushaltsbefragung des zensus. die (fi nalen) einwohnerzahlen nach alter und geschlecht, die insbesondere für die generierung von demografi schen kennziffern relevant sind, sind mit einer verzögerung von vier jahren veröffentlicht worden. zum vergleich: in schweden, wo systematisch bevölkerungsregister aufgebaut wurden, werden die fi nalen bevölkerungsdaten nach alter und geschlecht innerhalb eines jahres publiziert. ein argument für einen registergestützten zensus war es, dass dieser kostengünstiger und effektiver durchgeführt werden kann, da die notwendigen daten bereits in den registern vorlägen (bierau 2001: 335; eppmann 2004). die komplexen verfahren, die notwendig waren, um die verschiedenen register zusammenzubringen, stellt diese vorstellung in frage. sicherlich ist die fehlende transparenz und die mangelnde nachprüfbarkeit der zensusergebnisse teilweise den spezifi schen rechtlichen rahmenbedingungen in deutschland geschuldet. allerdings stellt sich durchaus die frage, ob nicht die möglichkeiten der registerverknüpfung überschätzt worden sind. selbst in norwegen, wo über einen langen zeitraum hinweg systematisch ein haushaltsregister aufgebaut wurde, sind erst mit dem zensus 2011 die daten der haushaltsregister für den zensus verwendet worden (zhang/hendriks 2012). es überrascht schon, dass deutschland, das nicht auf erfahrungen mit haushaltsregistern zurückgreifen kann, gleich in der ersten runde die haushaltsinformationen über die registerdaten in einem hoch komplexen verfahren generiert hat (vorndran 2004). letztendlich sind die möglichkeiten des registergestützten zensus 2011 nicht genutzt worden, um ein haushalts-, ein bevölkerungs(wie dies beispielsweise in der schweiz der fall war) oder ein verwaltungsregister langfristig aufzubauen und zu pfl egen. neben der gesellschaftspolitischen, demografi schen und sozialwissenschaftlichen relevanz kommt dem zensus auch eine zentrale politische bedeutung zu, da auf basis der durch zensus und fortschreibung festgesetzten einwohnerzahlen der finanzausgleich zwischen gemeinden und ländern berechnet werden und darüber hinaus der zuschnitt der wahlkreise für die bundestagsund landtagswahlen bestimmt wird. diese „doppelnatur“ des zensus hat vor allem die unerwünschte nebenwirkung, dass eine kritik am zensus, die allein wissenschaftlich begründet sein mag, sich zwangsweise immer auch der gefahr aussetzt, für politische zwecke von jenen instrumentalisiert zu werden, die nachteile aus den zensusergebnissen hinnehmen mussten. einwohnerzahlen sind ein politikum und eine sachliche und wissenschaftliche auseinandersetzung mit der generierung der populationszahlen gestaltet sich entsprechend schwierig. erstaunlich ist dennoch die große vehemenz, mit der sich politiker über die zensuskorrekturen der einwohnerzahlen beschweren der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 21 (siehe für berlin bspw. rennefanz/zylka 2013), während die gravierenden mängel in den fortschreibungsdaten in der vergangenheit stillschweigend hingenommen wurden. auch mit dem zensus 2011 wurde erhebliche energie auf die anfechtung der einwohnerzahlen verwendet (statistisches bundesamt 2016), während eine politische auseinandersetzung über die verbesserung der melderegister und der fortschreibung weitgehend ausgeblieben ist. fakt ist, dass die probleme, die die populationszahlen in der fortschreibung verzerrt haben, bis heute nicht behoben wurden. damit ist auch für die zukunft zu erwarten, dass die systematischen fehler wieder im abstand zum zensus ansteigen werden. danksagung wir danken harald utne (senior adviser population statistics, statistics norway) für wertvolle hinweise zur haushaltsgenerierung im norwegischen zensus. gunnar andersson (stockholm university, demography unit) danken wir für informationen zu den schwedischen registern. für die unterstützung bei der erstellung der abbildungen 3a und 3b möchte wir uns sehr herzlich bei rainer walke (max-planck-institut für demografi sche forschung) bedanken. für die sprachliche durchsicht danken wir lena klein (hertie school of 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data for dwelling and household. united nations economic commission for europe. conference of european statisticians. oslo, norwegen, 24-26. september 2012. zur nieden, felix; sommer, bettina 2016: life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census: was the healthy migrant effect merely an artefact? in: comparative population studies 41,2: 145-174 [doi: 10.12765/cpos-2016-05en]. der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 25 dr. rembrandt scholz. max-planck-institut für demografische forschung. rostock, deutschland. e-mail: scholz@demogr.mpg.de url: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter_1899/rembrandt_d_scholz_663. htm prof. dr. michaela kreyenfeld (). hertie school of governance. berlin, deutschland. e-mail: kreyenfeld@hertie-school.org url: https://www.hertie-school.org/de/fakultaet-forschung/fakultaet/profi le/michaelakreyenfeld/ eine übersetzung dieses begutachteten und von den autoren autorisierten deutschen originaltextes durch das bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung ist unter dem titel „the register-based census in germany: historical context and relevance for population research“, doi 10.12765/ cpos-2016-08en bzw. urn urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2016-08en8, auf http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de verfügbar. eingegangen am: 26.10.2015 angenommen am: 22.03.2016 • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld26 d eu ts ch es r ei ch e in w o h n er q u el le (in 1 .0 00 ) 1. d ez em b er 1 87 1 41 0 58 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 87 5) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e vo m 1 . d ez em b er 1 87 1. v ie rt el ja h re sh ef te z u r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, r ei h e 1, b an d 1 4, h ef t 3 , a b t. 3 , s . v i.3 -4 9. 1. d ez em b er 1 87 5 42 7 27 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t ( 18 78 ): d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e vo m 1 . d ez em b er 1 87 5. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, m o n at sh ef te , r ei h e 1, b an d 3 0, h ef t 4 , 2 . t ei l, s . 3 -2 3. 1. d ez em b er 1 88 0 4 5 23 4 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t ( 18 83 ): d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch e am 1 . d ez em b er 1 88 0. b an d 5 7, v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . 7 6 -1 17 . 1. d ez em b er 1 88 5 46 8 55 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 88 8) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g im d eu ts ch en r ei ch a m 1 . d ez em b er 1 88 5. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, n eu e fo lg e, b an d 3 2, b er lin , s . 9 6 -1 23 . 1. d ez em b er 1 89 0 49 4 28 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 89 4) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g am 1 d ez em b er 1 89 0 im d eu ts ch en r ei ch . s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, n eu e fo lg e, b an d 6 8, b er lin , s . 3 1* , 4 4 -7 1. 2. d ez em b er 1 89 5 52 2 79 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 89 7) : d ie b ev ö lk er u n g d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s n ac h d er v o lk sz äh lu n g vo n 2. d ez em b er 1 89 5. v ie rt el ja h re sh ef t zu r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . i .2 728 . 1. d ez em b er 1 90 0 56 3 67 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 97 4) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 24 . ja h rg an g 19 03 , g eo rg o lm s v er la g , n ac h d ru ck , b er lin , s . 6 . 1. d ez em b er 1 90 5 60 6 41 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 90 6) : d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g am 1 . d ez em b er 1 90 5. v ie rt el ja h rs h ef t zu r s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, b an d 1 5, h ef t 4 , s . i v .2 98 -3 01 . 1. d ez em b er 1 91 0 64 9 25 k ai se rl ic h es s ta ti st is ch es a m t (1 91 3) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 34 . ja h rg an g , v er la g vo n p u tt ka m m er & m ü h lb re ch t, b er lin , s . 8 -9 . 1. d ez em b er 1 91 6 k. a . k. a . 5. d ez em b er 1 91 7 k. a . k. a . 8. o kt o b er 1 91 9 60 4 12 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 22 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 4 2. j ah rg an g 19 21 /2 2, v er la g fü r p o lit ik u n d w ir ts ch af t, b er lin , s . 4 -5 . a n h an g ta b . a 1: v o lk sz äh lu ng en in d eu ts ch la nd s ei t 1 87 1 na ch e in w o hn er za hl (i n ta u se nd ), te rr ito ri en u nd q ue lle n der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 27 d eu ts ch es r ei ch e in w o h n er q u el le (in 1 .0 00 ) 16 . j u n i 1 92 5 62 4 10 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 28 ): v o lk sz äh lu n g . d ie b ev ö lk er u n g d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s n ac h d en e rg eb n is se n d er v o lk sz äh lu n g 19 25 . te il i e in fü h ru n g in d ie v o lk sz äh lu n g 19 25 , ta b el le n w er k. s ta ti st ik d es d eu ts ch en r ei ch s, b an d 4 01 , i , b er lin , s . 1 74 -2 95 . 16 . j u n i 1 93 3 65 2 18 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 37 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch fü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 5 6. j ah rg an g 19 37 , v er la g fü r s o zi al p o lit ik , w ir ts ch af t u n d s ta ti st ik , b er lin , s . 1 6 -1 7. 17 . m ai 1 93 9 79 3 75 s ta ti st is ch es r ei ch sa m t ( 19 42 ): s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d as d eu ts ch e r ei ch . 5 9. j ah rg an g 19 41 /4 2, b er lin , s . 2 4. 29 . o kt o b er 1 94 6 64 5 01 a u ss ch u ß d er d eu ts ch en s ta ti st ik er f ü r d ie v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g 19 46 (1 94 9) : v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g vo n 29 . o kt o b er 1 94 6 in d en v ie r b es at zu n g sz o n en u n d g ro ß -b er lin . v o lk sz äh lu n g ta b el le n te il. d u n ck er & h u m b lo t, b er lin -m ü n ch en , s . 7 273 . d d r e in w o h n er q u el le (in 1 .0 00 ) 31 . a u g u st 1 95 0 18 3 88 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 12 -1 3. 31 . d ez em b er 1 96 4 17 0 03 s ta at lic h e z en tr al ve rw al tu n g fü r s ta ti st ik (1 96 7) : e rg eb n is se d er v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g am 3 1. d ez em b er 19 64 . s ta at sv er la g d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik , s . 3 5 -4 9. 1. j an u ar 1 97 1 17 0 68 s ta at lic h e z en tr al ve rw al tu n g fü r s ta ti st ik (1 97 3) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch 1 97 3 d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik . 1 8. j ah rg an g , s ta at sv er la g d er d eu ts ch en d em o kr at is ch en r ep u b lik , b er lin , s . 4 17 . 31 . d ez em b er 1 98 1 16 7 05 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 99 4) : a u sg ew äh lt e z ah le n d er v o lk s u n d b er u fs zä h lu n g en u n d g eb äu d e u n d w o h n u n g sz äh lu n g en 1 95 0 b is 1 98 1. s o n d er re ih e m it b ei tr äg en f ü r d as g eb ie t d er e h em al ig en d d r , h ef t 15 , w ie sb ad en , s . 2 236 . 3. o kt o b er 1 99 0 16 0 33 r eg is te rz äh lu n g d es e in w o h n er d at en sp ei ch er s (b ev ö lk er u n g sa n za h l b ez ie h t s ic h au f d en 3 1. 12 .1 99 0) ta b . a 1: fo rt se tz un g • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld28 b r d e in w o h n er q u el le (in 1 .0 00 ) 13 . s ep te m b er 1 95 0 47 6 95 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 25 . 25 . s ep te m b er 1 95 6 53 1 98 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 95 9) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 29 . 6. j u n i 1 96 1 56 1 74 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 96 4) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 34 . 27 . m ai 1 97 0 60 6 51 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t (1 97 2) : s ta ti st is ch es j ah rb u ch f ü r d ie b u n d es re p u b lik d eu ts ch la n d . w ie sb ad en , s . 35 . 25 . m ai 1 98 7 61 0 77 s ta ti st is ch es b u n d es am t ( 19 90 ): b ev ö lk er u n g u n d e rw er b st ät ig ke it . v o lk sz äh lu n g am 2 5. m ai 1 98 7. f ac h se ri e 1, h ef t 3 , t ei l 1 , w ie sb ad en , s . 2 0 -3 1. 9. m ai 2 01 1 80 2 20 s ta ti st is ch e ä m te r d es b u n d es u n d d er l än d er ( 20 14 ): e rg eb n is d es z en su s 20 11 z u m b er ic h ts ze it p u n kt 9 . m ai 2 01 1. o n lin e li n k: h tt p s: //e rg eb n is se .z en su s2 01 1. d e/ # s ta ti cc o n te n t: 00 ,b e v _1 1_ 1, m ,t ab le . ta b . a 1: fo rt se tz un g der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 29 b ev ö lk er u n g 31 .1 2. 20 11 e re ig n is se 2 01 1 r at en p ro t au se n d d er b ev ö lk er u n g fü r 20 11 fo rt sc h re ib u n g d es z en su s 20 11 fo rt sc h re ib u n g d es z en su s 19 87 fo rt sc h re ib u n g d es z en su s 20 11 fo rt sc h re ib u n g d es z en su s 19 87 d if fe re n z g eb u rt en s te rb efä lle p fl eg efä lle g eb u rt en s te rb efä lle p fl eg efä lle g eb u rt en s te rb efä lle p fl eg efä lle 0 -4 3 38 6 58 6 3 40 8 76 2 2 2 17 6 2 40 8 12 5 18 0. 7 3. 7 0. 7 3. 7 5 -9 3 49 7 32 6 3 51 5 78 9 1 8 46 3 46 3 26 6 69 0. 1 7. 6 0. 1 7. 6 10 -1 4 3 88 9 09 4 3 90 7 53 7 1 8 4 43 52 31 1 28 5 47 0. 0 0. 1 7. 3 0. 0 0. 1 7. 3 15 -1 9 4 02 7 94 6 4 08 0 46 2 52 5 16 12 7 13 39 5 23 4 09 3. 2 0. 1 5. 8 3. 1 0. 1 5. 7 20 -2 4 4 82 2 07 7 4 95 9 92 0 13 7 84 3 80 8 41 1 03 4 21 3 56 16 .8 0. 2 4. 4 16 .3 0. 2 4. 3 25 -2 9 4 85 5 40 7 4 99 0 60 2 13 5 19 5 18 1 34 9 1 92 2 18 2 79 37 .3 0. 4 3. 8 36 .3 0. 4 3. 7 30 -3 4 4 80 9 95 4 4 94 2 91 4 13 2 96 0 22 7 02 9 2 03 1 16 4 41 47 .2 0. 4 3. 4 45 .9 0. 4 3. 3 35 -3 9 4 64 9 4 46 4 78 5 17 1 13 5 72 5 12 5 77 8 2 60 7 16 5 74 27 .1 0. 6 3. 6 26 .3 0. 5 3. 5 40 -4 4 6 16 6 63 0 6 36 3 15 4 19 6 52 4 33 0 41 3 56 5 24 9 23 5. 4 0. 6 4. 0 5. 2 0. 6 3. 9 45 -4 9 6 99 8 76 0 7 13 7 63 4 13 8 87 4 1 77 5 7 94 7 37 1 77 0. 3 1. 1 5. 3 0. 2 1. 1 5. 2 50 -5 4 6 32 4 08 0 6 42 2 95 3 98 8 73 10 7 15 3 80 48 4 21 0. 0 2. 4 7. 7 0. 0 2. 4 7. 5 55 -5 9 5 46 5 59 2 5 55 0 05 4 84 4 62 24 0 07 62 0 92 4. 4 11 .4 4. 3 11 .2 60 -6 4 4 83 1 57 0 4 89 8 24 1 66 6 71 33 1 33 85 7 61 6. 9 17 .8 6. 8 17 .5 65 -6 9 3 98 4 74 4 4 03 9 54 3 54 7 99 43 2 03 11 4 50 4 10 .8 28 .7 10 .7 28 .3 70 -7 4 4 95 2 54 4 5 00 1 25 5 48 7 11 56 5 63 23 8 98 2 11 .4 48 .3 11 .3 47 .8 75 -7 9 3 39 6 97 2 3 43 8 52 8 41 5 56 99 3 90 33 7 05 8 29 .3 99 .2 28 .9 98 .0 80 -8 4 2 33 3 43 1 2 36 7 68 4 34 2 53 11 7 13 9 48 4 81 8 50 .2 20 7. 8 49 .5 20 4. 8 85 -8 9 1 34 6 88 8 1 37 2 71 1 25 8 23 15 1 47 1 52 2 00 1 11 2. 5 38 7. 6 11 0. 3 38 0. 3 90 + 5 45 4 33 66 0 82 9 11 5 39 6 28 9 35 6 38 1 91 1 53 0. 5 70 0. 2 43 7. 9 57 7. 9 to ta l 80 2 84 4 80 81 8 43 7 43 1 55 9 26 3 66 2 68 5 85 2 32 8 2 50 1 4 41 8. 3 10 .6 31 .2 8. 1 10 .4 30 .6 ta b . a 2: v er gl ei ch d er j ah re se nd b es tä nd e d er b ev ö lk er un g na ch f o rt sc hr ei b un g d es z en su s 19 87 u nd z en su s 20 11 u nd au sg ew äh lte n b ew eg un g sm en g en a ls a uc h au sg ew äh lte r r at en je 1 .0 00 p er so n en n ac h a lte r q ue lle : s ta tis tis ch es b un de sa m t 20 13 a, 2 01 4a /b , u nd w ei te re p ub lik at io ne n d es s ta tis tis ch en b un d es am te s • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld30 abb. a1: anzahl der gemeinden (ordinate) nach relativer differenz zwischen zensus 2011 und fortschreibung auf basis des zensus 1987 (abszisse), nach kleinen gemeinden (unter 10.000 einwohner) und großen gemeinden (10.000 und mehr einwohner) und bundesländern, in % 0 100 200 300 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden baden-württemberg 0 100 200 300 400 500 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden bayern brandenburg hessen 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden mecklenburg-vorpommern niedersachsen 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 31 abb. a1: fortsetzung 0 100 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden nordrhein-westfalen 0 100 200 300 400 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden rheinland-pfalz sachsen sachsen-anhalt 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden schleswig-holstein thüringen 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden 0 100 200 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 kleine gemeinden große gemeinden anmerkungen: berlin, hamburg und bremen wurden aus der darstellung ausgeschlossen, da es für stadtstaaten keine variation nach gemeinden gibt. saarland wurde ausgeschlossen, da die anzahl der gemeinden für dieses bundesland gering ist. quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2013b • rembrandt scholz, michaela kreyenfeld32 abb. a2: relative differenz zwischen zensus 2011 und fortschreibung des zensus 1987, nach geschlecht, alter und staatsangehörigkeit -10 0 10 2010 2002 1992 1982 1972 1962 1952 1942 1932 1922 jahr männer frauen in prozent deutsche -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 2010 2002 1992 1982 1972 1962 1952 1942 1932 1922 jahr männer frauen in prozent ausländer quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2014 a/b der registergestützte zensus in deutschland • 33 abb. a3: anzahl der personen an allen personen (in 1.000) (ordinate) nach alter (abszisse) und gemeindegröße -5 0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 >10.000 einwohner < 10.000 und weniger einwohner differenz quelle: statistisches bundesamt 2014b published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator: approaches for dealing with age-specific prevalence data the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator: approaches for dealing with age-specifi c prevalence data* vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg abstract: the healthy life years (hly) indicator is the offi cial european union indicator and a cornerstone of many health policies used in over 15 countries in the eu region to set national health plans and monitor targets. it is also used to investigate trends over time in the proportion of total life years spent in good or poor health, socioeconomic inequalities in health and mortality and the male-female health survival paradox. based on the global activity limitation indicator (gali) included in the european union statistics on income and living conditions (eusilc), a great amount of effort has been directed at harmonising and making hly comparable across countries. nonetheless, the characteristics of the age-specifi c prevalence distribution are still rarely accounted for, regardless of the fact that patterns of prevalence often fl uctuate considerably by age. in addition, the impact of assumptions used at very young ages on hly estimates are seldom discussed, despite the fact that the majority of policies and initiatives at the eu level use hly at birth, while data on health is only available after age 16. in this paper, we assess whether smoothing the age-specifi c prevalence distributions by different methods, extrapolating to older ages and changing assumptions at younger ages affect hly estimates. overall, assumptions made before age 15 are the most important and affect women and men differently, thus affecting hly at birth for some countries. estimates at age 65 are very slightly impacted. generalised linear models (gams) seem promising for harmonising and extrapolating to older ages, while using polynomials or aggregating into 5-year age groups seem best for younger ages. as most eu policies use hly at birth and by sex for developing and monitoring health policies, caution is needed when estimating hly at birth. keywords: healthy life years · sensitivity · age-specifi c prevalence · life table · sullivan method · gali · smoothing · gender differences comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 117-150 (date of release: 06.04.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-06 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-06en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/476/374. https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/476/374 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-06 • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg118 1 introduction the healthy life years (hly) indicator is one of the most important indicators for monitoring population health, developing policies and addressing different research questions. it is the offi cial european union indicator for developing strategies for national health plans and monitoring health policy targets such as the 2000 lisbon strategy and the european innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing to increase the average hly of europeans by two years by 2020 (robine et al. 2013; bogaert et al. 2018; eurostat 2020). it has also been used to investigate important research questions, such as trends over time in the proportion of total life years spent in good or poor health (the “compression-expansion debate”), socioeconomic inequalities in health and mortality, compositional effects of education on health indicators across regions and the male-female health survival paradox (murray et al. 2002; bocquet-appel 2008; ekholm/brønnum-hansen 2009; nusselder et al. 2010, 2019; van oyen et al. 2013; jagger et al. 2013; füssenich et al. 2019; di lego et al. 2020; welsh et al. 2021; sauerberg 2021). the hly is a disability-free life expectancy (dfle) indicator based on the global activity limitation indicator (gali) included in the european union statistics on income and living conditions (eu-silc) (robine et al. 2003). it combines mortality information from period eurostat life tables with the disability prevalence data obtained from eu-silc (saito et al. 2014). even though several other methods are available for estimating health expectancy indicators for different contexts and health data (robine/mathers 1993; lynch/brown 2005, 2010; mccallum/mathers 2008; crimmins et al. 2009; nepomuceno/turra 2015), the approach developed by sullivan is the most employed up until now (sullivan 1971; mathers et al. 2001; saito et al. 2014). this is mainly due to its parsimonious approach and requirement for age-specifi c prevalence data that are readily available from cross-sectional surveys (robine/jagger 2003; yokota et al. 2019). in addition, the sullivan method and the gali instrument have been extensively tested for consistency and comparability across european countries (robine/jagger 2003; van oyen et al. 2006; berger et al. 2015), with a wide range of sensitivity analyses performed to attest its harmonised features (cox et al. 2009; jagger et al. 2010; rubio-valverde et al. 2019). however, the sensitivity of the age pattern of disability in the context of the hly has been less explored. the distribution of age-specifi c prevalence is very uneven, with a profi le that often fl uctuates across ages and with alternating last-age intervals. since information on disability is usually derived from population surveys, health information is limited to specifi c ages and subject to specifi c survey characteristics, such as individual responsiveness, sample design and reporting behaviour (jürges 2007; peracchi/rossetti 2012; hardy et al. 2014; cigolle et al. 2018; spitzer/weber 2019). hence, the age pattern may also be sensitive to particular technical features that directly affect age-specifi c prevalence estimates, which in turn can impact the hly indicator. for instance, despite many health policies in the eu region using hly at birth as the main indicator, the eu-silc survey includes only people above age 16. in addition, the last open age interval available for most countries is 80+, with some countries not only having different last age intervals available, but also the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 119 experiencing changes over time, like germany, which starting from 2015 only has data available for ages 74+ (gesis 2022). therefore, assumptions for very young and old persons are required. the conventional approach used by eurostat for the offi cial estimates assumes that the prevalence of being unhealthy for individuals younger than age 15 is half of the prevalence of the 16-19 age group (eurostat 2020; welsh et al. 2021). further, a common strategy to deal with the erratic behaviour of age-specifi c prevalence is to aggregate data into 5-year age groups prior to combining it with abridged life tables, which is the current procedure adopted by eurostat. in this case, it assumes a constant proportion of unhealthy individuals in each age group as a means to deal with single-age inconsistencies. although a number of issues related to the sensitivity of health expectancy indicators have been addressed and discussed (crimmins et al. 1994; robine et al. 2001; mathers 2002), the majority of the effort has been directed at evaluating the role of the gali instrument, harmonisation issues and comparability across countries (van oyen et al. 2006; berger et al. 2015). nonetheless, the characteristics of the age-specifi c prevalence distribution is not as often considered when empirically analysing levels and trends of health expectancy and their role when interpreting the results. in part, this is due to the fact that age-specifi c prevalence is usually combined with mortality data in order to derive health expectancy indicators, so little attention is given to the age pattern of prevalence prior to combining it with mortality. in this paper, we assess whether adopting different age-specifi c prevalence distributions and changing the most commonly used assumptions prior to combining the health information with the mortality data may affect hly estimates. first, instead of simply aggregating age-specifi c prevalence into 5-year age groups, we evaluate whether smoothing the age prevalence distribution of disability by different methods as measured by the gali instrument has any implication on the posterior hly estimates. second, as hly is estimated using survey data that only has health information available after the age of 16, we test whether changing assumptions of the prevalence proportions before that age affects the distributions, as well as computing prevalence by single age intervals. third, as the last age interval available from health surveys varies and is limited to either age 80+ or 74+, we extrapolate the maximum observed age to 100+ using a generalised additive model (gam), in order to test whether extrapolating the age profi le has any impact on the hly estimates and whether this is a viable strategy for computing hly at older ages. we then compute hly at birth and at age 65 for all smoothing and extrapolation methods using period life tables from eurostat. estimates are for the year 2017 and for all the eu-28 countries (in this year it includes united kingdom as part of the eu member states), as well as switzerland, norway and iceland as non-members. we fi nally estimate the proportion of total life expectancy spent in healthy life years for each method and discuss implications of these results when estimating hly. by further exploring the sensitivity of the hly indicator with regard to the characteristics of age-specifi c prevalence, we seek to address the extent to which differences in health status across european countries are vulnerable to these technical features. the standard practice of combining agespecifi c prevalence proportions with person-years lived without proper attention • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg120 to the distribution profi le of the former may affect the estimation of healthy life years. overall, differences are small, but oftentimes they are not trivial and vary by smoothing method, country, sex and age. this suggests that it is important to be more cautious with the age distribution of health prevalence prior to combining it with mortality data, especially when the indicator of interest is estimated at birth. further research is needed to understand what the optimal strategy would be to deal with the age-specifi c prevalence and this will more likely depend on the data available and the purpose in using the indicator. however, according to the results of the sensitivity analyses presented in this paper, we suggest a routine practice as regards estimating the hly, as summarised in the fl owchart in figure 9, which includes fi rst and foremost considering whether hly is to be estimated at birth or age 65. second, plot the age-specifi c disability prevalence and evaluate its pattern, as well as whether aggregating into 5-year age groups already smooths the pattern. gams adjust well at ages 65 and older and their impact on hly is very small, but they can impact hly at birth. in this case, either just estimating hly based on the usual aggregation by 5-year age groups or smoothing by a polynomial fi t can be best. most importantly, always test age profi les for women and men separately, as well as country-specifi c patterns. the most important recommendation is to consider the purpose of the indicator carefully beforehand and to assess its pattern by age before combining it with the person-years lived by age. 2 data and methods the observed prevalence of limitations in activities of daily living (adls) is obtained from the gali. the exact wording of the gali is: “for at least the past 6 months, to what extent have you been limited because of a health problem in activities people usually do? would you say you have been (1) severely limited, (2) limited but not severely, or (3) not limited at all?”. this is the offi cial eurostat indicator used to monitor health status, where individuals are defi ned as healthy if they report no limitations at all (jagger et al. 2013; eurostat 2020). the advantage of using the gali instrument in order to estimate health expectancy is that it has been systematically assessed in order to ensure the highest level possible of harmonisation and comparability of health dimensions, age and time across european countries (van oyen et al. 2006; jagger et al. 2010; berger et al. 2016). we employ the most commonly used approach for estimating the hly and also the one offi cially adopted by the european union, which is the sullivan method (imai/soneji 2007; saito et al. 2014; sullivan 1971). sullivan applies the age-specifi c prevalence (proportions) of a population in an unhealthy state to the age-specifi c person-years lived from the life table. in this way, the total life years in each age interval can be partitioned into years spent in good and poor health. before we combine the age-specifi c prevalence with the person-years lived using eurostat life tables, we employ a series of smoothing techniques and extrapolations methods as shown in table 1. we choose this set of smoothing techniques because they are fl exible, demand few or no assumptions the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 121 ta b . 1 : s m o o th in g te ch ni q ue s u se d o n th e ag esp ec ifi c p re va le n ce o f a d ls s m o o th in g an d s p ec ifi ca tio n o p tim al v al ue c ri te ri a s m o o th in g p ar am et er e xt ra p o la tio n m et h o d s r s s (f, λ) = g en er al is ed c ro ss -v al id at io n n o e xt ra s m o o th in g p ar am et er , s m o o th in g sp lin e (g c v ) d f u se d fo r th e d eg re e o f ∑(y i − f( x i ))2 + λ ∫ [f '' (t )] 2 d t sm o o th in g s p ar a d d ed s o t h e co ef fi c ie n t λ p en al is ed lo g lik el ih oo d is g en er al is ed c ro ss -v al id at io n fr o m t h e p en al is ed lo g s p lin e w it h p en al ty l  = (y − f )́ w (y − f ) + λ ć ∑ c (g c v ) lik el ih o o d c ri te ri o n is a m o n o to n e fu n ct io n o f s p ar = 0. 7 p o ly n o m ia l y = β 0 + β 1x + β 2 x + β 3 x + .. . + β n x + ε . fi x th e d eg re e o r u se cr o ss s el ec te d d eg re e 4 va lid at io n to c h o o se y ~ e xp of am (μ , e tc .) m ix ed m o d el a p p ro ac h vi a b in o m ia l l in k to c o n st ra in g a m e( y) = μ re st ri ct ed m ax im um th e in te rv al t o [0 ,1 ] a n d k = 5 g( μ) = b 0 + f( x 1 ) + f (x 2) + .. . + f (x p) lik el ih o o d (r e m l) n i= 1 2 3 n n o te : fo r th e po ly no m ia l, se e al so t he i m p le m en ta tio n an d d is cu ss io n at h tt p s: // p at ri ck au b er t.g ith ub .io /h ea lth ex p ec ta nc ie s/ in d ex . ht m l. t he v ar ia b le s fo r al l m o d el s ar e ag e, c o un tr y an d s ex . s o ur ce : g ar et h ja m es , d an ie la w itt en , t re vo r h as tie , r ob er t t ib sh ir an i 2 02 1: a n in tr o d uc tio n to s ta tis tic al l ea rn in g: w ith a p p lic at io ns in r . n ew y o rk : s p ri ng er (j am es e t al . 2 02 1) . https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index https://patrickaubert.github.io/healthexpectancies/index • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg122 about the age distribution but at the same time have slightly different approaches and smoothing parameters allowing for different test setups. the polynomial smoothing provides us with a single model for the data, while the splines approach gives us a piecewise continuous function composed of many polynomials to model age-specifi c prevalence (eilers/marx 1996; gu 2014; james et al. 2021). the smoothing splines are set both with and without penalty and the polynomial fi t is of fourth degree, as suggested by previous applications of this approach to age-specifi c health prevalence (aubert 2021). lastly, generalised linear models (gams) were computed for each country and by sex in order to smooth and extrapolate the last age interval until 100+.1 gams have the advantage that the shape of the predictor functions are fully determined by the data, allowing for a more fl exible estimation while still capturing underlying patterns (rigby/stasinopoulos 2005; wood 2006). we used the population size at each age as weights in the model to account for age structure and the binomial link to constrain the prevalence into the interval [0,1]. the estimates were performed using the mgcv package in r. in addition, three different assumptions regarding the age-specifi c prevalence below age 15 were tested: 1. the offi cial eu assumption that the prevalence between ages 0-15 is half of the observed in the age group 16-19 (eurostat 2020); 2. the prevalence between ages 0-15 is zero and so there is no observed disability below age 15; and 3. smooth increase since birth for the cases where age-specifi c prevalence was extrapolated and smoothed using gams. these three alternative scenarios of disability at younger ages allow for evaluating the sensitivity of the hly indicator when estimated at birth. in order to choose the smoothing parameter that best fi ts the data, we used restricted maximum likelihood (reml) for the gams and generalised crossvalidation (gcv) for the splines. likewise, in order to compare the estimated outputs across all smoothing methods, we used the root mean square error (rmse). the rmse is defi ned as the square root of the mean of the square of all of the errors and it measures how far predicted values are from observed values or how concentrated the data is around the best fi t (christie/neill 2022). smaller rmse score values indicate that the estimated curve is closer to the true curve and used as an indicator of best fi t. we use this approach since we compare different methods and the rmse is advised as a general purpose approach to assess error metrics when performing comparisons, including across different smoothing methods (malloy et al. 2009; ben ghoul et al. 2019). for a more detailed explanation of the reml used for gams and the rmse for comparing all approaches, refer to the technical note in the appendix (scores for each method and all countries by sex, considering the offi cial eu assumption that the prevalence between ages 0-15 is half of the observed in the age group 16-19 are presented in table a7 in the appendix). 1 we tested whether the same methods usually employed to extrapolate mortality would also work with health, in addition to using more fl exible approaches. several attempts to extrapolate the age pattern of disability using kannisto-makeham, gamma-gompertz and gompertz mortality models were employed, but yielded unsound results as shown in figures a6 and a7 in the appendix. the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 123 because the age-specifi c prevalence in disability in the eu-silc survey is only available until 80+, we recalculated eurostat life tables adopting a new openended age interval of 80+ for most countries – as the offi cial life tables close at age 85+ – using the standard approach by preston et al. (2001). one exception was germany, where we close the life table at age 74+ (because for germany the last age observed in the eu-silc starting from 2015 is 74+). for the case of agespecifi c prevalence that we smoothed and extrapolated until age 100+ using gams, we also extrapolated the life tables until 100+ using the makeham mortality law. after smoothing the estimated age-specifi c prevalence πi+ni from the surveys and adjusting the open-end age interval from life tables accordingly, we combined the many different distributions with the person-years lived by age li+ni adjusted from the eurostat life tables to estimate the disability-free life expectancy êdf, or in this case, the hly, following the formulation by imai and soneji (2007): differences in our estimates and the offi cial hly may occur not only because we are computing the estimates for single ages, while eurostat computes for 5-year age group intervals, but also because we are using life tables with different openage limits. the health data eurostat has available to estimate hly may also be slightly different from the eu-silc microdata we have access to. nonetheless, the calculations are internally consistent with the method for each variant of smoothing and extrapolation we use, which allows for performing the comparisons across the scenarios we have built between smoothed/unsmoothed and extrapolated/nonextrapolated. as our goal in this paper is not to provide a direct comparison between our estimates and the offi cial ones across countries, but to showcase the sensitivity of the indicator for different smoothing methods, we present the results for single ages, the case of highest fl uctuation and sensitivity possible. nonetheless, in the appendix we have added the analysis with the 5-year age group intervals so that the reader can evaluate the consistency in our estimates, which are in this case very close or the same as the offi cial estimates. all results were computed for the year 2017 since that is the latest year for which we can compute the estimates including the most comprehensive set of the eu-28 member states that included uk as well as switzerland, norway and iceland as nonmembers, but before the covid-19 pandemic, which can cause an additional layer of sensitivity that would be diffi cult to isolate. as our particular aim in this paper is to test the sensitivity of age-specifi c prevalence to various smoothing techniques, we believe that the specifi c choice of year is not of particular importance to test the sensitivity of the indicator itself. ^ x 1 1 (1) • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg124 3 results 3.1 the sensitivity of age-specifi c health prevalence the fi rst set of results refers to the prevalence data by different smoothing and extrapolation methods. across countries two overall major clusters of age-specifi c patterns of disability were identifi ed: an exponential-like and a linear-like. we separated the results into selected countries to emphasise the two clusters of age patterns that were observed. one interesting exception is germany, which falls in the middle of these two clusters. we will present its results separately. as presented in figure 1, spain, france and finland have a more exponential-like pattern – fig. 1: prevalence for women and men aged 0-80+, by different smoothing methods, year 2017, selected eu countries finland france spain w om en m en 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 denmark netherlands sweden w om en m en 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 age type obs. half disability obs. no disability penalty polynomial spline half the disability ag e− sp ec ifi c pr ev al en ce source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 125 especially spain and france –, while denmark, the netherlands and sweden have a linear pattern with remarkable stability over most ages for sweden (overall, most countries fall within these two patterns by age. refer to country-specifi c age patterns for all countries in fig. a1 in the appendix). for all countries and for both sexes, the polynomial fi t is the smoothing that most evens out the distribution. in addition, for some countries, like spain and france, the visual difference between the assumption of no disability below age 15 and half the disability is smaller for both sexes than in other countries, particularly women in finland and the netherlands. for danish men, the age-specifi c pattern of prevalence shows signs of decline from fig. 2: heatmap of age-specifi c prevalence for women and men, by different smoothing methods, year 2017, eu-28* countries and switzerland, norway and iceland obs. no disability obs. half disability penalty polynomial spline half the disability w om en m en 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 germany austria belgium bulgaria croatia cyprus czechia denmark estonia finland france greece hungary iceland ireland italy latvia lithuania luxembourg netherlands norway poland portugal romania serbia slovakia slovenia spain sweden switzerland united kingdom germany austria belgium bulgaria croatia cyprus czechia denmark estonia finland france greece hungary iceland ireland italy latvia lithuania luxembourg netherlands norway poland portugal romania serbia slovakia slovenia spain sweden switzerland united kingdom age 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75prevalence c ou nt rie s * germany until 74+, eu-28 in 2017 still includes united kingdom. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg126 around age 65 on. it is diffi cult to infer from these patterns alone whether this shape is due to data or period artifacts, sample size, selectivity or a real effect (engberg et al. 2008; lin et al. 2012). figure 2 presents an overview for all eu-28 countries in 2017, together with switzerland, norway and iceland. the heatmap shows the observed and smoothed age-specifi c prevalence, placing countries in perspective. it shows how the proportion of disability is higher among women for most countries and in some contexts at relatively younger ages (see iceland, netherlands, finland and denmark). in general, the smoothing methods perform well in retaining the original structure of observed data, with the exception of smoothing splines, which appear to be extremely fl exible for some countries and most likely overfi tting the data (see fig. 3: age-specifi c prevalence by sex smoothed by different methods and extrapolated to age 100+ by gam, year 2017, selected eu countries finland france spain w om en m en 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 denmark netherlands sweden w om en m en 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 age type gam extrapolated obs. half disability penalty polynomial ag e− sp ec ifi c pr ev al en ce source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 127 luxembourg, women in finland and men in serbia). in figure 3, we present the same set of countries but now extrapolating by fi tting a gam model and predicting until age 100 with the respective confi dence intervals, as shown in the shaded area. we use the fi t from the penalty spline and polynomial smoothing to predict agespecifi c values until age 80+. fig. 4: prevalence for women and men aged 0-74+, by different smoothing methods, year 2017, germany women men g erm any 0 20 40 60 75 0 20 40 60 75 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 age type obs. half disability obs. no disability penalty polynomial spline half the disability ag e− sp ec ifi c pr ev al en ce source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument fig. 5: age-specifi c prevalence by sex smoothed by different methods and extrapolated to age 100+ by gam, year 2017, germany women men 0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 age type gam extrapolated half disability penalty polynomial ag e− sp ec ifi c pr ev al en ce source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg128 figure 3 presents these estimates in comparison with the offi cial assumption used by the eu to estimate hly, which considers that below age 15 the prevalence of disability is half of the observed in the age group 16-19. the model extrapolates reasonably well until age 100 and retains most of the pattern observed until age 80+. denmark and sweden have the most uncertainty with regard to the extrapolation after age 80 and before age 15 for men, as shown by the wider confi dence intervals. the same is observed for finnish women before age 15. overall, similar to what was observed in figure 1, countries for which smoothing the age pattern seem to show the largest differences are finland (especially at younger ages for women), denmark and sweden. fig. 6: total person-years lived and person-years lived without disability, by smoothing method and sex, selected eu countries age 80+, 2017 finland france spain w om en m en 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 denmark netherlands sweden w om en m en 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80 40000 60000 80000 100000 40000 60000 80000 100000 age type obs. person−years lived no disability person−years lived no disability penalty person−years lived no disability polynomial person−years lived no disability splines total person−years lived pe rs on −y ea rs l iv ed (l x) source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 129 we present the case of germany separately due to the particularity of its age pattern and the last observed age available in the eu-silc change from year 2015. before 2015, germany had the last age available at 80+. however, from year 2015 on, the age changed to 74+ affecting not only the comparability with other countries where the available ages remain 80+, but also the comparability of germany across the years. interestingly, as figure 4 shows, the age pattern for germany is neither as linear-like as in denmark, the netherlands and sweden nor as exponential-like as spain, finland and france, but follows an almost linear pattern until around age 40, when the prevalence of disability increases. similar to the shape for danish men, the prevalence starts to decline from around ages 70 on. as shown in figure 5, a gam fi ts well to german data. the extrapolation has higher uncertainty starting from age 80 on but it is still a good fi t considering that no information is available and thus may be a good model to harmonise data at older ages. after smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence, we compute the person-years lived without disability for the observed and smoothed age-specifi c prevalence, by multiplying the estimated age-specifi c prevalence subtracted from one (1-πi+ni) from the surveys with the total person-years lived by age li+ni retrieved from the eurostat life tables for each country, following equation 1. in figure 6, we present the total person-years lived and person-years lived without disability, considering each smoothing method, until age 80+. in terms of person-years lived without disability, the different smoothing methods yield almost the same profi les by age when compared to the observed values, represented by the grey line with dots. the exception is for finnish women, where, as already previously noted in figures 1-2, the smoothing splines are very fl exible, overfi tting the data, instead of providing a smoothed curve. irrespective of smoothing methods, figure 6 shows how the age pattern of person-years lived ^ fig. 7: total person-years lived and person-years lived without disability, by smoothing method and sex, germany, age 74+, 2017 women men g erm any 0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 60000 80000 100000 age type obs. person−years lived no disability person−years lived no disability penalty person−years lived no disability polynomial person−years lived no disability splines total person−years lived pe rs on −y ea rs l iv ed (l x) source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg130 without disability is more compressed for sweden and spain for both sexes in 2017, as evidenced by the shorter distance between the curve of total person-years lived and person-years lived without disability. in addition, men present a more compressed profi le than women across the majority of countries. for denmark and the netherlands, we observe an almost linear pattern in the decline of personyears lived without disability across age, with a steeper decline in the proportion of person-years lived without disability as age increases, when compared to other countries. for germany, as shown in figure 7, the age pattern of person-years lived without disability is also more compressed for men than women and the pattern of decline is less steep until age 40, when the decline is steeper and linear until age 74+. 3.2 the sensitivity of healthy life years (hly) we combine the estimated and smoothed age-specifi c prevalence as presented in section 3.1 with the person-years lived in order to compute the hly indicator and evaluate whether there are any differences by smoothing technique. total hly and the proportion of total life expectancy (le) spent in healthy life years (%hly = hly/ le) for selected countries by different smoothing technique and extrapolation by sex are presented in tables 2-3, for age 0 (table 2) and age 65 (table 3), respectively. overall, differences across smoothing methods are greater for hly estimates at birth (table 2) than at age 65 (table 3). furthermore, if one considers hly estimated using half the disability as the benchmark for comparison, differences are greater for women than for men across methods for the majority of countries. the proportion of total life expectancy in healthy state (%hly) is barely affected for most smoothing approaches used, with the exception of gams, with varying magnitudes across countries. again, using half the disability as the benchmark for comparison, gams underestimate both hly at birth and at age 65 for all countries presented here. this most likely refl ects the fact that we are extrapolating agespecifi c prevalence to ages above 100, so estimating a higher burden of prevalence in the population. for the splines penalty and polynomial fi ts the results are virtually the same, varying only in the second or third decimal. as expected, for the hly estimates at age 65 there are no differences between the no disability and half the disability assumption, as these assumptions do not affect estimates for hly beyond age 0. in order to provide a clearer picture of the variation across methods, table 4 summarises the absolute differences in values at age 0, where differences between no disability and half the disability (columns (1)-(2)) range from 1.2 years at birth for women in finland to 0.5 in spain and 1.2 years at birth for men in finland to 0.6 for men in spain (see tables a1-a2 in the appendix for the values for all countries available in eu-silc for each smoothing technique and tables a3 and a4 with the values with 95% confi dence intervals). not surprisingly, for the assumption of no disability below age 15 in the population, the hly is larger when compared to the assumption that the population below age 15 experiences half of the observed disability of the age group 16-19 (columns (1)-(2)). the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 131 when comparing the no disability below age 15 scenario versus any of the smoothing methods (see differences computed for columns (1)-(2), (1)-(3), (1)-(4) and (1)-(5)), which were applied on half the disability curve, gams present the tab. 2: healthy life years (hly) and %hly of total life expectancy at birth, by different smoothing methods, extrapolation and sex, selected eu countries, 2017 country assumptions and smoothing methods, hly at age 0 no disability half the splines polynomial gam* disability† penalty hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly women denmark 60.4 72.7 59.8 72.0 59.9 72.0 59.9 72.0 57.4 69.1 spain 70.3 81.6 69.8 81.0 70.3 81.6 70.3 81.6 68.8 79.9 finland 57.8 68.4 56.6 67.0 57.5 68.0 57.4 68.0 53.4 63.2 france 66.7 77.8 66.2 77.3 66.3 77.4 66.3 77.4 65.6 76.5 netherlands 58.0 69.6 56.9 68.3 57.4 68.8 57.4 68.9 55.2 66.2 sweden 72.1 85.7 70.5 83.9 71.2 84.6 71.3 84.8 70.8 84.2 germany** 68.1 81.6 67.5 80.9 67.1 80.4 67.1 80.4 66.2 79.4 men denmark 59.7 75.4 59.1 74.6 59.3 74.8 59.3 74.9 57.1 72.1 spain 69.3 86.0 68.6 85.2 68.8 85.3 68.9 85.4 68.5 85.0 finland 59.0 74.8 57.8 73.3 58.3 73.9 58.3 73.9 57.0 72.2 france 63.8 80.1 63.5 79.8 63.6 79.9 63.6 79.9 62.8 78.9 netherlands 62.1 77.4 61.6 76.9 61.9 77.2 61.9 77.2 60.4 75.3 sweden 73.1 90.5 72.7 89.9 73.1 90.5 73.0 90.4 70.9 87.7 germany** 66.1 83.9 65.7 83.5 65.3 83.0 65.3 83.0 64.8 82.4 note: small differences between the offi cial eu hly indicator may occur since eurostat uses life tables that close at age 85+, while we recalculate the eurostat life tables to close at either 80+ or 74+ by summing the person-years lived at each age and then computing the life table following the conventional procedure of preston et al. (2001). † half the disability is the offi cial eu assumption for ages below 16 and more closely refl ects the offi cial eu statistics. however, we are using age-specifi c prevalence and eurostat life tables by single years of age, while the offi cial estimates are from 5-year age groups, so differences may occur for some countries. refer to the appendix for calculations using 5-year age groups and that match or have very little difference from the offi cial estimates. %hly=hly/le represents the proportion of life expectancy spent in a healthy state. * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg132 largest differences, with finnish women experiencing a difference of 4.4 years. noteworthily, the gam scenario is with both the prevalence extrapolated to age 100 and with a life table closed at age 100+, which can also refl ect on the absolute values. tab. 3: healthy life years (hly) and %hly of total life expectancy at age 65, by different smoothing methods, extrapolation and sex, selected eu countries, 2017 country assumptions and smoothing methods, hly at age 65 no disability half the splines polynomial gam* disability† penalty hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly hly %hly women denmark 12.0 57.7 12.0 57.7 11.9 57.3 11.9 57.1 11.4 55.0 spain 12.5 53.3 12.5 53.3 12.9 55.3 12.9 55.1 11.3 48.5 finland 9.5 42.8 9.5 42.8 10.3 46.8 10.2 46.3 8.8 39.8 france 12.2 51.5 12.2 51.5 12.3 51.8 12.2 51.6 11.8 49.6 netherlands 9.6 45.5 9.6 45.5 10.1 47.5 10.0 47.4 9.3 43.9 sweden 15.7 72.8 15.7 72.8 16.3 75.6 16.3 75.8 15.2 70.7 germany** 13.2 62.1 13.2 62.1 12.8 60.2 12.8 60.3 11.8 55.8 men denmark 11.0 60.4 11.0 60.4 11.3 62.0 11.3 62.0 10.7 58.6 spain 12.3 63.9 12.3 63.9 12.4 64.1 12.4 64.0 11.7 60.5 finland 8.8 47.8 8.8 47.8 9.2 49.7 9.1 49.6 8.5 46.0 france 10.1 51.7 10.1 51.7 10.2 52.0 10.1 51.6 9.9 50.7 netherlands 10.1 54.2 10.1 54.2 10.3 55.3 10.3 55.1 9.7 51.7 sweden 15.1 78.9 15.1 78.9 15.6 81.4 15.6 81.2 14.9 77.8 germany** 11.9 65.7 11.9 65.7 11.5 63.6 11.5 63.5 10.8 59.6 note: small differences between the offi cial eu hly indicator may occur since eurostat uses life tables that close at age 85+, while we recalculate the eurostat life tables to close at either 80+ or 74+ by summing the person-years lived at each age and then computing the life table following the conventional procedure of preston et al. (2001). † half the disability is the offi cial eu assumption for ages below 16 and more closely refl ects the offi cial eu statistics. however, we are using age-specifi c prevalence and eurostat life tables by single years of age, while the offi cial estimates are from 5-year age groups, so differences may occur for some countries. refer to the appendix for calculations using 5-year age groups and that match or have very little difference from the offi cial estimates. %hly=hly/le represents the proportion of life expectancy spent in a healthy state * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 133 ta b . 4 : h ea lt hy l ife y ea rs (h ly ) a t a g e 0 an d a b so lu te d if fe re n ce s ac ro ss d if fe re n t a ss um p tio n s, e xt ra p o la tio n an d sm o o th in g m et ho d s, b y se x, s el ec te d e u c o un tr ie s, 2 01 7 c o u n tr y a ss u m p ti o n s, s m o o th in g an d e xt ra p o la ti o n m et h o d s, h ly a t a g e 0 n o h al f t h e s p lin es p o ly n o m ia l g a m * a b s. d if f h ly d is ab ili ty d is ab ili ty † p en al ty (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) (5 ) (1 )(2 ) (1 )(3 ) (1 )(4 ) (1 )(5 ) (2 )(3 ) (2 )(4 ) (2 )(5 ) w o m en d en m ar k 60 .4 59 .8 59 .9 59 .9 57 .4 0. 6 0. 5 0. 6 3. 0 -0 .1 -0 .1 2. 4 s p ai n 70 .3 69 .8 70 .3 70 .3 68 .8 0. 5 0. 0 0. 0 1. 5 -0 .5 -0 .5 1. 0 fi n la n d 57 .8 56 .6 57 .5 57 .4 53 .4 1. 2 0. 3 0. 4 4. 4 -0 .9 -0 .8 3. 2 fr an ce 66 .7 66 .2 66 .3 66 .3 65 .6 0. 4 0. 4 0. 3 1. 1 -0 .1 -0 .1 0. 6 n et h er la n d s 58 .0 56 .9 57 .4 57 .4 55 .2 1. 1 0. 7 0. 6 2. 8 -0 .4 -0 .5 1. 7 s w ed en 72 .1 70 .5 71 .2 71 .3 70 .8 1. 6 1. 0 0. 8 1. 3 -0 .6 -0 .8 -0 .2 g er m an y** 68 .1 67 .5 67 .1 67 .1 66 .2 0. 6 1. 0 1. 0 1. 8 0. 4 0. 4 1. 2 m en d en m ar k 59 .7 59 .1 59 .3 59 .3 57 .2 0. 7 0. 4 0. 4 2. 5 -0 .2 -0 .2 1. 9 s p ai n 69 .3 68 .6 68 .8 68 .9 68 .6 0. 6 0. 5 0. 4 0. 7 -0 .1 -0 .2 0. 0 fi n la n d 59 .0 57 .8 58 .3 58 .3 57 .4 1. 2 0. 7 0. 7 1. 6 -0 .5 -0 .5 0. 4 fr an ce 63 .8 63 .5 63 .6 63 .6 62 .1 0. 3 0. 2 0. 2 1. 7 -0 .1 -0 .1 1. 4 n et h er la n d s 62 .1 61 .6 61 .9 61 .9 60 .6 0. 4 0. 1 0. 1 1. 5 -0 .3 -0 .3 1. 0 s w ed en 73 .1 72 .7 73 .1 73 .0 71 .0 0. 5 0. 0 0. 1 2. 1 -0 .4 -0 .4 1. 7 g er m an y** 66 .1 65 .7 65 .3 65 .3 64 .9 0. 4 0. 7 0. 7 1. 1 0. 3 0. 4 0. 7 n o te : s m al l d iff er en ce s b et w ee n th e o ffi ci al e u h ly in d ic at o r m ay o cc ur s in ce e ur o st at u se s lif e ta b le s th at c lo se a t ag e 85 + , w hi le w e re ca lc ul at e th e e ur o st at li fe t ab le s to c lo se a t ei th er 8 0+ o r 74 + b y su m m in g th e p er so nye ar s liv ed a t ea ch a ge a nd t he n co m p ut in g th e lif e ta b le f o llo w in g th e co nv en tio na l p ro ce d ur e o f p re st on e t al . ( 20 01 ). † h al f th e d is ab ili ty i s th e o ffi ci al e u a ss um p tio n fo r ag es b el o w 1 5 an d m o re c lo se ly r efl e ct s th e o ffi ci al e u s ta tis tic s. h o w ev er , w e ar e us in g ag esp ec ifi c p re va le nc e an d e ur o st at li fe ta b le s b y si ng le y ea rs o f a ge , w hi le th e o ffi ci al e st im at es a re fr o m 5 -y ea r ag e gr o up s, s o d iff er en ce s m ay o cc ur fo r so m e co un tr ie s. r ef er to th e a p p en d ix fo r ca lc ul at io ns u si ng 5 -y ea r ag e gr o up s an d th at m at ch o r ha ve v er y lit tle d iff er en ce fr o m th e o ffi ci al e st im at es . * fo r th e h ly e st im at es p er fo rm ed b y sm o o th in g an d e xt ra p o la tin g th e ag esp ec ifi c p re va le nc e us in g g a m , w e ex tr ap o la te d th e e ur o st at li fe ta b le s to ag e 10 0+ u si ng th e m ak eh am l aw o f m o rt al ity . ** f o r g er m an y, e xc ep tio na lly , th e cl o se o ut a ge w as 7 4+ in a ll va ri an ts e xc ep t g a m , w he n b o th t he a ge -s p ec ifi c p re va le nc e an d t he li fe t ab le s ar e ex tr ap o la te d to a ge 1 00 + . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns u si ng e u -s il c p re va le nc e d at a b as ed o n th e g a li in st ru m en t; e ur o st at • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg134 again, the overall differences between half the disability and gams are larger for women than for men, with the exception of france and sweden. when considering the offi cial assumption of half the disability (presented in columns (2)-(3), (2)-(4), (2)(5)), the differences invert signs for splines with penalty and polynomial fi t for some countries, meaning that the smoothed hly values are slightly higher than without smoothing, but the differences are very small. between the splines with penalty and polynomial fi t there is virtually no difference in the smoothed hly, so that the difference between these two smoothing methods and the offi cial assumption is very similar, with differences in the second or third decimal order (not shown as the values are all rounded to one decimal only). the difference for splines with penalty (columns (2)-(3)) is -0.9 and -0.6 years for finnish and swedish women respectively, while it is -0.8 for both swedish and finnish women for the polynomial (columns (2)-(4)). for all other countries, the differences between splines with penalty and polynomial are the same. comparing the offi cial assumption of half disability with gams (columns (2)-(5)), the signs are positive again with finnish women leading the greatest difference of 3.2 years, followed by german women with 2.4 years. for men, the magnitude of these differences is smaller than for women, but is also the highest across all approaches, with danish men experiencing a difference of 1.9 in hly at birth when comparing half the disability with gam (columns (2)-(5)), followed by swedish men (1.7 years). unsurprisingly, when considering hly at age 65, there are no differences between estimating hly with no disability and half the disability for any country and for any of the smoothing and extrapolation approaches, as shown in columns (1) and (2) of table 5. the assumptions of no disability and half the disability for ages below 16 do not affect hly estimates at age 65, so there is no difference between these two scenarios. as with the hly estimates at birth, there is almost no difference between splines with penalty and polynomial fi t across countries for both sexes, with differences appearing only in the second decimal. in addition, the differences between hly estimates at age 65 and at birth are smaller across all smoothing methods. the largest differences observed are between either no disability at birth and half the disability and gams extrapolated to age 100+ for both sexes in germany, with differences of 1.3 years for women and 1.1 for men (columns (1)-(5) and (2)-(5)). however, unlike for hly estimates at birth, the difference between the assumption half the disability and gams is not higher than for other smoothing methods. while for women in germany, denmark, spain and france this is true, for women in finland, netherlands and sweden the differences are actually higher between the assumption half the disability and polynomial or penalty fi ts (columns (2)-(3) and (2)-(4)), albeit in the negative direction (i.e., considering half the disability as the benchmark, hly estimated with the smoothing methods is higher than the assumption of half the disability). for men in denmark and finland, the magnitude of the difference between half the disability and gams and half the disability and penalty or polynomial at age 65 is the same, but in opposite directions (i.e., hly estimated by gam is higher, by the other methods it is lower than the assumption half the disability). the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 135 c o u n tr y a ss u m p ti o n s, s m o o th in g an d e xt ra p o la ti o n m et h o d s, h ly a t a g e 65 n o h al f t h e s p lin es p o ly n o m ia l g a m * a b s. d if f h ly d is ab ili ty d is ab ili ty † p en al ty (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) (5 ) (1 )(2 ) (1 )(3 ) (1 )(4 ) (1 )(5 ) (2 )(3 ) (2 )(4 ) (2 )(5 ) w o m en d en m ar k 12 .0 12 .0 11 .9 11 .9 11 .4 0. 0 0. 1 0. 1 0. 6 0. 1 0. 1 0. 6 s p ai n 12 .5 12 .5 12 .9 12 .9 11 .3 0. 0 -0 .5 -0 .4 1. 1 -0 .5 -0 .4 1. 1 fi n la n d 9. 5 9. 5 10 .3 10 .2 8. 8 0. 0 -0 .9 -0 .8 0. 7 -0 .9 -0 .8 0. 7 fr an ce 12 .2 12 .2 12 .3 12 .2 11 .8 0. 0 -0 .1 0. 0 0. 4 -0 .1 0. 0 0. 4 n et h er la n d s 9. 6 9. 6 10 .1 10 .0 9. 3 0. 0 -0 .4 -0 .4 0. 3 -0 .4 -0 .4 0. 3 s w ed en 15 .7 15 .7 16 .3 16 .3 15 .2 0. 0 -0 .6 -0 .7 0. 4 -0 .6 -0 .7 0. 4 g er m an y* * 13 .2 13 .2 12 .8 12 .8 11 .8 0. 0 0. 4 0. 4 1. 3 0. 4 0. 4 1. 3 m en d en m ar k 11 .0 11 .0 11 .3 11 .3 10 .7 0. 0 -0 .3 -0 .3 0. 3 -0 .3 -0 .3 0. 3 s p ai n 12 .3 12 .3 12 .4 12 .4 11 .7 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 7 0. 0 0. 0 0. 7 fi n la n d 8. 8 8. 8 9. 2 9. 1 8. 5 0. 0 -0 .4 -0 .3 0. 3 -0 .4 -0 .3 0. 3 fr an ce 10 .1 10 .1 10 .2 10 .1 9. 9 0. 0 -0 .1 0. 0 0. 2 -0 .1 0. 0 0. 2 n et h er la n d s 10 .1 10 .1 10 .3 10 .3 9. 7 0. 0 -0 .2 -0 .2 0. 5 -0 .2 -0 .2 0. 5 s w ed en 15 .1 15 .1 15 .6 15 .6 14 .9 0. 0 -0 .5 -0 .4 0. 2 -0 .5 -0 .4 0. 2 g er m an y* * 11 .9 11 .9 11 .5 11 .5 10 .8 0. 0 0. 4 0. 4 1. 1 0. 4 0. 4 1. 1 ta b . 5 : h ea lt hy l ife y ea rs (h ly ) a t a g e 65 a nd a b so lu te d if fe re n ce s ac ro ss d if fe re n t a ss um p tio n s, e xt ra p o la tio n an d sm o o th in g m et ho d s, b y se x, s el ec te d e u c o un tr ie s, 2 01 7 n o te : s m al l d iff er en ce s b et w ee n th e o ffi ci al e u h ly in d ic at o r m ay o cc ur s in ce e ur o st at u se s lif e ta b le s th at c lo se a t ag e 85 + , w hi le w e re ca lc ul at e th e e ur o st at li fe t ab le s to c lo se a t ei th er 8 0+ o r 74 + b y su m m in g th e p er so nye ar s liv ed a t ea ch a ge a nd t he n co m p ut in g th e lif e ta b le f o llo w in g th e co nv en tio na l p ro ce d ur e o f p re st on e t al . ( 20 01 ). † h al f th e d is ab ili ty i s th e o ffi ci al e u a ss um p tio n fo r ag es b el o w 1 5 an d m o re c lo se ly r efl e ct s th e o ffi ci al e u s ta tis tic s. h o w ev er , w e ar e us in g ag esp ec ifi c p re va le nc e an d e ur o st at li fe ta b le s b y si ng le y ea rs o f a ge , w hi le th e o ffi ci al e st im at es a re fr o m 5 -y ea r ag e gr o up s, s o d iff er en ce s m ay o cc ur fo r so m e co un tr ie s. r ef er to th e a p p en d ix fo r ca lc ul at io ns u si ng 5 -y ea r ag e gr o up s an d th at m at ch o r ha ve v er y lit tle d iff er en ce fr o m th e o ffi ci al e st im at es . * fo r th e h ly e st im at es p er fo rm ed b y sm o o th in g an d e xt ra p o la tin g th e ag esp ec ifi c p re va le nc e us in g g a m , w e ex tr ap o la te d th e e ur o st at li fe ta b le s to ag e 10 0+ u si ng th e m ak eh am l aw o f m o rt al ity . ** f o r g er m an y, e xc ep tio na lly , th e cl o se o ut a ge w as 7 4+ in a ll va ri an ts e xc ep t g a m , w he n b o th t he a ge -s p ec ifi c p re va le nc e an d t he li fe t ab le s ar e ex tr ap o la te d to a ge 1 00 + . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns u si ng e u -s il c p re va le nc e d at a b as ed o n th e g a li in st ru m en t; e ur o st at • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg136 in other words, if we consider the assumption of half the disability the benchmark for comparison, gams tend to underestimate hly at birth and at age 65 while penalty and polynomial tend to slightly overestimate hly for all countries. however, at age 65, the magnitude of these differences is smaller. the magnitude of these differences across hly estimates are in line with what was observed by visual inspection in figures 1-3, where, for example, the distribution of the observed prevalence by age for countries like spain is already relatively smoother than the profi les of denmark, finland and the netherlands, with seemingly shorter distances between the observed values and the smoothed curves. in any case, the differences are larger for hly at birth. indeed, the confi dence intervals for those estimates are also wider so they have more uncertainty than the estimates for hly at age 65, as shown in tables 6 and 7 (see tables a3 and a4 for all countries). tables 6 and 7 show how while the confi dence intervals for hly estimates at birth can be as high as 8 years within the selected countries (women in finland, 57.5 (95% ci 53.5-61.4) and men in denmark, 59.3 (95% ci 55.0-63.0, both splines penalty), the interval for hly estimates at age 65 does not exceed 2.6 years (women in finland, 10.3 (95% ci 9.1-11.6) splines penalty). the estimates with the wider confi dence intervals are splines with penalty while gams present lower uncertainty in the measures. irrespective of method and whether the prevalence was extrapolated or not, the estimates for hly at age 65 have lower uncertainty. as a means of comparatively assessing the performance across the methods, we estimated the root mean square error (rmse) as presented in table 8 (see table a7 for all countries). indeed, with the exception of denmark for both sexes and for finnish women where gams deviate more strongly from the other models, for most countries the performance of the models are similar, with gam presenting slightly higher scores. the higher the score, the poorer the performance of the method, relatively. nonetheless, other factors are important to account for in order to evaluate performance and which method is more appropriate. even though the smoothing splines present the lowest scores in most cases, this may in part be due to the extreme fl exibility, which can lead to overfi tting the data (as fig. 1 and 2 show for the case of finland). as shown in tables 6 and 7 they also yield the widest confi dence intervals and the most uncertainty when estimating hly at birth, suggesting that at least for some countries smoothing age specifi c prevalence with a very fl exible model yields overfi tted results. alternatively, splines with penalty and polynomial provide a similar result with an adjustment that is not as fl exible as smoothing splines, also shown in figures 1 and 3, and with lower uncertainty in the estimates. however, these methods are still sensitive to variations throughout the age structure, for example capturing the decreasing prevalence after age 75 in denmark, which is not guaranteed to be a real effect or simply a data artifact and upticks in older ages for france. in this case, polynomials may be best when there is not so much variance in the data, as their estimated hly values have lower uncertainty than the penalty. gams present the highest rmse scores and thus have the highest distance from the observed data, despite the differences being small for the majority of countries (with the exception of denmark and finnish women). it is unclear whether this is due to the fact that gams seem to be particularly affected the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 137 by the pattern below age 15. this effect is relatively smaller when the modelling is done by 5-year age groups, but not enough to eliminate this effect (see appendix, fig. a3-5 and tables a5-6). as previously shown, differences across methods varied for women and men depending on the smoothing method and country. for example, we showed that for some countries the difference between half the disability and gams is larger for tab. 6: healthy life years (hly) at birth with 95% confi dence intervals, by different smoothing methods, extrapolation and sex, selected eu countries, 2017, half-disability assumption smoothing and extrapolating methods, hly at age 0 country splines penalty polynomial gam* hly 95%ci hly 95%ci hly 95%ci women denmark 59.9 55.8 63.5 59.9 56.7 62.6 57.4 54.7 60.2 spain 70.3 68.4 72.1 70.3 68.8 71.8 68.8 67.3 70.3 finland 57.5 53.5 61.4 57.4 54.4 60.4 53.4 49.7 57.1 france 66.3 64.1 68.4 66.3 64.6 68.1 65.6 64.3 66.9 netherlands 57.4 54.3 60.4 57.4 54.9 59.9 55.2 53.1 57.3 sweden 71.2 67.6 74.7 71.3 68.6 73.9 70.8 68.5 73.1 germany** 67.1 65.2 68.9 67.1 65.6 68.5 66.2 64.8 67.7 men denmark 59.3 55.0 63.0 59.3 56.0 62.1 57.1 53.9 60.3 spain 68.8 66.9 70.7 68.9 67.4 70.4 68.5 67.6 69.5 finland 58.3 55.1 61.5 58.3 55.9 60.7 57.0 54.7 59.2 france 63.6 61.3 65.6 63.6 61.8 65.0 62.8 61.3 64.3 netherlands 61.9 59.2 64.3 61.9 59.9 63.7 60.4 58.9 61.9 sweden 73.1 70.5 75.5 73.0 71.0 74.8 70.9 68.0 73.7 germany** 65.3 63.5 67.1 65.3 63.8 66.7 64.8 63.5 66.2 note: small differences between the offi cial eu hly indicator may occur since eurostat uses life tables that close at age 85+, while we recalculate the eurostat life tables to close at either 80+ or 74+ by summing the person-years lived at each age and then computing the life table following the conventional procedure of preston et al. (2001). however, we are using age-specifi c prevalence and eurostat life tables by single years of age, while the offi cial estimates are from 5-year age groups, so differences may occur for some countries. refer to the appendix for calculations using 5-year age groups and that match or have very little difference from the offi cial estimates. * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg138 women than men. hence, in order to provide a clearer picture of these differences and whether existing sex gaps in hly estimates are affected by the smoothing methods, we used the estimates to calculate gender differences in hly across countries for all the methods used, as presented in figure 8. the absolute gender differences in hly estimates are higher at birth than at age 65 and more markedly so for some countries, like the netherlands and finland. as already shown in tables 4 tab. 7: healthy life years (hly) at age 65 with 95% confi dence intervals, by different smoothing methods, extrapolation and sex, selected eu countries, 2017, half-disability assumption smoothing and extrapolating methods, hly at age 65 country splines penalty polynomial gam* hly 95%ci hly 95%ci hly 95%ci women denmark 11.9 10.7 13.2 11.9 10.8 13.0 11.4 10.7 12.2 spain 12.9 12.3 13.6 12.9 12.3 13.4 11.3 10.7 12.0 finland 10.3 9.1 11.6 10.2 9.1 11.3 8.8 8.0 9.6 france 12.3 11.5 13.0 12.2 11.5 12.9 11.8 11.1 12.4 netherlands 10.1 9.1 11.0 10.0 9.2 10.9 9.3 8.7 9.9 sweden 16.3 15.2 17.3 16.3 15.4 17.2 15.2 14.4 16.0 germany** 12.8 12.1 13.4 12.8 12.2 13.4 11.8 11.2 12.5 men denmark 11.3 10.1 12.5 11.3 10.2 12.3 10.7 9.8 11.5 spain 12.4 11.8 12.9 12.4 11.9 12.9 11.7 11.2 12.2 finland 9.2 8.2 10.1 9.1 8.3 9.9 8.5 7.8 9.1 france 10.2 9.5 10.9 10.1 9.5 10.7 9.9 9.3 10.6 netherlands 10.3 9.6 11.1 10.3 9.7 11.0 9.7 9.1 10.2 sweden 15.6 14.9 16.4 15.6 14.9 16.2 14.9 14.1 15.8 germany** 11.5 10.9 12.1 11.5 11.0 12.0 10.8 10.2 11.4 note: small differences between the offi cial eu hly indicator may occur since eurostat uses life tables that close at age 85+, while we recalculate the eurostat life tables to close at either 80+ or 74+ by summing the person-years lived at each age and then computing the life table following the conventional procedure of preston et al. (2001). however, we are using age-specifi c prevalence and eurostat life tables by single years of age, while the offi cial estimates are from 5-year age groups, so differences may occur for some countries. refer to the appendix for calculations using 5-year age groups and that match or have very little difference from the offi cial estimates. * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument; eurostat the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 139 and 5, the hly at birth for women estimated using gam in finland is 3.2 years lower than the estimated value using the offi cial eu assumption of half the disability below age 15. for men, the difference is only of 0.4 years. thus, the higher gender gap of -4.01 shown in figure 8 for the gam is driven by the hly estimate for women (i.e., a higher gender gap driven by a larger underestimation of the gam compared to the benchmark of half the disability), while the hly estimates using the other methods are similar, varying from -1.25 (half disability) and -0.80 (penalty). in addition, the overall positive gender gap in spain has its sign reversed at age 65 when comparing the gender gap using gam versus the other methods for hly estimates. finally, we performed some additional exercises that are presented in the appendix (see section the role of mortality), as we found it intriguing that the differences between smoothed versus unsmoothed hly estimates seemed far smaller than what we expected when comparing the curves of observed versus smoothed persons-years lived without disability in figures 6 and 7. it appears that it does not matter very much whether the person-years lived, the li+ni function, when weighted by the age-specifi c prevalence, has a fl uctuating pattern or not, as the sullivan approach sums the persons-years lived across all ages and evens out the fl uctuating pattern of disability. in order to test to what extent the summing procedure from the sullivan method ends up capturing the mortality pattern of the li+ni function more than the health prevalence itself, we calculate hly with standardised mortality information, with country-specifi c prevalence data and the eu-28 average mortality tab. 8: root mean square error (rmse) by different smoothing methods, extrapolation and sex, selected eu countries, 2017, half-disability assumption country root mean square error (rmse) women men splines penalty polynomial gam* splines penalty polynomial gam* denmark 0.068 0.069 0.073 0.092 0.079 0.077 0.081 0.092 spain 0.028 0.029 0.031 0.038 0.029 0.032 0.036 0.039 finland 0.048 0.064 0.067 0.107 0.056 0.057 0.060 0.063 france 0.036 0.036 0.038 0.041 0.042 0.041 0.042 0.047 netherlands 0.049 0.051 0.057 0.069 0.046 0.046 0.050 0.055 sweden 0.051 0.057 0.059 0.063 0.047 0.045 0.047 0.061 germany** 0.026 0.028 0.030 0.032 0.031 0.031 0.033 0.036 note: smoothing methods evaluated with the exception of gam are until age 80+. * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument and smoothing methods; eurostat • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg140 information. consequently, differences in these standardised hly estimates stem solely from differences in country-specifi c prevalence data. in figure a8 we show how eu countries would rank from best to worst after controlling for differences in the country’s mortality level. among men, the country ranking is more affected by the mortality information, with changes of up to 8 ranks. this effect is less prominent for women in all countries. changing mortality never affects rankings for women more than 3 points. in part, this is due to the fact that there is a larger variation in mortality among men across eu countries than among women. however, that is not the full story. even if we replace the eu-28 standard with that of bulgaria for swedish women who rank high in terms of hly, their change in ranking would only be of 3 points below. this suggests that the hly indicator appears to refl ect mostly differences in gali prevalence among women, with mortality levels playing a less important role, while the opposite is true for men. 4 discussion the hly indicator is not only used by researchers to address topics related to health and mortality, but is also the cornerstone of many health goals and policies fig. 8: absolute differences in hly at birth and at age 65 between women and men, by different smoothing methods, selected eu countries, 2017 0 65 denmark finland france germany netherlands spain sweden denmark finland france germany netherlands spain sweden −4 −2 0 2 country ab so lu te d iff er en ce in h ly e st im at es (w om en −m en ) type gam half the disability no disability polynomial splines penalty note: smoothing methods evaluated with the exception of gam are until age 80+. * for the hly estimates performed by smoothing and extrapolating the age-specifi c prevalence using gam, we extrapolated the eurostat life tables to age 100+ using the makeham law of mortality. ** for germany, exceptionally, the closeout age was 74+ in all variants except gam, when both the age-specifi c prevalence and the life tables are extrapolated to age 100+. source: own calculations using eu-silc prevalence data based on the gali instrument and smoothing methods; eurostat the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 141 developed by the eu. hly has been used by different directorate generals (dg) for a variety of initiatives and policies such as social protection & social inclusion (hly at birth and age 65, by sex), european pillar of social rights on social scoreboard (hly at the age of 65, by sex), european innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing: target 2020 (hly at birth by sex) and the european sustainable development indicator (hly and life expectancy at birth, by sex), just to mention a few (leonardi 2010; lagiewka 2012; bogaert et al. 2018). it is also used in the united nations active ageing index (hly at the age of 65, by sex) and in over 15 countries in the eu region to set health targets and national plans as well as evaluate budget and pension policy issues (oortwijn et al. 2007; economic and financial affairs 2017). hence, it is an important indicator and thus a deep understanding of its potential, limitations and sensitivity is key. indeed, the hly indicator has been recognised as the most suitable indicator for cross-national comparisons, with the gali instrument being harmonised and developed to increase comparability across countries (van oyen et al. 2006, 2018; jagger et al. 2010; berger et al. 2015). nonetheless, the characteristics of the age-specifi c prevalence distribution are still rarely considered when employing the indicator and interpreting results, regardless of the fact that patterns of prevalence often fl uctuate considerably by age, especially when using single ages. in addition, the impact of assumptions used at very young ages on hly estimates are seldom discussed, despite the fact that data on health is only collected after age 15 and the majority of policies and initiatives at the eu level use hly at birth. a common strategy to deal with the erratic behaviour of age-specifi c prevalence has often been to aggregate data into 5-year age groups and combine it with abridged life tables in order to estimate hly (eurostat 2020). research has also been directed to account for uncertainty in hly measures caused by survey characteristics (murray et al. 1993; jagger et al. 2014) and developing confi dence limits for hly estimates that do not require the assumption of a constant proportion of unhealthy individuals in an age interval (andreev/shkolnikov 2010). in our exploratory analysis, we focus on the age-specifi c prevalence behaviour and instead of grouping data into 5-year age groups we test whether there is any effect on hly estimates of smoothing and extrapolating the prevalence of disability by age by different methods, country, sex and assumptions below age 15. overall, absolute differences across methods are not very substantial and smoothing performance is also similar, as supported by the rmse scores. however, the analyses indicate caution when handling age-specifi c prevalence, particularly when considering the assumptions below age 15, with differences across methods being in general larger for estimates of hly at birth and larger for women than men in the majority of countries. when using the offi cial eu assumption of half the disability as a benchmark for comparison across the three main smoothing and extrapolation variants tested (penalty, polynomial and gams), the difference between methods compared to the benchmark was larger for hly at birth than at age 65 and usually higher for women than for men, with penalty and polynomial smoothing yielding similar results. the gams extrapolated to ages 100+ provided slightly lower values of hly at age 65 when compared to half the disability benchmark, but differences • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg142 between gams and half the disability for age 65 were small. however, differences between gams and half the disability for hly estimates at birth were sometimes as high as 3 years (see women in finland). in addition, the assumption of no disability before age 15 had the highest impact on hly at birth, mainly because it directly impacts the younger ages with higher values of person-years lived. even though the offi cial eu indicator does not assume no disability before age 15, comparing estimates with this scenario helps to demonstrate the magnitude of the impact of assumptions at younger ages. as expected, these assumptions have no impact on the hly estimates at age 65. this indicates that assumptions made at young ages are important and that the strategies used to deal with this age group merits attention. likewise, the fact that assumptions affect women and men differently may suggest that different parameters by gender are important when the aim is to design gender-specifi c policies. this is relevant as most eu policies use hly at birth and by sex for developing and monitoring health policies, like the target by the european innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing (eip-aha), which was set in 2011 with the aim of increasing healthy life years at birth by 2 years by 2020 (jagger et al. 2008; nusselder et al. 2010; lagiewka 2012; van oyen et al. 2013; luy/minagawa 2014; unece/european commission 2015). furthermore, the fact that even after extrapolating to ages 100+ and applying different smoothing methods did not impact hly estimates at age 65 indicates that at this age the indicator is less sensitive to age patterns of prevalence than at birth. hence, the generalised additive model (gam) approach may be a promising tool to model and harmonise age-specifi c profi les of disability for cases where there is limited or erratic information for older ages or where there is a break in the time series with changes in the coverage across ages like the case of germany. however, it is important to note that the level of uncertainty with the extrapolation can be higher with gams depending from which age the extrapolation occurs. one alternative could be to extrapolate only 5 or 10 years in order to harmonise the data and have a more robust comparison across countries. this would be an interesting avenue for further investigation, as while there is a wide array of demographic and statistics methods available to interpolate, graduate and smooth mortality data both at young and older ages, strategies for dealing with age-specifi c prevalence are still limited in health research, often relying on multistate methods (van der gaag et al. 2015). in part, this is due to the fact that contrary to mortality, health prevalence by age may not increase monotonically, as recovery from certain conditions is possible. in addition, health is a stock variable sensitive to past experience (barendregt et al. 1997; brouard/robine 1992; murray et al. 2002) and with a complex interaction between health and mortality, making it diffi cult to accurately model age-specifi c health prevalence (riffe et al. 2016, 2017). in this regard, it has been shown that some relational models provide a good fi t for modelling some types of disabilities by age (marshall et al. 2013), while alternative summary measures that incorporate the mortality history of cohorts and therefore combine health and mortality information have also been proposed (sauerberg et al. 2020). however, these methods are more important to capture the relationship between age-specifi c prevalence of the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator • 143 disability and various disability types rather than to harmonise and extrapolate prevalence at older ages. in addition, since the eu-silc does not include individuals living in institutions, the prevalence of being unhealthy at older ages is likely to be systematically biased downwards. since health data for the institutionalised population at a european level is not easy to obtain, extrapolating prevalence data to higher ages might be one alternative to account for this issue in the lack of more reliable information. 5 conclusions and recommendations the standard practice of combining age-specifi c prevalence proportions with person-years lived without proper attention to the distribution profi le of the former may affect the estimation of hly. although the overall differences seem to be small, oftentimes they are not trivial and vary by smoothing method, country, sex and age. this suggests that it is important to be more cautious with the age distribution of health prevalence prior to combining it with mortality data, especially when the indicator of interest is estimated at birth. we have shown in what ways and in which direction hly is sensitive to some assumptions at younger ages and the age-specifi c prevalence. however, further research is needed to understand what the optimal strategy would be to deal with the age-specifi c prevalence and this will more likely depend on the data available and the purpose in using the indicator. according to the results of the sensitivity analyses presented in this paper, we suggest a routine practice as regards estimating the hly, as summarised in the fl owchart in figure 9 below. first, as the main sensitivity in the results refers to hly at birth, it is important to consider whether hly is to be estimated at birth or age 65. second, plot the age-specifi c disability prevalence and evaluate its pattern, as well as whether aggregating into 5-year age groups already smooths the pattern. gams adjust well at ages 65 and older and their impact on hly is very small, but they can impact hly at birth. in this case, either just estimating hly based on the usual aggregation by 5-year age groups or smoothing by a polynomial fi t can be best. most importantly, always test age profi les for women and men separately, as well as country-specifi c patterns. the most important recommendation is to consider the purpose of the indicator carefully beforehand and to assess its pattern by age before combining it with the person-years lived by age. it is noteworthy to mention that this recommendation is based on very fl exible smoothing methods that we chose since they do not require any assumptions about the pattern of prevalence by age. however, future research is needed to develop techniques that employ a more robust treatment of those profi les and test whether standard demographic procedures used for adjusting age-specifi c distributions are equally suitable for health. • vanessa di lego, markus sauerberg144 acknowledgements we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who contributed to improving the fi rst version of this paper. this project received funding from the european research council under the eu’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 725187 (lethe). this paper is based on data from eurostat, european union statistics on income and living conditions european health interview survey (eu-silc), cross-sectional 2017, version release 2 in 2020. references andreev, evgeny m.; 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2,100023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100023 wood, simon n. 2006: generalized additive models: an introduction with r. 391. wood, simon n. 2017: generalized additive models: an introduction with r, second edition. new york: imprint chapman and hall/crc. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315370279 yokota, renata t. c. et al 2019: contribution of chronic conditions to gender disparities in health expectancies in belgium, 2001, 2004 and 2008. in: european journal of public health 29,1: 82-87. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cky105 date of submission: 23.01.2022 date of acceptance: 05.01.2023 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-012-0361-1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13690-018-0270-8 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100023 https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315370279 https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cky105 mailto:vanessa.dilego@oeaw.ac.at https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/vanessa-di-lego mailto:markus.sauerberg@bib.bund.de https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/sauerberg/sauerberg.html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de editorial on the special issue “geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives” editorial on the special issue “geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives” birgit leick, birgit glorius 1 introduction to the special issue demographic challenges and their various effects on european countries and regions have long been debated among policymakers, practitioners and scholars (see, for example, bloom/canning 2008; börsch-supan 2008, 2013; steinführer/ haase 2007; ferry/vironen 2011; kröhnert et al. 2011; swiaczny 2010). despite a broad body of mainly empirical literature which exists both in research and practice of the social sciences and population studies, far less attention has been paid to the conceptual approaches underlying these debates. notably, our observations show that the conceptual underpinnings and narrative elements associated with common terms such as “demographic change” or “demographic decline” are typically not touched upon in mainstream debates. consequently, this special issue of “comparative population studies” is motivated by the idea of framing a broader understanding of these phenomena by critically refl ecting the all too often taken-for-granted views, theories and concepts that are used for studying demographic change, as well as their implications from a multi-scalar, multi-actor and multidisciplinary perspective. taking the normative dimension of discourses on demographic change into account, this issue particularly intends to move beyond positivist theorising or practical perspectives by focusing on the socio-temporal and socio-spatial contexts of demographic processes and challenges, i.e., the “geographies of demographic change”. by “geographies of demographic change”, we mean different and contextspecifi c confi gurations of regional demographic change. in this issue, they will be approached from a european perspective. such contexts include, for example, urban versus rural areas, or federally organised states in germany versus centrally organised countries in northern europe. the scope of the present special issue also addresses social change that accompanies demographic processes, including marginalisation and peripheralisation as two conceptual approaches. the contributions gathered in this special issue, including this editorial, thus intend to stimulate an interdisciplinary discourse on demographic change, focusing on different socio-temporal and socio-spatial contexts for demographic change. altogether, these papers highlight the need to pay specifi c attention to the disciplinary origins and variety of the main terms used to denote demographic change and its comparative population studies vol. 41, 3-4 (2016): 207-224 (date of release: 29.05.2017) federal institute for population research 2017 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2017-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2017-05en5 • birgit leick, birgit glorius208 effect. they also stress the sometimes confl ictual and normative character of the connotations connected to the different debates. to do so, the dominating scholarly approaches and the prevailing paradigms underlying these approaches are critically examined by discussing their openness towards, and refl ections of, the variety and idiosyncrasies of different socio-spatial and socio-economic confi gurations. it is our aim to enhance the existing scholarly knowledge on the narratives, discourses and conceptualisations of demographic change and related phenomena, and elaborate how public debates are both intertwined with, and refl ected in, specifi c policies and governance mechanisms. this will be achieved by bringing together academic expertise from different disciplines and fi elds such as economic geography, social and cultural geography, sociology, and political science. looking at one of the most controversially discussed topics of the past years, the european migration crisis (which unfolded at the time the fi eld work for the articles in this special issue was carried out), the need for putting greater effort into contextualising demographic processes becomes strikingly visible. in the public debate, one can detect the transformative power of the demographic discourses associated with this crisis. some of the urgent questions arising in the context of these immigration fl ows, for example housing and education, labour market participation, etc. within germany, are completely separated from other discourses, which are linked to migration or demographic challenges as well. for instance, the issue of sustainable development perspectives for peripheralised regions, the quantitative and qualitative development of the labour force for ageing populations, or the effects of european integration and migration policies on the mobility of qualifi ed migrants in europe are some of the questions that are being left unexamined. instead, the main discourse on the recent migration challenges in the eu focuses on the humanitarian aspects, which is easily understandable given the shock-like, sudden infl ux of over one million people into countries such as germany. demographic processes such as contemporary external migration movements also challenge the ongoing discourses about demographic change. in the light of recent migration, issues of social and cultural change, the general adaptability of the social system towards a fastchanging composition of society and context-sensitivity clearly gain importance. this editorial fi rst maps the main debates on demographic challenges from a european perspective, and then critically analyses the mainstream paradigms underlying these contemporary debates. this is followed by a brief survey of conceptual approaches that might be helpful when it comes to conceptualising demographic change (for instance: agency, context, self-refl exivity and normative power). it is argued that such alternative views on demographic processes are fruitful to amend the existing explanations and to better understand how demographic change shapes specifi c socio-spatial and socio-temporal settings. the editorial fi nally introduces the articles included in this special issue which discuss these alternative conceptual elements such as peripheralisation (leibert/golinski 2017), globalisation peripheries (matuschewski et al. 2017), and resource peripheries (carson et al. 2016). the articles also propose discursive or narrative approaches in order to improve our understanding of demographic change, either as narratives and representations in speech that produce and reproduce problems and stigmata associated with geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives • 209 demographic change (meyer et al. 2016; bartl/sackmann 2016), or as discourses which instead refl ect the entrepreneurial opportunities linked to demographic challenges (christmann 2017). most contributions contain empirical cases that focus on rural-peripheral eastern germany, where population ageing and decline, coupled with youth emigration, have long since weakened socio-economic development perspectives. analysing the dynamics of population decline, peripheralisation processes and concomitant discourses in eastern germany may lead to an enhanced understanding and may function as representative example for demographic developments to come – also in other parts of europe. the respective case studies are thus relevant for a reassessment of demographic discourses in a european perspective. another case is sweden’s north, where low population density complicates local development in the nordic periphery (carson et al. 2016). 2 the geographies of demographic change: what is achieved? 2.1 mapping the debates the demographic development of european societies has long been debated among policymakers, practitioners and scholars alike. population decline, population ageing, youth migration and, to a lesser extent, the movement of elderly people are all central themes that have been addressed from different perspectives. this has resulted in a body of literature that seeks to formulate solutions to urgent practical problems which are associated with these demographic challenges. from a regional development perspective, both the conceptual approaches and the practice of policymaking have been oscillating around the pivotal question of how the competitiveness of regions, industries and companies, and the provision of basic services (education, health service, public transport, and retail trade) can be sustained in socio-spatial contexts that are burdened by persistent outmigration, rapid population ageing and quantitative population decline as the three inter-related dimensions of the contemporary demographic challenges. all of these processes interactively result in various complex, and partly unpredictable, challenges at different spatial scales, involving private industries and companies, state-governed organisations and civil society. the changing population size and structure might even endanger the long-term economic viability of some types of regions, such as remote rural regions and peripheral places where infrastructures will never keep pace with urbanised agglomerations that tend to benefi t from migration. in addition, such demographic processes will ultimately modify the conditions for local policymaking and planning because policies that might have been adequate for periods of population (and economic) growth must be renewed in response to changing settings in terms of population decline and ageing. despite a broad strand of mainly empirical and applied research, several questions with respect to these observations are, to date, still largely under-explored. first, although various theories and concepts implicitly address demography and population change, the explanatory power of demographic change as a conceptual • birgit leick, birgit glorius210 perspective for describing and understanding the recent transformation of societies, economies and regions is still an unresolved issue. second, many of the approaches that explicitly model demographic key indicators (for instance, economic models) do not specifi cally refl ect upon the way in which demographic challenges are narrated and dealt with, or how such a conceptual engagement can contribute to a broader perspective on demographic change. exceptions include van de kaa (1996) who summarises the state-of-the-art knowledge on fertility in population studies from a narrative perspective. against the backdrop of the multi-layered challenges and opportunities attached to phenomena such as population ageing, population shrinking, migration, etc., our knowledge is limited with respect to how and to what extent academic debates that challenge mainstream paradigms of (economic) growth and go beyond practical problem-analysis or problem-solving can enrich the contemporary debate across various disciplines. 2.2 similar concepts, different foci the study of demographic processes and challenges from a european perspective is marked by a co-existence of various disciplinary approaches in the wider fi eld of the social sciences (such as economics, business administration, human and applied geography, political science, demography studies, and sociology) and beyond (population statistics, policy development), which all address similar phenomena, but have different foci. depending on the disciplinary origins, there is no all-embracing defi nition upon which the geographies of demographic change might be based. moreover, the terminology used to denote demographic processes is, to a large extent, rooted in both past and ongoing public discussions, policy and academic debates, and media articles, which, in turn, have moulded not only the debate but also the terms used. this interaction, in turn, has resulted in a bundle of partly overlapping or contradictory terms and defi nitions used to refer to demographic challenges, but without making the origins of the terms and/or related debates explicit. it is therefore worthwhile to describe the core of some of the most prominent terms in order to reveal their specifi c meanings and connotations, but also their “blind spots”, which are left open, particularly from a cross-disciplinary perspective. “demographic change” is the most prominent term, which is often used to describe different and related changes in fertility and mortality or lifestyles, and the resulting phenomena such as population ageing and decline. migration is another factor that affects these key indicators, not only in quantitative terms but also with regard to the structure and heterogeneity of a population. the fi eld of policy development in particular uses the term “demographic change” to describe processes of population shrinking and ageing. this, however, only refl ects a partial understanding of the demographic developments and challenges in the past and nowadays, neglecting growing intra-societal differentiation and heterogeneity due to inward or outward migration patterns or singularisation. “demographic decline” or alternatively “population decline” mainly refer to the long-term trend of a decreasing population, which is caused by changing mortality, fertility, or migration patterns, and their interaction. these terms are frequently geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives • 211 used both in scientifi c and public debates on demographic processes. referring to “decline” clearly adds a normative component to what is understood by them, as it is associated with the negative character of these processes. by contrast, the term “demographic transition” describes the causes and effects of the transformation of societies, originating from dropping fertility and mortality rates, a process that is associated with changing regimes of production and consumption throughout history. these processes accompanied the so-called “fi rst demographic transition” from an agrarian to an industrialised society (coale 1975; thompson 1929). the “second demographic transition” occured when modern societies changed to post-modern societies (see lesthaeghe 1995; van de kaa 1994, 2001), with this transition process being of primary importance for the phenomena addressed in this special issue. the fourth term, “population change”, captures the statistical side of these three main defi nitions used in most debates in the social sciences and beyond. “population change” in a statistical sense is the mere description and interpretation of fertility, mortality, and migration indicators. the term is neutral as it describes population development in general, but its usage in the public debate often overlaps with the term “demographic change”, which makes it diffi cult to separate the two related notions clearly, particularly from an applied perspective on demographic phenomena and challenges. consequently, debating such demographic challenges based upon various and partly overlapping or even confl icting defi nitions, terms and meanings risks producing and reproducing isolated knowledge that lacks inter-connectedness. thus, it becomes diffi cult to identify the connections between the different research approaches and traditions and the sources of synergies for establishing multidisciplinary conceptions of similar topics. the parallel, yet unconnected use of these notions and terms hinders some of the necessary clarity about the core phenomena that are dealt with, which certainly limits the potential of cross-fertilisation between scholarship, public policy management and planning practice and thus prevents knowledge expansion through a change in perspective. the boundaries between the thematic cores of the most important disciplines and research traditions in the social sciences and population studies, which deal with demographic processes and challenges from a european perspective, are equally blurred. in economics, the academic debate predominantly focuses on theories of economic growth and specifi c economic sectors in which demography infl uences economic outcomes (or vice versa), for instance, educational and health systems, or the age-retirement provisions of economies (börsch-supan et al. 2015; kuhn et al. 2014). the economic debate has converged around two different topics: population growth in terms of over-population and its economic consequences in developing nations in a malthusian tradition (birdsall et al. 2001; bloom et al. 2003) versus population decline or ageing and migration, and how it affects the competitiveness of industrialised economies (kelley/schmidt 2005; oliveira martins et al. 2005; poot 2008). while the fi rst issue received more attention in the past, the latter stream of research has gained popularity in recent years (bloom et al. 2010). from an eco• birgit leick, birgit glorius212 nomic perspective, demographic change is modelled as an exogenous factor that affects the demand of private households and labour markets (franz 2004; lührmann 2005) and implies changes in private markets as well as in the provision of public goods and services (general welfare, health and education), as highlighted by börsch-supan et al. (2015), kuhn et al. (2014), bengtsson/scott (2011), meier/werding (2010) or misoulis (2008). other contributions discuss its long-term impact on human capital and skills (poot 2008; see, also, green 2003; brown/danson 2003). some of the literature specifi cally investigates how population decline and ageing infl uence entrepreneurial activities and innovation (bönte et al. 2007; harhoff 2008). by contrast, business researchers have approached demographic change from a “hands on” perspective to address different issues with practical relevance for business leaders and researchers (see, for instance, pompe 2012; reidl 2007). the purchasing power of elderly consumers and the market opportunities for business organisations with the so-called “silver agers” (kohlbacher et al. 2014; kohlbacher/ herstatt 2008; kunisch et al. 2011; suprinovic/kay 2009), the new requirements of human resources policies within business organisations and public administration (streb et al. 2008; thun et al. 2007; verworn et al. 2009), and the management and leadership topics for ageing societies (tulik 2014; kuebler et al. 2009) are some of the relevant debates. in the fi eld of regional science and human geography, studying the effects of demographic change on specifi c segments of local economies (retail trade and real estate markets) or on the provision of public goods and services (maretzke 2014; leick 2013; matuschewski/leick 2012; neu 2009; sackmann et al. 2008) are the most important issues addressed. with respect to context, this research explores demographic change for rural regions (bmvbs/bbsr 2009), urban settlements (martinez-fernandez et al. 2012; nuissl/rink 2005) or regions affected by economicpolitical transformation (kurek 2011; steinführer/haase 2007). this strand of mostly empirical literature, however, lacks a critical refl ection of the underlying conceptual understanding of demographic change (exceptions include steinführer et al. [2014] and leibert/golinski [2017] in this special issue). local development is thus reduced or “essentialised” in terms of demography without suffi ciently incorporating the complexity of demographic processes, and research results are translated into policy recommendations, implicitly hypothesising that demographic processes are irreversible (see, for example, arl 2016; gans et al. 2006). this approach to policymaking and regional planning, however, has become more contested recently, owing to its essentialist view on regional or social problems, which are all too often perceived as a result of demographic change. barlösius/neu (2007) criticise this as the “demographisation of society” (see, also, leibert/ golinski 2017 in this issue). as a matter of fact, interpreting cultural, economic or social phenomena as the sole outcome of demographic processes such as population ageing and decline hides the fact that regional development paths and local options for taking action are, to a large extent, place-specifi c, individual, and path-dependent, and should thus be seen in context. regional development studies that take on a historical perspective and discuss the spatial and temporal contingencies of localregional processes are rare, yet stress the need for contextualised understandings geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives • 213 of the external factors infl uencing local development (see, for example, hassink 2005 who contextualises historical industrial cycles and changing local economies). demography studies and sociology focus on demographic key indicators such as fertility and mortality trends to describe and contextualise the inter-relationship of social change and population developments (barbi et al. 2008; baudisch 2008; klüsener/goldstein 2016). this research tradition actively contributes to the building of a theory in line with general modernisation or social-demographic transition theories by considering and explaining the changing fertility behaviour of societies (kirk 1996; sobotka et al. 2011). however, heterogenisation or diversity as another important facet of demographic change is rarely addressed and, if so, often reduced to the issue of individualisation and how it affects fertility (ehrhardt/kohli 2011). migration and its effects on societal development are typically handled within an isolated framework of migration and integration. for example, fertility patterns of immigrant women (andersson 2004) or immigrant ageing and the provision of social care (cangiano 2014) are studied without being connected to the broader context of demographic change. vice versa, the existing literature on demographic change quite often lacks sensitivity towards place, space and time as important contextual factors for understanding the processes of demographic change. in the political sciences, demographic change is addressed in a twofold way. political economists approach the economic consequences of population changes from a systemic perspective, for example by discussing and analysing their infl uence on housing markets (malmberg 2012). the recently emerging fi eld of political demography addresses political change as a consequence of population dynamics (goldstone et al. 2012; sánchez-gassen 2013). what both research strands have in common is that they focus on the political effects of demographic change using demographic data and concepts in an essentialist manner. in a similar vein, the practical side of policy advice concerning demographic change and related phenomena within societies (such as decline and ageing of the population) also relies on mainstream concepts about demographic processes and challenges without critically questioning the underlying paradigms (wilkoszewski 2006). 3 conceptualising the geographies of demographic change: problems and missing links in light of these observations, this special issue collects contributions that establish a broader understanding of the “geographies of demographic change” and aims to pay more and closer attention to conceptualising the socio-spatial and sociotemporal confi gurations. from the authors’ point of view, it is important to do so because these confi gurations are produced by the patterns of demographic developments on multiple scales, but are also reproduced in the debates and policy responses addressing these developments. thus, this collection of articles intends to pick up the loose ends which have been left unexamined by various sub-disciplines and to elaborate upon the cross-disciplinary interfaces. moreover, it seems necessary to add new elements to the research agenda, which reveal how demographic • birgit leick, birgit glorius214 discourses are constructed at the level of society, the economy and the region, how narratives about demographic change are built, communicated and legitimated, and why discourses are held in specifi c ways. 3.1 unresolved issues and conceptual problems most debates about demographic change in research and practice are based upon a practical approach, using empirical data, statistical indicators, fi eld observations, and case studies to derive policy recommendations. indeed, the bulk of the scholarly knowledge that has been generated focuses on quantitative problem analysis, pilot projects or “best practice” templates for policymaking. this positivist approach to the “geographies of demographic change” hides the discursive power associated with its interpretation of “change” in terms of “decline”, at least from a european perspective, and may therefore disguise alternative concepts which are more context-sensitive and take on a neutral position against analysis and appraisal of these phenomena. in addition, many theories and approaches rely on dominant paradigms such as “economic growth” and “economic competitiveness”, which, however, fail to provide appropriate explanations of the greater challenges of demographic change (see matuschewski et al. 2017 in this issue). in this respect, a general problem with most economic approaches (exceptions include endogenous growth theories, see aghion/howitt 1998) is that demographic change is often considered as an exogenous factor which infl uences economic growth prospects or quantitative economic development on various scales. however, the inherent complexity of phenomena such as population ageing, population decline or demographic heterogeneity (as measured by [net] migration fl ows and differences in fertility behaviour over time) makes it diffi cult to predict their effects on regional growth and competitiveness (poot 2008). alternative ideas about the interfaces between economy and demography are still at an early stage; for example, quality of life, well-being or minimum standards for the provision of public goods and services are discussed as points of reference for conceptualising this link. in geographical and regional research, this paradigm partially overlaps with other, more context-specifi c discourses about conditions of rurality or peripherality (danson/de souza 2012), urbanisation (garcía docampo 2014; storper/manville 2006), centralisation and decentralisation (besley/ coate 2003), and the system transformation of economies (such as the post-socialist transformation, see grabher/stark 1997; stark/bruszt 1998). hence, theoretical approaches to describe the geographies of demographic change need to refer to both different and to related debates, but implicitly hypothesise that socio-spatial entities and economies are supposed to follow a somewhat pre-determined economic growth path. consequently, the assumption of economic growth in terms of increases or stability in income and employment over time remains unchallenged, cutting across most demographic discourses as a normative paradigm and conceptualising demographic change as a problematic context for long-term economic growth prospects. indeed, this stance fails to capture the complexity of its systemic character. altergeographies of demographic change: theories and narratives • 215 native topics emerging in the recent discussions on the systemic transformations of economies and societies are associated with a sustainability approach (hansen/ coenen 2015; schulz 2014) and endogenous, network-based local development (amin 1999; huggins/thomson 2014). from a normative, public policy perspective, integrating these new research topics is still in its infancy. more generally, this special issue attempts to discuss the dominant normative paradigms underlying these debates critically, taking into account the overlapping topics and challenges. 3.2 missing elements and alternative conceptualisations against this background, this editorial argues that the wider fi eld of the social sciences lacks a broad academic discussion that considers the narratives and discourses that are built in practice, policymaking and research to refer to the changes that lie ahead for societies, economies and regions. thus, the conceptual work resulting from scholarly engagement with the phenomenon of demographic change remains somewhat fragmented. the present special issue thus offers some building blocks which may complement the prevailing understanding of these phenomena because they pay specifi c attention to the conceptual and narrative perspectives underlying the “geographies of demographic change”. regarding conceptualisation, the following questions are asked: • which conceptual approaches describing demographic change and its effects on societies and economies are used in what fi elds or disciplines within the social sciences? • how are these concepts connected with the way that demographic change is represented in contemporary debates? • how and to what extent is the systemic character of demographic change considered or stressed? • what might be the potential gains of such theoretical explanations? how can (so far) underrepresented conceptual ideas about demographic change enrich the existing academic, public and political discussion in a european context? the special issue also discusses discourses and narratives associated with demographic change such as the following issues: • which narratives describe the geographies of demographic change? • why is demographic change predominantly negatively connoted in the european context, for instance, with “decline”, “withdrawal” or “adaptation”, instead of more positively connoted terms such as “renewal” or “resilience”? • what do alternative – and perhaps more optimistic – interpretations of demographic change (for instance, demographic resilience) look like? • what impact does the one-sidedness of negative connotations associated with demographic change produce in the public and scholarly discourse have? • birgit leick, birgit glorius216 the special issue refl ects upon the role of agency, claiming that it is necessary to describe and analyse in greater depth the role that individual actors involved at different levels (civil society, private enterprises and industry, the state and its representatives, such as governments or municipalities, etc.) play in the process of socio-spatial change caused by or accompanying demographic processes. such actors can be important facilitators of endogenous development due to their resource endowments (human capital, knowledge, and skills) or because they can act as gatekeepers between different communities and contextual settings. however, individual agency may also reproduce existing narratives about demographic change, such as the growth paradigm. this might be the case when ignorance on the part of key actors towards complex future changes and adherence to past ways of handling processes of change persist even if and when change becomes visible. from a social psychology perspective, such behaviour can be interpreted as an irrational reaction to crisis (folkman/lazarus 1990; furnham 2005). notwithstanding this, the contradictions in the actions and behaviour of such agents have not been fully acknowledged as an important element to describe the “geographies of demographic change”. therefore, an agency-centric perspective is important to better understand demographic processes on different levels. from a policy perspective, policymakers should pay particular attention to the different, and often paradoxical, roles of agents who steer, accompany and communicate demographic change processes. to avoid such fallacies, context and self-refl exivity are crucial lenses through which to observe demographic change from a multi-level, multi-actor and multiscalar perspective as a context-specifi c phenomenon. this makes it necessary to refl ect upon the paradigms underlying existing descriptions and explanations. such paradigms include the concept of economic growth and the recent post-growth debates (ferguson 2015; schulz 2014), the rural-urban divide (hoggart 1990), and the dominating rationalist, engineering-based planning approaches (albrechts 2004: 745). most importantly, criticism of these paradigms should include the extent to which they address the systemic character of demographic change. at the local level, the specifi c conditions associated with demographic change may overlap with problems caused by rural or peripheral contexts, thereby reinforcing negative prospects for sustainable local development. consequently, regions and actors embedded in such regions are “locked in” (hassink 2010), and new approaches to local problem-solving are needed to move ahead in such cases. normative power also plays an important role for conceptualising demographic change. in fact, policymaking generally seems to ignore the dynamics of demographic change whilst keeping a focus on growth strategies through job creation and the assignment of new housing or production sites. with some exceptions, most policies addressing demographic change are reactive, rather than proactively working with specifi c constellations such as a certain population size or structure. for the case of germany, strategies to counteract or mitigate demographic change at the local level tend to neglect or even overlook the necessity of contextand place-specifi c governance schemes which could strengthen local resources (including networks and social capital) and enlarge the scope of core actors (such as civil geographies of demographic change: theories and narratives • 217 society, private companies, ageing residents, etc.). even though there have been numerous model projects on the national and the european levels on how to cope with demographic change, many municipalities widely neglect the effects of demographic changes and pursue a strategy of “muddling through”, rather than actively implementing middleand long-term multilevel governance strategies of adaptation (see, for instance, jonda 2012; könig 2014). 4 what lies ahead? towards establishing a conceptual understanding of the “geographies of demographic change” the papers in this special issue aim to establish a broader understanding of what we call the “geographies of demographic change”. matuschewski et al.matuschewski et al. (2017) start this discussion by criticising the growth-oriented regional development theories and policies which are most typically referred to in the social sciences and economics. in their paper, the authors search for alternative conceptual frameworks to describe regional development theories for regions affected by demographic change, frameworks which go beyond the growth paradigm. to this aim, matuschewski et al. (2017) use scholz’ (2007) idea of “globalisation peripheries” for a better understanding of the demographic-economic vicious circle of many particularly ruralperipheral contexts. “globalisation peripheries” allude to the interconnectedness of demographic and economic processes, which they consider to be a neglected facet in the conceptual approaches used for describing demographic change. the east german region of altenburger land serves as a case in which this overlap of demographic and economic factors does not comply with a growth-based regional development trajectory. in a similar vein, the prevalent regional planning approaches for rural-peripheral places can be criticised because of the lack of refl ection on their conceptual underpinnings. all too often, socio-cultural processes are simply equated with demographic change. for instance, selective outmigration is often called the “demographisation” of local development of rural-peripheral regions. in their paper, leibert and golinski (2017) introduce “peripheralisation” as an alternative, and more sophisticated, perspective on regional development, which better contextualises the multi-layered problems and challenges for rural-peripheral, demographically changing regions. according to the authors, peripheralisation is a missing link that helps connect the overlapping discourses on demographic change, rurality and peripherality. leibert and golinski (2017) also conclude that peripheralisation is a useful point of departure for planning approaches to overcome defi cits and fl aws in the 1 see, for example, the demographic strategy of the german federal government (https:// www.bundesregierung.de/webs/breg/de/themen/demografi estrategie/_node.html), the programme focus “health, demographic change and wellbeing” within the eu framework programme for research and innovation horizon 2020 (http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/health-demographic-change-and-wellbeing,) or the demographic change regions network (http://dcrn.eu/). • birgit leick, birgit glorius218 policymaking for such regions. the paper points out that public intervention policies to adapt to peripheralisation on the one hand and private commitment through civic action on the other hand are two distinct instruments suited for policymaking based upon the peripheralisation hypothesis. both matuschewski et al. (2017) and leibert and golinski (2017) offer new interpretations of the mainstream growth-based concepts for demographic change, which are still the uncontested and primary targets of many economic policy programmes. in doing so, they challenge the assumption that demographic processes are irreversible. meyer et al. (2017) introduce another argument to this discussion by approaching demographic change from a discursive perspective that focuses on “stigmatisation”. in their paper, the authors show how stigmata and stigmatisation in demographically declining, peripheral regions are produced and reproduced through the discourses and narrations of local adolescents. meyer et al. (2017) thus provide a conceptualisation of the precarious, crisis-ridden context of rural-peripheral, declining places from a social psychological perspective, which embeds demographic change in a social geographical understanding. their empirical case study of the altenburger land emphasises this argument. indeed, examining the discourses on demographic change and its importance can be helpful to disentangle the demographic and social roots of these debates or the positions which actors take. bartl and sackmann (2017) provide an interesting case study of media discourses and representations in speech about school closures due to local population decline and ageing, highlighting how local practices are refl ected in mainstream media coverage and the representations derived therefrom. a central fi nding of this contribution is that the social stratifi cations of the local population, which are signifi cantly and adversely affected by outmigration, ageing, etc., are, indeed, re-produced through the discourses of local policymakers and the media. in the next paper, christmann (2017) moves away from discourses of stigmatisation, i.e., a narrative that views demographic change as a problematical context. instead, social innovation is proposed as a trigger of local-regional development in peripheralised contexts. agency then becomes central to resolving “negative” discourses and inspires local stakeholders to launch counter-discourses that stress the chances and opportunities associated with demographic challenges, rather than the problems and stigmata. another important mechanism to produce such “positive narratives” is pro-active local communication and media coverage, which the author stresses based upon an empirical case study from east germany. hence, contextualising local-regional development processes and the impact of demographic change on specifi c contexts by considering historical path-dependencies, the place-specifi c social stratifi cation and local institutions is crucial for understanding the complexity of the various confi gurations. rural-peripheral nordic regions offer a context in which demographic change had been embedded in specifi c mitigating strategies for a long time (persson 2003). carson et al. 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(eds.): handbuch politikberatung. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 496-508. associate professor dr. birgit leick (). østfold university college, faculty of business, languages, and social sciences. norway. e-mail: birgit.leick@hiof.no url: http://www.hiof.no/om-hogskolen/enheter/avdeling-for-okonomi_-sprak-ogsamfunnsfag/om-avdelingen/ansatte prof. dr. birgit glorius. university of technology chemnitz, chair of human geography and eastern european studies. chemnitz. germany. e-mail: birgit.glorius@phil.tu-chemnitz.de url: https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/europastudien/geographie/mitarbeiter/inhab.php published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2017 managing editor frank swiaczny assistant managing editor katrin schiefer copy editor (selected articles in german) dr. evelyn grünheid layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board paul gans (mannheim) karsten hank (cologne) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (vienna) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) nikola sander (groningen) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany: administrative dispersal and existing ethnic networks spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany: administrative dispersal and existing ethnic networks lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis abstract: since the beginning of the russian invasion of ukraine on february 24, 2022, many people have fl ed the war and left their home country. by the end of january 2023, more than one million ukrainian refugees had been registered in germany alone. in contrast to refugees from other countries of origin in germany, ukrainian citizens can choose their place of residence if they have either found private accommodation with family members or friends or do not claim state support. however, little information exists on where within germany ukrainian refugees have moved and why certain regions are potentially more attractive than others. there exists a substantial literature on the location choices of migrants in general, showing that the existing level of immigrant concentration is an important determinant, while economic factors have a smaller effect – if not in the initial location choice after immigration, then at least in later location decisions. whereas these studies mainly focus on labour migrants, research on refugees’ location choices is still scarce, because refugees are usually assigned to specifi c places of residence by the authorities in many european countries. in the context of forced migration, spatial patterns may therefore largely be related to administrative decisions. in this paper, we aim to answer the question of the settlement patterns of recently arrived refugees from ukraine in germany by using current data from the central register of foreigners. these patterns are modelled on the nuts-3 level and consider the proportion of previous ukrainian migrants living within those regions as well as additional economic, demographic, and geographical factors. spatial regression models show that, on the one hand, ukrainian refugees indeed settle where the number of ukrainians is already high. the empirical analyses also indicate a correlation between the spatial patterns of refugees in general and ukrainian refugees, suggesting that dispersal policies may play a role in explaining settlement patterns. furthermore, affordable housing and lower rents are important explanatory variables. keywords: ukrainian refugees · spatial patterns · ethnic networks · regional economic opportunities · housing markets · dispersal policies comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 261-280 (date of release: 27.06.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-11 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-11en2 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-11 • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis262 1 introduction the russian invasion of ukraine forced nearly one third of the ukrainian population to leave their home within the war’s fi rst eleven months, between february 24, 2022 and january 31, 2023. whereas almost 6 million people have been displaced internally, more than 7.9 million people have fl ed ukraine, particularly towards other countries in europe, making this one of the largest human displacement crises in the world today (unhcr 2023). the vast majority has fl ed to neighbouring countries such as poland, romania, hungary or moldova. however, germany also hosted over one million refugees in january 2023, ranking second after poland in terms of the total numbers of ukrainian refugees (brücker et al. 2023; unhcr 2023). migration scholars responded quickly to the crisis compared to refugee movements in the past. in many of the major receiving countries of ukrainian refugees, new surveys have been launched to provide information on these refugees’ living situations and their plans, including the recent longitudinal study “refugees from ukraine in germany (iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep-survey)”. however, these surveys provide little evidence about where these refugees move within germany and why certain regions are more attractive to them than others. there is substantial literature on migrants’ location choices and whether pre-existing ethnic networks, local economic conditions, socio-political context, or differences in the amenities offered by the regions are important determinants of residential choices (see e.g., bartel 1989; tanis 2020; zorlu/mulder 2008). however, most of these studies mainly focus on labour migrants and research on refugees’ location choices remains scarce. in the initial period of their stay, refugees in many european countries are assigned to specifi c places of residence and accommodation by public migration administrations, and therefore cannot choose their place of residence. due to the sudden and steep increase in the number of ukrainian refugees, the activation of the european “temporary protection directive,” and consequently the implementation of this directive by §24 of the residence act, ukrainian refugees are not subject to the same regulations as other groups of refugees are. they can decide where to settle in their eu destination countries. in germany, in the fi rst weeks after the beginning of the war (until march 16), ukrainian refugees could choose their place of residence without restrictions. since then, refugees claiming state support have been distributed regionally between the federal states in accordance with the existing legal framework. the vast majority of those who fi nd private accommodation are still exempt from offi cial distribution policies (bamf 2022b). as the spatial concentration of refugees is often one of the most intensely discussed political and public topics due to the fi nancial and social consequences for the affected municipalities, local housing markets, and infrastructures, this paper takes a closer look at the settlement patterns of refugees who are largely unaffected by these administrative dispersal policies. specifi cally, we aim to answer the following research questions: what are the spatial patterns of ukrainian refugees within germany, and why? what role do pre-existing ethnic networks of ukrainians but also administrative dispersal policies play? spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 263 the paper provides initial empirical evidence on the settlement patterns of ukrainian refugees arriving in germany within the fi rst months of the war. it uses recent data from the central register of foreigners in germany on the regional distribution of more than 700,000 ukrainian citizens who were registered between february 24 and july 31, 2022. the aggregated data are available on the nuts3 level, allowing an analysis of the 400 administrative districts (landkreise und kreisfreie städte) in germany. these data were merged with contextual information on economic, demographic, political and geographical characteristics of these administrative districts. based on these aggregated data, initial insights into the main determinants of the spatial patterns of ukrainian refugees can be gained. moreover, these fi ndings also provide necessary knowledge for political decisionmakers. numerous studies show that the initial conditions at the place of settlement infl uence migrants’ economic, social and political integration (aksoy/poutvaara 2019; braun/dwenger 2020; tanis 2020). moreover, local governments are grappling with the fi scal and organisational costs of the large infl ux of refugees within a very short period of time and the social costs of integrating them. thus, the determinants of the regional distribution of new immigrants, resp. refugees, have a high policy relevance, entailing important implications for the design of appropriate immigration and integration policies. 2 previous migration from ukraine to germany and the situation of current refugees until the early 1990s, there was little international migration between ukraine and countries outside the former ussr. due to the social and economic changes in ukrainian society after 1991, such as the rise in unemployment, long delays in payments of salaries and wage infl ation, ukrainian nationals began to migrate west. the main destinations were central and eastern europe (mainly poland and the czech republic), southern europe (italy, spain, and portugal), but also countries in western europe with a long-shared history of migration, such as germany (fedyuk/ kindler 2016). migration from ukraine to germany increased from approx. 9,000 yearly immigrants in 1992 to about 24,000 ukrainians in 2004. at the same time, annual out-migration accounted for 4,000 to 6,000 ukrainians. after a decline in 2005, the annual in-migration remained relatively constant at around 7,000 cases from 2006 to 2013 (see fig. 1). until the euromaidan protests in 2014, the social and economic situation was the main driver of ukrainians’ migration. after that, new push factors emerged, including political instability and the policy of mobilisation announced during the early stages of the armed confl ict in eastern ukraine and the violent russian-backed breakaway of the luhansk and donetsk regions (gulina/pozniak 2018), resulting in a slight increase in in-migration from ukraine to germany (2014: approx. 13,500). for 2021, the german federal statistical offi ce counts more than 12,600 cases of in-migration and about 6,300 cases of out-migration, resulting in an annual net migration of about 6,300 (destatis 2022a). • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis264 the positive net-migration over the last three decades resulted in an increasing number of ukrainian citizens living in germany. while there were fewer than 4,000 ukrainian citizens living in germany in 1992, this number had increased to 155,000 by the end of 2021 (destatis 2022b). if the number of people living in germany with ukrainian roots (who were born in ukraine but have been naturalised, including ethnic germans as well as second-generation migrants) is included, this fi gure roughly doubles. information from the german microcensus shows that at the end of 2021, about 308,000 people had a so-called ukrainian migration background (destatis 2022c). since the beginning of war on february 24, 2022, these numbers increased substantially – at the end of january 2023, more than one million refugees from ukraine were registered in germany (brücker et al. 2023), many of whom were women.1 the current legal situation for ukrainians in germany is as follows: ukrainian citizens can enter and move freely in the schengen area – which includes germany – without a visa and can stay for up to three months (annex ii of eu regulation 2018/1806). at the european level, the so-called “temporary protection fig. 1: inand out-migration between ukraine and germany, 1992-2021 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 20 10 20 12 20 14 20 16 20 18 20 20 year out-migrationin-migrationnet migration source: destatis 2022a 1 with few exceptions, men between the ages of 18-60 are prohibited from leaving ukraine due to general mobilisation. those suffering from health problems are allowed to leave, as are men who are fi nancially responsible for three or more minor children. single fathers of minor children and fathers of children with a disability are also exempt. spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 265 directive” (council directive 2001/55/ec of 20 july 2001) was adopted on 4 march 2022 (council of the european union 2022). due to the implementation of this directive by §24 of the residence act, specifi c conditions now apply to ukrainian refugees, some of which differ signifi cantly from refugees from other countries of origin (bamf 2022b). instead, they are automatically granted temporary protection, a status that is currently valid for up to two years. within this timeframe, an alternative residence title can be applied for. since march 16, 2022,2 ukrainian refugees who have not been able to fi nd accommodation and apply for state support can be distributed among the federal states after their arrival – similarly to asylum seekers and refugees in general – according to the “königsteiner schlüssel” as the existing administrative allocation key in germany (bamf 2022a). below the level of federal states, additional regulations exist concerning the distribution between the different administrative districts which are regularly used when refugees are confronted with requirements to reside in specifi c areas (for a description of germany’s distribution policy of asylum seekers, see tanis 2022). offi cial fi gures on the proportion of redistributed ukrainian refugees are not available. this data also cannot be deduced from the number of ukrainian recipients of state benefi ts, because the decision of redistribution is often a discretionary one and is mainly based on the urgent need of adequate housing. however, current data collected by the iab-bib/fredabamf-soep survey indicate that only about 16 percent of ukrainian refugees were assigned and the vast majority have chosen their place of residence themselves (brücker et al. 2023). 3 theoretical framework and hypotheses since the seminal work on the local concentration of migrants of similar ethnicity in the united states by bartel (1989), a vast literature on migrants’ location choices has emerged. generally, these studies have analysed whether ethnic concentration, local economic conditions and amenities are associated to migrants’ residential choices. most of these studies fi nd that local labour market conditions, welfare benefi ts as well as other local amenities seem to have only a small effect on where migrants choose to settle. instead, studies highlight the importance of path dependency regarding migration in-fl ows: newly arrived migrants are likely to go where other migrants of the same ethnicity or from the same country of origin have settled. from a theoretical perspective, the underlying mechanism is that rational individuals are assumed to choose a location from a set of possible locations that maximises their expected utility minus moving cost (epstein 2008). in this sense, externalities arising from ethnic networks may reduce migration costs or increase the expected utility. benefi cial externalities within these networks include information and direct assistance with accommodation, employment, bureaucracy, as well as a general 2 due to legislative changes in june 2022 (§12a of the residence act is applied to ukrainian refugees), possibilities of governmental allocation were further extended. • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis266 reduction of the stress of adapting to a foreign culture, particularly regarding language (boyd 1989; hugo 1981; massey et al. 1987/1993). studies focusing on refugees’ location choices are rare, as in the initial period of their stay, refugees in many european countries are assigned to specifi c places of residence and accommodation by authorities and cannot choose their residence freely. previous research analysing where refugees decide to live either examines subsequent migration choices or compares different groups of migrants (åslund 2005; damm 2009; weber 2022; zorlu/mulder 2008). for the netherlands, zorlu and mulder (2008) fi nd distinct patterns for different groups of migrants varying in duration of stay as well as initial and subsequent location choices. western immigrant groups tend to fi rst choose neighbourhoods where people from the same country of origin are concentrated. over time, they leave these areas for less concentrated ones and move to labour markets with more employment possibilities. in contrast, newly arrived refugees or asylum seekers are initially much more geographically dispersed across the netherlands due to the specifi c government settlement policies, but tend to move to more ethnically segregated neighbourhoods over time. this result is supported by fi ndings of åslund (2005) and damm (2009) for placed refugees in sweden and denmark, letting us assume that refugees – if they can choose their residence – decide to reside in areas where other persons from the same country of origin live. we therefore hypothesise: h1: the more people from ukraine already live in a region, the more attractive this region is for newly arriving ukrainian refugees. previous literature on residential choices often contrasts pre-existing ethnic networks on the one hand with the conditions on the local labour market. a recent study for germany (tanis 2020) shows that after the fi nancial crisis and recession in 2008/09, germany’s immigrant population changed towards immigrants coming from southern eu countries and from the new member states in eastern europe. in particular, immigrants from southern eu countries have a relatively high level of education and are likely to prefer a quick entry into the labour market. thus, local labour market conditions are important for settlement patterns (tanis 2020). a high proportion of ukrainian refugees holds a university degree (72 percent), was previously employed in ukraine and wants to work in germany (almost 80 percent of the currently not working ukrainian refugee population in working age) (brücker et al. 2023). in order to fi nancially support family members left behind in ukraine, it is important to earn money quickly. thus, the availability of employment opportunities is also important for location choices. furthermore, regions with a lower unemployment rate, more available employment opportunities and higher wages are economically more prosperous. we therefore assume that: h2: the lower the local unemployment rate and the higher the expected wage in a region, the more attractive a region is for newly arriving ukrainian refugees. analyses of the refugee sample of the soep show that although previous migrants from ukraine were highly educated and learned the german language spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 267 quickly, they integrated into the german labour market more slowly than other migrant groups did (brücker 2022). based on qualitative interviews, schork et al. (2022) conclude that the majority of former migrants from ukraine work as skilled workers (“facharbeiter”), whereas only a small proportion works in precarious jobs, mainly as seasonal workers or as care workers in private households. as a large proportion holds a university degree, it can thus be assumed that: h3: ukrainian refugees are more likely to settle in regions with a high proportion of high-qualifi cation jobs than to settle in regions with higher proportions of lowerqualifi cation jobs. another important contextual factor for settlement patterns is suitable and affordable housing (adam et al. 2008; mulder 2006). previous work on the impact of housing costs on migration in western countries found that for migrants with higher average incomes, high housing prices are positively associated with immigration, as higher housing prices are an indication for high-income jobs (graves 1983). in contrast, other studies showed that migrants tend to move to regions with low housing prices or – in the german context – low rents (e.g., for germany: busch 2016; stawarz et al. 2021; sturm/meyer 2008). this holds particularly true for migrants with limited fi nancial resources, such as refugees. we assume that: h4: the lower the rents, the more attractive a region is for newly arriving ukrainian refugees. studies covering local amenities argue that certain populations (mainly urban populations due to long migration histories) are more accustomed to the interaction with foreigners (damm 2009). for different european countries (including germany), it can be shown that concerns about immigration are positively correlated with political support for right-wing populist parties (edo et al. 2019; sola 2018). in contrast, regions with a higher support for left parties can be assumed to be more open-minded towards refugees and provide more support (tanis 2020). thus, we hypothesise that: h5: ukrainian refugees are more likely to choose regions with a higher support for left parties. however, ukrainian refugees who are dependent on state support are restricted in their location choice. like other refugees, they are distributed to the federal states according to the so-called königsteiner schlüssel, where they are usually fi rst accommodated in initial reception facilities and then distributed to the municipalities (bamf 2022a). as it takes time to set up new accommodations and time resources were limited in the spring of 2022, it can be assumed that, especially in this initial period, existing accommodation facilities were used that had previously been created and expanded in 2015 and 2016 in the course of the infl ux of refugees, largely from the middle east. therefore, the spatial pattern of those ukrainian refugees who have been subject to administrative dispersal should correspond to the spatial patterns of former refugees across germany’s administrative districts. we therefore propose that: • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis268 h6: the higher the proportion of refugees in a region who arrived in previous years, the higher the proportion of recent ukrainian refugees in this region. 4 data and methods analyses of the regional distribution of international migrants are regularly hampered by the long time horizons at which administrative data are provided for further scientifi c studies. within the preparation of the study “refugees from ukraine in germany (iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep-survey),” current data on this new refugee population was made available by the central register of foreigners (azr). in principle, a central register such as the azr provides high quality data about the foreign population in germany. because of its administrative character, however, this register is confronted with a certain time lag between the arrival of a refugee in germany and their actual registration. particularly given the accelerating numbers of refugees in the fi rst weeks of the war and the ambiguous administrative regulations concerning ukrainian citizens, a potential time lag must be taken into account. however, a comparison between two german administrative registers – the central register of foreigners and the local population registers – for 100 randomly selected municipalities shows highly consistent statistical information about the numbers of newly registered ukrainian citizens in late may 2022 (correlation coeffi cient 0.96) and there are no indications of any selective registration process of ukrainian refugees concerning the spatial pattern. 4.1 dependent variable for the following analyses, information from the central register of foreigners is used for the reference date 31 july 2022, when a total of 722,000 ukrainian citizens had been registered in germany since the beginning of the war. the register does not include information about the postal address of the population, but it does cover information about the corresponding local foreigners’ registration offi ce. this offers data on at least 3903 of all 400 german administrative districts, covering 673,000 (93.2 percent) of all newly arriving ukrainians. following similar analyses on the location choice of foreigners in germany, the main dependent variable is the number of ukrainian refugees registered between february 24, 2022 and july 31, 2022 in one of the 390 administrative districts (nuts3). to account for the population size of the administrative districts, we divided 3 in the federal state saarland, one local foreigners’ registration offi ce is responsible for six administrative districts. similarly, in kassel and cottbus, one offi ce is responsible for the registration of foreigners living in a neighbouring district. for these ten administrative districts, no district-specifi c data about the registration of ukrainian refugees are available and they are therefore excluded from the analyses. the districts are: kassel (city), kassel (county), saarbrücken, merzig-wadern, neunkirchen, saarlouis, saarpfalz, st. wendel, cottbus, spreeneiße. spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 269 the number of ukrainians by the overall number of inhabitants in the respective districts. whereas in the fi rst few weeks of the war, the arriving ukrainian refugees were highly concentrated in major cities, by july 2022 a more balanced spatial distribution emerged. on average, 0.97 percent of the resident population in germany were ukrainian refugees ranging from 0.29 to 2.92 percent between the 390 administrative districts (see table 1 for a descriptive overview of all dependent and independent variables). 4.2 independent variables following the hypothesis discussed above, four sets of explanatory variables are tested in our empirical analyses – ethnic networks, political determinants, economic context, and demographic structures. the necessary data for these variables are provided by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr 2022) as well as the federal statistical offi ce, which both offer region-specifi c indicators along the four sets of variables (destatis 2022b). the key independent variable to test the correlation of existing ethnic networks with the location choice of recent ukrainian refugees is the spatial pattern of ukrainians living in germany before the start of the war in february 2022. data from the central register of foreigners on the stocks of ukrainian citizens in december 2021 is used. in line with the dependent variable, the variable measures the share of ukrainians among the overall resident population in each district. testing the robustness of this hypothesis, the models test for alternative operationalisations of ethnic networks, including the general share of all foreign citizens – irrespective of their citizenship – in administrative districts, the share of eu-28 nationals and the share of non-eu-28 nationals. the second set of variables examines the relevance of regional economic aspects observed in december 2019:4 the regional unemployment rate is an indicator of the performance as well as the tightness of the local labour market and its employment opportunities for recent immigrants. the importance of jobs in the higher educational segment of the labour market is tested by an indicator measuring the share of jobs with highly complex occupations requiring at least four years of university education or corresponding professional experience (bbsr 2022). as the german housing market is characterised by a high share of rentals, we follow the approach of other studies (e.g., stawarz et al. 2021) using rental prices as a proxy for housing costs. in particular, we use data on the average asking rents per square metre at the county level observed in 2021, which are collected from real estate listings published online and in print media (bbsr 2016). the relevance of more welcoming political opportunity structures is measured by the share of votes for left and centre-left parties (spd, the greens, die linke) in the most recent national election in 2021. finally, the state dispersal policies are operationalised by taking 4 as we assume that the location choice and the resulting spatial patterns are based on information of previous years, our regional variables are lagged. • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis270 the share of refugees into account. as the residence requirement and restricted mobility for refugees usually ceases three years after their asylum application has been approved, we use the share of refugees at the end of 2018 to capture information on refugees who arrived and were distributed as part of the large infl ux of refugees in 2015. more dense regions and large cities seem to be more attractive for new immigrants, because they are well-known, better equipped with jobs, housing and educational institutions as well as the access to certain urban amenities (e.g. public transport) and because urban populations are thought to be more accustomed to interactions with foreigners (damm 2009; jayet et al. 2010; massey 1995; waldinger 1996). we thus included a measurement of urban (large and medium sized cities) versus rural (less urbanised and rural counties) as further control by applying a summarised typology of german counties (siedlungsstrukturelle kreistypen; see bbsr 2022). moreover, ukrainian refugees might prefer regions closer to their home country in order to have the possibility to remigrate immediately after the end of the war. therefore, we also added the distance to kyiv (in 1,000 km) as additional control variable. table 1 summarises all dependent and independent variables. 4.3 empirical strategy building on a descriptive analysis of the development of the regional distribution of ukrainian refugees, the correlations between this spatial pattern and the different theoretical determinants are analysed. as basic assumptions of standard regression models are often violated when analysing spatial data, spatial regression models are generally used to detect this spatial dependence. in line with the usual procedure for testing spatial correlation, we fi rst applied the moran test (moran’s i), which is signifi cant and therefore suggests using spatial models instead of regular ols regressions for our data.5 there are two common variants of spatial regression: the spatial error model (sem) and the spatial lag model (slm). while the slm captures the cross-section dependence of the dependent variable, the sem incorporates the spatial dependence in the error term (lesage/pace 2009). therefore, we decided to apply a spatial error regression (ser) model which has been regularly applied in similar analyses in the german context (e.g., lehmann/nagl 2019). ser model specifi cations use a spatial weighting matrix based on inverse distances between the regional entities following the most regularly used approach (again, alternative model specifi cations based on contiguity matrices have been estimated as well). all independent variables have been tested for multicollinearity, never exceeding a variance infl ation factor of more than 2. to ease the interpretation of coeffi cients, all independent variables are included in the models untransformed, but additional tests with logarithmic indicators support the fi ndings presented in the following. 5 the dependent variables include fractional responses all within the 0;1 interval. the fi tted values of all ser models do not exceed or fall below this interval. additionally, generalised linear models with logit link functions were applied, providing largely identical results. spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 271 5 results the descriptive fi ndings presented in figure 2 show the spatial patterns of all resident ukrainian citizens in germany on 31 december 2021, before the start of the war, alongside the newly arriving ukrainian citizens who were registered in germany between february 24 and july 31 2022, after the start of the war. before the february 2022 invasion, the 155,000 ukrainian citizens living in germany showed a very distinct spatial pattern standing in sharp contrast to most other foreign national groups (see panel 1 in fig. 2). whereas foreign nationals are generally concentrated in west germany, the ukrainian settlement also has a signifi cant concentration in the eastern parts of germany – particularly in the states of brandenburg and mecklenburgwestern pomerania as well as along the polish border. more in line with the general fi ndings of immigrant location choices in germany, many ukrainian citizens also live in urban agglomerations such as berlin, hamburg, cologne, frankfurt/main, bremen, munich, and their surroundings regions (see also kosyakova 2022). tab. 1: descriptive statistics of all dependent and independent variables for all 390 administrative districts min max mean median sd dependent variables newly registered ukr nationals 3/2022 0.00 1.96 0.43 0.42 0.23 [in % of the resident population] newly registered ukr nationals 5/2022 0.01 4.48 0.78 0.76 0.33 [in % of the resident population] newly registered ukr nationals 7/2022 0.29 2.92 0.97 0.92 0.28 [in % of the resident population] independent variables stocks of ukr nationals 12/2021 0.03 1.28 0.16 0.12 0.14 [in % of the resident population] stocks of refugees 0.21 11.29 1.97 1.85 0.99 [in % of the resident population] unemployment [in %] 1.35 12.83 4.66 4.32 2.10 highly complex occupations [in %] 5.14 29.34 10.73 9.70 3.89 rental prizes 2021 [in euro per m2] 4.81 18.92 8.15 7.73 2.08 left party vote share [in %] 22.31 65.70 42.99 43.46 8.91 further control variables large and medium sized cities [in %] 0.00 1.00 0.49 0.00 0.50 stocks of foreign nationals 2.11 36.56 10.84 9.98 5.43 [in % of the resident population] stocks of eu-28 nationals 0.65 25.72 5.36 4.84 3.15 [in % of the resident population] stocks of non-eu-28 nationals 0.99 17.44 6.42 5.80 3.47 [in % of the resident population] distance to kyiv [in 1,000 km] 1.20 1.64 1.46 1.49 0.12 source: bamf 2022c, destatis 2022b, bbsr 2022 • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis272 comparing the pre-invasion settlement pattern with that of the 673,000 postinvasion refugees from ukraine in the analytical sample of 390 administrative districts, certain continuities are obvious (see panel 2 in fig. 2). this concerns the strong presence of ukrainians in east germany in particular, including mecklenburgwestern pomerania and additional districts close to the polish border, as well as the continuing interest of many ukrainians to settle in urban agglomerations such as berlin, bremen, hamburg, frankfurt/main, cologne, or munich. however, there are also some new spatial patterns, with a relatively high proportion of ukrainian refugees settling in hanover and its surroundings (where one of the central distribution centres was located), as well as more rural areas in rhineland-palatinate, hesse, north rhine-westphalia and lower saxony. the similarities in the spatial patterns discussed so far provide an initial indication of the importance of existing ethnic networks for the settlement patterns fig. 2: spatial pattern by nuts-3 in germany of all resident ukrainian citizens on 31 december 2021 (panel 1) and all ukrainian citizens registered in germany between 24 february and 31 july 2022, after the start of the war (panel 2), share of ukrainian citizens among the overall resident population berlin wiesbaden hamburg schwerin kiel dresden bremen potsdam stuttgart mainz erfurt 0,03 0,08 0,08 0,12 0,12 0,17 0,17 1,29 no data quantile class breaks hanover munich dusseldorf saarbrucken berlin wiesbaden hamburg schwerin kiel dresden bremen potsdam stuttgart mainz erfurt 0,00 0,79 0,79 0,92 0,92 1,11 1,11 2,92 no data quantile class breaks hanover munich dusseldorf saarbrucken note: ten districts without data not shown; quantile classifi cation method source: destatis 2022b; bamf 2022c (1) (2) spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 273 of newly arriving ukrainian refugees, as expected in hypothesis 1. this descriptive fi nding is also supported by multivariate spatial regression models. the fi rst model shows that the proportion of recently registered ukrainian refugees in july 2022 is positively correlated to the proportion of ukrainians living in german regions at the end of 2021 (see m1 in table 2). this fi nding is signifi cant in bivariate analyses and remains a strong predictor even when controlling for other determinants regularly used to account for migrants’ settlement patterns. alternative models based on neighbourhood weight matrices (model 2) as well as ordinary least square regression (model 3) support the robustness of this fi nding. hypothesis 2 proposed that local labour market conditions are also important for spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees. it was expected that the higher the regional unemployment rate, the lower the proportion of recent ukrainian refugees living in the administrative district. however, the regional unemployment rate in general does not show any statistically signifi cant correlations. this might be explained by the particular structure of the ukrainian refugee fl ows, which are mainly women and children, for whom labour market conditions are less important for settlement behaviour. whereas earlier immigration from eastern europe into the german labour market was oriented towards lower qualifi ed occupations in recent decades, ukrainian refugees are often highly qualifi ed by comparison. the iab-bib/freda-bamfsoep-survey shows that more than two thirds of ukrainian refugees employed in germany are working as skilled workers, specialists or experts (brücker et al. 2023), which might be an explanation for why ukrainian refugees are oriented towards regions with a higher share of highly complex occupations, supporting hypothesis 3. previous studies have shown that housing costs play an important role in the decision of where to move. we also fi nd that the lower the housing costs – here measured as residential asking rental prices – the more attractive a region is for recently arriving ukrainian refugees (hypothesis 4), which illustrates the importance of affordable housing for the settlement patterns of migrants. this fi nding is driven by individual location choices, but could also be partly caused by the dispersal policy of ukrainian refugees, in which the availability of affordable housing plays a central role (weber 2022). furthermore, the percent of the stocks of refugees in the districts – whose spatial pattern is most directly infl uenced by administrative requirements to reside in particular areas – is positively correlated with the proportion of recent ukrainian refugees, which seems to support hypothesis 6. as expected, the institutional distribution mechanisms thus also seem to have an impact on the spatial distribution of newly arriving ukrainian refugees. with respect to the political opportunity structures in the administrative districts, we did not fi nd empirical support for a positive correlation between the share of leftwing voters and the spatial patterns of ukrainian refugees (hypothesis 5). finally, the control variables – distance to kyiv and degree of urbanisation – do not reveal any statistically relevant results. to check the robustness of the signifi cant ethnic network effect presented above, we estimated several additional models. in a fi rst step, the models were estimated • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis274 based on earlier reference dates to check whether the numbers of registered refugees – particularly in the fi rst months of the war – on a regional level are a valid indicator for our analysis or follow administrative idiosyncrasies. the fi rst two models in table 3 show the coeffi cients for the stocks of ukrainian citizens living in germany in december 2021 to account for the numbers of registered ukrainian refugees at the end of march 2022 as well as the end of may 2022. both coeffi cients support the fi ndings presented above for the situation at the end of july 2022, providing further evidence for the importance of ethnic networks. finally, we also tested the relevance of the structure of ethnic networks. the results of models m3-m5 in table 3 show that the distribution of arriving ukrainian refugees is not related to the proportions of other immigrants in germany, but tab. 2: ser estimates of the regional determinants of location choice of recently registered ukrainian refugees in july 2022, following different model specifi cations ukr nationals 7/2022 (inverse (contiguity (ols) distance matrix) matrix) (m1) (m2) (m3) stocks of ukr nationals 0.723*** 0.660*** 0.723*** (0.115) (0.115) (0.116) unemployment rate -0.012 -0.008 -0.014 (0.009) (0.010) (0.009) highly complex occupations 0.010** 0.011** 0.011** (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) rental prizes in euro per m2 -0.351*** -0.338*** -0.355*** (0.082) (0.085) (0.080) left party voters 0.003 0.002 0.003 (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) stocks of refugees 0.048*** 0.048*** 0.046*** (0.017) (0.017) (0.017) urbanisation (ref. suburban and rural counties) large and medium sized cities -0.049 -0.046 -0.050 (0.033) (0.034) (0.034) distance to kyiv -0.001 -0.006 -0.003 (0.013) (0.014) (0.013) constant 1.082*** 1.123*** 1.088*** (0.276) (0.288) (0.275) spatial error 0.326 0.277** (0.251) (0.115) adjusted r2 0.27 0.27 0.25 observations 390 390 390 note: standard errors in parentheses; * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. source: bamf 2022c, destatis 2022b, bbsr 2022 spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees in germany • 275 rather primarily to the concentration of other ukrainian citizens. the variables on the share of foreign nationals in the administrative districts (m3), on the share of eu-28 nationals (m4) as well as non-eu-28 nationals (m5) are all not signifi cantly correlated with the share of newly registered ukrainian refugees. 6 discussion and conclusion this study aimed to analyse the location choices and spatial patterns of refugees who are largely unaffected by administrative dispersal policies. based on the case of ukrainian refugees arriving in germany between february 24 and july 31, 2022, and making use of current administrative data, this paper not only focuses on a group of forced migrants with different demographic characteristics and legal conditions than other refugee groups in germany, but also provides valuable insights into the settlement patterns of this specifi c group. it must be noted, however, that these analyses are based on aggregated data that do not allow for testing the mechanisms of location choice at the individual level. therefore, these data need to be combined with more detailed individual-level information, such as data from the iab-bib/ freda-bamf-soep survey, to enable the examination of the main drivers of the spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees. our analyses offer several insights and conclusions. first, our spatial regression models fi nd strong evidence that the settlement patterns of ukrainian refugees are correlated with pre-existing networks of ukrainians already living in germany. as no offi cial fi gures on the proportion of ukrainian refugees who are redistributed are available, it is diffi cult to interpret the importance of dispersal policies. nevertheless, tab. 3: additional ser estimates of the regional determinants of location choice of ukrainian refugees: alternative reference time of dependent variable (m1-m2) as well as alternative defi nition of ethnic networks in july 2022 (m3-m5) ukr nationals 5/2022 3/2022 7/2022 7/2022 7/2022 (m1) (m2) (m3) (m4) (m5) ukr nationals 0.260* 0.332*** (0.153) (0.105) foreign nationals 0.004 (0.004) eu-28 nationals 0.007 (0.006) non-eu-28 nationals -0.001 (0.009) note: standard errors in parentheses; * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. all model specifi cations follow m1 in table 2, but only the selected estimates are shown here. source: bamf 2022c, destatis 2022b, bbsr 2022 • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis276 the empirical analyses also suggest a correlation between the spatial patterns of refugees in general and ukrainian refugees, suggesting that dispersal policies may play a role. second, the fi ndings on regional economic factors (unemployment rate and highly complex occupations) provide a mixed picture. these results indicate that ukrainian refugees are more likely to move to regions where the share of high-skilled employment is high, which can be interpreted as an attempt to move into these labour market segments. however, the results of the spatial regression models for the local unemployment rate seem to be of limited relevance because of the particular structure of ukrainian refugees to germany (i.e., mostly women and children). instead of general labour market characteristics, affordable housing and low rent seem to play a more important role. once again, more individual-level data are needed to better understand these results, which may point to strong selection effects of refugees compared to the ukrainian citizens who moved to germany before the beginning of the war. to the best of our knowledge, the present study is the fi rst to examine the spatial patterns of recent ukrainian refugees to germany using current register data. it provides quick and useful information not only for existing research but also for policy makers. the results indicate that the large infl uence of pre-existing ethnic networks could lead to regional concentrations of ukrainian refugees, which could consequently result in regionally varying fi nancial and social burdens. conversely, ethnic networks could also lead to reduced burdens by providing informal support 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https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/anlagen/en/forschung/kurzanalysen/kurzanalyse1-2022-iab-bamf-soep-befragung-wohnhistorie.pdf?__blob=publicationfile&v=4 https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine https://doi.org/10.1177/019791839603000410 https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/79869/ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/79869/ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/79869/ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/79869/ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-2022-weber-binnenmobilitat_von_gefluchteten_mit_schutzstatus.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/00343400601145210 • lenore sauer, andreas ette, hans walter steinhauer, manuel siegert, kerstin tanis280 date of submission: 18.10.2022 date of acceptance: 28.04.2023 dr. lenore sauer (), dr. andreas ette. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: lenore.sauer@bib.bund.de; andreas.ette@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/sauer/sauer.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/ette/ette.html dr. hans walter steinhauer. german institute for economic research (diw). berlin, germany. e-mail: hwsteinhauer@diw.de url: https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.617914.en dr. manuel siegert, dr. kerstin tanis. federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bamf). nuremberg, germany. e-mail: dr.manuel.siegert@bamf.bund.de; dr.kerstin.tanis@bamf.bund.de url: https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ siegert-manuel-person.html;jsessionid=eb6aef24b46ca53720434f4f04059cc2 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ tanis-kerstin-person.html;jsessionid=17a4acb1513dc4665eda85cc7d442989. intranet261?nn=282388 mailto:lenore.sauer@bib.bund.de mailto:andreas.ette@bib.bund.de https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/sauer/sauer.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/ette/ette.html mailto:hwsteinhauer@diw.de https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.617914.en mailto:dr.manuel.siegert@bamf.bund.de mailto:dr.kerstin.tanis@bamf.bund.de https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/siegert-manuel-person.html;jsessionid=eb6aef24b46ca53720434f4f04059cc2 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/tanis-kerstin-person.html;jsessionid=17a4acb1513dc4665eda85cc7d442989.intranet261?nn=282388 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania ionuț földes abstract: economic support is widespread among multigenerational romanian family units separated by national borders and plays an important role for nonmigrating family members. from a political economy perspective, remittances are characteristic of such long-term kin networks, which in turn are shaped by sociostructural contexts. this study aims to analyse transfers of remittances in cash and in kind from emigrant romanian adult children to elderly parents back home. both forms of upward support are investigated under the lens of family practices across distance. data from a survey (intergenerational solidarity in the context of work migration abroad. the situation of elderly left at home) are used to examine the infl uence on remittances of family commitments over time and of needs and opportunities. the sample includes 2109 parent-child dyads with data provided by elderly parents from all regions of romania. results of the logistic regression models show that stronger familial commitments increase the likelihood of remittances in cash and remittances in kind. findings indicate the importance of fi lial support before migration and of various forms of intergenerational reciprocity. our results stress that remittances in cash are more likely to be variable compared with remittances in kind. both forms of support are part of a much broader set of family practices and intergenerational relationships but express different understandings of fi lial responsibility. keywords: remittances · intergenerational relationships · transnational families · family practices 1 introduction an easing of the restrictions for crossing national borders across europe (visa or border control elimination) along with the facilitation of work permits for foreigners in western europe has had an enormous impact on romanians, as well as on citizens from other eastern european countries (horvath/anghel 2009). following comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 65-86 (date of release: 18.02.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-03en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-03en5 • ionuț földes66 the transition to market liberalism (neoliberalism) which has resulted in a struggling economy – with increasing unemployment and a high risk of poverty – a considerable number of romanians are seeking fi nancial security in western societies (ban 2012; horvath/anghel 2009). besides self-evident structural effects of international migration, at both the family and household level, migration might be a way to improve the wellbeing of the family unit and at the same time be a negative emotional experience for the kin involved. living separated by national borders, family members need to renegotiate their active roles, responsibilities and commitments to each other (bryceson and vuorela 2002; marcu 2018). starting from the concept of the modifi ed extended family structure proposed by litwak (1960), this article will address the issue of intergenerational kin connections within the transnational space, created by middle-aged romanian migrants. the concept of generation is based here on bengtson’s defi nition: “ranked-descent ordering of individuals within families” (bengtson 1993: 11). according to litwak (1960), kin networks are a necessity for modern societies. moreover, the author argues that kin structures have changed in response to the mobility of members in a world in which technology can lessen geographic and social distance. for instance, increased opportunities for travelling long distances (larsen et al. 2006) and the development of easier methods of telecommunication (madianou/miller 2012) make contact between family members spread across the world much easier than in the past. among the forms of transnational care transfers often studied in research, the present paper dwells on money transfers and in-kind support to ageing parents "back home" in romania, provided by middle-aged children living abroad. the reason for focusing on adult intergenerational relationships is that they are voluntary in nature, as intergenerational support from elderly parents or adult children is rarely regulated by national law. these relationships tend to be informal in nature and conform to unwritten laws (wolff/laferrère 2006). studies of remitting practices among romanian adult emigrants have failed so far to integrate this topic into broader research on intergenerational solidarity and care circulation. early empirical evidence based on quantitative data addressed the variety of options for remittance transmission, determinant factors for money transfers, the amount of remittances, the use of the remittances in the homeland or the impact of these practices on the household and home country economy (world bank group 2016). as a form of care that does not require face-to-face contact (kilkey/merla 2014; litwak/kulis 1987), economic support is widespread among multigenerational family units living in spatial separation. since migration from romania to western europe is generally motivated by fi nancial reasons (ban 2012), romanian transnational families are well-known for the importance they attach to regular remittances (horvath/anghel 2009; toth 2009; zimmer et al. 2013). according to the world bank group (2016), romania was ranked third among remittance recipient countries in europe and central asia. for example, more than half of romanians living in spain constantly send money to family members that they have left behind, mostly underage children or the spouse, and sometimes parents or grandparents (toth 2009). compared with other forms of intergenerational support, material assistance from linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 67 romanian children towards their parents is the most important type of support in transnational settings, while in the case of internal migration, intergenerational support practices are much more fl uid and diverse (zimmer et al. 2014). against this backdrop in current research for the case of romania, this study seeks to analyse remittances within a theoretical framework of family-like relationships (morgan 2011). the main contribution of the paper is to investigate remitting practices as a form of family commitment between generations, and across time and distance. family commitments are not to be taken for granted, but are instead subject to the infl uence of family history, and the needs and opportunities of both elderly parents and middle-aged children. firstly, the study aims to provide insights about how intergenerational solidarity evolves during the life course when migration is the main turning point in the life of the family. secondly, the paper explores how various measures of family commitment, mutual support and needs and opportunities trigger remitting practices. finally, the study seeks to identify possible differences in the meanings between remittances in cash and remittances in kind. this study is relevant for several reasons. the fi rst is the romanian demographic context, involving the ageing of the population, increased international migration and population decline. future projections of the country’s population also raise concerns about the future of the family. secondly, when trying to understand the signifi cance of kin relations as sources of assistance, attention must be paid to the considerable importance romanians continue to attach to family cohesion. reports of the population policy acceptance study (european commission 2006) show that romanians rely heavily on help provided by the family, in both of its forms: downward (from parents to children) and upward (from children to parents) (see also mureșan and hărăguș 2015). after outlining the romanian demographic context, a theoretical framework will be briefl y presented. i then explain the data and methodology used for the empirical analysis. the results section includes descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis, both for remittances in cash and remittances in kind. the later sections of the paper will discuss the fi ndings in relation to the broader context of both literatures and the romanian situation. the conclusions emphasize the need to investigate remittances not only from a material perspective, but also as a family practice embedded within the moral codes of kinship. 2 the romanian context at present, people in post-industrial societies have a greater life expectancy. children will live longer than their parents, while elderly people today will live longer than in the past. in romania, it took only 15 years (1990-2015) for the percentage of people aged 65+ to increase from 10.4 percent to 15.5 percent (rotariu et al. 2017). during the same period, the old-age dependency ratio has increased from 15.8 percent to 25.5 percent (rotariu et al. 2017) and this fi gure is expected to continue increasing over the next period, reaching 48.2 percent in 2050 (united nations • ionuț földes68 2017). these trends are infl uenced by persistent low fertility and improving life expectancy, and also by the increased out-migration by young people. romania is one of the top emigration countries. emigration fl ows from romania to other member states are among the most important in the eu (world bank group 2016). based on the number of immigrants by country of origin provided by each european country, the total number of romanians in 2016 who were offi cially registered as residing outside romania, but within european borders, reached almost three million people (rotariu et al. 2017). the majority of emigrants are young adults aged between 20 and 39 (national institute of statistics 2015, table 2.28), while italy, spain, united kingdom and germany are the most preferred destination countries (national institute of statistics 2015, table 2.29). unfortunately, in terms of numbers, little is known about transnational households, their multigenerational composition and the precise national situation regarding elderly people with children living abroad. ageing affects the structure of families and kinship networks. research on kin availability shows that 95 percent of romanian adults aged 20 to 39 had at least one living parent and almost 60 percent were in the age category 40 to 59 (puur et al. 2011). the increase in the number of different generations within the same family unit (intergenerational extension) along with the reduction in the number of same generation family members (intragenerational contraction) has created beanpole families (mureșan 2012). romania is one of the european countries where fi lial obligation is highly valued but has a low score for upward intergenerational support (mureșan/hărăguș 2015). older parents expect to receive care from their children while believing that the state should be responsible for providing opportunities for young generations (kulcsár/ brădățan 2014). a quarter of romanian adult children live in the same household with their parents, in a context where intergenerational support is downward, from the parent towards the offspring (hărăguș 2014). along with strong shared norms of family obligations and widespread co-residence between parents and adult children, these cohesive support networks of kinship are necessary because of the underdeveloped romanian social protection system, especially for the elderly (nadolu et al. 2007). 3 theoretical perspectives transnational families or multi-local families are defi ned as “families that live some or most of the time separated from each other yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’, even across national borders” (bryceson/vuorela 2002: 3). this defi nition is captured well within the framework of "circulation of care" (baldassar/merla 2014). in this framework, mobility is seen as an integral part of family life with positive and negative outcomes. the framework considers both nuclear and extended family types, highlights that fl ows of support are multidirectional and asymmetrical, and also recognizes the importance of a life course approach (baldassar/merla 2014). linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 69 care is understood as a result of "the moral codes of family and kinship ties" and less as a commodifi ed service, which only delivers utility (baldassar/merla 2014). for instance, transmission of remittances towards elderly parents is part of a longer-term social contract (zelizer 2005). based on the political economy paradigm, kolm (2008) identifi es two forms of reciprocity, namely matching reciprocity and linking reciprocity. the fi rst is associated with a moral desire to achieve a balance between the one who offers and the one who receives. linking reciprocity, on the other hand, is a result of strong emotional bonds and a generator of further emotionally positive relationships. reciprocity can be manifested directly when the mutual relationship is based on the same type of support or indirectly when the gift or service is different to the one received previously (finch/mason 1993). as a result, we expect that stronger family commitments prior to emigration and the receipt of transnational support from parents will increase the likelihood for remittances (hypothesis h1). reciprocity implies that high probabilities of upward material support are linked to high probabilities of emotional assistance and frequent contact between migrant adult children and elderly parents (baykara-krumme/fokkema 2018; karpinska/ dykstra 2018). on the other hand, strong emotional ties do not always entail material support. for example, rooyackers and collaborators (2016) argue that affective expressions of care usually compensate for the lack of material or practical support. in addition, they found that other types of assistance are not contingent upon emotional support (rooyackers et al. 2016). however, even though there may not be a positive causal relationship between the provision of remittances and strong emotional ties, we expect that regular contact between parents and adult children will increase the likelihood for remittances (hypothesis h2). maintaining family relationships is always subject to a varying set of interdependencies. szydlik (2016) argues that family solidarity is shaped by a group of conditional factors which he classifi es into four dimensions: opportunity, need, family and cultural-contextual structures. baldassar et al. (2007) argue that transnational exchanges of care are mediated by the capacity of individuals to engage and by the embodiment of cultural values regarding family obligations. capacity is translated here in terms of an individual’s opportunity for fulfi lling familial duties across distance and is related to structural and individual factors (baldassar et al. 2007). one of the most important factors determining a migrant’s capacity to remit is employability. lacking job opportunities or experiencing unemployment in the country of destination reduces the migrant’s income and therefore the probability of sending remittances (de sousa/duval 2010). furthermore, research shows that emigrants with increased fi nancial possibilities remit more to their family members living in the home country (funkhouser 1995). the same author stresses that the likelihood that a migrant will send remittances will increase if his or her own children and spouse are non-migrant (funkhouser 1995). this result is meaningful for two reasons. firstly, it could indicate a shortage of available funds to provide intergenerational monetary help to elderly parents (lower opportunities). secondly, the result refl ects more opportunities for elderly parents to receive remittances if they • ionuț földes70 take care of their non-migrant grandchildren, and the need of migrants to receive such support, which in turn is reciprocated by fi nancial means. the literature on remittances often highlights that monetary transfers from abroad to the country of origin (developing countries) are usually family-oriented and largely spent on food and basic consumption, followed by medical or health care expenses (cox 2002; sander 2003). moreover, it is also reported that low-income households tend to receive more remittances (funkhouser 1995). in this case, remittances play a major role in reducing poverty and improving quality of life for non-migrant family members. parental needs, for fi nancial or medical reasons, are an important trigger for remittances by migrant adult children. the third hypothesis assumes that remittances are more likely when opportunities are available for migrant children and when the needs of their elderly parents living in the country of origin are greater (hypothesis h3). transfers of remittances are compound transactions, including material, emotional and relational elements (carling 2014). subjectivity specifi c to both sender and receiver is involved when remittances are transferred from the migrant to the non-migrant family members. this creates a structure that facilitates social interactions and remittances (carling 2014). compensation payments, repayments, allowances and other forms of help are essential for understanding the social meaning of remittance transactions (carling 2014). distinctions between individual motives (such as altruism, exchange, inheritance or strategic motives) and familial arrangements (insurance and investment), provide important insights into the complex set of possible motivations to remit (rapoport/docquier 2006). ethnographic studies also highlight the variation of meanings of fi nancial upward support. on the one hand, remittances for parents living in diffi cult fi nancial conditions are the only available solution in order to be economically secure. on the other hand, fi nancial transfers from adult children may be a "symbolic expression of fi lial piety" or simply "a matter of choice or practicality" (baldassar et al. 2007: 86). in a previous study in poland, children living abroad were responsible for helping their parents fi nancially. remittances were valued as a symbol of children’s concern and care from a distance (krzyżowski/mucha 2014). in the romanian context, family solidarity and limited state support for elderly persons in poverty are the reasons for a strong fl ow of remittances from adult children abroad. therefore, remittances in cash produce a safety net for the non-migrant family members. romania is also a free market economy, with a large range of imported products and high rates of consumption (national institute of statistics 2019). previous fi ndings on smaller romanian communities abroad show that the money which the migrants send back home is mostly spent on covering household needs (toth 2009). we assume that remittances in cash are mostly a way to secure parents’ wellbeing and fi nancial security, while remittances in kind may, for their part, be deeper expressions of caring and are not intended to make ends meet for parents (hypothesis h4). linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 71 4 data and methodology to test the research hypotheses, we used recent data from the project entitled intergenerational solidarity in the context of work migration abroad: the situation of elderly left at home. this research project included a national survey carried out among romanians aged 60 and over. in international demographic studies, 60 is the threshold age for the older population (un 2015). eligible sample members had to have at least one adult child currently working abroad. data collection took place between april and december 2016. the analytic approach adopted in this paper focuses on the elderly parent-emigrant adult child dyad. data were collected from 1,506 different households and the respondent was the elderly parent (if alive, either the mother, or the father). the sampling procedure consisted of a random selection of two administrative units within each development region of romania, followed by another random selection of towns and villages within each stratum. respondents were identifi ed by fi eld survey staff through collaboration with local people: public and private institutions that maintain contacts with potential respondents (for example: city halls, social service departments, day-care centres for elderly people, organizations that provide care services). another method for fi nding eligible respondents was through recommendations from already-interviewed individuals. most of the parents interviewed have one adult child living abroad and around 30 percent of respondents have two or more adult children living abroad. in total, our data set consists of 2,188 emigrant adult children aged 20 years or over. for 79 emigrant children (4 percent), the parents did not provide any information about either their transnational connection or previous family ties. once these cases were excluded, the fi nal sample includes 2,109 parent-child dyads. the variables used for this study are measurements of various types of support offered and received by elderly parents and emigrant children. in order to capture exchanges before migration, we used retrospective questions. other questions addressed topics related to family composition, living arrangements of the nuclear family and demographics. these variables have a non-response rate of between 1 and 5 percent. results are presented in two different sub-sections according to the methods used for data analysis. descriptive results are fi rst provided in order to give the reader a sense of the sample composition. the results of the logistic regression models are then presented. regression estimates were obtained after adjusting standard errors for correlation among adult children of the same parent. in order to achieve better explanatory power, explanatory variables measuring the types of current and past intergenerational support were recoded as dichotomous. for the analyses of remittances in cash, the original ordinal scale (1 = no support, 2 = once or twice, 3 = more than twice, 4 = regular, at least once a month) was retained. the polr function in r was used for estimating the effects of several explanatory variables on remittances in cash. in the case of remittances in kind, the glm function for the binomial family distribution was used. ordinal and binary logistic regression coeffi cients have similar interpretations. • ionuț földes72 two different categories of explanatory variable are employed. the fi rst uses measures of downward support and upward support, both before and during migration. frequencies of ict (information and communications technology)-mediated conversations and visits were used to assess the extent of contact between parents and children. these variables are used in order to give a sense of the family background and family history. the second category of explanatory variable comprises information about the needs and opportunities of individuals: the nuclear family context of the adult child, his or her employment status, parents’ health condition and fi nancial dependency. these variables identify the structures of opportunities and needs of both emigrant adult children and ageing parents. some other variables were used as control factors, including country of destination, gender combination and parents’ age and marital status. before regression modelling, all explanatory variables were checked for multicollinearity. the generalized variance infl ation factor was calculated for the glm models. finally, the two regression analyses, namely for remittances in cash and remittances in kind, provide fi nal models which integrate both types of explanatory variable. the empirical results are thus based on two logistic regression models. the fi rst model explains the variation in cash remittances using the ordinal scale, while the other model uses the binary response variable measuring remittances in kind. before describing the empirical results, it is necessary to assess some limitations of the data. on the one hand, the empirical evidence relies only on the parents’ perspective and on their information about the personal characteristics of their children. this raises the issue of parental bias, but no information directly from the adult children is available in order to control for possible errors. additionally, even though there is some knowledge about previous intergenerational exchanges, using cross-sectional survey data imposes limits when trying to understand how intergenerational solidarity is changing across the life course. the retrospective data used here is based on parents’ memory of the past and their subjective sense of early relationships with their adult children. however, we do not believe that such limitations diminish the theoretical and empirical value of our fi ndings. 5 results 5.1 description of respondent characteristics and responses descriptive statistics in table 1 distinguish between several measures of intergenerational solidarity and indicators of the opportunities and needs of elderly parents and emigrant adult children. looking at intergenerational support during migration, our results show more fi nancial and material support overall from migrant adult children. on the other hand, parents were more involved in providing fi nancial and material intergenerational support before migration. these results are in line with literature showing that downward intergenerational support is more frequent in a translocal context and that the direction of support usually changes after migration linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 73 of the adult child (finch/mason 1993). however, parents with adult children living abroad do not only receive support, but also play active roles in transnational exchanges. support in kind and practical help around the house are family practices that are highly present among elderly parents with emigrant adult children. 5.2 explaining transnational fi nancial support. multivariate analysis considering intergenerational support in cash, the results displayed in table 2 highlight continued upward support across time and geographic distance. signifi cant estimates for variables measuring intergenerational support range from 0.309 to 1.034, where support in cash from an adult child before migration (1.034) and support in kind from an adult child during migration (0.822) are highly signifi cant. our results show that adult children who used to provide support in cash before emigrating are almost three times more likely to send more remittances (odds ratio = 2.812), and 50 percent more likely if they had provided support in kind (odds ratio = 1.489). strong association is observed for upward support in kind during migration (0.822). the odds ratio is 2.275, which means that the odds of sending more frequent remittances in cash are twice as high when migrants send remittances in kind as well. smaller and less signifi cant regression coeffi cients are observed for practical support from a distance provided by elderly parents (0.309). the estimated regression coeffi cient for monetary transnational support is signifi cant and negative when fi nancial support is transferred by elderly parents to emigrant adult children (-1.008). when emigrants receive money from their parents, they are 64 percent less likely to send remittances in cash. clearly, support in cash in the context of migration is unidirectional. migrants have the means to remit back home and parents have the means to return the support received in other ways. we do confi rm hypothesis (h1) regarding previous commitments and reciprocity. strong previous family commitments, both from adult children and elderly parents, and indirect reciprocity increase the likelihood of more frequent remittances. at the level of family and household, table 2 shows other explanatory factors to be signifi cant. our fi ndings stress a signifi cant association between transnational visits by emigrants and ict contact. the two signifi cant values of the regression estimates range from 0.619 for weekly ict contact to 0.709 for visits. the unexpected result is the non-signifi cant negative effect of daily ict contact. our second hypothesis (h2) is therefore only partially confi rmed. considering the emigrant’s needs and opportunities, stepwise results (not displayed here) show signifi cant positive association when the migrant child has a regular job (employed worker, self-employed or business owner) compared to a non-working child. unexpectedly, the estimate in the full model is not signifi cant anymore. living separately from own nuclear family members accounts for the regularity of monetary support to ageing parents. in this case, the estimate varies from negative to positive values. having underage children in romania provides a positive association (0.428). in this case, emigrants are 50 percent more likely to send more remittances back home. a much stronger relationship regards non-coresident • ionuț földes74 variable/category % /mean(sd) support (remittances) in cash from adult child during migration at least once per month 10.1 more than twice a month 22.2 once or twice a month 18.3 no support 49.5 support in cash from adult child before migration yes 27.9 no 72.1 support in cash from parents during migration yes 6.0 no 94.0 support in cash from parents before migration yes 42.3 no 57.7 support (remittances) in kind from adult child during migration yes 46.3 no 53.7 support in kind from adult child before migration yes 58.2 no 41.8 support in kind from parents during migration yes 35.7 no 64.3 support in kind from parents before migration yes 75.8 no 24.2 practical support from parents in the household yes 25.0 no 75.0 ict contact monthly or less 23.0 weekly 47.9 daily 29.1 visits from adult child (in the past year) no 27.6 yes 72.4 tab. 1: descriptive results by intergenerational solidarity and personal characteristics of migrants and non-migrant elderly parents linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 75 variable/category % /mean(sd) gender combination son-father 18.6 daughter-father 18.8 son-mother 29.8 daughter-mother 32.9 working status of the migrant adult child has a regular job 87.7 unemployed 12.3 children of the migrant adult child no 28.1 yes, they live together 54.1 yes, living in romania 17.8 partner of the migrant adult child no 20.7 yes, they live together 70.2 yes, living in romania 9.2 country of destination of the migrant adult child italy 24.8 spain 19.2 germany 17.0 uk 10.5 other european 21.2 non-european 7.3 partnership status of the parent has partner 56.4 no partner 43.6 parent’s diffi culties caused by health status experiencing illness 63.7 no health problems 36.3 parent’s capability to manage household expenses no need for support 72.4 no 5.5 only with support 22.1 parent’s age 67.8 (6.7) n 2,109 tab. 1: continuation source: solfam database, own calculation • ionuț földes76 variable/category remittances in cash remittances in kind b (std. error) b (std. error) family and household level support in cash from adult child before migration (ref=no) yes 1.034 (0.121)*** 0.072 (0.161) 2.812 1.075 support in cash from parents during migration (ref=no) yes -1.008 (0.225)*** 0.051 (0.313) 0.365 1.052 support in cash from parents before migration (ref=no) yes 0.219 (0.113) -0.048 (0.145) 1.245 0.953 support in cash from adult child during migration (ref=no) yes 1.036 (0.147)*** 2.818 support in kind from adult child during migration (ref=no) yes 0.822 (0.112)*** 2.275 support in kind from adult child before migration (ref=no) yes 0.398 (0.128)** 0.843 (154)*** 1.489 2.323 support in kind from parents during migration (ref=no) yes -0.116 (0.124) 1.618 (0.157)*** 0.890 5.043 support in kind from parents before migration (ref=no) yes 0.125 (0.147) -0.157 (0.181) 1.133 0.855 practical support from parents (ref=no) yes 0.309 (0.124)* 0.325 (0.160)* 1.362 1.384 ict contact (ref=monthly or less) weekly 0.619 (0.118)*** 0.263 (0.152) 1.857 1.301 daily -0.157 (0.086) -0.081 (0.115) 0.855 0.922 visits from adult child (ref=no) yes 0.709 (0.132)*** 0.651 (0.161)*** 2.032 1.917 adult children working status (ref=unemployed) has a regular job 0.237 (0.188) 0.264 (0.214) 1.267 1.302 children (ref=no) yes, they live together -0.189 (0.129) 0.223 (0.188) 0.828 1.250 yes, living in romania 0.428 (0.213)* 0.357 (0.229) 1.534 1.429 tab. 2: unstandardized coeffi cients of logistic regression for remittances in cash and remittances in kind to elderly parents living in romania linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 77 variable/category remittances in cash remittances in kind b (std. error) b (std. error) partner (ref=no) yes, they live together -0.127 (0.148) 0.122 (0.204) 0.881 1.130 yes, living in romania -1.142 (0.280)*** -0.076 (0.315) 0.319 0.927 elderly parents diffi culties caused by health status (ref=none) yes 0.156 (0.120) -0.042 (0.147) 1.169 0.959 capable of managing household expenses (ref= no need for support) no 0.497 (0.307) -0.352 (0.311) 1.644 0.703 only with support 0.734 (0.131)*** -0.016 (0.171) 2.083 0.984 control variables gender combination (ref=son-father) daughter-father 0.092 (0.171) 0.403 (0.227) 1.096 1.496 son-mother 0.228 (0.162) 0.247 (0.213) 1.256 1.280 daughter-mother 0.219 (0.168) 0.399 (0.212) 1.245 1.490 country of destination (ref=italy) spain 0.010 (0.156) -0.433 (0.208)* 1.010 0.649 germany -0.289 (0.177) -0.434 (0.211) 0.749 0.648 uk -0.074 (0.186) -0.560 (0.248)* 0.929 0.571 other european 0.071 (0.155) -0.799 (0.204)*** 1.074 0.450 non-european -0.081 (0.233) -0.628 (0.290)* 0.922 0.534 partnership status of the parent (ref=no partner) partnered -0.297 (0.123)* 0.046 (0.153) 0.743 1.047 age of the parent (continuous) -0.020 (0.009)* 0.015 (0.011) 0.980 1.015 pseudo r-squared mcfadden 0.304 0.389 nagelkerke 0.639 0.597 tab. 2: continuation notes: *** p ≤ 0.001; ** p ≤ 0.01; * p ≤ 0.05 odds ratio are reported in italics below the coeffi cients source: solfam database, own calculation • ionuț földes78 living arrangements between spouses. specifi cally, when the spouse or the partner lives in the home country, the estimate is negative and highly signifi cant (-1.142). these are important results, stressing that family needs are highly valued among middle-aged immigrants. in cases where parents have trouble managing household expenses without support, the likelihood of remittances being sent is doubled (odds ratio = 2.083). this is the only signifi cant result for measures of parental needs. parental health status does not provide any signifi cant change in the regression estimate. the lack in signifi cance is mainly because the romanian public medical and health care system is based on social contributions and is free of charge at the point of use for most of its medical services. our empirical results verify hypothesis (h3) regarding the way in which needs and opportunities shape the transmission of remittances in cash to elderly parents. signifi cant estimates varying from -1.141 to 0.428 for migrants who do not live abroad with their nuclear family members and 0.734 for parents who need fi nancial support, give evidence to support our hypothesis. transnational support through money transfers is a way of securing the wellbeing of parents. nonetheless, children’s own needs and their capacities to transfer money are important as well. for instance, their own nuclear family arrangements seem to be extremely relevant in terms of understanding intergenerational help consisting of money transfers. remittances in kind are signifi cantly associated with other forms of support during migration. the values of estimates range from 1.036 for remittances in cash to 1.618 for downward support in kind. furthermore, practical support from parents increases the likelihood of remittances in kind by 40 percent. even though the association with practical support is not as strong as it is for material exchanges, the regression estimate is still large enough to support a generalized form of reciprocity (0.325). previous help is also important. adult children who used to help their parents before migration are expected to continue to offer support during migration. the regression estimate for upward support in kind before migration is highly signifi cant (0.843). based on our results, hypothesis (h1) regarding previous family commitment and mutual support during migration is confi rmed for remittances in kind as well. transnational support in kind to parents is not signifi cantly associated with ictcontact but only with visits to the home country. it appears that even though remittances do not require face-to-face contact, the likelihood for such exchanges is doubled (odds ratio = 1.384) when emigrant children visit their parents in the origin country. having no strong evidence for the importance of the regularity of ict contact, the second hypothesis is therefore only partially confi rmed for remittances in kind (h2). in terms of an individual’s opportunities and needs, our empirical results do not show any signifi cant associations. however, some countries of destination are associated with negative regression coeffi cients. remittances in kind are less common as the distance between the home country and the country of destination increases. our results do not provide enough reasons to confi rm the third hypothesis (h3) regarding the impact of opportunities and the need for remittances in kind. linked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 79 comparing results for remittances in cash and remittances in kind, both are heavily infl uenced by previous support and by the child’s commitment to family solidarity. however, different types of reciprocity are observed. when considering the structures of needs and opportunities, differences arise between the two outcomes. our evidence makes it clear that the frequency of money transfers from abroad is shaped signifi cantly by the opportunities of the children and by the needs of the parents. this is not the case for remittances in kind, however. also, money transfers appear to be absent except when face-to-face interaction occurs. we do confi rm the last hypothesis (h4) with regards to the particularity of remittances in cash in contrast with remittances in kind. 6 discussion the effect of intergenerational support before migration was confi rmed as positive. this result highlights the family-oriented type of migration which is characteristic to a large category of romanians living abroad. the strong positive association between remittances to parents and needs underlines how the decision to migrate is related to keeping the family materially well-off. previous research showed that 81 percent of the total amount of remittances was used to cover the daily needs of the non-migrants (toth 2009) and that temporary migration is triggered for fi nancial reasons (angel 2009). asymmetry between those who offer and those who receive support was also observed. the highest odds ratio indicates that emigrant adult children tend to be providers of support. they are more likely to remit if they were involved in upward support before migration and when their transnational support consists of both remittances in cash and in kind. this is in line with other studies which show that transnational relations can be asymmetrical (baldassar/merla 2014). however, the involvement of parents who are benefi ciaries of remittances should not be neglected. matching reciprocity (kolm 2008) is achieved by them providing practical help from a distance and by offering support in kind. regarding face-to face contact, visits to the home country seem to be an appropriate way of reconnecting with kin left behind and expressing fi lial piety by offering support in cash or kind to parents. most probably, this is when emigrants also receive goods such as traditional food from their parents. visits, along with mutual support in kind, can be understood as linking reciprocity (kolm 2008) between elderly parents and migrant adult children. transnational visits are considered to be the strongest way of remaining in contact and expressing togetherness (ducu 2016). the adult child’s own nuclear family also shapes only the regularity of remittances in cash to ageing parents. we observed lower chances of intergenerational support when the spouse or partner lives in romania and a higher likelihood when underage children live in romania. the literature shows that grandparents usually care for the grandchildren when parents work abroad (hărăguș et al. 2018; kagitҫibasi 2005; treas/mazumdar 2004). these results highlight the importance of family negotiations within the larger kin network. • ionuț földes80 with respect to the characteristics of elderly parents, our empirical evidence shows no signifi cant relationship between remittances in kind and parental needs. in contrast, parents experiencing fi nancial diffi culties are more likely to receive remittances in cash. remittances in kind are more likely to be exchanged during visits motivated by special occasions such as christian holidays, summer holidays and important family events. support in kind is a practice of gift-giving, and has a sentimental rather than a material meaning. previous research concluded that exchanging goods or objects creates a positive sense of attachment and gratitude (kolm 2000) and an embodied feeling of co-presence by proxy (baldassar et al. 2007). the results presented here highlight the fact that remittances are not just simple practices that occur between transnational family members, but instead are embedded within the broader set of family-like activities and shaped by the individual biographies and family history. these fi ndings build on previous work on romanian transnational families but provide new insights. 7 concluding remarks as part of the moral economy (minkler/estes 1991), exchanges of care are “governed by the moral codes of family and kinship ties” (baldassar/merla 2014: 32). the aim of this paper was to approach the study of remitting practices as something more than simple actions that family members do or do not engage in within the context of migration. we chose to understand remittances as a family practice and part of the intergenerational relationships of support, rather than as a contribution to the macro-economy of the home country. instead of emphasising the materiality of purely economic transactions, money and commodities were understood here in terms of means of doing family (morgan 2011). our empirical evidence shows that intergenerational support in cash and in kind can be reciprocal, multidirectional and asymmetrical. as highlighted by the results above, transfers of care change over the life course, being modelled by early family context, family history, current relationships and life events. individual characteristics, along with a degree of cultural, economic and political infl uence, are also important factors which determine the decision or the capacity to actively engage in supporting family from a distance. even if we do not have strong empirical evidence to distinguish between individual willingness and individual capacity to provide remittances, we have managed to see the important link between strong family bonds and intergenerational support. we have noticed that the patterns of transferring remittances in cash compared to remittances in kind to non-migrant elderly parents living in romania display similarities but also clear differences. both forms of transnational support have a certain material and sentimental value, but most importantly they are part of a broader family relationship. even though a large proportion of emigrant adult children do not send remittances to their elderly parents living in romania, we cannot directly assume the disruption of intergenerational family ties. different typologies of famlinked lives across borders: economic remittances to ageing parents in romania • 81 ily practices across borders imply that some forms of support are rather marginal while others are more intense (baykara-krumme/fokkema 2018). the limitations of the study also need to be considered. firstly, we recorded only the parental perspective regarding the relationship with each emigrant adult child. studies on intergenerational ambivalence regarding family support show that adult children do not always have the same opinions or perspectives as their parents (connidis/mcmullin 2002). secondly, this paper focuses on the parent-child dyad with minimal concerns for the broader kin network. looking at the broader kin group provides a clearer view of how responsibilities towards the family are negotiated among family members (finch/mason 1993). thirdly, compared to retrospective questions (the case here), longitudinal data provides more accurate and detailed information about past events and life changes. retrospective questions are subject to various sources of bias such as memory loss, blurred memories or misjudgements (de vaus 2001). our fi ndings and the limitations of this study suggest the need for further quantitative studies concerning romanian families and transnational family relationships across multiple borders. exploring normative and consensual intergenerational solidarity (bengtson 1993; bengtson/roberts 1991) and acculturation in the host societies could show how social values can determine transnational care and remittances in the romanian context. strong family norms indicate the presence of intergenerational support (bengtson 1993), but ambivalence can also produce changes in the subjective meaning of each family practice and differences in views between migrants and non-migrants. in some cases, acculturation is believed to nurture family support (rooyackers et al. 2016). however, increased differences in family systems and welfare regimes between the country of origin and the country of destination, along with a cosmopolitan type of migration (nedelcu 2012), could lead to different forms of transnational relations among kin groups. new variations may prevail while focusing on the economic 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(ed.) 2005: the purchase of intimacy. princeton: princeton university press. zimmer, zachary; rada, codrina; stoica, cătălin-augustin 2014: migration, location and provision of support to older parents: the case of romania. in: journal of population ageing 7,3: 161-184 [doi: 10.1007/s12062-014-9101-z]. date of submission: 14.06.2018 date of acceptance: 20.11.2019 ionuț földes (). babeş-bolyai university. cluj-napoca, romania. e-mail: ionut.foldes@gmail.com url: http://socasis.ubbcluj.ro/staff/ionut-foldes/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) with age comes …? an examination of gendered differences in the resource advantages associated with parental age in norway with age comes …? an examination of gendered differences in the resource advantages associated with parental age in norway wendy sigle, øystein kravdal abstract: using high-quality register data, this paper constructs an empirical portrait of older parenthood in contemporary norway and explores gender differences in the extent to which older parents are better-resourced parents. like most family issues, academic and policy discussions of older parenthood have tended to focus on the experiences of women. although motherhood at older ages was not uncommon in previous generations, rapid social and family changes in recent decades mean that today’s older mother is far more likely to be having her fi rst child. she may have focused on obtaining a good education and then on establishing her career and fi nding a supportive partner. when viewed through this motherhood lens, older parents are often portrayed as being relatively well-off fi nancially and enjoying stable family lives. viewed through the fatherhood lens, however, the family literature suggests that age might not be as strong a marker of socio-economic advantage. our fi ndings show that this is the case: while older fathers are, on average, more socio-economically advantaged than younger fathers around the time their children are born, their relative advantage is narrower than what we observe when older mothers and younger mothers are compared. gender differences in the family history profi les of older parents appear to explain some of the differentials we document. the children of older fathers are more likely to be born into blended families and less likely to born to a mother who postponed her fi rst birth than are the children born to older mothers. the results suggest that the meaning of paternal age and maternal age differs: paternal age is not as strong a marker of socio-economic advantages and resources for children as maternal age is. keywords: fertility postponement · late parenthood · fathers · norway · family diversity comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 363-386 (date of release: 26.08.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-13 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-13en5 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-13 • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal364 1 introduction in many countries of northern and western europe, the period since the late 1960s has been marked by dramatic and interrelated changes in fertility and family life. cohabitation increasingly replaced marriage as the fi rst union, and unmarried childbearing lost much of its stigma – particularly in contexts in which unmarried parents tended to co-reside. at the same time, opportunities for women to participate in higher education and the labour market created incentives for women to make use of new contraceptive technologies and to delay the transition to motherhood (goldin 2006). divorce and dissolution displaced widowhood as the predominant pathway into lone parenthood, and the subsequent formation of new partnerships resulted in growing numbers of blended families. these changes and their consequences, which have been collectively described in the demographic literature as the second demographic transition (sdt) (lesthaeghe 1995; van de kaa 1994), have attracted considerable international interest amongst academics, policymakers, and social commentators. for a variety of practical, pragmatic, and sometimes problematic reasons, social scientists have historically tended to approach the study of family changes by focusing almost exclusively on the experiences of women (goldscheider/kaufman 1996; kneale/joshi 2008; lappegård et al. 2011; sigle-rushton 2005). although demographers and family scholars increasingly recognise the theoretical and practical importance of carrying out research on men and fathers (sigle-rushton et al. 2013), the legacy of this focus on the experiences of women might mean that prevailing conceptual frameworks are less well-suited for depicting what has been going on with men. as feminist scholars confronted with androcentric bias in their fi elds of study have long noted, excavating the experiences of women is often challenging because existing frameworks and models do not always represent or explain their lived experiences well. in the study of family and fertility, we might encounter the same problem in reverse: when turning our attention from mothers to fathers, it might not be suffi cient to simply “add men and stir”. this may well be the case when we attempt to understand trends towards older parenthood in postsdt countries. the infl uential diverging destinies framework (mclanahan 2004) – and particularly the relationship between parental age and family resources that is central to it – may not fi t the experiences of men as well as it fi ts the experiences of women. moreover, the norwegian context might differ from the anglo-saxon settings in pertinent ways. with lower income inequality and more generous parental leave policies the norwegian economy may not differentially reward highly skilled women who delay childbearing to the same extent (sigle 2016; mandel/ shalev 2009). although motherhood at older ages was not uncommon in previous generations, rapid social and family changes in recent decades mean that today’s older mother is far more likely to be having her fi rst child. she may have focused on obtaining a good education and then on establishing her career and fi nding a supportive partner. when viewed through this motherhood lens, older parents are often portrayed – in the social scientifi c literature at least – as being relatively well-off fi nancially and with age comes …? • 365 enjoying stable family lives (goisis et al. 2017; goisis/sigle 2014). viewed through the fatherhood-lens, however, age might not be as strong a marker of socio-economic advantage and resources for children. some older fathers will be having children at an advanced age because they are forming or completing their fi rst family with a mother who postponed her fi rst birth, and so resemble older mothers as described in the diverging destinies framework. however, there are reasons to think that a smaller percentage of older fathers than older mothers will have followed this family trajectory. evidence has shown that the likelihood of forming a second family is higher for men than for women (van bavel et al. 2012; ivanova et al. 2013) and we expect to see more older fathers than older mothers in second and higher order partnerships. given that divorce, particularly when children are involved, is a “stratifi ed and stratifying life event” (raley/sweeney 2020: 81; see also sweeney 2010; for norway, see lappegård/rønsen 2013; poortman/lyngstad 2007; steele et al. 2009), this suggests that more older fathers than older mothers will be socioeconomically disadvantaged. as men tend to form partnerships with women who are younger than they are (ní bhrolcháin 2005) and wide age differences are often acceptable to both older men and younger women (ní bhrolcháin/sigle-rushton 2005), age differences are greater in subsequent partnerships (e.g. ní bhrolcháin 2005; gustafson/fransson 2015). we therefore expect older fatherhood to be less strongly associated with maternal postponement (having a partner who postponed her fi rst birth) – and all its associated advantages – than older motherhood. taken together, these gender differences suggest that older fatherhood will not be the same marker of resources for children as older motherhood is (mclanahan 2004). in other words, what measures of parental age represent – their meaning – may be gendered. we are, however, not aware of any studies that have systematically compared gender differences in the meaning of parental age. using high-quality norwegian register data, this paper will begin to address this research gap. our aims are to describe what distinguishes men registered as fathers at an older age (40+) from men registered as fathers at a younger age in the same time period, to explore whether the differentials and trends are similar to what is observed when older (aged 36+) and younger mothers are compared, and to document whether these gender differences have changed over the course of the sdt. our fi ndings represent a fi rst step towards understanding whether advanced paternal age is, on balance, a similar marker of higher parental resources (mclanahan 2004) as maternal age is. 2 background and research questions efforts to document, describe and explain older childbearing, which is typically defi ned as childbearing after age 35 or 40, have, like fertility studies in general, tended to analyse the experiences of women (for an excellent recent exception, see beaujouan 2020). in post-sdt countries, the increasing share of older mothers is often understood as being driven by economic or other incentives for a woman to have her fi rst child at a later age (billari et al. 2007). historically, many older • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal366 mothers were completing larger-than-average families that they started at younger ages. when fertility fell to low levels, most women who started their childbearing at young ages completed their families while they were still relatively young, and older motherhood became increasingly rare. in recent years, the number and share of older mothers has increased as women started and completed their childbearing closer to the biological limit (goisis et al. 2017). consequently, recent trends in older motherhood have been understood as a consequence of the process of maternal postponement. the predominant focus on women in fertility studies and the emphasis on maternal postponement as the main driver of the growing share of older mothers has shaped the way the needs of families with older parents are represented and understood. economists and demographers have tended to conceptualise contemporary, postponement-driven older motherhood as the avoidance and reversal of the disadvantages associated with early motherhood. compared to early motherhood, postponement is associated with higher socio-economic status, greater maturity and a lower likelihood of dissolution, and so older motherhood is frequently described as both a marker and driver of advantage, with important implications for children and their life chances (gustafsson 2001; mclanahan 2004). consequently, on average, “an increase in mother’s age is viewed as an increase in parental resources” (mclanahan 2004: 609). in the demographic and sociological literature, concerns about early motherhood have tended to focus on socio-economic disadvantages, while studies of late motherhood, if they focus on risks at all, tend to focus on issues associated with biological constraints, health risks (sobotka 2010), and the economic costs to wider society: subfecundity leading to eventual childlessness and fuelling low fertility rates in ageing societies, and the medical costs of providing art to older women. although some recent work has demonstrated that late motherhood may violate wider social norms and so attract some level of opprobrium (billari et al. 2011), the assumption that older mothers are, on average, better-resourced mothers underpins much of the social scientifi c literature (goisis/sigle 2014). even if evidence suggests that advanced maternal age means higher resources, should we assume that advanced paternal age can be interpreted similarly? this is our fi rst research question. because men tend to be slightly older than their wives and partners, many men will become older fathers because they are having children with women who postponed their fi rst birth (henwood et al. 2011). patterns of assortative mating and hypergamy suggest that these men will be similarly socio-economically advantaged. they may also have benefi ted from their partner’s postponement by having more time to invest in their own education and career before assuming the responsibilities of fatherhood. however, family changes that accompanied the sdt suggest that the family and partnership histories may be more varied for older fathers than for older mothers, and in ways that suggest less socio-economic advantage. previous studies have shown that men repartner more often and more rapidly than women do, especially when they are older and have had children in a previous union (van bavel et al. 2012; ivanova et al. 2013). consequently, we expect that older fathers with age comes …? • 367 will be more likely than older mothers to have to provide time and resources to dependent children from previous partnerships. as age differences tend to be narrowest in fi rst partnerships (gustafson/ fransson 2015), a greater share of second and higher order partnerships may lead to childbearing where the father, but not the mother, is becoming a parent at an older age. taken together, this evidence suggests that some older fathers will be having children with mothers who have not postponed their fi rst birth and, importantly, many of these men will not be fi rst-time fathers. the literature on childbearing across partnerships suggests that these fathers are often more socio-economically disadvantaged than fathers who have children with only one partner (lappegård/ rønsen 2013; ginther et al. 2019). however, few studies of multiple partner fertility link it to the rise in older parenthood more generally. our second research question asks whether and how the families of older fathers and older mothers have differed in recent decades. to answer this question, we examine how older fathers and older mothers are distributed across fi ve family history profi les that take into account maternal postponement and childbearing across partnerships. our third research question asks whether the fi ve family profi les are associated with differences in socioeconomic and health resources. in contrast to the academic literature on older and late parenthood which has focused extensively on the postponement of fi rst births to women, the “start-over” or “do it again” dad – an older man in a higher order partnership who starts a second family after his children from previous partnerships attain adulthood – fi gures prominently in media depictions of older fathers (rubin 2016). this older father is often represented as a deeply committed family fi gure who regrets choices made the fi rst time around, such as prioritizing work and earnings when his now adult children were younger. like the mother who postpones, he is often assumed to be economically advantaged. however, he is consciously and actively embracing family life the second time around, often with a much younger partner who is starting her fi rst family with him (beyette 1985; hartley 2014). because media representations of this kind tend to be anecdotal, they provide little information about how typical this type of older father actually is. furthermore, the start-over father has not attracted much attention in the academic literature, perhaps because of its (until recently) almost exclusive focus on women. “start-over” parenthood – which requires that children from previous partnerships have all reached adulthood before starting a second family – represents a pathway that, for biological reasons, few women could follow into older motherhood, especially in recent decades as the proportion of women having their fi rst birth in their early 20s has declined substantially. this might explain why non-overlapping serial families have received limited attention in the extant literature so preoccupied with the experiences of women. children born to such fathers might face less competition for time and resources from halfsiblings when they are young. however, they might also be born to the oldest of older fathers, and so we expect them to be more likely to experience the death of their father before they research adulthood. evidence that start-over fathers are, in line with media depictions, a distinct, more socio-economically advantaged group than other fathers with childbearing • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal368 across partnerships would resonate with previous studies that found that, for norwegian fathers, multiple partner fertility is associated not just with socioeconomic disadvantage (as shown in previous literature) but also with socioeconomic advantage (lappegård/rønsen 2013). when we answer our second and third research questions, we are specifi cally interested in examining the following: how typical and how distinct – from other kinds of blended families and other families with older parents – are families with older, start-over fathers? 3 data and measures to examine differences between older fathers and mothers, we use data extracted from the norwegian population register which covers everyone who has ever lived in the country after 1964. from this register we identifi ed the mothers and fathers of children born in norway in each of three time periods: 1991-95, 2001-05, and 201115. individuals who became older parents in the fi rst period would have reached adulthood during the early stages of norway’s sdt (frejka 2017; lesthaeghe 2011), while many of those who became older parents in the most recent period – except perhaps the very oldest fathers – became adults after the fertility and family changes that comprise the sdt were fairly well-advanced. for 98.2 percent of the children born, both the mother and father can be identifi ed in the register. we excluded those cases where at least one parent was born before 1935 (less than 0.1 percent in the fi rst period, otherwise 0.0 percent) because the birth histories of those parents may not be complete. because birth events (deliveries) rather than children or parents are the unit of analysis, multiple births are treated as one event, and some parents are associated with more than one birth event in the analytic sample. this is the case for 12.9 percent of older fathers and 8.6 percent of older mothers. for each delivery, we extracted information about the parents’ ages at the time of delivery, the parents’ ages at fi rst birth, whether they had previously registered a birth with someone else, and the dates of any previous deliveries. for those deliveries that were recorded in the fi rst time period, we extracted information about whether the parent died in the next 18 years, thus depriving the child of parental resources before they were legally independent. furthermore, we added information about the highest educational level each of the parents had achieved, measured in the october before the year of birth, and the total pre-tax, pensionable income earned by each parent in the calendar year two years before the year of birth. this income measure includes wages and salaries, any income from self-employment, and unemployment benefi ts, temporary sickness benefi ts, and maternity or paternity benefi ts, but neither pensions nor permanent disability benefi ts. for 7.1 percent of all deliveries in our sample, information about education was missing for either the mother or the father. this is often because the parent was born or educated abroad. in these cases, the delivery (the information for both parents) was excluded when average education levels were calculated. another limitation was that income was missing for many mothers or fathers. the missing value typically indicates that the parent did not earn any pensionable with age comes …? • 369 income that year. when there is no evidence that income was missing because the parent had been living abroad (3.8 percent of fathers and 8.8 percent of mothers), missing values were set to zero. when at least one parent was not living in norway at the start of the previous two calendar years (8.1 percent of all deliveries), we excluded the delivery from all analyses of income differences. finally, if at least one parent emigrated from norway within 18 years of the delivery, that delivery is excluded from the analysis of survival/death. we fi rst consider whether, over the past three decades in norway, older fathers can be described as better-resourced than younger fathers. we also consider whether the extent of any resource advantage is similar to what is observed when older mothers are compared to younger mothers. older mothers are defi ned as those aged 36 and older. this is one year above the age threshold that is often used in the medical literature to classify a pregnancy as “geriatric”, and so all of our older mothers were “geriatric” at conception. the literature offers little guidance about where to set the age threshold for older fathers. in their study of older fi rsttime fathers in norway, nilsen and colleagues (2013) used age 40 as the threshold for “very advanced age”. in a cross-national comparison of late and “latest-late” parenthood in wealthy countries, beaujouan (2020) used age 40/48 as the threshold for late/extremely late motherhood and 45/55 as the threshold for late/extremely late fatherhood. in the absence of a clear convention, we relied primarily on information about the proportion of older mothers to set the age threshold for older fathers. figure 1 shows the share of deliveries to all older parents (the height of the bars), and the share of all deliveries to “late” and “very late” parents. in the 201115 period, about 17 percent of mothers were aged 36+ and therefore classifi ed as older mothers. in the same period, a similar share of fathers was aged 40+ (about 16 percent of fathers) and so we used this as the threshold for older fathers. while our decision ensures that older parenthood, as we defi ne it, is equally rare for both genders, there are differences and trends in the age distribution of older parents which may have implications for our results. to see these differences more clearly, figure 2 shows how the older mothers and fathers are distributed across the late and extremely late age categories we use similar thresholds to those in beaujouan (2020), with some slight adjustments so that the number of years of age included in the “late” category is the same for mothers (age 40-47) and fathers (age 44-51). while the majority of older parents in norway are at the younger end of the age range, the share of older parents who are late or very late parents has increased over the time period our data covers: from 39 percent to 43 percent of deliveries to older fathers and from 19 percent to 25 percent of deliveries to older mothers. for men, the increase in the share of late fathers is observed mostly at ages 52+ (“extremely late”). in contrast, almost no norwegian mothers have children at extremely late ages (48+) and so the 6 percentage point increase in births to late mothers is observed almost exclusively in the 40-47 age group. to measure fathers’ and mothers’ socio-economic position, we use information about their educational attainment and income. the fi rst measure identifi es individuals with higher tertiary education: an undergraduate degree and at least one year of graduate education. we focus on this relatively high level of attainment, • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal370 equivalent to a master’s degree in many countries, because we cannot be certain that those recorded as having lower tertiary education completed their undergraduate degree. because we are interested in whether older parents are better-resourced and whether the children born to older parents have greater access to economic resources, we examine both pensionable income and equivalised pensionable income (pensionable income divided by 1+0.3k where k represents the number of own biological children under the age of 18). we construct indicators for whether these income measures were in the top or bottom quartile of the respective income distribution of all fathers and all mothers who became parents in the same year (regardless of their age). to account for blended families, we create an indicator that identifi es fathers and mothers who have had children with more than one person. for parents who have registered a previous birth with another parent, we also calculated the time elapsed between the last child with a different parent and the fi rst child with the current parent. we use this information to identify those fathers who completed their last family before starting their current family with a mother who had not previously fig. 1: percentage of deliveries to older parents (fathers 40+, mothers 36+), distinguishing late (fathers 44-51, mothers 40-47), and very late parents (fathers 52+, mothers 48+) in norway 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 1991 2001 2011 zeile 5 1991 2001 2011 5.6 3.4 7.7 4.8 9.5 6.4 7.5 1.8 11.0 2.9 12.9 4.2 not late or very late late parents very late parents in percent 0.30 0.70 0.90 0.0005 0.0011 0.0036 1991-1995 26,436 deliveries 2001-2005 34,882 deliveries 2011-2015 45,315 deliveries 1991-1995 27,354 deliveries 2001-2005 38,081 deliveries 2011-2015 48,236 deliveries fathers mothers source: norwegian population register with age comes …? • 371 had children. this means the youngest child with another parent was at least 18 before the father started his current family with a fi rst-time mother. as noted above, for biological reasons, few women could become start-over mothers, especially in a context where few fi rst births occur in the late teens and early 20s, and so we examine start-over father families only.1 to answer our second and third research questions, we move beyond individual circumstances of older parents and compare the distribution of older parents across fi ve family history profi les (research question 2) and examine how the characteristics and resources of parents vary across those profi les (research question 3). these profi les take into account whether the mother of the child postponed her fi rst birth (already established as a clear marker of high resources e.g. mclanahan 2004), the presence of maternal and paternal half-siblings (often shown – or assumed – in 1 in all three periods, fewer than 1 percent of older mothers had started a new family with a fi rsttime father after all their children with other fathers reached 18. fig. 2: percentage of older parents (fathers 40+, mothers 36+) that are late (fathers 44-51, mothers 40-47), and very late parents (fathers 52+, mothers 48+) in norway 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1991 2001 2011 zeile 4 1991 2001 2011 60.3 37.0 58.3 37.0 56.5 38.1 80.6 19.4 79.1 20.9 75.4 24.5 not late or very late late parents very late parents in percent 1991-1995 26,436 deliveries 2001-2005 34,882 deliveries 2011-2015 45,315 deliveries 1991-1995 27,354 deliveries 2001-2005 38,081 deliveries 2011-2015 48,236 deliveries 0 20 40 60 80 100 fathers mothers 3.2 5.3 5.4 0.0 0.0 0.0002 source: norwegian population register • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal372 previous literature to be marker of lower resources; e.g. mclanahan 2004; sweeney 2010) and whether the father who has previous children is a start-over father (less explored in the extant literature). we fi rst divide the sample into two groups: those children born with at least one half-sibling (maternal or paternal) and those children born to parents who have only had children with each other. from the fi rst group, we identify the start-over dad families: there are only paternal half-siblings, the youngest of which was at least 18 when the parents had their fi rst child together (the fi rst full sibling or the delivery in our sample). setting aside this start-over dad group, the remaining two groups are each divided into families with and without maternal postponement. we consider motherhood to have been postponed when the fi rst birth occurs after the age of 30. in recent decades, time spent in education has increased and other events that mark the transition to adulthood, including the age at fi rst birth, have been delayed to older ages. the average age at fi rst birth climbed from 26.1 in the early 1990s to 28.2 in 2010. by 2016, the average age at fi rst birth for women in norway was 29. although the age 30 threshold is a bit lower than what has been used in recent scandinavian medical studies (waldenström 2016), it identifi es women who, even in the most recent period, were having their fi rst birth later than average and who had suffi cient time to complete high levels of education and get established in their careers before transitioning to motherhood. this classifi cation approach results in fi ve mutually exclusive family history profi les. the fi rst family history profi le, diverging destinies, identifi es families where the mother postponed her fi rst birth (beyond age 30) and there are no maternal or paternal half-siblings. this profi le most closely resembles the high resource life course trajectory described by sara mclanahan (2004) in her diverging destinies framework. the second family history profi le, pre-sdt, most closely resembles the normative family patterns of the mid-20th century. it identifi es those families where the mother did not postpone her fi rst birth and there are no half-siblings. in many of these families, both parents were relatively young when their fi rst child was born. all of the children born to older mothers in the pre-sdt profi le will therefore be higherorder births. in contrast, some of older fathers in this group will be having their fi rst child with a much younger mother (8 percent, 11 percent and 14 percent in 1991-95, 2001-05, and 2011-15, respectively). the third family history profi le identifi es the start-over dad families. there are only paternal half-siblings, and the youngest halfsibling was at least 18 before the father and mother had their fi rst child. the fourth and fi fth family history profi les contain all the remaining families with at least one half-sibling. the fourth profi le, early sequential parenting, includes mothers who did not postpone their fi rst birth, and the fi fth profi le, late sequential parenting, includes mothers who did. as both early parenting and family complexity have been shown to be associated with greater disadvantages, we expect the diverging destinies families to be most advantaged and the early sequential parenting profi le to be most disadvantaged. we expect the pre-sdt and late sequential parenting family history profi les to fall in between the two extremes. because media depictions of start-over dad families as highly resourced are anecdotal, we examine whether, in a representative sample, with age comes …? • 373 these families have greater resources available to children than other kinds of stepfamilies. 4 results our fi rst research question asks whether older fatherhood is as strong a marker of high (individual-level) resources as older motherhood is. table 1 presents information on the socio-economic position of older and younger parents as well as information about the economic resources they can provide for their children. for each of the three time periods, we fi rst compare older fathers and mothers to their younger counterparts and then examine whether, drawing on what we know about gendered differences in family patterns and trends, those age-related differentials are narrower for fathers than for mothers at different points in time. the fi gures in table 1 indicate that both older fathers and older mothers are relatively more educated than younger fathers and mothers respectively. since the early 1990s, however, the share of all parents with a tertiary qualifi cation has increased, and educational differences between older and younger parents have become less pronounced, with the largest change occurring between the fi rst and second period. in the early 1990s, older fathers were more than twice as likely as younger fathers to have higher tertiary education. ten years later, they were just 35 percent more likely than younger fathers to have a postgraduate qualifi cation. in all three periods, the relative educational advantage is greater for older mothers than for older fathers. for the 2011-15 period, older mothers were 71 percent more likely than younger mothers to have obtained a postgraduate qualifi cation. in the same period, older fathers were only 20 percent more likely than younger fathers to have higher tertiary education. both older fathers and older mothers are over-represented in the top quartile and under-represented in the bottom quartile of pensionable income in all three time periods. however, the over-representation is most marked in the earliest period for older fathers, when 41.5 percent had pensionable income in the top quartile of the income distribution (of all fathers of newborns in the same year) and in the most recent period for older mothers, when 43.5 percent had a pensionable income in the top quartile of the mothers’ income distribution. because income tends to increase with age, the differences in pensionable income between older and younger parents are not surprising. however, as the next rows of table 1 show, older parents are less likely than younger parents to be having their fi rst birth and more likely to have larger families. while declining over time, in the most recent period, 20.4 percent of the older fathers had at least three previous children, compared to only 3.2 percent of fathers younger than 40. older mothers are also more likely than younger mothers to have large families. however, the percentage of older mothers with three or more previous births is, in all periods, substantially smaller than the percentage of older fathers with at least three previous births. in the most recent period, for example, only 13 percent of older mothers have already had three or more children. these fi gures suggest that • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal374 tab. 1: socio-economic and health resources of older and younger parents in norway fathers fathers older: mothers mothers older: fathers' 40+ <40 younger 36+ <36 younger ratio: (%) (%) fathers (%) (%) mothers mothers' ratio older parents 1991-95 9.0 91.0 0.10 9.3 90.7 0.10 0.96 2001-05 12.7 87.3 0.15 13.9 86.1 0.16 0.90 2011-15 16.1 83.9 0.19 17.1 82.9 0.21 0.93 educational qualifi cations higher tertiary 1991-95 13.6 6.7 2.03 7.0 2.8 2.50 0.81 2001-05 13.6 10.1 1.35 12.8 7.1 1.80 0.75 2011-15 17.5 14.6 1.20 24.3 14.2 1.71 0.70 own pensionable income bottom quartile of parents of children born in the same year 1991-95 18.8 25.6 0.73 19.6 25.5 0.77 0.96 2001-05 22.2 25.4 0.87 17.8 26.2 0.68 1.29 2011-15 20.1 25.9 0.78 14.7 27.2 0.54 1.44 top quartile of parents of children born in the same year 1991-95 41.5 23.4 1.77 40.3 23.4 1.72 1.03 2001-05 35.5 23.5 1.51 39.1 22.7 1.72 0.88 2011-15 35.8 23.0 1.56 43.4 21.1 2.06 0.76 number of own previous children no previous births 1991-95 14.4 44.2 0.33 15.5 44.4 0.35 0.93 2001-05 18.6 45.4 0.41 19.2 45.3 0.42 0.97 2011-15 21.7 47.2 0.46 23.0 47.3 0.49 0.95 three or more previous births 1991-95 31.2 5.0 6.24 23.2 4.1 5.66 1.10 2001-05 26.3 4.3 6.12 18.0 3.8 4.74 1.29 2011-15 20.4 3.2 6.38 13.0 2.9 4.48 1.42 equivalised own income (dependent children only, children 18+ excluded) bottom quartile of parents of children born in the same year 1991-95 23.3 25.2 0.92 21.3 25.4 0.84 1.10 2001-05 28.5 24.5 1.16 20.5 25.7 0.80 1.46 2011-15 25.5 24.9 1.02 17.7 26.6 0.67 1.54 top quartile of parents of children born in the same year 1991-95 32.2 24.3 1.33 29.3 24.6 1.19 1.11 2001-05 28.2 24.6 1.15 29.6 24.2 1.22 0.94 2011-15 29.6 24.1 1.23 34.0 23.1 1.47 0.83 died within 18 years of the birtha 1991-95 6.8 2.1 3.24 2.1 0.9 2.30 1.39 a amongst those parents who did not permanently emigrate. source: norwegian population register and registers on education and income with age comes …? • 375 age-related economic advantages observed using pensionable income will narrow when equivalised income is used. they also suggest that the results will change more for fathers than for mothers. when income is equivalised to account for the number of dependent children, older parents are still over-represented in the top quartile, but, as expected, the difference narrows. at the bottom end of the distribution, older mothers are less likely to have a bottom-quartile income in all three periods, and this is most pronounced in the most recent period. in contrast, older fathers are under-represented in the bottom quartile of the equivalised income distribution in the fi rst period only. to the extent that higher educational attainment or a top-quartile equivalised income are valid indicators of high levels of resources for children born in norway, the fi gures in table 1 suggest that older fathers are better-resourced than younger fathers, but the association of parental age and high resources is stronger for mothers than for fathers. moreover, the strength of the relationship between paternal age and resources for children declined over the three periods as enrolment in higher education has increased and childbearing has shifted to older ages more generally. for older mothers, their income advantages – but not their educational advantages – have actually widened. we interpret older mothers’ improved position in the equivalised income distribution across the three time periods as an upward trend in the economic resources they have available for their children. the results for older fathers suggest an opposite trend. regardless of their age, few parents of children born in the early 1990s died within 18 years. nonetheless, older parents were more likely to die than younger parents. unsurprisingly, given their higher average age (table 1) and more skewed age distribution (fig. 2), the absolute and relative risk of death was highest for older fathers, who were 3.2 times as likely to die as fathers who were under age 40. around 6.8 percent of older fathers who did not emigrate (and so were excluded from the analysis) did not survive. the risk of death for younger fathers and older mothers was similar: around 2 percent died within 18 years. the individual characteristics of older parents suggest that parental age is a marker of resources for children, but that maternal age is a stronger marker than paternal age is. when considering the resources available to children, and the extent to which they vary by parental age, the characteristics of both parents are relevant. to consider whether and how the parental characteristics of children born to older fathers and older mothers differ in ways that might suggest higher or lower resources for their children, we next look at the distribution of older fathers and older mothers across the fi ve family history profi les. as described in the data and methods section, these fi ve profi les are constructed by cross-tabbing maternal postponement (the older mother postponed or the older father is having a child with a mother who postponed her fi rst birth) and family complexity (the presence of one or more half-siblings), and then separating out, as a fi fth profi le, those deliveries to blended families with start-over fathers. figure 3 shows how older fathers and older mothers are distributed over the fi ve family history profi les and how the distributions have changed over time. the share of diverging destinies families (the mother postponed her fi rst birth, and neither • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal376 parent has had a child with another person), which we hypothesised would contain the most advantaged older parents, has increased over time for both fathers and mothers. this profi le became the modal profi le of older mothers in the second period (41.3 percent of deliveries to older mothers), and by 2011-15, this profi le accounted for the majority of the older mothers – 53.5 percent. while increasing over the three time periods, the share of older fathers in such families is notably smaller. it is only in the most recent period that the diverging destinies profi le becomes the modal family history profi le for older fathers, accounting for 33.8 percent of the deliveries. the pre-sdt family history profi le was, in 1991-95, the modal family history profi le for both older fathers (37.9 percent of birth events) and older mothers (36 percent of birth events). in subsequent periods, the share of children born into pre-sdt families declined, but more for older mothers than older fathers. in the fi nal period, the pre-sdt family history profi le still accounted for 30.4 percent of the older fathers, but only 19.7 percent of older mothers. the share of parents in the remaining three profi les – all of which involve some childbearing across partnerships – has declined over the three time periods. the fig. 3: family history profi les of older fathers and older mothers in norway, 1991-2015 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1991-1995 2001-2005 2011-2015 1991-1995 2001-2005 2011-2015 17.9 37.9 6.5 28.9 8.8 24.7 32.3 5.0 26.3 11.7 33.8 30.4 4.3 20.1 11.4 32.3 36.0 2.0 22.0 7.7 41.3 23.9 1.9 22.9 10.0 53.5 19.7 1.8 15.4 9.7 diverging destinies pre-sdt start-over dads early sequential parenting late sequential parenting in percent 1991-1995 2001-2005 2011-2015 1991-1995 2001-2005 2011-2015 older fathers older mothers source: norwegian population register with age comes …? • 377 latter trend is more pronounced for older fathers than older mothers. nonetheless, in the most recent period, these three profi les contained a larger share of older fathers than older mothers, and so the children born to older fathers are more likely to have half-siblings than the children born to older mothers. although the share of older fathers in the late sequential parenting profi le is larger, the percentage of older mothers in the diverging destinies profi le is far larger, suggesting that older motherhood is more strongly associated with maternal postponement than older fatherhood is. in the 2011-15 period, at least 63.2 percent of older mothers postponed their fi rst birth and at least 45.2 percent of older fathers were having a child with a mother who postponed her fi rst birth. we say “at least” because the start-over dad profi le contains mothers who postponed and mothers who did not postpone their fi rst birth. for the 2011-15 period, only 4.3 percent of the older fathers were start-over fathers and 1.8 percent of the older mothers were having a child with a start-over father.2 around 63 percent of these start-over dads are having a child with a mother who postponed her fi rst birth (2.7 percent of deliveries to older fathers), while 89 percent of older mothers in start-over dad families postponed their fi rst birth (1.6 percent of deliveries to older mothers). adding the percentage of start-over dad families where the mother postponed her fi rst birth thus has little impact: in total, 64.8 percent of children born to older mothers had a mother who postponed her fi rst birth and 47.9 percent of children born to older fathers had a mother who postponed her fi rst birth. that older motherhood is more strongly associated with maternal postponement than older fatherhood and that older fatherhood is more strongly associated with family complexity than older motherhood suggests differences in their family histories should partly explain why older motherhood is a stronger marker of socio-economic advantage and resources for children. turning to our third research question, tables 2 and 3 present information on how parental characteristics and resources available to children with older fathers (table 2) and older mothers (table 3) vary across the fi ve family history profi les. the diverging destinies profi le often, but not always, includes the most highly resourced older parents. in all three time periods, older parents who meet the criteria for this family history profi le are more likely to be highly educated and to be having a child with someone who is highly educated. these educational differentials are most pronounced in the most recent period. for two of the three time periods, the diverging destinies profi le contains the smallest percentage of older fathers with a bottom-quartile, pensionable income. differences from older fathers in the late sequential parenting profi le are, in all periods, small, and in the most recent period, the gap in bottom-quartile pensionable income is reversed. while the diverging destinies fathers were most likely to have a top quartile pensionable income (42 percent) in the most recent period, the late sequential parenting profi le was, 2 since almost all start-over fathers are older fathers, these fi gures suggest that the majority of older fathers in the start-over dad profi le are having children with women who are not older mothers ([4.3 x 45,315 deliveries]-1.8 x 48,236 deliveries]/[4.3 x 45,315] = 55 percent). • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal378 tab. 2: socio-economic and health resources of older fathers by family profi le no half-siblings half-siblings other childbearing across no maternal partnerships mother mother did half siblings mother did mother postponed not postpone not postpone postponed diverging pre-sdt start-over dads early sequential late sequential destinies parenting parenting distribution of profi les 1991-95 17.9 37.9 6.5 28.9 8.8 2001-05 24.7 32.3 5.0 26.3 11.7 2011-15 33.8 30.4 4.3 20.1 11.4 father is 44+ 1991-95 30.9 27.4 78.9 41.5 47.0 2001-05 31.8 28.9 87.4 42.7 49.2 2011-15 33.6 33.6 86.5 45.5 51.7 father is 52+ 1991-95 2.0 1.8 17.4 3.6 3.7 2001-05 2.9 2.5 40.8 6.0 5.8 2011-15 3.1 3.3 40.7 6.0 7.4 father is 7+ years older 1991-95 39.4 54.6 91.1 76.1 60.3 2001-05 38.7 62.3 93.5 71.3 59.8 2011-15 37.4 68.3 90.6 70.6 56.9 father has higher tertiary education 1991-95 22.1 12.5 9.9 8.8 18.6 2001-05 22.0 12.5 10.7 7.3 13.8 2011-15 27.0 15.2 8.6 8.1 15.1 both parents have higher tertiary education 1991-95 6.1 2.4 2.2 1.5 5.4 2001-05 9.2 3.9 3.9 1.7 5.6 2011-15 14.2 6.2 4.0 2.3 7.4 father's pensionable income in bottom quartile of all parents in the same year 1991-95 16.3 18.4 18.2 21.5 16.4 2001-05 17.8 25.5 22.1 24.2 18.5 2011-15 16.4 26.0 20.6 20.7 14.5 father's pensionable income in top quartile of all parents in the same year 1991-95 44.4 38.3 48.5 39.3 51.7 2001-05 42.4 31.0 39.1 30.6 42.2 2011-15 42.0 29.6 35.5 30.9 41.8 father's equivalised income in bottom quartile of all parents in the same year (dependent kids) 1991-95 16.0 26.7 16.2 25.6 20.5 2001-05 17.3 36.1 19.3 32.6 26.6 2011-15 16.4 35.1 18.1 30.3 21.6 with age comes …? • 379 again, little different (41.8 percent). the pensionable incomes of start-over dad families were, in all periods, more similar to the other two economically advantaged profi les, but they became less similar (less economically advantaged) over time. contrary to what we predicted, in all three time periods, the late sequential parenting older mothers are least likely to have a bottom-quartile pensionable income and most likely to have a top-quartile pensionable income, although, at the top end of the earnings distribution, differences with the diverging destinies mothers narrowed substantially over time. in the 2011-15 period, the percentage with top-quartile pensionable income is roughly the same for both profi les. the relative economic advantage enjoyed by older mothers in start-over dad families declined over the three time periods we consider, and by the fi nal period, their pensionable income distribution was substantially different from older mothers in the diverging destinies and late sequential parenting profi les. when we consider economic resources available to children by equivalising older fathers’ pensionable income, the diverging destinies and start-over dad profi les are the most advantaged in all three periods, and the late sequential parenting profi le more closely resembles the two less-advantaged profi les (presdt and early sequential parenting). for older mothers, the fi gures for bottomquartile income are little changed when pensionable income is equivalised. at the no half-siblings half-siblings other childbearing across no maternal partnerships mother mother did half siblings mother did mother postponed not postpone not postpone postponed diverging pre-sdt start-over dads early sequential late sequential destinies parenting parenting father's equivalised income in top quartile of all parents in the same year (dependent kids) 1991-95 45.7 22.6 56.2 30.2 35.4 2001-05 41.3 19.3 44.9 23.8 27.6 2011-15 41.8 19.6 43.9 23.0 26.6 father's fourth or higher order birth 1991-95 3.3 32.3 33.4 42.5 43.6 2001-05 3.1 27.5 33.5 38.6 41.5 2011-15 2.3 22.6 30.0 36.5 36.7 father died within 18 years of the birtha 1991-95 6.4 6.3 10.4 7.8 7.2 tab. 2: continuation notes: when a fi gure associated with profi le 2, 3, 4, or 5 is underlined, the difference with profi le 1 is statistically signifi cant at the 5 percent level. when the fi gure associated with profi le 4 or profi le 5 is in boldface, the difference with profi le 3 is statistically signifi cant at the 5 percent level. a amongst those who did not emigrate. source: norwegian population register and registers on education and income • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal380 top end of the distribution, older mothers in start-over dad families do not become less advantaged over time relative to the diverging destinies and late sequential parenting profi les as we observed with pensionable income. in all periods, the diverging destinies profi le contains a lower share of top-quartile observations than the other two profi les, but the gap has narrowed substantially over time to around 5 percentage points in the most recent period. taken together, these fi gures suggest that maternal postponement has remained persistently associated with socioeconomic advantage and resources for children, but the stratifying effects of family complexity depend to a greater extent on the measure of economic advantage that we use. in contrast to media depictions of start-over dads, the results suggest higher resources for children not because their fathers have markedly higher incomes but because they have markedly fewer dependents than fathers in other kinds of stepfamilies. they are less likely to be having a fourth or higher order birth than other older fathers in complex families, and so have fewer dependents. even so, we might ask whether we have underestimated the claims on their resources. although not legally dependent, adult children might nonetheless make a substantial claim on their fathers’ resources. this would not be refl ected in our equivalised income measure, which did not count adult children as dependents. when we equivalise income using a count of all children regardless of their age (results not shown, but available upon request), older fathers in the start-over dad profi le no longer stand out as having greater resources for their children.3 they most resemble those older fathers in the early sequential parenting profi le. start-over fathers are not more highly qualifi ed than older fathers in other types of blended families either, and given their higher average age, they are the most likely to die within 18 years of the delivery (based on deliveries in the 1991-95 period only). hence, it is not clear that older fathers in start-over dad families provide, on average, greater resources for children. 5 discussion and conclusion this paper takes as its point of departure previous research on the impact of family changes which have accompanied the sdt. focusing predominantly on women’s fertility and family experiences, and dramatic trends in the postponement of the transition to motherhood, the demographic literature has tended to use advanced maternal age as a marker of resources which benefi t parents and children (mclanahan 2004). drawing on previous research which has questioned whether demographic indicators like maternal age or marital status mean the same thing 3 because few women who become older mothers have adult children, their income results do not change much when we count all children. only those mothers in the early sequential parenting profi le (half-sibling(s) and the mother did not postpone) show any real change: they are slightly more likely to have a bottom-quartile income and slightly less likely to have a topquartile income when their income is equivalised using all children, dependent or otherwise. with age comes …? • 381 across different contexts or different population groups (sigle/goisis 2019), and inspired by feminist research which has noted that conceptual frameworks that were developed to explain the experiences of one gender (usually men) are often inadequate when the focus is shifted to the other gender, we ask whether and to what extent advanced paternal age means the same thing as advanced maternal age does. in other words, is it a similar marker of resources and advantages? we also examine how the resources associated with advanced paternal and maternal age have changed over the course of the sdt in norway. using high-quality norwegian register data covering three time periods, we fi nd that around the time their children are born, older fathers (aged 40+) tend to be better resourced than younger fathers are. they are more highly educated and, even taking into account the number of biological dependent children that require their support, their fi nancial position tends to be better. however, their resource advantages have narrowed in recent decades. for most measures, the largest changes were observed from the fi rst (1991-95) to the middle period (2001-05). an economic recession beginning in 1988 and affecting younger people more than older people might have exacerbated income differences in the fi rst period. in addition, many older fathers in the early 2000s will have come of age prior to the rapid expansion of higher education (aamodt/arnesen 1995) which many of the younger parents they are compared to would have benefi tted from. when we examined whether the differentials and trends were similar to what is observed when older (aged 36+) and younger mothers are compared, we found that maternal age tends to be consistently associated with more socio-economic advantage and more resources for children than paternal age is. moreover, the age-related earned income advantage increased for older mothers and narrowed for older fathers over the three time periods. in the early 1990s, norway was still often described as having a housewife model. however, policy developments in the 1980s had already initiated a move towards a dual-earner model (lewis 1992; frønes 1997). older parents of children born in fi rst period transitioned to adulthood at a time when policies and the wider culture did not support mothers’ full-time employment (ellingsæter/jensen 2019). if highly educated older mothers in the later periods faced less statistical discrimination in the labour market than older mothers in the early period, highly educated mothers would be more likely to attain positions and pay commensurate with their education in recent years. differences in the family history profi les of older fathers and older mothers also appear to have contributed to the observed gender differences and trends. the more advantaged family history profi les contain a larger share of older mothers than older fathers, and these gender differences have widened over time. in the most recent period, the majority of older mothers in norway followed what sarah mclanahan (2004) described as a high resource trajectory: they had postponed their fi rst birth (facilitating investments in education and career) and neither they nor their partner had children with someone else. only about one-third of older fathers lived in such families. older mothers are more likely to have postponed their fi rst birth than are the partners of older fathers. • wendy sigle, øystein kravdal382 we fi nd weaker and more qualifi ed evidence for the stratifying effects of family complexity. the older parents who followed the late sequential parenting and start-over dad trajectory are less educated than the diverging destinies parents, but their pensionable income distribution (late sequential parenting) or equivalised income distribution (start-over dad) is similar. when we take into account the number of dependent children, older fathers – but not older mothers – in the late sequential parenting profi le are less economically advantaged. their relatively large family size means they have fewer economic resources available for their children. the start-over dad fathers do not have higher pensionable incomes but, with fewer dependent children, they have more economic resources available for their child. when we consider all children rather than dependent children, older fathers in the start-over dad profi le no longer appear similar to the diverging destiny fathers. for older mothers, the results are less dependent on the indicator of economic resources we use, in part because older mothers in the late sequential parenting profi le do not have much larger families than the other profi les with relatively high pensionable incomes, and they are less likely to have adult children. taken together, the results illustrate important differences between older fathers and older mothers in contemporary norway. while our fi ndings suggest that regardless of gender, older parents are better resourced parents, they also indicate that the resource advantage is more pronounced for older mothers than older fathers. some family history profi les are less socio-economically advantaged or well-resourced than others, and these profi les are more typical of older fathers than older mothers. if the family histories of older fathers and older mothers were more similar, gender differences in the extent to which parental age is a marker of socioeconomic advantage and resources for children would likely narrow. nonetheless, some family history profi les are more strongly associated with advantage for older mothers than for older fathers, in part because the characteristics of the families differ when the focus is on older fathers. for example, older fathers in the late sequential parenting profi le are more likely than older mothers in the same profi le to have at least four children, and so have greater claims on their resources. our results highlight the importance of examining the resources and family histories of both parents. the more complex family experiences of older fathers may have resource implications for the children born to older mothers. although older mothers are less likely than older fathers to have had children with a previous partner, the share of older mothers who give birth to children with a half-sibling increases substantially when the family histories of the fathers are considered as well. in recent years (2011-15), about 15 percent of older mothers have had a child with a previous partner, but nearly 27 percent are having children with at least one half-sibling (results not shown but available upon request). the extent to which older parents must negotiate the costs and challenges associated with having had a previous family may be under-estimated when older parenthood is viewed exclusively through the lens of the mother’s experiences (see also cancian et al. 2011). at the same time, for older mothers, maternal postponement appears to be linked to more (maternal) resources even when half-siblings are present. differences in the family histories of older fathers and older mothers underscore the need to with age comes …? • 383 attend carefully to what demographic indicators represent in a given context and for a given group. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the editors of comparative population studies and three anonymous reviewers for extremely detailed, supportive, and thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. in addition, we benefi tted from comments from rebecca sear and conversations with adrienne burgess. any 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(eds.): population and family in the low countries 1993: late fertility and other current issues. lisse: swets & zeitlinger: 81-126. waldenström, ulla 2016: postponing parenthood to advanced age. in: upsala journal of medical sciences 121,4: 235-243. https://doi.org/10.1080/03009734.2016.1201553 wu, zheng; schimmele, christop m. 2005: repartnering after first union disruption. in: journal of marriage and family 67,1: 27-36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2005.00003.x date of submission: 22.04.2020 date of acceptance: 15.06.2021 professor dr. wendy sigle (). london school of economics and political science. london. united kingdom. e-mail: w.sigle@lse.ac.uk url: https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/people/people-profi les/faculty/wendy-sigle professor dr. øystein kravdal. norwegian institute of public health, centre for fertility and health. oslo, norway. e-mail: oystein.kravdal@econ.uio.no url: https://www.fhi.no/en/more/research-centres/centre-for-fertility-and-health/ employees/oystein-kravdal/ https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2005.0026 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03483-1_7 https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.0.0063 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00724.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-012-9237-6 https://doi.org/10.1080/03009734.2016.1201553 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2005.00003.x mailto:w.sigle@lse.ac.uk https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/people/people-profi mailto:oystein.kravdal@econ.uio.no https://www.fhi.no/en/more/research-centres/centre-for-fertility-and-health/employees/oystein-kravdal/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey serap kavas abstract: although extensive research investigates the consequences of teenage motherhood, there is still very limited research exploring young mothers’ experiences in their own voices. this gap is particularly evident for those nonwestern developing countries in which women’s voices are largely muted. this paper explores women’s perceptions and evaluations of their early motherhood, drawing on their lived experiences and retrospective accounts. this study also investigates how early fi rst birth infl uences these mother’s subsequent fertility. the study adopts a qualitative method based on interviews with a total of 17 women in several cities in turkey who had their fi rst birth at a young age (ages 17-22). a qualitative approach is most suitable for this research area, which aims to explore young mothers’ interpretations of their fertility timing and the consequences of this event for their lives in general, including subjective evaluations and subtle meanings. a key fi nding of this study is that the interviewees describe early childbearing as a negative event in their life course, convey regret for having had an early fi rst birth, and report a feeling of dissatisfaction with being a young mother. a second fi nding concerns the infl uence of early fi rst birth on subsequent childbearing. the women’s accounts indicate that subsequent fertility operated as a compensation for the missed feelings of motherhood and served as an opportunity to heal from hurtful experiences. this study points to the importance of social context in determining the consequences of early fertility. keywords: young motherhood ·turkey · qualitative interviews · retrospective accounts comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 29-56 (date of release: 17.01.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-02 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-02en8 • serap kavas30 1 introduction women’s experiences of early childbearing and societal attitudes towards young motherhood vary by cultural context. for example, in western societies, teenage childbearing, especially below the age of 18 and below is often considered undesirable and problematic (luker 1996; furstenberg 2003; geronimus 1996), with extensive research reporting that both teen mothers and their children are disadvantaged in various areas. mothers in their teens and early 20s in western countries are more likely to have lower educational attainment and earnings and to experience poverty than women who delay fertility (e.g., hofferth 1987; diaz/fiel 2016; chevalier/vitanen 2003; lee 2010; coley/chase-lansdale 1998). children born to young mothers have less access to resources, display lower cognitive skills at school and are more likely to become young parents themselves (e.g., furstenberg et al. 1987; coley/chase-lansdale 1998). moreover, young mothers in these settings face stigma and are often socially excluded (geronimus 1996; whitley/kirmayer 2008; diaz/fiel 2016). however, in many developing countries in non-western settings, having a child in adolescence is more acceptable and, in some cases, even a praiseworthy step (luker 1996; mardi et al. 2018; bates et al. 2007). for the most part, early fertility takes place within marriage in many of these countries, and kin support to overcome the related hardships is normatively expected. however, this does not mean that young mothers are safe from the adverse consequences of early childbearing, with the most serious outcomes usually being health hazards for mothers and children (bates et al. 2007). importantly, in many ways, the social acceptance of early fertility and kin support may obscure many of the challenges and hardships young mothers experience. this study makes several important contributions. first, it aims to extend the literature by providing additional data from different settings in a non-western region of the world. although international research documents various consequences of young motherhood, scant attention is paid to the complexity and variance of social context. this is a signifi cant gap in our knowledge, given that social context matters in shaping the perception and consequences of early childbearing. studying turkey is important because even though early fertility persists and its health consequences are well-reported, little attention is paid to many other aspects of young motherhood. for example, there is limited research on young women’s unique perspectives on their early childbirth, its impact on their transition to second or higher-order births, and the role of family support in handling the hardship. there is a general lack of research on early fertility in the non-western developing world, and work on the subject mainly draws on data from the south asian context (avogo/somefun 2019). therefore, this study adds to current research; having its own distinctive family and gender norms, data from turkey provides a comparative perspective. another important contribution of this article is the investigation of women’s perceptions and evaluations of their early motherhood drawing on their lived experiences and retrospective accounts. much of the existing literature focuses “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 31 on structural consequences, such as educational attainment, employment, healthrelated outcomes, etc., and evidence on how early child-bearers evaluate their own fertility timing and motherhood is limited. as research indicates, young parenthood is a complex phenomenon in terms of its precursors and consequences and accordingly calls for a multifaceted approach to studying its various dimensions (luker 1996). in this sense, this study aims to investigate how young mothers make sense of having a child at a young age. moreover, this article explores, for the fi rst time, the effects of young motherhood on young women’s second or higher-order births, particularly in terms of their relationships with their fi rst and subsequent children and provides insight into women’s comparative evaluation of their early and later motherhood. finally, this study uses a qualitative methodology that offers channels through which women’s lived experiences are explored in greater detail, uncovering information related to an issue as complex and sensitive as childbearing at a young age. the importance of this approach is that “we hear interviewees’ own articulation of their reasoning, and this opens a window into what they view as desirable, what they view as possible, and why” (brinton et al. 2018: 282). i study the context of turkey, where young marital motherhood is neither stigmatized nor explicitly encouraged in public; legal norms prohibit early marriage and fertility and public policy discourse discourages women and their families from early family formation (child, early and forced marriage, cefm 2020). early marriage and early childbirth are defi ned as marriage and fertility taking place before the age of 18 by the turkish civil code. however, in line with the decades-long rise in age at fi rst marriage and fi rst birth (see table 1), fi rst marriage or birth in the early twenties are societally considered “early.” in line with this perspective, in this study, participants who had their fi rst birth between the ages of 17 and 22 are defi ned as young mothers. moreover, since most early fertility takes place within marriage in turkey (huips 2018), i examine both early marriage and early fertility. 2 background 2.1 research on early family formation in most western societies, early fertility (e.g., teenage pregnancy) has been treated as a social problem with moral and economic overtones and has aroused a great deal of public worry since the early 1970s (luker 1996). in line with these public attitudes, most research focuses on the adverse consequences of early fertility for both women and their children. for example, previous research documents that in the western context, young mothers in their teens or early 20s tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds (manlove 1997; kahn/anderson 1992; mclanahan/ percheski 2008; smith et al. 2018); they are generally unmarried and are more likely to raise their children as single parents (morgan/rindfuss 1999; johansen et al. 2020); they tend to have lower levels of educational attainment and are more likely to live on welfare than older mothers (furstenberg et al. 1987; manlove 1997; • serap kavas32 morgan/rindfuss 1999; diaz/fiel 2016; coley/chase-lansdale 1998). importantly, these negative long-term consequences are reported for both for young women and men, even in the context of nordic welfare states with substantial state support (johansen et al. 2020). studies also show that early fertility has intergenerational consequences; children of teenage mothers are more likely to become young parents themselves (barber 2001; kahn/anderson 1992; manlove 1997; morosow/ trappe 2018). while numerous studies straightforwardly associate early childbearing with adverse outcomes in numerous areas, a strand of research challenges the establishment of a causal link. qualitative studies explore the perspectives of young mothers and suggest that young mothers’ unique perspectives on early childbearing offer important insights for our understanding of this phenomenon (brubaker/wright 2006). some of these studies challenge the mostly negative depictions of teenage motherhood and suggest exploring the meanings teenagers give their experiences and the identity transformation they undergo during the early childbearing process (geronimus 2003; anwar/stanistreet 2014; brubaker/wright 2006). this body of research points to the role of cultural ideals regarding fertility timing and appropriate family structure in framing early childbearing straightforwardly as a social problem with negative outcomes for young mothers and their children (geronimus 2003; whitley/kirmayer 2008). according to these scholars, fertility timing norms may prevent social scientists and policymakers from having a multifaceted understanding of young women’s early childbearing experiences. numerous studies report that although young mothers are aware of the negative consequences of early childbearing, they also perceive benefi ts to it (e.g., anwar/ stanistreet 2014; rocca et al. 2013; rosengard et al. 2006; kendall et al. 2005; edin/ kefalas 2005; brubaker/wright 2006). for example, in a classic work, geronimus (2003) argues that for many african american populations who do not have equal access to advanced education, careers, and health care services, early fertility is an ‘adaptive practice’ in the face of structural constraints that decrease life expectancy among this population. in another study, young mothers reported the benefi ts of early childbearing including that “it would require them to grow up and take more responsibility in their lives and provide themselves with a purpose for their lives” (rosengard et al. 2006: 506). in a qualitative study conducted in the uk, anwar and stanistreet (2014) found that young mothers didn’t let teenage motherhood ruin their lives, as they continued to work toward their future aspirations. interestingly, all the young mothers in their study expressed a positive view about continuing their education and securing employment to be able to build a better future. in another study, brubaker and wright (2006) found that in addition to the hardship of early childbirth, young mothers struggled with the negative reactions of other people, which were disruptive to their identities. with their struggles and motivations to turn early motherhood into an advantage in their lives, these women’s experiences “provided a counter story to the master narrative of self-indulgent teenagers who become pregnant intentionally” (brubaker/wright 2006: 1226). in contrast, a different picture emerges in the non-western, developing world, where early childbearing usually takes place within marriage and is socially more “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 33 acceptable (singh/samara 1996; yüksel-kaptanoğlu/akadlı-ergöçmen 2014; luker 1996). similarly to the scholarship in the west on teenage mothers’ perceptions of the benefi ts of early fertility, emerging literature points to positive aspects of young marital motherhood in non-western settings through a different lens. jensen/ thornton (2003) report that having children early in the life course provides young women in the developing world with longer reproductive lives in which they have an increased chance to have multiple children. in a middle eastern society where desired fertility and rate of infant mortality are high, having a larger family is a privileged status for a mother, thus, in many ways, early fertility is an asset for young women (mardi et al. 2018; jensen/thornton 2003; mathur et al. 2003). moreover, early fertility helps young women to secure wellbeing in the family since “a woman who does not succeed in giving birth to a child can be abused and neglected and even the continuation of her marital life can be compromised” (mardi et al. 2018: 5). therefore, in these settings, many young women may benefi t from early entry into parenthood. as mathur et al. (2003: 4) state, “the adolescent experience of girls in many developing countries may be defi ned almost entirely in terms of entry into the marital state; emphasis is placed on domestic work and obedience, traits seen as essential to being good wives and mothers”. in summary, international research documents various consequences facing young mothers, showing that social context matters in shaping the consequences of early fertility. this is important because a young mother does not make a reproductive decision nor experience its consequences in a vacuum; “her behaviors and decisions occur in the context of the models, values, expectations, responses, and anticipated responses of the elders and peers who are important to her” (geronimus 1996: 327). although extensive research investigates the consequences of teenage motherhood, there is still very limited research exploring young mothers’ own perspectives in their own voices. it is therefore important to provide multidimensional and in-depth perspectives to better understand young mothers’ perceptions. moreover, eliciting young mothers’ own perspectives is important not only for more comprehensive research, but also for more effective policymaking. 2.2 early family formation in turkey 2.2.1 the demographics of early family formation turkey is an interesting case because policy efforts to modernize the country since the founding of the republic, movements opposing these changes, and massive urbanization since the 1950s have all had important infl uences on people’s demographic behaviors (cindoğlu et al. 2008; kavas/thornton 2013). many changes have been observed in family life for the past several decades, including a rise in age at marriage, a persistent decline in fertility from a high of 7.1 children per woman in 1930 to 2.3 in 2018 (huips 2018), and changes in marriage modes toward more self-choice marriages (nauck/klaus 2008; marriage preferences survey 2015). as the statistics below indicate, in line with the changes regarding norms of marriage and childbearing, early family formation patterns have changed as well. • serap kavas34 the average age of marriage has increased over the past several decades. for example, in 1978, the average age of women at fi rst marriage was 17.7 – thus, what is now defi ned as teen marriage was a norm then. this is also the case for young motherhood: in 1988 alone, the mean age of women at fi rst childbearing was 18.6. these ages have changed drastically over the years, currently, according to a recent demographic and health survey, among women aged 25-49, the median age at fi rst marriage is 21.4 and the median age at fi rst birth is 23.3 years. as table 1 shows, in addition to the rise in marriage and childbearing ages, there is a considerable decline in early marriage and childbirth. currently, among women aged 25-49, marrying before age 18 declined from 39 percent in 1993 to 21 percent in 2018, and having a fi rst child by age 18 fell from 21 percent in 1993 to a low of 9.4 percent (huips 2018). most recently, among adolescents, pregnancy at ages 15-19 is 4 percent, and pregnancy before age 17 is rare, with the higher proportions skewing to later teen ages (huips 2018). in turkey, marriage is universal, with 66 percent of women aged 15-49 currently married, 30 percent never having been married, and 4 percent being divorced or widowed (huips 2018). childbearing out of wedlock is uncommon, only 2 percent of never-married women have a child (turkstat 2020). in 2002, turkey made legal arrangements in the civil code and increased the minimum legal age for marriage to 18 years for both men and women, which had previously been 17 for men and 15 for women. however, the law allows young women to marry at the age of 17 with the consent of their parents or legal guardians, as well as at the age of 16 with permission from the courts under exceptional circumstances and on vital grounds. in some cases, parents marry off their daughters and sons through religious marriages, which is especially common among the rural populations. however, these marriages are not legally recognized and are registered when the spouses tab. 1: turkish women’s median age at fi rst marriage and fi rst birth, age 15-49, dhs data (1993-2018)* women’s age at fi rst marriage women’s age at fi rst birth year median age women (25-49) having median age women (25-49) having fi rst marriage by age fi rst birth by age 18 (%) 18 (%) 1993 19.0 38.8 20.5 21.53* 1998 19.3 34.8 21.3 19.17* 2003 20.0 29.5 21.8 14.98 2008 20.8 24.3 22.3 12.2 2013 21.0 22.0 22.9 10.2 2018 21.4 20.9 23.3 9.4 * these estimations (1993 and 1998) also include age 19. source: dhs data, huips “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 35 have turned 18 (cefm 2020). note that this leads to complexity in collecting data on age at fi rst marriage particularly from register data, which captures only legal marriages (nauck/klaus 2008; marriage preferences survey 2015). 2.2.2 determinants of early family formation various socioeconomic and cultural factors are determinants of early family formation in turkey, with education being the leading one. studies point to the crucial role educational attainment plays in delaying both marriage and fertility timing (family structure survey 2016; yağbasan/tekdemir 2017; yüksel-kaptanoğlu/ akadlı-ergöçmen 2012; yavuz 2010; kırdar et al. 2016). turkey’s extension of the basic educational requirement for both girls and boys from five to eight years in 1997 and then from eight to twelve years in 2012 coincided with a 33 percent decline in adolescents’ fertility (kırdar et al. 2016; güneş 2015; yavuz 2010). moreover, parents’ low education and low income are usually cited as the main drivers of marrying off daughters at an early age (güler/küçüker 2010; anık/ barlin 2017; gökçe et al. 2007). low-income parents fi nd it hard to provide for their children, especially when they have multiple children, and are usually motivated to view marrying off their daughters to decrease the economic burden for the family (cefm 2020). in some cases, parents see their daughters’ early marriage not only as alleviating economic hardship but also as an economic opportunity, especially when they receive bride money for this marriage (kara 2015) – a practice that was common in times past yet persists today, especially among rural populations. 10 percent of married men aged 25-34 report having paid a bride money before marriage according to a sample survey (family structure survey 2016). it may be that daughters also consider early marriage as a solution to poverty; an opportunity to live an economically better life in the husband’s family (gökçe et al. 2007). often, young women live with their husband’s family upon marriage and are expected to perform housework under the supervision of their husband, mother-in-law, and the more senior female members of the household (cindoğlu et al. 2008). variation across regions and urban vs. rural residences are salient dimensions of early family formation, for example, early marriage and fertility are higher in the eastern regions of turkey, particularly among rural populations (huips 2018; cefm 2020). in turkey, regional variation displays economic and structural inequality, with eastern turkey being the country’s least developed region. traditional family structures characterize domestic life in this region; the extended household is more common and patrilocal residence (living with the husbands’ family) is favored, while both are relatively rare occurrences in western turkey among urban populations (cindoğlu et al. 2008). the level of education among women is still extremely low, early marriages, particularly with religious matrimonies, are much higher among kurds and arabs than among turks, and polygamy is performed despite the legal ban. fertility shows signifi cant variations across the regions; the total fertility rate (tfr) is 3.2 in eastern turkey, compared to 2.0 and 1.6 in western and northern turkey, respectively (huips 2018). • serap kavas36 another dimension of early marriage and motherhood is that consanguineous marriages, marrying a close relative, particularly a cross-cousin, is a common practice in turkey; according to a demographic and health survey, 24 percent of married women said that they are related to their husbands either as cousin or close relative (huips 2018). this rate is even higher among early-married women, at 31 percent. a sizeable literature reports on consanguineous marriages facilitating early marriage decisions (cefm 2020; kayi et al. 2018; nauck/klaus 2008; güler/ küçüker 2010). as nauck and klaus state (2008), parents arranging marriages with close relatives or extended family members not only accelerates the marriage process but also stimulates premature marriages of their daughters or sons. it is important to note that early marriages are not necessarily forced marriages, nor do they take place only in the eastern regions and among rural populations. first, early marriage and childbearing are observed in urban centers of the country as well, and not all early marriages are forced or arranged by the parents without young women’s consent. while parents may play a considerable role arranging an early marriage, in many of the cases women make their own decision and, in some cases, they marry by quitting school and eloping (güler/küçüker 2010; anık/barlin 2017; marriage preferences survey 2015). for example, in a qualitative study, anık and barlin (2017) explored the motives of early family formation in a small city in western turkey. the authors found that most of the study participants chose to enter marital life themselves, without any infl uence from their parents. this study also reports that disadvantageous and confl icting family backgrounds motivate young women to marry early. young women consider marriage as an escape from a confl icting or violent family environment and as an opportunity to live a better life (anık/barlin 2017; gökçe et al. 2007). another important factor pertains to social norms and values. patriarchy is a persistent phenomenon and many aspects of family norms and values including marital and fertility timing are shaped by these norms. in turkey, a confl icting gender culture exists; offi cial discourse and policy efforts promote gender equality, while traditional gender roles and authoritarian practices persist (kandiyoti 1987). these norms urge women to conform to rigid norms about the necessity of getting married and marriage timing. for example, marrying later than the expected marriage age is disapproved of, as it is deemed to reduce a woman’s chance of fi nding a suitable husband. according to a recent sample survey (family structure survey 2016), 47 percent of turks believe that 20-24 is the ideal age range for a woman to get married, while 54 percent say that it is 25-29 for men. marrying after 30 is deemed the ideal age for men (20 percent) far more commonly than for women (5 percent). it is important to note that conformity to normative gender roles shows variation across social classes; for the most part, educated and high-income populations are more likely to embrace egalitarian gender roles. however, among uneducated, lowincome populations, traditional norms continue to guide people regarding men’s and women’s roles in the family and in society (kandiyoti 1987). this variation is manifest in attitudes toward the division of labor in the household. in urban, middleclass, and professional populations in turkey, gender roles are changing to more egalitarian patterns, with women more active in professional work life and more “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 37 men contributing to domestic work (aycan 2004). other studies also note small changes toward a more equal division of domestic work in low income, urban groups (e.g., cindoğlu et al. 2008). however, some norms cut across socioeconomic classes and regions; the concept of honor is an important example. the notion of family “honour” (namus) is related to female sexuality, particularly women’s chastity and virginity, which are family matters rather than individual choices (cindoğlu 1997). patriarchal control over women’s bodies creates social anxiety over women’s chastity and virginity, and this anxiety often drives families to marry off their daughters before they become involved in a socially unacceptable sexual relationship. within marriage, young women are expected to begin childbearing quickly, it is typical in turkey for parents and in-laws to encourage and even pressure young married women to proceed with childbirth (ertem et al. 2008; kavas/de jong 2020). 2.2.3 consequences of early family formation as elsewhere, early marriage and motherhood have negative consequences for young women and their children in turkey. one important adverse outcome is related to young women’s contraceptive and fertility behavior. most young married women do not have suffi cient knowledge about family planning methods, which results in low rates of contraceptive use and high rates of unwanted pregnancy (özşahin et al. 2006; koç/ünalan 2001; huips 2018; uslu/çoban 2020). according to a recent demographic and health survey, the rate of contraceptive use among young married women aged 15-19 is 31 percent and increases to 53 percent among women who married at age 20-24. it may be that even if these younger women want to prevent pregnancy, they may not be able to do so because they lack access to contraceptive services and supplies (özşahin et al. 2006). while lack of access to contraceptive services is expected in rural parts of the country, according to özsahin et al.’s study, it is also true for the urban areas of western turkey. importantly, research has found a signifi cant association between the age disparity of spouses and low contraceptive use. this research has shown that young women are unable to negotiate about contraceptive use when their spouses object to it, as, in many ways, a signifi cant age difference with their husband diminishes women’s power in the household (yavuz 2010). to give a more complete picture of the experiences of young mothers and to better contextualize early marital motherhood in turkey, it is important to provide information related to the health hazards of this phenomenon as well. several studies document that hypertension, preeclampsia, anemia, preterm delivery, and low birth weight are common occurrences mostly resulting from lack of access to antenatal birth services (e.g., uslu/çoban 2020; edirne et al. 2010; şen/kavlak 2011). this research also draws attention to the higher risk of infant and maternal mortality among early child-bearers (uslu/çoban 2020; edirne et al. 2010; ertem et al. 2008; koç/ünalan 2001). some studies focus on psychological consequences and report that young mothers suffer from psychological distress and trauma deriving from their premature transition to adulthood, assuming childrearing responsibility at a • serap kavas38 very young age, and from social isolation (yağbasan/tekdemir 2017; koç/ünalan 2001). most of these health hazards derive from young mothers’ vulnerability in the face of access to health care services. problems in obtaining proper health services range from the availability of services and ease of access to young women’s diminished power to express themselves about their health needs or to act without the permission of their husbands or in-laws (yavuz 2010; mathur et al. 2003). another severe consequence of early family formation in turkey is domestic violence. young women have a higher risk of facing domestic violence both from their partner and their in-laws (yüksel-kaptanoglu/akadli-ergöçmen 2014; edirne et al. 2010). importantly, studies report that the age gap between spouses shapes power relations within the household to the detriment of young women, early-marrying women have lower bargaining power when negotiating important decisions and face physical and psychological violence (yavuz 2010; yüksel-kaptanoglu/akadliergöçmen 2014; mathur et al. 2003). 2.3 research questions the signifi cance of the current study is that it draws on retrospective accounts of mothers’ lived experiences regarding how they made sense of early childbearing. this approach investigates how this early experience infl uenced these mothers’ overall fertility, including their transition to second and higher-order births. mothers’ perceptions of early fertility provide a broader perspective to examine the impact of the early fi rst birth on these women’s reproductive practices as well as on their personal lives. to date, most qualitative research has interviewed young mothers who gave birth recently (e.g., geronimus 1996; whitley/kirmayer 2008; anwar/ stanistreet 2014; rosengard et al. 2006). however, these studies do not report on the fi rst birth’s effects on subsequent fertility. no qualitative research, to our knowledge, has examined the retrospective accounts of mothers to explore the experience of early childbearing and its impact on women’s overall fertility. this study aims to fi ll this gap in evidence by interviewing mothers currently aged 24-41 who had their fi rst birth between the ages of 17-22. to this end, the study aims to expand qualitative family scholarship that investigates the perspectives of young mothers and sets out to explore young mothers’ experiences of early childbearing by drawing on their unique perspectives. in particular, this study asks the following questions: how do young mothers make sense of their early marital motherhood? how do they perceive the advantages and disadvantages of having formed a family – e.g., marrying and having a child – at a young age? and how does their early fi rst birth infl uence their second and higherorder births? “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 39 3 method 3.1 data collection and participants the qualitative interviews were conducted between june 2015 and january 2016 and were part of a larger survey project that studied fertility and family life in urban turkey. the qualitative component of the project primarily focused on social network and fertility decisions, interviewing a total of 51 mothers. however, the semistructured interview guide also covered areas relevant to studying various aspects of turkish women’s fertility decision-making, and young mothers’ evaluations of their own motherhood were one signifi cant focus of the study. a total of 17 mothers who ranged in age from 24 to 41 at the time of the interview and who had their fi rst child between the ages of 17 and 22 comprised the sample for this article. the author conducted the interviews together with two trained research assistants. a snowball sampling technique was used to identify the participants; they were initially recruited from a daycare center in downtown istanbul. these participants were then asked to identify other eligible women with at least one child living in their communities or social and familial networks. while most of the respondents resided in istanbul, several additional cities in various regions of turkey were visited during this recruiting process.1 as table 2 shows, the study sample displays heterogeneity with respect to the region of residence. even though i didn’t attempt to select different regions of turkey systematically, our recruitment approach led to this diversity. despite the considerable heterogeneity concerning the region of residence, this study focused on a nonrepresentative sample of young mothers both because it didn’t reach rural areas in these regions, where a grimmer picture of early childbearing tends to prevail, and because the study used a nonprobability sampling method (i.e., snowball sampling). before the interview, all respondents provided informed consent and were informed about the process and the option to withdraw at any time. approval for the study was obtained from the human research ethics committee of the institution that the author was affi liated with. all interviews were conducted in the respondents’ mother tongue (turkish) and primarily conducted in the respondents’ homes. the interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim in turkish by the two research assistants, and representative quotations were translated into english by the author. interviews lasted for about an hour. pseudonyms are used to ensure respondents’ anonymity. the interviews were semi-structured, the interview guide listed relevant areas to cover, including experiences of early marriage and motherhood, social support, women’s perceived cost and benefi ts of early motherhood, and their feelings of subsequent childbearing. we asked how the respondents decided to get pregnant, whether it was a planned/intended or wanted/unwanted pregnancy; whether they received kin support along the process; how they felt about this support; and how 1 these cities include ankara, i̇zmir, bursa, antalya, edirne, eskişehir, urfa, trabzon, and malatya. • serap kavas40 ta b . 2 : s am p le c ha ra ct er is tic s a g e a g e at n um b er o f r eg io n o f e d u ca tio n e m p lo ym en t fi r st b ir th ch ild re n re si d en ce d er ya 36 18 2 w es te rn m id d le s ch o o l w o rk s p ar t t im e e zg i 29 20 1 w es te rn h ig h sc h o o l fo rm er f ac to ry w o rk er fe ry al 28 18 2 s o u th er n m id d le s ch o o l fo rm er fa ct o ry w o rk er fi g en 41 20 3 e as te rn m id d le s ch o o l b ab ys it te r fu ly a 32 22 2 n o rt h er n m id d le s ch o o l s ea so n al w o rk er /a g ri cu lt ur e g iz em 24 22 1 w es te rn h ig h sc h o o l g ra p hi c d es ig n er g o n ca 33 17 2 w es te rn m id d le s ch o o l fo rm er fa ct o ry w o rk er g ül ay 36 18 3 e as te rn p ri m ar y sc h o o l c le an in g st af f h as ib e 27 21 2 s o u th er n m id d le s ch o o l a ss is ta n t t ea ch er h üm ey ra 35 22 3 e as te rn p ri m ar y sc h o o l u n em p lo ye d /h o u se w ife im ra n 35 18 2 n o rt h er n tu rk ey h ig h sc h o o l u n em p lo ye d /h o u se w if e k er im an 31 18 2 c en tr al u ni ve rs it y fo rm er r ec ep tio ni st la le 25 19 4 e as te rn n o e d u ca tio n u n em p lo ye d /h o u se w if e m el is 28 22 3 c en tr al h ig h sc h o o l u n em p lo ye d /h o u se w if e p er ih an 27 20 1 c en tr al h ig h sc h o o l p re sc h o o l t ea ch er s ev g i 25 18 2 s o u th er n m id d le s ch o o l c u st o m er s er vi ce r ep re se n ta ti ve tü la y 32 18 2 c en tr al h ig h sc h o o l fo rm er f ac to ry w o rk er s o ur ce : su rv ey "f er til ity a nd fa m ily li fe in u rb an t ur ke y" , o w n d es ig n “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 41 they evaluated the early marriage/pregnancy/delivery/childrearing experience overall. this included how they felt about having a child at an early age; what they considered as the advantages and disadvantages of being a young mother; how they decided to have a second or third child; whether these further children were planned/intended/wanted; how they felt about having a second or third child; and how they compare the second and third birth experiences to the fi rst birth (was it easier, harder, etc.). table 2 presents some of the characteristic features of the study sample. as this table illustrates, at the time of their fi rst births, respondents were between 17 and 22 years old. all of them were married during their fi rst birth and at the time of the interview. except for one case of divorce. for the most part participants’ marriages were voluntary, with the nature of marriages ranging from own-choice marriages with parental consent (n=8) to arranged marriages with participant consent (n=7) to elopements (n=2); none reported a forced marriage. the information related to education is based on respondents’ reports of their education level at the time of the interview. education levels were quite mixed, with the highest level of education being high school for most of the participants; only one participant had a university degree, and one participant had no formal education. participation in full employment was low, as most young mothers were not currently working, either because they left work temporarily due to childbearing or were not employed at all (59 percent, n=10). generally, all employed women had low-paying jobs. five participants joined their husbands’ parental house after marriage and 4 of these women were living with in-laws during their fi rst childbirth. the study data exemplifi ed the discrepancies between the eastern and western regions with respect to marriage and childbearing patterns. participants from eastern turkey (n=4) had more children (at least 3), they have no or low formal education, and were living in extended households in their husbands’ parental house at the time of their fi rst childbirth. the literature provides evidence that there is an association between early childbearing and higher completed fertility, with young mothers having a longer period in which to have multiple births (morgan/rindfuss 1999). however, this may not be true for the young child-bearers in this study. as table 2 shows, even though these young mothers seem to have more years in which to decide to have additional children, most stopped at two children. hence, for the majority of sampled women, it can be assumed that they seemed to conform to the dominant childbearing norm of having two children in turkey (huips 2018). 3.2 analysis this study aimed to explore women’s perspectives on the consequences of their early childbearing by drawing on their retrospective accounts. in order to do so, common themes in women’s narratives were examined. after an initial reading of the transcriptions, a thematic analysis was performed (strauss/corbin 2015), preliminary codes were generated based on the recurrence of themes, and pervasive patterns were identifi ed. in the second stage of the analyses, the authors • serap kavas42 reviewed all data, noted dominant themes and representative quotes and generated additional codes and emergent themes. then, the codes most relevant for the study purpose were chosen and sorted into conceptual divisions and subdivisions by their content and meaning. finally, the authors re-read the transcripts to compare codes and quotations against the original text to minimize any potential confusion. 4 results the analysis of the young mothers’ descriptions of their early fi rst births revealed three prominent themes. first, many respondents refl ected a certain regret over their immature childbearing, with one interviewee calling it “courage in ignorance.” second, respondents offered their perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of being a young mother. third and fi nally, the mothers evaluated their continued childbearing and described making better sense of motherhood in their subsequent childbearing. the next section discusses each of these themes and presents representative quotations. 4.1 views on early childbearing: “having an early birth is courage in ignorance” an important theme that emerged from interviews was study participants’ descriptions of their early childbearing as immature and undesirable. interestingly, although these women’s marriages were generally voluntary and childbearing after marriage is socially expected, most of the participants (n=8) reported that their fi rst pregnancy was unplanned, and even unexpected for some. for the remaining participants, early pregnancy after an early marriage was expected. however, only two participants explicitly stated that they planned their pregnancy and negotiated with their husband for it. for other participants (n=7), it seems that planning for the fi rst childbirth was not a conscious and independent decision. women’s accounts indicate that these women’s decisions to have their fi rst child was signifi cantly shaped by parents and in-laws. the following quotations are illustrative: “i wasn’t thinking of having a baby, neither was my husband, but because of my mother-in-law’s extreme pressure on me…” [keriman]. p: as a matter of fact, they pushed us quite a lot for my fi rst birth. i: were these people your parents or your in-laws? p: both, both sides were insistent, but particularly my grandpa! he kept talking about it, he was keen to see his grandchild before it was too late [i̇mran] importantly, as these women’s accounts display, fertility decision-making varies regionally in turkey. in eastern turkey, upon marriage, a young woman is “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 43 expected to live with her husband’s family and the young couple is expected to obey the husband’s parents. among the respondents in this study, most of the early child-bearers who resided in eastern turkey ceded control over their reproductive behaviour to elders based on social customs. from the narratives, it was clear that these women accepted the idea that elders have the right to shape childbearing decisions, as two respondents residing in eastern turkey reported: “well, i don’t really know what i felt, what i thought about having my fi rst child. i was young and she [my mother-in-law] kept talking about it [having a child]. i didn’t understand anything. it was like a family duty, you know, they [mothers and mothers-in-law in general] expect you to do it.” [lale] “i got married in february, i think that i got pregnant the day i married! it was a surprise, no… no, it was not planned at all, but everyone was so looking forward to it, my son is the fi rst grandson of my husband’s parents you know, so my mother-in-law was desperately expecting it.” [humeyra] regardless of their plan for the fi rst child, all the early child-bearers reported that their fi rst birth was too early. assessing their early fertility in hindsight, from a more mature perspective, they saw that giving birth at a very young age could have led to a lot of negative outcomes, including health risks both for the mother and the child. several respondents pointed to this fact and described their experience as nothing but running the risk. for instance, the word “cahil” (unknowledgeable/ignorant) was frequently used when describing their mental and emotional situation at the time of their fi rst birth: the following statements are illustrative: “i was a child myself when i had my fi rst baby, i was scared of it, especially when he started crying, you know, i was so ignorant [çok cahildim, çok!]!. [gülay]. “my fi rst child! ohhh... you know what they say it [having a baby at that age] was ‘courage in ignorance’ [cahil cesareti]; you have no idea about motherhood, you don’t understand anything.” [tülay] “well, you are just ignorant of many things [pek çok konuda cahil oluyorsunuz], you don’t understand what is really happening.” [fulya]. “i think it is not a good thing at all to have a child when you are totally ignorant [zır cahilken çocuk sahibi olmak hiç iyi bir şey değil].” [keriman]. the feeling of unpreparedness at the time of fi rst childbirth was repeatedly reported in women’s interviews. their narratives indicate that this sentiment most likely led them to stay disconnected from the entire process of childbirth. for example, they often remarked that they were not fully involved in their fi rst childbirth nor did they experience the feeling of motherhood. when asked how she • serap kavas44 felt about her fi rst childbirth, lale said: “i couldn’t make sense of it at all”, another respondent (sevgi) said: “i was not aware that i became a mother, all i felt was pain, concern, and fear”, a third respondent (keriman) said: “i was so young i couldn’t feel like i was becoming a mother.” almost all the young mothers interviewed relied on family support to handle the diffi culties and concerns related to their early fi rst birth, with most of this family support providing both fi nancial (e.g., money lending, housing) and instrumental support (e.g., assistance with daily tasks), as well as childcare. the women studied stressed the importance of the family support they received, from own mothers in particular, in overcoming the hardship of the stressful transition to motherhood, particularly the overwhelming feeling of “not knowing what to expect” (sevgi, aged 18 at fi rst birth). for example, in one case, the young mother, hümeyra, lived with her mother-in-law for fi ve years. ceding all mothering responsibilities to her motherin-law, she reported that she felt as if “she was raised together with her baby by her mother-in-law during these years”. sevgi said that since she could not care for her baby and was “not even able to hold the baby in her arm properly”, her mother took charge entirely during the baby’s infancy and cared for her until the baby turned four. on the one hand, grandmothers’ support is a lifeline for these women. on the other hand, this support might contribute to their feelings of estrangement from their fi rst child. although there were no critical remarks about grandmothers’ over-involvement in caring for the fi rst child, the narrative accounts indicate that grandmothers’ taking charge completely may have prevented these women from developing closer mother–infant interactions. research shows that early fertility may motivate a woman to push herself for her baby’s sake; it can enhance a young woman’s self-esteem since it enables her to do something productive, nurturing, and socially responsible (see luker 1996; anwar/stanistreet 2014; brubaker/wright 2006). however, when these young mothers gave all the responsibility to family members whose support is normatively expected and assured, they seemed to miss an opportunity to benefi t from their experience of early childbearing. for many of the women studied, it appeared that they missed the feeling of motherhood in their fi rst childbirth experience. this may be part of the reason why these mothers desired to have a second child – an issue that i will discuss later. moreover, even though the decision to become a parent is usually made in the context of a partnership, and the husband’s infl uence is as important as the wife’s infl uence in the transition to parenthood (stein et al. 2014), in this study this does not seem to be the case. during the interviews, the women rarely talked about their husbands’ role in their childbearing decision process. instead, community norms and elders’ opinions played a stronger role in their decision-making. it could be that due to their young age and inexperience regarding childbearing, the young mothers valued and trusted elders’ experiences and followed their advice. moreover, as a previous study in turkey showed, parents and in-laws exert pressure over the couples’ transition to parenthood and parity progression, and with their young age and inexperience, young mothers in particular readily submit to parental (or in-law) pressure to transition to parenthood at a young age (kavas/de jong 2020). “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 45 ezgi revealed her rationale for relinquishing all the responsibility to the child’s grandmothers: “i was ignorant, i was just 20! i knew nothing about caring for a baby, but they did, they were experienced, they cared for him better than me and my husband. i trusted them endlessly.” 4.2 perceived advantages and disadvantages to fully understand the mothers’ perceptions of early motherhood in other domains of life, i asked them what they thought the advantages and disadvantages of having a child at a young age are, specifi cally with respect to life choices such as education, their career, and social life. the women studied generally emphasized the disadvantages more palpably than the advantages. for example, gonca said that early marriage and childbearing isolated her from her circle of friends who were still in school at the time. she found herself in a circle of mothers who were both older than her and more attuned to domestic life, which was not interesting to her. gülay reported that her early motherhood did not have any positive effect on her life, in that “[she] was a child herself when [she] had a baby and [she] continued to be a child with lots of increasing responsibilities”. another respondent, sevgi, said that her early motherhood terminated her education, though she was a bright student in high school and determined to go to university. moreover, she viewed her early transition to parenthood as a barrier to the recovery of her life prospects: “well you know what they say, ‘you can still do both’ – no! it never works. shall i study my courses or take care of the kids? you cannot do both. also, i am the kind of mother who wants the best for her kids, for example, i want my daughter to have ballet lessons, i frequently visit physical education teachers to talk to about this, i investigate things on the internet for my children and there are lots of other similar things that keep me very busy.”. with early marriage and motherhood, the women seemed to consider that their lives were largely limited to the domestic sphere, and that they irrevocably missed the opportunity to have career prospects. this sentiment was explicit in the narratives of some participants, such as sevgi. in other cases, the women seemed to transfer their unfulfi lled ambitions onto their children. the narrative accounts of derya and figen are cases in point. derya and figen talked extensively about their regret for leaving school early; however, despite their broken dreams and relatively young age (table 2), they didn’t have any career expectations for themselves. instead, they transferred their aspirations onto their children. in many ways, they seem to attain their unfulfi lled dreams through their children’s school achievements: “well, education-wise, we couldn’t go to school; we were four siblings and we had a diffi cult life, we had a lot of (economic) hardship. i was able to study • serap kavas46 only until middle school. i wanted to study beyond it but i could not make it because of, you know, the conditions. i suffered a lot, so it is my aim that i will do my best to provide for them [her children], send them schools, they will have an education and they will have everything they need to have a golden ticket [get a job], god willing [insallah]” [derya]. “my daughter is a university student, she is studying law, i keep telling her that she should continue her education until the very end. because it was something i was longing for, my dad didn’t let me go to middle school. he didn’t let my sisters either, i was lucky that at least i went to primary school.” [figen] interestingly, while the women studied overwhelmingly focused on the disruptive outcomes of early parenting for their education, career, and social life, some of them also identifi ed some positive aspects. for example, one respondent said that when her children grow up, her young motherhood will transform from a disadvantage into an advantage as “[she] will still be young after 15-20 years and be like a friend to [her] kids” [melis]. another respondent, keriman, who reiterated the drawbacks of young motherhood throughout the interview, also noted that it may benefi t her since, she may end up having the joy of being a parent close in age with her daughters: “…there is a large age gap between me and mom, a gaping chasm of 36 years. thus, we never had the sort of closeness i saw in my friends’ relationships, we never got along well and we still don’t understand each other… but in my relationship with my daughters, we don’t have this large age gap and we talk, we talk about their friends, relationships and stuff. as a matter of fact, it is good for me, because i don’t like to have breakfast alone, they are with me and we set the table, eat, and talk together. it is a lot of fun; we are friends now and we are gonna be good friends when they grow up.” 4.3 the second child as a remedy and compensation a striking fi nding from this qualitative data concerned the effects of early fi rst birth on mothers’ subsequent fertility. while a vast majority of the studied mothers described the negative emotions and challenges of their early childbearing, for many of them, the experience did not necessarily discourage continued childbearing. in contrast, most reported that their subsequent fertility was desired and planned. interestingly, the transition to second and higher-order births had a different dynamic for these early child-bearers than their fi rst birth, with many of them seizing fulfi llment only in their subsequent births. this theme was frequently voiced during the interviews. the women interviewed commonly pointed to the circumstances, including their young age at their fi rst childbirth, as the reason for missing the fulfi llment in being a mother. the following quotations are particularly illustrative: “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 47 “i wanted to have the second [child] so much, he was not planned either, but the thing is that i wanted him… when i learned about it [the pregnancy] i could not sleep all night because of my excitement, it was like i was having a baby for the fi rst time in my life! […] it was a very different feeling, i hadn’t had it before, you know, i was too young at my fi rst childbirth and my parents were not talking to me [they resented her because she married by eloping], i didn’t feel it [motherhood] back then.” [gonca, aged 26 at second birth]. “i enjoyed raising my second child and liked the feeling of motherhood, my mother and people around me told me that i was behaving weirdly, you know, as if it was my fi rst childbirth. well, i was just telling them that i wasn’t in the right mood at that time [referring to fi rst birth], i mean i didn’t live through it [motherhood] at that young age, i was a child myself! it’s hard to say, but i feel exactly like i am raising my fi rst child now.” [keriman, aged 28 at second birth]. the following quotation is even more explicit and emphatic in conveying this sentiment: “back then [fi rst childbirth], raising a child sounded to me like torture, but with this kid [the second child], i came to understand motherhood. i mean, if i hadn’t had him, i would never have understood how it feels to be a mother. it is only now that i came to have that feeling.” [hasibe, aged 27 at second birth]. the women’s accounts also indicate that making better sense of motherhood may have intensifi ed the bond between the mother and the subsequent child, making the mother feel even more attached to the subsequent child. for example, one young mother, lale, who gave birth to her fi rst three children successively, all spaced very closely – 18, 20, 21 and 24 – told me that she only came to “feel like a mother” with her fourth childbirth: “well, i don’t really know what i felt, what i thought in my fi rst three childbirths, i was too young, i did not understand anything. it was only when i had samet [her fourth child] [...] believe it or not, i didn’t have this feeling in my fi rst three childbirths, i was so young and they were one after another, i really suffered a lot, but for samet it was different, i felt like a mother when i had him, he has a different place in my heart, i am fond of him.” interestingly, for some of these mothers, second and higher-order childbearing served to heal from hurtful experiences and acted as a compensation for the sense of guilt of not feeling like a mother at their fi rst birth. for example, keriman said: “this second child was good to me, it was all good for his sister and for my husband too, he was like a therapy to us. […] [b]ecause i came to understand my mistakes, i didn’t repeat them in my second childbirth, you know what • serap kavas48 they say, ‘second children are always lucky’ – that is so true. […] i grew up and i grew mature, so i was way better.” a particularly poignant remark came from another early child-bearer, gülay, a young mother of three children, aged 20 at her second birth. being overwhelmed by the feelings of regret for not being a “good mother” to her three children, gülay hopes that if she has one more child sometime soon, she will have a chance to compensate for the hurtful experiences and will be able to live through the substantive feeling of motherhood: “...if i give birth to one more child, this child will be very different in my eyes, i will be able to get over my longing for real motherhood, you know why? because when i was rearing them while they were crying, i was literally crying too, but if i have a new baby now, i will know what it wants, how i can help it. i will have one more child just-for-this-reason”. 5 discussion this study investigated mothers’ perceptions and evaluations of their early fi rst birth, drawing on their retrospective accounts and subjective interpretations. one of the substantive fi ndings of this study is that early age at fi rst birth and overreliance on family support led most of the interviewed women to feel estranged from the entire process of childbirth and childcare. many of these women only partially took on the responsibility of childcare and delayed the feeling of motherhood to the next child. a second theme concerned the perceived costs and benefi ts of childbearing at a young age. the women who participated in this study predominantly reported disruptive outcomes; the description of hardships and feelings of unfulfi llment of being a mother were dominant discourses. the fi nal theme concerned the infl uence of early fi rst birth on subsequent childbearing; women’s accounts indicated that subsequent fertility operated as a compensation for the missed feelings of motherhood. moreover, second and higher-order births served as an opportunity to heal from hurtful experiences and feelings of guilt from not being able to care for their fi rstborn children. this study makes important contributions to the research on young motherhood, particularly to qualitative research which explores the perspectives of the young mothers themselves and challenges the long-established and mostly negative depictions of teenage motherhood. first, this study argues that studying turkey provides a non-western perspective to the research on the middle east, where specifi c norms and meanings attributed to early family formation shape women’s perceptions of having a child at a young age. for example, this study fi nds that young women’s experiences and perceptions of early fertility differ from that in western countries, where early childbearing is conceptualized as deviant demographic behavior. a sizeable literature from the western context documents that young mothers redefi ne their pregnancies in positive terms; redefi ning themselves “courage in ignorance”: mothers’ retrospective accounts of early childbearing in turkey • 49 as mothers by becoming more responsible, and by considering their pregnancy as something that brings a sense of order to their lives (luker 1996; brubaker/ wright 2006; anwar/stanistreet 2014). for example, in brubaker and wright’s study (2006), early motherhood became a turning point for some young mothers to assert themselves not only for themselves, but also for their children. anwar and stanistreet’s study (2014) found that becoming a mother gave the interviewed young women a greater appreciation of education and employment. creating a positive identity and sense of purpose in life was reported by other studies of western contexts as well (e.g., seamark/lings 2004; horowitz 1995; rosengard et al. 2006). however, the fi ndings of this study revealed that in contrast to young women who evinced a more “resilient mothering,” the studied women in turkey exhibited less resilient and less assertive identities. this is an unexpected fi nding, because in turkey, early marriage and childbearing are socially acceptable. therefore, with early marital motherhood, young women do not deviate from social norms as such, and they are justifi ed in expecting family support. however, despite this relatively supportive environment, the women studied reported mostly negative views about their experiences of early motherhood. it is a general rule in turkey that parents are involved in their adult children’s childbearing and childrearing processes. in the case of the interviewees, the elders who provided support may have perceived the women as still dependent and embraced the role of mother on their behalf. many of the participants relinquished their reproductive agency and caregiving activities to their mothers or in-laws. thus, it may be that while drawing on grandparents’ support aided them to cope with the practical hardships, in many ways, it also led to feelings of unfulfi llment as a mother. thus, i propose that grandparents’ over-involvement in their daughters’ childbearing and caring processes may have snatched away the opportunity for these women to create a positive sense of identity and purpose in life. such a sense of purpose could have potentially contributed to the young mothers’ psychological wellbeing, a favorable mother-child relationship, and future aspirations to continue education and employment. second, the qualitative data that i analyzed in this study enabled me to understand young motherhood from young mothers’ own perspectives moreover, this mode of data collection allowed me to identify the complexities and subtleties inherent in fertility decision-making (miller et al. 2004). for example, it helped me explore an interesting aspect of having a child at an immature age, in that the study participants reported that they missed the feeling of being a mother after their fi rst childbirth and were only able to feel fulfi lled as a mother following their second or higherorder births. there are limitations to this research as well. first, this study reports on a small sample of 17 women and used a non-probability sampling method (i.e., snowball sampling) to identify potential participants, both of which limit my ability to draw generalizable conclusions. given the study’s exploratory nature, it aimed to produce detailed knowledge “grounded in real data” (whitley/kirmayer 2008: 9), rather than presenting data that are generalizable to a broader population (matthew 2005). a further limitation is that the study sample is restricted to data exclusively from • serap kavas50 young mothers who were married at the time of childbirth. thus, the data do not allow us to analyze the experience of early fertility among unmarried women, which would yield additional and varied data. nevertheless, since early motherhood out of wedlock is rare in turkey, study fi ndings may be transferrable to the general populations of young mothers in turkey. a fi nal limitation is the retrospective nature of the study, which drew on participants’ self-reports on their early marriage and motherhood. self-reported retrospective information is subject to recall bias, meaning that participants may not remember their marriage and childbearing experiences accurately or omit details (e.g., gorin/stone 2001). nevertheless, given that marriage and childbearing are among the most important events of many women’s life courses, i argue that respondents tend to recall the timing of these milestones accurately. moreover, since most of these mothers yielded data from their lived experiences of early fi rst marriage and childbirth that took place in the not-too-distant past, they are less likely to make cognitive errors in reporting their family formation experiences. despite these limitations, i argue that mothers’ retrospective accounts provide suffi cient data to explore women’s perceptions of their early fertility. further studies with larger sample sizes and married and unmarried respondents should continue exploring the consequences of early childbearing, recognizing the importance of social context in shaping these experiences. i conclude by suggesting that policy analysts should consider young mothers’ voices and understand their perceptions of early fertility. this approach is important to better understand young mothers’ problems and formulate relevant policies to minimize the negative consequences for young mothers and their children. funding support for this work was provided by a grant from the scientifi c and technological research council of turkey (tubitak), grant #113k073 (serap kavas, principal investigator). approval for the study was obtained from the human research ethics committee the institution that the author was affi liated with during the grant application process. acknowledgement special acknowledgment to julie de jong and hüseyin kavas is due for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. i thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this 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https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513x14538025 date of submission: 02.01.2021 date of acceptance: 24.09.2021 serap kavas, phd (). independent scholar. istanbul, turkey. e-mail: serapkavas@gmail.com published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? lone parenthood and welfare benefit receipt in germany why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? lone parenthood and welfare benefit receipt in germany esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld abstract: this article uses data from the german microcensuses of 2007 and 2012 to examine gender differences in welfare reliance among lone parents. binary logistic regression was employed as the method of analysis. we show that the risk of welfare benefit receipt is lower among lone fathers than lone mothers. we also find that these gender differences can be partially explained by the socio-economic characteristics of lone fathers; compared to lone mothers, lone fathers are, on average, better educated and more likely to be living with older children. gender differences decreased over time among parents who have never married, but remained constant among divorced parents. we present a discussion of our findings in light of recent policy reforms, in particular the reform of the german maintenance law of 2008, which curbed the ability of a divorced parent to collect support from an ex-spouse. keywords: employment · lone parents · single parents · social assistance · welfare 1 introduction in recent years, divorce and separation rates have increased or stalled at high levels. as a result of this trend, the share of lone parents has increased in most european countries. a lone parent is defined as a mother or a father who co-resides with her or his minor child or children, but does not have a partner who lives in the same household unit. although lone fathers are included in this definition, public policy has focused primarily on lone mothers, who constitute the overwhelming majority of lone parents, and who are at an elevated risk of poverty and welfare dependence (chzhen/bradshaw 2012; härkönen 2017; lewis 1997; maldonado/nieuwenhuis 2015). while significant scholarly and public attention has been devoted to lone motherhood, relatively few studies have looked at the economic well-being of lone fathers. comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 61-84 (date of release: 16.07.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-09en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-09en9 • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld62 most of the knowledge we have about lone fatherhood comes from broad overview studies on lone parenthood, most of which include only short subsections on the prevalence and characteristics of lone fathers. for most countries, it has been reported that the prevalence of lone fatherhood has increased substantially in recent decades (bures 2009; coles 2015). it has also been repeatedly shown that compared to lone mothers, lone fathers have higher incomes and are at a lower risk of poverty and welfare dependence (chzhen/bradshaw 2012; kramer et al. 2016; maldonado/nieuwenhuis 2015). the differences in the poverty risks faced by lone fathers and lone mothers have largely been attributed to socio-economic differ ences. compared to lone mothers, lone fathers are, on average, better educated, more likely to be in a well-paid occupation, and more likely to be living with children who are older and fewer in number. cross-national studies have shown that germany is among the countries where lone parents face a very elevated risk of poverty (chzhen/bradshaw 2012: 497). in line with findings for other countries, it has also been shown that in germany, lone fathers differ in their socio-demography from lone mothers (statistisches bundesamt 2018) and that they are at lower risk of poverty and of receiving welfare benefits than lone mothers (andreß 2001; hammer 2002; matzner 2007; schneider et al. 2001). however, these studies did not answer the question of whether these patterns have changed over time, or of whether these changes can be attributed to social policy reforms that have altered the economic well-being of lone parents in germany. this article seeks to close parts of this research gap by analysing large-scale survey data from the german microcensus that compare behaviour in the years 2007 and 2012. we describe the socio-economic correlates of lone fatherhood and how they compare to the characteristics of lone mothers. in particular, we explore the economic foundations of lone parenthood by investigating the extent to which lone parents receive social welfare, and how this level has changed between 2007 and 2012. we have picked these two points in time because 2007 is the first year in which the microcensus contained unambiguous measures of welfare reliance. the year 2012 was selected as the most recent year for which a scientific use file of the microcensus was available when this study was conducted. the advantage of focusing on the more recent time period is that our analysis covers the period after the implementation of major labour market reforms (the “hartz reforms”). as these reforms made significant changes to welfare eligibility, an investigation of this issue that covered a longer period of time would have been difficult to conduct. another advantage of focusing on 2007 and 2012 is that these years represent points in time immediately before and after the implementation of the reform of the spousal maintenance law in 2008. although we are unable to perform a thorough evaluation of this policy change, we can provide some descriptive insights into the welfare benefit receipt of divorced women with children, who represent the group most affected by this legal change. a note on terminology: in line with the conventional definition, we define a lone parent as a woman or a man who lives with his or her minor children in the same household, but does not have a partner who also lives in the household. a lone parent may be single (never-married), divorced, or widowed. other household memwhy do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 63 bers (siblings, parents, etc.) are disregarded in the definition of lone parenthood. thus, a lone parent may live with her or his own parents in the same household unit. however, unmarried parents in cohabiting unions are not considered lone parents and are not part of this investigation. 2 theoretical considerations 2.1 perspectives on lone parenthood it is conventional wisdom of social policy research that the modern welfare state has evolved around securing the risks faced by the married male breadwinner family (esping-andersen 1999; lewis 1992). the assumption underlying the conservative welfare regime is the continuous full-time employment of the male breadwinner who is insured against the risks associated with unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age. non-working women obtain derived rights through marriage in the public retirement and health care system. the risk to the family of the death of the male breadwinner is reduced through the availability of survivor pensions. the economic consequences of divorce are cushioned by means of spousal maintenance, albeit to varying degrees in different countries and time periods. the people who fall through the cracks of this regime tend to be single women with children. their care duties mean that they are unable to participate fully in the labour market, but they also lack derived rights to benefits through a legal bond with a male breadwinner. as a result, women in this regime are at a high risk of poverty and welfare dependence. scholars of comparative welfare state research have thus argued that the public policy treatment of single mothers is a “bellwether” for the treatment of women in general, as such policies determine whether women are able to form autonomous households, or whether the lack of a married partner forces women into poverty and welfare dependence (christopher 2002; duncan/edwards 1997; orloff 1993; zagel 2018). a second and contrary view of lone parenthood has focused on how social policies incentivise the employment of lone mothers (blundell et al. 2016; ermisch/ wright 1991; jenkins 1992). according to this perspective, the social transfer system discourages lone mothers from entering the labour market. because social benefits are means-tested, and lone mothers do not have a partner whose income is assessed in the calculation of benefits, they are especially likely to be eligible for transfer payments. concerns about the excessive use of social welfare by lone mothers have been expressed in the us and the uk in particular, as in these countries the employment rates of lone mothers tend to be substantially lower than those of partnered mothers (zagel 2014). in line with this view, the implementation of welfare reforms such as the working tax credit in the uk and the earned income tax credit in the us were motivated by the belief that changes in the incentive structures would boost the employment rates of lone mothers and reduce their reliance on social welfare (eissa et al. 2008; rake 2001; skevik 2006). • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld64 researchers who have examined the poverty risks and the welfare reliance of lone parents have often included in their investigations not only parents who have never married but also divorced parents (e.g., jenkins 1992; chzhen/bradshaw 2012). some studies have focused on divorcees (e.g., andreß/bröckel 2007; uunk 2004), while others have drawn attention to the poverty risks of never-married parents (e.g., mclanahan 2009). the overwhelming majority of these studies have examined mothers. in our study, we include both lone mothers and lone fathers. moreover, we pay special attention to the differences between unmarried, widowed and divorced parents. it seems important to distinguish lone parents by their marital status, because of the distinct treatment of the different groups under german legislation. under a conservative welfare state regime, social policies tend to provide a buffer against some of the adverse consequences of widowhood and divorce. for example, germany was the first country in europe to install a system of “pension splitting” in 1977. in this system, pension entitlements that are accrued during marriage are split equally between the partners after divorce. furthermore, the “weaker party” is eligible to ex-spousal maintenance. recent policy reforms have, however, aligned the treatment of never-married and divorced parents. these regulations as well as recent changes in labour market policies are set out in the next step. 2.2 social policies and lone parents’ poverty risk: the german context german labour market policies underwent radical changes shortly after the turn of the century. following the enactment of the hartz iv reform in 2005, the three-tier system of unemployment support – which consisted of social assistance, unemployment benefits, and unemployment assistance – was replaced by a two-tier system (hassel/schiller 2010). previously, the long-term unemployed had been eligible to receive income-related unemployment assistance. for this group, the reform merged the social assistance and unemployment assistance benefit programmes to form the unemployment benefit ii (arbeitslosengeld ii or alg ii), which grants only a flat-rate, means-tested benefit. social assistance (sozialhilfe) still exists, but is mainly reserved for the disabled. the implementation of the reform was also accompanied by intensified use of active labour market programmes designed to integrate the long-term unemployed into the labour market. although the primary recipients of alg ii are the unemployed, people who are in work but are earning very low wages are also entitled to supplement their earnings by claiming this benefit. unemployed alg ii recipients include long-term unemployed people who have run out of their unemployment insurance benefits, people who have accumulated too little recent employment experience to claim unemployment insurance benefits, as well as people who were previously employed only in non-contributory jobs (e.g. minijobs). in addition, people whose unemployment benefits (alg i) are too low can claim supplementary alg ii. currently, alg ii is the main welfare benefit provided by the german government. while individuals can claim a means-tested housing benefit designed to ensure that people have suitable housing, this benefit cannot be claimed in conjunction with alg ii. for the purposes of this study, we classify why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 65 a person as being a social welfare recipient if he or she is receiving either alg ii, a housing benefit, or social assistance. germany has commonly been classified as a country with a conservative welfare regime that provides strong incentives for a gendered division of labour within the family. in line with this principle, the german tax system allows married couples to file their taxes jointly. because the tax schedule is progressive, the “second earner” is taxed heavily under this system, which particularly reduces the work incentives for women with children. however, over the past decade, major reforms of the german welfare system have been enacted that incentivise the labour market participation of mothers. the most significant of these reforms are the expansion of day care for children under age three since 2005 and the redesign of parental leave benefits in 2007 (geisler/kreyenfeld 2018; zoch/hondralis 2017). these policy reforms have been widely seen as representing a major shift in the german family system away from conservative principles (fleckenstein 2011). it has also been well documented that since the enactment of these reforms, full-time employment among mothers and the uptake of leave among fathers have risen steadily (bmfsfj 2014; statistisches bundesamt 2017a). while these policy changes have had a major impact, the full-time employment and earnings levels of mothers and fathers have yet to converge. according to recent data from the german federal statistical office, the gross earnings of employed women are more than 20 percent lower than those of their male counterparts. thus, germany’s gender pay gap continues to be one of the highest in europe (boll/lagemann 2018). however, there are large regional differences. differences in employment and earnings between men and women in eastern germany are considerably smaller than in western germany (statistisches bundesamt 2017b). it has been shown that divorced women – and especially those who have been absent from the labour market for longer periods of time – tend to face particular difficulties in increasing their labour market participation following union dissolution (andreß et al. 2006; bröckel/andreß 2015). until recently, german family law followed the principle of status maintenance, whereby spousal maintenance levels were calculated based on the couple’s standard of living prior to divorce. the weaker party in the couple was generally not expected to work full-time, and thus received financial support from the ex-partner until the youngest child reached age 16.1 in 2008, the german maintenance law was reformed, and the length of time divorcees were entitled to receive maintenance on the grounds of having care obligations for children was drastically cut. while it was previously assumed that the caregiving mother (or theoretically also the father) is unable to work full-time until the youngest child reaches age 16, the revised legislation assumes that – given the wider availability of day care – a parent can return to work after the youngest child has reached age three (lenze 2014). very little is known about the share of women 1 it may be that ex-spouses agree on reduced ex-spousal maintenance payments, for example in exchange for housing property. however, there is no reliable and representative information available on these agreements. • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld66 who were claiming ex-spousal support before and after the reform. it is, however, clear that while the reform created incentives for divorced parents to enter the labour market swiftly after splitting up, it also increased the risk of a divorced woman who failed to receive sufficient ex-spousal support having to rely on social benefits. hypotheses despite the recent reforms of the german welfare state, there are still considerable differences in the employment patterns of men and women. as women continue to face difficulties in expanding their labour market activities after separation and divorce, we expect to find that they are at a higher risk than lone fathers to receive welfare benefits. these differences between lone mothers and lone fathers in terms of the share receiving welfare benefits may be attributable to differences in their human capital, such as gaps in educational attainment. compared to lone mothers, lone fathers are more likely to live with children who are older and fewer in number (matzner 2007). we might therefore assume that lone parents’ education and other socio-demographic characteristics, as well as the ages and the number of children who live with them, explain some of the differences in welfare recipient levels between lone fathers and lone mothers (hypothesis 1). in germany, maternal employment has increased over time and fathers have become more active in the upbringing of their children. because women are more frequently employed than in previous decades, the possibility of women working after union dissolution or expanding their employment may have increased as well. we might therefore assume that the gap between lone mothers and fathers in the risk of being dependent on welfare benefits narrowed during our observation period (hypothesis 2). recent welfare state reforms, in particular the reform of the german maintenance law, emphasised the principle of “self-reliance” after divorce. we might therefore conclude that divorced as well as married women had a greater incentive than before to establish themselves in the labour market. the risk of a divorced women being dependent on social welfare may, thus, have declined over time. as a consequence, gender differences in terms of welfare recipient levels should have diminished more strongly among divorcees than among those persons that never married (hypothesis 3a). however, because the german maintenance law of 2008 also included major cuts in post-maintenance payments, some divorced women may have been pushed into the labour market, while others were pushed into welfare receipt. thus, our alternative hypothesis assumes that gender differences in welfare recipient levels increased more strongly among divorcees than among the unmarried between 2007 and 2012 (hypothesis 3b). 3 data and methods we use data from the german microcensus for the years 2007 and 2012 in this analysis. ideally, we would have investigated welfare benefit patterns since the midwhy do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 67 1990s, and looked at how various reforms affected the behaviour of lone parents over several decades. however, because the hartz reforms outlined above redefined unemployment and welfare benefit receipt in germany, comparing these patterns before and after 2005 would be too cumbersome. in addition, the microcensus data did not allow us to distinguish between the two forms of unemployment benefit (insurance-based for the short-term unemployed and means-tested for the longterm unemployed). thus, we were able to unambiguously identify respondents who had only been in receipt of social welfare benefits from 2007 onwards. the dataset for 2012 was selected because it is the most recent microcensus dataset for which a scientific use file was available when this study was conducted. furthermore, because the microcensus replaces a quarter of its respondents every year, the sample is fully replaced after four years. as personal identifiers are not included in the data, we selected two years of survey data that are at least four years apart in order to ensure that the respondents do not appear in the data multiple times. the microcensus is a one percent sample of the population in germany. it has been conducted in western germany since 1957 and in eastern germany since 1991. for our analysis, we use the scientific use file of the data, which is a 70 percent sub-sample of the original. our analytical sample contains women and men aged 18 to 64 who were living in a private family household with at least one child under the age of 18, but in which no partner was present. we defined (a) lone fathers as men who were living in a family unit that included minor child(ren), and (b) lone mothers as women who were living in a family unit that included minor child(ren). the microcensus distinguishes between family units and households. although the lone parents in our sample were defined as sharing a family unit with minor child(ren) only, they may have been sharing a household with other people as well (e.g. other relatives, such as the lone parents’ own parents) as a household can contain more than one family unit. it should also be noted that the microcensus does not collect information on the filial relationships of the respondents to the co-residential children. it is therefore possible that the children in the household were stepchildren, foster children or adopted children. our key dependent variable is a binary variable that measures the welfare benefit receipt of the respondent. we define a person as a social welfare recipient if he or she was collecting alg ii, social assistance, or housing benefit. the overwhelming share of welfare benefit recipients were collecting alg ii (82 percent). if the respondent was not receiving any of these welfare benefits, he or she was coded as “not receiving welfare benefits”. it should be noted that people can receive these benefits while in employment if their income is too low to support themselves and their families (see below for a further discussion). the socio-economic correlates that we take into account are the age of the youngest child (0-2, 3-5, 6-9, 10-13, 14-17) and the number of children (one, two, three or more children). we also consider whether any of the children had a second residence in order to capture parents who were practicing shared parenting. in our sample, two percent of the mothers and eight percent of the fathers reported that at least one of their children was also registered at a different household. the small share of children who were living at two residences reflects the small percentage of • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld68 parents in germany who practice shared parenting (kindler/walper 2016). we also consider the household context. in particular, we control for whether the respondent was living with his or her parents, as co-residence with parents may reduce eligibility for means-tested benefits. only a very small fraction (roughly three percent) of the lone parents in our sample were co-residing with their own parents. in addition, we consider the marital status of the respondent, i.e. whether he or she was never married, was divorced (a category that also includes those who were separated, but were not yet legally divorced), or widowed. the respondent’s level of education is identified using three categories: no degree (low level of education), vocational degree (medium level of education), and university degree (high level of education). the regression analysis further controls for age (18-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-49, 50-64), and citizenship (german/non-german). given the considerable differences in maternal employment patterns that have been well documented (drasch 2012; hanel/riphahn 2012), we also control for region (eastern/western germany). in an initial step, we use standard cross tables to describe the socio-economic characteristics of lone parenthood and how these characteristics changed between 2007 and 2012. in a second step, we employ a binary logistic regression model that explores the determinants of welfare receipt among our two comparison groups (lone fathers and lone mothers). in the final part of our analysis, we investigate the question of whether these gender differences disappeared between 2007 and 2012, using interaction models that take into account gender and calendar year. we also examine the question of whether there are differences by marital status, using a three-way interaction model that includes marital status, calendar time, and gender. 4 results 4.1 descriptive results table 1 presents information on the composition of the sample. it shows that the vast majority of the lone parents studied were mothers, not fathers. in both 2007 and 2012, just 10 percent of the lone parents in our sample were men. unlike in other countries (coles 2015), no increase in the share of lone fatherhood in germany was reported over the period. the results shown in table 1 reveal that the characteristics of the male and the female lone parents differed considerably. the lone fathers were, on average, about six years older than the lone mothers. the majority of the lone fathers were living with teenage children, while most of the lone mothers had children under the age of 10. the lone fathers were also living with fewer children; about three-quarters of the fathers, but only two-thirds of the lone mothers, were living with only one child. in addition, the lone fathers were found to have higher levels of education than the mothers. about 16 percent of the lone fathers, but only around 11 percent of the lone mothers, reported having a university education in 2012. the analysis also uncovered gender differences by marital status. for example, in 2012, about 42 percent of the lone mothers, but only 23 percent of the lone fathers, were never-married. relative to the women, the men were more likely to be why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 69 tab. 1: characteristics of lone parents, column percentages total lone fathers lone mothers mothers both 2007 2012 both 2007 2012 & fathers years years sex men 9.8 women 90.2 calendar year 2007 49.5 48.8 49.6 2012 50.5 51.2 50.4 region western germany 78.4 82.4 83.5 81.4 77.9 77.7 78.1 eastern germany 21.6 17.6 16.5 18.6 22.1 22.3 21.9 citizenship german 88.9 90.5 91.0 90.0 88.7 89.9 87.5 non-german 11.1 9.5 9.0 10.0 11.3 10.1 12.5 age group 18-24 5.5 1.5 1.8 1.2 5.9 6.1 5.7 25-29 10.0 2.6 2.3 2.9 10.8 10.8 10.8 30-34 14.0 5.4 5.1 5.8 14.9 14.5 15.4 35-49 61.7 66.3 68.8 63.9 61.2 62.7 59.7 50-64 8.9 24.2 22.1 26.3 7.2 6.0 8.5 mean age 38.8 44.3 44.1 44.5 38.2 37.9 38.6 sd. 8.3 7.6 7.5 7.7 8.2 7.9 8.4 education no education/low level of education 22.3 15.4 16.3 14.5 23.0 23.3 22.8 medium level of education 61.7 64.9 62.1 67.7 61.4 61.7 61.1 high level of education 11.3 17.5 18.9 16.2 10.6 10.3 10.9 in education 4.3 1.7 1.9 1.6 4.6 4.2 4.9 n/a 0.5 0.5 0.9 0.1 0.5 0.6 0.4 marital status never married 37.1 19.1 15.3 22.7 39.1 36.2 41.9 divorced/married and separated 57.6 69.1 72.6 65.9 56.3 58.9 53.8 widowed 5.3 11.8 12.1 11.5 4.6 4.9 4.3 household position household reference person 94.4 95.9 96.5 95.4 94.2 94.7 93.7 son/daughter (in law) of household reference person 2.8 2.6 2.7 2.5 2.8 3.0 2.6 other kin of household reference person 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.4 no kinship with household reference person 2.4 0.9 0.3 1.5 2.5 1.8 3.2 number of children one child 67.9 76.2 75.0 77.3 66.9 67.7 66.2 two children 25.6 20.0 21.1 18.9 26.3 25.9 26.7 three or more children 6.5 3.9 4.0 3.8 6.8 6.5 7.1 • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld70 divorced or to be widowed. although widowhood has declined over time, 12 percent of the lone fathers and four percent of the lone mothers reported in 2012 that they were widowed. the table also displays information on the respective proportions of the lone mothers and fathers who were receiving welfare benefits. among the lone fathers, 20 percent in 2007 and 19 percent in 2012 reported that they were collecting welfare benefits. among the lone mothers, by contrast, 39 percent in 2007 and 37 percent in 2012 indicated that they were receiving welfare benefits. thus, a slight downward trend in welfare receipt was observed for both groups. moreover, the descriptive statistics suggest that these gender differences were stable over the period studied, with the risk of welfare receipt consistently being twice as high among the lone mothers compared to the lone fathers. of the welfare recipients in our sample, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) were not working. however, under the german system, individuals who are employed may also be eligible to claim social benefits to top up their incomes if their wages are not high enough to enable them to support themselves and their families. figure 1 shows that levels of welfare receipt were much higher among the employed lone mothers than among the employed lone fathers (see also table a1 in the appendix). 20 percent of the mothers but only six percent of the working fathers were receiving welfare benefits. this pattern can be attributed in large part to the finding that, compared to the lone fathers, the lone mothers were more likely to be in marginal or part-time employment where wages are lower than in full-time jobs. we do not take into account the employment status in the multivariate regression, as employment cannot be regarded as an exogenous variable to the collection of welfare benefits. total lone fathers lone mothers mothers both 2007 2012 both 2007 2012 & fathers years years age of youngest child 0-2 14.0 3.1 3.2 2.9 15.2 14.8 15.5 3-5 15.8 9.3 8.3 10.2 16.5 16.3 16.6 6-9 21.5 16.5 16.7 16.3 22.0 22.7 21.4 10-13 22.9 29.0 27.6 30.4 22.2 22.1 22.3 14-17 25.9 42.2 44.3 40.2 24.1 24.2 24.1 at least 1 child has other residence yes 2.6 7.6 7.8 7.4 2.0 1.9 2.2 no 97.4 92.4 92.2 92.7 98.0 98.1 97.8 welfare benefits (unemployment benefit ii, social assistance, housing benefit) no 63.8 80.6 80.0 81.2 62.0 61.0 62.9 yes 36.2 19.4 20.0 18.8 38.0 39.0 37.1 number of cases 18,928 1,859 907 952 17,069 8,469 8,600 tab. 1: continuation source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. data are not weighted. why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 71 however, for the interpretation of the subsequent investigations, it is important to bear in mind that even if they were able to enter the labour market, the lone mothers continued to be at a high risk of welfare receipt. 4.2 regression results table 2 shows the results from the logistic regression that estimated the probability of receiving social welfare benefits. the results are reported as average marginal effects (ame). the outcomes for model 1 – which includes only calendar year, citizenship, region, and gender – confirm the descriptive finding that welfare receipt was lower among the lone fathers than among the lone mothers. the results also revealed that welfare receipt levels were lower in 2012 than in 2007, and that the risk of receiving welfare benefits was substantially higher for foreign nationals than for german nationals. we also find that people in eastern germany were more likely to receive welfare benefits than those in the west of the country. separate investigations by region (see table a2 in the appendix) reveal that the determinants for collecting welfare were very similar in eastern and western germany, with the exception of the number and age of children. while the age of the children was a strong predictor of welfare receipt among lone parents in western germany, this was not the case in the eastern part of the country. however, having three or more children was a stronger predictor of welfare receipt in eastern than in western germany. the findings for model 2 indicated that the likelihood of receiving welfare benefits declined with age, with the lone parents aged 18-24 being at the greatest risk of having to rely on welfare benefits. model 3 included the respondent’s level of fig. 1: probability of receiving welfare benefits by calendar year, employment status, and gender 0 25 50 75 100 total non-employed employed total non-employed employed 37 74 20 19 73 6 39 75 20 20 75 7 2007 2012 lo ne m o th er s lo ne fa th er s note: respondents on parental leave are classified as non-employed. source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. data are not weighted. • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld72 education. in line with previous research (see also chzhen/bradshaw 2012; achatz et al. 2013), a strong negative gradient was found: compared to having a medium level of education, the risk of welfare receipt increased by 29 percent when the respondents had either no education or a low level of education. while the divorced respondents were at a lower risk of receiving welfare benefits compared to the never-married (see model 4), the effect was not very strong. by contrast, the risk of collecting social benefits was found to be much lower for the widowed respondents than for their divorced or never-married counterparts: the risk of welfare benefit reliance was about 16 percent lower for the widowed respondents than for the nevermarried respondents. this result can most likely be attributed to the availability of a survivor’s pension, which reduces the chances of a widow or widower having to rely on welfare benefits. the results also showed that co-residence with the parent’s own parents – which was more common among younger than among older lone parents – acted as a buffer against some of the adverse effects of early lone parenthood on welfare receipt. if a respondent was living with his or her parents, the probability that he or she was receiving welfare benefits was 25 percent lower than it was for a respondent who was living in an independent household. whether a lone parent was receiving welfare benefits was greatly influenced by how many children the parent had and how old they were (see also chzhen/bradshaw 2012; achatz et al. 2013). the probability of receiving social benefits was 18 percent higher among the lone parents with three or more children than among their counterparts with one child only (see model 5). the analysis also showed that the likelihood of a lone parent receiving social benefits declined gradually as his or her children grew older. the model includes an indicator of whether the parent’s children were also living at a second residence, as this may indicate that the lone parent was in a shared parenting arrangement, thus potentially making it easier for her or him to engage in the labour market. the model results confirm this assumption: the probability of a lone parent being on welfare declined by about eight percent if his or her children were also living at a second residence. a major finding from the stepwise modelling procedure is that the inclusion of the socio-demographic characteristics of the lone parents reduced the gender differences from 18 (model 1) to eight percent (model 5). thus, lone mothers are at a higher risk of welfare receipt, but lone parents’ socio-demographic characteristics – particularly their educational levels and the ages and number of their children – explain some of the differences in the levels of welfare receipt found between lone fathers and lone mothers (see hypothesis 1). the pseudo r squared suggests that the model fit increases in particular when marital status and education are included in the model. in the next step of our analysis, we examined the evolution of gender differences between 2007 and 2012. figure 2 includes the results from an interaction model by calendar year and gender. we assumed that gender differences in welfare receipt would narrow. the improved compatibility of work and family life has resulted in a rise in the employment rates of (partnered) women, which should have also affected the employment prospects of women after union dissolution (see hypothwhy do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 73 m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . s ex ( re f. w om en ) m en -0 .1 78 ** * -0 .1 32 ** * -0 .1 15 ** * -0 .1 08 ** * -0 .0 84 ** * c al en d ar y ea r (r ef . 2 00 7) 20 12 -0 .0 24 ** * -0 .0 23 ** -0 .0 20 ** -0 .0 24 ** * -0 .0 25 ** * r eg io n (r ef . w es te rn g er m an y) e as te rn g er m an y 0. 14 7 ** * 0. 10 6 ** * 0. 14 1 ** * 0. 13 3 ** * 0. 12 7 ** * c it iz en sh ip ( re f. g er m an ) n o n -g er m an 0. 24 1 ** * 0. 22 6 ** * 0. 14 6 ** * 0. 15 4 ** * 0. 14 2 ** * a g e g ro u p (r ef . 3 5 -4 9) 18 -2 4 0. 34 5 ** * 0. 22 5 ** * 0. 19 0 ** * 0. 17 5 ** * 25 -2 9 0. 26 7 ** * 0. 19 2 ** * 0. 16 7 ** * 0. 12 2 ** * 30 -3 4 0. 15 1 ** * 0. 11 5 ** * 0. 10 0 ** * 0. 05 5 ** * 50 -6 4 -0 .0 20 * -0 .0 12 n .s . 0. 00 5 n .s . 0. 05 2 ** * ed u ca ti on ( re f. m ed iu m e d u ca ti on ) n o e d u ca ti o n /l o w le ve l o f e d u ca ti o n 0. 28 9 ** * 0. 29 1 ** * 0. 27 7 ** * h ig h le ve l o f e d u ca ti o n -0 .1 84 ** * -0 .1 87 ** * -0 .1 91 ** * in e d u ca ti o n 0. 04 8 ** 0. 04 6 ** 0. 06 2 ** * m ar it al s ta tu s (r ef . n ev er m ar ri ed ) d iv o rc ed /m ar ri ed a n d s ep ar at ed -0 .0 36 ** * -0 .0 52 ** * w id o w ed -0 .1 64 ** * -0 .1 72 ** * h ou se h ol d p os it io n (r ef . h ou se h ol d re fe re n ce p er so n) s o n /d au g h te r (in la w ) o f h o u se h o ld r ef er en ce p er so n -0 .2 54 ** * o th er k in o f h o u se h o ld r ef er en ce p er so n -0 .1 22 ** n o k in sh ip w it h h o u se h o ld r ef er en ce p er so n -0 .2 49 ** * ta b . 2 : r es ul ts f ro m b in ar y lo g is tic r eg re ss io n, d et er m in an ts o f w el fa re b en efi t r ec ei p t ( un em p lo ym en t b en efi t i i, so ci al as si st an ce , h o u si ng b en efi t) (1 = ye s; 0 = no ), av er ag e m ar g in al e ff ec ts ( a m e ) • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld74 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n m o d el 1 m o d el 2 m o d el 3 m o d el 4 m o d el 5 a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . a m e s ig . n u m b er o f c h ild re n (r ef . o n e ch ild ) tw o c h ild re n 0. 06 8 ** * t h re e o r m o re c h ild re n 0. 18 3 ** * a g e o f y ou n g es t ch ild ( re f. 0 -2 ) 35 -0 .0 37 ** 6 -9 -0 .0 64 ** * 10 -1 3 -0 .1 07 ** * 14 -1 7 -0 .1 37 ** * a t le as t 1 ch ild h as s ec on d re si d en ce ( re f. n o) y es -0 .0 78 ** * m od el s u m m ar y lo g lik el ih o o d s ta rt in g m o d el -1 2, 38 8 -1 2, 38 8 -1 2, 38 8 -1 2, 38 8 -1 2, 38 8 lo g lik el ih o o d -1 1, 91 1 -1 1, 40 3 -1 0, 58 9 -1 0, 53 3 -1 0, 06 2 p se u d o r ² 0. 04 0. 08 0. 15 0. 15 0. 19 n u m b er o f c as es 18 ,9 28 18 ,9 28 18 ,9 28 18 ,9 28 18 ,9 28 n o te s: * ** p < 0. 00 1; * *p < 0. 01 ; * p < 0. 05 . a m e : av er ag e m ar gi na l e ff ec ts . s o ur ce : s ci en tifi c u se f ile o f t he g er m an m ic ro ce ns us 2 00 7 an d 2 01 2. why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 75 esis 2). however, our results do not support this hypothesis. instead, we observed a slight decline in welfare benefit reliance from 2007 to 2012 for fathers as well as for mothers, with the gender difference remaining fairly stable. after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, the difference between the genders narrowed (fig. 2, panel 2). in the final part of the investigation, we examined differences by marital status. in 2008, a reform of the german maintenance law was enacted, aimed at strengthening the economic independence of divorced women. the notion of “self-reliance” that governed this reform may have pulled married as well as divorced women into the labour market, thereby reducing divorced mothers’ reliance on welfare benefits. however, as the reform also mandated large cuts in ex-spousal maintenance, the divorced women who were unable to enter the labour market may have become increasingly reliant on social benefits. to illustrate these patterns, figure 3 displays the results of a three-way interaction, by marital status, calendar year and gender. as the sample sizes for widowers and widows were rather small, they were omitted from this part of the analysis. panel 1 in figure 3 shows the pattern for the fig. 2: average predicted probabilities from the interaction model, by calendar year and gender 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 2007 2012 year fathers motthers panel 1: no controls panel 2: with controls fathers mothers 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 2007 2012 year fathers motthers note: the results displayed in panel 1 do not contain any covariates apart from gender and calendar year (in interaction). the model in panel 2 includes all covariates that are also included in model 5 (region, citizenship, age of respondent, household position, marital status, number of children, age of youngest child, second residence of child, education). source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. data are not weighted. • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld76 never-married parents. the figure suggests that the likelihood of the never-married mothers and fathers receiving social welfare benefits showed signs of converging between 2007 and 2012, as welfare receipt levels declined slightly among the nevermarried mothers, but increased among the never-married fathers. panel 2 in figure 3 displays the results for the divorcees. we observed stable and strong gender differences in terms of the probability of receiving welfare, and even witnessed a slight increase in 2012. the divorced mothers were found to be more than twice as likely as the divorced fathers to be receiving welfare benefits. thus, we must reject the claim that the maintenance reform has enforced women’s self-reliance and diminished the gender gap (see hypothesis 3a). we find that the differences between the genders among the unmarried narrowed, while they increased slightly in the fig. 3: average predicted probabilities from the interaction model, by calendar year, marital status and gender (with all controls) 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 2007 2012 year fathers motthers fathers mothers 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 2007 2012 year fathers motthers never-married parents divorced parents note: the model includes all covariates that are also included in model 5 (region, citizenship, age of respondent, household position, marital status, number of children, age of youngest child, second residence of child, education). source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. data are not weighted. why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 77 case of the divorcees, which provides mild support for the alternative hypothesis (see hypothesis 3b). 5 summary and conclusions this article has examined gender differences in terms of transfer reliance among lone fathers and mothers in germany. our analysis uncovered stark gender differences in the risk of welfare receipt among lone parents. the findings indicate that in 2012, 19 percent of the lone fathers and 37 percent of the lone mothers in our sample relied on transfers. although the vast majority of the welfare recipients in our study were not in employment, significant proportions of the lone parents who were employed were also claiming welfare benefits. among the employed lone parents, 20 percent of the mothers and six percent of the fathers were collecting benefits in 2012. these results suggest that being employed did not fully shield the lone mothers from the risk of having to rely on welfare receipt, because many of these lone mothers were either not in full-time employment or did not earn enough money to support a family. the regression analysis showed that gender differences in welfare receipt can partially be explained by the ages and the number of children living in the household. the finding that the lone fathers were more likely than the lone mothers to be highly educated may also explain some of the differences between these two groups. another important finding from our investigation was a narrowing of these gender differences between 2007 and 2012. however, the time trend was shown to differ by marital status. while we observed a trend towards convergence among the never-married parents, we also found that the differences between the divorced mothers and fathers remained relatively unchanged. a primary aim of the reform of the german maintenance law in 2008 was to strengthen the economic independence of divorcees. although our results did not show that the risk of welfare receipt increased among the divorced women in our sample, they also failed to provide evidence that the reform made these women less economically dependent on state subsidies. while previous research for other countries has shown that lone fatherhood is on the rise, the findings of our investigation did not support that notion for germany. in our sample, men constituted roughly 10 percent of all lone parents, and this figure changed very little over time. one potential explanation as to why other countries have been reporting major changes in the prevalence of lone fatherhood while a similar pattern has not been evident in germany is that joint parenting is becoming increasingly common in other countries, but not yet in germany (kindler/walper 2016). in our analysis, we used an indirect measure of joint parenting, namely whether there was a child in the household who had a second residence. we found that only a small fraction (less than five percent) of the parents reported having such an arrangement. these lone parents were found to be less likely to be receiving welfare, which suggests that shared parenting could increase lone parents’ employment and lower the share who received welfare benefits. however, our measure of • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld78 shared parenting probably did not capture all of the respondents who were practicing this arrangement, as it relied on the official registration of a second residence with the local authorities. fathers who practice shared parenting may be classified as lone fathers in other countries, whereas such fathers in germany may not have entered our investigation because their children were not officially registered with the local municipality as living with their father “part-time”. unfortunately, we know little about how couples who practice shared parenting in germany manage the official registration of their children’s residence. there is still relatively little research on shared parenting for the german case in general (see, however, kindler/walper 2016). our analysis suggests that this type of research is desperately needed in order to gain a better understanding of living arrangements of lone parents and the possible impact of such arrangements on the economic well-being of children and parents. there are also limitations as regards the variables that were included in our investigation. we were able to explain some of the gender differences in welfare benefit reliance by controlling for the standard socio-demographic characteristics of the children and the parents. as the lone fathers were more likely than the lone mothers to be living with older children, they were less likely to be facing the challenges associated with caring for small children while maintaining paid employment. however, some of the gender differences we observed remain unexplained. an important dimension that was left out was gender role norms (grunow/evertsson 2016; schneider et al. 2015). parental behaviour is governed by societal norms of what constitutes good parenthood (coltrane 2009; fenstermaker/west 2002), and by the fact that fathers are pulled into the labour market because society assigns them the role of family provider. conversely, it may be assumed that women reduce their labour market participation while prioritising family and care obligations in order to live up to the societal norm of “good motherhood” (hays 1996). these moral obligations guide the division of labour between couples, but they can also extend beyond union dissolution. thus, the high share of welfare recipients observed among lone mothers should be seen as resulting from the tension between being a good provider for the family and a good caregiver. lone fathers may prioritise full-time employment and the financial well-being of the household, while lone mothers may be more willing to sacrifice financial well-being for time spent with their children in order to align their behaviour with their aspiration to be a “good mother” (duncan/ edwards 1997). yet, with the microcensus, which does not include any attitudinal questions, we were unable to examine how the incompatibility of work and family life affects the lives of lone parents, or how gendered attitudes towards parental responsibilities play into this dynamic. another important limitation of our study is that the microcensus data we used do not include information on the respondents’ employment and earnings histories. women – and especially married women – are more likely than men to reduce their level of employment after having a child. these women may face substantial obstacles to increasing their level of employment after separation, and are therefore at a particularly high risk of becoming reliant on welfare benefits. with the data from the microcensus, we were able to provide robust estimates of the shares of welfare rewhy do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 79 ceipt by calendar year, marital status, and gender. however, we were unable to track the same individuals over time, or to examine how the event of divorce and separation triggered benefit claims, and how these patterns differed by gender across policy contexts. conducting such a methodologically superior longitudinal analysis was, unfortunately, not possible given the limitations of the microcensus data. our analysis has also been confined to the investigation of lone fathers and lone mothers. examining how the transition into a new co-residential union, which terminates the status of lone parenthood, affects the risk of receiving welfare was beyond the scope of our investigation. furthermore, our analysis compared the risks of welfare receipt among lone mothers and lone fathers, but disregarded other comparison groups. although we found that lone fathers have been outperforming lone mothers, it must be emphasised that compared to two-parent families, lone parents – regardless of their gender – are more likely to be reliant on welfare. finally, our investigation only included the immediate period following the reform of the german maintenance law. the courts may possibly have adopted the legislation with a certain time lag as some ambiguities arose over the correct interpretation of the new regulation (lenze 2014). it would therefore be important to continue to monitor the differences in the risk of welfare receipt between divorced and never-married parents once new releases of the scientific use file of the microcensus become available. acknowledgements the research leading to these results received funding from the german research foundation (project number: 266395921). we would like to thank cordula zabel for her valuable comments as well as miriam hils and lena klein for language editing. all remaining errors are our own. references achatz, juliane et al. 2013: alleinerziehende mütter im bereich des sgb ii. eine synopse empirischer befunde aus der iab-forschung. iab forschungsbericht 8/2013. institut für arbeitsmarktund berufsforschung (iab): nürnberg. andreß, 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wiesbaden: statistisches bundesamt. uunk, wilfred 2004: the economic consequences of divorce for women in the european union: the impact of welfare state arrangements. in: european journal of population 20,3: 251-285 [doi: 10.1007/s10680-004-1694-0]. zagel, hannah 2014: are all single mothers the same? evidence from british and west german women’s labour market involvement trajectories. in: european sociological review 30,1: 49-63 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jct021]. zagel, hannah 2018: alleinerziehen im lebensverlauf. familiendynamiken und ungleichheit im wohlfahrtsstaat. wiesbaden: springer vs [doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-20051-0]. zoch, gundula; hondralis, irina 2017: the expansion of low-cost, state-subsidized childcare availability and mothers’ return-to-work behaviour in east and west germany. in: european sociological review 33,5: 693-707 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jcx068]. date of submission: 11.07.2018 date of acceptance: 16.03.2019 dr. esther geisler. hertie school of governance. berlin, germany. prof. dr. michaela kreyenfeld (*). hertie school of governance. berlin, germany e-mail: kreyenfeld@hertie-school.org url: https://www.hertie-school.org/de/forschung/professoren/profil/person/kreyenfeld/ why do lone mothers fare worse than lone fathers? • 83 appendix tab. a1: employment status (column %) and share of welfare benefit recipients (unemployment benefit ii, social assistance or housing benefit) by employment status 2007 2012 employment % receiving employment % receiving status benefit status benefit lone fathers employed 80.6 6.7 81.1 6.2 non-employed 19.4 75.0 18.9 72.8 total 100.0 20.0 100.0 18.8 number of cases 907 181 952 179 lone mothers employed 65.8 20.4 68.0 19.8 non-employed 34.2 74.8 32.0 73.73 total 100.0 39.0 100.0 37.06 number of cases 8,469 3,303 8,600 3,187 note: respondents on parental leave are classified as non-employed. source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. data are not weighted. • esther geisler, michaela kreyenfeld84 tab. a2: results from binary logistic regression, determinants of welfare benefit receipt (unemployment benefit ii, social assistance, housing benefit) (1=yes; 0=no), western and eastern germany, average marginal effects (ame) western germany eastern germany ame sig. ame sig. sex (ref. women) men -0.079 *** -0.114 *** calendar year (ref. 2007) 2012 -0.017 * -0.051 *** citizenship (ref. german) non-german 0.121 *** 0.244 *** age group (ref. 35-49) 18-24 0.173 *** 0.158 *** 25-29 0.105 *** 0.166 *** 30-34 0.059 *** 0.047 * 50-64 0.042 ** 0.133 *** education (ref. medium level of education) no education/low level of education 0.235 *** 0.248 *** high level of education -0.180 *** -0.351 *** in education 0.076 *** 0.019 marital status (ref. never married) divorced/married and separated -0.056 *** -0.035 * widowed -0.189 *** -0.143 ** household position (ref. household reference person) son/daughter (in law) of household reference person -0.332 *** -0.283 *** other kin of household reference person -0.178 *** 0.233 + no kinship with household reference person -0.323 *** -0.272 *** number of children (ref. one child) two children 0.060 *** 0.101 *** three or more children 0.142 *** 0.303 *** age of youngest child (ref. 0-2) 3-5 -0.033 ** -0.033 6-9 -0.071 *** -0.016 10-13 -0.122 *** -0.058 14-17 -0.162 *** -0.004 at least one child has second residence (ref. no) yes -0.094 ** -0.071 model summary log likelihood starting model -9,451 -2,828 log likelihood -7,562 -2,406 pseudo r² 0.20 0.15 number of cases 14,834 4,094 notes: *** p<0.001; **p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1. ame: average marginal effects. source: scientific use file of the german microcensus 2007 and 2012. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) _goback ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now* philip rees, nik lomax abstract: in 1876, 1885 and 1889, ernst ravenstein, an anglo-german geographer, published papers on internal and international migration in britain, europe and north america. he generalized his fi ndings as “laws of migration”, which have informed subsequent migration research. this paper aims to compare ravenstein’s approach to investigating migration with how researchers have studied the phenomenon more recently. ravenstein used lifetime migrant tables for counties from the 1871 and 1881 censuses of the british isles. data on lifetime migrants are still routinely collected but, because of the indeterminate time interval, they are rarely used to study internal migration. today, internal migration measures from alternative sources are used to measure internal migration: fi xed interval migrant data from censuses and surveys, continuous records of migrations from registers, and “big data” from telecommunications and internet companies. ravenstein described and mapped county-level lifetime migration patterns, using the concepts of “absorption” and “dispersion”, using migration rates and net balances. recently, researchers have used lifetime migrant stocks from consecutive censuses to estimate country to country fl ows for the world. in the last decade, an australian-led team has built an international database of internal migration fl ow data and summary measures. methods were developed to investigate the modifi able areal unit problem (maup), in order to design summary internal migration measures comparable across countries. indicators of internal migration were produced for countries covering 80 percent of the world’s population. ravenstein observed that most migrants moved only short distances, anticipating the development of “gravity” models of migration. recent studies calibrated the relationship between migration and distance, using gravity models. for mid-19th century britain, ravenstein found the dominant direction of internal migration to be towards the “centres of commerce and industry”. urbanization is still the dominant fl ow direction in most countries, though, late in the process, suburbanization, counter-urbanization and re-urbanization can occur. ravenstein focussed on placespecifi c migration, whereas today researchers describe migration fl ows using area comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 351-412 (date of release: 07.05.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-10en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • philip rees, nik lomax352 typologies, seeking spatial generality. ravenstein said little about migrant attributes except that women migrated more than men. in recent decades, the behaviour of migrants by age, sex, education, ethnicity, social class and partnership status have been studied intensively, using microdata from censuses and surveys. knowledge about processes infl uencing internal and international migration has rarely been built into demographic projections. scenarios that link migration with sub-national or national inequalities and with climate or environmental change are infl uencing the design of policies to reduce inequalities or slow global warming. keywords: ravenstein’s laws of migration · defi nitions and measures of migration · migration flows and counter-fl ows · migration and distance · migration and urbanization · migration differentials by sex, age, education, socioeconomic status and ethnicity · models of migration fl ows · projection models 1 introduction in the eighth and ninth decades of the 19th century, ernst georg ravenstein, an anglo-german cartographer, published three papers that used data from the 1871 and 1881 censuses to describe the patterns of internal migration across the british isles (ravenstein 1876, 1885). in a third paper, he extended his analysis to europe, the united states and canada, examining “the foreign element” in their populations (ravenstein 1889). these papers continue to infl uence research into internal and international migration. the aim of this paper is to compare the data, methods and results of ravenstein’s work with research on migration in recent decades, to show both the connections and differences between his ideas and contemporary approaches. this paper is therefore a review of the fi eld of internal migration with excursions into international migration. the raw material used are ravenstein’s papers and a selection of papers and books published in recent decades on internal migration, which connect to themes introduced in the 19th century work. ravenstein’s most cited paper published in 1885 has the title “laws of migration”.1 he presented the paper at the statistical society of london (later royal statistical society), followed by a lengthy question and answer session (ravenstein 1885: 228-235). a key outcome of the “discussion of mr. ravenstein’s paper” was that both author and discussants agreed that the “laws” were not immutable rules but rather “empirical generalizations” specifi c to the time and place of the evidence. table 1 presents these “laws of migration” from the 1885 paper. tables a1 to a3 in the appendix report interpretations of the “laws” by later scholars. 1 google scholar (9 march 2020) counts 4749 citations for ravenstein (1885), 2159 citations for ravenstein (1889) and 119 citations for ravenstein (1876). ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 353 ravenstein’s work on migration has been expertly reviewed and interpreted by subsequent scholars (grigg 1977; dorigo/tobler 1983 and greenwood 2019) so remarks here will be brief. in his 1876 paper, ravenstein covers much the same ground as his 1885 paper on the british isles, without the key ingredient that has grabbed the attention of later scholars, his list of seven laws of migration (table 1). greenwood (2019: 271) extracts fi ve key points from ravenstein (1876), which antab. 1: ravenstein’s “laws of migration” in his 1885 paper year-law# text pages the laws of migration, ravenstein (1885) 1885-1 we have already proved that the great body of our migrants only proceed a short distance, and that there takes place consequently a universal shifting of displacement of the population, which produces “currents of migration” setting in the direction of the great centres of commerce and industry which absorb the migrants. in forming an estimate of this displacement we must take into account the number of natives of each county which furnishes the migrants, as also the population of the towns or districts which absorb them. p.198 1885-2 it is the natural outcome of this movement of migration, limited in range, but universal throughout the country, that the process of absorption would go on in the following manner: the inhabitants of the country immediately surrounding a town of rapid growth, fl ock into it; the gaps thus left in the rural population are fi lled up by migrants from more remote districts, until the attractive force of one of our rapidly growing cities makes its infl uence felt, step by step, to the most remote corner of the kingdom. migrants enumerated in a certain centre of absorption will consequently grow less with the distance proportionately to the native population which furnishes them, and a map exhibiting by tints the recruiting process of any town ought clearly to demonstrate this fact. that this is actually the case will be found by referring to maps 3, 4, 8 and 9. these maps show at the same time that facilities of communication may frequently countervail the disadvantages of distance. p.198-9 1885-3 the process of dispersion is the inverse of that of absorption and exhibits p.199 similar features. 1885-4 each main current of migration produces a compensating counterp.199 current. 1885-5 migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference to one of p.199 the centres of commerce or industry. 1885-6 the natives of towns are less migratory than those of the rural parts of p.199 the country. 1885-7 females are more migratory than males. p.199 source: ravenstein (1885: 198-199) • philip rees, nik lomax354 ticipate his 1885 laws of migration (table a1). ravenstein’s 1885 list (table 1) mixes elaborate statements of the regularity in which more than one proposition is made (laws 1885-1 and 1885-2)2 with pithy summary phrases (laws 1885-3 to 1885-7). grigg (1977) extends the list of ravenstein laws to eleven (table a2) using short sentences or phrases. dorigo and tobler (1983) interpret ravenstein’s statements as constituting precursors for later generalizations about push and pull factors infl uencing migration fl ows (table a3). dorigo and tobler (1983) suggest that one of ravenstein’s laws (1983-1 in table a3) anticipates the scale and zonation dimensions of the modifi able areal unit problem or maup (openshaw 1983). another of ravenstein’s laws (1983-2 in table a3), dorigo and tobler propose, anticipates the hypothesis in which previous migrations by “friends and families” channel later migration. this hypothesis was investigated by swedish geographer hägerstrand (1957), using detailed longitudinal migration records. a third suggestion is that the confi guration of the transportation system is likely to play a signifi cant role in channelling migration fl ows (ravenstein’s law 1983-3, table a3). so, we have the seven original laws proposed by ravenstein plus four added by grigg and three by dorigo and tobler, fourteen in total. ideally, this impressive number of empirical generalizations should be tested in any study of new internal migration data. like most researchers, we select a sub-set to compare the approaches of ravenstein then and migration scholars now. we structure the rest of the paper as follows. section 2 considers the wide set of defi nitions of migration used in data collection, presenting them in a common graphical framework. section 3 discusses how “raw” data may be used to estimate “refi ned” indicators of migration behaviour and how gaps in empirical information can be fi lled. section 4 reports on recent research on internal migration patterns, tracking recent work linked to ravenstein’s generalizations. the fi nal section sets out an agenda for future research aimed at improving our knowledge of both internal and international migration. 2 data: defi nitions and sources then and now to describe and understand migration requires robust defi nitions of the phenomenon and reliable quantitative and qualitative data based on one or more of the defi nitions. in this section of the paper, we review defi nitions of migration and offer a framework that links them. 2.1 what is migration? for ravenstein, migration was displacement of population between their place of birth and their place of enumeration at the census because those were the only 2 this numbering system links to the listing of the laws of migration in papers by date and order in tables 1, a1, a2 and a3. ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 355 comprehensive records available from 19th century censuses. in the contemporary world we need to introduce distinctions between different types of migration based on national or local boundaries. if migration takes place between countries, properly it should be labelled “international migration”. if migration takes place within a country it is usually labelled as “internal” or “domestic” migration. some scholars and some offi cial statistics agencies distinguish between local mobility (migrations within local areas) and inter-area migration. ravenstein wondered about how urban and rural migration differed but the 1871 and 1881 censuses provided no direct information about migration within cities. we consider this distinction arbitrary because of its dependence on local government boundaries which in many countries are subject to periodic reorganization, destroying temporal comparability. so, the ideal data set should record the geo-coded address of origin and the geo-coded address of destination so that tables of fl ows for any spatial system or scale can be created. several diffi culties arise which mean this ideal is rarely achieved. not everyone agrees with these distinctions. ravenstein did not distinguish between internal and international migration, treating, for example, the irish element in the population of england and wales in a similar way to the foreign element. papers that discuss international migration will use “migration” without any prior specifi cation that this is only convenient shorthand. the same occurs in papers about internal migration. the second diffi culty is that offi cial statistical agencies are reluctant to publish migration information for fl ows between small areas due to uncertainty or because of the risk of disclosure. offi cial statistical offi ces (such as australian bureau of statistics) often perturb the counts in published census tables and create inconsistency across tables at the same spatial scale and across spatial scales for the same tables. a third diffi culty arises because it is diffi cult to capture geography in a census or survey question. most statistical agencies rely on a write-in answer, but people’s knowledge of places may be defi cient. the cost involved in converting a write-in place name answer to a geocoded reference is considerable. so, in 1961, when the general register offi ce of england and wales decided to introduce a question on migration in the year before the census, the tabulation of lifetime migration was restricted to “home” countries with the united kingdom (uk) and foreign countries, dropping birthplace by county used in censuses from the 1871 to 1951 (friedlander/ roshier 1966). 2.2 households or individuals? human migration is defi ned as the relocation between dwellings of groups of individuals known as households over time and space. people migrate in small groups (households), which are either a nuclear family unit or a couple or a single person or several unrelated individuals, who share some common aspect of life together such as meals or housework or a set of relationships (husband-wife, child parent, student-fellow student). household numbers and compositions alter as individuals join to form households or leave households to create or join new ones. migration is associated with both household formation and dissolution. as activities • philip rees, nik lomax356 shared among members change, so do the precise defi nitions adopted in census or survey questionnaires. an alternative defi nition, which is necessary when using administrative records, defi nes a household as the group of people who live at the same address. however, migration of households is rarely studied, except in the netherlands (van imhoff/keilman 1992), because complex changes take place at the same time in household membership (e.g. separation of partners, death of spouse, birth of a new child). most research using aggregate data on migration focusses on individuals, whose characteristics are either fi xed (e.g. place of birth), stable (e.g. gender) or change systematically (e.g. age). however, there is large and expanding literature that analyses family and household mobility using household survey data. mulder (2018) provides a comprehensive review of the fi eld to which she has contributed many rigorous and insightful studies. 2.3 migrant attributes the literature which investigates aggregate migration fl ows focuses most attention on the age and sex differentials. however, many more attributes are important in migration processes. these include health status (wallace/kulu 2014), labour force status (marois et al. 2019a), family status (mulder 2018), educational attainment (bernard/bell 2018), motivations (coulter et al. 2011) and ethnic status (darlingtonpollock et al. 2019). such attributes have been investigated using census microdata or survey data. note that migrant attributes tend to be measured at the end of the migration interval and so their impacts are not precisely measured unless longitudinal microdata are available (e.g. from the population registers of nordic countries or the census-based longitudinal studies of uk devolved administrations). 2.4 usual residence the term “usual residence” is the dwelling unit in which people normally reside (sleep, eat and do household work in). sometimes a detailed defi nition is provided in the offi cial questionnaire, such as the place where people spend most of their nights. however, working members of a household may spend more time at a distant work location than at the residence they regard as “usual”. people who use more than one residence need to choose which to report as their usual residence. administrative registers ranging from comprehensive population lists through registrations for local or national tax purposes require reporting of a de jure (legal) residence though many allow registration of temporary residences. 2.5 a duration criterion for migration or an instantaneity? to distinguish between usual and temporary residence, statistical offi ces employ length of residence as a criterion. for example, people who cross international boundaries are asked about how long they will be staying at their destinations. the united nations specifi es that countries use a 12-month duration criterion to distinguish between long-term and short-term migrants, with the exact method of gathravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 357 ering this information left to national statistical offi ces. this may involve gathering electronic information on all entries and exits, administering a sample survey at entry or exit or deriving the information from registers. the duration criterion is linked to visa regulations governing visits, temporary and permanent migration. when the duration of stay is short, usually up to 3 months but up to 6 months in many countries, the entrant is classifi ed as a visitor. for durations of 3 months/6 months to 12, the entrant is classifi ed as a temporary or short-term immigrant. 2.6 migration and space internal migration measurement is particularly sensitive to the number, size and shapes of regions as migration is recorded as people cross those region boundaries. if a national territory is divided into a few regions, a lower count of migrants or migrations will be recorded than if a larger number of regions, necessarily smaller, is used. the exact shape and borders of regions will also affect the counts of migrants or migrations. this dependence of a migration measures on the spatial systems used in measurement hampers comparison of internal migration across both countries and time periods. bell and colleagues (bell et al. 2002, 2015a/b, 2018; bell/ muhidin 2011; stillwell et al. 2014, 2016; rees et al. 2017a; image project 2020a)3 have pioneered the development of system wide measures of internal migration, in which the effect of size and zonation of areal units is established and stable summary measures derived for international comparisons of internal migration. stillwell et al. (2018) use zone design software that assembles basic areal units into larger zones (image project 2020b) to investigate the effects of scale and zone confi guration on migration indicators and distance decay parameters. the results of this research are that, above a threshold number of regions, many system-wide measures remain reasonably constant. the test data set employed by stillwell et al. (2018) consists of migrant fl ows between 404 local authority districts in the uk derived from the special migration statistics from the uk’s 2011 census (dukewilliams et al. 2018). note that the image software does not “solve” the maup. rather, it allows the user to explore the effect of spatial framework design on their own migration system and select scales and zone systems which can be compared between countries or time periods. 2.7 full migration histories it is vital, when using existing migration data or in designing new methods of measurement, to understand the key concepts involved. here we use a set of graphs (fig. 1) to identify the most important types of measure. ideally, we would like to track the full migration career of individuals. figure 1a shows an example history for one individual in a time-space diagram. the horizontal axis proceeds from left to right, from time tb when the individual is born through to 3 the image project compares internal migration around the globe. • philip rees, nik lomax358 fig. 1: types of migration measure key to graphs 1a: full migration histories, from full population registers 1b: lifetime migrant, from a census or survey 1c: last residence migrant, unknown interval 1d: last residence migrant: fi xed interval ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 359 fig. 1: continuation 1e: fixed interval migrants by transition type, from transition demographic accounts 1g: migrations of different types (from registers) 1f: migrants, conditional on duration of residence source: authors’ design • philip rees, nik lomax360 time td when they die. vertical timelines, t1 and t2, bracket a period of interest. the vertical axis divides space into two regions, i and j, between which the person can migrate. the open arrows, which straddle the border between regions i and j, represent a migration. the person experiences one migration from region i to region j in the tb to t1 interval, a return migration from region j to region i in time interval t1 to t2 and a further migration to region j in time interval t2 to td. the individual makes three migrations over their lifetime, the second of which is return migration to region of birth and the third a return migration to a region with a previous spell of residence. a full set of migration histories from which migration could be measured would consist of all lifelines that entered, stayed in or left the system of interest. to measure the intensity of migration we would divide the number of events of migration by the person time of exposure in the regions of interest. only the highest quality population registers, in the nordic countries, provide the real-world equivalent of figure 1a. in longitudinal studies based on censuses or surveys such as the longitudinal study of england and wales (celsius 2019) there are missing elements. reconstruction of migration histories through retrospective questions in surveys suffer from survivor bias as respondents who have died or emigrated cannot be interviewed. 2.8 lifetime migration lifetime migration data analysed by ravenstein (1876, 1885), compare only place of birth with place of current residence (fig. 1b). in the 1871 and 1881 censuses, a question was asked about a person’s birthplace, using county as the geographical unit. tables were constructed for the populations of england and wales, scotland and northern ireland by county of residence and county of birth. there is no information about the exact timing of the migration or about how many migrations occurred between birth and date of enumeration. in the decade 1871-1880, male life expectancy was estimated as 41.4 years and female as 44.6 years (ons 2015). so, it is likely that most migration took place between 1831 and 1871. similar tables of lifetime migration at county scale were produced in censuses from 1891 to 1951, except for 1931 (friedlander/roshier 1966). in 1961, lifetime migration tables were restricted to uk home countries and a fi xed one-year interval question substituted (“where were you living one year ago?”). in the sample census of 1966 and the full census of 1971, two migration questions were asked using one-year and fi ve-year intervals. from 1981 to 2011, only the one-year question was asked. 2.9 migrants by last residence common questions included in censuses are: “where was your last residence” (open interval) or “where was your last residence in the previous x years” (fi xed interval), because this is the easiest question for respondents to answer. figure 1c shows the time-space graph for the open interval case where the timing is uncertain. figure 1d presents the fi xed interval case where the location at the start of the fi xed interval ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 361 is uncertain. uncertainty is indicated by using a pecked timeline or lifeline for the migrant. most countries that collect last migration data (with timing undefi ned) do also collect duration of residence. these data can be used to approximate fi xed interval measures, but only if the duration is reported in fi nely graded intervals, and if the space to which the duration refers is clearly specifi ed. these conditions are rarely satisfi ed. this type of question provides important descriptive information but like the lifetime migration question picks out only one migration without precise information about when the migration occurred. rees (1985) showed that it was diffi cult to use the results as an input for estimating or forecasting the population. however, schmertmann (1999) proposes three methods for estimating multistate transition hazard rates from last migration data. the methods are compared using a micro-simulation model with invented test data. the author then applies the methods to estimate fi xed period transition fl ows from last migrant data for a brazilian three state system (parana, sao paolo, rest of brazil). he demonstrates that the back-projection method produces plausible estimates. 2.10 fixed interval migrants the left-hand graph in figure 1d shows the lifeline of a typical fi xed interval migrant, based on a retrospective census or survey question. data on fi xed interval migrants are generated by asking the question “where were you living x years ago?” (where x is typically, 1, 5 or 10 years) or “where were you living at the time of the last census?” (as in the french census, where censuses have been held at irregular rather than regular intervals). it is diffi cult to compare migration volumes and intensities of questions with different time intervals because of return and repeat migration (rees 1977). papers from the image project (bell et al. 2015b; stillwell et al. 2016 and rees et al. 2017a) report on both 1-year and 5-year migration results but do not compare them directly. rogers et al. (2003) and dyrting (2018) have developed models for translating between 1-year and 5-year probabilities, so in future harmonization may be possible if the assumptions of the models hold for a country. however, figure 1d shows three graphs which have fi xed start and end states in the period which may not be captured by a census or survey question: the exist-die, born-survive and born-die transitions, all of which might involve an inter-regional migration. these additional life-state to life-state transitions were recognized by rees and wilson (1977) in their book on spatial demographic analysis as building blocks of transition demographic accounts. in principle, the born-survive transition should be captured by a census question, either through cross-tabulating the residence region at the census of 0-year olds or 5-year olds against their place of birth, derived from the births register but this is rarely done. 2.11 fixed interval migrants, conditional on duration of stay many surveys of international migration (ons 2019) incorporate a condition that to be counted as a long-term migrant that person must reside for 12 months or more, following a recommendation by the united nations. durations of stay of 3 months • philip rees, nik lomax362 up to 12 months classify migrants as short-term while durations of less than 3 months lead to classifi cation as visitors (fig. 1e). nowok and willekens (2011) develop a framework that identifi es types of migrants, conditional on how long they stay at their destination after migration. the authors specify a general process of migration drawing statistical theory and, using a microsimulation model of an invented sample of migrants, show how different intensities result in different expected transitions over intervals of different lengths (fig. 5 and 6 in nowok and willekens 2011). this work should be an important building brick in the development of a tool to handle the modifi able temporal unit problem (mtup) discussed later in section 3.5. 2.12 migrations as boundary crossing events figure 1’s fi nal panel (1f), focuses on representations of migrations as boundary crossing events. the right most graph illustrates the situation when border crossings are counted. a migrant may make more than one border crossing in a time interval of interest as in the middle graph. this person would have been recognised once as a fi xed interval migrant between region i and region j. such migrants are recognised as “performing” repeat migrations (left hand graph in fig. 1f). when those migrations are a sequence of region i to j and then region j to i, they are return migrants (right hand graph in fig. 1f). later in the paper we show that it is necessary to estimate these two types of migrant and the number of moves they make to convert a migrant count into a migration count. 2.13 sources of migration data bell et al. (2015a) reported on the types of internal migration data gathered by countries across the world. table 2 identifi es the types of retrospective questions used in the 2000 round of censuses. the commonest question is asked about place of birth (lifetime migration), followed by duration of residence, last migration and then the fi ve-year, one-year and other interval questions, upon which most comparative analysis is based. in addition, bell et al. (2015a) record the number of countries reporting migrations (events) from registers, though such data are gathered mainly in european countries. the categories of census, register and survey cover a range of strategies and coverages of the population. censuses are normally designed to be complete enumerations of the population and surveys are normally samples, designed to be representative of the national population. often, diffi cult-to-handle questions, such as those about migration, are assigned to long-form representative samples to reduce the burden of coding geographic responses. in some cases, the migration questions are left out of the census and included in a separate national survey, as in the us census of 2010 where no migration question was asked in the main census but included instead in the annual american community survey. this strategy is adequate for many kinds of migration measure (total infl ows, total outfl ows, age and gender profi les) for larger administrative units but provides little information on origin-destination fl ows, because the n categories of interest (e.g. ~3,000 us counravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 363 ties) turn into n2 fl ow dyads (3,000 by 3,000 or 9 million data points). the modern us migration researcher would have a hard time replicating ravenstein’s analysis of counties of absorption and dispersion. administrative registers avoid the small sample problem by aiming to cover the whole of a target population such as all usual residents or all taxpayers or all patients in the health care system. so, coverage issues replace the sampling issues of survey or within census samples, substituting the advantages of continuous recording and capacity to generate good time series of migration information. however, registers are often restricted in the range of co-variates available. for example, the national health patient register used to measure uk migration provides just basic demographic information (location, gender, age) for statistical release and imposes very strict safeguards and terms and conditions of use for associated health data. fully developed registration systems such as that of finland (statistics finland 2019) overcome this diffi cult by linking demographic information from the population register with socio-economic information from the tax and benefi t records and employment data from the business register. for many questions about migration, researchers use national or international household surveys or microdata samples from censuses (bell et al. 2015a). such sample data are very useful where available, yielding new insights into migration behaviour by migration cohort (bernard 2017) or by migration motivation (coulter et al. 2011) by type of area, but they are too small for the analysis of the place to place migration that ravenstein studied. alternative detailed survey data are collected by commercial polling or marketing fi rms who also need detailed place-specifi c data. thomas et al. (2014) explore the potential of a large commercial survey data, produced by marketing company (axciom 2019). under licence the authors had access to unit postcode data for respondent households and their residents. they demonstrate that results for the detab. 2: number of countries collecting internal migration data in the 2000 un census round by world region world region observation period 1 year 5 year other lifetime last duration total fi xed migration of countries interval residence collecting data africa 9 8 8 29 13 17 32 asia 2 13 8 27 18 24 35 europe 13 4 12 25 10 12 31 latin america & the caribbean 2 17 2 29 12 13 29 northern america 1 2 0 2 0 0 2 oceania 2 8 2 10 2 5 13 total 29 52 32 122 55 71 142 source: bell et al. (2015a), table 2, p5. • philip rees, nik lomax364 terminants of migration are close to those from offi cial surveys, and that unweighted and reweighted data produce similar results. stillwell and thomas (2016) use postcode-to-postcode migration data to estimate intra-zonal migration distances. they show that traditional methods of estimating this variable are fl awed. distance decay parameters calibrated for spatial interaction models of migration differ signifi cantly using individual rather than zone data. there has been huge interest in using electronic data generated by users of internet platforms and of smartphone devices to provide statistical information on a comparable basis for member states (un 2019a). to date, there has been relatively little progress. the data belong to private corporations, which make limited data available but retain the right to change the algorithms that generate the information. migration is not a variable that is directly generated from available internet queries and phone location traces. corporations are reluctant to release the most detailed data for testing or calibration purposes. nevertheless, for many countries that lack good offi cial statistics systems, “big data” are a useful source, particularly for establishing the location of most used residence and for monitoring daily journeys (manley/dennett 2018). a second example of use of telecommunications data is provided by lai et al. (2019). in a namibia case study where both census and mobile phone call data records (cdrs) are available, the authors construct a model that predicted migration fl ows between 13 regions from cdr data and some fi xed co-variates. the aim was to develop migration fl ow data for years after the latest census up to the next. a linear model with co-variates had high goodness of fi t (r2 = 0.94). there is no way of fully testing the model until the next census, but it clearly has considerable potential for countries without continuous records of migration. mobile phone penetration in less developed countries is already high and getting higher. an important study was carried out by a team of experts for the european union to investigate the potential of using social media data to fi ll the gap between the latest offi cial labour force survey data and “now” (european commission 2019). the authors commented as follows: “the fi rst results of the application of the stocks model are experimental, but they are promising” but that “the approach taken to estimate eu mobility flows has not yet offered any plausible results” (european commission 2019: 15). the problem, recognised by the authors, was that offi cial statisticians have virtually no control over social media data from facebook or twitter. use of call data records seems more promising. 3 filling the gaps: harmonizing and estimating migration ravenstein (1876) used lifetime migration from the 1871 census of great britain and ireland, while his 1885 paper employed similar tables from the 1881 census. there were two gaps in the data: one spatial and one temporal. the spatial gap was the absence of fl ow data from between counties in one “home” nation (england and wales together, ireland and scotland) and counties in another (ravenstein 1885: map 6). outside the home nation only birthplace by home nation was made availravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 365 able. the temporal gap was the absence of migration fl ows from one census to the next. the timing of the transition between birth county and residence county was unknown. ravenstein did not have the statistical tools to fi ll these spatial and temporal gaps. contemporary researchers take the view that once the phenomenon to be studied has been identifi ed, efforts should be made to use the partial data available along with auxiliary data and statistical models to make an estimate of the true fl ows. we now discuss a sequence of critiques, improvements and new estimates that have generated new estimates of migration, which can inform and improve offi cial statistical practice. 3.1 harmonizing spatial units used to measure internal migration ravenstein was fortunate in being able to study historic counties, whose boundaries did not change between 1871 and 1881. american, australian and canadian researchers can use state or province boundaries which are fi xed from the date of admission to their respective union, commonwealth or confederation, and french researchers can rely on boundaries for departéments, fi rst created in 1790 by the national constituent assembly of revolutionary france. other european countries have experienced greater volatility in both regional and municipal boundaries. the uk, for example, has experienced frequent changes in the boundaries of its local authorities, which have shrunk in number and grown in population through mergers, in order to achieve economies of scale in administration. look up tables based on the populations of the smallest geographical units are used to apportion population statistics from the “old” geographic units to “new” geographic units (simpson 2002). this works reasonably well for statistics that apply to one spatial entity. however, for migration fl ows which refer to two spatial units, the origin and the destination, this method is problematic. to aggregate migration fl ows from one geography to another, it is essential to aggregate fl ows between small basic spatial units (bsus), which ideally nest within the larger units of interest. if there are still overlaps, then the centroids of zones can be used to match bsus via a point in polygon function (bell et al. 2015a). 3.2 estimating missing internal migration data since the 1966 uk census (a 10 percent sample), migration origin-to-destination fl ow data sets have been produced, at fi rst on user demand at cost (1971, 1981) and then as publicly accessible data sets in 1991, 2001 and 2011, free at the point of use, though with restriction to safe settings for the most detailed tables (duke-williams et al. 2018). these fl ow data sets provide tables for regions, local authorities, and small areas (e.g. output areas and super-output areas), though the detail of the tables shrinks with spatial scale to avoid disclosure issues. however, the diffi culty that ravenstein experienced of fl ow tables only being available within uk “home” countries and the lack of harmonised fl ow data for the years between censuses persists for fl ow tables derived from the main uk administrative register, the patient register of the national health service (nhs) (lomax 2013a: chapters 3 and 4). flow tables • philip rees, nik lomax366 are available for each mid-year to mid-year interval for each home country but fl ows between local authority districts (lads) in one home country and lads in another are not generated. figure 2 (based on a similar diagram in lomax et al. 2013b) sets out the status of information in each cell of the matrix of fl ows. the table has origin and destination lads sorted by home country. lad to lad fl ows (represented by the green cells) are available within england, wales and scotland and between england and wales. flows between lads in scotland and northern ireland and lads in other home countries are not available (cells shaded in beige). for northern ireland lad to lad fl ows are also not available. the grey cells represent marginal totals (total infl ows and outfl ows of various kinds). the question is: “how can the full matrix be estimated?” the solution is to borrow information from a closely aligned source, in this case the full 2001 or 2011 census fl ows matrices and adjust these borrowed fl ows to agree with the known marginals derived from the home country nhs registers for years 2001-02 to 2010-11. the generic algorithm used is called “iterative proportional fi tting” (ipf), applied to each sub-matrix in figure 2 (lomax 2013a/b; lomax/ norman 2016). the algorithm has been re-invented and renamed in many social disciplines. yule (1912) used it to standardize cross-tabulations; kruithof (1937) developed a double factor method for use with telephone call data; deming and stephan (1940) employed the method to adjust census tables; bishop et al. (1975) wrote a defi nitive guide to the method. ipf is known as bi-proportional fi tting in spatial interaction modelling (wilson 1971) and employed in migration modelling (stillwell 1978, 1979). when employed in economics, ipf is referred to as the ras method and used to estimate input-output accounts; when employed to re-weight sample survey results the term is referred to as statistical raking (mercer et al. 2018). the lomax work achieved consistent year by year estimates of migration fl ows between 389 local authority districts in the uk using ipf techniques. american demographer andrei rogers and colleagues have worked intensively on methods for estimating internal migration when direct data are not available. in the monograph the indirect estimation of migration (rogers et al. 2010), the authors summarise achievements of three decades of research on migration estimation, acknowledging the key contribution of willekens (1983) on the use of log-linear models to understand the contributions of origin, destination and interaction factors to migration fl ow matrices. one of the motivations for writing the book was concern that in 2010 the us census bureau would no longer ask a fi xed interval question on residence 5 years ago but instead rely on the annual (but sample) american community survey to provide information on internal migration with the united states (us census bureau 2019). log-linear modelling helps to estimate missing fl ow data from marginals and proxy interaction data. the rogers team also worked on modelling the age variation of migration intensity, using the migration by age data assembled in the migration and settlement study at the international institute for applied systems analysis (rogers/castro 1981a; rogers/willekens 1986), developing a multi-exponential model of the age profi le of migrants. the average exponents of the profi le across the 17 country inter-regional matrices by age in the study have been widely used to disaggregate or improve migration by age information (e.g. sander ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 367 fi g . 2 : t h e es tim at io n o f o ri g in -d es tin at io n m ig ra tio n fl o w s b et w ee n lo ca l a u th o ri tie s in t he u ni te d k in g d o m s o ur ce : a d ap te d fr o m l om ax e t al . ( 20 13 b ), fi g. 1 , p . 2 68 in th e jo ur na l o f p o p ul at io n r es ea rc h, p ub lis he d b y s p ri ng er . • philip rees, nik lomax368 et al. 2014a). subsequently, the age profi le model has been refi ned by wilson (2010) and linked to life course event profi les (bernard/bell 2015). the decomposition of migration by age is hinted at by ravenstein (1876) but no data were available for investigation (greenwood 2019: 271). 3.3 filling the gaps in international migration data despite the prominence of international migration in political discourses in most countries and the existence of national statistics (at least on immigration), there is no system for producing harmonised measures of international migration fl ows. the best data currently available are the national census tables of migrants by country of residence and country of birth, collected by the statistics division of the united nations and published by the un’s international organization for migration (iom 2019). these data are analogous to the 1871 and 1881 census data analysed by ravenstein, referring to country to country fl ows rather than county to county fl ows. the united nations population division assembles data from national statistical offi ces on net international migration where available and produces estimates as the residual balance after natural change is subtracted from total population change. the iom data portal (iom 2019) points to the category migrant fl ows, but these are only available in europe from eurostat (the statistical offi ce of the european union). flow estimates were compiled partially from data supplied by national statistical offi ces of eu member states and partially from estimates compiled by academic researchers working with eurostat (raymer et al. 2011, 2013). poulain, perrin and singleton (2006) carried out a comprehensive survey of sources, defi nitions and measures of migration available from eu member states. the thesim report (towards harmonised european statistics on international migration) covers eu migration policy and data regulation, administrative systems of data collection, statistics on international migration fl ows (where available), residence and work permits, asylum applications, removals of persons refused leave to remain together with twenty-fi ve country reports written by national experts using a uniform template. the edited collection by raymer and willekens (2008) builds on the thesim work by reviewing models available for generating better migration estimates. raymer (2008) proposes a schema for carrying out the estimation by reconciling confl icting origin country and destination country estimates or by borrowing information from other countries where it was not available for a country. in the case of the uk reliable data on fl ows to/from other eu countries were missing and had to be borrowed from origins or destinations with better statistics. raymer and colleagues working together in the mimosa (migration modelling for statistical analysis) project developed a model for estimating international migration fl ows between member states in the eu and efta and fl ows to and from the rest of the world. the model combines the procedure for harmonization proposed by van der erf and van der gaag (2007), which works from most to least reliable estimates with the log-linear modelling framework set out in raymer (2008), a gravity model for intra-eu and extra-eu fl ows in the european union, where fl ow estimates are missing (raymer/abel 2009; abel 2010; raymer et al. 2011). the estimates were ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 369 further refi ned in the imem (integrated modelling of european migration) project which incorporates expert views about the reliability of fl ows by country and provides measures of uncertainty/confi dence (prediction intervals) around those estimates within a bayesian framework (raymer et al. 2013). these estimates of migration fl ows between eu and efta states have been used as inputs in a subsequent demographic forecasting project demifer (demographic and migratory flows affecting european regions and cities) (rees et al. 2010; rees et al. 2012). scenarios of future migration are developed that are linked to migration and regional development in national and eu policies. the projection model used a multi-level approach (kupiszewski/kupiszewska 2011), in which migration fl ows between eu states were explicitly forecast and then allocated to regions within eu states using information on immigration and emigration or population totals by region for eu states. dennett and wilson (2013, 2016) took the mimosa/demifer estimates and used them to generate a full matrix of interregional migration across the eu that combines international fl ows between eu member states and internal interregional migration estimates. 3.4 estimating period migration data from lifetime migration data section 3.2 showed how migration fl ows can be estimated from partial data, where reliable sub-totals were available together with a full matrix of reliable proxy migration fl ows to adjust. section 3.3 discussed ways in which a full fl ows matrix could be constructed from partial information by using information from destination countries with high quality statistics where origin countries had very poor information. in this section (3.4), we report on methods of estimating period-specifi c migration fl ows between counties (internal migration) or countries (international migration) from tables of population classifi ed by current residence and place of birth, the same as the lifetime migrant tables used by ravenstein (1876, 1885). table 3 sets out the contributions to these estimations. the fi rst entry identifi es ravenstein’s use of lifetime migrant data using information from two censuses. he did not attempt to estimate period migration data but has stimulated subsequent researchers to investigate possible methods of doing so. important work on the estimation of migrant fl ows from migrant stocks was carried out by friedlander and roshier (1966). the aim of the analysis was to use lifetime censuses from 1851 to 1951 to create period estimates for inter-census migration between counties in england and wales. the authors built a model that uses two successive lifetime migrant tables, information on births and deaths in the inter-census intervals and three important assumptions. the fi rst is that persons who die do not make any migrations and die at their place of enumeration at the fi rst census. the second is that only one migration is recognised between censuses and additional (repeat) migrations are ignored. the third assumption is that fl ows from origin 1 to destination 2 are cancelled out by fl ows in the opposite direction. age structures of lifetime migrants available from the 1911 census table are used to estimate age structures at other censuses. death rates based on decennial life tables for england and wales are used to compute survivors and non-survivors. all • philip rees, nik lomax370 tab. 3: contributions to the estimation of period migrant fl ows from lifetime migrant stocks author(s) (method) source data: lifetime number of estimated period migrant stocks territorial units migrant flows ravenstein 1885 uk census tables 118 counties not attempted (uses lifetime data only) 1881 friedlander/roshier 1966 ew census tables 53 counties net intercensal (survival analysis & 1851,1861, 1871, 1881, migrant bi-lateral assumptions to generate 1891, 1901, 1911, 1931, fl ows, 6 ten-year net migrant flows) 1951 intervals and 2 twenty-year intervals abel 2013 wb stock tables 191 countries gross intercensal (formulation of problem 1960, 1970, 1980, migrant bi-lateral as ipf estimation of 1990, 2000 fl ows, 4 ten-year 3 d migrant array, intervals with maximum stayer assumption) abel/sander 2014 un stock tables, 196 countries gross migrant bi(uses abel 2013a methods 1960, 1970, 1980, lateral fl ows, 8 fi vewith un migrant stock 1990, 2000 year intervals table, and circular migrant flows) dennett 2016 wb stock tables 191 countries gross migrant bi(uses apportionment 1960, 1970, 1980, lateral fl ows, 4 tenprobabilities from global 1990, 2000 year intervals totals; compares estimates against imem fl ow estimates and un fl ow estimates used by kim and cohen 2010) abel 2018 wb stock tables, wb 196 countries gross bi-lateral (uses abel 2013a method 1960, 1970, 1980, un 232 countries migrant fl ows, for with both wb and un stock 1990, 2000, un stock 10-year intervals tables by gender with tables, 1980, 1990, (1960-1990) and successive un population 2000, 2010, 2015 fi ve-year intervals and vital statistics (from 1990) estimates in comprehensive sensitivity analysis that yields 90 global migration tables) azoze/raftery 2018a, 2018b un stock tables: un 232 countries gross migration (adapts abel 2013a method 1990, 1995, 2000, bi-lateral fl ows for using bayesian methods that 2005, 2010, 2015 5-year intervals, relax the maximum stayer 1990-95 to 2010-15. assumption. factor up fl ows the method by using ratios from internal converts estimates migration studies relating of migrants into 1-year and 5-year migration) estimates of migrations ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 371 this means that the friedlander and roshier model can only estimate minimum net migrant fl ows. it is not possible to deduce gross fl ows from net as there are many pairs of gross fl ow values that would report the same net fl ow. however, their maps of net migration fl ows show the dominance of coalfi eld counties (glamorgan, monmouth) and of london as main benefi ciaries of net migration in the decades 1861-71, 1871-1881 of ravenstein’s analysis, and 1881-91 to 1901-11. the periods 1911-31 and 1931-51 show a reversal of migration fl ows from south wales and the north east as coal mining declined with a persistence of infl ows to london and surrounding counties. table 3 shows that we had to wait until the 2010s for a methodological breakthrough to be made by abel (2013). he has subsequently refi ned the estimates in four further papers. figure 3 sets out the 3-dimensional cube of migration fl ows invented by abel (2013) that enabled the estimation of period migration from lifetime migrant stocks. abel skilfully uses simple numerical illustrations to explain the procedures for estimating period migration fl ows from two consecutive migrant stock tables. two faces of the cube represent lifetime migrant data at two successive censuses (matrix a and matrix b). we wish to estimate the contents of the third face, migrant transitions for a fi xed time interval (matrix c). abel’s insight was to realise that if provisional estimates or assumptions of the elements in the three dimensional array were proposed, they could be adjusted to agree with the marginal totals in matrices a and b. matrix c elements were simply a sum of array elements over country of birth. however, it is also useful to set out the general algebraic framework for the estimation, as in table 4. the notation derives from work on demographic accounting (rees/wilson 1977; rees 1985 and rees/willekens 1986). the notation used is set out in table 5. the variables to be estimated are migrant fl ows by country of birth tab. 3: continuation author(s) (method) source data: lifetime number of estimated period migrant stocks territorial units migrant flows abel/cohen 2019 un stock tables: un 200 countries gross bi-lateral (test out 6 alternative 1990, 1995, 2000, migrant fl ows, methods for generating 2005, 2010, 2015 for 5-year intervals bi-lateral international validation data: (1990-2015). migrant fl ows: 2 use stock 45 countries: correlations of differencing; 1 uses immigration fl ows fl ows against migration rates, 1 uses open emigration fl ows validation data demographic accounting + wpp2017: ipf: 2 use closed population counts demographic accounting + net migration fl ows ipf or a pseudo-bayesian model) notes: abel/cohen (2019) also discuss two contributions (beine et al. 2011 and bertoli et al. 2015) which use the net differencing of country i to country j migrant stocks in two successive censuses. these methods resemble those used by friedlander/roshier (1966). • philip rees, nik lomax372 (i), country of origin at the fi rst census ( j) and country of destination (k), represented by the var iable in table 4d. how do we arrive at these period estimates of migrant fl ows by place of birth? we start with information on lifetime population stocks at the fi rst census, (matrix a in fig. 3, table 4a) and the second census, (matrix b in fig. 3, table 4b). these marginal tables can be used to adjust an initial distribution (seed values) of migration fl ows in the full array . the problem translates into one familiar to users of contingency tables. iterative proportional fi tting methods can be used to estimate adjusted array elements, associated with an underpinning log-linear statistical model (deming/stephen 1940; bishop et al. 1975; willekens 1983; rogers et al. 2010). once an array of variables had been generated (fig. 3), then the required migrant fl ows matrix (matrix c in fig. 3, table 4e) is obtained as a sum over place of birth of the array variables, that is, . a condition for a successful solution to iterative proportional fi tting (ipf) is that the totals of elements in the constraint matrices (matrix a and matrix b in fig. 3) are the same. otherwise the ipf procedure will never converge. it is necessary to reduce the migrant total for matrix a by the deaths that occur in the inter-census interval and to reduce the migrant total for matrix b by the births that occur between censuses, as friedlander and roshier (1966) had earlier incorporated in their methods. in table 4a the total deaths in a country, , are shaded in pink, indicating the counts are available from vital statistics records or un estimations using, for example, the demographic and health survey. the country of birth of persons dyfig. 3: a framework for estimating period migration from lifetime migration source: drawn by the authors, based on a model by abel (2013). ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 373 ing is not known, but can be estimated by applying the proportion from the population stocks table to the total deaths over all birthplaces to produce a table of estimated deaths. births are handled differently, simply by assigning total births to the country of residence at the second census, that is, . subtract ion of deaths from population by country of residence at time t and subtraction of births from population by country of residence at time u produces two tables of estimated survivors in the third panels of table 4a and 4b. the totals of these two sub-tables must be made equal, , for example, by constructing an average (abel 2013, 2018; abel/sander 2014). the two sub-table population elements are adjusted to agree with this common total. the ipf estimation model requires specifi cation of initial or seed values of all array elements (table 4c), designated . this process of estimating the origindestination-birthplace tables involves two steps: (1) making an assumption about the diagonal cells in the array (people who reside in the same country at both start and end of the time interval), and (2) estimating initial values of the off-diagonal elements (people who reside in a country at the end of the period from that at the start). the options for the diagonal include maximization of stayers (as in abel 2013), minimization of stayers or an average of the two. abel (2018) suggests options for the off-diagonal elements include adopting an independence model or introducing an interaction matrix which refl ects the diffi culty of moving between countries (e.g. spherical distance, airline connections). azose and raftery (2018a/b) use a weighted average of the assumption of maximum stayers and the independence model assumption, developing a method for optimizing the weights. the ipf procedure is carried out conditional on the margin totals and diagonal elements. a spatial interaction model could be developed for a sub-set of country-to-country migrant fl ows for which reasonable estimates have been made. such a model was developed by kim and cohen (2010), fi tting their model to a un data set of international migration fl ows between industrialized countries. however, the drawback would be that if researchers wanted to fi t a global spatial interaction model to estimated fl ows, there would be an element of “double-counting”. given a choice of the seed values for the migrant fl ow array, estimates of the full array of migrant fl ows can be generated and then summed to produce the country to country matrix of fl ows (matrix c in fig. 3, table 4e). the abel estimates generate migrant fl ows only for persons existing at time t and surviving at time u. demographic accounting theory (rees/wilson 1977) demonstrates that for a complete picture of population change and migration it is necessary to consider migrants hidden in the deaths and births statistics. table 6 expands the matrix in table 4e by adding transitions for infants born in the period t to u, who survive in the destination country at time u (shaded green), the persons alive in the country of origin at time t who die in the t to u interval (shaded blue) and the infants born in the period who also die before the end of the time interval (shaded brown). the off-diagonal elements in each of these additional sub-matrices in table 5 represent persons with (at least) one migration in the time interval. the number of such “hidden” migrants is likely to be small (perhaps 1 percent of exist-survive migrants) • philip rees, nik lomax374 tab. 4: country to country migrant fl ows estimated using the abel (2013, 2018) methods source: based on an interpretation of abel 2013, abel/sander 2014 and abel 2018. ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 375 but it is better to estimate them than include in the closure error. methods for estimating these migrant fl ows are described in rees and wilson (1977). both dennett (2016) and azose and raftery (2018a) regard the abel estimates of bi-lateral migrant fl ows as under-estimates of the “true” fl ows. of concern are migrants who return to their origin country during a time interval and migrants who make more than one migration. we have discussed these migration histories earlier (see fig. 1a). both authors compared the abel estimates with the estimates of international migration between eu member states (see earlier for a discussion). the claim of under-estimation derives from a comparison of abel estimates with migration fl ow estimates between eu member states (raymer et al. 2011; raymer et al. 2013). however, these international migration estimates are based, largely, on adjusted counts of entries to and exits from national population registers, where commonly no duration of residence criterion is applied. so, these register-based estimates count migration events (fig. 1f, rightmost graph) rather than (transition) tab. 5: variable and subscript notation for lifetime and period migrants variables defi nition p population (stock) d deaths b births x seed (assumed) values of migrant fl ows before adjustment to migrant stocks t transitions (between state at time t and state at time u) lm long-term migrants (un defi nition) m migrations (events of migrating across borders between one area and another r residual balance term in population accounts for migrations g grand total of inputs and outputs in population accounts for migrations subscripts defi nitions t time at start of period/interval u time at end of period/interval t,u combination of start and end times, signifying a time period/interval b being born during a time period/interval e existing at the start of a time period/interval s surviving at the end of a time period/interval d dying during a time period/interval i place/zone of birth (e.g. county within country or country within world) j place/zone of residence at time t k place of residence at time u n number of zones in system studies + sum over the subscript replaced note: subscripts can be placed below the variable they are attached to or above. • philip rees, nik lomax376 migrants (fig. 1d, leftmost graph). in other words, the comparison is between migrants and migrations. both are “true” fl ows, conditional on their defi nitions. the choice of which estimates to use depends on the application they are used in. rees (1985) showed that either type of fl ow data could be used in a population projection based on a components-of-change model, but that a matching projection model needed to be used. if, for example, you wished to compute the carbon footprint of migrant travel, you would need to use the migration fl ows rather than the migrant fl ows. azose and raftery (2018a/b) make estimates of the migration events additional to the number of migrants by borrowing results from three pieces of work on internal migration that compared one-year migrant rates with fi ve-year migrant rates in censuses where the migration question had asked respondents where they were living one-year and fi ve-years ago (long/boertlein 1990; rogers et al. 2003 and newbold 2005). azose and raftery (2018a/b) use an average of 1.5 for the long-boertlein index, the ratio of the measured fi ve-year interval migrants to fi ve times the oneyear interval migrants as generated from retrospective questions on previous residence. the method assumes that migration intensity is constant over the fi ve-year interval and that populations are approximately constant. azoze and raftery adopt a one-year retrospective interval equivalent to the 12-month duration (either prospectab. 6: expanded country to country migrant fl ows adding transitions notes: variables: t = transitions. superscripts: e = exist at time t, s = survive at time t+1, d = die in interval t, t+1, b = born in interval t, t+1. subscripts: 1 … n = individual countries in world source: based on rees/wilson 1977. ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 377 tive or retrospective) recommended for the measurement of long-term international migration by the united nations. the effect of this procedure is to lift the bilateral fl ows of abel by around 200 percent over 5 years (abel/cohen 2019, table 7). note that despite the paper’s title, azose and raftery (2018a/b) do not identify the separate contributions of return and transit migrations. table 7 shows how the azose and raftery migration estimates fi t into an event-based population accounts table. the analyses in table 3 are not the end of the story. it is necessary to extend the estimation to decompose migration fl ows by age, as in friedlander and roshier (1966). this would provide a better basis for using international migration fl ows in a global population projection than assumed the age profi le matched the average age profi le parameters of the 17 country case studies in rogers and castro (1981a). however, this assumes that country of birth and country of residence tables are available for age. the censuses and surveys containing lifetime migrant data should hold birth date or age at last birthday information, but special tabulations would need to be requested from censuses or might be generated from sample census microdata. 3.5 the “one-year/fi ve-year” problem the problem of estimating consistent migration probabilities from data with different retrospective intervals had been observed for france by courgeau (1973a), though his solution was to say that good longitudinal migration histories were needed to solve the problem. courgeau’s paper fi rst identifi ed the clear distinction tab. 7: estimates of country to country migration fl ows notes: m = long-term migration using the un 12-month duration definition. migrant flow estimates derived from an average of minimum stayer and independence model by multiplication of five-year migrant estimates by the long-boertlein ratio (5-year migrant count/5× one-year migrant count) set to 1.5 based on empirical estimates in rogers et al. (2003) and newbold (2005). source: based on azose/raftery (2018a/b), rees (1985) and rees/willekens (1986). • philip rees, nik lomax378 between migrants (persons making a spatial transition between two points in time) and migrations (the events of changing locations). in the 1970s and early 1980s, an ambitious study of future population change at regional scale using multi-state methods for 17 countries was carried out at the international institute for applied systems analysis (iiasa) located in laxenburg, austria by andrei rogers and frans willekens (rogers/willekens 1986). as is usual in studies across countries, there were diffi culties in harmonizing the data need for input to the software for implementing the projections (willekens/rogers 1978). the key harmonization problem was to align national migration data with model requirements for migration over fi ve-year intervals, matched with fi ve-year ages. countries with migration events derived from population registers simply added up fi ve years of migrations. countries which relied on censuses for migration information could either supply data based on a one-year retrospective migration question or a fi ve-year question. occasionally, two questions were asked in the national census, as in the uk in 1971 (rees 1979). the existence of two sets of data for the uk enabled kitsul and philipov (1981) to experiment with a highand low-intensity movers model which gave reasonably good results, bearing in mind that the one-year data (1970-71) were available for just one-year of the fi ve in the fi ve-year data (1966-71). having surveyed contemporary research on estimating migrant and migration fl ows, we turn attention in the next section to contemporary research into a selection of ravenstein’s empirical fi ndings. 4 recent research on internal migration patterns this section is not designed to be a comprehensive review of what we know about contemporary internal migration but rather provides illustrations of how contemporary migration scholarship carries out analyses of the internal migration patterns that ravenstein studied. 4.1 comparisons of internal migration across countries: case study collections using lifetime migration data from censuses in the 1880s and earlier, ravenstein (1889: maps 1 and 2) describes the regional distribution of foreigners for the countries of europe by region and the net gains (absorption) and losses (dispersion) in international migration at country scale. drawing on the 1880 censuses in the united states of america (usa), he maps the distribution of the foreign-born population in 1880 across the states of the usa and the provinces of canada (map 3), the gains and losses of state-born, national-born and foreign-born migrants by state and province (map 4), and examples of migration fi elds of dispersion (map 5) and absorption (map 6). since the 1880s, the systematic comparison of internal or international migration patterns across countries has not fi gured prominently, with most work focussing on national case studies, brought together in edited and informative collections (nam et al. 1990; white 2016; champion et al. 2018). comravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 379 parison between countries was diffi cult because data types, variable defi nitions and theoretical frameworks differ from chapter to chapter, with the editors making heroic attempts in discussion chapters to overcome the differences in chapter design and achieve a true synthesis of knowledge. rogers and willekens (1986) summarize the results of an international project covering 17 countries in which authors carried out and interpreted the same analysis, a multi-regional population projection incorporating inter-regional migration by age and sex using common software (willekens/rogers 1978). one common output across the case studies was a table of life expectancy by regions of birth and regions of subsequent residence (e.g. rees 1979: table 28). the span of life spent outside the region of birth was an index of internal migration intensity. in the late 1990s, a study for the council of europe (rees/kupiszewski 1999) focussed on internal migration within ten member states. data on internal migration fl ows supplied by national collaborators at the smallest available scale made possible the elucidation of spatial patterns. these were urban concentration or de-concentration; the relationship of internal migration (or overall population change where internal migration statistics were not available) with population density, the links between internal migration and economic conditions, signalled by unemployment rates, and the relationship of internal migration to gender and the life course. the study identifi ed that many countries were still urbanizing; a few had adopted a counter-urbanization; and other exhibited an intermediate pattern of net fl ows both down the density gradient from the top and up the density gradient from the bottom. 4.2 development of a robust methodology for comparing internal migration across countries a step change in the ability to compare internal migration came with the publication of a paper proposing fi fteen measures organized by four measurement dimensions for internal migration: intensity, distance decay, connectivity and effect on population redistribution (bell et al. 2002). the main aim of the paper was to design summary indices of internal migration for a country which could be submitted to international statistical databases (un 2019b/c) and constitute the internal migration component of a human migration database equivalent to the human mortality and human fertility databases (hmd 2019; hfd 2019). in the 2010s, a team at the university of queensland led by martin bell have, with funding from the australian research council, been able to implement this agenda across countries of the world (image 2020a) in collaboration with the asian demographic research institute, shanghai. bell et al. (2015a) provide an inventory of the data sets used, a mixture of census and register aggregate tables of migration fl ows, and of census and survey individual microdata sets from which fl ow data can be computed, held in the an international repository developed by the university of minnesota (ipums 2019). table 8 summarises the signifi cant contribution of bell and colleagues to our understanding of internal migration across countries that cover 80 of the world’s population. • philip rees, nik lomax380 tab. 8: contributions of image project participants to the analysis of internal migration topic description reference theory defi nes four structural dimensions and bell et al. 2002 16 associated indices for describing migration fl ows data reviews sources of internal migration bell et al. 2015a data in countries of the work and describes image database software describes image studio, software for stillwell et al. 2014 computing indices of migration fl ows at multiple scales and zoning, to overcome the maup problem in migration measurement intensity develops a method for standardising bell/muhidin 2009, 2011; the measurement of migration that bell et al. 2015b; controls for number and size of zones courgeau et al. 2012 distance investigates the effect of distance stillwell et al. 2016 on migration fl ows using a spatial interaction model for a set of countries where detailed fl ow data are available impact uses net migration and migration stillwell et al. 2000, 2001 effectiveness indices to compare the impact of internal migration on population in two countries uses image indicators to compare rees et al. 2017a the impact of internal migration on population redistribution for sets of countries and develops a theory linking migration directions to urbanizationcounter-urbanization processes country uses selected indicators from the latin america: bernard et al. 2017 comparisons image studio to compare the structure asia: charles-edwards et al. within of migration with continental groups of 2017a/b, 2019; continents countries bell et al. 2020 europe: rowe et al. 2019 age develops methods of harmonizing the bell/rees 2006; age-period-cohort classifi cations of migration develops simpler models for describing bernard/bell 2012; bernard et al. the migration-age relationship 2014a,2016; bernard/bell 2015 reconceptualises the migration-age bernard et al. 2014b relationship as a product of life course transitions cohort investigates the role of birth bernard 2017; cohort in infl uencing internal bernard/pelikh 2019; migration patterns in european bernard et al. 2019 countries and china ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 381 at the core of the image research was a recognition that the maup (openshaw 1983) could potentially invalidate any comparison across countries and that methods were needed to compensate or control for the problem. the maup problem has two aspects. the fi rst, the scale problem, is that internal migration measures tend to increase with increasing numbers and decreasing sizes of the zones used. the second, the zoning problem, is that, for any given number of zones, there are multiple ways of creating those zones from smaller basic spatial units. summary measures may differ drastically across different groupings of the same number of zones (openshaw 1983: 24, fig. 2). stillwell et al. (2014) developed a software package that, given the input of a matrix of fl ows between basic spatial units for a country and associated populations, computes aggregations of the fl ow data for specifi ed numbers of zones and recomputes 15 national summary indices of migration (table 2 in stillwell et al. 2014). for any aggregation (number of zones), values of the summary indicators are computed for a user-defi ned number, up to 1,000, of different zoning systems with reports of the median, upper and lower quartile values. it is then possible to evaluate the effect of scale (number of zones) and zonation (number of different constructions of the same number of zones) on the outcome summary indicator. the scale effect is used to construct summary measures of migration intensity, drawing on an original proposal by courgeau (1973b), further developed by bell and muhidin (2009, 2011) and courgeau et al. (2012). bell et al. (2015b) use the courgeauderived methodology to compare migration intensities across the world, linking intensities with development status, with confi dence that the intensities were comparable. the authors used the aggregate crude migration intensity (acmi), designed to be comparable across countries, to reveal the extraordinary variation in migration intensity around the world, from a high of 52 percent per annum in south korea to a low of only 5 percent in india. ravenstein did not discuss migration intensity directly in his papers because the period of exposure to the risk of migration in lifetime migrant data was uncertain. stillwell et al. (2016) compare the effect of distance on migration volumes using the image software suite to reveal the scale and distance effects and make possible robust comparisons (see sub-section 4.3). rees et al. (2017) used measures topic description reference education educational differentials in internal bernard/bell 2018 migration across the countries of the world temporal extracts information on temporal bell et al. 2018 change change for selected countries and assesses the intensity decline hypothesis tab. 8: continuation source: https://imageproject.com.au/framework/ • philip rees, nik lomax382 of the impacts of internal migration to compare the effects of migration on population redistribution, combining the crude migration intensity (cmi) and migration effectiveness index (mei) measures to create a synthetic index of migration impact (inmi). a key fi nding was that the mei was stationary over space down to 20 asrs (aggregated spatial regions, combinations of bsus, basic spatial units). this was an unexpected outcome and important because it was key to development of the cross-nationally comparable index of migration impact – the inmi. this might be regarded as one of the most important fi ndings of the image project. net migration measures were used to examine re-distribution patterns and a general theory linked to urbanization was proposed. papers on latin america, asia and europe (bernard et al. 2017; charles-edwards et al. 2017a/b; bell et al. 2020; rowe et al. 2019) compare on countries within world regions across three of the four dimensions of internal migration identifi ed in bell et al. (2002). 4.3 distance and migration the evidence that ravenstein presented for his short distance generalization (18851 in table 1) and remarks on long-distance migration (1885-5 in table 1) came from maps of migration rates to or from single counties or through tables of lifetime migrants and so were essentially qualitative observations. in the 20th century, researchers measured distances from migrant origins to destinations and related the size of fl ows to the distances and other variables. a gravity model of inter-city movement was proposed by zipf (1946), based on newton’s formulation of the attractions of planetary bodies. since 1946, a very large number of gravity models of migration have been proposed and implemented and the model continues to be used. poot et al. (2016) characterise some recent applications of the gravity model of migration as “the successful comeback of an ageing superstar”. the authors make interesting proposals for how the model might be used in other applications, such as population forecasting. however, the variety of model forms and explanatory variables in the corpus of gravity model case studies make it diffi cult to compare the impact of distance on migration across countries. the image project team therefore approached the task of comparing the effect of distance on migration by using a standard model for all countries: the doubly constrained spatial interaction model of wilson (1971) with observed out-migration totals as the origin terms and in-migration totals as the destination terms, a negative power function and distance measured using national grid cartesian co-ordinates (stillwell et al. 2016). the image software was used to compute distance decay parameters at different population scales and employing different zoning solutions for a fi xed number of zones. figure 4 presents results for a set of countries reporting fi xed interval migration for one-year data. mean distance decay parameters (beta) are averaged over 1,000 different zoning confi gurations at each selected zone population size. the ranges of betas at different zonal population sizes (stillwell et al. 2016, figure 8) are moderate to small. the graphs of figure 4 show a feature characteristic of most image analyses: over ranges where the population sizes are small and ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 383 numbers of zones are large, the distance decay parameter varies substantially by size and moves in different directions in different countries. however, for systems with fewer, larger zones the parameters for each country are relatively stable and can be compared. for example, the mean betas in the population size range 200,000 to 600,000 show few cross overs. we can be sure, for example, that swiss migrants are more constrained by distance than australian migrants. for one-year migrants, betas are stable from zone sizes of 100,000 population and larger. countries exhibit greater variation in betas when migrants are measured over fi ve years than one year. stillwell et al. (2016: 1672) summarise that, of those countries which collect one-year migration data, the frictional effect of distance is lowest in the usa, canada, australia and higher in much of western europe. for those countries that collect fi ve-year data, those with higher levels of development display lower levels of distance friction. most demographic phenomena vary systematically by sex and age. the friction of distance is no exception. figure 5 plots origin-specifi c distance decay parameters generated in a study for the uk government by a team led by stewart fotheringham and tony champion (odpm 2002; fotheringham et al. 2004). gravity models were fi tted to a time series of migration fl ows (events) between 96 geographic zones in england and wales over 14 years for 14 sex-age groups. the shaded box shows the upper quartile, median and lower quartile of the distribution of beta values across origin zones. the upper and lower whiskers are located 1.5 times the quartile-median difference, above and below the box. the numbered circles represent outlier zones beyond the whiskers. there is relatively little difference between male and female results by age, because men and women mostly migrate as couples or as fig. 4: mean distance decay parameter by population size, countries with (a) 5-year and (b) 1-year migration data 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 m et a b et a (d is ta nc e d ec ay p ar am et er ) mean population (1,000s) norway sweden australia austria canada denmark finland uk germany italy netherlands usa source: graph re-drawn based on stillwell et al. (2016): 1667, figure 6, with permission of the authors. • philip rees, nik lomax384 families. there are two exceptions. at ages 16-19 many young people enter higher education, which in england and wales often involves a migration. the lower median and downshifted box plot for young women probably refl ect a preference of either the daughters or their parents that they attend university closer to home. at ages 60 and over, the median for women and the boxplot extent are higher for women. at these ages men and women may no longer be together because of death or divorce. men die earlier and so are less exposed to the necessity of migration after death of a spouse or partner. at other ages the male and female plots are very similar but vary systematically by age. younger adult ages experience lower frictions of distance (that is, smaller negative numbers) in a pattern that resembles the plot of migration intensity by age. 4.4 gravity models of migration the gravity model has been used in hundreds of applications to understand fl ows of people, goods, services and investments. economists have shown a revived interest, as poot et al. (2016) suggest. however, because disciplines still work in silos, ramos (2016), in his review of gravity models, still claims that the recently assembled un and world bank databases of lifetime migrants constitute “bilateral data on migratory fl ows”, whereas in section 3.4 we have reviewed the recent attempts to convert what is migrant stock data into estimates of migrant and migration fl ows over fi xed time intervals. there is not space here to treat gravity models (also called spatial interaction models) fully but we briefl y describe some important papers. sen and smith (1995) and crymble (2019) provide valuable overviews of gravity models. wilson (1971) developed a family of models based on entropy maximizing methods and willekens (1983) showed how similar log-linear models could be derived from statistical theory. flowerdew and murray (1982), flowerdew and lovett (1988), flowerdew (2010) and congdon (1993) describe poisson regression models which deal with small numbers or zeroes in origin-destination cells. abel (2010) provides an example of a gravity model used to fi ll in missing cells in a fl ow table. he fi ts a binomial regression model using an expectation-maximization algorithm and co-variates suggested by theory to fl ows between european countries that are reliably estimated. the model is then used with known co-variates to estimate cells where there are no reliable fl ow estimates. raymer et al. (2019b) extend this approach to estimating migration fl ows between asean countries in which there are no reliable estimates at all and gravity model parameters are borrowed from fi tting a model to migration fl ows between european countries instead. the model parameters are used with asean country co-variates. here we describe some recent work which has advanced our understanding or exposed problems that still need to be solved. a key assumption made in gravity models of internal migration is that there are no restrictions on free movements within national spaces whereas between nations restrictions based on immigration policy are ubiquitous. history provides examples of violations of this assumption, ranging from the eviction of crofters in highland scotland by landowners leading to mass migration to scotland’s cities and other ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 385 countries in the highland clearances (1750 to 1860) to the example of china’s hukou system (1950 to the present), which makes diffi cult the relocation of rural migrant families to the cities for which they provide vital labour because of restricted access to benefi ts (pradier 2018). on the other hand, fotheringham et al. (2004) found policy variables at local scale (employment or investment programmes) to have little infl uence on migration within england and wales. some important decisions need to be made when constructing a gravity model of internal migration fl ows. first, it is necessary to choose the variable(s) that will represent the impedance between origin and destination. normally, a simple distance measure is used. however, shen (2016) has shown, in modelling interprovincial migration in china, that the mis-specifi cation of the spatial interaction effect (predictions of the “friction of distance”) leads to absolute mean errors of 32 percent in migration fl ows compared with 15 percent for each of origin “emisfig. 5: box plots of origin-specifi c distance decay parameters by sex and age group generated from a model used to predict internal migration fl ows between 96 zones (former health service areas) in england and wales, 1983-84 to 1997-98 distance decay parameter source: odpm (2002), the development of a migration model, figure a21.7, p. 301. crown copyright. • philip rees, nik lomax386 siveness” and destination “attractiveness”. more attention is needed to investigate alternatives to the minimum distance between origin and destination. linked questions arise about whether the model should be constructed using intra-zone migration (if available) and how the intra-zone distance might be estimated. stillwell and thomas (2016) show, employing a person level data set recording postcode of origin and destination available from acxiom ltd, a marketing technology and services company (acxiom 2019), that conventional geometric methods are inaccurate and that including intra-zonal fl ows and a more precise intra-zonal distance based on postcode locations improves the goodness of fi t of a spatial interaction model substantially. second, it is necessary to experiment with the mathematical function of impedance which will be used, because predictions of fl ows are dependent on the decision. openshaw and connolly (1977) provide a methodology for spatial interaction modellers to use. third, a decision is needed on whether to use a global distance prediction parameter (stillwell et al. 2016) or a set of local parameters either attached to the origin or the destination. a related choice is whether to use a one-step model or a hierarchical model with several steps (fotheringham et al. 2004). fourth, it is necessary to select or write software that will calibrate the chosen model successfully (dennett/wilson 2016). can the model be transformed into a linear equation for which standard regression software will fi t the coeffi cients, or should an iterative routine that searches for optimum parameters be used? fifth, consideration is needed about which variables to include in predicting out-migration from origins and in-migration to destinations. we think ravenstein would be proud of the sophisticated analyses that his simple “law” about migrants moving short distances has generated. 4.5 directions of migration fl ows ravenstein’s empirical generalisations arose out of his detailed attention to places. his papers are fi lled with list of places (zones) from which lifetime migrants come or to which they go. today such lists are regarded as the raw material from which we can discover spatial generalisations. places have meaning if you are familiar with the geography of the country being studied, but we try today to attach numerical information to that general knowledge. ravenstein, being a cartographer by training, drew many maps to illustrate the patterns or directions of fl ows. but there is an issue. his maps and ours today are highly selective and convey only a fraction of the information embedded in the data. this can be termed a 3n problem, where n is the number of regions with a country for which you have migration information. to represent the matrix of fl ows, you need to draw n maps of outfl ows, n maps of infl ows and n maps of the balances. but there are many indexes you can use: the raw numbers, the raw data converted into percentage shares by division by the total infl ow or outfl ow or presented as rates by division of the population of the sending region (outfl ows) or receiving region (infl ows). if v is the number of useful variables for characterising the fl ows (age, sex, education, ethnicity) then 3n×v maps are needed. in effect, you have created an atlas of evidence for the directions of migration. could not the maps be reduced by plotting simultaneravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 387 ously all the origin to destination fl ows as lines? such a plot would be unreadable. ravenstein (1885) does draw some line maps for selected sets of fl ows but is careful to avoid clashes. friedlander and roshier (1966) plot the largest fl ows, which reveal the importance of glamorgan (where most of the south wales coalfi eld is located) in the 1890/99 and 1900/09 decades. the french demographer, daniel courgeau, who gave the term "migration fi eld" to the pattern of outfl ows or infl ows around a geographical zone, fails to produce any maps of migration in his monograph on les champs migratoires en france (courgeau 1970). for visualization, he relies on graphs of migration against generalised distance bands. several techniques can be used to overcome some of these problems. figure 6 shows how you can plot legible maps for net migration volumes using a proportional circle to represent the absolute number, while using colour to represent direction (gain or loss), for three separate annual intervals during a decade. the maps show continuity of the patterns but with changes in intensity in the third interval when the world was still experiencing the consequences of the global fi nancial crisis of 2008/09. another technique, promoted by british geographer daniel dorling, is the population cartogram, in which zones are drawn with an area proportional to their population, using hexagonal grids. dorling and thomas (2004) plot an atlas of cartograms based mainly on information from the 2001 census. each page offers both the variable on a standard geographic base (a transverse mercator projection of great britain, produced by ordnance survey gb) and the hexagonal population cartogram. on pages 61 to 75 of dorling and thomas (2004), lifetime migration from 4 home countries and 11 countries outside the united kingdom are plotted using the 2001 census data together with change from the previous census in 1991. these maps are proud successors to those that ravenstein drew in 1885 and friedlander and roshier produced in 1966. local knowledge is brought to bear to explain unusual changes. for example, “the english born share of the local population has risen by two percentage points or more in corby (as scottish born immigrants to the steel works there have left or died)” (dorling/thomas 2004: 61). one very successful graphic for depicting migration fl ows that is becoming widely used is the circular plot of migration, developed by nikola sander, using circos open source software (abel/sander 2014; sander et al. 2014a). figure 7 adapts an example from sander et al. (2018). the plot is for fl ows between regions in the uk. design decisions include selecting the number of regions that can be read in the static plot (12) and arranging them in a logical order around the circle. northern regions are placed at the top, southern regions at the bottom; regions have neighbours with which they exchange signifi cant fl ows; only the larger fl ows are depicted so that number of crossings is minimized. there is potential to design interactive versions of the circular plots, which can be referenced as part of the supplementary material associated with a publication. failure to take good design decisions can result in what sander et al. (2018) refer to as a “hairball”. azose and raftery (2018b) use circos based plots to demonstrate the differences between their estimates of country to country migration fl ows and those of abel and sander (2014). circular plots are used for each of the 15 asian country cases of internal migration in bell et al. (2020). • philip rees, nik lomax388 fi g . 6 : in te rn al n et m ig ra tio n fl o w s fo r u k lo ca l a u th o ri ty d is tr ic ts fo r m id -y ea r to m id -y ea r in te rv al s 20 01 /0 2, 2 00 6/ 7 an d 2 01 0/ 11 s o ur ce : a d ap te d fr o m l om ax e t al . ( 20 13 b : 28 2, f ig . 5 ) i n th e jo ur na l o f p o p ul at io n r es ea rc h, p ub lis he d b y s p ri ng er . ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 389 4.6 drivers of migration it is helpful to consider two kinds of drivers (factors) which infl uence migration: the context of the places where migrants live and migrate between and the individual characteristics of the migrants which infl uence their propensity to migrate. the most important contextual drivers are the level and changes in economic development, associated with industrialization and urbanization, as ravenstein recognised. for most of history cities have been the organisers of the space-economy (jacobs 1970). starting from a low base in the late 18th century, the share of the world’s population which lives in urban places has grown to 58 percent in 2018 (un 2018). in developed countries the urban population makes up between 68 percent and 82 percent of the total, with levels of 50 percent in asia and 43 percent in africa. the populations in some cities in eastern europe, eastern asia (japan) and the rust belt of the usa have shrunk in recent decades. the main demographic component contributing to urban population growth has been internal migration supplemented fig. 7: circular plots of migration fl ows between uk regions, 2010-11 y o r k s h i r e &h u m b e r n o r t he a s t e a s t m i d l a n d s e a s t o f e n g l a n d l o n d o n south east s o u t h w e s t w a l e s w e s t m i d l a n d s n o r t h w e s t n i s c source: redrawn by the authors based on sander et al. (2018: 205, fig. 16.1) published by routledge. • philip rees, nik lomax390 by international immigration in some developed countries and by natural increase in developing country cities. in selected european countries and in the usa in some recent decades, there have been net fl ows out of cities (rees/kupiszewski 1999), which have been termed counter-urbanization. however, often, this counter trend has not persisted. a new wave of urban-ward migration has resumed. the populations in some cities in eastern europe, eastern asia (japan, korea) and north america have shrunk in recent decades, either as a result of manufacturing decline (e.g. detroit, st louis) or because of population ageing (e.g. nagasaki, busan). however, cities have also been spreading as new suburbs are added or new towns develop within the commuting fi eld of metropolitan centres. suburbs and commuting towns are growing through internal migration from centre cities and sometimes through direct immigration from outside the country. to monitor the migration processes producing urbanization, suburbanization, counter-urbanization and re-urbanization requires careful delineation of functional urban regions (furs) split into cores, suburbs and peripheries. many countries have developed geographical defi nitions of furs and the european commission has funded several projects to produce harmonised fur defi nitions across eu member states. but fur defi nitions differ across countries and most developing countries lack them. furs also expand their boundaries over time, necessitating decisions about temporal harmonization of boundaries. different zones within furs (e.g. core, suburbs, periphery) contain rural settlements; zones outside furs also contain urban settlements. rees et al. (1996) analyses net internal migration trends using fur and density frameworks, illustrating the complexities. to surmount this defi nitional problem, rees and kupiszewski (1999) used population density by small areas within a country as a means of tracking changing internal migration patterns in ten eu member states, comparing results from the mid-1980s with those from the mid-1990s, straddling the revolution in political systems between 1989 and 1991. figure 8, re-drawn from the great britain case study (rees et al. 1996) illustrates the utility of the density classifi cation. the data used are internal migration fl ows, classifi ed by broad age for males (the female graphs are very similar), into and out of gb small areas (wards in england and wales and postal sectors in scotland) from which net migration rates were computed. each graph plots the overall gb value for the net internal migration rate in each age band against density classes arranged from least dense (leftmost) to most dense (rightmost). all age bands except for young adult slope from left to right, with positive net migration into low density areas which falls away to zero at middling densities and becomes negative at the higher densities (the city cores). the declines are steepest for the middle working ages (30-44) of high labour force participation and family formation. the graphs for the childhood ages (1-15) parallel those of 30-44 ages but are lower at the lowest density end, suggesting some differences between family and non-family migration. the downward slopes indicate strong suburbanization and counter-urbanization in the 1990-91 observation period, though this is likely to have been a high water for this process. the slope was less steep for the late working ages, 45 to pensionable age (65 for men and 60 for women in 1991). in the fi nal age band, pensionable age and above, there is net migration towards more dense areas ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 391 note: counts of net internal migrants and population by electoral ward are aggregated to population density classes and rates computed. source: data from the 1991 census, special migration statistics, crown copyright. indicators computed by the authors. re-drawn from rees et al. (1996: 72, fig. 16). fig. 8: net internal migration gains and losses by density classes for age groups, males, great britain, 1990-91 -40.0 -30.0 -20.0 -10.0 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 0-< 100 100-< 500 500-< 1000 1000-< 2000 2000-< 4000 4000-< 6000 >=6000 density class, persons per square kilometre a g e 1 1 5 net internal migration rate (per 1000 population) density class, persons per square kilometre a g e 1 6 2 9 net internal migration rate (per 1000 population) -20.0 -10.0 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 0-< 100 100-< 500 500-< 1000 1000-< 2000 2000-< 4000 4000-< 6000 >=6000 density class, persons per square kilometre a g e 3 0 4 4 net internal migration rate (per 1000 population) density class, persons per square kilometre a g e 4 5 6 4 net internal migration rate (per 1000 population) -25.0 -20.0 -15.0 -10.0 -5.0 0.0 5.0 10.0 0-< 100 100-< 500 500-< 1000 1000-< 2000 2000-< 4000 4000-< 6000 >=6000 density class, persons per square kilometre a g e 6 5 + net internal migration rate (per 1000 population) • philip rees, nik lomax392 on the left side of the graphs followed by migration away from dense areas. this was interpreted by the authors as a desire among retired migrants not to locate in the most remote areas but in small towns in metropolitan peripheries where health care and other services were more accessible. figure 8 represents the relationship between net internal migration and density for one country and time interval. other researchers had studied this relationship across time in one country (courgeau 1992) and across several countries (fielding 1989). the technique was not to group observation areas into density bands but to plot net migration rates against density for all areas and then fi t a linear regression against the logarithm of population density. courgeau (1992) splits the 95 départements into rural and urban parts, showing clearly the transition from a strong urbanizing trend in 1954-62 and 1962-68, a fl at trend in 1968-75 and a strong counterurbanizing trend in 1975-82. in the discussion above, we have seen how two individual drivers of migration, age and sex, interact with the context, represented by the population densities of different settlements. the age profi les of internal migration were studied in the migration and settlement project at iiasa led by andrei rogers. rogers et al. (1978) fi rst proposed a model for describing the variation of migration rate with age as a set of multi-exponential functions linked to the labour force ages, childhood ages, and retirement ages. rogers and castro (1981a) used the model to characterise the internal migration profi les of the inter-regional migration fl ows in the 17 countries of the project. subsequently, additional functions were added for: post-retirement migration by the elderly (rogers 1992) and the double peaks at entry to and exit from higher education (wilson 2010). in a migration and settlement case study for the uk, rees (1979) observed that that the retirement peak was confi ned to fl ows from big cities to retirement regions and that international migration infl ows had a subdued childhood slope and a later peak in the labour force function. wilson (2020) has replaced the rising slope of migration intensity in the age band of retirement with a function that sees an increase followed by a decrease from age onwards. rogers and castro (1981b) analyse migration by age schedules by reason for migration, but data sets providing this additional information are rare in censuses though more common in surveys. the model of the variation of migration by age has been extensively used in other analyses and the schedule parameters have been borrowed to decompose all age migration fl ows (e.g. in sander et al. 2014b as input to the wittgenstein world projections of population and human capital). bernard, bell and charles-edwards have presented an alternative scheme for working with age schedules of migration (bernard/bell 2012, 2015; bernard et al. 2014a, 2016), which is simpler to implement and more informative. country profi les are classifi ed by age at peak (years), normalized migration intensity at peak and overall migration intensity. they defi ne three clusters of countries. the fi rst cluster comprises countries with young age peaks (ages 21 or 22), high concentrations at peak ages but low overall intensity. the second cluster has peak ages from 21 to 24 with low concentrations at peak ages and moderate intensities. countries in a third cluster have later peak ages (26 to 29), moderate to low concentrations at peak ages ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 393 and relatively high overall migration intensities (fig. 5 in bernard et al. 2014a). in an important contribution to migration theory, bernard et al. (2014b: 212) proposed: “a framework that links contextual factors to the age structure of migration through proximate determinants that directly affect migration ages: the prevalence, timing, and spread of life-course transitions. we focused on four key transitions that are concentrated at young adult ages and mark the passage to adulthood – exit from education, entry to the labor force, union formation, and childbirth – and sought to link these to the early-to-mid-20s peak commonly found in the age profi le of migration. the proposed framework enabled us to identify the determinants of cross-national differences in the age structure of migration and to quantify their relative importance across a global sample of 27 countries”. other migrant attributes also have important effects. in world population and human capital in the twentieth century (lutz et al. 2014; for a précis and review see rees 2018), the authors incorporate fertility and mortality rates decomposed by educational attainment categories into a model for projecting the population of world countries. driven by an independent projection of how educational attainment will change over the current century, improving education raises survival rates but decreases fertility rates in the developing world. the outcome is a set of projected populations signifi cantly lower than those of the united nations population division (un 2015). education provides skills and knowledge to improve both economic and social well-being. to a certain extent, education also acts as a surrogate for socioeconomic status, the occupational and income components of which can change through upward or downward social mobility, whereas the stock of an individual’s human capital is more stable, although subject to gradual obsolescence as knowledge grows or to decreases in mental capacity at older ages. bernard and bell (2018) showed that, using ipums microdata from censuses and surveys, it was possible to measure the differences in propensity to migrate across educational attainment levels in a large set of countries. the authors showed that there was a near universal positive relationship between level of education and the propensity to migrate. education was one of the few socio-economic variables for which this was the case. therefore, it should be possible to introduce education as a driver of internal migration within sub-national population projections. the links between education and migration were largely ignored in lutz et al. (2014). in recent work for the european commission, marois et al. (2019a/b, 2020) use a large microsimulation model of the european population to connect international migration to the attributes of individuals in the sample microdata in order to assess whether the negative economic consequences of population ageing can be mitigated through higher immigration, higher labour force participation and better integration of new arrivals into the labour force. they fi nd that policies that raise labour force participation rates at older ages, that encourage women to enter the labour market and that promote integration of foreign workers will reduce the increase in the economic dependency rate and mean that immigration levels need not be higher than today. • philip rees, nik lomax394 internal migration also varies by ethnicity and birthplace. international migrants by race or ethnicity or birthplace have initial distributions that differ from the native population. subsequently, later generations migrate out of their initial settlement locations to other parts of the country. the consequences for the population composition by race have been monitored in us state projections by frey (2015), for the population composition of local authorities in the uk by rees et al. (2011, 2017b) and for the birthplace composition of australian state and local populations by raymer et al. (2019a). the usa has experienced a shift in the destinations of hispanic immigrants from traditional ports of entry to interior cities. in the uk the concentration of ethnic minorities in large cities has been lessened through out-migration. in australia immigration has been concentrated in the major state capitals but with destinations widening over time. the roles of internal and international migration as contributors to national and local ethnic population change have been assessed for 2001-based projected populations (rees et al. 2013). this analysis extended a decomposition analysis developed for world population regions by bongaarts and bulatao (1999), who claim that, when the world is divided into two regions, developed and developing, migration does not matter. this is a view that does not apply when you drill down to individual countries, sub-national regions and ethnic populations. 4.7 temporal trends in internal migration in this review of contemporary analysis of internal and international migration, we have not referred to changes over time. abel and sander (2014) and abel (2018) showed that the view of international migration as an expanding phenomenon was incorrect for the period 1960 to 2015. yes, the volume of fl ows showed growth over time in line with world population change, but, when expressed as a rate in relation to population, exhibited fl uctuating trends rather than the explosive growth of popular commentators. zelinsky (1971) sets out a profoundly infl uential set of hypotheses about the “mobility transition”. note that his defi nition of mobility encompassed human movements including temporary migration, circular migration, daily commuting and visiting, a wider concept than the residential migration reviewed in this paper. he saw “circulation” as replacing the need for migration in later phases of the economic and social development of nation-states (zelinsky 1971, fig. 2). with hindsight we might extend zelinsky’s defi nition of circulation to include greater levels/distances of daily commuting, more working from home and telecommunications, including the internet and broad band replacing the need for migration. other infl uential theories include the model of urbanization, counter-urbanization and reurbanization proposed by geyer and kontuly (1993). a theoretical framework linking development to population redistribution through net internal migration was proposed by rees et al. (2017a, fig. 8) and used in the country studies of latin america (bernard et al. 2017), asia (charles-edwards et al. 2017a/b, 2019; bell et al. 2020) and europe (rowe et al. 2019). the relationship of internal migration with development was considered in most of the analyses in table 8, though most are cross-sectional except for bell et al. (2018). ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 395 to test these theories and to clarify the directions of recent change requires analysis of long national time series in a robust comparative framework as set out in bell et al. (2002). champion and shuttleworth (2017a) assemble from offi cial statistics on migration based on changes in patient address generated from the national health service register to examine trends in longer and shorter distance migration. champion and shuttleworth (2017b) use the england and wales longitudinal study, which links individuals across census from 1971 to 2011 to look at trends in the distances of migration, by type of person covering age, marital status, country of birth, occupation, and education. they tested the hypothesis, put forward by cooke (2011, 2013), that migration rates were now declining, after demographic composition changes (ageing) had been accounted for. in collaboration, champion et al. (2018) recruited authors from the us, uk, australia, japan, sweden, germany and italy to explore trends in internal migration in a set of highly developed countries. bell et al. (2018) contributed a chapter which examined trends in intensity in 66 countries in the image database for which observations were available for more than one period, focusing on changes in the 2000-2010 decade. was cooke’s decline trend confi rmed? well, yes and no and maybe (see champion et al. 2018 for the range of case studies with differing outcomes). 5 summary and discussion 5.1 since ravenstein, how far have we come? in the introduction, we briefl y summarised ravenstein’s key insights into internal migration in britain and in other countries in europe. his articles also reveal an interest in international migration through his maps of foreign-born immigrants in the british isles, selected european countries, the usa and canada. in section 2, we placed the data set used, tables of lifetime migrants by country of residence at the census by country of birth, in a more general conceptual framework of defi nitions of migrants and migration. in section 3, we tracked further use of this type of migration data to the present decade when solutions have been put forward for estimating fi xed period migration from lifetime migration data. we made suggestions for the further refi nement of these estimates. in section 4, we showed how some of ravenstein’s empirical and verbal generalizations had been theorized and quantifi ed in 20th and 21st century research, covering the topics of migration and distance, gravity models of migration, migration fl ow patterns and visualizations, drivers of internal migration and the need for extending comparative internal migration analysis over time. we now set out an agenda for future work on both internal and international migration. • philip rees, nik lomax396 5.2 agenda for making further progress the goal in comparing internal migration across countries is to bring the “cinderella”4 of population change components (migration) to the demographic ball. ideally, tables of comparable measures of internal and international migration should appear alongside the tables of indicators for mortality, fertility and net international migration published by the united nations, the international organization for migration and the world bank. we ask a series of questions, the answers to which may contribute to further progress in estimating, for as many countries as possible, both international and internal migration fl ows where data are missing or inadequate. how can we maximise the number of countries and time period for which we have comparable internal migration measures? the fi rst suggestion focuses on using the rich resources assembled in the image database so that the measures of migration can be assembled for as many countries as possible and for as many time periods as possible. for example, the models used to produce international migration fl ow estimates from lifetime migrant data could be applied to improving estimates of internal migration. bell et al. (2015a) fi nd that 109 countries report collection of lifetime migrant data, but little use has yet been made of this resource in image project analyses. many countries use census or survey questions on last migration/migrant data which often has an indeterminate time reference. estimating fi xed interval migration from these sources would build up the space-time coverage of comparable internal migration measures. the image analyses report on 5-year and 1-year fi xed interval measures separately. the problem has been investigated many times, but no general solution has been adopted. further research is needed, building on the literature and the recent model proposed by dyrting (2018). a method for investigating the spatial maup has been enabled by the image studio. an equivalent tool for investigating the temporal mtup (modifi able temporal unit problem) needs to synthesize the conditional framework of nowok and willekens (2011) and the migrant heterogeneity models (mover-stayer or high mobility-low mobility) of dytring (2018) and schmertmann (1999). a goal would be to specify a general method for conversion of migration data of different intervals to a common interval for international comparison, that derived the underpinning intensity of migration from the different data sets and then generated the estimation of migration transition rates based on a standard interval. 4 the cinderella narrative is a global story with greek and chinese origins and versions in many different cultures (wikipedia 2019). ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 397 how should we improve the estimates of internal and international migration fl ows? in section 3, methods for fi lling gaps in internal and international migration fl ow data sets were discussed. innovative measures that make best use of available data collections have been proposed. however, offi cial statistical agencies are slow to take up these methods and use them to provide continuous time series, despite, in some cases, having funded the projects. there are no magic solutions to this problem. it is necessary to engage in an open dialogue with offi cial statisticians and other government departments (including local government) which use migration statistics. useful venues are conferences attended by offi cial statisticians, other government departments meetings and academics. these conversations are best held outside of formal sessions over coffee or meals. making solving the problem a shared task is better than an excuse for scoring points. how can we use knowledge of internal and international migration in policy making? most countries and international organizations make use of population projections in formulating medium and long-term plans. assumptions about internal and international migration are essential ingredients but these are rarely linked to policies. internal migration assumptions usually involve continuation of inter-regional migration rates for a representative recent period. poot et al. (2016) suggests there is scope to embody gravity models of migration into forecasts, although there would be a challenge in forecasting push factors at the origin and pull factors at the destination, as well as a need for better measures of impedance as shen (2016) has pointed out. the uncertainty around future population numbers can be handled through specifying variant projections based on judgement or through generating probabilistic projections which provide confi dence intervals. scenarios that specifi cally link international migration to policies (rees et al. 2012; abel et al. 2016; cafaro/ dérer 2019; marois et al. 2020) provide forecasts of future populations conditional on the acceptance of specifi c policies. such scenarios need a body of evidence to show that policies will result in a set direction of change in migration. time series extrapolation, no matter how sophisticated, has a poor track record in forecasting international migration (bijak et al. 2019). what is the case for a world migration survey? willekens et al. (2016: 898-899) have proposed a world migration survey (wms), echoing a proposal by the international union for the scientifi c study of population: “the wms should include respondents and partnering institutes in countries and of origin, transit, and destination and, ideally, should be longitudinal.” • philip rees, nik lomax398 such a global migration survey might by implemented through the international organization for migration, the un population division and the organization for economic co-operation and development. the expertise should be harnessed of international population research centres such as the max planck institute for demographic research (rostock), the wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (vienna) and the economic and social research council centre for population change (southampton) and global polling organizations such as the pew centre or gallup organization. the wms will no doubt be besieged by researchers wanting to load their questions into the survey. procedures should be implemented to require question or design proposals to draw up realistic cost/benefi t analyses. key questions that we suggest should be included are those that would unlock the value of current information so that existing but unsatisfactory data could be converted to fi xed interval migration data. willekens et al. (2016: 897) suggest estimation of “fl ow data” as a target concept without elucidating how this is defi ned and measured. we hope that the measurement framework set out in section 2 of the paper will help clarify what measures should be included. willekens et al. (2016) recommend “longitudinal data”, without specifying exactly what that means: alternatives include regular cross-section surveys, surveys in which individuals are linked over time or full population registers. what about climate change and migration? future research on migration cannot ignore the climate crisis, which threatens the existence of whole island nations and of a share of the world’s population that lives in low-lying land vulnerable to sea-level rise. a one degree rise in global mean temperature has already increased storm frequency and the magnitude of droughts and increased fl ows of persons displaced by climate change. a requirement of future funding of migration research should be to take the climate emergency into as full an account as possible (muttarak/jiang 2015). 5.3 concluding remarks this paper began with a brief survey of the achievements of anglo-german geographer, ernst ravenstein. his papers have infl uenced much research into migration in the century and a quarter since publication. we have reviewed how scholars now investigate the phenomena he wrote about. he was an international scholar and investigated migration both nationally and internationally. we hope he would be pleased with what the fi eld of migration research has achieved and would not be too daunted by the challenges of understanding migration in the modern world. acknowledgements the authors are very grateful to the two referees of the paper for their insightful and helpful comments. ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 399 references abel, guy j. 2010: estimation of international migration flow tables in europe. in: journal of the royal statistical society a 173: 797-825 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-985x.2009.00636.x]. abel, guy j. 2013: estimating global migration flow tables using place of birth data. in: demographic research 28,18: 505-546 [doi: 10.4054/demres.2013.28.18]. abel, guy j.; sander, nikola 2014: quantifying global international migration flows. in: science 343: 1520-1522 [doi: 10.1126/science.1248676]. abel, guy j. et al. 2016. meeting the sustainable development goals leads to lower world population growth. in: pnas 113,50: 14294-14299 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1611386113]. abel, guy j. 2018: estimates of global migration flows by gender between 1960 and 2015. in: international migration review 52,3: 809-852 [doi: 10.1111/imre.12327]. abel, guy j.; cohen, joel 2019: bilateral international migration fl ow estimates for 200 countries. in: scientifi c data 6,82 [doi: 10.1038/s41597-019-0089-3]. acxiom 2019: power exceptional marketing experiences with a unifi ed data & technology foundation [https://www.acxiom.co.uk/, 06.05.2020]. azose, jonathan j.; raftery, adrian e. 2018a: estimation of emigration, return migration, and transit migration between all pairs of countries. in: proceedings of the national academy of sciences 116,1: 116-122 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1722334116]. azose, jonathan j.; raftery, adrian e. 2018b: estimation of emigration, return migration, and transit migration between all pairs of countries: supporting information. in: proceedings of the national academy of sciences [www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ pnas.1722334115, 06.05.2020]. beine, michel; docquier, frédéric; özden, çağlar 2011: diasporas. in: journal of development economics 95,1: 30-41 [doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2009.11.004]. bell, martin et al. 2002: cross-national comparison of internal migration: issues and measures. in: journal of the royal statistical society. series a: statistics in society 165,3: 435-464. bell, martin; rees, philip 2006. comparing migration in britain and australia: harmonisation through use of age-time plans. in: environment and planning a 38,5: 959-988 [doi: 10.1068/a35245]. bell, martin; muhidin, salut 2009: cross-national comparisons of internal migration. in: human development research paper 2009/30: 1-62 [hdr.undp.org/en/content/crossnational-comparisons-internal-migration, 29.04.2020]. bell, martin; muhidin, salut 2011: comparing internal migration between countries using courgeau’s k. in: stillwell, john; clarke, martin (eds.): population dynamics and projection methods. london: springer: 141-164 [doi: 10.1007/978-90-481-8930-4_7]. bell, martin et al. 2015a: internal migration data around the world: assessing contemporary practice. in: population, space and place 21,1: 1-17 [doi: 10.1002/psp.1848]. bell, martin et al. 2015b: internal migration and development: comparing migration intensities around the world. in: population and development review 41,1: 33-58 [doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00025.x]. bell, martin et al. 2018: global trends in internal migration. in: champion, anthony; cooke, thomas; shuttleworth, ian (eds.): internal migration in the developed world. are we becoming less mobile? oxford: routledge: 76-98 [doi: 10.4324/9781315589282]. bell, martin et al. 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summaries of ravenstein’s findings by later authors tab. a1: key points from ravenstein’s 1876 papers as interpreted by greenwood year-# text pages 1876-1 centres of industry and commerce tend to grow more rapidly p.271 than agricultural areas, with large towns growing more rapidly than surrounding rural areas. the observed differences in population growth patterns are due to migration. 1876-2 people migrate to towns from nearby rural areas, and migrants p.271 from more distant places fi ll the gaps left in the rural areas. thus, ravenstein sees migration occurring in stages, and he believes that with respect to growing towns the nearby potential labour supply is quickly depleted. 1876-3 migration decreases with distance, an observation based on p.271 london and to a lesser extent on glasgow, but other places as well. 1876-4 migration is not determined by distance alone, but rather also is p.271 shaped by ‘facility of access’ and ‘local circumstances’, which at least in part apparently means the quality of roads and the transportation system. thus, at least in some limited sense, the public sector may facilitate migration. 1876-5 intervening opportunities tend to absorb migrants to any given p.271 urban destination. source: ravenstein (1876), greenwood (2019). ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now • 411 tab. a2: the summary of ravenstein’s laws by grigg (1977) source: grigg (1977). year-# text pages 1977-1 the majority of migrants go only a short distance. p.44 1977-2 migration proceeds step by step. p.47 1977-3 migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference p.48 to one of the great centres of commerce and industry. 1977-4 every migratory current has a counter-current. p.48 1977-5 the natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural districts. p.48 1977-6 females are more migratory than males within the kingdom of p.49 their birth, but males move more frequently abroad. 1977-7 most migrants are adults; families rarely migrated. p.49 1977-8 towns grow more by migration than natural increase. p.50 1977-9 migration increases as industries develop and the means of p.52 transport improves. 1977-10 the major direction of migration is from the rural areas to p.52 the towns. 1977-11 the main causes of migration are economic. p.53 • philip rees, nik lomax412 tab. a3: key points made about ravenstein’s work by dorigo and tobler (1983) source: dorigo and tobler (1983). year-law# text pages push and pull migration laws, dorigo/tobler (1983), quoted in greenwood (2019) 1983-1 ‘counties having an extended boundary in proportion to their p.5 area, naturally offer greater facilities for an infl ow ... than others with a restricted boundary’ (ravenstein 1885: 175). boundaries, or the geographic size of the spatial unit over which migration is measured, are clearly of great importance, but this observation was not noted by others. 1983-2 (migration streams) ‘sweep along with them many of the p.10 natives of the counties through which they pass (and) deposit, in their progress, many of the migrants, which have joined them at their origin’ (ravenstein 1885: 191). with some imagination, we might view this statement of ravenstein as an early indication of the family and friends hypothesis regarding migration. however, ravenstein does not indicate any thoughts about what forces underlie the infl uence of family and friends-forces such as information provided by earlier migrants, their social ties, or the miniature private social benefi ts due to the presence of prior migrants from their origin who may provide food, shelter, and information to the newly arrived migrants. 1983-3 ‘migratory currents fl ow along certain well defi ned geographical p.12 channels’ (ravenstein 1889: 284). this point is related to that immediately above, but is broader (dorigo/tobler, p. 12). features of the transportation system are likely to play a critical role in this regard. a good example is found in us historical migration from the south to the north. railroad and highway systems, as well as the mississippi river, generally ran more or less directly south to north with a chain of mountains (the appalachians) separating the two south-to-north paths. consequently, northern seaboard cities received migrants disproportionately from florida, georgia, the carolinas, and virginia, whereas midwestern cities like chicago, detroit, cleveland and st. louis received migrants from alabama, mississippi, louisiana, texas, and tennessee. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) local migration regimes in rural areas: the example of refugee reception in saxony, germany local migration regimes in rural areas: the example of refugee reception in saxony, germany* hanne schneider abstract: the reception of asylum seekers has challenged municipalities and their populations across europe in recent years: many rural villages and small and midsized towns had little prior experience with large numbers of asylum seekers. the housing of refugees constitutes one of the most controversial arenas and challenges for local communities within the reception process. this paper sheds light on rural case studies using the perspective of migration regimes. local migration regimes constitute arenas of migration-related processes including actors, practices, and negotiations at different scales. the analysis covers four rural municipalities (two villages, two towns) from two saxonian counties in germany. all cases have different strategies for accommodating migrants but all can be seen as post-socialist immigration societies. the fi ndings show that the issue of reception and housing is seen as a recurrent and contested local fi eld of confl ict and cooperation in the rural case sites. the regime lens highlights the strong dependencies but also fragmentation between different levels (national, regional, and supra-local). housing practices and strategies for refugees refl ect local discourses and contribute to the social and spatial production of migration. i argue, that the regime lens contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding of local settings, acknowledges spatial and social structures but challenges empirical fi eld work and data sets. this empirical research is based on qualitative interviews, media articles, and documents from rural counties in germany and was conducted within the joint research project “future for refugees in rural regions of germany”. keywords: local migration regime · refugees · rural regions · local level · saxony · germany comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 413-442 (date of release: 28.11.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-16en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • hanne schneider414 1 introduction as the numbers of asylum seekers increased tremendously, refugee reception during the “long summer of migration” in 2015 (hess et al. 2017) challenged municipalities throughout germany. in particular, this applied to localities which were not experienced in the accommodation of asylum seekers, such as rural villages and small and mid-sized towns. today, many of these localities receive refugees, whereas asylum had previously not been a prominent local issue. moreover, most rural regions in germany also have a lower level of diversity and fewer long-standing traditions surrounding arrival infrastructures (aumüller/gesemann 2016; rösch et al. 2020). this is particularly true for rural municipalities in eastern germany which are the geographical focus of this paper. public discourses on how to manage the reception challenge of 2015/2016 referred to possible advantages of rural regions for refugee reception and integration: for example, housing vacancies or a higher level of social engagement than in urban agglomerations, which could offer easy entry points for inclusion of refugees. discourses also highlighted potential benefi ts for rural localities accommodating refugees such as demographic rejuvenation or positive effects for the local labor market (e.g. franke/magel 2016). however, this optimistic description of a “win-win situation” neglected the complexity of immigrant inclusion in terms of local societal processes. in academic contributions, this supposed “rural idyll” is also refl ected in a more critical way (e.g., arora-jonsson 2017). the issue of accommodation and housing undoubtedly constitutes one of the most controversial issues in the local reception of refugees. first of all it, triggers very practical questions regarding residential facilities, local infrastructure and capacities, but also questions of local political governance and civil society involvement, and it fi nally lays bare societal negotiation processes of localities on spatial issues. factors shaping local reception processes include the socioeconomic situation, societal structures, local actors, and multi-level decisionmaking such as the impact of national policies (see also glorius et al. 2019). these local characteristics have sparked the interest of migration scholars in recent years, aiming to go beyond national frameworks which formerly constituted the main scientifi c level of observation (glick schiller/çağlar 2009). one promising concept for understanding but also disentangling the complexity of local settings is the local migration regimes approach, which focuses on the analysis of structures and power formations in certain local contexts concerning migration issues (schmiz/ räuchle 2019). the local migration regimes perspective opens the view on local processes without ignoring legal and political implications of spatial levels. this paper uses the regime perspective to implement a comparative analysis of local reception situations in four distinct rural localities in the state of saxony. focusing on the issue of reception and housing, and making use of a rich dataset consisting of documents, expert interviews and media articles, this paper explores the ways in which the reception of migrants is negotiated and constructed at the local level. therefore, this paper provides insights into the spatial conditions and processes of spatial production in two districts, including four localities in the rural local migration regimes in rural areas • 415 areas of the federal state of saxony in germany. i argue that both the previous experience with migration and rural specifi cs such as socio demographics shape the local regime characteristics. this paper is structured as follows. section 2 explores the theoretical perspective of local migration regimes as a way of observing contexts of migration. section 3 introduces the data and methods. the contextual conditions for migrant reception for both districts are described in section 4, and the empirical fi ndings presented in section 5. the fi ndings are then further discussed through the lens of local migration regimes in section 6. 2 theoretical perspectives: local turn and local migration regimes as a result of the emerging role in refugee reception and the ongoing push to move beyond the state as the central unit of analysis (“methodological nationalism”), migration scholars have recently turned to the local as relevant level for political negotiation processes on immigration and immigrant inclusion, and thus for research on those processes (“local turn”) (glick schiller/çağlar 2009; zapatabarrero et al. 2017). this emerging research perspective has become even more prevalent as european cities have introduced their strategies and have become more involved in national reception policies addressing challenges to integration and diversity. meanwhile there is a growing body of literature covering local migration policies and the role of localities within integration processes (e.g., martinello 2013; garcés-mascareñas/penninx 2016; schammann et al. 2021; zapata-barrero et al. 2017). whereas previous comparative research paid particular attention to policies and local government and governance (borkert/caponio 2010; martinello 2013; scholten 2013), fi ndings from recent comparative case studies increasingly highlight the importance of local contexts beyond the policy level such as local discourses, regional socio-economic situations, the local population, and other geographical implications (doomernik/glorius 2016; glorius et al. 2019; meer et al. 2021; schammann et al. 2021; walker 2014). as local specifi cs receive more attention, there is also growing interest in rural municipalities as case study sites (cabral/swerts 2021; haselbacher/segarra 2022; woods 2018), as well as on urban agglomeration without a long-standing immigration history. in germany, this notably applies to east german cities with a post-socialist history (dunkl et al. 2019; el kayed et al. 2020; wiest 2020). considering those developments described above, the concept of migration regimes has found its way into the locality debate (“local migration regimes”): it aims to capture the complexity of overlapping societal and political settings for migration while also acknowledging spatialities (see rass/ wolff 2018). in contrast to policy-oriented frameworks or development studies, the regime perspective introduces a more interdisciplinary view on migration and, different from governance analysis, approaches “the local” from different angles (e.g., actors, discourses, spatial conditions). most prominently, the term “regime“ was introduced in political science in the late 1970s to describe regulative structures in normative systems of international • hanne schneider416 relations (keohane 1984; krasner 1983). the underlying assumption is that states do not only act in a rational or egoistical manner, but also focus on cooperative mechanisms. the core idea of this defi nition remains central to different notions of regimes today: regimes are “defi ned as principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issuearea” (krasner 1983: 1). regimes affect ways of interacting (“regimes do matter”, krasner 1983: 6) and are prolonged modes of interaction, although they can be shorter-term. in contrast to ad hoc agreements, regimes set the standards across such agreements and do not change in a short time frame. the term “regime” is widely used in migration studies and its meaning differs, e.g., “european migration regime”, “asylum regime”, “border regime” or “mobility regime”. most of these meanings share a focus on power formation between (non-)state actors, inclusionary/exclusionary practices, and challenge state-centric approaches or normative governance frameworks. in recent years, migration scholars have suggested a broadened heuristic perspective on “migration regimes“ and “local migration regimes“ (e.g., bernt 2019; hinger/schäfer 2019; pott 2018; oltmer 2018; rass/wolff 2018; schmiz/ räuchele 2019). while most of these contributions focus on conceptual thoughts there are few empirical contributions using the term local migration regime (hinger/ schäfer 2019; cabral/swerts 2021). the lens of local migration regime emphasizes spatial structures and conditions for political and societal processes of negotiation on migration processes within a certain local context. therefore, the idea of migration regimes considers the complexity of migration processes, challenges the state-centric research focus, and addresses the “scalar shift in migration studies” (schmiz/räuchle 2019: 3). contributions on local migration regimes highlight the interaction of state and non-state actors, local migration history, positioning processes, discourses, and migrant representation (schmiz/räuchle 2019): for example, how do certain actor constellations deal with migration-related issues; what role is taken by civil society and migrants? how can different practices and discourses about migration be linked to historical developments? and are spatial and bordering practices shaped by local or other levels? overall, the approach of local migration regimes adopts a social constructivist perspective, focusing on certain entities as spatial-temporal and social ordering structures and the corresponding production of migration: the main foci of most of the contributions, based on the basic idea of the regime theory, are the power formation and principles of collective processes (“confl ict and cooperation”, oltmer 2018: 4). these collective processes constitute “zones of negotiation” (pott/tsianons 2014) or “arenas” (oltmer 2018) in which migration is negotiated. despite the increased number of conceptual publications on migration regimes in recent years, there is still no universal defi nition or framework as the concept is undertheorized (bernt 2019: 10-12). this is certainly due to missing empirical embeddedness of the concept. the lack of empirical application might be caused by the fuzziness and variation of meanings of regime analysis. therefore, rass and wolff propose a multi-layered and methods-based approach, arguing for “more empirically saturated current […] regime research” (rass/wolff 2018: local migration regimes in rural areas • 417 44). they propose approaching migration regimes “not as a detectable entity or institution ‘out there’, but rather as a model to describe and understand a complex and decentralized power formation” (rass/wolff 2018: 44). in this sense, i use the perspective of regimes as a methodological viewpoint for reconstructing local settings with empirical evidence (see also section 3). for this, i refer, based on oltmer (2018: 6), to the local migration regime as a local fi eld of actions focusing on certain migration-related issues. it represents a local arena of negotiation and processes of cooperation and confl ict driven by migrants, as well as (local) nonstate and state actors. furthermore, each local regime is shaped by its own political norms and spatial conditions. local migration regimes serve as a spatial context for migration but also include spatial productions1 (see also pott 2018: 121-122). in this paper, i focus on rural places which have been of increasing interest to migration scholars for several years. in their study of rural settings of local migration regimes in portugal, cabral and swerts (2021: 192) show that the pressuring role of non-state actors is not as decisive as in urban settings (e.g., hinger et al. 2016). drawing on this, i expect the non-urban environment to offer new insights on the characteristics of rural migration regimes, their actor constellations, and spatial features. this paper draws therefore on three core elements of local migration regimes: (1) actors and power constellations in migration-related issues, (2) local discourses, narratives, and migration history, and (3) spatial structures and levels (e.g., regional, national) impacting the local fi eld of action. for greater conceptual precision, i focus on one issue-area as a starting point for the empirical analysis. i examine the issue of reception and housing of refugees, since it is both a central fi eld of action for municipalities, as has been shown in comparative studies, and an integral part of local debates, confl icts, and spatial production (e.g., alexander 2007; kreichauf 2018; meer et al. 2021). also, as meer et al. state, the area of housing shows “where the national state is relying on third sector partnerships” (meer et al. 2021: 2). hinger and schäfer (2019) identifi ed cities’ migration history and scalar positioning as relevant features in their comparative analysis of two german cities. furthermore, their fi ndings clearly show that implicit structures in urban societies are linked to accommodation practices. for leipzig, a city in saxony, they highlight the importance of “the presence of right-wing groups and xenophobic sentiments” (hinger/schäfer 2019: 73). this impacts the way how migration is dealt with in a broader sense. referring to the accommodation situation, the authors found, for example, more hostility toward reception facilities accommodations than in the other comparative case of osnabrück (hinger/schäfer 2019: 6). referring to this previous research, i expect that the area of housing and accommodation is a useful starting point for identifying constellations and spatial productions while limiting the broad approach of migration regimes analysis to a particular issue. 1 the concept of “production of space“ was introduced by henri lefebvre (1991). he stated that social relations and social settings also structure physical spaces. in society, there is a dialectic of space and social relations. • hanne schneider418 3 methods and data the empirical data was collected in two rural counties (“landkreise“, nuts 3 level) in the federal state of saxony in germany. i selected the two cases from the data set of a comparative joint project (“future for refugees in rural areas of germany”) conducted in four länder with overall eight counties and 32 municipalities (“gemeinden“, lau level). according to küpper’s (2016) typology, all eight counties are either rural or very rural. for following analysis, i have chosen to focus on two counties and four municipalities from the sample of saxony. this selection and reduction of the cases made it possible to grasp the complexity of local regime cases by using a mixed set of data. because both counties are located in the state of saxony, they are subject to the same federal and national regulations concerning refugee distribution. this makes it possible to consider the regional context more closely (e.g., demographic development and socio-economic situations) and at the same time to identify the local varieties within the negotiation of housing and reception of refugees. one medium-sized town and one rural village2 were selected in each of the two counties (see table 1). in line with küpper’s (2016) typology acknowledging the diverse character of rurality in terms of sizes of municipalities, two different sizes were chosen (one rural village, and one rural town in both counties). also, all chosen localities accommodate refugees,3 which is not the case in all municipalities in these counties. for reasons of research ethics, the names of the municipalities are not mentioned here because the interview data of interviewees must be pseudonymized. to capture different aspects of migration regimes, this paper applies a multimethod approach. it uses the following methods and data: (i) 22 semi-structured interviews (see table 2) with local experts conducted in 2019 and 2020 dealing with migration or integration constitute the main data for this paper; the analysis of the transcribed interviews was carried out in three steps using structured and inductive methods (based on strauss et al. 1996) with maxqda: 1) a structured coding of interview segments containing any reference to housing, local reception, or accommodation 2) an inductive coding of all the identifi ed segments, and 3) selective coding to fi nd relations within the codes. (ii) the data collection also included newspaper articles covering local discourses. i searched two larger regional newspapers4 with local sections from 2009 to 2019 (keywords: “asylum“, and “migration“, each combined with the name 2 in this paper, i am refer to the two rural municipalities as “villages” since the fi ndings only draw on fi eld research in one part of each rural municipality. 3 i refer to the term “refugee“ as a general term for humanitarian migrants including different legal terms (e.g. asylum seekers, recognized refugees). 4 these are the leipziger volkszeitung for nordsachsen and the sächsische zeitung for bautzen. local migration regimes in rural areas • 419 c o un ty b au tz en (c o un ty i) n o rd sa ch se n (c o un ty ii ) r ur al it y/ s o ci o e co no m ic s c la ss ifi ed a s “r ur al ” w it h “l es s g o o d s o ci o -e co no m ic s it ua tio n” (t hü n en t yp o lo g y) v ill ag e i to w n i v ill ag e ii to w n ii po p ul at io n 1, 60 0 po p ul at io n 17 ,0 00 po p ul at io n 1, 10 0 po p ul at io n 20 ,0 00 ad m in is tr at iv el y m ed iu m -s iz ed t o w n ad m in is tr at iv el y m ed iu m -s iz ed t o w n as si gn ed t o a as si gn ed t o a ru ra l m un ic ip al it y ru ra l m un ic ip al it y o f 1 0 vi lla g es w it h o f 8 v ill ag es w it h 7, 00 0 in ha b it an ts 4, 00 0 in ha b it an ts ta b . 1 : o ve rv ie w o f c as e st ud ie s s o ur ce : s ta tis tic al o ffi ce o f t he f re e s ta te o f s ax o ny , 2 00 920 19 , o w n ca lc ul at io n, b as ed o n kü pp er 2 01 6. • hanne schneider420 of the municipality). in total, i found 1789 articles, 623 of which addressed housing or municipal reception as a central issue. i summarized these articles in monthly memos for each local case. in addition to the qualitative interviews, the media covers a long-term period and provides information about the relevant topics discussed in public. (iii) further case memos for each locality were compiled while working on all additional material, interviews, and newspaper articles. 4 refugee reception in the counties of bautzen and nordsachsen this section introduces the regional context of the case studies, which is necessary to assess the local contexts for migrant reception, including public discourses and practices on migration. as highlighted above, the local scale cannot be seen separately from other levels such as the regional or national levels (rass/wolff 2018: 52). furthermore, the rural conditions defi ning the spatial context should be addressed. 4.1 rural regions and the reception of migrants in saxony the state of saxony is located in eastern germany and was a part of the german democratic republic (gdr). saxony consists of 13 districts made up of 10 counties (166 towns and 250 rural municipalities) and 3 urban (see fig. 1) districts (chemnitz, dresden, leipzig). each of these counties contains between 28 and 59 municipalities. since the 1990s, the region has been shaped by a substantial transformation process in society, economics, and infrastructure (henn/schäfer 2020). starting after reunifi cation, the economic transformation led to an immense demographic decline due to outward migration of the working population and ageing processes. this applies in particular to rural regions in the state and to certain population groups, e.g., women. since the early 2000s, the state’s demographic decline has slowed down, especially in the three cities. the same trend can be observed with respect to the economic situation: the upward economic trend was followed by lower unemployment rates, and additional workforce was needed. however, the tab. 2: analyzed interview data type of expert bautzen nordsachsen total local politician 3 2 5 administration/public offi cial 2 5 7 civil society/volunteer 4 1 5 civil society organization 3 2 5 total 13 9 22 source: own design local migration regimes in rural areas • 421 demographic decline can still be observed in rural regions, where the effects of return migration and international migration remain lower than in the urban districts (leibert 2020: 200-204). population decline represents a continuous challenge in rural regions of saxony and other rural parts of (east) germany. there are ongoing debates on replacement migration via attracting germans or international migrants as a solution to demographic decline (nadler 2012). in the gdr, migration was mainly experienced as strictly regulated labor migration by contract workers from socialist partner countries, many of whom had to leave after the collapse of state socialism. after the reunifi cation of germany, emigration and immigration became more visible and increased signifi cantly. in the early 1990s, large-scale migration fl ows from former gdr territory to west germany began, so that urban and rural regions lost a signifi cant share of population at working age. at the same time, international migrants arrived, such as ethnic german immigrants from eastern europe, or refugees, from the wars in former yugoslavia. additionally, intra-eu-mobility increased, notably since the eu’s eastern enlargement in 2004. however, this did not reverse the declining demographic situation in rural regions of east germany. the fig. 1: rurality and foreigners in districts and counties of saxony source: thünen index of rurality/küpper 2016, federal statistical offi ce (destatis) 2021 based on central register of foreign nationals, geodata by geosn 2021, staatsbetrieb geobasisinformation und vermessung sachsen (geosn) 2021: geodaten des freistaates sachsen [https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0, 21.05.2021]. • hanne schneider422 increased infl ux of refugees in the mid-2010s interrupted the negative population trend, though only for a short time (reibstein/klingholz 2020). the proportion of foreigners, therefore, remains at a lower level in saxony than in other federal states. while the share of foreigners in germany was 12.5 percent, it was only 5.1 percent in saxony in 2019 (bamf 2020). table 3 shows that foreigners are a clear minority in saxony, especially in the more rural counties. with rising numbers of asylum seekers around 2015, the proportion of foreigners increased in many municipalities (though not all received refugees) and in all counties. as mentioned above, since 2014, the number of asylum seekers in germany has increased signifi cantly (2014: 173.072, 2015: 476.649, 2016: 745.545) (bamf 2020) and remains at a higher level than before 2014 (2020: 122.170), much of which is attributable to asylum seekers. the distribution, reception, and housing of asylum seekers in germany is a highly fragmented task between the national, state, and local levels with mutual dependencies on all levels. this context is important for understanding the impact on the localities: while the registration and asylum procedure is carried out by the federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bamf), the initial reception takes place at the state level. according to the distribution quota “königsteiner schlüssel“, the federal state of saxony, with its 4 million inhabitants, receives around 5 percent of the national applicants. asylum seekers are fi rst allocated to initial reception tab. 3: population and share of foreigners in saxony by county/city district county/district total population share of foreigners in% 2019 2011 2019 bautzen 299,758 1.6 2.3 erzgebirgskreis 334,948 1.1 2.1 görlitz 252,725 2.2 4.6 leipzig 258,139 1.4 2.5 meißen 241,717 2.5 3.2 mittelsachsen 304,099 1.6 3.5 nordsachsen 197,741 1.9 4.1 sächsische schweiz-osterzgebirge 245,586 1.7 2.9 vogtlandkreis 225,997 1.5 3.8 zwickau 315,002 1.6 3.5 city districts chemnitz, stadt 246,334 4.9 8.5 dresden, stadt 556,780 4.8 8.0 leipzig, stadt 593,145 6.0 9.7 total 4,071,971 2.9 5.1 source: federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bamf) 2020, federal statistical offi ce (destatis) 2019 (based on central register of foreign nationals), statistical offi ce of the free state of saxony (stla) 2011/2019, own calculation. local migration regimes in rural areas • 423 facilities of the state, where they stay during the fi rst weeks in order to manage issues of identifi cation, medical screening, and the preparation of the asylum application. after that, they are redistributed to the ten counties and three city districts within the state of saxony, which have to accommodate them while their asylum application is processed (see table 3). according to the distribution quota, 66.9 percent of refugees are sent to the (mainly rural) counties.5 there, asylum seekers are further redistributed to municipalities within the county, which have to provide accommodation and social support. some counties pursue an even distribution among municipalities; others focus on centralized reception centers installed in a few municipalities. after asylum status determination, the “followup“ housing takes place, in which refugees, in most cases, must move to private apartments. to prevent movements to cities with a higher share of migrants and reduce emigration from rural counties, saxony introduced an obligation for residence (“wohnsitzaufl age“, based on national law) on the county level in 2018, meaning that refugees with a protection status must stay in the respective county for three years after status determination (renner 2018: 4). 4.2 the perception of migrants in saxony and the cases of bautzen and nordsachsen in addition to the administrative side of the reception process, societal conditions and collective perception of migrants or refugees shape local migration regimes. for the counties under examination, notably their characteristics as post-socialist spaces and rural peripheries come to the fore. weiss concludes that the sociospatial conditions in east germany hinder the process of integration. she fi nds that there has not been a public discourse about migration as an integral part of society in the region (weiss 2018: 135). consequently, glorius argues that the discursive framing of migration is closely linked to past and ongoing “[m]igration experiences [which] mainly consist of the huge internal outfl ow, which – due to its selectivity – left behind local populations with high levels of ageing, unemployment and other social problems” (glorius 2017: 123). outward migration after reunifi cation, especially of women, is seen as another driver of deprivation. furthermore, there is an ongoing debate on the attitudinal specifi cs in the east german länder concerning the collective experience of economic instability. attitudinal studies of east germany have found several obstacles for the integration of migrants. for example, salomo concludes that the residential context in thuringia (composition, level of immigration and homogeneity of population) indirectly increases the above-mentioned perception of deprivation and therefore fosters ethnocentric attitudes (salomo 2019: 103) which are generally unsympathetic towards immigration. rees et al., building on intergroup contact theory and groupthreat theory, found that lower rates of diversity are one of the specifi c local factors 5 the details of the distribution within the state are regulated according to the saxonian refugee reception act (“sächsisches flüchtlingsaufnahmegesetz“). • hanne schneider424 contributing to a “climate of hate” and right-wing attitudes (rees et al. 2019: 9-10). this is also closely linked to high vote shares for right-wing parties such as the afd (alternative für deutschland). in both counties, the afd has achieved continuous, signifi cant electoral success (2017 federal parliamentary elections: bautzen 31.9 percent, nordsachsen 27.2 percent; 2021 state parliamentary elections: nordsachsen 27.8 percent, bautzen 33.4 percent). an attitudinal survey on rural populations’ attitudes conducted by the author (n = 904) in 2019 within the same project framework as the present study (“future for refugees in rural areas of germany”) supports these fi ndings. the surveyed population in saxony displayed the highest level of hostility against foreigners, while contact experiences with migrants were the lowest (schneider et al. 2021: 4344). these attitudes are also discussed in the context of rural areas (e.g., crawley et al. 2019). czaika and di lillo conclude: “people who attribute greater importance to living in safe and secure surroundings and having a domicile in rural areas are found to be associated with growing hostility towards further immigrant fl ows” (czaika/di lillo 2018: 2468). as in all regions of germany, refugee reception in saxony has shown a wide range of societal responses, including numerous welcoming initiatives, solidarity movements, and the engagement of various civil society actors, especially in 2014 and 2015. this went along with contention and protests against reception policies, including attacks against refugees (“the dark side of the german ‘welcome culture’”, jäckle and könig 2017). the share of foreigners within a local community has a “highly signifi cant and expected negative effect on attacks on refugees” as jäckle and könig (2017: 26) show. although such incidents and protests against reception centers for asylum seekers were not limited to rural communities or the region of saxony, some incidents in rural towns in saxony have become the focus of national news coverage and serve as nationwide symbols of “non-welcoming culture” (e.g., in heidenau, freital, schneeberg; see aumüller et al. 2015: 122). the protesters, often driven by right-wing initiatives, drew a picture of “refugees as security, economic, or even health threats” (koehler 2018: 78). within the two cases, counties, especially the county capital bautzen, experienced a variety of protests and anti-refugee attacks. rees et al. argue that the sociocultural climate is a key determinant of intergroup confl icts, conducting a qualitative case study on the “super-homogeneous context” of the town of bautzen (rees et al. 2022: 9). both the welcoming culture and anti-immigrant protests clearly show the reception of refugees as a fi eld of local struggles and contention. local migration regimes in rural areas • 425 5 empirical fi ndings in bautzen and nordsachsen across the four different municipality case studies, the housing issue illustrates different local strategies.6 these approaches are subject to negotiations within the localities and between municipalities and counties and are described in the following subsections (5.1-5.4). bautzen (county i) bautzen county is located in eastern saxony and consists of 57 municipalities. it has a share of foreigners of 2.3 percent and hosted about 2,300 refugees in 2019. the authorities in the county of bautzen follow a centralized accommodation strategy for asylum seekers: in 2019, at least two-thirds of the asylum seekers were accommodated in fi ve collective accommodation centers based in three mediumsized towns and in one rural municipality, the largest with a capacity up to 500 asylum seekers. most of the collective accommodation centers were set up in 2015. since then, village i has accommodated about 100 people in a collective accommodation center run by the county. the building used to be a school and is located at the outskirts of the village. almost no refugees stay in the village after their refugee status is accepted. town i has a somewhat longer history of refugee reception. since 1992, the town has hosted asylum seekers by order of the county. in 2012, a collective center was installed as the central facility of bautzen county, which provides up to 400 places. in 2015, around 700 refugees were accommodated in town i. in 2019, it hosts around 350 asylum seekers (2019), about 250 of them in the collective center. around 75 asylum seekers lived in private apartments provided by the municipal housing stock. after the approval of asylum, many refugees fi nd apartments mostly in municipal housing, assisted by social workers or volunteers. nordsachsen (county ii) the county of nordsachsen is located in northwestern saxony. the share of foreigners (4.1 percent) is somewhat higher than in bautzen and the county host about 2,100 refugees. in nordsachsen, the reception of asylum seekers is organized in a more decentralized manner, as around 30 municipalities are involved in the accommodation of asylum seekers. however, ten municipalities also provide collective accommodations. around three quarters of the asylum seekers are hosted in private apartments. the collective reception centers are signifi cantly smaller (maximum capacity of 150). village ii has hosted asylum seekers in municipality apartments since 2015. in 2018, approximately 90 refugees (40 after recognition of asylum and 50 during their asylum procedure) lived in the village, which is not as peripheral as village i, and close (10km) to a small town with basic infrastructure. in contrast, town ii had two collective accommodations (only one since 2020) and 6 the section refers mainly to the recent years in which numbers of asylum seekers increased (2014/2015). the empirical data was conducted in 2019/2020 but interviewees also referred to the recent past. newspaper articles cover 2009-2019. • hanne schneider426 private apartments. many of these appartments are located in a part of town with a higher proportion of migrants and socially precarious neighborhoods. the following sections outline the central fi ndings on the issue area of accommodation and housing found in the empirical analyses of both countries. the data analysis of the examined localities shows that the issues of housing and accommodation play a central role in the local negotiation of migration and was discussed more than other integration-related issues. the data mainly covers the initial reception period and early stages of the local admission of refugees. this is because the long-term housing of refugees, e.g., in private fl ats, was not addressed in the data as much as expected. this became particularly clear in the media analysis using the keywords “asylum“ and “migration“ to fi nd articles concerning the local debates. 623 out of 1789 newspaper articles address the topic of housing and reception facilities, so it is extensively covered in local media compared to other migration-related issues. accommodation and housing were also a central focus points in the majority of the analyzed interviews on refugee integration. the rising numbers of asylum seekers in 2014-2015 can be seen as a strong reference point (“before” and “after”), even though the refugee reception in town i (bautzen) and town ii (nordsachsen) were already discussed early: “i would like to start with 2015. yes, in 2015 the fi rst refugees came to [town ii] and then it became clear that we need accommodation facilities (...) over the year, the number [of asylum seekers] decreased. while in 2015 and 2016 people had arrived in buses, arrival signifi cantly decreased later on. later on, in some weeks one family came, some weeks later three families came, and then there were weeks when no one arrived here.” (interview 311, civil society/volunteer, own translation) “[in 2015] the county founded a unit for asylum. employees were assigned to this offi ce and mainly had to deal with the issue of accommodation and ensuring basic services. we were searching nearly everywhere, and set up new accommodations. during this time, it became clear that it meant more than just providing a roof over people’s heads and food, but also of what happens to the people we accommodate, how we integrate them, and what about their prospects of staying, for a longer or shorter period of time.” (interview 149, county offi cial, own translation) the great interest in accommodation and housing can also be attributed to the fact that the events of 2015 and the need for hosting a large number of refugees can be seen as an exceptional situation in small municipalities in saxony: even though migration and integration processes have been ongoing (at least) since reunifi cation, they remained somewhat overlooked as societal issues because the share of foreigners remained low. the county strategies of housing were highly discussed, as shown in the interviews and other data (e.g., ngo position papers and newspaper articles): the centralized housing strategy, as predominantly used in local migration regimes in rural areas • 427 bautzen county, is viewed critically, especially by civil society actors. however, the newly-introduced obligation for a specifi c residence (“wohnsitzaufl age“) was not a topic of great interest – neither for most interviewees nor media coverage. one reason might be that it came into force in 2018 and therefore did not concern many refugees who arrived in 2015. the analysis of the empirical data showed two central fi ndings which address the regional specifi city of the housing stock: first, even in smaller municipalities in saxony, the housing capacities are usually found in public housing. unlike other german municipalities (adam et al. 2020: 215-216), the housing market is not as competitive. however, this leads to a particular type of spatial segregation as municipal housing is often connected to lower rent and thus are preferable places for the lower social strata of society (see 5.4). secondly, for both collective accommodation and private apartments, large housing blocks built in the gdr were used. 5.1 reception and housing facilities: scenes of local (migration) history as shown in section 4, the saxon counties do not have a long-standing and distinctive history of migration, and there is no pronounced collective identity as a region of immigration. however, the recent migration of asylum seekers brings up interviewees’ memories and sheds light on this neglected part of local history. especially in town i and town ii, some of these memories are linked to certain reception facilities or buildings formerly used to accommodate other migrant groups, while other memories refer to previous buildings: “here, in the early 90s, bosnian refugees were accommodated at the beginning [of the reception period]. there were probably around fi ve hundred at the peak, which, from my memory, went relatively troublefree. there was also civic engagement by the churches, especially to help the people. and so this was the start of the reception center [in town i].” (interview 145, mayor, own translation) several interviewees compared refugees and previous migrant groups and how they were perceived and compared to each other by the local population. many of the former migrant groups were living in the same reception facilities or the same parts of town, e.g., contract workers in the gdr and ethnic german immigrants from eastern europe and central asia in the 1990s. still, they were not as visible as the newly arrived refugees. “several years ago, a number of migrants, ethnic germans and so on, came here from kazakhstan. but i have to say for the majority of them it was only a temporary stopover. (…) there are still quite a few of this group, and, from my point of view, they don’t attract attention. so they don’t stand out too much in society.” (interview 296, civil society/ volunteer, own translation) • hanne schneider428 one example from town ii also shows that the perception of different migrant groups can be comparable. in the following quote, a social worker refers to one part of the town: “here in [town ii], we had (...) immigration of ethnic germans in the 1990s, and the mood was ‘well, ... we ’don’t want these russlanddeutsche [ethnic germans from russia] here.’ then, people got used to each other and they were no longer an issue. ‘oh yes, they are very well integrated, they can speak german well by now and the children were in kindergarten and the next generation had grown up, so the issue was settled. then, the refugees came: ‘it ’won’t work with the refugees. we don’t want them.’ everyone was skeptical. and then, the picture changed again, because now eu citizens have come and are basically causing problems that the other immigrants had not yet caused, so that the [migrant group of] refugees are no longer an issue.” (interview 311, civil society organization, own translation) refugee housing is a locally recurring issue in media coverage from 2009-2019: even before 2014/2015, the topic of local housing and accommodation constituted a signifi cant part of the articles dealing with migration and asylum issues in three of the four case studies (except for village i, where no refugees were housed before 2014/2015). figure 2 shows the trend of the number of published articles 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 58 33 72 77 70 129 212 138 89 46 36 16 35 18 43 26 36 57 92 52 24 10 8 7 2009: closure of former asylum shelter in neighboring town within the county, discussions about location search for new facilities and funding 2011: new reception center, protests of rightwing party (npd) including campaign ("kein heim") against the reception center, new civil society initiatives for tolerance as a counter movement, several letters to the editor on the issue by residents 2015: rising numbers of asylum seekers, positioning of municipalities and mayors regarding the reception, ad hoc reception of asylum seekers, reports on volunteers, distribution within the county 2018: security concerns due violent incidents in the accommodation, current asylum figures, population development newspaper articles in total articles on housing / reception fig. 2: town i: news coverage of the accommodation of refugees (keywords “asylum”, “migration”) source: own design local migration regimes in rural areas • 429 and selected years with information collected in the summarizing memos for town i. 409 of 960 articles cover the issue of housing, with a peak of 92 articles in 2015. there was also a signifi cant share in the years before and after. these numbers clearly illustrate that certain local events, moments of social contention (e.g., antiimmigrant-protests), and the opening of new reception facilities are prominently featured in local newspapers. the conditions of accommodation are themselves shaped by local history and the socio-spatial context: a notable feature in the four municipalities is the availability of municipal housing stock and residential blocks built in the gdr. former military buildings and schools were also used for accommodation. 5.2 responsibilities for reception and housing as power mappings and supra-local alliances the arena of accommodation and housing can be used for a situational mapping to showcase power constellations within the local reception regime in a broader sense. this became particularly clear when most interviewees, while speaking about accommodation, positioned themselves towards other actors and/or other decision-making levels. moreover, many interviewees rejected their responsibility for reception and housing. this might not be a surprising result for civil society actors, but it is for local authorities and mayors. for example, representatives of municipal authorities often refer to decisions made by county authorities or even the national government to frame their local governance approaches. this position is grounded on the fact, that the initial reception of asylum seekers is the responsibility of the federal state and then handed over to the county authorities. as the reception of refugees was heavily discussed within the population, several mayors dissociated themselves from the decisions made, even though they were infl uential in the decision-making process. thus, the accommodation issue is perceived as a local problem, but apparently without any local mandate to act. this self-positioning is not only performed during the interviews, but can also be found in certain practices, as one example in village i illustrates: in 2015, the county authorities decided to rent a former school building in the village for accommodating asylum seekers. the mayor then regularly reported in the offi cial journal of the municipality to keep residents updated as the reception was heavily discussed and criticized: “in order to fulfi ll the constitutional mandate with regard to the right of asylum, the distribution among the federal states is regulated by the ‘königsteiner schlüssel’ [distribution quota]. the federal states have agreed on who receives how many and which refugees because they are the receiving destinations. they also decide the determination of safe third countries. by law, the länder act as accommodation authorities for the asylum seekers. [...] the county itself is only the sum of its municipalities, in which the accommodations are set up.” (offi cial journal of the municipality, 2015, own translation) • hanne schneider430 the mayor refers to the legal obligation and decision-making of the federal and county authorities and thereby distances himself from the political decisions made at the national and state levels. in both counties, most mayors were not willing to welcome asylum seekers voluntarily in 2015. this positioning of municipal leaders led to supra-local alliances: in november 2015, 48 mayors of municipalities in the county of bautzen started a joint initiative by writing a position paper (“grundsatzerklärung“), addressed to former chancellor angela merkel, to take a stand against the further reception of migrants and national asylum politics. due to the centralized distribution mechanism in bautzen, only a few of the mayors who joined the position paper actually had to accommodate asylum seekers, while the others nonetheless felt the need to position themselves against any possible future allocation: “we bear responsibility for many active citizens and responsible people who helped to build this country over the past 25 years, especially here in east germany. we are increasingly concerned to see the decrease in social harmony, internal security, and human values; it endangers our country.” [letter by mayors in bautzen county to chancellor merkel, november 2015, own translation] this quote illustrates the close links between public discourses at the local level and policymaking at the national level as perceived by municipal actors. the participating mayors chose to emphasize the rejecting attitudes of the population rather than the supportive ones. immigration to the localities, as stated in the letter, was seen as a threat to society. in this way, the mayors did not demand more local power but rather asked for the “exclusive responsibility” [letter of mayors 2015] over asylum procedures from the federal government. haselbacher and segarra also found such strategic partnerships in their work on mayors in rural municipalities, who formed alliances to “regain power and control over the reception process” (haselbacher/segarra 2022: 11). another strategy could be found in the county of nordsachsen: the mayor of village ii described that many other municipalities were not willing to take in asylum seekers, so he tried to talk to other mayors and tried to fi nd collaborators for the reception of migrants: “in the beginning [2015], it became clear that many other mayors looked away. they ducked their heads and created a situation so that they ’didn’t have to accommodate people. they said, ‘i don’t have any apartments available’, they just ducked out, said ‘that’s a federal matter, ’it’s none of our business’. some of it is true, because it was imposed on us, to be fair. (...) but i see it [the reception of refugees] as my job and that’s why i do it. and of course, i also try to talk to other colleagues, to know their opinion. we have collaborations in the sense that we communicate with each other. we have whatsapp [messenger] groups where we simply local migration regimes in rural areas • 431 exchange ideas (...) and so, we try to fi nd some collaborators.” (interview 167, mayor, own translation) here, the mayor acted in a pragmatic matter, seeing reception as a municipal duty. still, he also offered fl ats for two reasons: the signifi cant public housing stock in the village, and a forward-looking stance concerning local demographic decline: “our kindergartens are empty, and we have some capacity in schools. […] what we need is people.” (interview 167, mayor, own translation) these examples give a brief impression of positioning processes that often boil down to being for or against shelters, affecting all actors. civil society interviewees often took a more distanced stance towards the municipal representatives and demanded, for example, long-term strategies for societal integration and for mayors to clearly distance themselves from right-wing protests:7 “for example, i think we have the wrong [integration] strategies here at the local level. (...) the migrants are our people, even if they are only temporary residents, they belong here. and i think someone in the town [administration] should also take responsibility for this.” (interview 299, political actor, own translation). this is a highly regionally infl uenced issue, as the numbers of racist incidents – often happening at reception facilities – are higher in saxony, and bautzen in particular, than elsewhere in germany (osigus et al. 2019: 91-92). 5.3 reception facilities as drivers of solidarity and confl ict in the context of refugee reception and especially the set-up of new accommodation facilities, processes of social change can be observed in the case studies. as throughout germany, in all four cases, civil society played a signifi cant role in the practical challenge of taking in refugees (e.g., setting up accommodation, distributing clothes). they also conducted integration measures, social counseling, and language courses. this was particularly evident in the data of municipalities with centralized reception facilities, where formal volunteer groups were established around collective accommodation facilities (bautzen county). all interviewees from civil society groups had also previously been active members of the local community, such as church groups, political parties, and other local non-profi t organizations. in many cases, the opening of a reception center represented a starting point for 7 in this paper, it is not possible to take a closer look at the reactions of the population itself, but the fi eldwork, interviews, and documents showed signifi cant polarization. these reactions were also perceived by political stakeholders. therefore, access to some locations as well as interview requests were refused. several municipal stakeholders were worried about their reputation, because refugee reception is not perceived a “positive“ political issue. • hanne schneider432 long-term volunteer work regarding refugees. for example, several interviewees began to take care of language courses in a center. this was especially important in both villages, which had no offi cial language classes. over time, the commitment of many volunteers decreased, and fewer people are involved. an example of this is the welcome initiative in village i, which was founded at the time the center was set up: “well, we manage everything almost alone. currently, there are only three of us left.” (interview 156, civil society/volunteer, own translation), reports one of the founding members of the group. here and in other case study sites, many retirees, former church employees, and teachers got involved. this also applies to follow-up housing, as volunteers helped to look for fl ats and provided help and equipment for moving. but reception facilities remain central places of engagement. the reception of refugees also led to new cooperation between different local actors: over time, exchange formats, such as round tables, were created at the county level for volunteers from the municipalities and professionals in integration work (mostly at county level). unlike in many urban regions, there were only few associations and professional staff with intercultural expertise. in both villages, volunteers represent the only on-site contacts, especially in the reception centers; and therefore often act as troubleshooters on short notice for issues such as trips to the foreigners’ offi ce. this creates a two-way dependency between the administration and civil society. thus, situations of frustration for both administration and volunteers are common. for example, in several interviews and fi eld trips, access to the reception centers and the use of facilities (e.g., for language classes) was an issue of discussion between the local authorities and civil society actors. the distribution of funding by the ministry of social affairs covering expenses for volunteers has also been a subject of discussion, as the volunteers must apply through the county offi ces, not directly with the state ministry. this example illustrates the strong interrelationships of (in particular regional and local) levels and actors. however, the initial motivation of many volunteers must not only be seen as driven by a humanitarian mindset, but as a product of social demarcation. several groups, especially in the county of bautzen, started their activities in reaction to right-wing protests against new housing facilities and other forms of rejection of asylum seekers (such as petitions). “we are a group of citizens who agree that we must stand up for refugees. it actually started because the npd [a far-right party] was planning to protest in front of the reception facility. then our alliance was founded and citizens of the town said, ‘okay, let’s stand up against the right wing and see what we can do about it.’ in the beginning, it was no formal association. then in 2016, [association name] was founded.” interview 298, civil society/volunteer, own translation) most initiatives, also in other municipalities, use terms such as “democracy”, “diversity” and “humanity” in their names, refl ecting principles of democratic coexistence. however, despite being highly motivated to stand up against rightlocal migration regimes in rural areas • 433 wing groups and their activities (e.g., through counterdemonstrations), most do not see themselves as “activists“. this observation shows that migrant reception in localities is not only conditioned by legislation, policy, and legal obligations. rather, migration regimes constitute “arenas of confl ict and cooperation” (oltmer 2018: 7). the decision-making on accommodation but also the housing facilities themselves constitute such spaces of confl ict and cooperation. 5.4 housing and reception facilities as spatial and temporal production of migration another set of fi ndings relates to local practices. practices such as housing strategies and discourses about these strategies function as spatial production of migration. the results show that the negotiation about and decision-making for new reception facilities play a signifi cant role in the debate about migration. in many of the interviews, housing strategies serve as a yardstick of integration in a broader sense: for example, decentralized housing is often associated with the idea that it promotes social integration; centralized housing and mass accommodation, on the other hand, are usually associated with a lower likelihood of integration. another fi nding points to the exclusionary consequences of housing practices usually known from urban contexts: most asylum seekers and recognized refugees live in municipal housing stock, as it is widely available in both counties, and access is provided mostly with the support of social workers and municipal offi cials. this was particularly evident in the two examined towns. municipal apartment buildings are often placed near each other, sometimes for practical reasons for social workers and the municipal housing society. these apartments are also often set in stigmatized neighborhoods because municipal housing mainly hosts residents who receive social welfare. this is a specifi c problem in town ii (nordsachsen): since the 1990s, different migrant groups have largely lived in one part of the town, and refugees have also been brought there. for years, the number of eastern european migrants increased, often working in precarious factory jobs. this is accompanied by problems in the neighborhood and the perception of migration as a problem. “in this respect, [this town district] is a ‘problem zone’ because it has developed into a socially troubled area, because not only a lot of newcomers from abroad but also many socially deprived germans live here.” (interview 310, civil society organization, own translation) in town i, most of the refugees also live in the same neighborhood: “almost all [of the refugees] live here in [town district]. there are two blocks of fl ats where they distributed them, but that doesn’t work. it always depends on the housing situation, the capacity, the possibilities. and here, it is like a small kreuzberg [district in berlin].” (interview 298, civil society/volunteer, own translation) • hanne schneider434 in many cases, these municipal apartments are placed in large residential blocks (built in the gdr). consequently, even so-called “decentralized“ accommodation (meaning own apartments rather than collective reception centers) does not necessarily mean that refugee households are mixed with other households in a building, to provide opportunities for encounter and inclusion. furthermore, it became evident that there is a temporary character in the local negotiation of refugee reception. for example, several interview partners described them as “guests.” one of our interview partners assumed that this could also have to do with the structure of rural societies between “newcomers“ and “residents“. “from my perspective, this is often linked to sort of a two-class society. so that even the municipal authorities and decision-makers perceive them [the refugees] as guests and not as residents.” (interview 306, civil society organization, own translation) this example clearly shows the relevance of spatially sensitive perspectives in migration studies: “the rural“ not only serves as a spatial but also as a societal category, including ideas of a homogeneous society that is reluctant to social changes (hubbard 2005: 62-63). however, it cannot be determined conclusively whether these phenomena are produced by rural or social-structural regional phenomena (“super-homogeneous”, rees et al. 2022). 6 discussion: understanding refugee reception through the lens of local migration regimes the perspective of local migration regimes promises useful insights for case studies and comparative locality studies by emphasizing spatial context, actors, and power constellations. as a fi rst step towards addressing local migration regimes through empirical studies, i suggest highlighting contextual factors (see section 4) as recognition of space in empirical designs. the counties of bautzen and nordsachsen provide distinctive contexts as rural counties and post-socialist immigration societies. in the municipalities discussed here, refugee reception is seen as a (temporal) challenge rather than as a chance for rural development. to a certain extent, this might be explained by past experience (or rather non-experience) with migrant integration, resulting in a lack of awareness of local migration history. furthermore, the right-wing political landscape infl uences decision-making and actor constellations. this was particularly notable in the two case studies of bautzen. it remains unclear to what extent these attitudes are rooted in the rural context or the post-socialist setting (see, e.g., hinger/schäfer 2019: 73-74). as previous research suggested, the area of refugee accommodation is an essential fi eld for negotiating migration. as one issue within a broader local migration regime, it shows actor constellations on the local level, including confl icts and collaborative practices (e.g., in the decision-making for collective accommodation). the “long summer of migration“ in 2014/2015 can be described local migration regimes in rural areas • 435 as a driver for social change and the emergence of civil society action on migrationrelated issues. this has been linked to the set-up of housing facilities. however, civil society action, municipal self-perception, and local solidarity discourse are far from the “solidarity city“ movements observed in many urban contexts (bendel et al. 2019). the fi ndings support cabral and swerts’ regime analysis in rural portugal in that the pressuring role of civil society/pro-migrant groups is rare or absent when compared to urban contexts (cabral/swerts 2021: 192). in the case studies in saxony, more pressure coming from anti-migrant groups and petitions was found. migrant reception in localities is conditioned by legislation, policy, and legal obligations because migration regimes create “arenas of confl ict and cooperation” (oltmer 2018: 7) also driven by societal perceptions of migration and political actor constellations. the fi ndings also challenge the image of rural areas as idyllic places of migrant reception: even though certain “urban problems“ such as a shortage of housing are less pressing, the study demonstrates spatial challenges which have often been described as urban phenomena: similar to kreichauf’s (2015) fi ndings, this paper shows exclusionary processes such as “spatial isolation” and “decentral location” by housing strategies (kreichauf 2015: 20). the placement of refugees within localities can also be seen as a refl ection of societal negotiation surrounding the housing question. this shows how rural regions not only constitute “spatial contexts” for the reception of migrants, but also contribute to “spatial production” of migration (pott 2018: 121-122). the latter can be shaped, for example, by social practices that affect migration and, for example, generate exclusionary mechanisms. however, the spatial features might impact this social production of migration. in the case studies such practices were seen, for example, in solidarity initiatives but also counter-movements, such as xenophobic protests. the protests organized by right-wing parties as well as actions by local offi cials and civil society illustrate how contentious refugee accommodation is at the local level. some municipal authorities have built supra-local alliances against national decision-making, especially in bautzen county. in contrast, the mayor of the nordsachsen village case chose a more receptive approach based on socio-economic assumptions of demographic development. this highlights the fragmentation of reception policies. thus, the rural case studies imply that local migration regimes are not only “local”, but also strongly embedded the county and state levels. due to limited resources and less experience with the reception of migrants, supra-municipal cooperation and dependencies of the intermediate level are more distinct than in the context of cities. in sum, examining refugee reception through the lens of local migration regimes highlights the “complexity of constellations” (bernt 2019: 11) but challenges an empirical analytic framework: the perspective of local migration regimes indicates a multi-method approach, which is a challenge for empirical analysis. it, therefore, limits the analytical depth of the particular aspects and qualitative data material. however, this heuristic framework provides an overview about most important contextual features of the case studies and the societal negotiations of migration• hanne schneider436 related issues. a further benefi t of this concept is the interdisciplinary links between perspectives inspired by political scientist, human geographers and sociologists. 7 concluding remarks this paper examines the reception and housing of refugees by applying the local migration regime perspective to rural contexts. using this heuristic framework, the fi ndings illustrate that the negotiation of migration and also the reception of refugees is not a new issue, but a recurrent and contested one in the last decade. additionally, the example of refugee reception reveals a broad picture of social structures such as positioning processes among civil society and political actors driven by regional public opinion. the analysis goes beyond commonly-examined urban settings, providing both empirical and methodological insights. four municipal contexts in two counties in saxony (bautzen and nordsachsen) are explored. these counties developed different approaches towards the reception and housing of refugees. the fi ndings highlight the importance of studying migration through a local lens, showing a fragmentation and strong dependencies between the different levels constituting migration regimes (national, regional and supra-local). the study has certain limitations: migrant/refugee perspectives were not directly included in the analysis since the questionnaire of the migrant interviews is only of limited relevance to the research question of this paper. however, these perspectives are part of the fi eld experiences (and memos) of the framework project from which the data originated.8 in further research, both perspectives should be addressed. the framework itself sets another restriction: it is limited to capturing regime settings as a whole, as opposed to using, for example, a discourse method or empirical framework on local policies. however, it carries implications for further case studies in rural areas. from a conceptual point of view, the regime perspective broadens the analysis of local cases but also challenges research concepts with respect to operationalization. in this contribution, the inductive analysis of interviews and examination of other data sources (newspaper articles, collected documents, and fi eldwork memos) were helpful in applying this broader view. for more indepth studies of local migration regimes, i suggest fewer numbers of cases and longer-term fi eldwork to cover temporal developments. further, the aspects of local regimes should be linked to existing explanatory concepts. for rural regions, research remains a practical challenge, mainly due to the larger research area and long travel distances, compared to cities (covering municipalities and counties as “the local“). 8 for further insights see, e.g., weidinger/kordel 2020; glorius et al. 2021. local migration regimes in rural areas • 437 funding note and acknowledgement the research which led to this paper was supported by funds of the federal ministry of food and agriculture (bmel) based on a decision of the parliament of the federal republic of germany via the federal offi ce for agriculture and food (ble) under the rural development program (“future for refugees in rural areas”, funding code 2817le0xx, project period 01.01.2018 – 31.05.2021). i want to thank all our respondents and participants for their time to partake in the study. i am also indebted to all colleagues as well as student assistants of the joint research project. last but not least, i am thankful for the fruitful suggestions of the reviewers as well as those of birgit glorius. references adam, francesca et al. 2020: municipal housing strategies for refugees. insights from two case studies in germany. in: glorius, birgit; doomernik, jeroen (eds.): geographies of asylum in europe and the role of european localities. imiscoe research series. cham: springer international publishing: 201-223. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25666-1_10 alexander, michael 2007: cities and labour migration. comparing policy responses in amsterdam, paris, rome and tel aviv. hampshire, burlington: ashgate. 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politics of us immigration. in: journal of ethnic and migration studies 40,7: 1040-1059. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2013.831544 weidinger, tobias; kordel, stefan 2020: access to and exclusion from housing over time: refugees' experiences in rural areas. in: international migration. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12807 weiss, karin 2018: zuwanderung und integration in den neuen bundesländern. in: gesemann, frank; roth, roland (eds.): handbuch lokale integrationspolitik. wiesbaden: springer vs: 125-143. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13409-9_6 wiest, karin 2020: ordinary places of postmigrant societies: dealing with difference in west and east german neighbourhoods. in: urban planning 5,3: 115-126. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v5i3.2960 woods, michael 2018: precarious rural cosmopolitanism: negotiating globalization, migration and diversity in irish small towns. in: journal of rural studies 64: 164-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.03.014 zapata-barrero, ricard; caponio, tiziana; scholten, peter 2017: theorizing the ‘local turn’ in a multi-level governance framework of analysis: a case study in immigrant policies. in: international review of administrative sciences 83,2: 241-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852316688426 date of submission: 15.06.2021 date of acceptance: 29.08.2022 hanne schneider (). technische universität chemnitz. institut für europäische studien und geschichtswissenschaft. chemnitz, germany. e-mail: hanne.schneider@phil.tu-chemnitz.de url: https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/iesg/professuren/geographie/mitarbeiter/hs.php published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the impact of terrorism on fertility: evidence from women of childbearing age in pakistan the impact of terrorism on fertility: evidence from women of childbearing age in pakistan umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao abstract: direct and indirect exposure to terrorist attacks can have a signi cant impact on major life decisions, including the choice of whether to have a child. this study aims to investigate how terrorist attacks affect fertility. by pooling data from three years of cross-sectional surveys conducted between 2010 and 2015 by the pakistan bureau of statistics, our  ndings reveal a positive correlation between terrorist attacks and fertility among women of childbearing age in pakistan. speci cally, the probability of giving birth two years following a terrorist attack in one’s home district, all else equal, is 64 percent, compared to the probability of a woman not giving birth two years following a terrorist attack, which is 36 percent. furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that persistent terrorist attacks, that is, domestic and non-suicide incidents, result in higher probabilities of giving birth during a particular year. conversely, less common and more prominent terrorist attacks – transnational and suicide incidents – result in lower probabilities of giving birth during a particular year. additionally, we  nd that women from above-averageincome households, those with higher education levels, older mothers, and those residing in rural areas are more likely to adjust their fertility upwards in response to terrorist attacks. keywords: fertility · terrorist attacks · con ict · childbearing · pakistan 1 introduction tens of thousands of people die in terrorist attacks globally each year (herre et al. 2023), and many more are exposed to risk from terrorist attacks. exposure to terrorism in uences realized fertility and therefore warrants in-depth research (torrisi 2020). the issue has implications for how countries provide resources for pre-natal care and medical professional education and training if there is persistent terrorist activity in the area. to explore the connection between terrorism and fertility, we use pakistan as a case study. the persistent exposure to terrorist attacks comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 685-700 (date of release: 27.11.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-27 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-27en4 • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao686 and heterogeneous population of pakistan make the country an appropriate context to explore the impacts of terrorism on realized fertility. in pakistan, there were four terrorist attacks in 2000. this increased to 144 attacks in 2010 alone and then decreased to 23 attacks in 2016. over the period from 2000 to 2016, these attacks resulted in 19,407 deaths and 32,831 injuries (national consortium for the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism (start) 2015). our study is related to two streams of academic literature: population economics and the economics of con ict. this study builds on the work of torrisi (2020) and berrebi and ostwald (2015). we employ a micro-level analysis using data on individual women. the existing literature uses the total fertility rate and crude birth rate to examine this relationship. in their global analysis, berrebi and ostwald (2015) suggest that the negative effect of terrorism on fertility is driven by highincome economies that suffered terrorist attacks during the analyzed 1970-2007 period. in high-income economies, children may be treated as a cost, and like a “normal” good. furthermore, consumption is reduced when uncertainty increases (black et al. 2013). however, in lower-income economies, parents treat children as  nancial insurance to secure their livelihoods in old age (agadjanian/prata 2002). these dynamics suggest a  nancial security hypothesis, where there is a positive relationship between fertility and uncertainty, such as terrorism. we explore the terrorism–fertility relationship along various socioeconomic categories: age, education level, spousal occupation, household disposable income, and residential location. we employ a logistic regression approach on individuallevel data to understand the relationship between terrorism and fertility. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section 2 reviews relevant literature on terrorism and fertility and covers the context of pakistan as it relates to terrorism and fertility. sections 3 and 4 elaborate on the data and methodology used. sections 5 and 6 describe the results and conclude the paper. 2 terrorism and fertility terrorism can in uence fertility in numerous ways. this issue has been the focus of research covering different contexts over diverse time periods. the literature shows that – depending on circumstances and context – terrorism can lead to both increases and decreases in fertility. torrisi (2020) estimates the impact of armed con ict on fertility outcomes in postindependence azerbaijan using micro-level data from 2006,  nding that women who experience violent con ict have a higher probability of having a second child. similarly, boko haram attacks from 2011 to 2017 positively in uenced the fertility choices of nigerian households in order to overcome unexpected future shocks (rotondi/rocca 2021). their result gives credence to the security hypothesis that parents use children as  nancial insurance to secure their livelihoods in old age. evidence from colombia in the 2000s also shows a positive link between internal armed con ict and fertility: castro torres and urdinola (2019)  nd higher fertility rates in rural municipalities with con ict compared to territories without con ict. the impact of terrorism on fertility • 687 however, they  nd no signi cant relationship between fertility and con ict in urban areas. across these contexts, the constant threat of terrorism stimulates an increase in fertility as households seek to compensate for the additional risks that terrorism brings. these impacts include increased unemployment (malik/zaman 2013), lower economic growth (gupta et al. 2004), and lower investment (efobi/asongu 2016). persistent terrorism attacks may mean that more children are needed in the household, as household members may be killed in terrorist attacks at any time (chamarbagwala/morán 2011). a decline in alternative sources of income, as a result of terrorist activities, also increases the likelihood of a greater number of children. con icts result in an increase in the average age at marriage, increased education costs, and increased stress, but can also contribute to future poverty alleviation and prosperous economic conditions (caldwell 2007; eloundou-enyegue et al. 2000; khawaja et al. 2009; kraehnert et al. 2019; lindstrom/berhanu 1999; rodgers et al. 2005). in palestine, another con ict-ridden region, khawaja and randall (2006)  nd exceptionally high levels of fertility. this was particularly the case for women with nine or fewer years of education. women under 25 years of age also show higher fertility rates, which can be attributed to the intifada having stimulated marriage rates and thus overall fertility. toft (2021) attributes higher fertility rates among both muslims and ultra-orthodox jews in palestine and israel to the desire to increase the future populations of ethnic and religious groups in order to increase political in uence. however, there is also evidence of a negative relationship between armed con ict and population growth, especially in larger municipalities and ideologically polarized provinces (sanso-navarro et al. 2019). terrorism can also negatively impact fertility intentions through poor nutrition and the lack of (or poor) prenatal care and miscarriages (silverman et al. 2007). psychological stress and stress related to changes in occupation also in uence menstrual cycles, affecting fertility (bents 1985; fenster et al. 1999). berrebi and ostwald (2015) employ panel data from 170 countries examining the in uence of terrorism on fertility. they show that terrorism decreases fertility while addressing endogeneity concerns by using the instrumental variable of domestic terrorist attacks in neighboring countries. households might revise their fertility decisions either through the deferral of marriage or by ceasing to bear children as a result of economic crisis. economic crises lead to reduced household income, an increased cost of child education, and make the expected future income of children more uncertain due to unemployment (eloundou-enyegue et al. 2000). however, a counterargument also exists, in that earlier and more frequent childbearing can alleviate poverty (cain 1983; nugent 1985). this review of the literature demonstrates that there is con icting evidence for the direction in which terrorism and armed con ict impacts household fertility decisions. this relationship is in uenced by the extent, locality, and intensity of the con ict. furthermore, the issue needs to be tested empirically in many different • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao688 contexts to establish generalizability, examine causal mechanisms, and probe potential scope conditions. 2.1 terrorism and pakistan pakistan is divided into four provinces: khyber pakhtunkhwa (kpk), sindh, punjab, and balochistan, along with a capital territory and two autonomous regions (azad kashmir and gilgit baltistan). pakistan has suffered substantial economic and social losses while being a major us ally in the war against terrorism (ali 2010) and shares a long border with afghanistan. pakistan’s western provinces of kpk and balochistan, adjacent to afghanistan, sustained approximately 65 percent of the total terrorist attacks in pakistan during the period of 2000-15. pakistan has lost an estimated $35-40 billion since 2000-01 due to the con icts in the region (ali 2010). during the us war in afghanistan, many militants took refuge in the tribal areas located on the pakistan-afghanistan border (gunaratna/nielsen 2008). after the collapse of the soviet union in 1988–91, the taliban emerged as a main political force in afghanistan with very strong connections in the districts situated along the border (akhtar 2008). pakistan shares its entire eastern border with india across the two provinces of punjab and sindh. the punjab province has witnessed fewer than half the number of terrorist attacks the sindh province has, but the intensity of the attacks in punjab was much higher and destructive in nature (on average,  ve deaths per attack compared to two deaths per attack in sindh). terrorists generally choose their targets according to factors such as maximum intimidation and media coverage (alexander/finger 1979), and the western provinces offer greater opportunities along these dimensions than the eastern provinces do. figure 1 illustrates terrorists attacks in pakistan from 2000 to 2013. 3 data to explore the relationship between fertility and terrorism, we employ two data sources. first, we extract household-level data from the pakistan social and living standards measurements (pslm) for the period of 2010-11 to 2014-15, collected by the pakistan bureau of statistics (2016) every other year. second, data related to terrorist attacks from 2008-13 is obtained from the global terrorism database (gtd), managed by the national consortium for the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism (start) (2015). we obtain the outcome variable and demographics from three separate cross-sectional data waves of the pslm (2010-11, 2012-13, and 2014-15), harmonize the coding across these three waves, and then pool them. the survey covers all four provinces of pakistan (punjab, sindh, kpk, and balochistan), except the federally administered tribal areas (fata), which are omitted due to data availability (due to security concerns). there is a total number of 114 districts in the four provinces of pakistan. the province of balochistan has 26 districts. the other three provinces contain 85 districts. the pslm applies a two-stage strati ed sampling procedure to the population. each city or town is classi ed into blocks, and the impact of terrorism on fertility • 689 each block is considered a primary sampling unit (psu). each psu comprises 200250 households, out of which 16 and 12 are drawn from each block using systematic random sampling from rural and urban blocks, respectively (government of pakistan 2014). a total of 79,600 households are surveyed, which are contained within 5,563 enumeration blocks. table 1 (panel a) presents the summary statistics. our outcome variable is fertility, a binary variable. we assign a value of “1” if the woman gave birth during any year from 2010 to 2015, and “0” otherwise. we  rst identify all children born from 2010 to 2015 and then match the infants with their respective mothers by using the unique identi cation code for that household. we consider women aged 16 to 45 years, as marrying at a relatively young age is common in pakistan. these women of childbearing age could potentially have their fertility affected by terrorism. only married women are included in our analyses, as cohabitation without a marriage certi cate is practically impossible in the social setup of pakistan. the  nal sample consists of 11,055 female respondents. while we control for parents’ education in our analyses, it is important to note that there are missing values regarding the education of the mother. the dataset shows that 86 percent of women in this age bracket gave birth from 2010 to 2015. urban women comprise 52 percent of all observations. the average age of women in this study is approximately 30 years. we also extract the number of older siblings of the infants born from 2010 to 2015 in each family. on average, there are approximately two older siblings in a fig. 1: terrorist attacks in pakistan (2000-13) source: global terrorism database (gtd) • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao690 household, with the number ranging from 0 to 10. we further control for the number of persons in a family eligible to be in the labor force, which includes respondents aged 15 to 60 years old. on average, a family contains two to three household members that are in the labor force. given the societal preference for sons over daughters in pakistan (zaidi 2022), we also control for the number of sons. the number of sons in the sample households ranges from 0 to 8, with an average of one son per household. the data under analysis, based on the population concentration across provinces, are representative, with 69 percent from punjab, 21 percent from sindh, 8 percent from khyber pakhtunkhwa (kpk), and 2 percent from balochistan. the education system in pakistan consists of various levels starting from kindergarten, primary education (equivalent to  ve years), elementary or middle school education (equivalent to eight years), secondary school (equivalent to ten years), higher secondary (equivalent to twelve years), a four-year undergraduate degree that includes professional certi cations (equivalent to 16 years), and postgraduate studies. we classify formal education into three levels: illiterate and lower-level, medium-level, and higher-level education. among the female respondents, the distribution of educational levels is 38 percent illiterate and lower-level, 39 percent medium-level, and 23 percent higher-level. the corresponding educational levels of their male spouses are 23 percent illiterate and lower-level, 47 percent mediumlevel, and 30 percent higher-level. we also control for women’s birth cohorts and construct four-decade cohorts, from 1961 to 2000, recognizing that women from different decades may have different attitudes toward fertility due to growing up in distinct eras. we also account for the social status of households based on 24 home appliances used in daily life, categorized as low level (0 to 7 assets), medium level (8 to 15 assets), and high level (16 to 24 assets). terrorism involves the use of violence by sub-national groups or concealed individuals against civilians to achieve unlawful objectives and in uence a broader audience. our key exogenous variable is the logarithm of the second lag year’s terrorist attacks. in table 1 (panel b), our terrorism-related variables are summarized. the data related to terrorist attacks are obtained from the gtd, a dataset widely used in studies involving terrorism (tin et al. 2021). we use the dataset because it classi es attacks into various types. we consider two main characteristics of terrorist attacks: domestic and transnational, and suicide and non-suicide. suicide attacks are particularly important in the existing literature (choi 2014) due to their high fatality rates and great psychological impact (pape 2003). we use the method developed by enders et al. (2011) to estimate transnational attacks that result in elevated global insecurity (piazza 2008). a transnational terrorist attack occurs when the victim and perpetrator are from different countries of origin (sandler 2011). table 1 (panel b) indicates that domestic and non-suicide terrorist attacks are more common, while suicide attacks and transnational attacks are less common. we therefore separately examine the impact of these attack types on fertility outcomes. on average, a district in pakistan experienced approximately four terrorist attacks two years prior to the year in which births were reported, with the number of attacks the impact of terrorism on fertility • 691 ranging from 0 to 155. we consider terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality and/or injury (enders et al. 2011). tab. 1: descriptive statistics variables obs. mean sd min max panel a: outcome variable fertility (any child born from 2010-15) 11,055 0.86 0 1 controls urban 11,055 0.52 age (years) 11,055 30.45 5.40 16 45 older siblings (n) 11,055 2.34 1.72 0 10 labor force members in the household (n) 11,055 2.54 1.18 1 12 sons in the household (n) 11,055 1.19 1.16 0 8 province punjab 11,055 0.69 sindh 11,055 0.21 kpk 11,055 0.08 balochistan 11,055 0.02 educational level of female illiterate and lower level education 11,055 0.38 medium level education 11,055 0.39 higher level education 11,055 0.23 educational level of spouse illiterate and lower level education 11,055 0.23 medium level education 11,055 0.47 higher level education 11,055 0.30 decade birth cohort for women >=1961 & <=1970 11,055 0.01 >=1971 & <=1980 11,055 0.32 >=1981 & <=1990 11,055 0.59 >=1991 & <=2000 11,055 0.08 household social status low level 11,055 0.19 medium level 11,055 0.75 high level 11,055 0.06 panel b: independent variables; terrorist attacks in each respondent’s district of residence terrorist attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome 11,055 3.55 9.40 0 155 domestic terrorist attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome 11,055 3.36 9.02 0 153 transnational terrorist attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome 11,055 0.19 0.53 0 12 non-suicide terrorist attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome 11,055 2.88 8.72 0 151 suicide terrorist attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome 11,055 0.67 1.67 0 12 source: own calculation based on the pakistan social and living standards measurements (pslm) for the period of 2010-11 to 2014-15 • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao692 4 methodology to explore whether terrorism impacts fertility, we ran binary logistic regressions, given the binary nature of the variable of interest: “1” if childbirth occurred in any year from 2010 to 2015, and “0” if otherwise. the baseline model is expressed as follows: ydit = β0 + β1 logterrorismd,t-2+ β2 xdit + ϕt + µd + β3 hdit + ɛdit in equation (1), ydit is the dependent variable for an individual woman i living in a particular district d and surveyed in a particular year t. logterrorismd,t-2 is the logarithm of the number of terrorist attacks two years ago. it represents the main explanatory variable of interest. its coef cient can be interpreted as the effect of (the logarithm of) terrorist attacks on whether a woman gave birth two years later. the use of logarithms instead of absolute values is appropriate when dealing with skewed data, as is the case with terrorism data. the gestation period for a baby is approximately nine months. an infant born today is the result of a decision made around 12 months ago. such decisions can be in uenced by terrorist attacks in the preceding year. due to data limitations, it is challenging to differentiate between intended and unintended pregnancies, as well as the use of contraception. the rationale behind using terrorist attacks from two years prior is based on their potential impact on fertility outcomes in the current year. xdit includes a set of demographic control variables, such as the woman’s education level, residential location, birth decade cohort, and age in years. the covariate ϕt accounts for year-speci c effects from 2010 to 2015. these yearly  xed effects capture temporal variations consistent across districts. additionally, district  xed effects µd are included to control for time-invariant differences across districts that might confound the relationship between fertility and terrorism. household variables hdit are also controlled for, including the number of labor force members in the household, the number of older siblings of the infant, the spouse’s education level, the household’s social status, and the number of sons in the household. in equation (1), β1 represents the main coef cient of interest. 5 results 5.1 baseline evidence in table 2, we present our baseline evidence from the logistic regressions, illustrating the association between terrorist attacks and fertility outcomes two years after those terrorist attacks. the estimates in columns 1 to 5 encompass comprehensive model speci cations that include district  xed effects, year dummies, demographic variables, and household controls. these columns exhibit signi cant odds ratios greater than 1, except for transnational and suicide attacks in columns 3 and 5, respectively. based on the coef cient in column 1, a one-unit increase in log terrorist (1) the impact of terrorism on fertility • 693 attacks two years prior to the fertility outcome corresponds to an odds ratio of 1.79, signifying that the odds of giving birth in a particular year are approximately 1.79 times higher per log terrorist attack. in table 3, we display the probabilities of giving birth, given terrorist attacks. the probability of a woman giving birth two years following a terrorist attack, all else equal, is 64 percent compared to the probability of a woman not giving birth two years following a terrorist attack, which is 36 percent. we further differentiate the overall terrorist attacks into two classi cations: domestic and transnational terrorist attacks, and non-suicide and suicide terrorist attacks. domestic and non-suicide terrorist attacks are more common, whereas transnational and suicide attacks are rarer. our observations from table 3 indicate that the probability of giving birth two years following domestic terrorist attacks is 65 percent, while the probability of giving birth two years following non-suicide terrorist attacks is 72 percent. conversely, in the presence of less frequent terrorist attacks, the probability of giving birth in a particular year is 19 percent (transnational) and 31 percent (suicide), respectively. transnational terrorist attacks (column 3) and suicide terrorist attacks (column 5) occur less frequently and therefore may have a lower impact on fertility outcomes. in contrast, domestic and non-suicide terrorist attacks occur on a regular basis. this suggests that fertility outcomes are in uenced more by consistent exposure to terrorist attacks than by sporadic occurrences. tab. 2: baseline logit estimations (coef cients represent the odds ratio) variables 1 2 3 4 5 terrorist attacks occurring two years 1.79** prior to the fertility outcome (0.530) domestic terrorist attacks occurring two 1.84** years prior to the fertility outcome (0.546) transnational terrorist attacks occurring 0.24** two years prior to the fertility outcome (0.172) non-suicide terrorist attacks occurring 2.61*** two years prior to the fertility outcome (0.967) suicide terrorist attacks occurring two 0.44** years prior to the fertility outcome (0.141) observations 11,055 11,055 11,055 11,055 11,055 district fixed effects y y y y y year fixed effects y y y y y demographic controls y y y y y household controls y y y y y robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the district level *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 source: own calculation • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao694 5.2 the terrorism-fertility nexus by age, education, spousal education, income and residence in table 4, we present further results for two sociodemographic segments: age groups and education levels. in the  rst two columns, age groups are divided into two segments: 16 to 30 years and 31 to 45 years. older women exhibit a higher probability of giving birth, as evidenced by the signi cant coef cient in column 2, in contrast to younger women, whose coef cient in column 1 is not statistically signi cant. in columns 3-5, we categorize education levels into three groups: illiterate and lower, medium, and higher. women with medium and higher education levels are more likely to give birth during any year within the speci ed time period compared to women with lower or no formal education. speci cally, the probability of women aged 31 to 45 and with medium and higher education levels giving birth, in the presence of terrorist attacks occurring two years prior, is 68 percent, 70 percent and 67 percent, respectively. the coef cients for the younger age group (16 to 30 years) and for the illiterate and lower education levels are not statistically signi cant. notably, older women’s fertility appears to be more sensitive to terrorist attacks. this aligns with the intuitive understanding that older women may be more likely to have more children to provide support during their old age. in table 5, we segment the sample into three categories based on spousal occupation: employer, employee, and those who work in agriculture. as shown in columns 1 and 2, households where the spouse is either an employer or an tab. 3: baseline logit estimations (coef cients represent probabilities) variables 1 2 3 4 5 terrorist attacks occurring two years 0.64** prior to the fertility outcome (0.530) domestic terrorist attacks occurring two 0.65** years prior to the fertility outcome (0.546) transnational terrorist attacks occurring 0.19** two years prior to the fertility outcome (0.172) non-suicide terrorist attacks occurring 0.72*** two years prior to the fertility outcome (0.967) suicide terrorist attacks occurring two 0.31** years prior to the fertility outcome (0.141) observations 11,055 11,055 11,055 11,055 11,055 district fixed effects y y y y y year fixed effects y y y y y demographic controls y y y y y household controls y y y y y robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the district level *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 source: own calculation the impact of terrorism on fertility • 695 employee display signi cant positive coef cients. consequently, the probability of giving birth in a particular year for households with employers and employees, in the presence of previous terrorist attacks occurring two years prior, is 76 percent and 63 percent respectively. conversely, for households where the spouse is engaged in agricultural work, terrorism does not seem to exert an impact on fertility, as indicated by the non-signi cant coef cient. in table 6, the sample is divided into two sub-samples: by belowand aboveaverage personal disposable income of the household, and by the location of residence as either urban or rural. the  ndings indicate that a female residing in a rural area and in a household with above-average income is more likely to give birth in the presence of terrorist attacks. these results are in contrast to zhang (2017), who found that households where the spouse works in a lower-level occupation, tab. 4: results by age group and education levels (coef cients represent probabilities) variables 1 2 3 4 5 age groups (years) education levels 16 to 30 31 to 45 illiterate and medium higher lower terrorist attacks occurring two years 0.60 0.68** 0.58 0.70*** 0.67*** prior to the fertility outcome (0.326) (0.308) (0.435) (0.314) (0.250) observations 5,580 5,190 4,566 4,022 2,206 district fixed effects y y y y y year fixed effects y y y y y demographic controls y y y y y robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the district level *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 source: own calculation tab. 5: results by spouse occupation (coef cients represent probabilities) variables (1) (2) (3) employer employee agriculture terrorist attacks occurring two years 0.76*** 0.63** 0.37 prior to the fertility outcome (0.415) (0.248) (0.509) observations 3,451 5,561 1,369 district fixed effects y y y year fixed effects y y y demographic controls y y y robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the district level *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 source: own calculation • umer javeid, stephen pratt, han li, guachang zhao696 such as the agricultural sector, and earns a below-average wage are more likely to marry a less educated woman and demand more children, implying that children are considered “inferior” goods (zhang 2017); an inverse relation between family size and income. 6 conclusions and policy recommendations in this study, we empirically explore the relationship between different types of terrorist attacks and fertility outcomes at the individual level using logistic regression. this micro-level analysis is a less common approach in the literature on the subject. our estimation delves into the impact of terrorist attacks on the fertility of women in pakistan. we combine data from three cross-sectional surveys conducted between 2010 and 2015 across 114 districts in four provinces of pakistan, as provided by the pakistan bureau of statistics. the main  nding of our study is that terrorism is associated with an increase in the likelihood of childbirth. women in pakistan exposed to a terrorist incident in a given year are 1.79 times more likely to have a child within two years compared to women who haven’t been exposed to such incidents. additionally, our research reveals an intriguing nuance: households tend to choose to have a child when exposed to domestic and non-suicide terrorist incidents, which occur more frequently, while they are less likely to do so when exposed to transnational and suicide terrorist incidents, which are less frequent but larger in magnitude. as per stress theory, chronic exposure to stressors are more likely to have long-term effects on physical and mental health, which disturb the normal course of life much more than infrequent events, such as transnational or suicide terrorist incidents this nuanced  nding is novel and hasn’t been previously observed in the literature. tab. 6: results by personal disposable income and residence location (coef cients represent probabilities) variables (1) (2) (3) (4) personal disposable income residence location below average above average urban rural terrorist attacks occurring two years 0.62* 0.68** 0.60 0.68** prior to the fertility outcome (0.294) (0.376) (0.281) (0.335) observations 7,006 3,852 6,629 4,205 district fixed effects y y y y year fixed effects y y y y demographic controls y y y y robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the district level *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 source: own calculation the impact of terrorism on fertility • 697 furthermore, we segment our analysis by various socioeconomic variables to gain a deeper understanding of how terrorism impacts fertility. our results shed light on the fertility patterns of women in different population segments. women with higher education levels, those with higher personal disposable income, older women, and women living in rural regions are more likely to give birth in the face of terrorist attacks. we posit that this trend could be attributed to children being perceived as a form of insurance for these women’s futures. more children can contribute to household income, and in the case of untimely family deaths due to a poorer standard of living or terrorist attacks, they can provide support for their mothers in old age (cain 1983; nugent 1985). our results align with drèze and murthi (2001), who emphasize the signi cant role of parents’ education levels in shaping fertility outcomes. this study contributes to the existing knowledge in this domain by shedding light on a developing country such as pakistan. similar to other populous asian countries with inadequate basic facilities, our research offers insights for policymakers on where to allocate resources. a primary recommendation is to enhance the country’s security by curbing terrorism, allowing households to make family size decisions without the fear of con ict-induced child loss. policymakers should also concentrate public sector funds on higher-income households and older mothers, who are more likely to have higher birth rates due to the impact of terrorism. public health efforts could focus on providing prenatal healthcare and family planning education to women to enable informed decisions (lichtman-sadot et al. 2022). investing in healthcare services, particularly maternity care, and training healthcare professionals such as obstetricians and midwives can enhance the quality of care. demographers in the public sector should be mindful that con ict and terrorism can lead to population growth as women opt for more children as a form of insurance. there are limitations to our study which provide opportunities for further research. we focused on estimating the impact of terrorist attacks on fertility at the individual level. however, our study also has certain data limitations. for instance, we encountered missing data, particularly regarding the education level of the mother. additionally, our study could not distinguish between intended and unintended pregnancies, and does not capture information about contraceptive usage. these limitations point to potential areas for future research and re nement in understanding the relationship between terrorism and fertility outcomes. furthermore, some women in the sample may have directly experienced terrorist attacks and decided to have another child due to this experience. the replacement effect of lost children – previously extensively studied in demography – is not the focus of our research. • umer 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(ed.): a research agenda for political demography. cheltenham, uk: edward elgar: 101-114. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788975742.00014 torrisi, orsola 2020: armed con ict and the timing of childbearing in azerbaijan. in: population and development review 46,3: 501-556. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12359 zaidi, batool 2022: son preference and sex differentials in receipt of key dimensions of children’s healthcare: evidence from pakistan. in: population studies 76,2: 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2022.2032290 zhang, junsen 2017: the evolution of china’s one-child policy and its effects on family outcomes. in: journal of economic perspectives 31,1: 141-160. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.1.141 date of submission: 06.01.2023 date of acceptance: 13.09.2023 dr. umer javeid. university of the punjab (gujranwala campus) pakistan. lahore, pakistan. e-mail: umer.javeid@pugc.edu.pk prof. dr. stephen pratt (). university of central florida. florida, usa. e-mail: stephen.pratt@ucf.edu url: https://hospitality.ucf.edu/person/stephen-pratt/ prof. dr. han li, prof. dr. guachang zhao. southwestern university of finance and economics. chengdu, china. e-mail: hli@swufe.edu.cn; guochangzhao@swufe.edu.cn url: https://cn.linkedin.com/in/han-li-a71590a7 https://gczhao.weebly.com/about.html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) does sex matter? the role of sexual and relationship satisfaction on living apart together relationship transitions does sex matter? the role of sexual and relationship satisfaction on living apart together relationship transitions alexandra-andreea ciritel abstract: there is limited understanding of how the aspects of sex and relationship quality are related to decisions on whether to move in together, separate or continue dating among living-apart together (lat) couples. this paper focuses on sexual and relationship satisfaction in understanding lat relationship transitions into coresidence or separation in germany. the longitudinal prospective design of the german panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics data (pairfam, waves 1-9) is used. discrete-time competing risk hazard models on lat relationship outcomes to coresidence or separation are estimated. the results underline the fact that sexual satisfaction is not related to lat partners’ decision to move in together; however, higher levels of relationship satisfaction are positively related to the decision of moving in with a partner. the models reveal that low sexual and relationship satisfaction are associated with breaking-up relative to still living apart. this study highlights the importance of considering sexual satisfaction in understanding better the risk of separation from a lat partner, in addition to the global indicator of relationship satisfaction. keywords: sexual satisfaction · lat relationships · relationship satisfaction · event history analysis · germany 1 introduction living apart together (lat) is a term generally used to defi ne an intimate relationship between unmarried partners who are not living together but who identify themselves as being in a steady relationship (levin 2004; haskey/lewis 2006). sex is an important aspect of relationships, with sexual satisfaction being related to increased levels of well-being (debrot et al. 2017), intimacy, commitment (sprecher 2002; štulhofer et al. 2014) and better health (galinsky/waite 2014). it might also play an important role in understanding lat relationship transitions, defi ned in this paper as either moving in with or breaking-up from a partner. moreover, in western comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 485-512 (date of release: 19.12.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-18 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-18en0 • alexandra-andreea ciritel486 countries, sexual behaviour and lifestyle have changed in the past 60 years (mercer et al. 2013; herbenick et al. 2017). in germany, for example, greater acceptance of non-marital sex (klärner/knabe 2017), a growing number of (sexual) partners across cohorts (hiekel/fulda 2018), and a diverse pool of sexual practices (haversath et al. 2017) have been noted. furthermore, sexual pleasure is very important in nonreproductive sexual activity, and in terms of sexual health for germans (klein et al. 2022). it is remarkable, however, how little we know about the role of sex in decisions to separate, co-reside, or to continue to live apart. the main focus of this paper is to understand how sexual satisfaction is related to lat relationship transitions in germany. in addition, it investigates whether sexual satisfaction would remain an important indicator in explaining these transitions after accounting for relationship satisfaction, an important aspect for lat relationship stability (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). research on the link between sexual satisfaction and lat relationship transitions is scarce (sprecher 2002; meggiolaro 2010). to the best of the author’s knowledge, only one previous study used nationally representative data to underline that, in italy, sexual satisfaction is related to decisions to separate but not to decisions to cohabit or marry (meggiolaro 2010). nonetheless, these fi ndings might be affected by recall bias since sexual satisfaction accounts were collected retrospectively. other studies show that high levels of sexual satisfaction are related to lat couples still being together one year after the survey (sprecher 2002). however, these results are based on a non-representative sample of dating university students, making it hard to generalise from the fi ndings. moreover, sprecher’s study (2002) did not consider the competing event of moving in with the partner, and only followed-up these couples for a period of one year after the survey. this paper investigates how accounts of sexual satisfaction are associated with competing transitions of separation and coresidence, following-up lat couples for a longer period of time, namely nine years, using a unique survey which collects data prospectively. sex is related to relationship stability (sprecher/cate 2004), and sexual intimacy is enjoyed even at older ages (delamater 2012; gabb 2022). recent research shows that lat partners share greater compatibility in terms of interest in having sex than cohabiting or married partners (ciritel 2022). however, much of the past demographic research on lat relationship transitions has focused on other aspects, such as the individual or maternal socio-economic background, the childhood family structure (sassler et al. 2010, 2016, 2018), the intention to move in (régnier-loilier 2016), how long partners have to travel to see each other and the partners’ labour force status (krapf 2018), and the institutionalisation of the relationship (wagner et al. 2019). this paper adds to the literature on lat relationship transitions by shedding light fi rstly on how sexual satisfaction relates to lat relationship transitions in germany, and secondly on how sexual and relationship satisfaction interrelate in explaining these transitions. to do this, waves 1-9 of the german panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam) are used to model the lat transition for two groups: young adults and those approaching midlife (two birth cohorts, of 1981-1983 and 1971-1973). discrete-time competing risk models estimate the transition a) to coresidence and b) to separation, relative to the baseline of does sex matter? • 487 continuing to live apart together. this paper argues that both sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are important in understanding lat relationship outcomes, and refl ects on the nature of lat relationships by discussing the implications of these results. 2 the diversity of lat relationships lat partnerships have begun to grasp the attention of demographers investigating the prevalence and characteristics of lat individuals, and the meaning of this relationship. estimates from the german socio-economic panel collected between 2012-2013 show that in germany, among couples who are 20 years old, 80 percent are in lat relationships. this proportion drops to about 45 percent among those aged 25, and to about 18 percent among those aged 30, falling to just below 10 percent for respondents in their mid-30s (krapf 2018 – calculations based on the german socioeconomic panel). furthermore, the share of people in lat relationships increased across cohorts: for example, about 20 percent of those aged 25 in 1992-1993 were in a lat relationship compared with approximately 45 percent in 2012-2013. just under 10 percent of those aged 30 in 1992-1993 were in a lat relationship compared with about 18 percent in 2012-2013 (krapf 2018). in other western countries, roughly 10 percent of the population is in a lat relationship (strohm et al. 2009; reimondos et al. 2011; phillips et al. 2013; régnier-loilier 2016). the meaning of lat is related to their individual life-course. for those who are older and divorced, and in particular who have children, lat is an “ideal” type of relationship, with individuals intending to continue living apart (liefbroer et al. 2015; lewin 2018). these individuals view lat as an alternative to marriage and cohabitation, where they benefi t from intimacy while at the same time retaining an independent lifestyle (duncan/phillips 2010). however, lat relationships are mainly encountered among young individuals (coulter/hu 2015; liefbroer et al. 2015; pasteels et al. 2017), aged roughly 20-30 years old. for those who decide to move in together, lat is considered a stage in co-residential relationship formation (liefbroer et al. 2015; pasteels et al. 2017) whereas for those who break-up, lat is an experiment (régnier-loilier 2016). 3 sexual satisfaction and lat outcomes social exchange theory1 stipulates that a romantic relationship is an exchange relationship that involves the negotiation of a distribution of resources, rewards, and costs between partners (thibaut/kelly 1959; nye 1982). according to the theory, partners engage in interpersonal exchanges to maximise the rewards (such 1 “the social exchange theory/framework” is used to refer to a group of theories (models) which explain that human behaviour is based on judgements of costs and rewards. • alexandra-andreea ciritel488 as companionship, praise, emotional support, sex) and to minimise the costs (such as stress, confl icts, compromises, time commitments; foa/foa 1980). the theory also suggests that the decisions to continue a relationship or to separate are based on the cost and benefi t considerations of each partner. the social exchange models of relationship satisfaction have been extended to explain sexual satisfaction also in terms of rewards and costs (lawrence/byers 1995). sexual costs, defi ned as anything that creates anxiety, pain, or other negative effects (thibaut/kelly 1959: 12), generally indicate the negative aspect of sexual satisfaction. sexual rewards are exchanges evaluated as positive and pleasurable to the individual, referring generally to the positive aspect of sexual satisfaction. there is no specifi c list as to what sexual rewards or costs are, but past research has shown that many aspects of sex which are related to high levels of sexual satisfaction are defi ned as rewards, while aspects related to low levels of sexual satisfaction are defi ned as costs (macneil/byers 1997; byers 1999: 199). sexual satisfaction is an integral component of sexual health and well-being (who 2010) and is described as “an affective response arising from one’s subjective evaluation of the positive and negative dimensions associated with one’s sexual relationship” (lawrance/byers 1995). it was shown that high levels of sexual satisfaction are associated with sexual compatibility, affection, and frequent orgasms (byers/demmons 1999; štulhofer et al. 2014; frederick et al. 2017). lat relationships, usually characterised by the lack of structural investments, such as joint mortgages, joint household investments, or children (berrington et al. 2015; lewin 2017; carter/duncan 2018; eickmeyer et al. 2019). moreover, qualitative research underlines that lat individuals who greatly enjoy sexual intimacy with their partners are willing to continue their relationships (van der wiel et al. 2018). these individuals defi ned their high levels of sexual intimacy experiences in terms of “rewards” they get from the relationship. consequently, i expect that: (hypothesis 1a): lat individuals who experience high levels of sexual satisfaction will be more likely to move in with their partner (rather than to remain living apart) than those with low or moderate levels of sexual satisfaction. low levels of sexual satisfaction might be perceived by lat individuals as costs to continuing the relationship and might be associated with any decision to break-up. according to psychological research, low levels of sexual satisfaction are associated with sexual costs such as low orgasm consistency, low pleasure, dissimilar level of sexual desire (leaving one partner with a higher sexual desire), incompatibility in sexual preferences (engaging in sexual acts that one partner may dislike but the other may enjoy), lack of self-disclosure, and low emotional intimacy (macneil/byers 1997; byers 1999; frederick et al. 2017). high levels of sexual satisfaction are associated with stronger feelings of commitment to and love for a partner, emotional closeness (sprecher/cate 2004; štulhofer et al. 2014; meltzer et al. 2017), and generally sex reinforces bonding in a relationship (schwartz et al. 2013; debrot et al. 2017). sexual fi delity (partners who are sexually exclusive to each other; carter et al. 2016) is one of the central pillars in defi ning commitment for lats. conversely, low levels of sexual satisfaction may refl ect a lack of bonding and does sex matter? • 489 love between partners, and even infi delity on the part of one of the lat partners, all of which might ultimately affect the decision to separate. therefore, i expect that: (hypothesis 1b): lat individuals who experience low levels of sexual satisfaction will be more likely to separate (rather than to remain living apart) than those with moderate or high levels of sexual satisfaction. the link between sexual satisfaction and lat transitions has been studied by meggiolaro (2010), who used nationally representative data to show no association between sexual satisfaction and lat decisions to cohabit or to marry. yet when compared with couples that are sexually satisfi ed, couples who are less sexually satisfi ed were more likely to separate than to continue living apart. however, the author used proxy variables for sexual satisfaction such as frequency of having sex, and frequency of having an orgasm, without acknowledging that sexual satisfaction is not always defi ned by these two behavioural aspects (pascoal et al. 2013, 2014; kontula/miettinen 2016; frederick et al. 2017). moreover, the experience of orgasm is diverse and subjective, especially among females who can experience genital and non-genital orgasm (singer/singer 1972; komisaruk et al. 2011; lousada/ angel 2011; opperman et al. 2014). furthermore, as already stated in this paper, the results might be affected by recall bias since the assessments about the frequency of intercourse and orgasm were collected retrospectively. therefore, individuals’ reports could be less accurate than data collected prospectively (dex 1995). this paper uses data collected prospectively and adopts a broad defi nition of sexual satisfaction without restricting it at sexual frequency, acknowledging the variety of sexual satisfaction experiences. 4 relationship satisfaction and lat transitions evidence on lat relationship transitions shows that high levels of relationship satisfaction are associated with the transition to coresidence, whereas low levels of relationship satisfaction are associated with the transition to separation (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). qualitative evidence, employing arguments from the social exchange framework, underlines how important experiencing high levels of relationship satisfaction is for lat individuals when it comes to decisions on whether to continue their relationship (van der wiel et al. 2018). the participants have defi ned the rewarding aspects of their relationship in terms of positive qualities of their partner or enjoying intimacy with their partner. these aspects are mentioned as part of their motivation to continue the lat relationship. conversely, relationship costs, such as partners’ negative qualities (e.g. a controlling partner) lead to diminished feelings of commitment, especially among younger lat individuals (van der wiel et al. 2018); participants who have experienced feelings of dissatisfaction were more open to consider alternatives, such as fi nding a new partner or being single (van der wiel et al. 2018). similar to the literature on lat relationship transitions (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019), and in line with the social exchange framework, i expect that: • alexandra-andreea ciritel490 (hypothesis 2a): individuals in lat relationships with higher levels of relationship satisfaction will be more likely to move in together rather than to remain living apart and (hypothesis 2b) those with lower levels of relationship satisfaction will be more likely to separate than to remain living apart. the psychological literature shows that sexual satisfaction is related to relationship satisfaction (macneil/byers 1997; byers 2005; peck et al. 2005), and there may be a bidirectional relationship between these two variables (sprecher/ cate 2004). this paper examines the relationship between these variables (see table 2), and considers them as representing different dimensions of a relationship. 5 data and methods 5.1 pairfam the data are taken from the german family panel pairfam (panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics),2 release 9.1 (brüderl et al. 2018a), a nationwide random sample of german-speaking respondents born in 1971-1973, 1981-1983, and 1991-1993. the survey began in 2008 with a representative sample of 12,403 focal participants (referred to as “anchors”) who are followed annually. pairfam is an ongoing multi-disciplinary, longitudinal study focused on intimate partnerships, parenthood, and family development. the overall response rate for the initial wave was 37 percent (brüderl et al. 2017). even if this response rate is low, evidence suggests that it is not very selective (hiekel et al. 2015; huinink et al. 2011). firstly, response rates below 40 percent are currently common in germany (brüderl et al. 2018b: 8). secondly, the frequency distributions of gender, age, federal states, urban agglomeration type (bik), marital status, and respondents’ number of children in the german family panel do not differ substantially from those in the 2007 microcensus, a compulsory survey for a 1 percent sample of the population (huinink et al. 2011). the present study analyses data only from respondents in both wave 1 and at least one subsequent wave, using nine pairfam waves (wave 1 was collected between 2008-2009; wave 2 between 2009-2010; wave 3 between 2010-2011, wave 4 between 2011-2012, wave 5 between 2012-2013, wave 6 between 2013-2014, wave 7 between 2014-2015, wave 8 between 2015-2016, and wave 9 between 2016-2017). 5.2 sample selection the focus of this paper is to assess how sexual and relationship satisfaction are related to a fi rst-time coresidence or separation from the current lat relationship. therefore, the term lat relationship refers to all partnerships in which the main 2 this paper uses data from the german family panel pairfam, coordinated by josef brüderl et al. (2018a). pairfam is funded as long-term project by the german research foundation (dfg). does sex matter? • 491 respondent identifi ed himself/herself as being in an intimate relationship, not living with his/her current partner, and never having co-resided with this partner before. in 2008-2009 (wave 1), those in the youngest birth cohort (born in 1991-1993) were aged 15-17 years old. this age span corresponds to adolescence, a period characterised by experimentation, instability, and identity exploration, making it less likely for the individuals in question to progress to a co-residential partnership in germany (konietzka/tatjes 2014). since the focus of this paper is on relationship transitions, only individuals who responded in wave 1 in the older birth cohorts 1981-1983 (25-28 years old in wave 1) and 1971-1973 (35-38 years old in wave 1) are included. information about relationship histories is gathered by asking about event changes since the last interview and the timing of these changes. pairfam provides a dataset of the partnership histories in episode format (biopart). the analytical sample is derived by combining information from this dataset with the information provided in the interviews (anchor datasets). in this paper, all lat relationships that were ongoing in wave 1 were initially investigated and followed across the 9 waves, irrespective of respondents’ sexual identity, whether they previously co-resided with their current partner or not, or whether they have item non-response in the variables of interest. this is the total sample of all lat relationships in wave 1 (1102 respondents). on this sample, i investigated the pattern of response and attrition, which are described in the section below. i went on to build the initial sample of lat relationships, by deleting individuals in a same-sex lat partnership3 and those who had various data inconsistencies in the event history fi le (see appendix, fig. a1). the initial sample dropped to 1001 respondents. i further excluded those with item non-response in wave 1. all these data decisions led to the analytical sample, which consists of 920 lat individuals in wave 1 followed across nine years or until censoring, thus corresponding to the fi rst nine waves of pairfam. the analytical sample consists of 83.5 percent out of the total sample of lat individuals. 5.3 attrition rates the attrition rate is calculated on the total subsample presented above (1102 individuals). permanent dropouts (or “attritors”) are those who continuously participated for some waves and then left the panel, never to return. in the total sample, the attrition rate by wave 9 is 58.4 percent (appendix, table a1). moreover, in the total subsample, 29.9 percent of respondents attrit between waves 1 and 2. attrition by wave 2 is particularly important for the analytical sample because people’s relationship status is known only at the time of the wave 1 interview, and 3 there are only 24 individuals in a lat same-sex relationship, which corresponds to 2.17 percent of the total subsample of lat individuals (1102 individuals), too few to be included in the analysis as a separate category. • alexandra-andreea ciritel492 i can only allow these people to contribute with just one month in calculating their lat relationship transitions.4 the percentage of temporary dropouts is 15.9 percent out of the total lat subsample in wave 1 (1102 respondents, appendix, table a1). i included the temporary dropouts because pairfam surveyed them with a longer version of the event history calendar, which retrospectively covers the complete timespan since the last interview. 5.4 analytical strategy and outcome variable i fi t a discrete-time multinomial event history model, where respondents contribute person-months to the data until they experience one of the following events: either moving in with their partner (coresidence), splitting up from their partner (separation), or being censored (e.g. because they attrit from the survey, or because they reach the end of the 97th month observation window). the discrete-time competing-risk hazard model takes the following functional form (alison 1984; sassler et al. 2018): where pijt is the conditional probability of experiencing coresidence or separation ( j = 1 for coresidence, or j = 2 for separation; j = 0 for censored cases) for individual i at month t, given that he/she has not yet experienced an event or been censored before month t. αij is a set of dummy variables to control for time dependence (in yearly increments). after exploring other specifi cations of duration, i chose the yearly interval measure because this was found to be optimal, and has the best model fi t (using six-month intervals yielded a higher bayesian information criterion (bic) when compared with the yearly interval function of duration, results not shown, available upon request from the author); furthermore, a similar approach was used in studying the transition from lat to coresidence or separation using pairfam data (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). a set of m time-constant variables as well as n time-varying variables (measured at time t-1) are included in the model. among the key variables of interest, all are considered time-varying. i assume that the outcomes are distinct events infl uenced by different underlying mechanisms (alison 1984). 4 the wave 1 characteristics of those who attrited by wave 2 in terms of gender, cohort, education, and employment status are similar to all those remaining in at least one subsequent wave (appendix, table a2). this indicates that, even if this attrition rate is not negligible, it does not indicate a strong selection effect for those who remain in the subsequent waves. consequently, the lat relationships lost due to attrition by wave 2 are having a greater effect on the sample size than on its composition. log 1 , (1) does sex matter? • 493 all individuals in a lat relationship enter the risk set for transition to either of the destination states in wave 1. the duration variable is time (in months) in lat since the start of the relationship until event occurrence. it is preferable to have the duration variable in months since the outcome is measured in months even if the covariates are updated at the time of the annual interview (alison 1984; sassler et al. 2018; perelli-harris/blom 2021). time-varying variables, such as relationship satisfaction and levels of education had some missing values, either because the individuals experienced wave nonresponse after wave 1 or because they participated in each survey wave but did not answer these particular questions after wave 1 (item-missing). in both of these cases, i used the most recent value of the covariate (singer/willet 2003: 553). 5.5 sexual and relationship satisfaction sexual satisfaction asks: “how satisfi ed are you with your sex life?”, measured on an 11-point scale (where 0 is very dissatisfi ed and 10 very satisfi ed). because the distribution of the data is right-skewed, i grouped the points 0-6 into “low”, 7-8 into “moderate”, and 9 to 10 into “high level of sexual satisfaction”. the “no answer” category includes those who did not know and those who did not want to answer. respondents are asked to rate their satisfaction in the current relationship by answering the question “all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your relationship?” the variable is measured on an 11-point scale (where 0 is very dissatisfi ed and 10 is very satisfi ed). as the item non-responses for relationship satisfaction in wave 1 were less than 1.5 percent, they have been deleted from the analysis. since the proportion of item non-responses for sexual satisfaction was higher (6.4 percent), i kept them in the analysis. 5.6 additional control variables the existing literature on the outcomes of lat relationships points to the importance of the intention to move in, or to marry (régnier-loilier 2016; wagner et al. 2019), the socio-economic condition of the couple and the amount of time partners have to travel to see each other (krapf 2018), as well as the cost of already having a child (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). the intention to move in with a partner might be endogenous to the lat outcomes and thus is not included in this analysis. gender and cohort are dummy variables indicating – as reference categories – being a female, and belonging to the youngest cohort (1981-83) respectively. the relationship duration from the beginning of the partnership is measured in months. respondents’ educational attainment is based on the international standard classifi cation of education (isced 97) and is divided into low, medium, and high educational attainment. the couple’s employment status is a categorical variable indicating whether both partners are employed, one is employed, or neither is employed. this is the only couple-level variable used because the other variables had a high non-response rate from the partner. i control also for the amount of • alexandra-andreea ciritel494 time required to travel to see the partner, and whether the respondent has children or not. respondents’ children can be from a previous partner, a current partner, from mixed partners, adopted, or fostered. these children can be co-residential or non-co-residential. guided by previous work (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019), the travel time to a partner is categorised so as it captures short (travel time of less than one hour), and long-distance relationships (travel time of one hour or more). this study also includes a dummy variable indicating if respondents live in east germany, and the urban conglomerate. these two variables are used in computing the post-stratifi cation weights and are included to account for the disproportionately stratifi ed sample in the fi rst wave. all the variables are time-varying except for gender, cohort, and relationship duration. the inclusion of variables such as cohort, relationship duration, education, employment, and having children aims to account for selection effects into different types of lat relationship. 6 results 6.1 lat transitions and partnership duration analysis figure 1 below presents the cumulative proportions of entry into coresidence and separation on the analytical sample (920 lat individuals). in the analysis, i consider 10,502 relationship months from 920 lat individuals. approximately 7 percent of lat individuals continued to live apart, approximately 34 percent of lat individuals separated, and approximatively 59 percent co-resided by the end of nine years since the relationship began. this suggests that for most of the young and midlife individuals included in the sample, lat is a stage in the formation of co-residential relationships. for 28 individuals in the sample, the month of marriage was the same as the month in which coresidence began (3 percent of the analytical sample; results not shown, available upon request). this fi nding suggests that direct marriage is an isolated phenomenon among young adults and those in midlife in germany, and that the vast majority of respondents prefer to cohabit. to account for the duration of lat relationships, four categories have been created: < 1 year, 1 to <2 years, 2 to <3 years, 3 to <4 years, and 4+ years, similar to previous studies using the same data to study lat transitions (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). this categorical variable allows to capture non-linearity. 6.2 sample characteristics at interview the distributions of key variables measured in wave 1 are shown in table 1. in wave 1, the highest proportion of lat individuals declared high levels of sexual satisfaction (43.8 percent), followed by those who declared moderate (28.7 percent), and low levels (21.1 percent). only a minority of the sample (6.4 percent) did not respond to this question. the mean of relationship satisfaction among all lat respondents was does sex matter? • 495 relatively high (m = 8.18), indicating that lat individuals were satisfi ed overall with their relationship in wave 1. if the two variables are considered to be continuous, the pearson correlation coeffi cient suggests a moderate correlation, r = 0.33, indicating that they tap into different dimensions of relationships. the relationship between these key independent variables is further investigated via a one-way analysis of variance (anova) in table 2 below. if sexual satisfaction is considered to be categorical, the one-way analyses of variance (table 2) show that there are statistically signifi cant differences in the means of relationship satisfaction between at least two sexual satisfaction groups. tukey post-hoc tests run after anova analysis (results not shown, available from the author upon request) show that the mean of relationship satisfaction is signifi cantly higher only in the high sexual satisfaction group (mean = 8.97) than in the no response (mean = 7.93), low (mean = 6.80), and moderate sexual satisfaction (mean = 8.06) groups. descriptive statistics of the analytical sample in wave 1 are shown in table a3 and table a4 in the appendix. there are more lat individuals in the 1981-83 birth cohort (78.4 percent) than in the 1971-73 birth cohort (21.6 percent), and this is consistent with the literature which states that lat is most often encountered at younger ages (coulter/hu 2015; liefbroer et al. 2015). slightly more males (52.7 percent) than fig. 1: lat relationship transition risks into coresidence and separation source: pairfam data, own calculations 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% c um ul at iv e in ci d en ce fu nc tio ns 1 48 96 144 192 240 288 336 384 424 lat relationship duration (in months) lat coresidence separation • alexandra-andreea ciritel496 females (47.3 percent) are in a lat relationship in wave 1. most lat respondents have a medium level of education (53.4 percent), are employed and their partner is employed (57.7 percent), have to travel less than one hour to see their partner (80.8 percent), do not have children (80.9 percent), and live in west germany (81.8 percent). about a quarter (24.9 percent) live in a periphery area, and about a third of lat individuals had been together for four years or more (35.1 percent). most individuals in the birth cohort 1971-1973 are married (63.1 percent), indicating lats are a selected group of people at this life stage. variables % sexual satisfaction no response 6.4 low 21.1 moderate 28.7 high 43.8 total 100 variables mean (se) relationship satisfaction (0-10) 8.18 (0.06) tab. 1: distribution of sexual satisfaction at wave 1. means (and standard errors) of relationship satisfaction at wave 1 note: unweighted percentages; sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are measured at wave 1; s.e. – standard errors; unweighted results. source: pairfam data, own calculations summary of relationship satisfaction sexual satisfaction mean standard standard min max frequency p-value deviation error (mean) no response 7.93 2.55 0.33 0 10 59 0.000 low 6.80 2.81 0.20 0 10 194 moderate 8.06 1.72 0.11 0 10 264 high 8.97 1.44 0.07 0 10 404 total 8.18 2.12 0.07 0 10 921 tab. 2: one-way analyses of variance (anova) of relationship satisfaction by levels of sexual satisfaction at wave 1; analytical sample note: unweighted data. source: pairfam, own calculations on the variables measured at wave 1 does sex matter? • 497 6.3 multivariate results the relative risk ratios5 of entering coresidence or separation relative to continuing in a lat relationship are presented in table 3 , in three sequential models.6 the fi rst model examines the association between sexual satisfaction and the lat transitions with only the control variables included, and tests whether sexual satisfaction is related to lat relationship transitions. the second model includes the indicator for relationship satisfaction and the control variables, but excludes the indicator for sexual satisfaction, assessing how relationship satisfaction is related to lat relationship transitions. model 3 includes back the indicator of sexual satisfaction and tests whether it would still be an important indicator for explaining the lat relationship transitions after accounting for relationship satisfaction. model 3 represents the full model. the relative risk ratios on the transition to coresidence are presented in the left-hand column of table 3. model 1 shows the link between sexual satisfaction and lat individuals’ relative risk of moving in with their partner compared with continuing to live apart. in model 1, no evidence was found to suggest that sexual satisfaction plays an important role in lat individuals’ decision to move in with their partner, hypothesis 1a not being supported by the data. model 2 shows that higher levels of relationship satisfaction are associated with lat individuals’ decision to move in with their partner relative to continuing to live apart, indicating support for hypothesis 2a. finally, in model 3, when sexual satisfaction is included, it is noticed that a) the coeffi cients of sexual satisfaction do not change very much in size, direction, or signifi cance compared with model 1 (indicating no support for hypothesis 1a), and b) relationship satisfaction remains associated with lat transitions to coresidence (as it was in model 2, supporting hypothesis 2a). all in all, model 3 reveals that the transition to coresidence is associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction. 5 caution must be used in interpreting the change in the coeffi cients across these nested models when the outcome is non-linear due to rescaling (mood 2010). however, one way to account for this problem is to calculate average marginal effects (ame; mood 2010), an approach often used in demography (visser et al. 2016; krapf 2018). the direction and signifi cance between the models with ame and relative risk ratios do not differ. consequently, the models with competing risk ratios are presented in the paper for ease of interpretation (results not shown, available upon request from the author). 6 some sensitivity analyses were carried out. firstly, the main results did not change in models with a complete case approach (including people to the point when they dropped out from the panel), where all individuals with wave or item non-response are excluded. therefore, the model with the imputation approach is shown in the paper since it has more observations. secondly, the main results did not change when excluding the number of non-responses for sexual satisfaction. thirdly, the effect of sexual and relationship satisfaction on lat relationship transitions does not differ across life-stages and gender. lastly, the inclusion in the model of a variable measuring the number of previous partners, which is part of lat individuals’ background characteristics, did not change the main results; also, it showed no relationship with the outcomes. therefore, a more parsimonious model is presented in the paper (results not shown, available from the author upon request). • alexandra-andreea ciritel498 tab. 3: relative risk ratios (rrr) from the competing risk discrete-time event history analysis on lat relationship transitions coresidence vs lat separation vs lat model 1 model 2 model 3 model 1 model 2 model 3 relationship duration (ref. 1 to < 2 yrs) < 1 year 1.13 1.12 1.11 2.02** 2.11** 2.09** 2 to <3 years 0.76 0.77 0.77 0.92 0.93 0.90 3 to <4 years 0.64** 0.65** 0.6 4** 0.56** 0.59* 0.55** 4+ years 0.30*** 0.32*** 0.32*** 0.40** 0.40** 0.38** sexual satisfaction (ref. low) no response 1.31 1.18 1.07 1.26 moderate 0.92 0.83 0.48*** 0.54** high 1.10 0.91 0.50*** 0.63* relationship satisfaction 1.11** 1.11** 0.88*** 0.90** cohort (ref. 1971-1973) 1981-1983 1.26 1.20 1.21 1.50* 1.57* 1.58* gender (ref. male) female 1.27* 1.27* 1.27* 0.95 0.95 0.96 education (ref. low) medium 0.79 0.75 0.79 1.06 0.97 1.09 high 1.04 0.96 1.02 1.05 0.97 1.12 couple's employment status (ref. non-employed) both non-employed 0.89 0.90 0.89 0.73 0.74 0.74 one employed 0.95 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.94 0.97 time spent travelling to partner (ref. <1 h) >1 h 0.98 0.97 0.96 1.35+ 1.46* 1.41* respondent has children (ref. no) 1 or more children 0.83 0.84 0.85 1.55* 1.53+ 1.53+ living in east germany (ref. no) yes 0.98 0.96 0.96 0.80 0.82 0.82 urban conglomerate (ref. region < 20,000) city centre 500,000+ 1.17 1.11 1.11 1.33 1.48 1.44 periphery 500,000+ 1.21 1.18 1.16 0.70 0.76 0.75 city centre 50,000500,000 1.04 1.04 1.03 0.54* 0.58* 0.55* periphery 50,000500,000 0.88 0.85 0.85 0.83 0.90 0.87 region 20,00050,000 1.02 1.01 1.01 0.78 0.82 0.78 does sex matter? • 499 the effect sizes and signifi cance of control variables do not change much across these three models, which is the reason why i focus on the fi ndings from model 3.7 other covariates associated with the start of coresidence include being together for less than 2 years as compared with being together for 3 years and more, a fi nding similar to the literature on lat transitions in germany (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). the fi nding may suggest a selection effect of those who are happier with their relationship. at the same time, those who are in long-term relationships may have other reasons for not moving in together, such as co-residential children or placing more value on an independent lifestyle. women are more likely than men to move in with a partner rather than continuing to live apart. a respondent’s education, couples’ combined labour force status, the presence of children, the time taken to travel to see a partner, and the region where people live are not associated with lat outcomes. for the competing risk of separation, shown in the right-hand column in table 3, model 1 shows a statistically signifi cant relationship between sexual satisfaction and lat relative risk of separation compared to continuing to live apart. those who report high or moderate levels of sexual satisfaction as compared to those with low levels are less likely to break-up relative to remain living apart, supporting hypothesis 1b. model 2 shows that the higher the relationship satisfaction, the less likely lat individuals are to separate relative to continue living apart, supporting hypothesis 2b. finally, in model 3, when relationship satisfaction is included, it is noticed that a) sexual satisfaction remains signifi cant in explaining lat transitions to separation, with coeffi cients in the same direction (as model 1 shows, indicating support for hypothesis 1b), and b) relationship satisfaction is still negatively associated with tab. 3: continuation coresidence vs lat separation vs lat model 1 model 2 model 3 model 1 model 2 model 3 n (person-months) 10502 10502 10502 10502 10502 10502 log-likelihood -2468.56 -2547.52 -2457.96 -2468.56 -2547.52 -2457.96 aic 5025.12 5012.52 5007.93 5025.12 5012.52 5007.93 adjusted mcfadden r2 0.014 0.016 0.017 0.014 0.016 0.017 note: unweighted results; lat – living apart together relationship; ref – reference category; aic – akaike information criteria; *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05, + p < 0.10. source: pairfam, own computation 7 model 3 is the full model (with sexual and relationship satisfaction variables and covariates) and also has the best fi t; both model fi t parameters, namely log-likelihood and akaike information criteria, are smallest in model 3 compared with the other two models. also, the adjusted mcfadden r2 is highest in model 3. • alexandra-andreea ciritel500 lat transitions to separation (as model 2 shows, indicating support for hypothesis 2b). all in all, the models reveal that the transition to separation is associated with rather low levels of both sexual and relationship satisfaction. couples who have been together less than a year are more prone to separate than those who have been together between one and two years. similarly, those who have been together for more than three years are less prone to separate than those who have been together between one and two years. this may refl ect that longer lat relationships are more selected than those formed less than a year or two. compared with adults in midlife, young adults are more prone to separate, thereby suggesting that the chances of repartnering if one does not like one’s partner are higher when young. studies investigating remarriage show that the pool of single persons is larger at younger ages than in midlife and that the social opportunities to meet a spouse/partner decline with age (de graaf/kalmijn 2003; schimmele/wu 2016). the amount of time lat partners have to travel to see each other and having at least one child are factors associated with the likelihood of separation, consistent with the literature in germany (krapf 2018). also, living in the city centre as opposed to a region with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants is associated with lat transition to separation. 7 discussion although sexual pleasure is a fundamental element of couples’ lives and sexual health (who 2010; schwartz et al. 2013; klein et al. 2022), demographers have by and large ignored sexuality in their study of the nature of partnerships. to the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the fi rst to investigate how sexual satisfaction relates to lat relationship transitions, using a representative sample of lat couples. it also examines how sexual satisfaction interrelates with relationship satisfaction in understanding lat relationship transitions. this study shows that for most young and midlife individuals, lat is a temporary stage in coresidential partnership formation since more individuals move in together rather than separate within nine years since the start of their relationship. interestingly, sexual satisfaction was not related to lat partnership transition to coresidence as it was hypothesised. this is surprising since high levels of sexual satisfaction are associated with frequent orgasms, sexual compatibility, and intimacy (štulhofer et al. 2014; frederick et al. 2017), which are important aspects in any relationship (muise et al. 2016). nonetheless, the fi ndings are consistent with those of meggiolaro’s study (2010) which shows that there is no association between sexual satisfaction and lat transitions to coresidence or marriage in italy. it may be that lat couples prefer to continue living apart as opposed to moving in together out of a concern that living together might reduce their sexual pleasure. qualitative research found that some individuals, who were committed to and happy with their lat partner, believed that their satisfaction would remain higher when living separately, worrying that cohabiting would not be benefi cial to their relationship (van der wiel et al. 2018). moreover, demographic evidence shows no link between high does sex matter? • 501 levels of relationship quality and the likelihood of having children (rijken/liefbroer 2008; rijken/knijn 2009; rijken/thomson 2011). the authors explained that the partners may not want to change the dynamics of their relationship whenever they enjoy high levels of relationship quality. at the same time, coresidential partners show their (structural) commitment through joint investments such as buying a house, paying the mortgage together, and having children (berrington et al. 2015), which are not characteristic features of lat relationships (carter/duncan 2018). it may be, then, that relationship dynamics other than sex lead to the decision to move in together, such as partners’ income, savings, values, or communication. future research may investigate these facets more when studying coresidential relationship formation. on the other hand, sexual satisfaction was related to the outcome of separation: those with low sexual satisfaction as compared to those with moderate or high levels of sexual satisfaction are more prone to break-up, consistent with hypothesis 1b. this work reinforces meggiolaro’s fi nding (2010) that, when compared with couples with higher levels of sexual satisfaction, less sexually satisfi ed couples are more prone to break-up than to remain living apart. despite using different data and indicators to capture sexual satisfaction, meggiolaro investigated individuals in a lat relationship in a similar age range as this study: between 18-26 years old (born between 1980-1988) and 27-36 years old (born between 1970-1979). it would be interesting if future research compares and contrasts the importance of sexual satisfaction in the decision to break-up among lat couples in the same or even later life-stages, and in other countries as well. relationship satisfaction plays an important role in lat respondents’ decision to separate or to move in with their partner. this fi nding is consistent with hypotheses 2a and 2b, and supports previous studies in germany (krapf 2018; wagner et al. 2019). however, this paper went beyond these existing studies, engaging with sexual aspects of relationships, and bringing new understanding on the nature of lat relationships. high levels of sexual satisfaction are important in decisions to remain living apart (and perhaps to sexually experience and test the relationship). however, sexual satisfaction is not an important factor for lat partners when deciding to take the next step and move in together; such decisions depend more on the relationship as a whole. 8 limitations the analysis has some limitations. first, despite this research being longitudinal, causal effects between relationship and sexual satisfaction and lat outcomes cannot be assumed. secondly, the results are not representative for the entire population of lat relationships because the paper includes two cohorts: 1981-1983 (25-28 years old in wave 1) and 1971-1973 (35-38 years old in wave 1), leaving out people aged between 20-24 and 29-34 years old, and those older than 38 years old. thirdly, individuals in a lat relationship born between 1971-1973 are selective since most respondents in this cohort are married (appendix, table a4). however, • alexandra-andreea ciritel502 in the analysis, i control for background characteristics of the people that would be in lat at this later life stage, such as employment, education, and the number of children. fourthly, future research might consider using the whole panel structure by adding new individuals in lat relationships from subsequent waves. lastly, a monthly set-up of the data rather than a yearly set-up may affect the accuracy of the results since the time-varying covariates are updated annually. nonetheless, since the dependent variable is updated in months, the person-month set up is preferred despite the annual update of the covariates. moreover, this approach is similar to other studies in demography, where a person-month data set-up has been applied when the dependent variable was updated monthly, despite an annual update of the time-varying covariates of interest (sassler et al. 2016, 2018; bastin 2019; perelliharris/blom 2021). this analysis also has conceptual limitations that are related to how sexual satisfaction is defi ned. respondents are asked if they have an intimate partner with whom they are not living. pairfam measures sexual satisfaction by asking the participants how satisfi ed they are with their sex life, the question lacking the words “with the partner”. therefore, it might be that some participants based their answers on solitary sexual behaviour (i.e. masturbation; (mercer et al. 2013)), sex with other partners, sexting, or sending intimate pictures (ouytsel 2020). i recommend that pairfam or any demographic survey should include a more specifi c indicator measuring sexual satisfaction “with the partner”. this is important because these people have a relationship at distance and therefore they may more often practice solitary sexual behaviours, might send more intimate pictures, or have more opportunities to cheat on their partner than coresidential couples. all in all, this research underlines the need to go beyond the global measure of relationship satisfaction in better understanding lat relationship outcomes, emphasising the importance of investigating the sexual dimension of relationships. future research might incorporate other indicators of sexuality, such as sexual frequency or compatibility between partners in terms of sexual practices, which might be important in understanding the nature of lat relationships and coresidential formation. references alison, paul d. 1984: event history analysis. beverly hills, ca: sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412984195 bastin, sonja 2019: single mothers’ new partners: partnership and household formation in germany. in: journal of marriage and family 81,4: 991-1003. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12575 berrington, ann; 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.12.002 who 2010: developing sexual health programmes. a framework for action. geneva. van der wiel, roselinde; mulder, clara h.; bailey, ajay 2018: pathways to commitment in living-apart-together relationships in the netherlands: a study on satisfaction, alternatives, investments and social support. in: advances in life course research 36: 13-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.03.001 date of submission: 25.10.2021 date of acceptance: 12.10.2022 dr. alexandra-andreea ciritel (). university of southampton, faculty of social sciences. centre for population change. southampton, united kingdom. e-mail: aa.ciritel@soton.ac.uk url: http://www.cpc.ac.uk/about_us/the_team/1142/alexandra_ciritel#associates • alexandra-andreea ciritel508 appendix tab. a1: the pattern of response in the total subsample of lat individuals in wave 1 and at least one subsequent wave; pairfam lat pattern of response in all 9 waves % unweighted those who participated in wave 1 and 2 and attrited after wave 2 28.5 attrited by wave 2 29.9 full response 25.7 temporary dropouts 15.9 total 100 note: this table refers to the total subsample of 1102 lat respondents in wave 1 and at least one subsequent wave; unweighted results; the group ‘attrited by wave 2’ refers to those who participated just in wave 1. source: pairfam data, waves 1-9, own calculations does sex matter? • 509 tab. a2: comparison between those attrited by wave 2 and those who are not, by gender, cohort, education, employment status, and mean years of education; total subsample of lat individuals in wave 1 and at least one subsequent wave those in wave 1 and attrited by wave 2 total at least one subsequent wave variables numbers % or numbers % or numbers % or mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) gender male 397 51.4 179 54.4 576 52.3 female 376 48.6 150 45.6 526 47.7 birth cohort 1981-1983 577 74.6 261 79.3 838 76.0 1971-1973 196 25.4 68 20.7 264 23.9 educational attainment low 63 8.2 23 7.0 86 7.8 medium 403 52.1 188 57.1 591 53.6 high 307 39.7 118 35.8 425 38.5 employment status not employed 251 32.5 99 30.1 350 31.8 employed 522 67.5 230 69.9 752 68.2 mean for years of education 13.06 (3.14) 12.96 (3.17) 13.03 (3.15) total 773 100 329 100 1102 100 note: unweighted results; these calculations are made based on the total subsample of lat individuals in wave 1 followed across all 9 waves, which consists of 1102 homosexual and heterosexual individuals in a lat partnership in the two birth cohorts. source: pairfam data, waves 1-9; owns calculations • alexandra-andreea ciritel510 tab. a3: descriptive statistics of the analytical sample at wave 1; pairfam variables frequency percent (unweighted) (unweighted) cohort 1971-1973 198 21.6 1981-1983 722 78.4 gender male 485 52.7 female 435 47.3 respondent’s education low 62 6.7 medium 491 53.4 high 367 39.9 couple's combined labour force status both employed 530 57.7 both non-employed 91 9.9 one employed 299 32.5 time spent travelling to partner < 1h 744 80.8 > 1h 176 19.2 respondent has children no 745 80.9 yes 175 19.1 living in east germany no 752 81.8 yes 168 18.2 urban conglomerate city centre 500,000+ 176 19.1 periphery 500,000+ 88 9.6 city centre 50,000-500,000 169 18.4 periphery 50,000-500,000 229 24.9 region 20,000-50,000 145 15.7 region < 20,000 113 12.4 time in lat < 1 year 217 23.5 1 to < 2 years 158 17.1 2 to < 3 years 125 13.5 3 to < 4 years 97 10.5 4+ years 323 35.1 total 920 100 note: time in lat since the beginning of the union; unweighted results. source: pairfam, wave 1, own calculations does sex matter? • 511 tab. a4: relationship status among all respondents in the birth cohort 19711973; pairfam, wave 1 relationship status of those born in 1971-73 frequency percent in wave 1 (unweighted) (unweighted) incomplete data 8 0.2 lat 264 6.5 single 695 17.1 cohabiting 528 13.0 married 2559 63.1 total 4054 100 note: unweighted sample. source: pairfam, wave 1, own calculations • alexandra-andreea ciritel512 fig. a1: diagram showing the selection of the analytical sample of lats same-sex relationships reporting inconsistencies reporting lat in wave 1 but relationship history file shows they were coresiding with that partner before wave 1 reporting lat in wave 1 but relationship history file shows they were cohabiting with that partner in wave 1 reporting inconsistencies reporting inconsistencies reporting lat in wave 1 but relationship history file shows he/she started the union after the interview date for wave 1 temporarily interruptions of the union item missing in wave 1 1078 1009 1002 1001 initial subsample 991 920 analytical sample 24 69 7 1 10 71 1102 in wave 1 total subsample source: pairfam, waves 1-9; author’s diagram published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances* sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch abstract: panel data has become the gold standard for causal assessments of complex human behaviour in quantitative social science. the objective of this review is to examine and discuss how panel data and related methods contribute to the identifi cation of causal relationships in spatial mobility research. we illustrate this by providing a succinct overview of recent progress in spatial mobility research, drawing on panel data. the review outlines research from a number of scholarly disciplines that maps patterns, establishes determinants and assesses the impact of spatial mobility for a range of outcomes. studies presented in this article are used to decipher complex interdependencies over the life course, scrutinise the selectivity of migrants, and shed light on the interplay between individual agency, social embeddedness and socio-structural contexts. the article concludes with a set of critical issues for future research. keywords: panel data · longitudinal methods · residential mobility · internal migration · life course 1 introduction spatial mobility is a major driving force underlying demographic and social change, and a fundamentally important experience for many people. in 2019, 272 million people (3.5 percent of the world’s population) were international migrants living in a country other than their country of birth (international organization for migration 2019). mobility within national borders is more common, but with signifi cant variation comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 187-214 (date of release: 28.06.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-07 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-07en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on "identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data". http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-07 • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch188 across countries.1 for instance, about 19 percent of the population in iceland, around 9 percent in germany, and roughly 3 percent in spain changes residence each year (bell et al. 2015). changing the place of residence within countries, however, is becoming less common in many countries (bell/charles-edwards 2013; champion et al. 2017). instead, recurrent mobility, such as commuting or circulating between multiple homes, is increasing with advances in transportation and communication technology, and with changes in the way work and families are organised (lück/ schneider 2010). all of these types of spatial mobility can have a profound infl uence on individuals’ wellbeing and life chances (aybek et al. 2015). spatial mobility is studied by a multidisciplinary research community at the intersection of demography, economics, geography, psychology, sociology and other related disciplines. this community has made important advances in recent decades in our understanding of the patterns, determinants, and outcomes of spatial mobility. many of these advances have been made possible through the increasing availability of panel data. this review aims to provide insights into the use of panel data and methods for the identifi cation of causal relationships in spatial mobility research. this is illustrated through an overview of recent advances in selected research fi elds. panel data offers two key advantages for the study of spatial mobility through repeated observations of the same individuals. firstly, panel data improves measurement. observing individuals repeatedly is necessary if we are substantively interested in how changes occur within individuals, and to answer questions about long-term wage profi les of movers compared with non-movers. importantly, panel data allows us to examine not only change but also persistence in mobility practices and immobility. repeated observations are also necessary to track the various stages of the mobility process, from intentions and plans to the realisation of mobility (kley 2011). arguably, panel data is also superior in its accuracy of measuring mobility as prospective data collection is less likely to be subject to recall bias compared with retrospective data. secondly, panel data improves modelling. repeated observations allow us to eliminate unobserved time-constant heterogeneity by analytically focusing on within-individual change. in addition, repeated observations allow us to longitudinally model individual-specifi c trajectories and other substantively relevant heterogeneity in multi-level models. however, panel data is not a panacea. issues such as unobserved time-variant heterogeneity may still hinder causal inference based on panel data. these and other key advantages (and limitations) of panel data and methods are discussed in section 2. building on these advantages, panel data has prompted major advances in spatial mobility research. firstly, analyses of panel data enable the adoption of a temporal view on spatial mobility, which operationalises core concepts of the life course approach in empirical research, including individuals’ practices, transitions, 1 bell and charles-edwards (2013) estimate that in 2005, about 12 percent of the world’s population was living in its origin country but outside the region of birth. panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 189 and trajectories. this acknowledged the diversifi cation and fl exibility of individuals’ lives, moving away from outdated life cycle views of spatial mobility. diverse patterns of spatial mobility, repeated mobility practices and complex interdependencies with central life domains have thus become traceable. secondly, analyses of panel data shed more light on inequalities and differences observed between movers and nonmovers over time. in this context, the selectivity of mobile and migrant populations is not only a methodological issue to address when assessing the impacts of spatial mobility, but is also a central feature of the migration process itself that deserves further scrutiny. thirdly, panel data with multi-actor designs (e.g. gathering information from several household members) deepens our knowledge as regards the relational dimension of spatial mobility, thereby acknowledging power relations and social resources from interpersonal relationships and the embeddedness in larger communities. fourthly, panel data enables us to establish micro-macro links and address the interplay between individual agency and socio-structural conditions. these are the main themes around which our review of selected literature in section 3 is organised. we use the general term spatial mobility to refer to movements in geographic space that either involve a change of primary place of residence and place of daily activity or that are circular with a fi xed primary (or several habitual) address(es), e.g. commuting (aybek et al. 2015). changes in place of residence can be across national borders (international migration) or within borders (internal migration, residential relocation). the latter type of mobility is most often covered in panel data. we include commuting and circular mobility around multiple homes as alternatives to relocation, but our working defi nition of spatial mobility does not include temporary, one-off mobility, such as travel for leisure, and daily routine mobility, such as shopping. because the research area of spatial mobility is so vast, we necessarily have to limit ourselves in what we cover in this review. from our search of literature conducted on major databases,2 we selected sets of topics and studies to exemplify the use of panel data in solving analytical problems and addressing new research questions. we only considered studies using panel data (including survey and register sources) which allow us to observe individuals before and after a move, or variation in recurrent mobility practices over time. this means that we excluded other important areas of research, such as those which followed immigrants after their migration over time. notably, this excluded the bulk of studies on integration of migrants using panel data, which has become more relevant in recent decades. 2 we conducted a literature search between march and june 2020 on scopus and google scholar using the search terms “(panel | longitudinal | register) & (migration | mobility | move | residential)”. we also searched the databases of the british household panel survey (bhps), household, income and labour dynamics in australia (hilda) survey, understanding society – the uk household longitudinal study (ukhls), panel study of income dynamics (psid), and the socio-economic panel (soep) study. we added further studies that we considered relevant but which were not covered by the search terms. the full database resulting from our literature search can be accessed at https://osf.io/nzbj8/. https://osf.io/nzbj8/ • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch190 also note that although we covered studies from all over the world, relevant panel data is collected more often in developed countries. 2 panel data in spatial mobility research panel data has become the gold standard for causal assessments of complex human behaviour in quantitative social science. there are several main advantages (and current issues) of panel data for measuring and modelling spatial mobility. 2.1 measurement a range of theories and conceptual frameworks of spatial mobility revolves around temporal processes, such as the dynamics of change among mobile populations, the dynamics of stability and persistence in place, and sequential processes of mobility decision-making. in the absence of longitudinal data, none of these processes can be empirically examined to an adequate extent. compared with cross-sectional data, longitudinal measurement is also advantageous because it enables us to establish the time order of cause and effect, e.g. to address whether it is moving to a certain place (in the event of migration) or in being a migrant (thus a person with certain characteristics) that better explains employment outcomes. panel data presents several advantages over other sources of longitudinal data in terms of measurement quality, although researchers should also be aware of some problematic issues. firstly, the longitudinal analysis of spatial mobility that is based on retrospective information collected as part of cross-sectional data designs is susceptible to left truncation bias (i.e. bias from omitting those who have previously moved), as samples are extracted from surviving populations that have not moved away from the study context at the time of data collection. with panel data, truncation bias in spatial mobility studies is minimised as the prospective design enables mobile individuals to be followed over time. however, left censoring, where the event of interest occurs before the observation period, can still be an issue. the researcher should be aware, however, that prospective data collections are affected by attrition (i.e. the drop-out after a realised interview with unit nonresponse), which can lead to misleading results when respondents who drop out of the panel systematically differ from those who stay in the panel (frees 2004: 11). mobility (and even more so migration) increases the chances of attrition, partly because it is diffi cult to follow households if they change addresses. while prior research on spatial mobility fi nds little evidence that substantial conclusions are distorted by selective attrition (washbrook et al. 2014), it is important that researchers think carefully about the potential implications of selective attrition for their research questions and adjust their empirical strategy accordingly. secondly, reports of spatial mobility practices and events are less likely to be subject to recall bias in panel data collections, particularly when time intervals between interviews are short. recall bias in retrospective migration histories can be particularly harmful when it comes to events that occurred far in the past; that were panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 191 not paired with other salient life events (e.g. marriage, childbirth, or job change); for local moves; and for shorter residential episodes (smith/thomas 2003). even with panel data, however, recall bias may occur, e.g. when respondents report events more than once. also, the granularity of data on spatial mobility in extant panel data collections is limited. since most panel data is not specifi cally designed for the study of spatial mobility (see section 2.3), measurements are typically restricted to one change of residence since the last interview, and ignore repeated mobility between interviews. since it is often the case that only annual data is collected, it is not always possible to clearly establish the time order of events such as mobility and their outcomes within a given yearly interval. thirdly, information that is collected retrospectively may be contaminated by more recent experiences, such as the outcomes of spatial mobility or immobility – what is also known as post-hoc rationalisation bias. this type of bias is particularly pernicious for subjective measures such as intentions, motivations, or attitudes, and should not be asked in reference to the past, particularly the distant past. while spatial mobility (and in particular subjective evaluations) is preferably collected prospectively, the extent to which learning effects and panel conditioning (i.e. response patterns infl uenced by prior interviews) compromise measurement deserves more attention in panel survey analysis. while the prospective measurement of spatial mobility within countries is very common, panel data on international migration – with observations of individuals before (at origin) and after (at destination) a move – is limited. this is because most panel surveys focus on the representative nature of a dynamic population within national borders and do not re-interview original respondents after emigration even if they are traceable, considering them as a population that is not eligible for interview. a prominent exception is the mexican family life survey (as well as certain other projects in developing countries), which has made large efforts to track and re-interview migrants to the united states. in the absence of large migration fl ows, such as the case of mexico-us migration, the investment in following individuals might be too great in relation to the small number of migrants to study (liu et al. 2016). in this case, retrospective studies linking individuals across origins and destinations are more cost-effective sources of longitudinal data for the study of the international migration process. nevertheless, information in panel studies on migrant networks, resources (e.g. remittances), intentions to move (abroad), migration histories, or survey metadata indicating whether respondents emigrated are all useful in addressing questions relating to the migration process. in addition, panel data in the receiving countries could be complemented with information from (non-migrant) populations in the origin countries to help us understand the extent to which migrants’ outcomes are driven by migrant selectivity (feliciano 2020). 2.2 modelling theoretical and conceptual models of spatial mobility highlight a multiplicity of stressors, self-selective processes, and complex and recursive associations with the correlates of spatial mobility. given this, and in the absence of (quasi-)experimental • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch192 research designs, methods for the analysis of cross-sectional data may lead to biased and inconsistent estimates of the antecedents and consequences of spatial mobility since key model assumptions are unlikely to hold. for example, spatial mobility is an intermediary variable for many other life course processes, and omitting these processes might lead to a misestimation of the impact of spatial mobility. with panel data and its associated methods, it is possible to identify causal effects under weaker assumptions. in particular, the fi xed effects (fe) estimator – and related estimators that exploit within-individual variation in panel data – eliminates all individual-specifi c (time-constant) unobserved heterogeneity, thereby relaxing some strong assumptions in regression models, such as there being no correlation between explanatory variables and the stochastic error term. (see brüderl/ludwig 2014) for features and assumptions of major panel data estimators.) accordingly, the fe estimator has become very popular in research that estimates spatial mobility and associated outcomes, such as employment status, income, and subjective wellbeing (cooke et al. 2009; nowok et al. 2013; scheffel/zhang 2019). despite their advantages, most within estimators still assume no time-varying unobserved heterogeneity, but this assumption arguably does not hold true in many situations (see below). also, among estimators that only exploit within-individual variation (and compared to random effects estimators that exploit between-variation and withinvariation) effi ciency is reduced, and inference (which cannot be made beyond the groups in the sample) is compromised when studying processes or contexts where spatial mobility is rare. methods such as hybrid panel models aim to overcome issues of effi ciency and inference (allison 2009), but these introduce new model assumptions. the main argument for the use of within estimators is that spatial mobility is a self-selective process. mobile populations are often younger, healthier, and more qualifi ed than the general population. panel data is particularly helpful because it contains information on the populations of origin and destination, which enable us to study the selective nature of spatial mobility, how it has an impact on individuals’ outcomes, and whether it leads to structural changes in the populations of origin and destination (see e.g. brimblecombe et al. 2000; norman et al. 2005). the fact that mobile individuals are also selected on unobservables (or factors that are diffi cult to measure, such as ability, personal traits, or motivation) is problematic because it induces individual unobserved heterogeneity in spatial mobility models and limits the ability of researchers to obtain unbiased estimates. within estimators and instrumental variable approaches can be used to obtain unbiased estimates under the presence of self-selection on unobservables. they are, however, not without problems. on the one hand, fi nding a valid instrument can be cumbersome; on the other hand, within-estimator approaches rely on the parallel trend assumption, i.e. the expectation of similar temporal trends in outcomes for the mobile and the non-mobile populations in the absence of spatial mobility. to relax the parallel trend assumption, fi xed effects models with individual slopes can be used, but have rarely been deployed in mobility research (kratz/brüderl 2013), in part because data requirements are high. panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 193 questions about causal relationships in spatial mobility research also concern temporality, including the timing of events, individual change and stability over time. the timing of mobility in relation to its trigger events is often addressed with event history analysis, which accounts for censoring and truncation biases relating to incomplete information on events and their timings as they occur outside the study observation window (blossfeld et al. 2016). growth curve models can be used to examine variability in outcome change rates across mobile and immobile populations (curran et al. 2010). dynamic panel models include lagged panel variables to account for “true” state dependence, by which prior experiences infl uence current experiences to explain processes such as persistence in place or neighbourhood disadvantage (baltagi et al. 2015). despite their usefulness in modelling temporality, most of these models are not immune to individual unobserved heterogeneity and so researchers need to be aware of potential issues relating to omitted variables, sample selection, or measurement error. additionally, complex time dependencies between spatial mobility and its triggers/outcomes have been proposed (see section 3.1), by which the time order of events does not necessarily refl ect the causal order and brings up the issue of reverse causality. recent advances allow us to address these issues more convincingly with panel data (allison et al. 2017; steele 2008). for instance, cross-lagged panel models with fi xed effects or extensions of the event-history model to the simultaneous analysis of multiple correlated processes enable individual unobserved heterogeneity to be controlled for and reciprocal causation to be assessed. these models require the observation of repeated outcomes per individual, however, and are not immune to time-varying unobserved heterogeneity. spatial mobility can be considered as a process that is wider than an event or practice observed at one discrete point in time. adopting a holistic view to spatial mobility, trajectories consisting of multiple mobility events and immobility episodes have been examined using descriptive sequence analysis methods. related studies established typical long-term mobility pathways, often in interplay with occupational and family trajectories (e.g. stovel/bolan 2004; vidal/lutz 2018; impicciatore/panichella 2019). with panel data, it is also possible to address more explanatory questions within holistic approaches, although these have not yet been considered in spatial mobility research. for example, researchers can use mixture hidden markov models to predict transition probabilities between life stages in trajectories combining spatial mobility with events in employment, family and other life domains (helske et al. 2018). additionally, machine learning methods for variable selection, such as boruta or lasso, can be used to identify the most relevant properties (i.e. sequencing, timing and duration) of migration trajectories associated with a life outcome (bolano/studer 2020). also, brüderl et al. (2019) propose the triangulation of statistical tools, including descriptions of long-term trajectories and panel methods to shed light on underlying causal processes. many theoretical approaches highlight social relations and structural factors infl uencing spatial mobility behaviour and outcomes. although panel data is largely used in empirical analyses informed by these approaches, a relatively small number of these applications use appropriate modelling strategies that deal • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch194 with heterogeneity at supra-individual levels. multi-level modelling frameworks acknowledge complicated clusters of individuals in social relationships or structures, which enable us to explicitly address the infl uence of the spatial areas where individuals are nested in their mobility behaviour and outcomes. dyadic models, a sub-type of multi-level models, have been used recently in the study of family migration in order to address the joint infl uence of couple members on mobility decisions and associated outcomes (see section 3.2). 2.3 types of panel data there are increasing numbers of panel datasets which are regularly used for the study of spatial mobility. these data collections are diverse but rarely are they specifi cally designed to study spatial mobility. as a result, extant types of panel data display different strengths and limitations for the study of spatial mobility in relation to key aspects, such as sample size and attrition, length of observation, quality of measurement, or availability of key study variables to address intermediate or spurious relations. recent research often used household panel surveys such as the uk household longitudinal study, the socio-economic panel in germany, or the panel study of income dynamics in the usa. these data collections follow nationally representative samples of households, where all (adult) household members have been interviewed on a regular basis (often annually). these data sources are particularly advantageous in that their multi-actor designs enable the collection of a wealth of information in a household context, and their broader target populations enable us to study heterogeneity in a society, in terms of age groups, mobile/nonmobile populations, etc. many of these surveys follow individuals over long periods of time, even those that abandon or join original sample households. this not only helps to maintain the representativeness of the population in the sample but also enables the examination of a rich set of household dynamics, such as changes in family arrangements or the role of power relations within households for spatial mobility (see section 3.2). cohort studies such as the uk millennial cohort study, the german family panel, or the survey of health ageing and retirement in europe (share) follow individuals from a given cohort defi ned by age or an event such as birth, leaving school, or entering retirement. since samples are drawn for homogeneous groups (cohorts), the data design already controls for a great deal of context heterogeneity and allows for better causal assessments than general population surveys. the ability to make inferences to other groups of society, however, is rather limited. given the focus on the stages of childhood (and early adulthood), birth cohort studies have become particularly popular when studying the role of spatial mobility for childhood developmental processes and (later) outcomes (e.g. vidal/baxter 2018). rotating panel surveys such as the european living conditions survey or the european labour force survey follow different sets of individuals for shorter periods of time. for example, the longitudinal part of the labour force survey interviews the same individuals in each quarter of a year, but only for six consecutive quarters. panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 195 this is advantageous as far as the quality of the responses is concerned. panel conditioning is restricted here because respondents are less likely to grow tired or be susceptible to learning effects if they are not to be interviewed too many times. furthermore, since samples are refreshed frequently so as to enable new participants to be followed, sample representativeness remains high as it is less likely to be affected by panel attrition. the obvious drawback is that individuals can only be followed for a short observation window which limits within-individual analyses. mobility-specifi c panel studies, such as migration decisions in the course of life in two german cities (huinink/kley 2011) or job mobilities and family lives in europe (schneider et al. 2011), are advantageous in that they collect more and very detailed measurements to analyse the migration process. in addition, these studies often over-sample mobile populations, which provides suffi cient statistical power for analysis. despite their advantages, mobility-focused studies generally contain fewer observations (in many cases only two) and some leave aside the non-mobile population, which limits options to exploit within-individual change. the use of longitudinal population registers (often linked with data from other administrative registers, censuses or surveys) for research purposes is advantageous in that they enable (virtually) whole registered populations to be followed. this limits typical issues relating to the representativeness of the sample and allows us to focus on specifi c populations and mobility processes for which survey samples are not suffi ciently large. the possibility of deepening the study associations is often limited by the restricted availability of key study variables to address intermediate or spurious relations, including the absence of subjective measures. to date, this type of data has only been used in a few countries where it is available for research purposes (mostly in northern europe) but other countries are starting to grant access. in spain, access to the entire collection of social security records meant that the impact of inter-city migration on occupational achievement could be studied (la roca/puga 2017). less common is panel data deriving from experimental designs. although the random assignment of treatments provides the best context for causal inference, such designs are costly and complex to set up for spatial mobility. an example of a randomised social experiment is the moving to opportunity (mto) project that addresses impacts on life outcomes of sponsored moves to low-poverty areas for children in low-income families in fi ve us american metropolitan areas (chetty et al. 2016). • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch196 3 advances in spatial mobility research using panel data: an overview 3.1 micro-level perspectives on spatial mobility over the life course one major advantage of panel data is its greater capacity to model complex human behaviour. below, we illustrate how panel data has been instrumental to improving our knowledge of spatial mobility in relation to life course dynamics, decisionmaking processes, and labour market outcomes. pioneering longitudinal research with panel data has studied spatial mobility as discrete events, often using event history analysis or discrete choice models, and redirecting the attention from frequencies to the timing of moves. the comparison of results from (pooled) cross-sectional and longitudinal models using psid data from the united states by davies and pickles (1985) and clark (1992) acknowledges the adequacy of longitudinal data analyses to examine spatial mobility.3 this adequacy stems from the ability to approach spatial mobility as a time-dependent process, and to include time-varying variables in the analysis to partly address issues of the right time order of events, and omitted variables in the analysis of cross-sectional data. importantly, these papers recognise the contribution of the longitudinal analysis of panel data in moving from the evidence that is contingent in a particular period, based on life cycle views dominating prior micro-level research, to the impacts associated with change and transitions over the life course. over recent decades, research that has adopted a life course approach and longitudinal models has examined the proximate determinants of spatial mobility, often stemming from (expected) changes in occupational, family, and other relevant life domains – including in relation to social conditions (e.g. cooke et al. 2016; clark/ lisowski 2017; kulu et al. 2021; melzer/hinz 2019; warner/sharp 2016). even with panel data, establishing causal associations is often a daunting task given the concatenation of mobility events over short periods of time and the multiplicity of underlying time-varying stressors, particularly among young adults in the context of high diversity and the complexity of individuals’ life courses. capitalising on large panel data collections, recent research has deployed more sophisticated models that enable multiple, complex, and conditional life course events to be assessed in relation to spatial mobility. for instance, pelikh and kulu (2018) used bhps data and multi-state event history models to examine cohort and gender differences in series of short-distance and 3 although earlier research used panel data to assess aspects associated with mobility, these early studies did not adopt longitudinal methods and did not exploit the panel structure of the data. using retrospective data, sandefur and scott (1981) were among the fi rst to deploy longitudinal models and to pay more attention to the life course triggers of spatial mobility. they found that time-varying statuses in the family and work careers not only emerged as important predictors of intercounty and interstate mobility in the united states, but these statuses also largely explained the well-established inverse relationship between age and frequency of mobility from early to mid-adulthood. panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 197 long-distance moves among young adults from age 16. their analytical approach extends the traditional event history model of a single event to assess several moves for the same individuals (i.e. fi rst, second, and third/higher-order moves, also disaggregated by distance). this way, the authors do not assume homogeneity in the antecedents of initial and repeated moves over short and long distances. results showed signifi cant differences across cohorts, with more recent cohorts having a lower risk of fi rst move and a higher risk of third move, which the authors attribute to increasing polarisation between movers and stayers. group differences were not fully explained by typical family-related triggers (of short-distance moves) or employment-related triggers (of long-distance moves). however, the analytical design does not enable the authors to completely discard the fact that group differences can be due to omitted variables in the analysis. with increasing recognition of interdependence across life course domains, empirical research has addressed complex time dynamics of spatial mobility before (in anticipation of) or after (as adaptations to) transitions in other life domains (clark/ withers 2009). while temporal synchronicity suggests important interdependences across life course events, the direction of causality and the size of the effect remain unclear if the empirical strategy does not explicitly consider whether life events are endogenous or jointly determined.4 multi-level, multi-process modelling, which consists of simultaneous equations with correlated random terms, accounting for individual level unobserved heterogeneity that commonly affect spatial mobility and other life course processes, is increasingly applied to solve these issues (steele 2008). along these lines, kulu and steele (2013) use partnership and housing histories and annual measurements of key covariates between 1987 and 2000 from the finnish longitudinal fertility register to jointly estimate relocations among women to specifi c housing types (single-family house, terraced house, and apartment) and fertility progression (fi rst, second, and third conceptions). results showed a higher propensity to moving when a child is born, a higher likelihood of moving to single-family housing when the number of children increases, and an elevated level of fertility after residential mobility, particularly when moving to single-family housing. results also revealed a substantive degree of correlation among equation-specifi c random terms, which indicates that long-term family plans and housing aspirations were closely related – with women who wished for a large family more prone to moving (several times) to achieve adequate or desired housing. not accounting for the cross-process correlations would have led to bias on the causal effects, overstating the role of fertility for housing transitions and fertility differences by housing types (see also lersch and vidal (2014) for an application focusing on separation). 4 also, hoem and nedoluzhko (2016) warn that some practices of anticipatory analysis in spatial mobility research (e.g. using negative durations of independent variables, and other forms of conditioning on future outcomes) might produce biased estimates, and propose alternatives to adequately assess anticipation. • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch198 further research has improved our understanding of spatial mobility in anticipation of triggering life events by examining spatial mobility behaviour as a function of reported intentions in other life domains. an example of this is the study by vidal/huinink/feldhaus (2017) which uses data from the german family panel and event history models. this study fi nds that the intention to have a child in the near future impacts subsequent mobility, even though the direction of the effect varies depending on the life course phase. when intending to have a child, younger and childless individuals relocate at a lower rate while older individuals with children relocate at a higher rate. these associations are largely due to different opportunities and rationales for adjusting housing and other living conditions in anticipation of fertility behaviour. the authors also deploy multi-level multi-process modelling to show that results are consistent after accounting for unobserved factors that commonly determine fertility and spatial mobility decisions. with regard to spatial mobility as an intentional behaviour, panel data – with observations of subjective evaluations before and after the behaviour – has been instrumental in unveiling the mechanisms underlying mobility desires, concrete plans, and ultimately behaviour. it has also helped to explain how life course experiences motivate voluntary and involuntary (im)mobility. kley (2017) addresses the question as to why individuals who intend to leave their current town in the near future often do not realise their intention, and examine moving facilitators and constraints across different stages of the decision-making process. the analysis relies on a panel study conducted in two german cities that was designed around a three-step decision-making model consisting of pre-decisional (considerations), post-decisional (plans), and behavioural (realisation) stages (see kley 2011). results from several sets of (bivariate and seemingly unrelated) probit regressions show that the role of typical constraints (i.e. home ownership, place of work, and friendships in town) are signifi cantly underestimated if the pre-decisional stage is not included in the analysis. kley argues that those who are strongly rooted to their place of residence are not at risk of migrating because they do not consider migration a possibility. coulter and scott (2015) use data from the bhps, one of the few panel studies that has collected annual information on desires to move and their associated motivations, to examine the reasons that trigger mobility desires and behaviour. beyond the fi ndings that such motivations vary over a life course, results from fi xed effects models show that targeted motivations related to life course transitions, particularly employment, are better predictors of mobility than more diffuse or unspecifi c reasons (see also groot et al. (2011) for the role of unanticipated life course events in terms of unintended mobility). studying the dynamics in employment and other outcomes where panel data is uniquely suited to tracing changes before and after migration has been a subject of interest. a common fi nding is that wage gains after migration are not instantaneous but delayed. for instance, lehmer and ludsteck (2011) use german employment register data to compare the wage changes for workers moving between places of work within regions and for those migrating between regions within a fi xed effects regression framework. the study fi nds clear wage gains of migration beyond changing workplaces, which are established about three to panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 199 four years after migration. they use a fi xed effects approach to estimating panel data in order to limit bias due to unaccounted heterogeneity that is constant across individuals and establishments. the authors discuss that the time-varying unobserved heterogeneity might have been less of a problem in their application because workers often have longer rather than shorter decision horizons. similarly, rowe et al. (2017), drawing on australian panel data, fi nd that movers from rural into metropolitan areas receive a delayed wage premium. it is noteworthy that the study uses sequence analysis to gain a better understanding of the employment pathways leading to these wage premiums and fi nd that rural-metropolitan movers are more likely to experience rapid transitions into employment after school (and university). their analytical strategy considered decomposing differences in wage distributions between migrants and stayers, using an extension of the oaxacablinder approach to quantile regression to account for unobserved features that explain wage differences across groups. going beyond wages, perales (2017) deploys fi xed effects panel models on the same australian dataset and fi nds longterm increases in job satisfaction (at least fi ve years) after long-distance relocations with decreases before migration. effects are less pronounced for job-related moves and quickly fade after job-related moves. as referred to above, conventional fi xed effects regression assumes parallel trends in outcome variables (brüderl/ludwig 2014), which is seldom acknowledged as a problem in applied research. kratz and brüderl (2013) use fi xed effects models with individual slopes to examine the effect of internal migration (for job reasons) on wages in germany, relaxing the parallel trend assumption. when comparing results from pooled ordinary least squares (ols), conventional fi xed effects and fi xed effects individual slope models, they fi nd that conventional fi xed effects models overestimate the effect of migration (almost 7 percent) compared with fi xed effects individual slope models (about 3 percent), which indicates that migrants may be selected on wage growth. however, in this application, pooled ols estimates are very similar to fi xed effects individual slope estimates (see also jolly (2015)). a common concern in the study of labour market migration outcomes is selection. one type of selection is state dependence, where past labour market states determine current states. for example, previously unemployed individuals are more likely to become unemployed again (arulampalam et al. 2000) and they may also be more likely to migrate. panel data can help to address this problem but simplistic approaches may create more problems than they solve. for instance, it is common to include lagged dependent variables (e.g. cooke 2003; blackburn 2009, 2010). a naïve lagged dependent variable approach is problematic, however, because true and spurious state dependence cannot be separated. furthermore, it is very likely that the typical assumption of no correlation between the stochastic error and the lagged dependent variable in the regression equation has been violated; if unobserved factors affected the lagged outcome, they are also likely to affect the current outcome. boyle et al. (2009) is one of the few studies which aim to adequately address the issue of state dependence by estimating dynamic panel models. they fi nd that moving for men’s jobs (but also moving for non-employment-related reasons) • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch200 diminishes women’s subsequent employment in britain. without a dynamic panel model, the effect of state dependence is overstated but the overall conclusions remain unchanged. the estimation of dynamic panel models crucially rests on the inclusion of instrumental variables for the initial condition – in boyle et al. (2009) one instrument is occupational gender diversity in the region – which comes with the usual problems of fi nding adequate instruments. 3.2 linked lives spatial mobility does not occur in a social vacuum since mobility decisions and outcomes are infl uenced by and affect the lives of other individuals. panel surveys that adopt multi-actor designs are particularly well-suited to examining relationships between household members and the underlying inequalities and power relations in terms of spatial mobility. in addition, the regular collection of information on wider social relations and resources in some panel studies has enabled the infl uence and impact of spatial mobility beyond the household to be studied. the consequences of family migration, i.e. couples’ long-distance relocations within national borders for women’s labour market outcomes, have received considerable scholarly attention (vidal et al. 2017). here, household panel data helps to address individual unobserved heterogeneity while enabling us to study individuals within their household context. in a seminal study, cooke et al. (2009) use psid and bhps in a fi xed effects approach to study the changes in earnings for women related to family migration and also compare effect sizes for the consequences of childbirth. differentiating current moves, the number of past moves, and the number of years since the last move (thereby allowing a study of changes over time), the study fi nds that the overall negative earning effects for women are smaller than those for childbirth in both countries. the negative effect of migration on women’s earnings is more persistent in britain. using a comparative approach, lersch (2014: 202ff) fi nds long-distance relocations reduce employment chances for women and men (only marginally statistically greater effect for women), but these effects are short-lived (only in the fi rst year after migration). the negative effects for women are greater in england and west germany compared with east germany. this study shows that without accounting for individual-level heterogeneity using random effects migration effects for women are overestimated (4 percent vs 3 percent), while for men the estimated effects are similar in both model specifi cations. further studies suggest that parental status and childbearing transitions underlie gender inequalities in couple migration outcomes. for instance, studying the interrelatedness of parental status, migration, and labour market outcomes, cooke (2001) fi nds that the negative effect of migration on married women’s employment is mostly concentrated among mothers of young children in the united states. the author stresses that panel data and methods enable him to address changes before and after migration and parenthood, rather than to simply observe differences between migrants and non-migrants (see also related research in kley and drobnič 2019 and vidal et al. 2016). panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 201 household panel studies usually include interviews with all household members, thus allowing us to directly model the couple level, which is particularly relevant in the study of family migration. against this backdrop, sophisticated models that exploit both temporal and multi-actor components of panel household data have been deployed to address the joint infl uence of couple members on mobility decisions and associated outcomes. using a dyadic approach (actor-partner interdependence model) which also capitalises on the household panel structure, lersch (2016) shows that in britain, women with more egalitarian partners are less likely to leave employment after family migration. however, even adjusting for egalitarian gender ideology, family migration still has different outcomes among men and women. the model contains partner-specifi c random variables which are allowed to correlate to account for non-independence within couples and to limit bias due to couple-level heterogeneity. recently, dyadic models specifi c to residential mobility have been proposed. kern and stein (2018) put forward a dyadic modelling framework that specifi es actor and partner effects on the mobility dispositions of each couple member, which in turn have an impact on joint couple mobility decisions. they empirically illustrate the model using a multi-level structural equation model set-up (also accounting for regional context heterogeneity) and soep geo-coded data. results show strong similarities in couple members’ conditional mobility disposition, and that couple members infl uence household moving behaviour through their partner’s dispositions. this supports the notion of family migration as a by-product of couple bargaining. steele et al. (2013) propose panel data models that acknowledge the infl uence of both partners in couple decisions and are fl exible enough to address partnership dynamics, i.e. that individuals can change partners and incur periods of singlehood. compared to previously used panel data models, the proposed new models were found to improve the residual structure of an application to residential mobility as they capture unaccounted partnership dynamics.5 although the authors fi nd differences in estimated effects across models, these were not large enough to affect the substantive conclusions. we note that despite their usefulness, the level of sophistication and the high data requirements of these modelling approaches might hamper their wider application. although the number of panel studies following international migrants before and after migration is small, the consequences of migration for sending households can be examined in panel studies for countries with high emigration rates. migration and mobility do not only affect those who are mobile, but also those left behind, and it is important to account for selectivity in migration. most studies along these lines have deployed cross-sectional data, which does not enable us to assess whether study outcomes are due to differences between households (with members abroad or not), or changes before and after a member moved abroad that better refl ect the 5 these are “multiple-membership-consensus” models that include a weighted combination of the random effects for each partner, and a “head-of-household-joint” model that specifi es distinct but correlated random terms for single and partnered individuals. • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch202 causal effect of migration. in this regard, novel collections of panel data in developing countries have been instrumental in obtaining more accurate estimates of the impact of emigration. for instance, in contrast to earlier cross-sectional analyses, acosta (2020) fi nds no effects of remittances or international migration on labour supply in origin households when using fi xed effects and controlling for agricultural income shocks as important sources of time-varying heterogeneity in rural areas of el salvador for men. for women, remittances and migration increase their participation in agricultural activities while reducing non-agricultural and domestic labour, but the effect sizes are small (see also arouri and nguyen (2018) and also murard (2020)). using a similar analytical strategy, cuong and linh (2018) fi nd that in vietnam, remittances increase both household earnings and consumption and reduce poverty, while also reducing labour supply. the overall effect of migration on these outcomes is minor, most likely because migrants already contributed substantially to households’ economic resources before migration. similar results have been found for the philippines (ducanes 2015). in a related manner, the consequences of migration on left-behind children have received growing attention over recent years. binci and giannelli (2018) use vietnam living standards surveys and fi xed effects regression to show that remittances after domestic migration reduce child labour and increase school attendance for origin households in the country. in contrast, applying cross-sectional methods remittances from international migration seem to be more important than remittances from domestic migration. the authors argue that unobserved migration networks of families may drive these differences across methods. lu (2015) examines the consequences of internal and international migration on the physical growth (height and bmi) of left-behind children in indonesia (indonesian family life survey) and mexico (mexican family life survey) using fi xed effects regression. while there is no effect on bmi, the study fi nds that internal migration impacts positively on height in indonesia while the effect of international migration is negative in mexico (other effects are not statistically signifi cant). these cross-country differences were attributable to the different developmental status and nutritional profi les of both countries. yue et al. (2020) study maternal, internal out-migration for children below the age of 2 in china with a two-way fi xed effects regression, i.e. a difference-indifference approach. maternal out-migration leads to worse mental development and cognitive delay. there is no association of out-migration with social-emotional delay, anaemia, weight, or frequency of illness. earlier out-migration has particularly negative effects. results for pooled ols would lead to substantially different conclusions, sometimes with opposite signs. intermediate variables that can explain the association between out-migration and children’s outcomes are reduced activity with children and a reduction in the quality of food. 3.3 context-level conditions and outcomes spatial mobility allows individuals and households to change their economic, social, environmental, and geographical context, e.g. by moving into a different neighbourhood or labour market region. at the same time, dynamic contexts panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 203 have an impact on the probability of spatial mobility. because individuals (partly) select their contexts, it is often diffi cult to examine the causal consequences of contexts in terms of behaviour and outcomes. the aggregation of individual decisions also shapes population compositions and can lead to social change. panel data has several major advantages when studying the relationship between spatial mobility and context. firstly, panel data allows us to observe and model selection in context. secondly, because place is not static (baker et al. 2016), panel data is also particularly suited to investigating how changing contextual conditions infl uence spatial mobility and how spatial mobility creates changes in context. thirdly, panel data allows us to study the persistence in contextual exposure, e.g. the exposure to poor neighbourhoods. in addition, deploying multi-level models on repeated observations of individuals clustered in different contexts enables correct inferences to be drawn where there is context-level heterogeneity, and allows us to estimate context-level effects on individuals’ mobility behaviour and outcomes. a central context for spatial mobility at the macro level is the housing market, which is often conceptualised at the regional level. as theorised in the institutional approach of spatial mobility (flowerdew 1982), aspects such as tenure structure (where more rental accommodation facilitates mobility), housing demand, transaction costs, and housing costs can all have important implications for mobility. panel data is particularly suited to understanding the consequences of changing housing markets for spatial mobility. in considering changes in supply and demand in regional housing markets by drawing on panel data, lersch (2014: 156f) shows that population growth is positively associated with increases in crowding in britain and germany, but regional tenure structure is not associated. the author deploys fi xed effects regression, and replicates the analyses using multi-level models with random intercepts at the individual and housing market level to yield unbiased standard errors for the housing market variables. results from the application are broadly similar across both models, but standard errors are greater for the fi xed effects models. the bulk of micro-level research on the role of context characteristics for individual migration decisions has focused on those of origin context only. such models implicitly assume that the characteristics of potential destinations do not play any role in migration decisions, and is inconsistent with theory and empirical evidence from macro-level research that considers that such destinations do matter. incorporating information about potential destinations for movers in britain, rabe and taylor (2012) fi nd that differentials in house prices between origin and potential destinations matter for migration decisions; in particular, these deter migration for homeowners. the study innovatively combines bhps with the british labour force survey, register data on regional mobility, and regional house price data to estimate random effects regression models predicting mobility. several sources of migrant selectivity were modelled additionally, since random effects models are not immune to individual unobserved heterogeneity. the choice of the random effects model is in response to the interest in examining differences in opportunities across individuals rather than within-individual variation over time. overall, the origin-destination comparison approach enriches our understanding of context• sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch204 level migration incentives. thomas et al. (2015) also consider origin and destination contexts in a study of the distance moved by residential movers in england and wales. they assess the relative importance of individual and place-based variations, employing a multi-level cross-classifi ed statistical framework in which respondents can be nested in distinct higher level units. the modelling strategy enables them to assess the role of place-based attractiveness, net of average socio-demographic context compositions. the results show that migrants are pulled towards rural and coastal amenity-rich destination environments, which indicates the persistence and strength of counterurbanisation processes. with more and more people worldwide affected by climate change, a timely and relevant additional line of research studies the infl uence on spatial mobility of weather as an environmental and regional condition. for instance, sedova and kalkuhl (2020) link household panel data with weather forecasts at the district level for india and utilise panel regression models, including fi xed effects at the household and district level. they fi nd that temperature and precipitation extremes in rural india affect mobility. here, adverse weather shocks reduce international migration and rural-rural mobility but instead push migrants to cities in richer indian states. these climate migrants are mostly unskilled agricultural workers. using similarly combined data pooled for ethiopia, malawi, tanzania, and uganda, mueller et al. (2020) show that weather extremes reduce out-migration from urban areas but are not a predictor of rural migration using fi xed effects models. confl ict can also be a contextual condition that pushes people to leave their places of residence and is in fact a major reason for international migration (international organization for migration 2019), but individual-level evidence of the relationship between confl ict and mobility is scarce when drawing on panel data. a notable exception is a study by bohra-mishra and massey (2011) who rely on panel data from nepal to study the likelihood of local, internal, and external migration due to civil confl ict using an event history framework. the study provides evidence in support of a threshold model of migration, where violence must reach a high level to increase the likelihood of migration. moving from a regional to a local scale, a large body of literature is concerned with spatial mobility and neighbourhoods. baker et al. (2016) use hilda to study the relationship between housing affordability, mobility, and neighbourhood quality. in so doing, they use a dynamic random effects panel model to demonstrate that the context of where an individual lives is causally infl uenced to a signifi cant degree by the prior context, which is often of the same type. the authors augment the model with the mundlak approach (i.e. includes as an explanatory variable the means of the time-variant variables), which allows for potential correlation between the individual-specifi c effects and the explanatory variables, and ensures unbiased and consistent model estimates in the context of random effects regression. results show that those persons facing housing affordability issues are more likely to move and are more likely to move to disadvantaged neighbourhoods. vaalavuo et al. (2019) use finnish register data with fi xed effects regression to show that native finns are more likely to translate income growth into improvements in neighbourhood quality panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 205 when compared with immigrants. not applying a fi xed effect regression framework would underestimate the difference between the native population and immigrants. 4 conclusion after decades of collection (which can be costly) and use of panel data, it is imperative to monitor research advances in the fi eld of spatial mobility and to evaluate the capacity to build an evidence base that not only informs policy but also contributes to theoretical development. the aim of this article is to establish the benefi ts of panel data for spatial mobility research and to illustrate this by providing an overview of recent progress in research. the necessarily limited selection of themes and studies presented in this overview does not do justice to the vast literature that exists, but it should show the strong level of engagement among spatial mobility researchers with panel data and illustrate the value of panel data in the study of spatial mobility. furthermore, this overview has explained how spatial mobility is a multi-faceted phenomenon. panel data can be extremely useful in establishing the diverse and complex patterns of mobility and immobility, isolating key relationships in a range of outcomes for mobile and immobile populations, and deciphering the causal mechanisms underlying these processes. the overview also revealed that some limitations in extant data collection and the under-utilisation of the data available might be slowing down further progress. there are several critical issues which we believe to be essential in order to continue making progress. the key advantage of panel data is the repeated observation of individuals, but this is often not fully exploited in empirical research. among researchers who study spatial mobility, it is important to increase expertise in methods devised to examine data with longitudinal and panel structures (e.g. fi xed effects models, event history analysis, multi-level models). many of these methods enable more accurate inferences than cross-sectional analyses, pooled cross-sections, or time series analyses by isolating within-individual change from between-individual differences. additionally, they enable the modelling of complex associations that better characterise spatial mobility phenomena by uncovering temporal relationships or acknowledging complicated clusters of individuals in social relationships or structures (among others). we still largely ignore how the increasing fl uidity and complexity of the life course, with multiple and differentiated life transitions, is affecting how spatial mobility is (re-)negotiated throughout individuals’ lives. to shed light on these matters, research should take advantage of long-running, multi-purpose panel studies to examine changes and continuities in space for long life segments, from childhood to older age, and across generations, while accounting for problems of attrition. such analyses should deepen the role of spatial mobility at different life course positions as well. this would allow us to shed more light on the links between aspirations, diverse motivations, and outcomes – including subjective wellbeing, health and lifestyle, environmental quality, climate and green spaces, social relationships and solidarity, and political attitudes. greater knowledge about these links would enable • sergi vidal, philipp m. lersch206 us to gain new insight into the role of spatial mobility as a boost or a bottleneck to advancement throughout the life course. panel datasets increasingly (but not suffi ciently) include sets of questions that enable relevant intersections to be established among diverse forms of spatial mobility. very limited progress has been made in terms of unveiling how relocation mobility (which has been declining in many countries) as well as commuting and other recurrent mobility practices (which are on the rise) are intertwined and have an impact on life outcomes. at the same time, immobility is simply considered to be the absence of mobility, the causes and consequences of which remain largely understudied (schewel 2020). the same can be said of the links between internal and international mobility, although this is a general gap in spatial mobility research (kin/skeldon 2010). while the vast majority of panel data collections are not devised to examine the entire process of international migration, creative research designs that combine complementary data sources from registers, surveys, social media, and other digital sources across origin and receiving countries can be valuable solutions. for example, panichella (2018) combined german and italian household panel data to assess the social mobility of southern italians who move internally (to northern italy) and internationally (to germany). panel data is also better able to explain mobility-related phenomena beyond individuals and their properties. as this overview has shown, panel data is largely used in empirical analyses informed by approaches that emphasise social relations and structural factors. however, a relatively small fraction of these applications use advances in dyadic, multi-level, and other modelling strategies to deal with heterogeneity at supra-individual levels. understanding the social embeddedness of spatial mobility also requires us to deepen our knowledge of social relationships beyond the household (mulder 2018) and to consider mobility as relational practices that link lives together; one example of this is children circulating around the homes of their separated parents (coulter et al. 2016), even though there are only a small number of panel studies, such as pairfam, which collect detailed information on ties outside the household. evidence from extant research also calls for further assessments of the links across micro-, mesoand macro-levels of analysis, and for the combination of multiple levels to be taken into consideration. for instance, some studies found relevant context-level variation on individual-level, partner-specifi c outcomes of decisions about household relocations taken at the couple level (lersch 2016; nisic/ melzer 2016). advancing knowledge on the role of geographic, economic, cultural, or socio-political conditions for spatial mobility processes can be achieved by exploiting variation across temporal and spatial contexts, including cross-national comparisons. there is also untapped potential in panel data in the form of large surveys and registers, to understand the micro-level foundations of context-level change resulting from differential movement of individuals by features such as age, gender, education, class, or race. selective mobility can reshape population compositions in origin and destination areas, and, if substantive, both drive social change and reconfi gure the inequality structures of cities, regions, and countries. stratifi ed panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 207 mobility patterns cause a myriad of local and urban processes such as gentrifi cation, ethnic segregation, or socio-economic polarisation, as well as broader spatial processes such as rural depopulation, social diffusion, or economic redistribution. these merit further study but cannot be fully understood without assessing the features and behaviours of individuals over time. acknowledgements we thank kilian rüß for research assistance. we thank guest editors, johannes huinink and josef brüderl, and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments and suggestions. sergi vidal acknowledges fi nancial support from the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness (grant number: ryc-201518254) and from the cerca programme of the government of catalonia. philipp m. 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2013: modeling household decisions using longitudinal data from household panel surveys, with applications to residential mobility. in: sociological methodology 43,1: 220-271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175013479352 https://doi.org/10.1068/a45287 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2017.12.001 https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2125 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-015-0728-3 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2011.00682.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-016-0771-8 https://doi.org/10.2307/2061003 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-018-0715-y https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319831952 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104848 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-985x.00257 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985x.2007.00509.x https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175013479352 panel data in research on mobility and migration: a review of recent advances • 213 stovel, katherine; bolan, marc 2004: residential trajectories: using optimal alignment to reveal the structure of residential mobility. in: sociological methods & 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in a cross-national perspective: the importance of institutional and cultural context. in: demographic research 36: 307-338. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2017.36.10 vidal, sergi; baxter, janeen 2018: residential relocations and academic performance of australian children: a longitudinal analysis. in: longitudinal and live course studies 9,2: 133-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.14301/llcs.v9i2.435 vidal, sergi; lutz, katharina 2018: internal migration over young adult life courses: continuities and changes across cohorts in west germany. in: advances in life course research 36: 45-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.03.003 warner, cody; sharp, gregory 2016: the shortand long-term effects of life events on residential mobility. in: advances in life course research 27: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2015.09.002 washbrook, elizabeth; clarke, paul s.; steele, fiona 2014: investigating non-ignorable dropout in panel studies of residential mobility. in: journal of the royal statistical society: series c (applied statistics) 63,2: 239-266. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12028 yue, ai et al. 2020: parental migration and early childhood development in rural china. in: demography 57,2: 403-422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00849-4 date of submission: 02.10.2020 date of acceptance: 05.05.2021 phd sergi vidal (). universitat autònoma de barcelona, centre for demographic studies. barcelona, spain. e-mail: svidal@ced.uab.es url: https://ced.uab.cat/en/directori/sergi-vidal/ prof. dr. philipp m. lersch. humboldt-universität zu berlin, department of social sciences; german institute for economic research (diw berlin). berlin, germany. e-mail: p.m.lersch@hu-berlin.de url: https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/en/lehrbereiche-en/sozpolsoz/team/1691159?set_ language=en https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124103262683 https://doi.org/10.1068/a130327p https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcz017 https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12269 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0592-0 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2017.36.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.14301/llcs.v9i2.435 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.03.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2015.09.002 https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12028 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00849-4 mailto:svidal@ced.uab.es https://ced.uab.cat/en/directori/sergi-vidal/ mailto:p.m.lersch@hu-berlin.de https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/en/lehrbereiche-en/sozpolsoz/team/1691159?set_language=en published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds from 2006 to 2015, and differences of region, gender, and education development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds from 2006 to 2015, and differences of region, gender, and education ying zhou abstract: with populations rapidly aging, the development over time in the cognitive function among the elderly approaching or reaching retirement is important for successful aging at work and planning pension policies. however, few studies in this fi eld focus on this age group. this study characterizes time trends in cognitive function among 55-69-year-old europeans from 2006 to 2015, and compares these trends by region, gender, and education. this study analyzes 40,689 subjects in waves 2, 4, 5 and 6 of the survey of health, aging and retirement in europe (share) covering ten countries. cognitive function was measured by recall and verbal fluency. educational levels were classifi ed by quartiles. a generalized estimating equation (gee) model was used to explore the association between cognitive function and development over time after controlling for confounders. further stratifi cation analysis using gee models was conducted, stratifi ed by region, gender and education. cognitive function improved signifi cantly in southern and central europe over the observed timeframe, whereas it did not in northern europe. those with relative low levels of formal education displayed the most rapid increases in cognitive function in southern and central europe. among those with lower education in southern europe, males’ cognitive function improved more quickly than females’. the improvement of cognitive function at ages 55-69 in southern and central europe may contribute to continuing engagement with productive activities in old age. educational interventions for people with lower levels of education may be most effective in achieving such engagement. this paper extends the literature on the development over time in the cognitive function among the elderly close to retirement age in europe by analysing southern, central and northern europe, as well as differences by region, gender and education. the results may provide evidence for planning pension policies and educational interventions. keywords: aging · cognitive function · education · flynn effect comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 119-142 (date of release: 29.03.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-04 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-04en0 • ying zhou120 1 introduction and review as populations rapidly age, public policies in many countries now encourage working into increasingly higher ages, so as to help manage the increased costs of government retirement pension and health care (fisher et al. 2016, 2017). by legislation, about half of the oecd countries will increase their retirement age to approximately 66 years on average by 2060 (oecd 2017). moreover, fi nancial incentives are now widely provided to delay retirement (fisher et al. 2016). however, poor health – including cognitive health – is one of the leading causes of early and unplanned retirement (fisher et al. 2016). although age-related cognitive decline begins in early adulthood (salthouse 2010b), a study of the united states found that between the ages of 55 and 69, approximately 10 percent of workers experienced steep cognitive decline (belbase et al. 2015). these workers experiencing steep cognitive decline were more likely to have lower performance at work, to “downshift” to a less cognitively demanding job, or to retire earlier than workers not experiencing cognitive decline (belbase et al. 2015; fisher et al. 2017). the cognitive functioning among older adults at work, particularly during periods approaching or reaching retirement, is a critical factor to successfully aging at work, especially in cognitively-demanding jobs, such as professional, managerial, technical and other cognitively complex jobs (fisher et al. 2017). therefore, the development of cognitive function over time is a public health concern, particularly for the 55-69 age group. 1.1 current research on trends in cognitive function past research analysing the trends of cognitive function remains inconsistent regarding the theory (“success of success” hypothesis versus “failure of success” hypothesis, “flynn-effect” versus “anti-flynn-effect”), as well as in study results and conclusions. on the one hand, the “success of success” hypothesis states that there exist factors which may improve the cognitive function of a population over time, postpone the onset of disability, and thereby result in more people living longer and healthier lives (fries 1980). these positive factors for younger generations include higher education, better cardiovascular risk factor profi les (i.e. lower blood pressure and total cholesterol levels, less smoking, and more physical activity), better nutrition, and the improved treatment of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (pietschnig/voracek 2015; ahrenfeldt et al. 2018). moreover, according to the “cognitive reserve” hypothesis, more recent generations have also more experience in jobs that require considerable cognitive investment, which leads to increases in neuronal development and consequently serves as a buffer against cognitive decline (fisher et al. 2017). recent studies have shown more recent birth years are associated with better cognitive function in europe (ahrenfeldt et al. 2018), and with slower rates of age-related cognitive decline and a lower risk of incident cognitive impairment in the united states (downer et al. 2019; vonk et al. 2019). the berlin aging study reports that later-born cohort (in 2013-14, mean age of 75 years development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 121 old) showed higher levels of cognitive performance than their counterparts born 20 years earlier (gerstorf et al. 2015). in addition, the tendency toward a cumulation of advantages or disadvantages, the so-called “matthew effect”, is observed in human aging and life-course patterns within cohorts, as well as between cohorts (dannefer 1987, 2003). if a larger proportion of younger generations is exposed to more factors benefi cial to cognitive function, taking the “matthew effect” into consideration, their cognitive development over time at older ages may also develop positively. the increase of cognitive abilities from one generation to the next, the so called “flynn effect”, has been reported in both developed countries (including the united states, 15 european nations, japan, south korea, australia, canada, and new zealand) and developing countries (including china, india, brazil, dominica, saudi arabia, and sudan) (flynn 2012, 1987; pietschnig/voracek 2015). a meta-analysis has estimated a global increase of 3 iq points per decade on average from 1909 to 2013 (pietschnig/voracek 2015). on the other hand, according to the “failure of success” hypothesis, reduced age-specifi c mortality and longer lifespans might increase the prevalence of chronic conditions including cognitive impairment, leading to worse overall cognitive health of the elderly population (fries 1980). studies examining trends in cognitive function showed an increase over time in prevalent cognitive impairment in the netherlands (van den kommer et al. 2018) and the united states (downer et al. 2019), and in prevalence of dementia in japan (sekita et al. 2010) and sweden (mathillas et al. 2011). these studies investigating cognitive impairment and dementia usually focus on the population aged 65+, 75+, or 85+. however, little is known about the cognitive functioning and its development over time for the elderly approaching or reaching retirement (55-69 years old), despite research revealing that some workers experience steep cognitive decline over this period (belbase et al. 2015). the plateauing or decline of cognitive abilities from one generation to the next, the so-called “negative flynn effect” or “anti-flynn effect”, has been reported in european countries including norway (sundet et al. 2004), denmark (teasdale/ owen 2008), the netherlands (woodley/meisenberg 2013), finland (dutton/lynn 2013), france (dutton/lynn 2015), and britain (shayer/ginsburg 2009). however, the majority of research on the negative flynn effect used samples of under-20-yearolds (dutton et al. 2016; sundet et al. 2004; teasdale/owen 2008; shayer/ginsburg 2009; woodley/meisenberg 2013; dutton/lynn 2013, 2015). taking dynamic time periods, geographic areas, and gender into consideration, the trends in the cognitive function studies are more complicated, since development over time in cognitive function may vary among different population subgroups of geographic regions, genders, and further potential factors (prince et al. 2016; dutton et al. 2016; vonk et al. 2019). studies of both denmark and norway found early gains of the flynn effect, followed by stagnation through the 1990s in both countries, and a slight decline since the late 1990s in denmark (teasdale/owen 2005; sundet et al. 2004). a recent study indicated greater increases in cognitive performance for southern europeans (compared to central and northern europe) and for females (compared to males) (weber et al. 2017). however, the authors noted that further research is required for the inconclusive and statistically insignifi cant • ying zhou122 fi ndings, namely that males had larger gains than females in southern europe, whereas females had larger gains in northern and central europe (weber et al. 2017). moreover, the study did not analyse nor adjust for educational levels explicitly. however, in addition to region and gender, education appears to be one of the key factors for time trends in cognitive ability in some countries, while not appearing infl uential in others (neisser 1998; teasdale/owen 2005). more education in europe may help cognitive levels, with a long-term effect through the pathways of occupation, social interaction, and lifestyle choices (bennett et al. 2014; banks/ mazzonna 2012; alley et al. 2007; pavlova/silbereisen 2012; schneeweis et al. 2014). well-educated people are more likely to achieve higher earnings and income, to engage in greater social and cultural participation, and to have more healthy habits and lifestyles, which may prevent the age-related cognitive decline (banks/ mazzonna 2012; rowe/kahn 1997). moreover, people with higher education have more opportunities to work jobs demanding higher cognitive ability, and the “use it or lose it” hypothesis seems to be supported by results across studies (fisher et al. 2017). yet it remains unclear whether and how education moderates the trajectory of cognitive change (lenehan et al. 2015; alley et al. 2007). some of the inconsistency in previous evidence may lie in the threshold of education for its effect (lenehan et al. 2015). 1.2 novel contributions of this study first, this study focuses on the age group of 55-69. as mentioned above, the cognitive ability and its trends for this age group has a considerable infl uence on sustained productive work in old age and desired retirement timing. moreover, this age group is less affected by sample attrition related to death or other health conditions than older adults. however, most research examining time trends in cognitive limitations or dementia focuses on persons 70 years of age or older (langa 2015; choi et al. 2018); while the majority studies which found the anti-flynn effect examined those younger than 20 years old (larson et al. 2013; alley et al. 2007; dutton/lynn 2013; teasdale/owen 2005). second, this study investigates trends in cognitive function considering region, gender, and education by using a large representative european sample covering a total of ten countries in three european regions over nine years. the countries are austria, belgium, czech republic, denmark, france, germany, italy, spain, sweden, and switzerland. third, this study applies a new approach to operationalising education, which elsewhere has been successfully applied to time trend investigation by examining the relative rank of educational attainment or socio-economic status in proportion to the overall distribution (choi et al. 2018; bound et al. 2015). in contrast, the conventional classifi cation of educational attainment by credentials or international standard classifi cation of education (isced) may lead to less comparable subgroups in the study of time trends, because the high educational group (isced ≥ 5) has grown over time, and the low educational group (isced ≤ 2) has shrunk and is becoming an increasingly vulnerable segment of the population (bound et al. 2015). development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 123 insuffi cient numbers of participants with low or high education levels may limit statistical power and lead to bias (lenehan et al. 2015). furthermore, relying only on years of education may cloud international comparisons, as each country has its own system with varying programme durations and differing types of certifi cation, such as vocational and academic degrees. 1.3 research question this study aims to investigate changes in cognitive function over time at ages 55-69 in europe and the differences linked to region, gender, and education. this study seeks to provide evidence whether and how cognitive performance becomes better over time at the population level for the elderly close to retirement ages in europe. these results may contribute to the maintenance of productive activities in old age. 2 data and methods 2.1 sample this study uses data of people between the ages of 55 and 69 in waves 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the share survey, a longitudinal, nationally representative, populationbased, international, and harmonized survey (börsch-supan et al. 2013). wave 1 was excluded because education was measured differently than in subsequent waves. wave 3 was also excluded because it focused on respondents’ life histories. wave 7 was excluded because it was designed to focus on both life history and panel information, and the panel information was collected by a shorter, condensed set of questions from the regular panel questionnaire. thus, verbal fluency in wave 7, one of the key variables in this study, has a great deal of missing values because it was only asked for respondents who participated in sharelife in wave 3. this study included only those countries which participated in all selected waves, except for the netherlands due to differences in its mixed mode experiment in wave 6 compared to the regular share waves for other countries. thus, ten countries were included in the analysis: austria, belgium, czech republic, denmark, france, germany, italy, spain, sweden, and switzerland. although some waves covered two calendar years, the fi rst calendar year was used as the survey year, namely the years 2006, 2011, 2013, and 2015 for waves 2, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. italy and spain were assigned to the category of southern europe; austria, belgium, czech republic, france, germany, and switzerland were grouped together as central europe; denmark and sweden were listed as northern europe. 2.2 cognitive function measures share uses temporal orientation, numeracy, immediate and delayed recall testing, and verbal fl uency to measure cognitive function. this study focuses on recall tests and verbal fl uency for four reasons. first, episodic recall tests and semantic • ying zhou124 verbal fl uency are sensitive to cognitive aging (souchay et al. 2000; tomer/levin 1993). second, recall and verbal fl uency refl ect two key dimensions of cognitive performance separately, namely fl uid intelligence/working memory and crystallized intelligence/knowledge (arpino/bordone 2014; salthouse 2006; weber et al. 2017). crystallized intelligence refers to an individual’s store of knowledge and learned operation; fl uid intelligence refers to the ability to think logically and solve novel problems independently of acquired knowledge, and is highly related to working memory (nisbett et al. 2012; arpino/bordone 2014; salthouse 2006; horn/cattell 1967; jaeggi et al. 2008). third, the temporal orientation in share had a skewed distribution and thus was strongly affected by ceiling and fl oor effects. fourth, the ordinal variable resulting from the numeracy test had limited variability, and the numeracy tests had a high number of missing values in wave 6 (adam et al. 2013; mehrbrodt et al. 2019). the recall test was used to assess episodic memory performance. the respondent listened to a list of ten words, and immediately did a recall test (immediate recall test), followed by another after a delay (delayed recall test). the number of words the respondent recalled correctly was recorded, ranging from 0 to 10 for both tests. the recall variable is the average score of the immediate and delayed recall tests. verbal fl uency was used to assess executive function. respondents were asked to list animals, and the number of animals the respondent said correctly in one minute was counted and stored as the raw variable of verbal fl uency. outliers were defi ned as the values more than 2.5 standard deviations away from the mean per wave. these outliers were replaced by the wave-specifi c maximum values within 2.5 standard deviations. thus, the verbal fl uency without outliers ranged from 0 to approximately 40. additionally, the variable was multiplied by 0.25, so that it had a comparable scale of 0 to approximately 10, similar to the recall variable. 2.3 educational level for an international comparison of education, the isced 1997 was used with categories ranging from 0 to 6, with higher categories indicating higher levels of formal education. in order to improve comparability across groups over time, the isced 1997 grades were multiplied by years of education and further categorized into groups of “low”, “middle”, and “high” adjusted educational levels for each survey wave. these three groups are made up of the bottom 25 percent (lowest to fi rst quartile q1), middle 50 percent (fi rst quartile q1 to third quartile q3), and top 25 percent (third quartile q3 to highest) for each survey wave. 2.4 modelling strategies and statistical analysis generalized estimating equation (gee) models were estimated using a linear link function with normally distributed error terms and an unstructured covariance matrix to account for the dependency of observations between waves. the gee model is also capable of handling missing values and unbalanced cases and is fairly robust with large sample sizes in particular. development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 125 separate gee models for recall and verbal fluency were run to explore their association with the time trend measured by the numeric survey year, adjusting for gender, region, education, and the interactions of gender-by-survey year, educationby-survey year, and region-by-survey year. the adjustment was conducted further for age at interview and whether the subject had participated in share for the fi rst time. in subsequent stratifi cation analyses the association between cognitive function and time was further investigated by gee models stratifi ed by region, gender, and education. a sensitivity analysis was conducted for the other common correlation structures (autoregressive, exchangeable, and independent). the goodness of fi t statistic quasilikelihood under the independence model information criterion (qic) was used for the gee model comparison (hardin/hilbe 2013). moreover, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to include wave 7. finally, in order to investigate differences and similarities between the two operationalizations of education, the conventional classifi cation of education by isced (isced-97 = 0-2, 3-4, 5-6 as low, middle, and high levels of education) was additionally applied in a separate analysis. all analyses were performed in sas 9.4 (sas institute, cary nc). 3 results the sample comprised 40,689 subjects with a mean age of approximately 62; roughly 54 percent of whom were female and 46 percent were male (see table 1). from wave 2 to wave 6, the scores for recall and verbal fluency increased on average. the proportions of low, middle, and high adjusted educational level were approximately 25 percent, 50 percent, and 25 percent for each survey wave as defi ned, although these were not as precise as defi ned due to the tied values. the proportion of subjects who participated in the share survey for the fi rst time decreased over time (see table 1). figure 1 illustrates the mean values and 95 percent confi dence intervals for recall and verbal fluency, showing a consistent increase of verbal fluency over time for each european region, and of recall over time in central europe. a less consistent trend of increase of recall can also be found in northern and southern europe. overall, central europe shows higher cognitive function than southern europe, while northern europe has the highest values. however, the differences between regions are shrinking due to different speeds of increase over time. table 2 shows the results of the two overall models for the association of cognitive function and time after controlling for age, gender, region, education, their interaction, and whether the subject had participated in share for the fi rst time. gender: females had statistically signifi cantly better recall than males (ß = 0.44, p < 0.0001). there was a general improvement in cognitive function over time (recall: ß = 0.02, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = 0.04, p < 0.0001). however, there was no signifi cant overall difference in the trend between the two genders (recall: ß = 0.00, p = 0.322; verbal fluency: ß = 0.01, p = 0.176). • ying zhou126 region: there were statistically signifi cant regional differences, with northern europe showing higher cognitive function than southern and central europe (central vs. northern europe: recall: ß = -0.56, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = -0.57, p < 0.0001; southern vs. northern europe: recall: ß = -0.97, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = -1.73, p < 0.0001). however, southern europe experienced faster improvements in recall (ß = 0.03, p < 0.0001) and verbal fluency (ß = 0.02, p = 0.0009) than northern europe; in central europe recall and verbal fluency also improved more quickly than in northern europe (recall: ß = 0.07, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = 0.02, p = 0.0006). education: in comparison to those with relative low levels of education, people with middle and higher levels of education had higher cognitive function (middle vs. low educational levels: recall: ß = 0.65, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = 0.61, p < 0.0001; high vs. low educational level: recall: ß = 1.18, p < 0.0001; verbal fluency: ß = 1.22, p < 0.0001). nevertheless, those with lower levels of education tab. 1: demography, cognitive function, educational level, and other characteristics for the sample in share wave 2 wave 4 wave 5 wave 6 n (%) n (%) n (%) n (%) n 12556 19338 24464 21151 age 61.7 (4.27) 61.9 (4.22) 62.2 (4.21) 62.4 (4.25) gender female 6778 (54.0) 10562 (54.6) 13268 (54.2) 11666 (55.2) male 5778 (46.0) 8776 (45.4) 11196 (45.8) 9485 (44.8) country austria 649 (5.2) 2549 (13.2) 2128 (8.7) 1578 (7.5) belgium 1553 (12.4) 2597 (13.4) 2814 (11.5) 2883 (13.6) czech republic 1442 (11.5) 3067 (15.9) 3094 (12.6) 2515 (11.9) denmark 1233 (9.8) 1122 (5.8) 2162 (8.8) 1932 (9.1) france 1361 (10.8) 2767 (14.3) 2322 (9.5) 1905 (9.0) germany 1429 (11.4) 886 (4.6) 2731 (11.2) 2181 (10.3) italy 1591 (12.7) 1789 (9.3) 2280 (9.3) 2489 (11.8) spain 1048 (8.3) 1629 (8.4) 3018 (12.3) 2483 (11.7) sweden 1536 (12.2) 1026 (5.3) 2308 (9.4) 1705 (8.1) switzerland 714 (5.7) 1906 (9.9) 1607 (6.6) 1480 (7.0) recall 4.6 (1.67) 5.0 (1.69) 5.1 (1.71) 5.2 (1.70) verbal fl uency 5.1 (1.79) 5.3 (1.80) 5.5 (1.82) 5.6 (1.82) adjusted educational level low 3179 (26.0) 4001 (25.6) 5214 (26.9) 3889 (26.5) middle 5895 (48.3) 7697 (49.2) 9267 (47.9) 7098 (48.3) high 3143 (25.7) 3946 (25.2) 4879 (25.2) 3707 (25.2) participate in share-survey first time 5786 (46.1) 13175 (68.1) 10664 (43.6) 3827 (18.1) not the fi rst time 6770 (53.9) 6163 (31.9) 13800 (56.4) 17324 (81.9) source: own calculations, based on data from share development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 127 fig. 1: bar chart for mean values of cognitive function with 95 percent confi dence interval by region and survey year 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 northern europe central europe southern europe recall recall by region and survey year 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 northern europe central europe southern europe 2006 2011 2013 2015 verbal fluency verbal fluency by region and survey year survey year source: own calculations, based on data from share • ying zhou128 improved their recall faster than those with middle educational levels did (ß = -0.01, p = 0.005), and improved their verbal fluency more quickly than the highly-educated (ß = -0.02, p = 0.006). the models are stratifi ed by regions in table 3 (columns i and iv), permitting us to study the differences in regional time trends. the models reveal that cognitive function improved signifi cantly in southern and central europe (southern europe: recall: ß = 0.08, p < 0.0001; verbal fl uency: ß = 0.07, p < 0.0001; central europe: recall: ß = 0.09, p < 0.0001; verbal fl uency: ß = 0.06, p < 0.0001), whereas in northern europe recall has stagnated (ß = -0.02, p = 0.145) and verbal fluency improved somewhat, but not statistically signifi cantly according to a signifi cance level of 0.05 (ß = 0.02, p = 0.066). moreover, in southern europe, the interaction of time-by-gender showed that males tended to benefi t more from improving cognitive function than females (recall: ß = -0.02, p = 0.003; verbal fl uency: ß = -0.01, p = 0.081). additionally, in southern and central europe, those with lower education levels tended to improve their cognitive function faster than the other educational groups, as most of the coeffi cients for the time-by-education interaction tab. 2: overall models: association of the cognitive function and time after controlling for gender, region, education, their interactions, and potential confounders in share by gee models1 recall verbal fluency intercept 7.14*** 7.84*** gender (female)2 0.44*** 0.00 survey year 0.02*** 0.04*** survey year*gender (female)2 0.00 0.01 region (central europe)3 -0.56*** -0.57*** region (southern europe)3 -0.97*** -1.73*** survey year * region (central europe)3 0.07*** 0.02*** survey year * region (southern europe)3 0.03*** 0.02*** adjusted educational level (middle)4 0.65*** 0.61*** adjusted educational level (high)4 1.18*** 1.22*** survey year * adjusted educational level (middle)4 -0.01*** -0.01 survey year * adjusted educational level (high)4 0.00 -0.02*** age -0.05*** -0.04*** participate in share-survey for the 1st time -0.18*** -0.13*** 1 *** p<=0.01; ** p<=0.05; *p<=0.1. 2 male is the reference group for gender. 3 regions: southern europe: italy, spain; central europe: austria, belgium, czech republic, france, germany, switzerland; northern europe: denmark, sweden (reference group). 4 adjusted educational level: low: lowest-q1 (reference group); middle: q1-q3; high: q3-highest. source: own calculations, based on data from share development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 129 r ec al l v er b al f lu en cy o ve ra ll (i) fe m al e (ii ) m al e (ii i) o ve ra ll (i v ) fe m al e (v ) m al e (v i) s o u th er n e ur o p e2 in te rc ep t 5. 67 ** * 6. 22 ** * 5. 32 ** * 5. 55 ** * 5. 66 ** * 5. 25 ** * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 1. 01 ** * 0. 95 ** * 1. 06 ** * 0. 58 ** * 0. 61 ** * 0. 55 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 1. 69 ** * 1. 71 ** * 1. 69 ** * 1. 00 ** * 0. 94 ** * 1. 04 ** * s ur ve y ye ar 0. 08 ** * 0. 05 ** * 0. 09 ** * 0. 07 ** * 0. 05 ** * 0. 07 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 3* ** -0 .0 2* -0 .0 4* ** -0 .0 1 0. 00 -0 .0 1 s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 5* ** -0 .0 4* * -0 .0 7* ** 0. 00 0. 01 -0 .0 2 g en d er (f em al e) 4 0. 27 ** * -0 .1 3* * s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er (f em al e) 4 -0 .0 2* ** -0 .0 1* c en tr al e ur o p e2 in te rc ep t 6. 81 ** * 7. 31 ** * 6. 77 ** * 7. 30 ** * 7. 51 ** * 7. 10 ** * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 54 ** * 0. 56 ** * 0. 50 ** * 0. 72 ** * 0. 71 ** * 0. 74 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 1. 12 ** * 1. 12 ** * 1. 12 ** * 1. 41 ** * 1. 39 ** * 1. 43 ** * s ur ve y ye ar 0. 09 ** * 0. 08 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 06 ** * 0. 07 ** * 0. 07 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 1* * -0 .0 1 -0 .0 2* * -0 .0 1* * -0 .0 1 -0 .0 2* * s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 0. 00 0. 00 -0 .0 1 -0 .0 3* ** -0 .0 2* -0 .0 5* ** g en d er (f em al e) 4 0. 46 ** * 0. 05 s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er (f em al e) 4 0. 00 0. 01 ** n o rt h er n e ur o p e2 in te rc ep t 7. 01 ** * 7. 80 ** * 6. 74 ** * 8. 42 ** * 8. 99 ** * 7. 76 ** * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 43 ** * 0. 40 ** * 0. 46 ** * 0. 41 ** * 0. 46 ** * 0. 36 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 0. 78 ** * 0. 86 ** * 0. 67 ** * 0. 91 ** * 0. 91 ** * 0. 91 ** * ta b . 3 : s tr at ifi ca tio n an al ys es : a ss o ci at io n o f c o gn it iv e fu n ct io n an d t im e in s h a r e b y g e e m o d el s, s tr at ifi ed b y re g io n, a nd f ur th er s tr at ifi ed b y g en d er 1 • ying zhou130 r ec al l v er b al f lu en cy o ve ra ll (i) fe m al e (ii ) m al e (ii i) o ve ra ll (i v ) fe m al e (v ) m al e (v i) s ur ve y ye ar -0 .0 2 0. 00 -0 .0 3* * 0. 02 * 0. 03 * 0. 02 s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 02 * 0. 01 0. 03 * 0. 01 0. 00 0. 01 s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 0. 04 ** * 0. 01 0. 06 ** * 0. 02 0. 02 0. 01 g en d er (f em al e) 4 0. 59 ** * 0. 01 s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er (f em al e) 4 0. 01 0. 01 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n 1 * ** p < = 0. 01 ; ** p < = 0. 05 ; *p < = 0. 1. m o d el s ar e fu rt he r ad ju st ed b y ag e an d w he th er th e su b je ct p ar tic ip at ed in th e s h a r e s ur ve y fo r th e fi r st ti m e. 2 r eg io ns : s o ut he rn e ur o p e: it al y, s p ai n; c en tr al e ur o p e: a us tr ia , b el gi um , c ze ch r ep ub lic , f ra nc e, g er m an y, s w itz er la nd ; n o rt he rn e ur o p e: d en m ar k, s w ed en . 3 a d ju st ed e d uc at io na l l ev el : lo w : lo w es tq 1 (r ef er en ce g ro up ); m id d le : q 1q 3; h ig h: q 3hi gh es t. 4 m al e is th e re fe re nc e gr o up fo r ge nd er . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns , b as ed o n d at a fr o m s h a r e development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 131 ta b . 4 : s tr at ifi ca tio n an al ys is : a ss o ci at io n o f t he c o gn it iv e fu n ct io n an d t im e in s h a r e b y g e e m o d el s, s tr at ifi ed b y re g io n an d e d uc at io n1 r ec al l v er b al f lu en cy o ve ra ll2 lo w m id d le h ig h o ve ra ll2 lo w m id d le h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 (i) (ii ) (ii i) (iv ) (v ) (v i) (v ii) (v iii ) s o u th er n e ur o p e4 in te rc ep t 5. 67 ** * 6. 42 ** * 5. 87 ** * 6. 52 ** * 5. 55 ** * 5. 59 ** * 5. 60 ** * 8. 15 ** * g en d er (f em al e) 5 0. 27 ** * 0. 27 ** * 0. 23 ** 0. 35 * -0 .1 3* * -0 .1 6* * -0 .0 4 -0 .2 4 s ur ve y ye ar 0. 08 ** * 0. 08 ** * 0. 04 ** * 0. 02 0. 07 ** * 0. 07 ** * 0. 05 ** * 0. 05 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er 5 -0 .0 2* ** -0 .0 3* ** -0 .0 1 -0 .0 1 -0 .0 1* -0 .0 2* * -0 .0 1 0. 00 m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 1. 01 ** * 0. 58 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 1. 69 ** * 1. 00 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 3* ** -0 .0 1 s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 5* ** 0. 00 c en tr al e ur o p e4 in te rc ep t 6. 81 ** * 7. 57 ** * 7. 28 ** * 7. 75 ** * 7. 30 ** * 7. 44 ** * 8. 02 ** * 8. 71 ** * g en d er (f em al e) 5 0. 46 ** * 0. 40 ** * 0. 49 ** * 0. 42 ** * 0. 05 0. 06 0. 05 0. 05 s ur ve y ye ar 0. 09 ** * 0. 10 ** * 0. 07 ** * 0. 08 ** * 0. 06 ** * 0. 07 ** * 0. 05 ** * 0. 03 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er 5 0. 00 -0 .0 1 0. 00 0. 01 0. 01 ** 0. 00 0. 01 * 0. 02 ** m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 54 ** * 0. 72 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 1. 12 ** * 1. 41 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 -0 .0 1* * -0 .0 1* * s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 0. 00 -0 .0 3* ** n o rt h er n e ur o p e4 in te rc ep t 7. 01 ** * 7. 16 ** * 7. 49 ** * 7. 61 ** * 8. 42 ** * 9. 60 ** * 8. 65 ** * 9. 07 ** * g en d er (f em al e) 5 0. 59 ** * 0. 54 ** * 0. 47 ** * 0. 73 ** * 0. 01 -0 .0 6 0. 07 0. 00 s ur ve y ye ar -0 .0 2 -0 .0 3 0. 00 0. 03 ** * 0. 02 * 0. 03 0. 04 ** * 0. 03 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * g en d er 5 0. 01 0. 03 0. 02 -0 .0 1 0. 01 0. 01 -0 .0 1 0. 02 • ying zhou132 ta b . 4 : c o n tin ua tio n r ec al l v er b al f lu en cy o ve ra ll2 lo w m id d le h ig h o ve ra ll2 lo w m id d le h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 e d u ca tio n 3 (i) (ii ) (ii i) (iv ) (v ) (v i) (v ii) (v iii ) m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 43 ** * 0. 41 ** * h ig h e d uc at io n 3 0. 78 ** * 0. 91 ** * s ur ve y ye ar * m id d le e d u ca tio n 3 0. 02 * 0. 01 s ur ve y ye ar * h ig h e d u ca tio n 3 0. 04 ** * 0. 02 1 ** * p < = 0. 01 ; ** p < = 0. 05 ; *p < = 0. 1. m o d el s ar e fu rt he r ad ju st ed b y ag e an d w he th er th e su b je ct p ar tic ip at ed in th e s h a r e s ur ve y fo r th e fi r st ti m e. 2 t he o ve ra ll m o d el is th e sa m e as th at in th e ta b le 3 . i t i s lis te d h er e ag ai n fo r ea si er c o m p ar is o n w ith o th er m o d el s. 3 a d ju st ed e d uc at io na l l ev el : lo w : lo w es tq 1 (r ef er en ce g ro up ); m id d le : q 1q 3; h ig h: q 3hi gh es t. 4 r eg io n: s o ut he rn e ur o p e: it al y, s p ai n; c en tr al e ur o p e: a us tr ia , b el gi um , c ze ch r ep ub lic , f ra nc e, g er m an y, s w itz er la nd ; n o rt he rn e ur o p e: d en m ar k, s w ed en . 5 m al e is th e re fe re nc e gr o up fo r ge nd er . s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns , b as ed o n d at a fr o m s h a r e development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 133 were statistically signifi cantly negative values, and none of these coeffi cients were statistically signifi cantly positive values. further stratifi cation analysis by region and education, shown in table 4, confi rmed a statistically signifi cant interaction of time and gender favoring males with lower education levels in southern europe (table 4). (column ii, interaction time-by-gender for recall: ß = -0.03, p = 0.002; column vi, for verbal fl uency: ß = -0.02, p = 0.039). the sensitivity analysis regarding the correlation structures (autoregressive, exchangeable, and independent correlation structures) resulted in consistent parameter estimations and inference p-values, as well as similar goodness of fi t statistics (qics). results remained stable when the data of wave 7 was included, despite a large number of missing values for verbal fluency. the sensitivity analysis using the conventional classifi cation of education by isced produced similar results, but was not able to show the interaction of survey year and educational level consistently (data not shown). 4 discussion this study has three important results. first, cognitive function among 55-69-yearolds improved signifi cantly from 2006 to 2015 in southern and central europe, whereas it did not in northern europe, although there was already a generally higher level in northern europe to begin with. thus, the gap between european regions is getting smaller. second, in southern and central europe, the group with relative low education, starting from the lowest level of cognitive function, tended to improve its cognitive functions more quickly than the middle and higher educational groups did. thus, the gap between the relative low educational group and other educational groups is growing smaller. third, among those with lower education in southern europe, males improved their cognitive functions more quickly than females. more generally, in southern europe, males seemed to benefi t more than females in terms of improvement of cognitive function after controlling for education. the disparity of regions, education, and genders over time may be explained by the threshold theory, as lyketsos et al. tried to interpret the benefi t of education for preventing cognitive decline in adulthood (i.e. beyond a certain “dose” of education, such as 8 years of schooling, additional years of education are no longer associated with less cognitive decline) (lenehan et al. 2015; lyketsos et al. 1999). once the biological limits or environmental threshold on the improvement of cognitive function are reached or approaching, gains of cognitive ability might arrive at or get close to saturation and the improvements may yield diminishing returns, cease, or even reverse (weede 2006; rindermann 2008; pietschnig/voracek 2015; dutton et al. 2016). in other words, the “success of success” or “failure of success” hypotheses alone may not explain the complete picture of time trends in cognitive function. • ying zhou134 4.1 regional disparities the fi ndings of this study suggest that 55-69-year-old adults in southern and central europe stay at the flynn effect phase, whereas the same age group in northern europe stays at the anti-flynn effect phase. flynn et al. have summarized that some scandinavian nations had robust intelligence gains in the twentieth century but peaked around 1990 and may have gone into mild decline since then (flynn 2012). if we look at the trends in cognitive function dynamically, the flynn effect in southern and central europe indicates that these countries may have the potential for further improvement on cognitive function from one generation to the next, whereas the anti-effect in northern europe suggests that these countries may have arrived at or be approaching the maximum plateau. a recent study showed improvements in cognitive function for those aged 50+ in all european regions (ahrenfeldt et al. 2018). however, more closely examining those aged 55-69 in that study, southern and central europeans had considerable improvements of cognitive function, whereas northern europeans didn’t (ahrenfeldt et al. 2018). the mortality selection and different survival patterns for the oldest among the old (hülür et al. 2013; gerstorf et al. 2015) may explain the inconsistency between the present study and theirs. furthermore, the fi nding of the present study is consistent with some previous studies on trends in cognitive function (pietschnig/voracek 2015; sundet et al. 2004), but inconsistent with others (dutton/lynn 2015; weber et al. 2017). the inconsistency may result from the age groups of the samples, the measures and analysis of cognitive function, and other potential infl uencing factors. nonetheless, a major strength of the present study is that it provides evidence from three european regions with internationally comparable data and approaches. cognitive health is a key prerequisite for deciding the age at which people retire, although the decision of when to retire is complex and often based on many factors including macroeconomic, family, work-related, and individual factors (fisher et al. 2016, 2017). this study indicates that increases of the retirement age may be reasonable in southern and central european countries from the perspective of cognitive health. 4.2 educational disparities a threshold for the cognitive health benefi ts of education may explain the association between education and the rates of cognitive change. according to a review paper published in 2000, the majority of the studies between 1985 and 1999 reported protective effects of education on the rate of cognitive decline (anstey/christensen 2000). in contrast, another review paper published in 2015 indicated that the majority of the studies from 2000 to 2015 reported no such protective effects (lenehan et al. 2015). the benefi cial impact of education on cognitive decline may no longer be observable as education levels extend beyond a certain threshold, such as an eight-year threshold (lyketsos et al. 1999; lenehan et al. 2015). having eight years or less of formal education was reported to be associated with greater cognitive development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 135 decline. however, having nine years of education or more was unrelated to any further reduction of cognitive decline (lyketsos et al. 1999). in line with this threshold explanation, this study indicates that most benefi ts of the flynn effect in those with the least education are probably due to the fact that those people with the lowest education levels had the lowest baseline values for cognitive function, and these remained lower than the threshold throughout the analysis period in southern and central europe. consequently, those with low education in these regions have disproportionally improved their cognitive function over time. on the other hand, this was not observed in northern europe. a possible explanation is that the majority of the northern europeans attained the maximum cognitive reserve capacity with increasing levels of education as the norm (lenehan et al. 2015). interestingly, previous studies have revealed that school reform in england led to improvements in old-age memory of people with less education (banks/ mazzonna 2012). other studies also found that the early gains of the flynn effect in denmark and norway were primarily at the low end of the cognitive test score distributions, which were attributed to the developments of educational system (e.g. improved pre-school care, starting school earlier and leaving later, and improved special education for physically or mentally disabled children) (teasdale/owen 2005; sundet et al. 2004). support for active aging was recommended to target less-educated and other disadvantaged groups in germany (pavlova/silbereisen 2012). in a review paper, lenehan et al. suggested that less-educated groups were an under-researched subgroup for the effect of education on the rate of cognitive function, and they assumed that this subgroup could benefi t most from educationbased intervention approaches (lenehan et al. 2015). consistently, the fi ndings of this study provide further evidence that in the context of limited resources, it may be worth prioritizing those with relative low educational levels when it comes to education-based intervention approaches in southern and central europe. this would also hold true for developing countries, since a continuing flynn effect has been observed or has begun to be observed in the developing world (flynn 2012; nisbett et al. 2012). 4.3 gender disparities an explanation for the greater improvement of cognitive function in males in southern europe may be the larger biological vulnerability, variability, and fl exibility of cognitive function for males (halpern 2012). some types of mental retardation are x-linked and are therefore more prevalent in males (halpern 2012). moreover, previous studies have found that males show greater age-related decline than females, independent of whether males or females outperform for the parameter of cognitive function (maylor et al. 2007). in other words, 55-69-year-old males may have lower baselines, and a larger potential to improve, particularly in those groups in southern europe with the lowest educational levels. banks et al. found that school reform in england improved executive function at old age only for males with less education (banks/mazzonna 2012). schneeweis et • ying zhou136 al. similarly observed that the educational reforms in europe had stronger protective effects on cognitive function and decline for males (schneeweis et al. 2014). both of these studies explained this as the positive fi nancial returns and prolonged labor force participation only for males from the educational reforms (banks/mazzonna 2012; schneeweis et al. 2014). this may also explain the present study’s fi nding of greater increases in cognitive function favoring males in the group with lower education in southern europe. additionally , this study’s analysis of education gives further insights into the regional gender differences based on weber’s papers (weber et al. 2017). the larger gain for males in southern europe which was observed by weber et al. (weber et al. 2017) may be attributed to the improvement in the lower educational group. 4.4 a more complete picture of disparity by region, gender, and education on the whole, threshold theory may be able to explain the various rates of cognitive improvement throughout all europe by region, education, and gender. southern and central europeans, people with lower education, and males may have larger potentials to improve their cognitive function than the corresponding comparison groups, thus also showing quicker improvements in the data. conversely, the cognitive function of the corresponding comparison groups may be closer to biological limits (saturation), hence improvements happen more slowly, if at all. in addition, threshold theory may also cover other factors, such as living conditions and heathy behaviors, which may infl uence cognitive improvements over time as well. further research is needed to investigate and further support this explanation. 4.5 strengths and limitations one of the major strengths of this study is that it investigated 55-69-year-olds, whose cognitive development over time is important for sustained productive work in old age and pension policies, but who have relatively rarely been investigated to date. second, this study used share datasets with large sample sizes covering numerous european countries with harmonized design and data (börsch-supan et al. 2013). third, this study used a defi nition of education by quantiles, which decreased selection bias and increased comparability. fourth, this study used the data of waves 2, 4, 5 and 6, and considered the correlation of the same subject in its modelling strategy. this longitudinal approach can show a more precise picture than cross-sectional studies or studies with only two time points (lenehan et al. 2015). fifth, recall and verbal fl uency are performance-based measures, thus avoiding the biases which may occur in self-reported measures. this study also has limitations. first, the retest effect may infl uence the cognitive parameters (salthouse 2010a). in order to minimize it, an adjustment for fi rst-time participation was included in the statistical models. second, the two parameters only partially cover the overall concept of cognitive function. further studies are needed to investigate other parameters of cognitive function. however, our development over time in cognitive function among european 55-69-year-olds ... • 137 assessments of recall and verbal fl uency can be regarded as two key dimensions of intelligence, fl uid intelligence/working memory, and crystallized intelligence/ knowledge (arpino/bordone 2014; salthouse 2006; weber et al. 2017). third, as an observational study without a causal identifi cation strategy, no causal relationship can be provided. moreover, it is diffi cult to clearly distinguish the aging and cohort effects. consideration must be taken when interpreting the results. fourth, the overall effect sizes seem to be small. however, due to the division of values in our parameters for a comparable range, the true effect size might be larger than it seems to be. moreover, the diffi culty of setting criteria of clinical meaningfulness for the effect size is a general limitation in research using cognitive tests (halpern 2012). fifth, the relative rank of educational attainment is used to minimize the selection bias of educational groups over time. however, it is diffi cult to use another golden standard measurement to validate this approach. a sensitivity analysis using conventional classifi cation of educational attainment was conducted to investigate the differences and similarities between the two operationalizations of education. 4.6 conclusions older adults close to retirement age (55-69-year-olds) in southern and central europe improved their cognitive function signifi cantly from 2006 to 2015, whereas adults of the same age in northern europe did not. those with relative low levels of education in southern and central europe improved their cognitive function most rapidly. among those with lower education in southern europe, males improved in cognitive function more quickly than females did. these results can be interpreted in line with threshold theory. despite the complexity of the decisions about the retirement age, future increases of the retirement age may be reasonable in southern and central european countries from the perspective of cognitive function. it also may be worth prioritizing people with lower levels of formal education when it comes to education-based intervention approaches. acknowledgements i would like to express my sincere thanks to gabriele doblhammer for her very valuable comments on this manuscript, and renee lueskow for her english editing service. this paper uses data from share waves 2, 4, 5, and 6, see börsch-supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. the share data collection has been funded by the european commission, dg rtd through fp5 (qlk6-ct-2001-00360), fp6 (share-i3: rii-ct-2006-062193, compare: cit5-ct-2005-028857, sharelife: cit4-ct-2006-028812), fp7 (share-prep: ga n°211909, share-leap: ga n°227822, share m4: ga n°261982, dasish: ga n°283646) and horizon 2020 (share-dev3: ga n°676536, share-cohesion: ga n°870628, seriss: ga n°654221, sshoc: ga n°823782, share-covid19: ga n°101015924) and by dg employment, social affairs & inclusion through vs 2015/0195, vs 2016/0135, vs 2018/0285, vs 2019/0332, and vs 2020/0313. additional funding from the german • ying zhou138 ministry of education and research, the max planck society for the advancement of science, the u.s. national institute on aging (u01_ag09740-13s2, p01_ag005842, p01_ag08291, p30_ag12815, r21_ag025169, y1-ag-4553-01, iag_bsr06-11, ogha_04-064, hhsn271201300071c, rag052527a) and from various national funding sources is gratefully 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feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) father-child relations after divorce in four european countries: patterns and determinants father-child relations after divorce in four european countries: patterns and determinants matthijs kalmijn abstract: using nationally representative data on secondary school children in england, germany, the netherlands, and sweden, this study describes the relationships that children have with their fathers after divorce. differences in the post-divorce relationship are explained in terms of demographic factors, socioeconomic factors, and contextual differences (between countries and between immigrants and natives). the focus is on living arrangements after divorce, the amount of contact with the father, and the perceived quality of the relationship. many children have at least weekly contact with their father but one in six children never see their father at all. fathers in high-status families are more highly involved in the child’s life after divorce than fathers in low-status families. a mother’s employment also has a positive effect on the post-divorce relationship with the father. co-parenting is most common in sweden. post-divorce relationships are also strongest in sweden and relatively weak in germany. immigrant children see their fathers less often after divorce than native children. in the second generation, children of mixed marriages in particular tend to have little contact with the father. keywords: divorce · fatherhood · children · parent-child relations · immigrants 1 introduction one of the more important consequences of divorce is the effect it has on the father-child relationship (pryor/rodgers 2001). it is no surprise then that much research has been done on this topic in recent decades. some studies focus on longterm effects and compare the relationships that adult children have with their father depending on whether or not the parents divorced or separated when the children were young (albertini/garriga 2011; de graaf/fokkema 2007). other studies focus on short-term effects and examine the relationship that divorced fathers have with their children when the children are still living at home, usually with the mother comparative population studies vol. 40, 3 (2015): 251-276 (date of release: 30.09.2015) © federal institute for population research 2015 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2015-10en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2015-10en1 • matthijs kalmijn252 (adamsons/johnson 2013; juby et al. 2007; spruijt/duindam 2009). in general, the degree to which divorced fathers remain involved in children’s lives after divorce is an important issue for understanding the well-being of both children and fathers, is relevant for the resources that fathers can pass on to their children, and has an impact on the degree to which fathers receive support from children when they are old and in need of support (daatland 2007; kalmijn 2007; lin 2008; seltzer/bianchi 2013). because paternal involvement can be affected by legal custody and visiting arrangements and by rules about alimony, it is also of concern to policy makers and health practitioners. although there is consensus that a divorce weakens father-child relationships, there is considerable heterogeneity in this effect. some divorced fathers maintain frequent contact and remain an infl uential father fi gure in the child’s life; other divorced fathers lose contact or remarry and shift their investments to a new family (cheadle et al. 2010; manning/smock 1999). in understanding these differences, authors have looked at several types of moderating variables. most authors have focused on life course factors such as the child’s age at divorce, repartnering, residential moves, and employment changes (aquilino 2006; cooksey/craig 1998; jubyet al. 2007). fewer authors have examined how the social context in which the divorce takes place moderates the impact of divorce. examples of contexts that may be important are the country in which parents live (kalmijn 2008), the time period in which the divorce occurs (albertini/garriga 2011), and the ethnic or racial group to which the parents belong (kalmijn 2010; king et al. 2004). these contexts are relevant because they are related to the cultural climate in which a divorce occurs, to the legal and informal rules about how to deal with divorce and single parenthood, and to the economic opportunities that families are facing. other potentially relevant moderators about which little is known are the socioeconomic characteristics of parents such as their education, occupational status, and employment. there is debate about whether children from high-status families are protected from the adverse consequences of divorce (bernardi/radl 2014; mandemakers/kalmijn 2014), but it is not known if father-child relationships are more or less affected by a divorce in high-status families. in this study, new data from 14-year-old children in four european countries are analysed to examine the determinants of the father-child relationship after divorce. the fi rst goal is to describe three aspects of the father-child relationship for adolescents whose parents divorced or separated. the focus is on residential arrangements (where does the child live?), the amount of contact with the father, and the perceived quality of the relationship. while these aspects have been described before, virtually all demographic and sociological studies are based on american or canadian data. as a result, even the simplest facts such as the percentages of coparenting arrangements after divorce are unknown for most european countries. moreover, there is much popular debate and concern about divorced fathers who never see their children (e.g. zander 2012) but we do not have good data on how common this is. there are now several european studies on adult children and their divorced fathers (albertini/garriga 2011; kalmijn 2008), but studies on children who are still living at home are scarce. because we have nationally representative data, father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 253 this study is able to fi ll in this important gap in the literature. the second goal is to understand heterogeneity in father-child relationships after divorce. to meet this goal, we develop hypotheses about the infl uence of three types of characteristics on each aspect of the father-child relationship. more specifi cally, we focus on demographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, and contextual characteristics (i.e. country differences and differences among immigrants and natives as well as among major immigrant groups). we test hypotheses about the infl uence of these characteristics in a series of multivariate regression models. 2 hypotheses socioeconomic characteristics our fi rst set of hypotheses is about socioeconomic characteristics, in particular the socioeconomic status of the family and the employment status of the mother. there are several reasons why the socioeconomic status of the family may affect postdivorce relationships. first, studies have shown that more highly educated fathers are more involved in child rearing tasks than fathers with lower levels of education (hook/wolfe 2012; sayer et al. 2004; yeung et al. 2001). the more fathers are involved in their children’s lives, the more likely it is that the ties will remain strong after divorce. fathers may be more attached to their children when they were highly involved, just as children may be more attached to their fathers. in the legal decision-making after divorce, these investments may also be recognized and this may give fathers more opportunity to retain contact or to obtain custody or co-parenting rights. a second argument is that fathers in high-status families may be more effective in working out post-divorce agreements with the mother (ryan et al. 2008). thirdly, higher-status fathers and mothers read newspapers and magazines more often (kraaykamp 2002) and may therefore be more aware of public knowledge about the negative effects of divorce on children. for these reasons, we believe that parents in high-status families will pay more attention to the well-being of the child and this means, among other things, more balanced roles for the father and the mother after divorce. in sum, our hypothesis is that children in high-status families have stronger ties to their fathers than children in lower-status families. this would apply to all three outcomes that we study: co-parenting will be more likely, frequent contact will be more likely, and ties will be of higher quality. the father-child relationship may also be affected by the employment status of the mother. there is considerable heterogeneity in female employment after divorce, with many divorced mothers who are not working for pay (van damme 2010). there is debate about the possible effects of mothers’ employment on children’s well-being and school outcomes and the potentially mediating role of parent-child relationships in these effects (waldfogel et al. 2002). consensus has arisen that mothers’ employment does not have general negative effects on child outcomes (waldfogel et al. 2002). there is also little evidence that maternal employment competes with the time mothers spend with children, although there may be a quality/ • matthijs kalmijn254 quantity trade-off among employed mothers (bianchi 2000). it is not known, however, what infl uence employment has in single-parent families where working mothers cannot rely on their partner to support them with child rearing tasks. we suspect that for single mothers, employment may have more negative outcomes for children. more specifi cally, we expect that single mothers who work for pay have less time and energy for their children than single mothers who are at home most of the time. as a result, the children will be more likely to live (permanently or at least part of the time) with the father and will see their father more often as well if the mother works for pay. this will apply in particular to full-time working mothers but no information is present in our data on the mothers’ working hours. moreover, in families where the mother works, the father may already be more involved in child rearing tasks to begin with. since early investments in a child have positive effects on the relationship with the child when the marriage breaks down (juby et al. 2005), the effect of maternal employment could work in both ways: via the time that mothers have and via the investments that fathers make. demographic characteristics the literature has shown that there are no clear gender differences in the consequences of divorce for children’s well-being except for a somewhat stronger effect of divorce on the problem behaviour of boys than on the problem behaviour of girls (amato 2001). in addition, past studies fi nd inconsistent effects of gender on post-divorce contact (cooney 1994; swiss/le bourdais 2009; manning et al. 2003; cooksey/craig 1998). theoretically, one would expect that divorced fathers have stronger ties to sons than to daughters: attachment is believed to be stronger to the same-sex parent, the development of a child’s gender identity is more diffi cult when a child is raised by an opposite-sex parent, and a parent may feel more comfortable in advising a same-sex child than an opposite-sex child (powell/downey 1997). it is important to realise that this infl uence may be bi-directional: fathers may feel a stronger attachment to their son than to their daughter and hence take more initiative for contact, but sons may also feel a stronger attachment to their father than daughters and consequently visit more often. it is diffi cult to unravel these processes but we can develop some additional tests to clarify these things. if the effect of child gender on contact disappears when controlling for the quality of the tie with the father as perceived by the child, the gender difference probably stems from differences in what the children – sons and daughters – want. if the effect of child gender on contact remains when controlling for the perceived quality of the tie with the father, the gender difference also has to do with the preferences of fathers for sons as opposed to daughters. the second demographic variable is the number of siblings. research on adult intergenerational relationships has found that adult children have contact with their parents less often when they have more siblings (grundy/read 2012). from the perspective of parents, there is a benefi t in having a large family: parents with many children have more contact with at least one of the children. at the dyad level, however, the effect of sibsize on contact frequency is negative. this can be interpreted father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 255 in terms of time constraints (when there are more children, parents have less time per child) and in terms of a “division of labour” within families (when one child visits often, the other child may not need to visit). in this study, we examine if such an effect also exists for children of divorced parents who live with their mother, something that has not been studied as far as we know. for this more specifi c case, it is not clear if the effect will operate. young children who live with the mother may see their father simultaneously. this reduces the role of time constraints and may result in an insignifi cant “sibsize” effect on father-child contact. there may be a negative effect of sibsize on co-parenting if fathers fi nd it more diffi cult to care for a large family than for a small family whether or not the mother repartners is another important demographic variable in the literature on divorce. in the present study, we have good information on whether the mother has a new partner but we only know this if the child lives with the mother. previous research has not found consistent effects of the mother’s repartnering. a cross-sectional study fi nds a negative effect of the mother’s remarriage on visitation frequency with the father (stephens 1996). a recent longitudinal study, however, shows that the entry of a stepfather in the mother’s household does not lead to less frequent contact or a poorer quality relationship with the (biological) non-resident father (king 2009). this refutes the hypothesis that stepfathers are substitute parents. we test this notion again, this time using large-scale albeit crosssectional data in four european countries. unfortunately, we do not have data on whether the father is remarried when the child is not living with him. the national context: origin and destination effects there are two ways that the national context may play a role. first, there can be differences between destination countries, i.e. between england, germany, the netherlands, and sweden. second, there can be differences based on origin countries. because schools with high numbers of immigrants were systematically oversampled, we can examine differences between natives and (fi rstand second-generation) immigrants, as well as between immigrant groups themselves. this allows us to examine “origin country” effects. starting with the destination effects, the question is: can we expect differences in post-divorce father-child relationships among the four countries? one hypothesis suggests that in countries with higher rates of divorce, there will be more frequent contact between the child and the divorced father. divorce is more institutionalised in these countries and legal arrangements are more favourable for divorced fathers (albertini/garriga 2011; kalmijn 2008). how do divorce rates vary among the four countries? to assess this, we present net divorce rates for 2002 and 2011 in figure 1. net divorce rates are not widely available and were constructed as the annual number of divorces divided by the population of married women in a year (in 1000s), based on data from the united nations statistics division or the country-specifi c statistical websites (offi ce for national statistics, statistisches bundesamt, cbs statline). for england and wales, the early divorce rate is for 2001, the year in which the census was taken. the fi gure shows that divorce is most common in sweden • matthijs kalmijn256 and england and less common in germany and the netherlands. in england, the net divorce rate declined between 2001 and 2011 so that it is now more similar to that in germany and the netherlands. our data were collected in 2010-2011 but the parents may have divorced at an earlier point in time. hence, to compare divorce rates, we need to look at the entire decade. based on this line of reasoning, we would expect to fi nd the strongest relationships between fathers and children in sweden and england, and weaker ties in germany and the netherlands. the four destination countries also differ in their gender roles. attitudes toward maternal employment are more positive in sweden and the netherlands than in england and germany (kalmijn 2003). the percentage of mothers with young children (under 6) who are employed is also higher in sweden (76.8) and the netherlands (77.1) than in germany (59.7) and the uk (59.1) (oecd website, http://ec.europa. eu/eurostat/data/database, data for 2012). when looking at the division of paid and unpaid work, sweden stands out as being the most egalitarian (knudsen/waerness 2008; gauthier/degusti 2012). studies of the time fathers spend on childcare show that fathers are more involved in childcare in sweden than in germany and england (gauthier/degusti 2012). in sum, when gender roles are the dominant explanation, we would expect sweden to have the most involved fathers after divorce and germany and england to have the least involved fathers. the position of the netherlands will be somewhere in between but is less certain since comparative time diary studies rarely include the netherlands. theories about gender roles and the institutionalisation of divorce thus imply a different order of destination countries with respect to father involvement. the comparison between the two high-divorce countries sweden and england is especially informative in this respect. if gender roles are the dominant mechanism, sweden will have the most positive post-difig. 1: net divorce rates by country 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 germany netherlands sweden england & wales 10,7 9,8 14,6 11,110,8 9,4 13,7 12,9 2001/2002 2011 divorces per 1,000 married women note: for england and wales data refer to 2001; other countries refer to 2002. source: united nations statistics division, offi ce for national statistics (uk), statistisches bundesamt (germany), cbs statline (netherlands) father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 257 vorce father-child relationships, whereas if the institutionalisation effect is dominant, sweden and england will be similar in this respect. we now discuss possible differences between immigrants and natives and between the various immigrant groups that make up the european context. like most other european analyses, we focus on non-western immigrants even though western immigrants are potentially interesting as well. so far, very few studies have analysed post-divorce father-child relationships for immigrants or for ethnic minority groups. some studies in the us fi nd that black and hispanic fathers are less involved in their children’s lives after divorce than comparable white fathers (cheadle et al. 2010). other studies do not fi nd clear differences between major racial groups (cooksey/craig 1998; king et al. 2004; manning/smock 1999). there are more studies on ethnic and racial differences in child rearing practices but these focus only on intact families (pels/nijsten 2003; yaman et al. 2010; emmen et al. 2013). why would we expect differences between immigrants and natives in the strength of the father-child relationship after divorce? first, we can look at gender roles in various immigrant groups. in muslim countries, there is considerably less support for gender equality than in western countries (norris/inglehart 2002). in latin american and southern european countries, gender role attitudes are also more traditional but they deviate less from the western european pattern than muslim countries (kalmijn 2003; norris/inglehart 2002). as a result, most immigrant fathers could be less involved in child rearing during marriage and if this is true, they consequently may have weaker ties to their children when they are divorced and the children are adolescents. secondly, we can consider the institutionalisation hypothesis. in some of the origin countries – especially muslim countries – divorce and single parenthood are strongly disapproved of (norris/inglehart 2002). one would expect that a normal continuation of the father-child relationship after divorce is more diffi cult when the community disapproves of divorce. in these cases, it is more likely that a divorce coincides with an abrupt discontinuation of contact between the two ex-partners and their respective families. not all immigrant groups disapprove of divorce and single parenthood, however. immigrants with african and caribbean origins in particular are characterised by high levels of single parenthood and high tolerance of divorce (kalmijn 2010). at the same time, however, it has been argued that in these groups, the role of the father in the family tends to be weaker while networks of female friends and kin are more strongly relied upon to provide support in single-mother families (sarkisian/gerstel 2004; stack 1974). as a result of their more matrifocal orientation, we would expect that the children of african and caribbean origins will also have a weak relationship to the father after divorce, although for a different reason than is assumed to be true for immigrants from muslim countries. thirdly, economic considerations may play a role. immigrants from non-western origin countries on average have a weaker economic position in society. their earnings tend to be lower, they have less education on average, and they are unemployed more often, even when controlling for the infl uence of education (heath et al. 2008; van tubergen 2004). the weak economic position of immigrant men not only reduces their chances of marrying and increases their chances for divorce • matthijs kalmijn258 (edin/kefalas 2005; lichter et al. 1992; oppenheimer 2003); it may also weaken the position of the father in the post-divorce family. when fathers have few economic resources, they will be less likely to pay child support and this may limit the degree to which they remain involved in the child’s life (arditti/keith 1993; hofferth et al. 2010). economically disadvantaged fathers are also less able to provide a stable and comfortable place for their children to live, which would reduce the options for coparenting. it is therefore important to estimate the effect of immigrant background while controlling for the family’s socioeconomic status. while we have multiple indicators of socioeconomic status in our data, we do not have data on the income situation of the absent father. as a result, the net effects of immigrant background should not entirely be interpreted from a cultural perspective; residual economic causes for the differences between natives and immigrants may still play a role. 3 data and method the cils4eu data were collected in four countries. about 100 secondary schools were randomly chosen per country and two (randomly chosen) classes in each school were used (kalter et al. 2012). the focus was on year 10 pupils in england, year 9 in germany, year 3 of secondary schools in the netherlands, and year 8 in sweden. the children were about 14 years old in each country. schools with high proportions of immigrants were systematically oversampled via a stratifi ed sampling scheme to ensure a large enough sample of immigrants. based on the percentage of immigrants in a school, four strata were constructed and random samples of schools were drawn within these strata. to solve the problem that schools may not be willing to participate, a replacement strategy was used where each school was matched to a replacement school that would be approached if the initial school did not respond. this is similar to the procedures used by other international school studies such as pisa and timms. after replacement, response at the school level was 65.6 percent in england, 98.6 percent in germany, 91.7 percent in the netherlands, and 76.8 percent in sweden (where no replacement procedure was used). from the original data, we selected children whose parents were divorced or separated. parents who never lived together were not included. when children had divorced parents, they were fi rst asked about their primary home, i.e., the home where they live most of the time. next, they were asked about living in another home. it was assessed how often the child lived in this secondary home and with whom. we generated a variable indicating whether the child lives with the father and a variable whether the child lives with the mother. living with a parent is defi ned as living with that parent in the primary household or living with that parent in a secondary household for at least half of the time. cross-classifying these variables yields four categories: living primarily with the mother, living primarily with the father, living with both in two different households, and living with neither parent. in this defi nition, co-parenting means living with each of the two parents for half of the time. there are children who stay over once a week with the father but we do father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 259 not regard this as co-parenting even if the children regard this as their secondary household. this will be captured in the contact measure, however. living arrangements were analysed with a multinomial logit model where the baseline category is living primarily with the mother. secondly, we defi ned contact as the frequency of face-to-face contact with the biological father. this was recoded to missing for children who primarily live with their father (in which case there is no variation in contact). categories were: every day, once or a couple of times per week, once or a couple of times per month, less often, and never. the variable was analysed with an ordinal logit model. thirdly, we used a question about how well the respondent gets along with the father. the respondent could choose among the following options: very well, well, not so well, and not well at all. this variable was also analysed with an ordinal logit model. the question about quality was not asked if there had never been any contact with the father. the following socioeconomic variables were used as independent variables: (a) a variable indicating whether the mother works for pay, (b) the family status, which is composed of four variables: father’s educational level (coded from 0 for no education to 3 for tertiary), mother’s educational level (also coded from 0 to 3), father’s occupational status, and mother’s occupational status. education was asked via three separate questions, one for each level (primary, secondary, tertiary). it was assumed that if a student answers “don’t know” to a level, the parent did not complete that level. a student who answers “don’t know” to all three questions or does not answer for other reasons to any question is assigned to missing. the correlation between the father’s and mother’s education, thus measured, was 0.53, which gives us confi dence in the operational defi nition. if a mother does not work and the child does not list mother’s past occupation, we impute the country-specifi c mean. note that a dummy for employment status is included and most missings are due to non-working mothers. occupations were coded in isco-08 (international socioeconomic index of occupations) and recoded to isei status scores (ganzeboom et al. 1992). to create a family status scale, each of the individual status variables was standardised and the mean of the four variables was taken. the scale we constructed is the average of the valid items. we worked with an index in order to use as much information as possible and to reduce the number of missing cases in the regression model. not all children know the socioeconomic characteristics of their parents. missings were 6.9 percent for mother’s education, 15.3 percent for father’s education, 6.2 percent for mother’s occupation (for working mothers), and 22.6 percent for father’s occupation. an alternative would be to use multiple imputation while using individual status components in the models. this is not preferred because we have no specifi c hypotheses about which component of status is the most infl uential. the following demographic variables were used: (a) the age of the child, (b) the sex of the child, (c) the number of siblings in the (primary) household, (d) whether (or not) the mother is living with a new partner. the repartnering variable was included in a separate model where children who primarily live with the father and children who live with neither parent are excluded. in these cases, no information on repartnering is available. • matthijs kalmijn260 the following contextual variables are used. first, we include variables for the country of destination. second, we consider a variable that makes a distinction between “native” children (i.e. native-born children of two native-born parents) and “immigrant” children (i.e. the native-born children of immigrants and foreign-born children who came to the destination before or during the school ages). we make an additional distinction between 1st and 2nd generation children and we pay special attention to children of mixed parentage: children who have one native-born parent and one foreign-born parent. finally, we consider immigrant groups, defi ned on the basis of the country of birth of the mother. if the mother was native-born, the country of birth of the father was used. we distinguish seven regions, following often used classifi cations of world regions: southern europe, eastern europe, the larger middle east (including northern africa), asia, sub-saharan africa, latin america, and the caribbean. the means and standard deviations of the independent variables are presented in table 1. 4 findings before presenting the regression results, it is interesting to see how often children of divorced parents live with the mother, the father, or both. in table 2, we present these statistics separately for each of the four countries. the percentages are weighted to correct for the oversampling of schools with high numbers of immigrant tab. 1: descriptives of variables used in the analyses (n = 4524) mean standard deviation min max mother employed 0.77 0.42 0 1 family status index 0.00 1.00 -3.65 2.73 daughter versus son 0.52 0.50 0 1 age of child 14.48 0.67 13 18 number of siblings 1.29 1.21 0 9 mother new partner 0.31 0.46 0 1 germany (vs england) 0.26 0.44 0 1 sweden (vs england) 0.28 0.45 0 1 netherlands (vs england) 0.22 0.41 0 1 immigrant child (1st generation) 0.08 0.28 0 1 immigrant child (2nd generation) 0.24 0.43 0 1 both parents foreign 0.13 0.33 0 1 only father foreign 0.08 0.27 0 1 only mother foreign 0.04 0.19 0 1 source: own calculations based on cils4eu, 2010/2011 father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 261 children. co-parenting is most common in sweden: about 36 percent of swedish children have a co-parenting arrangement. in the netherlands, 18 percent of the children live in two parental homes. this corresponds well with an earlier study for the netherlands where it was found that 17 percent of 10-16 year-olds lived in a coparenting arrangement after divorce (spruijt/duindam 2009). co-parenting is least common in england and germany (about 10 percent). in all countries, however, the majority of children live primarily with their mother. a small minority of children live primarily with the father and even fewer children live without a parent. for children who do not primarily live with their father, we examined how often they have been in contact with their father (table 2). overall, about 40 percent of the children have at least weekly contact with their father, which is a substantial number. there is much heterogeneity, however. about one in six (18 percent) respondents say they never see their father. this is a substantial minority. the no-contact category is smallest in sweden, larger in the netherlands, and largest in england and germany where about one in fi ve children never have contact with the father. tab. 2: descriptive analyses of father-child ties after divorce in four countries england germany netherlands sweden total n living arrangement with mother 74.3 70.5 70.6 51.6 70.7 3,091 co-parenting 10.9 9.8 17.6 36.0 12.8 786 with father 9.5 12.9 6.4 7.6 10.6 389 with neither 5.3 6.8 5.4 4.8 6.0 271 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 4,537 contact with father (face-to-face) never (1) 18.9 20.7 14.2 8.0 18.4 678 less often (2) 17.7 16.5 8.7 15.8 16.2 717 monthly (3) 20.9 27.8 32.4 21.6 25.1 941 weekly (4) 34.4 26.4 39.2 39.3 31.8 1,376 daily (5) 8.1 8.6 5.5 15.2 8.6 415 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 4,127 perceived quality gets along: not well at all (1) 3.3 2.2 3.0 3.0 2.8 128 not so well (2) 11.8 12.1 11.8 9.5 11.8 432 well (3) 38.6 34.0 43.9 40.5 37.3 1,484 very well (4) 46.3 51.6 41.3 47.1 48.2 1,753 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 3,797 note: values refer to coding in ordinal logit models. source: own calculations based on cils4eu, 2010/2011 • matthijs kalmijn262 whether the relationships in these cases are hostile, estranged, or simply neutral and non-existent is not known, nor do we know how these children feel about the father that they never see. note that the percentage of 18 is based on children who do not live with their father. when we consider all children of divorced parents, 16 percent never see their father. the large majority of children of divorced parents say they have a good or very good relationship with their father (table 2). however, a signifi cant minority – about 15 percent in each country – does not have a good relationship with the father (based on children who have contact). it is also of some interest to examine the association between contact and quality. table 3 shows that there is a positive association, as one would expect. the correlation between contact and quality (when coded “as is”) is +.33, which is reasonable but not very strong. when we look at the table in detail, we see that there is a signifi cant group of children with a mismatch between quality and contact. of children who qualify the relationship as very good, 9 percent see their father less than once a month. of children who qualify the relationship as good, 19 percent see their father less than once a month. these numbers point to a possible source of deprivation in children’s post-divorce lives. tab. 3: the association between contact with the father and perceived quality: column percentages perceived quality (“gets along ...”) contact (face-to-face) very well well not well not well at all total daily 459 240 46 6 751 26.2 16.2 10.7 4.7 19.8 weekly 742 549 95 12 1,398 42.4 37.0 22.0 9.5 36.9 monthly 401 416 105 17 939 22.9 28.1 24.3 13.4 24.8 less often 149 277 186 92 704 8.5 18.7 43.1 72.4 18.6 total 1,751 1,482 432 127 3,792 100 100 100 100 100 note: weighted numbers. if there has never been any contact, no question was asked about quality. source: own calculations based on cils4eu, 2010/2011 father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 263 determinants of living arrangements we now turn to an analysis of the determinants of living arrangements. in table 4, we present the estimates of the multinomial regression model. living primarily with the mother serves as the comparison group. in all regression models, the standard errors are corrected for the clustering of students in schools. moreover, all models contain controls for the sample stratum but these effects are not presented in the tables. the socioeconomic variables have signifi cant effects on living arrangements after divorce. in line with expectations, we fi nd that children from high-status families are more likely to have a co-parenting arrangement. there is no effect of socioeconomic status on living primarily with the father. in addition we fi nd that children are more likely to have a co-parenting arrangement when the mother works for pay. this too is in line with our hypothesis. and again, we fi nd that the effect of employment on living primarily with the father is not as expected; the effect is negative rather than positive. in sum, the socioeconomic effects are as expected for co-parenting but they are not as expected for living primarily with the father. perhaps the tendency to not live with the mother – which is a small minority – is dependent on more specifi c circumstances such as the mother’s health or personality. we now discuss the demographic effects on living arrangements. gender and age differences are substantial. daughters are less likely to live in a co-parenting tab. 4: multinomial regression of living arrangements after divorce co-parenting with father without parents b p b p b p mother employed .431* (.00) -.820* (.00) -.222 (.15) family socioeconomic status .304* (.00) -.014 (.82) .053 (.43) daughter versus son -.270* (.00) -.383* (.00) -.294* (.02) age of child -.297* (.00) .220* (.01) .118 (.28) number of siblings .033 (.37) -.047 (.36) -.254* (.00) germany (vs england) .125 (.47) .276 (.13) -.569* (.01) sweden (vs england) 1.472* (.00) .378* (.04) -.086 (.65) netherlands (vs england) .530* (.00) -.191 (.34) .223 (.21) immigrant (1st generation) -2.386* (.00) -.335~ (.09) .300 (.13) immigrant (2nd generation) -.867* (.00) -.157 (.25) .319* (.04) constant -.041 (.74) .042 (.81) -.137 (.54) n 4,524 model chi2 678.7* note: p-values in parentheses. reference is living primarily with mother. see text for defi nition of co-parenting. ~ p < 0.10, * p < 0.05 source: own calculations based on cils4eu, 2010/2011 • matthijs kalmijn264 arrangement and this applies even more to living primarily with the father. these effects are in line with expectations. older children are less likely to live in a coparenting arrangement. we fi nd no effects of the number of siblings except on living without parents, which is less common in large families. presumably, arranging such a situation may be more complicated when there are many children. contextual differences are substantial as well. co-parenting is most common in sweden and more common in the netherlands than in england and germany. living primarily with the father is more common in sweden as well. there are also differences between natives and immigrants. children of immigrants are much less likely to live with their father after divorce. this applies most strongly to coparenting. a clear generational difference is found as well, with second-generation children being more likely to have a co-parenting arrangement than fi rst-generation immigrants. the contrast between the generations for co-parenting is signifi cant (x2 = 13.9, p < .01). this is consistent with standard notions from assimilation theory since co-parenting is a recently developed arrangement in western societies to which immigrant groups may adapt as they become more integrated in the host society. finally, second-generation immigrants are more likely to live with neither parent after divorce. the more important role of the extended family (e.g. grandparents) in immigrant groups may play a role here. since living with neither parent is often associated with poverty (hynes/dunifon 2007) and with poorer child wellbeing compared to other non-standard families (sun 2003), this effect may be an important disadvantage that immigrant children face while growing up. determinants of contact and quality the models for contact and quality are presented in table 5 and 6 respectively. the models for contact exclude children who primarily live with their father. in these cases, contact is probably daily and does not vary. to examine if the determinants affect contact primarily through co-parenting, we also estimated the model again while excluding children with co-parenting. in this model, the outcome is contact with a non-residential father. the approach is the same for quality in table 6, except that children who never have contact with the father were not asked about the quality of the tie so these are missing. we fi rst see that children from high-status families have more frequent contact with their divorced father and perceive the quality of the tie to be better. these fi ndings are in line with our expectations. the quality of the relationship with the father is also better in high-status families that divorce. contact is more strongly affected by status than quality. we also fi nd that when the mother works, the child sees the father more often and the quality of the tie with the father is better. this last effect is not as expected but may be a product of more frequent contact with the father when the mother works: more contact may improve the relationship. both effects on contact – of socioeconomic status and mother’s employment – are still signifi cant when we limit the sample to children who primarily live with the mother (model 5). hence, the effects are not solely a product of more frequent co-parenting in high-status families. father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 265 sons are more likely to have contact with their divorced father than daughters and they also perceive the quality of the relationship to be better. what happens when we control the effect of child gender on contact for the effects of the quality of the relationship with the father and the mother? in a linear regression model for the contact scale, the gender effect is b = -.24 without controls and b = -.07 with controls (p = .02). in other words, a large part of the gender difference in contact has to do with differences in the way sons and daughters assess the relationship with the father. however, even for children who assess the quality of the relationship with the father as similar, sons more often see their father than daughters. this suggests that the gender difference is in part also due to the preferences and behaviours of the father, but the children’s own role seems to be the more important one. the other demographic variables have mixed effects. there is no effect of the number of siblings. older children are less likely to see their father than younger children and more likely to assess the quality as poor. the most interesting fi nding is the effect of repartnering. when the mother lives with a new partner, children have less frequent contact with their divorced father than when the mother lives without a partner. the quality of the relationship with the father is not affected, however. this provides mixed evidence for the notion that stepfathers are substitutes. in terms of contact this may be true, but not in terms of what the father means to the child. the negative effect of the stepfather on contact with the biological father is the same when we limit the sample to children who primarily live with their mother (model 5). are there contextual differences in contact and quality? table 5 suggests that contact with the divorced father is most frequent in sweden, least frequent in germany, with england and the netherlands in between. these differences are partly due to differences in living arrangements. when we focus on children who primarily live with their mother (model 5), sweden no longer stands out. in this model, germany stands out as a country where divorced fathers have the least frequent contact with their children. note that there are no differences in the quality of the father-child relationship among the countries. are there differences in father-child relationships between immigrants and natives, between immigrant generations, and between immigrant groups? in model 1, we fi rst see that immigrant children are less likely to have frequent contact with their divorced father than natives. the effect is especially pronounced for the fi rst generation. this raises the question of whether the gap we fi nd is a phenomenon that is limited to the fi rst generation. when looking at the effect for the second generation, this appears not to be true. the effect is b = -.31 which shows that second-generation children have a 27 percent lower odds to have frequent (e.g. at least weekly) rather than less frequent (e.g. less than weekly) contact compared to native-born children of native parents.1 similar effects are found for the quality of the relationship. first and second-generation immigrant children evaluate the relationship with their divorced father more negatively than native born children of native origins. 1 formally, this means that the odds of being in contact category j > k rather than in contact category j ≤ k are 27 percent lower for second-generation immigrants. • matthijs kalmijn266 ta b . 5 : o rd er ed lo g it re g re ss io n o f f ac eto -f ac e co n ta ct w it h fa th er a ft er d iv o rc e (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) (5 ) b p b p b p b p b p m o th er e m p lo ye d .2 02 * (. 01 ) .2 46 * (. 00 ) .2 08 * (. 01 ) .2 59 * (. 00 ) .2 45 * (. 01 ) fa m ily s o ci o ec o n o m ic s ta tu s .2 13 * (. 00 ) .2 24 * (. 00 ) .2 19 * (. 00 ) .2 08 * (. 00 ) .1 90 * (. 00 ) d au g h te r ve rs u s so n -. 37 0* (. 00 ) -. 37 7* (. 00 ) -. 37 4* (. 00 ) -. 36 4* (. 00 ) -. 30 4* (. 00 ) a g e o f c h ild -.1 66 * (. 00 ) -.1 63 * (. 00 ) -.1 68 * (. 00 ) -. 21 5* (. 00 ) -.1 40 * (. 01 ) n u m b er o f s ib lin g s -. 01 9 (. 45 ) .0 10 (.7 0) -. 02 0 (. 42 ) -. 02 0 (. 43 ) .0 11 (.7 2) m o th er n ew p ar tn er -. 28 7* (. 00 ) -. 35 3* (. 00 ) g er m an y (v s e n g la n d ) -. 33 2* (. 00 ) -. 30 7* (. 00 ) -. 33 1* (. 00 ) -. 26 2* (. 00 ) -. 30 1* (. 00 ) s w ed en (v s e n g la n d ) .4 13 * (. 00 ) .4 40 * (. 00 ) .3 99 * (. 00 ) .4 45 * (. 00 ) .0 06 (. 95 ) n et h er la n d s (v s e n g la n d ) .0 98 (. 28 ) .1 19 (. 21 ) .0 82 (. 37 ) .1 51 ~ (. 09 ) .0 61 (. 56 ) im m ig ra n t ( 1s t g en er at io n) -1 .3 41 * (. 00 ) -1 .3 29 * (. 00 ) -1 .3 32 * (. 00 ) -1 .0 68 * (. 00 ) im m ig ra n t ( 2n d g en er at io n) -. 30 5* (. 00 ) -. 40 0* (. 00 ) -. 27 4* (. 00 ) b o th p ar en ts f o re ig n -.1 48 (.1 8) o n ly f at h er f o re ig n -. 60 8* (. 00 ) o n ly m o th er fo re ig n -.1 41 (. 32 ) s o u th er n e u ro p ea n -. 50 2* (. 01 ) e as te rn e u ro p ea n -. 60 3* (. 00 ) la ti n a m er ic an -. 64 0* (. 00 ) a si an -. 58 4* (. 00 ) la rg er m id d le e as t -. 25 6* (. 04 ) s u b -s ah ar an a fr ic an -. 36 1* (. 02 ) c ar ib b ea n -. 43 9* (. 02 ) c u tp o in t 1 -4 .3 03 * (. 00 ) -4 .2 98 * (. 00 ) -4 .3 41 * (. 00 ) -4 .8 88 * (. 00 ) -3 .7 21 * (. 00 ) c u tp o in t 2 -3 .2 54 * (. 00 ) -3 .2 45 * (. 00 ) -3 .2 91 * (. 00 ) -3 .8 65 * (. 00 ) -2 .6 08 * (. 00 ) c u tp o in t 3 -2 .2 26 * (. 00 ) -2 .1 93 * (. 00 ) -2 .2 60 * (. 00 ) -2 .8 56 * (. 00 ) -1 .4 93 ~ (. 06 ) c u tp o in t 4 -. 20 3 (.7 9) -. 08 6 (. 91 ) -. 23 4 (.7 5) -. 84 3 (. 26 ) .7 18 (. 36 ) n 4, 11 4 3, 84 8 4, 11 4 4, 11 4 3, 06 6 m o d el c h i2 39 1. 0* 42 7. 2* 40 6. 0* 31 0. 9* 25 2. 8* n o te : pva lu es in p ar en th es es . r es p o nd en ts w ho d o n o t p ri m ar ily li ve w ith t he ir f at he r. m o d el ( 1) a ls o e xc lu d es c hi ld re n liv in g w ith ne ith er p ar en t. m o d el ( 5) i s b as ed o n ch ild re n p ri m ar ily l iv in g w ith t he ir m o th er . c ut p o in ts a re e st im at ed b y th e o rd in al l o gi t m o d el s an d c an b e us ed to c al cu la te o d d s ra tio s. ~ p < 0 .1 0, * p < 0 .0 5 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n c il s 4e u , 2 01 0/ 20 11 father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 267 ta b . 6 : o rd er ed lo g it re g re ss io n o f p er ce iv ed q ua lit y o f f at he rch ild r el at io n sh ip a ft er d iv o rc e (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) b p b p b p b p m o th er e m p lo ye d .1 32 (.1 0) .1 90 * (. 05 ) .1 35 ~ (. 09 ) .1 37 ~ (. 09 ) fa m ily s o ci o ec o n o m ic s ta tu s .1 41 * (. 00 ) .1 83 * (. 00 ) .1 43 * (. 00 ) .1 40 * (. 00 ) d au g h te r ve rs u s so n -. 56 9* (. 00 ) -. 57 8* (. 00 ) -. 56 9* (. 00 ) -. 57 1* (. 00 ) a g e o f c h ild -.1 24 * (. 02 ) -.1 38 * (. 02 ) -.1 26 * (. 02 ) -.1 32 * (. 02 ) n u m b er o f s ib lin g s .0 25 (. 34 ) .0 17 (. 59 ) .0 24 (. 35 ) .0 28 (. 29 ) m o th er n ew p ar tn er .1 13 (.1 2) g er m an y (v s e n g la n d ) .1 02 (. 27 ) .0 81 (. 41 ) .1 03 (. 26 ) .1 05 (. 26 ) s w ed en (v s e n g la n d ) .1 00 (. 29 ) .0 39 (. 69 ) .0 95 (. 31 ) .0 99 (. 30 ) n et h er la n d s (v s e n g la n d ) -. 05 7 (. 56 ) -. 07 8 (. 45 ) -. 06 2 (. 53 ) -. 03 8 (.7 0) im m ig ra n t ( 1s t g en er at io n) -. 31 1* (. 02 ) -. 32 7* (. 03 ) -. 30 5* (. 02 ) im m ig ra n t ( 2n d g en er at io n) -.1 79 * (. 03 ) -.1 29 (.1 5) b o th p ar en ts f o re ig n -.1 23 (. 26 ) o n ly f at h er fo re ig n -. 26 4* (. 04 ) o n ly m o th er fo re ig n -.1 75 (. 23 ) s o u th er n e u ro p ea n -. 08 1 (.7 2) e as te rn e u ro p ea n -. 04 0 (.7 7) la ti n a m er ic an -. 20 8 (. 43 ) a si an -.1 23 (. 47 ) la rg er m id d le e as t -. 24 5~ (. 06 ) s u b -s ah ar an a fr ic an -. 23 3 (.1 7) c ar ib b ea n -. 21 3 (. 26 ) c u tp o in t 1 -5 .4 52 * (. 00 ) -5 .5 21 * (. 00 ) -5 .4 83 * (. 00 ) -5 .5 46 * (. 00 ) c u tp o in t 2 -3 .8 27 * (. 00 ) -3 .8 93 * (. 00 ) -3 .8 58 * (. 00 ) -3 .9 21 * (. 00 ) c u tp o in t 3 -1 .8 66 * (. 02 ) -1 .9 41 * (. 02 ) -1 .8 96 * (. 02 ) -1 .9 60 * (. 02 ) n 3, 78 8 3, 18 4 3, 78 8 3, 78 8 m o d el c h i2 16 5. 1* 17 0. 0* 17 2. 5* 16 4. 5* n o te : pva lu es in p ar en th es es . c hi ld re n w ho n ev er s ee t he ir fa th er a re e xc lu d ed . m o d el ( 1. ) al so e xc lu d es c hi ld re n w ho li ve w ith p ri m ar ily th ei r fa th er o r w ith n ei th er p ar en t. ~ p < 0 .1 0, * p < 0 .0 5 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n c il s 4e u , 2 01 0/ 20 11 • matthijs kalmijn268 does it matter which parent is foreign-born? in model 3, we make a distinction between three types of (second-generation) children: (a) both parents born abroad (n = 579), (b) only the father foreign-born (n = 347), and (c) only the mother foreignborn (n = 175). categories (b) and (c) are the children of an ethnically mixed marriage. when only the mother is foreign-born, there is no difference with natives. when both parents are foreign-born, the contrast with natives is signifi cant but small. it is primarily when the father is foreign-born and the mother is native-born that we fi nd less frequent post-divorce contact compared to natives. in other words, children in mixed marriages where the father is foreign-born tend to lose contact with the father more frequently. for quality, we see the exact same pattern of results: children from mixed marriages have poorer ties to their divorced father but this is only true when the father is foreign and the mother is native. remember, however, that fi rst-generation immigrants are also less likely to have frequent contact and evaluate the relationships with their divorced father more negatively. in other words, there is an effect of intermarriage but also an effect of immigrant status. to what extent are there differences among the various immigrant groups? to examine this, we distinguish broad regions in model 4. we fi rst conduct an extra test where the effects for all regions are the same. this hypothesis cannot be rejected (x2 = 5.5, p =.48). hence, the difference between natives and immigrants does not depend on the subgroup we look at. the individual effects vary from -.36 for sub-saharan african immigrants to -.64 for latin american immigrants. these are not small differences but apparently not large enough to be signifi cant with the present sample size. for quality, we fi nd the same pattern but the group-specifi c effects are smaller and often not signifi cant.2 the test for equal effects across groups cannot be rejected (x2 = 2.1, p = .91). hence, there is more evidence for a general immigrant background effect than for a group-specifi c effect. country differences in effects? so far, we pooled the four countries and included a main effect. this assumes that the effects of the other variables are similar across settings. in the last part of the analyses, we examine this assumption by presenting models for each country separately. we build one new model that summarises the main patterns. more specifi cally, we include all respondents regardless of living arrangement and look at the frequency of contact. this model takes into account that contact can be frequent because of a favourable living arrangement and therefore it combines the results for living arrangements and contact frequency. table 7 presents the country-specifi c estimates. we abstain from testing the differences across countries and simply describe the patterns that we see, focusing on whether or not an effect is signifi cant. the effects of the family’s socioeconomic status exist in all countries but the effect of a mother’s employment is present only in england and germany. gender differ2 the general immigrant effect is signifi cant for quality but the region-specifi c effects “distribute” this effect among many dummy variables, which on their own are often not signifi cant. father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 269 ta b . 7 : o rd er ed lo g it re g re ss io n o f f at he rch ild c o n ta ct a ft er d iv o rc e fo r al l l iv in g ar ra ng em en ts b y co un tr y en gl an d g er m an y n et h er la n d s s w ed en b p b p b p b p m o th er e m p lo ye d .4 16 * (.0 0) .3 00 * (.0 4) .1 26 (. 45 ) .0 07 (.9 7) fa m ily s o ci o ec o no m ic s ta tu s .1 42 * (.0 3) .2 40 * (.0 0) .2 41 * (.0 0) .2 07 * (.0 0) d au gh te r ve rs u s so n -. 28 8* (.0 3) -. 28 6* (.0 1) -. 50 3* (.0 0) -. 39 9* (.0 0) a ge o f c hi ld -. 09 3 (. 46 ) -. 24 7* (.0 0) -. 21 4* (.0 2) -. 02 7 (.9 2) n um b er o f s ib lin g s -. 01 8 (.7 4) .0 40 (. 45 ) -. 00 3 (.9 7) .0 15 (.7 4) m o th er n ew p ar tn er -.1 70 (. 21 ) -. 53 0* (.0 0) -. 31 4* (.0 0) -. 32 4* (.0 0) im m ig ra n t v s na tiv e -.7 97 * (.0 0) -. 51 6* (.0 0) -. 63 9* (.0 0) -. 51 9* (.0 0) c u tp o in t 1 -2 .7 89 (.1 3) -5 .3 63 * (.0 0) -5 .3 95 * (.0 0) -3 .2 22 (. 38 ) c u tp o in t 2 -1 .7 36 (. 33 ) -4 .2 84 * (.0 0) -4 .5 83 * (.0 0) -2 .0 16 (.5 8) c u tp o in t 3 -. 90 3 (.6 2) -3 .1 82 * (.0 1) -3 .4 24 * (.0 1) -1 .0 03 (.7 8) c u tp o in t 3 1. 21 4 (.5 0) -1 .1 41 (. 33 ) -1 .2 94 (. 35 ) .9 10 (. 80 ) n 98 7 1, 04 2 92 5 1, 16 0 m o d el c hi 2 76 .4 * 96 .2 * 69 .9 * 61 .8 * n o te : pva lu es in p ar en th es es . a ll ch ild re n ar e in cl ud ed , r eg ar d le ss o f l iv in g ar ra ng em en t. c o nt ac t f re q ue nc y w as a ls o a sk ed fo r ch ild re n liv in g w ith th ei r fa th er . * p < 0 .0 5 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n c il s 4e u , 2 01 0/ 20 11 • matthijs kalmijn270 ences are consistent across countries but stepfathers have a negative effect in all countries except england. finally, in all four countries, immigrant children less often have contact with their father than native children. 5 conclusion this paper has described the father-child relationship after divorce in four european countries, focusing on children who are about 14 years of age. although there has been much research on these relationships, most of the research is american and little is known about the situation in europe. moreover, there is considerable heterogeneity in post-divorce relationships and fi ndings about the causes of this heterogeneity are not consistent. examples of such factors are the socioeconomic status of the family, the national context, and differences between natives and immigrants. recent studies have made comparisons across countries, but these analyses focus on adult children who are no longer living at home. studies of ethnic and racial differences in family functioning have been done but these have rarely looked at effects of divorce on father-child relationships. using nationally representative data on secondary school children in four countries, we fi nd that there are considerable differences among divorced families. many children have good or very good ties to their father after divorce and a large group of children either lives with the father in a co-parenting arrangement or has at least weekly contact. however, there also is a non-trivial minority of children who do not see their father at all (about one in six). moreover, of those who do have contact, a substantial minority does not have a good relationship with the father. we suspect that this will be perceived as a problem by many fathers and children. in this sense, poor father-child relationships are one of the more problematic consequences of the divorce revolution. to understand heterogeneity, we looked at socioeconomic factors, demographic differences, and contextual variation. high-status families generally suffer less from the adverse consequences of divorce for father-child relationships. when measured by the parent’s educational level and their occupational status, socioeconomic status is positively associated with co-parenting, with frequent contact, and with the quality of the relationship. the same applies to mother’s employment, which is also positively related to father-child ties, at least in two of the four countries. we interpret these fi ndings in terms of the greater role that fathers play in children’s lives before divorce in such families, more awareness of the consequences of divorce for children, and better coping strategies to deal with the practical and emotional problems after divorce. we also found considerable demographic differences. previous research has not consistently found gender differences but our fi ndings are rather clear: sons more often live with the father, have more frequent contact if they do not live with him, and they also more often assess the relationship as positive. in addition, stepfathers “compete” with biological fathers in terms of contact frequency but the quality of the tie to the father is not negatively affected if the mother has a new partner. this father-child relations after divorce in four european countries • 271 suggests that the substitution effect of the stepfather is probably more practical than emotional: there is less time to visit and less need for support if the stepfather already helps out with a problem. the context matters for understanding father-child relationships as well. of the four countries, sweden seems to have the most favourable post-divorce fatherchild relationships and this is largely due to more frequent co-parenting. germany seems to have the least favourable post-divorce relationships, at least in terms of having less frequent weekly contact. these results do not support an institutionalisation perspective since england and sweden are both high-divorce countries but ties to fathers are much stronger in sweden than in england. the special position of sweden, and especially the fi nding on co-parenting, seems more consistent with a gender-role perspective. obviously, larger samples of countries are needed to test these ideas conclusively. one previous study of father-child contact among adult children in ten european countries found a similar pattern: stronger negative effects of divorce on father-child contact in less gender egalitarian countries (kalmijn 2008). our fi ndings are consistent with this earlier study. contextual differences were also analysed by looking at immigrant children. immigrant children less often live with the father after divorce and if they live with their mother, they less often have regular contact with the father. the weaker role of the immigrant father after divorce is observed for all investigated major immigrant groups. several reasons were suggested to explain the differences. first, immigrant families tend to be more traditional in their gender roles so that fathers invest less in their children during marriage. second, in some immigrant families, divorce is met with disapproval. this leads to a more selective group of parents who divorce (e.g. more confl ict-ridden families) and can also lead to more complications after divorce (e.g. more sanctions from the community). finally, economic considerations can play a role. immigrant men often have a weaker economic position in society (e.g. lower income) and this makes it more diffi cult for them to provide a comfortable (second) home for a child after divorce. alimony payments can also be more uncertain, and since a weak fi nancial tie is often associated with a reduction in contact, this can be part of the explanation as well (seltzer et al. 1989). what do the differences tell us about these explanations? first, we observe that second-generation immigrants are more likely to see their divorced father than fi rstgeneration immigrants. this is in line with a cultural perspective. second-generation immigrants are more accustomed to western european gender roles and may become more accepting of divorce (de graaf et al. 2011). secondly, we found more evidence for similarities than for differences among the major immigrant groups in the four countries. immigrants from african and caribbean origins have less frequent contact with the non-resident father, just as immigrants from predominantly muslim origin countries. in muslim groups, divorce is disapproved of, but in african and caribbean groups, divorce and non-marital childbearing are more accepted. that effects are nonetheless similar may be due to the matrifocal orientation of african and caribbean groups (sarkisian/gerstel 2004). the children of mixed marriages seem to occupy a special position. children of mixed marriages in which the father is foreign-born and the mother is native • matthijs kalmijn272 are more prone to lose contact with their father. perhaps when mixed marriages break up, the immigrant father becomes disconnected from the mother’s network because without being tied to the mother through marriage it may be diffi cult to bridge ethnic group boundaries. intermarriage is often believed to connect groups and the breakup of a mixed marriage may lead to the opposite effect with unintended negative effects for one parent. new studies need to look into this issue in more detail. the possibility that the father moves back to his origin country after divorce needs to be considered as well. we conclude with some caveats about our data. some information is missing as the cils4eu was a general survey and not specifi cally targeted to family scholars. this means that we have no information on whether the father repartnered (although we do know if the mother repartnered), we do not know the year of divorce, and we do not know where the father is living (for example, if he moved back to the origin country). the design is cross-sectional, which means that we do not know if the relationships of children and parents were already poor before the breakup. we also do not know the temporal order of some of the variables (e.g. co-parenting and mother’s employment). it is clear that longitudinal data could yield more stringent tests of our hypotheses but it is rather diffi cult practically to collect longitudinal data with suffi cient numbers of parents who divorce in between waves. there are no data where the exact same research 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http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/organisation/staff-members/item/m.kalmijn. html?f=kalmijn published by / herausgegeben von prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing editor / verantwortlicher redakteur frank swiaczny assistant managing editor / stellvertretende redakteurin katrin schiefer copy editor (german) / lektorat (deutsch) dr. evelyn grünheid layout / satz beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board / wissenschaftlicher beirat paul gans (mannheim) johannes huinink (bremen) michaela kreyenfeld (rostock) marc luy (wien) clara h. mulder (groningen) notburga ott (bochum) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers / gutachterbeirat martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zürich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (wien) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) karsten hank (köln) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (den haag) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (wien) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (wien) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussel) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (köln) © federal institute for population research 2015 – all rights reserved mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso: findings from repeated cross-sectional household surveys mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso: findings from repeated crosssectional household surveys badolo hermann, appunni sathiya susuman, bado aristide romaric, hien mwinonè hervé abstract: the signifi cant reduction in the level of child mortality in both developed and developing countries over recent decades has led to an improvement in children’s health. the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the health programs needed to reduce child mortality require determination and an understanding of the factors responsible for this reduction. this study investigated factors that have contributed to the recent improvement in the survival of children under fi ve, focusing on the contribution of preventive health care in improving children’s survival rates in burkina faso. the data used come from baseline and end-line surveys designed to evaluate the impact of performance-based fi nancing (pbf) on health programs in burkina faso. using time-series for health districts and child-level logistic regression models, we estimated the effect of preventive health care, as summarized by the changes in the composite coverage index (cci), on under-fi ve child survival of temporal trends and covariates at the household, maternal, and child levels. at the health district level, a unit increase in standardized cci was associated with an improvement in under-fi ve child survival after adjustment for survey period effects. the linear regression analysis showed that a standardized unit increase in cci was associated with an increase in the percentage of children under fi ve who survive. at the child level, the logistic regression showed that a skilled attendant at birth (sba), wealth index, and mother’s parity were associated with under-fi ve children’s survival, after adjustment for the survey period effects and a set of household, maternal, and child-level covariates. preventive health care is important in improving under-fi ve children’s survival, whereas the effects of economic growth in burkina faso remain weak and inconsistent. improved coverage of preventive health care interventions are likely to contribute to further reductions in under-fi ve mortality in burkina faso. keywords: child mortality · preventive health care · maternal and child health interventions · burkina faso comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 299-318 (date of release: 05.10.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-19 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-19en0 • badolo hermann et al.300 1 introduction and literature review the health of children under the age of fi ve is a major priority for developing countries (rockli et al. 2018). according to recent studies, a signifi cant reduction in the levels of child mortality over the last decades in both developed and developing countries has led to an improvement in children’s health (houweling et al. 2006; houweling/kunst 2009; mckinnon et al. 2014; united nations 2013; you et al. 2015). despite the overall decline in child mortality in developing countries, there are still unacceptably high levels in sub-saharan african countries (adedini 2013; harttgen/ misselhorn 2006; rajaratnam et al. 2010). like other african countries, burkina faso has a high level of under-fi ve mortality (liu et al. 2015; munos et al. 2016). according to the results of the demographic module of the continuous multi-sector survey conducted in 2015, for every 1,000 live births 82 children die before their fi fth birthday, and 43 do not reach their fi rst birthday (insd 2015). the results of this survey show that the mortality level of children under 5 declined between 1998 and 2014: from 177 to 82 deaths per 1000 births, respectively. the 2018 united nations development program (undp) human development index ranks it 182nd of 189 countries and territories with comparable data. the vast majority of the population (77 percent) lives in rural areas and is affl icted by a high illiteracy level (65.5 percent in 2014). in 2014, the poverty headcount ratio at the national poverty line was estimated at 40.10 percent of the total population (insd 2015). previous studies have revealed considerable disparities in burkina faso in terms of health service delivery, quality of care and use of obstetric and neonatal care (amnesty international 2009; de allegri et al. 2011; dong et al. 2008; gnawali et al. 2009). differences were thus observed between various socioeconomic groups in terms of health coverage and results, the differences being particularly marked among indicators relating to maternal and child health at the national level. progress has been made in recent years to improve these indicators. apart from inequalities in the risk of death, children are also exposed to inequalities in health care access (say/raine 2007; vilms et al. 2017). these inequalities result from various institutional, economic, cultural, and individual factors (adedini et al. 2014; adedini 2013; boco 2011; braveman et al. 2004; corsi/subramanian 2014; liwin/houle 2019; pedersen 2015; susuman 2015; tsawe/susuman 2014). one of the direct determinants is the set of mothers’ preventive health care practices (garenne/vimard 1984; ghimire et al. 2019; houweling/kunst 2009; masuy-stroobant 2002a/b; mosley/chen 1984). first, mothers are the primary caregivers for children. they are responsible for maintaining children’s health by providing them with adequate food and training in personal hygiene, both of which are preconditions for preventing illness. they may also be responsible for taking the children to health-care centers when they are ill (masuy-stroobant 2002a; mishra et al. 2019; ouedraogo 1994). second, within explanatory frameworks for child mortality, maternal health-care behaviors represent intermediate variables through which socioeconomic and cultural factors can infl uence child survival (garenne/vimard 1984; houweling/kunst 2009; masuy-stroobant 2002a/b; mosley/chen 1984). mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 301 in the context of institutional change and the fi ght against poverty including improvement of the health system, mothers’ behaviors have a major impact on their children’s survival (garenne/vimard 1984; houweling/kunst 2009; masuy-stroobant 2002a,/b; mosley/chen 1984). the best strategies for improving child survival occur at the individual level (corsi/subramanian 2014; owais et al. 2011; oyefara 2014; pedersen 2015; tsawe/susuman 2014). they involve mobilizing women to adopt behaviors conducive to child survival. their ability to make better use of the health services available to them and to take responsibility for managing health problems is important for improving children’s survival (susuman 2015; tsawe/susuman 2014; world health organization 2011). the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the health programs needed to reduce children’s mortality require determination and a clear understanding of the factors responsible for making this phenomenon so prevalent (barbieri 1991). awareness of the contributory factors to this phenomenon is therefore crucial in order to identify or inform the existing health actions, with the aim of further improving the situation and reducing the persistent health inequalities among children from different social strata. analyzing the factors associated with child mortality is a particularly complex undertaking. this complexity results from the large number of factors likely to impact on child mortality: demographic, epidemiological, medical, sociological, environmental and genetic. in practice, not all of these data are always available for analysis in a single piece of research, which limited the scope of the previous studies. the analytical framework adopted for this study is based on that established by garenne and vimard (1984). it distinguishes fi ve levels of variables specifi c to the analysis: discriminating, independent, intermediate, determining and dependent variables. these correspond to the different levels of analysis and thus to the different levels of explanation. this analytical framework has been adapted in this study to take into account independent (place of residence, household income, mother’s education, mother’s work) and intermediate (situation of birth, behavior in matters of health, immunity) variables. in this paper we therefore investigated factors that have contributed to the recent improvement in under-fi ve children’s survival in burkina faso using data from the baseline (2013) and end-line (2017) surveys for the impact evaluation of performance-based fi nancing (pbf)1 in burkina faso. specifi cally, we focus on the contributions of the main preventive factors associated with under-fi ve children’s survival in burkina faso. in other words, we seek to determine whether antenatal care visits, family planning needs satisfi ed (fps), skilled birth attendants at delivery (sba), and vaccination best practices have contributed to improving the under-fi ve children’s survival rate in burkina faso. 1 performance-based fi nancing (pbf) or pay-for-performance (p4p) is a form of incentive where health providers are, at least partially, funded on the basis of their performance to meet targets or undertake specifi c actions. it is defi ned as fee-for-service-conditional-on-quality (who). • badolo hermann et al.302 2 materials and methods 2.1 data source to achieve the objectives of this study, two quantitative data sources were used: baseline survey data (2013) and end-line survey data (2017) for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso. the pbf impact assessment was a blocked-by-region cluster random trial based on a pre-post comparison design. this process of random allocation seeks to ensure that the different study groups are comparable in terms of observed and unobserved characteristics that could affect treatment outcomes, thereby allowing average differences in outcomes to be causally attributed. the aim was to compare the indicators between intervention and control areas over a period before and after the intervention. in the protocol, it was planned to trace households and health facilities from the baseline survey to the fi nal survey. the choice of health regions was guided by the low level of maternal and child health indicators there. in each region (center north, center west, north, south west, boucle du mouhoun and center est), two health districts (hd) of intervention were selected by the ministry of health and two control districts in the same or in a neighboring region based on their relative proximity and similarity to the intervention districts in the targeted regions (fig. 1). within each hd of intervention, all the health facilities (hfs) – centre de santé et de promotion sociale (csps), or centers for health and social promotion, and centre médical avec antenne chirurgicale (cma), a medical center with surgical satellite services, and a district hospital – were included. in each hd control, the number of selected hfs was proportional to the size of the health district. a simple random draw of the number of hfs was performed in each health district based on one hf control for four hfs of intervention. a total of 529 hfs were investigated, including 428 rural csps. to be exact, 413 were visited in the intervention zones, and 116 in the control zones. each rural csps was associated with a village in its health area in which 15 households were selected for the survey. fifteen households were randomly drawn from each village. data collection for the baseline and end-line survey included a household and a facility-based survey. the household survey applied a two-stage sampling procedure (15 households per selected village). the questionnaire was administered to the head of household and women aged 15-49 years. the facility-based survey comprised different tools for data collection with different data sources and respondents: health facility records, providers’ questionnaire, direct observations (curative consultations of under-5 and antenatal consultations), exit interviews (curative and antenatal consultations), community health workers (chw) (questionnaire). all health facilities and all households included in this study responded to the questionnaires. this paper is based on the household survey. mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 303 fig. 1: study area – control and intervention health districts for baseline and endline survey, burkina faso source: author's own production from base maps of the geographic institute of burkina faso fig. 2: survey design diagram baseline survey health facilities survey (428) 100% household survey (6224) 99.98% region (06) intervention district (12) control district (12) endline survey health facilities survey (428) 100% household survey (6224) 100% region intervention district (12) control district (12) source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso • badolo hermann et al.304 2.2 study population and sample sizes two study populations were used in this study. first, we examined the study population based on an ecological time-series design, with health districts repeatedly observed over time. in this design, the lowest level of analysis was the health district, and 48 survey-period observations were available for analysis, covering 24 health districts observed in two periods (2013 and 2017). second, we used a repeated cross-sectional design, with children under fi ve at the lowest unit of analysis. one of the main advantages of this second approach is its ability to take into account the factors that can infl uence both child mortality and economic development indicators. in this second level of analysis, children from both surveys were grouped together, and the child’s likelihood of death was examined in the fi ve years immediately preceding the survey. in total, 37,244 children were involved in this analysis, after exclusion of missing covariate data. 2.3 selected variables dependent variables this study used two dependent variables, corresponding to the two study populations. in the ecological time-series design, the dependent variable is the proportion of under-fi ve surviving children for the fi ve-year reference period in each survey. in the child-level design, the dependent is the probability of child death occurring within fi ve years prior to the survey. these are children born during the fi ve years preceding the date of each survey used in this study. the question of the survival status of each live-born child made it possible to distinguish between surviving and deceased children. the age at death was recorded for each child who died. intermediate variables the independent variables are those that report on mothers’ practices in preventive health care. based on prior literature and the database used in this study, we selected six preventive health care measures that have been shown to reduce child mortality from the major causes of under-fi ve deaths, and that can be summarized as a composite index for comparability (cci) between hds and within hds over time (aaby et al. 1996; barros/victora 2013; victora et al. 2005, 1997). the preventive health care measures included were family planning needs satisfi ed (fps), skilled birth attendants at delivery (sba), at least one antenatal care visit with a skilled provider (ancs), and vaccination for children against diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (dpt3, three doses), measles (msl), and tuberculosis (bcg) vaccination. the coverage of these preventive health care measures at health district (hd) level was summarized using the cci, which is based on the following weighted average of the six preventive health care measures: mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 305 the cci is a composite measure. the cci gives equal weight to family planning and maternal and newborn care and immunization and has been proposed as an effective way to summarize and compare coverage of preventive health care across hds and over time (barros/victora 2013; corsi/subramanian 2014). independent variables at the child level, we used a variety of theoretically important household, maternal and child characteristics as covariates (victora et al. 1997). with regard to the individual characteristics of the mother’s social identifi cation, this study retained maternal age at childbirth, parity, educational level, and occupation. regarding children’s characteristics, we used sex of the child, childbirth order, and child preceding birth intervals (corsi/subramanian 2014; vilms et al. 2017). to better determine the impact of the social and household environment, we used the household wealth index and place of residence. statistical analysis most of the information collected on child survival focused on events that occurred in the fi ve years prior to the date of each survey. variables that operationalize mothers’ preventive health-care practices (contraceptive methods used, vaccination, antenatal care, place of delivery and an attendance at delivery) were captured only for women who had had a live birth in the fi ve years preceding both surveys. due to the nature of the data (collected from the retrospective surveys) and the objectives of our study, we adopted a longitudinal analysis approach. longitudinal analysis reports on the evolution of the risk of death of a generation or a group of generations. the basic assumption is that children born in the same period are deemed to experience the same conditions that expose them to the risk of an indiscriminate death. for this study we conducted two separate sets of analyses based on the two study populations described above. for the ecological time-series analysis, we apply linear regression models of form (corsi/subramanian 2014): where yij represents the percentage of surviving children for survey time i in hd j; β0 represents the constant or the average percentage of surviving children holding cci constant, and after accounting for hd differences (bcj); bcj represents the hd specifi c dummy variables estimating percentage differences of surviving children between hd; bsij represents the effects associated with dummies for survey years; (1) (2) • badolo hermann et al.306 β1cciij represents the percentage change of surviving children for a unit change in cci; and e0ij represents the residuals at the survey-year level i in hd j. a second set of analyses was implemented using the child-level dataset. in these analyses, the basic model is a logistic regression model with a binary response (y=1 for child is alive during the reference period, y=0 for child death). the outcome of child survival, pr(yij=1), is assumed to be binomially distributed yij ~ binomial (1, πij) with probability πij related to the set of independent variables x and a random effect for each level by a logit link function: the intercept, β0, represents the log odds of child survival for the reference group, bsij is a vector of coeffi cients for dummy variables for survey years, β1cciij represents the log odds of child survival for a one-unit increase in cci, and the bx represents a vector of coeffi cients for the log odds of child survival for a one-unit increase for each independent variable. coeffi cients were estimated and presented as odds ratios with 95 percent confi dence intervals. odds ratios (ors), adjusted odds ratios (aors) and p-value were estimated to capture the association between each independent and covariate variable and child survival (harrell jr. 2015). the data analysis was performed primarily using version 13 of the stata software. 3 results a total of 20,483 (55.0 percent) and 16,757 (45.0 percent) under-fi ve children from the 2013 baseline and 2017 end-line survey, respectively, were included in the analyses for the impact evaluation of pbf in burkina faso. between 2013 and 2017, the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children increased in a majority (17 of 24) of hds included in this study, although the rate of change varied across the hds (table 1). during this period, the cci increased in all hds from an average of 62.7 percent among all health districts in the baseline survey to 69.2 percent in the end-line survey (table 1). during the period, the cci increased in all hds, but the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children fell. indeed, the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children decreased in 7 of 24 hds (manga, boussé, yako, réo, gaoua, batié, boromo), while the cci increased in these same hds during the same period. in both the baseline and end-line surveys, a positive association was seen between hd levels of under-fi ve surviving children and cci coverage, indicating higher rates of under-fi ve surviving children in hds with greater preventive health care coverage (pearson correlation +0.30 [baseline] and +0.74 [end line], p<0.001, fig. 3.1 and 3.2). this association held when the average changes in the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children and cci over time were examined (pearson correlation 0.36, p<0.001, fig. 3.3). at an ecological level (model 1), the linear regression analysis showed that a standardized unit increase in cci was associated with an increase of 10.0 percent in under-fi ve surviving children after accounting for secular increases in the per (3) mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 307 centage of under-fi ve surviving children as captured by the survey period’s fi xed effects (table 2). in these analyses, cci was associated with an increase in underfi ve surviving children, indicating a multiplier effect of under-fi ve surviving children independent of survey period effects. in a second model (model 2), a child-level analysis was conducted that included all preventive health care associated with under-fi ve children’s survival. table 3 shows the sample sizes and unadjusted (or) and adjusted (aor) odds ratio by preventive health care variable: ancs (p<0.05), sba (p<0.001), and full immunization (p<0.05) were associated with under-fi ve children’s survival. indeed, children tab. 1: sample size, percentage of under-5 children surviving and cci for baseline and endline survey in 24 health districts, burkina faso n° health district baseline survey (2013) end line survey (2017) n % surviving cci n % surviving cci children children 03 solenzo 1,166 93.1 62.0 1,080 99.1 70.8 09 barsalgho 163 98.3 62.7 118 98.8 62.7 14 nanoro 185 98.3 60.8 175 98.4 66.4 18 gourcy 1,232 96.3 64.2 1,081 98.3 69.8 02 nouna 1,678 87.1 62.2 1,484 98.3 69.7 04 toma 410 94.8 63.6 326 98.3 72.6 08 zabré 144 97.7 69.3 128 97.9 75.0 05 manga 367 98.9 64.5 370 97.8 69.0 16 sapouy 736 96.9 62.6 544 97.6 64.7 10 kaya 2,001 96.0 63.1 1,680 97.5 68.6 19 ouahigouya 2,361 96.8 60.5 1,952 97.5 72.5 17 boussé 562 98.7 60.1 371 97.2 72.5 11 kongoussi 1,225 91.4 66.9 1,219 97.1 71.9 07 ouargaye 1,061 97.4 63.4 921 97.1 68.6 12 ziniaré 707 94.8 62.7 492 97.0 69.2 13 koudougou 2,289 95.0 62.4 1,601 96.7 65.9 06 tenkodogo 961 94.9 60.9 732 96.4 67.5 20 yako 690 97.0 61.1 503 96.2 69.8 15 réo 691 98.2 62.0 508 94.8 66.0 24 gaoua 181 94.1 57.5 152 92.8 65.5 21 batié 354 98.1 58.6 324 92.7 66.9 01 boromo 427 94.0 65.5 318 92.3 73.8 23 diébougou 726 88.7 61.3 552 91.5 66.0 22 dano 167 89.3 64.3 121 89.8 67.4 total 20,483 94.8 62.7 16,757 97.0 69.2 source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso • badolo hermann et al.308 whose mothers had no access to skilled antenatal care or a skilled attendant at birth are less likely to survive. the children under fi ve who did not receive full immunization are less likely to survive. model 3 includes, in addition to the variables of preventive health care, covariates related to the household, the mother, and the child in the child-level analysis. table 4 presents the results of the bivariate analysis of child survival and the covariates related to the household, the mother, and the child. the wealth index, place of residence, mother’s age at birth, maternal occupation, sex of the child, birth interval and birth order were signifi cantly associated with the survival of the child. for multivariate analysis, the results of this model presented in table 4 show that household wealth quintile (rich, richest) and received skilled attendant at birth (sba) were associated with better under-fi ve child survival. indeed, it is noted that maternal age at childbirth (25–29 years, aor=0.73) and high parity is associated with a low chance of under-fi ve child survival (aor=0.59 for 4-6 parity and aor=0.42 for 7&+). children from rich and richest households (aor = 1.4 for richest, aor=1.23 for rich, were less likely to die before their 5th birthday than those from the poorest households. fig. 3: correlation between under-fi ve children surviving and cci at baseline (panel 3.1, n=24 surveys) and end-line (panel 3.2, n=24 surveys) surveys and correlation between the change in under-fi ve children surviving and change in cci from baseline (panel 3.3, n=24 surveys) 1907 23 09 15 10 17 02 16 06 20 14 18 22 01 13 11 03 21 08 24 04 05 12 88 90 92 94 96 98 % s ur vi vi ng c hi ld re n 60 65 70 75 80 cci (%) 3.1 baseline survey 22 10 06 18 23 11 21 01 04 1716 15 2405 12 20 08 19 09 13140703 02 90 92 94 96 98 10 0 % s ur vi vi ng c hi ld re n 70 75 80 85 90 cci (%) 3.2 endline survey 12 0422 21 0511 181006 01 24 23 17 08 16 15 20 03 13 190914 02 07 -2 0 2 4 6 c ha ng e in % s ur vi vi ng c hi ld re n 0 10 20 30 change in cci (%) 3.3 change from baseline survey source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 309 tab. 2: coeffi cients of the health district model (ecological model) predicting under-5 children surviving across 48 survey periods in 24 health districts, burkina faso (model 1) variables model 1 beta standard error (se) survey period baseline (reference) end line 0.33 1.26 composite coverage index (per standard deviation (sd) increase) 0.10 0.15 constant 88.77 8.69 source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso tab. 3: bivariate odds ratios (or), and multivariable adjusted odds ratios (aor) of child survival according to preventive health care (model 2) variables children, % odds 95% ci p-value adjusted 95% ci p-value n ratio odds ratio family planning needs satisfi ed (fps) yes 9,135 24.53 1.00 1.00 no 28,112 75.47 1.05 (0.91 1.21) 0.94 (0.71 1.26) received skilled antenatal care (ancs) yes 30,238 81.19 1.00 1.00 no 7,006 18.81 0.93 (0.81 1.06) * 0.46 (0.23 0.95) * skilled attendant at birth (sba) yes 27,403 73.58 1.00 1.00 no 9,841 26.42 0.74 (0.63 0.87) *** 0.69 (0.51 0.93) * full immunization yes 22,175 59.54 1.00 1.00 no 15,069 40.46 0.83 (0.68 1.00) * 0.80 (0.65 0.98) * *** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, or: odds ratios, ci: confi dence interval, n = number of observations source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso • badolo hermann et al.310 tab. 4: bivariate odds ratios (or), and multivariable adjusted odds ratios (aor) of child survival according to preventive health care, child, maternal and household-level covariates (model 3) variables children, % odds 95% ci padjusted 95% ci pn ratio value odds value ratio survey period baseline 20,483 55.00 1.00 1.00 endline 16,757 45.00 1.57 (1.52 1.64) *** 1.47 (1.37 1.62) *** household wealth quintile poorest 6,464 17.36 1.00 1.00 poorer 6,935 18.62 1.17 (0.99 1.39) * 1.22 (1.00 1.50) middle 7,36 19.77 1.13 (0.96 1.34) 1.21 (0.99 1.47) rich 8,197 22.01 1.16 (0.99 1.36) 1.23 (1.01 1.49) * richest 8,279 22.23 1.35 (1.14 1.59) *** 1.40 (1.14 1.72) *** area of residence urban 16,958 45.54 1.00 1.00 rural 20,277 54.46 1.63 (1.47 1.81) *** 0.93 maternal age at child birth 15-19 3,200 8.60 1.00 1.00 20-24 8,328 22.37 1.12 (0.94 1.33) 0.79 (0.58 1.07) 25-29 10,293 27.65 1.37 (1.13 1.67) ** 0.73 (0.54 0.99) * 30-34 7,906 21.24 1.32 (1.05 1.65) * 1.11 (0.80 1.53) 35-39 4,855 13.04 1.35 (0.99 1.82) 1.29 (0.90 1.83) 40-44 2,011 5.40 1.82 (1.02 -3.28) * 1.25 (0.83 1.89) 45-49 651 1.75 0.66 (0.24 1.83) 1.22 (0.70 2.11) maternal education no education 35,041 94.08 1.00 1.00 primary &+ 2,205 5.92 1.16 (0.92 1.47) 1.27 (0.92 1.75) maternal occupation no working 17,592 47.23 1.00 1.00 working 11,887 31.92 0.87 (0.78 0.97) ** 0.92 (0.81 1.05) parity 1-3 17,443 46.83 1.00 1.00 4-6 14,231 38.21 0.67 (0.60 0.76) *** 0.59 (0.50 0.70) *** 7 & + 5,570 14.96 0.57 (0.49 0.67) *** 0.42 (0.33 0.54) *** sex of child male 18,935 50.84 1.00 1.00 female 18,309 49.16 1.14 (1.03 1.27) * 1.13 (1.00 1.29) birth order 1st child 7,526 20.31 1.00 1.00 2-3 8,938 24.12 1.46 (1.26 1.69) *** 1.23 (0.71 2.13) 4-5 3,366 9.08 1.45 (1.18 1.78) *** 1.64 (0.91 2.92) >= 6 17,234 46.50 1.46 (1.28 1.66) *** 1.38 (0.79 2.42) mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 311 4 discussion this study aimed to investigate the main preventive health-care factors associated with under-fi ve children’s survival in burkina faso. the results of this study support the conceptual framework that guided this study, namely, that the intermediate variables related to preventive health-care factors and the independent variables related to the household, mother and child were associated with under-fi ve children’s survival in burkina faso. improvement in preventive health care coverage (use of family planning, skilled antenatal care, sba, and full immunization) was associated with an increase in under-fi ve children’s survival in burkina faso. this association was signifi cant for the two types of populations considered in this study. on average, the increases in cci correlated with increases in the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children, however not all hds fi t this trend. these fi ndings suggest that other factors not considered here may also be infl uencing changes in the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children. further, the cci is a composite measure, and a decline in cci may refl ect one of the components decreasing over time while other components may have increased. we were not able to assess the association of each component of the cci with the percentage of under-fi ve survivtab. 4: continuation variables children, % odds 95% ci padjusted 95% ci pn ratio value odds value ratio birth interval 1st chid 7,915 21.25 1.00 1.00 <=24 months 2,617 7.03 0.90 (0.75 1.09) 0.67 (0.38 1.18) 24-47 months 15,592 41.86 1.66 (1.45 1.90) *** 1.61 (0.94 2.76) >=48 months 11,120 29.86 1.70 (1.47 1.96) *** 1.43 (0.82 2.48) family planning needs satisfi ed yes 9,135 24.53 1.00 1.00 no 28,112 75.47 1.05 (0.91 1.21) 1.03 (0.89 1.20) received skilled antenatal care yes 30,238 81.19 1.00 1.00 no 7,006 18.81 0.93 (0.81 1.06) * 0.89 (0.58 1.37) skilled attendant at birth yes 27,403 73.58 1.00 1.00 no 9,841 26.42 0.74 (0.63 0.87) *** 0.77 (0.58 1.37) ** full immunization yes 22,175 59.54 1.00 1.00 no 15,069 40.46 0.83 (0.68 1.00) * 0.84 (0.67 1.05) *** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, or: odds ratios, ci: confi dence interval, n = number of observations source: authors’ own calculations from baseline (2013) and end line (2017) survey data for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso • badolo hermann et al.312 ing children, but it is likely that some components are more strongly associated than others. for example, the results of the analysis presented in table 4 suggest that a skilled attendant at birth is particularly important in increasing the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children. it is therefore possible that increases in coverage of certain interventions (but not others) may result in an improvement in the percentage of under-fi ve surviving children without a corresponding improvement in cci. this paper shows that several preventive health care factors are associated with children’s survival. a study conducted in 35 sub-saharan countries in 2014 (corsi/ subramanian 2014) on dhs data showed that under-fi ve children’s mortality was related to the coverage of skilled antenatal care, sba, vaccinations, and so on. also, ghimire et al. (2019) conducted a study in nepal in 2019 that showed that family planning intervention as well as the promotion of universal skilled antenatal care (at least two doses of the tetanus vaccine) are essential in helping improve child survival in nepal. another study conducted by walker et al. (2013) in 71 countdown to 2015 priority countries2 on the patterns of maternal, newborn, and child health coverage showed that substantial reductions in child deaths are possible but only if intensifi ed intervention efforts, e.g. for sba, are implemented successfully within each of the countdown countries. it appears that health system improvements, including the scaling up of key maternal, newborn and child health (mnch) interventions, are a key explanation for reductions in u5mr in sub-saharan africa. for example, in tanzania between 1999 and 2004-05, the coverage of interventions relevant to child survival improved substantially (masanja et al. 2008). it has been suggested that effective implementation of cost-effective preventive health-care interventions can prevent much of the current under-fi ve mortality in low-income settings (black et al. 2003; bryce et al. 2006; victora et al. 2005). based on our child-level analyses, it appears that the coverage of health interventions has played a relatively important role in reducing child mortality. however, it is not clear whether these improvements are being driven by supply side increases in the national or regional availability and coverage of health services and interventions, or through increased demand and access at an individual level. based on the results of this study, concentrated efforts aimed at sensitizing the population (especially women of childbearing age) to the use of family planning, skilled antenatal care, sba, and child vaccination will help improve the survival of children (corsi/subramanian 2014; ghimire et al. 2019; rockli et al. 2018; walker et al. 2013). this indicates that activities aimed at increasing knowledge and awareness of the importance of family planning, skilled antenatal care, sba, child immunization, and other preventive measures for child survival should be conducted with women of childbearing age. 2 the countdown to 2015 for maternal, newborn, and child survival initiative monitors coverage of priority interventions to achieve the millennium development goals (mdg) for reduction of maternal and child mortality. mothers’ preventive health care practices and children’s survival in burkina faso • 313 in this study, it was not possible to explore certain important variables revealed in studies of factors associated with child survival, such as those related to the quality of the pregnant woman’s diet, to children’s nutrition in general, and to breastfeeding in particular. these variables were not taken into account in the analysis because of the quality of the information about these variables in the database. recommendations for future research include qualitative studies to provide a much deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to child survival. future research on this topic should explore the quality of pregnant women’s nutrition, child nutrition, the beliefs of women and their partners, and the infl uence of partners and the extended family on issues surrounding the adoption of preventive health care with the aim of improving child survival. 5 conclusion this study found that children whose mothers had not received sba at the birth of the child, those with high parity, and children who had lived in poorer and the poorest households were at greater risk of experiencing under-fi ve mortality in burkina faso. hence, to achieve sustainable development goal (sdg) child survival targets, the present fi ndings indicate the need for family planning interventions such as the promotion of contraception as well as universal sba coverage. in addition, these interventions should target women from socioeconomically marginalized groups as well as those who have lived in poorer and the poorest households. burkina faso could attain child survival sustainable development goal targets if this trend of improved child survival were to be sustained. investing in health systems and scaling up key maternal, newborn and child health (mnch) interventions can produce a rapid improvement in child survival. notes authors’ contributions: hb, arb and hh developed the detailed plans for the fi eldwork, designed the data collection instruments, implemented and supervised the fi eldwork. hb and as conceived and designed the paper and developed the analysis strategy. hb analyzed the data and wrote the fi rst draft. all authors reviewed, made inputs to and approved the fi nal paper. as is the overall guarantor and the corresponding author. funding: the baseline (2013) and endline (2017) survey for the impact evaluation of performance-based financing (pbf) in burkina faso was supported by the world bank through the health results innovation trust fund (hritf). acknowledgements we thank centre muraz, scientifi c leader of all fi eld activities, university of heidelberg, scientifi c leader of impact evaluation, and the world bank through the health results innovation trust fund (hritf) which provided the funding for the research • 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in: the lancet 386,10010: 2275-2286 [https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(15)00120-8]. date of submission: 15.05.2019 date of acceptance: 28.05.2020 badolo hermann. university of the western cape. bellville, south africa. institut national de santé publique (insp)/centre muraz. bobo-dioulasso, burkina faso e-mail: badholobi@gmail.com url: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=qzld5a0aaaaj&hl=fr prof. dr. appunni sathiya susuman (). university of the western cape. bellville, south africa. e-mail: sappunni@uwc.ac.za url: https://www.uwc.ac.za/biography/pages/dr.-sathiya-susuman.aspx bado aristide romaric. institut de recherche en sciences de la santé (irss). ouagadougou, burkina faso. west african health organization (waho). bobodioulasso, burkina faso e-mail: arbado@gmail.com url: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=5chpwz0aaaaj&hl=fr&oi=ao hien mwinonè hervé. institut national de santé publique (insp)/centre muraz. ouagadougou, burkina faso. institut de recherche en sciences de la santé (irss). bobo-dioulasso, burkina faso e-mail: hien_herve@hotmail.com published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) causal modelling in fertility research: a review of the literature and an application to a parental leave policy reform causal modelling in fertility research: a review of the literature and an application to a parental leave policy reform* michaela kreyenfeld abstract: this paper reviews empirical studies that have examined the causal determinants of fertility behaviour. in particular, we compare the approaches adopted in the different disciplines to improve our understanding of how birth dynamics are infl uenced by changes in female employment and changes in family policies. the wide array of panel data that have become available in recent years provide great potential for advanced causal modelling in this fi eld. event history modelling has been a dominant approach in sociology and demography. however, researchers are increasingly turning to other methods to unravel causal effects, such as fi xedeffects modelling, the regression discontinuity approach, and statistical matching. we summarise selected studies, and discuss the advantages and the shortcomings of the different approaches. in an empirical section, we analyse the impact of the german 2007 policy reform on birth behaviour to illustrate the diffi culties involved in isolating policy effects. the fi nal chapter concludes by underscoring that even simple modelling strategies may be benefi cial for improving our understanding of how policy effects shape demographic behaviour, and for laying the groundwork for more fi ne-grained causal investigations. keywords: family policy · event history · fertility · causation 1 introduction while most western governments may shy away from formulating any clear-cut pro-natalist policy goals, they nevertheless have a vested interest in understanding the effects that family policies can have on birth dynamics. scholars have approached this topic from different perspectives. thus, the modelling strategies comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 269-302 (date of release: 26.07.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-10 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-10en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data”. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-10 • michaela kreyenfeld270 which researchers use and the importance they attach to issues of causality have clearly been shaped by their respective disciplinary standpoints. the comparative welfare state approach has been among the most prominent concepts used to shed light on the interplay of family policies, female employment, and fertility behaviour – despite being the least committed to questions of causal modelling. based on the simple assumption that women now “demand economic independence and permanent integration in working life”, it was argued that “familialistic regimes” would be punished by low national fertility rates (esping-andersen 1999: 69). esping-andersen has remained the most cited proponent of this line of thought, although similar ideas were developed contemporaneously by scholars from other disciplines (see e.g. mcdonald 2000; rindfuss/brewster 1996). the empirical evidence that esping-andersen (1999) generated in his seminal work relied on rather simple ols regressions, whereby the outcome variable was the change in the national total fertility rate (tfr), while the independent variables were crude measures that depicted female employment rates and the degree to which social policies at the national level supported the compatibility of work and family life. obviously, the strength of this concept did not emanate from its methodological rigour. instead, it had fi lled a void that was left by other theories that failed to adequately address the pivotal role of family policies in infl uencing birth dynamics. numerous studies followed that used more refi ned estimation techniques or employed more sophisticated measures that mapped the extent to which national policies help to achieve a work-family balance (ahn/mira 2002; castles 2003; engelhardt/prskawetz 2004; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013; thévenon/ gauthier 2011). overall, the evidence from macro-level data remained inconclusive and unsatisfactory (gauthier 2007). as the unit of analysis is the country, only a few observations could be included in such investigations, which resulted in unstable results that relied on a set of rather heterogeneous countries. most importantly, concerns were raised about the outcome variables, which were often restricted to simple summary indicators, such as the national total fertility rate (tfr). the conventional tfr confl ates different birth parities. but even if vital statistics contain a parity-specifi c tfr, these data are still limited as they only rarely include real “exposure data” that relate births to the population at risk of a certain birth parity. furthermore, these types of data do not allow researchers to conduct fi ne-grained analysis; for example, to examine how different subpopulations react to a policy change. longitudinal micro-level analyses were deemed to be a more promising avenue in this area of research as they were less prone to the well-known problems associated with ecological fallacies, and they opened up new possibilities for unravelling the causal effects behind birth behaviour. this paper discusses the contribution of longitudinal micro-level analysis to the understanding of fertility dynamics. we provide an overview of two broad streams of literature in this area. first, we discuss studies that have examined the causal impact of women’s work on fertility behaviour. second, we draw attention to studies that have explored how national policies have infl uenced birth dynamics. the third part of the paper takes the german 2007 policy reform as an example to illustrate the causal modelling in fertility research • 271 diffi culties researchers face when seeking to isolate policy effects in an empirical investigation. the fi nal section summarises and evaluates the pros and cons of the different approaches. such an overview can never be complete. it is limited to the two abovementioned broad research streams, and is restricted to studies that use the potential of longitudinal micro-level data to unravel causal effects, which may be panel surveys, retrospective surveys, or process-produced administrative data.1 furthermore, most of the literature we discuss below addresses behaviour in european countries since the 1990s. 2 female employment and fertility 2.1 contributions and limitations of event history modelling despite claims that the heyday of regression analysis has long since passed (morgan/winship 2015), event history modelling has remained a dominant method for studying fertility behaviour, at least in demographic and sociological research. unlike in simple cross-sectional ols regression, “time” is at the heart of these methods. through its use of time-varying covariates, event history analysis lives up to one of the main principles of causal analysis, namely that the cause should always precede the effect (bhrolcháin/dyson 2007). thus, a large body of literature emerged that examined how women’s work – operationalised by a time-varying covariate distinguishing between different employment states – is related to fi rstorder and higher-order birth risks (for a meta-analysis, see alderotti et al. 2021; matysiak/vignoli 2008). because the moment of childbirth is not equivalent to the decision to become a parent, these studies conventionally predated the date of childbirth by several months. important policy-relevant results were generated from this type of research, which illustrated that the links between female employment and fertility can vary greatly across policy contexts, socio-economic statuses, birth parities, cohorts, and time periods (andersson et al. 2014; matysiak/vignoli 2008, 2013; schröder/brüderl 2008; wood/neels 2017). micro-level investigations also opened up the opportunity to operationalise employment status in a more sophisticated manner. while most of the macrolevel studies were confi ned to simple summary indicators, such as the female employment rate, micro-level studies could operationalise women’s work over a fi ne-grained measure that differentiated between various employment categories, including educational participation, gainful employment, unemployment, and other activities. while this level of granularity enabled researchers to cast a more nuanced 1 this overview is limited to studies that employed longitudinal data. however, we must pay tribute to the earlier empirical studies that tried to unravel causal effects, even though they relied mostly on cross-sectional datasets only (cramer 1980; stolzenberg/waite 1977; thomson 1984; waite/stolzenberg 1976). in addition to laying the groundwork for conceptualising the association between female employment and fertility, these studies motivated much of the later collection of longitudinal data. • michaela kreyenfeld272 light on the micro-level correlations between female employment and fertility, it also raised broader questions about the meaning of women’s employment status. this was particularly evident for the category of “housewife” that was included in some of the datasets. it was deemed obvious that housewives would experience elevated fi rst birth rates, based on the assumption that their life course concept was closely intertwined with the idea of having a family. although the time-varying modelling of women’s employment status guaranteed a correct ordering of cause and effect, it was also evident that it did not entirely eliminate reverse causality. people plan their lives ahead and they base their current actions on their anticipated future behaviour (hoem/kreyenfeld 2006). an individual’s current employment status is therefore more than just an indicator of his/her present circumstances. instead, it is the product of choices that factor in anticipated future behaviour and thus the individual’s “personal imaginaries” or “narratives of the future” (bazzani et al. 2020; vignoli et al. 2020a/b). another source of bias in event history modelling comes from the modelling of employment as a time-varying covariate. in such cases, endogenous selection bias may bias the coeffi cient for past employment status, if past employment affects the confounders of current employment (elwert 2013; elwert/winship 2014; sharkey/ elwert 2011). multi-process models or simultaneous equation event history models have been proposed in an effort to address endogeneity (lillard 1993). the advances in such methods have been closely connected to the development of the software package aml (lillard/panis 2000), which led to an upsurge in the use of these methods in family research, particularly in the early and mid-2000s (e.g. aassve et al. 2006; upchurch et al. 2002; kravdal 2001; kulu/steele 2013; schnor 2014). this modelling approach is based on the premise that partnership formation, marriage, educational attainment, and fertility behaviour are transitions that may infl uence each other as these processes unfold. multi-process modelling tries to capture this endogeneity by letting the outcome of one process (such as the formation of a partnership) infl uence the other process (such as educational attainment), and by including heterogeneity components in each process. these heterogeneity components are usually assumed to follow a joint normal distribution. a methodological limitation of these models is that they hinge on this underlying distributional assumption.2 while this assumption may be relaxed, employing alternative ones often leads to practical problems, such as the models failing to converge (see e.g. kravdal 2001: 198). a more substantive limitation of these models is that the unobserved heterogeneity components remain a black box, with researchers being unable to pinpoint the exact mechanisms that lead to a particular behaviour. furthermore, even if employment and fertility can be modelled as mutually related processes, such efforts will not eliminate the bias that arises because people are acting on their anticipated behaviour in the future (the abovementioned “personal imaginaries”). 2 additionally, the model assumes that the source of unobserved heterogeneity is constant across time, which may also be a strong assumption. causal modelling in fertility research • 273 endogenous selection bias is conceptually different from the more widely known problem of common-cause confounding, whereby the bias comes from having failed to include a variable that causes both the variable of interest (employment) and the outcome variable (fertility) (elwert 2013; elwert/winship 2014; hernán et al. 2002). a typical example would be the omission of migration background, which may affect both fertility behaviour and employment. standard regression analysis usually tries to combat this problem by including additional variables in the model. thus, the main strategy for assessing causality in regression models is to eliminate “alternative effects” by controlling for confounders. this strategy has several implications. it hinges on the availability of variables, whereas some variables may simply not be available in a given dataset. in addition, the results may vary depending on the number and the type of variables that are included in the regression. this is also one of the main conclusions reached by matysiak and vignoli (2008) in their meta-analysis of 30 journal articles that used event history modelling to assess the effects of female employment on fertility. the authors concluded that the prior results were often unstable and heavily infl uenced by the inclusion of available covariates. while this is undoubtedly a valid conclusion to draw from this meta-analysis, it can leave researchers in some despair. scholars may be torn between including further covariates and ending up with a grossly over-specifi ed model, or choosing a parsimonious modelling strategy while running the risk of being accused that the model does not suffi ciently account for all possible confounders. 2.2 fixed-effects modelling for fertility research? the self-selection into “treatment” is one of the main reasons why observational studies will always remain limited in their ambitions to make causal claims. while experimental designs, such as randomised controlled trials, are usually considered the gold standard for causal analysis, conducting them remains an elusive goal for most demographic and sociological researchers, as ethical reasons generally prohibit the use of such designs (bhrolcháin/dyson 2007). nonetheless, most of the progress made in recent decades in the development of sociological research methods has been geared towards mimicking an experimental design approach (gangl 2010). the terminology of a “control group” and a “treatment group” clearly signals such a commitment. the rise of the use of fi xed-effects regression modelling has been informed by this broader aim (brüderl/ludwig 2015; hill et al. 2020). fixed-effects modelling is based on the idea that a person can be used as his/her “own control group” if longitudinal data are available (allison 2009; brüderl/ludwig 2015). thus, fi xed-effects panel regressions make causal claims by exploiting the variations that exist within a person over time. a classical demographic example that demonstrates the power of this method is the investigation of the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction (brüderl/ludwig 2015). in contrast to a standard regression approach that compares the life satisfaction of married and unmarried people, this method follows a person throughout his/her life course, and assesses how the individual’s life satisfaction changes when s/he experiences the • michaela kreyenfeld274 event of marriage. in this context, marriage is considered the “treatment”, while the “control group” is the individual before s/he experienced the event. technically, this method eliminates all time-constant heterogeneity that commonly distorts standard regression analysis (brüderl/ludwig 2015). many studies have employed fi xed-effects panel regression to study different demographic and sociological themes, such as the demographic determinants of life satisfaction and other dimensions of well-being. moreover, childbirth has been used regularly as an independent variable in these models (e.g. myrskylä/margolis 2014). it is noticeable, however, that only a few studies have employed this method to examine childbearing behaviour as an outcome variable. in the few cases in which the method was employed for fertility research, the results were mainly published in economic journals (boca et al. 2005; huttunen/kellokumpu 2016; michaud/ tatsiramos 2011).3 have demographers and sociologists been too slow to catch up with this methodological innovation? or are there sound reasons why this method has not yet been widely adopted in fertility research? a possible answer to these questions is that, the study of fertility from a parityspecifi c point of view is almost an imperative in demographic and sociological research. the decision to have a fi rst child is regarded as a distinct choice that is determined by factors that are different to those that result in higher-order births. if we subscribe to this idea, we need to model the transition to fi rst parenthood as a unique event. fixed-effects panel regression runs into a problem in such cases, as it is based on the premise that the event (i.e. the birth) should be observed before and after a treatment (e.g. a change of employment status). if an event is observed only once in a lifetime, there is a fundamental fl aw in the logic as there is no before and after. if the event of the fi rst birth occurred before the “treatment”, it cannot be repeated afterwards. to get around this problem, some researchers have treated the number of children as a continuous variable (see e.g. boca et al. 2005; huttunen/kellokumpu 2016; michaud/tatsiramos 2011). obviously, this approach confl ates different birth parities. but there are other concerns as well. births are infrequent events in contemporary european societies, and people rarely have more than two or three children. as such, there is little variation in the outcome variable, and some of the variation comes from the more “unusual” cases of people with larger families. moreover, employment and fertility are events that strongly infl uence each other. the birth of a fi rst child often results in drastic changes in a woman’s work pattern. a large share of women do not work shortly after giving birth, but re-enter the labour market at some later point in time. in other instances, women may space their fi rst and second children closely together to minimise their family-related employment interruptions. the complex interplay that exists between fertility and women’s employment gets completely lost in these models, such that it ultimately becomes 3 this observation pertains to panel fi xed-effects modelling. fixed-effects modelling has been regularly used with macro-level fertility data in sociological and demographic fertility research; for example, to account for regional-specifi c effects (e.g. schneider 2015). causal modelling in fertility research • 275 diffi cult to grasp the meaning of the underlying behavioural patterns. thus, the use of fi xed-effects panel regression is not a panacea for causal analysis (collischon/ eberl 2020; hill et al. 2020) and it is clearly not the best way to move forward in the analysis of fertility behaviour.4 2.3 fertility intentions and panel data while fi xed-effects modelling may not be the preferred method for examining fertility behaviour, it can be applied more effectively to the analysis of fertility preferences. the opportunities to analyse fertility preferences with european panel data accelerated in the early 2000s, when data became available from sources such as the generations and gender survey, the british understanding society study, and the german family panel, which included recurrent items on the respondents’ fertility desires, ideals, and intentions.5 kuhnt, kreyenfeld, and trappe (2017) used data from the german family panel (pairfam) to study changes in the ideal number of children across the life course by means of fi xed-effects modelling. the authors did not fi nd any association between women’s employment status and their ideal number of children. the only variable that was shown to have a substantial effect was “having (further) children”, which suggests that the respondents were adjusting their ideals to align them with their behaviour. kuhnt, minkus, and buhr (2020) employed the same data, but used the intention to have a child (within the next two years) as an outcome variable in a multinomial fi xed-effects regression model (with the categories “certainly yes”, “uncertain”, and “certainly no”). while the authors did not fi nd that a woman’s employment status affected her fertility intentions, the model showed that men’s worries about fi nding a suitable job increased the likelihood of being uncertain about the plans for having a child within the next two years. a non-trivial problem that tends to arise in this type of investigation is that some respondents may realise their fertility intentions and have a child during the study period. as such, there is selective drop out from the study population.6 other studies have focused more specifi cally on the link between intentions and fertility behaviour. berrington and pattaro (2014) used data from the uk data 4 schröder and brüderl (2008) used an event history model to study fi rst birth rates. instead of controlling for employment status, they controlled for whether a person had changed his/her employment status (i.e. moved from non-employment to employment). in doing so, the authors used standard event history analysis, but also exploited the within-variation. 5 the collection of large-scale longitudinal data that included items that measured fertility desires, intentions, and ideals was initiated in the us as far back as the 1970s. much of the work on fertility intentions was motivated by studies based on us data (see e.g. hayford 2009; thomson 1997). 6 a downturn in these investigations is that all birth parities were pooled in this investigation, thus, the fertility intentions of a particular woman that is observed across time may refer to different birth parities. furthermore, problems of selectivity may arise, because women who did not state a preference, or who were pregnant at the time of the interview, are excluded from the sample. in a similar vein, the realisation of an intention (childbirth) is not adequately accounted for in this model. • michaela kreyenfeld276 “understanding society” to compare women’s fertility intentions at age 23 with their actual number of children at age 46. this study found that highly educated women were less likely to realise their intentions. however, the results also showed that a woman’s employment status at age 23 did not seem to be related to her chances of realising her early fertility intentions. other studies examined how a woman’s fertility intentions as measured in a given year determined the probability of the woman realising those intentions by the next year or the next round of data collection (e.g. hanappi et al. 2017; kuhnt/trappe 2016; riederer et al. 2019; spéder/kapitány 2009). these studies have greatly advanced our understanding of the obstacles women face in realising their fertility plans. ultimately, however, these models do not solve the problem that a woman may self-select into a certain employment status across her life course. 2.4 natural experiments our interest in understanding the causal effects of female employment on fertility stems from the fact that in economic and demographic theories of fertility, women’s labour market participation has been seen as one of the prime factors contributing to declining or low fertility rates. refuting the hypothesis that women’s employment leads to lower fertility not only challenges the predictions from conventional theories; indeed, in the narrow economic sense, it means that the “income effect” has ultimately trumped the “substitution effect”. more broadly, it implies that women’s role in society, the meaning of female work, and the economic foundations of the family have all shifted. as these are strong implications, it is imperative that we rule out the possibility that selection into employment has produced the observed outcomes. a standard approach used in economics to establish causality is to search for natural experiments; i.e. events that affect the variable of interest (female employment, non-employment, or unemployment), but that are beyond the control of the individual. examples of such natural experiments are large-scale lay-offs, bankruptcies, and fi rm closures. these events have been used previously in labour market research to examine how unemployment, operationalised over these exogenous unemployment shocks, alters people’s behaviour and well-being. however, this approach has seldom been used in fertility research (see, however, del bono et al. 2015; hofmann et al. 2017; huttunen/kellokumpu 2016). with regard to the small number of existing studies that adopted this approach, most were conducted by labour economists who employed matching techniques. the underlying idea of this approach is that true causal analysis requires a comparison of a control group and a treatment group. standard observational studies suffer from the problem that the comparison group may be select, and is thus not comparable with the treatment group. to ensure comparability, matching techniques start with the sample of “treated” individuals and search the pool of the control group for those units that best correspond to the treatment group. this “search procedure” has been refi ned in recent years by employing sophisticated algorithms, most recently from machine learning operations (lee et al. 2010). however, despite recent causal modelling in fertility research • 277 refi nements in these approaches, researchers using matching techniques struggle with problems similar to those faced by researchers using conventional regression models. to ensure a good match, they need a suffi cient number of covariates. if these covariates are not included, the matching techniques will result in poor matches – and, by extension, in biased results. in addition, matching techniques are not always easy to apply to demographic processes. hofmann and colleagues (2017) examined, for example, the causal effects of unemployment on fi rst birth risks. the paper compared the subsequent birth risks of individuals who lost their jobs after having been laid off by a fi rm with those of a control group of women who were not subject to a fi rm closing. to make the control and the treatment groups comparable, fi rm-level information was required. as a result, the sample was limited to respondents who had been employed with the same fi rm for at least 1.5 years. women who had been working at fi rms with more than 2,000 employees or at very small fi rms had to be excluded as well, because it would have been diffi cult to fi nd suitable matches for these women. in the end, after the restrictions were imposed, the original sample of 101,910 individuals shrank to 3,286 treated and 17,836 untreated women. although the sample restrictions were clearly spelled out and clear justifi cation given for them, the results from such an analysis are inevitably limited to a restricted subpopulation. in this case, one of the restrictions required by the sample was that the women were employed with the same fi rm for at least 1.5 years. this limited the results to women who were fi rmly established in the labour market. thus, while this model may have generated careful causal effects, the external validity of the results was limited. 2.5 narratives of the future a new impetus for understanding the causal link of the “female employment and fertility nexus” comes from studies that have tried to integrate future uncertainties into models of rational decision-making. these models break from the presumption that many decisions, including the decision to have children, are long-term commitments. it is therefore argued that actors need to take into account the uncertainties regarding the future implications of their choices. some future states of the world may be extrapolated from the “shadow of the past” (i.e. it may be assumed that a woman’s husband will continue to have a high income if he is currently earning well). other states of the world are more diffi cult to predict, and actors may “play” with imaginaries to deal with these uncertainties (beckert/bronk 2018). “narratives” are standard concepts in psychology and sociology, and have recently also been employed in economics (bènabou et al. 2018; shiller 2020) and demographic research (vignoli et al. 2020a). it has been argued that while conventional fertility models have primarily dealt with the effects of present states, fertility choices are governed by narratives of the future, which stem from the “human capacity to place oneself in an imagined situation that cannot be deduced from present conditions” (vignoli et al. 2020b). in other words, the decision to have • michaela kreyenfeld278 a child depends on how a woman visualises the future; for example, whether she can imagine being a “working mother”, or whether she can only imagine being a “homemaker”. this area of research is still evolving, and among the major challenges scholars have faced is that of generating suitable item sets that can capture these “narratives of the future” (vignoli et al. 2020b) or “images of the future self” (bachrach/morgan 2016: 466). what is interesting about this debate is that it shifts attention away from developing sophisticated econometric techniques for studying the causal effect of employment on fertility, and instead focuses on fi nding appropriate item sets to measure future “models” or “narratives” of the world. it has also been proposed that more qualitative research should be conducted, including longitudinal qualitative research that helps to elucidate how these “narratives” are formed and altered across time (bernardi 2021; vignoli et al. 2020b). the concept of “future narratives” resonates well with the considerations developed by friedman, hechter, and kanazawa (1994). they provided a rationale for why some women may decide to have children in a seemingly unstable und insecure economic situation, and why this decision may still be regarded as rational. on the one hand, childbirth tends to block biographical “alternatives”. thus, having children while unemployed may limit a woman’s chances of swiftly returning to the labour market and fi nding a job with good career prospects. on the other hand, this limitation may be perceived as a relief and a source of “uncertainty reduction”, as it structures a woman’s otherwise uncertain life course.7 for women who foresee that they will not be able to succeed in the labour market, taking on the role of a homemaker may be regarded as a meaningful and socially accepted “biographical alternative” to an uncertain labour market trajectory. clearly, the societal context matters here because it defi nes the available “narratives” or “biographical alternative”. for example, policies may encourage or discourage a certain earner model; or the normative fabric of a society may defi ne gender roles, attitudes towards non-parental care, and, more generally, attitudes towards parents’ roles as earners and carers. 3 policy change and fertility 3.1 isolating policy effects in response to declining and low birth rates in european countries, policy-makers have become increasingly interested in the question of whether policies could halt the downward trend in period fertility and reduce childlessness, particularly among highly educated and work-oriented women. in this debate, it was argued that the expansion of publicly fi nanced child care and the implementation of earningsrelated parental leave benefi ts are key measures that can simultaneously support 7 lehrer et al. (1996: 133) criticised this argument for the assumption that the risks “emanating from parenthood are more controllable than those associated with labor force participation”. causal modelling in fertility research • 279 higher levels of gender equality and fertility. against this background, the european commission issued recommendations to expand public day care and to implement suitable parental leave regulations (annesley 2007). although many national governments followed their own agenda and did not necessarily comply with the eu recommendations, most european governments have scaled up their public day care services and implemented parental leave regulations since the 1990s (daly/ ferragina 2018). child care services have been gradually expanded, and the speed of this expansion has depended in part on the capacities and conditions at local municipality level. researchers have thus been able to use the regional variations in these child care expansion efforts to isolate the possible policy effects (e.g. bauernschuster et al. 2016; hank/kreyenfeld 2003; krapf 2014; kravdal 1996).8 however, as parental leave benefi t regulations were generally implemented at the national level, scholars had to use other strategies to examine the impact of these measures on birth behaviour. much of the early demographic research into the causal impact of policy changes on fertility behaviour has dealt with developing economies, and thus with highfertility settings. for these regions, randomised controlled trials have been regularly employed to evaluate the effectiveness of family planning programmes (mwaikambo et al. 2011). for advanced economies, these methods are applied less commonly in the area of fertility behaviour. there have, however, been investigations of how sexual education (and other “moderate” interventions) have affected teenage pregnancy rates (for an overview, see bennett/assefi 2005). ethical issues, including concerns about equal access to public services, often prevent the implementation of randomised control trials to evaluate the impact of more coercive policies on fertility behaviour (bhrolcháin/dyson 2007). however, the programme evaluation literature offers a battery of techniques for isolating policy effects with observational data (lalonde 1986). a standard method that is often used is the difference-in-difference (did) approach, which is commonly combined with the abovementioned matching techniques. this approach suffers from the same drawbacks as fi xed-effects modelling (see section 2). the did requires an observation before and after the intervention to isolate the causal effect of a policy. as the fi rst childbirth is an absorbing event, did cannot be employed to study fi rst birth processes. researchers could combine all birth orders so that they would be able to observe events before and after treatment (a policy reform). however, this would violate a basic understanding of demographic research: namely that fi rst and higher-order births are distinct processes. in light of these challenges, researchers have increasingly turned to the regression discontinuity approach to examine how policy reforms impact behaviour. the regression discontinuity approach is based on the idea that causal inference can 8 the assumption here is that regional and temporal differences in child care slots depend on the capacities and willingness of local actors to increase child care services. if municipalities offer child care services based on expected demand, regional changes in provision rates cannot be used as a suitable exogenous policy measure, as they already refl ect the usage of care services. • michaela kreyenfeld280 be generated by comparing the behaviour of individuals immediately before and after a cut-off date of a policy reform. this method has, for example, been used to examine how changes in parental leave regulations have affected labour supply (ginja et al. 2020), living arrangements (cygan-rehm et al. 2018), as well as childbirth (e.g. cygan-rehm 2016; farré/gonzález 2019; tamm 2013). while these models are central to the fi eld of policy evaluation, they have high data demands. in order to generate signifi cant results, large sample sizes that include reasonable numbers of events that are observed immediately before and after a policy reform are needed. while this need for large amounts of data is a general concern when using these types of models, it is a particularly pressing problem in fertility research as births are rare events. therefore, most survey data will not provide a suitable basis for applying the regression discontinuity approach to birth behaviour. consequently, this method can mainly be used in fertility research if large-scale register data are available. 3.2 criteria and considerations for the analysis of policy effects in order to study policy effects, suitable counterfactuals are needed. the nordic countries have been ideal for the counterfactual approach. these countries are at the vanguard of progressive parental leave regulations, having already overhauled their family policies in the 1970s and 1980s. furthermore, as these countries have large-scale register data suitable for individual-level fertility analysis, studies conducted in these countries were among the fi rst to generate solid evidence of how parental leave policies could alter fertility patterns (andersson 1999; andersson et al. 2006; björklund 2006; neyer/andersson 2008). a stylised fi nding from this body of research is that the introduction of the so-called “speed-premium”9 in the swedish parental leave system led to an increase in second birth rates, and a shortening of birth intervals. this evidence was generated based on simple parityspecifi c birth rates (i.e. from event history models) for sweden that were compared with patterns in other nordic countries. in the nordic context, where there are only minor differences in the cultural and economic developments between countries, it seems straightforward to analyse swedish fertility and to use neighbouring norway or denmark as counterfactuals. other european countries often lack such clear-cut comparison groups, because the data are often less comparable across countries; and because countries differ on multiple dimensions, including in their cultural and economic conditions, and in their fertility patterns prior to a reform. in addition to the challenge of guaranteeing similar prior conditions, bhrolcháin and dyson (2007) have listed further criteria for performing meaningful causal analysis of demographic outcomes. in particular, they have emphasised the importance of 9 parental leave benefi ts in sweden cover roughly 80 percent of prior income. if the fi rst and second births are spaced closely apart, women will receive the same parental leave benefi t for the second child as for the fi rst one, even if they had reduced their employment and earnings between the two births. the same applies to higher-order births (andersson et al. 2006). causal modelling in fertility research • 281 contiguity: i.e. that the effect should follow shortly after the cause (bhrolcháin/dyson 2007: 8). moreover, the regression discontinuity approach (see above) capitalises on the idea that a policy reform can be regarded as a sudden external shock that leads to an immediate reaction. sharp cut-off dates for eligibility for certain benefi ts are very important tools in understanding how policies operate. however, not all policy reforms are implemented in a clear-cut fashion. furthermore, there may be a mismatch between the de jure regulations and the de facto implementation of a policy. some groups may be eligible for a service or payment, but may not be able to take advantage of it, either because they are simply not aware of their eligibility or because they are unable to master the bureaucratic hurdles involved in applying for a state benefi t. moreover, in family law, there is often a “margin of appreciation” of how legal texts are interpreted and enforced in practice. this is most evident in the regulation of child custody or alimony, in which judges have a certain leeway in their rulings. there is only a small margin of appreciation in the case of parental leave regulations, as eligibility is clearly defi ned in law. however, for some families, bureaucratic hurdles may have indeed been a barrier to taking advantage of these programmes. the abovementioned parental leave benefi t reform requires parents to document their earnings of the last 12 months. the german family ministry has only recently intensifi ed efforts to make the procedure easier (by retrieving the earnings information automatically from the pension registers). returning to the abovementioned principle of contiguity, we observe that this principle seems to confl ict at least somewhat with the ways in which some policies play out in practice. thus, there may not be an immediate “reform effect” because it can take time for the knowledge of how to apply for certain benefi ts to trickle down to all layers of society. in addition, governments may need time not only to optimise their systems and thus remove bureaucratic hurdles, but also to make the application procedure easier so that access is guaranteed even for hard-to-reach populations, such as those who do not speak the native language. also relevant in this context is the policy process. from the ministerial draft, to the discussion in parliament, to the enactment of the law, and to its ultimate implementation; this process can easily stretch across several months, or even years. depending on the magnitude and relevance of the reform, this debate may receive media coverage. as a result, even if we are able to pin-point the exact date when a policy reform came into force, the reform may have increased levels of public awareness much earlier. for example, germany drastically curbed ex-spousal maintenance after divorce in 2008 (radenacker 2020). as this policy process was covered in the media, it is likely that women who foresaw that they would get divorced had altered their employment behaviour well in advance of the actual date of the implementation of that reform. the parental leave benefi t reform, which will be analysed below, came into force on 1 january 2007. the reform bill was passed on 20 june 2006.10 it is possible that some couples foresaw that this policy would 10 http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/018/1601889.pdf http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/018/1601889.pdf • michaela kreyenfeld282 come into effect, and acted accordingly. thus, births in january 2007 may have been planned in anticipation of the implementation of the reform. therefore, an immediate reaction to the reform may have been observed. however, given that births are not that easy to time for most couples, a more realistic scenario is that there was a certain time lag between the implementation of this reform and its effects on fertility. policies are rarely formulated in a vacuum, and how they operate also depends on the context. in some cases, a policy may not succeed because people do not use it. levels of policy usage may vary for different reasons. for example, eligible individuals may not consider applying for a transfer for fear of being stigmatised if they collected the benefi t. similarly, parents may not take advantage of an available child care slot because societal norms sanction the use of day care at young ages. neyer and andersson (2008: 702) argued that certain policies may be deemed to have failed as a result of a lack of coherence and a mismatch with the broader societal system. for example, the german parental leave benefi t reform was basically copied from the swedish system. unlike sweden, which had already abolished individual taxation in the 1970s, germany retained its system of joint taxation. the german system continues to provide tax relief if the “second earner” (usually the woman) has worked less. thus, the system does not provide a clear commitment to the “dual earner model”, but instead provides strong incentives to opt for the single earner model. kalwij (2010: 704) concluded that researchers should never analyse policies in isolation, nor should they “simply sum up the various family policies”. instead, researchers should consider the interplay of the different measures and how they align and resonate with the overall logic of the system. neyer and andersson (2008) introduced the concept of critical junctures into this debate. this terminology was originally used in the political economy literature to depict turning points in institutional developments. critical junctures are policy reforms that have a lasting effect on the entire welfare state framework because they determine its future pathway and can “lock” the system into moving in a certain direction (pierson 2000; thelen 1999). it also follows that the constellation of different policies generates a unique and separate dimension. in addition to pointing to this idiosyncratic nature of policies, the authors suggested to analyse possible interaction effects between the existing policy measures and the newly introduced ones. for example, it is conceivable that parental leave policies would only be effective if they were combined with an increase in the provision of child care. while child care policies could be integrated by exploiting regional variations, other policies are more diffi cult to integrate (such as the effects that come from the tax and transfer system). the use of large-scale cross-national data, combined with information on the features of the different welfare states, could provide some important insights into how policies operate in different contexts (wesolowski et al. 2020). causal modelling in fertility research • 283 4 how did the german parental leave benefi t reform affect fi rst birth behaviour? 4.1 the 2007 parental leave benefi t reform below, we use the german parental leave benefi t reform of 2007 to illustrate the diffi culties involved in isolating policy effects. the german parental leave benefi t reform came into force on 1 january 2007. the reform, which was copied from the parental leave benefi t programmes of the swedish system, was regarded in the academic community as marking a major departure from the previous system in germany (fleckenstein 2011; spieß/wrohlich 2008). the prior regulations provided a fl at-rate benefi t of 300 euros per month for the duration of two years, while the new regulations provided a shorter term of parental leave of only 12 months. moreover, the benefi t was now earnings-related, with the net earnings in the year prior to childbirth serving as the basis for the calculation of the benefi t.11 although the term during which benefi ts were received was shortened, the new regulations generally led to an increase in monthly payments, one exception being the unemployed and persons who were not integrated into the labour market. the benefi ts of these individuals were often lower under the new system. some scholars characterised the reform as a major and radical shift and a clear departure from the logic of the previous system, which was often classifi ed as a conservative and familialistic welfare state regime (fleckenstein 2011). in addition, the new regulations provided strong incentives for women to become established in the labour market before having children. thus, a clear-cut hypothesis follows from these observations: namely, that the association between female employment status and earnings should have changed after the reform, with women becoming more likely to postpone childbearing until they were fi rmly established in the labour market. this hypothesis will be tested below based on large-scale register data. 4.2 data and variables data for this investigation come from the german pension registers. we use the “vskt 2015”, which is a sample drawn from the registers and which includes persons with german citizenship who had an active pension account in 2015, i.e. persons who were not yet retired (stegmann 2018). the main benefi ts of using this dataset are its large sample size and its detailed and reliable employment, earnings, and fertility biographies (for a validation of the fertility histories, see kreyenfeld/ mika 2006). there are, however, several disadvantages to using this dataset. first, the pension data cover only about 90 percent of the resident population in germany, as opposed to the total population. people in certain professions (farmers, civil servants) are not included in the registers. an additional drawback is that it contains 11 there is an earnings cap for the calculation of the benefi t (currently 1,800 euros). • michaela kreyenfeld284 only a few variables that can be employed for the investigation. for example, partner information or information at the household level are not available in the dataset. thus, the analyses must rely on a “sparse model” with a limited number of covariates. another drawback is that the data only include individuals born between 1948 and 1985. this means that coverage of younger ages for the very recent time period is poor. the data have been transferred into a person-month dataset, and have been restricted to women aged between 20 and 40 in the years 2005 to 2010. we do not analyse earlier years because unemployment is one of our main covariates, and because measures of unemployment are not fully comparable for longer time periods due to a major policy reform of the unemployment benefi t scheme that came into force in 2004 (the so-called hartz iv reforms). we do not analyse later years because coverage of very young women for the period after 2010 is poor. sensitivity analyses were conducted that cover longer time periods for older women (see fig. a2 in the appendix). the main outcome variable is the fi rst childbirth, which was pre-dated by nine months. women who had a child before the observation window are not part of this investigation. cases are censored at “last clearance”, which is the date when the german pension fund contacts a person to verify the information provided in the registers. the total number of women in the analytical sample is 48,843, which corresponds to 2,833,078 person-months. these women gave birth to 13,913 fi rst children in the observation window (see table a1 in the appendix for the sample statistics). the main covariate is the employment status. employment status is available on a monthly basis in the registers. we distinguish between women who were in (1) schooling, (2) employment, (3) unemployment, and (4) others. schooling includes any educational episode, including school attendance, vocational training, and university education. not all educational episodes are equally relevant for pension payments. for this reason, university education (as well as further education) is not fully recorded in the registers.12 thus, some educational episodes cannot be identifi ed, and they will appear in the “other” category (see below). employment includes “regular” employment. it does not include any form of informal or marginal employment.13 unemployment includes periods of registered unemployment (including alg ii). the “other” category is heterogeneous. it comprises some episodes of university education, marginal employment, or other episodes in which a person was out of the labour market for other reasons. 12 vocational training generates “pension points”, while university education is not immediately “pension-relevant”. although an individual does not acquire any “pension points” while in university education, these periods count as “pension-relevant periods”. an individual needs a certain minimum of pension-relevant periods before s/he can claim a pension. the maximum duration of time that can be claimed was reduced to 96 months in 1992. 13 marginal employment is partially or fully exempt from social security contributions and income tax. since 1999, the marginally employed are required to pay contributions to the public pension fund, but they are still exempt from other social security payments (such as contributions to the unemployment insurance system). causal modelling in fertility research • 285 in order to capture the effect of the policy reform, we control for the time period. even with large register data, the sample sizes are too small to conduct the analysis by single years, ages, and employment status and earnings. for that reason, we have grouped the calendar years into the following three broad categories: the years 2005-2006, 2007-2008, and 2009-2010. our aim is not to measure precisely the effects of the reform; instead, we seek to map the time trends around the reform. we will return to this limitation later on. we control for major socio-demographic characteristics. we include a binary variable that indicates whether a person was living in eastern or western germany. this variable is a time-constant variable and denotes whether the person was living in eastern germany (including east berlin) or western germany at the time at which they were last contacted by the german pension fund. age is the baseline hazard in the event history model. it is included as a categorical variable in the model that distinguishes between ages 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, and 35-40. these cut-points have been chosen arbitrarily, but the results remain largely unchanged if more fi negrained ones are used. moreover, other model specifi cations that do not make any parametric assumption regarding the baseline hazard, like the cox model, lead to similar results. a considerable disadvantage of this dataset is the lack of variables that could be used as control variables. while the data include information on level of education, this information is incomplete since it is provided by the employer on a voluntary basis only. however, a signifi cant advantage of the register data is that they provide very detailed monthly earning histories. earnings information is stored in terms of pension points, with one pension point constituting the average earnings in a given year. based on this information, we have generated a variable that gives information on each individual’s monthly earnings, distinguishing between low earnings (up to 50 percent of average earnings), medium earnings (50 percent to less than 100 percent of average earnings), and high earnings (100 percent or more of average earnings). this variable is a time-varying covariate that changes its value as people progress through time. as earnings generally increase with age, this variable is strongly correlated with age. we control for age, but we also provide analyses by age group. 4.2.1 modelling strategies the empirical investigation we conduct below relies on conventional event history modelling. in order to specify the baseline hazard, we use a piecewise constant model. compared to the more widely used cox model, there are several benefi ts to using the piecewise constant model. most importantly, it generates estimates for the baseline hazard, which means that it provides straightforward measures for the effect of the main process time (age).14 we start with a simple model that 14 in the cox-model, this is only possible in a post-estimation strategy. • michaela kreyenfeld286 controls for the main socio-demographic covariates (age, year, employment, earnings, region). in the next step, we examine the effect of the policy reform by including an interaction term of the calendar year and the main covariate of interest (women’s employment and earnings). the policy reform provides strong incentives to postpone childbearing until an individual’s earnings are reasonably high. thus, we assume that the association between women’s employment and earnings is different before and after reform, i.e. it is assumed that stable employment and high earnings have become a prerequisite for family formation in recent years. 4.3 results 4.3.1 determinants of fi rst birth risks table 1 displays the results from the event history models, with employment (model 1) and earnings (model 2) as the major covariates, and fi rst birth (or rather fi rst pregnancy) as the outcome variable. all results are provided as relative risks. the models show that birth risks were lower at younger (20-24) and older ages (3540), but were fairly similar at ages 25-29 and 30-34. the models also indicate that the fi rst birth rates were higher in eastern than in western germany, refl ecting the earlier family formation tendencies among eastern german women. turning our attention to the effects of calendar time, the model suggests that the fi rst birth rates had increased somewhat since 2005-2006. model 1 shows that educational participation lowered the fi rst birth rates by about 65 percent, which is in line with earlier evidence for germany (e.g. andersson et al. 2014; blossfeld/huinink 1991; schmitt 2012). unemployment (versus employment) does not seem to infl uence birth behaviour. it should, however, be noted that this effect varied by region, with eastern german women being more likely than their western german counterparts to postpone parenthood during unemployment (see table a1 in the appendix). model 2 includes a combination factor of earnings and employment, and shows a positive gradient; i.e. that higher earnings increased the fi rst birth transition rates. however, we cannot rule out the possibility that the strong positive effects we observe are attributable to an acceleration of birth intensities among high income earners at advanced ages. this would mean that the proportionality assumption of the model was violated, and that the effects of earnings on the birth rates varied by age. it is therefore possible that there were interaction effects of earnings and age. this aspect will be addressed in the next step of the analysis, which also focuses more narrowly on how the effects of earnings change over time. 4.3.2 effect heterogeneity the next step of the analysis contains more refi ned analyses by age group and calendar year. for that purpose, we have split the sample into a group of younger (ages 20-29) and older persons (ages 30-39). furthermore, we have used the calendar year in interaction with women’s earnings/employment. while an alternative strategy would be to use a three-way interaction, this would be more causal modelling in fertility research • 287 diffi cult to display. figure 1 visualises the results separately for the younger and the older age groups (for the regression table, see table a3 in the appendix). the model corroborates earlier fi ndings (see e.g. andersson et al. 2014) showing that unemployment is positively associated with having the fi rst birth at younger ages (below age 30), but is negatively associated with having children later in the life course. an important fi nding from the results is that the association between female tab. 1: results from piecewise constant model, fi rst birth risks model 1 model 2 age 20-24 ref. ref. 25-29 1.48*** 1.46*** 30-34 1.89*** 1.84*** 35-40 1.04 1.01*** region western germany ref. ref. eastern germany 1.18*** 1.20*** years 2005-06 ref. ref. 2007-08 1.05*** 1.05*** 2009-10 1.05*** 1.05*** employment status education 0.34*** 0.37*** unemployment 0.96 1.08* other 0.60*** 0.68*** employment ref. -earnings: low -ref. earnings: medium -1.11*** earnings: high -1.20*** constant (absolute risk) 0.004*** 0.003*** model fi t ll initial model -15,575 -15,575 final model -14,473 -14,454 sample size persons 48,843 48,843 events (fi rst births) 13,913 13,913 person-months 2,833,078 2,833,078 note: date of childbirth was backdated by nine months. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: vskt 2015, own estimates • michaela kreyenfeld288 employment, earnings, and fi rst birth rates changed over time. after 2007, when the parental leave benefi t reform came into force, the fi rst birth rates increased among women with high earnings, while they declined or stagnated among women with lower earnings. furthermore, the fertility pattern of unemployed women changed dramatically, with the fi rst birth rates of younger unemployed women decreasing by 27 percent from 2005-2006 to 2009-10. while unemployment had been conducive to childbearing at younger ages before the parental leave reform came into force, it appears that this was no longer the case. we also see a change in patterns at older ages. in this age group, the fi rst birth rates of unemployed women had dropped by 16 percent over the same time period. the results of the model provide strong evidence that the prerequisites of family formation have shifted over time in germany. it has become increasingly important for women to have decent earnings and regular employment before starting a family. 4.3.3 convincing evidence? can we attribute the pattern we observed to the parental leave benefi t reform? while the fi ndings allude to a decisive societal change, clearly attributing that shift to the parental leave regulations is more cumbersome. causal modelling requires that “all reasonable alternative explanations (including confounders) must be ruled out” (bhrolcháin/dyson 2007: 9). we obviously cannot rule out the possibility that other policies – such as the increase in day care services for children that was initiated in 2005 – are the more important drivers of the changes in behavioural fig. 1: results from the piecewise constant model. relative fi rst birth risk by calendar year, age category, and female earnings 0 1 2 2005-06 2007-08 2009-10 calendar year unemployment earnings: low (0-49%) earnings: medium (50-99%) earnings: high (100% and more) age 20-29 relative first birth risk 0 1 2 2005-06 2007-08 2009-10 calendar year age 30-40 relative first birth risk note: date of childbirth was backdated by nine months. further covariates in the model are region (east/west), age (categorised and time-varying), educational participation, and other employment status in interaction with the time period. source: vskt 2015, own estimates causal modelling in fertility research • 289 patterns. an alternative explanation may also be the effects of the global fi nancial crisis, which hit europe at almost the same time as germany enacted new parental leave regulations. the growing sense of economic insecurity in the wake of the crisis could have sharpened people’s awareness that the single-earner model is a fragile family model – which may, in turn, have led to a reduction in fi rst birth risks among unemployed women. would a more causal modelling strategy be better able to discern causal effects? a model that mapped the monthly birth rates shortly before and after the reform could provide more convincing support for the claim that there was a true “reform effect”. indeed, these kinds of analyses have been conducted using data from the german birth registers. the results showed that there was an immediate increase in births at the cut-off date of 1 january 2007 (tamm 2013). despite the beauty of such set-ups, these fi ndings remain limited. they may not even provide clear-cut evidence that prospective parents acted in response to the reform. instead, they probably indicate that medical doctors and midwives have some limited leeway to infl uence the dates of childbirth. thus, given that the mechanisms at the cut-off date were likely to have been very specifi c, these results may not be generalisable. while intricate identifi cation strategies can easily “throw the baby out with the bathwater” (for the same analogy, see hill et al. 2020: 363), the simple event history modelling approach – as illustrated above – fails to provide clear-cut causal effects, but delivers more accessible and generalisable results. 5 conclusions the aim of this paper was to provide an overview of recent attempts to perform causal fertility modelling based on longitudinal data. in particular, we focused on research that had tried to investigate the causal effects of female employment and family policies on birth behaviour in european countries since the 1990s. the empirical section of the paper paid special attention to the german policy reform of 2007, and raised the question of how this reform affected fi rst birth patterns. the “reform effect” was modelled over a time-varying variable that depicted the calendar year. a main fi nding from this investigation was that birth rates during unemployment declined over time, whereas fi rst birth risks increased at higher earnings levels. these results provide important insights into fertility dynamics in germany, as they illustrate that the prerequisites of family formation have shifted rather dramatically in recent years. these shifts may be attributed to the parental leave policy reform. however, the analysis also revealed how diffi cult it is to rule out “alternative explanations” with simple methods, considering that the expansion of day care as well as the global fi nancial crisis occurred around the same time as the policy was implemented, and could have caused a similar pattern. event history analysis is a concept that has evolved partially from demographic research, in which the aim is to portray the fertility behaviour of a given population. event history modelling also shares the general understanding of sociological life course research (i.e. elder 1985) that vital events must be situated in time • michaela kreyenfeld290 and studied along major life course dimensions (i.e. by age when fi rst births are analysed, and by duration since the last birth when higher order births are the focus of attention). a commitment to the life course approach is often absent from many of the more causal modelling strategies. thus, standard event history models are better able to deliver on the “life course dimension”, and to provide more accessible “descriptions of the social world” (brüderl/ludwig 2015: 353). these descriptions are of considerable value, and should probably be used as the basis before moving to the next step of analysing causal effects. but what are the reasonable next steps for causal fertility research? the literature overview demonstrated that causal modelling approaches, and fi xed-effects methods in particular, have increasingly seeped into sociological and demographic research. the wide array of european panel data, such as data from the generations and gender survey, the british understanding society study, or the german family panel, have clearly fuelled this development. however, demographic and sociological scholars have been very careful when applying fi xed-effects methods to fertility processes. while these methods have been regularly used to study the question of how demographic events infl uence other determinants, such as life satisfaction and well-being, they have rarely been used to examine birth dynamics as outcome variables. this is because in family sociology and demography, taking a parity-specifi c view is almost an imperative. this includes the notion that a fi rst birth is a unique event. the analysis of fi rst births is therefore not amenable to fi xed-effects modelling since a requirement of this method is that the behaviour being studied can be repeated by the same individual under different conditions. other econometric methods from the programme evaluation literature, such as the regression discontinuity approach, have been employed to examine the causal effects of policy reforms on fertility behaviour. while this technique may be highly valuable in terms of advancing causal modelling in demographic research, some caution seems warranted when considering its use. it is important to keep in mind that these methods have been developed mainly for the evaluation of labour market programmes in which the outcome variables are usually frequent events, such as entering employment or receiving welfare benefi ts. this is clearly not the case for demographic events, which are rare. thus, there may be only a few birth events around a cut-off date available in the survey data, which makes it diffi cult to generate signifi cant results. we may intuitively prefer statistically insignifi cant, but well-specifi ed results over signifi cant and biased ones. however, an underpowered model can also raise concerns. after all, model results that are nowhere near conventional levels of signifi cance will be diffi cult to interpret and hard to publish, despite all discussions and complaints about the publication bias in peer-reviewed journals. while conventional models jump to conclusions too quickly, these types of models may be characterised as being too cautious. hill et al. (2020) pointed out that a “no-effect result”, which is based on a seemingly solid causal investigation, can be harmful if it leads to the discontinuation of a potentially meaningful policy measure, for instance. what seems like a trivial and purely data-driven concern is causal modelling in fertility research • 291 often of considerable practical relevance, because the sample size can be a serious constraint, and because vital events are rare events. while acknowledging that a causal perspective is important for arriving at meaningful conclusions, the paper also emphasised that the choice of method should be carefully considered when studying demographic processes. we argued that fertility research can be moved forward through more careful refl ection on the origins of the bias. the observation that people act on their anticipated behaviour was regarded as a core reason why simple models that study the relationship between women’s work and birth behaviour often cannot be interpreted in a causal manner. as we noted, several scholars have proposed considering the role of “narratives”, which also currently seem to be gaining ground in economic research (e.g. bènabou et al. 2018; shiller 2020). instead of applying ever more sophisticated econometric modelling techniques, the future of causal fertility research in this area may lay in a careful refl ection of how suitable item sets could be developed to map these “imaginaries of the future self”. this overview paper has many limitations. it was restricted to fertility research based on studies that relied on longitudinal, prospective, or retrospective surveys, as well as on administrative data that were mostly collected in european countries. the paper discussed common-cause confounding and endogenous selection bias as prime sources of bias in studies that dealt with the relationship between female employment and fertility. in terms of the isolation of policy effects, several reasons were cited as to why standard tools from the programme evaluation literature cannot be used for studying fertility behaviour. beyond the concerns listed in this paper, there are other reasons why an investigation may result in biased results. in particular, data quality may affect model results. we addressed the limitations related to small sample sizes when vital events are investigated based on survey data. however, there are numerous other aspects that revolve around the topic of “data quality”. for example, recall bias in retrospective surveys can lead to biased models if events in the distant past are not remembered with the same precision as events that happened more recently. furthermore, more salient events (childbirth) may be easier to remember than less salient ones (like events in a person’s employment biography). while retrospective surveys suffer from recall bias and related problems, prospective studies suffer from attrition, which raises concerns about the selectivity of the drop-outs. administrative data can have other problems depending on the registration system in a given country. for example, a problem of nordic register data is that most of the information, such as information on employment status or childbirth, is only available on a yearly basis. for other countries, administrative data may not include the entire resident population. data quality has not been addressed in this overview, but it is certainly an important additional and often overlooked aspect that warrants more attention. acknowledgment for his critical feedback on an earlier version of this paper, i am thankful to daniele vignoli (university of florence). i am very grateful to felix elwert (university of • michaela kreyenfeld292 wisconsin) for his support in helping me to wrap my head around endogenous selection bias. thanks also to kai baron (wzb) for his suggestions to engage with the economic literature on “narrative economics”. for valuable comments on matching techniques in demographic research, i would also like to thank daniel brüggmann (german pension fund). many thanks must also go to tatjana mika for sharing her expertise and knowledge on the german pension data. for language editing i would like to thank miriam hils. all remaining errors are my own. references aassve, arnstein et al. 2006: employment, family union and childbearing decisions in great britain. in: journal of the royal statistical society a 169, part 4: 781-804. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985x.2006.00432.x ahn, namkee; 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(in %) occ. exp. (in %) occ. age 20-24 38 1,964 --25-29 62 5,573 --30-34 --61 4,747 35-40 --39 1,629 region western germany 80 5,639 84 5,371 eastern germany 20 1,898 16 1,005 years 2005-06 44 2,972 32 1,904 2007-08 33 2,586 33 2,176 2009-10 23 1,979 35 2,296 employment status education 11 290 1 45 unemployment 7 779 7 273 other 27 1,206 29 1,499 earnings: low 13 1,201 9 477 earnings: medium 30 2,998 26 1,700 earnings: high 12 1,063 29 2,382 person-months 1,704,821 7,537 1,128,257 6,376 source: vskt 2015, own estimates causal modelling in fertility research • 299 tab. a2: results from piecewise constant model, fi rst birth risks by eastern and western germany western germany eastern germany age 20-24 ref. ref. 25-29 1.55*** 1.34*** 30-34 2.10*** 1.39*** 35-40 1.18*** 0.66*** years 1990-94 ref. ref. 1995-99 1.06*** 1.02 2000-06 1.07*** 0.98 employment status education 0.33*** 0.38*** employment ref. ref. unemployment 1.01 0.86*** other 0.63 0.49*** constant (absolute risk) 0.004*** 0.006*** model fi t ll initial model -11,549 -3,098 final model -48,801 -2,864 sample size persons 39,689 9,154 events (fi rst births) 11,010 2,903 person-months 2,309,983 523,095 note: date of childbirth was backdated by nine months. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: vskt 2015, own estimates • michaela kreyenfeld300 tab. a3: results from piecewise constant model, fi rst birth risks by age, employment status, earnings and time period model 1 model 2 age 20-29 age 30-40 years: 2005-06 unemployment 1.42*** 0.98 employment: low earnings (0-49%) ref. ref. employment: medium earnings (50-99%) 1.00 1.29*** employment: high earnings (100% and more) 0.89 1.59*** years: 2007-08 unemployment 1.06 0.70*** employment: low earnings (0-49%) ref. ref. employment: medium earnings (50-99%) 1.03 1.20*** employment: high earnings (100% and more) 0.82** 1.57*** years: 2009-10 unemployment 1.18 0.75*** employment: low earnings (0-49%) ref. ref. employment: medium earnings (50-99%) 1.19*** 1.30*** employment: high earnings (100% and more) 1.11 1.68*** note: date of childbirth was backdated by nine months. two separate models for younger ages (age 20-29) and older ages (age 30-40) were estimated. furthermore, employment status was used in interaction with calendar year. the interaction model was re-estimated with different references categories, so that the effect of unemployment (versus low income) could more easily be compared for a given year. further covariates in the model are region (east/west), age (categorised and time-varying) and educational participation and other employment status in interaction with the time period. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: vskt 2015, own estimates causal modelling in fertility research • 301 fig. a2: results from piecewise constant model. relative fi rst birth risk by single calendar year and earnings/employment status, only ages 30-40 0 1 2 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 calendar year unemployment earnings: low (0-49%) earnings: medium (50-99%) earnings: high (100% and more) relative first birth risk note: date of childbirth was backdated by nine months. further covariates in the model are region (east/west), age (categorised and time-varying), educational participation, and other employment status in interaction with the time period. source: vskt 2015, own estimates published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality: a comparison of western and mena countries on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality: a comparison of western and mena countries zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt abstract: the changing macro-level relationship between fertility and development (i.e., the standard of living, health and education) from negative to positive for the most advanced economies has received considerable attention recently. using aggregate data, we compare the relationship between fertility and development in western countries with the middle east and north africa (mena) region, where fertility rates are higher than in other regions with identical levels of development. to understand the drivers of this association, we further link fertility to the components of development as well as female labour force participation separately. our fi ndings show that fertility and development were positively associated for only a short period in western countries and that the relationship turned negative again in recent years. recent data also show that there is no signifi cant relationship between fertility and development in mena countries. these fi ndings indicate that the wellacknowledged theories of fertility and development do not apply in every context. keywords: fertility · human development index · mena region 1 introduction seminal demographic literature, such as on the fi rst and second demographic transition theories, have postulated a negative relationship between fertility and development (kirk 1996; lesthaeghe 2010). to explain this negative association between fertility and development, mechanisms such as declining mortality and increasing child survival (notestein 1945), investment in the quality rather than quantity of children and opportunity costs of motherhood in confl ict with female employment (becker 1960) have been proposed. one recognized mechanism used to explain the fertility-development nexus is gender equality, which has been highlighted as a necessary condition for “the transition from very high fertility to fertility around replacement level” (mcdonald 2000b: 432). more recently, however, new theoretical considerations suggest that comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 245-268 (date of release: 21.07.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-09 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-09en9 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-09 • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt246 the established negative correlation between fertility and development has turned positive for the most advanced economies (anderson/kohler 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). rising levels of gender equality with development are emphasized as the potential driver of the emerging positive association between fertility and development (esping-andersen/billari 2015; mcdonald 2000a/b). this is empirically supported by myrskylä et al. (2009), who, in their study published in nature, found that the relationship between the human development index (hdi) and total fertility rate (tfr) reverses from negative to positive at advanced hdi levels. although these fi ndings are consistent with theoretical expectations suggesting a reversal of the relationship between fertility and development from negative to positive due to advanced levels of gender equality, it remains unclear whether the observed association is actually driven by gender equality or other factors, including progress in living standards, education and health. moreover, these theories and empirical assessments have focused mainly on western countries (e.g., anderson/kohler 2015; fox et al. 2019; luci-greulich/ thévenon 2014; myrskylä et al. 2009, 2011). yet the evolutionary process of social change can be modifi ed by cultural and institutional context and is not the same across all societies (mcdonald 1994; mcnicoll 1980). countries of the middle east and north africa (mena), for instance, showed considerable improvements in economic standard of living, education and health, which comprise the three main indicators of development. despite the development progress, the region falls considerably short of indicators of gender equality such as women’s labour force participation and political empowerment (world bank 2004), contrary to theoretical expectations and empirical evidence for other countries (forsythe et al. 2000; inglehart/norris 2003). according to the world economic forum (2017), the mena region globally ranks last in terms of gender equality with an average remaining gender gap of 40 percent. at the same time, the demographic patterns suggested by the demographic transition theory are not followed by all countries and some countries such as algeria, egypt and lebanon have actually experienced an increase in fertility rates in recent years (engelhardt et al. 2018), although these countries have made signifi cant progress toward development. moreover, evidence indicates that mena countries have higher fertility rates than would be the case in other countries at identical levels of development and the fertility-development link is weaker in mena countries (tabutin/schoumaker 2005). this asserts that fertility and development trends in the mena region may be different from western countries and what established theories suggest. in this study, we examine how the fertility-development relationship has evolved over time in mena countries and compare it to the relationships in western countries. we also separately assess how the three components – living standards, education and health – of development, as well as female labour force participation1 as an indicator of gender equality are related to fertility in these two contexts to test 1 similar to the previous studies (e.g., luci-greulich/thévenon (2014), female labour force participation has been used as an indicator of gender equality in our analyses. on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 247 the relevance of each component of development as well as gender equality. our study contributes to the literature in two regards. first, we test the importance of development for fertility in two contexts with substantially different levels and progress in gender equality and fertility: mena countries with the lowest levels of gender equality and relatively high levels of development and western countries with advanced levels of gender equality and development. given the relevance of gender equality to the fertility-development nexus as suggested by theoretical arguments (anderson/kohler 2015; espingandersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; mcdonald 2000b), these two contexts might have different fertility-development patterns. we test this by comparing how the correlation between fertility and development differs between western and mena countries. second, we revisit the relationship between fertility and development in advanced economies. harttgen and vollmer (2014) showed that the reversal in the tfr-hdi relationship found by myrskylä et al. (2009) is not robust for the undp revision of the hdi calculation method. using more recent data, we test whether a reversal from negative to positive exists between tfr and hdi. we combine human development index datasets (hdi; undp 2019), which contain information on various development indicators with datasets from the world development indicators (wdi; world bank 2018), which contain annual information on fertility. we fi rst estimate the time-series association between fertility and development (or its components and female labour force participation) while controlling for country-specifi c fi xed effects. second, we apply the differencein-differences strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) to examine the overall relationship between fertility and development. 2 fertility, development and gender equality western countries in the historical decline in fertility, the key pre-transitional factor was mortality, especially infant mortality (davis 1945; mason 1997). western countries have achieved remarkable reductions in mortality rates with rising incomes, urbanization and industrialization. for instance, evidence from four european countries shows that whilst infant mortality rates ranged from 100 deaths per 1,000 live births in the late 19th century, by the 1950s they ranged from 20 to 50 deaths per 1,000 live births (corsini/viazzo 1993). subsequently, the decline in mortality led to a shift from a high to a low fertility regime between the late 19th to the early 20th century. over the course of the demographic transition, europe’s distinct past characterized by malthusian cycles that emphasize a positive fertility-economic growth link started breaking down with the exception of the baby boom as a period when development was accompanied by a rise in fertility (caldwell 1982; guinnane 2011). recent research, indeed, has empirically confi rmed the importance of childhood • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt248 survivorship in childbearing decisions (reher et al. 2017). mortality has not only infl uenced childbearing decisions, but also the timing and prevalence of marriage. although “truly modern demographic behaviour could not begin before childhood mortality declined to insignifi cant levels” (reher 2021: 4), mortality alone does not explain the shift from very high to very low fertility rates. many other factors, such as the gender revolution (goldin 2006), the interaction between women’s labour force participation and the lack of institutional adjustment, cultural and ideological innovations that led to greater behavioural freedom (lesthaeghe 1983) and more individualistic attitudes (van de kaa 1987), have attracted the attention of scholars. in the 20-30 years that followed the end of the baby boom, western countries experienced rapid social and cultural changes. the trend converged in most advanced countries, albeit with visible differences in timing, tempo and degree accompanied by rapid economic growth. for instance, the shift away from the male breadwinner model had begun in the 1960s and accelerated in the 1970s in scandinavia and north america, whereas similar transitions in countries like west germany and spain occurred with a delay of one or two decades (esping-andersen 2009). reher (2021) emphasized the historical baggage of societies that drives these differences. the key determinants of historical baggage were the relative importance of the individual, family and religion in society (derosas/van poppel 2006; inglehart/ baker 2000; reher 1998). these progressive tendencies clashed with norms shaped by the regime of male breadwinner/female housewife. neither the status nor the bargaining power of women increased at the same pace, despite their non-negligible involvement in the economy (goldin 1990). consequently, a confl ict arose between individual-oriented social institutions with a high degree of gender equality and family-oriented social institutions with persistent gender inequality, resulting in very low fertility among western countries (mcdonald 2000a/b). having children and starting a family was associated with child-rearing, domestic work and male breadwinner roles. this in turn was perceived as a barrier to women’s careers. the marketable skills of men and women began to converge as women became more involved in the economy. as a result, the cost of childbearing for women increased substantially, which reduced the returns of marriage (becker 1974). subsequently, new ways of living together such as cohabitation started emerging, whereas partnerships became less stable and fertility declined (lesthaeghe 2010). rising levels of development and gender equality were paralleled by fertility decreases in societies with high levels of gender inequality. most western countries had low fertility rates at the end of the 20th century with some exceptions such as france where fertility rates remained relatively high, despite low levels of gender inequality (population reference bureau 2007). yet rindfuss and brewster (1996) argued that changes in the social organization of work and childcare arrangements would alter these trends and that easing women’s confl icts in balancing work and family life courses would lead to an increase in fertility. similarly, mcdonald (2000b) pointed to a reversal of the macro relationship between fertility and gender equality in the long run. he argued that institutions would develop reforms that support rising fertility at advanced levels of gender equality. this is more recently supported on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 249 by esping-andersen and billari (2015) who suggested that the declines in fertility with the increasing number of women involved in the economy would be reversed as societies approach gender egalitarianism. increasing gender equality at both institutional and household levels would allow individuals to have their desired number of children while ensuring the reconciliation of work and family life courses (anderson/kohler 2015; myrskylä et al. 2011). goldscheider et al. (2015) further emphasized the male involvement in family life for reversing fertility trends. in line with these theoretical expectations, the focus of family policies in many western countries has shifted to the expansion of parental leave for both men and women and the provision of childcare that aimed at reducing work-family confl icts. several studies supported these recent theories suggesting a reversal/u-shaped pattern for the relationship between fertility and development empirically. myrskylä et al. (2009) showed that the relationship between development and fertility reverses from negative to positive after a certain threshold. in the same vein, luci-greulich and thévenon (2014) found a change in the relationship between fertility and gdp per capita above a certain threshold of economic development for 30 oecd countries. moreover, by decomposing gdp per capita into several components, they identifi ed female employment as a co-varying factor in the fertility rebound. this conclusion is consistent with theoretical expectations (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/ billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; mcdonald 2000a/b; myrskylä et al. 2011; rindfuss/brewster 1996): countries with high levels of development as measured by health, income and education, but low levels of gender equality, continue to experience declining fertility. empirical fi ndings on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality, however, are not entirely consistent. furuoka (2009) found a negative association between fertility and development in countries with lower levels of development, whereas the relationship remained negative, albeit weak, in countries with a high hdi. in the same vein, harttgen and vollmer (2014) found no evidence for the inverse j-shaped association using the recent revision of the hdi calculation. by utilizing gender equality, kolk (2019) examined the infl uence of gender equality on fertility in 35 developed countries. the results showed that a u-shaped pattern was only observed across countries and that changes within countries did not lead to a reversal of fertility and gender equality. mena countries in contrast to western countries, mortality in mena countries was very high in the fi rst half of the 20th century. crude death rates were close to 25 percent and life expectancy was about 40 years until the 1950s. in the same vein, fertility rates were very high, reaching seven or eight children per woman. in the second half of the 20th century, mortality in the mena countries was signifi cantly reduced. infant mortality rates fell from about 200 deaths per 1,000 live births in the 1950s to less than 50 deaths per 1,000 live births by the end of the century (roudi 2001) reaching levels that western countries had half a decade ago. along with the decline in mortality, fertility fell to below six and fi ve in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively and then to • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt250 3.1 in the early 2000s (world bank 2017). nevertheless, these rates were still higher than the average fertility rates that developed countries had in the 1950s (i.e., 2.8; world bank 2018). the fertility decline occurred late in comparison to other regions and concealed diversity in the pace of change between countries and sub-regions. for instance, in 2016, saudi arabia had a total fertility rate of 2.4, whereas women in jordan had 3.5 children on average (world bank 2017). tabutin and schoumaker (2005) further showed that the relationship between fertility and development is very weak. at same hdi level, total fertility rates ranged from 2.0 in tunisia to 4.1 in saudi arabia. moreover, fertility in many mena countries is signifi cantly higher than it would be elsewhere at the same level of development. while the rapid decline in fertility in mena countries is not negligible, fertility in several countries such as jordan, morocco, syria and tunisia has stabilized since the mid-2000s (bel air 2017). some countries such as algeria and egypt even experienced an increase in fertility in this period (engelhardt et al. 2018). krafft (2020) recently argued that egypt’s demographic transition is not stalling but reversing by showing that egypt’s fertility rate reached 3.5 in 2012 after reaching a low of 3.0 in 2008. even in the fi rst decade of the 21st century, about 3 out of 4 mena countries had fertility rates well above the replacement level (world bank 2018), despite declining infant mortality rates and development progress. one explanation for these observed trends could be that the cultural and ideological innovations that triggered gender equality in western countries were not yet present in the mena region. women’s participation in the economy remained considerably low, while the returns of marriage for women were still high. moghadam (2001) emphasized that the kind of development that was witnessed in the mena countries reinforced patriarchal gender contracts in the mena region. the idea is consistent with mcdonald’s (2000b: 432) proposition, which posits that “[t]he transition from high fertility to fertility around replacement level is accompanied by an increase in gender equity within the institution of family.” to explain the low level of gender equality in the region, scholars pointed out, on the one hand, that this low level of gender equality is due to the islamic traditions in the region (e.g., sharabi 1992) and the poor treatment of muslim women (inglehart/ norris 2003; landes/landes 2001). on the other hand, ross (2008) argued that low female employment and gender equality and high fertility are not solely due to islamic traditions, but to structural opportunities. he pointed to the oil revenue-based economies in the region that triggered a shift from export-oriented sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing to non-export-oriented sectors such as construction and retail. subsequently, economic growth in the region was mainly generated by fl ows from oil-producing countries. while oil-producing countries mainly comprise the gulf cooperation council (gcc) countries, other countries benefi tted indirectly from oil through remittances from migrant labourers and shared the characteristics of a rentier economy (world bank 2013). historically, authoritarian regimes provided public sector jobs and the mena region had one of the largest public sectors in the world (amin et al. 2012). nevertheless, with this type of economic growth a growing fi scal burden of on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 251 an oversized public sector emerged that affected budgetary sustainability and prompted calls for downsizing and cuts in the public sector (assaad/barsoum 2019). for instance, the pause in public sector hiring began in egypt in the 1970s and the share of public sector employment in total employment declined from about 35 percent in 2002 to about 20 percent in 2018 (assaad/barsoum 2019). accordingly, the public sector share in hiring new entrants has fallen steadily in most mena countries, despite progress in educational attainment and development. women in particular prefer public sector employment to the private sector in most mena countries. there are several reasons for this, including the fact that public sector jobs are more hospitable and offer favourable and fl exible working conditions such as short working hours, job security and social benefi ts (barsoum 2016). considering the norms that prioritize women’s domestic responsibilities, such characteristics make public sector jobs more popular among women than men (barsoum 2019). as a result, despite the feminized public sector, women’s employment opportunities have been negatively impacted as public sector jobs that traditionally employed women have declined and private-sector jobs dominated in many mena countries (assaad/krafft 2015). these emerging jobs in the private sector such as construction require physical strength and are dominated by men. even the other economic pillars of the private sector that do not require physical strength are signifi cantly dominated by men. for instance, in 2020, less than 9 percent of the tourism labour force was women in the mena region (unwto 2020). this mismatch between women’s rising educational attainment and stagnant labour force participation rates has been termed the “mena paradox” (assaad et al. 2020). as a result, women’s structural opportunities have not increased despite economic growth. overall, the fertility-development nexus in mena countries may show different patterns than in western countries if progress towards development is not complemented by gender equality. 3 data we include time series of 19 mena and 24 western countries in our analyses. as there is no standardized list, we include those that are generally referred to as mena countries: algeria, bahrain, egypt, iran, iraq, jordan, kuwait, lebanon, libya, morocco, oman, qatar, saudi arabia, sudan, syria, tunisia, turkey, united arab emirates (uae) and yemen.2 western countries refer to the countries included by myrskylä et al. (2009): australia, austria, belgium, canada, denmark, finland, france, germany, greece, iceland, ireland, israel, italy, japan, luxembourg, the netherlands, new zealand, norway, south korea, spain, sweden, switzerland, the united kingdom and the united states of america (usa). 2 iran and turkey are included among mena countries, given that they are located in the middle east and share similar structural (i.e., type of economy) and cultural (i.e., religion) characteristics. yet, as a robustness check, we only considered countries where arabic is the offi cial language. findings are reported in the appendix, table a2. • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt252 we use hdi data from the international human development indicators database (undp 2019). it contains information on hdi and its components annually between 1990 and 2018. we use the revised version of hdi in which the calculation method was changed to the geometric mean. the hdi revision provides consistent measurements that are comparable over time and this time consistent index included: (i) gross domestic product (gdp) per capita at purchasing power parity (ppp) referring to the standard of living, (ii) average of the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross school enrolment ratio referring to the human capital endowment and (iii) annual life expectancy at birth, referring to the health component of development. fertility data, which is available yearly between 1960 and 2018, comes from the world development indicators (wdi; world bank 2018). it is measured by the country-specifi c annual total fertility rate refl ecting the number of children that would be born to a woman during the considered age window if she experienced the agespecifi c fertility rates observed in a particular year. the main weakness of the tfr is that it is subject to tempo effects of fertility (bongaarts/feeney 1998; sobotka/ lutz 2011). tempo adjusted fertility measures may provide a more comprehensive overview of the fertility trends and may (partly) explain changing tfr (bongaarts/ sobotka 2012). yet fertility changes in mena countries differ greatly from those in advanced societies (see balbo et al. 2013 for a review of fertility in advanced societies). age-specifi c fertility rates have not experienced a shift to the right in most mena countries, suggesting that the mean age at fi rst birth has not changed considerably in this region (engelhardt et al. 2018). accordingly, tempo effects are likely to be an issue only for the analysis of western countries. while acknowledging this critique, other indicators of fertility such as age at fi rst birth are only available in time-series data every fi ve years between 1990 and 2015 and the tfr is the only available fertility measure for mena countries that allows a longitudinal analysis of the fertility-development relationship.3 moreover, it is plausible that the tfr provides extensive insight into fertility comparison between mena and western countries because it “is the most widely used indicator of fertility, as tfr is a key determinant of the number of children born in a calendar year and thus of population aging and population growth/decline” (myrskylä et al. 2011: 38) and most public debates on fertility trends focus on the tfr. 4 method we estimated the relationship between fertility and development using two approaches. while the fi rst approach focused on how the association between fertility and development varies between different periods, the overall association between 3 nevertheless, in additional robustness checks, we replicated our models while controlling for the mean age at childbearing. findings did not deviate strongly from the main outcomes and are reported in the appendix. on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 253 these two indicators was examined with the second strategy. more specifi cally, we fi rst applied linear regression models with fi xed effects at country-level separately for mena and western countries to examine the relationship between fertility and development with the following formula using time-series annual data: where t indicated the year and c the country. the terms γc represented time invariant country-specifi c effects, which are accounted for with country fi xed effects and εtc is the error term. to examine how the fertility-development link evolved since 1990, we compared the estimated coeffi cients of hdi(β) between six periods: 19901994, 1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2005-2009, 2010-2014 and 2015-2018. we used robust standard errors clustered by country in all models to account for heteroscedasticity and deal with atypical countries. we then examined the fertility-development link by adopting the difference estimation strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009). specifi cally, we estimated a piecewise linear model where the coeffi cient of hdi (or subindices of hdi and flfp) can differ above and below a predetermined threshold value with the following equation: where t indicated the year and c the country. the coeffi cients βpre and βpost estimated the effects of hdi on tfr above and below the threshold value, respectively. ∆ referred to the difference indicator: ∆xt = xt x(t-1) and . differencing allows us to control for country fi xed-effects and account for the unit root from the residual autocorrelation. a n d were dummy variables indicating whether the hdi was below and above threshold value, respectively. γt denoted year-specifi c effects common to all countries. we tested whether there is a signifi cant reversal in the fertility-development relationship with this specifi cation. to determine the threshold value, we also followed the strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) and used maximum likelihood methods. equation 1 was estimated using a wide range of potential threshold values and the threshold value with the maximum log-likelihood function was used in the main analyses. 5 results as the fi rst step of the analysis, we made a cross-country comparison of the relationship between tfr and hdi. we fi tted linear and polynomial prediction plots to display cross-country associations in figure 1-4. these predicted plots describe the cross-country associations between fertility and development at two points in time (i.e., 1990 and 2018). panel a and b of figure 1 plot how the linear relationship varies across western countries in 1990 and 2018, respectively. in both periods, western countries’ fertility levels increased with development. polynomial (1) • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt254 prediction plots of western countries illustrated in figure 2, however, imply that the positive relationship between fertility and development reversed to negative at very advanced levels of development in 2018. yet these fi ndings should be interpreted with caution given that the reversal is driven by a few countries. on the contrary, cross-country analyses of mena countries indicate that fertility declined at higher levels of development, as shown in figure 3. the predicted polynomial plots of mena countries, shown in figure 4, were similar to figure 3 with the exception that the negative relationship between fertility and development became weaker at the higher levels of development in 1990. moreover, most mena countries experienced notable declines in tfr between 1990 and 2018. while the average tfr of mena countries was 4.88 in 1990, it decreased to 2.60 in 2018. table 1 shows the estimates of the linear regression models with country-level fi xed effects. unlike the cross-sectional analysis in figure 1, fertility and development trends of western countries was negative in 1990-1994. this relationship became insignifi cant in the next two 5-year periods. consistent with the recent demographic theories (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015), the negative relationship between fertility and development reverses to positive in 2005-2009. this period relates to the most recent data analysed by myrskylä et al. (2009), who found a reversal of the relationship between fertility and development from negative to positive. yet the main fi ndings of myrskylä et al. (2009) disappeared when we examined the most recent periods. in fact, fertility in fig. 1: cross-country association between fertility and development (western countries) aus aut bel can dnk finfra deu grc isl irl isr ita jpn lux nld nzl nor kor esp swe che gbr usa 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 .7 .75 .8 .85 .9 hdi panel a: 1990 panel b: 2018 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) aus aut bel can dnk fin fra deu grc isl irl isr ita jpn lux nld nzl nor kor esp swe che gbrusa 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 .88 .9 .92 .94 .96 hdi tfr tfr on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 255 western countries was negatively associated with development in 2010-2014 and 2015-2018. these fi ndings suggest that the positive association between fertility and development in western countries was temporary. in mena countries, fertility declined signifi cantly and noticeably at the higher levels of development between 1990 and 2004. yet this relationship became insignifi cant in 2005-2009. in the subsequent periods (i.e., 2010-2014 and 2015-2018), unlike in western countries there was also no longer a systematic relationship between fertility and development. fig. 2: cross-country association between fertility and development with polynomial prediction plots (western countries) aus aut bel can dnk finfra deu grc isl irl isr ita jpn lux nld nzl nor kor esp swe che gbr usa 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 .7 .75 .8 .85 .9 hdi panel a: 1990 panel b: 2018 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tfr tfr aus aut bel can dnk fin fra deu grc isl irl isr ita jpn lux nld nzl nor kor esp swe che gbrusa 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 .88 .9 .92 .94 .96 hdi hdi 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014 2015-2018 western -2.416** -0.966 0.032 4.404** -4.980*** -9.267*** (0.753) (0.794) (0.979) (1.494) (0.986) (2.260) mena -15.948*** -14.977*** -10.575*** -3.572 0.830 -2.137 (4.456) (3.156) (2.126) (1.921) (1.402) (4.401) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tab. 1: regression results (robust standard errors in parentheses) • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt256 results for the three hdi subindices and female labour force participation (flfp) are presented in table 2. for the education and health indices, fi ndings are very similar to table 1, except that the negative relationship between fertility, on the one hand, and education and health, on the other hand, became signifi cant during the 2015-2018 period. in contrast, both western and mena countries’ standard of living was weakly associated with fertility.4 only in 2005-2009 – the period when the fertility-development link became positive –, were estimated coeffi cients of the flfp signifi cant for western countries. this is in line with luci-greulich and thévenon (2014), who found a positive relationship between female employment and fertility for within-country variation. so far, we have examined how the association between tfr and hdi has changed over time. in table 3, we adopted the difference-in-differences strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) and examined the overall relationship. in line with the fi ndings of harttgen and vollmer (2014), the estimated threshold value of hdi was 0.808 and there was no reversal in the fertility-development link among western countries. 4 further analyses of mena countries (not shown) where fertility was regressed on the three components of hdi together had illustrated that standard of living is positively associated with fertility when controlling for health and education in 2015-2018. this suggests that mena region’s insignifi cant association between fertility and development in 2015-2018 was related to socioeconomic development. fig. 3: cross-country association between fertility and development (mena countries) dza bhr egy irn irq jor kwt lby mar qat sau sdn syr tun tur are yem 2 4 6 8 10 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 hdi panel a: 1990 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tfr tfr panel b: 2018 dza bhr egy irn irq jor kwtlbn lby mar omn qat sau sdn syr tun tur are yem 1 2 3 4 5 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 hdi on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 257 moreover, while fertility was negatively related to education and health, standard of living was insignifi cantly associated with fertility in line with the fi ndings shown in table 2. findings for mena countries showed different patterns than those for western countries. the calculated threshold was strikingly low, suggesting that the difference-in-differences strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) was not well suited for the mena region. moreover, development was insignifi cantly associated with fertility below the certain threshold value we determined. yet fertility started increasing above this threshold value. while increasing levels of education and health were negatively linked to fertility below the threshold value we identifi ed, fertility rates were positively associated with education and health above this threshold value. strikingly, fertility rates in mena countries were positively related to socioeconomic development below the determined threshold value. for both western and mena countries, the overall relationship between fertility and flfp was negative above the determined threshold value. to strengthen confi dence in our fi ndings, we performed several additional analyses including controlling for mean age at childbearing, focusing only on arabicspeaking countries, using quinquennial fertility data, inclusion of a quadratic term and replicating the fi rst model by focusing on 10and 15-year intervals. findings were qualitatively robust to these specifi cations and are reported in the appendix. fig. 4: cross-country association between fertility and development with polynomial prediction plots (mena countries) dza bhr egy irn irq jor kwt lby mar qat sau sdn syr tun tur are yem 2 4 6 8 10 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 hdi panel a: 1990 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tfr tfr panel b: 2018 dza bhr egy irn irq jor kwtlbn lby mar omn qat sau sdn syr tun tur are yem 1 2 3 4 5 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 hdi • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt258 6 conclusion in this study, we examined the association between fertility and development among western and mena countries. the main contribution of the present study is twofold. first, we showed that well-established theories of fertility and development may not apply in every context. while fertility and development have been negatively associated in western countries in recent years, there was no signifi cant relationship in mena countries during the same period. indeed, further analyses where we focused on the overall relationship rather than specifi c periods implied that fertility and development is positively associated above the identifi ed threshold. a separate examination of the hdi components suggested that this association was mainly related to the standard of living component. these fi ndings of mena countries are in line with mcdonald (1994) and mcnicoll (1980) who emphasize that the process of social change may not be the same across all societies and may be infl uenced by cultural and institutional contexts. tab. 2: regression models with hdi components and flfp rates (robust standard errors in parentheses) 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014 2015-2018 panel a: education western -1.196** -0.463 -0.022 1.579* -2.145** -6.818** (0.326) (0.458) (0.382) (0.736) (0.533) (2.038) mena -10.238** -9.215* -7.176*** -1.888 0.200 -4.639*** (3.457) (3.141) (1.259) (1.031) (0.975) (0.682) panel b: standard of living western -0.931 -1.277 0.638 0.304 -2.345 -6.182** (1.564) (0.990) (2.598) (1.416) (2.539) (1.709) mena -2.111 -7.970** -1.511 -2.353 0.886 1.747 (1.603) (2.271) (2.465) (2.223) (0.751) (1.191) panel c: health western -4.227* -2.449 -0.050 6.124*** -7.572*** -9.991*** (1.752) (1.364) (1.545) (1.079) (1.545) (2.395) mena -26.570*** -25.713*** -12.642*** -4.296 -0.196 -7.567** (3.071) (5.007) (2.691) (3.333) (3.826) (2.217) panel d: flfp western -0.005 0.004 0.007 0.032** -0.015 -0.025 (0.010) (0.005) (0.006) (0.009) (0.014) (0.018) mena -0.092 -0.076 -0.016 -0.012 -0.009 0.022 (0.080) (0.061) (0.042) (0.023) (0.020) (0.016) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 259 secondly, our analyses focusing on western countries have shown that the relationship between fertility and development were signifi cantly positive for a short period (i.e., 2005-2009), yet afterwards the relationship became negative again. moreover, analyses where we employed the difference-in-differences strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) indicated no reversal from negative to positive in the fertility-development link. accordingly, we found no empirical evidence supporting recent demographic theories that suggest a reversal from negative to positive in the fertility-development link (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/ billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). furthermore, the difference-in-differences strategy implied that the overall association between fertility and female labour force participation was negative among both western and mena countries above the threshold value we determined. yet these fi ndings should be interpreted with caution because we observed no signifi cantly negative relationships in the analyses where we focused on how this relationship changed over time in both western and mena countries. moreover, the identifi ed threshold for mena countries was considerably low, suggesting that the strategy of myrskylä et al. (2009) is not particularly compatible. we conclude with limitations and suggestions for further research. tfr is used to measure fertility throughout the analyses. yet tfr is an imperfect measure given that it is affected by the timing of childbearing and both western and mena countries have experienced notable shifts in age of fi rst childbirth (bongaarts 1999). at the same time, union formation was postponed in the mena region in the 2000s together with development, resembling the nuptiality patterns of the western world in the 1970s (kuhn 2012; ortega 2014). moreover, evidence indicates that no tab. 3: regression results: difference-in-differences (standard errors in parentheses) hdi education standard of living health flfp western pre -0.656 -0.017 1.070 -1.332 0.000 (0.976) (0.448) (2.042) (2.762) (0.003) post -1.093* -0.390* -0.231 -4.784* -0.024** (0.446) (0.161) (0.472) (1.873) (0.008) threshold value 0.808 0.716 0.806 0.866 0.737 mena pre 0.059 -1.583* 3.657*** -5.581*** 0.003 (0.571) (0.806) (0.902) (1.518) (0.005) post 1.604* 0.541* 0.230 2.745* -0.022*** (0.628) (0.260) (0.207) (1.060) (0.005) threshold value 0.675 0.383 0.478 0.775 0.416 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt260 marriage regime has been able to reduce fertility in the mena region (engelen/ puschmann 2011). given that childbearing is mostly within marriage in mena countries, fertility could be reduced due to the postponement of marriages among younger generations, leading to rebounds in the latter period. accordingly, we note that tfr could not capture these trends. however, additional analyses where we controlled for timing of childbearing supported our main fi ndings, although these fi ndings should be interpreted cautiously due to limited available data on the timing of childbearing. moreover, annual un data on tfr is primarily based on a later interpolation of the quinquennial base data in most developing countries. thereby, there could be less variability in tfr among mena countries leading to biased standard errors. to acknowledge this, we replicated our analyses using the original quinquennial fertility data as a robustness check. we assumed that development affects fertility in the analyses. yet the effects could work in both directions: fertility may affect development. we also expected that the fertility-development link of mena countries is different from western countries due to the distinct progress and evolution of gender equality in the region. indeed, fertility-development trends of mena countries are noticeably different from fi ndings on western countries (fox et al. 2019; myrskylä et al. 2009, 2011) and theoretical expectations (anderson/kohler 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015). consequently, there could be factors such as barriers in the use of contraception, problems in women’s reconciliation of work and family life or unwanted fertility affecting these trends. these factors are not tested in this study. why mena countries show different fertility trends and have not become more gender-equal societies with increasing levels of development is beyond the scope of this paper and it would be interesting to elicit the drivers such as religion and/or structural opportunities of this trend. in conclusion, future research may elicit the drivers of a positive fertility-development link among western countries that only emerged for a short period. references amin, magdi et al. 2012: after the spring: economic transitions in the arab world. oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924929.001.0001 anderson, thomas; 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in: comparative population studies 35,3: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-15 tabutin, dominique; schoumaker, bruno 2005: la démographie du monde arabe et du moyen-orient des années 1950 aux années 2000. in: population 60,5: 611-724. https://doi.org/10.3917/popu.505.0611 undp 2019: human development report 2019: beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: inequalities in human development in the 21st century. new york, ny: united nations development programme. unwto (world tourism organization) 2020: regional report on women in tourism in the middle east. madrid: unwto. https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284422371 van de kaa, dirk j. 1987: europe’s second demographic transition. in: population bulletin 42,1: 1-59. world bank 2004: gender and development in the middle east and north africa. in: the world bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/0-8213-5676-3 world bank (ed.) 2013: jobs for shared prosperity: time for action in the middle east and north africa. washington, dc: world bank. world bank (ed.) 2017: progress towards gender equality in the middle east and north africa region. washington, dc: world bank. world bank 2018: world development indicators. washington, dc: world bank. world economic forum 2017: the global gender gap report. date of submission: 20.10.2020 date of acceptance: 14.05.2021 zafer buyukkececi (). universität zu köln, institut für soziologie und sozialpsychologie (iss). cologne, germany. e-mail: bueyuekkececi@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/de/institut/personen/b/zafer-bueyuekkececi prof. dr. henriette engelhardt. university of bamberg, faculty of social sciences, economics, and business administration. bamberg, germany. e-mail: henriette.engelhardt-woelfl er@uni-bamberg.de url: https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/demografi e/professorship/prof-dr-engelhardtwoelfl er/ https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-15 https://doi.org/10.3917/popu.505.0611 https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284422371 https://doi.org/10.1596/0-8213-5676-3 mailto:bueyuekkececi@wiso.uni-koeln.de https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/de/institut/personen/b/zafer-bueyuekkececi mailto:er@uni-bamberg.de https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/demografie/professorship/prof-dr-engelhardt-woelfler/ on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 265 appendix additional analyses table a1 presents the fi ndings where we replicated the models focusing on 5-year intervals by considering 10and 15-year intervals, respectively. in table a2, we replicated the main models focusing on 5-year intervals with different specifi cations. in panel a, we included only arabic-speaking mena countries by excluding turkey and iran and including mauritania and palestine. although malta has different structural and cultural characteristics than the mena countries considered, we additionally used the world bank defi nition of mena countries and included djibouti and malta (not shown). in panel b of table a2, we examined how the tfr-hdi relationship changed in every fi ve year between 1990 and 2015 while controlling for timing of childbearing.5 the models were replicated using quinquennial fertility data in panel c, given that the un’s annual information on fertility is based on a later interpolation of the quinquennial base data in most developing countries.6 using these three specifi cations included in table a2, we replicated the differencein-differences models of myrskylä et al. (2009) and fi ndings are reported in panel a-c of table a3. all these models supported the conclusions drawn from the main models. in table a4, we estimated the non-linear time series association between fertility and development separately for western and mena countries by introducing a quadratic term of hdi with the following form: where t indicated the year and c the country. the terms γc represented countryspecifi c effects, λt denoted year-specifi c effects common to all countries and εtc is the error term. the models focused on the period between 1990 and 2018 and included country-level and period fi xed effects to account for unobserved timeconstant country heterogeneity and variation in outcome over time that is not attributed to the predictors, respectively. for a better illustration of the results, we plotted the marginal effects obtained from the regression models in figure a1. accordingly, we present the expected instantaneous changes in the outcome as a function of a change in the main predictors. overall, estimated results supported our main fi ndings. while fertility insignifi cantly decreased at higher levels of development among western countries, mena countries had higher fertility rates with increasing development. 5 these fi ndings should be interpreted with caution, given that the timing of childbearing data is available every fi ve years for the period 1990 to 2015. 6 information on timing of childbearing and quinquennial base data is available until 2015. therefore, these models were not estimated for the 2015-2018 period. • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt266 tab. a1: regression results focusing on 10and 15-year periods (robust standard errors in parentheses) hdi 1990-1999 1995-2004 2000-2009 2010-2018 western -2.238** -0.364 2.472** -2.633* (0.735) (0.624) (0.766) (1.098) mena -15.856** -14.134*** -7.281** -0.204 (4.730) (2.104) (1.934) (1.915) hdi 1990-2004 1995-2009 2000-2018 western -1.387* 0.982 -0.048 (0.526) (0.631) (0.552) mena -16.078*** -10.885*** -3.177 (2.951) (1.925) (1.743) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tab. a2: robustness checks focusing on 5-year periods with different specifi cations (robust standard errors in parentheses) hdi 1990-1995 1995-2000 2000-2005 2005-2010 2010-2015 2015-2018 panel a: focusing on arabic-speaking countries mena -13.267** -14.920*** -10.884*** -4.642 0.585 -0.170 (4.014) (3.265) (2.301) (2.432) (1.647) (0.199) panel b: controlling for the timing of childbearing western -1.117 1.497 1.071 0.571 -6.474** (1.231) (0.991) (1.665) (2.017) (2.144) mena -21.106*** -15.812*** -9.798*** -1.932 1.297 (3.421) (2.958) (2.307) (2.121) (1.752) panel c: using quinquennial fertility data western -1.921* -0.387 2.967*** 0.572 -3.985*** (0.736) -0.641 -0.595 -0.959 -0.882 mena -16.647*** -12.835*** -6.602* -1.221 -0.248 (2.920) (1.770) (2.506) (2.015) (1.144) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) on the relationship between fertility, development and gender equality • 267 tab. a3: robustness checks with difference-in-differences strategy and different specifi cations (robust standard errors in parentheses) panel a: focusing panel b: controlling panel c: using on arabic-speaking for the timing of quinquennial fertility countries childbearing data western pre -0.747 -4.711* (0.888) (2.215) post -2.723 4.474 (2.758) (2.282) threshold value 0.906 0.823 mena pre 2.041 6.009 0.759 (1.161) (4.812) (1.396) post -1.105 -4.661 1.435 (1.237) (4.910) (1.989) threshold 0.4 0.53 0.6 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tab. a4: non-linear association between fertility and development (robust standard errors in parentheses) western mena hdi 1.803 -0.069 (14.999) (11.556) hdi x hdi -2.074 3.128 (8.581) (9.363) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) • zafer buyukkececi, henriette engelhardt268 fig. a1: non-linear association between fertility and development (estimated marginal effects) 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 .75 .8 .85 .9 .95 1 hdi panel a: western countries panel b: mena countries source: undp (2017), world bank (2018) tfr tfr 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 .5 .55 .6 .65 .7 .75 hdi published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de lone mothers' employment trajectories: a longitudinal mixed-method study lone mothers' employment trajectories: a longitudinal mixed-method study emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza abstract: using a mixed-method design, this study explores the heterogeneity in employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood in switzerland. first, we perform sequence and cluster analysis on data from the swiss household panel to identify typical employment trajectories around the transition to lone parenthood, and then estimate their association with individual and household characteristics (n=462). finally, we contrast these results with fi ndings from a content analysis of narrative interviews with lone mothers residing in switzerland (n=38), focusing on values and norms concerning work and care. we identify fi ve employment patterns characterized by either an increase in labor supply (especially for those with more/older children) or by stability in or outside the labor market (for highly educated or younger mothers respectively). the analyses of the interviews provide insights on how employment opportunities and decisions differ by entry mode into lone parenthood, the post-separation relationship with the children’s father, and the ability to mobilize individual, social and institutional resources. the heterogeneity of employment trajectories calls for more attention to within-group differences rather than focusing exclusively on the divide between lone and coupled mothers. by identifying the multiplicity of factors shaping lone mothers’ decisions on their labor market participation, this work feeds into the literature suggesting that effective policies encouraging lone mothers’ labor-market participation should consider: (i) their normative priorities when facing work and care trade-offs, and (ii) the availability of informal and formal support. keywords: employment · lone parenthood · mixed-method · sequence analysis · switzerland comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 265-298 (date of release: 15.09.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-14en6 • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza266 1 introduction the primary reason why parents have raised children alone in the last 30 years has been ever-growing union instability (nieuwenhuis/maldonado 2018). the most common pathways into lone parenthood in the 21st century are divorce and separation, while widowhood, pregnancy, or adoption by individuals not living in a couple have diminished in importance since the 1980s. consequently, the share of the population experiencing lone parenthood is growing and becoming increasingly heterogeneous. the duration of lone parenthood is falling on average (bernardi et al. 2018) but transitions to lone parenthood may imply a process with blurred boundaries rather than an abrupt event (bernardi/larenza 2018). lone parenthood remains a predictor of poverty, fragmented work histories, and poor health for parents (e.g., brady et al. 2017; struffolino et al. 2016). lone parenthood is a gendered phenomenon in the vast majority of cases in heterosexual couples. lone parents are mostly women, who often face gender inequalities in the distribution of paid and unpaid work combined with poor familywork reconciliation policies (hübgen 2018; nieuwenhuis/maldonado 2018). in most countries, laws and social norms relating to parenthood reinforce such inequalities. even if they have previously entered the labor market, women with children are more likely to experience interrupted work histories than men and childless women; consequently, they are more frequently secondary earners in couples than men. mothers are therefore more fi nancially vulnerable following separation or divorce despite being in employment (e.g., fisher/low 2015; hübgen 2020) and they rely on social assistance more often than men (e.g., kessler et al. 2018). the effects of transitions to lone parenthood on labor market participation had to be considered together with the higher-priority needs of childcare support and economic resources within the household. existing research on lone mothers’ labor market participation is mostly based on cross-sectional analyses, showing heterogeneities by country (i) in the likelihood of lone mothers’ being employed compared to coupled mothers (looze 2014; western et al. 2008), (ii) in the responsiveness of lone mothers to incentives to move from welfare into work (athreya et al. 2014), and iii) in the timing of transitions into and out of the labor market after lone parenthood (stewart 2009). a few longitudinal studies consider how labor market trajectories before, during, and after lone parenthood differ depending on individual and household characteristics (struffolino/mortelmans 2018; zagel 2014). these works show at best that employment trajectories before lone parenthood (stewart 2009) and contextual factors, such as the welfare state, infl uence lone mothers’ careers afterwards (zagel 2014). however, they cannot determine the connection between objective constraints/resources and subjective perceptions of norms and values regarding work and care in infl uencing lone mothers’ employment trajectories. we fi ll this gap by adopting a life-course mixed-method approach. first, we reconstruct the trajectories of lone mothers’ labor market participation before and after the family transition and identify typical patterns. we then estimate the probability of different patterns on the basis of individual and household characteristics that help or hinder labor market participation. we fi nally contrast these results with the lone mothers' employment trajectories • 267 fi ndings of the content analysis of narrative interviews focusing on lone mothers’ employment decisions in relation to values and norms concerning work and care. in this respect, lone mothers face a dilemma: to be a working lone-mother with little public support, or to be unemployed and/or reliant on social assistance. therefore, lone mothers – depending on their initial labor market status – may fi nd it preferable to reduce or suspend their labor force participation in the short run to cope with time and other pressures related to the lone parenthood transition. this short-term strategy reduces care costs, but can lead to negative outcomes in the long-run, in that it can result in the depreciation of skills and employability and undermine the chances of earning suffi cient income in the long-run, when children’s fi nancial needs increase (e.g. costs for extra-school activities or investment in higher education). assuming that such dynamics are similar to those of other western countries, there are at least three reasons which make it important to study the swiss case: fi rst, a high divorce rate, resulting in more than 40 marriages in every 100 ending in divorce since 2002 (sfso 2017a); second, the absence of a “general unemployment problem”, i.e. the employment rate is high and protection in the event of unemployment is more generous and effective than in other countries; third, limited public support for families (le goff/levy 2016), especially for those deviating from the “nuclear family norm” (rossier et al. 2018). since most studies on the relationship between lone parenthood and employment trajectories have been conducted in countries with higher unemployment rates and lower social protection – such as the us and the uk – the swiss case represents a different set of opportunity costs for lone mothers. we concentrate on women because, in the swiss context, they represent the large majority of lone parents. moreover, they have increased needs for economic resources and childcare support during lone parenthood in a context where traditional gender norms persist. ultimately, this exposes them to great practical diffi culties and related moral dilemmas. 2 labor market participation before and after the transition to lone motherhood the situation of lone mothers regarding labor market participation is distinctive. theoretically, this population challenges the classic economic approach to the division of labor within the family (becker 1981) because lone parents cannot share day-to-day care and breadwinner responsibilities with a partner – although both care and resources have been found to be shared and pooled unequally within couples (see bennett [2013] for a review). lone mothers’ fi nances depend more on women’s labor supply and child maintenance payments. the former depends on their childcare needs and the accessibility (availability and economic/social costs) of external childcare. furthermore, because childcare is mostly conceived as a “matter for mothers”, mothers sometimes opt not to contravene such a rooted social norm and decide not to use childcare services, in spite of their needs and regardless of service accessibility (schenk 2000). • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza268 the increasing heterogeneity in birth cohorts, education, and age distributions of lone mothers (oecd 2014) is likely to be refl ected in the different labor-marketparticipation pathways and in the different motivations and rationales underpinning them. moreover, a differentiated opportunity structure among lone mothers based on individual and household characteristics might lead to increasing within-group inequality over the life course. however, researchers have not studied the effects of the increasing heterogeneity in lone-parent characteristics extensively. the existing longitudinal studies only consider how labor market trajectories during the transition to lone parenthood are infl uenced by individual and household characteristics or how they differ across welfare states (struffolino/mortelmans 2018; zagel 2014). yet differences in the mechanisms behind labor market participation strategies cannot be identifi ed by survey data. this data can neither reveal subjective motivations over time nor scrutinize the mechanisms interpreted by individuals as enabling them to overcome objective constraints or to activate resources. 2.1 obstacles to lone mothers’ labor market participation two factors can infl uence lone mothers’ attachment to the labor market. first, the decrease in disposable income resulting from the transition to lone parenthood (jarvis/jenkins 1999; kalmijn et al. 2007) could push lone mothers to increase their labor supply. second, lone mothers face competing resource demands due to the dual responsibility of being the main breadwinner and the primary caregiver (haux 2013). the outcome depends on the availability of opportunities to externalize childcare and the associated costs, the value of individuals’ skills on the labor market, and the economic support they can obtain from the nonresident parent or from public benefi ts. these two mechanisms, however, can behave differently depending on the life-course phase at which lone parenthood occurs. this, in turn, is indirectly associated with household composition. individual characteristics when lone parenthood occurs at an earlier age, individuals who did not complete formal education can be excluded from the labor market or may end up in low income jobs due to their lower qualifi cation and employability levels. hence, very young lone mothers often fi nd themselves in a spiral of cumulative disadvantage that affects life domains beyond employment; this makes it even harder for them to subsequently improve their qualifi cation level (jaehrling et al. 2015). pursuing higher education, hence entering the labor market at a higher age, generally corresponds to stronger labor market attachment (eurostat 2017). women who choose to leave the labor market temporarily after having children or who substantially reduce their labor supply to provide childcare due to adequate income from the partner, may have to reconsider this after separation. women who have been lone parents since the transition to motherhood may also have to reconsider their engagement with paid work. in both cases, women with relatively low education levels might have to reduce their labor supply because they cannot afford fulltime childcare due to insuffi cient earnings. alternatively, they could simply drop out lone mothers' employment trajectories • 269 of the workforce because of the low opportunity costs. in contrast, having at least some college education is generally associated with stronger labor market attachment: after the transition to lone parenthood, these mothers can either increase their labor supply or work in more fl exible jobs (e.g., part-time work) when generous and regular child maintenance support from the father makes up for the reduced income. however, declines in human capital investment during marriage as the result of unemployment/inactivity, may hinder the uptake of paid work. household composition in contexts where childcare cannot be outsourced due to poor state welfare provision or the high costs involved, the presence of more than one child (at least one of whom is very young) is crucial in prompting lone mothers to give up paid employment and provide childcare as their main occupation (damme et al. 2009). starting to cohabit with a (new) partner represents an additional source of variation in household composition that might have implications for lone mothers’ labor market participation. exploring these aspects has become possible only recently: using high-quality data, recent fi ndings highlighted the fact that the presence of a resident and non-resident partner plays an important role within lone mothers’ decisions in different life domains and have an effect on their wellbeing (bastin 2012; bastin 2019; fux 2011; langlais et al. 2016). norms and values adjustments in labor supply may be infl uenced by cultural expectations regarding women’s work-family balance (bakker/karsten 2013; krüger/levy 2001). traditional gendered norms concerning motherhood generally support an unequal division of paid and unpaid work between mothers and fathers and become a trap for mothers when they enter lone parenthood, unless fathers change their approach/attitudes. having said that, norms may differ depending on mothers’ socioeconomic circumstances. indeed, from a normative point of view, working middle-class mothers are generally encouraged to limit workforce participation in the interest of their children (see hennessy [2015] for a review). this is problematic as, for example, it may prevent employers from offering promotion to lone mothers, fearing that they would not be able to work more, as they would wish to provide adequate care for their children. at the same time, work-fi rst policies emphasize the value of personal autonomy and fi nancial independence for mothers in need of social support (brady 2019; millar 2019). hence, based on a specifi c interpretation of the work-fi rst discourse, lower-class lone mothers are encouraged to work to increase their resilience to fi nancial strain, but this may entail moral dilemmas: such policies may overlook the complexity of their individual situation and ignore how their actions will affect their signifi cant others. for example, mothers who take up a job suggested by the authority providing welfare assistance may suffer if their parental relationship worsens and they are not receiving adequate childcare support. subjective perception and assessment of existing norms also play a role. lone mothers in the same position may still interpret it differently and decide not to comply with prevailing social norms, depending on their personality, education and past life experience • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza270 (larenza 2019). this is also the case with norms regarding mothers’ labor market participation and use of childcare facilities (see above). for example, mothers in highly qualifi ed jobs may strive to increase (or keep up) their (high) level of labor market participation because they think this is important for their own wellbeing and their children’s future development, while being stigmatized by colleagues for being neglectful and irresponsible. 3 the swiss case in switzerland, around 15.2 percent of children under the age of 18 live in oneparent households and around 50 percent of the divorces involve children (oecd 2011 based on 2007 data). around 14 percent of households with children under 25 are lone parent households, and the great majority of these (84 percent) are headed by a mother (sfso 2017b). a lone parent household’s income is far lower than that of other households – the only household group with lower income is that of individuals aged over 65 and living alone (sfso 2017b, spefi cically for years 1998-2009). this is partially explained by the gender inequalities in the labor market (branger et al. 2003). women’s labor market participation is higher in switzerland than in other european countries (oecd 2015b), but they are mostly concentrated in part-time jobs and this is not exclusively a matter of choice. after the birth of the fi rst child, mothers reduce their employment rate and rarely manage to increase it again afterwards (bühler/heye 2005). lack of statutory parental and paternity leave also contributes to this (valarino 2014). the labor market activity rate for women in switzerland has increased in recent years (from 68 percent in 1991 to 79 percent in 2014), but differences between men and women persist in this respect and in the pay gaps, which have even increased over time (bühlmann et al. 2012). after separation or divorce, custody is still customarily assigned to mothers, although a recent reform introduced an obligation for the judge to consider if shared custody is possible, and if one of the parties (the mother, the father, or the children) requires it despite the opposition of any of the other parties.1 mothers are often the creditor of maintenance payments for their children. the amount may vary signifi cantly depending on the agreement between the parents or on the method of calculation adopted by the judge if no such agreement exists. however, at least 20 percent of non-custodial fathers violate such obligations, according to current statistics (arnold/knöpfel 2007). lone parents are formally subject to the same rights and duties as coupled/married parents under swiss family law. however, there is a clear bias in favor of formerly married parents in that, after separation, pension contributions can only be split between parents who were married (larenza 2019). switzerland is an ideal context in which to disentangle the relationship between the transition to lone parenthood and employment because of its social policies 1 such a reform was passed in 2017, meaning that none of the parents in this study were subject to it. lone mothers' employment trajectories • 271 which may affect employed parents in this transition. on the one hand, unemployment benefi ts are more generous in switzerland than in other oecd countries (oecd 2015a). similarly, social assistance is also more generous in relative terms, but access may differ depending on the regulations in the individual cantons (obinger 1999; cantons are the federated states of the swiss confederation). on the other hand, work-family reconciliation policies are weaker here compared to other western welfare states. existing studies show poor availability of childcare services across the country (e.g. bertozzi et al. 2005). against this backdrop, individuals’ professional trajectories are less vulnerable to the scarring effects of unemployment than elsewhere: longer job-search periods may reduce the risk of having to accept low-quality and unstable temporary jobs in the short term rather than better opportunities in the long term. however, despite the dramatic increase in the use of non-family daycare in the last decade, facilities are still relatively expensive and underprovided (schlanser 2011). as a consequence, there is widespread use of non-institutional childcare (both formal and informal): in 2013, 21,30 percent of children aged 0-3 used both institutional and non-institutional childcare, 35 percent only non-institutional (sfso 2017b). lone parents with poor networks and limited economic resources might face additional obstacles when having to combine work and care. finally, residential mobility may also be diffi cult due to the federal nature of the welfare state, i.e. policies that are crucial for lone mothers are administered at the cantonal level (e.g. children’s allowances, taxation rules, social assistance, and childcare). advances of maintenance payments represent a typical example of a policy targeted at lone parents that differs across cantons in terms of duration, amount and eligibility criteria. such factors may lead mothers to adjust their labor market participation if they only receive the benefi t for a short period, for example. in summary, lone mothers face a dilemma: to be a working-lone-mother with little public support, or to be unemployed and/or rely on social assistance. therefore, lone mothers – depending on their initial labor market status –may fi nd it preferable to reduce or suspend their labor force participation in the short-run to cope with time and other pressures related to the lone parenthood transition. this short-term strategy reduces care costs but can lead to negative outcomes in the long-run. it can result in skills and employability depreciation and undermine the chances of earning suffi cient income in the long-run when children’s fi nancial needs increase (e.g. costs for extra-school activities or investment in higher education). assuming the situation is similar to that in other western countries, there are at least two good reasons for studying the swiss case: fi rst, the high rate of divorce (more than 40 marriages in every 100 have ended in divorce since 2002 (sfso 2017a)); second, the absence of a “general unemployment problem” (the employment rate is high and protection in case of unemployment is more generous and possibly more effective than in other countries). since most studies on the relationship between lone parenthood and employment trajectories are conducted in countries with higher unemployment rates and worse social protection – such as the us and the uk – the swiss case represents a different set of opportunity costs for lone mothers. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza272 4 data and methods 4.1 analytical strategy we applied a mixed-method analytical strategy using a large-scale quantitative panel survey and a qualitative panel based on semi-structured interviews. we conducted a sequential exploratory/explanatory data analysis in which the content analysis of the interviews both anticipated and followed the quantitative analysis (creswell 2003). we started by analyzing the interviews to explore the important factors for employment decisions. this was the basis for selecting the explanatory and control variables in the quantitative multivariate models that estimated the probability of following the different employment patterns identifi ed by cluster analysis on individual employment trajectories associated with lone parenthood. we then returned to the interviews and classifi ed the cases according to the similarity of lone mothers’ employment trajectories to the main characteristics of the patterns represented by the clusters. finally, we reconstructed the decision-making process around labor market participation. the rationale behind using such a mixed-method approach was twofold. first, it allowed consideration of the proportion of lone mothers represented in a given employment pattern (and their characteristics in the swiss context). second, it enabled us to understand such patterns by qualitatively exploring the moral dilemmas surrounding work and care, that is the perceived obligations and constraints faced by these women. all three authors liaised constantly regarding interpretation of the data from both types of analysis. 4.2 identifying typical employment trajectories before, during, and after the transition to lone parenthood the shp collects longitudinal sociodemographic information and data on the living conditions of a representative sample of the swiss population from 1999. however, only the 2001 and 2013 waves include a retrospective biographical calendar that enables the reconstruction of (among others) complete trajectories for living arrangements, partner relationships and changes in civil status, family events, professional activities. for these two waves it is therefore possible to identify a subsample of women who have been lone mothers at some point (due to separation/divorce, widowhood, or not living with a partner at childbirth), including before 1999. we further selected the sample to retain women who experienced the fi rst transition to lone parenthood as an 18-54 year-old living with at least one child under age 18. the fi nal sample consists of 478 women (4.2 percent of the initial 2001 and 2013 samples pooled). instead of considering single and isolated points in time, we rely on the theoretical and methodological framework of sequence analysis to consider longitudinal employment patterns as a whole (abbott 1995). in other words, we do not simply estimate the timing or the probability of specifi c transitions between states (e.g. from employment to unemployment), but look also at “process outcomes”, which lone mothers' employment trajectories • 273 are career confi gurations conceptualized as the succession of different spells in different types of employment/unemployment as they unfold over time. for this purpose, we reconstructed employment sequences for the 478 women in the analytical sample spanning 2 years before and 7 years after the transition to lone parenthood: opening the observational window before lone parenthood allows us to capture some of the effect on labor supply choices for women who anticipate a separation and start to increase their working hours accordingly. each year of these 10-year sequences (the year when lone parenthood commences, 2 before, and 7 after) was coded according to the labor market situation at that point in time: part-time (between 20 and 89 percent of a 40-hour working-week) or full-time (90100 percent) employment as employee or self-employed, or out of the labor force (either in unemployment or inactivity).2 cluster analysis was used to detect typical employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood. the clustering procedure implies the computation of a pairwise dissimilarity matrix. because the duration of the spells is of primary importance when evaluating the salient dimensions of working trajectories (such as stability), we used optimal matching with insertion/deletion costs equal to 1 and substitution costs equal to 2. this setting is theoretically more sensitive to differences in order than to those in timing of a state’s appearance along the sequences (studer/ritschard 2016).3 we applied the partitioning-around-medoids clustering algorithm (kaufman/rousseeuw 2005) to the dissimilarity matrix to group sequences in such a way that it maximizes both internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity. medoids are representative sequences that have the smallest dissimilarity to the other sequences of the cluster they belong to. the average silhouette width (asw) criterion is commonly used to measure the coherence of the assignment of each sequence to a cluster. asw can vary between -1 and +1 (min./ max. coherence): for our data, a fi ve-cluster solution displayed an asw value of 0.63, which indicated a strong structure in the data (studer 2013). a partition can be considered as satisfactory if it identifi es the most relevant types from a substantive/ theoretical point of view with respect to the research question (piccarreta/studer 2019). in our case, a 5-cluster solution identifi es substantively meaningful pathways that resonate with the experiences of mothers in the qualitative sample. a compre2 we combined unemployment and inactivity, as the vast majority of spells out of the labor force were characterized by inactivity: the average number of years spent in unemployment is 0.18 (versus 2.16 in inactivity). we ran all the analyses keeping the two states separate: the unemployment spells were residual, meaning that they did not contribute to creating an independent group even when allowing for solutions with a larger number of clusters and cases including some unemployment episodes scattered across different clusters. results of the multinomial logistic regression for cluster assignment with clusters based on four states are highly consistent with those presented here. 3 given the small number of states we use to code sequences and sequence length, when conducting robustness checks using alternative costs (e.g. longest common subsequence, insertion/deletion equal to 2 and substitution equal to 1 among others), cluster solutions are highly correlated and results of the multinomial logistic regression are consistent in terms of the direction and the signifi cance of the effects. results are available upon request. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza274 hensive discussion of the reasons why we opted for a 5-cluster solution and the implications for within-sequence heterogeneity can be found in the notes to figure a1 and a2 in the appendix. finally, we estimated a multinomial logistic regression model for the probability of membership of the 5 typical employment trajectories identifi ed by the cluster analysis as a function of individual characteristics and household composition. the latter are operationalized as: education (up to lower secondary, upper secondary, or tertiary); age of the woman when the transition to lone parenthood occurred (1824, 25-30, 31-40, or 41-54); number of children under 18 living in the household (1, 2, or 3+); age of the youngest child (0-2, 3-5, 6-10, or 11-18). all the variables refer to when the transition occurred. following the literature, the model is adjusted for the type of entry into lone parenthood (unpartnered at fi rst childbirth, separation, or widowhood); year of transition to lone parenthood (up to 1979, 1980-1989, 19901995, or 1996-2005); nationality at birth (swiss or other); wave (2001 or 2013). the results will be presented as adjusted predictions at group specifi c means (long/ freese 2014). the results expressed as exponentiated coeffi cients are available upon request.4 three aspects need to be acknowledged. first, variables for which it might have been important to adjust the model are not available in shp (for example, social support with care or the receipt of regular child maintenance support from the other parent). second, we could not adjust the models for time-varying variables, as their change in value over time is endogenous to the longitudinal process captured by the clusters. sequence analysis is a powerful analytical tool for uncovering patterns in longitudinal categorical data, but when clusters are used as the dependent variable in a regression framework they are crystallized in their temporal unfolding. for example, the regression models cannot include indicators for changes in the fi nancial situation of the household over time caused by the presence of a (new) co-resident partner or changes in external support for childcare provided by (new) non-resident partners. finally, we could not detect the presence of a non-resident partner in the retrospective biographical data. therefore, we could not model the presence of a non-cohabiting partner at childbirth. 4.3 content analysis of the qualitative interviews the waves of the qualitative panel were collected in “the multiple paths of lone parenthood”5 project on lone parents residing in the french-speaking part of swit4 sequence analysis is performed using the software r version 3.6.3 (r core team 2020) and the r packages traminerr and traminerextras (gabadinho et al. 2011; ritschard et al. 2013). regression models are estimated using stata 16. 5 the project, currently ongoing, is headed by laura bernardi within the national center for competence “lives. overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives” project funded in 2012 by the swiss national science foundation. more information is available on the project website: https://www.lives-nccr.ch/en/page/multiple-paths-lone-parenthood-n3912. a summary of the empirical work conducted within the project can be found at https://www.lives-nccr.ch/en/ newsletter/lone-parenthood-life-course-n2622. lone mothers' employment trajectories • 275 zerland. the fi rst wave contains 38 interviews conducted in 2012-2013 with lone mothers who had sole physical custody of at least one child between ages 0 and 13 at the time of the fi rst interview and who had no co-resident adult.6 31 mothers agreed to be re-interviewed in 2015. therefore, we could draw on longitudinal qualitative material from two time-points for the large majority of our initial sample. individuals were recruited through a multiple-entry snowball approach and following a purposive sampling scheme aimed at maximizing the variability in education levels and patterns of entry into lone parenthood. the research design focused on the presence of one or more very young children (mostly 0-9 year-olds), who require more care compared to adolescents. for 36 mothers the transition to lone parenthood occurred 0 to 7 years prior to the fi rst interview. the observational window from entry into lone parenthood until the fi rst wave was 4 years on average (min. 0, as one mother was pregnant at the time of the interview, and max. 14). at the second interview, 6 years had passed on average since participants’ transition to lone parenthood (min. 2 and max. 16). this sample complemented the analysis of the shp subsample, as participants’ stories included biographical information on the life-course prior to the transition to lone parenthood up to a substantial number of years after that. the interview guidelines encompassed: the narrative reconstruction of educational, residential, employment, health and family trajectories; information on the current relationship with the noncustodial parent (negotiations over custody and child maintenance); individuals’ social networks; and access to various kinds of institutional and informal support. the semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed the subjective motivations underpinning specifi c lone mothers’ behaviors to be elicited in each domain. this was particularly useful for understanding how interviewees defi ne and/or interpret norms and values associated with parenting, reconciling work and private life, and the extent to which their decisions in the professional domain were inspired by such norms and values. ex-post rationalization biases were tackled in two ways. first, by eliciting inconsistencies in the interviewees’ discourse through specifi c questions, we could identify and address a meaningful “reconstruction” of the past. second, the longitudinal setup allowed us to identify potentially divergent interpretations of the same event across waves. having said that, it was important to retain attempts to renegotiate events as important pieces of information, as they allowed us to make sense of interviewees’ changes of perspective on their life events. 6 our interest was in exploring “solo” living in all its variety, so we left open the kind of relationship with the father of the child or a new partner. this yielded a great variety of situations which were relevant for the different levels of emotional and/or practical support (or the lack of it) but less for the mothers’ decision regarding employment. this is possibly due to the fact that a partner who is not invested in cohabitation is of limited relevance in terms of economic and employment decisions. we cannot exclude some social desirability bias to social norms surrounding fi nancial responsibilities. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza276 qualitative materials include full transcriptions, fi eld notes, and comprehensive case summaries. moreover, during the semi-structured interview we asked the interviewees to fi ll in a biographical calendar similar to the one completed by the shp interviewees on employment, partnership and parenthood trajectories. this permitted us to place the information collected during the two qualitative waves within the individuals’ broader life courses.7 drawing on fereday and muir-cochrane (2006), we used a combination of inductive and deductive coding to capture the motivation for taking paid work before and after lone parenthood. initial nodes: the possible trade-offs and compatibilities with parenting, factors like the accessibility of public support; the regularity of maintenance payments from the father and uncertainties related to custody; support from the social network including a new partner, as well as the health of the lone mother, her child/ren, or their father. finally, we developed a dual perspective for analyzing the data (holland et al. 2006; kuckartz 2019; larenza 2019): a longitudinal examination of each story (data as cases) and categorical examination across stories to identify commonalities and divergences in individual trajectories (data as content category). this was valuable as it allowed us to profi t from the systematicity of constant comparisons through content analysis and from the consideration of the subjective reconstructions through case narration. 4.4 summary statistics table 1 provides descriptive statistics for the independent variables relative to both the quantitative and the qualitative samples. the right column shows that the distribution of the interviewees according to the major variable of interest for the quantitative analyses matches the distribution of the qualitative sample relatively well. this is useful for triangulating the results from the two data sources. two differences between the samples are notable. first, women in the qualitative sample had experienced lone parenthood for 4 years on average prior to the fi rst interview. this choice was deliberate because we wanted their retrospective account of the transition to lone parenthood to be relatively close to the time of the interview. second, women with a lower secondary education are underrepresented in the qualitative sample. the diffi culty in sampling individuals belonging to disadvantaged groups is a well-known issue in qualitative data collection (abrams 2010; penrod et al. 2003). our results are conservative given the association between low education level and higher exposure to the risk of unemployment, poverty, and diffi culties in combining work and care. 7 each interview lasted between 1 and 3 hours and was taped and fully transcribed. to protect participants’ identities, their real names together with the names of the people they mentioned were substituted with pseudonyms. the coding was conducted using the software nvivo (version 11). lone mothers' employment trajectories • 277 tab 1: distribution of the main independent variables across the quantitative and qualitative samples shp 2010 & 2013 qualitative interviews (% and n) education lower secondary 41.9 7.9 3 upper secondary 45.6 44.7 17 tertiary 12.6 47.4 18 age upon becoming lone parent 18-24 11.6 5.3 2 25-30 26.8 26.3 10 31-40 44.1 57.9 22 41-54 17.5 10.5 4 number of children upon becoming lone parent 1 52.2 60.5 23 2 35.0 34.2 13 3+ 12.9 5.3 2a age of the youngest child upon becoming lone parent 0-2 37.5 71.0 27 3-5 19.7 23.7 9 6-10 26.3 5.3 2 11-18 16.5 0.0 0 type of entry into lone parenthood unpartnered upon birth of fi rst child 23.3 18.4 7 separation 68.0 76.3 29 widowhood 8.7 5.3 2 year upon becoming lone parent up to 1979 26.4 0.0 0 1980-1989 26.5 0.0 0 1990-1995 18.4 0.0 0 1996-2005 28.7 5.3 2 2006-2013 94.7 36 nationality at birth swiss 83.6 76.3 29b other 16.4 23.7 9 n 478 100.0 38 a in one case the mother had two children from a previous relationship. b six women migrated to switzerland by the age of 15 and in most cases obtained swiss naturalization. source: authors’ calculations. shp data, biographical calendar 2001 and 2013 (weighted); qualitative panel “the multiple paths of lone parenthood”, wave 1 (2013). • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza278 5 results 5.1 employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone motherhood figure 1 displays the fi ve clusters which represent different typical employment pathways spanning the 2 years before and 7 years after the transition to lone parenthood. each subplot contains 30 representative individual sequences of the sequences allocated to each group. almost 80 percent of lone mothers in the sample belong to one of three clusters that are strongly characterized by stability in one single state: out of employment, part-timers, and full-timers. most of the individuals who were assigned to these clusters do not change their labor supply after the transition to lone parenthood: the overwhelming majority maintains steady attachment (29.5 percent in part-time and 29.9 percent in full-time jobs) or remain in/leave the labor force after the transition to parenthood (16.9 percent). the remaining 23 percent of lone mothers were allocated to the two remaining clusters, namely the returners and the strengtheners. in the case of cluster 2 returners (12.1 percent), mothers’ employment trajectories are characterized by two or more years out of the labor force before and/or around the transition to lone parenthood that develop over time towards stable part-time employment. some of these lone mothers may have been young when they became a lone parent, meaning that inactivity might actually conceal time spent in education. with respect to cluster 4 strengtheners (11.5 percent), the characteristic shared by the vast majority of mothers’ trajectories in this group is having spent between 1/3 and 1/2 of the time-span in part-time work and the rest in full-time work from/some years after the transition to lone parenthood. we acknowledge that some women (24 percent within this cluster) are actually “reducers”, as they move from full-time to part-time work or from part-time work to out of the labor force. this pattern did not emerge as a separate cluster although it is of substantive interest. as highlighted in the methods’ section, cluster analysis is a data reduction technique and (like all techniques of this kind) it requires a certain amount of simplifi cation to let substantively meaningful (and interpretable) trends/patterns in the data emerge. “simplifi cation” in the case of cluster analysis applied to sequences means that we have to accept a degree of within-cluster heterogeneity in order to identify groups of sequences that represent a similar process. 5.2 the role of individual characteristics and household composition for employment trajectories figure 2 displays the adjusted predictions at group specifi c means for cluster membership by individual characteristic (panel (a)) and household composition (panel (b)). a younger age (18-24) at the transition to lone parenthood corresponds to a slightly higher likelihood of being among those out of employment or full-timers (24 and 53 percent respectively). being older when experiencing lone parenthood is associated with a much lower probability of being inactive, combined with a higher lone mothers' employment trajectories • 279 fig. 1: individual employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood: 5-cluster solution notes: for each cluster, 30 representative sequences are shown (fasang/liao 2014) and ordered by the employment status at time t0 (x-axis), indicating the year when the transition to lone parenthood occurred. the assessment of the representativeness can be found in figure a3 in the appendix. source: authors’ calculations. shp data, 2001 and 2013. n=478. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza280 fi g . 2 : a d ju st ed p re d ic tio n s (p er ce n ta g e p o in ts ) a t g ro up s p ec ifi c m ea n s fo r as si gm en t t o t he c lu st er s 8 7 51 8 26 11 20 27 12 30 23 8 27 9 33 15 15 32 11 27 9 15 37 12 27 24 12 20 11 33 24 4 13 6 53 15 13 29 11 32 0 20 40 60 80 10 0 pe rc en t ed uc at io n ag e at l p av er ag e te rti ar y up pe r s ec . lo w er s ec . 41 -5 4 31 -4 0 25 -3 0 18 -2 4 (a ) i nd iv id ua l c ha ra ct er is tic s 10 11 38 10 30 15 14 33 22 16 7 26 22 5 40 23 7 22 8 40 19 23 26 13 19 8 20 37 10 25 20 7 23 10 40 15 13 29 11 32 0 20 40 60 80 10 0 pe rc en t ag e yo un ge st c hi ld n r. ch ild re n av er ag e 11 -1 8 61035 023+21 (b ) h ou se ho ld c om po si tio n o ut o f e m pl oy m en t r et ur ne rs pa rttim er s st re ng th en er s fu lltim er s s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns . s h p d at a; 2 00 1 an d 2 01 3 (w ei gh te d ). n = 47 8. t ab le a 1 d is p la ys r es ul ts fr o m th e fu ll m o d el . lone mothers' employment trajectories • 281 likelihood of being in long-lasting part-time work and being a strengthener. tertiary education is associated with long-lasting part-time work (51 percent), whereas having a lower-secondary education implies higher probabilities of being out of employment (23 percent) or a full-timer (33 percent) compared to both tertiary and upper secondary education. interestingly, lone mothers with an upper secondary qualifi cation are more likely to be returners. as far as household composition is concerned, panel (b) shows that the presence of more than one child in the household is associated with a decrease in inactivity and full-time employment trajectories (from approximately 20 to 8 percent on average for those out of employment, and from 40 to 19 on average for full-timers). as the number of children in the household increase, lone mothers are more likely to be returners (especially when children are 3+). the trend across the age of the youngest child in the household is less clear-cut, but two interesting results emerge. first, lone mothers whose youngest child in the household is 0-2 or 3-5 years-old differ only with respect to a higher probability of being out of employment for the former and of being a returner for the latter. second, lone mothers with the youngest child aged 6-to-10 are the most likely to strengthen their labor market participation (approximately 22 percent), while mothers with older children are more likely to have held part-time work around the transition to lone parenthood (38 percent). all differences highlighted so far are statistically signifi cant. in sum, following employment trajectories characterized by different degrees of stability in one state is associated with different life-course stages signifi ed by the subject’s own age and age/number of children, but also with individual resources proxied by education. however, a consideration of relational/partnership histories together with norms and values is necessary to address the question of why such employment choices were made. the subjective accounts from the qualitative interviews will enrich our understanding of these dynamics in the transition to lone parenthood. 5.3 a qualitative account of what shaped labor market participation around lone parenthood a range of factors could shape respondents’ employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood: the type of entry into lone parenthood, the relationship with the noncustodial parent (when present), and the possibility to mobilize resources (both accumulated (e.g. education, job position) and transient (e.g. social and institutional support)). the same fi ve typical patterns of the quantitative study emerged in the qualitative study. specifi cally, 25 single mothers reported little variation in employment after the transition to lone parenthood (relatively stable arrangements: out of employment, part-timers, and full-timers), while 11 of them had either a gradual or a sudden need to change their working arrangements (increasing working hours: returners and strengtheners). one extra category included women who faced a turning point in their professional trajectory. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza282 5.3.1 relatively stable employment statuses across lone parenthood out of employment two interviewees were not regularly employed before becoming mothers and did not change their status thereafter. they have received social benefi ts since their transition to lone parenthood after separation or divorce, which occurred in their late-20s/early-30s. both had a low level of education and very young children at the moment of the interview. pilar’s story is a case in point. she migrated to switzerland as a teenager and worked occasionally until she married at 20. she separated at 25, at which time she had two young children (aged 1 and 5). pilar did not have access to adequate legal assistance and was not aware of the existence of public support with litigation costs. hence, she had to accept unfavorable divorce conditions including formal shared custody, which turned into de facto full custody (due to the other parent’s neglect) and no maintenance for her children. she had no public childcare for her small child and could only count on her sister’s occasional support. consequently, she had little time to look for a job. pilar is not happy with her situation and states clearly that her ex-husband is very unfair. however, she is so powerless that the only way to make sense of her situation and tolerate her current circumstances is to renegotiate it with herself, saying that what really matters is that her children can live with her and not with a neglectful father. pilar is caught in a moral dilemma that she solves by resorting to social norms prescribing good mothering and justifying as a choice what in fact is an imposition: “anyway, it’s me who has accepted all this … if i accepted all this it is for the children … but, him, he doesn’t understand anything about that … and now i often have the children at home, i don’t care … i love my children”. what both mothers in this category have in common are limited socio-economic resources to face the transition to lone parenthood and change their professional situation thereafter, and very young children to provide for. as pilar’s story highlights, further potential obstacles to activation in lone parenthood include: lack of support with childcare, both from the other parent and from public institutions; poor social network to supersede the lack of support with childcare; and no fi nancial support with child maintenance. a migrant background may further hinder paid work uptake if the person is not aware that support is available from public institutions in the country. finally, pilar’s story shows how norms around motherhood may prevail in the quest for a more egalitarian division of unpaid work. part-timers 17 mothers belong to this category and have either tertiary education or an upper secondary professional diploma, which are highly valued in switzerland and normally give access to relatively well-paid jobs. the main income sources for these lone mothers are employment, child maintenance payments, widowhood pension, temporary or lump-sum social benefi ts, or a combination of several of these. there are two major life-course confi gurations among part-timers. the most common one applies to women who have a stable, adequate income, which may include child maintenance from the father; these lone mothers could also count on social support lone mothers' employment trajectories • 283 and appropriate childcare. these women considered part-time employment as an ideal working arrangement to fulfi ll their double role of breadwinner and caregiver.8 for example, natasha was 26 years old and had a 10-month-old child at the transition to lone parenthood. when she was in a couple, she was working part-time (50 percent) and studying. she fi nished her tertiary education as a lone mother. afterwards she increased her part-time hours (60 percent of full-time hours, and then 80 percent), as the child had grown up. for her, this was the right way to balance caregiving and income-earning. to complete her studies she could count on welfare benefi ts (including a scholarship) and a supportive and stable social environment, with neighbors ready to provide emergency care, a good relationship with the child’s father including a well-functioning arrangement for visitation and child maintenance. unlike natasha, many women faced signifi cant obstacles to improving their fi nancial situation after separation. these belong to a second subgroup of part-timers. in such cases, mothers could not increase their labor supply because they could not easily change their employment conditions, or because they would lose income if they did so (childcare-fees are set in proportion to the parents’ income). for instance, vivianne was 42 years old when she gave birth to her fi rst and only child from a non-cohabiting partner. the relationship rapidly deteriorated following the birth of the child, the father refused to pay child maintenance and to offer any regular childcare support. vivianne was socially isolated and this is likely to have made her even more dependent on the support of the other parent. at the time of the interview, vivianne was working as a professor at between 50 percent and 65 percent of full-time hours on largely temporary contracts. she would have been happy to increase her employment rate, but her employer offi cially rejected her request, yet required her to commit herself to performing extra unpaid work. receiving welfare benefi ts was not easy, as constant changes in her employment rate impacted on her eligibility for social assistance. despite having only one child and a high level of education, the two mothers epitomize two different ways of viewing and using part-time employment before and after the transition to lone parenthood. natasha adheres to the social norm that mothers should work parttime: she states that, for her, this is the right compromise which gives her enough time for herself and her child, and allows her to improve her career later when she will take over from her superiors who are about to leave: “i feel i am not made for working full time, because i have a child and my everyday life to cope with … (…)i think one must make the most of one’s life, and there are more things to do than just work, even though i like my job…”. vivianne subscribes to the same norm, but has a completely different understanding of it: for her, part-time work is a trap which is diffi cult to escape, rather than an opportunity. it imposes further (fi nancial) strain on her private situation (no support with childcare or maintenance): “there is a problem with the law and the corporate culture concerning motherhood [there is still a lot to do]. i mean, when i said that i needed to increase my worktime because (…) i 8 the majority of mothers (both single and in couples) in switzerland work part-time (sfso 2017b). • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza284 am a lone parent and i do not receive any child maintenance support. it’s true that i did not receive any maintenance. well, they told me <<it’s your choice>> ... that was the answer <<your private life does not concern us>>” full-timers these six women exhibited different levels of education and types of employment. according to their accounts, how they combined the latter and the relationship with the former partner after separation (or the type of welfare support in case of death of the other parent) shaped how they experience the transition to lone parenthood and the signifi cance they attached to their professional trajectories thereafter. when mothers had a stable and very well-paid job before their transition to lone parenthood, receiving support with childcare and child maintenance from the former partner may not be a crucial issue, especially if they were allowed some degree of fl exibility in terms of working hours. if the wage allowed for adequate childcare, no major upheavals occurred. working full-time in such cases is not just a matter of making ends meet, but rather it seems to fulfi ll the mothers’ desire for full professional satisfaction and for maintaining high living standards. for example, dorothea had her fi rst child with a cohabiting partner, whom she separated from during pregnancy. dorothea never received fi nancial support from him but was entirely able to provide for herself and for her child thanks to her job as a manager in a multinational company. dorothea always outsourced care when the child was in preschool and had the fl exibility she needed to cope with emergencies. she explained that she kept her full-time position and never stopped investing in her career, even when her child was very young. this allowed her to live the life she wanted and to spend enough time with her children, thanks to the fl exibility she could eventually gain with her top-manager position. for some mothers, keeping a full-time position was a necessity rather than a choice. this was the case for those who earned average wages and obtained no support from their former partners and were therefore forced to keep their employment rate high enough to make ends meet. catalina explained this clearly. since her separation she had to live on her wage as an offi ce worker. she would have liked to decrease her employment rate from 100 percent to 90 percent which would have allowed her to spend a whole afternoon with her child during the week, but she was on a tight budget. remaining in full-time work kept her out of poverty. in such cases, staying in full-time work equates with coping with a constraint rather than achieving a higher degree of freedom, as is the case with dorothea. in comparison with catalina, dorothea’s criticism of the traditional form of motherhood has always been one of the main drivers of her career choices. however, her socioeconomic condition and wealthy family background allowed her to reconcile her values and her actions. catalina’s decision to accept a full-time job was in tune with a traditional view of good mothering, which prescribes that it is impossible to take good care of children while in full-time employment. nevertheless, her interpretation of “what is best for a child” was inevitably infl uenced by her precarious fi nancial situation, the infl exible worktime, and the impossibility of fi nding alternative ways to provide adequately for her child. lone mothers' employment trajectories • 285 5.3.2 increasing working hours during lone parenthood returners most of these six women withdrew temporarily from the workforce to devote time to their young children. after the dissolution of their union, they re-entered the labor market. françoise was in her thirties during her transition to lone parenthood and had a professional diploma as a medical assistant. she interrupted her part-time work (40 percent) when she became mother of two children, who were 4 and 6 when she separated. she then worked on an 80 percent contract during the two years of uncertainty and acrimonious negotiations regarding maintenance and custody with the children’s father to ensure an adequate standard of living for the family. in some cases, the fact that the children were not entitled to maintenance (e.g. because they were not recognized by the other parent) infl uenced the mother’s decision to return to work, although this might be problematic with young children. for example, martine was in a homosexual couple. she was highly educated and was freelancing occasionally in the art fi eld when her partner gave birth to their fi rst child. after giving birth to their second child, she gave up working almost entirely. her partner pursued her career while martine assumed the role of a full-time mother. at separation she found herself in a precarious fi nancial situation. she could not claim maintenance for her biological child, as there was no legal fi liation between her biological child and her ex-partner. in addition, she decided not to claim the alimony set in the partnership contract because of the possible negative repercussions this might have on the relationship with her ex-partner and the fear of losing contact with her nonbiological child. martine strove to fi nd work but few positions were available in her fi eld that would be compatible with her role as a mother with two young children. she did not apply for positions which required a commute or frequent travel. she remained unemployed until she could take a part-time temporary job in her fi eld. unlike the fi rst two mothers, béatrice did not withdraw from the labor market. as with martine’s case, she could not receive maintenance for her child and put all her effort into searching for work. this involved taking multiple part-time jobs, on-the-job training, and some commuting. béatrice had almost no support with childcare. she resisted the stressful everyday organization this would have involved and imposed many changes on her small child. to her, this was the only possible way to achieve professional stability, although she reports that the relationship with her son might have been compromised to some extent as a consequence. these cases show different approaches to social norms towards motherhood. françoise and martine adhered to such norms and were primarily involved in childcare, but changed their mind after their transition to lone parenthood. their ability to fi nd work was infl uenced by the availability of jobs in their respective fi elds. béatrice always rejected such norms and decided to prioritize her career, aiming at building a better future for herself and her child. however, she expressed dissatisfaction with her parental life. strengtheners the stories of these fi ve lone mothers feature irregular or non-existent commitment on the part of the noncustodial parent, stable careers and the possibility to adjust • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza286 labor supply according to their needs. this is clear in vanina’s case. she used to work full-time before the birth of her child. her partner took no responsibility for the child despite offi cially acknowledging fatherhood. when the couple broke up, the child was 3 years old. after two years with no regular payments or childcare support from the father, she went back to work full-time. this was possible thanks to the support she received from her parents and the father’s family. despite sacrifi cing time beyond her paid-work, vanina decided to remain in full-time work even when the father started to pay some maintenance and meet the child more regularly, as she could not be sure that this would last. mothers in this group do not feel the pressure of social norms associated with good motherhood – which prescribe part-time work for mothers – in any of the phases of their employment trajectories, and change their employment rate in response to contingent needs and opportunities. as with some full-timers, increasing the time devoted to paid-work may be perceived as problematic insofar as it requires giving up time for other activities unrelated to childcare, such as continuing education. as vanina states: “so i cope, but i cope on a 90 percent contract. this means that i cannot (…) take courses for the time being. i have other projects, other professional projects (…) but fi nancially… i cannot save any money because i have to provide for my child alone.” 5.3.3 turning points employment trajectories characterized by unpredictable and radical changes throughout the professional careers could not be identifi ed as a separate cluster in the quantitative analytical step, but two of them emerged in the analysis of the qualitative interviews. indeed, turning points in employment trajectories may be expected in non-normative forms of parenting. sarah had a well-paid, full-time job as a teacher, and was about to found her ideal family with her partner and their child. after some time, she realized that her plan would not work, as her husband was not able to take adequate care of their child due to his emotional instability and alcohol addiction. sarah decided to quit her job and go back to university to study, as she had always intended. this was a risky decision, as it involved living on a small scholarship and came with no certainty of whether she would succeed in her professional career after obtaining the degree. sarah’s decision was unrelated to the normative idea of being a “good mother”, as it is grounded in her will to “follow her dreams” rather than being dissatisfi ed in a comfortable fi nancial position and a stable and well-paid job. a decision similar to sarah’s may be underpinned for example by conformity to social norms, as in léa’s case. she left a stable but challenging job to go back to university, as the job was incompatible with her small child’s care needs. léa could not keep asking her parents for help with childcare, but did not have reliable access to childcare either. and so she decided to quit her job and care for her child alone. in both stories the change is abrupt and unexpected, as it violates pure economic rationality. childcare needs may play a role in it, but this is not always the driver of the turning point. lone mothers' employment trajectories • 287 6 discussion and concluding remarks this paper adopts a mixed-method approach to study the employment trajectories in the years surrounding the transition to lone parenthood in switzerland. we used biographical calendars from a representative survey to identify typical employment histories and connect them to individual characteristics and household composition. we combine these results with qualitative interviews conducted with lone mothers to shed light on the rationales behind different employment trajectories. some labor market participation pathways followed by mothers before, during, and after the transition to single parenthood are characterized by stability either in employment or in inactivity, some by long-lasting transitions from a low to a higher labor supply. this heterogeneity corresponds to how individuals respond to the challenges which lone parenthood poses to women’s roles in the labor market and as caregivers. our results show that mothers with individual resources that are valued on the labor market (e.g. higher-level education) maintained arrangements that either allowed them to perform the dual role of worker and caregiver, or paid for childcare in the swiss context of weak welfare support and high childcare costs. the qualitative interviews, however, suggest that even lone mothers with a high education level might still fi nd it diffi cult to maintain high labor market attachment (or increase/strengthen it), depending on the occupational sector (e.g. arts or cultural management). mothers who increased their labor supply from inactivity to part-time, or maintained part-time work are mostly those who had a greater need for income due to the presence of more than one child, but who for the very same reasons could not work full-time. as emerges from the interviews, when mothers are able to combine different types of welfare support, they decide not to increase their labor supply even when they have young children. more generally, the qualitative interviews not only highlighted how individual characteristics and household composition might represent resources or obstacles for labor supply decisions around lone parenthood, but they also enhanced our understanding of these dynamics with accounts of the partnership and relational histories as well as norms and values relating to parenthood. almost all lone mothers saw a clear link between their employment pathway and other preand post-transition processes such as informal or legal negotiations for child custody and maintenance, or the institutional and informal support they could mobilize. specifi cally, the fi ndings clearly call into question the role of the non-resident partner in childcare. when mothers are uncertain about the regularity and length of the father’s visits, they fi nd it diffi cult to organize their own working (and life) schedule to the point that it is diffi cult for them to negotiate better arrangements with employers or to fi nd a job. many lone mothers stress the importance of their own role in supporting the father-child relationship despite (or in some cases regardless of) the father’s wishes. such beliefs may give rise to two risks related to their own fi nancial situation and therefore their employment choices. first, mothers are more likely to be vulnerable in the personal relationship with the noncustodial parent at the moment of separation: they might accept unfavorable post-separation maintenance arrangements in • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza288 exchange for the noncustodial parent’s commitment to child custody. second, lone mothers could retreat from claiming their rights or avoid complaining about the father’s failure to respect the formal agreement and legal obligations. in both cases, even if mothers believe that part-time work would be a more suitable arrangement, they need to increase their labor supply (ideally up to full-time) to make ends meet. if they become unemployed or if work “does not pay”, the poverty risk increases; and when work arrangements are at odds with their beliefs, the result may be increased stress, with severe consequences for the mother’s mental and physical health. our results suggest several potential directions for future research. first, because of the combination of limited unemployment and generous social assistance with poor work-family reconciliation policies in switzerland, the actual overlap between employment and welfare trajectories needs to be analyzed. however, because of the recruitment strategy for the qualitative sample and very limited information on welfare support in the shp data, these dimensions could not be fully considered here. as an example, we could not explore the differences across urban/rural areas in the swiss regions that differ not just in the prevalence of lone parenthood (sfso 2017a) but also in terms of welfare systems: we might expect it to be simpler to face the transition to lone parenthood where this is a more common family form and where public policies are more open to supporting them. the increasing availability of combined administrative and survey data will enable better analysis of these joint dynamics. second, the role of re-partnering and of living-apart-together relationships for easier organization of everyday life and its implications for opportunities regarding changes in labor market attachment need to be considered more closely. a new stream of research drawing on rich longitudinal data has started to scrutinize the timing of re-partnering and its consequences in different life domains (bastin 2012; bastin 2019; langlais et al. 2016; recksiedler/bernardi 2019). the longitudinal data we use represent a necessary compromise as they are the fi rst to allow the analysis of the employment trajectories of lone mothers in switzerland, but it is not possible to account simultaneously for specifi c relationship dynamics and for retrospective employment trajectories. finally, our focus on mothers meant we could not incorporate the perspective of non-resident parents on maintenance and care agreements. these elements are identifi ed by lone mothers as crucial when taking decisions on their careers. as a possible extension, researchers could analyze the narratives of non-resident parents to consider how confl icts between ex-partners emerge and are interpreted by both sides. this would allow a greater understanding of the processes shaping mothers’ employment but also its spill-over effects on children. our fi ndings on the heterogeneity of employment trajectories call for more attention to within-group differences rather than focusing exclusively on the divide between lone mothers and mothers in a couple. by showing the multiplicity of factors shaping lone mothers’ decisions on their careers, this work feeds into the debate about the policies for tackling poverty risk among poor lone mothers with low-level labor market attachment (brady/cook 2015; gregg et al. 2009; ellwood 2000; brady 2019). several european countries (switzerland included) have addressed this issue by implementing so called work-fi rst policies (or activation policies) which specifi lone mothers' employment trajectories • 289 cally target lone mothers: these policies imply welfare should be conditional upon labor market participation, based on the assumption that paid work is the primary way out of poverty. these policies rely on highly normative expectations of what constitutes good parenting and often ignore the fact that single mothers cannot be treated merely as a work-force waiting for activation: indeed, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such measures is inconclusive (blau et al. 2004; daly 2011; doiron 2004; hennessy 2005; millar 2019; millar/ridge 2009). therefore, this work reinforces the fi ndings of existing literature in urging consideration of at least two points. first, simply compelling these mothers to increase their labor supply in exchange for social support is often at odds with their possibilities to do so. specifi cally, by ignoring issues such as the commitment of the noncustodial parent towards the children, these policies may not distinguish between different situations and thus lead to inequalities. if a mother receives regular support from the non-custodial parent, she will be able to increase her participation in the labor market to improve her household’s fi nancial situation. when this is not the case, increasing the labor market supply may simply not be feasible, even if social benefi ts are provided to incentivize it. if the lone mother does not receive or cannot claim maintenance support, she may not be able to afford work-related expenses, including childcare. in turn, without external care support, she may have less time to devote to paid work, especially if she is socially isolated. in our qualitative sample, it is rare for fathers to be both highly involved in childcare and also remit maintenance payments. of course, the presence of at least one of these forms of support can be understood as necessary for giving lone mothers more leverage in combining work and care. however, this is never suffi cient in itself as a means to actually improve employment prospects: in the few cases of fathers’ involvement, lone mothers also benefi ted from other forms of support that complemented those provided by the non-custodial father. likewise, the lack of formal and informal support with childcare may prevent such mothers from increasing their time in paid work irrespective of the normative emphasis placed by work-fi rst policies on personal autonomy and fi nancial independence through paid work. in this respect, the mixed-method design is particularly useful for uncovering the relationship between the meanings associated with care, work, and formal/informal support for women who come from different backgrounds and who experience lone parenthood at different life-course stages. such meanings constitute a hierarchy of priorities which shape their employment decisions. this is crucial for understanding the implications of non-normative family transitions and their effects on trajectories in other life domains. acknowledgements this paper benefi ted from the support of the swiss national centre of competence in research lives – overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives, which is fi nanced by the swiss national science foundation. it was realized using the data collected by the swiss household panel (shp), based at the swiss centre of exper• emanuela 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matter? in: population 71,2: 187-213. struffolino, emanuela; mortelmans, dimitri 2018: lone mothers in belgium: labour force attachment and risk factors. in: bernardi, laura; mortelmans, dimitri: lone parenthood in the life course. cham: springer 257-282 [https://doi.org/10.1007/9783-319-63295-7_12]. studer, matthias 2013: weightedcluster library manual: a practical guide to creating typologies of trajectories in the social sciences with r. in: lives working papers 24 [https://doi.org/10.12682/lives.2296-1658.2013.24]. studer, matthias; ritschard, gilbert 2016: what matters in differences between life trajectories: a comparative review of sequence dissimilarity measures. in: journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society) 179,2: 481-511 [https:// doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12125]. valarino, isabel 2014: the emergence of parental and paternity leaves in switzerland : a challenge to gendered representations and practices of parenthood ? phd thesis. institut des sciences sociales. lausanne: suisse. western, bruce; bloome, deirdre; percheski, christine 2008: inequality among american families with children, 1975 to 2005. in: american sociological review 73,6: 903920 [https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240807300602]. zagel, hannah 2014: are all single mothers the same? evidence from british and west german women’s employment trajectories. in: european sociological review 30,1: 49-63 [https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jct021]. date of submission: 05.11.2019 date of acceptance: 19.05.2020 prof. dr. emanuela struffolino (). freie universität berlin and wzb berlin social science center. berlin, germany. e-mail: e.struffolino@fu-berlin.de url: https://emanuela-struffolino.com/ prof. dr. laura bernardi. university of lausanne and nccr lives. lausanne, switzerland. e-mail: laura.bernardi@unil.ch url: https://lives-nccr.ch/en/personne/laura-bernardi-n148 ornella larenza. supsi – scuola universitaria professionale della svizzera italiana. manno, switzerland. e-mail: ornella.larenza@supsi.ch url: https://www.supsi.ch/deass/strumenti/rubrica/dettaglio.27289.backlink. f69827e6-fd97-4aaf-b8fb-a5ca55783a36.html lone mothers' employment trajectories • 295 appendix tab. a1: multinomial logistic regression models predicting the assigment to the fi ve clusters. exponentiated coeffi cients and z-scores in parentheses full-timers vs.: out of returners part-timers strengtheners employment age upon becoming lone parent (ref. 18-24) 25-30 1.584 2.383 1.732 1.657 (0.98) (1.12) (0.81) (0.69) 31-40 0.569 1.429 1.552 0.745 (-1.01) (0.45) (0.62) (-0.38) 41-54 0.860 1.855 0.863 0.361 (-0.21) (0.64) (-0.18) (-1.08) education (ref. lower secondary) upper secondary 0.817 2.438* 0.763 1.542 (-0.51) (2.32) (-0.74) (0.98) tertiary 0.662 0.969 1.765 1.065 (-0.77) (-0.04) (1.13) (0.10) age of the younger child upon becoming lone parent (ref 0-2) 3-5 0.323* 1.517 0.567 0.463 (-2.19) (0.85) (-1.32) (-1.22) 6-10 1.355 1.872 2.197 6.634** (0.56) (1.12) (1.66) (2.97) 11+ 0.443 0.599 1.639 2.312 (-1.25) (-0.70) (0.85) (1.10) number of children upon becoming lone parent (ref. 1) 2 1.688 3.081* 1.19 0.947 (1.05) (2.28) (0.45) (-0.11) 3+ 3.172* 4.291* 0.867 1.465 (2.17) (2.36) (0.29) (0.61) mode of entry into lone parenthood (ref. lone parent at fi rst birth) separation 0.614 0.463 0.339** 0.460 (-1.14) (-1.57) (-2.58) (-1.29) widowhood 3.829 1.699 1.584 1.019 (1.79) (0.66) (0.64) (0.02) nationality at birth (ref. swiss) other 1.056 0.223* 0.432 0.662 (0.13) (-2.12) (-1.73) (-0.76) year upon becoming lone parent (ref. up to 1979) 1980-1989 0.582 1.248 1.501 1.247 (-1.34) (0.43) (0.91) (0.41) 1990-1995 1.024 1.285 1.793 3.080 (0.05) (0.39) (1.18) (1.93) 1996-2005 0.817 2.451 7.980*** 5.435** (-0.38) (1.60) (4.47) (3.11) wave (ref. 2001) 2013 0.477 0.628 1.923 1.158 (-1.73) (-0.96) (1.45) (0.26) n 478 478 478 478 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 source: authors’ calculations. shp data, biographical calendar 2001 and 2013 (weighted). • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza296 fig. a1: average silhouette width (weighted and not – asww and asw respectively), hubert's c coeffi cient (hc) and point biserial correlation (pbc) by cluster solution: standardized scores (z-scores) and original values note: the silhouette coeffi cient compares the average distance of a case to the cases in its cluster with the average distance to the cases in the closest cluster. therefore, such an index allows the identifi cation of sequences that lie between clusters. the asw averages the distances of all sequences in a cluster. the higher the asw value, the higher the within-cluster “closeness” between the sequences (the asww is the same as the asw, but using sampling weights). the other two criteria assess the dissimilarity between the sequences allocated to the same cluster using different methods: the pbc behaves like the asw, while the lower the hc, the greater the closeness between sequences in a cluster. all four criteria indicate 3 clusters as the best solution, and 5 as the second best. we opted for the latter as it allowed us to extract clusters 2 and 4, which are substantively relevant as they identify long term transitions between states around lone parenthood that resonate with the experiences of mothers in the qualitative sample. source: authors’ calculations. shp data, biographical calendar 2001 and 2013. n=478. lone mothers' employment trajectories • 297 fig. a2: silhouette values for each sequence by cluster for the 5-clusters solution note: the silhouette value for each sequence is commonly used to assess how distant in a euclidian space sequences are from other sequences in the cluster. the pam algorithm we used allocate the sequence to their closest medoid (the most central sequence to the most populated areas of the sequences distribution): therefore, even if a sequence seems very different to those in its cluster, it is nevertheless more similar to them compared to the others in other clusters. although the asw for cluster 4 seems suboptimal, as more than 50 percent of the sequences are located on the left-hand side of the 0, this does not mean that they would have been better allocated to other clusters, but that the within cluster heterogeneity is higher for that cluster compared to the others. from a visual inspection of figure 1 in fact, the sequences in cluster 4 that diverge from the general pattern of “strengthen the labor market attachment” and are actually “reducers”: 6 women moved from full-time to part-time work and 7 from part-time to out of the labor force. the time spent in these states lead to the allocation of these sequences to this cluster, although how they unfold over time has a different substantive meaning. the other sequences share long periods in part-time work followed by full-time, in some cases followed by time out of the labor force. we now include a word of caution, where relevant, in the presentation of the results. source: authors’ calculations. shp data, biographical calendar 2001 and 2013. • emanuela struffolino, laura bernardi, ornella larenza298 fig. a3: dissimilarities to the medoid within each frequency group as a box-andwhisker plot by cluster note: y-axis reports the box-and-whisker plot for dissimilarities to the medoid within each frequency group; x-axis displays distance from the medoid selected as the most suitable representative sequence of each frequency group. r2 and f statistics for the goodness of fi t are displayed below each plot (fasang/liao 2014). source: authors’ calculations. shp data, biographical calendar 2001 and 2013. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) editorial on the special issue “the identification of causal mechanisms in demographic research” editorial on the special issue “the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research” johannes huinink, josef brüderl 1 introduction explaining demographic behaviour and population change means identifying the causal mechanisms which “drive” them over time. based on theoretical modelling and guided by empirical fi ndings in prior studies, demographic and social research pursues the improvement of knowledge about those mechanisms and the relationships between the involved factors. in demography, as in the social sciences in general, theoretical and methodological advancements over the past 50 years have greatly contributed to accomplishing this goal. methods of longitudinal data collection as well as individualand multilevel longitudinal data analysis have gained relevance. this trend was paralleled by the development of the life course perspective in the social sciences and conceptual refi nements in cohort analysis in demographic research. meanwhile, collecting and analysing longitudinal data is a standard procedure in individualand multi-level demographic research. many studies using this methodological inventory have been conducted, enriching our knowledge on individual decision-making and behaviour considerably. compared to crosssectional data, longitudinal data signifi cantly improve the conditions for identifying the “true” effects of underlying causal mechanisms. while retrospective information is already of great use, prospective panel designs enable a more appropriate and manifold collection of relevant information, as well as more refi ned statistical modelling of the interdependence between individual behaviour, its dispositional and motivational drivers, its situational conditions, and its outcomes over time. panel data are also useful for another prominent class of methods, i. e. techniques of event history analysis (blossfeld/rohwer 2002; kreyenfeld 2021). in this special issue of comparative population studies, we review the degree to which methodological innovations in panel studies have been useful in properly identifying causal mechanisms in the study of demographic behaviour, and ultimately population change. in the fi rst contribution, methodological issues of panel data analysis are discussed and illustrated by the example of estimating the effect of motherhood on life satisfaction. the next four articles address the core question of the special issue with regard to major fi elds of demographic research: comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 487-502 (date of release: 24.11.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-17en9 • johannes huinink, josef brüderl488 nuptiality and partnership formation, fertility, spatial mobility and migration, and morbidity and mortality. the fi nal two articles present illustrative empirical studies, both using data from the german family panel study (pairfam). in doing so, they demonstrate the opportunities as well as the apparent limitations of longitudinal data analysis in identifying causal effects in social research. 2 causal mechanisms what are the key causal mechanisms of demographic behaviour? there is an extensive literature on causal mechanisms across all scientifi c disciplines in general, and in the social sciences in particular. in the social sciences, the term “social mechanisms” is also used at times. we will not review this broad literature on causal and social mechanisms in detail here. on the social sciences in general, see for example hedström and ylikoshi (2010) or mayntz (2020). recently, wunsch and gourbin have also addressed the issue in their article on causal assessment in demography (wunsch/gourbin 2020). this literature proposed various defi nitions of the concept of causal mechanisms. in the following, we introduce and elaborate upon our own defi nition, which shall be simple but instructive for our introduction into the topic of this special issue. a causal mechanism m (in its simple, mono-causal version) is a process by which a change in an attribute of an entity a, denoted by variable x (causing factor), at time point t1 or during an interval [t0,t1] induces a change in another attribute of a and/or an attribute of another entity b, denoted by variable y (outcome), at time point t2 or during a time interval [t2,t3], with t3 > t2> t1> t0. according to this defi nition, the change in x, say ∆xa(t1) or ∆xa([t0,t1]), precedes the change in y in time: ∆ya(t2) = f(∆xa(t1)) or ∆ya([t2,t3]) = f(∆xa([t0,t1])). t2 t1>0 is the length of the time gap the mechanism “needs” to take effect. xa and ya denote realisations of the variables x and y for an entity a. if the outcome occurs for an entity b, the realisation would be yb respectively.1 the size of the causal effect, i.e. the size of the change in y (outcome), principally varies with the size of the change in x as well as with the time elapsed since the change in x according to the function f, which usually can be expressed mathematically. a causal mechanism as defi ned here usually cannot be observed directly. one only realizes observable manifestations of the mechanism and follows the process empirically more or less closely over time. based on theoretical modelling, which is always preliminary, as well as depending on the quality of applied methods of observation and the data analysis, we can “identify” the causal mechanism, i.e. the causal effect of x on y, only in a more or less valid way. for this reason, causal 1 even though x and y may change continually over time, it is assumed that the condition that a cause temporally precedes an effect always holds, although by a potentially extremely small period of time. for instance, it can be the case that the size of a change in x during [to,t1] must surpass a certain threshold at t1 before a causal effect on y is induced at t2 or during [t2,t3]. the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 489 mechanisms are often conceptualized probabilistically. because we are not able to identify all relevant circumstances under which the mechanism is at work, we must deal with uncertainty. x and y are treated as random variables, and usually only the effects of a change in x on the (mean of a) probability distribution of a change in y can be estimated (wunsch/gourbin 2020: 3). in principle, according to this understanding of a causal mechanism, the collection of longitudinal data is a pre-emptory condition for tracing the “real” processes of the causal mechanism as it evolves over time. this means observing changes in properly measured variables x and y, and the extent to which a change in x effects a change in y over a certain period of time. ideally, the data collection also should cover the time span across which the causal mechanism exerts its effect as precisely as possible. therefore, the time schedule and intervals of data collection should be fi ne-grained enough to appropriately capture changes in x and y. this also helps avoiding collecting synchronous information. in the social sciences and demography, we usually do not study simple monocausal versions of a causal mechanism, but rather much more complex social processes – so-called “compound mechanisms”. compound mechanisms are composed of more than one mono-causal mechanism. changes in y are induced by changes in causal factors x1, ..., xn, n>1. we extend the defi nition presented above and specify compound mechanisms with the formal expression: ∆y=f(∆x1, ..., ∆xn), given that n causal factors are involved which also may be attributes of more than just one entity a.2 the included mechanisms might work in parallel or in sequence. in the fi rst case (mechanisms working in parallel), changes in causal factors xi and xj (i, j=1,...,n, i≠j) independently exert a “direct” effect on y. the second case (mechanisms working in sequence) covers two sub-cases. in the fi rst, a change in one causal factor xi induces a change in another causal factor xj, which then induces a change in y: ∆xj=f((∆xi) and ∆y=g(∆xj). in this case, the causal effect of xi on y is “indirect”, i.e. exerts an effect on y via xj. in the second, a change in xj simultaneously induces a change in xi and y: ∆xi=f((∆xj) and ∆y=g(∆xj). here, xj is a so-called confounder producing a (spurious) correlation between changes in xi and y which is not the consequence of a causal mechanism connecting xi and y. usually, combinations of these different constellations occur in empirical analyses. compound mechanisms might also be composed of mono-causal mechanisms working on different process levels. in such a case, x1, ..., xn might stand for attributes of entities on different levels of aggregation. we will mainly distinguish between inner-individual levels, extra-individual levels, and the level of the acting individuals themselves. finally, we must consider that the outcomes of causal mechanisms depend on the situational conditions they are working in. these conditions are constant during the time period the mechanisms need to take effect and can be specifi ed 2 for the sake of simplicity, the equations in the following are written without timeand entityrelated indices. • johannes huinink, josef brüderl490 by variables z1, ...., zm, m ≥ 1. they can restrict or support the mechanisms in their functioning. one can specify: ∆y=f(∆x1, ..., ∆xn | z1, ...., zm). the relatively stable conditions z1, ...., zm may also be observed on different process levels.3 some important conclusions can be drawn from these considerations with regard to the empirical analyses of complex social processes we deal with in demographic research. first, we usually must consider more than one relevant causal factor, i.e. x1, ...., xn, n>1, which themselves might affect each other through known or unknown causal mechanisms. if we are interested in the direct causal effect of a single potential causal factor xi on y – i.e. its “true” direct causal contribution to the change in y, we must isolate the effect of ∆xi on ∆y. this means that we must properly account for mediating and for confounding effects of other causal factors. the total causal effect of xi on y is then estimated by the sum of its direct and indirect effects. second, reverse causality presents a severe complication we may encounter when studying compound mechanisms. there is a mechanism by which a change in factor xi has an effect on y, say ∆y(t2) = f(∆xi(t1)), but after that, by another mechanism, ∆y(t2) affects a further change in x: ∆xi(t3) = g(∆y(t2)), and so forth. this phenomenon, which is common in demographic processes, requires particularly careful observation of the process under study. for a detailed discussion see an article written by brüderl and ludwig (2015). third, some causal factors at play might be unobserved due to not being measurable or due to poor or incomplete theory. this unobserved heterogeneity with respect to confounding or mediating attributes might bias estimates of the direct causal effect of a factor xi. in order to identify the “true” impact of xi, this issue must be properly addressed. fourth, the causal mechanisms at play might not work in an additive way. in other words, the effects of causal factors xi1 and xi2 on the outcome variable y may not be independent of one another: factor xi1 might modify the effect of factor xi2 on the outcome y, i.e. ∆y=f(∆xi1|xi2), and/or vice versa. this means that xi1 and xi2 interact with or moderate (condition) each other in their functioning according to the respective mechanism. in the empirical model of estimating the effects of causal factors, such interaction effects must be considered. fifth, in social research often processes on higher levels of aggregation, such as the change in the size and structure of a population are investigated. mechanisms working on more than one process level are involved in determining such outcomes. a reductionist programme examines that process level which allows us to identify the causal mechanisms which in combination are responsible for those changes in the units at higher process levels we are interested in. for instance, the approach of methodological individualism in the social sciences demands analyses on the 3 in the end, the impact of zj also is exerted by a causal mechanism as defi ned above. the moderating force of zj is assumed to be driven by the fact that it is constant during the period of time in which the changing xi evolves its impact. however, zj can also change. in such a case, the change in zj leads to a change in the effect of xi and a different outcome y. the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 491 level of individual actors, assuming that their behaviour drives observed social dynamics on the aggregate level of a society’s population. however, it might even be necessary to study underlying inner-individual, e.g., physiological, psychological, or neurological processes which eventually cause the observed behaviour.4 modelling multi-level regression is a way of including factors from different aggregation levels simultaneously and for allowing them to interact with each other. 3 challenges of causal analysis in demography over recent decades, empirical demographic research has changed considerably. it is increasingly acknowledged that a change in the size and structure of a population is ultimately the outcome of the demographically relevant activities and events (such as household formation, fertility, and mortality) which are conducted and experienced by its members and by individuals leaving or entering the population due to migration. this means that demographic behaviour, as we can call it, can be studied as part of the individual life course. in our terms, life courses are complex processes driven by compound causal mechanisms at various process levels (bernardi et al. 2019). following a life course perspective, one can identify typical issues in empirical demographic research, in accordance with the general considerations in the previous section. first, life courses have a past and future which both matter for demographic behaviour. regarding the past, the demographic behaviour of individuals is infl uenced by life experiences in various ways. they shape personal dispositions affecting individual decision-making (aizen/klobas 2014) as well as the capabilities and opportunities of future life conduct (dannefer 1987; diprete/eirich 2006). this leads to (self-) selection issues in the analysis of life course dynamics over time (brüderl/ludwig 2015). gattig and minkus deal with one such example in this special issue, analysing the interplay of life satisfaction and marriage among cohabitating couples (gattig/minkus 2021). greater life satisfaction supports the intention to marry, and therefore married couples are the happier ones on average. regarding the future, the life course perspective considers individuals’ expectations regarding the pros and cons of future activities and life plans. the anticipation of possible outcomes plays a major role in individual reasoning on costs and benefi ts of alternative activities and respective decision making. studying the effects of anticipation is a particular challenge in causal analysis of demographic 4 choosing the proper level of analysis is a question of theory. emergent phenomena on a systems level (global attributes) as an outcome of a strong interaction between the elements of a system might be studied without going below the systems level. however, this can lead to issues in causal explanation. in physics for instance, it is relevant to know that the positive relationship between the temperature and pressure of a constant amount and volume of gas is caused by the fact that increasing temperature leads to increasing velocity of colliding gasparticles and the higher kinetic energy leads to the increase in pressure. • johannes huinink, josef brüderl492 behaviour because it is hard to measure in a valid manner (kreyenfeld 2021; hoem/ kreyenfeld 2006). a special case of self-selection into entire patterns of future life course trajectories is what huinink and feldhaus discussed as a longitudinal version of spurious correlation (huinink/feldhaus 2009: 314). early life events or experiences might cause a synchronisation or harmonisation of trajectories in different dimensions of the further life course. this means that the correspondence between events in different life domains is not (only) driven by mechanisms working in the later life course. instead, some outcomes may be predetermined by life scripts internalized by individuals early on. for example, being raised in a social environment favouring traditional gender norms may make individuals more likely to follow a comprehensive script prescribing how the work and family lives of men and women are to be combined in the future life course; e.g. with women devoting their time to the family and accordingly restricting other activities. at the same time, deviance from life scripts due to unexpected events or unforeseen obstacles to life plans might initiate adaptation and coping mechanisms regarding the new situation (heckhausen/buchmann 2019). for instance, getting married or having a child can induce changes in individual traits and attitudes which otherwise would not have occurred. attitudes regarding gender roles may traditionalise after the birth of a child based on the new household circumstances. marked changes such as these may lead to shifts in individual values in order to reduce the uncomfortable consequences of cognitive dissonances which might otherwise occur (lesthaeghe 2002; moors 2001). second, the life course is multi-dimensional. developments in different life domains or dimensions, such as education, work, family, and health, affect each other in various and usually complex ways. among others, the question of reverse causality must be emphasised. in demographic research, the relationship between educational and occupational development and family formation processes is analysed particularly intensively in this respect. another example in which reverse causality is very hard to disentangle is the interdependence between health status and family development, as well as social mobility, over the life course (hoffmann/ doblhammer 2021). third, the life course is embedded in a multi-level structure of processes. studying demographic change means analysing and revealing the consequences of individual demographic behaviour for the change of the size and structure of an overall population. conversely, individual life courses are infl uenced by their natural and social environments. these include social dyads, intimate relationships, and wider social networks, as well as socio-economic structures or cultural and institutional environments. these environmental conditions limit the variety and affect the cost-benefi t balance of options available to individuals. however, environmental conditions unfold their impact on the individual behaviour mainly through individuals’ subjective perceptions and (re-) cognition. overarching conditions take effect via the mentioned mental and emotional mechanisms, including the cognitive processes of evaluating the costs and benefi ts of an action. the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 493 this leads us to the relevance of intra-individual processes, such as the biological and social ontogenesis which is based on biological dispositions as well as on social experiences, particularly in early phases of the life course. these mental states, including values, attitudes, and convictions may stay quite stable and thereby condition individual intentions and behaviour (ajzen/klobas 2014). studying these processes is not primarily the business of demographers, but the social sciences in general should devote more attention to these fi elds of the study of human nature. 4 longitudinal analysis of causal mechanisms and the advantages of panel data studying demographic behaviour as a source of demographic change means investigating compound mechanisms. as outlined in the previous sections, the identifi cation of such causal mechanisms through empirical analysis is quite a challenge. for comprehensive treatments of the issues of causal inference in the social sciences, see morgan and winship (2015) or gangl (2010). a recent overview on methods dealing with these issues in the context of demographic research has been published by wunsch and gourbin (2020). for the case of dichotomous treatments, such as the impact of life events on the attributes of individuals, see ludwig and brüderl (2021) in this special issue. we do not go into greater detail on these topics here, but rather present some insights on how panel data analysis is useful in the pursuit of identifying causal effects in compound mechanisms. randomised experiments are considered the “gold standard” for causal analysis. in principle, experimental data provide outcome data from before and after the treatment. a group of subjects is (randomly) drawn from a population of interest. members of a randomly selected subgroup (treatment group tg) are exposed to a change in one single factor x (treatment) which theoretically should have a causal effect on an outcome variable y. y is measured before and after the treatment and ∆y(tg) is calculated. this is compared to ∆y(cg), estimated for the members of a control group (cg) which was not exposed to the change in x. an unbiased estimate of the average treatment effect is thus gained, under the assumptions that randomisation worked and that no confounding occurred. in this case, the unknown counterfactuals in the treatment group can be substituted by the observed outcomes in the control group. the ability to use an experimental design with a purposefully implemented treatment is limited in demographic research due to practical and ethical considerations. therefore, observational studies remain most common. with observational data, we must almost always deal with selective (i.e., non-random) treatment assignment and confounding. observed confounders can be conditioned on, for instance by introducing them as controls in a regression model. however, there are very often plausible arguments that important unobserved confounders may exist. in such cases, the conditioning strategy will provide biased estimates. as outlined above, longitudinal data are helpful when identifying causal mechanisms. they can be collected retrospectively, by panel surveys, or by • johannes huinink, josef brüderl494 different ways of process tracing. retrospective data are collected in a one-shot survey by collecting information on past processes or, in the case of individual life courses, past experiences, which the respondents report. if we collect (or register) information on attributes of individuals (or other units of analysis) at a sequence of time points using the same measurement instruments, we produce panel data. this approach allows the researcher to follow life course trajectories more closely and reliably. typically, retrospective data are suffi ciently valid only in the case of structural-objective information such as dates of life course events and social status indicators. meanwhile, panel surveys aim to gather subjective information such as life satisfaction and attitudes on behavioural issues and their change over time. we also more reliably observe the temporal order of events and activities over the life course properly. therefore, panel data can provide valid information on individual decision-making and behaviour over time. there are also disadvantages of panel surveys compared to retrospective data collection: retrospective surveys are less expensive and less time-consuming than panel surveys and the problem of sample attrition is less serious. panel data enables signifi cant improvements in causal analysis. in some cases, one can use so-called natural or quasi-experimental designs. in such cases, data collected by process tracing or (quasi-) panel designs allow the researcher to estimate effects of certain events, e.g. political interventions, on the outcomes of individuals who experienced the event or realised the interventions (e.g. gangl/ ziefl e 2015; hofmann et al. 2017; kreyenfeld 2021). however, non-random selection of cases into the treatment group must be examined in close detail and with indepth substantive knowledge of the treatment assignment mechanism. as a complementary approach, some authors propose simulating counterfactuals by propensity score matching. by this procedure it shall be assured that the treatment effect of x can be estimated as an average treatment effect if one accounts for the dependence of the probability of experiencing the treatment given relevant other attributes of the units of analysis (morgan/winship 2015; gangl 2010). panel data, as longitudinal data in general, can also be analysed with event history analysis methods. the outcome variable y must be discrete in this case. potential causal factors can be traced over time (time-dependent covariates) and effects on incident rates of a (later) shift in y can be estimated. to study causal mechanisms inducing (or affecting the likelihood of) the occurrence of a certain life event, a rich toolbox of methods of event history analysis has been developed (blossfeld/rohwer 2002; kleiding 2014). a major advantage of panel data is that the infl uence of non-measured timeinvariant attributes (unobserved heterogeneity), i.e. variables zj as defi ned above, can be accounted for (“differenced out”) in fi xed-effects (fe) models. meanwhile, more advanced models have been developed which have relaxed the assumption of time independence of the unobserved heterogeneity (gattig/minkus 2021). nonetheless, fe models still present many issues or potential pitfalls which must be considered, as ludwig and brüderl discuss in their contribution in this special issue (ludwig/brüderl 2021). the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 495 panel data also allow researchers to analyse how the effects of causal mechanisms evolve over time. as mentioned, the impact of a certain treatment at a certain point in time t1, i.e., ∆x(t1), on an outcome, i.e. ∆y(t2), t2>t1, in many cases will be a function of the elapsed time since t1 (ludwig/brüderl 2021). here, one can also refer to growth curve modelling, which can be understood as a type of panel analysis (brüderl et al. 2019). panel data, at least in principle, enable the analysis of processes of recursive causation in models with lagged dependent variables or multi-equation event history analysis (allison et al. 2017; leszczensky/wolbring 2019; mund/nestler 2019; lillard 1993). we mentioned the interdependence between attitudes and behaviour over the life course. however, these methods are still controversially discussed (brüderl/ ludwig 2015). finally, multi-level panel data improve the opportunity of differentiating between cohort and age effects on individual life courses and models of apc analysis (age-period-cohort analysis), which is prominently used in demographic research (ludwig/brüderl 2021; kratz/brüderl 2021). 5 introducing the contributions this special issue is divided into three parts. the fi rst part contains a methodological contribution on the analysis of panel data. in the second part, a series of four articles from central fi elds of demographic research evaluate the progress in identifying causal mechanisms of demographic behaviour through longitudinal data analysis in general and panel analysis in particular. the third part contains two examples of studies using panel data to analyse complex research questions in family demography. these seven contributions will be briefl y introduced in the following. in their methodological contribution in the fi rst part of the special issue, volker ludwig and josef brüderl (2021) discuss the case of estimating the impact of a dichotomous treatment, such as a certain life event, on outcomes in the further life course using panel data. in doing so, the authors detail the “the methodological subtleties of the approach”. even though the standard methods of panel data analysis improve the quality of estimating impact functions, violations of the required assumptions for achieving unbiased estimates are still possible in many ways. this is shown with the instructive example of estimating the effect of motherhood on life satisfaction. the authors also provide guidance for tackling these obstacles. in the fi rst article of the second part, michael feldhaus and richard preetz (2021) give an overview of the state of the art in the longitudinal analysis of the dynamics of intimate relationships. starting with a brief introduction of theoretical approaches spanning from broader macro-analytical concepts to the micro-analytical model of more proximate mechanisms of partnership-related behaviour, they discuss issues of causal analyses from a methodological point of view. in the main part of the article, the authors present recent fi ndings from the rich literature using longitudinal data analysis. they focus on the most relevant biographic transitions between partnership statuses, i.e., union formation and living apart together; cohabitation • johannes huinink, josef brüderl496 and marriage; and divorce, re-partnering and remarriage. for each of these, they select research questions which have been prominently addressed in the literature. according to their overview, following the fi rst signifi cant step of introducing event history methods, the increased use of longitudinal panel data represents a second considerable improvement in identifying causal mechanisms in demographic research. the recent studies on the effect of marriage on wellbeing are mentioned as one example in which neglecting processes of self-selection would lead to incorrect results, but which can be corrected by adequate modelling using panel data. however, the authors discuss the limited quality of collected data as a major obstacle to achieving more accurate results, which is connected with the fact that the underlying mechanisms behind an identifi ed correlation of demographic factors are often not considered directly enough. next, michaela kreyenfeld (2021) evaluates the study of causal factors for reproductive behaviour. she focusses on three important substantive topics under investigation in this fi eld of research: the important “female employment and fertility nexus”, the impact of family policy on reproductive behaviour, and the explanation of fertility intentions and their behavioural link. she proceeds by discussing the merits, advantages, and limitations of event history analysis, panel analysis (fi xed-effects models), and natural experiments in this fi eld of demographic research. here, the thoughtful considerations regarding issues of anticipation of principally uncertain consequences of fertility (“narrative of the future”) are particularly interesting. kreyenfeld then turns to the causal analysis of policy effects and presents an illustrative empirical analysis of the effects of a parental leave reform on the female employment and fertility nexus. as a major conclusion from her overview on the state of the art as well as her own empirical study, she acknowledges the progress in the causal analysis of fertility achieved through different methods of causal modelling with longitudinal data. however, kreyenfeld also recommends that these advancements cannot substitute the improved specifi cation and measurement of causal factors. she particularly and correctly suggests that anticipation must be measured in greater detail and precision. in the third article, sergi vidal and philipp lersch (2021) synthesise the advancements made in migration and spatial mobility research using longitudinal and panel data. after clarifying some terminological issues, the authors present different approaches to longitudinal data collection and modelling causal mechanisms in spatial mobility research and refer to prominent panel studies which conduct refi ned analyses of mobility behaviour. in a broad overview of recent empirical studies of spatial mobility, they show how well-suited data can signifi cantly ease disentangling the highly interdependent processes in which the internal and external migration of individuals is embedded. these studies often use a life course approach. as migration decisions are commonly made by households, a “linked lives” perspective plays a prominent role and multi-actor designs are employed. finally, another section in the article is devoted to the contextual conditions of spatial mobility and their change due to different kinds of migration. the authors show that panel designs more adequately allow for the observation, modelling, the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 497 and testing of respective causal explanations relating to “the diverse and complex patterns of mobility and immobility”. in their article, rasmus hoffmann and gabriele doblhammer (2021) address the fourth major fi eld of demographic research; mortality and morbidity. they follow an original strategy in evaluating the advancement of causal analysis in a fi eld of demographic research which is particularly challenging in this regard. after a differentiated overview on several approaches of causal modelling in the social sciences in general, they present an analysis of relevant research articles published in the leading journal “demography” since 2010.5 the authors scanned the journal for articles on morbidity and mortality in which the considered approaches of causal analysis are applied. in the articles they found fi xed effects and growth curve models (applied to panel and register data) stand out among the methods of causal modelling. furthermore, they focus on studies of the impact of retirement, socioeconomic status, and partnership and fertility on health outcomes, and present the fi ndings of these articles. in their conclusions regarding the causal analysis of health issues in demographic research, they point out that there is a particular need for interdisciplinary cooperation in studying “the multi-faceted infl uence factors”. they also recommend to better combine fi ndings on different levels of aggregation including “results from more holistic concepts”. the third part of the special issue presents two new empirical studies which in different ways show how the use of panel data, in both cases stemming from the german family panel (pairfam), can be used to obtain estimates of causal effects with respect to important research questions in family demography. alexander gattig and lara minkus (2021) investigate the potential effect of marriage on cohabiting partners’ life individual satisfaction. as mentioned, selfselection is a major issue here. this might not only be true for time-independent traits of the respondents, but also for unobserved heterogeneity changing over time. the authors consider the latter case in their feis-model, showing evidence for a brief and small increase in life satisfaction due to marriage, which can be interpreted causally based on the mechanisms presented by the authors. kristin hajek (2021) investigates the complex relationship between having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution. she examines the question of whether the effect of experiencing an abortion on union dissolution is mediated by relationship satisfaction, or whether a potential correlation between these events is spurious because relationship satisfaction works as a confounder. panel data enable her to track changes in relationship satisfaction for a certain period of time and cover if and when one of the mentioned events occurs. the results of a sequence of models show that even though – as is well-known – relationship satisfaction supports union dissolution, it neither has a mediating effect, nor is it a confounder. among others, low relationship satisfaction probably does not fuel the likelihood of an abortion. on the contrary, having an abortion might depress relationship satisfaction temporarily. 5 they also conducted such an analysis of the journal “population studies”, which is not presented in the article. • johannes huinink, josef brüderl498 6 conclusion the contributions in this special issue shed light on the advancements made in causal analysis in demography using longitudinal research designs. they contribute considerably to the knowledge about in the contemporary state of demographic research with regard to explaining core dimensions of demographic behaviour. the special issue also shows which caveats deserve further attention. we very much hope that it fi nds a broad audience in demography and the social sciences and will stimulate the discussion on methodological and substantive challenges of causal analysis. in summary, what needs to be achieved for the fi eld to advance further? we will briefl y emphasize three aspects. first, to obtain unbiased estimates of the causal effects of individual factors, a few defi ciencies and pitfalls in current modelling must be considered. a particular challenge is the design of proper models of self-referential processes and pathdependency. this is connected to the problem of estimating the effects of lagged dependent variables. following our defi nitions, one case can be that ∆y([t2,t3]) = f(y([t0,t1]), i.e., that ∆y([t2,t3]) is triggered by previous changes in y itself. one example is the mathew effect studied in life course research (dannefer 1987). another case can be distinguished, namely that ∆y([t2,t3]) = f(∆x([t2,t3] | y(t2)), i.e., that y itself modifi es the effects of a causal factor x. put simply, this means that where one stands at a certain point in time matters for where one can go next. an additional case is studied in non-linear systems dynamics, where the aggregated outcome of individuals’ behaviour infl uences the likelihood of others adopting it (diffusion) or the likelihood of avoiding it (dampening). these processes can be studied with multi-level models. second, we also need progress in the measurement and collection of data relating to simple or compound mechanisms. for instance, panel studies usually follow a certain time schedule, e.g., annual waves. however, this might not be appropriate for the mechanisms under study. often, we miss the moment of decisive change, such as an individual change in an attitude or a life event. therefore, we might observe the changing factor too late, perhaps even only after the outcome one is interested in. in psychology, methods of experience sampling have been introduced to tackle this problem. in the social sciences, such approaches are waiting to be developed in a useful and applicable way. innovative methods such as “smart surveys” – are another promising instrument for improving the collection of timedependent information (toepoel et al. 2020). third, with respect to substantive aspects of demographic research, we see a need for an intensifi cation of interdisciplinary research. this is a must if one acknowledges the multi-dimensionality and multi-level structure of the compound mechanisms this research deals with. whatever advancements will be made methodically, without the study of these processes and the explanation of demographic behaviour as the driver of demographic change, demographic research will always remain incomplete. this is particularly true when we investigate processes of reverse the identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research • 499 causality. the research on morbidity as discussed in the contribution of hoffmann and doblhammer (2021) is an impressive example. for instance, interdisciplinary research on fertility has found that genetic issues, which are rarely studied in demography, can help to explain heterogeneity in the reproductive behaviour of individuals (kohler et al. 2004; mills/tropf 2020). for the case of migration research, geography and climate play an important role and will become even more relevant as the climate change proceeds. scanning the demographic literature and research activities in prominent institutions of demographic research, we realise that demographic research is well on its way in this regard – maybe even more so than other social sciences. acknowledgements finally, we would like to warmly thank our colleagues who contributed to this special issue for their professional work and great engagement. we also thank the reviewers for their support, thoughtful comments, and recommendations. and last but not least, we thank the cpos editorial team at the bib for the professional support and pleasant cooperation. references ajzen, icek; klobas, jane 2014: 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johannes huinink (). university of bremen, socium – research center on inequality and social policy. bremen, germany. e-mail: huinink@uni-bremen.de url: https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/ueber-das-socium/mitglieder/johanneshuinink/ prof. dr. josef brüderl. university of munich, department of sociology. munich, germany. e-mail: bruederl@lmu.de url: https://www.ls3.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professor/bruederl_josef/ index.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 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feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder abstract: we analyse roma fertility in four neighbouring countries in central and eastern europe with a large roma minority: in hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia. the sources of data are the respective national population censuses from 2011. fertility is measured at the birth cohort level as the average number of children ever born. we make an international comparison of the fertility of roma and nonroma majority population women on the basis of completed education. in the case of hungary, we also explore how the correlation between fertility and ethnic identity is modifi ed when completed education and ethnic residential segregation are controlled. the fertility of roma women is far above the majority population average in all birth cohorts and in each country. educational attainment modifi es this relationship. the fertility of highly educated roma and majority population women is converging. the exposure to majority behaviour also has an effect. the lower the level of ethnic residential segregation, the smaller the difference between the fertility of roma and majority population women. completed education and residential segregation may exert different forces at the two ends of the educational hierarchy when their joint effect is explored. at the upper end of the social hierarchy, neither segregation nor ethnicity matters; at the lower end, however, both exposure to ethnic majority behaviour and ethnicity matter. keywords: roma · fertility · education · residential segregation 1 introduction the total fertility rate of central and eastern european (cee) countries is below the replacement level (eurostat 2018). however, there are some demographic groups within these countries with fertility rates around or above the replacement level, such as the roma population. previous analyses from the 1990s (haug et al. 1998, 2000) which measured the fertility of the minorities in european countries highlighted the high fertility of the roma population in cee countries (kalibova 2000). one of our own previous calculations from the 2010s indicated that, while the cohort fertility of comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 387-424 (date of release: 13.10.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-14en1 • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder388 different national minorities living in hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia did not differ signifi cantly from that of their respective majority populations, that of roma women1 did (szabó et al. 2017). there is broad consensus among professionals from cce countries about the higher fertility of the roma minority population, at least as compared to the majority population (kemény/janky 2003; hablicsek 2007; vaňo 2002; šprocha 2017). however, the fi gures describing the fertility of roma women are often merely estimates (hablicsek 2007; vaňo 2002). these estimates are frequently criticised, either due to limitations regarding the identifi cation of the roma population (“who is roma?”, kalibova 2000; durst 2006; ladányi/szelényi 2001) or because of over-generalization of the results of small-scale anthropological or ethnographic studies carried out in geographically delimited areas. moreover, some of them are inaccessible to an international audience, since papers are often written in less widely understood national languages (havas et al. 1998; berevoescu et al. 2002; zamfi r/preda 2002; kemény/janky 2003; hablicsek 2007; husz 2011; šprocha 2017; šprocha/ďurček 2017; obádovics et al. 2019). our work is based on the assumption that population census data are one of the most suitable sources for analysing fertility by ethnicity across central and eastern europe (cee). our paper contributes to the existing literature by 1) publishing more recent fi gures on roma fertility in a comparative manner from four countries of cee with a large roma minority, from which the relevant statistics were available: hungary, romania, serbia and slovakia, 2) using broader population data (quasi full censuses), and 3) exploring the roma / non-roma fertility gap by birth cohort, level of education and level of ethnic residential segregation. comparing roma and non-roma fertility within their different subgroups is an interesting endeavour, as roma have been settled in cee countries for a century in a relatively homogenous economic and social environment, yet still have higher fertility rates than those of the majority societies. thus, the question arises as to the reasons behind this fertility gap between the roma minority and non-roma majority population. while it is common in fertility research to interpret the development of fertility in international comparison (as this allows for better exploration of general and specifi c trends), this is not the case regarding the roma population. to our best knowledge, only kalibova (2000) has compared the fertility of roma women living in cee coutries as well as other balkan countries to date, but she also only looked at the period of 1991-1994 (i.e., not based on the latest census data, as our study is), and did not compare different socio-demographic subgroups of roma women. previous research has established (for an overview, see balbo et al. 2013), that fertility is differentiated by a number of factors, one of them being the educational level of women (jalovaara et al. 2019). as ethnicity is also a determining factor (kulu et al. 2019), the question arises as to whether a social determinant such as 1 the 2011 population census from hungary, slovakia, serbia and romania classifi es the roma either as a national or an ethnic minority. we use both terms throughout the paper. although practically all members of the roma people call themselves gypsies, at least in hungary, in this paper, we use the more politically correct terminology of "roma". fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 389 education level infl uences the fertility of the ethnic majority and the roma minority to the same degree. according to previous research, childbearing is driven not only by structural factors, but also by the subculture of the different groups (forste/tienda 1996; durst 2011; kulu et al. 2019). therefore, in this paper, we explore how the relationship between fertility and ethnicity varies at different levels of ethnic residential segregation within neighbourhoods in the case of hungary. the level of segregation is used as a proxy for subcultural infl uences. moreover, the results of the joint examination of completed education and ethnic residential segregation may contribute to the discussion on the role of “structure” and “culture” in the fertility of roma minority populations.2 our results confi rmed that the distinct fertility pattern of roma – namely, early and high fertility – is very similar in the four selected countries. on the other hand, they also highlighted how certain groups among the roma women have different fertility patterns. the higher the educational attainment of roma women, the lower their fertility. and the less segregated they live, the lower their fertility. in addition, the fertility gap between the roma and the majority population from the selected countries narrows as the level of education increases. joint examination of the level of education and ethnic residential segregation in hungary, however, indicated a divergence in cohort fertility only between roma women with a medium level of education and non-roma majority population women with a medium level of education, as the level of residential segregation increased. thus, we concluded that these two factors may exert different forces at the two ends of the educational hierarchy. among highly-educated roma and non-roma women, there is no fertility gap at any level of segregation, while less-educated non-roma women exhibit increasingly minority-like high fertility when living in neighbourhoods with a high proportion of roma. we proceed as follows in the paper. the second section provides an overview of theoretical assumptions about majority-minority fertility differences. we present a short overview of the situation of roma in cee countries in section three, followed by a description of previous study results on roma fertility. section four introduces the data and methodology and presents the measures and indexes we use in our analyses. section fi ve contains the results: the cohort fertility differences by ethnicity, educational level and country; and, in hungary, by ethnicity, educational 2 however, see the opinion of small et al. (2010: 3): ”[the new generation of scholars] is often reluctant to divide explanations into “structural” and “cultural,” because of the increasingly questionable utility of this old distinction. […] part of the problem is that, in sociology, the term “structure” has been defi ned in several different ways. […] when applying the structure-culture distinction in its simplest and most straightforward form, scholars argue that the behaviour of the poor results not from their values (culture) but from their lack of fi nancial resources (structure), whether this deprivation is individual (as in the case of material hardship) or collective (as in the case of under-funded schools or organizationally isolated neighbourhoods).” small et al. (2010: 3) argue that “ideas such as “ethnic cultures” or “ghetto culture” lack much explanatory power.” however, they agree that “the substantial variation in responses to similar fi nancial constraints (whether individual or collective constraints) makes clear that such material constraints cannot explain everything.” • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder390 level and ethnic residential segregation level. we discuss our results in section six, and end the paper with the conclusion in section seven, including notes on our contribution, and limitations of the study. 2 theoretical approaches to the fertility of minorities the assumptions regarding the differences in the fertility of majority and minority populations basically follow three directions of thinking. these theoretical perspectives are not mutually exclusive, however. social characteristics assumption the earlier research on minorities’ fertility focused on differences between groups based on social characteristics. this avenue of thinking has a long tradition in the united states, as the fertility of people belonging to different ethnic groups and minorities (black, irish, american japanese, jewish) has been distinct from that of the majority population for a long time (goldscheider/uhlenberg 1969; sly 1970; kennedy 1973). in this approach, researchers assume that differences in fertility of majority and minority populations depend on the social characteristics of individuals, such as educational or income level. if all groups had the same social characteristics, there would be no differences in their fertility. this assumption adopts the perspective of modernization/long-term assimilation: a minority will converge with the majority population, but the pace of convergence depends on the social characteristics of given minority members (dubuc 2017; martin 2020; kulu et al. 2019). highly educated people will be the fi rst to adapt their fertility to that of the majority behaviour (johnson 1979). however, johnson (1979) has made a noticeable distinction between the “strong form” and “weak form” of the characteristics hypothesis when analysing the differences in black and white populations’ fertility in the usa in the 1970s. in his view (1979: 1388), the “weak form” of the characteristics hypothesis predicts that in the initial stage of sociodemographic transition, there would be higher black than white fertility among the less well educated, with no racially based difference among the highly educated. the “strong form” of the characteristics hypothesis predicts no black-white differences at any educational attainment level. here, we should note that empirical studies yielded rather contradictory results regarding the social characteristics hypothesis (anderson et al. 2018; shain 2019; wilson 2019, 2020; šprocha/tišliar 2019). minority group status assumption when goldscheider/uhlenberg (1969) analysed the 1960 us census data, they found that educated (non-white) minorities had lower fertility than educated majority women, based on which they formulated the so-called minority group status hypothesis. this states that belonging to a minority has its own effect on fertility – either in a positive or in a negative way, depending on the perceived possibilities of upward social mobility. members of a minority group experience discrimination, marginality and greater barriers to social mobility; accordingly, the fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 391 prerequisite for them to acquire higher social status or successful mobility is the investment of resources, and holding back their fertility (kulu et al. 2019; wilson 2019, 2020; martin 2020). however, in circumstances of deprivation and territorial, educational and occupational segregation, where there is very limited scope for mobility among minority people, fertility may be high; this is because minorities may expect that having children will improve their social and economic prospects, or will provide insurance against potential discrimination (see the “critical mass” argument goldscheider 2006; or the “weapon of womb” argument bezin et al. 2018; chabé-ferret/ghidichabé-ferret/ghidi 2013 2013). these lines of argument are in accordance with johnson’s distinction (1979: 1389), who also distinguished the minority-status hypothesis of “strong” and “weak” forms. according to him, the “strong form” of this hypothesis predicts differences between blacks and whites at every level of education: higher black than white fertility in case of the lower educated, and lower black than white fertility among the highly educated. the “weak form” of the minority-status hypothesis states that there is no difference between groups in terms of fertility at lower levels of education, but we can see lower black than white fertility at higher levels of education. subcultural assumption the minority position itself may also infl uence fertility through effects of the minority-majority relationship. social mixing, and encountering different cultural and social norms seems conducive to rapid behavioural change as well (battaglia et al. 2021; gamella 2018). the cultural and psychological change that takes place as the result of contact between different groups and their individual members may also be related to the process of acculturation (schwartz et al. 2010). although socio-economic characteristics may explain a certain variance in fertility among majority and minority populations, signifi cant differences remain after controlling for them (andorka 1987; kulu et al. 2019; wilson 2019, 2020; forste/tienda 1996; wilson/kuha 2018; šprocha/tišliar 2019). the cultural explanations suggest that behavioural differences between majority and minority populations not only rest on socio-economic characteristics, but also derive from diverging values, norms, habits, frames or repertoires, favouring particular family-formation and reproductive patterns. individuals’ behaviour is infl uenced by the normative environment of their proximate neighbourhood or community. following the arguments of wilson/kuha (2018) we can measure the degree of exposure to this normative environment by measuring the (ethnic) composition of these neighbourhoods. thus, the ethnic composition of a residential location can be seen as a measure of the exposure of individuals to the cultural norms of their community (forste/tienda 1996; wilson/kuha 2018). on the other hand, however, “culture” (that could be measured in different ways, see small et al. 2010) may also exert an infl uence on fertility via proximate determinants of fertility through sexual behaviour, contraceptive use, partnership formation, marital patterns. wilson/kuha (2018), testing the childhood socialization hypothesis, demonstrate, for example, that migrants who come to a country as children and • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder392 are exposed to the cultural norms of the host society early on are less likely to have completed fertility that differs signifi cantly from that of the native-born population. at the end of the theoretical overview, we should stress that our analysis is not able to statistically test the three concepts mentioned above, since the census data only cover a limited number of factors. moreover, cross-sectional data are very limited in their ability to reveal causal relations. however, the two factors we trace beyond ethnicity – level of education and degree of ethnic residential segregation – are powerful elements in understanding fertility. the level of education is a key socio-economic characteristic that strongly determines labour market success and material well-being (although, here, we should note the endogeneity problem between education and fertility). the share of roma within a neighbourhood could provide an accurate refl ection of the exposure to a normative environment, and therefore act as a proxy for subcultural contextual infl uences. all in all, our fi ndings on the joint impact of these two factors and our comparison of the four countries may provide partial evidence for and against the approaches presented above. 3 review of roma fertility: summary of previous results 3.1 roma population in cee countries the roma are europe’s largest minority, with an estimated 10-12 million people (european union agency for fundamental rights – fra/undp 2012). some of the groups of roma settled in cee countries more than 600 years ago. however, they only started to be recognised as ethnic or national minorities by governments (in cee countries) after the fall of communism in most cases. under socialist and communist dictatorships, governments made no effort to enforce human, minority or child rights considerations regarding the roma. around that time, the goal of the governments was to eliminate the roma as nationalities and as groups with distinct ways of life, which led to their forced settlement, employment and education. however, after the regime change in the 1990s, european union (eu) institutions, the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef) and the united nations development programme (undp), as well as international human rights foundations (open society foundation, european roma rights centre, roma education fund) tried to introduce hitherto untried schemes in this area. roma integration was explicitly included in the europe 2020 growth strategy framework and there is now evidently political commitment from eu member states to improve the situation of roma (european commission – ec 2011). in order to fulfi l these expectations, robust data and valuable evidence were needed by the ec (in addition to national population censuses). therefore, a joint research project was initiated by the fra, the undp, the world bank and the european commission in 2011, called the roma survey. the survey report came to the following conclusion: “roma […] are victims of racism, discrimination and social exclusion. of those surveyed in this report, one in three is unemployed, 20 percent are not covered by health insurance, and 90 percent are living below the poverty [line]. many face prejudice, intolerance, fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 393 discrimination and social exclusion in their daily lives. they are marginalised and mostly live in extremely poor socio-economic conditions” (fra/undp 2012: 5).3 these facts characterise the situation of roma in the four selected countries in our analyses, too (fra/undp 2012; fra/undp 2018). majorities in most countries would not be willing to accept roma in their family: this was the view of 65 percent in romania, 54 percent in hungary, and 49 percent in serbia in 2016 (pew research center 2017). in terms of their demographic composition, cee countries’ populations are characterised by an increasing proportion of elderly people and a decline in the number of children, while the roma communities are characterised by a high proportion of children and a low proportion of elderly people. these trends can be detected in hungary, romania, slovakia and serbia (table 1). the most striking fact, however, is that the overwhelming majority of the roma population is less tab. 1: the sex and age structures of the roma and majority populations 0-14 years old 15-49 years old 50-64 years old 65+ years old total male female male female male female male female male female in % (100%) (100%) majority population hungary 15.3 13.0 49.6 43.6 21.1 21.9 14.0 21.6 3,875,571 4,352,728 romania 15.3 13.7 50.2 45.4 20.4 21.3 14.1 19.6 8,172,326 8,620,542 slovakia 15.7 14.0 54.5 49.9 19.9 20.7 9.9 15.4 2,102,887 2,249,888 serbia 14.4 13.0 47.2 43.9 23.0 23.3 15.4 19.7 2,918,647 3,069,503 roma population hungary 33.3 32.2 54.6 54.4 10.2 10.4 1.9 2.9 156,094 152,863 romania 33.9 33.3 53.1 51.2 10.0 10.8 3.0 4.7 316,055 305,518 slovakia 39.7 39.1 50.2 49.6 8.4 8.7 1.7 2.5 53,721 52,017 serbia 32.2 32.1 51.2 50.0 13.1 13.4 3.4 4.6 75,042 72,562 full population data. observations: slovakia – data regarding the age of 677 slovak people and 38 roma people are missing. hungary: roma are those who choose to state roma as their fi rst or second nationality. source: national population censuses 2011, from hungary, romania, slovakia and serbia. 3 the survey covered 11 european union countries and six non-eu countries from the western balkans and moldova. however, we should keep in mind that the fra/undp/world bank/ec 2011 roma survey results are representative only of roma living in areas with a higher-thannational average density, i.e., of roma who are more at risk of exclusion. thus, the results are not representative of the entire roma population living in the target countries. however, they provide suffi ciently robust data to set the targets for roma integration (fra/undp 2012). • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder394 well-educated (see also appendix tab. a1), while the share of the highly educated is merely around 1 percent. 3.2 roma fertility compared to that of society as a whole estimates of roma fertility in cee countries are based either on census or on survey data. to our knowledge, only kalibova (2000) provided comparative evidence of differences in roma fertility in bulgaria, czech republic, hungary, romania, slovakia, slovenia and the former yugoslav republic of macedonia, using national censuses from 1990 to 1994. she found that roma fertility was approximately double that of the overall population in the period studied. besides this comparative analysis there are several individual country-results regarding roma fertility. according to large-scale survey research led by istván kemény in 1971, 1993 and 2003 in hungary, the total fertility rate (tfr) of the roma was around 3.0 in 1999–2002, while hungary’s overall tfr was 1.3. (however, the roma population was identifi ed not by self-declaration but by the neighbourhood community in these surveys kemény/janky 2003). using census data, hablicsek (2007: 12) estimated an average number of 2.91 children for roma for the year 2001 in hungary. durst (2006) conducted a small-scale anthropological case study in a roma-majority village in hungary in 2000-2004 and found that the crude fertility rate of roma was 34.8 ‰, three and a half times that of the total population (9.7 ‰; durst 2006: 54). the roma and non-roma differences in fertility were not only documented in hungary, but also in the neighbouring countries. šprocha (2017), based on 2011 census data, found that the cohort fertility of roma women born in the second half of the 1960s is around 3.5, while among non-roma it is 2.1 in slovakia. sobotka et al. (2008) analysing the undp/ilo 2001 survey data shows that, in most age categories, the mean number of children born to roma women in the czech republic exceeds that of the number of children born to all women by a factor of 2 or more; roma women born before 1952 had 5.3 children on average, compared to 2.1 of the total population. for bulgaria, koytcheva/philipov (2008) estimated from the 2001 census data that the tfr for the year 2000 was 1.1 for the bulgarian ethnic majority and 3.0 for roma women. 3.3 fertility differences within the roma population studies devoted to understanding the population dynamics of the roma minority highlight differences within the community. these differences are either due to social-geographic factors (such as type of settlement or degree of segregation) or to structural features. social-geographic differences and segregation representative studies in hungary fi nd territorial differences within the roma population. a survey in hungary from 2001, comparing territories with aboveaverage roma population from the northeast and southwest parts of the country, fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 395 ta b . 2 : r o m a fe rt ili ty c o m p ar ed t o t ha t o f s o ci et y as a w ho le s o u rc e r ef er en ce p er io d c o u n tr y m et h o d fe rt ili ty , e th n ic m aj o ri ty fe rt ili ty , r o m a w o m en w o m en k al ib o va 19 90 -1 99 4 b u lg ar ia , c en su s, s el fc ru d e b ir th r at e, ‰ (2 00 0: 1 87 -1 89 ) c ze ch r ep u b lic , d ec la ra ti o n h u n g ar y, b u lg ar ia 11 .0 25 .0 r o m an ia , c ze ch r ep u b lic 13 .0 25 .1 s lo va ki a, h u n g ar y 12 .0 28 .0 s lo ve n ia , m ac ed o n ia 15 .1 22 .0 th e fo rm er y u g o sl av r o m an ia 14 .5 31 .0 r ep u b lic o f m ac ed o n ia s lo va ki a 15 .0 31 .0 s lo ve n ia 12 .0 29 .0 k em én y/ ja n ky 19 99 -2 00 2 h u n g ar y s u rv ey , t fr 19 99 -2 00 2: 1 .3 t fr 19 99 -2 00 2: 3 .0 (2 00 3) n ei g h b o u rs ’ id en ti fi ca ti o n h ab lic se k 20 01 h u n g ar y c en su s, s el fa ve ra g e n u m b er o f a ve ra g e n u m b er o f (2 00 7: 1 2) d ec la ra ti o n ch ild re n: 1 .3 ch ild re n: 2 .9 d u rs t 19 99 -2 00 4 h u n g ar y a n th ro p o lo g ic al fe rt ili ty r at e (h u n g ar y) : fe rt ili ty r at e (“ lá p o s” ): (2 00 6: 5 4, 9 2) st u d y, s el f9. 7‰ 34 .8 ‰ d ec la ra ti o n t fr 19 99 -2 00 2 (h u n g ar y) : 1. 3 t fr 19 99 -2 00 2 (“ lá p o s” ): 5 .7 š p ro ch a 20 11 s lo va ki a c en su s, s el fc o h o rt f er ti lit y, c 19 65 : 2. 1 c o h o rt f er ti lit y, (2 01 7: 1 22 ) d ec la ra ti o n c1 96 5: 3 .5 p o ta n čo ko vá e t a l. 20 02 s lo va ki a vi ta l s ta ti st ic s t fr 20 02 : 1. 19 t fr 20 02 : 3. 1 (2 00 8: 9 90 ) • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder396 s o ur ce : ka lib ov a (2 00 0: 1 87 , 1 89 ) d at a ar e re d f ro m f ig ur e 9, b ut s ee a ls o f ig ur e 11 ; d ur st ( 20 06 : 54 , 9 2) : an th ro p o lo gi ca l s ur ve y in th re e p re d o m in an tly r o m a se tt le m en ts fr o m n o rt hh un ga ry (“ lá p o s” , “ b o rd ó ”, “ pa ló ca ”) . o w n d es ig n. ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n s o u rc e r ef er en ce p er io d c o u n tr y m et h o d fe rt ili ty , e th n ic m aj o ri ty fe rt ili ty , r o m a w o m en w o m en s o b o tk a et a l. 20 01 c ze ch r ep u b lic u n d p/ il o 2 00 1 c o h o rt f er ti lit y, c o h o rt b o rn c o h o rt f er ti lit y, (2 00 8: 4 25 ) su rv ey d at a, s el fb ef o re 1 95 2: 2 .1 co h o rt b o rn id en ti fi ca ti o n b ef o re 1 95 2: 5 .3 k o yt ch ev a/ p h ili p o v 20 01 b u lg ar ia c en su s, s el ft fr 20 00 : 1. 1 t fr 20 00 : 3. 0 (2 00 8: 3 73 ) d ec la ra ti o n fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 397 found a tfr of 2.6 and 2.1, respectively (husz 2011: 13). another small-scale hungarian ethnographic study, focusing on two neighbouring settlements, stresses the importance of segregation: whereas in a predominantly roma settlement (“lápos”), the fertility among segregated roma women born in 1951-1969 was 5.8, among the “assimilated” roma women of the same age it was 2.9 (durst 2006: 85); and in a neighbouring settlement (“bordó”) where roma had been well-integrated for decades, fertility was clearly lower: 3.00 (durst 2006: 171). similar territorial differences from neighbouring countries have been reported by others too. they found signifi cant differences in cohort fertility among roma women living in urban and rural areas in slovakia, as well as in smaller and larger municipalities (šprocha/ďurček 2017: 111). the fertility of the roma population differs based on the level of integration, too. in 2002, the overall tfr in the slovak republic was 1.19, while it was 3.1 for the total roma population; but the tfr of integrated roma was 1.3, 3.0 for the partially integrated roma, and 4.6 for segregated roma (potančoková et al. 2008: 990). fertility also depends on the concentration of roma in a given neighbourhood. battaglia et al. (2021: 244) found that in neighbourhoods with a small number of roma, there are 2.7 children per household; in neighbourhoods that consist of mostly roma, the fi gure is 3.2; while in totally roma-populated neighbourhoods it is 3.6. structural factors explanations of the relationship between fertility and level of segregation often point to factors such as low economic activity, high non-employment and below-average education of women. durst’s (2006: 32) research in hungary demonstrated that the fertility difference between roma and non-roma women depends largely on whether or not they have completed primary education (i.e., eight classes of schooling). if they have not, the mean number of children is 3.66 for roma and 2.65 for non-roma women. considering those who have completed at least primary education, both roma and non-roma have the same average number of children (2.21). according to our earlier calculation, roma women with lower levels of education (completed primary schooling or less) had a tfr of 2.79 in 2010, those with vocational education or above had a tfr of 1.79, which is below the replacement level (obádovics et al. 2019). the corresponding tfr fi gures for all women living in hungary were 1.81 and 1.21, respectively (obádovics et al. 2019). although a case study by preda (2010) of southern romania reports on territorial inequalities within the roma population, the description of the communities is based on the structural position (dominant occupation) of the roma. she found communities from southern romania – from the woodworker, brick-maker and beartamer clans – to have very high fertility rates (more than four children per family). all these clans were very poor, had low levels of education, were living off social welfare, and had bleak future prospects. there were other roma communities with a moderate fertility rate (2-3 children per family) – including members of the coppersmith, woodworker, bear-tamer, brick-maker and silversmith clans – who lived in an urban environment, had slightly higher levels of education than • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder398 ta b . 3 : fe rt ili ty d if fe re n ce s w it hi n th e r o m a p o p ul at io n s o u rc e r ef er en ce p er io d c o u n tr y m et h o d fe rt ili ty , e th n ic m aj o ri ty fe rt ili ty , r o m a w o m en w o m en h u sz 20 01 h u n g ar y s u rv ey a ve ra g e n u m b er o f c h ild re n: (2 01 1: 1 3) n o rt h ea st h u : 1. 7 n o rt h ea st h u : 2. 6 so u th w es t h u : 1. 8 so u th w es t h u : 2. 1 d u rs t 20 00 -2 00 4 h u n g ar y a n th ro p o lo g ic al a ve ra g e n u m b er o f c h ild re n, w o m en b o rn in 1 95 119 69 : (2 00 6: 8 6) st u d y, n o n -r o m a: 2 .4 se g re g at ed r o m a: 5 .8 se lfd ec la ra ti o n as si m ila te d r o m a: 2 .9 š p ro ch a/ ď u rč ek 20 11 s lo va ki a c en su s, a ve ra g e n u m b er o f c h ild re n, 4 5 -4 9 ye ar s w o m en : (2 01 7: 1 11 ) se lfd ec la ra ti o n c it ie s: 3 .4 4 r u ra l v ill ag es : 3. 82 w es te rn s k : 2. 65 c en tr al s k : 3. 12 e as te rn s k : 4. 03 p o ta n čo ko vá e t a l. 20 02 s lo va k r ep u b lic v it al s ta ti st ic s t fr 20 02 in te g ra te d r o m a: 1 .3 (2 00 8: 9 90 ) p ar ti al ly in te g ra te d: 3 .0 se g re g at ed r o m a: 4 .6 b at ta g lia /c h ab éfe rr et / 20 10 s er b ia , s u rv ey / c h ild re n p er h o u se h o ld ; se tt le m en ts w it h: le b ed in sk i b el g ra d e sc h o o l d at a fe w r o m a: 2 .8 ; (2 02 1: 2 4 4) m o st ly r o m a: 3 .2 ; o n ly r o m a: 3 .6 d u rs t 19 99 -2 00 0 h u n g ar y s u rv ey , a ve ra g e n u m b er o f c h ild re n, w o m en a g ed 3 5 ye ar s+ , (2 00 6: 3 2) se lfd ec la ra ti o n w o m en ’s e d u ca ti o n: b el o w p ri m ar y: 2 .6 5 b el o w p ri m ar y: 3 .6 6 p ri m ar y + : 2. 21 p ri m ar y + : 2. 21 fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 399 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n s o u rc e r ef er en ce p er io d c o u n tr y m et h o d fe rt ili ty , e th n ic m aj o ri ty fe rt ili ty , r o m a w o m en w o m en o b ád o vi cs e t a l. 20 11 h u n g ar y c en su s, t fr 20 10 (2 01 9: 2 0) se lfd ec la ra ti o n b el o w p ri m ar y: 1 .8 1 b el o w p ri m ar y: 2 .7 9 vo ca ti o n al + : 1. 21 vo ca ti o n al + : 1. 79 p re d a 20 02 so u th er n r o m an ia , c en su s, n u m b er o f c h ild re n /f am ili es , a m o n g r o m a cl an s: (2 01 0: 1 07 -1 10 ) o lt en ia se lfd ec la ra ti o n fo u r se tt le m en ts , w it h w o o d w o rk er , b ri ck -m ak er a n d b ea rta m er c la n s, w it h ve ry h ig h fe rt ili ty : 4+ c h ild re n; se ve n te en s et tl em en ts , w it h w ea lt h ie r co p p er sm it h, a n d tr ad it io n al w o o d w o rk er , b ea rta m er , b ri ck -m ak er , si lv er sm it h cl an s w it h h ig h fe rt ili ty : 3. 14 ch ild re n; fo u rt ee n se tt le m en ts in u rb an e nv ir o n m en t, w it h m o d er at e fe rt ili ty : 2. 13 ch ild re n s o ur ce : d ur st ( 20 06 : 86 ): a nt hr o p o lo gi ca l su rv ey i n th re e (m ai nl y in “ lá p o s” , n= 45 0; a nd t w o o th er s m al l vi lla ge s) p re d o m in an tly r o m a se tt le m en ts f ro m n o rt hh un ga ry . d ur st ( 20 06 : 32 ): s ur ve y o f “p ov er ty e th ni ci ty , ge nd er ”, d ir ec te d b y iv an s ze lé ny i in 1 99 920 00 , ha d a s am p le s iz e o f 60 3 in h un ga ry , an d e m p lo ye d b o th s el fid en tifi c at io n an d in te rv ie w er -id en tifi c at io n fo r r o m a. o w n d es ig n. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder400 their counterparts in rural areas, and who had a number of income-generating opportunities available to them due to their residence in an urban setting. 4 data and methods census data our analysis is based on national population census data from four selected countries, from 2011: hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia (appendix tab. a1). the individual-level database was available for us in the case of hungary, while we acquired tabulated data by women’s nationality, birth cohort and completed education in the case of slovakia, romania and serbia. in three countries – hungary, slovakia and serbia – calculations were based on the full population data; in the case of romania, calculations were based on the 10 percent ipums sample (ipums 2018). as far as we can assess, the romanian ipums sample is representative in terms of cohort, ethnicity and education.4 shortcomings of the census data are not discussed here (see kalibova 2000; durst 2011; kushen 2015), however, we should note that 8.6 percent of women aged 30-59 in slovakia did not answer the question on their number of children, rising to 12.1 percent for roma women of the same age (appendix tab. a5). identifying the roma: theoretical approaches and technical problems two ways of defi ning the roma population exist in the literature. some approaches are based on declared identity (self-identifi cation); others rely on outsiders’ identifi cation (external classifi cation).5 the 2011 national population censuses from hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia applied the self-identifi cation method. we should mention here that the number of self-identifi ed ethnic roma is always around two or three times lower than the number estimated by experts (nestorová dická 2021; pénzes et al. 2018; kemény/janky 2003). but whereas the citizens had to identify a single nationality/ethnicity for themselves in slovakia, romania and serbia, they were able to choose a second one as well in hungary (appendix tab. a2). 4 ipums-international data from romania, 2011 is a systematic unweighted sample with no geographic clustering, but household clustering. for such samples, there is limited potential for underestimated variance which might lead to invalid statistical inferences. the only concern in these instances is clustering by household, but our research focuses on a particular subpopulation (women aged 30-59) that rarely cluster within households, as households typically have one such woman (ipums 2019a/b). 5 without going into too much detail, we should note that in hungary, around the turn of the millennium, there was fi erce debate over questions such as who qualifi es as roma, how to identify roma people, and whether ethnic or national categories may be defi ned objectively on the basis of origin (durst 2011; ladányi/szelényi 2001; havas et al. 1998). the self-declared nationality defi nition is distorted by the fact that the identifi cation not only depends on the respondent’s identity, but also on the historical and political context and on perceived discrimination. furthermore, contextual factors are also present when an interviewer identifi es someone as roma, while other circumstances distort the identifi cation of roma when “labelled” by outsiders. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 401 however, we only use the primary identifi cation for hungary when we compare the data from all four countries. the countries also used different data collection techniques when inquiring about nationality/ethnicity: whereas in slovakia it was compulsory, in hungary, romania and serbia it was not. the fi gures for missing data on the nationality/ ethnicity questions are 3.5 percent in serbia, 6.2 percent in romania, 7.1 percent in slovakia and 14.7 percent in hungary (appendix tab. a1). fertility measures we analyse the average number of children ever born to women within specifi c birth cohorts. this information is based on information provided by women. birth cohort and age to overcome selectivity, based on the low life expectancy of the roma population (obádovics et al. 2019: 30) we limit our analysis to women born between 1952 and 1981 (i.e. aged 30-59 in 2011). in line with the usual age categories, we grouped the women into six birth cohorts: 1952-1956; 1957-1961; 1962-1966; 1967-1971; 19721976; 1977-1981. women born between 1952 and 1971 have (almost) completed fertility, since it is rare to give birth above the age of 40 (frejka/sardon 2003). the two youngest birth cohorts of women born between 1972 and 1981, aged 30-39, are far from having completed fertility. however, it is worth including them in our analysis, as it makes it possible to detect differences between roma and non-roma fertility within the youngest cohorts. level of education the completed education of women was measured at the time of the census. three main groups were distinguished: “primary”, corresponding to lower secondary education or less (isced 1997, 0-2); “secondary”, corresponding to higher secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education (isced 1997, 3-4); and “tertiary” – university/college education (isced 1997, 5-6). the educational attainment of women is considered to be an exogenous variable in this analysis and is used as an indicator measuring the socio-economic position of respondents. residential segregation – exposure to majority context the hungarian census data contains several sub-settlement-level territorial variables. these are the geographical grid, the census (residential) blocks, cityor settlement districts, and voting districts. the census (residential) blocks are built-up areas enclosed by streets or natural boundaries. these territorial units were the smallest territorial building blocks of the 2011 census.6 the share of the roma population is measured within these smallest territorial units, and thus can be considered as the share of roma people within their proximate neighbourhood. this index is grouped 6 hcso (downloaded at 12.03.2021): regional atlas – below-settlement-level statistics. http:// www.ksh.hu/regionalatlas_other_territorial_delimitations?lang=en • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder402 into four categories: residential blocks with a roma proportion between 0 and 5 percent; 5-20 percent; 20-40 percent, and more than 40 percent. we use this measure of segregation, as the census residential blocks cover neighbourhoods of those who reside in close proximity to a focal individual (rather than residing only within some administrative boundary) to avoid the modifi able areal unit problem (musterd 2005); i.e. of using administrative or statistical areas to measure the level of segregation by taking a single-scalar approach. 5 results 5.1 the difference between the fertility of the roma and the ethnicmajority population the fertility trends of post-communist countries before and after the fall of communism are well known and well documented (sobotka 2011). as we know, slovakia and romania had relatively high fertility during the socialist era; but following the transition, a decrease in fertility rates characterised all four countries fig. 1: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort and ethnicity in selected countries, 2011 source: own calculation based on 2011 national population censuses from hungary, romania, slovakia and serbia. full population data. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 19 52 –1 95 6 19 57 –1 96 1 19 62 –1 96 6 19 67 –1 97 1 19 72 –1 97 6 19 77 –1 98 1 19 52 –1 95 6 19 57 –1 96 1 19 62 –1 96 6 19 67 –1 97 1 19 72 –1 97 6 19 77 –1 98 1 19 52 –1 95 6 19 57 –1 96 1 19 62 –1 96 6 19 67 –1 97 1 19 72 –1 97 6 19 77 –1 98 1 19 52 –1 95 6 19 57 –1 96 1 19 62 –1 96 6 19 67 –1 97 1 19 72 –1 97 6 19 77 –1 98 1 birth cohort hungarian romanian slovak serb roma average number of children hungary romania slovakia serbia fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 403 included in our analysis. this trend is also clearly visible when we look at the mean number of children for birth cohorts born between 1952 and 1956 which range from 2.29 (slovakia) to 1.83 (serbia) (appendix tab. a4). this range is even smaller for birth cohorts born in 1977-1981 (aged 30-34 at the time of the 2011 census) at between 1.09 (hungary) and 1.30 (slovakia). when we compare the data by ethnicity, the difference between the roma and non-roma population is clearly visible. the average number of children ever born to roma women is far above the majority population’s average, in all birth cohorts and in all countries (fig. 1). considering only those cohorts that had already completed their fertility, the ratio of cohort fertility rate (cfr) for roma women to non-roma women ranges from a minimum of 1.6 (in serbia) to a maximum of 1.9 (in romania; fig. 1). it is not surprising that, from the selected countries, the cfr of the majority populations is very similar. the societal and economic conditions of fertility were pretty much the same under communism, and all these countries have experienced diffi cult transitions to a market economy, which rapidly led to the postponement of childbearing and to low fertility. it is more striking, however, that the fertility of the ethnic minority roma populations in the four countries shows much greater similarity to one another than to the respective majority populations. (however, the slovak fi gures may be distorted by the fact that in the census, many roma women, especially from the older cohorts, did not reveal the total number of children they had, appendix tab. a5). some differences by country may be observed, however. while the roma in serbia have had consistently lower levels of fertility with little change over time, the fertility of roma women from the other three countries has declined over time. 5.2 fertility of roma and ethnic majority, by completed education cohort fertility and level of completed education are basically inversely related according to our fi ndings, regardless of country of residence, birth cohort, or ethnicity (fig. 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d).7 cohort fertility is highest among the less well educated and is lowest among the highly educated women. the correlation between fertility and educational attainment is stronger among the roma than among the ethnic majority population, as the fertility of less well-educated roma women is far higher than the fertility of majority women with a lower education level. meanwhile highly educated roma and ethnic majority women have very similar fertility rates. consider, for example, the completed fertility of roma women born between 1962 and 1966 (45-49 years old in 2011), by educational attainment and by country. the cfr of roma women in hungary with low and high education levels is 3.46 and 1.90, respectively, (fig. 2a); 3.83 and 1.20 in romania (fig. 2b); 3.86 and 2.17 in slovakia 7 however, we should bear in mind the low number of highly educated roma women, especially among older birth cohorts. the number of highly educated roma women is in the range of 2787 in hungary, 4-24 in romania (ipums 10 percent sample), 12-71 in slovakia and 6-46 in serbia, according to birth cohort. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder404 (fig. 2c); and 2.93 and 1.47 in serbia (fig. 2d). meanwhile, the cfr of non-roma women with low and high levels of education in hungary is 2.41 and 1.75 (fig. 2a); 2.53 and 1.19 in romania (fig. 2b); 2.69 and 1.78 in slovakia (fig. 2c); and 2.04 and 1.48 in serbia (fig. 2d). that is, the difference in fertility between roma women with low and high levels of education is greater than that of the difference in the fertility of corresponding non-roma women. as educational attainment increases, the fertility gap between roma and non-roma women narrows. the difference in cfr of roma and non-roma women with a low education level born in 1962–1966 is 1.05 children in hungary (fig. 2a), 1.30 in romania (fig. 2b), 1.17 in slovakia (fig. 2c) and 0.89 in serbia (fig. 2d). furthermore, the difference in cfr of roma and non-roma women with a high level of education born in 1962– 1966 practically disappears: it is 0.15 children in hungary, 0.01 in romania, 0.39 in slovakia, and -0.01 in serbia (as the fertility of highly educated serbian women is higher than that of roma women). moreover, the youngest (30-34) group of highly educated roma women in hungary actually has a lower fertility rate than the group fig. 2a: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity and completed education, hungary, 2011 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry hungarian roma average number of children 1952-1956 1957-1961 1962-1966 1967-1971 1972-1976 1977-1981 birth cohort source: own calculation based on the 2011 population and housing census, hungary. full population data. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 405 of highly educated hungarian women from the same birth cohort. we observe a similar relationship in serbia: the highly educated roma women in the 1952-1956 and 1972-1976 birth cohorts have, on average, given birth to fewer children than serbian women (fig. 2d). the picture is also similar in romania, although there is no convergence in fertility by education among women aged 30-34 and 50-59. without going into too much detail, we should note that we were not able to track the dimension of migration, which is especially important with regard to the youngest romanian cohorts, and thus we cannot provide evidence on how the various migration processes infl uence the relationship between fertility and birth cohort, education and ethnicity. the fertility pattern by ethnicity and education in slovakia deviates from that found in the other three countries. it is true that women with a high level of education have fewer children than women with a low education level; but well-educated roma women, on average, have more children than roma women with a medium level of education in some birth cohorts. we might speculate that those well-educated fig. 2b: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity and completed education, romania, 2011 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry romanian roma average number of children 1952-1956 1957-1961 1962-1966 1967-1971 1972-1976 1977-1981 birth cohort source: own calculation based on the 10 percent sample of the 2011 population and housing census romania, ipums–international. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder406 roma women who had fewer children might have refused to answer the question regarding their number of children ever born because they felt uncomfortable about transgressing the norms of the roma community, which favour women who have many children. moreover, there are very few well-educated roma women (especially in older cohorts). however, the convergence in the cfr of roma and slovak women is visible in slovakia, too, with the increase in educational attainment. 5.3 fertility of roma and ethnic majority by residential segregation in hungary our second interest in this paper is to capture the contextual effect on fertility among the roma and ethnic majority population. we analyse this question using the hungarian census data, as we only have access to individual-level data of residential proximity in the case of hungary. furthermore, we can take advantage of the methodology used in the 2011 population census with regard to ethnic identifi cation. as the census allowed for double ethnic identifi cation, we could fig. 2c: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity and completed education, slovakia, 2011 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry slovak roma average number of children 1952-1956 1957-1961 1962-1966 1967-1971 1972-1976 1977-1981 birth cohort source: own calculation based on the 2011 population and housing census, slovakia. full population data. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 407 enlarge the population to include those who identifi ed themselves as roma as their second nationality. we consider a woman to have roma identity in this chapter if her primary or secondary nationality is roma, or her mother tongue is roma, or she uses the roma language when she speaks to friends and family members, or knows the roma language (appendices tab. a2 and tab. a3). the average number of children of women with primary roma nationality and women with secondary roma identity do not differ signifi cantly from each other (appendix tab. a6). we measure the contextual effect in terms of ethnic-minority members’ exposure to the majority population living in the same residential area. we calculated the share of the roma population within every residential neighbourhood (census residential block) and named it the level of ethnic residential segregation of roma women.8 fig. 2d: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity and completed education, serbia, 2011 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry p ri m ar y s ec o nd ar y t er tia ry serb roma average number of children 1952-1956 1957-1961 1962-1966 1967-1971 1972-1976 1977-1981 birth cohort source: own calculation based on the 2011 census on population, households and dwellings in the republic of serbia. full population data. 8 in total, 183,398 residential neighbourhoods were defi ned in the 2011 hungarian census. in our target group for analysis in this section, (i.e., 30-59-year-old women, living in a residential block with a minimum of 15 persons and at least one roma inhabitant), the number of roma women was 57,529; and the number of non-roma hungarian women was 877,637. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder408 the relationship between cohort fertility and the level of residential segregation is positive, regardless of birth cohort and ethnicity. the greater the share of roma in a residential neighbourhood, the higher the average number of children ever born to both roma and non-roma hungarian women. the differences in cohort fertility between the most and the least segregated neighbourhoods are larger among roma than among non-roma hungarian women, regardless of birth cohort. while this difference ranges from 0.61 to 1.24 for different birth cohorts among the ethnic majority population, the fi gure is between 1.10 and 1.66 among roma birth cohorts. it is also clear from figure 3 that the cohort fertility of roma women is higher than that of non-roma hungarian women at all degrees of segregation. however, a clear convergence can be observed: the lower the level of fig. 3: average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity and degree of residential roma segregation, hungary, 2011 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% (0 -5 )% [5 -2 0) % [2 040 )% [4 0+ )% hungarian roma average number of children 1952-1956 1957-1961 1962-1966 1967-1971 1972-1976 1977-1981 birth cohort notes: hungarians are those who answered “hungarian” (but not roma) to the questions on primary or secondary ethnicity, mother tongue, language spoken with friends and family, and known language. roma are those who answered “roma” (or beás, oláh cigány, or any other roma clan name) to the questions on primary or secondary ethnicity, mother tongue, language spoken with friends and family, and known language. source: own calculation based on 2011 population and housing census, hungary, full population data. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 409 segregation, the smaller the fertility gap between roma and non-roma hungarian women. while the fertility difference between the roma and non-roma in the most segregated neighbourhoods ranges from 1.02 to 1.32 (depending on the birth cohort), the difference is only between 0.60 and 0.80 in the least segregated areas. 5.4 joint effects of completed education and degree of residential segregation in hungary the completed fertility of three different cohorts (1952-1961; 1962-1971; and 19721981) by completed education and degree of residential segregation enables us to disentangle possible reinforcing effects. the two ends of the educational spectrum show quite different relations (fig. 4). on the one hand, higher education seems to determine the level of fertility quite unequivocally: the completed fertility of the ethnic majority non-roma hungarian women is similar to that of the roma women, and the degree of residential segregation does not add much to the variation. the fertility difference between highly educated roma and majority women is relatively constant and small. minor fl uctuations can be observed among roma women by degree of residential segregation due to the low number of highly educated roma women living in segregated areas, especially among the oldest birth cohorts.9 all in all, ethnicity makes no great difference among women with a high level of education. at the other end of the scale, residential segregation clearly infl uences the level of fertility among women who only have primary education. the higher the proportion of roma in a neighbourhood, the higher the fertility of women. and this relationship is the same for roma and non-roma women. however, ethnicity also makes a difference: the cohort fertility of roma women with a low level of education is always higher than that of less-educated non-roma hungarian women, regardless of the degree of residential segregation. the relationship between cohort fertility and residential segregation differs between roma and non-roma hungarian women with a medium level of education. we fi nd a positive relationship among roma women: fertility rises as the level of segregation increases. meanwhile, barely any positive relationship can be observed among non-roma women: fertility remains relatively constant as the degree of residential segregation increases. at this level of education, a divergence in cohort fertility is measured between roma and non-roma hungarian women as residential segregation increases: this divergence is caused by an increase in the cohort fertility of roma women. 9 the number of well-educated roma women living in segregated areas was low among the oldest birth cohort (i.e. born in 1952-1961): there were merely four in neighbourhoods where the share of the roma population was 20-40 percent; and three in neighbourhoods where the share of roma was over 40 percent. however, there were 22 well-educated roma women born between 1972-1981 living in the most-segregated neighbourhoods with proportion of roma population higher than 40 percent. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder410 6 discussion the average number of children ever born to roma women is far above the ethnic majority population’s average in all birth cohorts and in each selected country. at the same time, the distinct fertility pattern of roma – namely, early and high fertility – is very similar in these four countries. there may be several reasons for this. overall, roma fertility could be similar in the four countries because the fig. 4: average number of children ever born by women’s birth cohort, ethnicity, completed education and degree of segregation, hungary, 2011 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1972-1981 tertiary education 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1972-1981 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 primary education 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1972-1981 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 secondary education 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1962-1971 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1962-1971 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1962-1971 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] hungarian roma c1952-1961 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1952-1961 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 (0-5%) [5-20%) [20-40%) [40+%] c1952-1961 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.5 share of roma in neighbourhood share of roma in neighbourhood share of roma in neighbourhood notes: hungarians are those who answered “hungarian” (but not roma) to the questions on primary nationality, secondary nationality, mother tongue, language spoken with friends and family, and known language. roma are those who answered “roma” (or beás, oláh cigány, or any other roma clan name) to the questions on primary nationality, secondary nationality, mother tongue, language spoken with friends and family, and known language. source: own calculation based on the 2011 population and housing census, hungary, full population data. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 411 composition of the populations is also similar, or they live in similar contextual conditions, or their subculture is similar . at the same time, the roma population itself could be very heterogeneous due to institutional settings and resources, tradition and values; thus, the demographic behaviour of different roma subgroups may also be different within particular countries. however, as the share of individuals with advanced socio-economic status is low within the roma population in these countries, their behaviour are hardly visible within the overall roma population. therefore, the overall roma fertility is consistently higher than that of the ethnic majority population in these four selected countries. these general fi ndings – namely, the very similar patterns of fertility within the roma population of different countries, controlled for birth cohort (and by educational attainment) – may be seen as an indicator of the cultural conditions related to the behaviour of roma and their pronatalist attitude. the roma population may be divided into subgroups based on different factors. in our analysis, we focus on the aspects that have already been raised in theoretical assumptions explaining the fertility differences between ethnic minoritymajority populations. we have outlined three major concepts to understand these differences. the fi rst concept – known as the social characteristics hypothesis – states that it is not ethnicity per se, but rather social characteristics that determine fertility. from the point of view of our analysis, the “strong form” of this concept would be supported, if the fertility of roma and ethnic majority populations were the same at all levels of educational attainment – assuming that educational level is a good proxy for social status. our results clearly show that the level of completed education of women infl uences fertility in all the countries examined: the higher the education of roma women, the lower their fertility. besides, the fertility gap between roma and respective ethnic majority populations narrows as the level of education increases in all countries: the fertility of highly educated roma and nonroma women is the same, or at least converges to a large degree. we conclude that high roma fertility refl ects compositional effects: the high fertility of the roma population is certainly due to the fact that the proportion of less educated women is much higher among them than the proportion of those with medium or high levels of education. the social characteristics hypothesis is only relevant among the highly educated women: the highly educated roma and majority population fertility is not different, but the less educated roma and majority women’s fertility is. this means that the “strong form” of the social characteristics hypothesis is not supported by our results, but we fi nd evidence supporting the “weak form” of this hypothesis (johnson 1979: 1388). the minority hypothesis states that the minority position has an independent effect on fertility. if minority people wish to acquire higher social status, they have to invest their social and economic resources more heavily than others, and in order to do so they may have to limit their fertility. the “strong form” of the minority status hypothesis would be supported by our analysis if the highly-educated roma women had lower fertility than that of highly educated non-roma women, while less well-educated roma women’s fertility would be higher than majority women’s fertility. the “weak form” of it would be supported, however, if highly educated • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder412 roma women had lower fertility than highly educated non-roma women, while no fertility difference would be found between groups at the lower end of the education spectrum. our results suggest that, in general, neither the “strong form” nor the “weak form” of the minority status hypothesis is supported by the 2011 census data in these four cce countries. highly educated roma women’s fertility is not always lower than the fertility of highly educated ethnic majority women (johnson 1979: 1388). this is only the case among women born in 1977–1981 in hungary, and among women born in 1952-1956 and in 1972-1976 in serbia; thus, only in these subgroups does the “strong form” of minority group status hypothesis appear justifi ed. the minority position may also infl uence minorities’ fertility through the minoritymajority relationship. interacting with other fringes of the society may differentiate the viewpoints of minority individuals, as people living in close proximity to them may have different social characteristics, values, attitudes and opinions. certainly, individuals living in minority women’s neighbourhoods may also be heterogenous. they may likewise have higher or lower degrees of socio-economic status and may equally represent pronatalist or non-pronatalist values. thus, women (and their families) may be affected by different or even contradictory attitudes and behaviours. besides, it is an over-simplifi cation to assume that this contextual or environmental (or neighbourhood) infl uence is only a subcultural one. the fact that residential segregation is closely related to economic deprivation also suggests the presence of structural factors. with all this in mind we assume, however, that exposure to a given environment affects individuals’ (and families’) attitudes and behaviour. and we consider this environmental or neighbourhood infl uence primarily as a proxy for the subcultural infl uence in the case of roma minorities. the exposure to the ethnic majority populations’ environment is measured through the composition of the population by ethnicity: that is, the share of roma in given neighbourhoods. this indicator was considered to measure the level of ethnic residential segregation in our paper. the results show that the relationship between the cohort fertility and the level of ethnic residential segregation is positive, regardless of birth cohort and ethnicity. the greater the share of roma in a residential neighbourhood, the higher the average number of children ever born to both roma and non-roma women. however, the fertility of roma women is higher than that of the fertility of ethnicmajority women, regardless of the degree of residential segregation. these results may serve as arguments for the subcultural hypothesis, since the fertility of both roma and majority women residing in ethnically segregated neighbourhoods is higher than that in less segregated areas. moreover, the fertility of majority women living in ethnically segregated neighbourhoods is also higher than that of those living in less segregated neighbourhoods. at fi rst glance, it may seem surprising that non-roma hungarian women living in such areas also have high fertility, but some studies confi rm that members of the majority population tend to behave similarly to the minority where this minority represents a substantial share of the population (gyenei 1993). however, we should bear in mind that roma people living in segregated areas could have self-identifi ed as non-roma hungarians; or that segregated areas, in general, are also economically disadvantaged, where both roma and non-roma have low education levels, inducing high fertility. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 413 we also looked at the minority-majority fertility gap both by educational level and ethnic residential segregation. the results suggest that these two factors may exert a different force at the two ends of the education distribution. at the higher end of the educational hierarchy, there is no fertility gap between roma and nonroma women, at different levels of segregation. at the lower end of the social hierarchy, both exposure to majority behaviour and ethnicity matter. in addition, ethnic-majority women with low educational levels exhibit increasingly minoritylike fertility behaviour. it seems that “behavioural acculturation” takes place at this end of the social status hierarchy, as the fertility of non-roma majority women with low education levels depends on the level of ethnic residential segregation. however, the completion of secondary education renders majority women immune to exposure to ethnic-minority behaviour. as for roma women, having secondary education clearly reduces their fertility, but the infl uence of residential segregation remains. 7 conclusion as noted in the introduction, we have contributed to a better understanding of the characteristic fertility of a quite sizeable minority group – the roma. we have done this in a comparative manner, including four of the fi ve countries of central and eastern europe in our analysis, the ones with a sizable roma population: hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia (bulgaria was not included in the analysis because no relevant statistics were available to us). we have shown that the fertility of roma in all these countries is very similar in terms of both the rate of fertility and cohort change. we have also shown, comparatively, that the level of education has a strong impact on level of fertility among roma. lastly, we have demonstrated, based on the case of hungary, that exposure to ethnic-majority behaviour also has a large impact. to our knowledge, no analysis has so far been conducted that comparatively explores the fertility of the roma minority at the birth cohort level in the context of former communist countries, using census (quasi full population) data. we are not aware of any analysis that systematically compared cohort fertility among roma and non-roma majority women by educational level either across several countries. nor are we aware of any research that reviewed the joint effect of educational level and ethnical-residential (neighbourhood) segregation on birth cohort fertility among roma and the non-roma majority population at the national level. our analyses of these correlations and contexts may provide additional insights to fertility research on minority populations. our analyses and interpretations have several limitations. first of all, identifi cation of the roma population is far from unequivocal; moreover, we have non-negligible missing values with regard to the question of nationality from the censuses; both these factors could have consequences for our results. secondly, we should be very careful about interpreting our cross-sectional associations. the well-known endogeneity problem, especially in the case of education and fertility, may weaken the relevance of the social characteristics concept. thirdly, it may be oversimplistic • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder414 to interpret segregation as a cultural factor: the fact that residential segregation is closely related to economic deprivation hints at the role of structural factors. lastly, the non-inclusion of the time dimension in the analysis – i.e., how long people have lived in a particular place – may also infl uence the role of structural and cultural factors. the inclusion of additional contextual and individual-level factors would certainly lead to more detailed results. it falls to further research to overcome the limitations mentioned and to arrive at a more refi ned understanding of roma fertility. acknowledgements thanks to the two unknown reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. references andersson, eva k.; 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ďurček, pavol 2017: rómovia na slovensku v sčítaniach obyvateľov 1980-2011 [roma in slovakia in the census 1980-2011] bratislava. available: infostat. szabó, laura; kiss, igor; spéder, zsolt; sprocha, branislav 2017: fertility of minorities in central and eastern european countries. presentation at the fertility of migrants and minorities workshop, 6-8 february, 2017. leibniz university: hanover. undp/ilo 2001: multi-country survey of roma population in central and eastern europe [http://roma.undp.sk, 06.10.2021]. vaňo, boris 2002: projection of roma population in slovakia until 2025. bratislava: institute of informatics and statistics demographic research centre: 38. wilson, ben 2019: the intergenerational assimilation of completed fertility: comparing the convergence of different origin groups. in: international migration review 53,2: 429-457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918318769047 wilson, ben 2020: understanding how immigrant fertility differentials vary over the reproductive life course. in: european journal of population 36,3: 465-498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09536-x wilson, ben; kuha, jouni 2018: residential segregation and the fertility of immigrants and their descendants. in: population, space and place 24,3: e2098. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2098 zamfir, cătălin; preda, marian (eds.) 2002: romii în românia [roma in romania]. bucharest: editura expert. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder418 date of submission: 21.07.2020 date of acceptance: 01.07.2021 laura szabó, phd (), prof. dr. zsolt spéder. hungarian demographic research institute. budapest, hungary. e-mail: szabo@demografi a.hu; speder@demografi a.hu url: http://demografi a.hu/en/staff-szabo-laura http://demografi a.hu/en/staff-speder-zsolt igor kiss, phd student. university pécs, doctoral school of demography and sociology. bečej, serbia. e-mail: kiss.igor@gmail.com url: https://doktori.hu/index.php?menuid=192&sz_id=14799&lang=en dr. branislav šprocha. centre of social and psychological sciences sas. bratislava, slovakia. e-mail: branislav.sprocha@gmail.com url: https://www.sav.sk/?lang=en&doc=user-org-user&user_no=7429 fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 419 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: c la ss ifi ca tio n o f c o un tr ie s an d m in o ri tie s – nu m er ic a nd d em o g ra p hi c ch ar ac te ri st ic s o f s el ec te d n at io na lit ie s m aj o ri ty /m in o ri ty p o p u la ti o n si ze n u m b er o f 3 0 -5 9 s h ar e o f l o w , s h ar e o f n o n p o p u la ti o n (t o ta l, in t h o u sa n d s) ye ar -o ld w o m en m ed iu m , h ig h ly re sp o n se t o n u m b er ed u ca te d , a m o n g o f c h ild re n, a m o n g w o m en a g ed 3 0 -5 9 w o m en a g ed 3 0 -5 9 h u n g ar y h u n g ar ia n 8, 22 7 1, 81 5, 60 7 19 – 5 6 – 25 r o m a p ri m ar y n at io n al it y 13 0 23 ,2 75 86 – 1 3 – 1 r o m a at ta ch ed 32 7 57 ,6 27 82 – 1 4 – 4 n o n -r es p o n se o n n at io n al it y q u es ti o n 1, 46 7 r om an ia r o m an ia n 16 ,7 92 3, 68 3, 22 0 29 – 5 1 – 20 r o m a 62 1 10 2, 76 7 90 – 9 – 1 n o n -r es p o n se o n n at io n al it y q u es ti o n 1, 23 7 s lo va ki a s lo va k 4, 35 2 97 5, 70 9 8 – 65 – 2 1 – (6 ) 62 ,2 17 r o m a 10 5 15 ,8 66 66 – 1 5 – 1 – (1 8) 3, 03 5 n o n -r es p o n se o n n at io n al it y q u es ti o n 38 2 s er b ia s er b 5, 98 8 1, 29 2, 02 1 22 – 5 5 – 22 r o m a 14 7 25 ,6 58 92 – 7 – 0 .5 n o n -r es p o n se o n n at io n al it y q u es ti o n 25 2 n o te s: h un ga ry : “r o m a at ta ch ed ” ar e th o se w ho a ns w er ed “ r o m a” ( o r b eá s, o lá h ci gá ny , et c. o r an y o th er r o m a cl an n am e) t o th e q ue st io ns o n p ri m ar y na tio na lit y, s ec o nd ar y na tio na lit y, m o th er t o ng ue , la ng ua ge s p o ke n w ith f ri en d s an d f am ily , an d k no w n la ng ua ge . r o m an ia : th e d is tr ib ut io n o f co m p le te d e d uc at io n b y na tio na lit y is e xt ra ct ed f ro m ip u m s 1 0 p er ce nt ( n r o m an ia n= 36 6, 77 6; n r o m a= 10 ,1 86 ). s lo va ki a: th e sh ar e o f n o nre sp o nd en ts is in b ra ck et s. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n 20 11 n at io na l p o p ul at io n ce ns us es f ro m h un ga ry , r o m an ia , s lo va ki a an d s er b ia . f ul l p o p ul at io n d at a. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder420 tab. a2: the nationality question in 2011 national censuses in hungary, slovakia, romania and serbia country type of question number question(s) answer categories of questions hungary not compulsory 2 which nationality do you closed answer with 18 feel you belong to? nationalities, with the category gipsy/roma do you think you belong among them, and the to another nationality open-ended “other, in addition to what you namely: …” category marked above? offered. slovakia compulsory 1 nationality closed answer with 14 nationalities, with the category romani among them, and the openended “other” category offered. romania not compulsory 1 what ethnic group does open-ended question, the person consider to the enumerators coded belong to? them into categories. serbia not compulsory 1 national affi liation open-ended question, the enumerators coded them into categories. source: own design. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 421 ta b . a 3: t he m o th er t o ng ue , l an gu ag e sp o ke n am o ng f am ily a nd f ri en d s, a nd k no w le d g e o f f o re ig n la ng ua g e q ue st io n s in t he 2 01 1 na tio na l c en su s in h un g ar y q u es ti o n ty p e o f q u es ti o n a n sw er p o ss ib ili ti es q u es ti o n( s) a n sw er c at eg o ri es m o th er t o n g u e n o t c o m p u ls o ry 2 w h at is y o u r m o th er t o n g u e? c lo se d a n sw er w it h 18 la n g u ag es , (p le as e m ar k tw o a n sw er s w it h th e cl o se d c at eg o ry g ip sy m ax im u m !) (r o m an i, b ea s) a m o n g th em , an d t h e o p en -e n d ed “ o th er , n am el y: ” ca te g o ry o ff er ed . la n g u ag e sp o ke n in n o t c o m p u ls o ry 2 w h at la n g u ag es d o y o u u su al ly c lo se d a n sw er w it h 18 la n g u ag es , fa m ily , w it h fr ie n d s sp ea k w it h fa m ily m em b er s w it h th e cl o se d c at eg o ry g ip sy o r fr ie n d s? (p le as e m ar k tw o (r o m an i, b ea s) a m o n g th em , an sw er s m ax im u m !) an d t h e o p en -e n d ed “ o th er , n am el y: ” ca te g o ry o ff er ed . k n o w n la n g u ag e c o m p u ls o ry 3 w h at la n g u ag es d o y o u sp ea k? s em io p en -e n d ed q u es ti o n: in w h at la n g u ag es c an y o u w it h th e ca te g o ry “ h u n g ar ia n ” u n d er st an d o th er s an d m ak e o ff er ed a s a cl o se d a n sw er a n d yo u rs el f u n d er st o o d ? th re e o p en -e n d ed p o ss ib ili ti es le ft t o b e fi l le d . s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n. • laura szabó, igor kiss, branislav šprocha, zsolt spéder422 tab. a4: the average number of children ever born, by women’s birth cohort and selected countries, 2011 birth cohort hungary romania slovakia serbia 1952-1956 1.91 1.99 2.29 1.83 1957-1961 1.95 1.97 2.24 1.83 1962-1966 1.93 1.86 2.14 1.80 1967-1971 1.82 1.61 2.02 1.74 1972-1976 1.55 1.54 1.76 1.60 1977-1981 1.09 1.28 1.30 1.26 tab. a5: the share of non-respondents to the question on the number of children, by women’s age group, nationality and level of education, slovakia, 2011 nationality, primary secondary secondary, higher age group or below vocational high school/ education grammar school slovak 30-34 6 5 6 6 35-39 4 3 4 5 40-44 7 5 4 5 45-49 7 5 4 5 50-54 6 6 4 6 55-59 6 7 4 7 roma 30-34 8 9 22 24 35-39 5 8 11 44 40-44 12 14 42 43 45-49 13 18 44 52 50-54 14 25 36 36 55-59 13 32 19 38 source: own calculation based on 2011 national population censuses from hungary, romania, slovakia and serbia. full population data. source: own calculation based on the 2011 population and housing census, slovakia, full population data. fertility of roma minorities in central and eastern europe • 423 tab. a6: average number of children ever born by women’s birth cohort, level of roma nationality and completed education, hungary, 2011 birth cohort/ roma roma birth cohort/ roma roma education primary attached education primary attached nationality nationality 1977-1981 1962-1966 high 0.68 0.85 high 1.90 1.84 medium 1.81 1.75 medium 2.32 2.24 low 3.04 2.94 low 3.46 3.37 1972-1976 1957-1961 high 1.37 1.34 high 1.86 1.78 medium 2.08 2.08 medium 2.29 2.36 low 3.37 3.28 low 3.40 3.33 1967-1971 1952-1956 high 1.65 1.65 high 1.78 1.84 medium 2.22 2.23 medium 2.21 2.23 low 3.49 3.40 low 3.43 3.40 notes: roma attached are those who answered “roma” (or beás, oláh cigány, or any other roma clan name) to the questions on primary nationality, secondary nationality, mother tongue, language spoken with friends and family, and known language. source: own calculation based on the 2011 population and housing census, hungary, full population data. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility: evidence from brazil the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility: evidence from brazil camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima abstract: brazil’s bolsa família programme (bfp) aims to combat poverty and social inequalities through monetary transfers to families. a much-discussed indirect effect of the programme was its correlation to the fertility of the benefi ciary families. in this paper, we use a cohort fertility approach with parity progression ratios that differs from existing literature, which mainly used period fertility measures, to better understand the relationship between fertility and the bfp. this study analyses the relationship between the bfp and the reproduction of brazilian women. we use data from the 2010 brazilian micro-censuses, the only census after the start of the bfp in 2004, to reconstruct the childbirth history of women with incomplete reproductive cycles (women aged 25 to 29), and estimate parity progression ratios (pprs) and cohort fertility rates (cfr). in addition, we estimate propensity score matching (psm) models comparing fertility outcomes of benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries of the programme. our results show distinct differences in cfrs and pprs. on average, bfp benefi ciaries had more children than women not covered by the programme. this fi nding remained consistent even after controlling for educational gradients and other covariates. our empirical fi ndings show that women opt for a “rational” strategy, where they tend to have children in more rapid succession up until three children. these fi ndings contradict the recent literature that has not found any correlation between bfp and fertility. the results also suggest that cohort analyses may fi ll certain gaps left by previous studies of period fertility. this paper is one of a few that have analysed the relationship between a conditional income transfer programme and cohort measures in brazil. keywords: bolsa família programme · cohort fertility · propensity score matching · parity progression ratio comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 215-244 (date of release: 12.07.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-08 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-08en9 • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima216 1 introduction during the traditional process of demographic transition, mortality fi rst drops, followed by a decline in fertility as described by notestein (1953). brazil has not been an exception to this rule and its own transition followed this trend. first, mortality in the country fell by 35 percent in the 1940s and fell a further 25 percent in the following decade, while fertility remained essentially constant during the same period (carvalho/wong 1996). the beginning of brazil’s fertility transition occurred only 30 years after mortality decreased. we note the speed of the brazilian fertility decline in relation to developed countries, which took less than half a century to occur (martine 1996; patarra/oliveira 1988; merrick/berquó 1983). according to carvalho et al. (1981), this rapid decline was due to changes in the reproductive behaviour of the lower social strata, and related to institutional, economic, social and cultural changes (merrick/berquó 1983; faria 1989; paiva 1987). additionally, faria (1989) highlights several structural and institutional changes that indirectly affected fertility behaviour. he linked the government policies of the mid1960s, such as increased consumer credit, investment in telecommunications, the establishment of a social security system and increased investments in health care as the main factors that created a demand for fertility control. beginning within higher socioeconomic groups of society, in 1991, the decline in fertility rates was more pronounced among the less educated and poorest – especially residents of the (traditionally poorer) northern and north-eastern regions of the country (berquó/cavenaghi 2005), resulting in a signifi cant reduction in fertility rates (ibge 2010). in the following decades, the fertility reduction had been achieved by all socioeconomic groups in brazil (alves/cavenaghi 2012). today, despite total fertility rates (tfrs) reaching rates below population replacement, signifi cant differences in fertility rates between the different social strata still exist in the country (lima et al. 2018; rios-neto et al. 2018). as we have noted, variables such as income and years of schooling are especially important for understanding developments in tfr, because these two variables present an inverse relationship with fertility only for women (lesthaeghe/ surkin 1988; beaujouan et al. 2013; berquó/cavenaghi 2014; becker 1991a/b). the situation is, however, more complicated in brazil. according to an unfpa report (2018), in 40 percent of the poorest households women have the average number of offspring above the reproduction level and at the ages of 20 to 24 years old. during the brazilian fertility transition, reproductive behaviour varied greatly due to inequalities in income and education levels. however, unlike in developed countries where fertility was delayed with increases in education, in brazil, increases in education levels did not cause women to delay having children (wong/bonifácio 2009) and fertility became concentrated between the young ages of 15 and 24. interestingly, these young mothers generally have children until a certain parity is achieved and then begin to control their fertility by opting for female sterilization as a primary method of contraception (rios-neto 2005). gupta and leite (1999), using the demographic and health surveys (dhs) from 1986, 1991 and 1996, examined the trends and determinants of adolescent fertility the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 217 in the poorest brazilian region: the northeast. they found a strong relationship between years of schooling and the postponement of birth among adolescent women between the ages of 15 and 19 and this education effect has increased in the northeast since these studies. however, a reversal process was observed by the 2010 census and fertility began to be postponed slightly (ibge 2010). we notice this process particularly among highly educated women (lima/myrskylä 2014; lima et al. 2018; rios-neto et al. 2018). nonetheless, adolescent motherhood remains common in the country. cavenaghi (2013) meanwhile analysed the fertility of young brazilian women according to education and income levels. the author found that young women (aged 15 to 19) with low socioeconomic status showed higher levels of fertility than those of the same age but with a higher economic status. the bolsa família programme (bfp) was developed to fi ght poverty and income inequality among the brazilian population. the programme consists of monetary benefi ts and is considered a conditional cash transfer programme due to certain commitments that benefi ciary families must fulfi l. for example, children and adolescents of families enrolled in the programme must attend school, and mothers must seek healthcare and social assistance for their children (brasil 2013). on one hand, these conditions allow basic individual rights to reach families with very low per capita incomes, i.e., families with a per capita income below the national poverty line of r$140.00 per month. on the other hand, for those in extreme poverty, having children is not a requirement to receive this monetary benefi t (campello 2013). however, this social benefi t is generally destined for families with a per capita income that is slightly above the poverty line and for women with children aged 17 or below. the bfp limits benefi ts to fi ve per family (e.g., maximum 3 children and/ or 2 adolescents, according to law 10,836, dated 9 january 2004). some authors therefore believe that this benefi t and its limits may infl uence a woman’s decision to have a child by affecting the fertility preferences and by reducing the opportunity costs of the child (stecklov et al. 2006). many demography issues can be discussed and analysed in the context of this social programme, including access to modern contraceptive methods, contact with health facilities, years of education and the inclusion of women from low socioeconomic groups into the formal labour force, which can be seen as a way to ensure women’s empowerment. similarly, the programme raises a series of questions. for example, how might non-monetary benefi ts, such as those provided indirectly by the bfp, lead women to want fewer children? in addition, which factors related to this cash transfer programme may lead to changes in women’s decisions? in this study, we explore the relationship between cohort fertility levels, parity progression and receiving or not receiving the bfp benefi t in an attempt to answer the question: does the bfp acts as pronatalist programme, e.g., increasing the chances of women to opt for an additional child? we used a different approach and a different dataset. we aim to perform an exploratory analysis, comparing cohort fertility levels from bfp benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries who are eligible for the cash transfer programme. we analyse incomplete cohort fertility and its relationship with the bfp, using the retrospective • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima218 children ever born information provided by the 2010 brazilian census. this study will analyse the relationship between bfp benefi ciaries and several cohort fertility measures, such as average parity and parity progression ratios of benefi ciaries and eligible non-benefi ciaries of the programme. the latter is the only control group available because with the information available in the data we are not able to compare fertility levels before and after the start of the bfp. this group consists of women who do not receive the benefi t, but who also belong to an extremely low socioeconomic stratum with an income per capita below r$140.00 (corresponding to approximately 78 usd). we note that the bfp was not designed to be evaluated in terms of treatment and control groups, which made defi ning these two groups a challenge. in fact, a municipality quota (or percentage) restricts the number of households able to receive the benefi t and consequently no control group exists (oliveira/soares 2013). therefore, we were careful to conduct our analyses and separate our sample into groups that were as comparable as possible. we estimated a series of parity progression ratios (pprs) and cohort fertility rates (cfrs), focusing on the women who declare they are the head of the household at the time of the census interview. we also performed analyses controlling for education level and regional differences. finally, to select random samples, we applied a propensity score matching (psm) to our data, this time controlling for education level, region of residence and other relevant confounding variables. we used ppr and cfr measures because there is a lack of studies on the relationship between cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility. although this approach presents some limitations due to the available data, we believe that this work is important and explores new avenues in this well-discussed topic in demographics. 2 the bolsa família programme the legislation for the bfp was introduced in october of 2003, as provisional measure no. 132, and converted into law no. 10,836 in 2004. it provided for the unifi cation of various previous cash transfer programmes and specifi cally combined fi ve such programmes. registration for the bfp is performed at the municipal level, through the unique registration (cadúnico) for social programmes of the federal government. this registration platform is the gateway to all brazilian social programmes, such as bolsa verde (green grant) and minha casa minha vida (my home my life). created in july 2001, cadúnico aimed to identify families with a monthly per capita income of up to half of the national minimum wage. in 2003, cadúnico became the only means of accessing brazilian social programmes, including the bfp. in the 2010s, families with a per capita family income between r$70.01 and r$140.00 per month and with children up to 17 years of age and families with a per capita income below r$70.00 per month – even those without children – were eligible to receive the bfp benefi t. the value received through the benefi t is estimated by calculating a base value and several variable benefi ts that depend on the composition the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 219 of the family. therefore, the bfp provides fi ve benefi ts in total: 1) one base value for families in extreme poverty; 2) a variable benefi t for children through the age of 15; 3) a youth variable benefi t, for 16and 17-year-old adolescents; 4) a benefi t to help overcome extreme poverty; and 5) an extraordinary variable benefi t for families with monetary losses after migrating from other programmes to the bfp. certain benefi ts depend on the number of children per family, the per capita family income and the ages of the children. the base benefi t is for families living in extreme poverty – including families without children. the variable benefi t is intended for families with pregnant women and for mothers of children up to the age of 15, with a maximum of three benefi ts per family through 2011 and a maximum of fi ve benefi ts after 2011. families with children between the ages of 16 and 17 who attend school can receive a maximum of two benefi ts per family. the fourth benefi t listed above is for families that remain below the extreme poverty line, even after receiving the benefi ts above (brasil 2004). in 2010, families in extreme poverty (income below r$70.00 per month) could receive a base benefi t of r$68.00 and a maximum of three additional benefi ts of r$22.00 for each child through the age of 15. these families could also accrue two additional benefi ts of r$33.00 for any 16or 17-year-old children. based on these values, a family in extreme poverty could receive a maximum of r$200.00 per month. meanwhile, households with monthly family incomes between r$70.01 and r$140.00 would not receive the base benefi t of r$68.00 and the maximum such families could receive from the social benefi t was r$132.00 (brasil 2013). the selection of benefi ciaries is made by self-declaration of income by the head of household and registered in the cadúnico database. this form of selection differs from most income transfer programmes in developing countries that use proxy means tests (pmt) to estimate the household income (souza et al. 2018) by using multivariate regression to correlate proxies such as household expenditure or consumption (kidd/wylde 2011). then, this income is verifi ed in the administrative records of the federal government. however, some families do not receive the benefi t because of a municipal quota and hence some families enter a waiting list. as soon as a family leaves the programme, the next person on the waiting list receives the benefi t. this system also implies that once the quota value is reached, for a family to enter the programme it is necessary that another leaves it. however, this system was not updated effi ciently until 2011 and sometimes families with incomes higher than the permitted value continued to receive the benefi t, a situation that made it impossible for another household to receive the bfp. in this case, the only way for families that were left out to enter the programme is via an increase by the federal government of the bfp budget available to the programme, thus expanding the municipality quota. there are also many families with incomes below r$140.00 that are not registered in cadúnico, possibly due to a lack of information, especially among women in rural areas. according to a report by cadúnico (2013), 78 percent of registered families lived in urban areas, which have a lower proportion of extremely poor residents, while only 22 percent lived in rural areas. the place of residence and the degree to which women and families are informed are related to the household selection for • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima220 participation in the bfp. since the programme is based on self-registration, families need to search for the place in their municipality to register in cadúnico. in rural regions, generally the registration of families is more diffi cult because women may not be aware of this benefi t and where to register (tavares 2010). in this context, our aim is to further understand how these bfp conditions may – indirectly – affect the reproductive behaviour of women. in the next sections, we will discuss the data and estimates used to explore this relationship. 3 theoretical considerations and literature review the studies about fertility and cash transfers fi nd support in the microeconomic theories of becker (1960) and schultz (1974, 1993) and establish arguments for understanding variations in fertility in developed countries. according to the theory used by becker, parents behave rationally and their parenting decisions are oriented to maximize the utility of the children (becker 1960, 1991a/b). thus, family size is a function of the interaction between children’s quantity-quality and the usefulness of other consumer goods, which are related to income and prices. for becker (1960), this trade-off between quantity and quality is strongly determined by income. with an increase in household income, both measures should increase; however, the elasticity of quantity is weaker than the elasticity of the child’s quality (becker 1960). specifi cally, with higher income, families choose to invest in what will improve the quality of the life of the child rather than invest in having multiple children. becker (1991b) assumes that parents are altruistic towards their children. the utility function of the parents depends on their consumption and the utility of each child as well. for those women who invested in human capital, with higher education, and greater participation in the labour market, the opportunity cost will be higher, causing a drop in the number of children due to incompatibility between professional and maternal activities (becker 1991a/b). the division of labour in a household takes place according to the specialities in the activities of each family member, which in many cases means a signifi cant part of household work goes to the woman within that labour division. however, with the increase in women’s labour force participation, their activities inside the family tend to reduce and thus, the decision to have a child can be also impacted (becker 1991a). according to schultz (1974), the decision to have children depends on factors that are not only economic but also environmental – factors that can modify the idea of ideal family size. for schultz (1993), conditionalities reduce the costs of investment in child quality, leading to a decrease in the number of children, considering the two goods as substitutes. we fi nd the arguments of becker and schultz to be extremely important for understanding the rationality of the quantity-quality trade-off of children among socioeconomic groups in extreme poverty. in another study, becker and lewis (1973) analysed the interactions between the quality and quantity of children and their effects on the demand for offspring. according to the authors, highly educated women prefer to increase the quality of their children rather than the quantity. exploring the theory of becker and lewis (1973), angrist the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 221 et al. (2010) found new evidence about the quantity-quality trade-off. they used different treatment groups and exogenous variations in family size, also considering the incidence of multiple births and the composition of family siblings of the same sex. according to them, the birth of twins causes an increase in parity numbers and also the preference for mixed sexes among siblings results in higher order births (angrist et al. 2010). in addition, the authors found no signifi cant effect on fertility levels after controlling for education and the labour market, that is, no evidence of a quantityquality trade off. their approach is innovative, juxtaposing the results of multiple instrumental variable strategies to capture the effects of fertility for different groups of people (angrist et al. 2010). however, the limitation of the study by angrist et al. (2010) is that it does not capture the effect of one child. arguing from another perspective, easterlin (1975) studied the macroeconomic aspects of reproductive control and cited three main determinants of fertility level: 1) the demand for children, 2) the potential output of children and 3) the cost of fertility control, including subjective and objective costs. the fi rst determinant of demand is infl uenced by preferences, prices and income. however, the author argues that subjective and social factors must also be considered in the demand for children. galor and weil (1996) also investigated different mechanisms to explain the relationship between fertility and economic development. the authors consider three components: fi rst, the fertility decision is given by a function of the relative wages of men and women. the higher relative wages for women tend to increase the opportunity costs of children more than total household income, as pointed out by becker (1991a). the second component is the population growth rate that affects the level of capital per worker. finally, the level of capital per worker affects the relative wages of men and women. these three components form a cycle, thus an increase in capital raises the relative wages of women, which leads them to invest in the labour market rather than having children (galor/weil 1996). thévenon and gauthier (2011) suggest that even if they are not aimed at fertility, policies to tackle poverty (such as bfp) create favourable environments for motherhood because such social policies also reduce the costs of a child. in addition, kalwij (2010) argues that such policies can increase complete fertility, creating stimulus for young women to make an early motherhood transition and increasing the likelihood of having more children during women’s reproductive period by reducing the costs of a child. an increase in family income can reduce fi nancial constraints that work as an obstacle for families to desire more children (luci-greulich/thévenon 2013; becker 1991b; wesolowski/ferrarini 2018). as income increases, bearing children becomes more manageable. this indicates that cash transfer programmes promote not only monetary benefi ts, but more access to health and education usually linked to the programme conditionalities, thus reducing the cost of a child, which in turn is assumed to infl uence fertility. this theoretical economic background is important for understanding the rational choices behind fertility outcomes. therefore, we expect that our data will show that the economic incentives provided by the cash transfer programme are associated with a couple’s decision whether to have an additional child. • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima222 3.1 previous research in other latin american countries the conditions of certain cash transfer programmes in other latin american countries – such as chile solidario (chile), juntos (peru), red de protección social – rps (nicaragua), oportunidades/progresa (mexico), families in action (colombia), programa de asignación familiar – praf (honduras) and programme of advancement through health and education – path (jamaica), – are similar to those of the bfp (stecklov et al. 2006). studies have questioned how such programmes are related to the fertility of these nations. stecklov et al. (2006) have explored this relationship in some of these countries, analysing the rps, progresa and praf programmes and their association with the number of children among benefi ciary women. according to the authors, progresa and rps demonstrated no relation to fertility. however, the praf programme had a pronatalist profi le, presenting many incentives for women to raise children (stecklov et al. 2006). additionally, praf, similar to bfp, allows for an increase in benefi ts if the family has an additional child, whereas progresa and rps do not. after this study, praf formulators modifi ed the conditions of the programme to approximate those of progresa and rps, which in turn decreased the fertility incentive from praf (stecklov et al. 2006). using the data after the changes made to the praf, li (2016) replicated the study by stecklov et al. (2006) and she found an insignifi cant change in fertility levels due to the families being part of the programme. in a separate study, garganta et al. (2017) analysed argentina’s cash transfer programme, asignación universal por hijo (auh), and its relationship to national reproduction rates. this programme also contains conditions that provide monetary benefi ts to women with up to fi ve children under the age of 18 and the authors found that the programme is related to an increasing family size until this limit of fi ve children was achieved. interestingly, they found that in families with children over the age of six, this fi nancial support does not appear to encourage women to have another child. moreover, the positive fi nancial incentive was higher among mothers with lower levels of education (garganta et al. 2017). outside of latin america, andersen et al. (2018) analysed the relationship between the cash-for-care (cfc) programme introduced in norway in 1998 and changes in fertility behaviour among eligible versus ineligible mothers over a fouryear period. the results showed that the probability of having a second child was reduced and the programme caused a reduction in the total fertility levels of women (andersen et al. 2018). signorini and queiroz (2009), rocha (2018), simões and soares (2012), and cechin et al. (2015), superti (2020), olson et al. (2019), among others, used national household surveys to explore the relationship between the bfp and the country’s tfr. all studies found either little or no relationship between the social programme and fertility levels. some even argued that the bfp had a negative impact on fertility in the two years after its implementation (signorini/queiroz 2009). the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 223 3.2 previous brazilian studies on the other hand, the positive results of the bfp on education and health in brazil are already well known. studies have shown that bfp participation increases the numbers of poor children and adolescents going to school (araújo et al. 2010; oliveira/soares 2013; simões/soares 2012). in addition, the conditions of the programme in the area of education can help to decrease inequality in education and consequently reduce intergenerational cycles of poverty (cireno et al. 2013). with respect to health, the programme has served to improve the nutrition of children, reduce child mortality from malnutrition, increase vaccination rates and provide greater access to health care for children (camelo et al. 2009; raselha et al. 2013). a study by facchini et al. (2013) found a higher use of basic health units (bhus) among benefi ciaries of the bfp, implying improved health care among those in the programme. carloto and mariano (2010) argue that the fact that the bfp benefi t card contains the name of the woman creates a gender issue – specifi cally, it attributes the role of “family caregiver” to the woman and reinforces the stereotype of the female condition. in addition, the authors highlight certain issues attached to the conditions of the programme. first, they note that as women are the representatives of the family in the bfp, the women then wish to meet the conditions for the programme, which results in an increase in their family responsibilities (carloto/mariano 2010). this event is what corgozinho (2015) refers to as the “feminization of care.” meanwhile, rego and pinzani (2013) highlight several testimonials from bfp benefi ciaries who affi rm that the programme promoted a sense of citizenship, more autonomy within the family, engendered greater respect and encouraged better expectations for the future. pires (2013) also argues that many benefi ciaries created a bond with the “external world” by complying with programme conditions, thus creating both confi dence that goes beyond consumption and greater autonomy within the home. several studies have focused on fi nding a link between the bfp and women’s fertility. for example, rocha (2018) evaluated the programme by comparing fertility before and after the programme was implemented, using household surveys from 1995 to 2007 from pnad (brazil’s household survey) and propensity score matching method. the author did not fi nd a positive relationship between fertility and the bfp. his explanation of this result is linked to the bfp enabling investments in the quality of children’s lives, in contrast to infl uencing the women’s desire to have more children (quantity). other studies reinforced how the bfp indirectly provides assistance to its benefi ciaries in terms of health care, which facilitates women’s access to reproductive health information and contraception (rocha 2018; ribeiro et al. 2017). meanwhile, some studies (previously cited) presented similar results (simões/ soares 2012; signorini/queiroz 2009), fi nding no relationship between fertility rates and bfp. in their studies, simões and soares (2012) used data from pnds (national demographic and health survey) from 2006, and signorini and queiroz (2009) used pnad (national household survey) 2004 and 2006. both studies applied a model based on a differences in differences approach to measure the correlation with the programme and fertility. however, cechin et al. (2015) reached different conclusions • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima224 after analysing a longer period of exposure to the bfp and using 2010 census data. they found that the programme is slightly correlated with a woman’s progression from a fi rst to a second child (cechin et al. 2015). alves and cavenaghi (2012) also argued for a likely relationship between the social benefi t and fertility based on the hypothesis of inverse causality. specifi cally, an increase of one additional child reduces per capita family income; therefore, the family becomes eligible for the bfp. however, they do not demonstrate any substantial empirical analysis to prove their hypothesis. in contrast to our estimates, superti (2020) using data from cadúnico, the database that allocated bfp benefi ts, showed that bfp had no relationship with fertility decisions. in addition, olson et al. (2019) study the relationship between bolsa família and teenage pregnancy (ages 15 to 18) using pnad (brazil’s household survey) from 2004 to 2013.they fi nd a reduction in teen pregnancies after the year 2010. it is important to note that we are working with women from a very low social stratum, who fi nd an identity in maternity (patias/buaes 2012). the transition to motherhood for these women usually occurs earlier compared to other social strata (vieira 2009). in addition, these women view maternity as something sacred and a ritual, considered a “gift from god” (rego/pinzani 2013). however, the lack of future fi nancial benefi ts could delay the passage to motherhood. 3.3 hypotheses and assumptions we propose that the benefi t of bfp, with the programme’s conditionalities, reduces a child’s opportunity cost. therefore, the conditions of the bfp should operate as incentives to women to have more children and lead them to invest in quantity instead of quality as their income increases, because it provides to mothers a variable amount of money for each child born, with a maximum of 3 children up to the age of 15 years. to confi rm these results using another analytical method, we perform propensity score matching, the results of which we will discuss next. our hypothesis is that the women who receive the bfp, even if this benefi t corresponds to a low monetary value, have more children compared to mothers in the same social stratum who are not benefi ciaries of the programme. in addition, we hypothesize that women in poor socioeconomic conditions that allow them to participate in the bfp already have higher fertility rates than other social classes. in this case, the bfp may act as an incentive to fulfi l these women’s desire to have children. of course, another interpretation is also possible and they have more children as a way to gain some monetary relief from their poverty. given the data we use and according to our hypothesis, we expect to fi nd a positive correlation between the programme and fertility, with benefi ciaries displaying higher fertility. unlike other studies previously mentioned here, we suggest that the programme conditions may also correlate with parities progressions in a different way. the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 225 4 data and methods we use reproductive and socioeconomic data from the 2010 brazilian micro-census, provided by the brazilian institute of geography and statistics (ibge). we tabulated the cohort fertility measures of bfp benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries based on family income information and whether or not they declared in the 2010 census that they receive the benefi t. we use the reproductive information on children ever born (ceb), separated by fi ve-year age intervals, educational level and region of residence. we also tabulate this information for all women in the aggregate, for only women who are heads of household. this last tabulation is important for our analysis, as heads of household are more likely to have children and also control the income of the household. therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between fertility and the bfp among different cohorts. to this end, we selected two groups of women: bfp benefi ciaries in 2010, between the ages of 15 and 49, and non-benefi ciaries from the same age group, despite being eligible for the programme. these non-benefi ciaries are women aged 15 to 49 whose per capita family income is below r$140.00 per month (the poverty line in 2010, as described in fig. 1). one may argue that this analytical choice could create a selectivity bias yet this was the only feasible way that we saw to select the eligible women (our control group) and comparable to the bfp benefi ciaries. we also suggest that the propensity score matching applied in this study may reduce this selectivity issue, because it selects the groups randomly and with comparable characteristics and the only difference between them is in relation to whether or not they received the bfp. these women are eligible for the bfp, but for some unknown reason did not receive the benefi t that year. one possible reason for not receiving the benefi t may be linked to the municipal quotas. to select comparison groups, we used the following census microdata variables: women from fi ve-year age intervals; total number of ceb, grouped by the age of the mother; per capita family income; and whether or not the family has monthly income provided by the bfp. the sample includes 1,377,394 bfp benefi ciaries and 955,381 non-benefi ciaries. important points need to be addressed. first, the 2010 population census was the only data with reproductive and the social benefi t information after the start of the bfp in 2004. this dataset is still a good benchmark to analyse the proposed relationship between the benefi t and fertility because the families that enter the programme could continue for at least 2 years, even if their income increases due to household income volatility (souza et al. 2018). in addition, every two years the family needs to update their registration information and the period of benefi t is restarted. in reality, in some municipalities families are unable to update their information in the required register (resulting in continuing the benefi t) (soares/ sátyro 2010). secondly, even after voluntarily leaving the bfp, there is a 36-month guarantee period for families to return to the bolsa família if their fi nancial situation worsens (barros et al. 2018). thirdly, according to souza et al. (2018), bfp is the bestfocused social programme in the country. the programme’s coverage between 2004 and 2010 was around 50 percent among the poorest 20 percent of the population, • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima226 stabilizing at 60 percent of this population in 2012 (souza et al. 2018). this good degree of focus is thanks to the selection criteria linked to the registered families and the number of quotas in the programme (barros et al. 2008). 4.1 cohort fertility and parity progression ratio estimates next, we reconstructed the birth history of women with incomplete reproductive cycles and estimated pprs, which represent the proportion of women who progress from one parity to the next, or the share of women from birth order i, who progressed to birth order i + 1. pprs can be calculated for cohorts of women defi ned either by their age or time of marriage. generally, when studies divide women into age cohorts, parity progression ratios can be calculated from the parity distribution of a particular age group of women. these ratios are estimated as the proportion of women at a certain age interval with at least one child, divided by the total of women in that same age group, according to the formula below: where: • 5pprx(i) is the parity progression ratio between parity i and i + 1; • 5mx(i + 1) is the proportion of women between x and x + 5 who reached parity i + 1; • 5mx(i) is the proportion of women between x and x + 5 who reached parity i. the pprs also allow us to fi nd the cfr, according to the formula: cfr = ppr0 + ppr0 . ppr1 + ppr0 . ppr1 . ppr2 + … fig. 1: construction of benefi ciary versus non-benefi ciary (but eligible) groups, brazil, 2010 source: own design (1) (2) the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 227 additionally, for each comparison group, we initially estimated the cfr for cohorts with complete reproductive histories (women aged 45-49 years)1 and after incomplete reproductive histories (women aged 25-29 years). we note that the following tables and fi gures only show the results for women with an incomplete reproductive history (25-29 years). this is because the bfp began in 2004 and women aged 25 to 292 in 2010 were between the ages of 19 and 23 at the time of the programme’s implementation; and fertility was still considerably high in the recent periods for women aged 19 to 23 (berquó/cavenaghi 2014; lima/myrskylä 2014; and gupta/leite 1999). thus, older cohorts were less exposed to the relation between the bfp and fertility since a portion of their reproductive years had already been completed before the programme was implemented. the decision to follow this approach was based on previous studies about the relationship between bolsa família and fertility. for example, cechin et al. (2015) have found differences in fertility levels between the programme benefi ciaries at the ages of 16 and 34 years old and rocha (2018) has also shown fertility outcome differences between women aged from 26 to 35 years. moreover, as a household may include daughters, grandparents or other relatives who do not receive the benefi t or who are not mothers, we decided to include in our cohorts only the women who declared they were head of the household. these women represented almost 70 percent of the families who declared receiving the bfp in that period. an additional analysis was carried out including the men who declared they were head of the household, but the pattern of cohort fertility found did not change much in comparison with the households headed by women.3 the decision to work only with women heads of the household was considered to avoid the risks of selecting daughters (who also may be mothers) and other female relatives, avoiding counting the same benefi ts more than one time in a single household. in addition, households in brazil have a long history of extended families (ibge 2010) and daughters may constitute another family inside the same household, which, in turn, can bias the proposed comparison. this selection provides us with groups of women who may manage the fi nancial resources and care of the children in the family. this same age selection was performed by cechin et al. (2015), todd et al. (2012). thus, we hope that this selection may raise other important highlights not illustrated by previous studies, such as the correlation with parities; in other words, the difference between the two groups according to birth orders. this new sample contains 399,500 women benefi ciaries who are responsible for the household (versus 205,260 non-benefi ciary heads of household). 1 not showed in this paper. 2 we have also tabulated cfrs and pprs for complete reproductive (not shown), i.e., women who were ages 15 to 49. however, due to the large scope of our analyses, we limited our estimates to women aged 25-29 for reasons explained in the manuscript. nonetheless, the results for all cohorts are quite similar in terms of pprs. 3 due to the length of analysis, these results are not shown in this work. • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima228 two important points must be addressed with regard to the cohorts of women who had already completed their reproductive years by the time the programme began: first, we assume no mortality differential by parity of older women. however, we avoid this problem by using the incomplete reproductive information from younger cohorts. thus, measures derived from younger women may undergo both censoring and selection effects. this means that the comparison of the parity progression rates of younger and older women may sometimes be misleading (moultrie 2013). thus, we attempt to reduce this bias by selecting two groups that are easily comparable in terms of socioeconomic characteristics. both groups fall under the poverty line (a condition to receive the benefi t) and differ only in terms of whether or not they receive the benefi t, which should help in reducing the selectivity effect. 4.2 propensity score matching estimates programmes like bfp are diffi cult to separate into comparison groups, due to the design of the programme itself. despite that fact, a strategy to contour this problem would be to use quasi-experimental estimators. in this study, we sought to comprehensively investigate the relationship between fertility and the social programme by applying propensity score matching to separate the control and treatment groups and estimate the difference between the two groups in relation to the number of children ever born. psm relates to the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment group based on observed covariates (rosenbaum/rubin 1983). the method generally uses a logistic regression, probit or logit, to calculate the propensity scores, according to equation 3: e(xi) = pr(zi = 1|xi) the function e(xi) is called the propensity score, which is the propensity for exposure to treatment i given the observed covariates xi (rosenbaum/rubin 1983). the treatment indication is denoted as zi, where zi = 1 are the units that receive treatment, and zi = 0 otherwise. the psm is used to perform the balancing scores, selecting a control group with a propensity score similar to that of the treatment group, eliminating the selection bias of the study. for counterfactual estimation, the similarity between groups is a basic requirement, which is guaranteed by propensity score matching (cechin et al. 2015). given a variable of interest, the method is designed to observe if there is a difference between control and treatment groups, e.g., in terms of the number of children ever born in the case of this study. for this, the average treatment effect (att) is calculated, described in equation 4, where r1 is the response for the treatment group and r0 the response for the control group. this measure gives the estimate a correlation of the programme under analysis on the cohort fertility levels (cechin et al. 2015; rosenbaum/rubin 1983): (3) the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 229 att = e(r1|z = 1) – e(r0|z = 0) we estimate psm models, controlling for women’s education level, region of residence, household location, age, race/ethnicity, if the women live with a partner, the type of union, occupation and their religion. all of these variables are well explored in other studies of fertility differentials (gupta/leite 1999; marteleto/souza 2012; marteleto 2010; merrick/berquó 1983). reinforcing that, for the reasons already cited, the models are estimated for the selection of women aged 25 to 29 years old and heads of household. we consider that these women control the family fi nances and they are the ones at greater risk showing some relation with the programme (cechin et al. 2015). one psm method’s limitation is that it allows the user to work only with observable variables. unobservable variables can also correlate with the woman’s decision to have children and differences in the number of children ever born cannot be explained only by whether the woman receives the bolsa família social benefi t. to assess the correlation of unobservable variables with the psm model, rosenbaum (2002) suggests a sensitivity test, or rosenbaum’s limit, which tests the robustness of the propensity score matching results. according to the test, if the odds ratio is equal to 1, this implies that there is no selection bias and the difference between the control and treatment groups is explained by the bolsa família programme. 5 results the results are presented in two subsections. first, we show the results for the cohort of women between the ages of 25-29 years who are head of the household, separated by region and educational levels. in both analyses, we estimated the pprs and cfrs. second, we present the propensity score matching analysis, this time controlling for more confounding factors. 5.1 descriptive analysis of pprs and cfrs table 1 presents a descriptive analysis of the two comparison groups, according to certain socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. most of these benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries are located in the poorest, north-eastern region of the country. as shown in table 1, in the group of benefi ciaries most women are spouse/partner to the head of the household. however, among non-benefi ciaries, the percentage of spouses/partners and children are very similar (both near 33 percent). the share of heads of household in both benefi ciary and non-benefi ciary groups are similar (29 percent and 21.48 percent, respectively). meanwhile, the percentage of women by cohabitation is similar among benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries. we also found that women living in urban areas account for the majority of households in both groups. we did not notice any signifi cant differences between the two groups in terms of ethnicity. (4) • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima230 tab. 1: socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic characteristics: cohort ages 25 to 29, bfp benefi ciaries versus non-benefi ciaries, brazil, 2010 bfp non-bfp differences women women bfp – non-bfp in % relationship to household head head 29.00 21.48 7.52 spouse/partner of head 55.54 33.60 21.94 child 10.52 33.29 -22.77 other relative 4.47 10.28 -5.81 other 0.46 1.34 -0.88 total 100 100 type of union civil and religious 14.33 18.95 -4.62 civil only 15.34 14.47 0.87 religious only 6.16 3.69 2.47 union by cohabitation 64.17 62.89 1.28 total 100 100 race/ethnicity white 26.62 34.14 -7.52 black 10.03 9.35 0.68 asian 1.37 1.22 0.15 mixed-race 61.12 55.01 6.11 indigenous 0.86 0.28 0.58 total 100 100 household location urban 69.25 76.8 -7.55 rural 30.75 23.2 7.55 total 100 100 education level incomplete primary 55.93 43.86 12.07 primary education 23.27 21.58 1.69 secondary/tertiary education 20.79 34.57 -13.78 total 100 100 brazilian regions north 12.4 14.89 -2.49 northeast 54.16 39.3 14.86 south 6.94 6.83 0.11 southeast 21.0 33.16 -12.16 midwest 5.49 5.82 -0.33 total 100 100 n 1,377,393 955,381 source: own calculation based on data from 2010 brazilian population census. the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 231 regarding education levels, we found that benefi ciaries present a higher percentage of women with an incomplete primary school education in comparison to non-benefi ciaries. likewise, 44 percent of benefi ciaries completed primary school, compared to 56 percent of non-benefi ciaries. for this reason, we have tabulated pprs and cfrs according to education levels to identify how differentials in education affect the relationship between cohort fertility and whether or not a household receives the social benefi ts. when analysing the benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries regionally, we fi nd that the majority of bfp benefi ciaries are concentrated in the northeast (54 percent). this is consistent with offi cial estimates from the national statistics offi ce, which showed this region as having the highest percentage of the population living below the poverty line, followed by the southeast, north, south and midwest (ibge 2010). we compared the pprs among bfp benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries (although eligible for the bfp) in 2010, for heads of household. figures 2 and 3 show the pprs by educational level and regions. with respect to cfrs, rates in the whole country were higher for benefi ciaries than for non-benefi ciaries, at 2.42 versus 1.81, respectively. this represents a notable difference (equal to 0.61) in reproduction between the two groups, as fertility varies from above replacement level for benefi ciaries to below replacement for non-benefi ciaries. we fi nd the same pattern of increasing ppr up to the third parity when we disaggregate our analyses by education level. we used the following educational categories: did not complete primary school, completed primary school and completed secondary or secondary and tertiary school. (we grouped those that had completed secondary and tertiary school, since the two presented few cases.) we found that women with an incomplete primary level education demonstrated the highest cfrs (2.71 and 2.35 for benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries, respectively). meanwhile, women who had completed secondary school or higher presented the lowest cohort fertility levels (1.79 and 1.05 for benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries, respectively), both below population replacement. cross-group comparisons also showed that, disregarding educational level, bfp benefi ciaries present consistently higher cfrs than non-benefi ciaries. the results of the ppr analysis were even more insightful. benefi ciaries showed a consistently higher ppr until the birth of a third child, after which the pprs of benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries converged, even when controlling for education levels. in figure 3, we analyse how the fertility estimates are correlated geographically. brazil is historically a country characterized by extreme inequality, in part determined by place of residence (berquó/cavenaghi 2004; ibge 2010). the north and north-eastern areas of the country are less developed in comparison with the southern and south-eastern regions and bfp benefi ciaries are concentrated in the northeast (table 1). as a result, one would expect to fi nd regional differences in cohort fertility measures between benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries, due to wellknown differences in fertility rates across brazilian regions (berquó/cavenaghi 2014). however, we did not fi nd signifi cant differences in pprs between the two groups across regions. instead, we found a consistent pattern in all regions, which implies similar conclusions to those of the previous analyses by education • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima232 level – specifi cally, regardless of the region where the household is located, the benefi ciaries show a slightly higher fertility, up until the birth of a third child and that the progression to having another child is less determined by the social programme. as a hypothetical scenario, we simulate the country’s fertility if all women heads of household in brazil received bfp benefi ts, we extrapolated the relationship of the bfp based on cfrs and the percentage of women bfp benefi ciaries in the country in 2010. the fertility rate for women heads of household, ages 25 to 29 (both benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries) in 2010 was 1.38, while the fertility rate for only benefi ciaries in the same age group was 2.45. as benefi ciaries of the programme represented 21.96 percent of the total number of women ages 25 to 29, 21.96 percent of this cfr of 1.1 is attributed to women who received the bfp. if fig. 2: pprs for women heads of household, cohort ages 25 to 29, by educational level, brazil, 2010 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.42) non-beneficiary* (1.81) ppr all women considered 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.71) non-beneficiary* (2.35) ppr women with less than primary education 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.27) non-beneficiary* (1.84) ppr women with primary education 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (1.79) non-beneficiary* (1.05) ppr women with secundary/tertiary education * non-benefi ciary, but eligible. the values in parentheses correspond to the cfr. source: own calculation based on data from 2010 brazilian population census. the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 233 fig. 3: pprs, cohort ages 25 to 29, head of household, brazil, 2010 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.79) non-beneficiary* (2.49) ppr north 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.24) non-beneficiary* (1.93) ppr northeast 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.32) non-beneficiary* (1.89) ppr south 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.31) non-beneficiary* (1.83) ppr southeast 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4+ progression beneficiary (2.46) non-beneficiary* (2.11) ppr midwest * non-benefi ciary, but eligible. the values in parentheses correspond to the cfr. source: own calculation based on data from 2010 brazilian population census. • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima234 we extrapolate and suppose that 50 percent of the women in the age group were benefi ciaries, the new cohort fertility rate would increase to 1.76 (an increase in cfr of roughly 28 percent), which would in turn be a considerably high correlation with reproduction in the country. our results appear to indicate that the quality-quantity trade-off operates inversely for women in fragile economic positions in society. therefore, the conditions of the bfp operate as incentives to women to have more children and lead them to invest in quantity instead of quality as income increases, because it provides to mothers a variable amount of money for each child born, with a maximum of 3 children up to the age of 15 years. to confi rm these results using another analytical method, we perform propensity score matching, whose results we will discuss next. the initial step was to perform logistic regression, given the set of variables described in the data section, and to fi nd the propensity scores. once we estimated the propensity scores, the next step was to calculate the atts (as described in table 2). the psm models are estimated for cfrs and pprs separately. the fi rst analysis covers only the cohort fertility and the second aims to understand the parity progression ratios to distinguish birth orders. for overall cohort fertility, the att show a value of 0.531. this means that for women heads of household between 25 and 29 years old who received the bfp, their cfr will be on average 0.531 higher than that of non-benefi ciaries with the same characteristics. this result is close to previous fi ndings of cfrs and the differences in the number of children ever born was 0.61 (2.42 for benefi ciaries versus 1.81 for non-benefi ciaries). this means that, despite the explanatory power of the observed covariates, the bfp still presented a positive correlation with women’s cohort fertility. if we look at the pprs estimates, we see the same positive relationship between the number of children ever born and receiving bfp. once more, the results are consistent with the descriptive analysis, showing that women benefi ciaries have higher pprs and reducing this difference while we progress to higher birth orders. the threshold of three children is again observed this time. tab. 2: att estimation – head of household, age groups 25 to 29, brazil, 2010 cfr ppr 0-1 ppr 1-2 ppr 2-3 ppr 3-4 ppr 4 + benefi ciary 49405 11345 26552 28886 13369 4773 non-benefi ciary 49405 11345 26552 28886 13369 4773 (129585) (88090) (69973) (36722) (18200) (9174) att 0.531 0.226 0.121 0.071 0.033 -0.013 s. e 0.0086 0.0045 0.0042 0.0046 0.0062 0.0185 note: values in parentheses are the number of observations before psm. source: own calculation based on data from 2010 brazilian population census. the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 235 for the progression from childless status to one child the difference is almost 22 percent in favour of women benefi ciaries. while the progression from one to two children this value is 12 percent and then it declines to 7 percent when women bore a third offspring. in addition, for higher parity progressions this value is much lower, implying less signifi cant differences between bfp benefi ciaries and nonbenefi ciaries. a word of caution is necessary: despite these differences in fi ndings, a number of unobserved factors may affect the assignment to the treatment group. therefore, rosenbaum sensitivity tests were performed on each model. these tests indicate that there is a critical gamma level at which the results of our models would be questionable. in other words, this critical value raises the question about the validity of the positive correlation of bfp with the cohort fertility. in our models, the critical gamma values for the rosenbaum test were reached at 1.7 for ppr1-2, 1.4 for ppr23, 1.3 for ppr3-4 and 1.15 for ppr4 +. for the cfr and ppr0-1, until the gamma value of 2.0, no critical value was achieved. in order to reject our results for the ppr1-2, for example, the value of 1.7 indicates that an unobserved covariate or covariates would increase the odds of a treated woman progressing to a second child relative to a matched control woman by 70 percent. regarding the selected set of variables well explored in many fertility studies and used in our propensity score models, it may be unlikely that there are unobserved factors beyond these variables that would increase the odds of bearing an additional child between matched mothers by an additional 70 percent. considering the ppr2-3 and the ppr3-4, the odds of parity progressions between matched women would increase in 40 percent and 30 percent, also making these values implausible. looking at higher birth orders of four or more children, we see an increase in uncertainty of our estimates. but 15 percent is still a considerable value to doubt the model estimates. 6 discussion from our estimates, we found a similar pattern of reproduction among bfp benefi ciaries, particularly at the younger ages of 15 to 29, where women tended to have their fi rst through third children quickly, which allowed each family to receive a maximum of three variable benefi ts for each child from 0 to 15 years (according to the conditions of the bfp through 2011). moreover, with increases in years of schooling, the disparity between benefi ciaries and non-benefi ciaries increases in birth orders 0-1 and 1-2. our analyses at the highest educational level presented outliers and inconsistent estimates due to the small number of observations. we also note that eligibility for the programme can change over time and therefore may not have a correlation with higher educational groups. however, the pprs demonstrated similar patterns and differentials in fertility for the two groups at the national level and also when disaggregating the analysis by region and education level. an additional analysis with psm confi rms our cfrs and • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima236 pprs results, showing a positive correlation with the number of children among bf benefi ciaries as compared to non-benefi ciaries (who are eligible for the bfp). according to the general microeconomic theory of fertility, an increase in income results in the decision to have fewer children, followed by a greater investment in human capital or child quality, according to the quantity-quality trade-off (becker 1960, 1991a/b). in the case of benefi ciaries, this rationality was not directly dictated by this trade-off. for the groups within our study, the rational decision could be to have more children so that the family income would increase due to an increased number of benefi ts. our study is compatible with this hypothesis and showed that women may opt for a “rational” strategy. they are having children earlier to receive the associated monetary benefi t and then they begin to control fertility once reaching the allowable limit of children under the bfp. another explanation for our fi ndings could be that we are working with women from a very low social stratum who fi nd their identity in maternity (patias/buaes 2012). the lack of future fi nancial certainty may delay the passage to motherhood and the monetary benefi ts from the bfp can provide a better assurance of the future and monetary security that may encourage women to have children. however, regardless of years of schooling, the bfp appears to have a positive correlation with women’s fertility up to a third child. one plausible explanation for this fi nding may be related to the conditions of the programme. specifi cally, mothers receive a monetary supplement for each child, with benefi ts limited to three children through the age of 15. consequently, women appear to have children to receive the per-child benefi t until they have three children. moreover, we could argue that rationality among those in the poorest social strata in the country may not be directly dictated by the quantity-quality trade-off, as becker (1960,1991a/b) predicted. instead, for these women, the rational decision would be to have more children, as this will increase the household income until a capped number of monetary benefi ts. we fi nd it important to highlight that the purpose of this study was not to measure the impact of the bfp on fertility, but to perform a relationship analysis based on pprs and cohort fertility, neither of which has been used so far in the literature to study the relationship between fertility and the bfp. 7 limitations and challenges however, caution is necessary in interpreting these results since this analysis has certain limitations. the fi rst is related to the diffi culty in establishing the exact moment that the woman begins to receive the benefi t – specifi cally, the beginning of the association of the bfp with reproduction. with information from the census, even with other available databases such as cadúnico, we only know whether a woman received the benefi t or not in 2010. however, we do not know if the family entered the programme before or after having children. another important question that needs to be addressed is about the possible existence of reverse causality. that is, with this study design, we cannot control the fact that the women may have many the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 237 children to receive the benefi t or if they already have children and therefore receive the bf. the second limitation, a consequence of the fi rst, refers to the question of causality. establishing causality between the bfp and fertility is not possible, especially because the programme was not designed to be quasi-experimental (i.e., with clear distinction of control and treatment groups). our estimates are based on cross-sectional data and we cannot conclude cause and effect, but rather certain associations between the bfp and fertility. the third limitation is related to the fact that a number of unobserved factors (not captured by our data) play a role in a woman’s decision to have a child, such as the individual desire to be a mother, the lack of access and information about contraception, the absence of knowledge of family planning commonly seen among low socioeconomic groups, etc. however, many other variables impact a woman’s decision to have children and should therefore be tested. a fourth limitation refers to bfp rules that allow families living in extreme poverty to have access to the benefi t even without children and that can create confounding effects as well. finally, our analyses were based on pprs from the age group of 25 to 29; however, ideally we would use an age group at the end of the reproductive period – women 15 through 49. in addition to the issue of bfp not having a quasi-experimental design, we are faced with a data problem. the fact that we do not know the exact moment the woman entered the programme means we do not know if she had fi rst a child and therefore she fulfi lled the bfp criteria, as a consequence of reductions in household’s per capita income due to the increase in the number of family members, or if this woman’s children were born after her entering the bfp, characterizing a reverse causality issue. with the data available in brazil (household surveys or population census) that include fertility information and questions about bfp, we cannot establish the exact direction of this relationship between bfp and fertility. finally, our analyses were only in relation to education. however, many other socioeconomic variables that might correlate with fertility should be tested. therefore, we continue our analysis by studying regional differences in pprs. despite all this, the robustness of our estimates provides interesting results and offers a different perspective on the much-discussed topic of fertility and bfp. a fi nal limitation to be aware of is the selectivity effect. the group of non-benefi ciaries appears to include women with a higher educational level and living in the most developed region of the country, the southeast. psm was used precisely as an attempt to reduce this problem, even though it is known that the method may not capture all selectivity. even though it is not possible to establish causality between fertility and bfp, this study presents an important contribution to the discussion concerning the relation between cash transfer programmes and fertility. first, because we clearly verifi ed differences in cohort fertility levels between women that receive the benefi t and those eligible that did not participate in the bolsa família programme. additionally, we saw a positive correlation between the bfp and parity progressions that extended up to the third child, something not explored before. as a result, the only unanimous conclusion in all studies on fertility and social programmes is • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima238 the complexity of analysing this relationship. therefore, more analyses must be performed in this area. acknowledgements we are grateful to bernardo queiroz, laeticia souza, tomas sobotka and vegard skirbekk for their comments and tips during the writing of this paper. we are also thankful for the helpful comments of the editors and the reviewers in preparing the manuscript. we also would like to acknowledge the fi nancial support from the coordination for the improvement of higher education personnel – brazil (capes) – 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[https://brazil.unfpa.org/ sites/default/fi les/pub-pdf/swop_brasil_web.pdf, 06.07.2021]. vieira, joice m. 2009: transição para a vida adulta em são paulo: cenários e tendências sócio demográfi cos [phd thesis]. campinas: instituto de filosofi a e ciências humanas, universidade estadual de campinas. wesolowski, katharina; ferrarini, tommy 2018: family policies and fertility: examining the link between family policy institutions and fertility rates in 33 countries 1995-2011. in: international journal of sociology and social policy 38,11/12: 1057-1070. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijssp-04-2018-0052 wong, laura l. r.; bonifácio, gabriela m. 2009: retomada da queda da fecundidade na américa latina: evidências para a primeira década do século xxi. in: revista latinoamericana de población 3,4-5: 93-121. https://doi.org/10.31406/relap2009.v3.i1.n4-5.7 the association between conditional cash transfer programmes and cohort fertility • 243 date of submission: 28.09.2020 date of acceptance: 12.05.2021 camila ferreira soares (). universidade estadual de campinas (unicamp). campinas, brazil. e-mail: ferreirasoares01@gmail.com url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/camila-soares-15 prof. dr. everton emanuel campos de lima. universidade estadual de campinas (unicamp). campinas, brazil. e-mail: everton.emanuel@gmail.com url: https://www.ifch.unicamp.br/ifch/colaboradores/demografi a/625/everton%20 emanuel%20campos%20de%20lima • camila ferreira soares, everton emanuel campos de lima244 appendix tab. a1: logistic regression for the psm – brazil 2010 odds ratio household situation urban (ref.) rural 0.3487*** region north (ref.) northeast 0.5669*** southeast -0.4532*** south -0.3630*** midwest -0.2205*** age 25 (ref.) 26 0.0729*** 27 0.1320*** 28 0.1591*** 29 0.1538*** race/ethnic white (ref.) black 0.3364*** asian 0.2103*** mixed race 0.3096*** indigenous 0.4295*** educational composition less than primary (ref.) primary education -0.3361*** secondary education -0.9867*** tertiary education -2.1950*** live with someone yes (ref.) no, have before -0.0116 no, never have -0.9310*** marital status married (ref.) separated 0.2940*** divorced 0.1310** widowed 0.0014 single 0.2824*** religion atheists and agnostics (ref.) catholic 0.1797*** mainline protestants 0.0256 pentecostal protestants 0.0942*** other religion 0.0126** income -0.0033*** * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. source: own calculations based on data from 2010 brazilian population census. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? examining the predilections of native women and immigrant women from asia and africa is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? examining the predilections of native women and immigrant women from asia and africa sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli abstract: this paper investigates gender preferences for offspring within the native french population and among immigrants from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnam-cambodia-laos in france by combining the family and housing survey (2011) and the trajectories and origins survey (2008). in so doing, it is the fi rst paper to examine the persistence (or lack thereof) of gender preferences among immigrants in france. this allows the fi ndings of the paper to serve as a tool for monitoring the immigrant integration process in the country. using (multilevel) logistic regressions to examine transitions to second and third child births contingent upon gender of existing children and by migration status provides two main results. first, regarding evidence of gender preferences, the results show: mixed gender preferences and weak daughter preference among native french women when transitioning to the third parity; mixed gender preferences among secondgeneration turkish immigrant women when transitioning to the third parity; and a daughter preference for second-generation north african, sub-saharan african and vietnamese-laos-cambodian immigrant women when transitioning to the third parity. second, for the immigrant sample, these preferences emerge in the face of declining fertility, across subsequent generations of immigrants, and on average as a deviation from their country of origin gender preferences. this not only points to the malleability of gender preferences for offspring but also lends credence to both the selection and adaptation hypotheses in explaining immigrant integration in france. keywords: parental gender preferences · immigrants · migration status · fertility decline · transitions · integration · comparison comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 303-330 (date of release: 03.08.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-11 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-11en3 • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli304 1 introduction france has a long history of immigration dating back to the early 19th century, with immigrants arriving from other european countries (pison 2019). more recent waves of immigrants, i.e. after the second world war, included non-european immigrants from north africa and later sub-saharan africa and asia (pison 2019). consequently, the immigrant population in france has formed gradually over the years, over successive waves of immigration (pison 2019). in 2015, immigrants formed approximately 12.3 percent of the french population (pison 2019). as of 2017, immigrants born in africa and turkey comprised 65.2 percent of the immigrant population (of which 29.5 percent were algerian, moroccan and tunisian immigrants) and second-generation immigrants comprised 48.1 percent of the immigrant population (of which 32.3 percent were second-generation algerian, moroccan and tunisian immigrants) in france (ined 2020). the diversity in terms of country of origin of immigrants creates heterogeneity across fi rst-generation immigrants in different communities on social and economic fronts (algan/bisin/verdier 2012). first-generation immigrants may also display signifi cant gaps vis-à-vis natives in terms of age at fi rst marriage, education, age gap between spouses and fertility rates (algan/bisin/verdier 2012). this is especially true for non-european immigrants from more recent waves of immigration who come from high fertility countries with a strong emphasis on traditional family values, parent-child ties and religion (pailhé 2017). nevertheless, research has shown a rapid integration process between fi rst-generation and second-generation immigrants on almost all dimensions and for almost all groups of origin (algan/ bisin/verdier 2012). academic literature has analysed various facets of the immigrant integration processes in france for both fi rst-generation (e.g. toulemon 2004) and secondgeneration (e.g. pailhé 2017; dupray/pailhé 2018) immigrants in order to provide a quantitative assessment of the cultural integration path (algan/landais/senik 2012). nevertheless, one facet with the potential to provide crucial information on integration processes in france has largely been neglected to date, namely the possible existence of gender preferences among immigrants in france. given the persistence of gender preferences in north africa (e.g. arnold 1997), turkey (e.g. altindag 2016), southeast asia and possibly matrilineal and patrilineal societies of sub-saharan africa (e.g. rossi/rouanet 2015), an examination of their existence among immigrants from these countries in france and a comparison of these preferences with those of the native french population is important for two reasons. first, gender preferences for offspring develop at the nexus of strong institutional, cultural and economic values. a change in gender preferences refl ects a fundamental alteration in these values based on the futility of formerly held gender preferences in favour of new preferences. a change in gender preferences to match those of the host population thereby refl ects the development of a value system similar to that of the native population, refl ecting simultaneous integration on multiple fronts. second, the relationship between fertility decline and gender preferences cannot be ignored. as fertility declines, the expression of gender is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 305 preferences in a population group increases as women have fewer birth parities within which to achieve the desired gender constellation of their offspring (guilmoto 2009). in france, the fertility of second-generation immigrants of various immigrant groups that exhibit gender preferences in their country of origin (e.g. north african, sub-saharan african, southeast asian; kulu et al. 2017; pailhé 2017) has converged to the level of the native french population. therefore, in order to fully understand the immigrant integration process, especially with regard to fertility, an examination of gender preferences is imperative to reveal how immigrants reconcile this lower fertility with the desired gender preferences for their offspring. to this end, our paper combines data from the trajectories and origins survey (2008) and the family and housing survey (2011) to examine the existence of gender preference for offspring among native french women and immigrant women from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnam-laos-cambodia. in so doing, we seek to answer three research questions: (1) do native french women exhibit gender preferences for offspring when transitioning to the second and/or third birth parity?; (2) do immigrant women (in france) from north africa1, sub-saharan africa2, turkey and vietnam-laos-cambodia exhibit gender preferences for offspring when transitioning to the second and/or third birth parity, and how do these preferences (or lack thereof) compare with preferences in both the immigrant’s country of origin and in france (from 1)?; and (3) how do gender preferences for offspring among immigrants (in france) from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnam-laos-cambodia change across subsequent generations of immigrants? in addressing these research questions, we make two main contributions to the literature available on this subject. first, we use relatively recent data to determine the extent to which gender preferences for offspring in france exist, among both native and immigrant women. second, as far as we are aware, we are the fi rst to examine the existence/persistence or development of gender preferences among immigrant communities in france, and thereby to use these preferences (or lack thereof) as a tool to navigate immigrant integration processes in the country. our paper is organised as follows: the next section provides the theoretical background alongside the research questions; section 3 presents the data, analytical strategy and variables (dependent, explanatory and covariates); sections 4 and 5 provide the results and discussion, respectively; section 6 contains the conclusion. 1 includes: algeria, morocco and tunisia. 2 includes: senegal, mauritania, gambia, guinea-bissau, guinea, mali, burkina faso, niger, chad, ivory coast, niger, ghana, togo, benin, nigeria, cameroon, central african republic, gabon, congo, dr congo, equatorial guinea. • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli306 2 theoretical background 2.1 universal gender preferences gender preferences for offspring are a continuously evolving global phenomenon. in developing and developed countries, even when parents show a predilection for a specifi c gender, both sons and daughters are usually desired for distinct reasons (arnold/kuo 1984; hank 2007). in developing countries, sons may be valued for economic reasons (e.g. old age support, inheritance rights), continuing the family name and performing burial rites for parents (arnold/kuo 1984). daughters may be desired for companionship, non-fi nancial care-giving and desirable personality traits (arnold 1997). in developed countries, where economic motives are unlikely to be drivers of gender preferences, parents may perceive benefi ts derived from children in terms of expansion of self, affi liation, stimulation, accomplishment and social comparison to differ between sons and daughters (hank 2007). parents may exercise gender preferences by continuing to have children until the desired number of children of the preferred gender have been born or by using sex selection ultrasound technology to have an offspring of the preferred gender at the desired parity (pison 2004). son preference is commonly observed across many countries in asia, north africa and the caucasian region (pison 2004; guilmoto 2009; duthé et al. 2012; rossi/rouanet 2015). examples of countries where such preference is prominent include: china, india, vietnam, bangladesh, pakistan, turkey, egypt, morocco, jordan, armenia, azerbaijan and georgia (arnold 1997; pison 2004; duthé et al. 2012; guilmoto 2009; fuse 2010). in some asian countries, such as cambodia, there is also a documented preference for daughters (fuse 2010). in sub-saharan africa, while no or mixed gender preferences prevail on average, weak son preference is dominant in patrilineal societies and daughter preference is common in the relatively few matrilineal societies (rossi/rouanet 2015). different permutations of gender preferences are also evident in western countries. an analysis of 24 european countries shows that son preference is prominent in countries where gender equity is low and old age poverty is high (mills/begall 2010). nevertheless, the majority of these countries show evidence of mixed gender preferences when transitioning to a third birth parity (mills/begall 2010). parental preference for a gender mix of children has also been documented in austria, belgium, hungary, italy, latvia, slovenia, spain, switzerland, australia, canada, denmark, united states and united kingdom (jacobsen et al. 1999; mcdougall et al. 1999; hank/kohler 2000; dahl et al. 2003; gray/evans 2005; tian/ morgan 2015). across all countries, modernisation resulting in a change in the societal gender system can be expected to equalise the value of sons and daughters in the long run, thereby producing indifference among couples with regard to the gender of their offspring (pollard/morgan 2002; rossi/rouanet 2015). a fl eeting period of gender indifference emerged in the united states in the 1980s and 1990s, only to be reversed in favour of a gender mix in the 2000s (pollard/morgan 2002; tian/ is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 307 morgan 2015). on the other hand, recent evidence from western countries has shown that modernisation, increased levels of female labour force participation and the sharing of family responsibilities within the household are leading to the emergence of a daughter preference (miranda et al. 2018). from the 1980s onwards, mothers in denmark, norway and sweden exhibited daughter preference at the third parity (andersson et al. 2006; saarela/finnäs 2014). from 2000 onwards, daughter preference became stronger in sweden with mothers exhibiting it from the second parity onwards (miranda et al. 2018). similarly, historically changing gender preferences in east and west germany evolved into a preference for gender mix of children alongside a weak preference for daugters in unifi ed germany in the 2000s as a result of modernisation and policies of the welfare regime (carol/hank 2020; ezdi/baş 2020). gender preferences have been shown to be malleable in france as well. retrospective fertility data from the 1962, 1975 and 1982 family and housing surveys provides evidence for mixed gender preferences and weak son preference when transitioning to the third parity for births in the 1970s only (desplanques 1987). this is accompanied by the later fertility and family survey (1994), providing evidence of no gender preferences among offspring in france (hank/kohler 2000). we use two relatively recent surveys (trajectories and origins survey 2008 and family and housing survey 2011) to examine whether native french women exhibit gender preferences for offspring when transitioning to the second and/or third birth parity. 2.2 gender preferences and migration the effect of immigration on gender preferences provides a unique opportunity to investigate the extent of cultural integration of immigrants, as it indicates the extent to which immigrants abandon the cultural and social norms of their country of origin in favour of those of the host country. several hypotheses discuss the manner in which migration may shape the fertility behaviour of immigrants. the socialisation hypothesis assumes that individuals develop their fertility preferences during their childhood. hence, immigrants’ fertility behaviour is similar to that of their country of origin (kulu/gonzalez-ferrer 2014). the adaptation hypothesis, which hinges on re-socialisation, assumes that the current socio-cultural and economic environment of immigrants determines their fertility behaviour (kulu/gonzalez-ferrer 2014). the selection hypothesis assumes that immigrants are a distinct group whose fertility preference and behaviour differ from their country of origin and resemble that of their host country (kulu/gonzalez ferrer 2014). transnationalism assumes that sustained connections to the country of origin enable immigrants to forge and sustain simultaneous multi-stranded social relations that link together their country of origin and host country (afulani/asunka 2015). some evidence points towards cultural adaptation of gender preferences in the fertility behaviour of immigrants. tønnessen, aalandslid, and skjerpen (2013) fi nd that indian-born women in norway gave birth to more girls than boys at higher orders in the 2006-2012 period compared with the 1969-2005 period, with this • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli308 latter period witnessing a heavy concentration of male births at higher parities. mussino, miranda, and ma (2018) fi nd a positive effect of gender egalitarian values and universal welfare on chinese, south korean, and indian immigrants’ fertility preferences so that their sex ratios at birth (male/female) for the period 2000 to 2015 were lower than their signifi cantly male-skewed sex ratios at birth for the period 1980 to 1999. the majority of literature, however, shows that immigrant preferences continue to refl ect the cultural norms in their country of origin. asian immigrant populations originating from son-preferring countries (e.g. china, india, south korea, and pakistan), hosted in the united kingdom, united states, canada, norway, italy, greece and spain, have lower fertility than their counterparts in their country of origin and adopt son-preferring behaviour in a manner parallel to their country of origin (dubuc/coleman 2007; abrevaya 2009; gill/mitra-kahn 2009; lillehagen/ lyngstad 2018; verrapoulu/tsimbos 2010; singh et al. 2010; adamou et al. 2013; almond et al. 2013; gonzalez 2014; ambrosetti et al. 2015). for chinese, indian, and south korean immigrants, this implies the adoption of enabling technology in favour of sons at higher birth orders and a masculinised sex ratio at birth trajectory over time parallel to that of their home countries (dubuc/coleman 2007; abrevaya 2009; adamou et al. 2013; almond et al. 2013). for pakistani immigrants, this implies the adoption of the fertility-stopping rule until the fi nal birth parity to ensure the birth of at least one son (almond et al. 2013). immigrants in france arrive from countries that display different types of gender preferences: e.g. son preferences in north africa, turkey and vietnam (arnold 1997; guilmoto 2009; altindag 2016), an assortment of preferences (son/daughter/ mixed/none) in sub-saharan africa (rossi/rouanet 2015); daughter preference in cambodia (fuse 2010). the manner in which these preferences are either retained or re-formulated may help obtain a multifaceted understanding of the integration process, especially as all immigrants do not solely come from son-preferring or daughter-preferring societies. to investigate this, we assess whether immigrant women (in france) from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnamlaos-cambodia exhibit gender preferences for offspring when transitioning to the second and/or third parity, and how these preferences (or lack thereof) compare with preferences in both the immigrant’s country of origin and those of native women in france. 2.3 fertility and gender preferences in france with the exception of occasional spikes and dips, the total fertility rate (tfr) in france has remained roughly stable at approximately 1.84 per woman since 1975 (toulemon et al. 2008; pison 2020). france thus has one of the highest fertility rates in europe (volant et al. 2019). this is largely a consequence of the country’s family policy which promotes fertility by reconciling pro-birth and family assistance objectives with work-family balance and female labour force participation (toulemon et al. 2008). this has promoted a high level of fertility amongst working-age women, i.e. 30-40 years old (toulemon et al. 2008). hence, although the data shows that is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 309 progression to fi rst births has declined since 1975, progression to subsequent parities (i.e. second, third, fourth) has not changed, implying that a decline in fi rst births does not lead to a decline in second births (toulemon et al. 2008). a family of two to three children is the ideal completed family size in france, with most couples following the two child norm (toulemon et al. 2008; pailhé 2017). until the early 1990s, gender preferences for offspring appeared to be fl exible in france: having oscillated from no gender preferences, to mixed gender preferences accompanied by weak son preference, to no gender preferences (desplanquess 1987; hank/ kohler 2000). although the fertility behaviour of the children of immigrants in france displays a tendency to converge with french norms, with children of immigrants mostly adopting the norm of having two children (dupray/pailhé 2018), substantial heterogeneity in this convergence is observable amongst groups of immigrants (penn/lambert 2002; algan/landais/senik 2012). this highlights the multifaceted nature of integration between fi rst-generation and second-generation immigrants, which may be easier on some dimensions than others (algan/landais/senik 2012). women born in north africa (algerian, moroccan and tunisian) have the highest tfr of 3.5, whereas women born in sub-saharan africa, turkey and the rest of the world have an average of 3 children (volant et al. 2019). north african respondents in france have signifi cantly higher fertility rates than those born in france or those who have acquired french citizenship (penn/lambert 2002). nevertheless, women of north african descent (i.e. second generation) display the greatest convergence with french fertility patterns, especially with regard to fi rst and second births (pailhé 2017). a large proportion of these women have a fi rst child later than native french women, and proceed to have a second and third child (dupray/pailhé 2018; pailhé 2017). turkish immigrants in france have signifi cantly higher fi rst birth rates than other population subgroups and maintain a very high third birth risk (kulu et al. 2017). second-generation turkish immigrants enter motherhood earlier and have higher fi rst, second and third birth risks than native french women, thereby indicating an adherence to their parents’ fertility preferences (pailhé 2017). sub-saharan african immigrants of the fi rst generation have higher fertility than both the native french population and other immigrant subgroups in the country (afulani/asunka 2015). second-generation sub-saharan african immigrants appear to adapt to the society of settlement, postpone fi rst and second births, and hence display fertility patterns similar to those of native french women (afulani/asunka 2015; pailhé 2017). second-generation southeast asian immigrant women in france deviate from the fertility patterns of their parents and converge with the french norm (pailhé 2017). they postpone childbearing and have their fi rst child signifi cantly later than native french women but show no signifi cant difference with regard to the timing of second births (pailhé 2017). hence, with the exception of second-generation turkish immigrant women who continue to adhere to their parents’ fertility preferences, second-generation descendants of north african, sub-saharan and southeast asian origin have a strong tendency to align with french standards. • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli310 given the steep convergence in fertility behaviour amongst second-generation immigrants and the heterogeneity in these transitions between different generations of immigrants, we seek to analyse how gender preferences for offspring among immigrants (in france) from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnamlaos-cambodia change across subsequent generations of immigrants. 3 methodology 3.1 data we combine data from two nationally representative surveys in france: the family and housing survey (2011); and the trajectories and origins survey (2008). the family and housing survey (2011) is a joint collaboration among the national institute of statistics and economic studies (insee), the national institute for demographic studies (ined), the department for research evaluation and statistics (drees) and the national family allowance fund (cnaf, casd n.d.). it is based on a sample of 360,000 individuals aged 18 years or older residing in 400,000 private dwellings across metropolitan france. key issues addressed by the survey include fertility, partnership information, family structuring and restructuring, child care, information on parents and grandchildren, geographical distribution of the family, multiple residences and civil solidarity pacts (insee 2020). given these domains it allows fertility analysis to be performed by generation, socio-demographic origin or geographic origin, and is useful for the detailed investigation of distinct family situations and quantitative analysis of minority situations that are often inaccessible in large surveys (casd n.d.). the 2011 survey is the most recent and most evolved wave of the family and housing survey in not only incorporating family history, male respondents and regional respondents, but also providing detailed descriptions of current marital status and family situations (insee 2020). the trajectories and origins survey (2008-2009) is a joint collaboration between ined and insee conducted with the aim of identifying the impact of origin on living conditions and social trajectories (ined 2020). based on a sample of 22,000 people residing in metropolitan france, it collates relevant data on sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender, level of education, generation, social environment and neighbourhood of residence (ined 2020). given its focus on highlighting the diversity of the french population, it places special emphasis on sub-populations who, due to their origin or appearance, may encounter obstacles in their life trajectories, i.e. immigrants, descendants of immigrants, individuals from french overseas territories, descendants of the latter (ined 2020). the 2008-2009 survey is the fi rst and, at present, only available wave of the trajectories and origins survey (insee 2020). the two surveys are combined to not only maximise the sample size, especially for immigrant groups that form a relatively smaller proportion of the migrant population in france (e.g. southeast asian immigrants), but also to add a wider range of recent childbirth years for the examination of gender preferences (i.e. by is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 311 ta b . 1 a: d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s (w ei gh te d ), tr an si tio n s to s ec o nd b ir th s n at iv e (f re n ch ) n o rt h a fr ic a s u b -s ah ar an a fr ic a tu rk ey v ie tn am -c am b o d ia la o s to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n fi rs t b ir th s 75 ,9 09 8, 29 2 1, 15 1 1, 03 3 82 1 p er so n -y ea rs 47 8, 62 3 40 ,0 81 4, 82 1 4, 38 6 4, 00 5 s ec o n d b ir th s 0 ye s 56 ,4 30 25 .7 6, 08 8 73 .4 37 1 32 .3 83 4 80 .8 59 5 72 .6 n o 19 ,4 78 74 .3 2, 20 3 26 .6 77 9 67 .7 19 8 19 .2 22 5 27 .4 m ig ra ti o n st at u s 1s t g en er at io n 2, 18 0 26 .3 67 0 58 .3 49 7 48 .2 33 9 41 .4 1. 5 g en er at io n 2, 06 0 24 .9 25 3 22 .0 34 5 33 .4 24 2 29 .5 2n d g en er at io n 4, 05 1 48 .8 22 7 19 .7 19 0 18 .4 23 8 29 .1 a g e fi r st c hi ld 75 ,9 08 25 .6 8, 29 1 26 .0 1, 15 0 25 .9 1, 03 2 23 .0 82 0 26 .8 e d u ca tio n le ve l p ri m ar y 9, 67 8 12 .8 81 9 9. 9 11 2 10 .1 30 4 29 .5 14 0 26 .8 s ec o n d ar y 45 ,0 79 59 .4 5, 24 8 63 .6 67 0 60 .3 64 8 62 .8 12 8 24 .6 te rt ia ry 21 ,1 47 27 .9 2, 18 1 26 .5 32 8 29 .6 79 7. 7 25 3 48 .6 p ro fe ss io n al s ta tu s n o n e 9, 40 4 12 .6 2, 27 6 27 .6 24 4 21 .2 57 3 55 .8 16 4 20 .1 s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 62 ,4 74 83 .7 5, 69 1 69 .0 85 9 74 .9 4 4 4 43 .3 57 7 70 .5 h ig h ly s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 2, 75 4 3. 7 29 1 3. 4 45 3. 9 9 0. 9 77 9. 4 r el at io n sh ip s ta tu s s in g le 21 ,6 66 28 .7 1, 73 0 21 .9 39 3 40 .2 14 7 14 .7 28 6 38 .9 m ar ri ed 53 ,8 24 71 .3 6, 18 6 78 .1 58 2 59 .8 85 3 85 .3 4 48 61 .1 m o th er ’s p ro fe ss io n al s ta tu s n o n e 16 ,5 65 22 .5 4, 20 7 51 .0 42 3 37 .1 73 0 70 .9 32 1 39 .9 s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 55 ,9 11 76 .0 4, 68 1 46 .7 68 6 60 .2 29 0 28 .2 45 4 56 .5 h ig h ly s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 1, 13 1 1. 5 19 1 2. 3 30 2. 7 10 0. 9 29 3. 6 • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli312 ta b . 1 b: d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s (w ei gh te d ), tr an si tio n s to t hi rd b ir th s s o ur ce : fr en ch f am ily a nd h o us in g s ur ve y (2 01 1) a nd th e tr aj ec to ri es a nd o ri gi ns s ur ve y (2 00 8) , a ut ho rs ' o w n ca lc ul at io ns n at iv e (f re n ch ) n o rt h a fr ic a s u b -s ah ar an a fr ic a tu rk ey v ie tn am -c am b o d ia la o s to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n to ta l % /m ea n s ec o n d b ir th s 57 ,5 61 6, 37 1 78 2 83 3 58 7 p er so n -y ea rs 57 2, 35 0 42 ,0 59 3, 52 8 4, 51 2 3, 66 2 t hi rd b ir th s ye s 21 ,0 21 36 .5 3, 12 3 49 .9 43 9 56 .3 48 0 57 .7 26 6 45 .4 n o 36 ,5 39 63 .5 3, 24 7 50 .1 34 2 43 .7 35 2 42 .3 32 0 54 .6 m ig ra ti o n st at u s 1s t g en er at io n 1, 83 3 28 .8 47 9 61 .4 40 8 49 .1 23 4 39 .9 1. 5 g en er at io n 1, 63 1 25 .6 17 5 22 .4 30 1 36 .2 16 9 28 .8 2n d g en er at io n 2, 90 6 45 .6 12 7 16 .2 12 3 14 .7 18 4 31 .3 a g e fi r st c hi ld 57 ,5 60 24 .9 6, 37 0 25 .3 78 1 25 .2 83 2 22 .6 58 6 25 .8 e d u ca tio n le ve l p ri m ar y 7, 78 8 13 .5 75 0 11 .9 82 11 .1 27 1 32 .6 66 11 .4 s ec o n d ar y 34 ,2 76 59 .6 4, 00 5 63 .2 4 46 59 .9 51 8 62 .3 33 4 57 .5 te rt ia ry 15 ,4 95 26 .9 1, 57 6 24 .9 21 6 29 42 5. 1 18 1 31 .1 p ro fe ss io n al s ta tu s n o n e 8, 03 5 14 .2 2, 00 6 31 .6 17 4 22 .3 48 4 58 .5 11 2 19 .2 s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 46 ,4 79 82 .2 4, 12 1 65 .0 57 4 73 .6 33 5 40 .5 4 41 75 .4 h ig h ly s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 2, 03 0 3. 6 21 5 3. 4 33 4. 1 9 1. 0 32 5. 4 r el at io n sh ip s ta tu s s in g le 9, 65 2 16 .8 78 2 12 .7 17 7 25 .8 86 10 .6 98 18 .1 m ar ri ed 47 ,6 63 83 .2 5, 36 4 87 .3 50 8 74 .2 72 5 89 .4 4 40 81 .9 m o th er ’s p ro fe ss io n al s ta tu s n o n e 14 ,7 76 25 .7 3, 38 0 53 .3 32 1 41 .3 59 7 71 .8 19 5 34 .1 s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 41 ,8 83 72 .8 2, 79 6 4 4. 1 43 0 55 .5 23 1 27 .8 34 2 59 .7 h ig h ly s ki lle d p ro fe ss io n 87 5 1. 5 16 7 2. 6 25 3. 2 3 0. 4 35 6. 2 is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 313 the incorporation of the 2011 survey). appropriate weights are used in all analyses to ensure that the sample is nationally representative. the subjects of the study are women aged 16 to 45 who have given birth to at least one child. these respondents are either native french women or immigrant women of the fi rst generation, 1.5 generation or second generation from north africa, sub-saharan africa, turkey and vietnam-laos-cambodia. data from the survey is used to construct fertility histories for fi rst, second, and third childbirths for the respondents of interest. only women who had their fi rst child after migration are included in the sample. respondents with multiple births and fostered and adopted children up to the third parity are excluded from the sample, as are respondents who present missing information on their own date of birth, date of birth of children at the fi rst, second, or third parity, and migration status. tables 1a and 1b provide an overview of the fi nal sample to be analysed. 3.2 methods we conduct the analysis for each group of origin separately: for the native (french) population we use discrete time logistic regression and for each separate immigrant group (north african, sub-saharan african, turkish and vietnamese-laoscambodian), we use multilevel discrete time logistic regression. we fi rst examine transitions to second and third births for native and immigrant women contingent upon the gender of the fi rst child and of the fi rst two children, respectively, while incorporating the role of migration status for each immigrant group. subsequently, we subdivide the sample of each immigrant group by gender of the fi rst (boy/girl) and fi rst two (boy/girl/mix) child(ren) and investigate transitions to second and third births respectively while accounting for migration status. discrete time hazard hij is the conditional probability that a randomly selected individual i will experience the target event in time period j given that he or she survived through all prior time periods and did not experience the event prior to j (singer/willet 1993): hij = pr{ti = j | ti ≥ j, z1ij = z1ij, z2ij = z2ij, …, zpij = zpij} since hij are probabilities, they can be transformed to have logistic dependence on the predictors and the time periods (singer/willet 1993): logite(hij) = (1d1ij + 2d2ij + … + jdjij) + (1z1ij + 2z2ij + … + pzpij) this specifi cation clarifi es that the conditional log odds that the event will occur in each time period j (given that it did not occur before) is a linear function of the constant term, j, specifi c to period j and of the values of predictors period j multiplied by the appropriate slope parameter. multilevel models are fi tted to immigrant subgroups to account for the hierarchical structure of the data within each • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli314 group (i.e. individuals classifi ed by migration status: fi rst generation, 1.5 generation, second generation). the methods employed in this paper, i.e. (multilevel) logistic regression models and contingency on gender of existing children, are commonly used by researchers investigating fertility transitions (e.g. pailhé 2017; kulu et al. 2017; dupray/pailhé 2018) and gender preferences (e.g. miranda et al. 2018; ezdi/ baş 2020) in both local and immigrant populations. 3.3 variables the dependent variable of interest is the probability of second or third childbirth for each origin group. to construct data for this variable, the fertility trajectories of the sample are followed until the occurrence of the second and subsequently third childbirth in the case of event occurrence. alternatively, in the case of event nonoccurrence, the sample of interest is followed until the respondent turns 45 or until the date of last interview (right censoring). the analysis incorporates two explanatory variables: gender of existing children and migration status. gender of existing children is a categorical variable assuming the status of boy/girl when transitioning to the second parity and boy-boy/gender mix/girl-girl when transitioning to the third parity. this variable is included to depict how transition to subsequent parities is affected by different gender combinations of existing children, and thereby to indicate which gender constellation is most desired at each parity. migration status has four categories: non-immigrant, fi rst-generation immigrant, 1.5-generation immigrant, and second-generation immigrant. the non-immigrant category comprises both french-born individuals with two french-born parents and non-french-born individuals with two french-born parents who moved to france before the age of 15. the non-immigrant category is distinct from all other categories as it refers to the native french population. first-generation immigrant refers to foreign-born individuals with foreign-born parents, and who migrated to france at age 15 or later. 1.5-generation immigrant refers to individuals with foreignborn parents, and who migrated to france before the age of 15. second-generation immigrant refers to french-born individuals with one or two foreign-born parents. different levels of gradation in migration status allow us to account for the effect of integration on son preference. we incorporate the same six covariates for transitions to second and third births for all population groups in both sets of analyses. these include: age at the time of fi rst birth, age squared at the time of fi rst birth, education, relationship status, professional status, and mother’s professional status in france. education is recorded as the highest educational attainment of the respondent at the time of the survey and is recoded as primary, secondary or tertiary level of education. relationship status is recorded as the respondent being either single or married at the time of fi rst birth when considering transitions to second births, and at the time of second births when considering transitions to third births. professional status is recorded as the respondent falling into the category of no occupation, skilled occupation or highly skilled occupation. mother’s professional status is recorded as is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 315 the respondent’s mother having fallen under the category of no occupation, skilled occupation or highly skilled occupation at the time the respondent was 15 years of age. these covariates were incorporated due to their relevance as determinants of fertility and gender preferences for offspring, as identifi ed by previous literature (e.g. rossi/rouanet 2015; jiang et al. 2016; pailhé 2017; ezdi/baş 2020). 4 results 4.1 transition to second births table 2 shows the logistic regression results as average marginal effects for transition to second births for the native population and different immigrant groups in france. the gender of the fi rst child signifi cantly affects the probability of transition for north african immigrants only: women who have a daughter as a fi rst child are signifi cantly more likely to transition to a second birth than those who have a son. migration status signifi cantly affects north african and turkish immigrants. for north africa, compared to fi rst-generation immigrants, both 1.5-generation and second-generation immigrants have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to the second parity. among turkish immigrants, this applies to the latter group only. native north subturkey vietnam(french) africa saharan cambodiaafrica laos gender of fi rst child (ref.: male) female .005 .027** -.004 .014 -.001 (.005) (.009) (.015) (.014) (.015) migration status (ref.: first-generation) 1.5generation -.030** -.003 -.009 .026 (.010) (.018) (.017) (.020) second-generation -.020* -.023 -.047* .009 (.009) (.017) (.019) (.018) person years 478,623 40,081 4,821 4,386 4,005 sample size 75,909 8,292 1,151 1,033 821 note: controls: age at fi rst birth; age at fi rst birth square; education; professional status; relationship status; professional status of respondent’s mother. signifi cance levels: *=p-value<0.05; **=p-value<0.01; ***=p-value<0.001; standard errors in parentheses source: french family and housing survey (2011) and the trajectories and origins survey (2008), authors' own calculations tab. 2: results of transitions from fi rst to second births, presented as average marginal effects of logistic regressions, run separately for each population group • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli316 table 3 divides the results for immigrant population groups by the gender of the fi rst child to separately assess the effect of migration status on the probability of having a second child. the results show that migration status signifi cantly alters gender preferences for north african immigrant women only. if the fi rst child is a boy, the 1.5-generation of immigrants has a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to a second birth compared to fi rst-generation immigrants. if the fi rst child is a girl, second-generation immigrants have a signifi cantly lower probability of having another child than fi rst-generation immigrants. 4.2 transition to third births table 4 provides the logistic regression results as average marginal effects for transition to third births for all population groups in france. the gender of existing children signifi cantly affects the transition probability of the native french population only: women who achieve a gender mix of children at the fi rst two parities are signifi cantly less likely to transition to a third birth compared to women who have two sons. although statistically non-signifi cant, our results also show that native french women who have daughters at the fi rst two parities have a lower probability of transitioning to a third birth. migration status signifi cantly affects transition probability for all immigrant groups. north african and sub-saharan african women of the 1.5 and second generation have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to a third birth compared to their fi rst-generation counterparts. this only holds true for secondgeneration women from turkey and vietnam-laos-cambodia. following the logic of table 3, table 5 divides the results for each population group by gender of the fi rst two children in order to separately assess the effect of migration status on the probability of having a third child. this yields signifi cant results for all immigrant groups. amongstnorth african women with a gender mix and daughters only at the fi rst two parities, the probability of transitioning to a third birth is signifi cantly lower for 1.5-generation and second-generation women compared with fi rst-generation women. for north african women with two sons, this applies only to the 1.5-generation. for sub-saharan african women, only secondgeneration immigrant women with daughters only at the fi rst two parities have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to a third parity than fi rst-generation women. for turkish women, second-generation immigrant women who have achieved a gender mix of children at the fi rst two parities have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to a third parity than fi rst-generation women. among women from vietnam-cambodia-laos, immigrant women of the second generation who achieve a gender mix of children or daughters only at the fi rst two parities have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to a third birth than women of the fi rst generation. this is accompanied by a higher, albeit non-signifi cant, likelihood of transitioning to a third birth for second-generation vs. fi rst-generation immigrant women from vietnam-cambodia-laos in the event of sons only at the fi rst two parities. is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 317 n o rt h a fr ic a s ub -s ah ar an a fr ic a tu rk ey v ie tn am -c am b o d ia -l ao s b o y g ir l b o y g ir l b o y g ir l b o y g ir l m ig ra tio n s ta tu s (r ef .: f ir st -g en er at io n) 1. 5g en er at io n -. 03 7* ** -. 01 4 .0 05 -. 01 1 -. 00 9 -. 00 9 .0 22 .0 04 (.0 10 ) (.0 18 ) (.0 25 ) (.0 26 ) (.0 23 ) (.0 25 ) (.0 23 ) (.0 27 ) s ec o n d -g en er at io n -. 00 8 -. 03 9* * -. 02 0 -. 03 2 -. 04 7 -. 04 9 .0 02 3 -. 01 2 (.0 11 ) (.0 13 ) (.0 21 ) (.0 23 ) (.0 25 ) (.0 29 ) (.0 28 ) (.0 43 ) p er so n ye ar s 20 ,7 60 19 ,3 21 2, 42 3 2, 39 8 2, 50 7 1, 87 9 2, 13 8 1, 86 7 s am p le s iz e 4, 25 3 4, 03 9 57 6 57 5 56 6 47 7 42 7 39 4 ta b . 3 : r es ul ts o f t ra n si tio n s fr o m fi rs t t o s ec o nd b ir th s b y g en d er o f fi r st c hi ld , p re se n te d a s av er ag e m ar g in al e ff ec ts o f l o g is tic r eg re ss io n s, r un s ep ar at el y fo r ea ch p o p ul at io n g ro up n o te : c o nt ro ls : a ge a t fi r st b ir th ; a ge a t fi r st b ir th s q ua re ; e d uc at io n; p ro fe ss io na l s ta tu s; r el at io ns hi p s ta tu s; p ro fe ss io na l s ta tu s o f re sp o nd en t’ s m o th er . s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls : *= p -v al ue < 0. 05 ; ** = p -v al ue < 0. 01 ; ** *= p -v al ue < 0. 00 1; s ta nd ar d e rr o rs in p ar en th es es s o ur ce : fr en ch f am ily a nd h o us in g s ur ve y (2 01 1) a nd th e tr aj ec to ri es a nd o ri gi ns s ur ve y (2 00 8) , a ut ho rs ' o w n ca lc ul at io ns • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli318 5 discussion using data from the family and housing survey (2011) and the trajectories and origins survey (2008), we examined gender preferences for offspring within the native french population and among north african, turkish, sub-saharan african and vietnamese-laos-cambodian immigrants in france. our analyses highlight how the gender of existing children and migration status (in the case of immigrants) may be refl ected in both parity progression and underlying gender preferences. this investigation provides several interesting results. first, for all our immigrant groups, we confi rm declining fertility rates across subsequent generations of immigrants. for north africa and sub-saharan africa, 1.5-generation and second-generation immigrants have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to second and third births and third births only, respectively, vis-àfi rst-generation immigrants. for turkey and vietnam-cambodia-laos, second-generation immigrants have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to second and third births, and to third births only, respectively, vis-à-vis fi rst-generation immigrants. on average, these fi ndings are consistent with existing research which depicts declining fertility tab. 4: results of transitions from second to third births, presented as average marginal effects of logistic regressions, run separately for each population group native north africa subturkey vietnam(french) saharan cambodiaafrica laos gender of fi rst two children (ref.: boy-boy) gender mix -.015*** -.006 -.017 -.003 -.002 (.003) (.005) (.016) (.012) (.015) girl-girl -.000 .009 -.003 .017 .023 (.004) (.007) (.025) (.016) (.018) migration status (ref.: first-generation) 1.5-generation -.027*** -.036* .006 -.005 (.004) (.016) (.012) (.013) second-generation -.019** -.039* -.050*** -.033* (.006) (.017) (.013) (.015) person years 572,350 42,058 3,529 4,512 3,662 sample size 57,561 6,371 782 833 452 controls: age at fi rst birth; age at fi rst birth square; education; professional status; relationship status; professional status of respondent’s mother. signifi cance levels: *=p-value<0.05; **=p-value<0.01; ***=p-value<0.001; standard errors in parentheses source: french family and housing survey (2011) and the trajectories and origins survey (2008), authors' own calculations is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 319 ta b . 5 : r es ul ts o f t ra n si tio n s fr o m s ec o nd t o t hi rd b ir th s b y g en d er o f t he fi rs t t w o c hi ld re n, p re se n te d a s av er ag e m ar g in al e ff ec ts o f l o g is tic r eg re ss io n s, r un s ep ar at el y fo r ea ch p o p ul at io n n o rt h a fr ic a s u b -s ah ar an a fr ic a tu rk ey v ie tn am -c am b o d ia -l ao s b o yb o y m ix g ir lg ir l b o yb o y m ix g ir lg ir l b o yb o y m ix g ir lg ir l b o yb o y m ix g ir lg ir l m ig ra ti o n s ta tu s (r ef .: f ir st -g en er at io n) 1. 5 -g en er at io n -. 02 9* * -. 02 0* ** -. 03 4* * -. 05 2 -. 02 1 -. 05 7 .0 20 -. 00 6 .0 34 -. 00 9 .0 05 -. 02 0 (.0 09 ) (.0 06 ) (.0 11 ) (.0 34 ) (.0 21 ) (.0 40 ) (.0 23 ) (.0 18 ) (.0 32 ) (.0 21 ) (.0 20 ) (.0 32 ) s ec o n d -. 01 2 -. 01 8* -. 03 0* -. 05 2 -. 02 6 -. 08 1* -. 00 9 -. 07 8* ** -. 02 3 .0 45 -. 04 1* -. 06 8* g en er at io n (.0 11 ) (.0 08 ) (.0 13 ) (.0 33 ) (.0 22 ) (.0 38 ) (.0 29 ) (.0 16 ) (.0 36 ) (.0 60 ) (.0 16 ) (.0 30 ) p er so n ye ar s 10 ,5 41 22 ,0 43 9, 47 4 90 5 1, 85 5 76 9 1, 27 3 2, 39 8 78 4 1, 04 1 1, 95 0 67 1 s am p le s iz e 1, 64 8 3, 19 6 1, 52 7 20 5 39 6 18 1 24 0 43 2 16 1 15 1 30 6 12 6 c o nt ro ls : a ge a t fi r st b ir th ; a ge a t fi r st b ir th s q ua re ; e d uc at io n; p ro fe ss io na l st at us ; r el at io ns hi p s ta tu s; p ro fe ss io na l st at us o f re sp o nd en t’ s m o th er s ig ni fi c an ce le ve ls : *= p -v al ue < 0. 05 ; ** = p -v al ue < 0. 01 ; ** *= p -v al ue < 0. 00 1; s ta nd ar d e rr o rs in p ar en th es es s o ur ce : fr en ch f am ily a nd h o us in g s ur ve y (2 01 1) a nd th e tr aj ec to ri es a nd o ri gi ns s ur ve y (2 00 8) , a ut ho rs ' o w n ca lc ul at io ns • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli320 rates for second-generation immigrants in france and in europe (kulu et al. 2017; pailhé 2017; dupray/pailhé 2018). second, our results reveal whether the gender of existing children affects transition to second and third births for native french women and immigrant women in france. for native french women, while we fi nd no signifi cant effect of the gender of the fi rst child when transitioning to the second parity, we fi nd a signifi cant preference for a gender mix of children when transitioning to the third parity. furthermore, we fi nd a non-signifi cant daughter preference when transitioning to the third parity. our results signalling a preference for a gender mix of children are consistent with those of desplanques (1987) who, using the 1962, 1975 and 1982 family and housing surveys, also fi nds a preference for a gender mix of children when transitioning to the third parity in the 1970s in france. at the same time, our results for the non-signifi cant daughter preference are also at odds with desplanques (1987) who, in addition to fi nding a gender mix for offspring, fi nds evidence of weak son preference in the 1970s when transitioning to the third parity. our results are also somewhat different from those of hank and kohler (2000) who fi nd no gender preferences for offspring in france based on the fertility and family survey (1994). these discrepancies can be reconciled by noting that the different studies (i.e. desplanques 1987; hank/kohler 2000 and the current analysis) use data that examine gender preferences among native women for different birth cohorts of women in france. the different gender preferences for offspring noted amongst these studies thereby depict the changing nature of these preferences in france: from no gender preferences, to mixed-gender preferences accompanied by a weak son preference, to no gender preferences, to mixed-gender preferences accompanied by a weak (non-signifi cant) daughter preference. such an evolution in gender preferences has been noted in other european countries as well. for example, in germany, mixed-gender preferences were previously only observed in the east (hank/kohler 2003). however, over the past two decades they have also become evident in the west and hence unifi ed germany, alongside a weak daughter preference (carol/hank 2020; ezdi/baş 2020). in sweden, daughter preference has strengthened in the new millennium with mothers fertility transitions being conditional upon having a daughter at one parity earlier, i.e. second rather than third (miranda et al. 2018). the adaptability of gender prefrences and non-signifi cant daughter prefrence in france suggest that modernisation, change in the societal gender system, female labour force participation and work-family reconciliation policies may lead to the emergence of a strong daughter preference at the third parity among younger/future cohorts of french women (pollard/morgan 2002; miranda et al. 2018). for immigrant women in france, the gender of existing children only affects the transition probability of north african immigrant women. women who have a daughter as a fi rst child have a signifi cantly higher likelihood of transitioning to a second birth than those who have a son. however, when considering transitions to the third parity, the gender sequence of existing children has no signifi cant bearing on the probability of transition. this can possibly be explained by the polarisation of fertility rates between immigrants of the fi rst-generation and subsequent is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 321 (in particular second) generation, with the former displaying the highest fertility levels amongst all population subgroups in france and the latter exhibiting native level fertility rates (penn/lambert 2002; volant et al. 2019). furthermore, among second-generation north african immigrants, the rates of transition to different parities differ, with transitions to second parity being the same as the native level and transitions to third parity exceeding the native level (kulu et al. 2017). for second-generation north african immigrants, this confi rms an adaptation to the strong french two child norm regarding the timing of transition to the second parity, but the maintenance of the parents’ family-oriented values when considering transitions to third parities (pailhé 2017). as a result, we expect the son preference observed at the second parity among north african immigrants in france to be due to a contraction in fertility when transitioning to the second parity. third, our results allow us to disaggregate and compare transitions for immigrants simultaneously by gender of existing children and migration status. we fi nd signifi cant effects for all immigrant groups. for north african immigrants, we confi rm that regardless of the gender of the fi rst child, each subsequent generation (1.5 and second) has a lower likelihood of transitioning to the next parity. when transitioning to the second parity, these results are signifi cant for 1.5-generation immigrants who have a son as a fi rst child and second-generation immigrants who have a daughter as a fi rst child. this may be interpreted as declining son preference across subsequent generations of north african immigrants when transitioning to the second parity. when transitioning to the third parity, these results are only nonsignifi cant for second-generation immigrants who have two sons at the fi rst two parities. this may be interpreted as the emergence of a weak daughter preference amongst second-generation north african immigrants when transitioning to the third parity.3 the decline in son preference and emergence of a weak daughter preference may be explained by a combination of the selection and adaptation hypotheses, especially given the convergence and non-convergence to native french levels in transition rates to the second and third parities respectively (kulu et al. 2017). north african immigrants in france are not part of a marginal, rural, pre-modern group but rather have above average educational levels and french language abilities (penn/lambert 2002). these attributes point to the selectivity of north african immigrants so that perhaps even in their country of origin, their gender preferences are malleable. hence, it is likely that a welfare regime that is not only pro-birth but also promotes a work-family balance and women’s employment (toulemon et al. 2008) eventually creates an environment in which these preferences can emerge, despite the fertility constraints when transitioning to the second parity. for sub-saharan african immigrants, we fi nd that only women who have daughters at the fi rst two parities have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to the third birth. these results depict the emergence of a daughter preference among sub-saharan african immigrants when transitioning to the third 3 for 1.5-generation immigrants, our results signal lower fertility vis-à-vis fi rst-generation immigrants as the likelihood of transition is signifi cantly lower for all gender combinations. • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli322 parity. the emergence of gender preferences for offspring among sub-saharan african immigrant women is somewhat surprising, primarily because individual countries in sub-saharan africa have either not shown any gender preferences for offspring or, when present, such preferences have been rather modest compared with those displayed by asian countries. sub-saharan africa consists of countries/societies displaying son preference, daughter preference, gender-mixed preferences and no gender preferences (rossi/rouanet 2015). as our sample does not disaggregate among these countries/societies, we did not expect any overall gender preferences to prevail. we especially did not expect the emergence of a daughter preference because research from sweden, a country with a pro-fertility gender egalitarian welfare regime, has shown that african women display son preference when transitioning to third births (mussino et al. 2019). nevertheless, our results for sub-saharan africa may be explicable by the adaptation hypothesis. adaptation has already been shown to reduce fertility among second-generation sub-saharan african immigrants in france (afulani/asunka 2015). in the case of gender preferences for offspring, the factors that have led to the emergence of a gender mix in france may be the drivers of daughter preference in sub-saharan africa by not only weakening son preference in patrilineal societies but also eliminating gender preferences in societies that desire a gender mix and that exhibit no gender preferences for offspring. in light of the fi ndings for sweden (mussino et al. 2019), our results would suggest greater adaptation among sub-saharan african immigrants in france than in sweden. among turkish immigrants, we fi nd that only second-generation women with a gender mix of children have a signifi cantly lower likelihood of transition than fi rst-generation turkish immigrants. this is accompanied by lower non-signifi cant transition probabilities to third parities among second generation immigrant women who have sons only or daughters compared with their fi rst generation counterparts. these preferences are somewhat evident within the 1.5 generation as well: albeit non-signifi cant, women with a gender mix of children have a lower probability of transitioning to the third parity and women with sons only or daughters only have a higher probability of transitioning to the third parity compared with their respective fi rst generation counterparts. although turkish women in their country of origin display son preference when transitioning to the third parity (altindag 2016) and turkish immigrants in sweden display son preference (mussino et al. 2019), our result for the emergence of gender-mixed preferences among turkish immigrants in france is entirely plausible. research on the gender preferences of turkish immigrants in germany provides evidence of the changing nature of gender preferences across subsequent generations of immigrants and the emergence of a preference for a gender mix for children when transitioning to the third parity among second-generation turkish immigrants (carol/hank 2020; ezdi/baş 2020). this may be explained by the following factors: either by immigrant selectivity; or by the joint effect of higher fertility among turkish immigrant women in europe visà-vis turkish women in turkey and the higher fertility of turkish immigrant women (transition to second births) in france relative to other population groups (baykarakrumm/milewski 2017; pailhé 2017). the latter explanation provides women with is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 323 fewer constraints in which to exercise their preferences and ensures a slower convergence with native french fertility levels, possibly allowing turkish immigrant women ample time to simultaneously adjust their fertility and gender preferences. for immigrants from vietnam-laos-cambodia, migration status has no signifi cant bearing on the probability of transitioning to second births. relative to fi rst-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants with a gender mix of children and daughters at the fi rst two parities have a signifi cantly lower probability of transitioning to the third parity. this suggests a daughter preference among second-generation immigrants from these countries in france. we cannot conclusively assert whether this daughter preference signals an evolution of the gender preferences or migrant selectivity for vietnam (where boy preference dominates), or the prevalence of country of origin norms for cambodia (where girl preference dominates) as different gender preferences from different countries of origin were combined to form a single immigrant group. mussino, miranda and ma (2018) face a similar problem when they test the gender preferences of southeast asian immigrants in sweden from different origin countries (displaying different gender preferences) combined to show that immigrants originating from this region display neutral gender preferences. nevertheless, we suspect that this daughter preference is at least partly driven by a deviation from country of origin gender norms as it is evident among second-generation immigrants and research has shown that second-generation southeast asian immigrants in france deviate from the fertility patterns of their parents, withfi rst birth rates even lower than native french women (pailhé 2017). 6 conclusion our results show the development of mixed gender preferences alongside a weak (non-signifi cant) daughter preference for offspring among native french women, and an overall deviation from the gender preferences prevailing in the country of origin for north african, turkish, sub-saharan african and vietnamese-laos-cambodian immigrant women in france. second generation north african immigrant women display a decline in son preference when transitioning to the second parity and the emergence of a weak daughter preference when transitioning to the third parity. gender preferences of second-generation turkish immigrant women evolve into a preference for a gender mix of children when transitioning to the third parity. second generation sub-saharan african display a daughter preference when transitioning to the third parity. second generation vietnamese-laos-cambodian immigrant women display a daughter preference at the third parity. the evolutionary nature of gender preferences for offspring across subsequent cohorts of native french women suggests that the french pattern is similar to its german and, in particular, swedish counterparts. the latter countries have displayed weak daughter preference and persistent daughter preference strengthening over decades, respectively (carol/hank 2020; ezdi/baş 2020; miranda et al. 2018). for france, this suggests that modernisation, changes in the societal gender system, • sehar ezdi, sabrina pastorelli324 female labour force participation and work-family reconciliatory/pro-birth policies may lead to the emergence of a strong daughter preference at least at the third parity among younger/future cohorts of french women (pollard/morgan 2002; toulemon et al. 2008; miranda et al. 2018). it would therefore be fruitful to investigate gender preferences for offspring among younger french women on a periodic basis using recent datasets as they are released. despite the fertility decline observed across subsequent generations of all immigrant groups investigated, overall, we do not suspect the gender preferences displayed by north african, turkish, vietnamese-laos-cambodian and sub-saharan african immigrants to be a consequence of the constraint caused by this decline. such a constraint, resulting from the inverse relationship between fertility and expression of gender preferences, would strengthen country of origin gender preferences and thus enhance son preference among north african and turkish immigrants. this is exhibited by indian and pakistani immigrants in the united kingdom, for example, who experience a contraction in fertility compared with their counterparts in their country of origin and a stronger expression of son preference, i.e. at lower birth parities compared with their counterparts in their respective countries of origin (dubuc/coleman 2007; adamou et al. 2013). rather, our results show a weakening of these preferences among turkish and north african immigrants and possibly vietnamese-lao-cambodian immigrants, and altered preferences (i.e. daughter preference) among sub-saharan african immigrants. this may be the consequence of the selection hypothesis (especially in the case of north african immigrants), the adaptation hypothesis or a combination of the two. the viable application of these hypotheses has already been established in the context of immigrant gender preferences. for example, indian immigrant women in norway, and indian, chinese and south korean immigrant women in sweden who had been residing in the respective countries for an extended period of time, exhibited a decline in son preference (via a decrease in masculinised sex ratios at birth) in the period 20002015 (tønnessen et al. 2013; mussino et al. 2018). the malleable nature of north african, sub-saharan african and potentially vietnamese-laos-cambodian immigrants’ gender preferences as well as the decline in fertility also portray the dual infl uence of french mainstream society and the respective immigrant group’s minority subculture in reformulating the immigrants’ fertility and gender preferences. while french mainstream culture may have steered immigrants away from their native country gender preferences, the infl uence of the minority subculture may have led to the development of new preferences to specifi cally meet the demands of the immigrant subgroups in france. the viability of this explanation remains high in france where welfare state policies have reduced differences among population subgroups, the size of the main minority groups remains large, and residential and school segregation is substantial (kulu et al. 2017). we caution our readers to interpret our results while taking note of regional clustering of immigrant’s countries of origin. with the exception of native french women and turkish immigrant women, our analyses cluster countries together at the regional level. such regional aggregation may hide important country-level is there evidence of gender preference for offspring in france? • 325 differences both with regard to gender preferences and the ability of immigrants to integrate. for example, in this paper, the interpretation of gender preferences for vietnam-laos-cambodia presents some diffi culties because of contrasting gender preferences in vietnam and cambodia, i.e. son preference in vietnam (guilmoto 2009) and daughter preference in cambodia (fuse 2010). this is a problem that other authors have also faced (e.g. mussino et al. 2018) when interpreting gender neutral preferences for southeast asian immigrants in sweden. however, we note that many studies on fertility and gender preferences, especially for france using the same datasets, have used regional classifi cations similar to ours to obtain empirically and theoretically sound results. we therefore fi nd our regional clustering and the subsequent results to be theoretically and empirically sound and are confi dent in their ability to serve as indicators of the immigrant integration process. we conclude that our results for gender preferences among natives and immigrants in france provide evidence of the cultural adaptation of immigrants in france whilst also displaying elements of immigrant selectivity and the infl uence of a minority subculture. the fact that clear preferences for a gender mix or daughters only become evident in the second generation shows that early socialisation is important in the formulation of gender preferences for offspring. the development of a daughter preference among second-generation north african (weak), subsaharan african and vietnam-laos-cambodian women shows the role of minority subculture alongside cultural adaptation as, to date, among french women there is non-signifi cant evidence of daughter preference. this shows that the modernisation and work-family reconciliatory policies that are leading to the evoution of gender preferences for offspring among native french women may also be infl uencing immigrant women’s gender preferences for offspring. our results suggest that this would indicate the integration of immigrants on multiple fronts as we confi rm that these gender preferences for offspring emerge alongside a decline in immigrant fertility rates across subsequent generations. as we expect daughter preference in france to become more prominent in the forthcoming decades, we would expect immigrant gender preferences for offspring to converge more closely with those of the native french population. future research should therefore continue to use more recent data to see 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pison, gilles; héran, françois 2019: french fertility is the highest in europe. because of its immigrants? in: population & societies 568. institut national d’etudes demographiques: 1-4. date of submission: 25.01.2021 date of acceptance: 25.05.2021 dr. sehar ezdi (). cerpop, université de toulouse, inserm, ups. toulouse, france. e-mail: sehar.ezdi@inserm.fr, seharezdi@gmail.com dr. sabrina pastorelli. centre national de la recherche scientifi que (cnrs), centre maurice halbwachs (cnrs/ehess/ens). paris, france. e-mail: pastorelli.sabrina@gmail.com url: https://cnrs.academia.edu/sabrinapastorelli published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal abstract: migration is often viewed as a way to enhance occupational careers. however, particularly in mediterranean countries, labour market outcomes may also depend on local family resources. we investigate how men’s and women’s labour market outcomes differ between (1) those who migrated and those who did not; and (2) those who live close to family and those who live farther away. our main contributions are the investigation of the association between migration and labour market outcomes in a different context than the more commonly studied northern and western european countries and the united states, and of the role of living close to family in labour market outcomes. we used a sample of labour market participants from the “attitudes and expectations about mobility” survey, conducted in spain in 2019. our results show that the likelihood of being a professional is greater for women who migrated than for those who did not, and that the likelihood of being unemployed or in a temporary job is lower for women who live close to family than for those who do not, but neither association was found for men. the fi nding for living close to family is in line with the notion that nearby family may protect women in particular from precarious labour market positions. the fi nding for migration differs from previous fi ndings for northern and western europe and the united states, which indicate that migration is benefi cial to men in particular. this difference might be specifi c to a low-migration context, but data limitations prevent fi rm conclusions. keywords: migration · family relationships · distance to family · socio-economic status · unemployment · spain comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 3-28 (date of release: 10.01.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-01 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-01en2 • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal4 1 introduction according to the classical human capital model of migration introduced by sjaastad (1962), internal migration (defi ned as long-distance relocation within countries) is usually undertaken as an investment in human capital or the returns on it, and thus helps enhance occupational careers. yet positive labour market outcomes of migration are by no means universal. positive outcomes have been found for men (e.g. böheim/taylor 2007), and faggian et al. (2007) have suggested that high rates of migration among female university graduates might have to do with specifi c benefi ts of migration for young women. however, studies from the family migration literature have shown negative outcomes for partnered women (cooke 2003), if only in the short run (clark/davies withers 2002). in the longer run, having a history of migration tends to be associated with better occupational achievement for men, but not for women (mulder/van ham 2005). furthermore, positive labour market outcomes from migration are mainly found for those with high levels of education (korpi/clark 2015). the reason for a move also matters. labour market outcomes in britain were more positive for those whose motives were related to work than for those who reported other motives (böheim/taylor 2007). among employed migrants in sweden, those who migrated for family reasons were considerably more likely to experience a deterioration in labour market outcomes after the move than those who moved for work or for other reasons. by contrast, among those who were unemployed before the move, those who moved for family reasons were more likely to be employed afterwards than those who moved for other reasons (gillespie et al. 2021). these fi ndings suggest a complex role of migration for family reasons and labour-market outcomes: whereas for employed individuals, migrating for family tends to be associated with sacrifi ces in the labour market career; for those who are unemployed, migration for family seems to be benefi cial, possibly because family can be a social resource for fi nding work. depending on the social and welfare state context, family as a social resource might indeed be crucial for labour market outcomes – possibly as important as migration. in certain contexts, such as northern and western europe and the united states, migration is seen as a prime way of improving one’s chances on the labour market. in others, such as the mediterranean countries, where family ties are stronger (reher 1998) and family plays an important part in welfare provision (arts/ gelissen 2002; esping-andersen 1999; flaquer 2000), people may primarily use their local social resources to advance occupationally. for example, in spain, the majority of young adults found their jobs through family in the early 1990s (mendras 1997), and for the madrid region in 2013, it was found that family and friends were the most effective way of fi nding a job (alva et al. 2017). also in spain, family support plays a prominent role in achieving labour and residential independence and works as a resource in situations of labour market vulnerability (fuster et al. 2020) and therefore might be limiting mobility of kin. indeed, some authors have linked the low internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 5 internal migration rates in spain to this need for family support, particularly among households with children (méndez 2015; recaño valverde 2015). in this article, we explore the roles of lifetime migration and local family ties in men’s and women’s labour market outcomes in spain. we address how labour market outcomes differ between (1) those who never moved from their “home surroundings”, those who returned there, those who moved within the region, and those who migrated to another region; and (2) those who live close to their family and those who live farther away.1 our contributions to the literature are twofold. first, we address the association between labour market outcomes and migration in a mediterranean country, where this association could well be different from northern and western europe and the united states. second, we address the association between labour market outcomes and geographical proximity to family, which has rarely been studied. we use the “attitudes and expectations about mobility” survey, conducted in 2019. we perform multinomial logistic regression analyses of two labour market outcomes: the likelihood of being a professional or a manager versus holding a different occupation (indicating high socio-economic status), and the likelihood of being unemployed or having a temporary job versus being employed in a permanent position (indicating a precarious labour market position). our data have important limitations, mainly in comparison with available data for other countries. most importantly, the data are cross-sectional. they contain some retrospective information on migration histories – a comparison between current place of residence and the area where the respondent grew up, also including information about return moves – but no retrospective information at all on other life-course trajectories. we therefore cannot make causal claims. however, the data offer a unique opportunity to study labour-market outcomes in the spanish context, in relation not only to migration but also to living close to family. 2 theoretical and research background to arrive at our hypotheses, we employ two general frameworks: the human capital model and family as a social resource. for each hypothesis we draw on a combination of general theoretical arguments and arguments specifi c to spain or mediterranean countries. we also refl ect on gender differences – and on differences between women with and without a partner – and issues of self-selection. 2.1 human capital theory: migration and occupational achievement migration has been identifi ed as instrumental behaviour – it is a means to achieve a goal in a different life course domain (willekens 1991). the human capital model 1 the actual question in the survey asks whether the respondents live close to family and friends (see section 3). • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal6 of migration (korpi/clark 2015; sjaastad 1962) supposes that this goal is to make an investment, either in acquiring human capital (migration for education) or in improving the returns on human capital that has already been acquired (migration for work). under the assumption that the investment in migration indeed pays off, one would expect a higher socio-economic status and a lesser chance of a precarious labour market position among those who have migrated than among those who have not. furthermore, specialised jobs tend to be concentrated in specifi c areas and are thus more likely to require migration. from these general ideas we derive the hypothesis that those who have migrated are more likely to be a professional or manager and are less likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who have not migrated (hypothesis 1). spain has one of the lowest internal migration rates in europe, despite the large employment and income differentials across regions (lindley et al. 2002; adalet mcgowan/san millan 2019) and despite the fi nding that aggregated patterns of interregional migration are responsive to regional economic differentials (mulhern/ watson 2009; clemente et al. 2016; melguizo/royuela 2020). research on migration that includes factors on the individual and household levels emphasise the role of home ownership (palomares-linares/van ham 2020) and reliance on informal support from the extended family as prominent factors restricting interregional migration, particularly among family households (recaño valverde 2015). recent research also shows a positive selection of interregional migrants on education and occupational skills (gonzález-leonardo et al. 2020), particularly among those moving to large cities (de la roca 2017; de la roca/puga 2017; sánchez-moral et al. 2018). in the spanish context, there are particular reasons to expect a less benefi cial role of migration for being a manager than for being a professional. this is because many managers work in family businesses. family businesses are prominent in the spanish economy, and provide almost 70 percent of the jobs in the private sector (casillas-bueno et al. 2015). a majority of these family businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises, performing locally-based activities. as casillas et al. (2015) have shown, ownership of these businesses is often transmitted from one generation to the next, hence, there are strong incentives for directors and managers in family businesses to stay close to family in the local area. 2.2 human capital theory: “free location choice” from the human capital framework, we also derive the idea that occupational achievement is served best by “free” location choice, that is, location choice independent of the locations of social network members. the fewer constraints there are on location choice, the greater the potential search area for jobs, and thus the greater the likelihood of fi nding the best possible job. those who live close to family may not have migrated to remain close to these network members. family may constrain migration in general, but possibly even more so in the family-oriented spanish context. indeed, employing data from the same survey among the spanish labour force as we do, vidal (2020) found that 33 percent of internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 7 the respondents mentioned family as a main constraint to migration. if those living close to family migrated, they may have done so to be close to family who lived far away – and thus may have been constrained in their choice of migration destination. given this idea of free location choice, we hypothesise that those who live close to family are less likely to be a professional or manager, and are more likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who do not live close to family (hypothesis 2a). because of the prominence of family businesses in spain (see section 2.1), we can specify hypothesis 2a to expect a less negative association between living close to family and being a manager than between living close to family and being a professional. 2.3 family as a social resource besides potentially constraining migration and location choice, local ties to family can also be benefi cial to occupational achievement. family may form a social resource that helps fi nds better jobs or facilitates greater engagement in the labour market. relatives may also directly offer jobs, for example in a family business. social resources often improve the chances of attaining better socio-economic status (chen/volker 2016; lin 1999). family members who live nearby may also help out with childcare, thus enhancing mothers’ labour force attachment (compton/pollak 2014). the idea that family forms a local social resource that enhances occupational achievement leads to an alternative hypothesis to hypothesis 2a, which states the opposite: those who live close to family are more likely to be a professional or manager and are less likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who do not live close to family (hypothesis 2b). given gillespie, mulder and thomas’s (2021) fi nding that, in sweden, migration for family reasons was associated with a higher likelihood of becoming employed for those who were unemployed before the move, we might expect a role of living close to family for unemployment in particular. family members may perform a social resource function in a particularly pronounced way in mediterranean countries such as spain, which are characterised by strong family ties and a strong role of family in welfare provision. as hank and buber (2009) demonstrated, grandparents in mediterranean countries were considerably more likely to provide regular childcare support than those in northern and western europe. moreover, in other studies focused on young adult populations, luetzelberger’s (2015) and fuster et al.’s (2020) fi ndings indeed suggest that young adults expect a greater role of family in economic success in southern european than northern european countries, and thus prefer remaining close to their families. in the early 1990s, 61 percent of spanish young adults found a job through family – in stark contrast with dutch (18 percent) and german (21 percent) young adults, for example (mendras 1997: 171). in a similar vein, alva, escot mangas, fernández cornejo and cáceres ruiz (2017) found that family and friends were an effective route to fi nd jobs in the madrid region in 2013, particularly among women, youth (<30 years), older people (>45 years), and less educated workers. in accordance • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal8 with the prominent role of family businesses in the spanish economy, family relationships are relevant factors for obtaining temporary or permanent positions in family fi rms (casillas-bueno et al. 2015). thus, in the spanish context there are not only arguments for expecting a weaker role of family as a constraint for being a manager than a professional (hypothesis 2a), but also for a particularly strong role of family as a social resource for being a manager (the alternative, hypothesis 2b). 2.4 gender differences because of gendered socialisation patterns and a tendency for women to partner with men who are a few years older, the location choices of two-gender couples tend to be dominated by the male partner. at the time of union formation, women are more likely to migrate to start coresidence than men (brandén/haandrikman 2019; but see krapf et al. 2021 who did not fi nd a gender difference). they were also found to be more likely to migrate at the time of marriage than men (mulder/ wagner 1993) and to accompany their partner as a “tied mover” (cooke 2003). indeed, as bielby and bielby (1992) posited, gender-role beliefs could lead couples to be less willing to move for the female partner’s than for the male partner’s career. one would therefore expect women’s careers to benefi t less from migration than men’s (mulder/van ham 2005), particularly if they have a partner (cooke 2003). consequently, we have less reason to expect support for the idea that migration is benefi cial to occupational achievement, and thus for hypothesis 1, for women than for men. naturally, this lesser benefi t from migration would hold particularly for women who lived with a partner at the time of their migration decision. within the category of partnered women, it would hold particularly for mothers (cooke 2001). unfortunately, data limitations prohibit us from distinguishing between respondents with and without partners or children when investigating associations between migration and labour market outcomes. another reason for expecting a weaker positive association between migration and occupational achievement for women than men is that women are more likely to migrate for family reasons than men (gillespie/mulder 2020), and that migration for family reasons tends to be associated with worse labour market outcomes than migration for work and other reasons (gillespie et al. 2021). for unpartnered women, a counter-argument has been put forward: faggian, mccann and sheppard (2007) have suggested that young, highly educated women – who are generally unpartnered – might use migration to compensate for gender biases in the labour market. again, the data unfortunately do not allow us to explore differences between partnered and unpartnered respondents in the associations between migration and labour market outcomes. whereas having migrated could be more benefi cial for men than women, the opposite could be true of living close to family. family ties tend to be more important to women than men (rossi/rossi 1990) and women tend to provide more family care than men (patterson/margolis 2019). particularly in the spanish context, where public childcare is not abundant and women take up more childcare responsibilities than men (moreno mínguez 2010), women could also benefi t more from family help internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 9 with childcare. this would lead us to have more reason to expect hypothesis 2a to be supported for women than for men. however, men could be favoured in taking over a family business or farm (rodríguez-modroño et al. 2017), which could lead to the opposite fi nding. 2.5 the self-selection of migrants and those living close to family importantly, it should be noted that both those who migrate and those who live close to family could self-select into these behaviours. it has indeed been argued that those who migrate are a self-selected category of the population: migrants and non-migrants differ in ways that are systematically related to their labour market position (e.g. cooke/bailey 1996). for example, those who migrate to fi nd a job may be a selective category who attach particular importance to their careers and would have good chances to fi nd an appealing job even without migrating. those in professional occupations may also be more likely to migrate because they expect migration to be benefi cial to further career advancement. those currently living close to family may also be self-selected. for example, many of them may expect to rely on family for jobs. because our data are cross-sectional, we have no way to correct for such self-selection. we therefore refrain from making causal claims. 2.6 other factors associated with labour market outcomes naturally, we need to account for other individual characteristics known to be associated with labour market outcomes. our data allow us to account for age and level of education, as well as for differences between spain’s regions. we expect the likelihood of holding professional and managerial occupations to increase in the course of labour market careers and thus with age, and possibly to decrease again at older ages (owing to a cohort effect, for example). likewise, unemployment and temporary jobs will be most prevalent at young ages. this will be particularly true for spain, where youth unemployment rates are among the highest in europe and where young adults face many obstacles to fi nding a permanent job. those with higher levels of education should be more likely to be a professional, and possibly also a manager. however, in the family businesses that dominate the spanish labour market, level of education may not be very important for business ownership. castillas et al.’s (2015) fi ndings suggest that in these family businesses, succession is a matter of kinship rather than level of education, and thus prospective managers of small businesses might not fi nd formal professional training necessary. for others, especially women and young adult kin, family fi rms could offer formal and informal temporary jobs to learn on the job, either to prepare for work within the family fi rm or to gain professional experience useful for a career outside the fi rm (rodríguez-modroño et al. 2017). we can also expect regional differences. regions more dependent on the agricultural sector, as the southern and eastern regions (e.g. andalucía, extremadura, murcia), have high and persistent levels of unemployment and temporary employment (jimeno/bentolila 1998; palomares-linares/van ham 2020). • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal10 thus, we expect living in these regions to be associated with a higher likelihood of being unemployed or having a temporary job than other regions. furthermore, owing to processes of geographical concentration and the polarisation of human capital that have taken place in spain (sánchez-moral et al. 2018; gonzález-leonardo et al. 2020), professional job opportunities are concentrated in large urban areas, particularly in the metropolitan areas of madrid and barcelona. these areas also feature the best employment indicators, have more occupational opportunities, and have attracted a large share of interregional migrants in recent decades. these are also more prosperous than other areas, with lower unemployment. the attractiveness of the large metropolitan areas has increased further after the great recession of 2008-2013, as their productive sector was less severely affected by the economic crisis (hierro et al. 2019). thus, we expect living in these metropolitan areas to be associated with a higher likelihood of being a professional than living in other regions, and a lower likelihood of being unemployed or having a temporary job. to tap into life-course stage, we also account for whether the respondents share their households with a partner, a child, or a parent. 3 data and methods 3.1 dataset and analytical sample the data were derived from the online survey “attitudes and expectations about mobility” (n = 4,008), conducted in spain in 2019 (vidal/busqueta 2020). the main objective of the survey was to shed light on mobility decision-making processes. the emphasis was on future mobility – measured as whether respondents considered or planned moving outside their place of residence – and mobility responses to hypothetical job offers with experimentally manipulated conditions. fortunately, a question about mobility histories was also asked. uniquely among the data sources typically used to study mobility in spain, the survey also contains a question on the geographical proximity of family and friends.2 the information about mobility histories is limited; the timing of migrations is unknown. furthermore, the data do not contain retrospective information about other factors that might infl uence labour market outcomes or that might mediate the relationship between migration history and labour market outcomes. this is unfortunate, because it implies we cannot make causal claims. furthermore, interpreting fi ndings for the association between migration history and labour 2 another dataset containing information about migration, as well as a measure of whether parents live close by, is the two-wave survey “job mobilities and family lives in europe” (https:// www.bib.bund.de/en/research/surveys/jobmob/job-mobilities-and-family-lives.html). this survey was conducted in several european countries including spain. however, the sample size for spain is too small to perform analyses similar to ours – 1,133, with only 537 respondents retained in the second wave. internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 11 market outcomes from separate analyses for those with and without partners or children, or interaction effects between migration history and whether respondents have a partner or children in the household, would be highly problematic. the target population consisted of individuals aged 18-55, residing in spain, and in the labour force (either employed or unemployed but available in the labour market). the sample was stratifi ed by region (8 regions), age group (18-24; 2539; 40-55 years), and sex, and was obtained via quota sampling. the data were collected in october 2019 through computer-assisted web interviews (cawi) lasting a maximum of 15 minutes, by means of a structured questionnaire. there are typically some disadvantages of online surveys compared with traditional surveys, in the sense of obtaining representative samples. first of all, online surveys only cover the population with access to the internet. although access to and use of the internet is not universal in spain, the degree of internet penetration was over 90 percent in 2019 (ine 2019). bias owing to the lack of internet access is also less of an issue for our target population of labour market participants, because internet access is more common among these than among older and disadvantaged populations. there are further concerns on sample selection due to the diffi culty of establishing a sampling frame. to minimise the issue of self-selection, respondents in our sample were selected randomly, within strata, from several pools of pre-recruited online panellists. furthermore, overall response rates in online surveys are typically lower than for surveys relying on faceto-face interviews, which is also the case in our survey with an overall response rate of 12 percent. to assess the representativeness of our sample, we compared it to the sample of the third quarter of 2019 in the spanish labour force survey. the results showed no relevant divergences in sample composition with regard to socio-demographic characteristics, level of education, or employment situation (see appendix, table a1). for the analytical sample, we excluded those who were born outside spain and at the same time reported that they spent most of their childhood abroad (276 respondents), as well as those in the military (22 after the previous step). after these selections, our target sample comprised 3,710 respondents. of these, 93 (or 2.5 percent) were excluded because of missing values. this resulted in a fi nal analytical sample of 3,617 respondents: 1,851 men and 1,766 women. 3.2 dependent variables we measured the socio-economic status of the respondents’ occupation (either in the current job, or in a job before current unemployment) in three categories: professional occupations, managerial occupations, and other occupations (reference category). the original variable for occupation had eleven categories (“military workers” among them; we excluded this category), based on the spanish national classifi cation of occupations (ine 2012). these categories indicate the economic sector in which people are working if they do not have managerial tasks (e.g. agriculture, care, administrative work, commerce), with separate categories for middle managers and managers/directors regardless of sector. using a status • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal12 or prestige scale was not feasible; this would have required a fi ner-grained measure. the answer category we use for professional occupations was worded as “professional or technical (without staff in your charge)”. although in the original variable a distinction was made between middle managers on the one hand and managers/directors on the other, there were too few managers/directors in the data to retain this distinction in the analyses. it should be borne in mind that some of those reporting to be a manager might be owners of small and/or marginal businesses. managers of family businesses cannot be distinguished from other managers. our dependent variable for precarious labour market positions was also measured in three categories: unemployed, holding a temporary job, and employed in a permanent position (including self-employed and those helping in a family business). spain is one of the european countries with the highest levels of temporary employment, particularly since a deregulation of the labour market introduced in 1984 (polavieja 2003; ibañez 2011). although the precariousness of temporary employment is less clear in the professional and creative sectors, temporary workers in spain are less protected than permanent workers and thus fi nd themselves in a more vulnerable labour situation. according to polavieja (2003), temporary employment has become increasingly precarious as it grew in prevalence. in contrast, the level of part-time employment – which is also associated to labour precariousness – is one of the lowest in europe (ibañez 2011; oecd 2021). unfortunately, our data do not contain information about part-time jobs. 3.3 independent and stratifying variables the variable indicating migration histories was derived from the responses to the question “do you currently live in the place where you were born?”. if respondents spent most of their childhood in another place than where they were born, they were asked to think of the that other place. they were also asked to regard “place” as the place and its surroundings; usually a rather small area. the original answer categories were “yes, and i have always lived here”, “yes, and i have returned here”, “no, but i live in the same region”, “no, i live in a different region” and “no, i live in a different country”. no information is available on the timing of the moves. we only regard those who moved and live in a different region (or country – but this is rare because of our exclusion criteria) as having migrated. for those who reported that they returned to their place of origin, we cannot determine whether they are return migrants or non-migrants who moved within the region and moved back. the categorisation we used has four categories: did not move from the place of origin (reference category), returned to place of origin (among whom return migrants), moved within the region, and migrated. living close to family or not was measured with a dummy variable indicating whether all or most family members and friends lived in the surroundings, as opposed to all other situations (including a small number of cases in which respondents reported not having any contact with family or friends). ideally, the measure would only cover family, or separate out family and friends, but the data do not provide such measures. however, if respondents report that all or most family internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 13 and friends live close by, as opposed to all or most of them living elsewhere, it seems likely that this also holds for family without taking friends into account – with the possible exception of respondents without a family or those who have only few family members. we therefore think a measure for living close to family and friends is a reasonable proxy for living close to family. gender was used as a stratifying variable. age was measured in years; we also include age squared to account for non-linearity in the associations between age and labour market outcomes, for example owing to differences between birth cohorts. we used four categories for highest completed level of education: less than high school (reference category), high school, vocational education, and university. we use three dummies to measure whether respondents have a partner, one or more children, or a parent in the household. to account for regional differences, we distinguish between three areas showing large variation in labour market dynamics. first, we group the eastern and southern regions of spain together (reference), as they feature higher unemployment and fi xed-time employment, in part due to the high seasonality of important employment sectors. second, we group the northern and central regions together, as they arguably feature lower job precariousness than the eastern and southern regions. finally, we use a separate category for the metropolitan areas of madrid and barcelona. 3.4 analytical strategy we present results of separate multinomial logistic regression models for men and women for each of the two dependent variables. to test whether the gender differences were statistically signifi cant, we also estimated pooled models with interaction terms between gender and the main independent variables. we report the p-values for these interaction terms. we also performed several sensitivity analyses. although the two main independent variables – migration and living close to family – are not highly collinear, they are associated with each other (see appendix, table a2). we therefore not only estimated models with both variables included, but also with each of them separately. the results were robust to these different specifi cations. furthermore, because younger respondents entered the labour market in different times than older respondents, and migrated relatively recently whereas older respondents might have migrated a long time ago, we also ran separate models for those aged 18-34 and those aged 35-55. naturally, the standard errors for these models were larger than for the models we present, but the substantive fi ndings were similar. descriptive statistics are presented in table 1 for men and table 2 for women. the tables also presents cross-tabulations of the independent variables with the dependent variables. • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal14 4 results 4.1 migration history and labour-market outcomes for being a professional or manager rather than not having such an occupation, the results for the main independent variable “migration history” are quite different for men and women (table 3). for men, there is very little evidence of a positive association between having migrated and this labour market outcome, and thus, hypothesis 1 (according to which we expected those who had migrated to be more likely to be a professional or manager than those who had not migrated) is not tab. 1: descriptive statistics, men (n = 1851) n % professional manager unemployed temporary precarious position: no 1449 78.3 unemployed 165 8.9 temporary 237 12.8 socio-economic status: other 922 49.8 professional 403 21.8 manager 526 28.4 partner in household: no 597 32.3 21.8 17.6 20.1 17.4 yes 1254 67.8 21.8 33.6 3.6 10.6 child(ren) in household: no 858 46.4 23.4 17.7 16.4 18.8 yes 993 53.7 20.3 37.7 2.4 7.7 parent in household: no 1528 82.6 22.2 31.3 5.7 10.9 yes 323 17.5 19.8 14.9 24.2 22.0 migration history: did not move 1133 61.2 20.8 26.9 8.3 13.2 returned 185 10.0 27.0 30.8 11.9 12.4 moved within region 259 14.0 25.5 28.2 7.3 13.1 migrated 274 14.8 18.6 33.2 11.0 11.0 close to family: no 492 26.6 24.0 27.2 10.8 12.0 yes 1359 73.4 21.0 28.8 8.2 13.1 education: up to compulsory 206 11.1 15.5 12.1 24.8 18.9 high school 282 15.2 14.5 16.0 8.2 15.6 vocational 528 28.5 25.0 23.3 9.9 12.3 university 835 45.1 23.7 39.9 4.7 10.7 region: south-east 781 42.2 20.0 27.5 10.9 15.5 north-central 594 32.1 21.4 26.6 8.1 12.0 metropolitan 476 25.7 25.2 32.1 6.7 9.5 age (mean, standard deviation) 38.2 9.71 note: n = absolute number of respondents, % = column percentage of respondents in category. the remaining columns show row percentages in the categories of the dependent variables (professional/manager and unemployed/temporary, reference categories omitted). source: survey “attitudes and expectations about mobility”, authors' calculations internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 15 supported. most of the parameters for being a professional, and all of those for being a manager or director, are rather small and statistically non-signifi cant. having migrated (or having made a short-distance move) and then returned is positively and signifi cantly associated with being a professional, which forms some indication that moving could be benefi cial to men’s socio-economic status – but apparently only when such a move is followed by a return move (see hunt 2004, on the mix of successful and less successful return migrants). for women’s professional occupations, the fi ndings are more in line with hypothesis 1: having migrated is positively associated with holding such occupations. for women’s managerial occupations, we do not fi nd evidence that migration histories play a role. tab. 2: descriptive statistics, women (n = 1766) n % professional manager unemployed temporary precarious position: no 1163 65.9 unemployed 269 15.2 temporary 334 18.9 socio-economic status: other 1134 64.2 professional 354 20.1 manager 278 15.7 partner in household: no 602 34.1 23.4 10.6 19.9 24.8 yes 1164 65.9 18.3 18.4 12.8 15.9 child(ren) in household: no 851 48.2 23.5 11.4 18.6 23.9 yes 915 51.8 16.8 19.8 12.1 14.3 parent in household: no 1426 80.8 18.9 17.2 13.1 16.7 yes 340 19.3 25.0 9.7 24.1 28.2 migration history: did not move 1048 59.3 17.1 16.3 14.0 18.1 returned 181 10.3 21.0 14.9 14.9 19.3 moved within region 241 13.7 22.8 14.5 21.6 19.5 migrated 296 16.8 27.7 15.2 14.5 21.0 close to family: no 517 29.3 25.7 14.9 17.6 21.7 yes 1249 70.7 17.7 16.1 14.3 17.8 education: up to compulsory 156 8.8 5.1 4.5 41.0 16.0 high school 249 14.1 8.0 10.4 13.7 18.1 vocational 518 29.3 22.4 6.2 16.4 22.0 university 843 47.7 24.9 25.3 10.2 17.8 region: south-east 646 36.6 17.7 14.2 20.0 17.5 north-central 601 34.0 23.0 15.0 13.5 22.8 metropolitan 519 29.4 19.7 18.5 11.4 16.2 age (mean, standard deviation) 38.1 9.65 note: n = absolute number of respondents, % = column percentage of respondents in category. the remaining columns show row percentages in the categories of the dependent variables (professional/manager and unemployed/temporary, reference categories omitted) source: survey “attitudes and expectations about mobility”, authors' calculations • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal16 ta b . 3 : m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n o f b ei ng a p ro fe ss io na l o r m an ag er (r ef er en ce = n o) m en w o m en g en d er d if fe re n ce p ro fe ss io n al m an ag er p ro fe ss io n al m an ag er p ro fe ss io n al m an ag er co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . p p m ig ra ti o n h is to ry (r ef = n o) r et u rn ed 0. 41 2* 0. 20 5 0. 32 3 0. 20 5 0. 12 3 0. 21 6 -0 .2 77 0. 24 6 .5 15 .1 14 m o ve d w it h in r eg io n 0. 23 1 0. 18 9 0. 15 6 0. 18 7 0. 36 4† 0. 19 6 -0 .0 36 0. 23 0 .8 62 .5 25 m ig ra te d -0 .2 84 0. 20 8 0. 17 7 0. 18 6 0. 52 5* * 0. 19 3 -0 .0 34 0. 23 2 .0 02 .6 15 c lo se t o f am ily -0 .1 77 0. 15 6 0. 07 3 0. 15 4 -0 .2 51 0. 15 7 -0 .0 07 0. 18 7 .0 93 .9 86 a g e 0. 06 3 0. 05 0 0. 09 8† 0. 05 1 0. 10 0† 0. 05 6 -0 .0 07 0. 06 4 a g e sq u ar ed -0 .0 01 0. 00 1 -0 .0 01 † 0. 00 1 -0 .0 01 † 0. 00 1 0. 00 0 0. 00 1 e d u ca ti o n (r ef = lo w er ) h ig h sc h o o l -0 .1 40 0. 26 4 0. 08 4 0. 27 9 0. 58 7 0. 43 5 0. 89 0* 0. 4 43 v o ca ti o n al 0. 76 8* * 0. 22 5 0. 82 5* * 0. 24 8 1. 73 5* * 0. 38 1 0. 52 4 0. 43 1 u n iv er si ty 0. 99 9* * 0. 22 0 1. 61 5* * 0. 23 7 2. 13 0* * 0. 37 6 2. 31 6* * 0. 39 9 p ar tn er in h o u se h o ld 0. 04 9 0. 16 2 0. 26 3 0. 16 5 -0 .1 17 0. 16 0 0. 30 8 0. 19 2 c h ild in h o u se h o ld -0 .0 23 0. 14 2 0. 79 9* * 0. 14 0 -0 .1 62 0. 14 4 0. 61 1* * 0. 16 6 p ar en t i n h o u se h o ld -0 .3 18 0. 19 7 -0 .3 67 † 0. 21 2 0. 29 5 0. 19 2 -0 .1 99 0. 25 2 r eg io n (r ef = s o u th -e as t) n o rt h -c en tr al -0 .0 19 0. 14 6 -0 .1 03 0. 13 9 0. 29 8* 0. 15 1 0. 13 6 0. 17 4 m et ro p o lit an 0. 42 7* * 0. 15 4 0. 26 0† 0. 14 7 0. 21 0 0. 16 1 0. 36 1* 0. 17 4 c o n st an t -2 .7 87 ** 0. 91 2 -4 .1 12 ** 0. 94 4 -4 .7 29 ** 1. 09 1 -3 .2 12 ** 1. 22 5 n 18 51 17 66 lo g lik el ih o o d -1 77 0. 9 -1 43 5. 0 li ke lih o o d r at io c h i2 (2 8) 29 5. 8 30 0. 5 p > c h i2 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 p se u d o r 2 0. 07 7 0. 09 5 n o te : †p < .1 0; * p < .0 5; * *p < .0 1 s o ur ce : s ur ve y “a tt itu d es a nd e xp ec ta tio ns a b o ut m o b ili ty ”, a ut ho rs ' c al cu la tio ns internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 17 the lack of support for hypothesis 1 for managerial occupations might be related to the prominence of family businesses in spain. because of that prominence, we expected less support for hypothesis 1 for being a manager than for being a professional. yet unlike, for example, mulder and van ham (2005), neither do we fi nd support for hypothesis 1 for men’s professional occupations. we need to be cautious given the limitations of the data, but these fi ndings might indicate that human capital theory is less applicable to men’s migration in spain than in other countries (see also the conclusions and discussion). we do not fi nd any indications that precarious labour market positions are less likely for those who migrated (table 4). rather, we fi nd a marginally signifi cant positive association between having migrated and unemployment for men. this is a remarkable fi nding, which runs counter to hypothesis 1. another positive association is found between having moved within the region and unemployment for women. for having a temporary job, none of the parameters of the migration history variable are particularly large or statistically signifi cant. this lack of an association between migration and precariousness could be interpreted as another indication of a lesser applicability of the human capital theory of migration in spain than elsewhere – but, once again, we must be cautious because of data limitations. 4.2 the role of living close to family in labour market outcomes we put forward two competing hypotheses with regard to the associations between living close to all or most family members and labour market outcomes: one derived from the notion that free location choice would be benefi cial to labour market outcomes (hypothesis 2a), and the other derived from the idea that having family living close by would form a social resource that would be benefi cial to labour market outcomes (hypothesis 2b). for men, neither of these hypotheses is convincingly supported by the fi ndings. most parameters for “close to family” are rather close to zero (tables 3 and 4). for women, the situation is different. women who live close to family are estimated to be somewhat less likely to be a professional (b = -0.251). this fi nding is in line with the idea of benefi cial free location choice (hypothesis 2a), but the estimation fails to reach conventional signifi cance levels (p = .109). at the same time, women who live close to family are less likely to be unemployed (b = -0.318, p = .073) and to have a temporary job (b = -0.273, p = .089) than women for whom this is not the case. this fi nding is in line with hypothesis 2b and suggests that, for women, local family may protect against precarious labour market positions. interestingly, for women, labour market outcomes are associated both with migration (for being a professional) and living close to family (for precariousness). these fi ndings might suggest that, while staying close to family might be a good strategy for some women to secure employment through family connections, migration might be a good strategy for others who seek a career in a professional occupation. • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal18 m en w o m en g en d er d if fe re n ce u n em p lo ye d te m p o ra ry jo b u n em p lo ye d te m p o ra ry jo b u n em p lo ye d te m p o ra ry jo b co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . co ef f. st d .e rr . p p m ig ra ti o n h is to ry (r ef : n o) r et u rn ed 0. 43 3 0. 29 6 -0 .0 13 0. 25 5 0. 17 6 0. 24 9 0. 11 5 0. 21 9 .5 51 .5 72 m o ve d w it h in r eg io n -0 .0 48 0. 30 9 0. 11 4 0. 22 8 0. 59 4* * 0. 21 0 0. 23 0 0. 20 3 .0 13 .4 37 m ig ra te d 0. 62 7* 0. 28 6 0. 08 3 0. 24 6 0. 09 5 0. 23 1 0. 13 3 0. 20 1 .2 93 .3 97 c lo se t o f am ily -0 .1 74 0. 22 4 0. 06 6 0. 18 9 -0 .3 18 † 0. 17 7 -0 .2 73 † 0. 16 0 .7 81 .0 92 a g e -0 .2 24 ** 0. 06 4 -0 .1 13 * 0. 05 5 -0 .1 33 * 0. 05 8 -0 .1 54 ** 0. 05 3 a g e sq u ar ed 0. 00 3* * 0. 00 1 0. 00 1† 0. 00 1 0. 00 2* * 0. 00 1 0. 00 2* * 0. 00 1 e d u ca ti o n h ig h sc h o o l -1 .3 30 ** 0. 30 8 -0 .2 88 0. 26 1 -1 .6 28 ** 0. 27 1 -0 .2 80 0. 29 8 v o ca ti o n al -1 .0 77 ** 0. 25 1 -0 .6 18 * 0. 23 9 -1 .2 96 ** 0. 22 5 0. 02 3 0. 26 7 u n iv er si ty -1 .7 36 ** 0. 26 1 -0 .7 19 ** 0. 22 8 -1 .9 24 ** 0. 22 1 -0 .3 76 0. 26 0 p ar tn er in h o u se h o ld -1 .0 78 ** 0. 23 4 -0 .0 11 0. 19 1 -0 .2 62 0. 18 2 -0 .2 93 † 0. 16 2 c h ild in h o u se h o ld -1 .4 45 ** 0. 25 9 -0 .8 95 ** 0. 17 3 -0 .4 62 ** 0. 16 3 -0 .3 87 ** 0. 14 6 p ar en t i n h o u se h o ld 0. 77 0* * 0. 23 3 0. 60 7* * 0. 21 3 0. 79 1* * 0. 21 4 0. 46 6* 0. 19 3 r eg io n (r ef : s o u th -e as t) n o rt h -c en tr al -0 .4 90 * 0. 21 6 -0 .2 94 † 0. 16 9 -0 .3 93 * 0. 16 9 0. 29 3† 0. 15 1 m et ro p o lit an -0 .6 4 4* * 0. 24 5 -0 .6 04 ** 0. 19 4 -0 .7 92 ** 0. 18 4 -0 .2 85 † 0. 16 6 c o n st an t 3. 58 0* * 1. 13 1 1. 47 4 0. 97 1 2. 52 1* 1. 07 7 2. 33 6* 0. 97 4 n 18 51 17 66 lo g lik el ih o o d -1 05 4. 1 -1 42 4. 4 li ke lih o o d r at io c h i2 (2 8) 37 3. 4 24 7. 6 p > c h i2 0. 00 0 0. 00 0 p se u d o r 2 0. 15 1 0. 08 0 ta b . 4 : m ul tin o m ia l l o g is tic r eg re ss io n o f b ei ng in a p re ca ri o u s la b o ur m ar ke t p o si tio n (r ef er en ce = n o) n o te : †p < .1 0; * p < .0 5; * *p < .0 1 s o ur ce : s ur ve y “a tt itu d es a nd e xp ec ta tio ns a b o ut m o b ili ty ”, a ut ho rs ' c al cu la tio ns internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 19 4.3 gender differences we noted that, based on most of the literature, there was less reason to expect support for hypothesis 1 (that having migrated would be positively associated with being a professional or manager and negatively with the likelihood of being in a precarious labour market position) for women than for men. in contrast with this idea, the fi ndings on the associations between migration history and being a professional were in line with hypothesis 1 for women, but not for men. as can be seen from the last column in table 3, the gender difference in the association between having migrated and being a professional is statistically signifi cant (p = .002). the difference between men and women in the support for hypothesis 2a (a more negative association between living close to family and being a professional for women) is also signifi cant, albeit marginally (interaction term: p = .093), and the fi ndings in the separate models take the same direction. consequently, the fi ndings on gender differences in the association between having migrated and being a professional are more in line with faggian et al.’s (2007) suggestion that women might migrate to compensate for gender biases in the labour market than with assertions from, for example, the family migration literature. at the same time, we also noted that family ties tend to be more important to women than men, and therefore we had more reason to expect hypothesis 2b (that living close to family would be associated with better labour market outcomes) to be supported for women than for men. this is indeed what the separate models for men’s and women’s precarious labour market positions indicate; however, the only interaction term that also points to such a difference is the one for having a temporary job (p = .092). in sum, the following picture emerges for women’s and men’s labour market outcomes. migration seems to be benefi cial to women’s labour market outcomes given women’s higher chances of holding professional occupations. living close to family seems to be benefi cial to women’s labour market outcomes in the sense of lower precariousness. for men, there is not much evidence that migration or living close to family matter for their labour market outcomes. 4.4 other fi ndings there are clear age patterns in particularly precarious labour market positions. for example, men’s likelihood of unemployment is estimated to decrease up to the age of 34.6 and then to rise; women’s likelihood of having a temporary job is estimated to decrease up to age 41.5 and then increase. as one would expect, higher levels of education are associated with a greater likelihood of being a professional or manager, and a lower likelihood of unemployment and, for men, being in a temporary job. positive associations are found between having children in the household and being a manager, and negative associations between having children and precarious labour market positions. unemployment is less likely for men with partners than men without partners. men and women who live with a parent are more likely to be in a precarious position than those who do not. regional differences are also • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal20 observed. for example, men living in a metropolitan area are more likely to be a professional, and men and women living there are more likely to be managers than those living in other areas; while women who live in in the north-central region are more likely to be a manager than women who live in the south-east. as expected, unemployment and having a temporary job are less likely in the metropolitan areas than in the south-east, and except for women and temporary jobs this also holds for the north-central region. 5 conclusions and discussion for the context of spain, we investigated the associations between having migrated and living close to family on the one hand, and labour market outcomes on the other. the labour market outcomes we considered were being a professional or manager and precarious labour market positions in the sense of unemployment or having a temporary job. spain is a particularly interesting context for this research because it has low levels of internal migration, an important role of family in welfare provision, and a strong family orientation. there is no abundance of data for spain that would allow addressing our research question or similar questions. for example, spain has neither of the main data sources with which these questions can be addressed in other european countries: a long-running household panel survey, or readily available population register data. fortunately, we could use a recent (though prepandemic) survey among the spanish labour force. our hypotheses were based on human capital considerations and on the idea that family would form a social resource. based on human capital theory, we hypothesised that those who had migrated would be more likely to be a professional or manager, and less likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who had not migrated (hypothesis 1); and that those who lived close to family would be less likely to be a professional or manager, and more likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who did not live close to family (hypothesis 2a). based on the idea of family as a social resource, we put forward the hypothesis that those living close to family would be more likely to be a professional or manager, and less likely to be unemployed or in a temporary job than those who did not live close to family (hypothesis 2b, which competes with hypothesis 2a). a remarkable fi nding was the lack of evidence supporting our hypotheses related to human capital in the subsample of men, whereas these hypotheses were partly supported for women. this gender difference goes against ideas and evidence from, for example, the family migration literature on the greater likelihood for women of being tied movers, who move for the career of their partner rather than their own. for women, hypothesis 1 was supported for being a professional. the social resource hypothesis (hypothesis 2b) was supported for women’s – but not men’s – precarious labour market positions. with regard to hypotheses 1 and 2a, some results were unexpected. the lack of support for these hypotheses for men was not expected, given that interregional migrants of both genders were recently found to be positively selected on education internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 21 and occupational skills, and to experience productivity gains when moving to larger urban areas (de la roca/puga 2017; de la roca 2017; sánchez-moral et al. 2018). it is tempting to explain the apparently limited role of migration in men’s labour market outcomes as a feature of the spanish context, in which internal migration has traditionally been rare and migration may not be viewed as an obvious way to enhance one’s chances on the labour market (compare luetzelberger 2015, for italy). furthermore, the spanish low-migration context may lead to a lack of exposure to internal migration as a tool for achieving better life outcomes: the lack of a migration tradition may reinforce itself, and therefore human capital theory may not be suffi cient to understanding migration and its labour market consequences in spain (compare maza/villaverde 2004, who come to a similar conclusion based on a macro-level analysis of migration fl ows in spain). furthermore, as we do not know when respondents migrated, the lack of an association between migration and men’s occupational achievement could partly be the result of a confl ation of recent migration to larger cities among highly performing workers with previous migration to other regions among under-performing workers hit by the great recession. however, this reasoning does not help explain the partial support for hypothesis 1 for women. perhaps the results for women are partly shaped by features of our study design. the fact that our sample consists of individuals available in the labour market (i.e. employed individuals and unemployed job seekers) could partly explain the higher labour market achievement among migrant women. this could particularly be the case if a relevant share of migrant women were, in the long run, expected to display lower labour force attachment and occupational achievement, and eventually leave the labour market. a tentative speculation might be that some women who migrate for other reasons than employment may experience a release from family obligations, allowing them to take up a professional position. alternatively, highly achieving women might be more likely to be in the labour market after migration (and be observed in this sample of people in the labour market) than women who are less attached to the labour market. some of these women – particularly those without a partner – could belong to a selective category of particularly ambitious women among whom some migrate to escape unemployment – or, as faggian et al. (2007) suggested, to escape gender biases in the labour market. however, these are indeed speculations, and we would need further research to reach a more conclusive interpretation. for example, we would need to investigate if, and how, the associations between migration histories and living close to family on the one hand and labour market outcomes on the other differs between partnered and unpartnered individuals, and those with and without children. data limitations prohibited us from making such a distinction. in contrast, the support for hypothesis 2b for women regarding precarious labour market positions, and lack of support for men for this hypothesis, were more in line with expectations derived from the idea that family forms a social resource facilitating the labour-market outcomes of women in particular. this function of the family may be particularly prevalent in mediterranean countries such as spain. family fi rms are common in spain, and these might facilitate the labour market careers of women. women likely encounter fewer obstacles in reaching managerial • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal22 positions inside these fi rms than they would on the formal labour market, which is still characterised by high levels of gender inequality (mateos et al. 2006). however, in line with granovetter’s (1973) ideas on how strong ties (e.g. to family) tend to be less instrumental to labour market careers than weak ties, previous research for spain has shown how family resources might be enough to keep women out of unemployment, but not necessarily to further their careers (rodríguez-modroño et al. 2017). thus, our results may rather point to a role of geographically close family as a resource for social support and care provision (compton/pollak 2014; garcía-morán/kuehn 2017). indeed, in countries such as spain with strong family ties and limited family-oriented policies, grandparental help with childcare seems to have a prominent and positive impact on women’s labour market participation and occupational status (arpino et al. 2014; aparicio fenoll 2020). despite the limitations, the data also have important advantages. at the time of writing, these were the only data available for spain – and to our knowledge for all of southern europe – that allow us to address our research questions. we deemed it important to take this opportunity to analyse the associations between migration and labour market outcomes for a mediterranean country in which family forms an important pillar of the welfare regime, and to test a social resource hypothesis alongside human capital hypotheses. our results indeed suggest that in spain, the role of migration in labour market outcomes might be different from what previous research in northern and western europe and the united states suggests: this role seems to be limited to women rather than men, and family as a social resource seems to be important to women’s labour market outcomes besides migration. we might speculate that in spain – and other low-migration contexts where migration may not be particularly valued as a way to advance in the labour market – the gendered returns of migration may differ from those in higher-migration contexts. however, further research employing longitudinal data from a large sample would be necessary to gain more insight into the role of migration in men’s and women’s labour market outcomes in low-migration contexts. acknowledgements the contributions of clara h. mulder and isabel palomares-linares are part of the familyties project. the familyties project is supported by the european research council (erc) under the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 740113). the data collection was supported by fundación bancaria “la caixa”. references adalet mcgowan, müge; san millán, juan antona 2019: reducing regional disparities for inclusive growth in spain. oecd economics department working papers, no. 1549. oecd publishing: paris. internal migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 23 alva, kenedy et al. 2017: intermediarios del mercado de trabajo y efi cacia de los métodos de búsqueda de empleo durante la crisis económica. 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migration, living close to family, and individual labour market outcomes in spain • 27 date of submission: 01.09.2021 date of acceptance: 05.11.2021 prof. dr. clara h. mulder (). university of groningen, population research centre, faculty of spatial sciences. groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: c.h.mulder@rug.nl url: https://www.rug.nl/staff/c.h.mulder/ dr. isabel palomares-linares. university of groningen, population research centre, faculty of spatial sciences, groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: m.i.palomares@rug.nl url: https://www.rug.nl/staff/m.i.palomares/?lang=en dr. sergi vidal. universitat autònoma de barcelona, centre for demographic studies. barcelona, spain. e-mail: svidal@ced.uab.es url: https://ced.cat/en/directori/sergi-vidal/ • clara h. mulder, isabel palomares-linares, sergi vidal28 appendix tab. a1: sample composition of our data and lfs (percentages) lfs aem age group 20-29 16.85 21.80 30-54 83.15 78.20 employment situation employed 86.19 87.50 unemployed 13.81 12.50 gender men 51.54 49.94 women 48.46 50.06 level of education less than higher 55.88 53.24 higher 44.12 46.76 nationality spanish 91.61 90.97 foreign 8.39 9.03 lfs = labour force survey, 2019 (third quarter), aem = attitudes and expectations about mobility survey. comparison based only on respondents aged 20-54 years old. source: labour force survey and survey “attitudes and expectations about mobility”, authors' calculations tab. a2: cross-tabulation of living close to family by migration history (row percentages) migration history did not move returned moved within region migrated women not close to family 25.9 9.5 22.6 42.0 close to family 73.2 10.6 9.9 6.3 total 59.3 10.3 13.7 16.8 men not close to family 25.8 11.2 26.6 36.4 close to family 74.0 9.6 9.4 7.0 total 61.2 10.0 14.0 14.8 source: survey “attitudes and expectations about mobility”, authors' calculations published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) age-specific migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia* liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan abstract: ravenstein, writing in 19th century papers, observed that migration varied with the life course. however, he did not investigate this variation in detail, as the necessary data were not then available. age-specifi c migration has been a focus for researchers of migration in the 20th and 21st centuries. building on this research, the current paper explores age-specifi c migration in russia focussing on its spatial diversity. we compare age-specifi c migration patterns found in russia and those observed in other developed countries. for this investigation, we mainly use russian administrative data on residence registration for 2012-2016, together with information on populations by age in the latest census in 2010. the data are analysed using a classifi cation of local administrative units classifi ed by degree of remoteness from russia’s principal cities (regional centres). the main results are as follows: in russia, young people participate strongly in migration fl ows between peripheral territories and regional centres. the net migration surplus in regional centres is mostly produced by the migration of 15-19 yearolds starting further and higher education courses. peak migration occurs in this age group. this type of migration represents upward mobility in the spatial hierarchy because institutions of higher education are located in the large cities. people aged 20-29 and 30-39 migrate in much smaller numbers, but they also replenish the population of regional centres. the infl ow of middle-aged migrants and families with children was directed to the areas located closest to the regional centres, the suburbs. this type of migration is observed in regions with a well-developed middle class with high purchasing power, for example, in the city of moscow and in the moscow region. peripheral territories have similar profi les of age-specifi c migration, but of loss rather than gain. the farther they are from regional centres, the more signifi cant the outfl ow of young people and the stronger the impact of migration on population ageing. the rural periphery and small cities attract only elderly migrants, but this infl ow is far smaller than the outfl ow of young people. the directions and age comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 413-446 (date of release: 27.05.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-12en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-12en4 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan414 selectivity of migration observed in other countries are thus also found in russia, although there are important differences associated with the nature of housing in russian cities and regions. keywords: internal migration · russia · net migration · regional centres and periphery · a ge 1 introduction migration greatly contributes to the transformation of demographics at the regional and municipal level. young people are traditionally the most mobile group. ravenstein (1876) argued that in england and wales, teenagers and single young adults accounted for the major share of migrants. in russia, the results of the fi rst population census conducted in 1897 similarly showed that single young peasants comprised the most numerous migrant group (tihonov 1978). the migration behaviour of young people has a major impact on many territories of arrival and departure in terms of their demographic characteristics. however, there are territories where the population structure is more dependent on the mobility patterns of working-age groups and elderly people. such territories may specialise in certain manufacturing activities, have specifi c market functions, stand out as unique natural and climatic zones or have other important characteristics. we suggest that age-specifi c migration patterns should be analysed at lower levels of spatial hierarchy. the consequences of the diverse factors infl uencing migration are more explicit at these levels rather than at the level of large regions, where the infl uence of one group of factors can be compensated or neutralised by other factors. for example, at the regional level, population growth compensates for the population decline as a result of migration exchange between centres and peripheries, between urban and rural areas, and between more developed and less developed municipalities. migration statistics on municipalities in russia have been published open access since 2012.1 analysing these data, we can understand a) how the age profi le of net migration varies depending on the remoteness of a territory from the regional centre; and b) how the age profi les of migration of various types of regional centres and peripheral areas differ. as in other countries, migration in russia has been selective in terms of age and, most likely, in terms of destination. however, due to specifi c historical circumstances, as well as to the lack of open statistical data, these aspects of migration have been little studied. only a few papers have addressed these issues (rahmanova 1994; moiseenko 2004). therefore, it was hardly possible to speculate about pos1 database on the municipal formation indicators http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/bd_ munst/munst.htm age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 415 sible differences or similarities between russia and other countries. with this paper we aim to fi ll this knowledge gap. the remainder of this paper is organised as follows. we begin with an analysis of the academic discourse on age-specifi c migration patterns in different types of territories. we then describe our approach to the analysis of migration in regional centres and regional peripheries. we present the results of the analysis of the existing age structure of the population, age-specifi c patterns of net migration in centres and various types of peripheral areas. as a separate case, we analyse the moscow agglomeration. finally, we conclude the paper with a discussion of results and suggestions regarding further research. 2 previous research the migration relationship between centres and peripheries is a complex multilateral process no longer described as one-way movement and not considered as “effets de vases communicants“ (dasre et al. 2009). depending on countries and regions, this process has various forms and scale. in the ussr, the difference between centres and peripheries was signifi cant. however, at that time, the authorities took measures to constrain the growth of the largest cities. therefore, population distribution between rural and urban areas was not motivated by the size of the cities. the stage of mature urbanisation took a long time because of the numerous turbulences of the 20th century (nefedova/treivish 2003). after the dissolution of the ussr, the socio-economic discrepancies between the regions and within the territories increased, while the major administrative barrier of propiska2 was removed. these factors could have led to the intensifi cation of population redistribution between centres, suburbs and peripheries. moreover, this process could have been more intensive than in the countries where urbanisation and the centre-periphery relationship between territories underwent an evolutionary development. nowadays, the patchy distribution of the population in russia is mostly the result of migration (karachurina/mkrtchyan 2015). the most noticeable elements are the regional centres. usually, these are cities with a population of over 200,000 which attract migrants from the same region. the largest and more economically developed centres are also attractive for migrants coming from neighbouring regions (karachurina/mkrtchyan 2016; zubarevich 2010). moscow and st. petersburg lead not only in terms of size but also in terms of economic prosperity, and serve as migration destinations for migrants from all over the country. migration to these 2 propiska is a residence registration system which required the offi cial permission of authorities to register one’s residence in the ussr, thus constraining the movement of people. in 1993, the rules changed, requiring people to simply notify the local authorities about the change of residence instead of obtaining special permission to do so. while major barriers to migration were removed, some restrictions remained: for example, if a person was not registered at the place of residence, she/he had limited access to social protection. • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan416 destinations confi rms that “migrants who move longer distances tend to choose major sources of economic activity“ (ravenstein 1885). most peripheral territories in russia experience migration outfl ows. very few of them have cities that serve as destinations for people coming from neighbouring areas, following the logic of the prevalence of short distance migration, as noted by ravenstein (1885, 1889). this stage of centre-periphery relationship development, when migration fl ows are directed to the centres, occurred in most developed countries decades ago (berry 1980; champion 1987; geyer/kontuly 1993). unlike in russia, the concentration of the population which resulted from migration can be found in urban centres in those countries but not necessarily in regional centres. for example, in great britain, young and vibrant cities stand out as areas with net migration surplus, against the general tendency of counter urbanisation (dennett/stillwell 2010). in the countries of eastern europe, the concentration of the population in large cities occurred later than in western europe (kupiszewski et al. 1998; raagmaa 2003; vobecka 2010). currently, some eastern european countries are undergoing re-urbanisation as experienced in a number of urban districts in the countries of western europe (sander 2014; haase et al. 2017). in contemporary russia, migration to the centres still remains the key migration trend: the larger the centres, the more migrants move there (nefedova/treivish 2017; zubarevich 2010). therefore, we can conclude that internal migration patterns are associated with the stages of urban development. at the initial stages of urbanisation, internal migration fl ows are directed only one way, resulting in the concentration of people in large city centres (ravenstein 1885; vining/pallone 1982; geyer/kontuly 1993). at the later stages of urban development, alongside stronger economic diversifi cation and the growing popularity of alternative places of residence (berry 1980), and due to the greater variety of consumer preferences (long/deare 1988), migration fl ows start taking other directions. people move from cities to suburbs and to rural areas, as well as between cities of different size and type (champion et al. 2014); not only up but also down the escalator (fielding 1989, 1992), and up and down the urban hierarchy (de jong et al. 2016). migration trends in more densely populated territories differ from those in less populated areas (stillwell et al. 1990; rees et al. 1996). migration patterns become more complicated and diverse in terms of the distribution of population across the territory of the country. on the other hand, bell et al. (2015), bernard et al. (2014), kalogirou (2005), dennett/stillwell (2010), millington (2000) traced the link between migration patterns and life course events. they revealed that, across countries, the life course events driving migration may occur at different points in time and may vary in terms of duration. however, migration events are always linked to some stages of the life course. meanwhile, the research project conducted by the council of europe for several years reveals that the only common feature of age-specifi c migration profi les of the countries is the infl ow of young people to large urban agglomerations (rees/ kupiszewski 1999). the migration of the young can be treated as an ordinary life course event. fielding (1989, 1992; savage/fielding 1989) describes so-called escaage-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 417 lator regions, where young ambitious people come to make use of the existing opportunities and then leave. hansen and niedomysl (2009) show that the difference in the “people climate“ between the place of birth/youth and prospective migration destinations is important to consider when analysing the migration of the young. quite logically, such comparatively “better“ cities become even more successful thanks to young immigrants (berry/glaeser 2005; findlay et al. 2009; fratesi 2014; gordon et al. 2015; winters 2011). smaller cities, rural territories with fewer opportunities for a good education, fewer employment prospects, and little potential for social and economic growth are unable to retain their young population. that is why the outfl ow of young people from rural areas always exceeds the outfl ow from cities. research conducted in scotland demonstrates that the youth outfl ow from periphery areas can be signifi cant (gillies 2014). argent and walmsley (2008) showed that in australia, migration distance and migration frequency depend on the remoteness of the rural peripheral areas from the centres. this is an indicative case for our research because in australia we fi nd a specifi c system of population distribution, like in russia. other age groups do not demonstrate similarities in terms of migration destinations. the age groups are heterogeneous in terms of the reasons for and the objectives of migration: there is no common dominating motivation driving the migration of the middle-aged and the elderly. for example, de jong et al. (2016) fi nd that in the netherlands, migrants aged 18-44 move between different levels of urban hierarchy in both directions: upwards when migrating to large cities, and downwards when going to smaller cities, and 70 percent of migrants aged 35-44 choose smaller cities as migration destinations. in france, the 23-33 age-group is the key contributor to suburbanisation, while in general, migration to the suburbs and rural areas increases with age (détang-dessendre et al. 2008). in the united states, and in many european countries, middle-aged married couples usually consider moving to the suburbs, especially after the birth of children (plane/jurjevich 2009). in case of great britain, people move from the suburbs to more rural areas, including seaside territories (dennett/stillwell 2010). fuguitt and heaton (1995) argue that fast developing areas are attractive destinations for migrants of all ages. martel et al. (2013) fi nd that escalator regions can draw not only young and highly qualifi ed migrants but also people of pre-retirement age who are driven by the desire to ensure a decent standard of living after retirement. ultimately, there is no single factor explaining why a family considers one place or another more comfortable to live in; the decision is based on complex interactions between family members and can be motivated by a change of job and housing (clark/withers 2007; mulder 2006). numerous migration studies devoted to the “young elderly“ are focused on their desire to leave large cities and move to areas with better environmental conditions and lower housing prices (millington 2000; raymer et al. 2007), while the “old elderly“ want to return to a previous place of residence or move closer to their relatives (litwak/longino 1987; rogerson et al. 1997). détang-dessendre et al. (2008) demonstrate that in france, the old elderly are more inclined to leave large cities, but widowhood makes them return to cities. rerat et al. (2008) conclude that in the • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan418 case of switzerland, there is no evidence confi rming that the old elderly return to cities in great numbers. in denmark, the old elderly would prefer to move to the suburbs of copenhagen where they fi nd a better environment and good access to services (kupiszewski et al. 2001). in general, the periphery has a quieter lifestyle which is attractive for people of certain ages, habits and social capital (blowers/leroy 1994; polèse/shearmur 2006; kauppila 2011; pileček et al. 2013). therefore, it is quite logical to suggest that a net migration surplus in the rural periphery – if any – is more likely to result from the migration of the elderly (fuguitt/heaton 1995; philip et al. 2013); even for these people, a migration decision is the result of an interplay between life course events, economic factors and chance (stockdale 2014). these examples show that the choice of migration destination – be it a centre, suburb or peripheral area – varies for migrants of different age and at different life stages. plane and heins (2003) analysed the directions of migration across districts in the united states and identifi ed clusters of territories based on the migration preferences of people from different age groups. qualitative research fi ndings more often indicate that such a standardised interpretation of migration (associated with life course events) simplifi es reality (kalogirou 2005; plane et al. 2005; stockdale 2014), and that the age-specifi c migration profi le of the territories belonging to different levels of urban hierarchy is more complicated. in the case of russia, we observe even more complicated age-specifi c migration profi les. most of russia’s territory is sparsely populated, even in the european part where most of the population is concentrated (glezer/vainberg 2014). the vast peripheral areas of russian regions are still different in terms of the historically established structure of settlement networks (for example, small settlement pattern in the west of the country, large settlement pattern in the south, and fragmented settlement system in the north and north-east). other differences concern the accessibility of the peripheral territories, the presence or lack of peripheral cities acting as local sub-centres, their size and economic potential. finally, these territories are not equally attractive for young people, middle-aged and elderly people. age-specifi c migration in russia has been studied at the country level (moiseenko 2004) and at the level of large regions (rahmanova 1994). studies focusing on age-specifi c migration at the level of regions (kashnitsky et al. 2016) and municipalities are quite recent (karachurina/mkrtchyan 2018). the objective of this paper is to investigate how the age-specifi c migration patterns observed in europe and the united states are manifested in russia considering its peculiar socio-historical development, and compares the age profi les of net migration in central and peripheral municipalities. such comparative analysis yields more meaningful insights than a comparison of large administrative areas of the country. age profi les of net migration in the centres of various parts of the country have more similarities than those in centres and nearest peripheral territories. however, there are exceptions to this rule, and these equally deserve attention. we analyse net migration in different types of territories (regional centres, various types of peripheral territories, differing in remoteness from regional centres) age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 419 within the same level of urban hierarchy (to some extent, corresponding to nuts-3 level).3 we aim to fi nd differences in age-specifi c migration profi les of mfs4 of the regional centres and mfs of the periphery areas. finally, we answer the question of whether the russian migration model corresponds to the migration trends observed in developed countries, and we describe its peculiarities. unlike plane and heins (2003) and de jong et al. (2016), we cannot use the data on migration fl ows between urban hierarchy levels. our data compare the results of population redistribution using the net migration data for various age groups and types of territories – centres and peripheral areas. 3 methods and data our research on age-specifi c net migration in russia’s mfs relies on the following: • data on the age composition of the population in russia’s mfs derived from russia’s 2010 census; • administrative data from the russian federal state statistics service concerning net migration by 5-year age groups for intraregional, interregional and international migration fl ows for russia’s mfs for the period 2012-2016; • administrative data from the russian federal state statistics service on the age composition (by 5-year age groups) of the population in russia’s mfs for the period 2012-2016. we use migration data from administrative sources. these data are similar to the migration data derived from population registers for migration research in european countries (bell et al. 2015). the number of migration events does not always coincide with the number of people who migrate, as of the end of the year. in our analysis we use the data on migrants’ age for the year when migration occurred. the data on migration infl ows and outfl ows is available for almost all mfs of the regions of russia starting in 2012 or 2013. however, the interpretation of the data at this level is a separate task which we envisage to complete in another research. as of 1 january 2012, there were 83 regions in russia (appendix 1) divided into 2,334 mfs. this level of administrative-territorial units covered 517 urban okrugs and 1,817 municipal districts5 (fig. 1). in russia, urban okrugs mainly refer to cities, 3 nuts system is not directly compatible the russian administrative division system. with a considerable degree of conditionality, we can compare russian regions and territories of the nuts-2 level, as well as municipal formations (mfs) and territories of the nuts-3 level by population size (kashnitsky 2018). 4 municipal formations in russia are administrative territorial divisions with local self-government. 5 the list of the regions of russia can be found in appendix 1. mfs (city districts and municipal districts) which belong to a particular region are indicated in the russian federation population by municipal districts as of 1 january 2012. statistical bulletin. moscow. rosstat 2013 [https:// gks.ru/compendium/document/13282]. • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan420 although these areas sometimes include adjacent rural populations. municipal districts are administrative divisions inhabited by both urban and rural populations, or by rural populations only. data on 2,208 mfs – 94.6 percent of all mfs in the country (96.3 percent of the population) – were available for analysis. information was not available on mfs in dagestan, kabardino-balkaria, tyva, chukotsky autonomous okrug and closed administrative-territorial units (catus). the total population size of the mfs not covered in our research is 5.4 million people (the population of the catus is 1.2 million). the federal cities of moscow and st. petersburg and other large cities were analysed without further division into intra-urban municipal territories because, in russia, the change of place of residence within a city is not considered a migration event. for the purposes of our analysis, we divide all municipal formations into “centres“ and “periphery mfs“. “centres“ include capital cities of regions and the suburban mfs surrounding these centres. if a regional centre borders more than one mf (and the centre is located at the intersection of mfs), these mfs are considered as belonging to the centre (fig. 2). the remaining mfs in each region are treated as peripheral (see: mkrtchyan 2019). fig. 1: method of categorisation of the centres and periphery in russia at the two small administrative levels note: figures in brackets denote the number of units at the given administrative level source: compiled by authors using “rosstat 2013: the population of the russian federation by municipal formations as of january 1, 2012. statistical bulletin. moscow" age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 421 for our analysis, we divided peripheral areas into categories based on the criteria of physical and conventional remoteness from the centre. physical remoteness is the distance between an mf and the regional centre, measured in kilometres using existing transport routes. conventional remoteness is denoted by ranks of remoteness from a regional centre. centres and adjacent suburbs are mfs of the zero rank (fig. 3). those mfs that are adjacent to the central mfs are considered fi rst-rank mfs, while those adjacent to fi rst-rank mfs are mfs of second rank, and so on to mfs of the fi fth and higher ranks. such ranking allows us to compare areas of russian regions of different size. for example, fi fth rank of remoteness – regardless of the level of development – is a remote periphery, although it may be located 100 km or 250 km away from a regional centre. a time criterion could be used to measure the distance of migration. however, we do not have the relevant data for all regions and mfs in russia. in addition, in the case of russia, physical distance closely correlates with temporal accessibility, except for the suburbs of moscow and st. petersburg: these areas benefi t from a well-developed public transport network and a dense motorway network. for example, a two-hour temporal accessibility to a regional centre would correspond to the same measure of spatial accessibility in most russian regions because the road infrastructure in the regions provides similar time options for distance coverage (neretin 2018; neretin et al. 2019). fig. 2: method of categorisation of the centres composed of a regional centre and adjacent suburbs source: own design • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan422 the main variable used in the analysis is net migration by 5-year age groups6 per 1,000 people of the corresponding age calculated for all mfs as an average for the period 2012-2016. analysis of the mf-specifi c net migration by 5-year age groups allows us to determine which migration fl ows (intraregional, interregional or international fl ows) contribute to the net migration surplus or defi cit in each mf. tabulation of migration fl ows by age and scale of migration enables us to determine how important intraregional, interregional and international migration fl ows are at each life course stage. thus, we combine the age-specifi c dimension of migration with a specifi c classifi cation of territorial units, which allows us to differentiate between mfs by migration indicators. we also use russia’s population census data of 2010 to compare the age composition of populations in centres and peripheral areas. fig. 3: method of categorisation of the periphery areas by rank of remoteness from the centre source: own design 6 the age groups are 0-4 years (including children aged under 1 who were born in the year of migration), 5-9 years. 10-14 years, 15-19 years and so on. age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 423 4 results 4.1 age composition of the population in the centres and peripheral areas the age compositions of the population in central and peripheral mfs are not similar. central mfs have a larger share of young people and working-age population (in russia, working age is defi ned in legislation as 15-54 years for women and 15-59 years for men7). peripheral areas have a larger share of children, but the share of elderly people is almost the same (table 1). these differences result from different birth rates in large cities (most of them are regional centres) and rural areas (which make up the major part of the peripheral areas). in rural areas, the birth rate is still higher (vishnevskij 2014); therefore, in peripheral mfs, the number of children is greater, although the number of people of reproductive age (20-49 years) is lower than in the regional centres. 7 this retirement age was set in russia in 1932 (based on the low life expectancy rates) and remained as such until 2018. tab. 1: age structure of the population in centres and peripheral mfs in russia, 2010, % age total centres periphery proximity of periphery areas to the group population mfs regional centre 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th rank rank rank rank rank and beyond 0-4 5.6 5.1 6.0 6.1 5.9 5.9 5.9 6.1 5-9 5.0 4.5 5.3 5.4 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.5 10-14 4.6 4.1 5.1 5.0 5.1 5.1 5.2 5.4 15-19 5.9 6.0 5.7 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 20-24 8.5 9.2 7.9 8.2 7.9 7.7 7.7 7.5 25-29 8.4 9.0 7.9 8.1 7.9 7.7 7.7 7.7 30-34 7.7 8.1 7.3 7.5 7.3 7.2 7.2 7.3 35-39 7.1 7.3 6.9 7.0 6.9 6.9 6.8 7.0 40-44 6.5 6.5 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.5 45-49 7.5 7.3 7.6 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.8 50-54 8.0 7.7 8.3 8.1 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 55-59 7.0 6.8 7.2 7.1 7.2 7.2 7.3 7.2 60-64 5.5 5.6 5.3 5.3 5.4 5.4 5.3 5.1 65-69 2.8 2.9 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.8 2.7 2.6 70-74 4.5 4.4 4.6 4.4 4.6 4.8 4.6 4.4 75-79 2.5 2.3 2.6 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.7 2.6 80-84 2.0 1.9 2.1 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.2 2.1 85+ 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 source: authors’ computations using russia’s 2010 census [https://www.gks.ru/free_doc/ new_site/perepis2010/croc/perepis_itogi1612.htm] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan424 the birth rate in large cities is lower than in the peripheral areas, but due to the infl ow of young people, the age structure becomes younger. the shares of middleaged people and the elderly in the centres and peripheral areas are almost equal. on the one hand, rees et al. (2017) point out to the “high migration effectiveness“ in russia which could lead to signifi cant differences in age composition of the population in centres and periphery mfs. on the other hand, the consequence of the “high migration effectiveness“ could be the convergence between centres and periphery areas, due to the higher birth rate and younger age structure of the periphery. in any case, the centres benefi t from the migration infl ow of the young. 4.2 age profi les of migration fl ows in the centres and peripheral areas regional centres and peripheral areas have different age-specifi c net migration profi les for all types of migration fl ows (table 2). only international migrants contribute to the net migration surplus both in centres and peripheral mfs. however, the intensity of international migration infl ow in centres is higher than in peripheral mfs. for intraregional and interregional migration, centres and peripheries differ substantially. in other words, a net migration surplus is observed only in the centres, while peripheral areas suffer from a net migration defi cit. the redistribution of the population between the centres and peripheral mfs is mainly driven by the movement of young and middle-aged people (fig. 4). the highest migration peak in the 15-19 age group is observed in intraregional migration. this peak is driven by educational migration,8 with the main infl ow being directed toward regional centres from other cities of the same region and from rural areas. tab. 2: net migration in the regional centres and peripheral mfs, by various types of migration fl ows, average for the period 2012-2016, per 1,000 people including total intraregional interregional international migration migration migration migration regional centres 9.4 3.9 2.9 2.7 peripheral mfs*: -2.9 -2.8 -1.9 1.8 1st rank 1.2 -1.3 0.4 2.1 2nd rank -3.3 -3.1 -2.2 2.0 3rd rank -5.0 -3.6 -2.8 1.4 4th rank -5.3 -3.5 -3.0 1.2 5th rank and higher -7.2 -4.2 -4.4 1.3 * by rank of proximity to the regional centre source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] 8 it is very common in russia that 80 percent of school graduates (after 11th grade) choose to continue studying after school (bessudnov et al. 2017). age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 425 fig. 4: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in the centres and in periphery mfs, by types of migration fl ows and age groups, average for the period 20122016, per 1,000 people of the corresponding age -5,0 0,0 5,0 10,0 15,0 20,0 25,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups intraregional interregional international migration per 1,000 the centre -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 5,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups intraregional interregional international migration per 1,000 periphery source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan426 young people migrate from remote rural settlements and small cities to the regional centre to gain higher educational or technical qualifi cations and as a way to escape their native settlements (karachurina/florinskaya 2019; endryushko 2018). this is a very popular strategy. the age profi le of interregional migration is smoother because the fl ow is composed of both educational migrants and young people who relocate after graduation in search of jobs (20-29 age group). international migration has the smoothest age profi le: a migration peak is observed in the 25-29 age group and this infl ow is not associated with education. in russia, life course events such as graduation from school, enrolment in university and graduation from university have clear connections to specifi c ages; therefore, the migration to centres which provide higher university or technical education that happens at a certain age produces a noticeable impact on migration fl ows. here, the peaks of migration are higher than in many developed countries where the life trajectories of people are more diverse and life-course events have a less strict connection to age (billari/liefbroer 2010; bernard et al. 2014, 2016). all peripheral mfs experience an out-migration of student-age populations who move to regional centres (fig. 5). in russia, large universities that are attractive to students can only be found in regional centres, with rare exceptions (the cities of surgut, novokuznetsk, sochi and a small number of other large cities which are not capitals of the regions). young people tend not to return to their origin mfs but instead fi nd jobs and partners in the destination centres or equivalent centres (kashnitsky 2018; zamjatina/jashunskij 2012). 4.3 age-specifi c migration processes in the moscow agglomeration the differentiation between centres and peripheries is important because it helps explain the direction and composition of migration fl ows. other factors should not be ignored either. for example, migration in mfs within the largest russian agglomeration does not exactly correspond to the scheme describing the relationship between the centre and periphery of regions. for instance, all mfs within moscow oblast (region), regardless of how remote they are from the city centre, are popular destinations for migrants from other regions of the country. this is a manifestation of the centre-periphery relationship at the country level rather than at the regional level. a similar pattern is observed in the leningrad oblast (the st. petersburg agglomeration). immigration fl ows to moscow, st. petersburg and to the moscow oblast and the leningrad oblast from other regions of the country were also quite signifi cant during the soviet era. after the dissolution of the soviet union, this migration infl ow intensifi ed due to the disappearance of previous administrative barriers (zajonchkovskaya/mkrtchyan 2009). when compared by the net migration rate, mfs adjacent to the centre of the largest agglomeration in russia (moscow) surpass the capital (table 3). this phenomenon is the result of two independent processes: 1) the capital of russia, just like other large cities of the country, is prone to “urban sprawl“. blocks of multi-storey buildings in districts close to moscow make these areas look exactly like moscow-city districts or the moscow subage-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 427 fig. 5: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in the periphery mfs of varying remoteness from the centres, by age groups, average for the period 2012-2016, per 1,000 people of the corresponding age -25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 5,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups 1st-rank from the centre 2 3 4 5st-rank and lower per 1,000 intraregional migration -25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 5,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups 1st-rank from the centre 2 3 4 5st-rank and lower per 1,000 interregional migration source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan428 urbs. this process, however, hardly resembles the development of low-storey suburbs observed in other countries. the case of moscow qualifi es as another stage of the classic process of urbanisation. the new multi-storey buildings attract interregional migrants and those residents of moscow who wish to have an additional apartment or to move to a larger apartment (kurichev/kuricheva 2018; kuricheva/popov 2015). housing in the cities adjacent to moscow is less costly than in the centre of moscow. 2) as in the suburbs of cities in developed countries (miller 1995; kupiszewski et al. 1998; champion/hugo 2004; kladivo et al. 2015), in russian agglomerations, we observe a growing number of more comfortable and eco-friendly villages of twoand three-storey houses and townhouses owned by affl uent people. however, russian suburbanisation has its peculiarities in that the owners of suburban housing do not relocate from the capital to the suburbs; they prefer to live in both places, which is not refl ected in the migration statistics of the moscow oblast. what makes the net migration pattern in the suburban mfs of the moscow oblast peculiar is the absence of student-age migrant infl ows (fig. 6). very few higher education institutions can be found in the moscow region, and student dormitories, as a rule, are also located in moscow. similarly, signifi cantly fewer migrants of early retirement age – in comparison with moscow – contribute to the net migration surplus in the moscow oblast. the capital is more attractive for this category of the population because of the substantial additional payments to pensioners from the city budget. this factor prevents pensioners from moving out of the capital to other regions of russia, even to the moscow oblast. in the event that such migration does tab. 3: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in moscow and in mfs of moscow region, by types of migration fl ows, average for the period 2012-2016, per 1,000 people including migration, intraregional interregional** international total migration migration migration moscow 7.1 0.0 6.1 1.0 mfs of the moscow region, by remoteness from the centre of moscow* <30 27.0 1.7 22.2 3.1 30-50 24.9 3.1 17.7 4.0 50-75 8.5 -1.9 7.7 2.7 75-100 3.5 -1.4 2.9 2.0 >100 1.3 -3.1 2.4 1.9 * remoteness from moscow is calculated using the administrative borders of moscow before its expansion in 2012 ** migration between moscow and the moscow region is considered an interregional type of migration source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 429 take place, it is not refl ected in the statistical data since people do not cancel their moscow registration so as not to lose pension-associated payments and healthcare services in moscow (karachurina/ivanova 2019). resettlement to the moscow oblast seems appealing to families with children. our data show a signifi cant net migration surplus observed in the 0-4 and 5-9 age groups (fig. 3). this phenomenon is relatively new to russia and is explained by the increased effective demand for new housing in the 2000s and by a greater choice of such housing in the moscow oblast than in the city of moscow. thus, the 25-39 age group of the population in russia demonstrates migration patterns similar to those of the same age group in the united states or european countries (when young families with children move from the city to the suburbs) (morrill 1995; smetkowski 2011; kley 2011), although the reasons for this migration are not associated with more attractive ecology or the prestige of these territories (makhrova/kirillov 2015; mkrtchyan 2015). 4.4 the age composition of migration in peripheral cities of various sizes and in rural areas peripheral areas of russian regions differ both in terms of their remoteness from the centres and in terms of having or lacking mfs that serve as local migration destinations. such local destinations include, for example, large cities (with a population fig. 6: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in moscow and territories of the moscow region, by age-groups, average for the period of 2012-2016, per 1,000 people of the corresponding age 0,0 5,0 10,0 15,0 20,0 25,0 30,0 35,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 5 75 -7 9 80 + age groups moscow moscow oblast per 1,000 source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan430 size of 100,000 or more) and mid-sized cities (50,000-100,000 people). in addition to urban settlements of different sizes, such mfs also include rural populations.9 to determine peripheral mfs with and without urban centres of different population sizes, we chose an indicator of the urban population share in the total population. class 1 (see table 4, fig. 7) includes cities with a population that almost equals the population size of the corresponding mf. in other classes, the urban population acnote: classes of the peripheral areas correspond to those in table 4. * the data on migration in mfs in four regions of russia (the dagestan republic, the kabardino-balkar republic, the tuva republic and chukotka autonomous okrug), as well as migration data on towns and settlements belonging to the category of the closed administrative-territorial formations were not included into the mfd and were not available for the analysis. ** closed administrative-territorial formations have functions associated with national security and defense. the statistical data on migration in these formations are not published in open access. *** we use asia north equal area conic (espg: 102025) projection source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) ]https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] 9 unfortunately, existing statistical data do not allow us to distinguish cities within urban districts. fig. 7: centres and peripheral areas by classes age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 431 ta b . 4 : n et m ig ra tio n (s ur p lu s o r d efi c it) in p er ip he ra l m fs , b y p o p ul at io n si ze a nd t he s ha re o f u rb an p o p ul at io n, av er ag e fo r th e p er io d o f 2 01 220 16 , p er 1 ,0 00 p eo p le c la ss m f p o p ul at io n in cl u d in g m ig ra tio n, t o ta l in cl u d in g si ze a s o f t h e p o p ul at io n si ze in tr ar eg io na l in te rr eg io na l in te rn at io na l b eg in ni ng o f o f t h e m ai n ci ty , 20 12 , t h o u sa n d s th o u sa n d s c en tr es 9. 4 3. 9 2. 9 2. 7 p er ip h er al m fs -2 .9 -2 .8 -1 .9 1. 8 u rb an p o p ul at io n sh ar e ab o ve 7 5 p er ce n t 1a a b o ve 1 00 a b o ve 1 00 0. 6 -0 .1 -1 .2 1. 9 1b 50 -1 00 50 -1 00 -2 .2 -0 .4 -3 .4 1. 7 1c b el o w 5 0 b el o w 5 0 -5 .0 -2 .8 -3 .7 1. 4 u rb an p o p ul at io n sh ar e 50 -7 5 p er ce n t 2a a b o ve 1 00 50 -1 00 6. 9 -0 .5 4. 6 2. 8 2b 50 -1 00 a b o u t 5 0 -0 .6 -2 .2 -0 .5 2. 1 2c b el o w 5 0 b el o w 5 0 -7 .2 -5 .0 -3 .9 1. 7 u rb an p o p ul at io n sh ar e b el o w 5 0 p er ce n t 3a a b o ve 1 00 a b o u t 5 0 6. 9 -1 .1 6. 0 2. 1 3b 50 -1 00 b el o w 5 0 -1 .3 -2 .9 -0 .6 2. 2 3c b el o w 5 0 b el o w 5 0 -6 .7 -5 .5 -3 .0 1. 8 w it h o u t u rb an p o p ul at io n (o nl y ru ra l p o p ul at io n) 4 -6 .3 -5 .2 -2 .4 1. 3 s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c o m p ut at io ns u si ng r us si an s ta tis tic al o ffi ce , m un ic ip al f o rm at io ns d at ab as e (m fd ) [h tt p s: // w w w .g ks .r u/ st o ra ge / m ed ia b an k/ m un st .h tm ] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan432 counts for either a major (class 2) or minor (class 3) share of the total population. class 4 is composed of municipal districts with an entirely rural population. letters a, b and c serve to denote the population size of a given mf. in russia, peripheral cities with larger population sizes experience less signifi cant outfl ows of people. in total, net migration to the cities with a population above 100,000 people and located very far from regional capitals is almost zero (class 1a). such cities become centres and attract some migrants from adjacent mfs. these cities also tend to lose population because of out-migration to the regional centre (intraregional migration) or to a large neighbouring centre (interregional migration). such cities, even large ones, are less attractive destinations for educational migration compared to regional centres due to their limited educational infrastructure. hence, young people in the 15-19 age group usually move out. unlike regional centres, these centres have a less diversifi ed labour market, with economies dominated by single companies and manufacturing. thus, these cities strongly depend on the fi nancial and economic wellbeing of city-forming enterprises and industries, and they do not possess a permanent attractiveness as migration destinations (for example, the city of toliatti is dependent on the automobile plant, and novokuznetsk and nizhniy tagil depend on steelmaking plants). apart from industrial cities, the category of mid-sized cities (class 1b, class 2a in table 4) also includes the cities of moscow and leningrad regions. these act as “peripheries“ within their regions but as “centres“ for interregional migration infl ows, which helps ensure a net interregional migration surplus. further, other attractive migration destinations among mid-sized cities are resort cities located on the coast of the black sea and in the region of the caucasian mineral waters. some large (class 1a) and medium-sized cities (class 1b, class 2a) with lucrative employment opportunities attract young professionals (20-29 years old). such cities can be found in the oiland gas-producing regions of the urals, which are attractive for interregional migrants. people of pre-retirement and retirement ages move out of these cities. the infl ow of young people and the outfl ow of the elderly produce positive demographic changes (“rotation“) in these cities. peripheral mfs with a purely rural population and small cities with a population under 50,000 inhabitants (categorised under classes 1c, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 in table 4) experience the highest population outfl ow. rural peripheries and small peripheral cities are primary migration donors for regional centres in intraregional migration. these peripheral areas are unable to lure either educational migrants (there are no higher education institutions, and the capabilities of technical colleges can only satisfy local demand) or middle-aged people because of the limited employment opportunities and low wages. many rural peripheral areas have poor transport links to regional centres and provide insuffi cient social services for their population (e.g. schools and healthcare), even in comparison with other peripheral mfs. migration infl ows to these cities can be explained by the return of people of pre-retirement and retirement ages, the low cost of housing, and a desire to escape from a large city. for these rural and semi-rural areas, the relationship between net migration and the degree of remoteness from the regional centre is evident: the further the age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 433 distance from the regional centre, the greater the migration outfl ow. negative net migration is increasing both for intraregional and interregional migration (table 5). analysis of variance (anova) shows that the intensity of net migration in rural and semi-rural areas statistically differs at a 1-percent level of signifi cance for areas similarly remote from the centre. additionally, 9.5 percent of intraregional variance and 4 percent of interregional migration is explained by the scatter of the selected categories depending on their remoteness from a regional centre. international immigration in russia is mostly represented by the infl ow of migrants from countries which were formally members of the soviet union, such as ukraine or kazakhstan. these immigrants fi nd periphery areas are also attractive destination options: in the farthest periphery, one can purchase housing cheaply and obtain residential registration without actually living in the acquired property. in rural settlements with few inhabitants, the price of such housing is much lower rank of remoteness of total including a peripheral mf from a migration intraregional interregional international regional centre migration migration migration share of urban population 50-75 percent 1st rank -2.3 -2.9 -1.5 2.0 2nd rank -4.2 -3.6 -2.8 2.2 3rd rank -6.5 -3.8 -4.0 1.3 4th rank -6.4 -4.1 -3.6 1.3 5th rank and higher -7.0 -4.1 -4.2 1.3 share of urban population below 50 percent 1st rank -5.4 -5.0 -2.1 1.6 2nd rank -3.6 -5.1 -0.4 2.0 3rd rank -6.0 -5.4 -2.4 1.8 4th rank -8.0 -6.4 -3.5 1.9 5th rank and higher -1.0 -1.2 -1.4 1.5 only rural population 1st rank -0.8 -1.1 -1.3 1.5 2nd rank -7.2 -6.1 -2.4 1.3 3rd rank -8.3 -6.7 -2.7 1.2 4th rank -7.9 -6.3 -2.8 1.2 5th rank and higher -10.1 -7.6 -3.4 1.0 tab. 5: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in rural mfs and small peripheral cities* by rank of remoteness from regional centres, average for the period of 2012-2016, per 1,000 people * classes 1c, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4 in table 4. source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan434 fig. 8: net migration (surplus or defi cit) in various classes of mfs, by age groups, average for the period of 2012-2016, per 1,000 people of the corresponding age -35,0 -30,0 -25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 5,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups 1a 1b, 2a 1c, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c 4 per 1,000 intraregional migration -35,0 -30,0 -25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 5,0 04 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 + age groups 1a 1b, 2a 1c, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c 4 per 1,000 interregional migration source: authors’ computations using russian statistical offi ce, municipal formations database (mfd) [https://www.gks.ru/storage/mediabank/munst.htm] age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 435 (bogdanova/schukina 2013; tkachenko 2017). another possible reason is the access to benefi ts and preferential treatment that some russian regions offer those migrants who resettle to rural areas under the state program to assist the voluntary resettlement of compatriots living abroad. rural areas and small peripheral cities experience the largest losses of young population due to intraregional migration (starting from the 15-19 age group). many young people move to the regional centres to continue studies (fig. 8). we estimate that for each student from a village or a small city going to study in the centre of another region (interregional migration), there are three migrants moving to the centre of their region for the same reason (intraregional migration). people more often choose the capital of their region for educational migration for a number of reasons. education in the leading universities of the country is available only to a limited number of young people; additionally here is the high cost of education and the cost of living away from home (katrovskij 1999; gibbons/vignoles 2012). after graduation, the population of 20-29 year-olds in rural areas or small peripheral cities (the rank of remoteness does not matter) more often become interregional migrants than younger people aged 15-19. thus, the peripheral areas are not similar; mfs with large and mid-sized cities can keep young people from moving out, while small peripheral cities and rural areas experience intensive outfl ows of youth and insignifi cant infl ows of elderly people. 5 conclusions russia’s population tends to concentrate in regional centres, which follows from the data on the dynamics of population size in the two latest intercensal periods. peripheral mfs in all parts of the country suffer from a population decline; in more remote mfs, the population is decreasing faster (karachurina/mkrtchyan 2015). however, apart from its impact on population size, the redistribution of the population between centres and intraregional peripheral areas also results in a transformation of the age structure of the population. in regional centres, due to migration, the share of the young working-age population is growing, which brings a positive effect in terms of economic development and creates an additional “demographic dividend“. intraregional migration most signifi cantly contributes to making the population of the regional centres younger. however, in line with the logic of escalator mobility (fielding 1992) we observe the following processes: after graduation, young people move out of regional centres but not back to peripheral mfs—they migrate to the centres of other regions, primarily to russia’s largest cities, which are supra-regional centres. these cities attract migrants both from the same region and beyond. apart from moscow and st. petersburg, supraregional centres include novosibirsk, yekaterinburg, nizhny novgorod, kazan, samara and krasnoyarsk (zubarevich 2013). in regional centres, we observe the replacement of those who left with another infl ow of migrants from peripheral mfs as a result of intraregional migration. the • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan436 age structure of the population in the regional centres would not remain stable without permanent migration infl ows. many centres attract migrants of all ages, but primarily young people. in the periphery, the outfl ow of young people negatively impacts the reproductive capabilities of the population and speeds up its ageing. as in other countries (dennett/stillwell 2010; conway/houtenville 2003; raymer et al. 2007), migration infl ow to peripheral mfs is composed of pre-pensioners and pensioners. however, its infl uence on population aging is incomparable with the impact of youth outfl ows from these territories. the scale of this infl ow is still too insignifi cant and in general, pensioners in russia rarely migrate, which is in contrast with other countries where elderly people have long been on the move. the results of our analysis show that age-specifi c migration patterns in russia are similar to those observed in other countries with regard to the mobility associated with different stages of life. on the other hand, russia has its peculiarities. for example, as in other countries, the infl ow of young people to regional centres is highest when they leave school and enrol in universities. however, in russia, these life course events happen at the age of 18-19, while abroad, the same event can occur at an older age and last longer (bernard et al. 2014). we also found that in russia, as in other developed countries (morrill 1995; kulu 2008; vobecka 2010; johnson/winkler 2015), families with children tend to move to the suburbs of regional centres. this type of migration can be clearly observed in the moscow suburbs, and emerges in other parts of the country (mkrtchyan 2019). but migration from large city centres is still low, in contrast to the countries of western europe. a wide range of factors can explain why the suburbanisation process in russia is slow and has its own peculiarities and affects only selected territories: 1) the existence of a permanent residence registration system and the complicated process of obtaining residence registration documents during the soviet era and in the early years after the breakup of the soviet union. later, some categories of the population (e.g. pensioners) became benefi ciaries of social assistance programs run by the moscow and st. petersburg governments, so they refrained from resettling to the suburbs so as not to lose these benefi ts. as long as the infl ow of pre-retirement age people and elderly people to peripheral areas is negligible, it may be statistically underestimated. many of these migrants do not change their permanent residence registration documents; therefore, they do not fall under the statistical category of migrants. similar problems with administrative data on migrants have been identifi ed by researchers in other eastern european countries (gnatiuk 2017; ouředníček 2007). 2) the middle class is slowly forming in large cities. as a result, the demand for expensive housing in suburbs remains low. instead of moving to suburbs, many children from large cities live with their parents, with suffi cient space often lacking for all family members. in the largest urban agglomerations of russia, however, we observe a different situation. here, the process of suburbanisation is driven by middle-class households who move from the centre of the agglomeration to its periphery and by working-age people migrating from other regions of the country. the fi ndings of recent research (kurichev/ kuricheva 2018) show that both muscovites and migrants from other regions age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 437 account for a signifi cant share of those who buy property in moscow’s nearest periphery. 3) during the soviet era, housing in the suburbs was mainly for summer accommodation and had no social infrastructure (e.g. schools, hospitals, etc.). migration to the suburbs for permanent living was substituted by temporary migration to the countryside for the summer season or for weekends (makhrova et al. 2016). the peculiarity of the russian case lies in the large size and diversity of the peripheral areas. the rank of remoteness from the regional centre has no impact on the age-specifi c composition of migration fl ows in peripheral areas, but affects the intensity of the net migration decline. the age-specifi c migration patterns vary little across the periphery, with the key common feature being the outfl ow of young people. russia inherited a centralised higher education system from the ussr; therefore, universities remain located mostly in regional centres and sometimes in other large cities. institutions of secondary professional education are more evenly distributed across the country and can often be found in medium-sized cities or even small cities on the periphery. these educational institutions attract young migrants and help partially compensate for the outfl ow of the local young people to the regional centres. the degree of the urbanisation of peripheral areas (used in this paper as a second criterion for distinguishing between different types of peripheral areas) also determines the results of migration exchange between some mfs. the infl ow of young and middle-aged migrants is not observed in the peripheral areas located far from the regional centres (which makes daily commuting inconvenient) and in those peripheral areas not functioning as sub-centres (because these areas have a city with a population of 50,000-100,000 people or more). there are peripheral areas where the degree of urbanisation and the degree of remoteness from regional centres produce no effect on migration intensity. these are 1) territories focussing on extractive activities (chiefl y oil and gas) and successfully functioning manufacturing cities that specialise in steel or machinery production, with higher income levels compared with other mfs; and 2) resort areas, primarily along the black sea coast. the remaining periphery can only attract pensioners if it has developed infrastructure and a mild climate , but the infl ow of pensioners to this periphery is still insignifi cant. in our opinion, this outcome can be explained by a lack of fi nancial resources for relocation (guriev/vakulenko 2015) and the diffi cult living conditions (in rural periphery) in the winter season. in general, centre-periphery migration patterns in russia correspond to those observed in the united states and europe, especially with regard to youth migration. however, some noteworthy differences exist: 1) the outfl ow of population from large urban centres is still rather weak; 2) migration to the suburbs is not that widespread, and is associated with urban sprawl rather than suburbanisation; 3) migration of the elderly is a rare phenomenon, but elderly migrants, although not numerous, also choose rural areas and small cities as their destinations. to date, the migration statistics available in russia allow us only to partially analyse the age-migration links noted by ravenstein (1876, 1885) and to argue that • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan438 some of them are found in russia as well. at the same time, we cannot undertake a more detailed investigation of internal migration processes. for example, unlike ravenstein (grigg 1977), we cannot analyse migration “step-by-step“ due to the inconsistency of the data or the shortness of the time series, although such an analysis could make a relevant contribution to the studies of internal migration. acknowledgements this article is an 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(), prof. dr. nikita mkrtchyan. national research university higher school of economics, department of demography. moscow, russia. e-mail: lkarachurina@hse.ru, nmkrtchyan@hse.ru url: https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/65552 https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/203471 age-specifi c migration in regional centres and peripheral areas of russia • 445 appendix 1 administrative-territorial units (regions) in russia num region num region num region 1 altai krai 30 moscow 58 republic of tatarstan 2 amur oblast 31 moscow oblast 59 tuva republic 3 arkhangelsk oblast 32 murmansk oblast 60 republic of khakassia 4 astrakhan oblast 33 nenets autonomous 61 rostov oblast okrug 5 belgorod oblast 34 nizhny novgorod oblast 62 ryazan oblast 6 bryansk oblast 35 novgorod oblast 63 samara oblast 7 vladimir oblast 36 novosibirsk oblast 64 saint petersburg 8 volgograd oblast 37 omsk oblast 65 saratov oblast 9 vologda oblast 38 orenburg oblast 66 sakhalin oblast 10 voronezh oblast 39 oryol oblast 67 sverdlovsk oblast 11 jewish autonomous 40 penza oblast 68* sevastopol oblast 12 zabaykalsky krai 41 perm krai 69 smolensk oblast 13 ivanovo oblast 42 primorsky krai 70 stavropol krai 14 irkutsk oblast 43 pskov oblast 71 tambov oblast • liliya karachurina, nikita mkrtchyan446 num region num region num region 15 kabardino-balkar 44 republic of adygea 72 tver oblast republic 16 kaliningrad oblast 45 altai republic 73 tomsk oblast 17 kaluga oblast 46 republic of 74 tula oblast bashkortostan 18 kamchatka krai 47 republic of buryatia 75 tyumen oblast 19 karachay-cherkess 48 republic of dagestan 76 udmurt republic republic 20 kemerovo oblast 49 republic of ingushetia 77 ulyanovsk oblast 21 kirov oblast 50 republic of kalmykia 78 khabarovsk krai 22 kostroma oblast 51 republic of karelia 79 khanty-mansi autonomous okrug – yugra 23 krasnodar krai 52 komi republic 80 chelyabinsk oblast 24 krasnoyarsk krai 53* republic of crimea 81 chechen republic 25 kurgan oblast 54 mari el republic 82 chuvash republic 26 kursk oblast 55 republic of mordovia 83 chukotka autonomous okrug 27 leningrad oblast 56 republic of sakha 84 yamalo-nenets (yakutia) autonomous okrug 28 lipetsk oblast 57 republic of north 85 yaroslavl oblast ossetia – alania 29 magadan oblast continuation * note: as of 1 january 2012 there were 83 regions in russia source: compiled by authors using “rosstat 2013: the population of the russian federation by municipal formations as of january 1, 2012. statistical bulletin. moscow“ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data for demographic research what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data for demographic research* volker ludwig, josef brüderl abstract: the estimation of impact functions – that is the time-varying causal effect of a dichotomous treatment (e.g., marriage, divorce, parenthood) on outcomes (e.g., earnings, well-being, health) – has become a standard procedure in demographic applications. the basic methodology of estimating impact functions with panel data and fi xed-effects regressions is now widely known. however, many researchers may not be fully aware of the methodological subtleties of the approach, which may lead to biased estimates of the impact function. in this paper, we highlight potential pitfalls and provide guidance on how to avoid these in practice. we demonstrate these issues with exemplary analyses, using data from the german family panel (pairfam) study and estimating the effect of motherhood on life satisfaction. keywords: impact functions · fixed effects regression · negative weighting bias · motherhood · pairfam · panel data analysis 1 introduction in demography, many research questions examine the total causal effect of an event (e.g., marriage, divorce, parenthood) on certain outcomes (e.g., earnings, wellbeing, health). allison (1994) described this approach as asking for “the effects of events”. several papers in this special issue provide examples for such research questions and discuss research designs for the identifi cation of such treatment effects. experiments are in most cases not viable for analysing the effects of events in the social sciences, because manipulating them is unethical or not practically feasible. therefore, cross-sectional survey data have traditionally been used as an alternative. with cross-sectional comparisons, the unbiased identifi cation of a comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 453-486 (date of release: 24.11.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-16en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on “identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data”. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl454 treatment effect hinges on a very strong assumption: all time-constant and timevarying variables that affect both the treatment and the outcome (confounders) must be controlled for in the analysis. if some confounders are unobserved and cannot be controlled for, causal inferences will be biased. another research design for identifying the effect of events uses panel data. panel data offer the possibility of implementing within-person designs for identifying causal effects. the main advantage of within-person designs is that time-constant confounders will not bias the estimation of the treatment effect. thus, the unbiased identifi cation of a treatment effect hinges on the much weaker assumption (compared to cross-sectional designs) that all time-varying confounders are controlled for in the analysis. in most cases, demographers implement a within-person design by using fi xed-effects (fe) regressions. in fact, all papers in this special issue refer to this method and its advantages for causal analysis. therefore, it is no surprise that with the advent of more and more panel data (see e.g., the most recent addition of “the comparative panel file, cpf”, turek et al. 2021), the estimation of treatment effects by using fe regression is a growing business in demographic research. with long-running panel data, as they are meanwhile widely available, one observes many treated individuals for more than one time period after treatment. given this set-up, it is even possible to estimate time-varying treatment effects, i.e., one can estimate the time-path of a causal effect. we term such a causal time-path “impact function”, a term we borrow from andreß et al. (2013). impact functions obviously provide more insight, since we learn more than when estimating a timeconstant treatment effect. therefore, the recent demographic literature using fe methodology increasingly reports impact functions.1 the basic methodology of estimating impact functions with panel data and fi xed-effects regressions is now widely known. yet it is our impression that many researchers are not fully aware of the methodological subtleties of the approach, which may lead to biased estimates of the impact function. in this paper, we highlight potential pitfalls and provide guidance on how to avoid these in practice. we demonstrate these issues with exemplary analyses, using data from the german family panel (pairfam) study and estimating the effect of motherhood on life satisfaction. the paper proceeds as follows: in the fi rst section, we summarize the rationale for estimating impact functions. section 2 provides the basic framework for estimating 1 another popular research question is to investigate “the effect of an event on (the transition rate of) another event”. event history methods with time-varying covariates are useful in this case (see the contribution by michaela kreyenfeld to this special issue). one could even estimate an analog to an impact function by modeling an interaction between the coeffi cient of the timevarying event variable and process time. for instance, one might be interested in the effect of the birth of a child on the divorce rate. if one would allow the effect of a birth to vary over marriage duration, this would be an event history analog to an impact function. it must be noted, however, that (standard) event history analysis does not implement a withinperson design. therefore, estimates are unbiased only if both time-constant and time-varying confounders are controlled for. only event history analysis with repeated events implements a within-person design (see allison 2009). what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 455 impact functions. section 3 provides an illustration using pairfam data and estimating the effect of the birth of a fi rst (biological) child on happiness. section 4 discusses pitfalls and remedies when estimating impact functions. finally, section 5 offers a discussion of the negative weighting bias with staggered treatment events. 2 why do we estimate impact functions? the estimation of impact functions has become a standard practice in demography, as well as in the social sciences and economics more generally. in fact, when setting up studies using a panel design, we should always care about the impact function for both substantive and methodological reasons. substantively, knowledge of the precise shape of the impact function is often important for theoretical reasons. in demographic research, for example, we would not only like to know to what extent childbirth raises well-being, but also whether this is a short-lived or a persistent – and perhaps even increasing – effect. theoretically, the psychological adaptation/treadmill theory of happiness would lead us to expect a temporary effect that diminishes rapidly, a similar pattern as found for many other critical life events (e.g., diener et al. 2006). family economic models, however, would predict a permanent effect due to the benefi ts of household specialization (stutzer/frey 2006). this effect may even increase over time if specialization grows stronger after childbirth. the estimation of the impact function may thus help us discriminate between theories. methodologically, in case of time-varying treatment effects, different statistical models will yield different results. in the case of time-constant treatment effects, fe and fi rst-differences (fd) regressions will provide the same results (without controls). this, however, is not true for time-varying treatment effects. as laporte and windmeijer (2005) show with time-varying treatment effects, fe and fd models produce estimates that differ tremendously. furthermore, we need to address a potentially time-varying treatment effect, because assuming a time-constant effect may bias our causal inferences. recent papers demonstrated a “negative weighting bias” of the constant impact function (borusyak/jaravel 2017; de chaisemartin/d’holtfoeuille 2020; goodman-bacon 2018). this bias appears generally in the situation of staggered treatments (when the treatment appears at different time points) simply due to the mechanics of the fe estimator: fe estimation of a time-constant impact induces a bias due to downweighting of treated observations well after treatment (for details, see section 5). since demographic panel data typically use staggered treatment designs, where treatment assignment occurs at different points in time, the issue is clearly of relevance. the problem can be solved, however, by simply modelling a fl exible impact function (such as a dummy impact function, see below). • volker ludwig, josef brüderl456 3 the basic framework for estimating impact functions although impact functions could in principle be estimated by any basic statistical model for panel data (generally, clustered data), including pooled ols and random effects regression, we focus in this paper on fi xed effects modelling. the power of the fe approach for modelling impact functions stems from its property of unbiasedness under weak assumptions compared to other estimators. although the crucial condition for the consistency of fe is strict exogeneity, the estimator is consistent and unbiased even if stable unit-specifi c characteristics are related to the treatment variable or other covariates. the fe model therefore allows, fi rst, for the estimation of a causal treatment effect even when treatment assignment is not random, but rather the result of a conscious choice or otherwise systematic pattern (e.g., self-selection). second, fe methodology helps with the age-period-cohort problem: it allows for the consistent estimation of age and period effects (while implicitly also controlling for cohort effects), which is crucial for the estimation of treatment effects with panel data, as we will argue below. a simple fe model for estimation of a time-constant treatment effect with panel data for i = 1, … , n persons observed at t = 1, … , t points in time would be: where yit is the outcome, dit the treatment variable, xit are confounders, and αi are unit (person) fi xed effects. ϵit denotes a time-varying error term that is assumed to be (strictly) exogeneous. hence, for unbiasedness it must hold that e(ϵit│dit,xit,αi)=0. from a design-based perspective, the strict exogeneity condition implies that the parallel trends assumption must hold. furthermore, perfect collinearity is ruled out. even strong imperfect collinearity may cause serious problems for the estimation of time paths. more details on the fe model can be found in brüderl and ludwig (2015). there are three primary ways to model an impact function. above, we assumed that dit is a binary treatment variable, and that treatment assignment is an absorbing state, that is, once a unit switches to the treated status, the treatment variable turns 1 and subsequently does not return to 0. the treatment effect β in the model above thus is the single parameter that characterizes a step impact function: whenever a unit is treated, the model predicts an immediate and permanent change in the outcome (i.e., a time-constant impact). to estimate a time-varying impact function, one parameter is not suffi cient. hence, we might add a further variable kit to the model that contains the time passed since treatment assignment (technically this is an interaction variable between dit and time since treatment). this would be the simplest way to specify a continuous impact function. the coeffi cient for dit would tell us by how much the outcome changes immediately after treatment, and the coeffi cient for kit indicates how much the outcome additionally changes with each time unit passing subsequently. of course, continuous impact functions can be specifi ed with polynomials to approximate more complex time paths. alternatively, linear splines may be fi t to model changes in the treatment effect in order to relax functional form assumptions. (1) what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 457 the most often used type of impact function, however, is the dummy impact function, where dit is replaced by a set of dummy variables for kit (e.g., a separate dummy for every month or year since treatment): where k = 0 is the fi rst observation after treatment, and k is the last one.2 (in the following, we denote as the “k-year dummy”.) obviously, this specifi cation allows us to fi t the time path of a treatment effect in a very fl exible way. 4 an illustration: the effect of the birth of a fi rst (biological) child on happiness in an infl uential paper, myrskylä and margolis (2014) studied parental happiness trajectories before and after the birth of a child (using data from the soep and the bhps). this paper became a model for applying impact function methodology to demographic research questions. therefore, to illustrate the estimation of impact functions, we replicate the study of myrskylä and margolis (2014) with data from the german family panel (pairfam). thus, our research question is: how does the event of the birth of a fi rst (biological) child impact the outcome “life satisfaction” (synonymously: “happiness”). we restrict our analysis to mothers. pairfam is particularly well-suited for the task at hand because it prospectively measures the birth of children and mothers’ life satisfaction. the german family panel is a nationwide longitudinal study of initially more than 12,000 randomly sampled individuals from the birth cohorts 1971-73, 198183, and 1991-93. pairfam started in 2008/09 with roughly one-hour face-to-face interviews. respondents were approached annually in subsequent waves. for a detailed description of the study, see huinink et al. (2011). release 11.0 with waves 1-11 is used for this analysis, which covers the observation period 2008-19 (brüderl et al. 2020). we use only the pairfam base sample and do not use the refreshment samples added to the survey continuously. we construct the estimation sample according to the recommendations laid out in section 5. only never-treated females, i.e., those who never gave birth to a child before pairfam wave 1 are included. we include only females with at least two observations in pairfam. for fi rst-time mothers, the observation window is censored with the second pregnancy/birth. after these exclusions, our estimation sample comprises 2,982 women, of whom 505 gave birth to a fi rst (biological) child. (2) 2 starting the numbering with 0 may intuitively seem confusing. but it makes sense, because the fi rst time period after treatment might be approximately thought as the “period of treatment”, the second time period as “one period after treatment”, and so on. in addition, pre-treatment dummies can then be taken into account with -1, -2, and so on (see below). • volker ludwig, josef brüderl458 these women provide 19,996 person-years. they were observed in the age range of 14-48. due to low number of cases, we recoded 14 to 15 years, and 48 to 47 years. thus, models include age dummies for ages 16 to 47 (15 being the reference category). the outcome variable, life satisfaction, is measured by the question: “now i would like to ask about your general satisfaction with life. all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your life at the moment?” answers are recorded on an 11-point scale ranging from “very dissatisfi ed” (0) to “very satisfi ed” (10). to estimate the total causal effect of a fi rst birth on happiness, we include treatment variables as explained above (child dummy, time since birth). we derive these from the generated variable “nkidsbio”, as it is provided by the pairfam team. (this has the implication that timing is not exact, since the exact birth date is not taken into account.) time since birth starts at 0 (less than one year after birth) and reaches a maximum of 9 (nine years after birth). the maximum of 9 is reached if a woman is childless in the fi rst wave, gives birth before the second wave, and does not drop out of the survey. for reasons of parsimony, we group the time dummies in an upper category of 4+ years. according to the rules of modern causal analysis (vanderweele 2019) one must control for potential confounders to identify a total causal effect.3 potential confounders are variables that are assumed to infl uence both the treatment and the outcome, fi rst birth and life satisfaction. the most important confounder in our context is age (see below). as further controls, we include relationship status (dummies for living-apart-together, cohabitation, marriage; using single as the reference category), subjective health in the past four weeks (dummies on a fi vepoint scale), and a dummy for pregnancy. fixed-effects regression with cluster-robust standard errors is applied (for details of fi xed-effects estimation, see brüderl and ludwig 2015). estimation is conducted with stata 16.1. below we provide only the graphical representations of the estimation results. numerical results can be found in the appendix. first, we compare the results obtained with the three impact functions detailed in the last section. figure 1 gives a graphic representation of the results. the step impact function tells us that after birth, mothers’ happiness is on average higher by .32 scale points than before birth (the average happiness of all person-years before the event is the reference period). interpreted as a causal effect, this means that giving birth to a child makes mothers happier by .32 scale points. the quadratic impact function provides a completely different answer: here, happiness increases by .51 scale points right after birth, followed by a steep decline and negative values three years after birth, with a low point after 5 years. this is followed by a steep increase in happiness. 3 mediators (intervening variables) should not be controlled for (overcontrol bias). mediators must be controlled for if the target estimand is an indirect effect. furthermore, colliders (variables that are affected by both the treatment and by the outcome) must not be included in the regression. what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 459 however, both step and quadratic impact functions provide grossly misleading answers, as the results of the dummy impact function show. we see that the birth of a child immediately increases happiness by .60 scale points (this is the coeffi cient of the “0-year dummy”, see table a1). however, this “baby effect” is very short-lived: it exists only in the fi rst year after birth. the effect is much lower in the following years, and generally close to zero. this means that already one year after birth, mothers’ happiness essentially returns to the level before birth, on average. thus, the lesson learned here is that one always should start with a fl exible specifi cation of the impact function, i.e., a dummy impact function. if the dummy impact function provides a clear pattern, then one could use a more parsimonious specifi cation. figure 1 provides also an illustration of the negative weighting bias (we simplify here somewhat; exact details are provided in section 5). averaging the ten treatment effects estimated by the dummy impact function (see table a1) gives: (0.60 + 0.09 + 0.04 + 0.19 – 0.01 * 6)/10 = 0.086. however, the step impact function provides an estimate of 0.32, i.e., grossly overestimates the true average of fig. 1: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: comparing different impact functions -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 c ha ng e in h ap pi ne ss 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 age of first child step impact quadratic impact dummy impact notes: results from three fe regression models. controls are age dummies, relationship status dummies, subjective health dummies, and a dummy for pregnancy. see appendix, table a1 for numerical results. source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations • volker ludwig, josef brüderl460 the post-treatment effects. this is, because the mechanics of fe estimation downweights the treatment effects that occur in later post-treatment periods. thus, the fe estimate of the step impact is biased towards the early treatment effects. note that the negative weighting bias does not always provide a negative (i.e., downward) bias of the treatment effect. in our case the bias obviously is upwards. “negative” refers to the down-weighting of later treatment effects. further insights can be gained if one adds the confi dence intervals to the plot of the dummy impact function. figure 2 does this by plotting the regression coeffi cients of the dummies for the time since treatment along with 95 percent cis. this fi gure also shows that the impact of treatment on outcome is indistinguishable from zero already one year after birth. furthermore, it can be seen that the ses increase with time since birth, simply because fewer and fewer observations contribute to estimation. fig. 2: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: dummy impact function -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 c ha ng e in h ap pi ne ss 0 1 2 3 4+ age of first child notes: regression coeffi cients for “years since birth dummies” including 95 percent confi dence intervals from a fe regression model. controls are age dummies, relationship status dummies, subjective health dummies, and a dummy for pregnancy. this will be our reference model in the following. see appendix table a1, column 3, for numerical results. source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 461 5 pitfalls and remedies when estimating impact functions in the following, we highlight important issues arising with the estimation of impact functions that are often overlooked in applied research. specifi cation of the outcome trajectory specifying the average trajectory of the outcome over process time is a crucial step for any panel data analysis. misspecifi cation of the outcome trajectory may easily result in biased estimates of the treatment effect. this is true regardless of the type of impact function we assume. thus, if we work with panel surveys of persons or households, it is essential to model the life course appropriately. our specifi cation must include age effects (and/or period effects). otherwise, we run into problems of confounding: effects that are driven by ageing and maturation might produce a spurious treatment effect or suppress the true effect. the fe model allows the researcher to consistently estimate age (a) effects, while simultaneously holding cohort effects (c) constant. c is constant across units, so the cohort effects are subsumed in the unit fi xed effects. controlling for a is crucial for estimating treatment effects on person or household panel data. intuitively, age is very likely a relevant confounder in many demographic studies. in settings with all units initially untreated and treatment being an absorbing state, a and d are related by defi nition: as time passes, the treatment probability strictly increases (although possibly in a nonlinear way; fi rst childbirth, for instance). whenever the outcome changes over the life course, so that we have a correlation of a and y as well, leaving out a from the regression would bias the effect of d. an important issue concerns the inclusion of an appropriate control group in the estimation sample to make use of the advantages of panel data when studying life courses. the popular event study design that uses only those units who eventually get treatment while observed does not allow the researcher to identify a timevarying treatment effect in general. borusyak and jaravel (2017) discuss the underidentifi cation problem of a fe model specifying a dummy impact function with a full set of leads and lags of the treatment variable (a “fully dynamic specifi cation”). they show that it is not possible to disentangle the effects of calendar time (or age) and time elapsed after treatment due to collinearity. it certainly would help to restrict the number of dummy variables for kit, notably to include only post-treatment dummies. however, with all persons eventually experiencing the event, we inevitably run into collinearity problems towards the end of the observation window (especially if all persons in the sample are treated for a longer period of time). therefore, we should always include a control group of never-treated units in our fe estimation sample to be able to identify continuous or dummy impact functions. another important issue is the correct specifi cation of the functional form of the outcome trajectory. misspecifi cation of the age effects would imply misrepresented potential outcome trajectories, which in turn biases our estimates of the treatment effect (the so-called “bias transfer”, see ranjbar and sperlich (2020) for formal proofs). therefore, we should always take care regarding the underlying functional form assumptions of age effects. it is seldomly a good idea to simply specify a linear • volker ludwig, josef brüderl462 age effect without further checks for linearity. generally, we recommend including age as dummies in the model, since outcome trajectories often tend to be highly non-linear. a more parsimonious specifi cation should only be chosen if the resulting dummy coeffi cients show a regular pattern. besides controlling for age effects, it may also be necessary to control for period (p) effects. for example, happiness in a given population might change not only due to health deterioration (biological ageing), but also due to economic/political cycles. including (unrestricted) period effects, however, produces the so-called age-periodcohort (apc) problem, because the three variables are linearly dependent (see kratz and brüderl (2021) for more details). to separate a and p effects, we need to introduce parameter restrictions. a minimal restriction needed for identifi cation would be, for instance, that two period effects are equal. one should always think carefully about these restrictions, as they often exert strong impacts on the results (as well as on the treatment effect). it is not a good idea to simply let one’s software decide. for example, stata and r would exclude the fi rst and the last period dummy, thus assuming the period effects are the same in the fi rst and last year of the observation window. this assumption clearly is not met if there is some (positive or negative) trend over calendar time. a better idea might be to exclude the fi rst two period dummies, or to group several years into a smaller set of period dummies (assuming piecewise constant effects over calendar time). since all these restrictions are not testable, the more recent literature favors a “proxy approach”, whereby the period effects are proxied by variables that measure the economic/political cycle directly (e.g., gdp growth rates; see kratz and brüderl (2021) for more details). finally, we want to stress that in most demographic applications, age effects are more important than period effects. maturation is ubiquitous in demographic outcomes and age is inherently and systematically related to treatment. it is unlikely that period effects are related in a similar systematic fashion to treatment. therefore, one should include a full control set for the age effects (i.e., age dummies). period effects may be included in a restricted/proxied version only. the widely used two-way fe model does not follow this recommendation: it prioritizes period/wave effects over age effects. this model includes a full set of period/wave dummies (i.e., period fi xed effects alongside the unit fi xed effects; hence the name), but no age controls: where γt represents the period fi xed effects and xit does not include age. given this specifi cation, the period fi xed effects will capture a mixture of period and age effects. this very likely will result in a misspecifi cation of the outcome trajectory and consequently in a biased treatment effect estimation. thus, we warn against the “default use” of the two-way fe model.4 4 researchers often inadvertently specify a two-way fe model by including a full set of wave dummies in their (single-way) fe model. (3) what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 463 continuing with our childbirth example, we will illustrate some of the points made in this section. first, we want to note that our estimation sample includes an appropriate control group of never-treated women: 2,477 women did not give birth to a fi rst child while observed in the pairfam study. these observations do not contribute to the estimation of the birth effect, but they contribute to the estimation of the age effect (and the effects of the other control variables5). second, we address the importance of specifying the functional form of the age effect correctly. as kratz and brüderl (2021) show, the age-happiness trajectory in germany declines with age. the decline is slow between ages 18 and 65, and becomes steep afterwards. thus, not controlling for age generally would lead to downward biased treatment effects. since the decline is slow between ages 18 and 65 (about .02 scale points per year), the bias is expected to be moderate in our application. figure 3 presents the results for the 0-year dummy for differently specifi ed models. the fi rst one (“age dummies”) is the reference model. it includes a full set of age dummies (ages 16-47, 15 being the reference age). this is the fig. 3: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: varying the specifi cation of the age effect time period immediately after birth of first child 0.40 0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65 0.70 0.75 0.80 effect on happiness age dummies no control for age age linear two-way fe notes: regression coeffi cients for the 0-year dummy including 95 percent confi dence intervals from four fe regression models with varying specifi cations of the age effect. further controls are relationship status dummies, subjective health dummies, and a dummy for pregnancy. the fi rst model is our reference model. see appendix, table a2 for numerical results. source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations 5 age is not the only important control variable. in our case, relationship status is also important. the effect of the 0-year dummy increases to .64 if we drop the relationship dummies from the model. the reason is that birth commonly is related to a partnership, and being partnered increases happiness strongly. this demonstrates that impact functions – as fe estimators generally – may be severely biased if important time-varying confounders are not controlled for. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl464 specifi cation used in the previous section, since age-happiness trajectories tend to be highly non-linear (see kratz/brüderl 2021). thus, the reference birth effect immediately after birth is .60 scale points. the second model shows what happens if we do not control for age at all. figure 3 shows that the effect is biased downwards to .58. as expected, this a moderate downward bias. the third model adds age as a linear control. we see that this is not a good idea in our case, as now there is an upward bias to .65. this is most likely some kind of over-control bias, where the linear outcome trajectory over-estimates the happiness decline over the main childbearing years. this demonstrates that the correct modelling of the functional form of the outcome trajectory is important. third, we will show how large the bias is by using the two-way fe model. the fourth coeffi cient in figure 3 gives the result, if we include a full set of wave dummies instead of age dummies. once again, we observe an upward bias to .65. in addition, the two-way fe model fi nds further signifi cant positive birth effects in the second and fourth years after birth. this indicates that the wave dummies are not able to control for the full age effect.6 pre-treatment and late post-treatment dummies as argued above, it is important to model the impact function as fl exibly as theory demands. we have explained how to model dummy impact functions by including indicators for discrete time after the exposition to a treatment. theory often suggests that demographic events are anticipated by individuals, and thereby already exert a causal effect before treatment (anticipation effect). for instance, in the childbirth example, it is reasonable to assume that the mere expectation of a baby may already boost happiness. so, we might include a pre-treatment dummy indicating a person-year within the period of nine months prior to birth to capture anticipation during pregnancy. in fact, it is even advisable to do so: otherwise, a positive anticipation effect would be incorrectly attributed to the life course of the reference period (comprising all person-years before birth), and any positive fe impact function would be biased downwards. note that by including pre-treatment dummies, the reference period for the treatment effect changes. it is no longer all person-years before treatment, but only person-years before the fi rst pre-treatment dummy. for instance, if we include a -1year dummy, the reference period is k < -1. however, we must be particularly careful when specifying further “leads” of the treatment dummy. we should not mindlessly include pre-treatment dummies as regressors. the problem is that pre-treatment dummies may capture not only an anticipation effect, which is usually interpreted causally, but also various other effects. first, there may be time-varying confounders that are omitted from our specifi cation. for example, the positive effects of forming a new relationship or 6 period effects do not seem to be very relevant in our observation window. including a dummy for wave 1 (to capture a potential effect due to the fi nancial crisis 2008/09) did not change results. therefore, we do not include any period effect in our preferred specifi cation. what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 465 household which usually occur prior to pregnancy may be confused with the anticipation of the child. (we should of course control for such confounders directly whenever it is possible.) second, pre-treatment dummies might capture reverse causality, and feedback effects in particular: a positive “shock” to life satisfaction may lead people to decide to have a child. third, self-selection into treatment may be related to growth of the outcome (see below). for instance, people who are on a steeper happiness trajectory throughout their lives might be more likely to eventually have children. thus, the effects of pre-treatment dummies usually are not interpretable. it is often unclear whether they are driven by anticipation, omitted variable bias, reverse causality, or selection on growth. only if we have a clear theoretical argument for anticipation (and can also exclude the other sources mentioned) and can pin the effect down by a precise measure (e.g., respondents answering that they are pregnant) should we include a pre-treatment dummy. otherwise, pre-treatment dummies may capture spurious effects and thereby also bias the estimated treatment effects. a further important decision when modelling dummy impact functions in particular, concerns how to handle late post-treatment dummies. with staggered treatments, early-treated persons potentially could still be observed long after treatment. however, due to panel attrition, we usually will have only few observations for late post-treatment dummies. thus, the question of what we should do with these late post-treatment dummies arises. it is common practice in the demographic literature to group all post-treatment dummies into a residual dummy after a certain time point. although this seems like it may be an innocuous decision, it can cause a bias of the treatment effects. as we noted earlier, assuming a step impact function can cause a negative weighting bias. this reasoning also applies to the dummy impact function with a cap time point. after the cap time point, we assume a step function. this assumption will be violated if there are time-varying treatment effects after the cap time-point. basically, the functional form of the impact function is mis-specifi ed. then, negative weighting might bias the estimate for the residual dummy, and due to bias transfer, all coeffi cients of the dummy impact function may be biased (borusyak/jaravel 2017).7 it would thus be wrong to expect that grouping late treatment periods leaves the estimates of earlier post-treatment dummies unaffected in general. rather than grouping late treatment periods in one dummy, we therefore recommend truncating the data, i.e., excluding the late periods from the sample. clearly, paying attention to late post-treatment periods is particularly important if results of a fl exible impact function suggest strong treatment effects for these periods. once again using our childbirth example, we will illustrate some of the points made in this section. in our application, an anticipation effect during pregnancy is highly likely: most pregnant women will be much happier in anticipation of the child 7 a toy example with fi ctitious data demonstrating this bias is given in figure a1 in the appendix. in this example, the true impact function is increasing. grouping post-treatment dummies biases the impact function downwards. the earlier the cap time point is, the larger the bias. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl466 (especially if it is an intended pregnancy). in addition, a self-reported pregnancy indicator is available in pairfam. therefore, we controlled for a pregnancy dummy in all models. the effect of a pregnancy in our reference model is large, at .61 scale points (see table a1). this means that the pregnancy effect is as strong as the baby effect (which is .60 in the reference model)! note that by including a pregnancy dummy, the reference period changes: the baby effect is in reference to all personyears before birth, except person-years in pregnancy. what happens with the baby effect if we choose different specifi cations? figure 4 provides answers to this question. the fi rst model is our reference model controlling for pregnancy. the second model does not control for pregnancy. as expected, the baby effect is strongly biased downwards to .45, because the anticipation effect now is in the reference period before birth. in our application, it would thus be a specifi cation error not to include the pregnancy dummy. however, in most applications, we will not have a direct measure of anticipation (i.e., pregnancy). in such cases, researchers often simply include pre-treatment dummies. we apply this procedure in the third model, where we include six pretreatment dummies up to k = -6, as is often done in the literature. the -1-year dummy may then capture the pregnancy effect (though imprecisely). the other pre-treatment dummies may capture other mechanisms, as argued above. to demonstrate this, we do not control for relationship status and health in this model. as can be seen in figure 4, the result is a strong upward bias of the baby effect to .75. this is expected, since now the reference period is k < -6, long before birth, and when women may have had no partner and perhaps were in bad health. in addition, the confi dence interval is now much larger, because there are much fewer reference observations. thus, we strongly advise against using pre-treatment dummies without good reason. finally, the last two models address the grouping issue. so far, we grouped all late post-treatment observations into a single group of k > = 4. as argued above, this is not optimal. however, there might be no problem in our case, because all treatment effects after the fi rst year are zero. so, the grouping has, in fact, no consequence, as shown with the estimate of the fourth model that excludes all person-years observed later than 4 years after childbirth. generally, a sensible strategy to identify a short-lived treatment effect might be to truncate the post-treatment observation period after one year. as can be seen in model 5 in figure 4, we obtain basically the same result as in our reference model containing more post-treatment dummies. biased impact functions due to heterogeneous trajectories estimates of impact functions may be biased in the case of heterogeneous outcome trajectories that are related to the treatment process. in practice, it may therefore be necessary to allow for heterogeneous life courses when modelling an impact function. one way to do so would be to interact process time or age with a timeconstant indicator of the treatment group (fe with group-specifi c slopes, fegs). an even more fl exible way would be to allow for individual-specifi c trajectories (fe with individual-specifi c slopes, feis) (brüderl/ludwig 2015; rüttenauer/ludwig 2020; wooldridge 2010). what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 467 including individual-specifi c slopes for process time, age, or some other variable is a straightforward extension of the standard fe model. modelling individual slopes explicitly relaxes the parallel trends assumption that is crucial for the consistency of fe estimates. hence, feis guards against bias due to time-constant confounders related to differences in the outcome trajectories between treatment groups. an extended hausman test can be used to decide whether fe estimates are biased (rüttenauer/ludwig 2020). next, let us extend our empirical example on childbirth and happiness in that we allow for heterogeneous age-happiness trajectories for the women included in our pairfam sample. first, we must decide on a functional form for the individual slopes. we cannot use a dummy specifi cation for the age effect. the reason for this is simple: the feis model builds on variation in the data that is left over after controlling for the individual age effect. technically, we therefore estimate the age effect for each person (by ols), and to do so we need more observations than parameters for each person. hence, we must use a parsimonious model specifying few parameters to estimate the individual slopes. here, we simply allow for an individual constant and specify a linear effect of age. thus, we estimate two individual-specifi c parameters (a constant and a slope). therefore, feis estimation requires at least three observations per individual. for this reason, we are left with a restricted sample including 2,525 women, i.e., 84 percent of our previous sample. note that these fig. 4: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: varying the specifi cation of preor post-treatment effects time period immediately after birth of first child 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 effect on happiness control for pregnancy no control for pregnancy adding 6 pre-treatment dummies truncation after 4 years truncation after 1 year notes: regression coeffi cients for the 0-year dummy including 95 percent confi dence intervals from fi ve fe regression models with varying specifi cations of preor posttreatment effects. the fi rst model is our reference model. see appendix, table a3 for numerical results. source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations • volker ludwig, josef brüderl468 women nevertheless provide 95 percent of the observations of the previous sample, because we excluded only women with very few observations. although we usually would hesitate to exclude such a large number of units from our estimation sample, it may actually not do much harm in terms of “representativeness” if viewed from the perspective of sampling life courses. figure 5 depicts estimated coeffi cients for the pregnancy and age of fi rst child dummies from three models: a fe model using the full estimation sample, a fe model using the restricted sample, and a feis model (on the restricted sample). the restricted fe estimates indeed reproduce the unrestricted fe estimates almost perfectly. the feis effects are somewhat smaller, but still very close to the full fe fig. 5: effects of childbirth on happiness in models specifying homogeneous or heterogeneous age effects -0.8 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 c ha ng e in h ap pi ne ss pregnancy 0 yrs. 1 yr. 2 yrs. 3 yrs. 4+ yrs. age of first child fe fe restricted sample feis notes: regression coeffi cients for “pregnancy” and “years since birth dummies” including 95 percent confi dence intervals from fe and feis regression models. controls are age (linear), relationship status dummies and subjective health dummies. fe models are run on a full estimation sample and a restricted sample (only women with 3+ person-years). the feis model uses the restricted sample. the feis model specifi es age as a variable with individual-specifi c slopes. see appendix, table a4 for numerical results. source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 469 model.8 this is also the result of formal testing: the extended hausman test tells us that the coeffi cients of the restricted fe and the feis model are not signifi cantly different on the 5 percent signifi cance level (χ2 (13) = 21.80; p = 0.0586). the conclusion here would thus be that there is no substantial bias of the impact function due to heterogeneous age profi les (see gattig and minkus 2021 in this special issue for an analysis of the impact of marriage on happiness arriving at a similar conclusion). however, in other empirical applications, a bias may show up. we therefore recommend to at least conduct robustness analyses based on the feis model. routines for stata and r (xtfeis and feisr) are available for estimation and specifi cation tests (ludwig 2019; rüttenauer/ludwig 2021). consecutive life events another problem for the estimation of treatment effects may result from consecutive life events with heterogeneous effects. to give an example: causal effects of childbirth may depend on parity, such that the effect of the fi rst child differs from the effect of a second child. at fi rst sight, this setting does not introduce any diffi culties. it is common to use a sample of initially childless persons (as we recommended above) and proceed with a panel regression, including two separate dummy variables for person-years after the birth of a fi rst and second child (see, for an example, abendroth et al. 2014). we call this the “single estimation sample strategy”. but this standard procedure may be problematic if the effects of early treatments are themselves heterogeneous, and selection into later treatments depends on the magnitude of earlier treatment effects. in our example, it might be that people who get higher returns for fi rst childbirth are more likely to have a second child than people without positive effects after their fi rst child. in this case, estimates of both treatment effects will be biased. to clarify the issue: from a counterfactual perspective, we might distinguish between three different treatment effects in this situation (each built from differences between two out of three potential outcome trajectories): e1: effect of the 1st child for persons having only a 1st child compared to those always childless e2: effect of the 1st child for persons having a 1st and a 2nd child compared to those always childless e3: effect of 2nd child for persons having a 1st and a 2nd child compared to persons having only a 1st child (here, we assume homogeneous effects.) using the single estimation sample strategy assumes that effects e1 and e2 are identical. this assumption often remains tacit and untested, but it may easily be wrong in practice. effect e1 might be zero, which might be the reason that these 8 note that the baby effect in the fe models is overestimated here, because we use only a linear age control. in fact, the fe model with the full sample is identical to the model “age linear” in table a2/figure 2. note also that the coeffi cient of the three-year dummy is signifi cantly larger than 0. the feis model seems to “correct” these overestimations. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl470 particular people decide against having a second child, while effect e2 is positive. in this situation, the estimate of the dummy for the second child will not provide e3. it will be biased (upwards) due to the heterogeneity in e1 and e2. as a consequence, the average treatment effect (ate, the average of e1 and e2) for the fi rst child will be biased (downwards). we constructed a toy example to illustrate these biases. in the data shown in figure 6, we have two treatment groups (of equal size) with different effects for a fi rst treatment: group 1 has a fi rst treatment effect of 0 (e1), group 2 of 1 (e2). thus, the true ate is 0.5. now, only group 2 receives a second treatment later on (t = 21), the second treatment effect being 1 (e3). the single estimation sample strategy introduces a dummy for treatment one (=1 for the blue and red person-years) and a second dummy for treatment two (=1 for the red person-years only). what are the results if we apply this standard strategy to the toy data from figure 6? the fe estimate (two-way fe model) for treatment dummy one is 0.4. this is close to the true ate, but with a small downward bias. this is due to a negative weighting bias (group one enters fe estimation with a larger weight). the fe estimate for treatment dummy two is 1.4. this is an overestimation, because the fi rst treatment effect was underestimated. fig. 6: a toy example with fi ctitious data of consecutive life events treated group 2 treated group 1 untreated group 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 y 1 10 20 30 t notes: treated group 2 receives a fi rst treatment effect of 1 at t = 11 and a second treatment effect of 1 at t = 21. treated group 1 receives a fi rst treatment effect of 0 at t = 11 and no second treatment. source: fi ctitious data, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 471 we see that the single estimation sample strategy may provide biased treatment estimates. to recover the true ate for treatment one, we would have to exclude all observations after the second treatment, i.e., truncate the data at t = 20 for all panels in the sample. in practice, however, this will not be possible with staggered treatments. nevertheless, it would be an improvement to truncate at least those panels that receive a second treatment. then one could include interaction effects to allow for effect heterogeneity. in our toy example, the true effects for both treated groups can be recovered by including an interaction of treated group and the dummy for fi rst treatment. our advice for dealing with consecutive life events (complex life-courses) is to focus on specifi c transitions and to construct estimation samples accordingly. it is not advisable to estimate all treatment effects from a single estimation sample. instead, we suggest using multiple, specially tailored estimation samples. we recommend fi rst defi ning the causal effect of interest based on comparing potential outcomes. next, construct an appropriate sample to identify the effect. finally, specify the correct statistical model to estimate the effect. our recommendation to work from tailored estimation samples assumes rich data that allow for the construction of treatment groups that are suffi ciently large to be able to produce reliable estimates of the causal effects of interest. it might turn out, however, that effect heterogeneity induces only negligible biases. in that case, the main analysis could still use a more standard approach (estimation in a sample of various pooled treatment groups).9 nevertheless, we should at least check. moreover, the focus on specifi c treatment effects with reduced samples has the major advantage that it is straightforward to allow for time-varying effects. we can easily replace the step impact function with a dummy impact function, for instance. 6 negative weighting bias with staggered treatment events in practice, when estimating an impact function from person or household panel data, we often base our estimates on a staggered treatment design: persons receive the treatment at different points in time. variation in the age of fi rst childbirth is one important example of staggered treatments in demographic research. as recent papers show, using data with staggered treatments and specifying a step impact function when the true treatment effect is time-varying may result in biased estimates (de chaisemartin/d’haultfœuille 2020; goodman-bacon 2018). this problem is known as the “negative weighting bias” of fe estimates. negative weighting occurs with staggered treatment designs because, towards the end of the observation window, units who get the treatment earlier serve as 9 additional results with pairfam data showed that there was some heterogeneity for the effect of fi rst childbirth on happiness along the lines suggested here. however, this did not bias our result for the baby effect in any relevant way. thus, we might have added person-years with a second child to our estimation sample. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl472 controls for units who get the treatment later. treatment effects of early treated units that occur well after treatment are thus down-weighted by the construction of the fe estimator. as a consequence, fe estimates of the treatment effect will be biased towards the early treatment effects. to illustrate negative weighting, suppose we observe a fully balanced panel consisting of three groups of persons g = u, k, l, where one group remains untreated (u), one receives treatment early in time (k) and one is assigned to the treatment later in time (l). let t = tk and t = tl denote the timing of treatment of groups k and l respectively. we then specify a two-way fe model to estimate the treatment effect, i.e., we allow for person and time fi xed-effects as in equation (3), but we do not include any further control variables. in this setting with staggered treatment adoption, whenever the true treatment effect varies over time, the standard fe model with a step impact function estimates a (downward) biased average treatment effect on the treated (att) due to negative weighting of the treatment effect during later post-treatment periods.10 a toy example with fi ctitious data for three treatment groups (of equal size) observed at t = 1, … , 30 is shown in figure 7. for all three groups, there is a linear time trend, such that y increases by 0.1 each period. for the two treated groups, there is also a treatment effect: starting at tk = 11 and tl = 21, respectively, their trend slope is 0.2 (i.e., an additional 0.1). when estimating a step impact function with these data, most researchers expect that they would get a sample weighted average of the time-varying treatment effects. in our example, we know that the mean of the true treatment effect is for group k at times t = tk, … ,tl 1, and at t = tl, … , t. it is 0.45 for group l at times t = tl, … , t. given that groups k and l are equally large and group k provides 10 early and 10 late treated observations, while group l has only 10 late treated observations, it is natural to assume that each of the three average treatment effects should get a weight of 1/3 in the overall average effect. thus, we might expect an fe estimate of 2/3 * 0.45 + 1/3 * 1.45 = 0.7833. however, estimation of a two-way fe model returns a downward biased coeffi cient of 0.45. how can this be? the reason is that fe uses different (and incorrect) weights to build the average estimate. let e(βjs) denote the true average treatment effect for group j = k, l during treated times s of that group. furthermore, let pjs be the proportion of treated person-years contributed by group j during s to the total number of treated personyears in the sample. then, 10 assuming that a standard parallel trends assumption holds, it can be shown that the standard two-way fe estimator is identical to the weighted sum of difference-in-differences (did) estimates (see goodman-bacon 2018). the results on the negative weighting bias thus apply to both the fe and the did estimator. the problem also affects the estimation of fe models with individual-specifi c slopes (meer/west 2016; goodman-bacon 2018; de chaisemartin/ d’haultfœuille 2020). however, if we do specify the impact function correctly, feis is a viable alternative for dealing with correlated heterogeneous trajectories. rüttenauer and ludwig (2020) show this through simulations. what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 473 with weights that sum up to 1. the crucial parameter that is responsible for negative weighting is φjs. the φjs are the residuals from a two-way fe regression (on the full sample) including unit and period fi xed effects with dit as the dependent variable. the second term adjusts the weights for sample size and standardizes them so that they sum up to 1. in our simple example, the estimated φjs are 1/3 for group k during t = tk, … , tl 1 and 1/3 for group l during t = tl, … ,t. the φjs is 0 however for group k during t = tl, … ,t. intuitively, the zero weight results from the fact that these persons are already treated at tl, and fe puts them (erroneously) in the control group during the time up to t. technically, their residuals from the regression on dit are zero because, conditional on unit and period effects, there is no variation in dit left over.11 fig. 7: a toy example with staggered treatment design and a time-varying treatment effect early treated (k) later treated (l) untreated (u) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 y 1 10 20 30 t source: fi ctitious data, own calculations (4) 11 in other cases, negative residuals may be obtained for late periods, because with an absorbing treatment indicator, the predicted treatment probability towards the end of the observation window may actually be greater than 1 in a linear model on dit. • volker ludwig, josef brüderl474 adjusting the weights by sample size and standardizing them, we get weights wjs of 1/2, 1/2 and 0. plugging that into the formula for βfe, we fi nally get an estimated att of 1/2 * 0.45 + 1/2 * 0.45 + 0 * 1.45 = 0.45. as we have argued earlier, negative weighting of time-varying treatment effects provides a strong incentive to specify a fl exible impact function. simply assuming a time-constant impact and including one treatment dummy often produces a bias in settings with staggered treatments. contrary to its name, a negative weighting bias often biases the average effect upwards. for instance, often if we have a situation with an early positive, but transitory effect, and (close to) zero effects later on. with fe, late post-treatment effects get weights that are small, thus the overall average effect will often be similar to the short-term effect. in fact, this occurs in our empirical example of happiness and childbirth as we discussed above on context of figure 1. we expect an average effect of 0.086. but the step impact function provided an estimate of 0.32. thus, in our empirical example, we observed an upward (!) bias of the step impact function due to negative weighting (see borusyak/jaravel 2017 for results in a very similar setting). note that the negative weighting problem carries over to heterogeneous effects more generally (goodman-bacon 2018; de chaisemartin/d’haultfœuille 2020), as we discussed one example in the context of consecutive life events. it also applies to the estimation of dummy impact functions with inappropriate grouping, as shown earlier in our discussion of grouping post-treatment dummies (borusyak/ jaravel 2017). counterfactual outcomes and the selection of the estimation sample an important point concerns the deliberate choice of an appropriate sample for the identifi cation and estimation of the parameter(s) of interest. social researchers usually try to maximize the number of observations with the objective of retaining a “representative” sample. in the framework of a cross-sectional research design, we would like to keep as many units (persons) as possible in the estimation sample. with panel data, the maximizing strategy would imply to include as many units (persons) and measurements per unit (person-years) as possible. however, there are important arguments against maximizing sample size. in general, the within panel design calls for the restriction of the sample to units with at least two valid measurements over time. persons with only one person-year, for example, should be dropped because we do not observe useful variation over time for them on any variable. thus, they do not help in identifying any effect of the covariates.12 12 units with only one observation – “singletons” – should not be included for fe estimation. including them will leave point estimates unchanged, because time-demeaning leaves them with zeros on all variables of the model. also, conventional standard errors do not change. but singletons will affect the estimation of cluster-robust standard errors, which are usually reported in practice. notably, the cluster-robust standard errors will be too small, because the degrees of freedom correction is incorrect (correia 2015). what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 475 moreover, maximizing the estimation sample may come at the price of biased estimates of the treatment effect. in a typical setting, in which we are interested in the causal effect of a binary absorbing treatment, we would like to restrict the estimation sample to persons who have not yet experienced the treatment event (say, the birth of a child). in fact, the estimate for a time-constant treatment effect (step impact function) must be biased if the true treatment effect is time-varying and we include persons who enter the panel only after treatment (sobel 2012). for those people who do not experience treatment during the observation window, a constant treatment effect is not identifi ed using a within-panel design. although people who have already been assigned to treatment before they enter the panel do experience a treatment effect, their value for dit does not change in the data. it is always equal to 1. hence, the always-treated are subsumed in the control group. unless we explicitly (and correctly) specify the time-varying treatment effect, it is confounded with the effect of age (or process time). the counterfactual outcome trajectory is misrepresented by the average trajectory of the never-treated and the always-treated. this leads to biased estimates of the age effect or time trend, which in turn biases the estimation of the treatment effect. note that this identifi cation problem induces a bias that is slightly different in nature from the negative weighting bias discussed in the preceding subsection. essentially, including always-treated units introduces two sorts of biases, because these units already serve as controls not only in the post-treatment periods, but also in the pre-treatment periods of other treated groups. we have a negative weighting bias, as before. an additional bias, however, results from misrepresenting the counterfactual trajectory of the control group. thus, including always-treated units exacerbates the bias of an fe step function estimate with time-varying treatment effects. to illustrate the bias due to the misrepresented counterfactual trajectory, we modify our toy data (from fig. 7). we leave out the later-treated group l, but include an always-treated group a, which receives treatment right at entry into the panel (at t = 1). from then onwards, these persons experience the same time trend as groups u, k and the identical causal effect on the trend as group k. the modifi ed data are plotted in figure 8a. however, due to their earlier treatment, time trend and causal effect are inseparable for always-treated persons. specifying a step function would assume they are never treated because dit does not change for them. thus, the fe estimate of the time trend for the control group would be biased. since the always-treated now also serve as controls during the pre-treatment period of group k, a second bias to the treatment effect is introduced in addition to the negative weighting bias that results from the always-treated serving as controls during posttreatment periods of group k. since group a is effectively subsumed in the control group (together with group u), the situation is equivalent to the data shown in figure 8b: besides the trajectory for group k we have an average trajectory for groups a and u, denoted with u’. (from the raw data in figure 8a, we simply calculate the mean of y at t = 1, which is 2.5, and the mean of the slope of the time trend in both groups, which is 0.15.) with these modifi cations, two-way fe estimates an effect of 0.2. this is much lower • volker ludwig, josef brüderl476 than the true sample weighted att, which equals if we exclude the always-treated and use the true counterfactual trajectory of group u (with a slope of 0.1). in fact, this is also what fe returns without the always-treated. as can be seen in figure 8b from the different pre-treatment trends of the combined control group u’ and the treated group k, the bias with inclusion of an always-treated group thus effectively comes from a violation of the parallel trends assumption. using the always-treated as part of the control group results in nonparallel pre-treatment trends, thus violating the strict exogeneity condition of fe. confounding of the time-varying treatment effect of an always treated group with an identical overall time trend for all groups thus induces a bias of the treatment effect. as mentioned earlier, we should however include a control group of nevertreated units in order to control for age/period effects. leaving out the group of untreated units also increases the negative weighting bias of fe. in our toy example (fig. 7), if we exclude group u and apply equation (4), we end up with an fe estimate of the att of 1 * 0.45 + (-1/2) * 1.45 + 1/2 * 0.45 = -0.05, which is even negative due to the negative weight of -1/2 assigned to group k during the fi nal treatment period t = tl, …, t. in sum, whenever we specify a time-constant impact, we should include untreated units, but we should exclude units that are not at risk of getting treatment because they have already received it earlier. if we expect a time-varying treatment effect, we should of course specify it. even then, we must use care with the always-treated units. for example, they might belong to older cohorts (which is likely because they received treatment earlier), and the time-varying pattern of the treatment effect may have changed over cohorts (assuming that we use multi-cohort data as with a household panel of the general population). so, we might again end up with a biased age effect and a resulting bias of the treatment effect. in general, we would therefore recommend excluding the always-treated units from the estimation sample, even if we specify a fl exible impact function. fig. 8: a toy example illustrating the bias due to inclusion of the always-treated early treated (k) untreated (u)always treated (a) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 y 1 10 20 30 t treated group k control group u' 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 y 1 10 20 30 t a. raw data of treated and untreated b. treated and combined control group source: fi ctitious data, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 477 7 conclusion the estimation of impact functions using panel data and fe models has become common practice in demographic research. in this paper, we addressed important decisions researchers face when modelling such impact functions. we identifi ed some problems and provided hands-on advice to applied researchers for dealing with these problems. thus, we conclude with a list of recommendations for applied research. 1. specify the impact function as fl exibly as theory demands. in most cases, this will mean that one should use a dummy impact function. if the dummy impact function provides a regular pattern, then one could instead use a more parsimonious specifi cation. 2. specify the age-outcome trajectory in a fl exible way, i.e., by including age dummies as controls. if necessary, also control for period effects. however, do not use the two-way fi xed effects model (i.e., including wave dummies without close consideration). 3. specify anticipation effects only if theory predicts these (and if you have direct measures of these). do not include pre-treatment dummies without close consideration. these may make your results uninterpretable and increase estimation uncertainty. 4. do not group late post-treatment dummies. it is better practice to truncate the post-treatment period. 5. do not maximize the sample size. instead, tailor the estimation sample according to the research question at hand. include only units that were not treated when fi rst observed (i.e., drop the always-treated). do not drop the control group of never-treated units. 6. in the case of consecutive life events, we advise defi ning the causal effect of interest based on comparing potential outcomes, focusing on specifi c transitions, and constructing estimation samples accordingly. 7. it may be necessary to allow for heterogeneous life courses when modelling an impact function (e.g., by allowing for individual-specifi c slopes). acknowledgment we thank two reviewers for their helpful comments. data note this study uses data from the german family panel pairfam, coordinated by josef brüderl, karsten hank, johannes huinink, bernhard nauck, franz neyer, and sabine walper. pairfam is funded as long-term project by the german research foundation (dfg). pairfam data can be ordered at https://www.pairfam.de/en/. replication fi les (stata do-fi les) are available at brüderl and ludwig (2021). • volker ludwig, josef brüderl478 references abendroth, anja-kristin; huffman, matt l.; treas, judith 2014: the parity penalty in life course perspective: motherhood and occupational status in 13 european countries. in: american sociological review 79,5: 993-1014. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414545986 allison, paul d. 2009: fixed efects regression models. thousand oaks, ca: sage. allison, paul d. 1994: using panel data to estimate the effects of events. in: sociological methods and research 23,2: 174-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124194023002002 andreß, hans-jürgen; golsch, katrin; schmidt, alexander w. 2013: applied panel data analysis for economic and 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wage premium? new evidence from the united states. in: american sociological review 83,4: 744-770. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418784909 meer, jonathan; west, jeremy 2016: effects of the minimum wage on employment dynamics. in: journal of human resources 51,2: 500-522. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.51.2.0414-6298r1 myrskylä, mikko; margolis, rachel 2014: happiness: before and after the kids. in: demography 51,5: 1843-1866. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0321-x ranjbar, setareh; sperlich, stefan 2020: a note on empirical studies of life-satisfaction: unhappy with semiparametrics? in: journal of happiness studies 21: 2193-2212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00165-z rüttenauer, tobias; ludwig, volker 2020: fixed effects individual slopes: accounting and testing for heterogeneous effects in panel data or other multilevel models. in: sociological methods and research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124120926211 rüttenauer, tobias; ludwig, volker 2021: feisr: estimating fixed effects individual slopes models [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/feisr/, 15.11.2021]. sobel, michael e. 2012: does marriage boost men’s wages? identifi cation of treatment effects in fixed effects regression models for panel data. in: journal of the american statistical association 107,498: 521-529. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2011.646917 stutzer, alois; frey, bruno s. 2006: does marriage make people happy, or do happy people get married? in: the journal of socio-economics 35,2: 326-347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2005.11.043 turek, konrad; kalmijn, matthijs; leopold, thomas 2021: the comparative panel file: harmonized household panel surveys from seven countries. in: european sociological review 37,3: 505-523. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab006 vanderweele, tyler j. 2019: principles of confounder selection. in: european journal of epidemiology 34: 211-219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-019-00494-6 wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. 2nd ed. cambridge, ma: mit press. date of submission: 25.06.2021 date of acceptance: 11.08.2021 jun. prof. dr. volker ludwig (). tu kaiserslautern. department of social sciences. kaiserslautern, germany. e-mail: ludwig@sowi.uni-kl.de url: https://www.sowi.uni-kl.de/en/sociology/team/ludwig prof. dr. josef brüderl. university of munich, department of sociology. munich, germany. e-mail: bruederl@lmu.de url: https://www.ls3.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professor/bruederl_josef/ index.html • volker ludwig, josef brüderl480 appendix tab. a1: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: comparing different impact functions (1) step impact (2) quadratic impact (3) dummy impact (reference model) dummy 1st child 0.318*** 0.510*** (0.066) (0.070) age of 1st child (years) -0.248*** (0.051) age of 1st child squared 0.025*** (0.007) age of 1st child 0 years 0.599*** (0.071) 1 year 0.088 (0.091) 2 years 0.041 (0.101) 3 years 0.192 (0.120) 4+ years -0.009 (0.152) relationship status: single (ref.) living apart together 0.344*** 0.343*** 0.342*** (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) cohabiting 0.436*** 0.423*** 0.421*** (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) married 0.484*** 0.463*** 0.467*** (0.070) (0.070) (0.070) health status: bad (ref.) not so good 0.641*** 0.642*** 0.644*** (0.107) (0.107) (0.107) satisfactory 0.951*** 0.949*** 0.950*** (0.108) (0.108) (0.108) good 1.241*** 1.239*** 1.239*** (0.109) (0.109) (0.109) very good 1.520*** 1.514*** 1.514*** (0.112) (0.112) (0.112) dummy pregnancy 0.619*** 0.610*** 0.607*** (0.075) (0.076) (0.076) constant 6.564*** 6.555*** 6.553*** (0.129) (0.129) (0.129) age of resp. dummies included yes yes yes within r-squared 0.0696 0.0717 0.0727 n persons 2,982 2,982 2,982 nxt person-years 19,996 19,996 19,996 regression results from fe regression models, coeffi cients and panel-robust standard errors (in parentheses). * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 481 tab. a2: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: dummy impact function age dummies no control for age age linear two-way fe (reference model) age of 1st child 0 years 0.599*** 0.578*** 0.648*** 0.648*** (0.071) (0.070) (0.070) (0.071) 1 year 0.088 0.061 0.156 0.177* (0.091) (0.088) (0.090) (0.090) 2 years 0.041 0.012 0.138 0.152 (0.101) (0.096) (0.098) (0.098) 3 years 0.192 0.162 0.313** 0.317** (0.120) (0.116) (0.118) (0.118) 4+ years -0.009 -0.054 0.175 0.163 (0.152) (0.147) (0.150) (0.150) relationship status: single (ref.) living apart together 0.342*** 0.293*** 0.319*** 0.323*** (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) cohabiting 0.421*** 0.284*** 0.382*** 0.380*** (0.043) (0.040) (0.042) (0.042) married 0.467*** 0.359*** 0.499*** 0.495*** (0.070) (0.065) (0.069) (0.069) health status: bad (ref.) not so good 0.644*** 0.650*** 0.646*** 0.648*** (0.107) (0.108) (0.108) (0.107) satisfactory 0.950*** 0.948*** 0.948*** 0.955*** (0.108) (0.109) (0.108) (0.108) good 1.239*** 1.246*** 1.239*** 1.245*** (0.109) (0.109) (0.109) (0.109) very good 1.514*** 1.529*** 1.515*** 1.514*** (0.112) (0.113) (0.112) (0.112) dummy pregnancy 0.607*** 0.596*** 0.645*** 0.642*** (0.076) (0.075) (0.076) (0.076) age of respondent -0.031*** (0.005) constant 6.553*** 6.253*** 6.964*** 6.310*** (0.129) (0.107) (0.153) (0.109) age of resp. dummies included yes no no no survey wave dummies included no no no yes within r-squared 0.0727 0.0632 0.0669 0.0691 n persons 2,982 2,982 2,982 2,982 nxt person-years 19,996 19,996 19,996 19,996 regression results from fe regression models, coeffi cients and panel-robust standard errors (in parentheses). * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations • volker ludwig, josef brüderl482 tab. a3: the effect of the birth of a fi rst child on mothers’ happiness: varying the specifi cation of preor post-treatment effects no control adding 6 truncating truncating for pregnancy pre-treatment after 4 years after 1 year dummies age of 1st child (post-treatment) 0 years 0.448*** 0.750*** 0.601*** 0.598*** (0.067) (0.114) (0.071) (0.073) 1 year -0.071 0.194 0.088 (0.088) (0.129) (0.091) 2 years -0.121 0.099 0.043 (0.096) (0.141) (0.100) 3 years 0.034 0.263 0.190 (0.116) (0.152) (0.120) 4+ years -0.187 0.021 -0.089 (0.147) (0.189) (0.193) age of 1st child (pre-treatment) -1 year 0.460*** (0.110) -2 years 0.041 (0.114) -3 years 0.126 (0.110) -4 years -0.004 (0.117) -5 years 0.062 (0.113) -6 years -0.142 (0.118) dummy pregnancy 0.612*** 0.634*** (0.075) (0.076) relationship status: single (ref.) living apart together 0.343*** 0.344*** 0.338*** (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) cohabiting 0.439*** 0.420*** 0.425*** (0.043) (0.043) (0.043) married 0.544*** 0.475*** 0.528*** (0.069) (0.070) (0.072) health status: bad (ref.) not so good 0.648*** 0.619*** 0.614*** (0.107) (0.108) (0.109) satisfactory 0.960*** 0.924*** 0.929*** (0.108) (0.109) (0.110) good 1.247*** 1.211*** 1.205*** (0.109) (0.109) (0.110) very good 1.520*** 1.489*** 1.486*** (0.112) (0.113) (0.114) what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 483 no control adding 6 truncating truncating for pregnancy pre-treatment after 4 years after 1 year dummies constant 6.529*** 7.798*** 6.580*** 6.585*** (0.129) (0.071) (0.129) (0.130) age of resp. dummies included yes yes yes yes within r-square 0.0688 0.0149 0.0724 0.0733 n persons 2,982 2,982 2,982 2,982 nt person-years 19,996 19,996 19,782 18,967 tab. a3: continuation regression results from fe regression models, coeffi cients and panel-robust standard errors (in parentheses). * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations • volker ludwig, josef brüderl484 tab. a4: effects of childbirth on happiness in models specifying homogeneous or heterogeneous age effects fe fe feis full sample restricted sample restricted sample age of 1st child 0 years 0.648*** 0.648*** 0.570*** (0.070) (0.072) (0.091) 1 year 0.156 0.158 -0.020 (0.090) (0.090) (0.129) 2 years 0.138 0.140 -0.032 (0.098) (0.098) (0.156) 3 years 0.313** 0.315** 0.091 (0.118) (0.118) (0.206) 4+ years 0.175 0.177 -0.118 (0.150) (0.150) (0.291) dummy pregnancy 0.645*** 0.645*** 0.544*** (0.076) (0.077) (0.087) relationship status: single (ref.) living apart together 0.319*** 0.315*** 0.348*** (0.030) (0.031) (0.033) cohabiting 0.382*** 0.383*** 0.415*** (0.042) (0.042) (0.049) married 0.499*** 0.493*** 0.474*** (0.069) (0.070) (0.089) health status: bad (ref.) not so good 0.646*** 0.625*** 0.609*** (0.108) (0.109) (0.111) satisfactory 0.948*** 0.934*** 0.928*** (0.108) (0.110) (0.111) good 1.239*** 1.224*** 1.187*** (0.109) (0.111) (0.112) very good 1.515*** 1.496*** 1.439*** (0.112) (0.114) (0.116) age of respondent -0.031*** -0.031*** individual-specifi c (0.005) (0.005) slopes constant 6.964*** 6.979*** (0.153) (0.155) within r-square 0.0669 0.0668 0.0615 n persons 2,982 2,526 2,526 nt person-years 19,996 19,084 19,084 notes: regression results from fe and feis regression models, coeffi cients and panel-robust standard errors (in parentheses); the restricted sample is restricted to women providing at least three person-years. the fi rst model is identical to the model “age linear” from table a2. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: pairfam release 11.0, own calculations what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data ... • 485 fig. a1: biased impact functions due to grouping late treatment dummies (toy example with fi ctitious data) -0.5 -0.3 0.0 0.3 0.5 0.8 1.0 1.3 1.5 1.8 2.0 c ha ng e in y 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 time since treatment full set of dummies 5+ yrs. grouped 10+ yrs. grouped 15+ yrs. grouped notes: the fi ctitious data are the same as in figure 7, with a staggered treatment design (one early and one late treated group) and a time-varying treatment effect. the model with a full set of dummy variables exactly hits the true impact function. other models that instead group treatment periods towards the end of the observation window return biased impact functions. source: fi ctitious data, own calculations published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain: time squeeze or social norms? transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain: time squeeze or social norms? marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero abstract: as fi rst births are increasingly postponed across europe, a strong twochild family norm persists. past research has examined educational differentials in progressions to second birth, testing various hypotheses but overlooking normative aspects. comparing fertility surveys from france and spain, we explore whether late fi rst-time mothers, who have fewer reproductive biological years left to conceive, accelerate the transition to a subsequent child (time squeeze effect). we also consider a normative dimension, i.e., whether women have their fi rst child earlier or later than others in their educational and cohort groups. in both countries, among fi rst-time mothers between 25 and 34 years of age, highly-educated women transitioned to second birth more frequently than less-educated women did. within the same age group, highly-educated women in spain had a second child more quickly after the fi rstborn than their less educated counterparts did, while there is no such difference in france. these results hold after controlling for cohort effects, but are only partly explained by a time squeeze effect. different normative ages at fi rst birth by education and birth cohort explain the educational gap in the likelihood of transitioning to second birth, but not the birth intervals in spain. in sum, our analysis demonstrates a persistent educational gap in second births in this country that cannot be reduced to biological or normative effects. this suggests that a broad range of economic constraints play a role, such as unfavourable individual economic conditions and lower levels of institutional support for parenthood. keywords: second births · time squeeze · fertility norms · birth intervals · france · spain 1 introduction family formation has been delayed in all of europe, but large variations in total fertility rates persist across countries (sobotka 2017). these differences depend on how much people delay their fi rst birth and how many children they ultimately have comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 307-338 (date of release: 11.07.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-13 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-13en4 • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero308 (beaujouan et al. 2023; frejka 2008). this has been studied in terms of completed fertility or by parity, with a growing interest in parity progression ratios (ppr) owing to the importance of higher-order births in explaining fertility levels (brzozowska et al. 2022). in contexts where a two-child family norm is strong (sobotka/beaujouan 2014), countries’ economic conditions, the friendliness of their institutions towards the family and their surrounding social norms are commonly evoked as factors for cross-country differences. in addition, once the fi rst birth is postponed, people may experience an ensuing time squeeze and respond by accelerating further births (rendall et al. 2020). hence, as people have children later in life, questions about the timing of subsequent births also arise. educational differentials in the transition to second and third births have been identifi ed as crucial factors in analyses of fertility levels (brzozowska et al. 2022; klesment et al. 2014; kreyenfeld 2002; van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). at the individual level, scholars have been interested in mechanisms that can explain why, in most countries, highly-educated women more commonly transition to another birth when the fi rst one is delayed. this line of research examines whether this phenomenon is explained by income (baizán 2005), selection (billari/borgoni 2005) or partner effects (kreyenfeld 2002). it has also been proposed that highly-educated women shorten the interval between the fi rst and second child to limit their time out of the labour market (ekert-jaffé et al. 2002; köppen 2006; ní bhrolcháin 1986), while others argue that they accelerate the second birth to avoid biological limits after delaying the fi rst one (castro 2015; köppen 2006; kreyenfeld 2002). previous research also emphasises the role of normative aspects in explaining educational differences in family enlargement, although this remains less studied (hoem 1996; klesment et al. 2014; van bavel/nitsche 2013; van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). this paper examines the extent and pace with which women who entered motherhood at different ages transition to a second child in france and spain. we do so by focusing on educational attainment and by taking into account changes across cohorts. we are particularly interested in individual mechanisms and therefore do not address the effect of population composition on countries’ fertility levels, which has been studied elsewhere (brzozowska et al. 2022; lazzari et al. 2021; zeman et al. 2018). we focus on two possible dimensions of age (rennes 2019). the fi rst is chronological age, i.e., the number of years that have elapsed since a person was born, which also indicates when it may become more diffi cult for women to conceive since fecundity decreases with age. the second dimension is normative. the life course is organised into different stages, and social expectations around when transitions should occur vary across social groups and over time. in particular, age at fi rst birth follows very different patterns across educational and cohort groups (ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; rendall et al. 2005) and presumably refl ects differences in the appropriate timing of childbearing to which people adhere. we defi ne here a normative age based on the distribution of fi rst-birth schedules by women’s characteristics, and we distinguish between whether women had their fi rst child very early, early, late, or very late compared to the other mothers in their educational and cohort group. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 309 we fi rst examine age through its chronological dimension by asking whether educational differentials in progressions to second birth are associated with shorter birth intervals at later ages (time squeeze), especially among higher-educated women who tend to postpone entry into motherhood. then, we explore whether differences in age standards at fi rst birth explain educational gaps in subsequent family behaviours, by country. finally, we discuss alternative factors by examining whether higher educational degrees induce greater progressions to second birth and shorter birth intervals. this stems from an assumption according to which highly-educated women are better able to afford expenses related to a second birth and are motivated by return-to-work considerations. 2 past research on second births in europe 2.1 postponement of fi rst births and parity progression to second births the relationship between age at motherhood and completed cohort fertility has received growing attention regarding the extent to which higher-order births are foregone after postponing the fi rst child (philipov 2017) because delaying entry into parenthood can lead to smaller families (kohler et al. 2001; tomkinson 2019). however, this can be offset if women catch up on the delayed entry into motherhood so that cohort completed fertility remains stable despite a rise in age at fi rst birth. this phenomenon, called “fertility recuperation,” is also refl ected by the extent to which the decrease in cohort fertility rates at early ages is offset by the increase in fertility rates at later ages (ciganda/todd 2019; goldstein et al. 2009). evidence for recuperation has been found in some nordic countries’ cohorts born before 1970 (andersson et al. 2009; frejka/calot 2001) and has been projected in france (toulemon et al. 2008). similar evidence has not been found in the united kingdom (berrington et al. 2015) or any eastern european countries (castro 2015). furthermore, fertility recuperation can also be captured by observing fertility transitions at each parity (frejka 2008: 201; frejka/sardon 2007; toulemon et al. 2008). research in some western european contexts shows that the likelihood of transitioning to a second child declines from around the age of 25-30 at fi rst birth (kreyenfeld 2002; tomkinson 2019). however, a thorough examination of parity progression to a second child (ppr2) at different ages and in different contexts is lacking, despite the ongoing tendency to postpone fi rst births to late ages (beaujouan/sobotka 2019). educational differentials in the transition to subsequent births are also crucial in understanding fertility levels across time and space (brzozowska et al. 2022; klesment et al. 2014; kreyenfeld 2002; van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). delayed fertility is a general trend among all population groups, but it is particularly prevalent among highly-educated women. this group is also more likely to catch up on delayed fi rst births when compared to their less educated peers, exhibiting higher or similar ppr2 (klesment et al. 2014; köppen 2006; kreyenfeld 2002; van bavel/ • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero310 różańska-putek 2010). to deepen our understanding of the patterns observed, we integrate the educational dimension into our study of progressions to second birth. 2.2 the selection of family-prone women into parenthood: preferences explaining educational differentials in ppr2 selection is a primary explanation for why highly-educated mothers are more likely to further enlarge their families. the line of reasoning is that because childlessness rates increase with levels of education, highly-educated fi rst-time mothers may be particularly family-oriented (kreyenfeld 2002). after having one child, these women may be more likely to continue enlarging their families until the desired size is achieved. such “family proneness” is rarely measurable and therefore deduced from models that show evidence for selection effects. this has been supported by previous work on west germany (kreyenfeld 2002), italy (impicciatore/zuanna 2017) and norway (kravdal 2001), but not on spain, hungary and sweden (bartus et al. 2013; billari/borgoni 2005). the lack of evidence for such an effect in some countries can refl ect the diffusion of family preferences towards two-child families among all female educational groups (heiland et al. 2005; testa 2014). furthermore, because families are now relatively small, selection may particularly explain differences in third-birth rates (brzozowska et al. 2022), as suggested for austria (prskawetz/ zagaglia 2005). arguably, selection can also be related to factors other than “family proneness,” such as health conditions or personality traits. 2.3 running out of time after the postponement of the fi rst birth? besides the probability of having a second child, the speed at which this happens is relevant to understanding patterns of family enlargement. an important question to be addressed is whether some of the women who delayed their fi rst birth accelerate the second to avoid having only one child. so far, birth-interval trends have been poorly documented in low fertility countries (casterline/odden 2016). for instance, some eastern european countries have witnessed a lengthening of birth intervals over time (rutstein 2011), while in other countries, family policies have contributed to shortening intervals between the fi rst and second birth (berg/rotkirch 2014; miranda 2020; štástná et al. 2020). to complement the study of parity progression ratios, we study birth intervals – defi ned as the time between the fi rst and the second birth among women who have had at least two children – by age at entering motherhood. at the macro level, fertility recuperation has also been described as “the action of compensating for the fewer reproductive years with higher fertility once motherhood begins” (castro 2015: 276). therefore, the inter-birth interval may infl uence the number of children achieved. likewise, at the individual level, this process has been described as a “time squeeze” (kreyenfeld 2002). female fertility starts declining around a woman’s thirties and accelerates around age 35 (dunson et al. 2002). age-specifi c infertility is generally considered to be stable over time and across countries (menken 1985; smarr et al. 2017). consequently, one could transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 311 expect women who become mothers at age 30 or older to progress to second birth more quickly because they are more constrained by age to achieve their desired family size (rendall et al. 2020), especially in contexts with a strong two-child family norm (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). this mechanism is also expected to apply to highly-educated women, who tend to postpone fi rst motherhood. this “time squeeze” effect has, however, not been found in previous work on hungary (bartus et al. 2013), germany (bremhorst et al. 2016) and denmark (gerster et al. 2007). conversely, it does hold for italy, where highly-educated women have a second child more quickly than their lower-educated peers, especially among fi rst-time mothers above age 30 (impicciatore/zuanna 2017). in sum, the timing of second births differs by educational attainment, but whether highly or lower-educated women enlarge their families more quickly depends on the context (matysiak/ vignoli 2019). therefore, a study of birth intervals by age at fi rst birth and level of education in two very different contexts may provide insights into this relationship. 2.4 differences in the “proper timing” of fi rst births by education and birth cohort although biological factors infl uence fertility decisions, having a second child and having it more quickly after a late fi rstborn are not solely related to fecundity. some scholars have shown the role that social rather than biological aspects play in fertility behaviours. for instance, in sweden, school starts in late august and ends in june the following year, therefore women who graduated in one educational cohort are not all the same age. in this setting, skirbekk et al. (2004) showed that mothers’ fertility patterns followed those of their educational peers more closely than those of their birth cohort, confi rming the importance of social age (skirbekk et al. 2004). there is also evidence that social age norms, such as the common perception of what the ideal age at fi rst birth is, are correlated with cross-national differences in the progression to second birth. transitions to second birth are more frequent in normative contexts where perceptions of the “proper timing” of parenthood are at higher ages (van bavel/nitsche 2013) or when fi rst births occur in an age range close to what is seen as “normal” at the society level (van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). at the individual level, it is also crucial to consider normative dimensions when analysing educational differentials in family enlargement, for instance by looking at a woman’s age at fi rst birth relative to the fi rst birth schedule of mothers in her educational group (hoem 1996; köppen 2006). for instance, having a fi rst birth at age 30 may have a different meaning from one group to another – presumably being perceived as “late” by lower-educated women and more “normal” by higher-educated women. as actual behaviours to some extent refl ect age norms, the relative age at fi rst birth may capture normative aspects. for example, the average perceived ideal age at fi rst birth is higher in spain than in france, as is the average age at fi rst birth (liefbroer/merz 2009). in addition, as births are increasingly postponed, societal perceptions of the ideal age at fi rst birth have also shifted towards later ages over time (seiz et al. 2022; lazzari et al. 2022). hence, we investigate the role of norms in educational differences in second-birth behaviours by considering a woman’s age • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero312 at fi rst birth relative to the prevailing fi rst-birth schedule within her educational and cohort group. 2.5 economic factors explaining the link between education and fertility: opportunity costs, income, and partner characteristics microeconomics also provides interpretations for educational differences in second births. while high opportunity costs theoretically explain fi rst-birth postponement, highly-educated women are also likely to earn more – a fact that may explain why they are more likely to have a second child after the postponement of motherhood. as regards the timing of second births, shorter intervals after the fi rst birth can be related to return-to-work motivations to limit time spent outside the labour market (ekert-jaffé et al. 2002; köppen 2006; ní bhrolcháin 1986). context may also reinforce educational differences in second-birth behaviours. patterns of recuperation related to completed fertility have been found for both higherand lower-educated women in the nordic countries (andersson et al. 2009), while differentials in second-birth schedules and progressions are more pronounced in britain (berrington et al. 2015). in western europe, higher-educated women end up having as many children as the medium-educated group despite delaying entry into motherhood, but still fewer than their lowest-educated counterparts (klesment et al. 2014). these cross-national variations in educational gap magnitude are often explained by different institutional contexts which can ease the work and family life balance, such as the availability of childcare services and family policies (klesment et al. 2014; van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). the role of partners’ characteristics has also been increasingly explored by focusing on educational status and couples’ homogamy or heterogamy (nitsche et al. 2018). following the line of reasoning that people with more economic resources are more likely to transition to second birth, highly-educated women may be more likely to enlarge their family after postponing motherhood because they tend to be partnered with men of the same educational group (klesment et al. 2014; kreyenfeld 2002). however, the infl uence of male partners’ education varies between contexts (trimarchi/van bavel 2020). evidence for such an infl uence has been found in west germany (köppen 2006; kreyenfeld 2002) and austria (prskawetz/zagaglia 2007), but not in france (köppen 2006), hungary (bartus et al. 2013), spain (bueno/garcíaromán 2021) or denmark (gerster et al. 2007). finally, although less explored, the partner’s age may also play a role, as women who enter motherhood at late ages tend to have a fi rst child with men their age or younger (compans 2021; dudel et al. 2020). analyses of the quantum and tempo of second births often test a limited number of mechanisms. here, we disentangle age and educational differences in transitions to second birth and the intervals between fi rst and second birth. examinations of the infl uence of normative factors on second births have also remained scarce, hence we probe this question by looking at age at fi rst birth relative to women’s educational group and birth cohort. by doing so, we investigate to what extent biological factors transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 313 explain second-birth acceleration and educational differentials at later ages (30 years old and above), or whether they can be challenged by other aspects. we focus on two national contexts, france, and spain. in the following section, we describe aspects of these countries’ fertility regimes relevant to understanding second birth trends. 3 france and spain: distinct fertility regimes but similar cultural features 3.1 france: exceptionally high fertility levels in france, birth rates before age 25 decreased substantially throughout the 1980s and 1990s (toulemon et al. 2008). as a result, teenage births became rare – around 2 percent of mothers in the early-1970s cohort had their fi rst child during adolescence (tomkinson 2019). fertility in women’s thirties has increased accordingly, along with late fertility rates (40+) now close to the european average (beaujouan/sobotka 2019). this delay is partly driven by education extension because births occurring while studying are rare, at less than 5 percent (ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; régnier-loilier 2016). france is an unusual case among western european countries, as fertility levels remained close to two children per woman in the past decades despite the postponement of fi rst births (mazuy et al. 2015; toulemon et al. 2008). this suggests that fertility postponement and fertility levels developed relatively independently of each other. a long tradition of pronatalist family policies within a generous welfare state explains these comparatively high fertility levels and small educational gaps in fertility behaviours (toulemon et al. 2008). for instance, maternity leave allowances and family benefi ts can infl uence fi rst and higher-order births. formal childcare is also widely available and used. in the early 2000s, enrolment rates in formal childcare among children under three years old was 43 percent, higher than the oecd average of 30 percent (oecd 2008). such policies decrease the opportunity costs associated with having children, especially for highly-educated groups (van bavel/różańska-putek 2010) and allow women to achieve a more manageable work and family balance. french mothers return to work quickly after birth and often continue working full-time when having young children (pailhé/solaz 2006). in the 1990s and 2000s, 65 percent of the active female population were working mothers with children younger than 15 (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). the female load of parental and household tasks in france is close to the european average (aliaga 2006) and the gap between men and women has decreased since the mid-1980s (champagne et al. 2015). moreover, while the two-child family norm is strong (frejka 2008; frejka/sardon 2007; sobotka/beaujouan 2014), large families (at least three children) are perceived as an ideal for many people (ruckdeschel et al. 2018; sobotka/beaujouan 2014). regarding the proper timing for childbearing, in 2006, the average ideal age for fi rst • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero314 motherhood was slightly above 25 years and the average perceived age deadline for motherhood was 42 years (liefbroer/merz 2009). hence, in this economic, institutional, and normative context, progressions to second birth are relatively more common than in other western european countries such as the united kingdom (tomkinson 2019) and southern european countries such as spain (frejka 2008). 3.2 spain: strong postponement of births and lowest-low fertility the postponement of births has been particularly substantial in spain (castro martín/martín garcía 2016). while early motherhood has become very rare, this country exhibits one of the highest shares of births occurring over the maternal age of 40 among european countries (6.1 percent; beaujouan/sobotka 2019). in line with actual fertility behaviours, perceptions of the normative window for parenthood in 2006 also correspond to higher ages in comparison to france – close to 28 years for the ideal age at fi rst motherhood and 43 years on average for the age limit for female childbearing (liefbroer/merz 2009). in contrast to the french context, this substantial postponement has been associated with lowest-low fertility levels, down to 1.3 children per woman in the 1990s (kohler et al. 2002). this is also visible in the decline in cohort completed fertility (esteve et al. 2016). this trend is paralleled by the decrease in the desired number of children (delgado et al. 2008) converging into a two-child family norm (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). this dramatic decline in fertility occurred concurrently with changes in the labour market – unemployment rose tremendously from the 1980s, affecting young people in particular (adserà 2011b/a; delgado et al. 2008) – and was combined with a lack of family policies to reconcile motherhood and labour force participation (esping-andersen 2009). indeed, spain is a familistic welfare state that provides little childcare support. this can partly be explained by cultural norms. motherhood is mainly seen as a private matter in which the state should not intervene (alvarez/ marre 2022), resulting in a reliance on informal childcare by grandparents or other family members (rutigliano 2020). as a result, preschool enrolment rates are close to the oecd average, but below those observed in france (oecd 2008). employment rates among women are also much lower compared to france – only 49 percent in 2000-04 (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). in the private sphere, the sharing of household tasks remains gendered, which affects women’s fertility intentions (suero 2023). however, the country has progressed into the second demographic transition as far as its neighbouring european countries have (sobotka 2008). for instance, attitudes are now quite favourable towards “non-traditional” family behaviours such as cohabitation or divorce (seiz et al. 2022). because the economic and policy landscape in spain has made it diffi cult to seamlessly combine family life and work, highly-educated women still show lower completed fertility than their less-educated counterparts (klesment et al. 2014). here, delays in fi rst births seem to have a causal effect on fertility decline and are accompanied by fewer transitions to second birth (billari/borgoni 2005; brodmann et al. 2007). in line with this, previous research has shown an absence of any sign transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 315 of recuperation (delgado et al. 2008) and a persistent educational gap in fertility (requena 2022). in summary, progression to a second child is less common for women in spain than in france (klesment et al. 2014), which may be attributed to the two countries’ very different economic and welfare conditions. despite this, both countries share common cultural traits, such as the two-child family norm. fertility intentions are more often unmet in spain than in france, as there seems to be more of a confl ict between fertility desires and the economic context (beaujouan/berghammer 2019; castro-martín/martín-garcía 2016). there is also a negative educational gradient in transitions to second birth, which does not hold after controlling for age at fi rst birth in both countries (klesment et al. 2014; matysiak/vignoli 2019); while information on educational gradients in fi rst and second childbirth intervals is lacking for both countries. by comparing france and spain’s second birth transitions and birth intervals along two dimensions of age (chronological and normative) and educational attainment, we provide new insights into how family enlargement patterns differ within these countries. 4 research question and hypotheses this paper examines, in france and spain, the extent to which women who become mothers at different ages transition to second birth, at which pace they do so and how this varies by educational attainment. the time squeeze effect posits that later fi rst-time mothers speed up the transition to the second child in anticipation of greater biological constraints with age. accordingly, we formulate the following hypotheses: 1a. among mothers with at least two children, we expect women who delayed family formation to have transitioned to second birth more quickly after the fi rstborn. 1b. assuming that biological constraints remain the same in france and spain for women born between 1935 and 1974, we expect this time squeeze to be similar across countries and to hold after accounting for cohort effects. 1c. as highly-educated women are more likely to postpone a fi rst birth, at later reproductive ages, we expect them to have a second child more often and more quickly than women of other educational groups. rather than biological concerns, the pace and extent of family building may also be driven by the prevalent fertility schedules within one’s group, which differ depending on women’s characteristics. to test whether this normative dimension of age explains educational differences in family enlargement, we examine transitions to second birth by comparing a woman’s age at entry into motherhood with the distribution of fi rst-birth schedules within her educational and cohort group. with this indicator of fi rst birth timing relative to group membership, we formulate the following: • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero316 2. if the normative dimension of age holds more explanatory power than chronological age, we would expect there to be no educational differential in second births by relative age at fi rst birth. this would indicate that women of different characteristics behave the same way when they conform or deviate from the standard within their group. 5 data and methods 5.1 data and measures this paper relies on samples of 146,555 observations retrieved from the french family and housing survey (enquête familles et logement, ined-insee, 2011) and 12,451 women from three spanish fertility surveys conducted in spain (encuestas de fecundidad, ine, 1985, 1999, and 2018) with observations of women born between 1935 and 1974. these samples were obtained after excluding 203 and 186 multiple fi rst births for france and spain, respectively. the french survey is conducted about every ten years in conjunction with the census, in a self-completed questionnaire that includes fertility histories. despite an underestimation of the total number of children across cohorts in the 2011 survey, the quality is good as regards parity distribution (brée 2017). the number of births in the spanish surveys has been compared to offi cial vital statistics from ine, showing only slight variations. the cohorts studied are divided into 10-year groups, except for the oldest (193539) and youngest (1970-74) cohorts. in this work, we cover fertility history up to at least age 42 for most cohorts.1 when cohorts which have not yet reached age 42 are excluded from the analyses, educational differentials and cohort effects – which are the main focus of this study – are similar (although the sample size for spain is reduced and not all cohorts from 1935 to 1974 are observed). therefore, most women are considered to have reached the end of their reproductive life. however, since some of them may have had a second birth after being surveyed, we discuss possible biases which may exist in the paper. we conduct analyses on different subsamples depending on the birth parity studied. educational groups are defi ned according to the level attained at the time of the survey and divided into three groups.2 following the isced classifi cation, a low degree corresponds to no schooling, primary education, and lower secondary education. the medium group comprises upper secondary education and vocational training, while the highest levels include university graduates (table 1). 1 women born in 1970-74 in france were 37-41 years old at the time of the survey (in 2011). for spain, data for cohorts 1935 to 1949 are measured in the 1985 fertility survey (at 37-50 years old), for cohorts 1950 to 1961 in 1999 (38-50 years old), and 1962 to 1974 in 2018 (44-56 years old). 2 the degree was not necessarily acquired before the fi rst birth, particularly for the highlyeducated mothers who had a child before age 25. therefore, it is possible that their studies infl uenced the timing and occurrence of the second birth. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 317 age at fi rst birth is defi ned in two different ways: in absolute and relative terms. while the fi rst can refl ect a time squeeze effect after a late birth, the second is an indicator of deviation from (or conformity to) the norm in fi rst-birth behaviour within an individual’s cohort or educational group. it is computed by comparing the age at which a woman had her fi rst child with the distribution of age at fi rst birth in her educational group and birth cohort, by country. we distinguish between “very early” (below the 25th percentile, i.e., the ages at which 25 percent of women become mothers), “early” (between p25 and p50), “late” (between p50 and p75) and “very late” fi rst-time mothers (above the 75th percentile). note that “very late” births refer to fi rst-time mothers of 30 years old or older for highly-educated women and even to those above age 35 among the most recent cohorts of women in spain (table a1). thus, this category illustrates not only normative aspects of age but also biological ones, since fecundity declines from women’s thirties onwards. these cutoffs are also above 30 years old for the medium and lower-educated groups from the 1960s cohort in spain, but are below 30 for lower-educated women in france. 5.2 methods first, we report descriptive statistics by education. our main focus is on parity progression ratios to second births (ppr2), computed as the ratio between the number of women with two children and the number of women with at least one child, generally by age 42 depending on the birth cohort (see above). we also focus on the number of years between the fi rst and second birth, examining closed intervals (casterline/odden 2016). conditional on having at least two children by the end of the reproductive life, birth intervals between the fi rst and second child (bi2) are the differences between each child’s birthdate (computed in months, shown in years). we calculate the median age interval within each observed group (e.g., by educational level). past research often focused on the occurrence of births after the fi rstborn using event-history models, which combine the analysis of the tempo and the event of tab. 1: distribution of educational groups by female birth cohort in france and spain france (n=146,555) spain (n=12,451) low medium high low medium high 1935-39 66.9 24.7 8.4 81.8 13.2 5.0 1940-49 50.6 33.0 16.5 70.8 22.2 7.0 1950-59 37.7 40.0 22.2 33.2 52.1 14.8 1960-69 25.2 44.5 30.3 34.5 42.6 22.9 1970-74 17.2 39.4 43.3 25.9 39.9 34.3 note: n’s are unweighted. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018) using survey weights. • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero318 second births when data are censored (klesment et al. 2014; kreyenfeld 2002). more recently, some studies have used cure models, which allow for the estimation of the share of people who have not experienced a second birth when analysing transition rates (bremhorst et al. 2019; matysiak/vignoli 2019). instead, we separate the analysis of transition occurrences from that of the timing of second births. this is made possible by examining the birth cohorts of women who are considered to have completed their fertility (these are the same cohorts used in the descriptive analysis): there is no censoring, and we know whether the second birth took place or not. regarding fertility levels, we estimate the probability of having a second birth through logit models. these models are run among mothers with at least one child (n=120,946 for france, after excluding 7,174 observations due to missing values, and 10,247 minus two observations for spain). for the analysis of second birth timing after entering motherhood, we use lognormal durations models. assuming a non-monotonic hazard distribution, they are suitable to estimate duration to the next birth when hazards decrease over time (which is the case for second births) and show good statistical fi t compared to other model specifi cations. we focus on women who have had at least two children by the end of their reproductive life, so the produced estimates refl ect the timing of second births only, not their occurrence. we calculate predicted median birth intervals based on the estimates of the models. the lognormal models were run among a subsample of 92,213 french mothers with at least two children (after excluding 7,511 observations with missing values) and among 7,927 spanish mothers (after excluding 30 observations with missing values).3 in all models, we control for the birth cohort and allow the infl uence of age at fi rst birth to vary by level of education, including interaction terms. finally, we produce a second set of estimates using relative age instead of chronological age. 6 differences in occurrence and timing of second birth by age at fi rst birth and education before breaking down the analysis by age at fi rst birth, we describe, at the macro level, the different intensities and paces at which educational groups transitioned to motherhood and enlarged their families in france and spain. we only describe statistically signifi cant results (signifi cance level of 5 percent). for all cohorts (1935-74), transitions to fi rst birth decrease with the level of education, with a more signifi cant differential in spain than in france (table 2). the higher the woman’s degree, the later the fi rst birth is on average. within the same educational groups, women in spain postponed fi rst births more than women in france did; this was especially the case for highly-educated women (30.9 vs 28.3 years old on average). 3 additional analyses including further covariates were conducted when the information was available in the french survey (country of birth, professional category of the respondent’s father) and with relevant variables depending on those available in each spanish fertility survey. including these controls do not change the education, age at fi rst birth and cohort results substantially. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 319 among those who did become mothers, lower-educated women in france exhibited the highest progression ratio to a second child (8 out of 10 mothers). for women with medium and high educational attainment, the ratio is lower, but similar between the two groups (0.76-0.77), despite the large educational variations in the fi rst birth schedule. the median birth interval (bi2) was slightly shorter among low-educated women (under three years) than for other groups, but differences by educational degree were slight in france. conversely, in spain, transitions to second birth decreased more clearly with the level of education (from 0.79 to 0.70 between the ends of the educational scale). highly-educated women had a second child more quickly after the fi rstborn than other groups did (though only signifi cant compared to the medium educated). all in all, the relationship between second birth progressions and birth intervals is not straightforward. for instance, fewer highly-educated women in spain transitioned to second birth, even though they did so more quickly than the other groups. this may be explained by this group‘s much higher mean age at fi rst birth. to better understand this, we examine women according to their educational level and age at entry into motherhood. 6.1 a time squeeze effect? the top panel of figure 1 reports predicted probabilities of transitions to second birth and their confi dence intervals, estimated with logit models that include an interaction between age at fi rstborn and level of education, controlling for women’s birth cohorts. progressions to second birth decrease substantially with age for both countries. in france and spain, young and highly-educated fi rst-time mothers (<25 years) progress to second birth as often as their lower-educated counterparts of the same age at fi rst motherhood do. between 25 and 34 years old, highlytab. 2: levels and timing of progressions to fi rst and second birth by women’s educational level in france and spain (cohorts 1935-74) france spain 1st births 2nd births 1st births 2nd births ppr1 mab1 ppr2 median ppr1 mab1 ppr2 median bi2 bi2 high 0.83 28.3 0.77 3.08 0.73 30.9 0.70 3.08 medium 0.88 25.6 0.76 3.33 0.83 26.3 0.74 3.75 low 0.89 23.8 0.80 2.84 0.86 25.2 0.79 3.74 n (unweighted) 146,555 120,946 120,946 92,213 12,451 10,247 10,247 7,927 note: ppr refers to parity progression ratios to fi rst (ppr1) and second birth (ppr2). mab1 is the mean age at fi rst birth. bi2 are birth intervals between the fi rst and second births. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018) using survey weights. • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero320 educated women are more likely to enlarge their families, while ppr2 are similar between medium and lower-educated groups. in spain, ppr2 are also higher for higher-educated women after a late fi rstborn (35+), but this result is not signifi cant due to the small sample size (fig. 1b). the higher ppr2 at most ages for the most qualifi ed group explain why, when controlling for age at fi rst birth in both countries, higher-educated women are more likely to transition to second birth than those with medium educational attainment (see the estimates for second birth occurrence in table a2 in the appendix). despite similar graphs for france and spain in figure 1, the age compositions of mothers in the two countries differ, leading to various aggregate fertility outcomes as shown in table 2. in france, the median birth interval curves shown in the bottom panel of figure 1 display a similar bi2 between women with different educational levels. this is after a fi rst birth occurred between 25 and 34 years (fig. 1c).4 longer birth intervals among medium and highly-educated women at young ages can be explained by fi rst births occurring during schooling or entry into the labour market, prompting a second birth postponement. at later ages, the median birth interval is considerably shorter than for younger fi rst-time mothers and equal across groups. this may refl ect the similar effect biological limits have in constraining fertility, regardless of the educational degree. by combining the analysis of ppr2 and bi2 in france, we fi nd that second birth timing is more determined by age at fi rst birth than by the level of education. that is, the time squeeze hypothesis does not explain why highly-educated women in france demonstrate a higher ppr2 between ages 25 and 34, since they do not have their second child faster than other groups do. in spain, the picture is different – highly-educated women exhibit shorter birth intervals between the fi rst and second child than their counterparts in any age group do, except for those who became mothers before age 25 (fig. 1d).5 faster family enlargement among highly-educated mothers may explain why they exhibit higher ppr2 than lower-educated women. however, at age 25-29, women are not yet constrained by biological limits. thus, this correspondence between shorter birth intervals and larger transitions to second birth cannot be entirely attributed to a time squeeze effect. on the whole, in both countries, women over 30 and even more so over 35 years old at fi rst birth have a second child less frequently. however, when they do, they progress to second birth more quickly than other age groups do. the comparison with men lends support for an interpretation of these fi ndings partly in biological terms (see appendix a3): compared to later fi rst-time fathers, later fi rsttime mothers either have an only child or accelerate the second birth. in summary, the time squeeze hypothesis helps us understand the variations in progressions to second birth by age at fi rstborn. at the same time, biological constraints do not fully 4 see estimates without interaction in table a3. 5 there are also strong cohort effects on bi2 in spain, which are detailed in appendix 4. birth intervals increased signifi cantly between women born in 1935 and 1974, especially if the fi rst birth took place at a young age. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 321 explain the differences by education. indeed, in france, education and second birth timing seem disconnected (since patterns by education are different between ppr2 and bi2), while in spain, higher ppr2 is associated with faster second births but this is not specifi c to late ages. 6.2 a refl ection of various norms in fi rst-birth schedules? next, we explore age from a normative perspective by estimating the level and timing of second births using ages relative to women’s membership in educational groups and birth cohorts. this indicator allows us to examine family enlargement fig. 1: predicted progressions to second birth and median intervals between the fi rst and second birth (with confi dence intervals) by chronological age at fi rst child and education in france and spain note: predicted progressions to second birth are estimated with logit models and median bi2 with lognormal duration models. models control for cohort effects. results are shown here for the 1950-59 cohort (reference level). they are displayed with confi dence intervals (95%) in grey, which are small for france due to the large sample size. the full models can be found in tables a2 and a3 in the appendix. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 <25 35+ age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s rance 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 <25 35+ age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s education high medium low 0 1 2 3 5 <25 35+ age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) rance 0 1 2 3 5 <25 35+ age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) education high medium low • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero322 behaviours depending on whether women were deviating from or conforming to the prevailing fi rst-birth schedule within their group. switching to relative ages in lieu of chronological age cancels out educational differentials in the occurrence of second births in both countries (fig. 2a and 2b). for all educational groups, progressions to second birth decrease slightly between very early and late relative ages at fi rst birth – a less pronounced curve than with absolute age at fi rst birth – and decrease sharply from very late ages only.6 6 we can note that, among very late mothers at fi rst birth, low-educated women show higher ppr2 (fig. 2a and b, though not statistically signifi cant for spain because of the sample size). this may be explained by the lower age limits for this group (below age 30 in france) compared to highly or medium-educated women (table a2). fig. 2: predicted progressions to second birth and median birth intervals between the fi rst and second birth (with confi dence intervals) by relative age at fi rst child and education in france and spain note: predicted progressions to second birth are estimated using logit models and median bi2 with lognormal duration models. models control for cohort effects. results are shown here for the 1950-59 cohort (reference level). they are displayed with confi dence intervals (95%) in grey, which are small for france due to the large sample size. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 very early early late very late relative age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s rance 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 very early early late very late relative age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s education high medium low 0 1 2 3 4 5 very early early late very late relative age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) c) mothers of at least tw rance 0 1 2 3 4 5 very early early late very late relative age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) education high medium low d) mothers of at least tw transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 323 turning to birth intervals (bottom panel of fig. 2), medium-educated women in france take slightly more time than the other groups to enlarge their families (fig. 2c). in spain, despite the lack of an educational gap in ppr2 by relative age, highly-educated women have second births more quickly than their less-educated counterparts in each age group, except for the very early one (fig. 2d). birth intervals across relative age groups are also rather stable within each educational level, suggesting that the timing of a second child is barely infl uenced by the normative dimension of age within one’s group. for instance, having a fi rst birth at 27 can be considered late for medium-educated women and close to the norm for highly-educated women (table 2), but deviation or conformity to this norm does not infl uence the timing of the second birth strongly (fig. 2). notably, the fact that very early fi rst-time mothers do not tend to accelerate their second births suggests that they are not, as a group, more prone to family enlargement (with the exception of low-educated women in france who show slightly shorter birth intervals than their educational counterparts). it is only at very late ages that mothers from all educational groups have second births more quickly, a behaviour that possibly derives from both biological and normative pressures. 7 conclusion and discussion through a thorough exploration of second birth occurrence and timing among the 1935-74 cohorts in france and spain, we found that, at most reproductive ages, highly-educated mothers are more likely to have a second child than other groups are. to explain variations by age at fi rst birth and education, we found evidence for the two hypotheses we tested: an age-related time squeeze and the normative infl uence of age. first, as age at fi rst birth increases, there is a parallel decrease in the occurrence of second births and shortening in birth intervals in both countries, which can be interpreted as a time squeeze effect. especially for those entering motherhood at or above age 35, the shorter birth intervals we observe seem to refl ect a phenomenon in which mothers enlarge their family before it is “too late” by having a second child within a short timeframe. biological age effects on women’s family enlargement are also visible in the comparison with men’s fertility (which is less constrained by a decline in fecundity) since late fi rst-time fathers had second births more often and less quickly than late fi rst-time mothers. furthermore, we showed that the time squeeze is visible in all educational groups, but because highly-educated women tend to have their fi rst child later, the decrease with age in second birth progressions and birth intervals between the fi rst and second child explains some of the educational differences in the aggregate indicators. however, this time squeeze effect does not explain why the highly educated in spain accelerated the transition to a second child even before age becomes a biological constraint. next, we made alternative use of age-at-fi rst birth data by exploring the infl uence of differences in norms between groups on fertility enlargement. previous work highlights the importance of cultural factors in shaping transitions to second • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero324 birth (hoem 1996; van bavel/nitsche 2013; van bavel/różańska-putek 2010). we considered age a factor that may prevent or encourage women to enlarge their family more or less quickly, depending on the distribution of age at fi rst birth in their educational group and birth cohort. of fi rst note is that cultural and biological dimensions of age are linked. this link is particularly visible in the “very late fi rst-time mother” category. findings support the idea that age norms may be turning more fl uid (lazzari et al. 2022), as early or late fi rst-time mothers do not show substantially different behaviours related to family enlargement. more interestingly, we show that, for both countries, differences in fi rst-birth schedule standards explain the educational gap in second birth progressions. however, like the time squeeze effect, the relative dimension of age is insuffi cient to explain faster transitions to second birth among highly-educated women in spain. these conclusions leave room for alternative explanations. it has been assumed that second birth transitions among higher-educated mothers can be explained by a greater family proneness when compared to childless peers (kreyenfeld 2002). however, there is little support for this selection hypothesis in our analysis and the literature (bartus et al. 2013; billari/borgoni 2005), and selection effects may be more apparent while observing third birth dynamics (brzozowska et al. 2022). it can also be expected that, at the same age at fi rst birth, highly-educated women would be more likely to have a second child than less-educated women for fi nancial (because they can better afford to raise an additional child) or work-related reasons (to reduce cumulative time outside the labour market). such economic factors can also interact with the partner’s educational level, a relationship we did not explore here. however, previous work has found no evidence for a partner effect in france (köppen 2006) and spain (bueno/garcía-román 2021). nonetheless, data on women’s income or employment pathways or that of their partners would be useful in refi ning the analysis (baizán 2005). information on the motivations behind long or short birth intervals would also bring valuable insights. finally, fi ndings in spain suggest that women with a high level of education more often overcome normative and biological barriers to family enlargement by quickly transitioning to second birth. such an education effect is not found in france, and this could be explained if, in general, fertility decisions are more constrained in spain than in france. cross-country variations in family enlargement are often attributed to differences in family policies and economic factors. compared to france, childcare is less institutionalised and generous in spain (delgado et al. 2008), a country where labour market uncertainty has persisted for decades (adserà 2011a; bueno/brinton 2019). therefore, highly-educated spanish women may wait to start a family until their professional goals are achieved to limit time spent outside the labour market in order to secure higher salaries and greater stability (dueñas et al. 2017). after delaying childbearing, they likely fi nd themselves in a better fi nancial position than their lower-educated counterparts and are therefore able to transition to second birth more quickly. all in all, economic factors seem to signifi cantly infl uence family enlargement in spain more than in france, which could explain the greater educational gap. in addition, as labour conditions among young people in spain are more uncertain than in france, unemployment rates are transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 325 particularly high. this could explain why birth intervals for young fi rst-time mothers rose more substantially across cohorts in spain than in france. in spain, in addition to improving the reconciliation of work and family, implementing public policies aimed to reduce job precarity may make it more feasible to transition to a second child, especially for women with low levels of education. such conclusions are in line with recent work on low fertility levels in this country, calling for policies that not only target family behaviours but also increase social equality in education and labour market conditions (elizalde-san miguel et al. 2023). acknowledgements this work is supported by the austrian science fund via project fwf p31171-g29, (“later fertility in europe”); and grant pre2018-086566 funded by mcin/ aei/10.13039/501100011033 and “fse invierte en tu futuro”. references adserà, 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eva.beaujouan@univie.ac.at url: http://www.wittgensteincentre.org/en/staff/member/compans.htm http://www.wittgensteincentre.org/en/staff/member/beaujouan.htm cristina suero. spanish national research council, universidad carlos iii de madrid. madrid, spain. e-mail: cristina.suero@cchs.csic.es url: https://cchs.csic.es/es/personal/cristina-suero-garcia • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero332 tab. a1: age at fi rst birth corresponding for percentiles 25, 50 and 75 within educational groups and by birth cohort in france and spain france spain p25 p50 p75 p25 p50 p75 high 1935-39 23.5 25.9 29.0 25.0 27.7 31.0 1940-49 23.2 25.7 29.2 24.8 27.1 29.5 1950-59 24.0 26.8 30.4 24.3 27.3 30.7 1960-69 25.7 28.3 31.6 26.7 30.2 33.7 1970-74 26.5 28.6 30.9 28.9 31.9 35.0 medium 1935-39 22.1 24.2 26.8 18.2 20.2 22.2 1940-49 21.3 23.4 26.3 23.5 25.6 28.8 1950-59 23.7 26.4 30.1 22.3 24.3 27.2 1960-69 22.5 25.3 28.7 22.9 26.8 30.8 1970-74 23.0 25.7 28.6 24.3 28.4 31.9 low 1935-39 21.0 23.2 25.8 23.1 25.0 27.3 1940-49 20.2 22.2 24.8 22.3 24.4 26.7 1950-59 19.9 22.2 25.4 21.4 23.5 26.0 1960-69 20.4 23.2 27.2 22.1 25.6 29.3 1970-74 20.3 23.0 26.6 21.9 26.3 30.8 appendix appendix 1: relative ages at fi rst birth by level of education and birth cohort note: p=percentile. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018), using survey weights. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 333 appendix 2: multiple regression analyses tab. a2: estimation of transitions to second birth for women in france and spain (logit models) france spain coeff. std. err. p-value coeff. std. err. p-value age at fi rst birth < 25 0.711 0.02 0.000 0.652 0.07 0.000 25-29 0.000 0.000 30-34 -0.867 0.02 0.000 -0.732 0.07 0.000 35+ -1.992 0.03 0.000 -1.998 0.09 0.000 educational attainment high 0.442 0.02 0.000 0.085 0.06 0.000 medium 0.000 0.000 low 0.098 0.02 0.000 0.527 0.07 0.162 birth cohort 1935-39 0.022 0.03 0.483 0.883 0.13 0.000 1940-49 -0.154 0.02 0.000 0.701 0.09 0.000 1950-59 0.000 0.000 1960-69 0.236 0.02 0.000 -0.321 0.07 0.000 1970-74 0.185 0.03 0.000 -0.053 0.08 0.531 constant 1.030 0.02 0.000 1.219 0.07 0.000 n 117,612 10,245 log-likelihood -56,108 -4,716 source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero334 tab. a3: estimation of the duration between fi rst and second birth for women in france and spain (lognormal duration models) france spain coeff. std. err. p-value coeff. std. err. p-value age at fi rst birth < 25 0.015 0.01 0.007 -0.022 0.02 0.174 25-29 0.000 0.000 0.000 30-34 -0.119 0.01 0.000 -0.203 0.02 0.000 35+ -0.401 0.02 0.000 -0.470 0.04 0.000 educational attainment high -0.058 0.01 0.000 0.008 0.02 0.000 medium 0.000 0.000 low -0.098 0.01 0.000 -0.067 0.02 0.674 birth cohort 1935-39 -0.194 0.01 0.000 -0.330 0.03 0.000 1940-49 -0.163 0.01 0.000 -0.360 0.02 0.000 1950-59 0.000 0.000 1960-69 0.057 0.01 0.000 0.215 0.02 0.000 1970-74 0.041 0.01 0.000 0.245 0.03 0.000 constant 1.164 0.01 1.227 0.02 n 89,660 7,934 log-likelihood -98,178 -7,571 source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). appendix 3: comparison between male and female fertility family enlargement is often studied by observing female fertility, as data on male fertility by parity are scarcer. one might expect time squeeze effects to have less of an infl uence on fathers’ likelihood to progress to second birth than on mothers’ because men are less biologically constrained by age when conceiving. the survey data we use allow for some comparison between women’s and men’s fertility. for france, this analysis was conducted using the same cohorts as those used for women (1935-74, n=74,822 men after excluding multiple fi rst births). for spain, data on male fertility are only available in the 2018 spanish fertility survey (n=1,025). while the comparison to women’s fertility is possible, among the cohorts of interest the sample size is too limited to obtain signifi cant results by both men’s education and age at fi rst fatherhood. since men meet fewer biological barriers to conception than women, we expect more transitions to second birth and later completed fertility among fathers than transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 335 mothers. indeed, men have a higher probability than women of enlarging their family to two children, and this gender gap increases after age 30 (fig. a1a). results (not shown) do not differ by education. among late-fi rst-time parents, men also tend to have a second child within later and longer timeframes than women (fig. a1b). results are similar in both countries, although with large confi dence intervals for spain due to the small sample size (fig. a1c and a1d). in turn, differences in late fertility behaviours by sex provide evidence for a biological age effect on female family enlargement. 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 <25 35+ age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s a) p rance 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 <25 35+ age at first birth p ro gr es si o ns to s ec o nd b ir th s sex men women b) p 2 6 <25 35+ age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) c) parents of at least tw rance 2 6 <25 35+ age at first birth m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) sex men women d) parents of at least tw fig. a1: predicted progressions to second birth and median birth intervals between the fi rst and second birth (with confi dence intervals) by age at fi rst child and sex in france and spain note: progressions to second birth are estimated using logit models and median birth intervals with lognormal duration models. they are shown for women and men with medium educational attainment and for the cohort 1950-59 for france, and 1965-69 for spain (reference levels). they are displayed with confi dence intervals (95%) in grey, which are small for france due to the large sample size. source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). • marie-caroline compans, eva beaujouan, cristina suero336 7 for france, the specifi c decline among the 1970-74 cohort should be viewed with caution, since some women in the sample had just reached 37-38 years old at the time of the survey and may have experienced a second birth at later ages. this implies that some women will eventually have a second child before they turn older, which may fl atten the curve we see for women who became mothers at age 35 or more (fig. a2a) or at a relative very late age (fig. a2c). appendix 4: trends in birth intervals across cohorts across the observed cohorts, figure a2 shows substantial changes in birth intervals in spain (1935 to 1974). holding the level of education constant and allowing for the effect of age at fi rst birth to vary by cohort, the age gradient in the timing of second birth after the fi rst widened, especially compared to france (fig. a2a and a2b). birth intervals mainly increased among the youngest fi rst-time mothers in spain (<25 years old), with half of those born in the early 1970s enlarging their family nearly fi ve years after the fi rstborn. this is substantially above young mothers’ median birth interval in france (around 3.5 years). as birth intervals have increased across cohorts, the appropriate timing for entering motherhood has also shifted towards later ages. figures a2c and a2d display trends in birth intervals by relative age at fi rst motherhood across cohorts. in france and spain, among women born before the 1950s cohort, very late mothers did not have a second birth faster than other mothers did. when compared to other age groups, these women only accelerated second births from the 1960s cohorts onwards. these are cohorts for which the very late timing of the fi rst birth corresponds to ages above 30 years old (table a1).7 this, in turn, provides further evidence for a time squeeze effect. transitions to second birth and birth intervals in france and spain • 337 fig. a2: median interval between the fi rst and second birth (with confi dence intervals) across women’s cohorts by absolute and relative age at entering motherhood in france and spain 0 1 2 3 4 5 birth cohort m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) rance 0 1 2 3 4 5 birth cohort m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) abs. age at first birth <25 35+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 birth cohort m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) rance 0 1 2 3 4 5 birth cohort m ed ia n b ir th in te rv al (y ea rs ) rel. age at first birth very early early late very late note: median bi2 are estimated with lognormal duration models. they are displayed with confi dence intervals (95%) in grey, which are small for france due to the large sample size. models control for education (reference level = medium). source: own calculation based on the french family and housing survey (2011) and spanish fertility surveys (1989, 1999, 2018). published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? evidence using panel data and fixed-effects individual slopes does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? evidence using panel data and fixed-effects individual slopes* alexander gattig, lara minkus** abstract: many contemporary studies fi nd that married couples are more satisfi ed with life than unmarried people. however, whether marriage makes people more satisfi ed with life or whether more satisfi ed couples are more likely to marry remains a debated question. we reassess this relationship with panel data from the german family panel (pairfam) and extend previous analyses by adding individual trajectories (slopes) to standard fi xed-effects regressions (feis). we are thereby able to distinguish – controlling for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity – whether there is in fact an effect of marriage on life satisfaction, whether people who are simply happier in their relationship are more likely to get married, or whether people whose development in life satisfaction is more positive are more likely to get married. we translate these different social mechanisms into different analytical strategies and fi nd that ols regression – due to its confounding effects between and within persons – overestimates the effect of marriage on life satisfaction. a fi xed-effects estimator reveals a much lower effect of marriage on life satisfaction for couples who marry compared to those who continue to live apart together or cohabitate. additionally, using a feis estimator and adjusting for – non-linear – development of individual life satisfaction over time, suggests that this effect is in fact causal. keywords: life satisfaction · marriage · pairfam · panel data · feis models · causality comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 123-148 (date of release: 31.05.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-05 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-05en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on "identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data". ** both authors contributed equally to this paper and thus appear in alphabetical order. • alexander gattig, lara minkus124 1 introduction a vast body of research has examined the association between marriage and life satisfaction.1 most research concludes that there is a clear increase in happiness once people get married (clark et al. 2008; musick/bumpass 2012; tao 2019). however, despite this extensive research, the question whether marriage is really the cause of increased life satisfaction or if it is simply the case that individuals who are already more satisfi ed with life are more likely to get married is vigorously debated. due to the obvious impossibility of assigning marital status randomly, researchers have to rely on so-called observational data to infer the difference in life satisfaction between married and unmarried people. thus far, researchers have brought forth a variety of empirical strategies in order to disentangle causal effects of marriage from possible selection into marriage. especially due to the wide availability of panel data covering long time spans for many countries, considerable improvements have been made to disentangle the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction. a recurring fi nding from the literature, irrespective of crosssectional or longitudinal estimation techniques, is that happiness increases with marriage (di tella et al. 2003; qari 2014). however, the question as to whether this association is a "true effect" of marriage and to what extent it may or not be due to various forms of self-selection into marriage is still under discussion. thus, the questions that arise are whether the association between marriage and life satisfaction is causal and how such a potential effect could be identifi ed. the main goal of our article is thus twofold: first, we make a substantial contribution estimating the effect of marriage on life satisfaction by using the feis estimator, an estimator that has not been previously implemented in this strand of research, and secondly, we make a methodological contribution by discussing the strengths and limits of using different panel techniques for establishing different forms of causal inference in the social sciences. in the following, we add to this debate by employing a new panel estimator, which not only controls for time-constant individual heterogeneity, but also accounts for future individual development in life satisfaction. we are therefore able to disentangle to what extent this effect of marriage on happiness is a) due to a selection of satisfi ed people into marriage, b) a selection of people whose life satisfaction evolves more positively over time, or c) a true causal effect of marriage – that is, whether people select into marriage not because they are more satisfi ed with life than others but whose relationships evolve more positively over time. in line with previous research, we fi nd an increase in life satisfaction after marriage, or mechanism c) above. however, this effect is largely overestimated 1 the sociological and demographic literature on happiness and marriages uses the terms happiness and life satisfaction interchangeably. however, as one of the reviewers pointed out, the psychological literature clearly distinguishes between these two concepts. our dependent variable is a measure of overall life satisfaction, we therefore use the term "life satisfaction" in our study. however, when we refer to other authors, we use their respective terminology. does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 125 when not accounting for selection as in pooled ols regression. accounting (partially) for self-selection into marriage, or accounting for mechanism a) above, using a fi xed-effects estimator does presumably underestimate this effect since it does not fully control for the possibility that people with steeper trajectories in life satisfaction; people whose relationship evolves more positively over time, are more likely to be selected as marriage partners. this mechanism b) can only be accounted for when estimating fi xed effects with individual slopes (feis, see ludwig/brüderl 2018; rüttenauer/ludwig 2020; wooldridge 2010). our analysis results in a stronger effect of marriage on life satisfaction, which provides evidence that marriage does indeed make people more satisfi ed with life, or mechanism c) above. hence our results corroborate fi rstly a self-selection of people with higher life satisfaction into marriage and secondly a "true" effect of marriage on life satisfaction, which under specifi c assumptions can be interpreted as causal. in the following we will fi rst review the literature and the respective empirical strategies applied to investigate the relation between marriage and happiness. then we will discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses and introduce our estimator and how it improves on previous research. further, we will discuss different strategies to identify treatment effects, or casual inference, in the social sciences. thereafter we will present our data and our results and conclude with a discussion. 2 the link between marriage and life satisfaction background the relationship between subjective well-being and marriage has been vastly debated across different disciplines in the social sciences (cf. evans/kelley 2004; grover/helliwell 2019; lucas et al. 2003; perelli-harris et al. 2019; qari 2014; stutzer/ frey 2006). marriage is associated with a variety of benefi cial outcomes, both at the individual and the societal level. for example, marriage makes couples happier (clark et al. 2008), increases self-rated health (musick/bumpass 2012) and makes depression less likely (pearlin/johnson 1977), to only name a few of the benefi ts. there are four links that are commonly stressed when explaining the positive association between marriage and well-being (musick/bumpass 2012; umberson/ montez 2010). these can be separated as to whether they provide benefi ts of marriage over being single, that is whether it is benefi cial to live together with someone, or whether it is marriage that accounts for the difference. in the latter case, married couples should not only be more satisfi ed with life compared to singles but also with respect to cohabitating couples or couples who live apart together (lat). it is this latter contrast on which we focus in the paper. the literature clearly states that marriage and a romantic union in more general terms is benefi cial for life satisfaction in comparison to being single. these benefi ts unfold in many shapes and forms within different life domains. firstly, spouses give each other support; they provide companionship, and give partner’s access • alexander gattig, lara minkus126 to their social support network. as such, spouses will, for example, take care of each other if one of them becomes ill. in case of continued illness and in lack of proper and affordable care facilities, spouses are usually the ones to take over the often necessary (long-term) care (ehrlich/minkus/hess 2020; ehrlich/möhring/ drobnič 2020). secondly, marriage demands commitment as it legally binds two people together. those two people then commit each other to long-term fi nancial investments such as housing and sharing their wealth in more general terms (lersch/ vidal 2014; waitkus/minkus 2021). thirdly, from a social role perspective it is argued that marriage structures women’s and men’s lives by establishing the gendered division of household labour between couples (abramowski 2020; becker 1981; minkus/busch-heizmann 2020). while in principle these mechanisms also apply to unmarried couples, we argue that their effect on life satisfaction should be stronger for married couples since commitment and (perceived) structure should be more important for the latter. finally, an institutional perspective emphasizes that there are certain normative structures defi ning marriage as the appropriate behaviour. thus, marriage is socially more acceptable and, since people generally prefer to comply with social norms, they get married. this latter benefi t can only be reaped by married couples. in this article we focus on the increases in life satisfaction when transitioning from living apart together or cohabitation into marriage. a few studies have argued that in contemporary societies where cohabitation is becoming more frequent, it might take on the function of marriage (musick/bumpass 2012; perelli-harris et al. 2019). in line with our reasoning above, research shows that couples can also reap benefi ts from their subjective well-being when transitioning into cohabitation (blekesaune 2018; chen/van ours 2018; perelli-harris et al. 2019). however, we argue that there will be an additional benefi t when transitioning from cohabitation or lat to marriage (musick/bumpass 2012; schneider/rüger 2007) and that this additional benefi t is mainly due to the greater legal embeddedness marriage provides. weddings legally bind two people to the contract of marriage. within that contract there are many legally binding rules for couples. thus, for example, while unmarried couples can also commit to long-term investments, if they split up there are no or only few institutionalized rules as to how their wealth must be distributed among them, whereas there are some legally binding rules as to how wealth is distributed among spouses who divorce. the same is true for other life course events that potentially come along with legal repercussions, such as parenthood (i.e., paternal rights), inheritances or many insurance cases. what’s more, as mentioned above, marriage and weddings have a benefi t on their own: the fact that two people commit to a life-long union within a religious ceremony is cited as one of the key motives for weddings and the decision to get married – at least in germany (schneider/rüger 2007). thus, the ceremony as such as well as the commitment made to each other before friends, family and, possibly, the church is a desirable life goal. accordingly, contemporary research indeed fi nds evidence that there is an additional increase in subjective well-being when transitioning from cohabitation to marriage (blekesaune 2018; chen/van ours 2018). hence, in this article we will scrutinize the additional benefi ts of marriage over cohabitation and does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 127 lat, the other two forms of being in a romantic union, which adds to a theoretical debate and helps us to more precisely understand the mechanisms as to why living with a partner is benefi cial. selection or causation as discussed, there is an abundance of studies pointing toward an increase in subjective well-being when married. however, there has also been a long-standing debate on whether this effect is actually causal, or if the increase in life satisfaction can be attributed to self-selection, that is whether individuals who are more satisfi ed with life select themselves into marriage. thus, the question whether marriage makes you really more satisfi ed with life or if simply only satisfi ed people get married is an ongoing discussion in the literature. in the following, we will fi rst briefl y lay out how large-scale panel data advanced our knowledge on causal inference2 concerning the link between marriage and life satisfaction. then, we’ll extend this question of causality even further by asking if and which selection effects are present: is it really only more satisfi ed people that get married or people with happier future relationships that get married?3 lastly, we will provide an overview on causal inference and the different treatment effects and the assumptions under which it can be estimated. early studies in particular employed cross-sectional data for testing the association of marriage and life satisfaction. the large majority of them fi nds evidence that there is a positive association between marriage and subjective wellbeing (di tella et al. 2003; gove et al. 1983; lee/ono 2012; simon 2002; stack/ eshleman 1998). however, results from these studies can be interpreted as causal effects of marriage on life satisfaction only when making specifi c and often highly unlikely assumptions. specifi cally, these assumptions postulate that in a regression equation the relevant variable – marriage in our example – is uncorrelated with the error term, i.e., with unobserved variables or variables observed but omitted from the equation. this implies that all variables that are jointly correlated with the dependent and the central independent variable have to be added as control variables. this is known as the exogeneity condition in standard regressions. 2 "causal inference" differs slightly from "causal effect." we can infer what the counter-factual outcome would be – either in the population or in the sample – for those who are treated or for those in the control group. this may or may not be the case for causal effects. for example, a statement such as "if those who received treatment hadn’t, their behaviour would have changed by x" is a different statement than saying "treatment condition has an effect on behaviour." the former statement involves a number as well as a degree of uncertainty while the latter does not (hernán 2016). moreover, a statement such as "a is a cause of b" is much broader than "if a changes by x, b changes by y." 3 as we discuss below, we cannot infer the responsible mechanism with absolute certainty. however, we use relationship duration as a proxy for being in a happy and stable union that will continue to evolve positively in the future. thus, from an optional vanishing of the marriage effect, in the feis model as compared to the fe-model, we would deduce that the marriage effect is due to better future relationship quality. • alexander gattig, lara minkus128 however, including all potentially relevant variables is notoriously diffi cult. first, many of them are unobservable by defi nition or they are observable in principle but simply not included in the survey data at hand. secondly, many researchers are trained to think "more control is always better" and therefore they include as many control variables in their equation as possible. however, controlling too much can also result in biased estimates (for a discussion see elwert/winship 2014). to give an example, much of the modern applied discussion on causality draws on the evaluation of labour market programmes. let us assume that such a programme is designed to improve the labour market chances of unemployed individuals. however, this very participation of individuals in a specifi c programme might affect their motivation to look for work. thus, controlling for motivation in a regression framework might underestimate the causal effect of the programme on future employment, since motivation levels rose as a direct consequence of taking part in such a programme. thus, the research question of whether people who are more satisfi ed with life get married or if marriage actually makes you more satisfi ed could not be resolved by using ordinary, for example, least squares, regression. consequently, later studies concentrated on fi ltering out this very selection effect. since there is an extensive body of studies focusing on the question of association vs. causation, we concentrate on a few works that signify the most prominent empirical strategies employed in this strand of research. in a nutshell, four empirical strategies are used to identify causal relationships. first, some studies employed a matching estimator using cross-sectional data (perelli-harris et al. 2019). here, fi rst the probability of entering the treatment, that is marriage, is modelled, thereafter people with identical probabilities for marriage are matched and their happiness is compared. this approach yields proper estimates of causal effects if the selection process into marriage is correctly specifi ed. thus, it "cures" the bias caused by the omission of control variables. however, this strategy requires, fi rst of all, that all variables that govern this selection process have been measured ("observed"), secondly, that the selection model including these variables is correctly specifi ed, and thirdly, that the matching algorithm is correctly specifi ed as well. in practice, all three assumptions are problematic and hence empirically the estimators from matching procedures often tend to vary greatly (e.g., morgan/ winship 2015). second, some (panel) studies employ a lagged dependent measure (lv) of happiness prior to marriage (grover/helliwell 2019), thereby controlling for prior happiness levels of respondents. using this strategy, one is indeed able to control for happiness prior to marriage and hence to control for potential self-selection into marriage. this strategy, however, severely violates an additional assumption for regressions using panel data, namely strict exogeneity:4 prior life satisfaction 4 strict exogeneity, compared to exogeneity explained above, means that in addition to the regression assumptions, all independent and the dependent variable are uncorrelated with their past and future values. this – stronger – assumption is obviously mainly of relevance when panel data are being used. does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 129 levels are very likely to infl uence current ones (i.e., one rarely moves from being depressed to being very satisfi ed with one’s life within a year) and are likely to be correlated with previous and future values of the independent variables x. there are also many studies that combine the fi xed effects estimator (explained below) with a lagged dependent measure of subjective well-being (chen/van ours 2018). however, it should be noted that these two empirical strategies assume different data-generating processes and hence are suited for different research questions. a lagged dependent variable approach for panel data may be appropriate if one wants to investigate how strongly past outcomes infl uence current ones. consider for example the question as to whether stereotypes about foreigners reduce contact with foreigners or whether stereotypes about foreigners are nourished simply because there is no contact with them. using a (cross-)lagged panel model would reveal how strong the effects of previous states, or attitudes towards foreigners, on future values of this variable are. fixed effects estimators, by contrast, reveal the effect on y of a change in x within a person. these are substantially different research questions (see brüderl/ludwig 2015 for an extensive discussion of whether and when the investigator’s focus should be on within changes or state dependency). additionally, research has shown that lv estimators are in danger of being biased, this applies to linear regression as well as fi xed effects environments (nickell 1981; phillips/sul 2007). third, another strategy is to include time dummies for the time prior to and after marriage when predicting happiness (blekesaune 2018). again, this can also be done in combination with a fi xed effects estimator (qari 2014; tao 2019). employing this combination, one is able to track the decline and/or increase in life satisfaction prior to and after marriage, or the general trend or development over time, while simultaneously controlling for unobserved factors that are related to time periods. yet if these time dummies capture unobserved heterogeneity, as they are likely to do, they are most likely correlated with previous and future values of the dependent and independent variables, thereby again violating strict exogeneity. therefore, just adding time dummies is insuffi cient as the only solution to identify causal effects but it provides a useful supplementary strategy to control for trends (see below). fourth, as has already become obvious from the above, some studies use a fi xed-effects estimator (fe) in order to estimate the effect of marriage on well-being (musick/bumpass 2012; næss et al. 2015). these models have arguably become the central tool in the analysis of panel data outcomes. in fe models, outcomes are derived by de-meaned individual changes. here, each individual has a personspecifi c mean, from this person-specifi c mean all individual deviations over time are subtracted and only these changes are used when estimating the fe model. thus, in the case of marital transition, only those respondents who actually have a change in relationship status and other relevant independent variables, for example from being in cohabitation or lat to being married, are analysed. this procedure cancels out all time-invariant personal characteristics and between person heterogeneity; presumably stable personal characteristics such as gender, personal ideology, or religiosity, are mathematically eliminated (allison 2009; brüderl/ludwig 2015; • alexander gattig, lara minkus130 wooldridge 2010).5 formally, a regression model with dependent variable y, independent time-constant variable x and independent time-varying variable z, as well error components e and u in a panel context can be described as: yit = b1zit + b2xi + eit + ui where the subscripts i and t indicate variation across individuals (i) or time (t). the fi xed-effects model then is: yit yi = b1 (zit z̅ i) + b2 (xi xi) + (eit e̅ i) + (ui ui) here it becomes evident that all stable individual characteristics are cancelled out and hence are being controlled for (xi xi = 0, because there is no subscript t; and the time-constant individual error u, ui ui = 0). the only coeffi cient that can be estimated is the time-varying effect b1 (zit z̅ i). as can be seen from the theoretical overview above, the fi xed-effects model has become the cornerstone of longitudinal data analysis. an fe model therefore can potentially distinguish whether marriage makes people more satisfi ed with life – the within estimator of marriage would be positive – or whether there is a selection effect of people who are constantly satisfi ed with life into marriage. this would be the case when an ols estimator, which combines effects within and between persons, for marriage is positive but an effect within persons is absent. this would indicate that the ols effect combining within and between effects is solely due to effects between individuals, or selfselection into marriage based on unobserved characteristics. however, this model needs assumptions, too. first, to arrive at unbiased (within) effects, it is assumed that all errors or unobservable elements within a unit are time-constant. sometimes this assumption may be highly unlikely, especially in the case of long panel data sets. for example, priorities between work and family life may change over the life course due to specifi c life events such as the birth of children, thereby making unobservable personal characteristics such as work motivation time-varying. bollen and brand (2010) provide a statistical test for the mainly untested and often heroic assumption of stable unobservable personal characteristics within the realm of structural equation modelling. yet these tests are rarely acknowledged or carried out within the more econometrically driven fi xedeffects literature. secondly, it assumes that treated, or married, and untreated, or unmarried, people would behave similarly if they were in a different treatment condition. this is the so-called parallel trends assumption (cf. brüderl/ludwig 2015). in the setting of marriage and life satisfaction this would imply that over time, the development in life satisfaction would evolve parallel for those who are married and 5 fixed-effects models have been extended to random-effects model, and hybrid models (allison 2009). however, the major advantage of these latter models is to jointly estimate the effect of time-varying and time-constant variables. since our focus is on the effect of marriage on life satisfaction and both variables are varying over time, we omit the discussion of these models here. see brüderl/ludwig (2015) for such a discussion. does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 131 those who are cohabitating or lat. however, this assumption would be violated if people whose life satisfaction evolves more positively in the course of a relationship are more likely to get married. yet this effect would be independent from marriage and these people would be more satisfi ed with life irrespective of marriage because their (future) relationship works well. in the following, we use a recent extension of fe model, viz. the fi xed-effects models with individual slopes (feis) (ludwig/brüderl 2018; wooldridge 2010), which accounts for the second shortcoming mentioned above by relaxing the parallel trends assumption. the feis is a generalized fe estimator that allows for different slopes among subgroups by de-trending for the individual trajectory in the dependent and independent variable (ludwig/brüderl 2018; rüttenauer/ludwig 2020; wooldridge 2010). that (within) effects of an independent variable differ across subgroups is a standard fi nding in empirical studies and is usually modelled by the inclusion of interaction effects, such as in an fe model. the feis model, however, allows for a different form of effect heterogeneity, viz. that the effect of marriage on life satisfaction might differ for those who marry and those who do not. more specifi cally, married couples are not only more satisfi ed with life than unmarried ones at the time of marriage, but continue to become even more satisfi ed in the development of their relationship. put differently, using an fe estimator allows us to check whether it is simply people who are more satisfi ed with life that get married and employing the feis estimator one can additionally check whether these people are in happier (future) relationships than their unmarried counterparts. for a graphic illustration of this empirical problem see figure 1. lif e sa tis fa ct io n relationship duration cohabiting/lat married marriage a. true causal effects lif e sa tis fa ct io n relationship duration cohabiting/lat selection on happiness selection on relationship quality marriage b. spurious causal effects fig. 1: potential effects of marriage on life satisfaction source: own illustration, based on brüderl/ludwig (2015). • alexander gattig, lara minkus132 often, such effect heterogeneity across groups is investigated by estimating interaction effects across specifi c subgroups and the respective treatment. the feis model, however, allows for different selection of subgroups or individuals into treatment. theoretically therefore, if an feis model is statistically preferable to a standard fe model, this would lend credibility against a causal interpretation of a marriage effect on life satisfaction. instead, a non-signifi cant effect of marriage on life satisfaction in an feis model would foster the interpretation that happier people are indeed selected into marriage, that is, they are chosen as marriage partners, but not on the basis of being more satisfi ed in life in general but on the basis of being in happier (future) relationships. we will test this assumption in the following, but beforehand we will briefl y discuss whether there is such a thing as "the causal effect" in the social sciences and which treatment effects can be identifi ed in research, especially when using observational data instead of experimental data. causal inference and the different treatment effects up to now, we have talked about causal effects or causality rather loosely. in fact, the literature of causal effects and their proper estimation has grown extensively in recent decades and it has identifi ed a variety of causal effects, each with a different interpretation (cf. morgan/winship 2015 for a thorough and excellent review). hence, there is no such thing as "the causal effect." we therefore, in the following, briefl y present and discuss the most commonly investigated causal effects. these are the average treatment effect (ate), the average treatment effect on the treated (att or atet in econometric or stata terminology), and the average treatment effect on the control group (atc). for other variants, such as local average treatment effects (late) or marginal treatment effects, we refer to morgan and winship (2015). table 1 illustrates how these treatment effects differ and under which assumptions they can be estimated. moreover, it demonstrates how the fe estimator and its feis generalization improve estimations compared to cross-sectional data. first one must note that in experiments, the researcher has full control over the assignments of units into the treatment and the control group. the selection process into these two groups therefore is potentially completely randomized and the mean difference between the treatment and the control group tells the researcher how the treated would have behaved if they were in the control group and vice versa. in experiments, therefore, all of the three treatment effects above are identical and their interpretation as "true" causal effects is widely established. however, in real life, experimental manipulation is not possible or feasible and the researcher does not have such full control over treatment assignment. these data are often called observational data: only the group-mean values for those treated, married, can be observed and only the group-mean value for those who are not married. yet again, the researcher cannot observe, but has to estimate how those in the treatment group would have behaved if they were in the control groups and the other way does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 133 around. in such scenarios, causal inference is much harder to establish and relies on specifi c assumptions, which may or may not hold true. the following table 1 demonstrates how and under what conditions atc, ate or att will differ – and how a standard ols regression based on observational data will necessarily result in biased estimates. note that we cannot observe all cells displayed in the table, which is the core of the problem. we distinguish between those in the treatment group whose expected values are given by e(t) and those in the control group whose expected values are given by e(c). thus, to arrive at proper treatment effects, we have to subtract the values in the respective columns. however, we only observe the value e(t) for those receiving the treatment, or are in the treatment group, and the value e(c) for those who do not receive the treatment, or are in the control group. the other two cells – "control group" for those in the treatment e(t) and "treatment group" for those in the control group e(c) – have to be estimated. the fi rst panel ("homogeneous effects, same values") gives a situation without self-selection into treatment, or treatment is randomized and exogeneity is as in classical experiments: the treated individuals – mean observed value 10 in the row e(t) – would have yielded a mean value of 8 (unobserved) if they had been assigned to the control group. hence, they would have shown the same behaviour as those in the control group if the latter had received treatment. only in this case would a regression analysis comparing means across groups give us the correct treatment effect of 2. moreover, this effect would be the att, the atc, and the ate. now consider the next panel ("homogeneous effects, different starting values"). for both groups (t and c) the treatment effect would be 2, again by subtracting values in the respective columns for treatment, e(t), and control group, e(c). however, a regression analysis would compare the observed mean values e(t) for those in the treatment group with the observed mean values e(c) in the control group, (erroneously) estimating the causal effect at 5 (10-5 in the diagonal for the observed tab. 1: treatment effects for treatment (t) and control (c) group with identical and varying starting values as well as equal and different effects for atc, att, and ate homogeneous effects homogeneous effects heterogeneous effects for t and c, same for t and c, different for t and c, different values for t and c values for t and c values for t and c e(t) e(c) e(t) e(c) e(t) e(c) treatment group 10 10 10 7 10 6 control group 8 8 8 5 8 5 atc: average treatment effect for the control group, att: average treatment effect for the treated, ate: average treatment effect in the sample. e(t) and e(c) denote the respective (only partially observed) expected values for the treatment and control group, treatment effects can be derived by subtracting values in the rows for each respective group. source: own illustration, based on on morgan/winship (2015). • alexander gattig, lara minkus134 values). however, again, att, atc, and ate are identical if properly estimated by subtracting values in the respective rows. this bias in standard regression results is due to the non-random treatment assignment, in other words, treatment and control group also differ in other respects and not solely in the treatment assignment. in the fi nal panel however, even this is different. again, those receiving the treatment have higher initial values of y than those in the control group – if those who receive the treatment had not received treatment, we would observe values of 8 instead of 10, compared to those in the control group of 6 and 5 respectively. hence, treatment is not assigned randomly – apparently there is something unobserved that selects respondents into treatment and exogeneity does not apply. however, to make things more complicated, the treatment effect now differs for both groups: the att would be 2, the atc would be 1, the ate would be an average depending on the distribution of the treatment across the sample, and the ols-coeffi cient would be an obscure 5, far from either relevant effect. as a potential solution for these problems, estimation techniques for panel data have been proposed that focus on the changes within persons, thereby using individuals in a pre-treatment phase as their own control group – whose values have been observed. nevertheless, the core problem with observational data of partially unobservable values for groups also arises when panel data and methods such as fe or feis are used. despite providing more information than cross-sectional data, again treatment is not randomly assigned. therefore, fi xed-effects estimators, with or without effect heterogeneity, that is, individual slopes, only give the average treatment effect on the treated (att). we can observe how those who receive treatment behave afterwards. that is, we compare the values in the columns for those who are treated before and after treatment. however, we cannot observe how those who do not receive treatment would have behaved if they had received treatment. the atc and consequently the ate, which is a weighted average of atc and att, remain unknown. it may be argued that in our case this is exactly what is wanted. "what is the effect of marriage on life satisfaction for those who marry?" may be a more relevant question than "what would be the effect of marriage on those who never get married if they would get married?" however, since for the latter there might be observables and unobservables that prevent those people from being married, if they were to be married "by force" their att might differ substantially. this judgment may differ for other research purposes, but it is an important restriction to keep in mind. for example, we could identify the effect of a divorce on life satisfaction (or earnings, or whatever) with an fe estimator. this would give us the effect of the treatment, that is, the att. however, we might want to assess the effect of a programme for preventing divorce. in that case, we would be interested in how life satisfaction or earnings would change for those not yet divorced, or the atc. does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 135 3 data and methods data this study uses data from the fi rst 11 waves of the german family panel (brüderl et al. 2019). starting in 2008, the german family panel (pairfam) provides data on the formation and the development of intimate relationships and families in germany (huinink et al. 2011). data are collected annually from a nationwide random sample of four birth cohorts (1971-73, 1981-83, 1991-93, and, since wave 11, 2001-2003). a special feature of the panel is the multi-actor design: in addition to the initial respondent, his/her partner, child(ren) and parents are also interviewed. after the initial attrition between the fi rst and second wave (23 percent), pairfam’s panel attrition was very low (currently 8 percent, see brüderl et al. 2020). sample we start out with 83,132 person-years. first, we exclude respondents from the pairfam demodiff sample,6 reducing our original sample by about 9 percent. next, following brüderl and ludwig (2015), we exclude respondents who stated that they were married, divorced, or widowed in pairfam’s fi rst wave and thereby lose about 32 percent of the remaining sample. likewise, we exclude all subsequent person-years for respondents after the year they report having had a divorce or becoming widowed, reducing the remaining sample again by about 1 percent. thereafter, we dropped all person-years for singles, reducing the remaining sample by about 47 percent. then we delete all respondent-years with missing values on life satisfaction, marital status, and our independent variables, causing an additional loss of 0.1 percent of the remaining sample. lastly, because feis needs at least three person-years (depending on the number of individual slope parameters), we had to drop everyone who is observed less than three times. those restrictions reduce the remaining sample again by roughly 18 percent. this leaves us with a sample size of 3,350 persons and 22,007 person-years. variables as the dependent variable we employ overall life satisfaction. more specifi cally, every respondent in all eleven waves is asked "now i would like to ask about your general satisfaction with life. all in all, how satisfi ed are you with your life at the moment?" they then have to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from 0 "very unsatisfi ed" to 10 "very satisfi ed." 6 demodiff is a supplement to pairfam for east german respondents only. there are several problems when integrating pairfam and demodiff, thus we decided to drop demodiff entirely from the sample. • alexander gattig, lara minkus136 our main variable of interest, marital status, is a time-varying measure coded as one, once a respondent gets married. the dummy is coded one if respondents are married and cohabiting (n = 4499) or married and live separately (n = 41). furthermore, we employ the continuous variable relationship duration. this variable is measured in years and represents the duration of the relationship of married and non-married couples. as explained above, controlling for individual trajectories of relationship duration and its impact on life satisfaction constitutes the major difference between the feis model and the fe model. if the marriage effect on life satisfaction is due to steeper trajectories in relationship quality, this would imply that people with greater life satisfaction are more likely to marry, which would run counter to the interpretation of a causal effect of marriage. we employ several controls. first, we employ categorical dummies measuring education retrieved from the casmin categories: lower secondary education and below ("low education"), higher education entrance qualifi cation and below ("intermediate education"), tertiary education ("higher education"), and being "currently enrolled." additionally, we control for age (in years) and the number of biological children. descriptive statistics for these variables and the two samples are displayed in table 2. ever-married never-married ∆ mean sd mean sd life satisfaction 7.90 1.44 7.69 1.53 0.21*** relationship duration (years) 7.07 5.07 3.71 4.21 3.36*** education low education 0.12 0.32 0.11 0.31 0.01* intermediate education 0.46 0.50 0.35 0.48 0.11*** higher education 0.31 0.46 0.15 0.36 0.17*** currently enrolled 0.11 0.31 0.40 0.49 -0.29*** number of children 0.69 0.89 0.26 0.64 0.43*** age (years) 31.0 6.34 25.9 7.50 5.14*** observations (n) 8334 13673 22007 persons (n) 993 2357 3350 tab. 2: descriptive statistics note: not weighted; sd = standard deviation. stars indicate the signifi cance of differences in means; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. source: based on pairfam 11.0, own calculations does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 137 4 findings descriptive fi ndings table 2 illustrates that on average, people who get married are more satisfi ed with life than those who do not. they also have longer relationships, more children, and higher education levels. additionally, descriptive results suggest that ever-married respondents are on average older and signifi cantly less often currently enrolled. thus, fi rst descriptive evidence suggests that there are clear observable differences, indicating that people who get married are systematically different from those who do not. since, as discussed above, such systematic differences can bias results, we follow up with a more detailed analysis to detect a potential causal effect. regression analysis including control variables for instructional purposes we compare our feis estimator not only with its fe counterpart but also with the results obtained by an ols regression for the pooled sample and by an fe regression, where we interact the marriage effect with relationship duration (fegs). this allows us to separate the att of marriage (fe estimator) from an estimator confounding att and self-selection into marriage (ols estimator). in addition, it allows us to properly estimate the att due to potential additional selection into marriage based on the identifi cation of individuals whose life satisfaction evolves more favourably over time (feis estimator). if this estimator differs from the fe estimator, then there is not only self-selection of more satisfi ed people into marriage but additional self-selection of people whose life satisfaction evolves more favourably over time. if the effect of marriage turns insignifi cant when using a feis estimator, this would provide strong evidence against a causal effect (att) of marriage on life satisfaction (see ludwig/brüderl 2018 for an example). if the effect of marriage would remain signifi cant, it would provide evidence for an att, even after controlling for this additional source of self-selection.7 the main results from these analyses are depicted in table 3.8 we can see that the effect of marriage on life satisfaction is overestimated when employing the ordinary least square estimator. the pols coeffi cient is three times as large as the coeffi cient estimated using an fe model. this former effect is clearly biased since it confounds the effect of marriage within those who marry with the selection effect that people who are more satisfi ed with life are also more likely to get married. since both of these effects work in the same direction and this estimate is much higher than the estimates obtained from the within estimators, the fe model supports the notion of a causal – albeit weaker – effect (att) of marriage on life satisfaction. 7 indeed, brüderl and ludwig have modelled the association of happiness and marriages within a feis framework in their previous research (brüderl and ludwig, april 2019). assigning singles and cohabiting couples in the control group, they also fi nd that marriage affects happiness positively, even when controlling for individual growth. 8 feis models are estimated using the stata command xtfeis provided by ludwig (2015). • alexander gattig, lara minkus138 p o ls fe fe g s fe is m ar ri ed 0. 42 ** * (0 .0 5) 0. 14 ** * (0 .0 4) 0. 15 ** (0 .0 5) 0. 14 ** (0 .0 5) r el at io n sh ip d ur at io n (y ea rs ) 0. 02 ** (0 .0 1) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 1) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 1) lo w e du ca ti on ( r ef .) in te rm ed ia te e d u ca tio n 0. 26 ** (0 .0 8) 0. 16 (0 .1 0) 0. 16 (0 .1 0) 0. 17 (0 .1 1) h ig he r ed uc at io n 0. 47 ** * (0 .0 9) 0. 21 * (0 .1 0) 0. 21 * (0 .1 0) 0. 16 (0 .1 2) c ur re n tl y en ro lle d 0. 37 ** * (0 .0 8) 0. 25 ** (0 .0 9) 0. 25 ** (0 .0 9) 0. 24 * (0 .1 0) n um b er o f c hi ld re n -0 .0 7* (0 .0 3) 0. 09 ** (0 .0 3) 0. 09 ** (0 .0 3) 0. 10 * (0 .0 4) a g e (y ea rs ) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 0) -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 1 (0 .0 1) e ve r m ar ri ed x r el at io n sh ip d ur at io n -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) p er so n s (n ) 33 50 33 50 33 50 33 50 o b se rv at io n s (n ) 22 00 7 22 00 7 22 00 7 22 00 7 r s q u ar ed 1 0. 03 4 0. 00 5 0. 00 5 0. 00 2 ta b . 3 : m ar it al in cr ea se in li fe s at is fa ct io n es tim at ed u si ng p o ls , f e , f e g s , a nd f e is 1 p le as e no te th at th e re p o rt ed r 2 fo r fe , f e g s , a nd f e is is th e w ith in r 2 . s ta nd ar d e rr o rs in p ar en th es es . * p < 0 .0 5, ** p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 01 . s o ur ce : b as ed o n p ai rf am 1 1. 0, o w n ca lc ul at io ns does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 139 extending this model to a model that allows this effect of marriage to differ according to relationship duration (fegs), the non-signifi cant interaction effect gives us a fi rst hint that there are no group-specifi c deviations in slopes. thus, we clearly have to differentiate between a (non-existent) heterogeneous effect of marriage across groups as illustrated with the non-signifi cant respective fegs coeffi cients and a different propensity of becoming married across different groups, as illustrated by the large difference in the pols to the fe coeffi cient. the feis model displays a similar coeffi cient to the fe model. the effect of marriage on life satisfaction remains signifi cant and identical in size. thus, we do not have a spurious effect of marriage on life satisfaction caused by different individual life satisfaction trajectories. to further test whether this suspicion proves correct, we estimated a hausman test designed to assess the model fi t of feis vs. fe models. we fi nd that there are no signifi cant differences between feis and standard fe (prob > chi2 = 0.92). non-linear dynamics of marriage on life satisfaction in the previous analysis, we assumed a linear effect of relationship duration and development in life satisfaction. that is, we assumed that for each individual, life satisfaction steadily and linearly increases or decreases with relationship duration. however, contemporary literature examining the link between marriage and life satisfaction found evidence that the association between the two is not linear (cf. blekesaune 2018; qari 2014; tao 2019). to test this assumption, we estimated two additional feis models, one adding a squared term of relationship duration and the other adding not only a squared but also a cubic term in addition to the linear term of relationship duration for modelling individual life satisfaction trajectories.9 table 4 shows that the effect of marriage on life satisfaction becomes greater when including polynomials. however, hausmann tests again showed that there is no additional gain when modelling squared (prob > chi2 = 0.54) or squared and cubic terms (prob > chi2 = 0.26) in addition to the linear term, as opposed to a simple fi xed-effects regression. table 4 provides tentative evidence that the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction is not linear over time. to test to what extent life satisfaction varies preand post-marriage, we ran pols and fe regression including yearly time dummies. we restricted the sample to ever-married couples, four years prior, the year of the marriage, and four years after marriage. results are depicted in table 5. results suggest that the effect of marriage on life satisfaction varies over the years and is especially strong in the year of marriages as well as one year prior to marriage. 9 please note that observation numbers are smaller in the models that include polynomials. this is due to the increased degrees of freedom of the respective models, see also ludwig and brüderl (2018). • alexander gattig, lara minkus140 fe is fe is (s q u ar ed r el at io n sh ip fe is (s q u ar ed a n d c ub ic d ur at io n) re la tio n sh ip d ur at io n) m ar ri ed 0. 13 ** (0 .0 5) 0. 15 * (0 .0 6) 0. 21 ** (0 .0 8) lo w e du ca ti on ( r ef .) in te rm ed ia te e d uc at io n 0. 19 (0 .1 2) 0. 06 (0 .1 5) 0. 00 (0 .1 8) h ig he r ed uc at io n 0. 19 (0 .1 3) 0. 03 (0 .1 6) -0 .0 4 (0 .1 9) c ur re n tl y en ro lle d 0. 24 * (0 .1 2) 0. 12 (0 .1 4) 0. 07 (0 .1 8) n um b er o f c hi ld re n 0. 09 * (0 .0 4) 0. 13 * (0 .0 5) 0. 14 * (0 .0 6) a g e (y ea rs ) -0 .0 1 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) 0. 00 3 r s q u ar ed (w it hi n) 0. 00 2 0. 00 2 o b se rv at io n s (n ) 18 39 7 18 39 7 18 39 7 p er so n s (n ) 23 01 23 01 23 01 ta b . 4 : m ar it al in cr ea se in li fe s at is fa ct io n; f e is m o d el ; in cl ud in g o nl y lin ea r, sq ua re d a nd c ub ic t er m s ta nd ar d e rr o rs in p ar en th es es . * p < 0 .0 5, ** p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 01 . s o ur ce : b as ed o n p ai rf am 1 1. 0, o w n ca lc ul at io ns does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 141 thus, marriage does make people more satisfi ed with life, but not so much in the long run. fixed-effects results in table 5 instead suggest that it is the anticipation of marriage and the year of marriage during which couples are signifi cantly more satisfi ed with life. this supports the argument that marriage does have an intrinsic value, making respondents more satisfi ed. this value is neither necessarily tied to objective (long-term) legal benefi ts such as additional rights that are only granted to spouses nor to the benefi ts of living together with a partner. in our opinion, it is related to compliance with social norms and, potentially, to the anticipation of a wedding as a pleasant social event (cf. schneider/rüger 2007). robustness finally, we would like to draw attention to the selection of control variables. in a robustness analysis (see table a1 in the appendix), we added a control variable for current pregnancy. the table in the appendix illustrates that our main result, i.e. marriage increases life satisafaction, is robust, although the association becomes tab. 5: marital increase in life satisfaction estimated using pols and fe; sample restricted to four years prior to and after marriage pols fe married (time) three years to marriage (ref.) four years to marriage -0.08 (0.07) -0.14 (0.10) two years to marriage 0.09 (0.06) 0.17 (0.09) one year to marriage 0.13* (0.07) 0.32* (0.15) year of marriage 0.22** (0.07) 0.49* (0.21) one year after marriage 0.15 (0.08) 0.47 (0.28) two years after marriage 0.12 (0.08) 0.49 (0.35) three years after marriage 0.20* (0.09) 0.60 (0.42) four years to marriage 0.07 (0.10) 0.55 (0.48) low education (ref.) intermediate education 0.11 (0.12) -0.16 (0.21) higher education 0.33** (0.12) 0.03 (0.22) currently enrolled 0.05 (0.13) -0.13 (0.19) number of children -0.05 (0.04) 0.07 (0.04) age (years) -0.01 (0.01) -0.03* (0.01) constant 8.11*** (0.23) 8.71*** (0.37) persons (n) 993 993 observations (n) 6194 6194 r squared1 0.01 0.01 1 please note that the reported r2 for the fe model is the within r2. standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. source: based on pairfam 11.0, own calculations • alexander gattig, lara minkus142 slightly weaker once we control for pregnancy. however, pregnancy is in all likelihood closely related to the future development of a relationship, which is exactly what we are trying to model with the feis estimator. moreover, the temporal relationship between marriage and pregnancy is unclear. it is possible that there is a causal effect of marriage on pregnancy; that if people had not married, a pregnancy would not have occurred, as well as the other way around; that people marry because of a pregnancy. to complicate matters further, people may marry because they anticipate becoming pregnant or vice versa. in our specifi cation, these mechanisms cannot be further separated.10 we therefore decided to refrain from accounting for pregnancy in the main analysis presented in this article. 5 summary and discussion the main goal of our article was twofold: the fi rst was to properly estimate the substantial causal effect of marriage on life satisfaction and the second was to lay out and discuss the strengths and limitations of establishing causal inference using panel techniques. as to the substantial question, comparing married to unmarried couples, we found that there is indeed an instant and genuine increase in life satisfaction when people get married. this effect is overestimated in pols models and decreases a great deal when employing a fi xed effects estimator (fe estimator). our analysis revealed that people in happier relationships are more likely to get married, but that marriage among cohabiting/lat couples nevertheless increases life satisfaction substantially. in addition, we extended the widely employed fe estimator that separates these two effects with the feis estimator that controls for different developments of life satisfaction over time. thereby, we demonstrated that it is not the selection into marriage of individuals who are more satisfi ed with life in future, but a genuinely positive effect of marriage on life satisfaction. however, we also found that the relationship between life satisfaction and marriage is potentially underestimated when using a linear term for estimating such individual trajectories. instead, the true coeffi cient is apparently modelled more correctly when allowing for non-linear trends in the development of relationship quality. selection into marriage thus occurs not only because of higher current life satisfaction levels but also higher (non-linear) growth of relationship quality, thereby qualifying the "causal effect" (att) derived from the fe estimator. in substantial terms, our analysis further showed that one is especially satisfi ed with life in anticipation of marriage (i.e., one year prior to the wedding), and during the wedding year. 10 an excellent discussion on when and how to include such future anticipated treatments can be found in elwert and pfeffer (2019); elwert and winship (2014) provide a more general discussion on the perils of controlling too much. both papers provide formal representations within a directed acyclical graph (dag) framework. an extensive discussion of this framework is beyond the scope of this paper; the interested reader is again referred to morgan and winship (2015). does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 143 in summary, our evidence shows that marriage indeed makes cohabiting/ lat couples happier, and it does so for reasons additional to being in a romantic relationship. theoretical arguments laid out in the manuscript suggest that this is possibly the legally binding character of marriage as well as the anticipation of the festive event. however, it should be noted that also in classical experiments the respective mechanisms may or may not be properly identifi ed. to return to our previous example of labour market programmes, it might be that a programme is randomized and thus experimentally established as successful in raising employment rates. however, the experiment may fail to demonstrate whether this is due to sending signals to employers, providing useful skills, raising work ethos, or something else. methodologically, our goal was to point out the benefi ts, but also the limitations of estimating causal effects with panel data. the literature often argues that panel data are able to identify causal relations while cross-sectional data are not. however, this reasoning is imprecise since the literature on causality distinguishes a variety of causal effects for which specifi c assumptions must apply if estimated properly. panel data, as any other data, identify particular causal effects (here: the average treatment effect on the treated – att) only if specifi c assumptions apply, but in comparison to cross-sectional data these assumptions are much less restrictive. in our analysis, we demonstrated that employing panel data and techniques allow us to separate selection effects into a "treatment" – in this case, marriage – from the effect the treatment has. we clarifi ed that this effect is the att, which is revealed by the fe estimator. however, as our study demonstrated, often selection effects into treatment occur in two ways. in addition to the selection based on current levels of the outcome – in this case, life satisfaction – there might be selection based on different future levels of the outcome. using the feis estimator is helpful whenever one wishes to control for this subtler latter selection effect. such treatment effects are, however, erroneously specifi ed when modelling the temporal development of the outcome incorrectly. our results are therefore in line with a growing body of literature that underlines the necessity to carefully model temporal dependencies and to go beyond the almost standardly employed fe estimator. for example, plümper and troeger (2019) demonstrate that the fe estimator, which is generally considered to robustly estimate the att, is suspect to such dynamic misspecifi cation and potentially results in severely biased estimates. in that respect the feis estimator can serve as one important tool to more adequately model temporal dynamics. references abramowski, ruth 2020: das bisschen haushalt. zur kontinuität traditioneller arbeitsteilung in paarbeziehungen – ein europäischer vergleich. barbara budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/96665008 allison, paul d. 2009: fixed effects 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effects individual slopes: accounting and testing for heterogeneous effects in panel data or other multilevel models. in: sociological methods & research (online fi rst): 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124120926211 schneider, norbert f.; rüger, h. 2007: wert der ehe / value of marriage: der subjektive sinn der ehe und die entscheidung zur heirat / the subjective meaning of matrimony and the decision to wed. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 36,2: 131-152. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2007-0204 simon, robin w. 2002: revisiting the relationships among gender, marital status, and mental health. in: american journal of sociology 107;4: 1065-1096. https://doi.org/10.1086/339225 stack, steven; eshleman, j. ross 1998: marital status and happiness: a 17-nation study. in: journal of marriage and family 60,2: 527-536. https://doi.org/10.2307/353867 stutzer, alois; frey, bruno s. 2006: does marriage make people happy, or do happy people get married? in: the journal of socio-economics 35,2: 326-347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2005.11.043 tao, hung-lin 2019: marriage and happiness: evidence from taiwan. in: journal of happiness studies 20,6: 1843-1861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0029-5 umberson, debra; montez, jennifer karas 2010: social relationships and health: a flashpoint for health policy. in: journal of health and social behavior 51,1(suppl.): s54-s66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383501 waitkus, nora; minkus, lara 2021: investigating the gender wealth gap across occupational classes. international inequalities institute working paper 56. london school of economics and political science. london. wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data: mit press. date of submission: 01.10.2020 date of acceptance: 29.03.2021 dr. alexander gattig. university of bremen, socium research center on inequality and social policy. bremen, germany. e-mail: alexander.gattig@uni-bremen.de url: https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/alexander-gattig/ https://www.soziologie.uni-bremen.de/ccm/content/mitglieder-neu/aa_lektoren/ gattig-alexander.de dr. lara minkus (). university of bremen, socium research center on inequality and social policy. bremen, germany. e-mail: lminkus@uni-bremen.de url: https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/lara-minkus/ en/? does marriage increase couples’ life satisfaction? • 147 p o ls fe fe g s fe is m ar ri ed 0. 40 ** * (0 .0 5) 0. 10 * (0 .0 4) 0. 11 * (0 .0 4) 0. 10 * (0 .0 5) r el at io n sh ip d ur at io n (y ea rs ) 0. 02 ** (0 .0 1) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 1) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 1) lo w e du ca ti on ( r ef .) in te rm ed ia te e d u ca tio n 0. 26 ** (0 .0 8) 0. 17 (0 .1 0) 0. 17 (0 .1 0) 0. 18 (0 .1 1) h ig he r ed uc at io n 0. 47 ** * (0 .0 9) 0. 21 * (0 .1 0) 0. 21 * (0 .1 0) 0. 17 (0 .1 2) c ur re n tl y en ro lle d 0. 38 ** * (0 .0 8) 0. 26 ** (0 .0 9) 0. 26 ** (0 .0 9) 0. 25 * (0 .1 0) n um b er o f c hi ld re n -0 .0 7* (0 .0 3) 0. 14 ** * (0 .0 3) 0. 14 ** * (0 .0 3) 0. 20 ** * (0 .0 5) a g e (y ea rs ) -0 .0 3* ** (0 .0 0) -0 .0 1 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 1 (0 .0 1) -0 .0 1 (0 .0 1) p re g n an t ( = 1 ) 0. 27 ** * (0 .0 5) 0. 30 ** * (0 .0 5) 0. 30 ** * (0 .0 5) 0. 29 ** * (0 .0 5) e ve r m ar ri ed x r el at io n sh ip d ur at io n -0 .0 0 (0 .0 1) p er so n s (n ) 22 00 7 22 00 7 22 00 7 22 00 7 o b se rv at io n s (n ) 33 50 33 50 33 50 33 50 r s q u ar ed 1 0. 04 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: r o b u st n es s: m ar it al in cr ea se in li fe s at is fa ct io n es tim at ed u si ng p o ls , f e , f e g s , a nd f e is ; in cl ud in g a p re gn an cy d um m y 1 p le as e no te th at th e re p o rt ed r 2 fo r fe , f e g s , a nd f e is is th e w ith in r 2 . s ta nd ar d e rr o rs in p ar en th es es . * p < 0 .0 5, ** p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 01 . s o ur ce : b as ed o n p ai rf am 1 1. 0, o w n ca lc ul at io ns published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany – a probabilistic approach population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany – a probabilistic approach patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke abstract: industrialised economies are experiencing a decline in mortality alongside low fertility rates – a situation that puts social security systems under severe pressure. population ageing is associated not only with longer periods of pension claims but also smaller cohorts eventually entering the labour market. this threatens the sustainability of pay-as-you-go social security systems for implementing or further improving appropriate reform measures; adequate forecasts of the future population structure are needed. we propose a probabilistic approach to forecast the number of pensions in germany up to 2040. our model considers trends in population development, labour force participation, and early retirement, as well as the effects of pension reforms. principal component analysis is used to manage the high degree of complexity involved in forecasting trends in old-age and disability pension claims, which arises because of cross-correlations between old-age and disability pension rates, different age groups, and gender. time series methods enable the inclusion of autocorrelations of the pension rate time series in the model. monte carlo simulation is used to quantify future risk. the latter is an important feature of our model, as the future development of the population and, eventually, the pension claims and the fi nancial burden resulting from those claims, are highly stochastic. the model predicts that, in the median trajectory, the number of old-age pensions will increase by almost 5 million between 2017 and 2036, alongside increases in the number of disability pensions by 2036. these numbers take account of the increase in legal retirement ages as part of the 2007 pension reform. after the mid-2030s, however, a moderate decrease can be expected. the results show a clear need for further reforms, especially in the medium term. keywords: population ageing · stochastic forecasting · principal component analysis · time series analysis · applied econometrics · public pension systems · social policy comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 87-118 (date of release: 22.03.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-05 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-05en6 • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke88 1 introduction countries with low fertility and decreasing mortality rates struggle with an ageing population structure and negative natural population growth (oecd 2018). decreasing mortality means longer periods of pension claims as long as retirement ages are not adjusted proportionally to the increases in life expectancy. ceteris paribus, low fertility results in a smaller workforce in the long run (zuchandke et al. 2014). in western europe, for instance, mortality has been decreasing almost monotonically since the 1970s (vanella 2017); throughout the same period, fertility has been rather low (vanella/deschermeier 2019). for countries applying a bismarcktype pension system (pay-as-you-go),1 such as germany, the fi nancial distress resulting from this particular demographic development is twofold: the elderly are at increased risk of suffering from old-age poverty, while a growing share of labour income generated by the working population has to be transferred to the elderly (goffart 2018). demographic ageing, combined with pay-as-you-go schemes, thus affects the fi nancial sustainability of pension systems if such a trend is not averted by policy reforms. at approximately 63 percent, public pension payments constitute the largest share of retirement income in germany (federal ministry of labour and social affairs 2019). therefore, future old-age income will depend heavily on changes in the size and structure of the population, which are essential for the fi nancial stability of german pension insurance (deutsche rentenversicherung, drv). the drv should ensure a certain living standard for its pensioners while not overburdening the working population with excessively heavy contributions to the pension system (vogt 2017). since potential pension reforms should be based on new and adequate forecasts of the future development of the drv (zuchandke et al. 2014), this paper provides a stochastic forecast of the year-end old-age and disability pensions for germany up to 2040. we defi ne the notion of ageand sex-specifi c pension rates (assprs) by dividing ageand sex-specifi c pension numbers by the corresponding offi cial population estimates for people living in germany. we use principal component analysis (pca) for dimensionality reduction and consideration of cross-correlation between the assprs, and the connections with retirement, disability, and legal retirement age are covered as well. time series models include autocorrelation of the assprs. combined with a fully probabilistic population forecast model developed in earlier studies (vanella 2017; vanella/deschermeier 2018, 2019, 2020), a forecast of the future numbers of pensions is drawn up. the model takes trends in labour force participation and early retirement, along with demographic trends such as decreasing mortality and morbidity, into consideration implicitly by time series analysis. the effects of previous pension reforms are captured by an econometric model in the forecast. the simulation returns distributions of 1 pension payments are redistributed from the labour force to pensioners within the same period (see, for example, graf von der schulenburg/lohse 2014). population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 89 the old-age and disability pensions by age and sex of the recipients. predicting the future distribution of pensions (instead of relying on specifi c scenarios under predefi ned conditions) allows for additional insights, as we derive a large number of possible future outcomes from the historical data available and then quantify the probabilities of these outcomes taking place (vanella/deschermeier 2020). this allows readers, such as pension experts and policy-makers, to tailor necessary reforms to the specifi c needs of german pensioners as well as future pensioner cohorts.2 deterministic approaches, in contrast, only present a limited number of scenarios without knowing their expected probability (keilman et al. 2002). vanella and deschermeier (2020), for instance, show that a stochastic forecast of the population in germany in the median scenario is not necessarily more accurate than an informed deterministic approach, but is more likely to also cover the real, perceived population development.3 the remainder of this paper is structured as follows. the next section presents an overview of german pension reforms since the 1980s. we will then describe the method and data used for our analysis and present a selection of the results generated by our forecast. the model is applied to germany but is in principle applicable to other countries as well, especially those that adopt a bismarck-type social security system. the paper will conclude with a discussion of the results and limitations, and provide an outlook regarding opportunities for further research. 2 german pension insurance and its demography-related reforms demographic ageing puts pension systems under pressure. this is not solely a problem of the german economy but is also recognised by other industrialised countries which are hit similarly hard or even harder than germany by demographic trends. countries with low fertility and decreasing mortality, such as italy (baldacci/ tuzi 2003), spain (spijker et al. 2020), japan (ogawa 2005), finland (koissi 2006), china (wang et al. 2019), and croatia (tomaš 2020),4 have recognised the need for, and have been discussing the possibility of pension reforms. indeed, many countries have already introduced demography-related parameters in their pension schemes. for instance, denmark, finland, france, greece, italy, the netherlands, and portugal have already introduced automatic or semi-automatic adjustments of retirement ages to changes in life expectancy. overall, oecd countries have introduced pension reforms that will raise the respective standard retirement ages over the next four decades by about two years, on average (oecd 2021). 2 for instance, decision-makers would have the option to specify reforms under which the statutory pension payments made by the working population are 75 percent likely to cover all pension claims (to state a simple example). 3 the authors illustrated in a backcast that, even when adjusting for census errors and taking the limits of the extreme scenarios into account, the federal statistical offi ce’s deterministic projection did not cover the eventual population in any of the years. 4 list is non-exhaustive. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke90 the timing of pension claims is an individual decision. however, there is strong evidence supporting the effects of policy reforms on social security and retirement decisions or expectations (börsch-supan 1992, 2000; coppola/wilke 2014; buchholz et al. 2013). moreover, social policy can try to infl uence retirement decisions by bonus-malus systems in order to affect retirement behaviour as well as labour force supply (gruber/wise 2000). since the late 1980s, the german government has passed a series of pension reforms as countermeasures to the demographic ageing process. in 1989, the rentenreformgesetz 1992 (rrg 1992) was the fi rst reform with a clear demographic agenda: it raised the legal retirement age for female and unemployed persons from 60 years to 65 (the latter being the standard legal retirement age for men at that time, i.e. the normal retirement age in the absence of any factors allowing for an earlier retirement) by 2008 and was one important measure for containing the number of future retirees. moreover, the exceptional early retirement age of 63 years for persons who had been employed for at least 35 years was abolished5 (rrg 1992). furthermore, whereas early retirement without monetary “sanctions” had previously been possible, the reform introduced a fi nancial bonus-malus system for the individual retirement decision. since that reform, every month of premature pension claims reduces the monthly pension payments by 3‰. in contrast, each month of delayed pension claims beyond the individual legal retirement age6 is rewarded with an increase of 5‰ in monthly pension payments (wilke 2009). the wachstumsund beschäftigungsförderungsgesetz (wfg) in 1996 (wfg 1996) accelerated the increases in the legal retirement ages for the unemployed and females even further, underlining the urgency of policy measures. due to rrg 1992, the increase in the retirement age of these two groups would have ended at the target age of 65 in 2018 (rrg 1992, §41 i). however, the wfg required the introduction of this target age in 2007 for unemployed men and in 2010 for women. the legal retirement age for severely disabled persons increased from 60 to 63 years between 2000 and 2006 following rentenreformgesetz 1999 (rrg 1999). even though the rrg reforms introduced actuarial adjustments into the benefi t calculation and harmonised statutory retirement ages across groups, a more fundamental reform was necessary to cope with the demographic changes. the riester reform of 2001 brought such a fundamental change. while the statutory pension as the fi rst pillar had alone secured the standard of living of pensioners in germany until then, the riester reform transformed the german pension system into a multipillar system – this meant that the statutory pensions from the fi rst pillar should be partially replaced in the long term by additional retirement income from the second (occupational) and third (private) pillars. this led to the introduction of a 5 in 2014, the german government returned to a similar measure, with a legal retirement age of 63 years for persons who have 45 years of social security payments (bundesregierung 2013). this change is considered in our model as well. 6 the legal retirement age corresponding to an individual’s personal circumstances, as defi ned by gender, fi eld of work, birth cohort, and absence or presence of disabilities. population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 91 new pension formula that linked individual pension benefi ts not only to the overall development of labour income but also to the predetermined growth in private oldage saving rates in society over time (wilke 2009). in 2004, this new pension formula was enhanced once more by adding the socalled sustainability factor, which is directly connected to the system dependency ratio.7 the sustainability factor links the amount of pension payments to the annual change in the ratio between pension recipients and pension payers, thus including the demographic developments in the pension payments. consequently, this adjustment directly considers the overall demographic and labour market development when determining pension payments (wilke 2009). the effects of including the system dependency ratio in the benefi t calculation, as opposed to considering the life expectancy as alternative reform options, were analysed in a simulation study (see fehr/habermann 2006). the rv-altersgrenzenanpassungsgesetz from 2007 was the most recent reform designed to address the demographic ageing process in germany. the standard legal retirement age will now increase gradually to 67 years by 2031. the legal retirement age for severely disabled individuals will be adjusted accordingly, from 63 to 65 years, while for mineworkers, which make up a small group, the change will be from 60 to 62 years (rv-altanpg 2007). these differing retirement ages are directly refl ected in our forecast model. the average annual retirement ages for different retirement groups are shown in appendix a for historical, current, and future time horizons. 3 method and data in this section, we propose a joint probabilistic forecast model for the number of old-age pensions and disability pensions by sex and age of the pensioners. we estimate past assprs for old-age and disability pensions. the data have been accumulated from three sources: the german federal statistical offi ce (destatis), the deutsche rentenversicherung (drv), and the federal health reporting service (gbe-bund) provided by destatis and the robert koch institute (rki). thus, we used the year-end sex-specifi c stocks of old-age pensions by age (in years)8 for the years 1992-2009 from the gbe-bund database (destatis 2018). it is not advisable to use data before 1992 because the integration of pensions for citizens from the former german democratic republic (ddr) into the drv after german reunifi cation did not happen until 1992 (rüg 1991). therefore, data up to 1991 are available for west germany only. furthermore, the drv was reformed in 1992, transforming disability pensions for persons who had already passed their individual legal retirement age into old-age pensions (rrg 1992). the data for 20107 the ratio of the number of persons exceeding a certain age (mostly 65 years) to the number of persons in the assumed working age bracket, e.g. 15-64 years (wilke 2009). 8 ages 60-99 annually, over 99 grouped. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke92 2017 were downloaded from the statistics portal of the drv (statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020a). because the gbe-bund data originate from the drv as well, we ensure that our datasets are consistent. we estimate the age-specifi c pension rates by year for ages 60 to 64 for both genders. for instance, the asspr for old-age pensions of females aged 64 years in 2015 is computed by dividing the stock of old-age pensions on 31 december 2015 paid to females aged 64 by the population estimate of this demographic group. old-age pensions for persons above 64 years of age are cumulated, as there are no time series data for persons aged 66 and above available for the past. instead, our data only contain cumulative pension numbers paid to individuals aged 65 or older. those numbers are then divided by the estimate of the population residing in germany in that particular age group and for that particular gender. in other words, the old-age asspr of females aged 65 and above in the year 2015, for instance, is computed as with a65+,f,2015 being the number of old-age pensions on 31 december 2015, paid to females aged 65 years or older, and p65+,f,2015 being the estimated number of female residents in germany on that same date.9 for each gender and year, the population aged 65 and above is cumulated and used as the denominator of the quotient. that way, trends in pension claims in the 64 and over age group are covered by the historical data. population estimates are computed annually by updating the estimates for the previous year, i.e. births and migration infl ows are added and deaths and migration outfl ows are subtracted (vanella/deschermeier/ wilke 2020). however, there is still some difference due to the undercounting of international migration (vanella/deschermeier 2018), but the grouping reduces the dimensionality of the data and mitigates the error that naturally results from updating in the old-age population, since individuals who have emigrated in the past without notice continue to be counted in the population. in relative terms, these errors are of a larger magnitude than for the younger population, as the elderly population is smaller (vanella/heß/wilke 2020). disability pensions are not differentiated by age but simply by sex and type of disability (full or partial). the data for the years 2010-2017 were downloaded from the statistical database of the drv (statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020b), and the data for 2000-2009 are available at the drv research homepage (forschungsportal der deutschen rentenversicherung 2018). the data for 1992-1999 were provided by the drv upon request (deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2018). year-end population estimates for 1992-2017, broken down by sex and age based on the 2011 census, were downloaded from the human mortality database (2019). , , , ,, , , 9 the data give annual estimates of the ageand sex-specifi c population by age in years (0-109, 110+), the reference for the data is described below. population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 93 the pension numbers are divided by the population estimates, allowing us to calculate annual assprs for the 1992-2017 period. the resulting data matrix has 16 columns as conglomerates of 16 time series of assprs. basing the model on the assprs has the advantage of including the possibility of a return to the labour force indirectly in our data. another advantage of our approach is that we take into account the numbers of persons receiving pension payments from the drv while residing abroad, which, to our knowledge, previous studies did not. as stated above, earlier approaches tend to estimate labour force participation rates fi rst and derive pension rates from those rates. we apply pca (see, for example, chatfi eld and collins 1980; handl 2010; vanella 2018 for a comprehensive description and application of the method) to the matrix of the logistically transformed assprs with 1.03 as the upper limit, which is approximately the historical maximum rate for germany.10 this transformation prevents the simulations for the assprs from taking unrealistically high values (see vanella/deschermeier 2019 for a similar application for age-specifi c fertility rates). the pca approach allows us to minimise the effective dimension of the data while also covering the correlations between the time series in our model (vanella 2018). the principal components (pcs) are linear combinations of all logistically transformed assprs, which are correlated with these while being uncorrelated with each other (chatfi eld/collins 1980; vanella 2018). for example, the ith pc is a linear combination of all original j assprs as: where • aj,t is the observation of the jth asspr in year t, • λj,i is the loading (i.e. coeffi cient) of the jth asspr on the ith pc. the loadings between the fi rst pc and the logistically transformed assprs are illustrated in figure 1. principal component 1 (pc1) is negatively correlated with the rates of oldage pensions in pre-legal retirement ages and with the rates of disabled males. moreover, its loadings are positive for disabled females. ceteris paribus, positive trends in pc1 are therefore associated with decreases in retirement rates in the prelegal retirement age groups. likewise, disability pension rates of males decrease with increases in retirement rates, while the disability pension rates of females increase instead. pc1 explains approximately 91 percent of the total variance in the logistically transformed assprs. figure 2 shows the historical course of pc1, as derived from (1). the years 1996 and 2011 are marked by vertical lines to stress that 10 the value of 1.03 shows that the number of pensions in the specifi c age groups exceeds the offi cial population estimate by 3 percent, which is due to individuals living abroad while receiving pension payments from germany. , , , , (1) • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke94 in the following years, the effects of rrg 1992 and rv-altanpg 2007 started to kick in (see appendix a). the trend in pc1 decreases until the late 1990s. it increases almost monotonically shortly after 1997 and has done so even more sharply since 2012, strongly implying a connection of pc1 to the past pension reforms that introduced increases in the legal retirement ages, as explained in section 2. to test our hypothesis of connections between pc1 and legal retirement ages and to integrate effects in their adjustment on future pension numbers, we iteratively fi t an explanatory model for pc1 with the mean annual retirement ages as exogenous variables. these variables are derived from the legal texts presented in section 2. the individual retirement age does not address the period but rather the birth cohort of said person. our forecast, however, has a period perspective. as a result, we need to approximate the average legal retirement age of persons who are eligible to retire in a certain year. for instance, the standard legal retirement age of persons born before 1947 is 65 years. for each cohort born after 1947, the legal retirement age will increase, depending on the year and month of birth (rv-altanpg 2007). consequently, we would need a more detailed estimation of the individual legal retirement age for all groups eligible for legal retirement in each year. we therefore assumed births to take place uniformly for a year and approximated the average individual retirement age for persons eligible to retire in a certain year, which is a fig. 1: loadings of the fi rst principal component -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 60 61 62 63 64 65 age old-age male old-age female fully disabled male fully disabled female partially disabled male partially disabled female loading source: own calculation and design population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 95 composition of different cohorts. the estimates for these average retirement ages by period are given in appendix a. we estimate the impact of increasing retirement ages on pc1 by regressing its past time series on the set of different legal retirement ages in the corresponding years, according to appendix a. we follow a stepwise estimation procedure to identify the best possible model for predicting the course of pc1 based on the current retirement regulation. the results of the different iterations are given in table 1, with standard errors for the coeffi cient estimates in brackets. for informative purposes only, we also report the r2 and adjusted r2 for each model. the models all show a high degree of joint signifi cance. for the standard legal retirement age and the legal retirement age of mineworkers, the natural logarithms are put into the model since the scatterplots suggest a logarithmic connection between the two variables and pc1. we optimise the model iteratively by omitting the variable with the smallest individual signifi cance in each iteration. we fi nally choose the model that minimises akaike’s information criterion (aic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic). both are minimised by model 1.3. omitting more variables leads to worsening model fi ts, as indicated by increases in the aic and the bic in model 1.4. the fi nal model accentuates the effects on pc1 of the standard legal retirement age, the earlier legal retirement age for persons with 45 years of social insurance payments, as well as the legal retirement ages of females fig. 2: past course of principal component 1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year principal component 1 source: own calculation and design • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke96 and mineworkers. it stresses developments in very early retirement between ages 60 and 63, an age group in which most retirement stems from mineworkers. we see this from the high negative loadings for these age groups, as illustrated in figure 1. for example, in 2016, over 70 percent of the pension numbers among male 60-year-olds were mineworkers (deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2017). the coeffi cient for the legal retirement age of unemployed persons is negative, which appears strange at fi rst. one possible explanation might be that increasing the legal retirement age for unemployed individuals might create incentives for them to retire early instead of applying for welfare services for longer periods (brussig 2012). after fi tting the data to the quantifi ed model, we fi t a box-jenkins time series model to the data (see box et al. 2016). based on the autocorrelation function (acf) and the partial autocorrelation function (pacf), we identify a random walk as the most appropriate model for the error term (see, for example, shumway and stoffer 2016 on arma processes, acfs and pacfs). the forecast model for pc1 is therefore p1(y) = -4,551.43 + 731.96ln(sy) + 0.41ly 0.32uy + 0.58fy + 355.66ln(by) + ry + εy, tab. 1: model estimates for principal component 1a retirement age model 1.1 model 1.2 model 1.3 model 1.4 intercept 4,426*** 4,326*** 4,551*** 3,907*** (709) (625) (555) (474) ln(standard) 711** 669*** 732*** 579*** (258) (218) (202) 198) insured for 35 years 0.52 0.37 (0.65) (0.46) insured for 45 years 0.31 0.3 0.41* (0.26) (0.25) (0.21) severely disabled 0.21 (0.63) unemployed 0.43* 0.44* 0.32* 0.14 (0.23) (0.22) (0.16) (0.14) women 0.64*** 0.58*** 0.58*** 0.58*** (0.21) (0.14) (0.14) (0.15) ln(mineworkers) 344*** 363*** 356*** 358*** (107) (88) (86) (92) r2 0.9912 0.9911 0.9908 0.9891 adj.r2 0.9878 0.9883 0.9885 0.9870 aic 34.51 32.66 31.54 34.06 bic 45.83 42.73 40.35 41.60 a one asterisk means statistical signifi cance on a 10 percent level against h0 : βx = 0, with βx being the xth coeffi cient. two asterisks indicate a 5 percent signifi cance level and three asterisks mean 1 percent. source: own calculation and design (2) population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 97 with εy ~ nid(0,0.372), ln(sy) being the natural logarithm of the mean standard legal retirement age ly being the mean legal retirement age after being insured 45 years, uy being the mean legal retirement age for unemployed persons, fy being the mean legal female retirement age and by being the mean legal retirement age of mineworkers in year y, as calculated in appendix a. ry is the difference between the actual value of pc1 in period y and its mean estimate according to model 1.3, therefore covering prediction errors in the independent variables. the forecast of pc1 with 75 percent pi is illustrated in figure 3. after an expected sharp increase up to the early 2030s and associated agespecifi c pension rates induced by the pension reforms and connected retirement age increases, illustrated in appendix a, we expect stagnation once the retirement ages have reached their maxima. the remaining 15 pcs11 are assumed to be random walk processes, as they show no clear trending behaviour. this allows the surplus risk generated by them to be reasonably well included. the fi tted pc models are used for future simulation of fig. 3: forecast of principal component 1 with 90 percent pi 0 10 20 30 40 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year principal component 1 source: own calculation and design 11 we have 16 pcs overall, as the number of pcs is equal to the number of assprs. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke98 the 10,000 trajectories up to 2040 via wiener processes (see, for example, vanella 2018). in this way, the stochasticity of all variables is considered in the forecast model (vanella 2017). the trajectories of the pcs can easily be retransformed into trajectories of the assprs (vanella 2018):φτ = πτ λ-1, where• πτ is a 10,000x16 matrix of 10,000 trajectories for each pc in year τ,• λ-1 is the inverse of the loading matrix,• φτ is a 10,000x16 matrix of 10,000 trajectories for all logit-assprs in year τ. these are multiplied by the trajectories resulting from the probabilistic population forecast for germany conducted by vanella and deschermeier (2020). in this way, trajectories of the pension numbers are derived up to 2040. 4 results according to vanella and deschermeier (2020), which forms the basis of the pension forecast conducted in the present paper, there is a high probability that the total population will increase over the forecast horizon. the population in the median forecast, for 31 december 2040, will be slightly below 85 million. in light of the pension fund, the population structure is highly relevant. table 2 gives a selection of the simulation results of vanella and deschermeier (2020), by three age groups. obviously, the increase in the population is the result of clear growth in the population in the pension age group, whereas the population in the typical labour age group is expected to decrease by 2040. in our context, the forecasts of the working-age population12 and the old-age population13 are of major interest. there is a high probability that we will observe a sharp increase in the old-age dependency ratio due to a decrease in the working-age population14 up to the late 2030s, together with an increasing population in the pension age group. our modelling approach provides more insight into the actual pension numbers because the predicted population at this stage is multiplied by the ageand sexspecifi c risks of pension claims estimated by our pc time series method. the trajectories of the pcs are transformed back into trajectories of the assprs, as mentioned above. the trajectories can be used to estimate the quantiles of the forecast to construct pis. figure 4 illustrates the assprs for old-age pensions at 12 defi ned by vanella and deschermeier (2020) as persons aged 20-66 years. 13 the old-age population here is defi ned as the population aged 67 years and above. 14 it should be noted that this does not even include labour force participation (see, for instance, fuchs et al. 2018), but simply refers to the age group. (3) population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 99 ta b . 2 : fo re ca st p o p ul at io n (in m ill io n s) fo r se le ct ed y ea rs a nd t hr ee a g e g ro up s w it h 75 p er ce n t p is ye ar yo un g yo un g yo un g w o rk in g w o rk in g w o rk in g o ld o ld 7 5% o ld 7 5% m ed ia n 75 % p i 75 % p i a g e a g e 75 % a g e 75 % m ed ia n p i l o w er p i u p p er lo w er u p p er m ed ia n p i l o w er p i u p p er b o u n d b o u n d b o un d b o un d b o un d b o un d 20 17 15 .2 52 51 .8 04 15 .7 36 20 21 15 .5 73 15 .3 54 15 .7 99 51 .5 88 51 .1 78 52 .0 12 16 .4 28 16 .3 57 16 .5 00 20 25 16 .1 22 15 .6 75 16 .5 63 50 .7 55 49 .9 58 51 .5 68 17 .2 33 17 .0 64 17 .3 98 20 29 16 .6 42 15 .9 48 17 .3 37 49 .3 96 48 .2 24 50 .5 59 18 .4 46 18 .1 81 18 .7 15 20 33 17 .0 31 16 .0 65 17 .9 85 47 .8 45 46 .3 46 49 .3 25 19 .8 12 19 .4 39 20 .1 88 20 37 17 .0 86 15 .8 53 18 .3 11 47 .0 65 45 .2 33 48 .8 71 20 .6 30 20 .1 27 21 .1 18 20 41 16 .9 74 15 .5 10 18 .4 81 47 .3 52 45 .2 11 49 .5 13 20 .3 89 19 .7 44 21 .0 13 20 45 16 .8 35 15 .1 24 18 .6 09 47 .8 29 45 .3 40 50 .3 82 19 .8 44 19 .0 20 20 .6 03 s o ur ce : va ne lla /d es ch er m ei er 2 02 0; o w n d es ig n • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke100 year-end 2017 in comparison with the predicted assprs in the median trajectory with 75 percent and 90 percent pis at the end of the forecast horizon. for the age group of people under 65 years, a decrease in the prevalence of oldage pension claims is probable as a result of the pension reform of 2007 described in section 2, as these reforms push the standard legal retirement age to 67 years. fig. 4: ageand sex-specifi c pension rates in 2017 and 2040 0.0 0.4 0.8 60 61 62 63 64 65 age 2017 2040 median 2040 75% pi 2040 90% pi pension rate male 0.0 0.4 0.8 60 61 62 63 64 65 age pension rate female 2017 2040 median 2040 75% pi 2040 90% pi source: statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020a; human mortality database 2019; own calculation and design population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 101 for the age group of people over 65 years, the changes for the males will be subtle, whereas the assprs of the females will almost certainly increase. this stems from the high labour force participation rates among the female population born since the baby boom years (fuchs et al. 2018). the preceding generations participated less in the labour market because their primary profession was mostly motherhood and housekeeping (hertrampf 2008). increased labour force participation is associated with higher pension entitlements in a pay-as-you-go system, eventually leading to a higher share of persons receiving pension payments associated with labour income. figures 5 and 6 give the past and future overall rates of disability pensions by sex and type of pension. please note that for figure 6, the scales on the vertical axes are not the same due to illustrative purposes. for both types of disability pension, we will observe decreasing overall rates for males and increases for females. this can be explained by a reduction in agespecifi c disability risks for males due to healthier life circumstances and a fall in the proportion of people working in physically exhausting fi elds of work, which more often precede disabilities (rodriguez gonzalez et al. 2015). the trends for females are much different. first, the susceptibility to serious disabilities in the high age groups is much greater among females than among males (vanella/heß/wilke 2020). second, due to females’ increasing labour force participation rates, they are more eligible for disability pensions in comparison with preceding generations. multiplying the assprs derived in this study by the ageand sex-specifi c population estimated by vanella and deschermeier (2020) results in forecasts of future pension numbers. the pension rates of males converge to zero, leading to narrower pis. figure 7 illustrates the resulting forecast of the total numbers of oldage pensioners by sex. in the mean, we observe a monotonic increase in the number of old-age pensions for both sexes up to the mid-2030s. the increase is especially large up to the late 2020s, the period in which the strongest birth cohorts reach their respective retirement ages. after this point, there is a high probability that the total number of pensioners will increase further, but at weaker rates. this trend is caused by slightly decreasing birth cohorts entering their retirement ages, combined with the effects of the pension reforms since 1992, which imply lower age-specifi c old-age pension rates. the decreasing trend after the mid-2030s refl ects the weaker birth cohorts since the 1970s, which can also be observed in table 1. overall, we see that the median number of old-age pensions will increase from 8.1 million to 9.9 million for males and from 10.1 to 12.8 million for females between 2017 and 2036, the year in which the number of old-age pensions for both genders is predicted to be at its highest. these results include demographic trends and the effect of labour market participation. these results show the massive increase in retirees occurring over the forecast horizon. there is less uncertainty in the forecast for females as the development of the female population is more certain than it is for males. the increase in legal retirement ages by two years is obviously not suffi cient to address demographic development from the perspective of the drv. figures 8 and 9 show the forecasts of the numbers of disability pensions for fully and partially disabled persons by sex, respectively. the long-term trend for males • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke102 was negative because the relative prevalence of disability decreased, as illustrated in figure 8. on the other hand, the increase in the legal retirement age means, ceteris paribus, an increase in the risk of disability pension claims. these trends are superimposed on the demographic trends for females; therefore, increasing fig. 5: forecast of full disability pension rate by sex source: deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2018; forschungsportal der deutschen rentenversicherung 2018; statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020b; human mortality database 2019; own calculation and design 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.07 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year disability pension rate male 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.07 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year disability pension rate female observed/median 75% pi 90% pi observed/median 75% pi 90% pi population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 103 numbers of pensions can be expected up to the early 2030s. after that point, the strong birth cohorts enter the legal retirement age, so the disability pension numbers will probably decrease again slightly because of the decrease in the population numbers in the respective age group. fig. 6: forecast of partial disability pension rate by sex 0.000 0.004 0.008 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year disability pension rate male 0.000 0.010 0.020 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year disability pension rate female observed/median 75% pi 90% pi observed/median 75% pi 90% pi source: deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2018; forschungsportal der deutschen rentenversicherung 2018; statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020b; human mortality database 2019; own calculation and design • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke104 it can be concluded that the pension reforms raising the legal retirement age will not only mitigate the increase in old-age pension numbers but also increase the number of disability pensions through to the early 2030s. for females in particular, the increase in the legal retirement age might lead to a sharp rise in the number of cases in which a disability pension will be claimed. this is an effect of fig. 7: forecast of old-age pensions by sex up to 2040 source: destatis 2018; statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020a; vanella/ deschermeier 2020; own calculation and design 4.000 8.000 12.000 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year pensions [in millions] male pensions [in millions] female observed/median 75% pi 90% pi 4.000 8.000 12.000 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year observed/median 75% pi 90% pi population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 105 increasing female labour force participation rates in combination with the increase in the legal retirement age; more women will be active in the labour market and will therefore be “eligible” for disability pensions; in the past, these women might have retired earlier. from the perspective of this population, this therefore represents fig. 8: forecast of full disability pensions source: deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2018; forschungsportal der deutschen rentenversicherung 2018; statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020b; vanella/deschermeier 2020; own calculation and design 500 1.000 1.500 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year pensions [in millions] male pensions [in millions] female observed/median 75% pi 90% pi 500 1.000 1.500 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year observed/median 75% pi 90% pi • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke106 an improvement as increasing female labour force participation allows for better fi nancial compensation in the event of a disability resulting in a reduced ability or inability to work, giving them greater fi nancial independence. fig. 9: forecast of partial disability pensions source: deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2018; forschungsportal der deutschen rentenversicherung 2018; statistikportal der rentenversicherung 2020b; vanella/deschermeier 2020; own calculation and design 0 100 200 300 400 500 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year pensions [in thousands] male pensions [in thousands] female observed/median 75% pi 90% pi 0 100 200 300 400 500 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 year observed/median 75% pi 90% pi population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 107 to conclude, we see that a thorough forecast of the demand for statutory pension payments cannot be made from a trivial analysis based on simple statistics such as the old-age dependency ratio. an age-specifi c and joint forecast of oldage and disability pensions is needed in order to gain a full understanding of the real sensitivity of the pension system to reforms and demographic developments. moreover, the stochastic approach accounts for the high uncertainty of the complex system of interacting population trends, labour market effects, and the regulations of the pension system. 5 discussion our model predicted the future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany by gender, age, and type of pension, quantifying not only the most likely future course but also estimating prediction intervals for all variables. our model includes cross-correlation between the pension variables via pca and autocorrelation of the pension variables by arima models. we checked the appropriateness of pca to our data, following kaiser (1970). we found kaiser-meyer-olkin values between 0.32 and 0.91 for the separate time series and 0.72 for the set of all time series. considering that kaiser and rice (1974) defi ned values above 0.5 as suitable for factor analysis or pca, we concluded that our approach was valid. monte carlo simulation quantifi ed uncertainty in our forecast. although our forecast is contingent on future retirement ages as explanatory variables, it is stochastic, as it simulates all realistic future scenarios under the assumed retirement ages. these are, however, legally fi xed for the long term and can be assumed to apply to the forecast horizon, since no new regulations in this regard are likely in the near future. even though our main result concerning an increase in the number of future pensions appears quite robust, our approach nevertheless has some limitations. for example, the model does not consider age-specifi c disability pension rates. this approach was tested as well but did not give plausible loadings for all variables. consequently, disability pensions are differentiated only by sex and type of pension. moreover, the model does not include widow and orphan pensions. there are three reasons for this: fi rst, the inclusion in the model of disabled persons under 60 could give false indications of sensitivity to retirement ages;15 second, the data for this type of pension are not available in the form needed to fi t our model; third, we would need data or strong assumptions on nuptial behaviour, eradicating the advantages of the chosen probabilistic approach to some degree. another conceivable limitation is the deterministic part of the model, which relies on future retirement ages as explanatory variables but which are legally fi xed over the forecast horizon. the stepwise procedure to choose the fi nal model might be subject to discussion (smith 2018). however, we chose our model based on information criteria, which 15 of course, those effects do not exist because persons do not “decide to die” based on the pension policy regime. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke108 weigh the model’s goodness-of-fi t against its complexity, thereby accounting for multicollinearity. as the connection between the explanatory variables and the target variable appears plausible in qualitative terms, we believe our results are plausible. further studies might include widow and orphan pensions in their analyses. to provide a full picture of not only the numbers of pensions but also their volumes, an enhanced pension model should include all kinds of pensions covered by the drv as well as the development of the labour market. a joint model for the labour market and pensions would present a meaningful extension, as the labour market and the pension system are basically two sides of the same coin and heavily infl uence one another. moreover, this paper has been restricted to persons instead of economic entities such as monetary units. such deeper analyses require forecasts of economic development as well. because our pension model is fully probabilistic, the associated economic model should also be probabilistic. the available labour market data, however, do not yet allow long-term trends to be derived as the time series are still too short, due to structural breaks in the data. drawing stochasticity from one source only, as done in previous studies, would create a biased picture of reality by creating some kind of pseudostochasticity. this is especially important, as the proportions of the population who enter higher education after graduating from school in germany have signifi cantly increased since 2006 (genesis-online 2021). this trend means that payments into the drv begin later on average and periods of payments are shorter if the retirement age is not adjusted accordingly. this trend is both a result of personal preferences to work in less physically demanding fi elds (schirner et al. 2021) and the higher educational requirements on the labour market due to digitisation (steffes et al. 2016). these developments on the reverse side are observed, ceteris paribus, in decreasing disability risks, which are covered indirectly in our time series data of disability pensions. moreover, we found the development of a stochastic joint labour-pension model to exceed the scope of a single paper. further research might add forecasts addressing the fi nancial effects that result from using a probabilistic economic model, and might also elaborate on previous approaches. 6 conclusions the present study showed the effect of future demographic development in germany on the numbers of old-age and disability pensions under the public pension system. due to the ageing of the baby boom generation, we expect the numbers of old-age pensions to increase by almost 5 million, from 18 million in 2017 to 23 million in 2036. this increase will continue to be the case even if legal retirement ages are raised, as per the 2007 pension reform. stochastic modelling for trajectories with high mortality rates equally shows increasing pension numbers. pension reforms targeting obvious demographic trends do help mitigate the effects of the ageing process to some extent but are far from suffi cient. population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 109 further reforms concerning the three basic parameters of the drv in germany – namely the pension contribution rate, the pension level, and the legal retirement age – are thus inevitable. furthermore, proposals regarding the fi nancing option, such as a (partial) shift to a tax-funded system16 (d’addio 2013) or the implementation of fi nancial market-linked pensions, following the swedish example (groll 2021), are likewise being discussed. furthermore, demography and labour market policy could offer another option for the long-term stabilisation of the pension system. a larger number of pensioners means that there is a need for a proportional increase in the labour force, assuming that the labour market offers enough jobs to support this increase. because the infl uence of fertility on the labour market is only felt after approximately 20 years (zuchandke et al. 2014), a short-term or mid-term effect can only be achieved by either decreasing emigration of the labour force or increasing the immigration of skilled workers, who can be integrated into the labour market quickly (fuchs et al. 2021).17 however, we need to keep in mind that increases in the labour force as a result ofhigher fertility or international migration will mean higher pension payments, for which they will gather entitlements, in the long run. complimentary increases in labour force participation rates may alleviate unfavourable trends in old-age dependency ratios (scherbov et al. 2014). this addresses not only the trends in higher labour force participation by persons aged 65 and over, which is the aim of the pension reforms that have been implemented, but also the higher rate of female labour force participation, especially among the migrant population (fuchs et al. 2018). in general, integrating migrants, especially refugees, into the labour market more quickly could have positive impacts on the fi nancial sustainability of the drv (fuchs et al. 2021). improvements to our modelling approach, as indicated in section 5, might be considered in further studies. the approach could be supplemented by the adoption of a more detailed economic approach, which takes account of the pension formula and predicts the future payments of the drv. acknowledgments we would like to express our thanks to andreas dannenberg from the drv for his patience in not only providing much of the underlying pension data for our study but also offering valuable information on the limitations and problems associated with them. moreover, we appreciate the critical discussion of an earlier version of the model by j.-matthias graf von der schulenburg, which helped to improve the fi nal model signifi cantly. finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers 16 in fact, in 2020 already, just 76 percent of the drv’s pension benefi ts were transferred via pension insurance payments, the rest was fi nanced from additional sources such as taxes (deutsche rentenversicherung bund 2021). 17 guest 2008, for example, also discusses a number of issues, including measures to stimulate labour force participation rates among the elderly population, the fertility rate and higher immigration, as well as other measures like superannuation or health and care policy. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke110 for their thorough and knowledgeable comments on our paper, which contributed to further improvements. authors’ contributions pv developed the model, researched 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higher fertility rates and immigration mitigate the fi nancial pressure? in: zeitschrift für die gesamte versicherungswissenschaft 103,3: 283-299. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12297-014-0271-9 list of abbreviations acf autocorrelation function aic akaike’s information criterion arima autoregressive integrated moving average asspr ageand sex-specifi c pension rate bic bayesian information criterion ddr german democratic republic drv deutsche rentenversicherung pacf partial autocorrelation function pca principal component analysis pi prediction interval rki robert koch institute rrg rentenreformgesetz rüg renten-überleitungsgesetz rv-altanpg rentenversicherungs-altersgrenzenanpassungsgesetz rvleistverbg rentenversicherungs-leistungsverbesserungsgesetz wfg wachstumsund beschäftigungsförderungsgesetz population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 115 date of submission: 07.07.2021 date of acceptance: 13.01.2022 dr. patrizio vanella (). gottfried wilhelm leibniz universität hannover, center for risk and insurance, demographic and insurance research center. hannover, germany. helmholtz centre for infection research, department of epidemiology. braunschweig, germany. e-mail: patrizio.vanella@helmholtz-hzi.de url: https://www.helmholtz-hzi.de/de/nc/forschung/forschungsschwerpunkte/ bakterielle-und-virale-krankheitserreger/epidemiologie/team/personal/infos/patriziovanella/ dr. miguel rodriguez gonzalez. gottfried wilhelm leibniz universität hannover, center for risk and insurance, demographic and insurance research center. hannover, germany. e-mail: mr@ivbl.de prof. dr. christina b. wilke. fom hochschule für oekonomie & management. bremen, germany. e-mail: christina.wilke@fom.de url: https://www.fom.de/forschung/kompetenzcentren/kcv-kompetenzcentrum-fuerangewandte-volkswirtschaftslehre/organisation.html#!acc=wissenschaftliche-leitung/ accid=20562 * patrizio vanella currently works at the helmholtz centre for infection research. the study was mainly conducted during his time at the university of hannover. • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke116 appendix a: mean retirement ages tab. a1: past, current, and future mean annual legal retirement ages year standard insured insured severely unemployed women minefor 35 years for 45 years disabled workers 1992 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 1993 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 1994 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 1995 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 1996 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 60.000 1997 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.292 60.000 60.000 1998 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 60.792 60.000 60.000 1999 65.000 63.000 63.000 60.000 61.292 60.000 60.000 2000 65.000 63.292 63.292 60.292 61.792 60.292 60.000 2001 65.000 63.792 63.792 60.792 62.292 60.792 60.000 2002 65.000 64.292 64.292 61.292 62.792 61.292 60.000 2003 65.000 64.792 64.792 61.792 63.292 61.792 60.000 2004 65.000 65.000 65.000 62.292 63.792 62.292 60.000 2005 65.000 65.000 65.000 62.792 64.292 62.792 60.000 2006 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 64.792 63.292 60.000 2007 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 65.000 63.792 60.000 2008 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 65.000 64.292 60.000 2009 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 65.000 64.792 60.000 2010 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 65.000 65.000 60.000 2011 65.000 65.000 65.000 63.000 65.000 65.000 60.000 2012 65.083 65.083 65.083 63.000 65.083 65.083 60.292 2013 65.159 65.159 65.159 63.000 65.159 65.159 60.538 2014 65.235 65.235 63.000 63.000 65.235 65.235 60.614 2015 65.311 65.311 63.000 63.292 65.311 65.311 60.689 2016 65.386 65.386 63.167 63.538 65.386 65.386 60.765 2017 65.462 65.462 63.333 63.614 65.462 65.462 60.841 2018 65.538 65.538 63.500 63.689 65.538 65.538 60.917 2019 65.614 65.614 63.667 63.765 65.614 65.614 61.000 2020 65.689 65.689 63.833 63.841 65.689 65.689 61.167 2021 65.765 65.765 64.000 63.917 65.765 65.765 61.300 2022 65.841 65.841 64.167 64.000 65.841 65.841 61.433 2023 65.917 65.917 64.333 64.167 65.917 65.917 61.567 2024 66.000 66.000 64.500 64.300 66.000 66.000 61.700 2025 66.167 66.167 64.667 64.433 66.167 66.167 61.833 2026 66.300 66.300 64.833 64.567 66.300 66.300 62.000 2027 66.433 66.433 65.000 64.700 66.433 66.433 62.000 2028 66.567 66.567 65.000 64.833 66.567 66.567 62.000 2029 66.700 66.700 65.000 65.000 66.700 66.700 62.000 population ageing and future demand for old-age and disability pensions in germany • 117 year standard insured insured severely unemployed women minefor 35 years for 45 years disabled workers 2030 66.833 66.833 65.000 65.000 66.833 66.833 62.000 2031 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2032 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2033 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2034 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2035 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2036 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2037 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2038 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2039 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 2040 67.000 67.000 65.000 65.000 67.000 67.000 62.000 tab. a1: continuation source: rrg 1992; wfg 1996; rrg 1999; rv-altanpg 2007; bundesregierung 2013: 72; rvleistverbg 2014; own calculation and design • patrizio vanella, miguel rodriguez gonzalez, christina b. wilke118 appendix b: correlation matrix of mean retirement ages tab. a2: correlation matrix of different legal retirement ages over the period from 1992 to 2016 standard insured insured severely unemwomen minefor 35 years for 45 years disabled ployed workers standard 1 0.87 0.52 0.82 0.75 0.78 0.96 insured for 35 years 0.87 1 0.72 0.99 0.97 0.96 0.89 insured for 45 years 0.52 0.72 1 0.70 0.72 0.64 0.47 severely disabled 0.82 0.99 0.70 1 0.99 0.98 0.86 unemployed 0.75 0.97 0.72 0.99 1 0.98 0.79 women 0.78 0.96 0.64 0.98 0.98 1 0.84 mine-workers 0.96 0.89 0.47 0.86 0.79 0.84 1 source: own calculation and design published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) scarred for life? early-life experience of the post-reunification economic crisis in east germany and physical and mental health outcomes in early adulthood scarred for life? early-life experience of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany and physical and mental health outcomes in early adulthood lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt abstract: existing research suggests adverse short-term health effects of economic crises during early life, yet, the long-term health effects for children and adolescents exposed to economic crises are still understudied. we investigated the early-adult health implications of experiencing the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany in the early 1990s during infancy, childhood and adolescence. using data from the german socio-economic panel (soep) and its linkage with german pension records (soep-rv), we applied entropy balancing and conditional quantile regression to assess the relationship between the experience of the economic crisis during early life (ages 0-17) and physical and mental health effects (sf-12 summary scores) in n = 2,337 young adults (aged 17-30) from east and west germany. our results indicate mainly no signi cant physical health effects, yet, signi cant adverse mental health effects for respondents exposed to the economic crisis in east germany, especially in young women of average and better mental health. parental unemployment was an additional risk factor for young women’s mental health. thus, we suggest women who experienced economic crises during early life are at increased risk of adverse mental health effects already early in their adulthood. support for families in times of economic crisis and early prevention for infants, children and adolescents exposed to economic adversities is warranted. keywords: economic crisis · life course approach · family stress · sf-12 · health · germany 1 introduction economic stress is consistently associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes, especially during economic crises (see karanikolos et al. 2016; mucci et al. 2016; and thompson et al. 2019 for review). children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to the adverse health effects of economic crises, as their comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 701-740 (date of release: 14.12.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-28 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-28en0 • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt702 health is sensitive to changes in their socio-economic environment (elder 1998; kuh et al. 2013) while being entirely dependent on their families and unable to mitigate the consequences of the emerging economic stress themselves (elder 1999). this process may be explained by physiological dysregulation resulting from increased distress exposure (glei et al. 2007) that may result in later-life adverse physical and mental health outcomes (alastalo et al. 2013; elder/caspi 1988). therefore, exploring the relationship between early-life exposure to economic crises and longterm health outcomes is particularly important for understanding the accumulation processes of poor health over the life course and explaining health inequalities in adulthood. both empirical evidence and the theoretical view of the life course approach strongly suggest that exposure to a signi cant adverse life event – such as an economic crisis – early in life carries signi cant physical and mental health risks over the remaining life course. first, recent empirical studies conducted in highincome countries have found adverse short-term health effects among children and adolescents of both the general occurrence of an economic crisis (anagnostopoulos/ soumaki 2013; cui/zack 2013; rajmil et al. 2013) and the family exposure to an economic crisis, i.e., through parental unemployment and family economic hardship (briody 2021; costa et al. 2020; rajmil et al. 2013). in addition, studies on infant exposure to economic stress suggest higher mortality and cardiovascular health differences in later life compared to unexposed children (alessie et al. 2019; van den berg et al. 2006, 2011). second, the theoretical assumptions of the life course approach imply midand long-term mental health effects of exposure to economic crisis during childhood and adolescence, considering the sensitive period model within the life course approach (ben-shlomo et al. 2014). speci cally, children and adolescents are more susceptible to external stressors than adults; thus, early-life exposure can lead to long-term adverse health outcomes (kuh et al. 2013). economic stressors, in particular, increase family stress and ultimately harm children’s and adolescents’ physical and mental health (cf. gard et al. 2020; masarik/conger 2017). in addition, recent studies on parental unemployment show that particularly school-age children and adolescents might suffer long-term mental health effects until adulthood (moustgaard et al. 2018; nikolova/nikolaev 2018; powdthavee/vernoit 2013). while these results emphasise the vulnerability of children and adolescents to family economic stress, the adult health consequences of early-life economic adversities, particularly economic crises, remain unclear. this study seeks to contribute to this discussion by investigating the relationship between early-life exposure to an economic crisis, i.e., during infancy, childhood and adolescence, and physical and mental health in early adulthood. speci cally, we study this relationship in the context of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany in the early 1990s (see 2.2. for more information). to our knowledge, research on the long-term health consequences of early-life exposure to the postreuni cation economic crisis in east germany is limited to one study on metabolic health effects (bister et al. 2022). we are the  rst to study this economic crisis’ longscarred for life • 703 term comprehensive mental and physical health consequences while considering not only the general but also the family-level exposure to economic stress. accordingly, we address the following research questions: (1) what is the general early adult physical and mental effect of exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany during infancy, childhood and adolescence? (2) what is the role of parental unemployment in this relationship, i.e., the direct exposure to the economic crisis? in assessing the exposure to this economic crisis in early life and subsequent physical and mental health consequences in early adulthood, we follow the life course approach by distinguishing between infancy, childhood and adolescence as the three main sensitive phases of the life course (kuh et al. 2013). furthermore, we conceptualise the adverse health effects of experiencing economic stress at the family level during economic crises for children and adolescents using the family stress model (see masarik/conger 2017 for review; solantaus et al. 2004) and speci cally consider parental unemployment during the economic crisis period. our results thereby contribute to the understanding of long-term health consequences of early-life economic adversities and further provide insights into the setting of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany, which we utilise for our study and which has been widely understudied. 2 background 2.1 theoretical considerations in our efforts to investigate the early-adult health implications of experiencing severe economic stress during early life, we rely on two theoretical concepts, namely the family stress model and the life course approach. first, the family stress model (fsm) broadly explores how external stressors affect family dynamics (masarik/conger 2017) focusing on traditional family constellations, i.e. a two-generation household consisting of one or two parent(s) and at least one of their dependent children. the mechanism of action is described as follows: the external stressor is initially absorbed by the parents. in processing the related adversities of this stressor, they experience increased distress leading to disruptions in the family dynamics and eventually to a decline in parenting. this decline in parenting entails the signi cantly decreasing ability to ful l parental duties to varying extents, ranging from lacking emotional support to child neglect (masarik/conger 2017). subsequently, the family stress transmitted from the parents to their children may negatively impact child development, potentially resulting in adverse health consequences such as developmental delays or immense physical and mental health problems (cf. gard et al. 2020; solantaus et al. 2004). economic stressors, such as poverty, unemployment, or  nancial strain, are amongst the common stressors studied when it comes to applications of the fsm in empirical research. speci cally, economic stressors at the family level triggered • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt704 by worsened economic conditions – i.e., low income, debts, or other adverse  nancial events – may lead to decreased parenting capabilities in the parents (cf. schmiedeberg/bozoyan 2021) and subsequently increased psychological distress in children (conger et al. 2012; conger/conger 2002). in turn, children are at higher risk of suffering from adjustment problems (see masarik/conger 2017 for review), leading to developmental delays and subsequently adverse long-term health outcomes. while the fsm may aid in conceptualising how economic stressors during an economic crisis, it does not explain the relationship between early-life economic adversities and later life health consequences. therefore, we additionally utilise the life course approach. the life course approach (brandt et al. 2012; kuh et al. 2013) stresses the signi cance of early-life conditions for the healthy development of individuals until and throughout adulthood. speci cally, it emphasises children’s and adolescents’ emotional, social, and physical dependence on their social environment, such as their family. exposure to sources of family economic stress during the vulnerable early years of life, such as an economic crisis during infancy, childhood or adolescence, may accumulate adverse health outcomes over the life course, into signi cant health differences in adulthood (kuh et al. 2013). hence, the experience of an economic crisis and its subsequent family economic stress during early life may play a critical role in individuals’ long-term health. 2.2 effects of economic crises on child and adolescent health previous research has shown that economic crises are particularly severe for children and adolescents‘ short-term physical and mental health (see rajmil et al. 2014 for review). for mental health, costa and colleagues (2020) studied children aged 7 to 10 born shortly before or during the great recession of 2008 in portugal. they found that children directly exposed to the economic crisis showed increased psychosocial functioning problems, poorer health-related quality of life, and increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. similarly, rajmil and colleagues (2013) found in spain that parental unemployment during this economic crisis immediately and adversely affected the health-related quality of life of children aged 0-12. in their research on us adolescents, cui and zack (2013) observed that mental health declined during the great recession. finally, anagnostopoulos and soumaki (2013) showed increased uptake of psychiatric services in children and adolescents in greece during the same economic crisis. at the same time, research on the physical health effects of economic crises for children and adolescents is scarce. of the previously discussed studies, cui and zack (2013) are the only ones that also examined physical health outcomes and showed declined self-rated health but no signi cant decreases in physical health in adolescents. rajmil and colleagues (2013) also studied children’s body mass index and found an increased prevalence in child adiposity after exposure to the economic crisis. these  ndings are consistent with studies investigating children’s weight gain after the great recession of 2008 in portugal (rodrigues et al. 2021) and ireland (briody 2021). both concluded a positive association between scarred for life • 705 deteriorated nutritional status and decreasing physical activity in families affected by an economic crisis and children’s weight gain. the fact that children and young people are affected by the onset of economic crises is generally unsurprising. several studies suggest that the sole onset of an economic crisis can lead to psychological distress in the population (see mucci et al. 2016 for review). this general negative health effect likely evolves from higher levels of economic insecurity during economic crises that, in turn, reinforce economic stress emerging from any occurring unemployment (hessel et al. 2014; reibling et al. 2017). parents, in particular, may experience increased distress as they experience a greater sense of responsibility for their children and thus might feel strongly threatened by an economic crisis. accordingly, a study by chzhen (2016) showed that the presence of children in the household increased the probability of reporting distress in the context of the great recession of 2008 in europe. consequently, and based on the family stress model (fsm), parental distress experiences during economic crises may have a negative impact on their children. solantaus and colleagues (2004) validated the assumptions of the fsm for children’s mental health during the 1990s economic crisis in finland. their study showed that increased economic pressure and negative changes in parental mental health, marital interaction, and parenting quality contributed to children’s mental health risks. at the same time, a family’s socio-economic capability is crucial for the coping with the adverse economic conditions, and may decide on adverse health effects in the children (currie/stabile 2002; doyle et al. 2007). speci cally, parental educational attainment (rajmil et al. 2013) or household income (burgess et al. 2004) might facilitate physical and mental child health inequalities induced by family economic stress. accordingly, we hypothesise that children from families that were more severely affected by economic stress show worse physical and mental health in early adulthood. 2.3 adult health effects of economic adversities during early life studies on adult health effects of exposure to economic crises in early life are scarce. only one study by bister and colleagues (2022) investigates early-adult metabolic health effects of early-life exposure to an economic crisis. speci cally, they studied several metabolic health outcomes of east germans born shortly before or during the post-reuni cation economic crisis. they found increased early-adult metabolic health risks in women exposed to the economic crisis in utero and infancy. however, they only analysed the overall burden of the economic crisis and did not consider experiences of family economic stress through, e.g., parental unemployment. following the insights of the life course approach, we hypothesise that exposure to an economic crisis during early life increases the long-term physical and mental health risks. while research on the long-term health consequences of economic crises during early life is scarce, evidence from studies of parental unemployment provides support. several studies showed adverse long-term physical and mental health • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt706 outcomes after experiencing economic hardship and parental unemployment at a young age (lindström et al. 2012, 2014; moustgaard et al. 2018; nikolova/ nikolaev 2021; widding-havneraas/pedersen 2020). for example, moustgaard and colleagues (2018) observed increased psychotropic medication use in adolescents experiencing paternal unemployment in finland with long-lasting effects. nikolova and nikolaev (2021) found decreases in life satisfaction during early adulthood (ages 18-31) for individuals experiencing parental unemployment during childhood. lindström and colleagues (2012, 2014) con rmed in their research in sweden that childhood and adolescent economic stress (ages 0-18) accumulates to poor selfrated general health (lindström et al. 2012) and mental health (lindström et al. 2014) in adulthood. widding-havneraas and pedersen (2020) con rmed these  ndings for 20 european countries and found an association between childhood and adolescent economic stress (ages 0-18) and adult self-rated health and cancer. accordingly, we hypothesise that the exposure to severe early-life economic stress is associated with worse physical and mental health in early adulthood. 2.4 the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany and its health effects in this paper, we study the relationship between exposure to an economic crisis during childhood and adolescence and health in early adulthood using the postreuni cation economic crisis in east germany in the early 1990s. this economic crisis followed the sudden economic restructuring in east germany following the german reuni cation in 1990, during which the previously centrally planned east german economy was transformed into a competitive market economy (burda/ hunt 2001). this process caused many east german companies to go bankrupt, resulting in mass unemployment in entire east germany, where full employment had been a political imperative before the reuni cation (burda/hunt 2001; chevalier/ marie 2017). this signi cant economic shock in east germany occurred within a few months and suddenly exposed more than 16 million east germans to a severe economic crisis that escalated between 1990 and 1994 (federal statistical of ce 2020a). although west germany also saw a slight increase in unemployment, the changes were not comparable to the substantially rising unemployment rate in east germany in combination with the overall decline of the east german economy. figure 1 illustrates the tremendous economic growth and unemployment rate differences between east and west germany. we identi ed the main economic crisis period between 1990 and 1994 with a sudden drop in the gross domestic product (gdp) per capita in 1990 that only recovered to pre-reuni cation levels in 1995 (fig. 1, left panel), and a sharp increase in unemployment from 1990 that slightly decreased again in 1995 (fig. 1, right panel). the variation in the economic situation between east and west germany was particularly evident in the unemployment statistics: in 1993, for example, only about 7 percent of the west german population was directly or indirectly affected by unemployment compared to approximately 27 percent of the east german scarred for life • 707 population (federal statistical of ce 2020b;hauser 1996; hofer et al. 1995). the rapid increase in unemployment rates in east germany was not only a macroeconomic shock but also a completely new experience for east germans who were not used to unemployment prior to the german reuni cation, neither its anticipation nor its consequences. different from the gdp, however, the unemployment rates did not recover after 1994 but established themselves and introduced a decade of futile labour market prospects in east germany. although the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany was a signi cant economic shock for the entire east german population, its health effects have received relatively little attention, especially those of children and adolescents exposed to it. previous research mainly focused on east-west german mortality differences and reported general east german health disadvantages in the older fig. 1: comparison of the gdp per capita and the unemployment rate during pre-reuni cation period (1960-1989), pre-reuni cation economic crisis (approx. 1990-1994, in grey) and later years between east and west germany 0 5 10 15 20 25 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 year east germany west germany children present in household in east germany* children present in household in west germany 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 year 1990 us$ (ppp-geary khamis) gdp per capita: relative levels (1960=100) unemployment rate (soep) percentage (%) unemployed note: gross domestic product (gdp) per capita (1960-1997) in 1990 us$ converted at geary khamis purchasing power parity (gk ppp) and compared to 1960 (1960 = 100) (left graph); unemployment rate (1984-1999) for total population and for households, in which children below the age of 16 are present, for east and west germany. *no unemployment data available for pre-reuni cation east germany (1983-1989); however, since full employment was a political imperative in pre-reuni cation socialist east germany (cf. burda/hunt 2001), we assume the unemployment rate from 1983 to 1989 being zero; the grey area indicates years of post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany from 1990-1994. source: gdp per capita data from the conference board total economy databasetm (2013); unemployment rates (own calculations) from the german socio-economic panel (soep), liebig et al. (2019). • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt708 population (grigoriev/pechholdová 2017; nolte/mckee 2004; vogt 2013). some of these health differences can be attributed to the inherently different public health system in pre-reuni cation east germany (busse/riesberg 2005; lampert et al. 2019). however, the role of the post-reuni cation economic shock in east germany remains unknown. the prolonged economic insecurity in east germany after the reuni cation and its in uence on east germans’ health has been frequently studied (berth et al. 2011; easterlin/plagnol 2008; frijters et al. 2005). however, these studies mainly focused on short-term health effects for the adult east german population, and the younger population remained largely unresearched. only two studies addressed the health of younger east germans. first, forkel and silbereisen (2001) researched east german adolescents’ well-being in 1993, i.e., during the post-reuni cation economic crisis, concerning parental unemployment, parental mood, and family climate. their results did not indicate signi cant health disadvantages for east german compared to west german adolescents. however, they adopted a cross-sectional study design, which only provided a snapshot during one year of the post-reuni cation economic crisis and did not account for individual or family-level confounding or a longitudinal perspective. second, bister and colleagues (2022) observed in their recent study increased long-term metabolic health risks of the post-reuni cation economic crisis. however, they did not consider parental unemployment, i.e., the direct experience of the economic crisis. thus, the full extent of the long-term mental and physical health consequences of this economic crisis for children and adolescents, particularly concerning the experience of family economic stress, remains unclear. 3 methods 3.1 data and sample we used data from the german socio-economic panel (soep) (liebig et al. 2019), a nationally representative longitudinal study of private households in germany. the survey, which includes more than 25,000 respondents in nearly 15,000 households, has been conducted annually since 1984 in west germany and 1990 in east and west germany. with an east german sample compiled already in june 1990, the soep is the only longitudinal study enabling the study of east german families during the post-reuni cation period introducing disrupting political and economic transformation to an entire society (liebig et al. 2019). the soep core study contains detailed personal, social, and economic information for all household members aged 16 and older (wagner et al. 2007). to identify the preand post-reuni cation household residence in east or west germany, we additionally retrieved information from the soep regional data (knies/spiess 2007) (identi cation of 84.5 percent of the  nal sample) and the soep-rv data linkage with longitudinal data on social security pension records from the german pension insurance (“deutsche rentenversicherung”) (lüthen et al. 2022) (identi cation of 16.5 percent of the  nal scarred for life • 709 sample). these additional data sets complement the comprehensive survey data of the soep with objective information from survey metadata (soep regional data) and administrative registers (soep-rv) and are thus highly reliable. to summarise, for the purpose of our study we utilised the soep survey year of 1990 and the pre-1990 information from the soep-rv data link to identify the place of residence at the onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany (with west germany as reference); the 1990-1994 soep survey years and respective soep-rv information to reconstruct the family-level exposure during the economic crisis years; and the 2002-2009 soep survey years to retrieve the sf-12 variables informing on physical and mental health. thereby, the soep enabled us to study the long-term physical and mental health of a vastly understudied population, i.e., east german cohorts experiencing the post-reuni cation economic crisis as children or adolescents. the soep thereby aided in depicting the long-term health consequences of exposure to extreme economic stress for these cohorts and their families. subsequently, our premise in the sample selection was to obtain as large a sample as possible with high statistical power to address our objective. we restricted our sample to respondents born between 1973 and 1989, i.e., those who were between zero and 17 years old at the onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in 1990. we refrained from including individual respondents born after the onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis to avoid bias due to birth selection in post-reuni cation east germany (cf. adler 1997; huinink/kreyenfeld 2006). we only considered respondents with,  rst, at least one parent included as a respondent themselves in the soep and, second, the parental household residence in either east or west germany before the german reuni cation. since neither the soep regional data nor the soep-rv differentiates between east and west berlin, we excluded berlin. subsequently, our  nal sample consisted of n = 2,337 individuals from east (n = 982, 42.0 percent) and west germany (n = 1,355, 58.0 percent) (see table 1 for sample description and figure s1 for sample selection). 3.2 health outcome variables we measured two dependent variables indicating the physical and mental health of the respondents using the sf-12 summary scores for physical and mental health functioning (sf-12) (soep-version, see andersen et al. 2007 and appendix page 37). the sf-12 physical (pcs) and mental component scores (mcs) were computed from eight domains: namely, physical role limitation, general health perception, vitality, bodily pain, physical functioning, social function, socio-emotional role limitations, and mental health (rand corporation 2020). the sf-12 is known as a valid and reliable tool for assessing physical and mental health based on subjective health measures (andersen et al. 2007; rand corporation 2020) and has previously been used to measure health functioning in adolescents aged 13-19 and young adults aged 20-23 (cf. ge et al. 2019; jörngården et al. 2006; moscarelli/manning 2009) on a scale from zero (poor health) to 100 (good health) (turner-bowker/hogue 2014). we included both the pcs and the mcs as continuous variables observed once per respondent at the earliest available age in young adulthood to avoid unobserved • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt710 heterogeneity due to the accumulation of additional health risks over their adult life. speci cally, we measured the respondents’ health outcomes between ages 17 (the minimum response age for the health measure) and 30 (the earliest available response age for the 1973 cohort in 2002). 3.3 main explanatory variables we measured the experience of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany using two variables, namely the region of the pre-reuni cation residence and the experience of migration to west germany. for the  rst measure, we created tab. 1: sample description of the unbalanced sample (i.e., with no balancing weights from entropy balancing applied) of the full n = 2,337 sample variable mean / % std. dev. min max health outcomes during early adulthood (using sf-12) mental component score (mcs)+ 49.56 9.56 13.17 71.81 physical component score (pcs)+ 56.18 6.49 13.63 73.61 age at sf-12 in years 21.00 3.60 17 30 parental household residence before the german reuni cation (%) west germans (n = 1,355) 57.98% east germans (n = 982) 42.02% migrated to west germany* 29.74% stayed in east germany* 70.26% parental unemployment 1990-94 (%) total 31.66% west german (n = 1,355) 20.52% east german (n = 982) 47.05% demographics birth year 1982.23 4.51 1973 1989 female (%) 50.02% age at onset of the economic crisis (1990) 7.7 7 4.51 0 17 in age groups in 1990 (%) infancy (aged 0-2) 21.31% early childhood (aged 3-5) 22.12% childhood (aged 6-11) 38.30% adolescence (aged 12-17) 18.27% number of siblings 1.49 1.26 0 9 mother’s age at birth in years 25.97 5.05 12 48 same residence region at health outcome 91.62% + sf-12 physical component score (pcs) and mental component score (mcs) are scale measures that may potentially range from 0 (poor health) to 100 (very good health). * percentage of east german subsample migrating to west germany or staying in east germany during the 1990s. source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link scarred for life • 711 a binary variable indicating the respondents’ parental pre-reuni cation residence in east germany (reference: west germany) identi ed by either their household residence retrieved from the soep regional data or by their employment location retrieved from the soep-rv data (see data and sample). for the second measure of migration from east to west germany, we created a binary variable indicating the migration from the pre-reuni cation residence in east or west germany to the opposite region (reference: no migration) between 1990 and 1994. with this measure, we aimed to consider the large share of east germans migrating to west germany during the early 1990s (heiland 2004), which undeniably shortened the exposure period to the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany. we included this measure as an interaction with the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis to account for the sole exposure to the initial post-reuni cation economic shock (i.e., the initial region of residence in east germany and subsequent migration to west germany (liebig et al. 2019) and shortened exposure to an economic crisis), or full exposure to the severe economic crisis in post-reuni cation east germany (i.e., no migration). we further assessed the respondents’ family’s direct exposure to the economic crisis by including a binary variable on their experience of any spell of parental unemployment during the economic crisis period between 1990 and 1994 (reference: no parental unemployment). we base this information on paternal and maternal unemployment spells between january 1990 and december 1994. we retrieved these from parental employment biographies in either the soep core study for households that entered the soep in 1990 or earlier or the social security pension records (soep-rv) for households that entered the soep later than 1990. we interacted the parental-unemployment variable with the above-mentioned binary variable indicating the respondent’s parental pre-reuni cation residence to account for different meanings in parental unemployment during the post-reuni cation economic crisis period between east and west germany. 3.4 control variables as control variables, we included  rst, a categorical measure for the exposure age at the onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in 1990 with categories of “infancy” (age 0-2, reference), “early childhood” (age 3-5), “childhood” (age 6-11), and “adolescence” (age 12-17); second, a continuous measure for the number of siblings; third, the respective other sf-12 pcs or mcs value to control for the reciprocal in uence of physical and mental health; and, fourth, a continuous measure for the mothers’ age at  rst childbirth, z-standardised for east and west germany respectively. the  nal control variable served as proxy for the respondents’ socio-economic background. more commonly used measures such as the parental education comparably showed many missing values for our sample (see table a1) or relied on respondent-reported approximations (see fig. a2). to maintain a larger sample and achieve higher statistical power, we therefore decided to measure the socioeconomic background using the mothers’ age at  rst childbirth. this measure has • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt712 been used before as a proxy for socio-economic background (van roode et al. 2017) and general effects on later-life health outcomes (carslake et al. 2017). we, however, tested the robustness of our variable selection in a sensitivity analysis replacing mothers’ age at  rst childbirth with the highest parental education leading to nearly congruent results and thus con rming our modelling choice (see fig. a2). moreover, the included control variable of the exposure age at the onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in 1990 additionally captures the respondents’ ages at the health outcome assessment and thereby partially accounts for the monitoring gap between the exposure and the health outcome assessment. corresponding to the sf-12, the survey questions were roughly collected at the same time for the vast majority of our sample, i.e., in the years of 2002 (n = 1,549, 66.3 percent), 2004 (n = 427, 18.3 percent), and the years thereafter (n = 361, 15.4 percent). with a collinearity coef cient of 0.7847 (p<0.0001), the exposure age to the economic crisis should thereby re ect on the age at the respondents’ sf-12 assessment. 3.5 analytical approach in our analysis, we proceeded in two steps (table 2). in step 1, we applied entropy balancing to adjust the covariate distribution of the control group data (i.e., the west german sample) by re-weighting the observations to improve the comparability of both groups regarding the covariate distribution in the treatment group (i.e., the east german sample). based on known sampling moments, entropy balancing improves the covariate balance and helps to adjust survey samples to the known characteristics of a target population (hainmueller 2012). we calculated the entropy balancing sample weights in statase 17 using “ebalance” (hainmueller/xu 2013). we matched the east and the west german respondents on (1) their parental unemployment experiences, (2) their birth year, (3) their gender, (4) their age at the sf-12 survey, (5) their number of siblings, and (6) their mothers’ maternal age at childbirth (z-standardised for east and west german samples separately) (see table a1 for matching statistics). using the obtained sampling weights, we re-weighted the observations for the analysis in step 2. with this re-weighting strategy, we refrained from achieving results representative of the east and west german population structure. however, we aimed to obtain two comparable samples (in at least the speci c attributes used) and enable the isolation of the exposure effect of the post-reuni cation economic crisis. in step 2 of our analysis, we applied conditional quantile regression with a re-weighted sample using the entropy balancing weights from step 1 (table 2). conditional quantile regression is an extension of linear regression and estimates the conditional mean within a quantile of a response variable across the values of a predictor variable. speci cally, we used conditional quantile regression to identify the heterogeneous effects of the experience of the post-reuni cation economic crisis on physical (pcs) and mental health (mcs) for the quantiles of their respective distribution. we decided for quantile regression as our main analytical strategy, scarred for life • 713 as it allows to estimate a linear relationship while accounting for different slopes depending on the quantile in the outcome variable distribution. it thereby allows for a more ef cient inclusion of data outliers compared to mean-based regression techniques such as ordinary least squares regression (cf. rios-avila/maroto 2022). speci cally, we suggested that the effect of the experience of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany during childhood and adolescence on the young adult physical (pcs) and mental health outcomes (mcs) differed over different quantiles of the conditional distribution. therefore, we  t quantile regression at the 20th, 40th, 60th, and 80th percentiles of the conditional distribution of the exposure to the economic crisis in east germany on both health outcomes pcs and mcs. 4 results 4.1 descriptive results we observed in two-sample t-tests that east germans scored on average 0.3 units lower in the pcs (p=0.2440) and 2.2 units signi cantly lower in the mcs (p<0.001) compared to the west german sample. the descriptive analysis further tab. 2: overview of the analytical strategy using entropy balancing (step 1) and conditional quantile regression (step 2) used measures step 1: entropy balancing step 2: conditional quantile regression models aim to balance the sample to to obtain the predicted average improve the comparability of change in sf-12 measures for the east and the west quantiles of the pcs/mcs german subsamples. distribution applying sample weights from step 1. sf-12 pcs [no conditioning on sf-12 health outcome variables sf-12 mcs measures in step 1.] pre-reuni cation residence (x) “treatment” measure internal east-west migration (main) explanatory variables parental unemployment variables used for matching  predictors conditioning the treatment probability age at economic crisis gender control variables age at sf-12 assessment maternal age at  rst childbirth n 2,337 2,337 note: sf-12 summary score for health functioning shown as physical (sf-12 pcs) and mental component scores (sf-12 mcs); other measures correspond to descriptions in health outcome variable and main explanatory variables. source: own design • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt714 showed that 47.0 percent of the east german respondents experienced parental unemployment between 1990 and 1994, which was signi cantly higher than the west german respondents with 20.5 percent (p<0.001). the health scores for those who experienced parental unemployment between 1990 and 1994 were signi cantly lower with 1.19 units for the pcs (p<0.001) and 0.95 units for the mcs (p<0.5) for the total sample. however, we only found signi cantly lower health scores for east germans who experienced parental unemployment during that time for the pcs (1.68, p<0.001), yet not for the mcs (0.33, p=0.6015). table 3 shows the differences in early adult physical and mental health of the east german sample compared with the west german sample over the 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent quartiles of the distribution using mean difference testing (t-test results). again, we observed no signi cant difference between the pcs of the east and west german samples across all quantiles, with lower pcs only in the 60 percent and 80 percent quantiles. the mcs, however, were smaller for the east german sample across all quantiles, with signi cant differences at the 5 percent level for the 60 percent and 80 percent quantiles, indicating health differences especially among those respondents at the upper end of the distribution of mental health scores. to fully understand how the experience of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany during early life shaped individuals’ physical and mental health in early adulthood, we turned to the multivariate analysis. tab. 3: differences in early adult physical and mental health of the east german sample compared with the west german sample over the 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent quartiles of the pcs/ mcs distribution quantile 20% 40% 60% 80% means per subsample physical component score (pcs) west german 45.51 50.23 52.70 54.63 east german 46.57 50.33 52.58 54.30 p-value (t-test) 0.0547 0.8084 0.7001 0.2350 mental component score (mcs) west german 35.08 40.50 44.24 47.28 east german 34.33 39.65 43.30 45.88 p-value (t-test) 0.1525 0.0548 0.0217 0.0003 note: mean differences (t-test results) of the health outcome variables sf-12 physical component score (pcs) and mental component score (mcs) over 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent quartiles of the distribution for the full n = 2,337 sample (no weighting applied). annotations: italic font indicates signi cant differences (p<0.05) between west german and east german quantile-speci c mean. source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link scarred for life • 715 4.2 regression results figures 2 and 3 present the association between the experience of the postreuni cation economic crisis during early life and early adult physical (pcs) and mental (mcs) health outcomes, along with the distribution of pcs and mcs (as average marginal effects, complete regression and effect tables available in tables a3). in doing so, we structured our main results around three aspects, for physical and mental health outcomes respectively:  rst, the general experience of the onset of the economic crisis in 1990 (indicated by the birthplace in east or west germany prior to the german reuni cation in 1990); second, the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis throughout its duration from 1990 to 1994 (indicated by an interaction of the birthplace and an east-west migration during the economic crisis years); and third, the experience of parental unemployment between 1990 and 1994. first, we present our results on the general experience of the onset of the economic crisis in 1990 (research question 1). the quantile regression showed lower pcs for east german men across all quantiles ranging from -1.2 in the 20 percent quantile to -0.3 in the 60 percent quantile lower pcs compared to west german men. nevertheless, none of the effects were statistically signi cantly different from zero (p>0.05). we observed almost no difference in pcs for east german women compared to west german women (fig. 2). for mcs (fig. 3), we found consistently lower scores for east german men and women than their west german counterparts. mcs differences for men ranged from -0.8 in the 80 percent quantile to -2.6 in the 60 percent quantile lower for east germans, with signi cant effects at the 5 percent level only for the 60 percent quantile (p<0.01). for women, the mcs were from -2.0 in the 20 percent quantile to -3.4 in the 40 percent quantile lower for the east german samples, with statistically signi cant effects at the 5 percent level for the 40 percent (p<0.01), 60 percent and 80 percent quantiles (p<0.001). second, we show our  ndings on the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis, which showed increased east-west migration (research questions 1). the quantile regression results for the region of birth in east germany that interacted with migration to west germany showed no signi cant differences for pcs in men and women who migrated and did not migrate compared to their west german counterparts (fig. 2). for mcs (fig. 3), we observed signi cant effects at the 5 percent level for east german men only for those exposed to the economic crisis throughout its duration (i.e., no migration), with effects ranging from -1.5 in the 80 percent quantile to -3.1 in the 60 percent quantile decreased mcs, all statistically signi cant (p<0.05/p<0.01) except for the 20 percent quantile. for east german women, we found signi cant effects at the 5 percent level on the mcs for those who did and did not migrate to west germany with similar effects. third, we assessed the experience of parental unemployment during the economic crisis years between 1990 and 1994. the quantile regression results for the region of birth in east germany that interacted with parental unemployment experience in the respective period revealed no statistically signi cant effects at the 5 percent level for pcs (fig. 2), neither for east german men nor women. however, • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt716 the pcs of east german men experiencing parental unemployment was slightly lower than those who did not experience parental unemployment. the effects on the pcs in women tended towards zero. for mcs (fig. 3), we found an overall trend of lower scores for both east german men with and without experience of parental unemployment during the economic crisis, with most scores not statistically signi cant. similarly, the mcs for women were also overall lower for those who did and did not experience parental unemployment compared to their west german counterparts. however, the effects for those who experienced parental fig. 2: overall effect of the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany on physical health scores (sf-12 pcs) over four quantiles (20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent) of the pcs distribution, estimated from conditional quantile regression models 20 40 60 80 overall effect: exposure to the economic crisis east germany (ref.: west germany)in average difference in pcs average difference in pcs overall effect x migration to west germany (ref.: west germany) -6 -4 -2 0 2 20 40 60 80 percent quantiles no migration migration average difference in pcs overall effect x parental unemployment (ref.: west germany) -6 -4 -2 0 2 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 no unemployment unemployment percent quantiles percent quantiles average difference in pcs average difference in pcs -4 -2 0 2 4 20 40 60 80 percent quantiles -4 -2 0 2 4 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 no migration migration average difference in pcs -4 -2 0 2 4 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 no unemployment unemployment percent quantiles percent quantiles women men -6 -4 -2 0 2 20 40 60 80 note: reference for each effect is pre-reuni cation residence in west germany. effects were calculated based on quantile regression models adjusted for east-west germany migration and parental unemployment (both interacted with the pre-reuni cation residence), age at onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis, children’s gender, their age at sf-12 assessment, and their mother’s age at  rst childbirth. see tables a3 for full regression and effect tables. source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link scarred for life • 717 unemployment were far larger compared to those who did not, ranging from -1.2 in the 20 percent quantile to -5.2 in the 60 percent quantile, with statistically signi cant effects at the 5 percent level for all (p<0.05/p<0.01) except the 20 percent quantile. fig. 3: overall effect of the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany on mental health scores (sf-12 mcs) over four quantiles (20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent) of the mcs distribution, estimated from conditional quantile regression models note: reference for each effect is pre-reuni cation residence in west germany. effects were calculated based on quantile regression models adjusted for east-west germany migration and parental unemployment (both interacted with the pre-reuni cation residence), age at onset of the post-reuni cation economic crisis, children’s gender, their age at sf-12 assessment, and their mother’s age at  rst childbirth. see tables a3 for full regression and effect tables. source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link 20 40 60 80 overall effect: exposure to the economic crisis in east germany (ref.: west germany) average difference in mcs average difference in mcs overall effect x migration to west germany ( )ref.: west germany -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 percent quantiles no migration migration average difference in mcs overall effect x parental unemployment (ref.: )west germany -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 no unemployment unemployment percent quantiles percent quantiles average difference in mcs average difference in mcs -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 percent quantiles no migration migration average difference in mcs -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 no unemployment unemployment percent quantiles percent quantiles women men -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 -10 -5 0 5 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 80 • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt718 5 discussion 5.1 summary of results this study analysed the relationship between exposure to the economic crisis in post-reuni cation east germany during infancy, childhood and adolescence (ages 0-17) and physical and mental health in early adulthood (ages 17-29). we sought to investigate (1) the general physical and mental health responses to the experience of an economic crisis while exploring the in uence of the initial economic shock immediately after the german reuni cation in 1990 and the following economic crisis in the early 1990s, and (2) the in uence of parental unemployment during this economic crisis, i.e., the direct exposure to this economic crisis. our results indicate no signi cant early-adult physical health effects of the postreuni cation economic crisis for east german-born men and women compared to their west german counterparts. however, we observed signi cantly worse mental health in east german men and women, especially among women of average and better mental health. furthermore, when differentiating between the experience of the initial economic shock of the post-reuni cation economic crisis and the experience of the subsequent economic crisis from 1990 to 1994 (using an indicator of migration to west germany), we only found signi cantly lower mental health for east german men who experienced the economic crisis throughout its duration. we further found signi cantly lower mental health for east german women who experienced parental unemployment during the post-reuni cation economic crisis compared to their west german counterparts, especially for those of average and better mental health. 5.2 discussion of results our  ndings emphasise the adverse long-term mental health effects of earlylife economic adversities. in line with previous research, this result con rms our hypothesised negative relationship between early-life exposure to the economic crisis and early-adult health, as derived from previous research on immediate health and stress responses of children and adolescents to economic crises (anagnostopoulos/soumaki 2013; cui/zack 2013; rajmil et al. 2013). furthermore, our study provides evidence that women in particular carry the long-term mental health consequences after experiencing an economic crisis early in life, both in general and through parental unemployment at the family level. these  ndings align with prior studies showing stronger reactions to external stressors in women than in men and increased hormonal and physical dysregulation (dedovic et al. 2009), which may also affect their mental health. similarly, bister and colleagues (2022) observed signi cantly worse (metabolic) health outcomes in east german than west german young women, but not for men. similar to the results presented in this study, early-life experiences of distress in the family environment might drive these adverse health outcomes for women. scarred for life • 719 our  ndings on the relevance of parental unemployment during an experience of an economic crisis suggest an accumulation of mental health risks from infancy to young adulthood rooted in economic stress (cf. lindström et al. 2012, 2014). as previous research has unambiguously shown, the health hazard for children in settings of economic stress, both in the shortand in the long-term (lindström et al. 2012; moustgaard et al. 2018; nikolova/nikolaev 2021), is nested in their families (cf. family stress model, masarik/conger 2017). our investigation of the family experience of the economic crisis, i.e., parental unemployment, showed negative associations with early-adult mental health, corresponding to insights from recent research on health consequences of childhood economic crises (cf. briody 2021; cui/zack 2013; rajmil et al. 2013) and on children’s immediate mental health and long-term stress dysregulation consequences of experiencing economic hardship (evans/kim 2007; solantaus et al. 2004). unlike literature assessing longer-term physical health effects of early-life exposure to economic stress (cf. alessie et al. 2019; van den berg et al. 2011), our results show little to no evidence for physical health effects of the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany. we should acknowledge the nature of our chosen health outcome: the sf-12 assesses physical and mental health functioning but not its causes (rand corporation 2020). subsequently, we might underestimate the actual effects of the economic crisis on physical and mental health, as only their expression in health functioning was analysed. concerning the young age of our sample, we might expect more far-reaching health consequences in the longer term. however, we also found signi cantly lower physical and mental health among east german men and women who migrated to west germany during the early 1990s compared to west german respondents who did not migrate. this result might indicate that the initial economic shock of the reuni cation in east germany explains the adverse early-adult health outcomes of those affected better than the consequent economic crisis itself. hence, the experience of the economic and political shock in east germany accompanying the german reuni cation might be the common denominator in both east german groups, those who did migrate to west germany and those who remained in east germany. on the other hand, we acknowledge that the adaptation process that families had to go through who migrated from east to west germany might have negatively contributed to the physical and mental health of their children, and potentially have cancelled out the health bene ts gained by withdrawing from the economic crisis though moving to west germany. prior studies provide evidence for adverse physical and mental health effects of residential relocation experienced during early life (cf. simsek et al. 2021; tseliou et al. 2016) and we cannot exclude the existence of additional stressors related to the migration to west germany (cf. kley 2013; rosenbaum-feldbrügge et al. 2022). at the same time, the relocation to west germany implied the escape from the economic crisis in east germany that potentially led to a decline in economic stress in the parents and had an alleviating effect on the children. in addition, a positive health selection was observed among east-west german migrants (cf. westphal 2016) indicating that the respective • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt720 children and adolescents likely belonged to families that were able to mitigate negative consequences of the move. 5.3 strengths and limitations our study is the  rst to investigate the association between economic crises during infancy, childhood and adolescence and early-adult physical and mental health in post-reuni cation east germany. we paid particular attention to the role of family stress by assessing parental unemployment during the economic crisis. our data source, the data link between the german socio-economic panel (soep) survey and social security pension records (soep-rv), allows us to identify the exposure to the economic crisis studied (i.e., the family household residence when the initial economic shock happened right after the german reuni cation in 1990 as well as throughout the economic crisis from 1990 to 1994), to reconstruct economic family conditions during the economic crisis through linked parental unemployment information, and to obtain health information of our respondents in early adulthood. we are among the  rst to utilise this new and unique linkage between the soep and the pension registers. furthermore, given that west germany did not experience the post-reuni cation economic crisis, we can utilise the quasi-experimental situation of the east german respondents experiencing a treatment with the west german respondents serving as a control group (under the application of advanced methods of sample weighting). nonetheless, our study has some data-driven limitations. first, we used the sf-12 score for physical and mental health functioning, a self-reported health measure. the sf-12 is calculated following a validated and population-based algorithm (andersen et al. 2007), which may lead to lacking comparability with other studies. we further acknowledge potential biases in our results due to cultural differences in health perceptions between east and west germany (lampert et al. 2019) and – probably to a lesser extent due to the young age of our study population – inherently different public health systems in prereuni cation east and west germany (busse/riesberg 2005; lampert et al. 2019). on the other hand, the converging cultural and living conditions as well as having spent a large part of their lives in reuni ed germany may also have led to further convergence in the answers to the health questions in the soep between the east and the west german respondents. accordingly, east germans might – to a certain extent – have underreported their health-related restrictions, potentially leading to an underestimation of the health consequences of the post-reuni cation economic crisis for east germans (cf. nolte/mckee 2004). second, the soep does not consider all of the potential effects of the postreuni cation economic crisis in east germany, including developmental information during the post-reuni cation economic crisis on all cohorts we are observing. since the soep only includes individual respondents from age 17 onwards, we faced a substantial monitoring gap between exposure to the economic crisis and measuring the health outcomes. subsequently, our results may suffer unobserved heterogeneity (cf. schmiedeberg/bozoyan 2021), and the observed effect of the scarred for life • 721 economic crisis may be partially underestimated due to prevailing east-west german health perception differences. furthermore, we potentially underestimated the health impact over the years due to the reuni cation gains in east germany, i.e., improved economic perspective for younger generations (cf. forkel/silbereisen 2001). while we cannot analytically consider these aspects, they should be kept in mind when interpreting our results. although we considered the exposure to parental unemployment, the experience of this economic crisis may have varied enormously with the family’s socioeconomic status, e.g., parental education. as previous studies have shown, children in families with higher education show fewer adverse health effects of an economic crisis (rajmil et al. 2013). unfortunately, we were unable to consider parental education due to many missing values in the respective measures (see table a1). we approximated the socio-economic background by adding the mothers’ age at the child’s birth, yet, acknowledge that the omission of parental education might have led to an underestimation of the adverse health effects of exposure to the economic crisis. 5.4 conclusion and implications despite some limitations, we conclude that, in line with our hypotheses, the exposure to the post-reuni cation economic crisis in east germany during infancy, childhood and adolescence was associated with lower mental health for women, especially for those who experienced parental unemployment during the economic crisis period. we thereby emphasise the relevance of this direct exposure to severe economic stress for girls regarding their later-life mental health. although we did not observe any statistically signi cant effects for men (although most point estimates were below zero), we cannot exclude an in uence of severe early-life economic stress in boys (e.g., on other health outcomes such as health behaviour or behavioural problems). nevertheless, our  ndings deliver insights into the long-term health development of the currently understudied east german reuni cation cohorts. in addition, our  ndings suggest long-term health disadvantages for those experiencing severe economic stress during early life, implying a double burden to these populations. future research should therefore follow the east german reuni cation cohorts to monitor their health development throughout their adulthood, as the earlyadult health disadvantages may translate into worse physical and mental health at older ages. on a more general note, our results once again urge policy makers to especially focus on the support of directly affected families in times of economic crisis and implicate early prevention methods for children and adolescents exposed to these economic adversities protecting their long-term mental health. acknowledgements this study originates from the  rst author’s (lara bister) master thesis in the prorgamme of the european doctoral school of demography 2019/20. the authors • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt722 thank all members of the centre d’estudis demogrà cs, universitat autònoma de barcelona and especially diederik bortien whose ideas helped to develop the study. lara bister further acknowledges the international max planck research school for population, health and data science for the training and support in conducting this research. fanny janssen has received 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projection of east german life expectancy. in: gerontology 59,3: 276-282. https://doi.org/10.1159/000346355 wagner, gert g.; frick, joachim r.; schupp, jürgen 2007: the german socio-economic panel study (soep): scope, evolution and enhancements. in: schmollers jahrbuch: journal of applied social science studies 127,1: 139-169. westphal, christina 2016: healthy migrants? health selection of internal migrants in germany. in: european journal of population 32,5: 703-730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9397-x widding-havneraas, tarjei; pedersen, siri hansen 2020: the role of welfare regimes in the relationship between childhood economic stress and adult health: a multilevel study of 20 european countries. in: ssm – population health 12: 100674. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100674 • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt728 date of submission: 08.03.2022 date of acceptance: 29.08.2023 lara bister (). university of groningen, faculty of spatial sciences. groningen, the netherlands. e-mail: l.bister@rug.nl url: https://www.rug.nl/staff/l.bister/?lang=en dr. jeroen spijker. centre d’estudis demogrà cs, universitat autònoma de barcelona, bellaterra, spain. e-mail: jspijker@ced.uab.es url: https://ced.cat/en/directori/jeroen-spijker/ prof. dr. fanny janssen. university of groningen, netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute – knaw. den haag, the netherlands. e-mail: janssen@nidi.nl url: https://nidi.nl/en/employees/fanny-janssen/ dr. tobias vogt. university of groningen, population research centre, faculty of spatial sciences. groningen, the netherlands. prasanna school of public health, manipal academy for higher education. karnataka, india. e-mail: t.c.vogt@rug.nl url: https://research.rug.nl/en/persons/tobias-vogt scarred for life • 729 appendix fig. a1: sample selection of the used sample in the analysis derived from the soep population (active respondents only) source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt730 fi g. a 2: r es ul ts s en si tiv it y an al ys is u si ng (r es po n d en tre po rt ed ) p ar en ta l h ig he st e d uc at io n as a p ro xy fo r th e so ci o ec o n o m ic s ta tu s in st ea d o f m o th er s’ a ge n o te : r ep lic at io n o f m ai n an al ys is ( le ft c o lu m n ) u si ng ( re sp o n d en tre p o rt ed ) m ea su re f o r hi g he st p ar en ta l e d uc at io n (r ig h t co lu m n, f ro m s o e p d at a se t b io p ar en ) (n = 2, 19 8) . m ea su re c o ns is ts o f in fo rm at io n o n th e m at er na l a nd p at er na l s ch o o l a n d p ro fe ss io na l e d u ca tio n d eg re es , c o m b in ed in li ne w ith is c e d -b as ed c at eg o ri es : ( 1) n o fo rm al e d uc at io n, (2 ) l o w er s ec o nd ar y ed uc at io n, (3 ) u p p er s ec o n d ar y ed uc at io n, (4 ) p o st -s ec o nd ar y ed uc at io n, o r (5 ) t er tia ry e d uc at io n . d is tr ib ut io n o f h ig h es t p ar en ta l e d uc at io n : n= 84 r es p o n d en ts (3 .8 p er ce nt ) h ad p ar en ts w ith a s ec o nd ar y sc ho o l e d uc at io n o n ly , n = 1, 78 6 (8 1. 3 p er ce nt ) w ith p o st -s ec o n d ar y (n o n -a ca d em ic ) p ro fe ss io na l ed u ca tio n a n d n = 32 8 (1 4. 9 p er ce nt ) w ith t er tia ry ( ac ad em ic ) p ro fe ss io n al ed uc at io n. s o u rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co n o m ic p an el (s o e p ) a n d s o e pr v li nk scarred for life • 731 tab. a1: missing values in highest parental education variable (soep data set pl) highest parental west germany east germany total education (isced) isced 1 9 0.66% 0 0.00% 9 0.39% isced 2 4 0.30% 0 0.00% 4 0.17% isced 3 1 0.07% 1 0.10% 2 0.09% isced 4 154 11.37% 259 26.37% 413 17.67% isced 5 30 2.21% 18 1.83% 48 2.05% isced 6 0 0.00% 3 0.31% 3 0.13% missing 1,157 85.39% 701 71.38% 1,858 79.50% total 1,355 982 2,337 note: percentages show column percentages, isced levels are in accordance with iscedv1997. source: german socio-economic panel (soep) and soep-rv link • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt732 ta b . a 2: m is si n g va lu es in h ig h es t p ar en ta l e d uc at io n va ri ab le (s o ep d at a se t p l) s am pl e g ro u p: tr ea tm en t c o n tr o l ( b ef o re m at ch in g) c o n tr o l ( af te r m at ch in g) m at ch in g va ri ab le s: m ea n v ar ia n ce s ke w n es s m ea n v ar ia n ce s ke w n es s m ea n v ar ia n ce s ke w n es s e as tw es t m ig ra ti o n 0. 29 7 0. 20 9 0. 8 87 0. 26 1 0. 19 3 1. 08 7 0. 29 7 0. 20 9 0. 8 87 p ar en ta l u n em pl o ym en t 0. 13 0 0. 03 6 1. 67 2 0. 05 4 0. 02 1 4. 0 51 0. 13 0 0. 06 8 2. 2 94 b ir th y ea r 19 8 2 19 .9 3 -0 .3 01 19 8 2 20 .6 3 -0 .3 67 19 8 2 19 .8 -0 .3 92 y ea r o f s f12 20 03 4. 23 2. 22 6 20 03 5. 21 3 2. 4 4 5 20 03 4. 5 39 2. 5 37 g en d er : fe m al e 0. 4 8 9 0. 25 0 0. 04 5 0. 50 9 0. 25 0 -0 .0 34 0. 4 8 9 0. 25 0 0. 04 5 n u m b er o f si b lin g s 1. 26 9 1. 13 7 1. 6 0 6 1. 6 47 1. 83 4 1. 60 7 1. 27 1. 0 8 6 1. 22 3 m o th er ’s a g e in y ea rs 25 .1 1 21 .7 9 0. 9 04 26 .6 27 .3 2 0. 52 25 .1 1 23 .8 0. 60 8 n ot e: e nt ro p y b al an ci ng s am p le w ei gh ts w er e ca lc ul at ed in s ta ta s e 1 7 us in g “e b al an ce ” (h ai nm ue lle r/ x u 2 01 1: e b al an ce : a s ta ta pa ck ag e fo r e nt ro py b al an ci ng . s s r n e le ct ro ni c jo ur n al . ht tp s: //d oi .o rg /1 0. 21 39 /s sr n. 19 43 09 0) . m at ch in g of t he t re at m en t sa m pl e (e as t g er m an b o rn i nd iv id ua ls ) an d t h e co nt ro l sa m pl e (w es t g er m an b o rn i nd iv id ua ls ) us in g m ea su re s o f ea st -w es t m ig ra tio n, p ar en ta l u ne m pl oy m en t b et w ee n 19 90 a nd 1 99 4, b irt h ye ar , y ea r of s f12 a ss es sm en t, ge nd er (m al e an d fe m al e) , n um be r of s ib lin g s, m ot he r’ s ag e at b ir th . c o nv er g en ce a ch ie ve d af te r el ev en i te ra tio ns o f ba la nc in g op tim is at io n w ith m ax im um d iff er en ce b et w ee n tr ea tm en t a nd c o nt ro l g ro up s o f 0 .0 02 99 19 99 . a to ta l o f 9 82 s am p lin g w ei gh ts a ch ie ve d. s ou rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el (s o e p) a nd s o ep -r v li nk scarred for life • 733 ta b . a 3. 1a 3. 4: q u an til e re g re ss io n ta b le s an d av er ag e m ar g in al e ff ec t t ab le s (n = 2 ,3 37 ) ta b . a 3. 1: q ua n til e re g re ss io n re su lt s o n s f12 p hy si ca l c o m p o ne nt s co re (p c s ) ( n = 2 ,3 37 ) m en w o m en q u an ti le s q u an ti le s v ar ia b le s 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% b o rn in e as t g er m an y -0 .5 53 0. 11 0 0. 41 6 -0 .0 58 3 0. 95 4 0. 22 7 0. 61 6 0. 61 7 (r e f.: w es t g er m an y) (0 .8 03 ) (0 .7 3 0) (0 .3 60 ) (0 .3 4 6) (0 .6 3 3) (1 .0 9 9) (0 .6 95 ) (0 .5 45 ) e as tw es t m ig ra ti o n -0 .2 21 0. 25 2 0. 19 1 -0 .0 34 4 0. 8 59 -0 .4 5 6 1. 16 8 1. 36 7* * (r e f.: n o m ig ra ti o n) (1 .0 29 ) (0 .6 18 ) (0 .4 60 ) (0 .2 81 ) (0 .7 0 9) (1 .0 37 ) (0 .7 6 8) (0 .5 87 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x m ig ra ti on e as t x m ig ra ti o n -0 .4 32 -0 .6 58 -1 .0 3 0* -0 .9 8 3* ** -1 .1 92 0. 73 7 -0 .8 86 -1 .7 36 * (1 .5 16 ) (0 .9 0 5) (0 .6 07 ) (0 .3 81 ) (0 .9 30 ) (1 .6 45 ) (1 .1 07 ) (0 .8 9 4) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x p ar en ta l u n em pl oy m en t (1 99 0 -9 4) w es t x u n em p ly o m en t 0. 06 57 0. 26 9 -0 .1 63 -0 .5 7 7 -0 .2 4 8 -1 .3 55 -1 .0 3 6 -0 .1 91 (1 .6 32 ) (0 .9 62 ) (0 .3 07 ) (0 .6 51 ) (0 .9 35 ) (1 .0 41 ) (1 .0 70 ) (0 .7 3 0) e as t x u n em p ly o m en t -1 .2 75 ** -1 .3 2 9* * -1 .2 6 9* ** -1 .1 21 ** * -1 .1 13 -2 .0 14 -1 .3 90 -0 .7 21 (0 .6 2 8) (0 .6 59 ) (0 .3 60 ) (0 .2 51 ) (0 .7 12 ) (1 .3 12 ) (0 .8 62 ) (0 .5 45 ) a g e in 1 9 90 (r ef .: in fa n cy (a g e 02) ) e ar ly c h ild h o o d ( ag e 3 -5 ) 0. 65 0 0. 26 1 0. 07 8 6 -0 .0 34 4 0. 67 2 0. 18 4 0. 3 50 0. 19 7 (0 .9 19 ) (0 .5 55 ) (0 .4 06 ) (0 .2 56 ) (0 .6 47 ) (0 .9 52 ) (0 .6 76 ) (0 .5 6 0) c h ild h o o d (a g e 6 -1 1) 0. 81 9 0. 64 8 -0 .1 9 9 -0 .1 68 0. 71 3 0. 3 81 0. 8 37 0. 47 0 (0 .9 16 ) (0 .5 3 6) (0 .3 9 6) (0 .2 8 0) (0 .6 0 6) (0 .8 86 ) (0 .5 62 ) (0 .5 3 5) a d o le sc en ce ( ag e 12 -1 7) -0 .4 9 0 -0 .6 5 4 -0 .9 23 * -1 .1 06 ** 0. 03 25 -3 .1 07 ** 0. 3 06 -0 .2 6 0 (1 .1 71 ) (0 .7 03 ) (0 .5 3 0) (0 .4 36 ) (0 .7 61 ) (1 .4 58 ) (1 .1 51 ) (0 .6 77 ) n u m b er o f si b lin g s -0 .1 8 9 -0 .0 2 94 -0 .0 20 5 -0 .0 23 3 0. 26 7 -0 .4 28 0. 17 5 0. 19 3 (0 .2 6 3) (0 .2 03 ) (0 .0 8 68 ) (0 .1 13 ) (0 .2 0 8) (0 .3 9 6) (0 .2 42 ) (0 .1 4 8) s f12 m c s 0. 05 38 -0 .0 4 6 4* -0 .1 0 5* ** -0 .1 74 ** * 0. 01 41 0. 16 3* ** 0. 05 97 * -0 .0 17 0 (0 .0 38 5) (0 .0 26 2) (0 .0 17 5) (0 .0 13 6) (0 .0 27 1) (0 .0 4 0 6) (0 .0 3 41 ) (0 .0 24 5) m o th er ’s a g e (z -s td .) 0. 17 2 0. 23 1 0. 21 5* * 0. 11 8 0. 4 53 ** 0. 17 3 0. 52 8* * 0. 22 9 (0 .2 70 ) (0 .2 10 ) (0 .0 9 09 ) (0 .0 9 91 ) (0 .1 99 ) (0 .3 76 ) (0 .2 6 6) (0 .1 70 ) c on st an t 50 .4 8* ** 5 8. 9 4* ** 6 4. 62 ** * 70 .5 3* ** 55 .6 6* ** 4 4. 72 ** * 52 .1 2* ** 5 8. 8 3* ** (2 .3 3 8) (1 .5 24 ) (1 .0 9 0) (0 .8 19 ) (1 .5 80 ) (2 .3 0 9) (2 .0 68 ) (1 .4 58 ) o b se rv at io n s 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 n ot e: r o bu st s ta nd ar d er ro rs in p ar en th es es . s ig ni  c an ce le ve ls : ** * p< 0. 00 1, * * p< 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 . s ou rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el (s o e p) a nd s o ep -r v li nk • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt734 ta b . a 3. 2: a ve ra ge m ar g in al e ff ec t ta b le s fo r s f12 p hy si ca l c o m p o ne n t s co re (p c s ) ( n = 2 ,3 37 ) m en w o m en q u an ti le s q u an ti le s a ve ra g e m ar g in al e ff ec ts 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% b o rn in e as t g er m an y -1 .1 77 -0 .6 75 -0 .2 9 6 -0 .5 4 9* 0. 18 8 0. 21 0 -0 .1 14 0. 09 62 (r e f.: w es t g er m an y) (0 .7 4 4) (0 .4 9 5) (0 .2 37 ) (0 .3 03 ) (0 .7 4 9) (0 .6 0 6) (0 .4 19 ) (0 .2 87 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x m ig ra ti o n to w es t g er m an y n o m ig ra ti o n -1 .0 4 9 -0 .4 81 0. 00 65 9 -0 .2 6 0 -0 .0 34 0 0. 47 7 0. 4 08 0. 3 69 (0 .7 9 8) (0 .6 14 ) (0 .2 61 ) (0 .3 57 ) (0 .8 89 ) (0 .6 82 ) (0 .4 63 ) (0 .3 77 ) m ig ra ti o n -1 .4 82 -1 .1 3 9 -1 .0 23 -1 .2 4 3* * 0. 70 3 -0 .4 0 9 -1 .3 28 -0 .5 3 9 (1 .4 05 ) (0 .7 12 ) (0 .5 3 8) (0 .3 30 ) (1 .3 85 ) (0 .9 97 ) (0 .8 03 ) (0 .3 9 8) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x a n y p ar en ta l u n em p lo ym en t 19 9 0 -1 99 4 n o u n em p lo ym en t -0 .6 8 0 -0 .0 8 32 0. 11 3 -0 .3 47 0. 4 4 8 0. 3 50 0. 09 56 0. 57 1 (0 .6 98 ) (0 .5 81 ) (0 .3 18 ) (0 .2 79 ) (0 .8 77 ) (0 .5 5 8) (0 .4 63 ) (0 .3 51 ) u n em p lo ym en t -2 .0 21 -1 .6 82 -0 .9 93 ** -0 .8 91 -0 .2 10 -0 .0 03 4 3 -0 .4 34 -0 .6 28 (1 .6 0 4) (0 .9 6 9) (0 .3 49 ) (0 .6 4 5) (1 .4 02 ) (1 .2 71 ) (0 .7 9 0) (0 .5 19 ) o b se rv at io n s 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 n ot e: r o bu st s ta nd ar d er ro rs in p ar en th es es . s ig ni  c an ce le ve ls : ** * p< 0. 00 1, * * p< 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 . s ou rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el (s o e p) a nd s o ep -r v li nk scarred for life • 735 ta b . a 3. 3: q u an til e re g re ss io n re su lt s o n s f12 m en ta l c o m po n en t s co re (m c s ) ( n = 2 ,3 37 ) m en w o m en q u an ti le s q u an ti le s v ar ia b le s 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% b o rn in e as t g er m an y -2 .1 91 -1 .9 19 -2 .7 69 ** * -2 .2 98 ** * -2 .4 68 -2 .0 0 4 -1 .4 2 9 -2 .4 4 4* (r e f.: w es tg er m an y) (1 .8 97 ) (1 .2 6 6) (0 .9 25 ) (0 .8 82 ) (1 .5 11 ) (1 .4 8 6) (0 .9 51 ) (1 .0 57 ) e as tw es t m ig ra ti o n (r ef .: n o m ig ra ti o n) -1 .7 93 -0 .7 55 -1 .3 72 -0 .7 21 -0 .6 51 -0 .0 74 0 -0 .3 22 -1 .1 08 (2 .5 74 ) (1 .1 76 ) (0 .8 9 9) (0 .4 54 ) (1 .8 56 ) (1 .3 58 ) (0 .9 6 8) (1 .0 64 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x m ig ra ti o n e as t x m ig ra ti o n 0. 3 69 2. 22 4 1. 61 5 2. 52 0* * -0 .2 8 0 -1 .1 90 -1 .3 90 -0 .1 13 (3 .1 3 9) (1 .8 95 ) (1 .3 8 8) (1 .0 45 ) (2 .2 74 ) (2 .2 69 ) (1 .4 0 4) (1 .4 91 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x p ar en ta l u n em pl oy m en t (1 99 0 -9 4) w es t x u n em p ly o m en t 0. 61 7 1. 7 74 1. 32 1 -0 .2 39 -3 .2 13 * 0. 28 0 0. 70 8 -0 .0 56 3 (2 .5 4 9) (1 .6 8 6) (1 .3 4 3) (0 .4 78 ) (1 .8 11 ) (1 .9 20 ) (1 .3 60 ) (1 .2 17 ) e as t x u n em p ly o m en t 0. 63 7 1. 13 2 0. 50 7 1. 82 0* -1 .8 12 -2 .3 33 -2 .6 37 ** -1 .1 42 (1 .7 56 ) (1 .3 61 ) (0 .9 4 8) (0 .9 61 ) (1 .3 07 ) (1 .4 93 ) (1 .1 6 6) (0 .9 11 ) a g e in 1 9 90 (r ef .: in fa n cy (a g e 02) ) e ar ly c h ild h o o d ( ag e 3 -5 ) -0 .2 77 0. 3 4 4 1. 53 0* 0. 3 65 1. 63 6 -2 .0 6 0 -2 .1 21 ** -1 .2 8 8 (1 .8 92 ) (1 .0 57 ) (0 .8 4 3) (0 .6 13 ) (1 .6 14 ) (1 .4 4 9) (0 .9 5 4) (0 .9 27 ) c h ild h o o d (a g e 6 -1 1) -4 .2 3 4* * -3 .5 8 4* ** -1 .0 8 8 -1 .9 78 ** * -1 .3 28 -2 .6 16 * -1 .9 72 ** -2 .2 51 ** * (1 .7 36 ) (1 .1 33 ) (0 .8 01 ) (0 .4 70 ) (1 .5 9 6) (1 .4 75 ) (0 .7 67 ) (0 .7 20 ) a d o le sc en ce ( ag e 12 -1 7) -2 .9 46 -1 .5 10 -1 .0 0 0 -2 .1 07 ** * -1 .9 17 -4 .4 13 ** * -3 .6 03 ** * -1 .6 20 (2 .2 58 ) (1 .2 71 ) (1 .1 11 ) (0 .5 21 ) (1 .8 53 ) (1 .5 36 ) (1 .3 71 ) (1 .3 39 ) n u m b er o f si b lin g s -0 .2 91 -0 .0 32 9 -0 .0 79 1 0. 03 25 0. 93 3* * 0. 3 62 0. 21 3 -0 .1 52 (0 .6 55 ) (0 .4 4 0) (0 .2 8 3) (0 .1 86 ) (0 .3 82 ) (0 .4 26 ) (0 .3 03 ) (0 .2 51 ) s f12 p c s -0 .0 97 1 -0 .1 32 * -0 .2 69 ** * -0 .2 8 8* ** 0. 10 9* * 0. 06 32 -0 .0 11 7 -0 .0 87 1 (0 .1 17 ) (0 .0 72 2) (0 .0 6 65 ) (0 .0 23 8) (0 .0 55 3) (0 .0 79 9) (0 .0 55 2) (0 .0 5 40 ) m o th er ’s a g e (z -s td .) -0 .1 8 5 -0 .2 19 -0 .1 79 -0 .1 17 0. 3 30 -0 .1 3 4 0. 3 31 0. 4 93 (0 .6 17 ) (0 .4 4 8) (0 .3 21 ) (0 .1 5 8) (0 .5 15 ) (0 .5 0 8) (0 .3 77 ) (0 .3 14 ) c on st an t 52 .9 1* ** 59 .6 2* ** 71 .4 8* ** 76 .3 3* ** 35 .2 7* ** 47 .1 2* ** 55 .8 3* ** 65 .2 1* ** (6 .9 8 4) (4 .2 78 ) (3 .9 72 ) (1 .4 76 ) (3 .6 20 ) (4 .7 11 ) (3 .1 83 ) (3 .1 95 ) o b se rv at io n s 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 n ot e: r o bu st s ta nd ar d er ro rs in p ar en th es es . s ig ni  c an ce le ve ls : ** * p< 0. 00 1, * * p< 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 . s ou rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el (s o e p) a nd s o ep -r v li nk • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt736 ta b . a 3. 4: a ve ra ge m ar g in al e ff ec t ta b le s fo r s f12 m en ta l c o m p o ne n t s co re (m c s ) ( n = 2 ,3 37 ) m en w o m en q u an ti le s q u an ti le s a ve ra g e m ar g in al e ff ec ts 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% 20 % 4 0% 6 0% 8 0% b o rn in e as t g er m an y -2 .0 75 -1 .5 02 -2 .5 9 5* ** -0 .7 9 4 -1 .9 9 8* -3 .3 9 6* ** -3 .1 70 ** * -2 .9 08 ** * (r e f.: w es t g er m an y) (1 .4 3 3) (0 .9 07 ) (0 .6 8 3) (0 .5 15 ) (1 .0 14 ) (1 .0 8 3) (0 .7 55 ) (0 .6 79 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x m ig ra ti o n to w es t g er m an y n o m ig ra ti o n -2 .1 83 -2 .1 56 * -3 .0 70 ** * -1 .5 3 6* -1 .9 13 -3 .0 3 8* -2 .7 52 ** * -2 .8 74 ** * (1 .5 85 ) (1 .0 78 ) (0 .8 07 ) (0 .6 4 4) (1 .1 8 9) (1 .2 3 0) (0 .8 76 ) (0 .8 22 ) m ig ra ti o n -1 .8 14 0. 06 82 -1 .4 55 0. 98 5 -2 .1 94 -4 .2 29 * -4 .1 42 ** * -2 .9 8 7* * (2 .8 13 ) (1 .5 9 5) (1 .1 76 ) (0 .8 23 ) (1 .9 3 6) (1 .9 96 ) (1 .2 2 0) (1 .2 31 ) b o rn in e as t g er m an y x a n y p ar en ta l u n em p lo ym en t 19 9 0 -1 99 4 n o u n em p lo ym en t -2 .0 82 -1 .2 6 5 -2 .2 94 ** * -1 .5 57 * -2 .5 52 * -2 .3 62 -1 .8 47 * -2 .4 78 ** * (1 .6 5 4) (1 .0 16 ) (0 .7 41 ) (0 .7 3 4) (1 .2 5 0) (1 .2 4 0) (0 .7 4 6) (0 .8 5 9) u n em p lo ym en t -2 .0 62 -1 .9 06 -3 .1 0 8* 0. 50 3 -1 .1 52 -4 .9 75 * -5 .1 91 ** * -3 .5 6 4* ** (2 .6 26 ) (1 .8 37 ) (1 .4 16 ) (0 .7 26 ) (1 .8 03 ) (2 .0 59 ) (1 .6 02 ) (1 .2 0 4) o b se rv at io n s 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 8 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 1, 16 9 n ot e: r o bu st s ta nd ar d er ro rs in p ar en th es es . s ig ni  c an ce le ve ls : ** * p< 0. 00 1, * * p< 0. 01 , * p < 0. 05 . s ou rc e: g er m an s o ci o -e co no m ic p an el (s o e p) a nd s o ep -r v li nk scarred for life • 737 calculation of the sf-12 summary score description the soep version of the sf-12 summary score for physical and mental health functioning (sf-12) has been included biannually in the soep since 2002 and is used as a reliable tool of meas-uring self-reported health functioning and health-related quality of life (andersen et al. 2007). the sf-12 is a subset of the sf-36v2® that measures eight domains of health, which are used to calculate a physical (pcs) and a mental component score (mcs): role limitation due to physical problems, general health perceptions, vitality, bodily pain, physical functioning, social function, role limitations due to emotional problems, and general mental health (rand corporation 2020). the sf-12 is known as a valid and reliable standardised tool for assessing mental health functioning and health-related quality of life (andersen et al. 2007; rand corporation 2020). • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt738 it em s o e p va ri ab le s u rv ey q u e st io n a n sw er c at eg o ri es m et h o d o f i te m c re at io n p hy si ca l p le 00 04 w h en y ou h av e to c lim b 1 s tr o ng c o m b in ed a s m ea n fu n ct io n in g (p f) se ve ra l  ig ht s o f s ta ir s, d o es 2 s lig h tl y yo u r cu rr en t h ea lt h li m it yo u? 3 n o t at a ll p le 00 05 a n d w h at a b o u t o th er d em an d in g ev er yd ay 1 s tr o ng ac ti vi ti e s, s u ch a s w h en y o u h av e to li ft 2 s lig h tl y so m et h in g h ea v y o r d o s o m et h in g 3 n o t at a ll r eq u ir in g p h ys ic al m o b ili ty : d o es y o u r h ea lt h lim it y o u? g en er al h ea lt h (g h ) p le 00 08 h o w w o u ld y o u d es cr ib e yo u r cu rr en t h ea lt h? 1 v er y go o d r ev er se d a n sw er 2 g o o d ca te go ri es f ro m 3 s at is fa ct o ry 1 = b ad t o 5 = v er y go o d 4 p o o r 5 b ad b o d ily p ai n ( b p ) p le 00 3 0 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks d id y o u 1 a lw ay s n o a d ju st m en t su ff er f ro m s ev er e p h ys ic al p ai n? 2 o ft en 3 s o m et im es 4 a lm o st n ev er 5 n ev er r o le p h ys ic al ( r p ) p le 00 31 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks , d u e to 1 a lw ay s c o m b in ed a s m ea n p hy si ca l p ro b le m s, d id y o u ac h ie ve le ss 2 o ft en in y o u r w o rk o r ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s th an 3 s o m et im es yo u ac tu al ly in te n d e d ? 4 a lm o st n ev er 5 n ev er p le 00 32 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks d id y o u 1 a lw ay s ex p er ie nc e lim it at io n s d u e to p h ys ic al 2 o ft en p ro b le m s? 3 s o m et im es 4 a lm o st n ev er 5 n ev er ta b . a 4: s o ep s u rv ey q u es tio n s an d m et ho d o f cr ea tin g th e s f12 it em s fo r ca lc ul at in g th e p hy si ca l ( p c s ) a nd m en ta l co m -p o ne n ts s co re s (m c s ) f o r p hy si ca l a nd m en ta l h ea lth fu nc tio n in g scarred for life • 739 ta b . a 4: c o n tin ua ti o n it em s o e p va ri ab le s u rv ey q u e st io n a n sw er c at eg o ri es m et h o d o f i te m c re at io n m en ta l h ea lt h (m h ) p le 00 27 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks d id y o u 1 a lw ay s c o m b in ed a s m ea n fe el in lo w s p ir it s an d m el an ch o ly ? 2 o ft en (r ev er se d a n sw er 3 s o m et im es ca te go ri es o f se co n d 4 a lm o st n ev er q u es ti o n f ro m 5 n ev er 1 = n ev er t o 5 = a lw ay s) p le 00 28 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks d id y o u 1 a lw ay s fe el w el lb al an ce d ? 2 o ft en 3 s o m et im es 4 a lm o st n ev er 5 n ev er r o le e m o ti o n al ( r e ) p le 00 3 3 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks , d u e to 1 a lw ay s c o m b in ed a s m ea n p sy ch o lo g ic al o r em o ti o na l p ro bl em s, 2 o ft en d id y o u ac h ie ve le ss in y o u r w o rk o r 3 s o m et im es ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s th an y o u ac tu al ly 4 a lm o st n ev er in te nd ed ? 5 n ev er p le 00 3 4 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks , d u e to 1 a lw ay s p sy ch o lo g ic al o r em o ti o na l p ro bl em s, 2 o ft en w er e yo u le ss c ar ef u l i n y o u r w o rk o r 3 s o m et im es ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s th an y o u ac tu al ly 4 a lm o st n ev er in te nd ed ? 5 n ev er s o ci al p le 00 3 5 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks , 1 a lw ay s n o a d ju st m en t fu n ct io n in g (s f) d u e to h ea lt h o r ps yc h o lo gi ca l p ro b le m s, 2 o ft en h av e yo u b ee n re st ri ct ed in t er m s o f 3 s o m et im es yo u r so ci al c o n ta ct t o f o r ex am p le f ri en d s, 4 a lm o st n ev er ac q u ai n ta n ce s o r re la ti ve s? 5 n ev er v it al it y (v t ) p le 00 29 h o w o ft en in th e la st fo u r w ee ks d id y o u 1 a lw ay s r ev er se d a n sw er fe el f u ll o f en er gy ? 2 o ft en ca te go ri es f ro m 3 s o m et im es 1 = n ev er t o 5 = a lw ay s 4 a lm o st n ev er g o o d 5 n ev er s ou rc e: s o ep c o m pa ni on t op ic s of h ea lth a n d c ar e [h tt p: // co m pa ni on .s oe p. d e/ to pi cs % 20 of % 20 s o ep co re /h ea lth % 20 an d% 20 c ar e. ht m l] • lara bister, jeroen spijker, fanny janssen, tobias vogt740 references andersen, hanfried h. et al. 2007: computation of standard values for physical and mental health scale scores using the soep version of sf12v2. in: ferrer-i-carbonell, ada; grabka, markus m.; kroh, martin (eds.): schmollers jahrbuch: journal of applied social science studies 127,1: 171-182. rand corporation 2020: 12-item short form survey (sf-12) [https://www.rand.org/ health-care/surveys_tools/mos/12-item-short-form.html, 27.10.2020]. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction in twelve european countries untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction in twelve european countries* vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov abstract: in this study, we explore how educational differences in demographic behavior – in particular, mating patterns and fertility – mediate the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality in twelve european countries. although this research interest itself is not new, we contribute to this debate by adopting a prospective approach and scaling it to include multiple countries and cohorts. to this end, we leverage a series of complementary datasets and the inferential method developed by song and mare (2015) and advanced by skopek and leopold (2020) to estimate the components of a stylized educational reproduction model. we then employ a simple decomposition analysis to quantify the contributions of different pathways to prospective educational reproduction rates across educational backgrounds and explore the differences across cohorts and countries. we report several findings. most notably, (1) the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality persists in all twelve countries and is barely offset by small (and declining) negative educational gradients in fertility, (2) educational differences in selection into partnership are small and do not account for much inequality, and (3) the role of assortative mating, where present, is ambiguous because it both reinforces inequality via its effects on resources within the family and offsets it via its effects on fertility. keywords: education · assortative mating · fertility gradient · educational reproduction · prospective analysis 1 introduction the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic status characteristics and social inequality has been extensively studied in the social sciences (blau/duncan 1967; breen 2004; breen/jonsson 2005; breen/müller 2020; erikson et al. 1992; shavit/ comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 371-402 (date of release: 30.10.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-15 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-15en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/604/424 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-15 • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov372 blossfeld 1993). however, much of this research is retrospective in nature, in the sense that it looks at reproduction “backwards” by comparing children to their parents. this limits our understanding of the reproduction of inequality because such an approach implicitly conditions on parenthood and thus dismisses individuals who never had children (duncan 1966). these childless individuals, however, may be seen as contributing to social reproduction precisely by not being involved in the transmission of socioeconomic status characteristics to the next generation. only recently have these limitations become well recognized in research on intergenerational reproduction of social inequality, with ever more studies adopting an alternative prospective lens (breen/ermisch 2017; corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; lawrence/breen 2016; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; skopek/leopold 2020; song/mare 2015, 2017; wittemann 2023) the advantage of prospective designs is that they allow for a more holistic view of reproduction by explicitly recognizing childlessness as a pathway blocking status transmission. this not only facilitates a more comprehensive account of fertility ‒ itself an important aspect of the intergenerational reproduction of social inequality ‒ but also enables a more detailed examination of other processes linked to childlessness, on the one hand, and potentially stratified by socioeconomic status, on the other. this includes, among other things, union formation and partner choice, which have been shown to both influence social status attainment (breen/andersen 2012; breen/salazar 2011; eika et al. 2019; fernández/rogerson 2001; grotti/scherer 2016) and to be influenced by it (domański/przybysz 2007; erát 2021; kalmijn 1991; schwartz/mare 2005; smits 1999). to date, only a handful of studies have investigated the role of mating patterns using a prospective design (corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; song/mare 2017). high data requirements and the scarcity of available data meeting these requirements still limit the use of the prospective approach, despite its apparent advantages. the challenge lies in obtaining data for sufficiently long timespan to (1) let individuals accomplish their fertility plans and (2) to let these individuals’ children accomplish social status attainment ‒ i.e., an observational span lasting roughly a lifetime of a single generation. in this study, we circumvent this challenge to scale our analysis to include twelve european countries and several cohorts of women in a single comparison by leveraging an inferential method developed by song and mare (2015) and advanced by skopek and leopold (2020). the method builds on estimating different components of a stylized reproduction model, which we identify using a mixture of complementary yet wellharmonizable datasets, including the generations and gender survey, world and european values survey, european social survey, and several others. the model and its estimates are then used in a counterfactual analysis (leesch/skopek 2023; skopek/ leopold 2020) to quantify the contributions of different pathways to prospective educational reproduction rates across educational backgrounds and explore the differences across cohorts and countries. in our analysis, like previous research (breen et al. 2019; breen/ermisch 2017; corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; lawrence/breen 2016; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; skopek/leopold 2020; song/mare 2017; wittemann 2023), untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 373 we focus on educational reproduction, given the ease of operationalization and measurement of education relative to other socioeconomic status characteristics, such as income, wealth, occupational status, or social class. furthermore, we focus on women for the practical reason of identifying their fertility span (dudel/klüsener 2021; menken et al. 1986; schoumaker 2019), which is critical to the identification of generations across datasets. more specifically, we investigate the educational reproduction of four cohorts of women born from 1930-1950 in austria, belgium, bulgaria, czech republic, estonia, georgia, germany, the netherlands, poland, romania, russia, and sweden. with our analysis, we advance previous research in several respects. first, we evaluate educational reproduction in quantities that do not simply correct for the educational differences in childlessness rates (breen et al. 2019; corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; song/mare 2017) but rather reflect differences in complete fertility rates. we refer to them as educational production rates, which embed both qualitative (i.e., the education of children) and quantitative (i.e., the number of children) aspects of individuals’ reproduction. second, we present analyses that consider both sides of the coin ‒ i.e., the inequality in the production of both higherand lower-educated children ‒ to show that different pathways may have ambiguous implications for inequality. third, we evaluate the relative contribution of different pathways ‒ examining mating, fertility, and inheritance of educational attainment from mother to child ‒ to the inequality in educational production rates. fourth and finally, we contribute empirical knowledge on post-socialist countries of central-eastern and south-eastern europe, which have not been featured in prospective mobility research before. with our set of countries, we additionally represent several european welfare state regimes (esping-andersen 1990) as well as a range of educational and demographic contexts (blossfeld et al. 2016; nisén et al. 2021; pfeffer 2014; skirbekk 2008). 2 background in their analysis of educational reproduction in germany, skopek and leopold (2020) introduced a simple model of educational reproduction integrating two pathways. the first pathway represents the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage per se ‒ the focus of much classic (i.e., retrospective) research on intergenerational social mobility and reproduction of social inequality (breen 2004; breen/jonsson 2005; breen/müller 2020; erikson et al. 1992; shavit/blossfeld 1993). the second pathway integrates fertility ‒ i.e., a demographic process, whereby the transmission of educational advantages becomes possible in the first place. the model thus integrates both qualitative (attainment) and quantitative (number of children) aspects of reproduction, with the latter aspect being the defining feature of a prospective view on reproduction (breen/ermisch 2017; kye/mare 2012; lawrence/ breen 2016; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; skopek/leopold 2020). the focal quantity of the model is the so-called educational (re-) production rate (rji), which refers to the expected number of children attaining education j produced • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov374 by a woman with education i. here, we extend the model to incorporate, in a highly stylized way, an additional mechanism mediating the effects of women’s education on their educational reproduction rates ‒ i.e., partner selection and assortative mating. a graphical intuition of the model is presented in figure 1. as described, a woman’s education is assumed to affect the educational production rate ‒ i.e., a quantity integrating the number of children and the “quality” of her children’s education. the qualitative aspect is illustrated by two pathway sets running through the upper node “attainment,” with the solid lines (a ‒ f ) referring to a more direct effect of woman’s education on child’s education and the dashed lines (b ‒ d ‒ h) referring to a less direct effect of woman’s education affecting her child’s education through her partner’s education. the quantitative aspect refers to the pathway sets running through the lower node “fertility” into rji. accordingly, the dashed (b ‒ e ‒ k) and the solid (c ‒ g) lines refer to the less and the more direct effects of woman’s education on rji, i.e., those mediated and not mediated by partner’s education. the model thus incorporates three major pathway sets that link a woman’s education to her educational production rate: (1) a more direct qualitative effect (pathway a ‒ f ), (2) a more direct quantitative effect (pathway c ‒ g), and (3) a set of less direct effects operating through partnership status (pathways b ‒ d ‒ h and b ‒ e ‒ k). a simpler representation of the same model could involve just three nodes, i.e., a woman’s education (independent variable), her partnership status (a mediator), and her educational production rate (dependent variable). however, we present a more complete model here to emphasize that the effect of the partners’ education on the educational production rate also has both qualitative and quantitative aspects. below, we zoom in on the constitutive pathways and engage more closely with their theoretical and empirical underpinnings. fig. 1: educational reproduction model source: own design. woman’s education (𝑖𝑖) educational production rate (𝑟𝑟𝑗𝑗𝑗𝑗) mating by education 𝑃𝑃(𝑀𝑀|𝐼𝐼) attainment 𝑃𝑃(𝐽𝐽|𝐼𝐼,𝑀𝑀) fertility 𝐸𝐸(𝐹𝐹|𝐼𝐼,𝑀𝑀) 𝑎𝑎 𝑏𝑏 𝑐𝑐 𝑑𝑑 𝑒𝑒 𝑓𝑓 𝑔𝑔 ℎ 𝑘𝑘 untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 375 2.1 inequality in educational reproduction let us first consider the first set of pathways a ‒ f, referring to a more direct qualitative effect. we expect a woman’s educational level to positively affect the educational production rate of higher-educated children (and, accordingly negatively ‒ the production rate of lower-educated children) via these pathways. this expectation is warranted by various theoretical perspectives, most prominently social reproduction theory, rational choice theory, and human capital theory. according to social reproduction theory, women with higher levels of education are more likely to emphasize the value of education, create a conducive learning environment, and have the resources to support higher educational achievement in their children, thereby reducing the likelihood of lower educational outcomes (bourdieu et al. 1977). rational choice theories stress that individuals make educational decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis. for instance, highereducated women are more likely to recognize the long-term benefits of investing in their children’s education and can more easily tolerate the costs and risks associated with more challenging educational options for their children (breen/goldthorpe 1997; esser 1999; morgan 1998, 2002). finally, human capital theory complements this by positing a link between education and women’s financial and non-financial resources, which are required to effectively support children’s educational endeavors (becker 1992). empirically, the intergenerational transmission of educational advantages has been widely investigated and constitutes one of the most robust facts in the social sciences, holding across temporal and national contexts (blossfeld et al. 2016; breen et al. 2009; breen/jonsson 2005; erikson et al. 1992; shavit/blossfeld 1993). in previous research, however, between-country differences in the strength of the association have been discussed (breen 2004; breen/jonsson 2005; hertz et al. 2008; hout/diprete 2006; lipset/zetterberg 1956; pfeffer 2008). in the ranking of countries according to their level of educational persistence, research is relatively unanimous with the nordic countries showing the least educational reproduction and the german speaking countries, italy, france, and belgium representing societies with relatively high educational reproduction (breen 2004; breen/jonsson 2005; hertz et al. 2008; pfeffer 2008). 2.2 educational reproduction and fertility we now turn to the second set of pathways c ‒ g, referring to a more direct quantitative effect. unlike the previous set of pathways, we expect c ‒ g to transmit a negative effect of a woman’s educational level on her educational production rate of higher-educated children (and, accordingly, a positive one ‒ on the production rate of lower-educated children). first, women with higher education spend more time in educational institutions, which often delays their fertility (cigno/ermisch 1989; gustafsson et al. 2002; kravdal/ rindfuss 2008; neels/de wachter 2010). since the upper bound of the reproductive window, especially for women, is biologically rather fixed (menken et al. 1986), they • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov376 have less time to give birth than less educated women who start having children earlier, and women rarely have children while they are in education (gustafsson et al. 2002). second, higher-educated women might more often have other goals and ideals in life than traditional family formation (lesthaeghe 2010; van de kaa 2002). relatedly, higher-educated women might also have stronger occupational aspirations that are in conflict with family formation and childcare (becker 1960; lappegård 2002; lappegård/rønsen 2005; wood et al. 2014). empirical findings on educationally stratified fertility are more mixed and report different magnitudes and directions across countries (gustafsson et al. 2002; nitsche 2024; osiewalska 2017; skirbekk 2008; wood et al. 2014). on average, however, higher-educated women exhibit a higher propensity for childlessness (beaujouan et al. 2016; van bavel et al. 2018; wood et al. 2014) and have a smaller number of children (nisén et al. 2021; osiewalska 2017; wood et al. 2014). previous prospective research on educational reproduction has also investigated the effects of educationally stratified fertility (breen/ermisch 2017; lawrence/breen 2016; skopek/leopold 2020; song/mare 2015; wittemann 2023). in sum, these studies consistently report that higher education is associated with reduced fertility rates (i.e., a negative fertility gradient), which tempers the potential to transmit educational advantages among the higher-educated, as evidenced in various country-specific studies: mare and maralani (2006) for indonesia, kye and mare (2012) for south korea, hillmert (2013) and skopek and leopold (2020) for germany, lawrence and breen (2016), maralani (2013), and song and mare (2017) for the usa, and breen and ermisch (2017) for great britain. 2.3 assortative mating and educational reproduction finally, we consider the last set of pathways, b ‒ d ‒ h and b ‒ e ‒ k, referring to a less direct effect linking woman’s education to her educational production rate via her partnership status. first, a woman’s education can influence the likelihood of finding a partner at all, determining who gets the chance to reproduce in the first place (kalmijn 2013). additionally, we expect that people from the same educational category are more likely to form a couple and start a family than people with different educational levels (pathway b). individuals’ ambitions for status attainment tend to drive them to select partners with similar educational levels, as education increasingly shapes future socioeconomic status in industrialized societies (mare 1991; smits et al. 1998) and serves as an indicator of family background (domański/przybysz 2007; mare 1991). consequently, the extent of assortative mating is linked to the degree of educational mobility within a country (katrňák et al. 2012). another factor promoting educational homogamy is the structure of the marriage market, which is increasingly characterized by a growing number of highly educated individuals due to educational expansion (ballarino et al. 2013). furthermore, the pool of potential partners is significantly influenced by the educational institutions individuals spend time in (eckland 1968; mare 1991). untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 377 empirically, both selection into partnership (kalmijn 2013) and the average educational level of partners (domański/przybysz 2007; kalmijn 1991) are socially stratified. this leads to the prevalence of educationally homogamous relationships, characterized by both partners possessing equivalent levels of education. following pathway b, we expect assortative mating to reinforce the theoretical mechanisms of pathways a ‒ f and c ‒ g. regarding pathway (b ‒ d ‒ h), we expect the partner’s education to correlate positively with the production rate of higher-educated children. the partner’s education further shapes educational resources within the family. when both partners possess high educational qualifications, the family is endowed with a greater accumulation of resources, thereby enhancing the educational opportunities available to their children (blossfeld et al. 2024; corti/scherer 2022; mare/maralani 2006; schwartz 2013). this mechanism mirrors the previously discussed relationship between family size and educational reproduction, where the educational qualifications of parents endow them with specific resources (such as time, financial capability, and expertise) that can be allocated to their offspring. the higher the parent-child ratio and the more intellectual and economic resources each parent possesses, the more the child can benefit from its parental resources (coleman 1988; downey 1995; kalmijn/werfhorst 2016). regarding the second of these pathways (b ‒ e ‒ k), we expect the partner’s education to have a negative association with fertility choices. the observed educational disparities in the timing of births and the total number of offspring are expected to be modulated by the educational attainment of partners (mare/ maralani 2006; osiewalska 2017). assuming a negative educational fertility gradient (nisén et al. 2021), this dynamic operates counter to the mechanism of resource enhancement. specifically, if couples in which both partners are highly educated (homogamous couples) exhibit lower fertility rates compared to their counterparts, this would inherently limit the number of children who could benefit from elevated parental resources. however, this limitation also means that the fewer children in highly educated families are likely to receive a disproportionately higher share of educational resources, amplifying their advantage (choi et al. 2020; downey 1995; gibbs et al. 2016; kalmijn/werfhorst 2016). this scenario underscores the complex interplay between partner education, fertility decisions, and the subsequent availability of educational resources for offspring. prior prospective studies have investigated the impact of assortative mating on the dynamics of intergenerational educational reproduction (corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; song/ mare 2017). these studies consistently indicate that educational assortative mating ‒ where partners have similar educational levels ‒ tends to magnify the educational advantages of offspring of highly educated couples while exacerbating the disadvantages of children of less educated parents, thereby intensifying educational inheritance across generations. corti and scherer (2022) also highlight the significance of spousal education by identifying the causal effect of spousal education on the probability to have a higher-educated child. they report that women with lower educational levels who have partners with higher education are • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov378 more likely to have children who achieve higher educational status, suggesting that the educational level of a spouse plays a crucial role in enhancing the educational prospects of offspring. 2.4 cross-national and temporal variations in educational reproduction to date, the sole prospective cross-national investigation into educational reproduction is the study conducted by breen et al. (2019), which focuses on the relationship between unconditional, prospective estimates of educational reproduction with conventional estimates that condition on fertility across twelve european countries. they find differences between countries with educational variation in the probability to have a higher-educated child are stronger in the south-east than in the north-west. additionally, they find a universal distinction between the conventional estimates of educational reproduction (which condition on parenthood) and the prospective ones (which do not condition on parenthood). furthermore, they find that the effect of partnership selection on inequality in the probability to have a higher-educated child runs primarily through fertility, and specifically selection into childlessness. however, the mechanisms underlying the differences in the gap between conventional and prospective estimates of educational reproduction remain unclear and are not part of the investigation. additionally, rather than conducting a country-specific analysis, the study aggregates countries into regional clusters, possibly as a response to the constraints posed by the limited sample sizes available in the survey of health, aging, and retirement in europe (share) dataset. another shortcoming of this data is that it only provides detailed information on up to four children. although breen et al. (2019) is now the only study investigating educational reproduction prospectively cross-nationally, other studies have focused on crossnational differences and trends in processes relevant to educational reproduction: fertility, partnership selection, assortative mating, and educational persistence. recent investigations into the patterns of educational stratification of fertility across nations (merz/liefbroer 2017; nisén et al. 2021; skirbekk 2008; wood et al. 2014) have consistently identified a negative educational fertility gradient as a dominant form of stratification of fertility. despite this overarching trend, significant regional variations have been reported. nisén et al. (2021) highlight an inverse relationship between the educational gradient in fertility and economic development. thus, they find romania to inhibit the strongest negative educational gradient of fertility, a finding that is corroborated by wood et al. (2014). both wood et al. (2014) and merz and liefbroer (2017) observe that post-communist countries generally display stronger negative educational fertility gradients in comparison to other european nations. in contrast, belgium is distinguished as the sole country exhibiting a positive educational fertility gradient in the analyses conducted by nisén et al. (2021) and wood et al. (2014). additionally, research on fertility stratification in nordic countries reveals a consistently weak, albeit negative, educational fertility gradient (nisén et al. 2021; skirbekk 2008; wood et al. 2014). untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 379 prior research also has explored national variances and the temporal evolution of assortative mating patterns (domański/przybysz 2007; erát 2021; kalmijn 1991; katrňák et al. 2006; smits et al. 1998; uunk 2024). the theory posits that a societal shift from valuing ascriptive characteristics such as religion, ethnicity, and family background towards a greater emphasis on achieved attributes, notably educational attainment, for determining one’s social standing should parallel a similar transformation in the attributes influencing homogamy in partner selection (kalmijn 1991; katrňák et al. 2012). consequently, an increase in educational homogamy, coupled with a decline in homogamy based on social backgrounds, would be anticipated alongside educational expansion. nevertheless, while an upwards trend in educational homogamy is documented in the united states (kalmijn 1991), the trends and patterns within europe present a more complex picture, exhibiting distinct country-specific differences (erát 2021; katrňák et al. 2012; smits et al. 1998). across these countries, however, a consistent decline in hypergamy across cohorts is observed, attributed to the rising educational attainment of women (erát 2021). research has also identified cross-national variation in the level of educational assortative mating. notably, post-communist countries exhibit stronger patterns of assortative mating relative to other european nations (domański/przybysz 2007; uunk 2024). in contrast, belgium and the netherlands are distinguished by comparatively low rates of assortative mating in the studies conducted by domański and przybysz (2007) and smits et al. (1998). these cross-national disparities may also be linked to the differences in the timing and extent of educational expansion, which have varied significantly across european countries (ballarino et al. 2013; blossfeld et al. 2017; breen 2010). furthermore, katrňák et al. (2012) identify a positive correlation between the level of educational reproduction and the degree of educational assortative mating. this suggests that in countries with greater equality in educational opportunities, there is a higher likelihood of choosing partners from different educational backgrounds. 2.5 approaches to the prospective study of intergenerational reproduction several approaches to the prospective study of intergenerational reproduction exist. most researchers have utilized extensive, long-term panel data to analyze the reproduction of generations prospectively (breen/ermisch 2017; corti/scherer 2022; kye/mare 2012; lawrence/breen 2016; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; song/ mare 2015), which offer the greatest advantage because they allow for going beyond descriptive accounts of educational reproduction and permit causal investigations such as those by breen and ermisch (2017), corti and scherer (2022) and lawrence and breen (2016). lawrence and breen (2016) apply marginal structural models with inverse probability weighting. this method aims to discern the causal effect of obtaining a college degree on the likelihood of having a child that also achieves a college degree. by reweighting the observations within the sample of college degree holders, this technique ensures that the distribution of different outcomes remains unaffected by • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov380 whether an individual belongs to the treatment group (those with a college degree) or the control group (those without a college degree). breen and ermisch (2017) apply this method to estimate not only the causal effect of possessing a college degree on parenthood but also on the likelihood of having a child who subsequently obtains a college degree. in a more recent study in germany, corti and scherer (2022) recycled this approach, further extending it to incorporate considerations of assortative mating, thereby offering a more nuanced analysis of educational reproduction and its determinants. lacking data with such high requirements, it is still possible to study educational reproduction based on specific demographic (i.e., population renewal) models of the kind proposed by mare and maralani (2006). the virtue of these models is that they can be informed both by longitudinal and cross-sectional data and thus have fewer constraints. usually, these studies involve different sorts of simulation and decomposition techniques to explore how changes in specific parameters of these models (e.g., pertaining to different aspects of reproduction) alter the make-up of offspring generations (hillmert 2013; kye/mare 2012; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006; song/mare 2015). although song and mare (2015) used prospective panel data in their study, they also innovated a technique to recalibrate retrospective data, mitigating biases associated with retrospective sampling. by comparing estimates derived from prospective data with those adjusted from retrospective data, they demonstrated that their correction method effectively reconciled nearly all discrepancies between the two sets of estimates. building on this, skopek and leopold (2020) devised a comparable approach to generate prospective estimates without long-term panel data that was also applied by wittemann (2023) and is used in this study. the method builds on estimating different components of a stylized reproduction model, which we identify using a mixture of complementary yet well-harmonizable datasets, including the generations and gender survey, world and european values survey, european social survey, and several others. the model and its estimates are then used in a simple counterfactual analysis (leesch/skopek 2023; skopek/leopold 2020) to quantify the contributions of different pathways to prospective educational transmission rates across educational backgrounds and explore the differences across cohorts and countries. a more detailed description of the method is provided in the data and methods section. 3 data and method 3.1 model we now provide a mathematical formulation of the model illustrated in figure 1 and introduced in the previous section. the main quantity of interest rji, the number of children attaining educational level j produced on average by a woman with educational level i, is assumed to expand as follows: untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 381 in the model, p(mǀi) is the probability of being in a partnership status m (with m taking values 0 “unpartnered”, 1 “partnered to a lower-educated man”, 2 “partnered to a higher-educated man”) for a woman of education i (with i taking values 0 = "lower-educated" vs. 1 = "higher-educated"). the distribution of p(mǀi) conditional on i corresponds to pathway b in figure 1, and thus incorporates partner selection and assortative mating as a factor of educational reproduction. e(f|i,m) is the expected completed fertility rate given partnership status m and women’s education i. the distribution of e(f|i,m) conditional on i and m corresponds to pathways c and e in figure 1 respectively, and thus embeds the quantitative aspect of reproduction. finally, p(jǀi,m) is the probability that a child attains education j (with j taking values 0 = "lower-educated" and 1 = "higher-educated") given mother’s education i and partnership status m. the distribution of p(jǀi,m) conditional on i and m corresponds to pathways a and d in figure 1 respectively, and thus embeds the qualitative aspect of reproduction. overall, a woman’s education i controls the distribution of rji more directly via the components e(f|i,m) and p(j|i,m) corresponding to pathways c ‒ g and a ‒ f in figure 1 respectively, and less directly via p(m|i) affecting e(f|i,m) and p(j|i,m) corresponding to pathways b ‒ e ‒ k and b ‒ d ‒ h. the model thus embeds (1) a more direct qualitative effect (pathway a ‒ f ), (2) a more direct quantitative effect (pathway c ‒ g), and (3) a set of less direct effects operating through partnership status (pathways b ‒ d ‒ h and b ‒ e ‒ k). to provide a better intuition behind the equation shown above, consider the following hypothetical example. let us assume that an average higher educated woman has a 10 percent probability to remain unpartnered (p(m = 0|i = 1) = 0.1), a 30 percent probability to have a lower-educated partner (p(m = 1|i = 1) = 0.3), and a 60 percent probability of having a higher-educated partner (p(m = 2|i = 1) = 0.6). the expected fertility rate for such a woman with a lower-educated partner is 2 (e(f|i = 1,m = 1) = 2), and 1 with a higher-educated partner (e(f|i = 1,m = 2) = 1). women without a partner can be assumed to have a fertility rate of zero (p(m = 0|i = 1) = 0). the probability that a child of a higher-educated mother attains higher education is 50 percent with a lower educated father (p(j = 1|i = 1,m = 1) = 0.5) and 100 percent with a higher educated father (p(j = 1|i = 1,m = 2) = 1). given these quantities, r11, i.e., the expected number of higher-educated children produced by a higher-educated women would thus be r11 = 0.1 ∙ 0 + 0.3 ∙ 2 ∙ 0.5 + 0.6 ∙ 1 ∙ 1 = 0.9. estimating all the constituent quantities of rji with a single data source poses a great challenge. as mentioned, the challenge lies in obtaining data for a sufficiently long span so as to (1) let individuals accomplish their fertility plans and (2) let these individuals’ children accomplish educational status attainment. such data is not easily available and may not even exist for many countries. however, the good news is that different components of the educational reproduction model do not have to 𝑟𝑟𝑗𝑗𝑗𝑗 = ��𝑃𝑃(𝑀𝑀|𝐼𝐼) ∙ 𝐸𝐸(𝐹𝐹|𝐼𝐼,𝑀𝑀) ∙ 𝑃𝑃(𝐽𝐽|𝐼𝐼,𝑀𝑀)� 𝑚𝑚 (1) • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov382 be estimated with a single data source, provided they are adequately linked to the populations they are intended to represent. for instance, quantity e(f|i,m) requires relatively simple data on the number of children among women whose fertility is most likely to have been accomplished, i.e., those aged 40 and above, broken down by their level of education. this is available in most sociological surveys. accordingly, quantity p(m|i) requires information about the presence of a partner and that partner’s education (broken down by the woman’s educational level), which is also available widely. the data for quantity p(j|i,m) is perhaps less common, but it can be estimated using respondents’ reports about their own and their parents’ education, which is also not difficult to come by. for this approach to work, however, all three quantities must be appropriately linked. the challenge is that e(f|i,m) and p(m|i) are most likely to be estimated using data on respondents representing reproducing generations (g1), whereas p(j|i,m) more commonly is based on data on respondents representing the offspring generation (g2). however, this can be easily overcome when parents’ birth years are provided in the estimation of p(j|i,m). additionally, given that p(j|i,m) is estimated from retrospective data that does not represent the parents’ generation (but rather the children’s generation), certain transformations are needed to enable such representations. the issue has to do with the overrepresentation of higherparity parents in retrospective data. the issue and a simple solution ‒ i.e., inverse probability weighting using information on respondents’ sibship size (also present in most datasets) ‒ is well described by song and mare (2015) and skopek and leopold (2020). 3.2 data as described above, different sets of data can inform different components of the educational reproduction model, which is exactly the strategy we leverage here. to obtain the distributions of mating patterns and fertility rates, we piece together several datasets that contain information on respondents’ education, their year of birth, partnership status (including partner’s education), and the number of children. specifically, we pool together integrated values survey (ivs) from 19812021, international social survey programme (issp) from 1994, 2002, and 2012, european social survey (ess) wave 3 from 2006-2007, general population survey of social stratification in eastern europe after 1989 (ssee) from 1993 and 1994, and survey of health, aging and retirement in europe (share) from 2015. these choices were dictated by the availability of datasets, the relative ease of their harmonization, and a decent representation of countries and cohorts. to obtain the distribution of educational attainment likelihood by parents’ education, we use the first wave of the generations and gender survey (ggs). ggs is an ideal source for this purpose for several reasons. first, it contains information on respondents’ education, gender, birth year, number of siblings, and parents’ education and birth years. second, ggs is perhaps the only source of this sort with readily harmonized data that provides a decent coverage of countries. of untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 383 the 16 countries that participated in ggs, we select twelve for which all necessary information is available: austria, belgium, bulgaria, czech republic, georgia, germany, lithuania, the netherlands, poland, romania, russian federation, and sweden. third, ggs offers relatively large sample sizes for each country. we chose to constrain our analysis to the reproduction of four g1 cohorts born (1) 1930-1935, (2) 1936-1940, (3) 1941-1945, and (4) 1946-1950. in this choice, we optimized between a reasonably wide representation of g1 cohorts in the pooled dataset and the representation of their g2 counterparts in the ggs data. because we face the challenge of linking g1 data to g2 data, we only consider the reproduction of women. this is due to fertility age of women being more clearly defined due to existence of a physiological fertility limit (menken et al. 1986). for instance, assuming a lower fertility age bound of 14 years old and an upper bound of 40 years, we can define g2 cohorts for the above g1 cohorts as those born (1) 1944-1975, (2) 1950-1980, (3) 1955-1985, and (4) 1960-1990, and these cohorts are reasonably represented in ggs. furthermore, the relatively narrow fertility age span of women also overcomes the right censoring problem when estimating g1’s completed fertility using our prospective data (see below). in contrast, physiological fertility age among men spans much longer (dudel/klüsener 2021; schoumaker 2019), thus compromising the accuracy of male fertility estimates as well as making it problematic to establish the correspondence between g1 and g2 across the datasets. in ggs, we restrict the sample to observations with no missing data on key variables (respondent birth year, number of siblings, education and country of birth, maternal birth year, and parental education). given that we listwise delete observations, we admit that our results might be affected by patterns of nonresponse, especially if they vary by age, gender, or education. vergauwen et al. (2015) analyze the implications of nonresponse within the ggs both at the unit and item levels. their analysis suggests that specific demographic groups might be underrepresented in ggs, notably men, as well as people at extremes of the age distribution. it also indicates a slight overrepresentation of higher-educated people. consequently, listwise deletion of observations with missing information in our case may inadvertently result in a marginal overestimation of higher-educated women, particularly within the oldest cohort (1930-1935). for the countries where we have information on parents’ country of birth, we restrict the sample to those respondents whose mothers were born in the country. although this excludes georgia, lithuania, and poland, migration is unlikely to have had a major effect on g1 in these countries (fassmann/münz 1994; wallace 2002). additionally, we drop observations with an implausible age distance between the respondent and the mother (less than 14 years). finally, we restrict the sample to those who possibly descended from women born between 1930-1950. for this, we apply a lower bound of fertility of 14 years and an upper bound of 40 years, thus keeping respondents born between 1944-1990. this leaves us with on average 2,850 cases per country, see appendix table a1. in the pooled prospective dataset, we also drop individuals with missing data on key variables (respondent birth year, partnership status, partners’ education, gender, education, and the number of children) and sub-select those born between • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov384 1930-1950 to represent our g1 cohorts. here we have, on average, 2,400 cases per country; see appendix table a2. 3.3 estimation in this study, we use a binary coding of education, with higher education being defined as having a tertiary degree (isced 1997 level 5 and above). more refined distinctions are complicated due to large heterogeneity in the coding of belowtertiary education across datasets. in the case of sweden, we were not able to distinguish between isced levels 4 and 5 among parents in the ggs dataset (though isced level 4 education accounts for a relatively small share in this country (halldén 2008)). we apply the same coding to all education variables both for consistency and to adequately match g1 to g2. it is also critical to our decomposition procedure (described briefly below), which would otherwise become significantly less intuitive and much more complicated to conduct. to estimate the distributions of p(m|i), i.e., the probabilities of a given partnership status conditional on education, we use the pooled data and calculate the quantities for women, for each country, and g1 cohort separately. we apply normalized survey weights in estimation, accounting for both the sampling design of each specific survey and the survey sample size in the pooled dataset. we distinguish between three categories of partnership status: “unpartnered,” “having a lowereducated partner,” and “having a higher-educated partner.” thus, the information on partnership status comprises two variables: one derived from marital status information and the other from data regarding the educational level of the partner. our measure includes married as well as cohabiting partners. however, it is just a snapshot in time and does not account for union dissolution and/or re-partnering and thus assumes stable partnerships over the life course. the limitations of these assumptions is discussed in detail below. when estimating the distributions of e(f|i,m), i.e., average completed fertility rates by women’s and their partners’ education, we also use the pooled dataset and a similar weighting strategy. for each cohort, the completed fertility rates are calculated for women that have reached aged 44+, avoiding the issue of right censoring. finally, to estimate the distributions of p(j|i,m), i.e., the probability of children attaining a given level of education by their mother’s and father’s education, we use ggs, i.e., retrospective data provided by g2. to make this data representative of g1, we account for the underrepresentation of lower-parity parents in the anchor sample by re-weighting it using the inverse of respondents’ sibship size plus one (skopek/leopold 2020; song/mare 2015). these weights are then multiplied by ggs survey weights to account for ggs sampling designs in different countries. we could not estimate p(j = 1|i = 1,m = 1) for the earliest-born cohort of women in romania due to a lack of cases and zero variance in several variables involved and therefore exclude it from our analysis. untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 385 3.4 decomposition to explain differences in educational production rates between higherand lowereducated women, we employ a decomposition analysis of the kind previously employed by skopek and leopold (2020) and leesch and skopek (2023). the method builds on the intuition that these differences ‒ i.e., ∆1 = r11 ‒ r10 and ∆0 = r00 ‒ r01 for the differences in the production rates of higherand lower-educated children respectively ‒ mathematically represent the sum of the average effect of swapping the distributions of p(m|i), e(f|i,m), and p(j|i,m) and every combination of those between higherand lower-educated women. we provide a detailed mathematical proof of this decomposition and further details in appendix b1. here it suffices to explain the basic intuition. for instance, to understand how much of the production rate of higher-educated children by higher-educated women is due to fertility, one could compare the factual production rate to the counterfactual one, in which these women are assumed to have the fertility rates of the lower-educated (all else equal). alternatively, an idea of how much of the production rate of higher-educated children by lower-educated women is due to fertility can be gained by comparing the factual production rate to the counterfactual one, in which these women are assumed to have the fertility rates of the higher-educated (again, all else equal). in sum, both differences (factual vs. counterfactual rates) provide an idea about the contribution of fertility. the logic can be extended to estimating the contribution of all other constituents of rji. with only two constituents of rji involved, a counterfactual decomposition of this sort is relatively intuitive (skopek/leopold 2020; wittemann 2023). a three-way decomposition is somewhat more challenging but nevertheless follows the same logic. 4 findings in the following, we present and discuss educational production rates per se. next, we discuss educational differences in fertility rates, partnership status, and mating patterns, i.e., the “ingredients” of our educational reproduction model. finally, we present the results of their decomposition. 4.1 educational production rates in figure 2 and figure 3, we plot the estimates for educational production rates of higherand lower-educated offspring, respectively. the rate refers to the average number of higheror lower-educated children a woman with a certain level of education is expected to produce. thus, the educational production rates do not represent any specific pathway specified in figure 1, but rather figure 1 as a whole. overall, we find clear and predictable educational differences in the production rates of higher-educated children, although countries vary in the magnitude of these differences. the smallest ones are observed in lithuania, russia, the czech • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov386 republic, and sweden and the largest in romania, belgium, and poland. moreover, in germany, lithuania, the netherlands, and austria, the educational production rates seem to converge in the more recent cohorts. we note, however, that this recent convergence may be due to the right censoring issue: the children of the most recent cohort of women may not have had enough time to accomplish education by the time of ggs data collection. only in poland and the netherlands the rates for lowerand higher-educated women converge in cohorts born 1941–1945, whose offspring should be less affected by right censoring. when looking at the production rates of lower-educated offspring, the educational difference is reversed but consistent across the entire range of countries: i.e., on average, lower-educated women produce more lower-educated offspring than higher-educated women do. notably, educational differences are more pronounced in figure 3 than in figure 2. cross-national variation is similar, fig. 2: prospective educational production rates of higherand lowereducated women in terms of production of higher-educated children 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -0 5 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -0 5 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -0 5 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -0 5 austria belgium bulgaria czech republic georgia germany lithuania the netherlands poland romania russian federation sweden high-educated children of high-educated women high-educated children of low-educated women av er ag e nu m be r o f h ig hed uc at ed c hi ld re n reproducing cohort (g1) 2 1 0 2 1 0 2 1 0 source: own calculation based on the pooled prospective and retrospective datasets. untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 387 with the lowest differences in russia, sweden, the czech republic, and belgium, and largest in austria, poland, and romania. in the netherlands, educational differences consistently decline across cohorts, while in the other countries educational differences remain stable across cohorts. although, for some countries, the stylized trends are difficult to discern, it seems that the differences have also declined slightly in austria, poland, and lithuania. in germany, a rise in the production rate of lowereducated children by higher-educated women is visible in the most recent cohort. as already mentioned, this is likely to result from right censoring and should thus be approached with caution. in sum, sweden, russia, and the czech republic stand out as the countries with the lowest educational inequality in educational production rates. conversely, poland and romania have the highest educational inequality. a temporal trend is not clearly evident, but a tendency towards convergence is slightly indicated in poland, austria, fig. 3: prospective educational production rates of higherand lowereducated women in terms of production of lower-educated children 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 austria belgium bulgaria czech republic georgia germany lithuania the netherlands poland romania russian federation sweden low-educated children of high-educated women low-educated children of low-educated women av er ag e nu m be r o f l ow -e du ca te d ch ild re n reproducing cohort (g1) 2 1 0 2 1 0 2 1 0 source: own calculation based on the pooled prospective and retrospective datasets. • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov388 and lithuania. only in the netherlands do educational inequalities in educational production rates seem to decrease noticeably across cohorts. 4.2 educational differences in fertility rates, partnership status, and mating patterns in this section, we summarize the actual (i.e., observed) distributions of the quantities of our educational reproduction model. note that these quantities do not refer to the pathways visualized in figure 1, but rather the fundamental underlying demographic processes. our analysis reveals substantial differences in educational fertility gradients across countries (detailed estimates are shown in table a3 of appendix). the gradient is nearly absent in sweden, belgium, and germany. in most other countries, we observe negative gradients (i.e., lower fertility rates among the higher educated), though with a range of magnitudes. while relatively small in russia, we observe strong gradients in austria and poland. figure 4 illustrates the distribution of mating patterns by education, countries, and cohorts. specifically, we differentiate between unpartnered women, women in a homogamous relationship, and women in a heterogamous relationship (either hypogamy for higher-educated women or hypergamy for lower-educated women). educational differences in the chances of remaining unpartnered vary minimally across countries. notable exceptions are georgia and the netherlands, where lower-educated women are marginally more likely to have a partner compared to higher-educated ones. in austria, no significant differences by education were found among women born between 1930 and 1935, although this changes in more recently born cohorts, with lower-educated women more likely to have a partner. small educational differences in the likelihood of selection into partnership already suggest its minimal impact on the inequality in educational reproduction rates. notably, irrespective of educational differences, our estimates reveal a consistent downward trend in the likelihood of remaining without a partner over cohorts in post-socialist countries. however, we see this merely as an indication of generally lower male life expectancy in these countries (i.e., a widowhood effect) compared to other european ones (leon 2011; mäki et al. 2013). as far as patterns of assortative mating are concerned, we find that educational homogamy prevails in all 12 countries. the share of lower-educated homogamous couples typically is greater than the share of higher-educated couples, but this is largely a reflection of the underlying distribution of educational attainment (given our definition of higherand lower-educated). both educational hypergamy and hypogamy are rare occurrences. assortative mating patterns also demonstrate remarkable stability across cohorts in most countries, although hypogamy diminishes over successive cohorts in austria and within the latest cohort in poland, while it demonstrates an increasing trend in bulgaria and lithuania. educational homogamy appears to be least widespread in sweden, georgia, and lithuania. as prior research also found, romania exhibits a particularly high rate of educational homogamy (domański/przybysz 2007). poland and the czech republic untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 389 are also characterized by higher educational homogamy, especially in the lowereducated category. 4.3 decomposition in figure 5 and figure 6, we decompose the differences in educational production rates of higherand lower-educated children respectively using the technique described earlier (see also appendix section b1). with this decomposition, we thus explicitly explore how much of these differences (represented by the shaded areas in figure 2 and figure 3) is attributable to the educational differences between women in terms of their mating patterns, fertility rates, and attainment per se, the pathways fig. 4: proportion of women either having no partner, being in a homogamous relationship or being in a heterogamous relationship by education; (p(m|i)) 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 austria belgium bulgaria czech republic georgia germany lithuania the netherlands poland romania russian federation sweden homogamy high; p(m=2|i=h) homogamy low; p(m=1|i=l) hypogamy; p(m=1|i=h) hypergamy; p(m=2|i=l) no partner high; p(m=0|i=h) no partner low; p(m=0|i=l) pr op or tio n reproducing cohort (g1) 2 4 0 6 8 2 4 0 6 8 2 4 0 6 8 source: own calculation based on the pooled prospective dataset. • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov390 visualized in figure 1. the colors used in figure 5 and figure 6 correspond to those in figure 1. first, we focus on the decomposition of the differences in the production rates of higher-educated offspring (figure 5). one common prominent pattern is that the differences are largely driven by the attainment effects of the mother’s education (green lines in figure 5 corresponding to pathway a ‒ f in figure 1). moreover, considering the combination of all three pathways, we can identify a group of countries in which differences in educational production rates of higher-educated children are almost entirely driven by an attainment effect: georgia, lithuania, sweden, and germany. there is also some variation that largely overlaps with the magnitude of differences in educational production rates as identified above: the effects appear strongest in poland, austria, and romania, and weakest in sweden, russia, and the czech republic. fig. 5: decomposition of differences in educational production rates of highereducated children -.5 0 .5 1 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 austria belgium bulgaria czech republic georgia germany lithuania the netherlands poland romania russian federation sweden fertility attainment mating d iff er en ce in a ve ra ge n um be r o f h ig hed uc at ed o ffs pr in g be tw ee n hi gh ly a nd lo w -e du ca te d w om en reproducing cohort (g1) -.5 0 .5 1 -.5 0 .5 1 source: own calculation based on the pooled prospective and retrospective datasets. untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 391 when interpreting the effects of fertility gradients on differences in educational production rates, it is important to keep in mind that we analyze the reproduction of cohorts born between 1930-1950. thus, recently reported trends in a weakening of fertility gradients likely do not affect the cohorts in this study (kravdal/rindfuss (2008) examine cohorts 1940-1964, nisén et al. (2021) cohorts 1965-1960, wood et al. (2014) cohorts 1940-1961). the contribution of fertility differences (red lines in figure 5 corresponding to pathway c ‒ g in figure 1) is much smaller in absolute magnitude compared to the attainment effect. moreover, where it is present, it is more likely to remain negative, thus offsetting the difference in educational production rates of higher-educated children between higherand lower-educated mothers (figure 2). more precisely, in these countries, the lower fertility of highly educated women compared to lowerfig. 6: decomposition of differences in educational production rates of lowereducated children 0 .5 1 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 19 30 -3 5 19 36 -4 0 19 41 -4 5 19 46 -5 0 austria belgium bulgaria czech republic georgia germany lithuania the netherlands poland romania russian federation sweden fertility attainment mating d iff er en ce in a ve ra ge n um be r o f l ow -e du ca te d o ffs pr in g be tw ee n lo w a nd h ig hl yed uc at ed w om en reproducing cohort (g1) 0 .5 1 0 .5 1 source: own calculation based on the pooled prospective and retrospective datasets. • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov392 educated women reduces their ability to transmit advantages simply because fewer children exist to whom the educational advantage could be passed on. here, we also find some cross-country variation. the role of fertility is negligible in bulgaria, the czech republic, georgia, lithuania, the netherlands, sweden, and germany. it is more prominent in austria, poland, russia, and romania, although this is more evident only for the earlier-born cohorts. notably, belgium stands out as the only country in which educational fertility differences (albeit small) reinforce rather than diminish differences in educational production rates of higher-educated children (i.e., due to a positive rather than negative educational fertility gradient), although this is only attributable to the earlier-born cohorts. what about the role of educational differences in partnership status and partner choice (yellow line in figure 5 corresponding to pathways b ‒ e ‒ k and b ‒ d ‒ h in figure 1)? in austria, georgia (except for the single cohort), germany, lithuania, and sweden, its role is almost negligible. in all other countries, it appears to widen the gap in educational production rates and thus resonates with the effect of women’s own education. notably, the effect is unlikely to be due to selection into partnership and most likely reflects the effects of assortative mating per se. nevertheless, we underscore that the effect of assortative mating on educational production rates (including as it is calculated in figure 5) represents a combination of both pathways illustrated in figure 1. on the one hand, both partners’ pooled educational resources have an effect on the probability of a child’s educational attainment (pathway b ‒ d ‒ h in figure 1). on the other hand, the partner’s education influences fertility and, thus, indirectly, a woman’s educational production rate (pathway b ‒ e ‒ k in figure 1). this possibly explains the overall small effect of assortative mating on the difference in educational production rates of lower-educated children: while enhancing the difference via effects through attainment (e.g., due to the pooling of resources relevant to children’s educational success), it partly offsets them through fertility (e.g., a negative fertility gradient further enhanced by educational homogamy). notably, the effect of assortative mating, where present, also declines across cohorts. since we do not observe any notable changes in the patterns of assortative mating (figure 4), the effect is unlikely to be compositional in nature and most likely reflects the change in the balance of both mechanisms (figure 1) as just described. we now move to the decomposition of differences in the production rates of lower-educated offspring (figure 6). concerning the effect of attainment (green lines), we observe a largely similar pattern as in figure 5, in that it appears to be the main driver of the difference observed in figure 6. furthermore, it mirrors the country differences noted previously, with poland and austria scoring highest in terms of the relevance of this effect and its contributions being the lowest in the czech republic and russia. similarly, the role of fertility (red lines) is small in most cases, except for poland and austria. however, unlike in figure 5, its effect on the differences is reversed. this underscores the ambiguous implications of a negative educational fertility gradient on the reproduction of educational inequality: whereas it increases the inequality in untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 393 the production rates of higher-educated children, it also increases the inequality in the production rates of lower-educated children. educational differences in mating patterns (yellow lines) also resonate with the effect of attainment, and thus reinforce inequality. however, we find that its effects are much more pronounced with respect to the difference in the production rates of lower-educated children (figure 6) than with respect to the difference in the production rates of higher-educated children (figure 5). this is in line with the explanation of the complex nature of mating effects. since assortative mating might enhance (rather than reduce) the gap in fertility rates between higherand lower-educated mothers (i.e., pathway b ‒ e ‒ k in figure 1), it also resonates with (rather than offsets) its effect on the pooling of educational resources affecting the likelihood of children’s lower educational attainment. simply put, if all women had similar chances in the marriage market, educational differences in the average number of lower-educated children would be reduced. 5 discussion and conclusion in this paper, we analyzed inequality in educational production rates and its trends for women born 1930-1950 in twelve european countries. furthermore, we investigated the mechanisms behind this inequality, distinguishing between three pathways ‒ fertility, mating, and the inheritance of educational attainment from mother to child. our first general and relatively trivial finding is that inequality in educational production rates is substantial and persists across countries and cohorts. more specifically, an average higher-educated woman contributes more higher-educated offspring than a lower-educated one does, and, vice versa, a lower-educated woman contributes more lower-educated offspring than a higher-educated one does. however, our cross-country and cross-cohort analysis also reveals some notable variations. regarding country differences, we find that the inequalities are largest in poland, romania, belgium, and austria, and lowest in russia, sweden, the czech republic, and lithuania. in terms of cohort changes, a stylized trend is harder to identify, however, in most countries, the gaps remain stable over cohorts and only consistently decline in the netherlands. these findings, pertaining to inequality in prospective educational production rates, generally align with the findings of conventional intergenerational social mobility research. for instance, sweden and poland appeared in our findings as the cases displaying one of the smallest and the highest inequality, respectively, similarly to how these countries are frequently ranked in the social mobility literature (breen et al. 2009; breen/jonsson 2005; katrňák et al. 2012; oecd 2018). in that sense, a prospective angle on educational reproduction does not yield any stunning or paradigm-changing results. at the same time, we must acknowledge that our findings somewhat diverge from those of breen et al. (2019), who also analyzed educational reproduction prospectively and focused on european countries. they report that the intergenerational association of educational attainment remains stronger in north-western european countries than south-eastern european countries, even when educational • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov394 disparities in childlessness are considered (which they call “unconditional estimates of educational reproduction”). however, in our study, the extremes of inequality include countries from both geographic regions, with post-socialist countries of eastern europe being particularly represented at these extremes. nevertheless, we underscore that our studies are not directly comparable for at least two reasons. first, breen et al. (2019) use relatively small sample sizes and compare regions rather than countries, whereby cross-country variation is obscured. second, their estimates of reproduction only correct for childlessness rather than fertility differences at large. furthermore, in our analysis, we go beyond our trivial finding establishing differences across europe and reveal how much of these differences are due to the different pathways we outlined. direct educational inheritance, i.e., the effect of a mother’s education on that of her child, contributes most to the inequality in educational production rates. although this is consistent with the findings of skopek and leopold (2020 in germany and wittemann (2023) in sweden, we here confidently show that this is a more universal pattern. however, the inequality in educational production rates is not shaped exclusively through direct educational inheritance. although our analysis reveals only small educational differentials in fertility, they remain relatively pronounced in some countries, especially in earlier-born cohorts. we find negative fertility gradients, particularly in austria, poland, russia, and romania. for the latter three nations, this observation aligns with prior research that identified post-communist countries as having notably strong negative fertility gradients in relation to education (merz/liefbroer 2017; wood et al. 2014). furthermore, our findings partially reflect another aspect of previous studies on the variation of educational stratification across countries: the positive educational fertility gradient observed in belgium (nisén et al. 2021; wood et al. 2014). specifically, belgium emerges as the sole country in our analysis where higher fertility rates among highly-educated are observed. however, this pattern is only evident in cohorts born earlier. accordingly, a negative fertility gradient, where strong enough, partly offsets the inequality in production rates of higher-educated children. this is because a higher ability to pass educational advantages on to children among higher-educated women meets their generally lower levels of fertility. this seems consistent with findings from the prospective mobility literature, claiming that the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is usually overstated in the analyses that condition on parenthood (mare/maralani 2006; kye/mare 2012; maralani 2013; song/ mare 2015; lawrence/breen 2016; breen/ermisch 2017; song/mare 2017; breen et al. 2019). however, by examining the inequality in production rates of lower-educated children, we also find a completely different pattern, with fertility differences reinforcing rather than counterbalancing the inequality. moreover, this inequalityreinforcing effect appears to be even more pronounced than the effect of fertility on the inequality in production rates of higher-educated children, especially in contexts where the educational fertility gradient is particularly strong. thus, the overall effect of the fertility pathway on the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality can be rather ambiguous. untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 395 social stratification of the selection into partnership can shape inequality in educational production rates simply by predetermining who produces offspring in the first place. however, we find no educational differences in the likelihood of having a partner in any country, a finding that corti and scherer (2022) also detected for germany. however, kalmijn (2013) reports varying educational gradients in marriage across europe for cohorts born 1953-1971 using data from the educational social survey (ess). our finding of an absence of social stratification in selection into partnership may be influenced by our method of operationalizing partnership status, which is treated as a snapshot in time. this approach is shaped by data limitations, and an attempt to mitigate the impact of mortality by imposing an age cap of 70 years when estimating partnership status has been made. nonetheless, we acknowledge that this strategy may introduce a bias in our results, particularly concerning the selection into partnership. assortative mating possibly shapes inequalities in educational production rates in two ways. first, through educational resources available in the family, and second, through its influence on fertility. among individuals with a partner, educational homogamy is prevalent, corroborating prior research on educational assortative mating in europe (erát 2021; esteve et al. 2016; uunk 2024). however, our findings partially reflect the anticipated cross-country variations. specifically, romania exhibits a notably high proportion of assortative mating, followed by poland and the czech republic, as expected based on previous studies (domański/ przybysz 2007; uunk 2024). in contrast, belgium and the netherlands do not exhibit notable distinctions in our analysis, despite being characterized by relatively low levels of educational assortative mating in the literature (domański/przybysz 2007; smits et al. 1998). assortative mating patterns also demonstrate remarkable stability across cohorts in most countries of our study, which is in line with the findings of uunk (2024). an increase in hypogamy across successive cohorts is observed only in bulgaria and lithuania, aligning with trends identified by erát (2021) that span several countries, alongside a general decrease in hypergamy. given that erát (2021) focused on cohorts born between 1954 and 1980, it is plausible to infer that the trends he observes may predominantly emerge in cohorts beyond those we analyze. we find that mating influences differences in educational production rates in all countries. however, in some countries, educational differences in the average number of higher-educated children are not influenced by differences in mating patterns. this is the case in austria, georgia, germany, lithuania, and sweden. in countries where the educational stratification of mating patterns influences the educational stratification of reproduction, it widens the educational gap of both educational production rates. this works through two pathways depicted in figure 1. first, higher-educated women are more likely to have a higher-educated partner than lower-educated women are, which increases the likelihood of a dual educational advantage, which in turn increases the ability to transmit educational advantages to possible children (pathway b ‒ d ‒ h in figure 1). analogously, the higher probability of lower-educated women finding a lower-educated partner increases the probability of lower education for their possible offspring. however, this is only one pathway through which educational differences in mating patterns • vanessa wittemann, gordey yastrebov396 possibly shape educational reproduction. the other pathway is through its influence on fertility (pathway b ‒ e ‒ k in figure 1). thus, for couples where both partners are higheror lower educated, educational differences in fertility rates might be even more pronounced, which in turn increases the educational gaps between educational production rates of lower-educated offspring and decreases the educational gap in the production of higher-educated offspring. thus, our findings regarding the role of mating patterns in the reproduction of educational inequality are in line with those of previous prospective studies (kye/ mare 2012; maralani 2013; mare/maralani 2006). corti and scherer (2022) found that in germany, from the perspective of women, spousal education matters for the probability of having an educated child and that this effect does not work through spousal influence on fertility but rather through direct educational inheritance. our findings do not contrast those since we find that differences in mating patterns shape educational differences in the average number of lower-educated offspring. this work is not free from limitations. first, our analysis is descriptive in nature and does not allow for or make causal claims. our counterfactual analysis is not “counterfactual” in the strict sense and only serves the purpose of decomposing differences in observed inequalities in educational production rates. second, in measuring partnership status, we make the strong assumption that it remains fairly stable throughout the life course. furthermore, as we have noted, the measurement of partnership status is also likely influenced by mortality, especially in earlier-born cohorts of women in post-socialist countries (leon 2011; mäki et al. 2013). third, and somewhat relatedly, we use the woman’s highest education degree and not their attained education when they met their (possible) partners and (possibly) produced and raised children. fourth, we use a binary coding of education. although dictated by convenience, harmonization across datasets, and the ease of cross-country comparison (and aligning with other work (e.g., breen et al. 2019; corti/scherer 2022), we recognize that this may obscure important heterogeneity. in our coding, “lowereducated” includes individuals both with incomplete and complete secondary education of a variety of degrees (i.e., up to isced level 4). fifth, the selection of countries in this study is based on data availability, and thus, some european regions and countries such as france, the uk, spain, or italy are not represented, limiting the generalizability of our findings to the entire european continent. finally, fertility and assortative mating represent just a subset of the demographic factors that are socially stratified and, as a result, impact educational reproduction. specifically, factors such as union stability, mortality, and the timing of childbirth are also likely to exhibit social stratification and, therefore, should be taken into account in future research on educational reproduction. acknowledgments this research was supported by the german research foundation (grants le 3253/41 and ya 778/1-1). we deeply appreciate thoughtful and constructive feedback from thomas leopold and jan skopek on early drafts of this article, as well as feedback from anonymous reviewers and the editors of comparative population studies. untangling the role of assortative mating in educational reproduction ... • 397 finally, we acknowledge the producers and the distributors of data employed in our study. ggs wave 1 data (doi:10.17026/dans-z5z-xn8g) were obtained from the ggs data providers (https://www.ggp-i.org/). evs data (doi:10.4232/1.14021) were obtained from gesis data archive (https://www.gesis.org/). wvs data (doi:10.14281/18241.17 and doi:10.14281/18241.18) were obtained from the wvs data providers (https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/). ess waves 3 (doi:10.21338/nsdess3-2006) and 9 (doi:10.21338/nsd-ess9-2018) data were obtained from the ess data providers (https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/). ssee data (doi:10.7910/ dvn/xyuddx) were obtained from harvard dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard. edu/). share wave 6 data (doi:10.6103/share.w6.900) were obtained from the share providers (https://share-eric.eu/). references ballarino, gabriele; 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university of cologne, institute of sociology and social psychology (iss). cologne, germany. e-mail: wittemann@wiso.uni-koeln.de; gordey@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institut/personen-a-z/w/vanessa-wittemann https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institut/personen-a-z/y/dr-gordey-yastrebov https://doi.org/10.2307/2657327 https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124114554460 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-016-0540-4 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-09 https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2018.1498223 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2015.32.24 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183021000032227 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2023.48.25 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2014.31.46 mailto:wittemann@wiso.uni-koeln.de mailto:gordey@wiso.uni-koeln.de https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institut/personen-a-z/w/vanessa-wittemann https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institut/personen-a-z/y/dr-gordey-yastrebov published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen 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editorial team wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable work for cpos! published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? a machine learning approach applied to german municipalities how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? a machine learning approach applied to german municipalities hannes weber abstract: for several decades, demographic forecasts had predicted that the majority of germany’s cities and rural areas would experience population decline in the early 21st century. instead, recent trends show a growing population size in three out of every four german districts. as a result, there are currently severe shortages of housing and childcare in regions that were projected to decline but have instead grown in recent years. other regions, by contrast, continue to lose young people in particular. most of these differences between regions stem from within-country as well as international migration. an important question for both regional demographic research as well as local policy-makers is thus how well net migration rates in cities and rural districts can be predicted several years into the future. in this study, we develop models that predict migration (both within-country as well as international migration) at the level of municipalities for two demographic groups, namely young people aged 18 to 24 years, and families (people aged 30 to 49 years and underage children). we collect data on economic, demographic and other characteristics such as distances to large cities or universities for around 3,000 german municipalities (gemeinden). the model is trained on a subset of these data from the period 2005-2009 and predicts net migration rates among young people on an unseen test dataset in the future (i.e. for the period 2011-2015). the results show that the model can predict future net migration by young people aged 18 to 24 years reasonably well (r² > 0.5), although there were quite signifi cant changes during the period under study, for example refugee immigration to germany. family migration, on the other hand, cannot be predicted equally well (r² = 0.25). some important lessons emerge concerning the predictability of regional and international migration and the usefulness of demographic forecasts for local policy-makers. keywords: migration · machine learning · municipalities · prediction · demographic change comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 143-178 (date of release: 09.04.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-08en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-08en5 • hannes weber144 1 introduction germany’s population will decline drastically throughout the 21st century – this had been the predominant belief among demographers, politicians and the general public in germany for decades. in its 2009 forecasts, the german federal statistical offi ce was still predicting a substantial drop in the national population from 82 million to between 65 and 70 million by 2060 (statistisches bundesamt 2009). in recent years, however, the demographic outlook has changed dramatically. as of 2019, more people live in germany than ever before. and according to the 2019 revision of the offi cial forecasts, this is unlikely to change in the coming decades (statistisches bundesamt 2019). instead of the “demographic implosion” that had often been envisioned, germany’s population size is likely to remain above 80 million by mid-century. the federal statistical offi ce’s estimates are in line with other recent forecasts (e.g. fuchs et al. 2018; vanella/deschermeier 2018; weber 2019) which arrive at much higher values for mid-century population size than had long been assumed. it goes without saying, however, that there are strong regional differences within germany regarding the demographic outlook. some metropolitan areas are preparing for population density to increase more and more in the near future, whereas other regions are already experiencing quite dramatic rates of out-migration by mainly young people and, as a consequence, accelerated demographic ageing and decline (schlömer 2006; mai/scharein 2009). but again, local forecasts have been proven wrong by the reality in many regions. for instance, a decade ago, the german federal institute for research on building, urban affairs, and spatial development (bbsr) predicted that the majority of districts and cities (kreise und kreisfreie städte) in germany will experience a population decline between 2005 and 2025 (bbsr 2008). even in the federal states of bavaria and baden-württemberg in the south of the country, both of which experienced strong economic and demographic growth in the past, many regions were projected to stagnate or decline (see also swiaczny 2015). this is in contrast with the actual recent (2011-2015) trend displayed in figure 1. the general geographic pattern of growth versus decline matches the predictions by the bbsr and others: the populations of rural regions in the eastern states mostly declined, whereas big cities and their surrounding areas increased in population size. however, there are also marked differences between predictions and reality. between 2011 and 2015, only 23 percent of all german districts actually experienced population decline, instead of the majority that had been expected by the bbsr. this means that around 30 percent of all german districts – many of them smaller cities and rural areas – were projected to decline but instead gained inhabitants. of course, it is still uncertain whether this trend will continue over the coming years. but the current trend already has considerable consequences in many areas, including a severe shortage of housing and child care, overcrowded public and private transport in large as well as smaller cities, and a considerable backlash against efforts to protect the environment and the fi ght against climate change (weber/sciubba 2019). in the past, many cities got rid of public housing projects or cut educahow well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 145 tion budgets because it was thought they were not needed in a future characterised by population ageing and decline. today, soaring housing prices and a shortage of teachers and child care workers are among the main problems frequently cited by local politicians. thus, demographic forecasts that turn out to be wrong can clearly cause substantial problems in many policy areas. the main reason for the sudden turnaround in german demography is obvious. between 2012 and 2016 alone, net immigration to germany amounted to more than three million people, whereas the federal statistical offi ce’s (statistisches bundesamt 2009) forecasts only expected between half a million in the “low” immigration variant and one million immigrants in the “high” variant to settle permanently in the same period. not only did the surge in refugee migration (especially during 2015) contribute to these fi gures, but also sharp increases in other types of immigration, fig. 1: population growth in german districts between 2011 and 2015 stuttgart munich dresden berlin five−year change between 2011 and 2015: < −2% −2% to −1% −1% to 0 0 to 1% 1% to 2% 2% to 3% 3% to 4% 4% to 5% > 5% note that the subsequent analyses will use data on the smaller-scale municipalities (gemeinden, n > 10,000), but the visual inspection is easier using the larger aggregation. source: own calculations, bertelsmann stiftung (2018) • hannes weber146 above all intra-eu movements from the new accession states in the east and southeast. international migration is the most diffi cult component in demographic projections. sharp fl uctuations in migration are the main reason why demographic forecasts in europe have not become more accurate over time, despite massive advances in computational power and statistical methods (keilman 2008). as an example, the forecasts by alders et al. (2007) assumed that migration to germany until 2050 would be moderate, and lower than migration to other eu countries such as portugal or spain. the authors justifi ed this by stating that the high fl ows of refugees were “probably over”, labour migration from central and eastern europe was assumed to be more balanced, and high unemployment in germany would deter immigration (alders et al. 2007: 60). all of these trends have seen a drastic reversal just a few years after publication of the forecasts. evidently, it is still unclear whether net migration to germany will remain higher than the federal statistical offi ce’s “high immigration” variant of 200,000 people per year as is currently the case (in 2018, this fi gure was 386,000), or whether it will, for instance, drop to the previous decade’s (2000-2009) average fi gure of just 96,000. but migration has by far the largest impact on the accuracy of demographic forecasts (e.g. weber 2015a). fertility and mortality have only changed gradually throughout the past decades, but migration has been very volatile, changing from negative net migration in 2009 to a historical record fi gure in 2015, all within the space of a few years. moreover, contrary to previous occasions when vast differences were recorded in fertility or mortality rates between cities and rural areas, today there are only minor differences across german regions as far as these two indicators are concerned (bujard/scheller 2017). thus, the uncertainty of demographic forecasts for cities and regions stems mainly from inter-regional and international migration. how well, then, can regional population fi gures be forecast into the future? the aim of this study is to develop a model to predict future net migration (including both within-country mobility and international migration) for german municipalities based on various socio-economic, demographic, and geographic characteristics. we focus on relocations into municipalities by two demographic groups, namely young people aged 18 to 24 years, and middle-aged families (people aged 30 to 49 with underage children). attracting younger demographic groups is often stated as a goal for cities and regions that are facing population ageing and decline. this does not mean that only young people contribute to economic growth; on the contrary, research fi nds that having many workers in their forties leads to greater levels of productivity in a country as opposed to having a younger workforce (feyrer 2007). in addition, many demographers challenge the notion that low fertility and population ageing are per se problematic, fi nding that per capita income can actually benefi t from below-replacement fertility and a moderately declining population size (lee et al. 2014). there are many aspects, including environmental considerations, that might be taken into account in a normative discussion of population ageing and decline which goes beyond the scope of this study. nevertheless, younger people how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 147 are clearly regarded by local governments as an economic advantage and an asset against demographic ageing. the question, therefore, is as follows: can the migration component of regional population change be predicted at all? or are the possibilities of cities and regions for anticipating future demographic developments limited, given the recent changes in trends? 2 regional migration in germany: recent trends before turning to predictions, it is fi rst instructive to look at descriptive trends in residential mobility and migration in germany in recent years. these trends constitute the explanandum and the variation that can be captured by the subsequent models. figures 2 and 3 show the geographic variation in net migration into districts between 2011 and 2015. note that the numbers include both international migrants as well as within-country mobility. as figure 2 shows, young people aged 18 to 24 years display a clear pattern of leaving rural areas and moving into big cities. there are a few notable differences across regions, though. the surrounding areas of berlin or dresden see many of their young inhabitants leave for the cities. in munich or stuttgart, by contrast, the surrounding districts are gaining young inhabitants as well. the geographic pattern for families with underage children (fig. 3) stands in marked contrast to the mobility behaviour of young adults. looking at middle-aged people and children, we see big cities mostly losing these inhabitants while the suburban areas, especially around berlin and munich, show a massive increase. it is also important to look at the temporal stability of these trends. figure 4 shows changes in migration rates among young adults as well as families in the 13 largest german cities with a population size of at least 500,000. as the graph shows, the changes in the young-age (18 to 24 years) migration rates were generally small between 2005 and 2015. even as early as the period between 2005 and 2009, all cities were gaining many young adults on balance (see x-axis), and this pattern remained stable up to 2015. leipzig is an exception. here, the net migration rate of young adults doubled, making the east german city the most popular destination (per capita) for young people between 2011 and 2015, followed by nearby dresden. munich, previously the most popular city among 18 to 24 age group, is the only major city where the migration rate decreased slightly over time, presumably due to housing prices that are unrivalled in all of germany. nevertheless, the greater munich area attracts large numbers of young people who move there from other parts of the country in order to work or study there. if, by contrast, we look at changes in the vertical dimension in figure 4, the picture looks drastically different. during the period between 2005 and 2009, all 13 large german cities were characterised by a negative net migration rate among the age groups 30 to 49 and 0 to 17 years. families had, on average, left these cities for the surrounding districts. just a few years later, however, this trend had reversed and eight out of 13 cities are now net receivers of families. • hannes weber148 figure 5 shows the same analysis as figure 4, but in this case the data are limited to german nationals in the respective age groups. as indicated by the graph, there is a massive decrease in net migration among german families in the largest german cities. all cities had already lost german nationals in the age groups 30 to 49 and 0 to 17 years during the period between 2005 and 2009, but the balance became markedly more negative by 2011-2015. this means that the positive total net migration in this demographic group shown in figure 4 can be attributed entirely to foreign nationals who moved into the big cities in much larger numbers in recent years. this is an important insight, showing that an average trend (the increase in family migration rates) can mask two contradicting trends that partially cancel each other out. on the one hand, natives are leaving the big cities in ever greater numbers whereas immigrants more than compensate for this loss. on the other hand, young immigrants and germans in the 18 to 24-year age group are moving into the cities, and without immigrants the net migration rates would not look drastically different. fig. 2: net migration rate, age group 18 to 24 years, in german districts between 2011 and 2015 stuttgart munich dresden berlin yearly net migration rate (per 1,000 inhabitants): < −26 −26 to −19 −19 to −13 −13 to −8 −8 to 0 0 to 8 8 to 19 19 to 41 41 to 81 > 81 source: own calculations, bertelsmann stiftung (2018) how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 149 3 regional migration and residential mobility: theoretical considerations in general, two strands of literature provide theoretical accounts that seek to explain why people relocate and which places are more attractive to movers than others. macro-level accounts on the determinants of migration focus on the characteristics of countries or regions that attract or repel people (e.g. massey et al. 1993). the terminology of “push and pull factors” (lee 1966) has long transcended the scientifi c literature and infi ltrated into public discourse. among the founding documents for macro-level migration research are ravenstein’s (1885) classic inquiries into the determinants of movements between cities. his “laws” stated, for instance, that long-distance migrants tend to target large cities with economic opportunities over rural areas. zipf (1946) formulated the well-known hypothesis that the volume of migration between two places is proportional to the product of their population size fig. 3: net migration rate, age group 30 to 49 years and 0 to 17 years, in german districts between 2011 and 2015 stuttgart munich dresden berlin yearly net migration rate (per 1,000 inhabitants): < 2 2 to 5 5 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 11 11 to 12 12 to 14 14 to 15 15 to 17 > 17 source: own calculations, bertelsmann stiftung (2018) • hannes weber150 and inversely proportional to the distance between the two places. these simple models have inspired more recent research that relates global migratory movement mostly to geographic and demographic characteristics of origin and destination countries (e.g. cohen et al. 2008; kim/cohen 2010). besides these “gravity” variables (population size and distance), macro-level research into migration most often relates observed migration rates to economic prosperity and growth as well as to the labour market (e.g. lowry 1966). in general, a problem for macro-level migration theory based on human capital or gravity models is the recurrent fi nding that the number of people that do actually migrate is small, despite huge wage differentials and other supposed pushand pull-factors (speare 1974). on the one hand, the effect of economic variables such as unemployment is not straightforward and sometimes found to be zero or negative (hatton/tani 2005; fig. 4: net migration rate, age group 18 to 24 years (x-axis) and age groups 30 to 49 years and 0 to 17 years (y-axis), in the 13 largest german cities 2005-2009 (start of arrow) vs. 2011-2015 (arrowhead) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 −5 0 5 10 migration rate (18−24 years) fa m ily m ig ra tio n ra te ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● berlin bremen dresden düsseldorf essen hamburg hannover köln leipzig münchen stuttgart dortmund frankfurt am main source: own calculations, bertelsmann stiftung (2018) how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 151 windzio 2004). on the other hand, non-economic variables are also of importance, such as the reluctance to move to culturally different regions even within a country (e.g. into regions with different dialects) (bauernschuster et al. 2014). micro-level theories seek to explain migratory behaviour on the basis of individual characteristics of (potential) migrants. the micro-founded neoclassical model assumes that people migrate to maximise their well-being and, accordingly, migration occurs if the expected utility outweighs the costs of moving (sjaastad 1962). among the individual-level theories, there are also accounts from life course research which explain migratory behaviour through psychological models of the decision-making process (e.g. kley 2011). research on residential mobility often fofig. 5: net migration rate among german nationals, age group 18 to 24 years (x-axis) and age groups 30 to 49 years and 0 to 17 years (y-axis), in the 13 largest german cities 2005-2009 (start of arrow) vs. 2011-2015 (arrowhead) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 −1 5 −1 0 −5 0 migration rate (german nationals, 18−24 years) fa m ily m ig ra tio n ra te (g er m an n at io na ls ) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● berlin bremen dortmund dresden düsseldorf essen frankfurt am main hamburg hannover köln leipzig münchen stuttgart source: own calculations, bertelsmann stiftung (2018) • hannes weber152 cuses on individual characteristics such as age, education, employment status, or psychological factors such as affi nity to risk (greenwood 1985). of course, the need to combine micro-level and macro-level models has long been voiced (e.g. cadwallader 1989). in a combined model, “objective” characteristics of places are perceived by individuals as subjective variables, which the individuals combine to estimate utility scores of different places (cadwallader 1989). if the subjective attractiveness of a potential destination is greater than the current place of residence, an individual disposition for mobility exists (considering migration) which may translate into actual migratory behaviour, conditional on constraining factors such as costs (kalter 1997). as a general framework, the concept of subjective expected utility (seu) can serve as a starting point for integrating various middle-range theories (de jong et al. 1983). individuals subjectively evaluate their origin as well as potential destination places and compare them to their own aspirations. an seu model of residential mobility in accordance with cadwallader (1989: 497) could be formulated as follows: where the subjective expected utility seu of moving to region i is a function of the subjective utility ratings u of regional attribute j, weighted by an individual-specifi c importance measure w, and the costs c of moving to region i. the attributes considered by individuals when assigning values to different places might include, among others, employment opportunities, length of commute to existing job, green space, crime rates, or in case of families the perceived quality of schools. importantly, we assume that the weights that individuals place on these factors can change over the life course (kley 2011). that is, individuals in different age groups will have different rank orders of places because the subjective importance assigned to various regional characteristics has changed. in particular, the presence or absence of children infl uences personal preferences regarding residential location choices and commuting behaviour (kim et al. 2005). for instance, research fi nds that young adults are more likely to plan to leave a city if there are better career opportunities in the potential destination or better opportunities to pursue own interests relative to the current place of residence. in the family phase, however, these effects are absent and instead factors related to family life inspire the plan to move (kley 2011). below, we discuss different preferences for residential mobility among young adults and families, focusing on four trends that we deem especially important for predicting future patterns of mobility among these two demographic groups in germany. (1) how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 153 educational expansion between 2000 and 2015, the share of school leavers attending university increased drastically, from around 30 percent to more than 50 percent. this means that while two decades ago, the average school leaver started vocational training as part of the traditional dual system in germany, today the majority of school leavers begin some form of tertiary education. this has a considerable impact on the residential mobility of young people. starting around the year 2000, the large infl ow of young people aged 18 to 24 has caused germany’s big cities to grow once again, counteracting the previous decades of de-urbanisation (gans 2013). whereas opportunities for vocational training in crafts and trades are available in equal measure in urban as well as rural regions, tertiary education is mostly confi ned to cities. an ever increasing share of fi rst-year university students among young people implies that secondary school leavers will leave rural regions situated a long way from universities in even greater numbers. this process also affects people’s mobility decisions in later stages of the life course. once a university degree has been obtained, the likelihood of moving back to the countryside diminishes since there are fewer employment opportunities for job-seekers with tertiary education. after children have been born, tertiary-educated residents of large metropolitan areas might still express a desire to leave the city, but this is constrained by employment opportunities that are largely restricted to urban areas. as a consequence, young families living in big cities are likely to move into suburban municipalities close to these cities, but less likely to go back to the peripheral rural regions where they may have come from (milbert/sturm 2016). socio-economic and ethnic segregation another feature that consistently predicts residential mobility of family-age people in particular is the socio-economic or ethnic composition of an area (e.g. south/ crowder 1997; van ham/feijten 2008). in germany, there is a close correlation at the neighbourhood level between the share of migrants and lower socio-economic status, but at the more aggregate regional level, the opposite is true (weber 2015b). thus, prosperous and ethnically diverse metropolitan areas are presumably attracting families, while at the level of municipalities, the concentration of ethnic minorities is likely to lead to greater out-migration. residential segregation by ethnic background has historically been rather low in germany, as compared with other countries such as france, the united kingdom, or the united states (e.g. musterd 2005). however, there are also signs that ethnic and socio-economic segregation have been on the rise in germany in recent years. the residential segregation of welfare recipients, for instance, has increased in 80 percent of all german cities over the past few years (helbig/jähnen 2018). half of all cities now have neighbourhoods in which more than 50 percent of all children are dependent on social security transfers (helbig/jähnen 2018). in addition, it is well known that residential segregation is stronger among recent migrants than among migrants from previous waves who tend to move into more mixed neighbourhoods • hannes weber154 over time (e.g. friedrichs 1998). as such, the recent sharp increase in immigration to germany is likely to lead to an increase in the level of segregation, at least in the short term. in line with schelling’s (1971) well-known theory of segregation, one could assume that municipalities with a growing proportion of migrants or socio-economically deprived people will, at some point, start witnessing an increase in emigration rates among the native population even though there is no historic precedent for this. it is likely that there will be a tipping point at which an accelerated level of outmigration by middle-class members of the municipality is triggered. to a certain degree, this can already be observed in big german cities with a negative correlation between the concentration of ethnic minorities in a neighbourhood and the net migration rate of natives (weber 2015b). a high concentration of immigrants is, for example, often associated with the fear of a decrease in the educational quality of schools due to language problems and cultural misunderstandings (svr 2016 ). however, ethnically mixed but prosperous areas (such as university quarters) are still popular (weber 2015b). tight housing markets one of the most politically salient issues in recent years has been the sharp increase in housing prices throughout most of germany. a tight housing market has previously been linked to low residential mobility in germany (clark/drever 2000). some people might consider moving, but fi nancial constraints impede actual resettlement. for many young adults wishing to move to the city to enrol at university or start vocational education, living in the core cities might not be affordable and they instead resort to surrounding municipalities with good public transport connections. this is what the descriptive view already suggests for munich in particular (see fig. 2 and 5). in the family age groups, the desire to leave the city may be amplifi ed by the inability to fi nd larger apartments within the city limits after the birth of a child (busch 2016). there is also obviously endogeneity with regard to the effect of housing costs. since demand for housing as a consequence of local population growth is one of the most important determinants of intranational variation in housing prices – other factors such as the interest rate are constant for all regions – residential mobility affects housing prices at least as much as housing prices affect residential mobility. whereas the former relationship is positive, however, the latter is negative. rising housing prices are thus a strong indicator of population growth in the past, but can deter future infl ows if the price level surpasses the acceptance limit of potential inmovers. the housing market also interacts with residential segregation along socio-economic or ethnic lines and with geographic location. on the one hand, high rents may impede people with a low socio-economic status from moving into certain municipalities or prompt them to leave in the case of “gentrifi cation” of previously cheaper areas. on the other hand, depending on the demographic composition of a municipality, potential in-movers may be more or less willing to pay high housing how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 155 prices. municipalities within commuting distance of big, prosperous cities with a low proportion of socio-economically deprived residents or ethnic minorities are probably most attractive to families who want to move into the broader metropolitan area. in this case, housing prices are likely to be higher. increase in international migration while the previous theoretical considerations have mostly focused on residential mobility within germany, the descriptive view has already suggested that international migration plays a major role in determining the demographic prospects of many regions. mobility patterns of international migrants are different to those of internal migrants (compare fig. 6 and 7). there is abundant evidence that international migrants tend to move into big cities where other migrants already live (e.g. mayda 2010). we can thus hypothesise that, in terms of the weighting placed on different attributes of a municipality, equation (1) looks different for migrants than it does for natives. in particular, we assume that migrants are willing to pay a larger share of their income to housing if it allows them to live close to kinship and fellow countrymen in the big cities. for recent refugees in particular, it should also be noted that their location choices (if they do have a choice) are less sensitive to the housing market. in sum, the following assumptions can be made about the determinants of residential mobility among young people and families: • young adults’ (18 to 24 years) propensity to move to large cities with universities will increase over the study period due to the continued expansion of tertiary education. • in the most prosperous cities where housing prices are highest, the surrounding areas with access to good public transport connections will also attract young people, and fewer school leavers originating from these areas will move out of their parental home into the city due to the higher living costs. • for rural areas farther away from large cities, a crucial aspect in attracting young people or preventing them from leaving will be whether universities (of applied sciences) are within reach. the labour market and opportunities for vocational education still play a vital role, but tertiary education is gaining in importance over time. • families who value access to green areas, larger living spaces, and schools with a low share of socio-economically deprived children are more likely to move to suburban or rural areas with low unemployment and high income levels compared with large cities. • however, since an increasing share of young-to-middle-aged mothers and fathers has undergone tertiary education, these suburban or rural areas need to be in reach of large cities with a diversifi ed economy. thus, areas that are within short distances of large cities, have access to public transport, and only a small number of residents with a low socio-economic status, will likely lead to high infl ows of family-age people. • hannes weber156 • rising housing costs and an increasing concentration in cities of residents with a low socio-economic status will accelerate this trend of families moving towards suburban and rural areas. • places with a high share of immigrants can be expected to attract more immigrants in the future – the volume of these fl ows, however, is highly conditional upon national and international factors such as domestic migration policies, and is hardly predictable on a local basis. 4 building predictive models of municipal migration explanations versus predictions explanations and predictions are both fundamental to science. for hempel and oppenheim (1948: 138), “an explanation of a particular event is not fully adequate unless [it] […] could have served as a basis for predicting”. an “explanation” in the deductive-nomological tradition is the logical derivation of statements about particular observations from a more general theoretical model – this is also sometimes termed “scientifi c prediction” (dowding/miller 2019). a “prediction”, by contrast, in our understanding is closer to what dowding and miller (2019) call “pragmatic prediction”, namely the assignment of values to previously unseen cases (possibly in the future), i.e. to cases that were not used to train the model that is the basis for prediction. in many disciplines, such as demography and other social sciences, applied research often uses a mixture of these approaches. in these disciplines, there are no universally applicable laws but often, instead, a set of middle-range theories and auxiliary assumptions about the causal mechanisms at work that are translated into a statistical model. there is arguably a continuum between a purely data-driven predictive model and a purely deductive-hypothetical approach, with theory-informed empirical research in the middle. the big difference between “explanatory” and “predictive” approaches is thus not so much the underlying philosophy of science. rather, they differ in their main goal of what should be achieved by the empirical endeavour. in an explanatory approach, as is the dominant practice in many applied statistical fi elds such as population studies and economics, a hypothesis is translated into a formal model and tested with inferential statistical techniques such as linear regression and null-hypothesis signifi cance testing (in the frequentist paradigm) on the basis of empirical data. if the regression coeffi cient is statistically different from zero, the association found in the data is unlikely given a null hypothesis is assumed to be true. if some other conditions are met, the effect is assumed to be causal. formally, in a standard linear regression model of the form ŷ = α̂  + βx, where values of an outcome ŷ are estimated as a function of an explanatory variable x with parameter weight β (and a constant α̂ ), the explanatory approach is most concerned with the estimation of parameter β (mullainathan/spiess 2017). “mere” predictions are often dismissed as not advancing the fi eld by providing reliable evidence based on theory (keuschnigg et al. 2018). how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 157 by contrast, a predictive model is more concerned with the outcome ŷ. the goal is to maximise predictive accuracy as defi ned, for instance, by the number of correctly predicted events as a proportion of all observed events in case of a dichotomous outcome. predictive models are much more widely used in the computer science and machine learning communities, and increasingly also in applied fi elds in business and industry (e.g. kuhn/johnson 2013). in these fi elds, there is often less emphasis put on “explanation”, and some even dismiss the necessity for theoretical models, causality and explanations per se (anderson 2008). indeed, in many applications such as the prediction of credit default, customer churn, or accident risks, it might suffi ce to have a data-driven approach with high predictive accuracy without a deeper understanding of the causal mechanisms for why two specifi c items are often bought together, or why a scanned image of a handwritten signature is more likely to belong to someone named “smith” rather than “miller”. the coeffi cient of a specifi c independent variable β is less interesting compared with correct forecasts of the outcome. some model characteristics such as hyperparameters (e.g. number of hidden units in a neural network) are not even substantially informative. a common critique of most explanatory approaches is the lack of model validations via out-of-sample predictions (e.g. schrodt 2014). since in most cases all of the data is used to obtain the model parameters, the model is likely to be overfi tted (e.g. cranmer/desmarais 2017). this means that the parameters are infl uenced by outliers or other idiosyncrasies of the training dataset and the model would probably fail to produce good estimates for cases that were not part of the training set. this critique is arguably most appropriate if the data analysed do not come from a random sample of a population (as is the case in public opinion research for instance, where the frequentist paradigm of null-hypothesis signifi cance testing was developed), but are instead a non-random sample or the total population – as in, for instance: “all german municipalities with a population greater than 5,000”. these shortcomings are arguably major causes for today’s replication crisis in science. predictive models using machine learning algorithms are increasingly applied to social science research, although their use is still comparatively rare. for instance, bansak et al. (2018) used machine learning algorithms to geographically place refugees in a way that their employment prospects improved signifi cantly. in this application, the main question of interest is not whether a specifi c independent variable (e.g. a refugee’s level of education) infl uences the outcome signifi cantly. therefore, a research design for causal identifi cation is less well suited, compared with a predictive model. in another example, muchlinski et al. (2016) fi nd that machine learning algorithms such as random forests provide more accurate predictions of civil war onset as opposed to “traditional” regression-based approaches. but predictive models alone are no panacea for arriving at more reliable evidence (e.g. athey 2017). correlations that exist in big databases are often spurious (calude/longo 2017), and most machine learning algorithms do not give consistent estimates of which features are more important to the outcome and which are less so (mullainathan/spiess 2017). a machine learning algorithm discarding a certain feature does not therefore constitute a falsifi cation of a theory that claimed this feature to be important. this might be less problematic in some applications (e.g. • hannes weber158 image recognition), but in other cases it is important to have at least a plausible idea of the underlying mechanisms at work. a combination of proxy variables that are highly correlated with the “real” causally relevant factors often produce predictive accuracies that are just as good as models informed by the true mechanisms. as a consequence, policy-related interpretations of the form: “since x is given high importance by the algorithm, improving x will result in higher y”, are invalid. this is important to note because practitioners and policy-makers might be tempted to interpret the results in such a way. thus, susan athey (2019) does not expect the increasing use of machine learning techniques in disciplines such as economics to have any substantial impact on the statistical theory of causal identifi cation. the latter will continue to be a main goal for researchers in these fi elds. instead, machine learning algorithms will complement the standard econometric approaches, which might put an end to the “statistical monoculture” of linear and logistic regression that schrodt (2014) complained about. in addition, practices that are widely used in machine learning such as crossvalidation and out-of-sample predictions can help applied research in economics and social sciences to overcome the problem of overfi tted models and purported fi ndings that fail replication (cramner/desmarais 2017). our application is located somewhere on the continuum between a data-driven predictive model and a deductive-nomological explanatory approach. on the one hand, our goal is to make out-of-sample predictions: how well can future migration rates be predicted for municipalities that were not part of the training dataset? on the other hand, our predictive model is informed by theories and well-established knowledge about mechanisms behind migration and residential mobility. since there is no grand theory in demography and other social sciences, the various middle-range theories referred to in the previous chapter can guide variable selection and transformation (feature engineering). as such, the evidence produced by the model will hopefully prove to be more stable compared with pragmatic, purely data-driven approaches. however, strictly testing these theories of migratory behaviour or inferring policy recommendations is beyond the scope of this approach. data the main data source in this project is the “wegweiser kommune” (bertelsmann stiftung 2018), a database that contains various demographic and socio-economic indicators for more than 3,000 municipalities (kommunen) in germany. all german municipalities with a population greater than 5,000 are included in the database, although a small number of municipalities have dropped below this mark since the fi rst reference year from which the data are available (2008). the largest municipality is the city of berlin with a population of more than 3.3 million, whereas the average population size of a municipality in the dataset is around 24,000. we thus have a non-random sample of municipalities that also shows systematic geographical patterns (see fig. 6): especially in rural areas in the states of bavaria, schleswig-holstein, and mecklenburg-western pomerania, large parts of the map consist of smaller municipalities with populations below 5,000. in these states, we how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 159 lack data on many rural areas. in the states of north rhine-westphalia or saxony-anhalt, by contrast, local government reforms resulted in fewer, but larger municipalities. finally, in lower saxony and rhineland-palatinate, there are many associations consisting of multiple smaller municipalities (samtgemeinden) which are treated as a single municipality in the analyses. in the latter states, there are thus fewer areas fig. 6: map showing german municipalities that are included (in red) in the dataset (grey areas = not included) source: bertelsmann stiftung 2018 • hannes weber160 for which we lack data. all in all, considering that many smaller municipalities are represented as unions of municipalities in the dataset, 5,850 or 51.3 percent of all german municipalities are included in the analysis. however, the total sample size is 3,151 since associations of municipalities are treated as a single observation. the outcome variable of interest in this study, namely net migration, is reported in the dataset as the average yearly value for the fi ve years leading up to the reporting year. in other words, for the 2015 edition, net migration refers to the average net migration value (per 1,000 inhabitants) during the period from 2011 to 2015. this is our target variable which is reported for a variety of age groups. we focus on the two pre-defi ned demographic groups that the authors (bertelsmann stiftung 2018) refer to as “educational migration” (age group 18 to 24 years) and “family migration” (age groups 30 to 49 and 0 to 17). among the many indicators (n = 184) in the dataset, we excluded a number of variables that were either irrelevant to our question or too close to the defi nition of the dependent variable (e.g. total net migration, total population change). in addition, we excluded many indicators that were highly correlated (r > .95) with others; for instance, total balance of commuters out of a municipality vs. balance of male commuters vs. balance of female commuters, etc. we also excluded indicators that had more than 50 percent missing values, which is often the case for indicators that are only available at the district level or for larger agglomerations (e.g. share of children with a migrant background in kindergartens). this leaves us with 38 indicators from the source database that are potentially considered for inclusion in the models (see appendix). for each algorithm, a recursive feature elimination procedure is built into the modelling pipeline in such a way that the model is trained with the optimal subset of features determined via cross-validation. this means that the algorithm may use all of the variables listed in the appendix or only a subset if this results in greater predictive accuracy in the training data. adding to the indicators from the bertelsmann dataset, we assembled a number of other variables and merged them with the dataset. in particular, these were: • information on all long-distance and regional train stops in germany obtained from the german railway company deutsche bahn. for each municipality, we coded whether a train station is present and whether long-distance trains also serve this station. as an additional variable, we calculated the distance to the nearest municipality with a station served by long-distance trains. these indicators are included because theoretical considerations suggested that good public transport connections are vital in attracting young people to municipalities. • we calculated the distance from each municipality to the nearest city with more than 50,000, more than 100,000, or more than 500,000 inhabitants. the idea is that short distances to cities, especially if combined with other features such as good public transport links, is important for predicting net migration (see theory section). • we coded whether a municipality had a university, how many students were enrolled at this university, as well as the distance to the nearest municipality with a university. we also counted the total number of university students enrolled within a radius of 20 km around each municipality. how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 161 • a few indicators from the original dataset were transformed; e.g. we calculated the change in the share of foreigners over the past two years. models of municipal migration the basic idea is to train models based on past migration rates between the years 2005 and 2009 and to use them to predict migration in the period between 2011 and 2015 in previously unseen municipalities. the dataset consisting of 3,151 municipalities in germany is divided into a training set (n = 2,543, i.e. 80 percent of the data) and a test set (n = 608, i.e. 20 percent) via a random split. figure 7 depicts this procedure schematically. variables with skewed distributions are log-transformed and non-binary indicators are z-normalised, resulting in mean = 0 and standard deviation = 1. this facilitates fi nding numerical solutions with many machine learning algorithms. finally, an imputation routine based on a k-nearest-neighbour algorithm is applied to missing values. all of these preprocessing steps are performed with the preprocess() function included in r’s (r core team 2018) caret package (kuhn 2018). importantly, these transformations are applied to the test data using only information (such as mean and standard deviation) from the training data. next, 10-fold cross validation is performed on the training set. the data are divided into 10 sets where nine serve as training sets and the remaining one as a validation set against which parameters are tuned. the procedure is repeated with fig. 7: schematic depiction of the procedure to partition the dataset and arrive at out-of-sample predictions original dataset training data random split (80/20) test data cross validation (log-transformation, z-standardization, imputation…) model evaluation: accuracy? predictions val eva ) n (log transf a source: own design • hannes weber162 each of the ten sets serving as the validation set, with the result that the entire dataset was used for both training and validation. the model with the best predictive performance on the training set is selected to produce predictions for the test set. as a predictive performance measure, we generally select r² since our outcome variable is continuous and it offers the most intuitive interpretation. as robustness tests, all predictions were also judged by their root mean squared error (rmse), but the overall interpretation of the results did not change. we consider four popular algorithms: (1) linear regression as the baseline; (2) a random forest; (3) an extreme gradient boosted tree; and (4) a deep neural network. these are four popular algorithms in applied research, with the latter two in particular often listed as (part of) the winning submissions in machine learning competitions (chollet/allaire 2018). there are, of course, many other algorithms that are frequently applied to regression problems, but for the sake of simplicity we confi ne the analysis to these four methods. tree-based methods are more fl exible compared with regression models in terms of handling non-linear relationships and interactions. in the case of multi-collinearity, however, the result of a tree-based algorithm is likely to be unstable since many of the variables could have served as substitutes for others. random subspace methods used in random forests or gradient-boosted trees can improve this issue. instead of one tree, many trees are grown using only a random subsample of all features (variables) as well as observations. the fi nal prediction comes from an ensemble of all trees where each tree votes which value to assign to a given observation. peculiarities of the training dataset such as outliers will have less of an impact on the fi nal model used for predictions. gradient boosting machines are also ensemble methods (of trees, in this case), but progress sequentially. after a tree is built, greater weights are assigned to badly predicted cases and the next tree tries to optimise these cases. ensemble methods usually outperform single learners (such as a decision tree or a linear regression); on the other hand, they cannot easily be interpreted by humans (e.g. zhou 2012). for random forests and (extreme) gradient boosted trees, we use caret’s wrapper function train() which calls algorithms from the randomforest and xgboost packages (liaw/wiener 2002; chen et al. 2019). the model-building pipeline is set up to tune the hyperparameter mtry, i.e. the number of variables sampled as potential candidates at each tree node split. a few outliers with z-scores greater than 4 on the dependent variables were dropped since it is likely that these represented either measurement errors or extremely unusual changes, such as the installation of a state-wide reception centre for refugees in a small municipality. to build neural networks, we use the keras package for r with a tensorflow backend (allaire/chollet 2018). deep neural networks are non-linear regression models with stacks of unobserved variables (hidden layers). the units in the hidden layers are a linear combination of the input variables, transformed by a non-linear activation function. we specify a convolutional neural network with two hidden layers with varying numbers of units and dropout layers with different weights for hyperparameter tuning. deep neural networks have become widely used in recent years due to their ability to learn any kind of function, almost supplanting the need for feature engineering (chollet/allaire 2018). the fact that functional forms, feature how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 163 importance, and interactions between variables remain inside the black box is unproblematic for many applications such as natural language processing or image recognition. in our application, it might be tempting to seek out mechanistic explanations – why is this happening and what can we do against it – but this is not what the method can provide. 5 results figure 8 shows the predictive performance of four different algorithms. the models are trained on migration data between 2005 and 2009 and predict migration rates in the period between 2011 and 2015 in 608 previously unseen municipalities. the results show that migration rates among young people (18 to 24 years) can generally be predicted quite well (left-hand panel in fig. 8). the best performing model (gradient boosted tree) achieves r² values of more than 50 percent, equivalent to correlations of r > 0.7 between the predictions and the actual observed values. the variation around the average predictive performance (marked with a dot) comes from different combinations of hyperparameters for the models other than linear regression. the well-known bias-variance tradeoff becomes apparent, with linear regression showing no variation in the forecasts but the results are furthest from the actual observations, compared with the other models. the “family” demographic group, by contrast, is less predictable in its migratory behaviour. r² = .25 is the best value that could be achieved with an xgboost regressor. this refl ects the fact that patterns of family migration appeared to be less stable over time and had changed considerably by 2011-2015 compared with the mid-2000s (see fig. 4 and 5). sharp increases in immigration from other countries turned net migration rates in many cities from negative to positive, at the same time as native german families left the cities in ever greater numbers, resulting in higher infl ows into suburban and peripheral regions. these trends were “unpredictable” in the sense that, when looking at data from 2005 to2009, an accurate prediction of which cities and rural areas would gain many families on balance and which would lose inhabitants in these age groups would not have been possible. by contrast, the residential mobility of young people (18 to 24 years) was comparatively stable over time and is less affected by international migration. yet, r² values of around 50 percent mean that there is still variation that is left unaccounted for by the models. arguably, the trend towards ever higher participation rates in tertiary education that accelerated during the study period is a crucial factor in this regard. this pushes young people to municipalities with universities in even greater numbers than before. at the same time, skyrocketing housing prices in large university cities contribute to a suburbanisation even among this young demographic group, but only in certain regions such as the greater munich, stuttgart or frankfurt areas (see fig. 2). figures 9 and 10 plot the predicted values against the actual observations for the standardised migration rates of young people (fig. 9) and families (fig. 10) from the two xgboost algorithms. again, it is obvious that the predicted values for young• hannes weber164 age migration anticipate the actual observations quite well (r = 0.7 between predicted and observed values). with regard to family migration (fig. 12), this generally proves to be more diffi cult (r = 0.5), mirroring what we learned from the descriptive analyses. in order to better understand which features prove useful in predicting migration rates (without making causal claims), figures 11 and 12 plot decision trees for youngage and family migration, respectively. note that these are exemplary trees and do not necessarily refl ect what the majority of trees in the random forest, for instance, yield as results. but they intuitively show how the algorithm arrives at its results. here we can also note the trade-off between better interpretability (as provided by the decision tree) and greater predictive accuracy by a “black box” ensemble model (e.g. as a random forest). for the sake of simplicity, tree depth is limited to three. at the leaf nodes, the boxplots show the distribution of the dependent variable in the respective group, the mean value being the prediction made by the model. for the 18 to 24 years age group, the share of foreigners in a municipality is being used as the fi rst split to separate the data. the second split refers to the share of sealed (urban) land. municipalities that have a below-average share of foreigners and a very low share of sealed land are characterised by the lowest migration rate, i.e. a large out-migration of young people. the municipalities that attract the largest number of people aged 18 to 24 years are those with an above-average share of foreigners, a very low share of one or two-family homes, and a very high number of university students. the exemplary regression tree in figure 11 shows several of the characteristics that make tree-based models in general more fl exible compared with linear regression. first, non-linear relationships can easily be accounted for by the model. for instance, while the share of foreigners has a considerable impact when splitting the data near the average value (fi rst split), splitting the data has less of an effect fig. 8: predictive performance (r²) of four algorithms in predicting migration among people aged 18 to 24 years (left-hand panel) and family-age groups (30 to 49 and 0 to 17 years) (right-hand panel). variation around coeffi cients is caused by different hyperparameter values ● ● ● ● 0.2 0.4 0.6 linear regression random forest xgboost deep neural network age group 18−24 years (r−squared) ● ● ● ● 0.2 0.4 0.6 linear regression random forest xgboost deep neural network age groups 30−49 and 0−17 (r−squared) source: own calculations how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 165 at higher values of the predictor (compare nodes 12 and 13). in addition, complex interaction effects are detected by the tree. for instance, as noted above, a greater share of foreigners is generally associated with more in-migration by young people. however, when a high share of foreigners coincides with a rural setting (many one or two-family homes, low share of sealed land, see node 20), these rural municipalities with many foreigners actually attract slightly fewer young people compared with urban and rich municipalities with few foreigners (node 8). again, the position of variables and their importance as indicated by the tree cannot be interpreted in a causal way. for instance, the share of foreigners is the most important variable according to the algorithm and is highly correlated with many other variables, in particular those that are characteristics of urban areas. while it is obvious that urban areas with more foreigners show higher infl ows of young people, the model provides no evidence for a causal or policy-oriented interpretation of the sort: “increasing the share of foreigners in a municipality will, everything else being equal, lead to more young people settling there in the future”. the only theoretical mechanism that points in this direction is the migrant networks mechanism fig. 9: predicted and observed values for the migration rate among people aged 18 to 24 years in 608 municipalities in the unseen test data, 2011–2015 (z-standardised) source: own calculations ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 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(compare fig. 4 and 5), international migration is not the most decisive factor in this age group. figure 12 plots a decision tree with depth = 3 for migration rates among people aged 30 to 49 and underage children. the algorithm selects child poverty as the most important feature to divide the dataset. families leave areas with a high child poverty rate and high unemployment. a low rate of child poverty, many highly qualifi ed workers, and a favourable rate of employment for women in comparison with men are factors associated with a large infl ow of families. the lower overall predictive accuracy of the models is refl ected by the fact that many of the leaf nodes in figure 12 do not differ much in their average migration rate. fig. 10: predicted and observed values for the family-age (30 to 49 and underage children) migration rate in 608 municipalities in the unseen test data, 2011–2015 (z-standardised) ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ● ●● ● ● ● ●● ● 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● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● −2 −1 0 1 2 3 −4 −2 0 2 4 predicted values o bs er ve d va lu es source: own calculations how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 167 fi g . 1 1: e xe m p la ry d ec is io n tr ee fo r th e m ig ra tio n ra te a m o ng p eo p le a g ed 1 8 to 2 4 ye ar s s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns sh ar e of fo re ig ne rs p < 0. 00 1 1 ≤ −0 .2 1 > −0 .2 1 sh ar e of s ea le d/ ur ba n la nd p < 0. 00 1 2 ≤ −1 .6 5 > −1 .6 5 n od e 3 (n = 5 7) ●●● ● −4−2024 g ro ss ta x re ve nu e in m un ic ip al ity p < 0. 00 1 4 ≤ −0 .4 3 > −0 .4 3 n od e 5 (n = 5 36 ) ●● −4−2024 sh ar e of s ea le d/ ur ba n la nd p < 0. 00 1 6 ≤ 0. 34 > 0. 34 n od e 7 (n = 2 48 ) ● ●●● ●● ● −4−2024 n od e 8 (n = 7 7) ●● ● ●● ● ●● −4−2024 sh ar e of o ne o r t w o fa m ily h om es p < 0. 00 1 9 ≤ −1 .1 7 > −1 .1 7 n um be r o f u ni ve rs ity s tu de nt s p < 0. 00 1 10 ≤ 4. 14 > 4. 14 sh ar e of fo re ig ne rs p < 0. 00 1 11 ≤ 1. 22 > 1. 22 n od e 12 (n = 1 17 ) ● ● −4−2024 n od e 13 (n = 6 1) ●● −4−2024 n od e 14 (n = 5 0) −4−2024 sh ar e of o ne o r t w o fa m ily h om es p < 0. 00 1 15 ≤ 0. 03 > 0. 03 sh ar e of s ea le d/ ur ba n la nd p < 0. 00 1 16 ≤ 0. 53 > 0. 53 n od e 17 (n = 4 24 ) ● ●● ●● ● −4−2024 n od e 18 (n = 2 70 ) ●● ●● ●● −4−2024 sh ar e of s ea le d/ ur ba n la nd p < 0. 00 1 19 ≤ −0 .0 1 > −0 .0 1 n od e 20 (n = 4 57 ) ●● ●●● ● ● −4−2024 n od e 21 (n = 2 42 ) ● ●● −4−2024 • hannes weber168 fi g . 1 2: e xe m p la ry d ec is io n tr ee fo r th e fa m ily -a g e (3 0 to 4 9 an d 0 t o 1 7 ye ar s) m ig ra tio n ra te s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns c hi ld p ov er ty ra te p < 0. 00 1 1 ≤ 0. 76 > 0. 76 sh ar e of h ig hl y qu al ifi ed w or ke rs p < 0. 00 1 2 ≤ 0. 15 > 0. 15 u ne m pl oy m en t r at e p < 0. 00 1 3 ≤ −0 .2 4 > −0 .2 4 sh ar e of h ig hl y qu al ifi ed w or ke rs p < 0. 00 1 4 ≤ −0 .8 1 > −0 .8 1 n od e 5 (n = 2 30 ) ●●● −4−2024 n od e 6 (n = 3 55 ) ● ● ●● ●●●● −4−2024 sh ar e of h ig hl y qu al ifi ed w or ke rs p = 0. 00 3 7 ≤ −1 .2 2 > −1 .2 2 n od e 8 (n = 1 09 ) ●● ● ●● −4−2024 n od e 9 (n = 4 42 ) ● ●●●● ● ●● ● −4−2024 r at e of e m pl oy m en t w om en /m en p < 0. 00 1 10 ≤ 1. 6 > 1. 6 c hi ld p ov er ty ra te p < 0. 00 1 11 ≤ −0 .1 1 > −0 .1 1 n od e 12 (n = 5 33 ) ●● ● ●●● ●● ●● ●●● ● ● −4−2024 n od e 13 (n = 2 47 ) ● ● ●●● −4−2024 n od e 14 (n = 6 0) −4−2024 u ne m pl oy m en t r at e p < 0. 00 1 15 ≤ 1. 34 > 1. 34 sh ar e of h ig hl y qu al ifi ed w or ke rs p < 0. 00 1 16 ≤ 0. 84 > 0. 84 n od e 17 (n = 2 40 ) ● ● ● ●●● ● ●● −4−2024 n od e 18 (n = 5 1) ●●● ● −4−2024 u ne m pl oy m en t r at e p < 0. 00 1 19 ≤ 1. 87 > 1. 87 n od e 20 (n = 1 96 ) ● ● ● ●● ●● −4−2024 n od e 21 (n = 7 6) −4−2024 how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 169 6 conclusions how useful are regional demographic forecasts? recent trends in local population growth have disproved many predictions which assumed that most german districts would experience population decline rather than growth. just a few years ago, given the demographic outlook, public housing projects were abandoned, schools were closed and fewer teachers were hired in many regions. now, by contrast, as a consequence of considerable population growth throughout most of germany, there is a severe shortage of housing, too few kindergarten teachers and nurses, and overcrowded public transport, roads, and hospitals. it is therefore obvious that short and medium-term demographic forecasts, if reliable, would be a useful tool for local policy-makers. how well, then, can municipal migration and residential mobility be predicted fi ve to ten years into the future? in general, this proves to be very diffi cult, even with sophisticated methods and detailed data at the municipal level. the main reason for this is the volatility of international migration over time. whereas in the late 2000s, net migration to germany was close to zero or even negative, an all-time high was recorded just a few years later. statisticians and qualitative experts failed to predict this trend – and at the sub-national level such predictions become even more diffi cult. while immigration has decreased in recent years since 2015, it is still at a much higher level than in previous decades. similarly, while the infl ow of refugees is currently much lower than it was in 2015 and 2016, the fi gure of approximately 180,000 per year in 2018 still represents more than a fi vefold increase on rates seen a decade ago. for small municipalities in particular, the uncertainties of how many more migrants will arrive in the next few years, how many will be allowed to stay permanently, and how many will potentially relocate to bigger cities, have a strong infl uence on the local demographic outlook. however, not everything is uncertain. the breakdown into two different age groups reveals that some trends are more stable and predictable than others. in particular, the residential mobility of young people aged 18 to 24 years can be predicted quite well fi ve to ten years into the future. the general pattern of these people leaving rural areas and settling in big cities with universities prevails. it is likely that the continued expansion of tertiary education will reinforce the trend of young people leaving remote areas without universities and moving to larger cities. since more remote areas also provide limited employment opportunities for graduates of disciplines such as cultural studies or media science, these moves will often be permanent. there are also a few mechanisms that have changed, though. the allocation of young refugees to rural areas partly reversed the negative migration rate in some regions. a shortage of housing and skyrocketing rent prices result in young people settling in the suburban surroundings of large industrial areas such as munich or stuttgart. as a consequence, munich is no longer the most sought-after city among young people and is the only large city (together with bremen) where infl ows of young people have decreased somewhat. what can be done about this? while our statistical models do not allow for causal and policy-oriented interpretations, there are a number of measures that are likely • hannes weber170 to affect young-age migration. given the trend towards an ever greater share of secondary school leavers going on to university, setting up new universities (of applied sciences) in rural areas is likely to prevent some of the young people from leaving the region. these new established universities can specialise in disciplines that are linked to the local labour market. at the more aggregated state and national level, policy-makers might want to reconsider whether the extensive educational expansion of recent years should be continued at the same pace in future. today, labour shortages are occurring in many jobs that require vocational training, such as kindergarten teachers, nurses, and craftspeople. in rural areas, these jobs dominate over occupations that typically require tertiary education. a very different set of conclusions can be drawn for residential mobility among families consisting of middle-aged people (30 to 49 years) and underage children. predicting the migratory behaviour of this group into the future is much more diffi cult than that for the young age group. in the 2000s, families tended to leave big cities and settle in the surrounding suburbs or in more rural areas. this is still true for native germans; in fact, this trend has accelerated among this group and the 13 largest german cities witnessed a surge in emigration of german families between 2011 and 2015. however, immigrant families have moved into the large cities in ever greater numbers, reversing the overall trend for residential mobility in the family age group. the majority of the largest german cities are now actually attracting more families on balance than are leaving. in addition, native families leaving the cities contribute to high population growth in the surrounding districts of large cities such as berlin or munich, but even municipalities situated further away from the city are now increasingly becoming net receivers of family migration. there are certainly a few limitations to this study, e.g. regarding the availability of data at the level of municipalities. if we were able to further disaggregate the age groups or provenance (within-country mobility vs. international migration) and analyse directed fl ows rather than net migration, the predictive accuracy of the models would certainly be higher with regard to some groups (e.g. mobility behaviour of native germans aged 30 to 39). on the other hand, international migration would still be the hardest factor to predict accurately, so a forecast of total population change in broadly-defi ned age groups (e.g. underage children in order to forecast the demand for teachers), which is of practical interest to local policy-makers, would still achieve only moderate levels of predictive accuracy. in sum, it is hard to predict whether the current trends will continue in the near future. many of the patterns described above are intertwined; for instance, as more immigrants move into the city centres and housing costs rise, natives are more likely to relocate to the suburbs. however, municipalities surrounding munich or stuttgart are already highly-priced when it comes to housing and are also densely populated, so if families want lower housing costs, this requires ever further commutes to work in these regions. if immigration from other countries were to decline in the coming years, the populations of big cities would start to decrease on balance, since natives are already leaving these cities in considerable numbers. this might in turn make the core cities more attractive again for young people who are currently moving to the suburbs due to the 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e-mail: hannes.weber@mzes.uni-mannheim.de url: https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/d7/en/profi les/hannes-weber • hannes weber176 appendix tab. a1: feature labels and descriptive statistics feature label valid n mean std. dev. min max population size 3,148 23,763 93,863 4,215 3,326,002 population density 3,151 4.027 5.760 0.000 75.586 share of welfare recipients among workers (per 1,000) 3,125 31.829 4.792 10.000 56.000 share of welfare recipients among working males 3,099 28.376 5.816 6.000 68.421 share of employment in primary sector 1,997 1.920 3.000 0.020 29.860 share of employment in secondary sector 2,944 37.785 15.575 2.870 84.600 unemployment rate, persons aged 15-25 years 3,114 2.880 2.078 0.300 16.100 unemployment rate 3,114 4.627 2.756 0.900 19.000 share of foreigners 2,500 5.491 4.210 0.200 33.200 share of foreigners older than 65 years 1,769 3.194 2.346 0.100 17.100 share of employed persons in vocational training 3,102 6.032 1.329 2.200 11.900 share of welfare recipients among foreigners 1,625 15.181 8.758 0.700 63.200 part-time workers per 1,000 residents 3,109 95.277 22.903 19.548 220.952 share of age group 65 to 79 years 3,114 15.647 2.403 7.500 29.100 birth rate 3,105 7.720 1.073 4.000 12.800 mortality rate 3,105 10.751 2.436 4.500 26.900 mean age 3,102 44.331 2.145 37.400 53.300 share of age group 80 or older 3,114 5.416 1.079 2.200 10.900 mean apartment size per resident 2,996 46.361 4.109 16.900 69.500 share of 1-family or 2-family homes 3,099 61.873 18.115 10.500 96.100 growth in the number of jobs in the past 5 years in % 3,093 8.559 11.094 -46.600 117.900 share of employment in private sector services 2,961 8.583 6.491 0.200 74.700 dynamics of employment in private sector services, past 5 years 2,902 46.554 81.142 -96.300 837.500 share of highly qualifi ed workers 3,043 9.284 4.995 1.500 62.100 share of employed inhabitants among all inhabitants (18 to 64 years) 3,102 55.399 4.410 21.300 70.900 share of employed females among all female inhabitants (18 to 64 years) 3,035 50.631 5.307 21.200 71.600 female employment rate as a share of the male employment rate 3,027 84.553 9.735 56.300 123.100 how well can the migration component of regional population change be predicted? • 177 feature label valid n mean std. dev. min max share of highly qualifi ed residents 3,114 11.372 4.965 2.800 37.800 gross tax revenue in the municipality 2,422 682.145 179.026 226.800 999.900 rate of commuters into the municipality 2,906 65.092 11.431 7.639 95.568 rate of commuters out of the municipality 2,915 71.924 15.523 9.301 97.262 youth unemployment rate 3,115 6.540 3.928 0.800 29.100 child poverty rate 2,944 11.495 8.000 1.100 51.300 share of sealed/urban land 2,828 19.021 11.253 2.507 95.000 long-term unemployment rate 3,087 2.641 2.352 0.136 40.397 recreational space per inhabitant 2,816 0.005 0.005 0.001 0.060 employment rate of foreigners relative to total 1,819 66.369 16.056 7.451 133.461 relative number of fatal accidents in transportation 3,069 4.735 1.854 0.596 21.218 long-distance train connection 3,151 0.092 0.290 0.000 1.000 public transport connection 3,151 0.583 0.493 0.000 1.000 distance to long-distance train connection 3,147 16.937 12.790 0.000 83.882 distance to city >100,000 inhabitants 3,147 35.388 23.994 0.000 173.557 distance to city >50,000 inhabitants 3,147 22.633 16.118 0.000 151.670 distance to city >500,000 inhabitants 3,147 81.283 50.247 0.000 352.297 number of university students 3,151 1,023 7,481 0.000 185,161 university city (yes/no) 3,151 0.052 0.222 0.000 1.000 distance to nearest university 3,147 20.743 13.248 0.000 106.145 number of students in 20 km radius 3,147 13,600 26,780 0.000 210,249 migration rate, 18 to 24 years (2011-2015 average) 3,122 -8.169 38.149 -128.767 316.429 migration rate, families (2011-2015 average) 3,132 12.637 9.781 -24.896 184.017 migration rate, 18 to 24 years (2005-2009 average) 3,085 -21.850 29.031 -130.500 181.600 migration rate, families (2005-2009 average) 3,082 1.004 6.873 -21.200 46.500 change in share of foreigners, 2 years 2,367 0.474 0.768 -1.465 1.891 tab. a1: continuation source: own calculations published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) comparative population studies at fifty: views on the past, present, and future editorial comparative population studies at fifty: views on the past, present, and future* heike trappe, roland rau, katrin schiefer, c. katharina spieß abstract: the 50th volume of comparative population studies (cpos) is a significant milestone in the journal’s history, offering us the opportunity to reflect on its development into a key platform for population research, major achievements, and future aspirations. besides a retrospective, we present a forward-looking perspective, outlining our vision for the journal’s trajectory in an ever-changing scientific landscape. furthermore, we offer insights from 50 years of cpos, including the total number of submissions, the geographic origins of our authors, and an analysis of the journal’s most downloaded articles. this editorial is the first in a series accompanying cpos volume 50 in our anniversary year. further editorials by former cpos editors, publishers, and authors will follow, giving an overview of the editorial processes, guiding principles, and strategic considerations that have and will continue to shape the journal’s identity and impact. keywords: zfb · cpos · ojs · publishing policies · open access 1 what to expect from this editorial 2025 marks an extraordinary year for comparative population studies (cpos): the journal’s 50th anniversary. over the past five decades, cpos has been a major platform for population studies and demography. back in 1975, the zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb), cpos’ predecessor, was established as the scientific journal of the newly founded german federal institute for population research (bib). over the years, the zfb became a well-established journal in the german-speaking research community. in order to make the journal accessible to a wider international audience, it was transformed into cpos and became a peer-reviewed online openaccess journal in 2010. today, the journal attracts cutting-edge population research from around the globe. comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): i-vi (date of release: 28.01.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-01 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-01en6 * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. • heike trappe, roland rau, katrin schiefer, c. katharina spießii celebrating this 50-year journey, we reflect on the journal’s major developments and achievements. and who could report better than the individuals that shaped it? to give a comprehensive overview of the past, present, and future of the journal, we will publish a series of editorials throughout volume 50 of cpos. in these editorials, past editors, publishers, and authors will share their experiences and perspectives on the journal. 2 a journal of population studies and demography: then and now the editorial accompanying the very first issue of zfb back in 1975 set the tone for the journal’s mission (maihofer 1975: 3): “this journal is intended to be a forum for the scientific debate of population issues, taking into account neighbouring disciplines as well as the experiences of population research and population policies of other countries.”1 this core aim remains central to cpos today – albeit applied to contemporary publishing standards and aspirations. today, cpos is positioned as an interdisciplinary journal of population studies and demography with a strong focus on comparative research from around the globe. comparative research is understood in a broad sense, encompassing diverse comparative approaches across – for instance – countries or regions, across the life course and across social groups. topics may include (but are not limited to) family and fertility, ageing and mortality, health and wellbeing, migration and mobility, and population structure and its dynamics. in 2010, zfb was formally renamed cpos, though this transition had started much earlier (see fig. 1). opening up the journal to a wider international audience had also been an aim in the journal’s early days. already in 1976, zfb provided english and french summaries of its german-language research articles. however, the primary focus remained on german population studies and research at the bib itself. significant structural changes began in 2003 with the establishment of a scientific advisory board, paving the way for the introduction of peer review in 2004. by 2008, the journal was accessible online (via vs verlag). however, the greatest changes came with the relaunch of the journal in 2010 into a fully online and open access ojs2 journal. these developments did not stop with the relaunch – rather, the relaunch marked the start of a series of further advances. the journal also moved to being entirely english-language during these transition years. in 2016, cpos became part of the web of science core collection by entering the emerging sources citation 1 translated by cpos; the german original reads: „diese zeitschrift soll ein forum für die wissenschaftliche diskussion von bevölkerungsfragen werden, wobei auch benachbarte disziplinen sowie die bevölkerungswissenschaftlichen und bevölkerungspolitischen erfahrungen anderer länder berücksichtigt werden.“ 2 ojs stands for open journal systems, an open source publishing platform for the management of peer-review journals. comparative population studies at fifty: views on the past, present, and future • iii index (esci), affirming the journal’s successful transition, scientific quality, and global impact. further steps included the appointment of external editors complementing the team at the bib in order to ensure scientific independence, transparency, and fig. 1: a timeline of major developments from 1975-2025 zeitschrift für bevölkerungs1975  wissenschaft (zfb) is established.  1976 summaries are published in english and french. a scientific advisory board 2003  is established.  2004 introduction of peer review online availability at vs verlag 2008   2010 full relaunch as comparative population studies (cpos) first participation at the epc 2012  exhibition  2015 cpos is now published entirely in english. inclusion in web of science 2016  (emerging sources citation index esci)  2018 phil rees is named external editor. cpos joins twitter (now x). 2019   2020 johannes huinink is named external editor. new submission category, 2021  “demographic trends around the globe” frans willekens is named external editor.  2024 heike trappe and roland rau are named external editors. volume 50 of cpos is published. 2025  • heike trappe, roland rau, katrin schiefer, c. katharina spießiv quality. furthermore, a new descriptive paper category, demographic trends around the globe, was successfully introduced, aligning with the initial idea and mission to explore population structures and changes and their respective challenges in other parts of the world. these developments exemplify the journal’s commitment to continuous progress and innovation. 3 cpos: facts and figures the following sections present facts and figures on cpos drawn from the past years. figure 2 illustrates cpos’ global reach from 2010-2024. the map shows our authors’ home institutions, indicating that the journal has become a truly international platform attracting population researchers from around the globe. that said, we hope to achieve even greater geographical coverage in the future with further highquality submissions. since its relaunch in 2010, cpos has received 605 submissions, of which 272 articles have been published. the journal’s three most downloaded articles exemplify its interdisciplinarity and broad range of contributions. first, an 2015 article by hannes weber asks whether immigration can prevent population decline in germany. second, a methodological paper by volker ludwig and josef brüderl from 2021 focusses on the challenges when estimating impact functions with panel data. third, in 2012, oliver arránz becker and anja steinbach analyse the relations of grandparents and grandchildren. over the years, each of these three articles has fig. 2: where our authors come from cpos authors‘ origin note on figure 2: cpos’ authors from 2010 to 2024 come from australia, austria, brazil, bulgaria, china, croatia, czech republic, england, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, iceland, india, ireland, italy, japan, netherlands, nigeria, norway, pakistan, poland, portugal, romania, russia, scotland, south africa, south korea, spain, sweden, switzerland, taiwan, türkiye, uruguay, the usa, and zimbabwe. this data refers to the affiliation of the first authors of published manuscripts. comparative population studies at fifty: views on the past, present, and future • v been downloaded over 6,000 times – indicating their relevance and contribution to the field. social media has also become a crucial tool for connecting with population researchers around the globe and major institutions in the field. posts on x regularly update the community on new publications and calls for papers. 4 views and insights from the current editors, heike trappe and roland rau reflecting on our first year as editors of cpos, we discussed what had been the biggest surprise and we both agreed that it was diversity. this diversity manifests in two key ways: global outreach and thematic breadth. first, cpos truly has become an international journal. after decades with a focus on german-speaking authors and topics, submissions and published articles now come from around the globe. submissions from latin america or asia, for example, are no longer the exception. second, submissions span the three core areas of traditional demography: fertility, mortality, and migration – often interwoven, of course, with related topics such as population ageing or union trajectories. methodological papers are submitted more rarely, but this is also not the intended focus of the journal. 5 what’s next? looking to the future, we see an opportunity to further enhance the journal’s contributions through innovative data visualisation. demographic analyses often examine phenomena across ages, periods, and cohorts. each of these data points may be based on thousands of observations. mere description in words and tables can often miss important aspects of the underlying dynamics. this is why we will emphasize data visualisation more strongly in future volumes of cpos. we believe that effective data visualisation can offer readers deeper insights by presenting complex dynamics in an intuitive and visually compelling manner. data visualisation is becoming increasingly important for understanding complex relationships across all demographic sub-fields – and we believe cpos should also advance in this direction. 6 closing remarks over the past 50 years, cpos (and its predecessor, zfb) has transformed continuously to meet the challenges of its times, indicating the journal’s ability to adapt to evolving research and publishing trends and standards. we at the bib are proud of the journal’s development and achievements. looking ahead, we are excited to continue fostering innovative research, engaging with global demographic population trends and dynamics, and exploring new avenues such as data visualisation. • heike trappe, roland rau, katrin schiefer, c. katharina spießvi ultimately, it is you ‒ the readers and authors ‒ who bring our journal to life. we thank you for your continued support and look forward to shaping the next 50 years of comparative population studies together, through exciting special issues, innovative data visualisation, and research on emerging demographic trends from around the globe. references arránz becker, oliver; steinbach, anja 2012: relations between grandparents and grandchildren in the context of the family system. in: comparative population studies 37,3-4: 543-566. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2012-06 ludwig, volker; brüderl, josef 2021: what you need to know when estimating impact functions with panel data for demographic research. in: comparative population studies 46: 453-486. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-16 maihofer, werner 1975: vorwort des bundesministers des innern prof. dr. werner maihofer. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 1,1: 3. weber, hannes 2015: could immigration prevent population decline? the demographic prospects of germany revisited. in: comparative population studies 40,2: 165-190. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2015-05 prof. dr. heike trappe, prof. dr. roland rau. university of rostock. rostock, germany. e-mail: heike.trappe@uni-rostock.de; roland.rau@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/trappe/ https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/rau/ dr. katrin schiefer (*), prof. dr. c. katharina spieß. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: katrin.schiefer@bib.bund.de; direktorin@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/schiefer/schiefer.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/spiess/spiess.html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea bongoh kye abstract: this study examines excess mortality in south korea during the covid-19 pandemic. i analyze age-speci c mortality rates and present an international comparison. first, korean excess mortality remained low until the end of 2021 but signi cantly increased in early 2022. second, this excess mortality was concentrated among older people. for example, cumulative excess mortality among the population aged 85+ years until the 30th week of 2022 was approximately 1-2 percent, that is, an additional 1-2 percent of this age group died compared with what we would have expected in the absence of covid-19. third, the international comparison demonstrates that excess mortality in south korea was relatively low. the country experienced one of the lowest excess mortality rates among countries under study until the end of 2021, but excess mortality rapidly increased in early 2022. however, it returned to being comparatively low by mid-2022. this comparison shows cross-national variation in excess mortality, which may be associated with policy responses and public health infrastructure. finally, i discuss implications and opportunities for future research. keywords: excess mortality · south korea · covid-19 1 introduction this study examines excess mortality after the outbreak of covid-19 in south korea (hereafter, korea). it focuses on age and sex differences in excess mortality in korea and presents an international comparison. scholars have widely recognized that fatality rates due to covid-19 are highly age-dependent. in other words, the risk of dying when stricken with covid-19 is much higher for and concentrated among older persons than younger ones. for example, among the 29,209 cumulative deaths due to covid-19 in korea as of november 1, 2022, 59 percent (17,269 deaths) were individuals aged 80 years and over (kye 2022). furthermore, covid-19 costs lives indirectly as well as directly. for example, the impact of the pandemic on the public health system certainly hindered its normal operation, resulting in unnecessary comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 665-684 (date of release: 07.11.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-26 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-26en8 • bongoh kye666 deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. in addition, some individuals may recover from the disease, but the consequent damage may be suf ciently signi cant to result in their deaths at a later point in time. however, such deaths are not attributed to covid-19, despite certainly being related to the virus. hence, researchers should estimate the numbers of deaths directly and indirectly caused by covid-19. one way of doing so is assessing the magnitude of excess deaths. this study analyzes short-term mortality fluctuations (stmf) data to examine the patterns of excess mortality during the pandemic in korea. the stmf visualization toolkit available at https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/ can produce the same results reported in this study because it allows for inspecting excess mortality under baseline mortality scenarios including the ones used in this study. the main contribution of this study is a reorganization of country-speci c excess mortality patterns and their comparison with pre-pandemic mortality. this will show how severe the mortality crises due to the pandemic were in different countries in a comparative perspective. the remainder of the paper is structured as follows. section 2 brie y reviews previous studies that examined excess death during the pandemic. sections 3 and 4 explain the data and methods used to estimate excess mortality, respectively. section 5 presents the results, and section 6 summarizes the  ndings and discusses their implications. 2 literature review covid-19 has been a major topic in demographic and public health research due to its global impact on public health, the economy, and social relationships. the increase in mortality during and after the pandemic is among the most prevalent research topics in these  elds. scholars have analyzed various death outcomes and applied different methods to assess excess mortality. a 2022 report by the world health organization (who) analyzed excess death counts using monthly death counts in 2020-2021 by specifying baseline deaths under the assumption of linear changes in monthly deaths (knutson et al. 2023; who 2022). global excess deaths between 2020 and 2021 were estimated at 14.9 million, which was more than  ve times the number of deaths directly related to covid-19 (2.7 million). this  nding suggests that the number of deaths indirectly caused by covid-19 far exceeded those directly caused by covid-19. a few studies have also analyzed changes in life expectancy after the outbreak of the pandemic. for example, aburto et al. (2022) used stmf data to analyze changes in life expectancy in 29 countries in 2020 and demonstrated that life expectancy in many countries declined in 2020 compared to 2019, and even was lower than in 2015 in certain countries (e.g., russia). although the annual increase in life expectancy at birth between 2015 and 2019 was approximately 0.2-0.3 years, it declined in many countries after the covid-19 outbreak. in the united states, life expectancy at birth decreased by more than 1 year, and the decrease in life expectancy was concentrated among the older population. however, there is crossexcess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 667 national variations, and the reduction in life expectancy among individuals aged 60 years and under was largest in eastern europe. other studies have examined excess mortality by comparing observed and projected life expectancies (islam et al. 2021; schöley et al. 2022). while aburto et al. (2022) examined the trend in mortality after the pandemic, these studies compared observed and predicted mortalities under the assumption that previous trends on mortality continued. these analyses thereby accounted for declining mortality trends in assessing the size of excess mortality. the results demonstrated that the loss of life expectancy in russia and the united states in 2020 was greater than 2 years, but no such reduction was observed in new zealand, taiwan, korea, or norway (islam et al. 2021). in germany, luy et al. (2021) analyzed changes in life expectancy by age and sex and illustrated that life expectancy at birth and at age 60 in germany decreased by 0.2 years, with a greater reduction among men than women. the reduction in eastern germany was greater than in western germany. changes in life expectancy can be easily interpreted, but require  ne-grained mortality data to be used. the stmf data provide fairly wide age intervals (0-14, 15-64, 75-84, and 85+ years) compared with the data usually used to construct life tables. thus, we need to convert the data into shorter age intervals to estimate life expectancy, likely entailing errors. hence, several studies analyzed agespeci c mortality rates instead of constructing life tables. examining covid-19 deaths in italy in 2020, basellini and camarda (2022) found that the degree of intergenerational co-residence, number of intensive care unit beds per capita, and delay in the outbreak of the epidemic in uenced the magnitude of related deaths. furthermore, nepomuceno et al. (2022) used the stmf to analyze excess mortality by applying various mortality baselines. the authors constructed a total of 12 mortality baselines, four time-trend models (speci c-average, speci c-trend, speci c-average with trend, and harmonic with trend), and three reference periods (2010-2019, 2015-19, and 2017-2019). their results indicate that excess mortality in the united states, eastern europe, and southern europe was high; in contrast, it was low in new zealand and taiwan. the international comparison of excess mortality illustrates that excess mortality was lower in korea than in the majority of countries. moreover, the loss of life expectancy in 2020 was statistically nonsigni cant in korea, in contrast to most other countries (islam et al. 2021). the excess mortality in korea in 2020 was one of the lowest among countries examined, regardless of estimation method (nepomuceno et al. 2022). as elsewhere, excess mortality patterns in korea showed withincountry variation. while excess mortality in korea was negative in the majority of weeks in 2020, that is, fewer deaths occurred than expected based on the previous trend, excess mortality among men eligible for medicaid was positive. this  nding suggests that the impact of the pandemic on mortality was concentrated among the economically disadvantaged (kim et al. 2022). shin et al. (2021) demonstrate seasonal and regional variations in excess mortality. daegu-gyeongbuk province, in which a cluster outbreak during the  rst wave of pandemic occurred, exhibited higher excess mortality during the spring of 2020. • bongoh kye668 based on previous studies, the current study examines excess mortality in korea from a comparative perspective. it contributes to the literature in two ways. first, it extends the time span of analysis on excess mortality during the pandemic. previous studies in korea analyzed data through 2020, when excess mortality was negligible (kim et al. 2022; shin et al. 2021). the larger comparative studies published thus far also focus on excess mortality in 2020 (islam et al. 2021; nepomuceno et al. 2022). by using data until the 30th week of 2022, this study extends previous work. second, the current study explores age and sex differences in excess mortality in korea during the pandemic and compares them with those of other countries. as harm due to covid-19 on health is age-dependent, it examines differences in the patterns of excess mortality by age and sex. 3 data the study uses the stmf data provided by the human mortality data base (https:// www.mortality.org/), which provides annualized weekly mortality rates by age (i.e., 0-14, 15-64, 65-74, 75-84, and 85+ years) and sex for 38 countries (jdanow et al. 2021). time coverage varies by country, but data between 2015 and 2022 are available for the majority of countries. i use data last updated on september 26, 2022, which covers information until the 37th week of 2022 for several countries (e.g., chile, denmark, scotland, and the netherlands). however, data is more limited for other countries (e.g., taiwan and russia). thus, the study analyzes data until the 30th week of 2022, when the data for korea and the majority of countries are available. using short-term mortality data (e.g., weekly or monthly) introduces two concerns. if the late registration of deaths is common, then the death rates for the most recent periods could be underestimated. in addition, short-term  uctuation in death may re ect other shocks beyond the interest of the study. for example, the spikes in death rates in europe from late july to early august in 2020 were largely consequences of a heat wave, rather than covid-19 (wang et al. 2022). despite these concerns, i opt to use weekly mortality data, because doing so can enable the precise monitoring of trends (nepomuneno et al. 2022). furthermore, to minimize the undue in uence of a particular period on the trend, the study uses cumulative excess mortality, which is de ned in the next section. 4 method specifying baseline mortality rates is necessary for analyzing excess mortality. many methods can be used to de ne excess mortality (nepomuceno et al. 2022). the present study applies two approaches. first, i use a speci c-average method. weekly mortality rates tend to  uctuate cyclically due to the seasonality of mortality, and the speci c-average method uses the average mortality rates of the reference periods as baselines. second, i use a speci c-trend method, which speci es excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 669 baselines under the assumption that mortality rates per week change in a linear manner. equations (1) and (2) present the formulas for the two abovementioned methods (nepomuceno et al. 2022: 282-283): speci c-average model: speci c-trend model: basey,w,a = βwh + εy,w,a, (w = 1, 2,..., n; h = y−r, y−r+1,..., y–1) where y indicates the year, w is the week, a indicates age, r is the number of reference periods in years, n is the total number of weeks in year y, and εy,w,a are the residuals. the speci c-average model estimates baseline age-speci c mortality rates (basey,w,a) using the weekly average during the reference period (2015-2019), while the speci c-trend model assumes a linear time trend of weekly mortality. if mortality declines over time, then age-speci c baseline mortality rates under the speci ctrend model also tend to decline and are lower than those under the speci caverage model, which assumes no declining trend. in contrast, baseline mortality rates for the entire population will exhibit the opposite pattern, because crude death rates increase due to population aging. as excess mortality is de ned as the difference between observed and baseline mortalities, low baseline mortality yields high excess mortality. thus, the speci c-trend method is likely to be more accurate than the speci c-average model, because the former re ects mortality trends, whereas the latter does not. nonetheless, the study presents the results of the speci c-average method to assess the degree to which excess mortality depends on the assumption of baseline mortality. this study uses 2015-2019 as the reference period for specifying baseline mortality. the analysis of excess mortality in korea uses both baseline mortality rates, while the international comparison uses only the speci c-average method. excess mortality rates are de ned as the differences in weekly mortality rates between baseline and observation, which is expressed in equation (3). excess mortality rates can produce negative values if the observed weekly mortality rates were lower than the baseline. excessy,w,a = obsy,w,a − basey,w,a, where y is the year, w indicates the week, and a is the age. cumulative excess mortality rates are estimated as the sum of excess mortality until a given week w, which is expressed in equation (4): cum_excessy,w,a = ∑ excessy,w,a /52, where y is the year, w indicates the week, and a is the age. cumulative excess mortality rates at week w of year y display the excess mortality rates accumulated up to this time point since the outbreak of covid-19. this measure is useful for showing how excess mortality accumulated during the period under consideration. cumulative excess mortality increases with the increase in excess mortality. although short-term events may in uence excess mortality, which could signi cantly  uctuate and render the interpretation of trends dif cult, cumulative excess mortality tends to remain stable and easy to interpret. the study (1), , = 1 , , + , , (2) (3) (4) • bongoh kye670 will compare cumulative excess mortality rates with 2019 mortality rates, which will elucidate the severity of the mortality crisis during the pandemic. 5 results 5.1 korea figure 1 presents the age-speci c annualized weekly mortality rates per 100,000 individuals in korea for 2015-2022. the study presents the results using different y-axes by age groups to clearly show the trend for each age group. the  gure shows downward trends in the weekly mortality for those aged 0-14 and 65 years and over among men and women from 2015 to 2019. this result re ects the decline in age-speci c mortality rates over time. the study found no notable trend for those aged 15-64 years. in contrast, the mortality rates for the 75-84 and 85+ age groups signi cantly  uctuated, with a declining trend. in general, mortality rates were higher at the end and at the beginning of the year, which may be related to the increases in mortality during the winter. mortality rates for the entire population tended to increase, which re ects population aging. mortality trends after the outbreak of covid-19 (since 2020) did not exhibit any notable difference from the previous period until 2022; a surge in mortality was observed for early 2022 except for the 0-14 age group, in which the declining trend fig. 1: age-speci c annualized weekly mortality rates per 100,000 in korea (2015-2022) source: author’s calculation using stmf data 0 20 40 60 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year men women mortality rate 100 150 200 250 300 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year mortality rate 0-14 15-64 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year mortality rate 75-84 mortality rate 85+ 400 600 800 1,000 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year 65-74 mortality rate 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year mortality rate total 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 2015 2016 2018 2020 2022 year excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 671 fig. 2: baseline mortality rates per 100,000 in korea (2020-2022) 0 20 40 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 200 250 300 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 0-14 15-64 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 75-84 baseline mortality rate 500 600 700 800 2020 2021 2022 year linear 5-yr avg. 85+ 65-74 baseline mortality rate 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate total -10 0 10 20 30 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 80 100 120 140 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 0-14 15-64 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate 75-84 baseline mortality rate 400 500 600 700 800 2020 2021 2022 year 85+ 65-74 baseline mortality rate 400 500 600 700 800 2020 2021 2022 year baseline mortality rate total men women 10,000 15,000 20,000 2020 2021 2022 year 5,000 7,500 10,000 12,500 15,000 2020 2021 2022 year notes: the reference period is 2015-2019, and the time unit is weeks. linear refers to the speci c-trend method, and 5-yr avg. refers to the speci c-average method. source: author’s calculation using stmf data • bongoh kye672 continued. mortality rates returned to previous levels from may onwards. although the study observes increases in mortality for all age groups except for the 0-14 age group, the increase in mortality was more signi cant for the older population. for example, the mortality rate for men aged 85+ years when mortality reached its high point in the spring of 2022, was greater than 25,000 per 100,000. if this level of mortality remained constant for one year, then 25 percent of individuals in this age group would have died within a year. the study also shows gender differences: although mortality for men increased more than that for women in the 15-64 and 65-74 age groups during the peak period, the increase for women was greater for those in the 85+ age group. figure 2 presents baseline mortality rates for men and women. the blue lines depict baseline mortality rates using the speci c-trend method (linear), and the red lines represent those using the speci c-average method ( 5-yr average). fluctuations produced by the speci c-trend method are greater than those by the speci caverage method, and baseline mortality rates using the speci c-trend model exhibit a declining trend that re ects the reduction in age-speci c mortality rates between 2015 and 2019. an exception is the 15-64 age group. in addition, the speci ctrend model shows increasing baseline mortality for the entire population due to population aging. the level of baseline mortality was higher for men than women, but the patterns of changes and differences between the two baseline mortality rates were similar. figure 3 depicts the excess mortality rates from the  rst week of 2020 to the 30th week of 2022. although the study does not observe any remarkable trend for those aged 0-14 years, the changes exhibited by the other age groups display notable patterns. first, the study  nds no clear trends until early 2022. second, excess mortality increased in spring 2022 and then returned to the previous level. third, excess mortality using the speci c-average model is lower than that produced using the speci c-trend model for all age groups, because the baseline mortality rates were lower for the speci c-average model than those for the speci c-trend model. for the entire population, the opposite is true; excess mortality rates for the speci c-average model tend to be higher than those for the speci c-trend model, because crude death rates increased due to population aging. moreover, gender differences in excess mortality differed by age group. except for those aged 85+, excess mortality among men was greater than that among women. for the entire population, excess mortality was higher for women than men, because the older population is composed of more women. figure 4 presents cumulative excess mortality rates. as is evident, the trends during the pandemic greatly differed from the baseline mortality rates. when comparing the age patterns of excess mortality under the speci c-average model (5-year average), we  nd that cumulative excess mortality rates remained negative except for women aged 15-64 years. in other words, weekly mortality rates after the covid-19 outbreak, on average, remained lower than the average weekly mortality rates between 2015 and 2019. thus, we can conclude that no excessive death tolls occurred during the  rst two years of the pandemic if the declining mortality trend is not considered. the study observes that cumulative excess mortality increased excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 673 fig. 3: excess mortality rates per 100,000 in korea (2020-2022) -20 0 20 40 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate -50 0 50 100 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate 0-14 15-64 -2,000 0 2,000 4,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate 75-84 excess mortality rate -200 0 200 400 600 2020 2021 2022 year linear 5-yr avg. 85+ 65-74 excess mortality rate -500 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate total -20 -10 0 10 20 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate -20 0 20 40 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate 0-14 15-64 -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate 75-84 excess mortality rate -200 0 200 400 600 2020 2021 2022 year 85+ 65-74 excess mortality rate -200 0 200 400 600 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate total men women -5,000 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 2020 2021 2022 year -5,000 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 2020 2021 2022 year notes: the reference period is 2015-2019 and the time unit is weeks. linear refers to the speci c-trend method, and 5-yr avg. refers to the speci c-average method. source: author’s calculation using stmf data • bongoh kye674 fig. 4: cumulative excess mortality rates per 100,000 in korea (2020-2022) -15 -10 -5 0 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate -15 -10 -5 0 5 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 0-14 15-64 -1,000 -500 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 75-84 cumulative excess mortality rate 0 50 100 150 200 2020 2021 2022 year linear 5-yr avg. 85+ 65-74 cumulative excess mortality rate -400 -200 0 200 400 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate total -15 -10 -5 0 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 0 5 10 15 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 0-14 15-64 -500 0 500 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 75-84 cumulative excess mortality rate 0 50 100 150 200 2020 2021 2022 year 85+ 65-74 cumulative excess mortality rate -400 -200 0 200 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate total men women -2,000 0 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -2,000 -1,000 0 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year notes: the reference period is 2015-2019, and the time unit is weeks. linear refers to the speci c-trend method, and 5-yr avg. refers to the speci c-average method. source: author’s calculation using stmf data excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 675 in early 2022 using the speci c-average model, which con rms a signi cant excess mortality during this period. nonetheless, this increase did not turn the cumulative excess mortality positive. here, women in the 15-64 age group were an exception, as their cumulative excess mortality was positive and increased over time. interestingly, the cumulative excess mortality rates of the total population tended to increase for men and women despite the negative excess mortality for each age group, except for women aged 15-64 years. simply put, crude death rates during the pandemic were higher than those during the reference period (2015-2019) and tended to increase. this result likely re ects the trend of population aging in korea in general, rather than an increasing mortality risk per se. the study  nds contrasting patterns in the speci c-trend model (linear). for the youngest age group (0-14 years), cumulative excess mortality remained negative and close to zero. the patterns for those aged 15-64 years differed by gender. although cumulative excess mortality for men remained negative until the end of 2021 and increased in early 2022, that for women continuously increased since the covid-19 outbreak. the levels of excess mortality among those aged 65+ years were higher for men than women under the speci c-trend model. for the 65-74 age group, cumulative excess mortality increased over time for men and women. for those aged 75 and over, it remained low or negative until the end of 2021, which then sharply increased in early 2022. the magnitude of cumulative excess mortality was greatest for those aged 85+ years: more than 2,000 additional men per 100,000 died since the outbreak of covid-19. for the entire population, cumulative excess mortality was higher under the speci c-average model than the speci c-trend model due to population aging. the speci c-trend model re ects the increase in crude death rates due to population aging, whereas the speci c-average model does not. table 1 compares cumulative excess mortality until the 30th week of 2022 with mortality rates in 2019. doing so enables the assessment of the relative magnitude of excess mortality since the covid-19 outbreak. for the speci c-trend model, there were 94 excess deaths per 100,000 men, accounting for 15.1 percent of the crude death rate for men in 2019. this  gure amounted to 18.6 percent for women, because their crude death rate was lower than that for men. if we apply the speci c-average model, then these  gures became higher (men: 30.6 percent; women: 35.8 percent). a total of 15-35 percent of excess death occurred during the pandemic. as we observed in the analysis of excess mortality, the majority of excess mortality occurred in early 2022, which indicates the severity of the mortality crisis during this period. the magnitude of cumulative excess mortality differs by age and sex. for those aged 0-14 years, cumulative excess mortality rates were negative under both models, which suggests that mortality rates were lower than the baselines. under the speci c-trend model, cumulative excess mortality rates reached approximately 2-29 percent of the mortality rates for 2019 by age. these  gures were negative under the speci c-average model, except for women aged 15-64 years. compared with mortality rates in 2019, the largest cumulative excess mortality was observed for people aged 65-74 years (men: 26.5 percent; women: 28.8 percent). although • bongoh kye676 cumulative excess mortality rates were highest among those aged 85+ years, the relative magnitude was the greatest among those aged 65-74 years. the cumulative excess mortality rates under the speci c-average model were negative except for women aged 15-64 years, which indicates that weekly mortality rates during the pandemic were, on average, lower than the mean mortality rates between 2015 and 2019. 5.2 international comparison covid-19 is a global phenomenon, and international comparisons are necessary to understand excess mortality during the pandemic. many factors, including as baseline mortality levels and public policies, in uenced the rate of excess mortality in each country. this study has compared the level of excess mortality by applying baseline mortality rates under the speci c-trend model. it now presents excess mortality and cumulative excess mortality for the entire population of selected countries. figure 5 displays excess mortality rates at the population level. excess mortality rates in several countries, such as new zealand, norway, and australia, were very low, but eastern european countries, such as bulgaria, the czech republic, and lithuania, displayed high excess mortality rates. excess mortality in a. speci c-trend b. speci c-average c. 2019 a/c b/c (linear) (5-yr. avg.) mortality (%) (%) men age 0-14 -1 -17 24 -4.2 -70.8 15-64 6 -11 250 2.4 -4.4 65-74 410 -425 1549 26.5 -27.4 75-84 752 -763 4923 15.3 -15.5 85+ 2126 -1645 14379 14.8 -11.4 total 94 191 624 15.1 30.6 women age 0-14 -4 -15 19 -21.1 -78.9 15-64 15 11 105 14.3 10.5 65-74 179 -263 621 28.8 -42.4 75-84 582 -566 2672 21.8 -21.2 85+ 1136 -1019 11070 10.3 -9.2 total 97 187 522 18.6 35.8 tab. 1: cumulative excess mortality rates as of the 30th week of 2022, compared to mortality rates in 2019 notes: the reference period is 2015-2019, and the time unit is weeks. the unit for cumulative mortality rates and mortality rates in 2019 is 100,000. source: short-term mortality fluctuation (www.mortality.org) (09/26/2022) excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 677 fig. 5: excess mortality rates per 100,000 in selected countries, entire population excess mortality rate australia excess mortality rate austria -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate belgium excess mortality rate bulgaria -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate canada excess mortality rate chile -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate croatia excess mortality rate czech republic -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate denmark excess mortality rate estonia -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate finland france -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate germany excess mortality rate greece -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate hungary iceland -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate israel excess mortality rate italy -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate latvia lithuania -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate luxembourg excess mortality rate netherlands -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate new zealand norway -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate excess mortality rate excess mortality rate excess mortality rate • bongoh kye678 korea remained at the lowest level globally until the end of 2021 but became the highest in early 2022. figure 6 compares the cumulative excess mortality rates. we can observe several patterns. first, cumulative excess mortality rates in east european countries increased nearly linearly. for example, the cumulative excess mortality in bulgaria began increasing in the early stage of the pandemic and continued to increase, reaching 968 per 100,000 by the 30th week of 2022, for the highest rate among the countries examined. in other words, nearly one person per 1,000 bulgarians additionally died across the two and a half years of the pandemic. second, cumulative excess mortality rates rapidly increased during the early stage of the pandemic, but eventually slowed down in the united kingdom and the united states. excess mortality rates in these countries increased earlier than those of eastern european countries. although the former slowed down, the latter continued to increase. this contrasting pattern may be related to policy responses and overall public health capacity. policy responses in the united states and the united kingdom at the early stage were known to be ineffective in restraining the spread of the virus and excess death. however, these countries possessed advanced medical technology and health infrastructure to cope with the pandemic, leading to a slowdown in excess mortality. in contrast, eastern european countries lacked suf cient resources and were therefore very susceptible to the virus and continued to experience high mortality rates. third, countries in northern europe and oceania fig. 5: continuation excess mortality rate poland excess mortality rate portugal -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 p 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate russia excess mortality rate slovak republic -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate slovenia excess mortality rate south korea -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate spain excess mortality rate sweden -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate switzerland excess mortality rate taiwan -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate united kingdom united states -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 2020 2021 2022 year excess mortality rate notes: the reference period is 2015-2019, and the time unit is weeks. source: author’s calculation using stmf data excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 679 fig. 6: cumulative excess mortality rates per 100,000 in selected countries, entire population cumulative excess mortality rate australia cumulative excess mortality rate austria 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate belgium cumulative excess mortality rate bulgaria 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate canada cumulative excess mortality rate chile 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate croatia cumulative excess mortality rate czech republic 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate denmark cumulative excess mortality rate estonia 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate finland france 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate germany cumulative excess mortality rate greece 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate hungary iceland 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate israel cumulative excess mortality rate italy 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate latvia lithuania 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate luxembourg cumulative excess mortality rate netherlands 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate new zealand norway 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate cumulative excess mortality rate cumulative excess mortality rate cumulative excess mortality rate 55 235 229 968 116 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 314 496 408 169 316 114 148 400 123 124 331 349 426 624 28 205 -10 78 52 • bongoh kye680 successfully restricted excess death. in new zealand, cumulative excess mortality by the 30th week of 2022 was even negative, which indicated that mortality rates during the pandemic were lower on average than those assumed under the speci ctrend model. finally, cumulative excess mortality in korea was also comparatively low. among the countries whose data were available until the 30th week of 2022, cumulative excess mortality for korea was the  fth lowest after new zealand, luxemburg, denmark, and norway. until 2021, cumulative mortality in korea was the lowest globally along with new zealand, but increased signi cantly in early 2022 and reached 96 per 100,000 by the 30th week of 2022. figure 7 displays the relative magnitude of cumulative excess mortality by the 30th week of 2022 compared with the mortality rates in 2019. the cumulative excess mortality rates in bulgaria accounted for 60 percent of crude death rates in 2019, which suggests that more than 20 percent more deaths occurred annually during the two and a half years of the pandemic than otherwise would have. this  nding illustrates that bulgaria experienced a massive mortality crisis during the pandemic. as previously discussed, cumulative excess mortality was high among eastern european countries and low in northern europe and oceania. cumulative excess mortality in korea was close to 20 percent of the mortality rate for 2019, which was relatively low among the countries under study. fig. 6: continuation cumulative excess mortality rate poland cumulative excess mortality rate portugal 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate russia cumulative excess mortality rate slovak republic 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate slovenia cumulative excess mortality rate south korea 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate spain cumulative excess mortality rate sweden 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate switzerland cumulative excess mortality rate taiwan 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate united kingdom united states 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year cumulative excess mortality rate 441 239 250 0 500 1,000 2020 2021 2022 year 495 264 96 263 157 174 -9 259 351 notes: the reference period is 2015-2019, and the time unit is weeks. source: author’s calculation using stmf data excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea • 681 6 summary and discussion this study has examined excess mortality in korea using stmf data, analyzed agespeci c mortality rates in korea and other countries, and assessed the magnitude of excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic. the key  ndings are as follows. first, in korea, excess mortality remained low until the end of 2021 but increased signi cantly in 2022. second, this excess mortality was concentrated among older people. for example, cumulative excess mortality among those aged 85+ years until the 30th week of 2022 was more than 1-2 percent, which indicates that fig. 7: relative magnitude of cumulative excess mortality compared with mortality rates in 2019, entire population 0 20 40 60 in percent bulgaria chile slovak republic lithuania poland united states czech republic croatia italy hungary latvia spain greece estonia united kingdom slovenia austria belgium israel netherlands switzerland portugal russia iceland sweden south korea france canada germany finland norway australia denmark luxembourg new zealand taiwan source: author’s calculation using stmf data • bongoh kye682 approximately 1-2 percent more deaths occurred for the oldest age group during the pandemic. third, an international comparison showed that excess mortality in korea was relatively low. korea exhibited one of the lowest excess mortality rates globally until the end of 2021, but excess mortality increased rapidly in early 2022. however, the country’s cumulative excess mortality was still comparatively low internationally as of the 30th week of 2022. the present study is largely descriptive and demonstrates substantial variations in excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic. this variation is likely related to differences in population structure, public health systems, and policy responses during the pandemic. future studies should examine the more exact determinants of excess mortality during the pandemic. however, this is methodologically challenging. in particular, assessing the causal impact of policy responses on excess mortality could be fairly dif cult, because the level of excess mortality due to covid-19 likely drove policy responses. nevertheless, data on policy responses has been collected (hale et al. 2020, 2021), which opens up the possibility of examining these relationships. this aspect could be an interesting next step for the research on mortality caused by covid-19. acknowledgements this work is a revision of a research report of the korea institute for health and social affairs, international research on health and welfare policy (policy report 2022-03). i thank dr. yoon-jeong shin for providing me with the opportunity of participating in this study. references aburto, jose manuel et al. 2022: quantifying impacts of the covid-19 pandemic through life-expectancy losses: a population-level study of 29 countries. in: 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2022: methods for estimating the excess mortality associated with the covid-19 pandemic. working paper. world health organization. date of submission: 09.04.2023 date of acceptance: 22.09.2023 prof. bongoh kye (). kookmin university. seoul, korea. e-mail: bkye@kookmin.ac.kr published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries: a comparative perspective labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries: a comparative perspective francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore abstract: although evidence suggests a correlation between fertility and employment, comparative studies on this topic are relatively scarce, particularly when considering the diverse ways in which the two variables interact in different countries. the aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between the employment and reproductive behaviours of women born between 1940 and 1979 in seven european countries (bulgaria, czech republic, france, germany, georgia, italy, and lithuania). using data from the second wave of generation and gender surveys (ggs) and the istat survey famiglia e soggetti sociali (fss) in italy, we estimated the propensity of fi rst and second childbirth through multi-process modelling. the article’s contribution is both theoretical and methodological. first, this research aims to investigate the correlation between employment and the timing of fi rst and second births in a comparative perspective challenging the traditional east-west divide in europe and the potential convergence in the impact of employment on fertility behaviours across european countries. furthermore, the study asks whether the relationship between employment and fertility is changing similarly across european countries or whether differences tend to persist over time. the results are discussed considering women’s emancipation in different institutional settings, highlighting how women’s participation in labour markets affects reproductive behaviour. in particular, the relationship between employment and fertility behaviour is examined in relation to the opposing macro-level thesis, which suggests that the association between employment and fertility changed from negative to positive after the mid-80s. the second contribution of the article is a methodological one. it involves using simultaneous models with three equations to account for potential unobserved factors that infl uence the timing of the fi rst and second childbirth and the potential endogeneity of employment status on fertility behaviour. the three equations include two log-hazard equations for the transitions to the fi rst and second birth order and an additional probit model to estimate the probability of being currently employed over the life course. by using this approach, we aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between employment and fertility, while controlling for potential confounding factors. comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 183-216 (date of release: 26.04.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-08 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-08en9 • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore184 results suggest relevant national differences. on the one hand, the three western countries considered in the analysis, france, germany, and italy, show a clear incompatibility of work and childbearing. however, in the fi rst two, younger cohorts seem to be less affected by employment, likely because they benefi tted from family policies introduced after the mid-1980s. on the other hand, the postsocialist countries are highly heterogeneous. in this area, we can fi nd three different models. first, in bulgaria and the czech republic employment is largely compatible with fertility choices resulting in a higher propensity of having the fi rst and the second childbirth among working women. second, in lithuania the positive impact of employment for the fi rst childbirth turns negative for the second one. third, in georgia we found a clear postponement of childbirth among working women for both birth orders. overall, our results show deep differences across countries, suggesting that some european countries are far from demonstrating convergence in the relationship between employment and fertility. keywords: fertility · employment · europe · hazard models · birth order · multiprocess model 1 introduction women’s fertility and employment options have been widely studied in the demographic, economic, and sociological literature. empirical studies in western industrialised countries suggest that these two life choices tend to be in confl ict, but that this confl ict can be softened by institutional support for employed parents and when labour markets stimulate female employment. another factor that helps women combine work and life is the social acceptance of working mothers. in fact, when it becomes a social norm, the confl ict between work and family decreases (adsera 2005; del boca et al. 2005; klesment et al. 2014; gutiérrez-domènech 2010; gustafsson/wetzels 2000; mills et al. 2005; liefbroer/corijn 1999; muszyńska 2007). these fi ndings are consistent with microeconomic theory, which suggests that when women’s participation in the labour market increases, opportunity costs for childbearing become higher, resulting in a reduction in the birth rate. however, micro-level research in post-socialist european countries (kreyenfeld 2004; kantorová 2004; matysiak 2009) has challenged these assumptions by showing that in this region, working women are just as likely to become mothers as those who are not employed, even though these countries offer little support in terms of family reconciliation policies. this suggests that conditions relating to work and family balance are not the only country-specifi c factors affecting fertility and employment behaviour. furthermore, employment may be a facilitator of family-building in countries with longer histories of women’s participation in the labour force, where they are accepted as income providers. despite the abundance of research into the work-fertility nexus, comparative analyses on this issue are still rare. this article analyses the relationship between labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 185 being employed and the reproductive behaviours of women born between 1940 and 1979 in seven european countries: bulgaria, the czech republic, france, germany, georgia, italy, and lithuania. using data from the second wave of generation and gender surveys (ggs), and the istituto nazionale di statistica (istat) survey famiglia e soggetti sociali (fss) in italy,1 we estimated the propensity of fi rst and second childbirth through multi-process hazard models, adopting a comparative perspective. thus, the contribution of this article is both theoretical and methodological. first, the association between employment and the transition to fi rst and second birth is analysed from a comparative perspective, challenging the traditional east-west divide in europe and the potential convergence in the impact of employment on fertility behaviours across european countries. second, the impact of employment on fertility is considered over the life course and taking into account potential unobserved confounding factors that may affect both employment and fertility. our results reveal a negative link between employment and fertility behaviours in western countries, whereas eastern european countries demonstrate a high level of heterogeneity. overall, we did not fi nd evidence of a converging trend across countries. the paper is organised as follows. in the second section, the theoretical background related to the employment-fertility nexus in the literature is introduced and discussed, and research hypotheses are formulated. the third section contains a description of the data and methods used in the analysis. in the fourth section, results from multivariate models are shown, and the fi fth section draws some concluding remarks and provides a discussion of emerging issues and new research directions. 2 employment and fertility at macro and micro level women’s fertility and employment choices have been widely studied in the demographic, economic, and sociological literature. on the one hand, studies have repeatedly underlined that fertility reduces work-force participation, especially among women who have just become mothers (bernhardt 1993; matysiak/vignoli 2008). the studies’ results refl ect the challenges of balancing childcare and employment (brewster/rindfuss 2000). in contrast, the fi ndings on the impact of female labour force participation on family size are generally more controversial (ní bhrolcháin 1986b; vignoli et al. 2012; kreyenfeld/andersson 2014). 1 ggs data are suitable to study fertility, especially for cohorts born after the 1940s and for periods after the 1970s (vergauwen et al. 2015), and there are no more recent longitudinal and comparative data. italian data comes from the 2009 survey “indagine multiscopo famiglie e soggetti sociali,” conducted by istat. fss, as part of the multipurpose survey program on italian households, is the italian version of generations and gender survey. • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore186 at the national level, the correlation between female labour force participation and total fertility changed from negative to positive around the mid-1980s (ahn/ mira 2002; rindfuss et al. 2003), a fi nding that may hide the presence of relevant country-specifi c heterogeneities (kögel 2004). at the micro level, the theory of fertility and women’s labour supply as suggested by mincer (1963) and becker (1965) provides an explanation of the changes that have occurred in recent decades. formally, women’s fertility and employment decisions may be evaluated using a framework of economic rationality based on two economic mechanisms: the price effect and the income effect. the price effect implies that a fertility decision is, at its core, an evaluation of opportunity costs. the forgone earnings of the person caring for the child at home, in most cases the mother, contributes to the total cost of having a child. the maximisation of the utility of the family is achieved through a specialisation of the roles of the parents, which usually results in the man being the breadwinner and the woman devoting her time to domestic and childcare work. the income effect assumes that women achieving higher levels of education and a stable position in the labour market have better chances of pursuing a career and accumulating wealth. higher income can offset the additional fi nancial burden that may prevent individuals from having another child, and thus increases the chances of childbearing among working women. furthermore, additional resources enhance the feasibility of outsourcing childcare, which motivates mothers to re-enter employment sooner after the birth of a child. the microeconomic approach further suggests that the price effect largely outweighs the income effect, and subsequently supports the idea not only that women’s employment hinders childbearing, but also that parenthood threatens mothers’ employment opportunities. today, the role specialisation of parents is increasingly questioned, mainly because women have a greater presence in labour markets and have shortened their child-related career pauses (oppenheimer 1997). nowadays, women are increasingly averse to leaving a career for the purpose of having a child (gutiérrez-domènech 2010). instead, they combine and balance work and family life, choosing the time to enter motherhood and sequencing birth and work episodes (ní bhrolcháin 1986a/b; gracia/kalmijn 2016). as a result, household organisation is changing, and women are playing a growing role in contributing to the household budget (cherlin 2000; stevenson/wolfers 2007; raz-yurovich 2012). in this new scenario, the price effect of women’s employment on fertility becomes less likely to outweigh the income effect. in addition, for women who are pursuing careers, any time spent out of the labour force negatively affects their chances of occupational advancement (bielby 1992; rosenfeld 1992; rosenfeld/spenner 1992; gangl/ziefl e 2009; rindfuss/choe 2015). one possible mechanism by which labour force participation may reduce fertility is through delaying the transition to parenthood, refl ecting a consideration of the high opportunity costs of childbearing, especially among women with higher human capital (rindfuss et al. 1996). generally, women’s economic roles are more signifi cant in countries where women’s work is supported by adequate welfare policies and the employment of mothers is more socially accepted. mcdonald (2000) argues that in societies where the breadwinner model prevails, women labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 187 must decide between children and employment, resulting in lower fertility rates. conversely, in societies with higher levels of gender equity in the social institutions related to the family, women and men are better able to combine employment with higher levels of fertility. in other words, if a society removes or restricts structural obstacles through the provision of social organisation and support for families with children, women should be better able to combine work with children. in line with this perspective, chesnais (1996) and esping-andersen (2009) observe that at the fi rst stage, providing similar opportunities to women and men, both in terms of education and labour market participation, tends to reduce the number of children per woman because women bear the burden of both family and employment. however, subsequent improvements in the availability of childcare, as well as an increase in more egalitarian couples, might result in a positive effect on fertility by providing women with greater opportunities to reconcile work and family. this viewpoint is strengthened by the fact that fertility is higher where the differences between men and women in terms of educational, occupational, and political participation are low (mcdonald 2000, 2006; esping-andersen 2009; esping-andersen/billari 2015; baizan et al. 2016; frejka et al. 2018). 2.1 fertility and women’s employment across european countries a meta-analysis by matysiak and vignoli (2008) highlights at a micro level the negative impact of female employment on childbearing for most western industrialised economies, especially for the second and third birth order. the price effect outweighs the income effect wherever the opportunity costs are higher for mothers than for childless women. another explanation alludes to the fact that after childbearing, women’s positions in the labour market may become more vulnerable, and consequently, their bargaining power in the household is reduced (neyer et al. 2013). furthermore, the magnitude of the negative effect of women’s employment on fertility varies across countries, depending on the opportunity costs in a given country. empirical work clearly concludes that women tend to postpone motherhood and avoid additional births in countries where mothers in employment are less supported at an institutional level and/or less socially accepted, or where labour market institutions are less aligned with mothers’ needs (adsera 2005; del boca et al. 2005; mills et al. 2005; gutiérrez-domènech 2010; schleutker 2013). southern european states are typical examples of countries where the reconciliation of work and family is diffi cult and where the confl ict between paid work and motherhood is particularly pronounced (adsera 2005; boeri et al. 2005). in italy, where childcare services receive little state support and are still largely reliant on the family (saraceno/ keck 2010), women who want to pursue a career may markedly delay or completely renounce childbirth. this so-called “familialism” is bolstered by a plethora of norms and policies that reinforce it, including cash transfers and vouchers for families rather than accessible public care services, as well as a disjointed system of social benefi t schemes (impicciatore/dalla zuanna 2017). in countries characterised by conservative welfare regimes, policies supporting mothers’ employment are the exception, despite extensive state interventions in • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore188 other economic activities (esping-andersen 1990, 1999). additionally, women are often only perceived as ancillary income providers. consequently, the traditional “male breadwinner/female caregiver” model has changed slightly into a “male breadwinner/female part-time caregiver” (matysiak/vignoli 2008: 366) model. by contrast, in strong welfare regimes, the diffi culties of combining employment and childrearing are reduced by relatively liberal attitudes and policies supporting working mothers. research in strong welfare states on the relationship between fertility and career choices reveals that employed women are at least as likely to give birth to a fi rst child as the non-employed (matysiak/vignoli 2008). female employment is also more socially accepted and indeed encouraged in eastern european countries such as eastern germany (kreyenfeld 2004), the czech republic (kantorová 2004), and poland (matysiak 2009). these fi ndings may seem counterintuitive: in eastern europe, policies offering support for working parents declined following the fall of socialism (stropnik 2003; saxonberg/sirovátka 2006; szelewa/polakowski 2008). furthermore, many of the family and labour market policies as well as cultural barriers opposing the conciliation between work and family have been shown to be comparable to those in mediterranean countries (matysiak 2011; thévenon 2011). furthermore, lück and hofäcker (2003) reveal that attitudes towards working mothers in post-socialist countries are relatively traditional when compared to the rest of europe. one possible explanation can be found in the social norm that expects women to enter motherhood early (perelliharris 2005; potančoková 2009; mynarska 2010). under socialist rule, the diffi culties involved in combining work and family life were alleviated by low competition in the labour market and supported by a socialist ideology which promoted both fertility and high levels of women’s employment. therefore, in these countries, women have historically been seen as income providers and are more integrated into the labour market than in western europe. this effect may even have been reinforced after these countries became members of the eu, as families tried to achieve higher, western living standards, which would be diffi cult to reach with only a single income. considering the difference between fi rst child and higher order childbirths, the interrelationship between fertility and women’s employment is particularly strong among mothers. in fact, the opportunity costs can be higher for mothers than for childless women. a possible explanation can be traced back to the fact that after childbearing, a woman’s position in the labour market may be weakened and more vulnerable, resulting in a reduction of their bargaining power at home (neyer et al. 2013). other studies suggest that the negative impact of labour force participation on fertility is higher after the fi rst birth, because women pay more attention on the confl ict between work and child-rearing as they get older and gain experience with work and children (stolzenberg/waite 1977). this “learning hypothesis” suggests that mothers are more cautious about balancing work and life when they have already experienced this confl ict. labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 189 2.2 research hypotheses the discrepancies between empirical fi ndings reported across welfare state regimes highlight the need for more in-depth investigations into the role of women’s employment for childbearing. we compare different european countries where family and labour market-related policies and the cultural obstacles to work and family reconciliation are similarly strong, but which have different income models. to disentangle the complex links between employment and fertility, we distinguish between birth orders. adopting a life course perspective, we observe how employment affects both the entry into motherhood and the transition to a second child. based on the previously debated literature, we test three hypotheses: h1) employed women tend to postpone the entry into motherhood compared to non-employed women. h2) the impact of women’s employment on a second birth is more pronounced than on a fi rst birth. h3) the adverse effect of women’s employment on fertility is higher in countries with familialistic regimes than in countries with other regimes (post-socialist and conservative), particularly in relation to the propensity to become a mother. 3 data and method the analysis is based on the second wave of ggs and fss surveys, conducted between 2007 and 2009, in the following countries: bulgaria, the czech republic, france, germany, georgia, italy, and lithuania.2 these surveys, which are still the most suitable and current data available, contain information on employment histories on a monthly basis, as well as detailed information on women’s fertility. we restricted our sample to women born between 1940 and 1979.3 the resulting 2 among the countries available from the second wave of the ggs, we excluded some countries because of a lack of information on one or more substantive variables used in the analysis. each country developed the survey independently, following the guidelines of the generation and gender programme. the second wave of the ggs is affected by decreasing response rates and attrition; germany and lithuania reported overall response rates of around 32 percent and 23 percent, respectively. caution should be taken in interpreting the results from these countries. further details are available in the appendix. however, only the second wave gathers information on respondents’ careers. cross-national analyses based on the second wave of ggs survey are also applied in schwanitz (2017). for italy, we preferred to use the italian fss survey instead of the ggs second wave because of the larger sample size, more recent data, and greater availability of proximate determinants, without sacrifi cing comparability. the same strategy was recently used by schwanitz et al. (2021). 3 we excluded cases with missing or misreported information on the year of birth for children: 1,392 in the case of the fi rst birth and 697 for the second. we also deleted cases in which the second/third child was born before the fi rst/second one; 480 twins, and another 62 cases with inconsistent information. • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore190 sample pool used for the analysis comprises 25,031 women. in the case of the second birth, we limited our analysis to 20,519 women. we adopted an event history analysis approach aiming at considering women interviewed before the end of their reproductive age (i.e., right-censored), as well as allowing for time-varying variables (e.g., blossfeld et al. 2007; mills 2011). the multivariate perspective is ensured by developing piecewise linear exponential models (also known as generalised gompertz or piecewise-linear gompertz) where the baseline is linear over a certain range, and again linear but with a different coeffi cient (slope) over the next range (see lillard/panis 2003: 45). this is a generalisation of the standard exponential model that does not require the defi nition of an a priori shape of the baseline hazard. the events of interest are the transitions to fi rst and second birth. for the fi rst childbirth, episodes begin at the interviewee’s 14th birthday and end at the birth of the fi rst child (event occurred), or at the interview (event is right-censored).4 the baseline hazard duration is a function of the woman’s current age, assumed as linear within the following age intervals: up to 17, 18-21, 22-25, 26-29, 30-34, 35+. concerning the transition to the second childbirth, episodes begin nine months after the fi rst childbirth and end at the birth of the second child or the interview (censored cases). the baseline refers to the duration since the starting point (nine months after the fi rst birth) and it is considered as linear within intervals of 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, and 8+ years. one possible bias in estimating the two equations separately is that there may be some unobserved factors that drive the decision and the timing to have both the fi rst and the second child. the approach used to avoid this bias is to perform simultaneous estimation of hazard equations (one for each birth order) containing an identical residual expressing the total deviation of each individual from the rest of the sample in terms of unobserved characteristics (kravdal 2001, 2002, 2007). we also consider the potential endogeneity of being currently employed. indeed, there may be some unobserved factors behind both job and fertility choices. for instance, individual preferences for a large family (formed during infancy and adolescence) may contradict investing in one’s professional career (see, e.g., hakim 2000, 2003). in order to disentangle the effect of employment on fertility behaviours from the potential infl uence of unobserved confounding factors that may affect both job and fertility (e.g. family-work balance, gender role attitudes, contextual characteristics, contraceptive behaviours, etc.), we simultaneously estimated two hazard equations, one for the fi rst and second birth order each (both including an identical residual ε), together with a probit equation with a binary outcome (having, or not having, a job at a specifi c point in time t) including an unobserved factor λ. the joint estimation of the three equations allowing for correlation between ε and λ permits to account for the potential endogeneity of working activity on fertility behaviour. this multi-process approach represents a research strategy that has been adopted in several studies on fertility and other behaviours such as 4 all dates are monthly. some cases reported season instead of the month. in these situations, the month is randomly obtained within the specifi ed season. labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 191 partnership formation and dissolution (lillard 1993; lillard et al. 1995; steele et al. 2005; impicciatore/billari 2012), education (e.g., upchurch et al. 2002; impicciatore/ dalla zuanna 2017), internal mobility (thomas/dommermuth 2021), and employment transitions (steele 2011). more formally, we developed three equations (subscript i stands for i th woman): ln μi (t) = γ(1) (t) + α(1) jobi (t) + β '(1) xi (t) + ε ln μi (t) = γ(2) (t) + α(2) jobi (t) + β '(2) xi (t) + ε probit(jobi(t)) = φ-1 (β0 + β '(3) xi (t) + λ) where ln μi (t) is the log-hazard of having a j th child at time t; γ( j) (t) is the baseline function; jobi(t) is the employment condition (as a time-varying variable) and α( j) is the relative regression parameter; xi is the vector of the (time fi xed and timevarying) exogenous covariate for the j-th equation, and β '( j) is the relative regression parameters’ vector. equation (3) is a binary regression model based on a probit specifi cation (i.e., φ-1 is the inverse of the cumulative standard normal distribution) considering the probability of being employed as a function of a set of exogenous variables x (3). we assume that ε and λ refl ect, respectively, the woman’s propensity to have a higher fertility and to have a job, factors which are constant over time, normally distributed, and potentially correlated. therefore, we assume the following variancecovariance structure of unobserved heterogeneity in the simultaneous equations model: a strong correlation between pairs of residuals means that some common, unobserved factors (at the individual level) simultaneously infl uence the two processes (fertility and having a job). an estimate of the parameters of the model via maximum likelihood can be obtained using aml5 (lillard/panis 2003). the variable of interest (job) is modelled through a binary time-varying variable (currently working) and is defi ned by the start and end times of (up to eight) job episodes experienced before the interview. an evaluation of the impact of being employed on the birth of the fi rst or the second child is used to shed light on our hypotheses. the vector of exogenous variables includes the binary time-varying variable currently student and the educational attainment at the time of the interview (education) coded into three levels: primary (isced 0, 1, and 2), secondary (isced (1) (1) (2) (2) (1) (2) (1) (3) (j) (3) 00 , 1 5 aml uses full information maximum likelihood with an iterative search algorithm to fi nd parameter estimates. it requires that the user specifi es starting values for (almost) all parameters, i.e., values which are used in the fi rst iteration (lillard/panis 2003: 18) (4) • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore192 3 and 4), and tertiary (isced 5 and 6). level of education is widely considered to be a relevant aspect in shaping fertility, being strongly associated with occupational success and refl ecting cultural resources that infl uence individuals’ preferences for specifi c partners and family pathways in general (basu 2002; blossfeld/timm 2003; nitsche 2021). however, the impact of the educational level on the transition to motherhood may be smaller than the effect of being enrolled in education (hoem 1986; kravdal 1994). thus, several authors suggest including this aspect in multivariate models (goldscheider/waite 1986; blossfeld/huinink 1991; billari/ philipov 2004; impicciatore/tomatis 2020). due to lack of information on the educational career, education is here considered as a time-constant variable. the underlying assumption is that those who completed high levels of education aimed to achieve them from an early age. this assumption, which has also been used in previous works (see e.g., bratti/tatsiramos 2012; kravdal 2001), can be partially relaxed by including a cohort effect in the model. the models also include the women’s country (bulgaria, czech republic, france, georgia, germany, italy, lithuania) and birth cohort (1940-1949, 1950-1959, 19601969, 1970-1979). the reduction in western european fertility has mostly been driven by a reduction in the progression ratio to second and higher birth orders amongst older cohorts, i.e., those born between 1940 and 1955. in central and eastern europe, fertility decline has been mainly driven by a reduction in the transition to a second childbirth. highly educated women often choose to have only one child, thereby satisfying the social norm of becoming a mother, yet minimising the problems of combining full-time work with household and childcare duties (frejka 2008; brzozowska 2015). however, zeman et al. (2018) highlight that regional patterns emerged among women born between 1955 and 1970: central and eastern europe experienced a decrease in the transition to the second childbirth, while german-speaking and southern european countries showed a decrease in fi rst birth rates. in the nordic countries, fertility remained stable or even increased. finally, for the transition to the second child we included the mother’s age at fi rst childbirth (-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36+ years) as a categorical variable which encompasses the potential catch-up effect for women with postponed fertilities (impicciatore/ dalla zuanna 2017), such as those who work or are more educated. the catch-up effect suggests that women who have their fi rst child late have the second one relatively faster, increasing second birth intensities. a late age at fi rst birth, in fact, might generally have a reducing effect on the transition to the second childbirth. table 1 contains summary statistics of the sample. these results illustrate, among other features, the lower participation of women in the labour market in italy, the earlier transition to motherhood in the eastern european countries, and the short interval between the fi rst and the second birth in georgia. 4 the transition to the fi rst and second childbirth: empirical results table 2 shows the estimates obtained in the pooled sample by developing both independent and simultaneous models for the fi rst and second childbirth as well as labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 193 the probit estimates for being employed. we found a generalised postponement of fertility when women are working. this result is confi rmed (and even strengthened) in the simultaneous model, i.e., when the potential endogeneity of the employment condition is considered. we do not fi nd a relevant difference between the fi rst and second child; the associated coeffi cients are quite similar in both transitions. the coeffi cients of the control variables tend to be in line with our expectations. the propensity to have a child tends to be lower among more educated women (especially for the fi rst child), students, and younger cohorts. model estimates also confi rm that in eastern european countries the propensity to have a child is higher than in western ones (especially italy). italy also shows a reduced participation of women in the labour market, as highlighted by the probit equation. the correlation among residuals in the multi-process model is positive and signifi cant, suggesting that there are some unobserved factors infl uencing both the decision to have a child and to be employed. not taking this factor into account could result in an underestimation of the role of having a job. however, it must be stressed that sign and signifi cance of the coeffi cients do not change between the independent to simultaneous equations. tab. 1: sample description bulgaria czech france georgia germany italy lithuania republic education primary 23.8 13.6 26.4 7.9 9.2 49.4 20.9 secondary 48.1 71.3 40.3 62.5 61.5 33.5 48.9 tertiary 28.1 15.1 33.4 29.6 29.3 17.1 30.3 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 birth cohorts 1940-1949 16.9 25.6 21.4 18.3 19.4 21.1 24.7 1950-1959 16.5 25.3 26.5 27.0 28.0 24.7 26.5 1960-1969 33.9 22.8 27.7 29.4 35.1 28.8 25.8 1970-1979 32.6 26.3 24.4 25.4 17.5 25.5 23.1 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 ever worked 96.4 83.9 95.8 98.3 77.9 99.7 94.9 at least one child 89.7 88.3 81.2 88.6 86.3 79.0 88.5 two children (among mothers) 69.5 72.6 76.8 82.4 71.9 69.1 69.4 age at fi rst childbirth (median) 22.1 22.9 26.5 22.9 26.8 27.7 23.9 years between 1st and 2nd child (median) 4.8 4.5 3.7 2.5 4.3 4.8 5.2 number of cases 3721 1279 2748 3392 1397 11579 915 source: own calculation based on wave 2 of the ggs and istat fss (2009) • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore194 tab. 2: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth and probit model for having a job: independent and simultaneous equations first child second child having a job independent simultaneous independent simultaneous simultaneous β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. baseline (current age) -17 years 0.08*** 0.08*** 18-21 years 0.02*** 0.02*** 22-25 years 0.00 0.01*** 26-29 years 0.00 0.00*** 30-34 years -0.01*** 0.00*** 35+ years -0.02*** -0.02*** baseline (duration since the fi rst birth) 0-1 years 0.04*** 0.05*** 2-3 years -0.01*** -0.01*** 4-5 years -0.02*** -0.02*** 6-7 years -0.02*** -0.02*** 8+ years -0.02*** -0.02*** currently working (ref. no) yes -0.25*** -0.58*** -0.29*** -0.68*** education (ref. medium) low 0.24*** 0.40*** 0.06*** 0.11*** -0.31*** high -0.17*** -0.36*** 0.01 -0.08*** 0.00 currently student (ref. no) yes -0.87*** -0.89*** -0.30*** -0.46*** birth cohort (ref. 1960-69) 1940-49 0.04* 0.05* -0.04* -0.02 -0.03 1950-59 0.09*** 0.15*** -0.05** -0.01 -0.01 1970-79 -0.14*** -0.17*** -0.12*** -0.21*** 0.01 country (ref. italy) bulgaria 1.06*** 1.54*** 0.09*** 0.41*** 0.74*** czech republic 0.79*** 1.21*** 0.21*** 0.53*** 1.67*** france 0.37*** 0.61*** 0.43*** 0.71*** 1.12*** georgia 0.91*** 1.41*** 0.75*** 1.28*** 1.82*** germany 0.48*** 0.65*** 0.27*** 0.49*** 0.67*** lithuania 0.82*** 1.15*** 0.09* 0.37*** 0.65*** age at previous childbirth (ref. 25-29) 15-24 years 0.25*** -0.07** 30-34 years -0.31*** -0.13*** 35+ years -1.28*** -1.03*** constant -9.39*** -9.93*** -4.78*** -4.91*** -0.21*** standard deviation of residual in the fertility equations 0.85*** correlation between the residuals (fertility-education) in the simultaneous models 0.63*** number of cases 25031 20519 25031 note: statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on wave 2 of the ggs and istat fss (2009) labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 195 table 3 includes estimates obtained separately for each country coming from independent and simultaneous models.6 this comparative approach reveals important differences across countries: the fi rst childbirth tends to be postponed among working women in france, germany, italy, and georgia and accelerated in bulgaria, the czech republic, and lithuania. thus, with the sole exception of georgia, a distinction between eastern and western european countries emerges. for the transition to second birth, the role of being employed is confi rmed for almost all countries: the coeffi cients for the employment variable remain signifi cantly negative for western countries (france, germany, italy) and positive for bulgaria and the czech republic. however, being employed increases the propensity to have a second child for lithuanian women, differently to what we observed for the fi rst birth transition. there is no evidence of a generalised stronger impact of being employed for the second childbirth compared to the fi rst one. the coeffi cient associated with employment increases in magnitude for the second birth in france and germany. in bulgaria, the czech republic, georgia, and italy, the coeffi cient decreases. as previously noted, the coeffi cient changes sign in lithuania. an analysis of the interaction between employment status and cohort (table 4) provides further insights. in france, the negative impact of employment on the tab. 3: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth, by country and current employment condition (ref. non-working women in the same country): independent and simultaneous equations first child second child independent simultaneous independent simultaneous equations equations equations equations coeff. sig. coeff. sig. coeff. sig. coeff. sig. bulgaria 1.05*** 1.19*** 0.11** 0.24*** czech republic 0.72*** 0.75*** 0.56*** 0.64*** france -0.35*** -0.62*** -0.55*** -0.81*** georgia -0.51*** -0.67*** -0.13*** -0.26*** germany -0.15** -0.31*** -0.33*** -0.49*** italy -0.39*** -0.62*** -0.34*** -0.53*** lithuania 0.57*** 0.55*** -0.66*** -0.66*** note: other variables included: birth cohort of woman, education, currently a student, age at fi rst childbirth for the second childbirth (full models by country in appendix). statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on wave 2 of the ggs and istat fss (2009) 6 to check the robustness of the comparison, we also developed independent and simultaneous models on the pooled sample including an interaction term between country and being currently employed. results (available on request) do not differ signifi cantly from those shown in table 3. • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore196 transition to both the fi rst and second child is substantially reduced. this result can be the linked to family policies which were introduced starting in the mid1980s. given that our sample includes women born between 1940 and 1979, only the younger cohorts were able to benefi t from these measures. albeit in a less linear way, a similar reduction also emerges in germany and, to a lesser extent, in italy. conversely, in bulgaria and the czech republic, cohort analysis reveals the enhancement of the positive link between employment and fertility. this trend also applies to the fi rst child in lithuania, whereas in georgia no important cohort effects emerge. overall, the relationship between employment and fertility does not show a convergent trend moving from older to younger cohorts. most countries move in the same direction, just from different starting levels: negative associations become weaker, and positive associations become stronger. both these trends suggest that female employment becomes less harmful and more benefi cial to childbearing across countries. 5 discussion and conclusions in this article, we examined the relationship between fertility and employment in seven european countries, observing both the transition to fi rst and second childbirth. to date, few studies have observed the effect of employment on the propensity to have a fi rst and second child using a comparative perspective at a micro level and taking into account the potential endogeneity of the employment condition. overall, we do not fi nd support for a generalised delay effect when being employed (h1), nor for a more pronounced effect of employment on the propensity to have a second birth (h2). tab. 4: log-hazard for the transition to the fi rst and second childbirth, by country, cohort and current employment condition (ref. non-working women in the same country and in the same cohort): simultaneous equations first child second child 1940-49 1950-59 1960-69 1970-79 1940-49 1950-59 1960-69 1970-79 bulgaria 0.29** 0.96*** 1.03*** 1.07*** -0.24 0.09 0.28** 0.35*** czech republic 0.44** 0.59*** 0.58*** 0.69*** 0.59 0.13 0.94*** 0.52* france -1.12*** -0.73*** -0.49*** 0.08 -1.46*** -0.84*** -0.66*** -0.29* georgia -0.38*** -0.53*** -0.66*** -0.59*** -0.22* -0.19** -0.16* -0.23* germany -0.52*** -0.12 -0.24** -0.14 -0.60*** -0.45*** -0.48*** -0.22 italy -0.62*** -0.56*** -0.53*** -0.49*** -0.59*** -0.54*** -0.48*** -0.17** lithuania 0.33 0.18 0.45** 0.44** -0.83* -0.65* -0.48* -0.63** note: other variables included: education, currently a student, age at fi rst childbirth for the second childbirth. statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on wave 2 of the ggs and istat fss (2009) labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 197 findings on the cross-country variations at the micro-level relationship between fertility and women’s employment reveal important heterogeneity in europe, while not fully coinciding with the expected results (only partly consistent with h3). on the one hand, the three western countries considered in the analysis (france, germany, and italy) appear to be more similar than expected. conservative and familialistic countries are characterised by relatively rigid labour markets with little support for working parents and more traditional attitudes towards working mothers (matysiak/ vignoli 2008). however, women’s employment confl icts with childbearing not only in italy but in all the three western countries. women born between 1940 and 1970 are more likely to postpone the transition to motherhood as well as the transition to higher birth orders if they are employed. although france is considered a familyfriendly country, characterised by relatively high and stable fertility levels, these policies have been progressively built in tandem with those on employment only since 1985 (martin 2010). furthermore, in france, employment instability has a negative effect on household size (ciganda 2015). in germany, before unifi cation, there were two contrasting family models: in the east, the government supported the dual-worker model, and measures to increase the fertility rate were implemented; in the west, a male breadwinner model persisted and women pursued a part-time career model, with no-employment breaks while their children were in pre-school (ostner 2010; pfau-effi nger/smidt 2011). after unifi cation, family policies were built based on the west germany model. however, women in east germany have not adapted their behaviour to this model, de facto two different systems persist, and the two models have continued to coexist (pfau-effi nger/smidt 2011). on the other hand, post-socialist countries emerged as highly heterogeneous. existing literature suggests that the working mother norm is institutionally embedded in former socialist countries (standing 1994; puffer 1996; frejka/gietelbasten 2016), and the process of women’s integration in the labour market was maintained ideologically by linking employment with emancipation (scott 1974). while in western europe, the value of individualism and the post-industrial social context led to the consideration of work as a necessity for either fulfi lling family duties or achieving individual independence, in eastern europe people were more likely to consider women’s participation in paid work as a way both to fulfi l family responsibilities and to obtaining emancipation (ma 2010). therefore, eastern europe might be less progressive regarding the confl ict of a women’s role in balancing work and family but more tolerant in accepting that women work. at the same time, women’s labour market participation in post-socialist countries was supported by extensive childcare policies, incorporating generous maternity and childcare leave allowances, and fl exible working arrangements (metcalfe/afanassieva 2005). however, the relationship between labour market participation and fertility is radically different across countries in eastern europe. results suggest three different models. the fi rst is the one experienced in bulgaria and the czech republic, where being employed is largely compatible with fertility choices resulting in a higher propensity of having the fi rst and the second childbirth among working women. in these two countries, women have adopted the image of the working mother and, despite • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore198 increasing diffi culties, continue to follow both work and family goals. while in the majority of western europe being eligible for parental leave is dependent on prior employment, in many eastern european countries mothers are permitted to take long periods of parental leave unrelated to labour market status or employment history (matysiak/szalma 2014; moss 2014). as part of pro-natalist measures in the 1990s, for example, the czech republic extended its parental leave until the child’s 4th birthday, while in bulgaria maternity leave is 410 days (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). furthermore, in bulgaria, childcare allowances are higher for the second child than for the fi rst (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). the second model is that followed by lithuania, where the positive impact of employment for the fi rst childbirth turns negative for the second birth. the postponement of a second child may be the result of a dual expectation from women: earning income while fulfi lling care duties. on the one hand, in recent decades, changing attitudes towards working mothers and new family policies have improved the ability to better reconcile work and family. on the other hand, increased competition in labour markets has created new constraints and decreased the possibilities of re-entering employment for mothers who have left their jobs. the diffi culties in fi nding a new job or returning to work after the fi rst birth may infl uence women in postponing their next child until they have re-established a relatively good position in the labour market. in lithuania in particular, unstable economic conditions in part caused by changes in government have led to a discontinuity of family policies without a positive effect of measures on fertility taking hold (frejka/ gietel-basten 2016). furthermore, starting from the 1990s, not only the lithuanian fertility rate fell, but so did the number of desired children, falling below replacement level (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). the third model is the one experienced in georgia, featuring a clear postponement of childbirth among working women. this feature places georgia close to western countries even though, unlike the latter, the incompatibility between employment and fertility tends to decrease passing from the fi rst to the second childbirth. among post-socialist countries, georgia is often singled out with a persistence of very traditional values regarding family and gender roles (blum et al. 2009; van der lippe et al. 2006). most women and men become parents at a young age and soon after forming a union (frejka et al. 2008; kesseli 2008). once married, both women and men tend to have a child very soon (olds/westoff 2004; neyer et al. 2013) and are more inclined to have another child within three years from the previous birth than other europeans (neyer et al. 2013). given the strong relationship and the reduced time gap between union formation and childbearing, a work-related experience can lead to a postponement of family formation, causing working women to fall behind in the general trend of fertility decisions and outcomes. all things considered, there are limitations to our analysis. first, the comparative perspective obliged us to consider only a limited amount of information, as not all variables of interest are available for cross-country comparisons. aspects such as family background, income, area of education, and religion should be considered because they may also shape women’s life courses (rindfuss et al. 2003). the life history of the male partner also plays an important and often crucial role in a labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 199 woman’s choices regarding childbearing. however, the structure of the data used here limits the possibility of adopting a couple-level analysis (e.g., blossfeld et al. 2001) because of a lack of information about the current partners’ characteristics. another relevant factor is the characteristics of job episodes. for instance, the possibility to combine work and family duties can be facilitated by the availability of part-time employment. in countries with very small part-time labour markets, such as the mediterranean and eastern countries, women can be constrained to choosing between full-time work or no work at all (bardasi/gornick 2003). financial necessities and labour market insecurity may also force women to work on a fulltime basis and to follow both work and family goals (matysiak/steinmetz 2008). unfortunately, a large number of missing data on part-time/full-time information prevents us from including it in our analysis.7 second, in multiprocess modelling, the unobserved factors included that drive both employment and fertility choices are considered to be time-invariant. this implies that the individual orientation towards family life and fertility is constant over the reproductive life. despite some attempts to relax this assumption (e.g., gottard et al. 2015), it is usually accepted in the demographic interpretation (kravdal 2001; kreyenfeld 2002; steele et al. 2005). it is also in line with hakim’s (2000, 2003) interpretation which considers “preference” for a greater or lesser number of children as a crucial determinant of the fertility level. in fact, hakim argues that in european countries this preference is formed during infancy and adolescence and varies little over the course of a woman’s reproductive life. third, this comparison would have been enriched by considering additional countries with different welfare state regimes, especially from northern and southern europe and by including more recent data. unfortunately, recent changes in support of working mothers in several european countries therefore cannot be considered. finally, wave 2 of the ggs suffers from a high attrition rate. maintaining high response rates and low attrition levels is a major challenge for social science research infrastructures. failure to achieve this can cause unwanted systematic deviations from the true outcome of a survey, as high non-response rates can pose a signifi cant threat to survey quality (gauthier et al. 2018). van damme and colleagues (2022) found that, in bulgaria, georgia, germany, france, lithuania, and the czech republic (among other countries), attrition is systematically related to a variety of factors, including lower educational backgrounds, being older, being more traditional, having a lower commitment to marriage, cohabiting, having separated parents, and poor health. žilinčíková and hiekel (2018), observing transitions from cohabitation, showed that respondents with higher education and employment were more likely to participate in both waves, as well as cohabiting parents compared to those without children. these results suggest that people who are more disadvantaged 7 focusing on the fi rst eight job episodes for all countries included in the analysis except italy, we found 14,578 missing values about full time/part time classifi cation among 38,812 episodes (around 37 percent). • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore200 are more likely to drop out the panel between waves 1 and 2 whereas, conversely, couples who are less traditional may be less sensitive to attrition. although some potential spurious effects may be partially limited by including variables such as education and employment in a multivariate analysis (as suggested by žilinčíková and hiekel 2018), panel attrition selectivity could create a bias resulting in a potential underestimation of the connection between labour market participation and fertility (see the appendix for further detail). notwithstanding these limitations, our analysis provides new evidence that can shed light on the relationship between employment and fertility behaviours, particularly with regards to the opposing macro-level thesis, which states that after the mid-80s the association between employment and fertility changed from negative to positive. at a micro level, the relationship remains controversial. thus, this is an example of a relatively common phenomenon in the social sciences: a pattern appears in cross-sectional analyses (different countries observed at the same point in time), but the same relationship does not emerge when studying a single country (or a group of countries) over time (kolk 2019). our results show deep differences across countries, suggesting that some european countries are far from demonstrating convergence in the relationship between employment and fertility. we found that the incompatibility between work and childbearing is more marked in western european countries compared to post-socialist countries. however, some exceptions reveal that the european east-west divide is not completely clear-cut. references adsera, alicia 2005: vanishing children: from high unemployment to low fertility in developed countries. in: american economic review 95,2: 189-193. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282805774669763 ahn, namkee; 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03.03.2023 francesca tomatis (). university of milan. milan, italy. e-mail: francesca.tomatis@unimi.it. orcid: 0000-0001-6248-7895 url: https://www.unimi.it/en/ugov/person/francesca-tomatis roberto impicciatore. alma mater studiorum, university of bologna. bologna, italy. e-mail: roberto.impicciatore@unibo.it. orcid: 0000-0003-3378-9733 url: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/roberto.impicciatore/en labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 209 appendix tab. a1: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth and probit model for employment. simultaneous equations, full models, bulgaria and czech republic bulgaria czech republic first child second having a first child second having a child job child job β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. baseline (current age) -17 years 0.05*** 0.09*** 18-21 years 0.03*** 0.02*** 22-25 years -0.01*** 0.00 26-29 years 0.00 0.00 30-34 years -0.01*** -0.01 35+ years -0.01*** -0.02*** baseline (duration since the fi rst birth) 0-1 years 0.06*** 0.05*** 2-3 years 0.00 -0.01** 4-5 years -0.01** -0.02* 6-7 years -0.02*** 0.00 8+ years -0.02*** -0.02*** currently working (ref. no) yes 1.19*** 0.24*** 0.75*** 0.64*** education (ref. medium) low 0.81*** 0.73*** -0.26*** 0.18* 0.17 -0.26*** high -0.30*** -0.41*** 0.10*** -0.24* 0.21 0.10*** currently student (ref. no) yes -0.47*** -0.31*** -0.56*** -0.29 birth cohort (ref. 1960-69) 1940-49 -0.30*** -0.11 0.04 -0.09 -0.18 0.04 1950-59 -0.09 0.15** 0.04* -0.17* 0.03 0.04* 1970-79 0.01 -0.56*** -0.09*** -0.49*** -0.28** -0.09*** age at previous childbirth (ref. 25-29) 15-24 years 0.02 0.03 30-34 years -0.18 -0.61*** 35+ years -2.43*** -1.47** constant -8.33*** -5.73*** -0.46*** -9.88*** -5.67*** -0.46*** theta 0.86*** 0.62*** rho 0.03 0.07 number of cases 3721 1279 note: statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on the 2nd wave of the ggs • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore210 tab. a2: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth and probit model for employment. simultaneous equations, full models, france and georgia france georgia first child second having a first child second having a child job child job β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. baseline (current age) -17 years 0.08*** 0.09*** 18-21 years 0.03*** 0.02*** 22-25 years 0.02*** 0.00** 26-29 years 0.00 0.00 30-34 years -0.01** -0.01** 35+ years -0.02*** -0.01*** baseline (duration since the fi rst birth) 0-1 years 0.08*** 0.03*** 2-3 years -0.01** -0.03*** 4-5 years -0.01* -0.01** 6-7 years -0.03*** -0.03*** 8+ years -0.02*** -0.02*** currently working (ref. no) yes -0.62*** -0.81*** -0.67*** -0.26*** education (ref. medium) low 0.31*** 0.10 -0.26*** 0.13* 0.11 -0.26*** high -0.51*** 0.18* 0.09*** -0.33*** -0.25*** 0.10*** currently student (ref. no) yes -1.29*** -0.35*** -1.10*** -0.74*** birth cohort (ref. 1960-69) 1940-49 0.02 0.02 0.04 -0.16** -0.23*** 0.04 1950-59 -0.06 -0.20** 0.04* 0.08 0.00 0.04* 1970-79 -0.12 0.07 -0.10*** 0.04 -0.45*** -0.09*** age at previous childbirth (ref. 25-29) 15-24 years -0.40*** 0.08 30-34 years -0.03 -0.43*** 35+ years -0.81*** -1.79*** constant -9.80*** -4.93*** -0.46*** -8.51*** -3.58*** -0.46*** theta 1.13*** 0.64 rho 0.09 0.14*** number of cases 2748 3392 note: statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on the 2nd wave of the ggs labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 211 tab. a3: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth and probit model for employment. simultaneous equations, full models, germany and italy germany italy first child second having a first child second having a child job child job β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. β sig. baseline (current age) -17 years 0.08*** 0.07*** 18-21 years 0.01*** 0.03*** 22-25 years 0.01*** 0.01*** 26-29 years 0.01** 0.01*** 30-34 years 0.00 0.00 35+ years -0.03*** -0.02*** baseline (duration since the fi rst birth) 0-1 years 0.06*** 0.06*** 2-3 years -0.02*** 0.01*** 4-5 years -0.01* -0.02*** 6-7 years -0.03*** -0.02*** 8+ years -0.02*** -0.03*** currently working (ref. no) yes -0.31*** -0.49*** -0.62*** -0.53*** education (ref. medium) low 0.40*** 0.19 -0.26*** 0.47*** 0.07 -0.25*** high -0.14 0.13 0.10*** -0.40*** 0.09 0.10*** currently student (ref. no) yes -1.33*** -0.50*** -1.05*** -0.38*** birth cohort (ref. 1960-69) 1940-49 0.13 -0.24* 0.04 0.32*** 0.27*** 0.03 1950-59 0.14 -0.26** 0.04* 0.51*** 0.14*** 0.04* 1970-79 0.04 -0.01 -0.10*** -0.41*** -0.02 -0.10*** age at previous childbirth (ref. 25-29) 15-24 years -0.42*** -0.26*** 30-34 years -0.08 0.12** 35+ years -1.38*** -0.36*** constant -9.58*** -4.63*** -0.46*** -10.41*** -5.55*** -0.45*** theta 0.79 1.02*** rho 0.13** 0.11*** number of cases 1397 11579 note: statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on the 2nd wave of the ggs and istat fss (2009) • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore212 tab. a4: hazard models for the fi rst and second childbirth and probit model for employment. simultaneous equations, full models, lithuania lithuania first child second child having a job β sig. β sig. β sig. baseline (current age) -17 years 0.10*** 18-21 years 0.03*** 22-25 years 0.00 26-29 years -0.01** 30-34 years -0.01 35+ years -0.02*** baseline (duration since the fi rst birth) 0-1 years 0.04*** 2-3 years -0.01 4-5 years 0.00 6-7 years -0.02* 8+ years -0.03*** currently working (ref. no) yes 0.55*** -0.66*** education (ref. medium) low 0.19 0.06 -0.26*** high -0.42*** -0.33** 0.10*** currently student (ref. no) yes -0.42*** -0.64*** birth cohort (ref. 1960-69) 1940-49 -0.20 -0.10 0.04 1950-59 -0.18 -0.07 0.04* 1970-79 0.00 -0.32** -0.09*** age at previous childbirth (ref. 25-29) 15-24 years -0.05 30-34 years -0.68*** 35+ years -1.39** constant -10.82*** -4.34*** -0.46*** theta 0.68*** rho 0.04 number of cases 915 note: statistical signifi cance: * > 90%; ** > 95%; *** > 99%. source: own calculation based on the 2nd wave of the ggs labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 213 the generations and gender survey (ggs) – documentation this appendix provides a detailed overview of the generation and gender survey, wave 2 (ggs). the ggs is a large-scale survey that explores the intergenerational transmission of social inequality, family dynamics, and gender relations across europe. data are provided by the generation & gender programme research (ggp). started under the umbrella of the united nations economic commission for europe (unece), the ggp infrastructure is run by institutes with strong traditions in academic research on population and family change and on survey methodology. ggs survey was conducted in multiple countries and covers representative samples of men and women from different age cohorts. the ggs dataset has been used to investigate a wide range of topics, such as partnership dynamics, fertility, transition to adulthood, care and support networks, household tasks division, and contraception. these data are crucial for understanding fundamental societal challenges in europe and constitute a considerable basis for formulating evidence-based policies. the sampling guidelines, as summarised by simard and franklin (2005), establish three main elements: the target population is 18-79-yearolds (at the time of the fi rst wave), the sample size for wave 1 must be suffi ciently large to achieve at least 8,000 interviews in case of a third wave, and probability sampling must be used. it is worth noting that the large sample sizes in each wave are one of the ggs’s distinguishing features. this allows data users to study specifi c social groups, such as low-income families or particular living arrangements (e.g., cohabiting couple, single parent, living alone, etc.). moreover, the broad age range expands research possibilities, particularly in terms of analysing intergenerational relations and support. during the fi rst wave of the ggs, national teams consisting of national statistical offi ces and/or national research institutes collected data. to ensure consistency in fi eldwork procedures, data collection guidelines were provided to each national team. probability sampling was implemented across all participating countries. however, the timing of fi eldwork in wave 1 differed signifi cantly between countries (between 2003 and 2012) due to constraints in each specifi c country, which is relevant information for data users as differences between countries might be related to time-specifi c contextual elements. nonetheless, the survey is designed to examine retrospective and within-person life-course dynamics, which reduces the need for strict comparability between countries in the timing of fi eldwork. there was also diversity in the modes of data collection in wave 1, with some countries using computer-assisted personal interviewing (capi) and others using paper and pencil interviewing (papi) or a mixed-methods strategy. most countries continued to use similar survey modes in wave 2, with papi and capi prevailing as the most common survey modes (gauthier et al. 2018). observing the methodology documentation provided by the generations and gender programme (ggp), it is possible to reconstruct the sampling procedure and the response rate of each county selected in our analysis (see table a5). • francesca tomatis, roberto impicciatore214 to minimise attrition rates, the ggp has implemented several recommendations for fi eldwork practices since the fi rst wave. these practices include close collaboration between the research institute, fi eldwork agency, interviewers, and respondents; providing incentives to respondents that may vary depending on the country; maintaining regular contact with respondents through letters, brochures, and questionnaires; recommending interviewer continuity to establish a rapport; and ensuring specialised interviewer training and supervision. the ggs faces the challenge of tracing and contacting all respondents every three years, which requires measures to trace and motivate respondents between waves. in france, the cumulative attrition after three waves of the survey was 43 percent, with the highest attrition registered between waves 1 and 2. however, such a rate is “similar to that found in other similar surveys in france,” according to régnier-loilier and guisse (2012). in austria, buber-ennser (2014) observes that attrition does not affect results, suggesting that “the data can be used without (signifi cant) concern about selectivity”. labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries • 215 c o u n tr y y ea r o f i n te rv ie w s am p lin g p ro ce d u re d at a co lle ct io n m o d e c o m p le te in te rv ie w r es p o n se r at e ca lc u la te d w it h re fe re n ce t o w av e 1 to ta l s am p le b u lg ar ia 20 07 w av e 2 co ve rs t h e sa m e fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 9, 34 4 72 .7 % p o p u la ti o n th at w as in te rv ie w ) t ec h n iq u e: sa m p le d in 2 00 4, fo r pa p i w av e 1 o f t h e g g s c ze ch r ep u b lic 20 08 /2 00 9 d at ab as e fr o m w av e 1 fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 10 ,0 71 32 % + q u o ta s am p lin g in te rv ie w ) t ec h n iq u e: c a p i, c a s i fr an ce 20 08 a ll w av e 1 re sp o n d en ts fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 6, 57 6, * 42 w er e th en 65 % w h o h ad a g re ed t o b e in te rv ie w ) t ec h n iq u e: re m o ve d re co n ta ct ed fo r a se co n d c a p i in te rv ie w g eo rg ia 20 09 to c o n d u ct a s m an y fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 8, 30 3 83 % re p ea te d in te rv ie w s as in te rv ie w ) t ec h n iq u e: p o ss ib le o f 1 0, 00 0 pa p i re sp o n d en ts f ro m g g s w av e 1 g er m an y 20 08 /2 00 9 a ll th e w av e 1 fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 3, 28 5, * 58 w er e th en 33 % re sp o n d en ts w h o h ad in te rv ie w ) t ec h n iq u e: re m o ve d ag re ed t o b e re co n ta ct ed c a p i fo r a se co n d in te rv ie w li th u an ia 20 09 a ll th e w av e 1 fa ce -t o -f ac e (p er so n al 2, 29 4 23 % re sp o n d en ts w h o h ad in te rv ie w ). te ch n iq u e: ag re ed t o b e re co n ta ct ed pa p i fo r a se co n d in te rv ie w ta b . a 5: in fo rm at io n ab o u t g g s w av e 2 n o te : pa p i: p ap er a nd p en ci l i nt er vi ew , c a p i: c o m p ut er -a ss is te d p er so na l i nt er vi ew , c a s i; c o m p ut er -a ss is te d s el f i nt er vi ew . s o ur ce : b as ed o n d o cu m en ta tio n p ro vi d e b y g g p (h tt p s: // w w w .g gp -i. o rg /d at a/ m et ho d o lo gy /) published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition: how patterns of fertility are changing under an unstable demographic policy three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition: how patterns of fertility are changing under an unstable demographic policy* sergei v. zakharov abstract: this study aims to highlight the changes in fertility patterns of russians which occurred after the ussr’s dissolution or disintegration, taking a long historical perspective. after that disruption, thirty cohorts were born and raised who never lived under the soviet system. fifteen more cohorts (those who were born between 1975 and 1990) remember that system only as a part of childhood, but their adult life started after the iron curtain had fallen and a flood of new ideas and practices spilled into all spheres of life. at the same time, the increased concern among the russian elite about the declining population and low birth rates led to the adoption of a pronatalist family policy based on monetarist approaches reinforced by conservative-traditionalist ideology. our main research question asks: to what extent did state social and family policies in russia, which are based on the ideology of traditionalism and conservatism, derail or slow down the modernization of the quantitative and structural parameters of fertility patterns within the second demographic transition context? our analysis is based on indicators from period and cohort fertility tables, specific for age and parity. extrapolations are used for russia’s female cohorts born 19711994 to arrive at expected ultimate fertility outcomes. our evidence, obtained from the comprehensive analysis of fertility tables, reveals that the transformation of the russian fertility model continues to be in line with the second demographic transition common to developed countries, and that two decades of active pronatalist policy in the context of strengthening the conservative family ideology did not stop the modernization of fertility patterns. keywords: russia · period and cohort fertility · parity progression · second demographic transition · pronatalist policy comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 25-54 (date of release: 31.01.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-02 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-02en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/626/402. https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/626/402 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-02 • sergei v. zakharov26 1 introduction in the first three decades following the end of the era of communism in its soviet socialist form, there were tremendous changes in the political, economic, and social life of people in russia. the most substantial changes in the patterns of family formation and fertility happened in russia when a sharp improvement in life satisfaction indices took place in 1995-2008 (inglehart 2018: 164). the so-called value revolution and the revolution of young people’s aspirations in their well-being, professional, and social status were confidently revealed in regular sociological surveys conducted from the 1980s to the 2010s (magun/engovatov 2006). young people in that period received previously unknown opportunities for the rapid accumulation of human capital (kapeliushnikov 2011). the level of education in the russian population was high even in the soviet period, but since the early 1990s, the expansion of education has assumed an explosive character. tertiary education, including university-level education, has become the most widespread, as a result of which today russia’s population has one of the highest educational levels in the world. in 2015, in the age group 25-29 years, 40 percent of men and 57 percent of women had higher (university and above) education (microcensus 2015). based on projections by 2030, these figures will increase by another 5 percentage points. russian youth practically do not know what unemployment is, which is facilitated by the small size of cohorts starting work, and the premium for higher education was quite stable; in 2000-2015 it did not fall below 50 percent, supporting the demand for vocational education (gimpelson/kapeliushnikov 2018). not surprisingly, such dramatic changes are accompanied by transformations in their sexual, contraceptive, marital and reproductive behaviors, healthy lifestyles, etc., which become more individualized, with a wider choice of strategies (golod 2005; zakharov 2007a; blum et al. 2009; troitskaia et al. 2009; denisov et al. 2012; puur et al. 2012; mitrofanova 2013; 2019, 2020; biryukova/tyndik 2015; vishnevsky et al. 2017; zakharov/mitrofanova 2018; radaev 2020; andreev et al. 2022). as a result “fertility has become ‘derivative’. young people do not have well-defined fertility targets when they begin conjugal life: whether they have children or not, have them early or late, when they are married or before, it all depends on a sequence of decisions made when various options present themselves” (van de kaa 2004: 8). at the same time, the changes in russia were not unidirectional or consistent. moreover, the vector of changes in politics, in institutional reforms of the economic and social sphere, in the living standards of households, has changed several times not only for reasons of internal necessity and as a result of the action of objective forces, but also for subjective reasons, including the changing ideological paradigms and guidelines for the development of society, which were offered by opposing groups of elites who succeeded each other in power. to understand the scale of variability in the situation concerning every citizen in russia, it is enough to point out that the period of transition to a free market economy, which actively occurred between 1991 and 2004, was immediately followed by a period of transition to autarkic state-monopoly capitalism (djankov 2015; åslund 2019). social and family policy, moving in the first decade toward liberation from the principles of state three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 27 paternalism and acquiring a more liberal attitude towards the family, marriage and partnerships (ivanov et al. 2006), today has firmly taken the ideological positions of orthodox conservatism with clericalism as a cementing link, proposing pronatalism as the main core of family policy and the entire population policy in general (rivkinfish 2010; chernova 2012; selezneva 2017; frejka/gietel-basten 2016; zakharov 2018; rakhimova-sommers 2019; kazimov/zakharov 2021; russkikh 2021; cook et al. 2022; blum/zakharov 2023). over the last two decades, state intervention in private life has greatly increased in russia (makarychev/medvedev 2015; rakhimova-sommers 2019). demographic policy became a part of a larger plan for the control of industry, labor, culture, society and family by state institutions and their affiliated agencies. in his presidential address to the federal assembly in january 2020 putin assured the nation that “russia’s destiny and its historic prospects depend on how numerous we will be.”1 post-communist russia under putin attempts to re-patriarchalize gender and family through a number of pronatalist and pronuptialist state initiatives closely connected to nationalist goals (rivkin-fish 2010; chernova/shpakovskaya 2021; cook et al. 2022). for the first time in a long while, russian political rulers have taken the liberty of setting goals, within a set timetable, for defined quantitative parameters of fertility, mortality, migration and population change in general. the russian government has never before openly declared a pronatalist policy in such a directive form, and has never taken the full responsibility for the growth of the population; neither in the days of the empire, in stalin’s time, in khruschev’s time, nor in the late soviet/brezhnev era. previously, pronatalism was presented only in a latent form in russian social and family-oriented policy (zakharov 2018). the orthodox church, moreover, does not remain on the sidelines. the participation of the church in the development of russia’s demographic policy is very significant, as is its influence in the wider context of family, social, ethnic and cultural policies (freese 2017; knorre 2018). putin’s predecessor boris yeltsin, the first president of the new russia, rarely touched upon russia’s demographic problems in his speeches, even though one of the charges during his failed impeachment as president in 1999 was “genocide of the russian people” which referred to pronounced negative natural growth. in his annual presidential addresses to the federal assembly in 1994-1999, yeltsin only minimally noted the problem of high mortality and the aging of the population in russia, but did not mention the problem of low birth rates. and yet his 1996 address, “russia for which we are responsible,” contains the following statement, reflecting the attitude of the yeltsin administration to the problem of state control of human behavior: “the experience of russian history forces us to abandon utopian social engineering, which sets a fictitious, unrealizable goal, and then brings the lives and destinies of people as a sacrifice to its implementation ... any passion for social engineering inevitably leads to the fact that at first they pretend that everything is going according to plan, and then they begin to silence, imprison, 1 http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62582 http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62582 • sergei v. zakharov28 expel and shoot everyone who had the imprudence to doubt this.”2 also in 1996, yeltsin signed a presidential decree on the fundamental directions of state policy for the family. the decree stressed the need for the state to provide the conditions necessary for families to realize their quality-of-life goals. state family policy would not regulate familial behavior through economic, legal and ideological measures but rather provide support for the choices of families, which were otherwise to be seen as independent and autonomous in decision-making with respect to their own development. also emphasized in the decree was the principle of “equality between men and women in achieving a more just division of familial duties, as well as in the potential for self-realization in the working world and in public life.”3 in our earlier works, in which we relied on demographic data and facts that characterized social changes in the first ten to fifteen years of the post-communist transition period with its liberal approach to family policy, we drew conclusions about the beginning of profound changes in families, marriage and fertility associated with signs of the second demographic transition (sdt), which we were able to see in russia only after the collapse of the soviet system, and with a corresponding delay, compared to western countries (zakharov/ivanova 1996; zakharov 1999, 2000, 2007a, 2008). some authors supported our conclusions with the results of their research (philipov/jasilioniene 2008; hoem et al. 2009; eberstadt 2010; potârcӑ et al. 2013); others expressed doubts, starting from the idea that the low level of well-being in russia does not contribute to the growing attitudes in favor of selfexpression and choice of life paths (see e.g.: billingsley 2010; perelli-harris/gerber 2011).4 the discussion about russia’s right to move along the path of the sdt is in many ways reminiscent of the discussion that took place at the same time about the validity of the sdt process for the united states (lesthaeghe/neidert 2006). now, a few decades later, in the context of changing milestones in the economy and politics, it is time to look at the shifts that have taken place to assess the extent to which the russian population retains the most general regularities in the transformation of fertility patterns (“postponement transition”, see: kohler et al. 2002, 2006; sobotka 2017) that constitute the second demographic transition. it is time also to continue our critical assessment of the pro-natalist policy that started fifteen years ago and was supported by the state with both constant energy in propaganda and increased financial incentives for the birth of children (see previous works: frejka/ zakharov 2013; zakharov 2016). to what extent did state social and family policies in 2 http://www.intelros.ru/strategy/gos_rf/psl_prezident_rf_old/73-poslanie_prezidenta_rosii_borisa_ elcina_federalnomu_sobraniju_rf_rossija_za_kotoruju_my_v_otvete_1996_god.html 3 http://www.zakonprost.ru/content/base/7042. for more details about historical experience of russia in family policies issues, see ivanov et al. 2006; zakharov 2018. 4 economic difficulties have been given a major role in explaining the transformation of fertility patterns in the cee countries and russia, especially in their early stages of societal and economic change; see, for example: macura 1997; kohler/kohler 2002; philipov/dorbritz 2003; barkalov 2005; rieck 2006. moreover, at that time, the researchers thought that russia would remain for a long time among the countries with “lowest low fertility” settings (kohler et al. 2006). for a more general and recent discussion of the explanatory powers of the sdt theory and a “pattern of disadvantage” thesis, with related comments, see lesthaeghe 2020. http://www.intelros.ru/strategy/gos_rf/psl_prezident_rf_old/73-poslanie_prezidenta_rosii_borisa_ http://www.zakonprost.ru/content/base/7042 three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 29 russia, which are based on the ideology of traditionalism and conservatism, derail or slow down the modernization of the quantitative and structural parameters of fertility patterns within the sdt context? our analysis is based on the increment-decrement ageand birth-order–specific period and cohort fertility tables. extrapolations are used for russia’s female cohorts 1971-1994 to arrive at expected ultimate fertility outcomes. the analytical sections of the article are structured as follows: in the first part, we describe the databases used, as well as our main analytical tool. the second part is devoted to a detailed analysis of the transformation of fertility patterns with special emphasis on the age and birth-order profiles, including changes which could be attributed to pronatalist family policy. the final part contains the study’s main conclusions. it also discusses the prospects for fertility in the context of russia’s political situation and the limitations of the data and methods used. 2 data and methods the annual statistics of women who had a live birth distributed by age and birth order, which are routinely collected and tabulated by the federal state statistics service (rosstat), are the starting point for our analysis. we used the internationally harmonized and regularly updated human fertility database (hfd),5 which, on the basis of a special agreement, received initial vital statistics data directly from rosstat. the hfd also contains estimates of indicators and characteristics of fertility covering russia during the period 1959-2018 and female cohorts born 1944-1978, including increment-decrement ageand birth-order-specific period and cohort fertility tables. these are life tables which model the process of childbearing in synthetic (period) or real female cohorts, and provide the most reliable basis for comparative studies of differences in fertility over time and space. the quality of russia’s data, despite the presence of certain but not critical problems, is assessed by hfd experts as quite satisfactory in general, and is recommended for wide use, which is documented in detail in the corresponding protocol (andreev et al. 2020). in preparing this article, we supplemented the data series with the latest final data for 2019-2021, which are not published by rosstat, and have not yet been processed in the hfd, but were provided to the institute of demography at the higher school of economics (moscow) for analytical purposes by rosstat officials.6 based on these data we computed ageand birth-order-specific period fertility life-tables for 20192021, which were easily harmonized with the historical series presented in the hfd. 5 human fertility database. max planck institute for demographic research (germany) and vienna institute of demography (austria). available at www.humanfertility.org; see also: (jasilioniene et al. 2015, 2016). 6 the author performed the calculations with the right to publish the results when he worked for the hse institute of demography. http://www.humanfertility.org • sergei v. zakharov30 previously, we proposed a simple approach to the construction of cohort age and order-specific fertility tables for cohorts who have not yet exceeded childbearing age (zakharov 2015: 124-128). it is based on modeling the rate of change with age in the probability for women over 25 years old to give birth to another child, using the observed age-specific period progression ratios (pprs) for synthetic cohorts in recent years. in fact, we propose freezing not age-specific fertility rates, but the tempo of change with age parity progression ratios, which are obtained from period fertility life-tables and then smoothed using spline functions. it should be noted that the curves describing the rate of change with age in parity progression ratios of each birth order for women after 25-30 years – i.e., for women who have reached or exceeded the peak values of fertility rates – demonstrate, at least for russia, a fairly high stability over time, and can easily be modeled using spline functions of the 3rd5th order (see “online appendix,” s-1). 3 fertility patterns in russia: quantum, age at childbearing and number of children ever born 3.1 fertility quantum in russia: period versus cohort indicator’s trends the period total fertility rate (ptfr), after a sharp jump in the 1980s caused by family policy measures and a corresponding compensatory decline in the 1990s, has been growing ever since it reached a historically low value in 1999 (fig. 1).7 this growth, observed up to and including 2015, is often associated with the positive influence of the pronatalist family policy pursued by the state after 2006. formally speaking, the data for 2007-2015 fit perfectly into the trend that has emerged since 2000, with a respite in 2005, and it can be hypothesized that the policy to stimulate the birth rate has accelerated the positive dynamics. further, the ptfr shows a steep drop in 2016-2019 and then the suspension of the decline (in 2019, 2020 and 2021 the ptfr was the same, 1.50 births per woman). the indicator has practically returned to its value observed before the start of putin’s pronatalist policy. the ptfr trajectory in recent years has reproduced, with some partial differences, the situation of the 1980s-1990s in the same interval of 15 years. it can be hypothesized that the demographic mechanisms for changing the ptfr under the influence of policies in the 1980s and 2000s may be similar, despite significant differences in the system of incentive measures. whereas the campaign in the 1980s prioritized maternity leave and other institutional changes, in the modern context financial instruments and the promotion of traditional values and patriotism play a major role (zakharov 2008, 2018; selezneva 2018; rakhimova-sommers 2019). it is known that the ptfr as an indicator of the “expected” fertility quantum is imperfect; it can be misleading when assessing the role of economic turmoil and 7 for the history of fertility change in russia see (zakharov 2008, 2023). three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 31 results of policy in the context of longand short-term shifts in the timing and spacing of childbearing in female birth cohorts (rallu/toulemon 1994; philipov/ kohler 2001; sobotka 2003a; sobotka/lutz 2011). replaced by the rejuvenation of parenting in the 1950s-1970s, the aging of the fertility profile began and continues to this day. russia, like other eastern european countries, is experiencing a later onset of the transformation of the age pattern of fertility (bosveld 1996; frejka/ sardon 2006; sobotka 2008; frejka/sobotka 2008; billingsley/duntava 2017), but since the mid-1990s, russia has been moving in the same general direction. this transformation is embodied in the postponement of childbearing and recuperation 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 calender year 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 bi rth s pe rw om an 19 30 19 35 19 40 19 45 19 50 19 55 19 60 19 65 19 70 19 75 19 80 19 85 19 90 female birth cohort cohort period 1,8 1,9 average ctfr for 1945-1960 cohorts average ctfr for 1965-1990 cohorts 1,6 1,7 fig. 1: completed cohort (observed and expected ctfr) and period fertility (ptfr) birth cohorts 1930-1991 (bottom axis), period 1960-2021 (top axis), russia, average number of children born to a woman by age 50. source: calculations by s.v. zakharov based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www.demogr.mpg.de • sergei v. zakharov32 process which apparently commenced in the early 1990s with the birth cohorts of the mid-1960s (frejka/zakharov 2012; sobotka 2017) and are still in progress. there is one more important point to consider here. in the 1980s, an acceleration in the pace of starting a family at a young age occurred. the family policy of that time further spurred the process of lowering the age profile of parenthood, which had begun in russia long before the introduction of policy measures, and ultimately led to a kind of – the inflationary growth of period tfrs. it was the outcome of both the continuing decline of the age at childbearing, and shortening the intervals between births, while the latter factor, apparently, played a more significant role. it is quite reasonable to assume that the current policy of stimulating births established after 2006 demonstrates the same inflationary mechanism, but this time in older age groups of mothers. an unusually high concentration of births occurred as a result of an increase in the age of mothers, followed by a stabilization and even slight decrease in the average age of childbearing (fig. 2). this was also due to the reduction in the average intervals between births, which accompanied the introduction of pronatalist policy measures in the 2000s (fig. 3): from the recordbreaking intervals in the generations of the second half of the 1960s – the first half of the 1970s (about 6 years between the first and second, and about 4 years between the second and third births) before approaching much shorter intervals in the generations of the late 1980s – early 1990s (less than 4 years between the first and second, less than 3 years between the third and fourth). of course, for cohorts born after the mid-1970s, we are dealing with expected but reliable estimates of fig. 2: mean age of women at birth of all, and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and higher order births, russia, years 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19 20 21 year all births 1st births 2nd births 3rd births 4th births 5+ births age 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 19 44 19 46 19 48 19 50 19 52 19 54 19 56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 19 70 19 72 19 74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 birth cohort all birts (observed) 1st births (observed) 2nd births (observed) 3rd births (observed) 4th births (observed) 5th+ births (observed) all births (expected) 1st births (expected) 2nd births (expected) 3rd births (expected) 4th births (expected) 5th+ births (expected) age left panel: period (1979-2021); right panel: female birth cohort (1944-1990), actually observed and expected, with constant rates of change based on the age of period parity progression ratios observed in 2019-2021. source: period and cohort ageand order-specific fertility life-tables calculated by s.v. zakharov, and based on data from the human fertility database (http://www. demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 33 mean ages of mothers at childbearing, whereas even the youngest cohort under consideration is already past its 30th birthday. thus the ongoing significant shifts in the timing of births lead to bias in the interpretation of changes in the fertility quantum based on ptfr, especially when assessing the results of the pro-natalist policies. what conclusions do we draw from a glance at the fertility trends in russia over four decades? first, the timing but not the quantum nature of the surge in ptfr in the 1980s, which did not have long-term consequences (zakharov 2007b, 2008, 2016, 2023; andreev 2016), was once again confirmed. second, from the beginning of the 1990s to 2015, the true value of total fertility was maintained in a fairly narrow range of 1.6-1.7 births per woman. third, a slight rise in the 2000s can be observed, which fig. 3: difference between the average ages of women at the birth of children of the 1st and 2nd order, 2nd and 3rd order, russia, years 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 19 44 19 46 19 48 19 50 19 52 19 54 19 56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 19 70 19 72 19 74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 female birth cohort interval between 1st and 2nd births (observed) interval between 1st and 2nd births (expected) interval between 2nd and 3rd births (observed) interval between 2nd and 3rd births (expected) years actually observed and expected with constant rates of change with age of the period parity progression ratios observed in 2019-2021, female birth cohorts 1944-1990. source: cohort ageand order-specific fertility life-tables calculated by s.v. zakharov, and based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www.demogr.mpg.de • sergei v. zakharov34 could be cautiously associated with the intensification of targeted pronatalist family policy. what can we say about the more distant prospect of fertility quantum in russia? in international practice, it is accepted that for cohorts who have reached 3035 years of age by the time of observation, one can expect that under modern conditions (aging of motherhood), the fertility rates after this age will not be lower than those period age-specific rates for a synthetic cohort that we observe in the reference year. this assumption, in particular, is the basis for the estimates of the expected cohort total fertility rates (ctfr) in eurostat. so, by 2022 we have ultimate cumulative fertility for all cohorts born before 1971; for the 1972-1982 cohorts, estimates of the expected total fertility will have an error of less than 5 percent; for cohorts born in 1983-1990, the estimates will have an error of less than 10 percent. when regular estimates are made, we get a dynamic picture of sequential changes in estimates of both the “actual” and “expected” components of the cumulative fertility for the same cohort and, consequently, their total value. as long as in russia, as in other developed countries, there is an increase in fertility rates among women over 25 and even over 35, the values of the expected total fertility have a chance to be revised upward for older cohorts with a growing contribution of late fertility. at the same time, shifts in this direction are countered by declining fertility at a young age, which may outweigh the growing contribution of more mature women. the result of the opposition of the age components is reflected in the expected final value of ctfr (table 1). thus, with fixed age-specific fertility rates of 2021 for cohorts who have reached 30 years of age and older by 2022, the forecast of a stabilizing ctfr in russia is obvious. but it was not as obvious as it seemed based on the data accumulated tab. 1: observed and expected cohort total fertility rates (ctfr), russia birth cohort expected ctfr, estimates based on expected ctfr, estimates based on 1999, 2006 and 2015 data 2021 data estimates estimates estimates observed expected in ctfr based on based on based on cumulative addition to 1999 data 2006 data 2015 data tfr by 2022 observed tfr 1960-1964 1.75 1.76 1.76 1.76 0.00 1.76 1965-1969 1.58 1.63 1.64 1.64 0.00 1.64 1970-1974 1.40 1.52 1.60 1.60 0.00 1.60 1975-1979 1.23 1.43 1.65 1.65 0.01 1.66 1980-1984 1.16 1.33 1.73 1.66 0.07 1.73 1985-1989 1.79 1.46 0.28 1.74 1990-1994 1.78 0.99 0.65 1.64 female birth cohorts 1960-1994; average number of births per woman. source: calculations by s.v. zakharov, based on age-specific fertility rates in 1979-2021 and data from the 1979 census regarding the responses of women on the number of children ever born. initial data taken from the human fertility database (http://www. demogr.mpg.de) and from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 35 by 2016 (the latest available data referred to 2015 with the highest tfr since the 1980s) – then, if the trends had continued, one would have expected that the level of 1.7 births per woman would be surpassed and the tfr for the cohorts born in the 1980s – first half of the 1990s would come close to 1.8. five years later, and following the results of negative dynamics, for these cohorts, we can only talk about maintaining the average level of 1.6-1.7, characteristic for the entire period of the 1990-2000s, as an optimistic scenario. the decrease in fertility rates in 2016-2021 had a noticeable effect on both the actual and the expected components of the total cohort fertility. based on the data available by 2016, the ctfr for the 198589 cohorts could be expected at the level of 1.79; and then, based on the data accumulated by 2022, we have for the same cohorts 1.74, and for the 1990-94 cohort (which had reached the age of 28-32), the corresponding values are 1.78 and 1.64 births per woman. the expected values of the ctfr for the 1980-84 cohorts, who are now aged 38-42 years, do not have to be revised, but remain at the level of 1.73. however, they remain significantly higher than could be expected based on the data available by 2000 or by 2007 (table 1). calculations based on the birth-order–specific life-table approach give the following alternative values for expected ctfr: 1.59 for 1970-1974 cohorts; 1.63 for 1975-1979 cohorts; 1.71 for 1980-1984 cohorts; 1.72 for 1985-1989 cohorts; and 1.65 for 1990-1994 cohorts. in comparison with estimates obtained by the more traditional method based on freezing the current age-specific fertility rates presented in table 1, the alternative projected values of the cohort total fertility do not differ much, but appear slightly more conservative. they are less prone to fluctuations, which is more consistent with the nature of the process under study, with its internal logic of reproducing, and repeating, with some modification, the existing fertility patterns. obviously, the tfr for the cohorts that actively contributed to russian total fertility in the first two decades of the 21st century on average will be 0.1-0.2 live births per woman lower than for their mothers who formed their families in 19701980s. the relative stability of the ctfr at the level of 1.8-1.9 live births per woman has been replaced by the new stability at the level of 1.6-1.7. what conclusions can be drawn from comparing the dynamics of indicators designed to assess the level of total fertility for synthetic and real generations? 1. if the range of fluctuations for the traditional ptfr of 1980-2021 was 1.07 births per woman and 0.62 for the last two decades, 2000-2021, then the range of fluctuations in the ctfr values based on actual and expected cumulative cohort fertility was less than 0.4 births per woman for the entire period from 1979 to 2021, and no more than 0.2 births for the period 1999-2021. 2. the average value of the total fertility of generations in russia has not fluctuated much, neither from the perspective of the last four decades, nor over the last decade, even though the traditional ptfr showed large fluctuations. the ptfr is an official target indicator in russian demographic policy. at the same time, due to imperfections and methodological limitations, the ptfr creates distorted ideas about both the actual fertility quantum in russia and the direction of its changes. the “true” average total fertility rate of childbearing • sergei v. zakharov36 women in the period from 1980 to 2020 amounted to 1.7 births and 1.6 births per woman over the past decade, with very insignificant fluctuations over the years and the entire period under study. 3.2 structural changes in russia’s fertility pattern: the number of children born 3.2.1 annual estimates of women by number of children born we produced an estimate of the annual distributions of women of reproductive ages (15-49 years old) by number of children ever born for the period 1979-2020, based on the period ageand birth-order–specific fertility tables. these data attest to the minor changes in the distribution of women by number of children born, confirmed by the dynamics over the past 40 years. for the entire period from 1979 to 2020 the proportion of women who did not have a single birth averaged 28.6 percent (sd = 2.7 percent), the proportion with one birth: 30.8 percent (sd = 1.6 percent), the proportion with two births: 30.4 percent (sd = 2.8 percent), and with three or more births: 10.3 percent (sd = 1.8 percent). for the period from 2003 to 2020 the variability was even lower, despite the ongoing policy to stimulate the birth rate; specifically: without births: 31.2 percent (sd = 0.6 percent), with one birth: 32.3 percent (sd = 1.1 percent), with two births: 27.9 percent (sd = 0.6 percent), with three or more births: 8.7 percent (sd = 0.6 percent). the distribution of women by number of children born, observed today, is very close to what it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a slightly larger representation of women with one birth today and a slightly smaller share of women with 3 or more births. 3.2.2 parity progression ratios the parity progression ratio (ppr) shows the proportion of women who have given birth to another child among those who have given birth to one child less. figure 4 presents the values of period and cohort pprs by the age of 50. the expected values for the cohorts that have not completed reproductive activity were obtained based on modeling age functions of the pprs using the average rates of change with age of period pprs observed in 2019-2021 (see “data and methods” above for details). observing trends over the past 40 years leads us to the following conclusions: • since the 1990s (in the generations born in the early 1970s) there has been a significant decrease in the probability of first birth, and in the most recent years this trend has intensified: if in the generations of the 19401960s the percentage of ultimate childlessness was maintained at less than 10 percent (i.e., ppr 01 was 0.9 and more), then in the generations of the 1980-1990s the percentage of ultimate childlessness trends towards 20 percent (ppr 01 is about 0.8); • the transition to a second birth (for those who gave birth to one child) experienced significant fluctuations, especially for synthetic cohorts: an increase in the 1980s (i.e. in births by women born in the second half of the three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 37 1950s); a decline in the 1990s as ppr 12 decreased by half (from 0.7-0.8 to 0.4), which served as the basis for the assumption which was widespread among experts in those years, regarding the transition of russian fertility from a twoto a one-child model (antonov 1999; avdeev 2003; barkalov 2005). in fact, cohort data show that the decrease in the likelihood of a second birth was significantly lower: from 0.6-0.7 in cohorts born in 19401950 up to 0.5-0.6 in the 1970s cohorts. the 1980-1990s cohorts restored the values to the level observed in their grandmothers (cohorts born in 1940-1950s); • the probabilities of third, fourth and subsequent births have changed little over 40 years: after some subsiding in the cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s, women born in the early 1970s and later demonstrate a monotonic rise (the accumulated gain was about 0.10 from the minimum value of 0.250.3). as a result, at the moment the transitions from the second to the third and from the third to the fourth birth are almost the same, and even slightly higher values can be expected than 40-50 years ago. 3.2.3 ultimate distributions of women by number of children born the observed and expected ultimate distributions of women by number of children born, obtained on the basis of period and cohort fertility tables, are presented in figure 5. consideration of shifts in the distribution of women by number of children ever born leads us to the following main conclusion: the presence of one or a higher number of children in russian families today is more equiprobable than ever before in history (detailed historical changes in the distribution since the end of the 19th century shown in vishnevsky 2006: 176-183; zakharov 2008). in the cohorts born fig. 4: parity progression ratios for women by age 50, russia 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19 20 21 year ppr 0—>1 ppr 1—>2 ppr 2—>3 ppr 3—>4 parity progression ratio parity progression ratio 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 19 44 19 46 19 48 19 50 19 52 19 54 19 56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 19 70 19 72 19 74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 female birth cohort ppr 0—>1 (observed) ppr 1—>2 (observed) ppr 2—>3 (observed) ppr 3—>4 (observed) ppr 0—>1 (expected) ppr 1—>2 (expected) ppr 2—>3 (expected) ppr 3—>4 (expected)period 1979-2021 (left panel), cohort 1944-1994 (observed and expected, right panel). source: period and cohort age-order–specific fertility life-tables calculated by s.v. zakharov, and based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www.demogr.mpg.de • sergei v. zakharov38 in the 1980s and up to the first half of the 1990s, we expect that approximately 30 percent of women will eventually have one or two children, and 20 percent each will be those who have not given birth at all and those who have given birth to 3 or more children. although the ideal two-child family model retained its prevalence, it lost its former overwhelming dominance as a result of an increase in the proportion of women at the edges of the distribution – childless and with “many children” (among women who have given birth to three or more children and are officially recognized as having “many children”, the majority are women with three children, and the share of women from particularly large families – with five or more children – is 15-20 percent). even if we assume that the entire increase in the relative number of women with the number of births of 3 or more occurred recently as a result of pronatalist measures (or at least in part, as some estimates suggest, see validova 2021), then the question arises as to why this policy turned out to be so ineffective in the transition to motherhood in general (the proportion of ultimately childless women continued to grow); why the probability of transition from first birth to second birth in birth cohorts of women has changed little; and why the proportion with two children among mothers (women who have ever given birth) has hardly changed at all. let us recall that the policy to stimulate the birth rate was aimed at increasing the prevalence of two-child families, and “maternity capital” as a central financial measure was intended specifically for mothers who gave birth to a second child. in-depth studies should continue to answer these key questions. however, it is clear that the policy did not bring the results that its initiators expected. fig. 5: distribution of women by number of children born by age 50, russia, % 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19 20 21 year no births one birth two births three and more births percentage percentage 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19 20 21 female birth cohort no births (observed) one birth (observed) two births (observed) three and more births (observed) no births (expected) one birth (expected) two births (expected) three and more births (expected) period 1979-2021 (left panel), cohort 1955-1995 (observed and expected, right panel). source: period and cohort age-order–specific fertility life-tables calculated by s.v. zakharov, and based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www.demogr.mpg.de three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 39 4 general conclusions, discussion and limitations changes in fertility patterns in russia over the last three decades can be summarized with at least three points. first, we observe a continuous increase in the age of parenting. over the last thirty years, the mean age of mothers at first birth has risen from age 23 by more than 3 years (see appendix). there are also non-obvious changes in the average age at the birth of the second and subsequent children, and compression of the intervals between births. second, we observed strong fluctuations in the period fertility indicators against the background of weak changes in the cohort indicators. the “true” average total fertility rate of childbearing women in the period from 1980 to 2020 was maintained in a fairly narrow range of 1.6-1.7 births per woman. we can observe a slight rise in the 2000s, which could tentatively be associated with the intensification of targeted pronatalist family policy. third, there were considerable changes in russia’s order-specific fertility model, including an increase in the proportion of those who have never given birth to children and those who have given birth to three or more children. since the 1990s there has been a significant decrease in the probability of first birth, and the universality of motherhood ceased to be the characteristic feature of the russian fertility pattern. the expected share of ultimately childless women is approaching 20 percent, which corresponds to the average level for developed countries nowadays (see appendix). comparison of fertility trends in russia with western countries and with the closest neighbors in eastern europe shows that the transformation of the fertility model continues towards convergence with those developed countries, that are more advanced on the path of the second demographic transition (see “online appendix,” s-3). therefore the main conclusion from our observations of the development of the situation in russia is the following. the expanding diversity of life strategies and matrimonial and reproductive practices, which is actively going on in russia, and which we find in an increasing variety in the birth of children within marriage and out of wedlock; and in the number, timing and spacing of children ever born, fully corresponds to the content of the second demographic transition. the critical question, the answer to which puzzles most experts, is the extent to which pronatalist policies have had an effect on fertility patterns and trends. in this article, we add what is in our opinion an equally important question: to what extent was the conservative policy of the state able, based on financial and propaganda tools, to reverse the trends of the second demographic transition, and thus brings russia closer to other developed countries. putin’s main demographic policy documents, including the “concept of demographic policy” of 2007 and the “concept of family policy” of 2014, are dominated by a natalist concept that is based on traditional values concerning marriage and the family. the clearly populationist (as much as pronatalist) framework of the contemporary demographic discourse held by the russian authorities articulates the domination • sergei v. zakharov40 of conservative thought during the second decade of the 21st century. this is not unrelated to the very marked rapprochement, increasingly visible on the public stage, between the political authorities and the orthodox church, which unfailingly supports the war waged by russia against ukraine. the latest embodiment of this conservative stance is, without a doubt, the decree of the president of the russian federation entitled “the foundations of state policy aimed at preserving and strengthening the spiritual and moral traditional values of russians” (november 9, 2022). at the same time, the conservative discourse around the so-called “return to traditional values” does not seem to have any significant effect on demographic behavior. above all, it is in strong contradiction with the profound tendencies that bring russia closer to other european countries. the age at marriage has indeed increased steadily (zakharov/mitrofanova 2018; mitrofanova 2020), even if it remains lower than in most european countries. the proportion of children born out of wedlock increased rapidly in the 1990s, reaching 30 percent of all births in 2005. thereafter, the rate became lower. from 2015, the proportion of births outside marriage oscillates between 21 and 22 percent, which places russia in the average of developed countries. it should also be noted that half of the children born out of wedlock are registered on the basis of a joint declaration by the parents, which indicates voluntary recognition by the fathers of their children born out of wedlock. all these indicators reveal the high prevalence of cohabitation that, as elsewhere in europe, has developed (stankuniene et al. 2009; mitrofanova/artamonova 2016; andreev et al. 2022) which the state, actively supported by the church,8 tries to combat. union breakdown remains very frequent, the rate being one of the highest in the world: between 50 and 60 per 100 of marriages (synthetic indicator calculated according to the duration of marriages). this indicator has not changed since the mid-1990s (churilova/zakharov 2021). sociological surveys demonstrate that matrimonial behavior of russians is diversifying: cohabitation is becoming widespread, normative, and early, while marriages are transforming into selective, choice-dependent, and late unions (blum et al. 2009; stankuniene et al. 2009; mitrofanova 2013, 2019; mitrofanova/artamonova 2016). the age at first childbearing is logically increasing following the transformation of the marriage model. apparently as a result of the 2006 policy measures, the interval between births was considerably reduced, but as we have seen above, this is more of a situational effect than a significant change in the fertility quantum. russian fertility began to rise in 2000, admittedly with a short, inexplicable interruption in 2004, but the recovery that followed preceded the adoption of the 2006 decree on the introduction of maternity capital. it is very likely that the policy reinforced the slight rise in cohort total fertility, without being decisive. however, this had mostly only a temporary effect, since period fertility began to fall again in the middle of the 2010s, and most likely the effect has disappeared for the 8 see speech of his holiness patriarch alexy ii of moscow and all rus’ at the council of bishops of the russian orthodox church, moscow, june 24, 2008. https://pravoslavie.ru/26960.html https://pravoslavie.ru/26960.html three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 41 generations born around the 1990s. moreover, a comparison of the trends observed in russia with those observed in europe testifies to a dynamic that is not specific to russia. fertility in russia is now in a zone that corresponds to that observed in many countries (excluding southern europe, which continues to be marked by low fertility), namely close to 1.5 children per woman. we cannot support claims about the high demographic effectiveness of pronatalist policy measures adopted in russia after 2006 because they either rely on direct fixation of the period effects (arkhangelsky et al. 2015) or estimate long-term effects on less or more complex models with various assumptions and limitations (slonimczyk/yurko 2014; yakovlev/sorvachev 2020), when it is possible to use the more direct and reliable measurement of final effects (andreev 2016) in the sense of complete cohort fertility, as demonstrated in our article. skepticism about the results and measures of pro-natalist policies, also shown in this article, is also growing among other experts (validova 2021; biryukova/sinyavskaya 2021). awareness of the failure of the pronatalist policy was expressed even at the official level in the fact that at the end of january 2023, having been waging a war in ukraine for a year, vladimir putin instructed the government to develop and submit in two weeks a set of additional measures aimed at increasing the birth rate and supporting families with children, providing for an assessment of the effectiveness of these measures, sources and amount of additional funding.9 at the same time, there are two important points regarding the changes in russian fertility patterns that may have not only short-term, but also medium-term consequences. first, it is very likely that the shortened intervals between births will be replaced by, on average, longer intervals, which would negatively contribute to the perspectives of period total fertility indicators. second, the expansion of the prevalence of the birth of three or more children in the very limited extent in which it occurs does not in any way solve the problem of the reproduction of russia’s population, but will intensify the multidimensional problems of the redistribution of national income in favor of limited and not very numerous ethnic, social and territorial groups of the population which are characterized by above average fertility with less stable economic and political environments, in particular in the north caucasus and siberia (sievert et al. 2011; kazenin/kozlov 2020; kazimov/zakharov 2021). in the medium term (within 20-30 years, as a period corresponding to the demographic length of a generation) in russia, one can hardly expect any fundamental changes in the quantum of fertility. the cohort total fertility rate will be maintained at the level of 1.6-1.7 births per woman, as the strong two-child ideal is still visible in surveys in russia (gudkova 2019), even in st. petersburg, the city with the lowest low fertility in russia (rotkirch/kesseli 2012). at the same time, more prominent fluctuations for the ptfr can be expected that will remain in the range of 1.4-1.8 births per woman due to multidirectional timing effects under the influence of changing political and economic conditions. 9 https://www.interfax.ru/russia/883641 https://www.interfax.ru/russia/883641 • sergei v. zakharov42 in this article, we have limited ourselves to analyzing only those official statistics which can be considered complete and reliable in russia. at the same time, russian statistics make it possible to analyze long-term changes in fertility patterns only in relation to the distribution of mothers by age at the birth of children of each order. some of the family and fertility surveys conducted in russia, including those within the framework of international comparative research projects (ggp, ess, wvs, evs, rhs, etc.) provide important information on a wide range of demographic and socio-economic variables; a number of publications based on these studies are mentioned above. however, in the context of russia’s passage along the path of the second demographic transition, they often give a contradictory picture. that is why in this work we have deliberately limited ourselves to an in-depth analysis of only the most reliable and verifiable indicators of fertility modernization, which are provided by routine vital statistics, and increment-decrement ageand birth-order-specific period and cohort fertility tables, which are computed from official statistics. we also did not include in this work a detailed consideration of such indicators as marriage rates and age at marriage, divorces and remarriages, the spread of premarital cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, the use of modern contraception, abortion prevalence, etc., which are related to the signs of the second demographic transition (van de kaa 2002; lesthaeghe/neidert 2006; lesthaeghe 2020). on the one hand, all these issues require special consideration and a variety of additional information, including survey data, which would entail the diversification of the adopted methodology and complicate the structure of the research. on the other hand, we mentioned above a number of important works and conclusions regarding changes in the nature of family formation, marriages, birth control in russia in recent decades. another limitation of our analysis concerns the abstraction from differences in the transformations of fertility patterns that manifest in urban and rural settlements, different provinces, ethnocultural and confessional groups. russia is a heterogeneous population with significantly different trends for, on the one hand, the highly educated urban strata of the population of central and northwest russia and the urals, and on the other hand, the ethnocultural areas of rural areas of the south, the north caucasus, the volga region and siberia, and some other remote areas in which minorities are characterized by a low level of education, rural organization of life, and having not yet fully completed the first demographic transition to low fertility, controlled at the individual level. these differences are of great interest for special studies, as they have an impact on fertility trends at the national level, including when measuring the unequal response of fertility to family policy financial measures (kazenin/kozlov 2020). at the same time, their importance should not be overestimated, even in the context of increased regionalism in the post-soviet period (streletsky 2017). more than 80 percent of the russian population is represented by russians and ethnic groups close to them (streletsky 2017) with long-standing uniform patterns of demographic behavior in low-fertility settings. three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 43 acknowledgments the author expresses gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and useful comments, which undoubtedly contributed to improving the structure and content of the article. in addition, the author would like to thank michele rivkinfish and galina rakhmanova for their invaluable assistance in 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(eds.): handbook of the sociology of youth in brics countries. singapore: world scientific publishing: 123-145. date of submission: 17.01.2022 date of acceptance: 30.10.2023 dr. sergei v. zakharov (*). university of strasbourg. strasbourg, france. e-mail: sergei.v.zakharov@gmail.com url: https://sage.unistra.fr/membres/enseignants-chercheurs/zakharov-sergei/ https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2008.19.24 https://doi.org/10.17323/demreview.v10i1.17259 mailto:sergei.v.zakharov@gmail.com https://sage.unistra.fr/membres/enseignants-chercheurs/zakharov-sergei/ three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 51 appendix tab. a1: key indicators of period fertility in russia: 1990-2020 calendar years 1990 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 period total fertility rate (ptfr) by the age of 50 1.89 1.20 1.29 1.57 1.78 1.50 contribution of women under 25 and 25 and over to the total period fertility: under 25 years old cumulative fertility rate of age group under 25, ptfr (-25) 1.06 0.61 0.57 0.56 0.56 0.44 % to ptfr 56.2 51.0 44.4 35.5 31.5 29.2 25 and over years old cumulative fertility rate of age group 25 and over, ptfr (25+) 0.83 0.59 0.72 1.01 1.22 1.06 % to ptfr 43.7 44.0 55.6 64.5 68.5 70.8 mean age of women at childbearing, years all births 25.2 25.8 26.5 27.7 28.2 28.8 first order births 22.7 23.5 24.1 24.9 25.5 25.9 indicators estimated on the base of ageand order–specific period fertility tables parity progression ratios for women by the age of 50 first births (ppr 01) 0.945 0.847 0.839 0.851 0.851 0.756 second births (ppr 12) 0.725 0.422 0.470 0.597 0.688 0.613 third births (ppr 23) 0.259 0.178 0.208 0.302 0.375 0.384 fourth births (ppr 34) 0.252 0.219 0.248 0.295 0.317 0.356 distribution of women by number of children born by the age of 50, % 0 births 5.5 15.3 16.1 14.9 14.9 24.2 1 birth 26.0 49.0 44.5 34.3 26.6 29.2 2 births 50.8 29.4 31.2 35.5 36.6 28.7 3 or more births 17.7 6.3 8.2 15.3 21.9 17.9 all 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 notes: ptfr is the conventional total fertility rate, calculated as the sum of fertility rates of the second kind (frequencies, in the denominator “number of women of a given age”) for one-year age groups of women. ptfr (-25) is the sum of fertility rates for women under 25 years of age, tfr (25+) is the sum of fertility rates for women aged over 25 years. mean age of women at childbearing is calculated as an arithmetic weighted average, where the birth rates of the second kind (frequencies, i.e. the denominator of the rates is the number of women of a given age) for one-year age groups are used as weights; the mean age of a woman at the birth of her first child is calculated in the same way, but using fertility rates of the second kind for first births. parity progression ratio (ppr) is the expected value of the transition to the next birth for a woman over the entire reproductive life, showing the proportion of women who give birth to a next child among women who have given birth to one child fewer. • sergei v. zakharov52 distribution of women by number of children born (by the age of 50) is the expected final distribution of women by number of children ever born, provided that the period pprs remain unchanged at the level of the reference year. source: calculations of s.v. zakharov based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). tab. a2: key indicators of cohort fertility in russia: female birth cohorts 19601970 (observed values) and 1975-1990 (expected values) female birth cohorts 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 cohort total fertility rate (ctfr) by the age of 50 1.85 1.67 1.60 1.62 1.68 1.74 1.62 contribution of women under 25 and 25 and over to the total cohort fertility: under 25 years old cumulative fertility rate of age group under 25, ctfr (-25) 1.03 1.04 0.92 0.75 0.64 0.58 0.56 % to ctfr 55.8 62.4 57.3 46.5 37.8 33.5 34.8 25 and over years old cumulative fertility rate of age group 25 and over, ptfr (25+) 0.82 0.63 0.68 0.87 1.04 1.16 1.05 % to ctfr 44.2 37.6 42.7 53.5 62.2 66.5 65.2 mean age of women at childbearing, years all births 25.1 24.8 25.5 26.9 27.9 28.2 28.2 first order births 22.9 22.7 22.8 23.6 24.7 25.1 25.4 indicators estimated on the base of ageand order–specific cohort fertility tables parity progression ratios for women by the age of 50 first births (ppr 01) 0.949 0.920 0.923 0.883 0.863 0.856 0.790 second births (ppr 12) 0.695 0.615 0.541 0.582 0.634 0.668 0.667 third births (ppr 23) 0.253 0.239 0.251 0.286 0.326 0.358 0.396 fourth births (ppr 34) 0.270 0.273 0.272 0.267 0.272 0.297 0.345 distribution of women by number of children born by the age of 50, % 0 births 5.1 8.0 7.7 11.6 13.3 14.1 20.8 1 birth 29.0 35.5 42.3 36.9 31.8 28.6 26.4 2 births 49.3 43.0 37.5 36.8 37.1 36.8 31.8 3 or more births 16.6 13.5 12.5 14.7 17.8 20.5 21.0 all 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 notes: all estimates obtained on the basis of special cohort fertility tables, taking into account the age of the woman and the order of birth of children. for cohorts of women born in 19601970, the observed values are presented; for 1975-1990 cohorts expected values are given, while maintaining the functions of changing the probability of having another child with the age of a woman, observed in 2018-2020. cohort born in 1975 reached 45 years by 2021 http://www.demogr.mpg.de three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition • 53 and the cumulative observed fertility is at least 99.8 percent of the expected ultimate value of ctfr; the 1980 cohort reached 40 years of age and the corresponding contribution of observed cumulative fertility to the expected ctfr is 97-98 percent; for the 1985 cohort the corresponding value for the age of 35 years is 86-89 percent; for the 1990 cohort, 6570 percent. ctfr is the cohort total fertility, calculated as the sum of fertility rates for one-year age groups. ctfr (-25) is the sum of fertility rates for women under the age of 25; ctfr (25+) is the sum of fertility rates for women over 25. mean age of women at childbearing is calculated as an arithmetic weighted average, where the birth rates of the first kind (intensities or occurrence-exposure rates are used as weights, i.e. the denominator of the rates is the number of women at risk of having a next child) for one-year age groups are used as weights; the mean age of a woman at the birth of her first child is calculated in the same way, but using fertility rates of the first kind for first births (for women who had never given birth). parity progression ratio (ppr): observed (for cohorts aged 50 and over by 2021) and expected (for cohorts aged 30 and over) values of the transition to the next birth for a woman during her entire reproductive life, showing the proportion of women who give birth to another child among women who had given birth to one child fewer. distribution of women by number of children born (by the age of 50) is the final distribution of women by number of children ever born, observed for cohorts born in 1960-1970 and expected for cohorts born in 1975-1990, provided that the functions of the change in period pprs with the woman's age observed in 2018-2020 remain unchanged. source: calculations of s.v. zakharov based on data from the human fertility database (http://www.demogr.mpg.de) and unpublished data from the federal state statistics service of russia (rosstat). http://www.demogr.mpg.de published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mortality compression and variability in age at death in india mortality compression and variability in age at death in india suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam abstract: the global rise of life expectancy at birth has attracted worldwide interest, especially in understanding the pace of mortality transition in developing countries. in this study, we assess the progress of mortality transition in india during four decades between 1970 and 2013. we estimate measures of mortality compression and variability in age at death to assess the trends and patterns in mortality compression for india as a whole and its twelve biggest states. the results reveal an unequivocal convergence pattern in mortality compression across the states underpinned by the reduction in premature mortality and emerging homogeneity in mortality. results by gender show that women are more homogenous in their mortality across the country because of an explicit reduction in the gini coeffi cients at age 10 by the age group of 15-29 years. mortality compression has changed in recent decades because of the increased survival of women in their reproductive ages, which marked a distinct phase of mortality transition in india. the pace of mortality transition, however, varies; adult mortality decline was greater than senescent mortality decline. these results show that india has passed the middle stage of mortality transition and has entered an early phase of low mortality. keywords: mortality compression · variability in age at death · gini coeffi cient · adult mortality · premature mortality · mortality transition 1 introduction 1.1 the stages of mortality transition the global rise of life expectancy at birth (e0) is attributed to improvements in mortality at all ages, which generally contribute to rising human longevity (dowd et al. 2010; vaupel 1986; vaupel et al. 1998; vaupel 2010). the mortality decline among infants and children initially affects the level of e0 (clark 2011; moser et al. 2005; wang et al. 2016). adult mortality, the probability of dying between age 15 and 60, comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 319-358 (date of release: 27.10.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-20 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-20en8 • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam320 together with infant and child mortality decline are reshaping the age pattern of mortality (cheung/robine 2007; heligman/pollard 1980; rau et al. 2008; tuljapurkar et al. 2000). the transformations in the age pattern of mortality in conjunction with mortality decline results in mortality compression, a process in which deaths are concentrated in a narrow age interval of age at death (cheung et al. 2005; kannisto 2000, 2001; myers/manton 1984; thatcher et al. 2010). the phenomenon of mortality compression and associated changes in other related phenomena such as variability in age at death or degree of inter-individual variability in age at death (shkolnikov et al. 2003: 306) and rectangularization of the survival curve (wilmoth/ horiuchi 1999: 475) are signifi cant determinants of the advances in mortality transition (cheung et al. 2009; kannisto 2000; lynch/brown 2001; myers/manton 1984; nusselder/mackenbach 1996; paccaud et al. 1998; wilmoth/horiuchi 1999). over the historical trends of demographic transition of developed nations, there is consensus among researchers that mortality compression is a fundamental demographic process for comprehending the progress of mortality transition (bohk-ewald et al. 2017; kannisto 2000; robine 2001; smits/monden 2009; thatcher et al. 2010). while developed nations have been passing through a low mortality regime since the middle of the 20th century and have been experiencing strong mortality compression (kannisto 2000; thatcher et al. 2010), india, as a developing south asian country, experienced a rapid mortality decline in 44 years between 1970 and 2013 (arokiasamy/yadav 2014; bhat et al. 1995; bhat/navaneetham 1991; chaurasia 2010; navaneetham 1993; visaria 2004). a key concern arises about how quickly and persuasively the mortality transition in india has characterized the process of mortality compression, spurred by a reduction in variability in age at death (yadav 2013). 1.2 mortality transition in india during the last stage of mortality transition, the contours of mortality and morbidity are characterized by a low mortality and a heavier burden of chronic noncommunicable diseases (ncds) (omran 2005; robine 2001). nevertheless, with structural changes in disease patterns (kumar 1993; subramanian et al. 2006; visaria 2004), india endured a dual burden of ncds and communicable diseases (cds). specifi cally, the burden of infectious and parasitic diseases for urban men and urban women declined from 27 percent and 25 percent, respectively, of total deaths in 1975 (org 1979: 78) to 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively, of total deaths in 2017 (org 2019: 72). the burden of diseases of the circulatory system in urban men and urban women increased from 10.7 percent and 13 percent, respectively, of total deaths in 1975 (org 1979: 78) to 33.7 percent and 34.3 percent, respectively, of total deaths in 2017 (org 2019: 26), with a signifi cant concentration of deaths in adult and old age groups. despite this dual burden, the rapid mortality decline in india is signifying an epidemiological transition similar to that of developed nations (joshi et al. 2006; yadav/arokiasamy 2014). on the whole, the burden of deaths attributed to ncds and cds was as high as 63.5 percent and 26.7 percent, respectively, in 2017 (global burden of disease collaborative network 2018). between 1970 and 2018, the infant mortality rate (imr) was cut by two-thirds from 129 in 1970, to 80 in 1990, to mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 321 32 per 1000 live births in 2018 (org 2020; rgi 1972-2013), and adult mortality for men and women showed a decline from 358 and 330 per 1000 persons, respectively, in 1970 to 145 and 228 per 1000 persons, respectively, in 2010 (rajaratnam et al. 2010: 1709). improvements in these mortality indicators as well as structural changes in disease pattern indicate that the current phase of mortality transition is signifi cantly modulated through improved survival at adult and old (60 and above) ages (horiuchi/wilmoth 1998), despite the fact that imr decline played a dominant role in the past in india (bhat/navaneetham 1991; navaneetham 1993). edwards/tuljapurkar (2005: 647) acknowledge that higher-order moments (variance, skewness, and kurtosis) of distribution of age at death better demonstrate differentials in mortality and variability in age at death that contribute to the process of mortality compression than fi rst-order moments (e0 or mean) do (aburto/van raalte 2018; canudas-romo 2008; chaurasia 2010; cheung et al. 2009; missov et al. 2015; németh 2017; shkolnikov et al. 2003; wilmoth/horiuchi 1999). developed nations display a low disparity in the lifespan (e†), which is average remaining life expectancy at the ages when death occurs, and a higher threshold age, which separates early deaths from late deaths, though not restricted to old age (zhang/vaupel 2009: 726), as the characteristics of increasing homogeneity in old ages (cheung/robine 2007; nusselder/mackenbach 1996; thatcher et al. 2010). also, cheung et al. (2009: 584) show that a decline in adult heterogeneity spurred mortality compression in switzerland between 1920 and 2005. both indicators (lifespan, threshold age) are higher in developed nations compared to developing nations (aburto/van raalte 2018; bohk-ewald et al. 2017; vaupel et al. 2011). indian women show an analogue threshold age value of 72.8 years compared to women in japan, france, switzerland, and italy but a higher e† value of 18.2 years (vaupel et al. 2011: 2, table 1). with declining or negligible imr, a convergence in age at death is incontrovertible as the model age at death (m*) converges (canudas-romo 2008: 1198; vallin/meslé 2004) and the variance of mortality distribution at age 0 (s0) and age 10 (s10) follows a similar trajectory (engelman et al. 2010: 521, fig. 1a). this development attests to multiplying homogeneity among the sub-populations over adult and old ages that expedite the progression in variability in age at death and mortality compression (myers/manton 1984; vaupel et al. 1979; vaupel et al. 1998) and thus marks the outset of an advanced or later stage of mortality transition. in this context, india has shown an impressive decline in imr and adult mortality over time. hence, transformation in the distribution of age at death is exemplifi ed by its contribution to adultage and old-age mortality, which plays a crucial role in the pace of variability in age at death and mortality compression (canudas-romo 2008). studies on the association of the age pattern of mortality and its linkages with mortality transition are limited in india (arokiasamy/yadav 2014; chaurasia 2010; yadav/arokiasamy 2014). previous mortality studies in india dealt predominantly with changes in life expectancy and sex differentials in mortality (bhat/navaneetham 1991; canudas-romo et al. 2016; kumar 1993; navaneetham 1993; singh/ladusingh 2016; subramanian et al. 2006; yadav et al. 2012). it is important to comprehend the interlinkages between the transformation in the age pattern of mortality and the process of mortality transition by exploring the fundamental phenomena of mortal• suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam322 ity compression and variability in age at death. recognizing this theoretical gap, we investigated the progress of mortality compression and variance of age at death including variability in age at death during 44 years from 1970 to 2013 for india as a whole and its twelve biggest states for the fi rst time. we explored (a) the level of mortality compression and variability in age at death in a high mortality regime versus a medium or a low mortality regime, and (b) the contribution of adult-age mortality and old-age mortality to mortality compression and variability in age at death in a high mortality regime versus a medium or a low mortality regime. we tested the hypothesis whether the mortality compression has become stronger with the reduction in variability in age at death over the course of the mortality transition. the specifi c objectives of the study are (1) to measure the concentration of deaths in a narrow interval of age at death, (2) to assess the contribution of variability in age at death, and (3) to investigate the convergence or divergence in mortality compression of different indian states during mortality transition. overall, the study examines the progress of mortality transition through advances in mortality compression and variability in age at death. 2 data and methods in this study, we used multiple data sources and methods to assess the progress of mortality transition in india and its twelve biggest states, primarily by examining the process of mortality compression and variance of age at death including variability in age at death. 2.1 sample registration system the offi ce of the registrar general of india (orgi) introduced the sample registration system (srs) as a pilot scheme in the period 1964-65, and it was implemented as a full-scale system in the period 1969-70. the srs in india is a dual record system. the baseline survey of households in sample units provides the usual resident population. resident part-time enumerators record all births and deaths of usual residents in the sample of villages/urban blocks, and a full-time supervisor records births and deaths in the sample unit that occurred during the six-monthly retrospective survey. the unmatched and partially matched events are re-verifi ed in the fi eld to obtain the count of true events. this procedure leads to a quantitative assessment of the distortions in the two sets of records, and hence, it is a self-evaluating technique, which is a major advantage of srs (org & cc 2019). srs allows comparison of estimates, as the methodology and defi nition of the statistics are consistent over time. bhat (2002: 130, table 6) demonstrates that completeness of death registration for all ages in the period 1971-80 was 94 percent and 93 percent for males and females, respectively. the completeness of death registration for females deteriorated in the period 1981-1991, which was attributed to the indian states of punjab, haryana, uttar pradesh, and maharashtra. saikia et al. (2011: 76, table 1) showed that imr estimates from the national family household survey (nfhs) were in acmortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 323 cord with srs for the periods 1991-1995, 1996-2000, and 2002-2005. yadav/ram (2015: 114) observed birth undercount by 2-3 percent by srs between 1991 and 2010. srs data in india is considered most reliable regarding the death statistics. 2.2 construction of life tables we constructed new life tables for the entire period from 1970 to 2013. the main input is annual age-specifi c death rates (asdr) from india’s srs for the entire reference period (rgi 2016; rgi 1972-2013). the fi ve-year moving average of asdr is used for the construction of period life tables for 1970-2013. a life table for a fi veyear period represents estimates for the mid-year of that interval. srs provides abridged life tables (org 1986-2015) by quinquennial age groups; however, it does not provide life expectancy (ex) data for age groups over 70 years for the period 1970-1994. notably, asdr are provided up to age 70+ for the period 1970-1994 and up to age 85+ from 1995 onwards. therefore, the construction of life tables is essential for the comparability of ex and other estimates based on age at death for analytical purposes. new life tables were constructed based on the methodology recommended by the united nations (united nations 1982; unpd 2013). using the last six asdr, the gompertz-makeham (gm) model (gompertz 1825; juckett/ rosenberg 1993; makeham 1867) was applied to estimate the force of mortality (μx) at higher ages up to the age of 110 years. thus, the probability of dying between age x and x+n (nqx) was estimated up to age 110 for the construction of the life tables. the newly constructed life tables for the fi ve-year rolling periods of 19702013 were based on this methodology. these new life tables provided life table deaths between age x and x+n (ndx) up to age 110, which was the base parameter for examining the process of mortality compression and variability in age at death (canudas-romo 2008; kannisto 2000). 2.3 single-year distribution of age at death the distribution of age at death for india was bimodal during the 1970s. one of the two peaks was in the 0-1 age group, and another was in the 70-79 age group. in less than 20 years, the imr declined swiftly and, hence, by the mid-1980s the age at death was unimodal: the peak only exists in old age groups (arokiasamy/yadav 2014: 11, fig. 3). in such conditions, researchers prefer to eliminate the effect of infant and adolescent mortality in order to test mortality compression (kannisto 2000; nusselder/mackenbach 1996; robine 2001). the life table deaths for age groups 10 and above (5dx : x ≥ 10) were disaggregated into single year life table deaths using the karup-king third-difference formula. this interpolation method assumes that the distribution pattern of grouped data is a valid indication of the distribution pattern within groups, maintaining the original data and the group totals at the cost of less smoothness (popoff/judson 2004: 696, 702). applying this method, we derived single-year distribution of age at death between 10 and 110 years which was smoothened using the cubic spline method (cheung et al. 2009; kostaki/panousis 2001). henceforth, the single-year, smoothened distribution of age at death between • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam324 10 and 110 years is referred to as the distribution of age at death or age at death which was used to examine mortality compression and variability in age at death. 2.4 methodology for mortality compression and variability in age at death we adopted and computed the following mortality compression measures: modal age at death (m*), standard deviation (sd) for age 10 and older (sd(10+)), between the age 10 and below m* (sd(<m*)), for age m* and older (sd(m*+)) (canudasromo 2008; kannisto 2001; thatcher et al. 2010), and c50 (c-family) (kannisto 2000: see annex), which is the best known measure for computing the concentration of 50 percent of life table deaths in a narrow age interval of age at death. mathematically, the sd about m* for distribution of age at death is an absolute measure, which is expressed as: where, m*: modal age at death; t: time (year); a: initial age; w: oldest age; x: age; d: deaths at age x. similarly, we applied the gini coeffi cient at age 10 (g10) to compute the variability in age at death (shkolnikov et al. 2003) based on the newly constructed abridged life tables. the gini coeffi cient at age 10 for an abridged life table is expressed as: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 325 where, : adjusted average person-years lived by the individuals who die within the interval lx – lx+n; w: oldest age; lx: person-years lived at age x; n: age interval. the application of decomposition technique for g10 was based on standardization of asdr. the decomposition technique is applied over the permutations of populations and time, running from age 10 to the oldest age, for computing the agespecifi c contributions to g10. it is expressed as where, δi is the contribution of ith age-interval [x,x + n) to the difference in e10 between two populations, m[xi] is a vector of age-specifi c mortality rates with its elements in the fi rst population for x ≤ xi and in the second population for x ≥ xi (shkolnikov et al. 2003: 325). we applied beta convergence, i.e. a negative relationship between the change of an estimate in a period and the level of the estimate in the initial period, and sigma convergence, i.e. decline in the dispersion of mortality distribution (barro/sala i martin 1990; janssen et al. 2016) to test the process of convergence in c50. beta convergence was carried out by regressing the annual change in c50 in the period t0 to t1 with c50 in t0 for india. statistically, where, c50: concentration of 50 percent of deaths in an age interval of age at death; t0: the initial year (the period 1970-1974); t1: the end year (the period 2009-2013); α: constant, β: the slope; and ε: the error term of a regression model. sigma convergence was executed by computing the ratio of sd(<m*) to sd(10+). we defi ne the ratio rs(t) as follows: where, r: ratio; s: a region (indian state). the ratio rs(t) measures the proportion of variation contributed by age at death from 10 years and below the m* about m* (sd(<m*)) to the total variation of age at death between 10 and 110 years about m* (sd(10+)) for a region s at time t. demographically, the trends in rs(t) show the reduction in premature mortality, which is deaths between age 10 and below m*, adjusted for the shift in m*. the rs(t) is a relative measure which is applied to describe the progression in the variability of the selected states (regions) towards a coherent value or a limiting value over the transitional period from 1970 to 2013. another advantage of this ratio is its ability to identify outliers among states for a sigma convergence. from the known level of e† for developed countries (vaupel et al. 2011), the lowest known value of e† is 9.2 for (6) (7) (8) • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam326 japan with the highest e0 value of 86.4 years in 2011. given the low level of e†, the value of ratio rs(t) would tend towards a limiting value for japan. in the condition of minimum premature mortality or low mortality condition, a normal curve about m* is evident (lexis 1877 as cited in kannisto (2000: 159-160)). at this stage, variability in age at death would be minimal, and the rs(t) would approach the value of 1.0. 2.5 validating model fi t and life table estimates we fi tted the gm model over asdr to estimate nqx in old age up to 110 years (carey et al. 1992; vaupel et al. 1998), assuming nqx follows an exponential curve. the levenberg-marquardt (lm) algorithm for a non-linear regression method was used for optimizing the parameters of the gm model because it interpolates between the gauss-newton algorithm and the method of gradient descent (ibrahim 2008: 4) and thus provides balanced estimates of model parameters. the gompertz model or law of mortality is universal for all populations; however, carey et al. (1992) raise doubts regarding the central concept of gerontology, especially the heterogeneity (γ) of the study population. the gm model: μx = c + abx; where x ≥ 35, a > 0,b > 1, c ≥ -a (makeham 1867) takes into account the non-zero extrinsic mortality or assumes hazard c at all ages x in addition to a and b which are death rate at initial age and slope of mortality increase, respectively. however, it does not account for the heterogeneity in the population. in that case, the gm model may lead to biases of model parameters (missov/németh 2015: 117, 118). the gamma gm model accounts for deceleration in mortality rates at older ages and shows a better fi t compared to the logistic model (bongaarts 2005: 25, fig. 1; missov/németh 2015: 118, fig. 2). however, despite these constraints, the mortality measures like life expectancy, life disparity, entropy, and the gini coeffi cient are only slightly sensitive to model misspecifi cation. therefore, gompertz family is most suitable and benefi cial for studying human mortality data. modal age at death is a measure that is deemed to be sensitive to model misclassifi cation (missov/németh 2015: 130, fig. 5). we applied the gm model for india because mortality data are aggregated for the population and, thus, heterogeneity (γ) in the population is unobserved. it may be noted that there has been some contention among indian demographers over the success of applying the gompertz family to the indian populations. saikia et al. (2011: 78, fig. 2) show that the gompertz model did not fi t well for the periods 1981-1985 and 2000-2004, and hence mortality estimates in old ages for india were called into doubt. however, we confi rm that the gm model fi tted well over asdr for india for the entire period of 1970-2013, satisfying the conditions of the parameters of the model. therefore, the mortality estimates in old ages are robust enough (lee 2003). the fi t of the gm model over the asdr from age 35 is signifi cant at the one percent level (table 1, 2, and fig. 1). the proportion of the variance explained by the gm model averages out at 0.9769 and 0.9678 for women and men, respectively, for the period 1970-2013. the slope b of the gm model for men and women remained nearly constant from 1970 through to 2013 (table 1, 2 (last column)) and therefore depicts shifting of mortality rates in old ages (horiuchi/wilmoth 1998) (fig. 1) similar to those of men and women in developed nations (bongaarts 2005: 27, fig. 2, 28, mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 327 tab. 1: parameters of the gompertz-makeham model, indian women, 19702013 year a c b 1970-1974 0.0179497 0.0002530 1.1129957 1971-1975 0.0181967 0.0002552 1.1136880 1972-1976 0.0177643 0.0002380 1.1151444 1973-1977 0.0161678 0.0002488 1.1139609 1974-1978 0.0137552 0.0003159 1.1096285 1975-1979 0.0128564 0.0003301 1.1083128 1976-1980 0.0124846 0.0002966 1.1091272 1977-1981 0.0118703 0.0003035 1.1083241 1978-1982 0.0119633 0.0002858 1.1081265 1979-1983 0.0118245 0.0002577 1.1093404 1980-1984 0.0113718 0.0002480 1.1101719 1981-1985 0.0100052 0.0002965 1.1069923 1982-1986 0.0108660 0.0002380 1.1106573 1983-1987 0.0099030 0.0002444 1.1102394 1984-1988 0.0092907 0.0002413 1.1103814 1985-1989 0.0091276 0.0002172 1.1116056 1986-1990 0.0094232 0.0001662 1.1160647 1987-1991 0.0092275 0.0001597 1.1164004 1988-1992 0.0102529 0.0001335 1.1195324 1989-1993 0.0098395 0.0001362 1.1187246 1990-1994 0.0094743 0.0001533 1.1162522 1991-1995 0.0088546 0.0001803 1.1128260 1992-1996 0.0072246 0.0002445 1.1071916 1993-1997 0.0050294 0.0003167 1.1026522 1994-1998 0.0047142 0.0003328 1.1018568 1995-1999 0.0030074 0.0003922 1.0992254 1996-2000 0.0016532 0.0004423 1.0972138 1997-2001 0.0004362 0.0005011 1.0948280 1998-2002 0.0013839 0.0005513 1.0931025 1999-2003 0.0021177 0.0005653 1.0921804 2000-2004 0.0003725 0.0004370 1.0956443 2001-2005 0.0005823 0.0004084 1.0965212 2002-2006 0.0001576 0.0003382 1.0993023 2003-2007 0.0013817 0.0002708 1.1025866 2004-2008 0.0018518 0.0002299 1.1050549 2005-2009 0.0000082 0.0002573 1.1038210 2006-2010 0.0002451 0.0002570 1.1037615 2007-2011 0.0005430 0.0002391 1.1046662 2008-2012 0.0004830 0.0002419 1.1042331 2009-2013 0.0010027 0.0002338 1.1043491 source: own calculations using asdr (rgi 1972-2013); μx = c + abx, x is age; the parameter a, c, and b are all signifi cant at the one percent level for each year. • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam328 tab. 2: parameters of the gompertz-makeham model, indian men, 1970-2013 year a c b 1970-1974 0.00169 0.00133 1.08872 1971-1975 0.00464 0.00109 1.09209 1972-1976 0.00196 0.00132 1.08946 1973-1977 0.00127 0.00146 1.08734 1974-1978 0.00016 0.00153 1.08668 1975-1979 0.00168 0.00169 1.08442 1976-1980 0.00016 0.00135 1.08805 1977-1981 0.00350 0.00100 1.09239 1978-1982 0.00391 0.00083 1.09494 1979-1983 0.00618 0.00065 1.09859 1980-1984 0.00679 0.00056 1.10126 1981-1985 0.00290 0.00085 1.09392 1982-1986 0.00205 0.00089 1.09282 1983-1987 0.00170 0.00092 1.09234 1984-1988 0.00192 0.00088 1.09290 1985-1989 0.00258 0.00080 1.09425 1986-1990 0.00467 0.00064 1.09767 1987-1991 0.00421 0.00062 1.09793 1988-1992 0.00508 0.00057 1.09937 1989-1993 0.00364 0.00064 1.09713 1990-1994 0.00329 0.00068 1.09576 1991-1995 0.00343 0.00067 1.09557 1992-1996 0.00435 0.00064 1.09614 1993-1997 0.00126 0.00085 1.09144 1994-1998 0.00021 0.00092 1.09021 1995-1999 0.00026 0.00097 1.08890 1996-2000 0.00203 0.00116 1.08605 1997-2001 0.00329 0.00128 1.08428 1998-2002 0.00336 0.00129 1.08376 1999-2003 0.00249 0.00125 1.08377 2000-2004 0.00102 0.00103 1.08656 2001-2005 0.00104 0.00083 1.08961 2002-2006 0.00259 0.00069 1.09214 2003-2007 0.00469 0.00054 1.09589 2004-2008 0.00659 0.00045 1.09872 2005-2009 0.00534 0.00049 1.09766 2006-2010 0.00476 0.00053 1.09649 2007-2011 0.00433 0.00055 1.09574 2008-2012 0.00269 0.00066 1.09279 2009-2013 0.00470 0.00053 1.09583 source: own calculations using asdr (rgi 1972-2013); μx = c + abx, x is age; the parameter a, c, and b are all signifi cant at the one percent level for each year. mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 329 fig 3, panel b). the differences in life expectancy at age 50 (e50) and life expectancy at age 60 (e60) between srs and our own calculations are minimal, which is shown in table 3 for the fi ve-year intercensal periods. lastly, we conducted analyses for india as a whole and its twelve biggest states by sex and residence for the rolling fi ve-year periods between 1970 and 2013, the critical period that represented india’s transition from a high to a medium and to a low mortality regime. the twelve biggest states included are andhra pradesh, gujarat, karnataka, kerala, maharashtra, punjab, tamil nadu (pioneer indian states), assam, haryana, madhya pradesh, odisha, and uttar pradesh (backward indian states) (see table 4). fig. 1: gompertz-makeham (gm) fi t for selected years for india, by sex -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group 1973-1977 1983-1987 1993-1997 2003-2007 2009-2013 (a) women, srs ln of force of mortality (nmx) (c) men, srs ln of force of mortality (nmx) (b) women, gm ln of force of mortality (nmx) (d) men, gm ln of force of mortality (nmx) -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group note: mortality rate is shown per person. source: own calculations using asdr (rgi 1972-2013) • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam330 3 results 3.1 age pattern of mortality and premature mortality figure 2 illustrates the transformation in age patterns of mortality for women and men by residence between 1970 and 2013, signifying a signifi cant period of mortality transition in india. a fl attening age pattern of mortality – across all ages – is evident, and it is most prominent for rural women compared to other population categories. only in the infant, child, and adolescent ages do rural and urban women now have a higher nqx ; otherwise, women aged 25 and older have a lower nqx compared to men. the 30q15 for rural women (fig. 2a) and rural men (fig. 2c) declined by a rate (cagr) of -2.2 and -1.1 percentage points per year, respectively, in the transitional period. the swift decline of 30q15 for women refl ects a sharp decline in mortality in childbearing ages. overall, reshaping of the age pattern of mortality in india took a relatively short time, i.e. the last two decades of the 1990s and 2000s. the fi rst of the two components that contributed to this transformation is the decline in the imr since the 1970s, and the second is the decline in young adult mortality (30q15) since the 1990s. therefore, infant mortality together with young adult mortality decline indicate an improvement in the chances of survival in india. in principle, the comparison of mortality rates contains the same information as the comparison of mortality distribution (edwards/tuljapurkar 2005: 670). the structural changes in the pattern of causes of death immensely contributed to the transformation in age at death leading to the concentration of death in old ages (yadav/arokiasamy 2014: fig. 2 and 3). the shift in the concentration of deaths attributable to certain infectious and parasitic diseases for urban women in the 0-4 age group and 65 plus age group was from 38 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, in 1975 (org 1979: 78) to 8.9 percent and 23.6 percent, respectively, in 2013 (org 2015). the toll of deaths attributable to certain infectious and parasitic diseases tab. 3: life expectancy (ex) at age 50 and 60 for selected years, by sex, 19702013 year women men e50 e60 e50 e60 srs estimate srs estimate srs estimate srs estimate 1970-1975 21.3 21.3 14.3 14.2 19.8 19.9 13.4 13.5 1976-1980 23.0 22.0 15.9 14.7 20.5 20.1 14.1 13.7 1981-1985 23.8 23.0 16.4 15.6 21.4 21.1 14.6 14.2 1986-1990 23.7 23.5 16.1 15.8 21.7 21.6 14.7 14.6 1991-1995 24.8 24.3 17.1 16.5 22.3 22.2 15.3 15.1 1996-2000 25.5 25.2 17.8 17.5 22.8 22.7 15.8 15.7 2001-2005 26.7 26.5 18.7 18.4 23.7 23.7 16.4 16.4 2002-2006 26.9 26.6 18.9 18.5 24.0 23.9 16.7 16.5 2009-2013 27.2 26.7 19.0 18.9 24.2 24.0 16.9 16.8 source: own calculations using asdr (rgi 1972-2013) mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 331 turned upside down from child to old age groups during 39 years between 1975 and 2013. since the mid-1990s the country has experienced enormous rise in the burden of chronic ncds which intruded in the later years of life. the high concentration of deaths of 21 percent and 63 percent, attributable to the diseases of the circulatory system, among urban men in the 25-44 and 45-64 age groups, respectively, in 1975 gradually shifted to older age groups, with 36.3 percent and 45.6 percent, respectively, in the 45-64 and 65 plus age groups, in 2013 (org 1979; org 2015). a similar shift in concentration of deaths was evident for other population categories (yadav/ tab. 4: annual estimates of birth rate, death rate, imr, and tfr for selected states, india, by residence, 1971 and 2013 states region category 1971 2013 birth death imr tfr birth death imr tfr rate rate rate rate rural india – – 38.9 16.4 138 5.4 22.9 7.5 44 2.5 andhra pradesh south p 35.6 15.7 115 4.8 17.7 8.3 44 1.9 assam northeast b 39.3 18.7 144 5.8 23.5 8.2 54 2.3 gujarat west p 41.5 17.6 155 5.9 22.2 7.2 43 2.5 haryana north b 44.2 10.4 74 7.3 22.4 6.7 44 2.3 karnataka south p 34.6 14.0 105 4.8 19.1 8.0 34 2.0 kerala south p 31.3 9.1 60 4.2 15.0 7.0 13 1.9 madhya pradesh central b 40.0 16.6 144 6.1 28.2 8.5 57 3.1 maharashtra west p 33.7 13.5 111 4.9 17.2 7.1 29 1.9 odisha east b 34.7 15.9 131 4.8 20.5 8.7 53 2.2 punjab north p 35.0 10.9 109 5.5 16.3 7.5 28 1.7 tamil nadu south p 32.9 16.5 127 4.2 15.7 8.1 24 1.7 uttar pradesh central b 46.3 21.1 173 6.9 28.1 8.1 53 3.3 urban india – – 30.1 9.7 82 4.1 17.3 5.6 27 1.8 andhra pradesh south b 31.3 9.1 65 3.8 16.7 5.0 29 1.7 assam northeast p 31.0 9.5 73 4.3 15.4 5.6 32 1.5 gujarat west b 35.8 13.0 110 4.7 18.5 5.5 22 2.0 haryana north p 43.4 7.3 58 4.6 19.0 5.3 32 2.0 karnataka south p 25.3 7.2 54 3.4 16.7 5.2 24 1.6 kerala south b 29.6 8.4 48 3.8 14.0 6.6 9 1.8 madhya pradesh central p 34.5 9.8 79 4.7 19.6 6.1 37 2.0 maharashtra west b 29.0 9.7 88 3.9 15.4 5.0 16 1.6 odisha east p 33.0 10.0 84 4.3 14.4 6.3 38 1.5 punjab north p 31.4 8.7 76 4.4 14.7 5.4 23 1.6 tamil nadu south b 27.8 9.3 77 3.3 15.5 6.3 17 1.7 uttar pradesh central p 34.7 13.1 119 4.9 23.3 5.9 38 2.5 note: the pioneer (p) and backward (b) states are categorized on the basis of death rate, birth rate, and imr in the period 1993-1997 source: rgi (2016: table 1) • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam332 arokiasamy 2014: fig. 4 and 5). the high concentration of deaths at adult and old ages was attributable to the prodigious rise of ncds as well as the structural shift of cds. the distribution of age at death characterized by an increasing concentration of deaths about m* shifting to older ages demonstrated a greater reduction in premature mortality between the age of 10 and below m* (kannisto 2001) in the transitional period from 1970 to 2013, and was especially conspicuous for women (fig. 3a and 3b: c and d) compared to men (fig. 3a and 3b: a and b). the upsurge in the bellshaped distribution of age at death about m* points to increasing homogeneity in older ages. the m* for urban women and rural women increased respectively from 75 and 73 years to 78 and 81 years, remaining higher than that of men throughout fig. 2: probability of dying for selected years for india, by population category -6.0 -5.0 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 01 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group 1973-1977 1983-1987 1993-1997 2003-2007 2009-2013 (a) rural women ln of probability of dying (c) rural men ln of probability of dying (b) urban women ln of probability of dying (d) urban men ln of probability of dying 01 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group -6.0 -5.0 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 01 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group -6.0 -5.0 -4.0 -3.0 -2.0 -1.0 0.0 01 14 59 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 age group 1975 2011 note: the years 1975 and 2011 in the above graph represents the periods 1973-1977 and 2009-2013, respectively. source: own calculations using asdr (rgi 1972-2013) mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 333 the transitional period (fig. 4). developed nations have shown convergence in m* (canudas-romo 2008; thatcher et al. 2010) whereas the developing country india showed a linear increase in m* which lags by 10 years for women and 8 years for men (yadav/arokiasamy 2014: fig. 8). although india lags behind the developed nations in mortality transition, the distribution of age at death has been reshaped into a more left-skewed distribution (fig. 5) similar to that of developed nations (cheung/ robine 2007: 88, fig. 2; kannisto 2000: fig. 6). this development has been faster since the 1990s, basically because young adult mortality exhibited a rapid decline, leading to a period that can be termed as a phenomenal phase of mortality transition in india. 3.2 mortality compression in india figure 6 depicts the trends in c50 by residence and sex for india between 1970 and 2013. first, the c50 values for india declined in all population categories. sorted fig. 3a: premature mortality for rural india, 1973-1977 and 2003-2007, by sex 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age (a) rural men (1973-1977) life table deaths, single year (c) rural women (1973-1977) life table deaths, single year (b) rural men (2003-2007) life table deaths, single year (d) rural women (2003-2007) life table deaths, single year 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age distribution of age at death mirror image of distribution of age at death beyond modal value 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age modal value modal age at death normality around the modal value premature deaths source: own calculations • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam334 by population category, women living in urban areas had the narrowest c50 values throughout the transitional period. the c50 values for urban women and men declined from 23.4 and 24.0 years in the period 1970-1974 to 17.3 and 19.7 years in the period 2009-2013, respectively. urban population had narrower c50 values throughout the transitional period than their rural counterparts. the declining c50 values reveal that deaths have been increasingly concentrated in a narrower age interval of age at death during the transition from high to low mortality conditions. second, the c50 values declined at a faster pace in the 1970s and 1980s, with the fastest pace for the rural population when sorted by population category. women living in rural areas showed six years decline in c50 from 28 years in early 1970s to 22 years in the late 1980s, outstripping men living in rural areas in the early 1980s. concerning the rural population, the deaths were dispersed over a wider age interval of age at death during the 1970s but swiftly concentrated in a narrower age interval of age at death by the end of the 1980s. here, rural women showed a narrower age interval of age at death which was slightly wider than that of urban fig. 3b: premature mortality for urban india, 1973-1977 and 2003-2007, by sex (a) urban men (1973-1977) life table deaths, single year (c) urban women (1973-1977) life table deaths, single year (b) urban men (2003-2007) life table deaths, single year (d) urban women (2003-2007) life table deaths, single year distribution of age at death 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age modal age at death distribution of age at death source: own calculations mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 335 women. compared to the rural population, the urban population showed a consistent decline in c50 values during the transitional period, with narrower c50 values for urban women compared to urban men. following a rapid decline in the 1980s, the c50 values stagnated during the 1990s. women and men living in rural areas had similar c50 values, with a plateau apparent until the late 1990s. nevertheless, by the early 2000s, rural women had narrower c50 values compared to their male counterparts. also, urban men showed a modest decline in c50 values, exhibiting a plateau in the 1990s and 2000s. the trends and gender differentials of c50 in rural and urban populations have been the same since the mid-1980s: rural and urban women showed narrower c50 values than rural and urban men. the advantageous pace for rural and urban women in the later years of the transitional period resulted in a wider gap in c50 values between women and men in the rural and urban areas, similar to the pattern seen in developed nations (kannisto 2000: table 2). third, the trends in c50 indicated a coherent decline, leading to a convergence among the population categories. the convergence in c50 was faster among women compared to men. a stronger convergence in c50 among population categories manifest a greater concentration of deaths about m* and hence, greater homogeneity in mortality, although india lags signifi cantly behind developed nations in mortality transition. thatcher et al. (2010: table 3) demonstrate a rapid reduction in varifig. 4: trends in modal age at death for india, 1970-2013, by sex and residence 65 70 75 80 85 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 year rural women rural men urban women urban men modal age at death source: own calculations • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam336 ability in age at death and increase in m* for sweden, switzerland, england & wales, france, and italy in the period from 1900-1904 to 2000-2004, attesting to stronger mortality compression. the convergence in m* is evident by sex in developed nations (horiuchi et al. 2013: 45, fig. 3; missov et al. 2015: 1042, fig. 4). therefore, a stronger convergence in c50 among women indicates greater homogeneity in mortality than among their male counterparts. overall, the results of mortality compression measures confi rm that the process of mortality compression has been developing at the national level since the 1990s. the two decades between 1970 and 1990 showed a modest progression in mortality compression while the latter two decades, from 1990 to 2013, marked a fig. 5: distribution of age at death for intercensal periods for india, 1971-2013, by sex and residence -500 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 2009-2013 2007-2009 2003-2007 1999-2003 1995-1999 1991-1995 1987-1991 1983-1987 1979-1083 1975-1979 1971-1975 (a) rural women life table deaths, single year (c) rural men life table deaths, single year (b) urban women life table deaths, single year (d) urban men life table deaths, single year -500 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age -500 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age -500 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 11 0 single year age 1973 1989 2011 1997 note: the years 1973, 1989, 1997 and 2011 in the above graph represent the periods 19711975, 1987-1991, 1995-1999, and 2009-2013, respectively. source: own calculations mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 337 stronger progression in mortality compression. among the population categories, urban women experienced the strongest mortality compression during the transitional period. 3.3 variability in age at death figure 7 displays the trends in sd(10+), sd(m*+), and sd(<m*) along with the trends in c50 at the national level by population category between 1970 and 2013. a signifi cant change in variance indicator points to the fact that a mortality decline developed in many age groups, contributing to the reduction in the variance of age at death. the almost static sd(m*+) values (fig. 7) prove that changes in old-age mortality made a small contribution to the reduction in the variance of age at death in india. developed nations have shown a consistent decline in sd(m*+) with a shift in m*, based on period life tables from human mortality database (hmd) (kannisto 2001: 164, table 1; thatcher et al. 2010), despite the fact that compression of deaths above m* is a feature of period life tables and not cohort life tables (ediev 2011). however, india has exhibited a feature of rapid decline in sd(<m*) with a shift in m*. the sd(<m*) values for rural women declined from 27.4 years in the period 1970-1974 to 20.7 years in the period 2009-2013 (fig. 7a). in contrast, the sd(<m*) fig. 6: trends in c50 for india, 1970-2013, by population category 15 20 25 30 35 19 67 -1 96 9 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 year rural women rural men urban women urban men c50 (years) source: own calculations • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam338 for rural men declined marginally by only 2.6 points to 20.8 years during the same period (fig. 7c). for women, the trends in sd(10+) gradated down swiftly, which is consistent with the trends in sd(<m*). of all sds, sd(<m*) better manifested the premature mortality, and hence the declining trends in sd(<m*) attested to the reduction in premature mortality. the trends in sd(<m*) were also consistent with the trends in c50. this, therefore, demonstrates the dominant role of adult-age mortality compared to old-age mortality when it comes to a reduction in the variance of age at death. fig. 7: trends in c50, sd(10+), sd(m*+), and sd(<m*) for india, 1970-2013, by population category 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 year c50 sd(10+) sd(m*+) sd(<m*) (a) rural women lengh in years (c) rural men lengh in years (b) urban women lengh in years (d) urban men lengh in years year 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 year 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 year 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 source: own calculations. equations 2 to 4 were used for sds mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 339 another key measure is the gini coeffi cient, which is used to comprehend variability in age at death (edwards 2011; hambleton et al. 2015). figure 8 displays the trends in the gini coeffi cient at age 10 (g10) for women and men as well as rural and urban areas in india. a faster decline in g10 for women affi rmed the rapid progression of homogeneity in mortality among women, which was intensive during the transitional period. sorted by population category, urban women have had the lowest g10 since the late 1970s. urban women achieved a low inequality value of 0.10 in the period 2009-2013 compared to a higher value of 0.14 in the early 1970s. compared to urban women, rural women showed near-stagnancy in the late 1990s, followed by a rapid decline in g10 since the early 2000s. overall, women exhibited a swift reduction in g10. however, men showed a gradient increase in g10 in the latter half of the 1990s. this juxtaposition in men was attributable to modest, insuffi cient adult mortality decline. hence, this rise in g10 among men led to a widening gap in the g10 between women and men in the later years of the transitional period. németh (2017: 3, fig. 1) and shkolnikov et al. (2003: 342, fig. 7) demonstrate a negative relationship between g0 and e0 and between g15 and e15. it may be noted that the reduction in variability in age at death is concomitant with the increase in the length of life (smits/monden 2009: 1119, fig. 2). this relationship asserts that fig. 8: trends in the gini coeffi cient at age 10 (g10) for india, 1970-2013, by population category 0.10 0.11 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 year rural men rural women urban men urban women gini coefficient at age 10 19 67 -1 97 1 19 71 -1 97 5 19 75 -1 97 9 19 79 -1 98 3 19 83 -1 98 7 19 87 -1 99 1 19 91 -1 99 5 19 95 -1 99 9 19 99 -2 00 3 20 03 -2 00 7 20 07 -2 01 1 20 11 -2 01 5 source: own calculations using equation (5) • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam340 the gender differentials in e0 contribute to the gender differentials in variability in age at death and vice versa. fig. 9: the age-specifi c contribution to the gini at age 10 (g10) for india, 19702013, by population category note: the gini coeffi cient was computed from abridged life tables for age 10 and above source: own calculations using equation (6) -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 contribution to gini at age 10 -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 age group 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 contribution to gini at age 10 -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 age group -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 contribution to gini at age 10 -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 age group (a) rural women (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 contribution to gini at age 10 -0.010 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 10 -1 4 15 -1 9 20 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 50 -5 4 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 75 -7 9 80 -8 4 85 -8 9 90 -9 4 95 -9 9 10 010 4 10 510 9 age group mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 341 figure 9 depicts a strong equalizing effect in the 10-59 age group and a passive dis-equalizing effect in old age groups (60 and above) to g10 during the entire examination period from 1970 to 2013. a similar equalizing effect of age groups below 65 years and a dis-equalizing effect of age groups above 65 years is apparent for women in the usa between 1900 and 1995 (shkolnikov et al. 2003: 327, table 7). in the 1970s and 1980s, the contribution of adult age groups (15-59 years) to g10 of rural women in india was prominent from the age group 15-29 years followed by the age group 30-44 years. by the early 1990s, the age group 15-29 years became the largest contributor to g10 of rural women. the female age group of 15-29 years taken together with the age group of 30-44 years (fig. 9a) were the main contributors to the decline in g10 of rural women. urban women showed a more interesting pattern of the adult age groups’ contributions to g10. the adult age groups of 15-29 years, 30-44 years, and 45-59 years have contributed almost equally to g10 of urban women since the late 1970s (fig. 9b). altogether, the progressive contribution of the young adult age group (15-44 years) to g10 provides evidence of the progress towards homogeneity in mortality among women. on the other hand, rural and urban men aged 30-44 years made a signifi cant contribution to the homogeneity in mortality (fig. 9c and 9d). the contribution of young adult age group to g10 of men was nearly half that of women during the transitional period of 1970-2013. this small contribution in adult men was caused by high mortality at adult ages attributable to injuries and chronic ncds. the patterns of causes of death reveal that men compared to women had substantially higher toll of deaths attributable to injuries rather than to cds and ncds. a high concentration of deaths attributable to injuries of 25.5 percent and 12.8 percent was in the 30-44 and 45-54 age groups, respectively, among men in the period 2010-13, which was approximately two-fold as compared to women (org & cc 2015: statement 1.3b and 1.3c). the 15-29 age group had a similar concentration of deaths of approximately 27.5 percent of total deaths attributable to injuries for both men and women. the unintentional injuries (accidents) and intentional injuries (suicides) were responsible for 9.2 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, of total deaths in men whereas 5.7 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively, of total deaths in women in the period 2010-13. the toll of deaths, 47 percent of total deaths attributable to accidents and 69 percent of total deaths attributable to suicides, were concentrated in the 15-44 age group among men. however, the corresponding fi gures for women aged 15-44 years were 26 percent of total deaths attributable to accidents and 78 percent of total deaths attributable to suicides. additionally, men showed higher toll of deaths attributable to chronic ncds in the 30-44 and 45-54 age groups as compared to women (org & cc 2015). overall, the contribution by age groups revealed that adult-age mortality played a signifi cant role in accelerating the pace of g10. compared to women, men showed a modest progress towards homogeneity in mortality in the transitional period. globally, the modest progression in e† for men compared to women is evident even in the most demographically developed countries such as japan, france, switzerland, england & wales, germany, and finland (vaupel et al. 2011: 2, table 1). canudasromo et al. (2016: 9, fig. 1) and singh/ladusingh (2016: 46, fig. 6; 47, fig. 7) showed • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam342 that younger, older adult and younger old age groups (30-74 years) made a major contribution to the gender gap in e0 and e† between the early 1970s and late 2000s, in india and its major states. 3.4 dominance of adult mortality in mortality compression in india figure 10 and figure 11 show the scatter plot between c50 and sd(<m*) and the scatter plot between c50 and g10, respectively, for the selected indian states and population categories. figure 10 reveals a close positive correlation between c50 and sd(<m*) for women rather than men. the average correlation coeffi cient, i.e. the mean value of correlation coeffi cients of the selected states excluding india, between c50 and sd(<m*) for rural and urban women was 0.85 and 0.86, respectively. for the selected states, a correlation coeffi cient of more than 0.80 was found for women, with the exception of women in assam and haryana. on the other hand, the average correlation coeffi cient for rural and urban men was 0.50 and 0.30, respectively. for these states, there was considerable variation in the correlation coeffi cient between c50 and sd(<m*+) between women and men, given the reduction in premature mortality. figure 11 shows a close positive correlation between c50 fig. 10: scatter plot of c50 against sd(<m*) for india and its twelve biggest states, 1970-2013, by population category source: own calculations (a) rural women (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 ln of sd(<m*) (years) ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 ln of sd(<m*) (years) ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 ln of sd(<m*) (years) ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 ln of sd(<m*) years ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 343 and g10 for the population categories. the average correlation coeffi cient between c50 and g10 for women and men amounted to 0.94 and 0.88, respectively. it is noteworthy that g10 in comparison to sd(<m*) revealed a higher correlation coeffi cient for men. this high correlation can be explained by a similar contribution of oldage mortality to g10 (fig. 9) for both sexes but with a slight advantage for women (chaurasia 2010). the results indicate greater consistency between the impressive progression in mortality compression and the reduction in premature mortality of the respective states. the selected twelve states have shown variation in the pace of mortality compression despite the progress in mortality compression caused by the same factor: the reduction in premature mortality. in urban areas, states such as andhra pradesh, gujarat, kerala, maharashtra, punjab, and tamil nadu displayed narrower c50 values for women than for men from the early 1970s. only two states, odisha and uttar pradesh, had wider c50 values for urban women than for urban men until the late 1990s. on the other hand, in rural areas, uttar pradesh, madhya pradesh, and assam showed wider c50 values for women than men for a large portion of the transitional period from 1970 to 2013. rural women in the states of madhya pradesh and assam outpaced rural men in the progression of mortality compression by the fig. 11: scatter plot of c50 against the gini coeffi cient at age 10 (g10) for india and its twelve biggest states, 1970-2013, by population category source: own calculations (a) rural women (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 ln of gini * 100 ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 ln of gini * 100 ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 ln of gini*100 ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 ln of gini*100 ln of c50 (years) india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam344 late 1990s. the states of andhra pradesh, kerala, maharashtra, odisha, and tamil nadu showed narrower c50 values for rural women than for rural men from the beginning of the transitional period. altogether, the demographically pioneer states compared to backward states showed stronger mortality compression for women than men. hence, these states make a major contribution to the progression in mortality compression for india as a whole. in sum, adult mortality decline plays a determining role in the regional variation in mortality compression. additionally, results show that c50 is a more appropriate measure to assess mortality compression for a developing country like india because it is sensitive to adult-age mortality as well as old-age mortality. kannisto (2000) has shown the application of the c50 method for the developed nations passing through the low mortality regime. 3.5 convergence in mortality compression figure 12 depicts a convergence in c50 among the selected indian states for all the population categories in the transitional period from 1970 to 2013. the interquartile range (iqr) of c50 for rural and urban women across the twelve states, excluding india as a whole, narrowed from 6.0 years and 5.1 years, respectively, in the period 1971-19751 to 1.4 years and 1.1 years, respectively, in the period 2009-2013. however, beta and sigma convergence are better measures in comparison to iqr. figure 13 provides a summary of convergence in c50 for all population categories in the transitional period, using beta convergence method (barro/sala i martin 1990; janssen et al. 2016). it shows absolute beta convergence in c50. rural and urban women showed strong linearity with high adjusted r2 values of 94 percent and 92 percent, respectively. high linearity among women indicates a similar pace of decline in c50 for the selected states. compared to women, rural men and urban men showed a lower adjusted r2 but had larger and statistically signifi cant beta coeffi cient values, indicating faster convergence (fig. 13: c and d). these results revealed that beta convergence in c50 among women was consistent and at a stronger level of mortality compression, whereas beta convergence in c50 among men was faster but at a moderate level of mortality compression. figure 14 shows the trends in rs(t) for india and the twelve selected indian states for all population categories in the transitional period. urban women followed by rural women showed a coherent decline in rs(t) in the later years of the transitional period, whereas rural and urban men showed stagnancy over time. it is noteworthy that the demographically most advanced state of kerala had the lowest values of c50, comparable to those of developed nations, throughout the transitional period. the state of kerala, passing through the last stage of the demographic transition, showed c50 (sd(m*+)) values similar to those of developed nations. table 5 provides a comparison of c50 (sd(m*+)) values for indian women and women from 1 srs provides asdr of the indian states kerala, karnataka, and tamil nadu from the year 1971 onwards. for these indian states, the initial period is 1971-1975. mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 345 the state of kerala and women in developed nations such as switzerland, england, the netherlands, and finland. kannisto (2000: table 1) demonstrated c50 (sd(m*+)) values and the change in c50 (sd(m*+)) values of women over time for the same developed countries of switzerland, england, the netherlands, and finland. the c50 (sd(m*+)) value of women from kerala was 14.2 (6.5) years in the period 2009-2013, which is close to the c50 value of england at 14.8 (7.0) years in the period 1990-1992 as well as to that of the netherlands at 14.4 (6.5) years in the period 1990-1995. this is despite the fact that for kerala the rs(t) values for rural women and urban women were nearly stagnant during the transitional period. importantly, among women, kerala was an outlier in the 1970s and 1980s, and assam, maharashtra, punjab, and haryana were outliers in the 1990s. nevertheless, women from other states and fig. 12: trends in c50 for india and its twelve biggest states, 1970-2013, by population category 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh (a) rural women ln of c50 (years) (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of c50 (years) 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of c50 (years) 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of c50 (years) source: own calculations • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam346 india as a whole showed rs(t) values tending towards rs(t) values of the women of kerala since the early 2000s. undoubtedly, sigma convergence together with strong beta convergence in the c50 for rural and urban women were evident from the progression in mortality compression and variability in age at death during the transitional period. however, it is important to note that the average rs(t), i.e. the mean value of rs(t) in the late 2000s of the selected states excluding india as a whole, was 1.16 and 1.18 for urban women and rural women, respectively, which is higher than the approaching value of 1.0. sigma convergence was not evident for men; howfig. 13: scatter plots of c50 in 1971-1975 against the annual change in c50 over the period 1971-2013 and regression estimates for india and its twelve biggest states, by population category note: * represents signifi cance of 1 percent level ap: andhra pradesh, ass: assam, guj: gujarat, har: haryana, ind: india, kar: karnataka, ker: kerala, maha: maharashtra, mp: madhya pradesh, odi: odisha, pun: punjab, tn: tamil nadu, up: uttar pradesh source: own calculations using equation (7) (a) rural women annual change in c50 during 1971-2013 (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men annual change in c50 during 1971-2013 annual change in c50 during 1971-2013 annual change in c50 during 1971-2013 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 c50 (years) in 1971-1975 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 c50 (years) in 1971-1975 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 c50 (years) in 1971-1975 -0.7 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 c50 (years) in 1971-1975 ker pun tn har maha kar ap guj odi ass ind mp up adj. r2=0.944 beta=-0.021* const=0.352* adj. r2=0.764 beta=-0.027* const=0.576* ker pun tn har maha kar guj odi ass ind mp up ap adj. r2=0.924 beta=-0.025* const=0.414* adj. r2=0.819 beta=-0.025* const=0.497* ker puntn har maha kar guj odi assind mpup apker pun tn har maha kar guj odi ass ind mp up ap mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 347 ever, a beta convergence was evident. the state of kerala remained an outlier in sigma convergence for men compared to other states, as is evident from the trends in rs(t) during the transitional period. overall, the ratio (rs(t)) is a useful tool for testing sigma convergence for mortality compression. 4 discussion this study explored the progress of mortality transition during 44 years between 1970 and 2013 for india and its twelve biggest states using measures of mortality compression and variability in age at death. the progression in mortality compresfig. 14: trends in ratio rs(t) (sd(<m*)/sd(10+)) for india and its twelve biggest states, 1970-2013, by population category -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year india andhra pradesh assam gujarat haryana karnataka kerala madhya pradesh maharashtra odisha punjab tamil nadu uttar pradesh (a) rural women ln of sd(<m*)/sd(10+) (c) rural men (b) urban women (d) urban men -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of sd(<m*)/sd(10+) -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of sd(<m*)/sd(10+) -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 19 69 19 73 19 77 19 81 19 85 19 89 19 93 19 97 20 01 20 05 20 09 20 13 year ln of sd(<m*)/sd(10+) source: own calculations using equation (8) • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam348 sion spurred by variability in age at death in a high mortality regime versus in a medium or a low mortality regime was modulated by the contribution of adult-age mortality and old-age mortality. we estimated c50 (kannisto 2000: see annex) and the gini coeffi cient at age 10 (g10) (shkolnikov et al. 2003) from the distribution of age at death and analysed contribution of many age groups for comprehending the progress in mortality compression and variability in age at death. we investigated convergence in mortality compression among different indian states, using the beta and sigma convergence method (barro/sala i martin 1990; janssen et al. 2016). the phenomenon of mortality compression is a fundamental demographic process. the developed countries have shown a remarkable contribution of old-age mortality to the progress of mortality compression (cheung/robine 2007; ediev 2013; kannisto 2001; lynch/brown 2001; thatcher et al. 2010). for a developing country like india, a greater fall in imr since the late 1980s (org 2020; rgi 19722013) reduced the dominance of childhood mortality to a more progressive phase of mortality transition wherein adult mortality (rajaratnam et al. 2010: 1709) demonstrated a greater role in the progress of mortality compression and variability in age at death. for india and its twelve biggest states, the c50 values (fig. 6) and the gini coeffi cients (fig. 8) declined from a high value to a low value in 1970-2013, whereas the reduction was greater for women than for men. the progression in mortality compression was modest in the 1970s and 1980s and has been swift since the mid-1990s. urban women among the population categories showed the strongest mortality compression and the lowest variability in age at death. the fl attening of the age pattern of mortality (fig. 1 and 2) (bongaarts 2005; horiuchi/wilmoth 1998) and rise in modal age at death (fig. 4) (canudas-romo 2008; thatcher et al. 2010; yadav/arokiasamy 2014: fig. 8) were conspicuous in the period 1970-2013. the rapid decline in infant and child mortality in the 1970s and 1980s (org 2020; rgi 1972-2013) transformed the distribution of age at death from a bimodal distribution to a unimodal distribution (arokiasamy/yadav 2014: fig. 3). this tab. 5: c50 (sd(m*+)) for women of selected developed countries, india and kerala (indian state) time period switzerland england netherlands finland india kerala 1876-1880 35.3 (8.8) 1988-1993 13.6 (6.0) 1891-1900 31.7 (8.9) 1990-1992 14.8 (7.0) 1850-1860 49.7 (8.5) 1990-1995 14.4 (6.5) 1881-1890 36.7 (8.3) 1991-1995 12.5 (6.5) 1971-1975 28.5 (8.5) 15.5 (7.2) 2009-2013 18.6 (9.5) 14.2 (6.5) source: the fi gures for four developed countries are taken from kannisto (2000: table 1); own calculations for india and state kerala mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 349 development proved the most advantageous when adult-age mortality was most dominant since the early 1990s by outlining the contours of mortality (edwards/ tuljapurkar 2005; zhang/vaupel 2009). the decline in both adult and infant mortality led to the suffi cient reduction in the premature mortality (fig. 3) (mckee/shkolnikov 2001) which mainly contributed to the progression in mortality compression. the variance of age at death in adult age (cheung/robine 2007) rather than in old age reduced variability in age at death substantially (fig. 7) (engelman et al. 2010; wilmoth/horiuchi 1999). the decomposition analysis of the g10 (shkolnikov et al. 2003) revealed that the 15-29 age group taken together with the 30-44 age group were the main contributors, more for women than men, to the decline in variability in age at death (fig. 9). the decrease in adult heterogeneity has a positive relationship with the increase in adult longevity (cheung et al. 2009), and hence the individuals who survived at old ages have been homogeneous enough to propel the progression in mortality compression, and eventually, they shaped this phase of mortality compression to a greater extent than ever before. the low variability in age at death is strongly associated with the rise in life expectancy (németh 2017: fig. 1; shkolnikov et al. 2003: fig. 7). women showed a strong mortality compression (kannisto 2000) and a low variability in age at death (hambleton et al. 2015) that was primarily the result of the aversion of maternal deaths in their reproductive ages (fig. 9) (mohfw 2014). a close negative correlation manifested between the reduction in premature mortality and measures of mortality compression (fig. 10) and variability in age at death (fig. 11), a bit stronger for women than men. compared to women, men showed a weak mortality compression with modest progress of homogeneity in mortality which is evident even in the most developed countries such as japan, france, switzerland, england & wales, germany, and finland (vaupel et al. 2011: 2, table 1). comparatively, gender differentials in mortality compression was strongly evident in india and its states. nevertheless, women and men in the different regions (states) of india showed a consistent progression in mortality compression (fig. 12). the pioneer indian states (table 4) with better mortality conditions showed stronger mortality compression as compared to backward states (smits/monden 2009; subramanian et al. 2006). despite this fact of regional variation and gender differentials in mortality compression, the progress in mortality compression both for pioneer and backward states was caused by the same factor: the reduction in premature mortality (fig. 3). the indian states demonstrate (beta and sigma) convergence in c50 (janssen et al. 2016). women at a stronger level of mortality compression showed a consistent beta convergence in c50 (fig. 13: a and b). however, men at moderate level of mortality compression showed a faster convergence in c50 (fig. 13: c and d). sigma convergence was evident for women but not for men among indian states (fig. 14). the results of sigma convergence revealed that indian states tended to follow the state of kerala which showed strong mortality compression similar to that of developed nations. studies based on hmd indicated that developed nations have advanced to the last stage of mortality transition with a stronger mortality compression and homogeneity in mortality (cheung et al. 2009; ediev 2011, 2013; edwards/tuljapurkar • suryakant yadav, arokiasamy perianayagam350 2005; horiuchi et al. 2013; kannisto 2000; lynch/brown 2001; myers/manton 1984; nusselder/mackenbach 1996; thatcher et al. 2010; wilmoth/horiuchi 1999). low variability in age at death is primarily explained by the reduction in premature adult mortality. many countries achieved a high level of e0 in a shorter time with lower variability in age at death than more demographically advanced countries (seaman et al. 2016; smits/monden 2009). india and its state kerala showed a faster progress in mortality compression when compared to developed nations (table 5). these developments in mortality demonstrated that the reduction in premature mortality vis-à-vis lower variability in age at death is a prerequisite for a mortality compression. the study demonstrated that the reduction in premature mortality has been the reinforcing factor for the progress in mortality compression and variability in age at death. women in india as a whole and in the twelve biggest indian states showed that a reduction in premature mortality attributable to the rapid decline in young adult mortality was concomitant of the decline in maternal mortality ratio (mmr) (arokiasamy 2004; clark 1987; coale 1991; memoire 2007; rgi 1972-2013: table 13). however, several backward indian states – namely, uttar pradesh, odisha, madhya pradesh, and assam – have had high mmr levels compared to the state of haryana and the pioneer indian states. gender differentials in mortality compression highlighted the variance in adult mortality as the primary deterrent for men in india. the weak mortality compression for men is explained by the high variability in age at death and the low e0 (németh 2017; shkolnikov et al. 2003). men aged 15-29 years have shown a negligible contribution to variability in age at death in the transitional period. the pace of adult mortality decline was slower for men (rajaratnam et al. 2010: 1709) arising from relatively higher adult mortality resulting from a greater risk of deaths due to accidents and suicides (global burden of disease collaborative network 2018; org 1979; org 2015, 2019). specifi c interventions for adult survival focusing on men in the 15-29 and 30-44 age groups is now crucial, which essentially requires controlling deaths from injuries, violence, cardiovascular diseases, and lifestyle diseases, at which developed nations have been successful (balia/jones 2008; mckee/ shkolnikov 2001). the high adult mortality in men, which was disregarded, has now become a signifi cant cause of the lag in mortality transition. it indicates that programmes that reduce under-fi ve mortality have not had a greater impact on the survival of adult men who are exposed to death from external causes (rajaratnam et al. 2010). averting deaths in the 15-29 age group is of prime importance for both women and men. rural women outpaced rural and urban men in mortality compression because of the remarkable contribution of the 15-29 age group to variability in age at death. it is also essential to ensure an equal contribution from many age groups in reproductive ages of rural women as this has reinforced urban women in achieving low variability in age at death and a strong mortality compression. mortality compression and variability in age at death in india • 351 5 conclusion this study reveals important insights on india’s progress of mortality transition during 44 years between 1970 and 2013. measures of mortality compression and variability in age at death are worthwhile and useful to assess the progress of mortality transition. the progress of mortality compression and variability in age at death forge a bridge between the transformation in age pattern of mortality and the process of mortality transition. the progress in mortality transition in india and its major states is accompanied by notable progression in mortality compression and a sizeable reduction in variability in age at death during the transitional period. the process of mortality compression and the multiplying homogeneity in mortality have been stronger since the mid-1990s, with a notable improvement in young adult mortality (30q15). mortality transition changed in this phase due to strong mortality compression and multiplying homogeneity, and therefore, the decade of the 2000s marked a distinct phase of mortality transition for india. indeed, in contrast to developed nations, india and its major states have made a signifi cant contribution to mortality compression from adult-age mortality rather than old-age mortality and have seen progress in mortality compression in a shorter span of time. overall, this study reveals that mortality transition in india has entered an early phase of a low mortality regime. the convergence in the indian states, in accordance with their relative level of e0, shows that the rapid progression in mortality compression is caused by the reduction in premature mortality, more intensively for women than men. men show a lag in mortality transition primarily because of the insuffi cient reduction in premature mortality and weak morality compression. this lag in mortality transition represents a major concern for adult men. india and its states need an inclusive health policy focusing on adult men, which would extend life expectancy and would lower variability in age at death. acknowledgements the authors are thankful to prof. eileen crimmins (phd), university professor, aarp chair in gerontology, usc leonard davis school of gerontology, and director, multidisciplinary research training in gerontology phd program for her critical suggestions and comments on this paper. the authors 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dr. suryakant yadav (), prof. arokiasamy perianayagam. international institute for population sciences, department of development studies. mumbai, india. e-mail: suryakant11@gmail.com, parokiasamy@gmail.com url: https://www.iipsindia.ac.in/deparment-faculties/55 https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/suryakant_yadav https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/perianayagam_arokiasamy published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) 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(wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data* michael feldhaus, richard preetz abstract: panel data on intimate relationships are becoming increasingly available, enabling a closer examination and deeper understanding of why and how they develop over time. the aim of this review is to illustrate to what extent demographic research has made progress in understanding the dynamics of intimate relationships by examining panel data. we focus on hypotheses about key transitions throughout the progression of intimate relationships, ranging from union formation up to cohabitation, marriage, divorce and repartnering. for every hypothesis, we will present fi ndings from cross-sectional data and illustrate whether the use of panel data and longitudinal methods modifi ed the previous understandings of transitions in intimate relationships. keywords: intimate relationships · panel data · life course transitions · cohabitation · marriage · divorce 1 introduction over recent decades, tremendous societal changes have taken place regarding the development of intimate relationships over the life course. these include changes in union formation processes, increasing rates of living-apart-together relationships, cohabitation, separation or divorce, repartnering, and same-sex relationships, alongside the postponement and overall decreasing rates of marriage. thus, trajectories of intimate relationships have become more complex and divergent in many countries (elzinga/liefbroer 2007; billari/liefbroer 2010; perelli-harris/amos 2015). a large body of research in demography, sociology, and related disciplines focus on these ongoing changes in order to uncover the mechanisms of partnership-related comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 331-362 (date of release: 23.08.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-12 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-12en9 * this article belongs to a special issue on "identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data". http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-12 • michael feldhaus, richard preetz332 dynamics. in this regard, the objective of collecting longitudinal data is to improve the analytical potential for investigating ongoing decision-making processes and dynamics for a better understanding of the underlying mechanism. in this review, we focus on the research question, to what extent has demographic research made progress in understanding the dynamics of intimate relationships through applying longitudinal data? to address this question, we limit the topics and focus on key demographic outcomes, such as the transition to union formation, cohabitation, marriage, separation or divorce, and repartnering. we start with a brief overview of demographic facts and theoretical advancements for investigating intimate relationships. we then review major fi ndings and achievements with regard to demographic transitions in the context of using panel data. for this large fi eld of research, not all fi ndings from the past decades can be reported. we must explicitly admit that the presented results are in some way selective. rather, the aim is to concentrate on a few key hypotheses that cover the full range of the progress of intimate relationships. here, we focus on assumptions and research questions that have been extensively internationally studied over the past decades and have been affected by the rise of longitudinal data and modern causal statistical methods. we conclude with a critical summary. 2 theoretical approaches for changing trajectories in intimate relationships in recent decades, the occurrence, trajectories, and dynamics of partnership-related living arrangements have changed in many european countries. terms such as “the retreat from marriage” or the “de-institutionalisation of marriage” (cherlin 2004; sassler/lichter 2020) summarise these demographic trends as a result of decreasing marriage rates, increasing divorce rates and higher shares of extramarital births. the dissemination of cohabitation is another key indicator of ongoing demographic change in europe and western countries (sassler/lichter 2020; see also andersson et al. 2017). furthermore, the rates of consensual unions and repartnering after a separation or divorce has increased in european countries over the past decades (gałęzewska et al. 2017). taken together, these fi ndings document tremendous changes in union formation and partnership trajectories in europe, and we fi nd similar developments, for example, in north america and australia. looking at these demographic developments, questions as to the factors that explain these changes arise. various theoretical explanations are discussed and used for framing ongoing changes. a very popular approach is known as the second demographic transition (sdt, van de kaa 1987; lestheaghe 1995, 2010). sdt emphasises the ideational changes that have occurred from the 1950s and 1960s onwards. it describes a preference drift from material needs (subsistence, shelter, physical and economic security) to non-material needs (freedom of expression, participation and emancipation, self-realisation, and autonomy). this shift in needs occurred alongside a shift in values and attitudes, accompanied by greater tolerance for diversity and respect for individual choices. this led to a decline of analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 333 traditional values, less social group adherence and cohesion, and more liberal laws and attitudes (e.g., toward divorce, non-marital births, sexuality, and pre-marital cohabitation) (lesthaghe 2010). these developments were accompanied by a more rational “utility evaluation” of cohabitation and marriage in terms of the welfare of both adult partners, an aspect which was accentuated in the new home economics approach (becker et al. 1977; becker 1991; browning et al. 2014). new home economics and other related costbenefi t or utility maximizing models were highly infl uential in explaining partnershiprelated behaviour and decision-making processes. these models particularly focused on men’s and women’s economic status (earnings, education, social status), fi nancial independence, partnership-related investments (homeownership, children), gender differentiations, direct or indirect costs and benefi ts (e.g., becker et al. 1977; oppenheimer 1988; 1997; kalmijn 2011, 2013). this approach arose in conjunction with the increase in female labour force participation, which has in turn been linked to trends of delayed or postponed marriage, low fertility, and increased union dissolution. these changes are also often discussed in the theoretical framework of changing gender relationships in the public and private spheres, described as the “gender revolution” (goldscheider et al. 2015). the strong focus of cost-benefi t approaches on a rational evaluation of partnership-related transitions has been criticised at times by pointing out that cohabitation or marriage are rather heart-over-head matters (basu 2006). billari and liefbroer argue that more attention should be paid to emotions and other related indicators rather than focusing purely on utility evaluation (billari/liefbroer 2016). as an extension of microsociological approaches, cross-national comparative studies surged in recent decades. these approaches recognise that partnershiprelated behaviour and decisions are embedded, shaped, or constrained by larger social, economic, and cultural conditions, including laws, local or national opportunity structures, economic conditions, and demographic variables. related studies analyse country-specifi c or contextual indicators with regard to union formation, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, and repartnering (lundberg et al. 2016; cohen/pepin 2018). similarly, the life course approach places greater emphasis on the microfoundation of individual behaviour (mayer 2009; bernardi et al 2019). as a heuristic model, the life course approach helps modulate the occurrence, timing, spacing, and stopping of biographical transitions (such as union formation, marriage, fertility behaviour, and separation) with an emphasis on the interdependencies of life domains and their contextual infl uences. another strand of theories relevant to partnership behaviour and decisionmaking processes stems from psychology. in many studies, the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) (ajzen 1991) is used for modelling biographical transitions (billari/ liefbroer 2007). behaviour is infl uenced by proximal (behavioural intentions and actual behaviour control) and other determinants (attitudes or beliefs, subjective norms, perceived behaviour control). there are also a number of exchange theory approaches that attribute the stability and satisfaction of intimate relationships to exchange processes and (pre-) marital investment. other psychological approaches often focus on stress theoretical arguments, coping strategies, vulnerabilities, and • michael feldhaus, richard preetz334 the roles of personality traits. more recent developments emphasise that fi ndings from cognitive and neurological research as well as from evolutionary biology must be taken into account, especially for partnership decisions (bachrach/morgan 2013; lieberwirth/wang 2014; billari/liefbroer 2016). taken together, we can say that a bundle of theoretical approaches from various disciplines have been developed over the past 40 years and have been applied for analysing dynamics and ongoing biographical transitions on intimate relationships. these theoretical approaches are worth mentioning because they outline a broad range of explanations often used for partnership-related transitions. 3 methods, data innovations, and causality regarding data and methods, available data sets for research on partnership dynamics have changed considerably. in many countries, panel studies have been implemented alongside offi cial statistics, register data, and cross-sectional studies, or at least studies that explicitly take a life course perspective by collecting partnerrelated events and partnership-related trajectories. the collection of partnership histories since the 1970s has contributed considerably to broadening the focus of analysis. it is now possible to analyse partnership trajectories and episodes which mark different transitions (e.g. cohabitation, marriage, separation/divorce, repartnering, remarriage, etc.). simultaneously, advances in statistical methods, such as event history analysis and various types of panel regression models, have made considerable contributions to a better understanding of underlying causal relations and offering new perspectives on the progress of intimate relationships. another important improvement was the collection of dyadic data. in many surveys, both partners are asked about their partnership, their intentions, emotions, dynamics – also from a longitudinal perspective. here too, the existence of longitudinal dyadic models has considerably expanded the scope of analysis (kenny et al. 2006). more generally, there is an extensive literature on causality from different academic disciplines, implying different answers or at least different emphases regarding the concept of causality (bunge 1979; spirtes et al. 1993; pearl 2000; woodward 2003; opp 2010; pearl et al. 2019). in his book about “making things happen” woodward (2003) argued that it is heuristically useful to think of explanatory and causal relationships as relations that are exploitable for manipulation and control. the guiding idea of the manipulability approach as an approach for a working defi nition of causation has the advantage of fi tting a wide range of the social and behavioural science, which is well-documented and formally elaborated by pearl et al. (2019; woodward 2003; pearl 2000). many statistics textbooks have pointed out that correlation does not imply causation and that no statistical method can determine the causal story from the data alone (pearl et al. 2019). pearl et al. (2019) elaborate upon four items to get a clear picture of causality: (1) a working defi nition of causation, (2) a method to formally articulate causal assumptions, (3) a method to link the structure of a causal model to the data, and (4) statistical methods to draw conclusions from the combination of causal assumptions embedded in a model and analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 335 the data. put simply, causation is defi ned as follows: “x is a cause of y if y listens to x and decides its value in response to what it hears” (pearl et al. 2019: 5). having no deterministic laws in social science, we must refer to indeterministic causation, which means that a manipulation of x changes the probability distribution of y. in the deterministic case, changes of x always lead to the same changes of y. however, if causal relationships are indeterministic, a relevant equation has to specify the causal assumptions and, therefore, the direct causes of x variables on a probability distribution of y. in the indeterministic context, this approach comes along with a bundle of criteria that must be considered in order to estimate the unbiased causal effect of a set of variables (woodward 2003: 43; pearl 2000): one widely accepted indicator that x is a cause of y is based on time: the change of x must occur before y, which can be ensured by an intervention in experimental research or by collecting longitudinal data in a non-experimental setting. the research question determines how temporally close the measurements of x and y must be. another point relates to how to measure the change in x. there is broad literature in social statistics regarding how changes over time can be measured within persons on the individual level and/or between persons (brüderl 2010; andreß et al. 2013). for example, while the fi xed effects approach focuses on within-variation, random effect models include both withinand between-variation. measuring changes in x and related changes in y on the individual level is closer to causality and an experimental design than an overall correlation of cross-sectional data is. furthermore, measuring causal relationships also depends on the set of included variables. we often do not know all determinants of y, or we do not have appropriate measurements in the data. therefore, it could be that we have omitted explanatory variables and therefore unobserved heterogeneity or a specifi c kind of selection, which leads to biased estimates. in this case, our conclusions on causality claims of x among y may be wrong, as x is related to important unknown or not included variables. these criteria can be readily implemented in experimental designs in particular. here, the sample is randomly divided into two or more groups, one of which is assigned an intervention while another is not. alternatively, this procedure can be approximated with longitudinal data, when the change of x proceeds the measurement of y and where the assumption is that both variables are randomly distributed. compared to these approaches, the use of cross-sectional data does not seem to be an appropriate design for assessing causality due to omitted variable bias and the lack of the possibility of modelling changes in x and y (andreß et al. 2013). keeping these general criteria of causality in mind, we next describe the progress of causality-based research for selected hypotheses in partnership research. here, we will focus on key hypotheses about the progress of intimate relationships ranging from union formation to further transitions such as cohabitation, marriage, divorce, and repartnering. for each hypothesis, we will present previous fi ndings from cross-sectional studies and discuss whether these initial fi ndings are supported by the more recent the application of longitudinal data and causal methods. • michael feldhaus, richard preetz336 4 findings from longitudinal data 4.1 union formation and living-apart-together today, individuals may have a choice between numerous romantic options, including entering into casual short-term sexual relationships, living as a non-cohabiting couple in separate households, entering into stable cohabitation without marriage, or being a married couple with a joint household (sassler 2010). contrary to the increasing postponement of marriage, there is no general trend in postponing union formation. for germany, konietzka/tatjes (2014) show that men born in the early 1980s started their fi rst partnership about one year earlier in life than those born in the early 1970s. however, for women, no differences by birth cohort are observed. for the us, manning et al. (2014) found no delay in median age at fi rst union for men and women in the same timeframe. research about union formation often focuses on the infl uence of socio-economic resources, resulting in fi ndings that higher outcomes in education and employment are associated with higher chances of entry into a partnership (klein 1990; bracher/santow 1998; oppenheimer 2003; jalovaara 2012; rapp 2018). however, in the following, we will discuss two main hypotheses in the fi eld of union formation and living apart together as the main type of partnership after individuals start their unions. do imbalanced partner markets affect union formation? the composition of partner markets, usually measured as the relative number of men and women (sex ratio), has been emphasised as a key theoretical factor for starting a new relationship (becker 1991; blau 1994; south et al. 2001; stauder 2008). chances and opportunities of forming cross-sex associations are hypothesised to be determined by the numerical distribution of men and women in the population. thus, the partner who is in scarce has higher chances and opportunities of fi nding a partner. studying these partner market effects has a long tradition going back to the 1920s (groves/ogburn 1928; cox 1940). several studies show signifi cant effects of being the scarcer sex and higher rates of marriage (trovato 1988; fossett/kiecolt 1991; south/lloyd 1992; angrist 2002; schacht/kramer 2016). all of these studies analyse marriage, rather than being in a relationship of any type, as the outcome. only the study by warner et al. (2011) investigates young adults’ chances of being in a relationship depending on partner market imbalances with combined us census and cross-sectional survey data. they fi nd no correlations between relationship status and sex ratios for men and women. these previous studies theoretically assume a causal link between partner market imbalances and union formation through a time-ordered mechanism, in that imbalances result in different subsequent partnership outcomes. however, these studies do not use longitudinal data and methods that take this time-dependent relationship into account. rather, they use cross-sectional data correlating the relative number of men and women with marriage or union status, and are thereby not able to uncover to what extent partner market conditions indeed affect analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 337 subsequent outcomes. a recent study by eckhard/stauder (2019) combines register data and longitudinal survey data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep) to test how different partner market measures like sex ratios, availability ratios, and partner market density affect the transition into a partnership. they start with a sample of single persons and follow them over time to investigate how the different partner market measures affect later transition rates into a new partnership. their piecewise-constant models show signifi cant effects of the availability ratio for men and partner market density for women, but no effects for sex ratios like those used in previous cross-sectional studies. another recent study by filser/preetz (2021) uses combined register and longitudinal survey data from the german family panel (pairfam) to investigate whether regional sex ratios and subjective perceptions of meeting more men or women are associated with, and result in, different transition rates into partnership. they model the assumed link between partner market and partnership outcomes with a sample of people who were initially not in a partnership and follow them over time. here, partner market imbalances predict later partnership outcomes. while there is no general association between regional sex ratios and subjective perceptions of meeting more men or women, results from the longitudinal event history analysis show only weak effects of being the scarcer sex, measured with age-specifi c sex ratios, and having higher transition rates into a partnership for women. no signifi cant effects are found for men. on the contrary, the use of the subjective partner market measure shows strong effects of perceiving to meet more people of one’s own sex on rates of union formation, in that rates of transition into partnership decrease if someone meets more people of their own sex. in sum, longitudinal data and longitudinal methods suggest that strong partner market effects on union formation identifi ed in previous studies are based on crosssectional fi ndings and therefore may not relate to causality. recent longitudinal approaches show only a weak infl uence of changing partner markets on partnership formation and may relativise the strong assumed relationship between imbalanced partner markets and union formation. as recent fi ndings have shown, one explanation for this weak association may be the missing link between the regional measurement of partner market imbalances and how individuals perceive and experience these imbalances subjectively in their daily life contacts. is living apart together a more stable or more transitory type of partnership? research on living apart together (lat) relationships is relatively new, with a growing number of studies since the early 2000s due to the availability of new datasets and more detailed questionnaires. while many of these studies are based on different concepts, defi nitions, and meanings of living apart together, such as committed or long-distance relationships, they all focus on the same basic concept of intimate partners living in separate households. several studies put the prevalence of lat relationships between around 6 percent to 10 percent in australia (reimondos et al. 2011), canada (milan/peters 2003), the us (strohm et al. 2009), the uk (haskey 2005), • michael feldhaus, richard preetz338 france (régnier-loilier et al. 2009), germany (asendorpf 2008), sweden (olàh et al. 2020) and eastern europe (liefbroer et al. 2015). they show that living in an intimate relationship with separate households occurs throughout all stages of the life course and is not characteristic for a specifi c stage and phase in someone’s partnership biography. the number of lat couples is highest in early adulthood and decreases until the age of 40, but becomes stable later in life when living apart together is seen as an alternative stable type of relationship, e.g. after a divorce in later life. further studies use descriptive methods such as cluster-analysis to investigate different types of lat relationships, identifying clusters from independence-seeking young adults up to older adults in post-family life stages (lois/lois 2012; régnier-loilier et al. 2009; coulter/hu 2017; pasteels et al. 2017). liefbroer et al. (2015) and rhoades et al. (2009) analyse the reasons for living apart together and fi nd that the majority of couples live in separate households because of practical constraints such as the partners’ employment or fi nancial situations, or the housing market. only around 20 percent of lat couples live apart for reasons of independence or not feeling ready yet. these fi ndings from cross-sectional studies have resulted in a debate and the key assumption that living apart together may be a “new” alternative partnership form to cohabitation and marriage. the results suggest the existence of a signifi cant group of couples who live in a stable lat partnership over time. more recent studies have used longitudinal data to observe the progress of lat couples and investigate the assumption of living apart together as a stable alternative relationship form. several further factors that infl uence the development and transition of living apart together relationships have been identifi ed. the studies mostly use longitudinal methods of time-discrete event history analysis, fulfi lling the time assumption that the measurements of x must occur before y. for germany, dorbritz/naderi (2012) and lois/lois (2012) analyse the progression of lat couples in their mid-20s and mid-30s over one and two years with longitudinal data from the german family panel (pairfam). their fi ndings show that around half of lat couples experience a transition to cohabitation or separation within two years. results from france with data from the generation and gender survey (ggs) confi rm the transitory character of living apart together relationships, with only 22 percent of couples still living in the same lat relationship after three years, and 12 percent after six years (régnier-loilier 2016). further results show differences in relationship progression by age. while the share of stable lat relationships is lowest for young adults aged 22-27 with 6 percent survival after three years, for older adults, lat may indeed be a form of coupledom in its own right, with around one-third of couples still in their lat relationship after six years (régnier-loilier 2016). schnor (2015) uses retrospective data for partnership biographies from germany, showing the highly transitory character of lat relationships, with 98 percent of lat relationships experiencing either a transition into cohabitation or separation within 10 years. a recent study by bastin (2019) examines single mothers’ partnerships and shows a share of 20 percent in the same living apart together relationship after three years. besides investigating the number of couples still in lat relationships within different time periods, all of these studies also examine several factors that infl uence analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 339 the transition of living apart together relationships to cohabitation or separation. considering the time assumption, they model the infl uence of these factors in a time-delayed way, measuring x before the occurrence of y. starting with structural characteristics for the transition to cohabitation, results show higher transition rates for couples with educational homogamy, whereas transition rates for those couples with lower-educated men than women decrease (dorbritz/naderi 2012; wagner et al. 2019). a transition to cohabitation is also less likely for those in education or still living in the parental household (lois/lois 2012; wagner et al. 2019). previous life course experiences such as having children from a previous partner or the number of previous relationships decrease the likelihood of moving in together (wagner et al. 2019; bastin 2019). relationship dynamic factors show higher transition rates if relationship satisfaction is high, partners were introduced to each other’s parents, and if partners have positive intentions for future cohabitation, marriage, and children (dorbritz/naderi 2012; wagner et al. 2019). turning to the transition from living apart together to separation, those who state independence as their main reason for living apart together have higher chances of breaking up over time and lower chances of moving in together (régnier-loilier 2016; lois/lois 2012). krapf (2018) uncovers the role of geographical distance for lat relationship development and fi nds higher risks of separation for long-distance and higher transition rates to cohabitation for those in short-distance relationships. while lower relationship satisfaction increases the risk of separation, more nights spent together per week decrease separation risks (dorbritz/naderi 2012). to sum up, the use of longitudinal data improves our understanding of living apart together relationships signifi cantly. instead of describing the prevalence and characteristics of lat couples with cross-sectional data, using panel data allows the researcher to examine the partnership course and discover when, how, and for what reasons lat couples experience various union transitions. a key assumption from early cross-sectional studies is that living apart together may be a stable alternative partnership form to cohabitation and marriage due to the rising levels of importance of independence to individuals. however, longitudinal studies have revealed the highly transitory character of non-cohabiting partnerships. the use of longitudinal data uncovers the nature of living apart together as a phase throughout partnership courses, usually followed by either cohabitation or separation. besides these descriptive fi ndings over time, some studies have explicitly focused on causal relationships, such as those trying to disentangle the rationale behind the transition to cohabitation or separation including the fear of losing autonomy as an important predictor. however, in many cases, the causal claims behind the fi ndings are still unclear because of omitted variables, thus requiring more specifi cation. for example: why does the previous number of partnerships decrease the chances of a transition to cohabitation? while there are numerous plausible reasons (e.g., negative experiences with previous partners, unfulfi lled expectations, ambivalent attachment styles, etc.), causal explanations remain unclear. another example is the role of educational homogamy: which features might coincide with educational homogamy, infl uencing x and therefore the outcome y over time (e.g., similar income, similar expectations, similar leisure time activities, similar attitudes etc.)? • michael feldhaus, richard preetz340 more analysis that considers dyadic data with information from both partners is needed. previous studies have considered structural couple characteristics such as age, education, or employment situation more closely than relationship dynamics due to data limitations. however, to uncover the underlying mechanisms, both partners’ satisfaction, expectations, and future orientations must be taken into account. the data from the german family panel (pairfam) covers both partners that live in separate households, offering unique possibilities to use dyadic model approaches not only for structural but also for relationship dynamic characteristics (for examples of dyadic analyses on relationship dynamics with pairfam, see johnson/horne 2016; finn et al. 2020; yurkiw/johnson 2021). 4.2 cohabitation and marriage over recent decades, a large number of studies have been published with regard to the transition to cohabitation and marriage. in this brief review, it is not possible to investigate all these developments. therefore, we again concentrate on several key research questions and hypotheses that have been received particular scholarly attention. is cohabitation a temporary step towards marriage, or an alternative? in northern and western european and north american countries, spread of consensual unions started in the 1970s (in eastern europe since the 1990s) (sobotka/ toulemon 2008). while cohabitation was initially seen as a deviant or avantgarde behaviour, it is now socially accepted in many countries. theoretically, the diffusion of consensual unions was fi rst embedded in the sdt framework (lesthaeghe 2010), emphasizing that cultural shifts and economic development trigger entry into cohabitations and the “de-institutionalisation of marriage”. demographic research started to observe the diffusion of cohabitation primarily by analysing social indicators for a fi rst description of this then-new phenomenon (e.g., bumpass/ sweet 1989; rindfuss/vandenheuvel 1990). in 1989, bumpass and sweet wrote: “there is no single answer to whether cohabitation is a late stage of courtship or an early stage of marriage. it is the former for couples who are uncertain about their relationship but are considering marriage, the latter for those who would marry immediately were it not for some practical constraint, and neither for couples who do not want to marry each other.” (bumpass/sweet 1989: 615) the authors postulate and investigate key hypotheses on the spread of cohabitation and rationale for decreasing marriages rates in the us by using data from the national survey of families and households (nsfh). with the measurement of relationship histories as well as attitudes towards cohabitation, marriage, and divorce, the nsfh data set offered a unique database for relationship transitions at the time. some of the initial results from the nsfh are worth mentioning: the entry into cohabitation was most likely among women and those who did not complete analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 341 high school, those whose family received welfare, and those who did not grow up in a nuclear family. these consensual unions generally did not last long because most cohabiting couples either married or separated within a few years. from these and other fi ndings, the question arose as to whether cohabitation was a step towards marriage or an alternative to it. at the time, answers to this question were quite unclear, and the initial results were based only on cross-sectional fi ndings. over the next 30 years, research on cohabitation and marriage increased dramatically. life course data and longitudinal data offered the opportunity of analysing partnership biographies over time. even rather descriptive methods such as sequence analysis, cluster analysis, and latent class analysis allow the investigation of partnership trajectories over time and include other descriptive variables – the identifi cation of specifi c partnership types or patterns. for the us, casper/bianchi (2002) proposed different types based on the couple’s rationale for cohabiting, which included “precursor to marriage”, “trial marriage”, “co-residential dating”, and “alternative to marriage”. di giulio et al. (2019) fi nd fi ve patterns of cohabitation: “prelude to fast marriage and childbirth”, “alternative to marriage”, “temporary union”, “prelude to childless marriage”, “stable cohabitation”. similar research strategies with similar results are used and presented by heuveline et al. (2003; hiekel et al. 2014; jalovaara/fasang 2015; fulda 2016). the opportunity of looking at complete partnership trajectories in the context of panel data increases the analytical power of answering questions of timing, duration, and meaning of cohabitation compared to other partnership related transitions. from these fi ndings, it can be summarised that over the past 30 years, cohabitation has increasingly become a heterogeneous experience, its meaning and function varying from a stepping-stone into marriage to a marital alternative, with great variability across countries (manning/smock 2005; vespa/painter 2011; sobotka/ toulemon 2008). however, this area of research remains rather descriptive. while the information of partnership trajectories and related descriptive indicators for specifi c subgroups is very important, it is only a fi rst step towards a more elaborate causal analysis. many papers stop at this descriptive level. why cohabitate? why still marry? besides the descriptive investigation of partnership trajectories, a large number of studies have focused on indicators determining the entry into cohabitation or marriage. one key hypothesis postulates that women with high economic resources and higher education are much more independent and therefore do not need to marry. in 1997, oppenheimer noted that there were no empirical signs of this socalled women’s independence effect: women with attractive economic resources were not less likely to enter marriage (oppenheimer/lew 1995; oppenheimer 1997). until this time, support for the independence hypothesis was found only in cross-sectional aggregate-level studies. for example, mclanahan/casper (1995) regressed the percentage of married women aged 25-29 on, among other variables, the percentage of women, also aged 25-29, who were working full-time year-round. • michael feldhaus, richard preetz342 they found that employment had a large negative effect on marital status, which was interpreted as a support for the independence hypothesis. however, individual-level analyses of marriage formation using longitudinal data and event history analysis failed to support the hypothesis: rather, the opposite is the case, as micro-level regression analyses show that more education, employment, earnings of women coincide with a higher rather than a lower propensity to marry (e.g., oppenheimer/lew 1995; lichter et al. 2006). in his article about the “price of partnering”, clarkberg (1999) uses the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 (nls-72), based on six waves with retrospective marriage and cohabitation histories of 12,841 participants and discrete-time event history models, in order to investigate the role of economic factors regarding the entry into cohabitation and marriage. results indicate that relative income (how well an individual is doing compared to others in the same position), is strongly associated with the transition to marriage, but it is less so with the transition to cohabitation. furthermore, there are disparate effects of employment instability: while instability is negatively associated with the transition to marriage, it is positively associated with the transition to cohabitation. this example underlines how results and hypotheses can change if the specifi cation of a causal model is more precise regarding time, the specifi cation of change, and the granularity of data. while the independence effect is related to women’s economic position, the socalled uncertainty hypothesis focuses on men (oppenheimer 1988). the argument is that unstable careers, nonemployment, or low earnings imply uncertainty, which should coincide with a lower rate of union formation and a higher rate for cohabitation rather than marriage (oppenheimer 2003). xie et al. (2003) explore the relationship between economic potential and rates of entry into marriage and cohabitation. the results confi rm that all fi ve measures of earnings potential strongly and positively infl uence the likelihood of marriage for men, but not for women. earnings potential does not affect entry into cohabiting unions for either men or women. kalmijn (2011), using the european community household panel (echp, with 13 countries, using discrete-time event-history analysis), confi rms that men who are not yet settled in their career postpone union formation and that cohabitation is less sensitive to economic insecurity than marriage is (see also, e.g., liefbroer 2005; robert/bukodi 2005; lichter et al. 2006). therefore, there is some evidence that cohabitation is the “poor man’s marriage”, and there are empirical indications that changes in an individual’s economic position are causally related to partnership-related transitions. in many cases, contextual factors regarding the entry into cohabitation or marriage are analysed by comparing different countries (kalmijn 2013). multilevel analyses show that the direction and strength of the gradient depend on the societal context. in countries where gender roles are traditional, more highly-educated women are less likely to be married than women with lower levels of education; in gender-egalitarian countries, better-educated women are more likely to be married. for men, the educational effect on marriage is absent in traditional countries but becomes positive as gender roles become more equal (dykstra/poortman 2010). analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 343 concerning the theory of the second demographic transition, clarkberg et al. (1995), investigate whether attitudes affect the transition to cohabitation or marriage. using event history techniques, they show that the choice between cohabitation and marriage is affected by attitudes and values towards work, family, leisure time-use, money, and gender roles, as well as values and attitudes toward marriage itself. similar results using event history techniques were also previously found by axinn/thornton (1992). billari/liefbroer (2016) emphasise the role of cognitive and affective evaluations in the decision-making process to marry. using panel data from the panel study on social integration in the netherlands (psin) and cox hazard regression, the timing of entry into marriage was estimated. the key fi nding is that the affective evaluation of marriage and cohabitation is a better predictor of the actual entry into marriage than the cognitive evaluation, suggesting that the choice to enter marriage is more strongly dependent on emotions than rational considerations. simultaneously, cognitive evaluations were found to be more infl uential for higher educated young adults than for young adults with a low level of education. another advantage of using panel data is related to analysing the timing of transitions. for example, in a recent paper, sassler et al. (2018) concentrate on the question of how rapidly women progress into cohabitation. what factors are associated with the tempo of shared living, and is the timing into cohabitation associated with subsequent marital transitions? multivariate analyses (event history analysis) reveal important social class disparities in the timing of cohabitation. there is a rapid tempo to shared living among women from less-advantaged backgrounds, consistent with qualitative and quantitative research (sassler/miller 2011; sassler et al. 2016). women who enter into cohabiting unions rapidly may view living together as a more intensive form of dating or as an alternative to being single, as well as a means to take advantage of factors formerly touted as benefi ts of marriage. sassler et al. (2016) do not fi nd evidence that those who rapidly moved in with their current partners also accelerated their pace into marriage. instead, their fi ndings suggest that rapid transitions into cohabitation may reduce the odds of transitioning into marriage, although these results are only weakly signifi cant (see also perelli-harris/ amos 2015). these examples show that statistical techniques, especially event history analysis, have been used extensively to identify the factors that may explain a transition or the timing into cohabitation or marriage over time but with more or less precise measurement of changing x variables. in many analyses, the variables used are often placeholders for assumed underlying mechanisms. the dyadic perspective also has substantial advantages over the use of longitudinal data, because panel data offers the possibility to analyse the decisionmaking process to cohabitate or to marry from both partners’ points of view. in this regard duvander/kridahl (2020) investigate how decisions are taken regarding marriage among swedish cohabiting couples. the study fi nds that women’s and men’s intentions to marry seem to be equally important, but that there are gendered differences by educational level: women’s intentions carry more weight among highly educated couples, while men’s intentions carry more weight among couples with lower levels of education. • michael feldhaus, richard preetz344 is there a “cohabitation effect”? does marriage increase well-being? a burgeoning literature has explored whether there is a causal or spurious association between marriage and well-being, and whether pre-marital cohabitation positively or negatively affects subsequent marital outcomes (musick/bumpass 2012; james/beattie 2012; stanley et al. 2010). in this regard, a number of outcomes was analysed: physical and mental health, sexual fulfi lment, family violence, job productivity, economic well-being, and contact with parents and friends (perelliharris/styrc 2018; soons/kalmijn 2009; musick/bumpass 2012; zimmermann/ easterlin 2006). early results showed that cohabiting unions result in poorer outcomes. axinn/ barber (1997) demonstrated that individuals who cohabit prior to marriage for longer periods of time experienced an erosion of valuing marriage and childrearing over time. thus, the experience of cohabitation may erode the motivation for and the commitment to marriage, and increase the tolerance for divorce. further fi ndings show that cohabitation comes along with poorer communication, lower relationship satisfaction, higher levels of domestic violence, and later divorce (e.g., cohan/ kleinbaum 2002; dush et al. 2003; kline et al. 2004; stanley et al. 2004). therefore, a hypothesis often investigated is known as the “cohabitation effect” (stanley et al. 2006), indicating that pre-marital cohabitation leads to poorer marital outcomes. two fundamental explanations, which may also be at work simultaneously, are discussed (axinn/thornton 1992; brown/booth 1996; smock 2000): (a) the argument of selection means that the cohabitation effect exists because of the pre-existing characteristics of people who choose to cohabit, and (b) that cohabitation is a special kind of experience, i.e., that there is something about cohabitation itself that increases the risk for partnership dissatisfaction, distress, and divorce. results from longitudinal analyses indicate that differences in outcomes are reduced or eliminated upon accounting for selection into either cohabitation or marriage (james/beattie 2012; musick/bumpass 2012; perelli-harris/styrc 2018). variables such as religious beliefs, attitudes about marriage and divorce, and other socio-demographic variables, associated with both the likelihood of cohabiting prior to marriage and diffi culties in marriage, are included in many studies, and fi ndings indicate that these selection variables explain some or all of the pre-marital cohabitation risk (e.g., brown et al. 2006). nevertheless, numerous studies show that selection does not completely explain the risk associated with cohabiting prior to marriage (e.g., dush et al. 2003; stafford et al. 2004; kline et al. 2004; stanley et al. 2006). recent studies using fi xed-effects models for analysing within-variation over time show opposite effects, indicating that the transition to marriage per se results in few if any improvements in relationship quality. the authors found the similarities between marriage and cohabitation to be more striking than the differences: entering into any union improved psychological well-being but reduced contact with parents and friends. direct marriage and marriage preceded by cohabitation were statistically indistinguishable in all outcomes examined, providing no evidence that pre-marital cohabitation has negative consequences for well-being or ties to analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 345 family and friends. when union dissolutions were excluded from the analysis, there were no statistically signifi cant differences between the married and cohabiting for depression, relationships with parents, contact with parents, or time spent with friends (musick/bumpass 2012). vespa/painter (2011) extend research on the relationship between wealth accumulation and union experiences, such as marriage and cohabitation. using longitudinal data, their fi ndings indicate that marriage is positively correlated with wealth accumulation: individuals who marry their one and only cohabiting partner experience a wealth premium that is twice as large as that for married individuals who never cohabited prior to marrying. furthermore, some studies using longitudinal data indicate that relationship quality declines with union duration (e.g., brown 2004; umberson et al. 2005; zimmermann/easterlin 2006; soons et al. 2009), showing a “honeymoon effect” in subjective well-being following marriage. such analyses, which consider couples’ well-being immediately before and after a transition or change, are only possible with appropriate panel data (see the contribution by gattig/minkus 2021 in this si). these are very important results, but we must note that research regarding the specifi c impacts of a biographical transition on future outcomes in many cases does not go behind the given associations over time. it is not the status of cohabitation or marriage itself, but rather the underlying partnership dynamics arising from or amplifi ed by that status (e.g., stress and daily hassles, communication, common activities). some papers discuss these aspects in their theoretical framework, but the variables are then not specifi ed later in the model. for causal explanation, the link between a causal model, related variables, and available data is sometimes not suffi cient or could be improved by using richer data. 3.3 divorce, repartnering and remarriage as divorce rates have increased, the investigation of reasons and consequences of separation and divorce has become a central topic in family research, fi rst in the usa and also in european countries (goode 1956). after a period of sharp increases in europe since the 1970s, rates of divorce have begun to stabilise or even decline in nations with some of the highest levels, a phenomenon that suggests the possibility of a widespread stabilisation of divorce at a moderately high plateau (cherlin 2017; härkönen 2014). are there changing impacts of education and employment on divorce over time? in initial studies, a number of socio-demographic characteristics (such as age at marriage, education, pregnancy, religion, parental divorce, children, employment, income, ethnic differences, etc.) hypothesised to make divorce more likely were fi rst examined with cross-sectional data (e.g., udry 1966; bumpass/sweet 1972; becker et al. 1977). many of the topics dealt with at the time remain relevant today (raley/ sweeny 2020). in his review, amato (2010) identifi ed nine consistent predictors of divorce: teenage marriage, poverty, unemployment, low educational attainment, • michael feldhaus, richard preetz346 pre-marital cohabitation, pre-marital fertility, interracial marriage, previous divorce, and parental divorce. in recent years, the analysis of the causes and outcomes of divorce has become much more differentiated: teachman (2010), using the panel data of the nlsy-79, found that women’s higher incomes and higher income ratios act to destabilise marriages, whereas cumulative labour market participation acts to stabilise marriages. sayer et al. (2011) use longitudinal data to assess distinct predictors of wives and husbands leaving marriages. they fi nd that when men are not employed, either spouse is more likely to leave. when wives report betterthan-average marital satisfaction, their employment affects neither spouse’s exit. however, when wives report below-average marital satisfaction, their employment makes it more likely they will leave. the authors’ fi ndings suggest that theories of divorce require a “gendering” to refl ect asymmetric gender dynamics. with regard to the uncertainty hypothesis and using finnish register data, jalovaara (2013) fi nds that lower levels of education, unemployment (of the man in particular), and the male partner’s (or the couple’s) low income increased dissolution rates of cohabitation and marriage. the stabilizing effects of each partner’s high educational level as well as the male partner’s employment and high income were stronger in marriage than in cohabitation. with the availability of long-term panel data, such as the psid or the soep, it is also possible to examine changes over longer periods with panel analysis. in this regard, schwartz/gonalons-pons (2016) fi nd that wives’ relative earnings were positively associated with the risk of divorce among couples married in the late 1960s and the 1970s. using discrete-time event-history techniques on data on fi rst marriages from the fertility and family surveys (ffs), härkönen/dronkers (2006) fi nd that women with higher education had a higher risk of divorce in france, greece, italy, poland, and spain, but not in estonia, finland, west germany, hungary, latvia, sweden, and switzerland. in austria, lithuania, and the united states, the educational gradient of divorce is negative. they fi nd that the de-institutionalisation of marriage and unconventional family practices are associated with a negative educational gradient of divorce, while welfare state expenditure is associated with a more positive gradient (see also matysiak et al. 2014). therefore, with regard to the educational infl uence on divorce, raley/sweeny (2020) conclude that the argument that increased educational attainment reduces divorce risk by reducing fi nancial hardship and stress, and by increasing marital quality, stands on weak empirical ground. more research on this potential link is needed. does pre-marital cohabitation increase divorce risk? previous fi ndings indicate that pre-marital cohabitation was associated with a higher risk of martial dissolution (bumpass/sweet 1989), though it was unclear whether this was a selection effect or whether the cohabitation experience itself indeed destabilises marriage. new panel data and statistical tools can better disentangle this cohabitation–divorce association. pre-marital cohabitation may increase the risk of divorce by truncating the marital search: couples may begin cohabiting without giving much consideration to long-term compatibility and then marry out of inertia or analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 347 in response to a pregnancy (stanley et al. 2006). furthermore, there is also be an age effect: the younger a couple is when they begin living together, the more likely they are to eventually divorce (kuperberg 2014). a growing body of evidence suggests that self-selection (rather than causal processes) is driving this statistical association (brüderl/kalter 2001; impicciatore/billari 2012). findings by kulu & boyle indicate that those who cohabit prior to marriage have a higher risk of marital dissolution. however, once observed and unobserved characteristics are controlled for, the risks of marital dissolution for those who cohabit prior to marriage are signifi cantly lower than those who marry directly, which supports the “trial marriage” theory (kulu/boyle 2010). some recent studies conclude that the association between premarital cohabitation and elevated risk of divorce may have weakened over time (manning/cohen 2012; raley/sweeny 2020). looking at the us, since the mid-1990s, pre-marital cohabitation has not been associated with marital instability (manning/ cohen 2012). a meta-analysis found that pre-marital cohabitation was more strongly associated with marital stability as long as one married the fi rst cohabiting partner (jose et al. 2010). once again, we must keep in mind that it is often not the status itself, but rather the underlying mechanism within a specifi c status, that is inducing these results. it seems that more research is needed regarding this question as well. repartnering after a divorce another example of the increasing use of panel data is the question of the occurrence and factors infl uencing repartnering and remarriage. due to the increasing number of divorces, numerous studies have dealt with questions of remarriage in the us from the 1970s onwards (e.g., sweet 1973; becker et al. 1977). for example, teachman/heckert (1985) use marital histories, covered by the national survey of family growth (1973), and compute life tables and proportional hazard models. similar methods and estimates are used by bumpass et al. (1990): they fi nd that the presence and number of children, ethnic groups, women’s age at divorce, age at fi rst marriage, presence of children (in some studies), higher socio-economic position of men, and lower socio-economic position of women, as well as regional differences, infl uence the probability of remarriage. in the meantime, many of the earlier results have been supported and expanded upon by more recent studies (de graaf/kalmijn 2003; gałęzewska et al. 2017). de graaf/kalmijn (2003) use life history data and calculate competing-risk models. they fi nd less support for economic theories and related variables. with regard to cultural aspects, they fi nd that women with more individualistic orientations are less likely to repartner. this effect is primarily a rejection of marriage after divorce, not a rejection of cohabitation. stronger support is obtained for the role of meeting and mating opportunities. findings show that men and women who are more integrated into society are more likely to repartner. on the other hand, dependent children are also likely to restrict women’s meeting opportunities as they increase the cost of time women spend searching for a new partner (de graaf/kalmijn 2003; ivanova et al. 2013). poortman (2007) computes frailty models and fi nds that chances of repartnering are smaller than chances of fi rst union formation. formerly married • michael feldhaus, richard preetz348 persons are less likely to enter a new union than former cohabiters are. findings also indicate that “the fi rst cut is the deepest”: union formation probabilities drop substantially after the fi rst union dissolves but remain constant after subsequent break-ups. using data from the divorce in flanders study, ivanova et al. (2013) analyse the impact of parenthood on repartnering. they fi nd that full-time residential parents are the least likely to start a new union following separation and that parents are more likely to start a union with another parent than with a childless partner. schnor et al. (2017) demonstrated that flemish mothers with sole custody were less likely to repartner than those with shared custody, indicated that parenthood may not be a particularly attractive status on the partner market (e.g., gałęzewska et al. 2017; ivanova et al. 2013). a further special topic is remarriage or repartnering after a “gray divorce”, a divorce at age 50 or older (brown et al. 2019): there is an increasing rate of gray divorces over the past few decades, but little is known about the mechanisms undergirding decisions to repartner after gray divorce. brown et al. (2019) examined women’s and men’s likelihood of forming a marriage or cohabiting union following gray divorce by estimating competing risk multinomial logistic regression models using discrete-time event history data. about 22 percent of women and 37 percent of men repartnered within 10 years after a gray divorce. repartnering more often occurred through cohabitation than remarriage, particularly for men. resources such as economic factors, health, and social ties were linked to repartnering (brown et al. 2019). the chances of men repartnering increase in higher income quintiles, whereas women in lower income quintiles are more likely to repartner, in opposite to women in higher income groups, who are less likely to do so (pasteels/mortelmann 2017) another important infl uencing factor receiving increasing attention is existing contextual factors. contextual factors – such as social norms towards divorce and remarriage, economic conditions, legal policies, welfare state regulations, the partner market, and the attractiveness of the separated women and men – are important because they may infl uence the interplay between individual-level characteristics and repartnering behaviour, resulting in different associations across countries (billari 2015). current fi ndings with longitudinal data confi rm that there are many country-specifi c differences in this respect. findings show that economic conditions, legal policies, and welfare state regulations infl uence women’s need to repartner (de graaf/kalmijn 2003; ivanova et al. 2013; vanassche et al. 2015). 6 conclusions in this review, we have reviewed selected articles in order to analyse to what extent demographic research have made progress in understanding the dynamics of intimate relationships by applying longitudinal data. given the wide range of studies and topics on intimate relationships, we focus on key demographic transitions: the entry into cohabitation, marriage, separation or divorce, and repartnering. therefore, many studies and topics on partnership dynamics, such as the effects of analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 349 various socio-cultural factors on partnership stability or the role of personal traits or personal constructs on partnership-related dynamics, are not considered here. we want to conclude our refl ections on partnership relationships and their related transitions with the benefi ts that have emerged with the introduction of longitudinal data in regard to causal claims and the challenges that still remain. looking at studies on partnership-related transitions, we can conclude that signifi cant initial studies have been carried out, particularly in the north american context. for example, the world’s longest running household panel, the panel study of income dynamics (psid), was launched in the usa in 1968. it is therefore not surprising that pioneering research is coming from north america. however, we can also emphasise that the foundations of longitudinal analyses have also improved considerably in european countries in recent decades. concerning partnership transitions (the entry into cohabitation, marriage, divorce, repartnering), life history data has introduced major improvements regarding the collection of complete partnership trajectories and related demographic events. given complete partnership histories, it is now also possible to analyse different episodes, their duration, the timing or postponing, and resulting sequences over the life course, often differentiated by various cohorts. the simultaneous development of event data analysis, with its various possibilities, has led to a signifi cant improvement of the time-based analysis of associations between variables over time. this was an essential step towards identifying causal relationships. in subsequent years, event history data were more strongly supplemented by panel data, often based on annual surveys and rich data sets. these advances allowed for more accurate analyses over time and a much more precise detection of time-varying dependent and independent variables. additional prospective information for analysing transition-related decision-making processes was also included with the newly-launched panel studies, such as intentions, attitudes, expectations, personality traits, etc. this has again considerably increased the potential of causal analysis because measurements of changes of dependent and independent variables are temporally closer and measured on the individual level over time. in this case, various panel regressions models (fi xed-effects, randomeffects, dynamic panel models, latent growth curve modelling, etc.) are more likely to be used. overall, these approaches are in line with the mentioned criteria about causality, and by applying these methods, our knowledge about causal claims within intimate relationships increases considerably. furthermore, the problems of omitted variables and unobserved heterogeneity as well as questions about selectivity bias are at least reduced given rich individual-level databases over long time periods. therefore, we can conclude that the availability of longitudinal data, together with the improvement of statistical techniques, has led to a more precise analysis of causal claims regarding partnership dynamics and related transitions in recent decades. however, some challenges remain: careful attention must be paid to the link between the causal model and used data. in particular, this includes whether the measurement of a change in variable x and the outcome y really represents the proposed and often theoretically justifi ed underlying causal mechanism. findings • michael feldhaus, richard preetz350 signifi cant effects of, for example, gender, race, or partnership status, are in many cases not convincing or comparable with a manipulability approach of causal explanation. if we refer to causal relationships as relations that are exploitable for manipulation and control, strict causal analysis is essentially out of the question. therefore, in many cases, the underlying mechanisms behind observed effects are of greater interest. in this regard, a rich database from different disciplines increase the options of examining assumed underlying mechanisms more directly. furthermore, longitudinal data are not a suffi cient alternative for experimental designs. but with regard to the analysis of biographical transitions, conducting experimental studies is neither practically feasible nor ethically desirable. in this respect, questions of causality are perhaps diffi cult to answer conclusively. in their recent review, sharon sassler and daniel lichter conclude that “the processes of union formation will become increasingly diverse, fragmented, and complicated. family scholarship will be challenged as never before by these developments. international migration, racial and ethnic diversity, challenges to traditional gender relations and sexual 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https://doi.org/10.1086/224279 https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2005.0131 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-015-9366-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0043-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/90.1.269 https://doi.org/10.1093/0195155270.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.2307/3180805 https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407521996446 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2006.00135.x analysing transitions in intimate relationships with panel data • 361 date of submission: 09.11.2020 date of acceptance: 23.06.2021 prof. dr. michael feldhaus (). carl von ossietzky universität oldenburg, institute for social sciences. oldenburg, germany. e-mail: michael.feldhaus@uni-oldenburg.de url: https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-lifecourse-and-social-inequality/team/michael-feldhaus richard preetz. university of bremen, socium research center on inequality and social policy. bremen, germany. e-mail: rpreetz@uni-bremen.de url: https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/richard-preetz/ carl von ossietzky universität oldenburg, institute for social sciences. oldenburg, germany. e-mail: richard.preetz@uni-oldenburg.de url: https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-lifecourse-and-social-inequality/team/richard-preetz mailto:michael.feldhaus@uni-oldenburg.de https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/michael-feldhaus https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/michael-feldhaus https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/michael-feldhaus mailto:rpreetz@uni-bremen.de https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/richard-preetz/ mailto:richard.preetz@uni-oldenburg.de https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/richard-preetz https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/richard-preetz https://uol.de/en/school1/institute-for-social-sciences/sociology-of-the-life-course-and-social-inequality/team/richard-preetz published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states* natalie nitsche abstract: a growing body of research indicates significant variation in the fertilityeducation relationship by partner education across high income countries. however, little is known on the education-fertility-couple nexus in the us context. the present study fills this gap. it investigates linkages between married couples’ relative socio-economic resources and their first and second birth transitions in the united states, using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 (nlsy79) and a competing risk approach to model birth transitions and union dissolutions competing with first and second births independently. the study presents four findings. first, homogamous tertiary educated couples have the highest first and second birth rate, net of fertility preferences, indicating the relevance of resource pooling for family formation. second, low-resource hypogamous and hypergamous couples have lower birth rates than most other pairings, underscoring that linkages between heterogamy and family formation may vary by the absolute level of the partners’ resources. third, family income mediates first birth rate differences between homogamous highly educated couples and most other pairings. lower first birth rates of hypogamous large distance couples, compared with homogamous tertiary educated couples, however, appear in part rooted in higher union dissolution rates. fourth and finally, the higher second birth rate of homogamous highly educated couples was not mediated by any of the tested socio-economic mechanisms. more research is needed to investigate the mechanisms underlying this birth rate pattern found throughout high income societies. keywords: fertility · couples · education · employment · income · union dissolution · united states comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 403-436 (date of release: 19.11.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-16en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-16 • natalie nitsche404 1 introduction the relationship between fertility and education has received much attention in population science. the fertility postponement and sub-replacement fertility that emerged across high income countries in the second half of the 20th century coincided with an increase in women’s participation in higher education and the labor market. fertility declines were subsequently attributed to female education expansion, and, in consequence, studies focused on understanding the fertility-education link mainly from the perspective of women (gustafsson 2001; kravdal/rindfuss 2008; rindfuss et al. 1996). men or couples were much less frequently studied (for reviews, see balbo et al. 2013; vasireddy et al. 2023). however, around 95 percent of births occur to co-residential couples, with little change to this proportion over time (andersson 2023; perelli-harris et al. 2012). this points to the relevance of the couple as unit of analysis for studying fertility dynamics and fertility-education linkages. indeed, a growing body of literature documents meaningful variation in the link between one’s education and fertility tempo and quantum by the educational attainment of the partner. studies on the education-fertility couple nexus largely examine transition rates to first, second, or subsequent births using individual level data. they indicate that the combination of both partners’ education is consequential for couples’ childbearing trajectories. for instance, couples with two tertiary educated partners postpone the first birth the longest and significantly longer than couples with one tertiary educated partner only, at least in some contexts (bagavos 2017; nitsche et al. 2018). moreover, these homogamous tertiary educated couples tend to subsequently have higher second and third birth transition rates in many, but not all examined contexts (bueno/ garcía-román 2021; dribe/stanfors 2010; nitsche et al. 2018; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). moreover, in finland, homogamous tertiary educated couples contribute the largest share of births to the completed cohort fertility of the 1969-75 birth cohort (andersson et al. 2024). however, educational combinations, or pooling, seems less relevant for childbearing among lower educated couples: across europe, there seem to be no differences in birth rates between homogamous and heterogamous couples comprised of lower and medium educated individuals (nitsche et al. 2021). this underscores the relevance of not only examining partners’ relative education (homogamous versus heterogamous) in the context of childbearing, but also of distinguishing between the levels of their combined education (high, medium, low). despite these emerging patterns, various open questions on the fertility-educationcouple nexus remain. first, studies have almost exclusively examined european societies; much less is known on the fertility-education-couple nexus in other world regions, including north america. one study using us national survey of family growth (nsfg) data documents that fertility intentions of tertiary educated women who already have a child are higher when their partner is tertiary educated as well, compared to tertiary educated women with a lower educated partner and all other educational pairings (morales 2020). while this finding is line with educational pairing differences in relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 405 fertility behavior that were found in other contexts, birth rates by education pairing in the us context have not been investigated. second, the mechanisms underlying the variation in birth transitions by educational pairings remain unclear. education is closely linked to other socioeconomic resources and one’s socio-cultural origin. however, no clear evidence has yet emerged on whether partners’ absolute and relative income, gendered work or care arrangements, or other factors underpin educational pairing differences in fertility. studies which have investigated these mechanisms indicate complex relationships with employment, income, and educational fields that vary across social contexts (osiewalska 2017; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). third, studies on birth rate differences often employ event-history methodology, censoring couples who separate before experiencing a birth. after a union dissolution, couples therefore no longer contribute to the denominator of the estimated hazard rates, implying that higher birth rates of certain educational pairings may in part be an artifact of some couples’ lower union separation rates and ensuing longer exposures to the risk of joint reproduction. the present study examines first and second birth transition rates by couples’ educational pairings in the united states, using data from the national longitudinal study of youth (nlsy79), representing the 1957-65 us birth cohort, and cox regression models. it extends the literature by offering evidence on the educationfertility-couple nexus in the united states, a populous high-income context with an early onset of female education expansion. moreover, it investigates whether the emerging variation in first and second births by educational pairings in the us is mediated by couples’ labor market work arrangements, absolute or relative income resources, or the female partner’s attitudes toward gendered work divisions. unlike many prior studies, it also controls for the woman’s desired family size. furthermore, it employs a competing risk approach and considers the link between educational pairings and union dissolution risks that occur in competition to first and second birth transitions. finally, it measures educational composition by employing an educational pairings approach, forming all combinations of low (defined as 0-12 years of schooling), medium (defined as 13-15 years of schooling), and high (defined as 16+ years of schooling) education. this educational pairing specification using all combinations of the partners’ low, medium, and high education has been commonly employed in the literature (nitsche et al. 2018; osiewalska 2017; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). it is akin to a full interaction of both partners’ education. this allows for assessing couples’ joint education from various angles: their absolute joint education, their relative (gendered) education, and their educational distance among the subset of heterogamous couples. furthermore, this specification is well suited to contrast homogamous tertiary educated couples to other educational pairings, particularly those comprised of one tertiary and one less educated partner. • natalie nitsche406 2 couples and fertility: theoretical considerations 2.1 absolute education ‒ pooling of resources one pathway through which couples’ educational pairings have been theorized to impact fertility behavior is via their joint absolute level of present and projected future resources. oppenheimer’s work (1988, 1994, 1997) stressed the relevance of partners’ pooled resources for their family trajectories and production. she emphasized the individual importance of each spouse and their interactions within the marriage, arguing that the spouses’ “collaborative” roles in making contributions to the economic wealth of the marriage are essential to understanding couples’ family production, including their childbearing behaviors (oppenheimer 1994: 333). both partners’ resources contribute to the well-being of the family, and each partner’s socio-economic contributions can buffer the couple against unforeseen threats such as unemployment or ill health, thereby reducing risk and uncertainty and offering a more conducive environment for childbearing. the pooling argument implies higher birth transition rates with increases in the partners’ additive resources for either birth transition. it also implies that couples who acquire the highest level of education may postpone the first birth until they have completed their education. however, they may then catch up with and perhaps even exceed the first birth rates of couples with lower pooled resources over the course of their relationship. hence, the higher the partners’ combined resources, the more conducive to childbearing their union is theorized to be. accordingly, tertiary educated homogamous couples would be expected to have the highest birth rates. 2.2 relative education ‒ specialization, bargaining, and gendered dynamics in contrast, the new home economic approach theorized a joint utility function of the family, which is maximized when both partners specialize in different roles, with one (traditionally the male partner) being the breadwinner in the labor market and the other (traditionally the female partner) being the primary caretaker of children and the household (becker 1981). this approach assumes mutual agreement about gendered work divisions and fertility desires among partners and disregards potential bargaining dynamics within the couple. it implies higher birth rates among hypergamous couples because women’s lower earning potential and opportunity costs when interrupting labor market work to take care of offspring are assumed to stimulate family formation in a specialized role set-up. the same applies to couples with male breadwinner work configurations, where the male partner works and the female partner does not (regardless of the couples’ educational pairing), or couples who are supportive of traditional gendered work division attitudinally. however, empirical research shows that, on average, there is considerable disagreement in spousal fertility preferences (testa 2012; thomson et al. 1990; voas 2003), suggesting that fertility is negotiated between partners. blood and wolfe (blood jr./wolfe 1960) argued that the partner with more resources holds greater relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 407 negotiation power. several studies emphasize that bargaining over fertility may be a crucial element of the fertility decision making process (bauer/jacob 2010; brodmann et al. 2007; neyer et al. 2013). as more and more women enter university, gender ratios in higher education are shifting and hypogamous couples are becoming more common (esteve et al. 2016; van bavel 2012). despite women’s advancement in education and the labor market, they still perform most of the domestic work, with changes to this gender imbalance being rather slow (bianchi et al. 2012; mandel/ lazarus 2021; treas/tai 2016). several authors argued that fertility will be low as long as the “gender revolution” is “stalled,” because women will not be willing to engage in the second shift of domestic work (goldscheider et al. 2015; mcdonald 2000). according to these arguments, hypogamous couples (i.e., the female partner being more highly educated than the male partner) and female breadwinner couples may be a preferential set-up for first and second births, because the female partner may be able to successfully negotiate for fairer gendered work divisions. this argument also implies that couples’ more egalitarian domestic work divisions will stimulate first or second birth transitions. 2.3 doing and un-doing gender housework is still considered the woman’s responsibility, despite rapidly increasing gender equality in the public sphere, according to the doing and undoing gender approach (lorber 2000; west/zimmerman 1987). in practice, women in the us today indeed still do the majority of domestic work (bianchi et al. 2012; sullivan et al. 2018). in consequence, women can be expected to do the majority of domestic work as part of their gender display, even in couples where the female partner outearns the male partner or has higher earning potential, as is likely in educationally hypogamous couples. moreover, gender structure theory suggests there is no gender neutrality of partners’ economic resources, including any potential bargaining power stemming from them (dominguez-folgueras 2022). instead of bargaining for equal domestic work divisions on the basis of their higher resources, women in hypogamous couples may therefore engage in gender-deviance neutralization, by picking up more domestic work, rather than less (sullivan/gershuny 2016; treas/drobnič 2010). this may lead to a poor work-life balance and relationship dissatisfaction and imply lower rates of first and especially second births. 2.4 educational distance ‒ cultural considerations yet another perspective points out the relevance of the partners’ educational distance. the cultural matching perspective operationalizes education as a proxy for variation in social and cultural background, values, and habitus (bourdieu 1984; kalmijn 1994; schwartz 2010). not necessarily heterogamy per se, but especially large distances in heterogamous partners’ education (e.g., low-high education pairings) may thus signal heterogamy along socio-cultural dimensions, such as religion, nationality, social value orientation, or cultural practices. these “mismatches,” in turn, may destabilize the relationship and lead to (sooner) union dissolution or refraining • natalie nitsche408 from childbearing within this union due to lower relationship satisfaction, lack of joint social networks, etc. this distance hypothesis is gender neutral. both first and second birth rates are expected to be lower in large-distance education unions, regardless of who is more and less educated. the lower fertility of these couples is theorized to operate in part but not only via higher union dissolution rates. 2.5 prior studies prior studies have tested these hypotheses across various societies. they offer empirical support for the pooling hypothesis in many contexts. some support was also found for the specialization model. higher second or third birth rates of homogamous tertiary educated couples were observed in spain, sweden, belgium, austria, finland, germany, and in a pooled sample from across europe, compared with couples with one tertiary and one lower educated partner, and with couples in which neither partner has tertiary education (bueno/garcía-román 2021; dribe/ stanfors 2010; nitsche 2017; nitsche et al. 2018; nitsche et al. 2022; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). moreover, parenthood occurs at later ages when both partners have tertiary education across a european sample and in the netherlands (corijn et al. 1996; nitsche et al. 2018). in finland and flanders, the male partner’s education did not influence first birth timing beyond the female partner’s education (corijn et al. 1996; jalovaara/miettinen 2013). there are exceptions to the additive educational pooling finding: a study on greece finds the highest cumulative number of children among homogamous low educated couples, while homogamous highly educated and hypogamous couples had the lowest number of children (bagavos 2017). in a sample of low educated people across 22 european countries, educational pairings did not significantly predict second or third birth transitions. here, all couples involving at least one low educated partner had significantly lower birth rates compared with the highly educated homogamous couples, which supports the educational pooling hypothesis within highly educated but not within low educated couples (nitsche et al. 2021). this finding points to the relevance of the absolute levels of each partner’s education for resource pooling, underscoring the importance of examining all educational pairings separately, including by educational level among homogamous couples. some support for the specialization model was found across eastern europe, indicated by higher second birth rates among hypergamous couples (trimarchi/van bavel 2020), whereas hypogamy was linked to lower second birth rates in austria and bulgaria, and across europe generally (nitsche et al. 2018; osiewalska 2017). couples with large distances in education have been examined less often. studies using data from finnish registers found that they had similar second birth rates as other heterogamous couples do (nitsche et al. 2022), but also have especially high divorce risks (mäenpää/jalovaara 2014). educational heterogamy has also been linked to higher risks of union dissolution in various other studies and contexts, including the united states (schwartz 2010; theunis et al. 2018). relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 409 absolute joint education, especially the joint education of couples involving one or two tertiary educated partners, has thus emerged as particularly relevant for couples’ childbearing. heterogamy was linked with higher union dissolution risks. 2.6 the us context the us is characterized by an absence of comprehensive family policies such as maternity leave, parental leave, or comprehensive public childcare (aisenbrey et al. 2009; mandel/shalev 2009). furthermore, 75 percent of mothers return to the labor market within six months of the birth (aisenbrey et al. 2009). in this relative absence of policies designed to support working families, the meso-level of partners’ own resources, childcare arrangements, and support of each other’s careers may be even more relevant for childbearing behaviors than in countries with more extensive public resources supporting families with young children. thus, the us is an interesting case for examining fertility transitions through the lens of partners’ joint absolute and relative resources. 2.7 hypotheses based on the discussion above, the following four hypotheses are derived. h1 (pooling): first and second birth transition rates will be higher the higher the partners’ additive resources are, all else equal. education enrolment will depress first and second birth rates. couples with the highest level of education may postpone the first birth due to longer education enrolment but will eventually catch up and perhaps surpass the birth rate of lower educated couples. furthermore, controlling for the couple’s absolute financial resources will mediate the link between education pairings and birth rates. absolute financial resources may, however, not fully mediate the link between higher additive education and birth rates because education may imply additional resources beyond current finances, e.g., future income potential, non-monetary resources such as health insurance, unemployment insurance, or social networks, including the resources of both partners’ families of origin. h2 (specialization): first and second birth rates will be highest among educationally hypergamous couples and male breadwinner couples, all else equal. educationally hypergamous couples will have the highest first and second birth rates. higher birth rates of hypergamous couples may be mediated by these couples’ male-breadwinner-type work arrangements. moreover, male breadwinner couples and couples with a male full-time and a female part-time worker are expected to have the highest birth rates, due to their family specialization, regardless of educational pairing effects. • natalie nitsche410 h3a (bargaining): first and second birth rates will be the highest among educationally hypogamous couples and female breadwinner couples, all else equal. according to the bargaining argument, hypogamous unions may be conducive to childbearing, net of fertility preferences and economic resources. potentially more egalitarian divisions of housework, negotiated via the woman’s higher relative earnings, may mediate such an effect. ideally, gendered domestic work divisions would be measured directly to test this mechanism. however, housework time measures are not available in the nlsy79. attitudes toward the gendered division of housework are therefore used as a proxy measure because they have been shown to predict actual domestic work divisions (nitsche/grunow 2016). because educational hypogamy may not necessarily translate into higher income or bargaining power for the woman, female breadwinner arrangements or her relative income may instead be positively related to first and second birth rates. this positive effect of relative income may furthermore vary with the absolute level of family income – it may be stronger among couples in the upper third of the income distribution because more room for negotiation on how to arrange the family or spend excess income may be possible once basic needs are met. increases in the female partner’s relative income may thus give her greater bargaining leverage in higher income couples specifically. h3b (doing gender): first and second birth rates will be lowest among educationally hypogamous female breadwinner couples, all else equal. competing with h3a, birth rates in couples with a woman who is more highly educated than her male partner may be the lowest. as discussed, women in hypogamous couples may have poorer work-life balance, which may lead to lower relationship satisfaction and imply lower rates of first and especially second births. female breadwinning arrangements may mediate lower birth rates of hypogamous couples or be negatively associated with first and second birth transition rates in and of themselves. h4 (distance): first and second birth rates will be lowest among couples with one low (0-12 years) and one highly (16+ years) educated partner, all else equal. these couples will also exhibit higher union dissolution rates. as discussed, couples with large educational distances are hypothesized to be less likely to transition to a first or second birth and more likely to separate due to a lack of shared social and cultural practices, background, and resources. relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 411 3 method 3.1 data the data for the analyses come from the nlsy79, a panel study of individuals born between 1957 and 1965. the first wave was collected in 1979, when respondents were aged 14-22. the nlsy79 is a household panel. it provides (limited) information on all household members living with the main respondents in all waves. since 1979, interviews were conducted annually between 1979 and 1994, and every two years thereafter. the survey is ongoing, and the waves until 2010 are included in the current analysis. respondents roughly reached age 50 in 2010, hence the end of their reproductive lifespan. most of the respondents’ first and second births took place during the 1980s and 1990s, though, so the more recent waves are of little relevance for the analyses. the strengths of the nlsy79 are its detailed information on the relationship history of primary respondents (and partly of those of their partners), its detailed fertility history information, and detailed employment histories. additionally, the birth cohort design allows investigating one birth cohort in depth with a large enough sample size. some aspects of the employment history were collected in a (retrospective) weekly format (employment status, work hours), but many other variables (education, income) are only available annually. for the present analyses, all covariates are used in their yearly format (rather than the weekly). the nlsy provides month/year dates for all major life events, such as marriage, divorce, and the birth of children. socio-economic information on the spouses of main respondents was collected in detail from the beginning of the survey, but while educational attainment was always collected for all household members, there is no information on income, occupation, or hours spent in the labor market for cohabitating partners before 1994. including cohabiting couples before 1994 is therefore not feasible due to the missing values on the cohabiting partner’s income and labor supply variables – a point in time at which the first birth had already occurred for many respondents. besides the limited information on cohabiting partners, another drawback of the nlsy79 is that there is no information on the division of household labor, or on the number of children a spouse might have had from prior relationships. variables on respondent’s attitudes toward gendered work divisions and responsibilities are, however, available, and were measured at three points in time (1979, 1982, 2006). one of these items measures if the respondent endorses a shared division of household labor between men and women, serving as a proxy for the gendered division of household labor in the present analysis. these value items are only available for respondents; hence, i can only measure attitudes of females, as the sample is restricted to female main respondents. 3.2 sample the full nlsy sample consists of 12,686 respondents, alongside the information on their household members. the nlsy cautions that the fertility histories of • natalie nitsche412 male respondents are not as accurate as those of female respondents. i therefore restricted the sample to female respondents, and further to those women who were childless at the time of their first marriage (n = 2,768). hence, only first marriages of female primary respondents who were without a birth at the time of their first marriage are included in the analytic sample. the male spouses, however, may have been married before. it is also possible for them to have fathered a child before entering the marriage under analysis, since this information is not available in the data. furthermore, only white women are included in the sample. initial results show that the relationship between relative resources and first and second birth transitions may differ between white, black, and hispanic americans (models not shown), but the sample sizes for black and hispanic women are too small for meaningful analyses. therefore, i estimated separate models for the three ethnic groups and will include only the results for white women (regardless of their partner’s race). this results in a sample size of 2,768 white women at risk for first birth within their first marriage. missing values on the relevant covariates, including missing values that result from using lagged covariates (due to a loss of the first time period at risk) further reduce the sample. the final sample size is 1,067 couples during their first marriages in the risk set for the analysis of first birth, with 535 first birth events, and 158 union dissolution events. for the analysis of second birth, only couples with white female respondents who had their first birth in their first marriage (regardless of whether the birth was observed or occurred before the start of the panel) enter the risk set, resulting in a sample size of 1,295 couples at risk. there are 689 second birth events and 102 union dissolutions. further descriptive statistics of analytic samples 1 (first birth) and 2 (second birth) can be found in tables 1a and 1b. 3.3 dependent process and estimation strategy in the analysis, time to event is measured in months, even though the covariates change in yearly intervals. using detailed monthly information to measure union start and end dates and to estimate birth events has two advantages. first, it allows for modeling time to event in greater detail, and second, it results in a significantly reduced number of tied events (events occurring at the same point in time), which is important given that the cox model uses the partial likelihood estimator. the efron method for tied events is used. given the precise monthly timescale of events in the data, the cox proportional hazards model, which can operate on a continuous time scale, is preferrable over a piecewise constant or discrete time approach, because it can estimate the birth transitions by pairings with much greater precision. this is relevant in this sample, because birth transitions occur in quick succession because the sample is rather homogeneous. for modeling the transition to first birth, the dependent process is time measured in months, from the month of marriage to the occurrence of a first birth. in some couples, spouses do not yet cohabitate at the time of marriage. in these cases, the date of origin changes to the interview time at which the spouse was first present in the household. couples can exit the risk set through three events. the first is the event of interest, the first birth, the second exit is via censoring (panel attrition or relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 413 being in the first marriage but event-free until the last observation), and the third is the dissolution of the first marriage in competition to the first birth. since a union dissolution is a competing event for leaving the risk set, a competing risk approach is used. for easier interpretation of the coefficients of the covariates on the birth tab. 1a: first birth/union dissolution sample descriptives (couple-years) note: f=female, m=male source: national longitudinal study of youth 1979 (nlsy79), own estimations frequency percent min max mean s.d. enrolment respondent not enrolled 36,023 90.95 respondent enrolled 3,583 9.05 education both 0-12 15,061 38.03 f 0-12/m 13-15 2,907 7.34 f 0-12/ m 16+ 1,509 3.81 f 13-15/m 0-12 3,428 8.66 both 13-15 2,263 5.71 f 13-15/m 16+ 1,691 4.27 f 16+/m 0-12 2,111 5.33 f 16+/m 13-15 2,867 7.24 both 16+ 7,769 19.62 desired number of children 0 children desired 4,303 10.86 1 child desired 4,115 10.39 2+ children desired 31,188 78.75 work arrangements male breadwinner 3,441 8.69 female breadwinner 1,107 2.80 f full time, m part time 1,684 4.25 m full time, f part time 6,184 15.61 both full time 25,930 65.47 both don’t work 464 1.17 continuous variables f logged income 0.00 12.54 8.39 2.98 m logged income 0.00 12.64 9.29 2.45 logged family income 6.99 13.87 10.44 0.78 f share of income 0.00 100.00 34.87 21.85 f age at union 13.00 44.00 22.99 4.89 f age at union 15.00 60.00 26.26 6.71 housework attitude 1.00 4.00 3.15 0.95 women’s place home attitude 1.00 4.00 1.84 0.99 working wife useful attitude 1.00 4.00 2.61 0.86 traditional roles best attitude 1.00 4.00 2.15 0.85 • natalie nitsche414 hazard, i estimate separate cox proportional hazard models for the event of first birth (treating union dissolutions as right censored) and for the competing event of union dissolution (treating birth events as right censored), as suggested by cleves et al. (2008) and allison (2010). the same strategy is used for the models estimating tab. 1b: second birth/union dissolution sample descriptives (couple-years) note: f=female, m=male source: national longitudinal study of youth 1979 (nlsy79), own estimations frequency percent min max mean s.d. enrolment respondent not enrolled 50,273 94.70 respondent enrolled 2,814 5.30 education both 0-12 25,396 47.84 f 0-12/m 13-15 3,811 7.18 f 0-12/ m 16+ 1,992 3.75 f 13-15/m 0-12 5,260 9.91 both 13-15 2,815 5.30 f 13-15/m 16+ 2,498 4.71 f 16+/m 0-12 2,304 4.34 f 16+/m 13-15 1,957 3.69 both 16+ 7,054 13.29 desired number of children 0 children desired 2,022 3.81 1 child desired 7,555 14.23 2+ children desired 43,510 81.96 work arrangements male breadwinner 9,115 17.17 female breadwinner 1,215 2.29 f full time, m part time 1,448 2.73 m full time, f part time 11,060 20.83 both full time 28,993 54.61 both don’t work 526 0.99 continuous variables f logged income 0.00 12.49 7.48 3.68 m logged income 0.00 12.64 9.43 2.27 logged family income 4.22 13.87 10.39 0.82 f share of income 0.00 100.00 27.73 21.85 f age at union 14.00 40.00 21.41 3.56 m age at union 15.00 48.00 24.44 5.01 housework attitude 1.00 4.00 3.17 0.84 women’s place home attitude 1.00 4.00 1.82 0.89 working wife useful attitude 1.00 4.00 2.55 0.84 traditional roles best attitude 1.00 4.00 2.17 0.81 relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 415 second births. here, observation time starts with the birth of the first child. since the focus of the paper is on birth transitions, and not union dissolution, the model results for union results will be presented only briefly. a stepwise modeling strategy was employed. educational pairings are modeled first and basic controls added thereafter. next, work arrangements, absolute income, relative income, and gender attitudes are modeled separately. finally, a full model with all covariates is estimated. 3.4 covariates most covariates are time-varying measures. while birth and relationship histories are available on a monthly time scale, covariates are only measured yearly (or biyearly) on interview dates. all time-varying covariates, including the educational variables, are lagged by one period (i.e., one year), and therefore measured at or before conception. education is time-varying and measured as highest year completed. i settled on a three-category specification for both the respondents’ and their spouses’ educational attainment. it follows the standard educational us groupings: (1) less than high school education or high school education (0-12 years), (2) some college education (13-15), or (3) completed college education or higher (16+ years). the models contain a full set of interactions between the respondent's (i.e., female partner) and their spouse's (i.e., male partner) education. hence, each possible pairing of education is reflected in a separate indicator variable. couples in which both spouses have 0-12 years of education serve as the reference group. enrolment in education is timevarying and unfortunately only available as a variable for respondents, not spouses. since enrolment can be expected to lead to a postponement of pregnancy and birth, it is included in all models as a dummy variable and indicates respondents’ enrolment in either college or high school. work status is time-varying and coded as a dummy variable, indicating current employment in the labor market versus non-employment, including inactivity and unemployment. the partners’ work statuses are interacted, resulting in four possible working status indicator variables: dual earner couples (the largest group), male breadwinner couples, female breadwinner couples, and couples with two non-working spouses. dual earner couples serve as the reference category. hours worked is time-varying and measured differently for respondents and spouses. for respondents (i.e., women), a variable indicates the number of hours worked in the last calendar year. for spouses (i.e., men), average hours worked per week in the last calendar year is used. i multiply this value by 52 to have a roughly comparable indicator for men’s and women’s hours worked. due to issues with multicollinearity, it was not feasible to include the work-hours variable in a continuous format. therefore, i use four indicators, indicating whether (1) both work full time (defined as working 35 hours per week or more), (2) the woman works full time and the man part time (part time is here defined as working less than 35 hours per week), (3) the man working full time and the woman part time, or (4) both work part time. both partners working full time serves as the reference category. • natalie nitsche416 income measures are also time-varying. the models contain logged measures for female yearly income from wages and salaries, male yearly income from wages and salaries, and the yearly joint family income. there is also a measure for the woman’s share of the total family income, which is measured as the percentage which the woman contributes to the total (non-logged) yearly family income, ranging from 0-100. there were some instances in which the wages of the woman were larger than the yearly family income; here, her share was set to 100 percent. in addition, the woman’s income share was interacted with tertiles of family income, which designate the lower, middle, and upper third of the log-family income distribution. the partners’ ages at marriage are the only non-time-varying covariates included in the models as mean-centered variables. the number of children desired is included as a time-varying categorical covariate and is only available for respondents (women), not for spouses (men). however, this question was asked in only two surveys; in 1979 and 1982. the 1979 value was filled in for the 1980/81 surveys and the 1982 value for all subsequent surveys. it is coded in three categories: no children desired, one child desired, two or more children desired, which serves as reference category. finally, the nlsy asked respondents for their values regarding gender roles. they are measured on a scale of 1-4 (strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree). four measures are included into the analysis: (1) “a woman’s place is in the home,” (2) “a working wife feels more useful,” (3) “traditional husband/wife roles are best,” and (4) “men should share housework.” these variables were used as linear predictors. year fixed effects (i.e., calendar year dummies) were included in all models but are not shown in the model output due to space considerations. 4 results 4.1 cause specific hazards panels a-d in figure 1 show cause-specific hazard functions for first and second birth events and for the competing risks events of union dissolutions among the couples. these hazards are estimated based on the full analytical sample, and include all cases from the sample, including those with missing values on covariates which are omitted from the models. for both risk sets, birth events are much more likely to occur than union dissolution events. please note, though, that those union dissolutions only refer to dissolutions which occur in competition to birth events, hence after the marriage but before the first birth (panel b) or after the first birth but before the second birth (panel d). union dissolutions which occur after the second birth are not reflected. the first birth hazard (panel a) is highest (approx. .018) within 18-48 months after the first marriage and declines rapidly thereafter. the competing hazard of union dissolution is distributed more evenly across time; it hovers around .005 in the first twelve years (144 months) of marriage and declines even further thereafter. the hazard of the second birth is distributed somewhat differently; it remains at zero during the first ten months after the first birth due to the duration of a potential relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 417 second pregnancy. after ten months, the second birth hazard increases rapidly and peaks at approx. 36 months at .025. it rapidly declines after three years, to under .005 nine to ten years after the first birth. the hazard for the competing risk of union dissolution is highest at about four years after the first birth (.005) but generally low and remains well below .005 for most of the time. in sum, union dissolutions after marriage but before a birth in competition to birth events are rather rare, specifically after a first birth has occurred. while the birth hazard varies strongly over time, the dissolution hazard remains rather flat over the years. the cox model assumes proportional hazards among relevant groups (here: educational pairings). i tested the proportionality assumption by including the pairings as time-varying covariates in the models (“tvc” command in stata 18). all time-varying covariates were insignificant when controlling for year fixed effects. this indicates proportionality of hazards among the sub-groups, thus, that the proportional hazards assumption is not violated. plotted hazards by subgroup fig. 1: hazard functions 0 .005 .01 .015 .02 .025 0 24 48 72 96 120 144 168 192 216 months since first marriage smoothed hazard function for first birth panel a ‒ first births since first marriage, per month panel b ‒ union dissolution since first marriage (before first birth event), per month 0 24 48 72 96 120 144 168 192 216 240 264 288 months since first marriage smoothed hazard function for comp. risk union dissolution 0 .005 .01 .015 .02 .025 source: nlsy79, first birth sample, own estimations 0 24 48 72 96 120 144 168 192 216 months since first birth smoothed hazard function for second birth 0 .005 .01 .015 .02 .025 0 24 48 72 96 120 144 168 192 216 240 months since first birth smoothed hazard function for comp. risk union dissolution 0 .005 .01 .015 .02 .025 source: nlsy79, second birth sample, own estimations panel c ‒ second births (since first birth), per month panel d ‒ union dissolution after a first birth (before second birth event), per month • natalie nitsche418 indicate some variation, especially for the first birth. however, the overall trend is very similar across groups (figures not shown but available upon request), further supporting proportionality of first birth hazards after marriage and second birth hazards after the first birth across the educational pairings. 4.2 first births table 2 shows stepwise results for the cox proportional hazards model estimating first birth transitions. model 1.1 shows several significant contrasts between the educational pairings and the reference group (both 0-12 years of education). couples with two college educated spouses and with a college educated man married to a woman with some college education (13-15 years) have significantly higher first birth hazards than the reference group (both 0-12 years) (p <= 0.05). indeed, birth hazards increase almost linearly as the couples’ pooled educational capital increases. this finding offers support for the pooling hypothesis (h1), and for the specialization hypothesis (h2), but only among hypergamous couples with high joint human capital (man: college / woman: 13-15 years). both large distance type couples (one partner 0-12, the other 16+ years of education) stand out, as they are the only ones who have lower first birth hazards than the reference group, although these contrasts remain statistically insignificant. however, further testing reveals significant first birth rate differences between the pairing of two college educated spouses and either of the large distance couples (p <= 0.05). this offers some support for the large distance hypothesis (h4). stepwise models add further evidence in support of these findings. increases in the logged family income (model 1.4) accelerate the transition to first birth and render the contrasts between the reference group and the homogamous highly educated pairing and that of a college educated man and a woman with some college education insignificant. however, contrasts between the highly educated homogamous pairing and the large distance couples remain significant, at least marginally (he col/she 0-12 p <=. 01, she col/he 0-12 p <=.10). thus, the difference in first birth rates between homogamous college educated couples and the reference group (or the hypogamous large distance pairing) seems partly mediated by the higher pooled financial resources these couples hold. however, this does not apply to the contrast between the highly educated homogamous pairing and the hypergamous large distance couple; their birth rate remains significantly lower. this goes against the specialization hypothesis (h2) among large distance couples. model 1.5 shows a significant association between the woman’s income share and the first birth hazard. increases in the income share accelerate the first birth among the two upper family income tertiles, but depress it among couples at the lower end of the income spectrum. this finding offers some support for h3a with respect to relative income, which states that bargaining or more gender-egalitarian domestic work sharing may occur as the woman’s income share rises, leading to higher birth rates. however, in this case, increases in the woman’s income share are associated with increases in first birth rates only among couples in the middle and upper income tertile. in contrast, among couples in the lowest income tertile, relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 419 ta b. 2 : co x h az ar d m od el s o f fi rs t b irt h va ria bl es h az ar d ra tio (s e) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el ed uc at io n en ro lle d 0. 72 8* 0. 75 9^ 0. 76 2^ 0. 75 8^ 0. 74 5^ 0. 76 6^ 0. 76 4^ (0 .11 4) (0 .11 9) (0 .12 0) (0 .12 0) (0 .11 8) (0 .12 1) (0 .12 2) sh f 012 /m 1 315 1. 23 3 1. 24 0 1. 25 9 1. 20 6 1. 25 7 1. 23 9 1. 24 0 (0 .2 07 ) (0 .2 09 ) (0 .2 13 ) (0 .2 04 ) (0 .2 12 ) (0 .2 10 ) (0 .2 11 ) f 012 / m 1 6+ 0. 64 7 0. 63 3 0. 64 2 0. 59 8^ 0. 61 3 0. 62 9 0. 59 8^ (0 .19 3) (0 .19 0) (0 .19 3) (0 .18 0) (0 .18 4) (0 .18 9) (0 .18 0) f 13 -1 5/ m 0 -1 2 1. 07 5 1. 01 5 1. 02 2 1. 01 5 1. 01 5 1. 02 6 1. 04 0 (0 .19 1) (0 .18 3) (0 .18 4) (0 .18 3) (0 .18 3) (0 .18 6) (0 .18 9) re fe re nc e: b ot h 012 bo th 1 315 1. 29 2 1.1 79 1.1 85 1.1 70 1.1 90 1.1 87 1. 20 2 (0 .2 30 ) (0 .2 13 ) (0 .2 15 ) (0 .2 12 ) (0 .2 16 ) (0 .2 16 ) (0 .2 19 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 1 6+ 1. 56 0* 1. 44 6^ 1. 47 3* 1. 35 9 1. 43 8^ 1. 44 9^ 1. 41 3^ (0 .2 93 ) (0 .2 80 ) (0 .2 86 ) (0 .2 65 ) (0 .2 79 ) (0 .2 81 ) (0 .2 80 ) f 16 +/ m 0 -1 2 0. 90 0 0. 83 9 0. 83 5 0. 81 3 0. 80 3 0. 84 8 0. 81 7 (0 .2 03 ) (0 .19 6) (0 .19 5) (0 .19 0) (0 .18 9) (0 .19 9) (0 .19 3) f 16 +/ m 1 315 1. 32 7 1.1 66 1.1 94 1.1 13 1.1 48 1.1 75 1.1 39 (0 .2 50 ) (0 .2 26 ) (0 .2 33 ) (0 .2 17 ) (0 .2 24 ) (0 .2 30 ) (0 .2 25 ) bo th 1 6+ 1. 43 0* * 1. 33 5* 1. 34 1* 1. 24 3 1. 31 1^ 1. 35 0* 1. 28 8^ (0 .18 1) (0 .18 4) (0 .18 6) (0 .17 4) (0 .18 3) (0 .19 0) (0 .18 6) ba sic c on tr ol s f ag e at u ni on 1. 04 1 1. 04 0 1. 02 4 1. 03 1 1. 04 2 1. 02 1 (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) m a ge a t u ni on 0. 94 5* ** 0. 94 5* ** 0. 94 1* ** 0. 94 3* ** 0. 94 5* ** 0. 94 0* ** (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 13 ) 0 ch ild re n de sir ed 0. 35 0* ** 0. 35 1* ** 0. 36 0* ** 0. 35 0* ** 0. 35 4* ** 0. 35 8* ** (0 .0 87 ) (0 .0 87 ) (0 .0 89 ) (0 .0 87 ) (0 .0 88 ) (0 .0 89 ) 1 ch ild d es ire d 0. 53 0* * 0. 53 4* * 0. 52 5* ** 0. 52 5* ** 0. 53 5* * 0. 53 2* * -0 .10 3 -0 .10 4 -0 .10 2 -0 .10 2 -0 .10 4 -0 .10 4 re fe re nc e: 2 + ch ild re n de sir ed w or k st at us m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 96 8 1. 52 4 (0 .16 9) (0 .5 76 ) fe m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 70 0 0. 81 5 (0 .2 39 ) (0 .3 22 ) • natalie nitsche420 va ria bl es h az ar d ra tio (s e) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el re fe re nc e: b ot h fu ll tim e bo th d on ’t w or k 0. 43 1 (0 .2 59 ) f fu ll tim e, m p ar t t im e 0. 76 4 0. 87 2 (0 .17 3) (0 .2 02 ) m fu ll tim e, f p ar t t im e 0. 99 4 1. 06 4 (0 .12 0) (0 .13 6) ab so lu te in co m e f in co m e 1. 00 0 1. 06 8 (0 .0 19 ) (0 .0 56 ) m in co m e 1. 00 4 0. 98 5 (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 27 ) fa m ily in co m e 1. 32 9* * 1.1 97 (0 .11 7) (0 .13 4) re la tiv e in co m e f sh ar e of fa m ily in co m e 0. 99 3* 0. 99 3 (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 05 ) re fe re nc e: f s ha re *3 3% f sh ar e* 66 % 1. 00 7* 1. 00 4 (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 03 ) f sh ar e* 10 0% 1. 01 1* * 1. 00 6 (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 05 ) g en de r a tti tu de s m en s ho ul d sh ar e ho us ew or k 0. 97 5 0. 95 6 -0 .0 74 (0 .0 73 ) w om en 's pl ac e is in th e ho m e 0. 99 6 1. 00 5 (0 .0 79 ) (0 .0 80 ) w or ki ng w ife fe el s m or e us ef ul 0. 99 8 1. 00 4 (0 .0 52 ) (0 .0 53 ) tr ad iti on al h us ba nd /w ife ro le s b es t 1. 02 6 1. 02 8 (0 .0 72 ) (0 .0 72 ) n um be r o f o bs er va tio ns 39 66 5 39 66 5 39 66 5 39 66 5 39 66 5 39 66 5 39 66 5 ta b. 2 : co nt in ua tio n ** * p <. 00 1, ** p <. 01 , * p <. 05 , ^ p <. 1, f =f em al e, m =m al e so ur ce : n at io na l l on gi tu di na l s tu dy o f y ou th 1 97 9 (n ls y7 9) , o w n es tim at io ns relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 421 increases in the woman’s relative income are associated with a lower first birth rate, offering some support for h3b. 4.3 union dissolutions as a competing risk to first births table 3 shows the stepwise model results for union dissolutions as a competing risk to a first birth. in model 2.1, union dissolutions hazards are lower among couples with a college educated woman and a spouse with some college education compared to the reference group (p < 0.10). this marginal significance disappears once basic controls for the spouses’ ages at union formation are added. nonetheless, hypogamous large distance couples have significantly higher union dissolution hazards compared with couples with a college educated woman and a man with some college education (woman: 16+, man: 13-15) (p <= 0.05). this contrast remains significant regardless of which additional variables are added in the stepwise models. hypogamous large distance couples also have a higher union dissolution risk than homogamous college educated couples do, but the difference is not statistically significant. all other educational pairing contrasts remain insignificant. in sum, hypogamous large distance couples indeed have a higher union dissolution hazard before the first birth than other types of couples involving a highly educated woman. these differences in union dissolution hazards may be partly responsible for the differences in first birth hazard between the educational pairings involving a highly educated woman. note that increases in the woman’s absolute and relative income accelerate union dissolution before a first birth occurs independently of the educational pairings. 4.4 second birth stepwise model results for second births hazards are presented in table 4. educational pairings significantly relate to second birth hazards. first, couples with more pooled resources – i.e., all pairings with combinations of college and some college education – have significantly higher second birth hazards (p <= 0.10 or 0.05) than the reference group does (both no college education). this finding lends support for the pooling hypothesis (h1). second, birth hazards of college educated men are significantly higher when their spouse is highly educated as well, compared with hypergamous large distance couples (p <= .05). women with some college education have higher birth rates with a spouse with at least the same educational level compared with a less educated spouse (p <= 0.01). this finding suggests a depressed second birth rate among large distance couples, offering further support for h4. college educated women married to a man with some college education have higher second birth rates than the reference group and than hypogamous large distance couples do. this offers some support for h3a, but only when the hypogamous couple has a high level of joint education. in contrast, the significantly lower second birth rate of hypogamous couples with lower joint educational resources (e.g., the woman having some and the man no college education) compared to homogamous and hypergamous couples involving a woman with 13-15 years of education offer some • natalie nitsche422 ta b. 3 : co x h az ar d m od el s o f fi rs t u ni on d iss ol ut io n va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el ed uc at io n en ro lle d 0. 88 6 0. 80 8 0. 84 4 0. 85 1 0. 88 1 0. 71 3 0. 77 5 (0 .2 51 ) (0 .2 32 ) (0 .2 43 ) (0 .2 45 ) (0 .2 54 ) (0 .2 08 ) (0 .2 29 ) f 012 /m 1 315 1.1 13 1. 06 0 1. 02 2 1. 02 3 1. 00 0 1.1 04 1. 03 1 (0 .3 29 ) (0 .3 19 ) (0 .3 08 ) (0 .3 08 ) (0 .3 02 ) (0 .3 33 ) (0 .3 15 ) f 012 / m 1 6+ 0. 91 7 0. 87 9 0. 84 2 0. 78 9 0. 80 3 0. 84 8 0. 76 9 (0 .3 95 ) (0 .3 80 ) (0 .3 64 ) (0 .3 43 ) (0 .3 50 ) (0 .3 69 ) (0 .3 39 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 0 -1 2 1. 00 6 1. 00 7 1. 01 2 1. 00 9 1. 00 1 0. 94 8 0. 95 4 (0 .3 10 ) (0 .3 19 ) (0 .3 21 ) (0 .3 19 ) (0 .3 19 ) (0 .3 05 ) (0 .3 09 ) re fe re nc e: b ot h 012 bo th 1 315 1.1 27 1. 33 6 1. 28 0 1. 29 1 1. 23 6 1. 28 5 1.1 79 (0 .3 61 ) (0 .4 34 ) (0 .4 17 ) (0 .4 19 ) (0 .4 03 ) (0 .4 20 ) (0 .3 88 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 1 6+ 0. 89 8 1. 01 6 1. 08 3 0. 94 7 0. 91 8 0. 97 5 0. 91 4 (0 .3 67 ) (0 .4 27 ) (0 .4 56 ) (0 .4 00 ) (0 .3 87 ) (0 .4 11 ) (0 .3 93 ) f 16 +/ m 0 -1 2 1. 32 6 1. 60 0 1. 63 3 1. 59 6 1. 36 9 1. 52 4 1. 36 2 (0 .4 51 ) (0 .5 62 ) (0 .5 76 ) (0 .5 63 ) (0 .4 93 ) (0 .5 38 ) (0 .4 99 ) f 16 +/ m 1 315 0. 42 2^ 0. 54 1 0. 52 4 0. 47 4 0. 45 7 0. 53 7 0. 45 3 (0 .2 20 ) (0 .2 86 ) (0 .2 77 ) (0 .2 52 ) (0 .2 44 ) (0 .2 84 ) (0 .2 42 ) bo th 1 6+ 0. 81 3 0. 98 0 0. 98 2 0. 88 5 0. 86 4 0. 94 7 0. 77 3 (0 .2 12 ) (0 .2 73 ) (0 .2 73 ) (0 .2 51 ) (0 .2 44 ) (0 .2 66 ) (0 .2 27 ) ba sic c on tr ol s f ag e at u ni on 0. 88 2* * 0. 86 8* * 0. 85 1* * 0. 86 4* * 0. 87 2* * 0. 83 8* ** (0 .0 41 ) (0 .0 42 ) (0 .0 42 ) (0 .0 41 ) (0 .0 42 ) (0 .0 42 ) m a ge a t u ni on 1. 08 7* ** 1. 09 2* ** 1. 08 9* ** 1. 09 5* ** 1. 09 1* ** 1. 09 6* ** (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 15 ) 0 ch ild re n de sir ed 0. 98 6 0. 97 7 0. 98 9 1. 00 6 0. 92 4 0. 96 1 (0 .2 65 ) (0 .2 63 ) (0 .2 66 ) (0 .2 72 ) (0 .2 54 ) (0 .2 64 ) 1 ch ild d es ire d 0. 69 9 0. 73 0 0. 74 3 0. 72 2 0. 63 8 0. 65 6 -0 .2 13 -0 .2 23 -0 .2 27 -0 .2 20 -0 .19 7 -0 .2 04 re fe re nc e: 2 + ch ild re n de sir ed w or k st at us m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 52 3^ 1. 06 2 (0 .18 0) (0 .7 60 ) fe m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 26 2 0. 12 8^ (0 .2 65 ) (0 .14 0) relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 423 ta b. 3 : co nt in ua tio n va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el re fe re nc e: b ot h fu ll tim e bo th d on ’t w or k 0. 38 6 (0 .3 97 ) f fu ll tim e, m p ar t t im e 1. 41 2 1. 27 9 (0 .4 74 ) (0 .4 48 ) m fu ll tim e, f p ar t t im e 0. 73 1 0. 92 9 (0 .17 5) (0 .2 38 ) ab so lu te in co m e f in co m e 1. 09 4* 1. 04 6 (0 .0 42 ) (0 .10 4) m in co m e 0. 95 6 0. 93 4 (0 .0 36 ) (0 .0 45 ) fa m ily in co m e 1. 27 1 1. 40 6 (0 .2 21 ) (0 .3 25 ) re la tiv e in co m e f sh ar e of fa m ily in co m e 1. 01 1* 1. 01 4^ (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 08 ) re fe re nc e: f s ha re *3 3% f sh ar e* 66 % 0. 99 8 0. 99 3 (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 06 ) f sh ar e* 10 0% 1. 00 9 1. 00 0 (0 .0 06 ) (0 .0 08 ) g en de r a tti tu de s m en s ho ul d sh ar e ho us ew or k 0. 91 3 0. 89 0 -0 .13 1 (0 .12 8) w om en 's pl ac e is in th e ho m e 1. 06 8 1. 09 5 (0 .15 2) (0 .15 7) w or ki ng w ife fe el s m or e us ef ul 0. 93 7 0. 94 0 (0 .0 87 ) (0 .0 88 ) tr ad iti on al h us ba nd /w ife ro le s b es t 0. 64 8* * 0. 65 8* * (0 .0 89 ) (0 .0 90 ) n um be r o f o bs er va tio ns 39 60 6 39 60 6 39 60 6 39 60 6 39 60 6 39 60 6 39 60 6 ** * p <. 00 1, ** p <. 01 , * p <. 05 , ^ p <. 1, f =f em al e, m =m al e so ur ce : n at io na l l on gi tu di na l s tu dy o f y ou th 1 97 9 (n ls y7 9) , o w n es tim at io ns • natalie nitsche424 ta b. 4 : co x h az ar d m od el s o f s ec on d bi rt h va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el ed uc at io n en ro lle d 0. 84 9 0. 82 8 0. 83 5 0. 83 1 0. 80 9 0. 82 9 0. 82 4 (0 .16 0) (0 .15 6) (0 .15 8) (0 .15 7) (0 .15 3) (0 .15 7) (0 .15 7) f 012 /m 1 315 1.1 76 1.1 93 1.1 69 1.1 80 1. 20 0 1.1 61 1.1 48 (0 .17 7) (0 .18 0) (0 .17 7) (0 .17 9) (0 .18 2) (0 .17 6) (0 .17 5) f 012 / m 1 6+ 0. 90 3 0. 94 6 0. 93 3 0. 92 4 0. 92 0 0. 96 9 0. 94 9 (0 .2 28 ) (0 .2 39 ) (0 .2 36 ) (0 .2 34 ) (0 .2 33 ) (0 .2 45 ) (0 .2 41 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 0 -1 2 0. 78 0 0. 75 0^ 0. 73 2^ 0. 74 0^ 0. 75 9^ 0. 72 7^ 0. 72 2* (0 .12 6) (0 .12 2) (0 .11 9) (0 .12 1) (0 .12 4) (0 .11 9) (0 .11 9) re fe re nc e: b ot h 0– 12 bo th 1 315 1. 40 5* 1. 36 4* 1. 33 3^ 1. 36 0* 1. 37 0* 1. 32 8^ 1. 31 5^ (0 .2 14 ) (0 .2 11 ) (0 .2 07 ) (0 .2 11 ) (0 .2 13 ) (0 .2 06 ) (0 .2 05 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 1 6+ 1. 38 6^ 1. 28 4 1. 29 2 1. 26 7 1. 28 4 1. 21 8 1. 21 7 (0 .2 72 ) (0 .2 55 ) (0 .2 57 ) (0 .2 53 ) (0 .2 56 ) (0 .2 43 ) (0 .2 45 ) f 16 +/ m 0 -1 2 1. 32 4 1.1 49 1. 08 0 1.1 28 1.1 34 1.1 25 1. 05 0 (0 .2 81 ) (0 .2 48 ) (0 .2 34 ) (0 .2 45 ) (0 .2 48 ) (0 .2 43 ) (0 .2 31 ) f 16 +/ m 1 315 1. 64 7* * 1. 55 8* 1. 53 6* 1. 53 1* 1. 52 8* 1. 55 1* 1. 49 1* (0 .3 15 ) (0 .3 03 ) (0 .3 00 ) (0 .3 00 ) (0 .3 00 ) (0 .3 04 ) (0 .2 96 ) bo th 1 6+ 1. 64 0* ** 1. 53 5* ** 1. 47 7* * 1. 49 1* * 1. 47 8* * 1. 49 5* * 1. 41 1* (0 .2 06 ) (0 .19 8) (0 .19 2) (0 .2 01 ) (0 .19 6) (0 .19 7) (0 .19 7) ba sic c on tr ol s f ag e at u ni on 1. 06 7* * 1. 06 8* * 1. 06 8* * 1. 06 8* * 1. 06 9* * 1. 07 1* * (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 23 ) (0 .0 24 ) m a ge a t u ni on 0. 95 2* ** 0. 95 3* ** 0. 95 1* ** 0. 95 0* ** 0. 95 5* ** 0. 95 4* ** (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 12 ) 0 ch ild re n de sir ed 0. 58 9* 0. 61 6^ 0. 59 5* 0. 59 9* 0. 63 8^ 0. 67 2 (0 .15 2) (0 .15 9) (0 .15 3) (0 .15 4) (0 .16 6) (0 .17 5) 1 ch ild d es ire d 0. 30 9* ** 0. 73 0 0. 30 8* ** 0. 30 5* ** 0. 31 2* ** 0. 31 1* ** (0 .0 57 ) (0 .2 23 ) (0 .0 57 ) (0 .0 56 ) (0 .0 57 ) (0 .0 57 ) re fe re nc e: 2 + ki ds d es ire d w or k st at us m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 87 6 0. 63 5^ (0 .0 97 ) (0 .15 1) fe m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 29 2* 0. 32 4* (0 .14 7) (0 .17 1) relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 425 ta b. 4 : co nt in ua tio n va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el re fe re nc e: b ot h fu ll tim e f fu ll tim e, m p ar t t im e 0. 55 0^ 0. 62 2 (0 .17 0) (0 .19 4) m fu ll tim e, f p ar t t im e 1. 09 6 1. 08 1 (0 .10 0) (0 .11 1) ab so lu te in co m e f in co m e 1. 00 1 0. 96 9 (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 33 ) m in co m e 1. 03 3 1. 00 2 (0 .0 24 ) (0 .0 25 ) fa m ily in co m e 1. 00 7 0. 96 5 (0 .0 77 ) (0 .0 86 ) re la tiv e in co m e f sh ar e of fa m ily in co m e 0. 99 3* 0. 99 5 (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 04 ) re fe re nc e: f sh ar e* 33 % f sh ar e* 66 % 1. 00 4 1. 00 3 (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 04 ) f sh ar e* 10 0% 1. 00 9* 1. 00 8^ (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 05 ) g en de r a tti tu de s m en s ho ul d sh ar e ho us ew or k 1. 21 8* * 1. 21 3* * (0 .0 82 ) (0 .0 82 ) w om en 's pl ac e is in th e ho m e 1. 06 2 1. 05 8 (0 .0 70 ) (0 .0 70 ) w or ki ng w ife fe el s m or e us ef ul 0. 88 2* * 0. 88 3* * (0 .0 40 ) (0 .0 41 ) tr ad iti on al h us ba nd /w ife ro le s b es t 1.1 26 * 1.1 22 ^ (0 .0 68 ) (0 .0 69 ) n um be r o f o bs er va tio ns 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 ** * p <. 00 1, ** p <. 01 , * p <. 05 , ^ p <. 1, f =f em al e, m =m al e so ur ce : n at io na l l on gi tu di na l s tu dy o f y ou th 1 97 9 (n ls y7 9) , o w n es tim at io ns • natalie nitsche426 support for a lower birth rate of hypogamous couples (h3b) among low-resourced couples. third, various significant relationships between the other covariates and second birth hazards emerge in the stepwise models. however, none of these mechanisms mediate the educational pairing links with second births hazards. female breadwinner couples and couples in which the woman works full time and the man part time have significantly lower second birth hazards, further rejecting the bargaining hypothesis (h3a) and offering support for the “doing gender” hypothesis (h3b). increases in family income positively predict the second birth hazard, offering more support for the pooling hypothesis (h1). increases in the woman’s relative income have a small but significantly positive association with the second birth rate among the highest income tertile, while depressing the second birth rate in the lowest income tertile. this further lends some support for the bargaining hypothesis (h3a) among highresource couples and the “doing gender” hypothesis (h3b) among low-resource couples. finally, the wife’s egalitarian attitude toward housework sharing positively predicts second births, offering further support for h3a. conversely, egalitarian attitudes toward women’s labor market work lowers the second birth rate, and traditional attitudes towards gender roles increase the second birth rate, giving some support to h2. 4.5 union dissolution in competition to second births estimates for the competing risk model for union dissolutions which occur after the first birth are shown in table 5. homogamous college educated couples display a marginally significantly lower dissolution rate than the reference group. again, this contrast becomes insignificant as control variables are added. no other educational pairing contrast or other predictors of interest significantly predict union dissolutions that occur in competition to a second birth. thus, educational pairings emerge as relevant predictors of union dissolution that occur before parenthood occurs, but no longer after a couple became parents. 5 discussion and conclusion using data from the nlsy79 and cox proportional hazard models, this paper aimed at understanding the relationship between educational pairings in couples and their first and second birth hazards among married white couples in the us. four major conclusions can be drawn. first, i find strong support for the pooling hypothesis (h1). the first birth rate increases with increasing joint education; it is highest among homogamous tertiary educated couples and couples with a man with completed college education and a woman with some college education. couples were at risk for childbirth starting at the time of their union formation, and models controlled for both partners’ ages at union formation. these results therefore do not focus on the age at first birth and its postponement from a life course perspective, as prior studies did, and the relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 427 ta b. 5 : co x h az ar d m od el s o f s ec on d un io n di ss ol ut io n va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el ed uc at io n en ro lle d 0. 35 3 0. 34 6 0. 34 8 0. 35 5 0. 35 4 0. 35 2 0. 36 0 (0 .2 56 ) (0 .2 50 ) (0 .2 52 ) (0 .2 57 ) (0 .2 57 ) (0 .2 55 ) (0 .2 62 ) f 012 /m 1 315 1. 49 2 1. 68 8 1. 68 3 1. 68 9 1. 67 4 1. 72 6 1. 72 8 (0 .4 96 ) (0 .5 71 ) (0 .5 72 ) (0 .5 74 ) (0 .5 67 ) (0 .5 86 ) (0 .5 90 ) f 012 / m 1 6+ 0. 87 3 0. 95 9 0. 96 0 0. 98 6 0. 97 4 0. 94 6 0. 98 6 (0 .5 27 ) (0 .5 86 ) (0 .5 87 ) (0 .6 04 ) (0 .5 95 ) (0 .5 77 ) (0 .6 05 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 0 -1 2 0. 83 3 0. 93 4 0. 93 3 0. 92 8 0. 89 6 0. 95 9 0. 93 1 (0 .3 19 ) (0 .3 61 ) (0 .3 62 ) (0 .3 61 ) (0 .3 52 ) (0 .3 73 ) (0 .3 68 ) re fe re nc e: b ot h 012 bo th 1 315 1. 63 4 1. 82 9 1. 86 0^ 1. 81 3 1. 80 3 1. 82 5 1. 84 3 (0 .5 94 ) (0 .6 76 ) (0 .6 92 ) (0 .6 73 ) (0 .6 68 ) (0 .6 78 ) (0 .6 92 ) f 13 -1 5/ m 1 6+ 1. 45 0 1. 67 5 1. 68 8 1. 67 9 1. 66 9 1. 76 3 1. 82 7 (0 .7 13 ) (0 .8 34 ) (0 .8 44 ) (0 .8 38 ) (0 .8 33 ) (0 .8 85 ) (0 .9 24 ) f 16 +/ m 0 -1 2 0. 29 0 0. 33 3 0. 32 9 0. 33 0 0. 31 2 0. 34 2 0. 32 0 (0 .2 98 ) (0 .3 44 ) (0 .3 40 ) (0 .3 42 ) (0 .3 25 ) (0 .3 54 ) (0 .3 34 ) f 16 +/ m 1 315 0. 85 5 1. 04 0 1. 05 3 1. 04 5 1. 00 6 1. 04 8 1. 07 4 (0 .6 31 ) (0 .7 76 ) (0 .7 89 ) (0 .7 85 ) (0 .7 57 ) (0 .7 84 ) (0 .8 14 ) bo th 1 6+ 0. 35 1^ 0. 44 3 0. 44 4 0. 45 5 0. 43 2 0. 45 4 0. 46 9 (0 .2 15 ) (0 .2 77 ) (0 .2 79 ) (0 .2 89 ) (0 .2 74 ) (0 .2 85 ) (0 .3 01 ) ba sic c on tr ol s f ag e at u ni on 0. 93 1 0. 93 1 0. 93 2 0. 92 9 0. 93 2 0. 93 2 (0 .0 55 ) (0 .0 55 ) (0 .0 55 ) (0 .0 55 ) (0 .0 55 ) (0 .0 55 ) m a ge a t u ni on 0. 96 5 0. 96 5 0. 96 6 0. 96 6 0. 96 4 0. 96 7 (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) (0 .0 29 ) 0 ch ild re n de sir ed 0. 93 6 0. 93 4 0. 92 9 0. 94 2 0. 86 4 0. 86 7 (0 .5 72 ) (0 .5 73 ) (0 .5 69 ) (0 .5 81 ) (0 .5 33 ) (0 .5 41 ) 1 ch ild d es ire d 1.1 84 1.1 92 1. 20 6 1. 20 2 1.1 83 1. 22 1 (0 .3 04 ) (0 .3 08 ) (0 .3 12 ) (0 .3 10 ) (0 .3 05 ) (0 .3 18 ) re fe re nc e: 2 + ki ds d es ire d w or k st at us m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 92 8 1. 40 3 (0 .2 45 ) (0 .8 70 ) fe m al e br ea dw in ne r 0. 97 0 0. 86 1 (0 .7 07 ) (0 .7 25 ) • natalie nitsche428 ta b. 5 : co nt in ua tio n va ria bl es h az . r at io (s td . e rr. ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ba se lin e ba sic c on tr ol w or ks s ta tu s ab so lu te in co m e re la tiv e in co m e g en de r a tt itu de s fu ll m od el re fe re nc e: b ot h fu ll tim e f fu ll tim e m p ar t t im e 0. 63 1 0. 60 1 (0 .4 61 ) (0 .4 45 ) m fu ll tim e, f p ar t t im e 0. 94 3 1. 00 2 (0 .2 40 ) (0 .2 81 ) ab so lu te in co m e f in co m e 1. 01 5 1. 04 9 (0 .0 30 ) (0 .0 94 ) m in co m e 0. 98 9 0. 98 6 (0 .0 45 ) (0 .0 52 ) fa m ily in co m e 0. 93 2 0. 86 3 (0 .16 1) (0 .18 0) re la tiv e in co m e f sh ar e of fa m ily in co m e 1. 00 1 0. 99 8 (0 .0 06 ) (0 .0 09 ) re fe re nc e: f sh ar e* 33 % f sh ar e* 66 % 1. 00 3 1. 00 5 (0 .0 08 ) (0 .0 08 ) f sh ar e* 10 0% 1. 00 3 1. 00 5 (0 .0 10 ) (0 .0 11 ) g en de r a tti tu de s m en s ho ul d sh ar e ho us ew or k 0. 89 1 0. 89 3 (0 .14 5) (0 .14 6) w om en 's pl ac e is in th e ho m e 0. 80 7 0. 80 3 (0 .13 8) (0 .13 9) w or ki ng w ife fe el s m or e us ef ul 1. 09 5 1. 09 3 (0 .13 5) (0 .13 6) tr ad iti on al h us ba nd /w ife ro le s b es t 1. 09 8 1.1 06 (0 .17 2) (0 .17 5) n um be r o f o bs er va tio ns 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 53 08 7 ** * p <. 00 1, ** p <. 01 , * p <. 05 , ^ p <. 1, f =f em al e, m =m al e so ur ce : n at io na l l on gi tu di na l s tu dy o f y ou th 1 97 9 (n ls y7 9) , o w n es tim at io ns relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 429 results are not directly comparable to them. rather, they offer evidence on the first birth hazard over the course of the first marriage, which in this us sample is highest when both partners have at least some college education. second birth rates were also highest among couples with two college educated partners. taken together, these findings corroborate results from prior studies in several other contexts: resource pooling of two tertiary educated partners seems to provide a conducive environment for (continued) childbearing in highest-income countries, including in the us (bagavos 2017; bueno/garcía-román 2021; dribe/stanfors 2010; nitsche et al. 2018; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). a strength of the present study is that, unlike most prior research, it controls for the respondent’s number of desired children. hence, higher birth rates of couples with high pooled educational resources likely don’t hinge on different preferences regarding envisioned family size. rather, the partners’ combined education may impact couples’ decision-making on whether they transform their fertility desires into concrete pregnancy plans, as fertility intentions in the us have been shown to be highest among homogamous tertiary educated couples (morales 2020). this suggests that tertiary educated individuals feel most inclined to realize their fertility desires with a partner who is also college educated, or that homogamous highly educated couples perceive themselves to be in a more favorable position to form or expand their family than heterogamous couples with only one tertiary educated or jointly lower educated partner(s) do. interestingly, respondents in the study on fertility intentions were born between 1965 and 2000, hence, after the 1957-64 nlsy79 birth cohort examined in this study (morales 2020). further research on cohort differences in the educational pairingfertility link are needed to examine whether tertiary educated homogamous couples indeed consistently have, or intend to have, higher second birth rates across various birth cohorts. second, the link between educational heterogamy and birth rates seems to depend on the partners’ absolute levels of education, more specifically, if the heterogamous couple included a tertiary education partner or not. little support was found for the specialization hypothesis (h2). if present, it only applied to highly resourced hypergamous couples. jointly college educated hypergamous couples (men with 16+ years, women with 13-15 years) had higher first birth rates than the reference group of homogamous high school educated couples, and than the lower resourced hypergamous large distance couples (men with 16+ years, women with 0-12 years). this offers some support for the specialization hypothesis (h2) regarding first births. some support was also found for the bargaining hypothesis (h3a), but again only among highly resourced couples, in terms of joint education levels and household income tertile. jointly college educated hypogamous couples (men with 16+ years, women with 13-15 years) had higher second birth rates than the reference group and than the lower resourced hypogamous large distance couples (men with 16+ years, women with 0-12 years). this offers some support for the bargaining hypothesis (h3a) regarding second births, but only among hypogamous couples with a woman who completed college. in contrast, hypogamous couples with lower joint educational resources (women with 13-15 years, men with 0-12 years) had the lowest second birth rates of all • natalie nitsche430 couples. this offers some support for the “doing gender” hypothesis (h3b), which stated that hypogamous couples would have the lowest second birth rates due to their mismatch with prevailing gendered norms, but this applied only among low resourced hypogamous couples. taken together, these findings on heterogamous couples underscore that associations between heterogamy and birth rates seem to depend on a couple’s joint absolute level of resources. higher resourced heterogamy appears conducive to first births, while low resourced heterogamy does not. hence, future work should consider absolute joint resources when studying the link between heterogamy and childbearing. this finding contributes to an ongoing debate on how partners’ absolute and relative resources can be best operationalized in research on homogamy and heterogamy and its linkages with family dynamics (for an overview of this debate, see blossfeld et. al 2024 in this special issue). the finding could also be interpreted as further evidence for the pooling hypothesis (h1) – among heterogamous couples, the higher the joint pooled educational resources, the higher the birth rate, especially with respect to second births. third, both hypogamous and hypergamous large distance couples had the lowest first birth rates, and significantly lower second birth rates than homogamous highly educated couples, offering support for h4. among tertiary educated people, the low education of a spouse seems to lower the chance of a joint first birth, regardless of gender. competing risk models show that hypogamous large distance couples had higher union dissolution rates compared with other couple types involving a college educated woman. the low birth rate of hypogamous large distance couples seems thus partly driven by higher separation rates of this type of couple before having a first child. note that once a first child is born to large distance couples, their union dissolution rate decreases. prior research has demonstrated higher union dissolution and lower childbearing rates among heterogamous couples, as well as lower union dissolution rates after parenthood across high income countries (hart et al. 2017; saarela/finnäs 2014; schwartz 2010; theunis et al. 2018). mazzeo et al. (2024) in this special issue, for instance, find that marriages in which wives have more education than their husbands have higher union dissolution rates in the west german birth cohorts 1951-60 and 1961-70. hence, their parallel finding pertains to roughly the same birth cohort as the us nlsy79 cohort examined in this study. however, they do not investigate the hypogamy-union dissolution link by couples’ number of children. it may therefore be fruitful to pay more attention to the intersection of educational pairings and parenthood status when studying union dissolutions in the future. fourth and finally, this study also tested the mechanisms through which educational pairings and birth rates may be linked. for first births, high family income emerged as a relevant mechanism underlying the higher birth rate of homogamous highly educated couples. however, it did not fully explain why college educated individuals with a low educated spouse had a lower birth rate, especially in the case of hypergamous large distance couples. the income variables also did not mediate second birth rate differences between highly educated homogamous couples and other couples. mechanisms underlying first and second birth rate relative resources in couples and their childbearing behavior in the united states • 431 differences between educational pairings thus seem to vary, and they may even vary between educational pairings concerning the same birth transition. while economic aspects and “socio-cultural” distance appear to play a role for couples’ differences by educational pairing to start a family together, second birth rate differences in educational pairings seem to be underpinned by other aspects. further research is needed to investigate underlying mechanisms beyond the socio-economic variables tested here. this study indicates that neither absolute or relative income, nor labor market work divisions, nor gender attitudes can help us understand why second birth rates of homogamous highly educated couples are higher compared to other educational pairings. further factors that could be worth considering include relationship satisfaction, the partners’ social networks and support, resources accessible via families of origin, housing conditions, health and health care access, or psychological factors such as stress resilience and conflict resolution skills. this study has limitations. it focuses on a very specific sample, namely first marriages involving a white woman in the us nlsy79 birth cohort. it remains unclear whether similar patterns apply to other ethnicities, other birth cohorts, cohabitations that do not result in marriage, and second or subsequent unions in the united states. moreover, births that occurred before the start of the panel in 1979 among this cohort of women were excluded from the sample because the partners’ covariates were not recorded. this excludes about 25 percent of first and 10 percent of second births to nlys79 women. hence, this analysis may systematically exclude women who had their first child at very young ages, and therefore potentially underestimate first birth rates of lower educated couples, who tend to have children earlier in the life course. furthermore, this study does not investigate lifetime fertility. this would involve measuring fertility across multiple unions and their educational pairings and how these unions’ fertility outcomes contribute to completed fertility. one recent study on finland indicates that educational pairings are also important for a deeper understanding of completed cohort fertility. here, the highest proportion of births was attributed to homogamous tertiary educated couples, further underscoring the relevance of understanding why this educational couple type appears to reproduce at higher rates than others (andersson et al. 2024). finally, hazard rates do not distinguish between tempo and quantum effects. more research is needed to differentiate timing versus quantum of the educational pairings on all birth orders. in summary, considering the educational composition of a couple adds important insights to the fertility-education link. this study indicates that, first, homogamous highly educated couples have the highest first and second birth rates, providing evidence for the relevance of resource pooling for family formation. second, the link between educational heterogamy and birth rates hinges on the partners’ absolute education levels, while hypogamous and hypergamous couples with large educational distances have lower birth rates than most other pairings do. third, family income mediated first birth rate differences between homogamous highly educated couples and most other pairings. lower first birth rates of hypogamous large distance couples, however, appear in part rooted in higher union dissolution rates of this couple type. fourth, the higher second birth rate of homogamous • natalie nitsche432 highly educated couples was not mediated by any of the tested socio-economic mechanisms. finally, there are four aspects to consider when operationalizing couples’ joint education: their absolute joint (pooled) education, their relative education (homogamy vs. heterogamy), the gender composition among heterogamous couples (hypergamy vs. hypogamy), and the distance of the educational attainment among heterogamous couples. all four aspects were relevant for couples’ birth transitions in this study. while this study adds further evidence to the emerging finding of higher birth rates among homogamous tertiary educated couples in high income countries (especially concerning second births), it may be premature to interpret the findings as a causal effect of a couples’ education composition on fertility. this study offers comprehensive life history data, a clear temporal ordering of potential cause and outcome, and the results are consistent with prior research. the underlying mechanisms of the educational pairing findings regarding first births were successfully examined (indicating that educational “effects” are rooted in economic circumstances and differences in union dissolution rates) but remained in large part elusive regarding second births. furthermore, due to data limitations, not all births and unions of this birth cohort were observable. the results therefore may be rooted in unobserved heterogeneity, for instance regarding the selection into partnerships or into tertiary education. more research is needed to understand which specific characteristics of tertiary educated homogamy protect couples from union dissolution and stimulate their fertility. while causal effects of educational attainment and its pooling in couples may indeed emerge, especially concerning second births, this study can only document associations and does not speak to causality. acknowledgements this study was supported with funding from the german research foundation (dfg) under grant agreement 459056529. additional support was provided 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candace; zimmerman, don h. 1987: doing gender. in: gender & society 1,2: 125-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002 date of submission: 28.05.2023 date of acceptance: 12.09.2024 prof. dr. natalie nitsche (*). australian national university, school of demography. canberra, australia. e-mail: natalie.nitsche@anu.edu.au url: https://demography.cass.anu.edu.au/people/associate-professor-natalie-nitsche https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09537-w https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2012s127 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-21 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00627.x https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002 mailto:natalie.nitsche@anu.edu.au https://demography.cass.anu.edu.au/people/associate-professor-natalie-nitsche published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de from zfb to cpos: a dynamic development in a challenging environment editorial from zfb to cpos: a dynamic development in a challenging environment* norbert f. schneider abstract: this editorial, written by norbert f. schneider, who served as director of the federal institute for population research (bib) and publisher of comparative population studies (cpos) from 2009 to 2021, outlines the journal’s transformation during his tenure. reflecting on the challenges the predecessor zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb) faced, the strategic decisions made to reimagine the journal are discussed. key milestones include the rebranding to cpos, the transition to open access, the shift to an entirely english-language publication, and the adoption of a rolling publication model. despite challenges, the journal has grown significantly, with increased international recognition and a solid ranking. on its 50th anniversary, the journal’s established position in the academic community of population research and demography is highlighted, emphasizing its commitment to high-quality publications and an efficient editorial process. keywords: cpos · zfb · academic publishing · open access · population research 1 reimagining the future of zfb: overcoming challenges and paving the way for cpos when i took over responsibility for zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb) in 2009, the journal faced several challenges. for some time, the german-language zfb had been published irregularly, with a number of articles lacking the scientific depth it once had, and it had become more difficult to attract contributions from authors outside the federal institute for population research (bib). despite these challenges, the potential for growth was clear, though the future of the journal needed to be reimagined. the transition in 2006 from boldt verlag to springer vs had not yet brought the desired improvements in terms of the journal’s visibility and appeal. comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): vii-x (date of release: 31.03.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-03 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-03en8 * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. • norbert f. schneiderviii several factors contributed to the situation at the time. some were internal, while others were external. i would like to highlight two key external factors. in germany, there was a limited number of scientists focusing on demographic topics that aligned with the scope of zfb at that time, and there was little indication that this would change in the near future. another significant change was the evolving landscape of academic publishing, especially among younger researchers who increasingly sought to publish in international english-language journals. the journal impact factor (jif) by thomson reuters (today clarivate) became a key metric, making it difficult for german-language journals to remain competitive. it soon became clear that, after 34 years, a new direction for zfb was necessary. the question arose whether it was time to embark on a completely new path and to reimagine the journal. the decision was made quickly, and a comprehensive relaunch was initiated in 2009, accompanied by a number of important strategic decisions. first, we decided to part ways with publishing houses. while the shift away from print journals was not as evident in 2009 as it is today, i had long been disappointed by the practice of publishing publicly funded research through profit-oriented publishers, who often charged high fees, limiting access to scientific knowledge. i was pleased to see the journal move toward an open-access publishing platform, a decision that would later be followed by many other publications, not only in germany. to ensure the journal’s future viability and competitiveness, it was clear that a more international approach was necessary. this led to a rebranding as comparative population studies (cpos) and a gradual shift to english-language contributions. in hindsight, it may seem ambitious that we published bilingual issues at first, with all articles published in both german and english. this was an immense effort. it was soon clear, however, that this was an interim phase and cpos transitioned to an english-only publication. 2 key developments: expanding scope, structural changes, and new publishing strategies other important developments included the expansion of the journal’s thematic scope to appeal to a broader range of authors and readers, and the creation of a rotating scientific advisory board, featuring renowned colleagues to give strategic advice and to help attract more international contributions. these were crucial steps towards enhancing the journal’s scientific independence and free it from the mistaken image of an in-house publication. one major goal during the initial transition was to make up for the publishing backlog. special issues organized and managed by external guest editors were a key strategic decision back then. this strategy proved highly effective, with most of the issues published during this period. during the transition phase, submissions from outside the bib only gradually began to increase and special issues were able to attract new authors. from zfb to cpos: a dynamic development in a challenging environment • ix for several years, cpos followed the traditional issue-based structure, with four issues per year, each containing around four articles, aiming for quarterly publication. this structure allowed to catch up on the publishing backlog, an achievement that required a great deal of effort from all involved and was an exceptional accomplishment. however, as the limitations of this rather inflexible publishing model became apparent, it was clear that we needed to move to an annual rolling publication model, which became another important development milestone. this change allowed for a faster publication of articles, reduced the editorial workload, and avoided the peaks of pressure typically associated with quarterly deadlines. with this change, the era of print editions of cpos came to an end. today, the journal is only printed in small quantities for libraries and collaborating institutions. another significant change was the transition to an online publishing platform. this was another area where cpos played a pioneering role in germany. it became one of the first journals to be run on ojs (open journal systems), an open-source software that was still in development at the time, and we made a meaningful contribution to the development of this platform in germany. this transition also marked the decision to stabilize the editorial team within the bib, moving away from the previous rotation model. these changes further enhanced cpos’ appeal, and both the number of downloads and submissions steadily increased. additional support through externally organized special issues continued to be crucial to the journal’s growth. despite the achievements described the dynamic publishing market that is flooded with e-journals has and will continue to challenge cpos. it is not easy for an open access journal to stand out in this environment with many predatory journals on the market. 3 cpos today – achievements, growth, and future prospects a major new development occurred in 2018 with the introduction of an external editor, appointed for a fixed term. this change brought further new impulses and energy to the journal and contributed to its quality, transparency and scientific independence. looking back over the past 16 years, the relaunch and internationalisation of cpos can be seen as highly successful. the journal is now widely recognized as a respected academic publication. while the goal of elevating cpos to an a-journal is still a work in progress, the journal has made significant strides. it is already indexed in prominent rankings including the emerging sources citation index (esci). in 2023, cpos ranked 42nd in the scimago journal & country rank among 132 demographic journals worldwide and 4th among those published in germany. this is a strong ranking, reflecting the journal’s growing influence and reach. on the 50th anniversary, it can be proudly stated that cpos is a well-established publication with an excellent editorial support for authors and a highly efficient review process. the average time from submission to publication is below 12 months, which is an outstanding achievement. • norbert f. schneiderx looking ahead, i hope for a further increase in high-quality submissions and continued growth in the journal’s reputation. one thing is clear: cpos deserves continued success. prof. dr. norbert f. schneider (*). johannes gutenberg university mainz, germany. e-mail: nos@uni-mainz.de published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) “i have to start all over again.” the role of institutional and personal arrival infrastructures in refugees’ home-making processes in amsterdam “i have to start all over again.” the role of institutional and personal arrival infrastructures in refugees’ home-making processes in amsterdam* mieke kox, ilse van liempt abstract: in this study, we take the concept of arrival infrastructures as a starting point to explore refugees’ home-making processes in amsterdam. this concept allows us to look beyond formal infrastructures set up for refugees and to take a closer look at all (f)actors playing a role in refugees’ processes of “starting all over again”. drawing on participatory ethnographic research in a community centre for refugees, we describe the role of institutional as well as personal infrastructures in material and affective terms and show how these are related to refugees’ sense of belonging in the city. we illustrate that refugees become entangled in a web of reception/asylum seekers centres and civic integration requirements that facilitate and constrain their home-making processes in a new place. it is more the informal, personal infrastructures that enable refugees to build social and affective ties in the city. nevertheless, refugees are still struggling with social isolation and a lack of participation due to their limited opportunities and the relatively closed character of dutch society. this impacts their sense of belonging and comes at the cost of their integration in the city. these insights raise not only questions on the current organisation of arrival infrastructures for refugees, but also show the need to move towards a multidimensional integration model that includes the role of (civil) society in the destination society in the refugees’ integration processes. keywords: arrival infrastructures · home-making processes · belonging · integration · refugees · cities comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 165-184 (date of release: 14.04.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-07 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-07en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • mieke kox, ilse van liempt166 1 introduction “the problem is, i’m not happy. i am only temporary happy. (…) i’ve lost everything, that is really hard. i have to start a new life, learn a new language. i’ve grown older but have to start all over again, another time. when i was still in turkey, i had a house, a wife, a child, a good job. but now, everything is gone and i start from zero. (…) i have to start all over again and it is really hard to get to know new people, adapt to a new culture and learn a new language.” (semih) the speaker is semih, a turkish refugee who arrived by plane in the netherlands to claim asylum. he was held in what he calls “a prison for one day,” after which he was sent to the initial reception centre in ter apel where he was registered as an asylum seeker. from there he was send to an asylum seekers centre (azc) to await his asylum decision. highly educated semih spent approximately 22 months in four different azcs, which he appreciated due to having contact with people from different cultures and the volunteers who helped him learn dutch. yet he found it hard to spend so much time there due to the lack of meaningful daytime activities, the limited privacy and the lengthy suspension of his life, something that many asylum seekers are confronted with upon arrival (cf. van heelsum 2017). when his asylum claim was granted, semih was allocated an apartment in amsterdam and tried to build a new home in amsterdam. this was not as straightforward as semih had expected. he thought he would feel at home within two years but, to his frustration, he is still struggling with the language, social isolation and a lack of employment at the time of the interview. our participatory ethnographic fi eldwork among refugees, asylum seekers and unauthorised migrants (refugees from now onwards) between 19 and 37 years of age in amsterdam, the netherlands, shows that this is not an isolated case. other newcomers also say they arrived with the hope and expectation they would fi nd new opportunities upon arrival. they want to feel – perhaps temporarily – at home in the city and become full members of the local community (cf. steigemann/misselwitz 2020; van heelsum 2017). they aspire to fully integrate in society. their aspirations move beyond the common notion of integration used by policymakers which mainly refers to the one-dimensional process of sociocultural and socioeconomic inclusion in a society (cf. damen et al. 2022). by contrast, our empirical fi ndings show that refugees seek emotional and social attachment in their destination country as well. they aim to become part of society and participate in it, to feel they belong in the city (cf. ager/strang 2008; damen et al. 2022; phillimore 2012). upon arrival, however, they are confronted with a wide range of diffi culties such as lengthy legalisation procedures, strict civic integration requirements and lack of activities in azcs. in addition, they encounter everyday diffi culties in terms of language barriers, discrimination and social isolation. these diffi culties hamper newcomers’ homemaking processes in the netherlands, the complex process by which newcomers try to establish security and familiarity as well as a sense of control or autonomy in a new place (boccagni 2017). “i have to start all over again.” • 167 this raises the questions of how refugees try to build their homes in amsterdam and what role infrastructures have in these home-making processes. we answer these questions in this study based on the concept of arrival infrastructures, “those parts of the urban fabric within which newcomers become entangled on arrival, and where their future local or translocal social mobilities are produced as much as negotiated” (meeus et al. 2019: 1). this concept enables us to get an inside perspective on how the various layers of this infrastructure are or are not interlinked and how refugees use and experience these infrastructures of the city upon arrival (see also boost/oosterlynck 2019; kreichauf 2019). in the following, we fi rst elaborate on the concept of arrival infrastructures in relation to newcomers’ home-making processes. after a note on methods, we describe and explain refugees’ experiences upon arrival and show how various layers of the arrival infrastructure affect their home-making processes in different ways. in the conclusion, we show that these insights raise questions about the current organisation of arrival infrastructures, as these do not adequately contribute to the affective component of refugees’ homemaking processes. due to the refugees’ limited opportunities and the relatively closed character of dutch society, refugees are still struggling with social isolation and a lack of participation in the city. this impacts their sense of belonging and comes at the cost of their integration. these insights indicate the need to move towards a multidimensional integration model that allows a more nuanced understanding of integration processes and includes the role of (civil) society in a destination society. 2 arrival infrastructures and homing in the netherlands arrival infrastructures entail a wide range of (interlinked) institutions, actors, spaces, practices and technologies (meeus et al. 2019; xiang/lindquist 2014). this includes supportive as well as exclusionary infrastructures at the state and civil society levels. when formal state infrastructures withdraw or fall short, more informal actors may emerge to repair and/or limit the effects of the state’s restrictive, exclusionary approach (meeus et al. 2019). these formal and informal – or institutional and personal – actors are not always strictly separated and may form more or less formalised or institutionalised alliances (steigemann 2019). these span a wide spectrum – or continuum – of institutions, people and practices, ranging from top-down approaches enacted by supranational, national or local authorities to bottom-up infrastructures developed by citizens, volunteers, activists and civil society (meeus et al. 2019). this wide range of infrastructures is assumed to help newcomers to become socially mobile upon arrival in a new place (meeus et al. 2019). we agree with meeus et al. (2019) that the length of arrival is negotiable, but believe that arriving is not only about taking off and becoming socially mobile. in our view, arriving is also about feeling at home in the destination society. duyvendak (2011: 106), for instance, argues that feeling at home – or belonging – is an essential or even existential need for people, which aligns the ideas of kale et al. (2019) that there is a universal need for emotional attachment to a place. boccagni (2017), too, believes that home lies • mieke kox, ilse van liempt168 at the roots of everyday live. this also applies to migrants who left their country for political and security reasons. after they leave their homes behind, they start a process of searching for a new home elsewhere (boccagni 2017). they aspire a new becoming (carling/collins 2018) and want to become full – perhaps temporary – members of their destination society (van heelsum 2017). as part of their integration processes, they want to feel they belong in their destination country (ager/strang 2008). therefore, asylum seekers may already start to create a home during their temporary stay in a reception camp (steigemann/misselwitz 2020). given the importance of homing, a wide range of studies have been published on “home” and “home-making processes”. myriad defi nitions of the concept arose (see mallet 2004 for an overview). generally, home is considered a safe and reassuring place that is characterised by a sense of dignity, safety, trust and familiarity (boccagni 2020; duyvendak 2011; mallet 2004). in these studies, there are some reoccurring factors that are required to feel at home or to feel one belongs in a place. first, values such as security, emotional and cognitive familiarity and autonomy are important to feel at home (boccagni 2017). for refugees in particular, “ontological security” is important given the insecurity in their former homes and the opportunity security offers to start an ordinary life (van liempt/miellet 2021). second, there is an affective or emotional component in home-making processes, which means that someone actually feels they belong in the destination society (duyvendak 2011; yuval-davis 2006). the hosting society has an important role here given its powers in terms of including newcomers, building relations with locals and bridging differences between newcomers and the host society (boccagni 2017; cichocka 2021; yuval-davis 2006). third, material and immaterial artefacts may make someone feel at home, such as (the decoration of) someone’s house (van liempt/ staring 2020), food (bailey 2017), hygiene and healthcare (kim/smets 2020) and smells or sounds (duyvendak 2011). finally, the role of space in someone’s homemaking process is still rather ambiguous as some studies indicate the importance of spaces (van liempt/staring 2020) while others show that space is not prerequisite for feeling at home (duyvendak 2011). these interrelated factors are supposed to impact whether someone feels at home in a destination country. these home-making processes are not merely individual but directly related to broader socio-spatial processes in the host society (boccagni 2017). the city – rather than the state – plays an important role in these refugees’ experiences although its exact impact depends on the local conditions and characteristics (castaneda 2018; caglar/glick schiller 2018; cichocka 2021). amsterdam – the focus of this study – is historically known for being a liberal city with a long history of migration and tolerance towards different religions, lifestyles and mentalities, which has led to its current superdiversity (uitermark 2014). it is generally proud to announce its tolerance towards “strangers” and its migration policies has long been an example of what was called “a multicultural approach” (de graauw/vermeulen 2016). however, the netherlands started to adopt a “failure of multiculturalism” discourse towards the end of the 1990s. nowadays, the country is known for its institutionalised and restrictive refugee reception approach (rast/ghorashi 2018) that is characterised by partly remote reception and asylum centres where asylum “i have to start all over again.” • 169 seekers await the decision in their legalisation procedure without being allowed to work or learn the language (rast et al. 2020). amsterdam took over parts of this national restrictive stance for the integration of asylum seekers although the city also introduced more open local policies that offer a more tailor-made approach and assign case-managers to refugees (the “amsterdam approach newcomers”) (oostveen et al. 2019). this approach is meant to facilitate refugees’ integration processes in the city. 3 methods to understand refugees’ home-making processes in amsterdam, we draw on participatory research in a community centre in the eastern part of amsterdam that newcomers and volunteers established after the increased infl ux of refugees in 2015. the centre initially focused on language classes and creating a connection between refugees and citizens of the neighbourhood but now offers a wide range of activities such as language classes, cafés, kickboxing classes and theatre sessions. on weekdays, a hot lunch is served. the centre received about 150 newcomers and volunteers on a weekly basis before the covid-19 pandemic. the fi rst author conducted 210 hours of participatory fi eldwork in this centre from january 2020 up to june 2021 (with some disruptions due to the lockdowns in the covid-19 pandemic and summer holidays). initially, she participated in all activities and later, she focused on language cafés and hanging out as well as informally chatting with participants. this approach has resulted in contacts with 77 refugees varying from one single meeting in a language café to over twenty meetings and conversations with the same person. a wide range of topics were discussed in these conversations such as the refugees’ experiences upon arrival, their everyday lives as well as their thoughts on the city and their aspirations, experiences and diffi culties in the netherlands. these were all recorded in extensive fi eldnotes. the participatory fi eldwork involved 18 semi-structured interviews with newcomers who were all recruited in the community centre.1 participants were twelve men and six women who vary in age from 19 to 37 years old. they are refugees, asylum seekers2 and unauthorised migrants3 who left their home country out of fear for their safety. they originate from syria, eritrea, sudan and other 1 given this selection strategy, we may have missed out on contact with refugees who are more isolated and are not willing or capable of making use of these services as well as refugees who are fully active on the labour market. 2 this includes asylum seekers with a so-called dublin claim, i.e., asylum seekers who are registered in another country in the schengen area after which the dutch authorities have laid a claim on that country to accept the asylum seeker concerned. if that country does not respond within 18 months, the dublin claim expiries meaning that an asylum seeker is eligible to claim asylum in the netherlands after all. 3 we are aware of the legal differences between these groups but will use the term “refugees” to refer to all respondents as they consider themselves refugees. • mieke kox, ilse van liempt170 countries that are known for their asylum migration. they have spent from half a year to over seven years in the netherlands. some came, after their initial reception in a reception centre, straight to amsterdam, others were housed in the city after their asylum procedure. in the interviews, we discussed all their experiences upon arrival in relation to their aspirations in the city. all respondents were generally able to speak dutch or english on a suffi cient level to be interviewed.4 they were willing to open up in these interviews, although some were insecure at times due to their language profi ciency. sometimes we made use of a translator app if a question was not entirely clear to them or if they felt they could not suffi ciently express themselves. most interviews were held in a room in the community centre, but one interview took place in the home of the respondent. the interviews lasted between 60 minutes and 4 hours, sometimes spread over multiple meetings. the interviews were recorded and transcribed while observations and conversations were recorded in extensive fi eldnotes. all materials were imported in atlas-ti (qualitative data analysis software) and openly and thematically analysed. for this study, we focused on the representations of arrival infrastructures in the netherlands in relation to newcomers’ home-making processes in amsterdam. 4 arrival in the netherlands our respondents told us that they were grateful to arrive in a safe country. however, they considered it frightening as well considering the uncertainty about what lay ahead for them. most of our respondents said that they reported to random people in the street or went to a police station after which they were offered a day ticket to travel to the main reception centre of the netherlands in ter apel. ndulu, an eritrean young person explains that “i want to go to ter apel” is the most important sentence upon arrival if you do not speak english or dutch yet. this also comes to the fore in the story of aziz, a syrian man who arrived by train at amsterdam central station in the beginning of the “refugee crisis” in 2015: “i went to the police offi ce and they gave me a dagkaart [day ticket for public transport] and a map (…): ‘ok, you can go to ter apel and this ticket is for free.’ (…) i knew how to work with a map, but i didn’t know how the train, the tram and metro worked here. and i only spoke a little bit english (…). i started to ask people. in the beginning, i was afraid because i didn’t know these people. i had heard that the european didn’t like people from the middle east, especially with black hair, with beard.5 4 the quotes are translated and, when necessary for readability, revised by the authors. 5 we observed that respondents themselves reproduce stereotypes in their narratives to illustrate that they felt different from those already living in the netherlands, which impacted their arrival processes. especially upon arrival, they think in terms of “us” and “them” as they do not feel part of society (yet). “i have to start all over again.” • 171 maybe they would look at me and think that i’m dangerous. but i didn’t have any choice than just to ask. and i asked a man because i was afraid to ask women, maybe women would call the police or something. i didn’t know. (…) i asked a man. i felt that this man was not european. and i say, ‘okay, i can ask him.’ and, you know, he surprised me by saying, ‘i don’t know anything.’ i told him, ‘please, i need help because i don’t know anything.’ he said, ‘i don’t know anything’. and he left. but this woman, i think she’s 45 or something, she told me, ‘can i help you?’ (…) i wanted to talk with her but i was a little bit afraid. i told her that i wanted to go to this address, to ter apel, but that i didn’t know how to use the train or metro or something. (…). and she told me, ‘okay, follow me.’” (aziz) these random people and the police were usually the fi rst infrastructures respondents encountered upon arrival. respondents were generally surprised and relieved that these people were so willing to help them, especially as some – such as aziz – were reluctant to ask for help given the fear they would be considered dangerous. they preferred to turn to people they expected might speak their language or have the same ethnicity, which aligns with the everyday experiences of muslims in amsterdam who also feel judged based on their appearance (shaker et al. 2021). most respondents felt openly received and positively treated, especially in comparison with their experiences en route in other european countries. however, during the so-called refugee crisis, there were also demonstrations against asylum seekers, something that brought out more negative sentiments. faisal, an afghan young person, told us that he came across such a protest group: “at the train station on his way to ter apel, he encountered a protest group that was demonstrating against the arrival of more refugees and asylum centres. he says that this was really shocking for him as he was running from war. however, he was helped by another group of citizens when he got stranded at the same station. they offered him soup and a sleeping bag as he had to spend the night at the train station before he could continue travelling to the reception centre.” (fieldnotes 10/01/2020) while more respondents make mention of similar negative encounters, their positive experiences generally outweighed the negative. they downgraded these events and considered the people living in the netherlands quite friendly and open towards refugees. 5 an institutional package at the state level the reception centre in ter apel, a small city located in the northern part of the netherlands, is a 10-minute walk from the nearest bus stop on a remote street that also houses an asylum seekers’ centre and a penitentiary institution for foreign• mieke kox, ilse van liempt172 national offenders. once refugees arrive there, they are mainly confronted with arrival infrastructures at the state level that can be associated with what goffman (1961) calls “total institutions” (see also larruina/ghorashi 2016). these are characterised by interception, waiting and funnelling (cf. meeus et al. 2019). during the increased infl ux of asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016, the state infrastructures were not suffi ciently equipped to receive the increased number of asylum seekers, which meeus, van heur and arnaut (2019: 17) consider “a spectacular case of infrastructural failure.” in the netherlands too, the immigration police, the immigration and naturalisation service (ind) and the central agency for the reception of asylum seekers (coa) lacked capacity for their tasks (acvz 2017), i.e., the registration and identifi cation, legalisation procedures and housing of asylum seekers. consequently, asylum seekers had to queue in front of the reception centre while awaiting their registration. hamza, an iraqi man who arrived in 2015, explained what happened when it was his turn to register. “i entered the door, at the reception desk. they gave me a form, i had to share my personal details, my name and my age. they also took a picture of me. then they put me in a room, a big room with lots of people. after two days, they brought me to the police station. there, they took my fi ngerprints and another picture. they searched my bags and clothes, actually everything.” (hamza) in line with hamza’s story, coa usually offered registered asylum seekers a shared room at the reception centre in ter apel to await the ind’s decision. however, this reception centre was completely occupied during this so-called crisis. after a day of waiting in uncertainty, asylum seekers were generally assigned to a bus that brought them to ad-hoc emergency accommodations such as sport arenas and event centres all over the country. they could spend the fi rst nights there. during this time, they were brought to special locations of the immigration police who searched them and explored their identity. refugees told us that they were relieved to be safe, to have a bed and to have some more perspective in terms of legalisation. however, they have rather frustrating memories of this initial period after their exhausting migration journeys given the extended waiting and uncertainty, the tough conditions and freedom restrictions as well as an experienced lack of opportunities to ask questions to clarify what was going to happen to them. the respondents’ narratives showed that the organisation of their reception created a great deal of frustration. imani, a sudanese young person, therefore said that he “never wants to go to ter apel again.” after registration, the immigration and naturalisation service decided whether someone was eligible for an (extended) asylum procedure. dublin claimants – i.e., asylum seekers who were registered and/or claimed asylum in another country in the schengen territory – could already be rejected in this initial period. this indicates the interception and funnelling of state infrastructures that select and fi lter wanted from unwanted migrants (cf. de haas et al. 2018). this also applied to aklilu, an eritrean man who went to ter apel to claim asylum. he said that the dutch “i have to start all over again.” • 173 authorities wanted to lay a dublin claim on switzerland as he had applied for asylum in that country fi rst. “in ter apel, they asked, ‘okay, where do you come from?’ ‘i come from switzerland, i was there three years and six months.’ ‘okay, that is good. we have some questions for you.’ then they say that i have to wait a year and six months. when i am done with that, i can go to ter apel. that is really hard; i don’t have a house, i sleep outside, also in the rain. no food.” (aklilu) like some others, aklilu left switzerland as he feared deportation to eritrea, which involved severe risks for eritrean deserters like him (here to support 2019). his asylum claim was rejected by the dutch authorities, after which he had to wait for a response from the swiss authorities. the netherlands court of audit (2018), however, shows that only 14.8 percent of such dublin claims in 2014-2016 resulted in other countries accepting the asylum seekers concerned, meaning that all other dublin claimants are eligible to claim asylum in the netherlands after eighteen months after all. during these eighteen months, there were no state infrastructures available for dublin claimants, meaning that they did not receive any housing or living allowances and were only entitled to necessary health care, legal aid and – until the age of 18 – education. they were thus confronted with a wide range of deprivations, something kox, boone and staring (2020) refer to as “the pains of being unauthorised.” this shows the differentiation in available arrival infrastructures at the state level, which may be explained based on refugees’ legal statuses and migration journeys. refugees who were eligible for an asylum procedure were usually transferred to an azc, which are, with some exceptions, located in more remote areas. at the peaks of the “refugee crisis,” asylum seekers sometimes had to wait up to twenty months before their procedure started due to the ind’s lack of capacity (refugee council the netherlands 2019). given the remoteness of azcs, refugees were often segregated and subjected to both spatial and temporal suspensions of their lives, something kreichauf (2018) calls “campization.” respondents generally felt they were treated in a friendly manner by the authorities in these centres, but said they faced hard times. for example, they complained of the lack of meaningful activities in the camps as this contributed to the temporal suspension of their lives and resulted in wasted time and boredom. aman, a former dublin claimant who was fi nally eligible for an asylum procedure, explained: “i miss amsterdam! in the azc, there is nothing i can do. no language cafés, no dutch lessons, no activities, nothing. i share my room with three others, also an eritrean guy. these men are nice, but it is boring there.” (aman) spatial isolation in the asylum camps also made it rather complicated to participate in city life and build relationships with other people and spaces. as the conditions • mieke kox, ilse van liempt174 did not enable aman to start to build a life in the netherlands, he spent most of the time at a friend’s place in amsterdam to start learning the language and building social ties. this was not possible in his azc, although some azcs do host (in the opinions of respondents too few) volunteers who provide language support or offer social activities to refugees. the lack of meaningful daytime activities contrasts with the refugees’ aspirations as they would like to start to learn dutch, enter the labour market, engage with dutch citizens and start to build their homes in the netherlands as soon as possible. they feel they lost important years of their lives as the dutch state infrastructures were mainly aimed at containment and offer little participation or affection during the legalisation procedures. the sudanese omar explained his time in the camp: “i cannot say that it was good nor that it wasn’t good, it was just no real life there.” like other respondents, he mainly referred to the lack of opportunities to start engaging with and participating in dutch society. 6 arriving at the local level refugees reported being held in azcs until they were granted asylum. then, they received a fi ve-year residence permit and a one-time housing offer in an allocated municipality. the distribution of refugees among municipalities is based on proportionality (van liempt/miellet 2021). refugees’ interests, networks and opportunities at the labour market are assumedly insuffi ciently included in the dutch dispersal policies (huizinga/van hoven 2018; van liempt/miellet 2021). participants in this study were rather lucky to be housed in the dutch capital as they preferred amsterdam over other regions given its multicultural character, the availability of social networks and social organisations and its vibrant atmosphere. semih, for instance, explained: “amsterdam is the biggest city of the netherlands with lots of activities. (…) there used to be lots of activities and organisations, but this is less now due to corona. (…) and the people in amsterdam are beautiful people, very polite. when i walk in amsterdam, i hear lots of english words, no dutch. in a café, i hear english. in the streets, i hear english. amsterdam isn’t dutch, it’s a city of the world.” (semih) it was only when refugees were granted legal status and were placed at the local level that their civic integration formally started. from then onwards, refugees were allowed – and obliged – to learn the language, access the labour market and participate in dutch society. they had three years to fulfi l their civic integration requirements without having to repay their loans for the language lessons. informally, however, refugees could start earlier with settling down and interacting with the new environment. some respondents already had a network in amsterdam as their stay in the asylum camp in the city kickstarted their arrival. others had stayed in camps in other regions, meaning that their existing ties were cut off and that they had to start all over to build a home in the city. it was rather complex to “i have to start all over again.” • 175 arrive in the city in the heydays of the so-called “refugee crisis” given the lack of suffi cient institutional support in that time. some newcomers had no idea what they should do. abrihet, a 34-year-old eritrean woman who got pregnant shortly after she started to live in amsterdam, explained that the father of her baby was still living in another city and could not move to amsterdam. she felt completely left on her own, which made it a rather diffi cult and lengthy process to adjust to the city: “well, i was pregnant and with small kids, no one helped me. i had to stay at home. (…) i didn’t like it there. my two kids are born there. i was alone and it was really diffi cult to go with the kids upstairs and downstairs without an elevator. (…) i didn’t go out and stayed inside with my children. they were small and i had to stay at home. but now, if the kids go to school, i go outside. (…) i want to improve my dutch, that’s why i want to go outside, to the school and to have contact with others.” (abrihet) abrihet said that she could not make use of day-care and was not offered any assistance at that time, meaning that she was totally unconnected from any type of arrival infrastructure. as soon as her kids went to school, she started to improve her dutch and outreach to dutch society. during the interview she explained that she would have liked to have more infrastructures available at the moment of arrival that would have allowed her to directly participate in this way. while refugees were appointed a case manager in the context of the amsterdam approach newcomers, the fi eldwork showed that these case managers lacked the time or willingness to actually offer practical support upon arrival. consequently, some respondents were struggling over how and where to start to build their homes in this city. they became dependent on more personal infrastructures, but – as abrihet’s experience shows – did not always have the capacity or opportunity to reach out to personal services (yet). case managers were supposed to support refugees to quickly access the labour market. oostveen, klaver and born (2019) show that the amsterdam approach is successful in terms of numbers of refugees who – sometimes temporarily – access the labour market. however, the approach has some weaknesses as well given the case-managers’ rather bureaucratic approach (oostveen et al. 2019). regardless of the aspirations of the refugees themselves, these case mangers mainly focus on fulfi lling the civic integration requirements and getting them a job as soon as possible according to oostveen, klaver and born (2019). our respondents confi rmed this fi nding. they told us they preferred a job within their fi eld of expertise or interests as this offers more perspective and certainty in the long term, but they were confronted with case managers who wanted them to quickly accept any job. the interviewees’ contacts with their case managers were – in their view – mainly about work in the initial period of arrival. in addition, the number of contacts decreased over time, although most respondents continued to feel a need for support given the diffi culties they still encountered and/or life events that occurred after the trajectory had been fi nished. therefore, several respondents did not feel adequately helped. • mieke kox, ilse van liempt176 elias, a syrian young person who worked in several shops over time, complained that it was rather complicated to get in touch with and receive support from his case manager: “the municipality, no. i don’t know. my contact person is really diffi cult. whenever i ask her something, she doesn’t help me. (…) the municipality doesn’t help you either. if you have a lot of problems, for instance if you don’t have a dole, they won’t help you. i have been talking to my case manager, but she doesn’t talk to me.” (elias) elias showed us the whatsapp texts he had sent to his case manager which remained unanswered. he therefore turned to other, established migrants in the city who were able to offer him a job and provide him the needed support. these migrants are thus part of refugees’ arrival infrastructures as well. these more informal and personal infrastructures are important for refugees’ home-making processes as the organisation of institutional arrival infrastructures at the local level is mainly aimed at socio-economic integration and focuses less on the aspirations and emotional needs of refugees themselves. in recent decades, more informal, personal infrastructures have been established to facilitate the arrival of refugees, partly in response to the failing institutional infrastructures. respondents mentioned a wide range of initiatives, ranging from the public library to community centres, from concerned neighbours to ngos, from neighbourhood whatsapp groups to sport clubs, from churches to grassroots organisations, and from language schools to established migrants. some of these initiatives have become institutionalised over time and receive funding from national or local authorities, others are still run by volunteers. these initiatives contributed to the respondents’ language profi ciency, access to the labour market and civic integration requirements. they also had an important affective function as they contributed to building relationships between newcomers and/or others living in amsterdam. yaman, a syrian man, for instance, told us that he used to visit the community centre daily and made friends for life there. it “feels like home, it is my second family,” he said. others also indicated the importance of and need for such infrastructures. without these informal infrastructures, they would not have been able to become attached to both places and people within the city. in addition, these personal infrastructures helped them to cope with the stress of arriving and building a new home in a new place. the importance of these infrastructures was magnifi ed during the covid-19 pandemic when more institutional infrastructures were not capable of fulfi lling the material as well as immaterial needs of newcomers that arose because of the pandemic. these personal infrastructures were not only occupied with the affective, immaterial aspects of arrival. some also provided material support to those who could not use available infrastructures given their lack of a legal status. such support was offered by both organisations and concerned volunteers as the quote by ali, a sudanese man who used to be unauthorised, shows: “i have to start all over again.” • 177 “we get help from citizens, but we don’t get help from the government. the government is always against us. (…) in the netherlands, i don’t feel welcome from the government side. apart from that, i do feel welcome because when i am out, i see people. they are happy, they are talking, they are laughing. i don’t trust the government though because i know that they have put me in a bad situation.” (ali) this bad situation refers to him not being eligible for state infrastructures given his lack of a legal status. he felt punished by the dutch authorities, which is more common among unauthorised migrants (kox et al. 2020). for some unauthorised respondents, the lack of adequate state provisions combined with the availability of such personal infrastructures in amsterdam was the reason to come to this city in the fi rst place.6 given the, in his view, unacceptable situation for unauthorised migrants, ali started a foundation himself to provide support to other migrants and homeless people after he was eventually granted legal status, meaning that he became part of the personal arrival infrastructures for unauthorised migrants himself. 7 homing in amsterdam the fi eldwork showed that respondents aimed to stay – at least temporarily – in amsterdam. they wanted to participate in terms of work, relationships, and social activities. they could continue to be mobile (meeus et al. 2019) and their homemaking processes were not automatically bound to a particular time or place (duyvendak 2011). nevertheless, they did want to become – temporarily – part of the city. the respondents’ narratives show that there are several elements that made them feel at home. that is a sense of security and familiarity as discussed by boccagni (2017). except for rejected asylum seekers who felt deprived of secure living conditions, most respondents felt rather secure given the – in their view – relatively fair dutch rule of law and the lack of insecurity. this fostered their sense of belonging. in addition, they felt rather accustomed to the city, although they usually needed an adjustment period to get familiar in the city and learn the dutch customs (cf. van liempt/kox forthcoming). they felt free in comparison with their home countries, which contributed to their level of autonomy. furthermore, they were rather positive about both material and immaterial artefacts that were available to them upon arrival. however, this all was not suffi cient. they wanted to participate in the city as well. this was rather complicated for them, which hampered their sense of belonging. yasin, a yemeni man, illustrates: 6 they were not offered any housing given the lack of legal status, meaning that they could choose where they live (although they have limited opportunities). • mieke kox, ilse van liempt178 “do i belong here? not yet. if i don’t help people, if i don’t work, if i don’t contribute to the city of amsterdam, if i don’t do anything for humanity, then i can’t consider myself part of it.” (yasin) our fi eldwork showed that personal arrival infrastructures facilitated respondents’ arrival processes and contributed to their sense of belonging. however, these infrastructures were not completely able to make all research participants feel at home as they could not help all refugees to actually participate in the city. furthermore, a substantial number of respondents were confronted with loneliness and social isolation upon arrival, something that also made them feel they were not part of this society. more personal actors did try to establish relationships between refugees and between refugees and city dwellers, meaning that refugees were being offered several places and opportunities to meet others. respondents really appreciated these contacts but were – as we discuss elsewhere in more detail (van liempt/kox forthcoming) – hardly able to transmit these relationships to their everyday lives. this brought about social isolation and loneliness among refugees, which was considered one of the most diffi cult aspects of homing in amsterdam. amina, a syrian woman who has a relatively large number of contacts and makes use of the services of several organisations for newcomers explained that she still missed friends that she could call and open up to about her problems. she argued that those contacts at organisations were rather superfi cial while there was little opportunity to establish more in-depth relationships: “i am a social person and i do have friends, but i feel lonely. (…) it is hard to explain. i can drink coffee with a friend, but this is just about killing time. (…) it is superfi cial.” (amina) the rather closed society in the netherlands complicated amina’s search for social contacts, especially during the pandemic. vermeulen (2021) shows that refugees’ experiences with the closed society in the netherlands result in doubts among syrian and eritrean refugees about whether they will ever be fully accepted by this society and able to establish close relationships, something that impacts their connectedness with this society in the long run. despite the availability of a wide range of different infrastructures, refugees need more support and differentiated arrival infrastructures to feel at home in the netherlands, although there are different experiences among respondents. 8 conclusion this study draws on the concept of arrival infrastructures to explore refugees’ home-making processes in amsterdam. this concept allows us to look beyond the formal, institutional infrastructures set up for refugees and to include their everyday experiences upon arrival. based on our participatory research, we show that refugees aim to feel – at least temporarily – at home in the netherlands and “i have to start all over again.” • 179 to become part of the city. however, they encounter a wide range of diffi culties that constrain their home-making processes. these diffi culties are directly related to the current organisation of arrival infrastructures at the national and local level. at the national level, refugees are initially confronted with a rather institutional state infrastructure that is characterised by interception, waiting and funnelling. they spend a relatively large amount of time without suffi cient meaningful, futureoriented activities and cannot learn the language or work (cf. ghorashi 2005; engbersen et al. 2015). the temporal and spatial suspension of refugees’ lives in azcs complicates their home-making processes. it is only when they are granted a legal status and offered housing at the local level that their civic integration formally begins. then, in the case of amsterdam, refugees are formally appointed a case manager of the municipality who should help them integrate in the city. respondents feel that these case managers focus too much on short-term socio-economic integration without taking their own emotional needs, aspirations and capabilities into account. to compensate for the national and local state’s shortcomings in terms of (affective) arrival infrastructures, a wide range of more informal, personal arrival infrastructures have emerged over the years. although these more informal, personal actors aim to facilitate refugees’ arrival processes and contribute to their sense of belonging, many of our respondents still encounter diffi culties starting all over again in amsterdam. this brings about experiences of social isolation and makes them struggle to fully participate in society, meaning that they do not yet feel at home in the city. refugees are not only looking for socio-cultural and socio-economic inclusion in a society. this study shows that they also seek emotional and social attachment in their destination country to feel at home (cf. ager/strang 2008; damen et al. 2022; phillimore 2012). dowling and mee (2007) illustrate that home-making processes require both physical and emotional energy, which applies in particular to refugees who do not speak the language, are unfamiliar with the country and have encountered insecurity and uncertainty (cf. van liempt/miellet 2021). therefore, our respondents invest a great deal of time in their home-making processes by learning the language, looking for jobs and searching for all kinds of connections that may help them to become part of the city. however, they feel only partially rewarded for their investments due to the everyday barriers they experience. they want other citizens to engage with them, the labour market to open up to them and a more open attitude in (civil) society in order to be able to fully participate in society and build affective ties. in everyday reality, they are confronted with limited opportunities and the relatively closed character of dutch society (vermeulen 2021). this hampers them building affective ties with (citizens in) the city and contributes to their social isolation and lack of participation. the causes for these problems may partly be found in the relatively closed character of dutch society, meaning that the available arrival infrastructures cannot fully address the refugees’ affective needs. this impacts the refugees’ sense of belonging and comes at the cost of their integration in the city. these fi ndings indicate that the receiving society has an important role to fulfi l in refugees’ home-making processes as well (cf. ager/strang 2008; damen et al. 2022; • mieke kox, ilse van liempt180 phillimore 2012), especially as the host society seems to have more agentive powers in terms of inclusion than refugees themselves (yuval-davis 2006). this implies that we need to move towards a multidimensional integration model that allows a more nuanced understanding of integration processes (cf. ager/strang 2008). the model should move beyond socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions of integration that policymakers use. it should also include affective and emotional elements in refugees’ everyday lives which does more justice to refugees’ own home-making and integration aspirations. in addition, this model should include the role of (civil) society in a destination society (cf. ager/strang 2008). refugees invest a lot of time in their home-making and integration process, but depend on citizens who want to engage with them, on the labour market opening up and on civil society ś commitment to them. refugees cannot achieve that all by themselves. therefore, integration should be considered a two-way process in which both refugees and (civil) society play a role. considering integration in this manner will contribute to refugees’ participation and engagement in the city and will benefi t their socioeconomic and sociocultural integration. this requires an arrival infrastructure in which civil society itself has a role as well, and which actually supports refugees in building affective ties in the city of arrival. funding the project – the everyday experiences of young refugees and asylum seekers in public spaces – is fi nancially supported by the hera joint research programme (www.heranet.info), which is co-funded by ahrc, bmbf via dlr-pt, f.r.s. – fnrs, nwo, and the european commission through horizon 2020. references acvz 2017: pieken en dalen. naar een duurzaam system voor opvang van asielzoekers en huisvesting en integratie van vergunninghouders. the hague: advisory committee on migration affairs. ager, alastair; 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2006: belonging and the politics of belonging. in: patterns of prejudice 40,3: 197-214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220600769331 date of submission: 04.06.2021 date of acceptance: 06.02.2022 mieke kox (). utrecht university, human geography and planning department. utrecht, the netherlands. e-mail: kox@law.eur.nl https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0332-5030 dr. ilse van liempt. utrecht university, human geography and planning department. utrecht, the netherlands. e-mail: i.c.vanliempt@uu.nl url: https://www.uu.nl/staff/icvanliempt/profi le https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4978-3101 published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries – on pre-pandemic fertility forecasts fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries – on pre-pandemic fertility forecasts patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier abstract: the covid-19 pandemic has affected all areas of our lives. among other outcomes, the academic literature and popular media both discuss the potential effects of the pandemic on fertility. as fertility is an important determinant of population development and population forecasts are important for policy decisions and planning, we need to address to which extent fertility forecasts performed before the pandemic still apply. using monte carlo forecasting based on principal components of fertility rates, we quantify the effects of the pandemic on fertility for 22 countries and discuss whether forecasts made prior to the pandemic need adjustment based on more recent data. among the studied countries, 14 countries show no signifi cant effect of the pandemic at all, while six countries have signifi cantly lowered numbers of births in comparison to counterfactual trajectories that assume that past trends will hold. these countries are primarily in the mediterranean and east asia. for finland and south korea, there is statistical evidence for increased fertility in the early phases of the pandemic. in all cases with statistically signifi cant fertility differentials caused by the pandemic, reproductive behavior normalized quickly. therefore, we fi nd no evidence for long-term effects of the pandemic on fertility, leading to the conclusion that pre-pandemic fertility forecasts still apply. keywords: covid-19 · fertility · international trends · causality · stochastic forecasting · principal component analysis · sarima models · monte carlo simulation 1 background the covid-19 pandemic has affected many areas of life, both via direct effects on morbidity (fernández villalobos et al. 2021) and on mortality (vanella et al. 2021) as well as via indirect effects, by increasing the demand for healthcare services (khailaie et al. 2021). moreover, national and regional governments have introduced comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 19-46 (date of release: 31.01.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-02 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-02en3 • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier20 a variety of non-pharmaceutical interventions (npis) aimed at limiting the spread of the virus (ecdc 2021). while the impacts of the pandemic on mortality and morbidity have been well-investigated, our understanding of other factors, such as long-term effects of the npis on mental health or behavior, has not advanced as far. this is because data on those issues are still very limited, and effects will only show up in the long term. we do not know whether we will observe signifi cant long-term changes in behavior, whether pre-pandemic behavior will re-establish itself immediately (potentially after short-term catch-up effects) after all restrictions have been lifted and all individuals have been suffi ciently immunized, or whether it will take some time to return to the pre-pandemic state (berrington et al. 2022; goldstein 2020). in this contribution, we are specifi cally interested in the impact of the pandemic and associated npis on fertility. with regard to fertility, future trends will likely be infl uenced by socioeconomic characteristics of the affected countries and their previous fertility levels and trends (aassve et al. 2020). from a demographic perspective, the long-term effects of the pandemic on fertility are of interest for family policy and for planning in fi elds associated with the future development of the population and especially numbers of births, for example the labor market (fuchs et al. 2018; berrington et al. 2022) or social insurance (vanella/deschermeier 2019). our study investigates the overall effects of the pandemic on reproductive behavior for a variety of countries and outlines potential future developments based on our empirical fi ndings. in particular, our focus is on pre-pandemic fertility forecasts and whether and how those should be adjusted in response to the pandemic. our paper aims at presenting an advanced approach to quantifying effects of extraordinary events on fertility in different countries. our case study addresses the fi rst one and a half years of the covid-19 pandemic. we apply a fully stochastic approach that considers long-term trends in fertility, monthly seasonality, autocorrelations, and cross-correlations of fertility rates across countries. we thereby adapt a model previously suggested by vanella, basellini, and lange (2021) in a study on excess mortality to monthly fertility patterns. based on the fi rst results, we compare the lessons learned from the most recent data with theoretical considerations on the long-term effect of the pandemic on fertility to draw conclusions about whether fertility forecasts should be modifi ed in light of the pandemic. in the next section, we present a threefold literature review. we fi rst address effects on fertility observed in past crises. second, we discuss the potential future impact of the covid-19 pandemic on fertility according to previous studies on the matter. third, we will give a short overview of forecast approaches in demography relevant to our present paper. in the next section of the paper, we discuss the data used and our methodological approach. we then present results generated from our simulations and a suggestion on the need to adjust pre-pandemic fertility forecasts for those countries identifi ed as being signifi cantly affected in terms of their reproductive behavior during the pandemic situation, matching our results to theoretical considerations stated earlier in studies on fertility forecasting in the light fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 21 of the pandemic. we then close our paper with a discussion of the results and our approach. 2 state of knowledge 2.1 effects of past crises on fertility the covid-19 pandemic can be seen as a health crisis as well as an economic crisis (dorn et al. 2020, 2022). it is quite possible that both the pandemic itself (including associated increases in mortality rates and associated contact reduction measures) as well as the economic downturn associated with it could infl uence current and future fertility. a large body of research has addressed the effects of crises, or other shocks on fertility. the majority of scholarly work on the effects of crises on fertility has focused on economic downturns (comolli 2017; comolli et al. 2021; goldstein et al. 2013; lee 1990, 1997; matysiak et al. 2021; neels et al. 2013; sobotka et al. 2011). it is generally agreed that fertility is pro-cyclical; fertility tends to increase in times of economic prosperity and decline in times of economic weakness (lee 1997; sobotka et al. 2011; matysiak et al. 2021). historically, the effects of economic downturns have often been short-lived (neels et al. 2013; sobotka et al. 2011). the work of lee (1990, 1997) on shocks to the population equilibrium is well-known. other scholars, too, have discussed the effects of economic downturns, epidemics and pandemics as well as natural disasters on fertility. these studies may provide some guidance on possible effects of the pandemic on future fertility. whereas lee’s methods appear to present a comprehensive and rather mathematical approach to tackling fertility change in times of uncertainty, they tend to oversimplify the complex phenomenon of fertility, as not all cases fi t this model. many countries in eastern and central europe have witnessed signifi cant declines in their total fertility rates (tfrs) during their transition from socialist to capitalist societies and associated economic shocks since the late 1980s. this process dragged on until the turn of the millennium, followed by geographically heterogeneous recoveries in fertility until the onset of the great recession after 2007 (frejka/ gietel-basten 2016). the great recession of 2007-2009 offers – for some countries at least – a striking exception to the general pattern of fertility decline followed by a relatively rapid recovery (comolli et al. 2021; comolli 2017; goldstein et al. 2013; matysiak et al. 2021; seltzer 2019). buckles et al. (2022) described the aftermath of the great recession in the united states (us) as a baby-less recovery. in many developed countries, a fertility rebound did not occur, and in many countries, the birth rate has continued to decline. in other countries, fertility recovered relatively quickly after the great recession, even in the absence of rapid economic recovery (comolli 2017; sobotka et al. 2011). fertility is affected by a number of secular trends, including changing fertility intentions, and would likely not be stable even in the absence of economic fl uctuations (sobotka et al. 2011). lee (1979) famously described fertility as a moving • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier22 target, meaning that the desired number of children reacts to exogenous factors. the fact that fertility is affected by many different, often countervailing, forces means that it is often diffi cult to ascertain causal connections. a likely mechanism linking economic condition to fertility is changes in fertility timing due to perceived uncertainty about the future (comolli 2017; sobotka et al. 2011). the explanation for the lack of a rapid rebound in fertility in response to the great recession in some countries may be related to wide-spread and longlasting uncertainty about the future, caused both by the great recession itself and by structural changes to the global economy, which have led to unprecedented global interdependence, increased economic insecurity, and the intensifi cation of neoliberal social policies (comolli 2017; comolli et al. 2021; comolli/vignoli 2021; matysiak et al. 2021; seltzer 2019; vignoli et al. 2020). concern about climate change and political instability in many parts of the world may have also contributed to what may be described as a state of chronic uncertainty. vignoli et al. (2020) have developed a new theoretical approach – the narrative framework for the analysis of the fertility decision-making process – that makes coping with uncertainty about the future the centerpiece of understanding fertility trends. according to the authors, people make fertility decisions in the face of uncertainty based on imaginative scenarios of what to expect in one’s life course, which they call narratives of the future. in a globally inter-connected world, public and social media play a large role in shaping narratives of the future. therefore, it may be that a narrative of chronic uncertainty has become the basis of fertility decision-making for many people. other scholars have investigated the effects of diseases, such as the well-studied infl uenza pandemic of 1918 (boberg-fazlic et al. 2021; chandra/yu 2015), which led to an immediate and striking decrease in fertility followed by a long baby boom (beach et al. 2022). the zika epidemic of 2015 (marteleto et al. 2020) has also been studied with regard to its impact on fertility in brazil. the authors compared the annual changes in monthly live births and age-specifi c fertility rates from 2015 to 2016 relative to the corresponding changes from 2014 to 2015. they showed that, in summer 2016, approximately nine months after the major media reports on the zika outbreak, fertility declined signifi cantly relative to the year 2015. however, it is hard to compare one disease to another. for example, mortality in the 1918-2020 infl uenza pandemic was signifi cantly increased for people of childbearing age (çilek et al. 2018), while this is not the case for the recent covid-19 pandemic (vanella et al. 2021; vanella et al. 2022). to add an example of a natural disaster and its consequences for fertility, nobles et al. (2015) studied the indonesian tsunami of 2004 by comparing the differences in age-specifi c fertility rates in the years before the tsunami against the years 2006-2009. for this, the authors stratifi ed regions with and regions without mortality caused by the tsunami, fi nding decreased fertility for the regions not directly affected by the tsunami, while regions with tsunami mortality had increased fertility. the authors concluded that the death of multiple own children triggered an increase in reproductive behaviors by many females. however, we see again that the idiosyncratic characteristics of each natural disaster make it hard to compare their consequences for fertility. fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 23 this overview of the literature shows that fertility is a complex phenomenon that may be infl uenced by institutional and economic opportunities, as illustrated by the large body of literature on the connection between fertility and the institutional economic or political setting, and individuals’ preferences for children, which are also subject to the economic situation and perceived uncertainty (lee 1979; vignoli et al. 2020). in low-fertility countries, pro-natalist social policies may affect reproductive behaviors as well (vanella/deschermeier 2019). a holistic projection approach after a shock such as the pandemic should factor in the driving forces of the fertility phenomenon. 2.2 research on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on future fertility the covid-19 pandemic may have impacted fertility either on a biological level or on a behavioral level. possible scenarios and mechanisms have been outlined by berrington et al. (2022). at the biological level, those include increased maternal mortality, different timing of births (premature, for instance, see sentilhes et al. 2020), a higher proportion of stillbirths (desisto et al. 2021), or higher infertility among the infected (li et al. 2021). there might also have been decreases in births due to pandemic restrictions lowering access to assisted reproductive technology, which could have led to smaller numbers of births among females aged over 35 (berrington et al. 2022; gromski et al. 2021). however, so far, there is little evidence one way or the other concerning biological effects of covid-19 on fertility, although the existence of such effects is plausible (li et al. 2021; madjunkov et al. 2020). li et al. (2021) have outlined a research protocol to explore these issues. as noted in the previous paragraph, the pandemic might have also affected fertility through behavioral mechanisms. the fear of the virus and its effects on the child or a general increase in subjective future insecurity might have given rise to smaller fertility rates (guetto et al. 2022). furthermore, younger couples not living together, and in some cases, being forced to move back to their parents could have meant less privacy and restricted opportunities to engage in sexual activity, leading to fewer unplanned children (berrington et al. 2022). carballo and corina (2020) suggested that the most important effect of covid-19 on fertility would be behavioral changes caused by uncertainty about the future. a study of google searches during the pandemic (wilde et al. 2020) suggested that people might have changed their fertility-related behavior as a response to the pandemic. the authors predicted large declines in fertility in the us, with the greatest declines among racially and economically marginalized women. in a study of fi ve countries (italy, germany, france, spain, uk), luppi et al. (2020) showed that effects of covid-19 on fertility plans varied by country. aassve et al. (2020), carballo and corina (2020), and ullah et al. (2020) posited that consequences might differ for low-income countries vs. highand middle-income countries. on the other hand, measures aimed at contact reductions could have led to intensifi ed contacts between couples living together and, therefore, increased sexual and reproductive activity. this was the subject of much speculation in the • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier24 popular press (see, e.g., puffett/hall 2021; deutsche welle 2021). also, reduced access to contraceptives or abortion clinics as a consequence of increased social distancing measures and other precautions could have led to increases in unplanned births (berrington et al. 2022). in addition to effects on the quantum of fertility, the pandemic situation might have had consequences for the tempo of births (see bongaarts/feeney 1998), as couples might have either decided to postpone intended births because of the reasons mentioned above or to have births earlier than previously planned in response to better opportunities to work from home and greater labor fl exibility (berrington et al. 2022). there is already some evidence suggesting that fertility rates were declining in high-income countries (kearney/levine 2021; sobotka et al. 2021). a few scholars have made projections about the impact of the pandemic on fertility but have used different approaches as opposed to ours. based on his earlier studies on historical effects of crises on fertility, lee (2021) advised demographers to ignore the covid-19 crisis when formulating longer-run fertility projections. carballo and corina (2020) took the great recession as the basis of a historical simulation model for their projections and predicted an acceleration of downward fertility trends in some high and middle-income countries but less of an effect in low-income countries. sobotka et al. (2021) compared fertility in 2021 with that of the previous year. they found substantial declines in fertility in many countries and do not expect a return to prepandemic levels in the near future. however, in an international study, sobotka et al. (2022), found evidence that the pandemic appeared to have affected the volatility of fertility, rather than the mean. thus, their results suggested that the tempo rather than the quantum of fertility had been affected. bujard and andersson (2022) supported this conclusion for the cases of germany and sweden, mentioning that females of reproductive age, who did not belong to the groups that were prioritized in the enrollment of vaccinations, might have delayed their wishes to reproduce to a point in time after which broad and secure vaccinations for pregnant women would be available. this would support an effect of the pandemic on the tempo rather than the quantum of fertility. goldstein (2020), adapting lee’s (1979) moving target theory, identifi ed four major scenarios for the future course of fertility after the end of the pandemic: the boom, bounce, whimper, and thud scenarios. • the boom scenario assumes a signifi cant and abrupt increase in fertility immediately post-pandemic, after which the level of fertility will slowly converge to the pre-pandemic level. • the bounce scenario assumes an immediate re-installment of the prepandemic fertility level. • the whimper scenario assumes a slower convergence of the fertility level to a target level below the pre-pandemic level. • the thud scenario assumes a further decrease post-pandemic, after which it slowly converges to a level below the pre-pandemic level. fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 25 the boom scenario corresponds to what some in the popular press have predicted based on the fact that couples may be spending more time together than before the pandemic due to working at home and the closure of many social activities. the bounce scenario describes a quick re-installment of the pre-crisis fertility level. the whimper and thud scenarios are what one might expect in situations of chronic uncertainty. the thud scenario assumes that fertility trends initiated during the crisis would continue afterward, while the whimper scenario assumes that extremely low rates of fertility were unsustainable in the long term. goldstein’s approach provided good qualitative descriptions of possible post-pandemic trends in fertility, but it did not make any specifi c predictions. guetto et al. (2022) conducted surveys on fertility intentions among italians during the fi rst covid-19 wave based on vignoli et al.’s (2020) earlier mentioned narrative framework. controlling for socio-economic characteristics and personal preferences for children, the authors showed in a regression analysis that a worse personal perception of the political and economic situation and high exposure to daily news had a negative effect on the intentions to procreate after the pandemic. moreover, the study participants were randomly exposed to pseudo-press releases on the length of the pandemic expected by a panel of italian experts. the authors showed that personal expectations about the duration of the pandemic signifi cantly affected participants’ intentions in regard to having another child after the pandemic. those with more pessimistic expectations about the duration of the pandemic had – ceteris paribus – decreased intentions to procreate. we will check the results from our forecast approach against the theoretical considerations by goldstein (2020) and draw conclusions about necessary adjustments to fertility forecasting during and after the pandemic based on the connection of both. the fi ndings from the two studies presented suggest that, at least for economically weakened countries such as italy, a boom is unlikely and that the two realistic extreme scenarios are the bounce or the thud scenario, i.e., a quick re-installment of the pre-pandemic fertility trend against a long-lasting decreased fertility in comparison to what could have been expected in the counterfactual scenario of no pandemic. the literature review suggests that the effects of the pandemic on fertility are expected to be heterogeneous internationally, depending on cultural and economic background, among other factors. the pandemic could, based on these early empirical studies and theoretical considerations, cause fertility declines, increases, or no effects. however, the most probable outcomes appear to be that fertility declines rather than increases. our review shows that studies on the projection of post-pandemic fertility have primarily been based on theoretical considerations that were not connected to empirical evidence and described future scenarios qualitatively, which gives an idea of future paths but cannot be directly translated into concrete fertility projections. even the quantitative approaches are somewhat restrictive, as they deterministically suggest a limited number of future scenarios. the latter, however, fail to quantify the probabilities of certain scenarios to occur (lee 1998) and always have an individual probability close to zero. moreover, such deterministic approaches cannot cover future risk and uncertainty suffi ciently, as the quantifi ed scenarios only represent • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier26 a small subset of all realistically possible developments (vanella et al. 2020). this appears especially problematic in situations such as the pandemic, which is an event not witnessed before and therefore, not represented in past data. given that historical data is at best only partially representative of the future, uncertainty about the future development of fertility is naturally higher. this points to the importance of a stochastic approach for the current case study. 2.3 approaches to demographic forecasting a variety of approaches to fertility forecasting can be found in the literature. whereas statistical offi ces tend to rely on deterministic scenario approaches that state assumptions for the future course of age-specifi c fertility rates (asfrs) (see, e.g., eurostat 2020), the scientifi c literature suggests a variety of forecast approaches based on time series analysis. among those are approaches that predict births by birth order (de beer 1985), autoregressive integrated moving average (arima) models based on principal component analysis (pca) (bozik/bell 1987) – well-known as lee-carter models (lee 1998), or age-period-cohort models (de beer 1989). there is also a variety of extensions for the lee-carter model. for instance, vanella and deschermeier (2019) suggest including family and social policy variables as predictors for low-fertility countries. a limitation of time series approaches is that they are purely quantitative and rely only on available data. therefore, they only include observed trends in forecasts of future developments. thus, yet-unobserved developments, such as the pandemic, are not considered in the forecasts. alternative approaches to the frequentist models mentioned above include qualitative expert opinions in the simulations. for instance, lutz and colleagues suggested simulating the tfr based on sampling out of a range of judgments of an expert panel, who were asked to give their prediction with lower and upper bounds of realistic scenarios for the tfr (lutz et al. 1998; lutz 1995). those approaches have been extended and refi ned, applying more sophisticated mathematical models in the tfr projections for the united nations (alkema et al. 2011). alternatively, schmertmann et al. (2014) suggested bayesian forecasting of the cohort fertility rate instead of the tfr. bayesian approaches are, in principle, capable of integrating qualitative information, such as subjective assessments and guesses, into forecasts. they are, however, sensitive to biases by subjective misjudgments and personal opinions and should, therefore, be applied with caution (lee 1998; vanella et al. 2020). keeping that in mind, it is important to include a reasonable number of realistic future scenarios in bayesian projections. bijak (2011) suggested bayesian averaging among a selection of possible models for the case of international migration, assigning likelihood-based probabilities to those models, such that there is a likelihood for each model family so that they can be assigned further probabilities to cover a suffi ciently large number of scenarios and quantify them with likelihoods. that approach, however, requires that representative past data are available which can be used to apply likelihoods via backtesting; these are not available in our case. fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 27 it is not immediately obvious when (and if) fertility forecasts (or demographic forecasts in general) should be adjusted in response to a changing environment. for instance, destatis (2017) presented a new projection of international migration to germany as a response to the refugee shock that started in 2014, especially from syria, iraq, and afghanistan, stating that a valid estimation of the long-term effects of the crisis on migration and the structure of the population in germany could not be performed at that time, but that an adjustment of the previous assumptions would be necessary for projections that build on the population projection. this seems conceivable since lee’s (2021) suggestion of ignoring shocks (here: the pandemic) might lead to systematic biases in fertility projections for countries that show signifi cantly altered reproductive behaviors. nevertheless, his assumption is in the realm of realistic scenarios and should therefore be considered a possibility in each projection. even in the event of a signifi cant fertility response to the pandemic in the early stages, it is not straightforward to determine how long the process of recovery to a pre-pandemic level might take. section 2.1 has illustrated that, for past crises, the duration of fertility change, if it has occurred at all, has been very heterogeneous with quick re-installments of fertility to the levels before the crises in some cases and long periods of recovery for others. again, the issues mentioned above call for a stochastic approach that includes the variety of different possible outcomes and the increased uncertainty involved in estimating future fertility. first, we need to assess counterfactual scenarios of fertility to estimate the effect of the pandemic on fertility as observed so far. these ideas derive from estimation rooted in epidemiology on excess mortality due to extraordinary causes. vanella et al. (2021) suggested extending the lee-carter forecast approach to weekly mortality data for several countries to evaluate ageand sex-specifi c excess mortality during the pandemic, taking long-term mortality trends, international correlations caused by the spread of the virus across country borders, interannual seasonality, and stochasticity into account. we adjust their approach to construct counterfactual fertility trends under the assumption of no pandemic and associated npis and quantify distributions of the yet observed pandemic effect on fertility. 3 data and methods: estimating the past effect of the pandemic on fertility our methodology follows a hierarchical approach that consists of several steps. in the fi rst step, we use monthly total fertility rate (mtfr) estimates (see jdanov et al. 2022) for 22 countries,1 as provided by the human fertility database (hfd) in the short-term fertility fluctuations dataset (hfd 2022). the fi rst cases of covid-19 were reported on 31 december 2019 in china (yang et al. 2020). as the median time 1 austria, belgium, czechia, denmark, england &wales, finland, france, germany, hungary, israel, italy, japan, latvia, the netherlands, norway, portugal, scotland, slovenia, south korea, spain, sweden, and the us. • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier28 of human pregnancy is between 38 and 39 weeks (jukić et al. 2013), any behavioral effects of the pandemic situation would not have become apparent before october 2020 – the exception might be abortions caused by the pandemic. therefore, we use the mtfrs for the period january 2008 – september 2020 as a baseline period. we combine our data into a matrix with 153 rows (months) and 22 columns (countryspecifi c mtfrs). our approach is rooted in principles from classical studies on excess mortality during extraordinary periods. checking whether some event has affected some target variable is not straightforward, as this is a question of counterfactuals. for instance, we do not know how exactly mortality would have developed if we had not observed a specifi c event, in our case the covid-19 pandemic. instead, we observed the mortality development under the pandemic situation (vanella et al. 2021), including fatality risk after infection with the virus (vanella et al. 2022) or contemporaneous contact reduction measures (khailaie et al. 2021). therefore, we can only estimate a hypothetical development that we would have expected under normal circumstances. translating the idea to fertility during extraordinary phases, such as the pandemic, we could only observe fertility under those circumstances, not the counterfactual development which would have been observed under normal circumstances. the latter can be predicted based on some forecast approach. for the case of mortality, vanella et al. (2021) suggest a lee-carter-based forecast approach that considers long-term trends, seasonality, and stochasticity to forecast counterfactual distributions of weekly ageand sex-specifi c mortality rates. here, we apply the approach to the mtfr time series. specifi cally, we perform pca to log-mtfrs over the period january 2008 – september 2020 for all study countries to cover crosscorrelations between their fertility trends over the baseline period. pca performs singular value decomposition on the log-mtfr time series, transforming them into new variables that are uncorrelated (so-called principal components or pcs) (vanella 2018). the value of the ith pc for month m is: pi,m ≔ ∑c=1 λi,c ∙ lfc,m, where λi,c is called the loading of the log-mtfr of country c on pc i. the loading can be understood as a “correlation” between the original variable (here: the log-mtfr of some country) and the corresponding pc. in matrix notation, the singular value decomposition can be written as p ≔ f × λ, with f being the 153 × 22 matrix of the log-mtfrs over the baseline period; λ (22 × 22) is called the loadings matrix, and p is the matrix of hypothetical observations for the principal components for the baseline period (153 × 22). each column in λ represents the loadings (coeffi cients) of one pc with respect to all original variables (e.g., the element in the fi rst row and third column of λ is the coeffi cient of the third pc with the log-mtfr of the fi rst country, in this case: austria) and is computed (1) (2) 22 fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 29 such that the fi rst pc explains a maximum of the variance in f. then, the second column of λ is computed such that the second pc explains as much of the variance in f as possible, given the fi rst column of λ. this process continues until all 22 pcs have been identifi ed. the advantage of pca is that a high number of correlated variables can be analyzed quite effi ciently with a reduced number of variables while also taking the correlations between the variables into account (vanella 2018). since we take an internationally comparative perspective that analyzes contemporaneous fertility trends, pca offers an effi cient way to both reduce the high complexity of our research question as well as take common international trends into consideration. in a special case like a pandemic, we can expect fertility trends in, e.g., germany, to be affected by outbreaks in france. therefore, correlations between countries should be considered as well. figure 1 shows pc 1’s course for the baseline period (dots). figure 1 reveals both a negative long-term trend and distinct seasonality. pc 1 represents the pattern of fertility for all study countries since the onset of the great recession. the blue line is a trend function fi t to the time series that is a combination of a long-term trend function and a seasonality function. the long-term trend is estimated by an inverse logistic trend function, as suggested by vanella 0.80 1.05 1.30 1.55 1.80 2.05 12 /2 00 7 12 /2 00 8 12 /2 00 9 12 /2 01 0 12 /2 01 1 12 /2 01 2 12 /2 01 3 12 /2 01 4 12 /2 01 5 12 /2 01 6 12 /2 01 7 12 /2 01 8 12 /2 01 9 month observation model fit principal component 1 fig. 1: time series of principal component 1 for baseline period with model fi t source: authors' computation and illustration • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier30 and deschermeier (2019) for the case of the german quantum of fertility that has an infl ection point in the autumn of 2017. previous studies do not suffi ciently take long-term fertility trends into consideration but rather compare fertility during the pandemic to means of short time periods before the pandemic (e.g., sobotka et al. 2022). figure 1, however, suggests a clear trend in fertility since the great recession. not accounting for this trend in studies on differential fertility can lead to systematic biases in the formulation of counterfactual scenarios (vanella et al. 2021). to avoid this bias, our model fi ts the long-term trend to the data. fertility exhibits strong annual seasonalities such as those observed in figure 1. these should be considered in counterfactual scenarios (see, e.g., sobotka et al. 2022). we include those seasonalities by a combination of a cosine function and monthly dummies. while a cosine function covers interannual seasonality relatively well, it tends to signifi cantly underestimate the peaks and troughs. therefore, vanella et al. (2021) suggest adding seasonal dummies to attain a better fi t of the trend function to the local extremes. the deterministic model illustrated by the blue line in figure 1 as derived by ordinary least squares (ols) for pc 1 is:2 with m being a month parameter that is 0 for january 2008.3 the combination of monthly dummies and a cosine function gives the best model fi t based on both akaike’s (aic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic). the counterfactual trend is associated with an amount of stochasticity. equation (3) provides our expectation for the trend. however, a realistic account of a causal connection between the pandemic and fertility developments must factor in random fl uctuations as well (sobotka et al. 2022): otherwise, the fertility developments might in many instances be misinterpreted as caused by the pandemic, although they may not be connected to it (vanella et al. 2021). to account for stochasticity and autocorrelations in pc 1, we derive the residuals from (3), i.e., the differences between the observations (black dots) and the blue trend function specifi ed by our model: u1(m) ≔ p1(m) − t1(m). considering the time series of u1, its autocorrelation function (acf), and its partial autocorrelation function (pacf),4 we concluded that the residuals follow an 2 we tested seasonal dummies as in vanella et al. (2021) as well but found monthly dummies to perform better according to the aic and the bic. 3 derived such that the model’s r² is maximized. 4 see, for instance, shumway/stoffer (2016), for more details on the acf and the pacf. 1.83 1.1 exp 11730.561 exp 11730.56 0.15cos 6 0.15 0.12 0.05 0.08 0.09 0.06 0.04 0.03 (3) (4) fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 31 autoregressive moving average process of orders one and one (arma(1,1)). in lag notation, this can be written in our case as: (1 − 0.81l)u1(m) = (1 − 0.48l)ε1(m), ε1(m)~nid(0, 0.042), that is equivalent to u1(m) = 0.81u1 (m − 1) + ε1(m) − 0.48ε1 (m − 1), ε1(m)~nid(0, 0.042). figure 2 illustrates the loadings of pc 1, which present the coeffi cient for each country-specifi c log-mtfr. countries below the horizontal line have a generally positive tendency from the perspective of the mtfr since the onset of the fi nancial crisis and vice versa. for the case of germany, vanella and deschermeier (2019) have shown that a combination of demography-related social policy measures introduced since the late 1970s have had positive effects on the quantum of fertility and that the tempo of fertility has stabilized such that delays in births, although still present, have decelerated. this trend appeared to be unaffected by the great recession, as germany’s economy coped quite well with the crisis. portugal, latvia, czechia, and (5) (6) fig. 2: loadings of principal component 1 by country (alpha-3 code) -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 h u n c z e lv a d e u p r t a u t is r jp n s v n d n k e s p fr a it a n ld s w e u s a e n w b e l s c o k o r n o r fi ncountry loading hun cze lva deu prt aut isr jpn svn dnk esp fra ita nld swe usa enw bel sco kor nor fin source: authors' computation and illustration • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier32 hungary, after an initial fertility shock, have been showing positive fertility trends in recent years that, for these countries, appear to provide evidence for a baby boom after the fi nancial crisis. the reproductive behavior in the majority of countries, however, appears to be negatively affected by the great recession, as the literature overview in section 2.1 suggests. the remaining 21 pcs exhibit no long-term trend, but they do show strong seasonalities. to get a good trade-off between accuracy and model complexity, we model several pcs by fi tting seasonal autoregressive moving average (sarima) models and the remaining pcs as simple random walks (i.e., in expectation held constant at their last observed levels). to decide on the number of pcs to model explicitly, we consider the screeplot that illustrates the variance explained by each pc in descending order (fig. 3): the graphical criterion for the number of pcs in the analysis is to include all pcs before the “elbow” (vanella 2018). here, we have an elbow at pc 3 and another one at pc 5. therefore, we also consider the cumulative shares of explained variance. the fi rst two pcs explain 77.8 percent (48.9 and 28.8 percent, respectively) of the overall variance in the 22 mtfr time series over the baseline period. after adding pc 3 (8 percent) and pc 4 (6.3 percent), the fi rst four pcs explain 92 percent of the variance. therefore, we model the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pcs explicitly as sarima models. fig. 3: variance explained by each principal component 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 5 10 15 20 principal component variance source: authors' computation and illustration fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 33 the remaining 18 pcs are assumed to be random walks, which makes them easy to simulate. as they only explain 8 percent of the variance in the log-mtfrs, the error arising from this simplifi cation is negligible. the acfs and pacfs of pcs 2-4 suggest a good fi t using the following processes: (1 − l)(1 − l12)pi(m) = εi(m), εi(m)~nid(0, σ2), i = 2,3,4. the remaining 18 pcs are modeled by pi(m) = pi(m − 1) + εi(m), εi(m)~nid(0, σ2), i = 5, …,22. the counterfactual development of the pcs and, therefore, the development of the mtfrs is obviously connected with a lot of risk. to avoid misinterpretation of random deviations of fertility from the predicted course as pandemic-induced differential fertility, we need to forecast counterfactual distributions instead of expectations. we accomplish this by monte carlo simulation, following vanella et al. (2021). we simulate the stochastic parameters (the εi(m)) as in (5)-(8) for all pcs 10,000 times for each forecast month (october 2020 – september 2021). this results in 10,000 trajectories for each of the 22 pcs. let pm be the 10,000 × 22 matrix of simulations of all pcs for month m. then, the corresponding simulation matrix of all log-mtfrs for month m (fm ) is computed by fm = pm × λ−1, with λ−1 being the inverse of the loadings matrix derived earlier by singular value decomposition. here, each column of fm corresponds to 10,000 simulations of the log-mtfr for month m. exponentiation of fm then leads to simulations of the mtfrs. in the next step, we compare the observed mtfrs against prediction intervals (pis) derived as empirical quantiles from our forecast model for each month of the forecast horizon and each country. following the principal of classical hypothesis testing, we could, based on a chosen signifi cance level, check how many of the observations exceed the limits of the confi dence intervals, which are in our case the monthly pis derived from the simulations. for instance, under a null hypothesis stating that there has not been an effect of the pandemic on fertility over the period october 2020 – september 2021 using a 5 percent signifi cance level, we would expect not more than 5 percent of the observations over that period to exceed the limits of the pis. we will illustrate this in the next section, employing the data presented earlier. 4 results concerning the effects of the pandemic on fertility the analysis is carried out based on the null hypothesis stated in section 3. if our null is correct, we would, e.g., at a 10 percent signifi cance level expect no more than 10 percent of our observations to lie beyond the bounds of the pis. in our case, i (7) i (8) ~ (9) ~ ~~ ~ ~ • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier34 the latter depend on the country and the month and are derived from the mtfr distributions forecast using our model described in the previous section. the limits of the pis are derived by monte carlo simulations as the 5th and 95th percentiles of the trajectories for each country and month, which are illustrated with red lines in figures 4-7 for the months of october 2020 – september 2021. the gray areas show the rejection areas of the stated hypothesis test against the observed mtfrs as black dots. figures 4 and 5 give the pis derived from our model with the observed mtfrs for the study countries without statistically signifi cant differential fertility since october 2020. fig. 4: mtfrs (dots) against rejection area of two-sided null hypothesis with α = 0.1 of no differential fertility (gray area) – countries in northern and central europe with no signifi cant fertility response monthly total fertility rate latvia monthly total fertility rate norway monthly total fertility rate sweden monthly total fertility ratemonthly total fertility rate monthly total fertility rate netherlandsdenmark germany austriabelgium czechia 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month monthly total fertility ratemonthly total fertility rate monthly total fertility rate 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month source: hfd 2022; authors’ computation and illustration fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 35 we have to take into account that only the observations available at the date of data extraction (04 october 2022) could be considered. however, updating the analysis when additional data are available is relatively simple. our results for countries with very limited time series data available for the pandemic period are to be considered with caution; this is particularly the case for norway (fig. 4), england & wales (fig. 6) and south korea (fig. 7). keeping all this in mind, the fi gures can be understood as follows: the black dots show the observed mtfrs since october 2020, whereas the grey areas are the rejection areas (α = 0.1) for the hypothesis test with ho “there is no fertility differential caused by the pandemic circumstances.” this corresponds with simultaneous testing for both increased and decreased fertility at the 5 percent signifi cance level each. the rejection areas are derived from empirical quantiles generated by our monte carlo simulation, as described in section 3. here, again, we would expect around 90 percent of the observations to lie in the 90 percent pis (i.e., the white areas), even if we had not witnessed a pandemic and the associated restrictions in freedom. in figures 4 and 5, we see that the majority of countries (14 out of 22) show no statistically signifi cant fertility differential during the pandemic. we understand this to mean that either all observations are within the limits of the 90 percent pis or, as in the case of portugal, one out of 11 (9.1 percent) observations exceeds the fig. 5: observed mtfrs (dots) against rejection area of two-sided null hypothesis with α = 0.1 of no differential fertility (gray area) – other countries with no signifi cant fertility response monthly total fertility rate portugal monthly total fertility rate hungary monthly total fertility rate slovenia monthly total fertility rate monthly total fertility rate israel usa 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month source: hfd 2022; authors’ computation and illustration • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier36 pis, which could be expected even under non-pandemic circumstances given the chosen signifi cance level. figure 6 shows the six countries for which we identify statistically signifi cant decreases in fertility since the onset of the pandemic. those include japan, the mediterranean countries, which are economically weakened and were low-fertility countries even before the pandemic (vignoli et al. 2020), and great britain. the latter, however, must be interpreted cautiously, since the number of observations is very limited thus far. the countries in figure 6 share a similar pattern, as their fertility appears to be affected only in the early phase of the pandemic and returned quickly afterward to an expected level. we will discuss this further in the next section. figure 7 presents data for the two countries with increased fertility during the pandemic, namely, finland and south korea. the latter, again, should be interpreted with caution, as the available data thus far spans only the period until june 2021 and only one observation exceeds the upper limit of the pi. similar to the countries with decreased fertility, finland and south korea appear to re-establish in the expected fertility range very quickly. we will also discuss these results further in section 5. fig. 6: observed mtfrs (dots) against rejection area of two-sided null hypothesis with α = 0.1 of no differential fertility (gray area) – countries with signifi cantly lowered fertility monthly total fertility rate france monthly total fertility rate scotland monthly total fertility rate england and wales monthly total fertility ratemonthly total fertility rate monthly total fertility rate japanitaly spain 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month source: hfd 2022; authors’ computation and illustration fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 37 5 conclusion: fertility response to the pandemic and consequences for forecasting our analysis reveals very heterogeneous fertility responses to the pandemic among the study countries. the majority (14) of the 22 study countries showed no statistically signifi cant change in reproductive behavior, as measured via the mtfrs. six countries showed statistically signifi cant decreases in fertility; however, these decreases have been limited to the early phase of the pandemic from november 2020 to february 2021, i.e., the period of conception from february to may 2020. during this phase, excess mortality due to covid-19 was observable (vanella et al. 2021), especially in some of the six countries with decreased fertility, such as scotland, france, spain (vanella et al. 2021), italy (michelozzi et al. 2020), and england & wales (basellini et al. 2021). this indicates more passive reproductive behavior during the highly uncertain early period of the pandemic in these countries, as suggested by guetto et al. (2022). only two countries show evidence for increased fertility during that period. the latter results, however, must be interpreted with caution, as the increases in finland could also be associated with bounce-back effects after a period of lowered fertility (yle 2022), while the increase in south korea is inconclusive, since there is only one observation above the upper critical value of the pi. in any case, after an initial shock, fertility quickly reached the previously expected ranges, as indicated by the fact that the observations quickly jumped back within the pis for all countries that showed a statistically signifi cant fertility response to the pandemic. therefore, our study provides evidence for the bounce scenario formulated by goldstein (2020). based on the recent evidence, we conclude that fertility forecasts conducted before the pandemic do not need adjustments, as predicted by lee (2021). fig. 7: observed monthly births (dots) against rejection area of two-sided null hypothesis with α = 0.1 of no differential fertility (gray area) – countries with signifi cantly increased fertility monthly total fertility rate finland monthly total fertility rate south korea 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 10/20 01/21 04/21 07/21 month source: hfd 2022; authors’ computation and illustration • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier38 6 discussion in this contribution, we have discussed theoretical fertility outcomes arising from the covid-19 pandemic and the associated contact reduction measures as found in academic discourse. using monthly fertility data since january 2008 provided in the human fertility database, we investigated effects of the pandemic on fertility, adapting a stochastic approach for assessing cross-country excess mortality suggested by vanella et al. (2021). the model draws on a combination of principal component analysis, seasonal time series models, and monte carlo simulation. we simulated the fi rst of the 22 principal components with a detailed time series model, thereby including the major long-term trends and seasonality in international fertility. the next three pcs were approximated using seasonal arima models. the remaining pcs varied based on the assumption of random walk processes, which offers a relatively simple model that still takes the stochasticity of all other pcs into account. failure to take stochasticity into account is a common limitation of most pc-based fertility models, as they only model a small number of pcs and ignore the others, leading to systematic underestimation of future risk (vanella/ deschermeier 2019) because this implicitly assumes zero variance in the omitted pcs, which is not the case. using this approach, we compared the observed mtfrs to distributions of counterfactual scenarios, taking, not only stochasticity, but also correlations between fertility trends among different countries into account. in this way, changing fertility due to developments in other countries – which is probable in a highly connected and digital world – are taken into account. our model includes long-term trends in fertility and seasonality of births, both of which are observable, as we have seen. in this way, we adjust for potential biases in the estimation of differential fertility during the pandemic crisis. among the study countries, a potential “positive” side effect on fertility of contact reductions and associated lowered mobility, as suggested by the popular press, does not come to fruition on a large scale. the fertility response to the pandemic situation, however, varies very much between the countries. among the 22 study countries, 14 do not show signifi cant changes in fertility during the pandemic, and six witness signifi cantly decreased fertility. among those, there is an apparent focus on low-fertility regions of the mediterranean and east asia. this holds even after controlling for fertility trends, irrespective of the changed conditions during the pandemic. for the mediterranean, previous studies have shown the connection between economic downturn and fertility decreases, which could explain our observation as well. moreover, the mediterranean, especially italy, was the european region fi rst affected by the virus, resulting in a severe health crisis with signifi cant excess mortality (ghislandi et al. 2022; egidi/manfredi 2021; vanella et al. 2021; vanella et al. 2022), which may have led to a more negative subjective outlook on the future, and associated with that, decreased fertility intentions, as contemporary research suggests (guetto et al. 2022). the same could hold true for the other low-fertility region in east asia, as the virus started in china at the end of 2019 (egidi/manfredi 2021) and quickly reached neighboring countries (johns hopkins university 2022). fertility response to the covid-19 pandemic in developed countries • 39 our results have strong implications for forecasting. fertility forecasts are of high importance for population forecasts and further infrastructure and economic planning that relies on future population development. however, these were conducted before the pandemic or cannot include effects of the pandemic on fertility, as historical data does not yet include the effects of the pandemic. we see that for a large number of countries – among those germany and other central european countries – fertility does not show high sensitivity to the pandemic. for the eight countries that exhibited changing fertility patterns during the pandemic, we have seen that the effect was short-lived. fertility signifi cantly decreased in the early stages of the pandemic, i.e., in the contraceptive period of february – may 2020. this corresponds to the fi rst “wave” in most countries that was associated with a shock situation and a maximum of future uncertainty. afterwards, fertility has returned to within the range expected before the pandemic, as identifi ed by our forecast of counterfactual developments. this implies the scenario labeled by goldstein (2020) as a “bounce”, i.e., a quick re-installment to previous fertility levels, is the one holding for the case of covid-19. therefore, our results imply that prepandemic fertility forecasts still hold and do not need specifi c adjustment to the pandemic. obviously, our model has several limitations. it is limited to the available data, which is restricted to overall monthly tfr estimates. therefore, age-specifi c effects, such as a change in the tempo of fertility, which we discussed earlier, cannot be identifi ed with the available data, and we can only give a rough estimate of the effect on the quantum. more detailed data (i.e., monthly age-specifi c fertility rates) could shed even more light on the fertility response to crises, such as the covid-19 pandemic. vanella and deschermeier (2019) have shown that a principal component approach such as ours can identify trends in the quantum and tempo of fertility quite well and effi ciently. moreover, forecasters need to keep in mind that longterm forecasts need to also account for echo effects, which we have ignored here. typical fertility and population forecasts, which cover ranges of 30-50 years, need to account for the fact that lower births now will result in lower births in about 30 years as well, since the cohort bearing children then will be today’s smaller birth cohort (vanella/deschermeier 2020). overall, our data cover only the fi rst year of the pandemic (from the perspective of fertility). not all the study countries provide data for one full year. therefore, our concrete results cannot reliably predict longterm effects yet. however, the methodological approach could be easily updated as soon as more data become available. we presented an international study here. this provides some advantages, as we not only cover international correlations in fertility trends (which are often observable and, as explained earlier, might infl uence one another), but also provide a relatively effi cient, comparative perspective for monitoring contemporaneous fertility trends. instead, one could think of applying national studies that could lead to more accurate estimates for the individual country. • patrizio vanella, arthur l. greil, philipp deschermeier40 list of abbreviations aic akaike’s information criterion asfr age-specifi c fertility rate bic bayesian information criterion hfd human fertility database i.e. id est (m)tfr (monthly) total fertility rate npi nonpharmaceutical intervention ols ordinary least squares (p)acf (partial) autocorrelation function pc(a) principal component (analysis) (s)arima (seasonal) autoregressive integrated moving average author's contributions alg: investigation, original draft; 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mencarini, letizia; alderotti, giammarco 2020: is the effect of job uncertainty on fertility intentions channeled by subjective well-being? in: advances in life course research 46,100343 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2020.100343 wilde, joshua; chen, wei; lohmann, sophie 2020: covid-19 and the future of us fertility: what can we learn from google? in: iza discussion paper series 2020: 13776 [https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13776/covid-19-and-the-future-of-usfertility-what-can-we-learn-from-google, 23.06.2022]. yang, jing et al. 2020: prevalence of comorbidities and its effects in patients infected with sars-cov-2: a systematic review and meta-analysis. in: international journal of infectious diseases 94: 91-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.03.017 yle 2022: rise in finland's birth rate not just due to covid [https://yle.fi /news/3-12311529, 10.02.2022]. date of submission: 23.06.2022 date of acceptance: 23.11.2022 dr. patrizio vanella (). aqua institute, health reporting & biometrics department. göttingen, germany. university of rostock, chair of empirical methods in social science and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: patrizio.vanella@aqua-institut.de url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/patrizio-vanella prof. dr. arthur l. greil. alfred university, division of social sciences. alfred, new york, usa. e-mail: fgreil@alfred.edu dr. philipp deschermeier. german economic institute (iw), global and regional markets unit. köln, germany. e-mail: deschermeier@iwkoeln.de url: https://www.iwkoeln.de/en/institute/who-we-are/philipp-deschermeier.html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? influences of fertility orientations on partnership transitions is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? infl uences of fertility orientations on partnership transitions okka zimmermann abstract: using panel data from childless respondents of the german family panel (pairfam, n=3,802 respondents), this paper investigates whether fertility orientations (biographical orientations with respect to fertility) infl uence the risk of different partnership transitions among german men and women over the age of 18 (for n=14,572 observation periods between two panel waves). signifi cant infl uences are found for both gender and partnership transition types, and are generally stronger among men than women and for the transition to a coresidential as opposed to a romantic partnership. uncertainty about anticipated fertility has a stronger negative impact on transition risks among men than among women. results strongly suggest that the early stages of the partnership formation process are instrumental in terms of future fertility in germany, at least to some degree. this indicates that a more comprehensive conceptualisation and analysis of fertility within the life course paradigm (as suggested by huinink/kohli 2014) should consider the impacts of fertility orientations on life course events in other dimensions, especially among men. viewed more broadly, the results also underline two factors: the role of agency in coordinating life course dimensions in time and space in order to maximise individual welfare; and the importance of considering the impacts that anticipation of future life course events will have, as suggested by different theoretical approaches. keywords: fertility · partnership · coresidential partnership · life course · biographical orientations comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 3-34 (date of release: 01.03.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-01 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-01en7 • okka zimmermann4 1 introduction the link between partnership formation and childbearing within individual lives is to some extent unclear. one assumption of life course theory (e.g. bernardi et al. 2019; huinink/feldhaus 2009; mayer 2019), but also of theories on individualisation (e.g. beck 1992) as well as differentiation of private life (e.g. meyer 1992, 2014), is that individuals increasingly have to coordinate requirements and goals across life course domains which have become more independent of one other. empirical research is therefore required to establish just how strong the link between two different life course dimensions (e.g. partnership and childbearing) is within a specifi c context or group. as far as germany in particular is concerned, a comparatively strong link exists between marriage and childbearing, with childbirth outside marriage having recently risen to about a third in 2019 (statista 2020). in comparison with other countries, this fi gure is still low (eurostat 2018). furthermore, there is a strong norm prevalent in germany of two children being the ideal family size (ruckdeschel et al. 2018; schröder et al. 2016). the german context is thus specifi c insofar as the meaning of childbearing is concerned, because this act is tied more strongly to marriage (and thus to the strong institutionalisation of a partnership) than in many other european countries (nave-herz 2015; konietzka/kreyenfeld 2017; lappegård et al. 2017). all three of the latter studies also emphasise that marriage is still considered to be the most preferable setting for childbearing in germany, and that it is indeed often the intention of having children which leads to the intention to marry. however, the strong link between childbearing and marriage in germany indicates that the link between childbearing and other forms of partnership is less robust. today, a romantic non-coresidential partnership in germany is typically followed fi rst by a coresidential partnership, then by marriage, and fi nally by childbearing (konietzka/zimmermann 2020; kopp et al. 2010). these forms of partnership therefore often constitute stages within a differentiated process of partnership and family formation. however, given the existence of other forms of non-coresidential and coresidential partnership (e.g. lois 2012; hiekel et al. 2014, 2015; ostner 2001; cherlin 2004), the link between coresidential and non-coresidential partnerships on the one hand and childbearing on the other hand is not completely clear. furthermore, a high proportion of men and women remain childless in germany (around 20 percent, kreyenfeld/konietzka 2017, leading, among other things, to low total fertility rates). this suggests that family formation has become just one of the options available for people’s individual life courses. accordingly, meyer (1992, 2014) hypothesises that individuals increasingly choose between different principles in the way they organise their private life (child-centred, partnershipcentred or individualistic). similarly, aries (1980) argues that, since the 1960s, raising children is no longer the core aim of couples but is instead merely one method of potential self-realisation and self-fulfi lment within couple relationships (see also zaidi/morgan 2017). keddi (2006, 2010) emphasises that this is particularly the case among young women, for whom a variety of different role models exist, ranging from the traditional homemaker to a focus on a professional career. taken is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 5 together, it remains unclear how close the link between early partnership formation and childbearing actually is. as far as germany in particular is concerned, both choices could be largely independent of each other. to my knowledge, there is no empirical research to date investigating how anticipations regarding future fertility infl uence the partnership formation processes. to fi ll this research gap, this study uses prospective data from n=3,802 childless respondents (n=14,572 observation periods between waves) of the german family panel (pairfam). it analyses how anticipations of future fertility collected in one wave of the panel infl uence the risk of transitioning to a romantic or coresidential partnership by the next wave of the panel, using cox regression models. it is assumed that the anticipation of fertility in general, as well as the anticipated timing of fertility, increase transition risks. 2 background and hypotheses 2.1 theoretical background recent theoretical approaches within life course research place more emphasis on agency, conceptualizing actors as actively trying to maximise their individual welfare/well-being through coordinated action across various life course domains and time (e.g. bernardi et al. 2019; buhr/huinink 2014; huinink/feldhaus 2009; mayer 2019). these concepts resonate with theories on individualisation (e.g. beck 1992; ehrhardt/kohli 2011) and institutionalisation of the life course (e.g. kohli 1986, 2007), which assume an increasing need for refl exive planning within individual life courses (biographisation). similarly, the increasing importance of post-materialistic goals, such as self-realisation, that are assumed in different theoretical approaches (e.g. van de kaa 2001; lesthaeghe 2010, 2011; inglehart/welzel 2005) suggests that the role of actors (i.e. the "selves") needs to be taken into account more seriously. concepts of the growing differentiation of private lives (meyer 1992, 2014) also highlight the fact that individuals are likely to pursue different goals within their private lives and thus need to actively decide which goals to pursue and how. finally, becker’s (1981) seminal work stresses the importance of considering economic constraints within households and families. here, families and individuals, among other parties, are forced to weigh up different (life course) goals and to consider the consequences that pursuing goals in one life course domain (e.g. childbearing) will have on other life course domains (e.g. working life, such as in terms of opportunity costs). in this context, huinink and kohli (2014) highlighted the need to conceptualise and analyse fertility within the life course paradigm in a more comprehensive manner. in their eyes, this could help to improve understanding of how fertility relates to developments in other life course domains, for example partnership and working life. huinink and feldhaus (2009: 317-318) furthermore assume that the "shadow of the future" – in the form of expectations, intentions or desires for core family-related events like childbirths – is likely to have a signifi cant infl uence on • okka zimmermann6 decision-making in the near future. they argue that individuals try to take actions which lead to life course situations that are compatible with longer-term or general life course goals. events in one life course dimension can thus be instrumental for reaching goals in other life course dimensions (huinink/feldhaus 2009: 309). in the case of fertility, individuals often assume a stable partnership (ideally in a shared apartment, i.e. coresidential) to be a prerequisite for childbearing (e.g. berrington 2001, 2004; rijken/thomson 2011; spéder/kapitány 2009). empirical results on this question could also help to enhance our understanding of life course dynamics in general, and in particular interdependencies between life course dimensions, as suggested in established works by elder (1985) and levy (1977) for example. they could also help to improve understanding of the role played by individual strategies in maximizing well-being within life courses and thus contribute to the more general discussion about the role of agency and structure with respect to life course outcomes (settersten/gannon 2005; huinink/feldhaus 2009; mayer 2019). 2.2 fertility orientations some strands of theory (e.g. heckhausen/heckhausen 2010, 2018; ajzen 1991; miller 1994; beckmann/heckhausen 2018) suggest that a distinction should be drawn between expectations (subjective assessment of life course situations), intentions (goals or plans) and desires (internal individual preferences). there is, however, evidence that individuals do not clearly differentiate between these concepts (wilson/oeppen 2003; davis/warshaw 1992; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2019). instead, they are seemingly intertwined and are likely to be represented in an individual’s mind as more diffuse biographical orientations (huinink/kohli 2014; van de kaa 2001). i will term these fertility orientations when they refer to anticipated future fertility. prior research on different topics, for example by willoughby (2014), carroll et al. (2007), born (2001), krüger (2014) and wagner et al. (2019a), showed that biographical orientations for the longer-term infl uence the present and the shorter-term in many different dimensions of the life course. i conceptualise fertility orientations to be part of biographical orientations. as suggested by huinink and kohli (2014: 1302-1303) these are established individually, based on beliefs, experiences and preferences, and infl uence further life course events. in accordance with the concepts established by van de kaa (2001), i also assume that individual orientations specifi cally with respect to fertility (but potentially also to other aspects) guide individuals in their decision-making across the life course, thus helping to form an individual lifestyle and an individual identity. the concept of biographical orientations is somewhat different to the concepts of schemas and life course scripts (johnson-hanks et al. 2011; huinink/kohli 2014; macmillan/copher 2005) because it refl ects individual desires and intentions and is hence generated within individual minds. in contrast, schemas and scripts are defi ned as generally accepted ways of thinking and acting, generated and reproduced by reiterations of behaviour. they exist independently of individuals and are therefore part of the social structure. biographical orientations may help is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 7 individuals to coordinate actions within multiple time dimensions and periods within the life course, so that decisions in the present or in one life course dimension do not hinder goal attainment in the future or in other life course dimensions (huinink/ kohli 2014; macmillan/copher 2005). i conceive fertility orientations as containing expectations, intentions and desires but being more general than these. i think of fertility orientations as anticipations, estimations, assumptions, prospects or forecasts of future fertility and as multidimensional constructs that encompass a number of different aspects (e.g. ajzen 1991; barrett et al. 2004; miller 1994; santelli et al. 2009). i distinguish between general orientations (no children vs. any number of children at any time) and a specifi c orientation with respect to the timing of fertility. these aspects are mentioned in several of the studies listed above and can therefore be regarded as key dimensions of fertility orientations. other dimensions might exist, for instance with respect to parity or the preferred circumstances for childbearing. findings from earlier research (ruckdeschel et al. 2018; schröder et al. 2016) suggest that most respondents will anticipate having two children, because of the strong twochild norm in germany. therefore, although it may be different in other countries, including parity into the analysis in germany does not seem useful. fertility orientations are often geared towards the longer term and the inherent goals cannot be achieved within short time frames, especially for those individuals without a partner. the infl uence of fertility orientations on goals in other life course dimensions might even be greater than on fertility itself. this might be due to the fact that fertility intentions are frequently corrected if individuals grow older, not only if the desired circumstances have not yet been achieved (verweij et al. 2020). accordingly, previous studies demonstrated that fertility intentions for the near future increase the likelihood of residential relocation (clark/onaka 1983; michielin/ mulder 2008; vidal et al. 2017). among individuals in their mid-twenties or thirties, the intention to have a child also infl uences the likelihood that a person will move in with their partner (wagner et al. 2019a/b). earlier studies also demonstrated that fertility intentions and the related expected family tasks infl uence the selection of professional pathways among women long before children are born (born 2001; krüger 2014; zimmermann 2019). recent theoretical approaches assume that individuals construct fertility intentions and preferences in the interview situation and are strongly infl uenced by specifi c conditions and societal circumstances at the time of the interview (e.g. bachrach/morgan 2013; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2019; philipov/bernardi 2011; rackin/bachrach 2016; schaeffer/thompson 1992). furthermore, they emphasise that fertility orientations are infl uenced by individual experiences and changes in one’s own life course situations, as well as those of signifi cant others, and are therefore likely to be adapted continuously throughout the life course (gray et al. 2013; kuhnt/trappe 2016; kuhnt et al. 2020; miller 1994; morgan 1981; smith et al. 2020; verweij et al. 2020). consequently, these approaches and results suggest that fertility orientations should only be used when forecasting developments in the near future, not events or developments over the longer term. panel data where the interval between data collections is short (e.g. one year, as used in the german • okka zimmermann8 family panel) is therefore especially suited to testing the infl uence of fertility orientations on partnership behaviour in the near future. prior theoretical concepts and empirical results also suggest that "being uncertain" is a crucial state and stage within the fertility decision-making process, and should be taken into account in research (bernardi et al. 2015; berrington 2004; bachrach/ morgan 2013; ní brolcháin et al. 2010; kuhnt et al. 2020; miettinen/paajanen 2005; morgan 1981, 1982; ní brolcháin/beaujouan 2019; schaeffer/thompson 1992; sobotka 2009). prior results suggest that uncertainty about future fertility is high in particular among those individuals who are unmarried, partnerless and/or childless (berrington 2004; kuhnt/buhr 2016; kuhnt et al. 2020; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2011, 2015; sobotka 2009) and that the prevalence of uncertainty differs by gender (berrington 2004; kuhnt/buhr 2016; miettinen/paajanen 2005). as a result, in my analysis of fairly young, childless respondents, it is crucial to consider uncertainty as a category since it is likely to be mentioned frequently and indicates an important stage or step within the range of potential fertility orientations and their development across time. 2.3 forms of partnership and partnership formation an example of an event in one life course dimension being instrumental for another life course dimension is a partnership (ideally coresidential), which is often considered a prerequisite for childbearing (see for example rijken/thomson 2011; spéder/kapitány 2009; berrington 2001). for the most part, germans continue to regard marriage as a necessary or at least very useful prerequisite for childbearing (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2017). as nave-herz (2015) points out, within the context of "responsible parenthood", individuals often only consider marriage as an option if they are expecting children ("child-oriented marriage"). marriage is thus deinstitutionalised, i.e. it is no longer mandatory for couples, nor does it continue to hold the same privileges that it once did compared with other partnership and family forms (cherlin 2004; coontz 2004; lauer/yodanis 2010; thornton et al. 2007; walker 2016). the differentiation of partnership forms means that individuals often go through a number of stages in the process of institutionalising a partnership (kopp et al. 2010). in recent years, this has mainly occurred in the order described below (hoppmann/zimmermann 2018; konietzka/zimmermann 2020). individuals fi rst fi nd a partner, with whom a steady dating or living-apart-together-partnership (lat, duncan/phillips 2011; levin/trost 1999) is established. from now on, i will refer to this stage of the partnership formation process as entering, starting or transitioning to a romantic partnership. a romantic partnership is characterised by the fact that the partners defi ne themselves as a couple and typically view intimacy as exclusive to their relationship. after a while, partners might opt to share an apartment, i.e. coreside. from now on, i will refer to this stage of the partnership formation process as entering, starting or transitioning into a coresidential partnership. marriage is often the fi nal stage in the institutionalisation process. historically, the stages would often occur is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 9 at the same time (i.e. the date on which a couple married also marked the start of their coresidential and romantic partnership) and this can still happen today; in this case, the date of transition to a romantic partnership, coresidential partnership and marriage is the same. the transition to marriage is not considered in this study because the number of members in my sample undergoing the transition to marriage within the period analysed was too small. figure 1 shows that marriage, romantic partnerships and coresidential partnerships are not mutually exclusive but instead build upon one other. marriage also implies the existence or start of a romantic and coresidential partnership, while a romantic partnership is a prerequisite for a coresidential partnership. the forms of partnership can be started simultaneously ("traditional" pattern) or consecutively ("modern" pattern of gradual institutionalisation). hybrid forms of transitioning are also conceivable, in which either the transition to a romantic and coresidential partnership happens at the same time (hybrid 1) or marriage and transition to coresidence happen at the same time (hybrid 2). if the transition to a romantic or coresidential partnership takes place at the same time as any of the other events, these events shall still be counted as transitions to a romantic or coresidential partnership in the context of this research and the relevant respondents will thus form part of the respective data sets (see also the section on methodology).1 fig. 1: illustration of partnership forms and transition patterns coresidential partnership romantic partnership marriage source: own design 1 please note that the hypothetical case of a couple getting married before starting a coresidential union hardly appears in empirical data and is therefore not considered here. • okka zimmermann10 2.4 hypotheses i assume that if fertility orientations include anticipations of fertility in the near future, the search for a partner and efforts to establish and institutionalise a partnership may be intensifi ed. as a result, my expectation is that the number of years to pass until the assumed time of the fi rst birth will have a strong and negative impact on the risk of transitioning to a romantic or coresidential partnership (hypothesis 1). because changes in individual and societal circumstances are unpredictable, i also anticipate fi nding a high degree of uncertainty as regards expected fertility (berrington/pattaro 2014; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2019; verweij et al. 2020). i assume that individuals who are uncertain about fertility in the future will be less likely to transition to a romantic or coresidential partnership than men or women with a clearer vision of their future (hypothesis 2). furthermore, the likelihood of transitioning to a romantic or coresidential partnership ought to be even less among individuals who are not planning to have children at all (hypothesis 3) as the latter may prefer a greater degree of freedom in their lives. hypothesis 3 refl ects "general" fertility orientations (i.e. whether respondents on the whole anticipate having children, regardless of the assumed timing). among younger people, who make up the larger share of my sample, noncoresidential romantic partnerships might sometimes be less serious and be only trial partnerships (lois 2012). additionally, a coresidential partnership is regarded a specifi c requirement for childbearing (berrington 2001; rijken/thomson 2011; spéder/kapitány 2009). i therefore expect all of the above mentioned factors (number of years until assumed fertility, uncertainty about anticipated fertility, general fertility orientations) to infl uence the transition to coresidential partnerships more strongly than the transition to a romantic partnership (hypothesis 4). 3 methodology 3.1 data and variables i use data from waves 1-10 of the german family panel (pairfam, huinink et al. 2011, data collected between 2008 and 2018, release 10.0; brüderl et al. 2019). the biopart fi le contains information on partnership events on a monthly basis, which i combined with the information from the attitudinal and sociodemographic data collected in different waves (fi les anchor1-anchor9). table 1 describes how the independent variables were measured and recoded for the analysis. i used questions on the "realistic" (not the "ideal") number and timing of births because answers are likely to be based on an evaluation of the preconditions or life course circumstances (i.e. expectations in expectancy-value models, ajzen 1991; heckhausen/heckhausen 2010, 2018; miller 1994). furthermore, i assume that answers to these questions also refl ect individual desires (internal individual preferences) and intentions (concrete goals or plans). the "realistic" number and timing of births therefore provide the best fi t with the concept of fertility orientations. i merged the two categories "i’m is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 11 tab. 1: measurements and recoding of aspects of fertility orientations for all childless respondents aspect question & variable possible responses transformations of variables measured (1) general fertility orientation "when you think realistically about having children, how many children do you think you will have?" (waves 1-2, frt6) "when you think realistically about having children, how many biological or adoptive children do you think you will have?" (waves 3-9, frt26)1 "one child", "two children", "three children", "four or more children", "no children", "i’m not sure", "i have not thought about that". categories "no children", "i’m not sure" and "i have not thought about that" are used to form the categories "no children" and "uncertain" of the independent variable. note: this variable was used as a fi lter variable. only respondents who anticipate having at least one child were asked about what they perceive to be a realistic time frame (frt9) (2) timing "when you think realistically about having children, how old do you think you will be when you have your fi rst child?" (frt9)2 age in years or "i have not thought about that". "uncertain" is inserted if expressed either in this (frt9) or the prior (fi ltering) question on the number of children anticipated (frt6/frt26; "i’m not sure" or "i have not thought about that"). "no children" is inserted if mentioned in the previous question on parity. calculation of years until expected 1st childbirth by subtracting the age of respondents; categories "in the next 4 years", "in 5-6 years", "in 7-8 years", "in 9-10 years" and "in more than 10 years" are formed based on the distribution of respondents. note: as only childless respondents are included in the analysis, variations of the questions (next instead of fi rst child, additional children instead of children) are not relevant for the samples. 1 german original: "wenn sie einmal realistisch über eigene kinder nachdenken: wie viele kinder denken sie, werden sie haben?" (waves 1-2) "wenn sie einmal realistisch über kinder nachdenken: wie viele leibliche kinder oder adoptivkinder, denken sie, werden sie haben?" (waves 3-9); answer options: "ein kind" / "zwei kinder" / "drei kinder" / "vier kinder und mehr" / "ich bin mir nicht sicher" / "darüber habe ich mir noch keine gedanken gemacht" / "kein kind". 2 german original: "wenn sie einmal realistisch über eigene kinder nachdenken: in welchem alter denken sie, werden sie ihr erstes kind bekommen?", answer options: "mit ___ jahren" / "darüber habe ich mir noch keine gedanken gemacht". source: german family panel scales and instruments manual, release 10.0 (thönnissen et al. 2018), own considerations. • okka zimmermann12 not sure" and "i have not thought about that" since the fi rst option was only chosen by a small number of the young, partnerless individuals included in the sample. i also believe that, for the purpose of my analysis, these two categories actually have the same meaning: the respondent is not (yet) clear about his/her fertility intentions. as described above, i expect that fertility orientations may change based on the experiences of the respondents. it is therefore useful to model transition risks based on fertility-related attitudes surveyed not long before the events occur, if they do in fact occur at all. i meet this requirement by analysing transition risks between each pair of waves of the panel data provided. thus, i model the infl uences that attitudes measured in the interview of any wave i have on transition risks until the next interview in wave i+1. the observation periods are around twelve months long, but differ slightly in length according to the exact timing of the interviews of each respondent within the waves. the biopart fi le was in this sense used to create a data set a, including all partnerless and childless respondents in wave i (1 to 9) in order to analyse transitions to a romantic or coresidential partnership until the subsequent wave i+1. an additional data set b includes all respondents without a coresidential partnership or children, regardless of whether they are in a romantic partnership, in order to analyse transitions to coresidential partnership. married individuals are usually in a romantic partnership and coreside and are therefore not part of the samples. individuals under the age of 18 (formal adulthood in germany) are not included in the sample because they are not yet able to take full responsibility for any children of their own or other important life course decisions: their fertility orientations are therefore expected to be less meaningful. respondents who participated in more than two waves in the german family panel might be included more than once in the data sets. observation periods for which there was no information on the independent and control variables, or for which respondents already had a child at the beginning of the analysis period, were dropped. figure 2 provides an overview of the distribution of the observation periods between waves 1 and 10 of the german family panel and the total number of observations in each of the data sets. transition risks to a romantic and coresidential partnership are the dependent variable; see chapter 2 for details on the defi nition of these forms of partnership. if these or other partnership transitions occur within the same month, both transitions are assumed to have happened. i have integrated the following sociodemographic variables as covariates in the models, for which prior research or theoretical considerations proved or suggested infl uences on partnership formation. the region (east/west germany) is important because family formation cultures are still very different in both parts of the country (e.g. raab 2017). the size of the community (fi ve categories) is included since this has a considerable infl uence on the partners that are available within a reachable distance, i.e. the partnership market. the migration status (second generation migrant or not, with fi rst generation migrants having been excluded) is relevant because it can also determine partnership and family formation values as well as social contacts. the activity status (in education, regular full-time employment, other form of employment, not employed; recode of variable casprim) is relevant as prior research also showed that being in education, precarious is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 13 fi g . 2 : o ve rv ie w o f t he d is tr ib u tio n o f o b se rv at io n p er io d s th ro ug h w av es 1 t o 1 0 o f t he g er m an f am ily p an el n = 8, 37 5 ob se rv at io n pe rio ds . . s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • okka zimmermann14 employment or being unemployed are factors that can infl uence partnership transitions (e.g. andersen/özcan 2021; heintz-martin/zabel 2019; liefbroer et al. 2015; schmitt 2021). partnership transitions are likely to be infl uenced by age (e.g. gray et al. 2013; wagner et al. 2019a/b). health is an important predictor of the likelihood of entering cohabitation (brown et al. 2012) and is therefore included. the relationship status (single, romantic partnership; only in models analysing transition risks to a coresidential partnership) is necessary as a covariate because individuals in romantic partnerships are more likely to transition to a coresidential partnership than those without a partner (kopp et al. 2010). 3.2 analytical approach i use event history analysis in stata to analyse what infl uence the different aspects of the fertility orientations have on the transition to romantic or coresidential partnerships. i apply multi-level cox proportional hazard regression models for single destinations (cox 1972). after calculating the regression models, i tested the proportional hazards assumption based on schoenfeld residuals (schoenfeld 1982). the infl uences that different aspects of fertility orientations measured in wave i (1 to 9) have on the risk of transitioning to a romantic partnership or institutionalizing the partnership further by way of coresidence can be identifi ed using cox models. for those respondents who did not experience the respective transition until wave i+1, the data is indicated as being censored at the time of the interview in wave i+1 and included in the analysis. i accounted for frailty of observations from the same individual (by grouping these observations using stata’s "shared" option, i.e. applying a multi-level model) and for period effects using a variable on the wave at the beginning of the observation period as a control variable. i can therefore control for effects of changing institutional circumstances (e.g. changes in housing costs, economic upswing and downturn that might affect fertility intentions, see comolli 2021). i included the independent variable in a categorical form, so that the category "uncertain" could be kept. for a robustness check, i excluded uncertain respondents so as to be able to create a continuous independent variable. importantly, using panel data for the analysis helps to avoid causality problems (brüderl 2010) because the independent variable (in this case the anticipation of fertility) is measured before the dependent variable (in this case a dependent event, namely the transition to a romantic or coresidential partnership) within the chronological life course of individuals. specifi cally, i use the anticipation of fertility (estimates of "realistic" fertility) in wave i to forecast partnership events until wave i+1, which are retrospectively reported in wave i+1 (i.e. about a year after the fertility orientations). working on the assumption that the forecasting of future events (in this case partnership transitions) is always very uncertain and therefore unlikely to infl uence anticipations of fertility measured before such transitions, problems of reverse causality are therefore improbable. in the limitations, i discuss the unlikely circumstances under which reverse causality may still occur within this analytical framework and the consequences thereof for my results. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 15 4. results 4.1 descriptive fi ndings if respondents are partnerless in wave i, the proportion of them transitioning to a romantic partnership by the next wave i+1 is slightly less than half (fig. 3). a quarter of respondents without a coresidential partnership in wave i transition to a coresidential partnership by wave i+1 (fig. 4). in line with prior results, women experience partnership transitions at a slightly faster rate than men, which also explains why there are more men than women in my data sets. table 2 displays descriptive results for the independent and control variables for the two data sets for all observation periods, with many respondents included in the sample more than once. in more than a third of the observation periods, the assumption among respondents was that it would be seven years or more before they have children (measured at the beginning of the observation period). depending on sex and partnership status, the anticipation among respondents in around a fi fth of all observation periods is that they will have children within the next four years (i.e. in the near future). for many of the observation periods, the 0% 25 % 50 % 75 % 10 0% su rv ia l p ro ba bi lit ie s 0 5 10 15 20 months since wave i men women fig. 3: transition risks to a romantic partnership kaplan-meier survival estimates for the transition to a romantic partnership between waves i and i+1. based on 8,375 observation periods (3,405 of women, 4,970 of men) of 2,854 respondents (1,238 women, 1,616 men). source: german family panel waves 1-10, own calculations. • okka zimmermann16 respondents live in small towns (fewer than 20,000 inhabitants). respondents are still in education at the beginning of more than half of the observation periods. this is likely a result of the fact that the average age is low (24 to 25 years depending on the sub-sample), with there being many young respondents in the sample. this can in turn be attributed to most respondents among the older cohorts having already experienced the transitions examined and thus being excluded from the data sets. at the beginning of around a third of the observation periods, the respondents reported being in regular full-time employment, with other types of employment and non-employment accounting in equal measure for the remainder of the observation periods. depending on sex and partnership status, the respondents in 12-15 percent of the observation periods were 2nd generation migrants and nearly a quarter of the observation periods stem from respondents from east germany. at the beginning of some 30 percent of the observation periods, the male respondents in question reported poor health. this fi gure was higher for women, with poor or satisfactory health being reported at the beginning of 37-38 percent of observation periods. fig. 4: transition risks to a coresidential partnership 0% 25 % 50 % 75 % 10 0% r at e of s ur vi vo rs 0 5 10 15 20 months since wave i men women kaplan-meier survival estimates for the transition to a coresidential partnership between waves i and i+1. based on 14,572 observation periods (6,503 of women, 8,069 of men) of 3,802 respondents (1,753 women, 2,049 men). source: german family panel waves 1-10, own calculations. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 17 data set a data set b all respondents not in a all respondents not in a romantic partnership coresidential partnership women men women men (3,405 obs.) (4,970 obs.) (6,503 obs.) (8,069 obs.) realistic timing of fi rst child (recode of frt9) no children 526 (15%) 495 (10%) 742 (11%) 703 (9%) in the next 4 years 715 (21%) 868 (17%) 1,543 (24%) 1,682 (21%) in 5-6 years 636 (19%) 856 (17%) 1,298 (20%) 1,498 (19%) in 7-8 years 540 (16%) 800 (16%) 1,157 (18%) 1,283 (16%) in 9-10 years 356 (10%) 524 (11%) 716 (11%) 866 (11%) in more than 10 years 206 (6%) 449 (9%) 383 (6%) 662 (8%) uncertain 426 (13%) 978 (20%) 664 (10%) 1,375 (17%) realistic timing of fi rst child (recode of frt9)1 years until birth of fi rst child 6.33 6.84 6.23 6.56 migration background no migration background 2,889 (85%) 4,388 (88%) 5,619 (86%) 7,143 (89%) 2nd generation migrants 516 (15%) 582 (12%) 884 (14%) 926 (11%) community size <5,000 399 (12%) 796 (16%) 815 (13%) 1,212 (15%) 5,000-20,000 888 (26%) 1,501 (30%) 1,865 (29%) 2,394 (30%) 20,000-50,000 620 (18%) 861 (17%) 1,204 (18%) 1,444 (18%) 50,000-100,000 308 (9%) 429 (9%) 564 (9%) 737 (9%) 100,000-500,000 586 (17%) 751 (15%) 1,044 (16%) 1,256 (16%) 500,000+ 604 (18%) 632 (13%) 1,011 (16%) 1,026 (13%) region west 2,712 (80%) 3,766 (76%) 5,155 (79%) 6,280 (78%) east 693 (20%) 1,204 (24%) 1,348 (21%) 1,789 (22%) health poor/satisfactory (0) 1,308 (38%) 1,554 (31%) 2,420 (37%) 2,342 (29%) good/very good (1) 2,097 (62%) 3,416 (69%) 4,083 (63%) 5,727 (71%) activity status (recode of casprim) in education 1,837 (54%) 2,442 (49%) 3,763 (58%) 4,198 (52%) regular full-time employment 1,043 (31%) 1,734 (35%) 1,815 (28%) 2,707 (34%) other type of employment2 297 (9%) 393 (8%) 536 (8%) 606 (7%) not employed3 228 (7%) 401 (8%) 389 (6%) 558 (7%) tab. 2: descriptive results (measured at the beginning of the observation periods) 1 for a smaller sample as respondents who are "uncertain" are excluded. sample sizes: model a (women) – 2,453; model b (men) – 3,497; model c (women) – 5,097; model d (men) 5,991. 2 including self-employment, part-time employment, marginal employment, internships, other irregular employment, military and civilian service. 3 including maternal or paternal leave, retirement, disability, joblessness. • okka zimmermann18 4.2 cox regression models table 3 summarises the results of the different regression models. it is plausible and in line with prior fi ndings for some of the covariates, mainly age, partnership status (for models c and d only) and activity status (for transition in coresidential partnership only) to infl uence transition rates. consistent with the assumption under hypothesis 1, the risk of transitioning to a romantic or coresidential partnership decreased in line with the length of time that needs to pass until the reported "realistic" age of fertility. the transition risks are highest in all models for those who expect to have children within the next four years and decline continuously where respondents anticipate more years to pass before the birth of a child. the sensitivity models (appendix table a1) using a continuous model support the assumption of a clear, and what is likely to be an almost linear effect of the time that respondents expect to pass until childbearing. the effects are even greater for the transition to coresidential partnerships, which is consistent with the results from previous research indicating that coresidence is often considered a prerequisite for childbearing. for women, the effects of fertility anticipated for the near future in terms of transition to a romantic partnership are not signifi cant for the most part; in case the differences are signifi cant, the corresponding confi dence data set a data set b all respondents not in a all respondents not in a romantic partnership coresidential partnership women men women men (3,405 obs.) (4,970 obs.) (6,503 obs.) (8,069 obs.) wave 1 261 (8%) 428 (9%) 471 (7%) 711 (9%) 2 402 (12%) 572 (12%) 697 (11%) 904 (11%) 3 499 (15%) 747 (15%) 918 (14%) 1,156 (14%) 4 535 (16%) 752 (15%) 1,040 (16%) 1,198 (15%) 5 473 (14%) 664 (13%) 953 (15%) 1,113 (14%) 6 368 (11%) 560 (11%) 756 (12%) 924 (11%) 7 331 (10%) 478 (10%) 666 (10%) 796 (10%) 8 290 (9%) 412 (8%) 542 (8%) 686 (8%) 9 246 (7%) 357 (7%) 460 (7%) 581 (7%) partnership status not in a partnership 100% 100% 3,405 (52%) 4,970 (62%) in a romantic partnership – – 3,098 (48%) 3,099 (38%) age (mean) 24.99 25.41 24.03 25.00 tab. 2: continuation base: observation periods (not respondents), i.e. many respondents appear more than once in the results with the answers given in the wave before the observation period reported. source: german family panel (pairfam) waves 1-10, own calculations. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 19 tab. 3: results of cox proportional hazard regression models for single destinations (cox 1972) infl uences on transition transition to romantic transition into coresidential risks of the anticipated partnership (data-set a) partnership (data-set b) time until the birth of 1st child women men women men (a) (b) (c) (d) obs.3,405 obs 4,970 obs. 6,503 obs. 8,069 resp. 1,238 resp. 1,616 resp. 1,753 resp. 2,049 trans. 1,274 trans. 1,564 trans. 932 trans. 872 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 no children .640** .626*** .393*** .522*** in the next 4 years [reference] [reference] [reference] [reference] in 5-6 years .807* .724*** .569*** .560*** in 7-8 years .833 .659*** .464*** .421*** in 9-10 years .788 .613*** .344*** .241*** in more than 10 years .713* .563*** .312*** .175*** uncertain .876* .623*** .560*** .521*** migration status [reference: no migration background] 2nd generation migrant 1.102 1.043 .921 .841 region [ref.: west] east 1.146 1.034 1.180 .993 size of community [reference: 5,000-<20,000] 500,000+ .851 1.206 .960 1.009 100,000-<500,000 .961 1.100 1.051 1.059 50,000-<100,000 1.034 1.213 1.097 .797 20,000-<50,000 .794* 1.129 1.088 1.305* <5,000 .972 1.011 1.156 1.029 good health .981 1.049 .960 1.045 activity status [reference: in education] regular full-time employment 1.092 1.098 1.642*** 1.594*** other employment1 1.073 .941 1.423** 1.417* not employed2 .761 .742* 1.341 1.041 age .958*** .966*** .984 1.015 1 including self-employment, part-time and marginal employment, internships, services (i.e. military or civilian service), irregular employment 2 including maternal or paternal leave, retirement, disability, joblessness • okka zimmermann20 level is low and the effect sizes are small. thus, there is less support for hypothesis 1 among women, especially with regard to the transition to a romantic partnership. consistent with my expectations under hypothesis 2, uncertainty about the timing of fertility was negatively related to transitions to romantic and coresidential partnerships, especially among men, but also among women. i found that results supported my assumption under hypothesis 3, namely that the risk of transitioning to a romantic partnership decreased where respondents had no intention to have children. the infl uence of this factor was greater than that of uncertainty, albeit only among women. among men, uncertainty about the timing of fertility and the anticipation that they will not have children have a surprisingly similar effect on transition risks. hypothesis 4, namely that fertility orientations have a stronger infl uence on the transition to coresidential partnership, was generally supported across the different models. as far as the factors of uncertainty about childbearing, the length of time to pass before anticipated childbearing and the anticipation tab. 3: continuation infl uences on transition transition to romantic transition into coresidential risks of the anticipated partnership (data-set a) partnership (data-set b) time until the birth of 1st child women men women men (a) (b) (c) (d) obs.3,405 obs 4,970 obs. 6,503 obs. 8,069 resp. 1,238 resp. 1,616 resp. 1,753 resp. 2,049 trans. 1,274 trans. 1,564 trans. 932 trans. 872 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 wave [reference: wave 1] 2 .973 1.054 .938 .951 3 .947 1.093 .819 1.033 4 .877 1.078 .734* .965 5 .848 .991 .707* .905 6 .795 .900 .948 1.101 7 .829 .974 1.120 1.157 8 .912 .849 1.224 1.178 9 .892 1.016 .810 1.186 relationship status [reference: not in a partnership, models c and d only] in a romantic partnership – – 4.051*** 4.256*** obs = number of observation periods; resp = number of respondents; trans = number of transitions in the sample; *p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001; prob>chi2 > .05 in all tests of proportional hazards assumption based on schoenfeld residuals. models include controls for frailty (observations from the same individual) and period effects (wave), region (east/west germany), size of the community, migration status (2nd generation migrant or not; 1st generation migrants excluded from analysis), activity status, age, health status. models c and d include controls for partnership status (not in a partnership vs. in a romantic partnership). models with continuous variable only as robustness check in appendix. source: german family panel (pairfam) waves 1-10, own calculations. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 21 among respondents that they will not have children are concerned, the reduction in transition risks is greater in models (c) and (d) than in models (a) and (b). it is worthwhile taking a closer look at the gender differences in the strength and signifi cance of the infl uences. infl uences are generally greater among men, while the signifi cance is also consistently high. gender differences are even more pronounced with respect to the transition to a romantic partnership, with the expected timing of childbearing having hardly any infl uence among women. both fi ndings are in line with the argument put forward by ehrhardt and kohli (2011). they assume that men fear losing their investment in children in the event of separation from the mother as the latter is most likely to be in charge of childrearing following a separation. the will to establish a solid partnership is therefore likely to be greater among men than women. furthermore, men depend more than women on fi nding a partner if they defi nitely want to become a parent; women, on the other hand, have a number of other possible routes to parenthood open to them, e.g. through sperm donation (gray et al. 2013; kuhnt/buhr 2016). the fact that uncertainty as regards childbearing and the anticipation of not having children have similar effects among men but not among women suggests that uncertainty has a different meaning and therefore different consequences in the two gender groups (suggested also by fi ndings of kuhnt/buhr 2016; miettinen/paajanen 2005). among men, uncertainty is regarded more as being equivalent to not actively pursuing fertility plans. uncertainty among women, on the other hand, could be due to other reasons, for example only wanting to have children with the "right partner" or ensuring that the woman herself or the couple has a secure fi nancial background. 5 discussion using data from the german family panel (pairfam) and cox proportional hazard regression models, i have empirically demonstrated for the fi rst time that the anticipation of fertility in general, uncertainty about fertility prospects as well as the estimated timing of fertility (reported as being "realistic" by respondents, collectively referred to as fertility orientations) infl uence partnership transition risks. these risks are greater among men and women who expect to have children, particularly if they anticipate childbearing in the near future. the infl uences were stronger among men and for the transition to a coresidential partnership. this is consistent with assumptions made in earlier research, which highlighted that coresidence is often considered a prerequisite for childbearing (e.g. rijken/thomson 2011; spéder/kapitány 2009; berrington 2001) and that men are at a higher risk of losing an investment in a child in the event of separation from a partner (huinink/kohli 2014). furthermore, women have other ways in which they can become a parent, while men depend heavily on fi nding a partner (gray et al. 2013; kuhnt/buhr 2016). uncertainty also affects partnership formation differently in both gender groups (as suggested in previous research by berrington 2004; kuhnt/buhr 2016; miettinen/ paajanen 2005). • okka zimmermann22 this paper contributes to existing knowledge by helping to clarify the link between the life course dimensions of partnership and fertility in terms of the infl uences that fertility orientations have on partnership formation in germany. this evidence can be useful in conceptualizing in a more comprehensive manner the role played by fertility within life course research (suggested by huinink/kohli 2014), which considers interdependencies between different life course dimensions. results also suggest that the link between fertility orientations and partnership formation can be more or less close, and is likely to vary depending on the stage within the partnership formation process and between respondent groups, as demonstrated by the differences between men and women in this research. this supports theoretical notions from life course theory (e.g. bernardi et al. 2019; huinink/feldhaus 2009; mayer 2019), theories on individualisation (e.g. beck 1992) and value changes (inglehart/welzel 2005; lesthaeghe 2010, 2011; van de kaa 2001) as well as differentiation of private life (e.g. meyer 1992, 2014). all theories mentioned in the last sentence suggest that life course domains are increasingly formally independent of each other and that individuals can and need to choose how (best) to connect them in order to maximise their own welfare. establishing which life course domains and life events are more or less strongly linked in a specifi c setting and respondent group is thus a matter of empirical research rather than theory, while more detailed theoretical work is needed to explain these links (huinink/feldhaus 2009). the fi ndings have therefore illustrated the complex and intertwined nature of different life course areas (partnership and fertility) as well as life course phases; simple, unidirectional models of the infl uences that early life course phases have on later life course phases might be too simplistic (elder 1985; elder et al. 2003; levy 1977; mayer 1990, 2004, 2009). as a result, this research complements earlier research, such as that by born (2001), carroll et al. (2007), krüger (2014), wagner et al. (2019a/b) and willoughby (2014) on different topics, all of which show that biographical orientations over the longer term infl uence both the present and the shorter term in many different dimensions of the life course. this paper has several limitations, which is why further research is required. the respondents in my analysis were young, a fact attributable to many older respondents having already had children and/or a partner, thereby excluding them from the analysis. this was generally a positive factor and was necessary for the analysis and the research question since partnership formation largely takes place in younger years. this meant that the target group was generally well suited to answer the research question at hand. further research on the infl uence of fertility orientations, using larger sample of older respondents (in addition to the work already done by wagner et al. 2019a), could add extra value and test the assumptions of this research for older respondents, for whom the ticking of the biological clock might be more infl uential. due to the specifi c characteristics of the german context (e.g. strong link between marriage and childbearing, high proportion of both men and women remaining childless, partnerships adopting a more traditional course following the birth of children, strong two-child norm), the results are not easily transferable is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 23 to other countries. further research is needed to understand whether and how the two dimensions are linked in other countries. the gender differences could only partly be explained. in particular, the different role that uncertainty about anticipated childbearing among men and women plays in terms of partnership formation requires further research. to better understand the importance of fertility orientations within multidimensional life courses, it would also be useful to analyse the infl uences of fertility orientations on events in other life course dimensions, e.g. education or work. i argue that reverse causality is not a major problem within my analysis, as fertility orientations were measured before partnership events took place and were reported. however, individuals might take the decision to enter a romantic or coresidential partnership before the actual event occurs. this is more likely to be the case for coresidential partnerships because most partners who intend to cohabit need to fi nd a suitable housing option before they can put their plan into practice. therefore, individuals might already plan on starting a coresidential partnership (long) before the actual event takes place and before fertility orientations are measured. the plan/ intention could thus infl uence the reported anticipations of future fertility. however, i argue that a plan or an intention to enter a romantic or coresidential partnership is not equivalent to actually doing so; a considerable amount of uncertainty remains, therefore, as to whether the plan will prove successful. consequently, it is likely that intentions to form a romantic or coresidential partnership will, at most, have a very limited infl uence on fertility orientations. additionally, i am unable to distinguish between partnership transitions which are just trials or experiments, and those partnership transitions which are more relevant for the individuals (see lois 2012 for an overview of types of early-stage partnerships). prior research, however, suggests that trial partnerships are not very common among young people in germany, or at least not commonly reported within surveys like the german family panel (hoppmann/zimmermann 2018). therefore, these partnerships are likely to represent only a minority of partnerships and it can be comfortably assumed that this limitation does not seriously infl uence the results. the principle of linked lives (elder 1985) suggests that both (potential) partners’ fertility orientations infl uence partnership transition risks. this was not a focus of the current research because this perspective would only allow an analysis of the risk of transitioning to coresidential partnership or marriage, due to the non-availability of attitudinal data for partners before the start of the partnership. furthermore, not all partners fi lled out the questionnaire for a partner, leading to signifi cant reductions in sample size. however, analysing the infl uence that both partners’ fertility orientations have on the risk of transitioning to coresidential partnership or marriage for a reduced sample would be possible based on data from the german family panel. it would be worthwhile analysing these effects in future research in order to validate the fi ndings of this study. based on life course and individualisation theory as well as theory on the differentiation of private lives, i argued that fertility orientations and partnership transition risks are likely to be independent of each other for the most part. i therefore do not assume that they are determined by an underlying attitude towards • okka zimmermann24 family formation. this latter view is nevertheless suggested by the works of filandri et al. (2016), hakim (2000), rackin (2013) and testa (2007), however. because of the contradicting theoretical positions, it would still be worthwhile to test whether a common determining factor, such as a more abstract preference for familial relationships, could be established. it is also possible that both perspectives are true – that there is indeed a common determining factor as well as some independence and mutual infl uences of the phenomena. however, to my knowledge, there is no data set available which includes a more abstract variable on the importance of family relationships, which could serve as an explaining variable for testing the hypothesis about a common determining factor. nor is there any methodology available which can identify such abstract concepts based on more specifi c information from attitudinal and longitudinal data. therefore, this question has to remain open for now, to be potentially answered in future research. references ajzen, icek 1991: the theory of planned behavior. in: organizational behavior and human decision processes 50,2: 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-t andersen, signe hald; özcan, berkay 2021: the effects of unemployment on fertility. in: advances in life course research (journal pre-proof). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2020.100401 aries, philippe 1980: two successive motivations for the declining birth rate in the west. in: population and development review 6,4: 645-650. https://doi.org/10.2307/1972930 bachrach, christine a.; morgan, s. philip 2013: a cognitive–social model of fertility intentions. in: population and development review 39,3: 459-485. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2013.00612.x barrett, geraldine; smith, sarah c.; wellings, kaye 2004: conceptualisation, development, and evaluation of a measure of unplanned pregnancy. in: journal of epidemiology and community health 58,5: 426-433. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2003.014787 beck, ulrich 1992: risk society: towards a new modernity. london: sage publications. becker, gary s. 1981: a treatise on the family. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. beckmann, jürgen; heckhausen, heinz 2018: motivation as a function of expectancy and incentive. in: heckhausen, jutta; heckhausen, heinz (eds.): motivation and action. new york: springer: 163-220. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65094-4_5 bernardi, laura; huinink, johannes; settersten, richard a. jr. 2019: the life course cube: a tool for studying lives. in: advances in life course research 41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.11.004 bernardi, laura; mynarska, monika; rossier, clémentine 2015: uncertain, changing and situated fertility intentions. a qualitative analysis. in: philipov, dimiter; liefbroer, aart c.; klobas, jane e. 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(ed.): the wiley blackwell encyclopedia of family studies. new york: john wiley & sons: 1-3. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 31 willoughby, brian j. 2014: using marital attitudes in late adolescence to predict later union transitions. in: youth & society 46,3: 425-440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118x12436700 wilson, chris; oeppen, jim 2003: on reifi cation in demography. in: fleischhacker, jochen; de gans, hans; burch, thomas (eds.): population, projections and politics. critical and historical essays on early twentieth century population forecasting. amsterdam: rozenberg: 113-129. zaidi, batool; morgan, s. philip 2017: the second demographic transition theory: a review and appraisal. in: annual review of sociology 43: 473-492. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053442 zimmermann, okka 2019: der ‚kritische‘ und ‚neoliberale‘ vereinbarkeitsdiskurs in der alltagskommunikation berufstätiger mütter. in: gender – zeitschrift für geschlecht, kultur und gesellschaft 11,2: 121-137. https://doi.org/10.3224/gender.v11i2.09 date of submission: 17.03.2020 date of acceptance: 03.02.2021 dr. okka zimmermann (). technische universität braunschweig, institute of sociology. braunschweig, germany. e-mail: o.zimmermann@tu-braunschweig.de url: https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/ses/team/zimmermann • okka zimmermann32 appendix tab. a1: results of cox proportional hazard regression models for single destinations (cox 1972), sensitivity analyses with a continuous independent variable infl uences on transition … a romantic partnership … a coresidential partnership risks to … (data-set a) (data-set b) women men women men (a) (b) (c) (d) obs. 2,453 obs. 3,497 obs. 5,097 obs. 5,991 resp. 1,026 resp. 1,354 resp. 1,544 resp. 1,770 trans. 993 trans. 1,188 trans. 791 trans. 681 prob>chi2 .019 prob>chi2 .001 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 anticipated years until birth of the 1st child (cont.) .964* .939*** .849*** .799*** migration status [reference: no migration background] 2nd generation migrant 1.214 .995 .953 .691* region [reference: west] east 1.127 1.094 1.160 1.011 size of community [reference: 5,000-<20,000] 500,000+ .826 1.187 .962 .969 100,000-<500,000 1.054 1.100 1.060 1.096 50,000-<100,000 .913 1.207 1.002 .918 20,000-<50,000 .769* 1.095 1.134 1.143 <5,000 1.004 .967 1.137 1.035 good health 1.020 1.020 .986 1.064 activity status [reference: in education] regular full-time employment 1.077 1.102 1.574*** 1.545*** other employment1 1.028 .995 1.309 1.395* not employed2 .763 .717* 1.167 1.133 age .962** .964*** .981 .997 1 including self-employment, part-time and marginal employment, internships, services (i.e. military or civilian service), irregular employment. 2 including maternal or paternal leave, retirement, disability, joblessness. is early partnership formation instrumental for fertility in germany? • 33 infl uences on transition … a romantic partnership … a coresidential partnership risks to … (data-set a) (data-set b) women men women men (a) (b) (c) (d) obs. 2,453 obs. 3,497 obs. 5,097 obs. 5,991 resp. 1,026 resp. 1,354 resp. 1,544 resp. 1,770 trans. 993 trans. 1,188 trans. 791 trans. 681 prob>chi2 .019 prob>chi2 .001 prob>chi2 .000 prob>chi2 .000 wave [reference: wave 1] 2 1.097 1.168 1.007 .969 3 1.085 1.119 .801 1.039 4 .950 1.131 .742 .976 5 .909 1.000 .688* .849 6 .911 .944 .948 1.065 7 .846 1.051 1.092 1.170 8 .985 .915 1.179 1.126 9 .926 1.068 .802 1.040 relationship status [reference: not in a partnership, models c and d only] in a romantic partnership 4.107*** 3.840*** tab. a1: continuation obs= number of observation periods; resp = number of respondents; trans = number of transitions in the sample; *p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001; prob>chi2 > .05 in all tests of proportional hazards assumption based on schoenfeld residuals. models include controls for frailty (observations from the same individual). source: german family panel (pairfam) waves 1-10, own calculations. published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis abstract: easterlin’s relative income hypothesis refers to the current income of young adults compared to the level of material aspirations acquired during childhood. the hypothesis implies that young individuals are expected to reduce fertility if their material aspirations grow at a higher rate than their incomes. this paper examines whether the same hypothesis holds true for marriage. a higher (lower) level of income combined with a lower (higher) level of material aspirations would increase (decrease) relative income and consequently could affect marriage rates. thus, relative income might be one explanation for the “marriage paradox” which indicates that young adults in the united states retreat from marriage despite perceiving it as a milestone of their lives. one might also expect relative income to be a better predictor of marriage than absolute income. this is because, according to the easterlin hypothesis, the behaviour of young adults refl ects not only their response to changes in external conditions (e.g. absolute income), but also to past events they have experienced. we employ panel dynamic methods and causality tests for the united states that span the period from 1981 to 2016. empirical analysis supports the relative income hypothesis. causality tests indicate that the relationship runs mostly from relative income to marriage rather than the other way round. relative income emerges as a stronger predictor than absolute income in all of the methods employed. keywords: marriage · relative income · easterlin hypothesis 1 introduction the united states (us) has experienced a steady decline in marriage rates over the last half century. according to martin et al. (2014), one third of young adults in their 20s will never marry. marriage decline has led to an increase in the share of children born out-of-wedlock and raises concerns over the family structure (lerman 1996). however, many young men still perceive marriage as one of the most important milestones in their life (willoughby et al. 2015). this contradiction between the comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 57-86 (date of release: 26.01.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-03 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-03en4 • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis58 observed trend and young men’s preference regarding marriage poses a riddle called the “marriage paradox” (willoughby/james 2017). figure 1 shows the percentage decline in marriage rates between 1990 and 2016 in the us. states can be separated into four clusters, with darker states representing a higher decline. states that are coloured white exhibit the lowest decline throughout the examined period, with rates ranging from 8.8 percent to 23.4 percent. the sharpest drop is observed in states with the darkest shade, with rates ranging from 34.86 percent to 71.3 percent. the diminution of marriage is not an isolated phenomenon but instead has taken place alongside an increase in cohabitation (ishizuka 2018), economic improvements for women (becker 1991; cherlin 1992), access to contraception (mclanahan 2004; stevenson/wolfers 2007), and lower levels of marriageability among men (bridges/ boyd 2016). the percentage of men between 18 and 24 years of age living with a spouse in the us reduced from 31.2 in 1967 to 5.1 in 2016 (fig. 2). the percentage for women is 46.3 and 9.1, respectively. conversely, the percentage of young adults living in partnerships has increased (fig. 2). the latter reveals a trend towards delaying marriage (fig. 3). the postponement in younger ages is also in line with willoughby et al. (2015), who argue that marriage still remains important for young adults; more important than careers and leisure activities. indeed, we see that the decline is less prominent as we move to individuals who are over 50 years old (see fig. 3; dashed line and right y-axis). hence, one could infer that the drop we observe at younger ages may refl ect economic considerations. instead, the relatively smaller decline for individuals over 50 might be a result of factors other than those that are economic in nature (ethical, fig. 1: the percentage decline of marriage rates across the us between 1990 and 2016 note: calculations of the percentage changes have been conducted by the authors. the decline in marriage rates increases with darkness. source: cdc/nchs, national vital statistics system. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 59 political, religious, etc.). this evidence is consistent with easterlin’s hypothesis as we explain in the following section. however, easterlin’s hypothesis has not always been applied in the literature within its original context.1 another purpose of this study is to fi ll this gap. we contribute to this strand of the literature by investigating the question: why do young adults retreat from marriage in the us? to answer, we rely on the easterlin relative income hypothesis, the original setup of which we tried to replicate as closely as possible. we show that the ratio computed by earnings and material aspirations2 is an important factor that is positively correlated to marriage. thus, the reduction of relative income over the years may offer an explanation for young adults’ retreat from marriage. the latter may also be a solution to the “marriage paradox”. fig. 2: percentage of married and cohabiting young adults aged 18-24 0 5 10 15 0 10 20 30 40 50 202020102000199019801970 year cohabitation (men) cohabitation (women) married (men) married (women) percentage of cohabitors percentage of married source: us census bureau, current population survey, annual social and economic supplement. 1 for a criticism on the relativity measures that have been used to test easterlin’s hypothesis (not solely with respect to marriage), see macunovich (1997, 1998a/b). 2 hereinafter we refer to material aspirations simply as aspirations. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis60 2 literature review the existing literature suggests a number of factors that contributed to the decline in marriage rates in the us over recent decades. social scientists focus mostly on the importance of gender roles in marriage stability (parsons 1949; pessin 2018). becker (1991), on the other hand, examines gender roles following an economic approach. inspired by the international trade theory, becker argues that men and women will choose to get married only if the gains of marriage are greater than remaining single. this theory sees individuals as trade partners whose gains from marriage are maximised when each one specialises in a specifi c domain: men being part of the labour market and women undertaking household work. thus, as women have been improving their position in society through labour force participation, educational attainment and higher earnings, benefi ts from marriage have been weakening. as a result, marriage rates have decreased. becker’s contention had a great appeal in economics and many attributed the retreat from marriage to women’s emancipation (ermisch 1981; mclanahan/casper fig. 3: median age at fi rst marriage for men and women, and the percentage of married individuals (white non-hispanics) aged over 50 years old 20 22 24 26 28 30 62 63 64 65 66 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 year men women married individuals over 50 years old age at first marriage percentage of married over 50 years old source: for the age at fi rst marriage: us census bureau, current population survey, march and annual social and economic supplements. for married individuals above 50: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 61 1995; sassler/schoen 1999; sweeney 2002). however, oppenheimer (1988, 1997) questions the power of becker’s trade theory on marriage and provides evidence on the deterioration of young men’s labour market position. oppenheimer also notes that most aggregate cross-sectional studies fi nd that female empowerment has a negative effect on marriage whilst individual-level longitudinal studies fi nd the opposite. consequently, this effect is rather mixed and depends on the approach adopted. another major theory on marriage relates to ideological issues. according to van de kaa (1987), shifts in ethical, political, and religious beliefs are responsible in large part for the decline in marriage. other explanations consider the effect of the “marriage squeeze” theory (sex ratio). the latter implies that the existence of a greater number of women relative to men, for instance, would worsen women’s chances of fi nding a partner. angrist (2002) tests the squeeze theory on marriage patterns in second generation immigrants and fi nds a positive sex ratio effect for women. more recently, bronson/mazzocco (2018) suggest that changes in cohort size over time and across states explain about half of the variation in us marriage rates since the early twentieth century. finally, technological changes on birth control such as pill contraceptives (goldin/katz 2002) and abortion availability (akerlof et al. 1996) affect the desire to marry. easterlin (1987) claims that young adults’ decisions regarding a number of issues, such as marriage and fertility, are based on their relative affl uence. aspirations shape a consumption threshold for each generation (macro perspective) or individual (micro perspective) and function as an inward implicit premise for various demographic events. the formation of the consumption threshold stems from childhood (easterlin 1987). easterlin formulated his theory to interpret the postworld war ii baby boom and bust in the us. his theory posits cyclical changes in demographic and social behaviour due to the fl uctuations in birth rates. thus, a large cohort will produce a small cohort due to the unfavourable labour market conditions that it encounters, while a small cohort will produce a large one. easterlin developed two measures to test his hypothesis: the relative cohort size and the relative income (ry hereinafter). the two concepts – despite their linkage – have been proved to be different.3 a discrepancy between the two measures had already been observed since 1973 (macunovich 1998a). therefore, easterlin’s theory could be split into two perspectives. the fi rst concerns the relative cohort size, and the second concerns the ry.4 this paper focuses on the second perspective. easterlin discusses the role of aspirations on the decision-making process of young adults. the family income of their parents during childhood years acts as a proxy for young adults’ aspirations (easterlin 1966). easterlin claims that there is a positive correlation; the higher the family income in childhood, the higher the 3 for a discussion on the opposite direction of relative cohort size movements than that proposed by easterlin, see lutz et al. (2006). 4 ry refers to the wage of young men relative to the family income enjoyed in the parental house. a more thorough description is provided in section 4. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis62 aspirations that are formed and transmitted to young adulthood.5 however, the main problem with the construction of ry is the formation of the denominator which represents aspirations (macunovich 1997). aspirations are formed within the household, but they are also shaped by the infl uence of peers, neighbourhood, school, television, and other sources (richins 2017). hence, it might be crucial to take into account the (average) income of all families in a specifi c area (e.g. states in our case). with respect to marriage, the conclusion of the easterlin hypothesis could be presented in a nutshell as follows: young adults whose incomes are high enough relative to their desired consumption threshold6 will feel freer to wed. otherwise, they will choose to postpone – until they reach this threshold – or even forgo marriage. the ry hypothesis has been widely tested in the literature on fertility but it has received less attention with respect to marriage (pampel/peters 1995: 180). macunovich (2011) contends that there are only two studies in the relevant literature which have tested directly the relationship between ry and marriage: macdonald/ rindfuss (1981) and macunovich (2002). “there have been two studies that have tested this relationship between relative income and marriage directly – that is, using older family income: macdonald and rindfuss (1981) and macunovich (2002), with the fi rst fi nding no support for the theory, and the second fi nding strong support. other studies have looked at the effect indirectly – using parental education and/or occupation as proxies for income.” (macunovich 2011: 18). macdonald/rindfuss (1981) investigated a sample of men who graduated from wisconsin high schools in 1957 and found no support for the relative income hypothesis. their conclusion suggests that family formation is affected only by the absolute income. schapiro (1988) fi nds his measure of ry to predict divorce but not marriage rates. the third paper that tests the ry hypothesis for marriage in a manner that is closer to the original concept of ry is that of macunovich (2011). macunovich used the parental family income of men and women currently married who were 0-5, 6-10, and 11-15 years out of school. findings revealed a negative effect of family income on marriage. however, the use of the family income without considering the wage (income) variation is not in line with easterlin’s relative income hypothesis. aspirations per se cannot capture adequately the latter. macunovich was no doubt aware of this. nevertheless, she tried to conduct a more micro-oriented approach as she explained: “macunovich (2002) found support for the hypothesis, however, using parental income at a more aggregated level.” (macunovich 2011: 3; italics come from us). macunovich indicates that “[…] there has been a wide diversity of measures which have been developed empirically and tested in the name of the ‘easterlin hypothesis’ […]”. easterlin responded to this comment as follows: “i think it’s just a 5 the late work of easterlin on the economics of happiness recognised that young adults may have the same level of aspirations regardless of their family background (easterlin 2001). 6 for a clarifi cation of the concept of childhood family income and its relation to consumption threshold, see macunovich (1998a: 102). why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 63 lack of thought. the simplest thing is just mechanically to try various measures rather than refl ect on whether the measures capture the conceptual idea.” macunovich insisted: “some studies, for example, have compared the current average income of all males, to lagged values of that same variable – demonstrating a serious misunderstanding of the concept. do you fi nd this frustrating?” easterlin too: “yes, i do. i’ve tried to stress that it is important to look at the particular circumstances of young people, and measures based on data for all adults fail to embody this essential notion.” (macunovich 1997: 122). in the same spirit, macunovich (1998a: 55) points out: “[…] an examination of the studies which provide least support might lead some to question whether they actually address the easterlin hypothesis as he formulated it – but this could be said for several of the supportive studies as well! sometimes because of data limitations, sometimes because of widely varying interpretations of the hypothesis, researchers have conducted studies which seem to bear little resemblance to the hypothesis.” bearing in mind the above comments (and others), we tried to replicate the easterlin ry hypothesis as closely as possible when conducting our analysis. in other words, we focus on young adults and we take the lagged age-specifi c family income that represents their parental generation. among studies dealing with easterlin’s ry hypothesis on marriage, those by macdonald/rindfuss (1981) and macunovich (2002) appear to be more focused on easterlin’s conceptual idea. however, their fi ndings are contradictory: one study provides evidence against the hypothesis (macdonald/rindfuss 1981), the other in favour of the hypothesis (macunovich 2002). this paper contributes to the relevant literature by exploiting recent data that spans up to 2016. we also employ dynamic panel data methods and granger non-causality tests that had not been considered before in this framework. we also differentiate from the previous literature by incorporating the female labour force participation into the marriage model as a measure of women’s emancipation (upadhyay et al. 2014). finally, we compare relative income to absolute income. that comparison had also been conducted by macdonald/rindfuss (1981), albeit without controlling for the female dimension. 3 methodology 3.1 model specifi cation we follow a dynamic approach based on the fe estimator with a lagged dependent variable. the latter may cause what nickell (1981) has called dynamic panel bias. that could be corrected by using the arellano-bond estimator (difference gmm) which removes fi xed effects by taking fi rst differences (arellano/bond 1991; roodman 2009). however, the moderate value of t (=35) is not small enough to avoid overfi tting of the variables to be instrumented, nor large enough to argue that the dynamic panel bias is insignifi cant. thus, we apply the bias-corrected dynamic panel estimator (bruno 2005a/b). • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis64 we consider ry, female labour force participation, and the unemployment rate among young men as endogenous variables since reverse causality might occur if men decide to postpone or forgo marriage in order to increase their education (nielsen et al. 2009), or to fulfi l their aspirations before marriage. by increasing their education, the corresponding unemployment might also be affected.7 thus, the decline in marriage could impact on both ry and unemployment rates of young men. the same may also apply to women’s labour force participation. women decide to increase their participation in the labour market either because men postpone marriage, or due to their own decision to continue their education and consequently earn higher wages. hence, two lags have been imposed on the independent variables. the equation to be estimated is as follows: where subscripts i and t denote state and year, respectively; marriagei,t is the marriage rate, ryi,t-2 is the relative income of young men, denotes a vector of control variables, dummyk represents the decade dummy that takes value 1 for the decade of reference (k) or otherwise takes value 0, μi is the fi xed effect term and ui,t stands for the stochastic error term. to compare8 the effect of the relative income to the absolute income (ay hereinafter) on marriage, we re-run equation (1) by replacing the former with the latter.9 the panel is unbalanced. the fe estimator is still consistent under unbalanced panels as long as missing observations are random (wooldridge 2002). plausible estimation problems might arise from the correlation between and within states. for this purpose, we perform tests for cross-sectional dependence (csd), serial correlation (fi rst order), and stationarity. the latter is largely ensured by the fact that variables are bounded (farmer 2015) through the normalisation process. however, we test stationarity by employing the pesaran (2007) unit root test for panel data.10 normalisation also induces a rescaling which allows us to compare the contribution between the relative and absolute income. cross-sectional dependence has been examined with the pesaran (2015) test. the null hypothesis of cross-sectional independence was rejected (appendix d, table d1). lastly, we check for the presence of fi rst order autocorrelation using 7 unemployment is mostly affected by macroeconomic factors and can be considered as exogenous for marriage. thus, we have also repeated the analysis without imposing lags on unemployment. results do not signifi cantly deviate from those presented in section 5.1 (available upon request). 8 variables have been normalised (range between 0 and 1) so that their relative contribution on marriage is comparable. 9 in this we follow macunovich (1998a: 72). 10 the null hypothesis of non-stationarity has been rejected in all cases. results are available upon request. for bounded processes unit root tests, see carrion-i-silvestre/gadea (2013) and cavaliere/xu (2014). , , , , , (1) , why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 65 the wursten (2018) test. the presence of serial correlation would imply the loss of information hidden in the error term if we were only to consider a static model.11 results displayed in appendix (table d2) indicate the presence of fi rst order autocorrelation in all cases. 3.2 granger non-causality test we apply the granger non-causality procedure proposed by dumitrescu/hurlin (2012) to test for any causal effects of relative income on marriage. dumitrescu and hurlin’s method has the advantage of controlling for heterogeneous panel data models. the latter allows for weaker assumptions regarding the homogeneity of the cross-sectional units. it also applies a block bootstrap procedure to obtain the critical values (instead of the asymptotic ones) with the aim of correcting for crosssectional dependence. moreover, the number of lags can be chosen based on one of the selection criteria (aic, bic, hqic), see lopez/weber (2017: 983). the specifi cation is as follows: where k is the number of lags which are identical for all cross-sectional units of the panel; the coeffi cients a n d denote the autoregressive parameter and the regression coeffi cient slopes, respectively. both are allowed to differ across groups. αi is the fi xed individual effect and εi,t indicates the residuals. the null hypothesis (no causality) is defi ned as: and the alternative hypothesis (causality) as: where n1 ∈ [0, n 1] is unknown. it should be noted that rejecting the null hypothesis does not exclude the possibility of no causality for some states. this is an issue that should be further investigated in future work. on the other hand, not rejecting the null hypothesis would mean that there is no granger causality for any state. 11 the static model reveals that the coeffi cient of the ry is positive and statistically signifi cant at the 1 percent level of signifi cance in all cases examined. results are available upon request. , , , , (2) : . . . 0 1, … , : . . . 0 1, … , 0 . . . 0 1, … , • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis66 this methodology is not suitable for unbalanced panels (lopez/weber 2017: 973), which is why we proceed with the balanced version of our dataset. the latter caused a signifi cant drop in observations (from 1724 to 828). the lopez/weber (2017) approach has been applied in this case. in the regression analysis that follows, lags have been selected on the basis of the bayesian criterion. finally, the variables considered for the causality test have to be stationary (lopez/weber 2017: 977). 4 data description data were drawn from the ipums-cps and begin in 1962. we restricted the time dimension due to the lack of relevant variables needed for the development of ry. consequently, the analysis spans the period between 1976 (1981 taking into account the 5-year lags of the relative income) and 2016. all states have been included apart from alaska, district of columbia, and hawaii. the analysis has been also restricted to white non-hispanics due to their high level of representativeness in the ipumscps database. for instance, the main fi le of ipums-cps that was downloaded contains 8,677,348 observations, of which 7,280,335 refer to whites and 6,674,636 (out of 8,677,348) to white non-hispanics. in keeping with macunovich (2012), we retain only civilians. all variables have been developed (aggregated) by year, state, race, and age. the numerator of the developed ry consists of the wages for men between the ages of 15 and 24, who are single (never married), worked full time, and completed 52 weeks of employment during the previous year (full-time, year-round workers). wages refer to the total pre-tax wage and salary income for the previous calendar year. it is crucial to include only those persons who have completed 52 weeks, otherwise annual wages earned by individuals would present considerable heterogeneity and their rys would not be comparable. for instance, a young man with a stable job (52 weeks) and full-time employment status could have greater chances of getting married. a young man who has worked less than 52 weeks per year, and/or who has part-time status, may delay marriage even if his aspirations are low compared to his full-time, year-round worker peers. in this case, the role of aspirations is relegated beforehand. thus, a full-time, year-round worker could be the basis for testing the ry effect on marriage. the aim of including only full-time, year-round workers is also to exclude the possibility of educational-driven impacts on marriage, i.e. young adults retreating from marriage because of their attendance in higher education. despite that, we also test for the latter, showing results for young men aged 15-24 who attained a level of education that was equal to or more than high school but less than a bachelor’s degree (appendix c). the latter educational category has been considered because this is the most representative cluster for the age group under examination (total: 43,356 individuals; less than high school: 14,726 individuals; equal to or more than high school but less than a bachelor’s degree: 25,820 individuals; equal to or more than a bachelor’s degree: 2,810 individuals). why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 67 we have also restricted the sample to those who are native-born (we used the variable bpl – birth place – which unfortunately starts in 1994) in order to increase the odds of capturing their aspirations in childhood. next, we replaced the top-coded wages with the swap values for the years 1976-2010 and dropped the top-coded wages for the rest of the period (for more details see https://cps.ipums.org/cps/ topcodes_tables.shtml). we dropped individuals from the analysis if their calculated wage per hour was less than $2.50 or more than $250 in 2008 dollars (blau/kahn 2007). the wage has been estimated as the median of all individuals by year, state, race, and age. we considered the median calculation instead of the mean because the wage distribution was mostly skewed towards the right side. in the denominator, we set the family income which has been lagged by 5 years in order to proxy the aspirations of young males. the choice of 5-year lags (instead of 3-year or 10-year lags for instance) relates to easterlin’s initial work (see easterlin 1966; macunovich 1998a), and data limitations. thus, we stay closer to easterlin’s original approach and have more data points for the analysis. for instance, if we impose a lag of 3 years, the maximum age of the individuals considered in the analysis would be 24 years old, which would mean that the aspirations relate to when they were 21 years old (high enough). on the other hand, a lag choice of 10 years would catch aspirations plausibly better than 5, but with the cost of fewer observations. the use of family income (total family income) instead of solely the male’s income, is warranted by the increased pace of women’s contribution to family income and therefore to child’s aspirations (macunovich 2011). through the selection of the specifi c age group of young adults (15-24) and the assumed mean age at birth (30), we conclude that their parents’ age will range between 45 and 54 (15-24, +30) where the parental family income has been calculated and lagged. we adopt the age of 30 since we aim to capture aspirations for all the possible birth orders of young adults.12 for the mean age at birth of a male in the us, see khandwala et al. (2017); for the mean age at birth of a female, see mathews/hamilton (2002, 2016). unlike the numerator of ry, the denominator has not been restricted to nativeborn citizens. if the individuals are immigrants, or of a lower socioeconomic status, they contribute equally to the median family income of each state; in turn, this is assumed to form material aspirations. this is because psychologists have for a long time indicated the tendency of individuals to make social comparisons (festinger 1954). the latter could be either upward or downward (buunk/gibbons 2007). accordingly, we consider all the directions in the denominator with no exclusions. in the denominator, we only retained those who reported having at least one child and were the householder (coded as “head”). again, as in the numerator, we used the median instead of the mean calculation for the reason already mentioned. on the marriage rate estimation, we follow sweeney (2002) – both male and female marriage rates – as well as macunovich (2011), who distinguishes between the two. 12 obviously, a higher birth order relates to an older parental age at birth as well. adopting the mean age at fi rst birth would probably be misleading. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis68 figure 4 depicts the evolution of ry and marriage for white non-hispanic men aged 15-24 in the us. both have been declining. for ry, we observe a decline until the mid-1990s followed by an increase and then stagnation around 2000. after a short period in which it decreased, ry has been relatively steady from 2006 onwards. other factors may also affect the decision to marry. we consider two additional variables: female labour force participation, which also serves as a measure of women’s empowerment (upadhyay et al. 2014); and the unemployment rate of young men (gonzález-val/marcén 2018). all variables were smoothed (running medians) and normalised (sum to unity) in order to address scale disparity. decade dummies have been included; one dummy for each one of the four decades (plus the constant). dummies aim to capture time-varying effects which could affect marriage such as the level of inequality, cohabitation,13 sex ratio (marriage “squeeze”), contraception, divorce rates, etc. table 1 presents the descriptive statistics. table 2 provides the calculated formulas for the variables employed. finally, it is important to underscore some of the advantages and disadvantages of employing aggregate instead of micro-data on the ry hypothesis. fig. 4: relative income and marriage rate of young men between 15 and 24 years old for the us 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 5 10 15 20 25 30 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 year relative income 15-24 marriage rate 15-24 relative income 15-24 marriage rate 15-24 note: relative income has been smoothed. marriage rate refers to young men (age 15-24). source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. 13 we can capture cohabitation indirectly by the use of dummies. ipums-cps provides data on cohabiting partners from 2007 onwards. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 69 on the one hand, aggregate analysis arising from micro-data has been criticised by robinson (1950) who referred to the “ecological fallacy”. the latter points out the incorrect assumptions made about an individual, based on the characteristics of the group to which s/he belongs. moreover, simpson (1951) supports the view of a reversal in the sign between the aggregate and the individual-level analysis (see also oppenheimer 1997). on the other hand, tests at the micro-level have treated aspirations as being only a function of parental income by using either gross proxies for the ry measure such as “how well-off are you?” or, to a lesser degree, by employing the incomes of their parents. such approaches neglect the infl uence that peers, neighbourhood, or other social phenomena also have on individual aspirations. conducting the analysis at the aggregate level, we remedy this drawback. 5 estimation results 5.1 regression results table 3 presents the results obtained by employing the panel dynamic fe estimator. the lagged value of the dependent variable is always statistically signifi cant at the 1 percent level of signifi cance. coeffi cients on both incomes are positive but tab. 1: descriptive statistics variable obs. mean std. dev. min. max. marriage rate (b) 1,724 13.452 7.374 0.754 38.462 marriage rate (f) 1,724 15.728 8.522 0.714 43.421 marriage rate (m) 1,724 8.944 5.447 0.465 28.049 relative income 1,724 0.308 0.072 0.108 0.915 absolute income 1,724 25,010 4827.085 10,000 47,297 female labour force participation 1,724 56.114 8.829 28.283 82.353 unemployment rate (m) 1,724 13.503 5.812 1.754 38.889 relative income* 1,545 0.309 0.087 0.126 0.950 absolute income* 1,545 26,846 5,952 8,000 68,883 note: f: female, m: male, b: both male and female. * for young men of equal to or more than high school but less than bachelor’s degree. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis70 signifi cant only for the ry.14 in all cases, the ry exerts a greater impact on marriage than the ay. the latter implies that young men tend to decide on a comparative basis as easterlin suggests. beyond other criteria, it seems that childhood circumstances indeed compete with the circumstances in young adulthood during the decision process. this inference lends support to the fi ndings of willoughby et al. (2015) as already mentioned. we also observe that the coeffi cients of ry and ay are higher for the “male” category. on the covariates, both young men unemployment and young women labour force participation are negatively related to marriage. their effect is greater than that of ry and ay and always highly signifi cant (p-value < 0.01). hence, marriage decreases as female labour participation grows, which is consistent with female emancipation theories (guvenen/rendall 2015). tab. 2: calculation formulas for the variables employed variable calculationa marriage rate of young adults (men and/or women) relative income of young men absolute income of young men labour force participation of young women unemployment rate of young men number of married ,total population , 100 male wage ,family income , male wage , female labour force ,total female population , 100 number of unempl. men ,lab. force partic. of men , 100 a i refers to state and t to year. in all cases, we adjust for white non-hispanics in the age group 15-24. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. 14 an anonymous referee noted that the easterlin effect of relative income might be expected on the opposite direction (negative correlation with marriage) because the household equivalent income is augmented by marriage, whereas it is reduced by fertility. we found no evidence for the latter. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 71 table 4 aims to control for endogeneity by employing the bias-corrected fe estimator. we see that both absolute and relative income are positive and statistically signifi cant. as in table 3, ry has a greater impact on marriage compared with ay. the covariates are again negatively related to marriage. female labour participation has the most profound effect. the results presented in this section indicate that ry is an important predictor for marriage, thereby corroborating the easterlin hypothesis. furthermore, in all of the methods employed, the indication is that ry has been more signifi cant in both statistical and size aspects relative to the ay. young women’s empowerment leads to a decline in marriage, according to fi ndings on female labour force participation. lastly, unemployment among young men emerges as a deterrent with regard to marriage. the latter shows that uncertainty is a crucial determinant on decisions regarding early marriage. 5.2 granger non-causality tests this section employs the dumitrescu/hurlin (2012) granger non-causality test as formulated by lopez/weber (2017). we test for both directions of causality: from ry to marriage and from marriage to ry. table 5 refers to the former. the p-values indicate statistical signifi cance at the 1 percent level except for male marriage which tab. 3: panel dynamic fe estimator (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.977*** 0.970*** 0.970*** 0.981*** 0.973*** 0.974*** (0.011) (0.009) (0.013) (0.012) (0.010) (0.013) ryt-2 0.029* 0.033** 0.028* (0.014) (0.016) (0.014) ayt-2 0.016 0.019 0.015 (0.013) (0.014) (0.013) flfpt-2 -0.077*** -0.081*** -0.073*** -0.073*** -0.076*** -0.070*** (0.014) (0.012) (0.015) (0.014) (0.012) (0.015) unemploymentt-2 -0.042*** -0.042*** -0.039*** -0.044*** -0.045*** -0.041*** (0.011) (0.012) (0.011) (0.011) (0.012) (0.011) constant 0.060*** 0.065*** 0.064*** 0.062*** 0.068*** 0.067*** (0.015) (0.016) (0.016) (0.014) (0.015) (0.015) r-squared 0.966 0.955 0.965 0.965 0.955 0.965 number of observations 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 note: dependent variable: marriage rate. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis72 lies at the 5 percent level. hence, we can reject the null hypothesis of no causality and infer granger causality for at least one state in all cases presented. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.977*** 0.970*** 0.970*** 0.980*** 0.973*** 0.974*** (0.012) (0.011) (0.012) (0.012) (0.011) (0.012) ryt-2 0.029*** 0.033*** 0.028*** (0.009) (0.010) (0.009) ayt-2 0.016* 0.018** 0.015* (0.008) (0.009) (0.009) flfpt-2 -0.077*** -0.081*** -0.073*** -0.074*** -0.076*** -0.070*** (0.011) (0.011) (0.011) (0.010) (0.011) (0.011) unemploymentt-2 -0.042*** -0.042*** -0.039*** -0.044*** -0.045*** -0.041*** (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) number of observations 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 tab. 4: bias-corrected fe estimator note: dependent variable: marriage rates. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. tab. 5: dumitrescu/hurlin (2012) granger non-causality test both male female w-bar (wald statistic) 31.301 31.895 26.947 z-bar (standardised statistic) 32.953 33.793 26.795 p-valuea 0.008 0.033 0.001 critical value (95%) 105.520 87.067 58.300 z-bar tildeb 9.754 10.043 7.642 p-valuea 0.008 0.033 0.001 critical value (95%) 34.654 28.323 18.452 optimal number of lagsc 8 8 8 h0: ry does not granger-cause marriage. h1: ry does granger-cause marriage for at least one state. a p-value computed using 1,000 bootstrap replications. b preferred for large n but relatively small t datasets. c optimal number of lags selected according to bayesian (bic) criterion. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 73 table 6 tests for the granger causal impact of marriage on ry. the p-values change and become higher for “both” and “female”, but the value remains low in the case of “male”. the results therefore show that there is a granger causal effect of marriage on ry only for young men. that may be explained by the fact that the young men who retreat from marriage have, on average, lower relative income than their peers who get married. a decline in marriage therefore becomes evident as a causal factor on ry. figure 5 shows the latter. in sum, results indicate that in fi ve out of six cases considered, the grangrer causal effect is one-directional and runs from ry to marriage. 5.3 robustness check we proceed to robustness checks by employing three additional methods. first, we start with the arellano-bond estimator (difference gmm). a one-step difference gmm estimator has been considered instead of two15 due to the lower standard errors obtained in the former. moreover, in this way we avoid the magnifi cation of the gaps produced by the fi rst difference transformation (see roodman 2009: 21). it is also important to ensure that the number of instruments is lower than the number of states. we include the number of instruments obtained for each one regression in table a1. next, we correct for cross-sectional dependence (driscoll/kraay 1998). driscoll and kraay (d-k) standard errors aim to control for “spatial” forms of cross-sectional dependence. the latter is important given the potential of unobserved common tab. 6: dumitrescu/hurlin (2012) granger non-causality test both male female w-bar (wald statistic) 30.771 38.551 24.041 z-bar (standardised statistic) 32.203 43.205 22.685 p-valuea 0.152 0.027 0.563 critical value (95%) 38.034 39.152 40.713 z-bar tildeb 9.497 13.272 6.231 p-valuea 0.152 0.027 0.563 critical value (95%) 11.498 11.881 12.417 optimal number of lagsc 8 8 8 h0: marriage does not granger-cause ry. h1: marriage does granger-cause ry for at least one state. a p-value computed using 1,000 bootstrap replications. b preferred for large n but relatively small t datasets. c optimal number of lags selected according to bayesian (bic) criterion. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. 15 for a discussion on the one-step and two-step gmm estimator, see hwang/sun (2018). • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis74 shocks (political, economic, cultural or spatial) across states that could bias the results. finally, we apply the blackwell (2005) formula which corrects standard errors for heteroskedastic and contemporaneously correlated disturbances across panels. the robustness results are presented in the appendices. in tables a1, b1 and b2, we present the outcomes for the aforementioned corrections. the results are qualitatively similar to those presented in subsection 5.1. we observe that the coeffi cient of ry is positive and highly signifi cant as previously. the signifi cance varies depending on the method employed. on the other hand, ay is shown to be statistically signifi cant in all but the gmm estimator (table a1). upon comparing ry and ay, it is noted that ry has the greatest impact on marriage. however, its impact is shown to be less than that of the flfp and the unemployment rate of young men. the former exerts the most sizeable effect, lending support to the women’s emancipation theories. uncertainty, that the unemployment rate typifi es, has the smallest impact. finally, in tables c1 and c2, we test for the hypothesis that the obtained results on ry might be considered as spurious due to the educational attainment of young men. in other words, we test whether young men decide to postpone marriage owing to their attendance in higher education rather than their low economic prospects compared with their aspirations. on this purpose, we estimate the ry for young men (15-24 years old) who attained a level of education equal to or more than high school but less than a bachelor’s degree, and were full-time, year-round workers fig. 5: relative income for single and married young men (age 15-24) 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 year single married relative income 15-24 source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 75 during the previous year. we follow the same methods as applied in subsection 5.1. in both of the tables c1 and c2, ry is still positive and statistically signifi cant. differences arise only in respect of the remaining variables. ay is insignifi cant, as is flfp apart from one case (table c2, column 2). the young male unemployment variable becomes positive and signifi cant only for the “male” category in both tables (p-value < 0.05). 6 conclusions previous studies have pointed out the importance of the institution of marriage, both for the individual and the well-being of society (popenoe 2009; lerman 2011; halla/scharler 2012). this paper investigates its decline from the easterlin relative income perspective. according to macunovich (2011), there have been two studies in the past testing this hypothesis for marriage. the results contradict each other: one study supports the hypothesis (macunovich 2002) while the other refutes it (macdonald/rindfuss 1981). we contribute to the relevant literature by providing some new evidence. we employ recent data and panel dynamic techniques and show that an increase in the relative income of young men also increases their odds of getting married. one might question the strength of the results on the ground of cultural effects. female education has improved in recent decades and the resultant increase in women’s emancipation (guvenen/rendall 2015) has affected their marriage rates. this paper deals with such effects by incorporating female labour force participation – as a measure of female emancipation – and time decade dummies into the model specifi cation. ry might also be useful to policy-makers. ry can be modifi ed by either the numerator (income or wage) or by the denominator (family income during childhood). the former could be accommodated through a stabilising macroeconomic policy. for the latter, one could argue that the same applies since the current income of parents is the future “childhood income” of young adults. however, a wage increase would affect “childhood income” inequality, which in turn would be depicted in future ry (in young adulthood). thus, one has to consider the impact of income inequality over the long term (genicot/ray 2017). richins (2017) found that middle school children especially are engaged in the process of social comparison and this is why “childhood income” inequality becomes important. therefore, one could make the following statement: the higher the income inequality, the worse the outcome of the comparisons for the less advantaged children, and the higher the materialism they acquire and transfer to their early adulthood. in other words, a young adult might be affected not only by the level of income inequality that he currently faces (as a young adult), but also by that faced in childhood (as a child). accordingly, this study urges for more research on how children perceive income inequality and how childhood income inequality interacts with current income inequality to shape young adults’ demographic behaviour. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis76 given the central role of childhood experiences in the easterlin hypothesis, this paper also tries to add to a growing body of literature that investigates the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on various adulthood outcomes (tani et al. 2016; last et al. 2018; barr et al. 2018; stamos et al. 2019). a future paper could also study the socioeconomic mobility aspect that comes directly from this hypothesis with respect to marriage. references akerlof, george a.; yellen, janet l.; katz, michael l. 1996: an analysis of out-of-wedlock childbearing in the united states. in: the quarterly journal of economics 111,2: 277317. https://doi.org/10.2307/2946680 angrist, josh 2002: how do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets? 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marital centrality among young adults. in: the journal of psychology 149,8: 796-817. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2014.979128 willoughby, brian j.; james, spencer lyle 2017: the marriage paradox: why emerging adults love marriage yet push it aside. oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190296650.001.0001 wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2002: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. cambridge, ma: mit press. wursten, jesse 2018: testing for serial correlation in fi xed-effects panel models. in: the stata journal 18,1: 76-100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x1801800106 date of submission: 28.09.2020 date of acceptance: 15.11.2021 dr. georgios mavropoulos. prof. dr. theodore panagiotidis (). university of macedonia, department of economic sciences. thessaloniki, greece. e-mail: mavropoulos@uom.edu.gr, tpanag@uom.edu.gr url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/georgios-mavropoulos-2 https://www.uom.gr/en/tpanag why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 81 appendix appendix a: gmm estimator results tab. a1: gmm fi rst difference estimator (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 1.519*** 1.100*** 1.238*** 1.718*** 1.011*** 1.408*** (0.341) (0.290) (0.351) (0.243) (0.276) (0.242) ryt-2 0.929** 0.817* 0.846* (0.461) (0.412) (0.459) ayt-2 0.625 0.317 0.552 (0.390) (0.614) (0.388) flfpt-2 -1.221*** -0.933*** -1.076*** -0.885*** -0.604*** -0.777*** (0.219) (0.195) (0.234) (0.205) (0.158) (0.202) unemploymentt-2 -1.076*** -1.223*** -1.171*** -0.905*** -1.278*** -1.028*** (0.311) (0.325) (0.304) (0.239) (0.309) (0.245) f-stat. (prob>f) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 number of instruments 41 41 41 41 41 41 number of observations 1,508 1,508 1,508 1,508 1,508 1,508 note: dependent variable: marriage rates. instrumental variable: one year lag of th e independent. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis82 appendix b: control for cross-sectional dependence (csd) tab. b1: control for csd (d-k s.e.) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.977*** 0.970*** 0.970*** 0.981*** 0.973*** 0.974*** (0.021) (0.022) (0.020) (0.023) (0.023) (0.022) ryt-2 0.029** 0.033*** 0.028* (0.014) (0.011) (0.016) ayt-2 0.016** 0.019** 0.015* (0.008) (0.009) (0.009) flfpt-2 -0.077** -0.081*** -0.073** -0.073** -0.076*** -0.070** (0.032) (0.026) (0.034) (0.031) (0.025) (0.033) unemploymentt-2 -0.042 -0.042* -0.039 -0.044* -0.045* -0.041 (0.025) (0.023) (0.026) (0.026) (0.023) (0.026) constant 0.060*** 0.065*** 0.064*** 0.062*** 0.068*** 0.067*** (0.014) (0.016) (0.015) (0.014) (0.016) (0.015) r-squared 0.955 0.963 0.965 0.955 0.962 0.965 number of observations 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 note: dependent variable: marriage rates. driscoll-kraay s.e. in parentheses. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 83 tab. b2: blackwell (2005) panel corrected s.e. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.956*** 0.942*** 0.957*** 0.974*** 0.959*** 0.973*** (0.031) (0.026) (0.032) (0.032) (0.026) (0.032) ryt-2 0.051** 0.053** 0.050** (0.024) (0.023) (0.024) ayt-2 0.043** 0.043** 0.039* (0.020) (0.019) (0.020) flfpt-2 -0.080*** -0.077*** -0.083*** -0.082*** -0.078*** -0.084*** (0.027) (0.024) (0.028) (0.027) (0.025) (0.028) unemploymentt-2 -0.067*** -0.067*** -0.067*** -0.066*** -0.065*** -0.066*** (0.026) (0.024) (0.026) (0.026) (0.023) (0.026) constant 0.072* 0.077** 0.076* 0.062 0.068* 0.068 (0.040) (0.034) (0.041) (0.042) (0.036) (0.044) r-squared 0.937 0.928 0.938 0.937 0.928 0.938 number of observations 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 1,574 note: dependent variable: marriage rates. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis84 appendix c: results for the young men attaining a medium level of education (equal to or more than high school and less than a bachelor’s degree) tab. c1: panel dynamic fe estimator (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.891*** 0.907*** 0.884*** 0.899*** 0.910*** 0.892*** (0.014) (0.018) (0.015) (0.014) (0.017) (0.015) ryt-2 0.040** 0.033* 0.047** (0.019) (0.017) (0.021) ayt-2 0.004 0.001 0.012 (0.011) (0.009) (0.012) flfpt-2 -0.009 -0.018 -0.006 -0.007 -0.016 -0.004 (0.012) (0.011) (0.013) (0.011) (0.011) (0.013) unemploymentt-2 0.008 0.016** 0.007 0.006 0.014* 0.004 (0.007) (0.007) (0.008) (0.008) (0.007) (0.008) constant 0.006 -0.003 0.010 0.017 0.009 0.020 (0.015) (0.018) (0.015) (0.016) (0.017) (0.017) number of observations 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 note: dependent variable: marriage rates. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. why do young adults retreat from marriage? an easterlin relative income approach • 85 tab. c2: bias-corrected fe estimator (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) both male female both male female marriaget-1 0.891*** 0.907*** 0.884*** 0.899*** 0.910*** 0.892*** (0.015) (0.014) (0.015) (0.015) (0.014) (0.015) ryt-2 0.040*** 0.033*** 0.048*** (0.013) (0.012) (0.014) ayt-2 0.004 0.002 0.012 (0.010) (0.009) (0.011) flfpt-2 -0.009 -0.018* -0.006 -0.007 -0.017* -0.004 (0.010) (0.010) (0.011) (0.014) (0.010) (0.011) unemploymentt-2 0.008 0.016** 0.007 0.006 0.014** 0.004 (0.007) (0.010) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.007) number of observations 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 1,059 note: dependent variable: marriage rates. *** p-value < 0.01, ** p-value < 0.05, * p-value < 0.1. flfp stands for female labour force participation. decade dummies have been included. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. • georgios mavropoulos, theodore panagiotidis86 appendix d: panel tests tab. d1: pesaran (2015) cross-sectional dependence test variable cd-test p-value average joint t mean ρ mean abs (ρ) marriage (b) 178.121 0.000 34.10 0.91 0.91 marriage (m) 166.213 0.000 34.10 0.85 0.85 marriage (f) 178.597 0.000 34.10 0.91 0.91 relative income 74.157 0.000 34.10 0.38 0.43 absolute income 26.631 0.000 34.10 0.13 0.31 flfp 144.385 0.000 34.10 0.74 0.74 unemployment 64.245 0.000 34.10 0.33 0.42 tab. d2: wursten (2018) fi rst order serial correlation test case variable hr-stata p-value marriage (b) residual 9.06 0.000 marriage (m) residual 6.42 0.000 marriage (f) residual 9.06 0.000 note: h0: cross-section independence; f: female, m: male, b: both male and female. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. note: f: female, m: male, b: both male and female. h0: no fi rst-order serial correlation. a heteroskedasticity-robust (born/breitung 2016) hr-test on residuals. source: own calculations employing data extracted from the ipums-cps. published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany over the period 1991-2017 the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany over the period 1991-2017* nico stawarz, nikola sander abstract: in 1885 and 1889 ravenstein published two seminal papers on the role of migration in changing population distribution. this article analyses the importance of internal migration for shaping the spatial population distribution of germany in the last three decades. we use a time-series dataset of annual inter-county migration fl ows from the german population register for the years 1991 to 2017. population density is used as proxy measure for settlement type as an alternative to the commonly used bbsr typology. our fi ndings show that around 3 percent of the population moves between counties each year, and that the effi cacy of internal migration in redistributing population has declined since the 1990s. our results are in line with other recent work stating that the re-urbanisation phase, which was prevalent during the 2000s, has ended and sub-urbanisation patterns have become more prominent since 2011. we show that internal migration indeed plays an important role in shaping the distribution of population, especially the movements of young adults and families along the rural-urban continuum. in the 1990s and 2000s, internal migration tended to be more important for shaping regional populations than international migration and natural population change. notably, this ranking reversed in the last few years and natural population change even became positive for densely settled regions. keywords: internal migration · population redistribution · population density · germany · sub-urbanisation · urbanisation comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 291-316 (date of release: 23.03.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-06en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-06en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • nico stawarz, nikola sander292 1 introduction changes in population size as well as age and sex structure at the regional level have important implications for regional planning and infrastructure provision. in germany, internal and international migration have been major drivers of regional population change, besides fertility and mortality. a key factor has been the movement between and within east and west germany after reunifi cation, which has signifi cantly altered the age and sex structure in many eastern regions (heiland 2004; kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012; sander 2014). moreover, international migration has an indirect effect on fertility, given that germany usually exhibits population gains among younger adults of reproductive age (sobotka 2008). the ways in which migration shapes regional population change are not a new phenomenon. more than 120 years ago, ravenstein (1885, 1889) published two seminal papers in which he analysed the interrelation of internal and international migration patterns and population change, as well as their spatial outcomes in europe and north america. the results show that migration was already then a key factor affecting regional population change. migration in turn was largely driven by economic development and spatial inequalities. in late nineteenth-century germany, the era of industrialisation unfolded in the context of crop failures and the onset of capitalist agriculture, which led to substantial rural-urban movements towards industrial cities like duisburg, essen and dortmund in the coal-mining region of the ruhrgebiet. since the early works by ravenstein, migration has become an even more important driving force, especially in the context of low fertility and rising life expectancy (bujard 2011; statistisches bundesamt/wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung 2018: 16ff. and 44ff.; wenau et al. 2019). in germany and other european countries, research has demonstrated that the impact of internal and international migration on the population distribution and change increased relative to births and deaths since the late 1960s (birg 1974; gatzweiler/schlömer 2008; rees et al. 2017). in this paper, we focus on the impact of internal migration on the regional distribution of the population in germany and how this changed in recent decades (gatzweiler 1975; kemper 1985; sander 2018; szymańska et al. 2009). we pay special attention to the migration trends among young adults and those aged 30 to 49 years, because these highly mobile age groups tend to have the strongest impact on regional population age and sex structure, thereby also indirectly affecting natural population change. previous work has shown that the movement of young people from the countryside to the cities entails a rejuvenation of the population in the cities, while more rural localities tend to record an increase in the mean age of the population through migration (gatzweiler/schlömer 2008; mai et al. 2007; sander 2014). such movements lead to pronounced regional differences that are mainly discussed within the context of urbanisation, sub-urbanisation and counter-urbanisation, also referred to as the urban development model (champion 2001; geyer/ kontuly 1993). for germany, studies based on population size and the bbsr typology of regions show that the pattern of internal migration has switched from suburbanisation in the 1990s to (re-)urbanisation in the 2000s (bbsr 2018b; gans 2017; the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 293 haußmann 2007; herfert/osterhage 2012; milbert/sturm 2016). however, there are pronounced differences between west and east germany (e.g. kontuly et al. 1997). in the east, the sub-urbanisation phase of the 1990s ended earlier than in the west, resulting in net migration for the largest cities becoming positive by the end of the 1990s (sander 2014; schlömer 2009). furthermore, recent studies suggest that the (re-)urbanisation phase has ended in germany and the pattern switched back to sub-urbanisation in the last few years (busch 2016; henger/oberst 2019). the continued growth in suburban movements has also been found in other western countries (florida 2017; frey 2017). following ravenstein (1885; 1889), one would argue that these shifts in migration patterns are related to variations in economic development across localities. indeed, the re-urbanisation in the 2000s seems to have been mainly driven by the rise of jobs in the service sector and the knowledge-based economy that tend to cluster in larger cities (gans 2017; geppert/gornig 2010; milbert/sturm 2016). however, the new phase of suburbanisation may be the result of economic counterforces that dampen internal migration into the cities, such as increased rents coupled with housing shortages (bbsr 2018a; florida 2017; henger/ oberst 2019). against this background, we aim to determine the impact of internal migration on the population distribution in germany and pay special attention to the changes over time and the shifts between urbanisation and sub-urbanisation over the period 1991 to 2017. this paper contributes to the literature by providing a longer-term perspective on internal migration at the county level within germany, and by applying the population density approach rather than a settlement typology. our data comprises a time-series dataset of annual inter-county migration fl ows for the years 1991 to 2017 based on data of the federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, which was compiled and adjusted for boundary changes by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr). to avoid the inaccuracies of existing settlement typologies, we analyse the impact of internal migration on the population distribution using the population density approach proposed by rees and kupiszewski (1999; see also rees et al. 2017). this allows us to capture the full range of the spatial distribution of population across the rural-urban continuum. the following section lays out the theoretical considerations and the third section outlines the data and methods. we then present the empirical results and conclude the paper with a summary and discussion of the main results. 2 theoretical assumptions following ravenstein (1885; 1889), we can think of two regularities – or “laws” – of migration that form the point of departure for this paper. first, economic reasons are an important factor for persons to move to economically wealthy regions. second, cities gain population through migration, while areas that are more rural lose population within the trend towards urbanisation. these two regularities feed into a key question that concerns population researchers and that is the focus of this pa• nico stawarz, nikola sander294 per: how do internal (and international) migration fl ows alter the spatial distribution of population across regions within a country? a key aspect of population redistribution is the association between migration and economic development. earlier work has suggested a relationship in which rising unemployment leads to higher outfl ows. economic migration models state that, under the assumption of full access to information and unrestricted mobility, internal migration plays a balancing role and tends to equalise regional disparities (e.g. harris/todaro 1970). however, more recent work concludes that migration fl ows do not reduce regional disparities but rather tend to intensify existing ones (greenwood 2014, 1975; krugman 1991). this may at least in part be due to changes in the spatial distribution of jobs and services. however, internal migration from poorer to richer regions may increase the welfare of the total population in a given country. since occupations in the service sector and knowledge-based economy have become more important for national economies, and those jobs tend to cluster in cities or economically dense localities, an increasing spatial concentration of economic activity can be observed (florida 2017; fritsch/stützer 2007; gans 2017; geppert et al. 2008). correspondingly, studies show a positive correlation between a region’s gdp and internal migration, as well as a positive relation between income potentials, business related services, creative industries and population development, while a high unemployment rate tends to dampen internal migration (birg 1974; decressin 1994; gans 2017). moreover, other theories argue that location-specifi c amenities (e.g. climate, diversity, cultural infrastructure) are important for the decision for a specifi c location (especially for education-related moves) (e.g. clark et al. 2002; florida 2002). in a nutshell, these theories assume that location-specifi c amenities are a crucial factor for urban development by attracting human capital and jobs or fi rms. however, storper and scott (2009) argue that even if amenities play a greater role, individuals are mainly attracted by the local economy. therefore, people are more likely to move out of regions with a weak economy regardless of the quality of life in that region (kawka/sturm 2006). for germany, geppert and gornig (2010) have shown a rising spatial concentration of jobs in the cities at the expense of jobs in more rural areas. moreover, the number of employees in the industry sector has decreased in the cities, while those in the service sector and in knowledge-based occupations have increased. in sum, one may conclude that the potential of internal migration to equalise spatial disparities cannot be confi rmed empirically. instead, studies demonstrate that movements between regions tend to intensify existing differences between localities (especially between urban and rural areas). we call this the disparity hypothesis. 2.1 the urban development model much of the earlier work on migration and regional development was based on the assumption that the process of spatial change is unidirectional, with only urban areas gaining in population through migration. however, we know that the way in which migration redistributes population is not unidirectional, and that periods of concentration may be interrupted by periods of de-concentration. the urban dethe impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 295 velopment model (e.g. geyer/kontuly 1993) describes the ebbs and fl ows in how internal migration alters the settlement structure. the model distinguishes between three main patterns: urbanisation, sub-urbanisation and counter-urbanisation (champion 2001). in simple terms, in the phase of urbanisation, cities exhibit positive rates of net migration and population gains (concentration) due to their positive economic development. if the monocentric structure of the city is overstrained (e.g. infrastructure, limited space, high costs), sub-urbanisation takes place and smaller neighbouring localities show positive net migration rates (intraregional decentralisation), while the net migration rates of the biggest cities decrease.1 in the fi nal stage, counter-urbanisation prevails and populations in the lowest density areas increase while the largest cities lose population due to internal migration. this cycle in the development of the settlement structure is observed in several countries, and also in west germany (champion 2001). on the contrary, east germany (the former gdr, where moving patterns where largely shaped by the central planning of housing) experienced urbanisation tendencies from the 1950s until the 1980s, followed by a strong sub-urbanisation period in the 1990s (mai/micheel 2008; sander 2018). the urban development model by geyer and kontuly (1993) suggests that after a cycle is completed a new one takes place. in line with this assumption, germany has shown a new phase of urbanisation since the late 1990s (buzar et al. 2007; gans 2017; haußmann 2007; herfert/osterhage 2012; milbert/sturm 2016). the key driving forces behind the urban revival are a rising number of jobs in the cities (e.g. knowledge based economy), an increased quality of life (gentrifi cation, more cultural opportunities and better infrastructures), an increased number of students, and the general demographic change (e.g. more single households and dual-earner households) as well as a new appreciation of city life (buzar et al. 2007; gans 2017; green 2018; siedentop 2008). however, more recent studies show that this urban revival has come to an end, and that the pattern has switched back to sub-urbanisation, mainly due to soaring rents and a growing housing shortage in the cities (busch 2016; florida 2017; henger/oberst 2019). in sum, from the urban development model we can draw two main conclusions: first, areas with lower population density also benefi t in specifi c phases from internal migration and not just those with the highest density. we call this the differential spatial development hypothesis. second, the disparity hypothesis must be revised in that internal migration reduces spatial disparities between neighbouring regions and leads to a better infrastructure between those (geyer/kontuly 1993). moreover, those regions with the lowest population density located far away from the largest cities as well as those regions with a weak economic structure tend to lose population through migration (milbert/sturm 2016). 1 already during the urbanisation phase, smaller cities in the hinterland show increasing net migration rates because individuals with high educational level and income want to improve their quality of life and thus move into more rural areas. • nico stawarz, nikola sander296 2.2 migration decision and age-specifi c internal migration fl ows the forces discussed in the previous section operate on the macro level. however, we know that the way in which migration alters the spatial distribution of population is ultimately shaped by the actions of individuals (esser 1996). in simple terms, internal migration fl ows are the result of individual decisions to move or not to move in search of utility maximisation (e.g. borjas et al. 1992; burda/hunt 2001; kratz/ brüderl 2013). hence, persons with high levels of education tend to migrate to regions with better labour market conditions or a higher income potential to maximise the returns on their educational investment (becker 1975). but, as kecskes (1994) argues, the decision to migrate is typically more complex and requires that individuals need to experience a desire for change or are dissatisfi ed with their current situation (see also adam et al. 2008; rossi 1980; schulz 2009). therefore, in a simple migration model, there is a trigger, which causes that individuals search for alternatives to alter the dissatisfying situation (mulder/hooimeijer 1999). if relocation is a potential alternative, the individuals subjectively evaluate different destinations based on the search radius, the cost for living space, infrastructures, job market, expected income, and their constraints (e.g. available income) (lee 1966). this process may lead to the decision to migrate. from this point of view, individuals may relocate to another region after becoming unemployed if there is no possibility to fi nd a new job in the region of current residence. further complicating the decision-making process, migration is not an isolated decision of an individual but a group decision (e.g. in families), in which the preferences of each single individual are to be considered (mincer 1978; stark/bloom 1985). from a life course perspective (e.g. elder 1978; mayer 2004; mulder/hooimeijer 1999), the preferences for a specifi c living environment as well as the opportunities and costs of relocation for individuals (or couples and families) change across the life course (e.g. birth of a child, becoming unemployed) (huinink 2005; kemper 1985; lersch 2014; mulder 1993). therefore, research on internal migration has identifi ed typical age-specifi c migration patterns (age-specifi c internal migration hypothesis), which are prevalent in a large number of countries, and can be explained by the underlying migration decisions (bernard et al. 2014; dittrich-wesbuer et al. 2008; milbert/sturm 2016; plane/jurjevich 2009; rossi 1980). young adults aged 18 to 29 have the highest propensity to migrate and tend to move towards urban areas for vocational training, to study or to establish their economic career. for young families (persons aged 30-49) it is more important to improve the quality and quantity of their living space and environment, and so they relocate to more rural localities in search for detached housing. older adults with stable occupational careers and older children living with them (ages 50-64) show the lowest spatial mobility rates. those who do move tend to favour rural destinations with lower living costs and/ or high amenities. persons aged 65 years and over tend to move to be closer to the family, e.g. because of widowhood, grand parenting or the need for institutional or “private” care (e.g. van diepen/mulder 2009). in this paper, we consider the life course perspective by studying the impact of age-specifi c migration patterns on population redistribution. the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 297 3 data and methods 3.1 data we use a time-series dataset of annual inter-county migration fl ows from the federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder for the years 1991 to 2017, which was compiled and adjusted for boundary changes by the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bbsr) (bbsr 2010). therefore the data provide the annual number of moves between i and j (e.g. from dresden to hamburg and vice versa) for all 401 counties (kreise) over a period of 27 years. since the patterns of internal migration differed signifi cantly between germans and foreigners in the years 2015 and 2016 due to high infl ows of refugees from the middle east, we look at each group separately. moreover, we differentiate between six age groups (<18, 18-24, 25-29, 30-49, 50-64, and 65 and over). we specify the population at risk of migration in a given county as the mid-year population. by drawing on county-level data for births, deaths, immigration and emigration, we distinguish the impact of internal migration from natural population change (births and deaths) and international migration (immigration minus emigration). we use the unemployment rate, gdp per capita and asking rents (angebotsmieten) measured at the county level to determine the association between internal migration and other contextual factors. unfortunately, there is a lack of data on rents at the county level in germany. we thus use asking rents compiled by the bbsr that are based on the commercial apartment listings from internet databases and newspapers as a proxy (bbsr 2016). the asking rents provide a current picture of the cost of living space because they only capture the prices of newly built fl ats and of older fl ats that were re-rented to a new tenant. 3.2 methods to provide an overall picture of the impact of internal migration in germany on the population redistribution over the period 1991 to 2017, we use the crude migration intensity (cmi) and the migration effectiveness index (mei) (bell et al. 2002; rees et al. 2017). the cmi indicates the percentage or level of migration, defi ned as the ratio of moves (m) to the population at risk (p) the mei (fi rst proposed by shryock/siegel 1975) captures the imbalance between internal migration fl ows and counter-fl ows, and therefore indicates whether internal migration is an effi cient mechanism of population redistribution. the mei can assume values between 0 and 100, while high values indicate an asymmetry of internal migration fl ows, which means that some regions gain population and others lose. low values result from closely balanced internal migration fl ows that have a comparatively small effect on population redistribution. the mei is computed as follows: (1) • nico stawarz, nikola sander298 where di is the total infl ow to zone i, and oi is the total outfl ow from zone i. moreover, we also computed the mean distance moved in each year by using the euclidian distance between the geometric centres of counties created using arcgis. to consider both inter-county and intra-county fl ows, we use the method proposed by batty (1976).2 it is assumed that areas are circular and that the population is evenly distributed within these (for a further discussion see stillwell and thomas 2016). we computed the intra-zonal distance for a specifi c zone (dii) as follows: where ri is the radius of a circle that corresponds to the area (ai) of zone i. to determine the effect of internal migration on the population redistribution in a specifi c region, we use the net migration rate that shows the percentage of population gains or losses due to internal migration. the net migration rate for region i, ni is computed as follows: where di are the total infl ows, oi the total outfl ows, and pi is the population of zone i. given that the population is not evenly distributed across counties, we need to take into account the settlement structure. in germany, the settlement classifi cation of the bbsr is commonly used for this purpose. it distinguishes between largest cities, cities, hinterland and rural areas (milbert 2015).3 however, this classifi cation does not adequately capture the complexity of the settlement system. for example, the city of flensburg is defi ned as a rural area, but it is indeed a middle-sized city in a peripheral rural environment with around 85,900 inhabitants, and therefore should be rather classifi ed as urban (bmvi 2018). a further limitation of the bbsr classifi cation is that it lacks cross-national comparability. for these reasons, and because the classifi cation does not capture the full-range of the urban-rural continuum (amcoff 2006; bocquier 2005; buettner 2015), we use the population density as a proxy to distinguish between urban and rural areas. this measure has been suggested by rees and kupiszewski (1999), but has thus far not been used to study internal migration in germany (see also rees et al. 2017). we calculate the population density (2) 2 however, both the corrected distances moved as well as the uncorrected lead to similar conclusions about the change of the distances moved over time, but differ in their level. 3 we also conducted analyses using the bbsr area classifi cation, which lead to similar results as reported below. (3) and (4) (5) the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 299 by dividing the number of inhabitants (pij) in given zone i and year j by the area (ai) measured in km² and then take the base-10 log of population density.4 we use simple but effective linear regression models to determine the association between population density and internal migration (rees et al. 2017). to estimate the impact for several years, we use random effects (re) models, which consider autocorrelation over time (rabe-hesketh/skrondal 2012).5 we do not consider any covariates because our analyses are mainly of descriptive interest. the slope of the regression line shows how internal migration (y) and population density (x) are related. for example, a positive b-coeffi cient indicates a positive relation between the net migration rate and the log of population density, which means that more densely populated regions gain more population through internal migration compared to lower densely populated localities. however, given that a linear association may lead to biased results, we also used cubic slopes to model patterns that are more complex. 4 results we fi rst give an overall picture of the impact of internal migration in germany on the population redistribution over the period 1991 to 2017. figure 1 shows the crude migration intensity (cmi), the migration effectiveness index (mei), and the mean distance moved for the period 1991 to 2017. the cmi shows that about 3 percent (mean across all years x̅ = 3.25) of the population in germany moves across county boundaries each year (fig. 1a). the values were relatively stable until 2011 and increased thereafter to almost 4 percent. however, this is largely due to the high immigration numbers recorded in these years, and the systematic redistribution of refugees across municipalities. compared with other countries such as finland, australia or denmark, the population in germany is only moderately mobile (rees et al. 2017). note that, since the number of spatial units (i.e. the maup) affects the cmi, this limits comparisons between countries, and observed differences should be interpreted with care. however, using more advanced measures such as the acmi proposed by bell et al. (2015) yields a similar pattern with germany being a moderately mobile country compared to finland, australia or denmark. the impact of migration is also modest when considering its effectiveness in redistributing population. the mei is relatively small across the entire period (x̅ = 7.97), indicating rather balanced migration fl ows in germany. the mei values decreased over the observed 4 however, the population density measure also has its shortcomings. it is based on the size of regions without considering function, land use and infrastructure. furthermore, the usual resident population is used without considering daytime populations (i.e. commuting) (brenner/ schmid 2014; coombes/raybold 2001; parr 2007). 5 moreover, we also estimated models that consider spatial autocorrelation (anselin 2009). these models (not reported) yield very similar estimates and lead us to the same conclusions as the models shown here. • nico stawarz, nikola sander300 period, except for the last few years (fig. 1b). the higher values in the 1990s are the result of the unbalanced migration fl ows between east and west germany after reunifi cation, which led to population losses in the eastern part of germany. the decline of the mei since 1991 shows that migration fl ows have become more balanced over time. the peak in the years 2014 to 2016 is – as shown above – a consequence of the high immigration numbers in these years and the distinctive internal migration patterns of newly arrived foreigners. when comparing the effectiveness across countries, germany shows lower mei values than spain, canada or russia (rees et al. 2017), suggesting a modest role of migration in population redistribution within germany and a relatively stable settlement system. as the settlement pattern and the high level of development in germany suggest, the mean migration distance is relatively short. when considering both intra and inter-county fl ows, the mean distance moved across all years is 68 km. in the early 1990s, the mean distance was higher due to the longer-distance moves from east to west germany. this is also true for the early 2000s, when east-west migration peaked for a second time. in the late 1990s, the emerging sub-urbanisation trend meant that the distance decreased, given that people moved from cities to neighbouring counties (see fig. 1c). this also holds for the urbanisation phase in the late 2000s. overall, we see a constant decline of the distance moved since the early 2000s, thus indicating – as busch (2016) noted – a prevalence of movements from the cities to closely surrounding counties. in a next step, we look at population density as a proxy for settlement structure. figure 2 shows the spatial variation in population density in 2017. the map illustrates that the population density seems to be a good proxy for classifying counties. cities like munich, berlin, hamburg, and leipzig are clearly indicated as densely settled areas and rural localities in the north of bavaria, mecklenburg-west pomerania, schleswig holstein and brandenburg show low density values. the densely settled areas in the ruhr district and the region of cologne, bonn and frankfurt are clearly visible. however, the counties surrounding berlin have a low density, although the city has spread across county boundaries into brandenburg. however, this is more fig. 1: crude migration intensity, migration effectiveness index, and distance moved, 1991-2017, for the total population and for germans only 0 1 2 3 4 5 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 years crude migration intensity (cmi) (a) migration intensity total germans 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 years migration effectiveness index (mei) (b) migration effectiveness 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 years distance (km) (c) average distance moved source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 301 fig. 2: classifi cation of counties using population density in germany berlin wiesbaden düsseldorf hannover hamburg schwerin münchen kiel dresden bremen potsdam stuttgart mainz magdeburg erfurt saarbrücken 1,56 to under 2 36,3 to under 100 2 to under 2,2 100 to under 150 2,2 to under 2,5 150 to under 300 2,5 to under 3 300 to under 1.000 3 to under 3,67 1.000 to under 4.670 logarithmised population density, 2017 • flensburg source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations, © geobasis-de/bkg (2017) • nico stawarz, nikola sander302 a problem of the size and shape of the counties (i.e. the maup) rather than a problem of the density measure itself. figure 3 shows the distribution of the log of population density in 1991 and 2017 using kernel density estimates. following the oecd (2007), which defi nes localities with fewer than d = 150 inhabitants/km² (log(d) = 2.18) as rural and areas with more than d = 300 inhabitants/km² (log(d) = 2.48) as urban, we see that the distribution peaks within the rural category. the means of the population density in 1991 and 2017 (x̅ d1991 = 2.43 and x̅ d2017 = 2.44) and the kernel estimates show that the distributions are close together. both, less and higher densely settled areas have become more prevalent in 2017 compared to 1991. so, how does the density measure compare to the standard settlement classifi cation by the bbsr? in fi gure 4, we plott the average population density by the bbsr settlement types. overall, the density measure is in line with the bbsr classifi cation. however, for 32 counties, the density measure differs from the bbsr classifi cation. for example, flensburg, bayreuth, and amberg are classifi ed as rural and schweinfurt, bamberg, eisenach, frankfurt (oder) as hinterland. based on the density measure, these counties are classifi ed as urban areas.6 fig. 3: smoothed probability distributions of population density for the years 1991 and 2017 19912017 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) probability distribution (kernel density) source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations, bandwidth 0.29 6 we also conducted some of the analyses presented in the study employing the bbsr typology, which lead to similar conclusions. the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 303 in a next step, we examine how net internal migration rates relate to population density. we adopt the approach used by rees et al. (2017) to model the relationship between rates of net migration and the logarithm of population density by estimating linear regression slopes for selected years (see fig. 5). for 1994 we fi nd a negative relation (b = -0.74) between the net migration rate and population density. the estimates show that on average localities with densities between 1.5 and 2.5 gain population from internal migration while those with higher density lose. the confi dence intervals indicate that this relationship does not hold for all regions, suggesting that there is some degree of variation among regions with similar population density. in 1994, populations in more rural areas increased due to internal migration, while populations in urban areas shrank, also referred to as the sub-urbanisation phase of the 1990s in germany. for 2006, we see a positive relation of population density and internal migration (b = 0.46), which is in line with the re-urbanisation phase that prevailed in the 2000s. in 2017, the relationship between net migration rates and population density (b = -0.18) changed again, suggesting the beginning of a new sub-urbanisation phase in that people move to lower density regions. figure 6 summarises the shifts between sub-urbanisation and (re-)urbanisation across time. here, we show the relationship between net migration rates and population density over the period 1991 to 2017 using random effects (re) models with interaction effects. note that negative coeffi cients indicate population gains due to internal migration for lower density regions, while the same is true for higher density regions in the case of positive coeffi cients. in the early 1990s, we fi nd a weak relationship between population density and internal migration, which may fig. 4: bbsr typology and population density in 2017 n=96 n=102 n=137 n=661.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 rural areas hinterland cities largest cities log(population density) source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations • nico stawarz, nikola sander304 be due to high volumes of movements from rural areas in the east to cities in west germany. in the midand late 1990s, sub-urbanisation was characterised by population gains in rural areas. in the early 2000s, the weak relation between net migration and population density indicates that the pattern switched back to urbanisation, with population gains in high density areas in the late 2000s. after 2011, the coeffi cients decrease showing that the re-urbanisation ended, and since 2014, we fi nd an increasingly negative relation between net migration rates and population density, displaying population gains in lower density regions. the high immigration to germany between 2014 and 2016 blurs this effect a bit. to take variations in migration behaviour across the life course into account, we calculate the coeffi cients for the relationship between net migration rates and (the log of) population density for the period 1991 to 2017 for six age groups also deploying re models (see fig. 7). across the entire period, the relationship is strongest for those aged 18-24 years, followed by those aged 25-29 years. for all other ages, the relationship is much weaker, suggesting that movements among young adults have the strongest impact on population redistribution. for all age groups except those aged 18-24 years, the pattern over time resembles the pattern shown in figure 6 for all ages. for young adults aged 18-24 years, the coeffi cients are strongly positive throughout the entire period. migration among this age group redistributes population from rural to urban areas and thus clearly affects the spatial distribution of population. however, the impact has become slightly weaker with the end of the re-urbanisation phase around the year 2011. focusing on the labour market entrants fig. 5: net internal migration rates by population density (regression slope and 95 percent confi dence intervals) 1994 2017 2006 -1.2 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) net internal migration rate (%) source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 305 (25 to 29 year olds, fig. 7c), there is a weaker relationship between net migration rates and population density compared to the 18 to 24 year olds. this may be the result of jobs being more equally distributed across space compared to apprenticeships or universities. families (under 18 and 30-49 year olds, fig. 7a and d) usually show internal migration patterns towards lower density localities. interestingly, in the re-urbanisation phase this relationship is weaker, indicating that families move more often to or stay in higher density areas. the relationship between internal migration and population density for those aged 50 and over is weakly negative (fig. 7e and f). in sum, we fi nd that the way in which internal migration alters the spatial distribution of population varies by age, with migration among younger adults towards densely populated areas having a stronger impact than movements among older adults to less densely populated regions. in a next step, we determine the impact of internal migration on population redistribution relative to the impact of international migration and natural population change. using net rates for all three components of change, we show their relationship with the log of population density for selected years deploying linear regression models (see fig. 8). years were selected to best capture the sub-urbanisation phase (in the 1990s), the transition phase from sub-urbanisation to re-urbanisation (early 2000s), the re-urbanisation phase (mid of the 2000s to the early 2010s), and the “new” sub-urbanisation phase (since the mid of the 2010s). the results show a nonlinear relationship with population density, especially for natural population fig. 6: relationship between net internal migration rates and population density from 1991 to 2017 (b-coeffi cients and 95 percent confi dence intervals) -1.2 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations • nico stawarz, nikola sander306 change. given the nonlinearity, we calculate cubic relations between net rates and the log of population density.7 our results show that in 1994, the relationship with international migration was positive across all regions, while the relationship with natural population change was negative (see fig. 8a). for internal migration, the sub-urbanisation trend at that time meant that the direction of the relationship varied strongly between low and highly dense regions. in 2003, the pattern for internal and international migration shifted, while the coeffi cients for natural population change were similar to those observed in 1994. for internal and international migration, we see that coeffi cients increase and change from negative to positive as population density rises. regions with a density below 2.2 lose population, mainly as a result of negative net internal migration rates and negative natural population change, whereas populations increase in regions with a density above 2.2 due to positive migration rates overcompensating for negative natural population change. figure 8c shows that in 2006 the impact of international migration was almost non-existent due to its very low fig. 7: relationship between net internal migration rates and population density from 1991 to 2017 for different age groups (b-coeffi cients and 95 percent confi dence intervals) source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations 7 note that we also checked nonlinear relations for all other analyses for which a linear relation is assumed and which lead to similar conclusions. -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (b) 18 24 -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (c) 25 29 -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (a) under 18 -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (e) 50 64 -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (f) 65 and over -4 -2 2 4 6 8 0 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2017 years b-coefficients (d) 30 49 the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 307 intensity, whereas the impact of internal migration became much more pronounced compared to previous years and caused a signifi cant redistribution of population from less dense to more densely settled regions. in 2017, the pattern changed again with international migration causing population gains especially in highly dense areas (see fig. 8d). the impact of natural population change has become more pronounced compared to previous years. the impact of internal migration has become weaker and coeffi cients are now negative for highly dense areas, confi rming the beginning of a new phase of sub-urbanisation mentioned earlier. it is also worth fig. 8: net internal migration, natural population change and net international migration by population density source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations internal natural international -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) net rates (%) (a) 1994 internal natural international -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) net rates (%) (b) 2003 internal natural international -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) net rates (%) (c) 2006 internal natural international -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 log(population density) net rates (%) (d) 2017 • nico stawarz, nikola sander308 noting that some highly dense regions gained population due to a positive natural population change in 2017, somewhat counterbalancing the negative effect of internal migration for these regions. in a fi nal step, we determine the relationship between internal net migration rates, unemployment rates, gdp per capita, and rents for the years 2006 and 2017 (gdp was only available until 2016 at the time of writing). we use quadratic and cubic terms to visualise the relationship estimated by linear regression models. figure 9a shows that areas with an unemployment rate of 9 percent and above tend to experience negative net migration rates in 2006. this relation is weaker in 2017. however, if only german citizens are considered, the relationship is similar to that observed in 2006. furthermore, while there was a positive relationship between gdp per capita and net migration in 2006, meaning the higher the gdp the higher the net gain, this relationship is reversed and weaker in 2016 (see fig. 9b). this may be a result of the shift in internal migration patterns from re-urbanisation to suburbanisation. while in 2006 movements were directed towards high density areas with high gdp, in 2016 people were pushed out of the cities by soaring housing costs. indeed, the relationship between rents and internal migration changed noticeably between 2006 and 2017. in 2006, the relationship was positive, indicating that regions with high rents recorded high net gains. in 2017, this relationship was negative (see fig. 9c), suggesting that higher rents and limited housing availability in the cities were strongly associated with the shift in internal migration fl ows that we observed since 2011. 5 summary and discussion this paper examined the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany. we used a time-series dataset of inter-county migration fl ows in germany for the period 1991 to 2017. moreover, we employed the population density approach proposed by rees and kupiszewski (1999; see also rees et al. 2017) to demonstrate that population density is a suitable proxy measure for settlefig. 9: contextual factors infl uencing net internal migration source: federal statistical offi ce of germany and the statistical offi ces of the länder, spatial monitoring of the bbsr, own calculations 2006 2016 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0 9.0 9.5 10.0 10.5 11.0 11.5 12.0 12.5 log(gdp in euro per capita) net internal migration rate (%) (b) gdp 2006 2017 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 rents in euro per m² net internal migration rate (%) (c) rents 2006 2017 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 unemployment rate net internal migration rate (%) (a) unemployment the impact of internal migration on the spatial distribution of population in germany ... • 309 ment type, thus providing a valid alternative to the commonly used bbsr typology. besides, the population density approach avoids the problem of continual changes in the settlement type classifi cation. the results show that around 3 percent of the population move across counties in germany each year. while internal migration was modestly effective in redistributing population during the 1990s, its impact declined over time, presumably as a consequence of the decline in longer-distance migration from east to west germany (e.g. heiland 2004; sander 2014). we have demonstrated that internal (and international) migration plays an important role in shaping the distribution of population across space. even if internal migration fl ows are currently directed to less densely settled areas, our results show that it is not the remote rural areas that benefi t from this trend, but the relatively densely populated areas within the greater regions around munich, frankfurt and cologne. focusing on the distance moved we fi nd that distances tended to be smaller during periods of sub-urbanisation and greater during periods of re-urbanisation. high volumes of east-west migration in the early 1990s and the early 2000s also seem to affect migration distances. this trend coincides with the shift in the relationship between internal net migration rates and population density over the same period. in the 2000s, the results show population gains due to internal migration in the highest density areas (re-urbanisation), this pattern switched back to sub-urbanisation and population gains for lower dense areas. looking at age patterns, our results clearly show that young adults are the key driver of the re-urbanisation phase. therefore, we fi nd strong positive relations of population density and net internal migration rates of the 18 to 29 year olds. for all other age groups (under 18, 30 to 49, 50 to 64 and 65 and over) the analysis shows a negative relation, which means that moves are directed to areas with lower densities. these age specifi c profi les of internal migration are in line with those found in previous work (e.g. bernardi 2014; milbert/ sturm 2016). however, families and older adults also contribute to the shifts between suband re-urbanisation due to altered living preferences and the new attractiveness of the cities (e.g. florida 2002; storper/scott 2009). therefore, we fi nd a reduced negative relation of population density and net internal migration rate for the period in which re-urbanisation takes place. moreover, our results indicate that high rents and limited housing availability in the cities are key drivers of the recent shift from urbanisation to sub-urbanisation. of course, our study also has limitations. first, the analyses were done at the county level, and, as discussed earlier for the case of berlin, this certainly biases our results due to the modifi able areal unit problem (maup). therefore, similar analyses with smaller spatial units (e.g. at the municipality level) and with other spatial classifi cations are needed. second, we did not consider covariates in the regression models, which is a fruitful avenue for future work. third, since the macro-level data used here provide no information on the drivers of migration at the individual level, we used age as a proxy measure for the reason for moving. therefore, data with more contextual information (e.g. the level of education) is needed to study internal migration in more detail. • nico stawarz, nikola sander310 in summary, our study highlights – more than 120 years after ravenstein (1885, 1889) published his two seminal papers – the importance of internal migration for shaping the population distribution in germany. first, in line with the literature, we fi nd that younger adults are more prone to migrate, and that their movements are a key driver of change in the age-distribution across space. this means that, on average, populations become younger in high density localities and older in regions with lower population density. second, in line with ravenstein, our results show a clear relationship between internal migration and economic wealth. however, this relationship is complex and varies over time. while internal migration in the 2000s seemed to be labour market oriented (i.e. a dominance of movements to places with high gdp per capita), the pattern in the 2010s became more motivated by other factors due to increased rents in the cities (i.e. a pattern of short-distance moves to places with lower gdp). third, we fi nd mixed results regarding the unidirectional trend towards urbanisation that ravenstein noted. we fi nd periods in which more rural areas gain population, while in other periods the same is true for cities. however, as the urban development model (geyer/kontuly 1993) proposes, we fi nd that the change between sub-urbanisation and urbanisation also leads to stronger migration links between cities and their surroundings. we conclude by identifying aspects in need of further research. the approach proposed by plane and jurjevich (2009) should be used in the german context to study migration fl ows up and down the urban hierarchy. furthermore, given that our results suggest that densely settled regions exhibited positive natural population change in recent years, the impact of migration on regional fertility rates needs to be studied in more detail. lastly, since internal migration changes the distribution of the population over space, but not all migrants change their place of work upon moving internally, further work should examine how internal migration affects commuting fl ows at the regional level. acknowledgements we are grateful to antonia milbert for kindly providing the data on migration fl ows, 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stawarz (), dr. nikola sander. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: nico.stawarz@bib.bund.de, nikola.sander@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/stawarz/stawarz.html https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/sander/sander.html published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti abstract: after the eastern expansion of the european union (eu), a large number of emigrants left their home countries to work in economically better developed western member states. hungary followed this eu emigration trend with a certain time lag. however, the rising number of emigrants caused structural problems in the domestic labour market. a comprehensive examination of intra-eu remittances as one of the major determinants of migration has been outside the scope of recent research activity. the data from the hungarian microcensus survey and the fi rst hungarian household survey focusing on the topic of remittances can provide a valuable case study of intra-eu private transfer fl ows. the aims of this study are twofold. on the one hand we intend to provide empirical evidence for the major factors that determine remittance propensity by calculating probit regressions. on the other hand, ols regressions are calculated in order to introduce variables which are associated with money transfers. these results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of the new economics of labour migration (nelm) to identify the underlying motivations for remittances. the most important fi ndings are that older men with vocational school education have the highest remittance propensity, and the likelihood of sending private support is higher among short-term migrants. as the key factors, the income of the sender person is positively associated with the sum of money fl ows, while the income of the receiving household is negatively associated. within the theoretical framework of nelm, these results favour the dominance of altruistic motives, since supporting the household members who remain behind seems to be the major driving force. however, when intentions of returning home are considered in the models, it seems that self-interest might also play a role as a driver of remittances. within this study, the main focus was on the characteristics of the senders, meaning that a possible fi eld of future research could be an examination of these questions from the perspective of remittance receiver households. keywords: labour-market · remittances · european union · migration policy comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 87-114 (date of release: 04.03.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-04en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-04en1 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti88 1 introduction as globalisation increases and geographical distances can now be bridged easily as a result of the dramatic expansion of travel infrastructure, the economic, social and cultural effects of international migration are the focus of attention in several countries. resulting money fl ows sent by migrants – remittances – are also gaining increasing attention in research projects. remittances are more stable over time compared to foreign direct investments (fdi) or foreign fi nancial aid (offi cial development assistance – oda) and can have a signifi cant general impact on poverty (acosta et. al. 2008; koc/onan 2006; koechlin/leon 2007; ratha/mohapatra 2010; sirkeci et al. 2012) by contributing to investment and development in the countries of origin (durand et al. 1996; leon-ledesma/piracha 2004). however, the phenomenon of remittances is much more controversial, and some researchers tend to focus rather on the potential which lies in these money fl ows instead of their actual benefi ts (e.g. de haas 2012). several studies emphasize that, besides the aforementioned advantages, remittances can increase the volume of emigration as well as the level of inequality within the population in migrants’ countries of origin through the selection characteristics of emigration. this means that those households which are able to cover the high initial costs of sending a family member abroad will receive additional income from this source, while the relative deprivation of the poorer households which cannot afford emigration will tend to grow (massey 1988; stark/ taylor 1989; taylor 1999). according to eurostat,1 the number of citizens from eastern member states in economically better developed western countries rose dramatically from 1.5 million in 2004 to 8.1 million in 2017 in europe since the start of the expansion of the union in 2004. so far, the volume of emigration has been the primary centre of public and academic attention in eastern eu member states, and economic motivational factors such as remittances have been somewhat neglected. in hungary the increase in emigration lagged behind that of other countries in the region and started to grow signifi cantly only after 2011 (hárs 2016). several projects were launched to obtain a clearer picture of this, one of the most notable being the international seemigproject2 led by the hungarian central statistical offi ce (hcso) and the hungarian demographic research institute (hdri). the results of the project survey (blaskó 2014) showed that approximately 350,000 hungarians were living abroad permanently in 2013, and they were younger and better educated than the average person in hungary (blaskó/gödri 2014, 2016), nonetheless the educational composition dif1 we used data from the eurostat database (downloaded: 13 october 2018) and we considered the number of citizens from eastern eu countries (bulgaria, czech republic, estonia, hungary, latvia, lithuania, poland, romania, slovenia and slovakia) in certain western eea countries (austria, belgium, denmark, finland, germany, iceland, ireland, greece, spain, france, italy, liechtenstein, luxembourg, the netherlands, norway, portugal, sweden, switzerland and the united kingdom). 2 “seemig – managing migration in south east europe” as part of the south east europe programme. remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 89 fers signifi cantly among the main target countries. people who are relatively young and more highly qualifi ed leave the country for the united kingdom, while those leaving for austria and germany are mainly single men with a vocational educational background (hárs/simon 2016). there is also differentiation concerning the length of stay: hungarians moving to the uk usually live there for longer periods, while emigrants in austria and germany stay less than a year, in general. estimations based on recent ess mirror statistics3 and a microcensus survey showed that approximately 460,000 hungarian citizens resided abroad in 2016 (dickmann/ligeti 2018). the aforementioned studies also revealed that recent emigration caused issues in several fi elds in hungary, e.g. labour shortages in certain economic sectors (hárs/simon 2017), and this might be the case in other eastern european countries as well. financial fl ows like remittances sent by emigrants could also represent an even more ambiguous fi eld of migration studies due to the diffi culties of collecting sensitive income-related information which is comprehensive and realistic. in order to overcome these challenges, a two-stage household data collection process was performed in hungary concerning remittances, the results of which might yield important conclusions for other countries in the region as well. the international migration panel of the large-sample microcensus 2016, followed by a remittancespecifi c household survey, was possibly a unique attempt in the region to obtain a clear picture of fi nancial fl ows of intra-eu migrants. our intention in this study is to contribute to the academic research on remittances within the european union by providing evidence for the determining factors of remittance propensity of hungarians abroad and the sum of money fl ows. on the basis of the results we also try to identify the motives behind private transfers using the theoretical framework of the new economics of labour migration (nelm). since previous data collections showed that there are major differences between those who leave the country for more than a year (younger and more highly qualifi ed people usually move to the united kingdom) and temporary emigrants (mainly older men with vocational school education leave for austria and germany), we further examine differences between shortand long-term emigrants. this is also important in the light of the fi ndings of several studies described below which concluded that remittance habits change over time. although only cross-sectional data were at our disposal, the examination of temporary and permanent emigrants allowed us to address some of the changes in remittance habits. the surveys analysed provide comprehensive data on international migration and remittance fl ows, therefore such an examination can also serve as a background for further research not just in hungary, but also across all eastern european eu member states. after presenting the main theoretical concepts and literature concerning remittances, we briefl y introduce the characteristics of the data sets used and the meth3 based on immigration data of the member states of the european statistical system (switzerland, norway, liechtenstein, iceland, turkey and eu-28 countries except cyprus, malta and spain). • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti90 ods applied. this description is followed by a presentation of the main results, while the fi nal chapter draws conclusions with a focus on public policy implications. 2 literature overview the role of remittances as a factor for inducing and sustaining emigration, as well as their contribution to the development of migrants’ countries of origin has been a matter of discussions for decades. among the major theoretical concepts of migration, the topic might be expressed most strongly in the nelm on the micro (household) level (stark/bloom 1985). the nelm argues that the migration decision is part of a family strategy to minimise risks and raise and secure income, while remittances help to set in motion a “development dynamic” in migrants’ countries of origin (taylor 1999). most theoretical debates on determinants of remittances are based on the opposing concepts of altruistic vs. self-interest motives. in their fundamental work, lucas/stark (1985) placed remittance motivations in a range from pure altruism to pure self-interest. between these two distinct positions lies the motivation of tempered altruism or enlightened self-interest, where remittances are one element in a self-enforcing arrangement between migrants and the household members who have remained behind. in these contractual arrangements it is the sending family which usually covers the initial costs of migration and daily expenses in the host country during the job-seeking period, but later, remittances are expected from the migrant in compensation for this initial support (massey 1990; piché 2013; stark/ lucas 1988). the analysis of remittance effects within the process of migration has so far mainly focussed on money fl ows to less developed countries (e.g. licuanan et al. 2015; orozco et al. 2005), and several studies have attempted to identify the determinant factors of remittance propensity or the sum of transfers. some researchers followed a macro-level concept, mainly using balance of payments (bop) data, while the other approach examines the topic based on micro-level household surveys. on the macro-level, studies found evidence for the relationship between remittances and macro-determinants like government expenditures (hathroubi/aloui 2016), the economic output of the country sending remittance (akkoyunlu/kholodilin 2008) or receiving it (vargas-silva 2008). as for remittances to hungary, recent studies analysed world bank (kajdi 2016) or eurostat balance of payments (bop) data (csortos/kóczián 2017). based on the latter data source, temporary migrants who left hungary for less than a year had an income of 3.2 billion euros in 2018 (“compensation of employees” in the bop), while those who migrated permanently (i.e. for at least one year, “current personal transfers” in bop) sent more than 900 million euros in 2018 (eurostat 2019). however, it is important to note that data in the “compensation of employees” row in the bop only refer to potential remittances, but it does not mean that they are actually transferred to household members who remain behind, since this row captures gross incomes (csortos/kóczián 2017). these numbers therefore also include taxes, consumption and savings, for remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 91 example, besides the amounts sent to the country of origin, which can result in bias when using them for analysing remittance fl ows. in the case of hungary, the number of short-term migrants exceeds the number of those who left the country for more than a year, meaning that a signifi cant proportion of remittance-related bop data (i.e. “compensation of employees”) refers to the gross income of these people instead of the money they send home. another issue with macro-data is that mirror statistics are also used in the calculation of bop data in order to estimate the number of hungarian emigrants. however, since large numbers of hungarian nationals born outside hungary also possess hungarian citizenship (650,000 persons by 2015 according to hcso 2017), it is hard to capture only those migrants who left hungary instead of other – usually neighbouring – countries. this means that some of the registered hungarian citizens emigrating to germany, for instance, might in reality come from countries other than hungary, and thus presumably do not send their transfers to hungary. on the micro level, some surveys intended to identify the background motivations for remittances. cox et al. (1998) tested the two competing hypotheses of altruistic and exchange-type motivations for private income transfers. results showed a positive relationship between recipient income and transfer amounts, which supports mainly exchange-type motivations. nevertheless, evidence from a longitudinal canadian (unheim/rowlands 2012) and a chinese (cai 2003) survey showed that, alongside other factors such as age, the income of the sender also has a positive relationship with the sum of money fl ows in line with altruistic motivations. in contrast to the aforementioned studies, holst/schrooten (2006), based on data from germany, found no relationship between remittance propensity and income, while the correspondence between the amount of the transfer and the level of income proved to be signifi cant only for low-income individuals. a possible explanation for the diverging results in the relationship between remittances and income is that it is not linear over time (cox et al. 2004), i.e. migrants’ attitude towards supporting the household members who remain can change during the years spent abroad. besides altruism, purchasing insurance through remittances can also be an important driving factor of migrants’ behaviour, as mexican data, for instance, prove (amuedo-dorantes/pozo 2006). this is especially important for those who are not registered employees, thus their income risks are higher. other studies aim to reveal the determining factors behind the amount of private transfers. the diffi culties in obtaining a clear picture are highlighted by bollard et al. (2009), for instance, who examined 14 surveys from 11 oecd countries, but found no clear connection between migrants’ educational levels and their remittance propensity. however, a strong positive relationship was identifi ed between the educational level and the money sent home. analysis of italian silc survey data showed that most migrants transfer fi nancial aid to household members in the country of origin, which indicates the importance of remittances within the migration process. nevertheless, eastern european workers tend to send less home than migrants from third countries outside of eu. the results further confi rmed the hypothesis that the probability of not supporting the family in the country of origin is twice as high in the case of migrants with higher education (busetta et al. 2016). this is in line • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti92 with descriptive data from a survey on macedonian migrants which show that the remittance propensity is highest among those performing blue-collar work and with a secondary education (roberts et al. 2008). evidence from surveys on emigrants from ukraine (ambrosetti et al. 2014) and moldova (pinger 2010) suggest that remittance propensity and the amount of transfers is higher in the case of older migrants. the latter study also showed that those with a higher educational level and with an intention to return in the near future tend to send more money. the role of the time spent abroad is also highlighted by czaika/spray (2013), who found evidence for a positive relationship between private transfers and age, education and male migrants, but emphasized the nonlinear remittance trajectory over time. studies revealed that short-term migrants tend to send higher amounts (cai 2003; simkova/langhamrova 2015), which is also in accordance with the results of dustmann/mestres (2010) who presented evidence for the higher remittance propensity among short-term migrants. concerning hungary, the seemig survey was among the fi rst micro-level attempts to measure remittance propensity. it showed that almost one-third of hungarian emigrants regularly support their household members in the country of origin (blaskó/gödri 2016). nevertheless, before 2017 no specifi c survey was performed aimed at gaining a detailed insight into the personal fi nancial transfers from other countries to hungary. based on the results of previous international researches, we intend to test the following hypotheses. as unheim/rowlands (2012) highlighted, most existing evidence supports a positive relationship between the migrant’s income and the remittance sum, and thus we expect the same to apply in the case of hungaryl. cox et al. (2004) found a negative association between the amount of private transfers and the receiving households’ income, although this relationship is not linear, which is likely to be the case in hungary as well. on the basis of these results we assume that altruistic motivations dominate in remittances from hungarian emigrants i.e. in the case of senders who have altruistic motivations, the relationship between the amount of the remittance and the sender’s income is positive, while a negative association can be identifi ed with the receiving households’ income (hypothesis 1). regarding the determinants of remittances, the studies highlighted suggest that younger migrants with a higher educational level tend to have a lower remittance propensity and send less (hypothesis 2.). this may be the case in hungary, too, due to the different socio-demographic background of hungarian emigrant groups. as described in the next chapter, hungarian emigrants can be roughly divided into two main categories: older blue-collar workers moving to austria and germany for a short period in order to gain higher income, and younger, better qualifi ed people leaving hungary for longer periods, mainly to the uk. based on the experiences presented in the international literature and the descriptive data of hungarian emigrants we also expect short-term migrants to remit more (hypothesis 3), thus we calculate separate models for temporary and permanent emigrants. remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 93 3 data and methods previous analyses showed evidence of the advantages of using surveys in the fi eld of international migration (brown et al. 2014; fawcett/arnold 1987; gibson/mckenzie 2017), and in the present study we use the data from two hungarian household data collections: the microcensus and the family transfers survey. the microcensus survey was carried out by the hungarian central statistical offi ce (hcso) between 1 october and 8 november 2016. the main purpose of microcensuses – to update population data between two censuses – has become less signifi cant in many countries since traditional census surveys have been replaced with data from administrative sources. similar to the census in 2011, the microcensus 2016 was also prescribed by law, and participation by all household members at selected addresses was mandatory. a special feature of the microcensus 2016 was that the sample size was larger than ever, covering approximately 10 percent of households, which meant a total of 440,000 addresses in 2,148 localities, and a total number of 840,000 personal questionnaires. furthermore, fi ve supplementary questionnaires were added, one of which covered the topic of international migration. in addition to the usual microcensus questionnaires, each respondent was asked to complete one of the fi ve different supplementary questionnaires on a voluntary basis. the supplementary questionnaire on international migration was fi lled in by a total of 41,000 respondents. the questions referred to different migrant groups, i.e. respondents were asked about their future intentions to leave the country, former experiences abroad as well as household members currently living abroad. in the case of respondents currently residing abroad or with former migratory experience, a question4 was included concerning remittance propensity. to complement microcensus data, in 2017 may the central bank of hungary organised a specifi c household survey (entitled “family transfers”). the survey was carried out for the fi rst time in hungary, with the purpose of obtaining detailed data on the socioeconomic background of remittances. the data was collected by hcso, with the survey covering the reference period of 2016 and a sample of 3,000 addresses. it is representative among private households in hungary, and provides information on the receiving households, on the frequency of money fl ows, and on the emigrants sending these transfers. the questions also cover nonfi nancial personal transfers (e.g. sending goods like electronic devices or food). with regard to defi nitions, the design of both the microcensus and the family transfers survey permit analysis of the data based on the residence of the sender, according to the usual residence concept: the sender is considered to be resident in hungary if the duration of foreign residence is temporary (i.e. less than one year spent abroad), and non-resident if emigration is permanent (i.e. lasts for at least one year). this categorisation is in line with the european regulations concerning 4 “while you were abroad, did you provide economic support for your family members in hungary? / does [the household member living abroad] provide economic support for his/her family members in hungary?” • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti94 population statistics5 as well as with bop rules (imf 2009). the latter condition is important to ensure that survey results can be compared to current macro data on remittances. the heckman selection method (heckman 1976) was used to identify the determining factors of remittance behaviour and to resolve the selection bias problem. first, data of the microcensus survey were used to capture the main effects of remittance propensity among hungarian emigrants with probit regressions. then, inverse mills ratios6 were calculated from the results of probit regressions and were incorporated into the linear regression (ols) models of the family transfers survey in order to measure the most signifi cant variables for the sum of the money transfers. 4 results 4.1 descriptive statistics according to the microcensus survey, 306,000 hungarian citizens lived abroad in 2016 during the time of the data collection. since entire households which were abroad at this time were not included in the sample, the actual emigration stock number is presumably higher. in addition to this, 378,000 people in hungary had short or long-term migration experiences in the past 16 years. however, there are overlaps between the categories of shortand long-term migrants, and between current emigrants and those with migratory experience, therefore the total reference population is less than 684,000. the results refl ecting the composition of hungarian emigrants and return migrants based on the microcensus are in line with earlier research fi ndings. emigrants are on average younger than the hungarian population, and men as well as college/ university graduates are somewhat overrepresented. concerning the major target regions, hungarian emigrants are highly concentrated in three european countries (germany, the united kingdom and austria) with 69 percent residing there, while only 8 percent live outside the european economic area (eea). however, there are fundamental differences between hungarians emigrating to these three countries. 5 regulation (ec) 862/2007 of the european parliament and of the council on community statistics on migration and international protection and repealing council regulation (eec) no 311/76 on the compilation of statistics on foreign workers. similar to the census of 2011, the microcensus also took the concept of usual residence as its base, i.e. those staying abroad for more than one year were not considered part of the hungarian population, and their data were not registered in the basic questionnaires. when analysing the emigration stock, it is necessary to collect information on those staying abroad for more than one year. accordingly, the international migration supplementary survey collected information about these and former household members as well. 6 inverse mills ratio: this is the ratio of the probability density function to the cumulative distribution function of a distribution. it is often applied to handle selection bias in regression analysis. selection bias arises when a data sample is not a random draw from the population that it is intended to represent. remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 95 among those living in germany, there is a higher share of men, older age groups, and people with lower educational attainment levels, while hungarians in the united kingdom have typically fi nished secondary or tertiary education. as for the length of foreign residence, hungarians are more likely to migrate to germany or austria for short periods, and to the united kingdom or other countries for longer periods. most hungarians abroad (82 percent) moved for occupational reasons, and 60 percent of those who work are employed in three main occupational areas: commerce and services, industry and construction, and occupations requiring no qualifi cations. in the case of other countries, the main purpose of moving, according to descriptive statistics, is to study, and the share of women and emigrants with a college/university degree is higher. the microcensus results show that 31 percent of hungarian citizens living abroad provided economic support to their hungarian household members during their most recent stay abroad, which is in line with the results of the previous seemig study on hungarian emigrants (blaskó/gödri 2016). almost half of those who were living abroad temporarily (for less than 1 year), and 30 percent of those who were residing permanently (for at least 1 year) in a foreign country at the time of the survey, sent home remittances. among people with short-term (up to 1 year) migratory experiences since 2000, 29 percent provided fi nancial support while living abroad, while 21 percent of those with long-term migratory experience (of at least 1 year) did so. these proportions are higher among migrants with lower educational attainment (elementary or vocational school), industrial workers, men, older age groups and those residing in germany or austria. the weighted descriptive results of the “family transfers survey” (kajdi 2018) indicated that 1.6 percent (i.e. 67,548 in exact numbers) of private households in hungary received fi nancial support from abroad. the mean income of short-term emigrants is slightly lower compared to those who left the country for more than a year. this income difference was also apparent in the households left behind in the two groups (table 1). nevertheless, the mean amount sent by temporary emigrants is higher than the remittances sent by the long-term emigrants. a total of 72,240 sender persons were identifi ed, which means that approximately 20 percent of the total 350,000 migrants (blaskó/gödri 2016) according to seemig estimates, and 23 percent of the 306,000 persons living abroad captured by the microcensus sent a remittance to hungarian relatives. this ratio is lower compared to that of the results from the microcensus, which is presumably attributable to two reasons. on the one hand, the “family transfers survey” had a much smaller sample size, which can hamper attempts to obtain suffi cient coverage. on the other hand, the nonresponse rate was larger due to the highly sensitive nature of the topic. within the microcensus, only one question was asked on this topic: whether the household receives remittance from abroad. the family transfers survey, by contrast, was much more detailed. information was asked for on the income of the household, but also on the exact amount of private transfers from abroad and the income of the sender person. since these data are sensitive for private households, a lower response rate and coverage could have been anticipated in this survey compared to the microcensus. • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti96 the socio-demographic characteristics of senders are in accordance with the results of both previous hungarian and some other studies in central europe (e.g. roberts et al. 2008). the data has also revealed that mainly children supporting their elderly parents, which is similar to the results obtained, for example, by ambrosetti et al. (2014). concerning the sum of fi nancial support from migrants, respondents reported approximately 125 million euros in transfers to relatives in hungary, compared to a total of approximately 4,200 million euros in bop. the most important reason for the deviation is the difference in the defi nitions applied for micro and macro data, i.e. bop data contain taxes, consumption and also savings, therefore these data cannot be compared directly. it should also be noted that the distribution of the relevant data (household and sender income, amount of remittances received) appears realistic (close to log-normal distribution based on graphical analysis) in the survey, which strengthens their reliability. however, the potential for undercoverage and response bias cannot be excluded when surveying sensitive income data, as described above. in addition to this, hungarian nationals who obtained hungarian citizenship (mainly in romania and ukraine) might be a further source of minor differences as it was introduced above at bop data. in the two surveys used, only those remittances which are actually sent to hungary are captured, whereas some of the volume in the bop might be transferred to other countries (like romania or ukraine) instead of hungary. the descriptive data imply that emigrants in the united kingdom tend to send less than those in austria or germany, which might be attributable to the different characteristics of these populations. while in the uk, mainly younger and more highly educated persons reside for a longer term, in austria and germany it is typically older men with a vocational school education. tab. 1: descriptive statistics of incomes and remittances from the family transfers survey variable observations mean sd min max income per capita of the receiving household 65,812 319.3 242.4 19.3 4,232.8 short-term emigrants 33,019 306.4 266.8 19.3 4,232.8 long-term emigrants 32,793 332.3 214.2 31.7 2,539.7 income of the sender person 72,240 11,462.2 6,031.7 0.0 525,471.4 short-term emigrants 36,289 10,802.0 3,555.6 0.0 525,471.4 long-term emigrants 35,951 12,141.1 7,809.5 0.0 220,952.4 remittance per sender 72,240 1,787.1 3,615.9 3.2 46,031.7 short-term emigrants 36,289 2,067.9 3,764.2 3.2 46,031.7 long-term emigrants 35,951 1,498.8 3,433.2 3.8 31,174.6 note: exchange rate huf/eur 315 source: family transfers survey 2017 remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 97 during the analysis of remittance behaviour, probit regressions were fi rst calculated in order to identify the determinants of remittance propensity among hungarian citizens working abroad. our main objective was to identify which characteristics of hungarians living abroad are signifi cant with regard to whether the person supports the household in hungary or not. however, it is important that only the sending of the remittance was examined at this stage, irrespective of the sum of the transfer. the migration module of the 2016 microcensus was used for this purpose, in which respondents were asked (among other things) whether they supported their household members in hungary fi nancially from abroad. five categories were identifi ed for the regressions in accordance with the structure of the microcensus survey (table 2): • subgroup “a”: persons who had at least one year’s (long-term) migratory experience, but had already returned to hungary by the time of the survey. • subgroup “b”: persons who had migration experience of less than one year (short-term migrants) since 2000, but had already returned to hungary by the time of the survey. • subgroup “c”: persons who were temporarily (less than one year) abroad at the time of the survey. • subgroup “d”: persons who were permanently (at least for one year) abroad at the time of the survey. • subgroup “total”: all data in one dataset on respondents from categories “a” to “d”. the number of respondents (n), however, is not the total of the previous categories, since persons can have both shortand long-term migratory experience. in the “total” category only the most recent experience of each respondent was considered. the distinction within the shortand long-term categories was partly a technical requirement based on the structure of the survey and the types of questionnaire. however, prior analysis of the microcensus data showed signifi cant differences between the current emigrants (subgroup “c” and “d”) and the return migrants (subgroup “a” and “b”) regarding most socio-economic characteristics (dickmann/ ligeti 2018). for instance, while return migrants were more likely to have migration experience outside the three main destination countries (such as the usa), recent emigration mostly tends towards germany, the uk and austria. in the groups of return emigrants, the ratio of those who have completed tertiary education exceeds that of those currently residing abroad by more than 10 percent, and the ratio of those who left hungary for educational purposes is also higher among return migrants. the ratio of those who worked in a position which is not commensurate with their qualifi cations or educational level (on the basis of self-assessment by respondents) was also higher in the groups of return migrants, which could imply the increased establishment of migrational networks in recent years, and that it is easier for current emigrants to fi nd an appropriate occupation. another difference is the share of the foreign-born population (defi ning hungarian citizens who were born in neighbouring countries) among the subgroups, which is higher in group “a”. • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti98 as these deviations prove, the dynamics of emigration from hungary showed signifi cant changes both in volume as well as in structure in recent years (hárs 2016), making it important to distinguish between current emigrants and those who have already returned, and to examine them separately in addition to the total emigrant “pool”. there are also signifi cant differences in long-term and short-term migration: short-term emigration from hungary is more likely to be characterised as the labour migration of older male industrial and construction workers to germany or austria, and accordingly they are expected to have a higher remittance propensity compared to those who leave the country for more than a year. finally, as described above, the descriptive data show considerable differences in the ratio of senders among all emigrants between shortand long-term migrants, as well as between current and returned emigrants. 4.2 regression analysis for the probit model, we applied the following equation to calculate change in the probability of sending remittances if the independent variable increases by one unit:7 tab. 2: distribution of migrants in the different categories of the microcensus subgroup number weighted proportion of of respondents number respondents remitting in % a (long-term migratory experience) 11,400 416,090 21 b (short-term migratory experience) 8,789 338,922 29 c (short-term emigrants) 1,176 45,276 49 d (long-term emigrants) 3,544 157,969 30 total 13,124 517,078 31 source: microcensus 2016 7 interpretation of the values in table 3 should take into account the fact that dummy variables are constructed for the different categories in the case of categorical variables. for instance, in the case of “gender” variable, the values show the remittance propensity for females compared to all other values i.e. males. in the case of “job”, the values for agriculture and industry (isco 6-9) show the remittance propensity for persons working in this fi eld compared to all other persons (i.e. working in other fi elds or not working at all). ( = 1| = + 1, = , … = ) ( = 1| = , = , … = ) remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 99 where: • p is the predicted probability of y=1 • x is the independent variables • c is the constants y is the dependent variable measuring the remittance propensity of emigrants, i.e. whether the emigrant sends private transfers or not (value 1 or 0). we used the following independent variables8 (table 3.) • gender: since most hungarian emigrants who leave the country for fi nancial reasons are industrial workers, we expect men to have a higher remittance propensity. • age as continuous variable: on the basis of the fi ndings of cai (2003), holst/ schrooten (2006), ambrosetti et al. (2014) we expect older migrants to be more likely to send private transfers. this is in line with our hungarian descriptive data, which show that blue-collar temporary workers are older than the average hungarian emigrant. • highest level of education: as the study of bollard et al. (2009) showed, the relationship between education and remittance propensity diverges in different countries. in the case of hungary, descriptive data shows that it is mainly migrants with vocational school education who are more likely to send remittances. this corresponds to the fi ndings of busetta et al. (2016). • occupation abroad: descriptive data show that the short-term emigrants in germany and austria work mainly in blue-collar positions, accordingly we expect that those occupied in agriculture or industry are more likely to send fi nancial support. • purpose of emigration: higher remittance propensity is expected in the case of those who leave hungary to work abroad. • frequency of visiting hungary: we expect that the more often emigrants visit their relatives in hungary, the higher the probability of their sending remittances. this is due to the fact that, on the basis of descriptive data, short-term workers in germany and austria mainly leave their home on a temporary basis because of the higher income abroad. • whether the respondent lived abroad with their parents, children or partner: since the main impetus for sending private transfers is to support family members, we expect that those who left the country with their relatives are less likely to send money to hungary. however, it should be mentioned that, on the basis of this variable, the possibility cannot be excluded that if a migrant leaves hungary with a family member, other relatives will remain in the country. 8 survey questions: how often did you visit hungary in the last 12 months of the period that you spent abroad? (several times a month / once a month / once every 2-3 months / 1–2 times / did not visit hungary at all in this period). what activity/ies did you do abroad? (work / study, internship / language course / volunteering / other). what level of education did you receive while abroad? (primary / secondary / tertiary). while you were abroad, who were you living together with? (alone / spouse; cohabiting partner; partner / son(s); daughter(s) / parent(s) / fl atmate; colleague; other). the occupations are categorised according to the international standard classifi cation of occupations (isco). • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti100 • country of residence: as described above, workers who move to germany and austria do so mainly for fi nancial motivations, therefore we expect a higher remittance propensity in the case of these countries. no information was available from the microcensus data on the sum of remittances, the income of the sender person or the receiving household. the result of the probit regressions showed that age was the most powerful predictor in the models (second most powerful in model “d”) i.e. there is a growing likelihood of remitting with increasing age (in accordance with ambrosetti et al. 2014 and pinger 2010). men, especially short-term migrants, are more likely to send personal transfers, although the difference was not signifi cant among those permanently living abroad at the time of the survey (subgroup “d”). those who were living abroad with their parents or children were less likely to remit in all models. regarding educational levels, all models showed that vocational school attainment has the strongest positive effect on the sending of remittances, while models for the different emigrant subgroups indicate that people with higher educational levels are less likely to send transfers (in line with the fi ndings of busetta et al. 2016; roberts et al. 2008). model “b”, however, differs from the other models, as short-term return migrants who have completed tertiary education are more likely to remit than migrants with lower levels of education. this difference might be an indicator of the changing emigration strategies in recent years and the differences between the sub-groups described above (e.g. return migrants tended to leave for different target countries, the ratio of persons born in the neighbouring countries is higher). the lower likelihood of sending remittances is especially important among current short-term emigrants (model c) with a tertiary education: this is attributable to the lower number of persons in this subgroup with a university or college degree, while a higher level of education is more typical among permanent emigrants. however, as bollard et al. (2009) concluded in their comprehensive study, it is hard to fi nd an unequivocal connection between the level of education and remittances. with regard to primary and secondary school attainment, the results are ambiguous, and their effect was not signifi cant. in spite of the controlled effect of the education in the models, people working in agriculture and industry are signifi cantly more likely to support their household members who remain behind, while people who are not working are less likely to send transfers (except from model “c” where this predictor was not signifi cant). this is particularly noticeable among the short-term return migrants, as people working in agriculture and industry are even more likely to remit compared to longterm emigrants or return migrants. this is in line with our second hypothesis of a greater remittance propensity among blue-collar workers. most of the models confi rmed the expectations of a positive relationship between the frequency of visiting hungary and the likelihood of remitting. among those who visit hungary at least once per month, the probability of sending private transfers is higher, whereas the remittance propensity of those who return to hungary less frequently tends to decrease in line with the length of the periods, which indicates the importance of the personal relationship between the sender and the receiver. concerning the effect of the migrants’ country of residence in models “d” remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 101 tab. 3: results of probit regressions on remittance propensity (dependent variable: the household receives remittance) (change in the probability of sending remittances if the independent variable increases by one unit) model a d b c type of migration long-term short-term total return emigrants return emigrants migrants migrants gender (female) -0.048** ns -0.108** -0.156** -0.052** age 0.008** 0.004** 0.006** 0.015** 0.008** job professionals (isco 1-4) ns ns ns ns ns services (isco 5) ns ns ns ns ns agriculture, industry (isco 6-9) 0.066** 0.047** 0.105** ns 0.083** not working (eg. studying) -0.093** ns -0.160** ns -0.074** educational level primary school ns 0.074** ns ns 0.152** vocational school 0.050** 0.082** 0.093** ns 0.202** secondary school ns ns ns -0.114** 0.093** tertiary school -0.047** -0.043** 0.096** -0.379** ns activity abroad/purpose of migration work ns 0.070** ns 0.333** ns education -0.092** -0.110** -0.258** ns -0.182** other ns ns -0.158** ns -0.143** frequency of visiting home several times in a month ns 0.256** ns ns 0.199** monthly ns 0.135** ns ns 0.139** 2-3 monthly -0.053** 0.079** ns ns 0.085** 1-2 annually -0.088** ns -0.127** -0.165** ns did not visit hungary at all in this period -0.140** ns -0.246** -0.220** -0.072** family (parents/children) abroad -0.114** -0.103** -0.114** -0.176** -0.091** migrant’s host country usa 0.086** ns ns -0.560** ns australia ns ns 0.204** ns ns austria ns ns ns ns ns united kingdom ns ns -0.056** ns ns netherlands ns ns ns ns ns ireland ns ns ns ns ns germany ns ns ns ns ns switzerland ns ns ns ns ns sweden ns ns ns ns ns other country ns ns ns ns ns time spent abroad (years) 0.006** n 11114 3192 8755 1173 12749 r2 (nagelkerke) 0.436 0.375 0.441 0.509 0.375 *,** indicates signifi cance at 5 percent and 1 percent level respectively. source: authors’ calculations based on microcensus 2016 survey • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti102 and “total”, none of them proved to be signifi cant. in model “a” and “c” the results showed that residency in the usa had a positive effect, while in model “b”, living in australia had a positive effect and residing in the u.k. had a negative effect on sending remittances. these results therefore do not support our initial expectation that those who leave hungary for austria and germany would have a higher remittance propensity. after analysing the determining factors of remittance propensity (i.e. whether a migrant sends money or not) on the basis of microcensus data, in the second stage we used linear regressions of the “family transfers” dataset to identify the key variables which determine the sum of the transfer (table 4). our objective at this stage was to reveal the characteristics of remittance-sender emigrants which infl uence how much they send. we also intended to fi nd the differences in the determining factors between shortand long-term emigrants, in order to ascertain whether there are any effects which are peculiar to only one group. besides the total dataset, we created two subsets based on the senders’ length of stay abroad. one subset for long-term migrant senders, i.e. those remittance senders who stayed or intended to stay abroad for at least one year, and one for short-term migrant senders. we used the inverse mills ratios composed from the microcensus subgroups “a” and “d” in the linear regressions of the “long-term” subset and the inverse mills ratios of subgroups “b” and “c” for the regressions in the “short-term” subset in order to mitigate selection bias. data on the income of the sender were available in approximately half of the cases, thus we calculated regressions by: 1. using senders’ income data, 2. omitting them, or 3. substituting the missing income data with mean income. since the results showed that the sender’s income is one of the key explanatory variables, and the second and third options provided less effective models, we present the results of the models containing the logarithm of the sender’s income as an independent variable. we estimated the following equation by ordinary least squares (ols): log(remit) = β0 + β1migrchar + β2country + β3log(hhinc) + β4log(sendinc) + β5mills + μ where: • log(remit) is the logarithm of remittances sent in 2016 • migrchar is the sociodemographic variables of the sender such as  gender: since the ratio of male senders is almost 62 percent and they are more likely to leave hungary for fi nancial reasons, we expect that men will tend to send a higher sum of remittances.  age-squared: approximately two-thirds of senders are between 25 and 44 years of age. age is squared to control for nonlinearities. we expect to see a positive relationship with the sum of remittances.  occupation: three main categories were constructed, white-collar workers (isco groups 1-4), employees in the service sector (isco group 5) and blue-collar workers (isco groups 6-9). on the basis of descriptive data and probit regressions, we expect blue-collar workers to send more money. (1) remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 103  educational level: more than half of the senders have vocational or secondary school level education, but among long-term migrants, the ratio of persons with vocational school is lower, while the ratio of senders with a college or university degree is higher. we expect a higher level of education to be associated with a lower sum of remittances, since, in the case of hungary, the group of temporary workers with a vocational school education dominate remittance fl ows.  frequency of visits home: the variable is used as a dummy to capture the strength of relationship between the sender and the receiver. personal visits also make it possible to bring home money in cash instead of the more expensive electronic methods. we expect that those who visit home more frequently will tend to send more money, in line with holst/schrooten (2006).  family members abroad: the value of the variable is 0 if children, parents, spouse/partner also moved abroad and 1 if the sender migrated alone or with friends or colleagues. we expect that those who leave hungary with their relatives will tend to send less money. however, it should be mentioned that, on the basis of this variable, the possibility cannot be excluded of other relatives remaining in the country if a migrant leaves hungary with a family member. • country is the emigrants’ host country: on the basis of descriptive data, persons residing in austria or germany are expected to remit more than those living in the uk. • log(hhinc) is the logarithm of the monthly per capita income of the remittance receiver household in hungary. we expect a negative relationship between the sum of remittances and the receiver household’s income level. • log(sendinc) is the logarithm of the monthly income of the remittance sender. based on the literature, there is likely to be a positive association with the amount of private transfers. • mills is the selection bias calculated from microcensus probit regressions the results of partial variable effect estimations showed in all models that those with a higher income tend to send more money to the household members left behind (in line with the fi ndings of e.g. unheim/rowlands 2012; cai 2003), while a negative relationship was ascertained regarding the income of the receiving household. in other words, if the migrants’ income is higher or the receiving household’s income is lower, migrants tend to send a higher sum of remittances regardless of whether they reside abroad permanently or temporarily. within the theoretical framework of nelm, this supports our fi rst hypothesis on the altruistic motives of sending remittance rather than the exchange-type attitudes described by cox et al. (1998). the separate handling meant that the changes in remittance sending habits and motivations over time in shortand long-term migrants described by cox et al. (2004) or simkova/langhamrova (2015), for instance, were not borne out. concerning other variables, the determinants of the amount of remittance and the probability of remitting are similar in several aspects. the gender variable was signifi cant only in the case of short-term models and when all migrants were considered (i.e. total model), and results showed that women are not only less likely to remit but also tend to send lower amounts (in accordance with e.g. amuedo• lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti104 tab. 4: ols coeffi cients predicting the annual log amount remitted to hungary model a d b c type of migration long-term short-term total return emigrants return emigrants migrants migrants gender (male=0) -0.422 -0.196 -0.477* -0.488* -0.518 ** (-1.75) (-0.86) (-2.11) (-2.11) (-3.00) age-squared -0.001 0.001 omitted omitted omitted (-1.19) (1.13) job (professionals (isco 1-4) = 0) services (isco 5) -0.118 -0.155 0.559 0.447 0.239 (-0.37) (-0.50) (1.76) (1.35) (1.01) agriculture, industry (isco 6-9) 0.417 0.533 0.662* 0.057 0.525* (1.39) (1.59) (1.98) (0.19) (2.26) educational level (ba degree or higher = 0) primary school -0.920 -0.893 1.349** 1.426** 0.362 (-1.61) (-1.39) (3.29) (3.36) (0.94) vocational school 0.599 0.186 1.398** 0.867** 0.711** (1.89) (0.53) (4.17) (2.70) (3.22) secondary school 0.662* 0.365 0.772* 0.597 0.445* (2.36) (1.28) (2.34) (1.79) (2.04) frequency of visiting home (0 times = 0) several times in a month 1.427 1.066 2.600** 1.775** 1.632** (1.86) (1.30) (4.76) (3.48) (3.32) monthly 2.057** 1.549** 1.689** 0.864 0.659 (3.47) (2.68) (2.89) (1.52) (1.44) 2-3 monthly 0.366 0.451 1.740** 0.889* 0.510 (0.75) (0.91) (3.29) (2.10) (1.39) 1-2 annually 0.007 0.039 0.938 0.088 -0.091 (0.01) (0.08) (1.87) (0.22) (-0.25) family abroad (children, parents, spouse/partner -0.059 0.252 -0.243 0.126 0.032 abroad = 0) (-0.28) (1.22) (-1.21) (0.73) (0.24) migrant’s host country (uk = 0) country_us 1.272 0.976 (1.92) (1.50) country_at -0.035 0.043 0.177 0.183 0.218 (-0.09) (0.11) (0.53) (0.54) (0.85) country_nl -1.543** -1.587** -0.526 -0.544 -0.928* (-4.20) (-4.37) (-0.60) (-0.67) (-1.96) country_ie -0.007 0.146 (-0.01) (0.27) country_de 0.153 0.162 0.188 0.241 0.180 (0.48) (0.50) (0.62) (0.78) (0.81) country_ch 1.543** 1.171** -0.047 -0.625 0.482 (3.59) (2.67) (-0.14) (-1.72) (1.03) country_other1 0.538 0.543 0.550 0.077 -0.266 (1.49) (1.50) (0.18) (0.24) (-1.06) remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 105 dorantes/pozo 2006). the age distribution of senders was not linear, accordingly we tried to capture the effects both with age categories and by using an age-squared variable. in the case of short-term and total models, the age variable had to be omitted due to multicollinearity, while in the long-term models the association was not signifi cant. since the number of emigrants who make private transfers to hungary but did not have a job was negligible, we omitted these cases from our models. among long-term emigrants the occupation variable was not signifi cant, whereas among the temporary workers abroad, those who work in agriculture and different fi elds of industry tend to send larger remittances compared to those who are in white-collar positions. these fi ndings correspond to the results in macedonia (roberts et al. 2008). from the perspective of the educational level of emigrants, our results were similar to those of probit regressions, supporting our second hypothesis. in the case of short-term emigrants, primary or vocational school level education is associated with signifi cantly higher money fl ows to the household members left behind compared to those with tertiary education. this fi nding is not in line with the results of busetta et al. (2016) or pinger (2010). however, as bollard et al. (2009) described, the relationship between remittances and educational level can vary among countries. in the case of hungary, a large number of blue-collar workers left the country without any further goals (like making a career or starting a new life abroad), but inmodel a d b c type of migration long-term short-term total return emigrants return emigrants migrants migrants receiving household income -0.619** -0.582** -0.455** -0.464** -0.533** (log) (-3.18) (-2.97) (-2.86) (-2.98) (-4.42) migrant’s income (log) 0.433** 0.462** 0.185* 0.178* 0.359** (3.27) (3.52) (2.12) (2.05) (4.71) mills -7.425** -0.617 -6.886** -1.163** -4.150** (-2.71) (-0.13) (-4.46) (-4.14) (-5.38) _cons 13.535** 10.100** 15.746** 16.486** 13.600** (4.06) (3.00) (6.44) (6.52) (7.33) n 325 325 330 330 655 r2 0.362 0.346 0.388 0.388 0.331 tab. 4: continuation 1 other countries: in the case of total and short-term models, other countries include australia, belgium, canada, france, ireland, italy, norway, spain, sweden, the usa and those senders who did not respond to this question. in the case of long-term models, there were enough records to cover senders from ireland and the us in separate categories as well. numbers in parenthesis are t-statistics. *,** indicates signifi cance at 5 percent and 1 percent level respectively. source: authors’ calculations based on family transfers survey 2017 • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti106 tended to make private transfers during their residence abroad, which might explain why lower-level education is associated with higher transfer sums. the variable concerning the frequency of visits home also proved to be signifi cant, in line with the results of probit regressions on remittance propensity. when permanent emigrants pay monthly visits to hungary, the level of the money fl ow is signifi cantly higher compared to those who never travel back. as far as short-term emigrants are concerned, the sum of private transfers from those who come back to hungary several times per month or every 2-3 months was also signifi cantly higher. this also possibly highlights the strategy of those migrants who leave hungary only on account of the higher income in short-term industry jobs, but who do not plan to reside abroad for a longer period. concerning the migrants’ country of residence, no signifi cant difference was identifi ed between the three main target countries for hungarians (i.e. austria, germany and the uk). the geographical region of employment was important only with regard to permanent emigrants. within this group, those who reside in the netherlands send signifi cantly less, while those in switzerland signifi cantly more compared to hungarians who reside in the united kingdom. in four of the fi ve models, selection bias (inverse mills ratios) was also signifi cant, which draws attention to the way in which this issue is handled e.g. with our two-step approach to the surveys. since the family transfers survey also contained questions regarding the time of emigration and the intended date of return, we ran ols models including these variables for long-term emigrants (table 5). concerning short-term migrants, the estimations using these two additional variables are clearly superfl uous, since these persons leave hungary for less than a year. therefore, we omitted this sender population, and used the data only for those who have a permanent residence abroad, i.e. they live in a foreign country permanently. in order to test the signifi cance of their intention to return home, we used a dummy variable on whether these emigrants have any plans to move back to hungary or not. the value of the variable is “0” if the sender plans to move back to hungary and “1” if the sender has no such intention. the results revealed a negative relationship between the sum of money transfers and the intention of returning home. this means that those with no plan to reside abroad permanently tend to send higher amounts than emigrants who envisage their future in a foreign country in the long run, while the intention to stay in another country is associated with lower money fl ows. this provides further information on migrants’ primary motivations when sending remittances: our results generally confi rm mainly altruistic attitudes in hungarian emigrants, however this latter outcome also implies self-interest behind these money fl ows. those emigrants who plan to return to hungary tend to send higher amounts, presumably to secure a stronger position, both fi nancially and socially, within their families. emigrants who have no intention of returning send lower amounts by contrast, since their main priority is establishing a new life abroad rather than supporting their relatives who remained behind. remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 107 tab. 5: results of regressions for long-term emigrants in family transfers survey (dependent variable: annual log amount remitted to hungary) model a d type of migration long-term return emigrants migrants gender (male=0) -0.324 -0.139 (-1.35) (-0.62) age-squared -0.001 omitted (-0.80) time abroad -0.019 -0.500 (-1.01) (-1.83) intention of returning home (any plans to return home = 0) -0.754** -0.727* (-2.60) (-2.47) job (professionals (isco 1-4) = 0) services (isco 5) -0.167 -0.166 (-0.53) (-0.53) agriculture, industry (isco 6-9) 0.431 0.758* (1.47) (2.32) no job omitted omitted educational level (ba degree or higher = 0) primary school -0.789 -0.330 (-1.35) (-0.52) vocational school 0.558 0.639* (1.69) (1.99) secondary school 0.559 0.506 (1.90) (1.84) frequency of visiting home (0 times = 0) several times in a month 1.264 1.618* (1.64) (2.01) monthly 1.847** 1.313* (3.15) (2.38) 2-3 monthly 0.319 0.356 (0.69) (0.78) 1-2 annually 0.028 0.053 (0.06) (0.12) family abroad (children, parents, spouse/partner abroad = 0) -0.137 -0.089 (-0.65) (-0.42) • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti108 5 conclusions the study aimed to gain a better understanding of the socio-economic drivers of emigration and remittances in the case of hungary, using the results of the microcensus large-sample survey and the fi rst remittance-specifi c household survey in the country. so far, the effect on host countries’ labour-markets has been the main emphasis concerning intra-eu migrants from the eastern member states instead of other aspects of these population movements, such as private money transfers. analyses were mainly based on macro-level data, which offered no possibility for a more profound examination of the socio-economic characteristics of sender pertab. 5: continuation model a d type of migration long-term return emigrants migrants migrant’s host country (uk = 0) country_us 1.358* 1.071 (2.23) (1.95) country_at -0.019 0.011 (-0.05) (0.03) country_nl -1.564** -1.511** (-3.74) (-3.81) country_ie 0.184 0.240 (0.34) (0.44) country_de 0.180 0.200 (0.58) (0.65) country_ch 1.289** 1.009** (3.18) (2.59) country_other 0.627 0.645 (1.68) (1.72) receiving household income (log) -0.558** -0.556** (-2.94) (-2.95) migrant’s income (log) 0.496** 0.512** (3.76) (3.88) mills -6.985* -3.704* (-2.40) (-2.42) _cons 12.548** 11.924** (3.82) (3.89) n 325 325 r2 0.387 0.378 numbers in parenthesis are t-statistics. *,** indicates signifi cance at 5 percent and 1 percent level respectively. source: authors’ calculations based on family transfers survey remittance behaviour of intra-eu migrants – evidence from hungary • 109 sons and receiving households. the results provide a contribution to further research on the drivers of labour migration and the differences between shortand long-term emigrants. the results of the probit regressions indicate that hungarian emigrants have a higher remittance propensity if their highest level of education is vocational school, or if they work abroad in agriculture or industry. with increasing age and frequency of visits home, there is a growing likelihood of their making private transfers, and males are more likely to support their relatives who remain in hungary. using the theoretical framework of nelm, our results provide evidence for the altruistic motivations of emigrants, since a strong positive relationship could be identifi ed with the senders’ income in accordance with the fi ndings of unheim/rowlands (2012) and cai (2003). with regard to the receiving households’ income, however, the direction of the relationship is quite the opposite. as cox et al. (2004) showed, these motivations can change with the time spent abroad. accordingly, our examinations also distinguished between permanent and temporary workers abroad. our crosssectional data do not make it possible to capture any changes in sending habits over time, nevertheless we found that the relationship with income variables holds both in the case of shortand long-term migrants. it was also confi rmed that permanent emigrants who have no intention of returning home tend to send signifi cantly less money. on the one hand this implies self-interest as a motivation alongside altruism, on the other hand it reveals differences in the amounts of remittance sent based on the length of time spent abroad. according to our results, those who left the country with their family have a lower remittance propensity, while the variable was not signifi cant concerning the amount of money sent. a possible explanation of this latter result is that our variable did not cover the case of an entire family leaving the country, but referred only to those cases in which a relative (spouse, child, parent) accompanied the migrant abroad. in other words, on the basis of the data in the two datasets, it cannot be excluded that other relatives stayed in hungary, even if a family member accompanied the sender migrant abroad. the results showed that those who have a vocational school education and work in blue-collar jobs are the most affected. from a public policy perspective this can be important, since it is in line with the research of hárs and simon (2016, 2017), who found that emigration has the largest effect on the hungarian labour-market (i.e. shortage of workers) in these areas. this showed that it is possible to infl uence labour-market issues by reducing the volume of emigration – and thus the loss of young and qualifi ed human capital. this can be achieved in various ways, e.g. increased state support for training courses in the blue-collar jobs affected, or by launching programmes in which the state covers the costs of the vocational training but the contracts include a mandatory number of working years in hungary. reduced tax and social security burdens for employees in these occupations are also conceivable. this also marks a possible direction for future research, i.e. analysing remittances from the receiving household side as well by identifying the most important determining factors of receiving remittances beyond income, e.g. housing circumstances or deprivation factors. • lászló kajdi, anna sára ligeti110 the above methodology can also serve as a practical model for other countries in the region. it highlights the importance of censuses or microcensuses when examining international migration. in several countries, the lack of appropriately accurate data on the registration and deregistration of population movements means that administrative datasets provide little or no reliable insight into migration and remittance fl ows, making utilisation of these large-sample surveys essential. they can be the starting point for further specifi c fi eld work in which more sensitive topics – for instance fi nancial matters and money fl ows – can be analysed. this twostep approach also supports the handling of selection bias in order to draw accurate conclusions. references acosta, pablo et al. 2008: what is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in latin-america? in: world development 36,1: 88-114 [doi: 10.1016/j. worlddev.2007.02.016]. akkoyunlu, aule; 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lucas robert 1988: migration, remittances, and the family. in: economic development and cultural change 36,3: 465-481. stark, oded; taylor, j. edward 1989: relative deprivation and international migration. in: demography 26,1: 1-14 [doi: 10.2307/2061490]. taylor, edward j. 1999: the new economics of labour migration and the role of remittances in the migration process. in: international migration 37,1: 63-88 [doi: 10.1111/14682435.00066]. unheim, per; rowlands, dane 2012: micro-level determinants of remittances from recent migrants to canada. in: international migration 50,4: 124-139 [doi: 10.1111/j.14682435.2011.00718.x]. vargas-silva, carlos 2008: are remittances manna from heaven? a look at the business cycle properties of remittances. in: the north american journal of economics and finance 19,3: 290-303. date of submission: 14.03.2019 date of acceptance: 28.10.2019 lászló kajdi (). university of pécs, faculty of sciences. pécs, hungary. e-mail: kajdil@mnb.hu url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/laszlo_kajdi anna sára ligeti. hungarian central statistical offi ce. budapest, hungary. e-mail: anna.ligeti@ksh.hu url: https://www.ksh.hu/?lang=en mailto:kajdil@mnb.hu https://www.researchgate.net/profi mailto:anna.ligeti@ksh.hu https://www.ksh.hu/?lang=en published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe: the role of educational composition trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe: the role of educational composition* wilfred uunk abstract: the extent of educational homogamy has important consequences for social inequalities and social cohesion. however, little is known about current trends, cross-national differences, and the drivers of educational homogamy in europe. this study aims to fill this gap by (a) describing trends in absolute educational homogamy (i.e., the share of similarly educated partners) and relative educational homogamy (i.e., homogamy corrected for the distribution of spouses’ education) for european countries; and (b) examining the association between a population’s educational composition and the level of absolute and relative educational homogamy. given the large changes in the educational composition of european populations and the presumed consequences for absolute and relative educational homogamy, this focus on educational composition is warranted. our aggregate-level regression analyses covering 36 countries and five birth cohorts (1940-1989) from the european social survey show that absolute and relative educational homogamy has not changed. however, this obscures variation by education group and country. we find that the extent of absolute educational homogamy in a country cohort is strongly associated with educational composition and observe statistical effects of educational expansion (positive for the higher educated), educational heterogeneity (negative), educational gender symmetry (positive), educational income inequality (positive), and educational reproduction (positive). relative educational homogamy is only weakly associated with a population’s educational composition, and its effects are confined to gender symmetry (positive) and educational reproduction (positive). our findings suggest that changes in educational composition in europe affect educational homogamy in various directions and indicate that these effects come from structural opportunities rather than changing preferences for educational homogamy. keywords: educational homogamy · educational composition · trends · crossnational differences comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 215-242 (date of release: 20.08.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-09 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-09en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/601/413 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-09 • wilfred uunk216 1 introduction socioeconomic homogamy, i.e., the tendency of people to marry within their social group or to marry a person close to them in status, is an important indicator and determinant of a society’s extent of social inequality and intergroup cohesion (kalmijn 1998). higher levels of socioeconomic homogamy indicate less “openness” of a society’s social structure and stronger social boundaries between groups (berent 1954) and may increase economic inequalities through income pooling and wealth concentration (schwartz 2010; 2013) and erode social cohesion through reduced intergroup contact (kalmijn 1998; schwartz 2013). in addition, higher socioeconomic homogamy exacerbates social inequalities in future generations, for example, by affecting children’s education (beck/gonzález-sancho 2009; edwards/roff 2016; hillmert 2021). a particularly interesting form of socioeconomic homogamy is educational homogamy. one reason to examine educational homogamy is that it may bear major consequences for social inequalities and cohesion because education is a prime determinant of cultural values and economic resources in contemporary societies (davis 1982; treiman/terrell 1975). concerningly, educational homogamy may increase existing social, economic, cultural, and political cleavages between lowerand higher-educated people (esping-andersen 2016; mclanahan 2004; norris/inglehart 2019; schwartz/mare 2005) and may reproduce these inequalities in future generations (mare/schwartz 2006; schwartz 2013). another reason to examine educational homogamy is that it is likely to have changed in recent decades, given substantial changes in the educational composition of western industrialised countries, with educational expansion and the gender gap reversal in education (diprete/buchmann 2013; esteve et al. 2016; grow/van bavel 2015; schofer/ meyer 2005; van bavel et al. 2018). educational homogamy may not trivially relate to these and other changes in the educational composition of populations. educational expansion, for example, may increase absolute educational homogamy among the higher-educated because of higher meeting chances in this group and decrease educational homogamy among the lower-educated because of lower meeting chances. in contrast, the reversal of the gender gap in education may weaken overall educational homogamy (permanyer et al. 2019).1 notwithstanding, little is known about current trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy and its drivers. most studies on educational homogamy focus on examining levels of relative educational homogamy, i.e., educational assortative mating holding constant the distribution of spouses’ education. scholars do this in the assumption that relative homogamy is a more appropriate indicator of social group distance and a society’s openness than 1 permanyer et al. (2019) find that educational expansion is a more important driver of educational homogamy than the reversal of the gender gap in education. however, compared to our study, permanyer et al. do not use country fixed effects. this methodological objection is important for estimating the effect of educational expansion on educational homogamy (see footnote 10 below). trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 217 absolute homogamy, as the supply of marriage candidates strongly determines absolute homogamy (kalmijn 1998: 405; ultee/luijkx 1990). however, large-scale cross-country comparative studies on trends in relative educational homogamy mostly examine data from decades ago (smits 2003; smits et al. 2000; ultee/luijkx 1990), before large changes in the educational composition of western industrialised countries took place (educational expansion and the reversal of the gender gap in education). some newer cross-country comparative studies on relative educational homogamy are confined to a restricted number of countries (katrnak et al. 2006; katrnak/manea 2020; halpin/chan 2003) or not aimed at describing trends (bouchetvalat 2018; domanski/przybysz 2007; katrnak et al. 2012), which limits their ability to study drivers of variation in the levels of educational homogamy. in addition, cross-country comparative studies have mainly focused on testing the effects of more general factors of societal openness on relative educational homogamy, such as social mobility, economic development, and the degree of political democracy (bouchet-valat 2018; domanski/przybysz 2007; katrnak et al. 2012; smits et al. 2000; smits et al. 1998; ultee/luijkx 1990). the studies did so under the umbrella of modernisation theory, assuming a weakening of socioeconomic group boundaries with modernisation (cf. schwartz 2013). research on relative educational homogamy has hardly investigated the effects of more immediate factors of educational group barriers in mate selection, such as the educational composition of populations. educational expansion, for example, may have raised the minimum level of education people seek in a partner (schwartz 2013). cross-national comparative studies on absolute educational homogamy, i.e., the observed proportion of people marrying within their educational group, are even more scarce.2 studies on relative educational homogamy in europe (domanski/przybysz 2007; katrnak et al. 2006; 2012; katrnak/manea 2020; ultee/ luijkx 1990) describe patterns of absolute educational homogamy, but suffer from the abovementioned limitations. the scarcity of studies on absolute educational homogamy may be explained by the fact that it does not inform us about group boundaries. however, patterns of absolute educational homogamy must also be investigated because absolute homogamy is, like relative homogamy, highly consequential for social cohesion and socioeconomic inequalities (kalmijn 1994; schwartz 2010; 2013). for example, educationally mixed marriages that were “forced’ by the supply of marriage candidates, e.g., through a lack of higher-educated women for higher-educated men, increase intergroup cohesion just as educationally mixed marriages caused by weaker group boundaries do (cf. kalmijn/uunk 2015). in addition, as previously stated, absolute educational homogamy may not trivially relate to the educational composition of populations. 2 however, quite a few studies have investigated hypergamy (women partnering with higher educated men) and hypogamy (women partnering with lower educated men) and their associations with a population’s educational composition. erat (2021) and de hauw, grow, and van bavel (2017), for example, found that the female advantage in education is associated with decreased hypergamy. as these patterns are quite well established, we do not focus on intermarriage patterns by gender. another reason is that we already assess educational homogamy by education group • wilfred uunk218 we fill in the gaps in the literature and describe and explain absolute and relative educational homogamy across 36 european countries and five birth cohorts (19401989) derived from six waves of the european social survey (ess). in our explanatory analyses, we focus on the effects of the educational composition of populations (educational expansion, the gender gap in educational attainment, and heterogeneity in the distribution of education) and (economic) inequalities by education (intergenerational reproduction of education and educational income inequality). these factors have been neglected in the literature, yet have shown considerable changes in western populations in europe and elsewhere (diprete/buchmann 2013) and may affect educational homogamy (katrnak et al. 2012; permanyer et al. 2019; schwartz 2013; smits 2003; torche 2010). a population’s educational composition and inequality by education may not only affect educational homogamy by altering the opportunities for intermarriage, as blau’s theory of structural opportunities generally argues for homogamy (blau 1977; blau et al. 1982),3 but also by altering the boundaries of intermarriage between education groups. this is why we also test the association of educational composition and inequalities with relative educational homogamy, which is done only rarely (however, see fong 2024; katrnak et al. 2012; smits 2003; torche 2010). furthermore, since educational composition may affect educational homogamy differently for the higherand lower-educated, as may be the case for educational expansion, we conduct our analyses by education group (cf. katrnak/manea 2020; schwartz/mare 2005; smits/park 2009). we address the following research questions: 1. how does absolute and relative educational homogamy change across birth cohorts (1940-1989) in europe, and how does this differ by education group? 2. what european countries display higher and lower levels of absolute and relative educational homogamy, and to what extent do countries differ in trends? 3. to what extent and how are educational expansion, educational heterogeneity, gender symmetry in education, educational income inequality, and educational reproduction associated with absolute and relative educational homogamy in country cohorts? 2 theory and hypotheses partner choice, and thus the selection of a partner with similar (homogamy) or dissimilar traits (heterogamy), is dependent on opportunities (or constraints), preferences, and social pressures (goode 1970 (1963); kalmijn 1991, 1998; schwartz 2013). the greater the opportunities and preferences for mating a similarly educated person ‒ a preference for similarity is the basic assumption for matching on 3 blau et al. (1982) tested the effects of several (educational) composition factors and educational reproduction on a region’s level of educational homogamy. yet, in contrast to our study, the approach is bivariate and correlational. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 219 education (kalmijn 1991; hitsch et al. 2010) ‒ and the greater the social desirability of educational homogamy, the greater the likelihood of homogamy. based on this general theory, we assume that educational composition factors and factors of (economic) inequalities by education are associated with (absolute levels of) educational homogamy through the opportunities for mating a similarly educated person and the preferences for a similarly educated partner. in the absence of strong (institutionalised) norms on educational homogamy, social pressure is considered less relevant for educational homogamy than for other forms of homogamy, e.g., religious homogamy (kalmijn 1998). the interpretation of educational composition and inequality effects on educational homogamy via opportunities is based on blau’s structural opportunity theory (1977; blau/schwartz 1984; blau et al. 1982). blau and colleagues contend that structural opportunity or supply-side factors such as group size, heterogeneity, sex ratio, inequality, “intersection” (the overlap between characteristics, by which they also mean educational income inequality and educational reproduction), proximity, and whether the marriage market is local determine the likelihood of meeting the preferred partner and thus affect the rate of absolute homogamy. for example, when one’s group is relatively large within a population, the likelihood of meeting and mating a group member increases (blau et al. 1982). interestingly, simkus (1984) makes similar arguments regarding the effect of social structure on intergenerational social mobility. educational composition and inequality factors may also affect educational homogamy by altering partner preferences and group boundaries (cf. fong 2024; schwartz 2013; smits 2003; torche 2010). educational expansion, for example, may not only imply greater opportunities for higher-educated persons to meet other higher-educated persons, but also implies that a match on higher education becomes more important for that group, though counterarguments exist (see below). if educational composition and inequality factors influence preferences for educational homogamy, it is likely that these factors also affect relative educational homogamy, the assortative mating indicative of group boundaries. below, we present our hypotheses on the effects of educational composition and inequalities on the extent of absolute and relative educational homogamy. 2.1 educational expansion by “educational expansion,” we mean the rising level of education in populations, specifically the increasing share of higher-, tertiary-educated people. this expansion has occurred in all western industrialised countries, including across europe, yet differences between countries exist in the share of higher education and the pace of educational expansion (diprete/buchmann 2013; blossfeld et al. 2015; 2016). theoretically, educational expansion ‒ disregarding the developments by gender ‒ may first affect educational homogamy by altering meeting and mating opportunities. following blau’s (1977) theory of structural opportunity effects and his argument on group size effects, we expect that a larger share of highereducated people in a population increases the likelihood of homogamy among • wilfred uunk220 higher-educated people and decreases the likelihood of homogamy among lower-educated people. the reason lies in the logic of meeting chances: the larger one’s group, the greater the chances of meeting ingroup members and the lower the chances of meeting outgroup members. another opportunity mechanism pertains to the timing of marriage and the type of meeting places. by prolonging schooling, educational expansion has made the pool of potential partners more homogeneous, and potential partners more often meet at school (blossfeld 2009; mare 1991). however, as the age of first marriage has risen faster than the age of school completion, this mechanism becomes less relevant (schwartz 2013). educational expansion may also influence educational homogamy via partner preferences and group boundaries.4 however, the effect of educational expansion on these preferences and boundaries is not a priori clear, as there exist arguments for stronger and weaker educational boundaries in mate selection. arguments favouring stronger boundaries include, first, that with educational expansion, the importance of education for labour market success and other life outcomes increases (goldin/katz 2008; kalmijn 1991; schwartz/mare 2005). this makes it less attractive to “marry down.” second, educational expansion means that people’s cultural values and attitudes are increasingly shaped by education, through a longer period of secondary socialisation. this implies, given preferences for cultural similarity, increased assortative mating by education (kalmijn 1991). third, individuals’ preferences may change as the supply of higher-educated partners increases, raising the minimum level of education they seek in a partner (fong 2024; schwartz 2013). arguments favouring weaker boundaries are, first, that educational expansion implies more competition among the higher educated in marriage markets. this may lower preferences for similarity (fong 2024), particularly among higher-educated persons. second, through upward intergenerational educational mobility, educational expansion has reduced the selectivity of the higher-educated group. this may have lowered barriers to educational intermarriage (kalmijn/uunk 2015; smits 2003). given the above, we expect that educational expansion increases absolute educational homogamy among higher-educated people and decreases absolute educational homogamy among lower-educated people (h1a). how the overall rate of absolute educational homogamy in society will be affected is unclear, as this depends on whether the higher educated become a dominant group (see the discussion of educational heterogeneity below). next, we expect that educational expansion is not associated with relative educational homogamy (h1b). the reason for this is that there are good arguments that educational expansion both raises and decreases preferences for educational similarity in mating. 4 the argument that group size can influence preferences for homogamy has also been made about racial/ethnic intermarriage, e.g., to account for the surprising decline in hispanic-native intermarriage in the us between the mid-1990s and 2000s. the growth in the hispanic immigrant population may not only have increased opportunities for homogamy but also reinforced a shared cultural identity, decreasing preferences for intermarriage (qian/lichter 2007, 2011; schwartz 2013: 455). trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 221 2.2 educational heterogeneity heterogeneity is another structural factor at the population level that may affect the chances of meeting a group member and marrying within one’s group (blau 1977). heterogeneity refers to the relative shares of groups in society. generally, the more equally groups in a population are distributed (i.e., more equal shares), the more heterogeneous the population, and the greater the chances that persons of distinct groups will meet. heterogeneity should therefore diminish homogamy (blau 1977). it is important to note that the heterogeneity effect may exist beyond the group size effect, provided the population has more than two groups. in a 5 percent-15 percent-80 percent population, for example, the size of the largest group is the same as in a 10 percent-10 percent-80 percent population, but the latter population is more heterogeneous. this is not purely hypothetical: for instance, in our sample, the netherlands is more heterogeneous in educational attainment than sweden, despite having the same share of higher-educated people. furthermore, we expect that educational heterogeneity weakens group boundaries. more encounters between groups in heterogeneous societies may lead to increased mutual acceptance, as is argued in allport’s (1954) contact theory, yet not in blau’s (1977) theory. given the above, we expect a population’s educational heterogeneity to lower absolute educational homogamy (h2a) and relative educational homogamy (h2b). 2.3 gender symmetry in education another obvious structural opportunity factor for meeting a group member and marrying within one’s group is the sex ratio, i.e., the number of men to women in one’s group and vice versa (cf. blau 1977). the sex ratio hypothesis holds that the more men to women in a group, the higher the chances of homogamy for women (because of increased meeting chances with ingroup members) and the lower the chances of homogamy for men (because of increased competition among men over similarly educated women). on the aggregate population level, the sex ratio may be important because a more balanced gender ratio, i.e., more gender symmetry in the distribution of a trait, increases the chances that men and women from the same group meet. this raises educational homogamy (cf. esteve et al. 2012). greater gender equality in educational attainment may also increase preferences for educational homogamy. schwartz notes: “as women’s economic prospects grow and egalitarian marriage becomes more normative, men may begin competing for highly educated, highearning women just as women have traditionally competed for highearning men (england/farkas 1986; sweeney/cancian 2004). the increasing similarity of men’s and women’s preferences drives up competition for high-status partners and results in increased homogamy” (schwartz 2013: 456). furthermore, once women start to acquire higher education than men, women may match less on education (schwartz 2013: 456). higher-educated women • wilfred uunk222 may have to “marry down,” provided they want to marry, and may “lower” their preferences regarding their partner’s education. in summary, we expect that greater gender symmetry in educational attainment in a population (i.e., more similarity in educational distribution between men and women) increases absolute educational homogamy (h3a) and relative educational homogamy (h3b). 2.4 educational income inequality and reproduction besides educational composition, (economic) inequalities by education ‒ measured here by educational income inequality and educational reproduction ‒ may be important for a population’s degree of educational homogamy (schwartz 2013). blau (1977) acknowledged this arguing from an opportunity perspective. he proposed that intersection, i.e., the overlap between groups along multiple dimensions, may affect homogamy levels. for example, the overlap between ethnicity and income increases geographical segmentation (e.g., migrants being overrepresented in lowincome neighbourhoods), restricting intergroup contact opportunities. below, we will argue that educational income inequality and reproduction may also affect educational homogamy via homogamy preferences. we expect that educational income inequality, i.e., the differences in income by education (also known as returns to schooling), increases absolute educational homogamy (h4a). this is, first, due to opportunities, as blau (1977) argued with respect to intersection. research has shown that higher income differentials between education groups are associated with greater geographic segregation of these groups, which reduces intergroup contact and intermarriage (jarvis et al. 2023; reardon/bischoff 2011). second, educational income inequality may raise preferences for educational homogamy because the economic and social distance between groups is larger in times of high inequality (schwartz 2013). higher inequality also means that people have more to lose, i.e., they can pool fewer resources if they “marry down” (fernández et al. 2005; in schwartz 2003: 455). therefore, educational income inequality should also increase relative educational homogamy (h4b). finally, we expect that educational reproduction, i.e., the association between the education of parents and their children, increases absolute educational homogamy (h5a; also see mare 1991; katrnak et al. 2012). when educational reproduction is higher, social groups mix less. greater school and residential segregation and educational income inequality, which accompany educational reproduction, may weaken opportunities for intermarriage. in addition, educational reproduction may strengthen group boundaries in mating because of the increased distance between education groups. therefore, educational reproduction should also be positively associated with relative educational homogamy (h5b). table 1 provides an overview of the hypotheses. the table highlights that educational composition and inequality factors may have distinct effects on educational homogamy (e.g., a negative effect of educational heterogeneity and a positive effect of gender symmetry on absolute homogamy). this makes it interesting to test its effects. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 223 3 data, measures, and methods 3.1 data we use data from six waves of the european social survey (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020) to answer our research questions and test our hypotheses.5 the european social survey (ess) is a cross-national comparative survey conducted every two years among about 40 countries. the country samples are derived from random probability sampling and are nationally representative of all persons aged 15 and over (no upper age limit) resident within private households. each country has a sample size of about 1,500 respondents, or 800 in countries with ess populations of less than 2 million (for details on sampling procedures, see https:// www.europeansocialsurvey.org/methodology/ess-methodology/sampling). to assess trends, country differences, and drivers of educational homogamy, we pool the ess waves and compare educational homogamy measures across country and birth cohorts. we perform our analyses on the aggregate country cohort level because our hypotheses involve the effects of population characteristics on aggregate levels of educational homogamy and because relative homogamy is, tab. 1: overview of expectations regarding absolute and relative educational homogamy by explanatory factor effect on a. absolute homogamy b. relative homogamy 1. educational expansion 0; 0 + for high-educated; for low-educated 2. educational heterogeneity 3. gender symmetry + + 4. educational income inequality + + 5. educational reproduction + + source: own design 5 since waves before 2010 have a substantial share of non-harmonised education codes (more than one-third) and waves before 2008 did not collect the partner’s education, we confine our analyses to 2010 and later. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/methodology/ess-methodology/sampling https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/methodology/ess-methodology/sampling • wilfred uunk224 by definition, an aggregate characteristic.6 to assess educational homogamy in a country cohort, we selected persons who were married or cohabiting at the time of the interview and reported on their and their partners’ educational attainment. we examine heterosexual couples because we are interested in, e.g., the effect of sex ratios. unfortunately, the data do not allow us to distinguish first from further relationships. furthermore, we selected persons aged at least 30 years at the time of interview to ensure that we measured final educational attainment and selected persons born between 1940 and 1989. in addition, we excluded four specific country waves that displayed an odd distribution of education across the ess waves (an unexpectedly large change in the share of education across waves with more than eight percentage points after weighing the data; great britain, ess round 10; montenegro, round 10; the republic of serbia, round 10; russia, round 5). in total, our sample of analysis consists of 171 country cohorts. these cover 36 countries and five birth cohorts. homogamy measures for these country cohorts are derived from 135,296 married or cohabiting individuals. country cohorts with less than 100 married or cohabiting individuals were omitted (n=8; a large enough number of cases is a requirement for our analyses of marriage tables, crosstabulating partners’ educations). we also excluded country cohorts with missing values on independent variables (n=1; cf. appendix table a2 for sample sizes by country and cohort). 3.2 measures our first dependent measure, absolute educational homogamy, is measured as the proportion of couples in a country cohort in which partners have the same attained educational level. ess uses the internationally standardised international standard classification of education (isced) classification to measure educational level. to meaningfully compare education across the 36 european countries ‒ countries with distinct educational systems ‒, we recoded the seven-category isced classification in the individual-level data into three levels: low (primary and lower secondary education; isced 1, 2), medium (upper secondary, post-secondary, non-tertiary, and short-cycle tertiary education; isced 3, 4, 5), and high (bachelor’s or master’s degree, or equivalent tertiary education; isced 6, 7; cf. de hauw et al. 2017). there are only a few missing or “other” codes (less than 1 percent), which were therefore omitted. the 6 however, due to the limited number of cohorts per country, we used the individual-level data to assess cohort effects on educational homogamy by country. we note that when we used the individual-level data to assess the effects of educational composition on absolute educational homogamy (modelling the probability of being in an educationally homogamous partnership with ols regression, including country and cohort dummies and robust standard errors), we obtained the same outcomes as our aggregate country-cohort ols regressions (appendix, table a1). however, the effect of educational reproduction was insignificant in the individual-level analyses. we further note that to derive aggregated estimates of educational composition and educational homogamy per country cohort, we applied the available ess post-stratification weights in the individual-level data. these account for differential sample selection probabilities across countries and population groups (kaminska 2020). trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 225 summary statistics for absolute educational homogamy are: mean=0.65; sd=0.08; min.=0.45; max.=0.85; n=171. we further computed the proportion of homogamous relationships among lower-, medium-, and higher-educated persons in a country cohort using the same procedure as above. our second dependent measure, relative educational homogamy, is measured as the proportion of couples in a country cohort with the same attained educational level, given the educational distribution of men and women in that population. we assessed relative homogamy by estimating for each country cohort a loglinear model for the marriage table cross-classifying the husband’s by the wife’s education. in the loglinear model, the cell frequencies within marriage tables (i.e., the combinations of spouses’ education) are estimated as a function of the margins of this table (i.e., the main effects of spouses’ education) and the association between spouses’ education (i.e., relative homogamy; ultee/luijkx 1990). we chose a relatively simple association measure, so-called diagonal parameters, for total relative homogamy and relative homogamy by educational group.7 the diagonal parameters model the combinations where the spouses’ educations match exactly (also known as “intrinsic homogamy”; johnson 1980), similar to our definition of absolute homogamy. another reason to use these relatively simple measures of association is that we have few degrees of freedom to model relative homogamy in the 3 x 3 marriage tables. summary statistics for relative educational homogamy are: mean=1.13; sd=0.26; min.=0.43; max.=1.84; n=171. higher values of the diagonal parameter indicate greater relative educational homogamy. note that relative educational homogamy, as assessed with loglinear models controlling for the distribution of spouses’ education, is mostly interpreted in terms of group boundaries (kalmijn 1998). however, it may also be driven by structural factors not accounted for by the distribution of spouses’ education, such as residential and school segregation and the supply of singles (schwartz 2013). we measure the independent measures regarding educational composition and inequality not only from cohabiting and married persons, but by also including single persons to better represent the population of potential partners. using the same age and birth year restriction as for the prime respondents, we define educational composition and inequality measures as follows (see appendix table a3 for correlations): • educational expansion is the share of higher-educated persons in the countrycohort population (i.e., with isced 5, 6, or 7; mean=0.26; sd=0.12; min.=0.05; max.=0.57; n=171). 7 the log-linear model for the general diagonal parameter is: log fkl = λ + λhek + λwel + δν. the loglinear model for the variable diagonal parameters is: log fkl = λ + λhek + λwel + δνk, where f is the cell frequency, hek is the education of the husband with educational categories k, wel is the education of the wife with educational categories l, ν is educational homogamy (where ν = 1 if k = i; ν = 0 otherwise), and λ and δ are the coefficient estimates, for the margins and the diagonal parameter(s), respectively. • wilfred uunk226 • educational heterogeneity is the equality in the shares of the three distinct education groups in a country cohort (cf. blau 1982) and is measured as one minus the summed (absolute) differences of an education group’s share to an equal share (33 percent). theoretically, it may range from -0.33 (perfect homogeneity: one group is 100 percent and the two others 0 percent) to 1 (perfect heterogeneity; all three groups 33 percent). summary statistics are: mean=0.49; sd=0.20; min.=0.03; max.=0.96; n=171. when modelling it jointly with educational expansion, an effect of educational heterogeneity represents equality in the shares of the two lower education groups. • gender symmetry is the equality in the distribution of education of men and women in a country cohort, measured as one minus the summed, absolute differences of an education group’s share of men and women. theoretically, it may range from 0 (maximum gender asymmetry; e.g., men in lowest education group 100 percent, in other groups 0 percent) and 1 (perfect gender symmetry; all three groups have equal shares of men and women). summary statistics are: mean=0.83; sd=0.10; min.=0.44; max.=0.98; n=171. • educational income inequality is the (absolute) difference in the mean income of the highest-educated group in a country cohort (level 3 on the three-category education classification) and the mean income of the lowest-educated group (level 1) in that country cohort (cf. blau et al. 1982). income in ess is measured as a household’s total income (after tax and compulsory deductions, from all sources) in decile groups, from low (1) to high (10; countries could choose weekly, monthly or annual amounts, each corresponding broadly to deciles of the actual household income range in the country). theoretically, it may range from 0 (perfect equality; both education groups have the same mean income decile) to 9 (perfect inequality; one group has a decile score of 10 and the other a decile score of 1). since in each country cohort, the mean income decile of the higher-educated is higher than that of the lower-educated, our inequality measure indicates the income advantage of the higher-educated. summary statistics are: mean=2.80; sd=0.75; min.=0.48; max.=4.52; n=171. • educational reproduction is the share of respondents with the same education as their parents in a country cohort. parental education is assessed by the highest education level attained among parents, measured in isced, and coded similarly to respondents. theoretically, it may range from 0 (perfect mobility; no respondents have the same education as their parents) to 1 (perfect reproduction; all respondents have the same education as their parents). summary statistics are: mean=0.47; sd=0.11; min.=0.15; max.=0.78; n=171).8 8 in regression analyses, the educational composition and inequality variables are standardised (mean=0; sd=1) to compare effect sizes. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 227 as stated, we estimate changes in homogamy across birth cohorts and identify five cohorts ten years in length (1940-1989; cf. de hauw et al. 2017, who also used birth cohorts from the ess for this purpose). this covers marriages concluded from approximately 1960 to 2009. we do not use marriage cohorts. marriage cohorts may represent the moment of partner choice better than birth cohorts do. birth cohorts may bias trends in homogamy due to selective patterns of relationship formation and divorce, remarriage, and mortality (cf. erat 2021). however, unlike birth cohorts, marriage cohorts do not represent the educational distribution of populations well (cf. kalmijn/uunk 2015). singles can neither be represented by marriage cohorts. furthermore note that ess lacks information on the year of first marriage and the year of cohabitation. 3.3 method to assess trends and country differences in educational homogamy across all 36 countries, we describe the mean level of (absolute and relative) homogamy by country and cohort and regress the educational homogamy measures on country and cohort using ordinary least squares (ols) regression. we thereby estimate linear and curvilinear cohort effects. we also use ols regressions to assess the association of educational composition and inequality variables with the level of (absolute and relative) educational homogamy in a country cohort.9 we thereby fix general country and cohort effects (i.e., include country and cohort dummies). in doing so, we model the variation in time trends between countries and control all time-constant (unobserved) country characteristics and general cohort trends that potentially confound conclusions on educational composition and inequality effects. this leaves 132 degrees of freedom (171 country cohorts minus 4 cohort dummies and 35 country dummies). a potential confounder may, for example, be social democracy: social-democratic countries have more highly educated populations than other countries and show less relative educational homogamy (smits et al. 1998), which may bias the effect of educational expansion on relative educational homogamy.10 we regard this fixed effect design as another contribution to the cross-national comparative literature on homogamy. nonetheless, our analyses cannot prove causation. endogeneity likely exists, for example, regarding the effect of educational income inequality on educational homogamy: homogamy may reinforce educational income inequality, specifically because the income measure refers to household income. 9 loglinear models could also have been used to model trends and cross-national differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy and its drivers (e.g., smits et al. 1998). yet, these models cannot assess the variance in homogamy measures across country cohorts and the extent to which this variance can be attributed to independent factors. for a similar methodological approach– regressing aggregated levels of relative homogamy in contextual units (european regions) on macro-level covariates while fixing country dummies ‒ see bouchet-valat (2018). 10 additional analyses showed that controlling for country dummies especially altered the effect of educational expansion on absolute and relative educational homogamy, rendering it insignificant (appendix table a4). this underlines the importance of our fixed effects approach. composition and inequality effects changed less when controlling for cohort dummies. • wilfred uunk228 4 findings our descriptive analyses of country and cohort differences in educational homogamy show that overall absolute educational homogamy did not change in europe across birth cohorts from 1940-1989, neither in a linear nor curvilinear fashion (table 2) and has consistently remained at a rate of about 65 percent (fig. 1). however, this stability hides variation in the level of and change in educational homogamy by education group and country. while absolute educational homogamy was higher for lower than for higher-educated people for the oldest birth cohort (1940-1949), homogamy significantly decreased among the lower-educated and significantly increased among the mediumand higher-educated (table 2). consequently, the pattern of educational homogamy by education group has reversed in recent cohorts. figure 1 shows that the changes were substantial for lowerand higher-educated people: for lower-educated persons, educational homogamy decreased from a rate of 64 percent for cohort 1940-1949 to a rate of 42 percent for cohort 1980-1989, while for higher-educated persons, educational homogamy increased from 52 percent to 64 percent. thus, both the lowerand higher-educated increasingly marry highereducated people, two trends that can be attributed to the sharp rise in tertiary education in european populations. fig. 1: absolute educational homogamy by birth cohort and education group 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 1940-49 1950-59 1960-69 1970-79 1980-89 birth cohort all lower education medium education higher education in percent source: ess 2008-2020, own calculations. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 229 ab so lu te h om og am y re la tiv e ho m og am y m 1 m 2 m 3 m 4 m 5 m 6 m 7 m 8 al l lo w er m ed iu m h ig he ral l lo w er m ed iu m h ig he red uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed a li ne ar c oh or t co ho rt (1 -5 ; l in ea r) -0 .0 00 -0 .0 49 ** 0. 01 5* * 0. 03 2* * -0 .0 13 -0 .13 0* * 0. 15 8* * -0 .11 6* * (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 06 ) (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 08 ) (0 .0 42 ) (0 .0 39 ) (0 .0 41 ) co ns ta nt 0. 70 3* * 0. 90 9* * 0. 61 7* * 0. 44 9* * 1. 40 4* * 3. 76 0* * -1 .4 00 ** 3. 33 4* * (0 .0 22 ) (0 .0 50 ) (0 .0 27 ) (0 .0 34 ) (0 .0 72 ) (0 .3 59 ) (0 .3 34 ) (0 .3 49 ) r2 0. 72 1 0. 77 3 0. 86 5 0. 59 5 0. 74 0 0. 58 4 0. 44 7 0. 51 8 b cu rv ili ne ar c oh or t co ho rt (1 -5 ; l in ea r) 0. 01 9 -0 .0 99 ** 0. 09 7* * 0. 04 2* -0 .0 38 -0 .3 50 0. 30 0 -0 .0 82 (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 30 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 20 ) (0 .0 44 ) (0 .2 17 ) (0 .2 02 ) (0 .2 11 ) co ho rt -s qu ar ed -0 .0 03 0. 00 8~ -0 .0 14 ** -0 .0 02 0. 00 4 0. 03 7 -0 .0 24 -0 .0 06 (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 03 ) (0 .0 07 ) (0 .0 35 ) (0 .0 33 ) (0 .0 34 ) co ns ta nt 0. 68 1* * 0. 96 8* * 0. 52 1* * 0. 43 7* * 1. 43 3* * 4. 01 8* * -1 .5 66 ** 3. 29 4* * (0 .0 26 ) (0 .0 60 ) (0 .0 30 ) (0 .0 41 ) (0 .0 88 ) (0 .4 37 ) (0 .4 07 ) (0 .4 26 ) r2 0. 72 6 0. 77 8 0. 89 2 0. 59 6 0. 74 1 0. 58 8 0. 45 0 0. 51 8 ta b. 2 : o ls re gr es sio ns o f a bs ol ut e an d re la tiv e ed uc at io na l h om og am y: c oh or t e ffe ct s n =1 71 c ou nt ry -c oh or ts ; s ta nd ar d er ro rs in p ar en th es es ; ~ p < 0 .1 0, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1; c ou nt ry fi xe d eff ec ts (c ou nt ry d um m ie s a re n ot sh ow n) ; r ef er en ce g ro up : i ta ly . so ur ce : e ss 2 00 820 20 , o w n ca lc ul at io ns . • wilfred uunk230 figure 2 shows that european countries also vary in the level of and change in absolute educational homogamy. for the first cohort, 1940-1949, educational homogamy is weakest in iceland (47 percent) and strongest in greece (83 percent). the country pattern generally indicates larger educational homogamy in eastern and southern european countries than in northern and western european countries (see appendix figure a1). countries also differ in trends in educational homogamy (cf. fig. 2). this variation is substantial: when modelling country and cohort dummies, the remaining country-cohort variance in absolute educational homogamy is 27 percent (appendix table a5). absolute educational homogamy significantly increased in 12 countries, decreased in 8 countries and remained stable in 16 countries when modelling linear cohort effects on the individual level by country (cf. appendix table a6). particularly large increases in absolute homogamy between the first and last birth cohort can be observed for hungary (15 percentage point increase), germany (10 percentage points), and norway (10 percentage points), while particularly large decreases are evident in cyprus (12 percentage points), spain (23 percentage points), and italy (15 percentage points; fig. 2). for the most recent birth fig. 2: absolute educational homogamy by country and birth cohorts 1940-49 and 1980-89 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 al ba ni a au st ria be lg iu m bu lg ar ia sw itz er la nd cy pr us cz ec h re pu bl ic ge rm an y d en m ar k es to ni a sp ai n fi nl an d fr an ce gr ea tbr ita in g re ec e cr oa tia h un ga ry ire la nd isr ae l ic el an d ita ly li th ua ni a la tv ia m ac ed on ia n et he rla nd s n or w ay po la nd po rtu ga l se rb ia ru ss ia sw ed en sl ov en ia sl ov ak ia uk ra in e 1940-49 1980-89 in percent source: ess 2008-2020, own calculations. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 231 cohort, 1980-1989, eastern european countries have the highest levels of absolute educational homogamy (cf. appendix figure a1). similar to absolute homogamy, the extent of relative educational homogamy ‒ which is positive overall, indicating a general tendency to marry within rather than outside one’s group ‒ remained stable in europe between birth cohorts from 19401989 (fig. 3). it changed neither linearly nor curvilinearly (cf. table 2). yet again, this general stability in relative educational homogamy hides variation in the level of and trends in relative homogamy by education group and country. relative educational homogamy is stronger for the higherand lower-educated than for the medium-educated (cf. fig. 3), indicating that the educational hierarchy’s top and bottom rungs are more closed (cf. kalmijn 1998). the medium-educated tend to marry outside their group, as indicated by the negative ingroup marriage parameter. furthermore, while relative educational homogamy decreased among the lowerand higher-educated, it increased among the medium-educated (fig. 3 and table 2). for the higher-educated group, the decrease in relative homogamy is remarkable because we noted that this group’s absolute homogamy increased (cf. fig. 1). so, while highly educated people increasingly marry within their group, fig. 3: relative educational homogamy by birth cohort and education group -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 1940-49 1950-59 1960-69 1970-79 1980-89 birth cohort all lower education medium education higher education log odds homogamy source: ess 2008-2020, own calculations. • wilfred uunk232 the boundary of this group in mating with other groups ‒ indicated by relative homogamy ‒ became weaker. the supply of marriage candidates may reconcile these two findings: a greater supply of highly educated men and women in european populations, caused by educational expansion, implies higher homogamy rates among the higher educated despite lower mating boundaries. this supply effect outweighs the group boundary effect. countries also differ in relative educational homogamy and patterns resemble those for absolute educational homogamy.11 figure 4 displays that in the first cohort (1940-1949), relative educational homogamy is weakest in great britain and strongest in italy. generally, the country pattern indicates higher rates of relative homogamy for southern european countries (cf. appendix fig. a2). furthermore, countries differ in trends in relative educational homogamy (cf. fig. 4). this variation is substantial: when modelling country and cohort dummies, the remaining country-cohort variance is 26 percent (cf. appendix table a5). relative educational homogamy significantly increased in five countries, decreased in eight countries, and remained stable in 23 countries. this indicates less change in european countries than for absolute homogamy (cf. appendix table a6). we notice substantial increases between the first and last birth cohort in relative homogamy for austria, great britain, and hungary, and substantial decreases for cyprus, spain, and italy (fig. 4). the changes resulted in higher relative homogamy in eastern european countries in the last birth cohort (1980-1989), similar to absolute homogamy (appendix figure a2; cf. bouchet-valat 2018; domanski/przybysz 2007). in table 3, we model the country variation in trends in absolute educational homogamy (m1-m4) and relative educational homogamy (m5-m8) and assess the association with educational composition and inequality factors. we observe that the extent of absolute educational homogamy in a country cohort is negatively associated with educational heterogeneity and positively associated with gender symmetry, educational income inequality, and educational reproduction, whereby heterogeneity has the strongest statistical effect (m1). educational expansion is not associated with overall absolute educational homogamy, but it raises absolute homogamy among those with high levels of education and lowers it among those with medium levels (m2-m4). these findings support our hypotheses (h1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, and 5a). we also observe some other education-specific effects. for example, educational heterogeneity is only associated with homogamy of the lower-educated and educational income inequality is only associated with homogamy of the highereducated. however, these effects are hard to interpret. together, the educational composition and inequality factors account for more than half of the between-country cohort variation in absolute homogamy. the unexplained, between-country cohort variance is 27 percent when only cohort and country dummies are modelled (cf. appendix, table a5) and 12 percent when 11 absolute and relative educational homogamy correlate highly at the country level: r=0.91 for cohort 1940-1949 (p<0.01; n=31 countries); r=0.82 for cohort 1980-1989 (p<0.01; n=32 countries; cf. appendix fig. a3). trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 233 adding composition variables (m1, table 3). therefore, the “composition effects” can be deemed to be strong.12 educational composition and inequality characteristics are also associated with relative educational homogamy, though this is confined to gender symmetry and educational reproduction. both factors are positively associated with the total level of relative educational homogamy in a country cohort, whereby the statistical effect of educational reproduction is strongest (m5, table 3). these findings confirm the hypotheses concerning gender symmetry (h3b) and educational reproduction (h5b) and the hypothesis concerning educational expansion (h1b, for which we postulated no effect), but not those regarding educational heterogeneity (h2b) and educational income inequality (h4b). the educational composition and inequality factors account for one-fourth of the between-country cohort variation in relative homogamy fig. 4: relative educational homogamy by country and birth cohorts 1940-49 and 1980-89 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 al ba ni a au st ria be lg iu m bu lg ar ia sw itz er la nd cy pr us cz ec h re pu bl ic ge rm an y d en m ar k es to ni a sp ai n fi nl an d fr an ce gr ea tbr ita in g re ec e cr oa tia h un ga ry ire la nd isr ae l ic el an d ita ly li th ua ni a la tv ia m ac ed on ia n et he rla nd s n or w ay po la nd po rtu ga l se rb ia ru ss ia sw ed en sl ov en ia sl ov ak ia uk ra in e 1940-49 1980-89 log odds homogamy source: ess 2008-2020, own calculations. 12 bivariate analyses also display a strong association of absolute homogamy with the educational composition and inequality factors, from a correlation of r=0.31 (gender symmetry) to r=–0.51 (educational heterogeneity; see appendix table a1). • wilfred uunk234 ta b. 3 : o ls re gr es sio n of a bs ol ut e an d re la tiv e ed uc at io na l h om og am y: e du ca tio na l c om po sit io n an d in eq ua lit y eff ec ts ab so lu te h om og am y re la tiv e ho m og am y m 1 m 2 m 3 m 4 m 5 m 6 m 7 m 8 al l lo w er m ed iu m h ig he ral l lo w er m ed iu m h ig he red uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at ed ed uc at io na l e xp an sio n -0 .0 07 -0 .0 37 -0 .0 30 * 0. 04 2* -0 .0 30 -0 .12 8 0. 08 0 -0 .2 61 (0 .0 08 ) (0 .0 25 ) (0 .0 12 ) (0 .0 17 ) (0 .0 37 ) (0 .2 06 ) (0 .19 3) (0 .19 9) ed uc at io na l h et er og en ei ty -0 .0 32 ** 0. 04 7* * -0 .0 07 0. 01 1 -0 .0 17 -0 .0 54 -0 .0 13 0. 06 6 (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 13 ) (0 .0 06 ) (0 .0 09 ) (0 .0 19 ) (0 .10 7) (0 .10 0) (0 .10 3) g en de r s ym m et ry 0. 01 9* * 0. 03 1* * 0. 01 0* 0. 03 0* * 0. 03 7* -0 .0 31 0. 12 2 -0 .14 3~ (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 11 ) (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 07 ) (0 .0 16 ) (0 .0 88 ) (0 .0 82 ) (0 .0 85 ) ed uc at io na l i nc om e in eq ua lit y 0. 01 0* 0. 00 6 0. 01 0~ 0. 03 4* * 0. 01 1 -0 .0 18 0. 01 2 0. 03 8 (0 .0 04 ) (0 .0 11 ) (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 08 ) (0 .0 17 ) (0 .0 93 ) (0 .0 87 ) (0 .0 90 ) ed uc at io na l r ep ro du ct io n 0. 01 5* * 0. 05 3* * -0 .0 41 ** -0 .0 05 0. 07 7* * 0. 15 1 0. 05 6 -0 .12 2 (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 15 ) (0 .0 07 ) (0 .0 10 ) (0 .0 22 ) (0 .12 1) (0 .11 4) (0 .11 7) co ns ta nt 0. 68 9* * 0. 75 7* * 0. 57 9* * 0. 54 5* * 1. 29 7* * 3. 45 7* * -1 .2 35 ** 2. 85 5* * (0 .0 20 ) (0 .0 59 ) (0 .0 28 ) (0 .0 39 ) (0 .0 87 ) (0 .4 79 ) (0 .4 49 ) (0 .4 63 ) o bs er va tio ns 17 1 17 1 17 1 17 1 17 1 17 1 17 1 17 1 r2 0. 87 9 0. 83 4 0. 92 2 0. 70 7 0. 80 0 0. 60 5 0. 46 7 0. 54 6 st an da rd ise d va ria bl es (m ea n 0; s d -1 ); st an da rd e rro rs in p ar en th es es . ~ p < 0 .1 0, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1; co un try a nd c oh or t fi xe d eff ec ts (c ou nt ry a nd c oh or t d um m ie s a re n ot sh ow n) ; r ef er en ce g ro up s: ita ly a nd c oh or t 1 94 019 49 . so ur ce : es s 20 08 -2 02 0, o w n ca lc ul at io ns . trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 235 (unexplained, between-country cohort variance is 26 percent (cf. appendix, table a5) and 20 percent in m5, table 3). therefore, educational composition and inequality characteristics explain less of the country-cohort variation in relative educational homogamy than absolute educational homogamy. this was to be expected because relative educational homogamy already accounts for part of the educational distribution effects. still, some educational composition characteristics are associated with group boundaries in educational assortative mating. 5 conclusions and discussion this paper aimed to advance the cross-comparative literature on educational homogamy by describing trends and cross-national differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy in europe and assessing the association of absolute and relative educational homogamy with educational composition and inequality measures. our descriptive analyses on 36 countries and five birth cohorts from several waves of the ess show that the overall level of absolute and relative educational homogamy did not change across birth cohorts from 1940-1989 in europe. however, this stability conceals variation in the level of and change in educational homogamy by education group and country. absolute educational homogamy decreased for the lower-educated and increased for the higher-educated, and for the younger birth cohorts, educational homogamy among the higher-educated is considerably higher than among the lower-educated. these changes imply that both lowereducated and higher-educated people increasingly marry higher-educated people, two trends that can be attributed to the sharp rise of the share of higher-educated people in european populations (i.e., educational expansion). on the other hand, relative educational homogamy decreased for both lowerand higher-educated people, whereas it increased for those with intermediate levels of education. this may indicate weaker preferences for educational homogamy among those with lower and higher levels of education in europe and stronger preferences for educational homogamy among those with medium education level. furthermore, absolute and relative educational homogamy have differed substantially among countries ‒ with a higher level of absolute and relative homogamy in eastern european countries in the most recent cohorts ‒ and countries have substantially differed in absolute and relative homogamy trends. these descriptive findings ‒ the overall stability in absolute and relative educational homogamy in europe, with country and educational group variation in homogamy trends ‒ align with findings from systematic reviews of worldwide studies on relative educational homogamy (blossfeld 2009; kalmijn 1998) and with de hauw et al.’s (2017) analysis of absolute homogamy in europe. on the other hand, the large-scale cross-country comparative study by ultee and luijkx (1990) observed decreases in absolute and relative homogamy. however, this study examined an older period and shows substantial country variation in homogamy trends (cf. smits et al. 2000 for countries worldwide). smaller-scale comparative and single-country • wilfred uunk236 studies for europe also display varying trends. katrnak and manea (2020) showed increases in absolute homogamy in the czech republic, hungary, italy, poland, slovakia, and sweden. decreases in relative educational homogamy were found for france (bouchet-valat 2014) and great britain (halpin/chan 2003); increases for ireland (halpin/chan 2003), hungary, and slovakia (katrnak et al. 2006); and stability for the czech republic (katrnak et al. 2006), west germany (wirth 1996), the netherlands (kalmijn/uunk 2015), and poland (katrnak et al. 2006).13 like our study, prior studies observed that homogamy trends differ by educational group. studies report decreasing relative educational homogamy among tertiary-educated people worldwide (smits 2003) and in europe (katrnak/manea 2020), yet some singlecountry studies note an increase (for spain: esteve and cortina 2006). our regression analyses of the country-cohort variation in absolute and relative educational homogamy displayed that (changes in) educational composition and inequality characteristics are associated with (changes in) educational homogamy. educational gender symmetry, educational income inequality, and educational reproduction are positively associated, and educational heterogeneity is negatively associated with the level of absolute educational homogamy in a country cohort. educational expansion is not associated with the overall level of absolute homogamy. however, it is positively associated with homogamy among the higher-educated and negatively with homogamy among the medium-educated. a population’s educational composition is less strongly associated with relative educational homogamy. only gender symmetry and educational reproduction are associated, in a positive direction, with relative educational homogamy. these findings indicate that educational composition and inequality characteristics are likely important drivers of educational homogamy. we regard this finding as an advancement of the homogamy literature, in which composition effects have generally been neglected.14 we interpret the composition effects via meeting opportunities ‒ using blau’s theory of structural opportunities for intermarriage (blau 1977; blau et al. 1982) ‒ and preferences for educational homogamy. educational heterogeneity, for example, may have lowered educational homogamy by increasing meeting opportunities with other education groups and by raising mutual acceptance. however, our findings suggest that an interpretation of educational composition and inequality effects in terms of opportunities is more likely than preferences since relative educational homogamy is associated more weakly with educational composition characteristics than absolute educational homogamy. this was to be expected, because relative educational homogamy already partly accounted for the educational distribution effects. still, we observe some associations, indicating 13 the findings for single countries cannot be easily compared to our study because they refer to distinct marriage periods and apply different educational classifications and methods to measure change (cf. blossfeld 2009). 14 but see katrnak et al. (2012) regarding educational reproduction and relative homogamy, torche (2010) regarding educational income inequality and relative homogamy, and permanyer et al. (2019) regarding educational expansion and gender symmetry and absolute educational homogamy. trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe • 237 that the effects of educational composition on homogamy go beyond opportunity effects. based on the following limitations of our study, we see several avenues for further research. first, our study was limited to analysing educational homogamy among three broad educational groups. how educational composition affects homogamy at the top and the bottom of the educational hierarchy, when using a more detailed classification, is also of interest. a decline in the share of the least educated may imply more relative homogamy among this group due to greater homogeneity. similarly, further educational expansion may imply new social closure and more relative homogamy within the educational elite (cf. bouchet-valat 2014), for example, to ensure cultural similarity in mate selection or as a form of social distinction (bourdieu 1974). second, our measure of relative homogamy is, as stated, not a perfect indicator of homogamy preferences, as this measure may still be an outcome of unaccounted structural factors (geographical segmentation and the number of singles). future studies may model the preferences for homogamy more directly, as done in online dating studies, and test the effects of the structure of marriage markets (cf. fong 2024). third, we limited ourselves to studying the effects of some educational composition and inequality factors. future studies may compare the strength of these effects with those of other (potentially) relevant drivers of educational homogamy, such as the educational gradient in marriage (cf. leesch/skopek 2023), the selectivity of higher education institutions (cf. uchikoshi 2022), residential segregation of educational groups (cf. blau/schwartz 1984), and educational differences in human values. fourth, although our study improved upon other cross-national comparative studies on homogamy by examining trends across countries while controlling for general country and cohort effects, our study cannot make causal claims. unobserved time-varying factors may still exist that present an alternative explanation of our findings on educational composition effects. in addition, some of the drivers of educational homogamy, e.g., educational income inequality, may be endogenously determined by educational homogamy (torche 2010). further studies may therefore model the recursive effects of marriage market constraints and partner choice (cf. jarvis et al. 2023). references allport, gordon w. 1954: the nature of prejudice. boston: addison-wesley. beck, audrey; gonzález-sancho, carlos 2009: educational assortative mating and children’s school readiness. princeton: center for research on child wellbeing. berent, jerzy 1954: social mobility and marriage: a study of trends in england and wales. in: glass, david v. 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luijkx, ruud 1990: educational heterogamy and father-to-son occupational mobility in 23 industrial nations: general societal openness or compensatory strategies of reproduction? in: european sociological review 6,2: 125-149. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.esr.a036554 van bavel, jan; schwartz, christine r.; esteve, albert 2018: the reversal of the gender gap in education and its consequences for family life. in: annual review of sociology, 44: 341-360. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041215 wirth, heike 1996: wer heiratet wen? die entwicklung der bildungsspezifischen heiratsmuster in westdeutschland. in: zeitschrift für soziologie 25,5: 371-394. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-1996-0503 date of submission: 31.10.2023 date of acceptance: 20.06.2024 prof. dr. wilfred uunk (*). university of innsbruck. innsbruck, austria. e-mail: wilfred.uunk@uibk.ac.at url: https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-teamwilfred-uunk/ https://doi.org/10.2307/2657547 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2004.00073.x https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.0.0109 https://doi.org/10.1086/226108 https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-10271332 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.esr.a036554 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041215 https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-1996-0503 mailto:wilfred.uunk@uibk.ac.at https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 risto conte keivabu abstract: seasonal trends in fertility are found in several contexts and are affected by societal and environmental factors. this paper documents how birth seasonality in east and west germany changed over time and, in particular, after 1989 and the onset of reunification. we use birth counts by month from the human fertility database, broken down into east and west germany, from 1946 to 2017. we observe similar birth seasonality in east and west germany in the years from 1946 to the 1970s, with an initial peak occurring in the first months of the year followed by a second peak in september. in the 1970s, west germany starts to diverge, with the emergence of a single peak in births in late summer. shortly after reunification, the seasonal fertility trends found in west germany are mirrored in east germany. consequently, it appears that the socioeconomic, cultural and institutional differences in the two areas have potentially influenced the intra-annual distribution of births, as well as the timing and number of children as described in previous studies. keywords: seasonality · germany · fertility · demographic changes 1 introduction seasonal trends in births are found in several contexts around the world, but are not homogeneous across regions, time and sociodemographic groups. importantly, economic (ruiu/breschi 2019), cultural (symul et al. 2022; wood et al. 2017), environmental (wilson et al. 2020), sociodemographic (bobak/gjonca 2001; haandrikman/van wissen 2008; recio alcaide et al. 2022), and physiological factors (ellision et al. 2005) as well as parity (sobotka et al. 2005), and pandemics (aassve et al. 2021; krombholz 2024) are major determinants of birth seasonality. however, as economic, cultural and environmental factors change over time, shifts in the seasonality of births may well be expected to follow. for example, existing research has reported extensively on how the industrialisation process has affected seasonality of fertility in the past (ruiu/breschi 2019). nevertheless, there is a lack of studies investigating how major socioeconomic and institutional changes in already industrialised settings with similar environmental conditions alter seasonality of births. for instance, the socioeconomic, technological and cultural differences comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 50 (2025): 41-56 (date of release: 23.04.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-04 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-04en4 • risto conte keivabu42 evident in east and west germany after the second world war have been found to influence the timing and total number of births (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; kreyenfeld 2003, 2004), but the intra-annual distribution of births could have differed as well. in this study, we explore how seasonality of fertility is shaped by long-term differences in socioeconomic factors and sudden changes in economic structures, drawing on the unique context found in east germany and west germany in the period following the second world war. the economic and societal differences between east and west germany post-second world war have been substantial and it is possible that they have shaped seasonality of births. notably, environmental factors are not expected to determine differences in the two areas as found in other contexts (martinez-bakker et al. 2014; wilson et al. 2020), since the two areas share a similar climate. conversely, differences might be expected due to the higher religiosity found in west germany compared with the east. the latter has one of the highest rates of atheism, due in part to the strong process of secularisation experienced during the rule of the socialist unity party of germany (sed) (froese/ pfaff 2005). the higher share of the population employed in agriculture in east germany could be a determinant of higher birth seasonality as already documented in the 19th century, most notably for non-marital births (klüsener/goldstein 2016). furthermore, the abrupt changes in socioeconomic structures that occurred in east germany with the process of reunification may have brought about a sudden change in seasonal trends in the area. consequently, by exploring seasonal trends in east and west germany, we contribute to the broader existing literature focusing on seasonal fertility trends and the potential determinants thereof. 2 change in seasonality of fertility over time only a small number of studies have documented changes in the seasonality of births over time. in spain, a peak in births was documented in the spring months between the 1940s and the 1980s, but a decline in such a peak was observed in later years, disappearing in the 2000s (cancho-candela et al. 2007). in recent decades, this has been replaced by a new peak in late summer (recio alcaide et al. 2023). similar findings to spain were also observed in france, west germany, the netherlands (haandrikman/van wissen 2008) and poland (cypryjański 2019; lerchl et al. 1993; régnier-loilier/divinagracia 2010). in sweden, births peaked in spring between 1940 and 1999, but showed a loss of seasonality in the 21st century (dahlberg/andersson 2018). there are multiple mechanisms used to explain changes in birth seasonality. one explanation relates to industrialisation and the economic and technological developments in societies (dahlberg/andersson 2018). for instance, in italy at the turn of the 20th century, the shift in seasonal birth trends occurred earlier in the north of the country than in the south due to the north’s earlier industrial development (ruiu/breschi 2019). other possible factors relate to the introduction of birth control, a higher level of non-marital births and the declining importance of religion (recio alcaide et al. 2023). furthermore, short-term changes in birth seasonality have changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 43 been observed and linked to environmental factors such as hot temperatures (conte keivabu et al. 2024; hajdu/hajdu 2022) or pandemics (chandra et al. 2018). nevertheless, it remains unclear as to how sudden changes in socioeconomic and institutional structures might affect birth seasonality. 3 data and methods in this study, we leverage data on monthly birth counts separately for east and west germany from january 1946 to december 2017, as provided by the human fertility database (hfd 2023) (for further information on the data, we refer the reader to the hfd documentation on germany). to analyse the change in the seasonality of fertility in the two areas over time, we first adjust our time series of monthly birth counts by the number of days in each month. second, we construct a birth index that is computed as: im,y,r = in which the index i for year y, month m and region r is determined by the monthly birth counts in region r and month m, divided by the centred moving average number of births in region r and year y, and multiplied by 100. the moving average is computed symmetrically, averaging the 12 months around a specific month (six months prior and six months after). in this regard, we follow similar previous studies that used such an index to observe monthly variations in births from expected values in a specific year (haandrikman/van wissen 2008; recio alcaide et al. 2022; wilson et al. 2020). third, we estimate the change in seasonality over time based on equation (1): 1) ym,y,r = αr + monthm x αr + ɛm,y,r here, we run an ols model with the birth index as our outcome representing the index in region r at month m and year y. we then run an interaction between our variable α denoting region r and the month variable month and we run this model for eight separate periods, from 1946 to 1954, 1955 to 1963, 1964 to 1972, 1973 to 1981, 1982 to 1989, 1990 to 1998, 1999 to 2007 and 2008 to 2017. the results allow us to provide an estimate of the months with higher and lower numbers of births in a specific period and region of germany. finally, to better investigate changes in birth seasonality in the years prior to reunification (1980-1989) compared with the periods immediately thereafter (1990 to 1998, 1999 to 2007 and 2008 to 2017), we use a p-score as per similar previous studies analysing changes in seasonal trends (fallesen 2021). the p-score is used to calculate the percentage difference in the birth index of a given month in the period after reunification relative to the baseline, namely the years before reunification. the p-score is calculated as: 2) pm,period,r = ��,�,� ���,�,� ∗ 100,  𝐼𝐼�,������,� � 𝐼𝐼�,��������,� 𝐼𝐼�,��������,�   • risto conte keivabu44 here, with p denoting the percentage change in the monthly birth index in the periods after reunification relative to the period just before reunification. positive values therefore denote an increase in the birth index in the periods after reunification, whereas negative values describe a decrease. importantly, we calculate this score separately for east and west germany. the code and data available to replicate the analysis are accessible in this repository: https://osf.io/9a835/. 4 results in figure 1, we plot the total number of monthly births in east and west germany from 1946 to 2017. as reported in several previous studies, we observe an increase in births in the years after the second world war. however, we also observe a sharp decline in births in west and east germany in the 1970s that coincides with the oil crisis. following reunification, births in east germany decline sharply, with a steady, albeit only partial recovery from the early 2000s onwards. conversely, in west germany, there is no sharp decline in births in the immediate post-reunification period. such descriptive findings are consistent with existing studies depicting a difference in fertility rates before and after reunification, especially in east germany (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; kreyenfeld 2004). nevertheless, it should be noted that we plot these numbers here for descriptive purposes only and that the trends depicted show the absolute number of births but do not take into consideration changes in population size and age structure. as a result, these should be interpreted carefully and compared with figures such as the total fertility rate (tfr) provided in previous studies (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011; kreyenfeld 2004). to better understand the spread of births between months in a given year, we compute a yearly coefficient of variation (cv) in east and west germany. the cv is calculated as: cy,r = here, we divide the standard deviation in region r and year y by the average number of births in the same region and year. the values of the cv are interpreted as percentages and denote variability relative to the mean, where high values signify years with values dispersed from the average, and vice versa for low values. in figure 2, we observe the yearly cv in east and west germany from 1946 to 2017. the cv is relatively low, showing values of around 5 for most of the years. nevertheless, in certain periods the cv displays a sharp increase. a high coefficient of variation in both east and west germany is observed in the years immediately following the second world war, but declines thereafter. notably, we observe a major increase in the coefficient of variation in east germany in 1972. this increase is surprising and could be the result of several political, socioeconomic and cultural factors that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. for instance, several reforms in family and reproductive policies were implemented in 1972 and might explain this pattern (kreyenfeld 2004). monetary incentives were implemented to boost fertility in a country with low immigration (kreyenfeld 2004). however, in figure 1 (also shown in more detail in appendix: fig. a1), we observe a notable decline in σ�,� μ�,� * 100.  changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 45 births in east germany in 1972, from august onwards in particular. consequently, the family policies implemented to boost fertility do not seem to have had the expected impact, rather the contrary. march 1972 witnessed a major change in reproductive rights with the legalisation of abortion, making it available to all women within 12 weeks of pregnancy and at later stages for specific cases such as health dangers to the mother (mehlan 1990). approximately 110,000 abortions were performed in 1972 but the number decreased to some 80,000 in 1988 (david 1992; mehlan 1990). studies on the legalisation of abortion and the effects on the fertility rate find mostly a negative association (levine et al. 1999; pop-eleches 2010; valente 2014), although there are also some contrasting findings (fernández/juif 2023). in east germany, we observe a decline in births from 234,870 in 1971 to 200,443 in 1972, suggesting a decline of about 14.7 percent which is somewhat comparable with the decline of 11 percent documented in parts of the united states (levine et al. 1999). additionally, in appendix figure a1, we see that the average number of births in fig. 1: number of births in east (blue) and west germany (red) 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 number of births 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 year note: in the figure, we show the monthly number of births in east and west germany between 1946 and 2017. the monthly values are shown in black. the red line is a curve generated using a kernel-weighted (epanechnikov) local regression fit with a bandwidth of three months. the blue line represents a similar curve, but for east germany. source: human fertility database, own calculations. • risto conte keivabu46 january and february of 1972 resembles that of the previous three years, but a decline can be seen from march onwards, with the largest decrease evident eight and nine months after the legalisation of abortion, in november and december 1972 respectively. nevertheless, such insights should be treated with caution and require additional future research, since other competing social and economic factors could have contributed to the observed decrease in births. conversely, the sharp increase in the cv in 1990 in east germany can be linked to the process of reunification and the political movements of 1989 which depressed births in the early months of 1990 and postponed them to later months of 1990 as against previous years (appendix: fig. a2). post-reunification, east and west germany exhibit a similar cv in births, albeit with a slightly higher value in east germany. in figure 3, we show results based on equation (1) run separately for the eight periods (1946 to 1954, 1955 to 1963, 1964 to 1972, 1973 to 1981, 1982 to 1989, 1990 to 1998, 1999 to 2007 and 2008 to 2017). here, we observe higher values in the birth index during the early months of a year in both regions between 1946 and fig. 2: coefficient of variation in east and west germany note: the coefficient of variation in births in east and west germany is reported for the period from 1946 to 2017. source: human fertility database, own calculations. 0 5 10 15 20 cv births 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 east germany west germany year changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 47 1972. births tend to peak in february or march, but decline in the months thereafter, with a slight uptick in the month of september that is likely determined by a higher rate of conception during the winter holidays (wood et al. 2017). in west germany, the peak observed in the first months of the year decreases over time, becoming a period of below average births from 1982 onwards, but a new peak emerges in late summer and september. in east germany, a peak in the early months of the year is observed up until 1989, but disappears in the periods thereafter to show a similar seasonal trend to that of west germany. in figure 4, we visualise the birth index for each month over time and separately by region. we see that the months of march, april and may show the peaks in births during the first decades. by contrast, we see that the increase in the months of july, august and september takes place in the later decades. as observed in figure 3, the shift in the trend happens earlier in west germany, namely in the 1970s, and is slower to take place in east germany where it accelerates and is completed in the 1990s. the observed shift indicates that conception was frequent during the summer months in the decades after the second world war, but a postponement in conceptions to autumn and winter months emerged in the 1970s in west germany and in the 1990s in east germany. a common trend in the two regions regards the fig. 3: seasonality of fertility in east and west germany across eight periods from 1946 to 2017 note: our results are reported based on equation (1), run separately for the eight periods 1946 to 1954, 1955 to 1963, 1964 to 1972, 1973 to 1981, 1982 to 1989, 1990 to 1998, 1999 to 2007 and 2008 to 2017. we report 95% confidence intervals. source: human fertility database, own calculations. 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1946-1954 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1955-1963 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1964-1972 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1973-1981 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1982-1989 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1990-1998 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1999-2007 80 90 100 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2008-2017 east germany west germany bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x bi rth in de x • risto conte keivabu48 months with the lowest number of births. this remains concentrated in the final two months of the year (november and december). however, march and april exhibit a significant decline in their seasonal component, with birth levels dropping to lows comparable with those seen in november and december. fig. 4: birth index for each month from 1946 to 2017 note: we plot the birth index separately for each month from 1946 to 2017, in both east and west germany. source: human fertility database, own calculations. 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 january 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 february 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 march 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 april 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 may 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 june 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 july 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 august 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 september 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 october 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 november 60 80 100 120 bi rth in de x 1946 1960 1975 1990 2005 2017 december east germany west germany changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 49 in figure 5, we show the p-score in east and west germany, describing the percentage change in the birth index in the periods after reunification relative to the period 1980-1989. in east germany, we observe a more significant decline in the birth index concentrated in the first months of the year, followed by an increase in late summer. the decline is sharpest for the month of march and the period 20082017, when it exceeds -10 percent. by contrast, the increase is greatest in the late summer months and in the latest period 2008-2017, during which time the increase recorded was about 10 percent. in west germany, a decline can be seen during the first months of the year although this is not as stark as in the east and is equal to about 5 percent. similarly, the increase in the birth index is concentrated in the late summer months and is more significant in the period 2008-2017, albeit of minor relevance as it is below 5 percent. fig. 5: monthly percentage difference in the birth index post-reunification relative to the period 1980-1989 -10 -5 0 5 10 % change in birth index jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month east germany -10 -5 0 5 10 % change in birth index jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month west germany 1990-1998 1999-2007 2008-2017 note: in the left panel, we show the percentage difference in the birth index in the periods post-reunification relative to the period 1980-1989 in east germany. in the right panel, we show similar values but for west germany. the periods are 1990-1998, 2000-2007 and 20082017. source: human fertility database, own calculations. • risto conte keivabu50 5 discussion and conclusion this study investigated seasonal trends in fertility and their evolution in east and west germany from 1946 to 2017. first, we observed a change in the seasonality of births over time, with births peaking in spring in the earlier periods and in late summer in the later period. second, the change in seasonality occurred first in west germany in the 1970s, and post-reunification in the 1990s in east germany. third, we observe greater declines in the birth index in the early months of the year in the periods post-1990 relative to the pre-reunification period (1980-1989) in both east and west germany. the observed shifts in the season of peak fertility, from spring to late summer, align with existing studies on west germany (lerchl et al. 1993), east and west germany (häussler/dudenhausen 2024) and other countries such as spain, sweden, the netherlands, france and poland (recio alcaide et al. 2023; cypryjański 2019; dahlberg/andersson 2018; haandrikman/van wissen 2008; régnier-loilier/ divinagracia 2010). however, we also observe that the shift in the season of peak births does not happen at the same time in east and west germany. in the 1970s, east germany continues to show a preference for early-year births whereas west germany begins to see a shift towards a late summer peak. interestingly, alignment of east german birth seasonality with that of west germany only occurs postreunification. these trends lay bare the question of which factors determined the timing in the shift in seasonality in the two regions, and why this occurred only after reunification in east germany. testing the factors that shape such trends in seasonality is beyond the scope of this study, but here we provide some tentative explanations. previous studies attributed the peak in births during spring to agricultural cycles (klüsener/goldstein 2016; ruiu/breschi 2019), whereas a peak in september has been described as being attributable to higher levels of sexual activity during the winter festivities (symul et al. 2022; wood et al. 2017). it is difficult to argue how much of the sudden change in birth seasonality observed in east germany is due to the decline in the share of the population employed in the agricultural sector after reunification. in 1991, 7.3 percent of the population in east germany was still employed in agriculture and forestry compared with 3.5 percent in west germany (burda/hunt 2001). in 2000, the numbers converged to 3.6 percent in east germany and 2.4 percent in west germany (burda/hunt 2001). consequently, the number of people employed in agriculture was higher in east than in west germany, but still limited relative to the overall population. differences in religiosity are unlikely to explain the later changes in birth seasonality observed in east germany. further, similar attitudes on the use of contraception have been documented in east and west germany and differences are unlikely to be fully explained by the accessibility to such technologies (oddens et al. 1993), as argued in a recent study (häussler/dudenhausen 2024). arguably, other sociodemographic factors related to the broader change in fertility behaviour, coinciding with a sharp decline in tfr, could have brought about a change in birth seasonality in east germany after reunification. for instance, a previous study for the netherlands argued that seasonal changes in births were driven by a change changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 51 in age at first birth and changes in parity (haandrikman/van wissen 2008). in fact, previous findings point to an increase in mean age at birth after reunification and a decline in second births among east german women post-reunification (arránz becker et al. 2010; kreyenfeld 2003). in conclusion, this study documents the changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany from 1946 to 2017. the divergent fertility behaviours in east and west germany, and their alignment post-reunification, bring further evidence on how economic and sociodemographic factors could influence fertility decisions. nevertheless, our findings raise important questions regarding the mechanisms that determined the observed changes in birth seasonality. future studies could test which precise mechanisms led to the observed changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany and what influenced their timing, potentially providing important lessons in order to understand human fertility behaviour in other contexts. references aassve, arnstein et al. 2021: early assessment of the relationship between the covid-19 pandemic and births in high-income countries. in: proceedings of the national academy of sciences 118,36: e2105709118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105709118 arránz becker, oliver; lois, daniel; nauck, bernhard 2010: differences in fertility patterns between east and west german women. disentangling the roles of cultural background and of the transformation process. in: comparative population studies 35,1: 7-34. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-02 bobak, martin; 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lópez, césar pérez; bolúmar, francisco 2022: influence of sociodemographic factors in birth seasonality in spain. in: american journal of human biology 34,10: e23788. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23788 recio alcaide, adela; lópez, césar pérez; montrull, francisco bolúmar 2023: changes in birth seasonality in spain: data from 1863-1870 and 1900-2021. in: demographic research 49: 969-982. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2023.49.35 régnier-loilier, arnaud; divinagracia, emily 2010: changes in the seasonality of births in france from 1975 to the present. in: population 65,1: 145-185. ruiu, gabriele; breschi, marco 2019: intensity of agricultural workload and the seasonality of births in italy. in: european journal of population / revue européenne de démographie 36,1: 141-169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09524-1 sobotka, tomáš et al. 2005: monthly estimates of the quantum of fertility: towards a fertility monitoring system in austria. in: vienna yearbook of population research 2005: 109-141. https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2005s109 symul, laura et al. 2022: unmasking seasonal cycles in human fertility: how holiday sex and fertility cycles shape birth seasonality. in: medrxiv − the preprint for health sciences. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.19.20235010 valente, christine 2014: access to abortion, investments in neonatal health, and sexselection: evidence from nepal. in: journal of development economics 107: 225-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.12.002 wilson, tom; mcdonald, peter; temple, jeromey 2020: the geographical patterns of birth seasonality in australia. in: demographic research 43,40: 1185-1198. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2020.43.40 wood, ian b. et al. 2017: human sexual cycles are driven by culture and match collective moods. in: scientific reports 7,17973. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18262-5 date of submission: 24.06.2024 date of acceptance: 20.02.2025 dr. risto conte keivabu (*). laboratory of digital and computational demography, max planck institute of demographic research. rostock, germany. e-mail: contekeivabu@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/about_us_6113/staff_directory_1899/risto_conte_ keivabu_4143 • risto conte keivabu54 fig. a1: monthly birth counts and birth index in east and west germany 19691975 150,000 200,000 250,000 bi rth s jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month births east germany 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 900,000 1,000,000 bi rth s jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month births west germany births pre & post 1972 80 90 100 110 120 bi rth in de x jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month birth index east germany 90 95 100 105 110 bi rth in de x jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month birth index west germany birth index pre & post 1972 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 note: we plot the birth counts and birth index in the years between 1969 and 1975 in east and west germany. pre-1972 values are shown in blue and post-1972 values in red. the values for 1972 are in black. source: human fertility database, own calculations. changes in birth seasonality in east and west germany, 1946-2017 • 55 fig. a2: monthly birth counts and birth index in east and west germany 19871993 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 bi rth s jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month births east germany (1987-1993) 90 95 100 105 110 bi rth in de x jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month birth index east germany (1987-1993) east germany (1987-1993) 600,000 650,000 700,000 750,000 800,000 bi rth s jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month births west germany (1987-1993) 90 95 100 105 110 bi rth in de x jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec month birth index west germany (1987-1993) west germany (1987-1993) 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 note: we plot the birth counts and birth index in the years 1987-1993 in east and west germany. pre-1990 values are shown in blue and post-1990 values in red. the values for 1990 are in black. source: human fertility database, own calculations. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups: an approach that examines their demographic, cultural and socio-economic characteristics understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups: an approach that examines their demographic, cultural and socioeconomic c haracteristics philip sapiro abstract: population researchers have contributed to the debate on minority group distribution and disadvantage and social cohesion by providing objective analysis. a plethora of new distribution measurement techniques have been presented in recent years, but they have not provided suffi cient explanatory power of underlying trajectories to inform ongoing political debate. indeed, a focus on trying to summarise complex situations with readily understood measures may be misplaced. this paper takes an alternative approach and asks whether a more detailed analysis of individual and environmental characteristics is necessary if researchers are to continue to provide worthwhile input to policy development. using england and wales as a test bed, it looks at four small sub-populations (circa 250,000 at the turn of the century) – two based on ethnic grouping: bangladeshi and chinese; and two based on an under-researched area of cultural background, religion: jews and sikhs. despite major differences in longevity of presence in the uk, age profi le, socio-economic progress, and levels of inter-marriage, there are, at a national level, parallels in the distribution patterns and trajectories for three of the groups. however, heterogeneity between and within the groups mean that at a local level, these similarities are confounded. the paper concludes that complex interactions between natural change and migration, and between suburbanisation and a desire for group congregation, mean that explanations for the trajectory of distribution require examination of data at a detailed level, beyond the scope of index-based methods. such analyses are necessary if researchers are to effectively contribute to future policy development. keywords: spatial distribution · index of dissimilarity · ethnic group · religion · migration · natural change comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 137-170 (date of release: 07.10.2019) federal institute for population research 2019 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2019-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2019-13en5 • philip sapiro138 1 introduction population geographers and other social scientists have been investigating and analysing the spatial distribution of minority groups, and the impact of group segregation on the stability of society for many decades. this work has made a positive contribution to academic and political debate in many parts of the world, by providing an objective analysis of the extensive amounts of data that are available (for example, rugh/massey 2010; ãslund/skans 2010; shon 2010; jivraj/simpson 2015; catney 2016). frequently, this has taken the form of assessing and quantifying the pattern of distribution and its change over time through the use of a wide variety of indices of distribution. the utility in attempting to summarise a complex picture in a readily understood measure that can be transferred from one situation to another clearly has benefi ts. however, given the need to explain, understand, and predict changes in spatial distribution if policy advice is to be developed, a focus on measurement techniques may be misplaced. it may have contributed to an undue prominence being given to residential segregation, and attempts to reduce it per se, rather than considering positive aspects of group congregation, or identifying location-specifi c underlying health, qualifi cations, employment or other socio-economic disadvantages. indeed, “housing policies have a limited effect on ethnic concentration, not only because they often contradict each other, but also because they fail to address the main causes of segregation” (bolt 2009: 397; see also van ham/manley 2009; dhalmann/ vilkama 2009; münch 2009; kempen/bolt 2009; and holmqvist/bergsten 2009). this paper proposes taking an alternative approach. it suggests that a more detailed analysis of individual and environmental characteristics is necessary if researchers are to continue to provide worthwhile input into the discussion of segregation/integration, disadvantage, and social cohesion. as a case study, analysis is presented for four small cultural groups, based on output from the england and wales 2001 and 2011 censuses. 2 recent measurement techniques numerous indices have been used to measure various aspects of spatial distribution, with in-depth reviews carried out to reach a consensus on their use (duncan/ duncan 1955; massey/denton 1988; simpson 2007). despite a long period in which use of the index of dissimilarity (d) predominated, in recent times a wide range of alternative approaches have been developed. however, few of these have been widely adopted; indeed, as discussed below, a number of researchers have revisited their approaches in subsequent studies. despite its popularity and its easy interpretation as “the proportion of a group that would have to move to be distributed through localities like the rest of the population” (simpson 2007: 421), three types of weakness in d have long been recognised: understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 139 • mathematical/theoretical weaknesses (cortese et al. 1976; taeuber/taeuber 1976; winship 1977; voas/williamson 2000), • variability of results depending on geographic units the results of index calculations suffer from the modifi able areal unit problem (maup) (openshaw 1984) and zonation issues (rees et al. 2017). • the fundamental aspatiality of the measure (wong 2016) – in that the absolute and relative positions of the spatial units/zones being used have no impact on the resultant value of the index. the checkerboard analogy, presented by white (1983), demonstrates this in a very clear manner. examination of a number of papers that have been published since the release of small scale outputs from the 2011 england and wales census shows that a wide range of alternative approaches have been applied. these attempt to meaningfully summarise levels of integration or segregation of minority groups, and overcome the weaknesses. harris and owen (2018) attempted to enhance d by developing a spatial multilevel index of dissimilarity. they considered the impact of adjoining areas at different scales, having previously proposed an index of discontinuity (based on differences in values of d in adjoining zones) (harris 2014). another approach sought to apply d to measure unevenness in combination with moran’s i spatial autocorrelation coeffi cient to measure clustering (catney 2017). however, in a later paper, catney (2018) used both d and the index of isolation (p) to examine spatial variation. an alternative methodology was developed by johnston (johnston et al. 2015, 2016). they employed a rule-based approach that categorised areas according to the percentage share of the population provided by white, all non-white, and individual non-white ethnic groups. in parallel with this jones et al. (2015) were developing yet a further technique that used a modifi ed log-poisson model based on the degree of overor under-representation of each group compared with its average presence. this was subsequently enhanced by the introduction of a multi-scale element (johnston et al. 2016). of course, these matters are not solely an england and wales issue. internationally, there is a considerable body of research that makes use of assessment of the presence in the nearest k-neighbours of members of the same or different ethnic/ racial/nationality group (johnston et al. 2004; reardon et al. 2008). the base unit can be an individual, a small census tract, or gridded data. the technique allows the value of k to be varied to examine group concentrations at a variety of scales, addressing the maup issue. in recent years, variations of, and enhancements to, the technique have been applied in los angeles and sweden (östh et al. 2015; clark et al. 2015), seattle (fowler 2016), and amsterdam, utrecht, and groningen (netherlands) (petrović et al. 2018). geographically wider studies include those of several us cities in the context of the usa as a whole (hennerdal/nielsen 2017), and a comparative study of belgium, denmark, netherlands, and sweden (andersson et al. 2018). overall, we can say that a wide range of alternative approaches and enhancements to earlier indices have been tested. in the case of the uk, their lack of adoption by other researchers, and the apparent continuing need for the original authors • philip sapiro140 to revise their techniques, suggests that attempting to measure and summarise spatial distribution is not advancing the understanding of distribution or the forecasting of its future trajectory. the thesis of the current paper, therefore, is that in this context such approaches should be set to one side. 3 approach of this paper a closer examination of the variation in the characteristics of minority groups may improve the explanation of change in spatial distribution and its underlying drivers. it is important that this is better understood since cultural and “ethnic diversity, which is now a key characteristic of contemporary society … is an issue of public, policy, political, and academic interest.” (catney 2016: 13). using england and wales as a test bed, this paper seeks to broaden the discussion on understanding spatial distribution trends. it takes the view that heterogeneity within groups means that a more detailed exploration of the data is required if a clearer understanding of spatial distribution trajectory is to be achieved. the 2001 census identifi ed four explicitly defi ned groups (that is, excluding “mixed” and “other” groupings) with a population of around a quarter of a million people – bangladeshis, chinese, jews, and sikhs. all four groups are examined side by side, using data from the 2001 and 2011 censuses, with the majority white british group used as a benchmark where appropriate. the case for the selection of these four groups (in addition to their similarity in size) is that: • religion is an under-researched area of cultural identity, compared with ethnic background; presenting detailed analysis of spatial distribution change for jews and sikhs for the fi rst time seeks to redress this. • this size of group may display a different dynamic to the larger ethnic groups that other researchers have examined. • as described later, despite similarity in size, the groups demonstrate different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, with a notable variation in their length of material presence in britain, the importance of students, and levels of recent immigration. the focus is thus on two groups based on religion, and two based on ethnic background. similarities and differences in their trajectories provide an interesting and varied basis for the investigation of spatial distribution. this paper examines census data at a detailed geographic level. for a higher level comparison of ethnic groups in recent uk censuses see jivraj/simpson 2015; finney/simpson 2008; simpson/finney 2009, and for the 1991 census see rees et al. 1995. british studies need to be seen in the context of interest in cultural group spatial distribution across the globe. recent international studies, making use of census data, include: an analysis of characteristics of foreign nationals in the czech republic (přidalová/hasman 2018); an examination of religious diversity in australia (bouma/hughes 2014); a wide-ranging and detailed examination of ethnic diversity understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 141 in indonesia (ananta et al. 2015); and a multi-national investigation of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity in africa (gershman/rivera 2018). uk censuses are accepted as being of high quality, and undergo a strong validation process (ons 2009). however, it is worth briefl y considering some aspects of the ethnic group and religion questions and responses on which this paper focuses, and the differences between them. pre-defi ned response categories were specifi ed for both questions, an approach that can sometimes be regarded as infl uencing the replies given, as can the order of questions (blaikie 2000; voas/bruce 2004). uniquely, the religion question was voluntary, and ons accepted blank responses (about 7 percent of the total) – allocating them to a “religion not stated” category. as with all other questions, the ethnic group question was compulsory though 3 percent of respondents did not answer it; in these cases ons imputed an answer (ons 2012). another difference between the ethnic group and religion questions was that ons provided “advice” as to what the ethnic group question was seeking to elucidate: “tick one box to best describe your ethnic group or background”. however, the religion question simply asked “what is your religion?” (ons 2011), leaving it to the respondent to determine whether this might mean, for example, belief, family affi liation, or membership. there was a specifi c concern that the jewish response rate might be low because of concerns about biblical prohibition on counting jews (see hosea, 2:1), or holocaust-related mis-use of census data (brasz 2001). indeed evidence of some undercount amongst strictly orthodox jews was found, certainly as regards the 2001 census (graham/waterman 2005; voas 2007). ultimately, however, the focus of this paper is on changes over time and underlying characteristics of the members of the groups, and not numerical comparisons between the groups or absolute measures of segregation/congregation. on this basis, use of the census outputs without additional manipulation is a suitable basis on which to proceed. 4 theoretical background questions about the spatial distribution of minority populations and how this might change over time are not new. as long ago as 1926, park recognised that change in residential location was associated with levels of education, employment and income (park 1926). subsequently, gordon (1964) defi ned various social/cultural levels of assimilation that he believed represented a trajectory along which minority groups might travel. twenty years later massey (1985: 316) set out to develop “a modern theory of ethnic residential segregation”, under which immigrant groups would initially form concentrations, but would gradually disperse into the wider community as their socio-economic circumstances improved. this approach was later criticised, for example by nagel (2009) and wright et al. (2005), and alternative theories/approaches developed (see for example: portes/zhou 1993; iceland/nelson 2008; ehrkamp 2005). attention has also been given to the positive aspects of group concentration or congregation (peach 1996; phillips et al. 2007; dunn 1998). • philip sapiro142 whilst internal (and international) migration is important in bringing about change in spatial distribution of groups (rees et al. 2013), it is not the only mechanism in play. other processes, such as natural change due to births and deaths, can have a larger impact on segregation and neighbourhood mix (bailey 2012). in summary, several factors have confounded the simplicity of traditional theories about spatial distribution: heterogeneity amongst groups; uncertain economic conditions; changing outlook of later generations; and changing political and social circumstances that impact on individuals’ aspirations and expectations. however, most researchers continue to fi nd some form of link between socio-economic advancement, cultural preferences and assimilation, and changes in spatial distribution. 5 overview of the four cultural groups prior to examining the spatial distribution of the four cultural groups at a detailed level (and how this changes over time), this section provides an overview of the characteristics of each group. these characteristics, all linked to theories of spatial distribution, may provide us with expectations about the likely distribution and trajectory of distribution of the groups. in this section, four aspects are considered: • longevity of material presence in, and scale of recent immigration to, britain – which may infl uence the level of continuing presence in immigrant settlement areas; • age profi le and thus whether groups might be increasing in presence due to an excess of births over deaths; • socio-economic status – where improvement might be associated with advancement up the property ladder, and relocation to more sought-after areas; • inter-marriage – as a marker for cultural assimilation – which some commentators have associated with the post-physical integration period. longevity of material presence and recent immigration levels using census data in parallel with existing research – rees/butt 2004; schmool/cohen 1998; peach/gale 2003; eade et al. 1996 – it is possible to gain an appreciation of the scale and rate of growth for these groups over a longer period. census data are available for the ethnic groups from 1991 onwards and for religions from 2001. the main sources used by these authors to produce estimates for earlier years were: census country of birth data (chinese and bangladeshis); relationships between number of registered places of worship and numbers of worshipers (sikhs); and a comprehensive database of burials with ages at death (jews). figure 1 identifi es the trajectory of population change for each group over the last 80 years; for understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 143 each group, 100 percent equals the 2011 census population.1 inevitably there must be a margin of error around the fi gures, but the purpose in including the diagram is only to establish the general shape of the profi les and the extent to which the four groups are similar to or differ from each other. the profi le for the jewish population is clearly in stark contrast to the other groups. over the last 60 years, the jewish group’s population has gradually fallen from its peak, which was more than 50 percent higher than the current population. the other groups have all grown from no more than 5 percent of their 2011 fi gures. this confi rms that jews have been present in the uk in signifi cant numbers for a much longer period than the other groups considered here. the graph can be supplemented by examining information on year of arrival in the uk of those present at the 2011 census by making use of the 2011 census microdata individual safeguarded sample fi les (ons 2014) – a 10 percent anonymised sample of the england and wales 2011 census returns – see table 1. the profi le for the chinese group differs from the others, with just under half having arrived since 2001, and with students making up almost half of that element. the majority of students are likely to be transient visitors to the uk, located in key university towns. the overall impact on spatial distribution of such a material proportion of the group having arrived since 2001 depends on whether they have settled in areas where the chinese group is already present (luk 2008, 2009; lymperopoulou 2013). 1 the 2011 population of each group, according to the census was: bangladeshi: 447,201; chinese: 393,141; jewish 265,073; and sikh: 423,345. (source: census table dc2201ew as corrected by ons on 26 february 2015). fig. 1: group population profi les 1931-2011 (england and wales) 0 50 100 150 1931 1951 1971 1991 2011 jewish sikh chinese bangladeshi population as percentage of 2011 population source: see text for commentary on sources and derivation of data for this graph • philip sapiro144 traditional theory would lead us to expect that jews would be highly dispersed amongst the wider british population, but we already know that this is not the case (simpson 2012). however, we might expect to fi nd that their physical location is away from the settlement areas occupied a century ago. age profi le table 2 summarises a number of characteristics taken from 2011 census outputs, including information on age profi le. the proportion of the bangladeshi community aged below 15, at 46 percent, is twice that of any other group listed here and indicates that the population is expanding at a fast rate through natural change (see also simpson/jivraj 2015). the jewish group has a larger proportion of its population in the aged 65 and over band than all of the other groups, and has the potential for shrinkage through natural change. the absence of a signifi cant elderly presence in the sikh and chinese communities will result in an excess of births over deaths. we should expect to see these natural changes refl ected in changing spatial density. socio-economic status we can anticipate that higher incomes will be a pre-requisite for enabling households to live in (or to move to) the more sought-after/affl uent home-owning areas. indeed, the median weekly wage (for the 2006-2008 period) for male employees living in a home with a mortgage was 37 percent higher than for those in private rented accommodation and 65 percent higher than those living in social housing (hills et al. 2010). unfortunately, the census does not collect information on incomes, but it presents information on areas of employment and the roles played in those occupations – socio-economic status (see table 2). moreover, hills et al. (2010) demonstrate that national statistics socio-economic class (ns-sec) is a useful proxy for income – with a gradual diminution in median male full-time employee hourly wages from ns-sec class 1 (higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations) to class 7 (routine occupations). for those adults who have group uk born year of arrival in uk total sample before 1971199120012007-11 size 1971 1990 2000 2006 nonstudent student in % bangladeshi 52 3 19 10 9 5 2 100 44865 chinese 24 5 15 11 16 9 20 100 39099 jewish 81 4 4 3 3 3 1 100 26394 sikh 57 15 12 5 6 4 1 100 41962 tab. 1: 2011 england & wales usual residents – year of arrival source: author analysis from the 2011 census microdata individual safeguarded regional and la fi les understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 145 e n g la n d w h it e b an g la c h in es e je w is h s ik h an d w al es b ri ti sh d es h i u su al r es id en ts p ro p o rt io n (x 1 00 ) d em og ra p hy /c u lt u ra l b ac kg ro u n d (o f a ll u su al r es id en ts in g ro u p) m al e 49 .2 49 .1 51 .6 47 .3 48 .7 50 .6 a g e 0 to 1 5 18 .9 22 .7 46 .1 16 .1 20 .1 20 .5 a g e 65 a n d o ve r 16 .4 18 .8 3. 7 5. 0 21 .0 8. 3 u n it ed k in g d o m b o rn 86 .6 97 .9 51 .9 23 .7 81 .1 56 .6 w it h o n ly n o n -b ri ti sh id en ti ty 7. 3 0. 3 15 .5 48 .0 8. 6 16 .8 ec on om ic a ct iv it y s el fem p lo ye d (o f a ll in e m p lo ym en t) 15 .2 15 .0 15 .0 18 .5 29 .0 17 .5 r et ir ed (r at io t o n u m b er a g ed 6 5 o r m o re ) 10 5. 3 10 5. 9 98 .5 12 8. 4 85 .0 10 5. 6 a ll st u d en ts (r at io t o n u m b er o f 1 6 to 6 4 ye ar o ld s) 10 .5 8. 0 17 .8 32 .5 13 .1 13 .8 a re as o f e m p lo ym en t (o f t h os e in e m p lo ym en t) m an u fa ct u ri n g 8. 9 9. 4 3. 2 4. 2 3. 8 9. 9 w h o le sa le a n d r et ai l t ra d e; r ep ai r o f m o to r ve h ic le s 15 .9 16 .1 18 .8 12 .0 14 .1 22 .2 tr an sp o rt a n d s to ra g e 4. 9 4. 7 7. 2 2. 3 2. 7 8. 5 a cc o m m o d at io n an d fo o d s er vi ce a ct iv it ie s 5. 6 4. 7 27 .3 26 .7 2. 8 5. 2 p ro fe ss io n al , s ci en ti fi c an d t ec h n ic al a ct iv it ie s 6. 6 6. 5 4. 3 10 .7 15 .9 5. 8 e d u ca ti o n 9. 9 10 .2 9. 2 8. 2 13 .3 7. 1 h u m an h ea lt h an d s o ci al w o rk a ct iv it ie s 12 .5 12 .2 8. 8 10 .1 11 .2 9. 8 s oc ia l/e d u ca ti on al le ve l 4 (d eg re e) q u al ifi ed (o f a ll o ve r 16 y ea r o ld s) 27 .2 25 .7 19 .8 42 .9 42 .1 30 .1 n s -s ec c la ss 1 a n d 2 ( p ro fe ss io n al /m an ag er ia l) o f a ll in c la ss es 1 t o 7 35 .4 35 .1 24 .7 43 .6 54 .6 31 .8 h o u se h o ld s w it h ro o m s h o rt ag e (o f a ll h o u se h o ld s) 8. 5 6. 9 41 .4 25 .5 8. 0 13 .7 h o u se h o ld s liv in g in o w n ed o r sh ar ed o w n er sh ip a cc o m m o d at io n (o f a ll h /h o ld s) 64 .3 68 .1 43 .1 50 .8 73 .3 78 .1 h o u se h o ld s w it h 2 o r m o re c ar s o r va n s av ai la b le (o f a ll h o u se h o ld s) 32 .2 34 .2 18 .3 21 .5 35 .7 46 .6 ta b . 2 : d em o g ra p hi c, c ul tu ra l a nd s o ci o -e co no m ic c ha ra ct er is tic s (2 01 1 e & w ) s o ur ce : a ut ho r c al cu la tio n us in g 20 11 c en su s ta b le s d c 21 01 e w , l c 21 07 e w , d c 22 02 e w , d c 22 04 e w , d c 22 05 e w , d c 22 07 e w , l c 24 04 e w ls , l c 24 05 e w ls , d c 42 02 e w , l c 42 04 e w , l c 42 07 e w , l c 42 08 e w , l c 52 04 e w , d c 52 09 e w la , d c 62 01 e w , l c 62 05 e w , d c 62 06 e w , l c 62 07 e w , d c 62 16 e w , d c 62 17 e w . • philip sapiro146 ever worked (and excluding current full time students), table 2 demonstrates that a higher proportion of chinese and jews accommodate managerial and professional positions (ns-sec 1 and 2) than do the white british, with bangladeshis and sikhs including lower proportions. however, for england and wales residents (aged 16 or over) overall, 14 percent have either never worked or are full time students. for the chinese group the proportion is 40 percent (census table lc6206ew). once these individuals are included, the proportion of chinese adults falling into the ns-sec class 1 and 2 categories falls below the england and wales average. despite a relatively low proportion of managerial and professional positions in the sikh group, that group exhibits the highest levels of home and two-car ownership of all groups. this apparent disconnect between ns-sec and home-ownership (and its likely consequential impact on spatial distribution) is investigated here. it appears that certain factors relating specifi cally to the sikh community, not directly discernible from the census outputs, are in play. the british sikh community has produced an annual report about the community since 2013. the 2014 report analysed responses to a questionnaire that included relevant questions on demography, income, and property. caution is necessary in making use of information in detail from the report as the analysis was based on a non-validated survey sample, largely self-selected via social media or word of mouth (bsr team 2014). however, the report indicates that two-thirds of the sample live in households with four or more people and almost half of the adult respondents are living with one or more parent. two thirds have household incomes above the average for all uk households. there is clearly a tradition of property ownership in the sikh community; the bsr 2014 indicating that half of all families own more than one property in the uk, and half also own property in india. in addition a third of families own a business in the uk (bsr team 2014). so it seems likely that the high home ownership level among the sikh group arises through three factors: a higher total income per household due to a greater number of employed persons per residence (arising from household size and multi-generational households); income through business ownership, noting that the relationship of wages to ns-sec only relates to employees; and the potential for non-employment related income through property ownership elsewhere in the uk and overseas. overall, therefore, we might expect larger proportions of the jewish and sikh groups to be located in more sought after residential areas, where home-ownership predominates, compared with the other cultural groups. the index of multiple deprivation (imd) provides an alternative way of considering the economic/fi nancial link with location of residence. the department of communities and local government measures each lsoa2 in terms of its level of deprivation. the index incorporates a range of measures associated with income, employment, health and disability, education skills and training, barriers to hous2 the offi ce for national statistics (ons) defi ned output areas (oas) as the key geographic building block for census output. oas (average population 300) have a consistency of housing type and tenure and are grouped into lsoas (typical population 1600); lsoas are grouped into msoas (population around 7800). understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 147 ing and other services, crime and living environment (dclg 2011). the lsoas are ranked using the deprivation score, and it is customary to categorise them based on the decile into which they fall (decile 1, most deprived, to decile 10, least deprived). to provide a fi xed base to monitor change in spatial distribution, the 2010 index (based on data collected between the 2001 and 2011 censuses) has been used here. the link between ns-sec and wage income already described has been found to apply also to the deciles of the imd (hills et al. 2010). figure 2 indicates the proportion of the 2001 population of each of the small cultural groups that were resident in lsoas falling into each decile of the index. it is important to note that the index relates to the mean status of the totality of residents of the lsoa – not just members of the groups under examination. the graph shows that, in 2001, the bangladeshi population was most concentrated in the most deprived deciles (particularly decile 1), with below average proportions in deciles 4 to 10. the sikh group is over-represented in deciles 1 to 5, and under-represented in deciles 6-10 though to a much lesser degree. the chinese group is evenly spread, with the jewish group demonstrating a mirror-image of the sikh pattern. the trajectory of change in group distribution is a key issue under investigation in this paper. therefore, rather than simply including an equivalent graph based on the 2011 population, figure 3 homes in on the changes over the 2001 to 2011 period. it shows the percentage point change in split between deciles that has occurred to fig. 2: allocation of 2001 group population to imd deciles 0 10 20 30 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2001 bangladeshi 2001 sikh 2001 chinese 2001 jewish proportion of 2001 group population falling into decile in percent decile of multiple deprivation: most (1) to least (10) deprived source: author calculated based on combining 2001 census output with 2010 imd data • philip sapiro148 the population of each group in the intercensal period, to allow a link between social advancement and spatial distribution change to be investigated. both the bangladeshi and sikh groups have seen a reduction in the proportion of their populations resident in the most deprived deciles. this represents a pattern of continuing socio-economic advancement, though the shape of the curve and pivot points of zero change are differently located. conversely, the chinese and jewish lines show the opposite trend. the chinese trend (which is almost a mirror-image of the sikh line) is probably explained through the very large increase in student numbers over the decade, given that in most major cities, student residences tend to be found in less-affl uent areas. the jewish line is less easily explained. it may suggest that the jewish group’s socio-economic progress over the last century has now plateaued and is in a period of fl uctuation; or it may simply refl ect the marked difference in age profi les and fertility levels in different parts of the community (staetsky/boyd 2015). the question is whether the level of change demonstrated here is suffi cient to be refl ected in a noticeable pattern of geographic change on the ground. for example, figure 3 shows that in 2011 a smaller proportion of the bangladeshi population is found in lsoas in decile 1, and a greater proportion is found in decile 3. if the affected lsoas are close to each other the actual geographic/spatial impact of the imd decile change would be less noticeable than if the lsoas concerned happen to be more remote from each other. fig. 3: percentage point change in imd decile 2001-2011 -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 chinese jewish sikh bangladeshi 2001 to 2011 change in proportion of group population in decile in percent decile of multiple deprivation: most (1) to least (10) deprived source: author derived based on 2001 and 2011 census output and 2010 imd data understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 149 inter-marriage table 3 summarises the census information available on the cultural identity of spouses3 and other partners of partnered members of the groups under examination. note that for the groups based on religion, relationships where the partner did not respond to the question on religion are excluded; an equivalent consideration for ethnic group does not apply as ons imputes an ethnic group for non-respondents. it is clear that the bangladeshi and sikh groups are overwhelmingly endogamous, whereas there is a material level of inter-marriage for the chinese and jewish groups. gordon’s (1964) perspective on this is that these higher levels could only be achieved if the relevant groups were residentially dispersed amongst the wider tab. 3: proportion of partnered group members with non-group partners married cohabiting all partnerships 2011 total non-group total non-group total non-group partner partner partner bangladeshi men 74,974 4,652 6% 4,243 1,781 79,217 6,433 8% women 74,380 4,062 5% 3,454 1,206 77,834 5,268 7% total 149,354 8,714 6% 7,697 2,987 157,051 11,701 7% chinese men 51,936 8,365 16% 11,203 4,471 63,139 12,836 20% women 68,046 24,479 36% 14,587 8,133 82,633 32,612 39% total 119,982 32,844 27% 25,790 12,604 145,772 45,448 31% jewish men 54,125 12,364 23% 6,190 4,202 60,315 16,566 27% women 53,609 11,876 22% 6,029 4,109 59,638 15,985 27% total 107,734 24,240 22% 12,219 8,311 119,953 32,551 27% sikh (2001 data) men 71,170 3,658 5% 2,682 1,481 73,852 5,139 7% women 70,437 2,925 4% 2,274 1,073 72,711 3,998 5% total 141,607 6,583 5% 4,956 2,554 146,563 9,137 6% source: 2001 tables c0400, c0629; 2011 tables ct0458,ct0459, ct0460, ct0461, and 2011 un-numbered tables from “what does the 2011 census tell us about inter-ethnic relationships”: http:// www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3a77-365449 3 note that 2011 data include same-sex civil partnerships in the married column. note also that ons has not released information for the sikh group for 2011, so the table shows data for 2001 for that group. data for 2001 does exist for the other three groups – it shows that there has been no material change in out-marriage for the bangladeshi and jewish groups since 2001, but the proportion of chinese with non-chinese spouses has increased by 5 percent from 22 percent; the sikh proportion for 2011 can be expected to be similar to 2001. • philip sapiro150 population, and had become culturally assimilated (see also waters/jiménez 2005). in reality, the degree of intermarriage may involve more than residential proximity between the groups and individual concerned, so to what extent is this refl ected in the spatial distribution of these groups? 6 analysis of census distribution data group spatial distribution having set out some of the overall characteristics that may have an infl uence on shaping the spatial distribution of the groups, their geographic distribution and trajectories are examined in this section. whenever census data (particularly for small groups) is being analysed spatially, there is always a balance to be struck between data accuracy and quality, and homogeneity of areas being considered. lsoa geography (defi ned by ons taking account of consistency of housing type) has been selected. this strikes a balance between small numbers and non-disclosure adjustments affecting oa data, and the potential for msoa areas to mask within-area variation (see also catney 2018). lsoas ranked by the population of the group under examination can be plotted, and contiguous accumulations or communities can be identifi ed. the method used built on that used by sapiro (2016) to identify jewish accumulations using msoa geography. for the current study it was noted that for three of the groups over 80 percent of their populations can be found in each group’s most populous 10 percent of lsoas. these lsoas were plotted and geographically contiguous groupings of them were regarded as accumulations. accumulations for each group that each include at least 1 percent of the group’s total england and wales population have been listed in table 4. where there is a strong student presence in an accumulation, a fi gure excluding students, approximating to the “permanent” group presence in the area, is also shown in the table. note that as this approach includes all lsoas with group populations down as far as 8 persons (jewish) to 19 persons (chinese), varying the criterion from the 10 percent proportion has no impact on which localities would be listed in table 4, or materially change their rounded-tothe-nearest-thousand populations. there is a marked similarity in the hierarchy of accumulations for the bangladeshi, jewish, and sikh groups. each has one large moderately dense accumulation in the london area, which is the home to a large proportion of the total england and wales population (noting that the sikh community has a second equally large congregation in the west midlands). there are one or two more moderately sized groupings elsewhere in the london area; one or two signifi cant communities outside of london (birmingham for bangladeshis, north manchester area for jews; leicester and coventry for sikhs), and then a scattering of smaller accumulations. given the long period of establishment of the jewish group in britain, the level of congregation of that group is exceptionally high compared to what might be expected from traditional theory, though this type of pattern for jewish communities understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 151 (in the uk and elsewhere) has been recognised for a long time (massarik/chenkin 1973; newman 1985; waterman/kosmin 1987; kosmin et al. 1991; kotler-berkowitz et al. 2004). the jewish group is predominantly focussed in outer suburban areas and the small town/partly-rural hinterland beyond the suburban limit. there is no material presence in the original settlement areas of, for example, the “east end” of london and central manchester (williams 1990; freedman 1992; endelman 2002). the sikh group follows a generally similar pattern, but with a continuing presence in inner suburbs in some of the west midlands authorities, and in the original settlement area in ealing (london). the bangladeshi group is very strongly focussed in the tower hamlets area of east london (that is, the same settlement area occupied by jews a century earlier), and adjoining newham. the pattern for the chinese group looks quite different. there are no large area/ large population accumulations, and the student element of accumulations is very signifi cant, particularly away from london, where the focus is frequently on the tab. 4: group accumulations and population (2011) location of accumulation (and group population in thousands including/excluding students*) group in london area elsewhere in england and wales bangladeshi tower hamlets, newham, redbridge, & barking (148); camden & islington w (13); haringey (5) birmingham & west bromwich (36); oldham (16); luton (13); bradford (7); walsall (6); manchester (6) chinese westminster, camden, islington, & hackney (22/14); southwark, lewisham, greenwich, & lambeth (19/14); tower hamlets & newham (10/8); barnet (9/7) manchester & salford (13/7); birmingham (7/3); liverpool (5/2) jewish barnet, hertsmere, harrow, camden and environs (118); hackney & haringey se (17); redbridge & epping forest (14) bury, salford & manchester n (18); leeds (5); trafford, stockport, manchester s, & cheshire east (5); gateshead (3/2); brighton (3) sikh ealing, hounslow, hillingdon, slough & environs (90); redbridge, newham, barking, & epping forest (27); bexley & greenwich (6) sandwell, birmingham, walsall, wolverhampton and environs (98); leicester, oadby, & blaby (21); coventry & nuneaton (18); gravesham & dartford (10); derby & s derbys (9); warwick (5); leeds (5); pudsey & bradford e (5) * shown only if students make up more than 15 percent of population note – see text for defi nition of “accumulation” source: author derived from 2011 census outputs (see text) • philip sapiro152 fringe of the inner areas with extensions into the outer suburbs. see luk (2009) for a more extensive discourse on the distribution of chinese. there is a much greater scattering of small pockets of chinese than seen for other groups; luk (2008) makes reference to chinese immigrants working in the catering trade deliberately choosing to move away from traditional “chinatown” areas in order to expand the market and avoid creating an over-supply of chinese cuisine in a concentrated area. 2001 to 2011 changes so, what is the trajectory of distribution; where have the 2001 to 2011 changes taken place? the proportion of the population of each lsoa belonging to each of the groups in 2001 and 2011 was compared, and the lsoas ranked by group proportion change. for each group, the 150 lsoas (across england and wales as a whole) where the group’s share of the population had increased by the largest percentage (positive change) were identifi ed. similarly the 150 lsoas where the share had reduced by the largest proportion (negative change) were also determined. a mapping exercise to display spatial distribution and change has been carried out, and extracts of england and wales maps showing the london area are shown in figure 4. to be clear, the maps show those of the 300 largest change lsoas from england and wales as a whole that happen to fall in the london area (which, for all groups, includes a large proportion of the 300). hatching on the maps shows areas where the particular group made up more than 6 percent of the 2001 population. this allows the reader to identify unhatched but shaded/coloured areas where the 2001 proportion was relatively low but there has been a large intercensal change. hatched but unshaded/uncoloured areas where the 2001 proportion was relatively high, but the change between 2001 and 2011 has not been very large, can also be observed. the pattern of change between 2001 and 2011 (as with the actual distribution) shows a remarkable degree of similarity for the bangladeshi, jewish and sikh groups. in terms of the principal focus of the bangladeshi group in east london, there is a reduced concentration in parts of the most densely populated area. an increase in congregation in a central part of the accumulation has occurred with a noticeable extension into more suburban areas that were not part of the 2001 “heartland”. there is thus both a re-focussing within the main area of settlement, and a strong movement into “new” areas outwards from the centre of london suburbanisation (see farrell 2016 for an american perspective on minority group suburbanisation). in addition this is combined with a noticeable loss of population share in the smaller london communities and scattered areas elsewhere. the jewish and sikh groups repeat this pattern, though in those cases the extension is into semi-rural areas and might be better described as counter-urbanisation rather than suburbanisation. there is no noticeable suburbanisation pattern for the chinese community. insofar as the london area is concerned there is a refocussing into two inner city areas. this is accompanied by a loss in group proportion in almost every small pocket across the rest of the london area – almost a centralisation process, potentially disunderstanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 153 torted through the dominance of the impact of students in some areas. indeed, the student impact in provincial areas is much more apparent – with strong growth in university/student areas of the major cities, and (as in london) a loss in proportion in small suburban clusters. qualitatively therefore, some clear patterns of change can be observed, but can a closer investigation of the characteristics of shrinking and expanding areas provide a clearer explanation of these changes? that is, does heterogeneity within the groups help us to understand the patterns in a better way than a focus on distribution indices or overarching terms such as suburbanisation? as already described, the 34,000 lsoas have been ranked by the 2001 to 2011 change in proportion of the lsoa’s population that belongs to each group under examination. this showed that material change is limited to around 400 lsoas at each end of the spectrum. table 5 provides an overview of the characteristics of areas that have had an increase in group proportion over the 10 year period (gaining/ growth areas), and those where there has been a reduction (contracting/shrinking areas), based on the two groups of 400 lsoas relevant to each group. if the age profi le for an area or group in 2001 is artifi cially aged by 10 years and then compared with the actual 2011 profi le (for example by “lifting” the 2001 age pyramid by 10 years and overlaying on top of the 2011 pyramid – see simpson/jivraj fig. 4: change in distribution 2001 to 2011 at lsoa level note: see main text for explanation of the key source: author derived based on analysis of 2001 and 2011 census data • philip sapiro154 2015: 43-45) then the differences will represent the impact of births, deaths, and migration over the intercensal period. more specifi cally, the number of 0-9 year olds in 2011 will represent births over the intercensal period (subject to some migration, depending on the scale of migration for their parents’ age band). differences in profi les between the ages of 10 and 59 will represent net migration (subject to a small number of deaths); and differences over the age of 60 will be largely representative of deaths (and some older age migrations) (ballard 2004; simpson/jivraj 2015). the age band population data that ons has made available for ethnic and religion based groups in the 2001 and 2011 censuses at lsoa level allows differences in the profi les to be split at age 10 and 60. it has been necessary to assume that the age 60+ difference all relates to deaths; however, except for the jewish group, the proportion in that age band for the cultural groups is very small so, natural change has been determined by subtracting the over 60 difference from the number of 2011 0-9 year olds, and the age 10-59 difference has been used to represent migration. fortunately, for all groups, the difference between the calculated natural change and migration has been far greater than would be nullifi ed by errors caused by the simplifi cations that have had to be made. the table is thus able to indicate whether migration (denoted as “mig”) or natural change (“nat”) is the greater source of intercensal population change for each group. there are some common characteristics for all four groups: contracting areas have a higher proportion of people with poor health than gaining areas and (not shown in the table) this disparity has increased over the 10 year period. given that group proportion is reducing in these areas, it is unlikely that the movement into the area of people with poor health is a signifi cant factor. the conclusion to be drawn is that people with poorer health are less likely to move home and get “left behind” in areas of group shrinkage. indeed their health may suffer through increasing isolation from other members of their group (smith/easterlow 2005). darlington et al. (2015) provide a discussion on the complexities of unravelling the relationship between health and internal migration. for three of the groups, areas of growth have a higher proportion of 0-15 year olds and a lower proportion of those aged 75 than do contracting areas; again (not shown in the table) the disparity has increased in the intercensal period. this agerelated aspect to changes in distribution was also found in america (winkler/johnson 2016). as might be expected, areas with an increasing group proportion benefi t from positive natural change (excess of births over deaths), whereas the opposite situation applies to shrinking areas, though for most groups migration (whether international or internal) has a larger impact on the outcome. the chinese fi gures are heavily infl uenced by the very high student presence in growth areas (71 percent); nevertheless the small levels of natural change are also positive for growth areas and negative for shrinking areas. there is a marked difference in population density between the groups of lsoas for sikhs – refl ecting the urban locations for the shrinking areas and the suburban gaining localities. there is no differential for the (suburban) jewish group, but the bangladeshi fi gures refl ect the very dense urban locality of the contracting areas and the more typical urban value for growth areas. it is only the sikh areas that understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 155 g ro u p g ro u p p ro p o rt io n o f p o p u la ti o n d ir ec ti o n an d a re a su m m ar y ls o a s in in 2 00 1 in 2 01 1 10 y r ch an g e m ai n so u rc e o f a ve ra g e m ed ia n p o p ’n g ro u p g ro u p p o p ’n im d d ec ile d en si ty p er h a in % ch an g e* b an g la d es h i g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 40 0 9. 3 16 .8 7. 4 + (m ig ) 3 86 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 40 0 10 .2 7. 2 -3 .0 (m ig ) 3 12 2 c h in es e g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 40 0 2. 3 7. 4 5. 1 + (m ig ) 4 71 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 40 0 2. 9 1. 4 -1 .5 (m ig ) 5 48 je w is h g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 40 0 9. 7 13 .1 3. 3 + (n at ) 6 54 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 40 0 11 .0 7. 0 -4 .0 (m ig ) 6 54 s ik h g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 40 0 7. 6 12 .6 5. 0 + (m ig ) 6 42 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 40 0 11 .6 8. 1 -3 .5 (m ig ) 3 81 ta b . 5 : c ha ra ct er is tic s o f 4 00 l s o a s w it h hi gh es t g ai n an d lo ss o f g ro up p o p ul at io n sh ar e * “m ig ” an d “ na t” in d ic at e w he th er m ig ra tio n o r na tu ra l c ha ng e (b ir th s an d d ea th s) is th e gr ea te r co nt ri b ut o r to th e o ve ra ll + (p o si tiv e) o r – (n eg at iv e) c ha ng e in g ro up p o p ul at io n • philip sapiro156 g ro u p g ro u p c h ar ac te ri st ic s (p ro p o rt io n o f 2 01 1 ar ea g ro u p p o p u la ti o n) a g ed a g ed 7 5 b o rn in u k w it h p o o r em p lo ye d st u d en ts d eg re e liv in g in liv in g 0 -1 5 o r ab o ve h ea lt h (o f o ve r 16 s) (o f o ve r 16 s) h o ld er s o w n ed w it h o ve r(o f o ve r 16 s) h o m e cr o w d in g in % b an g la d es h i g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 38 1 53 17 43 19 29 46 46 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 32 2 52 21 40 18 24 27 56 c h in es e g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 4 1 11 5 25 71 46 16 30 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 11 4 24 13 48 32 51 42 22 je w is h g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 33 7 81 11 60 11 38 68 2 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 13 20 85 23 53 7 38 82 3 s ik h g ro u p la rg es t g ai n o f s h ar e 23 3 58 15 66 12 30 88 3 la rg es t l o ss o f s h ar e 17 5 47 22 57 11 23 81 5 ta b . 5 : c o n tin ua tio n s o ur ce : a ut ho r ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n an al ys is o f 2 00 1 an d 2 01 1 ce ns us o ut p ut s understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 157 show a marked difference between the average decile of deprivation in which the groups of lsoas lie – with the growth areas on average 3 deciles less deprived than the shrinking areas. this fi gure is actually exceeded by the white british group (not shown in the table). this should be compared with the swedish picture where there is an apparent inability of ethnic minority groups located in poorer neighbourhoods in childhood to relocate to better areas in adulthood (gustafsson et al. 2017). whilst this summary provides an interesting overview, to address the infl uence of heterogeneity of individual and area characteristics, we need to examine whether these patterns apply consistently across the actual localities where reducing and increasing population shares have been found. table 6 summarises the same characteristics, area by area. the areas have been named after the main local authority involved, though they are defi ned in terms of groups of contiguous lsoas (annotated in the table) where there is shrinkage or expansion. for reasons of space, only the largest areas are shown. in 2001 and 2011 the more suburban of the bangladeshi increasing share areas had a lower proportions of 0-15 year olds, higher proportion of people over 50, degree holders, employed persons, and home owners and less over-crowding than bangladeshis living in other growth areas. migration has a more important role in growth areas than is the case elsewhere. indeed, there are differences between areas where natural change has been the larger contributor to expansion. they are generally located in areas of highest deprivation, and where the proportion of 0-15 year olds exceeds 40 percent, and proportions in employment and good health are lower. such is the dominance of the student impact on the chinese group that only two expanding areas (one is shown in the table) could be located that were not dominated by students, though even in these places students make up a disproportionate element. most of the student-dominated expanding areas have seen a fi veto ten-fold increase in the number of chinese residents over the decade, and also large increases in the proportion made up by students. their differentiating characteristic is thus the level of popularity of their universities with (international) chinese students. and as the chinese group is relatively scattered, only one small group of 5 lsoas that encompassed a reducing proportion could be found. there are clear differences between some of the gaining jewish areas. those with the largest changes in population share in the decade are located in areas of fairly high deprivation, have extremely high proportions of 0-15 year olds, low levels (compared with the jewish group overall) of older people, low levels of poor health, and generally low levels of degree holders and home ownership. natural change is a more important source of population change than migration. these areas are known to be the home of britain’s strictly orthodox jewish communities, which demonstrate a high level of fertility (graham 2013; staetsky/boyd 2015). the other growth areas are located in areas of lower deprivation, and whilst they feature above average (rather than very high) proportions of 0-15 year olds and larger proportions of older people than the fi rst three areas, adults in these areas are more likely to be employed, hold a degree, and be home-owners. unlike the other small • philip sapiro158 ta b . 6 : c ha ra ct er is tic s o f a re as w it h la rg es t i n cr ea si ng a nd r ed uc in g g ro up p o p ul at io n sh ar e g ro u p g ro u p p ro p o rt io n o f p o p u la ti o n d ir ec ti o n an d a re a su m m ar y lo ca ti o n ls o a s in in 2 00 1 in 2 01 1 10 y r ch an g e m ai n so u rc e o f a ve ra g e p o p u la ti o n a re a g ro u p p o p ’n im d d ec ile d en si ty p er h a ch an g e in % b an g la d es h i i n cr ea si n g ar ea s to w er h am le ts (e as t) 27 24 .8 35 .6 10 .8 + (n at ) 2 12 3 b ar ki n g 23 4. 3 14 .1 9. 7 + (m ig ) 3 90 n ew h am 41 6. 1 13 .5 7. 4 + (m ig ) 2 11 7 r ed b ri d g e 63 1. 9 8. 3 6. 5 + (m ig ) 5 72 b an g la d es h i r ed u ci n g ar ea s c am d en 29 12 .6 9. 1 -3 .5 (m ig ) 4 10 5 to w er h am le ts ( w es t) 41 41 .9 30 .6 -1 1. 2 (m ig ) 2 13 9 c h in es e in cr ea si n g ar ea s n ew ca st le 13 2. 7 9. 9 7. 2 + (m ig ) 4 38 le ic es te r 12 2. 3 8. 7 6. 4 + (m ig ) 4 61 s o u th w ar k 14 2. 7 8. 0 5. 3 + (m ig ) 5 92 c h in es e re d u ci n g ar ea s e al in g 5 3. 2 1. 4 -1 .9 (m ig ) 5 50 je w is h in cr ea si n g ar ea s s al fo rd 13 33 .8 4 4. 3 10 .5 + (n at ) 4 56 h ac kn ey 28 21 .9 32 .1 10 .2 + (n at ) 2 13 9 b ar n et 39 31 .4 36 .4 5. 0 + (n at ) 7 46 h er ts m er e 41 14 .6 18 .9 4. 2 + (n at ) 7 11 * “m ig ” an d “ na t” in d ic at e w he th er m ig ra tio n o r na tu ra l c ha ng e (b ir th s an d d ea th s) is th e gr ea te r co nt ri b ut o r to th e o ve ra ll + (p o si tiv e) o r – (n eg at iv e) ch an ge in g ro up p o p ul at io n understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 159 ta b . 6 : c o n tin ua tio n g ro u p g ro u p p ro p o rt io n o f p o p u la ti o n d ir ec ti o n an d a re a su m m ar y lo ca ti o n ls o a s in in 2 00 1 in 2 01 1 10 y r ch an g e m ai n so u rc e o f a ve ra g e p o p u la ti o n a re a g ro u p p o p ’n im d d ec ile d en si ty p er h a ch an g e in % je w is h re d u ci n g ar ea s b re n t 32 7. 2 3. 2 -4 .0 (n at ) 5 53 le ed s 14 20 .2 15 .0 -5 .3 (n at ) 8 6 h ar ro w 27 26 .7 19 .6 -7 .1 (m ig ) 7 31 r ed b ri d g e 4 4 14 .6 6. 9 -7 .7 (m ig ) 6 40 s ik h in cr ea si n g ar ea s b ir m in g h am (n w )/ w al sa ll 33 11 .7 18 .4 6. 7 + (m ig ) 5 24 s lo u g h 30 6. 9 13 .3 6. 4 + (m ig ) 6 11 c o ve n tr y (s o u th ) 10 7. 1 13 .0 5. 9 + (m ig ) 9 33 h ill in g d o n 38 13 .9 19 .7 5. 8 + (m ig ) 4 43 s ik h re d u ci n g ar ea s n ew h am 15 8. 1 4. 9 -3 .3 (m ig ) 2 16 0 c o ve n tr y (n o rt h) 23 13 .4 9. 6 -3 .8 (m ig ) 2 66 b ir m in g h am ( w es t) 15 21 .9 17 .6 -4 .4 (m ig ) 2 67 d er b y 14 14 .4 9. 3 -5 .1 (m ig ) 3 81 * “m ig ” an d “ na t” in d ic at e w he th er m ig ra tio n o r na tu ra l c ha ng e (b ir th s an d d ea th s) is th e gr ea te r co nt ri b ut o r to th e o ve ra ll + (p o si tiv e) o r – (n eg at iv e) ch an ge in g ro up p o p ul at io n • philip sapiro160 g ro u p g ro u p c h ar ac te ri st ic s (p ro p o rt io n o f 2 01 1 ar ea g ro u p p o p u la ti o n) lo ca ti o n a g ed a g ed 7 5 b o rn in u k w it h p o o r em p lo ye d st u d en ts d eg re e liv in g in liv in g 0 -1 5 o r ab o ve h ea lt h (o f o ve r 16 s) (o f o ve r 16 s) h o ld er s o w n ed w it h o ve r(o f o ve r 16 s) h o m e cr o w d in g in % b an g la d es h i i n cr ea si n g ar ea s to w er h am le ts (e as t) 39 1 52 18 41 18 26 14 61 b ar ki n g 32 1 51 15 51 20 41 68 41 n ew h am 34 1 43 16 50 29 41 37 57 r ed b ri d g e 33 1 52 14 52 17 47 74 28 b an g la d es h i r ed u ci n g ar ea s c am d en 34 3 52 25 40 15 21 10 64 to w er h am le ts ( w es t) 32 2 52 22 38 17 23 20 63 c h in es e in cr ea si n g ar ea s n ew ca st le 2 2 6 6 15 80 4 4 12 31 le ic es te r 1 0 7 3 14 85 42 13 36 s o u th w ar k 5 0 19 6 63 27 54 34 40 c h in es e re d u ci n g ar ea s e al in g 9 5 29 15 63 7 67 76 17 je w is h in cr ea si n g ar ea s s al fo rd 43 6 81 10 56 12 27 65 1 h ac kn ey 49 3 76 8 48 17 13 30 5 b ar n et 30 10 76 12 60 8 48 77 2 h er ts m er e 25 6 92 10 70 7 41 91 1 ta b . 6 : c o n tin ua tio n understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 161 g ro u p g ro u p c h ar ac te ri st ic s (p ro p o rt io n o f 2 01 1 ar ea g ro u p p o p u la ti o n) lo ca ti o n a g ed a g ed 7 5 b o rn in u k w it h p o o r em p lo ye d st u d en ts d eg re e liv in g in liv in g 0 -1 5 o r ab o ve h ea lt h (o f o ve r 16 s) (o f o ve r 16 s) h o ld er s o w n ed w it h o ve r(o f o ve r 16 s) h o m e cr o w d in g in % je w is h re d u ci n g ar ea s b re n t 4 32 82 33 43 4 38 90 2 le ed s 13 21 95 23 50 5 40 89 1 h ar ro w 17 17 86 20 57 6 38 89 2 r ed b ri d g e 9 24 95 32 49 5 18 90 2 s ik h in cr ea si n g ar ea s b ir m in g h am (n w )/ w al sa ll 22 3 63 17 66 10 31 95 1 s lo u g h 23 3 59 13 71 11 37 90 3 c o ve n tr y (s o u th ) 24 4 66 13 72 9 42 97 1 h ill in g d o n 21 3 4 4 16 62 13 26 74 7 s ik h re d u ci n g ar ea s n ew h am 14 5 46 23 55 12 26 81 6 c o ve n tr y (n o rt h) 16 6 48 25 55 11 20 84 4 b ir m in g h am ( w es t) 18 5 46 24 50 14 18 76 5 d er b y 19 8 45 26 56 7 17 84 3 ta b . 6 : c o n tin ua tio n s o ur ce : a ut ho r ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n an al ys is o f 2 00 1 an d 2 01 1 ce ns us o ut p ut s • philip sapiro162 cultural groups, for jews, natural change is a more infl uential source of population change than migration for all the gaining and most of the contracting areas. the sikh analysis includes a number of pairs of proximate localities between the increasing and reducing areas, primarily in the midlands, where the contracting area has a high level of deprivation and a higher population density, and the growth area a lower or much lower level. this implies movement by those with improving socioeconomic standing from one area to the other. the growing areas also benefi t from positive natural change refl ected in higher proportions of 0-15 year olds, which may contribute to the lower level of poor health in the expanding areas. 7 discussion and conclusions some global characteristics of the groups, linked to traditional theories, have been explored. this has identifi ed some similarities, but also some quite distinct differences, between the groups. have these differences been refl ected in their spatial distribution? the longevity of the jewish group’s presence in britain is refl ected in its almost complete absence from its areas of original settlement, whereas the bangladeshi group is still much focussed in its settlement areas and the sikh group maintains a presence in its original areas. the broadly similar scale of clustering found in these three groups means that, contrary to traditional theory, length of presence has not led to a dispersed pattern. moreover, the link between intermarriage levels (which vary greatly between these three groups) and level of dispersal (which does not) is weak. socio-economic status (and more specifi cally, professional and managerial positions) has a link with location of residence, with groups with higher proportions of employment at these levels being found in areas in less deprived imd deciles. thus, if we review some key elements of traditional theories in the light of this study’s fi ndings, we can conclude that socio-economic progress has led to relocation of groups away from their initial settlement areas towards more sought-after residential localities. however, such moves have not led to widespread dispersal (for three of the groups), nor (for the jewish group) has intermarriage remained limited due to a lack of residential dispersal. there are some broad similarities between the groups in areas where the proportion of a group has reduced between 2001 and 2011, and another set of broadly shared characteristics for areas that have expanded. two key fi nding are, fi rstly, that areas where the concentration of a group has been relatively high, but has reduced, are locations of worsening health inequality. secondly, areas where the proportional sikh presence is above average and increasing actually demonstrate reduced socio-economic disadvantage. when an index-based approach is used, sub-areas of the study area that demonstrate a group population proportion equal to the average for the study area as a whole generally contribute a zero value to the index. larger values are contributed by areas where the group proportion varies more from the overall average. if two time periods/censuses are being compared, then areas which have moved closer to the study area average would be making less of a contribution to the index, and this reducing value and would be considered to represent an understanding the spatial trajectories of minority groups • 163 “improving” result. conversely, areas moving further away from the average value between the censuses would be demonstrating an increasing contribution to the index value and would be regarded as a “worsening” result. thus in the case of the two types of area described at the start of this paragraph, an index-based approach would conclude that the fi rst type was an improving situation (and thus warranting reduced attention) and the second type a worsening scenario. that is, an indexbased approach can lead to misleading conclusions in targeting disadvantage. when the analysis explores individual areas where the group population proportion has materially increased or reduced, not only are there many differences between the cultural groups, but there is much reduced consistency of characteristics within each group. however, there is a degree of consistency insofar as the relative importance of migration (whether international or internal) and natural change is concerned. despite the greater presence of older people in the jewish group compared with the other groups under examination (and its likely negative impact on natural change), positive natural change (rather than migration) is the main driving force in expanding jewish areas. conversely, despite the positive natural change overall refl ected in the high proportion of 0-15 year olds in the other groups (particularly the bangladeshi group) migration is the more important element in explaining changed group proportion in increasing areas for those groups. thus, particularly for areas where group proportion has increased, the more important element is at odds with what might be expected from the overall age profi le of the group. the chinese group is quite different to the other three groups that have been examined. whilst the very high presence of international students within that group creates a distinctive pattern to that group’s distribution and the large rise in student numbers over the decade overwhelms the pattern of change, it does not explain all the differences. levels of congregation of (non-student) members of the chinese group are very low. peach notes that “urban concentration allows the groups to pass the threshold size at which ethnic shops and religious institutions can be maintained and the proximity to members of the groups that allows the language and norms of the groups to be maintained” (peach 1996: 386). this is refl ected in the distribution found for three of our groups, but not the chinese. so why might that be the case? there could well be a religion element to this. by defi nition, of course, there is a religious commonality within the jewish and sikh groups, though the degree of actual religiosity may vary (graham et al. 2014), and census outputs indicate that 90 percent of bangladeshis described themselves as muslim (and only 1 percent had “no religion”). the chinese group, on the other hand, includes 56 percent who indicated that they had “no religion”; the next largest group (20 percent) were christians. neither of these groups requires residential concentration. additionally, at one of end of the scale, the majority of bangladeshi early immigrants originated in a relatively compact area of bangladesh (sylhet) and many later immigrants have family connections with the earlier arrivals (ballard 2004). in contrast, the origin of chinese immigrants has evolved over recent decades. initially, the arrivals were lowly qualifi ed residents of rural hong kong; more recent immigrants came from a much wider • philip sapiro164 section of south-east asia. the most recent arrivals have been highly qualifi ed (luk 2008, 2009). there is thus a large inherent heterogeneity in the chinese group. the infl uence of the different elements of the benefi t of congregation clearly differ between the groups, and no one over-arching explanation for their current spatial distribution and its trajectory can be found. indeed, the migration element of distribution appears to embody a tension between suburbanisation/counter-urbanisation “fuelled” by socio-economic progress, and a desire for group congregation. the conclusion is that not only does heterogeneity between the groups confound any attempt to produce a “model” of spatial distribution, but heterogeneity within each group means that producing any form of understanding of, or explanation for, the trajectory of distribution requires the examination of data at a detailed level, and is beyond the scope of global indices. in addition to presenting such information for previously studied ethnic groups, the paper has presented, for the fi rst time, detailed analysis for two religion-based groups. the key message of this research is that to achieve a full understanding of minority group spatial distribution, investigation at a fi ne geographic level is required. more importantly, full account of the personal, household, and community characteristics of those involved is essential, rather than placing too much reliance on indices and other measures that underplay the issue of heterogeneity within groups. indeed, by taking proper account of group heterogeneity in analysing minority group spatial distribution, population analysts can better assist policy makers to spatially target health, education, training, and other social programmes and, as a consequence, address issues of segregation, disadvantage, and cultural diversity. acknowledgement all census data and mapping used in this paper are crown copyright and reproduced or adapted from data from ons (the offi ce for national statistics) licensed under the open government licence v.2.0. 2011 census tables can be accessed via http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/data_fi nder; 2001 tables can be accessed via http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/census2001.asp; and underlying ons mapping via https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page. the 2011 safeguarded microdata were made available via the uk data service and accessed under the terms of its 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(cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) biases in assertions of self-rated health. exploring the role of the respondent, country of residence, and interviewer biases in assertions of self-rated health* exploring the role of the respondent, country of residence, and interviewer patrick lazarevič abstract: comparative analyses frequently examine respondents’ self-rated health (srh), assuming that it is a valid and comparable measure of generic health. however, given srh’s vagueness, this assumption is questionable due to (1) manifold nonhealth infl uences, such as personal characteristics including optimism, interviewer effects on the rating, and cultural contexts, as well as (2) potential gender, ageor country-specifi c expectations for one’s health or frames of reference. conceptually, two major components of srh can be distinguished: latent health and reporting behavior. while latent health exclusively refers to objective health status, reporting behavior collectively refers to non-health characteristics (nh) affecting srh. the present paper is primarily concerned with the latter and aims to identify whether and how nh bias srh, including possible differences by gender, age, and country of residence. the presented analyses are based on data from 16,183 participants in fi ve countries drawn from the fi fth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share). latent health is controlled via a wide array of health indicators and the residuals are examined with a model covering nh from three different sources: the interviewer, the respondent, and the country of residence. to identify subgroup-specifi c response behaviors, all analyses are carried out separately by gender, three age groups (50-64, 65-79, and 80+ years), and country of residence. the analyses uncovered infl uences of – among others–the interviewer’s srh, the respondent’s life satisfaction, and the country of residence on srh, while other factors differed by subgroup. the amount of explained variance due to such reporting behavior (with a mean of seven percent) can be deemed meaningful, considering that controlling for latent health already explains around half of srh’s variance. the greatest source of non-health infl uences was respondent characteristics, with the interviewer and country having smaller effects. comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 73-98 (date of release: 15.02.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-04 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-04en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity”. • patrick lazarevič74 these results illustrate the importance of taking nh into account when using srh measures. future research on complementing srh with factual questions in survey design is advisable. keywords: response bias · cross-national comparison · europe · reporting behavior · self-rated health · survey of health · ageing and retirement in europe (share) 1 introduction health is relevant across all social sciences. given ongoing demographic aging in many societies, the reasons and consequences of health inequality as well as maintaining good and improving bad health are increasingly important strands of research for individual and societal welfare. results from such inquiries are crucial for developing evidence-based policies for improving the lives of vulnerable groups such as the elderly (brandt et al. 2016). how to measure the rather abstract concept of “health”, however, is comparably seldom the focus of rigorous scientifi c analyses. in this context, self-rated health (srh) is the most widely-used single-indicator of health in many scientifi c disciplines, which simply asks respondents to rate their overall health on a fully labeled fi vepoint scale, e.g., “excellent, very good, good, fair, poor” (jylhä 2009). apart from its simplicity, brevity, and the comparability implied in its widespread use, the most important reasons for using srh to measure health are its well-established predictive validity regarding morbidity (idler/kasl 1995) and mortality (idler/benyamini 1997) and its inclusive, dynamic, and resource-refl ecting measurement of health (benyamini 2011). more comprehensive approaches to health measurement (e.g., extensive questionnaires, physical examinations, performance tests, biomarkers etc.) on the other hand, while being more precise and straightforward in what is actually measured, are disadvantageous because of increasing respondent burden (bradburn 1979; sharp/frankel 1983) and being generally more timeand costintensive, making them especially impractical for use in multi-thematic surveys. while srh is often taken at face value in applied research, researchers increasingly raise the question whether simply asking “would you say your health is...?” alone might leave too much room for interpretation to respondents to provide comparable measurements due to potential biases from non-health infl uences. this makes it diffi cult to know what exactly is measured by srh and how to interpret srh scores, group differences, and coeffi cients in multivariate analyses. conceptually, srh can be assumed to comprise two components: latent or “true” health and reporting behavior, also known as reporting heterogeneity (shmueli 2003; layes et al. 2012). latent health in this context can be thought of as the theoretically “objective” generic health status of a person covering aspects such as functional limitations or diseases. the greatest compliment you can get from a german is “i can’t complain”, because you know they tried. (anonymous) biases in assertions of self-rated health • 75 reporting behavior, on the other hand, is a collective term for any kind of systematic variation of srh caused by non-health characteristics (nh) such as optimism or age, i.e., features that systematically affect health perceptions. however, this does not mean that nh are completely unrelated to health but rather that, for a given objective health status, for instance, people who are more optimistic will likely rate their health more positively than comparably pessimistic respondents. similarly, older respondents might rate their health generally more positively because of changing frames of reference and health aspirations or due to having had more time to get used to functional limitations or health conditions (heyink 1993; groot 2000; melzer et al. 2004). the goal of this paper is to explore the infl uence and variability of reporting behavior by using cross-sectional data from the fi fth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share). to this end, i fi rst present the analytical model employed in the subsequent analysis and discuss the results of studies pertinent to this research. subsequently, i describe the data and methods used for the analysis. finally, i present the results that will then be discussed with possible directions for future research. 2 theoretical model: health ratings and non-health characteristics at its core, the idea of measuring generic health via srh is based on the notion of latent health being refl ected in srh. however, as described above, reporting behavior likely plays an important and biasing role in how respondents translate their latent health into a health rating. one way to illustrate this idea is shown in figure 1. latent health as a major determinant of srh is represented by the arrow from latent health to self-rated health. however, figure 1 also acknowledges the nh of respondents, i.e., any respondent traits that do not belong to the concept of latent health. the role of nh is twofold: first, they can infl uence the latent health of the respondent, like higher education and its consequences benefi ting health (jasilionis/ shkolnikov 2016; lynch/von hippel 2016), which is represented by the arrow from nh to latent health in figure 1. second, however, nh may also directly affect srh in a way that is not mediated by latent health and represented by the direct, bent arrow from nh to self-rated health. this direct effect of nh on srh corresponds to the previously described concept of reporting behavior. one example for this might be if more educated respondents have a comparably positive outlook on their health and therefore tend to rate a similar objective health state more positively than less educated respondents do. in order to isolate these direct effects of nh on srh, i.e., nh net of its effects that are mediated by latent health, one possible approach is to control for any infl uences of latent health on srh. when controlling for as much health information as possible, the remaining variance of srh (i.e., the residuals) can, assuming a comprehensive latent health model, be attributed to either random deviations, i.e., idiosyncrasies of rating health, or to direct effects of nh on srh. this means that the approach chosen for this study assumes that all information (i.e., srh’s variance) that cannot • patrick lazarevič76 be explained or predicted by health indicators is caused by reasons beyond health itself (i.e., nh). any signifi cant effect on the residuals of a comprehensive regression model of latent health on srh that cannot be attributed to omitted health indicators can thus be interpreted as bias (i.e., systematic variation in error terms). in other words, any effects of nh after a control of latent health would describe the extent to which the same health status (based on the available latent health indicators) is rated differently by the respondents. fig. 1: direct and indirect effects of non-health characteristics on srh direct effect indirect effect non-health latent health self rated health source: own design based on lazarevic 2019 fig. 2: theoretical model of srh latent health non-health gender, age, country, ... pain interviewee function depression self-rated health country diseases behavior interviewer source: own design based on lazarevic 2019 biases in assertions of self-rated health • 77 the analytical model used for the analyses of this paper is depicted in figure 2. this model was developed by lazarevič (2019)1 from general models of the cognitive process underlying answering survey questions (tourangeau 1984; strack/martin 1987) and rating one’s health (knäuper/turner 2003; jylhä 2009). in short, it asserts that srh is based both on different domains of latent health (on the left side of the model) as well as nh, such as infl uences of the interviewer (in personal interviews), personal characteristics, and the country of residence (on the right side). as this paper is focused on direct infl uences of nh on srh and, as stated above, the approach to isolate direct effects of nh on srh is to control for latent health before the main analyses shown in this paper, the infl uences of latent health on srh are depicted with dashed arrows while the arrows representing effects of nh on srh are solid. additionally, this model posits that basic sociodemographic characteristics of the respondent, such as gender, age, or country, can also potentially moderate any infl uence on srh (top of figure 2). this moderating effect can be captured analytically, e.g., as interaction effects of specifi c nh with sociodemographic traits or, as done in this paper, by estimating separate models by gender and age or country. in the framework of this model, function(ing) represents how well an individual is able to function health-wise and is measured via aspects such as the ability to deal with (instrumental) activities of daily living, general health-related restrictions of activities, and physical performance tests. the aspect of diseases covers the infl uences of being affl icted by diagnosed (chronic) diseases or (adverse) health conditions, the presence of multimorbidity, and the overall number of diseases. pain stands for the (chronic) experience and intensity of pain. depression generally covers aspects of mental health, such as being affected by or diagnosed with mental health conditions such as depression or anxiety disorders, the number of such symptoms, and taking mental health medications. lastly, behavior represents risk-related behaviors or their outcomes, such as being a smoker or having a nonnormal body-mass-index (bmi), since these aspects might also infl uence one’s evaluation of health even if they might not (yet) clinically affect health status. as for nh, interviewee characteristics represent, in this paper, the direct infl uences of respondent characteristics, such as socially desirable responding, satisfaction with life as a proxy for optimism, and social participation and trust in others as a proxy for the infl uences of social networks (shmueli 2003; layes et al. 2012; warner et al. 2012; latkin et al. 2017). further, this also includes situational characteristics of the interview situation, such as the presence of other persons during the interview or whether (health) information was provided by someone else, i.e., proxy interviews (de luca/lipps 2005). these situational characteristics might also be seen as a source of bias in their own right (i.e., survey characteristics or method effects), but were included in the interviewee category since the respondent can often at least in part be deemed responsible for their occurrence. the country of birth or residence plays a double role in this analysis since it fi rst might infl uence 1 a description of this model in english is provided by lazarevič and brandt (2020). • patrick lazarevič78 srh directly, e.g., through cultural aspects such as norms regarding communication about health or problems in general, or simply variation in the translation of standardized survey instruments. second, the country of residence might also, together with general respondent characteristics such as gender and age, have a moderating effect on how nh infl uence health ratings due to disparate expectations and frames of references or cultural aspects that affect rating behavior (e.g., jürges 2007). lastly, interviewer effects refer to direct effects of interviewer characteristics on health reporting, such as the interviewer’s age, experience, education, or their own srh (singer et al. 1983; groves et al. 2009). additionally, this also includes potential biases due to interactions between the respondent and interviewer, e.g., their age difference or gender composition (lipps/lutz 2017). 3 previous studies on reporting behavior seminal research on the role of nh in srh goes back to the 1950s and 1960s when researchers such as suchman et al. (1958) and maddox (1962) demonstrated a divergence between physicianand respondent-rated health, concluding: “it appears that a person’s perceived state of health – whether it is healthy or ill – relates to one’s attitudes, regardless of the objective health condition as judged by a physician.” (suchman et al. 1958: 228). while maddox (1962) found a greater congruence of health ratings by physicians and respondents in his study, his analysis was only based on the distinction of good vs. poor health, making a congruent rating more likely. nevertheless, he also noted that: “despite the marked infl uence of objective health on self-assessments of health, social factors do seem to have a consistent effect on this relationship” (maddox 1962: 182). this divergence suggests that srh is not completely based on objective indicators of health that a physician might measure, meaning that nh likely play into respondents’ health ratings. accordingly, some studies on the health determinants of srh that utilize extensive health information provided by gerontological and epidemiological surveys fi nd that while a lot of srh’s variance can be explained by health indicators (i.e., latent health), at least half of its variance cannot (singh-manoux et al. 2006; lazarevič/brandt 2020). building on both the mentioned divergence and the unexplained variance of srh by health variables, different studies have examined interviewee-related characteristics, especially sociodemographic ones, that may be responsible for this unexplained variance. one study on this issue was conducted by shmueli (2003) with israeli data and found infl uences such as age, gender, and religiosity for the sf36 which also comprises srh. in this study, for example, men, older respondents, and individuals with a higher economic status rated similar health states more positively than women, younger respondents, and people with a lower economic status did. another study by layes et al. (2012) controlled for latent health using the hui-3 in canadians and found that females, older respondents (80+), and people who have less income and education rate their health relatively more positively. consequently, results from these studies were rather inconsistent, complicating specifi c expectations regarding future results except for older respondents rating biases in assertions of self-rated health • 79 similar health states relatively more optimistic than younger respondents in both studies. however, certain respondent attitudes proved more consistent regarding their role in overor underestimating one’s health, such as positive social relations and trust (especially towards peers), both of which were found to be positively related with srh (cotter/lachman 2010; glanville/story 2018). the same is true for positive and negative affect: both show direct effects on srh when controlling for objective health, meaning that respondents with a more positive disposition tend to report better srh (whitehead/bergeman 2016). in summary, this can be interpreted as evidence for the notion that more optimistic or positive respondents rate their health more favorably, which had already been shown for optimism in general (e.g., hooker et al. 1992; ruthig/chipperfi eld 2006; rasmussen et al. 2009; warner et al. 2012; lazarevič et al. 2018). in some cases, such effects are thought to result from positive infl uences of optimism on latent health without considering the possibility of optimism itself affecting response behavior, even though this infl uence is considerably weaker for more objective health indicators such as mortality (rasmussen et al. 2009), highlighting the necessity of a prior control for latent health. lastly, methodological aspects such as the presence of another person during the interview or proxy interviews might also affect how respondents evaluate a certain health state. the presence of others might, for example, lead to more socially desirable response behaviors regarding sensitive questions (mneimneh et al. 2015), even though this effect is typically considered to be rather small (bradburn/sudman 1979; silver et al. 1986; mensch/kandel 1988; smith 1995; ensminger et al. 2007). this might be explained, at least in personal interviews, by the fact that the presence of an interviewer who is typically a stranger elicits more social desirability than one might expect towards a family member (duffy/waterton 1984: 304). as for proxy interviews, i.e., the responses about a person’s health being provided by another person, results from previous studies are mixed with their congruence ranging from low (vuorisalmi et al. 2012) to medium (ayalon/covinsky 2009) to high (magaziner et al. 1996; sneeuw et al. 2002). a second major aspect of potential nh is the country. some european studies examined country-specifi c reporting behavior and found evidence that, for instance, swedish and danish people reported their general health more positively than respondents from other countries such as germany, even when controlling for objective health, pointing to a more positive view of similar underlying latent health states (jürges 2007; pfarr et al. 2012). furthermore, different translations of the same questionnaire might also play a role in reporting behavior. for instance, studies from the us have repeatedly shown that respondents who were interviewed in spanish rather than english tended to rate equivalent health states more pessimistically (bzostek et al. 2007; viruell-fuentes et al. 2011), which also points to the necessity of including the country as nh. studies investigating the interviewer as a source of reporting behavior are relatively rare since comprehensive interviewer data beyond basic information such as gender or age are rarely collected. however, there is some evidence that • patrick lazarevič80 the mere presence of an interviewer might introduce systematic bias into srh, since respondents generally appear to show signs of social desirability in personal interviews (groves/mathiowetz 1984; livert et al. 1998; latkin et al. 2017; lipps/ lutz 2017). while social desirability is typically not directly measured in major surveys, a few studies have examined the interaction of interviewer and respondent characteristics (e.g., gender composition or age difference), assuming that they might affect reporting behavior. in this line of research, some researchers have found that female interviewers showed signs of lower social desirability, as worse health states were reported – or admitted – to them, possibly due to greater trust of the respondents (lipps/lutz 2017). furthermore, there are indications that a greater age difference might have the same effect, possibly for the same reason (okamoto et al. 2002). strikingly, the role of the interviewer’s health in the respondents’ health reports has not yet been investigated, probably due to a lack of suitable data. accordingly, it is unclear whether a healthier interviewer could have an infl uence on the respondent’s srh. effects in both directions are conceivable: on the one hand, better health on the side of the interviewer might be used as a reference frame by the interviewees, thus decreasing their subjective health ratings and leading to a negative correlation, while on the other hand it is also possible that respondents would only “admit” worse health states to less healthy interviewers, resulting in a positive correlation between the two ratings, in line with the previously mentioned fi ndings regarding social desirability. even though there are some studies investigating nh, overall, the state of research is quite fragmented. most studies are only concerned with the infl uence of individual sources of bias or specifi c characteristics on srh. however, multiple sources of bias should be considered simultaneously. this would also enable an evaluation of their relative importance. additionally, most studies only insuffi ciently control for latent health, if at all. this is problematic for the evaluation of reporting behavior, since there might be both direct and indirect effects of nh on the respondents’ health perceptions and corresponding ratings. 4 data and method 4.1 data for the following analyses, i used data from the fi fth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) from 2015, comprising a wide array of data for more than 60,000 respondents from fi fteen european countries aged 50 years or older. specifi cally, in the multivariate analyses, i drew on data from 16,183 respondents (8,676 women and 7,534 men) from all fi ve countries (austria, belgium, germany, spain, sweden) which participated in an interviewer survey (blom/ korbmacher 2013; korbmacher et al. 2015). these data are exceptionally well suited for the present research questions because of share’s comprehensive (non-) health information, its data collection in multiple countries, and the interviewer survey which was fi rst conducted in multiple countries in this wave. these three aspects biases in assertions of self-rated health • 81 offer the opportunity for a comparably comprehensive control for latent health, cross-country comparisons, and for including interviewer characteristics as well as the combination of interviewer and respondent characteristics in the analyses. 4.2 analysis and measurement to conduct the analysis according to the previously described analytical model, it is necessary to remove or control for all health-related variance of srh, or at least as much of this variance as possible given the available data, in order to isolate the effect of nh characteristics. after this, a broad model of nh can be applied to the remaining variance to investigate their isolated relationship with srh. olsregression models are particularly appropriate to implement this approach. ols examines the non-health-related variance of srh by fi rst modeling the infl uence of latent health on srh with as many health indicators as possible and then further analyzing the infl uence of nh on the fi rst model’s residuals. accordingly, i fi rst ran a linear regression with extensive health information provided by share as the independent variables and srh as the dependent variable, separately by gender, age, and country. in this model, fi ve domains of latent health were controlled for to obtain the residual variance of srh. in short, these were functional health (e.g., grip strength, chair stand, number of restrictions of (i)adl and mobility), chronic diseases and health conditions, the presence of chronic pain and its intensity, symptoms of and medication against mental health, and health behavior and its consequences (i.e., smoking behavior and bmi). the overall explained variance is comparably high (r2 = 0.51; r2 = 0.48, see table a1 in the appendix for the full results by gender), suggesting a relatively comprehensive control of latent health, given the lower or comparable amounts of explained variance regarding srh in similar studies, e.g., 46 percent for tornstam (1975), 35 percent for quinn et al. (1999), and 35-41 percent for singh-manoux et al. (2006), with the latter two additionally controlling for sociodemographic information. a full description and discussion of the latent health model used for the analyses of this paper can be found elsewhere (lazarevič 2019; lazarevič/brandt 2020), while the results specifi c to the present analyses, i.e., restricted to the sample used here, are shown by gender in the supplementary material in table a1 in the appendix. to analyze the infl uence of nh on srh net of health infl uences in this paper, i used the residuals from these regression models as the dependent variable and non-health indicators as independent variables. these nh were, in line with the theoretical model, categorized according to the three proposed sources of nonhealth-related indicators: interviewee and situational characteristics, the country of residence, and interviewer characteristics: respondent and interview situation the fi rst potential source of bias consisted of two types of information: respondent characteristics and situational effects. the fi rst type represented in the model of bias were characteristics or opinions directly linked to or provided by the respondent, ♀ ♂ • patrick lazarevič82 i.e., (1) life satisfaction (11-point likert scale), (2) generalized trust in others (11-point likert scale), (3) formal education (high (isced 5 and 6), medium (isced 3 and 4), and low (isced 0-3)), (4) age groups (only in analyses by gender and country), (5) marital status (married and living together vs. all others), and (6) number of types of activities participated in last year (count variable of seven types of activities, such as doing voluntary or charity work, or playing cards or chess).2 to account for a likely non-linear relationship of this last variable with srh, it was transformed with an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation (log(xi + (x2 + 1).5)). this transformation generally functions similarly to logarithmic transformations but also allows for the transformation of zero values (burbidge et al. 1988; zhang et al. 2000), which were common in this variable. situational effects were operationalized with dummy variables for (1) having at least one other person present during the interview apart from the interviewer and respondent and (2) whether somebody else provided health information for the survey in lieu of the respondent (i.e., whether it was a proxy interview). country the fi ve countries included in this study are austria, belgium, germany, spain, and sweden, all of which participated in share’s interviewer survey. they are used in the analyses of this paper both as directly infl uencing the residuals (via country dummies with german residents as the reference group) as well as potentially moderating all effects of the two other sources of bias on residuals. the second aspect was implemented by separate analyses of the infl uence of the other variables by country so that potentially differential effects could be identifi ed. interviewer two types of nh related to the interviewers were included in the overall model: interviewer characteristics and interviewer–respondent interactions. the fi rst type of these indicators was only based on the interviewers themselves and comprised their experience as an interviewer (none vs. at least one year), their age (ten-year intervals), their own srh, and their education (university vs. lower). the second type of the indicators of this source of bias stemmed from the combination of characteristics of interviewers and respondents, represented here by their age difference (in years) and their genders (interviewer gender in separate analyses by respondent gender). to examine the importance of these three potential sources of bias, i conducted dominance analyses with the stata module domin (luchman 2013). this approach compares r2 for all possible subsets of variables or, as in this case, sets of variables to determine their individual or combined contribution to the overall r2 (budescu 2 furthermore, income and/ the ability to make ends meet as additional measures of socioeconomic status as well as the existence of or contact with one’s children as another type of social contact and/ support were considered. however, the inclusion of these variables would have greatly reduced the number of available cases due to high numbers of item nonresponse, with none of these variables being signifi cantly related to the residuals. i biases in assertions of self-rated health • 83 1993; luchman 2014, 2015). the possible moderating infl uence of gender, age, and country was implemented by conducting separate analyses for the corresponding groups. in the context of the analyses of this paper, a moderating effect of each of the three characteristics on the extent of bias due to one source of bias would be evident if estimations of its relative importance were to signifi cantly differ between groups. furthermore, i used bootstrapping (10,000 samples for each model) to estimate confi dence intervals for these contributions to r2 in order to better evaluate the size of group differences in the amount of bias due to different sources as well as to test the statistical signifi cance of potential differences in the explained variance between groups or sources of bias (10,000 samples for each difference). 5 results the detailed regression results are shown in table 1 separately by gender. considering that around half of srh’s variance was already explained by the indicators of latent health (r2 = 0.51; r2 = 0.48, see table a1 in the appendix), the model’s r2 of .07 suggest a substantial bias of srh due to nh. the available interviewee characteristics accounted for around 5 percent of the overall variance of srh that was not explained via health indicators. as for the interpretation of the coeffi cients, each can be interpreted as indicating the bias in rating one’s health corresponding to the coeffi cient’s sign. for instance, the statistically signifi cant positive effect of life satisfaction for both genders can be interpreted as more satisfi ed respondents rating the same latent health (as measured via health indicators), on average, more positively than less satisfi ed respondents. furthermore, the same was true for men with an isced score of fi ve or higher, who rated similar health states more favorably than their counterparts with less formal education (isced ≤ 4). this suggests that a general satisfaction with life and, by extension, general optimism as well as advanced education (at least for men) positively bias health ratings. apart from this, there was a tendency in the oldest age group (80+) to rate their health more optimistically, although this relationship was not statistically signifi cant for either gender. being married and living with one’s spouse, as another indicator of social control or loneliness, turned out to be negative in the case of women, i.e., married women who lived with their spouse rated similar health states more negatively than women with a different marital status. in any case, a more diverse social participation turned out to bias health reporting upwards. generalized trust in others, as an additional proxy for positivity bias, was not signifi cantly correlated to the srh after controlling for health indicators, which might be due to the fact that generalized trust appears to be less relevant to srh than particularized trust, i.e., trust in family, friends, and acquaintances (glanville/story 2018; kim 2018). additionally, it seems to be warranted to emphasize that neither the presence of other persons during the interview nor proxy interviews seemed to generate signifi cant bias in srh. furthermore, the country dummies showed country-specifi c reporting behavior, in line with earlier research (e.g., jürges 2007). respondents from austria, belgium, and sweden all rated their health more positively than germans did, given the ♀ ♂ • patrick lazarevič84 same latent health. in the case of austria, however, this effect was only signifi cant for men. additionally, the country effects were signifi cantly more pronounced for men than for women in the case of austrians and swedes. this impression is also tab. 1: results from ols regression explaining residuals (b-coeffi cients and explained variance for each source of bias) women men interviewee (explained variance) 4.89% 4.55% satisfaction with life 0.05*** 0.06*** trust in others 0.01 -0.01 education (rc: high (isced 5-6)) medium (isced 4-5) -0.02 -0.11*** low (isced 0-3) -0.08 -0.17*** age (rc: 50-64 years) 65-79 years -0.02 0.00 80+ years 0.15 0.06 married, cohabitating (rc: other marital status) -0.08** 0.01 number of activities (last year)a 0.14*** 0.07** not alone during interview (rc: alone) 0.03 0.03 proxy interview (rc: no proxy) -0.02 0.04 country (rc: germany) (explained variance) 1.21% 1.76% spain -0.01 0.08 austria 0.05 0.17*** belgium 0.19*** 0.25*** sweden 0.30*** 0.42*** interviewer (explained variance) 1.12% 0.93% no experience (rc: one year or more) -0.03 -0.02 interviewer’s age (cat. 10 years) -0.06* -0.05 interviewer’s self-rated health 0.05** 0.04* age-difference (in years) -0.00 -0.00 female interviewer (rc: male) 0.04 -0.01 education (rc: university) upper 0.08* -0.00 medium 0.05 -0.02 lower 0.12** 0.03 (health) 0.51 0.48 (non-health) 0.07 0.07 n 8,677 7,532 adj.r 2 adj.r 2 a inverse hyperbolic sine transformation to account for nonlinear relationship. + p ≤ 0.1; * p ≤ 0.05; ** p ≤ 0.01; *** p ≤ 0.001. source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations biases in assertions of self-rated health • 85 corroborated by the fact that, overall, the country of residence explained around 1.2 percent of srh’s residual variance in women and 1.8 percent in men, even though this difference was not statistically signifi cant. as for interviewer characteristics, the negative sign for the interviewer’s age means that respondents with older interviewers rated their health more negatively than other respondents with the same latent health (according to the collected health indicators) and younger interviewers, though this was only statistically signifi cant for women. the opposite was true for the interviewer’s self-rated health: respondents of both genders with (subjectively) healthier interviewers tended to rate their own health more positively than respondents with interviewers in worse health did. both coeffi cients suggest that interviewees slightly “adjust” their health rating according to their interviewers’ (supposed or apparent) health status, which could be interpreted as social desirability bias. the experience of the interviewer, the age difference between respondent and interviewer, as well as their genders did not show a signifi cant relationship with their health reporting. as for the interviewer’s education, only women exhibited a signifi cant infl uence in that they generally rated their health more positively when the interviewer’s education was lower than university, although this was only statistically signifi cant in the case of interviewers who graduated from a lower and higher-level secondary school. in sum, the available interviewer characteristics explained around 1 percent of srh’s residual variance after controlling for health, with no signifi cant difference between genders. each of the three potential sources’ contribution to the overall r2 can be seen in figure 3, separated by gender. in these analyses, interviewees were (in this model) by far the most relevant source of bias, explaining around 5 percent of the residual fig. 3: amount of explained variance accounted for by source by gender (95%-confi dence intervals) 10 5 0 interviewee country interviewer residual variance explained in % source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations • patrick lazarevič86 variance for both genders. it appears that interviewers and the country of residence or language of the interview are, at least in comparison, less important as sources of bias. lastly, even though there appeared to be some minor gender differences regarding the country of residence in particular, the confi dence intervals for all three groups’ contribution to r2 strongly overlapped, indicating great similarity in their relevance by gender. these impressions were confi rmed by the fact that only the differences between interviewee characteristics and the other sources of bias are signifi cantly different from each other between genders, while there was no signifi cant difference between the contribution of interviewer characteristics and country dummies to the explained variance. for all three sources of bias, no signifi cant gender differences in these contributions were found, which is also true for the overall explained variance by gender. figure 4 shows the same analyses separated by age group. these results corroborate the impression that there appear to be no meaningful differences by gender, as all confi dence intervals heavily overlap for all three sources of bias in every age group, which is confi rmed as none of the gender comparisons yielded signifi cant differences. however, the fi gure also shows only very slight signs of differences between the age groups. the only apparent age discrepancies were that respondent characteristics were slightly more relevant for men aged 80+ and slightly less relevant for women of this age group and interviewer effects were generally (nominally) a little more relevant for the oldest respondents of both fig. 4: amount of explained variance accounted for by type of variable separated by gender and age-group (95%-confi dence intervals) 5 50-64 65-79 80+ residual variance explained in % 15 10 0 country country ( ) interviewee interviewee ( ) interviewer interviewer ( ) source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations biases in assertions of self-rated health • 87 genders. however, the confi dence intervals demonstrate that all these supposed age differences were far too small to be meaningfully interpreted, as none of these differences turned out to be statistically signifi cant. the only signifi cant differences in these analyses were, once again, between interviewee characteristics and the two other sources of bias, albeit not for the oldest age group in the case of the interviewee characteristics for both genders and country dummies in the case of women. this is likely due to the lower number of cases as well as the overall higher contributions of interviewer effects in this age group, and the comparably high contributions of country effects for the oldest women. the overall adjusted r2 by gender and age group, as documented in table 2, showed no systematic differences, except for a relatively low amount of explained variance for the oldest women in comparison to men, in line with the impression of a lower relevance of respondent characteristics in this group, although no comparison of any of these statistics yielded a signifi cant difference between the models. as the last step of this paper’s analyses, figure 5 shows the extent to which the explained variance by nh was attributable to interviewer and respondent characteristics in country-specifi c models. as can be seen from the fi gure, there were, once again, no marked differences by gender, as the confi dence intervals for each gender (strongly) overlap in every country for both sources of bias. this was backed by further signifi cance testing, and within countries, once again, no gender differences turned out to be statistically signifi cant. still, there were some possible differences by country in that germans and belgians of both genders appeared to be considerably less infl uenced in their reporting behavior by interviewer characteristics than people from spain, austria, and sweden. this notion is also substantiated by the fact that germany and belgium were the only countries where the confi dence intervals of both sources of bias did not overlap for both genders. this was further supported by austria and spain being the only two countries where there were no signifi cant differences between the explained variance by source of bias for both genders. however, while the contribution of interviewee and interviewer characteristics to the r2 differed in a statistically signifi cant way for both men and women in germany, this was only true for women in sweden and belgium. lastly, as depicted in table 3, there did not seem to be much variance in adjusted r2 tab. 2: adjusted r2 and number of cases for separate models by gender and age women men 50-64 65-79 80+ 50-64 65-79 80+ (health) 0.48 0.50 0.48 0.48 0.45 0.44 (non-health) 0.07 0.07 0.06 0.08 0.07 0.10 n 4,312 3,408 957 3,563 3,183 786 adj.r 2 adj.r 2 source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations • patrick lazarevič88 between countries, perhaps with the exception of swedish and belgian men, whose overall adj.r 2 was lower than .05, although neither of these groups signifi cantly differed from any other subsample regarding overall explained variance. 6 conclusion and discussion the focus of this paper was to explore the effects of non-health characteristics (nh) on self-rated health (srh), also known as “reporting behavior” in the pertinent literature, and how they might differ by gender, age group, and (european) country and language of the interview. to this end, i fi rst controlled for latent health fig. 5: amount of explained variance accounted for by type of variable separated by country and gender (95%-confi dence intervals) 15 10 5 0 be se es residual variance explained in % de at interviewee interviewee ( ) interviewer interviewer ( ) source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations tab. 3: adjusted r2 and number of cases for separate models by gender and country women men be de se at es be de se at es (health) 0.47 0.52 0.51 0.55 0.54 0.41 0.48 0.50 0.53 0.47 (non-health) 0.06 0.06 0.05 0.07 0.08 0.03 0.05 0.04 0.05 0.08 n 1,826 2,288 971 1,729 1,863 1,545 2,155 881 1,236 1,715 adj.r 2 adj.r 2 source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations biases in assertions of self-rated health • 89 indicators as comprehensively as possible with a model comprising a wide array of health indicators that explained about half of srh’s variance (for the full results, see lazarevič/brandt 2020). in a second step, i then applied a nh model to the residuals from the fi rst regression, encompassing three potentially important sources of bias unrelated to health in the context of survey research: the respondent, country (of residence), and interviewer. separate detailed analyses by gender showed consistent effects of the respondents’ life satisfaction and social participation, living in belgium or sweden, and the interviewer’s srh. all these aspects appear to bias srh, regardless of gender. this suggests a substantial bias of srh due to non-health characteristics, potentially threatening the validity of research based on this widely-used indicator alone. however, especially in the case of life satisfaction and social participation, reverse causality cannot be ruled out, since healthier respondents might be more satisfi ed with life and good health can be seen as a prerequisite for greater social participation. further, there was also a positive effect of higher education on reporting behavior in the case of men. this can be interpreted in two different ways: the effect might be attributable to omitted variables in the latent health model or might refl ect the greater resources more educated respondents have to cope with objective health problems (idler/benyamini 1997; benyamini 2011). in the fi rst case, this effect would mean that more educated respondents are actually more healthy resulting in no actual bias, while the second case would suggest that the perception of a given latent health status is indeed dependent on education. as such, whether this would mean biased empirical research depends, as with all effects of personal characteristics in this paper, on the rationale of srh’s use. if srh is used to refl ect the respondent’s health perception or satisfaction with their health status, this would not necessarily mean biased results or interpretations. however, when using srh as a proxy for latent health (i.e., generic health status) – as is often the case in applied research – the results would be biased. nonetheless, the infl uence of interviewer characteristics on srh is undesirable in any case and respondents’ latent health or day-to-day health perceptions should not be related to them. thus, these effects, i.e., the interviewer’s srh for both genders and interviewer age and education for women, can be attributed to the interview situation itself, and therefore mean biased results, possibly due to social desirability. this is sometimes explained by the respondent’s willingness to “admit” worse health states to more trustworthy or relatable interviewers (e.g., lipps/lutz 2017). there were no marked differences regarding the relative importance of the three sources by gender, with the respondent being by far the largest source of bias while the interviewer and country of residence only explained small shares of the residual variance. furthermore, there were some gender-specifi c biases such as interviewer age and education for women and education and living in austria and sweden for men, although the corresponding coeffi cients were only signifi cantly different by gender in the case of the two countries. overall, this does seem to substantiate the impression that women and men are relatively similar when rating their health (e.g., jylhä et al. 1998; zajacova et al. 2017; lazarevič/brandt 2020). subsequent analyses • patrick lazarevič90 by age group revealed that there are only very minor differences by age group and gender in the relative importance of the three sources, the most notable being a nominally higher r2 from interviewer characteristics for the oldest respondents in the sample, which was, however, not signifi cantly different between any age group. finally, separate analyses by country also uncovered only slight differences, except for relatively high relevance of interviewer effects in austria and spain, as highlighted by non-signifi cant differences between both sources of bias for both genders in these countries as well as for swedish men. overall, these results demonstrate that while srh is indeed largely based on latent health, biases due to non-health infl uences are evident. even with the comparably limited attitudinal and psychological measurements on the respondent level available in share, around 7 percent of the residual variance of srh could be explained, with little overall variability across gender, age, and country of residence. furthermore, these biases are mainly driven by respondent characteristics, demonstrating that biases due to interviewer effects (e.g., lipps/lutz 2017) and the country of residence (e.g., jürges 2007), although non-negligible, are apparently far lower than those deriving from idiosyncrasies in the rating behavior of respondents. some limitations in this study should be addressed in subsequent work on nhrelated biases in srh. first, as with all secondary analyses, this study was restricted to the indicators available in the dataset. albeit rich in health information, the current data were relatively limited regarding nh that have been proven to infl uence srh, such as the respondent’s personality traits (e.g., jerram/coleman 1999; goodwin/ engstrom 2002), hypochondriasis (e.g., barsky et al. 1992), or social desirability (e.g., latkin et al. 2017). a general measurement of these aspects as well as a more direct measurement of traits such as a generally optimistic or positive disposition would be highly desirable for future studies of biases in the general appraisal of one’s health. lastly, studies that aim to not only investigate but to also alleviate the problem of biases in srh are advisable. one way to achieve this could be priming the meaning of health by asking other questions on health information prior to srh (garbarski et al. 2015; garbarski 2016). furthermore, complementing srh with factual questions refl ecting important aspects of subjective health such as functioning and diseases (lazarevič/brandt 2020) might be helpful in providing a quick and simple measurement of generic health status for multi-thematic surveys. measuring health in this way could be promising since it has the potential of capturing an overall inclusive, dynamic, resource-refl ecting appraisal of health (idler/benyamini 1997; benyamini 2011) while also gathering information on known key aspects of health (lazarevič/brandt 2020). still, considering both fi nancial as well as temporal restrictions and the need for comparability, a standardized, short, and easily understandable measurement is central for achieving this. the minimum european health module (robine/jagger 2003) seems to be very promising in this regard, since it comprises a question about chronic diseases and the global activity limitation indicator (gali), which captures overall activity limitations, i.e., functioning and disabilities (jagger et al. 2010). both aspects appear to be integral facets of srh. this approach of measuring health biases in assertions of self-rated health • 91 would also have the additional benefi t of enabling the aforementioned priming of a meaning of health by asking about diseases and activity limitations fi rst. references ayalon, liat; covinsky, kenneth e. 2009: spouse-rated versus self-rated health as predictors of mortality. in: archives of internal medicine 169,22: 2156-2161. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2009.386 barsky, arthur j.; cleary, paul d.; klerman, gerald l. 1992: determinants of 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huzurbazar, snehalata; todd, megan 2017: gender and the structure of self-rated health across the adult life span. in: social science & medicine 187: 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.06.019 zhang, mingliang et al. 2000: an application of the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation: a note. in: health services and outcomes research methodology 1,2: 165-171. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1012593022758 • patrick lazarevič96 date of submission: 21.01.2022 date of acceptance: 26.08.2022 dr. patrick lazarevič (). austrian academy of sciences. vienna institute of demography. vienna, austria. e-mail: patrick.lazarevic@oeaw.ac.at url: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/patrick-lazarevic biases in assertions of self-rated health • 97 appendix tab. a1: results from ols regression explaining srh via latent health indicators (b-coeffi cients and explained variance for each health domain) women men functioning (explained variance) 19.81% 18.27% global activity limitation indicator -0.33*** -0.33*** number of restrictions in daily lifea -0.04 -0.04 number of restrictions in mobilitya -0.12*** -0.12*** grip strength (rc: middle 50%) no measurement -0.06 -0.09 strongest 25% 0.12*** 0.10** weakest 25% -0.05 -0.13*** chair stand (rc: middle 50%) no measurement −0.23*** -0.24*** fastest 25% 0.14*** 0.06 slowest 25% -0.17*** -0.11** diseases (explained variance) 15.03% 14.32% chronic diseases (rc: none) -0.23*** -0.29*** number of diseasesa -0.24*** -0.22*** pain (rc: none) 8.79% 7.47% mild 0.02 0.03 moderate -0.16*** -0.21*** severe -0.33*** -0.33*** mental health (explained variance) 5.63% 5.99% medication for depression (rc: no) -0.13** -0.11 number of depressive symptomsa -0.12*** -0.14*** behavior (explained variance) 2.24% 1.76% bmi (rc: normal (18.5 ≤ bmi ≤ 25)) underweight (bmi < 18.5) -0.18 -0.11 overweight (25 ≤ bmi < 30) -0.09** -0.06 adipose (bmi ≥ 30) -0.19*** -0.19*** current smoker (rc: no) -0.10* -0.16*** adj. r2 0.51 0.48 n 8,677 7,532 a inverse hyperbolic sine transformation to account for nonlinear relationship. +p ≤ 0.1; *p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001. for details on the variables used for these models, see lazarevič/brandt (2020). source: survey of health, ageing and retirement, release 7.1.0, own calculations published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, markus sauerberg abstract: good health is central to human happiness and well-being. it contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. the corresponding public health policies are typically assessed based on a structural indicator for “health expectancy” (he) such as the eu’s “healthy life years” (hly) or the who’s “health-adjusted life expectancy” (hale). unfortunately, he estimates are extremely sensitive to methodological choices, an issue that is widely overlooked. first, the common practice of measuring population health by the distribution of responses to specific survey questions is ambiguous and not straightforward. consequently, levels and trends of he vary significantly depending on the underlying data and health indicators. moreover, he estimates are also highly sensitive to technical features, such as the age range and partitioning selected for analysis, as well as the technique chosen to add the health dimension to the life table; an issue that has gone remarkably unrecognized. with the aim of filling this important research gap, the european research council (erc) funded a consolidator grant project entitled “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity” (lethe). this special issue of comparative population studies (cpos) marks the completion of this project. it contains five articles, each dealing with a specific aspect of he computation or a concrete empirical application based on he indicators. this editorial summarizes the insights gained during the lethe project and aims to make users of he aware of its methodological sensitivities through illustrative empirical examples. a better understanding of these issues is essential to ensure the indicators’ appropriate usage in research as well as in advising policy makers and public health officials. keywords: population health · health expectancy · healthy life years · healthadjusted life expectancy · gali · compression of morbidity · expansion of morbidity comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 239-264 (date of release: 15.10.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-14en http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-14 • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 240 1 introduction the current demographic development of european societies is characterized by the ageing of populations, i.e., the absolute and relative increase in older people compared to younger people (golini 2003; rechel et al. 2013). demographic projections show that population ageing is unavoidable in any population of the industrialized world (lutz et al. 2008; powell 2010). the numerical and percentage increase in the older population is already having direct and relevant social consequences today, including a growing demand for social services, healthcare, and social security systems (harper 2000, 2014). the extent of these consequences largely depends on the health status of the population (muszyńska/rau 2012; prince et al. 2015; solé-auró/gumà 2023; steptoe et al. 2015). improving citizens’ health condition is therefore one of the most important and effective ways to reduce the burdens of demographic ageing (beard/bloom 2015). accordingly, the promotion of health was defined by the european union (eu) as an integral part of “europe 2020,” the eu’s ten-year strategy for economic growth from 2010 to 2020 (european commission 2010). as part of this programme, the pilot initiative “european innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing” (eip-aha) was launched in 2011. its main objective was to increase the average healthy lifespan in the eu by two years by 2020 (jagger 2020; jagger et al. 2013). assessing the progress of such public health programmes toward their target requires a reliable indicator to monitor the levels and trends of population health. several indicators have been developed for this purpose, for which we use the umbrella term “health expectancy” (he). according to the general understanding, he is simply an extension of the classic average life expectancy (le) by one dimension. technically speaking, this is correct, because the total number of years lived by the life table population − which form the basis of le − is divided into two quality dimensions: life years spent in good health and those spent in poor health. figure 1 illustrates this methodological concept with data for germany in 2010. the bold line shows the reduction of people alive from birth to age 100 due to mortality (“survivorship function”). the area below the line represents the total number of years lived by the population (80.3 years on average, i.e., the average le) which is subdivided into the two basic health states, resulting in an average number of 68.4 years (85.2 percent) spent in good or very good health and 11.9 years (14.8 percent) spent with health impairments. the derivation of the number (or proportion) of life years spent in good or poor health is intuitive. however, an overly simple interpretation of he obscures the great complexity inherent in adding the health dimension to the life table. unlike le, this makes he extremely sensitive to various aspects related to its estimation. this can lead to considerable distortions in the interpretation of levels and trends, but also in the analysis of differentials in population health, as noted by robine and ritchie (1991). this is a serious problem because he is not only increasingly used in health research, but has also become the most important structural indicator in health policy. health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 241 in contrast to mortality, health is multi-dimensional and difficult to measure, and the common method for quantifying individuals’ health statuses through selfassessments based on survey questions is ambiguous and not straightforward (mchorney/tarlov 1995). consequently, statistics on levels and trends of he vary significantly depending on the underlying survey data and health indicators (see, e.g., jagger et al. 2011; mathers et al. 2001). the data itself, i.e., the specific survey, can also have a significant impact on the estimated levels and trends of he. börschsupan and mariuzzo (2005) and croezen et al. (2016) compared the prevalence of “good” and “very good” self-perceived health across several european countries according to different european surveys, including european union statistics on income and living conditions (eu-silc), the survey on health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), the european social survey (ess), and the european community household panel (echp). both studies found substantial differences caused by multiple factors, including study size, response rate, sampling strategy, survey mode, and survey design (see also similar studies of bowling/windsor 2008; lee/grant 2009; lumsdaine/exterkate 2013). notably, the same problem exists across different surveys of the same population (freedman et al. 2004; freedman et al. 2013; salomon et al. 2009; tipping et al. 2010). even less recognized is that he estimates are also highly sensitive to technical estimation features. these include, e.g., the age range and its partitioning into groups, and the technique used for adding the health dimension to the life table. among these issues, only the latter has been addressed and discussed in detail fig. 1: life years spent in good or very good health and life years spent with health impairments, 2009/2011 for germany (women and men) 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 pr op or tio n su rvi vin g (in p er ce nt ) age (in years) life years spent in good or very good health life years spent with health impairments proportion surviving (in percent) source: luy (2016: 132). • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 242 (e.g., crimmins et al. 1993; mathers 2002; robine et al. 2001). nonetheless, these methodological controversies have neither been resolved nor has the choice of method been taken into account when empirically analysing levels and trends of he. the other technical features have largely escaped the attention of researchers so far, although they can significantly affect the estimates as well. with the aim of filling this important research gap, the european research council (erc) funded a consolidator grant project entitled “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity” (lethe). this special issue of comparative population studies (cpos) marks the completion of the erc project lethe. it contains five articles, each dealing with a specific aspect of he computation or a concrete empirical application based on he indicators. this editorial proceeds as follows. in section 2, we use the above mentioned eip-aha objective of increasing the average healthy lifespan in the eu by two years between 2010 and 2020 to demonstrate the significant impact that the characteristics of the underlying health data and the selection of a health indicator can have on the estimated number of life years spent in good health, as well as on the level, differences, and trends. section 3 adds the “compression version expansion of morbidity” debate − i.e., the discussion around the question whether the life years gained by rising le are primarily spent in good health or with health impairments − as a second example. these illustrations are followed by a summary of the work and findings of the lethe project with regard to the sensitivity of the he indicator (section 4) and the presentation of the articles included in this special issue (section 5). the editorial ends by drawing together the most important conclusions derived from the lethe project (section 6). 2 sensitivity of he indicators: the eu’s eip-aha goal the structural indicator selected by the eu for assessing its strategic goals regarding population health is the average remaining years of life spent free from activity limitations, referred to as “healthy life years” (lagiewka 2012). healthy life years (hly) are computed based on the “global activity limitation indicator” (gali), that is, people’s self-ratings of long-term activity limitations due to health problems which are collected annually in eu-silc. the gali consists of the single-item question “for at least the past six months, to what extent have you been limited because of a health problem in activities people usually do?” with the three possible answers: severely limited, limited but not severely, and not limited at all. the latter defines the “healthy” status as the basis for determining hly (berger et al. 2015). in the early 2010s, the trend in hly suggested that the eip-aha target of increasing the healthy life span in the eu by two years by 2020 could not be achieved. however, if the eu had chosen the world health organization’s “health-adjusted life expectancy” (hale) as its health indicator, the development of population health would have appeared more optimistic (for the derivation of hale, see, e.g., mathers et al. 2001). figure 2 illustrates the different conclusions provided by the two he indicators − hly and hale − by grouping the populations of the eu into health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 243 those where the healthy lifespan decreased between 2010 and 2013, those that experienced an increase of up to one year, those where the healthy lifespan increased between one and two years, and those that already had reached the eu objective with an increase of two years or more. according to the hly, almost half of the populations experienced decreases in the healthy lifespan between 2010 and 2013, including countries as diverse as latvia, slovakia, germany, greece, denmark, and the uk. according to the hale indicator, however, almost 95 percent of european populations experienced an increase in healthy lifespan during these same years, with approximately 25 percent having already exceeded the targeted increase of two healthy life years. these differences between hly and hale raise the question of which he indicator is better suited to describe population health. gali, which serves as the foundation for the hly indicator, is based on individuals’ self-assessments of their level of perceived activity limitation. by contrast, hale is based on the “global burden of disease” (gbd) which quantifies the comparative magnitude of health loss due to approximately 300 diseases, injuries, sequelae (consequences of diseases and injuries), and risk factors in a summary measure for population health. the gbd utilizes more than 100,000 different data sources, such as hospital discharge data, disease registries, and household surveys, and uses numerical weights ranging from 0 (perfect health) to 1 (death) to combine all health issues into a single indicator (for details, see ihme 2013). at first glance, this approach may seem to be the ultimate solution by not only taking the multidimensional nature of health into account, but also by serving as a measure free of subjective decisions regarding the type of health indicator and the grouping of its outcome categories. however, the gbd methodology necessarily gives the highest weights to the most severe health problems. since these are also associated with the highest risk of dying, the hale indicator correlates strongly with le. this correlation becomes apparent in figures 3a and 3b, which contrast the hale values for over 200 countries on the x-axis with the respective le at birth values on the y-axis for women and men, respectively. 6.5% 25.8% 41.9% 25.8% 44.8% 24.1% 13.8% 17.2% decrease increase by up to 1 year increase by up to 2 years increase by more than to 2 years (a) health-adj. life expectancy (hale) (b) healthy life years (hly) fig. 2: proportion of european countries by change in the healthy lifespan (at birth) between 2010 and 2013 on the basis of different indicators for health expectancy, men source: own calculations with data from eurostat and ihme. • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 244 fig. 3: association between health-adjusted life expectancy (hale) and life expectancy at birth (le) for 204 countries by sex, 2019 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 life expectancy (le) hale 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 life expectancy (le) hale (a) women (b) men source: own calculations with data from ihme. fig. 4: association between healthy life years (hly) and life expectancy at birth (le) for 29 european countries by sex, 2019 hly hly (a) women (b) men 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 life expectancy (le) 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 life expectancy (le) source: own calculations with data from eurostat. health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 245 the correlation between the two indicators is so strong that hale does not provide insights into differences between countries beyond le. this is not the case for the hly, which is significantly less correlated with populations’ le (see fig. 4a and 4b). this illustrates that the choice of health indicator is crucial. thus, it is important to consider carefully which health dimension should be reflected in the he indicator used to answer a particular research question or policy goal. despite the decline in hly in the first years after the launch of the eu 2020 strategy, the ambitious eip-aha goal was eventually achieved: hly increased in the eu-27 countries by 2.2 years between 2010 and 2020 (eurostat database).1 this appears to be a great success of eu’s development programme, especially if we imagine this improvement as a steady trend. however, a closer look at the data reveals that the increase in hly was not gradual. between 2010 and 2013, hly had declined by -0.8 years. the decisive trend change occurred in 2015 and 2016, when hly increased by 1.5 and 1.2 years, respectively (see the solid black line in fig. 5). as a result, hly at this point has increased by 2.2 years compared to 2010. hly then remained essentially unchanged through 2020.2 to understand to what extent these increases in hly reflect a joint success of the european population, we decomposed the changes in hly between 2014 and 2015 and between 2015 and 2016 into the individual contributions of each country. therefore, we reconstructed the hly for eu-27 for each calendar year from the weighted average of member states’ hly, with the weights being the countries’ relative populations sizes. the results of the decomposition reveal that the strong increase in hly between 2014 and 2016 was caused almost exclusively by two countries: germany, which was solely responsible for the increase in 2015, and italy, which accounted for more than half of the increase in hly in 2016 (see table 1). changes in hly in these two countries have a particularly strong weight for the development of hly of the entire eu-27 population due to their population size. table 1 also shows the decomposition of the change in hly between 2010 and 2016, i.e., between the starting point of the europe 2020 strategy and the year when the eip-aha target was reached. it becomes apparent that more than half of the overall increase is due to the contribution of germany, where hly increased by ten years between 2014 and 2015. this enormous gain in life years spent free from activity limitations did not result from an improvement in population health, however. rather, it can be attributed to a change of the gali question in the german silc survey from the standard single question to a routed three-question version. since 2015, participants in the german silc are asked “are you permanently limited by a health problem in activities of normal daily living?” with the two answer options “yes” and “no”. only respondents who answer “yes” are then directed to the two additional questions “to what extent are you limited in activities of normal daily 1 the figures described in the remainder of the section refer to the entire populations, i.e., women and men taken together. however, the trends and conclusions described apply equally to both genders. 2 the only exception was a further increase in hly in 2019, but this gain was lost a year later due to the decline in le in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic. • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 246 living?” (strongly limited/moderately limited) and “how long have your restrictions lasted?” (less than six months/six months or longer).3 although the three-question version covers the same aspects as the original single question, the results for the gali since 2015 are clearly not comparable to the results from previous waves of the german silc survey (see also von der lippe et al. 2017). to simulate how hly in the eu-27 could have evolved without the change in the german gali question, we estimated a counterfactual trend of hly in germany from 2010 to 2020 with 95 % confidence intervals based on the actual trend from 2005-14 by generalized additive modelling (gam). we then substituted the actual hly values for germany with our counterfactual estimates in the reconstructed hly trend for the eu-27 population. the resulting simulated trend for eu-27 shows that the headline target of eip-aha would most likely have been missed without the modification of the gali question in the german silc (see the dashed line in fig. 5). according to this estimate, the hly would be 1.7 years lower than the official value in 2020, and thus only 0.5 years higher than in 2010, 1.5 healthy years short of the target. even using the value for the upper 95 % confidence interval for the counterfactual hly fig. 5: trend in healthy life years at birth in the eu-27 population from 2010 to 2020, official data from eurostat versus counterfactual trend with 95 % confidence interval 60.0 61.0 62.0 63.0 64.0 65.0 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 calendar year eu-27 (official) eu-27 (with counterfactual trend for de) 64.0 61.8 62.3 63.3 61.4 hly at birth notes: de = germany, counterfactual trend estimated by generalized additive models (gam) with restricted maximum likelihood for optimal estimates and smoothing. source: eurostat; authors’ own calculations. 3 own translation of the authors of the german silc questionnaire. health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 247 trend in germany, the eip-aha target would have been missed by half a year, with a value of 63.3 years in 2020. the strong hly increase in italy in 2016 also coincided with a technical variation in italy’s silc, when the survey technique was changed from capi (computer-assisted personal interviewing) to cati (computer-assisted telephone interviewing). regarding eu’s hly we can conclude that − with its current implementation − it cannot fulfil its important task as a structural indicator. its value does not reflect the actual health of the population. instead, it is decisively influenced by technical aspects related to the collection of gali. although this situation is unsatisfactory for everyone using and relying on the hly indicator, it gives us the opportunity to tab. 1: country-specific contributions to changes in healthy life years at birth in the eu-27 population from 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2010-16 2014-15 2015-16 2010-16 in years in percent in years in percent in years in percent germany +1.82 +121.49 +0.00 +0.00 +1.14 +52.01 italy +0.03 +1.84 +0.65 +54.09 +0.46 +20.77 poland +0.03 +1.73 +0.11 +9.16 +0.16 +7.38 spain -0.11 -7.04 +0.23 +18.96 +0.16 +7.22 sweden -0.00 -0.30 +0.01 +0.91 +0.12 +5.42 france -0.03 -2.01 -0.03 -2.49 +0.09 +4.16 romania +0.01 +0.60 +0.01 +0.73 +0.07 +3.05 slovakia -0.00 -0.16 +0.02 +1.79 +0.04 +1.87 hungary -0.02 -1.18 +0.02 +1.28 +0.04 +1.76 ireland +0.00 +0.22 +0.01 +1.18 +0.02 +0.80 slovenia -0.00 -0.20 +0.00 +0.08 +0.02 +0.76 portugal -0.01 -0.62 +0.05 +4.00 +0.01 +0.48 bulgaria -0.01 -0.86 +0.04 +3.31 +0.01 +0.39 belgium +0.00 +0.17 -0.01 -1.04 +0.01 +0.35 cyprus -0.01 -0.36 +0.01 +0.81 +0.01 +0.24 estonia -0.00 -0.04 +0.01 +0.45 +0.00 +0.06 malta +0.00 +0.01 -0.00 -0.16 +0.00 +0.03 czechia -0.03 -1.77 +0.01 +0.60 +0.00 +0.00 finland -0.00 -0.32 +0.00 +0.30 -0.00 -0.04 latvia -0.00 -0.11 +0.00 +0.20 -0.00 -0.17 luxembourg -0.00 -0.11 -0.00 -0.17 -0.00 -0.18 croatia -0.03 -2.15 +0.02 +1.34 -0.01 -0.34 lithuania -0.02 -1.50 +0.01 +0.65 -0.01 -0.42 netherlands -0.08 -5.35 +0.05 +3.78 -0.01 -0.53 denmark -0.02 -1.57 +0.02 +1.29 -0.02 -0.77 austria +0.01 +0.38 -0.02 -1.66 -0.05 -2.15 greece -0.01 -0.80 +0.01 +0.60 -0.05 -2.17 eu-27 +1.50 100.0 +1.20 100.0 +2.20 100.0 notes: countries are ordered by contribution in period 2010-16. source: eurostat; authors’ own calculations • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 248 rethink the concept’s definition and estimation. two immediate recommendations emerge from the lessons learned from the first years using hly as a structural indicator (see also solé-auró et al. 2025). first, the survey question must be uniform, clear, and simple to minimize the impact of semantic differences between languages (see luy et al. 2023). there is empirical evidence that the complication of the gali question does not necessarily make the result more precise (cambois et al. 2016). second, the question should only have yes and no options. these suggestions could lead to a very simple new gali question, such as “does your health limit you in your daily activities?” (yes/no). the hesitation against a change of the health definition behind the structural health indicator might be reduced by the fact that several countries have already changed the gali question in a similar manner as germany did, including sweden in 2014 and slovenia in 2019. given the great effect of this modification, it is likely that other countries will follow. thus, the change of the gali question is already ongoing, though with variation in the exact survey module, the time of implementation, and with no proper evaluation of its impact on estimating hly trends. in our opinion, the advantage of reducing the existing bias and the possibility for manipulation notably outweighs the disadvantage of having a discontinued time series. this would probably be a significant step towards having a health indicator that allows for tracking trends across countries and evaluating the populations’ progress toward the goals of public health programmes such as the eip-aha target. 3 sensitivity of he indicators: the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate the comparison of hly and hale in the previous section illustrates how relevant the choice of health indicator is for one of the most important questions in health research, namely whether the life years gained through increasing le are predominantly spent in good or poor health. three theoretical models have been proposed in the literature: 1. longer lives are associated with more years spent in poor health, or the “expansion of morbidity hypothesis” (gruenberg 1977), 2. longer lives are associated with a delay in the onset of health problems, or the “compression of morbidity hypothesis” (fries 1980), and 3. there is a balanced relationship between health and longevity, or the “dynamic equilibrium hypothesis” (manton 1982). all three theories are based on the concept of he and constitute the so-called “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate (see e.g. jagger 2000; payne 2022). empirical evidence supports each of these approaches, depending on the specific health domain considered (christensen et al. 2009). in particular, existing research suggests a postponement or stagnation of functional limitations and disabilities (bardenheier et al. 2016; crimmins 2015; freedman et al. 2016; payne 2022; shen/payne 2023), but an increase in morbidity defined by the presence of several biomarkers or physician-assessed health conditions and chronic diseases health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 249 (beltrán-sánchez et al. 2016; crimmins 2015; crimmins/beltrán-sánchez 2011; crimmins et al. 2019; payne 2022; shen/payne 2023). these trends were confirmed in our investigation of trends in he in germany from 2005 to 2019 (luy 2022, 2024b). we used the three health indictors of the “minimum european health module” (mehm) included in annual silc: self-perceived general health, chronic morbidity, and activity limitations. general health reflects the self-assessment of a person’s overall health based on the question “how do you rate your health in general?” (very good/good/fair/bad/very bad), and chronic morbidity is defined as the presence of longstanding health problems based on the question “do you have any longstanding illness or health problem?” (yes/no). activity limitations are assessed with the gali as described in section 2. for the german silc, the data from 2008 onwards is considered fully comparable (statistisches bundesamt 2019). nonetheless, the comparability of the mehm health indicators is in some cases significantly restricted because of changes in the questions and answer options (see luy 2022). the question on general health was surveyed most homogeneously over the entire period 2015-2019, and thus provides the time series least distorted due to changes in question wording. in contrast, there were several changes to the question on chronic morbidity, which also lead to noticeable jumps in the indicator’s value over time. the most significant changes occurred in the question on activity limitations, particularly the change to the gali question in 2015, which was discussed in more detail in the previous section. for the illustration of trends in this section, we eliminated the break in the time series of activity limitations between 2014 and 2015 by adjusting all values from 2015 onwards to the jump between 2014 and the average value for 2015/16. to assign the trends in he (from age 16) to the three theoretical trend scenarios of the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate, we focus on the life years spent with health impairment, i.e., using the “unhealthy life years” (uly) as the he indicator. therefore, we calculated the proportion of life years spent in poor or very poor general health, with chronic morbidity, and with activity limitations that are classified as “severe”. the results are shown in figures 6a and 6b for women and men, whereby the trends in uly are normalized to the respective baseline value for 2005 for better comparability. consequently, all trends start with the value 1.0 and show how the proportion of life years spent with impaired health has changed in relation to the baseline year over time. the annual values for chronic morbidity (chron) are shown in white triangles connected by dotted lines, those for selfperceived general health (sph) in white squares connected by dashed lines and those for activity limitations (gali) in black circles connected by solid lines. in addition, the respective trends are illustrated by simple linear regression lines, which are shown in bolder print in the respective line type. figures 6a and 6b show that the trends in uly point in different directions for both women and men. uly for general health show a reduction in the proportion of impaired life years, i.e., a compression of morbidity, whereas an expansion of morbidity can be seen in the case of chronic morbidity. the trend in life years spent with severe activity limitation is not clear and corresponds most closely to the dynamic equilibrium scenario, as the trend between 2005 and 2019 is close to • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 250 the 1.0 baseline, especially for women. for men, the trend points more towards the compression scenario, albeit to a lesser extent than for general health. in summary, it can be concluded that each of the mehm health indicators provides a different answer to the compression-expansion question for the german population. this raises the question of why different health indicators lead to different conclusions. a key difference between the three health dimensions of the mehm lies in the severity of disease progression, which is reflected in their association with the risk of dying. analyses using longitudinal data for germany have shown that the risk of dying is significantly higher among people with poor general health and severe activity limitations than among people who report suffering from one or more chronic diseases (luy 2021). consequently, the different trends in uly make sense. the increase in le, i.e., in the total number of life years, must originate from the reduction in diseases with high mortality, which can explain the compression effect in poor and very poor general health. chronic diseases, on the other hand, lead to death less frequently or later in life. moreover, the likelihood of suffering from a chronic disease increases with age. it can therefore be concluded that the compression of morbidity in general health is a cause of the increase in le, while the expansion of morbidity in chronic diseases is a consequence of the increase in le (see also luy 2022). fig. 6: trends in the proportion of unhealthy life years (uly) from age 16 in germany, 2005-19, annual values and linear trend lines 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 calendar year (20...) chron sph gali proportion of uly (2005 = 1.0) 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 calendar year (20...) chron gali sph proportion of uly (2005 = 1.0) (a) women (b) men notes: chron = chronic morbidity, gali = global activity limitations indicator, sph = selfperceived health. source: luy (2024b). health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 251 4 the erc project lethe the examples presented in the previous two sections illustrate that he indicators cannot be seen as simple extensions of conventional le. he indicators include a variety of sensitivities which can affect their values and thus have the potential to bias both the conclusions drawn from them as well as the policy recommendations and assessments that often follow. the main objective of the lethe project was therefore to test and assess the he indicators’ sensitivity to several technical issues. these can be roughly divided into two areas: 1. conceptual issues, i.e., aspects of health measurement, and 2. technical issues, i.e., the methodological aspects of he estimation. the conceptual domain includes, above all, the definition of health. health is multidimensional and difficult to quantify. unlike le, where there is only one variant of mortality (and moreover, individuals only die once), there are as many different variants of he as there are health indicators. we demonstrated that the choice of health indicator has a significant impact on, e.g., the analysis of levels and trends in life years spent in good or poor health (di lego 2021; luy 2024b), differences between women and men (di lego et al. 2020; luy 2024a; nepomuceno et al. 2021; schmitz/lazarevič 2020), and the health consequences of informal care (kaschowitz/ lazarevič 2020). for most of these estimates of he, the health status of individuals is measured by self-assessments based on specific questions in survey questionnaires. therefore, the choice of survey has a strong impact on estimating he on the one hand, but on the other hand, the reporting behaviour of the survey participants and their understanding of health and health problems also determines outcomes (lazarevič/brandt 2020; lazarevič/quesnel-vallée 2023; luy et al. 2023). in addition, the chosen definition of “good health” has an influence, as most survey questions on people’s health status are not dichotomous and therefore can have different thresholds between good and poor health. these effects have been shown, e.g., by beller et al. (2022). particularly in the case of non-dichotomous health indicators, it makes a difference whether one studies trends or differences between populations in the healthy life expectancy or the unhealthy life expectancy. the technical area of he estimation includes, for example, the choice of the underlying life table (period table, cohort table, or a “mixed form,” such as the “cross-sectional average length of healthy life” discussed in the next paragraph), the handling of missing responses in surveys (“missing cases”), the procedure for smoothing the age-specific proportions of health status or the use of unsmoothed values, and the size of the age groups used. moreover, the start of the upper open age interval (e.g., 75+, 80+, 90+) and the methodological combination of mortality and health based on prevalence values (sullivan method based on cross-sectional data) or incidence values (multi-state method based on longitudinal data) can also influence he estimates. although the multi-state method is the conceptually superior approach, most studies use he values derived from the method developed by sullivan (1971), mainly due to data availability. to use the sullivan method, a crosssectional survey of health status and a period life table are sufficient, whereas the multi-state method requires several longitudinal observations of the health status • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 252 and information on the mortality of the survey participants. the research team of the lethe project examined in detail various aspects of these technical sensitivities. for instance, we showed that hly estimates using eu-silc data are not significantly biased by health-related attrition across samples, but sample attrition increases the uncertainty in the measurement of individual countries. consequently, healthrelated attrition should be taken into account in cross-sectional estimates of hly based on longitudinal samples of eu-silc (muszyńska-spielauer/spielauer 2023). we also found that attrition from longitudinal share samples impacts cross-sectional data, yielding estimates of population health that are over-optimistic (muszyńskaspielauer/spielauer 2022). in addition to these tests and assessments of he’s estimation and measurement sensitivities, the project team developed three new health indicators with the aim of overcoming some of the limitations of the commonly used he measures: “crosssectional average length of healthy life” (hcal; sauerberg et al. 2020), “well-being adjusted health expectancy” (wahe; muszyńska-spielauer/luy 2022), and “difadjusted hly” (luy et al. 2023). hcal modifies the sullivan method and combines the health prevalence data with the “cross-sectional average length of life” (cal), which was introduced by brouard (1986) and guillot (2003), instead of the classic period le. in this sense, it captures historical mortality and health, in contrast to only a snapshot of time as reflected in period le. hcal is therefore a more refined indicator, and we suggest using it in addition to the conventionally estimated he when data is available, since it allows for a broader spectrum of empirical analyses. we additionally introduced a method for decomposing differences in hcal, which sheds new light on the interaction between mortality and health (sauerberg/ canudas-romo 2022). wahe combines health and mortality information into a single indicator with weights that quantify the reduction in well-being associated with decreased health. the advantage of this indicator in comparison to others is its ability to differentiate between the consequences of health limitations at various levels of severity and its transparent, simple valuation function. dif-adjusted hly is an indicator that adjusts for the effect of a possible bias due to interpersonal reporting heterogeneity across populations. for this, we used anchoring vignettes (see luy et al. 2023 for details). in a further article, we extended the state of the art by combining the three mehm indicators, i.e., gali, self-perceived health (sph), and chronic health problems, into a single measure of generic health (lazarevič 2023). we demonstrated the utility of this indicator by showing that it significantly reduced age-specific reporting behaviour and some non-health biases present in the classic indicators such as sph. furthermore, this approach can be flexibly extended to additional indicators of health, if available. we concluded that using the mehm to measure generic (physical) health is a promising approach for a wide array of applications and is worth further exploitation. most recently, we contributed to the development of a double-accounting approach to increment-decrement life table methods to intuitively derive a multi-state health distribution over age and cumulative duration spent in each state (riffe et al. 2024). health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 253 5 contributions of this special issue the special issue “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity” marks the completion of the erc project lethe. it contains five articles, each dealing with a specific aspect of he computation or a concrete empirical application on the basis of he indicators. the article “the sensitivity of the healthy life years indicator: approaches for dealing with age-specific prevalence data” by vanessa di lego and markus sauerberg (2023) deals with the issue that the characteristics of the age-specific prevalence distribution are still rarely accounted for, although patterns of prevalence often fluctuate considerably by age. moreover, assumptions on health prevalence at very young ages are necessary for the estimation of hly at birth because data on health below age 16 is not available in silc data. the authors also assess whether smoothing the age-specific prevalence distributions by different methods, extrapolating to older ages, and changing assumptions at younger ages affect hly estimates. they show that assumptions made before age 15 are most important and affect women and men differently, thus affecting hly at birth for some countries. estimates at age 65 are only slightly impacted, however. the authors argue that generalized additive models (gams) are promising for harmonizing and extrapolating health prevalence values to older ages, while using polynomials or aggregating into 5-year age groups seem more appropriate for younger ages. the authors conclude that − as most eu policies use hly at birth and by sex for developing and monitoring health policies − caution is advised when estimating hly for the total lifespan from birth until the highest ages. another important contribution of the article is a “best-practice” guideline that researchers can use when their goal is to smooth health prevalence or graduate age patterns of health. the article “biases in assertions of self-rated health: exploring the role of the respondent, country of residence, and interviewer” by patrick lazarevič (2023) challenges the assumption that sph is a universally valid and comparable measure of general health. the author uncovers significant non-health influences that bias respondents’ assessments. using data from more than 16,000 participants across five countries in the share study, the author disentangles objective “latent health” and subjective “reporting behaviour,” showing that factors such as the respondent’s life satisfaction, the characteristics of the interviewer, and national context shape sph responses. these non-health influences explained about 7 percent of sph’s variance, a notable figure considering that latent health accounts for about half. crucially, individual respondent characteristics emerge as the strongest biasing factor. these findings underscore the need for researchers to account for these biases, particularly across gender, age, and countries, and suggest that supplementing sph with more factual health questions in surveys could improve validity in crossnational comparisons. the article “healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data using the sullivan method are informative summary measures of population health” by magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, and martin spielauer (2024) expands the application of the widely used sullivan method for calculating he by • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 254 showing its ability to estimate broader healthy lifespan distribution statistics. by interpreting the sullivan method through the lens of the stationary population model, the authors show that, for chronic conditions without recovery, it is possible to derive detailed healthy survival distributions using only cross-sectional prevalence data and life tables. their empirical analysis, based on share data from 2017 and eurostat life tables, reveals important differences between conditional and unconditional he, with conditional he potentially providing new insights for health policy. notably, they find that while higher le is typically linked to lower lifespan inequality, higher he can correspond to greater inequality in healthy years when measured conditionally. this work highlights the value of refining traditional methods to produce more nuanced measures of population health, offering fresh perspectives for comparative research and policymaking. the article “mismatches in health: a global analysis of discrepancies between self-reported and tested mobility and cognition” by vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer and patrick lazarevič (2024) highlights critical concerns about the reliability of selfreported health data, especially in global comparisons across diverse economic and cultural contexts. analysing harmonized data from 25 countries, the authors reveal significant discrepancies between self-reported and objectively tested measures of mobility and cognition, with inconsistencies being most pronounced in lowerincome countries. the study shows that these discrepancies correlate with the human development index, as less developed nations exhibit greater mismatches. moreover, while objective health declines clearly with age, self-reports often fail to capture this trend, particularly for memory. these findings cast doubt on the validity of using self-reports in cross-national health assessments and underscore the need for caution when comparing health data across regions with varying levels of development. finally, the article “cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years: proof of concept tests of the croham hypothesis” by marc luy (2024c) builds on the recently presented “croham hypothesis,” which proposes (1) that longitudinal health domain-specific expansion and compression effects depend primarily on the health domains’ mortality risk and (2) that these effects exist equivalently in the cross-sectional context, affecting differences in he between populations and subpopulations with different levels of le (luy 2021). luy tests this hypothesis by analysing the association between le and uly at age 50 for a large number of subpopulations. the analyses are carried out for the three mehm health domains which relate to mortality in different ways: poor self-perceived health and strong activity limitation with comparatively high mortality, and chronic morbidity with comparatively low risk of dying (see also section 3). the results from the decomposition of differences in uly between each subpopulation and the total population and between women and men for each subpopulation into the effects caused by differences in health (“health effect”) and mortality (“mortality effect”) support the croham hypothesis. a positive relationship between le and uly can be found only for chronic morbidity, whereas this relationship is negative for poor self-perceived health and strong activity limitation. however, when the mortality effect is controlled for, there is a negative relationship between le and uly for all health expectancy: increasingly used, but not well understood • 255 three health domains. the practical relevance of these findings is discussed using the example of the so-called “gender paradox” in health and mortality. the author concludes that the croham hypothesis may describe an important determinant of life years spent with and without health impairment, and it may help us understand and interpret trends and differentials in healthy or unhealthy life years based on cross-sectional data. 6 conclusions from the lethe project the examples presented and summarized in this editorial are not only an academic matter. they demonstrate that he’s measurement and estimation sensitivity can easily have severe consequences: misor over-interpretations can enter the political discussion and influence current and future public health programmes. the efforts that have been hitherto undertaken to improve the estimation of he focused primarily on the measurement of health with surveys (see, e.g., mcdowell 2006). however, the effect of the chosen he indicator, data, and method have remained widely unexplored, and they are often overlooked even in the context of major research topics. in sections 2 and 3, we have shown this in greater detail for trends in he. the same sensitivity aspects affect research on other phenomena with high societal relevance, such as the significant differences in he between european populations (see e.g. jagger et al. 2008; jagger et al. 2013) and between subgroups by socioeconomic position (e.g. cambois et al. 2011; crimmins/saito 2001; fouweather et al. 2015; mäki et al. 2013; matthews et al. 2009; solé-auró et al. 2015), or the emergence of the so-called “gender and health paradox” (e.g. crimmins et al. 2002; crimmins et al. 2011; di lego et al. 2020; di lego et al. 2019; luy 2024a; rieker/bird 2005). the explanation for these shortcomings of the extant research on population health likely lies in the fact that the quantitative assessment of health is one of the youngest endeavours in population research. naturally, the problems caused by the measurement of health are perceived at an early stage of research, while the he indicators’ measurement and estimation sensitivities are less obvious. however, the examples presented in sections 2 and 3 have illustrated that the methodological sensitivity of he is equally important for providing unbiased interpretations and for drawing fully appropriate conclusions. the efforts undertaken so far to investigate these issues do not include a systematic, comprehensive, and complementary analysis of the methodological features of he estimation to explore their empirical impacts on answers to a specific research question (see, e.g., jagger et al. 2020; murray et al. 2002; robine et al. 1992; robine et al. 2003; robine et al. 1993). many, but not all methodological issues are mentioned in these books. however, these issues were elaborated independently by different authors who focused on very different theoretical and empirical aspects. the central aim of the erc project lethe was to fill this gap and to assess the he indicators’ sensitivity to specific measurement (i.e., conceptual) features and specific estimation (i.e., technical) features, identify the most important sources of possible biases, and find options for overcoming these issues. during the project work, it • marc luy, paola di giulio, vanessa di lego, patrick lazarevič, magdalena muszyńskaspielauer, markus sauerberg 256 turned out that the investigated estimation features do not lead to a significant bias in most of the tested empirical applications, especially for those aged over 65 years. in other words, he indicators are rather robust regarding the technical aspects of their estimation. however, the opposite applies to the investigated measurement features. these have an enormous impact on the he indicators and can lead to significant biases in empirical application, as shown by way of the examples of the eu’s eip-aha goal to increase the number of healthy life years in its member states by two years between 2010 and 2020 in section 2 and the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate in section 3. the employed health dimension, choice of survey, and reporting heterogeneity across populations are some of the aspects that have proven to be more significant than different estimation techniques used to compute health prevalence. in some cases, the issue may even lie at the core of data collection, such as the gender bias in how health data is collected and what information is considered important. these new insights into the understanding of he values, trends, and differentials are highly relevant and valuable for all researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders who are using these indicators to track levels and trends of population health. above all, they help reduce the risks of misinterpretation and drawing potentially misleading conclusions. it is important to note, however, that we focused on prevalence-based methods, that is, using health stock information at a given period in time by age and sex across european countries. it is uncertain whether the estimation issues described above are of equal relevance for incidence-based he measures, where the prevalence is derived from longitudinal transitions between health states observed during a study period (lièvre et al. 2003). nonetheless, because of the limited availability of longitudinal data, all eu-level policies are formulated using prevalence-based health information, and consequently, our research focused on this relevant practical application. to conclude, the measurement and estimation sensitivities of the he indicator are highly relevant for all researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders who use this 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der lippe, elena; fehr, angela; lange, cornelia 2017: limitations to usual activities due to health problems in germany. in: journal of health monitoring 2,3: 84-90. https://doi.org/10.17886/rki-gbe-2017-071 prof. dr. marc luy (*), dr. paola di giulio, dr. magdalena muszyńska-spielauer. vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences. vienna, austria. e-mail: marc.luy@oeaw.ac.at; paola.digiulio@oeaw.ac.at; magdalena.muszynska@oeaw.ac.at url: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/marc-luy https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/paola-di-giulio https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/magdalena-muszynska-spielauer prof. dr. vanessa di lego. faculty of economics, universidade federal de minas gerais. belo horizonte, brazil. e-mail: vdilego@cedeplar.ufmg.br url: https://vdilego.github.io dr. patrick lazarevič. statistics austria. vienna, austria. e-mail: patrick.lazarevic@statistik.gv.at url: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/patrick-lazarevic dr. markus sauerberg. hamburg cancer registry. hamburg, germany. e-mail: markus.sauerberg@bwfg.hamburg.de url: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9524-446x https://doi.org/10.17886/rki-gbe-2017-071 mailto:marc.luy@oeaw.ac.at mailto:paola.digiulio@oeaw.ac.at mailto:magdalena.muszynska@oeaw.ac.at https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/marc-luy https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/paola-di-giulio https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/institute/vid-team/magdalena-muszynska-spielauer mailto:vdilego@cedeplar.ufmg.br https://vdilego.github.io mailto:patrick.lazarevic@statistik.gv.at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/patrick-lazarevic mailto:markus.sauerberg@bwfg.hamburg.de https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9524-446x published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe* luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar abstract: human development and ageing are lifelong processes, where earlier life conditions and events are interlinked with later life outcomes. patterns of inequality within and among cohorts emerge over time as products of the interplay between institutional arrangements and individual life, often dependent on childhood or earlier life circumstances. the life conditions and experiences of older adults in eastern and western europe differ signifi cantly, but whether their cumulative effects on later life outcomes vary across these two regions has not been compared. we explore the effects of socioeconomic position, the experience of a period of hunger, the dispossession of assets, and discrimination suffered by parents in respondents’ life courses on later life health inequalities in europe. self-reported health, everyday activity limitations, and cognitive functioning are the main outcomes that provide an adequate overview of different health domains. we mainly use data from the seventh wave of the survey of health, ageing, and retirement in europe (share 2017) and restrict our sample to respondents aged 65 and older from 26 european countries (n=41,566). we fi nd that older people in eastern europe fare worse in self-rated health and everyday activity limitations than western europeans, while eastern europeans indicate somewhat better outcomes in cognitive functioning. a disadvantaged socioeconomic position in childhood and adulthood has the strongest association with all health outcomes, followed by the experience of hunger over the life course for the whole of europe. however, we do not fi nd diverging associations between life-course factors and health outcomes in eastern and western europe. we argue that self-reported health, everyday activity limitations and cognitive functioning have to be analysed within their own frameworks and cannot yield conclusions that are uniform for all health outcomes. moreover, major generalisations either about eastern or western europe must be treated with caution as the regions have very different historical as well as demographic developments and thus cannot be treated as uniform. comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 231-260 (date of release: 06.06.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-10 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-10en6 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/482/379. http://www http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-10 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/482/379 • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar232 keywords: self-rated health · everyday activity limitations · cognitive functioning · older adults 1 introduction although life expectancy at birth and at age 65 steadily increased in europe at the beginning of the 21st century, this growth stagnated as of the second half of the 2010s. life expectancy at the age of 65 has remained on average at 20.1 years in western europe and 17.2 years in eastern europe, although the increase over these years has been somewhat more rapid in the latter (eurostat 2022a). at the same time, the more qualitative indicator of health status – healthy life years at and above age 65 – has not improved, especially in eastern europe, where the healthy life expectancy of people aged 65 and above (6.5 years) is on average more than three years shorter than the healthy life expectancy of older adults in western europe (9.9 years) (eurostat 2022a). to put this into perspective, older adults in the west live with health restrictions for half of their remaining lifetime, whereas older adults in the east live with health restrictions for over two thirds of their remaining life. such health stagnation among older eastern europeans is the main motivation for this study: we further investigated the sources of health restrictions between the two regions. the main aim is to understand whether the discrepancy between eastern and western europe remains the same in three different health domains (self-rated health, disability, and cognitive functioning) and what might be the main underlying circumstances. we seek to understand whether, and to what extent, one’s socioeconomic position over the life course as well as adverse events in childhood, adulthood, or both explain different health outcomes in eastern and western europe. our study uses mainly data from the seventh wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement (share), a cross-national multi-disciplinary study of individuals aged 50 and older across europe. this wave was the fi rst to include all 26 continental eu member states, switzerland, and israel, which lends additional weight to our eastwest comparison of the association between life-course economic or otherwise adverse circumstances and later life health. prior comparative research was often solely based on a couple of eastern european countries (e.g. sieber et al. 2019, 2020), rendering conclusions about broader european regions problematic. additionally, we account for differences in the principal societal developments of eastern and western europe, since most studies on health disparities have not included a focus on adverse lifelong disruptions after world war ii (here defi ned as dispossessions of assets, hunger episodes, and discriminations against parents over a respondent’s lifetime), as critiqued by tapia granados (2013), for example. life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 233 2 research background: adverse life-course circumstances and later life health life-course infl uences contribute signifi cantly to differences in health and mortality in later life (e.g. case et al. 2005; freedman et al. 2008; zhang et al. 2008; lorenti et al. 2020). moreover, the relationship between life-course infl uences and later life health evolves across various domains of health (arpino et al. 2018; lorenti et al. 2020). in this study, we specifi cally examine three health outcomes in later life: selfrated health, disability, and cognitive functioning. self-rated health is a subjective assessment of one’s own health, which is a good, if not a main, predictor of mortality (desalvo et al. 2006; jylhä 2009). disability, measured by the validated proxy of everyday activity limitations (jagger et al. 2010), assesses the interaction between personal capabilities and the barriers or facilitators for participation in society (verbrugge/jette 1994). cognitive functioning is an objective assessment of one’s cognitive abilities and performance, which is associated with well-being, physical and mental health, and life expectancy (winblad et al. 2016). cognitive limitations may also lead to activity restrictions and disability in later life (cambois et al. 2013), and contribute to future increased complex care needs as longevity increases (kingston et al. 2018). taken together, these three health outcomes provide a holistic overview of both physical and mental health in later life, as well as their interaction with societal barriers, thus complementing research perspectives focusing solely on life expectancy and survival. the extent to which life-course infl uences are associated with health outcomes (i.e. self-rated health, disability, and cognitive functioning) likely depends on at least two aspects: the specifi c type of (adverse) life-course event and the time of occurrence within the life course (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003). regarding the fi rst aspect, the literature on health disparities tends to focus on specifi c lifecourse infl uences (e.g. socioeconomic position throughout the life course) but has neglected others (e.g. experience of societal disruptions, repressions, or discrimination). the latter is central for a theoretical framework – the cumulative advantage/disadvantage (cad) or accumulation of risk model (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003) – that emphasises gradual and dynamic processes over the life course that generate health disparities. there are several other mutually inclusive theoretical mechanisms linking lifecourse circumstances with later life health. first, the direct long-term effects of early life-course or sensitive life-period factors on adult health and mortality have been discussed (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002). second, early life-course circumstances may indirectly affect later life health, leading to diverging health outcomes through mediating factors such as education or socioeconomic status (graham 2002). we argue, nevertheless, that the accumulation model is a useful theoretical framework to assess health disparities in later life, as it underlines the process through which (adverse) events affect health outcomes across the life course. according to this (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003), early infl uences create either baseline vulnerabilities or resilience, which then accumulate over the life course. accumulation refers to both independent and interlinked events. however, the latter • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar234 is more common – adverse circumstances tend to cluster, add up, or act as triggers, resulting in increased health inequalities in later life (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; wang/ kang 2019). one of the pathways through which childhood disadvantages may become visible is intracohort inequality regarding earnings, job stability, pension accumulations, health, and access to health care (dannefer 2003), but also through intergenerational continuities of (dis)advantage (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002). empirical evidence for such an indirect cumulative effect is mixed overall, showing that early life-course factors compound over time, leading to either widening health disparities with age (mirowsky/ross 2008) or narrowing health disparities with age (ross/wu 1996; cullati et al. 2014; sieber et al. 2019, 2020). 2.1 self-rated health self-rated health is a multidimensional indicator of health, integrating biological, mental, and social health beliefs and behaviours (stanojević jerković et al. 2017). it has proven to be a key predictor of mortality (desalvo et al. 2006; jylhä 2009) and related to other health outcomes such as well-being, depression, functional health decline, or morbidity onset (idler et al. 2000; pinquart 2001; jylhä 2011). known predictors of self-rated health include gender, age, family confi gurations, socioeconomic status, physical and physiological health status, as well as cognitive and emotional factors (ferraro 1980; hays et al. 1996; cott et al. 1999; leinonen et al. 2001; crimmins et al. 2011; weissman/russell 2018). previous studies have also shown that there is cross-national divergence in self-rated health, which in europe typically follows an east-west divide (witvliet et al. 2014; präg/subramanian 2017). in addition to such proximal infl uences of self-rated health outcomes, there is substantial evidence from life-course research showing that the antecedents of poor self-rated health in old age may occur much earlier in life. for example, early life conditions such as parental socioeconomic status or other characteristics of the parental household have been shown to be associated with self-rated health in later life (e.g. case et al. 2005; yi et al. 2007). recently, a few studies have focussed on contextualising the effects of early life conditions on self-rated health outcomes in old age within european welfare regimes using share (sieber et al. 2019, 2020). sieber et al. (2019) fi nd that disadvantaged early-life socioeconomic conditions are associated with the risk of poor self-rated health in old age, irrespective of the welfare regime. the way in which adult-life socioeconomic circumstances in turn modify the earlier association, however, differs by welfare regime. sieber et al. (2020) further fi nd that childhood misfortune and disadvantaged adult-life socioeconomic conditions are associated with poor self-rated health until the age of 50. after that, the socioeconomic gradient in later life self-rated health levels with ageing, with varying patterns across welfare regimes. 2.2 disability disablement is a social process: becoming disabled arises from the loss or reduction of the ability to perform activities pertinent to any social role due to a life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 235 prolonged deterioration of health (verbrugge/jette 1994). three sets of factors may moderate the speed of the progression towards disability: predisposing factors (e.g. demographic or biological characteristics), intraindividual factors (e.g. social relations), and extraindividual factors (e.g. institutional context). disability itself is not a personal characteristic, but a gap between personal capability and environmental demand; it thus refers to environmental barriers which are (at least partially) constructed by society. in order to remain as independent as possible and feel well in old age, optimising environments and respective environmental interventions are critical for people with disabilities (wahl/oswald 2016). while the situation in europe improved slowly between 2005 and 2010 in terms of years expected to live without activity limitations above 65 years (fouweather et al. 2015), the length of unhealthy life has been expanding more recently, but its severity has not (welsh et al. 2021). it is not clear whether this holds true more for eastern or western europe. the association with childhood circumstances is revealed in several studies trying to understand late-life disablement (freedman et al. 2008; montez/hayward 2014; wang/kang 2019; lorenti et al. 2020). in the us context, disadvantages in childhood socioeconomic status have been shown to be associated with both shorter lives in general as well as shorter active lives without impairments when compared with older adults from advantaged childhood circumstances (montez/ hayward 2014). similarly, the higher the number of disadvantaged situations experienced earlier in life, the lower the number of working years, and the higher the number of years lived with disability (lorenti et al. 2020). adverse childhood circumstances may delay (positive) effects on health during the life course in general, increasing the prevalence of chronic diseases, which expand the number of years lived with disability in later life (beltrán-sánchez et al. 2022). an association between childhood living conditions and ageing well (including functioning) has been found for europe (brandt et al. 2012; arpino et al. 2018). in addition to childhood cognitive skills and health, higher socioeconomic status at age 10 and parental socioeconomic status was positively associated with better later life health, even when contemporary characteristics were controlled for. in china, the persistence of advantaged childhood socioeconomic circumstances across midand late-life was the best protection for later health outcomes (wang/kang 2019). poverty is one of the important social factors related to the onset of disability, acting in various ways. experiencing economic hardships such as long-term unemployment or material deprivation may both increase exposure to disabling diseases, making it more diffi cult to limit the impact of illnesses on functioning (cambois/jusot 2011; fouweather et al. 2015). education can be the main protecting factor from late-life disability, even in the case of having a disadvantaged childhood (montez/hayward 2014; lorenti et al. 2020). less educated groups may be more disadvantaged regarding disability in countries with a less favourable economic context and low levels of income redistribution (cutler et al. 2015; dahl et al. 2006), such as eastern european and baltic countries. however, cambois and her colleagues (2016) found that out of 26 european countries, only hungary and • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar236 the czech republic had larger disadvantages in activity limitations between the different education groups. 2.3 cognitive functioning cognition plays an important role in old-age well-being due to affecting most of the life functions and domains, and can be considered an important indicator of the future challenges of ageing. similar to other health outcomes, there is evidence of early life socioeconomic circumstances being associated with cognitive functioning in old age, irrespective of socioeconomic status in adulthood (cheval et al. 2019; aartsen et al. 2019), although the effects have been small in some regions (horvat et al. 2014). specifi cally, the number of books at home during childhood has been the main associating factor in later life cognition, suggesting the relevance of social or cultural factors over material or fi nancial ones (cheval et al. 2019). however, direct effects of childhood conditions on late-life cognition are confi rmed only in some contexts (e.g. zhang et al. 2008; horvat et al. 2014; aartsen et al. 2019). there is evidence of early childhood social and economic conditions being associated with (absolute) levels of cognitive functioning in old age (everson-rose et al. 2003; aartsen et al. 2019; cheval et al. 2019), while fewer studies confi rm their relation to cognitive decline (aartsen et al. 2019). childhood poverty, hunger and illiteracy have a negative association with old age cognition in some contexts (zhang et al. 2008; wang/kang 2019). additionally, adulthood socioeconomic conditions may ameliorate the different childhood socioeconomic effects (aartsen et al. 2019; zhang et al. 2008; horvat et al. 2014; cheval et al. 2019). education is one of the most important factors in cognition: the higher the education received, the better cognition outcomes in later life, especially regarding memory (everson-rose et al. 2003; zhang et al. 2008; horvat et al. 2014; schneeweis et al. 2014; lee/schafer 2021; wolfova et al. 2021). among its several benefi ts, one may be that education enables a better sense of control, therefore extending the pathway into late-life cognition advantages (lee/schafer 2021). other (adulthood) factors relevant to cognition include marital or partnership status, number of children ever born, as well as various economic or social roles and activities (bordone/weber 2012; doblhammer et al. 2013; horvat et al. 2014; schneeweis et al. 2014; okamoto et al. 2021; wu-chung et al. 2022). also, the economic situation during childhood or at birth can relate to all cognitive functioning outcomes in later life through nutrition or stress experienced due to the economic situation and employment opportunities of the parents (doblhammer et al. 2013). stress experienced over a lifetime as well as more recently is also relevant for cognition. emotionally traumatic events – such as losing a parent early in life, mistreatment at school, combat activity, genocides, or bereavement of a close person – contribute to emotional and mental stress, mood swings, and depression. this may infl uence cognition, even if only to a small extent or only in some cognition domains (tsolaki et al. 2010; ritchie et al. 2011; blanchette et al. 2019, wu-chung et al. 2022). however, traumatic life events (including childhood, social, community, and war events) were not related to cognitive impairment in later life in a south life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 237 african population (payne et al. 2020). potentially, survival of a small and selective population to old age explains some of these outcomes. cognitive functioning is one of the under-researched health outcomes for eastern europe, with only single countries and life-course associations having been included (horvat et al. 2014; laidra 2016; cermakova et al. 2018; ahrenfeldt et al. 2019; formanek et al. 2019; carmel/tur-sinai 2022). comparative analyses indicate that eastern european countries do not differ from western european countries in cognition, especially in verbal fl uency, though they fare somewhat worse in recall (ahrenfeldt et al. 2019; formanek et al. 2019). general associations with cognition have been similar to other european countries, including the relevance of education (horvat et al. 2014; wolfova et al. 2021). like other spheres, educational systems went through various transitions in eastern european countries during the 20th century.1 childhood socioeconomic position has been found to be related moderately to latelife cognition in one eastern european city (horvat et al. 2014), but it remains largely unknown how different life-course factors may relate to cognition in later life in this region. 3 subject of this study the previous theoretical considerations lead us to the following hypotheses: first we assume that there are cross-regional differences (between eastern and western europe) in all three health outcomes (h1). this is based on the notion that the effect of life-course factors on later life health is more meaningfully contextualised through a comparison between eastern and western european countries. this is due to different exposures to health risks in association with broader historical developments related to socioeconomic and political transformations (hobcraft et al. 1982; van den berg et al. 2006; sagi-schwartz et al. 2013; mackenbach 2013; tapia granados 2013; leppik/puur 2020). while it is conceivable that such regional differences coincide with welfare regime settings, haas and oi (2018) note that the welfare regime typologies used, and how countries are classifi ed to them, is key. a comprehensive and accurate taxonomy of “the” eastern european welfare regime is far from unanimous in the research literature (van der veen/van der burg 2013; lauzadyte-tutliene et al. 2018) without even considering the shortand long-term changes in the specifi c welfare provision mix, which ranges from recalibration to outright transformation. several studies have noted differences in health outcomes 1 some eastern european countries had compulsory basic education until age 16, established since the beginning of the 20th century, similarly to other nordic countries (volmari 2019). some had the same system in place even earlier, similarly to other continental european countries (monostori 2014). with the incorporation of several countries into the soviet union, similar educational systems were in place in these contexts after world war ii. compulsory schooling was changed to seven years (until age 14) after 1949, and increased to eight in 1958. secondary education of 10 or 11 years of education was compulsory in some countries since the mid1960s. (saar 2008; cunska/dedze 2015). other eastern european countries experienced similar reforms somewhat later or with variations (hărăguș et al. 2014; salonen/pöyliö 2017). • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar238 between eastern and western europe (or other regions of the world), despite their different scope of comparison (witvliet et al. 2014; präg/subramanian 2017; sieber et al. 2019, 2020). we extend our fi rst hypothesis to explore whether this regional effect is similar (in direction) for the different health outcomes: we expect that older adults in eastern europe are more likely to have a disability or poor self-rated health compared with older adults in western europe (h1a). this expectation is supported by previous studies and statistical fi ndings (e.g. witvliet et al. 2014; cambois et al. 2016, 2016a; präg/subramanian 2017; eurostat 2022a). we conversely expect that older adults in eastern europe do not differ in cognitive functioning compared with older adults in western europe (h1b). this is expected mainly because some eastern european countries do not differ from western european countries, especially in verbal fl uency (laidra 2016; ahrenfeldt et al. 2019; formanek et al. 2019). also, there was relatively early uniform access to education, and correspondingly, we see higher proportions of older people with higher levels of education, especially among women, in several, but not all, eastern european countries (barone/ruggera 2018; eurostat 2022b). these developments may have attenuated the negative health outcomes, possibly due to education being highly relevant for cognitive functioning outcomes in ageing societies (lutz 2021). since some cognitive functioning outcomes for selected eastern european countries are somewhat worse compared with western europe, and also because there are more older people with lower levels of education in some eastern european countries (ahrenfeldt et al. 2019; formanek et al. 2019; eurostat 2022b), we expect these differences between eastern european countries to counterbalance each other. according to our second hypothesis, we expect that adverse life-course factors tend to accumulate and lead to worse health outcomes in old age (h2). this hypothesis is based on the notion that the multiple disadvantages experienced during one’s lifetime are interlinked and exacerbate each adverse event’s effects (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003). specifi cally, we expect older adults who have never experienced socioeconomically disadvantaged circumstances to be least likely to have poor health outcomes, followed by those having been in a socioeconomically disadvantaged position in either childhood or adulthood, and for those who have experienced socioeconomic disadvantage in both childhood and adulthood to be most likely to have poor health outcomes (h2a). we expect older adults who have never experienced a period of hunger to be least likely to have poor health outcomes, followed by those having experienced hunger either in childhood or adulthood, whereas those who have experienced hunger in both childhood and adulthood to be most likely to have poor health outcomes (h2b). similarly, we also expect older adults who have never experienced dispossession to be least likely to have poor health outcomes, followed by those having experienced dispossession either in childhood or adulthood, and for those who have experienced dispossession in both childhood and adulthood to be most likely to have poor health outcomes (h2c). a similar reasoning is also applied to the associations between discrimination experienced by the respondents’ parents and later life health outcomes (h2d). life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 239 our third hypothesis is that regions infl uence the associations between (accumulated) life-course factors and health outcomes in old age (h3). specifi cally, we expect that accumulative processes in eastern europe – as described in h2a, h2b, h2c, and h2d – are more marked and lead to worse health outcomes among older adults in terms of poor self-rated health (h3a) and limitations in everyday activities (h3b). we further expect, however, that these accumulative processes are relatively similar and do not lead to differences in health outcomes between regions in terms of poor immediate word recall (h3c) and poor delayed word recall (h3d) among older adults. 4 data and methods 4.1 sample we mainly used data from the seventh wave of share (survey of health, ageing, and retirement in europe, version 8.0.0) collected in 2017/2018 (börsch-supan et al. 2013). share is a representative panel survey of the population aged 50 and older within a country and includes a host of multi-disciplinary health and sociodemographic variables. the seventh wave encompasses a total of 28 european countries (and israel) with fi ve eastern european countries among them (bulgaria, latvia, lithuania, romania, and slovakia) that were not present in previous waves. the seventh wave also includes retrospective questions on people’s childhood conditions and life histories, which is of particular importance for the purpose of our study.2 the data of the seventh wave pertain to a total of 77,196 respondents from 28 european countries (and israel). we restrict our analytical sample to people aged 65 and older (at the time of the interview) from the 26 european countries without any missing values on key variables. in order to reduce the missing values in our sample, we supplement the information from earlier waves (2004-2015) with information on childhood conditions and individual childbearing, and we use information from multiply imputed variables provided by the share team. this results in a total sample size of 41,566 individuals. 4.2 variables 4.2.1 dependent variables we consider four different dependent variables: (1) the binary variable poor selfrated health is based on a single item, asking respondents to rate their health (from 1 = excellent to 5 = poor). we recoded the response categories “excellent” and 2 the sharelife questionnaire was included for all respondents (and countries) who did not participate in the third wave (82 percent of respondents), which was a similar questionnaire fi elded for the fi rst time for countries included at the time (stuck et al. 2022). • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar240 “very good” to 0 and the categories “good”, “fair”, and “poor” to 1. (2) the binary variable limited in everyday activities is based on the internationally validated global activity limitations index (gali; jagger et al. 2010), which has shown to be a good indicator of disability (e.g. cabrero-garcia et al. 2020). we recoded the response category “no limitations” to 0 and the categories “moderately limited” and “severely limited” to 1. (3) the binary variable poor immediate word recall is based on how many words of a ten-word list read to them by the interviewer respondents could recall during a 1-minute interval. following the share criteria, which identify a score of four or less words as impairment in verbal learning and recall (börschsupan/jürges 2005), we recoded a score of fi ve to ten words to 0 and a score of zero to four words to 1. (4) the binary variable poor delayed word recall is based on how many words respondents could recall from a ten-word list read to them by the interviewer after completing a set of other share questions. again, we recoded a score of fi ve to ten words to 0 and a score of zero to four words to 1. both immediate and delayed word recall capture cognitive functioning; they are suitable measures for predicting dementia, assessing learning capacity, memory storage, and memory retrieval (baltes et al. 1999). 4.2.2 independent variables we grouped the 26 countries in our sample into two broader regions, and the resulting binary variable is coded 0 for western european countries (denmark, finland, sweden, austria, belgium, france, west germany, luxembourg, switzerland, cyprus, greece, italy, malta, portugal, and spain) and 1 for eastern european countries (bulgaria, croatia, czech republic, estonia, east germany, hungary, latvia, lithuania, poland, romania, slovakia, and slovenia).3 we created a categorical variable that captures whether a respondent had a disadvantaged socioeconomic position in childhood or adulthood, distinguishing between “not in childhood and not in adulthood” (=0), “not in childhood, in adulthood” (=1), “in childhood, not in adulthood” (=2), and “in childhood and in adulthood” (=3). the specifi c structure of this variable follows the approach suggested by niedzwiedz et al. (2015). however, it is adapted to the variable availability of our study sample:4 first, we selected three childhood socioeconomic variables (number of books owned, number of rooms per person, and the number of amenities in the childhood home), which correspond to when the respondent was 10 years old. we 3 german respondents were divided into west or east germany based on whether they were living in the federal republic of germany or the german democratic republic on 1 november 1989. the 62 german respondents who lived elsewhere or who had a missing value were categorised according to their place of birth. if they were born in germany or any other western country, they were categorised as west germans. if they were not born in germany but in a country of the eastern bloc, they were categorised as east germans. 4 we omit the father’s occupational skill level, where missing values range between 10-70 percent among the different countries in the sample. we omit respondent’s occupational skill level, where missing values range between 4-48 percent among the different countries in the sample. life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 241 then selected three adulthood socioeconomic variables (highest education level, household income, and the household net wealth), which correspond to when the seventh wave was collected. we further adjust household income and household net wealth for household size and purchasing power parity. all six variables thus capture different aspects of the respondent’s socioeconomic positioning across their life course. second, we generated six standardised relative ranks by country, and summed up the respective three childhood and three adulthood ranks to generate a childhood and adulthood socioeconomic index. for both indices, equal weight was given to each of the three indicators making up the socioeconomic index. third, we calculated whether respondents fall within the lowest 25th percentile of each socioeconomic index. if they did, respondents were considered as having had a disadvantaged socioeconomic position (in childhood and/or adulthood). based on this information, we created the above four-category variable to capture whether a respondent had experienced a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation during their life course. we created a categorical variable to capture whether a respondent had experienced a period of hunger in childhood or adulthood, and a categorical variable to capture whether a respondent had experienced dispossession (of their property as a result of war or persecution) in childhood or adulthood. for both of these, we distinguished between “not in childhood and not in adulthood” (=0), “not in childhood, in adulthood” (=1), “in childhood, not in adulthood” (=2), and “in childhood and in adulthood” (=3). we also created a categorical variable to capture whether respondents’ parents experienced at least one act of discrimination in the respondent’s childhood or adulthood, distinguishing between “not the mother and not the father” (=0), “not the mother, the father” (=1), “the mother, not the father” (=2), and “the mother and the father” (=3). discrimination in this case specifi cally refers to a respondent’s mother or father experiencing any of the following: war and occupation; imprisonment; confi nement in a labour or concentration camp; deportation; forced displacement or fl ight; engagement in combat operations or fi ghting; serious damage to physical and/or mental health or injury; and death (as a direct consequence of war, persecution, or discrimination). for all three measures – and similarly to the measure of socioeconomic position – childhood corresponds to when the respondent was 10 years old, and adulthood corresponds to when the respondent was older than 17 years old. 4.2.3 control variables in the analyses, we controlled for age and its squared term (as continuous variables centred at age 65), as well as for the gender of the respondent (0= female, 1= male). marital status is included as a categorical variable, the four categories being “married/ partnered” (=0), “never married” (=1), “divorced” (= 2), and “widowed” (=3). we included the number of partnerships and the number of children as continuous variables. as the current country of residence – independent of the broader regions of eastern and western europe – may also be of importance to our four different health outcomes, we included country dummies (with austria as the reference) in • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar242 our models. this captures wider relevant historical, political, and socioeconomic contexts (van den berg et al. 2006; mackenbach 2013; tapia granados 2013). 4.3 analytical strategy binary logistic regression analyses with clustered standard errors were conducted to test the hypotheses for the three health outcomes (self-rated health, disability, and cognitive functioning). note that we operationalised disability through the variable of everyday activity limitations and cognitive functioning through the two variables of immediate and delayed word recall. the number of missing values on the dependent and control variables was low (the highest share (2 percent) of missing values was on the immediate word recall measure). the share of missing values for the independent variable of the disadvantaged socioeconomic position (sep) in childhood or adulthood, however, was quite high (21 percent). this is because the individual variables for this measure – household income and wealth, and educational attainment – have considerable shares of missing values, too. we therefore used the fi ve imputed datasets generated and provided by the share team to estimate the different logistic regression models and combine their results (stata 16: mi estimate). 5 results 5.1 descriptive results table 1 shows descriptive characteristics per european region. regarding the dependent variables – poor self-rated health, limited in everyday activities, poor immediate word recall, and poor delayed word recall – the results generally show that the percentages with poor health outcomes are higher among respondents in eastern europe. regarding the four independent variables capturing life-course disadvantage along several dimensions – sep, hunger, dispossession, and parental discrimination – the results also show differences between the two regions favouring western europeans: the percentages of those experiencing any of these adverse events are generally higher among respondents from eastern europe. mean age varies by about one year between eastern and western europe (with respondents from western europe being slightly older on average), and the percentage of males varies between 46.1 percent (western europe) and 41.2 percent (eastern europe). the proportions of married or partnered respondents varies between regions as well, with higher levels of married or partnered respondents in western europe, and higher levels of widowhood in eastern europe. the mean number of partnerships is higher among respondents in eastern europe, and the mean number of children is slightly higher among respondents in western europe. life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 243 w es te rn e u ro p e e as te rn e u ro p e s ig n ifi ca n ce t es t / m ea n s d / m ea n s d p o o r se lfra te d h ea lt h χ² = 1. 1e + 03 , p = < .0 01 n o 21 .0 4 9. 03 y es 78 .9 6 90 .9 7 li m it at io n s in e ve ry d ay a ct iv it ie s χ² = 79 0. 42 , p = < .0 01 n o 51 .5 0 37 .4 5 y es 48 .5 0 62 .5 5 p o o r im m ed ia te w o rd r ec al l χ² = 38 .9 3, p = < .0 01 n o 58 .8 0 55 .6 8 y es 41 .2 0 4 4. 32 p o o r d el ay ed w o rd r ec al l χ² = 16 7. 63 , p = < .0 01 n o 29 .9 1 24 .0 6 y es 70 .0 9 75 .9 4 s e p d is ad va n ta g ed in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d χ² = 16 8. 51 , p = < .0 01 n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 55 .2 5 53 .6 6 n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 17 .0 9 13 .2 1 in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 16 .8 1 20 .8 3 in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 10 .8 5 12 .3 0 e xp er ie n ce d h u n g er p er io d in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d χ² = 13 .9 8, p = < .0 1 n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 94 .5 8 93 .8 2 n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 22 1. 48 in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 3. 74 4. 06 in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 46 0. 64 ta b . 1 : d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s b y re g io n (b ef o re m ul tip le im p u ta tio n) • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar244 w es te rn e u ro p e e as te rn e u ro p e s ig n ifi ca n ce t es t / m ea n s d / m ea n s d e xp er ie n ce d d is p o ss es si o n in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d χ² = 71 7. 49 , p = < .0 01 n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 96 .4 4 90 .7 9 n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 36 1. 55 in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 2. 17 7. 59 in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 02 0. 08 m o th er o r fa th er e xp er ie n ce d a t l ea st 1 a ct o f d is cr im in at io n χ² = 21 0. 96 , p = < .0 01 n o t t h e m o th er a n d n o t t h e fa th er 66 .5 1 63 .6 7 n o t t h e m o th er , t h e fa th er 24 .0 7 22 .3 5 t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er 1. 79 2. 50 t h e m o th er a n d t h e fa th er 7. 62 11 .4 8 a g e† 9. 51 0. 04 8. 84 0. 05 f= 94 .9 8, p = < .0 01 a g e sq u ar ed † 13 9. 94 1. 11 12 3. 30 1. 22 f= 96 .2 6, p = < .0 01 g en d er χ² = 99 .6 3, p = < .0 01 fe m al e 53 .8 8 58 .8 5 m al e 46 .1 2 41 .1 5 m ar it al s ta tu s χ² = 45 3. 98 , p = < .0 01 m ar ri ed /p ar tn er ed 68 .2 9 61 .9 1 n ev er m ar ri ed 4. 70 2. 94 d iv o rc ed 6. 82 6. 35 w id o w ed 20 .1 9 28 .8 0 n u m b er o f p ar tn er sh ip s 0. 70 0. 00 0. 98 0. 00 f= 19 25 .7 7, p = < .0 01 n u m b er o f c h ild re n 2. 22 0. 01 2. 15 0. 01 f= 31 .8 1, p = < .0 01 ta b . 1 : c o n tin ua tio n n o te : t he d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s ar e b as ed o n th e va lu es p ri o r to im p ut at io n. † a ge a nd it s sq ua re d te rm a re c en tr ed a t a ge 6 5. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n s h a r e life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 245 5.2 regression results the results of the logistic regression analyses are shown in tables 2 and 3. the models are estimated in two steps. in the fi rst step, the main effects are estimated for all independent variables, adjusted for control variables (models 1a and 2a in table 2 and models 3a and 4a in table 3). in the second step, interactions between the regional variable and all factors for life-course disadvantage are added to the model, to see whether these add to our understanding of the four health outcomes beyond the individual and structural factors (models 1b and 2b in table 2 and models 3b and 4b in table 3). according to our fi rst hypothesis, we assumed that there are cross-regional differences (between eastern and western europe) in all three health outcomes. in general, we fi nd support for this hypothesis. the regional indicator is signifi cantly related to self-rated health and disability (see models 1a and 2a in table 2), as well as to at least one indicator of cognitive functioning: poor delayed word recall (see models 3a and 4a in table 3). this is above and beyond the effects of life-course factors and country dummies (see also online supplement, tables a1-a4). in terms of the expected direction of this effect for the different health outcomes, the results show that eastern europeans are more likely to have worse self-rated health and more likely to have everyday activity limitations. furthermore, and contrary to our expectations, eastern europeans are less likely to be impaired in cognitive functioning. while the direction of the effect is the same for impairment in both immediate and delayed word recall, it is only statistically signifi cant for delayed word recall. according to our second hypothesis, we expected that life-course disadvantage factors accumulate and lead to worse health outcomes in old age. the empirical support for this hypothesis is mixed overall, where the clearest cases can be made for hunger and disadvantaged sep in childhood or adulthood. older adults who have been in a socioeconomically disadvantaged position in both childhood and adulthood are most likely to have worse self-rated health, to be limited in everyday activities, to be impaired in immediate word recall, and to be impaired in delayed word call (consistent with h2a). older adults who have experienced a period of hunger are most likely to have worse self-rated health, to have everyday activity limitations, and to be impaired in immediate word recall (thus overall, mostly consistent with h2b). regarding the experience of dispossession in either childhood or adulthood, however, we do not fi nd evidence for an association with different poor health outcomes (contrary to h2c). older adults whose parents were both discriminated against are most likely to have everyday activity limitations, but not most likely to have worse self-rated health, and in terms of cognitive functioning, the results indicate the opposite effect of what was expected in h2d. in models 1b and 2b (table 2) and models 3b and 4b (table 3), we examine the extent to which the regions infl uence the associations between (accumulated) life-course factors and health outcomes in old age. the results, however, are not generally in line with our hypotheses. we found that only single interactions were statistically signifi cant. a reasonable question is, therefore, whether the interactions • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar246 m o d el 1 a m o d el 1 b m o d el 2 a m o d el 2 b p o o r se lfra te d h ea lt h p o o r se lfra te d h ea lt h li m it at io n s in li m it at io n s in ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s o r s e o r s e o r s e o r s e in te rc ep t 1. 36 0. 10 ** * 1. 37 0. 11 ** * 0. 54 0. 03 ** * 0. 56 0. 04 ** * e as te rn e u ro p e (r ef . w es te rn e u ro p e) 1. 90 0. 34 ** * 1. 81 0. 34 ** 1. 28 0. 14 * 1. 20 0. 14 d is ad va n ta g ed s e p in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 68 0. 08 ** * 1. 69 0. 09 ** * 1. 4 4 0. 05 ** * 1. 41 0. 06 ** * in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 56 0. 06 ** * 1. 52 0. 07 ** * 1. 28 0. 04 ** * 1. 23 0. 05 ** * in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 2. 54 0. 16 ** * 2. 58 0. 19 ** * 1. 70 0. 07 ** * 1. 62 0. 08 ** * e xp er ie n ce d h u n g er p er io d in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 38 0. 22 * 1. 38 0. 26 1. 57 0. 16 ** * 1. 63 0. 21 ** * in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 23 0. 12 * 1. 20 0. 13 1. 48 0. 09 ** * 1. 42 0. 10 ** * in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 1. 42 0. 40 1. 28 0. 42 1. 99 0. 35 ** * 2. 09 0. 47 ** e xp er ie n ce d d is p o ss es si o n in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 99 0. 13 0. 79 0. 13 0. 97 0. 10 0. 71 0. 10 * in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 97 0. 08 0. 91 0. 11 1. 09 0. 06 1. 09 0. 10 in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 2. 84 3. 05 1. 43 1. 77 1. 08 0. 50 0. 47 0. 39 p ar en ts e xp er ie n ce d a t l ea st 1 a ct o f d is cr im in at io n (r ef . n o t t h e m o th er a n d n o t t h e fa th er ) n o t t h e m o th er , t h e fa th er 1. 22 0. 05 ** * 1. 23 0. 05 ** * 1. 20 0. 03 ** * 1. 17 0. 04 ** * t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er 0. 96 0. 10 1. 09 0. 14 1. 09 0. 08 1. 10 0. 11 t h e m o th er a n d t h e fa th er 1. 16 0. 07 * 1. 12 0. 08 1. 29 0. 05 ** * 1. 33 0. 07 ** * ta b . 2 : b in ar y lo g is tic r eg re ss io n s p re d ic tin g tw o h ea lt h o u tc o m es : se lfra te d h ea lt h an d d is ab ili ty life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 247 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n m o d el 1 a m o d el 1 b m o d el 2 a m o d el 2 b p o o r se lfra te d h ea lt h p o o r se lfra te d h ea lt h li m it at io n s in li m it at io n s in ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s ev er yd ay a ct iv it ie s o r s e o r s e o r s e o r s e in te ra ct io n s e as te rn e u ro p e x d is ad va n ta g ed s e p (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) ... x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 99 0. 11 1. 04 0. 07 ... x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 11 0. 10 1. 12 0. 06 ... x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 95 0. 14 1. 13 0. 09 e as te rn e u ro p e x h u n g er (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) ... x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 03 0. 38 0. 93 0. 20 ... x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 15 0. 27 1. 12 0. 14 ... x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 1. 51 1. 02 0. 88 0. 32 e as te rn e u ro p e x d is p o ss es si o n (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) … x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 2. 23 0. 75 * 1. 98 0. 42 ** … x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 15 0. 20 1. 01 0. 12 … x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d — 3. 78 3. 94 e as te rn e u ro p e x p ar en ta l d is cr im in at io n (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er ) … x n o t t h e m o th er , t h e fa th er 0. 99 0. 09 1. 06 0. 06 … x t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er 0. 69 0. 14 1. 00 0. 15 … x t h e m o th er a n d t h e fa th er 1. 13 0. 15 0. 94 0. 08 n 41 56 6 41 55 3 41 56 6 41 56 6 n o te : o r = o d d s ra tio ; s e = c lu st er ed s ta nd ar d e rr o r. a ll m o d el s co nt ro l fo r ag e, a ge s q ua re d , ge nd er , m ar ita l st at us , nu m b er o f p ar tn er sh ip s, n um b er o f ch ild re n, a nd c o un tr y fi x ed e ff ec ts . t he d as h (— ) in d ic at es w he n th e o d d s ra tio c o ul d n o t b e es tim at ed b ec au se o f a p er fe ct fa ilu re p re d ic tio n. * ** p -v al ue < .0 00 ; ** p -v al ue < .0 1; * p -v al ue < .0 5. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n s h a r e • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar248 m o d el 3 a m o d el 3 b m o d el 4 a m o d el 4 b p o o r im m ed ia te w o rd p o o r im m ed ia te w o rd p o o r d el ay ed w o rd p o o r d el ay ed w o rd re ca ll re ca ll re ca ll re ca ll o r s e o r s e o r s e o r s e in te rc ep t 0. 10 0. 01 ** * 0. 10 0. 01 ** * 0. 48 0. 03 ** * 0. 48 0. 04 ** * e as te rn e u ro p e (r ef . w es te rn e u ro p e) 0. 87 0. 11 0. 81 0. 11 0. 72 0. 08 ** 0. 70 0. 09 ** d is ad va n ta g ed s e p in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 2. 28 0. 08 ** * 2. 28 0. 10 ** * 2. 19 0. 09 ** * 2. 15 0. 11 ** * in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 64 0. 05 ** * 1. 67 0. 07 ** * 1. 60 0. 05 ** * 1. 61 0. 07 ** * in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 2. 84 0. 11 ** * 2. 80 0. 14 ** * 2. 82 0. 15 ** * 2. 73 0. 17 ** * e xp er ie n ce d h u n g er p er io d in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 06 0. 11 1. 02 0. 14 1. 01 0. 13 1. 17 0. 20 in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 18 0. 07 ** 1. 18 0. 09 * 1. 11 0. 08 1. 06 0. 10 in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 1. 79 0. 31 ** 1. 84 0. 4 4* 1. 18 0. 26 1. 09 0. 34 e xp er ie n ce d d is p o ss es si o n in c h ild h o o d o r ad u lt h o o d (r ef . n o t i n ch ild h o o d a n d n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 84 0. 09 0. 78 0. 12 0. 98 0. 12 0. 79 0. 14 in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 86 0. 05 ** 0. 89 0. 09 0. 84 0. 05 ** 0. 81 0. 08 * in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 92 0. 46 1. 11 0. 99 0. 45 0. 22 1. 17 0. 84 p ar en ts e xp er ie n ce d a t l ea st 1 a ct o f d is cr im in at io n (r ef . n o t t h e m o th er a n d n o t t h e fa th er ) n o t t h e m o th er , t h e fa th er 0. 92 0. 03 ** 0. 86 0. 03 ** * 0. 99 0. 03 0. 99 0. 04 t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er 1. 00 0. 08 0. 98 0. 11 1. 02 0. 09 1. 00 0. 11 t h e m o th er a n d t h e fa th er 0. 85 0. 04 ** * 0. 83 0. 05 ** 0. 93 0. 04 0. 93 0. 06 ta b . 3 : b in ar y lo g is tic r eg re ss io n s p re d ic tin g co gn it iv e fu n ct io ni ng life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 249 ta b . 3 : c o n tin ua tio n m o d el 3 a m o d el 3 b m o d el 4 a m o d el 4 b p o o r im m ed ia te w o rd p o o r im m ed ia te w o rd p o o r d el ay ed w o rd p o o r d el ay ed w o rd re ca ll re ca ll re ca ll re ca ll o r s e o r s e o r s e o r s e in te ra ct io n s e as te rn e u ro p e x d is ad va n ta g ed s e p (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) … x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 00 0. 07 1. 05 0. 09 … x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 96 0. 06 0. 98 0. 07 … x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 1. 02 0. 08 1. 09 0. 11 e as te rn e u ro p e x h u n g er p er io d (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) … x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 08 0. 22 0. 71 0. 18 … x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 00 0. 12 1. 12 0. 17 … x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 96 0. 33 1. 20 0. 54 e as te rn e u ro p e x d is p o ss es si o n (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d ) … x n o t i n ch ild h o o d , i n ad u lt h o o d 1. 15 0. 24 1. 63 0. 43 … x in c h ild h o o d , n o t i n ad u lt h o o d 0. 94 0. 12 1. 06 0. 13 … x in c h ild h o o d a n d in a d u lt h o o d 0. 76 0. 82 0. 24 0. 22 e as te rn e u ro p e x p ar en ta l d is cr im in at io n (r ef . e as te rn e u ro p e x n o t t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er ) … x n o t t h e m o th er , t h e fa th er 1. 19 0. 07 ** 0. 99 0. 06 … x t h e m o th er , n o t t h e fa th er 1. 05 0. 17 1. 04 0. 17 … x t h e m o th er a n d t h e fa th er 1. 05 0. 09 1. 02 0. 09 n 41 56 6 41 56 6 41 56 6 41 56 6 n o te : o r = o d d s ra tio ; s e = c lu st er ed s ta nd ar d e rr o r. a ll m o d el s co nt ro l fo r ag e, a ge s q ua re d , ge nd er , m ar ita l st at us , nu m b er o f p ar tn er sh ip s, n um b er o f c hi ld re n, a nd c o un tr y fi x ed e ff ec ts . * ** p -v al ue < .0 00 ; ** p -v al ue < .0 1; * p -v al ue < .0 5. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io n b as ed o n s h a r e • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar250 are required. we used multiply imputed data, and therefore cannot perform a likelihood ratio test to know if adding the interactions improves the basic model (i.e. models 1a, 2a, 3a, and 4a, respectively). with our multiply imputed data, we tested instead whether the coeffi cients on the interaction terms are jointly equal to zero for each health outcome. based on the results, model 1b is not better than model 1a for poor self-rated health (f= 1.19; p-value= 0.29), model 2b is not better than model 2a for everyday activity limitations (f= 1.69; p-value= 0.06), model 3b is not better than model 3a for poor immediate word recall (f= 0.83; p-value= 0.62), and model 4b is not better than model 4a for poor delayed word recall (f= 0.83; p-value= 0.62). as we do not fi nd evidence that the interactions improve the different basic models, we refrain from any further interpretations of the models with interactions. 5.3 sensitivity analyses we specifi ed several additional models to gauge the sensitivity of our results to changes in measurement and modelling. the results of these sensitivity analyses are fully presented in the online supplement (tables a5-a21) and only briefl y summarised here. first, we estimated the same models as shown in table 2 and table 3, but for complete cases only (i.e. without multiple imputed variables). largely, the results do not change, indicating that they are generally not driven by the multiply imputed cases. second, and based on a reviewer's suggestion, we estimated the same models as shown in table 2 and table 3 as linear probability regressions. the different model specifi cation produced equivalent results to those shown in table 2 and table 3, with one exception: if we specify a linear model to the dichotomous outcome of poor self-rated health, there is partial support for the interaction hypothesis (h3a). we note, however, that the logistic model specifi cation nevertheless has the mathematical advantage, producing more conservative parameter estimates. third, and based on a reviewer’s suggestion, we checked whether results differed for men and women. to do so, we ran the models in table 2 and table 3 separately for men and women and then assessed the differences in the effects of key variables via seemingly unrelated regressions (stata 16: suest). although we fi nd three instances where a difference in parameter estimates is statistically signifi cant, the results from these analyses indicate that the main effects generally do not differ between men and women. overall, we do not fi nd support for a difference in the accumulation of adverse life-course factors and the relationship with the different health outcomes between men and women. fourth, we examined an alternative specifi cation of self-rated health as an ordinally scaled variable ranging from “excellent” (=0) to “poor” (=4). the results of the ordinal logistic regressions provided more support for a cumulative effect of having experienced hunger in childhood or adulthood on poor self-rated health in later life, but are otherwise substantially similar to the models shown in table 3. because we have to reject the parallel lines assumption for the specifi ed ordinal logistic regressions, we consider a binary logistic regression the more appropriate model specifi cation for poor self-rated health in our sample data. fifth, we explored the binary operationalisation of having ever experienced a period of hunger, life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 251 dispossession, and discrimination, as well as the binary operationalisation of the respondents’ parents having ever experienced at least one act of discrimination. the results of these additional analyses specifi cally show that there is no support for having ever experienced dispossession being related to either poor self-rated health or being limited in everyday activities in old age. conversely, those having experienced discrimination themselves are more likely to have either poor health or to report having everyday activity limitations. regarding cognitive functioning, the results are seemingly non-intuitive: those having ever experienced dispossession are less likely to have either poor immediate or poor delayed word recall. 6 discussion our study tracked later life health outcomes in three health domains (self-rated health, disability, and cognitive functioning) between eastern and western european respondents, investigating how they relate to various accumulated lifecourse factors. we confi rm a general east-west divide in most health outcomes, but eastern europe is not always faring worse. while some life-course factors, especially a disadvantaged socioeconomic position, show stronger associations with health outcomes, our expectation was not confi rmed regarding these factors being more marked (in the case of poor self-rated health and limitations in everyday activities) or not different (in the case of poor immediate and poor delayed word recall) for eastern europe. for the whole of europe, we fi nd that the persistence of disadvantaged circumstances across one’s lifetime has detrimental associations with later life health. the clearest evidence from our study is seen in the disadvantaged socioeconomic position, followed by the experience of hunger and/or parents being discriminated against. people who experienced disadvantaged socioeconomic positions during both their childhood and adulthood have signifi cantly worse outcomes on all health variables observed, while those having experienced these circumstances neither in childhood nor adulthood have the best health outcomes later in life. these fi ndings confi rm previous fi ndings on the relation of accumulated disadvantage to later life health (e.g. case et al. 2005; yi et al. 2007; zhang et al. 2008; cambois/jusot 2011; fouweather et al. 2015; cambois et al. 2016; arpino et al. 2018; wang/kang 2019; sieber et al. 2019, 2020), specifi cally highlighting the important roles of the temporal, clustering, additive, or triggering effect of risks over the life course (benshlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003; wang/kang 2019). interestingly, a disadvantaged socioeconomic position in adulthood shows a stronger association with all health outcomes than the childhood position, confi rming some of the previous fi ndings on its role in late life health (e.g. cheval et al. 2019). this is worth studying further, especially in the eastern european context. our study also supports previous fi ndings on regional differences (e.g. witvliet et al. 2014; cambois et al. 2016, 2016a; präg/subramanian 2017; eurostat 2022a) that show eastern europeans fare signifi cantly worse on self-rated health and everyday activity limitations compared with western europeans. it is well-known • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar252 that mortality is higher in eastern europe, and since self-rated health is one of the best constructs to predict mortality (desalvo et al. 2006; jylhä 2009), the self-rated health outcome might capture the broader trend of generally worse health among eastern europeans. the disability measure used in our study is a good indicator of the mismatch between personal capabilities and the extent to which society has successfully responded to them (verbrugge/jette 1994). our results reinforce the need to tackle the barriers that people with disabilities in eastern european societies face. among others, activities such as redistributing income for social purposes might yield benefi ts (cutler et al. 2015; dahl et al. 2006). this is the fi rst known analysis where cognitive functioning was observed for such a large number of (eastern) european countries from a comparative perspective. the better performance of eastern europe in the cognitive domain, especially in delayed recall, is a novel fi nding. one possible explanation is that societies with higher life expectancy tend to have more people with cognitive functioning issues as these health concerns manifest in older ages compared with other common health concerns (olshansky/ault 1986). therefore, it is possible that impairment in cognition is not (yet) as visible in eastern europe, as most western european countries still have higher life expectancies than eastern european countries. this selection effect, likely due to the survival of specifi c people as a consequence of repressions and wars, may be creating a selective older population currently living in eastern europe where those in good (cognitive) health are alive and captured by the survey. this is in line with the literature of some authors (hobcraft et al. 1982; sagi-schwartz et al. 2013; leppik/puur 2020). future share waves that include more specifi c dementia measures could shed light on how different population ageing trends may separately relate to cognitive functioning. another important aspect is that self-rated health and everyday activity limitations are largely subjective indicators, whereas cognition measures are more objective. subjective reports of health may often contradict or show different outcomes than objective health reports. it has been consistently shown that for several self-reported health measures, eastern european countries tend to indicate lower rankings than western european countries (e.g. spitzer/weber 2019). some eastern european countries indicate especially large gaps between subjective and objective measures, usually pointing towards eastern europeans underestimating their health (spitzer/weber 2019). this mismatch between subjective and objective measures may be due to lower education in older adults being overrepresented in some of the eastern european countries for the share survey, thus affecting selfreports (spitzer 2020). however, the educational distribution of survey respondents does not explain the outcome for the more objective cognitive functioning measures. further analyses including other factors should be conducted to solve this puzzle. our study indicates that there are more people in eastern europe with adverse life-course experiences. understandably, more societal transformations among most of the eastern european countries meant a signifi cant loss of family property, restricted earning circumstances, and a long-term social and material devaluation of jobs that required higher education. in several circumstances, these transformations also rendered all the accumulations people had acquired by the time life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe • 253 the transition(s) took place null and void. the fact that their association with later life health outcomes is not generally more marked for eastern europe in our study rejects some propositions about the consequences of collective repressions and societal disruptions in later life health (e.g. van den berg et al. 2006; mackenbach 2013; tapia granados 2013), although it is in line with some fi ndings (e.g. payne et al. 2020). it is conceivable, however, that we have not been able to account for the effect of societal transitions completely, possibly either due to selection bias or having a more individualthan population-level research design. another limitation of our study is that we have mostly identifi ed associations between lifecourse factors and health outcomes, which cannot be interpreted as pure causal links. we have also been constrained in terms of the variables available for analysis. specifi cally, this resulted in creating a modifi ed childhood socioeconomic position (sep) indicator using three variables instead of the fi ve proposed by niedzwiedz et al. in 2015. therefore, other datasets, research designs, and methods could be used in the future to study their role in later life health differentials. finally, we also note that isolating life-course infl uences in childhood and/or adulthood is largely owed to share’s measurement of childhood circumstances and sep indicators at age 10. disadvantage during adolescence may also be predictive of health outcomes in later life, but we are unable to test how disadvantages during that phase of the life course specifi cally contribute to a cumulative burden based on share data. taken together, our fi ndings nonetheless underscore that later life health (as well as adverse life-course circumstances and disadvantages) evolve across different domains of health (arpino et al. 2018; aartsen et al. 2019; lorenti et al. 2020) and that it is useful to empirically consider various health outcomes when studying lifecourse effects (arpino et al. 2018; sieber et al. 2020). funding this research was funded by the estonian research council (project number: prg71). additionally, this research was partially funded by the 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https://www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/30955454_basic_education_in_the_nordic_region_netti_19_04_08_0.pdf https://www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/30955454_basic_education_in_the_nordic_region_netti_19_04_08_0.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2019.100289 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319538111 https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464816655439 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100023 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1474-4422 https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckt040 • luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar260 wolfova, katrin; kucera, matej; cermakova, pavla 2021: risk and protective factors of neurocognitive disorders in older adults in central and eastern europe: a systematic review of population-based studies. in: plos one 16,11: e0260549. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260549 wu-chung, lydia e. et al. 2022: spousal caregiving, widowhood, and cognition: a systematic review and a biopsychosocial framework for understanding the relationship between interpersonal losses and dementia risk in older adulthood. in: neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews 134: 104487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.12.010 yi, zeng; gu, danan; land, kenneth c. 2007: the association of childhood socioeconomic conditions with healthy longevity at the oldest-old ages in china. in: demography 44,3: 497-518. https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2007.0033 zhang, zhenmei; gu, danan; hayward, mark d. 2008: early life infl uences on cognitive impairment among oldest old chinese. in: the journals of gerontology: series b 63,1: 25-33 . https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/63.1.s25 date of submission: 15.02.2022 date of acceptance: 31.03.2023 prof. dr. luule sakkeus, uku rudissaar. estonian institute for population studies, school of governance, law and society, tallinn university. tallinn, estonia. e-mail: luule.sakkeus@tlu.ee; uku.rudissaar@tlu.ee url: https://www.etis.ee/cv/luule_sakkeus/eng/ https://www.etis.ee/cv/uku_rudissaar/eng/ dr. katrin schwanitz. invest research flagship center, university of turku. turun, finland. estonian institute for population studies, tallinn university. tallinn, estonia. e-mail: katrin.schwanitz@utu.fi ; katrin.schwanitz@tlu.ee url: https://www.etis.ee/cv/katrin%20vanessa_schwanitz/eng/ liili abuladze (). estonian institute for population studies, school of governance, law and society, tallinn university. tallinn, estonia. population research institute. väestöliitto, finland. e-mail: liili@tlu.ee; liili.abuladze@vaestoliitto.fi url: https://www.etis.ee/cv/liili_abuladze/eng/ https://www.vaestoliitto.fi /en/people/liili-abuladze/ https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260549 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.12.010 https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2007.0033 https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/63.1.s25 mailto:luule.sakkeus@tlu.ee mailto:uku.rudissaar@tlu.ee https://www.etis.ee/cv/luule_sakkeus/eng/ https://www.etis.ee/cv/uku_rudissaar/eng/ mailto:katrin.schwanitz@utu.fi mailto:katrin.schwanitz@tlu.ee https://www.etis.ee/cv/katrin%20vanessa_schwanitz/eng/ mailto:liili@tlu.ee mailto:liili.abuladze@vaestoliitto.fi https://www.etis.ee/cv/liili_abuladze/eng/ https://www.vaestoliitto.fi published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country: timing, type, and order of life course events transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country: timing, type, and order of life course events alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu abstract: this study analyses the key transitions over the course of a woman’s life: forming a first union, leaving home, economic independence, and employment. it assesses their association with the probability of motherhood in spain, a low-fertility country. the study focuses on the timing of these transitions and their particular conditions, as well as the order in which they occur. data for the analysis are taken from the 2018 fertility survey (n = 7,819) conducted by the spanish national statistics institute. we have applied event history models, specifically discrete-time logistic regression models. the study reveals varying relationships between life transitions and motherhood, emphasizing the relevance of both the order and specific characteristics of each transition. forming a union is the main transition associated with motherhood, being moderated by the type of union, its stability, and by economic and employment circumstances. leaving the parental home also shows a strong association with the likelihood of motherhood, although it also appears to be mediated by the woman’s economic, union, and employment status. finally, access to employment favours motherhood, albeit to a lesser extent than the other life transitions. keywords: motherhood · fertility · life transitions · family formation · childlessness 1 introduction this paper examines the transition to motherhood in spain, a country characterized by very low and late fertility among cohorts born in the 1960s and 1970s, who at the time of analysis had completed their reproductive periods. according to data from the spanish national statistics institute, in 2018 the average number of children per woman was 1.2, and the mean age at first birth was 31. moreover, 19 percent of women aged 40 or older were childless. this study explores the relationship between the birth of a first child and the key life events that mark young people’s transition to adulthood, namely, entering a first co-residential union (marriage or cohabitation), leaving the parental home, achieving economic independence, and comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 153-182 (date of release: 08.09.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-10 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-10en http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-10 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu154 entering employment. adopting a longitudinal approach allows us to analyse the timing, nature, and ordering of these life transitions. low fertility is currently a serious challenge for many european countries. low fertility and childlessness can be explained in part by changes in values and population preferences, which lead many individuals to prioritize their professional careers and self-fulfilment expectations over family life (van de kaa 1987; hakim 2003). however, low fertility is also linked to unfulfilled preconditions for having desired children (baizán et al. 2003; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; tanturri/ mencarini 2008; mynarska et al. 2015). this study focuses on this second perspective. the transition to motherhood is one of the main challenges women face in their transition to adulthood (billari/liefbroer 2010; sironi et al. 2015) and often requires certain economic, labour, partnership, or housing conditions (gonzález/juradoguerrero 2006) to be met. unmet preconditions lead directly to a delay in the age of motherhood, and successive delays may ultimately affect total fertility, even resulting in childlessness for some couples (berrington 2004; sobotka 2004; kneale/joshi 2008). institutional contexts yield varying conditions for the transition to adulthood and partially explain cross-country differences in fertility rates (mcdonald 2000; billari/ kohler 2004; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; adsera 2011; nathan/pardo 2019). various studies have shown that unmet preconditions – such as achieving a stable partnership (baizán et al. 2003; hart 2019; raab/struffolino 2020), securing suitable employment (bloom/pebley 1982; heaton et al. 1999; baizán 2006; keizer et al. 2008; mynarska et al. 2015) which enables financial independence and leaving the parental home (aassve et al. 2002; billari/kohler 2004; del rey et al. 2023), as well as access to adequate housing (jurado guerrero 2001, 2003) – lead many couples to postpone having children or even to abandon reproduction plans altogether (sobotka 2004; mynarska et al. 2015). this situation results in many women having fewer children than preferred (sobotka/beaujouan 2014; beaujouan/berghammer 2019). the discrepancy between women’s fertility intentions and outcomes, along with prior research conducted in other contexts, highlights the need to examine the factors and conditions in women’s lives that hinder the transition to motherhood. this focus has driven growing interest in studying key life transitions – particularly forming a union, leaving the parental home, and pursuing a career – which unfold during women’s lifespans and may significantly influence motherhood. moreover, numerous studies have emphasized the critical role these transitions play in motherhood, not only in terms of their timing (the age at which they occur but also regarding the specific conditions and the sequence in which they take place (baizán et al. 2003; billari/kohler 2004; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; matysiak/vignoli 2010; tanturri/mencarini 2008; alderotti 2022). however, there is a lack of studies systematically examining generally, but also specifically in southern europe, key life events associated with the transition to motherhood that also take into account the timing of their occurrence, the sequencing of transitions, and the specific characteristics of each event. for instance, it is essential to consider not only the formation of a union but also the type of partnership (marriage or cohabitation) and its relationship to other events such as achieving economic independence, transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 155 leaving the parental home, or entering the labour market. together, these elements configure distinct pathways in the transition to motherhood. this study contributes to the existing literature on the transition to motherhood in two main ways. first, it highlights the specific conditions under which the transition to motherhood takes place in a context of very low and late fertility, particularly within southern europe. second, it demonstrates the relevance of the sequencing and specific characteristics of each life event in shaping the pathways to motherhood. 1.1 the spanish case spain has been characterized for decades by very low fertility rates (kohler et al. 2002), late age at first childbirth, and a high proportion of childless women (esteve et al. 2016; esteve/treviño 2019; del rey et al. 2022; lozano et al. 2024). according to data from the spanish national statistics institute, the total fertility rate in spain was 2.2 children per woman in 1980, dropping to 1.16 by 1995, and since then has fluctuated between 1.1 and 1.3 children per woman. meanwhile, the mean age at first birth, 25 years in the 1980s, has steadily increased, surpassing 31 years by 2018. as for the age at first marriage among women, it rose from 25 years in 1980 to over 33 years in 2020. regarding the distribution of births by marital status, the share of births to unmarried mothers increased markedly, from under 10 percent in 1990 to nearly 50 percent in 2018. this shift has been accompanied by a general decline in the number of marriages, particularly religious ones, which fell by 26 percent between 1990 and 2018. at the same time, cohabitation has become increasingly common. although comprehensive data on the prevalence of cohabitation in spain are lacking, since many partnerships are not officially registered, various surveybased studies have documented a significant increase since the 1990s (domínguezfolgueras/castro-martín 2013; garcía-pereiro et al. 2015). the 2018 fertility survey (hereinafter fs2018) shows that nearly one in four women aged 40 and older are childless. for spain a wide fertility gap is also documented – the difference between the number of children women want and the number they have (castro-martín/martín-garcía 2013; sobotka/beaujouan 2014; castro-martín et al. 2018; beaujouan/berghammer 2019). according to fs2018 data, 31.6 percent of women who remained childless at age 40 (constituting 25 percent of the population in that age group) stated that they did not wish to have children, whereas 68.4 percent expressed a desire to do so. a study of the spanish case is highly important because of its comparatively very low birth rates, very much delayed union formation, and very high childbearing ages in europe (eurostat 2020). in addition, recent decades have witnessed a spectacular increase in rates of both cohabitation and divorce, the rapid modernization of women’s roles in society through education, and their access to the labour market (castro-martín/martín-garcía 2013; esping-andersen 2013; del rey et al. 2023). concerning young people, spain is characterized by high levels of unemployment and considerable job uncertainty, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s (fernández cordón 1997; jurado-guerrero 2001; adserà 2011; beaujouan/berghammer 2019); scant measures of support for reconciling work and family life (billari et al. 2001; • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu156 beaujouan/berghammer 2019; bueno 2020; bueno/brinton 2019); and no support at all for leaving home and living independently (reher 1998; baizán 2001). as a result, spain is one of the countries worldwide with the widest fertility gaps and one of the nations with the most delayed transition to motherhood (castro-martín et al. 2018; beaujouan/berghammer 2019). traditionally in spain, there has been a strong connection between leaving the parental home, entering a co-residential partnership, getting married, and ultimately having a first child (holdsworth 2000; baizán et al. 2003; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; domínguez-folgueras/castro-martín 2013; del rey et al. 2023). however, in recent decades, the country has undergone profound economic, social, and cultural transformations that have significantly affected the life-course events associated with the transition to adulthood (castro-martín/martín-garcía 2013; esping-andersen 2013; del rey et al. 2023). this study’s main contribution involves revealing the range of factors that facilitate or hinder the transition to motherhood over the course of young people’s lives within the context of a very low fertility rate. as far as we know, there are no studies that systematically analyse the impact of these transitions on motherhood within the context of southern europe whilst considering both the characteristics and the order of the main life transitions. 2 theoretical framework and hypotheses an analysis of the transition to motherhood from a life course perspective reveals the importance of several life transitions associated with the birth of a first child, such as a woman’s partnership history, leaving home, economic independence, and employment (baizán et al. 2003; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; tanturri/ mencarini 2008; mynarska et al. 2015). nevertheless, it is not easy to establish a causal relationship between union and motherhood, while it may be assumed that the desire to become a mother favours leaving home and co-residential union. various authors (baizán et al. 2003; del rey et al. 2022) have reported that a first birth and a first union, mainly marriage, are part of the same process of family formation in spain. although in general there continues to be a strong synchrony between leaving the parental home, forming a co-residential union, and the birth of the first child, in more recent generations cohabitation has gained ground over marriage (dominguez-folgueras/castro-martín 2013; garcía-pereiro et al. 2015), and exits from the parental home without a partner have increased (del rey et al. 2023). these complicate the transition to the birth of the first child. in any case, given the strong interrelation of these events, we adopt a descriptive approach to the analysis of the results. 2.1 union formation and motherhood union formation is the domain with the most obvious link to childbearing behaviour (baizán et al. 2003; mynarska et al. 2015; nishikido et al. 2022). a committed union transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 157 is one of the main factors informing the decision to have children, as most births occur within a relationship, whereby the absence of a partner correlates closely with childlessness (raab/struffolino 2020). nonetheless, besides the importance of forming a union, other studies report that the age when the first union is formed, union stability, and union status are major influences on fertility (baizán et al. 2003; tanturri/ mencarini 2008; mynarska et al. 2015; mikolai 2017; hart 2019; raab/struffolino 2020; compans/beaujouan 2022). the longer the delay in union formation, the greater the risk of childlessness; by contrast, an early union increases the probability of motherhood (keizer et al. 2008; compans/beaujouan 2022). other studies find that in addition to the effect of late formation of unions on fertility, many late unions are fleeting and are one of multiple unions, whereas a young and stable union increases the probability of motherhood (keizer et al. 2008; hart 2019; nishikido et al. 2022). however, the probability that a woman will become a mother or remain childless is today informed less by whether she is married than by whether she is in a stable or long-term relationship (keizer et al. 2008). several studies report a strong relationship between the prevailing type of union and fertility, with the effects of union formation on the birth of a first child being considerably more significant for marriage than for cohabitation (baizán et al. 2003; dominguez-folgueras/castro-martín 2013). although this situation has been evolving in spain in recent years, cohabitation still often constitutes a preliminary stage to both marriage and motherhood (garcía-pereiro et al. 2015). nevertheless, births outside marriage have increased substantially, rising from 11 percent in 1995 to 35 percent in 2010 (dominguez-folgueras/castro-martín 2013), a trend that mirrors developments observed in other countries (schnor/jalovaara 2020; cherlin 2021; trimarchi/van bavel 2017). h1. we expect forming a co-residential union to have a positive association with the risk of a first birth. however, we anticipate this association to be stronger in the case of marriage compared to cohabitation and within the context of a long-term relationship (duration of more than 5 years). 2.2 leaving home, economic independence, and motherhood leaving the parental home and achieving economic independence are two transitions that, on the one hand, tend to be closely linked to the moment of union, and on the other, could directly affect the transition to motherhood (billari et al. 2001; billari/ liefbroer 2010). being financially independent and living outside of the parental home provide part of the “minimal set of conditions for motherhood” (gonzález/ jurado-guerrero 2006). both transitions tend to coincide in time, particularly in southern europe (holdsworth 2000; del rey et al. 2023; meggiolaro/ongaro 2024), because attaining economic independence facilitates both leaving the parental home and forming co-residential unions. however, some individuals undertake this transition without being economically independent. in this sense, the establishment of a co-residential union may rely on the pooled economic resources of the couple. whilst being financially independent is fundamental to being considered an adult, the economic situation can affect other transitions to adulthood as well, • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu158 such as establishing independent living arrangements, marrying, and having children (sinori/fustemberg 2012). for the case of spain, del rey et al. (2023) find that achieving economic independence generally facilitates men’s departure from the parental home. however, in the case of women, it reduces the likelihood of leaving the parental home to marry or cohabit, although it increases the probability of leaving to live alone. at this point, it is important to note that, since decisions regarding childbearing are generally made by a couple jointly (corijn et al. 1996; bauer/kneip 2013), certain transitions experienced by women may be influenced by their partner’s situation. in our specific case, ceasing to be economically dependent on one’s parents may result either from the woman’s own financial independence or from the resources provided by her partner − an aspect we are unable to control for in this study. leaving the parental home traditionally tends to coincide with union formation, primarily through marriage and, more recently, also through cohabitation (gonzález 2001; jurado-guerrero 2001; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; holdsworth 2000). in most cases, the desire to live independently with one’s partner is the main factor driving the decision to leave the parental home. leaving home involves the formation of a new household and greater autonomy for young people in all aspects of social life and decision-making, including many fertility-related decisions (billari/ kohler 2004). in spain, marriage and cohabitation are the traditional reasons for leaving home (holdsworth 2000), although recent studies report that more people are leaving home before forming coresidential union (del rey et al. 2023). the timing of leaving home is influenced by interactions between young people, their families, and their social, institutional, and cultural contexts (billari/liefbroer 2007). this combination of factors explains variation in the reasons for leaving home across countries (fernández cordón 1997; billari et al. 2001; jurado-guerrero 2003), with access to housing being a decisive factor in southern europe (holdsworth 2000; jurado-guerrero 2003; billari/liefbroer 2007). leaving home today reveals a broad range of trajectories and major differences across countries, albeit increasingly decoupled from the formation of a new family and favouring an independent life (billari et al. 2001; aassve et al. 2002; del rey et al. 2023). h2. we expect both leaving home and achieving economic independence to be positively associated with the risk of having a first birth. however, we also anticipate a stronger relationship when leaving home is combined with economic independence. 2.3 employment and motherhood employment is another factor closely linked to fertility and the transition to motherhood. historically, employment has been associated with lower fertility and delayed motherhood, so non-working women have demonstrated higher and earlier fertility, whereas those more involved in their careers and in better jobs have tended to demonstrate a lower fertility rate. the reason for this incompatibility between work and motherhood involves opportunity costs (becker 1981), as well as a preference for career over childrearing (hakim 2003). education plays a key role in transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 159 both cases, insofar as it increases the opportunity cost of motherhood and tends to favour the focus on improving a woman’s career and her job promotion prospects. this therefore means that a higher level of education and a better job tend to delay motherhood compared to those women with less schooling and lower-paid jobs, as highly educated women adapt their family life to their work commitments (blossfeld/ huinink 1991; brewster/rindfuss 2000; mynarska et al. 2015). over the past decades, the relationship between work and fertility has changed in numerous developed societies, where employment has become a requirement for rather than an obstacle to motherhood (esping-andersen 2009; mcdonald 2000; baizán et al. 2002; baizán 2006; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006). in this transformation, the overall rise in educational attainment and the massive entry of women into the labour market played a fundamental role, leading to a shift in the age of motherhood and in the incidence of childlessness (jalovaara et al. 2019). access to the labour market in recent years has become significantly delayed due to the prolonged duration of educational participation (baizán et al. 2002; del rey et al. 2022). this delayed entry into the labour market, combined with many women delaying family formation until they have achieved their career goals, have led in turn to a general postponement of motherhood (blossfeld/huinink 1991; baizán et al. 2002). although female employment rates are associated with higher fertility levels and lower proportions of childless women (ahn/mira 2002; myrskylä et al. 2009), this is an evolving and complex relationship (tomatis/impicciatore 2023), particularly in southern europe (baizán 2006; matysiak/vignoli 2008, 2010; mynarska et al. 2015; alderotti et al. 2021; alderotti 2022). nonetheless, certain constants persist regarding the interplay between access to employment and the transition to motherhood. first, stable employment provides financial security, which can create favourable conditions for motherhood. in contrast, precarious employment and unemployment tend to delay the transition to motherhood and reduce the number of children (baizán 2006; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; adserà 2011; vidal-coso/miretgamundi 2017; glavin et al. 2020; alderotti et al. 2021; del rey et al. 2022). finally, note should be taken of the important influence a couple’s employment status has on childbearing decisions (baizán 2006; vidal-coso/miret-gamundi 2017; grande et al. 2022), an aspect that we do not address in this study due to the scarcity of data sources. h3. we expect a first job to have a positive relationship with the likelihood of motherhood, although we anticipate varying results depending on job type and stability or duration. specifically, we expect greater job stability to be associated with a higher likelihood of motherhood. finally, although several studies highlight the importance to fertility of the timing and conditions of life transitions, only a handful adopt this approach in southern europe. fewer still cover the order of such events (gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; mynarska et al. 2015). we therefore include the following hypotheses: h4. we expect a long-term union (cohabitation or marriage) combined with employment or economic independence to be associated with a higher likelihood of motherhood compared to unions formed without these characteristics. • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu160 h5. we expect that leaving the parental home in combination with forming a co-residential partnership, having a job, or achieving economic independence will be associated with a higher likelihood of motherhood compared to leaving home without these characteristics. 3 methodology 3.1 data the data source for this study is the 2018 fertility survey (fs2018), a nationally representative survey conducted by the spanish national statistics institute (ine) in 2018. the survey involved 14,446 women aged between 18 and 55. the fs2018 is a retrospective survey, allowing for the application of a longitudinal perspective to the study of fertility. in other words, it provides a complete record of births, unions, leaving the parental home, economic independence, and employment. to obtain the most homogeneous sample possible, we selected women who have completed their reproductive stage, specifically those aged 45 years or older. these individual records have been converted into person-years, whereby each personal record was divided into one-year periods from the age of 201 through to the birth of the first child, or until the age of 45 if the women had no children. this transformation of the data from a wide format to a long one entails that the initial number of women aged 45 and over (5,367 cases, born in the 1960s and 1970s) becomes 74,289 person-years. the use of this format for the records enables us to readily include the following as time-varying covariates: age when first forming a union, age of first job, age of leaving the parental home, and age of economic independence, while at the same time establishing their order and analysing their influence on the first birth. table 1 displays the main characteristics of the women aged 45 and older in the analysis. these descriptive data reveal certain differences in the sample’s make-up between women with and without children, whose percentages differ according to level of education, religion, country of birth, and number of siblings. the biggest 1 we sought to align the onset of the reproductive period with the completion of education. however, the survey does not allow us to include education as a time-varying covariate, which would have enabled us to begin observation at an earlier age without biasing the estimates. the survey only records the highest level of education attained and the year it was completed. for this reason, we set the starting point of observation at age 20, an age at which only 5 percent of the women in the sample had had their first child, and which approximates the age at which university education is typically completed (it being actually slightly later). starting observation at an earlier age, such as 16, would have anticipate the effect of education at an age far removed from its actual occurrence, thereby distorting the estimates. conversely, delaying the onset of observation beyond age 20 would exclude a period in which a substantial share of first births occurs among women with lower levels of education: between ages 20 and 25, 37 percent of first births among women without university education are recorded. importantly, the results of the models regarding the effect of life-course events on the transition to motherhood remain robust regardless of whether observation begins at age 16, 20, or 25. transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 161 differences depend on whether the woman has formed a first stable union, left home, or become economically independent, but not so much on whether they have been employed. 3.2 variables the dependent variable is age at first birth (event = 1), and women enter the observation upon turning 20 and exit when they have their first child or when they reach the age of 45 without having had children, being considered censored cases (event = 0). the explanatory variables are women’s age at their main life transitions, namely, first union, leaving home, economic independence, and first job, which are added as time-varying covariates (tvcs). tvcs enable a more accurate estimation of the association between events and facilitate the precise establishment of the sequence of different transitions. first union: this transition involves analysing the age at which a woman forms a first co-residential union, its type (cohabitation or marriage), and its duration or stability (more or less than five years). leaving the parental home: we determine the age at which a woman leaves home for the first time,2 with or without economic independence. additionally, upon leaving the parental home, we investigate the potential association between forming a union, finding a job, and the likelihood of motherhood. economic independence: this variable is the age at which a woman states she became economically independent from her parents.3 first job4: this transition considers the age at which a woman gets her first job, along with its characteristics (self-employed or employer, employee with a permanent contract, employee with a fixed-term contract; employee without a formal contract) and duration (more or less than five years). the control variables include key sociodemographic characteristics associated with motherhood such as education, age cohort, religious beliefs, and country of birth, all of which are treated as constant variables in the model (table 1). 2 we lack information on potential returns to the parental home or subsequent departures from it beyond the first occurrence. 3 in our case, economic independence refers to the age at which the person indicates that he/she started to be economically independent from his/her parents (questions 4.9 and 4.10 of the 2018 fertility survey). 4 we have chosen to focus exclusively on the transition to the first job, despite having data recorded for up to the top five jobs performed. however, apart from the first job and the current job, the remaining job records contain a significant number of missing cases. • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu162 tab. 1: descriptive data: women aged 45 and over event: first birth 0 1 n (cases) % in percent cohort 1962-1969 19.3 80.7 3,737 69.6 1970-1978 19.1 80.9 1,630 30.4 country of birth spain 19.0 81.0 4,854 90.4 other 21.6 78.4 513 9.6 education primary or below 15.9 84.1 1,145 21.3 lower secondary 16.6 83.4 1,466 27.3 upper secondary 20.9 79.1 1,283 23.9 tertiary 23.1 76.9 1,473 27.4 religion catholic 17.0 83.0 3,781 70.4 other 22.2 77.8 225 4.2 none (non-believer) 23.2 76.8 850 15.8 n.a. (no answer) 28.4 71.6 511 9.5 number of siblings 0 31.6 68.4 256 4.8 1-2 19.7 80.3 2,619 48.8 3 and more 17.5 82.5 2,492 46.4 partner (marriage or cohabitation) no 83,6 16,4 427 8.0 yes: 20,6 79,4 4,940 92.0 cohabitation 41.0 59.0 561 10.5 marriage 18.0 82.0 4,379 81.6 leaving the parental home no 35.2 64.8 781 14.6 yes 16.5 83.5 4,586 85.4 age at leaving the parental home 20 or before 18.9 22.3 985 21.5 21-25 27.3 38.6 1,650 36.0 26-30 28.4 29.3 1,334 29.1 31-35 14.9 7.9 437 9.5 36-40 5.8 1.3 108 2.4 41-45 3.4 0.5 53 1.2 after 45 1.3 0.1 19 0.4 economic independence of parents no 35.1 64.9 815 15.2 yes 16.4 83.6 4,552 84.8 transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 163 3.3 model as one of this study’s overarching aims is to analyse the association of each one of the transitions on the birth of the first child, we have chosen to use event history analysis. a discrete-time model has therefore been used to study the probability of a first birth depending on the explanatory variables. we have specifically applied a logistic model for estimating the relationships of each one of the explanatory variables, time constant and time-varying covariates, and the probability of the event occurring year-by-year between the ages of 20 and 45.5 discrete-time modelling enables us to establish the order of the relevant transitions throughout the women’s lives and to analyse their influence on the likelihood of motherhood. the discrete-time logistic regression model is defined as follows: h(t|x) = 1 – exp {-exp(β0t + x’β}, with x’β = (x1 β1 + x2 β2 +… + xn βn) where h(t|x) is the conditional probability or risk of a first birth as a function of time (t) and a series of explanatory variables (x), with β being its parameters. this provides coefficients that indicate the effect or relationship of the women’s age (t) on the probability of motherhood. finally, we opted for a generalized additive model (gam) to reduce the number of parameters involved in estimating the year-by-year effect of age from 20 to 45 years (see appendix). this approach yields a parsimonious model while allowing us to capture potential non-linear relationships (wood 2017). tab. 1: continuation event: first birth 0 1 n (cases) % in percent age at economic independence 20 or before 26.2 31.9 1,393 30,.6 21-25 36.3 41.8 1,843 40.5 26-30 25.0 21.2 1,004 22.1 31-35 8.6 4.2 238 5.2 36-40 2.7 0.7 53 1.2 41-45 0.7 0.1 12 0.3 after 45 0.6 0.1 9 0.2 first job no 17.6 82.4 431 8.0 yes 19.4 80.6 4,936 92.0 total 19.2 80.8 5,367 source: ine’s fs2018 5 although for many transitions we have information on the month and year of the event occurrence, we have chosen to use only the year due to the high number of missing cases in the monthly records. • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu164 4 results 4.1 forming a first coresidential union and the probability of motherhood the analysis of the first union considers different situations that may affect motherhood (fig. 1 and 2). the first model examines the relationship between the transition to the first union and motherhood, specifically considering the age at which women began living with their partner. the second model incorporates union status, distinguishing between cohabitation and marriage. the third model assesses the stability of the first union based on the time spent together, differentiating between durations of less than five years and five years or more. the fourth model includes an interaction between the type of union and its duration. finally, the fifth and sixth models analyse different transitions to the first union in relation to the timing of economic independence and obtaining a first job, allowing us to determine whether the women were economically independent and employed at the time. the initial model shows that a first union leads to a 21-fold increase in the probability of a first birth over those not living with a partner (fig. 1, model 1). as noted in other studies, forming a union is a prerequisite for motherhood (gonzález/ jurado-guerrero 2006; mynarska et al. 2015). nevertheless, among those women who have formed at least one union,6 both type of partnership and its stability have a statistically significant correlation with the probability of motherhood. cohabitation in this first relationship has a weaker association with the probability of motherhood compared to marriage (12.8 times vs. 22.8 times, respectively, compared to those not living with a partner, fig. 1, model 2). in other words, a union involving marriage is a life event that is linked more closely to motherhood than one involving cohabitation (baizán et al. 2003; dominguez-folgueras/castromartín 2013). indeed, in many cases, it is quite likely that the desire to have a child is one of the reasons for entering into marriage, given the strong interrelationship between motherhood and marriage. regarding the duration of the first union, there are significant differences in the association between motherhood and unions lasting less than five years compared to those lasting five years or more (12.4 and 21.9, respectively, see fig. 1, model 3). when introducing an interaction between the type of union and its duration, the results remain consistent (fig. 1, model 4): the previously observed differences between cohabitation and marriage persist, and in both cases a longer duration is associated with a higher probability of having a first child. these results enable us to highlight the importance of the type of union and its stability or duration in the probability of motherhood. the two following models include an interaction between the type of union and economic independence and access to the labour market (fig. 2 and table a2). in both interactions, the formation of a marriage whether with or without economic 6 in the spanish case, 76 percent of women over the age of 45 have had only one co-residential union (fs2018). transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 165 independence, and with or without employment, shows a stronger association with the transition to motherhood than cohabitation. when individuals are economically independent from their parents at the time the union is formed, whether in cohabitation or marriage, the association with motherhood increases slightly (fig. 2, model 5). however, being employed at the time of union formation does not lead to a stronger association with the transition to motherhood; in fact, it is slightly reduced in both cohabitation and marriage (fig. 2, model 6). 4.2 leaving the parental home, economic independence, and the probability of motherhood economic independence and leaving the parental home are closely correlated. fs2018 reveals that 62 percent of women undertook both transitions at the same time. this suggests that the relationship between these transitions and motherhood, as well as their order, may serve as an indicator of different life events. leaving the parental home with or without economic independence involves fundamentally fig. 1: union transition and the probability of motherhood (exp(b)): age, type, and duration 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. first union ex p( b) model 1: first union (f.u.) 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. cohabitation marriage ex p( b) model 2: type of first union 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. <5 years >5 years ex p( b) model 3: duration of first union 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. c&<5y c&>5y m&<5y m&>5y ex p( b) model 4: type of & duration of first union f.u. = first union; c&<5y = cohabitation and less 5 years; c&>5y = cohabitation and 5 and more years; m&<5y = marriage and less 5 years; m&>5y = marriage and 5 and more years). source: results from table a1, appendix. ine’s fs2018 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu166 different scenarios. in addition, we have identified diverse circumstances associated with leaving home in relation to the transitions into a first union and a first job. economic independence from parents7 prompts a 3.4-fold increase in the probability of motherhood (fig. 3, model 8). in the case of leaving the parental home, the probability of motherhood increases by a factor of 5.4 (fig. 3, model 7). the order of these transitions has a different and significant association with the probability of motherhood depending on whether leaving the parental home involves economic independence (fig. 4, model 9): 5.6 times if it does, and 3.8 times if it does not, strongly confirming the importance of leaving home, and more so with economic independence. the interaction between leaving the parental home and marital status reveals markedly different outcomes. on the one hand, there are no differences in the transition to motherhood between those who leave the fig. 2: type of union transition and the probability of motherhood according to economic independence and employment (exp(b)) 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. coh&no−e.i. coh&e.i. marr&no−e.i. marr&e.i. ex p( b) model 5: type of first union & economic independence (e.i.) 5 10 15 20 25 1 no−f.u. coh&no−empl. coh&empl. marr&no−empl. marr&empl. ex p( b) model 6: type of first union & employment f.u. = first union; coh = cohabitation; marr = marriage; e.i.= economic independence; empl. = employment. source: results from table a2, appendix. ine’s fs2018 7 although we do not have information on the cause of economic independence, in 23.8 percent of cases, the age at first employment coincides with the age at which economic independence is achieved. transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 167 parental home while single and those who continue living with their parents (fig. 4, model 10); however, when leaving the parental home occurs with a partner, whether in cohabitation or marriage, the probability of motherhood increases by 5.1 and 8.5 times, respectively, compared to those not living with a partner. finally, leaving the parental home with a job leads to a slightly higher probability of motherhood compared to doing so without a job (5.7 and 4.8, respectively, fig. 4, model 11). 4.3 transition to the labour market and the probability of motherhood the final transition examines the relationship between the transition to motherhood and entry into the workforce, focusing on the characteristics of the first job and its duration. accessing a first job shows a significant association with the transition to motherhood, although its influence is considerably weaker compared to earlier transitions (fig. 5, model 12). compared to women who have never worked, entering the workforce through their first job is associated with a 1.15 (or 15 percent) higher probability of becoming a mother. differentiating between various types of employment reveals significant nuances in this transition (fig. 5, model 13): women whose first work experience is as entrepreneurs or self-employed show no significant differences compared to women who have never worked; in other words, fig. 3: leaving the parental home, economic independence, and the probability of motherhood (exp(b)) 1 2 3 4 5 6 no−leaving home leaving home ex p( b) model 7: leaving the parental home 1 2 3 4 5 6 no−economic independence economic independence ex p( b) model 8: economic independence source: results from table a3, appendix. ine’s fs2018 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu168 there is no difference in these cases between working and not working as regards motherhood; in contrast, entering paid employment with a permanent contract8 is associated with a 1.21 (21 percent) higher probability of motherhood, compared to a 1.15 (15 percent) increase for other women in paid employment. this means that better conditions in a first job, i.e., a permanent contract, favour motherhood. finally, taking into account the duration of the first job (fig. 5, model 14), the probability of motherhood is slightly higher for jobs lasting five years or more (1.19) compared to those lasting less than five years (1.15). in sum, joining the labour market shows a positive, albeit small, association with the probability of motherhood compared to prior transitions. however, depending on the type of employment, some jobs exhibit no significant association with this probability. the direction of this relationship points to the importance of first employment as a factor that provides the necessary resources for coping with motherhood. it is also important to note that this paper includes only the timing fig. 4: leaving the parental home and the probability of motherhood according to economic independence, partner, and employment status (exp(b)) 2 4 6 8 10 1 no−lh lh without e.i. lh with e.i. ex p( b) model 9: leaving the parental home (lh) & economic independence (e.i.) 2 4 6 8 10 1 no−lh lh single lh cohabitation lh marriage ex p( b) model 10: leaving the parental home (lh) & union status 2 4 6 8 10 1 no−lh lh without employment lh with employment ex p( b) model 11: leaving the parental home (lh) & employment source: results from table a4, appendix. ine’s fs2018 8 a large majority of first jobs with permanent contracts take place in the public sector. transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 169 and certain characteristics of the first job, so it does not in itself define women’s employment trajectories. 5 discussion and conclusion the likelihood of spanish women born in the 1960s and 1970s becoming mothers appears to be strongly influenced by the timing and nature of specific key life transitions: forming a co-residential partnership, leaving the parental home, achieving economic independence, and entering the labour market. generally speaking, these findings reveal that motherhood is strongly associated with specific conditions throughout women’s lives, aligning with the results of previous studies conducted in spain (gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006). the main findings of this article reveal not only the significance of life transitions for motherhood but also the importance of the conditions informing those transitions and the different relevance they have depending on their order. the formation of a co-residential union is the life event most strongly associated with the transition to motherhood, which aligns with previous studies (baizán et al. 2003; mynarska et al. 2015) and corroborates our first research hypothesis. there are, fig. 5: first employment and the probability of motherhood: age, type, and duration (exp(b)) 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 never worked first employment ex p( b) model 12: first employment 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 never worked self-employment permanent other ex p( b) model 13: type of employment 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 never worked less 5 years 5 years and more ex p( b) model 14: duration of employment source: results from table a5, appendix. ine’s fs2018 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu170 nonetheless, major differences depending on the type of union and duration (keizer et al. 2008; hart 2019). if the first union is short, involving cohabitation rather than marriage, the probability of motherhood is reduced. it should be added, however, that certain cohabitations may be the gateway to marriage. interacting the moment of the first union with the time of access to employment and economic independence reveals that the probability of motherhood varies depending on the order of these transitions (h4): those women who are already economically independent when they form their first co-residential union or have already accessed the labour market record a greater probability of motherhood, compared not only to those who have not formed a union but also to those who were not economically independent or had not joined the labour market when they formed their first union. the timing of leaving home is another highly significant predictor of motherhood (holdsworth 2000; billari et al. 2001; billari/liefbroer 2010), as we proposed in the second hypothesis, and more so when it coincides with economic independence, forming a co-residential union, or employment (h5). in other words, leaving home in combination with the formation of a co-residential union facilitates the transition to motherhood, although significant differences arise depending on whether this transition is supported by adequate economic and employment conditions. the third transition analysed involves employment. although it is also a significant event associated with the probability of motherhood, as proposed in the third hypothesis, its relationship is less pronounced compared to the previous transitions. this suggests a more complex relationship between employment and motherhood (baizán 2006; keizer et al. 2008; mynarska et al. 2015). when considering the conditions of the first job, it is observed that women who have never worked do not exhibit a more significant association compared to those who are self-employed or entrepreneurs. a better position in the labour market, such as having a permanent contract, favours motherhood (baizán 2006; gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; keizer et al. 2008). as regards the cohorts of women born in the 1960s and 1970s, we do not find a negative relationship or assumed incompatibility between labour and family trajectories, as noted in the theory section. this means that employment in these cohorts provides the material conditions for coping with motherhood, in line with recent studies (gonzález/jurado-guerrero 2006; adserà 2011; del rey et al. 2022). these findings highlight the particularity of women who have never been employed and who exhibit a lower probability of having a first child. these are women who combine weaker fertility desires with greater difficulties across most life-course transitions,9 dimensions which, moreover, are likely to be endogenously related. this study’s main contribution not only concerns the importance of the transitions analysed in motherhood but also the conditions in which they occur. it stands to 9 according to data from the 2018 fertility survey, among childless women aged 45 who have never been employed, 41 percent would have liked to have children (compared to 51 percent among childless women who have worked). they also show higher percentages of women who have never had a partner (11 percent versus 10 percent), who have never left the parental home (21 percent versus 14 percent), and who have not achieved economic independence (23 percent versus 14 percent). transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 171 reason that insofar as these transitions can take place at younger ages, there would be a greater probability of having children and reducing the fertility gap; yet it is also important to consider the conditions under which a union is formed, the parental home is exited, or employment begins. the conditions and the order in which they occur have a major bearing on fertility. these results shed light on the social and economic context in which the women included in the dataset lived their reproductive lifecycles. it was characterized by profound changes and considerable instability, with major difficulties accessing the labour and housing markets, affecting the conditions in which transitions took place, including delaying or hindering them (esping-andersen 2013; gonzález/juradoguerrero 2006). this situation helps to explain why one out of four women had no children and two out of three of these had wanted children. some aspects of the study warrant further consideration. first, the analysis has approached motherhood exclusively from the female perspective, but given that childbearing decisions are typically made within couple relationships (corijn et al. 1996; bauer/kneip 2013), analysing data on union histories and couples’ characteristics would add an additional layer of insight. second, comprehensive data on complete labour market trajectories could extend our analysis, which focuses only on access to the first job. finally, it should be noted that many life-course decisions, such as entering employment, forming a union, leaving the parental home, and becoming pregnant, often occur simultaneously, suggesting a degree of endogeneity among the variables considered. the diversity of situations observed in the transitions allows us to highlight not only the expediency of facilitating them but also the importance of the conditions in which they occur, which need to be considered when public policies introduce measures for countering a low fertility rate. importantly, union formation is crucial, as it favours leaving the parental home through economic independence and employment and also favours accessing housing (an issue that has not been addressed here), and these in turn additionally enable women to achieve desired motherhood. in contrast, when these transitions – whether related to partnership, employment, or economic conditions − are undertaken under worse conditions and at an older age, this will increase the likelihood of women reaching the end of their reproductive lifecycle childless against their will. future research on spain should seek to incorporate the diversity of local, cultural, and familial contexts, in light of the substantial influence these dimensions exert on the broader process of transition to adulthood (sironi et al. 2015). references aassve, arnstein et al. 2002: leaving home: a comparative analysis of echp data. in: journal of european social policy 12,4: 259-275. https://doi.org/10.1177/a028430 adserà, alicia 2011: where are the babies? labor market conditions and fertility in europe. in: european journal of population 27,1: 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-010-9222-x https://doi.org/10.1177/a028430 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-010-9222-x • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu172 ahn, namkee; 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beaujouan, éva 2014: two is best? the persistence of a two-child family ideal in europe. in: population and development review 40,3: 391-419. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00691.x tanturri, maria letizia; mencarini, letizia 2008: childless or childfree? paths to voluntary childlessness in italy. in: population and development review 34,1: 51-77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2008.00205.x tomatis, francesca; impicciatore, roberto 2023: labour market participation and fertility in seven european countries: a comparative perspective. in: comparative population studies 48: 183-216. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-08 trimarchi, alessandra; van bavel, jan 2017: pathways to marital and non-marital first birth: the role of his and her education. in: vienna yearbook of population research 15,1: 143179. https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2017s143 van de kaa, dirk j. 1987: europe’s second demographic transition. in: population bulletin 42,1: 1-59. vidal-coso, elena; miret-gamundi, pau 2017: characteristics of first-time parents in spain along the 21st century. in: revista española de investigaciones sociológicas 160: 115-138. https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.160.115 wood, simon n. 2017: generalized additive models: an introduction with r. boca raton: chapman and hall/crc. date of submission: 10.03.2025 date of acceptance: 28.07.2025 prof. dr. alberto del rey (*), dr. mengyao wu. university of salamanca, department of sociology and communication. salamanca, spain. e-mail: adelrey@usal.es; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4262-5557 wmen@usal.es; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9670-9214 url: https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/57666/detalle https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/157388/detalle?lang=en dr. jesús garcía-gómez. universitat autònoma de barcelona, centre d'estudis demogràfics (ced). barcelona, spain. e-mail: jgarciagomez@ced.uab.es; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3288-355x url: https://portalrecerca.uab.cat/en/persons/jesus-garcia-gomez dr. guillermo orfao. pompeu fabra university, department of political and social sciences. barcelona. spain e-mail: guillermo.orfaoevale@upf.edu; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9670-9214 url: https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/147946/detalle https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00691.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2008.00205.x https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-08 https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2017s143 https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.160.115 mailto:adelrey@usal.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4262-5557 mailto:wmen@usal.es https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9670-9214 https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/57666/detalle https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/157388/detalle?lang=en mailto:jgarciagomez@ced.uab.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3288-355x https://portalrecerca.uab.cat/en/persons/jesus-garcia-gomez mailto:guillermo.orfaoevale@upf.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9670-9214 https://produccioncientifica.usal.es/investigadores/147946/detalle transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 177 appendix tab. a1: discrete-time logistic regression models: union transition and the probability of motherhood (models 1-4) transition to first type of first duration of first type of union & union union union duration b se sig b se sig b se sig b se sig s(time) 5.41 6.52*** 5.42 6.53*** 5.43 6.55*** 5.47 6.58*** country of birth (r.c. spain) other 0.15 0.05** 0.19 0.05*** 0.17 0.05** 0.20 0.05*** education (r.c. primary or below) lower secondary 0.00 0.04 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.04 upper secondary -0.11 0.05* -0.09 0.05. -0.08 0.05. -0.08 0.05. tertiary -0.12 0.04** -0.09 0.05* -0.10 0.04* -0.09 0.05* religion (r.c. catholic) other -0.06 0.08 -0.07 0.08 -0.06 0.08 -0.06 0.08 none (non-believer) -0.26 0.04*** -0.20 0.04*** -0.24 0.04*** -0.19 0.04*** n.a. (no answer) -0.25 0.05*** -0.21 0.05*** -0.23 0.05*** -0.20 0.05*** cohort (r.c.: 1962-69) 1970-79 0.07 0.03* 0.12 0.03*** 0.09 0.03** 0.12 0.03*** number of siblings (r.c.: 0) 1-2 0.11 0.07 0.09 0.07 0.10 0.07 0.09 0.07 3 or more 0.19 0.07** 0.19 0.07** 0.19 0.07** 0.18 0.07** first union transition (r.c. no) yes 3.05 0.06*** type of first union (r.c. no partner) cohabitation 2.55 0.07*** marriage 3.12 0.06*** duration of first union (r.c. no partner) < 5 years 2.52 0.08*** >= 5 years 3.08 0.06*** type of union & duration (r.c. no partner) cohabitation & < less 5 years 2.34 0.11*** cohabitation & >= 5 years 2.64 0.08*** marriage & < less 5 years 2.73 0.11*** marriage & >= 5 years 3.14 0.06*** constant -5.23 0.09*** -5.29 0.09*** -5.25 0.09*** -5.29 0.09*** signif. codes: ‘.’ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. r.c. = reference category. source: ine’s fs2018 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu178 tab. a2: discrete-time logistic regression models: union transition and the probability of motherhood according to economic independence and employment status (models 5-6) type of first union & type of first union & economic independence employment b se sig b se sig s(time) 5.43 6.54*** 5.43 6.54*** country of birth (r.c. spain) other 0.19 0.05*** 0.19 0.05*** education (r.c. primary or below) lower secondary 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.04 upper secondary -0.09 0.05* -0.09 0.05. tertiary -0.09 0.05* -0.09 0.05* religion (r.c. catholic) other -0.07 0.08 -0.07 0.08 none (non-believer) -0.20 0.04*** -0.20 0.04*** n.a. (no answer) -0.21 0.05*** -0.21 0.05*** cohort (r.c.: 1962-69) 1970-79 0.12 0.03*** 0.12 0.03*** number of siblings (r.c.: 0) 1-2 0.09 0.07 0.09 0.07 3 or more 0.18 0.07* 0.18 0.07** type of first union & economic independence (r.c. no partner) cohabitation & without economic independence 2.29 0.17*** cohabitation & with economic independence 2.58 0.07*** marriage & without economic independence 3.12 0.07*** marriage & with economic independence 3.13 0.06*** type of first union & first employment (r.c. no partner) cohabitation & without employment 2.68 0.16*** cohabitation & with employment 2.54 0.07*** marriage & without employment 3.12 0.06*** marriage & with employment 3.13 0.06*** constant -5.28 0.09*** -5.28 0.09*** signif. codes: ‘.’ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. r.c. = reference category. source: ine’s fs2018 transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 179 tab. a3: discrete-time logistic regression models: leaving home, economic independence, and the probability of motherhood (models 7-8) leaving the parental home economic independence b se sig b se sig s(time) 5.26 6.37*** 5.48 6.59*** country of birth (r.c. spain) other -0.001 0.05 0.06 0.05 education (r.c. primary or below) lower secondary -0.12 0.04** -0.13 0.04** upper secondary -0.29 0.04*** -0.34 0.04*** tertiary -0.49 0.04*** -0.53 0.04*** religion (r.c. catholic) other -0.07 0.08 -0.06 0.07 none (non-believer) -0.31 0.04*** -0.28 0.04*** n.a. (no answer) -0.36 0.05*** -0.34 0.05*** cohort (r.c.: 1962-69) 1970-79 0.00 0.03 -0.02 0.03 number of siblings (r.c.: 0) 1-2 0.11 0.07 0.10 0.07 3 or more 0.16 0.07* 0.17 0.07* leaving the parental home (r.c. non) leaving the parental home 1.68 0.04*** economic independence (r.c. non) yes 1.24 0.04*** constant -3.966 0.08*** -3.71 0.08*** signif. codes: ‘.’ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. r.c. = reference category. source: ine’s fs2018 • alberto del rey, jesús garcía-gómez, guillermo orfao, mengyao wu180 tab. a4: discrete-time logistic regression models: leaving home, economic independence, and the probability of motherhood according to economic independence, partner, and employment status (models 9-11) leaving the parental home & economic independence union employment b se sig b se sig b se sig s(time) 5.26 6.36*** 5.30 6.41*** 5.26 6.36*** country of birth (r.c. spain) other 0.01 0.05 0.19 0.05*** 0.03 0.05 education (r.c. primary or below) lower secondary -0.12 0.04** -0.05 0.04 -0.13 0.04** upper secondary -0.29 0.04*** -0.19 0.05*** -0.31 0.04*** tertiary -0.46 0.04*** -0.28 0.04*** -0.51 0.04*** religion (r.c. catholic) other -0.07 0.08 -0.04 0.08 -0.06 0.08 none (non-believer) -0.31 0.04*** -0.23 0.04*** -0.31 0.04*** n.a. (no answer) -0.35 0.05*** -0.25 0.05*** -0.35 0.05*** cohort (r.c.: 1962-69) 1970-79 0.00 0.03 0.06 0.03. -0.02 0.03 number of siblings (r.c.: 0) 1-2 0.09 0.07 0.04 0.07 0.10 0.07 3 or more 0.14 0.07* 0.11 0.07 0.15 0.07* leaving the parental home & economic independence (r.c. no leaving home) without economic independence 1.34 0.07*** with economic independence 1.72 0.04*** leaving the parental home & union status (r.c. no leaving home) single 0.00 0.08 cohabitation 1.63 0.07*** marriage 2.14 0.04*** leaving the parental home & employment (r.c. no leaving home) without employment 1.57 0.05*** with employment 1.74 0.04*** constant -3.97 0.08*** -4.16 0.08*** -3.95 0.08*** signif. codes: ‘.’ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. r.c. = reference category. source: ine’s fs2018 transitions to motherhood in a low-fertility country • 181 tab. a5: discrete-time logistic regression models: first employment and the probability of motherhood (models 12-14) first employment type of first first employment & employment duration b se sig b se sig b se sig s(time) 5.35 6.455*** 5.35 6.45*** 5.35 6.45*** country of birth (r.c. spain) other 0.14 0.05** 0.13 0.05** 0.14 0.05** education (r.c. primary or below) lower secondary -0.11 0.04* -0.11 0.04** -0.11 0.04* upper secondary -0.31 0.04*** -0.32 0.04*** -0.31 0.04*** tertiary -0.52 0.04*** -0.53 0.04*** -0.52 0.04*** religion (r.c. catholic) other -0.04 0.07 -0.04 0.07 -0.04 0.07 none (non-believer) -0.20 0.04*** -0.20 0.04*** -0.20 0.04*** n.a. (no answer) -0.32 0.05*** -0.32 0.05*** -0.32 0.05*** cohort (r.c.: 1962-69) 1970-79 -0.03 0.03 -0.02 0.03 -0.03 0.03 number of siblings (r.c.: 0) 1-2 0.19 0.07** 0.19 0.07** 0.19 0.07** 3 or more 0.28 0.07*** 0.28 0.07*** 0.28 0.07*** first employment (r.c. no) yes 0.14 0.04*** first employment (r.c. never worked) entrepreneur / self-employed 0.03 0.06 employed (permanent) 0.19 0.05*** employee (other) 0.14 0.04*** first employment & duration (r.c. without stability) less 5 years 0.14 0.04*** 5 years and more 0.17 0.07* constant -3.07 0.08*** -3.07 0.08*** -3.07 0.08*** signif. codes: ‘.’ p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. r.c. = reference category. source: ine’s fs2018 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec abstract: yugoslavia was a union of countries at the crossroads of cultures, rich in diversity, bringing together heterogeneous populations with very different demographic transition pathways, particularly with respect to fertility. this paper studies the trends and patterns of cohort fertility in former yugoslav countries, similarities and differences between the countries, and their possible clustering. do former yugoslav countries exhibit persistent diversity to this day, or is there convergence in terms of cohort fertility behaviour? if so, what might account for this homogeneity within yugoslavia’s heterogeneity? we trace how fertility behaviour changed from the turn of the twentieth century, when yugoslav countries began their progression from agrarian into industrial capitalist societies. we consider the factors related to a rapid transformation to socialist modernity after 1945 and proceed to investigate the federation’s breakup and the successor states’ transitions to market economies in the early 1990s. our study thus covers a century of socioeconomic and fertility developments within the region. we analyse census data on children born by means of the completed cohort fertility rate, parity progression ratios, and parity composition. our results show that while fertility levels decreased in all former yugoslav republics, this happened at different speeds and taking different paths. parity progression to higher birth orders was particularly responsible for this development, as well as for the differences and similarities between the respective republics. former yugoslav republics are clustered into three groups, where croatia, slovenia, and serbia form the low fertility group, and bosnia-herzegovina, north macedonia, and montenegro belong to a higher fertility group. kosovo remains a special case with exceptionally high fertility in the european context. we conclude that this clustering stems from a complex interplay of historical, political, economic and social factors. keywords: cohort fertility · census data · former yugoslav countries · parity progression ratios · parity composition comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 229-264 (date of release: 14.09.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-18 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-18en0 • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec230 1 introduction the year 2018 marked the centennial of the birth of yugoslavia, a former state in south-eastern europe, about the size of the united kingdom and with a population of more than 12 million at the time of its creation (simeunović 1964). from a demographic perspective, yugoslavia is an interesting case to explore, with its staggeringly diverse collection of ethnicities that were long ruled by two major foreign empires. the downfall of the austro-hungarian and ottoman empires by the end of world war i made grounds for the realisation of the idea of a unifi ed south slavic state. the so-called first yugoslavia was founded as a state union of serbs, croats, and slovenes, but in reality, it was a multinational kingdom with about two million members of ethnic minorities (erlich 1966). after the turbulent times of world war ii, the rebirth of the country was realised in 1945 as a socialist federal republic. it comprised six socialist republics: bosnia-herzegovina, croatia, macedonia, montenegro, serbia, and slovenia, as well as two autonomous provinces within serbia (kosovo and vojvodina). in the 1990s, yugoslavia broke up in a series of wars that ultimately ended with the establishment of seven sovereign states: bosnia-herzegovina, croatia, kosovo, north macedonia, montenegro, serbia, and slovenia. yugoslavia was very rich in socio-economic and cultural diversity. this stemmed from a complex interplay between historical, political, economic, and social factors. western infl uences (mostly originating from the austro-hungarian era) in some parts of the country collided with ottoman infl uences in others. yugoslavia was at the crossroads of cultures, bringing together heterogeneous populations with signifi cantly different demographic transition pathways, especially with respect to fertility. the cultural setting was multifaceted, encompassing a mix of religious identities (orthodox christians, roman catholics, and muslims), with strikingly different norms, values, and family practices. given yugoslavia’s multinational character, such a complex economic, cultural, and institutional setting may have produced different effects on cohort fertility outcomes in each of the former constituent states. some parts of yugoslavia experienced a much earlier onset of the fertility decline, while others maintained high fertility even after the post-world war ii baby boom era (breznik 1991). fertility trends in yugoslav regions were a mirror image of global fertility trends: differences between the most and least developed parts of yugoslavia refl ected worldwide differences in fertility levels between high-income and least-developed countries. those unfamiliar with yugoslavia’s background could easily assume that its constituent states exhibited similar demographic patterns. however, as the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly diffi cult to imagine that slovenia and kosovo were part of the same country. historically, for example, kosovo strongly lagged behind slovenia in its economic and overall social development. infant mortality declined below the threshold of 100 infant deaths per 1000 births soon after world war ii in slovenia and montenegro, but this decline did not occur in bosnia, macedonia, and kosovo until the 1960s (simeunović 1964). in the 1980s, the gross social product per capita of slovenia was seven times higher than that of the least developed region within yugoslavia, kosovo (gligorov 2016). cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 231 yugo-specifi c fertility dynamics, however, have not yet been fully explored in the demographic literature (see breznik 1991 for a more detailed review). existing research mostly deals with the long-term change in period fertility (rašević 1971; breznik et al. 1972; breznik 1980), but only partially – if at all – includes cohort fertility analyses. cohort data on fertility rates, family size, and parity composition have rarely been studied for the region, with some notable exceptions. rašević (1971) and breznik and colleagues (1972) used 1961 census data to construct cohort fertility rates, parity progression ratios, and cohort-specifi c proportions of childless women. they also reported on basic demographic, socioeconomic, and regional cohort fertility differentials. breznik (1991) did similar work with 1971 and 1981 census data. these studies are now dated and – more importantly – not available in english, which makes them mostly inaccessible to the international research community. a small number of english-language studies on fertility developments in the former yugoslav countries are either part of a broader cross-european cohort fertility analyses (frejka/sardon 2006; frejka/gietel-basten 2016) or refer to the most recent period fertility trends (lerch 2018). to the best of our knowledge, this study is the fi rst to investigate historical cohort fertility trends and patterns that covers the full course of the fertility transitions in all seven yugoslav successor states. in this paper, we aim to describe how cohort fertility evolved in the formerly yugoslav countries, we look for country clusters tab. 1: crude birth rate (1900-1939) and total fertility rate (1950-2018) period bosniacroatia north montenegro serbia slovenia kosovo herzegovina macedonia crude birth rate around 1900 41.0 38.2 – – 38.0 34.0 – 1931 40.3 31.4 37.6 30.9 35.1 27.3 37.5 1939 35.1 24.1 32.8 28.6 22.6 21.7 31.5 total fertility rate 1950 5.22 2.91 5.81 4.32 3.17 2.98 7.03 1960 3.91 2.18 4.11 3.47 2.09 2.17 6.70 1970 2.67 1.81 2.99 2.61 1.86 2.11 5.48 1980 1.88 1.91 2.45 2.16 1.85 2.12 4.83 1990 1.71 1.63 2.06 1.79 1.75 1.46 3.58 2000 – 1.42 1.88 1.85 1.43 1.26 – 2010 1.63 1.55 1.56 1.66 1.40 1.58 2.46 2018 – 1.47 1.42 1.76 1.49 1.60 – the value for bosnia-herzegovina, 2010, is our own estimate using 2013 census data. the value for kosovo, 2010, is estimated using 2011 census data, from the european demographic datasheet 2014 (wic 2014). source: cbr: rašević (1971) and gelo (1987). data for serbia (1900-2000) are for central serbia only. tfr: human fertility collection (2019), namely observatoire démographique européen (ode) (for 1950), gaćeša 1991 (for 1960-1980), national statistical institutes (for 1990-2017); eurostat (2019). • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec232 that share similar characteristics and we try to assess whether a common yugoslav background has spurred between-cluster convergence. more specifi cally, we address the following research questions: 1. what are the trends and patterns of cohort fertility in the former yugoslav countries? 2. are some countries more similar to one another than to others? can country clusters be identifi ed? and, if so, what might account for this homogeneity within yugoslavia’s heterogeneity? 3. do former yugoslav countries exhibit persistent (between-cluster) diversity, or is there (at least some) convergence in terms of cohort fertility behaviour? similarities and differences in fertility decline can be related to the socioeconomic and cultural contexts within each yugoslav country. in this paper, we further aim to trace how fertility behaviour changed from the turn of the twentieth century, when yugoslav countries began their progression from agrarian into industrial capitalist societies. then, we consider the factors related to a rapid transformation to socialist modernity after 1945. finally, we investigate the federation’s breakup and the successor states’ transitions to market economies in the early 1990s. our study thus covers a century of socioeconomic and fertility developments within the region. 2 socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional contexts of fertility change before turning to a more detailed investigation of the specifi c economic, social, and institutional contexts of fertility change in yugoslavia, we provide a short overview of the main theoretical perspectives on the historical fertility transition. there is no consensus among demographers on the causes and mechanisms of fertility decline in europe over the past two centuries. dominant theories and explanations of why fertility declined often dichotomise “economy” versus “culture” (balbo et al. 2013). in this paper, we present a macro-level study of fertility change and build on these two broad approaches in an attempt to explain cohort fertility dynamics in former yugoslavia. according to classical demographic transition theory (see kirk 1996), economic factors are central to fertility decline. numerous macro-level studies stress the role of modernisation, industrialisation, urbanisation, educational expansion, labour market changes, and fi nally yet importantly, infant mortality decline in adapting to new socioeconomic conditions resulting in family size reductions. economists extended the scope of the original formulation of demographic transition theory. the most infl uential extension, the microeconomic theory of fertility (becker 1960, 1991), applies the economic theory of consumer behaviour to fertility decisions and focuses on couples’ reactions to changes in income and the costs of children. an especially popular contribution of the economic analysis of fertility is the well-known quantity-quality trade-off, with parents having fewer children (a drop in quantity), but at a higher cost (an increase in quality). the economic study of fertility was furcohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 233 ther extended by easterlin’s relative income hypothesis (easterlin 1975), which links relative cohort size to income potential and fertility, with fertility cycles and baby booms and busts as results. in his intergenerational wealth fl ow theory, caldwell (1976) offered a hypothesis according to which in traditional societies, children work and contribute to family income, while in modern societies, children become far more costly to their parents, so the net wealth fl ow reverses. the largest empirical test of the demographic transition theory, the european fertility project directed by ansley coale (coale/watkins 1986), brought about new evidence suggesting that the fertility transition was driven more strongly by cultural than socioeconomic factors. the so-called “innovation diffusion” perspective hypothesises that fertility declined because new knowledge about birth control spread alongside more permissive values and attitudes that made birth control more socially acceptable (cleland/wilson 1987). starting from the 1960s, in western and northern europe, this perspective on fertility decline gave rise to a novel narrative of the diffusion of new family and fertility behaviour: the theory of the second demographic transition (van de kaa 1987; leasthaeghe 1995). the basic premise of the theory is that ideational shifts led to profound demographic and social changes, including declining marriage rates, rising ages at fi rst marriage, increasing cohabitation, rising divorce rates, increasing nonmarital fertility, postponement of childbearing, below-replacement fertility, rising childlessness among women ever in a union, rising symmetry in gender roles, effi cient contraception use, the sexual revolution, rising female education levels, greater female economic autonomy, the retreat of the state, increasing refusal of authority, individual autonomy, and self-realisation. the creators of this theory acknowledged the contribution of economic and structural changes to this cultural shift, but it is the ideational change that lies at the heart of the explanation (surkyn/lesthaeghe 2004). during the period covered by our study, which stretches over more than a century (from 1890s to early 2010s), numerous factors shaped fertility change in the former yugoslav countries. although the constituent states held together for more than 70 years, the contexts within which fertility changes took place were diverse. this study does not aim to provide an exhaustive examination of all possible factors that could have shaped the reproductive behaviour of the population of yugoslavia. we only want to point to the most relevant factors that are most likely to have triggered and patterned completed fertility. we start with a brief timeline of the rise and fall of yugoslavia, followed by a description of key domains related to fertility reduction: economic development; family life; women’s education and economic activity; fertility regulation; and population policy. 2.1 the rise and fall of yugoslavia in the territory that was known as yugoslavia for much of the twentieth century, today we fi nd seven independent states. however, not all of them were independent before the fi rst unifi cation at the end of world war i. serbia and montenegro were independent kingdoms at the turn of the century, and previously vassals of the ottoman empire. ethnically mixed bosnia-herzegovina and macedonia remained under • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec234 ottoman rule and cultural infl uence even longer, until 1878 and 1912, respectively. croatia and slovenia were part of the austro-hungarian empire until its dissolution in 1918 (calic 2019). among all states established in europe after world war i, yugoslavia was the most diverse and complex (calic 2019). the narrative of yugoslavia starts in 1918, when the south slavs united under the state that had been organised as a monarchy, formally named "kingdom of the serbs, croats and slovenes" and ruled by the serbian karađorđević dynasty. the state changed its name to "kingdom of yugoslavia" in 1929 as other nations and groups such as macedonians, bosniak muslims, montenegrins, and many other ethnic minorities lived under the heading of the same state name. the fi rst yugoslavia ceased to exist when world war ii broke out in the region in 1941. after the war ended in 1945, yugoslavia was renewed as a federal people’s republic of yugoslavia, with the central aims of internal cohesion, socialist/communist brotherhood, and unity. in 1963, the country’s name was offi cially changed to the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia (calic 2019). yugoslavia fell apart in a series of wars in slovenia (1991), croatia (1991-1995), bosnia-herzegovina (19921995) and kosovo (1998-1999), with tens of thousands dead, as well as millions of refugees and displaced persons. the dissolution of socialist yugoslavia began in 1991, when slovenia and croatia declared their independence, followed by macedonia and bosnia-herzegovina. in 1992, serbia (including kosovo and vojvodina) and montenegro established a rump state: the federal republic of yugoslavia. in 2003, serbia and montenegro established a short-lived state union – dropping the name “yugoslavia” – that lasted until 2006, when montenegro declared its independence. finally, in 2008, kosovo declared independence from serbia, which signifi ed the fi nal breakup of yugoslavia. 2.2 sharp contrasts in economic development in the late nineteenth century, virtually all parts of what would become yugoslavia were economically underdeveloped relative to the rest of europe and predominantly agrarian. even in the most developed region, slovenia, the signifi cant majority of the population were peasants, and three-quarters of the economically active population worked in agriculture (rašević 1971). in the interwar period, yugoslavia had the highest percentage of agrarian population in europe (erlich 1966). socioeconomic factors prompted differing demographic patterns: slovenia roughly resembled western europe with its relatively low fertility, while kosovo had a high pretransitional fertility (breznik et al. 1972). somewhat stronger industrial development had occurred in slovenia and croatia, which had been part of the austro-hungarian empire. the beginning of fertility decline coincides with the development of capitalism. in croatia, industrial development progressed in the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, but agriculture was still the predominant economic activity. at the same time, the emergence of capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in serbia not only resulted in economic changes, but also in broader societal ones (the development of cities, greater social mobility, the spread of literacy). these processes, although slow, infl uenced fertility through new views on family cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 235 size, age at marriage, and marriage formation and dissolution (rašević 1971). other yugoslav republics were among the last in europe to experience modernisation (leasure 1992): economic and industrial development in early twentieth-century bosnia-herzegovina, macedonia, and montenegro was very slow and late to start, delaying socioeconomic change affecting the reproductive behaviour. in kosovo, high fertility before world war ii resulted from what remained of the feudal system. extensive agriculture demanded labour force, a demand further heightened by high levels of child and adult mortality (rašević 1971). the gap between population growth and economic growth brought about agrarian overpopulation and unemployment (calic 2019). agrarian overpopulation and unemployment occurred because the economy was developing slowly and not creating enough jobs, which spurred the great waves of emigration from slovenia and croatia (rašević 1971; gelo 1987). in slovenia, and to a lesser extent, in croatia, high rates of unmarried women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at least in part resulted from gender imbalances caused by the higher emigration rates of young, unmarried males (rašević 1971).1 throughout the interwar years, the agrarian character of the yugoslav economy continued to dominate, and the country remained largely undeveloped. the vast majority of the population worked in agriculture, the share of the urban population grew slowly, and literacy was slow to expand, but there was far less emigration than in the previous decades (rašević 1971). there was a speed-up in industrialisation throughout the 1920s, but yugoslavia had not yet developed the typical features of a modern society (calic 2019). the impact of the great economic crisis on fertility and family dynamics was greater in slovenia, croatia, and serbia due to a stronger penetration of capitalism. bosnia-herzegovina, macedonia, montenegro, and kosovo were underdeveloped agrarian communities with rigid social norms regarding reproduction, and were therefore relatively isolated from global economic trends at the time (rašević 1971). in 1948, the yugoslav rural population began to decline in size, but some features of a traditional agrarian society remained, nonetheless. even in slovenia and croatia, large extended families lived and worked together under the new industrial conditions (calic 2019). after world war ii, the yugoslav economy and society witnessed a profound transformation, especially after 1953. intensive rural-to-urban migration, a rise in living standards, increases in women’s employment beyond agriculture, educational expansion, and improvements in health services were all in progress (rašević 1971). yugoslavia experienced unprecedented change in the twenty years following 1945, with the most rapid urbanisation in all of europe following world war ii (calic 2019). by the 1960s, society could no longer be characterised as rural-traditional, while also not yet fully urban-industrial. the structural change brought about by industrialisation eased, but the problem of agrarian underemployment remained without a 1 according to the 1948 census, the proportion of unmarried women at age 75-79 was 3.7 percent in all of yugoslavia, but 14.5 percent in slovenia (rašević 1971: 67, table 3). • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec236 satisfying solution (calic 2019). meanwhile, many peasants and the post-war baby boomers entered the urban labour market. the resulting surplus of labour was one of the reasons why yugoslavia was the only socialist country in europe that tolerated and even promoted out-migration (bonifazi/mamolo 2004). during the 1960s, yugoslavia had crossed the threshold from an agrarian to an industrial society, and the population was wealthier than ever before (calic 2019). between 1950 and 1965, real income grew by about 80 percent, and the wealth gap with the western industrial nations narrowed. this meant that “yugoslavs no longer lived in europe’s poorhouse” (calic 2019: 208) and yugoslav society resembled western europe’s more closely. yugoslavia’s socialist self-management in many ways differed from other state socialist regimes in europe. rapid industrialisation during the 1950s (horvat 1971) was accompanied by considerable rural-to-urban migration, and unemployment – in contrast to other planned economies – became a chronic problem (woodward 1995). unemployment rates were higher in the least developed republics – kosovo and macedonia – and lowest in the two wealthiest ones, slovenia and croatia (gligorov 2016).2 in the 1980s, yugoslavia entered an economic recession. this was accompanied by a rise in foreign debt and infl ation, and a decline in living standards. from the late 1970s onwards, the yugoslav economy was faced with the unemployment upsurge caused by market-oriented economic reforms of the fi rst half of the 1960s. unemployment now affected not only unskilled rural workers, but also the skilled labour force (woodward 1995). the economic and social crises that followed the 1991 dissolution of yugoslavia produced a sharp drop in living standards and a rise in social problems (kaporstanulović/david 1999). these changes brought about economic and social insecurity, worsened by an outbreak of wars. recovery began in the 2000s, when all former yugoslav countries once again had reached their 1989 gdp levels (bolt et al. 2018). 2.3 family life in the yugoslav countries the role of women in many yugoslav countries during the fi rst half of the twentieth century was shaped by patriarchal family and social relations, as well as by traditional morality based on the norms of the prevailing peasant society (erlich 1966). the low status of women in the patriarchal peasant society before world war ii included a traditional gender division of labour. widespread illiteracy and traditional family values and customs resulted in high fertility. in such circumstances, children – and sons in particular – were regarded as highly valued labour force and as someone to continue the family line (rašević 1971). historically, yugoslav women 2 in 1980, unemployment in slovenia was 1.4 percent, 5.2 percent in croatia, 15.8 percent in serbia (excluding voivodina), 14.1 percent in bosnia, 14.7 percent in montenegro, 21.5 percent in macedonia, and 27.6 percent in kosovo (gligorov 2016: 19, table 5). cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 237 assumed a more submissive and subservient role than women in many other european countries (springer 1986). in many parts of yugoslavia, a basic social unit of family life was the zadruga, a patriarchal family community. before the twentieth century, it was the most common form of family organisation in the region, with members owning and working common land (erlich 1966; sklar 1974). the members of a zadruga were related by blood or marriage. women were subservient to men and performed much of the hardest physical work (springer 1986). the zadruga system conditioned early and universal marriage that was widespread throughout the region (sklar 1974; hammel 1975). nonetheless, early trends toward social change from the nineteenth century continued in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. in parts of yugoslavia where extended families were becoming rarer, there were more unmarried people, more women were using birth control, and abortions were more frequent (calic 2019). however, nineteenth and early twentieth century modernisation processes did not infl uence all areas equally (erlich 1966). regional fertility differences can be traced to the different cultural infl uences to which the particular republic was exposed. in particular, differences in social norms regarding marriage formation came to the fore. social norms of marriage formation may have had their roots in economic and social circumstances. fertility was highest in the least developed parts of yugoslavia: areas that were under ottoman infl uence for a longer time, as well as areas in which the traditional zadruga remained intact. on the other hand, fertility was lowest in developed parts of the country, which were dominated by their northern and western neighbours, or had developed on their own (rašević 1971). certain ethnic characteristics may also have affected fertility levels. this is especially true of sociocultural factors, such as social customs, moral codes, or religious doctrines. religious affi liation played an important role in political, cultural, and social life during the interwar period (calic 2019). its association with fertility possibly ran through marriage norms (age at marriage, prevalence of celibacy, remarriage of widows, etc.) or through a direct impact on the number of births (women’s status in the family, changing attitudes about family size, religious norms of birth control, attitudes toward sexual life, etc.) (breznik et al. 1972; rašević 1971). the impact of marital behaviour on fertility varied. in macedonia and kosovo, almost universal marriage was certainly one of the reasons behind high fertility. in other areas, the importance of marital variables was also noticeable, except in slovenia, where widespread celibacy contributed to low fertility (breznik et al. 1972). this phenomenon is related to the traditional inheritance system in slovenia, which allowed only the oldest son and daughter to marry and bear children, while younger siblings remained unmarried if they did not fi nd their own means of subsistence (breznik 1991). a similar system was in place in parts of what is now croatia, where more than 20 percent of women born during the late 1860s and early 1870s remained childless. on the other hand, childlessness was low in kosovo, macedonia, and parts of serbia and bosnia, where the family system followed different rules. in slovenia, fertility rates were closer to those in western europe. high rates of unmarried women in slovenia in cohorts born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were partly a result of changing social norms of marriage, and partly a • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec238 result of high emigration rates of young men. at the same time, in bosnia-herzegovina, only 5 percent of adult women remained unmarried (rašević 1971). in socialist yugoslavia, the traditional patriarchal family changed and disappeared. in the period immediately following world war ii, many women in yugoslavia resumed their traditional roles as wives and mothers, especially in rural areas (jancar-webster 1990). the trend toward secularisation accelerated after 1945. apart from the well-known determinants associated with the demographic transition (industrialisation, changes in the economic structure of the population, urbanisation, increases in education, greater population, and social mobility), several important factors related to the revolutionary social changes during and after the war contributed to drops in fertility. these were related to women’s status within the family; changes in family relations; changes in attitudes toward religion and other social institutions; and increases in parents’ efforts to provide a better education for their children (rasević 1971; breznik et al. 1972). patriarchal attitudes, values, and social relations eroded (calic 2019), and changes in the social structure were of such a magnitude that they accelerated the process of changing attitudes toward family size, which began in yugoslavia in the late nineteenth century (rašević 1971). the dominant male role in marriage ceased to exist as it had before the war, and marriage started to become more and more of a partnership (calic 2019). socialist modernisation, consumerism, more education and increasing job opportunities for women promoted a slow but sure shift to more gender egalitarianism during the 1960s (calic 2019). the acceptance of gender equality was uneven in the yugoslav population. slovenia can be regarded as having been relatively progressive, with the least traditional gender roles, and the nuclear family as the norm (woodward 1995). however, profound changes in gender relations did not occur in bosnia-hercegovina, montenegro, or macedonia, where the extended family was still typical (woodward 1995). despite increasingly working outside the home, even in the late 1980s, women took greater responsibility for housework. neither education, occupation, urbanisation, nor participation in the informal economy had a signifi cant effect in reducing this. only the presence of an older female in the household measurably reduced an employed woman’s participation in the “second shift” (massey et al. 1995). in almost all republics, women still worked the “second shift” in the household, and childcare facilities such as nurseries and kindergartens were lacking and widely unaffordable (transmonee database 2019). today, young people in the western balkans have chosen conformity, rather than challenging traditional norms on family formation, because the family remains the main social safety net (lerch 2018). many features of the second demographic transition did not reach the majority of the population in the less developed regions. former yugoslav countries belong to regions with the highest share of young people who live in the parental home in europe (eurostat database 2019). there are still high marriage rates in kosovo and north macedonia, and low extra-marital fertility in almost all regions except slovenia (where it exceeds 50 percent). the mean age of women at fi rst birth used to be very low from the 1960s to 1980s, comparable to other socialist countries (22-24 years of age). since 1990, it increased more in croacohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 239 tia (28.5 in 2017) and slovenia (28.8) than in other regions (around 27 years of age in kosovo and bosnia-herzegovina) (eurostat database 2019). 2.4 women’s education and economic activity many factors contributed to the weakening of the patriarchal model and the transformation of the traditional yugoslav family throughout the twentieth century, but mass education and employment of women outside the household were especially important (breznik et al. 1972). it was not until the early twentieth century that women started basic education in larger numbers in serbia. the situation was very similar in slovenia and croatia, while in bosnia-herzegovina, kosovo, and parts of macedonia, girls’ education was not only denied, but the state even allowed sharia law until 1945 (breznik et al. 1972). high illiteracy was closely associated with more traditional values and attitudes and, consequently, with higher fertility. the greatest increase in literacy happened in the early twentieth century in slovenia. it was somewhat slower in croatia and serbia, and very slow in other countries (rašević 1971). however, there were already some notable between-country differences in the early twentieth century. according to the 1921 census, the percentage of illiterate women was the lowest in slovenia, but high in serbia (44 percent) and bosniaherzegovina (57 percent) (somerville 1965). in the kingdom of yugoslavia, basic schooling was compulsory, at least formally, but not all children were covered by primary education. girls, especially those who lived in poor regions, were often excluded from schooling (somerville 1965). female education grew more slowly relative to other socialist countries (woodward 1985), but there were huge regional variations, pointing to yugoslavia’s uneven economic development. in the early post-world war ii years, the education of girls was still very modest. schooling of girls became widespread in later decades, especially during the 1970s. women began to catch up in higher education statistics and increasingly attained tertiary education. they not only narrowed the gender gap in education, but also became equal with men in terms of their representation in higher education institutions (woodward 1985). the further expansion in female educational participation in the 1990s led to later childbearing as compared to the socialist era (eurostat database 2019), which is related to the so-called “postponement transition” (sobotka 2011; kohler et al. 2002). however, signifi cant regional variations regarding female educational levels persisted. the similar proportion of women aged 20-39 with post-secondary education that was achieved in serbia and montenegro in 1990 (around 12 percent) was not achieved in the less-developed countries (kosovo, north macedonia, bosniaherzegovina) until 2002 or later (lerch 2018: table 1). the relationship between education and fertility was probably mediated by economic and cultural circumstances. rašević (1971) found that the link between education and fertility in yugoslavia was strong, and that it was weakest in low-birth rate regions and strongest in middle and high-birth rate regions. female economic activity is another determinant that was often discussed among yugoslav demographers (rašević 1971; breznik 1991) as a driver of fertility, espe• ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec240 cially in republics with high fertility, in which social change and fertility decline were markedly faster only in urban areas. later, when such changes spread to the rural population, the impact of women’s activity on fertility rates diminished (breznik et al. 1972). before world war ii, women were rarely in paid employment outside their households (rašević 1971), a situation that changed after the war. female employment continuously increased until the 1960s in non-agriculture sectors, faster than in any other european country (calic 2019). nevertheless, the pressure on women to join the labour force, typical to european socialist countries, was never present in yugoslavia. yugoslav women had lower labour market participation rates than women in other socialist countries. in the 1970s and 1980s, female employment fi gures were closer to the lower numbers found in western europe (woodward 1985). the combined effect of preserved traditional attitudes toward working women, together with the chronic shortage of jobs (labour surplus), contributed to a lower participation rate for women in paid employment (springer 1986). married women had a lower attachment to the labour force, which indicates that traditional values might have discourage married women from working (reeves 1990). during state-socialism, yugoslav republics and provinces developed economically at different rates, and this had a visible impact on women’s lives. women in wealthier republics (slovenia and croatia) prospered more than women in other regions (reeves 1990). slovenia was the most progressive republic, with the highest levels of female employment, and where the work of women outside their households has had the longest tradition. during this period, slovenia even had one of the highest proportions of women in the total employed population in europe (mežnarić 1985). in the 1990s and 2000s, the region underwent a substantial reduction in employment rates and a surge in job insecurity that hit women especially hard (brunnbauer 2000). relatively low economic activity rates (particularly among women), a large share of long-term unemployment, a shrinking working-age population, and high youth unemployment have remained dominant features of all countries in the post-yugoslav era, with the exception of slovenia. female employment was low compared to the eu average, and unemployment rates in the 1990s and 2000s were among the highest in europe (eurostat database 2019). female labour market integration remains a key challenge for many countries in the region. work-schedule fl exibility is low, part-time employment is less common than in most (other) eu member states, and societal and cultural attitudes toward working women remain fuzzy. 2.5 fertility regulation birth control and the prevalence of fertility regulation within marriage in yugoslavia were major contributing factors in the differentiation of fertility rates between the republics (rašević 1971; breznik et al. 1972). despite their relatively weak socioeconomic development in the early twentieth century, the populations of the balkan countries adopted the practice of voluntary birth control within marriage more quickly than the rest of europe (botev 1988). birth control began to emerge in the cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 241 late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in slovenia and some parts of croatia and serbia (rašević 1971). due to the rise of literacy and education, the use of classical methods of contraception began in slovenia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside abortions as a means of terminating unwanted pregnancies (breznik 1991). there is some evidence that the population of eastern serbia, in some parts of croatia, in vojvodina, and in other areas accepted birth control in marriage, triggered by specifi c economic factors (breznik et al. 1972). in serbia, fertility decline started before any signifi cant economic progress. abortions performed by non-skilled persons were a common practice. a preference for small families emerged as an incentive to prevent land from being divided among multiple heirs. this economic motive was also widespread in other areas, for example, in slavonia –the most eastern region in croatia (rašević 1971; breznik et al. 1972). between the two wars, both the relative and absolute numbers of abortions increased (rašević 1971; breznik et al. 1972). societal attitudes toward birth control during this period tended towards prohibition. immediately following world war ii, birth control gradually increased in the form of a large number of so-called “incomplete abortions” (self-induced or administered by non-professionals), for which women had sought professional help in healthcare institutions (breznik et al. 1972). the fi rst abortion regulation in 1952 allowed abortions only for medical and ethical reasons. legislation that is more liberal entered into force in 1960, allowing women to have abortions legally for social reasons as well (rasević 1971). socialist yugoslavia was a trendsetter in its offi cial support for women’s rights, having put into its 1974 constitution (article 191) that “it is a human right to decide freely on childbearing” (drezgić 2010). most spouses accepted birth regulation as a part of their “lifestyle”, mainly through abortions, which were very common in some regions. abortion as a method of fertility regulation was used (often repeatedly) by women at all levels of educational attainment, in order to maintain the desired number of children (drezgić 2010). modern contraceptives were made available in yugoslavia in the 1960s, but their spread was limited in all republics except slovenia (breznik 1991). the majority of women still relied on traditional contraceptive methods, such as coitus interruptus, and modern contraception was widespread only in slovenia (breznik 1991). after 1970, the adoption of new legislation on abortion led to a rise in the number of registered abortions. some scholars assume that the liberalisation of abortion regulation meant that many previously illegal abortions could now be sought out legally (breznik 1991). the overall use of modern contraceptives was low and went in tandem with high abortion rates (kapor-stanulović/david 1999; drezgić 2010). throughout socialist yugoslavia, except in kosovo, almost half of all pregnancies ended in abortion (kapor-stanulović/david 1999). abortion rates were comparatively very high in yugoslavia (especially in serbia); they were higher only in the soviet union (drezgić 2010). within yugoslavia, abortion and contraceptive practice were least accepted in kosovo (breznik 1991). after the dissolution of yugoslavia in the 1990s, attempts were made to restrict reproductive rights and freedoms. this happened even though abortion rates declined signifi cantly in all yugoslav republics; the decrease was lowest in serbia (ka• ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec242 por-stanulovic/david 1999). with the advancement of nationalist ideologies in the 1990s, the birth and biological survival of the nation became the dominant theme of political discourse, and population themes were part of these ideologies (drezgić 2010). for example, in 1990s croatia and later, it was much more diffi cult to exercise the right to abortion, although the legislation itself had not changed in any signifi cant way. as a result of a campaign in which the catholic church and religious organisations started to advocate the “right to life” and pronatalism, many physicians refused to perform abortions (kapor-stanulovic/david 1999). 2.6 spurious population policies little attention has been devoted to population policies and family planning programmes before the socialist period. in the fi rst decades of the socialist period, authorities mostly neglected demographic issues (drezgić 2010). compared to the standards of that time in many other countries, yugoslavia maintained a very liberal population policy (calic 2019). moreover, while other eastern european socialist countries opted for pronatalist policies (albeit in varying degrees), yugoslavia endorsed a liberal principle of family planning, refraining from openly pronatalist measures (drezgić 2010). in the mid-1960s, yugoslavia was the only european country with a digressive scale for family allowances (besemeres 1980). child allowance payments were decentralised in the late 1960s. higher benefi ts were paid in wealthier republics with lower fertility (e.g. slovenia), and lower benefi ts were paid in poorer regions with higher fertility (e.g. kosovo). however, these differences were not pronounced, and authorities in kosovo introduced and even raised child benefi ts (besemeres 1980). why did yugoslavia not implement a pronatalist policy, like other socialist european countries, even though some republics and provinces already exhibited the lowest fertility rates in the world by the 1960s? besemeres (1980) offers several possible explanations. the communists in yugoslavia were more liberal than other socialist regimes, with no interest in interfering with family decision-making. in addition, in the 1960s, the country fell into a labour surplus, so there was no need for the federal government to addresses the possible future shortage of labour. due to large regional disparities in fertility levels, the common pronatalist policy could easily become a politically sensitive issue, and selective introduction by republics and provinces could have become a potential source of inter-regional dispute. while the “homogenisation” of fertility rates became one of the normative principles of demographic discourse in yugoslavia, it was never operationalised into specifi c policies at the federal level (drezgić 2010). besemeres (1980) also raised the question of whether yugoslavia had any population policy at all, because at the time, it was one of very few countries in the world that included in its constitution the right to decide freely about childbirth. however, in 1969, the federal assembly adopted a resolution on family planning, allowing the republics (provinces) to introduce and implement regionally differentiated population policy. population policy was reconsidered in a 1975 developmental policy document, but not as a standalone topic (breznik 1991; drezgic 2010). in the cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 243 1980s, regional authorities in low-fertility regions passed several resolutions and strategies with clearly proclaimed pronatalist objectives, but their implementation either failed or never happened (breznik 1991). in the 1990s, especially in croatia and serbia, there was an attempt to replace socialist family policies, which had aimed, at least formally, for gender equality, with traditional and pronatalist proposals (drezgić 2008; dobrotić 2018). the “demographic renewal” agenda in croatia in the 1990s was most visible in the offi cial government proposal to introduce the paid profession of a mother-caregiver. the aim was to provide all mothers with four or more children with an average salary (dobrotić 2018). however, this idea of re-traditionalisation and withdrawal of women from the labour market was never implemented. in subsequent strategies on family and population policy, the pronatalist effort still dominated, but the notion of withdrawing women from the labour market weakened, and was rarely expressed explicitly (dobrotić 2018). nevertheless, in the 1990s and 2000s, while the pronatalist agenda was visible in public discourse and remained high on the list of policy priorities throughout the region, the lack of resources and economic crises challenged such initiatives. these fi ndings are not surprising, as pronatalist “our nation is dying” agendas in the formulation of family policy have been present in many central and eastern european countries, especially after 2000 (sobotka 2011). in comparison to other former yugoslav countries, slovenia has a relatively well-developed, comprehensive family policy, but research has not revealed any signifi cant impact of individual family policy measures on individual fertility behaviour (frejka/ gietel-basten 2016). in sum, promoting higher fertility in former yugoslav countries has not been especially effective over the past few decades. a search for all possible factors that might have contributed to cohort fertility declines in the seven former yugoslav countries over a century-long period requires monograph-length explanation. these factors were and still are obviously numerous, and the exact degree of their infl uence cannot be properly assessed when the availability of appropriate data is limited. in this chapter, we have provided a thorough review of economic and societal changes that took place in yugoslavia during the twentieth century, with an effort to describe in detail their possible impact on long-term cohort fertility developments. numerous and varied fertility determinants stemming from a complex interplay of political, economic and social forces are either regionor country-specifi c. socio-economic and cultural change was, to a non-negligible extent, country-specifi c, but some countries nonetheless shared similarities. in regions where people began to practice birth control (including abortions) within marriage, fertility fell earlier, and the pace of its decline was faster. in other countries, modernisation and sociocultural changes came later, but proceeded more quickly. this chapter has provided a multitude of partial explanations of fertility decline over many generations, but some fertility determinants may have remained unmentioned. nevertheless, we rely on this framework to analyse cohort fertility behaviour in former yugoslav countries in the following chapters. we can hypothesize that fertility control within marriage greatly contributed to the fertility decline in former yugoslavia. marital fertility decline had a predominant infl uence on the decline in overall fertility levels • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec244 in the more developed republics. a conscious adjustment of family size to changing economic and social circumstances can be viewed as the main explanation. instead of producing change, as fertility theories might suggest, cultural variables prevented change in less developed yugoslav regions, where ideational shifts were hampered by strong religious infl uences. in less developed agrarian societies (kosovo, bosnia and herzegovina, macedonia), children were still of high economic value to their parents. the lowest completed fertility levels can be found in regions where the features of the second demographic transition were most visible (slovenia, croatia, parts of serbia). the nature of the fertility decline in yugoslavia and the resemblance of fertility dynamics in some of its constituent states thus indicate that clusters of former yugoslav countries share similar fertility histories. in the following analysis, we explore this hypothesis and investigate partial indicators of fertility by birth order in an attempt to confi rm it. 3 data and methods to answer our research questions, we employ a comparative perspective, and construct a range of census-based cohort fertility indicators. these include completed fertility rates (cfr), parity progression ratios (ppri-1,i) and parity distributions (pi). we use data on women born between 1868 and 1973. within this timespan, we cover the reproductive careers of women who were giving birth over a period ranging from the end of nineteenth century through the entirety of the twentieth century, including both world wars and the 1950s baby boom, up to the post-socialist transition era. 3.1 census data on parity of women two censuses were performed in yugoslavia before world war ii, in 1921 and 1931, but these did not include questions on the number of births. the census prepared for 1941 was not conducted due to the outbreak of war. the question regarding the number of children a woman has had was introduced in the 1948 census and was retained in all subsequent ones, conducted in roughly tenyear intervals. the question, which was asked to all women of age 15 and older, followed the un-recommended wording: “how many children have you ever born alive?” all post-war censuses were based on the permanent (de jure) population. the international recommendations for defi nitions were applied to the greatest possible extent (breznik 1980). during the yugoslav era, the census was always carried out in all federal republics simultaneously; after the breakup, dates varied. we use census data from the last three census rounds (around 1991, 2001 and 2011), complemented with results from the oldest available census, from 1948, as well as other censuses performed in 1961, 1971 and 1981 in former yugoslavia, depending on their availability (see table 3). in kosovo, no census was carried out between 1981 and 2011; data from the 1991 census were highly unreliable because of a boycott among the kosovar – predominately ethnic albanian – population of the census performed by the then-serbian cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 245 administration. in north macedonia, the last census was performed in 2002. we use the tabulation of women by birth cohort (or age) and the number of children born. data from the 1948 census are available only by 5-year age groups, but we decided to include them in order to cover the cohorts born in the nineteenth century and broaden our analysis to the cohorts born before the start of the demographic transition. data from consecutive censuses were merged to the continuous time series using local polynomial regression fi tting.3 the data for croatia are displayed as an example in fig. 1). the census data on the number of children born are, by nature, retrospective. we analyse the responses of women aged 40-80 at the time of the census interview, as younger women may still have additional children, while women older than 80 years were not used for the analysis because of selectivity due to mortality, and because the underreporting of deceased children could infl uence the results (united nations 1983; van bavel 2014). various studies have identifi ed a higher mortality of childless women, women giving birth at a very young age and of women with four or more children (as summarised in barclay et al. 2016). however, at ages up to 80, the selectivity by parity is generally negligible (hurt et al. 2006). another phenomenon that can affect the quality of retrospective census data is external migration, which was quite high in certain periods of yugoslav history. andersson and sobolev (2013: 352-353) found that: “the omission of individuals who emigrated or died rarely results in more than a minor overestimation of fertility rates (...) in population[s] with moderate or low levels of out-migration”, as the “migration rates are typically lower for parents than for nonparents”. similarity between different censuses for the same country is an important indicator of data quality. generally, there is a very good match in the summary indica3 for the local polynomial regression fi tting, we employed loess smoothing in r with the second degree of the polynomials and with the parameter α=0.20. tab. 2: overview of the analysed countries and data sources country code analysed censuses population (millions) c 1948 c 1991 2018 bosnia-herzegovina bih 1948, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2013 2.6 4.4 3.5* croatia hrv 1948, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 3.8 4.8 4.1 kosovo rks 1948, 1961, 1971, 1981, 2011 0.7 2.0 1.8 north macedonia mkd 1948, 1994, 2002 1.2 2.0 2.1 montenegro mne 1948, 1991, 2003, 2011 0.4 0.6 0.6 serbia srb 1948, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2002, 2011 5.8 7.6 7.0 slovenia svn 1948, 1991, 2002, 2011 1.4 1.9 2.1 source: population censuses of yugoslavia (1948-1981) and of respective countries since 1991. population in 2018 is taken from the eurostat database (2019). population data for bosnia-herzegovina comes from the 2013 census. • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec246 tors of fertility calculated from various censuses in most of the analysed regions. there is an exception for the 1948 census, which shows a lower level of cohort fertility (fig. 1) and a higher proportion of childless women than later censuses do (1961 and 1971), especially for serbia, croatia, and bosnia-herzegovina (breznik 1972). even if the 1948 census is not fully comparable, as the data only come from 5-year age group tabulations, we are not fully aware why such a difference exists, as it cannot be explained by differential mortality or migration. the croatian 1981 census shows a lower level of fertility (fig. 1), comparable to the 1948 census, but not fully comparable to other censuses. however, the effect on the overall level of cohort fertility and other analysed indicators is negligible. 3.2 completed cohort fertility, parity progression ratios and parity composition the basic summary indicator of cohort fertility level is the indicator of completed cohort fertility rate (cfr), and completed cohort fertility rate by birth order i (cfri), which is defi ned as: fig. 1: completed cohort fertility rate in croatia according to the 1948-2011 censuses, and the fi tted value used for analysis (dashed black line), cohorts 1868-1971 source: own calculations based on data from population censuses (1) 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 1968 cohort census 1948 census 1961 census 1971 census 1981 census 1991 census 2001 census 2011 fitted completed cohort fertility cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 247 where i stands for birth order (parity), wi for number of women of given parity, and w for total number of women (in a given cohort). cfri is the average number of children of birth order i born to women from a given cohort. for each birth cohort analysed, the cfr can be defi ned as the sum of parityspecifi c cfri: parity composition is expressed by the proportion of women of a given parity: the parity progression ratios (ppr) to fi rst birth and to higher birth orders are given as: we combine data on the sixth and further births, computing an indicator of the progression rate from the fi fth and higher-order births to the sixth and higher-order births: the other way around, it is possible to obtain completed cohort fertility from parity progression ratios as: for the highest parity: in the second stage, we group the countries into three different clusters based on fertility levels. in order to better understand the differences between the clusters, as well as the similarities within them, we use decomposition of differences between completed cohort fertility rates of the clusters into the contribution of parity progression ratios. we employ a method used by zeman et al. (2018), which build (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec248 upon barkalov (1999) (for details, see the appendix). all calculated indicators are provided in the supplemental fi le. 4 results 4.1 completed cohort fertility and country clusters the completed cohort fertility of women born between 1868 and 1973 in the respective republics of former yugoslavia is depicted in figure 2. the oldest available data reveal relatively a high fertility rate of populations before the start, or just at the start, of the demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality. in the 1880 cohort, the level of fertility varies between 4 and 6 children per women (table 4). in some countries (serbia, slovenia, croatia), the decline is already under way, while in others, the fertility level is maintained at around 6 children per woman until cohort 1900. around cohort 1930, the fertility level in serbia drops below 2 children per woman, closely followed by croatia and slovenia. at that time, the fertility decline in bosnia-herzegovina, north macedonia, and montenegro is also well under way, at around 3.5 children per woman. only kosovo retains the pre-transition fig. 2: completed cohort fertility rate in former yugoslav countries, cohorts 1868-1973 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 1968 cohort bosnia croatia kosovo macedonia montenegro serbia slovenia completed cohort fertility source: own calculations based on data from population censuses cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 249 level of 5.7 children per woman. since the generations of the 1930s, the fertility remained around 2.0 in low-fertility republics, joined by the three higher-fertility countries over the next 30 cohorts. fertility in kosovo starts declining considerably only around cohorts 1940-1950, while still retaining the highest fertility rates in europe. the nature of the fertility decline and the similarity of the trends indicates that there might be clusters of former yugoslav countries that share similar fertility histories. in the following analysis, we explore this hypothesis, investigate the partial indicators of fertility by birth order, and attempt to confi rm it. this paper further analyses the mechanism of changes in cohort fertility in terms of parity progression ratios and the consequences on the parity composition of families, with a focus on the change between cohorts 1880, 1920 and 1960. we start by defi ning three clusters of countries: two clusters of three countries each, and kosovo as a separate case. the fi rst cluster consists of croatia, serbia, and slovenia, who already had relatively low levels of cohort fertility (around two children per woman) by cohort 1930 and maintained these levels throughout the analysed cohort span. women born in 1970 had slightly lower levels of fertility, from 1.72 (serbia) to 1.85 (croatia). we label this cluster the low-fertility cluster. the second identifi ed cluster consists of north macedonia, montenegro, and bosnia-herzegovina. here, the fertility level steadily declined from high levels around 6 children per woman among cohorts born in 1900 and converged close to the levels of the fi rst cluster by the cohorts born in the 1960s. higher fertility – over two children per woman – persists in montenegro and north macedonia. however, for north macedonia we need to rely on an older census (2002), and newer fi gures for cohorts born in the late 1960s are not available. the lowest fertility level was recently recorded in bosnia-herzegovina (1.92 for cohort 1970). we label this cluster the high-fertility cluster. montenegro used to have lower fertility rates among the oldest cohorts, comparable to the countries of the fi rst cluster, but subsequently, the levels stagnated and caught up with those of the other two high-fertility countries. tab. 3: completed fertility rate of cohorts 1870–1970 by former yugoslav country country 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 croatia 4.6 4.2 3.7 3.4 3.1 2.5 2.1 2.0 1.9 1.9 1.9 serbia 4.9 4.4 3.8 3.7 3.1 2.5 2.0 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.7 slovenia 4.3 4.0 3.4 3.1 2.6 2.3 2.1 2.0 1.9 1.9 1.7 bosnia-herzegovina 6.1 6.0 6.0 6.1 5.6 4.5 3.6 2.8 2.4 2.1 1.9 north macedonia 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.0 4.1 3.4 2.9 2.4 2.3 – montenegro 5.1 4.8 4.8 4.7 4.3 3.8 3.3 2.9 2.5 2.3 2.1 kosovo 6.0 6.0 6.0 6.1 6.1 5.9 5.7 5.3 4.8 3.9 2.9 source: data from population censuses • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec250 the third cluster is solely made up of kosovo, with levels of cohort fertility that are still comparatively very high in the european context. the level was above fi ve children per woman among cohorts born in the 1930s, followed by an almost linear decline of around 0.1 children per generation. generation 1970, then, went just below three children, with the decline likely to continue in further cohorts. this clustering was conducted via hierarchical cluster analysis4 based on the similarities in respective parity progression ratios for cohorts 1868-1962 (fig. 3). 4.2 parity composition of women the most frequently used cohort fertility summary indicator after the cfr is cohort childlessness. figure 4 reveals an interesting fact about fertility in the nineteenth century: childlessness in many regions was in fact much higher than in contemporary cohorts. this is especially striking for slovenia, where census data indicate that more than one-quarter of women from the 1868 cohort remained childless, compared to about 12 percent of women from the 1973 cohort. childlessness dropped to particularly low levels during communist times, with only around 5 percent. toward the youngest cohorts, childlessness again increases at a similar pace across regions, and with the highest level now in montenegro 4 function hclust in r. fig. 3: dendrogram of the similarity of regions according to cohort fertility patterns (ppr of cohorts 1868-1962), based on hierarchical cluster analysis source: own calculations cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 251 (17 percent in cohort 1971), while childlessness is lowest in north macedonia (7 percent in 1962 cohort and slowly increasing). from this point of view, we found that childlessness does not follow the three previously defi ned clusters. however, childlessness – which is complementary to the parity progression to fi rst birth – forms only part of the entire cohort fertility level. when looking at the proportion of women by number of children in the bigger picture (fig. 5), we identify higher parities that show considerable similarities within the clusters. in the low-fertility cluster, there is a noticeable decline of large families of three or more children, and a strong focus on the two-child family. in serbia, more than 60 percent of women born in the mid-1950s ended up with exactly two children, and around 55 percent in croatia and slovenia. this is comparable to some of the countries of central-eastern europe, where the two-child family was very popular in communist times and remains the most common family arrangement (frejka 2008; sobotka/beaujouan 2014). from the second cluster of countries, bosnia-herzegovina and north macedonia have a more pronounced two-child family norm, while in montenegro, the most preferred number of children was three or more. overall, the proportion of women with one child increased, especially in the lowfertility cluster, while the proportion of larger families decreased – though still relatively high – in the high-fertility cluster. fig. 4: cohort childlessness, cohorts 1868-1973 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 1968 cohort bosnia croatia kosovo macedonia montenegro serbia slovenia proportion of childless women source: own calculations based on data from population censuses • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec252 fig. 5: share of women by number of children, cohorts 1880, 1920, 1960 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 childless 1 child 2 children 3+ source: own calculations based on data from population censuses fig. 6: proportion of women with six or more children, cohorts 1868-1973 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 1968 cohort bosnia croatia kosovo macedonia montenegro serbia slovenia proportion source: own calculations based on data from population censuses proportion cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 253 if we were to pick up one parity that drives the fertility decline, as well as the differences in the paths of decline between the countries and the clusters, it would be the parity 6+ (women with six or more children). depicted in figure 6, it follows the paths of total fertility decline very closely (fig. 2). while in the low-fertility cluster the proportion of women with 6+ children quickly decreased from 40 percent around cohort 1870 to below 10 percent in cohort 1920, the proportion was still above 60 percent in other regions, until cohorts born in the early twentieth century (and more than half of all women in kosovo had six or more children until cohort 1937). six was the modal value of children in all regions before it changed directly to two children. in slovenia and croatia, for a few cohorts around 1900, the modal number of children was zero. in montenegro and north macedonia, this fi gure was three for a limited number of cohorts born around 1925. in kosovo, the modal number recently dropped to four and subsequently to three. 4.3 parity progression ratios and parity composition of women the low-fertility cluster of croatia, serbia and slovenia is also very homogeneous in terms of parity progression ratios. while ppr01 and ppr12 are quite high and stable, ppr23 and ppr34 went down almost simultaneously in all three countries (fig. 7). this development led to the aforementioned dominance of the two-child family. in the high fertility cluster of bosnia-herzegovina, north macedonia, and montenegro, the situation is not particularly homogeneous. parity progression ratios developed in more varied ways, and while ppr34 (and higher) had already declined fig. 7: parity progression ratios to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th birth, cohorts 1880, 1920, 1960 source: own calculations based on data from population censuses 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 ppr01 ppr12 ppr23 ppr34 parity progression ratios • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec254 considerably, lower parity progression ratios follow differing patterns. this is especially apparent in ppr23 (fig. 8). while in bosnia-herzegovina and north macedonia the parity progression ratio toward the third birth declined to very low levels comparable to croatia, in montenegro, the decline is somewhat slower, which is manifested by a lower proportion of women with two children, and a higher proportion with three children. in fact, progression to third births is the most distinctive factor of fertility differentials in the youngest cohorts between the regions and clusters of former yugoslavia, as we will show in the following section. the special case of kosovo is also apparent from the high cohort fertility. this is maintained by high, though declining, progression ratios to high parities. ppr23 in particular is still very high at 0.76 for the 1971 cohort (fig. 8), and ppr34 is still at 0.5. ppr01 and ppr12 stay close to 0.90–0.95, which leads to a very low proportion of women with one child, and the proportion of women with two children is also very low. 4.4 country clusters and decomposition in the fi nal analytical section of this study, we formally investigate the country clusters defi ned above and decompose the difference in overall fertility level between them into the effect of parity progression ratios. figure 9 includes the completed fig. 8: parity progression from second to third child, cohorts 1868-1973 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 1968 cohort bosnia croatia kosovo macedonia montenegro serbia slovenia parity progression ratios source: own calculations based on data from population censuses cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 255 cohort fertility in the three defi ned clusters, computed as the female population weighted mean of country cfrs in the given cohort. the development in the clusterspecifi c cfrs is obvious, as discussed above. we now decompose the difference in cfrs between the highand low-fertility clusters (depicted by the red line) into the effect of differences in pprs, using the method defi ned in the appendix. we decompose the difference between the lowand high-fertility clusters, omitting kosovo. the results of decomposition are given in figure 10. in the oldest cohorts, when the difference in cfr was around 1.0, all parities had a similar effect on the difference, with ppr01 having the largest effect (0.28), and others contributing 0.13 to 0.18. this changed in the subsequent decades, when the fertility level in the low-fertility cluster dropped, while stagnating in the high-fertility cluster. cohorts 1900-1910 then experienced the widest difference, 2.4. here, the most important factor was the progression toward the highest parities, which accounted for 0.64, or 27 percent, of the differences. additionally, progression to the third and fourth parity contributed heavily, with both around 0.45. the contribution was weaker at lower parities. in the last observed cohort of women born in 1962, the difference was just 0.25. here, the most important factor was the progression from the second to third birth (0.13), ppr01 was practically unchanged, ppr12 contributed by 0.09, and contributions of higher parities were negligible. fig. 9: completed cohort fertility by country clusters 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 1868 1888 1908 1928 1948 cohort low fertility cluster high fertility cluster kosovo difference high-low cluster completed cohort fertility source: own calculations • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec256 5 conclusions the goal of this study was to bring to light the overall picture of cohort fertility decline in the regions of former yugoslavia and to discuss it in a broader socio-cultural and economic context. formally, the paper aimed to respond to three research questions concerning cohort fertility based on the available census data. in this conclusion, we summarize the results of our formal data analysis and put these fi ndings into the context of broad historical, political, economic, and social factors. we are aware that the connection between the analysis results and the context is not causal, as the analysis is based on macro-data, and cannot identify the exact statistical link between broader socio-economic factors and fertility. this would require much more detailed survey data, or individual census data, which are not available for such a broad geographical and temporal space. therefore, our conclusion is an overview of parallel contextual phenomena, rather than one of causal determinants. 5.1 trends and patterns of cohort fertility in the former yugoslav countries in the descriptive part of the paper, we analysed census data that reveal rapid cohort fertility declines from levels of 5-6 children per woman born in 1860 to around 2 children in more recent cohorts (1960s). this decline has also been identifi ed elsewhere in europe and in other developed countries (frejka/sardon 2006; frejka fig. 10: decomposition of the difference between completed fertility in country clusters source: own calculations 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 1868 1878 1888 1898 1908 1918 1928 1938 1948 1958 cohort dppr01 dppr12 dppr23 dppr34 dppr45 dppr56 completed cohort fertility difference cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 257 2008; zeman et al. 2018). in the yugoslav context, it is interesting that the various regions progressed along different paths, while also displaying some specifi c features regarding parity composition of women. for example, very high childlessness in old cohorts of slovenian women was related to the traditional inheritance system, which encouraged the oldest son (the heir) to marry and have children, while younger siblings could continue to inhabit the family property if they remained unmarried. on the other hand, childlessness was low in kosovo, north macedonia, and parts of serbia and bosnia, where the family system followed different rules (zadruga, universal marriage). the transition from an agrarian society to industrialisation did not come to yugoslavia in a uniform manner. in northern parts of yugoslavia – such as slovenia and croatia, which were part of the habsburg monarchy – and also some parts of serbia, this transition started earlier than in underdeveloped parts of kosovo, montenegro, and macedonia. in the socio-economic sphere, this was accompanied by increases in women’s employment outside agriculture, educational expansion, a rise in living standards, intensive rural-to-urban migration, and improvements in health services. in census data, it is identifi ed by a steeply decreasing proportion of women with six or more children from the 1860 cohorts onwards in croatia, slovenia, and serbia, while in other parts, the decline started only with women born after 1900. while there were differences in the timing of economic development throughout the regions before world war ii, yugoslavia never before experienced such profound changes as it did during the two decades after 1945. however, similar to the princeton project fi ndings (coale/watkins 1986), breznik (1991) argues that for many regions, cultural factors were much more important than economic ones, and that even less-developed regions could be further along in the pace of demographic transition and fertility decline than economically better-off and developed regions with more rigid cultural norms. for example, ethnic composition and religion have a strong infl uence through local traditions on marriage dynamics, family patterns, and family planning, including birth control, contraception, and abortion. very high abortion rates probably pushed fertility levels down further in serbia. female economic activity is strongly related to female educational expansion and the eradication of illiteracy. women entered basic education in larger numbers in serbia, slovenia, and croatia from the early twentieth century onwards. in bosnia-herzegovina, kosovo, and parts of macedonia, girls’ education was denied even until world war ii. high illiteracy was closely associated with more traditional values and attitudes and, subsequently, with higher fertility. higher education of women generally only started after world war ii, and more intensively only in the 1970s. 5.2 country clusters: homogeneity within yugoslavia’s heterogeneity, persistent divergence or convergence? in the analytical part of this paper, we clearly identifi ed three clusters based on similarities in cohort fertility development. the fi rst cluster contains slovenia, croatia, and serbia, countries that are closer to western and central europe, both geographically and culturally. here, demographic transition started earlier than in the • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec258 second cluster, which consists of bosnia-herzegovina, north macedonia, and montenegro. this was also apparent from the period fertility levels (table 1), where the decline in serbia, croatia, and slovenia was already underway at the beginning of the twentieth century, while in other parts it came much later – in some places, only in the 1950s. when we look at the differences in 1950, the total fertility rate varied between 3 and 7 children per woman: in low fertility countries, it was around 3 to 3.5, in montenegro it was higher than 4; in bosnia-herzegovina it was 5; in macedonia it was 6; and in kosovo, it was 7 children per woman. the gap between the two clusters’ overall cohort fertility levels was largest in the 1900-1910 cohorts, when it was 2.4 children. this was a considerable change compared to nineteenth-century cohorts, where the difference was only around one child, and the cohort fertility levels were much higher. this fact indicates that the demographic transition started about 30 years earlier in the low-fertility cluster than in the high-fertility cluster. however, with fertility hitting very low levels in the most recent cohorts, the high-fertility cluster is catching up, and the most recent gap for the 1962 cohort amounts to only 0.25 children per woman. we may conclude that there is a continuing convergence in fertility levels, with the persisting gap related to children of the third birth order, and the parity progression from the second to the third child. in other words, the two-child family model is much more prevalent in the low-fertility cluster. there is a different situation in kosovo – even though we identifi ed a decline in fertility levels, especially among high-birth orders, the progression toward the third and fourth child is still so strong and unique in the european context that we can hardly talk about convergence. the reasons for this are both economic and cultural. on the one hand, we have low economic development, an unclear and generally pessimistic political situation, persisting agrarian settlement, poor female education, and low female economic activity; on the other hand, we have deep-rooted traditions, the prevalence of conservative family values within a muslim population, a low acceptance of birth control and modern contraception, and high marriage rates. as for future developments, we can expect a further convergence of high-fertility cluster regions to low-fertility ones towards a situation that will most likely resemble that of central and eastern european countries, with cohort fertility levels at around 1.75-2, moderate childlessness at around 10-20 percent, and the accentuated model of two-child families (zeman et al. 2018). in fact, some of most recent fertility indicators of high-fertility countries already resemble the ones from low-fertility countries: completed fertility in bosnia-herzegovina for cohorts born in the early 1970s is 1.9, similar to croatia. childlessness in montenegro (17 percent) is higher than anywhere else in the former yugoslav republics, and the two-child family model is increasingly prevalent in north macedonia (55-57 percent; only in serbia is the proportion of women with exactly two children higher). cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 259 5.3 discussion and further research as far as we know, this study is the fi rst complex discussion of cohort fertility trends in former yugoslavia. it summarises the main features of historical, political, economic, and social development in its regions during the twentieth century. it also analyses the cohort fertility developments based on available census data. the paper has its limitations in connecting these two parts in a causal way, and restricts itself to only several prominent infl uences on the fertility transition. micro-data from fertility surveys might help shed more light on the subject. in our future studies, we would like to focus on more rigorous ways to determine the particular determinants of fertility decline, and female education in particular. other socio-economic variables that could be analysed using existing census data are, for example, ethnicity and religion (even in the smaller-scale in case of bosnia-herzegovina), economic activity of women, urban-rural differences, and changes in marital dynamics. acknowledgements this research is funded by the centre of international cooperation and mobility (icm) of the austrian agency for international cooperation in education and research (oead-gmbh) under the program scientifi c & technological cooperation (wtz) with 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(eds.): women, state, and party in eastern europe. durham: duke university press: 234-256. woodward, susan l. 1995: socialist unemployment: the political economy of yugoslavia 1945-1990. princeton, nj: princeton university press. zeman, kryštof et al. 2018: cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: decomposition using parity progression ratios. in: demographic research 38,25: 651-690 [https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2018.38.25]. cohort fertility, parity progression, and family size in former yugoslav countries • 263 ivan čipin (), petra međimurec. department of demography, faculty of economics and business, university of zagreb. zagreb, croatia. e-mail: icipin@efzg.hr, pmedimurec@efzg.hr url: http://www.efzg.unizg.hr/icipin www.efzg.unizg.hr/pmedjimurec kryštof zeman. wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital, vienna institute of demography/austrian academy of sciences. vienna, austria. e-mail: krystof.zeman@oeaw.ac.at ur: http://www.wittgensteincentre.org/en/staff/member/zeman.htm date of submission: 23.12.2019 date of acceptance: 16.04.2020 • ivan čipin, kryštof zeman, petra međimurec264 appendix: method of decomposition the decomposition of differences between completed cohort fertility rates of the low fertility cluster versus the high fertility cluster into the contribution of differences in parity progression rates uses the modifi ed method used by zeman and colleagues (2018). this method builds upon barkalov (1999: 52-53 formulae [3-6]) and follows the sequential nature of childbearing as a chain of transitions across parities, starting from the transition to fi rst birth and then proceeding to subsequent parity transitions. in this framework, the change in the progression rate to a given parity i affects not only the number of women in this parity, but also all higher parities. the modifi cation consists of two parts: fi rst, we do not decompose differences in time, but between regions (clusters); and second, we decompose until higher parities (with 6+ as the highest parity). we fi rst defi ne completed cohort fertility cfr in a given cluster c as a function of parity progression ratios ppr: the difference between cfr in initial cluster 1 and cluster 2 is expressed as: where . (a1) (a3) (a2) (a4) (a5) (a6) (a7) (a8) published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence in post-socialist countries, 1970-2010 the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence in post-socialist countries, 1970-2010* sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung abstract: many demographic challenges and new trends have been observed across formerly state socialist countries after embarking on their political and economic transition. including countries that range from eastern europe to central asia, this study explores whether some family-related events were more sensitive to the transformation that occurred in the 1990s than others, and whether the disruption was immediate or delayed across this wide range of contexts. based on year-speci c hazard ratios over four decades, results point to changes in fertility patterns being clearly linked to the transition. second birth rates reacted almost immediately to societal disruption, whereas a more delayed change occurred for  rst births. although abrupt changes in marriage and divorce rates also occurred, these changes often began before the transition and therefore may be part of longer-term developments. that second births were the most sensitive family event to the immediate change in conditions may be due to economic costs, but also unique characteristics related both to its lack of conferring a new social role on the individual, such as in the case of marriage and parenthood, and the narrower window of time in which this event usually occurs. the delayed changes in  rst births may instead re ect changes in norms and culture that in uenced younger individuals when they reached childbearing ages. keywords: marriage · first births · second births · divorce · postponement · postsocialist comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 493-522 (date of release: 18.09.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-19 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-19en4 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung494 1 introduction the study of family dynamics has long been concerned with how macro-level conditions and the social context affect the timing and occurrence of family-related events. one way of understanding how context matters is to isolate a critical historical juncture with a signi cant development or event and observe how things change after this juncture (see, e.g., neyer/andersson 2008). the fall of the berlin wall and collapse of the soviet union is a remarkable example of a critical juncture that ushered in an intense period of transformation. myriad demographic changes in post-socialist regions have been well documented in a large body of research, including on marriage, childbearing and divorce. we know there was widespread change in partnership dynamics, including marriage and cohabitation, as well as in childbearing behavior. although we can piece together  ndings from studies that address these family events individually and for speci c countries, drawing widespread conclusions is dif cult because of differences in samples, timing, and methods across countries and family-related events. no research to date has compared standardized trends over time for multiple dimensions of family behavior, presenting a  ne-grained picture of how rapidly and when exactly changes occurred. based on the current literature, we cannot yet answer the following two questions: for which family-related event do we see the most widespread impact from the transition among post-socialist countries? was the impact of transition on selected events immediate or delayed? in this study, we address these questions and assess whether some events that are integral to family dynamics are more sensitive to major societal disruption than others, using the transition from state socialism as a critical juncture. speci cally, we track period estimates of marriage, entering parenthood, having a second child, and divorce using a standardized procedure. we do not explore the take-up of “new” behavior, such as non-marital cohabitation, in keeping with the aim of tracking long-term trends of common family behavior. our results yield insight into whether there are certain moments in the life course that are more vulnerable than others, as well as how societal disruption affects individuals, couples and families. in our search for signs of a universal effect in any of these life course events, we include a wide range of contexts that all experienced the transition from state socialism to democracy, dominant-party, and authoritarian systems (belarus, bulgaria, czech republic, estonia, georgia, hungary, kazakhstan, lithuania, poland, romania, and russia). despite diversity in cultural heritage and levels of prosperity, there were commonalities across the country groups in terms of relatively similar institutional arrangements, including access to healthcare, fertility control, education, and employment. similar societal norms were promoted about women as workers and mothers, there was full employment on paper, and the state organized and managed services from the cradle to the grave (frejka 2008; blanchard 2008). after either 1989 (fall of the berlin wall) or 1991 (dissolution of the soviet union), the countries we include all adopted market reforms to some degree, shifted toward democratic processes and opened their borders. many countries gained independence and some lost parts of their territory, ushering in an intense the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 495 period of nation building. new opportunities and risks emerged that had great potential for shifting the behavior of individuals and families in all eleven countries we study, and a wealth of research shows us that behavior did indeed shift. our analysis of this critical period and wide range of countries is possible due to the harmonized histories dataset (perelli-harris et al. 2011), which is based on generations and gender surveys, and has been extended to include an update on earlier surveys in many of the post-socialist countries. we make use of these retrospective histories to estimate hazard ratios of experiencing each event in each year from the 1970s and 1980s – to establish secular trends – and into the 1990s and 2000s to establish change that may be linked to the transition from state socialism, particularly if showing an abrupt deviation in the 1990s. we explore changes in family demography for both men and women. 2 theoretical perspectives and previous research marriage, childbearing and divorce are life course events that have all been argued to be governed by individual and societal norms and values, as well as in uenced by economic context. in the case of the post-socialist transitions, changes occurred in all these domains, making it impossible to point clearly to the speci c causal mechanisms at work. as such, frejka (2008) argues that all forces of change, including economic and ideational, must be included in the main explanation of broad changes in family and fertility behavior, which he argued was simply the transition to capitalism. theoretically, the speci c arguments for how family life course events are in uenced work in the following ways. in the second demographic transition (sdt) framework (lesthaeghe/van de kaa 1986; van de kaa 2004), a shift in values and norms promotes and allows for individuals to make more individualized choices related to when and if they marry, have children and divorce. the gender, sexual and contraception revolutions that were part of the sdt were key elements that allowed women greater freedom of choice in these matters (lesthaeghe/surkyn 2002). they enabled women’s autonomy so that they were no longer dependent on being in a partnership. these changes upended the order and timing of when women and men began co-residential unions and started their families (billari/liefbroer 2010) as well as contributed to family instability through allowing more movement out of partnerships that were not successful. in an updated overview of how well the sdt explains fertility and non-marital cohabitation trends over the turbulent last three decades, lesthaeghe (2020) points out a remarkable diversity in how family behavior developed (including postponement of marriage and childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation, higher parity transitions) as well as how behavior may  rst develop in different parts of the population, in line with the patterns of disadvantage thesis (perelli-harris/gerber 2011). how economic conditions in uence family dynamics is one of the oldest questions in sociology and demography, and the literature on these issues is broad. in relation to income, both marriages and childbirths are less likely to occur when they are • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung496 not affordable (becker 1960; hill 2015) or not perceived as affordable (easterlin 1976). the relationship for marriage is relatively unambiguous. in contrast, although fertility on average appears to be pro-cyclical in wealthy countries (sobotka et al. 2011), the idea that it could be counter-cyclical has long been argued (butz/ward 1979a/b). in the latter case, conditions of economic improvement make it more costly to step out of the labor market and care for children. similar to fertility, income is argued to be related to divorce and partnership instability in both opposite directions. whereas relationship quality may be compromised when economic stress is heightened at the macroand micro-level, it also increases the barriers to leaving the partnership (fischer/liefbroer 2006), particularly if experienced at the micro-level such as through one member of the couple losing a job. results are mixed, whereby we can  nd, for example, a pro-cyclical relationship in hellerstein and sandler morrill’s (2010) study of the us and a counter-cyclical relationship in fischer and liefbroer’s (2006) study of the netherlands. härkönen et al. (2020) describe in greater depth the potential mechanisms at work in how divorce rates may have changed in post-socialist regions. economic conditions may in uence family behavior not just through income effects but also economic uncertainty. this mechanism has been intertwined with income in much of the literature on pro-/counter-cyclical family dynamics, particularly when assessing the impact of aggregated unemployment rates or consumer con dence. it can be conceptualized through perceptions of future stability based on type of contract in employment, unemployment rates and the current economic climate. but it appears on its own in a few different versions. for example, it features prominently in the literature on the impact of globalization. the globalization framework focuses particularly on the development of increasingly volatile  nancial markets and the accelerating speed of change (mills/blossfeld 2005). in this narrative, individuals approach these changes from a rational choice perspective that leads them to delay or forego transitions that are binding or long-term commitments such as marriage and childbearing. instead of focusing on individuals acting out their individualized preferences, individuals’ choices are here understood to be constrained by work and family incompatibility as well as by uncertainty in the labor market (mills/blossfeld 2013). these, in turn, are shaped by the institutional characteristics of a setting, such as policies related directly to family and work. many studies have assessed how family policies shape family dynamics, but some questions have not yet been conclusively answered. most studies are based on cross-sectional data or use aggregate fertility rates as an outcome, which comes with strong limitations (neyer/andersson 2008). studies that combine longitudinal policy measures with individual level data on fertility intentions (billingsley/ferrarini 2014) and actual parity transitions captured in childbearing histories (billingsley et al. 2022), show that family policies supporting the labor market attachment of both parents were related to continued childbearing. these latter studies included postsocialist and other countries in europe. the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 497 the shift toward dual earner-carer households, in which both men and women are engaged in the labor market and childrearing, as well as examining how policies support this arrangement, have been a key focus of more recent theorizing in family and fertility research. mcdonald (2000) posited that the negative affect of women becoming more equal to men in the public sphere will reverse as institutions better support this shift. goldscheider et al. (2015) conceptualize this early, negative relationship as an incomplete gender revolution and predict that gender equality within the home will complete the gender revolution and support higher fertility. this u-shaped pattern that is argued to develop over time between gender equality and fertility was further elaborated by esping-andersen and billari (2015). kolk (2019) found only weak support for this, although his measure captured female political empowerment and not the private dimension. policy developments have led to variation over time and across countries in responsibilities and rights accorded to couples depending on whether they are married or cohabiting (perelli-harris/sánchez gassen 2012). these legal factors have the capacity to in uence both the entrance into and exit from marriage. to summarize, the main theories related to family behavior are cultural (sdt) and economic (costs, uncertainty and globalization), while also covering gender equality in work and private life and the role social policies play in supporting women to balance work and family. in addition to these speci c mechanism-based explanations, a helpful perspective for understanding how family behavior might change in accordance with major social, political and economic events is provided by life course theory. this framework was conceived within historical research on the great depression of the 1920s. from the study of cohorts that were children when severe economic hardship hit, followed by the war years, elder discussed the life course as developmental theory (1998) and explains that all life choices are contingent on the opportunities and constraints of social structure and culture. the life course framework emphasizes, among other factors, the importance of the societal regulation of key life course transitions – such as family formation events – and their timing as well as the long-lasting effects of early formative experiences (e.g., settersten/mayer 1997; elder 1998). as for the former, the life course framework highlights how social norms and institutions shape ideas around the appropriate and optimal age for each transition. this regulation of the timing of life course events, as it involves attitudes and beliefs, is likely to respond slowly to societal ruptures and may moderate its effects, speci cally by counteracting the pressures from economic mechanisms (e.g., mynarska 2010; perelli-harris 2005). regarding the latter, the life course approach also emphasizes how the development of individuals’ identities, ideas and prospects are shaped by what happens when they are young. a critical juncture can create a cohort effect through changes in the values and attitudes individuals develop as a child or adolescent, in which case we would not see the effect until they reach the stage in life where partnership and fertility careers commence. this would imply that a critical juncture could have a lasting in uence on the life course, but it may not in uence those who have already begun their family careers with values and attitudes formed long ago. if • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung498 adults’ identity formation and ideas about family life have already solidi ed, certain behaviors may be less sensitive to societal disruption. in general, there is remarkable overlap in the common theoretical pathways to the family life course events studied here. from these discussions, we would expect the societal disruption at the dawn of the transition from socialism to have ushered in a decline in marriage and fertility rates, and an increase in divorce rates. and we know from past research that this is the case, even if we cannot clearly compare the starting points and similarities of changes across the countries and events. we have no a priori reason to expect any of the events to be more sensitive to societal disruption than the others. indeed, based on the standard theoretical approaches, we might expect that all events would be in uenced similarly, given the similarity in the pathways to change. in our analysis, we empirically assess whether this is the case and analyze whether an effect of the transition may be seen immediately or with a delay, potentially indicating new norms appearing during childhood and adolescence and in uencing family life course events occurring later. we do not expect trends to differ for men and women, particularly because these are events that relate to couples, but analyze them separately in order to track any potential deviations. the critical juncture barr (2001) summarized the socialist system in central and eastern europe according to  ve stylized facts: the government was totalitarian; resources were allocated by central planning; workers all received the same, wages were low; these wages were supplemented with universal bene ts; and work was guaranteed. drawing also on frejka’s (2008) discussion of the most important changes that in uenced family and fertility, we know that before the transition commenced, the general policy standpoint toward families under state socialism was pro-natalist. the costs of childbearing were substantially reduced through a range of measures, often including meal and clothing subsidies, institutional care (nurseries, kindergartens and after-school programs), childbirth grants, and child allowance. housing was in short supply and an important means to gain independence from one’s parents was to marry and have a child, which helped secure access to own housing. inef ciencies in the economic system kept demand for labor high, guaranteeing full employment in the population. this demand, coupled with the need for two earners, fueled almost equal rates of employment for men and women (frejka 2008). however, similarly to developments in the west, this was not accompanied by gender equality in the private sphere, with women carrying the double burden of paid work and work at home. family formation was incentivized and protected from risks found in market economies under state socialism, resulting in what has been called a “socialist greenhouse” (sobotka 2002). these favorable conditions for family formation and expansion can be seen in the relatively stable and similar childbearing patterns before the 1990s across a wide range of countries in central and eastern europe, as well as the caucasus and central asia (billingsley/duntava 2017; frejka/gietelthe sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 499 basten 2016). nevertheless, differences based on unique historical developments impacted how societies adapted to state-socialism (inglot et al. 2022); for example, rat and szikra (2018)  nd three different models of “familism” developed in hungary, poland and romania. for varying lengths of time during the 1990s, the transformation of the economic system was accompanied by economic crisis. individuals, couples and families faced massive in ation and a sharp increase in unemployment and/or wage arrears, a decline in social services including public childcare and health clinics, and a lack of housing (holzman et al. 2020; frejka 2008). the unstable political, economic and social environment bred uncertainty, which was exacerbated by deprivation due to rapidly rising income inequality and the emergence of poverty (gimpelson 2001; blanchard 1998; world bank 2000; klugman et al. 2002). milanovic (1998: 23) terms this era the “post-communist great depression”. after this initial economic turbulence and once market economies had begun to function, a set of new issues arose. new career opportunities were accompanied by increased job insecurity and heightened competition for positions. discrimination of women in the job market increased at the same time as educational expansion occurred (frejka 2008). while the market was  ooded with new services and goods, childcare and healthcare became more costly, as did the indirect costs of raising children. fajth (1999) and teplova (2007) reported extensive losses of state and  rm-sponsored family services, which increased reconciliation dif culties for women combining paid and unpaid work. in the political arena, family policies were changing rapidly but generally became less supportive of working mothers (frejka/ gietel-basten 2016; billingsley et al. 2022). these changes led to “re-familization” in central and eastern european countries (saxonberg/sirovátka 2006). however, no single narrative accurately characterizes all the countries considered here, or the entire period since the end of the 1980s. for example, czech republic and slovakia diverged in parental leave policies as late as 2004 (šťastná et al. 2020). in fact, szeleva and polakowski (2008) studied developments in childcare and parental leave from 1990 to 2004 in eight central and eastern european countries and found that most shifted models of family policy over this period. billingsley et al. (2022) show that family policies dramatically changed in the aftermath of the transition, becoming either more or less conservative across and within countries over time. the period of european integration brought new policy pressures and considerations for the new eu member states as well (inglot et al. 2022). besides variation in policies, political instability and lack of resources – particularly at the beginning of the transition – led to many cases of poor policy implementation (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). speci c to post-socialist countries, other relevant institutional features, such as how housing provision was linked to marriage and having children, were also altered during the transition from socialism (frejka 2008; zakharov 2008). besides the in uence of policies, market reforms and democratization universally provided new opportunities and choices for individualized life paths (see, e.g., oláh 2015; mureşan/oláh 2019), as has been particularly pointed out for the case of the czech republic (maříková 2021) and hungary (szalma/takács 2022). new travel and • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung500 consumer opportunities also appeared and accompanied shifts in values and norms toward more individualized life courses (sobotka 2002). many scholars have argued that demographic shifts were largely caused by the unfolding of the sdt in post-socialist regions (e.g., sobotka 2008, 2011; mureşan 2007; zakharov 2008; hoem et al. 2009), whereas others have argued that the observed changes may be more complicated than that and are also related to new economic constraints and uncertainties (e.g., perelli-harris/gerber 2011; billingsley 2010; potârcă et al. 2013; gerber/berman 2010). to be sure, social and cultural shifts paved the way for a delayed sdt in post-socialist countries, even if its links to the speci c changes in marriage, natality and divorce are less clear. it is worth noting that trends in partnerships (hoem et al. 2009) and divorce (härkönen et al. 2020) indicate that the sdt had in some contexts begun before the transition from socialism commenced. a well-developed literature exists on family dynamics during the transition years in most of the countries included in this study. it is beyond the scope of this paper to review each literature on marriage, fertility and divorce within each country. as argued, comparative research is best suited to address the questions of this study. comparative perspectives such as the ones used in this paper are rare, although comparative analyses of other types do exist. for example, sobotka (2003), frejka and sobotka (2008), billingsley (2010), and billingsley/duntava (2017), among others, have shown trends in fertility for a wide range of post-socialist countries, but annual changes were either not the focus or the measures were based on aggregated rates. sobotka and toulemon (2008) and perelli-harris and lyons-amos (2015) extended this comparative discussion to marriage and partnership dynamics as well. härkönen et al. (2020) analyzed divorce rates across a smaller group of countries and identi ed an increased prevalence of divorce that varied across countries and could not be explained by compositional changes in marriage. broadening the analyses to include a wider range of family dynamics, andersson/ philipov (2002) and the follow-up study by andersson et al. (2017) presented life table representations of family events to assess how family dynamics differed across countries. these two studies introduced the novel perspective of the child’s point of view alongside adults’, providing a snapshot of partnership and separation behavior in a given period. although the latter study updated these  ndings, allowing a comparison of two moments in time, the observation points were decades apart and it is not clear when the documented changes occurred. billingsley and oláh (2022) studied changes in the amount of time women spent in co-residential unions during their twenties in the same set of countries analyzed in this study. the aim was to identify whether less time in a union could be a contributor to universally declining fertility rates during the  rst years of the transition from socialism. rather than focusing on marriage and divorce, however, they considered the entrance to and dissolution of all unions that were co-residential. overall, the number of years spent in a co-residential union before age 30 declined across the central and south-eastern european countries, with little or no changes in the post-soviet countries. underlying these two different  ndings, however, were many similarities. virtually all countries experienced an increase in partnership the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 501 instability, but this was counterbalanced by even earlier ages at entering a union during the 1990s in some countries, whereas in others it was exacerbated by union postponement and fewer women entering a union at all during their twenties. none of these studies provide the capacity to judge how universally family dynamics were upended during the transition from socialism, which family transitions were sensitive to transition in general, and whether shifts in familyrelated events were immediate or delayed. the present study addresses these questions and gaps. 3 data and methods data on  rst marriages,  rst births, second births, and  rst divorces are drawn from the harmonized histories dataset (perelli-harris et al. 2011) for the eleven countries in our analyses. this data source compiles individual histories from the generations and gender surveys (ggs) for over 20 countries. our study is one of the  rst to also use the harmonized data from the second waves of the ggs, where available (seven countries). the second wave lengthens the histories that were already documented in the previous wave and does not add additional respondents. the ggs is based on a sampling of 18-79-year-olds that is nationally representative. in the surveys, respondents were asked to recall  rst and subsequent partnerships and births, along with their timing. speci cally, participants were asked when they entered and ended all co-residential unions and whether they were marital or nonmarital. the country data has been carefully explored and is considered high quality in general (see e.g., vergauwen et al. 2015), although some more recent surveys have been less explored. table 1 lists the years in which each country was surveyed. we include all men and women from the age of 16 (or the age they were at the start of the observation period, 1970) until they transition to  rst marriage or  rst birth, whereas those person-years in which there is only a  rst child born at any time between 1970 and the survey are included in the sample for the second birth analysis. similarly, only those person-years in which a respondent was married were included in the analysis of divorce. the sample includes individuals born between 1924 (these individuals who had not yet either married, had children or divorced were 46 years old in 1970) and 1993. table 1 also shows the sample sizes on which all analyses are based in terms of number of respondents (not person-years). we use event history analysis methods to assess changes in transition rates over time for both men and women separately. this approach allows us to use the most up-to-date information available, including individuals who have not yet experienced the event under study. it properly accounts for different lengths of time under which an individual is at risk of experiencing the event. we use a piecewise exponential hazard model, which assumes the risk of an event is stable within each segmented duration speci ed in the baseline hazard. the baseline hazard is time since age 16 for  rst marriage and  rst birth analyses, whereas it is time since the • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung502 s ur ve y ye ar s m ar ri ag e an d  rs t b ir th s ec o nd b ir th d iv o rc e m en w o m en m en w o m en m en w o m en b el ar us 20 17 38 25 46 47 23 46 35 78 24 42 35 61 b ul g ar ia 20 04 20 07 46 21 56 05 33 60 47 56 38 47 49 96 c ze ch r ep ub lic 20 05 20 08 39 29 39 83 21 82 29 14 28 01 34 89 e st o ni a 20 04 /0 5 21 59 34 94 17 81 33 59 18 86 36 25 g eo rg ia 20 06 20 09 37 07 43 82 28 15 36 59 28 80 40 20 h un g ar y 20 04 20 08 47 20 50 35 37 46 49 48 40 23 57 59 k az ak hs ta n 20 18 50 74 78 40 29 46 53 24 30 02 51 76 li th ua ni a 20 06 20 09 39 73 38 14 29 12 31 56 34 85 36 02 p o la nd 20 10 /1 1 20 14 70 90 88 02 51 77 74 89 60 53 90 55 r om an ia 20 05 45 34 39 42 36 34 38 97 47 38 50 81 r us si a 20 04 20 07 33 77 51 12 27 53 50 07 31 33 53 59 ta b . 1 : s ur ve y ye ar s an d a na ly ti ca l s am p le s iz es , i nc lu d in g g g s  rs t an d s ec o nd w av es s ou rc e: o w n ca lc ul at io ns the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 503  rst birth for the second parity transition model and time since marriage for the divorce model. in addition, estimates are adjusted for age at  rst birth in the second birth model, as well as age at marriage and number of children (time-varying) in the divorce model. by including single year dummy variables, estimates are produced for every year under observation. due to the long history covered in the data, we have few additional covariates included in the analyses. we use information on the highest level of education ever achieved and the time when this level was achieved to construct a time-varying measure of education that shows when an individual was studying and when they completed their education at a speci c level. we do not include birth cohort in the analysis, as this information would overlap with other measures of period and age (time since the observation begins and age 16/age at previous event). results can be therefore interpreted as a combined cohort and period approach. relative risks are interpreted as the combined in uence of the timing and probability of event, which means that we do not distinguish between whether changes are due to postponement or fewer events ever occurring. because we are interested in change over time, we focus primarily on withincountry differences instead of differences between countries. results for men and women are presented separately for each country and all four family-related events are displayed across the same window of time (1970-2010). all relative risks are based on 1980 as the reference category. to remove noise from our estimates and identify trends more clearly, we display the estimate based on a three-year moving average. for instance, 1972 represents the average of 1970-1972. whether the nonaveraged hazard ratio is statistically different from 1980 is determined through a p-value of less than 0.05 and is indicated with a marker for that point. as mentioned, all hazard ratios are adjusted for a time-varying educational measure that includes time spent studying up until the highest level achieved. the baseline hazard is time since age 16 for  rst marriage and  rst birth, whereas it is time since the  rst birth for the second parity transition model and time since marriage for the divorce model. in addition, estimates are adjusted for age at  rst birth in the second birth model, as well as age at marriage and a time-varying indicator of number of children in the divorce model. full model results for one selected country (belarus) can be found in appendix table a1 and a2. we consider the trends in terms of whether there was an immediate shift (early 1990s), a delayed shift (late 1990s or early 2000s), a shift that occurred before the transition from state socialism (1980s or earlier), or no shift at all. the focus is mainly on those estimates that show a statistical deviation from 1980. in the few instances when the trend differed for men and women, one was usually unclear, and we therefore discuss the trend that was the clearest. 4 results figure 1 presents our main results by country, showing how marriage,  rst birth, second birth, and divorce trends changed over time separately for men and women. • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung504 note the shift in axis for men in the  gures due to high relative risks for divorce. in general, the pace of change and development was often similar for marriage and the  rst birth, but different patterns and timing emerged for second births and divorce. family-related events were usually similar for men and women according to the general pattern, even if not for years in which there was statistically signi cant deviation. considering marriage  rst, we see a decline in hazard ratios even before the transition began in estonia, georgia, hungary, kazakhstan and romania. all other countries showed a timing of decline that followed immediately after the transition commenced (i.e., before 1995). we do not  nd any country in which there was a delayed decline in marriage rates, and all countries experienced a decline. this means that marriage was postponed across all eleven countries in the 1980s or 1990s, relative to 1980. besides the onset of decline, some trends are worth considering. for the former soviet countries of georgia, russia and estonia, the decline in marriage risks was substantial and slowed down in the mid-1990s (georgia) and the 2000s (russia, estonia). in the case of georgia, it is important to note that the decline in marriage may be related to individuals choosing a religious form of marriage instead of civil registered marriages more frequently than before and that the questionnaire did not capture both forms of marriage. while marriage risks in georgia and russia declined after a stable period around 2000, marriage risks in kazakhstan started to increase around the 2000s, reaching higher marriage risks for women in 2010 than in 1980. the decline in marriage risks in the czech republic, lithuania, and romania introduced a steady trend of decreasing marriage risks until 2010. in poland, marriage risks started to decline slowly in 1990, followed by an increase in marriages in the mid-2000s. in contrast, the trend for  rst birth shows a marked delay in its decline for almost all countries. the exceptions were the following: in hungary, the timing of parenthood was already postponed for women throughout the 1980s. in contrast, an immediate decline in  rst birth hazard ratios was evident for estonia, and in kazakhstan we do not  nd a clear decline in  rst birth hazards at all. the most general pattern was stable  rst birth risks in the  rst two decades observed, and a decline that was especially strong until 2000. in belarus, estonia and kazakhstan, birth risks increased again, leading, especially in kazakhstan, to more similar  rst birth risks in 2010 than in 1990. in lithuania, we  nd stabilizing  rst birth risks after 2000, particularly for men. in russia and romania, in contrast,  rst birth risks have somewhat continuously decreased since 1990. second births show a trend that appears to be more similar to what we observed for marriage, in terms of an immediate reaction in hazard ratios to the transition from state socialism. in the case of marriage, however, quite a few countries experienced changes before the transition occurred, but not a single country showed this pattern for second births. the only exception to the immediate decline was found in hungary, where only a few years (1999 and 2002) deviated statistically from 1980 (and this was only found for hungarian women). the decline in second births appeared more pronounced than for  rst births from 1990 onward in belarus, the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 505 bulgaria, romania and russia. however, the samples at risk of different events are different, so any comparison of effect sizes must be made with caution. for estonia, georgia, kazakhstan and lithuania, the development of second birth risks mirrored those for  rst births. in the czech republic, the transition affected second birth risks less than  rst birth risks. the hazard ratios for divorce, on the other hand, present a less clear picture. almost all countries show a long-term increase in divorce since the 1970s, but not all annual estimates were statistically signi cant and there was more variation by gender in these estimates. for women in estonia, georgia, kazakhstan, lithuania and poland, we see signi cant increases in divorce in our  rst observed decades. this early increase was visible for men only in bulgaria and for both men and women in romania. in contrast, an immediate increase in divorce after the collapse of communism was evident for bulgarian women and both men and women in the czech republic and russia. a delayed effect appeared for men in lithuania and poland. we did not observe any statistically signi cant increase in divorce over time in belarus, although the trend did increase over time. the transition decade led to a strong increase in divorces in the post-soviet countries of georgia, lithuania and russia. in most cases, divorce risks increased throughout all decades observed. fig. 1: hazard ratios of family-related events for women and men from 19702010, three-year moving averages • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung506 fig. 1: continuation the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 507 fig. 1: continuation • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung508 fig. 1: continuation note: the reference category is 1980, but because estimates are smoothed through a moving average, the value at 1980 varies from 1. statistical signi cance (p-value<0.05) is indicated with a marker for the original relative risk. source: own calculations the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 509 5 discussion the main aims of this study were to compare shifts in family life course events within post–socialist countries to assess patterns across countries and identify how they were impacted by the transition from socialism. speci cally, we sought to learn how widespread changes were, whether some family dynamics appear to be more sensitive to societal change and disruption than others, as well as whether the transition from state socialism affected these behaviors immediately or with a delay. an immediate change would imply a period effect. in contrast, delayed effects may re ect changes that were more gradually set in motion by the transition, possibly through cohort effects on behaviors among those who were children and adolescents at the time of the critical juncture, as argued in the life course perspective (elder 1998). taken together, the analyses of different family dynamics in the immediate and long term can provide clues on how the transition did and did not affect family behavior. to this aim, we assessed smoothed year-by-year hazard ratios. as past research has shown, we  nd that the massive changes that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s, including economic and social transitions, economic crises, and then economic recovery, were accompanied by changes in family-related events (see, e.g., hoem 2008). we assessed changes for both men and women, which is rare in the literature. unexpectedly, trends did not differ substantially for men and women. the greatest disparity between the two, in terms of statistically signi cant deviations from 1980, appeared for divorce, where men’s increases were more often statistically signi cant. despite similar theoretical predictions related to marriage, childbearing and divorce, countries and family-related events were differentially impacted. while the transition from state socialism seemed to have in uenced family-related events strongly in some post-soviet countries (russia, georgia, kazakhstan, lithuania) other countries such as estonia, hungary and poland were less affected. in addition, our analyses revealed that fertility, and second birth rates more speci cally, were almost universally impacted by the transition whereas the shift toward lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates often began before transition commenced. regarding the latter, although conditions during the 1990s contributed to changes in the entrance to and exit from marriage, we cannot rule out the possibility that these later developments were part of a longer secular trend. in contrast, it was only in hungary that we found evidence of declining birth rates before the collapse of communism. this corresponds with the cohort trends and developments in age at  rst birth for hungary shown in spéder and kamarás (2008). the decline in second births began almost universally within the  rst few years of the transition, re ecting a clear and immediate period effect. the decline in  rst births appears to have been slower to develop. when interpreting these two parity events, lower  rst birth rates can generally be understood as a postponement of parenthood (given that the overwhelming majority of each cohort eventually becomes a parent), whereas a decline in second births may re ect an event that is not just postponed but altogether foregone (although whether a shift in quantum • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung510 has occurred, and not just tempo, is a conclusion that needs to be con rmed with later rounds of data collection). as mentioned above, declines in marriage rates and increases in divorce often already began before the transition from socialism, even though the transition may have further fueled these changes. although identifying precise mechanisms that underlie this parity-speci c change is beyond the scope of this study, we can offer some re ections based on these stylized facts. rather than forming or dissolving a family, the decision of whether to expand the family by having another child appears to be the moment in the early family life course most vulnerable to societal disruption. this is noteworthy given no evidence of a decline in the two-child norm (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). marriage, childbearing and divorce differ according to their nature in terms of social signi cance as well as in terms of beginnings, continuations and endings, which may render them more or less sensitive to immediate and slowly evolving in uences. marriage and entering parenthood are events that re ect the beginning of family life. generally, one precedes the other, but that was increasingly less of a given in the decades under review with the rise of non-marital childbearing (koytcheva/philipov 2008; sobotka et al. 2008; spéder/kamarás 2008; katus et al. 2007). in addition to the movable nature of these events in terms of timing, they are also loaded with personal and social meaning. union formation is a marker of the entrance into adulthood and separation from the family of origin. entering parenthood is also a self-expression of the individual and can be seen as ful lling a social role (mills 2007). assuming that most people consider their future to include a partner and children at some point, the main question around these choices is not if, but when in the life cycle they will take place. to varying degrees according to the country context, it is also a question of if and when to make a partnership of cial through marriage. although marriage and divorce can occur at any time, entering parenthood is an event that is bound in time, but still in a relatively wide window determined by the biological clock of women and cultural age deadlines. in contrast, the second birth, as an event that expands the family, usually occurs in a very speci c time of the life cycle. it cannot occur before the  rst child has been born and most people prefer to space their children relatively closely together to condense the time in their life with young children and to create siblings of a similar age. because parents of one child have transformed their life to parenthood already, the time cost of the second child transition may be perceived as relatively low. the economic cost of a second child may still be considerable, however, even if the marginal cost is lower than that for the  rst. in considering the meaning of having a second child, the social utility is arguably lower than for the  rst child, given that one has already entered the biological and social role of parent. the value of the second child may diminish over time as well, as the age gap between two potential siblings increases. accordingly, it may be the case that even if the societal disruption and economic crises of the 1990s did not prevent individuals from seeking the social reward of entering parenthood, second births were more affected because a) the reward is lower for the second child and potentially diminishes quickly over time, and b) the second child carries additional economic costs. that second births were the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 511 particularly affected in the post-soviet states, which were contexts with more serious economic crises and more severe turbulence (billingsley 2010; billingsley/duntava 2017; sobotka 2003) may give some credence to the importance of economic costs. in the case of  rst births, the declines were more gradual and usually plateaued by the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s. the expansion of higher education and new dif culties of getting established in the labor market likely contributed to the postponement of parenthood, as these developments have been linked to postponement in other contexts (e.g., ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; hsu 2023). one way to understand the more delayed development in  rst birth trends is from a life course perspective (elder 1998). the behavior of youth that reached childbearing ages in the late 1990s may have developed differently due to shifts or circumstances occurring at a formative age that shaped their life orientations, which then were expressed through opting for continued education, investments in work careers or other opportunities associated with a childfree life at the expense of delays in family demographic events. the period of the 2000s was characterized by economic recovery and growth to varying degrees across these countries, which also leads to the possibility that the halt in the decline of  rst birth rates was not just a natural recuperation of postponement but was a pro-cyclical effect. but it was not always the case that economic recovery coincided with a halt or an increase in the decline of  rst birth rates. we can interpret the shift in marriage rates as a postponement of union formation, but more importantly, the rise of non-marital cohabitation (sobotka/toulemon 2008; billingsley/oláh 2022; perelli-harris/lyon-amos 2015). no theoretical framework suggests that marriage would be delayed in more prosperous times, yet we observe low rates even into the 2000s when stability and recovery had been reached by all countries to some degree. this suggests that the changes surrounding the transition impacted marriage rates through changing the values of individuals who would not reach marriageable age until a decade later, even if the early decline hints at value changes more broadly that began in some contexts before transition. given that value change is largely cohort driven (kiley/vaisey 2020), this too points to exposure to societal change during the formative years as a possible avenue of change. divorce showed some immediate effects at the transition from socialism, but we also found evidence that might be considered a delayed impact of the transition on divorce, with changes in rates occurring in the 2000s. however, the evidence of a long-term increasing trend would again indicate that divorce rates developed somewhat independently from the transition from socialism. this  nding supports härkönen et al.’s (2020)  ndings from a smaller sample that there was no universal impact of the transition. the pre-transition changes imply that the norms and values governing divorce already began changing well before the transition from socialism in these countries. but the erratic timing of divorce increases means we cannot rule out that they were in uenced by economic and social conditions. the analysis and interpretation of our results do not take into account timevariant conditions beyond the critical juncture of transition from state socialism and general economic trends. speci cally, we are unable to distinguish changes that may be driven by changes in policies that particularly affect family-related events, • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung512 which we know occurred in the post-transition era (šťastná et al. 2020; billingsley et al. 2022). our results generally align with country-speci c research on these family events. direct comparisons are dif cult because of the different approaches, such as cohort analysis, that are typically used in studies that address these key events. in addition, our results concern within-country changes, whereas much research situates demographic trends in terms of levels. nevertheless, our country-speci c  ndings are robust to the extent that it is possible to compare them with past work. in bulgaria, the immediate decline in second births was visible after the transition began (koytcheva 2006). divorce rates also showed a steady incline over time in the czech republic (sobotka et al. 2008) and an abrupt decline in marriage rates appeared after 1990. spéder and kamarás (2008) similarly demonstrated a delayed and gradual postponement of parenthood in hungary after the transition. agadjanian et al. (2013) also tracked a gradual decline in marriage rates within kazakhstan. in estonia (katus et al. 2007) and lithuania (stankuniene/jasilioniene 2008), a decline in  rst births and marriage already took hold after 1990, the latter of which was most pronounced for 20-24-year-olds in lithuania. our  ndings seem to con rm the greater decline in second births compared to other birth orders after 1990 in poland (kotowska et al. 2008), as well as the departure in marriage timing at this time. mureşan et al. (2008) analyzed changes in romania after 1990 and similarly found that slow, gradual change was more common in this context. that socialization in the new, post-soviet era seemed to be related to delayed changes was argued already in zakharov (2008) when interpreting changing fertility and family formation dynamics in russia. the scarcity of appropriate data in belarus (almialchuk et al. 2011) until the recent collection of ggs data leaves no  ndings to which we can compare ours. little research exists on comparable family demographics in georgia as well (see badurashvili et al. 2019), but we  nd support for blum et al’s. (2009)  nding of an increase in divorce that appears for women in the more recent cohorts. this overview of country-speci c studies is by no means exhaustive, but this sample provides a useful starting point for gaining a more in-depth view of the institutional and demographic changes that occurred within each country. taking a standardized approach across eleven countries, we can conclude that the transition from socialism impacted family demography most directly through fertility, and second parity transitions in particular, rather than through marriage or divorce. indirectly, through more long-term change, we also see an in uence on the timing of parenthood. our results question a “one size  ts all” approach to understanding how societal disruption affects family demographic behaviors and invites more consideration of which behaviors are most likely to be affected by immediate effects and which are more likely to change through delayed effects. the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 513 references agadjanian, victor; dommaraju, premchand; nedoluzhko, lesia 2013: economic fortunes, ethnic divides, and marriage and fertility in central asia: kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan compared. in: journal of population research 30. 197-211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-013-9112-2 amialchuk, aliaksandr et al. 2011: economic determinants of fertility in belarus: a microdata analysis. in: beroc working paper series 13. belarusian economic research and outreach center (beroc) [https://www.beroc.org/ upload/iblock/1e8/1e8fbf667d535 3de9ea08f71ec436539.pdf, 13.09.2023]. andersson, gunnar; philipov, dimiter 2002: life-table representations of family dynamics in sweden, hungary, and 14 other ffs countries: a project of descriptions of demographic behavior. in: demographic research 7,4: 67-144. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2002.7.4 andersson, gunnar; thomson, elizabeth; duntava, aija 2017: life-table representations of family dynamics in the 21st century. in: demographic research 37,35: 1081-1230. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2017.37.35 badurashvili, irina et al. 2019: descriptive analyses of youth transitions in georgia. in: tew-cca working paper 4.2. bamberg: tew-cca project, university of bamberg. barr, nicholas 2001: reforming welfare states in post-communist countries. in: orlowski, lucjan t. 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https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2008.19.24 date of submission: 30.06.2022 date of acceptance: 19.07.2023 prof. dr. sunnee billingsley (), prof. dr. juho härkönen. stockholm university, demography unit, department of sociology. stockholm, sweden. e-mail: sunnee.billingsley@sociology.su.se; juho.harkonen@sociology.su.se, url: https://www.su.se/english/pro les/sbill-1.186892 https://www.su.se/english/pro les/jhr-1.186927 maria hornung. humboldt-university berlin. berlin, germany. e-mail: maria.hornung@hu-berlin.de url: https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/mitarbeiterinnen/1692292 the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 519 women men marriage 1st birth marriage 1st birth education studying 0.440** 0.384** 0.692** 0.591** high 1.008 0.761** 1.242** 1.001 medium 1 1 1 1 low 0.745* 0.767* 0.678** 0.691** year 1970 1.032 0.742 0.877 1.341 1971 0.833 0.816 1.058 0.759 1972 0.778 0.710* 0.759 1.034 1973 0.753 0.680* 0.945 0.649 1974 0.722* 0.803 0.822 1.111 1975 0.620** 0.862 0.905 1.205 1976 0.751* 0.589** 0.757 1.020 1977 0.733* 0.840 0.601* 0.762 1978 0.789 0.786 0.935 0.821 1979 0.884 0.847 0.935 1.013 1980 1 1 1 1 1981 0.927 0.718* 0.843 0.910 1982 0.792 0.766 0.936 0.961 1983 0.804 0.756* 0.847 0.786 1984 0.876 0.867 0.870 0.978 1985 0.885 0.991 0.959 0.947 1986 0.810 0.875 0.798 1.074 1987 0.799 0.982 0.758 0.880 1988 0.869 0.838 0.557** 0.703 1989 0.729* 0.839 1.029 0.828 1990 0.951 0.969 0.777 0.895 1991 0.823 0.826 0.558** 0.934 1992 0.707* 0.880 0.584** 0.794 1993 0.714* 1.002 0.751 0.582** 1994 0.730* 0.881 0.546** 0.645* 1995 0.806 0.821 0.714 0.582** 1996 0.460** 0.758 0.691* 0.885 1997 0.620** 0.569** 0.529** 0.670* 1998 0.600** 0.726* 0.650* 0.449** 1999 0.631** 0.596** 0.517** 0.733 2000 0.505** 0.787 0.553** 0.686* 2001 0.635** 0.610** 0.631** 0.497** 2002 0.671** 0.636** 0.471** 0.623** 2003 0.506** 0.715* 0.543** 0.542** appendix tab. a1: full model results for marriage and  rst births in belarus, relative risks from piecewise constant hazard models • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung520 women men marriage 1st birth marriage 1st birth year 2004 0.502** 0.537** 0.531** 0.633** 2005 0.508** 0.621** 0.452** 0.501** 2006 0.657** 0.736* 0.514** 0.562** 2007 0.701* 0.900 0.576** 0.561** 2008 0.623** 0.647** 0.484** 0.618** 2009 0.529** 0.792 0.450** 0.471** age 16-20 1 1 1 1 21-25 1.366** 2.254** 5.879** 8.620** 26-30 0.540** 1.377** 3.796** 8.835** 31-35 0.241** 0.671** 2.008** 5.793** 36-40 0.091** 0.246** 1.113 2.532** 41-45 0.048** 0.024** 0.775 1.460 46-50 0.035** 0.021** 0.396* 0.582 constant 0.015** 0.011** 0.003** 0.002** observations 52,094 50,976 45,937 47,712 tab. a1: continuation ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 source: own estimations the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence ... • 521 women men 2nd birth divorce 2nd birth divorce education studying 0.886 1.116 0.880 0.988 high 0.908 0.981 0.975 0.754* medium 1 1 1 1 low 1.117 0.954 0.933 1.085 year 1970 0.903 0.913 0.544 0.000 1971 1.103 0.795 0.765 0.000 1972 1.154 1.083 0.667 0.746 1973 1.494* 0.882 0.461* 0.000 1974 0.965 0.904 0.823 0.570 1975 0.957 0.730 0.643 1.512 1976 0.789 0.591 0.970 1.389 1977 1.191 0.937 0.722 0.869 1978 1.021 1.531 0.807 1.609 1979 0.883 0.816 0.808 0.724 1980 1 1 1 1 1981 1.046 0.465 0.900 0.000 1982 1.252 1.092 0.725 1.421 1983 1.178 0.834 0.992 1.066 1984 1.037 0.947 1.045 0.751 1985 1.490* 1.004 1.150 2.627 1986 1.080 1.019 1.317 2.305 1987 0.937 0.537 0.798 0.673 1988 1.385* 0.864 0.910 1.080 1989 0.974 0.876 1.008 2.487 1990 0.918 1.211 0.789 1.806 1991 1.116 1.058 0.666 0.784 1992 0.645* 1.138 0.798 1.363 1993 0.599* 0.658 0.539** 1.850 1994 0.590** 0.991 0.422** 1.422 1995 0.435** 1.064 0.582* 2.283 1996 0.322** 1.540 0.487** 2.741 1997 0.511** 1.529 0.387** 2.506 1998 0.501** 0.850 0.483** 1.628 1999 0.515** 1.057 0.313** 1.712 2000 0.537** 1.422 0.457** 2.757 2001 0.528** 1.186 0.436** 1.946 2002 0.584** 1.415 0.349** 1.896 2003 0.411** 1.544 0.346** 2.284 2004 0.521** 1.349 0.383** 1.386 2005 0.626* 1.554 0.340** 3.131 tab. a2: full model results for second births and divorce in belarus, relative risks from piecewise constant hazard models • sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung522 women men 2nd birth divorce 2nd birth divorce year 2006 0.582** 1.596 0.517** 3.104 2007 0.425** 1.753* 0.560** 3.030 2008 0.722 1.302 0.482** 1.927 2009 0.805 1.375 0.445** 2.270 time since 1st child/married 0-2 years 1 1 1 1 3-5 years 1.513** 1.456** 1.616** 1.409 6-8 years 1.173* 1.145 1.345** 1.159 9+/9-11 years 0.240** 1.120 0.285** 1.241 12-15 years n/a 1.121 n/a 1.058 16+ n/a 1.361** n/a 0.817 age at 1st birth/marriage 15-20 1.222** 1.236** 0.937 1.309 21-25 1 1 1 1 26-30 0.633** 1.186 0.812** 0.922 31-35 0.392** 0.850 0.610** 0.821 36-40 0.167** 1.194 0.259** 2.640** 41+ 0.174 2.390* 0.079* 1.027 parity 0 n/a 1.309* n/a 2.663** 1 child n/a 1.440** n/a 1.979** 2 children n/a 1 n/a 1 3+ children n/a 1.194 n/a 1.951** constant 0.009** 0.001** 0.012** 0.000** observations 45,218 88,855 25,797 59,232 tab. a2: continuation ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 n/a = not applicable source: own estimations published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions* rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat 1 introduction “europe’s migrant crisis: the year that changed a continent” (evans 2020) is a contribution published in bbc news in august 2020. whether one should speak of a crisis is a question of perspective. however, it is undisputed that european society has changed in many fi elds by the refugee movements that took place in 2015 and 2016. since migration processes always materialise in concrete places, the spatiallocal level, in which migrants are mobile and also immobile during a migration and at the (temporary) end of a migration movement, is omnipresent in research processes. migration without space does not exist, neither in the imaginaries of migration nor in the practice of migration. all levels of space are addressed, from the eu level to the municipal level, for example, when it comes to political-administrative spaces, or neighbourhoods and individual fl ats of a household, when it is more the sociospatial dimension that is addressed. in this respect, all spaces are also present in this special issue, with a particular focus on the regional and municipal levels with their concrete places of organisation and materialisation of fl ight. for refugee studies, the municipal level is also of great importance, because fi rst, the basic necessities of life, from food to shelter, must be provided by local institutions. and second, integration processes, even under the restrictive conditions for refugees, e.g. due to the usual work ban in the initial phase, primarily take place at this level. in contrast to other forms of migration, this dependency of refugees on local authorities is signifi cantly greater, as is the challenge for local offi ces to organise the fi nancial and human resources to meet the obligation to secure basic needs. the fact that studies at the small-scale level are always linked to all other levels and thus determine the everyday lives of refugees as well as challenge research concepts is particularly evident in the study by bolzoni et al. (2022) in this special issue. comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 513-532 (date of release: 21.12.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-19 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-19en0 * this is the editorial on the special issue "refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat514 this introductory contribution examines recent shifts in research approaches to refugee migration from a social science perspective, with a special focus on the regional and municipal levels. it is organised as a detailed and comprehensive review section which also asks about new perspectives that have emerged. social science research on refugees has been intensively conducted internationally for over 50 years. after the “long summer of migration” in 2015, new fi elds of research have emerged, especially in europe, analysing refugee migration from different perspectives. in germany, too, there are initial overviews of research on fl ight, e.g. on qualitative research approaches in the anthology by behrensen and westphal (2019) and especially kleist (2019) in the same volume. in this special issue, we then ask what issues have been explored in europe during and since the refugee movements of 2015 and 2016. which new research approaches have emerged since then, and which theoretical gaps and which research fi elds remain open. and fi nally, we consider the question of where the contributions of the special issue are to be placed in the research landscape. 2 processes and changes in research fi elds and research approaches although this article focuses on refugee migration to europe, it should fi rst be mentioned here that the vast majority of refugees worldwide are taken in by neighbouring countries. in terms of fl ight from syria to europe, türkiye is hosting about 3.7 million syrians (mainly due to the eu-türkiye agreement), lebanon almost 1.5 million and jordan over 651,000 (unhcr 2021, 2022a/b). these numbers are extremely high in relation to the population of lebanon and jordan and no comparison to the relatively few refugees that many european countries take in. in europe, more than 2.5 million people arrived in the course of migration movements in 2015 and 2016. although the civil war in syria and the related confl icts in the middle east began as early as 2011 and it was predictable that many people would fl ee to europe, european institutions were somehow surprised and sometimes overwhelmed by the quantity and permanence of the migration movements. decisions often had to be taken quickly, mainly on the accommodation and distribution of migrants, but also on border closures and other concrete measures. policies were developed and implemented at various levels, from the european community to the municipal level and on the fl ight routes, to control and, above all, to stem mobility towards europe. these migration politics are still effective today and are continuously renewed, and their effects can still be seen in 2021 in hot spot centres like moria or in enclave outposts of the eu like ceuta. previous research on this topic has accordingly focused on these aspects of immediate policy responses. while in the main host countries germany, sweden and austria, the focus was initially on questions of accommodation, from a paneuropean perspective, the main questions were how migrants are distributed in the european union, what measures are taken to limit refugee migration and what european migration policy as a whole should look like in the future. refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 515 2.1 refugee migration and potential “crises” the questions just addressed led to sometimes serious disagreements between european countries that lasted for a long time, so that the term “refugee crisis” was not only a central point of reference for political debates in media-political discourses again and again, but was also taken up in numerous academic publications throughout europe (e.g. hatton 2016; piguet 2020). in this context, the sociocultural effects of the supposed crisis and the related political responsibilities within europe were the main topics of discussion (cf. e.g. ostrand 2018). only gradually did research focus on discursive construction processes of this supposed fl ight or migration crisis. for example, abdelhady (2020), with reference to foucault (1979), focuses on the (de)construction of the 2015 migration crisis in swedish mainstream media. in doing so, she elaborates how the swedish government’s ongoing political goal of disciplining the bodies of refugees through control mechanisms in the areas of housing, schooling and health care has increased the pressure on institutions to act in order to manage the perceived risks associated with refugees. the resulting failure of institutions to deal with refugees and asylum seekers then led, sometimes politically intended, to a “sense of crisis” in society (abdelhady 2020: 136). this “perceived crisis” resulted in political agreements, such as the eu-türkiye agreement and others with north african states, and thus in new de facto border demarcations. this was also associated with violations of european legislation, such as the ban on push backs (breuckmann/wehrhahn 2021; davies et al. 2022). in a related context, the contribution of lorenz and etzold (2022) in this special issue shows how the fortifi cation of european borders and the externalisation of control regimes produce “journeys of violence” of refugees and other migrants at the local level. hess and kasparek (2017) also see the 2015/16 forced migration as a crisis in many european societies. however, they argue that it is rather a systemic crisis of the european union and its migration and security policy, which is, among other things, due to the collapse of the european border regime in the mediterranean as a result of the events of the arab spring in 2011. with reference to critical scholars in germany, karakayali (2018: 607) also draws on this argument when he writes that these same scholars hesitate to use the term “refugee crisis” and instead insist on speaking of a “political crisis”. he also uses the term “refugee crisis” in german to illustrate that the semantic relationship between the different parts of the term remains unclear: is it therefore a crisis in relation to refugees, a crisis for refugees or a crisis caused by refugees (karakayali 2018: 607)? the fact that the latter view has become the mainstream opinion in many european societies is partly due to media-driven discourses. a political crisis was thus turned into a refugee crisis, and for heidenreich et al. (2019), the complexity and duration of the supposed crisis created a climate of uncertainty, which provided ample space to infl uence public opinion on what the arrival of these refugees meant for the respective country. in the course of this study, national media discourses in hungary, germany, sweden, the uk and spain were analysed to uncover country-specifi c media frames and to trace the overall course of the refugee debate, as well as to reveal dynamics and shifts in discourses. • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat516 avraamidou (2020) has also followed this theme by questioning how the new york times and the guardian have described the so-called european refugee crisis in their editorials. she argues that these media representations, while sympathetic to migrants, are inherently eurocentric and contribute to reproducing the existing repressive global migration regime because they see the crisis as a rupture rather than a continuation of coloniality (avraamidou 2020). a similar postcolonial-critical perspective can also be found in gutièrrez rodriguez (2018), who has taken the so-called crisis of the migration in the summer of 2015 as an opportunity to develop the concept of a coloniality of migration. she uses this concept to discuss how european asylum and migration policies produce hierarchical categories of migrants and refugees and generate a terminology based on an imaginary that recalls the orientalist and racialised practices of european colonialism and imperialism. in this context, there is a racial differentiation between the “insiders”, who are considered members of a nation, and the “outsiders”, who are considered migrants. thus, this dichotomy between citizens and migrants is embedded in a racialising logic that emerges in social relations shaped by the ongoing effects of colonial epistemic power (gutièrrez rodriguez 2018). 2.2 anti-refugee mobilisation and welcome culture it is precisely this dualism between the “actual” citizens of the nation and the “other” citizens who have come from outside, as well as the associated creation of a climate of insecurity, that many right-wing political parties in europe have used to push through their political interests. this led to the strengthening of these parties, for example in france, italy, germany and the netherlands. there are numerous publications on these political processes that address resentment and the overall debate on racism (e.g sadeghi 2019). an example of this is a comparative study on anti-refugee mobilisation, which provides an overview of the reasons for and the nature of mobilisation against refugees in italy and france (gattinara 2018). gattinara (2018) argues that the perceived refugee crisis acted as a catalyst for far-right street politics, which has become an integral part of the broader antiimmigration movement. overall, this has contributed to an increase in far-right mobilisations against migrants, not only in quantitative but also in qualitative terms (gattinara 2018). these processes are countered by many pro-refugee mobilisations, which in germany, for example, led to the concept of welcome culture (cf. heckmann 2012) taken up again in the second half of the 2010s. the tension between the german welcome culture on the one hand and the growing xenophobia on the other has meanwhile been widely researched. while jünemann (2017), for example, focuses on the infl uence of emotions on german reactions to the “refugee crisis” (cf. also bräuer 2022 in this special issue), hamann and karakayali (2016) understand the so-called “willkommenskultur” as a set of collective practices of solidarity in many european cities. in doing so, they focus primarily on the volunteers who, through initial spontaneous actions, created the structures from which a welcoming culture could develop. refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 517 fleischmann and steinhilper (2017) offer an exciting perspective on this, arguing that it is precisely through the construction of this so-called crisis that many germans have been activated to engage in practices of “apolitical” helping. this development has led to the emergence of what they call a dispositive of helping, which embeds solidarity with refugees in a humanitarian framework but avoids an explicit political, spatial and historical contextualisation (fleischmann/steinhilper 2017: 17f.). thus, the question of the moral and political ambivalences of supporting migrants (schwiertz/steinhilper 2021) is repeatedly negotiated between contested politics and (voluntary) humanitarian aid. in this context, saltiel (2020: 67) emphasises the complex dialectical interrelation between political and humanitarian support and shows, using the example of maximilian park in brussels, what spatial and representational consequences this dualistic interrelation can bring about. based on two studies in 2017 and 2019, she shows how the park, where an emergency reception camp had provisionally been established in 2015, was sustainably transformed through a humanitarian approach involving different groups of actors, creating arrival infrastructures beyond the actual institutional structures, which in turn had positive effects on the treatment of refugees and their representation (saltiel 2020: 67). the questions about the accommodation and distribution of refugees in europe discussed at the beginning of this paper thus not only led to a sense of crisis in various european societies, which in turn led to a negative attitude towards refugees. rather, these processes activated groups of actors, some of which were very diverse, up to and including entire cities (e.g. “sanctuary cities”; “solidary cities” in germany), which showed solidarity with the refugees under the label “refugees welcome”, strengthened pro-migrant activism and demanded and promoted humanitarian approaches in order to integrate refugees into european societies. 2.3 integration and the labour market above all, the question of the integration of refugees played a central role in the european research landscape after the initial phase of acute reception and distribution. in addition to the aspect of language acquisition as a basic prerequisite for economic success, labour market integration was a central point of reference for social science research. for example, aksoy et al. (2020) investigated the causal relationship between local labour market conditions, attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival and possible multidimensional integration outcomes. they fi nd that initial unemployment negatively affects the economic and social integration of refugees. positive attitudes towards refugees, on the other hand, promote these areas of integration. the labour market integration of highly qualifi ed female refugees − as an example of the importance of gender studies with a focus on refugees – is the focus of a study by hillmann and toğral koca (2021). both in berlin and in smaller cities in brandenburg, gendered pathways of this group’s access to labour markets were analysed, with the role of intermediary actors and their power to infl uence access to labour markets as the central question. as this research • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat518 shows, a variety of recent research approaches have developed and a network of migration-related jobs has been created to support these women. all in all, a large number of studies have been carried out in recent years on the connections between forced migration or forced migrants on the one hand and work/labour in various economic and social functions as well as labour markets on the other. these studies are not only available as small case studies, but have also been conducted systematically over longer periods of time, e.g. in denmark in comparison with different immigration and integration policies over more than 40 years (nielsen ahrend et al. 2022). a very extensive quantitative analysis in 20 european countries on the chances of integrating refugees into the labour markets shows multifaceted, also contradictory results, but also overall a signifi cantly better labour market integration of non-refugee migrants compared to refugees (fasani et al. 2022). in this special issue, vanella et al. (2022) have addressed the issue of labour market integration of refugees at the regional level and against the backdrop of the opportunities to compensate for population losses through the integration of refugees. a different thematic focus is provided by easton-calabria and wood (2021), who turn their attention to organisations and institutions in berlin run by syrian refugees in order to understand their role in the integration process for syrians. in the fi eld of enquiry of “bridging”, “bonding” and “linking social capital“, they argue that the types of social connections these organisations seek to foster infl uence the integration process for syrian refugees, and that the process of establishing such initiatives reveals important components of integration in germany. mencutek (2021) also foregrounds refugee-led community organisations (rcos) in her research, focusing primarily on civil society activism and demonstrating how rcos gain a sphere of infl uence in the migration architectures of host countries. building on research on migration governance and grassroots organisations of refugees, it is argued that rcos can be crucial in strengthening the community and claiming rights for improving the living conditions of refugees. these publications exemplify the complexity of possible integration processes, whereby different actors with different goals and actions not only infl uence successful or less successful integration, but also bring about socio-spatial changes that in turn infl uence “european” societies themselves (e.g. also neis et al. 2018: 101; førde 2019: 44). in this context, a central research direction is decisive, which asks what role so-called arrival cities (cf. saunders 2010) or arrival infrastructures play in the integration process (cf. also the contribution by kox and van liempt 2022 in this special issue). the anthology by franz and hanhörster (2020) should also be mentioned here, which focuses on numerous european spaces (berlin, vienna, athens, rome). 2.4 regime concepts and actor constellations these complex interconnections between the different groups of actors and their goals and needs, as well as the effects and repercussions of the modes of action on different spatial levels, which have emerged as a result of the migration movements of 2015/16, are increasingly being researched with the help of the migration regime refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 519 concept (rass/wolff 2018; cvajner et al. 2018). this concept has been en vogue in migration research for a number of years, although it has always been understood and conceptualised in different ways (e.g. hillmann/calbet 2019). the debate on migration regimes and their possible methodological implementations are conceptually central in pott et al. (2018) and are also frequently used in international scholarship in the context of refugee migration research. bernt (2019) points out that due to the increased interest in the intersection of immigration, localities and regulatory techniques, there is increasing talk of “urban“ or “local“ migration regimes (e.g. schmiz/räuchle 2019), and that the concept of “urban regimes“ is gaining ground. however, he argues that “migration regimes” and “urban regimes” are two fundamentally different ways of analysing regimes, both of which have potentials and problems (bernt 2019: 1). for example, punter et al. (2019) discuss the concept of distributional regime, which they understand as a structure that coordinates practices of movement and settlement control in a way that produces an ideal distribution of populations in space. previously, horvath et al. (2017) critically assessed the potential of regime theory for migration research. although “regime” is not a unifi ed concept, the authors argue that there are commonalities in analytical perspectives that are useful for migration research (horvath et al. 2017). it is therefore not surprising that many studies on refugee movements to europe in 2015/2016 now take the migration regime approach as a basis for analysing certain migration-specifi c questions. schneider (2022) also uses the conception of migration regimes in this special issue to analyse the arrangements of refugee reception in rural areas in saxony (germany). in addition to studies that explicitly refer to this approach, ambrosini (2021), for example, introduces a similar research concept with the “battlefi elds of asylum (and immigration) policies”, as he primarily examines the constellation between the differently cooperating and at the same time confl ict-ready public and non-public actors at the “local” level and understands this as an extremely contested fi eld. hinger et al. (2017: 443) argue that with a perspective based on the assumption of migration regimes, the different practices of receiving and accommodating asylum seekers can be better understood without uncritically reproducing politically manufactured categories. based on empirical observations, hinger and schäfer’s (2019: 63) contribution discusses an exemplary solution to a central research problem, namely the question of how to compare the diverse and changing practices and discourses of housing refugees in local migration regimes. to fi nd answers to this question, they develop a fi ve-dimensional comparative model that combines the relational re-scaling approach (glick schiller/çağlar 2009) with the spatial constructivist considerations of henri lefebvre (hinger/schäfer 2019: 63). 2.5 scales, locality and knowledge the increasing interest of interdisciplinary social science research in the interface between immigration and regulatory processes, as discussed by bernt (2019), is already clear from the publications just discussed, whereby the “local” focus seems to play a special role (e.g. glorius/doomernik 2020). for example, glorius • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat520 and nienaber (2022) in this special issue discuss locational choices in the context of forced migration. but also local boundary practices of civil society actors and their transformative power vis-à-vis refugees in a specifi c urban space in berlin are investigated (toğral koca 2019), as well as, for example, placeand space-making activities carried out by and around refugees are addressed, with a spatial focus on refugee accommodation in rural areas in brandenburg (baumann 2019). in this context, zill et al. (2020) argue that “more open” forms of asylum accommodation can enhance the bond between asylum seekers and locals and promote the development of closer everyday social relationships, while “more closed” forms of asylum accommodation can give rise to feelings of foreignness, which can be reinforced by processes of categorisation and everyday demarcation. the authors distinguish between spatial, material and institutional dimensions of the openness of asylum accommodation and understand (un)familiarity as an expression of experiences, knowledge and perceptions of social distance. steigemann and misselwitz (2020) also focus on knowledge, but here the term is associated with space. the question is which spatial knowledge is mobilised at the place of asylum in order to make the accommodation a home. how do spatial practices and spatial knowledge hybridise practices of the place of origin, experiences made during the fl ight, and the incoming and uncertain time of residence in a foreign place of asylum? how do spatial appropriation processes confl ict with humanitarian logics and technocratic emergency management approaches at the place of asylum? in particular, it focuses on how refugees perceive their new urban environment materially and socially, how they adapt, appropriate and change the environment, and how they draw on existing and developing stocks of urban knowledge, urban experiences and social relations. wiest (2020) also discusses how the dynamics of social encounters in the city are shaped by specifi c migration histories, local discourses, economies and policies in her study of urban neighbourhoods in both west and east germany, using a postmigrant perspective as a heuristic starting point. she is specifi cally concerned with understanding urban encounters in a migration society as contestations of social and class-specifi c recognition that take place on different scales and in specifi c urban locations. at the same time, she wants to show how urban coexistence is negotiated in everyday settings between routines and new confl icts. 2.6 transnationalism and social interconnections between refugees using the example of thessaloniki and the “transnational no border camp” organised by numerous local and international initiatives and with the participation of refugees from the camps, tsavdaroglou (2019) illustrates how the struggle of migrants in crossing political and social borders inspires local solidarity movements to network globally and opens up new possibilities to re-imagine transnational common spaces. inspired by the lefebvrian idea of the right to the city, the autonomy of migration and approaches to common spaces, the study shows how the establishment of the transnational no border camp in the city centre challenges state policy. the actors involved (refugees, local and international initiatives and activists) demanded the refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 521 right to the city, formed direct democratic assemblies and organised a variety of direct actions, demonstrations and squats that marked the social body of the city with spatial disobedience and transnational practices of commoning. this paper reveals how complex the processes and interconnections that developed as a result of the 2015/2016 migration movements and how diverse the constellations of actors can be, what signifi cance the different scales (local vs. global) can have and, fi nally, what socio-spatial, political and transnational implications can arise (cf. also hathat/ wehrhahn 2021). for a long time, the social relations between refugees and the host society in a particular place, area or country were at the forefront of research, but there are more and more studies addressing the social connections between migrants both in one place and across national borders. the basis for this shift in focus is the changed perspective on migration movements since the early 1990s, in which space and the borders associated with it are no longer understood as rigid constructs, and instead focus on social and transnational and local relationships. an interesting piece dealing with similar issues from the regime approach from a transnational perspective is the one by steinhilper (2018). he examines how marginalised migrants organise transnational political protest against all odds. based on empirical fi eldwork and drawing on studies of transnational migration and social movements, he argues that migrants mobilise within transnational social spaces where the relationships and emotions acquired en route are linked to the qualities of the place of arrival. steinhilper (2018) introduces the term “transnational contested spaces” to refer to the politicisation of transnational spaces that emerge in this context and are transformed into specifi c social formations. nowicka et al. (2019) deal with transnational solidarity, focusing on polish-born migrants in germany and their practices and attitudes towards refugee assistance. transnational solidarity, they argue, must embrace the tension between cosmopolitan and particularist notions of belonging. the authors propose to defi ne transnational solidarity as an outcome of socio-cultural and spatio-temporally specifi c interpretations of the norm of solidarity. as a heuristic tool, transnational solidarity helps to understand the changing alliances for and against refugees in europe, according to nowicka et al. (2019). 2.7 social exchange and the role of digital media and communication borkert et al. (2018) make two contributions to the study of social ties among refugees. on the one hand, they offer substantial insights into the digital literacy, information needs and strategies of syrian and iraqi refugees who arrived in europe in 2015. on the other hand, they seek to change the dominant perspective on migrants and refugees as passive victims of international events and policies by highlighting migrants’ skills and abilities to navigate the complex landscape of information and border regimes on the way to europe. the work focused on 83 arab refugees from the za’atari refugee camp (jordan) and in two centres in berlin. following on from this, fiedler (2019) asks about the subjective value refugees attach to different sources of information and investigates whether they made • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat522 informed decisions at different stages of their transit. between november 2015 and april 2016, four focus groups and 36 in-depth interviews were conducted with syrian and iraqi refugees, as well as interviews with iraqi experts from the media sector and civil society. two key fi ndings were identifi ed: first, although mass media was consumed, the personal network was the most important source of information for the refugees. and secondly, although they felt suffi ciently informed before and during their fl ight, they experienced an information defi cit especially after arrival. based on a qualitative case study with syrians living in the netherlands, udwan et al. (2020) explore the impact of the withdrawal of the welfare state and the digital transformation taking place on the resilience strategies of marginalised people such as refugees. in doing so, they point to paradoxes of digital resilience as described by the emotional digital work refugees do in communicating with their families. in addition, they highlight the role of socio-cultural factors in refugees’ adoption and use of information and communication technology for health promotion and describe the negotiation of different and contradictory identity axes online. the importance of the smartphone for refugees has often been examined in recent years, either at the margins or very specifi cally (e.g. hathat 2019; eriksen 2020). eriksen’s (2020) detailed research on this aspect is primarily concerned with depicting how smartphones infl uence temporality, rhythm and gaps during indeterminate waiting times. with regard to the aspect of social networks, it is stated that with the help of smartphones, networking is accelerated and a new rhythm and intensity in social interaction is promoted. in addition, a number of multilingual apps developed to support refugees allow access to information about social services, ngos and volunteer networks, meeting places, language courses, application procedures and local information in general. in the contribution of glorius and nienaber (2022) in this special issue the role of social networks, internet and social media in the search for refuge destinations is of particular interest. bayramoğlu and lüneborg (2018) also focus on digital media. they work on the question of how digital media are used as self-empowering tools by queer refugees in the course of their migration from various middle eastern countries via türkiye to germany. through their discussion, they seek to highlight the need to shift attention away from the vulnerability of refugees to the empowering strategies that queer refugees, for example, develop for themselves. the research was based on observations and interviews with queer refugees in istanbul and berlin. according to the authors, not only social media activism and interpersonal communication platforms such as social networks, but also dating apps open up the possibility for refugees to develop new coping strategies and a sense of belonging during migration. they also focus on the emotional and affective value of digital media for queer refugees. while translocal digital media embed refugees in transnational networks that provide both interpersonal/emotional support and useful tools for activism, this new research shows the restrictive power of such media. digitally circulated affects can become regulating forces that integrate queer refugees into european regimes of racialised and sexualised difference. refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 523 3 outlook: the relevance of broad disciplinary and interdisciplinary research on refugee migration for european societies the aim of this introduction was to provide an overview of the infl uence that the refugee movements of 2015/2016 have had on research on refugees in the social sciences, which new perspectives have emerged and which topics have been prioritised. it should be noted that due to the extraordinary complexity of the topic, we can only refer to certain developments, concepts and publications that we consider central. for example, the gender aspect was addressed in two fi elds (cf. sections 2.3 or 2.7), which, in view of the increasing heterogenisation of fl ight and migration movements worldwide, seems to be taking on an increasingly important role not only in forced migration research, but is still too rarely placed at the centre of research. the same is true for a postcolonial-critical perspective, which was taken up in this article in section 2.1. decolonisation in this context serves to take a differentiated perspective, historically linked to colonialism, on the production of “crisis discourses” and categorisations of “insiders” belonging to the nation and “outsiders” (refugees or migrants) not belonging to it. although, in the authors’ view, this perspective signifi cantly helps to break down these categorisations and to question, for example, “simple” constructions of identity, it has so far been taken up too rarely as a basis for research. especially when integration processes are addressed, a postcolonial-critical perspective can lead to a changed understanding of migrant societies and, for example, make the “rigid” concept of integration obsolete both in political practice and in research. linked to postcoloniality, reference must be made at this point to the idea of a postmigrant society (yildiz 2016; foroutan 2019; wiest 2020; see also section 2.5), which aims precisely at this changed understanding of society. the concept is not about declaring migration to be completed or past, but to understand it as a decisive structuring element of societies (karakayali 2015: 369). in our view, this concept should also be given greater consideration in the future, although a more appropriate term would still have to be found for the semantically misleading term “postmigrant”. however, since it is still a rather young fi eld of research, there is also a need for a more concrete examination of this basic idea in order to make it more fruitful for future research on forced migration. especially the current rightwing populist tendencies, which can be observed not only in europe but all over the world, make a postcolonial-critical perspective an essential tool for future research on fl ight and migration, as right-wing and anti-democratic parties use the idea of national identity, which often goes hand in hand with racial divisions of the population, to divide societies and achieve their own political goals. a postcolonialcritical perspective, possibly including the “postmigrant”, would not only reveal similar past racialising processes and explain current tendencies, but also open up options to better classify complex developments. at any rate, these processes affect the spatial levels of municipalities and regions in everyday practice. another central process, which also has and will continue to have serious effects on european municipalities and regions and which must be more strongly linked to refugee and migration research in the future, • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat524 concerns demographic change and the associated labour market mechanisms and recruitment of foreign skilled workers. here, the selective differentiation between the “good”, i.e. desired refugees/migrants needed for the european labour market and the non-desired persons has to be critically questioned. once again, this dichotomy is reminiscent of practices of colonialism and imperialism, which ultimately materialise in a highly restrictive european border regime and thus also have concrete effects on migrants’ fl ight routes and movements (cf. e.g. lorenz and etzold 2022 in this special issue). future research on fl ight must address this problem and fi nd solutions to overcome the dichotomy of, among others, north and south. for the fact that refugee migration will continue to exist in the future and also in the global north as a central issue of societal further development is not only suggested by the contrasting demographic developments in – for example – europe and africa, but is also made clear not least by the consequences of the russian invasion of ukraine. the processes outlined in the preceding sections may possibly be seen as very specifi cally interpreted processes in the run-up to arrival in or even on the way to a european country. however, they not only signifi cantly infl uence the way, including the (spatial) path of fl ight, but also the integration process in europe and are therefore to be understood as a necessary, integral part of an (interdisciplinary) research on refugees. this is not only scientifi cally necessary, but also politically promising given this open scientifi c view, by setting the conditions, which range from historical-emotional to structural-economic conditions on the individual level to the political, social and economic conditions in so-called host countries, as conditions for the (theoretical) options and thus the (practical) shaping of refugee policy on the ground. cities and regions are particularly called upon to master the day-to-day challenges. 4 contributions of the special issue following on from the research presented on the major themes, this special issue offers selected studies from human geography, sociology, anthropology and demography. mieke kox and ilse van liempt’s contribution – “‘i have to start all over again.’ the role of institutional and personal arrival infrastructures in refugees’ homemaking processes in amsterdam” – is about refugees in amsterdam and how they can develop a sense of home. both personal and institutional infrastructures in material and affective terms are at the forefront of the study. kox and van liempt use the concept of arrival infrastructure (see section 2.3) as a theoretical basis to shed light on informal processes of participation and integration that might remain hidden in formal infrastructures. methodologically, the authors draw on participatory ethnographic research in a refugee shelter in amsterdam and also focus on different actor constellations. the study concludes that refugees become entangled in a web of reception/asylum seeker centres and civic integration requirements that simultaneously facilitate and constrain their process of fi nding refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 525 a home in a new place. informal and personal infrastructures, in particular, make it possible for refugees to build social and affective ties in the city. at the same time, they struggle with social isolation and lack of participation because they have limited resources and dutch society only partially engages with refugees. from these research fi ndings, the authors argue that, on the one hand, the current organisation of arrival infrastructures for refugees needs to be questioned and, on the other hand, a multidimensional model of integration is needed that includes the role of (civil) society in the processes of refugee integration. kim bräuer analyses in her contribution “five years of voluntary refugee aid in germany. a retrospective analysis of discourse, local organisation and the emotions involved” the development of the welcome discourse and the organisation of voluntary refugee aid between 2015 and 2020, how the perception of it has changed and which emotions are involved. for this study, she not only analysed numerous newspaper articles on voluntary refugee work, refugees and refugee policy from various newspapers, but also conducted guided interviews with volunteers, full-time or voluntary organisers and refugees who received assistance in berlin and braunschweig. theoretically, bräuer draws on the concept of governmentality, combines it with the concept of performativity and completes it with an affect-theoretical approach based on the concept of immersive power, in order to be able to work with a critical power perspective in this way and to attach signifi cance to affects and emotions in voluntary refugee aid. bräuer fi nally states in her contribution that the welcome discourse and the local organisation of voluntary refugee work are valuated differently by volunteers and refugees depending on their affective perception and emotional attachment. depending on the level of involvement in voluntary refugee care, the relationship to the discourse and to the voluntary work itself also changes, whereby the emotional perception of volunteers and refugees is shaped by the lack of knowledge about their social environment. overall, this contribution takes a critical look at the last fi ve years of voluntary refugee assistance and considers the consequences for voluntary refugee support if emotions are indeed as signifi cant as the authors point out. the serious consequences that a change in policy direction at the national level can have on policy practice at the local level are exemplifi ed by magda bolzoni, davide donatiello, and leila giannetto in their contribution to “sailing against the law tides. implications of the 2018 refugee reception reform in small-medium towns and rural areas in italy.” based on three case studies in different rural parts of italy, the paper uses a specially created methodology in a situated qualitative analysis to examine how a so-called security law enforced in 2018 by then interior minister matteo salvini affects the reception of refugees and local development opportunities at the local level. funding was reduced and shifted from smaller to larger reception centres, resulting in a multitude of negative impacts for the refugees themselves as well as on the possibilities of supportive interactions with refugees on the part of policy makers at all levels, but especially in small and medium sized towns and rural areas. well-functioning integration measures had to be discontinued and both on the material and on the symbolic level in relation to the concrete instruments – called “within” – as well as to the “around”, i.e. the positive • rainer wehrhahn, zine-eddine hathat526 effects in the sense of the coexistence of refugees and the established population, which was strongly developed in various areas, were massively impaired. further research on the effectiveness of regulating measures on a higher political level for all institutions dependent on it and thus also people and spaces directly affected by the regulation can benefi t from this systematic investigation using an analytical tool that can be transferred to other studies. the contribution is of great value in terms of research methodology as well as in terms of revealing multi-scale impacts of political regulations. behind the conceptional background of migration regimes, hanne schneider investigates in her paper on “local migration regimes in rural areas: the example of refugee reception in saxony” the modalities of the reception of refugees using a multi-method approach. although the author herself identifi es some limitations of her research concept, the questions of welcoming or rejecting attitudes toward migrants in general and refugees in particular, which are very rarely investigated in rural areas, are of value for subsequent studies. in the case studies of the districts of bautzen and nordsachsen, the questionable welcoming attitude towards refugees is not so much due to the rurality itself, but rather to the historical conditions of little or no contact with people from other cultural backgrounds in these areas, as well as the resulting political right-wing discourse on migration in the post-socialist period after 1990 and the societal phenomena of a “rural migration regime”. governance regimes with specifi c actor constellations and historical settings in these rural areas seem to be decisive for migration regimes in their function for the quality of society’s willingness to accept refugees. birgit glorius and birte nienaber use the concept of autonomy of migration in their study on “locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants” in their country comparison of the destinations luxembourg and germany. the aim is to conceptually merge the separation of mobility studies and forced migration research and to make locational choice in the course of forced migration visible on the factual level by means of an aspiration-ability model. as a result, a combination of different information, which has already been acquired throughout the migration trajectories mostly by means of transnational social networks, will be recorded. in the case of a possible further migration within europe, mainly economic reasons are decisive for the choice of the new destination. this improvement or consolidation of the socioeconomic situation would then be a classic motive for most migration movements within a country or a supranational entity such as the european union. in this respect, it should be considered whether and when a forced migration transforms into a labour migration and how a possible overlapping of migration leads to a longer lasting process of migration itself could be conceptualised more appropriately in future research. the opportunities that could arise from the labour market integration of refugees for regions in germany particularly affected by population losses in the course of demographic change are examined by patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner and philipp deschermeier in their paper “past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany – an analysis and projection of labor market effects.” on the basis of principal component analysis and time series analysis, refugee migration to europe – current challenges and potentials for cities and regions • 527 they show differentiated patterns of correlations. they relate to known differences in labour market integration as a function of variables such as origin, education, language competence and gender, but above all it is interesting that and how differently situated regions in relation to institutional factors as well as their economic prosperity increase the chances for the labour markets there. especially near large metropolises and/or in economically strong regions, in contrast to less successful, more peripheral regions, a compensation of lost workers by refugees can be expected. in addition to thematic results, the group of authors can also present new fi ndings in methodological terms due to their complex research methodology as well as provide valuable suggestions for future empirical research concepts. the extent to which other, also socio-cultural structural conditions play a role in the different development opportunities of the regions, and not only economic and demographic ones, could be investigated in follow-up studies that also include qualitative approaches. rahel lorenz and benjamin etzold’s contribution “journeys of violence: trajectories of (im-)mobility and migrants’ encounters with violence in european border spaces” focuses on the journeys of refugees and other migrants to and through europe. in particular, the authors focus on the conditions of refugees’ journeys in order to point out the fragmented mobility of refugees and to show how these journeys are shaped by experiences of violence. they use quantitative data and qualitative research methods to show that what they call “journeys of violence” are caused by a fundamentally unequal and asymmetrical global mobility regime. refugees and other migrants are typically exposed to different forms of violence as they travel to and through europe, lorenz 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in the netherlands. social media for social support, health, and identity. in: social media + society 6,2: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120915587 unhcr 2021: refugee data finder [https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ download/?url=hl6qhe, 19.12.2022]. unhcr 2022a: lebanon population [https://reporting.unhcr.org/lebanon, 19.12.2022]. unhcr 2022b: jordan population [https://reporting.unhcr.org/jordan#toc-populations, 19.12.2022]. vanella, patrizio; hellwagner, timon; deschermeier, philipp 2022: past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany – an analysis and projection of labor market effects. comparative population studies 47: 443-484. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-17 wiest, karin 2020: ordinary places of postmigrant societies: dealing with difference in west and east german neighbourhoods. in: urban planning 5,3: 115-126. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v5i3.2960 yildiz, erol 2016: postmigrantische perspektiven. von der hegemonie zur urbanen alltagspraxis. in: doğmuş, aysun; karakaşoğlu, yasemin; mecheril, paul (eds.): pädagogisches können in der migrationsgesellschaft. wiesbaden: springer vs: 7184. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-07296-4_5 zill, marielle et al. 2020: uneven geographies of asylum accommodation. conceptualizing the impact of spatial, material, and institutional differences on (un)familiarity between asylum seekers and local residents. in: migration studies 8,4: 491-509. https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mny049 prof. dr. rainer wehrhahn (), dr. zine-eddine hathat. christian-albrechts-universität zu kiel, department of geography. kiel, germany. e-mail: wehrhahn@geographie.uni-kiel.de, hathat@geographie.uni-kiel.de url: https://www.stadtgeo.uni-kiel.de/en/team/wehrhahn?set_language=en https://www.stadtgeo.uni-kiel.de/en/team/dipl.-geogr.-zine-eddine-hathat?set_ language=en https://www.stadtgeo.uni-kiel.de/en/team/dipl.-geogr.-zine-eddine-hathat?set_language=en published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data using the sullivan method are informative summary measures of population health healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data using the sullivan method are informative summary measures of population health* magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer abstract: health expectancy (he), commonly derived from cross-sectional prevalence data using the sullivan method, serves as the most frequently used summary measure of population health. like lifespan distribution statistics, which are often discussed alongside life expectancy (le) in demographic studies, analogous statistics on healthy lifespans can provide valuable information on population health. we examine whether healthy lifespan distribution statistics beyond he can be estimated based on cross-sectional prevalence data and the life table, the data inputs of the sullivan method. to do so, we treat the sullivan method as an extension of the stationary population model to health and distinguish between health conditions with and without recovery from the state of decreased health. our empirical demonstration is based on the prevalence of chronic diseases in selected european countries in 2017 from the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), as well as on life tables from eurostat. we find that the sullivan method, when considered as an extension of the stationary population model to health, allows for the estimation of a healthy survival distribution and its statistics, beyond he, for health characteristics with no recovery from the state of decreased health. we show that for such health conditions, the method requires that the number of persons in full health in a stationary population does not increase with age. we argue that for such health dimensions, he conditional on being in good health at the life table radix age is of relevance for health policy interventions. in our empirical application, we show that the conditional and unconditional measures of he can give substantially different pictures of population health. furthermore, we show that across european countries, in contrast to the negative comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 55-80 (date of release: 20.03.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-03 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-03en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/555/405. https://comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/555/405 • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer56 relationship between le and lifespan inequality, higher he is associated with greater inequality in healthy years lived when conditional on being healthy at age 50. overall, the sullivan method, when considered as an extension of the stationary population model, proves to be a valuable tool for deriving summary statistics of population health beyond he, which are highly relevant to public policy. keywords: population health · health expectancy · the sullivan method · healthy survival · healthy lifespan 1 introduction health expectancy (he) is the most common summary measure of population health and is most often derived using the sullivan method. despite its well-discussed limitations (barendregt et al. 1994, 1997; laditka/hayward 2002; rogers et al. 1990), the sullivan method remains the most widely used method to estimate he due to its minimal data requirements and computational simplicity. the method is based on cross-sectional health prevalence data combined with the stationary population distribution of a period life table. other methods for deriving he are double decrement life tables, multistate life tables, multistate markov chain models with rewards, and microsimulation models. some of the solutions of the sullivan method have previously been used to derive measures of healthy lifespans other than he. first, caswell and zarulli (2018) propose a markov chain with rewards model to derive the first three moments of the healthy longevity distribution. the first three moments allow, in addition to he, to estimate the variance and skewness of the distributions of healthy longevity. second, permanyer et al. (2022) use sullivan data inputs to derive “age-at-disability onset distributions” (p.3). from these distributions, the authors derive he and inequality in the age of disability onset, quantified by the gini coefficient. finally, based on health-adjusted life expectancy (hale) values from the global burden of diseases study (gbd), permanyer et al. (2023) and zarulli and caswell (2022) reconstruct healthy lifespans and estimate healthy lifespan inequality statistics. in this study, we revisit the sullivan method and show that, when considered as a stationary population model, it gives the theoretical foundation needed to derive healthy lifespan distributions in period life tables. we identify the limitations of the above-mentioned previous studies and show that our method significantly improves their solutions. we also identify the necessary assumptions and limitations of our method and apply it to a comparative study of the distribution of years lived in full health in selected european countries in 2017. healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 57 2 methods 2.1 the sullivan method basics research questions answered by the sullivan method refer to the average experience of a synthetic life table cohort. the sullivan method, however, is based on the stationary population model. the link between the stationary population model and the synthetic life table cohort is the period life table, from which they both derive (heuveline 2023; preston et al. 2000). according to the sullivan method, the number of persons alive in each age group in the stationary population, as implied by a period life table, is partitioned into subgroups by health state according to the agespecific probabilities of being in each health state. these probabilities are estimated from the observed age-specific prevalence of health states in cross-sectional data, usually a survey. the resulting number of persons alive at age x in a given health state i in a stationary population (lx,i, using life table notation) is then interpreted as the statistic of the corresponding life table synthetic cohort of the total years lived in a given age interval [x, x + n) and health state i (cambois et al. 1999; rogers et al. 1990). the he of persons alive at age x is then derived by summing the years lived in good health at ages x and above.1 imai and soneji (2007) provide statistical proof that, to derive an unbiased and consistent estimator of he, in addition to the standard assumptions of the life table stationary population model, the requisite assumption under the sullivan method is that the age-specific prevalence of health conditions remains constant over time long enough for the population to become stationary. the authors refer to this assumption as “stationarity of age-specific disability prevalence” (imai/soneji 2007: 1203). the prevalence of a health state is a stock variable, resulting from flows between health states, and all assumptions of the stationary population model concern population flows. therefore, the extension of the stationary population model to health states requires there to be the assumption that the transition rates between health states result in a constant age-specific probability of being in each of the selected health states. furthermore, the lifespans of individuals by health status can only be derived from life table mortality rates and health prevalence data if the sullivan method is considered as an extension of the stationary model to health status.2 in the following sections of the paper, “sullivan method” means “the sullivan method considered as an extension of the stationary population model”. 1 this method, known as the sullivan method, actually differs from the one originally proposed by sullivan (1971). in the original method, the number of years lived free of disability in an age group x was derived by redistributing the number of years lived in an age group x in a life table synthetic cohort in accordance with the average share of disability days in a study year per person aged x, as observed in a study population. 2 alternatively, the sullivan method can be considered as a solution to derive he as the multiplication of the average number of years of life of the life table cohort (le) by the average healthy period per year of life. • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer58 2.2 types of health dimensions and life table notations in this paper, we focus on the sullivan method applied to health conditions with a binary specification of health states, i.e. full or decreased health, which is the most common in demographic studies. our method can be extended to health dimensions with more than two health states, and other specifications of health dimensions as in caswell and zarulli (2018), as long as the requirements specified in the next sections are met. the sullivan method is based on the prevalence of decreased health by age. as in any population, prevalence at age x is implicitly an outcome of transitions between health states in ages below x. accounting for these transitions, we distinguish between health conditions with an irreversible (fig. 1a) and reversible state of decreased health (fig. 1b). in table 1, we define the notations used throughout this paper. the notations are defined for an age interval [x, x + n) from an abridged life table, where n defines the width of the age interval. 2.3 stationary population by health state in a single-age life table since the sullivan method derives the number of persons alive and healthy in each age group in the stationary population of a period life table, it also provides an estimate of the average number of persons healthy in each age group in this population. according to the sullivan method, the number of persons in full health in a stationary population at age x at any point in time is a subset of the number of fig. 1: diagrams of the population stocks and flows between health states in two types of health dimensions with a binary specification of health state (a) irreversible state of decreased health (b) reversible state of decreased health d12 d23 dead d13 d' healthy unhealthy healthy d12 d23 dead d13 d' d21 unhealthy notes: the specific transitions in the diagrams are highlighted in order to facilitate the explanation of the methods in the text. source: own design healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 59 tab. 1: notations for population stocks and flows in the stationary population and the synthetic cohort models of an abridged life table* variable stationary population synthetic cohort nlx number of persons alive at any point person-years lived between ages in time between ages x and x + n x and x + n nl'x number of persons healthy at any person-years lived in full health point in time between ages x and between ages x and x + n x + n nax mean time elapsed at death since mean person-years lived between xth birthday for deaths occurring ages x and x + n by those dying between ages x and x + n in a in the age interval calendar year x + nax mean age at death for deaths occurring between ages x and x + n in a calendar year lx + nax average number of persons alive number of persons left alive at age at any point in time between ages x + nax x and x + n in a calendar year** l'x + nax average number of persons who number of persons in full health at are healthy at any point in time age x + nax between ages x and x + n in a calendar year** nπx share of persons who are unhealthy average share of years lived as among those alive between ages unhealthy out of the total personx and x + n years lived between ages x and x + n ndx annual number of deaths between number of persons dying between ages x and x + n ages x and x + n nd'x models with an irreversible state of decreased health annual number of persons leaving number of persons becoming the stationary population by a unhealthy or dying between ages decrease in health or death between x and x + n ages x and x + n models with a reversible state of decreased health annual difference in the number difference in the number of persons of persons recovering and recovering and persons becoming persons becoming unhealthy plus unhealthy or dying between ages x deaths between ages x and x + n and x + n * for a single-age life table: n = 1, nax = 0.5, the notations are simplified to lx, l'x, lx + 0.5, l'x + 0.5, πx, dx, d'x, accordingly; ** this is a novel interpretation of the value of lx + nax and follows the explanations provided in section 2.4. source: own specifications based on preston et al. (2000: 54, 57), jagger et al. (2014) • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer60 persons alive at that age, proportional in size to the probability that a person alive at age x is in full health (1 − πx):3 l'x = (1 − πx) lx where the probability that a person alive at age x is in full health is estimated from the proportion of respondents who are in full health out of the total number of respondents at age x in a survey, or other source. in a single-age life table, it is commonly assumed that deaths are evenly distributed across the age intervals, with the exception of the first age and the last open interval. under this assumption, the period life table relies on the trapezoidal rule to provide a discrete approximation of the underlying continuous age distribution of the stationary population. the trapezoidal rule is routinely used in calculus to estimate the definite integral of a continuous function as the sum of the areas of trapezoids that approximate it in small intervals. the area of a trapezoid is half the sum of the lengths of its bases multiplied by its height. as shown in figure 2b, the area of the trapezoid in the age interval [x, x + 1) equals lx, i.e. the number of persons alive at age x in a stationary population of a single-age period life table. since the base of the trapezoid is the length of the age interval, its area is calculated as half of twice the length of the age interval multiplied by lx + 0.5, which simplifies to: lx ≈ lx + 0.5 where lx + 0.5 is the number of persons who survive to the middle of the age interval, which, assuming that deaths are evenly distributed over the age interval, is also the average number of persons alive in the age interval [x, x + 1). similarly, in a single-age life table, the number of those in full health at age x (l'x) is equal to the average number of persons who are healthy at age x, which is the number of healthy individuals in the middle of the age interval (l'x + 0.5). since the sullivan method allows us to derive the number of healthy individuals at age x using equation (1), we can also apply it to calculate the average number of people who are healthy at this age: l'x + 0.5 = (1 − πx) lx + 0.5 compare figures 2a and 2b for a graphical explanation of these relationships. 2.4 stationary population by health state in an abridged life table in an abridged life table, the average number of years lived by persons who die in an age interval [x, x + n), denoted as nax, is not well-approximated by the interval midpoint. for the case of abridged life table data, we presume that nax is either (3) 3 in a single-age life table, we refer to the age interval [x,x + 1) as “age x”. (1) (2) healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 61 given as a life table column or, if it is not given, it can be derived from other life table columns. the average number of persons alive in the age interval [x, x + n) is approximately equal to the number of persons aged x + nax (denoted as lx + nax). fig. 2: stationary populations in a single-age life table and the flows between health states (a) the sullivan method (b) population stocks approximation 1. 0 pr op or tio n l =l’ +l’’x x x+1 l xx x l’x l’x lx =(1 x) π lx l'x age 1. 0 l l’ x+0.5 x+0.5 x x+1x+0.5 l x l x+1 0.5dx 0.5dx pr op or tio n age 1x (c) irreversible state of decreased health (d) reversible state of decreased health 1. 0 age l’x+0.5 x x+1x+0.5 x+1.5 l’x+1.5 d’x+0.5=d12 -d21+d13 pr op or tio n 1. 0 l l’ x+0.5 x+0.5 x x+1x+0.5 x+1.5 l x+1.5 l’x+1.5 dx+0.5=d13+d23 d’x+0.5=d12+d13 pr op or tio n age source: own design • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer62 accordingly, the number of persons alive in a stationary population of a period life table at age [x, x + n) is approximated by (see fig. 3b) nlx ≈ n ∙ lx + nax when nax > 0.5n the distribution is right skewed and vice versa. in the example in figure 3b, nax > 2.5, which implies that dx,1 > dx,2. here, dx,1 denotes deaths that occur in the first part of the age interval, [x, x + nax), and dx,2 denotes deaths in the second part of the age interval, i.e. [x + nax, x + n). in figure 3b, the total number of years lost in the first sub-interval [x, x + nax) by persons who die in this sub-interval is denoted by dx,1 and derived as: dx,1 =  dx,1 nax 2 similarly, years lost upon death in the second sub-interval [x + nax, x + n) by persons who die in this sub-interval is denoted by dx,2 and derived as: dx,2 =  dx,2 ∙ [n − nax] 2 according to the trapezoidal rule, the sum of the number of years lost by persons who die in the two age sub-intervals, i.e. [x, x + nax) and [x + nax, x + n), is equal (dx,1 = dx,2). it therefore corresponds to the equations (5) and (6), with the total number of deaths in the age interval [x, x + n) denoted as dx = dx,1 + dx,2, where dx,1 is the number of deaths in the age interval [x, x + nax) and derived as: therefore, survivors to age x + nax , and the average number of persons alive in the age interval [x, x + n) is approximated as according to the sullivan method, the number of persons alive and in full health in a stationary population at age [x, x + n) is a subset of the total number of persons alive in that age interval, and its size is proportional to the prevalence of full health in that age interval (1 − nπx) : nl'x = (1 − nπx) nlx (4) (5) (6) 𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥,1 = �1− 𝑎𝑎𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 𝑛𝑛 �𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥 (7) (8)𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 = 𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥 − �1− 𝑎𝑎𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 𝑛𝑛 � 𝑑𝑑𝑥𝑥 (9) healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 63 fig. 3: stationary populations in an abridged life table and the flows between health states (a) the sullivan method (b) population stocks approximation 1. 0 age l’ x x+nx+ an xx+0.5n x+ an x dx,2 d d x,1 x,1 dx,2 l lx lx+n x+ an x pr op or tio n 1x (c) irreversible state of decreased health (d) reversible state of decreased health 1. 0 x x+nx+ an x x+n+ an x+n l’ l’x+n+an x+n x+ an x d’ =d12 -d21+d13x+ an xn pr op or tio n age source: own design • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer64 hence, the number of persons who are healthy at age x + nax, and, at the same time, the average number of persons who are healthy in an age interval [x, x + n), is derived as: l'x + nax = (1 − nπx) lx + nax , where lx + nax follows from equation (8). 2.5 an additional requirement for extending the stationary population model to health status when using the empirical prevalence data, as in the empirical example of this study, an increase in the average number of persons who are healthy between two neighbouring age groups is sometimes observed (nl'x + n > nl'x). this is impossible in health models based on health characteristics with an irreversible state of decreased health, and by extension, is not possible in the corresponding stationary population model.4 in the case of a model with a reversible state of decreased health, an increase in the number of persons in full health from one age group to the next can only occur if the recovery rates are higher than the incidence, but this situation is rather unlikely. as shown, for example, by guillot and yu (2009) and lièvre et al. (2003), the incidence of disability increases with age, and recovery from disability decreases with age. as the sullivan method has not been commonly seen as an extension of the stationary population model to health, to our knowledge, this is the first time that this additional requirement has been recognised.5 the problem of an increase in the number of healthy individuals between two adjacent age groups can be resolved by any of the methods for data smoothing, for example, as presented in di lego and sauerberg (2023) in this special issue. in our empirical application, rather than making a greater intervention in the data by smoothing the entire survival curves, we choose to correct only individual observations where the number of healthy individuals in a given age group is higher than in a younger age group. in such cases, the number of individuals who reach a given age in full health is replaced by the average of those who reach the age group before the study group in full health and those who reach the age group after the study group in full health, i.e. . (10) 4 however, an increase in the prevalence of full health from one age group to the next is possible. this can occur if the mortality of those experiencing diminished health is much higher than that of those in full health and the transitions from full to decreased health do not compensate for this difference in mortality. 5 the sullivan method commonly applies the total number of persons who are healthy in an age interval (nl'x). an increase in the number of healthy persons from one age interval to the next, is equivalent to an increase in the average number of healthy persons between two neighbouring age intervals of the same length (nl'x + n > nl'x). therefore, an increase in the total number of healthy persons from one interval to the next is not possible either. 𝑙𝑙′𝑦𝑦 = 𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦′ + 𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦′ 2 healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 65 2.6 statistics of the healthy lifespan distribution based on period life tables and cross-sectional health prevalence data, we can derive the population stocks (denoted as lx + 0.5 and l'x + 0.5 in figures 2c and 2d, or as lx + nax and l'x + n + nax + n in figures 3c and 3d). the period life tables also give us the total number of deaths at age x. however, we do not have information on the exact number of transitions between health states (denoted as dij i ϵ {1,2}, j ϵ {1,2,3}, in figures 1a and 1b). for a health model with an irreversible state of decreased health, the healthy stock in a stationary population (l'x) is equivalent to the healthy survivorship in a synthetic cohort of the same life table (see table 1). from the healthy survivorship, we infer attrition from full health, either through death (d13 in figure 1a) or health deterioration (d12). in a single-age life table, the number of persons who cease to be in full health in the age interval [x + 0.5, x + 1.5) is denoted as d' = d12 + d13 in figure 1a and derived as (see figure 2c):6 d'x + 0.5 = l'x + 0.5 − l'x + 1.5 in an abridged life table, the number of persons who cease to be in full health in the age interval [x + nax, x + n + nax + n) is derived as (see figure 3c): nd'x + nax = l'x + nax − l'x + n + nax + n for a health dimension with a reversible state of decreased health, the value of d'x + 0.5 (or nd'x + nax) gives the number of “net” transitions from a state of full health (d' = d12 − d21 + d13 in figure 1b), or in other words, a difference between outflows to and inflows from the state of decreased health (d12 − d21) plus deaths of healthy people (d13). the number of useful summary statistics that can be derived for the distribution of d' for a reversible state of decreased health is limited to he. since inflows and outflows are not observed separately for the sullivan input data, it is not possible to derive a distribution of healthy and unhealthy lifespans for individuals when return to full health is possible, and by extension, one cannot estimate statistics of inter-individual inequality in healthy lifespans. furthermore, it is not possible to derive the inflows and outflows according to health status at the threshold age. nor is it possible to estimate the number of healthy years lived by persons who are healthy at the threshold age for these health dimensions. as result, he that are conditional on being healthy at the threshold age cannot be derived for health dimensions with a reversible state of decreased health. all statistics in the following sections are derived for health dimensions with an irreversible state of decreased health. 6 the proposed method of deriving the quantities l'x and d'x for a health model with an irreversible state of decreased health differs from the double-decrement model (see, for example, katz et al. (1983)), as the latter is derived based on transition rates between health states. (11) (12) • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer66 below, we provide solutions to derive statistics for data from abridged life tables, as these formulas can be easily adapted to a single-age life table. a statistic of he conditional on being healthy at age x for a synthetic cohort of an abridged life table is estimated as since the distribution of healthy individuals by age can only be inferred at the exact ages x + nax, the remaining he of persons who are healthy at age x can only be approximated by the statistic at age x + nax. this statistic differs from the standard he, derived as where l''x + nax is the average number of persons who are unhealthy at any point in time between ages x and x+n in the stationary life table population and, at the same time, the number of persons in a decreased health status at age x + nax in the synthetic life table cohort. while the conditional he (e'hx) represents the mean number of healthy years remaining among persons who are healthy at age x, the standard he (ehx) represents the mean number of healthy years remaining among persons who are alive at age x, regardless of their initial health status. in the case of a health dimension with an irreversible state of decreased health, persons who are unhealthy at age x have no healthy life years ahead of them. thus, the standard statistic of he averages the remaining healthy years between the two subgroups: healthy persons, who could potentially accumulate the healthy years in their lives, and persons who are already unhealthy, who cannot. the conditional statistic of he averages the healthy years ahead only over the group of healthy people who could potentially live those years, in the same way as remaining life expectancy (le) at age x is conditional on survival to age x. he conditional on being healthy in the presence of irreversible disease can be interpreted as the mean age of decline in health, similar to le being interpreted as the mean age of death in a stationary population. figure 4 shows the difference between he and he conditional on being healthy at age 50 + 5a50. le at age 50 is conditional on survival to this age and is equal to the area under the survival curve lx (preston et al. 2000: 69) in figure 4a. he is the area under the healthy survival curve l'x in figure 4a. he conditional on survival to age 50 + 5a50 is equal to the area under the healthy survival curve in figure 4b. the healthy survival curve, denoted as in figure 4a, is derived by dividing the number of healthy persons at any age by the number of healthy persons at the initial age 50 + 5a50. in this study, we quantify healthy lifespan inequality using the standard deviation. however, it is also possible to estimate any additional statistic of lifespan disparities for a distribution of healthy survival in health dimensions with an irreversible state of 𝑒𝑒′ℎ𝑥𝑥 ≈ 𝑒𝑒′ℎ𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥 = 1 𝑙𝑙′𝑥𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 ∑ ∙𝜔𝜔 𝑧𝑧𝑧𝑥𝑥 𝐿𝐿𝑧𝑧𝜋𝜋𝑧𝑧 (13) 𝑒𝑒ℎ𝑥𝑥 = 1 𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥 ∑ ∙𝜔𝜔𝜔𝜔𝜔 𝑧𝑧𝑧𝑥𝑥 𝐿𝐿𝑧𝑧𝜋𝜋𝑧𝑧 = 1 𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥′+𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥′′ ∑ ∙𝜔𝜔 𝑧𝑧𝑧𝑥𝑥 𝐿𝐿𝑧𝑧𝜋𝜋𝑧𝑧 (14) 𝑙𝑙𝑥𝑥′ 𝑙𝑙50′ healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 67 decreased health (for example, compare the statistics of lifespan variation discussed in wilmoth and horiuchi (1999)). for a synthetic cohort of an abridged life table, the standard deviation of healthy lifespans conditional on being healthy at the threshold age x is estimated as: where z = x +  dx,2 nax + dx + 1,1 ∙ nax + n dx,2 + dx + 1,1 approximates the average age at death in the interval [x + nax, x + n + nax + n), which is also assumed to equal the average age at which a person stops being healthy. dx2 denotes the number of deaths that occurred in the age sub-interval [x + nax, x + n), and dx + 1,1 denotes the number of deaths that occurred in the age sub-interval [x + n, x + n + nax + n) (compare equations (5)-(7)). l'x + nax is the number of people who reach age x + nax in full health, nd'y + nay is the total number of transitions from full health between ages x + nax and x + n + nax + n, as defined in equations (3) and (10) (see fig. 2c and 3c). the conditional standard deviation at age x is approximated by this statistic for age x + nax x. fig. 4: health expectancy (left panel) and health expectancy conditional on being healthy at age 50 (right panel) 50 60 70 80 age l'x l'50 conditional health expectancy 50 60 70 80 age l'50 health expectancy lx 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 lx /l' x l'x source: own design 𝑆𝑆′ℎ𝑥𝑥 ≈ 𝑆𝑆′ℎ𝑥𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 = � 1 𝑙𝑙′𝑥𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑥𝑛𝑛 �(𝑧𝑧 − [𝑒𝑒′ℎ𝑥𝑥 + 𝑥𝑥])2 𝜔𝜔𝜔𝜔 𝑧𝑧𝑧𝑥𝑥 𝑑𝑑′𝑧𝑧𝑛𝑛 (15) (16) • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer68 2.7 improvements over previous methods caswell and zarulli (2018) propose using markov chain models with rewards to derive various statistics of healthy lifespans based on prevalence data. the proposed inequality statistic is the variance of healthy lifespans. this statistic accounts for the variance due to stochasticity in survival and due to the random outcome of the probabilities of collecting the reward of a year of healthy life. in the model of caswell and zarulli (2018), due to the limitations imposed by the health prevalence data, the distribution of the probability of collecting a reward of a year of healthy life, as well as the probability of death, are identical for healthy and unhealthy individuals.7 hence, years of life and years of healthy life are assigned randomly to the living individuals, independent of current health status. in this article, we show that for a health dimension with an irreversible state of decreased health, the healthy life years of individuals belonging to a stationary population can actually be derived from information on survival and prevalence of decreased health. life tables commonly use the standard trapezoidal rule to approximate the survival curve at each age interval. in our study, and also in the study undertaken by permanyer et al. (2023), we derive healthy survival distributions using the same approximations as those used in the period life tables. this improves the solution proposed by permanyer et al. (2022), in which the healthy survival curve is estimated based on the assumption that transitions between health states occur at the beginning of each age interval. in this study, we distinguish between health dimensions with an irreversible and a reversible decreased health state and demonstrate that healthy life years can be deconstructed only for the former. this distinction was not formally made in these prior studies. furthermore, in the empirical demonstrations of all these studies, the health dimensions applied are all reversible health conditions (including the study of zarulli and caswell 2022). 3 data the health prevalence data is estimated based on cross-sectional data from the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013). to construct our full sample, we combine respondents observed in wave 7 with respondents who dropped out of the panel sample and whose health status at wave 7, including the status of being dead, was imputed in a microsimulation model. this imputation procedure and its implications are discussed in detail in muszyńska-spielauer and spielauer (2022). similar to the original method of deriving cross-sectional individual weights in the share survey (de luca/rosetti 2019), we derive cross-sectional individual weights for our full sample by raking to 7 the probability of collecting a reward of a year of healthy life depends on the current health status in the incidence-based models of caswell and van daalen (2021). healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 69 sex, 10-year age groups and nuts-1 population margins from eurostat (2022), using the function anesrake from the anesrake package in r (pasek/pasek 2018). we include 13 european countries that participated in wave 7 and had nonmissing information on nuts-1 place of residence. additionally, to avoid random variation in prevalence due to small sample sizes, only countries with a sample of at least 2,000 respondents per sex were included in the study. the survey was conducted in the study countries in 2017. we also use the 2017 abridged life tables from eurostat (2022). health state is measured across 13 irreversible chronic diseases. a person with at least one of these conditions is considered to be in a decreased state of health. a list of the diseases included in the study can be found in the online appendix in online appendix in table a1table a1. 4 results figure 5 shows the healthy survival distributions. for this specific example, we select the five countries with the largest total samples in share wave 7, as shown in table 2. the reason for this selection is that we intend to show the cases where an increase in the number of persons in full health from one age to the next in the stationary population is a systematic pattern and not a random fluctuation due to a small tab. 2: total* and observed sample size, by country and by sex women men country total observed total observed 1 belgium 5518 2720 4472 2153 2 france 4868 1930 3581 1378 3 italy 4739 2514 3763 2043 4 czech republic 4631 2523 3204 1679 5 germany 4309 2024 3605 1777 6 spain 4169 2619 3273 2063 7 estonia 3953 3113 2497 1945 8 sweden 3469 1724 2803 1463 9 greece 3209 1768 2498 1292 10 slovenia 3121 2127 2413 1532 11 austria 3117 1876 2168 1297 12 poland 3056 2595 2391 2071 13 denmark 2742 1760 2320 1474 * the total sample consists of respondents observed in wave 7 and respondents who were not observed in wave 7 because they had dropped out of the panel sample prior to this wave. the health state at wave 7 of attrited respondents is derived in a microsimulation model as described in muszyńska-spielauer and spielauer (2022). notes: countries are ranked by the size of the total sample of female respondents. source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer70 sample size. in this study, following the simple method described in the methods section, we correct individual observation points of a higher average number of persons in full health than in a previous age group in the selection of countries. the number of persons in full health was corrected for german men and women in the age group [65,70), italian and belgian men aged [55,60) and men in the czech republic at age [80,85). as far as the men in the czech republic are concerned, since no values of l'x for the age group 85+ can be derived based on the share data, we assume a constant healthy survival after the age group [75,80). the newly derived number of persons who reach a given age in full health by sex (shown as dashed lines in fig. 5) replaces the corresponding number in the healthy survival curve (solid lines) and is then used to derive the number of healthy years lived (l'x) in estimating health expectancies in accordance with the standard sullivan method. the corrected counts are further applied to derive the number of persons who cease to be in full health (d'x). table a1 in the supplementary material shows the number of persons in full health by age and sex in all 13 countries studied, according to the raw and smoothed estimates of l'x. table 3 presents statistics of he at age 50 for years lived before age 85. we approximate he conditional on being in good health at age 50 using the average number of healthy years lived between ages 50 + a50 and 80 + a80 of persons who were healthy at the exact age 50 + a50. where a50 ϵ [2.7,2.8] and 80 + a80 (a80 ϵ [2.5,2.8], a50 and a80 vary between the study countries). the three statistics of he are estimated for the same age interval, i.e. [50 + a50,80 + a80]. the age restriction is related to the fact that the share survey covers respondents of age 50+, and the eurostat population data required to adjust survey weights has an open age interval of 85+. to simplify the presentation, we also refer to the standard statistic of he as “he at age 50”, and shorten the name “he at age 50 conditional on reaching age 50 in full health” to “conditional he at age 50”. all the statistics are based on the adjusted l'x data, i.e. healthy survival distributions corrected for the increasing number of persons in full health from one age group to the next. he at age 50 is on average a year lower than the same statistic estimated on the basis of the raw l'x data, and variation in the gap between the two statistics across the countries is small. the largest gap is of 1.6 years for italian men and is due to the large difference in the number of persons in full health in the age group [55,60] between the raw and corrected data, as shown in figure 5. for women, the largest difference between the two he is of 1.3 years in greece and spain. the gap between conditional he at age 50 and he at age 50 depends on the difference between survival to age 50 (l50) and healthy survival (l'50), but is also proportional to the total number of years lived in full health above age 50. the average he at age 50 in the study countries is 8.3 years for women and 8.1 for men, and the average conditional he at age 50 is 15.5 for women and 15.8 for men. this implies that the he for persons who are healthy at age 50 is almost twice as high as for all persons who are alive at age 50. the largest absolute difference in the he variants is for women in belgium (10.5 years) and for men in spain (13 years). these differences are the result of a very high conditional he value coexisting with the lowest values of standard he. coefficients of variation in the statistic, i.e. disparities healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 71 between countries relative to the average value of the statistic, are only slightly higher for he than for conditional he, and show no notable differences between the sexes. as shown in table 4, different conclusions are reached for men when studying population health based on the ranking of countries according to the conditional fig. 5: fraction of persons surviving in full health, by age and sex in selected countries country belgium czech republic france germany italy women men 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 age group note: solid lines represent the estimated number of people in full health, while dashed lines represent the same number, but smoothed. source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) and eurostat 2022 • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer72 he at age 50 and the ranking according to he at age 50, as these rankings are not correlated (the spearman correlation coefficient is insignificant). for women too, differences emerge in the rankings. however, a positive and significant correlation between the ranking of countries according to the two he values is observed for women. figure 6 shows he and he conditional on being healthy at a given age, by age and sex. for this presentation, we chose five countries with the highest and lowest differences between the two statistics at age 50, following table 3. in all countries, we observe a decrease in he with age, but not necessarily a decrease in he conditional on being healthy at a given age. such a universal decline in the conditional he only starts at age 70. the exceptions are spanish and german men, for whom the decrease in the statistic begins in the youngest age groups already. for the remaining country-sex observations, the statistic remains relatively stable until age 70. tab. 3: health expectancy (he) based on raw data (eh), he based on smoothed data (eh), he conditional on being healthy at age 50 (e'h), and the difference between the last two he (e'h − eh), by sex in selected european countries in 2017 women men country eh eh eh − eh e'h e'h − eh eh eh eh − eh e'h e'h − eh austria 10.7 9.9 -0.8 18.7 8.7 11.5 10.3 -1.1 14.2 3.8 belgium 6.9 6.4 -0.5 16.9 10.5 8.0 7.3 -0.6 16.4 9.0 czech republic 6.6 5.9 -0.7 13.6 7.7 5.7 5.1 -0.6 14.2 9.1 denmark 11.3 10.4 -0.9 17.3 6.9 10.1 9.3 -0.8 16.2 6.9 estonia 8.9 8.0 -0.9 15.3 7.3 8.9 8.2 -0.7 15.1 6.9 france 8.7 7.9 -0.9 15.9 8.0 8.9 8.1 -0.8 16.0 7.9 germany 8.5 7.4 -1.1 16.2 8.8 7.6 6.9 -0.7 16.8 9.9 greece 9.5 8.2 -1.3 12.0 3.8 9.3 7.9 -1.4 11.1 3.1 italy 11.2 10.1 -1.1 16.6 6.5 11.0 9.3 -1.6 17.5 8.1 poland 7.1 6.3 -0.8 13.4 7.2 7.3 6.4 -0.9 12.8 6.4 slovenia 9.9 8.7 -1.2 15.9 7.2 9.4 8.4 -1.0 16.0 7.6 spain 8.6 7.3 -1.3 11.4 4.1 8.4 7.6 -0.8 20.6 13.0 sweden 12.0 10.9 -1.0 17.8 6.9 11.4 10.6 -0.8 18.9 8.3 mean 9.2 8.3 -1.0 15.5 7.2 9.0 8.1 -0.9 15.8 7.7 standard deviation 1.7 1.6 0.2 2.1 1.7 1.6 1.5 0.3 2.4 2.4 100*cv 18 19 -23 14 24 18 18 -33 15 32 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� 𝑒𝑒ℎ� notes: cv = coefficient of variation. the statistics are estimated at age 50 + a50 ϵ [52.7 − 52.8], with the value of a50 differing between the countries. 50 + a50 is the average age at death within the age interval [50, 55). health expectancy refers to the expected number of healthy years lived between age 50 + a50 and 80 + a80, where 80 + a80 ϵ [82.5,82.8], depending on the study country. source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) and eurostat 2022 healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 73 the values of the standard deviation of healthy lifespans conditional on being healthy at age 50 are presented in figure 7b, with the exact numbers listed in table 5 in the supplementary material. the average value of the statistic in the study countries is 8.6 years for women and 8.7 years for men, and its level is similar across the study countries, as indicated by a small standard deviation of the statistic (0.7 for women and 0.9 for men). the largest disparity in healthy lifespans is found in belgium, where the standard deviation of conditional healthy lifespan at age 50 is 9.5 fig. 6: health expectancy (he) and he conditional on being healthy at a given age, by age and sex in selected european countries in 2017 (a) he 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 age group austria belgium germany greece spain (a) he conditional on being healthy at threshold age 5 10 15 20 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 age group men women source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) and eurostat 2022 • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer74 fig. 7: life expectancy (le) and lifespan inequality (sx) at age 50, prior to age 85 (a), health expectancy (e′h) and healthy lifespan inequality (s′h) conditional on being healthy at age 50* (b), by sex in selected european countries in 2017 (a) statistics of lifespans (b) statistics of healthy lifespans at be cz dedk ee es fr gr it pl se si atbe cz de dk ee es frgr it pl se si cor=−0.93*** cor=−0.92*** 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 26 28 30 32 le at be cz de dk ee es fr gr it pl se si at be cz de dk ee esfr gr it pl se si cor=0.56* cor=0.68** 7 8 9 10 12.5 15.0 17.5 20.0 e'h * statistics are estimated at age 50 + a50 ϵ [52.7 − 52.8], depending on country. both statistics are estimated for healthy years between age 50 + a50 and age 80 + a80 ϵ [82.5,82.8]. source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) and eurostat 2022 sex  men  women sex  men  women healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 75 years for women and 10.3 years for men. the smallest disparity in healthy lifespans is observed in greece, with 8.7 and 8.9 years for women and men respectively. the distributions of the mean and standard deviation of years lived and healthy years lived across the study countries are presented in figure 7. in the 13 study countries, a higher le coincides with larger inter-individual differences in longevity. for both sexes, the correlation coefficient between le and lifespan disparity (both estimated for ages between 50 and 85 years) is significant and the relationship is almost linear. however, the relationship between he and healthy lifespan inequality is positive in the study countries, i.e. higher average healthy lifespans are associated with higher inter-individual differences in healthy lifespans within the countries. the correlation coefficient between the two healthy lifespan statistics is significant and positive for both sexes (fig. 7b). both statistics are conditional on being healthy at age 50. 5 summary and discussion we propose a method to derive healthy survival distributions by extending the stationary population model to health status using the sullivan method. we discuss the method’s assumptions and conclude that the method is only valid for health models with an irreversible state of decreased health. for these models, we identify an additional requirement of the method, namely that the number of healthy tab. 4: ranking of the study countries based on an increasing value of health expectancy (he) at age 50 (eh) and on an increasing value of he conditional on being healthy at age 50 (e′h), by sex women men rank eh e′h eh e′h 1 czech republic spain czech republic greece 2 poland greece poland poland 3 belgium poland germany austria 4 spain czech republic belgium czech republic 5 germany estonia spain estonia 6 france france greece slovenia 7 estonia slovenia france france 8 greece germany estonia denmark 9 slovenia italy slovenia belgium 10 austria belgium denmark germany 11 italy denmark italy italy 12 denmark sweden austria sweden 13 sweden austria sweden spain spearman cor. coeff. 0.62** 0.24 ***α < 0.01, **α < 0.05, *α < 0.1 source: own estimations based on data from share (börsch-supan 2020; börsch-supan et al. 2013) and eurostat (2022) • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer76 individuals cannot increase from one age to the next. for health models with an irreversible state of decreased health, in addition to he, we introduce summary statistics of population health derived from healthy survival and conditional on being healthy at the threshold age: health expectancy (he) and healthy lifespan inequality. our empirical application is based on the prevalence of chronic diseases in selected european countries in 2017, utilising health data from the share crosssectional study and the eurostat life tables. we conclude that, when health is measured across irreversible diseases, the indicator of he conditional on being healthy at a given age is a more informative measure for health policy interventions, particularly those aimed at delaying the onset of health conditions, than the standard he. the reason is that persons who are already unhealthy have zero potential for healthy years lived and the standard measure of he is an average of their he and that of persons who are healthy and thus still have some healthy years ahead of them. in the case of irreversible diseases, policies to improve the health of the population would potentially affect only the latter group, and therefore only the he of this group is potentially of interest. policymakers should consider using he conditional on being healthy at a selected threshold age as a key measure of population health, particularly when targeting interventions to improve healthy ageing. the importance of discussing the policy relevance of conditional he is further underscored by the results of this study, which show that, for men, different conclusions can be drawn from examining population health based on the ranking of countries according to conditional he versus standard he at age 50. furthermore, the two hes show different age patterns: a decreasing pattern for the standard he, and a relatively stable level of the conditional he until age 70, only then followed by a rapid decline with age. additionally, in the 13 european countries studied, the he of persons who are healthy at age 50 is almost twice as high as the standard he, i.e. he for all persons alive at age 50 irrespective of their health status. across the european countries studied, in contrast to the well-known negative relationship between le and lifespan inequality (e.g. d’albis et al. 2014; smits/ monden 2009; vaupel et al. 2011), higher he coexists with larger disparities in healthy years between individuals (both statistics conditional on being healthy at age 50). the positive relationship between he and healthy lifespan inequality for health dimensions with an irreversible health state of chronic disease, means that higher he is achieved in countries where the onset of a disease is postponed to older age groups for a fraction of individuals. countries where chronic disease onset is concentrated at earlier ages are also characterised by lower he. this result differs from that reported by permanyer et al. (2022), where higher conditional he at age 35 is associated with lower inequality in healthy lifespans across educational groups in spain, but is consistent with the findings of permanyer et al. (2023) who report a positive relationship between the hale statistic and the healthy lifespan inequality statistic. the limitations of the proposed method are the same as the well-recognised problems of the sullivan method for deriving he, and arise from the limitations of health prevalence data (see, for example, barendregt et al. 1994, 1997; laditka/ healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data • 77 hayward 2002; rogers et al. 1990). the method proposed in this article is based on approximations of several quantities related to the average age of health deterioration in an interval, resulting in complicated formulas. the method proposed by permanyer et al. (2022) to approximate the number of persons who are alive and healthy at the beginning of the age interval leads to simpler formulas than those proposed in the article. if the bias introduced by the permanyer et al. (2022) approximation is small, it is better to choose this approximation – even if it is less accurate than that proposed in this article – because it reduces formula complexity. as the bias depends on the prevalence of decreased health and years lived at each age interval, it needs to be assessed for each empirical study. therefore, even if it were assessed on the basis of the data in this article, it would not be possible to draw general conclusions about its level. this study improves on previously developed methods for deriving healthy life distribution statistics in addition to he from cross-sectional health prevalence data and period life tables, by showing that the sullivan method – when considered as an extension of the stationary population model to health – provides a solution for deriving additional statistics of healthy survival distributions for health dimensions with an irreversible state of decreased health. acknowledgments mms was supported by the european research council within the eu framework programme for research and innovation horizon 2020, erc grant agreement no. 725187 (lethe) and the austrian science fund (fwf) [grant-doi 10.55776/v1011]. the funding sources had no involvement in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or writing of the articles, nor in the decision to submit it for publication. this paper uses data from share waves 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7. the share data collection has been funded by the european commission through fp5 (qlk6-ct-2001-00360), fp6 (share-i3: rii-ct-2006-062193, compare: cit5-ct-2005-028857, sharelife: cit4-ct-2006-028812), fp7 (share-prep: ga n.211909, share-leap: ga n.227822, share m4: ga n°261982, dasish: ga n.283646) and horizon 2020 (share-dev3: ga n.676536, share-cohesion: ga n.870628, seriss: ga n.654221, sshoc: ga n.823782) and by dg employment, social affairs inclusion. additional funding from the german ministry of education and research, the max planck society for the advancement of science, the u.s. national institute on aging (u01-ag0974013s2, p01-ag005842, p01-ag08291, p30-ag12815, r21-ag025169, y1-ag-4553-01, iagbsr0611, ogha-04-064, hhsn271201300071c) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org). • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer78 references barendregt, jan j.; 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zhang, zhen; van raalte, alyson a. 2011: life expectancy and disparity: an international comparison of life table data. in: bmj open 1,1: e000128. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000128 wilmoth, john r.; horiuchi, shiro 1999: rectangularization revisited: variability of age at death within human populations. in: demography 36,4: 475-495. https://doi.org/10.2307/2648085 zarulli, virginia; caswell, hal 2022: longer healthy life, but for how many? insights on healthy lifespan inequality from the global burden of disease study. in: medrxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.06.22283153 https://doi.org/10.1002/0470858885.ch11 https://doi.org/10.1002/0470858885.ch11 https://doi.org/10.1080/713644739 • magdalena muszyńska-spielauer, tim riffe, martin spielauer80 date of submission: 13.03.2023 date of acceptance: 21.11.2023 dr. magdalena muszyńska-spielauer (*). institute of applied statistics, johannes kepler university linz. linz, austria. e-mail: magdalena.muszynska-spielauer@jku.at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1591-6893 tim riffe. university of the basque country (upv/ehu). leioa, spain; ikerbasque (basque foundation for science). bilbao, spain; max planck institute for demographic research (mpidr). rostock, germany. e-mail: tim.riffe@ehu.eus. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2673-4622 url: https://www.ehu.eus/en/web/opik/tim-riffe dr. martin spielauer. austrian institute of economic research. vienna, austria. martin.spielauer@wifo.ac.at https://www.wifo.ac.at/en/martin_spielauer published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu abstract: this paper reviews research on education and childbearing in europe over the last decade. early demographic research attributed declining fertility in advanced economies in the second half of the twentieth century to increasing female educational levels. the twenty- rst century has witnessed further increases in educational attainment coupled with trend reversals in fertility. the relationship between education and fertility has become more complex, sparking renewed interest in the interplay between the two life domains. we examine how educational enrolment and attainment in uence individuals’ fertility behaviour – both fertility timing and level – and how the relationship between education and fertility is shaped by contextual factors such as family policies, macroeconomic shocks, and normative changes in gender attitudes. we also summarise the recent literature on educational gradients in male fertility and review methodological developments to address issues of self-selection and unmeasured heterogeneity in the study of education and fertility. finally, this paper identi es and discusses challenges and important areas for future research. keywords: fertility timing · education · fertility quantum · europe 1 introduction the decline in fertility to historically low-levels across europe in the 20th century is often attributed to increased female educational enrolment and attainment (basu 2002; liefbroer/corijn 1999). more recently, researchers explain the association through policy developments which encouraged the expansion of tertiary education (particularly for women); changes in laws relating to compulsory school leaving age (cygan-rehm/maeder 2013; brunello et al. 2009); and increased demand for higher education driven by macroeconomic trends such as increased economic uncertainty and reduced demand for unskilled workers as a result of globalisation (meghir/palme 2005). increased enrolment and attainment were viewed as key comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 553-588 (date of release: 20.09.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-21 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-21en8 • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu554 factors encouraging the delay of parenting to older ages and smaller family sizes (mills et al. 2011). however, the initial decades of the 21st century witnessed a reversal of fertility trends in some countries, where increases in fertility were seen despite another wave of educational expansion. currently, the relationship between fertility and education in europe is heterogeneous and sensitive to individual and contextual factors: while some studies report a positive relationship between educational attainment and fertility; some report negative, mixed, or u-shaped associations varying over countries and cohorts (goldstein et al. 2009; klesment et al. 2014; nisén et al. 2021; sobotka et al. 2017). examination of educational differences in the decline of fertility in nordic countries suggests that it is those with the least education who have experienced the greatest fertility declines (hellstrand et al. 2020). in denmark, norway, and sweden, the educational gradient in childlessness has now reversed such that those with the least education are more likely to be childless (jalovaara et al. 2019). these patterns indicate a need to look afresh at how education shapes fertility dynamics in high-income countries. this paper  lls the described gap in the literature by reviewing research  ndings from the last decade which have examined the relationship between educational enrolment and attainment on fertility. we examine the association between education and fertility timing, separately from its association with quantum. we also identify differences in the relationship according to parity, since the mechanisms governing the decision and timing of entry into parenthood are different to those in uencing second or higher-order births. notably, we also present how external factors such as family policies in the context of welfare regimes, gender equality and equity, and economic cycles work as moderators in shaping the association between education and childbearing. our study is inspired by the review by balbo and colleagues (balbo et al. 2013) published almost a decade ago, who presented a comprehensive review of the literature on fertility determinants. however, they did not focus on the association between education and fertility and the mechanisms that connect them at length. also, following this work, although many studies investigated the link between education and fertility, each of them focused on a speci c aspect, such as economic inequality (adserà 2017) or the gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015), paying little (or no) attention to linkages between the different factors. our review makes several contributions to this literature: firstly, we discuss recent theoretical developments. secondly, we review recent empirical evidence emphasising  ndings from the past decade, including emerging literature on male fertility and the educational attainment of both partners. lastly, we examine the mechanisms linking education and fertility along with the methodologies used to uncover them. we discuss the extent to which relationships between education and fertility have been shown to be causal. finally, we identify the strengths and limitations of the current state of research and discuss future opportunities in this study. education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 555 2 development of theoretical frameworks in structural explanations of the demographic transition, education has been used as an indicator of socio-economic development. more recently, it has been identi ed as a catalyst of “modernisation” in innovation-diffusion theories, in which educated women are portrayed as “forerunners” of the fertility transition, that is, as pioneers of smaller families. given the dif culty of collecting data on income, occupation, or social status in demographic surveys, education is typically used as an index of socio-economic status and as a surrogate for hard-to-measure concepts, such as opportunity costs. moreover, it is frequently the only available indicator for the concept of women’s status, which positions women vis-a-vis men in both the family and society. the wide range of concepts for which education serves as a proxy re ects the multifaceted nature of the educational experience. microeconomic theories of fertility argue that people derive satisfaction from having children and from their children’s well-being and must choose whether to invest in the number of children or increase their expenditure on fewer children to improve child outcomes – the “quality-quantity trade-off” (becker 1960). if higher education is a proxy for higher income and social status, highly educated couples with more resources are expected to have more children. however, the observed trend during the 1970s and 1980s was the opposite: the educational expansion and longer enrolment was generally accompanied by fertility decline in most european countries. this was explained by a “substitution effect” – educated women were more likely to participate in wage-earning labour, earn more, and thus faced increased opportunity costs of childbearing (becker 1974; joshi 1990). childrearing is not only associated with the direct costs of having a child, but also with the indirect costs for educated women who must also consider scaling back their commitment to the labour market. these theories highlight key gender differences in traditional family settings: women with higher educational attainment face a high opportunity cost of childbearing due to the substitution effect, while among men, higher education is associated with better resources for having children. we discuss these dynamics later, as the opportunity costs of childbearing will depend on how individuals, particularly mothers with different educational backgrounds, combine paid and unpaid work, which is strongly in uenced by social context, particularly gender roles, and family policies. in the 21st century, theoretical perspectives have focused on the fertility response to increased economic uncertainty, including uncertainty related to globalisation (alderotti et al. 2021; comolli/vignoli 2021; mills/blossfeld 2013; vignoli et al. 2020). theorists have highlighted how the impact of the recession, including increased unemployment, differentially affects direct and indirect costs of childbearing by the level of education. for example, while unemployment during the recession may be an opportunity for low-educated women to enter parenthood increasing their odds of pursuing the “motherhood track”, similar conditions may not encourage childbearing among highly educated women as well as men, as seen in denmark and germany (kreyenfeld/andersson 2014). further, the gendered component • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu556 explaining these educational differentials has been bifurcated into measures for equity and equality (guzzo/hayford 2020). second demographic transition theory (sdt) posits the rise of higher-order needs within post-materialist settings (inglehart 2009). highly educated individuals are seen to pursue self-actualisation, individual autonomy, and hold views that question traditional values focused on childbearing and family roles (lesthaeghe 2014; merz/liefbroer 2012). thus, women with high educational attainment have fewer children due to competing goals and interests (lesthaeghe 2010). moreover, according to sdt, increased educational attainment is associated with higher statusseeking. status-seeking highly educated individuals wait until they have a stable career and key material prerequisites before family formation, leading to fertility postponement or a reduction in completed fertility (oppenheimer 1988; rindfuss et al. 1980). status can also be sought through assortative partnering where highly educated women might choose to wait for a highly educated partner to start a family (kreyenfeld 2002). these preferences create a “marriage squeeze” for women due to the lack of suitable partners which might have important implications for fertility and are understudied in the empirical literature (huber/fieder 2011; van bavel 2012). status seeking through high-quality children leads highly educated parents toward the “quality trade-off”, investing more in fewer children to maintain their social status (mortimer et al. 2017). among men, a positive educational gradient tends to be seen (trimarchi/ van bavel 2017); low educational attainment and job instability are linked to childlessness, often operating through the lack of a stable partner (berrington/ pattaro 2014). over the past 40 years or so, there is a shift from becker’s model of “specialization” to the “pooling resource” model (oppenheimer 1994), revealing an increased need for domestic and labour market contributions from both sexes. to a certain extent, the educational differences in these changes have been explained by the “power rule” proposed by thomson (1990). women with as many or larger resources as their husbands have higher intra-household bargaining power in decision-making, meaning that highly educated women more often expect their partners to participate in household labour and childcare (goldscheider et al. 2015; jalovaara et al. 2019). consequently, in societies where there is greater equal gender division of household labour, the costs of childbearing are reduced, especially for well-educated women. thus, in the later stages of the gender revolution, fertility rates might increase, and educational differentials in childbearing narrow. however, such transitions may increase opportunity costs for men, especially those with higher educational attainments (who are more likely to partner with highly educated women), leading them to postpone family formation (esping-andersen/billari 2015; huinink/kohli 2014; jalovaara/fasang 2017). several authors have put forward theories as to how macro-level factors including institutional frameworks (such as family and welfare policies) and social norms (such as gender attitudes) moderate the association between education and fertility (esping-andersen 2018; mcdonald 2000; neyer et al. 2017a; thévenon 2011). recent theoretical growth has differentiated between gender equality and equity, where family policy changes, such as subsidised childcare services, education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 557 maternity-leave policies, and provision to return to work following maternity leave, may mitigate the challenges of role incompatibility faced by women (rendall et al. 2010). supportive family welfare policies are theorised to be particularly bene cial for highly educated women in stable jobs and less helpful to less educated women who may have a more precarious relationship with the labour market, leading to a reversal in the educational gradient of fertility (jalovaara et al. 2019). however, the effectiveness of family policies for educated women is observed to be dependent on other factors, such as gender equality. while family welfare policies with high gender equality both in the public and private spheres seem effective in nordic countries; in countries such as germany and austria, the male-breadwinner model was prevalent until recently, leading to wide educational differentials in fertility as women are expected to take long leaves for childcare, and childcare services are limited (neyer/andersson 2008). thus, the ideas of gender norms and men’s share of domestic work are gaining signi cance in understanding fertility differentials based on female educational attainment. yet, studies on the interplay of education and contextual factors among men are rare. 3 measuring education and fertility it is useful to distinguish between educational enrolment and educational attainment as different mechanisms through which education affects childbearing. educational enrolment characterises individuals according to whether they are currently studying (blossfeld/huinink 1991), their method of study, and has expanded to examine those who have a dual status, working and studying part-time (spéder/ bartus 2017). recently, the effect of technological advancements in education on fertility such as online learning has also been examined (andersson 2019; cowen/ tabarrok 2014). the age at leaving full-time education has become the main factor used to explain fertility timing in the last decade, sometimes explaining as much as 80 percent of the increase in the mean age at  rst birth (beaujouan/berghammer 2019; neels et al. 2014; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012). educational attainment, or the highest level of education completed by a respondent, is commonly used in individual studies due to its ease of self-report and/ or recording in administrative systems. while country-speci c studies differ in the categorisation used, educational attainment is often divided into “low”, “medium”, and “high”, using the international standard classi cation of education (isced), enabling cross-national comparability. “low” refers to primary and lower secondary attainment (isced 0-2). “medium” refers to upper-secondary and post-secondary education (isced 3-4). “high” refers to the attainment of tertiary education (isced 5-6) (unesco institute for statistics 2012). some researchers have extended attainment to include the  eld of study (hoem et al. 2006a/b; van bavel 2010) and highlight it to be a consequential determinant of the fertility behaviour of women, although there are no works that consider it in the context of men. studies that examine the effect of education on childbearing face several challenges. firstly, while educational enrolment and attainment can in uence • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu558 individuals’ childbearing decisions, childbearing can also impact their opportunities and choices for further education due to the perception of role incompatibility. for example, cohen and colleagues studying completed fertility show how norwegian women who enter motherhood early are less likely to pursue long educational tracks (cohen et al. 2011). similarly, gerster and colleagues (2014) found that dropping out of education among danish women was partly attributable to women giving birth while enrolled in education. secondly, information on educational attainment is often collected with retrospective fertility histories in cross-sectional surveys. in many countries, surveys do not always collect information on educational histories including the age or time of leaving education making it dif cult to identify the direction of causality. some authors attempt to resolve this problem by using educational attainment up to the age of exposure (kravdal 2007). prospective data on the educational level are dif cult to procure when compared to retrospective histories and are less commonly used. thirdly, educational attainment is confounded with numerous unobservable characteristics such as orientation to work and family attitudes (tavares 2016), or genetic factors (branigan et al. 2013; mills/tropf 2015; tropf/mandemakers 2017) which are correlated to both education and fertility. twin studies, for example using finnish register data, suggest that observed family characteristics can only partly explain the relationship between education and fertility (about 3-28 percent) (nisén et al. 2014). further, there are complexities regarding the measurement of fertility. some studies analyse educational gradients by quantum whereas others focus on fertility timing or tempo, for example, analysing  rst childbearing ages or birth intervals (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). researchers often face several dif culties in separately measuring educational gradients by tempo and quantum (ní bhrolcháin/ beaujouan 2012). comparisons of period measures of fertility, like age speci c fertility rates (asfr), and the total fertility rate (tfr) are affected by both tempo and quantum. period fertility indicators of highly educated spanish mothers on average showed 0.8 fewer children than those with low education levels in a study of births during 2007-2017 (requena 2022). however, period measures of fertility will yield misleading  ndings regarding educational gradients in childbearing if births are being postponed deferentially by education. including timing-quantum interactions can help examine whether the postponement of fertility may also lead to a reduction in completed fertility (berrington et al. 2015; kohler et al. 2002). studies often use completed family size and parity distributions to measure the fertility quantum, usually calculated for cohorts that reach the end of their reproductive years. interpretation of cohort differences in completed family size and parity distributions is made complex by the fact that over historical time the distribution of individuals across the educational categories changes: earlier cohorts have a larger share of women with little or low educational quali cations, whereas a higher proportion of more recent cohorts have tertiary level quali cations. finally, male fertility has tended to be overlooked in the literature despite men’s higher levels of education, autonomy, and their important role in childbearing decisions. this is largely due to data limitations, as fertility surveys and census datasets tend to focus solely on mothers (kravdal/rinduss 2008). while recent education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 559 survey data, such as those collected within the gender and generations programme (fadel et al. 2020), have provided data for men, the linkage of births recorded within vital registration systems to fathers tends to be restricted to those countries which have population registers – which is why vital research on the relationship between education and male fertility is limited to the nordic countries. 4 educational enrolment and fertility 4.1 fertility timing european countries have witnessed a surge in educational enrolment both in terms of the number of people who opt for higher education as well as the years of educational enrolment in recent times (oecd 2011). a consistent  nding in the literature is that higher enrolment directly impacts fertility through role incompatibility (blossfeld/huinink 1991) and is estimated to account for a third of the postponement of entry to motherhood in the uk, belgium, and france (neels et al. 2017). indirectly, enrolment also plays a “sequencing effect” on fertility by delaying other life-course transitions such as  nding a job, attaining  nancial independence, and partnership formation, which accounts for about a fourth of the increase in the mean age at entry into motherhood (neels et al. 2017). in addition, prolonged enrolment often involves living in the parental or a house share, further contributing to delays in entry to parenthood (berrington/diamond 2000). recently, authors have started to examine the effect of enrolment in online distance education (ode) on childbearing. it is hypothesised that ode is associated with lower parenting costs compared to face-to-face learning (andersson 2019; cowen/tabarrok 2014). andersson (2019), studying swedish women from 2004-2014, found lower  rst birth rates for those enrolled on campus compared to those in ode. this research has been further extended to account for those who are both working and enrolled in higher education. evidence from hungary suggests that the latter have higher  rst birth rates compared to those solely enrolled in education, either due to increased wages, or the lack of normative expectations mitigating the sequencing effects of enrolment (spéder/bartus 2017). it is entirely possible that individuals, particularly women, expecting a child might lose the opportunities or the interest in pursuing higher education and hence the observed relationship results from a reverse causation (kravdal 2007). the enrolment effect may also be due to a selection effect, whereby young adults who are more family orientated may leave education at an early age (neyer et al. 2017b). the last decade has seen debates in the literature as to whether or not the observed association between educational enrolment and fertility represents a causal relationship, due to issues of endogeneity and self-selection. some studies use exogenous changes in schooling policies and employ regression discontinuities or instrumental variables to address these constraints, such as changes in age-atschool-entry in germany (mccrary/royer 2011), minimum school-leaving age in the uk (fort et al. 2014, geruso/royer 2018), the extension of compulsory schooling • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu560 by a year in germany (cygan-rehm/maeder 2013), extended duration of vocational education in sweden (grönqvist/hall 2013), and compulsory schooling reform across europe (braakmann 2011; fort et al. 2014). other studies attempt to control for family background and environmental factors by utilising twin studies. for example, tropf and mandemakers (2017) use within-identical twin modelling on the twinsuk registry to show that family environment can lead to an overestimation of effect size, highlighting the role of unobserved characteristics in jointly determining fertility and educational choices. given the rarity of twin studies, the true extent to which educational enrolment has a causal effect on fertility remains unclear. 4.2 fertility quantum studies noting a positive association between educational enrolment and childlessness for women include those of northern europe (rønsen/skrede 2010) western europe (de wachter/neels 2011), and southern europe (bagavos 2010). their work discusses how education either operates through economic processes such as the opportunity costs of a career, or through cultural changes such as the sdt and changes in attitudes. however, the  nancial burden of educational enrolment such as debts incurred to fund education or lost wages, and the age at leaving fulltime education remain important but understudied channels that can potentially impact fertility and family formation (blossfeld/huinink 1991; oppenheimer 1994). research focusing on the association between educational participation and fertility quantum is limited in extent partly as it is dif cult to disentangle the timing and quantum effects of educational enrolment. longer enrolment periods have generally been associated with the postponement of entry into motherhood for women, which also shortens the reproductive window for higher-order births (neels/ de wachter 2010; ni bhrolchain/beaujouan 2012). many studies do not concretely address whether postponement adversely affects the family size, or if shorter subsequent birth intervals compensate for those having births at later ages. as a  nal note of caution in the interpretation of enrolment effects, it is worth considering that many of the individual-level studies of the association between enrolment and fertility are based on countries with state-subsidised educational systems. their results may not apply to countries where enrolment in tertiary education is costly and where accumulated student debt could also delay family formation. 5 educational attainment and fertility 5.1 fertility timing the negative relationship between educational attainment and the timing of entry into childbearing is well documented across europe (berrington et al. 2015; billingsley 2010; kohler et al. 2002). women with low educational attainment are more likely to experience early motherhood, whereas highly educated women tend to delay their births until their thirties. despite the abundance of evidence that this education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 561 association exists, surprisingly few studies quantify the underlying mechanisms. the positive educational gradient of age at motherhood is commonly attributed to greater substitution effects among those with higher levels of education (ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; nitsche et al. 2018; tanturri et al. 2015). highly educated women (once the graduation age is controlled for) are likely to have steeper earnings trajectories than less educated women and thus the indirect costs of childbearing early in a career are greater (mills et al. 2011). as a result, highly educated women tend to delay childbearing until they are well-established in their occupations. while at times, postponement need not be due to conscious decision-making (rijken/knijn 2009), highly educated parents in the netherlands did not consider having children seriously until they had completed their education and worked for a few years. in some countries like the uk, the timing of entry into parenthood varies considerably according to educational attainment (berrington et al. 2015), with teenage childbearing signi cant among those with the lowest levels of quali cations. in the us, early motherhood among generally poorer black women is explained by the lack of opportunities for career advancement (fewer advantages to postponement) which still needs to be examined in the context of the uk. some researchers note children to be a “meaning making” aspect of an individual’s life (edin/kafalas 2005), with some going as far as claiming motherhood to arguably be a positive life course event for teenagers (duncan 2007). despite this, the dominant discourse observes early childbearing as a result of poor education stemming from low aspirations or attributes it to the paucity of contraceptive knowledge among least educated women (arai 2003; van de kaa 1987; lesthaeghe 2010; silles 2011). the past decade has seen an increased availability of european longitudinal data used to understand life course trajectories in male childlessness (kreyenfeld/ konietzka 2017). generally, there is a strong and positive association between male educational attainment and family size, most commonly through a positive income effect (burkimsher/zeman 2017; nisén et al. 2013; trimarchi 2016; trimarchi/ van bavel 2017), although there is a delay in their entry to fatherhood in nordic settings (kravdal/rindfuss 2008; nisén et al. 2018). demographic studies have also established a pro-cyclical relationship between male fertility postponement and male employment across educational categories (neels et al. 2013; pailhé/solaz 2012; schmitt 2012), wherein highly educated men increasingly delay  rst births due to a sense of economic insecurity during the educational pursuit. this association is pronounced for young men with low education who are particularly vulnerable to economic shocks, and typically more pronounced in countries that adhere to male breadwinning gender norms (kreyenfeld/andersson 2014). other studies have focused on the role played by delayed union formation in deferring entry into parenthood. higher educational attainment may delay partnerships through increased search time (van bavel 2012) or attempts to pool resources from both sexes at the household level (oppenheimer 1994; esping-andersen/billari 2015). recent literature has shown the need to take a couple approach re ecting the transition studies from traditional ideas of educational heterogamy to homogamy and hypogamy (bagavos 2017; nitsche et al. 2018). generally, homogamous couples who are highly educated delay their  rst births relative to those with a • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu562 low level of education. however, when we just look at highly educated women, both homogamy and hypogamy are associated with lower fertility. if educational attainment is assumed to increase the bargaining power of women, then the results are surprising, and emphasise the need to alleviate domestic burdens on highly educated women through better public services and gender-equality that goes beyond household bargaining power. however, this strand of research is yet to establish the relationship between bargaining power and fertility preferences in couples (not just the measurement of fertility outcomes). another area of research that still requires more understanding is why educational differences in the timing of childbearing are very large in some countries such as the uk, but less in others such as france and norway (rendall et al. 2005). 5.2 fertility quantum first births and childlessness there is a widely observed positive relationship between educational attainment and ultimate childlessness (cygan-rehm/maeder 2013; guzzo/hayford 2020; kalwij 2010; requena/salazar 2014; wood et al. 2014). postponement for higher educational attainment not only in uences fertility timing but is also associated with childlessness and is negatively linked to the realisation of fertility intentions (berrington/pattaro 2014; morgan/rackin 2010). prolonged postponement is associated with increased chances of sterility and subfecundity (te velde et al. 2012). the decline in fertility rates during the last decades of the 20th century in europe was associated with persistent educational differences in childlessness (wood et al. 2014). in some countries, such as norway and belgium, the educational gradient remained fairly constant across cohorts born 1940-1961, whereas, in others such as spain, the netherlands, and the uk, the educational gradient strengthened over time (wood et al. 2014). among the 1958 british cohort, one-quarter of women with a university degree remained childless compared to 12 percent of those without any quali cations (berrington/pattaro 2014). over 20 percent of highly educated women forgo having children in switzerland (sobotka et al. 2011), whilst every additional year of education increases the odds of childlessness by at least two percentage points and decreases births by more than 0.1 children for women in germany (cyganrehm/maeder 2013), usually explained by dif culties for highly educated women in combining motherhood with a career. the divergence in educational gradients is largely prevalent in countries characterised by the persistence of traditional gender roles, lack of affordable childcare services, or conservative welfare regimes that place higher motherhood penalties on highly educated women (hanappi et al. 2017; gangl/zie e 2009). in contrast, there is a narrowing of educational differentials in the nordic fertility regime characterised by a  exible educational system, pro-natalist policies, and social democratic welfare governance (andersson et al. 2009; beaujouan et al. 2016; jalovaara et al. 2019; kravdal/rinduss 2008). although, this convergence is not so much due to reductions in the proportion of the childless among the highly education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 563 educated, due to a higher decline in cohort total fertility for low-educated women in denmark, and stabilisation in sweden and norway (jalovaara et al. 2019). the youngest cohorts in the nordic countries saw a large reduction in fertility gaps between the medium and highly educated women. union formation explains some of these differentials. while in some countries, more educated men face dif culty in  nding a matching partner (berrington 2017; miettinen 2010; miettinen et al. 2015; trimarchi/van bavel 2017); in france, less-educated men  nd it dif cult to partner and are more likely to be childless (kreyenfeld/konietzka 2017). although postponement is expected to have less impact on the completed fertility of men compared with women due to men’s longer reproductive windows, childlessness ranges from 20-25 percent among educated men in austria, germany, bulgaria, netherlands, the uk, and nordic countries (chudnovskaya 2019; jalovaara et al. 2017; miettinen et al. 2015) calling for further investigation into the underlying reasons, especially as educational levels continue to rise (berrington/pattaro 2014; jalovaara et al. 2017). beyond the marriage squeeze effects for low-educated men, there are relevant unobserved effects. further, socio-economic factors may play a greater in uence on fatherhood (income, social class, etc.) even more than educational prestige (de ned as higher degree attainment from reputed universities) (chudnovskaya 2019), which is overlooked by the literature on male fertility due to the limited availability of information on fathers. in the last two decades, fertility studies have been extended to encompass the  eld of education. at times, the  eld itself is shown to be a more important determinant of fertility outcomes such as permanent childlessness (hoem et al. 2006a) and ultimate fertility (hoem et al. 2006b) than educational attainment. individuals with scienti c and technological degrees tend to have higher starting wages re ective of the indirect costs of having a child early in their careers. in contrast, graduates from female-dominated  elds (e.g., teaching, health care) are linked to lower starting salaries and tend to have a shorter waiting time to  rst birth (hoem et al. 2006a/b; van bavel 2010). these  ndings are consistent with begall and mills (2013) who observe higher  rst births in family-friendly  elds, although their causal identi cation is limited due to unobservable characteristics such as ideas on family formation, personality characteristics, and attitudes that are correlated to the choice of the  eld as well as fertility outcomes (begall/mills 2013; trimarchi/ van bavel 2020). recent investigations extend the evidence that educational differences impact fertility outcomes through the nature of partnership choices going beyond the timing or dif culties towards the type of union formation (perelli-harris et al. 2010; perelliharris/gerber 2011; van winkle 2018; vitali et al. 2015; wright 2019). for example, cohabitation is pronounced among highly educated couples and is also linked to lower chances of  rst births in europe and the us (mikolai et al. 2018; perelliharris et al. 2010). however, these observations are not uniform across europe, and although there is a negative association between education and  rst births in the uk and in the netherlands, they  nd a positive gradient in norway, romania, russia, sweden, and the czech republic, and a curvilinear relationship in italy. further delving into variations in marital status, divorced highly educated women have a • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu564 higher likelihood of birth in belgium compared to low-educated women, while there are hardly any educational differences for men in flanders (vanassche et al. 2015). second births there are signi cant regional differences in the relationship between education and second births as well. for instance, klesment et al. (2014)  nd that southern european countries evidence a negative educational gradient for transitions to second births, even though highly educated women who delayed motherhood in nordic countries during 2005 and 2011 caught up with second births. they also observe a positive effect of female education on transitions to second births, using discrete-time event history models. but these  ndings are to be interpreted with caution since the educational differences noted here are complicated by the usage of hazard models con ating both timing and quantum. for instance, higher birth rates for highly educated women in a period might be a result of a time squeeze effect and need not be indicative of higher completed fertility. that is, it may arise due to postponement in entry to motherhood, thereby reducing birth intervals to meet fertility goals, or to minimise the loss of wages, and job market opportunities, and reduce the time spent away from work in childcare (cigno/ermish 1989). in addition, recent research shows that educational differences in parity progression may be narrowing with a convergence of fertility across educational levels towards the two-child family ideal (beaujouan 2020; le moglie et al. 2019; sobotka/beaujouan 2014). the cross-country cohort study by van bavel et al. (2018) noted a reduction in childlessness as well as higher-order births among women with post-primary levels of education, leading towards homogeneity in family sizes. most notably, the usage of cohorts ranging from 1901-1945 enabled them to observe the convergence towards a two-family ideal even before the advent of modern contraception and attribute it to the quality-quantity trade-off and female educational attainment. such studies using census data, however, are limited by the lack of information on partnerships (reher/requena 2019), the timing of the census (not immediately following the baby boom period), and mainly, the comparability of the analysis to studies using register or survey data. although not comparable, even after the advent of modern contraception and greater educational expansion, jalovaara et al. (2022) following the swedish and finnish cohorts born in 19401973/78,  nd that highly educated individuals are more likely to have two children, while for the low and medium educated, she notes a rise in both childlessness and higher-order births. however, we note that parity studies handle timing biases better than period studies used to study fertility aggregates. higher-order births with the onset of extremely late  rst births among the highly educated during the 1950-2016 period, second and subsequent births are likely to be foregone (beaujouan 2020). apart from timing, the likelihood of third births is dependent in part on the selection of individuals by their level of education into higher order education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 565 births, their characteristics, and contextual factors – although they might not be as sensitive to contextual factors as  rst births (wood et al. 2014). for instance, cee (central and eastern european) countries display negative educational gradients for the likelihood of third births despite strong pro-natalist policies, and norway, france, and belgium display a u-shaped relationship between educational attainment and the likelihood of third births among women. such observations necessitate the study of births by parity, separately from completed fertility as they are impacted by birth spacing and timing decisions differently. this is especially relevant for higher-order births as they are conditional on the previous births or upbringing experiences and children’s characteristics (such as gender in the following case). one possible driver of educational gradients in higher-order births gaining interest is the growing desire for a certain sex composition of children in europe, such that highly educated couples with a child of either sex are shown to be least likely to proceed to higher parities in certain demographic groups (sandström/vikström 2015; hank/kohler 2000). despite the presence of empirical evidence, these  ndings remain to be substantiated by concrete evidence on the mechanisms governing the educational differentials in the sex preferences of children. selection bias is omnipresent in studies examining the relationship between education and higher-order births. for instance, kravdal (1992) shows a positive relationship between education and progression to third births, possibly because higher education is associated with better  nancial circumstances, enabling individuals to have a larger family. however, the odds of having a third birth may be higher due to selection and unobservable characteristics (kravdal 2001) such as wealth or simply better health that can be linked to gaining a good education, further associated with  nancial stability and the decision to have more children, to just state some of the dif culties in unmasking the mechanisms that govern higherorder fertility decision-making. although we do not delve into discussions on fertility intentions deeply, when thinking of higher-order births, it must be kept in mind that highly educated women have an unmet “fertility gap” between the intended and actual number of births (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). this gap persists not only due to the lack of lowerorder births and childlessness but also due to the lack of third births. this is wider for well-educated women in high-income countries who do not desire fewer children than those with low education, but who generally end up having fewer children on average (berrington/pattaro 2014; testa 2014). 6 contextual moderators of educational differences in fertility we categorise the major macro-level contextual moderators of educational differences in fertility within and across the groups into three sections: family policies and welfare regimes, changing gender norms, and macroeconomic moderators such as economic recessions. • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu566 6.1 family policies and welfare regimes only a few studies have explored how family-friendly policies moderate the relationship between education and fertility. family policies are categorised by neyer (2003) into three groups: (a) childcare services and education for children that is available and affordable; (b) tax bene ts and  nancial transfers that incentivise having and raising children; (c) better workplace policies, such as paid family leaves, accommodating workspaces, and  exible working hours. latest research has focused on the in uence of (a) and (c) in understanding the relationship between education and fertility, such as policies targeted towards education, housing, and labour markets with the potential to in uence fertility timing (rindfuss/brauner-otto 2008). for instance, places with policies promoting work-family balance among mothers, such as the nordic countries and france, note higher fertility and smaller educational differences (mcdonald 2013). though family policies in uence fertility choices across educational levels, they are especially relevant for women with tertiary education who are likely to have stronger connections to the labour markets and make up the largest share of women in recent cohorts. however, comparative studies investigating the relationship between female educational expansion and completed fertility indicate that there are no universal effects, even in similar regimes, and that the in uence of policies is neither uniform across countries nor birth parities. the policy implementation varies by welfare state – liberal economies largely targeted fertility through market-based systems via  scal policies and  nancial bene ts while social democratic economies used taxes to  nance the provision of formal services (mcdonald/moyle 2010). findings for the mediterranean countries (spain, cyprus, portugal), characterised by poor availability of public childcare facilities and strong adherence to traditional gender roles, align with theories on the substitution effect to show a negative educational gradient associated with the number of children (berrington et al. 2015). this relationship weakens in social democratic welfare states, including the nordic and post-soviet economies (russia, ukraine, estonia, latvia) (merz/liefbroer 2017). unlike the post-soviet countries, post-communist economies (bulgaria, hungary, poland, romania, slovakia, slovenia) are exceptional, and show a negative association between education and fertility (muresan/hoem 2010; brzozowska 2015b; merz/ liefbroer 2017). further, brzozowska (2015a) measures completed fertility including childlessness in eastern european countries, to show convergence by educational levels in slovenia, czech republic, and slovakia (state socialist economies), and; stable trends in poland and hungary (countries with 3-year maternity leave schemes); and persistent disparities in romania; although, regardless of regimes, fertility of highly educated women remained lower than those with low education. while the methods of brzozowska (2015a/b) are comparable to an extent, the results are incomparable as the cross-national study focuses on much earlier cohorts (1916-60). apart from quantum, the age distribution of fertility is strongly impacted by policies. that is, though the us has higher fertility than europe, it is driven by teenage fertility and unintended pregnancies among low-educated groups, while family education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 567 policies and gender equality drive the higher fertility seen in france (berrington/ pattaro 2014; hoem 2008), re ecting varied implications based on regional and individual characteristics. in a cross-national study, rendall et al. (2010) found that age at  rst motherhood was more heterogeneous in the uk than in other european countries. over time, they show that the likelihood of teenage motherhood was unchanged among low-educated women in the uk and spain, and italy, whereas it decreased in norway and france. moreover, a higher proportion of highly educated women in norway and france enter motherhood before the age of 35 as compared to the uk and southern european countries. one possible explanation relates to the role of welfare contexts in supporting young mothers. some countries like norway encourage work experience before welfare support for mothers becomes available, promoting a delay in childbearing among the least educated, whereas in other countries such as the uk, this is not the case (rendall et al. 2010). macroeconomic policies such as the changes in institutional facilities and the improved availability of formal childcare are associated with reduced costs of childbearing and the recent fertility increase noted among the highly educated in germany and belgium (fahlén 2013; neels/de wachter 2010; riphahn/wiynck 2017; cornelissen et al. 2018). while informal care is a  exible form of childcare from a trustworthy source, there are inequalities in its access, making it an ef cient safety net rather than a replacement for formal childcare for families (aassve et al. 2012; kaptijn et al. 2010; thomese/liefbroer 2013). generous childcare leaves of up to 1 year and monetary bene ts for parents (dearing 2016) coupled with increased workplace and of ce hours  exibility (beaujouan/berghammer 2019; matysiak/ vignoli 2013) have been shown to reduce the opportunity costs of employment and economic uncertainties on childbearing, especially for highly educated women with stronger labour market ties. in concurrence, a comparative study of polish and italian women showed that the former enjoy more generous paid childcare leaves and can afford to stay away from the labour market longer, thus experiencing lower indirect costs of fertility. among italian women, those who postponed or deferred employment on the completion of their education entered motherhood faster and were more likely to pursue a second birth than those who pursued employment (matysiak/vignoli 2013). although family policies are seen to moderate the postponement and timing of births, this research remains inconclusive on the direction of their results over different educational groups as well as the way in which they moderate the fertility quantum across them. klesment and puur (2010)  nd a positive relationship between female education and second births in northern and western europe with small differences, and a negative relationship in cee countries, except for estonia, where it is positive possibly due to a well-developed institutional framework that reduces the costs of childbearing on women. but they also add that this relationship is not positive among german-speaking countries due to differences in gender equality and employment policies. though there are arguments against leveraging public policies to increase fertility outcomes in the long run (demeny 2003; gauthier 2007), research increasingly suggests that accommodating family and welfare policies coupled with a commitment to gender-egalitarian policymaking helps meet fertility • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu568 targets of policy makers and individuals (adserà 2011; beaujouan/berghammer 2019; esping-andersen 2018; luci-greulich/thévenon 2013; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012; oecd 2011). there are also arguments that well-structured childcare facilities along with short-term leaves and workspace  exibility can boost fertility outcomes (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). however, policy effectiveness essentially depends on their compatibility with the social and cultural norms of a region. for instance, women in turkey stay out of the labour force to focus on home care, and this is identi ed as one of the reasons for the strong negative educational gradient in fertility for career-oriented women (abbasoğlu özgören et al. 2018). moreover, educational groups may react differently to policies that aim to promote gender equality. highly educated individuals respond more to such policies, and their gender-equal belief systems are then adopted by those with lower educational attainment, partly explaining the fertility convergence recently observed across educational levels (baizan et al. 2016; esping-andersen 2018). finally, we advise caution while interpreting the  ndings in this section due to the interplay between education, family policies, gender contexts, and fertility. also, multiple policies may have been passed around the same time, especially while looking at pro-natalist and welfare-oriented countries, which makes identifying the impact of any one policy challenging. models may also capture lagged effects of earlier policies and over-report the in uence or underestimate the policy effects if there are long lags in the time taken for a policy to impact people. researchers further face the problem of reverse causality, that is, policies themselves may be a reaction to fertility levels instead of shifts in the fertility timing or quantum. that is, while one may argue that the availability of easily accessible childcare support in a region can in uence fertility behaviour for an educational group, childcare may be more available in regions with high fertility levels (hoem 2008). 6.2 gender equality and equity progressing from traditional explanations of the educational gradients in fertility outcomes using the differences in the opportunity costs for women (becker 1960; cigno/ermisch 1989; happel et al. 1984; joshi 1990; kravdal 1992), demographic research now distinguishes between the moderating roles of gender equity and equality and notes the contextual in uence of gender revolution and the second demographic transition on female fertility. educational enrolment and attainment are direct measures of gender equality and additionally in uence fertility outcomes through work-family con icts, and intra-household bargaining power. equity, on the other hand, is used to indicate fairness and access to opportunities for each of the genders (esping-andersen/billari 2015; neyer et al. 2013). gender equality and equity are interconnected concepts in the sense that the three key dimensions to gender equality noted recently – household labour,  nancial resources, and employment lead towards strengthening gender equity, which is a long-term process necessitating many social and structural adjustments in european countries (bagavos 2017). nevertheless, while the moderating role of the measures of gender education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 569 equality in education is reasonably explored, equity is often understudied due to its complexities in measurement, with some papers using proxies of equality to understand equity. beginning with gender equality, some european countries have mixed educational differentials due to established gender roles in their family settings. bagavos/tragaki (2017) studying the tfr decline in greece as a response to the recession for the 2000-2014 period note signi cant gender as well as educational differentials in outcomes. while male fertility is noted to be more related to educational attainment and employability; female fertility is more closely tied to a “pure fertility effect” attributable to behavioural changes. although they only use a summary of the rates that mix-up fertility timing and quantum, this study explains the divergence in  ndings using the gendered expectations framework where a job is seen as an option for well-educated women who can choose not to work, while men remain the primary breadwinners in greece. the situation is similar in turkey, where educated women entered the labour market when their husbands lost employment (abbasoğlu özgören et al. 2018). for women, the combination of being able to work while pursuing a family life led to a gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015), and the past few decades have seen more complexity in how gender affects the education and fertility relationship. models of sdt posit female enrolment in tertiary education, as well as high educational attainment, to be related to an expansion in their choices with less traditional attitudes towards families, contributing to higher delays in family formation and increased childlessness (billingsley 2010; merz/liefbroer 2012). earlier literature assumed women to be the primary caregivers who must choose between their wages or caring for their children. for instance, hakim (2003) divides women into three categories based on their preference to focus on either work, family life, or the balance between them both. but recent  ndings show that although highly educated women have a higher preference for working, they do not desire fewer children. consequentially, it can be surmised that women with strong ties to the labour market respond to structural gender inequalities with low fertility or childlessness (mcdonald 2013). in concordance, using german panel data, billari et al. (2019) observe that for highly educated women between the ages of 25-35, broadband connectivity is positively related to fertility, as it helps highly educated women balance family and career better due to improved access to working from home. contemporary research further supports the idea using empirical evidence to show that more egalitarian gender relations could raise fertility levels, especially for highly educated women (who were noted to be the forerunners of fertility decline) in europe (esping-anderson/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; jalovaara et al. 2019; neyer et al. 2013; nitsche et al. 2018). an upcoming strand of literature on male fertility displays a positive relationship with education, where the least educated have the lowest fertility mainly due to their dif culties in union formation (jalovaara/fasang 2015; trimarchi/van bavel 2017). more recently, with the onset of the second half of the gender revolution, couples seem to be moving away from specialized roles towards resource pooling, spearheading a fertility increase within somelow fertility settings (sullivan et al. • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu570 2014), and reducing the direct costs of childbearing on their partners who are more likely to be highly educated women. however, this also means increased pressure on men (huinink/kohli 2014; mcdonald 2000) and may be a contributing factor to high childlessness among highly educated men (jalovaara/fasang 2017). to conclude, it must be noted that although there are speculations on the role of gender equity and equality in understanding enrolment and attainment effects on male fertility, they are seldom explored in depth. 6.3 economic recessions and unemployment several reasons are identi ed for childlessness and fertility postponement in the wake of recessions for those with relatively low levels of educational attainment: youth unemployment (goldstein et al. 2013), economic insecurity (berrington/ pattaro 2014), the dif culty in  nding a partner (sabater et al. 2019), diminished ability to purchase a house (xu et al. 2015), uncertainties stemming from temporary or short-term employment contracts (adserà 2011), and debts from student loans (min/taylor 2018). also, unemployment is more common and prevalent for longer spells among poorly educated women relative to the highly educated (hoynes et al. 2012; sobotka et al. 2011). for instance, even in countries such as denmark, hungary, and sweden, which are characterised by strong family policies, both loweducated and unemployed women postpone childbirth in response to recessions until they have a job (fahlen 2013). but, there are possibilities for different fertility outcomes by context, as some researchers note unemployed women with a low level of education move to join the motherhood track earlier than those with higher education (kreyenfeld 2010; neels et al. 2013; schmitt 2012). a possible pathway is through lower contraceptive use (observed in the us in response to the great recession by schneider 2017), although this linking mechanism between education and fertility has been seldom studied in the european context in recent years. also, job loss or the possibility of it may create  nancial uncertainties for highly educated women, causing them to have fewer children (adserà 2011; comolli 2017; schneider/hastings 2015) or postpone childbearing to later ages (lundström/andersson 2012; matysiak/vignoli 2010; pailhé/solaz 2012; seltzer 2019). well-educated women also tend to be more mindful of the opportunity costs of withdrawing from jobs (for at least a short period to have children), which increase during times of economic uncertainty (adserà 2011). however, the costs of economic shocks that decreased the likelihood of second and higher-order births for older and highly educated mothers have reduced to an extent after the introduction of family-friendly policy reforms in germany (kreyenfeld 2010). studying fertility by age and parity in 31 european countries between 2000-2013, comolli (2017) observes that women with a medium-level education had a strong negative fertility response to the great recession , not only due to the direct labour market shocks from the recession but also transmitted through prevailing economic and  nancial insecurities in the market (although their measurement methods remain problematic) (comolli 2017). there is a reduction in both planned and unplanned education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 571 pregnancies among young women with low education, particularly unmarried women during economic downturns in some countries (su 2019; schneider/ hastings 2015). but partners’ characteristics and their labour market attachments further in uence this relationship. that is, although unemployment is negatively linked to union formation among low-educated women, fertility outcomes are strongly and positively correlated to unemployment for those with well-educated and employed partners as noted in finland, germany, netherlands, poland, and the uk (fahlen 2013; sabater et al. 2019). a couple of advantages of this research line over other contextual moderators are that the studies are set in comparable periods (employing period measures of fertility) and that they may use the recession as an exogenous shock in studying the association between education and fertility (particularly timing) to establish causality. however, a key limitation of this research is that it is quite dif cult to measure economic insecurity that ties fertility behaviour with labour market opportunities, and this strand is mostly unidirectional, that is, it focuses on the in uence of educational enrolment or attainment on fertility, rarely examining reverse causality. and, in line with the extant literature on this topic, educational enrolment status, or the levels of attainment of both partners are seldom considered, even in the wake of recessions. 7 discussion this paper is motivated by the dramatic expansion of educational enrolment and attainment, the fertility  uctuations observed in europe over the last few decades, along with the onset of key societal changes. with the plethora of literature investigating the connection between education and fertility in different european countries, there is a need to consolidate their major  ndings to indicate the direction of these associations and examine patterns that have evolved recently. we categorise education into measures of enrolment and attainment to examine them by parity to note that apart from the direct association between an individual’s education and fertility, contextual changes are shown to in uence the association between education and childbearing in recent times. the key contextual moderators included in this review are family-friendly policies and welfare regimes, progress in understanding gender, and changes in labour market opportunities due to economic shocks. 7.1 advances in the literature existing theoretical frameworks have been reinforced with empirical evidence from the last decade. higher educational enrolment is associated with a delay in the entry to motherhood, possibly due to role incompatibility or as parents cannot afford the direct or indirect costs of childbearing. noteworthy progress has been made in attempting to causally link maternal educational enrolment and the postponement of births utilising the age at leaving education, changes in schooling policies and twin • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu572 births. recent work on enrolment and attainment has expanded into considering the  elds of study, types of educational enrolment,  exible enrolment methods (like odes), dual-status positions, childlessness, and completed fertility. childlessness is more prevalent among highly educated women relative to those with low education (except for swedish and finnish cohorts born during 1940-73/78, who move towards the two-child ideal), although they do not desire fewer children. this is often attributed to the work-family con ict for women, while delays in union formation explain the increasing numbers of highly educated males who opt for childlessness (berrington 2017; kreyenfeld/konietzka 2017; miettinen 2010; trimarchi/van bavel 2017). further, large delays in  rst births for highly educated women have reduced the likelihood of higher-order births due to biological constraints, although studies that examine fertility timing and quantum simultaneously are few and constrained by measurement issues. the improved availability of data on fathers prompted novel research on male fertility, noting a positive educational gradient for entry to fatherhood (with a weakening educational gradient for second and third births), and a procyclical attachment of male fertility and education to labour markets, particularly in nordic countries and southern europe (neels et al. 2013; nisén et al. 2018; pailhé/solaz 2012; schmitt 2012). apart from studies at the individual level, there is an increased interest in examining the educational attainments of both partners simultaneously, who have moved from educational heterogamy to hypogamy and homogamy in recent years. although the quantum effects are mixed, highly educated, homogamous couples are seen to delay their childbearing. however, there is no substantive evidence to conclude whether such a delay contributes to a smaller size. at the country level, there is evidence to show that family policies such as childcare provisions (beaujouan/berghammer 2019), paid family leaves, and monetary transfers have a positive in uence on the fertility of and lead towards narrowing the educational differentials (luci-greulich/thévenon 2013). but there is a clear need for institutional and family support in most european countries to promote gender equity and reduce women’s costs of career progression in the realisation of their fertility goals, especially for highly educated women who face the largest work-family con icts. countries classi ed by their traditional gender roles such as southern european countries, and turkey, have failed to support educated women in realising their fertility goals (merz/liefbroer 2017), while nordic countries with welfare regimes, and france with gender-egalitarian norms and family-supportive policies reduced the opportunity costs of having children, enabling highly educated women to have high fertility (mcdonald 2013). further, higher education and liberal attitudes are shown to enable women to question traditional roles and empower them to make decisions associated with household labour and fertility (mcdonald 2000, 2006). sdt and the movement towards self-actualising value systems in rejection of traditional ones are all linked to higher educational attainment and the postponement of births (neels/de wachter 2010; ní bhrolcháin/beaujouan 2012). at the household level, men are gradually moving from specialised household frameworks towards pooling resources, and are contributing more to childcare, education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 573 and subsequently, changing attitudes toward gender roles are linked to the better formation of family support mechanisms that can help highly educated men and women in reaching their fertility targets. considering the great recession of 2008, a large body of literature studies the resulting income shocks and heterogeneity in each country’s response to economic shocks and observes that generous childcare, leave, and family policies are directly needed by low-educated people who are the most affected, to enable them to afford to have children. the association between childbearing and education is strongly linked with labour market opportunities, family-friendly work policies, and welfare regimes. 7.2 limitations and the road ahead moving beyond literary advancements, we list the common hurdles and identify opportunities for growth in understanding the many linkages between educational attainment and enrolment, and fertility. some of the major areas to improve remain: fertility timing or quantum? it is dif cult to distinguish between the timing and quantum effects of education on fertility, especially since most of the models used in this literature (ex.: hazard models, age-speci c fertility rates, total fertility rates) con ate them. bridging between the macro-micro investigations: recent studies had to choose between focusing at the macro-level or micro-level with few options to “zoom in” while conducting cross-country comparisons due to data considerations to work on categorical educational differences (merz/liefbroer 2017). there is a clear need for detailed micro-data with cross-national comparability. interaction effects: a recurrent limitation of the studies covered in this section remains the interplay between education, family policies, gender contexts, and fertility, making it dif cult to isolate the impact of speci c policy changes. policy studies may also capture lagged effects, or spillovers from other policies or environmental changes in the same period. data issues: the effectiveness of comparisons between empirical studies is sensitive to the nature of the data employed. for instance, while it is easier to establish causation using longitudinal data (administrative/panel/retrospective), cross-sectional data might have a stronger representativeness of the population leading to disparate  ndings that are dif cult to compare. reverse causality: although we present unidirectional research on the association between education and fertility; their relationship is clearly bi-directional, and  ndings from studies need to be interpreted with caution. for instance, being enrolled in education may lead to delayed fertility due to role incompatibility; but this may also cause students to drop out of education because of conception. self-selection: as individuals tend to self-select themselves into certain  elds or types of education, it is dif cult to establish the direction of the relationship between education and fertility. this is perhaps a driving factor for the dearth of research on quantum effects, particularly for higher-order births. • sindhu vasireddy, ann berrington, bernice kuang, hill kulu574 unobserved characteristics: methodological biases stemming from unobserved characteristics such as the family background and environment remain to be addressed. age of educational attainment: it is dif cult to determine an ideal age to measure educational attainment (such as 30 years, as used by andersson et al. 2009), especially in cross-national studies, since some european areas such as the nordic commonly see people opting for education even after childbirth and in later ages, while studies in countries such as spain assume education to have completed before measuring fertility. role of partnerships: despite the emergence of literature accounting for the educational attainment of both partners, there is a dearth of literature that distinguishes between individual in uences on fertility. also, while the few papers on couples discuss some possible pathways for the association, there is little on how educational attainment or enrolment impacts fertility through intra-household bargaining power. costs of education: the in uence of the cost of education on fertility behaviour remains to be studied. we wonder if young adults who receive  nancial aid or have access to free education behave differently relative to those who pay to study, as this may explain the within-country educational differences in fertility behaviour to an extent. measuring educational attainment: studies on recent european cohorts note the decline of low-educated women, leading us to question the validity of the conventional “high-medium-low” categorisation of educational attainment. there is a dire need to update measures of educational categories based on cohorts as well as the countries under consideration. higher-order births: there is a gap in the literature studying the association between education and the fertility timing of higher-order births, especially as a large section only investigates the entry to parenthood in discussions on fertility timing. including childlessness: studies that discuss the educational gradient in fertility must include childlessness along with higher-order births to prevent skewed estimates and explain movements in completed fertility. male fertility: despite the progress made in understanding male fertility, this work is largely centred around the nordic countries characterised by their low cost of education, family-friendly policies, welfare regimes, and liberal norms, demonstrating limited external validity for other countries and remains to consider higher-order births, not limited to childlessness or permanent fertility. additionally, there are between-the-country differences (e.g., the uk vs the continent) and within-the-country norms (state-funded students vs fee-paying students) that remain to be answered. in addition, the role played by gender equity, equality, and sdt in moderating the association between male education and fertility remains unexplored. household-level investigation: further, while there is work on educational enrolment and attainment at the individual level and country levels, the research is education and fertility: a review of recent research in europe • 575 very limited in studying the educational measures of both partners simultaneously at the household level. pandemic: considering the recent pandemic, future research has a multitude of novel questions to explore about fertility and education that interplay with contextual moderators, such as the effect of the wide-spread usage of new forms of ode enrolment,  exibility in the workspace and work hours, and limited availability of childcare. while the last decade of research on the association between unemployment and fertility largely focused on responses to the great recession and the role of labour markets in explaining fertility differences across educational groups, a possible direction for future research is to understand the relationship between pandemic-related job loss and fertility, the duration of the impact, and if there are short-term or long-term in uences of recessions on fertility timing and quantum (see berrington et al. 2021). this is particularly crucial in understanding the childbearing behaviour of low-educated young individuals who are highly vulnerable to economic shocks across europe, including the nordic countries despite their strong family policies. theory: notwithstanding the long list of limitations, the largest caveat in understanding the association between education and fertility in the recent decade remains the need for revised (or even new) theoretical frameworks to interpret the emerging empirical works in changing socio-economic contexts. future reviews: the expanse of this review leaves opportunities for future essays to focus on speci c associations in greater detail. further, we understudy highly educated individuals who are likely to choose parenting at later ages, as demographic literature on education and fertility overlooks the association between education and the usage of assisted reproductive technology (art), and adoption. also, due to the length constraints, we do not cover research on migration, regional effects, and housing policies and refrain from delving deeply into fertility intentions. acknowledgements this research was supported by economic and social research council grant es/s009477/1 (understanding recent fertility trends in the uk and improving methodologies for fertility forecasting). references aassve, arnstein; meroni, elena; pronzato, chiara d. 2012: grandparenting and childbearing in the extended family: le rôle des grands-parents et la constitution de la 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b.kuang@soton.ac.uk url: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5y68mm/doctor-bernice-kuang prof. dr. hill kulu. university of st andrews. st andrews, united kingdom. e-mail: hill.kulu@st-andrews.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8808-0719 url: https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/hill-kulu(f57bb78d-4572-49b2a6ff-33b53e9e6a14).html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze abstract: among other things, fertility control in nigeria may not be feasible without recourse to socioeconomic issues such as micro-occupation classifi cation and dominant family cultural traditions facing women and their relationship to fertility behaviour. rural small-scale women farmers are a relatively closed group with some uniqueness for the understanding of the value of children (voc) in socioeconomic and cultural contexts and its relationship with fertility behaviour in developing nations. this study, guided by the voc model, focuses on determining factors for preference for family size (0-4 children) among rural small-scale women farmers in eha-amufun in enugu state. 200 married women (mean age = 33.9; mean age at marriage = 24.5) from 20 agricultural co-operative societies were selected for the study. the study adopted a survey and quantitative research design. besides the sociodemographic information of the study participants, the study elicited from the respondents information on their choice of family size, the connection of family size with their occupation and the circumstances surrounding son preference and son adoption in the family and rural contexts. the collected data were analysed using the ordinal logistic regression model. the fi ndings show that economic independence, son preference and male child adoption negates limiting family sizes to 0-4 (p<.05) however, age, formal education, children as source of labour and economic independence were positively correlated with the desire for a family size of 4 children and above. in view of the limitations of the study and the ability of the voc model to unveil spurious factors for fertility behaviour among women, there is a need for comparative studies of rural closed groups in developing nations and their fertility behaviour. keywords: closed group · desired family size · rural small-scale farmers · fertility control · voc · women’s roles comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 35-68 (date of release: 07.04.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-02 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-02en3 • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze36 1 introduction at present, the world population is over seven billion with the huge amount of the population living in low and middle-income countries of the world (who 2015; united nations 2012). the majority of these countries are located in sub-saharan africa, such as nigeria, niger, burkina faso, mali, etc. (de carvalho et al. 2017; doepke/tertilt 2018). although these nations have subscribed in principle to the united nations global policy objectives on curbing the human population;1 they appear to be insensitive to the complications attached to uncontrolled human population growth as they are showing laxity in policy implementation or deliberate avoidance of the policy objectives. beyond the global policy template on population control and subscription in principle, a number of factors come into play so that their ignorance or deliberate avoidance compromise the policy objectives and hence render the policy itself ineffective in most developing nations (okafor 2017). these factors, which include family’s socioeconomic status, women’s socioeconomic status, education, women’s role etc., directly or indirectly infl uence the direction of the future population structure of a nation and even regions of the world (atake/ali 2019; apanga/adams 2015; mbacké 2017; upadhyay/karasek 2012; miedema et al. 2018). while the world population status can be summarised by the crude birth rate and crude death rate (keyfi tz 1971), the components of the population structure are scaled down to the indices of population growth and population control from which the relationship between the biological and social aspects of fertility are put into perspective (weeks 1986). as far back as 1956, davis and blake (1956) pointed out the three intermediate variables that play the major roles in human population growth, and hence their importance in the population control processes. among these intermediate variables are intercourse, conception and gestation variables, which have been narrowed down to the fl uid relationship between socioeconomic status and behavioural disposition towards fertility control. while in general terms, socioeconomic status of the members of the society plays a role in determining fertility rates and, in the long run, population growth (derose/ ezeh 2010; tsui et al. 2017; ashraf et al. 2014), specifi cally, the socioeconomic status of women is more compelling in determining the effectiveness of population control (doepke/kindermann 2016). among other things, the socioeconomic status of women in developing nations has been observed as a major factor in decisions on desired family size at the household analysis level (bhattacharyya 2013; field et al. 2016; germain 1975; tavousi et al. 2016). women’s empowerment or the economic independence of women from the family and male-dominated systems in developed and developing nations have consistently predicted the direction of 1 these policy objectives emanated from the world conferences on population challenges such as world population conference (1974); mexico international conference on population and development (1984) and the cairo international conference on population and development (1994). rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 37 fertility rate and population growth (taylor/pereznieto 2014; phan 2016; upadhyay et al. 2014; united nations 2001). in past decades, a number of policy strategies, chiefl y to control the fertility rate among women, have been adopted to confront population growth by the united nations informing the domestic population policies across the nations of the world, especially developing nations such as nigeria (shofoyeke 2014). however, the fl uctuating results of these policy strategies as refl ected in nigerian population status over the years simply indicate that there are some misplacements between population policy initiation processes and their implementation in nigeria (okafor 2017). from the earliest fertility documentations in nigeria (1965), there has been a staggering and fl uctuating high fertility rate among nigerian women. total fertility rates have hovered between 7.2 and 5.2 between the years 1965-1999 (federal offi ce of statistics 1968; feyisetan/pebley 1989; makinwa-adebusoye/feyisetan 1994; national population bureau 1984; ndhs 2000). in 2015 the total fertility rate was recorded as 5.5 and increased in 2016 to 5.8 (nigerian bureau of statistics 2017). evidence from the fl uctuating fertility rates in nigeria in past decades further indicates the existence of unascertained factors in the explanation of fertility control in nigeria (shofoyeke 2014). in other words, the particular situation of nigerian women such as their socioeconomic conditions in all their facets and their roles in the family and society are yet to receive painstaking investigation for proper acknowledgement of the fertility control measures being put in place. among the particular situations of women in fertility control issues are self-perception, family infl uence on fertility choice, extent of economic and social empowerment, dominant traditions in the family of marriage and local communities, women’s roles and willingness in contributing to the desired family size. underpinning these factors is the concept of the value of children as described in the value of children theory by hoffman and hoffman (1973). beyond the circumstances surrounding women in rural settings, their perceptions of the future and the implications of their choice of family size for this play a role in their decisions on fertility control at least within their fertile period. as such, while economic empowerment may contribute to limited family size among women in developed nations, it can work in the opposite direction in developing nations so that the issue of inheritance and future wealth secured in the investment in more children can lead to the desire for more children (nauck 2014). to understand this and for an empirically informed perspective, the dominant avenues of women’s empowerment in some sub-saharan african communities, such as small-scale-farming, deserve research attention. specifi cally, like other sub-saharan african nations and other developing nations, nigeria still faces dominant socioeconomic conditions that have characterised the strength of women on the social ladder especially in rural settings. one of these socioeconomic conditions is agriculture as a mainstay in the sub-saharan african rural setting. as such, the lives of most women are built and continue to be built around this, which is expressed in layers of empowerment and self-assessments among these women. in line with this, and coupled with the fact that the majority of sub-saharan african women who are the major factor in the analysis of fertility rates • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze38 are located in rural settings, understanding the layers of empowerment and selfperception among women in this setting and their implications for the fertility rates will contribute to the overall empirical and theoretical unravelling of the spurious factors affecting fertility rates in nigeria and other developing nations. currently, there is a gap in the literature in coordinating the general socioeconomic status and the narrow space of peasant farmers as a secluded group and their behavioural disposition towards fertility control as expressed as desired family sizes. many scholars have approached the issue of women’s empowerment and other socio-economic factors such as race, ethnicity, religion etc., and their relationship with fertility control decision-making among the women. however, the particular situations of some culturally distinct women in parts of the world such as the southeast of nigeria (eha-amufu) have not been given attention in the light of its weight on the fertility control policy of the nigerian government. in addition, beyond the aforementioned factors on fertility control decisions and women’s empowerment in the farming occupations, the factor of a closed group as a variable between women’s empowerment and fertility behaviour has yet to be empirically substantiated. in the context of the present study, by closed group we refer to the group of women born and married within the area of eha-amufu with similar experiences such as traditional family culture, education, traditional marriage culture and heterogeneous age categories but with intergenerational similarity of experience. this, according to this study, is one of the extraneous variables in social fertility control analysis that has yet to be verifi ed among developing nations. in view of the empirical and epistemological importance of the aforementioned issues, the present study is interested in self-perception in the lens of socioeconomic status among the small-scale women farmers and desired family size in enugu state, southeast nigeria, with an exclusive focus on the women of agricultural cooperative societies in eha-amufu. the study is guided by the following research question: what are the determining factors for desired family size and preference for limited family size (1-4 children) among rural small-scale women farmers? 2 theoretical considerations, literature review, background and assumptions 2.1 theoretical framework for a theoretical overview of the study’s object of interest, the theory of value of children (voc) by hoffman and hoffman (1973) was utilised. the central assumption of voc is that the value of children varies. changing living conditions of social groups in societies have various far-reaching consequences for generative decisions and parent-child relationships (nauck 2014). rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 39 although the voc theoretical model was designed as a departure from the economics-dominated demographic2 analysis of fertility, there is common ground for voc and economic approaches to fertility such as objective economic and sociostructural factors like economic development, labour market opportunities and level of education. these factors are tied to an implicit decision-making model, while the “value of children” is taken as the central mediator variable at the individual level (nauck 2014). the value attached to children in itself is subject to variation due to changes in society and culture. as such, the voc has been observed as an important “missing link” between social and cultural conditions on the one hand and individual decision-making regarding fertility and child-oriented behaviour over the life course on the other. hence the basic tenets of the voc model, which include sociodemographic factors [education, urban experience, socio-economic status and wife’s employment], individual dispositions [basic values, control beliefs and information access], value of children [economic, psychological and social advantages/disadvantages] and family planning [fertility control]. in the central assumption of the model, the value of children varies from society to society and has far-reaching consequences for fertility decisions and the prevalence of parent-child relationship types (nauck/klaus 2007). hoffman and hoffman’s (1973) model took into consideration the possible existence of alternative sources of value for (potential) parents, either individual or institutional. according to hoffman and hoffman, in spite of the value of children motivating parents to the decision to have an additional child, there could be barriers to the value of children such as family poverty, inadequate housing or maternal illness. nevertheless, there are incentives as factors that encourage parents to pursue and obtain the desired value of children such as wealth, good housing, family support, generally positive attitudes towards children in the social context and economic benefi ts from children (nauck 2014). the voc model refi ned in the context of social theories on fertility has refl ected the contribution of the theory of social production function (tspf) on fertility, which is anchored in the basic aspects of children such as comfort, social esteem and affect (nauck 2014). according to the core hypotheses of the tspf, “the greater the expected social approval for any particular action alternative, or the higher the expected increase in physical well-being associated with the action alternative, the more likely this alternative will be chosen; secondly, the more persistent the effi ciency of a production factor in context is, the higher is the probability of its intergenerational transmission and of its institutionalization as a routine cultural solution” (nauck 2014: 1801-1802). this is encapsulated in the two dimensions of economic values and affect/behavioural confi rmation benefi ts. in essence, if economic and traditional cultural values dominate the social sphere, one can assume motivation for having many children while the domination of affect and behavioural confi rmation of the social sphere will result in the pursuit of a small number of children. these two dimensions of the hypotheses are subject to factors such as 2 era of demographic analysis of social fertility factors with more emphasis on the economic perspective of fertility control (werding 2014; leibenstein 1974). • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze40 education, labour market, dominant career among the women, wealth creation and possession, dominant value system in relation to children, etc. where the labour market is accessible via lineage and family ties, the members of the society will be interested in having more children to maintain intergenerational links and domination (nauck 2014; huinink 1995, cited in nauck 2014). this also applies to the concept of inheritance at the communal level where sharing of land properties occurs according to the number of males in the community irrespective of the number of males coming from one family. in addition, dominant careers among the women that require cheap labour from family members will encourage the pursuit of more children among these women. in view of the subjects of interest in this study (socioeconomic status and fertility control), the voc model appeared to foster some explanations requisite to the understanding of the rural dwellers and fertility control, at least in subsaharan african nations such as nigeria. although hoffman and hoffman (1973) and subsequent researchers applying the model did not pay attention to the model’s importance for understanding the challenges of fertility control in rural settings among developing nations (see arnold et al. 1975), the design of the model and subsequent dimensions developed from the model were all relevant in the understanding of fertility issues in rural settings among developing nations. the voc model, addressing three basic aspects of children such as comfort, social esteem and affect, all capture the common socio-psychological and economic conditions among rural dwellers in nigeria. in projecting the voc model as one of the interdisciplinary theories via the elements of social production function, nauck (2014) maintained that human beings strive for two basic goods such as physical wellbeing and social approval. these two goods as ends in themselves are realised through other instrumental factors, such as the value of children. in essence, having children is important for having these goods (physical wellbeing and social approval) while the desire for children is encapsulated in the factors surrounding the desire for family, such as the comfort that children bring, physical/psychological stimulation derived from children, social approval that children bring and status attainment. the comfort role of the children as it affects the desire for family size is observable in their active contribution to household production of the family. this is observable among many developing societies where the productive capacity of the society is dependent on informal and unskilled labour among members of the immediate family. in eha-amufu, farming among the women is chiefl y subsistence farming and requires all available hands in the family for day-to-day farming activities. as such, fertility levels among the women are still being affected by their immediate need for informal and unskilled labour on the farm. among other things, the physical/ psychological stimulation from children is realised at an earlier stage of the marriage when the mother and, in some cases, the father derive some amount of stimulation from constant interaction with the children. however, this stimulation appears to be immediate and can be infl uenced by the level of education of the couples, which may trigger an exchange in stimulation especially among the developed nations. in the case of developing nations such as nigeria, the situation seems to be different rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 41 considering the demands by the parents-in-law from opposite sides. in certain situations, the number of children produced by the couple are infl uenced by the parents-in-law who either derive stimulation from their grandchildren or even for “omugwo” issue in which the mothers-in-law receive sumptuous packages during visitation of their daughters and daughters-in-law after delivering a baby. social approval as one to the factors for fertility decisions in the voc model can be located in the context of creating new relationships for the parents or intensifying the existing relationship. while this situation may be fading in some developed nations, as nauck (2014) indicated, in developing nations such as nigeria it is intensifying due to the ethnic ties and the strength derived from larger numbers in the extended family networks. this is also connected to the status attainment of the parents in the family context as well as the societal context. while the above factors have been pointed out as the means through which the goals of physical wellbeing and social approval can be realised in relation to social production function and fertility intentions, nauck (2014) equally contextualised their effi cacies via the basic assumptions of the voc model. first among the four assumptions is, “if the work utility of children is high, then it is an effi cient strategy to be rich in children” (nauck 2014: 1805). in contexts where the work utility of the children is highly in demand, the corresponding action is for the young couple to increase the number of children in their fertility decision. work utility, although nauck (2014) presented it in the dimension of employment via lineage, is observed in the dimension of family sources of labour in informal employment. this is observed among the small-scale farmers in eha-amufu where subsistence and semi-commercial farming appear to be the dominant informal employment for the women and the majority of their families. in the second assumption of the voc model, “if the insurance utility of children is high, then having many children is also an effi cient strategy, as it distributes the burden of supplying the insurance utility for the parents onto more shoulders, and thus reduces each child’s duty” (nauck 2014: 1806). certainly, among the traditional systems in nigeria, especially the indigenous igbo people of southeast nigeria, children appear to be insurance for the parents especially when they begin to withdraw from active work, either from the formal or informal sector of the economy. during old age, it is the responsibility of the children to take care of their parents, hence the high level of dependency on youth in the dual dimensions of children and the aged. in addition, the more the number of children, the less the load among the children in taking care of their aged parents as well as the less the chances of the parents suffering in their old age since there is no institutionalised means of helping the aged in the country. this is observed among the people of eha-amufu located in southeast nigeria as well as in the history of agrarian society. the third assumption of the voc model is, “if the utility of children for social approval or the creation of additional social relationships is high, having as many children as possible is not an effi cient strategy, because the number of additional social relationships will not increase linearly with the number of children” (nauck 2014: 1806). the assumption here appeared to be more compatible with developed nations than developing nations such as nigeria and the indigenous people of igbo whose survival is ensured by the extent of family, tribal and ethnic • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze42 networks. in essence, while the social approval fl ags the relationship benefi ts and diminishing returns of having more children at the societal context, among the indigenous people of igbo where eha-amufu is located, the more the number of children the larger the network of relationships that will indirectly reinforce and popularise the social approval of the parents. this is observable sometimes during certain activities in the rural settings where the family enjoy more hands in terms of labour and other support via the connections of the family’s children. in the fourth assumption of the voc model, “if the utility of children for dialogical interaction and the emotional utility of having children are high, then it is also ineffi cient to have many children, as emotional benefi ts cannot be accumulated in the same way as work or insurance utility” (nauck 2014: 1806). perhaps this is the case in most developed and even some developing nations, however in the current traditional cultural setting among the indigenous people of southeast nigeria, each incoming child is an extension of emotional bonds as each child represents a particular experience, especially to the mother. while this may be triggered by the issue of “omugwo” among the mothers-in-law who benefi t from the ceremonial care of the daughters-in-law, in some contexts, the couple consider having what could be considered “late births” to create unforeseen emotional warmth in the family when the older children are transitioning to other stages of life such as higher education, employment and marriage. while the obligation to “multiply and fi ll the earth” by the adherents of some religions continues to hold sway in the rural communities, some cultural norms celebrating the most fertile woman by the number of children are still operational in some rural settings. as a way of encouraging fertility among women, some communities, especially among the igbo ethnic group, offer celebrations for women who are able to give birth to up to nine children; this is called “igbu-ewu-ukwu.”the term signifi es the fertility prowess of a particular woman or women among her people (okafor/okoye 2019). in essence, this negates the null hypothesis of the emotional utility of having more children as nauck (2014) proposed. the intermediate variables and the basic assumptions of the voc model as discussed above are connected to the living arrangements and compelling socioeconomic circumstances around the people of eha-amufu. for instance, in the area, which is a rural setting compared to an urban setting; investment in children is very low and informs the desire for a greater number of children. due to the socioeconomic arrangements in this rural setting and the dominant logic of passive decisions over the form of training the children ought to receive, women within this context seem to see no negative implications of poor educational training for their children. rather, they see more benefi ts in the dividends of multiple children, which, in this context, is observable in the subsistence and semi-commercial farming among them. while the early dividends of multiple children in the farming context appears to be a factor in encouraging high fertility rates among most of these women, this is extended to the issue of son preference. although the issue of son preference has been connected to social institutions of kinship and inheritance, the position of daughters among this people seems to be temporary while that of sons is permanent both in wealth creation and labour utility. for instance, according rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 43 to nauck (2014), the males’ duration in the labour market seems to be longer than that of the females, and the male children grow up to bring in daughters-in-law who eventually come in as another hand for domestic and informal labour in the family. another factor surfaces as confi dence in their economic productivity in facilitating the raising of many children to maintain a future wealthy family network (easterlin 1968). basically, son preference among the women in this ethnic group is second to none in their marriages because it appears to solidify marriage itself and create a proper platform of inheritance of properties as well as lineage maintenance. while voc has been applied by other scholars in testing the implication of value of children in some societies, chiefl y in developed nations with some defi ned categories, the fl uid nature of the issues raised by the voc model and the interwoven circumstances surrounding women and fertility control deserve scholarly attention for more micro indices in this context, which is yet to appear in the framework of the voc model. 2.2 literature review over the years, scholars have put the issue of women’s empowerment at various levels and its connectivity with fertility control into perspective, hence the availability of enormous fi ndings from different walks of life. women’s empowerment per se is not independent of other socioeconomic factors found in almost every part of the world such as ethnicity, race, religion, local tradition, access to wealth, etc., which have shaped the chances of women’s participation in decisions regarding fertility control. religion across the world has affected the extent of women’s empowerment in its different dimensions and belief systems. at the macro level, religions such as christianity, islam, hindu, judaism etc., have all made indelible marks on the extent of women’s empowerment and, in the long run, their contribution to decisions about family size, such as viewing fertility status as a natural occurrence, a gift from god and divine occurrence that does not require interruption of any kind (al-kandari 2007; kohli/al-omaim 1986; dharmalingam/morgan 2004). at the micro level, religion further infl uences women’s freedom and liberty at certain levels of decision-making. while the different sects in islam such as suni shiite and alawites further interpret women’s freedom and liberty as it affects their fate in fertility control towards the islamic interpretation of women’s existence, such as absolute obedience to the husband in all ramifi cations (al-kandari 2007; sueyoshi/ ohtsuka 2003), among the christians, the orthodox, catholics and protestants have further distinctions in their interpretation of women’s empowerment and the issue of family size with special regard for any move to interrupt the initiation of and period of gestation (castro martín 1995; kaufman/meekers 1998; frejka/westoff 2008). as such, the view of these communities towards all available methods of family planning but abstinence goes beyond the understanding of the implication of women’s empowerment and the right to personal decisions over reproductive health. although these studies connecting religion, women’s empowerment and fertility control were all-encompassing, the absence of indices of small-scale • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze44 specialised occupations among women and fertility decisions in recent times were lacking, creating a gap in the literature. evidence from different parts of the world equally reveals the relationship between ethnicity and women’s empowerment as well as fertility control (trovato 1981; dubuc 2009; amin/teerawichitchainan 2009; dudley et al. 2006). among the igbo, yoruba and ijaw people of nigeria, there is evidence of correlations between women’s empowerment and fertility control while in the same country among other ethnic groups such as hausa, kanuri and fulani there is a limit to women’s liberty as well as their active role in fertility control (kollehlon 2003; kritz/makinwa-adebusoye 1995, 1999; makinwa-adebusoye 2001). among the major ethnic groups in malawi, evidence shows generally high fertility rates compared to the global classifi cation of high and low fertility rates while internally, the major ethnic groups show further differences with women’s empowerment as a third variable in measuring fertility rates (zulu 2001; palamuleni 2014). in parts of iran, kuwait, india and south asia, women’s empowerment has been observed to be positively correlated with fertility control in the face of ethnicity as a conjoining variable (amin/teerawichitchainan 2009; siddiqui 1996; narayan 2006; asadi-aliabadi et al. 2017; moshfegh/eshgee 2013; froozanfar et al. 2012). by implication, it does not depend only on the empowerment of women and their liberty per se, however, it equally involves the dominant traditions, which dictate the limits of women’s liberty at certain levels of decision-making in the family (doepke/tertilt 2009).race has also surfaced in the multilevel analysis of women’s empowerment, fertility control and other factors (hamilton et al. 2003; alfonso 2000). while the above studies have paid attention to the issues of ethnicity and race in connection to fertility control, indicators of specialised occupations as a variable between ethnicity, race and fertility control are lacking. by implication, the studies appeared to be blanket summaries of the issues of ethnicity, race and fertility control of which some factors such as specialised occupations and small-scale local enterprises among women may play unknown roles in the results. women’s empowerment and fertility control has been studied in connection with the type of employment and contexts. in the mainstream labour force, women who felt empowered with regard to family socioeconomic status have been found more likely to contribute to the desired family size (upadhyay et al. 2014; carr et al. 2012; lee-rife 2010; mason/smith 2000). contrary to this, more women had been found inactive in decisions regarding fertility control irrespective of their participation in the mainstream labour force. in comparison to the mainstream labour force, women who are informally employed, usually as self-employed or in a family venture, have been found to be mostly inactive in fertility control decisionmaking (upadhyay/karasek 2012; hindin 2000). more importantly, fi ndings of certain studies (balk 1994; ali/sultan 1999) have shown the passivity of women in informal employment in fertility control decisions in the family. similarly, the family structure and leadership style in the family such as nuclear and extended family, have equally surfaced as predictors of behavioural disposition towards fertility control among relatively empowered women in informal employment (el ghannam 2005; amin et al. 1995; goni/saito 2010). employment as a basis of women’s rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 45 empowerment has been studied in isolation of ethnicity and fertility control. while in most cases studies on employment, empowerment and fertility control have focused on formal employment, little or no attention has been given to the fl uid relationship between ethnicity and small-scale traditional employment among women and fertility control, indicating the need for deeper empirical investigation of the relationships of these variables. meanwhile, the voc model, which has been adopted in a number of studies in connection with fertility and other sociocultural factors, has shown some indicators of fertility behaviour in view of values attached to children in a number of societies. in east and west germany, turkey, israel, indonesia, india, republic of korea, czech republic, ghana and china, the voc model has been applied in the investigation of cross-cultural analysis of values attached to children and fertility behaviour. specifi cally, these studies have focused on age cohort and value of children, social disparities and value of children, religion and value of children, emotional comfort and value of children, cultural values and values of children, economic circumstances and value of children, family formation and value of children and economic security and value of children (trommsdorff/ nauck 2005). however, the application of the voc model so far has not included the circumstances of small-scale traditional employment and ethnicity in connection with fertility control. this is a gap in the literature that this study aims to fi ll. 2.3 background: fertility rate in nigeria and the role of women fertility rates in nigeria since her independence from britain have yet to stabilise and exhibit much upward instability. while the fl uctuation has been between 7.2 and 5.2 tfr (federal offi ce of statistics 1968; feyisetan/pebley 1989; makinwaadebusoye/feyisetan 1994; national population bureau 1984; ndhs 2000, 2018), the upward and downward movements have not been specifi c in the direction of global trends in fertility rate changes (okafor 2017; shofoyeke 2014). for instance, between 1965 and 1982, the nigerian tfr hovered between 6.5 and 6.43 with an increase to 7.0 and 7.30 between 1971 and 1975. after the 1982 downward trend in tfr (6.43), between 1983 and 1986, this peaked to 7.40 however, between 1990 and 1999, the tfr partially moved steadily downwards (6.20-5.20) (federal offi ce of statistics/ird/macro international 1992; makinwa-adebusoye/feyisetan 1994; national population commission 2000). between 2003 and 2008, the tfr was at 5.7, while in 2013 this moved to 5.5 and 5.3 in 2018 (ndhs 2013, 2018). however, the disparity in terms of regions, urban/ rural, ethnic groups, religious groups and state groupings indicates the existence of some extraneous variables yet to be identifi ed among the different demographic groups. according to further classifi cations by the 2018 national demographic and health survey, the tfr in the rural areas was 5.9 while that of the urban areas was 4.5; regionally, north central nigeria has 5.0; north east nigeria has 6.1; north west nigeria has 6.6; south east nigeria has 4.7; south-south nigeria has 4.0; while south west nigeria has 3.9 total fertility rates. by state classifi cation (fig. 1), some states such as katsina (7.3), bauchi (7.2), jigawa (7.1) and sokoto (7.0) are still at the highest rate of tfr. one of the constant factors for higher tfr as far as nigeria is concerned • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze46 is religion. while islam in nigeria negates fertility control, catholicism is sceptical towards some family planning methods. nevertheless, protestantism, which allows some level of family planning in line with church doctrines, only operates chiefl y in the urban setting and among the few educated in the rural setting. meanwhile, a study by ayo stephen et al. (2019), which focused on the three major ethnic groups in nigeria, revealed the unseen, complex nature of fertility rates in nigeria in connection with other variables. according to their fi ndings, the combination of the current tfr of the igbo, yoruba and hausa/fulani refi ned is 6.3. by ethnic group classifi cation, the hausa/fulani had the highest tfr (8.4), while muslim women had the highest tfr (7.8) compared to other religious groups. while the hausa/fulani women were recorded as the group with higher tfr, this was followed by igbo women compared to the yoruba women (ayo stephen et al. 2019). also, among the southeast nigerian states, enugu state (the location of ehaamufu) is one of the states in the region with higher tfr (ndhs 2018); this is not unconnected with the mixed religion in the area and proximity to a high fertility region (north central) and the state with highest tfr in the region of the southeast (ebonyi state). with 5.0 as the mean number of children desired by married women, enugu state is the second to the state (ebonyi 5.9) with the highest mean number of children desired by married women between 15 and 49 years (ndhs 2018). fig. 1: total fertility rate by state, births per woman for the three-year period before the survey source: national demographic and health survey 2018 rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 47 among other variables, women’s roles in the family and society at large appear to be sacrosanct in the understanding and interpretation of fertility behaviour among women. while the pre-industrial era when women worked solely on the farm is seen as distant history in the developed nations, with the replacement of crude implements by mechanical farming (giuliano 2014), the case is different in developing nations such as nigeria and other sub-saharan african nations, at least in recent decades. in most rural nigerian settings, women are largely farmers, still operating with crude implements. a larger number of these women sees this as their basic means of income while a signifi cant percentage see it as a complement to their other means of livelihood such as small businesses and other informal employment. according to alesina et al. (2013), women in most societies are less likely to own means of production, participate in politics or control signifi cant positions in the society even in this 21st century. an earlier study by boserup (1970), affi rmed that women beyond the pre-industrial era gradually were removed from farming because of the plough farming era and thus were unintentionally made automatic dependents on the male-dominated system. outside the production niche in societal systems of operation, changes in marriage have redefi ned gender roles as it involves entering into marriage, staying put and the division of responsibilities in managing the affairs of the family. according to oláh et al. (2014), the post-golden age of family, which began after 1960 in europe, has redefi ned orientation towards family and gender roles in europe and other parts of the world. this equally affected the fertility rate among the population as the increasing involvement of gender roles in managing the affairs of children forced the couples into negotiation of fertility management. nigerian couples are no exception as the changing roles in the family setting has brought the implication of fertility rates to the couple involved to the fore. while women’s desire to control fertility rates in most societies has been subverted irrespective of the fragile reproductive health of the women, the recent breakthroughs in education, formal employment and wealth acquisition have revealed the capabilities of women to be actively involved in the management of fertility rate in their families (mcclearysills et al. 2013; malhotra 2012; kim 2016). 2.4 research gap and assumptions although there have been done enormous amounts of research on women’s empowerment, gender roles and fertility control, to the best knowledge of the present study the link between close-group indices, self-perception of economic empowerment and fertility control among rural small-scale women farmers has yet to be ascertained, especially with regard to a defi ned ethnic group. from the foregoing, the issue of women’s empowerment and reproductive behaviour as it affects fertility behaviour has been studied by a number of researchers from different parts of the world and in different aspects. these included researchers from mostly developing nations where the issue of fertility control is still a challenging phenomenon such as the middle east, asia, africa and latin america. however, in the subject matter of the available research documentations • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze48 so far, thematic highlights such as women’s economic empowerment and attitudes to fertility control use a somewhat blanket approach lacking information on specialisation in the traditional employment settings, religious infl uence over women and attitude towards fertility control, formal and informal employment and women’s attitudes towards fertility control without specifi c attention to the agrarian communities in sub-saharan africa and their unique challenges. they also do not explore changing family orientations and women’s attitudes towards fertility control with a clear focus on the particular situations of the rural and agrarian communities in sub-saharan africa. the nigerian national demographic and health survey extended the data-gathering instruments and analysis to include socioeconomic status and fertility behaviour such as wealth quartile and fertility rate; however, a gap in the literature still needs to be fi lled. specifi cally, beyond the covert approach to the correlation analysis of women’s socioeconomic status and fertility behaviour, there is more on self-assessment and individual attitudes to fertility control among self-employed women in the informal sectors, especially in the agricultural sector where the majority of women fi nd occupations in the rural setting. this is important in view of the fact that cumulative income analysis can be viewed differently by most women compared to their everyday experience in managing their affairs as it has to do with income and socioeconomic environment. at present, no study has focused on this aspect of socioeconomic circumstances and fertility behaviour, which the present study was designed to investigate. among other things, self-assessment, occupation, family environment, close-group status, educational qualifi cation,3 etc., have unique impacts on the issue of fertility behaviour and the likelihood of controlling it in a clear trajectory of the dominant logic among the population. the following hypothesis was tested in the study: among the rural women small-scale farmers in eha-amufu, the desire for moderate family size (1-4 children) is negatively affected by the dominant value of children among the population, observable in the work utility, insurance utility, social approval and emotional utility of children. by implication, the work utility value of children on the farm and other domestic and informal employment among women as theorised by nauck (2014), negatively affects the desire for family sizes of 1-4 children. also, insurance utility, social approval and emotional utility of children in nauck’s (2014) theoretical legacy negates the choice of family size between one and four children among the rural women small-scale farmers in eha-amufu. 3 methods and data the study focuses on the rural small-scale women farmers in eha-amufu in the south-east region of nigeria. due to the existence of co-operative organisations in 3 this is the stage at which a person ends their formal education. this is measured here in connection with the nigerian setting as primary education, secondary/high school education, national certifi cate in education (nce), diploma education and university degrees. rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 49 the area, which are major platforms for recognising the semi-commercial farmers (classifi ed as small-scale farmers in this study), the study used the co-operative societies/organisations in place of local communities within the area but the geographical circle of the study was limited to eha-amufu as a local government. there are about 20 standard co-operative societies with a minimal connectivity of fl uid membership among these farmers. preliminary investigations show there were only few individuals who belonged to more than one standard co-operative organisation. at most, the estimate of individuals belonging to more than one standard co-operative society was three from a community. this was ascertained to minimise the extent of sampling errors in terms of duplication. this effort helped the study to distinguish between general and particular co-operative societies. while the general co-operative societies in this classifi cation appear to be open to all farmers because of the nature and fl uid connectivity with all the types of farming activities, particular co-operative societies are mostly open to farmers in line with types of agricultural activities and equally gender-based. the suitability and relevance of eha-amufu for this type of study is connected with the ages-old farming history of the area, which has made women in semicommercial farming identify themselves as class in themselves. semi-commercial farming here was used for want of an empirical classifi cation of semi-organised farming in the area at the time of this study. eha-amufu as a people among the igbo tribe, located in the south-east region of nigeria, has some particularities, mostly in that their farming practice is different in terms of employment and labour force analysis, at least in the nigerian context. while farming is an ages-old practice that has created mechanisms for labour market and employment analysis, women in this area have been embedded in the system so that they can now assess their wellbeing and place on the social ladder in connection with the degree of their participation in agricultural activities in the community. consequently, there is some level of homogeneity in the marriage system of the people of the area so that these women are almost a closed group within the area in terms of age and similarity in life experience. they practice a mostly endogenous marriage system, which involves interconnectivity of people within the locality (communal endogamy). however, the cohort here was classifi ed as closed-group but as a separate variable in the data collection instrument as well as the analysis. the study was carried out among the 20 standard co-operative societies in the area among which are: zion umu-amu2 co-operative society, the god is great ehaamufu farmers’ co-operative society, chumansonngeleukwa co-operative society, amechingeleukwa co-operative society, uchennangeleaguiyi co-operative society, green land co-operative society, chibuzorisiuzor ethics and values co-operative society, ogechimgbuji farmers’ co-operative society, agro mgbuji youths cooperative society, cogleelshadai farmers’ co-operative society, shallomisiuzor ethics and values co-operative society, ifunanyamgbuji women farmers’ co-operative society, oziomaisiuzor ethics and value co-operative society, chigemezungeleukwa co-operative society, divine prince and princess eha-amufu co-operative society, ofuobi farmers’ co-operative society, chidiebere farmers’ co-operative society, • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze50 chidalungeleukwa co-operative society and demumisiuzor co-operative society. on average, each of the co-operatives has a population of 20 farmers who are not members of another co-operative society in the same community. ten female members each of the 20 co-operative societies were selected using inclusive criteria such as females that married based on the local defi nition of marriage, female farmers that are self-employed and at least possess a plot of farmland either independently or in connection with her family of marriage and those in possession of their own poultry farm or the capital base for their major area of farming, etc., in the last fi ve years. the age categories in the study were relaxed to involve the women in the circle of childbearing age and women who are in the age of menopause. the study adopted a cross-sectional survey design. the choice of this design was in line with the theoretical proposition about the dominant factors in the understanding of self-evaluation, economic empowerment and attitudinal disposition towards fertility control. in essence, for the possibility of empirical evaluation of the theoretical proposition, which is on the value of children (voc) in connection with fertility control among the small-scale women farmers, the logic of social survey in data collection and analysis is indispensable. the study adopted modifi ed random sampling techniques in selecting the respondents (using the list of members of the chosen co-operative societies). modifi ed random sampling as used in this study meant choosing the available respondents on the list based on random picks from the sampling frame. all of the relatively standard co-operative societies selected were equally represented in the study by adopting an equal probability sampling technique. in each of the 20 co-operative societies selected, 10 married female farmers were selected using a modifi ed random sampling technique via the registers of active members of these co-operative societies. here, the sex of the farmers, marital status and period of membership of the society were screened to select the members within the interest of the study. in total, 200 respondents were selected from the co-operative societies (i.e. the relatively standard co-operative societies). although there are a few members of these societies who could not be accessed during the time of data collection, a replacement was made in cases of rejected interview requests and where the name that appeared on the list was obsolete. this helped the sampling procedure and data collection among the targeted population and representativeness of all the 20 co-operative societies with their heterogeneous farming activities and community locations. the instrument for the study was survey a questionnaire developed on nominal and ordinal scales with a specifi c focus on the indices of fertility control (such as choice of family size, achieved family size, son preference, child adoption, age of marriage, family planning). choice of family size was operationalised as the number of children that a woman desired before she stops giving birth. this was added to the questionnaire items to create a background of the dominant fertility intention among the women in the area and to help emphasise the antecedents of voc-related concepts among the populations. in our analysis, we use an ordinal scaled version of the desired number of children distinguishing between less rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 51 than four children, four children and more than four children. son preference was operationalised as the desire to have a son by all means available for the marriage among the women such as continuous birth until a male child is born or reaching out for male child adoption if allowed by the community/culture. however, in view of the voc concepts captured here (insurance and dialogical utility of children), the variable was measured with the questionnaire item on the desire to have a male child. age at marriage was operationalised as the age at which the women were married. this was also to create further emphasis on the antecedents to family size decision as well as the aspirations towards the insurance utility of children. family planning was operationalised as the willingness among the women to use any form of contraceptive method for the purpose of controlling the number of births. this also created further emphasis on the women’s willingness to control birth, which invariably is connected to the insurance utility of children. these were presented in the questionnaire items listed below.4 another set of variables in the study is economic independence (source of labour on the farm and self-perception). source of labour was operationalised considering the situation among the population, such as considering children as the basic family members to be involved in the farming business by their parents. as such, source of labour was operationalised as either the family member or hired labourers helping the women in their farming business. this was designed to survey the work utility of children in the voc concept, which viewed the labour need of peasant farmers as encouraging giving birth to more children among these women. in addition, economic independence, which was operationalised in the women’s self-perceptions of their socioeconomic status in their various communities based on the local rating of economic effi ciency among the local population, was meant to emphasise the extent of socioeconomic upgrading perceived by the women among themselves and how this affected their fertility intention. the inclusion of the family and the community was a result of the closeness of the family and communal activities among the population; selfrating at the family level is as good as that of the community level. these were captured in the questionnaire items listed below.5 closed-group as a variable in the study was operationalised as women who were born, brought up and married in the eha-amufu area. this emphasised the dominant fertility attitude among the population, which connects with the communal values attached to children. this 4 how many children do you have or desire to have in your family? less than 4, 4 children, between 4 and 6, 6 and above; did you stop or will you stop at the earlier number of children you have desired for, without a male child? yes or no; when did you get married? before 18 years, between 18 and 23 years, between 24 and 29, 30 years+; do you use any effective family planning for birth control? yes or no; do you exercise equal rights with your husband in making decisions on the number of children to have? yes or no. 5 who helps you in your farming/other businesses you do for a living? children and family members [ ] hired labourers [ ]. do you feel economically and socially empowered in your family and community? yes or no; do you see yourself as economically independent in your family and community yes or no. • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze52 was captured in the questionnaire items listed below.6 the study did not use the voc standard instruments but the dominant concepts, which, by their operational defi nitions, aligned with the voc concepts. the questionnaires were distributed to the respondents with some guidance from the researcher when respondents requested assistance. the data collected were coded and analysed using spss version 23 (statistical package for the social sciences). this was carried out in two stages to comprehensively address the issues raised in the study. while the fi rst stage of the analysis involved the descriptive presentation of the responses in percentages, at the second stage an ordinal logistic regression was run on the dependent variable of interest. 3.1 limitation of the study design survey research design no doubt has made a tremendous mark on the demographic research landscape. however, there are some gaps always visible in every study solely carried out using survey design, especially in some contexts. among other things, a survey design can be leading in the instrument of data collection so that some relevant information may be omitted among the study participants. in the present study, such a gap cannot be denied as the study believed that the study participants could have given more information if the study observed qualitative methodology or rather a mixed method design. again, the 200 women who participated in the study were not comprehensive enough to cover the entire eha-amufu area in terms of information on fertility control in this dimension. this is in view of the fact that the co-operative organisations used to reach the women were not liberal enough to have included all married women as not all the women in the area are farmers. in view of this, the study is not suffi cient enough to predict the attitude of these women towards fertility control in general using the value of children (voc) model, which invariably required a large sample size and study population. 4 empirical results table 1 presents the sociodemographic description of the study participants. 10 percent of the participants completed primary education, 32.5 percent completed high school, 22.5 percent were educated up to the national certifi cate in education while most of the respondents (35 percent) were educated up to diploma and degree certifi cation. regarding the age distribution, the table shows that the majority of the participants (22.5 percent) are in the age category of 42-47 years, while only 7.5 percent of the participants are below the age of 18 years. the mean age of the study participants is 33.9 years. only 2.5 percent of the participants indicated to have married before the age of 18 years, 40 percent married between the ages of 6 were you born and married in isi uzor local government area? yes or no. rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 53 tab. 1: frequency distribution on the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents variables of interest in % completed education primary education 20 10.0 high school 65 32.5 national certifi cate in education 45 22.5 diploma/degree 70 35.0 age distribution < 18 15 7.5 18-23 30 15.0 24-29 20 10.0 30-35 35 17.5 36-41 35 17.5 42-47 45 22.5 48-53 10 5.0 54 and above 10 5.0 age at marriage < 18 5 2.5 18-23 80 40.0 24-29 80 40.0 30+ years 35 17.5 born and married in eha-amufu (closed group status) yes 115 57.5 no 85 42.5 feeling economically independent yes 145 72.5 no 55 27.5 children as source of labour yes 95 47.5 no 105 52.5 desired family size < 4 children 60 30.0 4 children 65 32.5 4-6 children 50 25.0 > 6 children 25 12.5 intention to stop family planning at 4 (or less) children regardless of male childbirth (self-birth-control measure) yes 130 65.0 no 70 35 access to family planning yes 115 57.5 no 85 42.5 • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze54 18-23 years and 24-29 years while 17.5 percent married between the ages of 30 years and above. the mean age at marriage among the study participants is 25.4 years. the majority of the participants (57.5 percent) fall into the closed-group category, i.e. were born and married within eha-amufu. more than 70 percent of the participants feel economically independent (self-assessment). about 47 percent of the participants consider their children as source of labour in their farm. most of the participants (32.5 percent) indicated a number of 4 children as ideal family size, 30 percent desire less than 4 children, 25 percent between 4 and 6 children and 12.5 percent would like to have 6 or more children. more than 60 percent of the participants intend to stop family planning at 4 (or less) children regardless of male childbirth. and 57.5 percent of the respondents state that they have access to reliable family planning. only 40 percent of the participants feel that they have equal rights in decision-making on family size compared to their husband. the majority of the participants (67.5 percent) believe their family will not accept the adoption of a male child. table 2 presents the results of the ordinal logistic regression for desired family size among rural small-scale women farmers in eha-amufu. the overall strength of the model in explaining the factors surrounding desired family size according to the pseudo r2 (cox and snell r2, nagelkerke r2 and mcfadden r2) is between 92.7 percent and 99.6 percent. among the variables of interest, age of the women, desire for a male child, family members as source of labour and feeling economically independent signifi cantly contributed to the explanation of desired family size among the women. specifi cally, according to the model, children as source of labour (wald 11.84, or = -.894), education up to national certifi cate in education (wald 4.232, or-.734) and preference for a male child (wald 57.83, or = -2.29) were all signifi cant in the model and in the positive direction (except for education), indicating the fact that the presence of the aforementioned factors encourages the likelihood of opting for higher family size (4 children and more). women aged between 24 years and above consistently show a positive correlation between age and desire for more than 4 children. while the age categories of 23 tab. 1: continuation variables of interest in % equal rights in decision-making on family size (compared to husband) yes 80 40.0 no 120 60.0 family’s acceptance of male child adoption (self-assessment) yes 135 67.5 no 65 32.5 total 200 100.0 source: field survey 2019 (primary data collected from the small-scale-women farmers in eha-amufu by the authors from university of nigeria, nsukka) rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 55 years and below appeared without a signifi cant relationship with the desire for family size above four children. when looking at age at marriage only ages between 18-23 years refl ected a signifi cant (negative) relationship with the desired family size. this cannot be explained without referring to the dominant condition of the people of eha-amufu such as the family and some communal traditions. while tab. 2: ordinal logistic regression on desired family size among the women estimate std. error wald df 95% confi dence interval lower upper bound bound thresholds less than 4 children -2.108*** .655 10.359 1 -3.392 -.824 4 children -.590 .646 .835 1 -1.855 .675 more than 4 children 1.299* .643 4.081 1 .039 2.559 completed education (ref.: diploma/degree) primary -.210 .634 .110 1 -1.452 1.032 high school -.409 .405 1.020 1 -1.201 .384 national certifi cate in education -.734* .357 4.232 1 -1.434 -.035 age (ref.: 54+ years) < 18 years 1.492* .701 4.527 1 .118 2.866 18-23 years .964 .536 3.240 1 -.086 2.014 24-29 years 3.090*** .738 17.546 1 1.644 4.536 30-35 years 1.769** .657 7.252 1 .482 3.057 36-41 years 1.908*** .594 10.308 1 .743 3.072 42-47 years 2.356*** .554 18.111 1 1.271 3.441 48-53 years 2.456** .792 9.623 1 .904 4.008 age of marriage (ref.: 30+ years) < 18 years -9.805 2761.562 .000 1 -5422.367 5402.756 18-23 years -.740* .378 3.824 1 -1.481 .002 24-29 years .430 .338 1.621 1 -.232 1.092 economic independence (ref.: no) yes .588* .291 4.093 1 .018 1.159 source of labour (ref:. non family members) family members .894*** .260 11.839 1 1.404 .385 son preference (ref.: no) yes 2.287*** .301 57.831 1 2.876 1.698 access to family planning (ref.: no) yes -.467 .269 3.006 1 -.995 .061 χ2 = 379.659 (df 87), *p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001, pseudo r2= cox and snell (92.7), nagelkerke (99.6), mcfadden (97.9) source: source: field survey 2019 (primary data collected from the small-scale-women farmers in eha-amufu by the authors from university of nigeria, nsukka) • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze56 preference for a male child perpetually put women in suspense about sustaining their marriage and the continuity of the family, more than 17 percent of the study participants indicated that they married between the ages of 30 years and above; equally, more than 30 percent of the respondents were concerned that their family tradition is against the adoption of a male child in case they managed a limited family size without giving birth to a male child. while this is observed in the result of age at marriage and partly in the age distribution of the study participants, the relationship between the age distribution of the participants and desire for family size above four children indicates a deeper understanding of the circumstances surrounding fertility control among the population. although the age categories of 41 years and above are invariably within the framework of the women who are in the fi nal stages of giving birth to children as well as those who have fi nished giving birth to children, the appearance of this age category as a signifi cant factor for the desire for family size above four children indicates the traditional perception of family size dominant among the population. similar studies (for example upadhyay et al. 2014; carr et al. 2012) have found negative correlations between women’s economic independence and desire for family size above 4 children, however, in the fi ndings of this study there is a positive relationship between the two. in table 2, children as a source of labour and preference for a male child contributed to explaining the desire for family size above four children. this can be observed in the positive signifi cance of the source of labour among the women and preference for a male child. economic independence triggers the need for cheap labour on the farm and one of the ways of achieving that among the women in this rurality is to increase the number of births for more hands and to pursue an objective that enhances the cumulative number of the family members, such as having a son who will bring in more people in the capacity of daughtersin-law. while economic independence among the women, the phenomenon of inheritance and children as source of future wealth and retirement hope (insurance utility of children) (werding 2014; nauck 2014), preference for male child(ren) among the igbo ethnic group in particular, also contradicts the determination to have a limited family size without a male child. this is more important, especially among the economically independent women who fi nd fulfi lment in the dominant family and communal traditions; a concept captured in the voc model as social approval. more than 60 percent of the respondents indicated that their families would allow adoption of a male child, which, in this context, indicates a gradual opening to child adoption in the rural settings of nigeria as well as options for families to satisfy their inward desire for family size and ethnic/tradition-related fertility issues. in normal circumstances among these rural dwellers, when a woman is not able to give birth to a male child, the husband is at liberty to marry another wife to have a male child for continuity of the lineage as well as for insurance and dialogical interests as aptly described by nauck (2014) and huinink (1995, cited in nauck 2014). however, with the gradual transformation in family structure and orientation, a woman with the husband can opt for adoption of a male child in order to maintain her marriage as well as the husband’s lineage but this is obtainable mostly among the women living in the urban setting with their husbands. rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 57 in the present context, children as source of labour surfaced as a signifi cant variable in the model, supporting the fi rst assumption of the voc model by nauck (2014) on the work utility of children among the parents. among the rural women occupied with agricultural activities, the bond of family relationship and labour supply actually affect almost every aspect of their lives including fertility behaviour. although the role of women in agriculture has changed in most nations due to the advent of mechanised farming (boserup 1970; giuliano 2014), in nigeria, at least in the near future, farming activities will slowly respond to the global status quo and are even more manual where they involve women. as such, in most rural communities like eha-amufu, farming to a large extent requires more hands and where it involves women, they largely depend on family members and nearby relatives. with such options among the women in this area, limited family size may not be an option compared to the option of having more children. in addition, feeling economically independent is substantiated by the traditional value system, which in any case is subject to methods of inheritance and lineage continuity (dialogical utility). in most cases, women who feel fulfi lled in the social system (social approval) here connect this with their ability to produce male children who will inherit their wealth and maintain the family lineage. since the area is under patrilineal descent, women are compelled to produce at least one son to make them proud in their marriage as well as to inherit the properties and maintain the family lineage. in the face of the unpopularity of male child adoption among the group, maintaining a limited family size without a male child may not be largely supported among the economically independent women here compared to other places in the world where women’s economic independence is gradually eroding the idea of large family size. as was pointed out concerning women’s economic independence and son preference, no woman in a traditional system where patrilineal descent dominates inheritance and lineage continuity will risk her marriage and pride in the family. as such, women having opportunities to adopt a son will be motivated by factors such as their pride in the marriage and family as well as who will protect them during old age and from kinsmen if their husbands die before them; a situation seen in the voc model as insurance utility of the children by the parents. 5 discussion of the fi ndings fertility control is one of the issues in the focus of the entire global community with different nations facing the issue in different ways. although the united nations population fund has put certain measures in place world over via the member nations to slow down the growth of human population, especially in developing nations, the implementation of the measures and the unseen factors for population growth still put in perspective the need for further empirical investigation; hence the present study. among other things, the micro factors for fertility rate/population growth such as self-assessment of socioeconomic status, age before marriage, communal and family tradition surrounding the fertility behaviour of the women • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze58 deserved attention for a better understanding of micro elements in population growth among the inhabitants of sub-saharan africa. although similar research has been carried out in sub-saharan africa, this study went a step further to isolate some factors with the help of the voc model for more advanced information. this was done with the aid of the four assumptions of the voc model according to nauck (2014). specifi cally, this study immersed itself in the understanding of the phenomenon of women’s economic independence and fertility control issues among rural small-scale women farmers with a common history of informal employment and communal tradition in eha-amufu. the study focused on major issues in relation with fertility behaviour and women’s feeling about economic independence. the research question focused on the determinant factors for decisions on family size above four children among these women. based on the issue of fertility-related decisions in the family, a number of factors have played roles among these women contrary to assumptions before now. these, as seen in the voc model, point to the elements surrounding women’s decisions on fertility issues especially when it lies in their power to make such decisions. while there are reservations to the dominant traditional perception on fertility control, the women’s experience over time in the system plays a rather minute role compared to their goal in life, which is more or less competitive in view of the achievement ladder in the society. this indicates that even though women may appear to be passive in fertility control decisions in rural settings among developing nations, this passivity is for a potential benefi t of children as described in the voc model. in the voc model, women are seen in the four dimensions of voc assumptions as inalienable factors in family fertility decisions, especially in sub-saharan african rural settings. from the fi ndings of the study, with about 92 percent and 99 percent explained by the ordinal logistic regression model, the phenomenon of women’s economic independence and desire for family size were probed to further understand the phenomenon among the population of women farmers. specifi cally, according to the model (see table 2), family members as source of labour and desire for male child indicated the likelihood of opting for higher family size (4 children and more). this confi rmed the fi rst assumption of the voc model by nauck (2014, nauck/klaus 2007), which states that, “if the work utility of children is high, then it is an effi cient strategy to be rich in children.” due to the role of women in agriculture and the family in developing nations such as nigeria, children continue to appear as future wealth and a mark of prosperity for women. although mechanisation of farming has changed the involvement of women in farming activities and family orientations in most parts of the world (oláh et al. 2014; giuliano 2014), the fi ndings here negate this understanding in this part of the world as more than 47 percent of the women understudy indicated that the sources of labour for their farming activities depended on the family members including their children. while the concern for the proper training of the children is not an issue here due to the level of education among the women, the concept of children as future wealth in this context goes beyond the wellbeing of the child. as such, most parents simply believe that whether the child is properly trained or not, rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 59 when they grow up they will at least add to human resources in the family line. this will eventually increase the population strength of the family in question for lineage, clan and tribe continuity and expansion. this will of course guarantee the future economic security for the nuclear and extended families. these also confi rmed the three assumptions of the voc model by nauck (2014) on insurance utility of children, social approval utility as well as the dialogical utility assumptions. while the low investment in the training of children in the rural context can encourage higher fertility rates, the early dividends of many children in agrarian societies play a role so that the focus for many women in fertility choice decisions is obscured by the short-term benefi ts of children on the farm as well as other household chores. in addition, in this part of the world most children stop at high school level and engage in one artisan work or the other or in trading. in this situation, parents simply look to the immediate and short-term dividends from the children without considering the future of these children based on the global trend, especially in the face of the dominant logic among these women, which upholds the recycling of lower rungs of the societal ladder. the phenomenon of age at marriage and age of the women can be seen from the angle of the mean age and the mean age at marriage among the participants in the study, which is 34 and 25.4 years respectively. this indicated more issues about age in relationships with desire for family size above 4 children. in southeast nigeria generally, the age of marriage is indirectly connected to the level of development found in each subarea so that in some parts of this region, women marry late as a result of socio-economic conditions of men as well as some ambitions among the unmarried female folks. for instance, eha-amufu, though a long-standing agrarian community with fertile land, is the home of one of the federal colleges of education located in different regions of the country. this in a way has an effect on the age of marriage among the women. this can be seen in the description of their educational status in this study, where 57.5 percent of the participants have acquired national certifi cates in education, national diplomas and other higher qualifi cations. late marriage has a way of disregarding family planning of moderate family size either as a result of the desire for male children to secure the marriage or pressure from the extended family members for more children. the link between education, age, age at marriage and desire for a son are equally connected to the problem of adoption of a male child in their family of marriage. while the age and age at marriage trigger the problem of apprehension over how long the women will remain fertile before menopause, the problem of a desire for son (which is a traditional thing coupled with the fact that child adoption among the communities does not suffi ciently accommodate male child adoption), compels the women to overlook the essence of moderate family size (0-4) such as reproductive health, quality family life and effi cient upbringing of a few children. these fi ndings have put forward further explanations of the factors surrounding fertility control in this part of the world beyond the fi ndings of some studies in sub-saharan africa and beyond those by kritz and makinwa-adebusoye (1995), kaufman and meekers (1998); atake and ali (2019). also, the fi ndings here negate the fi nding of the study by klaus et al. 2007 (cited in trommsdorff/nauck 2005), which was guided by the voc • samuel o. okafor, janefrances c. onu, vivian c. nwaeze60 model. while their study found that highly educated and gainfully employed women show lower instrumental values of children, the fi nding here indicated otherwise. this may, however, be explained by other extraneous variables such as the quality of education in the two different contexts and age at marriage in connection with communal traditions. although the study was specifi cally seeking the internal logic of choice of family size among the women in this setting, the varying ages of the respondents highlights the need to consider the women already out of childbirth age who were involved in the study. while the study did not include the specifi c number of live births among the women understudy as a variable, the information for this was gathered under the variable “choice of family size” within which the women were asked to indicate their desired family size whether childbirth is in progress or they have stopped giving birth to children. from the descriptive statistics, 27.5 percent of the participants indicated they have stopped or will stop at 4 children, 20 percent (less than 4 children), 30 percent (between 4 and 6 children) and 22.5 percent (6 children and above). with one of the dominant concepts guiding the study (closedgroup), the varying age of the respondents appeared insignifi cant as the family culture and other dominant cultures within the area hold sway on these women in view of fertility control among them. and this surfaced in what they viewed as ideal family size and when they deemed it necessary to stop or will stop giving birth. the innovative essence of this study at this point is to unveil salient issues of fertility rates that have been unobserved so far. before now, most research on the issue of fertility rates among women have approached it at the macro level where a blanket summary is given on the women’s fertility behaviour and socioeconomic circumstances. for instance, women in the agricultural sector have been lumped together in studies overtime without distillation of their particularities in terms of forms of farming, the extent of development of the farming methods, family/ communal traditions and closed-group factors. as a matter of fact, educational improvement among women of this pedigree ought to counter the desire for family size above 4 children but due to these confounders, education appeared as an encouraging factor to desire a family size above 4 children. meanwhile, the acceptance of male child adoption is a factor among the developing nations especially in the rural setting countering the effort for controlling fertility behaviour at the family and communal levels. although science has improved to make selection of the sex of a child before conception and child adoption has helped improve the reproductive health of women in many parts of the world, many rural settings and local traditions have yet to respond to the global advancement. for instance, while it is a taboo among some communities in the developing world to have a child from other blood partake in their patrilineal decent, knowledge and practices of selection of sex of a child before conception still appears complicated to these rural dwellers so that trial and error will compel the woman to continue giving birth until there is a male child in the marriage. in addition, a woman among the christian dominated southeast nigeria will hardly be happy to see her husband marry another wife for a male child. it is a slap in most women’s faces and loss of their pride as this can relegate them to the background should another woman rural small-scale women farmers and preference for family size in south-east nigeria • 61 come into the marriage and produce a male child. while in some contexts, children may be seen as future wealth as well as fulfi lment of religious obligations (suckow 2005) and equally as a sign of motherhood (mares/mozny 2005), the trend of value of children here is different as it is more focused on inheritance and the patrilineal tradition, conditioning the women to prioritise children especially the males in their marriage. in the social approval and dialogical dimensions of voc assumptions by nauck (2014), the above conditions of women bring to light the unseen driver of fertility among this population captured as variables in the voc model. more than 57 percent of the study participants were born and married in ehaamufu; by implication, these women are playing out the dominant family and communal traditions, which are guiding their fertility behaviour. with the typical family tradition among the eha-amufu people connected to the typical igbo tradition, a male child is a valuable asset to every marriage so that any marriage that fails to produce a male child can be viewed as unsuccessful, requiring another union with another woman. this situation seems to have abated among those living in the city who can adopt children to continue in the marriage. however, the regular rural dwellers like these women are under pressure to please their husbands by continually giving birth until there is a male child. the only option besides adoption is to marry another woman for a male child. while this situation indicates the dialogical/emotional assumption of the voc model by nauck (2014) in the short term, in the long term, this is connected to the insurance assumption of the model as eha-amufu has the culture of sharing communal and family lands among the males in the community. as such, for inheritance from the family and the community to be assured, there is a need for male child or children warranting the ambition for males among the families. references akpa, onoja matthew; ikpotokin, osayomore 2012: modelling the determinants of fertility among women of childbearing age in 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sociology & anthropology. nsukka, nigeria. e-mail: samuelokey200@gmail.com url: https://unn-ng.academia.edu/samuelokafor https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/okafor-samuel janefrances c. onu. university of nigeria, school of general studies. nsukka, nigeria. e-mail: janefrancess.onu@un.edu.ng url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/janefrances-onu?ev=brs_highl vivian c. nwaeze. university of nigeria, school of general studies. nsukka, nigeria. e-mail: chigozie.ishwu@unn.edu.ng published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change in the wider south east of england updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change in the wider south east of england* tony champion abstract: key among ravenstein’s “laws”, derived from extensive analysis of mid19th century migration patterns in the british isles, are that the majority of migrants go only a short distance and that migration proceeds stepwise as a sequence of localised population shifts towards the principal centres of commerce and industry. this paper tests these two laws in the 21st century context of counterurbanisation by reference to migration taking place within the wider south east (wse) of england, being the region dominated by deconcentration pressures emanating from london. it comprises two sets of empirical analyses using migration data for the period 20012016. firstly, these data are aggregated to a set of broadly concentric rings around this core and analysed to reveal how much of the net outward shifts of population produced by this migration arises from net movement taking place between adjacent rings as a type of cascade as opposed to leapfrogging directly from the core into a non-adjacent ring. cascading is found to predominate at this scale, confi rming the continued importance of shorter-distance moving. secondly, the migration data are rendered into a travel to work area (ttwa) framework to examine the extent to which these subdivisions of the wse perform a type of entrepôt role in helping to shift population outwards from london. drawing on ravenstein’s concepts of counties of “transfer” and “absorption”, two measures are developed for revealing how the net infl ow to a particular ttwa from rings closer to the core compares numerically with the net outfl ow from that ttwa to the rings further away from it. the derived transfer and absorption rates are then used to classify the ttwas into four groups according to whether their scores on each are above or below average. it is found that a ttwa’s role varies according to two main dimensions: the concentric zone to which it belongs and the radial sector out of london in which it is located, notably whether the sector has a coastal or landward border. keywords: short-distance migration · stepwise migration · transfer rate · absorption rate · south east england comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 269-290 (date of release: 23.03.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-05en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-05en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • tony champion270 1 introduction this paper examines how internal migration redistributes population across an extensive region dominated by london and analyses the centrifugal population movements emanating from that city, focusing on the period 2001-2016. it builds on a study of the wider south east (wse) of england that identifi ed deconcentration as the largest and most consistent of the three main currents of migration affecting its spatial population dynamics in recent decades, alongside a fading north-south drift and a growing net infl ow from abroad (gordon et al. 2018). impressively, the fi ndings resonate considerably with the results of ravenstein’s pioneering analyses of within-uk migration some 130 years earlier, especially his two “laws” about most migrations taking place over short distances and about migration shifting population in a stepwise manner. it might have been expected that the huge changes that have taken place in demography, economy, society and technology since ravenstein’s analyses of data from the 1871 and 1881 censuses – not least as refl ected in the main current of internal migration no longer being towards “the main centres of commerce and industry” (part of his fi rst law, see below) but away from them – would have substantially weakened the relevance of these two generalisations, but this turns out not to be the case. the paper begins by recalling ravenstein’s legacy, notably in terms of those two laws of migration but also concerning the migration patterns that he identifi ed for the wse. this sets the scene for the analysis of the within-uk migration fl ows affecting the wse in the twenty-fi rst century. for this, a two-fold geographical framework is adopted. the fi rst involves dividing the uk into broadly concentric rings around london, looking to see how much of the city’s net out-migration occurs in the form of relatively short steps between adjacent rings as opposed to longer-distance leapfrogging through direct exchanges between london and the more distant rings. the second framework involves assembling the migration data at the level of the wse’s travel to work areas (ttwas), enabling us to differentiate the places that are most intensely involved in the regional deconcentration process from those which accommodate more of their migrant infl ow and thereby reduce the need for the further outward movement of population. as the paper proceeds, it becomes clear that ravenstein’s laws about shortdistance and stepwise migration are highly applicable to the way in which the wse’s deconcentration current has been operating in recent years. indeed, that current – previously conceptualised in terms of the “counterurbanisation cascade” (champion/atkins 1996; champion 2005; see also plane et al. 2005) – had already been likened by ravenstein to the effect of “a cistern of water after the tap has been turned on” (ravenstein 1889: 286). the analysis also draws on his idea of “counties of absorption” in devising a measure of the extent to which a place accommodates net migration from some parts of the country without this leading to the displacement of residents to elsewhere and also on his notion of “counties of passage” which are active in transferring population over space without any signifi cant net change in their own resident numbers. at the same time, ravenstein’s approach is essentially descriptive of the patterns and, where he does venture into more explanatory updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 271 mode, his comments tend to be lacking in a fi rm evidence base. here, too, the paper follows his lead in merely speculating on the principal dynamic behind the migration patterns observed and briefl y suggesting what further research is needed. 2 ravenstein’s legacy it might be deemed unnecessary to recall here the contribution of ravenstein to migration studies, so fundamental has this been and so fully has it been documented in other studies, as demonstrated by greenwood’s (2019) review of his legacy. in the context of this journal’s special issue subtitled “updating ravenstein”, however, it is very important to be explicit about what it is that the present paper is aiming to update. this is partly because the migration literature has been dominated by studies aimed at testing the seven “laws of migration” as set out formally in his 1885 paper (ravenstein 1885: 198-199) and developed further by lee (1966). this preoccupation has, as pointed out by greenwood, led to the downplaying of ravenstein’s roles in anticipating the gravity modelling of migration and the concept of intervening opportunities, as well as ignoring his appreciation of the distorting effect on migration rates of having to use statistical reporting units that differ greatly in geographical size and shape. but the most important reason for recapitulating ravenstein’s contribution here is that the present paper focuses on a part of the world which features strongly in his descriptions of migration patterns, so there is the possibility of making comparisons between then and now. in terms of ravenstein’s laws, it is the fi rst two of these that are found to be of most relevance to this study of the wse’s recent migration trends, as just mentioned. in his own words (ravenstein 1885: 198-199): "1. … the great body of our migrants only proceed a short distance, and … there takes place consequently a universal shifting or displacement of the population, which produces ‘currents of migration’ setting in the direction of the great centres of commerce and industry which absorb the migrants. 2. it is the natural outcome of this movement of migration … that the process of absorption would go on in the following manner:– the inhabitants of the country immediately surrounding a town of rapid growth fl ock into it; the gaps thus left in the rural population are fi lled up by migrants from more remote districts, until the attractive force of one of our rapidly growing cities makes its infl uence felt, step by step, to the most remote corner of the kingdom." this then is the basis of the twin concepts that concern us most in the present paper, namely that most migration is short-distance and that a broader shift in population distribution therefore occurs through a stepwise sequence of population shifts rather than through longer-distance movement of individuals directly from the areas of net out-migration to those of net in-migration. further, there are two aspects of ravenstein’s approach to studying migration that need to be made clear before summarising his observations on population shifts affecting london and its wider region. one is that his data refer to life-time • tony champion272 migration owing to the fact that, unlike nowadays, the censuses of his time did not ask for people’s whereabouts at a single previous point in time like one or fi ve years before the census but instead recorded their birthplace. this means that any change in place of residence indicated by comparing place of census enumeration with that of birth could have taken place several years, if not decades, before the census and indeed might have involved several separate moves over the intervening period. the second aspect is that birthplace was provided in no more detail than the county level and also, as ravenstein was at pains to point out, this is so only within each of the three “kingdoms” of england & wales, scotland and ireland, such that people enumerated in one of these three but born elsewhere in the british isles are given only their country of origin and not the county. this means that ravenstein’s analysis is restricted to inter-county movement within each of these three areas, i.e. not covering local residential mobility and also not having the benefi t of a full countylevel migration matrix for the uk. even with these restrictions, however, ravenstein was able to draw on copious evidence in support of his conclusions about the importance of short-distance and stepwise migration, as can be amply demonstrated by reference to his observations on south-eastern england. this can be seen not only in his most commonly cited 1885 paper but also from his initial work which took the form of three papers in successive monthly issues of the geographical magazine (july, august and september 1876), these shortly afterwards being brought together in a 56-page essay entitled “the birthplaces of the people and the laws of migration” and published as one of a series of census of the british isles 1871 reports (ravenstein 1876). indeed, this laid a great deal of the groundwork which was subsequently refi ned in his 1885 paper and updated by use of data from the 1881 census. here he separated the counties into “two great classes” – those with out-migration higher than the average rate for their country and those with lower rates – and then disaggregated places’ populations by birthplace, thereby leading him to infer the process of stepwise migration. the latter is done not only for counties but also for a number of towns, though as just mentioned the detail of migrants’ origins is limited to county within kingdom. in relation to the wse, it is not surprising to fi nd that one of the places registering the greatest net in-migration according to the 1871 census is london, this defi ned in “metropolitan” terms to include parts of the adjacent counties of middlesex and surrey (ravenstein 1876: 18). similarly, it is london that he puts forward as the prime example of the stepwise “recruiting process” (ravenstein 1876: 20). he fi nds that counties adjacent to london have relatively larger non-native populations than those further away, symptomatic of “the devouring process that is going on in london” (ravenstein 1876: 20) and the replacement of these adjacent counties’ populations by in-migrants from further afi eld. he then provides (ravenstein 1876: 21) a breakdown of london’s residents by where they were born, with the largest contingents originating in two broadly concentric “metropolitan zones” around the capital, 317 thousand from the fi rst of these (comprising middlesex, surrey, kent, essex, bucks and herts) and 290 thousand from the second (comprising the rest of the wse plus northants). the former is equivalent to 15.5 percent of that zone’s updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 273 population and the latter 10.4 percent, showing how the migration rate falls off with distance from the destination. turning to ravenstein’s 1885 paper, this not only updates these types of analysis with data from the 1881 census, but also furnishes additional perspectives on london’s migration. in particular, there is fuller attention to migration “currents”, building up to his fourth law that “each major current of migration produces a countercurrent” (ravenstein 1885: 199). he notes (ravenstein 1885: 187) that “in the case of metropolitan london, both the main and the counter-currents fl ow with considerable vigour”, with almost 585 thousand london natives living elsewhere in england and wales in 1881 compared with the total fl ow into london of 1164 thousand, giving an outfl ow of 50 per 100 in-migrants. he also observes that the outfl ow is more localised than the infl ow, with an overall outfl ow/infl ow ratio of 82 per 100 for the group of counties immediately surrounding london and with “extra-metropolitan surrey” posting a ratio of 105, i.e. receiving more people from london than it sent to it (ravenstein 1885: 188). this latter observation leads ravenstein to remark: “many, if not most of them, have merely removed to what are actually suburbs and can hardly be said to have left the metropolis” (ravenstein 1885: 188). otherwise, the main currents are all londonward, at least for the county groupings shown in ravenstein’s table. this observation is reinforced by the evidence of ravenstein’s plotting of “currents of migration” on a hand-drawn map of the british isles (1885, map 5, between pp 182 and 183). in the immediate vicinity of london, the only arrow pointing away from london is that to surrey, as just mentioned. the map also helps to illustrate the stepwise nature of the londonward shift in population. this is most conspicuous in the case of the north-eastern corridor into london, where the main current from essex is to london, that from suffolk is to essex and that from norfolk is to suffolk. another key corridor is from the west, with currents from cornwall to devon, then devon to dorset and somerset, from there to hampshire and on to surrey. for the english midlands, however, the pattern is less clear, with more of the arrows there pointing northwards to the other main national centre of economic growth located primarily in northern england. his example of warwickshire (ravenstein 1885: 194) is particularly interesting in this context, because this county acts as a feeder to both these poles of attraction, yet the county has been able to maintain a positive migration balance, with its net loss of 32 thousand to these two growth areas being more than made good by its net gain from elsewhere. as such, while classifi ed as a “county of absorption” (ravenstein 1885: 194), warwickshire also bears the hallmarks of ravenstein’s “counties of passage” that act like an entrepôt in transferring people across space, similar to his archetypal example of peebles within scotland (ravenstein 1885: 188). 3 studying the wse’s 21st century patterns of migration as stated above, the central question which this paper seeks to answer is the degree of similarity between the wse’s current migration experience and the 19th century • tony champion274 patterns observed by ravenstein. as part of this task, the aim is to investigate the extent to which his fi rst two laws have stood the test of time and, at the same time, see what extra insights can be obtained by applying indicators derived from his ideas about places playing different types of roles in relation to migration, notably with some serving mainly as places of passage by transferring population over wider regions while others work to slow down this redistributive process by absorbing much of their migrant infl ow. this section briefl y reviews the massive changes that have taken place between the two eras and outlines the analytical approach adopted for this study. 3.1 the changing context it goes without saying that there is a huge time lapse between the two eras. as noted above, it is already 130 years since the publication of ravenstein’s fi nal paper in 1889, but it is very nearly a century and half since the 1871 census on which he based his fi rst (1876) paper and even longer since much of the lifetime migration recorded by the 1871 and 1881 censuses will have actually occurred. one substantial change is that, as the economy of the uk’s manufacturing and mining heartlands has weakened, the national capital has increasingly become the single pivot around which the nation’s migration system revolves (coombes/charlton 1992). as illustrated most compellingly by fielding’s (1992) “regional escalator” hypothesis, london acts as a major attractive force for young adults from all over the country who are lured there by better job prospects and faster career progression than elsewhere in the uk but who later in their working lives or at retirement may decide to trade in their gains of human and fi nancial capital for better-quality and lower-cost environments elsewhere (see also fielding 1993; champion et al. 2014). their destinations tend to be less distant from london than the source areas of the young adults, much of it taking place as extended suburbanisation similar in form to, but on a far broader canvas than, that noted by ravenstein for non-metropolitan surrey (see above) but also with a signifi cant element actively seeking out more rural locations as “counterurbanisation” migration (champion 1989: 1; see also boyle/halfacree 1998; lomax/ stillwell 2018). these developments are responsible for the biggest change since ravenstein’s day, namely the complete reversal of the main internal migration current affecting the wse. london now records a negative balance of within-uk migration and has been doing so for many decades (champion 2016; stillwell et al. 1992). indeed, in keeping with some other major cities around the developed world, most notably new york, this was most apparent in the later 1960s and 1970s when absolute population decline was taking place, posing major fi scal challenges to city governance. in london’s case, this process was reinforced by a programme of planned overspill to a ring of new and expanded towns situated beyond its extensive (25-40km wide) green belt (champion 2002). london’s population began to grow again in the late 1980s, but this reversal had rather little to do with changes in its within-uk migration, being driven primarily by rising immigration from abroad and a switch from natural decrease to the large surplus of births over deaths that prevails now (gordon updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 275 et al. 2018). if london’s current patterns of within-uk migration were to be plotted on a county map like ravenstein’s, a vast majority of the arrows would be pointing away from london rather than towards it. it is this major reversal in the overall pattern of internal migration affecting the wse that primarily prompts the question as to how relevant ravenstein’s insights are for nowadays, this along with other examples of change since his time that might be thought to make longer-distance moving much easier than then, not least improved infrastructure for transportation and better information about more distant places. can it still be the case that the currents of internal migration that are redistributing population across the extensive region around london are mainly composed of moves between adjacent areas rather than in the form of longer-distance leapfrogging to more distant destinations across intervening areas that now include a green belt where new urban development is highly restricted? in a nutshell, in this very different context, how tenable are ravenstein’s laws about the importance of short-distance migration and about migration tending to redistribute population in a stepwise manner? 3.2 data and methods this study addresses these questions using migration data for 2001-2016 derived from the nhs’s patient register data system (prds) by offi ce for national statistics (ons), which compares people’s addresses – as notifi ed to their doctors – between annual downloads and therefore records population movement in the form of yearly address "transitions". more recently, ons has introduced counts of all moves ("events") using an extract from the nhs’s personal demographic service, but these are not directly comparable with the previous series (see ons 2019, section 5). the nhs-derived migration data give the numbers of people who have changed address between each local government area and every other one in england and wales and also their total exchanges with scotland and northern ireland. the prds-derived dataset is considered to be of high quality, but with two caveats. one concerns its reliance on migrants registering their change of address, as this process tends to be less swift for healthier people, most notably young adult males, but it will eventually occur after a time lag. secondly, there have been some methodological improvements in the dataset since 2001, notably in trying to achieve more comprehensive coverage of students’ moves to and from higher education. in the present study, though, both these issues are sidestepped by not examining trends over time and instead analysing a single 15-year period spanning the migration recorded for the year beginning in july 2001 (when the series began in its present form) through to that ending in june 2016. the main analyses in this study are based on two sets of origin-destination migration matrices aggregated from these ons data. one divides the uk into fi ve zones with london being surrounded by four broadly concentric rings. this follows ravenstein’s lead in identifying “metropolitan zones” around the capital (see section 2, above). the other divides the wse into its constituent ttwas (see ons 2016, for details). these provide a fi ner grain of analysis than ravenstein’s counties • tony champion276 and indeed better represent the regional space economy in terms of both labour and housing markets. the only difference from the offi cial ttwa geography is that these must be defi ned on the basis of the best fi t of local government area because of the migration data being available in no more geographical detail than these (see above). further details of these two geographical frameworks are provided in the relevant sections of the results below, namely 4.1 and 4.2 respectively. finally, again inspired by ravenstein, two sets of measures of a place’s role in redistributing population have been developed for the purposes of this study. one of these, building on his notion of “counties of absorption”, relates to the extent to which a place accommodates the deconcentration current. this takes three forms: “absorption volume” is defi ned as the net migration infl ow from concentric zones nearer london minus the net outfl ow to the rings further away from it, while “absorption level” is the volume expressed as a percentage of the net infl ow and “absorption rate” refers to the volume as a percentage of the number of the place’s residents. the second relates to ravenstein’s concept of “counties of passage”, i.e. places which are heavily involved in transferring population over space without seeing their own population size altering appreciably in the process. here the sum of the net infl ow to a place from zones nearer london and the net outfl ow to zones further away from the capital is designated “transfer volume”, which is then transformed into the “transfer rate” by reference to the place’s population size. higher values of the rate denotes a stronger role in redistributing population outwards across the region, while the volume can also be used to rank places according to their share of the region’s overall deconcentration. 4 results 4.1 the fi ve-ring perspective this section presents the results of the empirical analysis of the wse’s within-uk migration for 2001-2016 on the basis of the fi ve-ring geography introduced in section 3.2 and depicted in figure 1. london itself is defi ned in terms of the area currently administered by the greater london authority (gla). the rest of the wse comprises two rings, the inner ring reprising the concept of outer metropolitan area (oma) as developed for planning purposes in the 1960s and the other labelled the outer wider south east (owse). lying beyond the wse boundary are two further zones, namely a fringe comprising the areas that are, as will be seen, the next most affected by metropolitan infl uence and fi nally the rest of the uk. before examining the results of the migration analysis in detail, table 1 sets the scene by outlining the broader picture of population change for this fi ve-ring geography for the study period 2001-2016. it shows that there is no overall deconcentration of population from london as the growth rate of the latter exceeds that of the three surrounding rings by around half as much again, with the rest of the uk posting an even slower increase than these. at the same time, london’s strong growth can be seen to be entirely due to a combination of natural increase and net immiupdating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 277 gration from abroad: it loses substantially through its migration exchange with the uk. in absolute terms, the latter was averaging roughly 71 thousand a year over the 15-year period, compared to net immigration of 96 thousand and natural increase of 73 thousand. the situation seems highly reminiscent of ravenstein’s cistern-andtap metaphor, though with overspill only partially offsetting the supply coming from those two taps. the other signifi cant feature of table 1 is that london’s net out-migration to the rest of the country would seem to have had a very much smaller impact on the immediately adjacent ring than on the next two zones further away. the oma’s rate of net within-uk migration gain is less than one quarter of the rates for both the owse and the fringe beyond. in absolute terms, this translates into a net gain of barely 5 thousand a year for the oma, compared to net gains of 28 and 26 thousands a year respectively for the next two rings out from london. on this basis, one might conclude that it is primarily the intermediate distances from london that have provided fig. 1: the fi ve rings ring london oma owse fringe rest of uk note: each ring is an aggregation of the local government areas shown, see text. oma outer metropolitan area, owse outer wider south east. the wse comprises london, oma and owse. rest of uk also includes scotland and northern ireland. source: based on the classifi cation developed by gordon et al. 2018. • tony champion278 the main destinations for its migration overspill, with shorter-distance population movement out of the capital being much less important. a very different picture, however, emerges when looking at the net fl ows between each of the fi ve zones. as shown in figure 2, london’s annual net outfl ow of 71 thousand to the rest of the country is primarily destined for the closest ring, with the oma gaining some 50 thousand a year compared to some 16 thousand going directly from london to the owse and under 5 thousand to the fringe. the reason why the oma’s overall within-uk migration balance is no larger than 5 thousand a year is because it loses nearly as many people to the rings further away as it gains from london. again, distance is a factor here, as the main recipient of the oma’s net outfl ow is the next ring outwards. in its turn, the owse registers a net exodus to the remaining two rings while receiving net infl ows from the oma and directly from london, but in this case the total volume of the outward shift is much smaller than the total infl ow from these two inner zones. clearly, therefore, while there is an element of leapfrogging, this population redistribution is still taking place mainly through shorter-distance movement between adjacent places, just as in ravenstein’s day. the between-zone relationships shown in figure 2 can also be expressed in the form of the two sets of more precise measures defi ned in section 3.2. looking fi rst at the extent to which a place accommodates the deconcentration current, the absorption level works out at 9.6 percent for the oma, based on its net migration gain from london of almost 51 thousand compared to its total net loss of 46 thousand to the three rings making up the rest of the country. by contrast, the level for the owse is much higher at 66 percent, derived from gaining 40 thousand from london and the oma and losing just under 14 thousand to the two rings further out. turning to the transfer rate that identifi es the zones most heavily involved in redistributing population across the wse and beyond, it is the oma that performs this role most clearly, with its net annual average infl ow of almost 51 thousand comzone natural international within-uk overall change migration migration change london 0.92 1.22 -0.91 1.22 outer metropolitan area (oma) 0.42 0.28 0.08 0.80 outer wider south east (owse) 0.15 0.30 0.36 0.82 fringe 0.16 0.27 0.35 0.80 rest of uk 0.17 0.26 0.04 0.50 uk 0.29 0.39 0.00 0.70 tab. 1: population change and its main components for the uk’s fi ve rings: average annual change, 2001-2016, % rate (compound) note: numbers may not sum due to rounding. also, ‘overall change’ includes ‘unattributable changes’ arising from adjustments following the 2011 census, as well as the effect of methodological and administrative changes. source: own calculations from ons data. updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 279 bining with its net outfl ow of 46 thousand to give a total population transfer that, when converted into a rate, comes to 16.1 per thousand of its total population. the equivalent rate for the owse is 7.3 per thousand and that for the fringe 3.7 per thousand, revealing how far the degree of involvement in the deconcentration process declines with increasing distance from london. of course, this conclusion is already evident from figure 2, but the utility of these measures becomes more apparent when handling the larger number of areas that are distinguished at the ttwa level. 4.2 the ttwa-level perspective within the context of the london-centric zoning of the uk above, the paper now focuses in on the individual places that make up the wse in order to identify their separate roles within the broad deconcentration current emanating from its core. as mentioned in section 3.2, this analysis is undertaken at the ttwa level rather than for the counties that ravenstein’s data forced him to use. in all, as shown in figure 3, the wse is composed of all or part of 45 ttwas, with the part element referring to cases where the ttwa straddles the wse boundary with the fringe (for which the data used here are only for the part lying within the wse). the ttwas also overlap the zone boundaries to some extent, notably for zone 1: london ttwa extends beyond the zone 1 boundary on the gla’s northern and eastern fl anks but doesn’t reach its western boundary where the separate ttwa of slough & heathrow enfig. 2: net migration between the fi ve rings, annual averages for 2001-2016 -80.0 -60.0 -40.0 -20.0 0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 london oma owse fringe rest of uk thousands per year london oma owse fringe rest of uk source: own calculations from ons data. • tony champion280 croaches on gla territory. together, these two london-based ttwas can be seen to be the main driving force behind the wse’s deconcentration current, so the focus here is on how the other 43 ttwas are involved in this. this goal is achieved by apfig. 3: the wse’s ttwa geography note: the areas displayed here constitute the best fi t of local government areas to the detailed geography of the ons’s 2011 ttwas, see text. the name of each ttwa can be found from the fi rst column of table 2. source: based on the grouping of local authority areas devised by gordon et al. 2018. updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 281 plying the two concepts of transfer and absorption to the ttwa framework. the full dataset behind the following commentary is provided in table 2. looking fi rst at the ttwas’ transfer role, it is found that all 43 have been contributing to the wse’s deconcentration current over the 15-year period ending june 2016. all 10 of the ttwas located entirely or predominantly in the oma received more migrants from london than they sent to it, i.e. they made a net gain from london. perhaps even more impressively, every one of the 33 ttwas located in the owse recorded an overall net gain from the two inner rings. meanwhile, in terms of their migration exchanges with rings further away from london, all but three of the 43 ttwas recorded a net outfl ow, the exceptions being on the outer edges of the owse, namely cromer & sheringham, brighton and isle of wight. but even in these three cases, the volume of net infl ow from outside the wse was much smaller than their net gains from the two inner rings, with the result that all 43 ttwas were transferring more people to further away from london than towards it, as is shown by the “transfer volume” column in table 2. at the same time, the degree of involvement in the wse’s deconcentration current varies greatly between the 43 ttwas. in the case of cromer & sheringham, it amounted to an annual average population shift of just 448 during 2001-2016, less than one-twentieth of luton’s 9,200 at the other extreme. besides the latter, seven other ttwas transferred at least 5 thousand people a year, these being (in rank order) crawley, medway, bedford, chelmsford, southend, high wycombe & aylesbury, and guildford & aldershot. together, these 8 places contributed 57 thousand out of the 43 ttwas’ total transfer role of 119 thousand a year, i.e. almost half of it. not surprisingly in view of the zone-level results discussed previously, these were predominantly representatives of the oma, with just one (bedford) located further away from london. as a corollary, the 11 ttwas contributing least (less than one thousand a year) to the deconcentration current are all located in the owse and mainly in its outer reaches. on the other hand, if using the population-standardised transfer rate to see how intensely each ttwa was involved in these transfers (table 2), then the ranking is somewhat different. on this basis, top with an annual rate of 19.0 per thousand residents is tunbridge wells, which is also part of the oma, with the owse’s bedford coming second with a rate of 17.4. the next 8 are luton, chelmsford, clacton, high wycombe & aylesbury, crawley, milton keynes, newbury, and stevenage & welwyn garden city, all with rates of at least 13 and therefore well above the wse’s annual average of 10 per thousand. five of these are members of the oma but the other three are located in the owse and indeed towards its furthest points from london, namely clacton on the east coast, newbury on the wse’s western boundary and milton keynes on its northwest edge. interestingly, several of these ttwas are centred on places that featured in the government’s postwar programme of new and expanded towns for accommodating london’s overspill. turning to absorption, as this is rather different conceptually from the transfer role (see section 3.2), it is not surprising to fi nd that a ttwa can rank highly on transfer rate even if one of the two sets of net fl ows is very small. clacton provides a clear example of this, because its fi fth highest ranking on transfer rate (as just seen) • tony champion282 t t w a r in g s ec to r p o p u la ti o n n et n et tr an sf er tr an sf er a b so rp ti o n a b so rp ti o n a b so rp ti o n 20 01 ( 00 0s ) in fl o w o u tfl o w vo lu m e ra te vo lu m e le ve l ( % ) ra te (p er 1 00 0) (p er 1 00 0) 1 a n d o ve r 3 s w 11 0. 0 34 9 41 5 76 3 6. 9 -6 6 -1 8. 8 -0 .6 0 2 a sh fo rd 3 s e 10 3. 0 10 90 17 4 12 64 12 .3 91 6 84 .0 8. 89 3 b an b u ry 3 w 13 2. 0 36 6 84 7 12 13 9. 2 -4 80 -1 31 .2 -3 .6 4 4 b as in g st o ke 3 s w 23 6. 5 19 31 94 4 28 75 12 .2 98 7 51 .1 4. 17 5 b ed fo rd 3 n w 38 2. 1 49 32 17 20 66 52 17 .4 32 13 65 .1 8. 41 6 b ri g h to n 3 s 24 9. 9 11 63 -3 14 84 9 3. 4 14 77 12 7. 0 5. 91 7 b u ry s t e d m u n d s 3 n e 18 1. 9 46 2 15 4 61 6 3. 4 30 8 66 .7 1. 70 8 c am b ri d g e 3 n 59 0. 7 36 31 37 3 40 04 6. 8 32 58 89 .7 5. 52 9 c an te rb u ry 3 s e 13 5. 4 13 72 32 14 04 10 .4 13 40 97 .7 9. 90 10 c h el m sf o rd 2 n e 41 7. 8 31 90 33 86 65 76 15 .7 -1 96 -6 .1 -0 .4 7 11 c h ic h es te r & b o g n o r r eg is 3 s 24 7. 5 25 18 33 6 28 53 11 .5 21 82 86 .7 8. 82 12 c la ct o n 3 n e 13 8. 8 20 39 14 5 21 84 15 .7 18 95 92 .9 13 .6 5 13 c o lc h es te r 3 n e 15 6. 0 10 94 23 9 13 33 8. 5 85 5 78 .1 5. 48 14 c ra w le y 2 s 63 6. 4 51 08 37 35 88 43 13 .9 13 73 26 .9 2. 16 15 c ro m er & s h er in g h am 3 n e 98 .5 60 9 -1 61 4 48 4. 5 77 0 12 6. 5 7. 81 16 e as tb o u rn e 3 s 32 2. 3 26 96 66 1 33 57 10 .4 20 34 75 .5 6. 31 17 fo lk es to n e & d o ve r 3 s e 20 1. 0 11 06 34 5 14 51 7. 2 76 1 68 .8 3. 79 18 g re at y ar m o u th 3 n e 90 .9 51 3 4 51 7 5. 7 50 9 99 .3 5. 60 19 g u ild fo rd & a ld er sh o t 2 s w 50 6. 5 20 49 35 28 55 77 11 .0 -1 47 9 -7 2. 2 -2 .9 2 20 h as ti n g s 3 s e 17 0. 9 17 51 29 6 20 47 12 .0 14 55 83 .1 8. 52 21 h ig h w yc o m b e & a yl es b u ry 2 w 41 7. 2 23 91 36 20 60 10 14 .4 -1 22 9 -5 1. 4 -2 .9 5 22 h u n ti n g d o n 3 n 15 7. 2 89 2 58 3 14 75 9. 4 31 0 34 .7 1. 97 23 ip sw ic h 3 n e 31 9. 4 16 71 41 6 20 87 6. 5 12 56 75 .1 3. 93 24 is le o f w ig h t 3 s w 13 2. 9 89 4 -1 4 4 75 0 5. 6 10 38 11 6. 1 7. 81 25 k in g 's l yn n 3 n 13 5. 6 75 2 66 81 8 6. 0 68 6 91 .2 5. 06 ta b . 2 : po p ul at io n an d m ig ra tio n, 2 00 120 16 , f o r th e w s e’ s t t w a s updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 283 t t w a r in g s ec to r p o p u la ti o n n et n et tr an sf er tr an sf er a b so rp ti o n a b so rp ti o n a b so rp ti o n 20 01 ( 00 0s ) in fl o w o u tfl o w vo lu m e ra te vo lu m e le ve l ( % ) ra te (p er 1 00 0) (p er 1 00 0) 26 lo n d o n 1 n /a 73 15 .1 n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a 27 lo w es to ft 3 n e 11 2. 5 57 0 46 61 6 5. 5 52 4 91 .9 4. 66 28 lu to n 2 n w 53 3. 3 4 48 4 47 25 92 09 17 .3 -2 41 -5 .4 -0 .4 5 29 m ar g at e & r am sg at e 3 s e 12 6. 8 10 52 25 1 13 03 10 .3 80 1 76 .2 6. 32 30 m ed w ay 2 s e 61 9. 7 41 60 38 30 79 90 12 .9 32 9 7. 9 0. 53 31 m ilt o n k ey n es 3 n w 21 2. 7 17 87 10 76 28 63 13 .5 71 1 39 .8 3. 34 32 n ew b u ry 3 w 14 4. 5 12 04 73 7 19 41 13 .4 46 7 38 .8 3. 23 33 n o rw ic h 3 n e 35 2. 0 84 6 64 91 0 2. 6 78 2 92 .5 2. 22 34 o x fo rd 3 w 47 5. 3 16 0 84 6 10 06 2. 1 -6 86 -4 28 .5 -1 .4 4 35 p et er b o ro u g h 3 n 19 2. 0 38 7 10 91 14 79 7. 7 -7 04 -1 81 .7 -3 .6 6 36 p o rt sm o u th 3 s w 59 9. 1 20 35 92 1 29 56 4. 9 11 13 54 .7 1. 86 37 r ea d in g 2 w 40 4. 7 51 6 31 32 36 48 9. 0 -2 61 5 -5 06 .7 -6 .4 6 38 s lo u g h & h ea th ro w 1 n /a 13 92 .2 n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a n /a 39 s o u th am p to n 3 s w 61 2. 6 15 36 48 4 20 20 3. 3 10 53 68 .5 1. 72 40 s o u th en d 2 e 49 1. 6 36 58 26 63 63 20 12 .9 99 5 27 .2 2. 02 41 s te ve n ag e & w el w yn g ar d en c it y 2 n w 29 4. 4 22 61 16 18 38 79 13 .2 64 4 28 .5 2. 19 42 t h et fo rd & m ild en h al l 3 n e 17 7. 7 96 4 89 10 54 5. 9 87 5 90 .7 4. 92 43 tu n b ri d g e w el ls 2 s e 21 3. 3 23 57 17 04 40 61 19 .0 65 3 27 .7 3. 06 4 4 w is b ec h 3 n 83 .7 62 7 30 8 93 5 11 .2 31 9 50 .9 3. 82 45 w o rt h in g 3 s 15 7. 4 60 1 28 0 88 1 5. 6 32 0 53 .3 2. 03 ta b . 2 : c o n tin ua tio n n o te : r in g 2 re fe rs t o o ut er m et ro p o lit an a re a, r in g 3 to o ut er w id er s o ut h e as t. fo r se ct o r, th e le tt er s re fe r to c o m p as s d ir ec tio n fr o m l o nd o n. n et in fl o w a nd o ut fl o w r ef er , r es p ec tiv el y, to n et m ig ra tio n fr o m z o ne s ne ar er l o nd o n an d to z o ne s fu rt he r fr o m it . s ee te xt fo r d efi n iti o ns o f t he o th er v ar ia b le s. n /a n o t a p p lic ab le : lo nd o n an d s lo ug h & h ea th ro w a re tr ea te d a s so ur ce a re as (s ee te xt ). s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n o n s d at a • tony champion284 results almost entirely from its strong net infl ow of over 2 thousand a year: its net outfl ow to outside the wse is only 145, meaning that it loses only 7 percent of its intake and has an absorption level of 93 percent (table 2). in fact, there are more extreme cases than clacton, notably the three ttwas mentioned above that gain from the further-out rings as well as from those nearer london, namely cromer & sheringham, brighton and isle of wight, which thus exhibit absorption levels of over 100 percent. all of the others posting high absorption levels (90 percent and over) are, similarly, in coastal locations or are immediately adjacent to them: in descending order, great yarmouth, canterbury, clacton, norwich, lowestoft, king’s lynn, and thetford & mildenhall. at the other extreme on absorption level are two groups of ttwas. as can be seen from table 2, there are 9 where the absorption level is between 0 percent and 40 percent, meaning that for every 100 of net infl ow from nearer london there is a net outfl ow of at least 60 to further from it. this group comprises (again in descending order) milton keynes, newbury, huntingdon, stevenage & welwyn, tunbridge wells, southend, crawley and medway. these are largely the mirror image of the high-absorption places, being generally away from the coast and closer to the wse’s landward boundary and thus with more opportunity for decanting residents into the fringe and beyond. medway on the thames estuary is an exception to this rule, but – like several of the others in the list – it is part of the oma with ample chance to shift people into the next ring outwards from london. some new towns also feature in the list, reinforcing their credentials as entrepôts for people or, in ravenstein’s terms, as “counties of passage”. the other 9 ttwas that make up the bottom of this ranking are distinctive in their absorption levels being negative (table 2). these are places where the net outfl ow to rings further away from london is larger than their net infl ow from nearer london. reading in the oma is the extreme case, as while its migration exchange with london is rather evenly balanced (with just over 500 more people arriving from london than moving to it), its net loss to the owse and beyond totals over 3 thousand: this ttwa thus fails to absorb some 2600 people a year, fi ve times its net infl ow from london. the other 8 in this group are andover, banbury, chelmsford, guildford & aldershot, high wycombe & aylesbury, luton, oxford and peterborough. on this evidence, these 9 places are performing a role that is rather similar to the role played by the two ttwas at the core of the region, in that they are helping to drive the wse’s deconcentration current. they include places that, like london, are characterised by stronger than average natural increase and net immigration from abroad, refl ecting the fact that nowadays the wse is not just a single-centred metropolitan region but a much more complex polycentric one that involves a degree of more localised population deconcentration (as noted by hall/pain 2006). at the same time, these data do not directly measure the impact of the ttwas’ absorption role, so – as with the analysis of their transfer role – the numbers accommodated in this deconcentration process are translated into per capita rates (see fi nal column of table 2). by defi nition, the 9 ttwas with negative absorption, just discussed, play no part in this, but at the other end of the scale it is clacton that posts the highest rate of impact. its absorption of almost 1,900 people a year over updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 285 2001-2016 equates to a rate of 13.7 per thousand residents. next highest (in order) come canterbury, ashford, chichester & bognor regis, hastings, bedford, cromer & sheringham, isle of wight, margate & ramsgate and eastbourne, with rates of between 6 and 10 per thousand. their dominant characteristic is that they contain seaside resorts that have for decades attracted retirement migrants and, with a consequently older than average age structure, experience a high mortality-driven population turnover rate that facilitates a large number of new arrivals without necessarily causing substantial overall population growth. ashford, however, has no coastline but instead is a town that has grown rapidly in recent years, helped by being on the main route to the channel tunnel, while bedford is distinctive in not only being in the wse’s far northwest but also performing a strong entrepôt function, as seen above. finally, the role which individual places play in the wse’s deconcentration current can be summarised by classifying them on the basis of their transfer and absorption rates together. table 3 splits the 43 ttwas into four groups according to whether each of these two rates is above or below the global average and also provides some locational information to help interpret the patterning. perhaps the most distinctive group is that characterised by high transfer rate and low absorption rate, as these are predominantly located in the oma (bottom left box of table 3). this represents what might be called the pure form of ravenstein’s “counties of passage” within the deconcentration process, as previously seen for the oma as a whole in figure 2. indeed, it can be seen that virtually all ttwas located in the oma are involved, irrespective of their radial sector out of london, the only exception being reading which is classifi ed as low on transfer rate as well as absorption rate. also lubricating the process is newbury, located west of reading, along with milton keynes in the north-western sector. apart from reading, the constituents of the other three groups in table 3 are entirely composed of ttwas in the owse, indicating the much greater variety of individual performances there. like the group just discussed, the list headed by ashford is a major player in receiving population from nearer london (i.e. from the oma or directly from london itself) but accommodates a substantial proportion of this infl ow rather than passing it on to rings further away. it is not surprising to fi nd that many of these are coastal, with no further-out zone to send people on to. similarly, coastal situations and high absorption rates dominate the list of places headed by brighton, but their below-average transfer rates indicate that these play a less important role in the deconcentration process. finally, the group that includes reading has a low absorption rate, i.e. these ttwas are essentially “counties of passage”, but despite this they display low transfer rates and are thus performing this role for a relatively small net fl ow of people moving there from nearer london. 5 concluding discussion: ravenstein then and now this paper has revisited territory – both geographical and conceptual – that ravenstein examined in considerable detail in his work on the 1871 and 1881 censuses. • tony champion286 the migration currents (and counter currents) that he identifi ed for south-east england helped him to formulate his migration laws, most notably that most migration takes place over shorter distances between adjacent counties and in the form of a stepwise shifting of population from each county to the one next closer to the growing “centre of commerce and industry” that was london. recognising that the main current of internal migration affecting this region is now centrifugal rather than centripetal, the aim has been to discover whether these two generalisations still hold in this very different context. to do this, the district-to-district migration fl ows for 2001-2016 were aggregated to, fi rstly, a london-centred zonation of the uk and, secondly, a subdivision of the wse into approximations of offi cial ttwas. the results provide strong support for the continuing relevance of these two laws. in spite of the initial evidence that the concentric ring to gain most from the deconcentration current emanating from london was not the immediately adjaabsorption rate transfer rate (average of 9.54) (average of 3.37) above average below average above ashford (3, se) brighton (3, s, coastal) average basingstoke (3, sw) cambridge (3, n) bedford (3, nw) colchester (3, ne, coastal) canterbury (3, se, coastal) cromer & sheringham (3, ne, coastal) chichester & bognor regis (3, s, coastal) folkestone & dover (3, se, coastal) clacton (3, ne, coastal) great yarmouth (3, ne, coastal) eastbourne (3, s, coastal) ipswich (3, ne, coastal) hastings (3, se, coastal) isle of wight (3, sw, coastal) margate & ramsgate (3, se, coastal) king’s lynn (3, n, coastal) wisbech (3, n) lowestoft (3, ne, coastal) thetford & mildenhall (3, ne) below chelmsford (2, ne, coastal) andover (3, sw) average crawley (2, s) banbury (3, w) guildford & aldershot (2, sw) bury st edmunds (3, ne) high wycombe & aylesbury (2, w) huntingdon (3, n) luton (2 nw) norwich (3, ne) medway (2, se, coastal) oxford (3, w) milton keynes (3, nw) peterborough (3, n) newbury (3, w) portsmouth (3, sw, coastal) southend (2, e, coastal) reading (2, w) stevenage & welwyn garden city (2, nw) southampton (3, sw, coastal) tunbridge wells (2, se) worthing (3, s, coastal) tab. 3: four-way classifi cation of ttwas based on their transfer and absorption rates note: in parentheses, 2 refers to outer metropolitan area, 3 to outer wider south east; the letters refer to compass direction from london; "coastal" indicates being bounded by the thames estuary, north sea or english channel. london and slough & heathrow are treated as source areas and are therefore omitted (see text). source: derived from calculations based on ons data. updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 287 cent oma but the next two zones beyond it, a breakdown of the inter-zone net fl ows clearly demonstrated the dominance of shorter-distance population movements between adjacent zones over longer-distance leapfrogging across intervening zones. additionally, ravenstein’s categorisations of counties of absorption and passage have prompted the development of quantitative measures of the extent to which places are involved in this deconcentration current. these have proved particularly useful for comparing the ttwas in terms of how dynamic each is in receiving population from nearer london and the degree to which each has accommodated this net infl ow locally as opposed to sending it further out across the wse and beyond. a four-way classifi cation based on differences in the ttwas’ transfer and absorption rates has pointed to key features that differentiate their role, with a particularly strong distinction being found between location in the oma as opposed to in the owse and also with the level of absorption depending partly on whether or not they have a coastal border. what this study has not examined in any detail are the direct drivers of the migration patterns observed, again following ravenstein’s emphasis on description and inference. as seen at the outset, his attempts at explanation focused almost exclusively on the workings of the labour market; in his words (1885: 198-199), “the mode in which the defi ciency of hands in one part of the country is supplied from other parts where population is redundant” – with this driver operating primarily on a local basis such that a growing town draws labour from the surrounding area which then leaves gaps that are fi lled by migrants from more remote districts. in more modern parlance, it is the pull factor that powers the migration process via a vacancy chain and, while this serves an equilibrating function, it is dominated by quantity (i.e. the fl ow of job opportunities) rather than quality (i.e. skills or earnings). the 21st century situation could be seen as the virtual antithesis of that interpretation, with its prevailing current of counterurbanisation being driven by the push of growing housing demand in london which cannot all be met locally, thereby powering a displacement chain. price effects are key to the latter, with the new households arising from natural increase and migration from abroad (plus extra space demands arising from local residents’ income growth) generating pressures that forces or encourages residents to move outwards. these effects depend on an inelastic local housing supply and this is the case not just in the booming centre but also further out in and beyond the green belt where new building is restricted to a greater or lesser extent. yet, despite these very different circumstances, it is perhaps not very surprising that ravenstein’s fi rst two laws still apply in the wse. whereas it is now recognised that the most long-distance migration is job-related, the vast majority of housing-related moves tend to be relatively short-distance (gordon 1982). indeed, most would normally take place within the confi nes of the individual ttwas used in this analysis, but the wse is not normal in this context, with the pressures emanating from london transcending what is no doubt also occurring at a more local level across the region. as just suggested (and as clearly documented decades ago by hall et al. 1973), planning controls have widened the area of housing-supply unresponsiveness while transport improvements have enabled london’s jobs to be • tony champion288 accessed from further away. in sum, infl exibilities built into the housing market now form a critical part of the wse’s whole migration system. that said and while acknowledging that considerable job growth has also been occurring in the towns and cities of the oma and owse, it is primarily through the lens of the housing market that further research is needed for identifying, and measuring the effect of, the factors directly involved in fashioning the patterning of the fl ows that comprise the wse’s deconcentration current. at the same time, given the striking similarities between the 19th and 21st centuries observed here despite internal migration switching from centripetal to centrifugal patterning, the fi ndings provide ample confi rmation that there is something fundamental about the friction of distance for human behaviour, not withstanding the major developments in transport and communications that have taken place over the past 130 years. conceptually, this raises a question as to how deeply zelinsky’s (1971) mobility transition model penetrates into the micro-level aspects of migration decision making as opposed to the waxing and waning of the various types of migration over the transition period, especially the ongoing debate as to how adequately that model can incorporate the switch from urbanisation to counterurbanisation (greenwood 2019). acknowledgements i am very grateful to ian gordon for allowing me to draw on the population and migration databases that we developed for the report migration infl uences and implications for population dynamics in the wider south east (gordon et al. 2018). i am also indebted to ian for providing the map in figure 1 and to caitlin robinson for preparing figure 3. thanks also go to special issue guest editors philip rees and nikola sander for inviting this contribution and to philip and two anonymous referees for their constructive and insightful comments and advice. any errors and omissions that remain are, however, entirely the author’s own. references boyle, paul; halfacree, keith (eds.) 1998: migration into rural areas: theories and issues. chichester: john wiley & sons. champion, anthony g. 1989: counterurbanization: the changing pace and nature of population deconcentration. london: edward arnold. champion, tony; atkins, david 1996: the counterurbanization cascade: an analysis of the 1991 census special migration statistics for great britain. seminar paper 66, department of geography. university of newcastle upon tyne. champion, tony 2002: the containment of urban britain: retrospect and prospect. milan: francoangeli. champion, tony 2005: the counterurbanisation cascade in england and wales since 1991: the evidence of a new migration dataset. in: belgeo 2005 1-2: 85-101 [doi: 10.4000/belgeo.12440]. updating ravenstein: internal migration as a driver of regional population change ... • 289 champion, tony; coombes, mike; gordon, ian 2014: how far do england’s secondorder cities emulate london as human-capital ‘escalators’? in: population, space and place 20: 421-433 [doi: 10.1002/psp.1806]. champion, tony 2016: internal migration and the spatial distribution of population. in: champion, tony; falkingham, jane (eds.): population change in the united kingdom. london: rowman and littlefi eld international: 125-142. coombes, mike; charlton, martin 1992: flows to and from london: a decade of change. in: stillwell, john; rees, philip; boden, peter (eds.): migration processes and patterns volume 2 population redistribution in the united kingdom. london: belhaven: 56-77. fielding, anthony j. 1992: migration and social mobility: south east england as an ‘escalator region’. in: regional studies 26,1: 1-15 [doi: 10.1080/00343409212331346741]. fielding, anthony j. 1993: migration and the metropolis: an empirical and theoretical analysis of inter-regional migration to and from south east england. in: progress in planning 39,2: 71-166 [doi: 10.1016/0305-9006(93)90006-f]. gordon, ian r. 1982: the analysis of motivation-specifi c migration streams. in: environment and planning a 14,1: 5-20 [doi: 10.1068/a140005]. gordon, ian et al. 2018: migration infl uences and implications for population dynamics in the wider south east. london: lse london [http://lselondonhousing.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/01/eelga-migration-project_main-report_plusexec.pdf, 07.01.2020]. greenwood, michael j. 2019: the migration legacy of e g ravenstein. in: migration studies 7,2: 269-278 [doi: 10.1093/migration/mny043]. hall, peter et al. 1973: the containment of urban england, volume 1, megalopolis denied. london: george allen and unwin. hall, peter; pain, kathy 2006: the polycentric metropolis london: earthscan. lee, everett s. 1966: a theory of migration. in: demography 3: 47-57 [doi: 10.2307/2060063]. lomax, nik; stillwell, john 2018: united kingdom: temporal change in internal migration. in: champion, tony; cooke, thomas; shuttleworth, ian (eds.): internal migration in the developed world: are we becoming less mobile? london: routledge. ons 2016: travel to work area analysis in great britain. london: offi ce for national statistics [https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/traveltoworkareaanalysisingreatbritain/2016, 10.10.2019]. ons 2019: population estimates for the uk, mid-2018: methods guide. london: offi ce for national statistics [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/ populationandmigration/populationestimates/methodologies/methodologyguideformid2015ukpopulationestimatesenglandandwalesjune2016, 07.01.2020]. plane, david a.; henrie, c. j.; perry, m. j. 2005: migration up and down the urban hierarchy and across the life course. in: proceedings of the national academy of sciences 102: 15313-15318 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.0507312102]. ravenstein, ernest george 1876: the birthplaces of the people and the laws of migration. london: trübner & co. ravenstein, ernest george 1885: the laws of migration. in: journal of the statistical society of london 48,2: 167-235 [doi: 10.2307/2979181]. ravenstein, ernest george 1889: the laws of migration. second paper. in: journal of the royal statistical society 52,2: 241-305 [doi: 10.2307/2979333]. • tony champion290 stillwell, john; rees, philip; boden, peter 1992: internal migration trends: an overview. in: stillwell, john; rees, philip; boden, peter (eds.): migration processes and patterns volume 2 population redistribution in the united kingdom. london: belhaven: 28-55. zelinsky, wilbur 1971: the hypothesis of the mobility transition. in: geographical review 61: 219-249. date of submission: 17.10.2019 date of acceptance: 13.02.2020 prof. dr. tony champion (). centre for urban and regional development studies (curds), newcastle university. newcastle upon tyne, united kingdom. e-mail: tony.champion@newcastle.ac.uk url: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profi le/tonychampion.html#research published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects asiya validova abstract: this paper examines the family policy reforms of 2007 in russia that were aimed explicitly at encouraging second and higher-order births, and analyses their impact on fertility. the existing empirical fi ndings about population policy interventions in transition economies are inconclusive, while the most common argument states that policies based on material incentives are insuffi cient to signifi cantly raise the real fertility in a population. the study aims to offer a better insight to the following research question: was russian demographic policy effective in terms of raising the fertility level in the country or did it merely change the timing of births? the objective of the paper is to measure two effects of the pronatalist policy in russia: tempo effect and quantum effect. using data from the human fertility database, i employ the decomposition method to separate tempo and quantum effects in the observed total fertility rate, and i estimate their relative weight in observed fertility changes. the analysis of period fertility indicators confi rmed the prevalence of a tempo effect in observed total fertility rate change, but also revealed a quantum effect of the policy measures, although this was much smaller. policy impact varied by birth order. for second parity, the tempo effect played a more critical role, while for third parity the quantum effect was more important. another decomposition approach employed to measure the contributions of various factors in the increase of the number of births during the post-reform period showed the quantum effect which was driven by second and third order births. the study provides empirical evidence of the impact of policies on fertility behaviour, expands the existing analysis of pronatalist measures taken in russia, and contributes to our understanding of the role of tempo and quantum effects in the recent fertility change in russia. keywords: fertility rates · tempo and quantum effects · pronatalist policies · births · russia comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 425-452 (date of release: 18.10.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-15 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-15en7 • asiya validova426 1 introduction the new population policies introduced by the russian government in 2007 aimed to encourage larger families to address the massive fertility decline that has posed a demographic challenge since the 1990s. the effectiveness of pronatalist policies depends on their ability to address the major causes of low fertility and reverse a trend toward a small family size. while in some low fertility countries, childbearing postponement and an increase in childlessness have been among the factors driving the fertility decline, in the case of russia, the prevalence of the one-child family has been the most infl uential fertility behaviour feature (elizarov/ levin 2015). russia differs from western low-fertility countries in several aspects: its demographic transition occurred later, and the country has undergone a rapid institutional transformation caused by the collapse of the soviet union. in the communist era, the authoritarian political system and pronatalist ideology were generally favourable for “early and universal childbearing” (frejka/gietelbasten 2016). due to a traditional early marriage and childbearing model associated with the system of job-protected parental leave, state-provided childcare and housing, the soviet union was able to maintain relatively high fertility rates; at the same time, female labor force participation rates were also quite high (frejka/gietelbasten 2016). looking at the historical context, one can conclude that the main tools of the pronatalist policies in the soviet system were monetary incentives ever since their introduction in the 1930s (frejka/gietel-basten 2016; elizarov 2019). adopted in 1944, the system of lump-sum benefi ts and monthly childbearing allowances, the increase in maternity leave for female employees and expansion of the network of childcare facilities, as well as measures for the moral encouragement of having many children (the “maternity medal” and the title “heroine mother”) aimed to increase fertility and at the same time were conducive to maintaining a high female labor force participation rate (elizarov 2019). similarly, the pronatalist policy introduced in the 1980s, which was designed to stimulate an increase in fertility, was based on fi nancial incentives. analyses of the impact of family and pronatalist measures adopted by the communist party at the beginning of the 1980s revealed that, despite the positive response from the population and increase of the period fertility rates, the quantum of fertility remained unchanged, and there was no increase in completed fertility of the birth cohorts; there was only a timing effect (frejka/zakharov 2013). economic and political instability played a role in fertility decline during the 1990s. this process also coincided with a change in the childbearing pattern from early to later childbearing. the societal transformation brought about job insecurity, expensive housing, and declining childbearing allowances, but it also meant more freedom, leisure, and consumption opportunities. during this time, the ideal of a twochild family weakened and the age pattern of fertility shifted from early childbearing to later ages. consequently, the number of one-child families became prevalent in russia (frejka 2008; sobotka 2011). unmet demand for formal childcare facilities had a negative impact on parents’ intentions to have more children. the 1990s pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 427 can be described as the period of transformation of fertility behaviour in russia in response to negligible government family support as manifested by the signifi cant drop in the family allowance. analyses of cumulated cohort fertility rates by birth order conducted by frejka and zakharov (2013) showed that “the main driver of the fertility declines among the 1960s and 1970s birth cohorts” had been a loss of second order births. in the light of those demographic trends, the dramatic 2007 reform of family policy in russia aimed explicitly at encouraging couples to have two or more children. the pronatalist agenda included a broad package of family support measures (see appendix a1). the fi rst measure included substantial increases in pregnancy, birth, and child allowance, and provided favourable parental leave conditions. another measure which sought to raise fertility directly – giving “maternal capital” (a “baby bonus”) to mothers of second and higher-order births – was the most signifi cant initiative of the pronatalist policy. other government measures included child-care subsidies and tax benefi ts. in line with the aim of stimulating higher-order births, subsidies for child-care services (for state child-care institutions) were differentiated by birth order. the provision of tax benefi ts to families with children was another measure; however, tax deductions for parents were negligible, except for tax credits for parents of children with special needs. pronatalist policies had an immediate effect on the observed period fertility indicators and brought about an increase in the number of births in russia after 2007. the purpose of the present paper is to offer a better insight into the effi cacy of a pronatalist policy in a country with a transition economy. russia, largely because of the sheer scale of the latest reforms, makes an interesting case study for addressing the question of whether government support, motivated by pronatalist arguments, affects fertility. the change in demographic policy in russia was unprecedented in the previous twenty-fi ve-year period; a new fi nancial scheme allowed mothers of second and subsequent newborns or adopted children to become eligible for substantial support. was russian demographic policy effective in terms of raising the fertility level in the country or did it merely change the timing of the births? in demographic research, the tempo effect implies that the change in the timing of births (which alters the period fertility rates but does not affect the real fertility rates of the cohorts since the completed cohort fertility) remains unchanged. the quantum effect occurs only if the level of completed fertility – the number of births per woman throughout her reproductive age – changes (philipov/kohler 2001). defi ning the investigation of the policy effects on the country’s fertility level as the primary purpose of the study, i aim to answer the following research question: was the raise in period fertility primarily infl uenced by the change in the level of fertility (quantum effect) or by the advancement of childbearing in response to monetary incentives provided to mothers (tempo effect)? the study period covers seven years before the reform and ten years after the policy came into effect (2000-2017). the paper is organized as follows: the next section provides a brief overview of previous research on the effi cacy of pronatalist measures of family policy, followed by the formulation of research hypotheses. section 3 explains the empirical strategy, • asiya validova428 data, and methods adopted for the analysis followed by the results section. the paper concludes with a summary and a further discussion of the fi ndings. 2 literature review theoretical approaches linking policies and demographic behaviour stem from the works of various scholars (e.g., becker 1960, 1965, 1981; schultz 1973, 1981; willis 1973; cigno 1991) who contributed to resolving the problem of analysing fertility as a form of economic behaviour and, in doing so, formulated the new economic approach to family behaviour. this neoclassical economic theory of fertility is based on the postulate that a decision to have a child is a rational decision made by parents as a result of weighing the costs and benefi ts of childbearing against their income, career preferences, and own perceptions concerning the quality of care provided to children, etc. (becker 1981; cigno 1991). these basic assumptions of the economic theory of fertility provide the interpretative framework of how policies might impact reproductive behaviour. such measures as public subsidies that reduce the cost of childrearing or government transfer payments that raise income are very likely to increase the demand for children (gauthier/hatzius 1997). by directly reducing the cost of having a child for working women, public policy can encourage a woman to have a child she would not have had otherwise, resulting in an increase in fertility. women may also decide to have a child earlier than planned because of this reduction in cost. in other words, two components of fertility may be affected by the introduction of the policy: the tempo effect (concerns the timing of births) and the quantum effect (relates to the total number of children born, including childlessness). despite theoretical explanations of the role of public transfers in stimulating fertility, there is an active debate about how to apply the economic framework to improve our understanding of policy as one of the determinants of fertility. it is hard to quantify the effect of any such policy because prevailing demographic trends in the relevant period can substantially affect the fertility behaviour of the population in the country/region. such phenomena as being in a transition economy, changes in the status of women (e.g., more extended education and higher employment), changing perceptions of what constitutes a family (e.g., cohabitation, divorce), postponement of marriage and childbearing that had taken place in developed countries all had an adverse effect on fertility in recent decades. as for empirical research, there is no clear-cut evidence regarding the impact of public policies on overall fertility rates. a body of literature that looked at the effects of explicitly pronatalist policies pointed to the success of such measures and their positive effect on fertility (hoem 1993; hoem et al. 2001; lalieve/zweimü ller 2009). these concluded that larger family benefi ts are associated with higher levels of fertility. however, an extensive literature review by gauthier (2007) shows mixed evidence regarding demographic policy effectiveness. it is also debatable whether such policies lead to the removal of barriers to higher fertility; they may pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 429 well infl uence the timing of fertility, but not the completed family size (blanchet/ ekert-jaffe 1994; gauthier 2007). there has been far less analysis of family policy interventions in post-communist countries which underwent enormous societal, economic and political transformation in the late 1980s and 1990s. most studies based on central and eastern european (cee) countries investigate the change in fertility trends and fertility transition that occurred in the region. their focus was on investigating variation in fertility over time and determining the driving force behind the fertility decline in this group of countries. the possible causes for the sharp fall in fertility after the end of a centrally planned economy include the following: economic and political turmoil associated with high unemployment and economic uncertainty (ranjan 1999; kohler/kohler 2002; kreyenfeld et al. 2012), and also demographic causes such as the second demographic transition and postponement transition (zakharov/ivanova 1999; zakharov 1997; billingsley 2010). cross-national and national analyses of population policy interventions in transition economies are quite scarce and inconclusive; the evidence of the policy effectiveness is mixed. frejka and gietel-basten (2016) linked the trends in fertility behaviour – such as postponement of childbearing – to different state intervention approaches in cee countries by providing the fi rst systematic analysis of the relevant family policies since the 1990s, although they underlined their general ineffectiveness. on the other hand, some case-studies on post-communist countries’ interventions which had been introduced to fi ght the decline in fertility after the fall of the communist system showed a signifi cant and differentiated effect on fertility. for example, an increase in the length of child-raising allowance (“fulltime motherhood”) in hungary had a positive effect on fertility among women with low educational attainment, while a generous tax-relief reform increased higherorder birth risks of educated mothers (spéder et al. 2017). although the meta-analysis of fertility trends in transition economies sheds light on the common patterns of fertility behaviour in this group of countries, cee countries varied substantially in terms of socio-economic development and country-specifi c demographic trends, as seen by the variation in fertility rates across the region. the total fertility rates (tfr) and women’s mean age at birth after 1990 imply that russia had a different aggregate fertility pattern compared to other countries in the region (kohler/kohler 2002). the causes of fertility decline in russia include economic, socio-cultural and policy-based factors (kohler/kohler 2002; gerber 2006). for the russian population, the transition period appeared to apply substantially more constraints to childrearing (compared to other cee countries); this argument is supported by the evident decrease in the quantum of fertility (philipov/kohler 2001). most studies that cover the last wave of reforms in demographic policy in russia are generally quite sceptical about the effectiveness of the measures introduced in 2007. many authors point to the short-term increase in fertility rate, but attribute this increase predominantly to coincidence with the 1980 cohort (the period of high fertility and a high proportion of higher-order births) reaching its peak reproductive age (frejka/zakharov 2013; elizarov/levin 2015; arhangel’skij et al. 2016). such • asiya validova430 arguments suggest that demographic measures in contemporary russia may lead to similar outcomes as those introduced in the 1980s – mainly causing a lowering of the age at childbirth and lessening of birth intervals – but they are very unlikely to have a signifi cant effect on real fertility. for example, frejka and zakharov (2013) state that family policy measures in russia designed to encourage higher-order births have little impact on women’s decision to give birth to a second and third child; the authors view the policy based on material incentives as insuffi cient to raise signifi cantly the real fertility in the population. they base their estimates on the gender and generation survey for russian federation (the 2011 round) and argue that the 2011 wave of the survey shows that “intentions to have another child were virtually the same as in the 2004 or 2007 rounds” (frejka/zakharov 2013). other scholars who examined the use of the “maternal capital” programme and the attitudes to this family support measure point to the distrust of the policy by russian women and families as well as to the many bureaucratic obstacles that discourage its utilization (borozdina et al. 2016). most demographers who specialize in russian population policy note that it is too early to make a conclusion about the outcome of the policy of 2007, since the data on completed cohort fertility is not yet available. but the importance of evaluating the family policy early on is well known. this also has advantages, especially in terms of future policy implications. the inconclusiveness of the existing results on the effi cacy of pronatalist policies is associated with many challenges demographers and public economists face when estimating the long-term effects of public policy on population reproductive behaviour. first, most policies are introduced nationwide at the same time, which makes it diffi cult to determine a causal effect with no information on the potential outcomes in the absence of the policy. second, the impact of a policy is especially hard to assess in countries that are undergoing changes in demographic behaviour due to demographic, economic and social factors: advancement of childbearing age, childbirth postponement in response to economic uncertainty or societal transformations, changes in perceptions about family structure, marriage behaviour, gender roles and labor market participation. so, the main obstacle here arises from the fact that the timing of births as a result of the policy may also coincide with the progression of the tempo transition (goldstein et al. 2009). finally, it can be complicated to differentiate between short-term and long-term outcomes of family policy. often a temporary shift in fertility behaviour may occur in response to the policy, however, it will not necessarily lead to real changes in reproductive behaviour and have the desired long-term effect.1 the present paper aims to contribute to the body of empirical studies that investigate the impact of policies on fertility behaviour and to expand the existing preliminary analysis of pronatalist measures taken in russia during the past decade. two research hypotheses are formulated as follows: 1 an example of this are the pronatalist policies in the german democratic republic during the 1970s and early 1980s (cf. kreyenfeld 2004). pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 431 hypothesis 1: the pronatalist policy of 2007 in russia had two effects: tempo and quantum; the tempo effect was prevalent, but the quantum effect was also evident. hypothesis 2: the variations in the fertility indicators over the post-reform period are likely to be the result of women having second and third births. in formulating the hypotheses i was guided by the fact that such an unprecedented increase in family support by government could have had an impact, and to some extent could have encouraged an increase in the real fertility in the country. moreover, my analysis of the gender and generation survey 2011, which examined women’s decision to have a second and third child, also supported the plausibility of this hypothesis (see appendix a2). i claim that the quantum effect could be distinguished by means of adjusted period fertility indicators that better approximate the cohort fertility than the total fertility rate. separation of these two effects enables us to determine the primary reason for the rise in observed fertility, which in turn helps us to assess the effectiveness of the policies in question. along with this objective, it seems relevant to differentiate these effects by birth order. since the most important development in the russian demographic policy concerns second and higher order births, the predominant focus in the paper is on higher parity births. 3 data and methods as stated above, the empirical analysis of how policies infl uence reproductive behaviour is prone to methodological challenges that complicate the assessment of the specifi c contribution of the policy change. since russian demographic policy reforms were applied nationwide, i cannot compare populations affected by the reforms with populations that were not (control group). moreover, the reforms took effect at the same time for all russian regions, and although regional family support was also introduced, the magnitude of federal government spending on creating pronatalist incentives for families was signifi cantly larger. regional family policies varied substantially across the russian regions in terms of timing, remuneration and eligibility requirements which, along with many demographic and socioeconomic regional differences, makes it methodologically diffi cult to evaluate the effects of regional policies. for this reason, only the federal programme is the object of primary interest. owing to the universal nature of the demographic policy, all women of reproductive age were affected by these policies. i rely on period fertility rates since i do not have data to compare the completed fertility of affected cohorts with the fertility of cohorts born in 1960 in order to estimate the change in fertility before and after the policy implementation. i base the calculations on period fertility data for the russian federation obtained from the human fertility database (hfd) of the max planck institute for demographic research (germany) and the vienna institute of demography (austria). the analysis covers the period 2000-2017, thus examining a ten-year period after the reform took place. from a cohort perspective, different • asiya validova432 cohorts were affected by the new family policy: older cohorts (1970s, 1980s birth cohorts), who are likely to have already started their family formation process at the time of the reform, and younger cohorts (cohorts born in the 1990s), who had to make all their fertility decisions taking the post-reform fi nancial incentives into account. some cohorts experienced peak fertility before the reforms took place (birth cohorts of 1970-1982) and could not respond to the policy by making changes in their fertility behaviour; others include younger cohorts – whose fertility peak falls in the period of the new policy (birth cohorts of 1983-1986), thus shaping their reproductive behaviour. the central question in this study is to determine the most appropriate way to measure fertility level by using period indicators. the sensitivity of conventional fertility indicators such as age-specifi c fertility rates (asfr) and tfr to the changes in the timing of births – postponement or advancement – inspired extensive literature devoted to the construction of indicators that adjust those fertility measures for this distortion. moreover, the distortion of the order-specifi c fertility rates may be caused by the parity composition of the population (kohler et al. 2002). therefore, age and parity-specifi c childbearing probabilities and intensities can be employed to measure the period fertility more accurately (sobotka 2003). a summary indicator, analogous to tfr, which controls for age and parity was established as parity-agetfr (patfr) (rallu/toulemon 1994). although it removes the parity composition bias which is present in the order-specifi c tfr, patfr does not ignore the changes in the timing of childbearing among women (sobotka 2003). as suggested by bongaarts and feeney (bf) (1998), a measure of fertility – tempo-adjusted total fertility rate (tfr*) – overcomes this limitation and allows the separation of tempo and quantum effects in changes of the total fertility rate.2 the main novel aspect of the empirical strategy applied in this paper lies in employing several different approaches to estimate the tempo and quantum effects of the policy. first, i adjust the observed fertility measures for various distortions and present a graphical analysis of various indicators used to measure fertility. second, i decompose tempo and quantum components and estimate their weight in observed fertility rates, adopting a method proposed by sobotka (2003). a further decomposition approach is also employed and the contributions of various effects 2 considerable caution is needed regarding the interpretation of tempo-adjustment of tfr. it should be noted that the bf formula relies on the assumed invariant shape for fertility schedule and no cohort effects. by comparing the completed fertility of cohorts with the weighted average of the adjusted tfrs during the reproductive years of these cohorts, bongaarts and feeney found relatively close correspondence between the two fertility indicators, and thus validated the adjustment (kohler/philipov 2001). this simplifying bf assumption was criticized by a number of scholars (kohler/philipov 2001; van imhoff 2001). kohler and philipov (2001) addressed the shortcoming by proposing an extension of the adjusted tfr that includes variance effects – tfr adjusted to fertility schedules with changing variance (kohler/philipov 2001). however, the sensitivity analysis of yi and land (2001) showed that the bf method is generally robust because the annual changes in the shape of the fertility schedules are usually more or less constant, except for very rare cases of extremely large changes (yi/land 2001). moreover, as pointed by kohler and phillipov (2001), in russia the cohort effects are of a very small magnitude, and do not affect the bf-adjusted tfr. pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 433 (with a focus on tempo and quantum) to the increase of the number of births during the post-reform period are measured. for the fi rst part of the demographic analysis, i use fertility indicators such as the mean age at birth (mab), tfr, and the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate (tfr*) suggested by bongaarts and feeney (1998) on the russian federation data in the human fertility database (hfd) (see 4.1. in the results section). the mab is calculated from the age-specifi c fertility rates across the entire range of the reproductive period, and can be also computed for each birth order. measuring the mean age at birth gains its importance as childbearing postponement becomes a characteristic of the second demographic transition (philipov/kohler 2001). postponement leads to a rise in the mother’s mean age at birth, thus decreasing the observed period asfr and tfr because women delay childbearing until later in life. this has particular relevance for the russian federation where postponement of childbearing started in the mid-1990s (about 30 years after the typical pattern for western european countries). the mother’s mean age at birth in russia has been steadily increasing since the 1990s; the age group with the highest fertility rate changed from 20-24 years in the soviet union to 25-29 years in the post-soviet period. at the same time, pronatalist policies can cause women to advance the time of the birth in response to the monetary stimulus, which would have the opposite effect: a reduction of the mean age at birth and a temporary increase in period tfr. the use of order-specifi c total fertility rates during the period of the advancement of childbirth will thus overestimate the short-run effect of the rise in fertility rates. to overcome this limitation, i calculate the tempoand parity-adjusted fertility rate (tfrp*)3, constructed by bongaarts and sobotka (2012), which is based on order-specifi c fertility but takes into consideration the changing parity distribution of women of reproductive age. demographers acknowledge that tfrp* yields considerably more consistent results because it eliminates several distortions in the conventional tfr (bongaarts/sobotka 2012). it therefore shows the quantum component of the total fertility rate, controlling for the biases discussed above.4 graphical representation of the adjusted fertility indicators along with the mab for the period in question provides some very valuable insights regarding fertility patterns, but it does not allow us to differentiate between timing and quantum effects in fertility, which facilitates a better understanding of how a demographic policy infl uences fertility behaviour. consequently, in order to evaluate the policy effects more precisely, the second part of the analysis section breaks the fertility measures down into tempo and 3 tfrp* was calculated using the following formula (bongaarts/sobotka 2012): this indicator is the tempo-adjusted version of tfrp(t) – the total fertility rate derived from rates of the fi rst kind (bongaarts/feeney 2006). see bongaarts and sobotka (2012) for details about fertility indicators. 4 owing to a lack of data, kohler and ortega adjusted patfr (adjpatfr) which allows separation of “the infl uence of timing change (‘mean tempo effect’). parity composition (‘parity composition effect’) on the total fertility rate” (kohler/ortega 2002) was not included in the analysis, and tfrp* was used instead. itr itapittfrpttfrp i • asiya validova434 quantum components and estimates their relative weight in observed fertility changes. for this purpose, i relied on the method described by sobotka (2003), albeit making all necessary case-specifi c modifi cations. the rationale of the above study is to combine different period fertility indicators that serve as the best approximates of the cohort fertility for every birth order and to estimate fertility quantum in periods when the postponement of childbearing took place. sobotka (2003) used the constructed hybrid indicator (comtfr) which “combines adjusted parity-age tfr (adjpatfr) indicator for birth order 1 and 2 with the tfr for birth order 3+”. the method used in my work has several modifi cations that are motivated primarily by the difference in the fertility trend between russia and eastern european countries in these two periods, and, secondly, by the limited availability of data. in the russian case, the advancement of births has been observed for the period following pronatalist reforms. at the same time, childbearing postponement has also been practised since the mid-1990s, and is particularly pronounced for parity one which is consistent with the demographic transition theory. to understand if an increase in observed tfr was driven by the quantum changes in fertility or by the advancement of the births (tempo effects), i use tfrp* for all births combined and for each birth order instead of employing the comtfr hybrid indicator which combines two different indicators that make interpretation diffi cult. the third approach used here to separate different effects of the pronatalist policy in russia is the method developed and described by sobotka, lutz and philipov (2005). this method separates period changes in the total number of births for the period 2006-2017 into a series of effects: changes in the “mean generation size” of women in their reproductive age, changes in fertility timing in tandem with changes in the parity distribution of women (tempo effect) and changes in the level of fertility (quantum effect).5 the decomposition method used here allows us to determine the weight of each factor to the absolute change in the number of live births during the post-reform period. the essence of this method is as follows: i decompose the change in the total number of births into three main components for the period from 2006 to 2017 (t0 and t1 respectively) using three indices ig, it and iq (results presented in table 4 in the results section). 2006 is chosen as a reference year – the year preceding the start of the new policy. the mean generation size (g) is a concept which was introduced by calot (1984) as an indicator that accounts for the annual number of potential mothers (sobotka et al. 2005). it links the recorded number of births b in a particular year with the period total fertility rate in that year.6 it is the index of tempo distortion, and it is estimated for each year considered using the following formula: it = tfr ÷ tfrp* (as has been noted, i use tfrp* instead of adjpatfr). since i do the decomposition of change for a period of time, ideally for a benchmark 5 in the paper authors state that “a framework of such decomposition has, however, been suggested earlier” by ortega and kohler (2002) and kohler and ortega (2004) (sobotka et al. 2005). 6 the mean generation size is calculated as follows: g = b ÷ tfr (sobotka et al. 2005). pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 435 year (t0), i would ideally choose a year free from tempo effects, so that b0 (number of births) remains unaffected by tempo distortions. in this case, however, it is impossible – there is no year with no postponement/advancement of births. i therefore use an alternative method and standardize it to capture tempo distortions in comparison with the reference year (it(stand) = it(t1) ÷ it(t0)) to “estimate the hypothetical number of children born, assuming no tempo effects during the period of observation (bt’)” by using the formula (sobotka et al. 2005). thus, b may be expressed as b = g × tfrp* × it. applying the methodology used in the paper i referred to, it is possible to distinguish between three components of the change in the total number of births by introducing two more indices that contribute to this change: ig, which stands for the relative change in the mean generation size g between the years t0 and t1 (ig(t1) = g(t1) ÷ g(t0)), and iq, which stands for the relative change in fertility quantum between the same years (iq(t1) = tfrp*(t1) ÷ tfrp*(t0)). therefore, i can express the observed total number of births b in 2017 as a function of the observed number of births in 2006 and the indices of change for this period; it will show us the relative contributions of timing effect, quantum effect and mean generation size effect in the changes in total number of births over this period (see table 3 in the results section).7 in addition to the decomposition of total indicators of fertility tempo, quantum and mean generation size, i distinguish the changes in these components by birth order, paying particular attention to birth orders 2 and 3 (presented in table 4 in the results section). lastly, i use the extension to the basic decomposition following the method of sobotka et al. (2005), and decompose the index of tempo distortion (it). this incorporates the mutual effect of tempo effect and shift in parity composition into the index of genuine tempo distortion, iτ, and the parity composition index, id (it = id ∙ iτ), using the non-adjusted fertility indicator patfr based on age-parity fertility tables for the calculations of the indices: idi = tfri / patfri and iqi = patfri / adjpatfri. my main focus is on the role of the pronatalist policy in russia that had different effects related to changes in fertility level and timing; the advancement of births is assumed to be the prevailing effect. therefore, to separate out the effects of the changing tempo and quantum of period fertility in the total number of births in 20072017, it is important to know how many births were “gained” due to changes in the timing of births as result of the family policy. as far as the data are concerned, such statistics as the number of births by women’s age and birth parity, and the fertility indicators, were extracted from the human fertility database (hfd). similarly, i use 7 b(t1) = b(t0) ∙ ig(t1) ∙ iq(t1) ∙ i(stand, t1) = b0(t0) ∙ ig(t1) ∙ iq(t1) ∙ (it(t1) ⁄ it(t0)), and ∆b(t0,t1) = ∆bg + ∆bq + ∆bt + ∆bgqt. each indicator ∆b is computed from the corresponding index of change i and the initial number of births b0 in year t0. ∆bgqt represents all the interactions between them. the direct effect of changes in the magnitude of tempo distortion is ∆bt (t0, t1) = (it(stand, t1) – 1) · b0. for the detailed theoretical elaboration of the method see sobotka et al. (2005) • asiya validova436 tfrp* to estimate the adjusted fertility rates, which are computed using the formula of bongaarts and sobotka (2012).8 4 results 4.1 mean age at birth (mab) and adjusted fertility measures i start the investigation of the interplay between the tempo and quantum effects by analysing a variety of measures graphically. the main overall trends are summarized in the fi gures below. the mean age at birth (mab) alongside the observed tfr and the adjusted indicators (tfr* and tfrp*) are shown in figures 1 and 2. there are two possible reasons for the increase in the mothers’ mean age at birth (mab) that is shown in figure 1 (panel a). one scenario resulting in an increase of the mothers’ mean age is due to the postponement of births – a trend that has affected russia since the beginning of the 1990s. another possible explanation for an upward change in the mothers’ mean age could be the introduction of the policy measures that gave women in older age groups incentives to have another child. this phenomenon, however, is generally quite rare because younger women tend to be more responsive toward monetary stimuli in the demographic policy. in the case of russia, until 2006 one can observe an increase in the mean age of mothers for all births combined due to birth postponement. starting from 2007, the mean age at fi rst birth still demonstrates the continuing postponement process, while an increase in mean age at second and third births throughout 2007-2017 is different in nature: older women with one or more children respond positively to the fertility stimulus. the lowering of the mothers’ mean age can also be infl uenced by a range of factors. the mab decreases as the fertility of younger women increases; it may happen if women of younger ages respond to the public policy more actively than older women, or react positively to favourable economic conditions (economic growth). in this case the advancement takes place; women have children earlier than they initially planned (timing effect). another plausible explanation of the decrease in the mean age at birth lies in the more active response to the demographic policy by younger age groups (age-specifi c quantum effect). the graphical analysis of the mothers’ mean age at different birth orders illustrates how in 2010 there was a downward movement for birth order 2 and 3 while mab1 exhibited a gradual increase during the same period (fig. 1 (panels b, c, d)). as for mab1, i attribute the slight increase to the continuing birth postponement; women who had not had 8 the paper of sobotka et al. (2005) that employs this decomposition method bases the calculation of adjusted fertility indicators on a simplifi ed version of the adjustment method proposed by kohler and ortega in 2002 and combines them with tfr for birth order 3 and higher. i do not have the detailed data necessary for the computation of the kohler-ortega adjustment and therefore replace them with tfrp* for all parities; i consider it to be the best tempoand parityadjusted measure, and i have all the necessary data for its computation. pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 437 children during the economic turmoil of 2008 due to the higher economic uncertainty postponed their fi rst childbirth, but the fi gures recuperated after the country started to come out of recession in 2010. regarding the changes in mean age changes for higher parities, figure 1 (panels c, d) shows that mab2 and mab3 had been stagnating since 2010; the reason might be the fact that advancement of childbirth for parity two and three contributes to this trend (timing effect). had that not been the case, one would have seen an increase in mab2 and mab3 caused by the overall trend of birth postponement in russia. however, i assume that the quantum effect is also present here: at the outset of the economic crisis, the youngest subgroup of women with one or more children reacted more actively to the pronatalist policy (“maternal capital” in particular), therefore providing downward pressure on the mothers’ mean age at second and fig. 1: mean age at birth for women by parity and combined in russia (20002018) 25 26 27 28 29 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 year (a) mean age at birth combined age (b) mab at parity 1 (c) mab at parity 2 (d) mab at parity 3 23 24 25 26 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 year age 27.0 27.5 28.0 28.5 29.0 29.5 30.0 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 year age 30.0 30.5 31.0 31.5 32.0 32.5 33.0 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 year age source: constructed based on data from hfd • asiya validova438 third births. this observation is consistent with my second explanation for the cause of decrease of mean age at birth. as for fertility rate measures (presented graphically in fig. 2), my predominant focus is on the analysis of changes of tfrp* for all births combined and tfrp* for parity 1, 2 and 3. bongaarts and sobotka (2012) highlighted the usefulness of this indicator for its ability to control for the composition of women by parity and to assess the undistorted quantum of period fertility. additionally, i will refer to the patterns of change of two other fertility measures – tfr and tfr* – where appropriate. following the demographic policy reform, an increase in all fertility measures can be seen for several years: tfr, tfr* and tfrp* dynamics suggest an immediate effect of the policy implementation. tfr* and tfrp* are considerably higher than fig. 2: observed and adjusted total fertility rates by parity in russia (20002017) 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 year tfr tfr* tfrp* (a) all births combined fertility indicator (b) parity 1 (c) parity 2 (d) parity 3 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 year tfr tfr* tfrp* fertility indicator 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 year tfr tfr* tfrp* fertility indicator 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 year tfr tfr* tfrp* fertility indicator source: data combined from hfd and author’s calculations based on hfd data pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 439 tfr from 2007 to 2009, just as they were for the years before the launch of the new policy (fig. 2). this trend indicates the existence of birth postponement throughout the period driven by birth postponement for the fi rst parity: the mean age at birth for all births combined has been increasing. tfr grew from 1.3 in 2006 to 1.78 in 2015 and then declined to 1.57 in 2018. at fi rst, tfr* and tfrp* also increased in line with an upward trend established at the end of 2006. remarkably, the adjusted fertility indicators moved in the opposite direction in 2009-2011; the visual representation of the variables’ dynamics shows that both tfr* and tfrp* diverged and fell during this period, and only afterward did a growth trend emerge. my explanation is based on several factors (examined below) that affect changes in mab and on adjusted fertility indicators for birth orders of different parity. as stated above, changes in tfr1 have not been infl uenced by the introduction of the pronatalist policy package. for that reason, and due to the absence of data concerning the motivation to have children by this group of women during the period of analysis, one cannot accurately estimate the extent of tempo and quantum changes in tfr1. examining the fertility rate for birth order 1, i turn the focus to tfr1 because, due to the increase of mab1, the tfr1 dynamics appear highly distorted. as we know, the birth postponement trend is more pronounced for the lower birth orders. figure 2 (panel b) demonstrates the increase in tfr1* throughout 20052009, presumably caused partially by economic growth in the country and partially by the effects of the demographic policies. overall, this increase in tfr1* was followed by a sharp drop in the indicator, as russia had been hit by the worldwide great recession of 2008; tfr1* continued to decrease through 2011. a rapid increase of mab1 in 2008-2010 indicated that women had reacted to the economic crisis by postponing their fi rst birth; however, improvement in the economic conditions applied downward pressure to mab1 over the post-crisis period (fig. 1, b). from 2012 onward, the overall tendency towards postponement of the fi rst child continued, and, starting from 2015, there was a considerable decline in all three fertility indicators. a closer look at the variations of fertility rates for higher-order births in russia reveals interesting fertility behaviour trends (fig. 2 (panels c, d)). the increase in all fertility indicators in combination with a growing mean age at birth for second and third parity until 2010 could indicate a small quantum effect during the period (as women of a young age group also contributed to changes in tfr2). interestingly, the mean age stopped rising in 2010, pointing to a policy-related birth advancement trend (tempo effect). as for fertility rates, in 2010-2011 adjusted indicators for higher parities showed virtually no change and even a slight decrease (crisis effect), but continued their upward trend in 2011-2015 (2011-2016 – for the third parity) which, according to my proposition, points to the presence of a small quantum effect. the rapid decline in fertility from 2015 as shown by the decrease in tfrp* provides evidence that the policy measures are indeed short-lived and not substantial enough to increase real fertility, especially when other macro factors such as sluggish economic growth, a growing proportion living in poverty, plunging real wages, and overall economic stagnation are also discouraging people from having more children. • asiya validova440 to sum up, a fall in the tfr* and tfrp* in 2009-2011 could be explained by different factors: fi rstly, the tfr* for fi rst parity decreased in 2009-2011 as mab1 in 2008-2010 increased (due to birth postponement during the crisis); secondly, there was no growth in the tfr* for higher-order births and even decreased slightly. combined, these factors lowered the tfr* and tfrp*. this observation confi rms the hypothesis about the timing effect’s prevalence in response to the pronatalist measures: despite the overall trend of childbearing postponement, in the postintervention period, the lowering of the mean age at second birth narrows the interval between fi rst and second births. in other words, women decided to have their second child earlier than they would have in the absence of the policy. 4.2 estimation of tempo and quantum effects in tfr using the framework developed by sobotka (2003) for childbirth postponement, i estimate tempo and quantum elements of fertility change in russia for the period which followed the introduction of the family policy. in table 1 i compare orderspecifi c and overall tfr for 2017 with tfrp* by birth order and for all births combined. in order to represent the quantum effect – the real increase in the fertility level – i fi rst constructed the index of change of quantum, which is computed as a ratio of tfrp* in 2017 to tfrp* in 2007, and i then computed a coeffi cient (iq-1) that is used to establish the quantum part of the difference between the observed tfr in 2017 and 2007. the difference between the change in observed tfr in 2007 and 2017 and the calculated quantum effect estimates the timing effect. to enable comparison of the timing and quantum effects for preand post-reform periods i also reproduced these calculations for the period prior to the policy intervention (2000-2006) (table 2). the results for the post policy period demonstrate that estimated tempo and quantum components vary by birth order (table 1). the quantum effect for parity 1 was negligible because the family policy reforms targeted those who already had at least one child. therefore, the change in tfr1 is mostly due to the timing of births. for higher-order births we see a different picture: the tempo effect for parity 2 is prevalent; however, there is a small quantum effect for the second birth order (13 percent). with increasing parity, the quantum effect becomes the more important factor. for birth order 3, 42 percent of the increase in tfr3 is driven by the change in the real level of fertility. the tfr results for all births combined indicate the prevalence of the tempo effect, suggesting that overall tfr increased to a considerably larger extent due to the advancement of births. there was also a change in the quantum and was estimated at 9 percent for tfr. results for the time period which preceded the policy, presented in table 2, indicate virtually no quantum effect in the tfr. even for the second and third parities, the quantum effect is very small, which is consistent with the observation that it did not boost tfr2 and tfr3 prior to the reforms. pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 441 4.3 decomposition of tempo and quantum effects in the total number of births the results of decomposing the quantum, tempo and mean generation size effects in the total number of births are presented in table 3. one can see positive effects of fertility quantum and fertility advancement in the change of the number of births; but tab. 1: quantum and tempo effects in tfr by birth order in russia between 2007 and 2017* birth order 1 birth order 2 birth order 3 total 1 tfr 2007 0.761 0.475 0.125 1.416 2 tfr 2017 0.704 0.605 0.223 1.621 3 reduction in tfr(2)-(1) -0.057 0.130 0.098 0.205 4 tfrp* 2007 0.871 0.525 0.141 1.590 5 tfrp* 2017 0.861 0.595 0.200 1.728 6 iq (5)/(4) 1.012 1.133 1.418 1.087 7 iq-1 0.012 0.133 0.418 0.087 8 quantum effect(3)*(7) -0.001 0.017 0.041 0.018 9 tempo effect(3)-(8) -0.056 0.113 0.057 0.187 10 quantum effect % 1 13 42 9 11 tempo effect % 99 87 58 91 tab. 2: quantum and tempo effects in tfr by birth order in russia between 2000 and 2006 birth order 1 birth order 2 birth order 3 total 1 tfr 2000 0.702 0.358 0.092 1.196 2 tfr 2006 0.753 0.409 0.101 1.305 3 reduction in tfr(2)-(1) 0.051 0.051 0.009 0.109 4 tfrp* 2000 0.900 0.492 0.119 1.560 5 tfrp* 2006 0.871 0.466 0.109 1.492 6 iq (5)/(4) 0.968 0.947 0.916 0.956 7 1-iq 0.032 0.053 0.084 0.044 8 quantum effect(3)*(7) 0.002 0.003 0.001 0.005 9 tempo effect(3)-(8) 0.049 0.048 0.008 0.104 10 quantum effect % 3 5 8 4 11 tempo effect % 97 95 92 96 * estimation of tempo and quantum components in tfr change was made largely based on the method suggested in sobotka (2003: 188-189). source: author’s calculations based on hfd data source: author’s calculations based on hfd data • asiya validova442 they were partially offset by a decrease in mean generation size over the observed period. that happened because the large birth cohort of women born in the 1980s started to leave the fertility peak reached in the early 2000s. table 3 contains an evaluation of births “gained” due to the advancement of childbirths during the whole period since the launch of the new family policy. to assess the relative long-term contribution of each considered factor, i estimated mean annual births “gained” due to those factors by relating them to the hypothetical number of births in 2006 had the family policy not taken place and advancement of childbearing not occurred. results summarized in this table show the overall effects of three components of change on the “additional” number of births. overall, two features stand out regarding the major effects. first, the tempo effect increases the number of births only by 1.4 percent in comparison with 2006. second, the change in fertility quantum over the analysed period had an even stronger impact on the increase in the number of births (15.8 percent). mean generation size was the important factor and was negative for this period, which means that it went in the opposite direction and contributed to the decline in fertility rates. overall, these results support the conclusion that the examined pronatalist policy could lead to both tempo and quantum effects; change in quantum and tempo distortions had a positive infl uence on the absolute number of births after the reform had taken effect. table 4 illustrates how the contribution of the major factors that infl uence the changes in the number of births varies for each parity. as for mean generation size tab. 3: decomposition of changes in the total number of births and relative contribution of the main factors from the beginning of the pronatalist policies in russia (2007-2017) reference year t0 2006 analyzed period t1 2007-2017 births in the reference year t0 1,479,637 hypothetical births in t0 (without tempo effects) 1,692,949 mean annual births in t1 1,774,870 mean annual gained births in t1 81,921 of which due to tempo effects 1,147 quantum changes 12,944 mean generation size g -3,441 interaction 1,106 % tempo effects 1.40% quantum effects 15.80% mean generation size g -20.32% interaction 1.35% source: author’s calculations based on hfd data pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 443 factor, it differs by birth order but makes a negative contribution for all three parities. this observation is supported by the fact that a large cohort of women are ageing and leaving their fertility peak. generally, the effect of ig for all births combined remains relatively stable at 0.95. the infl uence of the quantum component is characterized by marked differences by birth order: the positive effect of the fertility quantum index (iq) is the largest for parity 3 and becomes smaller for parity 2, whereas for parity 1 it is just under 1 (0.99). subsequently, the fertility quantum increased strongly for birth order 3 and moderately for birth order 2, thus indicating the difference in the interpretation of changes in the total number of births caused by including order-specifi c indices in the analysis. the positive total effect of the fertility quantum supports the assumption of the existence of the quantum effect. the standardized index of tempo distortion is at its maximum for parity 3 (1.2); while its infl uence on parity 2 is smaller, and for parity 1 turns negative. the index of tempo distortion it captures the collective tab. 4: decomposition of change in the number of births in russia by parity (2017 compared with 2006) and decomposition of the index of tempo distortion it in russia in 2017* parity 1 parity 2 parity 3 total births(b(t0)) in 2006 880,026 448,659 150,950 1,479,635 births(b(t1)) in 2017 656,607 654,548 250,969 1,664,615 b(t1)/b(t0) 0.746 1.459 1.663 1.125 tfri(t0) 2006 0.753 0.409 0.101 1.305 tfri(t1) 2017 0.704 0.605 0.223 1.532 tfrp* 2006 0.872 0.466 0.109 1.490 tfrp* 2017 0.861 0.595 0.200 1.728 g(t0) 2006 1,168,693.227 1,096,965.770 1,494,554.455 1,133,819.923 g(t1) 2017 932,680.398 1,081,897.521 1,125,421.525 1,086,563.316 ig (t1) 0.798 0.986 0.753 0.958 iq (t1) 0.987 1.277 1.835 1.158 it (t0) 2006 0.864 0.878 0.927 0.875 it (t1) 2017 0.818 1.017 1.115 0.887 it stand(t1) 2017 0.947 1.159 1.203 1.014 it decomposition in 2017: patfri 2017 0.819 0.532 0.190 1.636 it (t1) 2017 0.818 1.017 1.115 0.887 id (t1) 0.860 1.137 1.174 0.936 iτ(t1) 0.951 0.894 0.950 0.947 * calculations of the decomposition indices in the following tables have been made employing the methodology of sobotka et al. (2005) used for hungary, poland and spain in the cited paper. source: author’s calculations based on hfd data • asiya validova444 infl uence of tempo effects and the shifts in parity composition (sobotka et al. 2005). here the tempo index is decomposed into two components: index of genuine tempo distortion (iτ) and index of parity composition (id). all the indices discussed here are presented in table 4. for parity 2 and 3, parity composition had a positive effect, while genuine tempo distortion was less than 1. the results for all birth combined, which capture the negative effects of both indices for parity one, show that tempo distortion was explained to an equal extent by the genuine tempo effect (0.95) and by the parity composition (0.94). to sum up, the application of such decomposition for different parities uncovered marked differences in the weights of the tempo and quantum components. 5 conclusions and discussion this paper explores the effectiveness of population policy. its main focus is on a set of pronatalist reforms introduced in russia in 2007, the intention of which was to encourage mothers to have more births and raise further children. the bulk of empirical evidence with regard to policy effectiveness in different countries to date provides no plausible link between an increase in long-term fertility and government policies. in the case of russia, the new round of pronatalist benefi ts had a positive effect on observed period fertility indicators, demonstrated by the increased number of births and the steady upward trend in the period total fertility rate in russia following the implementation of the policy. however, a mere rise in observed fertility rates does not mean that the family policy efforts actually affect completed fertility; therefore, an analysis of the timing of births is of particular importance. given that reforms were based on creating monetary incentives for families, i investigated the following research question: was the raise in period fertility primarily infl uenced by the change in the level of fertility (quantum effect) or by the advancement of births in response to monetary incentives provided to mothers (tempo effect)? this study, therefore, aimed to contribute to our understanding of the role of tempo and quantum effects in the recent fertility change in russia, which has not yet been suffi ciently explored in the existing literature. the main novel aspect of the present evaluation of the family policy is the application of a multi-method approach, which makes it possible to investigate the nature of change in several fertility indicators and enables the results obtained to be compared in methodologically different ways. in the fi rst part of the study, i provided a descriptive analysis of such indicators as mothers’ mean age at birth, tfr, and alternative fertility indicators (tfr* and tfrp*) that eliminated common distortions. adjusting for timing and parity revealed differences in the patterns of change of the indicators for different parities. higher order fertility thereby increased due to possible effects of the policy, while fi rst parity rates and mean age at birth of the fi rst child did not change and only varied due to the economic crisis and the continued trend of birth postponement. as for the tempo-quantum interplay, changes in adjusted fertility rates and the lowering of the mean age at birth for parity 2 and higher generally supported the “advancement pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 445 of births” hypothesis, but stabilization of mab2 and mab3 from 2011 combined with an increase in adjusted fertility rates for those parities suggested the possibility of a quantum effect. further, i presented two ways to estimate the contribution of tempo and quantum effects in the incr ease seen in the period fertility indicators that followed the pronatalist policy launch in russia. although the contribution of tempo effects has been extensively studied in the context of birth postponement and the reduction of fertility rates in europe (kohler et al. 2002; lutz et al. 2003; sobotka 2004), decomposition of the tempo and quantum effects in the context of policy-induced advancement has not yet been thoroughly examined. furthermore, the infl uence of these effects on total births in russia has not been investigated either so far. the two methods employed in the analysis largely followed the approach of sobotka (2003), whereas those of sobotka, lutz and philipov (2005) were applied in the case of birth advancement in russia. the fi rst approach separated tempo and quantum effects in observed total fertility rate over the analysed period, thus allowing an assessment of the role of the advancement of births provoked by policy incentives in the period fertility rise. as for total fertility rate for all births combined, the results support the widely-held view that the tempo effects are the primary driving force behind the ensuing increase in period fertility. but the results also identifi ed a quantum effect (9 percent) supportive of the fi rst hypothesis of the current study. differentiation by birth order reveals a different picture: while second-time mothers changed the timing of birth (tempo effect prevalent), the fertility rates for third births changed due to both tempo and quantum effects. the quantum effect for the fi rst parity was negligible, which supports the second hypothesis regarding the main role of second and third births in the period fertility increase. the second approach taken in this paper also provided evidence of how the interpretations of change in fertility are modifi ed once order-specifi c components are taken into consideration. in that part of the analysis, i measured different effects of policy on the total number of births by separating the overall change in births into three components: changes in the “mean generation size” of women in their reproductive age, changes in the level of fertility (quantum effect), and changes in fertility timing combined with changes in the parity distribution of women (tempo effect) (a method proposed by sobotka, lutz and philipov (2005)). as for the relative contribution of the fertility quantum component, this increased the number of third births, while for birth order two its weight was shown to be less pronounced. overall, the estimated size of the effects on the change in the total number of live births consistently supported the presence of both tempo (1.4 percent) and quantum effects (15.8 percent); and the fertility quantum impact was stronger than the impact of the tempo effects. the mean generation size had a negative effect, indicating a decrease in the number of women of primary reproductive ages. this fi nding supports the proposition discussed in the literature about the temporary fertility increase which coincided with the 1980 cohort (the period of high fertility in response to pronatalist measures introduced in the 1980s) reaching its peak reproductive age (frejka/zakharov 2013; arhangel’skij et al. 2016) • asiya validova446 in summary, the main conclusions with regard to fertility dynamics since russia introduced its new policy in 2007 are as follows: along with the rise of period measures of fertility such as total fertility rate, indicators adjusted for timing and parity nevertheless demonstrate an increase in the level of fertility. two methods utilized in the study used very different decomposition approaches for timing and quantum effects, and, therefore produced different results. however, both supported the existence of the quantum effect, which was the general research question of the paper. some expected results emerged regarding the infl uence of the pronatalist policy on the timing of births; family policy based on birth-related monetary incentives did change fertility behaviour in terms of an advancement of births, especially during the fi rst years of the new policy regime. the order-specifi c decomposition of tempo and quantum effects revealed a clear difference in the relative contribution of these effects to second and third births. however, the rapid decline in fertility rates observed from 2015 suggests that the analysed demographic policy cannot be classifi ed as successful in the long run. this supports the widely held view that explicit pronatalist policies generally infl uence the timing of fertility and not the completed family size (gauthier 2007). the presence of a quantum effect, as found in this study, indicates that the goal of increasing the level of fertility has been achieved to some extent, but it may still be quite shortlived. the present empirical analysis leads to the conclusion that although the policy signifi cantly raised benefi ts from a previously relatively low level, it did not have a clearly positive effect on long-term fertility. the most plausible explanation of the phenomenon is the fact that, in russia, the principal tools for reaching a demographic goal remain fi nancial. international evidence and the results of this study show that the most effective family policy model is one which not only offers fi nancial benefi ts to families, but where there is also comprehensive support through social changes towards gender equity and family-friendly policies that help women combine work and childrearing, as well as accessible institutional childcare. a fi nal word of caution concerns the limited analysis of fertility from the period perspective. as has been noted, i did not have enough data to look at completed fertility for all relevant cohorts. although attempts have been made to eliminate biases in tfr by adjusting it for tempo distortions, there is room to improve the results, for example by incorporating kohler-ortega adjustment. more detailed investigation of how family policies are linked to cohort fertility is therefore left for future exploration. acknowledgements i express the deepest appreciation to joachim singelmann, ph.d. professor emeritus at the university of texas at san antonio for his valuable comments and guidance in the process of working on this article. pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 447 references arhangel'skij, vladimir; 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https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2001.5.2 willis, robert j. 1973: a new approach to the economic theory of fertility behavior. in: journal of political economy 81,2: 14-64. https://doi.org/10.1086/260152 zakharov, sergei 1997: fertility trends in russia and the european new independent states: crisis or turning point? in: population bulletin of the united nations 40/41: 292-317. zakharov, sergei; ivanova, elena 1999: fertility decline and recent changes in russia: on the threshold of the second demographic transition. in: davanzo, julie; farnsworth, gwen (eds.): russia’s demographic crisis. santa monica, ca: rand: 36-82. • asiya validova450 yi, zeng; land, kenneth c. 2001: a sensitivity analysis of the bongaarts-feeney method for adjusting bias in observed period total fertility rates. in: demography 38,1: 17-28. https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2001.0010 date of submission: 21.12.2020 date of acceptance: 28.07.2021 asiya validova (). university of texas at san antonio. san antonio, united states. e-mail: asiya.validova@utsa.edu pronatalist policies and fertility in russia: estimating tempo and quantum effects • 451 appendix a1 description of the pronatalist policy measures introduced in russia in 2007 1) increase in pregnancy, birth and child allowance. the law extended monthly child benefi ts to nonworking women (previously, they were available only to working women on maternity leave). in addition, the birth related allowance included a payment for pregnant women who register during early pregnancy at a local medical practice, and a lump-sum payment at the time of childbirth. 2) provision of favourable parental leave conditions (in terms of remuneration and leave length). the leave included maternal leave (70 calendar days before and after childbirth with payment of 100 percent of average earnings for 12 months prior to leave, with a set ceiling for all employed women, and also a small payment for unemployed), paid parental leave until the child reaches 18 months (40 percent of average earnings with a ceiling and minimum payment), and unpaid leave until the child reaches 36 months. 3) “maternal (family) capital”. the maternal capital is provided to mothers of second and higher order births and is given as a certifi cate and may not be transformed into cash. at the time of its introduction in 2007, the sum was 250,000 roubles ($9,423). until 2015 the payment was annually adjusted for infl ation, but in 2016 this adjustment was cancelled. within the ten-year period from 2007 to 2017 the amount of “maternal capital” grew from 250,000 roubles ($9,423) to 453,000 roubles ($7,530), representing an 81.2 percent increase in national currency. however, it should be noted that the price level increased by 139.6 percent within the period, as the russian rouble also lost substantially in value throughout the last decade. “maternal capital” can be used for several purposes listed in the federal law upon a child reaching the age of 3 (except for housing conditions improvements where the baby-bonus can be used immediately); as a result, the fi rst payments were initiated in 2010. more specifi cally, maternal capital can be used for the following purposes: • acquisition of housing or improvement of living conditions (buying an apartment, building a house, paying a mortgage, undertaking basic repairs and renovation etc); • children’s education (money can be used to pay for the education of all children in the family in different forms); • mother’s retirement (by investing the maternal capital money in the private pension fund to increase the level of the mother’s retirement income). 4) child-care subsidies and tax benefi ts. subsidies for child-care services (for state child-care institutions) were differentiated by birth order: while the federal budget covered 20 percent of the preschool fee for the fi rst child, the subsidy increased • asiya validova452 to 50 percent for the second and 70 percent for the third and subsequent children. tax deductions (effective from 2012) for parents were insignifi cant, with the exception of tax credits for parents of children with disabilities. a2 gender and generation survey 2011 – graphical analysis a question in the gender and generation survey 2011 was specifi cally designed to decompose the timing and quantum effects of the family policy of 2007. the exact nature of the policy is not specifi ed in this questionnaire, the question is rather broad and captures the respondents’ (both male and female respondents are sampled) perceptions of the effect of the policy on their decision to have children (without specifi cation of a child order). however, the design allows a choice of three possible answers to the question of whether the family policy affected their decision to have another child: 1) positive effect, had a child earlier than planned (timing effect); 2) positive effect, had a child that was not initially planned (quantum effect); 3) no effect, had our children as planned. across all age groups, the percentage of respondents who stated that they had a child that was not planned prior to the demographic policy was larger than that of women who had their child earlier than planned. older respondents demonstrated a clearer dominance of the quantum effect over the timing effect, but the overall positive effect of the government’s measures was reported by a very low percentage of respondents (fig. a1). fig. a1: did the introduction of demographic policy in 2007 affect your decision to have additional child? 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-45 age group positive effect, had a child earlier than planned positive effect, had a child that was not initially planned no effect, had children as planned in percent source: own calculations from gender and generation survey russia 2011 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany – an analysis and projection of labor market effects past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany – an analysis and projection of labor market effects* patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier abstract: since 2013, more than two million refugees have arrived in germany and have been allocated across federal states and districts according to legal policies. a steadily increasing number of refugees is now entering the german labor market, albeit under varying economic and demographic contexts. however, regional differences in refugees’ labor market integration have received little attention both retrospectively and particularly prospectively, given the projected population decline across germany. addressing this apparent shortcoming in the literature, we collect data on refugee arrivals by gender, nationality, approval rates, and regional allocation from 1995 to 2019. applying principal component analysis and time series analysis, we fi rst analyze past patterns of refugee migration to germany and project both arrivals and regional allocations by gender and nationality until 2030. then, combining the collected migration fi gures for german labor market regions and offi cial labor market statistics, we investigate past regional employment effects from 2008 to 2019. next, we calculate corresponding future employment effects conditional on our projected refugee fi gures, our estimation results, and offi cial regional demographic forecasts until 2030. our fi ndings suggest that refugee migration does not affect german labor market regions equally, but instead has and will continue to lead to distinct regional employment effects. moreover, the labor market integration differs by gender and origin of the refugees. consequently, the interaction of regional employment effects with projected population change gives rise to different regional mitigation potentials in view of the upcoming population decline. keywords: refugee integration · regional labor markets · population decline · principal component analysis · time series analysis comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 443-484 (date of release: 07.12.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-17en4 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". ** this article has a data appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/440/365. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-17 http://www http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/440/365 • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier444 1 introduction germany, like numerous other countries, has seen a surge in refugee migration over the past years. the causes of why refugees are forced to leave their home countries are complex and are often connected to impending or implemented restrictions of individual freedoms and future insecurity (easo 2016). the latter is also a growing consequence of nutritional problems caused, among others, by global warming (unhcr 2020). in host countries, these recent developments have been accompanied by wide-ranging debates on refugee integration and the possible consequences for host communities. for example, some advocates of more restrictive migration policies argue that higher migration numbers might increase crime or terrorism threats (see, for instance, vanella/deschermeier 2018; galantino 2022 on those discussions) or put an additional strain on social security systems (eckert 2017). similarly, the labor market effects of refugee migration are subject to discussions both within society and academia. in the scientifi c community, a large body of the literature has analyzed the multitude of reasons refugees enter the labor market more slowly compared to natives and other migrants and are subject to worse outcomes, including lower wages (brücker/jaschke/kosyakova 2019). explanations include worse access to and quality of education in their destination country (hunkler et al. 2021), the complicated systems for recognizing and confi rming formal qualifi cations (bmbf 2020), and language skills (de la rica et al. 2015). moreover, the demographic characteristics of refugees are important for their potential labor market integration. females have a lower ceteris paribus (c.p.) labor market participation than males. furthermore, the refugees’ age may also have a substantial impact on their labor market integration (gustafsson et al. 2017), as labor force participation rates are highly age-dependent (fuchs et al. 2018). meanwhile, refugees prevalently arrive in host countries such as germany, where demographic developments marked by low fertility as the major driver of natural population decline (vanella/deschermeier 2020) are expected to cause long-term decreases in the labor force (fuchs et al. 2018; vanella/deschermeier 2019). furthermore, recent projections indicate that this overall population decline will not take effect at the same magnitude across german regions (maretzke et al. 2021). this raises the question to what extent refugees’ labor market integration might contribute to mitigating regional labor supply decline. however, this question has not yet been addressed in the literature. while most research addresses the labor market integration–refugee migration nexus at the individual level, we analyze the potential regional variation in employment effects of refugee migration across german labor market regions in the context of population decline from a macro perspective. detailed and longitudinal data on refugee migration are diffi cult to obtain for germany. therefore, as a fi rst step, we construct time series of national refugee immigration data and derive estimates for the subnational level from these. we will explain the approach in the next section. second, we combine constructed time series with offi cial labor market statistics in an econometric model to derive past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 445 long-term trends of future refugee migration and quantify its past regional labor market effects, conditional on sex and nationality. these models are then combined to project the surplus number of employees eligible for social security as a result of observed and expected refugee immigration through 2030. put differently, we combine an econometric labor market model and a demographic forecast model to project the employment effect of refugee migration for 34 labor market regions in germany by 2030. the remainder of the paper is structured as follows. following a short illustrative literature review of refugee migration projections and the connection between refugee migration and labor market integration (section 2), we outline the baseline data of our study and our methodological approach (section 3). next, we present the study’s results (section 4). after a discussion of our fi ndings and the paper’s limitations (section 5), we outline the need for further, more detailed data and delineate avenues of future research (section 6). 2 literature review 2.1 refugee migration projections for destination countries such as germany, refugee migration constitutes an important share of overall migration (vanella/deschermeier 2018), which, in turn, is an important component of long-term population forecasts (vanella/deschermeier 2020) that are indispensable for economic and infrastructural planning (vanella et al. 2020). nevertheless, the literature on the estimation of future refugee migration is rather scarce. to our knowledge, no long-term refugee migration projections have been conducted to date, with the exception of refugee migration associated with climate change (unhcr 2020). for instance, unhcr (2019) only projects forced migration by target country two years out. longer forecast horizons are discussed qualitatively, but no quantitative results are presented. for example, unhcr (2020) expects a c.p. increase in globally displaced persons by 2050 due to global warming and related increases in extreme weather events, especially in sub-saharan africa. most forecasts of international migration do not address refugee migration at all (see, e.g., sohst et al. 2020 for a recent systematic review of migration projections). those stressing the importance of refugee migration in forecasting future migration fl ows only address the issue indirectly in their forecasts (see, e.g., for germany deschermeier 2016 or fuchs et al. 2018). for instance, bijak et al. (2019) discuss a separate bayesian time series approach for forecasting infl ows of asylum seekers in the united kingdom (uk). however, the authors do not fi nd the results satisfactory. vanella and deschermeier (2018) indirectly include refugee migration by demographics to germany in their forecast model of net migration via principal component analysis (pca). they interpret one of the major principal components (pcs) as a crises index, which covers the impact of crises on (refugee) migration. however, their model only covers asylum migration indirectly as a residual which cannot be interpreted directly. given that refugee migration is subject to • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier446 unforeseeable events such as sudden violent confl icts,1 it is hardly surprising that no long-term projections have been conducted, since such shocks are very diffi cult to predict in the long term (deschermeier 2016). 2.2 refugee migration and labor market outcomes a vast number of studies analyze refugees’ labor market outcomes, representing a steadily increasing part of the economic literature on the migration-labor market nexus.2 first, the empirical evidence3 suggests that, for developed countries, the overall employment share among migrants is lower compared to natives, with converging shares over time. the difference increases further for refugees (refugee gap) (e.g., brell et al. 2020; dustmann et al. 2017; fasani et al. 2018; brücker/ jaschke/kosyakova 2019). second, studies have found occupational differences between migrants and natives. dustmann/frattini (2013) show that immigrants are more likely to work in occupations requiring a lower level of skills. this occupational migrant-native gap is confi rmed by fasani et al. (2018) who demonstrate that the differences are more distinct for refugees. notably, there is substantial occupational underemployment among refugees who arrived in germany between 2014 and 2016 (brücker/jaschke/kosyakova 2019). third, fi ndings suggest that migrants’ wages are lower. dustmann/frattini (2013) provide evidence that across european countries, migrants are more likely to be in the bottom decile of the earnings distribution than natives. once again, there is evidence of a more distinct refugee gap (e.g. brell et al. 2020). various approaches seek to explain such differences in labor market outcomes, with education generally being considered as a key factor. among the refugee population in germany, heterogeneous educational patterns emerge: first, as brücker/jaschke/kosyakova (2019) note, the human capital levels among refugees in germany exhibit large shares at both ends of the educational continuum, that is, either a secondary education or above, or little to no formal education at all. second, as guichard (2020) shows, the educational background and self-selection of refugees concerning education varies by country of origin. basilio et al. (2017) provide corresponding evidence for germany. here, missing formal recognition of education obtained abroad may explain a substantial part of the differences (brücker et al. 2021). another factor contributing to the integration and outcomes of migrants is language skills (de la rica et al. 2015). indeed, empirical evidence suggests that 1 we will discuss this in more detail for the case of germany in section 3.1. 2 a comprehensive overview concerning migrants’ labor market integration can be found in de la rica et al. (2015). with a narrow focus on the labor market outcomes of refugees, the recent survey by becker/ferrara (2019) offers a broad view. 3 if not indicated differently, the quoted studies and respective results rely on conditional analyses incorporating individual characteristics, such as education, to account for aggregate differences in native, migrant, and refugee populations. we outline the most important of these characteristics below. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 447 lacking profi ciency in the host country’s language might explain a large part of the (refugee) employment gap (brell et al. 2020). furthermore, (mental) health is comparatively worse among refugees than other migrants (brell et al. 2020) due to traumatic experiences during the journey (see, e.g., schock et al. 2016). in labor market research, addressing the role of health for labor force participation has already found a widespread application (e.g., cai 2010). the results presented by ruiz/vargas-silva (2018) indicate that this might explain parts of the refugee gap. 2.3 towards a regional perspective labor market outcomes are not only determined by (observable4) individual characteristics but also by the broader social and economic contexts refugees are embedded in. for example, the institutional setting infl uences labor market integration and outcomes. in germany, labor market admission is regulated by federal law.5 importantly, the waiting time for employment opportunities has been reduced from twelve to three months in 2014 but, contrarily, asylum seekers from “safe countries of origin” no longer have access to employment (brücker/jaschke/ kosyakova 2019). empirical evidence indicates an adverse effect of employment bans (e.g., marbach et al. 2018). moreover, the literature suggests that labor force participation rates move cyclically – increasing during times of economic growth, declining during recessions (e.g. aaronson et al. 2014). this is particularly interesting since empirical evidence suggests that the business cycle disproportionally infl uences the labor market outcomes of migrants. for example, dustmann et al. (2010) show that economic shocks impact the unemployment rates among immigrants in germany more adversely compared to natives within the same skill group. as other high-income countries, germany is expected to experience unprecedented demographic developments in the near future: aside from further population aging (vanella/deschermeier 2020), its (potential) labor force will decline substantially (fuchs et al. 2018). as in the past, positive net migration and, more importantly, rising labor force participation rates and digitization could mitigate these developments, but hardly stop them (see, e.g., brenke/clemens 2017 or fuchs et al. 2019). regarding age and gender structure, the migrant and refugee populations differ from the total foreign and overall population in germany to varying degrees (see destatis 2020a). even though the refugee population is substantially younger, this may not proportionally increase the labor force. while participation rates of males between 15 and 65 years are similar for natives and foreigners (83.9 percent vs. 81 percent), this is not the case for females (77.1 percent vs. 60.8 percent) (destatis 2020b). 4 in the literature, other explanatory factors which are less easily observable (such as discrimination) are discussed as well. as stated in the beginning, we do not provide an exhaustive literature overview of the comprehensive research on the migration-labor market nexus but refer to corresponding papers noted above. 5 §61 asylum act (asylg). • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier448 however, the outlined dimensions do not necessarily affect refugees’ labor market integration uniformly across germany. first, recent projections show very different demographic developments at the regional level until 2040, with some regions (districts) expected to face further population growth while others are likely to experience a substantial decline, in particular among those of working age (see maretzke et al. 2021). second, there is evidence that labor force participation rates differ regionally (see, e.g., wanger 2020). third, labor market forecasts indicate that the regional labor demand is expected to vary both by economic sector and skill level in the upcoming decades (zika et al. 2020). fourth, in germany, labor market admission is regulated by federal law, thus there are no formal differences across the country. however, the formulation of the federal law gives rise to a three-stage labor market admission procedure, which alters the regional institutional setting for refugee integration as described by brücker/jaschke/kosyakova (2019). additionally, dispersal policies coupled with residency restrictions might play a crucial role. in germany, arriving refugees are distributed across the 16 federal states according to an agreement called königsteiner schlüssel (ks). in the literature, the coupling of dispersal policies and residency restrictions are found to impose negative effects on the labor market outcomes of refugees (e.g., fasani et al. 2018 or brücker et al. 2020). regional variation of all the discussed aspects – from demographic changes to the institutional setting, from structural differences of regional labor markets to refugees’ individual characteristics and internal migration – give rise to the possibility of regionally varying employment effects, in particular in the context of an aging and decreasing population, that is labor supply decline. yet, to the best of our knowledge, this issue has not been addressed in the literature. thus, as a working hypothesis, based on the literature review and the argumentation above, we propose that the regional interaction of employment dynamics and demographic changes yield regionally varying mitigation potentials for labor supply decline. as noted in the introduction, while the literature outlined above is strongly focused on micro-level studies, i.e., analyzing the labor market integration of refugees from an individual perspective, we complement the existing research by approaching employment effects from a regional, macro-level point of view. 3 data and methods 3.1 forecasting refugee migration and asylum requests 3.1.1 refugee migration to germany since 1995 – trends and background our analysis follows a hierarchical approach. as the fi rst step of the analysis, we investigate long-term trends of refugee migration at the national level. for this, we use annual data on initial asylum requests (iars) in germany by group of origin, provided by the german federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bundesamt für migration und flüchtlinge – bamf) and the federal ministry of the interior, building past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 449 and community (bundesministerium des innern, für bau und heimat – bmi) in their annual migration reports (bamf 2020b; efms 2003). because the defi nition of iars was introduced in 1995 (bamf 2017), we choose the period 1995-2019 for our analysis. to retain enough statistical power, we aggregate the exact nationalities of asylum seekers into four origin groups: european, african, asian, and others. we analyze the long-term trends in iars in germany for these four defi ned origin groups. figure 1 shows the time series of the four origin groups for the baseline period. there appear to be high correlations in application numbers among the four origin groups. however, trends in applications by persons with european citizenship tend to precede the other nationality groups by one year. after generally decreasing trends until the mid-2000s, asylum requests started increasing in 2007. table a1 gives an overview of major refugee infl ows to germany since then, with information on the major origin countries and causes for emigration. among all nationalities, the number of iars from 2011 to 2012 more than doubled from 11.000 to 23.000. in sum, annual increases in new asylum requests in germany are observable between 2007, the starting year of the fi nancial crisis, and 2016, from 19.000 to 722.000 iars. in particular, the sharp increases in the mid-2010s are caused by the growing reach and violence of various terror groups, most notably the islamic state in syria and iraq, the taliban in afghanistan, and boko haram in west africa (heidelberg institute for international confl ict research 2016). since 2017, the number of requests has declined after the eu initiated a series of measures fig. 1: annual initial asylum requests by origin group in thousands 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 year european african asian others 0 100 200 300 400 500 1995 2000 2005 20152010 initial asylum requests (in k) source: efms 2003; bamf 2020b; authors’ calculation and design. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier450 which made it more diffi cult to enter the eu at its eastern borders (svr integration und migration 2018). 3.1.2 forecast model of initial asylum requests since our goal is not only to describe past trends in asylum applications in germany, but to also predict their future development, we must consider the observed correlations between the different time series in our analysis. this is done via principal component analysis (pca), which transforms the original, correlated variables into the same number of uncorrelated, new variables, which are linear combinations of the original variables. pca chooses the principal components (pcs) such that most high dimensional problems can be covered well by a small number of index variables. pca moreover allows for including the correlations between the original variables in simulation studies.6 the method has been applied to forecasting international migration in germany by fuchs et al. (2018) and vanella and deschermeier (2018). the fi rst pc of the asylum request time series ( 1p a) explains 86.5 percent of the variance in the past observations of the four origin-specifi c asylum request series. its loadings are negative for all four series (-0.4 for european, -0.45 for africans, -0.51 for asians, -0.62 for others); therefore, increases in 1p a are associated with c.p. decreases in the number of iars in germany from all nationality groups. therefore, we interpret 1p a as a general refugee migration index. the hypothetical course of the refugee migration index with its projected future course is illustrated in figure 2. the refugee migration index mirrors the overall trends in asylum requests, with increases (i.e., c.p. decreases in asylum requests) until 2008 and rather sharply decreases (i.e., c.p. increases in asylum requests) until 2016, after which we observe slight increases due to the eu measures aimed at containing refugee migration, as mentioned in section 3.1.1. no clear long-term trend can be identifi ed, as the index is highly infl uenced by current crises, which are diffi cult to predict. we therefore follow a similar assumption as in vanella and deschermeier (2020, 2018), who interpreted a similar index as a general crises index in their migration forecast model, stating that in the long term 1p a is expected to converge towards its median over the observed period. however, this assumption is relaxed by fi tting an ar(1) process to the past data. thus, the slope of the curve is computed from the past data, not based on further assumptions. the resulting model for year y is (1) generates the prediction of 1p a until 2030. for the other four pcs, we assume random walk processes without drift in the future, which implicitly predicts the value of, say 𝔼[ 2p a (y + 1)] to equal the 6 for a more detailed description of pca and its application in demographic forecasting, see vanella (2018). | 1 18.192 0.885 1 (1) past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 451 observation 2p a (y). the random walk’s expectation is therefore similar to the naive prediction. 3.2 refugee demographics for germany, combined data on demographics and origin of refugees are not available. however, we can gather data on ageand sex-specifi c information for the sum of the iars, without disaggregation by nationalities. for this, we use bamf reporting data on the demographic structure of persons requesting asylum annually from 2009-2019 (bamf 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019a, 2020a). appendix table a2 displays the shares of asylum seekers by age-sex group for this period. we tested these data on the national level for trending behavior in asylum requests. however, a detailed differentiation by age group led to very small numbers of refugees by stratum on the nuts-3 level (see section 3.5 for details). an investigation of the trends in sex-specifi c requests, however, implies a connection of the share of males to the total level of iars. as the time series is relatively short, deriving long-term trends via time series methods for the demographic groups would yield misleading estimates.7 following our assumption fig. 2: historic development and prediction of the refugee migration index -23 -22 -21 -20 -19 -18 -17 -16 -15 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 year -22 refugee migration index -21 -20 -19 -18 -17 -16 source: authors’ computation and design. 7 we tried this in an earlier approach. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier452 that the iars eventually converge to their long-term median, a similar assumption appears plausible for the demographic distribution among the refugees if these phenomena are connected. therefore, our prediction follows an ar(1) model for both variables, similar to (1). the model for the share of males below age 65 among all iars is the corresponding model for females is note that this model does not explicitly include correlation among the shares of both genders. in our deterministic approach, this is acceptable. more sophisticated approaches should account for this, however. (2) and (3) are used as backcast functions to approximate the missing sex-specifi c data before 2009 and as a forecast function for the years 2020-2030. 3.3 estimated distribution of asylum seekers among federal states refugees are distributed among the german federal states following the ks (see 2.3), which takes the population size and the economic strength of the federal states into account. annual values of the ks from 1995-2018 were provided by the german joint science conference (gemeinsame wissenschaftskonferenz – gkw), partly online (gkw 2021a), partly upon request (gwk 2021b). to cover correlations between the time series of the ks, we apply pca to the logarithmized ks values. since the annual sum of all ks values is one, we need to include one condition. as bremen is the federal state with the smallest population, we model its refugee distribution indirectly by subtracting the sum of all other shares from one: the fi rst pc explains 93.9 percent of the variance in the refugee distribution among the federal states, therefore we call it the ks index. the loadings of the ks index for the 15 included federal states ordered by the offi cial geographic numbering are illustrated in figure 3. the accompanying information on the federal states can be found in figure 8. the federal states with positive loadings represent eastern germany, the former german democratic republic (gdr) (states 12-16), except berlin (11). interestingly, saarland at the french border and the most populous federal state, north rhinewestphalia in the west of germany, are positively correlated to the ks index also. | 1 0.629 0.734 1 , (2) | 1 0.362 0.753 1 . (3) 1 (4) past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 453 for a deeper interpretation, we must consider its past trend, which is illustrated in figure 4, with its predicted future development as explained below. the ks index shows a clear downward trend over the baseline period, meaning that there are clear trends in the distribution of refugees among the federal states. we extrapolate the trend until 2030 by fi tting the following model: with 1u k (y − 1) being the residual of the forecast from the preceding year 1u k (y − 1) ≔ 1p k (y − 1) 𝔼[ 1p k (y − 1)| 1p k (y − 2)]. figures 5 and 6 illustrate the annual population growth of the 16 federal states from 1995-2018. ignoring the countrywide decrease in 2011, when the german population count was corrected downwards by 1.3 million in the census-based estimate (vanella et al. 2020), we see a connection between the ks index and population growth. the federal states in figure 5 have a negative correlation with the ks index and witnessed positive trends in population growth since the mid-1990s, whereas the opposite is the case for the federal states in figure 6. the exception is north rhine-westphalia (5), whose long-term population growth does not follow a clear trend but has a positive tendency. however, there is a clear negative longterm trend in north rhine-westphalia’s population share. an explanation could be the state’s comparatively low economic growth. as economic development is fig. 3: loadings of the fi rst principal component of the ks model -0,4 -0,2 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 federal state -0.2 loading 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 source: authors’ calculations and design. | 1 27.297 0.016 1 , (5) • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier454 connected to tax income originating from the federal states (schulte 2015), differing economic developments are also mirrored in the ks index. the remaining 14 pcs are assumed to follow random walk processes. the results of the projection of the refugee distribution among the federal states are presented in section 4. 3.4 trends in asylum decisions by groups of origin the share of asylum seekers who received a protection status by group of origin is derived from the offi cial data on asylum decisions from 1998-2020 provided to us by the bamf (2021) upon request. there is a variety of different classifi cations of residence permits in germany, which defi ne whether a person is allowed to remain in the country permanently, for a limited time, or must leave the country; this defi nes the amount of fi nancial aid refugees receive.8 as a thorough analysis of this would exceed the scope of our paper, we refer to the simple binary classifi cation whether asylum seekers are allowed to stay in the country for a (limited) period or must leave immediately. the share of persons allowed to remain in germany is summarized by the protection rate. figure 7 illustrates the historical development of the protection rates for the defi ned four groups of origin. fig. 4: past course and prediction of the ks index -5.3 -5.2 -5.1 -5.0 -4.9 -4.8 -4.7 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 year koenigsstein index source: authors’ computation and design. 8 an overview, albeit in german, is given, e.g., in bamf 2019a/b. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 455 whereas the protection rates of european citizens had a downwards trend until the mid-2010s, we observe a sharp increase since 2016, mainly driven by high and increasing protection rates among turkish citizens (45.2 percent in 2020). this trend was caused by a failed military coup in the summer of 2016, after which many suspects fl ed the country. moreover, the turkish government has restricted journalism in the country ever since, leading to journalists and opposition fi gures fl eeing the country (zeit 2019). for all other groups of origin, besides some fl uctuations, the protection rates show an increasing long-term trend since the mid-2000s. the protection rate of asian citizens in particular peaks considerably in 2008. this development was caused by the harmonization of the eu asylum system, which was supposed to facilitate the process of refugee protection in the eu (haase/jugl 2007; engler/ schneider 2015; eu 2011). protection rates are, although infl uenced by stochastic phenomena, primarily driven by political decision-making and are therefore by nature deterministic. therefore, we will not construct a forecast model for them but rather assume a naive scenario which fi xes the protection rates at their 2020 values until 2030, i.e., 25.4 percent for europeans, 27.9 percent for africans, 60.7 percent for asians, and 53.9 percent for all others. fig. 5: annual population growth of federal states with negative loadings in the ks index -50 0 50 100 150 200 2000 2005 2010 2015 year 1 2 3 6 7 8 9 11 0 50 100 150 absolute population growth (in k) census source: genesis-online 2021; authors’ computation and design. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier456 3.5 the regional distribution of asylum seekers refugees assigned to specifi c federal states are distributed to the nuts-3 level (districts). in most cases, the distribution of refugees is based on the population size of the district relative to the federal state (geis/orth 2016). as population data in germany are normally published with a lag of over one year, we assume the second lag of the annual population estimates as the basis for the distribution of refugees to the nuts-3 level. for this, the end-of-year population numbers for 19952019 are downloaded from the database of the federal and state statistical offi ces (statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2021). to estimate the distribution of refugees in the districts within the federal states, we assume annual distribution according to the most recent regional population projection of the federal institute for research on building, urban affairs and spatial development (bundesinstitut für bau-, stadtund raumforschung – bbsr). the data was provided upon request by the bbsr (2021). we use these bbsr estimates for the future distribution of fig. 6: annual population growth of federal states with positive loadings in ks index, including bremen -50 0 50 100 150 200 2000 2005 2010 2015 year 4 5 10 12 13 14 15 16 0 50 100 150 absolute population growth (in k) census source: genesis-online 2021; authors’ computation and design. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 457 refugees within the federal states to the district level. we interpret this distribution as politically driven and therefore deterministic.9 in our analysis, we investigate the effects of refugee migration in 34 different labor market regions (lmrs) as suggested by zika et al. (2020), who, in turn, draw on the original classifi cation by kropp and schwengler (2011, 2016). the selection of lmrs for analyses in a regional perspective is widely used in the literature (e.g. burstein et al. 2020). a functional delineation of this kind appears to be preferable to administrative borders since lmrs capture most commuting fl ows. in other words, residence in the small-area, district level is not necessarily indicative of whether individuals work in the respective region as well, a point of particular importance in the context of this analysis. however, employment within the lmr of residence can be assumed. the original delineation by kropp and schwengler (2016) correctly estimated about 90 percent of labor commuters in germany to their respective lmrs. the aggregation by zika et al. (2020), which primarily aims at creating lmrs with suffi cient case numbers for projections, further increases this share. appendix table a3 gives an overview of the districts included in each lmr. figure 8 gives a detailed overview of the lmrs fig. 7: protection rates in germany by group of origin 0 20 40 60 80 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 year european african asian others protection rate (in %) source: bamf 2021; authors’ computation and design. 9 in fact, a refugee distribution linked to the more granular units makes it highly stochastic, as the future population size per se is highly volatile, which, in relative terms, holds especially true for relatively small regional populations (deschermeier 2011; vanella/deschermeier 2020). • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier458 and their composition from the nuts-3 to the nuts-0 level. the expected annual distribution of refugees below age 65 by sex and group of origin among the lmrs, as derived from our projection, is provided in the online data appendix. 3.6 estimation of labor market effects and projection in the fi nal part of our analysis, we investigate the regional labor market effects of refugee migration, drawing on our previous results and using the lmr classifi cation outlined above. given the availability and high dimensionality of regional data and for the sake of a consistent and parsimonious empirical approach throughout our analysis, we rely on pca. we apply separate pcas on the annual differences in regionally employed persons from 2007 to 2019 (annual average) for each gendernationality group, yielding six10 individual models. in doing so, we account for fig. 8: overview of the labor market regions as used in the analysis source: authors’ illustration using bkg 2021. 10 we excluded refugees, both male and female, with european citizenship from this part of our analysis. the reliable empirical assessment of their labor market effect is strongly hampered by various factors such as enlargements of the eu. increased labor-related migration from former refugee-sending countries to germany because of this enlargement process vastly outperforms the number of asylum requests in the preceding years. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 459 correlations in the regional employment by including simultaneous employment trends in the lmrs in the analysis. as it is diffi cult to measure interregional migration of persons with an asylum background, pca indirectly quantifi es the gravity of the lmrs for asylum seekers and hence their movements between the lmrs. moreover, the method enables the modeling of labor market trends for all lmrs by a small number of indices instead of requiring a multitude of separate models for each lmr. the employment data are taken from the statistical database of the federal employment agency (fea, bundesagentur für arbeit – ba) and refer exclusively to employees subject to social insurance. in each gender-nationality case, the fi rst of the resulting 34 pcs explains over 89 percent of the variance in the employment differentials. thus, we regress each fi rst pc, pcgn,t, on the gender-nationality specifi c refugee fi gures, refgn,t, and the real gross domestic product (gdp) per capita growth rate, gdpt. more formally, our model can thus be written as pcgn,t = c + refgn,t + gdpt +et where c is an intercept and et is the error term. the refugee fi gures refer to the aggregated number of the past seven years since survey data indicates that refugees’ labor market integration levels out seven years after arrival (brücker/ jaschke/kosyakova 2019). the real gdp per capita was included as a predictor of overall economic conditions, which, as outlined in section 2, plays a key role in the labor market participation and economic success of foreigners in general. gdp data was taken from vgrdl (2019). using the obtained coeffi cients from (6), we derive both in-sample and out-ofsample projections for each fi rst pc (see table a5). for in-sample projections, we draw on observed refugee migration and gdp values. for out-of-sample projections, we assume gdp growth according to the compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 201911 and rely on the projected refugee fi gures as outlined above. in both cases, the remaining 33 pcs are again assumed to follow random walks. applying matrix algebra on the newly derived matrix of pcs and the matrix of eigenvectors, we derive annual regional employment fi gures. in a second step, we repeat this exercise but exclude refugee migration in the calculation of the fi rst pc. by forming differences between both projections with and without refugee migration, we derive the annual regional employment impact for the past and the future. we cross-validate the plausibility of our empirical strategy by comparing the insample projection results for 2019 to fea employment stock statistics in figure 9. the offi cial fea statistics refer to the stock of employees eligible for social insurance who are labeled as individuals in the context of refugee migration in march 2020, which is the fi rst available record of this statistic. this defi nition encompasses all those persons whose residence status is related to an asylum procedure. both statistics are shown per 100,000 inhabitants (2019 fi gures from statistische ämter (6) 11 in doing so, we do not account for economic downturns due to the pandemic situation since march 2020. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier460 des bundes und der länder 2021). as can be seen, our model replicates the regional variation in employment stock fi gures fairly well. however, lmrs such as munich (20) or berlin (26) show by far larger estimated absolute employment numbers compared to offi cial statistics. this is likely a result of several factors. economically, regional structural or institutional conditions and differences thereof may not be fully captured by the estimation strategy and, thus, may explain comparatively lower or higher integration of refugees. demographically, different regional immigration and emigration patterns may hamper a more precise inference and estimation of regional fi gures. methodically, the model overestimates the number of people, as we are not able to account for people leaving employment, for example, due to retirement, job loss, or a higher number of job turnovers in general. additionally, the model does not cover people who stay employed but experience changes in their residence status and thus are no longer classifi ed by offi cial fea statistics as being “in the context of refugee migration.” below, we account for the outlined shortcomings in terms of overestimation by correcting the estimated values for the period from 2020 to 2030, using the ratio of offi cial and estimated values shown in figure 9. thereby, we are implicitly assuming that the difference between annually estimated employment infl ow fi gures and true employment infl ow fi gures is stable over time. 4 results maintaining the outlined order of partial models from our empirical strategy, we present the corresponding results below. first, projected iar fi gures by gender and nationality group as well as the estimated distribution across labor market regions are shown. second, we analyze regional labor market impact: we relate the cumulated fig. 9: comparison of fea stock statistics and model results 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 estimation results fea statistics employment of refugees: comparison of fea stock statistics and estimation results in 2019 labor market region em pl oy ed /1 00 ,0 00 source: statistische ämter des bundes und der länder 2021; federal employment agency 2021; authors’ calculation and design past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 461 estimated in-sample employment numbers in 2019 to the overall refugee infl ow fi gures in the regions, yielding an interpretation of different degrees of regional employment effects. we then compare employment and unemployment patterns, providing insights on possible regional differences in employment compared to overall labor market integration. subsequently, we relate the projected employment fi gures until 2030 to the regional working-age population fi gures projected by the bbsr (maretzke et al. 2021), thus offering an estimate of the contribution of refugee migration to mitigating the projected labor supply decline. first, we expect iars to further decrease beyond 2030, as illustrated by the projected increase in the refugee migration index in figure 2. note that due to the negative correlation between that index and the iars shown in figure 1, increases in the index are associated with c.p. decreases in the asylum requests. the decline is particularly distinct for asian citizens, driven by the very high number of iars in 2015 followed by a subsequent long-term decrease to the median level. multiplying the estimated future iar fi gures with the projections of the shares of males and females below age 65, we derive projections of originand gender-specifi c iars. these numbers are then multiplied by the federal state shares as outlined in section 3.3. the predicted annual distribution of the refugees to the federal states is listed in appendix table a4. as noted, using data of past refugee migration to germany and drawing on our estimates of future developments outlined in the preceding paragraphs, we then investigate corresponding regional employment effects. figure 10 shows the cumulative employed refugees according to the in-sample projection relative to the cumulative regional refugee infl ow numbers. thus, employment fi gures refer to 2008-2019, corrected as outlined in section 3.6, and refugee fi gures refer to 20012018 as we use the cumulated fi gures of the past seven years in the model. dark purple values indicate more people being employed relative to infl ow numbers, that is, 0.25 or more employees eligible for social security per person who had initially arrived in the respective region. those regions illustrated by the lightest color have seen 0.15 or less employment increase per person arrived. while frankfurt am main (10) experienced the strongest increase (0.35), greifswald-stralsund (29) has seen the smallest employment effect (0.08). notably, these results should not be interpreted as better or worse regional employment integration per se relative to immigration fi gures, but rather as regional employment receptivity to refugee migration, as the results displayed may be infl uenced by processes such as internal migration. the conceptual differences and limitations thereof are further discussed in the following section. figure 11 in turn displays the cumulative corrected estimation results in 2019 relative to the average annual unemployment stock fi gures of persons in the context of refugee migration according to offi cial fea statistics. dark brown values indicate comparatively more refugees being employed than unemployed (1.25 or more). dark turquoise areas refer to the opposite (0.75 or less). compared to the previous map, we can observe not only a distinct east–west pattern but also a north–south divide. munich (20) exhibits the largest value with 2.66. this means that for every • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier462 unemployed person in the context of refugee migration, 2.66 persons are employed. the lowest value is 0.52 for greifswald-stralsund (29). given our interest in the contribution of employment effects by refugee migration for mitigating population and labor supply decline, the projected fi gures may be related to existing population forecasts. here, we draw on the demographic projection by maretzke et al. (2021), which indicates a decline of the working-age population (aged 16-64) across all labor market regions through 2030. figure 12 illustrates the cumulative projected employment effects for 2020-2030 per expected working-age population decline in the same period, measured in absolute numbers. thus, dark green values indicate stronger mitigation of population decline by refugee migration (more than 0.2, i.e., 20 percent), light green values refer to the opposite (less than 0.1, i.e., 10 percent). munich (20) again exhibits the highest value among all regions with 0.27, closely followed by berlin (26) with 0.26. conversely, neubrandenburg (28) shows the lowest estimated value, at 0.02. fig. 10: regional employment effects relative to immigration fi gures until 2019 source: bkg 2021; federal employment agency 2021; authors’ computation and design. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 463 5 discussion the results presented in the preceding section demonstrate distinct regional employment patterns regarding refugee migration, in particular in the context of population decline. however, the empirical approach applied in this paper and the corresponding results still require a detailed discussion, including their limitations. the comparisons of cumulated employment fi gures to both cumulated infl ow numbers and stock unemployment in fea statistics, reveal stark differences across germany. the results for regional receptivity (fig. 10) display the extent to which a labor market region has experienced employment growth due to refugee migration. interestingly, the differences largely run along the borders of western and eastern german labor market regions. the former have seen disproportionally stronger employment increases, whereas employment growth due to refugee migration has been lower for the latter. however, this observation does not necessarily imply a stronger labor market integration per se, but may be the result of only implicitly modeled processes such as internal migration after arrival. to this end, the comparison of employment receptivity to employment integration patterns (fig. 11), the latter by relating the employment effects to stock unemployment fi gures, provides additional insights. here, by contrast, clear differences between fig. 11: regional employment effects relative to unemployment stock fi gures source: bkg 2021; federal employment agency 2021; authors’ computation and design. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier464 western and eastern labor market regions largely vanish, whereas a distinct north– south gradient emerges. thus, labor market regions in the south of germany have seen, at least in relative terms, more refugees and asylum seekers transitioning into employment. the conjunction of both analyses may point towards a twofold explanation: first, we do not model migration between regions after the arrival explicitly. as outlined in the literature review, the empirical evidence suggests that both free choice of residence and work as well as proximity to ethnic communities intervene in the integration process. our model does not disentangle these factors and their contribution to the derived results. detailed analyses of the distribution of refugees with approved protection status support the internal migration assumption (see, e.g., rösch et al. 2020). similarly, the existence of ethnic networks fosters integration. given the sharp differences in regional foreign population shares across german regions (see, e.g., bamf 2019c), these networks possibly emerge as another intervening mechanism. regionally varying labor force participation rates may eventually lead to differing employment effects; however, one may assume these differences to be comparatively small. second, the observed patterns in employment-to-unemployment ratios largely coincide with regional economic strength (see vgrdl 2019). as noted earlier, the literature suggests that migrants’ fig. 12: regional employment effects relative to population decline until 2030 source: maretzke et al. 2021; bkg 2021; authors’ computation and design. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 465 employment rates are linked to economic conditions. however, given the modeling strategy, we are not able to derive defi nitive conclusions for these two explanatory approaches. interpreting the relation of employment effects and future demographic changes, that is, the contribution of refugee migration to mitigating labor supply decline, is fairly straightforward. relating the conditional projection of the observed past employment effects until 2030 to projected working-age population declines indicates that future employment effects strongly interact with expected demographic developments. thus, concerning the working hypothesis in section 2.3, we fi nd that refugee migration can indeed be expected to mitigate labor supply decline differently across regions. this is particularly visible in the examples of labor market regions surrounding large cities, most of all for munich and berlin, which do not belong to the group of lmrs witnessing the largest employment effects relative to immigration but can expect refugee migration to compensate for the decline in the labor supply12 by more than a quarter. importantly, according to maretzke et al. (2021), both regions are expected to face signifi cantly smaller declines in the working-age population than the remaining regions. for a multitude of other regions which are expected to face a more distinct decline, the mitigation potential is mostly – but not necessarily – much smaller. for example, economically strong regions in the south-west of germany, such as frankfurt am main, freiburg, and ravensburg, with strong employment integration, i.e., large employment-tounemployment ratios, also exhibit comparatively high mitigation potentials despite stronger population decline. by contrast, labor market regions in western germany with large employment effects relative to immigration, do not exhibit similarly large mitigation potentials due to sharper population decline. moreover, the contribution of refugee migration to cushioning labor supply decline in labor market regions in eastern germany, given the expected intensities of population decline, remains limited, even for areas with strong employment integration such as erfurt. thus, the results presented above not only illustrate varying mitigation potentials but also point to regionally varying causes thereof. all these conclusions hold only if one relies on the implicit assumption that both receptivity and integration patterns as observed until 2019 do not change in the future. put differently, altered internal migration patterns as well as converging or intensifying regional differences in employment-to-unemployment ratios among refugees may increase or decrease the mitigation potentials shown and discussed above. further research which explicitly examines internal migration and regional unemployment patterns among refugees may offer signifi cant contributions. from a much more general perspective, we might also conclude that in the mediumto long-term, employment effects as a consequence of refugee migration, as observed and estimated in our model, could also provide diverging potentials for economic development among german labor market regions. once again, we recommend that additional research should be done to support these fi ndings. 12 only under the assumption that the decline of the working-age population equals or at least implies a proportional decline in the labor force and employment as well. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier466 our paper uses a novel hierarchical approach, which quantifi es the annual differentials in employees subject to social insurance contributions, stratifi ed by gender and country of origin group, for each lmr. the model accounts for demographic and geographic characteristics while including overall economic development. previous approaches, as illustrated in the literature review, took a shorter-term perspective, which does not suffi ciently refl ect the long-term nature of the labor market integration of refugees. besides an analysis of the past regional labor market effects of refugee migration, we offer an outlook on how refugee migration might impact the 34 discussed lmrs until 2030 in the form of a deterministic, yet data-driven, projection of age-, sex-, and origin-specifi c refugee immigration. the model also accounts for asylum policy and expected regional demographic developments. thus, our paper not only provides insights into regionally varying employment effects of refugee migration and the respective interaction with population decline but, from a more methodological point of view, has also shown the general complexity associated with analyzing these effects on regional labor markets in a quantitative and comparative setting. however, inevitably, our empirical approach is subject to several limitations which must be kept in mind when interpreting the results and drawing conclusions. we group and explain these limitations in three categories below: non-capturing statistical risk, small regional case numbers and data availability, as well as other relevant but not explicitly modeled processes. first, refugee migration is highly stochastic and therefore diffi cult to predict, as it is infl uenced by many political, social, economic, and environmental factors. throughout this paper, we apply a deterministic modeling strategy, since an appropriate stochastic approach should include stochasticity arising from all partial models. put differently, the nexus of refugee migration and labor market integration – encompassing, inter alia, the initial regional distribution, legal issues connected to labor market integration, individual characteristics, and regional differences in labor demand – is highly complex. most of those components within partial models are associated with stochasticity, as outlined in section 3, calling for a coherent approach to address this “cumulative” stochasticity. however, such an approach is not feasible for two reasons. on the one hand, data limitations largely rule out a reliable stochastic modeling strategy (for instance, regional refugee data are rounded, which could lead to strong biases in the variance estimates for small regions). similar limitations apply to labor market variables as discussed below. deriving stochastic estimates for our projections with these limited data, based on, e.g., theoretical assumptions, could lead to biased estimates for the projection intervals (either too narrow because of incorrect assumptions or too wide and therefore less meaningful). on the other hand, assuming the availability of the necessary data, a stochastic approach would also exceed the scope of this paper. we do not intend to present a complete forecast approach of regionally varying employment effects due to refugee migration. rather, given the obvious undercoverage of labor market effects of refugee migration from an explicitly regional perspective in general and in the context of population decline in particular, we propose a novel, though deterministic, approach to addressing these issues for the fi rst time. keeping these past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 467 limitations in mind, a stochastic extension of our approach could be explored in future research. second, as noted, some major limitations emerge due to data availability. in general, the degree of detail of the refugee statistics is very low. additionally, smallarea data on refugee stocks are inaccurately reported by rounding to account for data privacy. this, however, renders the data inadequate for our statistical analyses. similarly, our modeling strategy of employment effects exhibits shortcomings. crucial factors discussed in the literature review, such as education, skills, age, or information on the occupation of refugees, were not included in the analysis due to data availability or complexity. most of the literature on refugee migration and labor market issues draws on individual-level data to address these factors. in the present paper, using corresponding individual instead of administrative data, such as the comprehensive iab-bamf-soep survey (see, e.g., brücker et al. 2019), would mean relying on more detailed information for refugees’ characteristics, but at the same time, and more importantly, on a less appropriate database for comparative macrolevel analysis across regions, given the small number of observations across time and the regional coverage in the sampling method. similarly, relying on detailed administrative data, for example, disaggregated using a classifi cation of occupations, would imply very few or no observations in some gender-country specifi c groups, in particular for small labor market regions. thus, given the objective of this paper of presenting a novel and rather general analysis of employment effects across regions in the context of population decline, we rely on aggregated numbers of all persons employed and eligible for social security within a region. this acknowledges the limitations stemming from excluding detailed individual characteristics and leaves this shortcoming open to future research. third, other not explicitly modeled processes, such as the discussed internal migration effects or regionally varying economic conditions, may limit the interpretation of the presented results. as noted in section 3.6, we do not fully mirror regional employment dynamics. by construction, our model does not allow for leaving employment, no matter whether this might have occurred due to retirement, job loss, death, disability, emigration, voluntarily, or for another reason. also, regional differences such as sectoral structure, the frequency of job turnovers, or the degree of regional labor market tightness and the respective interaction with demographic structure and individual characteristics of refugees is beyond the scope of our approach, and thus only included implicitly. importantly, we also only use data on employed persons eligible for social insurance but exclude marginal employment. possibly regional disproportionally higher or lower integration of refugees into marginal employment is thus not refl ected in our approach. similarly, by relating projected employment effects to population decline, we implicitly assume that the decrease in the working-age population equals the decrease in labor supply. given the evidence in the literature concerning regionally varying and, over time, changing labor force participation rates, this limitation must be kept in mind. moreover, we only model employment effects as additional employees in the context of refugee migration. thus, spillover effects, e.g., leading to increased employment among natives or other migrants, are not included. finally, our labor supply analysis • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier468 excludes europeans, as described in the methods section of this paper. as the input data includes periods of eu enlargement, the number of countries with free movement of workers has increased over time, leading to declining numbers of asylum seekers from europe. to avoid biased model specifi cations arising from this, we do not include refugee migration infl ows from european countries in the fi nal parts of this study. 6 conclusions the labor market integration of refugees in germany and elsewhere has been discussed extensively in recent years. this development is refl ected in an increasing body of empirical research, mostly from a micro perspective, as illustrated by a comprehensive literature review in this paper. the process of refugees’ labor market integration depends on a multitude of factors. individually, education and language skills are of crucial importance. institutionally, bureaucratic hurdles such as employment bans complicate the integration process. employment effects of refugee migration likely differ across regions, given varying structural and demographic contexts. in particular, this includes varying intensities of projected labor supply decline as well as further intervening processes such as internal migration. thus, this paper has aimed at investigating whether the region-specifi c interaction of employment dynamics and demographic changes yields regionally varying opportunities for mitigating labor supply decline. by employing a macrolevel approach, we believe our paper addresses a substantial shortcoming in the literature, which is strongly focused on micro-level studies. we apply a complex empirical approach. first, as there are no long-term projections of refugee migration, particularly at the regional level, we contribute to the literature by proposing a detailed forecasting strategy. we analyze initial asylum requests by country of origin, gender, and protection rates with the regional distribution according to federal guidelines. based on developments from 1995 to 2019, we project gender-origin-specifi c refugee migration in german labor market regions until 2030 using principal components analysis. second, we use past migration values on the one hand and offi cial statistics from the federal employment agency on the other to analyze regional employment effects between 2007 and 2019. that is, we relate the cumulated employment fi gures from our model to both the cumulated refugee infl ow fi gures and the stock of unemployment according to offi cial statistics. in the last step, we combine both the refugee migration projection results and the fi ndings from the econometric model with existing population projections on the regional level and analyze the corresponding interactions. the fi ndings suggest that the employment effects due to refugee migration lead to regionally varying opportunities for mitigating labor supply decline. in particular, for labor market regions surrounding large cities such as munich and berlin, employment by refugee migration will contribute more strongly to cushioning the demographically induced declines. similarly, the results indicate that economically more prosperous regions may expect to experience larger mitigation effects. by past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 469 contrast, for most of the labor market regions in eastern germany, employment effects of refugee migration are likely to contribute to cushioning population decline effects far less. however, the empirical strategy and the corresponding fi ndings are subject to several limitations, which we outlined in the discussion section of this paper. for example, internal migration after the arrival in germany, among several other factors, might explain substantial parts of the observed differences. inevitably, this must be considered in any interpretation of the results. based upon the introduced modeling approach, the discussed fi ndings, as well as the outlined limitations of this paper, several avenues for future research emerge. first, the paper has introduced a novel modeling approach to investigating the employment effects of refugee migration from a macro perspective, which may be used and improved by other approaches and researchers. second, aside from methodological improvements such as stochastic approaches, future research is likely to benefi t from better data availability. individual labor market outcomes of refugees and regional (demographic and economic) development must be understood and analyzed as interdependent processes. thus, for example, individual-level data coupled with offi cial employment statistics, which is currently not possible, would substantially enhance research results. third, the observed patterns and corresponding mitigation potentials stem from different, likely interdependent, and in any case interacting processes, such as internal migration, co-ethnic networks, and economic prosperity. disentangling channels of impact will contribute substantially to our understanding of differing employment and mitigation effects. fourth, more generally, the fi ndings presented may serve as a starting point for further approaches to investigating past and future economic effects of (refugee) migration in an explicitly regional comparative perspective and across disciplines. acknowledgements the present study was conducted before the latest intensifi cation of the russianukrainian confl ict and the availability of data during the pandemic period. financial support through the joint graduate program in labour market research of the institute for employment research (iab) and the school of business and economics at the university of erlangen-nuremberg, gradab, is gratefully acknowledged by th. moreover, we appreciate the helpful comments by the anonymous reviewers of the paper. authors' contributions conceptualization: pv; methodology: pv and th; software: pv and th; validation: pv, th, and pd; formal analysis: pv and th; investigation: th, pv, and pd; data curation: pv and th; writing: pv and th; visualization: th and pv; supervision: pv; all authors have read and approved the fi nal 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261-280. vanella, patrizio; deschermeier, philipp 2019: a principal component simulation of age-specifi c fertility – impacts of family and social policy on reproductive behavior in germany. in: population review 58,1: 78-109. https://doi.org/10.1353/prv.2019.0002 vanella, patrizio; deschermeier, philipp 2020: a probabilistic cohort-component model for population forecasting. the case of germany. in: journal of population ageing 13,4: 513-545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-019-09258-2 vanella, patrizio; deschermeier, philipp; wilke, christina b. 2020: an overview of population projections – methodological concepts, international data availability, and use cases. in: forecasting 2,3: 346-363. https://doi.org/10.3390/forecast2030019 vgrdl 2019: bruttoinlandsprodukt, bruttowertschöpfung in den kreisfreien städten und landkreisen der bundesrepublik deutschland 1992 und 1994 bis 2018 [https://www.statistikportal.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/bruttoinlandsproduktbruttowertschoepfung-0, 01.06.2021]. wanger, susanne 2020: entwicklung von erwerbstätigkeit, arbeitszeit und arbeitsvolumen nach geschlecht. ergebnisse der iab-arbeitszeitrechnung nach alter und geschlecht (azr ag) für die jahre 1991 2019. in: iab-forschungsbericht 16/2020. zeit 2019: gedenken an putschversuch vor drei jahren [https://www.zeit.de/ politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestaggedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-ofoverscroll, 01.06.2021]. zika, gerd et al. 2020: langfristige folgen von demografi e und strukturwandel für regionale arbeitsmärkte. in: iab-forschungsbericht 1-2020. date of submission: 22.06.2021 date of acceptance: 01.11.2022 dr. patrizio vanella ().* aqua institute, health reporting & biometrics department. göttingen, germany. university of rostock, chair of empirical methods in social science and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: patrizio.vanella@aqua-institut.de url: https://www.researchgate.net/profi le/patrizio-vanella timon hellwagner.* gradab doctoral program and department of forecasts and macroeconomic analyses (makro), institute for employment research (iab) of the federal employment agency (ba). nürnberg, germany. e-mail: timon.hellwagner@iab.de url: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7480-3437 dr. philipp deschermeier. german economic institute (iw), global and regional markets unit. köln, germany. e-mail: deschermeier@iwkoeln.de url: h ps://www.iwkoeln.de/en/ins tute/who-we-are/philipp-deschermeier.html * equal contribu on https://doi.org/10.1353/prv.2019.0002 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-019-09258-2 https://doi.org/10.3390/forecast2030019 https://www.statistikportal.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/bruttoinlandsprodukt-bruttowertschoepfung-0 https://www.statistikportal.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/bruttoinlandsprodukt-bruttowertschoepfung-0 https://www.statistikportal.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/bruttoinlandsprodukt-bruttowertschoepfung-0 https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestag-gedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-of-overscroll https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestag-gedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-of-overscroll https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestag-gedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-of-overscroll https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestag-gedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-of-overscroll https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/tuerkei-putschversuch-recep-tayyip-erdogan-jahrestag-gedenkfeier?utm_referrer=https%3a%2f%2fde.wikipedia.org%2f#!top-of-overscroll mailto:patrizio.vanella@aqua-institut.de https://www.researchgate.net/profi mailto:timon.hellwagner@iab.de https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7480-3437 mailto:deschermeier@iwkoeln.de http://www.iwkoeln.de/en/ins%ed%af%80%ed%b6%9f • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier476 y ea r la rg es t a b so lu te (r el at iv e) o ri g in c au se s in cr ea se w .r .t . p re vi o u s ye ar 20 07 2, 12 0 (1 04 % ) ir aq fu rt h er e sc al at io n o f v ar io u s co n fl i ct s as a c o n se q u en ce o f t h e ir aq w ar 20 08 2, 50 9 (5 8% ) ir aq s ee a b o ve 20 09 2, 71 8 (4 14 % ) a fg h an is ta n a rm ed c o n fl i ct s, t er ro r at ta ck s b y ta lib an d u e to p re si d en ti al e le ct io n 20 10 4, 39 7 (7 57 % ) s er b ia a b ili ty t o le g al ly c ro ss e u b o rd er s si n ce a u tu m n 20 09 , a ft er m at h o f fi n an ci al c ri si s 2, 53 0 (7 5% ) a fg h an is ta n fu rt h er e sc al at io n o f p re vi o u s co n fl i ct s 2, 35 7 (2 ,1 62 % ) n o rt h m ac ed o n ia a b ili ty t o le g al ly c ro ss e u b o rd er s si n ce a u tu m n 20 09 , a ft er m at h o f fi n an ci al c ri si s 1, 88 9 (5 46 % ) s o m al ia v io le n ce o f a l s h ab aa b a g ai n st c it iz en s, d ro u g h ts , e co n o m ic d o w n tu rn 1, 30 5 (1 12 % ) ir an e m ig ra ti o n af te r vi o le n t s u p p re ss io n o f o p p o si ti o n al d em o n st ra ti o n s ag ai n st d is p u te d p re si d en ti al e le ct io n o f a h m ad in ej ad in 2 00 9 20 11 1, 86 2 (3 2% ) a fg h an is ta n s ee a b o ve 1, 69 9 (2 02 % ) p ak is ta n v io le n t c o n fl i ct s b et w ee n va ri o u s re lig io u s g ro u p s an d t h e m ili ta ry 1, 14 4 (7 7% ) s yr ia a rm ed c o n fl i ct s in t h e af te rm at h o f t h e “a ra b s p ri n g ” 20 12 3, 89 8 (8 5% ) s er b ia m ig ra ti o n af te r fi n an ci al c ri si s, t ri g g er ed b y h ig h in fl o w s fr o m m id d le e as te rn c o u n tr ie s 3, 56 7 (1 35 % ) s yr ia o n g o in g co n fl i ct s af te r 20 11 3, 41 5 (3 02 % ) n o rt h m ac ed o n ia s ee s er b ia 1, 72 0 (5 64 % ) b o sn ia a n d h er ze g o vi n a s ee s er b ia 1, 51 3 (9 0% ) r u ss ia o p p re ss io n o f o p p o si ti o n al d em o n st ra to rs b y g o ve rn m en t f o rc es a ft er th e th ir d p re si d en ti al e le ct io n o f p u ti n a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: m aj o r an nu al c ha ng es a nd c au se s in in it ia l a sy lu m r eq ue st s in g er m an y b y o ri g in o f r ef ug ee s past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 477 ta b . a 1: c o n tin ua tio n y ea r la rg es t a b so lu te (r el at iv e) o ri g in c au se s in cr ea se w .r .t . p re vi o u s ye ar 20 13 20 ,3 05 ( 90 % ) c en tr al a n d e as t e u ro p e o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” 14 ,0 88 (1 69 % ) a fr ic a o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , i n cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s in t h e af te rm at h o f t h e “a ra b s p ri n g ” 9, 58 6 (2 9% ) a si a o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , i n cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s in th e af te rm at h o f t h e “a ra b s p ri n g ” 1, 04 1 (1 79 % ) u n kn o w n o r n o c it iz en sh ip o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , ( in s o m e ca se s p u rp o se ly ) l o st id en ti fi ca ti o n d o cu m en ts 20 14 32 ,8 65 ( 77 % ) a si a e m er g in g o f i sl am ic s ta te (i s ) i n s yr ia a n d ir aq 16 ,9 07 ( 75 % ) a fr ic a o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , i n cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s, e .g . b o ko h ar am 10 ,5 18 (1 25 % ) c en tr al a n d e as t e u ro p e o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” 3, 19 1 (1 97 % ) u n kn o w n o r n o c it iz en sh ip o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , ( in s o m e ca se s p u rp o se ly ) l o st id en ti fi ca ti o n d o cu m en ts 20 15 17 4, 77 8 (2 32 % ) a si a in cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y va ri o u s is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s 80 ,7 95 (1 51 % ) c en tr al a n d e as t e u ro p e o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” 10 ,8 30 (2 25 % ) u n kn o w n o r n o c it iz en sh ip o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , ( in s o m e ca se s p u rp o se ly ) l o st id en ti fi ca ti o n d o cu m en ts 1, 28 3 (3 3% ) n ig er ia in cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y b o ko h ar am • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier478 ta b . a 1: c o n tin ua tio n y ea r la rg es t a b so lu te (r el at iv e) o ri g in c au se s in cr ea se w .r .t . p re vi o u s ye ar 20 16 31 4, 27 2 (1 26 % ) a si a in cr ea se d a g g re ss io n b y va ri o u s is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s, d el ay ed p ro ce ss in g o f a sy lu m r eq u es ts 38 ,5 04 ( 92 % ) a fr ic a o n g o in g “s n o w b al l e ff ec t” , d el ay ed p ro ce ss in g o f a sy lu m r eq u es ts 5, 72 8 (1 09 % ) r u ss ia e sc al at in g co n fl i ct b et w ee n g o ve rn m en t a n d o p p o si ti o n, t h e la tt er in cr ea si n g ly fl ee in g th e co u n tr y 4, 84 3 (3 1% ) u n kn o w n o r n o c it iz en sh ip d el ay ed p ro ce ss in g o f a sy lu m r eq u es ts 3, 88 3 (2 59 % ) tü rk iy e fl ig h t o f o p p o si ti o n af te r in cr ea se d s u p p re ss io n b y th e g o ve rn m en t i n th e af te rm at h o f f ai le d m ili ta ry c o u p, in cr ea se d p re ss u re o n su sp ec te d is c o lla b o ra to rs 20 17 2, 64 4 (4 9% ) tü rk iy e o n g o in g em ig ra ti o n b y o p p o si ti o n an d is s u sp ec ts 20 18 2, 35 7 (3 0% ) n ig er ia o n g o in g co n fl i ct s w it h is la m ic t er ro r g ro u p s 2, 24 9 (2 6% ) ir an in cr ea se d p ro te st s ag ai n st t h e p o lit ic al s ys te m 2, 13 3 (2 7% ) tü rk iy e o n g o in g em ig ra ti o n b y o p p o si ti o n an d is s u sp ec ts s o ur ce : b a m f 20 20 b ; b m i 20 13 ; h am m on d 20 14 ; h ei de lb er g in st itu te f or i nt er na tio na l c on fl i ct r es ea rc h 20 07 , 20 09 , 20 10 , 20 11 , 20 14 , 20 18 , 20 19 ; h um an r ig ht s w at ch 2 01 0; i nt er na tio na l c en tr e fo r m ig ra tio n po lic y d ev el op m en t 20 15 ; r as ch e 20 12 ; va ne lla /d es ch er m ei er 2 01 8. past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 479 tab. a2: distribution of annual initial asylum requests by age and sex [in %] i sex age 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 1 male 0-15 14.60 16.41 17.71 17.71 16.68 14.9 14.59 16.68 20.75 22.95 24.18 2 male 16-17 4.81 4.84 4.30 3.50 2.67 2.87 3.68 4.71 4.35 2.95 2.37 3 male 18-24 19.28 16.20 15.62 13.74 15.70 18.07 19.94 17.86 13.62 10.08 9.05 4 male 25-29 12.00 10.60 10.81 9.75 10.72 11.38 11.50 9.96 7.55 6.48 6.12 5 male 30-34 6.62 6.51 6.66 6.73 7.07 7.54 7.45 6.33 5.21 4.98 5.08 6 male 35-39 4.01 3.78 3.96 4.13 4.32 4.75 4.80 4.03 3.45 3.45 3.52 7 male 40-44 2.04 1.95 2.25 2.53 2.58 2.90 3.10 2.46 2.15 2.21 2.43 8 male 45-49 1.16 1.17 1.32 1.42 1.52 1.75 1.94 1.61 1.40 1.52 1.54 9 male 50-54 0.56 0.64 0.74 0.94 0.93 1.06 1.07 0.92 0.85 0.96 0.95 10 male 55-59 0.43 0.44 0.48 0.57 0.55 0.65 0.54 0.54 0.52 0.54 0.62 11 male 60-64 0.19 0.31 0.30 0.36 0.31 0.35 0.29 0.33 0.33 0.34 0.38 12 male 65+ 0.33 0.40 0.37 0.39 0.34 0.33 0.25 0.26 0.28 0.26 0.26 13 female 0-15 12.98 14.61 14.11 15.24 14.95 13.05 11.89 13.64 18.63 21.18 22.33 14 female 16-17 1.46 1.54 1.54 1.33 1.12 0.95 0.95 1.16 1.26 1.27 1.24 15 female 18-24 6.15 6.15 5.71 5.33 5.29 5.24 4.88 5.65 5.23 5.15 4.6 16 female 25-29 4.49 4.53 4.61 4.65 4.42 4.06 3.72 4.10 3.81 4.00 3.89 17 female 30-34 3.27 3.56 3.59 3.77 3.64 3.31 3.12 3.29 3.41 3.70 3.54 18 female 35-39 1.95 2.14 2.32 2.61 2.48 2.22 2.27 2.27 2.53 2.87 2.83 19 female 40-44 1.07 1.48 1.47 1.66 1.57 1.50 1.47 1.44 1.67 1.92 1.89 20 female 45-49 0.82 0.87 1.01 1.17 1.01 1.02 0.97 1.02 1.10 1.28 1.20 21 female 50-54 0.54 0.59 0.77 0.83 0.81 0.76 0.63 0.69 0.70 0.82 0.85 22 female 55-59 0.43 0.51 0.61 0.67 0.58 0.57 0.42 0.45 0.51 0.50 0.51 23 female 60-64 0.35 0.31 0.47 0.43 0.34 0.36 0.25 0.29 0.33 0.28 0.31 24 female 65+ 0.45 0.45 0.56 0.54 0.41 0.42 0.29 0.31 0.36 0.30 0.30 source: bamf 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019a, 2020a; authors’ calculation and design. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier480 n u m b er n am e d is tr ic ts 1 1 h am b u rg fl en sb u rg , k ie l, lü b ec k, n eu m ü n st er , l k d it h m ar sc h en , l k h er zo g tu m l au en b u rg , l k n o rd fr ie sl an d , lk o st h o ls te in , l k p in n eb er g , l k p lö n, l k r en d sb u rg -e ck er n fö rd e, l k s ch le sw ig -f le n sb u rg , lk s eg eb er g , l k s te in b u rg , l k s to rm ar n, h am b u rg , l k h ar b u rg , l k l ü ch o w -d an n en b er g , l k l ü n eb u rg , lk s ta d e, l k u el ze n, s ch w er in , l k n o rd w es tm ec kl en b u rg , l k l u d w ig sl u st -p ar ch im 2 g ö tt in g en lk n o rt h ei m , l k g ö tt in g en , l k e ic h sf el d , l k n o rd h au se n 3 h an n o ve r b ra u n sc h w ei g , s al zg it te r, w o lf sb u rg , l k g if h o rn , l k g o sl ar , l k h el m st ed t, l k p ei n e, l k w o lf en b ü tt el , lk r eg io n h an n o ve r, lk h am el n -p yr m o n t, l k h ild es h ei m , l k n ie n b u rg ( w es er ), lk s ch au m b u rg , lk c el le , l k h ei d ek re is 4 b re m en lk d ie p h o lz , l k c u xh av en , l k o st er h o lz , l k r o te n b u rg ( w ü m m e) , l k v er d en , d el m en h o rs t, e m d en , o ld en b u rg , w ilh el m sh av en , l k a m m er la n d , l k a u ri ch , l k c lo p p en b u rg , l k f ri es la n d , l k l ee r, lk o ld en b u rg , l k w es er m ar sc h, l k w it tm u n d , b re m en , b re m er h av en 5 d ü ss el d o rf /r u h r d ü ss el d o rf , d u is b u rg , e ss en , k re fe ld , m ö n ch en g la d b ac h, m ü lh ei m a n d er r u h r, o b er h au se n, r em sc h ei d , s o lin g en , w u p p er ta l, lk k le ve , l k m et tm an n, l k r h ei n -k re is n eu ss , l k v ie rs en , l k w es el , lk h ei n sb er g , b o tt ro p , g el se n ki rc h en , l k r ec kl in g h au se n, b o ch u m , d o rt m u n d , h ag en , h am m , h er n e, lk e n n ep er u h rk re is , l k h o ch sa u er la n d kr ei s, l k m är ki sc h er k re is , l k s o es t, l k u n n a 6 k ö ln b o n n, k ö ln , l ev er ku se n, l k s tä d te re g io n a ac h en , l k d ü re n, l k r h ei n -e rf tk re is , l k e u sk ir ch en , lk o b er b er g is ch er k re is , l k r h ei n is ch -b er g is ch er k re is , l k r h ei n -s ie g k re is k o b le n z, l k a h rw ei le r, lk c o ch em -z el l, lk m ay en -k o b le n z, l k n eu w ie d , l k r h ei n -h u n sr ü ck -k re is , l k w es te rw al d kr ei s 7 m ü n st er /o sn ab rü ck o sn ab rü ck , l k e m sl an d , l k g ra fs ch af t b en th ei m , l k o sn ab rü ck , l k v ec h ta , m ü n st er , l k b o rk en , lk c o es fe ld , l k s te in fu rt , l k w ar en d o rf 8 b ie le fe ld /p ad er b o rn lk h o lz m in d en , b ie le fe ld , l k g ü te rs lo h, l k h er fo rd , l k h ö xt er , l k l ip p e, l k m in d en -l ü b b ec ke , lk p ad er b o rn 9 s ie g en lk o lp e, l k s ie g en -w it tg en st ei n, l k a lt en ki rc h en ( w es te rw al d ) 10 fr an kf u rt d ar m st ad t, f ra n kf u rt (m ai n) , o ff en b ac h (m ai n) , w ie sb ad en , l k d ar m st ad td ie b u rg , l k g ro ß -g er au , lk h o ch ta u n u sk re is , l k m ai n -k in zi g -k re is , l k m ai n -t au n u sk re is , l k o d en w al d kr ei s, l k o ff en b ac h, lk r h ei n g au -t au n u sk re is , l k w et te ra u kr ei s, l k g ie ß en , l k l ah n -d ill -k re is , l k l im b u rg -w ei lb u rg , lk m ar b u rg -b ie d en ko p f, lk v o g el sb er g kr ei s, l k f u ld a, l k b ad k re u zn ac h, l k b ir ke n fe ld , l k r h ei n -l ah n k re is , m ai n z, l k a lz ey -w o rm s, l k m ai n zb in g en , a sc h af fe n b u rg , l k a sc h af fe n b u rg , l k m ilt en b er g ta b . a 3: a ss ig nm en t o f d is tr ic ts t o la b o r m ar ke t r eg io n s 1 lk s ta nd s fo r la nd kr ei se , w hi ch a re d is tr ic ts c o m b in ed fr o m d iff er en t ( m o st ly ) s m al le r m un ic ip al iti es . past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 481 ta b . a 3: c o n tin ua tio n n u m b er n am e d is tr ic ts 1 11 k as se l k as se l, lk h er sf el d -r o te n b u rg , l k k as se l, lk s ch w al m -e d er -k re is , l k w al d ec kfr an ke n b er g , lk w er ra -m ei ß n er -k re is 12 tr ie r tr ie r, lk b er n ka st el -w it tl ic h, l k e if el kr ei s b it b u rg -p rü m , l k v u lk an ei fe l, lk t ri er -s aa rb u rg 13 s tu tt g ar t s tu tt g ar t, l k b ö b lin g en , l k e ss lin g en , l k g ö p p in g en , l k l u d w ig sb u rg , l k r em sm u rr -k re is , h ei lb ro n n, lk h ei lb ro n n, l k h o h en lo h ek re is , l k s ch w äb is ch h al l, lk m ai n -t au b er -k re is , l k h ei d en h ei m , lk o st al b kr ei s, l k n ec ka ro d en w al d -k re is , p fo rz h ei m , l k c al w , l k e n zk re is , l k f re u d en st ad t, lk r eu tl in g en , l k t ü b in g en , l k z o lle rn al b kr ei s 14 k ar ls ru h e/ m an n h ei m lk b er g st ra ß e, f ra n ke n th al (p fa lz ), la n d au in d er p fa lz , l u d w ig sh af en a m r h ei n, n eu st ad t a n d er w ei n st ra ß e, s p ey er , w o rm s, l k b ad d ü rk h ei m , l k d o n n er sb er g kr ei s, l k g er m er sh ei m , l k s ü d lic h e w ei n st ra ß e, l k r h ei n -p fa lz -k re is , b ad en -b ad en , k ar ls ru h e, l k k ar ls ru h e, l k r as ta tt , h ei d el b er g , m an n h ei m , l k r h ei n -n ec ka rk re is 15 fr ei b u rg fr ei b u rg (b re is g au ), lk b re is g au -h o ch sc h w ar zw al d , l k e m m en d in g en , l k o rt en au kr ei s, l k l ö rr ac h, lk w al d sh u t 16 v ill in g en -s ch w en n in g en lk r o tt w ei l, lk s ch w ar zw al d -b aa rk re is , l k t u tt lin g en 17 k o n st an z lk k o n st an z 18 u lm u lm , l k a lb -d o n au -k re is , l k b ib er ac h, l k s ig m ar in g en , l k n eu -u lm 19 r av en sb u rg lk b o d en se ek re is , l k r av en sb u rg , l k l in d au (b o d en se e) 20 m ü n ch en in g o ls ta d t, m ü n ch en , r o se n h ei m , l k a lt ö tt in g , l k b er ch te sg ad en er l an d , l k b ad t ö lz -w o lf ra ts h au se n, lk d ac h au , l k e b er sb er g , l k e ic h st ät t, l k e rd in g , l k f re is in g , l k f ü rs te n fe ld b ru ck , l k g ar m is ch p ar te n ki rc h en , l k l an d sb er g (l ec h) , l k m ie sb ac h, l k m ü h ld o rf (i n n) , l k m ü n ch en , l k n eu b u rg s ch ro b en h au se n, l k p fa ff en h o fe n (i lm ), lk r o se n h ei m , l k s ta rn b er g , l k t ra u n st ei n, l k w ei lh ei m s ch o n g au , l an d sh u t, l k k el h ei m , l k l an d sh u t, l k r o tt al -i n n, l k d in g o lfi n g -l an d au , a u g sb u rg , k au fb eu re n, k em p te n (a llg äu ), m em m in g en , l k a ic h ac h -f ri ed b er g , l k a u g sb u rg , l k d ill in g en (d o n au ), lk g ü n zb u rg , l k o st al lg äu , l k u n te ra llg äu , l k d o n au -r ie s, l k o b er al lg äu 21 p as sa u p as sa u, l k d eg g en d o rf , l k f re yu n g -g ra fe n au , l k p as sa u, l k r eg en 22 r eg en sb u rg s tr au b in g , l k s tr au b in g -b o g en , r eg en sb u rg , w ei d en (o b er p fa lz ), lk c h am , l k n eu st ad t ( w al d n aa b) , lk r eg en sb u rg , l k s ch w an d o rf 1 lk s ta nd s fo r la nd kr ei se , w hi ch a re d is tr ic ts c o m b in ed fr o m d iff er en t ( m o st ly ) s m al le r m un ic ip al iti es . • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier482 ta b . a 3: c o n tin ua tio n n u m b er n am e d is tr ic ts 1 23 n ü rn b er g a m b er g , l k a m b er g -s u lz b ac h, l k n eu m ar kt (o b er p fa lz ), lk t ir sc h en re u th , b am b er g , b ay re u th , c o b u rg , lk b am b er g , l k b ay re u th , l k c o b u rg , l k f o rc h h ei m , l k k ro n ac h, l k k u lm b ac h, l k l ic h te n fe ls , lk w u n si ed el (f ic h te lg eb ir g e) , a n sb ac h, e rl an g en , f ü rt h, n ü rn b er g , s ch w ab ac h, l k a n sb ac h, lk e rl an g en -h ö ch st ad t, l k f ü rt h, l k n ü rn b er g er l an d , l k n eu st ad t ( a is ch -b ad w in sh ei m ), lk r o th , lk w ei ß en b u rg -g u n ze n h au se n, l k s o n n eb er g 24 s ch w ei n fu rt /w ü rz b u rg s ch w ei n fu rt , w ü rz b u rg , l k b ad k is si n g en , l k r h ö n -g ra b fe ld , l k h aß b er g e, l k k it zi n g en , lk m ai n -s p es sa rt , l k s ch w ei n fu rt , l k w ü rz b u rg 25 s aa rb rü ck en lk k ai se rl au te rn , p ir m as en s, z w ei b rü ck en , k ai se rl au te rn , l k k u se l, lk s ü d w es tp fa lz , lk r eg io n al ve rb an d s aa rb rü ck en , l k m er zi g -w ad er n, l k n eu n ki rc h en , l k s aa rl o u is , l k s aa rp fa lz -k re is , lk s t. w en d el 26 b er lin b er lin , b ra n d en b u rg (h av el ), fr an kf u rt (o d er ), p o ts d am , l k b ar n im , l k d ah m es p re ew al d , l k h av el la n d , lk m är ki sc h -o d er la n d , l k o b er h av el , l k o d er -s p re e, l k o st p ri g n it zr u p p in , l k p o ts d am -m it te lm ar k, lk p ri g n it z, l k t el to w -f lä m in g , l k u ck er m ar k 27 r o st o ck r o st o ck , l k r o st o ck 28 n eu b ra n d en b u rg lk m ec kl en b u rg is ch e s ee n p la tt e 29 g re if sw al d /s tr al su n d lk v o rp o m m er n -r ü g en , l k v o rp o m m er n -g re if sw al d 30 c h em n it z lk h o f, h o f, c h em n it z, l k e rz g eb ir g sk re is , l k m it te ls ac h se n, l k v o g tl an d kr ei s, l k z w ic ka u 31 d re sd en c o tt b u s, l k e lb ee ls te r, lk o b er sp re ew al d -l au si tz , l k s p re en ei ß e, d re sd en , l k b au tz en , l k g ö rl it z, lk m ei ß en , l k s äc h si sc h e s ch w ei zo st er zg eb ir g e 32 le ip zi g le ip zi g , l k l ei p zi g , l k n o rd sa ch se n, d es sa u -r o ß la u, h al le (s aa le ), lk a n h al tb it te rf el d , lk b u rg en la n d kr ei s, l k m an sf el d -s ü d h ar z, l k s aa le kr ei s, l k w it te n b er g , l k a lt en b u rg er l an d 33 m ag d eb u rg m ag d eb u rg , l k a lt m ar kk re is s al zw ed el , l k b ö rd e, l k h ar z, l k j er ic h o w er l an d , l k s al zl an d kr ei s, lk s te n d al 34 e rf u rt e rf u rt , g er a, j en a, s u h l, w ei m ar , e is en ac h, l k w ar tb u rg kr ei s, l k u n st ru th ai n ic h -k re is , lk k y ff h äu se rk re is , l k s ch m al ka ld en -m ei n in g en , l k g o th a, l k s ö m m er d a, l k h ild b u rg h au se n, lk il m -k re is , l k w ei m ar er l an d , l k s aa lf el d -r u d o ls ta d t, l k s aa le -h o lz la n d -k re is , l k s aa le -o rl ak re is , lk g re iz 1 lk s ta nd s fo r la nd kr ei se , w hi ch a re d is tr ic ts c o m b in ed fr o m d iff er en t ( m o st ly ) s m al le r m un ic ip al iti es . past and future trends in refugee migration on the regional level in germany • 483 fe d er al s ta te y ea r 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 20 20 3. 41 3 2. 56 1 9. 42 5 0. 94 5 21 .0 61 7. 45 1 4. 83 2 13 .0 4 4 15 .6 21 1. 19 9 5. 14 3 3. 01 4 1. 97 2 4. 96 6 2. 72 4 2. 62 8 20 21 3. 42 1 2. 56 5 9. 4 40 0. 92 7 21 .0 35 7. 45 8 4. 83 9 13 .0 75 15 .6 77 1. 19 5 5. 14 9 3. 01 0 1. 96 0 4. 94 2 2. 69 7 2. 61 0 20 22 3. 42 9 2. 56 8 9. 45 6 0. 90 7 21 .0 09 7. 46 5 4. 84 7 13 .1 06 15 .7 34 1. 19 2 5. 15 5 3. 00 6 1. 94 8 4. 91 7 2. 67 0 2. 59 1 20 23 3. 43 7 2. 57 1 9. 47 1 0. 88 7 20 .9 84 7. 47 2 4. 85 4 13 .1 38 15 .7 9 1. 18 8 5. 16 1 3. 00 2 1. 93 6 4. 89 3 2. 64 4 2. 57 2 20 24 3. 4 45 2. 57 5 9. 48 6 0. 86 5 20 .9 58 7. 47 9 4. 86 2 13 .1 69 15 .8 47 1. 18 5 5. 16 7 2. 99 8 1. 92 5 4. 86 8 2. 61 8 2. 55 4 20 25 3. 45 3 2. 57 8 9. 50 1 0. 84 3 20 .9 32 7. 48 7 4. 86 9 13 .2 01 15 .9 04 1. 18 1 5. 17 3 2. 99 3 1. 91 3 4. 84 4 2. 59 2 2. 53 6 20 26 3. 46 1 2. 58 1 9. 51 7 0. 82 0 20 .9 07 7. 49 4 4. 87 6 13 .2 32 15 .9 61 1. 17 8 5. 17 9 2. 98 9 1. 90 1 4. 82 0 2. 56 6 2. 51 8 20 27 3. 46 8 2. 58 5 9. 53 2 0. 79 5 20 .8 81 7. 50 1 4. 88 4 13 .2 64 16 .0 19 1. 17 5 5. 18 5 2. 98 5 1. 89 0 4. 79 6 2. 54 0 2. 50 0 20 28 3. 47 6 2. 58 8 9. 54 7 0. 77 0 20 .8 55 7. 50 8 4. 89 1 13 .2 95 16 .0 76 1. 17 1 5. 19 1 2. 98 1 1. 87 8 4. 77 3 2. 51 5 2. 48 2 20 29 3. 48 4 2. 59 2 9. 56 3 0. 74 4 20 .8 30 7. 51 6 4. 89 9 13 .3 27 16 .1 34 1. 16 8 5. 19 7 2. 97 7 1. 86 7 4. 74 9 2. 49 0 2. 46 4 20 30 3. 49 3 2. 59 5 9. 57 8 0. 71 6 20 .8 04 7. 52 3 4. 90 6 13 .3 59 16 .1 92 1. 16 5 5. 20 3 2. 97 3 1. 85 6 4. 72 5 2. 46 6 2. 4 46 ta b . a 4: p re d ic te d d is tr ib u tio n o f r ef ug ee s am o ng t he fe d er al s ta te s [in % ] s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c o m p ut at io n an d d es ig n. t he n um b er in g o f t he fe d er al s ta te s is il lu st ra te d in f ig ur e 8. • patrizio vanella, timon hellwagner, philipp deschermeier484 d ep en d en t v ar ia b le : fi rs t p ri n ci p al c o m p o n en ts o f a n n u al g en d er -n at io n al it y em p lo ym en t c h an g es (1 ) (2 ) (3 ) (4 ) (5 ) (6 ) a fr ic an a si an o th er s fe m al e m al e fe m al e m al e fe m al e m al e r ef u g ee in fl o w -0 .0 41 ** * -0 .0 87 ** * -0 .0 17 ** * -0 .0 33 ** * -0 .0 86 ** * -0 .0 59 ** * (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 05 ) (0 .0 01 ) (0 .0 02 ) (0 .0 08 ) (0 .0 06 ) g d p, g ro w th r at e -1 ,6 49 .5 95 -1 4, 32 5. 73 0* ** -2 ,8 64 .1 82 -5 ,9 28 .7 81 -2 ,2 46 .4 71 -4 ,2 98 .7 11 * (1 ,0 51 .8 05 ) (4 ,0 72 .8 35 ) (5 ,0 69 .2 15 ) (1 1, 46 4. 30 0) (1 ,4 51 .2 09 ) (2 ,2 70 .5 98 ) c o n st an t -1 67 .0 32 ** * 16 4. 21 4 -8 43 .2 35 ** * -2 80 .8 59 -4 30 .7 78 ** * -4 20 .6 82 ** * (3 8. 18 3) (1 47 .3 32 ) (1 77 .6 50 ) (3 99 .8 94 ) (4 8. 84 0) (7 6. 4 41 ) o b se rv at io n s 12 12 12 12 12 12 r 2 0. 97 0. 98 0. 94 0. 98 0. 93 0. 92 a d ju st ed r 2 0. 97 0. 97 0. 93 0. 97 0. 92 0. 90 r es id u al s td . e rr o r (d f = 9 ) 92 .9 35 9. 5 4 47 .4 1, 01 1. 6 12 8. 1 20 0. 4 f s ta ti st ic (d f = 2 ; 9) 15 3. 5* ** 18 1. 7* ** 70 .2 ** * 20 8. 2* ** 63 .4 ** * 49 .2 ** * ta b . a 5: r eg re ss io n o u tp u t * p < 0 .1 , * * p < 0 .0 5, * ** p < 0 .0 1 s o ur ce : a ut ho r's c o m p ut at io n an d th e so ur ce s o ut lin ed in th e m ai n te xt . published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany* flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali abstract: couples in which wives have more education than their husbands have been found to be more likely than other couples to divorce. but this relationship varies across time and place. we compare the relationship between spouses’ relative education and marital dissolution across four birth cohorts born between 1951 and 1990 in east and west germany using 37 waves of the german socioeconomic panel (1984-2021) and cox proportional hazard models. the comparison between east and west germany provides contrasting levels and trends in women’s education, employment, and gender cultures, with east germany persistently being a more gender egalitarian context compared to west germany. our results show that marriages in which wives have more education than their husbands are less stable in west germany, but not in east germany, where the point estimates indicate that these couples are more stable than other couples, but this association is not statistically significant. we do not find evidence of cohort change in these associations in either east or west germany. these findings are consistent with the idea that the consequences of non-traditional gender arrangements are weaker in more egalitarian contexts and confirm that notable differences between east and west germany persist after reunification. keywords: divorce · educational homogamy · hypogamy · east-west germany 1 introduction the expansion of women’s education and the emergence of a reversal of the gender gap in education means that women are, on average, more educated than men in many countries around the world (esteve et al. 2016; van bavel 2012). this change has led to an unprecedented increase in the prevalence of couples in which women comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 317-336 (date of release: 01.10.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-13 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-13en9 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/605/421 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-13 • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali318 are more educated than their male partners (bouchet-valat 2018; klesment/van bavel 2017; esteve et al. 2016; blossfeld 2009), and couples in which women have the same level of education as their male partners (blossfeld et al. 2024; uunk 2024). past studies have hypothesised that couples avoid forming partnerships where women’s status outranks their male partners’ status, and that when these partnerships do form, they will be more unstable (e.g., bertrand et al. 2015; ferrari et al. 2024). this article investigates the stratification of divorce risks by the educational pairing of partners and asks how it varies across geographical and historical contexts, focusing on a comparison of east and west german cohorts. there are several reasons why the risk of divorce may be higher for couples in which women have more education than their male partners. the functionalist view of families predicts that any deviation from a gendered division of roles will increase instability (parsons/bales 1955) as this would undermine the functioning of the family (and more generally its role in the social stratification system, goldthorpe 1983). indeed, in many societies, a gendered division of labour has long been (and continues to be) strongly normatively endorsed. usually attributed to becker (1981) is the idea that the traditional division of labour is most efficient for families and makes marriages more stable. because education is related to employment status, type of occupation and earnings, couples in which women have less education than their male partners will be the least likely to divorce. women’s educational advantage may also represent a threat to traditional gender identity for both men and women (tichenor 2005), which may be associated with increased divorce rates. however, other research suggests that the relationship between marital dissolution and spouses’ relative status is both historically and contextually specific. for example, gonalons-pons and gangl (2021) found that violations of the malebreadwinner norm are most associated with marital dissolution in countries with more conservative gender cultures. similarly, schwartz and han (2014) found that in the united states, while marriages in which wives had more education than husbands were once more likely to dissolve, this was no longer the case among couples married after the 1990s. these shifts are consistent with societal-level changes in gender, marriage, and women’s labour force participation. women’s autonomy and active participation in public life are not only much more common, but also more widely accepted nowadays. in addition, in many countries, a second income has become increasingly necessary to make ends meet (oppenheimer 1994, 1997; ruggles 2015; esping-andersen 2003). thus, we would expect that the negative association between women’s educational advantage and marital stability will have declined across cohorts and will be less pronounced in more gender-egalitarian contexts. although there is evidence that the association between couples’ educational pairings and marital dissolution varies over time within as well as across countries, there is little research that jointly compares both time and country variation. in addition, there are only a few studies of time variation in the association between wives’ educational advantage and marital dissolution overall (e.g., schwartz/ han 2014). in this article, we compare trends in the association between wives’ educational advantage and marital dissolution between east and west germany trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 319 among cohorts born between 1951 and 1990 and married between 1977 and 2021. our focus is on birth cohorts as we are interested in social change. although west germany is considered a latecomer when it comes to the reversal of the gender gap in education (e.g., de hauw et al. 2017; becker 20141), the country average masks important differences in women’s educational attainment between former east and west germany. in their forty years of separation, east and west germany took very different paths and east germany developed much more (gender) egalitarian labour market and education patterns than west germany. institutional differences gave rise to cultural differences that persist after reunification. we argue that both compositional and cultural differences impact trends and patterns of marital dissolution by spouses’ relative educational attainment across these two contexts. 2 background germany is known for its strong internal differences due to the country’s division into the federal republic of germany (frg or west germany) and the german democratic republic (gdr or east germany) for more than 40 years after the second world war. the fact that the former frg and gdr belonged to two different political regimes before their reunification in 1990 had implications for many areas of life, including the organisation of the family and women’s education and employment, leading to the emergence and diffusion of different gender divisions of labour within families. the differences between the two germanies before and after reunification are well documented (mayer et al. 1997, 1999; rosenfeld et al. 2004; trappe 1996, 2014; trappe et al. 2015). favoured by state socialism and family policies, women in east germany achieved higher levels of education and were more often active in the labour market, also on a full-time basis. in contrast, the male-breadwinner and modified male-breadwinner (that is, couples with full-time employed men and parttime employed women) arrangements remained more common in west germany. the prevalence of more egalitarian gender roles in east germany is also reflected by the fact that women’s education started to exceed men’s much earlier than in west germany. figure 1 shows the ratio between the share of women who achieved at least upper secondary education, the corresponding share of men and related confidence intervals for these estimates. in east germany, the share of women with at least secondary education had already surpassed men’s share (i.e., ratio>1) among the 1951-60 birth cohort. by contrast, women’s educational advantage has increased steadily in west germany, and thus, differences between east and west germany diminished across cohorts. the ratios in east and west germany are similar among the most recent birth cohorts. in line with the structural changes in the marriage market due to the narrowing of the gender gap in education and the increasing 1 becker (2014) reports a reversal of the gender gap in credentials to access tertiary education from the cohort born 1969-78 onwards in west germany, net of social origin. • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali320 length of time spent in education, blossfeld and timm (2003) report increasing levels of educational homogamy in west germany. greater gender equality in the east is also reflected in differences between the gdr’s and frg’s female employment rates, the former of which reached 89 percent in 1989, compared to only 56 percent in the latter (rosenfeld et al. 2004). these differences were accompanied by different perceptions of gender roles and values. even today, gender-egalitarian values are more common in the east than in the west, although the differences have narrowed as the west has caught up with more egalitarian values (ebner et al. 2020; zoch 2021). at the same time, east german cohorts who socialised after reunification appear to hold less egalitarian views compared to those socialised before reunification (ebner et al. 2020). after reunification, there has been a tendency towards re-traditionalisation in east germany, with a decline in dual full-time working households in favour of a “modified” male breadwinner model with full-time employed men and part-time employed women, especially among couples with children (trappe et al. 2015). fig. 1: gender gap in education by cohort in west and east germany: ratio of percent of women with at least upper secondary education / percent of men with at least upper secondary education 0.57 0.79 0.92 1.04 1.04 0.81 1.26 1.46 1.11 1.02 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 1941-50 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 ra tio birth cohorts west east notes: the sample is comprised of respondents with german nationality born between 1941 and 1990 (n = 49,929). ratios are calculated via a poisson regression that estimates the ratio between men’s and women’s percentages of completing at least an upper secondary education (barros/hirakata 2003). it includes an exposure term for the different numbers of men and women by country and cohort (the denominators), uses cross-sectional individuallevel weights so that estimates are representative of the population, and uses robust standard errors to calculate 95% confidence intervals. source: authors’ calculations from soep37 data. trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 321 these differences affect patterns of marriage and divorce. in both parts of germany, marriage rates have declined (oecd 2023), with a weakening of the importance of marriage (klärner 2015) and a considerably lower share of religious marriages (böttcher 2006). after a significant increase in marital instability up to the 1990s, more stable or even declining trends can be observed in recent decades. before reunification, divorce rates were higher in east germany, but sharply declined shortly after reunification at which point divorce became more common in west germany than east germany (schmid/wagner 2023; engelhardt et al. 2002). most of the german literature is concerned with the consequences of divorce (kreyenfeld/trappe 2020; brüggemann 2020 for recent studies) and less with its drivers. previous studies have documented that those with more education are less likely to divorce (böttcher 2006; schmid/wagner 2023), although not all studies show this relationship to be statistically significant (härkönen/dronkers 2006; arpino et al. 2022). more relevant to our study, previous literature has examined the relationship between partners’ educational pairings and union dissolution across countries and regions (e.g. theunis et al. 2018; van bavel et al. 2018). results are mixed and findings may vary across levels of education. for germany, kraft and neimann (2009), who examine the effect of educational (and religious) homogamy on marital stability, report that contrary to their expectations, homogamy per se does not increase marital stability but higher education (and religiosity) does. in a data driven approach controlling for life-satisfaction and personality traits, arpino et al. (2022) report no evidence for education or assortative mating to matter for divorce risks. blossfeld (2018) shows that among highly educated women educational hypogamy is associated with an increased risk of divorce compared to educational homogamy. as argued above, there are likely to be important changes over time in the relevance of hypogamy for divorce. in addition, little attention has been dedicated specifically to an east-west comparison. due to the overall greater gender egalitarian norms and division of labour in the east, we expect hypogamy to be associated with the risk of divorce in west germany but not in east germany. moreover, given the re-traditionalisation of east germans socialised after reunification (ebner et al. 2020; trappe et al. 2015), and the spread of gender egalitarian values in the west, we may see a change in the risk of divorce for hypogamous unions among the youngest cohorts of east and west germany. previous work supports the idea of different predictors of divorce in west versus east germany as well as different timing in changes in these predictors, but none has examined the relationship between hypogamy and divorce. schmid and wagner (2023), following the idea of changing gender equilibria developed by espinganderson and billari (2015), argue that trends in divorce risks depend on the (un) equal division of labour within couples, both in paid employment and in family work. the authors show that “the association between women’s employment and divorce risk has changed across marriage cohorts, and that this trend started earlier in east germany” (schmid/wagner 2023: 212). for the youngest cohort, female fulltime employment is no longer associated with higher divorce risk in west germany. lippmann et al. (2020) focus on earnings and show that while in west germany the risk of divorce increases when wives earn more than their husbands, this is not the • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali322 case in east germany. cooke (2006) and bellani and esping-andersen (2020) report that a more equal division of household tasks is associated with a higher risk of divorce in west germany, but increased couple stability in the united states. schmid and wagner (2023) do not find a destabilising effect of the male partner taking on more household tasks in east germany. these authors attribute their findings to the strong prevalence of the male breadwinner-female homemaker model in west germany and the higher level of gender equality in the east (and the united states). to summarise, given theory and previous findings on the changing association between couples’ relative education and divorce, as well as on the evolving differences between former west and east germany, we expect: hypothesis 1: a positive association between women’s educational advantage and marital union dissolution in west germany. hypothesis 2: no association between women’s educational advantage and marital union dissolution in east germany. linked to the spread of more gender-egalitarian values in the west and retraditionalisation in the east we have two additional hypotheses: hypothesis 3: the positive association becomes weaker across birth cohorts in west germany. hypothesis 4: the association becomes more positive across birth cohorts in east germany.2 3 data and methods we use data from the german socio-economic panel (soep), a nationally representative longitudinal survey of private households (goebel et al. 2019). the panel began in 1984 with a sample from west germany and a sample from east germany was added in 1990. we use data from 1984 to 2021 for west germany and from 1990 to 2021 for east germany.3 we excluded the migrant and refugee samples, as well as “sample q” (queer sample) from the analysis, given that the hypotheses pertain to different-gender couples. we selected different-gender married couples for which information on both partners was available and in which women held german nationality, and were born between 1951 and 1990 between the ages of 18 and 65. we limit our primary analysis to married couples for several reasons. first, the meaning of cohabitation differs in the two parts of germany (hiekel et al. 2015; klärner/knabe 2017), which could in turn limit the comparability of the two groups between samples. second, the theoretical “glue” that binds cohabitors’ and married couples’ relationships is very different (brines/joyner 1999). brines and joyner (1999), 2 note that it is possible that the overall association between hypogamy and marital dissolution may be non-significant in east germany (h2), but the association may become more positive across birth cohorts (h4). if this is the case, we would not interpret the results as null results, but as consistent with cohort change in the association. 3 samples included: a, b, c, e, f, g, h, j, k, l1, l2, l3, n. o, and p. trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 323 for example, use economic theory to argue that similarity of characteristics will be associated with stability for cohabitors whereas specialisation will be associated with stability for married couples. thus, combining cohabitors and married couples may lead to an underestimation of negative hypogamy effects on marital stability. third, limiting the analysis to married couples facilitates comparisons of the results to prior literature on the consequences of assortative mating and union instability as this literature concentrated on divorces (schwartz/han 2014) including the few west and east germany comparisons (e.g. lipmann et al. 2020; schmid/wagner 2023). nevertheless, because of changes in selection into marriage over this period and the rise of cohabitation, we report the results of sensitivity tests combining cohabiting and marital unions. our sample includes women who married no earlier than eight years prior to the panel survey. we do this to lessen the impact of left truncation but allow for a larger sample size compared with restricting the sample to those who begin marriages during the panel. there are 7,619 marriages among women born between 1951 and 1990 who married during the panel or not earlier than eight years prior to the survey. of these marriages, we have information on both partners for 6,832. after dropping marriages in which information on one or the other partner’s education was missing, the final (unweighted) sample contains 6,796 marriages (5,044 in west germany, 1,752 in east germany), of which 919 ended in divorce during the panel (659 in west germany, 260 in east germany). we distinguish women from former east and west germany using the information regarding where they lived in 1989, i.e., the year before germany’s reunification.4 for those who were born in 1990, who answered “abroad,” or did not answer this question (4 percent of the married sample), we used information on the region of residence at the first observation as married. to examine social change, we distinguish four birth cohorts: 1951-1960, 1961-1970, 1971-1980, and 1981-1990. more recent cohorts are too young to observe their marriage history for a sufficient period. the time-to-event of interest is marital dissolution, which we code as the year of divorce or separation in case divorce was preceded by a separation. union duration is measured in years. our explanatory variable of primary interest ‒ women’s educational advantage ‒ is captured by wives’ (w) education relative to husbands’ (h) education and distinguishes women who have a lower level of education than their husbands (hypergamy, “w<h”), the same level of education as their partner (homogamy “w=h”), or a higher level of education (hypogamy “w>h”). wives’ and husbands’ education is measured as the highest level attained by respondents during the panel and is coded into five categories from the casmin classification (compulsory education = 1a + 1b, basic vocational = 1c, lower secondary = 2a + 2b, upper secondary = 2c_ge + 2c_voc, tertiary education = 3a + 3b). following previous 4 a large majority of women are in homogamous marriages based on residence in 1989. only 3 percent of west german women in our sample are married to east german men and 15 percent of east german women are married to west german men. • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali324 studies (schwartz/han 2014), in addition to the level of education of both partners, we also control for the size of the absolute difference between spouses’ education (| wife’s education – husband’s education |), her and his age at union formation, squared ages at union formation, and the woman’s order of marital union (first or higher). we estimate cox proportional hazard models separately for west and east germany to examine the association between couples’ relative education and the risk of union dissolution. to check the proportional-hazards assumption of the cox model, we used schoenfeld residuals, which shows that the assumption holds for all the variables considered in the east sample, and for the relative education variable in the west sample. to test for changes in the relevance of partners’ relative education we interact our measure of relative education with birth cohort. 4 results table 1 shows descriptive statistics for the variables in our analytical sample for east and west germany. the table moreover shows the test of differences in means and proportions among the two samples, and the descriptive statistics of the overall sample of east and west germany, overall, divorce is somewhat more prevalent in the sample for east than for west germany (16 percent vs. 15 percent of couples). levels of education among husbands tend to be higher in west than in east germany (39 percent vs. 27 percent have at least upper secondary education). we also notice a higher share of tertiary-educated wives in the east (27 percent vs. 20 percent in the west). the percentage of couples in second or higher-order marriages is similar between the west (17 percent) and east (18 percent) as is the average age at marriage. table 1 also shows that in both parts of germany homogamy is the most common pattern, with 42 percent of couples in the west and 53 percent in the east. in west germany, couples are more likely to be hypergamous (w<h) compared to east germany (29 percent vs. 17 percent), whereas the difference in the share of hypogamous (w>h) couples is not significant (both about 30 percent). how has this varied across birth cohorts? figure 2 shows that in the west german sample, the share of hypogamous couples increased across cohorts (from 26 percent in the 1951-60 birth cohort to 32 percent in the 1981-90 birth cohort), whereas the share of homogamous couples stayed roughly constant, around 41-45 percent. in east germany, trends are less clear. consistent with the re-traditionalisation hypothesis, there appears to be a re-emergence of male educationally advantaged couples for those born after 1970, with a respective decline of both homogamous and hypergamous couples. the small sample size especially in east germany, however, comes with high statistical insecurity, so these results should be interpreted with caution. in the analytical sample of married couples, when focusing on the absolute level of education of husbands and wives by cohorts, married women in east germany have on average higher levels of education compared to their husbands trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 325 (appendix table a2, see total by cohort), while the opposite is true for the west german sample (appendix table a1, see total by cohort). educational attainment of the married samples of east and west germany hence resembles those of the general population described in figure 1 (drawn based on all soep respondents with german nationality), thus suggesting that there are no large selection processes into marriage by education. across cohorts, descriptively, hypogamous couples have the highest percentage of divorces in west germany (appendix table a1). on the contrary, no clear pattern emerges in the east german sample (appendix table a2). tab. 1: descriptive statistics, east and west germany west east test of difference in total means/proportions number of cases 5,044 1,750 6,794 percentages: divorced 14.71 16.02 14.97 relative education w<h 28.86 16.81 *** 26.43 w=h 42.33 52.62 *** 44.40 w>h 28.82 30.58 29.17 wives’ education compulsory education 7.18 1.96 *** 6.13 basic vocational 22.24 7.68 *** 19.31 lower secondary 35.59 55.72 *** 39.64 upper secondary 15.24 7.53 *** 13.69 tertiary education 19.75 27.11 *** 21.23 husbands’ education compulsory education 5.82 2.00 *** 5.05 basic vocational 33.12 16.81 *** 29.84 lower secondary 22.41 53.71 *** 28.71 upper secondary 11.07 6.67 *** 10.19 tertiary education 27.58 20.81 *** 26.22 birth cohorts 1951-60 25.97 16.58 *** 24.08 1961-70 38.78 43.32 39.69 1971-80 22.24 26.95 ** 23.19 1981-90 13.01 13.16 13.04 union order first marriage 82.87 81.82 82.66 higher order marriage 17.13 18.18 17.34 wife’s age at marriage (mean) 29.65 29.81 29.68 husband’s age at marriage (mean) 32.7 32.8 32.72 notes: weighted statistics based on the analytical sample, using cross-sectional individuallevel weights. two-tailed t-tests (for means) and z-tests (for proportions) are given, *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. source: authors’ calculations from soep37 data. • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali326 table 2 shows hazard ratios of marital dissolution by spouses’ relative education, jointly for all cohorts, based on cox proportional hazard models. the results are relative to hypergamous couples, as the most “traditional” pairing. in west germany, when the data are pooled across birth cohorts, hypogamous couples are significantly more likely to dissolve their marriages than hypergamous couples, with a hazard of dissolution being 1.55 times higher (p<0.1). this is not the case in east germany. on the contrary, in east germany, the hazard of divorce for hypogamous marriages is 0.56 times lower than for hypergamous marriages (result not statistically significant). these results are in line with our expectation that hypogamy will be positively associated with divorce in west germany (hypothesis 1) but that there will not be an association in east germany (hypothesis 2) – if anything these couples are more stable in the east. although not the main subject of this article, we also find that higher levels of education are associated with greater marital stability, in line with past research (hogendoorn et al. 2022). interestingly, it is the wife’s level of education that is significantly associated with stability in the west while it is the husband’s level in the east. fig. 2: percentage distribution of couples’ educational pairings by birth cohort for east and west germany 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 year 32 42 26 30 41 28 25 44 31 24 45 32 w<h w=h w>h west in percent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 year 22 49 29 11 56 33 18 52 30 28 46 26 east in percent notes: weighted statistics based on the analytical sample, using cross-sectional individuallevel weights. source: authors’ calculations from soep37 data. trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 327 tab. 2: hazard ratios of marital dissolution for east and west germany west east relative education (ref: hypergamy) homogamy 1.19 0.85 (0.19) (0.28) hypogamy 1.55* 0.56 (0.39) (0.30) cohort (ref: 1951-60) 1961-70 1.39*** 1.31 (0.15) (0.29) 1971-80 1.06 1.40 (0.13) (0.33) 1981-90 0.79 1.65* (0.13) (0.45) wife’s age at union formation 0.96 0.86** (0.04) (0.06) wife’s age at union formation squared 1.00 1.00 (0.00) (0.00) husband’s age at union formation 0.97 1.13* (0.04) (0.08) husband’s age at union formation squared 1.00 1.00 (0.00) (0.00) | wife’s education – husband’s education |a 0.99 1.00 (0.08) (0.17) wife’s education (ref: compulsory) basic vocational 0.51*** 1.24 (0.09) (0.52) lower secondary 0.46*** 1.26 (0.10) (0.65) upper secondary 0.45*** 1.65 (0.13) (1.06) tertiary education 0.42** 1.31 (0.14) (0.98) husband’s education (ref: compulsory) basic vocational 0.82 1.01 (0.14) (0.38) lower secondary 1.02 0.44* (0.22) (0.20) upper secondary 1.05 0.35 (0.30) (0.23) tertiary education 0.69 0.31* (0.23) (0.22) union order (ref: first marital union) higher order union 1.78*** 2.23*** (0.21) (0.43) observations 5,044 1,752 notes: hazard ratios (hr) based on cox regression; s.e. in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1; a absolute value of the difference between wife’s education and husband’s education. source: authors’ calculations from soep37 data. • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali328 as a second step, we estimate cox proportional hazard models interacting spouses’ relative education with women’s birth cohort to examine changes in the association. figure 3 shows the hazard of marital dissolution for hypogamous (“w>h”) and homogamous (“w=h”) couples relative to hypergamous (“w<h”) by birth cohort (coefficient estimates are presented in appendix table a3). in west germany, the point estimates of the hazard of dissolution for hypogamous and homogamous couples relative to hypergamous couples are greater than 1 for all cohorts while the opposite is generally true in east germany. in west germany, the hazard of marital dissolution for women born between 1951-60 and in hypogamous couples is 1.93 times that of hypergamous marriages (p<0.05, appendix table a4). although not statistically significant, the hazard of dissolution for hypogamous couples from the younger three cohorts in west germany are also higher than one (fig. 3), meaning that they have a higher risk of dissolution compared to hypergamous marriages among the same birth cohort. given that table 2 showed a statistically significant positive association between hypogamy and marital dissolution (hr=1.55) pooled across birth cohorts in west germany, and that we find no evidence for a cohort change in the association (table a3, interaction between assortative mating and fig. 3: hazard ratios of marital dissolution by spouses’ relative education and birth cohort .25 .5 1 2 3 h az ar d r at io 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 birth cohort west germany .25 .5 1 2 3 h az ar d r at io 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 birth cohort east germany w=h vs. w<h 90% ci (w=h vs. w<h) w>h vs. w<h 90% ci (w>h vs. w<h) notes: hazard ratios based on cox proportional hazard models. point estimates are offset slightly for legibility of confidence intervals but correspond to the same birth cohorts. parameters are shown in table a4. table a3 reports the full model. w>h are hypogamous marriages, w=h are homogamous marriages, w<h are hypergamous marriages. source: authors’ calculations from soep37 data. trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 329 birth cohort), the evidence as a whole suggests that hypogamous couples face an elevated risk of marital instability in west germany. in east germany, across all birth cohorts, the hazards of dissolution among hypogamous marriages are below one (fig. 3 and table 2), indicating lower divorce risks than that of hypergamous couples, although these differences do not reach statistical significance for any cohort (table a4 in the appendix). we thus find no evidence for a cohort change (table a3). thus, women in hypogamous marriages face a higher risk of dissolution compared to women in hypergamous marriages in west germany but not in east germany (consistent with hypotheses 1 and 2). in contrast to our expectations, we do not find sufficient evidence for any relevant change across cohorts in the hazard of divorce for homogamous vs. hypergamous couples in either west or east germany: neither does the positive association of hypogamy and divorce become clearly weaker in the west (hypothesis 3), nor does any positive association emerge in the east (hypothesis 4). 5 robustness checks we conducted a series of robustness checks of our results using different model specifications and samples. first, with the increasing prevalence of non-marital cohabitation across successive birth cohorts, changes in selection into marriage are a concern. one way to account for it is by constructing inverse probability weights of being married versus not being married, separately for the west and the east samples.5 these results are presented in appendix figure a1 and table a5. the resulting hazard ratios and the overall patterns are consistent with our main analysis. however, for the oldest and youngest birth cohorts in east germany, the lower hazards of marital dissolution among hypogamous versus hypergamous couples are now statistically significant, which suggests a selection into marriage of those partnerships who are intrinsically less stable. we come back to this result in the final section of the paper. the fact that the association is significant for the youngest birth cohort provides further evidence against hypothesis 4, which predicted an increase in the association between hypogamy and divorce in east germany. a second way of testing the sensitivity of our results to changes in selection into marriage because of the increasing diffusion of non-marital cohabitation is to conduct an analysis of a pooled sample of cohabiting and marital unions. results are presented in appendix table a6 and figure a2. given that the soep did not ask for retrospective data on cohabitations before wave 27, we include only those unions (marriages or cohabitations) that started during the panel and in which both partners were surveyed. hence, this sample comprises unions that were formed between 1984 and 2021. for comparison, appendix figure a3 shows the results of 5 among the predictors we include, side by birth cohort, education, and highest educational attainment of the respondent’s parents and run analysis separately for the east and west sample. • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali330 our main analysis with this much smaller sample of marriages formed during the panel. cohabiting couples are generally more likely to split up compared to married couples (table a6). regarding the consequences of educational pairing, the results for west germany are largely similar to those shown in the main analysis considering only marriages. the point estimates for east germany, despite still being nonstatistically significant, however, became positive. the change in the point estimates when including cohabitation in the east german sample is intriguing and suggests that dissolutions may work quite differently in cohabiting vs. marital unions in east germany. this finding is worthy of further investigation. for the present analysis, we note that although our results are largely consistent and robust for west germany across our sensitivity checks, we can be less confident in our “null” results for east germany. lastly, we conducted four additional robustness checks. (1) we limited the age range at union formation to 18-40 to avoid the possible over-representation of marriages at older ages in the oldest cohorts; (2) we selected marriages initiated up to five years before first observing the couple in the panel instead of eight years, as in the main analysis, to determine how variation in left truncation affected our results. (3) we dropped the control variable for the absolute difference in partners’ level of education. (4) we defined our east and west samples using the current region of residence when first observed in the sample rather than by place of residence in 1989. the results of all of these four checks on married couples are consistent with those in our main analysis and are presented in the appendix (tables from a7 to a10). 6 discussion and conclusion our study supports prior findings that the consequences of spouses’ non-traditional gender arrangements vary by social context (e.g., gonalons-pons/gangl 2021; schwartz/gonalons-pons 2016; schwartz/han 2014). we examined the relationship between spouses’ relative education and the risk of marital dissolution across contexts (west and east germany) and over time (birth cohorts spanning forty years). exploiting forty years of german separation, which led to very different levels of gender equality (including education and employment), we showed differences in the stability of marital unions among women in hypogamous unions. consistent with our hypotheses, we find that women’s educational advantage is significantly associated with a higher risk of marital dissolution in west germany (hypothesis 1), but not in east germany, where the point estimates indicate a lower risk of marital dissolution but these estimates are not statistically significant and thus, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no association (hypothesis 2). across cohorts, in west germany, educationally hypogamous couples have a hazard of marital dissolution 1.55 times that of hypergamous couples. in east germany, hypogamous marriages are less likely to dissolve, but this is not statistically significant. further, given that there is evidence showing that west germans are becoming increasingly more egalitarian (ebner et al. 2020; zoch 2021), and that in east germany trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany • 331 there seems to be a process of re-traditionalisation, both in terms of women’s work (trappe et al. 2015) and gender ideology (ebner et al. 2020), we hypothesised that the positive association between women’s educational advantage and marital dissolution would become weaker across birth cohorts in west germany (hypothesis 3) and a positive association between women’s educational advantage and marital dissolution would emerge in east germany (hypothesis 4). we did not find clear evidence for either of these hypotheses in our data. the point estimates do not indicate statistically significant evidence of change across cohorts. among the limitations of our analysis is the rather small sample size, especially for east germany, implying low statistical precision. while our results for east germany are not statistically significant, it is still notable that the magnitude of the hazard of marital dissolution among hypogamous couples is, for all birth cohorts, lower than for hypergamous couple types (hr smaller than 1), whereas for west germany divorce risks are considerably higher for homogamous than for hypergamous couples. thus, overall, results are consistent with the idea that the higher gender equality in east germany avoids instability for non-traditional educational pairings, especially hypogamy. west germany appears more traditional in this respect even among the youngest cohort. the magnitude of the difference between the results from west and east germany and the lack of change is interesting and suggests that forty years of separation and different institutional contexts led to enduring differences (lippmann et al. 2020) which are still influencing various aspects of east and west germans’ lives, including the stratification of marital stability. the lack of evidence for a change in the association between women’s educational advantage and divorce found in this paper does not mean that west and east germany are fixed social realms, but there might be relevant changes outside our somewhat limited window of observation. as our analyses include among the older cohorts only those that grew up under state socialism in the east, we cannot observe changes induced by this enforced egalitarianism, and, likely, dissolution risk was higher among hypogamous couples in east germany for birth cohorts older than those we examine here. at the same time, our analysis misses more recent changes and, maybe, hypogamous marriages are now no longer more unstable in west germany among those born after 1991. future research should explore this relationship including both older and younger birth cohorts. in this article, we focused on married couples given that theory and previous research identified differences in meaning (klärner/knabe 2017) as well as the process of dissolution between married and cohabiting couples (e.g., brines/joyner 1999; hiekel et al. 2015). non-marital cohabitation became increasingly common in both parts of germany, thereby potentially affecting the selection into marriage, which is why we also tested the sensitivity of our results to these changes. results for west germany are robust, but differ for east germany. specifically, whereas the results for married couples alone indicate that wives with an educational advantage are less likely to divorce (although this is not significant), including cohabiters in the model reverses this association (although the point estimates remain insignificant). this suggests that the association between partners’ relative education and union stability might work differently among cohabiting and marital unions in east • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali332 germany. in addition, in east germany, when we use inverse probability weights to control for (changes in) selection into marriage, the point estimates resemble those in the main analyses, with a lower risk of divorce for hypogamous couples, but the coefficients of the oldest and youngest cohorts gain significance. given that women in east germany have been more likely to be overqualified for their jobs compared to men (trappe/rosenfeld 1998), in this context, educational assortative mating, and especially hypogamy, may not be linked to a threat to “traditional” gender identity per se. on the contrary, it may be linked to a reduction in economic deprivation. ultimately, future research should further investigate this relationship. for east germany especially, future research should consider the relationship between women’s educational advantage and their earnings advantage and how they are associated with divorce (e.g., qian 2017). despite the variability of the results in east germany to sensitivity tests, however, it is worth stressing that none of the results are consistent with the idea that hypogamy is associated with divorce in the east german context, and none of the results suggested that hypogamy is becoming more associated with divorce across birth cohorts in east germany. this is in contrast to evidence from west germany of relative stability in the heightened risk of divorce among couples in which wives have more education than their husbands. references arpino, bruno; 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schwartz, christine r.; esteve, albert 2018: the reversal of the gender gap in education and its consequences for family life. in: annual review of sociology 44: 341-360. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041215 zoch, gundula 2021: thirty years after the fall of the berlin wall ‒ do east and west germans still differ in their attitudes to female employment and the division of housework? in: european sociological review 37,5: 731-750. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0440-z https://doi.org/10.20377/jfr-732 https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2016.2.4.08 https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414539682 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-017-9448-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-5678-2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888496023004003 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv015 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.esr.a018244 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-09 https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2012s127 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041215 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 • flavia mazzeo, christine r. schwartz, stefani scherer, agnese vitali336 date of submission: 31.10.2023 date of acceptance: 29.07.2024 flavia mazzeo (*). max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. university of trento. trento, italy. e-mail: mazzeo@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/about_us_6113/staff_directory_1899/flavia_ mazzeo_4259/ prof. dr. christine r. schwartz. university of wisconsin-madison. madison, usa. e-mail: cschwart@ssc.wisc.edu url: https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~cschwart/ prof. dr. stefani scherer, prof. dr. agnese vitali. university of trento, department of sociology and social research. trento, italy. e-mail: stefani.scherer@unitn.it; agnese.vitali@unitn.it url: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0029584/didattica https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0212776/curriculum mailto:mazzeo@demogr.mpg.de https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/about_us_6113/staff_directory_1899/flavia_ mailto:cschwart@ssc.wisc.edu https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~cschwart/ mailto:stefani.scherer@unitn.it mailto:agnese.vitali@unitn.it https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0029584/didattica https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0212776/curriculum published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de the division of routine and non-routine housework among migrant and native couples in germany the division of routine and non-routine housework among migrant and native couples in germany* theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak abstract: gender inequality in the division of household chores is a persistent issue over time and across country contexts, while differences within and between native and migrant couples remain largely unclear. relying on the german country case, this study examines the association between partners’ migration constellations and the division of housework. we differentiate between natives and fi rst-generation migrants, and within fi rst-generation migrants, we differentiate by their regions of origin. for the division of housework, we analyse traditionally female routine tasks and male non-routine tasks. following gender and resource explanations, this study expects gendered variation in the way native, migrant, and mixed (i.e., native/ migrant) couples divide housework. utilising novel data from the german family demography panel study (freda-ggs sample, 2021), the paper employs ols regression models to predict the division of housework among 11,223 cohabiting different-sex couples. the study fi nds a gender-traditional divide in routine household tasks among migrant couples, with heterogeneity across regions of origin. specifi cally, women in asian and eastern european couples tend to do more routine tasks than their native counterparts, while the division of routine housework in couples from western countries is more egalitarian. in mixed couples, the division of routine tasks is highly unequal if the male partner is a migrant. non-routine tasks in mixed couples are, however, mostly performed by the native partner, irrespective of gender. the results suggest that the division of routine housework conforms to traditional gender roles across most migrant groups, while non-routine housework, such as fi nancial tasks that require country-specifi c knowledge, is infl uenced by the native status, which serves as a resource in itself. keywords: couples · division of housework · migration · germany · freda comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 369-394 (date of release: 31.07.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-15 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-15en6 * this article belongs to a special issue on “family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/552/385. http://www http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-15 https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/552/385 https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/552/385 • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak370 1 introduction despite the convergence of the gender gap in housework over time, women still shoulder the majority of household responsibilities (cooke/baxter 2010; kan et al. 2011; mandel et al. 2020; pailhé et al. 2021). this is also the case in germany, the country case of this study, where women still do considerably more housework than men (hank/steinbach 2021; nitsche/grunow 2016; steinbach/schulz 2022). this disparity is exacerbated by the fact that – on average – women in germany face lower rates of labour market attachment, irregular work patterns, lower working hours, and lower wages than men (leuze/strauß 2016; trappe et al. 2015). these labour market-related gender inequalities are echoed within the area of unpaid labour. women tend to handle the more tedious and infl exible routine tasks, like cooking and cleaning. non-routine tasks, such as fi nances and repairs as part of housework, and the dimension of heterogeneity within unpaid work, have received less attention. non-routine tasks, being less frequent and more time-fl exible, are typically performed by men (coltrane 2000). this division of household tasks not only contributes to the persistence of the gender gap in housework but also increases women’s time constraints by restricting their opportunities to engage in paid work. the time-consuming nature of women’s routine household duties likely impacts their career and fi nancial opportunities in the long term. prior research on germany has widely examined gendered determinants of the division of housework within couples (e.g., gender ideologies (zoch 2021), parenthood (kühhirt 2012), or unemployment (fauser 2019; voßemer/heyne 2019)) as well as developments over time (leopold et al. 2018; steinbach/schulz 2022). however, prior studies have mainly focused on the native german population. the few quantitative studies that specifi cally studied migrant couples in the german context primarily compared the division of housework among native and turkish couples (diehl et al. 2009; kan/laurie 2018; steinbach 2009). following studies from other countries (for australia, see ting et al. 2016; for britain, see kan/laurie 2018; for european countries, see carriero 2021; for italy, see brini et al. 2022; for the us, see blau et al. 2020; sayer/fine 2011), fendel and kosyakova (2023) recently examined variations in the within-couple division of housework of migrants in germany depending on source-country cultural determinants. the present study goes a step further by differentiating routine and non-routine household tasks in different-sex couples with diverse origin constellations (considering whether one or both partners are migrants) and across different regions of origin. our study thus seeks to address this often-overlooked heterogeneity inherent in the distribution of domestic tasks and asks: 1) how is the division of routine and non-routine housework structured between women and men in native, migrant, and mixed different-sex couples in germany? and 2) how much variation do we fi nd in the division of routine and non-routine housework in germany when we include different regions of origin for mixed and migrant couples? prior research on germany put considerable effort into analysing migrants’ partnership behaviour (e.g., kuhnt/krapf 2020) and the division of housework around the event of migration (e.g., krieger/salikutluk 2023). however, a comprehensive the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 371 understanding of the division of housework across multiple ethnic groups has been limited by a scarcity of data sources. we contribute to eliminating this shortcoming by using novel survey data from the german family demography panel study (freda-ggs sample), a nationally representative panel study from germanyframework, objectives, and design of the new data infrastructure “freda – the german family demography panel study”, which has been funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf that provides rich information on partnership, family, and migration. first, we differentiate between constellations of native and migrant partners and, second, between couples of different regions of origin. we compare natives and fi rst-generation migrants, defi ned as individuals who migrated to germany themselves at some point in their lives. freda data additionally differentiate between typically female routine and typically male non-routine domestic tasks. routine tasks encompass the majority of household chores, including meal preparation, housecleaning, dishwashing, and laundry activities that consume a signifi cant amount of time (coltrane 2000). for non-routine tasks, freda covers fi nancial tasks (e.g., paying bills, doing taxes) and small repairs. the focus of the paper is on the relationship of the division of housework and different origin-compositions of mixed and migrant couples in reunifi ed germany. admittedly, there are persistently different gender ideologies between eastern and western germany (zoch 2021), but these differences within native couples are not the focus of this paper.1 2 background 2.1 gender and resource perspectives on the division of housework although gender differences in housework converge over time, women still contribute more time to housework on average than men across countries, which is due to their greater contributions to routine tasks like cooking and cleaning (kan et al. 2011; pailhé et al. 2021; perry-jenkins/gerstel 2020; sullivan 2021). in germany, gender inequality in housework is relatively high compared to other european countries (leopold et al. 2018; schulz/raab 2022; steinbach/schulz 2022). two main theoretical approaches guide the understanding of gender inequality in housework: the resource and the gender perspective. while the resource explanation argues that men’s advantage in economic resources is commonly exchanged for avoiding housework, gender explanations address gender ideology as the central determinant of a gender-unequal division of housework. the resource-bargaining perspective posits that the division of housework results from negotiations between partners based on their personal resources (breen/ 1 we assess differences between natives in eastern and western germany in supplementary analyses. • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak372 cooke 2005; brines 1993; lundberg/pollak 1996). the partner with greater economic resources has more bargaining power to avoid unpaid housework, which may be perceived as unpleasant (blood/wolfe 1960). economic resources functioning as bargaining tools are frequently measured with partners’ educational levels, income, or labour force participation (nitsche/grunow 2016). however, particularly routine tasks are less pleasant, more time-consuming, and less fl exible regarding when they are completed (coltrane 2000). men’s average resource advantage should therefore chiefl y explain why they contribute less to routine household chores than women. as the resource perspective is gender-neutral in principle, it cannot explain adequately why an increase in women’s resources does not accordingly lead to a more egalitarian division of housework. women and men use their resources differently to negotiate the division of paid and unpaid labour, shaped by their gender role attitudes (brines 1993; grunow et al. 2012; kan et al. 2011; mandel et al. 2020). accordingly, women and men divide housework strongly based on their gender role attitudes and the associated doing of gender (west/zimmerman 1987). doing gender means that individuals behave as normatively expected with regard to their gender role, which is embedded in social interactions and institutional contexts (mandel et al. 2020). in line with traditional gender perceptions, women are more likely to take on routine household chores as the primary carer of the family, which they provide in return for economic support from the male breadwinner (brines 1993; carriero/todesco 2018). men are normatively expected to be the main earner, allowing them to avoid doing unpaid regular housework. in return, women with greater economic resources may even increase their routine housework duties to align with their gender roles (fahlén 2016). men might instead focus on more pleasant and male-connotated non-routine tasks, such as small repairs, to conform to their gender role. 2.2 migration groups in germany germany is one of the largest immigration countries in europe with a strong history of migration and it has consistently seen an increase in the number of immigrants over time (bmi/bamf 2022). the composition of migrants has undergone fundamental changes over the years, moving from southern and eastern european migrants during the guest worker movement of the 1970s to a diverse range of migration groups from the european union (eu), economic migrants, and refugees from across the world. in 2020, 55 percent of all migrants came from eu countries, including mostly eastern european countries (bmi/bamf 2022). the largest groups originated from romania (16 percent), poland (9 percent), and bulgaria (6 percent). migrants from outside the eu came mostly from other european countries (26 percent) and the asian continent (22 percent). the changing nature of migration streams is also refl ected in the current composition of migrant groups in germany. comparing the immigrant generation across migrant groups, most economic migrants are foreign-born and thus have a direct migration experience. by contrast, most individuals from the former guest worker recruitment states – or their descendants – were born in germany. the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 373 this is refl ected in offi cial statistics showing that, in 2020, about 50 percent of the individuals with turkish or italian migration backgrounds were second-generation migrants born in germany, whereas around 85 percent of the migrants from syria were fi rst-generation migrants born in their country of origin (bmi/bamf 2022). as our analytical sample is limited to foreign-born migrants, this study does not examine large “migration” groups of the second or higher-order immigrant generations. 2.3 within-couple division of housework among migrants in germany according to the socialisation perspective, exposure to traditional or egalitarian values during childhood shapes individuals’ gender role attitudes across adulthood (davis/greenstein 2009). migrants tend to adopt gender attitudes prevalent in their country of origin, where they experienced early socialisation, and reproduce them in their destination country (frank/hou 2015; pessin/arpino 2018). a key factor of socialisation is the intergenerational transmission of values (davis/greenstein 2009). thus, individuals who migrated as children are also signifi cantly infl uenced by gender attitudes of the country of origin through the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes from their family of origin (kretschmer 2018). from a comparative perspective, countries differ in the degree of traditionalism of gender role attitudes. data from the european value survey (evs) from 2017 show that average gender role attitudes in the largest origin countries of our study from eastern europe and asia (see appendix table a1) are more traditionalist compared to germany (evs 2023). thus, most migrants in this study were born in countries with more traditional prevalent gender ideologies than natives (hipp/ leuze 2015). this is also refl ected in more traditional average gender role attitudes among migrants compared to natives in germany (evs 2023; kretschmer 2018; norris/inglehart 2012). these measures at the country level, however, conceal differences across ethnic groups as well as heterogeneity within origin countries. in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, migrants tend to be better educated, younger, and more likely to be male compared to the non-migrating population in their origin countries; aspects that altogether shape their gender values. in particular, individuals with more egalitarian gender values than their country of origin self-select into migration (norris/inglehart 2012). as migrants, however, have more traditional values than natives in germany (evs 2023; kretschmer 2018; norris/inglehart 2012), we assume that the infl uence of migrants’ socialisation in the country of origin remains relevant for their gender ideologies and the distribution of housework, as we discuss below. as a consequence of migrants’ more traditional gender role attitudes, they should also divide housework tasks in a more gender-traditional way than natives. according to the “doing gender” perspective, gender ideologies in favour of traditional gender roles are associated with a higher share of housework done by the partner who aims to reinforce his or her gender identity by complying with prevalent norms. prior literature has shown that a gender-traditional division of routine housework, where women do most tasks, is positively associated with gender traditionalism across countries (davis et al. 2007; fahlén 2016; treas/tai • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak374 2016). furthermore, compared to the destination country, migrants from countries with highly traditional gender ideologies also divide routine housework more gender-traditionally than migrants from more egalitarian countries (brini et al. 2022; diehl et al. 2009; fendel/kosyakova 2023; frank/hou, 2015). this might also apply to foreign-born men who might perform non-routine tasks to express and consolidate their gender role attitudes. for instance, migrant men in italy are found to be more involved in non-routine household tasks than women, although their involvement does not vary with the level of gender equity in their country of origin (brini et al. 2022). comparing partners’ origin constellations, the division of labour should be particularly strong in migrant couples (i.e., with two migrant partners) because migrants are, on average, more traditionalist than natives. although partners in migrant couples can be a heterogeneous unit stemming from different countries, in our analytical sample around two-thirds stem from the same country of origin (see appendix table a2). thus, most migrant couples might consolidate the similarity of their gender role attitudes over time. in mixed couples with a migrant and a native partner, the gender-traditional division of labour might be mitigated due to the more egalitarian gender role attitudes of the native partner. the division of labour might also be less traditional in mixed couples because western migrants with higher education levels and from predominantly christian countries are more likely to be in mixed couples than lesser-educated migrants from predominantly muslim countries (dribe/lundh 2011; kulu/gonzález-ferrer 2014). furthermore, partners from different regions of origin might also have contrasting gender ideologies, which likely initiate negotiation processes about the division of housework in mixed couples. in mixed couples, the gender composition in interplay with the type of housework might further shape the division of housework. as women traditionally do routine tasks, female migrants in particular, who tend to be more traditional than their native counterparts on average (evs 2023), might prioritise these tasks. this might not only align with their own but also with their native male partners’ gender ideology, as men also prefer a traditional division of unpleasant routine housework (ting et al. 2016). additionally, natives tend to have greater economic resources than migrants (halbmeier 2019), and men in particular have greater average economic resources than women (perry-jenkins/gerstel 2020). this might provide native men in mixed couples with more bargaining power, which tends to promote a traditional division of routine tasks. in mixed couples with female natives, gender differences in routine housework should be reduced due to native women’s more egalitarian gender role attitudes and their greater economic resources (halbmeier 2019). the division of non-routine tasks should also be more traditional in mixed couples with male than with female migrants. in mixed couples with male migrants, the gender structure aligns with the traditional behaviour and male partners might focus on these tasks to conform to their gender ideologies. the focus on non-routine tasks might also constitute a way for migrant men with native female partners to compensate for their potential disadvantage in economic resources by fulfi lling tasks typically done by the male breadwinner (brines 1993) the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 375 despite migrants’ stronger average traditionalism compared to natives, migrants are composed of heterogenous ethnic groups with varying gender role attitudes. as one of the largest groups, migrants from eastern europe stem from countries with highly traditional gender ideologies (evs 2023; hipp/leuze 2015), being socialised in a (post-)communist environment with a strictly gendered division of housework (hofäcker et al. 2013). migrants from asian countries partly share the (post-)communist socialisation while being more culturally distant from germany – for instance, due to differences in their historical, geographical, and religious background. as the largest asian country of origin in the analytical sample, average gender role attitudes are most traditional in russia (evs 2023; see appendix table a1). by contrast, migrants from northern and western europe and america might have more egalitarian gender norms than germans, as seen in their lower gender gaps in society and their more progressive attitudes towards female employment (evs 2023; hipp/leuze 2015). 2.4 expectations building on prior evidence showing that migrants are overall more traditionalist than natives in germany (e.g., kretschmer 2018; norris/inglehart 2012), we expect to observe similar fi ndings for their division of housework. we expect the most traditional division of routine and non-routine tasks in couples with two migrant partners, followed by mixed and native couples (expectation 1). differentiating by gender in mixed couples, migrant women in particular should take over routine tasks due to more traditional gender ideology paired with lower economic resources than their male native partners. thus, we expect gender inequality in the division of routine housework to be greater in mixed couples with female compared to male migrants (expectation 2a). this should also apply to non-routine tasks for male migrants, leading us to expect gender inequality in the division of non-routine housework to be greater in mixed couples with male compared to female migrants (expectation 2b). although examining these expectations with pooled migrant groups already provides valuable insights, the results are signifi cantly determined by the infl uence of the largest migrant groups. since the largest migrant groups, originating from eastern europe and asia, stem from countries with highly traditional gender ideologies and can thus be considered among the most traditional groups on average (e.g., hipp/leuze 2015), we anticipate greater heterogeneity in the additional differentiation by region of origin. the strength of the freda data, apart from the differentiation of eastern migrant groups into migrants from eastern europe and asia, lies in being able to examine further ethnic groups while additionally considering the gender constellation within the couple. we extract a further group of migrants from western countries that has not received much attention in prior literature due to their comparably small group size. western migrants differ considerably from eastern migrants in their demographic characteristics and gender role attitudes, being better educated and expressing more egalitarian values on average (bmi/ bamf 2022; evs 2023). based on these considerations, we expect that the division • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak376 of both routine and non-routine housework is more egalitarian in couples from western countries compared to natives, whereas eastern european and, even more, asian couples should divide these tasks in a more traditional way (expectation 3). 3 data, measures, and method 3.1 data the german family demography panel study (freda) is a novel, nationally representative panel study from germany that comprises two different samples (bujard et al. 2023; hank et al. 2023). from panel wave 1 in 2020 onwards, freda constitutes the german contribution to the generations and gender surveys (ggs). we consider the freda-ggs sample in this study. freda additionally continues the german family panel (pairfam) with the freda-pairfam sample from wave 2 onwards. a detailed study description for freda can be found in schneider et al. (2021). freda is a biannual panel study that surveys the population aged 18 to 49 years in germany and is designed as a self-administered, mixed-mode study (computer-assisted web and paper-and-pencil interviews). the data are well-suited for the present study, as they include comprehensive information on partnership, family, and household characteristics, complemented by a rich set of indicators on migration and socio-demographic background. this study uses data from subwave w1a, which has been complemented by information on respondents’ migration experience from the recruitment subwave w1r. among those respondents who participated in both subwaves, we excluded 451 (2.7 percent) observations living in same-sex couples and 2,732 (16.5 percent) respondents living in non-cohabiting couples. we further excluded 1,379 (10.2 percent) respondents who had at least one household task always or usually being done by someone else, as well as 900 (9.2 percent) observations with missing information on independent or control variables. the fi nal sample size comprises 11,223 observations. see appendix table a3 for an overview of the number and share of missing values of all variables. please note that we only refer to anchor data and therefore use proxy information provided by the anchor about their partners. 3.2 measures 3.2.1 dependent variables the outcome variables are arithmetic mean indices of the division of routine and non-routine housework.2 the fi rst index on the division of routine housework is composed of the four items “preparing daily meals,” “vacuum cleaning the house,” 2 the arithmetic mean indices are extracted by principal component factor analyses. see appendix section a1 for further information on the factor analyses. the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 377 “cleaning and mopping,” and “doing the laundry.” the second index on the division of non-routine housework is captured using the two items “doing small repairs in and around the house” and “paying bills and keeping fi nancial records.” all items are assessed on a 5-point likert scale of responsibilities ranging from 1 “always me” to 5 “always my partner” that is complemented by the sixth category “always or usually someone else,” which we excluded before calculating the mean indices. the items have been recoded so that 1 indicates that the male partner takes over the respective task and 5 that the female partner conducts the task. for the analyses, we calculate the mean indices ranging from 1 (“always man”) to 5 (“always woman”). it is important to consider that a high average value of routine tasks indicates a gender-traditional division of labour with women taking over most routine tasks typically ascribed as female-typed housework. however, a high average value of non-routine tasks indicates a non-traditional division of labour, as women take over tasks typically done by men. 3.2.2 independent variables we build two measures based on both partners’ own migration experience. first, partners’ origin constellations are measured by differentiating between the four categories of 1) native couples with both partners being born in germany (native/ native), 2) mixed couples with a male foreign-born partner (native woman/migrant man), 3) mixed couples with a female foreign-born partner (native man/migrant woman), and 4) migrant couples with both partners being foreign-born (migrant/ migrant). the second independent variable differentiates between partners’ different geographical regions of origin by relying on the combinations of women’s and men’s regions of birth. we rely on freda’s generated variable country of birth that differentiates between 14 countries and regions, following the coding by the united nations (un statistics division 2022).3 after summarising these categories further, we obtained a measure including couples’ ten most frequent constellations of regions of origin: 1) native/native, 2) both eastern european, 3) eastern european woman/native man, 4) native woman/eastern european man, 5) both asian, 6) asian woman/native man, 7) native woman/asian man, 8) western woman4/native man, 9) native woman/western man, and 10) other combination (including countries from southern europe, africa, and oceania). appendix table a1 provides an overview of women’s and men’s most frequent birth countries included in the regional categories. 3 freda summarises anchors’ and partners’ countries of birth in the scientifi c use file (suf) into broader categories for anonymisation reasons. a description of the generated variable in the suf data that is used to construct the independent variable “couples’ regions of origin” can be found in appendix table a4. 4 western countries include countries from western europe, northern europe, and north and south america. • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak378 3.3 method we conduct ordinary least square (ols) regression models to examine the association between couples’ migration constellation and the division of housework. we separately examine the association between couples’ migration constellation and the division of routine and non-routine housework. as the breusch-pagan and the white test reject the null hypothesis of homoskedasticity, we add robust standard errors to the regression models to account for heteroskedasticity. we used design weights in the regression analyses to correct for individuals’ unequal inclusion probabilities in the sampling process. to examine the association between couples’ migration constellation and the division of housework, we follow a stepwise inclusion of control variables in the multivariate analyses. first, we employ bivariate models to assess the main associations under study. in the second step, we control for the family characteristics of partnership type (married/cohabiting), relationship duration (in years), and the number of children living in the household because long-term married couples and parents divide their housework more traditionally (davis et al. 2007). we additionally control for anchors’ gender (female/male) to reveal differences in the way women and men assess the division of housework. in the third step, we include measures of resources to control for relative resource differentials among partners. we include women’s and men’s employment status (employed/not employed)5, age differences between partners (man older, similar age (± 3 years), woman older), and educational differences (man higher education, both similar education, woman higher education). lastly, we control for gender role attitudes, as individuals with more traditional attitudes tend to divide housework in a more gender-traditional way than couples with more egalitarian views, who instead aim for equal division. gender role attitudes are measured as an arithmetic mean index of fi ve items ranging from 1 (reverse traditional) to 5 (traditional), with 3 indicating egalitarian attitudes. see table 1 for descriptive statistics of the dependent, independent, and control variables in the analytical sample. in light of the small proportion of missing values on the dependent variable, we use listwise deletion under the assumption of missing completely at random (mcar). there is no reason to expect the probability of missing values on the independent and the dependent variables to depend on the division of housework, so we expect unbiased regression estimates. 5 for supplementary analyses, we generated a more detailed measure of the employment status that distinguishes between different types of part-time employment based on the average weekly working hours (categories: “no paid employment,” “part-time employed (<28 hours),” “almost full-time employed (28-35 hours),” and “full-time employed (>35)”). the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 379 tab. 1: descriptive statistics of dependent, independent, and control variables mean/ sd min max n prop dependent variables: division of housework routine housework (mean index) 3.67 0.65 1.00 5.00 11223 non-routine housework (mean index) 2.38 0.75 1.00 5.00 11223 independent variable: origin constellations native/native 0.82 9258 native woman/migrant man 0.05 0.00 1.00 561 migrant woman/native man 0.07 739 migrant/migrant 0.06 665 independent variable: regions of origin native/native 0.82 0.00 1.00 9258 both eastern european 0.02 177 w eastern european/m native 0.02 221 w native/m eastern european 0.01 138 both asian 0.03 331 w asian/m native 0.03 294 w native/m asian 0.02 168 w western/m native 0.01 151 w native/m western 0.01 152 other 0.03 333 gender, anchor male 0.43 0.00 1.00 4790 female 0.57 6433 marital status married 0.66 0.00 1.00 7359 unmarried 0.34 3864 relationship duration (in years) 12.05 7.42 0.08 36.25 11223 number of children in household 1.16 1.08 0.00 8.00 11223 age, woman 35.75 7.58 18.00 71.00 11223 age, man 38.20 8.28 18.00 73.00 11223 woman’s employment status not employed 0.31 0.00 1.00 3494 employed 0.69 7729 man’s employment status not employed 0.11 0.00 1.00 1201 employed 0.89 10022 • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak380 4 results 4.1 descriptive results 4.1.1 division of routine and non-routine housework by partners’ origin constellations figure 1 shows that women do most routine tasks (left panel), with an average of 3.67 on the scale from 1 (“always man”) to 5 (“always woman”; see also appendix table a5 for descriptive statistics on partners’ origin constellations ), which remains relatively stable across partners’ origin constellations. the results, however, indicate that women do slightly more routine housework tasks in migrant couples (x ̄ = 3.78 migrant/migrant) than with a male native partner (x ̄ = 3.66 native/native, x ̄ = 3.64 female migrant/male native; all differences p < .05). considering non-routine housework (right panel), we observe that men do most non-routine tasks, with an average of 2.38 on the same scale. couples with native women seem to behave less traditionally, as non-routine tasks are distributed signifi cantly more equally between both genders in these couples (x ̄ = 2.40 native/native, x ̄ = 2.62 female native/male migrant) compared to female migrant couples (x ̄ = 2.11 female migrant/ male native, x ̄ = 2.20 migrant/migrant; all differences p < .01). the results indicate overall that gender differences in the division of housework prevail across partners’ origin constellations, with stronger variation of non-routine tasks. tab. 1: continuation mean/ sd min max n prop age difference man older 0.33 0.00 1.00 3659 similar age 0.63 7028 woman older 0.05 536 educational difference man higher education 0.14 0.00 1.00 1537 both similar education 0.63 7108 woman higher education 0.23 2578 gender role attitudes 3.15 0.29 1.00 5.00 11223 region in germany western germany 0.84 0.00 1.00 9481 eastern germany 0.16 1742 note: w refers to women, m refers to men. western countries include western europe, northern europe, north and south america. source: freda v.2.0.0, w1r and w1a the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 381 4.1.2 division of routine and non-routine housework by couples’ regions of origin differentiating between the female and male partners’ regions of origin, figure 2 depicts the average division of routine and non-routine housework (upper x-axis) as well as differences in the division of housework to native couples (lower x-axis). the results reveal that migrants from eastern europe and asia tend to divide housework tasks more gender-traditionally than native couples, whereas the division of housework in migrants from western countries is more egalitarian on average. couples with both partners from asia divide both routine and non-routine tasks signifi cantly more traditionally than native couples on the scale from 1 (“always fig. 1: histograms of the division of routine and non-routine housework by partners’ origin constellations 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman native/native couple 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman native woman/migrant man 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman migrant woman/native man 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman migrant/migrant couple routine housework 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman native/native couple 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman native woman/migrant man 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman migrant woman/native man 0 10 20 30 pe rc en t always man both equally always woman migrant/migrant couple non-routine housework note: dashed lines indicate group-specifi c arithmetic means. source: freda v.2.0.0, w1r and w1a • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak382 man”) to 5 (“always woman”; differenceroutine = .21, p < .001; differencenon-routine = .31, p < .001). among mixed couples with native women and eastern european or asian men, native women tend to take over signifi cantly more routine (p < .01) but not non-routine tasks compared to native couples. conversely, if the female partner migrated from eastern europe or asia, native men tend to take over signifi cantly more non-routine (p < .001) but not routine tasks compared to native couples. the results align with a traditional behaviour of the native partner in mixed couples in fulfi lling their gender-specifi c housework tasks – with women focusing on routine and men on non-routine tasks. as migrants from eastern europe and asia hold more gender-traditional values than natives on average, their willingness to contribute to housework beyond the scope of their gender-specifi c tasks might be reduced. among mixed couples with at least one partner from western countries, routine tasks are distributed more equally than among native couples (difference = .14, p < .01 native man/western woman; difference = .12, p < .05 native woman/western fig. 2: differences in the division of routine and non-routine housework to native couples and average division of housework by couples’ regions of origin note: depicted lines indicate 95% confi dence intervals of the difference measure. arrows indicate the gender that is doing more of the respective housework type. w refers to women, m refers to men. western countries include western europe, northern europe, north and south america. source: freda v.2.0.0, w1r and w1a the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 383 man). regarding non-routine tasks, we fi nd men to take over signifi cantly more non-routine tasks if they are native (difference = .29, p < .001), while couples with male western migrants divide non-routine tasks more equally than native couples (difference = -.40, p < .001). the strong specialisation of native men in non-routine housework might counterbalance their comparably high commitment to routine tasks, which contradicts their rather gender-traditional socialisation in germany. 4.2 multivariate results 4.2.1 partners’ origin constellations and the division of routine and nonroutine housework to interpret the descriptive associations between partners’ origin constellations and the division of routine and non-routine housework, figure 3 adds results based on stepwise ols regression models that include controls for marital status, relationship duration, and number of children in the household (family characteristics), woman’s and man’s employment status, age, and educational differences between woman and man (resource differences), and gender role attitudes (gender ideology). in line with expectation 1, routine housework is most traditionally divided among migrant couples. in mixed couples, the division of household chores shows slight variation based on the gender of the foreign-born partner, which contradicts expectations 2a and 2b that the division of routine and non-routine tasks aligns with the gender of the foreign-born partner. in the bivariate model, routine housework is more traditionally divided in couples with male migrant partners (difference = .05, p < .1 for female native/male migrant couples; difference = .13, p < .001 for migrant/ migrant couples). thus, native and particularly migrant women tend to do more routine tasks than their male migrant partners. in couples with female migrants, however, the division of routine housework is similar to that of native couples. the division of routine tasks might therefore depend on the migration status of the male partner, with male migrants seeming to be less inclined to do tasks traditionally assigned to women than their native counterparts. the stepwise inclusion of control variables shows that the highly traditional division of routine tasks in migrant couples is partly attributable to differences in their family structure and gender attitudes. migrant couples are more likely to be married, have a larger number of children, and more traditional gender values than other couples (see appendix table a5), which is positively associated with a traditional division of household tasks (e.g., brini et al. 2022; fendel/kosyakova 2023). after considering other control variables in the full model, the slightly more traditional division of routine tasks in female native/male migrant couples is also reduced further. in supplementary analyses, we further differentiate between native/native couples in western and eastern germany (see appendix tables a12 and a13 and fig. a1). we observe that the division of routine tasks is .03 points less traditional in the more egalitarian context of eastern germany after including the full set of controls (p < .05). also, non-routine tasks are divided more equally in the former east • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak384 in the bivariate model, although this association no longer holds after controlling for marital status and gender. in couples with female migrants, non-routine household tasks are divided more traditionally, with men doing more of these tasks (difference = -.29, p < .001 female migrant/male native; difference = -.20, p < .001 migrant/migrant). in contrast to expectation 1, mixed couples with male migrants divide non-routine tasks more equally than native couples (difference = .22, p < .001). the inclusion of control variables does not considerably contribute to the associations for non-routine tasks, indicating that being native is more relevant to the division of non-routine than routine housework. supplementary analyses differentiating between fi nancial tasks and small repairs as the two items of non-routine housework indicate that these results are primarily driven by the division of fi nancial tasks (see appendix tables a14 and a15 and appendix fig. a2). native partners in mixed couples are likely more experienced in managing the family fi nances and associated tasks like paying taxes, doing paperwork, or paying bills. these tasks not only require language skills but also country-specifi c knowledge about legal regulations, the tax system, and terms used in the respective fi eld. thus, even migrant partners with good language fig. 3: ordinary least square regression models on the division of routine and non-routine housework by partners’ origin constellation w native/ m migrant w migrant/ m native migrant/migrant -.4 -.2 0 .2 .4 coefficient routine housework w native/ m migrant w migrant/ m native migrant/migrant -.4 -.2 0 .2 .4 coefficient non-routine housework bivariate + family characteristics + resource differences + gender ideology note: reference group native/native couples. depicted are regression coeffi cients from arithmetic mean indices and 95% confi dence intervals. model 2 (family characteristics) controls for marital status, relationship duration, and number of children in the household, model 3 (resource differences) additionally controls for woman’s and man’s employment status, age difference between woman and man, educational difference between woman and man. model 4 (gender ideology) additionally controls for gender traditionalism. models 2 to 4 control for respondents’ gender. see appendix tables a6 and a7 for the full regression results. source: freda v.2.0.0, w1r and w1a the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 385 skills might face greater insecurities than their native partners in dealing with these tasks. 4.2.2 couples’ regions of origin and the division of routine and non-routine housework differentiating between couples’ regions of origin, figure 4 summarises regression coeffi cients of couples’ regions of origin and the division of housework based on stepwise ols regression models including controls for family characteristics, resource differences, and gender ideology. we observe three main fi ndings. first, the division of housework differs based on migrants’ regions of origin. supporting expectation 3, couples from eastern europe and asia tend to divide both routine and non-routine tasks more gendertraditionally, while couples from western countries have a more equal division of housework compared to native couples. for example, couples with both partners from asia divide routine housework more traditionally by .20 points and nonroutine housework by -32 points than native couples (both p < .001). this supports previous research showing that migrants from countries with more unequal gender ideology tend to reproduce inequality in the division of housework (brini et al. 2022; steinbach 2009). particularly couples with male migrants from the traditional regions eastern europe and asia are less likely to perform routine tasks typically assigned to women. for instance, couples with a female native and a male eastern european show a more traditional division of routine housework by .16 points (p < .01) compared to native couples. the inclusion of control variables reveals that differences in family characteristics and gender role attitudes are associated with the more traditional division of labour among eastern european and asian couples, particularly if both partners are migrants.6 partly contrary to expectation 3, no differences are observed between couples with at least one partner from eastern europe or asia. in return, mixed couples with either women or men from western countries have an around .13 points more equal division of routine housework (p < .05), which aligns with expectation 3. however, we only observe a more equal division of non-routine housework when the woman migrated from a western country, which we will discuss next. secondly, we observe stronger differences in the division of routine tasks, whereas native status appears to defi ne the division of non-routine tasks in mixed couples. considering mixed couples with male natives and female partners from eastern europe or asia, we fi nd that they divide non-routine tasks in a signifi cantly more gender-traditional way, which aligns with gender-normative behaviour. this 6 although the control variables of differences in education and employment are statistically signifi cant across models, their inclusion does not considerably change the association between migration and housework. supplementary analyses measuring the employment status in more detail based on weekly working hours provide results similar to the main analyses, showing that both full-time and almost full-time employed women take over fewer routine tasks than nonemployed women (see appendix tables a10 and a11). • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak386 result is statistically signifi cant, with a difference of -.23 for eastern european couples and -.32 points for asian couples (both p < .001). mixed couples with female natives and male partners from eastern europe or asia however divide non-routine tasks similarly to native couples, suggesting that gender-traditional behaviour is weakened if the woman is the only native partner in the couple and has more country-specifi c knowledge. moreover, we fi nd that mixed couples with native women and men from western countries divide non-routine tasks more equally than native couples (difference = .40, p < .001), whereas the reverse is true for couples with native men and women from western countries (difference = -.28, p < .001). these fi ndings are robust even after controlling for other potential explanatory factors, implying that the migration status of both partners shapes the division of non-routine housework beyond gender and resource explanations. native status seems to supersede the relevance of gender ideology in shaping the division of non-routine tasks, which aligns with fi ndings of diehl et al. (2009), who observed a more egalitarian division of fig. 4: ordinary least square regression models on the division of routine and non-routine housework by couples’ regions of origin both eastern european w eastern european/ m native w native/ m eastern european both asian w asian/ m native w native/ m asian w western/ m native w native/ m western other -.4 -.2 0 .2 .4 .6 coefficient routine housework both eastern european w eastern european/ m native w native/ m eastern european both asian w asian/ m native w native/ m asian w western/ m native w native/ m western other -.4 -.2 0 .2 .4 .6 coefficient non-routine housework bivariate + family characteristics + resource differences + gender ideology note: reference group native/native couples. depicted are regression coeffi cients from arithmetic mean indices and 95% confi dence intervals. model 2 (family characteristics) controls for marital status, relationship duration, and number of children in the household, model 3 (resource differences) additionally controls for woman’s and man’s employment status, age difference between woman and man, educational difference between woman and man. model 4 (gender ideology) additionally controls for gender traditionalism. see appendix tables a8 and a9 for the full results. source: freda v.2.0.0, w1r and w1a the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 387 housework in turkish couples with second-generation women and fi rst-generation men. the role of gender ideology for the division of non-routine housework thus might be weakened among mixed couples from highly traditional regions, whereas it is less decisive among couples from more egalitarian regions. thirdly, our fi ndings indicate that cultural proximity shapes the division of nonroutine tasks among migrant couples (i.e., with two migrant partners). specifi cally, we observe that eastern european migrants divide non-routine tasks in a more gender-equal way than their asian counterparts (difference = -.24, p < .01). this result is unexpected, given expectation 3 that eastern european couples would exhibit a less traditional division of housework due to their comparably more egalitarian gender ideology. our fi ndings suggest that cultural proximity, rather than gender ideology, determines how gender predicts the division of non-routine tasks among migrant couples. when both partners are migrants from asian regions that are culturally distant from germany – for instance, due to differences in their historical, geographical, and religious background – gender is a stronger predictor of task division. by contrast, when both partners stem from eastern europe and might be more familiar with the destination country, both genders are more equally involved in non-routine tasks. 5 discussion whereas the division of housework as a central dimension of gender inequality among the native population in germany has received wide attention (e.g., hank/ steinbach 2021; leopold et al. 2018), research on the intersection of gender, migration, and housework in germany has remained sparse (exceptions are studies by diehl et al. 2009; fendel/kosyakova 2023; krieger/salikutluk 2023; steinbach 2009). the present study examined the division of housework within and between different-sex native and migrant couples, differentiating between the female and male partners’ migrant status and their regions of origin. looking at routine tasks typically done by women and non-routine tasks typically done by men, the study provides some new descriptive insights into the gender-specifi c division of housework among different native-migrant constellations within cohabitating couples. the study uses novel survey data from the german family demography panel study (freda suf, 2021). focussing on fi rst-generation migrants, the case numbers of the freda-ggs sample data still allow for a fi ne-grained analysis of the female and the male partners’ regions of origin. our fi ndings reveal a nuanced picture of the division of routine housework among migrant couples compared to natives. routine housework is generally divided more traditionally in migrant couples, with strong variation across regional groups. as freda allows us to take a closer look at couples’ regions of origin (following the coding by the un statistics division 2022), we assess heterogeneity among migrants. specifi cally, migrants from asia and eastern europe exhibit a more gender-traditional division of routine tasks, whereas western migrants divide routine tasks more equally than natives. these results extend prior research on italy • theresa nutz, lisa schmid, reinhard pollak388 (brini et al. 2022), suggesting that migrants in germany also divide routine tasks consistently with the gender ideologies prevalent in their countries of origin. the results of the allocation of routine household tasks seem to speak to both a resource-based explanation and a doing-gender explanation. partners in migrant, mixed, or native couples have different command of resources. likewise, they are socialised in different contexts or with some cultural heritage of the origin country, so doing gender seems to account for variations in couples’ division of housework as well. couples composed of two migrants tend to divide routine tasks more traditionally compared to native couples, which can be attributed to their more traditional gender role attitudes and their family composition. in mixed couples, by contrast, the division of routine housework is shaped by the gender of the migrant partner. particularly male migrant partners appear to undermine a more genderequal division of routine tasks and supersede the gender role attitudes of their native female partners. this may result from migrant men’s potential disadvantage in the couple in terms of economic resources and country-specifi c capital, increasing their efforts to avoid typically female housework tasks (brines 1993). this study fi nds that resource advantages are not used to avoid but rather to fulfi l more desirable non-routine tasks. in couples with migrant partners, men do more non-routine tasks in line with a gendered division of housework, while it is the native partner who focuses on non-routine tasks in mixed couples. supplementary analyses show that this is likely because natives have more country-specifi c knowledge that is required to manage the family fi nances as one dimension of non-routine tasks. beyond language skills, fi nancial tasks like paying bills or doing taxes also require knowledge about legal regulations or the tax system. thus, being native might be a resource itself in mixed couples that is used to fulfi l specifi c non-routine tasks. whereas the nativity status levels out gender in the division of non-routine tasks among migrants from western countries with prevalent egalitarian gender ideology, the infl uence of gender seems reduced in couples from more gender-traditional regional contexts of eastern europe and asia. complementing prior research on germany by fauser (2019) showing that a resource decline through unemployment leads to an increase in men’s time spent on male-typed tasks, we emphasise that beyond their desirability, the knowledge required for fulfi lling certain tasks should also be considered. the study underscores a largely unrecognised dimension of gender inequality in the division of housework in mixed couples, namely native women facing a double burden in this constellation. native women do both more routine and non-routine tasks by fulfi lling their female gender roles and additionally taking on tasks that require country-specifi c knowledge. native men, by contrast, only specialise in nonroutine tasks as their area of expertise that corresponds to their gender ideology. this work is not without limitations, which at the same time highlight promising avenues for future research with freda data. firstly, due to the novelty of the freda panel, our study relies on cross-sectional data and cannot yet address the division of housework with a longitudinal study design. therefore, our results should not be interpreted as causal and must be understood as purely descriptive. the results should especially be interpreted in light of the fi eldwork period during the division of routine and non-routine housework ... • 389 the covid-19 pandemic, which might have deepened gender differences in the division of housework (hank/steinbach 2021). as the freda panel proceeds with a biannual survey design, it will be possible to conduct panel data analyses in the future. further, we only include proxy information on the partner provided by the anchor person, which future research might complement by adding potentially contrasting information from partner interviews. secondly, the analytical sample of our study is restricted to fi rst-generation migrants and thus includes migrants at different stages in the acculturation process, comprising newly arrived migrants as well as migrants of child age. as prior research has shown that differences in gender ideology are largest between fi rst and second-generation immigrants (carriero 2021), we assume that the migrants in our sample comprising different ages of migration are comparable in their stage of acculturation. however, our design potentially conceals differences between second-generation migrants and natives, which are both subsumed in the reference category. thirdly, since the focus of this study is on the comparison of natives and migrants, differences between eastern and western germany have only been marginally addressed. the results of supplementary analyses still show a more traditional division of routine housework among couples in western germany, which already illustrates the scientifi c potential resulting from germany’s unique historical development. while we have only considered respondents’ place of residence, freda data also allow for the examination of the place of birth and place of residence during adolescence to assess the consequences of a socialisation in eastern or western germany. within couples, analysing mixed couples with an eastern and a western german partner constitutes a promising research avenue beyond the comparison of natives and migrants. overall, this study provides important insights into the intersection of gender, housework, and migration. it reveals stronger gender differences in the division of routine than non-routine tasks, particularly among couples with two migrant partners and those from eastern europe and asia. research is needed to explore the transferability of these results to childcare as the other main dimension of domestic labour. whereas non-routine childcare activities are commonly perceived as more joyful than routine care tasks, childcare might require more overall countryspecifi c knowledge than housework (steinbach/schulz 2022). this remains only one of many questions for future research that can be addressed with data from 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wall – do east and west germans still differ in their attitudes to female employment and the division of housework? in: european sociological review 37,5: 731-750. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 date of submission: 06.11.2022 date of acceptance: 01.06.2023 dr. theresa nutz (), dr. lisa schmid, prof. dr. reinhard pollak. gesis – leibniz institute for the social sciences. cologne/mannheim, germany. e-mail: theresa.nutz@gesis.org; lisa.schmid@gesis.org; reinhard.pollak@gesis.org url: https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/theresa.nutz https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/lisa.schmid https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/reinhard.pollak https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxab017 https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788975544.00033 https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783315579527 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv015 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0575-9 https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/ https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/ https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12602 https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 mailto:theresa.nutz@gesis.org mailto:lisa.schmid@gesis.org mailto:reinhard.pollak@gesis.org https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/theresa.nutz https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/lisa.schmid https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/reinhard.pollak published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data in the area of morbidity and mortality approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data in the area of morbidity and mortality* rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer abstract: we aim to give an overview of the state of the art of causal analysis of demographic issues related to morbidity and mortality. we will systematically introduce strategies to identify causal mechanisms, which are inherently linked to panel data from observational surveys and population registers. we will focus on health and mortality, and on the issues of unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causation between health and (1) retirement, (2) socio-economic status, and (3) characteristics of partnership and fertility history. the boundaries between demographic research on mortality and morbidity and the neighbouring disciplines epidemiology, public health and economy are often blurred. we will highlight the specifi c contribution of demography by reviewing methods used in the demographic literature. we classify these methods according to important criteria, such as a design-based versus model-based approach and control for unobserved confounders. we present examples from the literature for each of the methods and discuss the assumptions and the advantages and disadvantages of the methods for the identifi cation of causal effects in demographic morbidity and mortality research. the differentiation between methods that control for unobserved confounders and those that do not reveals a fundamental difference between (1) methods that try to emulate a randomised experiment and have higher internal validity and (2) methods that attempt to achieve conditional independence by including all relevant factors in the model. the latter usually have higher external validity and require more assumptions and prior knowledge of relevant factors and their relationships. it is impossible to provide a general defi nition of the sort of validity that is more important, as there is always a trade-off between generalising the results to the population of interest and avoiding biases in the estimation of causal effects in the sample. we hope that our review will aid researchers in identifying strategies to answer their specifi c research question. keywords: causality · health · mortality · panel data · methods comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 69-96 (date of release: 29.04.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-03 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-03en9 * this article belongs to a special issue on "identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data". • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer70 1 introduction researchers in population studies have long dealt with descriptive analyses (smith 2009) and ever more refi ned methods to use aggregate data for developing life tables, estimating vital rates and describing population dynamics. while causality has not been at the centre of demographic research (smith 2009) for quite some time, the demographic community exploring mortality and morbidity has embraced a variety of causal study designs and methods. with the greater availability of panel studies and registers, demographers also began to ask causal questions (engelhardt et al. 2009; moffi tt 2005) and took up questions and methods from other disciplines, such as economics or epidemiology, that have a long tradition in causal analysis. however, there is not one specifi c approach to causal analysis, neither in demography nor in the other disciplines. as moffi tt (2005: 92) pointed out: to conclude about causality “synthesis and reconciliation studies that are based on a variety of different approaches” are needed. in this article we take up this argument and discuss demographic studies with causal approaches in the fi eld of mortality and morbidity. first, we briefl y describe the most common methods and designs focused on causal relationships in the social sciences. we use the general term “treatment”, which may refl ect a binary treatment, such as retirement or divorce, but may also be a continuous treatment, such as socio-economic status (ses) or number of children. then we use the methods described as search terms in a structured literature review based on the leading demographic journal “demography”. the aim of such a review is to explore how prominent causal research features in a journal which is generally assumed to display the core research in the discipline of demography, and which methods and data were used to control for unobserved heterogeneity or selection. we have limited our search to journals that explicitly have “demography” or “population study” in their title, but we must bear in mind that demographers also frequently publish in epidemiological journals, as the boundaries between demographic research on health and mortality and neighbouring disciplines are often blurred. while it is conceivable that epidemiologic journals are preferred because of higher impact factors and faster peer review, it may also be that demographers fi nd their research appropriate for an epidemiologic rather than a demographic community when the issue is causality, and vice versa when methodological issues are involved. finally, we give an overview of causal approaches in three important topics of research on morbidity and mortality by describing studies about the dual relationship between health outcomes and (1) retirement, (2) ses, and (3) characteristics of partnership and fertility history. refl ecting on our choice of the three research areas in demography, it is worth mentioning that we preferred non-recursive causal research questions that deal with the direction of causality, i.e. the dual relation between health/mortality and some other factor where health selection plays a major role in addition to unobserved heterogeneity. we consider these to be very clear and very diffi cult causal problems, ideal to illustrate the use of different causal methods. at the same time, there are many demographic questions of recursive causality that are of no less importance, approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 71 e.g. the causal effect of a policy on health, where reverse causality is not an issue. in principle, the same fundamental problems apply to both types of causality, but in recursive causal questions the alternative to direct causality is rather indirect causality or no causality, while in non-recursive causality one tends to focus on the direction of causality, which does not mean that the alternatives "indirect causality" and "no causality" do not exist here either. we close with a discussion of our fi ndings. 2 causal methods in the social sciences 2.1 fixed effects (fe) and random effects models (re) both models assume individual specifi c effects and try to control for omitted variable bias due to unobserved heterogeneity. in this defi nition, “individual” can be (1) an individual or (2) a population segment, such as social group, it may be (3) kinships, mothers, grandmothers, twins, etc., or an aggregate group measure, e.g. in an (4) area or cohort analysis (moffi tt 2005, 2009). the random effects assumption is that the individual-specifi c unobserved effects are uncorrelated with the independent variables. the fi xed effects model does not need the random effects assumption. therefore, fi xed effects estimates are consistent even if the random effects assumption does not hold. random effects estimates will be biased in this situation. however, if the random effects assumption holds, both models will provide consistent estimates (if the “strict exogeneity assumption” holds), but the random effects estimator is more effi cient (brüderl/ludwig 2015; wooldridge 2002). the fi rst difference removes the time-invariant heterogeneity in the individuallevel fe model; in the case of areaor group-level fe models, this is done by subtracting the group average over time. the estimator is also called the withinvariance estimator and provides the average effect in the subgroup of the population that received the treatment. the latter often raises the criticism of extrapolation from the treatment group to the total population (cameron/trivedi 2005; nerlove 2005). it is common to combine fe and re in one model specifi cation with prior testing of whether the assumptions are fulfi lled (baltagi 2008; hsiao 2014). there is also the “between-within estimator” (also known as the mundlak estimator), which combines the advantages of random and fi xed effect estimators (schunck 2013). as far as we know, it has not yet been used in demography. 2.2 instrumental variables the instrumental variable approach addresses the problem of unobserved confounding due to selection; it is less concerned with the bias that individual unobservables introduce into the estimation process, but rather with the problem that the treatment effect might be biased by non-random selection into the treatment group. an instrumental variable needs to be mean-independent of the • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer72 unobservables directly infl uencing the outcome. in addition, it must be relevant, and thus be correlated with the probability of receiving the treatment (moffi tt 2009). these relationships may be specifi ed in two equations: fi rst the equation estimating the relationship between the instrumental variable and the treatment, and the second, estimating the relationship between the predicted treatment (from the fi rst equation) and the outcome. often these equations are combined into one, integrating the second equation into to fi rst, which is then called the reduced form. there are several types of instrumental variables and moffi tt (2005, 2009) distinguishes between 1. cross-sectional ecological variables, such as differences in policies, laws and social structure, which are independent of an individual’s own choice 2. population-segment fi xed effects instruments, where the segments are defi ned by social or demographic groups and the instruments pertain to groups, such as welfare reforms for certain income or demographic groups (e.g. single mothers) 3. siblings and related instruments, where the instrument is the deviation of each individuals’ treatment from the average group-specifi c treatment, e.g. one sibling has children, the other does not. 4. natural experiments, which are often defi ned as a residual category of instruments which appear to be random, such as the month of birth, the birth of (naturally conceived) twins, etc. combining the instrumental variable approach with fe panel analysis is considered the superior approach to simultaneously control for selection and for estimation bias by individual unobserved heterogeneity (moffi tt 2009). another prominent type of instrumental variable approach is mendelian randomisation, where the instrument is genes (mills et al. 2020). 2.3 regression discontinuity regression discontinuity can be used when individuals or other units are assigned to a programme or policy depending on a cut-off point of a continuous measure, e.g. eligibility according to age (ludwig/miller 2007). while other sources of external variation are (unexpected) historical events, in regression discontinuity designs, it is a known (deterministic or probabilistic, i.e. “fuzzy”) institutional rule to assign or withhold treatment that creates the relevant variation (gangl 2010); see imbens and lemieux (2008) for a review. the basic idea is that –depending on the relationship between the assignment variable and the outcome – the exposure at the cut-off point is as good as random. thus, a comparison of the outcome of those just below and just above the cut-off point provides an estimate of the effect of the programme or policy (hu et al. 2017). approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 73 2.4 difference-in-differences difference-in-differences is similar to regression discontinuity, but improves it by adding a control group. this method compares the change in the outcome for an exposed group before and after an event (e.g. the implementation of a policy) to the change in the outcome over the same time period for a non-exposed group (athey/imbens 2006; jones/rice 2011). the two groups may have different levels of the outcome before the policy, thus confounding by unobserved time-constant factors that differ between the exposed and unexposed is taken into account (hu et al. 2017). under the assumption that both groups follow a common trend, the difference in the change in the outcome between the exposed and non-exposed groups can be interpreted as an effect of the event or the policy (harper et al. 2014). 2.5 interrupted time series where time series data are available and there is a clear-cut event at a specifi c point in time, interrupted time series analysis can be used to estimate the effect of this event. this event can be a shock to individuals or change in an institution, programme or policy. repeated-measures logistic regression analysis can be used to detect any sudden change in the level of the outcome (in regression terms: a change of intercept) or a more sustained change in the trend of the outcome (a change of slope) around the time of the event. the analysis estimates the causal effect by comparing the outcomes before and after the event. interrupted time series is different from a difference-in-differences analysis because it does not use a control group. when randomised controlled trials are not feasible, a time series design is an alternative to estimate the effect of events (fretheim et al. 2013) because it controls for prior trends before the event and studies the dynamics of change afterwards (burdorf 2012; taljaard et al. 2014; wagner et al. 2002). however, it is problematic in situations with lagged-effects or other events affecting the outcome at the same time. 2.6 growth curve model the main focus of a (latent) growth curve model (gc) is on changes or development over time. this requires the subjects to be followed over time with repeated measures of each variable of interest. the goal of this model is to make inferences about the features of growth trajectories, i.e. the initial levels of outcome measures and their rate of change. in gcs, the changes are represented by growth parameters or trajectories (which are specifi ed as latent variables): the intercept, the initial value of the outcome measure, and the slope, which indicates how much the curve grows or the rate of outcome changes over time (pakpahan et al. 2015). in terms of causal analysis, the model can estimate the causal effect of the initial level on the rate of change. gcs assume that the subject’s growth trajectories vary randomly around the overall mean of growth trajectories (bollen/curran 2006; wang/wang 2012). • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer74 2.7 propensity scores the propensity score was defi ned by rosenbaum and rubin (1983) to be the probability of treatment assignment conditional on observed baseline covariates. in randomised experiments, the true propensity score is known and is defi ned by the study design. in observational studies, the true propensity score is not, in general, known. however, it can be estimated using the study data. in practice, the propensity score is most often estimated using a logistic regression model in which treatment status is regressed on observed baseline characteristics. the estimated propensity score is the predicted probability of treatment derived from the fi tted regression model and conditional on the propensity score; the distribution of observed baseline covariates will be similar between treated and untreated subjects. propensity scores control for observable characteristics at baseline in the hope that they also control for correlated unobservable characteristics. four different propensity score methods are used to remove the effects of confounding when estimating the effects of treatment on outcomes 1. propensity score matching forms matched sets of treated and untreated subjects who share a similar value of the propensity score (rosenbaum/ rubin 1983) and is used to estimate the average treatment effect among the treated (att) (imbens 2004). 2. stratifi cation by the propensity score groups individuals into mutually exclusive subsets based on their estimated propensity score, often into fi ve equal-size groups using the quintiles of the estimated propensity score. within each stratum, the effect of treatment on outcomes can be estimated and, using meta-analysis, the mean treatment-effect for the study population can be estimated. 3. inverse probability of treatment weighting (iptw) using the propensity score uses weights based on the propensity score to create a synthetic sample in which the distribution of measured baseline covariates is independent of treatment assignment (morgan/todd 2008). 4. covariate adjustment using the propensity score regresses the outcome variable on an indicator variable denoting treatment status and the estimated propensity score. more and more often, propensity scores are being estimated using machine learning methods (brand et al. 2019). 2.8 structural equations a structural equation model (sem) is a multivariate regression model that extends standard regression by allowing multiple outcomes, known as “endogenous” variables and unobserved “latent” variables. for each endogenous variable there is a corresponding regression equation, which can depend on other endogenous variables, as well as on exogenous variables. exogenous variables are the predictor variables that are not determined by any other variable in the model. a sem approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 75 combines the approach of confi rmatory factor analysis for the measurement model and path analysis for the structural model. the measurement model describes how well the observed indicator variables measure the underlying latent variable, whereas the structural model describes the causal relationship among the variables. this combination is the core advantage of sem: together, they can simultaneously take into account random measurement errors, the multiple dependent variables of the model, and estimate direct, indirect and total effects (acock 2013; bollen 1989; wang/wang 2012). 2.9 g-computation similar to structural equations, g-computation is a new and fl exible approach to causal analysis that is especially useful for mediation analysis. the parametric g-formula, originally developed by biostatisticians (robins/hernán 2009), has recently been used in demographic studies on interdependent life course processes with time-varying confounding (bijlsma/wilson 2020). the method fi rst runs multivariable regression models to estimate interrelationships between variables, based on the assumptions of a specifi ed directed acyclic graph (dag). then it uses these fi tted regression models to perform a series of micro-simulations and compare counterfactual scenarios to estimate causal effects. the g-formula approach assumes that all relevant variables are observed. but it is possible to explore the risk of unmeasured confounding by sensitivity analyses (carnegie et al. 2016; lin et al. 2017; vanderweele 2015). the g-formula approach can be summarised as a series of three analytical phases (bijlsma/wilson 2020): 1. causal diagram: a dag is created to describe the causal interrelationships to be studied. it describes the assumed relationships between the observed variables, including time-varying effects, confounders, mediators and outcomes. 2. estimation: based on the dag, a series of multivariable regression models are estimated using observed data. these models can take any parametric (functional) form, and the number of models will depend on the number of variables involved. 3. simulation: with the estimated parameters from the models, a series of causal processes can be simulated. 3 causal methods used in demographic research published in the journal “demography” we searched the journal “demography” using the online search tool provided by the publisher springer. publications from 2010 until 13 may 2020 were included and the following search was applied ((“unobserved heterogeneity” or “random effects” or “regression discontinuity” or “interrupted time series” or “g-computation” or “structural equation” or “growth curves” or “instrumental variables“ or “propensity score” or “difference-in-differences” or “fi xed effects”) and ("health" or "morbidity" or "mortality" or "death") and ("panel" or "longitudinal")). after the screening of titles and method sections, this search produced 37 publications (table 1). the most common causal method was fi xed effects models • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer76 ta b . 1 : r es ul t o f t he s tr uc tu re d li te ra tu re r ev ie w in t he jo ur na l “ d em o g ra p hy ” a u th o r ye ar t it le m et ho d s ju lie a . p hi lli p s 20 12 fa ct o rs a ss o ci at ed w it h te m p o ra l a n d s p at ia l p at te rn s in s ui ci d e fe r at es a cr o ss u .s . s ta te s t h o m as p . v ar ta ni an ; li n d a h o u se r 20 12 t h e e ff ec ts o f c hi ld h o o d s n a p u se a n d n ei g hb o rh o o d c o n d it io n s fe o n a d ul t b o d y m as s in d ex r ya n k . m as te rs 20 12 u n cr o ss in g th e u .s . b la ck -w hi te m o rt al it y c ro ss o ve r: t h e r o le o f fe c o h o rt f o rc es in l if e c o ur se m o rt al it y r is k to d d e . e ld er 20 13 t h e p re d ic ti ve v al id it y o f s ub je ct iv e m o rt al it y e xp ec ta tio n s: fe e vi d en ce f ro m t h e h ea lt h an d r et ir em en t s tu d y e liz ab et h n au m an e t a l. 20 15 r ur al -t o -u rb an m ig ra tio n an d c h an g es in h ea lt h a m o ng y o un g fe a d ul ts in t h ai la nd k ie ro n b ar cl ay ; m ar tin k o lk 20 15 b ir th o rd er a n d m o rt al it y: a p o p ul at io n -b as ed c o h o rt s tu d y fe c h ar le s l. b au m 20 17 t h e e ff ec ts o f c o lle g e o n w ei g h t: e xa m in in g th e 'f re sh m an 1 5' fe m yt h an d o th er e ff ec ts o f c o lle g e o ve r th e li fe c yc le o se a g iu n te lla 20 16 a ss im ila tio n an d h ea lt h: e vi d en ce f ro m l in ke d b ir th r ec o rd s o f fe s ec o n d an d t hi rd -g en er at io n h is p an ic s k ie ro n j. b ar cl ay ; m ar tin k o lk 20 18 b ir th in te rv al s an d h ea lt h in a d ul th o o d: a c o m p ar is o n o f s ib lin g s fe u si ng s w ed is h r eg is te r d at a r o ss m ac m ill an e t a l. 20 18 g en d er a n d t h e p o lit ic s o f d ea th : fe m al e r ep re se n ta tio n, fe p o lit ic al a n d d ev el o p m en ta l c o n te xt , a n d p o p ul at io n h ea lt h in a c ro ss -n at io na l p an el e m m a z an g; c am er o n c am p b el l 20 18 m al es ' l at er -l if e m o rt al it y c o n se q ue n ce s o f c o re si d en ce w it h fe p at er n al g ra n d p ar en ts : e vi d en ce f ro m n o rt h ea st c hi n a, 1 78 919 09 t h o m as l ai d le y et a l. 20 19 n ew e vi d en ce o f s ki n c o lo r b ia s an d h ea lt h o u tc o m es u si ng fe s ib lin g d if fe re n ce m o d el s: a r es ea rc h n o te p et te r lu n d b o rg e t a l. 20 16 t h e e ff ec t o f s ch o o lin g o n m o rt al it y: n ew e vi d en ce f ro m 5 0, 00 0 fe s w ed is h tw in s m ax b rü ni ng ; jo ss el in t hu ill ie z 20 19 m o rt al it y an d m ac ro ec o n o m ic c o n d it io n s: w h at c an w e le ar n fe fr o m f ra n ce ? jo n as h el g er tz ; to m m y b en g ts so n 20 19 t h e lo ng -l as tin g in fl u en za : t h e im p ac t o f f et al s tr es s d ur in g th e fe 19 18 in fl u en za p an d em ic o n s o ci o ec o n o m ic a tt ai nm en t a n d h ea lt h in s w ed en , 1 96 820 12 ta b ea b u ch er -k o en en e t a l. 20 20 d o ub le t ro ub le : t h e b ur d en o f c hi ld -r ea ri ng a n d w o rk in g o n fe m at er n al m o rt al it y approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 77 ta b . 1 : c o n tin ua tio n a u th o r ye ar t it le m et ho d s r ya n d . e d w ar d s 20 18 if m y b lo o d p re ss ur e is h ig h, d o i ta ke it t o h ea rt ? b eh av io ra l fe im p ac ts o f b io m ar ke r c o lle ct io n in t h e h ea lt h an d r et ir em en t s tu d y je re r . b eh rm an ; s u sa n w . p ar ke r 20 13 is h ea lt h o f t h e a g in g im p ro ve d b y c o n d it io n al c as h tr an sf er fe , d -d , p s p ro g ra m s? e vi d en ce f ro m m ex ic o je nn if er c ap u to e t a l. 20 20 m id lif e w o rk a n d w o m en 's l o ng -t er m h ea lt h an d m o rt al it y fe , g c d av id f ri sv o ld ; e zr a g o lb er st ei n 20 13 t h e e ff ec t o f s ch o o l q u al it y o n b la ck -w hi te h ea lt h d if fe re n ce s: fe , i v e vi d en ce f ro m s eg re g at ed s o u th er n s ch o o ls k en n et h a . c o u ch e t a l. 20 15 t h e lo ng -t er m h ea lt h im p lic at io n s o f m ar it al d is ru p tio n: d iv o rc e, fe , p s w o rk l im it s, a n d s o ci al s ec ur it y d is ab ili ty b en efi t s a m o ng m en a n a lu ci a a b el ia n sk y; h o lg er s tr ul ik 20 18 h o w w e fa ll a p ar t: s im ila ri tie s o f h um an a g in g in 1 0 e ur o p ea n fe , r e c o un tr ie s ili an a v. k o hl er e t a l. 20 17 t h e d em o g ra p hy o f m en ta l h ea lt h a m o ng m at ur e a d ul ts in a l o w fe , r e , g c in co m e, h ig h -h iv -p re va le n ce c o n te xt h ui z h en g et a l. 20 11 h et er o g en ei ty in t h e s tr eh le rm ild va n g en er al t h eo ry o f m o rt al it y r e an d a g in g r o ss m . s to lz en b er g 20 11 d o n o t g o g en tl e in to t h at g o o d n ig h t: t h e e ff ec t o f r et ir em en t iv o n s ub se q ue n t m o rt al it y o f u .s . s up re m e c o ur t j u st ic es r o ss m . s to lz en b er g; j am es l in d g re n 20 10 r et ir em en t a n d d ea th in o ffi c e o f u .s . s up re m e c o ur t j u st ic es iv v o lh a la zu ka 20 19 e ar ly -l if e a ss et s in o ld es to ld a g e: e vi d en ce f ro m p ri m ar y c ar e d -d r ef o rm in e ar ly t w en tie th c en tu ry s w ed en s u sa n w . p ar ke r et a l. 20 18 h ea lt h in su ra n ce a n d t h e a g in g: e vi d en ce f ro m t h e s eg ur o p o p ul ar d -d p ro g ra m in m ex ic o n ic o le g ue rt zg en ; k ar st en h an k 20 18 m at er ni ty l ea ve a n d m o th er s' l o ng -t er m s ic kn es s a b se n ce : d -d e vi d en ce f ro m w es t g er m an y m ic h al e ng el m an ; h ei d e ja ck so n 20 19 g ra d u al c h an g e, h o m eo st as is , a n d p un ct u at ed e q ui lib ri um , g c r ec o n si d er in g p at te rn s o f h ea lt h in l at er l if e m ar tin o ´f la h er ty e t a l. 20 16 t h e fa m ily l if e c o ur se a n d h ea lt h: p ar tn er sh ip , f er til it y h is to ri es , g c an d l at er -l if e p hy si ca l h ea lt h tr aj ec to ri es in a u st ra lia fe in ia n c h en e t a l. 20 15 fo r b et te r o r w o rs e: t h e h ea lt h im p lic at io n s o f m ar ri ag e s ep ar at io n g c d ue t o m ig ra tio n in r ur al c hi n a n ic h o la s j. b is h o p e t a l. 20 16 e st im at in g th e c o -d ev el o p m en t o f c o g ni ti ve d ec lin e an d p hy si ca l g c m o b ili ty l im it at io n s in o ld er u .s . a d ul ts • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer78 ta b . 1 : c o n tin ua tio n a u th o r ye ar t it le m et ho d s s te ve n a . h aa s et a l. 20 17 t h e li fe c o ur se , c o h o rt d yn am ic s, a n d in te rn at io n al d if fe re n ce s in g c a g in g tr aj ec to ri es li liy a le o p o ld 20 19 h ea lt h m ea su re m en t a n d h ea lt h in eq u al it y o ve r th e li fe c o ur se : g c a c o m p ar is o n o f s el fra te d h ea lt h, s f12 , a n d g ri p s tr en g th r an d al l k uh n et a l. 20 11 t h e e ff ec ts o f c hi ld re n 's m ig ra tio n o n e ld er ly k in 's h ea lt h: p s a c o un te rf ac tu al a p p ro ac h je re m y p ai s 20 14 c um ul at iv e s tr u ct ur al d is ad va n ta g e an d r ac ia l h ea lt h d is p ar it ie s: lc a t h e p at hw ay s o f c hi ld h o o d s o ci o ec o n o m ic in fl u en ce fe : fi x ed e ff ec t m o d el s, r e : ra nd o m e ff ec t m o d el s, iv : in st ru m en ta l v ar ia b le , d -d : d iff er en ce -in -d iff er en ce , g c : gr o w th c ur ve m o d el s, p s : p ro p en si ty s co re . w e co ns id er l c a (l at en t c la ss a na ly si s) to b e si m ila r to g c . approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 79 (23) with individual fe, but also kinship fe (mothers, grandmothers, siblings, twins) and region/country/cohort fe. the latter were most often used with aggregate data and thus did not use individual panel data. fe models were sometimes combined with other design features, such as random effects (re), the difference-in-differences approach, propensity score matching/regression, or growth curve models. both register data and panel data were used, and panel and registers were often linked to accommodate the various designs. the second most common method was (latent) growth curve models (9), followed by difference-in-differences designs (4), instrumental variables (3), propensity scores (3), and random effects models (3). a second search in the journal “population studies” confi rmed the overall picture with a strong reliance on fe models with sibling designs based on register data (not shown). 4 topic 1: the dual relationship between retirement and health the transition to retirement is an important step in the life course and an important study subject in demography. this is because retirement policies are a widely used instrument to address demographic change and the harmonisation of labour market demands, individual preferences, health development and public fi nances is a core problem of public policy. the empirical analysis of the effects between health and retirement is complex because the retirement process depends on health, and retirement has an effect on subsequent health (oksanen/virtanen 2012; radó/boissonneault 2018). it is relatively straightforward to hypothesise and to fi nd empirical evidence that poor health leads to earlier retirement (van rijn et al. 2014). thus, we concentrate on the question as to how retirement affects health, which is the more complicated question, because health is a confounder that infl uences both the retirement transition and health after retirement. available theory suggests two possible effects: on the one hand, leaving an active role on the labour market can lead to a form of crisis (atchley 1975); on the other hand, retirement can be a relief from work-related burdens and stress (westerlund et al. 2009). given these theoretical assumptions it is not surprising that the related empirical fi ndings are inconsistent: some studies show a positive infl uence of retirement on health (eibich 2015; insler 2014; jokela et al. 2010; westerlund et al. 2009), while others fi nd a negative effect (e.g. behncke 2012; stenholm et al. 2014). a systematic review (shim et al. 2013) shows a positive correlation between retirement and mortality, but points out that the problem of selection (i.e. poor health not only being a consequence but also a cause of retirement) is only insuffi ciently dealt with. two other systematic reviews suggest that the effect of health can be different between occupational status groups (effect heterogeneity) (schaap et al. 2018; van der heide et al. 2013). in the following we describe the four main causal methods that have been applied to longitudinal data to explore the effect of retirement on health. a) fixed effects models (fe): as mentioned above, fe models use multiple measurements per individual to take account of unobserved constant • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer80 confounders. however, the main confounder in our setting is prior health infl uencing both retirement and health after retirement, and this confounder might not be constant and not be accounted for by fe. using data from the health and retirement study (hrs) calvo et al. (2013) combine fi xed and random effects with an instrumental variable approach and fi nd that early retirements decrease health. b) several studies used the statutory retirement age as an instrumental variable (iv) that infl uences retirement without affecting health. for example, hessel (2016) uses data from the european union statistics of income and living conditions (eu-silc) and fi nds that retirement improves health. hanemann (2017) uses data from hrs, the english longitudinal study of ageing (elsa) and the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share), and fi nds that retirement improves physical health and deteriorates cognitive health. a potential problem with this method is that it identifi es the local average treatment effect (late), i.e. the effect of retirement in the population for which the instrument applies. in this case, it is the population that retires because the statutory retirement age is reached. this effect can differ from the overall effect of retirement for all people who retire. there are indications that studies using iv tend to fi nd positive health effects of retirement, while studies that control for confounding factors fi nd negative effects (behncke 2012). c) the regression discontinuity design is similar to the iv approach in that it also uses the statutory retirement age, e.g. different age cut-offs in different countries. coe and zamarro (2011) use share and eibich (2015) uses data from the german socio-economic panel (soep). both fi nd that retirement improves health. giesecke (2019) uses administrative data from the german federal pension insurance and fi nds substantial effect heterogeneity between people with different pension types and different life time earnings; poorer people experience a mortality decrease while richer people a mortality increase. also with this method, it is possible that only local causal effects are measured (among those who are just below and above the age threshold) that may not be generalisable to the whole population. d) finally, it is possible to study the effects of retirement on health with an interrupted time series analysis that compares the health trend before and after retirement. schuring et al. (2015) study health trends before and after transitions into early retirement with data from the european community household panel (echp). they conclude that lower educated people are more likely selected into early retirement because of poor health, while higher educated people who retire early experience a health decline after retirement. 5 topic 2: the dual relationship between socio-economic status (ses) and health the well-known association between ses and health can be explained by two opposed causal mechanisms: social causation, by which ses infl uences health, and health selection, by which health infl uences ses (goldman 2001). for a complete account of causal models explaining health inequalities, one needs to add indirect selection, which means that a common underlying factor, such as genes, cognitive approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 81 ability, family factors, personality, or general life-style orientations, infl uences both ses and health, so that there is no causal effect between ses and health. it is important to note that ses in itself is a highly debated concept. we use it here as a simplifying label for all studies that look at the relation between any aspect of ses (the most important being education, occupation and income) and health. but it is an open question whether there is a latent variable, such as the "socio-economic status" of a person, which can be measured and approximated by education, occupation or income as indicators, or whether ses is too imprecise and meaningful (causal) relationships can only be established between specifi c resources, such as education, income, or those related to occupational status or occupational class. on the one hand, specifi c variables (e.g. income) more convincingly fulfi l the requirement that any causal interpretation should be based on theoretical knowledge of the pathways and mechanisms. on the other hand, such an analytical approach to social variables can become unrealistic because social variables do not work in isolation. in this regard, it is possible to study the effect of lottery wins on health (lindahl 2005): while this isolated and randomised effect of income is closer to the causal "rules" of an experiment, the assumption is that it is far different from the mechanisms that create the health gradient between income groups in the general population. while the association between ses and health is generally accepted, and probably also the assumption that all three models are real to some extent (smith 1999), which of them actually contributes most to the social gradient in health is highly debated (kröger et al. 2015). the highest level of agreement can probably be reached for the effect of education on health, partly because it has been studied with a variety of approaches, such as natural experiments on school reforms or compulsory schooling law (see below) and twin studies (madsen et al. 2010). however, for the association between income and health there is still disagreement on the direction of causation between different studies and disciplines. while countless studies by social epidemiologists and medical sociologists implicitly or explicitly assume that income has an effect on health, e.g. galama and van kippersluis (2018) believe that the losses of income and wealth as a consequence of poor health is the most dominant causal relation between health and dimensions of ses. in the following we present a selection of approaches, studies and the respective results which, we believe, have contributed to this ongoing discussion. they also illustrate the methods that can be used for this and similar questions exploiting panel data for causal analysis. a) two examples shall be presented with fi xed effects models: fi rst, foverskov and holm (2016) is one of the few studies that address all three causal models in the same study. they analyse the british household panel survey and fi nd no support for social causation, and limited support for health selection. their conclusion is that indirect selection may be the most important mechanism. this conclusion is questionable because persons aged 30 to 60 are observed for 5 years and everything before age 30 is defi ned as a common background factor. second, a quite different application of a fi xed effects model to a natural experiment was done by frijters et al. (2005), who only look at a causal effect • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer82 of changes in income on health after german reunifi cation using the german socio-economic panel. they fi nd a statistically signifi cant but small effect. b) in the same vein as the study above, and again refl ecting the great interest of economists in this question, a large number of studies analyse the effects between material wealth and health with instrumental variables. it is interesting to see how in the following three studies sources of external variation have been exploited to create causal evidence. michaud and soest (2008) use inheritances and fi nd no evidence that wealth affects health, but strong evidence of effects from both spouses’ health on household wealth in the health and retirement study. lindahl (2005) uses the swedish level of living survey and lottery prizes as an exogenous source of variation in income and fi nds causal effects from income to health. finally, in several publications based on the health and retirement study and the panel study of income dynamics, smith (e.g. 2004) uses stock market changes as an instrument for changes in income and concludes that income as such has no effect on health, but the socio-economic status does, namely through education. as conceded by smith himself, it is questionable whether the instrument used in his study or by the other authors above represent the causal effects of material wealth in the general population. c) with regard to this effect of education on health, many studies have used school reforms as natural experiments and regression discontinuity analysis. lleras-muney (2005) fi nds a strong positive effect of education with us census data, and also kippersluis (2010) confi rms such an effect with linked survey and register data from the netherlands. conversely, albouy and lequien (2009) do not fi nd such effect in french longitudinal data (echantillon démographique permanent). in a systematic review and meta-analysis of this approach, gathmann et al. (2015) fi nd that more education yields small mortality reductions, but only for men. while this method may reveal the causal effect in a specifi c historical setting, this effect may not be the same as the one behind the social gradients in health in contemporary societies. d) growth curve models have also been used to study the interplay between the process of health development and the process of development of occupation and income during the life course. for example, halleröd and gustafsson (2011) analysed data from the swedish survey of living conditions and fi nd support for both social causation and health selection. it can be problematic to use the same variable across a longer period in the life course (which is necessary for this method), both for pragmatic reasons of availability and comparability and for theoretical reasons of the meaning of a variable (e.g. occupational status) in different ages. e) structural equation models have been applied in several ways to study the relationship between ses and health, often over long periods in the life course. we mention here, fi rst, studies that use this method to test how different aspects of ses and health in different ages directly and indirectly infl uence a health outcome later in life (e.g. chandola et al. 2006 based on the uk national child development study; pakpahan et al. 2017 based on the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe). in these models, aspects of all three causal mechanisms described above can be found, but are not directly compared. second, there are studies explicitly aimed at a quantitative comparison of social causation versus health selection as opposed causal mechanisms over longer parts of the life course. examples of such studies are warren (2009) and hoffmann et al. (2018) who both fi nd stronger evidence for social causation than for health selection; warren with the wisconsin longitudinal approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 83 study and hoffmann with the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe. in a related paper hoffmann et al. (2019) use this framework to compare the effects between health and education, occupation, and income (see discussion about ses above). a crucial and untestable assumption of this approach is that all relevant confounders are taken into account so that treatment assignment and outcome are conditionally independent. there are more methods within the wide defi nition of structural equation models that have been used to study effects between ses and health, e.g. path analysis (palloni et al. 2009) and g-computation (bijlsma et al. 2017). finally, it is worth mentioning that also other methods from our overview above have been used for causal analysis between ses and health, e.g. propensity score matching, often combined with difference-in-differences, but these are more focused on the effect of policies on an sesor health-related outcome. 6 topic 3: the dual relationship between partnership, fertility history, and health/mortality the relationship between characteristics of family formation and health has been a long-standing issue in demography. following the recent review by hank and steinbach (2018) we differentiate between the aspects of partnership and fertility history; both are confronted with the underlying question as to whether certain characteristics of these biographies have protective or detrimental effects on laterlife health, or whether any empirical relations are caused by selection forces into or out of partnership, and parenthood. while these two aspects are often explored separately, more frequently there are also attempts to jointly model their effects on health (see below, e.g. o’flaherty et al. 2016). 6.1 partnership over a long period, the difference in health between single, married, divorced and widowed individuals was at the centre of research. it has been repeatedly suggested that marriage has a protective effect on health due to economic and social benefi ts, as well as benefi cial lifestyle choices particularly among men. as hank and steinbach, however, point out in their review, selection into marriage may be related to better health in the fi rst place, by affecting an individual’s chance of getting married. on the other hand, marital disruption and divorce appears to have detrimental effects both in the short and long-term, even after remarriage. and the effect of divorce differs according to marriage satisfaction and by gender. women’s health appears to suffer more after divorce than men’s (monden/uunk 2013). a) the following example demonstrates how a fi xed effects model, to control for unobserved confounding, together with propensity score matching, to control for observed confounding, was used to explore the effect of divorce on men’s health. using the survey of income and program participation (sipp) panel study matched to us social security administrative data, couch et al. (2015) • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer84 followed continuously married men for 20 years and compared them with their counterparts experiencing divorce. in addition, they fi ltered the data for previous health issues to help control for health selection into divorce and fi nd that among those not re-marrying, divorce increases men’s longterm probability of both self-reported work limitations and federal disability benefi t receipt. they attribute the negative health impact to the lack of marital resources. b) the following two studies used growth curve models to explore marriage separation in the context of chinese migration, and of marriage disruption in australia. based on the “china health and nutrition survey”, chen et al. (2015) investigated health trajectories of left-behind rural individuals whose spouses migrated for work. their linear growth curve models take into account that individuals start with different levels of self-rated physical health and that each individual could experience a different rate of change across age dependent on their marital status and the residence of the spouse. the time varying-covariates allow that each individual is taken as its own control to account for withinand between-individual unobserved heterogeneity. their results point towards a clear health disadvantage of married individuals whose spouses are absent compared with those whose spouses are living in the same household. longer absence led to worse health and health defi cits were stronger for men than women. the second article incorporates the whole family life cycle from age 18 to 50 exploring both fertility and partnership histories (o’flaherty et al. 2016). using the household, income and labour dynamics in australia (hilda) survey they used a twofold analysis strategy. first, applying sequence analysis, they grouped individuals with similar fertility and partnership histories and used this categorisation as a primary independent variable for the second stage, where they applied growth curve models to establish the relationship with later-life health. they found gendered results with a stronger link of long-term family trajectories and health among men than women. early or no family formation, marital disruption or high fertility was particularly harmful for men, and high fertility levels with a disrupted marital biography for women. 6.2 fertility history turning to the second aspect, hank and steinbach (2018) in their review provided an extensive overview of the different fertility characteristics, such as parity, childlessness, birth spacing/intervals etc., that have been explored. they discussed both biological and social factors which may cause the relationship between (late) life health and fertility characteristics among both genders, stressing the lack of knowledge about the relative importance of these factors. the biological factors include diseases such as breast cancer, as well as other cancers of the female reproductive system, which were shown to be associated with pregnancy, childbirth and lactation; among the social factors, differences in socio-economic status, social relationships, and health behaviours across the life-course have been suggested. at the same time, health selection into certain fertility characteristics may play an important role, producing biased estimates if not accounted for (doblhammer/ oeppen 2003). a) fixed effects siblings design approaches are common with register data due to the availability of family links in the data and large sample sizes. einiö et al. approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 85 (2016) applied such a design, which is described in more detail below, when addressing the research by barclay and kolk (2015, 2018), and explored the relationship between the number of children and later-life mortality among finns. they confi rmed earlier fi ndings, which did not use causal modelling techniques, that all-cause mortality relative to those with two children is highest among childless women followed by women with one child and could also extend these fi ndings to men. they concluded that living conditions in adulthood contributed to the association between the number of children and mortality to a greater extent than childhood background, and chronic conditions contributed to the excess mortality of the childless, probably revealing health selection into childlessness. these designs suffer from the problem of extrapolation because they can only use sibships and thus exclude childless individuals and those with one child only. in addition, they need heterogeneity in the outcome, thus sibships with all individuals still alive are also excluded. the results of the study, however, were reproducible for the total population without a sibling design. when studying mortality by cause of death, sample size issues are common in sibling designs despite the large number of observations in register studies. although the sibling comparison design with sibling fi xed effects analysis is very common in demography, concerns about the causal interpretation of the fi ndings have been raised. as far as we know, these concerns have not been widely acknowledged in demography: e.g. problems related to precision and bias of estimates (gilman/loucks 2014), the violation of the assumption that the exposure and outcome of an individual do not affect the exposure and outcome of his/her siblings ("sibling carryover") (sjölander et al. 2016), or overcontrolling by the indiscriminate control for confounders, mediators and colliders (sjölander/ zetterqvist 2017). b) recent studies extended the topic to siblings and explored the effect of sibship size, birth order, and birth intervals between siblings on their later life health. using the swedish multigenerational population register data, barclay and kolk (2015) applied fi xed-effect discrete-time survival analysis using a within-family comparison of siblings with the same biological mother–father pairing. the fi xed effects were applied at the level of siblings to adjust for all factors that remained constant within the sibling group (e.g. sibling size) as well as factors diffi cult to observe and measure, such as shared socioeconomic background and general parenting style. exploiting within-family variation in mortality by cause of death, they showed that the relative effect of birth order was greater among sisters than among brothers, particularly for mortality attributable to cancers of the respiratory system and to external causes. social pathways only mediated the relationship between birth order and mortality risk in adulthood to a limited degree. in a second article with the swedish multi-generational register data linked to the swedish military conscription register and applying the same modelling strategy, barclay and kolk (2018) concluded that birth intervals had little effect on long-term health outcomes of brothers. c) to explore the relationship between the level and rate of change in cognitive functioning and associations with fertility history, read and grundy (2017) used elsa and applied growth curve models with random effects to capture individual differences, and fi xed effects to estimate the average growth of the entire sample. the results showed associations between the number and timing of births and cognitive functioning in older age, in particular adverse effects of high parity, early childbearing and low parity which appeared to refl ect underlying socio-economic and health disparities. • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer86 d) structural equation models have been applied to explore fertility trajectories and later-life depression in england (grundy et al. 2020). using the english longitudinal study of ageing (elsa), they applied path analysis within the structural equation framework to investigate direct and indirect effects. early parenthood, experience of a short birth interval, and high parity (four or more children) appeared to be linked to depressive symptoms in later life. these factors mainly worked indirectly, mediated by other life course experiences related to ses, partnership and lifestyle characteristics. 7 discussion our empirical account of causal methods applied to longitudinal observational data in the fi eld of demography rests on two parts: fi rst, we searched the causal methods used in the studies in the leading demographic journal “demography” using specifi c keywords. fixed effects models accounting for individual or family invariant characteristics in combination with other methods were the leading approach, followed by growth curve models. these methods were applied to both panel and register data, sometimes the two were linked but also fe area/cohort models with aggregate trend data were used. second, we used our own knowledge and experience to analyse three important areas of research in demography and described the contributions of prominent methods to the evidence base in these fi elds and to the concrete research questions. the fi rst approach is more systematic and superfi cial, while the second is admittedly more arbitrary, but allows a deeper insight into how a variety of methods have been used to answer core demographic questions. these methods can complement each other, but can also produce confl icting evidence. overall, fi xed effects models seem to be the most prominent causal approach in demographic analysis of health and mortality. fe models eliminate stable unmeasured factors related to invariant characteristics. for individuals, this works well for assessing treatment effects of variant characteristics, but excludes the analysis of invariant characteristics, such as completed family size, completed parity, or birth order. in these cases, individual fe models are not possible because all invariant characteristics are cancelled out of the equation. researchers therefore try to control for invariant unobserved characteristics, such as genes, upbringing, living circumstances, values and norms, by using fe for higher level entities, such as siblings, mothers, or grandmothers. register data, in particular, lend themselves to within-family comparisons using siblings-designs with fe since observations of this nature are seldom available in panel studies. the fe approach with individual fi xed effects is more naturally tailored for the study of ses, partnership status, or retirement processes on health since these characteristics are largely time variant. it does not work for the study of (long-term) effects of (completed) fertility characteristics and other characteristics related to early life because there is either little or no variation in these features over the life course. growth curve models are an extension of fe models and are the second most common approach in the journal “demography”. these models are often combined with fe approaches. in contrast to fe models, they permit approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 87 estimates of the effect of observables on the outcome at baseline as well as on the growth rate. in our literature review, a couple of studies used instrumental variables to identify recursive causality by exploring pension eligibility, political climate, differences in infant mortality between black and white, the decline in child labour, or the decline in family size and their relation to health. apart from unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causation, the hierarchical structure of data presents an additional source of bias, and multi-level modelling is often applied to address this bias. usually regional macro-data are combined with individual-level data to differentiate between contextual and individual-level determinants of mortality and morbidity. two of the many examples for germany are a study of individual area-level effects on mortality on the basis of data from the german pension fund (kibele 2014), and individual and contextual determinants of health among ethnic german immigrants (kreft/doblhammer 2012). in the following, we want to discuss the categorisation of causal methods into design-based versus model-based approaches (koch/gillings 2006) and a similar categorisation into methods that address unobserved confounders versus methods that deal with observed confounders. these two categorisations are largely overlapping in the sense that the conditioning on (time-constant) unobservables is generally design-based (fi xed effects, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and difference-in-differences), while model-based methods address observable confounders (interrupted time series, growth curve models, propensity scores, structural equation models, and g-computation). the fi rst group originates in econometrics, while the second originates in biostatistics and epidemiology. however, this distinction can be fuzzy, e.g. the g-formula can use fi xed effects intercepts and difference-in-differences approaches will sometimes use additional covariates in order to strengthen the parallel trend assumption. twin studies, which is arguably a design, use twin-fi xed effects, with fi xed effects generally being a model with no need for a special design (in the sense that it exploits external variation) other than the longitudinal design. finally, it is diffi cult to decide whether interrupted time series is a design-based approach (because it is a quasi-experimental method that needs a natural experiment situation) or a model-based approach (because specifi c modelling approaches have been invented to deal with them, e.g. arima). it is easier to claim that interrupted time series cannot deal with unobserved confounders. we would argue that all studies have a model and a design, and they deal or do not deal with unobserved confounders, therefore we give preference to the categorisation into unobservable vs observable confounders. methods conditioning on unobservables generally have higher internal validity, while methods conditioning on observables have higher external validity. however, this external validity depends on the sample and whether it is a random sample of the population of interest. the trade-off between these two validities when assessing different causal methods has long been discussed (moffi tt 2005; smith 2013). disciplinary traditions and changes over time infl uence which of these two aspects of scientifi c inquiry is deemed more important. moffi tt (2005) mentions the “danger in maximising internal validity at the expense of external validity” and • rasmus hoffmann, gabriele doblhammer88 smith (2013) advocates a balance of randomisation, representation and realism as integrated aspects of a meaningful causal analysis. since not all researchers across disciplines are open to all methods, this calls for an intensifi ed mix and comparison of methods which can yield the highest synergies in interdisciplinary cooperation, e.g. of demographers, sociologists and (social) epidemiologists in research on health and mortality. what is the special contribution of demographers to the fi eld of causality in health research? one may say: (1) while demographers, like other social scientists, use many different longitudinal surveys they also have a special preference for the use of register data, sometimes linked with panel data and the exploitation of designs that uniquely fi t to register data, such as kinship designs. (2) as demographers are used to work on the total population level, they tend to explore causal relationships in health on the total population level rather than for specifi c groups in specifi c situations. thus, they often search for high external validity which may come with reduced internal validity and may weaken the claim of causality. (3) compared to epidemiologists, they use general health outcomes (in addition to mortality) and explore factors of health that may have a number of different causal pathways, such as the relationship between fertility history, ses, or marital status and health. both the general health outcome and the multi-faceted infl uence factors certainly complicate the search for causality and often the relative importance of these factors cannot be determined. this also calls for the interdisciplinary cooperation mentioned above because results for more specifi c and isolated variables need to complement results from more holistic concepts. (4) there is a long demographic tradition of conducting ecological studies with panel data which, although not suitable for exploring causal mechanisms, provide important information on associations between socio-economic factors and health and mortality. complex decomposition methods have been developed to distinguish the effects of age structure from those of disease/mortality rates on regional or temporal differences in health/mortality. one could also argue that this focus on ecological study designs and decomposition has delayed the adoption of causal analysis once individual panel data became available. we close this chapter with a citation of paul w. holland (2003: 9-10), who reminds us that it is important to establish methods and their rules for identifying causal effects, but that adherence to these rules alone does not justify the ranking of empirical research into better or worse: “being able to assert that the association is based on a causal connection is, in many circumstances, merely a status symbol, one that confers importance to the fi nding without any consequence for improved public health […] it is the use of an association for important purposes that has enduring value and not its status as a causal variable.” approaches and methods for causal analysis of panel data ... • 89 acknowledgements we would like to thank maarten j. bijlsma for his very valuable comments on our manuscript and anna-victoria holtz for her help in preparing the manuscript. references acock, alan 2013: discovering structural equation modeling using stata: stata press. albouy, valerie; 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... • 95 warren, john robert 2009: socioeconomic status and health across the life course: a test of the social causation and health selection hypotheses. in: social forces 87,4: 2125-2153. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0219 westerlund, hugo et al. 2009: self-rated health before and after retirement in france (gazel): a cohort study. in: the lancet 374,9705: 1889-1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(09)61570-1 wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2002: econometric analysis cross section panel. mit press cambridge, ma. date of submission: 01.10.2020 date of acceptance: 23.03.2021 prof. dr. rasmus hoffmann(). universität rostock. rostock, germany. university of siegen. siegen, germany. e-mail: rasmus.hoffmann@eui.eu url: https://www.uni-siegen.de/lwf/professuren/mse/mitarbeiter/hoffmann.html?lang=de prof. dr. gabriele doblhammer. universität rostock. rostock, germany. german centre for neurodegenerative diseases (dzne). bonn, germany e-mail: gabriele.doblhammer@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/doblhammer/ published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden: an exploratory analysis trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden: an exploratory analysis mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson abstract: trust has recently received some attention in demographic literature as one potential factor for fertility considerations in post-industrial societies. it has been argued that trust is relevant in a number of different ways, including as a resilience mechanism against different perceived uncertainties that may affect childrearing decisions. trust is also related to a host of positive political and economic outcomes, all of which enable childbearing. to date, studies have used macro-level or multilevel frameworks and a measure of social trust that focuses on confidence in fellow members of society. in our study, we use two novel modules of the swedish generations and gender survey 2021 (ggs2021) to study this relationship further. first, we analyse the associations between different measures of interpersonal and institutional trust on the one hand and individuals’ fertility intentions on the other. second, we examine whether either interpersonal or institutional trust acts as a resilience mechanism against various individual and global uncertainties. the results do not show trust to be a decisive factor behind fertility intentions in sweden. the absence of strong associations may be attributable to sweden’s position as a notably high-trust society, with its inclusive labour markets and welfare services. keywords: trust · institutional trust · uncertainty · fertility intentions · sweden 1 introduction the field of social sciences boasts a considerable degree of literature on social trust, and how it is correlated with a range of positive outcomes at the societal level (schilke et al. 2021). a clear understanding has emerged that sees trust as a vital pillar for successful social relations and the functioning of social systems. however, only a few articles in recent years (aassve et al. 2021, 2018, 2016) have dealt with the potential impact of trust on fertility. these papers focused on social trust only comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 49 (2024): 297-316 (date of release: 10.09.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-12 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-12en3 * this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/615/419 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-12 • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson298 and studied the link between this kind of trust and fertility in a cross-country or a single-country setting. for the latter, the spotlight was on italy, in which both trust and family support are deemed to be low in a european comparison. these studies found social trust to be positively associated with fertility. as far as sweden is concerned, a recent study uses municipal-level change in the vote share for an anti-establishment political party as a proxy for (decreasing) social trust, and links it with fertility developments (comolli/andersson 2021). researchers have linked social trust to fertility in a number of ways. first, a higher level of social trust would increase the likelihood of using non-familial day care, since greater social trust should also be correlated with trusting day care workers to take care of one’s children (aassve et al. 2016). second, social trust can be interpreted as a mechanism that helps people to cope with risks and uncertainties, considering the long-term commitments of raising children (aassve et al. 2021). third, the effect of social trust can be implicitly linked to fertility through a number of variables, since greater social trust also benefits economic prosperity at the societal level, and the development of welfare states (lee 2013). this article contributes to the small body of literature that exists on the link between trust and fertility in four main ways. first, the study focuses on sweden, which, by european and global standards, is a high-trust country with an economically thriving society that is both gender-equal and socially-equal, a welfare state offering comprehensive levels of family support, and high-quality, universal child care services for children of all ages. second, we introduce institutional trust as an additional and thus far neglected trust dimension to fertility research. third, we address employment-related and global uncertainties in order to measure linkages between perceived uncertainties, social and institutional trust, and fertility considerations (neyer et al. 2024). we believe that it is important to include different dimensions of uncertainty in a trust-fertility study, given previous research findings on economic uncertainty and fertility (vignoli et al. 2022) and the increasing global risks in a globalised world (beck 1992). the use of institutional trust measures ought to be relevant when it comes to seeing trust as a coping mechanism against different forms of macro-level uncertainty. fourth, we focus on fertility intentions, and, in particular, on intentions to have a(nother) child in the next three years. by adding institutional trust as well as uncertainties at the individual economy and global levels, and by looking at fertility intentions, we expand previous research perspectives on the role of trust and on the links between trust and fertility. by focusing on fertility intentions, we emphasise the association between trust and childbearing considerations, and thus on individuals’ imaginations of the future. 2 theory and background 2.1 two types of trust social trust, often also called generalised social trust, can be conceptualised as interpersonal trust. it is social, generalised, and interpersonal in the sense that it trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 299 is not limited to the family, kin or friends. it is based on the assumption that an individual’s own honest and fair behaviour towards others – including persons that one does not know or has previous personal connections to – is reciprocated. we will therefore use the term “interpersonal trust” in this study, in addition to “social trust”. societies vary widely on the level of social trust, as it is measured most frequently and relevantly by the world/european values surveys (atlas of european values 2023; bjørnskov 2007). it is common for nordic countries to display high social trust, while southern european countries record low social trust levels. during the last decades for which we have such data, we do not see a convergence between countries in this respect. indeed, many of the explanations for differences in patterns of social trust emphasise deep historical roots for observed cross-country differences. the country rankings in such surveys closely correlate with findings of cross-country differences in various trust games/experiments, such as returning found wallets or getting caught up in bribery (cohn et al. 2019; rothstein/eek 2009). hence, interpersonal trust is something both real and behavioural. social trust is seen as a crucial positive factor behind the political and economic success of high-trust societies, because it enables collective functioning and increases cooperation (schilke et al. 2021). institutional trust captures people’s trust in the capacity of different institutions to provide conditions that reduce risks and enhance well-being. thus, while social trust is related to individuals’ trust in fellow citizens, institutional trust refers to individuals’ reliance on (public) institutions. countries also differ as regards confidence in different institutions. similar to social trust, people in the nordic countries are commonly found to have a high level of trust in their institutions, whereas in southern european countries it is low (atlas of european values 2023). this interrelation between the two forms of trust is assumed to have contributed to the creation of different types of welfare state (ellingsæter/pedersen 2016; rothstein/ uslaner 2005). thus, populations that display both social and institutional trust are more likely to live in universal welfare states with extensive public services (for children and others in need) and more equal opportunities (e.g. through education and egalitarian labour market policies); in familistic welfare states, where there is reliance on the family as the provider of social services, a clientelist welfare system and a high degree of social and gender inequality, people tend to have low levels of social and institutional trust (bergh/bjørnskov 2011; delhey/newton 2005). 2.2 how may trust influence fertility? the theoretical explanation of why trust would matter for fertility outcomes has touched on three main arguments. the first is that social trust increases the likelihood of using non-familial day care services, since greater social trust in general should also be correlated with trusting day care workers to take care of one’s children (aassve et al. 2016). this explanation is embedded in the wider framework of the gender revolution theory (esping-andersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015), which claims that an easier combination of work and family life, of which outsourced child care is an important factor, is a prerequisite for realising positive fertility intentions and achieving higher fertility. in response to the rise in female • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson300 labour market participation, aassve et al. (2016) argue that one of the main reasons why fertility rates have diverged in western countries since approximately 1970 is that societies with a high level of social trust were better equipped for the need to outsource child-rearing in order that women may retain their employment and succeed in the workplace, despite motherhood. there is some empirical support for this at an individual as well as a country level (de ruijter/van der lippe 2009; el-attar 2013). the second argument sees social trust primarily as a coping mechanism that helps people deal with uncertainties (aassve et al. 2021). this mechanism is linked to the “perceived uncertainty” or “imaginations of the future” literature that has emerged during the past decade to help make sense of persistently low and declining fertility rates (guetto et al. 2023; matera et al. 2023; vignoli et al. 2022). this literature conceptualises uncertainty primarily in economic terms, related to issues of individuals’ perceptions of employment security, income retention, and job scarcity. uncertainty has indeed emerged as one of the most influential topics in recent literature on fertility (guetto et al. 2023; matera et al. 2023; vignoli et al. 2022, 2020; neyer et al. 2022). it can be conceptualised by objective measures of employment-related difficulties, or can be seen as an individual subjective perception. what is common is the notion that uncertainty makes people insecure about their own future. given the long-term nature of child-rearing, it is obvious that (the feeling of) precariousness limits people’s wish to commit to such a lasting task. indeed, the lowest-low fertility in southern and eastern european countries is seen to be linked to the persistent economic difficulties in these countries (ahn/ mira 2001; billingsley/duntava 2017; caltabiano et al. 2017; tragaki/bagavos 2014). especially in countries where there is little institutional support, the family often acts as one coping mechanism against uncertainty. third, aassve et al. (2021) also see social trust as an indication of greater confidence in the wider community and its social networks, as a sign of greater social cohesion and civic engagement. this argument is more indirect in nature and related to the fact that higher levels of social trust are associated with a host of positive political and economic outcomes, all of which may enhance the feeling of individuals to be able to cope with uncertainties surrounding the future. this may be one reason why research finds higher fertility levels in those regions/countries in which social trust in the population is greater (aassve et al. 2016, 2018, 2021). fourth, in modern societies, public institutions have resumed vital functions in protecting individuals against essential life-course risks by providing support to cope with uncertainties (e.g. unemployment, medical needs) (kumlin/rothstein 2005). trust in institutions may thus be essential for fertility considerations, particularly in comprehensive, universal welfare states that provide extensive support for families and children. in norway, it has been claimed that trust in public institutions helps young people to cope with uncertainty and avoid unrealised fertility outcomes (ellingsæter/pedersen 2016). research has also found that social trust in institutions may vary depending on whether it concerns “selective institutions”, i.e. institutions that either carry a stigma or with which any form of encounter may be perceived as stigmatising (e.g. the police or social services), or “universal institutions” with trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 301 which everyone interacts (e.g. medical services) (edlund 2006; rothstein/stolle 2008). the association between institutional trust and fertility can therefore be expected to vary depending on whether trust concerns a selective or a universal institution. trust in public institutions may also have become more important for fertility amid a growing perception of global uncertainties, such as climate change, war, and the prospects for future generations. this is true especially since the family or civil society has a limited ability to serve as a coping mechanism against such macrolevel uncertainties (neyer et al. 2022, 2024). 2.3 the swedish context this study focuses on sweden, a universal welfare state with a gender-equal parental leave system, economic support for parents, and comprehensive public child care services. within the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd), sweden ranks among the leading countries when it comes to availability and use of day care (oecd 2023). in the latest round of the european values survey in 2017, sweden had one of the highest results for both interpersonal as well as institutional trust (atlas of european values 2023), having also held top positions in all previous comparative trust studies (see, for example, delhey/newton 2005; lee 2013). while it is true that trust in specific institutions (media, government, european union) may be below 50 percent, it is still rather high relative to other countries. when it comes to objective economic uncertainty, sweden is a nation of considerable economic success, as evidenced also by its experience in the great recession and its aftermath (comolli et al. 2021). with respect to trust and economic performance, it should be noted that sweden is clearly distinct from italy, the country that has been the focus of most previous studies on the link between trust and fertility. the recent decline in fertility in sweden that began in the early 2010s was thus unexpected, and cannot be explained by persistent or newly occurring economic crises, cuts in family policies or welfare state support. nor do previous or concurrent changes in the degree of social trust (at the national level) offer a satisfying explanation for the fertility decline, since yearly surveys do not reveal decreasing trust at the national level. this is the case for a variety of trust measures, both social and institutional (martinsson/andersson 2021). comolli and andersson (2021), however, find that there is a slightly negative relationship between aspects of declining trust, as reflected in rising votes for an anti-establishment party, and childbearing propensities, having factored in a host of individual and municipallevel variables. 2.4 aims the aim of this study is therefore to broaden the scope of the analysis on the link between trust and fertility considerations by focusing on fertility intentions. we do this in three ways, using new modules introduced in the swedish ggs2021 (neyer et al. 2024). first, we focus on universalistic, high-trust sweden as a counter example to familistic, low-trust italy. second, we use survey items on trust in specific institutions, https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/pf3_2_enrolment_childcare_preschool.pdf https://www.atlasofeuropeanvalues.eu/maptool.html • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson302 in addition to the item of social (or interpersonal) trust as in the previous literature. ultimately, the effect of social (interpersonal) trust in itself and as resilience against uncertainty may be channelled via the provision of better institutional support that provides protection against current and future insecurities. third, we also explore the mitigating role of trust on uncertainty. in other words, we ask if higher trust can moderate the negative effect of uncertainty on short-term fertility intentions. as well as considering employment-related uncertainty, a factor that concerns individuals directly, we also explore the role of wider national and global uncertainties in relation to trust and fertility considerations. the effects of such uncertainties (e.g. climate change) in relation to different aspects of trust may not be immediate, and do not only concern particular individuals specifically. 3 data, variables and method 3.1 data the most recent swedish ggs (ggs2021) and its sister projects in the other nordic countries set out to test novel theoretical explanations of determinants of fertility in advanced post-industrial societies (andersson et al. 2020; neyer et al. 2022). the explicit understanding was that the fertility declines witnessed in the nordic countries since the early 2010s could not be explained by prevailing explanations that emphasise economic aspects, gender issues or public policies. fertility in the contemporary nordic context was instead assumed to have become more influenced by subjective imaginations and perceived uncertainties surrounding national and global developments, rather than objective or structural conditions or changes in them. to explore this assumption, the swedish ggs2021 incorporated specific modules into its questionnaire. those modules relevant for our study touch upon issues of both individual (economic) and wider (global) uncertainties, trust as resilience against economic uncertainty, and institutional trust. the newly added trust modules complement the module on social trust included in the baseline ggs questionnaire. the new modules of the swedish ggs2021 have now been selected to be incorporated into the generations and gender programme (ggp) baseline questionnaire for the second wave of the international ggs (ggp 2023; for a detailed description of the swedish ggs2021 and the new modules, see neyer et al. 2024). the swedish ggs was carried out in the spring and summer of 2021 as a web survey with an option to respond by post. at 27 percent, the response rate for the swedish ggs was somewhat higher than the corresponding response rate in other countries (neyer et al. 2024). non-response was higher among the less educated, the young, men, and immigrants, as is usually the case. statistics sweden computed weights based on sex, age, country of birth, education and residence (löfgren 2021). despite the low response rate, the representativeness of the data is deemed good in terms of various fertility measures (antunes leocádio et al. 2023; neyer et al. 2024). https://www.ggp-i.org/call-for-survey-questions-for-the-follow-up-wave-2-questionnaire/ trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 303 3.2 dependent variable the ggs has two questions regarding respondents’ childbearing intentions, as posed to persons of childbearing age (18-49) who (and/or whose partner) are able to conceive, are currently not pregnant or are trying to get pregnant. participants were first asked whether they intend to have a(nother) child in the next three years, with four possible response options: definitely not, probably not, probably yes, definitely yes. those who did not intend to have a(nother) child in the next three years were asked whether they intend to have any (more) children at all, again with four response options. we will use the intention to have a(nother) child in the next three years1 as the main dependent variable, and also as a binary variable by collapsing the definitely and probably yes or no responses to the question on fertility intentions. with regard to the intention to have a(nother) child within a time limit that is unspecified, all analyses were repeated, using the question posed to those who did not intend to have a(nother) child in the next three years. the differences in outcomes for our main variables of interest are very small. we will therefore not show the latter results, but comment briefly on them whenever deemed necessary (results available on request). 3.3 measures of trust the baseline ggs questionnaire includes two questions on social trust similar to the european/world values surveys. these questions are: 1) “generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you need to be very careful in dealing with other people?”, for which possible answers are “most people can be trusted” and “need to be very careful”; 2) “do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be honest and fair?”, with possible answers being “would take advantage” and “would try to be honest and fair”. following previous research (aassve et al. 2021, 2016) we will use the first survey item, which we refer to as interpersonal trust, in order to emphasise the difference to institutional trust. we also ran the analyses with the second survey item with very similar results. additionally, the swedish ggs introduced a question on institutional trust: “how much confidence do you have in the way the following institutions and groups do their job?”, with six institutions included (government, police, medical services, civil service, media, european union). there are five answer categories available, ranging from “very high” to “very low”. this item was taken from the university of gothenburg’s yearly som survey that focuses on a wide range of issues concerning sweden (martinsson/andersson 2021). in our analysis, we use the variables for each institution separately, but also combine the answers to create an index. when using 1 as mentioned, respondents who were currently trying to have a child were not asked the questions on intentions to have a(nother) child. in the analysis, we have included those who are trying to conceive under the group that intends to have a child in the next three years. • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson304 the variables for each institution separately, we collapse the outer categories to create a three-level scale (high trust, neither, low trust). when creating the index, we use the full information with the five-level scale and compute a continuous variable with values ranging from 6 (maximum trust) to 30 (minimum trust). the cronbach α parameter for the institutional trust variables at 0.765 can be seen as a reliable outcome. tab. 1: distribution of the used variables trust variables n % dependent and other variables n % interpersonal trust three-year fertility intention careful 429 25.2 yes 739 43.4 trustful 1274 74.8 no 964 56.6 institutional trust index sex 6-13 514 30.2 male 676 39.7 14-17 599 35.2 female 1027 60.3 18-30 590 34.6 trust in government age high 717 42.1 20-29 568 33.4 neither 445 26.1 30-39 1135 66.6 low 541 31.6 trust in police n of children high 1134 66.6 0 921 54.1 neither 340 20.0 1 277 16.3 low 229 13.4 2+ 505 29.7 trust in medical service global uncertainty index high 1307 76.7 low 645 39.0 neither 231 13.6 medium 571 34.5 low 165 9.7 high 438 26.5 trust in civil service likeliness of losing employment high 785 46.1 unlikely 1072 86.8 neither 578 33.9 unsure 115 9.3 low 340 20.0 likely 48 3.9 trust in media likeliness of new similar employment high 543 31.9 unlikely 94 7.6 neither 610 35.8 unsure 197 16.0 low 550 32.3 likely 944 76.4 trust in the european union high 604 35.5 neither 739 43.4 low 360 21.1 note: for the uncertainty variables, there are additional nas which have been excluded from the calculation of shares. source: swedish ggs2021, authors’ calculations trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 305 3.4 other variables when it comes to individual-specific employment uncertainty and resilience, the swedish ggs2021 has two questions: 1) “how likely is it that you will lose your job in the next twelve months?”; and 2) “if you did lose your job, how likely do you think it is that you would find an equivalent job within twelve months?”. the first question is included in the baseline ggs questionnaire while the second is not. both questions have five possible answers, ranging from “very unlikely” to “very likely”. for the analysis, we again collapse the outer categories to create three levels for these variables (unlikely, unsure, likely). table 1 confirms that only a small minority of swedish residents perceive job loss as a likely occurrence, although anxiety about finding a new one with similar characteristics is somewhat more widespread. as mentioned, we also use a question relating to a range of issues that are not specific to the respondent’s own life and conditions but are instead broader in focus, the aim being to capture global uncertainties. the question was phrased as follows: “thinking about the future, how much does the following worry you?”, and listed thirteen potential threats (terrorism, climate change, overpopulation, economic crises, increased number of refugees, high unemployment, organised crime, military conflicts, global epidemics, weakened democracy, increased social inequality, political extremism, prospects of coming generations). the items and answer categories (very worrying, somewhat worrying, not particularly worrying, not at all worrying) were once again taken from the som survey. given the numerous threats, we combine these into an index with three levels noting high, medium and low (global) uncertainty following neyer et al. (2022), who also provide uncertaintyspecific analyses. the cronbach α for the global uncertainties is 0.828. we include three basic control variables in the models, namely sex, age (20-29, 30-39) and the number of children (0, 1, 2+). given the exploratory nature of this analysis, we did not want to add more complexity to the models, preferring instead to focus on the basic relationships between trust, uncertainty and fertility intentions. table 1 shows the distribution for all variables. somewhat more than half of the ggs2021 respondents do not intend to have a child in the next three years. as expected, interpersonal trust among the respondents is high, with 75 percent saying that others can be trusted. the distributions for the trust in specific institutions vary considerably, with trust in medical services being the highest at 76 percent, and trust in media the lowest at 32 percent. the strong swedish economy and welfare state support in the event of unemployment are reflected in the answers about economic uncertainty and resilience. most of the respondents (87 percent) do not expect to lose their job, and if so, the vast majority (75 percent) believe that they will find a similar one soon. likewise, with 25 percent being highly worried, feelings of uncertainties about global developments are not very widespread. the distribution of the other variables is as expected from the survey outcome and/or population register (e.g. age distribution). • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson306 3.5 method we limit our analysis to partnered individuals aged 20-39 at the start of 2021, with both the respondent and the partner able to have children, albeit not expecting children at the time of the survey. we chose to concentrate on partnered individuals, because most births in sweden are to cohabiting or married couples, and the decline in fertility since 2010 is concentrated among (childless) couples (ohlsson-wijk/ andersson 2022; neyer et al. 2022). we leave aside 85 individuals with no answers in one or more of the trust variables. the analysis set is not restricted based on the existing number of children. this leads to our study population including 1703 individuals. the number of cases is smaller if uncertainty is also included in the model. the largest decline in the number of cases (n=468) is with respect to individual employment uncertainty, since naturally, only those currently in employment were asked these questions. the exact number of observations can be seen for each model in appendices 1-3. for the modelling, we use binary logistic regression (glm function in r), and we model the intention of having a(nother) child without distinguishing between women and men of different parities. first, we concentrate on how different measures of trust, both interpersonal and institutional, are related to the intention to have a child in the next three years. second, we measure how the link between uncertainty and fertility intention is moderated by trust. to measure uncertainty, we use the individual-specific questions regarding employment-related uncertainty, as well as the global uncertainty index. for this analysis, we only use the institutional trust index, and not specific items separately as in the main analysis. for the purpose of easing interpretation and comparison, we present the results of our analysis in the form of plots that show predicted probabilities with 95 percent confidence intervals (predict function in r) derived from the regression models. in the interest of transparency, the regression tables themselves are given in appendices 1-3. 4 results 4.1 the direct relationship of trust and fertility intentions we begin the results section by focusing on the direct link between trust and the three-year fertility intention. this is plotted in figure 1. on panel a, the predicted probabilities for interpersonal trust show absolutely no difference in fertility intentions between trusting and untrusting individuals. this goes against previous results recorded for italy and a cross-country analysis conducted for europe, although one has to consider that these studies used macro-level and multilevel analysis with the fertility indicator showing actual births and not intended childbearing (aassve et al. 2021, 2016). on panel b, we display the predicted probability for the institutional trust index. its relationship to the dependent variable is statistically significant in the model trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 307 (p=0.006). the index value of 6 shows the maximum level of institutional trust, while the value 30 shows the minimum level. people with a higher degree of institutional trust are more likely to profess a positive fertility intention. the difference between the maximum and the minimum ranges from 0.56 to 0.33, although these values are rare. the more adequate measure of the difference of one standard deviation around the mean (index value 16) is 0.04, which is a rather constrained size. the predicted probability on panel b is computed from a model with only the linear term fig. 1: predicted probabilities of trust measured for positive three-year fertility intention notes: predicted probabilities computed based on logistic regression models with 95% confidence intervals. all models control for sex, age and number of children. for prediction, the values for the control variables are set to women, aged 20–29, with one child. source: swedish ggs2021, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson308 for the institutional trust index. when adding a non-linear term (index2) to it, the coefficient of the linear index is smaller, and also statistically insignificant (p=0.211). on panel c, we present the predicted probabilities for trust in each of the six specific institutions. for two of these institutions (media and the european union), the differences are statistically insignificant. two others (police, civil service) have a u-shaped relationship between trust and fertility intentions. such a relationship is difficult to explain on the basis of our theoretical arguments. previous research, however, showed that trust in such institutions is related to encounters with them (rothstein/stolle 2008). experiences with both of these institutions – or lack thereof – may be mirrored in our results, so that fertility intention is highest among the most (and least) trusting individuals. with respect to the police, the predicted probability difference between the high trust and middle trust group is sizeable (0.36 vs. 0.48). the predicted probability for those whose response was that they do not trust the government is on the same level as for those who gave “neither” as their answer; but those with trust in government have greater childbearing intentions. however, the differences between the point estimates are not particularly large (0.43 vs. 0.50). as far as trust in the medical service is concerned, the results show a linear and statistically significant pattern, with the predicted probabilities for the three groups being 0.36, 0.39 and 0.48. from table 1, we can see that overall trust in the medical services is high, and those individuals who do not have a high degree of trust in the medical services are a rather select group. given that childbirth is a medical procedure, the link to this institution is the most direct among the institutions listed in the questionnaire. an obvious hypothesis is that this relationship may be influenced by experiences during a previous birth. however, models that were run separately for childless individuals and parents (not shown here) do not support this hypothesis, showing almost identical results for the two groups. as mentioned, we also ran identical models for the overall fertility intention (without a time constraint). the results (not shown here) are similar. the main difference is that the associations are smaller, as well as more frequently statistically insignificant. for instance, a standard deviation for the institutional trust index is 0.02 and not 0.04, as with the three-year intention. additionally, the discrepancy in the predicted probabilities between high and low levels of trust in medical services is 0.07 rather than 0.12. 4.2 trust as a coping mechanism against uncertainty we also tested the extent to which we can detect interpersonal and/or institutional trust working as resilience factors in decreasing the effect of global or individual employment uncertainty on short-term fertility intentions. in a theoretical framework, a coping mechanism can be conceptualised as a moderator between two variables, as something that creates a heterogeneous treatment effect. this would mean that in our case, trust does not have any causal influence on uncertainty, but merely changes the impact of uncertainty on childbearing intentions. moderators are included in the models as an interaction with the variable of interest. figure 2 shows these results again as predicted probabilities. trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 309 if we interact global uncertainties and institutional trust (panel a), we find decreasing predicted probabilities of positive childbearing intentions for those with lower levels of institutional trust. this is particularly the case for those with high levels of global uncertainty, as can be expected from the theoretical discussion. however, the confidence intervals around the estimates are wide. the results are more mixed for individual-specific employment uncertainty and institutional trust (panel b). institutional trust affects only the two extremes (likely and unlikely), as expected by theoretical assumptions. those who think it unlikely and those who think it likely that they will either lose their job or find a new one soon are more inclined to consider having a child in the next three years if they have a high degree of trust in institutions. this is not the case for those who answered “unsure” fig. 2: predicted probabilities of trust and uncertainty interactions for positive three-year fertility intention notes: predicted probabilities computed based on logistic regression models with 95% confidence intervals. all models control for sex, age and number of children. for prediction, the values for the control variables are set to women, aged 20-29, with one child. the global uncertainty index (panels a and c) is computed as an index and categorised into three groups (low, medium, high global uncertainty). the labour market uncertainty variables (panel b and d) are derived from two questions on whether the person thinks that losing their job and finding a new similar job is likely, unlikely or they are unsure. source: swedish ggs2021, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson310 to the question of their employment security or future employment options. those with greater institutional trust show lower fertility intentions. again, the confidence intervals are wide and the results need to be interpreted with the uneven distribution of individual-specific employment expectations in mind (table 1). similar to institutional trust and in contrast to theoretical propositions, we also find no significant sign of moderation for interpersonal trust (panel c). among people who are very worried about global developments, those that are socially trusting do have marginally higher short-term fertility intentions than those who feel the need to be careful. however, we find the opposite relationship is true for those who are somewhat (medium) worried about the global situation. for employment-related uncertainty, the results are even messier (panel d). higher trust in others is associated with higher intentions to have a child in the next three years only for those with no employment worries, i.e. those who do not fear losing their job or are very confident of finding a similar one in the event of becoming unemployed. for those who are more anxious about their job security and employment prospects, greater interpersonal trust is associated with a lower childbearing intention. given the small numbers here and the resulting high uncertainty, this outcome cannot be taken at face value. however, what is clear is that the empirical results go some way to supporting the existence of a moderating effect of trust only when it comes to global uncertainty. our interaction results may also be due to methodological issues. as mentioned above, a coping mechanism is conceptually a moderator that has no direct effect on the variable of interest (uncertainty, in our case). however, we use cross-sectional survey data, and can assume that in reality, trust would have an influence directly on the answers that people give concerning various uncertainty issues. this would mean that trust may also function as a confounder, and thus not including it would result in bias. hence, we tested the degree to which the inclusion of trust measures influences the relationship between uncertainty and short-term childbearing intentions. figure 3 depicts the results of the regression models once again as predicted probabilities. we again model each uncertainty measure separately, and repeat this process for all three models. it is evident that both the global uncertainty index as well as the individual-specific employment uncertainties are to some extent related to the three-year fertility intention, although the size of the relationship is relatively constrained (0.1 between the extreme values). the inclusion of the two trust measures one by one as control variables, however, has no impact on the association of uncertainty and short-term fertility intention. this is true for all three uncertainty measures. similar models and calculations were also prepared using the overall childbearing intention without a time limit as the dependent variable (results available on request). the conclusions based on these models do not differ from those presented here. trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 311 5 conclusion and discussion this study focused on the influence of interpersonal and institutional trust on threeyear fertility intentions. it is a vital addition to a small body of literature that has concentrated on the intersection of the interpersonal trust and fertility outcome in italy and in a country comparison (aassve et al. 2021, 2018, 2016). this previous work focused on interpersonal (generalised social) trust, and put forward three reasons why trust would matter for fertility. first, trust enables parents of young children to use non-familial child care services since interpersonal trust would also be translated into specific trust in service providers. second, trust functions as a coping mechanism that helps people to come to terms with uncertainty regarding their future, and thus would also benefit the long-term project of child-rearing. third, there is an indirect effect given that social trust is correlated with (and possibly causally related to) better social and economic outcomes. our study focused on sweden, which is commonly found to be a high-trust country with a universal welfare state that provides extensive individual and institutional support both to parents and to children. in this regard, it represents a counter example to familistic and low-trust country of italy that was the focus of previous studies on trust and fertility. we were able to make use of novel questions included in the swedish generations and gender study aimed at finding new possible explanations for fertility behaviours in high-income societies. these questions related to institutional trust and global uncertainties. this is the first study relating to fertility intentions that examines the possibilities of including more broad-based concepts of trust. crucially, we were able to consider the role of institutional trust and not only interpersonal trust. the former can be important given the theoretical arguments with respect to fertility, especially in universal welfare states with fig. 3: predicted probabilities of uncertainty measures with the inclusion of trust variables for positive three-year fertility intention note: predicted probabilities computed based on logistic regression models with 95% confidence intervals. m1 controls for sex, age, and number of children. for prediction, the values for the control variables are set to women, aged 20-29, with one child. source: swedish ggs2021, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson312 comprehensive social protection and extensive family support and child care offers. we concentrated on the general relationship of interpersonal and institutional trust on the one hand and fertility intentions on the other, as well as their interlinkage with economic and global uncertainties. the results of the analysis highlight the need to consider broader concepts of trust in order to understand its relevance for fertility. first, we find no statistical relationship between interpersonal trust on fertility intentions, neither on shortterm intentions (as displayed in this paper), nor on long-term intentions (results upon request). second, for the institutional trust index that uses information on the level of trust in six specific institutions (government, police, medical services, civil service, media, european union), we do see a theoretically expected relationship, but it is comparatively small. for specific institutions, we find the strongest association for trust in medical services. since women in sweden generally give birth in hospitals, we would expect a direct association between trust in medical services and fertility intentions. the universality of medical services and the high trust of our respondents in it may further explain our findings. we find little evidence that either institutional or interpersonal trust functions as a coping mechanism that decreases the negative effect of uncertainty on fertility intentions. we do find that both institutional and interpersonal trust are weakly associated with lower global uncertainties. for employment uncertainty at the respondent-specific level, such resilience cannot be found. however, given the wellfunctioning swedish labour market and the country’s active labour market policies, the share of people who expressed at least some concern about losing their current job is small, and trust that they will find a new, similar job if needed is high. since interaction models demand a much higher statistical power, problems with detecting these relationships are thus to be expected. this study has some limitations. first, it is exploratory and uses simple models to look at basic relationships. second, it is based on cross-sectional data, which severely limits the interpretation of relationships as causal, and requires the focus to be on fertility intentions rather than fertility outcomes. with a register-based follow-up, one could in future analyse the relationship between trust and actual childbearing behaviour during the period following the survey. third, the study is based on just one country, because some survey items were only available in the swedish ggs. we hope that with the coming survey waves, similar information from a greater number of countries will be available. fourth, the ggs was carried out in late spring of the second year of the covid-19 pandemic. this period was related to the onset of further fertility postponement (bujard/andersson 2024) and may not reflect the situation that is seen during more normal circumstances. however, no trend breaks in measurements of trust have been observed in other survey data collected in sweden (martinsson/andersson 2021). how do we interpret the results of our study? to some extent, the lack of significant associations may be due to sweden being an economically stable country characterised by high levels of trust and its all-encompassing, universal, and wellestablished welfare state. swedish women and men may take institutional support for child-rearing for granted, and do the same for reintegration into the labour trust and fertility intentions in high-trust sweden • 313 market in the event of unemployment. unlike in research on italy, we find no direct link between interpersonal trust and fertility. this could be explained by the fact that italy is a context where people have to rely on the support of other family members to a large extent, whereas in sweden people can rely more readily on institutional support offered by the welfare state. the differences we find between the associations of interpersonal and institutional trust on fertility underline that the impact of trust on fertility is not universal, but depends on the country context. in another european or advanced post-industrial country, the results could be substantially different, as one would expect from previous research on 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-021-09602-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48519-1_3 • mark gortfelder, gerda neyer, gunnar andersson316 date of submission: 04.01.2024 date of acceptance: 15.07.2024 mark gortfelder (*). stockholm university, demography unit (suda). stockholm, sweden. tallinn university, estonian institute for population research. tallinn, estonia. e-mail: mark.gortfelder@sociology.su.se; mark.gortfelder@tlu.ee url: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/mago6392-1.625702 https://www.tlu.ee/en/node/108862 prof. dr. gerda neyer, prof. dr. gunnar andersson. stockholm university, demography unit (suda). stockholm, sweden. e-mail: gerda.neyer@sociology.su.se; gunnar.andersson@sociology.su.se url: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/gneye-1.186882 https://www.su.se/english/profiles/gande-1.184639 mailto:mark.gortfelder@sociology.su.se mailto:mark.gortfelder@tlu.ee https://www.su.se/english/profiles/mago6392-1.625702 https://www.tlu.ee/en/node/108862 mailto:gerda.neyer@sociology.su.se mailto:gunnar.andersson@sociology.su.se https://www.su.se/english/profiles/gneye-1.186882 https://www.su.se/english/profiles/gande-1.184639 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe* pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea abstract: in this paper, we examine (1) whether parental educational homogamy is associated with children’s tertiary educational attainment in different european countries and (2) whether this association is moderated by families’ educational backgrounds. using data from the european social survey and multilevel logistic regression models, we find that parental homogamy is important for children’s tertiary educational attainment. in particular, children of more highly educated homogamous parents are more likely to obtain a tertiary degree themselves. this parental homogamy association varies across countries. while the association is below the european average in czechia, austria, hungary, italy, switzerland, and germany, it is equal or close to average in slovenia, estonia, france, poland, ireland, sweden, and lithuania, and above average in spain, finland, the netherlands, portugal, the united kingdom, norway, and belgium. our findings suggest that parental educational constellations should be examined more closely in further education inequality research. keywords: parental homogamy · intergenerational transmission · educational inequality · european social survey · family background 1 introduction in the course of educational expansion, all european societies have experienced a dramatic increase in educational attainment in recent decades (blossfeld et al. 2016; breen et al. 2009; shavit/blossfeld 1993). women in particular have benefited from this development. they have been able to catch up with men in terms of educational attainment and have even overtaken them in recent years, leading to a gender gap reversal (blossfeld 2023; de hauw et al. 2017; diprete/buchmann 2013; van bavel comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 243-272 (date of release: 27.08.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-10 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-10en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/600/415 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-10 • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea244 et al. 2018). as a result of this structural change, educational homogamy among couples, and thus among parents – i.e., partners having the same level of educational attainment – has increased across cohorts in many european countries (blossfeld/ timm 2003; hu/qian 2023; uunk 2024).1 however, we still know little about the consequences of parental homogamy for children’s educational inequalities. only a few retrospective2 country studies have examined the association between parental homogamy and children’s school readiness, academic achievement and educational attainment, studying south korea (byun et al. 2020), the united states (beck/ gonzález-sancho 2009; edwards/roff 2016), and european countries such as denmark (bingley et al. 2022) and the united kingdom (gonzalez-sancho 2014). furthermore, only very little research has examined the association between parental hypogamy (the mother has a higher education than the father) and children’s educational expectations and attainment in cross-country comparisons (ortiz-gervasi 2021). in particular, to our knowledge, there is no international comparative study that examines the moderating effect of parental education on the association between parental educational homogamy and children’s educational attainment. this article aims to fill this gap in the literature. we use data from the 2016 and 2018 rounds of the european social survey (ess) from 20 european union (eu) countries. we analyse tertiary educational attainment because this education level is fully comparable across countries and more than half of the current inequality of educational opportunities is generated at the transition to it (katrňák/hubatková 2022). accordingly, our study focuses on two questions: (1) is parental homogamy associated with a higher likelihood of children’s tertiary educational attainment in different european countries? (2) is this association moderated by a family’s educational background? we focus on parental educational homogamy because (1) it has been empirically shown to be the most important family resource for children’s educational attainment (bukodi/goldthorpe 2013; meraviglia/buis 2015: 57), (2) both mother and father have an educational degree, but not necessarily a job, and (3) parental educational attainment is in most cases stable over the life course, while this is less often the case for occupation (marks 2008). this article is structured as follows. the first section briefly reviews the theories that attempt to explain why parental homogamy is relevant for children’s educational opportunities. we also provide a short introduction to the context of the 20 european countries we analyse. we then relate our study to the discussion on the operationalisation of family background. next, we present our data, methods, 1 note that parents that do not reflect a certain population at a specific point in time. 2 a retrospective study examines the direct intergenerational transmission of educational inequality, starting from a sample of children and then collecting information about their parents. the prospective approach, on the other hand, also examines the demographic processes (such as mating and fertility) of the intergenerational reproduction of education inequality. it is usually based on a representative sample of individuals who are then asked about their children. this takes into account, for example, the fact that not all individuals in a cohort become parents. a prospective comparative study is presented by wittemann and yastrebov (2024) in this special issue. parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 245 and empirical results. our findings show that parental educational homogamy increases the probability of obtaining a tertiary degree and that there is crossnational variability. moreover, we find that parental homogamy is particularly relevant for children from more highly educated parents. these results suggest that parental educational constellations should be studied in further research on the intergenerational transmission of education inequality. 2 theories and hypotheses to understand how parental educational similarity and children’s tertiary educational attainment are linked and why parental education might act as a moderator, we consider different theories for (1) the association between parental homogamy and children’s educational attainment and (2) the interaction between parental education and parental homogamy on children’s educational attainment. pooling of resources in the pooling of resources theory, all resources are pooled and shared within the family. there are different views on whether it matters (buis 2013) if both the mother and father contribute to these shared resources (lundberg et al. 1997). rising educational similarity of parents across cohorts implies that highly educated families are increasingly pooling their good educational resources and lower educated parents are increasingly pooling their low educational resources, which is likely to lead to greater educational inequality in the next generation (blossfeld/buchholz 2009; mare 2016). resource multiplication theory suggests that the accumulation of educational resources in households largely perpetuates the educational opportunities of children from highly educated homogamous households (becker et al. 2018; blossfeld/buchholz 2009; erola/kilpi-jakonen 2017). thus, parental education moderates the relationship between parental educational homogamy and children’s educational outcomes. highly educated parents are well-informed about the tertiary education system and can guide their children through it (bukodi/goldthorpe 2013; pfeffer 2008). they are more likely to teach their children to use “refined” language and to expose them to “high culture” (e.g., by visiting museums and libraries or listening to classical music). these traits are in line with the middle-class standards informally required by academic institutions (bourdieu/passeron 1990; lareau 1989; sullivan 2002). highly educated parents can also help their children if they have problems with studying (pfeffer 2008) and can complement each other’s expertise if they are knowledgeable in different subject areas. agreeance in parenting styles in the literature, a potential mediating mechanism for the association between parental homogamy and children’s educational outcomes is the similarity in parenting • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea246 preferences. this is reflected by an agreement in parenting styles and low gender specialisation in child rearing among similarly educated parents (beck/gonzálezsancho 2009; gonzalez-sancho 2014). examples of parenting agreement include beliefs about child-rearing practices and the role of parents in child development, concordance in the quality of parent-child interactions, approaches to discipline, the intellectual stimulation of children, the promotion of play and learning, and participation in parent-teacher meetings (bonke/esping-andersen 2011; el nokali et al. 2010; gniewosz et al. 2023; gonzalez-sancho 2014). research shows that parenting styles affect children’s educational outcomes (kiernan/mensah 2011; wang et al. 2014). it can be assumed that individuals who enter into a partnership and have children together have previously gone through a selection process that avoids potential partners who differ greatly in their views on childrearing. while this selection process will not be perfect, homogamy nonetheless should lead to greater agreement in parenting styles among couples (beck/gonzález-sancho 2009; gonzalez-sancho 2014). however, other arguments point to the role of education as a moderator. bonke and esping-andersen (2011) and byun et al. (2020) suggest that highly educated homogamous parents in particular prioritise their children’s education. these highly educated parental couples are in daily contact with each other, learn from each other, share information, influence each other on how to be better parents, and discuss their children’s problems and successes. such parents are also more likely to share the amount and quality of parenting time with their children in a more gender-equal way, leading to greater family harmony and a more conducive learning environment for their children (keizer et al. 2020). conversely, homogamous parents with low levels of education are more likely to have a more traditional division of childcare between the sexes, leading to less family harmony (bonke/esping-andersen 2011; keizer et al. 2020). their parenting may also be of lower quality because they have less experience of learning from each other than couples who share childcare more equally. this should in turn lead to a less positive learning environment for their children. divorce homogamous couples also have a lower probability of union dissolution and divorce (goldstein/harknett 2006; mäenpää/jalovaara 2014). they have a higher status equality in their relationship and experience higher rewards in their interactions with their partner (boertien/härkönen 2018; theunis et al. 2018). they are also seen as more equal in their beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and preferences (theunis et al. 2018). finally, family and friends are more likely to endorse homogamy in parents’ education because they prefer members of their own social group (mäenpää/ jalovaara 2014). thus, children who grow up in homogamous families are more likely to live in intact families than children from heterogamous families. dysfunctional families represent a less stable environment, often implying greater stress for children. researchers have shown that this has a negative impact on children’s educational parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 247 outcomes (bernardi/boertien 2016; gähler/palmtag 2015; grätz 2015; härkönen et al. 2017). family dissolution and the corresponding changes in children’s living arrangements negatively affect their educational outcomes (perkins 2019). therefore, the association between parental homogamy and children’s tertiary educational attainment may in fact be partly caused by the lower probability of divorce among homogamous couples. however, empirical evidence shows that homogamy leads to lower union dissolution and divorce rates only among highly educated homogamous parents (theunis et al. 2018). thus, parental education also acts as a moderator in this case. from the perspective of the highly educated, homogamy is seen as particularly attractive because it facilitates maintaining a societally privileged position (mäenpää/jalovaara 2014; theunis et al. 2018). it is also argued that highly educated homogamous couples are more gender egalitarian and have better interpersonal skills, leading to a more equal distribution of household tasks and higher marital satisfaction (boertien/härkönen 2018). some research also indicates that parental separation does not have a negative impact on children’s educational opportunities for highly educated (homogamous) parents (boertien/härkönen 2018). this implies that highly educated parents are more likely to be able to compensate for this negative life event with their advantageous resources (grätz 2015). from the perspective of the less educated, homogamy means that both partners have similarly disadvantageous characteristics, which is not particularly conducive to a relationship (tynes 1990). for example, two parents with lower levels of education are likely to face greater economic constraints, resulting in more stress, less satisfaction, and a higher risk of divorce. they may also be less able to manage and resolve marital disputes (conger et al. 2010). thus, parental homogamy should only have a positive effect on the educational attainment of children of highly educated parents. we derive the following two competing hypotheses from our theoretical considerations: hypothesis 1: children of educationally homogamous parents will have higher educational attainment than children with heterogamous parents. hypothesis 2: only children of highly educated homogamous parents will benefit from parental homogamy. our cross-national ess dataset limits our ability to disentangle the various mechanisms of the theoretical considerations presented above. moreover, the ess dataset does not allow us to investigate whether the differences in educational attainment between children of educationally homogamous and heterogamous parents are true causal effects or the result of selection processes into homogamous couples. if the parental mating process were truly random and unaffected by other social factors, then parental homogamy would be exogenous and causal inference would be possible. however, parental homogamy is very likely endogenous and mate choice is influenced by other social factors that explain differences in • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea248 children’s educational opportunities (gonzalez-sancho 2014). for example, we could hypothesise a reverse causal relationship in which parents who choose an educationally homogeneous partner are generally less likely to divorce, and that the lower likelihood of divorce is not necessarily a consequence of educational homogamy and greater harmony in the relationship, but rather a selection effect. therefore, more detailed information and longitudinal data would be more suitable. however, for our research interest, it is more relevant to establish this phenomenon and to test our two hypotheses in a variety of european countries than to investigate the underlying mechanisms or causal direction. 3 the european context we analyse 20 european countries that differ in their welfare and education systems, as well as in their educational expansion patterns. we expect these institutional and macro-structural contexts to be important for understanding the cross-country differences in the relationship between parental homogamy and children’s tertiary educational attainment. we provide only a very rough overview of these contexts here, as some have changed considerably over time and we cannot go into detail on all these changes (e. g. van de werfhorst 2019; esping-andersen 1999). in our analysis, the western continental european group of countries includes germany (de), austria (at), switzerland (ch), the netherlands (nl), france (fr), and belgium (be). these countries are characterised by the retention of strong traditional and hierarchical social structures and social security remains organised around the traditional male breadwinner model (esping-andersen 1990). we therefore expect that educational hypergamy (the father has a higher education than the mother) and homogamy are still the dominant patterns among parents compared to educational hypogamy (the mother has a higher education than the father). in the germanspeaking countries (austria, germany, and switzerland) and the netherlands, the emphasis on social stratification is also strongly reflected in the early tracking into different school types and a strong vocational training system that discourages working class children from pursuing academic careers (buchholz et al. 2016; buchmann et al. 2016; dronkers/korthals 2016; van de werfhorst 2019). therefore, we would expect a strong association between the similarity in parental resources and children’s tertiary educational attainment. conversely, france and belgium moved to comprehensive school systems in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively (farges et al. 2016; van de werfhorst 2019). we therefore expect lower associations in these countries. our analysis also covers eastern european countries such as poland (pl), czechia (cz), hungary (hu), estonia (ee), lithuania (lt), and slovenia (si). these countries have undergone a remarkable transformation from socialist to capitalist systems. the socialist system was characterised by an early educational expansion, as education was seen as a means to increase social and gender equality (esping-andersen 1999). thus, we expect parental homogamy, and perhaps even parental hypogamy, to be particularly high among parents in these countries. the comprehensive school system was very common during the socialist period (van de werfhorst 2019). after the fall parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 249 of the iron curtain, inequality and competition increased (cook 2010), and school tracking was introduced in czechia and hungary (horn et al. 2016; van de werfhorst 2019). these two countries (and slovenia) also had early tracking before the cold war (van de werfhorst 2019). social protection is still relatively high in czechia and slovenia and intermediate in poland and hungary (cook 2010). we therefore expect the association between parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education to be less pronounced in these countries. estonia and lithuania have become particularly liberal and market-oriented (cook 2010). therefore, we expect the association between parental homogamy and children’s tertiary education to be particularly high in the two baltic countries in our analysis. the mediterranean countries of spain (es), portugal (pt), and italy (it) experienced transitions from authoritarian dictatorships to democracies in the 20th century (teixeira et al. 2003; ballarino et al. 2009). italy was the first, followed by portugal and spain. all three had a strong emphasis on the traditional male breadwinner model, but have emancipated themselves (ferrera 2010). they were also latecomers to the educational expansion process, with a strong catching-up process in educational attainment in recent decades (cobalti/schizzerotto 1993; teixeira et al. 2003). it is therefore to be expected that the percentages of educational hypergamy and homogamy are relatively high in these countries and that parental educational hypogamy is still very low. mediterranean countries are also characterised by a relatively late establishment of the welfare state (ferrera 2010). these countries have moved from earlyto late-tracking school systems across cohorts (ballarino et al. 2009; van de werfhorst 2019). consequently, we expect weak associations between parental educational similarity and children’s tertiary attainment. scandinavian countries such as sweden (se), norway (no), and finland (fi) are characterised by strong social-democratic welfare regimes (esping-andersen 1990), placing great emphasis on social and gender equality. in addition, these countries provide extensive childcare and many highly educated women work in the service sector. we therefore expect the proportion of educationally homogamous and hypogamous couples among parents to be relatively high in the nordic countries. the strong focus on equality, such as the equality of living conditions in these countries (ensured, e.g., by high taxation and redistribution) is also reflected in comprehensive schooling systems that do not stratify children into different school tracks (esping-andersen 1990; van de werfhorst 2019). scandinavian countries are known for their low social origin effects on children’s educational attainment (erikson/jonsson 1996). however, in recent years, these countries, especially sweden, have also experienced a rise in inequality and welfare cuts, which could make the pooling of resources for children’s educational attainment more consequential (esping-andersen 1999). however, since this is a relatively recent phenomenon, we still expect low associations between parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary attainment for these countries. finally, our analysis also includes two anglo-saxon countries; ireland (ie) and the united kingdom (uk). these two countries are generally characterised by liberal welfare regimes, i.e., they are very market-oriented, with low social redistribution and high social inequality (esping-andersen 1990). there is a strong focus on equality • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea250 of opportunity by social origin and gender (esping-andersen 1990). as a result, these countries were forerunners in the educational expansion process. however, the uk also had a stronger emphasis on the traditional breadwinner model (orloff 2010). we therefore expect relatively high proportions of educationally homogamous and hypogamous parents in ireland and educationally homogamous and equal shares for hyperand hypogamous parents in the uk. the uk introduced a comprehensive school system in the 1960s (van de werfhorst 2019). however, due to these countries’ liberal market systems, there are strong inequalities in living conditions between children from different family backgrounds, and not all can take advantage of these equal opportunities to the same extent. the irish education system is characterised by a stable early tracking system across cohorts (van de werfhorst 2019). thus, in both education systems, we expect strong associations between parental educational similarity and children’s tertiary attainment. 4 parental homogamy and the operationalisation of family background in the literature on the intergenerational transmission of social inequality, family background has been captured through various approaches. it is assumed that families pool their resources and share the same living conditions, which affects their children’s opportunities in life (sørensen 1994: 32-33). in this section, we provide an overview of different approaches to measuring family background and how parental educational hypergamy, homogamy, and hypogamy can be integrated into analysis. we then outline and justify the approach we choose for our analysis. in early research, both economists and class theorists only used data on fathers to analyse children’s educational inequality (holmlund et al. 2011; goldthorpe 1983). one reason for this was that no data on maternal resources were available (goldthorpe 1983; sørensen 1994). this literature also argued that the father’s position reflected the mother’s position in the case of parental homogamy (goldthorpe 1983: 470; björklund/jäntti 2009: 4). furthermore, in traditionally male-dominated societies, the mother’s position was still seen as strongly dependent on the father’s position (goldthorpe 1983; sørensen 1994). the following describes how maternal resources and parental similarity are considered in operationalising the concept of “family background.” joint classifications and parental homogamy to take into account the educational resources of both the father and the mother, educational levels of both parents were included in additive models (sørensen 1994). however, including both parental resources into regression models as separate variables represents an individualistic rather than a family approach (sørensen 1994). in addition, separate parental resources cover the independent contributions of each parent, but not their similarity (holmlund et al. 2011). to reduce collinearity and to introduce a single measure of the family’s position, the sum or average of parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 251 parental resources were added into later analyses (erikson 1984; holmlund et al. 2011). these approaches also control for the case of assortative mating (holmlund et al. 2011; bingley et al. 2022). researchers therefore often include an interaction term to account for the case that the effect of one parent’s resources is influenced by the other parent’s resources, leading to an effect beyond the individual parents’ effects (becker 1973; eeckhaut et al. 2013). however, for our research interest in the similarity of parental resources and its association with children’s acquisition of a tertiary degree and whether it only plays a role when parents have high educational resources, we do not need to distinguish between the similarity of parental resources and the reinforcing effects of parental resources. furthermore, including both parental resources separately in a model with an interaction term can also exacerbate collinearity problems. moreover, latent variable approaches have been used to operationalise family background as a pooling of resources, taking into account different parental characteristics and allowing to specify the relative importance of paternal and maternal resources (meraviglia/buis 2015). as far as we know, however, this approach does not allow us to assess in which cases educational similarity matters. does it only matter at the lower or higher rungs of the educational ladder, or is resource pooling always beneficial? head of household measures and parental homogamy in class analysis, only the head of the household determines the class position of the family and therefore assumed to be the main influence on the life chances, lifestyles, attitudes, and interests of family members (sørensen 1994). the class concept also implies that when parents have different positions in the employment system, the family nonetheless has a single class position in the stratification system that determines the position of power and advantage in society (goldthorpe 1983, 1984; erikson 1984). it is assumed that there are no differences in class positions between members of the same family. if this were the case, there would be class conflicts within families (goldthorpe 1983). in conventional class system scholarship, the father determines the family class position (goldthorpe 1983). however, as the education and labour market attachment of women increased and researchers realised that the father is not necessarily the head of all households, the dominance approach was developed to integrate maternal resources into the family concept (beller 2009; sørensen 1994). in this operationalisation, the family’s position in society is determined by the “dominant” position of both parents (erikson 1984). this operationalisation accounts for cases in which the mother has a higher position than the father does. although these approaches were originally developed for parental social class to determine families’ market situations, they have also been applied to parental education to define family background (thaning/hällsten 2020; sørensen 1994: 33). however, research in the dominance approach tradition still often neglects the mother’s educational resources, as the highest education is often that of the father (blossfeld 2018; sørensen 1994; thaning/hällsten 2020). this is problematic in contemporary societies, as mothers generally play an important role in children’s • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea252 educational attainment, as they tend to spend more time with children and interact more actively with them (ballarino et al. 2021; buis 2013: 3-4; gonzález-sancho 2012). proponents of the conventional and dominance approaches argue that the resources of the other parent are important for intergenerational transmission and can be accounted for through complementary measures of household composition (erikson 1984: 508-509; goldthorpe 1984: 498). we follow their suggestions and add information on household composition in terms of parental educational hypergamy, homogamy, and hypogamy to the analysis. in combination with the dominance approach, this measure can be used to examine whether it makes a difference whether the mother or father is more highly educated and is considered the head of the family (hypogamy and hypergamy) or whether both parents have the same level of education (homogamy). the interaction of the two operationalisations also allows to directly test whether homogamy and heterogamy are only relevant for high or low levels of education. 5 data, variables, and method we use ess data from the 2016 and 2018 rounds. the ess is a biennial, crosssectional, and cross-national survey, which is particularly suitable for our purposes as it provides fully harmonised and comparable data on respondents’ education and family background.3 the country samples are representative of all individuals aged 15 and over. we restrict our analysis to individuals between the ages of 25 and 69 at the time of data collection. the lower age limit of 25 ensures respondents’ highest level of education and the upper age limit enables reliable cross-country comparisons. this results in a sample of 54,379 respondents across both survey rounds and 20 european countries. sample sizes per country are reported in table a2 in the appendix. table 1 presents descriptive statistics of all analysed variables for 20 countries. our dependent variable is the respondent’s tertiary educational attainment. country experts classified the different educational attainment levels covered in the ess based on the international standard classification of education (isced) 2011. we use four hierarchical educational categories: primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary education.4 we created a dummy variable with 0 indicating individuals 3 for 2016, we use “ess8 ‒ integrated file, edition 2.2”; for 2018, we use “ess9 ‒ integrated file, edition 3.1.” we use data from two years to ensure enough cases for analysis. before merging these two rounds, we tested the differences in respondents’ educational attainment categories (our dependent variable) over these two years. using likelihood-ratio chi-square tests, the differences in frequencies of tertiary education and non-tertiary education are not statistically significant at the 5 percent level in all but two countries (the netherlands and sweden, cf. table a1 in the appendix). 4 the isced 2011 is the international standard classification of education, using three-digit codes. the first digit distinguishes the vertical levels of education, the second digit distinguishes the horizontal differences within the educational levels and the third digit identifies the degree that relates to the next possibilities to study. the isced 2011 codes of the ess are not exact equivalents of the international isced 2011 codes (cf. schneider 2010). we recoded the three-digit ess codes into four levels as follows: (0/129 = 1) (212/229 311 321 421 = 2) (312 313 322 323 412 413 422 423 510 520 = 3) (610/800 = 4). parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 253 ta b. 1 : d es cr ip tiv e st at ist ic s so ur ce : e ss 8 (2 01 6) ‒ in te gr at ed fi le (d o i: ht tp s:/ /d oi .o rg /1 0. 21 33 8/ es s8 e0 2_ 2) , e di tio n 2. 2 an d es s9 (2 01 8) ‒ in te gr at ed fi le , ed iti on 3 .1 (d o i: ht tp s:/ /d oi .o rg /1 0. 21 33 8/ es s9 e0 3_ 1) va ria bl e m ea n st d. d ev . m in . m ax . ca te go rie s pr op or tio ns in di vi du al v ar ia bl es (l ev el -1 ) te rt ia ry e du ca tio n at ta in m en t 0 1 0) n o; 1 ) y es 0) 7 0. 2% ; 1 ) 2 9. 8% ed uc at io na l o rig in (i sl ed s td .) 0. 00 1. 00 -1 .2 3 2. 44 hi gh es t p ar en ta l i sl ed s ta nd ar di se d pa re nt al e du ca tio na l p ai rin g 0 2 0) h om og am y (th e sa m e ed uc at io n) ; 1 ) h yp og am y 0) 6 6. 1% ; 1 ) 1 4. 2% ; 2 ) 1 9. 7% (fa th er 's ed uc at io n lo w er ); 2) h yp er ga m y (m ot he r's ed uc at io n lo w er ) g en de r 0 1 0) m al e; 1 ) f em al e 0) 4 7.7 % ; 1 ) 5 2. 3% bi rt h co ho rt s 0 2 0) 1 94 919 63 ; 1 ) 1 96 419 78 ; 2 ) 1 97 919 93 0) 3 6. 0% ; 1 ) 3 4. 8% ; 2 ) 2 9. 2% o cc up at io na l o rig in 0 2 0) ro ut in e an d se m i-r ou tin e m an ua l a nd s er vi ce 0) 3 5. 1% ; 1 ) 5 3. 9% ; 2 ) 1 1. 0% oc cu pa tio ns ; 1 ) t ec hn ic al , c ra ft o cc up at io ns a nd fa rm er s; 2) p ro fe ss io na ls , c le ric al a nd in te rm ed ia te oc cu pa tio ns , m an ag er s a nd a dm in ist ra to rs co nt ex tu al le ve l co un tr y (le ve l-2 ) 1 20 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 https://doi.org/10.21338/ess9e03_1 • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea254 who did not attain tertiary education and 1 for those who did. in the 20 ess countries analysed, on average, about 70 percent of respondents aged 25-69 did not attain tertiary education and 30 percent did. proportions for all 20 analysed countries are presented in table a3 in the appendix. the two main independent variables at the individual level are parental education and parental educational pairing. for parental education, we first transformed the paternal and maternal isced 2011 measures into continuous international standard level of education (isled) variables (schröder/ganzeboom 2009, 2014). the isled measure optimises the role of education in the status attainment process and, as a continuous variable, is more appropriate for our statistical analysis than a categorical variable. we then applied the dominance principle, according to which the highest parental isled defines the respondent’s educational origin (erikson 1984). average isleds in ess data for the 20 analysed countries are presented in table a4 in the appendix. in the analysis, we use a standardised isled measure of educational origin (z-scores: mean = 0, sd = 1). for parental educational pairing, we examine the pairwise combinations of education based on the parents’ educational levels. to construct the parental pairing variable, we used the highest educational level of the father and mother based on isced 2011 and distinguished four hierarchical categories: (1) primary, (2) lower secondary, (3) upper secondary, and (4) tertiary education.5 since we determine educational origin through the highest parental level of education, we are able to create a pairing variable by combining these four categories for both parents, which has these three categories: (0) homogamy (both parents have the same level); (1) hypogamy (the father has a lower level of education than the mother); and (2) hypergamy (the mother has a lower level of education than the father) (van bavel et al. 2018). our control variables are gender, birth cohort, and parental occupational class (social origin). gender is a dummy variable with two categories (0 for men and 1 for women; see table a5 in the appendix). the birth cohort is constructed by subtracting the respondent’s age from 2018 (the second year of data collection). we define three birth cohorts: (0) 1949-1963, (1) 1964-1978, and (2) 1979-1993 (see table a6 in the appendix).6 to construct the parental social class, we used two variables from the ess dataset that capture the father and mother’s occupation when the respondent was 14 years old. on the basis of these occupational measures, we distinguish three basic types of occupations in the european labour market for mothers and fathers: (0) routine and semi-routine manual and service occupations; (1) technical, craft occupations, and farmers; and (2) professionals, clerical, intermediate occupations, managers, and administrators. we report the respondent’s occupational origin 5 we created these categories as described above (cf. footnote 3). 6 the three created cohorts only partially follow the established and largely-used cohorts – baby boomers (1945-1959), generation x (1960-1980), and generation y (1981-2000). they were designed to match the age range of our dataset (25-69) and an even distribution into three groups. furthermore, we did not intend to analyse cohort changes in tertiary educational attainment in this paper. parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 255 according to the higher of these two values (one for the mother and the other for the father; see table a7 in the appendix). the data have a hierarchical structure. individuals (level-1) are clustered in countries (level-2). we therefore use multilevel models to estimate the associations between the independent variables and the dependent variable. as our dependent variable is binary (tertiary education attainment or not), we use two-level random logistic regression models (gelman/hill 2006; rabe-hesketh/skrondal 2012). the model has the following form: logit[p(yij = 1)] = β0 + β1x1ij + ... + β8x8ij + µ0j the left-hand term in the equation is the logit of the probability of tertiary education attainment for respondent i in country j. level 1 covariates are: x1ij = parental education (isled standardised), x2ij = parental educational pairing (hypogamy), x3ij = parental educational pairing (hypergamy), x4ij = gender (woman), x5ij = cohort (1964-1978), x6ij = cohort (1979-1993), x7ij = parental social class (technical/craft occupations), and x8ij = parental social class (professionals/ administrators) with estimated intercept β0 and parameters β1,..., β8. µ0j is a random intercept varying across countries (level 2) (the random intercept is assumed to be uncorrelated with the observed individual variables). 5 empirical results differences in the patterns of educational pairings of parents in 20 european countries we begin by describing the patterns of parental homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy among the respondents’ parents in the 20 european countries we analyse. table 2 shows that parental homogamy is remarkably dominant in all european countries. parental educational homogamy clearly outweighs heterogamy. on average, about 66 percent of the respondents’ parents are educationally homogamous. among heterogamous parents, hypergamy is more common than hypogamy, at 20 percent and 14 percent, respectively. parental homogamy is particularly high in mediterranean (italy, portugal and spain) and eastern european (czechia, hungary, slovenia and poland) countries, where it exceeds 70 percent of couples. these proportions reflect the strong catching up process in educational expansion in the southern european countries and the strong emphasis on gender equality in the eastern european countries under state socialism. traditional parental hypergamy is the second most common constellation in the german-speaking countries of austria, germany, and switzerland, and the french-/dutch-speaking countries of france, belgium and the netherlands. this pattern is consistent with the stronger emphasis on the traditional male breadwinner model in continental europe. finally, the countries in which parental hypogamy is the second most common constellation or in which parental hypogamy is as common as hypergamy are the (1) • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea256 progressive liberal countries (ireland and uk), former socialist and now very liberal baltic countries (lithuania and estonia) and the scandinavian countries (finland, norway and sweden). all these countries have a strong emphasis on gender equality and are also forerunners in educational expansion. tab. 2: proportion of ess respondents by parental educational pairing and countries (aged 25-69) parental educational pairing country type country homogamy hypogamy hypergamy n (same level of (father's (mother's education) education lower) education lower) in % western european austria 66.1 5.2 28.8 3,181 belgium 58.3 15.1 26.6 2,184 france 63.6 12.6 23.8 2,258 germany 56.1 8.6 35.3 3,204 netherlands 59.0 12.9 28.1 2,009 switzerland 59.7 8.0 32.2 2,014 eastern european czechia 71.2 12.0 16.8 3,402 estonia 59.8 24.8 15.4 2,530 hungary 74.3 13.2 12.6 2,121 lithuania 66.7 22.1 11.2 2,358 poland 75.9 12.8 11.3 2,088 slovenia 69.6 12.9 17.5 1,787 mediterranean italy 74.9 8.2 16.9 3,453 portugal 80.7 8.4 11.0 1,468 spain 78.6 7.0 14.4 2,425 scandinavian finland 65.6 17.8 16.6 2,462 norway 61.1 17.5 21.4 1,981 sweden 59.6 19.5 20.9 1,888 anglo-saxon ireland 64.4 19.8 15.9 3,237 united kingdom 62.6 16.4 21.0 2,191 total 66.3 13.6 20.1 48,241 source: ess8 (2016) ‒ integrated file (doi: https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2), edition 2.2 and ess9 (2018) ‒ integrated file, edition 3.1 (doi: https://doi. org/10.21338/ess9e03_1). https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 257 the association between parental homogamy and children’s attainment of tertiary education table 3 shows the estimated random logistic regression models for tertiary education attainment.7 model m0 is the null random intercept model, where no covariates are considered (x1ij,...,x8ij = 0 in equation 1). the intercept can be interpreted as the average odds across all countries of attaining a tertiary education degree compared to attaining a lower education level. it is 0.42 (exp(-0.855)), or about 58 percent lower (100*[exp(-0.855)-1]). the individual-level independent variables (parental education and parental educational pairing) and control variables (gender, birth cohorts, and parental social class) are included in model m1 (x1ij ,..., x8ij in equation 1). we used a log-likelihood ratio (lr) test to compare models m0 and m1. this test reveals that the additionally included variables significantly improve the model fit.8 model m1 shows that parental education is positively associated with obtaining a tertiary degree. parental education is a standardised variable (z-scores) and must therefore be interpreted in terms of changes by one standard deviation (sd). for example, an increase of 1 sd in educational origin means that the odds of tertiary education attainment increase by a factor of 2.05 (exp(0.718)). the more educated the parents are, the higher the probability of their children attaining a tertiary degree. this relationship is expected and has been observed in many social stratification analyses (e.g., blau/ duncan 1967; breen 2007; breen/müller 2020). educated parents are knowledgeable about academic education themselves and can advise and support their children (bukodi/goldthorpe 2013; pfeffer 2008). model m1 also reveals that children from educationally heterogamous parents are statistically less likely to attain tertiary education than children from educationally homogamous parents (the reference category). at first sight, this is consistent with hypothesis 1, in which we expect that children from educationally homogamous parents are more likely to attain tertiary education because their parents are more consistent in their parenting styles, less likely to divorce, and create a less stressful learning environment for their children. with regard to parental heterogamy, our variable also takes into account whether the mother or the father is more highly educated, and the estimated values indicate this does in fact matter. in couples where the mother has a lower level of education than the father (hypergamy), children are significantly less likely (as indicated by a wald test) to attain tertiary education than children in couples where the father has a lower level of education (hypogamy). the probability is lower by 20 percent for hypergamous parents (100*[exp(-0.228)-1]) and 13 percent for hypogamous parents (100*[exp(-0.135)-1]), respectively, compared to homogamy. in a recent article, ortiz7 we estimated all models with the stata command melogit. we used combination of ess weights including design weights and probability weights. the do-file and data will be provided upon request. 8 icc (intraclass correlation) increases when the predictors are added to random logistic regression models. this happens because an unexplained variation at level one cannot decrease if the standard logistic distribution is used (cf. kreft/de leeuw 1998; goldstein 2010). • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea258 tab. 3: random logistic regression models for tertiary education attainment variable levels m0 m1 m2 m3 individual level educational origin (isled std.) 0.718*** 0.862*** 0.867*** (0.015) (0.020) (0.021) parental educational homogamy ref. ref. ref. pairing hypogamy -0.135*** -0.039 -0.008 (father lower) (0.036) (0.038) (0.064) hypergamy -0.228*** -0.196*** -0.177*** (mother lower) (0.030) (0.032) (0.061) gender man ref. ref. ref. woman 0.131*** 0.133*** 0.135*** (0.022) (0.022) (0.022) birth cohorts 1949-1963 ref. ref. ref. 1964-1978 0.194*** 0.177*** 0.177*** (0.028) (0.028) (0.028) 1979-1993 0.384*** 0.352*** 0.351*** (0.029) (0.029) (0.029) occupation origin manual/service occupation ref. ref. ref. technical/craft occupation 0.517*** 0.499*** 0.499*** (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) professionals/ 1.008*** 0.932*** 0.925*** administrators (0.046) (0.046) (0.046) constant -0.855*** -1.523*** -1.458*** -1.464*** (0.108) (0.109) (0.112) (0.121) interactions educational origin (isled std.)*hypogamy (father's lower) -0.405*** -0.396*** (0.036) (0.037) educational origin (isled std.)*hypergamy (mother's lower) -0.219*** -0.212*** (0.028) (0.029) random effects parameters country variation: constant 0.226*** 0.210*** 0.222*** 0.265*** (0.073) (0.068) (0.072) (0.087) hypogamy (father's lower) 0.040* (0.022) hypergamy (mother's lower) 0.040** (0.020) icc country 0.074 0.092 0.094 0.101 ll model -21 -19 -19 -19 560.23 413.46 397.59 383.62 n (respondents) 48 241.00 48 241.00 48 241.00 48 241.00 note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01. ** p<0.05. * p<0.1 source: ess8 (2016) ‒ integrated file (doi: https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2), edition 2.2 and ess9 (2018) ‒ integrated file, edition 3.1 (doi: https://doi. org/10.21338/ess9e03_1) https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 259 gervasi (2021) used ess data to show that there is a gendered effect of parental educational heterogamy: women benefit from having educationally hypogamous parents (positive and significant interaction term) and are disadvantaged if they have educationally hypergamous parents (negative and significant interaction term).9 model m1 also demonstrates that women are more likely to attain tertiary education. their odds are 1.13 (exp(0.131)) times higher than those of men. many studies have shown that there are gender differences in tertiary education attainment. while men were more likely to attain tertiary education in older cohorts, women caught up and even surpassed them in recent years (diprete/buchmann 2013; shavit/blossfeld 1993). m1 also reveals that across cohorts, more and more children are attaining tertiary education. this reflects the gradual expansion of tertiary education in european countries during the second half of the 20th century. in addition, children from higher parental social classes are more likely to attain tertiary education. the odds are 1.67 times (exp(0.517)) higher for children of parents in technical and craft occupations, and 2.74 times (exp(1.008)) higher for children of parents in professional, intermediate, managerial and administrative occupations than for children of parents in semi-routine, routine manual, and service occupations. these associations do not change significantly in the next two models (m2 and m3 in table 3). is parental education a moderator? model m2 is the same as model m1, but it adds an interaction between educational origin and parental educational pairing (the term β9x1ijx2ij + β10x1ijx3ij is added to equation 1). with this interaction term, we test hypothesis 2 on whether the effect of parental pairing is moderated by parental education levels. model m3 is the same as model m2, but it allows both variants of parental pairing (hypogamy and hypergamy) to vary randomly across countries. it is a random coefficient model, which means that the term µ1jx2ij + µ2jx3ij is added to equation 1 (the full equation for model m3 is presented in the appendix). this random coefficient model allows us to examine cross-country differences in all variants of parental pairing. the likelihood-ratio (lr) test of nesting model m1 in m2 and m2 in m3 indicates that all these extensions of model m1 significantly improve the model’s fit to the data. we interpret the results using model m3. the interactions of variants of parental pairing (hypogamy and hypergamy) with educational origin are different, negative, and significant. educational origin moderates the association between parental educational pairing and children’s tertiary educational attainment. this means that for each higher level of parental education, the differences in the probabilities of 9 we have tested for this interaction in our data (gender by parental heterogamy) and come to similar conclusions as ortiz-gervasi doe. parental educational homogamy increases the odds of tertiary educational attainment compared to parental educational heterogamy. looking at parental educational hypogamy and hypergamy, girls from hypogamous families have significantly higher odds of tertiary attainment than boys from the same families do. however, this is not the aim of our study. • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea260 tertiary educational attainment between children of educationally hypogamous and hypergamous parents compared to children of educationally homogamous parents increase. to illustrate this, figure 1 shows the estimated probabilities of tertiary educational attainment by educational origin (standard deviations of average isled) for the three categories of parental educational pairing (homogamy, hypogamy and hypergamy) for men (left-hand side) and women (right-hand side). the probabilities are calculated for average parental class. the probabilities rise from lower to the higher educational origins (from 15 percent on average for the lowest educational origins to 65 percent on average for the highest educational origins). there is no difference in trends by gender. in the case of women, the curves are only slightly shifted upwards by model m3 parameter for gender. parental homogamy significantly increases the probability of children obtaining a tertiary degree at almost all levels of educational origin, except for children of parents with low levels of education, where there is fig. 1: probability of obtaining a tertiary degree by educational origin (isled std.) and levels of parental educational homogamy by gender 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 -1 .2 -1 .0 -0 .8 -0 .6 -0 .4 -0 .2 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 1. 2 1. 4 1. 6 1. 8 2. 0 2. 2 2. 2 2. 4 -1 .2 -1 .0 -0 .8 -0 .6 -0 .4 -0 .2 0. 0 0. 2 0. 4 0. 6 0. 8 1. 0 1. 2 1. 4 1. 6 1. 8 2. 0 2. 2 2. 2 2. 4 men women homogamy hypogamy (father lower) hypergamy (mother lower) pr ob ab ili ty (% ) educational origin (isled std.) note: sd is standard deviation of isled std. sd 0 is standardised average of isled. whiskers denote 95% confidence intervals. source: ess8 (2016) ‒ integrated file (doi: https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2), edition 2.2 and ess9 (2018) ‒ integrated file, edition 3.1 (doi: https://doi. org/10.21338/ess9e03_1) https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 261 no difference between children from educationally homogamous or heterogamous parents. in the highest educational origins, hypergamy and hypogamy reduce the probability of children’s tertiary attainment to almost the same (the association of mother’s lower education is even stronger compared to father’s lower education). although each curve point in figure 1 has a confidence interval, these intervals do not say anything about the statistical differences between parental homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy in specific categories of educational origin (they refer to the estimated parameters of model m3 and their differences from 0). the statistical differences between homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy must therefore be tested in a different way. we used the contrast statistical procedure (mitchell 2012) for all combinations of parental educational pairing categories and educational origin for men and women separately (cf. table a8 in the appendix). among the higher educated families, parental homogamy is important and significantly increases the probability of tertiary educational attainment compared to parental heterogamy (hypogamy and hypergamy) for both men and women. it does not matter whether the parental constellation is educationally hypogamous or hypergamous (there is no statistically significant difference between these variants), heterogamy is always detrimental to tertiary educational attainment compared to parental homogamy. among less educated parents, children from hypogamous couples (where the mother is more educated) have a significantly higher probability of obtaining a tertiary degree. in sum, these empirical findings are consistent with hypothesis 2, which proposed that parental homogamy is only beneficial for children’s tertiary education attainment when parents are highly educated. according to the pooling of resources theory, high levels of education from both parents are beneficial for children, as children have access to two people with resources conducive to education. according to a variant of the agreement in parenting styles argument, highly educated parents are more likely to share childcare equally, leading to greater harmony between parents and a more conducive learning environment for children. finally, according to the divorce argument, highly educated homogamous parents are less likely to divorce and can compensate for doing so, leading to less emotional stress and better educational outcomes for their children. however, we cannot completely rule out hypothesis 1, as our results also suggest that in the middle range of parental educational resources, parental homogamy benefits children. hypothesis 1 proposed that parental educational homogamy always increases the probability of tertiary educational attainment compared to parental educational heterogamy, regardless of educational origin. the association of parental educational homogamy is positive for all educational origins except the lowest, where it is not different from parental hypergamy and significantly lower than in the case of parental hypogamy. only maternal educational advantages matter for the children of less educated parents. • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea262 cross-national differences in the association between parental educational pairings and children’s tertiary education attainment finally, we examine whether there are country differences in the association between parental educational homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy and children’s probabilities of obtaining a tertiary degree. figure 2 shows caterpillar plots of the empirical bayes residuals based on model m3. the zero line marks an average (main) association of homogamy, hypogamy and hypergamy respectively. the numbers below or above zero indicate the extent to which each country is above or below the average in terms of the association of homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy with children’s probabilities of obtaining a tertiary degree. there is large variation in parental homogamy across countries. however, there is almost no country variation for parental educational heterogamy (hypogamy and hypergamy). the lowest association between parental homogamy and children’s tertiary attainment is observed in czechia and austria. the association is also below average in countries such as hungary, italy, switzerland, and germany, but less pronounced. these are all countries with a very high share of parental educational homogamy or a relatively high percentage of parental educational hypergamy. while one would expect low associations with parental homogamy in formerly socialist countries, it is surprising that parental homogamy in german-speaking countries is less important for children’s tertiary educational attainment than elsewhere, as they are known for their early segregation into different educational branches and high educational inequality. slovenia, estonia, france, and poland do not differ from the average and ireland, sweden and lithuania have an association close to the average. countries in this intermediate group have a relatively high share of educationally hypogamous parents compared to educationally hypergamous parents (estonia, lithuania, ireland, and sweden). the highest associations are found in spain, finland, the netherlands, portugal, the united kingdom, norway, and belgium. these are countries with a percentage of parental educational homogamy above 60 percent and even above or close to 80 percent of couples. this high association was expected for the liberal uk, with relatively high social inequalities, and for the netherlands and belgium, with relatively early tracking (which was only changed in belgium recently). however, this result is more surprising for the scandinavian countries of norway and finland, which are characterised by high social securities, a comprehensive school system, and low educational inequality. especially in the scandinavian countries, it seems important to take into account not only the educational position of the family, but also the similarity of resources as an amplifying factor of educational inequality. ultimately, the associations between parental hypogamy and hypergamy and the likelihood of children obtaining a tertiary degree are not very different between countries. both associations are weak and below average in the uk and norway and stronger and above average in austria and hungary. nevertheless, the differences in parental educational hypogamy and hypergamy associations between countries are relatively small and we should not overinterpret them. we therefore conclude that parental heterogamy, compared to parental homogamy, reduces the probability of children obtaining a tertiary degree in a similar way in all european countries. parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 263 fig. 2: estimation of homogamy, hypogamy, and hypergamy associations for tertiary education attainment by country homogamy (parents' same education) -1.4 -1.2 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 ra nd om h om og am y ef fe ct cz at hu it ch de si ee fr pl ie se lt es fi nl pt uk no be hypogamy (father's education lower) -1.4 -1.2 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 ra nd om h yp og am y ef fe ct uk no be fi nl es lt fr ie de se ee ch si it cz pt pl hu at hypergamy (mother's education lower) -1.4 -1.2 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 ra nd om h yp er ga m y ef fe ct fr uk no se fi ch be lt ee ie nl de si es pl pt it at cz hu source: ess8 (2016) ‒ integrated file (doi: https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2), edition 2.2 and ess9 (2018) ‒ integrated file, edition 3.1 (doi: https://doi. org/10.21338/ess9e03_1) https://doi.org/10.21338/ess8e02_2 https://doi • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea264 7 conclusions and discussion the consequences of parental homogamy on children’s educational attainment are an understudied topic. this paper aimed to shed light on the issue in two ways: (1) by testing whether parental homogamy is associated with children’s tertiary education attainment in different european countries and (2) by assessing whether this association is moderated by parental education. with regard to the first objective, we demonstrated that parental homogamy has a positive association with children’s tertiary educational attainment compared to parental heterogamy. parental educational homogamy increases the chances of children obtaining a tertiary degree. conversely, children from educationally heterogamous parents are less likely to attain tertiary education. however, children from educationally hypogamous parents – i.e., whose mothers have higher educational attainment than their fathers – are less disadvantaged than children from educationally hypergamous parents. concerning the second objective, we were also able to show that parental educational homogamy is partly moderated by parental education. children of highly educated homogamous parents are much more likely to obtain a tertiary degree than children of educationally hypergamous or hypogamous parents. in this study, we found empirical support for theories suggesting that parental homogamy is relevant to children’s educational opportunities only among parents with higher levels of education. however, we could not completely rule out theories and hypotheses suggesting that parental homogamy is important for children of all educational backgrounds. only for children of parents with low levels of education did homogamy show no association. finally, we also examined whether there are differences in the association between parental homogamy, hypergamy, and hypogamy for children’s tertiary educational attainment across european countries. cross-country differences in parental homogamy are much greater than in parental hypogamy and hypergamy. two surprising findings were that the association between parental homogamy and children’s tertiary degree were below average in continental european countries and above average in scandinavian countries. one interpretation might be that in continental countries with high social origin effects on educational inequality, similarity has a less strong additional effect. conversely, the similarity of parental educational resources may be particularly important in the scandinavian countries, where educational attainment is less influenced by parental education. whatever the reasons for these findings, more research is needed to investigate this unexpected result. parental hypogamy and hypergamy reduce the probability of obtaining a tertiary degree in all european countries in a similar way compared to parental educational homogamy. we conclude that when studying differences in children’s educational opportunities by family background, it is important to not only include indicators of parental resources, but also to take into account the similarity and dissimilarity of maternal and paternal resources. our study also has some limitations: first, our sample of two ess waves does not allow us to examine changes in the associations of parental homogamy with parental educational homogamy and children’s tertiary education in europe • 265 children’s tertiary education across cohorts. further research examining these associations across cohorts is needed. there is also a need for research that examines how the association between highly educated homogamous parents and children’s tertiary educational attainment varies across countries and cohorts. second, ess data does not provide information on how long children lived with their parents, whether their parents were divorced or not, or when they got divorced. it is therefore unclear what influence non-resident parents have on their children, apart from child support payments. this could be problematic if we want to examine the effect of the similarity of parents’ education on children’s education. however, studies show that non-resident parents invest significant time and money in their biological children (tach 2015). the data also does not allow us to examine parenting style mechanisms. third, we cannot determine whether parents are cohabiting or married, and whether this makes a difference for the effect of parental educational homogamy. especially in the european context, cohabitation has become a means of testing a relationship for its suitability for marriage or even as a substitute for marriage (hiekel et al. 2014; perelli-harris et al. 2014). however, there are countryspecific variations. there is no universal model of whether marriage is still a prerequisite for childbearing, despite the spread of cohabitation and out of wedlock birth in europe. there is evidence of a decoupling of marriage and childbearing, particularly in scandinavian countries (heuveline/timberlake 2004; kiernan 2002). however, even in sweden, family-forming marriage (no children and no conception of a first child at least 8 months before marriage) remains the most common family model (holland 2013). cross-national comparisons show that this model is still typical for the majority of the population across cohorts and ages, although cohabitation now frequently precedes marriage (holland 2017). on the other hand, legitimising conception through marriage has become more important in central and eastern europe in recent decades, while in western europe and norway this model is less preferred (holland 2017). this reflects changes in family values and norms (inglehart 2020), as well as individualisation and the deinstitutionalisation of marriages (cherlin 2004; fučík et al. 2019). empirical evidence is inconclusive as to whether patterns of homogamy differ between cohabiting and married couples (blackwell/lichter 2004). however, if there are differences, they appear to be small (blackwell/lichter 2004). future studies with better and longitudinal data should examine these issues in greater detail. acknowledgements tomáš katrňák’s work on this study was supported by the czech science foundation (grant no. ga22-33722s: development of social mobility in central and eastern european countries from the 1970s to the present: a dynamic equilibrium?) • pia n. blossfeld, tomáš katrňák, beatrice chomková manea266 references ballarino, gabriele; meraviglia, cinzia; panichella, nazareno 2021: both parents matter. familybased educational inequality in italy over the second half of the 20th century. in: research in social stratification and mobility 73: 100597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2021.100597 ballarino, gabriele et al. 2009: persistent inequalities? 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manea@fss.muni.cz url: https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/7150-tomas-katrnak https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/66436-beatrice-elenachromkova-manea mailto:pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at https://piablossfeld.github.io/ mailto:katrnak@fss.muni.cz mailto:manea@fss.muni.cz https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/7150-tomas-katrnak https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/66436-beatrice-elena-chromkova-manea https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/66436-beatrice-elena-chromkova-manea https://www.fss.muni.cz/en/o-nas/zamestnanci-fakulty/66436-beatrice-elena-chromkova-manea published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution* kristin hajek abstract: this study researches the associations between having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution. empirical evidence on this topic is scarce, and there is a pronounced lack of studies analysing longitudinal data: most previous studies have used data from women recruited from abortion clinics who are about to undergo an abortion, and therefore do not incorporate a prospective measure of relationship satisfaction pre-pregnancy. panel studies, on the other hand, collect prospective data on various topics and allow for the estimation of more advanced models that can help identify causal mechanisms. using data from the german family panel pairfam in combination with pooled logistic regressions, discrete-time event history models, as well as fi xed effects regression models, this study compares relationships up to nine years before having had an abortion and eight years afterwards. the fi ndings of the analyses can neither confi rm that relationship satisfaction acts as a confounding factor that infl uences both the likelihood of terminating a pregnancy and union dissolution, nor as a mediating factor between having an abortion and union dissolution. a negative effect of having an abortion on relationship satisfaction appears to be only temporary. in the year of an abortion, relationship satisfaction decreases slightly. in the following years, a signifi cant difference in relationship satisfaction to pre-abortion years is no longer visible. by using panel data, the temporal order of events can be retraced, resulting in the discovery that relationship satisfaction and union dissolution do not change drastically from pre-abortion values after having an abortion. keywords: abortion · pairfam · relationship satisfaction · union dissolution comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 97-122 (date of release: 26.05.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-04 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-04en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on "identifi cation of causal mechanisms in demographic research: the contribution of panel data". • kristin hajek98 1 introduction stressful life events can have an impact on relationship satisfaction and stability (randall/bodenmann 2009). for example, having children, relocating, and chronic illness can negatively infl uence partnership quality and even lead to union dissolution (belsky et al. 1985; boyle et al. 2008; schmaling/goldman sher 2000). research has shown that induced abortions (from now on "abortions") can be stressful for both the men and women involved (kero/lalos 2000). having an abortion can thus be regarded as a stressful life event that might infl uence relationship satisfaction and union dissolution. on the other hand, relationship satisfaction can infl uence the decision to abort a pregnancy (kero et al. 2001), with relationship problems ranking amongst the most often mentioned reasons for having an abortion (biggs et al. 2013; kirkman et al. 2009). a negative association between having an abortion and relationship satisfaction might therefore be explained by relationship satisfaction pre-pregnancy and not by a stressful abortion experience. only if the temporal order of events is considered can the causal mechanism be revealed. cross-sectional data can compare the relationship satisfaction of couples who have had an abortion with couples who did not experience an abortion. however, this type of data cannot distinguish whether relationship satisfaction changed after having an abortion, or if couples terminated a pregnancy because they were less satisfi ed with their relationship. therefore, longitudinal data is required, which not only can detect associations, but also help identify causal effects. panel data enables an observation of individual changes following specifi c actions, events, or developments. by using panel data for this investigation, relationship satisfaction can be compared for the same individual before and after having an abortion, allowing for the detection of changes in relationship satisfaction in relation to having an abortion. moreover, panel data permit the use of statistical models (such as fi xed effects regression models) that control for all time-stable variation between couples who have reported having had an abortion and couples who haven’t, allowing causal effects to be identifi ed under weaker assumptions (brüderl/ludwig 2015). the connection between having an abortion, stress, and mental health is a well-studied topic; however, few studies have addressed relationship satisfaction and stability after experiencing an abortion. most studies addressing this topic haven’t found any differences in sexual satisfaction or relationship quality between couples who report having had an abortion and those who haven’t (barnett et al. 1992; freudenberg/barnett 1988; mauldon et al. 2015). however, some do fi nd negative effects of abortion on relationships (e.g., bianchi-demicheli et al. 2001; coleman et al. 2009), using either retrospective data or respondents recruited from abortion clinics (who are about to have an abortion). these data sources have the disadvantage that they do not incorporate an appropriate measure of pre-abortion relationship satisfaction. longitudinal studies analysing the association between having an abortion and partnership characteristics are thus far very scarce, aside from one study by väisänen (2017) that analyses register data. unfortunately, these data do not contain a measure of relationship satisfaction. the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 99 the german family panel pairfam, on the other hand, allows the comparison of relationship satisfaction and stability up to nine years before and eight years after a couple experiences an abortion. having an induced abortion is illegal in germany, but no legal recourse is taken in the fi rst 12 weeks of gestation if a medical, criminological, or social indication is given and if the individual underwent obligatory consultation (according to § 218a of the german criminal code). abortions after 12 weeks of gestation are only possible for medical reasons. the social stigma surrounding abortion is still present, and few women talk about their experiences (busch 2015). in 2019, 100,893 abortions took place in germany – a ratio of 57 to 10,000 women (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2020). the number of abortions was 9 percent lower in 2019 than in 2009 (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2020). using pairfam data, i am able to address this topic from different angles: it enables an analysis of factors that infl uence the likelihood of having an abortion, as well as partnership characteristics after a couple has experienced an abortion. first, i analyse the likelihood of having an abortion depending on relationship satisfaction. second, i examine the risk of union dissolution for couples that have experienced an abortion. third, relationship satisfaction after having an abortion is investigated. with this three-step approach, i aim to examine the complex association between relationship satisfaction, having an abortion, and union dissolution, as well as demonstrate the advantages of using panel data to detect causal mechanisms. 2 relationship satisfaction as a mediating or confounding factor the termination of a pregnancy can be defi ned as a (potentially) stressful life event, as it constitutes a demanding or even threatening situation perceived as stressful by most (kero/lalos 2000; wheaton 1996). individual stress can then expand to partnership stress: bodenmann (2005) defi ned dyadic stress as a stressful event that affects both partners either directly (if both partners are faced with the same event) or indirectly (if the stress of one partner spills over to the other). an abortion can therefore constitute a dyadic stressor, as it can often be stressful for both partners. even if one partner perceives an abortion as less stressful, the stress the other partner is confronted with might spill over. dyadic coping strategies and cooperative use of common resources are expected to follow in order to minimize the stress felt (bodenmann 2005). the consequences of dyadic stress on an intimate relationship depends on each partner’s vulnerabilities and coping resources (karney/bradbury 1995). poor adaptive processes, such as the inability to empathize or defensive problem-solving, may affect couples’ communication and lead to partnership dissatisfaction or even dissolution (randall/bodenmann 2009). high relationship satisfaction, on the other hand, can lower the likelihood of union dissolution (karney/bradbury 1995; lillard/waite 1993). hence, the stress of an abortion might lower relationship satisfaction and, consequently, lead to a higher likelihood of union dissolution. this logic implies that relationship satisfaction is a mediator between having an abortion and union dissolution, as shown in figure 1. • kristin hajek100 on the other hand, the association between having an abortion and partnership characteristics might be explained by an opposite causal path. some women worry that their relationship is too new or unstable to support a child without considerable strain (kirkman et al. 2009; mcintyre et al. 2001). relationship satisfaction may infl uence the decision to abort a pregnancy (kero et al. 2001), as partner-related issues are one of the main reasons given for having an abortion (biggs et al. 2013). partnership dissatisfaction pre-pregnancy might explain a positive association between having an abortion and partnership dissatisfaction and union dissolution after an abortion. furthermore, it might be less likely to decide to become a parent if a separation seems likely in the near future, as separation costs are higher in the presence of a child (lillard/waite 1993). thus, abortions might not cause union dissolutions, but might occur more frequently shortly before a separation. figure 2 depicts relationship satisfaction as a confounder, with a negative effect on having an abortion as well as union dissolution. if this is indeed the case, a positive association between having an abortion and union dissolution might be explained by pre-abortion relationship dissatisfaction. in the following, several analyses are conducted in order to shed light on the complex association between relationship satisfaction, having an abortion, and union dissolution with the goal of identifying whether relationship satisfaction acts as a mediator or confounder. fig. 1: illustration of relationship satisfaction as a mediator between having an abortion and union dissolution abortion union dissolution relationship satisfaction source: own design fig. 2: illustration of relationship satisfaction as a confounder of having an abortion and union dissolution abortion union dissolution relationship satisfaction source: own design the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 101 3 previous research longitudinal analyses of finnish register data reveal that experiencing a union dissolution is associated with a higher risk of abortion within the same year (väisänen 2017). register data offer a rich and reliable data source; however, relationship satisfaction is not reported. therefore, the study cannot confi rm whether relationship satisfaction is a confounder or a mediator in this relationship. mauldon and colleagues (2015) used data from the turnaway study to compare women who had an abortion to women who were denied an abortion. giving birth temporarily prolonged the latter group’s current romantic relationship; however, just two years later, no differences were found between groups (mauldon et al. 2015). barnett and colleagues (1992) and freudenberg and barnett (1988) each recruited about 100 women from abortion clinics and questioned them a few days before having an abortion and one year later. women in a stable partnership who reported using contraception were questioned as the control group. some women indicated that the abortion experience resulted in their partnership dissolution (barnett et al. 1992; freudenberg/barnett 1988). however, post hoc rationalisation might account for this fi nding since, objectively, no differences in union dissolution were found (barnett et al. 1992). separation often occurred more unexpectedly among the control group. some women who had an abortion reported that the abortion experience served as an occasion to refl ect on their relationship, realizing that the continuation was not desirable (freudenberg/barnett 1988). women in problematic relationships or who recently experienced a separation seem to be more likely to decide to have an abortion (finer et al. 2005; kirkman et al. 2009). evidence on the effect of having an abortion on consequent relationship satisfaction seems to be rather thin. when retrospectively asked about their experience, most women don’t report any effects of having an abortion on their relationship quality; however, some reported experiencing negative or positive changes in their relationship (canario et al. 2011; kero/lalos 2005; miller 1992; miller et al. 1998). philipps and colleagues only found one of four relationship quality items to differ between groups: women who reported having had an abortion (in the current or a past relationship) communicated less with their partners than women who never had an abortion (phillips et al. 2015). moreover, coleman et al. (2009) found an increased risk of sexual dysfunction, arguments about fi nances, confl ict over relatives, and jealousy among women who reported having an abortion with their current partner or in a previous relationship compared to women who never had an abortion. however, these two analyses do not distinguish whether the reported abortion happened in the current or a previous relationship. therefore, effects of having an abortion in the current relationship can hardly be inferred. barnett and colleagues (1992) and freudenberg and barnett (1988) detect more confl icts in the relationship shortly before having an abortion when compared to the control group. one year after the fact, no differences in relationship quality were detected. so far, no known study has included an appropriate measure of relationship satisfaction pre-abortion. some researchers that recruited respondents from abortion clinics questioned them a few days before the planned abortion (e.g. • kristin hajek102 bianchi-demicheli et al. 2002; freudenberg/barnett 1988). however, evidence suggests that both men and women are more distressed in the days immediately preceding an abortion procedure compared to control groups. women who have already decided to have an abortion experience elevated stress levels (lauzon et al. 2000). panel data, more specifi cally pairfam data, on the other hand, allow for a comparison of relationships several years before and after having had an abortion. 4 data and variables pairfam is a multidisciplinary longitudinal study focusing on partnership and family dynamics in germany. the partnership module encompasses questions regarding the development of intimate and sexual relationships and partnership quality and stability. most questions are asked by an interviewer (computer assisted personal interview – capi), whereas sensitive questions regarding sexuality and abortion are included in a self-administered module (computer assisted self interview – casi). over 12,000 randomly sampled men and women from the birth cohorts 1991-93, 1981-83, and 1971-73 are surveyed annually. the fi rst wave was conducted at the end of 2008/ beginning of 2009, at which point the fi rst cohort was 15-17, the second 25-27, and the third 35-37 years old. field work for the eleventh wave started in october 2018 and fi nished in august 2019. a more detailed description of the study can be found in huinink et al. (2011). the subsequent analyses are based on anchor and partner data from waves 1-11, release 11.0 (brüderl et al. 2020a). the variables were measured as follows: abortion: from wave 2 onwards, female respondents were asked whether they had an abortion, and male respondents whether their female partner had an abortion since the last interview (or since the start of the relationship, if they reported having a new partner since the last wave). in 2019, 0.57 percent of german women had an abortion (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2020). in the pairfam data, an average of 0.82 percent of women had an abortion in a single wave. however, pairfam observes respondents in their most fertile phase in life; a higher percentage of abortion occurrence is therefore plausible. union dissolution: respondents indicate whether their relationship ended since the last wave, including up until which month it lasted. relationship satisfaction: relationship satisfaction was measured on a scale from 0 to 10 (0: very dissatisfi ed – 10: very satisfi ed) in the pairfam data. control variables: relationship duration, the number of living children, relationship institutionalisation (categories: non-cohabiting, cohabiting unmarried, married), the male partners’ labour force status, the female partner’s education level and age at the start of the relationship, and the gender of the main respondent can all infl uence relationship satisfaction, union dissolution, as well as the likelihood of having an abortion. therefore, these variables are included as control variables in the subsequent analyses. in the following, several arguments as to why these variables can be considered confounders and therefore should be controlled for are discussed. the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 103 relationship duration: if a partnership is new, the likelihood of having an abortion (kirkman et al. 2009; väisänen 2017) as well as union dissolution (brüderl/ kalter 2001) is higher than in long-standing partnerships. however, relationship satisfaction is higher at the beginning of a relationship (karney/bradbury 1995). relationship duration is measured in months, then divided by 12 to represent relationship duration in years (both linear and quadratic terms are included in the analyses). number of children: the number of children appears to positively infl uence the decision to abort (broen et al. 2005; kero et al. 2001). having children reduces the risk of union dissolution (brüderl 2000; brüderl/kalter 2001), although romantic partnerships without children report greater levels of relationship satisfaction compared to those with children (meyer et al. 2016). the number of living children (categories: 0, 1, 2, 3 or more children) is therefore also included as a control variable. relationship institutionalisation: unmarried partnerships are more inclined to both abort a pregnancy (biggs et al. 2013; rossier et al. 2007; sihvo et al. 2003; skjeldestad et al. 1994) and show higher levels of relationship dissatisfaction and breakups (brown 2004; poortman/lyngstad 2007; wiik et al. 2012) as compared to marriages. labour force status and education: individuals in education or precarious working situations are more likely to have an abortion (finer et al. 2005; sihvo et al. 2003), while full-time employment of the male partner has a positive effect on relationship stability (karney/bradbury 1995; killewald 2016). women’s employment status, on the other hand, is not related to relationship stability in germany according to recent literature (e.g., killewald 2016). therefore, only male partner full-time and selfemployment, compared to part-time employment and unemployment, is controlled for. women with a basic education have a higher likelihood of abortion (väisänen 2015) and are more prone to relationship dissatisfaction and union dissolution (van damme 2020; van damme/dykstra 2018) than women with higher levels of education. therefore, this analysis distinguishes between “lower secondary education,” “higher secondary education,” “post-secondary/tertiary education,” and “no degree/currently enrolled.” female partner’s age at start of relationship: the likelihood of union dissolution decreases with age at the start of a relationship (brüderl 2000), and most women who report having had an abortion are between the ages of 20 and 29 (jones/ jerman 2017). gender (main respondent): the gender of the main respondent is controlled for as well, as men tend to report higher levels of marital satisfaction (skolnick 1986). moreover, men can only report abortions they are aware of. information on age at the start of the relationship, employment status, and education level were derived from generated variables provided by the pairfam project team, generated from the anchor respondent as well as the partner survey (brüderl et al. 2020b). • kristin hajek104 5 analysis of having an abortion 5.1 sample description and methods first, i investigated the likelihood of having an abortion depending on relationship satisfaction. do couples with different levels of relationship satisfaction have differing likelihoods of having an abortion? most abortions are of unintended pregnancies (henshaw 1998; torres/forrest 1988). the few women who abort planned pregnancies normally do so due to risks to their own health or foetal anomalies (major et al. 2009). it is not recorded in the pairfam data whether the pregnancies of women who decide to have an abortion were planned or unplanned. however, less than four percent of abortions in germany are due to health issues or foetal anomalies (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2020). therefore, it is assumed that the vast majority of the reported abortions in the pairfam data stem from unplanned pregnancies. as the circumstances of planned pregnancies are in many aspects vastly different to those that are unplanned, the reference group for the following analysis consists of unwanted/unexpected pregnancies that were carried to term. the analysis sample is defi ned as follows: heterosexual couples who reported an abortion are compared to couples who experienced an unwanted/ unexpected pregnancy and decided not to terminate. in waves 2 and 3, respondents who gave birth were asked whether the pregnancy was not wanted at all or whether the timing of the pregnancy was inconvenient. in the following waves, the question was formulated differently, asking whether the pregnancy was “unexpected.” births included in the analysis sample were therefore either unwanted (waves 2 and 3) or unexpected (waves 4-11). a total of 2,116 planned births were excluded from the sample. two observations indicating having had an abortion as well as given birth in the same year were omitted. furthermore, 112 respondents without a partner and 3 respondents in homosexual partnerships have been excluded. the control variables of wave t-1 are merged with the indication of a birth or an abortion of the following wave t, and respondents who separate from their partners between these two waves were also excluded (50 cases). unfortunately, the exact month an abortion took place is not collected in the pairfam data. as relationship satisfaction is the explanatory variable, it must be ensured that the decision to have an abortion happened in the context of a romantic relationship. therefore, it is pivotal that the partnership did not end before the pregnancy occurred or before the female partner was aware of the pregnancy. after dropping 17 cases with missing values on the included variables, the fi nal sample consists of 279 births and 254 abortions, for a total of 533 observations. table 1 lists the unweighted percentage of observations for the included categorical variables as well as mean values and standard deviations for metric variables. mean relationship satisfaction for the analysis sample is 8.0 if the couple had an unexpected child and 7.6 if the couple decided to have an abortion. a t-test fi nds this difference to be statistically signifi cant at the 5 percent level. in over 22 percent of all observations, respondents indicated that they are very satisfi ed the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 105 with their relationship. the mean relationship duration of the sample is between 6 and 7 years, while in about thirty percent of observations couples have been together for two years or less (158 observations). for 90 percent of respondents, only one unwanted pregnancy or abortion was observed over eleven waves. for 10 percent of respondents, two or more observations are included in the following analysis. as within-panel analyses cannot be estimated, the following represents a cross-sectional analysis that compares relationships that experienced an abortion with relationships that experienced an unwanted/unexpected pregnancy that was carried to term. pooled logistic regression models with lagged independent variables from the previous wave and cluster-robust standard errors are estimated. tab. 1: descriptive statistics for the analysis of having an abortion mean (sd) / percent variable all unexpected abortion childbirth metric variables: relationship satisfaction (scale: 0-10) 7.8 (2.3) 8.0 (2.1) 7.6 (2.5) relationship duration in years 6.6 (5.5) 6.5 (5.4) 6.8 (5.7) female partner’s age at start of relationship 22.9 (5.5) 22.8 (5.6) 23.0 (5.3) categorical variables: number of living children no children 37.5 41.6 33.1 1 child 26.8 25.1 28.7 2 children 22.2 21.8 22.4 3 or more children 13.5 11.5 15.8 relationship institutionalisation married 50.5 50.9 50.0 cohabiting, unmarried 29.1 29.7 28.4 non-cohabiting 20.4 19.4 21.6 female partner’s education level no degree/currently enrolled 13.1 11.8 14.6 lower secondary education 13.7 12.2 15.4 higher secondary education 46.9 46.2 47.6 post-secondary/tertiary education 26.3 29.8 22.4 male partner’s employment status part-time/unemployed 23.1 23.3 22.9 full-time 68.1 68.8 67.3 self-employed 8.8 7.9 9.8 main respondent female (ref.: main respondent male) 54.2 56.6 51.6 n (observations) 533 279 254 n (couples) 475 255 220 source: author’s calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 • kristin hajek106 5.2 results logistic regression analyses fi nd a negative effect of relationship satisfaction on the likelihood of having an abortion (see average marginal effects in model 1, table a1 in the appendix). figure 3 shows the predicted probabilities of having an abortion depending on relationship satisfaction with 95 percent confi dence intervals, generated by the margins stata command. couples with a relationship satisfaction of 5 on a scale of 10 have a predicted abortion probability of 51 percent, while couples with a relationship satisfaction of 9 have a predicted abortion probability of 46 percent. however, this relationship is not signifi cant at the 5 percent level. fig. 3: conditional predicted probabilities of having an abortion depending on relationship satisfaction including 95 percent confi dence intervals 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 predicted probabilities of abortion relationship satisfaction notes: based on logistic regression model 1, table a1. controlling for relationship institutionalisation, number of living children, female partner’s age at start of relationship and education level, male partners’ employment status, and gender of main respondent. source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 107 6 analysis of union dissolution 6.1 sample description and methods to study the risk of union dissolution (separations and divorces) over relationship duration, a discrete-time event history model (allison 1982; singer/willett 1993) is estimated. the survey waves defi ne the discrete measurement points, and the main interest is the effect of the time-varying variable abortion on the risk of separation. discrete-time event history models can be estimated in the same fashion as logistic regression models (best/wolf 2010). to account for duration dependency, a quadratic relationship duration term is included (box-steffensmeier/jones 2004). the dissolution of a union is recorded in wave t, although it happened between waves t-1 and t. in the case of a reported union dissolution, respondents are asked in which month it occurred. similarly, if an abortion took place between waves t-1 and t it is recorded in wave t. unfortunately, the month in which an abortion occurred was not asked. therefore, it is not known whether a separation reported in the same wave of having an abortion happened before or after the abortion. nevertheless, it is assumed that it was the abortion that affected the dissolution (eventually by an anticipation effect), and not vice versa. information on dissolution and abortion is copied to wave t-1, as information on the control variables was recorded the last time in wave t-1, before a dissolution occurred. the unit of analysis is a romantic union. if a union lasted more than one wave, several observations of the same union are in the analysis sample. the analysis sample includes all unions in pairfam. if a respondent changes partners during the panel frame, this respondent can be part of the sample in different unions. the dependent variable dissolution is coded 1 if a dissolution occurred before the next wave and 0 if the union continued or if the union is censored (last observation in pairfam). all men and women in heterosexual partnerships were included in the analysis. first, 21,549 observations of respondents without a partner and 452 observations of respondents in homosexual relationships were excluded. next, 126 unions were deleted because their relationship started before they were 12 years old. to clearly distinguish between the effects of giving birth and having an abortion, 23 observations of couples who indicate that a child was born and that they also experienced an abortion in the same wave were removed. then, 1,308 observations with missing values on any of the variables of interest were excluded. after eliminating 48 observations with identical values on the time variable (relationship duration) and 280 observations that began on or after the (fi rst) separation (resulting from temporary breakups), the fi nal sample includes 40,810 observations from 10,833 respondents. this sample includes 398 couples (with 1,300 observations) who report having, or their partner having had an abortion, and 318 couples (with 1,100 observations), that carried an unwanted/unexpected pregnancy to term. almost eleven percent of observations in the fi nal sample ended in separation. to allow for a time-varying effect of abortion, four dummy variables were generated: wave of abortion (meaning: the interview was at most 12 months after • kristin hajek108 abortion), one wave after abortion, two waves after abortion, and three or more waves after abortion. the variable wave of abortion is coded 1 if an abortion took place since the last wave, and 0 otherwise. the latter variables are coded 1 one/two/ three or more waves after an abortion was reported, respectively, and 0 otherwise. the number of living children is a time-varying variable that increases by 1 if a child is born to the respective couple. in addition, four dummy variables indicating the waves after an unexpected/unwanted birth, constructed analogously to the dummy variables of having an abortion (wave of unexpected childbirth, one wave after unexpected childbirth, two waves after unexpected childbirth, and three or more waves after unexpected childbirth) are included. table 2 reports the unweighted percentage of observations for the included categorical variables as well as mean values and standard deviations for metric tab. 2: descriptive statistics for the analysis of union dissolution mean (sd) / percent variable all unexpected abortion childbirth metric variables: relationship satisfaction (scale: 0-10) 7.9 (2.2) 7.6 (2.2) 7.3 (2.4) relationship duration in years 9.0 (7.3) 8.2 (6.1) 8.2 (7.0) female partner’s age at start of relationship 22.7 (6.1) 22.9 (5.6) 23.9 (6.0) categorical variables: number of living children no children 41.3 11.2 28.9 1 child 20.3 31.8 27.4 2 children 26.2 28.6 25.2 3 or more children 12.2 28.4 18.5 relationship institutionalisation married 51.9 57.7 50.1 cohabiting, unmarried 23.4 30.9 27.8 non-cohabiting 24.7 11.4 22.1 female partner’s education level no degree/currently enrolled 17.3 8.7 13.2 lower secondary education 6.3 15.3 14.4 higher secondary education 48.7 48.8 49.0 post-secondary/tertiary education 27.7 27.2 23.4 male partner’s employment status part-time/unemployed 25.8 20.2 23.5 full-time 66.4 71.2 67.0 self-employed 7.8 8.6 9.5 main respondent female (ref.: main respondent male) 57.9 59.5 56.6 n (observations) 40,810 1,100 1,300 n (couples) 10,833 318 398 source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 109 variables. relationship duration is lower for observations of couples that decided to terminate a pregnancy. furthermore, they were older at the start of the relationship and more often are in unmarried relationships. 6.2 results the average marginal effects estimated by the event history models are presented in table a2 in the appendix. both models control for relationship duration, relationship institutionalisation, the number of living children, the female partner’s education level and age at start of relationship, the male partners’ employment status, and the gender of the main respondent. no signifi cant effect on union dissolution is visible after having an abortion. additionally, model 3 controls for relationship satisfaction, which has a strong effect on union dissolution: the higher the respondent’s relationship satisfaction, the lower the risk of union dissolution. however, the effect of having an abortion on union dissolution decreases only slightly (see model 3, table a2). figure 4 depicts the predicted probabilities of union dissolution over relationship duration from model 2 generated through the margins stata command. the reference group is comprised of all heterosexual couples who did not experience an abortion or an unwanted/unexpected childbirth (blue line). these observations show a reduction in predicted probabilities of union dissolution with an increase in relationship duration that are in line with recent research (jalovaara/kulu 2018). furthermore, figure 4 depicts predicted probabilities of union dissolution for couples that experience an abortion in the second year of their relationship (red line) and couples that experience an unwanted/unexpected birth in the second year of their relationship (green line). in the wave of abortion, the predicted probability of union dissolution decreases slightly. in the following two waves, the likelihood of separation increases; thereafter, probabilities realign with the reference group. however, the effects are rather small and not signifi cant. giving birth to an unexpected/unwanted child, on the other hand, decreases the likelihood for union dissolution signifi cantly in the fi rst two waves. afterwards, predicted probabilities realign. introducing a third-order time variable as well as including the logarithm of relationship duration yielded similar results to those presented. 7 analysis of relationship satisfaction 7.1 sample description and methods next, i examined relationship satisfaction after having an abortion. again, all heterosexual partnerships were included in the analysis sample. control variables from one wave were merged with the indication of an abortion and relationship satisfaction from the next wave. first, 21,290 observations of respondents without a partner and 4,844 observations with a change in partner between the merged waves were excluded. second, 363 observations of respondents in homosexual relationships were deleted and 113 unions eliminated because their relationship • kristin hajek110 started before they were 12 years old. furthermore, 21 observations of couples who had an abortion and also reported the birth of a child in the same wave were removed. then, 1,245 observations with missing values on any of the included variables were dropped. next, only couples who did not have an abortion or unexpected birth in the fi rst wave of panel participation were included in order to have a baseline measurement of relationship satisfaction (592 observations dropped). moreover, in order to conduct a panel analysis, respondents with less than two observations were excluded (2,272 observations). the fi nal sample consists of 32,683 observations from 5,901 couples, 140 of which who reported having an abortion (935 observations) and 202 of which who reported having an unexpected/ unwanted birth (781 observations). again, four dummy variables were generated to indicate the effect of having an abortion over time: wave of abortion (meaning: the interview took place at most 12 months after the abortion), one wave after abortion, two waves after abortion, and three or more waves after abortion. a summary of the variables used for the fig. 4: conditional predicted probabilities of union dissolution depending on relationship duration 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 relationship duration in years control group unexpected child birth in second year of relationship abortion in second year of relationship predicted probabilities of union dissolution notes: based on discrete-time event history model 2, table a2. controlling for relationship institutionalisation, number of living children, female partner’s education level and age at start of relationship, male partner’s employment status, and gender of main respondent. source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 111 following analysis is presented in table 3 (all couples versus couples that experienced an abortion). the fi rst column shows the unweighted percentage of observations for dichotomous variables, and mean values with standard deviation in brackets for metric variables. the second column indicates the unweighted percentage of respondents who changed their status regarding each variable between waves. relationship satisfaction is slightly lower if the couple experienced an abortion (7.3 vs. 7.8) and relationship satisfaction of 93.6 percent of couples who experienced an abortion ever changed between waves. first, a pooled linear regression model (pols) was conducted, followed by an estimation with fi xed effects (fe) regression models with cluster-robust standard tab. 3: descriptive statistics for the analysis of relationship satisfaction all abortion variable mean (sd) / percent of mean (sd) / percent of percent couples with percent couples with change change between between waves waves metric variables: relationship satisfaction (scale: 0-10) 7.8 (2.1) 86.6 7.3 (2.4) 93.6 relationship duration in years 10.1 (7.2) 100.0 8.9 (5.9) 100.0 categorical variables: number of living children no children 35.7 14.3 25.3 27.9 1 child 21.6 21.3 25.4 39.3 2 children 29.1 17.1 30.5 34.3 3 or more children 13.6 5.8 18.8 16.4 relationship institutionalisation married 59.0 16.5 60.3 27.9 cohabiting, unmarried 23.9 28.8 29.1 42.1 non-cohabiting 17.1 21.0 10.6 30.0 female partner’s education level no degree/currently enrolled 12.5 13.1 8.6 10.7 lower secondary education 5.8 3.1 10.6 5.7 higher secondary education 50.8 10.8 49.4 10.7 post-secondary/tertiary education 30.9 6.2 31.4 7.9 male partner’s employment status part-time/unemployed 20.7 25.4 17.3 32.1 full-time 70.9 29.7 69.2 39.3 self-employed 8.4 8.8 13.5 15.0 n (observations) 32,683 32,683 935 935 n (couples) 5,901 5,901 140 140 source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 • kristin hajek112 errors. compared to pooled regression models, results of the fe models can be based on a within-person comparison while controlling for time-constant variables (brüderl/ludwig 2015). therefore, the time-stable control variables female partner’s age at start of relationship and gender of main respondent need not to be included in the model as they are automatically controlled for. unobserved heterogeneity caused by time-constant variables does not bias the estimation, as only information on intra-individual changes over time is used and need not be accounted for in the model (wooldridge 2010). in fe models, only respondents that reported experiencing an abortion are relevant to the estimation of the effect of having an abortion on relationship satisfaction. however, the control group remains in the analysis sample in order to provide reliable estimations for the control variables. 7.2 results table a3 in the appendix presents the main coeffi cients from pols and fe regression models predicting levels of relationship satisfaction. the pooled linear regression shows a statistically signifi cant decrease of roughly 0.5 to 0.7 points in relationship satisfaction in the waves following an abortion (model 4). in the fi xed effects model, the effect is considerably smaller (see table a3, model 5). figure 5 shows the change in relationship satisfaction after having an abortion including 95 percent confi dence intervals as estimated by the fe model (model 5). immediately after an abortion, relationship satisfaction decreases 0.3 points, just reaching signifi cance at the 5 percent level. in the next two waves, the effect is almost zero. three or more waves after having an abortion the effect is again larger, but not statistically signifi cant. either couples’ satisfaction rises again one wave after having an abortion, or less satisfi ed couples separate and are not observed a second time after having an abortion. bivariate analyses reveal that about 66 percent of couples whose relationship satisfaction is lower in the wave of an abortion are interviewed at least once more, while 75 percent of couples whose relationship satisfaction is the same or increased in the wave of abortion are interviewed at least one more time. therefore, the alignment in relationship satisfaction one wave after abortion may be partly due to less satisfi ed relationships separating. however, the 66 percent of couples that have been interviewed a second time after having an abortion show, on average, a rise in relationship satisfaction after the initial drop in the wave of the abortion. thus, it seems that the vanishing effect of an abortion on relationship satisfaction is not solely due to selection by union dissolution. 8 discussion this study sought to investigate the association between relationship satisfaction, experiencing an abortion, and union dissolution. the experience of an abortion can be regarded as a stressful life event that could potentially lead to partnership dissatisfaction and union dissolution. however, relationship satisfaction could also the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 113 be a confounding factor, infl uencing both union dissolution and the likelihood of having an abortion. few studies have addressed this association and no measure of relationship satisfaction pre-pregnancy has thus far been included in analyses. using data from the german family panel pairfam, i was able to compare relationship satisfaction several years preand post-abortion to more accurately examine its interplay with union dissolution. the chosen panel data allow for the consideration of the temporal order of events, which helps identify causal mechanisms and sheds light on the associations between relationship satisfaction, having an abortion and union dissolution. results show a higher likelihood to abort a pregnancy with lower relationship satisfaction which is in line with previous research (kero et al. 2001; biggs et al. 2013). couples that are more satisfi ed with their relationship are less likely to experience an abortion. however, the effect is not signifi cant at the 5 percent level. the likelihood of union dissolution is slightly higher after an abortion was recorded compared to couples who neither experienced an abortion nor an unwanted/ fig. 5: change in relationship satisfaction after having an abortion including 95 percent confi dence intervals -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 0 1 2 3 or more change in relationship satisfaction waves after abortion notes: based on linear fi xed effects panel regression model 5, table a3. controlling for relationship duration, relationship institutionalisation, number of living children, female partner’s education level, and male partner’s employment status. source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 • kristin hajek114 unexpected birth (statistically not signifi cant). this supports previous research that found no signifi cant impact of having an abortion on separation rates (e.g., barnett et al. 1992). carrying an unwanted/unexpected pregnancy to term, on the other hand, seems to decrease the likelihood for union dissolution in the following two waves, which explains why previous studies found higher separation rates for couples who had an abortion compared to couples who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term (e.g., mauldon et al. 2015). after having an abortion, relationship satisfaction decreases slightly, but only in the wave the abortion took place. in the following waves, no lasting effect of having an abortion on relationship satisfaction is visible. furthermore, the effect on relationship satisfaction is smaller in the fi xed effects models compared to pooled regression models, suggesting that couples who experience an abortion differ in their pre-pregnancy relationship satisfaction or other unobserved indicators from couples who do not terminate their unwanted pregnancy. therefore, these results can neither confi rm that relationship satisfaction acts as a confounding factor that infl uences both the likelihood of terminating a pregnancy and union dissolution, nor as a mediating factor between having an abortion and union dissolution. the effect of relationship satisfaction on the likelihood of having an abortion is not signifi cant. moreover, the negative effects on relationship satisfaction appear to be only temporary and the increase in probabilities for union dissolution after having an abortion is so small that it is not statistically signifi cant. these results are therefore in line with studies that found no major effects of having an abortion on relationship quality (e.g., barnett et al. 1992; kero/lalos 2005; miller 1992). the study also has some limitations: 1) abortion is still a taboo topic in germany (busch 2015), which might lead to underreporting. the pairfam data shows a higher prevalence of abortion compared to german abortion statistics (federal statistical offi ce of germany 2020); however, this might be due to pairfam’s young sample. 2) the stress of having an abortion might also lead to panel attrition or union dissolution. changes in relationship satisfaction can only be analysed if the couple is still together in the wave following an abortion. immediate breakups after having an abortion might not be included in the analysis. however, the event-history analysis found no association between having an abortion and union dissolution in the wave an abortion was reported. therefore, those couples were still integrated in the analysis on relationship satisfaction in the wave of abortion. in the following waves, the effect of having an abortion on union dissolution was positive, but not statistically signifi cant. furthermore, 66 percent of respondents who reported a decrease in relationship satisfaction in the wave of an abortion are interviewed at least once more. for these respondents, no lasting change in relationship satisfaction was observed in the following waves. 3) unfortunately, no indication was given in pairfam data whether the couple agreed on the decision of whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. a disagreement at this stage might also have consequences on relationship satisfaction and union dissolution. the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 115 4) furthermore, depending on the analysis, only 140 to 398 couples (with 2541,300 observations) that experienced an abortion were able to be included in the models. these results must therefore be interpreted with care. future research should strive to replicate these results with more observations and analyse whether couples who agree on the decision to have a child or an abortion differ from couples who disagree. 9 conclusion by using data from the german family panel pairfam, a more accurate temporal order in which the events surrounding an abortion unfold could be established. separate regression models for each step could be estimated and the association between the three main variables relationship satisfaction, having an abortion and union dissolution could be tested while controlling for confounding variables. this approach can help to identify causal mechanisms behind this association and examine whether relationship satisfaction changes after having an abortion, leading to union dissolution, or whether couples have an abortion and separate because they are less satisfi ed with their relationship. results support neither hypothesis. neither relationship satisfaction before having an abortion nor union dissolution after having an abortion are signifi cantly different from the control group. the only statistically signifi cant effect is found for relationship satisfaction after having an abortion: couples who experienced an abortion also experience a temporary drop in relationship satisfaction. the cause of this decrease in relationship satisfaction is not certain – it could be attributed to the abortion itself, or also to problems arising from the social stigma surrounding abortion, or even to the disagreement on whether to terminate the pregnancy. data on whether the couples agree on the decision to have a child, attitudes towards having an abortion, and the perceived social stigma of having an abortion would help to identify the mechanisms behind this temporary decrease in relationship satisfaction. however, relationship satisfaction and union dissolution do not seem to change drastically from pre-abortion values after having an abortion. acknowledgements my thanks go to prof. dr. josef brüderl and prof. dr. johannes huinink for editing this special issue and for their invaluable input. special thanks go to dr. gerrit bauer for his insights and statistical advice. 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(ed.): psychosocial stress: perspectives on structure, theory, life-course, and methods. san diego: academic press: 29-70. wiik, kenneth aarskaug; keizer, renske; lappegard, trude 2012: relationship quality and cohabiting unions across europe. in: journal of marriage and family 74,3: 389398. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00967.x wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. cambridge, ma: mit press. date of submission: 18.06.2020 date of acceptance: 26.03.2021 kristin hajek (). lmu munich, department of sociology. munich, germany. e-mail: kristin.hajek@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de url: https://www.en.ls3.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/staff/academic_staff/hajek_ kristin/index.html • kristin hajek120 appendix tab. a1: summary of logistic regression analyses estimating the likelihood of having an abortion versus having an unexpected/unwanted birth variable model 1 a.m.e. s.e. relationship satisfaction (scale: 0-10) -0.013 (0.009) relationship duration in years 0.006 (0.016) relationship duration in years squared 0.000 (0.001) number of living children (ref.: no children) 1 child 0.120 (0.065) 2 children 0.076 (0.077) 3 or more children 0.117 (0.088) relationship institutionalisation (ref.: married) cohabiting, unmarried 0.051 (0.062) non-cohabiting 0.110 (0.077) female partner’s age at start of relationship 0.005 (0.006) female partner’s education level (ref. no degree/currently enrolled) lower secondary education -0.040 (0.085) higher secondary education -0.115 (0.079) post-secondary/tertiary education -0.206* (0.090) male partner’s employment status (ref.: part-time/unemployed) full-time 0.038 (0.059) self-employed 0.075 (0.092) main respondent female (ref. main respondent male) -0.062 (0.046) pseudo r2 0.026 n (observations) 533 n (couples) 475 notes: * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 average marginal effects with cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses. variables were measured in the wave before an abortion/unexpected birth was reported source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 the interplay of having an abortion, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution • 121 tab. a2: summary of discrete-time event history models estimating the likelihood of union dissolution variable model 2 model 3 a.m.e. s.e. a.m.e. s.e. abortion in the wave of abortion -0.007 (0.015) -0.015 (0.014) one wave after abortion 0.026 (0.017) 0.016 (0.016) two waves after abortion 0.039 (0.022) 0.023 (0.020) three or more waves after abortion 0.025 (0.014) 0.018 (0.013) unexpected childbirth in the wave of unexpected childbirth -0.071*** (0.011) -0.071*** (0.010) one wave after unexpected childbirth -0.051** (0.017) -0.051** (0.016) two waves after unexpected childbirth 0.008 (0.024) -0.000 (0.022) three or more waves after unexpected childbirth 0.014 (0.018) 0.012 (0.017) relationship satisfaction (scale: 0-10) -0.015*** (0.001) relationship duration in years -0.021*** (0.001) -0.023*** (0.001) relationship duration in years squared 0.001*** (0.000) 0.001*** (0.000) number of living children (ref.: no children) 1 child 0.001 (0.005) -0.004 (0.005) 2 children 0.009 (0.006) 0.005 (0.006) 3 or more children 0.009 (0.008) 0.005 (0.008) relationship institutionalisation (ref.: married) cohabiting, unmarried 0.031*** (0.004) 0.027*** (0.004) non-cohabiting 0.100*** (0.006) 0.091*** (0.006) female partner’s age at start of relationship -0.002*** (0.000) -0.003*** (0.000) female partner’s education level (ref. no degree/currently enrolled) lower secondary education 0.009 (0.006) 0.004 (0.006) higher secondary education -0.010* (0.004) -0.013** (0.004) post-secondary/tertiary education -0.030*** (0.005) -0.030*** (0.005) male partner’s employment status (ref.: part-time/unemployed) full-time -0.024*** (0.003) -0.024*** (0.003) self-employed -0.012 (0.007) -0.014* (0.007) main respondent female (ref. main respondent male) 0.002 (0.003) 0.001 (0.003) pseudo r2 0.242 0.265 n (observations) 40,810 40,810 n (couples) 10,833 10,833 notes: * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 average marginal effects with cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses. control variables were measured in the wave before an abortion/unexpected birth/union dissolution was reported source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 • kristin hajek122 tab. a3: summary of linear regression models estimating relationship satisfaction variable model 4 model 5 pols s.e. fe s.e. abortion in the wave of abortion -0.687** (0.225) -0.339* (0.173) one wave after abortion -0.531* (0.236) -0.038 (0.205) two waves after abortion -0.679* (0.278) -0.035 (0.241) three or more waves after abortion -0.627* (0.249) -0.210 (0.237) unexpected childbirth in the wave of unexpected childbirth -0.066 (0.130) 0.085 (0.135) one wave after unexpected childbirth -0.450* (0.183) -0.168 (0.184) two waves after unexpected childbirth -0.530* (0.230) -0.247 (0.223) three or more waves after unexpected childbirth -0.311 (0.173) -0.038 (0.181) relationship duration in years -0.031** (0.011) -0.072*** (0.013) relationship duration in years squared 0.001* (0.000) 0.001** (0.000) number of living children (ref.: no children) 1 child -0.482*** (0.057) -0.314*** (0.062) 2 children -0.558*** (0.061) -0.468*** (0.082) 3 or more children -0.513*** (0.080) -0.568*** (0.119) relationship institutionalisation (ref.: married) cohabiting, unmarried -0.354*** (0.057) 0.048 (0.057) non-cohabiting -0.475*** (0.073) 0.098 (0.074) female partner’s education level (ref. no degree/currently enrolled) lower secondary education -0.207 (0.109) 0.211 (0.156) higher secondary education -0.323*** (0.061) 0.069 (0.059) post-secondary/tertiary education -0.175** (0.066) -0.094 (0.077) male partner’s employment status (ref.: part-time/unemployed) full-time 0.017 (0.048) -0.020 (0.043) self-employed -0.067 (0.079) -0.050 (0.081) r2 0.020 r2 (within) 0.013 n (observations) 32,683 32,683 n (couples) 5,901 5,901 notes: * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001 coeffi cients of pooled ols (pols) and fi xed effects (fe) regression models with clusterrobust standard errors in parentheses. control variables were measured in the wave before an abortion/relationship satisfaction was reported source: own calculations based on pairfam waves 1-11, release 11.0 published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mismatches in health: a global analysis of discrepancies between self-reported and tested mobility and cognition mismatches in health: a global analysis of discrepancies between self-reported and tested mobility and cognition* vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič abstract: the health of individuals is frequently assessed based on self-reported information derived from surveys. however, self-reports are often inconsistent with their tested equivalents, indicating measurement issues. while discrepancies between self-reported and tested health indicators have been investigated for high-income countries in europe, little comparative research has been conducted involving other low-income regions. this paper analyses discrepancies between selfreported and tested health limitations across 25 countries from six world regions with different income-levels, cultural backgrounds, institutional settings, and epidemiological trajectories. using harmonised data from the gateway to global aging, we match self-reported mobility and cognition with their tested equivalent to assess discrepancies at the individual level. our results suggest that the consistency between these measures is strongly correlated with the human development index, with lower scores of development showing higher discrepancies. examining patterns by age reveals that self-reports do not accurately reflect the deterioration of health associated with aging – tested health exhibits a pronounced age gradient, whereas self-reported health varies little over the life course, particularly self-reported memory. we find no persistent gender differences in consistency. these discrepancies cast doubt on the reliability of mobility and cognitive self-reports, especially when comparing health across nations with differing development levels. keywords: self-reported health · objective health · mobility · cognition · global health comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 181-214 (date of release: 05.08.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-08 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-08en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/656/411 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-08 https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/656/411 https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/656/411 • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič182 1 introduction the ability of self-reported health indicators to accurately reflect the true health status of individuals has long been questioned. research dating back to the 1950’s (suchman et al. 1958) and 1960’s (maddox 1962) investigated discrepancies between respondents’ health reports and assessments of outside observers like physicians. discrepancies have usually been attributed to biases in respondents, as judgments of others are less likely to be influenced by factors unrelated to health. this is particularly true when the assessment is done by a skilled healthcare expert. indeed, multiple studies have consistently shown that self-reports of health are often impacted by non-health characteristics, including the respondent’s gender, age, place of origin, level of education, and personality (barsky et al. 1992; jürges 2007; shumway/stoffer 2011; layes et al. 2012; warner et al. 2012; lazarevič et al. 2018; lazarevič 2023). a commonly employed approach to assess the credibility of self-reports is the comparison of self-reported health data with performance-based measurements. overall, such studies indicate that tested health is more reliable and sensitive to actual health changes for a series of conditions, including risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as hypertension (kislaya et al. 2021). in addition, tested health has been shown to be less sensitive to socio-cultural and psychological factors among respondents, making them more robust to comparisons across time and populations (guralnik et al. 1989; reuben et al. 1992; simpson et al. 2004). lastly, the reliability of self-reported or tested health data can vary by different socio-demographic factors, like gender and age group. for example, there is evidence that self-reported prevalence of hypertension and hypercholesterolemia underestimated educational inequalities among younger men (ages 25-49), but overestimated it among older individuals (ages 50-74), when compared to examined-based prevalence (kislaya et al. 2019). for the reasons mentioned above, it has been argued that self-reports in health may have limited utility in detecting clinically significant changes (guralnik et al. 1989; fors et al. 2006), yielding inaccuracy not only on health prevalence, but also on any indicator that is prevalence-based, such as health expectancy indicators (santos et al. 2021). most of these studies, however, assess differences between self-reported and tested health in clinical or small epidemiological population subgroups (wuorela et al. 2020), which may not reflect the context of everyday life of the participants nor reflect national or population-level health (glass 1998). another approach that has been suggested by researchers is to employ concordance or consistency measures, which compare the results of two measurements (bland/altman 1986; guyatt et al. 1987). consistency measures have been argued to be preferable to other reliability or correlation measures for contexts when the researcher would like to know to what extent two measurements yield the same results (are concordant with each other) (kramer/feinstein 1981). in the case of self-reported and tested health, the rationale is to have a counterpart test for the self-report and contrast those two results, to assess whether there are discrepancies between respondents’ self-perceived health and their objectively measured health markers. recent work has employed this approach to evaluate consistency between mismatches in health • 183 self-reported and tested health, finding significant disparities across various european nations (spitzer/weber 2019; arni et al. 2021). these variations were more important among older individuals, while gender differences made only a small contribution to the observed discrepancies (spitzer/weber 2019). nonetheless, the majority of these studies were limited to wealthier nations or focused on regions characterised by relatively homogeneous cultural beliefs, health care systems, and gender norms. in this paper, our goal is to employ the consistency method devised by spitzer and weber (2019) and arni et al. (2021) to assess consistency between population-level reported and tested health both withinand across countries with different development levels. besides being a recommended approach for comparing two indicators that measure the same outcome (kramer/feinstein 1981), using consistency measures has the advantage of relying on population health surveys, going beyond medical settings and thus a more suitable approach for understanding population-level health. since levels of development have been shown to correlate with health response outcomes, we also explore whether there is a correlation between levels of development and consistency between self-reported and tested health. we additionally aim to identify whether there are relevant genderand age-specific patterns in consistency between reported and tested health across the different countries. we use the human development index (hdi) as an indicator of development since it is comparable across countries and is an important summary measure of human development in key dimensions of life (united nations development programme 2022). the hdi has also been shown to be highly correlated to health outcomes (chandra et al. 2022). in order to explore broader regional heterogeneity, we also group countries according to the six global regions defined by the world bank development indicators and their corresponding hdi scores. to date, studies that have performed global comparisons use less detailed health indicators and typically lacked harmonisation across them, which can yield misleading results (tolonen et al. 2021; di lego 2021). for our analyses, we use harmonised health data from the gateway of global aging (lee et al. 2021), in order to compare the prevalence of agreement between tested and reported health among women and men in china (charls), india (lasi), mexico (mhas), europe (share), united states (hrs) and england (elsa). we limit our analysis of health dimensions to mobility and cognition because they cover different and important dimensions of health status. moreover, our consistency measure requires health dimensions that include both reported and tested information in all surveys. as a measure of mobility, we use walking speed test and self-reported difficulty walking 100 meters. for cognition, we use the immediate word recall test and self-reported memory. we use this strategy since the level of consistency between self-reports and tested health does not depend on the prevalence of health conditions in the population, but only on how tested and self-reported health diverge. similarly, because we are utilising hrs-sister surveys and they have been designed to replicate the same questions and survey methodology as the hrs, inconsistencies due to survey design are minimised. this enables us to capture ageand gender-specific patterns • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič184 in consistency for specific countries and whether there is stability across different nations in the discrepancy between tested and reported health. by performing this analysis across different countries, we shed light on how consistency between perceived and tested health may differ across different cultures and how in turn this affects the sensitivity of some health indicators. quantifying the divergence between self-reports and tested health is important, since how individuals perceive their own health can greatly impact their health behaviours, healthcare utilisation and prevention (spitzer et al. 2022; spitzer/shaikh 2022). this may additionally impact how we interpret health indicators when performing crosscountry comparisons and when comparing gender differences in health. 2 material and methods 2.1 data and sample 2.1.1 the gateway to global aging data the gateway to global aging data, produced by the program on global aging, health & policy at the university of southern california dornsife center for economic and social research is an effort to harmonise the hrs-sister surveys (lee et al. 2021). the purpose is to facilitate comparisons across countries and allow for more accurate estimates of health. the harmonised versions have followed the rand hrs conventions of variable naming and data structure. hence, the surveys are all harmonised having the structure and variable naming of the hrs study as a reference. for more details on how the harmonisation procedure is implemented, refer to their website (https://g2aging.org/). despite the gateway to global aging’s efforts, international comparisons are still challenging and limited to the variables and survey years that have been harmonised. in addition, even with the harmonisation, some surveys experienced variations across some waves as detailed in the harmonisation reports, like adjustments in tested health measurement, changes in self-reported response scales, and modification of rules for proxy respondent inclusion (kwon/hu 2018; young et al. 2021). furthermore, some countries like mexico and india have limited number of waves, which ‒ unfortunately ‒ prevent time trend analysis and fully exploring the longitudinal feature of other surveys. our aim is to include as many countries as possible from different regions in the world to evaluate whether country-specific patterns in consistency emerge. in addition, to employ the approach for assessing consistency between self-reported and tested health described in spitzer and weber (2019), we need to have a perfect match between self-reported and tested health variables for the same health dimension. hence, we used the following criteria for selecting years and health dimensions: 1. health dimensions that were present for the most diverse set of countries and that had the perfect match between self-reported and tested health variables for the same health dimension; 2. to address potential confounding effects arising from temporal variations in mortality and health trends within the https://g2aging.org/ https://g2aging.org/ mismatches in health • 185 surveys, we selected the years that are comparable or overlapping across all waves; 3. comparable waves in the sense that there were no documented changes in either the health test, the equipment needed, proxy respondents and self-reported health, as detailed in the reports from the gateway to global aging. following these selection criteria after extensive screening, the resulting health dimensions were mobility and cognition. these were the only two health dimensions for which the exact match between self-reported and tested health were available and that had the largest variety of countries for comparable years. for mobility, the match is between self-reported difficulty walking 100 meters and the walking speed test, where respondents’ timed walk over a walking course is recorded. for cognition, the match is between self-reported memory and the test of immediate word call (see details on these two health variables in section 2.1.2 below). because available waves for mobility and cognition were different, the samples were constructed separately. furthermore, because we are comparing data globally from countries with very different levels of socio-economic development and epidemiological trajectories, we also grouped countries into regions as defined in the world bank development indicators (world bank 2022). we used this country grouping to assess the role of regional development on the disparities found between self-reported and tested health across surveys. in addition, as the human development index (hdi) has been shown to be highly correlated to health outcomes (chandra et al. 2022), we assign hdi scores by country as a summary measure of development (united nations development programme 2022). lastly, the surveys have different age eligibility for inclusion to the survey sample, varying from age 45 (charls, lasi) to 51 (hrs). in some cases, the tested health variable is restricted to specific ages. to account for this, we focused on ages 65 and above. the exception is share, where the tested health for mobility (walking speed) was undertaken only for participants older than 74 (wave 2) and 75 (wave 1) years old (börsch-supan et al. 2013; bergmann et al. 2019). to assess whether the older age structure available for share impact the analysis, a robustness check with models for mobility restricted to ages 75+ for all countries was also adjusted (see appendix table a1.1). the waves and surveys that met our criteria for both health dimensions are described in table 1. any remaining inconsistencies between surveys and waves are addressed in the robustness analyses. for mobility, the available years that mostly overlapped were 2012-2015. exceptions are the share study for europe where the walking speed test was only undertaken in waves 1 and 2 (years 2004 and 2006), and the lasi study for india that has only one wave in year 2016. in addition, data for mobility (wave 1 and wave 2) and cognition (wave 4 and wave 5) come from share waves that included different sets of countries. for mobility, the countries in wave 1 are: germany, austria, belgium, denmark, spain, greece, italy, the netherlands, sweden, switzerland, france and israel. in wave 2, the following countries are added: ireland, poland and the czech republic. for cognition, in addition to the previously mentioned, the following countries are included: estonia, hungary, portugal, slovenia and luxembourg. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič186 2.1.2 measuring discrepancies between tested and self-reported limitations to assess discrepancies between tested and self-reported limitations, we construct a measure of consistency, following the approach by spitzer and weber (2019) and arni et al. (2021). the rationale for this approach is that, all things equal, selfreported and tested health should be consistent when considering the same health dimension within a population that is surveyed. the degree of consistency is thus defined according to how well self-reported and tested health match for the same variable. for this, we match tested health measures on mobility and cognition with their self-reported equivalent. in a first step, the tested and self-reported health measures are dichotomised so that their outcome is either “healthy” or “unhealthy”. tab. 1: overview of the samples for mobility and cognition world bank country survey waves observation n region period (unweighted)** mobility north america usa hrs w11, w12 2012-2015 7,584 europe and central asia / europe+ share w11, w22 2004-2007 6,629 middle east and north africa israel england elsa w6, w7 2012-2015 8,796 east asia and pacific china charls w2, w3 2012-2015 8,302 latin america and caribbean mexico mhas w3 2014-2015 734 (lac) south asia india lasi w1 2016-2017 18,366 cognition north america usa hrs w10, w11 2010-2013 21,702 europe and central asia / europe+ share w43, w54 2010-2013 63,627 middle east and north africa israel england elsa w7, w8 2014-2017 11,069 east asia and pacific china charls w1, w3 2010-2015 10,726 latin america and caribbean mexico mhas w3, w4 2012-2015 15,433 (lac) ** sample size refers to the total number of observations. because the studies are longitudinal, participants in one wave can also be present in the other. we account for this via weights and clustered standard errors in subsequent analyses. source: 1 (börsch-supan 2022a) 2 (börsch-supan 2022b) 3 (börsch-supan 2022c) 4 (börschsupan 2022d). data for mobility (w1 and w2) and cognition (w4 and w5) come from different share waves, which for these years imply different sets of countries. for mobility, we have the following countries in wave 1: germany, austria, belgium, denmark, spain, greece, italy, the netherlands, sweden, switzerland, france and israel. in wave 2, the following countries are added: ireland, poland and the czech republic. for cognition (w4 and w5), we have the following set of countries included, in addition to the previously mentioned: estonia, hungary, portugal, slovenia and luxembourg. mismatches in health • 187 in a second step, we assess the consistency between the tested and the self-reported measure. consistency is reached if survey participants are healthy according to both measures, or unhealthy according to both measures. the measures are deemed inconsistent if the tested measure does not agree with the self-reported measure. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. self-reported mobility is based on the survey question: “do you have difficulty walking 100 meters?” participants are considered healthy if they did not report any problems with the activity, and unhealthy if they reported some difficulty. tested mobility is based on a walking speed test, for which survey participants have to walk a distance of 2.5 meters (with the exception of mexico, which is 3 meters). prior to the actual test, respondents were asked if they had any problems from recent surgery, injury, or other health conditions that might prevent them from walking. only persons aged at least 60 years, willing to do the test, and able to walk (walking aids were permitted) were asked to perform the test. because the age eligibility for the test varied across surveys, we restricted the analysis to ages 65+. share only performs the walking test on individuals older than 74 years of age, so for european countries, the analysis on mobility is restricted to ages 74-85+. to ensure that the older age structure of share countries for mobility does not impact the cross-country comparisons, we provide an additional robustness check where we re-estimate all models for mobility with ages 65+ and 75+ only (refer to table a1.1) in line with the literature and following previous work, we estimate walking speed by dividing distance over time (m/s), with individuals considered unhealthy if their average walking speed is 0.4 meter per second or lower (studenski et al. 2011; middleton et al. 2015). respondents that tried to do the test but were unable to complete it are also considered as having poor health. this is also the threshold and protocol applied by official survey reports for elsa and share (steel et al. 2003). to ensure that our results are not driven by the cutoff of walking speed at lower or equal to 0.4m/s, we ran a robustness check using a higher cutoff of 0.6m/s, since the onset of mobility limitation among community dwelling residents has been shown to be associated to that threshold (cawthon et al. 2021) (refer to the appendix table a4). in addition, as mexico is the only country where the parameter for walking speed is different (3m-walking, instead of 2.5m), we perform an additional robustness check where we re-estimated all models excluding mexico, to evaluate any differences across countries that could be driven by this exceptionality (refer to the appendix tables a4.1, a4.2). self-reported cognition is based on the survey question “how would you rate your memory at the present time?”, with possible answers “excellent”, “very good”, “good”, “fair”, and “poor”. following previous research on the topic, individuals are considered unhealthy if they report “fair” and “poor” and healthy if they report “excellent”, “very good” or “good” memory (gardner et al. 2017; spitzer/weber 2019). cognition is tested via an immediate word recall test, for which survey participants are asked to recall a list of ten words within a minute in any order. individuals are considered unhealthy if they recall three words or less or if there is a proxy • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič188 respondent (grodstein et al. 2001; purser et al. 2005; spitzer/weber 2019). similar to walking speed, to ensure that our results are not being driven by the cutoff of three words, we also consider respondents that recall two words or less as having poor health, instead of 3 words or less, as a robustness check (table a6 in the appendix). mexico is again an exception for tested cognition, with a word list that is composed of eight words, instead of ten. for this reason, we re-estimated the models excluding mexico to evaluate whether there is any impact in the cross-country comparison (see tables a6.1 and a6.2). 2.2 empirical strategy we first explore discrepancies between tested and self-reported health with descriptive statistics by age, gender, and country. we then investigate country differences by regressing our consistency measure on country dummies and a set of control variables. given the binary nature of the consistency measure, we employ a simple logistic regression model that looks as follows: logit(πi) = α + βcountryi + δxi + εi where πi indicates the probability of individual i achieving consistency between the tested and the self-reported measure. country is a categorical variable that indicates the individual’s country of residence with the united states as the reference country, since all surveys are considered hrs-sister studies. the vector of control variables x includes the individual’s age to address countrydifferences in the age structure as well as period dummies to account for different survey waves. it also includes a gender dummy, except for when the model is estimated separately for women and men to obtain gender-specific coefficients for each country. all computations are weighted to adjust for representation error and to account for the impact of complex sample survey design on standard errors. in addition, we are not performing longitudinal analysis, but we use more than one wave for some countries, which means that some participants are included in the sample more than once, because we pool different survey waves. to account for this, we estimated standard errors that are clustered at the individual level using the hc3 estimator, which has been shown to outperform the hco, hc1 and hc2 estimators, since it avoids underestimating the true variance when there are observations with extreme values of the predictor variables (long/ervin 2000). this approach is adopted to mitigate the potential influence of artificially inflating the sample size due to measures that come from the same individual when treating the data as cross-sectional (white 1980; long/ervin 2000; abadie et al. 2022). since levels of development have been shown to be an important mediator of health differentials, we further explore the relationship between regional development and consistency between tested and reported health. for this, we first group countries into regions as defined in the world bank development indicators. (1) mismatches in health • 189 subsequently, spearman correlation coefficients are employed to assess the link between the odds of consistency, derived from the regression models, and the human development index (hdi) scores. the hdi scores are for year 2013, the mid-point year for most of the survey period selected. far from aiming at a causal analysis and given possible omitted variable bias, this exploration is a correlation exercise to elucidate regional disparities, provide context to these countries and put our comparison in perspective. lastly, for illustrative purposes and prompt discussion, we rank countries from low to high prevalence according to self-reported and tested health. the goal is to elucidate how countries can fare very differently if one chooses one indicator over the other. specifically for the ranking analysis, as we are rating absolute prevalence, we restrict the analysis to age 75+ to avoid biasing the results by performing comparisons that mix prevalence from different cut-off ages. 3 results 3.1 mobility 3.1.1 descriptive results there are large variations in consistency across countries as shown in table 2. consistency is as high as 89 percent in england but only 66 percent in india. among countries that are in the european region and part of the share survey, there is great heterogeneity. while consistency is 88 percent in sweden, 86 percent in the netherlands and 86 percent in switzerland, it reaches only 64 percent in greece, 66 percent in spain, and 69 percent in poland. china and mexico have 85 percent and 81 percent of consistency, respectively. women and men have different patterns of consistency. women show lower shares of consistency for all countries except ireland and the netherlands. for men, consistency reaches its highest in switzerland, with almost 92 percent and followed by england (90 percent), sweden (90 percent), and the u.s. (88 percent). while the high share of consistency holds for english women as well (88 percent), it is much lower for women in the u.s. (84 percent). greek and indian women show particularly low levels of consistency – the self-reports agree with the tests for less than two thirds of the survey participants in those countries (60 percent). importantly, consistency substantially declines with age, regardless of gender, in all countries. china has the steepest age gradient, where consistency drops from a high of 90 percent in the youngest age group (65-70 years old) to 66 percent for those ages 85 and over, a decline of more than 26 percent between those ages. across european countries, the age gradient is also substantial, despite the youngest age group available being 75-80. poland, austria and greece experience the most dramatic declines in consistency, at 27 percent, 26 percent and 21 percent, respectively. by the age of 85 and over, only half of respondents in poland experience consistency between their self-reported and tested mobility. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič190 as shown in figure 1, the age-related decline in consistency (panel b) can be attributed to the distinct age-related patterns of tested health (dashed lines panel a) and the self-reported health measure (solid lines panel a) (see appendix fig. a1-a2 for country-specific figures). the dashed lines (tested health) present a sharper increase by age compared with the solid lines (self-reported health). this suggests that mobility-losses over the life cycle are more severe according to the tested measure than to the self-reported measure. this discrepancy is particularly tab. 2: descriptive summary of %consistency between tested and reported mobility, by survey, country, gender and age survey/ total gender age country % women men 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85+ % % hrs usa 85.8 84.4 87.6 89.7 88.3 85.8 82.1 72.7 share europe 76.0 73.8 79.7 77.7 77.7 67.7 austria 72.4 70.5 75.2 77.3 72.7 57.3 belgium 80.1 77.2 84.7 84.4 77.4 72.5 czechia 81.2 79.4 83.8 83.5 80.8 69.1 denmark 84.2 82.4 87.0 88.2 81.6 80.1 france 76.2 74.0 80.1 78.3 76.9 69.5 germany 80.0 78.0 83.6 80.9 83.0 68.8 greece 64.2 60.4 68.6 67.5 66.2 53.1 ireland 72.4 76.1 66.7 71.2 74.3 70.5 israel 77.9 75.3 80.8 77.9 75.3 82.6 italy 73.8 70.3 80.0 74.2 79.2 59.2 netherlands 85.9 87.0 84.3 87.7 87.9 78.3 poland 69.2 61.9 79.1 69.9 75.6 51.3 spain 65.7 63.7 68.5 69.0 61.3 64.5 sweden 87.6 86.3 89.6 90.3 90.0 79.5 switzerland 86.2 83.2 91.9 89.0 87.4 79.6 elsa england 88.5 87.6 89.5 92.8 90.2 87.2 82.3 78.7 charls china 84.6 81.7 87.4 90.6 85.5 80.2 74.0 66.6 mhas mexico 80.7 78.2 83.2 86.6 82.9 77.1 69.7 69.6 lasi india 66.0 60.4 71.5 70.4 65.0 62.5 59.5 55.6 note: %consistency is reached if survey participants are healthy according to both tested and reported measures, or unhealthy according to both of the measures. for mobility, this is agreement between reporting some difficulty in walking 100m and having an average walking speed that is 0.4 m/s or lower. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. all values consider complex survey design and are weighed accordingly. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. mismatches in health • 191 pronounced in mexico ‒ highlighted in the figure ‒ and china, but also in some european countries like greece and italy (see fig. a1 in the appendix for all countries). india stands out as having the highest prevalence of self-reported health until the age group of 80-85 and the lowest consistency across all ages, compared to all other surveys. 3.1.2 regression results the above results show a clear decline in consistency with age. this age gradient is likely driving country differences in consistency and possibly between women and men. it is thus important to perform comparisons across countries while controlling for difference in the age composition. we thus fit regression models controlling for age and survey period. this enables us to examine the relationship between country and consistency in mobility while keeping age constant. figure 2 presents the estimated odds ratio for consistency, categorised by country and stratified by fig. 1: %prevalence (panel a) and %consistency (panel b) between reported and tested mobility, by age, gender and survey a) b) mexico (mhas) tes ted reported mexico (mhas) reported te ste d 65−70 70−75 75−80 80−85 85+ 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 age % p re va le nc e un he al th y 65−70 70−75 75−80 80−85 85+ 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 age % c on sis te nc y reported tested <=0.4 survey charls elsa hrs lasi mhas share m en n e m o w note: %prevalence (panel a) is weighted and considers complex survey design for each survey. %consistency (panel b) is reached if survey participants are healthy according to both tested and reported measures, or unhealthy according to both of the measures. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič192 gender (see regression table with all coefficients in table a1 in the appendix). the countries are shown in ascending order based on the estimates for women. we use the united states as a reference since the hrs is the basis for all other sister-studies. supporting the descriptive analysis presented in table 1, india has significantly lower odds of consistency for both women and men when compared to the united states. nevertheless, this is closely followed by countries in europe. greece, spain, and poland (women only) had lower consistency odds than the united states (61 percent, 57 percent, and 48 percent, respectively). in contrast, sweden has the fig. 2: odds ratio coefficients from regression models for mobility, by gender, country and survey sweden netherlands england switzerland denmark germany belgium ireland china czech republic france israel austria italy mexico spain poland greece india 0 1 2 3 4 woman manreference: usa england (elsa) china (charls) europe (share) mexico (mhas) india (lasi) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 usa (hrs) odds ratio (coefficients) note: models adjusted for women and men separately. reference value for the odds ratio is the united states (hrs) and the countries are shown in ascending order based on the estimates for women. the threshold for unhealthy in the walking speed test is 0.4m/s or less. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. mismatches in health • 193 highest level of consistency among all countries, regardless of gender. specifically, the odds of swedes displaying consistency is 68 percent higher than those of north americans. this finding supports the significant variation in consistency among european nations in the share survey. moreover, this heterogeneity persists even after controlling for age composition and survey year. however, these results must be interpreted with caution, since for mobility share countries only have available data for ages 75+. for the model adjusted for both women and men together and controlling for age and survey year, women have 34 percent lower odds of being consistent for mobility when compared to men, most likely an effect driven by the aforementioned countries (see table a1 in the appendix). depicted in the top plot located in the upper right section of the figure are the odds for the whole surveys. india (lasi) and mexico (mhas) are the countries/ surveys with the lowest odds of consistency when compared to the united states (hrs). although the odds of consistency are comparatively lower in the share survey for europe when compared to the hrs survey for both women and men, the difference is not significant. when analysing the odds by survey only, elsa has the highest odds of consistency across all surveys for mobility, when compared to the hrs study, while the lower-income regions have a much lower probability of achieving consistency. 3.1.3 robustness analyses to ensure that the results are not driven by the cutoff of walking speed at lower or equal to 0.4m/s, we ran the analysis using a higher cutoff of 0.6m/s. when using a higher cutoff mark, it is expected that a larger share of respondents will be reclassified as unhealthy, when compared to the 0.4m/s cutoff. we investigate whether this impacts the odds of consistency. tables a3-a4 in the appendix show that our main conclusions do not change when using different walking speed thresholds. the share that achieves consistency is lower overall for the 0.6m/s, but the direction of the effect by age is the same as with 0.4m/s (consistency declines with age). gender remains significant in the overall regression model and does not change direction, i.e., women have lower odds of consistency when compared to men. in addition, country-specific effects do not change in ranking and direction, but only the level of consistency. 3.2 cognition 3.2.1 descriptive results for cognition, there is lower consistency between tested and self-reported measure relative to mobility for all countries. keep in mind, however, that the overall level of consistency depends on the thresholds set for dichotomising the tested and the self-reported outcome (see table a3 of the appendix for a comparison). in addition, the set of countries and waves used for mobility and cognition are different, due • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič194 to previously mentioned data availability issues. hence, comparing the level of consistency in cognition with that of mobility is not informative. by contrast, country and gender differences as well as age patterns of consistency can be compared between the two health dimensions. as shown in table 3, consistency is particularly low for the countries with the lowest income, namely mexico (48 percent) and tab. 3: descriptive summary of %consistency between tested and reported cognition, by survey, country, gender and age survey/ total gender age country % women men 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85+ % % hrs usa 69.0 69.7 68.0 73.4 70.0 67.0 64.9 63.1 share europe 66.5 66.1 66.9 71.4 66.0 62.8 64.4 65.0 austria 74.8 75.6 73.6 80.6 77.0 71.6 69.6 67.4 belgium 67.4 66.0 69.2 74.6 69.8 63.2 63.1 60.1 czechia 66.8 64.4 70.2 72.3 69.1 63.5 55.5 61.1 denmark 75.6 75.7 75.6 84.1 77.0 68.8 66.8 66.5 estonia 51.3 50.8 52.5 54.8 48.9 46.2 49.6 64.3 france 63.1 61.5 65.5 69.2 64.6 60.6 58.6 58.7 germany 70.4 71.6 69.0 75.9 71.2 66.9 69.4 65.0 hungary 58.9 55.5 64.5 62.8 53.9 52.4 59.8 70.6 israel 71.4 73.8 68.6 75.8 66.4 67.9 68.7 76.4 italy 64.0 63.9 64.2 68.1 60.5 58.3 64.9 71.0 luxembourg 73.4 72.0 75.0 77.6 78.2 76.8 66.7 57.7 netherlands 74.2 75.5 72.7 81.8 73.3 70.5 71.7 62.4 poland 60.4 58.3 63.9 66.7 53.8 64.9 56.4 57.7 portugal 65.7 63.5 68.7 67.0 75.2 48.1 68.7 72.3 slovenia 66.1 66.7 65.2 72.5 62.7 69.0 60.2 58.6 spain 62.9 63.0 62.7 62.7 58.7 60.5 66.2 70.6 sweden 65.1 65.0 65.4 72.2 64.1 61.5 57.0 62.2 switzerland 76.1 75.1 77.4 85.3 78.5 72.4 66.0 66.2 elsa england 63.2 64.4 61.8 67.5 62.6 61.5 58.0 61.1 charls china 59.8 63.4 56.2 51.6 57.1 65.5 75.2 86.7 mhas mexico 48.0 46.0 50.1 43.2 43.9 47.5 56.3 69.2 note: %consistency is reached if survey participants are healthy according to both tested and reported measures, or unhealthy according to both of the measures. for cognition, this is agreement between reporting “poor” and “fair” memory and recalling 3 words or less in the immediate word recall test. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. all values consider complex survey design and are weighed accordingly. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. mismatches in health • 195 china (59 percent). among european countries, estonia (51 percent) has the lowest consistency, followed by hungary (58 percent). as indicated by the dashed lines in panel a of figure 3, the age gradient for tested health is steeper than the age gradient for reported health in all countries and regardless of gender, and is even steeper than the age gradient for mobility. in general, consistency also declines with age, but not as strongly as what is observed with mobility. in addition, there are two major exceptions: china and mexico. in these two countries, consistency increases with age, as shown in panel b, figure 3. there is a convergence between self-reported memory and immediate word recall test as individuals age. this convergence is particularly evident in china, where a distinct “wishbone” pattern is observed. the differential in pace by age between the self-reported and the tested measure is so great that it leads to an increase in consistency over the life course, because the tested measure slowly catches up fig. 3: %prevalence (panel a) and %consistency (panel b) between reported and tested cognition, by age, gender and survey reported reported reported tested <=3 words china tested china tested survey charls elsa hrs mhas share a) b) 65 −70 −75 75−80 80−85 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 age % p re va le nc e un he al th y 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 age % c on sis te nc y m en ne mo w 70 85+ 65 −70 −75 75−80 80−8570 85+ note: %prevalence (panel a) is weighted and considers complex survey design for each survey. %consistency (panel b) is reached if survey participants are healthy according to both tested and reported measures, or unhealthy according to both of the measures. the threshold for unhealthy in the immediate word recall test is three words or less. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič196 with the self-reported measure. it should be noted again that the prevalence of unhealthy and thus the level of the self-reported line in panel a of figure 3 depends on the exact cutoff. hence, the main take-away message here is not the decline or increase in consistency with age, but instead the substantial differences in the age pattern between the tested and the self-reported measure. particularly, the steeper age gradient in the tested indicator compared to the self-reported indicator. 3.2.2 regression results similar to mobility, we fit regression models controlling for age and survey period to account for differences in age structure across countries and perform more robust comparisons. it is important to note that the set of countries is different for cognition. waves 4 and 5 of the share surveys in the european region include more countries than waves 1 and 2 used for mobility. consequently, we also include slovenia, estonia, hungary, portugal and luxembourg. however, neither greece nor ireland are included. due to the absence of self-reported memory in the lasi survey, india could not be included in the analysis. when grouping all share countries (see top right plot in figure 4), it is again the lower-income countries that show the lowest consistency. however, when looking at all european countries separately, the picture is less clear. of all countries, women and men in mexico have the lowest consistency in cognition when compared to women and men in the united states. this figure is closely followed by women and men in estonia. interestingly, the heterogeneity across european countries is smaller than for mobility. the odds ratio for each country is closer in value than what was observed for mobility. in addition, contrary to mobility, england has lower consistency odds than the united states, while other countries in europe like germany, denmark, austria, switzerland and the netherlands have significant higher odds for both genders. in addition, the model that incorporates gender as a control variable together with age and survey year shows no significant difference in consistency between women and men, possibly due to this gender variability between countries (table a2 in the appendix). 3.2.3 robustness analyses for additional analysis regarding tested cognition, we apply a different threshold of recalling two words or less, instead of 3 words or less. tables a5-a6 summarise the results for the descriptive findings and the regression results. despite the expected changes in consistency levels, the direction of our main conclusions still holds. for the majority of countries, women have higher consistency between reported and tested health. however, the regression model controlling for country, gender, age and survey year shows no significant effect for gender. the age pattern in consistency is j-shaped, where consistency increases at very old ages (85+). china and mexico are particular cases where consistency increases dramatically with age, regardless of the threshold for tested cognition. mismatches in health • 197 3.3 regional heterogeneity and association with the human development index (hdi) as demonstrated in the preceding sections, there is an overall pattern of low levels of consistency for countries that are part of less affluent regions of the globe, such as mexico, india and china, when compared to the united states and europe. fig. 4: odds ratio coefficients from regression models for cognition, by gender, country and survey odds ratio (coefficients) netherlands switzerland austria denmark germany israel luxembourg england sweden czech republic belgium slovenia italy china spain france hungary poland portugal estonia mexico 0 1 2 3 4 woman manreference: usa europe (share) england (elsa) china (charls) mexico (mhas) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 usa (hrs) note: models are adjusted for women and men separately, controlling for age and survey year. coefficients are exponentiated so this is odds of consistency between tested and reported health. the country of reference is the united states (hrs survey). the threshold for unhealthy in the immediate word recall test is three words or less. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič198 fig. 5: association between consistency odds and the human development index (hdi) by world bank regions (panel a) and consistency odds in europe (panel b) cognition mobility 0.5 1.0 1.5 0.5 1.0 1.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 h d i world bank region east asia & pacific europe & central asia latin america & caribbean middle east & north africa north america south asia consistency odds ratio (united states (hrs) as reference) r= 0.69 r= 0.58 china switzerland estonia china india mexico mexico sweden greece a) b) 30°n 40°n 50°n 60°n 70°n −20°w −10°w 0°w 10°w 20°w 30°w 40°w consistency odds 0.25−0.50 0.50−0.75 0.75−1.00 1.00−1.25 1.25−1.50 1.50−1.75 30°n 40°n 50°n 60°n 70°n −20°w −10°w 0°w 10°w 20°w 30°w 40°w consistency odds 0.25−0.50 0.50−0.75 0.75−1.00 1.00−1.25 1.25−1.50 1.50−1.75 note: consistency odds ratio retrieved from models controlling of age, survey period and gender. the country of reference is the united states (hrs survey). the regression line in panel a was generated for share countries only. middle east & north africa is represented by israel. r refers to the spearman correlation. the threshold for unhealthy in the immediate word recall test is three words or less. for mobility, it is walking speed equal to 0.4m/s or lower. we do not differentiate between negative consistency, i.e. both measures suggest health limitations, and positive consistency, i.e. both measures suggest no health limitations. elsa and share mismatches in health • 199 nonetheless, it was also evident that the european region is rather heterogeneous when it comes to consistency, especially for mobility. in order to further investigate this aspect, we grouped countries into the world bank regions and evaluated their association with the human development index (hdi), a summary indicator of development. due to the absence of discernible gender disparities in consistency, we used the estimated odds ratio for each country derived from the model that accounts for age, gender, and survey year, but that is not estimated separately for women and men, as shown in figure 5. we find that there is a positive and significant association between human development index scores and the odds of consistency for both cognition (r=0.69) and mobility (r=58), as shown in figure 5 (panel a). in general, greater consistency odds are positively related with higher hdi scores. the regions of south asia (india), and latin america and caribbean (mexico) are distinguished from the rest of the regions with lower hdi ratings and odds of consistency when compared to the united states. the east asia & pacific (china) region has lower hdi but not necessarily lower consistency odds, especially for mobility, when compared with other countries. despite the high correlation between the human development index (hdi) and consistency odds, it also serves to underscore the significant variation when looking within the regions of europe and central asia (elsa and share countries) and middle east and north africa (israel, part of share). for cognition, there is less heterogeneity in consistency across european countries, as seen by the overall similarity in color shades throughout these countries on the map on panel b of figure 5 (odds [0.75-1.00]). for mobility, however, heterogeneity in consistency is more pronounced, as indicated by the presence of more contrasting colors (ranging from [0.25-0.50]) to [1.50-1.75]). switzerland, denmark, austria and germany are among the countries with the highest hdi scores and that also have higher odds of consistency in their tested and reported cognition when compared to the united states. 4 tested versus reported health: how do discrepancies impact country rankings? as shown in the above analyses, self-reported mobility and cognition appear do deviate substantially from their tested equivalent. most importantly, self-reports do not reflect the expected age pattern of increasing health decline over the life course. differences between the self-reports and the tests are particularly pronounced for countries are grouped within europe and central asia region. israel is part of share but categorised as a middle east and north africa in the world bank regions. in the map, panel (b), we categorised england is shaded as united kingdom, but the estimates refer only to england. this was done for visualisation purposes only. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. united nations development programme, human development report. 2022. “human development index.” retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/hdi. world bank annual report 2022. http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/hdi • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič200 countries with lower scores of human development index (hdi), which are indicative of lower levels of socio-economic development. this indicates that self-reports for mobility and cognition are not the most reliable indicators to be used as standalone tools for cross-country comparisons in health. to illustrate this issue in more detail, we provide a further overview of how differences between tested and selfreported health impact country rankings for ages 75+. for this, we estimated the %prevalence unhealthy for the whole population and for women and men for each survey and health dimension considered, as shown in table 4. we then compute country rankings based on the total %self-reported (r) and %tested (t) health prevalence for the total population and for women and men. in addition, because for the case of mobility european countries from the share sample only have available data above age 75, we have restricted the comparisons to those ages only, in order to prevent bias due to considering a younger age structure for the other countries. figure 6 shows the rankings for countries from low to high prevalence according to reported and tested health for the total population. it is important to note that these are absolute health prevalences computed for the total population aged 75 and over. this figure is thus impacted by the age structure of each country. the ranking is merely to illustrate the discrepancies across and within surveys if one looks only at either self-reported health or tested health. for cognition, hrs (-1 ranking from reported to tested), followed by mhas (+1 ranking from reported to tested) and charls (no changes in ranking) were the most stable surveys regarding their rankings for reported and tested health. share had a change of 2 positions in the ranking from reported to tested health (from 2nd to 4th). both for self-reported and tested health, regions with higher development tab. 4: discrepancies between %self-reported and %tested health prevalence, total population, survey/country and health indicator for ages 75+ for all countries survey country mobility cognition self-reported tested self-reported tested % % hrs usa 18.8 10.5 37.9 30.6 share europe 16.3 21.5 46.6 44.4 elsa england 17.8 10.7 49.4 25.4 charls china 19.2 26.5 88.2 74.2 mhas mexico 31.9 37.5 70.7 39.5 lasi india 49.4 18.6 note: %prevalence unhealthy for self-reported cognition is reporting “poor” and “fair” memory; for tested cognition is recalling 3 words or less in the immediate word recall test. %prevalence unhealthy for self-reported mobility is reporting some difficulty walking 100m; for tested mobility is having a walking speed that is 0.4m/s or lower. all values consider complex survey design and are weighed accordingly. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. mismatches in health • 201 levels according to their hdi scores are always ranked in the first two positions (hrs/shareelsa/hrs). for mobility, elsa was the survey that was more stable, with no change in rankings for the total population. the change in reported to tested health is stronger for share (from 1st to 4th place) and lasi (rises three places from 6th to 3rd). figure 6 allows us to derive some important messages both across and within surveys. first, within surveys, higher rankings in reported health are not necessarily followed by higher rankings in tested health, which reinforces the discrepancies between these two measures. second, across surveys, it matters whether one uses reported or tested health to estimate prevalence of unhealthy and compare performance. while share countries fare better than most countries with regards to reported health, this figure changes when one looks at tested health. this discrepancy raises concerns about which indicator is best for comparative purposes. 5 discussion we expanded earlier work that evaluated several health surveys using the consistency between reported and tested health to lower-income regions (cleary 1997; fors et al. 2006; spitzer/weber 2019; cislaghi/cislaghi 2019; huang/maurer 2019). a key result is that consistency decreases with age for mobility and has an overall j-shape for cognition, but no significant patterns are found by gender. tested health has a sharper age gradient than reported health, increasing at a faster pace with age. the inconsistencies found reflect that self-reported health does not adequately capture fig. 6: ranking of countries (from low to high prevalence) according to reported and tested health for the total population, ages 75+ hrs share elsa mhas charls elsa hrs mhas share charls share elsa hrs charls mhas lasi hrs elsa lasi share charls mhas cognition mobility total reported tested reported tested 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 ra nk note: %prevalence unhealthy for self-reported cognition is reporting “poor” and “fair” memory; for tested cognition is recalling 3 words or less in the immediate word recall test. %prevalence unhealthy for self-reported mobility is reporting some difficulty walking 100m; for tested mobility is having a walking speed that is 0.4m/s or lower. all values consider complex survey design and are weighed accordingly. source: own calculations based on the gateway to global aging data. • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič202 the deterioration in health that is expected with aging (di lego/sauerberg 2023), which is in line with earlier research that found strong intertemporal stability in health reports despite objective health decline (galenkamp et al. 2012; spuling et al. 2017). the lack of gender differences also correspond to previous work that found no significant differences between women and men in the response behaviour regarding self-rated health, even after adjusting for reporting behaviour, but did find significant differences by age (oksuzyan et al. 2019; spitzer/weber 2019; lazarevič/ brandt 2020; lazarevič/quesnel-vallée 2023). because we are comparing countries with very different gender norms and epidemiological trajectories, this indicates that inconsistencies between reported and tested health usually go in the same direction, at least for the health dimensions we analysed. interestingly, we found a positive and significant association between human development index scores and the odds of consistency for both cognition and mobility. in general, greater consistency odds were positively related with higher hdi scores, but important differences within the european region remained, with a large variation in consistency between reported and tested health. this is in line with previous work that documented large discrepancies in europe between reported and tested health and merits further investigation (spitzer/weber 2019). overall, this may be reflecting different welfare state systems and access to health care, as research has shown that differences in welfare state regimes within europe accounted for approximately half of the national-level variation of health inequalities between european countries (eikemo et al. 2008). most likely, this is driven by the profiles we observed in self-reported health, which challenge the validity of this indicator for performing cross-country comparisons. indeed, research has repeatedly shown that reporting behaviour across european nations is so heterogeneous that cross-country comparisons based on self-rated health indicators are questionable (pfarr et al. 2012; molina 2016; picavet 2017; luy et al. 2023). however, self-reports of health information may provide insight into other environmental factors. for the case of mobility, for instance, the extremely high levels of self-reported health limitations for india may be due to adverse environmental conditions, security concerns, lack of accessibility and cultural factors that discourage individuals from going outside (gallagher et al. 2016; almeida bentes et al. 2017; cantuaria et al. 2023). since both women and men report a higher prevalence compared to other countries, this may reflect the condition of the pavement and the ability to circulate in the streets rather than gender norms. such aspects have long been discussed under such terms as “extra-individual factors” (verbrugge/jette 1994) as important influences on the link between objective health impairments and consequent functional limitations. as these extra-individual factors can be expected to vary widely and in relation to, e.g., the economic welfare of a country, tested health would enable a better measurement of health conditions/clinical aspects since the test is taken in a standardised, controlled environment (fors et al. 2006). as a consequence, comparisons of specific health problems, such as in functioning or cognition, might not only reflect objective differences in prevalence, but also differences in welfare regimes or accessibility. mismatches in health • 203 other research that focused on comparisons of self-reported disability measures in six lowand middle-income countries (lmics) that included china, india and mexico, showed that self-reported data varied greatly due to differences in the inability to perform an activity because of one’s environment (capistrant et al. 2014). this is why it has also been suggested that tested health based on performance measures and self-reported measures are complementary measures and that they do not measure the same construct (hoeymans et al. 1996). our results on cognition are consistent with country-specific studies that also analyse self-reported and tested memory inconsistencies, suggesting that selfreported memory may not adequately represent memory issues (sohel et al. 2016). a study that focused on china strongly cautioned against relying on self-rated memory measures for performing memory assessments in primary care or survey research, since self-rated memory was only modestly correlated with performance on memory tests (huang/maurer 2019). all these results could also be interpreted as a “recalibration” of older respondents’ standards for reporting a health limitation, meaning that more severe limitations could be seen as less serious in older age (schwartz/sprangers 1999; sprangers/schwartz 1999). gender differences on memory tests were also in line with what has been shown in previous research, with women performing better than men on memory tests in some contexts like england (huppert/whittington 1993; steel et al. 2003; salthouse 2016). this study has some limitations, many of which were addressed in robustness analyses. first, as our goal was to have the most diverse set of countries as possible, the dimensions of health were restricted to the variables available across surveys. to ensure an exact match between self-reported health information and tested health, we also had to choose particular metrics within each of the health dimensions. our findings are therefore limited to mobility (as assessed by the 100-meter walking test difficulty and the walking speed test) and cognition (as assessed by the selfreported memory and the word recall test) and cannot necessarily be generalised beyond that. however, difficulty walking short to medium distances is not only an important marker for disability, but also a key predictor for mortality, cardiovascular risk and health care utilisation (lan et al. 2002; newman et al. 2006; hardy et al. 2011). likewise, gait speed is a simple yet important clinical marker of current health and well-being and a powerful predictor of mortality in older adults, often being referred to as a “vital sign” of overall health and well-being (studenski et al. 2011; peel et al. 2013; white et al. 2013). hence, despite our analysis being restricted to this aspect of mobility, it is likely a good candidate for capturing physical limitation. another limitation is the fact that share countries only have ages 75+ for mobility, which means that share has an older age structure compared to other countries. to mitigate this limitation, in the case of country rankings where we analyse absolute prevalence, we restricted the analysis to ages 75+. in the case of regression models, we performed robustness checks with models for mobility with ages 75+ only. overall, the impact is not as important as it might have seemed due to the strong age gradient in health and the fact that the prevalence for both • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič204 reported and tested health in mobility and cognition increase, while consistency declines with age. the fact that we did not find important gender differences may also be reflective of these particular health dimensions in our analyses, since other work has shown that women rate for chronic health conditions in a less consistent way than men (deeg/kriegsman 2003; idler 2003), and that important differences are found when different dimensions of health are considered (luy/di giulio 2006; di lego et al. 2020a/b). further, there were also some more specific deviations in the procedures in individual surveys that reduced their comparability. for one of the countries, india, there was only one wave available. the mexican survey also used slightly different procedures, compared to the other surveys, both for walking speed test and cognition. for cognition, the immediate word recall list is composed of eight words instead of ten words. likewise, the walking speed test is performed over a 3m-walking course in mexico, instead of 2.5m like the other countries. however, as we are concerned with the health of impaired individuals and the lower bound ‒ i.e., those who are most impaired ‒ of both walking speed and memory, these differences should not impact our analyses. in this case, the cutoff point we use, which is the same for all countries, can be interpreted as a lower bound for measuring functional limitations and cognition. what could indeed impact the results are the thresholds in the proportion that is considered unhealthy. for that reason, to ensure that the results are not driven by the cutoff of walking speed at lower or equal to 0.4m/s, we ran the analysis using a higher cutoff of 0.6m/s. when using a higher cutoff mark, it is expected that a larger share of respondents will be reclassified as unhealthy, when compared to the 0.4m/s cutoff. the conclusions were not changed with different cutoff marks. lastly, when dropping mexico from the analyses the odds ratios and significance were very close and in the same direction, indicating that the crosscountry comparisons are not affected. unfortunately, it is not possible to assess whether this difference in scale could impact within-country differences in mexico. as we mentioned, since we focus on impairment for this paper, this can mitigate the difference in scale. with all the robustness checks we performed, it is unlikely that the exceptionality in mexico’s tested health scale explains the steep age gradient observed for walking speed. finally, the discrepancies we find between self-reported and tested health may raise the question to researchers and policy makers alike: which indicator should i use or is more reliable to capture health? health is multidimensional and complex and that is why it is so hard to have a single indicator that can accurately capture health (mathers et al. 1994; robine/jagger 2003; costa et al. 2019; santos et al. 2021). indeed, the world health organization (who) has a global reference list of 100 core health indicators they categorise as: 1. health status indicators, 2. risk factors indicators, 3. service coverage indicators and 4. health systems indicators (world health organization 2018). the who defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (world health organization 2005). if we consider this definition, then self-reported health can also be capturing aspects related to social and mental well-being that mismatches in health • 205 are not restricted to the health condition itself, but to the environment one lives in. indeed, reported health has been shown to give clues as to the environmental limitations, cultural aspects and overall well-being (bombak 2013; gallagher et al. 2016). similarly, people-centred health systems, such as the patient-reported indicators surveys (paris) launched in 2017 by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), require indicators centred on people’s well-being. the oecd health ministers developed the paris in order to systematically collect data on what matters most to patients, and not only their tested health, since not all health conditions are equally felt by individuals (oecd 2019). in this case, using indicators that also reflect overall well-being, such as reported measures, are more appropriate, besides being inexpensive to include in national surveys (strawbridge/ wallhagen 1999; bombak 2013). in other health contexts, such as critical phases of the covid-19 pandemic, it was crucial to have tested health data and objective metrics to accurately assess infection rates and make proper decisions (di lego et al. 2022). likewise, in contexts of hospital care demand planning and forecasting hospital beds, it may also be important to have performance-based measurement (ravaghi et al. 2020). in other words, there is no single best health indicator, but the most appropriate depending on the purpose of a policy, and whether it is a monitoring, preventive, targeted or actionbased policy. the important thing is to be aware of how sensitive some indicators are to make better decisions on which indicator to use, instead of taking them for granted. the goal of this paper was to elucidate this sensitivity when performing cross-country comparisons, where usually the aim is to rank countries and assess which country is healthier. in this scenario, tested health is a more robust choice, particularly when comparisons are performed across countries from different levels of socio-economic development. 6 conclusion health surveys are important tools used by policy makers to monitor health and establish health goals and national strategies. self-reported health, usually derived from health surveys, is an important source of information that researchers use to assess health across populations (wong et al. 2005; jürges 2007; layes et al. 2012; boerma et al. 2016; galenkamp et al. 2020). however, the inconsistency we find indicates that self-reports, at least when considering mobility and cognition, are not the most reliable to be used alone for those assessments, especially when performing cross-country comparisons. tested health, on the other hand, seems to be more realistically capturing the deterioration of health that happens with age in a standardised, comparable way. they are more expensive and complex to incorporate in health surveys, but there are performance tests such as gait speed, word recalls or chair stand, which can be employed as cost-effective measures for high quality survey research (christensen et al. 2013; peel et al. 2013). • vanessa di lego, sonja spitzer, patrick lazarevič206 while there are no perfect measures for health, tested health seems like a better candidate to base cross-country comparisons on, especially when comparing a highly diverse set of countries as in this study. acknowledgements this work is supported within the eu framework programme for research and innovation horizon 2020, erc grant agreement no. 725187 (lethe). this paper uses data from share waves 1, 2, 4 and 5 (dois: 10.6103/share.w1.800, 10.6103/share.w2.800,10.6103/share.w4.800,10.6103/share.w5.800)see (börschsupan et al. 2013) for methodological details. the share data collection has been funded by the european commission, dg rtd through fp5 (qlk6-ct-2001-00360), fp6 (share-i3: rii-ct-2006-062193, compare: cit5-ct-2005-028857, sharelife: cit4-ct-2006-028812), fp7 (share-prep: ga n°211909, share-leap: ga n°227822, share m4: ga n°261982, dasish: ga n°283646) and horizon 2020 (share-dev3: ga n°676536, share-cohesion: ga n°870628, seriss: ga n°654221, sshoc: ga n°823782, share-covid19: ga n°101015924) and by dg employment, social affairs & inclusion through vs 2015/0195, vs 2016/0135, vs 2018/0285, vs 2019/0332, and vs 2020/0313. additional funding from the german ministry of education and research, the max planck society for the advancement of science, the u.s. national institute on aging (u01_ag09740-13s2, p01_ag005842, p01_ag08291, p30_ag12815, r21_ ag025169, y1-ag-4553-01, iag_bsr06-11, ogha_04-064, hhsn271201300071c, rag052527a) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org). this analysis uses data or information from the following harmonized datasets: lasi dataset and codebook, version a.2 as of october 2021, developed by the gateway to global aging data (doi: https://doi.org/10.25549/h-lasi). the development of the harmonized lasi was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag042778, 2r01 ag030153, 2r01 ag051125). charls dataset and codebook, version d as of june 2021 developed by the gateway to global aging data. the development of the harmonized charls was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag030153, rc2 ag036619, r03 ag043052). elsa dataset and codebook, version g.2 as of july 2021 developed by the gateway to global aging data. the development of the harmonized elsa was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag030153, rc2 ag036619, r03 ag043052). share dataset and codebook, version f as of june 2022 developed by the gateway to global aging data. the development of the harmonized share was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag030153, rc2 ag036619, r03 ag043052). mhas dataset and codebook, version b.4 as of february 2022 developed by the gateway to global aging data in collaboration with the mhas research team. the development of the harmonized mhas was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag030153). the harmonized mhas data files and documentation are public use and available at www.mhasweb.org. the mhas (mexican health and aging study) receives support from the national institutes of health/national institute on aging (r01 ag018016) in the united states and the instituto nacional de estadística y geografía (inegi) in mexico. hrs dataset and http://www.share-project.org http://www.share-project.org https://doi.org/10.25549/h-lasi http://www.mhasweb.org mismatches in health • 207 codebook, version c as of january 2022 developed by the gateway to global aging data and randhrs1992-2018v1. the development of the harmonized hrs was funded by the national institute on aging (r01 ag030153, rc2 ag036619, 1r03ag043052). for more information about the harmonization project, please refer to https:// g2aging.org/. references abadie, alberto et al. 2022: when should you adjust standard errors for clustering? in: the quarterly journal of economics 138,1: 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac038 almeida, bentes aline et al. 2017: self-rated health and perceived violence in the neighborhood is heterogeneous between young women and men. in: bmc public health 17,967. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4969-1 arni, patrick et al. 2021: 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organization 2018: 2018 global reference list of 100 core health indicators (plus health-related sdgs). world health organization. world health organization 2005: constitution of the world health organization: world health organization, basic documents. geneva. wuorela, maarit et al. 2020: self-rated health and objective health status as predictors of all-cause mortality among older people: a prospective study with a 5-, 10-, and 27-year follow-up. in: bmc geriatrics 20,120. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01516-9 young, codi et al. 2021: harmonization of cross-national studies of aging to the health and retirement study user guide physical functional health. cesr-schaeffer working paper no. 001. date of submission: 08.09.2023 date of acceptance: 26.06.2024 dr. vanessa di lego (*). department of demography, faculty of economics, universidade federal de minas gerais. belo horizonte, brazil. e-mail: vdilego@cedeplar.ufmg.br url: https://vdilego.github.io dr. sonja spitzer. department of demography, university of vienna, wittgenstein centre (iiasa, oeaw, university of vienna). vienna. austria. e-mail: sonja.spitzer@univie.ac.at url: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/person.html?id=112190 dr. patrick lazarevič. statistik austria. e-mail: patrick.lazarevic@statistik.gv.at url: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/patrick-lazarevic https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01516-9 mailto:vdilego@cedeplar.ufmg.br https://vdilego.github.io mailto:sonja.spitzer@univie.ac.at https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/person.html?id=112190 mailto:patrick.lazarevic@statistik.gv.at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/patrick-lazarevic published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda) family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)* martin bujard, karsten hank, reinhard pollak on may 31, 2023, the family demography panel study freda published its  rst complete wave – including three subwaves – as well as comprehensive documentation at the gesis data service tool (bujard et al. 2023). the recruitment wave was published one year earlier, on may 31, 2022. this special issue contains some of the  rst analyses with freda data. getting freda (logo: see fig. 1) to this point took a long time – nearly a decade – with important milestones in berlin, bonn, cologne, mannheim, paris, the hague, and wiesbaden. in august 2014, two co-pis of the german family panel (pairfam; see huinink et al. 2011), karsten hank and bernhard nauck, met with representatives of the federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) in bonn. this was the  rst meeting to discuss the possibility of continuing pairfam’s funding through the bmbf beyond 2022, the year pairfam’s long-term project funding by the german research foundation (dfg) was set to expire. even though (or rather: because) the 14 waves of data scheduled to be collected by then would already constitute an unprecedented wealth of longitudinal data on intimate relationships and family dynamics in germany, pairfam’s discontinuation would have entailed a severe loss for the scienti c community, as well as for the politicians and practitioners who depend on evidence-based advice. while the bmbf acknowledged in principle the importance of maintaining a high-quality data infrastructure such as that provided by pairfam, it was also suggested that its funding would only be considered if the comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 657-664 (date of release: 26.10.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-25 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-25en2 fig. 1: freda logo * this is the editorial on the special issue "family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)". • martin bujard, karsten hank, reinhard pollak658 family survey were enhanced by taking a european perspective. this was a welcome proposal, since pairfam had always been seeking to contribute to cross-national comparative research, especially in conjunction with the generations and gender surveys (ggs; see for example groepler et al. 2021; perelli-harris et al. 2012). meanwhile, the generations and gender programme (ggp), a unique and innovative data infrastructure (vikat et al. 2007) initiated in 2000 under the aegis of the united nations economic commission for europe (unece), was at a crossroads, too. while the ggs had a broad scienti c impact in european family demography with data collections in 18 countries, most of them (except france, hungary and netherlands) had been completed by then (see gauthier et al. forthcoming). central questions for the continuation of the ggs concerned its funding, the number of participating countries, and the governance structure, mode, and questionnaire. efforts were initiated by the ggp consortium board – and in particular by the director, anne gauthier – the ggp-steering committee, and the ggp-central-hub team to establish the ggs on the roadmap of the european strategy forum on research infrastructures (esfri) and to prepare new data collection in the long term. the german ggs-i had been completed after only two waves (2005, 2008/09). on the one hand, the international comparison with rich data for understanding fertility and family dynamics within the life course was also needed in the future, while on the other hand, the federal institute for population research (bib) was reluctant given the previous longitudinal design with only two waves in a three-year period, and preferred a more frequent mode. aiming to join forces with the ggs, the pairfam consortium with karsten hank and johannes huinink turned to the bib and its director at that time, norbert f. schneider, as well as martin bujard, the german representative on the generations and gender programme’s (ggp) consortium board. several issues quickly became clear in these early discussions: the new data infrastructure should (1) have a clear family-demographic focus, (2) consist of a newly drawn ggs sample in addition to the established pairfam sample, and (3) meet the highest survey-methodological standards. to this end, the gesis leibniz institute for the social sciences was invited to become the third partner in this enterprise, and its president, christof wolf, soon came up with a name for the new “baby”: family research and demographic analysis (freda). the dyadic design, with partner interviews as a central part of freda, was strongly supported by norbert f. schneider and  tted well with pairfam’s previous experiences. the german plans for freda – although still without secure funding, but with no lack of optimism – helped to give the ggp momentum, and vice versa. based on a ggp proposal mainly developed by anne gauthier and tom emery and supported by the ggp consortium board, the european commission gave the ggp the status of an “emerging project” and granted funding for the “evaluate, plan and initiate” (epi) stage, in order to prepare the ggp for the esfri roadmap and to make it a permanent institution. the bib participated in the epi, in particular in the mode experiment for germany, croatia and portugal in 2018. this paved the way for webbased interviews using the 50-60 minutes ggs questionnaire (lugtig et al. 2022) and allowed a better understanding of its break-offs (emery et al. 2023) – and the family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 659 demand for web-based interviews soon accelerated due to the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, a questionnaire task force made up of martin bujard, anne gauthier, peter lugtig, and melinda mills extensively revamped the questionnaire, with the approval of the consortium board. in the process, they cut out nearly one-quarter of the questions, added recent innovations in family demography, yet kept the unique, theoretically based items originally developed for ggs by a distinguished generation of social scientists and family demographers (see gauthier et al. 2022). this renewed questionnaire, ggs-ii, is the main basis of freda wave 1. the initiators of freda had several meetings with the bmbf, and the bib with the federal ministry of the interior (bmi), where the freda plans were promoted – and at the same time critically discussed and developed further with valuable feedback from both ministries. the bmbf eventually invited the trio of bib, gesis, and pairfam to present its vision of freda as the german family demography panel study at a meeting held in berlin in april 2018, attended by stakeholders in the scienti c community and representatives of several ministries. during that meeting – in a move that surprised most participants – the bmi expressed its willingness to take long-term  nancial responsibility for freda after a positive evaluation of freda’s work-up phase, which was expected to be funded by the bmbf. after the berlin meeting, the decisive political process involving the various ministries and both freda-pis from bib continued and was supported by the scienti c community, including for example the scienti c board of the family ministry. after a positive response and an invitation from the bmbf, the freda partners started to work on a formal grant proposal, which was submitted to the bmbf (or more speci cally, its project management agency dlr) in february 2019. after a thorough peer-review process, the requested funds for four main waves of data collection by the end of the year 2024 were granted in november 2019. both ministries, bmbf and bmi, signed an agreement for common but sequential funding of freda. finally, the six founding pis of freda, martin bujard, tobias gummer, karsten hank, franz neyer, norbert f. schneider and christof wolf, had reached their goal. in january 2020 they received the of cial documents from bmbf state secretary michael meister during a ceremony in mannheim (fig. 2) kicking off the new data infrastructure. at last, freda was ready to go! two months later, the covid-19 pandemic broke out. fortunately, freda was able to turn this challenge into an opportunity (see gummer et al. 2020). instead of the initially planned face-to-face survey, freda became a self-administered mixed-mode survey (wolf et al. 2021), including a push-to-web design. the recruitment wave (w1r) of the new freda-ggs sample, conducted from april through june 2021, collected data from more than 37,777 primary respondents aged 18-49 and was released in may 2022 (bujard et al. 2022). the subsequent subwaves (w1a and w1b) of freda’s baseline, which also covered anchor respondents’ partners, were collected from july 2021 through september 20211 and from november 2021 through january 2022, respectively. these were 1 in october 2021 norbert f. schneider retired and c. katharina spieß succeded him as bib director and thus joined the freda-pi team. • martin bujard, karsten hank, reinhard pollak660 made available for public use in may 2023 (bujard et al. 2023; see hank et al. forthcoming for a detailed data brief). freda consists of two samples: (1) the new freda-ggs sample started in 2021 and is comparable to at least 20 countries or territories (gauthier et al. forthcoming). (2) freda-pairfam is the continuation of pairfam’s  rst 14 waves: its 15th wave was collected together with freda-ggs wave 2. table 1 gives an overview of both samples and respondents: tab. 1: both freda samples and netto-panelists in the  rst 2 waves w1r w1a w1b w2a w2b freda-ggs anchor 37,777 22,048 20,220 19,024* 18,102* freda-ggs partner 7,339 6,566* 6,195* freda-pairfam anchor 4,457 4,322 freda-pairfam partner 1,443 1,387 total 29,387 31,490* 30,006* * preliminary data. source: own design fig. 2: of cial kick-off of freda, january 2020 l-r: christof wolf (freda-pi, gesis president), michael meister (bmbf state secretary), martin bujard (freda-pi, freda consortium coordinator, bib), karsten hank (freda-pi, pairfam-pi, cologne university). family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 661 freda content has four different sources (for details see: hank et al. 2023; schneider et al. 2021): • generations and gender survey (ggs-ii) is the main component of freda waves 1, 4, 7, etc. (gauthier et al. 2022), corresponding to the international data collection in ggs every three years. waves 2, 3, 5, 6, etc. contain 50 percent of the ggs questions in order to allow longitudinal analyses. • german family panel (pairfam) complements ggs: after harmonisation by the freda team, it has a broad overlap with nearly half of the ggs questions. in addition, many psychological scales and other variables of pairfam were introduced in freda; in particular in waves 2, 3, 5, 6, etc. • new modules developed by the freda team and pretested in the gesis pre-test laboratory. these focus on societal changes, crises such as covid-19, and innovations from promising scienti c advances. • new modules from the scienti c community based on an open and multidisciplinary “call for modules” which takes place every year, starting with  ve (out of 27) chosen contributions for wave 2. following up on cpos’ special issue “empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam)” a decade ago (see huinink 2012) and the original introduction to freda published in this journal (see schneider et al. 2021), we are proud to present initial insights from freda’s baseline wave in this new special issue. the set of  ve articles presented here provides an impression of some of the research potential that freda provides now; that is, before its longitudinal dimension has evolved. one advantage of freda is its large sample size, which allows researchers to assess heterogeneities in the population in relatively great detail. germany’s population, for example, has become very diverse in terms of people’s regional, cultural, and ethnic origins, whereby individuals’ family-related attitudes (e.g. towards maternal employment; see gambaro et al. 2023) and actual behaviours (e.g. couples’ division of housework; see nutz et al. 2023) may vary considerably. another aspect of diversity that has received growing public and scienti c interest is individuals’ sexual orientation and its impact on people’s lives. subjective wellbeing disparities in sexual minority populations, for example, may have changed over time – and merging pairfam’s and freda’s baseline waves allows us to monitor such dynamics (see hank et al. 2023). importantly, freda is compatible not only with pairfam, but can also be merged with data from other countries that contribute to the ggs, allowing cross-national comparative analyses (assessing, for example, differences in individuals’ fertility intentions across countries; see krapf et al. 2023). finally, freda is a multi-actor survey interviewing primary respondents and their partners. this brings about great opportunities for dyadic analyses – as well as obvious methodological challenges. the experiences gained in freda’s baseline wave can be used, for example, to improve our understanding of the conditions under which anchors are more willing to give consent to conducting an interview with their partner (see gummer et al. 2023). obviously, these studies are only the beginning of what we hope will become a new wave of family research and demographic analysis. a growing number of countries has started to collect new rounds of ggs data (and the ggp is on its way • martin bujard, karsten hank, reinhard pollak662 to becoming a european research infrastructure consortium). the german family panel has now been fully integrated into the german family demography panel study (from wave 2 onwards). freda is expected to prosper beyond its current funding period, providing a sound longitudinal database for the next generation(s) of family demographers in germany and beyond. acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge funding from the federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) under grants # 01uw2001a, # 01uw2001b, and # 01uw2001c. we would also like to thank friederike dahns, matthias klingner, ivonne küsters, monika van ooyen, anette fasang, and all members of the freda council for their initial and ongoing support of freda. we are deeply grateful to our (former and current) colleagues from gesis, bib, and the university of cologne who form the freda team and dedicate their time and expertise to freda. references bujard, martin et al. 2022: freda – the german family demography panel study. cologne: gesis. za7777 data file version 1.0.0. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13745 bujard, martin et al. 2023: freda – the german family demography panel study. cologne: gesis. za7777 data file version 2.0.0. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.14065 emery, tom et al. 2023: breakoffs in an hour-long online survey. in: survey practice 16,1. https://doi.org/10.29115/sp-2023-0008 gambaro, ludovica et al. 2023: should mama or papa work? variations in attitudes towards parental employment by country of origin and child age. in: comparative population studies 48: 339-368. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-14 gauthier, anne et al. 2022: generations and gender survey baseline questionnaire 3.1.1. netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute [distributor]. in: https://www. ggp-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/baselinequestionnaire_3.1.1.pdf, 08.08.2023. gauthier, anne et al. forthcoming: the second round of the generations and gender survey (ggs-ii): study pro le. under review. groepler, nicolai; huinink, johannes; peter, timo 2021: does the birth of a child still prompt a marriage? a comparison of austria, france, germany and hungary. in: european societies 23: 333-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2021.1922930 gummer, tobias et al. 2020: the impact of covid-19 on  eldwork efforts and planning in pairfam and freda-ggs. in: survey research methods 14,2: 223-227. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7740 gummer, tobias; christmann, pablo; kunz, tanja 2023: gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners: the importance of anchors’ survey experience in selfadministered modes. in: comparative population studies 48: 281-306. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-12 hank, karsten; neyer, franz j.; thönnissen, carolin 2023: disparities in subjective well-being by sexual orientation: comparing cohorts from pairfam’s (2008-09) and freda’s (2021) baseline waves. in: comparative population studies 48: 217-230. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-09 family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 663 hank, karsten et al. forthcoming: a new data infrastructure for family research and demographic analysis: the german family demography panel study (freda). in: european sociological review. huinink, johannes 2012: editorial on the special issue “empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam)”. in: comparative population studies 37: 313-326. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2012-09 huinink, johannes et al. 2011: panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam): conceptual framework and design. in: journal of family research 23,1: 77-101. https://doi.org/10.20377/jfr-235 krapf, sandra; buber-ennser, isabella; bujard, martin 2023: education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway: an international comparison using freda and ggs-ii-data. in: comparative population studies 48: 589-628 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-22 lugtig, peter et al. 2022: can we successfully move a cross-national survey online? results from a large three-country experiment in the gender and generations programme survey. in: socarxiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/mu8jy nutz, theresa; schmid, lisa; pollak, reinhard 2023: the division of routine and nonroutine housework among migrant and native couples in germany. in: comparative population studies 48: 369-394. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-15 perelli-harris, brienna et al. 2012: changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven european countries, 1970s to early 2000s. in: population studies 66,2: 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2012.673004 schneider, norbert f. et al. 2021: family research and demographic analysis (freda): evolution, framework, objectives, and design of “the german family demography panel study”. in: comparative population studies 46: 149-186. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-06 vikat, andres et al. 2007: generations and gender survey (ggs): towards a better understanding of relationships and processes in the life course. in: demographic research 17: 389-440. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2007.17.14 wolf, christof et al. 2021: conducting general social surveys as self-administered mixed-mode surveys. in: public opinion quarterly 85,2: 623-648. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfab039 prof. dr. martin bujard (). federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. heidelberg university, institute of medical psychology, medical faculty. heidelberg, germany. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/bujard/bujard.html prof. dr. karsten hank. university of cologne. institute of sociology and social psychology (iss). cologne, germany. e-mail: hank@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/h/prof-dr-karsten-hank prof. dr. reinhard pollak. gesis – leibniz institute for the social sciences. cologne/ mannheim, germany. e-mail: reinhard.pollak@gesis.org url: https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/reinhard.pollak published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) editorial: the past, present and future of cpos editorial the past, present and future of cpos frans willekens, katrin schiefer, nikola sander, c. katharina spieß abstract: in this editorial note, we re ect on the trajectory of comparative population studies (cpos) over the last decades, highlight major milestones along the road, and sketch our hopes and ideas for its future development. in 1975, the predecessor journal of cpos named zfb was established as the scienti c journal of the newly founded german federal institute for population research (bib). as the institute grew its international collaborations and the journal transitioned from german to english language, zfb became cpos. today, we are pleased that the journal has grown in statue and attracts high-quality submissions from scholars around the globe. looking ahead, we envision cpos as a unique open-access journal in the  eld of population studies where innovation, scienti c rigor and attention to quality work hand-in-hand to advance population studies and respond to societal challenges. keywords: zfb · cpos · relaunch · open-access policy · ojs 1 the roots of comparative population studies over ten years ago, comparative population studies (cpos) was launched as the successor of the german-speaking journal zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb). the zfb was founded in 1975 by the bib with a main focus on fertility, mortality and migration in the german-speaking countries. the zfb became a well-established journal in the research communities of austria, germany and switzerland. articles were published in german with abstracts translated into english and french. to make papers accessible to a wider audience, and in reaction to the general push towards open-access publishing, the publisher and editor at the time decided to transform zfb into the online open-access journal cpos with an english name and stronger focus on the international research community. instead of liaising with a publishing house, the editor opted for the open journal management system ojs to publish cpos. despite the challenges, it meant independence, freedom and comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): i-vi (date of release: 25.10.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-24 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-24en6 • frans willekens, katrin schiefer, nikola sander, c. katharina spießii  exibility in managing the journal. compared to zfb, cpos aims for a broader focus and a broader understanding of population studies. now that cpos has matured into a more widely known peer-reviewed open-access journal of population studies and demography, it is time for us to re ect on its past development and to envision its future. 2 what does comparative population studies stand for today? having talked about the past, let us turn to the present. as a journal of population studies and demography, cpos has a broad scope spanning from ageing and mortality to family and fertility and to topics related to health and wellbeing, migration and mobility, as well as population structure and its changes over time. this broad scope becomes clear when looking at our long list of special issues that have already been published. they are evidence of the diverse topics covered. since 2015 cpos has usually been publishing one special issue per volume. as most visible in its name cpos has a focus on comparative research. but what is comparative research and what does it mean in terms of submissions to the journal? clearly, there are differing opinions on what is comparative research. the focus we chose to adopt should not be seen as a plea for restricting our attention to comparative research, but rather as the scope that we decided upon for the journal. first of all, the focus on comparative research does not mean that we only accept such papers. we also welcome submissions without a comparative focus, as long as they address a research question with high relevance for population studies. nevertheless, we have a special interest in publishing comparative studies and comparative research methods. we believe the opportunity for comparative studies in the sense of cross-regional comparisons has never been greater, since harmonized data for comparisons become increasingly available (ipums, gateway to global aging data, dhs, ggs, share, etc.). yet at the same time comparisons can mean a lot: comparisons across time, across countries, across the life course, across social and demographic groups – just to name a few. we aim to promote all of these kinds of comparisons and explicitly want to encourage authors to strengthen the comparative features of their work in their submission to cpos. the interdisciplinary nature of the journal is a curse and a blessing at the same time. a curse because the genuine pro le of cpos is less clear. but also a blessing because the topics covered attract scholars from different disciplines from all over the world. moreover, this interdisciplinary focus re ects the interdisciplinarity of the  eld of population research in itself. a key feature of cpos is fair reviewing for all authors irrespective of their background. what does that mean? cpos has an inclusive approach meaning we are open to all researchers regardless of their career level and previous experience. the decisive criterion for a successful submission is the paper’s contribution to our knowledge about population. living up to this claim means that we, for example, pay special attention to papers from authors of less developed countries for whom it is less easy to publish in established journals, as well as to early career the past, present and future of cpos • iii scholars. we are dedicated to this policy and, for example, offer authors whose work does not meet the general research standards yet but is considered promising by the editorial team to revise the paper before it is sent to external reviewers. this approach requires time and resources but we believe it is worth the effort because the feedback that authors receive is an important part of a learning process and scienti c career development. cpos is fortunate to have a pool of dedicated reviewers. we cannot overstate the signi cance of the contributions of reviewers to the development that cpos has taken, and we are extremely thankful for their willingness to dedicate their time and effort to the journal. cpos is a marvelous ecosystem of authors, reviewers, publisher and editorial staff (including language and technical editors) supporting the publication process from start to  nish. everyone with the capability to produce an innovative contribution to population science can be part of that ecosystem, at no cost. that is the strength of cpos and our vision of what should make a journal successful. from our point of view, academic publishing nowadays is often focused too much on impact factors and other citation-based metrics, which are without question important but should not be overemphasized. so far, topics covered in cpos mainly focus on europe but we would like to encourage scholars from all over the world to submit their work. at cpos, we have a great interest to learn about population change and population structure and their challenges in other parts of the world and we are dedicated to make them known to a wide audience. this is also one of the reasons why we decided to establish a new category of papers besides traditional research articles: demographic trends around the globe. these are shorter papers presenting new descriptive  ndings. the manuscripts submitted to this category undergo a fast-track double blind peer review process. this leads us to other important features of cpos: platinum open access, turnaround time and costs. cpos has a rolling publication model, meaning papers are published online continuously. we aim for a speedy review and publication process of less than a year from submission of a manuscript to its publication. publications are platinum open-access and free to download without registration. cpos offers professional language editing and professional layout support ensuring high quality standards at our journal. all these services are quite unique in the  eld of population studies and come at no extra costs for the authors, because cpos is funded entirely by the federal institute for population research (bib). we are proud that publishing in cpos is completely free of charge to authors and readers. another feature of cpos is its external editor. since 2018, the editorial team is complemented by an internationally renowned scholar from outside the bib, who serves as editor to ensure scienti c independence, transparency and scienti c quality. the publisher and the bib are extremely grateful to phil rees, johannes huinink and currently frans willekens for their valuable input and dedicated work as editors in recent years. • frans willekens, katrin schiefer, nikola sander, c. katharina spießiv 3 looking into the future of comparative population studies this now leads us to cpos’ future development. as mentioned earlier, one of our goals is to open up the journal to a more international community and to invite authors to submit comparative research. in the coming years, we want to further strengthen the core aim of cpos, which is to advance comparative research in population studies. in doing so, we want to support research focussing on improving comparative methods and/or comparative data sources. we also aim to support papers that develop and re ne comparative frameworks which allow for cross-country or cross-region comparisons. this includes establishing standardized de nitions, indicators, and methodologies. besides promoting comparative population research, our challenge as a journal will be to keep up to date with developments in the academic publishing world, and the topics of replicability and open science. lastly, we consider to develop a platform for debate about innovation in population research. given that innovative research that deviates from the mainstream does not always get the attention it deserves, a platform for discussion contributions could help addressing this gap and foster innovation in the study of population. 4 current challenges at comparative population studies having talked about cpos’ past, present and future, we also need to look at challenges and how we plan to meet them. not being af liated with an association or a publisher means freedom and  exibility but it also comes with disadvantages, for example in terms of visibility. the number of population journals is large and it is important to make a difference and to stand out. advertising the journal at international conferences is one of the actions taken to make cpos known to a wide audience. our publications are advertised on x (twitter) and in newsletters of major population associations and perhaps you can spread the word, too. at cpos, we look forward to continue serving the scienti c community in the  eld of population studies and are enthusiastic about what the future will bring. the past, present and future of cpos • v cpos in a nutshell  our focus: comparative studies and comparative research methods  no geographic focus  two categories of articles:  research articles  shorter descriptive articles on demographic trends around the globe one special issue per volume external editor complementing the editorial team at the federal institute for population research (bib) in wiesbaden, germany how authors and their institutions bene t:  high-quality standards  double blind peer review with at least two external reviewers for each article  extensive feedback to authors as part of the publication process  publications are platinum open-access and free to download without registration  free professional language editing  free professional layout  no article processing charges (apc) or page charges prof. dr. ir. frans willekens. editor of cpos. honorary fellow at netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi). the hague, netherlands. emeritus professor of population studies at the university of groningen, netherlands. e-mail: willekens@nidi.nl url: https://nidi.nl/en/employees/frans-willekens/ dr. katrin schiefer. managing editor of cpos, federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/schiefer/schiefer.html dr. nikola sander. managing publisher of cpos, federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/sander/sander.html prof. dr. c. katharina spieß. director of the federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. professor for population economics at the johannes gutenberg university mainz, germany. e-mail: direktorin@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/spiess/spiess.html published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020: a decomposition analysis using prospective age the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020: a decomposition analysis using prospective age markus dörflinger abstract: population ageing has become a global trend, which unfolds at different speeds across world regions and countries. in asia, there are countries with rapidly ageing populations and those that continue to maintain a younger age structure. one potential driver of this difference is international migration. in this study, i assess the impact of migration on population ageing in asian countries over the period 1990-2020. to do so, i propose a refined decomposition method, applying a prospective view on population ageing that accounts for variation in life expectancy. using data from the united nations world population prospects 2022, changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio in 51 countries are decomposed into the effects of cohort turnover, deaths, changes in life expectancy and net migration. the results reveal that cohort turnover and deaths have had the largest impact on changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio over the last three decades, whereas the impact of international migration and changes in life expectancy was smaller in all countries. however, in countries with either highly negative or highly positive net migration, the effect of migration on the age structure is substantial. as migration largely occurs at younger ages, high immigration has decelerated or even halted the process of population ageing in countries such as bahrain, macao, oman and singapore. the opposite effect is observed in emigration countries such as armenia, georgia and timor-leste. hence, the large differences in the current level of population ageing across asian countries can at least partly be attributed to international migration in the last decades. keywords: population ageing · asia · prospective age · migration · decomposition analysis 1 introduction population ageing, characterized by increasing shares of older individuals in a population, is an inevitable part of the demographic transition (goldstein 2009) and linked to various opportunities and challenges for economies and societies worldwide (united nations department of economic and social affairs (un desa) comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 50 (2025): 1-40 (date of release: 27.03.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-02 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-02en2 • markus dörflinger2 2023). however, the timing, speed and extent of population ageing vary across countries. this is attributable to different fertility and mortality trajectories as well as to migration. a large body of research exists on the impact of these factors on the age structure using stationary or stable population models (e.g. alho 2008; coale 1957; espenshade et al. 1982), counterfactual population projections (e.g. blanchet 1989; coale 1986; coleman 2008; espenshade 1994; fihel et al. 2023; lee/zhou 2017; lesthaeghe et al. 1988; lutz/scherbov 2007; mcdonald/kippen 2001; murphy 2021), decomposition approaches (e.g. caselli/vallin 1990; de beer et al. 2011; fernandes et al. 2023; horiuchi 1991; kashnitsky et al. 2017; murphy 2017; preston et al. 1989; preston/vierboom 2021), cointegration analysis (santis/salinari 2023) or the variable-r method (canudas-romo et al. 2021). although the results of these studies may vary in detail depending on methodologies, two main conclusions can be drawn. first, while fertility decline is the main driver of population ageing, mortality improvements play a substantial role at later phases of the demographic transition. second, migration can have a rejuvenating or an ageing effect on a population, depending on the age structure of the migrants and of the resident population. in addition to the direct impact at the time of migration, migrants’ fertility indirectly affects the age structure in the long term (sobotka 2008). as shown for europe, different patterns of population ageing across countries and regions can be attributed partly to migration (de beer et al. 2011; ghio et al. 2022; kashnitsky et al. 2017). similar conclusions about the role of migration in ageing countries are drawn from studies on replacement migration, indicating that realistic levels of immigration cannot offset population ageing completely but can to some extent slow down the process (e.g. bijak et al. 2008; billari/dalla-zuanna 2011; craveiro et al. 2019; huguet 2003; un desa 2000). while many empirical studies on the drivers of population ageing focus on european and north american countries, asia presents a particularly intriguing world region for a comparative analysis of the impact of migration on age-structure changes. first, the level and speed of population ageing vary substantially across asian countries (balachandran et al. 2020; gietel-basten et al. 2016). aside from the prominent example of japan, which has one of the oldest populations in the world, population ageing is rapidly advancing in several other countries (e.g. south korea), while other countries continue to maintain a relatively young age structure. life expectancy has also developed very differently, with some countries (e.g. hong kong) having some of the highest life expectancies worldwide (un desa 2022b).1 second, asian countries demonstrate quite diverse migration patterns, ranging from high immigration (e.g. united arab emirates) to high emigration (e.g. georgia) (ibid.). moreover, migration patterns and policies in asia have been subject to profound changes over time (ali/cochrane 2024; de haas et al. 2018; oishi 2021). in this context, understanding the impact of migration on population ageing is crucial to comprehending asia’s heterogeneous demographic landscape. 1 when referring to the statistical units provided by the un simply as “countries”, no opinion on the legal status of these countries, territories or areas, its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries is expressed. the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 3 within the large body of research on the drivers of age-structure changes, age is predominantly measured as chronological age, i.e. the number of years a person has lived.2 chronological indicators of population ageing, such as the old-age dependency or the total support ratio, are based on a fixed threshold to define who is considered old, mostly at age 60 or 65. however, as noted by scherbov and sanderson (2020), chronological age is only one dimension of ageing and many characteristics of individuals are ignored when using these conventional measures. several new approaches have been elaborated recently to account for additional characteristics beyond chronological age, using risk of death (alvarez/vaupel 2023; zuo et al. 2018), health care needs (spijker 2023), distribution of ages within a population (d’albis/collard 2013), physical health (demuru/egidi 2016; muszyńska/ rau 2012; sanderson/scherbov 2010), cognitive functioning (skirbekk et al. 2012) and active life expectancy (manton et al. 2006). prospective age, likely the most common alternative measure of population ageing, links a person’s age to the average remaining life expectancy (sanderson/scherbov 2005). the central idea of this approach is that a person’s characteristics, such as physical and cognitive health, depend more on the expected remaining years of life (prospective age) than on the number of years lived (chronological age). hence, prospective measures may better capture many of the economic and social implications of population ageing. for instance, medical expenditures are concentrated in the final years of life (sanderson/ scherbov 2007). prospective age becomes particularly relevant as (healthy) life expectancy tends to increase over time in most countries (global burden of disease collaborative network 2020; rau et al. 2008; vaupel et al. 2021). thus, a 65-year-old today is on average healthier and lives longer than in 1950. in fact, global remaining life expectancy at age 65 has increased from 11.3 years in 1950 to 17.5 years in 2019 (scherbov et al. 2022). considering these life expectancy increases and health improvements, prospective measures indicate a slower speed of population ageing than chronological measures (sanderson/scherbov 2008; un desa 2019). life expectancy varies not only over time but also across countries and regions. for instance, the characteristics of an average person at a given chronological age in a low-mortality country (e.g. japan) are barely comparable to those of an average person at the same chronological age in afghanistan, where mortality is much higher and (remaining) life expectancy much lower. these differences become explicitly relevant when defining who is considered “dependent” in a population. the widely used fixed old-age threshold of 65 years, which marks an historically and contemporarily common retirement age in many countries, is based on the assumption that the retired population is entirely dependent on the tax contributions of those who work (gietel-basten et al. 2015). in many asian countries, however, the coverage of the public pension systems is low (organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) 2022), and informal employment rates are high (international labour organization (ilo) 2024). in this context, prospective measures 2 an exception is the study on replacement migration by craveiro et al. (2019), which uses prospective age. • markus dörflinger4 appear to be more suitable for a comprehensive understanding of population ageing in asia. however, this new perspective is rarely incorporated into the analysis of the drivers of population ageing. in this paper, i present an approach to incorporate the prospective age concept into a decomposition of age-structure changes. the study aims to assess the drivers of population ageing in asian countries over the period 1990-2020, with a particular focus on the role of migration.3 2 data and methods 2.1 data this study uses a) annual population and deaths counts by single age and b) life expectancy by single age (both sexes) for the definition of prospective age. these data are drawn from the united nations’ world population prospects (wpp) 2022 estimates (un desa 2022b). the un wpp 2022 estimates are based on population and household censuses, vital and population registration systems, surveys and other sources (e.g. unhcr data on refugees) (un desa 2022a). following the un definition of geographic regions, 51 asian countries are included in the analysis: 5 from central asia, 8 from eastern asia, 11 from south-eastern asia, 9 from southern asia and 18 from western asia. 2.2 indicators of population ageing the old-age dependency ratio of the (dependent) old-age population relative to the working-age population is a common measure of the potential burden of population ageing. this ratio is used as the key indicator in this study.4 conventionally, individuals are considered to enter old-age at 65, while the working-age population includes the population of age 15 to 64. therefore, the (chronological) old-age dependency ratio is defined as follows: in contrast to the chronological approach, which uses a constant old-age threshold at age 65, the prospective old-age threshold (poat) is determined by the average 3 in this study, when referring to migration, international migration is implied unless otherwise specified. 4 other studies on population ageing use the total support ratio or potential support ratio, which is the reciprocal of the old-age dependency ratio. however, the use of the term “support ratio” is sometimes ambiguous (kashnitsky et al. 2017), so i use the old-age dependency ratio in this study. (chronological) old-age dependency ratio (oadr) = old-age population working-age population = ∑ pop.age=100+ age=65 ∑ pop.age<65 age=15 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 5 remaining life expectancy. the most common definition of the prospective old-age threshold is the age when the remaining life expectancy equals 15 years (sanderson/ scherbov 2013). since life expectancy varies over time and across populations, this threshold is dynamic. however, sanderson and scherbov (2020) have shown that death rates, as an indicator of health, are approximately constant at this threshold across populations over time and space. the prospective old-age thresholds by country for the years 1990 and 2020 are reported in appendix table a1. the oldage population is defined for each country and year as the population at age=poat and older, while the working-age population includes the population aged 15 and over but younger than the prospective old-age threshold. the prospective old-age dependency ratio (poadr) is then the ratio between the two age groups according to the prospective definition: 2.3 decomposition analysis of changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio to assess the drivers of age-structure changes in asian countries, i conduct a decomposition analysis of changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio over the period 1990-2020. the end of the period is set at the beginning of year 2020 to avoid any effects of excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic starting in 2020 (world health organization (who) 2023). life expectancy for 2020 is obtained from the 2019 life table. similar to decomposition analyses based on chronological age (de beer et al. 2011; ghio et al. 2022; kashnitsky et al. 2017), cohort turnover, deaths and migration effects are taken into account. first, the cohort turnover effect depends on the number of individuals entering working-age and the number of individuals leaving working-age and entering old-age. thus, the cohort turnover effect is an indicator of the age structure, which in turn is the long-term result of fertility, mortality and migration. second, the deaths effect is defined by the number of deaths in working-age and old-age, respectively. third, the migration effect is based on the number of net migrants of working-age and in old-age, respectively. when using prospective age, the definition of the relevant age groups shifts with changing life expectancy. hence, i extend the decomposition method by adding an effect which accounts for the additional cohort turnover due to changes in the prospective old-age threshold. in case of life expectancy improvements, the prospective old-age threshold – the age at which the average remaining life expectancy equals 15 years – increases. in such instances, the effect of changes in life expectancy (le) is determined by the additional number of individuals that “remain” in the working-age population and do not enter old-age due to the increase in the prospective old-age threshold. when life expectancy decreases, as observed at least temporarily in some countries, the effect is defined by the additional number of individuals that leave working-age and enter old-age due to the reduction in the prospective old-age dependency ratio (poadr) = prosp. old-age population prosp. working-age population = ∑ pop.age=100+ age=poat ∑ pop.age<poat age=15 • markus dörflinger6 prospective old-age threshold. it should be noted that changes in life expectancy imply changes in mortality rates, which, of course, in turn impact the effect of deaths. in this paper, however, the effect of changes in life expectancy refers only to the effect of changes in the average remaining life expectancy and thus changes in the prospective old-age threshold. equation 1 describes the changes in the prospective old-age population (poa; numerator of the poadr) from the beginning of year t to the beginning of year t+1 considering the prospective old-age thresholds in the two consecutive years (poat(t) and poat(t+1)). the changes in the poa are attributed to the four components described above: where ctpoa(t) is the cohort turnover in old-age, dpoa(t) is the number of deaths in old-age, mpoa(t) is the net migration in old-age and ctlechange(t) is the additional cohort turnover into old-age due to changes in life expectancy. similarly, equation 2) describes the changes in the prospective working-age population (pwa; denominator of the poadr) from the beginning of year t to the beginning of year t+1: where ctpwa(t) is the cohort turnover in working-age minus the cohort turnover in old-age, dpwa(t) is the number of deaths in working-age, mpwa(t) is the net migration in working-age and ctlechange(t) is the additional cohort turnover in old-age due to changes in life expectancy. i assume that all migration takes place at the end of the year, which is a reasonable assumption if data are available by single year (un desa 2022a). accordingly, migrants do not contribute to either cohort turnover or deaths occurring in the year of migration. cohort turnover due to changes in life expectancy at the end of year ctlechange(t) is positive if the prospective old-age threshold increases and negative if it decreases. if it remains stable, the effect size equals 0. the following example illustrates how changes in the prospective old-age threshold impact the equations above. we assume an increase of the prospective old-age threshold from 67 years (2000) to 68 years (2001). hence, ctlechange(2000) comprises all individuals aged 67 at the end of year 2000 – let us assume 100 individuals – since they would have entered old-age at the beginning of year 2001 if the prospective old-age threshold 1) 2) 1) ∆poa(t, t+1) = poa(t+1) − poa(t) = 2) ∑ pop.(t+1)age=100+ age=poat(t+1) − ∑ pop.(t) =age=100+ age=poat(t) 3) ctpoa(t) − dpoa(t) + mpoa(t) + ctlechange(t) 2) ∆pwa(t, t+1) = pwa(t+1) − pwa(t) = 3) ∑ pop.(t+1)age<poat(t+1) age=15 − ∑ pop.(t) =age<poat(t) age=15 ctpwa(t) − dpwa(t) + mpwa(t) − ctlechange(t) the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 7 remained stable at age 67 but did not because it increased to age 68. these 100 individuals “remain” in the working-age population also in year 2001. therefore, with ctlechange(2000) equal to -100, the working-age population in year 2001 is 100 individuals larger and the old-age population is 100 individuals smaller than it would have been without any change in life expectancy. reliable data on international migration are lacking in many countries (willekens et al. 2016). this is particularly the case when data on migration by age are needed, as is the case in this analysis. therefore, i use the residual method to estimate net migration (siegel/hamilton 1952). annual net migration by age group at the end of the year t is derived from equations (1) and (2) above:5 using these definitions of the annual changes in the size of the old-age and working-age populations, changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio are decomposed using a two-step decomposition of a rate (kashnitsky et al. 2017). first, changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio are decomposed into changes in the size of the numerator (old-age population) and the denominator (workingage population). second, each of these changes is further decomposed into the effects of the four demographic components introduced above (cohort turnover, deaths, migration, changes in life expectancy). in contrast to kashnitsky et al. (2017), who focused only on changes in the working-age population, i decompose both the numerator and denominator effects, considering the effects of the demographic components on changes in the working-age population and changes in the old-age population. in the first step, i make use of the formula for the decomposition of rates as a function of two factors (das gupta 1991): the first of the two terms on the right-hand side of equation 5) represents the α-effect, and the second represents the β-effect. the α-effect describes how changes in the size of the prospective old-age population (numerator of the ratio) affect the poadr. the β-effect describes how changes in the size of the prospective working5 the annual sum of the derived net migration by age group corresponds to the total annual net migration provided by the un. 3) mpoa(t) = poa(t+1) − poa(t) − ctpoa(t) + dpoa(t) − ctlechange(t) 3) 4) mpwa(t) = pwa(t+1) − pwa(t) − ctpwa(t) + dpwa(t) + ctlechange(t) 4) 5) poadr(t+1) − poadr(t) = α β 6) [1 2 ∗ (poa(t+1) − poa(t)) ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t))] + [1 2 ∗ (poa(t+1) + poa(t)) ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) − 1 pwa(t))] 5) • markus dörflinger8 age population (denominator of the ratio) affect the poadr (das gupta 1993). the average α-effect across all 51 countries was -5.3 percentage points with a standard deviation of 3.0 percentage points. the average β-effect was +5.4 percentage points with a standard deviation of 2.3 percentage points. in the second step of the decomposition, i further decompose the two effects from equation 5) into the effects of cohort turnover, deaths, migration and changes in life expectancy. first, i replace poa(t+1) − poa(t) in the formula for the α-effect with equation 1) (see appendix equation 1 for the step-by-step substitution): the four right-hand terms of equation 6) denote the effects of cohort turnover in old-age, deaths in old-age, net migration in old-age and changes in life expectancy on the numerator of the prospective old-age dependency ratio. a similar transformation is done with the formula for the β-effect, which is rearranged to replace pwa(t+1) − pwa(t) with equation 2) (see appendix equation 2 for the stepby-step substitution). the four right-hand terms of equation 7) denote the effects of cohort turnover as the difference between the number of individuals entering and leaving the working-age population, deaths in the working-age population, net migration in the working-age population and changes in life expectancy on the denominator of the prospective old-age dependency ratio: finally, the effects by component (ct, d, m, ctlechange) are obtained by summing the αand β-effects by component from equations 6) and 7). the decomposition analysis is performed for the entire period from 1990 to 2020 and separately by decade to illustrate changes over time. 6)6) α [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ ctpoa(t)] + [− 1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ dpoa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ mpoa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ ctlechange(t)] 7) β [− 1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ ctpwa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ dpwa(t)] + [− 1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ mpwa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ ctlechange(t)] 7) the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 9 3 results 3.1 population ageing 1990-2020 the level of population ageing varies substantially across asian countries. for instance, the countries of the gulf cooperation council (gcc) – bahrain, kuwait, oman, qatar, saudi arabia and the united arab emirates – have an extremely young age structure, while japan has one of the oldest populations in the world (sanderson/scherbov 2008). however, in countries with high life expectancy, such as japan, population ageing seems less dramatic when using prospective measures. table 1 shows the prospective old-age threshold (poat), the prospective old-age dependency ratio (poadr) and the chronological old-age dependency ratio (oadr) using age 65 as the old-age threshold. the prospective old-age threshold – the age at which the average remaining life expectancy equals 15 years – ranges from age 62.1 in afghanistan to age 74.7 in hong kong. in 16 of the 51 countries, the prospective oldage threshold is lower than the classical old-age threshold at age 65. consequently, the poadr is higher than the oadr. however, in 35 countries, the prospective oldage threshold is higher than 65, leading to a lower prospective old-age dependency ratio. while the differences in the level of population ageing between countries are less pronounced when applying the prospective old-age threshold, they remain remarkable. on one hand, the gcc countries exhibit the world’s lowest prospective old-age dependency ratios, ranging from 0.7 percent (qatar) to 2.9 percent (kuwait). however, low or relatively low prospective old-age dependency ratios are not found solely in western asia, but also in other subregions, e.g. in macao (5.5 percent), the maldives (4.2 percent), singapore (5.6 percent) and afghanistan (6.1 percent). on the other hand, japan and georgia reach high values of 23.0 percent and 22.2 percent respectively, ranking them among the world’s most aged countries (un desa 2022b, own calculations). following these two exceptional countries, other countries with higher prospective old-age dependency ratios are spread over all subregions, such as armenia (15.6 percent), kazakhstan (14.1 percent), myanmar (12.2 percent), north korea (13.4 percent) and sri lanka (13.2 percent). the age structure of asian countries has also evolved quite differently in recent decades. in 27 of the 51 countries, population ageing – measured by an increase in the prospective old-age dependency ratio – has advanced between 1990 and 2020. japan stands out with an increase of more than eleven percentage points (fig. 1), followed by georgia (+7.0 percentage points), north korea (+6.1 percentage points), armenia (+6.1 percentage points) and sri lanka (+5.0 percentage points). globally, only about 20 countries – mainly in europe and the caribbean – have experienced comparable increases in the prospective old-age dependency ratio during this period (un desa 2022b, own calculations), underlining the notable speed of population ageing in some asian countries. in 24 of 51 asian countries however, the prospective old-age dependency ratio decreased from 1990 to 2020, e.g. in afghanistan (-4.1 percentage points), iraq (-4.4 percentage points) and mongolia (-4.9 percentage points). similar declines are seen in many other countries, particularly in subsaharan africa. a decreasing prospective old-age dependency ratio is not surprising • markus dörflinger10 tab. 1: prospective old-age threshold, prospective old-age dependency ratio (poadr) and chronological old-age dependency ratio (oadr) (2020) prospective old-age poadr oadr threshold central asia kazakhstan 63.8 14.1 12.3 kyrgyzstan 63.9 7.9 6.9 tajikistan 63.8 6.2 5.3 turkmenistan 63.3 8.9 7.2 uzbekistan 62.9 9.4 7.3 eastern asia china 68.6 11.7 17.7 hong kong 74.7 10.2 26.5 japan 74.1 23.0 50.3 macao 73.9 5.5 15.3 mongolia 65.2 6.4 6.6 north korea 66.9 13.4 15.7 south korea 72.9 10.2 21.3 taiwan 71.7 10.1 20.5 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 66.2 6.3 7.4 cambodia 65.4 7.5 7.9 indonesia 63.8 11.2 9.9 lao 63.0 8.2 6.6 malaysia 66.8 8.1 9.9 myanmar 62.5 12.2 9.3 philippines 64.3 8.7 8.1 singapore 73.3 5.6 16.9 thailand 73.8 7.7 19.2 timor-leste 63.0 10.8 9.3 viet nam 68.0 8.5 12.0 southern asia afghanistan 62.1 6.1 4.5 bangladesh 65.8 7.6 8.3 bhutan 64.0 9.4 8.5 india 65.9 8.9 9.8 iran 67.4 7.8 10.1 maldives 68.8 4.2 5.8 nepal 63.1 11.4 9.5 pakistan 63.1 8.7 7.1 sri lanka 67.0 13.2 16.2 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 11 at an earlier stage of population ageing, even though the chronological old-age dependency ratio might already be increasing at the same time (sanderson/scherbov 2008). an examination of the changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio by decade (fig. 1) indicates that in most of the asian countries with an overall decline, the negative trend has either diminished over time, e.g. in india, or even shifted towards an increase in the 2010s, e.g. in iran. a distinct development emerges in kazakhstan and uzbekistan. in these central asian countries, the prospective oldage dependency ratio rose sharply in the 1990s and declined in the 2000s before increasing again in the last decade. also in armenia and georgia (western asia), remarkable increases in the prospective old-age dependency ratio have been observed during the 1990s. as the following decomposition analysis reveals, this development is partly due to migration. tab. 1: continuation prospective old-age poadr oadr threshold western asia armenia 66.4 15.6 18.2 azerbaijan 65.1 9.1 9.2 bahrain 69.1 2.3 4.0 cyprus 70.6 12.1 20.0 georgia 65.1 22.2 22.3 iraq 64.2 6.3 5.9 israel 72.4 9.7 19.6 jordan 66.7 4.7 5.6 kuwait 68.7 2.9 5.0 lebanon 68.9 10.2 14.6 oman 67.7 2.8 3.7 palestine 66.2 5.3 6.0 qatar 69.7 0.7 1.4 saudi arabia 68.0 2.3 3.2 syria 65.0 7.5 7.5 turkey 68.2 8.6 11.9 united arab emirates 69.2 1.3 1.9 yemen 62.8 5.9 4.8 notes: prospective old-age threshold: age at which the average remaining life expectancy equals 15 years. source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger12 3.2 drivers of population ageing 1990-2020 turning towards the drivers of the age-structure changes illustrated above,figure 2 depicts the total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio (x-axis) and the change due to cohort turnover, deaths, changes in life expectancy and migration (y-axis) over the period 1990-2020. detailed values by country are reported in appendix table a2. in general, cohort turnover and deaths had a larger impact on the prospective old-age dependency ratio than changes in life expectancy and migration. the effect of cohort turnover, driven mainly by growing cohorts entering old-age, is positive in all countries. the largest effects are found in georgia (+38.7 percentage points) and japan (+44.5 percentage points), indicating an age structure increasingly dominated by older cohorts. conversely, the effect of cohort turnover is smaller in countries with younger age structures and larger cohorts entering working-age. this is the case in countries with still relatively high fertility rates, e.g. palestine (+11.9 percentage points) and yemen (+11.6 percentage points), as well as in the ggc countries where the age structure is skewed towards working-age due to labour migration. the smallest effect is observed in the united arab emirates (+3.3 percentage points). while cohort turnover accelerated population ageing, deaths consistently yielded a decelerating impact on population ageing across all countries. this is because mortality happens predominantly at older ages and less at working-age, consequently reducing the prospective old-age dependency ratio. as with the cohort turnover effect, this effect is most pronounced in georgia (-33.7 percentage points) and japan (-26.2 percentage points) and least pronounced in the gcc countries, such as the united arab emirates (-2.2 percentage points). these differences arise because the fig. 1: change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio (1990-2020) (in percentage points) 1990−2020 −5.0 −2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 1990−2000 −2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 2000−2010 −2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 2010−2020 −2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 map source: minnesota population center 2020. source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 13 number of deaths by age group – and consequently the effect of deaths on the prospective old-age dependency ratio – is not only determined by the age-specific death rates, but also depends heavily on the age structure (see liang et al. 2023). this can be illustrated by applying the age structure of the united arab emirates in 1990, which was the youngest in that year, to all countries. the standardized number of deaths in all countries – except the united arab emirates of course – is lower than the actual number of deaths observed in 1990. in qatar and kuwait, only about 5 percent of deaths in 1990 can be attributed to the slightly older age structure of these countries compared with the united arab emirates 1990 standard (results not shown here). in japan, however, this percentage reaches 81 percent, indicating the large impact of japan’s old age structure on the number of deaths. these examples underline that the effect of deaths on the prospective old-age dependency ratio reflects to a large part the country-specific age distribution. the effect of changes in life expectancy on the prospective old-age dependency ratio is determined by changes in the prospective old-age threshold. with the exception of uzbekistan, where the prospective old-age threshold in 2020 was at about the same level as in 1990, it increased in all asian countries between 1990 and 2020 (appendix table a1). consequently, this led to a reduction in the age groups defined as the old-age population and resulted in a negative effect of changes in life expectancy on the prospective old-age dependency ratio (fig. 2). the effect is most pronounced in countries with large improvements in life expectancy, particularly fig. 2: total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio and change by component (1990-2020) (in percentage points) cohort turnover −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 −5 0 5 10 total co ho rt tu rn ov er deaths −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 −5 0 5 10 total d ea th s changes in life expectancy −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 −5 0 5 10 total ch an ge s i n lif e ex pe ct an cy migration −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 −5 0 5 10 total m ig ra tio n central asia eastern asia south−eastern asia southern asia western asia source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger14 in eastern asia (e.g. hong kong and south korea). in south korea, for instance, the prospective old-age threshold increased over the three decades from age 65.3 to age 72.9, which in turn decreased the prospective old-age dependency ratio by seven percentage points (appendix table a2). conversely, the effect is smaller in countries with minor differences in the prospective old-age threshold, e.g. in the central asian countries turkmenistan and uzbekistan. in qatar and other gcc countries in western asia, the impact also remains modest despite noticeable improvements in life expectancy. this is again due to their particularly young population. since the effect of changes in life expectancy also depends on the number of individuals potentially affected by a shift in the old-age threshold, the small cohort sizes at these ages reduce the effect of increasing old-age thresholds on the prospective old-age dependency ratio. turning towards the impact of migration, both a decelerating and an accelerating effect on population ageing can be found in asian countries (fig. 2). a decelerating effect is due to positive net migration at working-age and/or negative net migration at old-age, while an accelerating effect is based on the opposite patterns. despite the migration effect being smaller than the effect of deaths and cohort turnover in most countries, migration had a notable impact on population ageing in some countries over the last three decades. figure 3 shows how migration has contributed to changes in the prospective old-age dependency ratio from 1990 to 2020. on one hand, large negative effects are observed in high-immigration countries, e.g. in bahrain (-4.5 percentage points), macao (-3.6 percentage points), oman (-4.5 percentage points) and singapore (-4.4 percentage points). in these countries, the prospective old-age dependency ratio would have increased without migration, illustrating that migration has not only slowed down but halted the process of population ageing. this migration effect is driven largely by high net migration at working-age (results not shown here), which aligns with the higher intensity of migration among younger adults. on the other hand, the largest positive effects of migration on the prospective old-age dependency ratio are found in armenia (+4.8 percentage points), georgia (+3.7 percentage points) and timor-leste (+7.2 percentage points). all three countries are characterized by high negative net migration rates (appendix table a6). while in timor-leste this migration effect was largely offset by other factors, particularly substantial improvements in life expectancy (appendix table a2), migration remained a pivotal driver of rapid population ageing in armenia and georgia. as the above examples illustrate, differences in population ageing, at least between some high-immigration and high-emigration countries, are substantially driven by migration. in most asian countries, however, the impact of migration on population ageing was relatively small. for instance, in japan, which experienced the largest increase in the prospective old-age dependency ratio between 1990 and 2020, the effect of slightly positive net migration rates on the rapidly advancing ageing process was marginal. but even in countries with remarkable emigration flows, such as bangladesh, india and the philippines (abel et al. 2019), the migration effect is small. this may be attributed to temporary migration, which is a common pattern in asia (hugo 2012). this analysis captures the effect of net migration over the entire the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 15 period under examination. for instance, a person leaving the country at workingage contributes to a positive effect on the old-age dependency ratio in the year of emigration. if this person returns before reaching old-age, the effect in the year of return is negative. the opposite effects are observed in the destination country. in general, if immigration and emigration occur in different years but within the same age group, the effects of immigration and emigration balance out over time. since this analysis relies on population changes between two consecutive years, it does not capture short-term, seasonal mobility within the same year. however, temporary migrants from south-eastern asia typically stay in destination countries for several years (bossavie et al. 2021; valenta et al. 2020). nevertheless, they may remain unregistered and migration flows may not be fully captured in the un population data. in general, data on net migration by age group, derived as a residual from population and vital statistics, depend on the quality of the underlying data. in this analysis, negative migration effects on the prospective old-age dependency ratio emerge in china and india, suggesting positive net migration at working-age and/or negative net migration at old-age. however, this seems unlikely given the slightly negative net migration rates in both countries, which are mainly driven by high emigration in young adult ages (shen et al. 2024). rather, these effects may be related to inaccuracies in the underlying data on population by age and age-specific deaths. for instance, death registration rates in both countries are lower than in most developed countries (karlinsky 2024). an under-reporting of deaths in oldfig. 3: change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio due to migration (1990-2020) (in percentage points) −5.0 −2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 map source: minnesota population center 2020. source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger16 age may lead to lower net migration in this age group, also impacting the overall migration effect on population ageing. the impact of cohort turnover, deaths, changes in life expectancy and migration on the prospective old-age dependency ratio varies over time. the results of the decomposition by decade are reported in the appendix (table a3-5).6 in all countries, cohort turnover had a consistently positive effect and deaths a consistently negative effect on the poadr. however, the impact of cohort turnover and deaths has increased in most countries towards the last decade, indicating an increasing shift towards older age structures. this is particularly true for rapidly ageing countries such as japan, while in countries with a younger age structure, such as the united arab emirates, the impact of these components remains stable or even decreases slightly over the decades. while the effect of changes in life expectancy over the entire period 1990-2020 is negative in all countries, reflecting improvements in life expectancy, the analysis by decade reveals that this trend is not uniformly linear in all countries. in some countries, temporary decreases in life expectancy are observed, leading to positive effects of changes in life expectancy on the poadr. the reversal of the effect of changes in life expectancy in many western and central asian countries in the 1990s is particularly striking. the post-soviet countries were strongly affected by the political, economic and social upheavals of the transformation phase. in most former soviet republics, life expectancy declined in the 1990s before gradually recovering (un desa 2022b; duthé et al. 2017; grigoriev et al. 2014). this accelerated – at least temporarily – population ageing in the 1990s. in kazakhstan, about 51 percent (+2.4 of +4.6 percentage points) of the increase in the prospective old-age dependency ratio between 1990 and 2000 can be attributed to declining life expectancy. similar effects can be observed in north korea (+2.6 percentage points), where life expectancy fell sharply in the 1990s due to famine and political mismanagement (spoorenberg/schwekendiek 2012). more recently, the syrian civil war after 2011 led to a temporary decline in life expectancy. however, life expectancy and the prospective old-age threshold recovered rapidly, so that the effect of these changes on the poadr in the 2010s remains small (+0.1 percentage points). there is also considerable variation over time in the impact of migration on age-structure changes. international migration flows within, from and to asia are driven by various cultural, demographic, economic, educational, historical as well as conflictand network-related factors (abel et al. 2019). in addition, migration policies and legal frameworks play an important role in shaping migration (de haas et al. 2019). because all of these factors are subject to change, net migration rates vary over time in many countries (appendix table a6). figure 4 shows net migration rates from 1990 to 2019 for three selected countries: armenia, syria and 6 the sum of each of the four effects over the decades does not necessarily equal the corresponding effect calculated for the entire period 1990-2020, since the effect size depends on the changes in the size of the population by age group over the period under consideration, which in most cases follow a non-linear pattern. the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 17 the united arab emirates. net migration rates in the united arab emirates reached a pronounced peak around 2005 to 2009, followed by a significant decline associated with the lower demand for labour migrants following the global economic crisis (de bel-air 2018). in the 2010s, net migration in the united arab emirates even turned slightly negative. as a result, the overall migration effect from 1990 to 2020 is lower in the united arab emirates than in other gcc countries. migration and its impact on population ageing can also be temporarily impacted by armed conflict and displacement. in syria, net migration rates peaked in 2006 and 2007, related to large refugee movements from neighbouring iraq (lischer 2008), and fell to negative rates with the onset of the syrian civil war in 2011, which led to large refugee emigration (mcauliffe/triandafyllidou 2021). these events had a noticeable impact on the age structure. about 56 percent (+1.1 of +2.0 percentage points) of the increase in the prospective old-age dependency ratio in syria during the 2010s can be attributed to migration. similar dynamics can be observed in other asian countries affected by armed conflict, such as afghanistan, iraq and timor-leste. the downfall of the soviet union also had a remarkable impact on net migration in the former soviet republics. in armenia, for instance, emigration rose remarkably after gaining independence in 1991, contributing to the large increase in the prospective old-age dependency ratio in the 1990s. the migration effect accounted for about 35 percent (+2.8 of +6.3 percentage points) of the increase between 1990 and 2000. these examples illustrate the impact of temporary increases or declines in net migration on changes in the age structure of asian countries. fig. 4: net migration rate for selected countries (1990-2019) (per 1,000 population) armenia syria united arab emirates −100 0 100 200 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 year n et m ig ra tio n ra te (p er 1 ,0 00 p op ul at io n) source: un desa 2022b. • markus dörflinger18 4 conclusion and discussion population ageing in asia has evolved differently over recent decades, with some countries ageing remarkably and others maintaining a very young age structure. in this paper, i assess the impact of international migration on age-structure changes in 51 asian countries from 1990 to 2020. to take into account varying health and life expectancy, i propose a new approach to incorporate a dynamic prospective oldage threshold into a decomposition analysis of changes in the old-age dependency ratio. the results reveal a smaller effect of migration on population ageing compared to the effects of cohort turnover and deaths. however, extraordinary migration effects are observed in some countries with either very negative or very positive net migration. as migration largely occurs at younger ages, high immigration had a decelerating effect on population ageing, and high emigration an accelerating effect. hence, the large differences in the speed and level of population ageing across asian countries can be partly attributed to migration. the findings reflect both the evolution and variation of migration policies as well as geopolitical and economic changes that have influenced migration patterns since 1990. economic growth and policies promoting temporary labour migration in the countries of the gulf cooperation council (aarthi/sahu 2021) led to high immigration flows at working-age, which slowed down or even halted the process of population ageing. other economically strong countries, such as south korea, remained relatively closed to immigration due to predominantly restrictive migration policies (de haas et al. 2018), so that almost no such decelerating effect of migration on population ageing was observed. yet, countries like japan and south korea are increasingly making efforts to open up to more immigration, also driven by the demographic challenges posed by an ageing population (de haas et al. 2018; oishi 2021). finally, the dissolution of the soviet union accelerated emigration from former soviet republics in the 1990s, which contributed to fasterageing populations. this effect is most pronounced in armenia and georgia, despite policy efforts to constrain emigration (makaryan/chobanyan 2014; reslow 2017). however, both countries have recently experienced higher immigration flows, at least temporarily halting the longstanding trend of negative net migration. in georgia, this is attributed to a rise in migration from russia following the invasion in ukraine in 2022 (national statistics office of georgia 2024). in armenia, it is driven by refugees from azerbaijan (nagorno-karabakh) following the azerbaijani offensive in artsakh in 2023 (statistical committee republic of armenia 2024). this study introduces an approach to incorporate the prospective age concept into decomposition analyses of age-structure changes. prospective age takes into account differences in life expectancy – as a proxy for additional characteristics beyond chronological age – thus providing a more comprehensive picture of population ageing. although the impact of changes in life expectancy on the old-age dependency ratio remains modest compared to the effects of cohort turnover and deaths, the application of prospective age in the decomposition of age-structure changes increases comparability across different contexts. further studies using the approach presented in this paper may yield valuable insights into the drivers behind the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 19 age-structure changes in other world regions and countries applying the prospective view of population ageing. prospective age is calculable for all countries, making it a very useful measure for such comparative analyses. it should be noted, however, that country-level analyses do not consider health differences across population subgroups. for example, it is well known that education is strongly correlated with higher (healthy) life expectancy (weber/loichinger 2022). moreover, the actual expected lifetime and prospective old-age threshold may be underestimated based on period life expectancy, making population ageing appear slightly more pronounced compared to when using cohort life expectancy (kjærgaard/canudasromo 2017). the analyses in this study are based on estimates from the un world population prospects 2022, which provide a unique source of population data for all asian countries. however, the quality of the un data depends on the national data available and are subject to uncertainties, particularly in countries without longstanding high-quality vital registration systems (liu/raftery 2020). in asia, death registration is incomplete in most countries (karlinsky 2024). in addition, temporary and undocumented migration flows may not be captured in official statistics (raymer et al. 2022), which might also impact population counts. in general, data on international migration, particularly by age, are scarce (willekens et al. 2016). in this study, net migration by age group is derived from population and death counts (siegel/hamilton 1952). since this method does not require data on migrant stocks or flows, it can be applied even in cases of poor data availability (un desa 2022a). however, the derived net migration is still subject to uncertainty, as it depends on the quality of vital statistics and population counts. therefore, the results should be interpreted with caution, acknowledging the uncertainties in the underlying data. another limitation arises from the decomposition method used in this study, as it captures only the direct effect of net migration on the age structure, without accounting for potential indirect or long-term demographic effects. this is because migrants contribute to the migration effect on population ageing only in the year of migration. in subsequent years, they become part of the total population of the country of residence. as a result, they may potentially contribute to cohort turnover and deaths (and again to the migration effect). in addition to these effects, migrants can also contribute to age-structure changes through fertility in the long term (goldstein 2009). given that the fertility of temporary labour migrants, who make up a large share of migrants in asia, is usually lower in the destination countries, the long-term effect of immigration through births can be assumed to be lower in many asian countries than in the european context (see fihel et al. 2018; murphy 2017). yet, in some asian countries, such as armenia and georgia, the emigration of younger adults has had a remarkable impact on the number of births (weinar 2014), affecting the age structure in the long run. while population ageing seems less dramatic through the lens of prospective age, it remains a key issue for development in asia. however, as this study underlines, there is substantial demographic heterogeneity across countries. in addition, the level and speed of population ageing also varies remarkably within asian countries (gietel-basten et al. 2016). these differences may be related to internal and • markus dörflinger20 international migration. in many asian countries, rural-urban migration is a notable phenomenon (bell et al. 2020). moreover, international migration patterns also vary between urban and rural areas (hugo 2016). future studies could further explore the impact of both international and internal migration on regional age-structure changes, enhancing our understanding of the relationship between migration and population ageing in asian countries. acknowledgements part of the research was developed in the young scientists summer program at the international institute for applied systems analysis, laxenburg (austria) with financial support from the german national member organization. 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appendix step-by-step substitution of poadr(t+1) − poadr(t) = α-effect + β-effect (cf. equation 5) in section data and methods) into the α-effects and β-effects by component: 1) α [1 2 * (poa(t+1) – poa(t)) * ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t))] = [1 2 * (ctpoa(t) − dpoa(t) + mpoa(t) + ctlechange(t)) * ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t))] = [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ ctpoa(t)] + [− 1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ dpoa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ mpoa(t)] + [1 2 ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) + 1 pwa(t)) ∗ ctlechange(t)] 1) 2)2) β [12 ∗ (poa(t+1) + poa(t)) ∗ ( 1 pwa(t+1) − 1 pwa(t))] = [12 ∗ (poa(t + 1) + poa(t)) ∗ (pwa(t)−pwa(t+1) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t))] = [12 ∗ ( poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t)) ∗ (pwa(t) − pwa(t+1))] = [− 1 2 ∗ ( poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t)) ∗ (pwa(t+1) − pwa(t))] = [− 1 2 ∗ ( poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t)) ∗ (ctpwa(t) − dpwa(t) + mpwa(t) − ctlechange(t))] = [− 1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ ctpwa(t)] + [12 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ dpwa(t)] + [− 1 2 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ mpwa(t)] + [12 ∗ poa(t+1)+poa(t) pwa(t+1)∗pwa(t) ∗ ctlechange(t)] • markus dörflinger28 tab. a1: prospective old-age threshold and prospective old-age dependency ratio (1990 and 2020) prospective old-age threshold prospective old-age dependency ratio 1990 2020 1990 2020 central asia kazakhstan 62.8 63.8 11.1 14.1 kyrgyzstan 62.3 63.9 11.3 7.9 tajikistan 62.1 63.8 9.2 6.2 turkmenistan 62.3 63.3 8.9 8.9 uzbekistan 62.9 62.9 8.3 9.4 eastern asia china 63.5 68.6 9.3 11.7 hong kong 68.2 74.7 8.8 10.2 japan 69.3 74.1 11.7 23.0 macao 67.9 73.9 7.5 5.5 mongolia 59.3 65.2 11.3 6.4 north korea 63.6 66.9 7.3 13.4 south korea 65.3 72.9 6.8 10.2 taiwan 65.8 71.7 8.1 10.1 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 64.6 66.2 4.4 6.3 cambodia 61.4 65.4 8.1 7.5 indonesia 61.5 63.8 9.7 11.2 lao 60.1 63.0 10.5 8.2 malaysia 63.6 66.8 7.1 8.1 myanmar 60.3 62.5 11.9 12.2 philippines 62.4 64.3 7.6 8.7 singapore 65.5 73.3 7.3 5.6 thailand 68.8 73.8 4.4 7.7 timor-leste 57.3 63.0 9.0 10.8 viet nam 65.9 68.0 9.2 8.5 southern asia afghanistan 57.5 62.1 10.2 6.1 bangladesh 60.1 65.8 10.4 7.6 bhutan 60.2 64.0 9.4 9.4 india 60.9 65.9 10.5 8.9 iran 61.9 67.4 8.8 7.8 maldives 61.4 68.8 8.2 4.2 nepal 60.1 63.1 10.7 11.4 pakistan 62.2 63.1 8.7 8.7 sri lanka 66.8 67.0 8.2 13.2 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 29 tab. a1: continuation prospective old-age threshold prospective old-age dependency ratio 1990 2020 1990 2020 western asia armenia 63.7 66.4 9.5 15.6 azerbaijan 61.9 65.1 10.2 9.1 bahrain 64.6 69.1 3.5 2.3 cyprus 64.5 70.6 15.3 12.1 georgia 63.8 65.1 15.2 22.2 iraq 60.5 64.2 10.7 6.3 israel 68.0 72.4 12.4 9.7 jordan 63.5 66.7 5.4 4.7 kuwait 65.8 68.7 2.2 2.9 lebanon 63.3 68.9 8.4 10.2 oman 63.4 67.7 5.5 2.8 palestine 63.0 66.2 5.2 5.3 qatar 65.2 69.7 1.5 0.7 saudi arabia 63.0 68.0 5.6 2.3 syria 63.4 65.0 6.9 7.5 turkey 64.7 68.2 8.1 8.6 united arab emirates 64.6 69.2 1.6 1.3 yemen 61.4 62.8 8.8 5.9 notes: prospective old-age threshold in years; prospective old-age dependency ratio in %. source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger30 tab. a2: total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio and change by component (1990-2020) (in percentage points) total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes central asia kazakhstan 3.0 27.3 -22.1 -1.3 -0.9 kyrgyzstan -3.4 17.2 -17.8 -1.5 -1.4 tajikistan -3.0 13.5 -14.7 -1.4 -0.4 turkmenistan 0.0 17.5 -15.7 -0.8 -1.0 uzbekistan 1.1 18.9 -17.0 -0.1 -0.7 eastern asia china 2.5 25.0 -16.0 -5.1 -1.5 hong kong 1.4 25.8 -16.1 -6.4 -1.9 japan 11.3 44.5 -26.2 -8.0 1.0 macao -1.9 15.5 -10.2 -3.6 -3.6 mongolia -4.9 15.7 -15.6 -5.0 0.0 north korea 6.1 31.8 -19.9 -5.1 -0.8 south korea 3.4 23.3 -11.8 -7.0 -1.2 taiwan 1.9 23.4 -14.3 -5.5 -1.7 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 1.9 12.4 -8.0 -0.6 -1.9 cambodia -0.5 16.0 -11.9 -3.0 -1.6 indonesia 1.5 23.4 -18.2 -2.5 -1.2 lao -2.3 15.6 -18.1 -2.6 2.8 malaysia 1.0 19.2 -13.2 -2.9 -2.1 myanmar 0.3 22.5 -19.2 -2.5 -0.6 philippines 1.1 17.1 -14.9 -1.6 0.4 singapore -1.7 18.1 -10.2 -5.2 -4.4 thailand 3.3 18.7 -9.1 -4.2 -2.2 timor-leste 1.8 17.3 -17.3 -5.3 7.2 viet nam -0.7 16.8 -15.0 -1.5 -1.0 southern asia afghanistan -4.1 16.2 -15.3 -4.0 -1.1 bangladesh -2.8 16.3 -14.3 -4.8 0.0 bhutan 0.1 17.7 -16.7 -3.4 2.4 india -1.6 20.5 -15.8 -5.0 -1.3 iran -1.0 19.1 -13.3 -5.0 -1.8 maldives -4.0 14.9 -11.4 -5.2 -2.4 nepal 0.7 18.7 -17.3 -3.0 2.4 pakistan 0.0 16.7 -15.6 -1.0 -0.1 sri lanka 5.0 25.8 -18.7 -1.5 -0.5 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 31 tab. a2: continuation total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes western asia armenia 6.1 29.0 -24.8 -2.9 4.8 azerbaijan -1.1 22.4 -17.9 -3.3 -2.2 bahrain -1.2 10.2 -5.1 -1.6 -4.5 cyprus -3.1 29.4 -22.8 -7.2 -2.5 georgia 7.0 38.7 -33.7 -1.7 3.7 iraq -4.4 14.0 -14.1 -3.0 -1.3 israel -2.7 23.4 -20.8 -4.6 -0.6 jordan -0.7 15.3 -10.3 -2.5 -3.2 kuwait 0.7 6.8 -2.6 -0.6 -3.0 lebanon 1.8 17.5 -13.7 -4.3 2.3 oman -2.7 10.4 -6.9 -1.8 -4.5 palestine 0.1 11.9 -9.6 -2.2 0.1 qatar -0.7 6.8 -2.3 -1.0 -4.3 saudi arabia -3.3 9.3 -7.2 -2.0 -3.4 syria 0.6 13.7 -13.3 -1.1 1.3 turkey 0.5 19.2 -14.4 -3.3 -1.0 united arab emirates -0.3 3.3 -2.2 -0.6 -0.9 yemen -2.9 11.6 -13.2 -0.9 -0.4 source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger32 tab. a3: total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio and change by component (1990-2000) (in percentage points) total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes central asia kazakhstan 4.6 9.5 -7.4 2.4 0.2 kyrgyzstan 0.5 6.9 -6.5 0.7 -0.6 tajikistan 0.1 5.8 -6.1 0.7 -0.3 turkmenistan 0.2 5.7 -5.2 -0.1 -0.2 uzbekistan 2.2 6.6 -5.3 0.8 0.0 eastern asia china 0.2 7.2 -4.8 -1.9 -0.3 hong kong 0.1 8.5 -4.8 -2.5 -1.1 japan 1.8 11.8 -6.4 -3.4 -0.2 macao -1.0 6.0 -3.5 -1.9 -1.6 mongolia -2.6 4.7 -6.3 -0.8 -0.2 north korea 6.6 9.5 -4.7 2.6 -0.8 south korea 0.3 6.1 -3.5 -1.9 -0.4 taiwan 0.9 7.5 -4.1 -2.1 -0.4 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam -0.3 3.0 -2.4 -0.6 -0.4 cambodia -1.2 4.6 -3.9 -0.8 -1.1 indonesia 0.7 7.0 -5.2 -0.6 -0.4 lao -0.8 4.5 -5.3 -0.6 0.5 malaysia -0.1 4.9 -3.8 -0.6 -0.7 myanmar -0.8 6.2 -6.2 -0.8 0.0 philippines -0.1 4.5 -4.3 -0.7 0.4 singapore -1.7 6.0 -3.7 -2.5 -1.5 thailand 1.2 4.5 -2.3 0.0 -1.0 timor-leste -0.4 6.7 -4.9 -3.6 1.4 viet nam -1.1 4.9 -4.6 -1.0 -0.3 southern asia afghanistan -2.2 5.1 -4.4 -2.3 -0.6 bangladesh -3.8 4.8 -4.9 -3.6 -0.1 bhutan 0.5 6.3 -4.4 -1.2 -0.2 india -1.3 6.1 -5.3 -1.7 -0.4 iran -1.1 4.8 -4.3 -1.3 -0.4 maldives -0.6 5.3 -4.3 -2.2 0.5 nepal -1.3 5.5 -5.2 -1.5 -0.2 pakistan -0.1 5.0 -4.7 0.0 -0.3 sri lanka 3.7 5.5 -4.8 2.8 0.2 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 33 tab. a3: continuation total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes western asia armenia 6.3 10.9 -6.9 0.1 2.2 azerbaijan 1.9 9.6 -6.4 -0.3 -1.0 bahrain -0.3 3.1 -1.7 -0.7 -1.0 cyprus -2.5 8.5 -8.7 -2.5 0.1 georgia 5.7 15.0 -10.3 0.4 0.5 iraq -3.2 3.5 -4.9 -1.4 -0.4 israel -0.4 7.6 -7.1 -1.2 0.2 jordan -0.3 3.9 -2.8 -0.5 -0.8 kuwait -0.5 1.7 -0.8 -0.2 -1.1 lebanon -0.4 5.8 -4.3 -1.7 -0.2 oman -1.5 3.1 -2.6 -0.9 -1.1 palestine -0.2 3.2 -2.6 -0.5 -0.3 qatar 0.0 2.0 -0.7 -0.1 -1.1 saudi arabia -1.1 3.1 -2.8 -0.7 -0.6 syria 0.0 3.9 -3.7 0.0 -0.1 turkey 0.1 5.3 -4.5 -0.4 -0.3 united arab emirates -0.5 1.3 -0.7 -0.2 -0.9 yemen -1.3 3.7 -4.4 -0.6 -0.1 source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger34 tab. a4: total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio and change by component (2000-2010) (in percentage points) total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes central asia kazakhstan -3.2 6.9 -8.6 -1.2 -0.3 kyrgyzstan -3.9 2.7 -6.2 -0.4 0.0 tajikistan -2.6 1.8 -4.6 -0.4 0.5 turkmenistan -2.0 3.2 -4.9 -0.4 0.0 uzbekistan -2.1 3.3 -5.3 -0.3 0.2 eastern asia china 0.2 6.7 -4.9 -1.5 -0.1 hong kong 1.4 8.5 -4.9 -1.9 -0.4 japan 5.0 14.7 -7.9 -2.1 0.3 macao -1.4 4.1 -3.0 -1.0 -1.6 mongolia -1.4 3.9 -4.7 -1.0 0.5 north korea 1.4 12.6 -7.5 -3.5 -0.2 south korea 1.5 8.2 -3.7 -2.8 -0.2 taiwan -0.4 7.0 -4.5 -2.1 -0.7 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 0.3 3.2 -2.2 -0.2 -0.6 cambodia -1.1 3.6 -3.2 -1.3 -0.1 indonesia 0.4 6.9 -5.6 -0.8 -0.2 lao -1.2 4.0 -5.8 -0.9 1.5 malaysia 0.1 5.2 -3.8 -1.0 -0.3 myanmar -0.6 6.2 -6.1 -0.6 -0.1 philippines 0.2 4.6 -4.5 -0.3 0.4 singapore -0.4 5.1 -2.8 -1.4 -1.3 thailand 0.8 6.2 -2.8 -2.0 -0.7 timor-leste 3.2 5.8 -5.2 -1.5 4.1 viet nam -0.5 4.2 -4.4 -0.3 0.1 southern asia afghanistan -0.9 4.1 -3.8 -0.9 -0.2 bangladesh 1.4 4.7 -4.1 0.5 0.3 bhutan -0.5 5.1 -5.6 -1.3 1.3 india -0.2 5.6 -4.9 -0.7 -0.2 iran -1.1 4.5 -3.8 -1.3 -0.4 maldives -2.3 4.1 -3.3 -2.5 -0.6 nepal 0.9 5.8 -5.0 -0.7 0.8 pakistan -0.3 4.8 -4.6 -0.4 -0.2 sri lanka -0.6 7.8 -6.8 -1.2 -0.3 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 35 tab. a4: continuation total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes western asia armenia -0.9 6.4 -8.9 -1.3 2.9 azerbaijan -3.1 3.8 -5.8 -0.9 -0.2 bahrain -1.2 2.4 -1.3 -0.6 -1.7 cyprus -2.1 8.3 -6.7 -2.7 -1.0 georgia -0.3 10.2 -12.1 -1.2 2.8 iraq -0.5 3.9 -4.1 0.1 -0.3 israel -1.7 6.8 -6.4 -2.2 0.1 jordan 0.4 3.9 -2.7 -0.6 -0.2 kuwait 0.0 1.9 -0.9 -0.2 -0.9 lebanon -1.1 4.7 -3.7 -2.0 -0.1 oman -0.8 2.5 -2.0 -0.5 -0.8 palestine 0.1 3.1 -2.6 -0.6 0.2 qatar -0.8 1.5 -0.5 -0.3 -1.4 saudi arabia -1.7 2.3 -2.1 -0.6 -1.4 syria -1.4 3.3 -3.2 -1.0 -0.5 turkey 0.1 5.8 -4.5 -0.9 -0.2 united arab emirates -0.9 0.6 -0.4 -0.1 -1.1 yemen -1.2 3.1 -3.6 -0.6 -0.1 source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger36 tab. a5: total change in the prospective old-age dependency ratio and change by component (2010-2020) (in percentage points) total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes central asia kazakhstan 1.5 11.5 -7.1 -2.2 -0.6 kyrgyzstan 0.0 6.6 -4.7 -1.3 -0.6 tajikistan -0.4 4.9 -3.8 -1.1 -0.3 turkmenistan 1.9 7.0 -4.3 -0.2 -0.6 uzbekistan 1.1 7.1 -5.0 -0.4 -0.6 eastern asia china 2.0 9.9 -5.5 -1.5 -0.9 hong kong 0.0 7.5 -5.4 -1.7 -0.4 japan 4.6 17.0 -11.2 -2.1 0.9 macao 0.5 4.2 -2.8 -0.7 -0.3 mongolia -0.9 5.5 -3.8 -2.4 -0.2 north korea -1.9 8.9 -7.1 -3.9 0.1 south korea 1.5 8.6 -4.3 -2.1 -0.6 taiwan 1.4 8.0 -5.0 -1.1 -0.5 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 2.0 5.0 -2.6 0.1 -0.6 cambodia 1.7 5.7 -3.2 -0.5 -0.3 indonesia 0.4 7.7 -5.9 -0.9 -0.5 lao -0.3 5.3 -5.3 -0.8 0.5 malaysia 1.1 6.5 -3.9 -0.8 -0.7 myanmar 1.6 9.0 -6.0 -1.0 -0.4 philippines 0.9 6.3 -4.6 -0.4 -0.3 singapore 0.4 4.9 -2.6 -1.0 -0.9 thailand 1.3 6.6 -3.2 -1.7 -0.4 timor-leste -1.0 4.8 -6.7 -0.8 1.7 viet nam 0.8 6.1 -4.4 -0.2 -0.6 southern asia afghanistan -1.1 3.2 -3.4 -0.5 -0.4 bangladesh -0.4 5.7 -4.2 -1.6 -0.3 bhutan 0.1 5.8 -5.9 -0.8 1.0 india -0.1 7.0 -4.5 -2.1 -0.6 iran 1.2 6.8 -3.5 -1.5 -0.6 maldives -1.1 2.9 -2.5 -0.5 -1.1 nepal 1.1 6.5 -5.8 -0.7 1.0 pakistan 0.4 5.0 -4.5 -0.4 0.2 sri lanka 1.9 10.9 -6.2 -2.5 -0.2 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 37 tab. a5: continuation total cohort deaths life expectancy migration turnover changes western asia armenia 0.7 11.2 -9.2 -1.9 0.5 azerbaijan 0.2 7.8 -5.1 -1.6 -0.9 bahrain 0.4 2.3 -1.1 -0.2 -0.7 cyprus 1.5 9.8 -5.9 -1.5 -0.9 georgia 1.7 14.9 -13.1 -1.3 1.1 iraq -0.7 4.5 -3.6 -1.3 -0.3 israel -0.5 6.7 -5.6 -0.8 -0.8 jordan -0.8 3.9 -2.6 -0.7 -1.4 kuwait 1.1 3.1 -0.9 -0.2 -0.8 lebanon 3.3 6.2 -4.3 -0.4 1.9 oman -0.4 3.0 -1.6 -0.3 -1.5 palestine 0.2 3.4 -2.6 -0.7 0.0 qatar 0.0 1.1 -0.3 -0.2 -0.5 saudi arabia -0.5 2.1 -1.4 -0.4 -0.8 syria 2.0 4.5 -3.8 0.1 1.1 turkey 0.3 6.6 -4.4 -1.5 -0.4 united arab emirates 1.1 0.5 -0.3 -0.1 1.0 yemen -0.4 2.9 -3.3 0.2 -0.1 source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. • markus dörflinger38 tab. a6: mean annual net migration rates 1990-2019, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019 (per 1,000 population) 1990-2019 1990-1999 2000-2009 2010-2019 central asia kazakhstan -6.3 -19.1 0.0 -0.1 kyrgyzstan -5.9 -6.7 -5.4 -6.2 tajikistan -5.9 -12.0 -3.8 -2.7 turkmenistan -1.5 -0.7 -2.0 -1.7 uzbekistan -1.5 -2.1 -1.5 -1.0 eastern asia china -0.3 -0.5 -0.4 -0.1 hong kong 4.3 8.1 3.4 2.0 japan 0.9 0.3 1.0 1.2 macao 15.0 11.5 21.1 12.7 mongolia -2.2 -3.9 -3.8 0.7 north korea -0.1 -0.1 -0.1 -0.1 south korea -0.2 -3.7 -0.6 3.9 taiwan -0.2 -2.0 0.1 1.3 south-eastern asia brunei darussalam 2.3 4.7 3.3 -0.9 cambodia 0.6 6.1 -1.0 -3.0 indonesia -0.2 0.0 -0.4 -0.2 lao -3.8 -3.4 -5.3 -3.0 malaysia 5.5 5.1 8.7 3.1 myanmar -2.2 -1.6 -3.4 -1.7 philippines -1.5 -1.6 -2.3 -0.9 singapore 15.5 19.8 17.5 10.8 thailand 1.3 1.7 1.6 0.8 timor-leste -5.9 -8.7 -6.5 -2.5 viet nam -0.5 0.2 -1.6 0.0 southern asia afghanistan 8.4 25.2 -0.5 1.0 bangladesh -3.1 -2.8 -5.1 -1.7 bhutan -4.3 -17.1 4.4 -0.9 india -0.2 0.0 -0.4 -0.2 iran 1.5 0.5 2.7 1.8 maldives 8.9 -1.9 7.8 22.6 nepal -5.7 -2.0 -8.5 -8.8 pakistan -3.2 -0.6 -1.8 -7.5 sri lanka -3.0 -3.7 -1.2 -3.8 the impact of migration on population ageing in asia 1990-2020 • 39 tab. a6: continuation 1990-2019 1990-1999 2000-2009 2010-2019 western asia armenia -13.3 -19.9 -11.3 -9.6 azerbaijan -0.6 -3.8 1.6 0.2 bahrain 17.9 11.6 39.2 9.9 cyprus 8.9 10.2 12.5 4.9 georgia -14.0 -26.3 -12.8 -4.6 iraq 0.4 0.4 -3.9 5.2 israel 4.3 9.2 2.4 1.5 jordan 13.1 8.7 6.3 27.8 kuwait 12.2 -8.3 21.5 33.3 lebanon 0.1 -0.2 0.7 6.5 oman 9.6 2.1 -3.8 41.3 palestine -4.0 1.0 -7.5 -5.8 qatar 47.6 18.7 90.4 48.6 saudi arabia 5.1 4.0 9.8 4.6 syria -5.7 -1.0 5.1 -28.6 turkey 0.1 -1.1 -0.6 2.5 united arab emirates 40.3 37.1 89.3 -1.6 yemen -2.3 -2.7 -3.2 -1.1 source: un desa 2022b, own calculations. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants in western germany partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants in western germany* müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören** abstract: adaptation to host country behaviours encompasses both individual and social change, bringing about rising diversity issues in the host society and societal shifts in the country of origin. this study aims to detect whether turkish immigrants and their descendants converge towards or diverge from the partnership practices of the native-born population in western germany. specifi cally, transitions from (1) singlehood to the fi rst partnership, (2) singlehood to the fi rst marriage, (3) singlehood to the fi rst cohabitation, (4) cohabitation to marriage and (5) marriage to divorce are investigated. data from the panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam) survey for the period of 2008-2018 are used, applying kaplanmeier survival estimations and cox proportional hazard models. this is the fi rst study that includes natives, immigrants and their descendants simultaneously in an analysis of extensive partnership transitions covering practices of cohabitation, marriage and divorce and to investigate the proportionality assumption in cox models. we formulate four research hypotheses based on the hypotheses of socialisation, adaptation and the cultural maintenance and segmented assimilation theory. supporting our fi rst hypothesis, our fi ndings indicate a difference in partnership patterns between both fi rstand second-generation immigrants and natives, except for the fi nding that second-generation immigrants resemble the native pattern in their transition to the fi rst union (including both cohabitation and marriage). immigrants and their descendants tend to marry directly and have lower divorce hazard ratios than their native counterparts, while consensual unions are uncommon among turkish immigrants. as suggested by our second hypothesis, the extent of the divergence varies across partnership transitions. finally, our results provide support for our third hypothesis rather than the fourth in that partnership transition of turkish immigrants’ descendants more closely resembles that of fi rstgeneration immigrants compared to natives. comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 321-348 (date of release: 01.08.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-13 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-13en0 * this article has a data appendix with supplementary material url: http://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/447/360. ** this paper is based on müşerref erdoğan’s ma thesis titled “the union formation and dissolution among turkish immigrants and their descendants in germany” at the hacettepe university institute of population studies (huips), department of demography, in 2020. • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören322 keywords: union formation · divorce · turkish immigrants · germany · event history analysis 1 introduction labour migrants to western germany have lived alongside ethnic germans and their descendants since the second world war. while migration infl uxes change the social fabric of cities and neighbourhoods and create diversity, immigrants themselves produce new demographic behaviours and establish a distinct minority culture. turkish immigrants, together with their descendants, are the most populous immigrant group in germany (german federal statistical offi ce 2020), and their population has been on the rise since a 1961 labour agreement between the turkish government and west germany. first-generation turkish immigrants and their descendants may fi nd themselves between two different backgrounds: that of the host country and that of their parents’ country of origin. this difference is also apparent in partnership dynamics, since partnership transitions differ strongly between türkiye and germany. in general, adaptation to host country behaviours illustrates both individual and social change. with turkish migrants affecting ongoing change in the social fabric in germany, it is vital to study who adapts to what, to what extent and how (if possible). additionally, as the descendants of turkish migrants enter young adulthood, it is important and timely to analyse the intergenerational transmission of their partnership preferences. with this background, this paper focuses on partnership formation and dissolution transitions of fi rstand secondgeneration turkish immigrants compared to natives in western germany using event history or survival analysis methods, namely the cox proportional hazard model and kaplan-meier method. this study uses data from the panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics (pairfam) survey covering the period of 2008-2018, which is a relatively extensive panel in germany. specifi cally, transitions from (1) singlehood to the fi rst partnership, (2) singlehood to fi rst marriage, (3) singlehood to fi rst cohabitation, (4) cohabitation to marriage and (5) marriage to divorce in western germany, plus their associations with migration status within the categories of turkish immigrants, their descendants and western german natives1 are analysed. our theoretical approach and research hypotheses are based on various complementary hypotheses that were originally focused on childbearing among migrants (and their descendants) to describe how migration intervenes with fertility dynamics. in forming our hypotheses, we differentiate between fi rstand secondgeneration immigrants, as found in rahnu, puur, sakkeus and klesment (2015). 1 natives are defi ned as individuals whose mothers and fathers were both born in western germany. partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 323 recently, many studies have reported on family dynamics among immigrants, thanks to available country-specifi c and cross-national data. these studies tend to focus on immigrants from different origins living in europe and the us (andersson et al. 2015; de valk 2008; de valk/liefbroer 2007; gonzález-ferrer et al. 2014; hamel et al. 2012; hannemann/kulu 2015; hannemann et al. 2020; huschek et al. 2010; kuhnt/krapf 2020; milewski/hamel 2010; pailhé 2014; rahnu et al. 2015; soehl/ yahirun 2011). early papers focus on the timing of marriage and use descriptive tools to compare immigrant generations to natives. later research emphasises differences in intensity of unions, type of union and, to a certain extent, dissolution practices, using multivariate event history analysis techniques. this paper aims to contribute to the existing knowledge in the following ways. first, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the fi rst study to include both fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants in the western german context in a single analysis with such an extensive partnership transition framework. the analysis covers not only partnership formation and type of union, but also marriage after cohabitation and divorce practices of immigrants. second, the data used, pairfam, is a specifi c data series used to study intimate relationships and family dynamics. both marriage histories and cohabitation practices of respondents are recorded separately in the data set. since pairfam is panel data, it provides data on the family practices of single young generations each year and gives up-to-date information on their status. this feature signifi cantly enriches this paper, since most of the studies use cross-sectional data that do not provide information on partnerships for the younger second generation. finally, although studies in this fi eld use the cox model or piece-wise constant model, this paper is the fi rst to discuss the proportionality assumption. in this way, the accuracy and reliability of the standard model are improved. 2 the context: partnership dynamics in germany and türkiye individuals in germany and türkiye have signifi cantly different demographic characteristics regarding partnership dynamics and family values. such variances directly affect the difference of partnership practices between turkish immigrants and the native population in germany. this section presents a present-day comparison of selected nuptiality and fertility indicators for germany and türkiye, in addition to discussing recent historical trends. in germany, marriage was historically an almost universal institution and earlier marriages were typical in the “golden age of marriage” in the 1950s and 1960s. during the 1970s, the former frg2 experienced a pronounced retreat from conjugal family formation compared to the rest of europe. the connection between sex, marriage and reproduction was relaxed by individualisation trends, advancement in women’s economic positions, the contraception revolution and changes in gender 2 refers to the territory of the former federal republic (frg before reunifi cation). • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören324 roles. according to the german federal statistical offi ce, the crude marriage rate, which was 11.0 per thousand in 1950, reached its lowest level in 2007 at 4.5. by 2018, the proportion of never-married between 25-45 was 49.1 percent among women and men (german federal statistical offi ce 2020). while marriage has lost its prevalence among all age groups, it has also been postponed. in 1960, the mean age for women at fi rst marriage was slightly under 24. after 1980, it increased, reaching 31 in 2018 (german federal statistical offi ce 2020). this trend is partly because marriage is no longer the primary means of achieving women’s fi nancial stability so that their bargaining power over partner choice and future career lead them to delay marriage formation (köppen 2011). the same effect reveals itself in the stability of conjugal families. the improvement of women’s economic positions reduces both the benefi ts of marriage and the cost of its dissolution for women (kalmijn 2007). in 1965, the total divorce rate was around 12 percent, peaking in 2004 with 42 of every 100 marriages on average resulting in divorce. according to the german federal statistical offi ce, in 2019, on average, 32 of every 100 couples divorce after 14.8 years of marriage (german federal statistical offi ce 2020). these substantial changes in living arrangements have been accompanied by the spread of extramarital cohabitation. although it is not an entirely new form of partnership in germany, the prevalence of consensual unions, especially at early ages, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, is apparent. according to the family and fertility survey (ffs), 16 percent of women aged 20-24 and 9 percent of women aged 25-29 were cohabiting in 1996 in western germany (kiernan 2002). a relatively recent report on the household structure of europe found that 83 percent of german women in their twenties were cohabiting in 2007. this proportion decreased to 48.3 percent among women in a union between 30 to 40 years old (eurostat 2010), so cohabitation has a well-established place in partnership formation trends. regarding fertility, the total fertility rate in germany settled to nearly steady levels of about 1.5 after the boosting effect of the post-second world war period had faded (german federal statistical offi ce 2020). typically, a low fertility rate is also accompanied by women giving birth at older ages. in 2020, for both married and unmarried women, the average fi rst birth occurred at age 30.2 (german federal statistical offi ce 2020). table 1 presents selected indicators of partnership behaviours and family values for germany and türkiye, revealing signifi cant differences between the two countries. in türkiye, immigrant marriages occur on average 7 years earlier than that of their german counterparts. the crude marriage rate is slightly higher in türkiye and the crude divorce rate is lower than that of germany. according to birth registers, the total fertility rate in both countries in 2020 was below replacement level, at 1.53 in germany and 1.76 in türkiye. offi cial data on cohabitation in türkiye is lacking, although the world values survey sample suggests a proportion of 0.2 percent. for germany, this share is much higher at 4.7 percent. values or attitudes related to partnership also differ between türkiye and germany. unmarried or cohabiting couples are not wanted as neighbours in türkiye by over half the population, whereas such a situation does not exist in germany. sex before marriage is seen partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 325 as totally unjustifi able by 61 percent of the population in türkiye, while this level is only 5.7 percent in germany. moreover, divorce is seen as never justifi able at a proportion fi ve times higher in türkiye compared to germany. although the indicators for turkish immigrants in germany are not recent, it is important to mention some of this data. cohabitation has been a relatively rare phenomenon among immigrants in both older and younger cohorts. only 22 percent of turkish immigrants between the ages of 18-29 cohabited at least once in their lives in 2005, while the share of pre-, postor non-marital cohabitation dropped to 14 percent among males and females aged 45-59 (naderi 2008). even among descendants, the conjugal family is the dominant choice; the ties (the integration of the european second generation) sample showed that 4 out of 5 children of turkish immigrants in germany preferred to marry rather than cohabit (hamel et al. 2012). this scenario is at least partly consistent with the current situation in türkiye, where marriage is the most widespread family formation. unlike german endogamous conjugal families, turkish immigrant marriages are found to be more stable (milewski/kulu 2014). related to this, as many studies suggest, both fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants marry either another immigrant from türkiye or a turkish descendant and that appears to be a factor tab. 1: selected partnership and fertility indicators, germany and türkiye germany türkiye partnership indicators (year: 2020) mean age at fi rst marriage (male) 34.9 27.9 mean age at fi rst marriage (female) 32.4 25.1 crude marriage rate (per thousand) 4.50 5.84 proportion cohabiting 15.1% divorce indicator (year: 2020) crude divorce rate (per thousand) 1.70 1.62 fertility indicator (year: 2020) total fertility rate 1.53 1.76 selected world values survey indicators (germany 2017, türkiye 2018) living together as married (cohabiting) 4.7% 0.2% partnership values (germany 2017, türkiye 2018) would not like to have unmarried couples living together as neighbours 0.7% 55.4% sex before marriage never justifi able 5.7% 61.0% divorce never justifi able 5.5% 29.1% source: mean age at fi rst marriage, germany: german federal statistical offi ce 2022a; mean age at fi rst marriage, türkiye: turkstat 2021a; crude marriage rate, germany: german federal statistical offi ce 2022b; crude marriage rate, türkiye: turkstat 2021a; proportion cohabiting, germany: german federal statistical offi ce 2022c; crude divorce rate, germany: german federal statistical offi ce 2022b; crude divorce rate, türkiye: turkstat 2021a; total fertility rate, germany: german federal statistical offi ce 2020; total fertility rate, türkiye: turkstat 2021b; selected world values survey indicators and partnership values: wvs 2022 • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören326 behind more stable relationships (constant et al. 2012; hamel et al. 2012; naderi 2015). 3 previous research and hypotheses there are various hypotheses used to study immigrant fertility behaviours namely, (childhood) socialisation, adaptation, selection, disruption, interrelation of events and others (milewski 2010; tønnessen/wilson 2020). the fi rst four of these behaviours are the most widely discussed in demography literature. since fertility behaviours and partnership dynamics are highly interrelated, these four hypotheses are also found to be useful tools when interpreting the partnership dynamics of immigrants (hannemann/kulu 2015). additionally, some phenomena related to these hypotheses may extend beyond fi rst-generation immigrants, so the cultural maintenance hypothesis (abbasi-shavazi/mcdonald 2000, 2002) and segmented assimilation theory (portes/zhou 1993) have provided useful frameworks to study family behaviours of the descendants of migrants (as in rahnu et al. 2015). the fi rst hypothesis, socialisation, argues that a person’s life-course choices are a product of the prevalent values and norms of their native region (kulu/milewski 2007). therefore, this hypothesis assumes that union trajectories of immigrants are similar to those still living in the country of origin if the immigrant spent their childhood in the sending country. it also posits that experience and exposure to values and norms in the country of origin shapes the life choices of immigrants in the long run and that those choices do not resemble the choices of natives in the destination country. if differences regarding family norms and dynamics in origin and host countries are signifi cant (as between türkiye and germany), immigrants will persist with the traditional patterns of their origin country. for instance, fi rst-generation turkish immigrants typically reject cohabitation in favour of direct marriage, a highly preferred and traditional pattern of family formation in türkiye (kuhnt/krapf 2020; pailhé 2015). furthermore, the socialisation hypothesis is not restricted to fi rstgeneration immigrants. as mentioned by rahnu et al. (2015), divergence from the patterns of the host society may extend beyond the fi rst generation. this pattern is referred to as “cultural maintenance” by abbasi-shavazi and mcdonald (2000, 2002) and it bears similarities to the sub-culture hypothesis. several studies suggest that turkish descendants in europe have diverging partnership patterns from natives wherein they tend to marry earlier and choose direct marriage, rather than cohabitation (de valk 2008; hamel et al. 2012; hannemann et al. 2020; milewski/ hamel 2010; pailhé 2015). liu and kulu (2021) have recently found that migrants with turkish backgrounds in germany enter marriage and parenthood earlier and in higher proportions than their native counterparts and extra-marital birth is much lower for turkish germans. even in their adolescent years, turkish immigrants still have stronger preferences for marriage than other immigrant groups and natives (de valk/liefbroer 2007). the adaptation hypothesis predicts that immigrant conformation to the demographic, social and economic behaviour of natives increases alongside the partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 327 duration of their residence in the host country (hervitz 1985). this approach argues that the effect of mainstream culture is more dominant than childhood experience. although this is not a sudden transformation, gradually and in medium-term timeframes, immigrants fi nd and defi ne a place within the existing social structure and lifestyle of their adopted culture. descendants of immigrants also adapt to the host society while being exposed to their family’s past values, norms and behaviours. meanwhile, the segmented assimilation theory proposed by portes and zhou (1993) addressed the confl ict between immigrant families and the social and cultural demands of the host society, as cited in rahnu et al. (2015). according to segmented assimilation theory, migrant descendants can preserve their community’s culture and values while being successfully economically integrated (rahnu et al. 2015). hence, second-generation immigrants exist somewhere between the cultural dynamics of two distinct societies. for instance, in the british case, hannemann and kulu (2015) conclude that the second generations of south asians and caribbeans maintain the patterns of their parents while making small deviations towards british native society. in spain, although country-of-origin social patterns seem dominant among immigrants, these preferences are relaxed among second-generation adolescents (gonzález-ferrer et al. 2014). in the us, arias (2001) fi nds that the socio-economic gap between immigrants and natives weakens in each successive cohort, thus suggesting that immigrants mirror the practices prevalent in the us. with each succeeding generation, immigrants living in the us opt for dominant patterns, although the level of convergence differs according to their origin (brown et al. 2008; landale et al. 2010). apart from decreasing socio-economic variances, native-immigrant relationships in early age increase the probability of convergence. huschek, liefbroer and de valk (2010) fi nds that turkish immigrants’ children who have non-coethnic peers will tend to build co-residential unions later than their parents, especially if they have had greater contact with native populations, i.e., if they have a higher proportion of natives in their schools. the adaptation process is also related to the welfare system in the destination country. for instance, in the swedish case, the state welfare system provides the same opportunity structure and fi nancial support in housing for both immigrants and natives; thus, turkish immigrants have more freedom to follow the early union formation practices of swedes or to choose the traditional turkish practice of marrying early. on the other hand, in germany, union formation usually occurs after securing access to a paid job and both natives and turkish secondgeneration delay partnership formation to later ages (hamel et al. 2012). for union separation, the patterns and dynamics would be different as traditional family values could impose barriers to separation. the third hypothesis is selectivity, which suggests that migration itself is a selective phenomenon, meaning immigrants are already a selected group with life preferences that may differ from the norm in their country of origin (hannemann/ kulu 2015). their nuptiality preferences, then, are already proximate to the native population in the destination country. this selectivity may originate at the individual level, in their social, cultural and economic capital. finally, assuming that migration has some psychological, economic and social cost to immigrants, the disruption • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören328 hypothesis envisions that immigrant preferences might be different from those of their country of origin only after they move to their destination (adserà/ferrer 2014). in other words, the structure of the marriage market of the receiving country and the available opportunities may not be compatible with those that immigrants are familiar with, or the lack of coethnic partners may result in unplanned deviation from their initial partnership practice preferences. these immigrants may delay the timing of partnership or accelerate the decision to divorce. however, carlson (1985) suggests that migration has only a temporary effect on the timing of marriages. single immigrants to australia delayed marriage compared to their country-of-origin peers. nevertheless, this effect is weak among successive generations. similarly, andersson, obućina and scott (2015) fi nd high divorce rates among some people of immigrant origins due to the stressful nature of migration and the changed landscape of the marriage market. this disruption can affect union formation in different ways: while turkish, arab, african and yugoslavian immigrants have elevated risk after migration, some countries have low marriage rates after migration. based on this theoretical and empirical background, we formulate four hypotheses (h)3: h1: partnership transitions of fi rstand second-generation turkish migrants differ from natives in western germany (but converge to patterns prevalent in türkiye). this hypothesis has roots in the socialisation and cultural maintenance perspectives. the effect of country of origin (türkiye) is assumed to extend beyond fi rst-generation immigrants. h2: the discrepancy between the natives and turkish migrants in western germany vary across partnership transitions, namely transition to fi rst partnership (including both cohabitation and marriage), transition to fi rst marriage, transition to fi rst cohabitation, transition from cohabitation to marriage and transition from marriage to divorce. specifi cally, the difference between migrants and natives in transition to fi rst partnership is expected to be small, whereas in transition to cohabitation or marriage, it is expected to be large. these different levels of convergence are due to the fact that fi rst partnership transition may end up in no event occurrence (i.e., remaining single) or an event occurrence that involves either cohabitation or marriage. any difference of preference of marriage over cohabitation or vice versa between migrant and native groups would cancel each other out in the analysis of transition to fi rst partnership. we also expect high divergence in the transition from cohabitation to marriage and transition from marriage to divorce since family norms in the two contexts (germany and türkiye) are quite different from each other. h3a: partnership transitions of turkish immigrants’ descendants more closely resemble those of the fi rst generation compared to natives. this proposition has roots in the cultural maintenance hypothesis or segmented assimilation theory. alternatively: 3 these hypotheses are similar to the ones in rahnu et al. (2015) for their study in estonia. partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 329 h3b: partnership transitions of turkish immigrants’ descendants more closely resemble those of natives compared to fi rst generation immigrants. this hypothesis is based on the adaptation hypothesis, since descendants of immigrants are exposed to the host country much longer than their parents. as we’ve seen, a single hypothesis is not enough to understand the position of immigrants and their descendants compared to natives. this paper mainly uses the frameworks of socialisation, adaptation, cultural maintenance and segmented assimilation approaches. considering disruption and selectivity hypotheses are not as relevant for second-generation immigrants, we exclude these two from our formulated hypotheses. moreover, due to a lack of information regarding the behaviours and characteristics of natives in the country of origin (türkiye), we cannot directly test for disruption or selectivity hypotheses for even fi rst-generation immigrants. however, we elaborate on all approaches in our interpretation of the results. 4 data and methodology 4.1 data the analysis in this study is based on the panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics, known as the german family panel (pairfam), release 10.0, which is funded by the german research foundation (dfg) as a long-term project (brüderl et al. 2019a).4 we use the fi rst ten waves of pairfam covering the period of 2008 to 2018. this paper uses anchor data of the respondents themselves consisting of three birth cohorts namely those born between 1991-93, 1981-83 and 1971-73. each birth cohort consists of a nearly equal number of respondents: 4,338 for the youngest, 4,010 for the middle and 4,054 for the oldest cohort (brüderl et al. 2019b). our analytical sample includes only those respondents whose parents were both born in western germany, i.e., natives and those who have a turkish background living there. after removing all other origins from the data, the sample size is 7,560. of this population, 6,950 form the fi rst analysis group in this research, namely natives, which is defi ned as those respondents whose parents were both born in western germany. turkish second-generation individuals, meaning those born in western germany but with at least one parent born in türkiye, correspond to 370 respondents. the remaining 240 anchors are fi rst-generation turkish immigrants born in türkiye with migration experience. among natives, 2 respondents are dropped since their gender information is missing. table 2 shows the percentage distribution of respondents according to migration status and transition types and outcomes. the second generation is the youngest group and the proportion that remain never partnered is high. as expected, this 4 it was initiated in 2008 and coordinated by josef brüderl, sonja drobnič, karsten hank, bernhard nauck, franz j. neyer and sabine walper. • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören330 ta b . 2 : p er ce n t d is tr ib u tio n o f t ra n si tio n ty p es a nd o u tc o m es o f r es p o nd en ts , p ai rf am fi rs t 1 0 w av es (2 00 820 18 ), an al ys is p er io d: 1 98 520 18 fi rs t t ra n si ti o n ty p e m ig ra ti o n st at u s r em ai n ed s in g le s in g le  c o h ab it at io n s in g le  m ar ri ag e to ta l n u m b er n at iv e 39 .7 56 .3 4. 0 10 0. 0 6, 94 8 1s t g en er at io n 15 .8 22 .5 61 .7 10 0. 0 24 0 2n d g en er at io n 58 .1 18 .4 23 .5 10 0. 0 37 0 to ta l 39 .8 53 .3 6. 8 10 0. 0 7, 55 8 fi rs t c o h ab it at io n o u tc o m es m ig ra ti o n st at u s m ar ri ag e s ep ar at io n r em ai n ed c o h ab it in g d ea th o f p ar tn er to ta l n u m b er n at iv e 47 .1 30 .6 22 .2 0. 1 10 0. 0 3, 91 1 1s t g en er at io n 74 .1 16 .7 9. 2 0. 0 10 0. 0 54 2n d g en er at io n 55 .9 30 .9 11 .8 1. 5 10 0. 0 68 to ta l 47 .6 30 .5 21 .9 0. 1 10 0. 0 4, 03 3 fi rs t m ar ri ag e o u tc o m es m ig ra ti o n st at u s r em ai n ed m ar ri ed d iv o rc e d ea th o f a p ar tn er to ta l n u m b er n at iv e 84 .2 15 .3 0. 6 10 0. 0 2, 12 2 1s t g en er at io n 86 .7 12 .8 0. 5 10 0. 0 18 8 2n d g en er at io n 89 .6 10 .4 0. 0 10 0. 0 12 5 to ta l 84 .6 14 .8 0. 5 10 0. 0 2, 43 5 s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 331 proportion is the lowest among fi rst-generation turkish immigrants, since they are older and are more likely to form a union compared to second generation immigrants. cohabitation levels represented in table 2 do not represent the current status of respondents. rather, they present the percentage of respondents whose fi rst transition was from singlehood to cohabitation in the data set. in many cases, cohabitation is a fi rst step for couples towards forming a marriage or it may lead to a dissolution of union through separation. approximately 78 percent of the pairfam sample chose to marry or separate as opposed to maintaining extramarital cohabitation. while 74 percent of cohabiting turkish fi rst-generation immigrants proceed to marriage, this proportion decreases to 47 percent among germandescendant cohabiting unions. this table may also roughly imply that those still in cohabiting unions also tend to proceed with one of the events in the future, since only 881 out of 4,033 respondents are still cohabiting. relatively lower shares of marriages end up in divorce among both migrants and natives. the sample compositions of our event history setting are represented for each transition in table a.1, a.2 and a.3, where the number and percentage distribution of personmonths and events are shown. our event history setting is explained in more detail in the following section. 4.2 method we analysed fi ve partnerships transitions including the transitions 1) from singlehood to the fi rst union, 2) from singlehood to direct marriage, 3) from singlehood to cohabitation, 4) of dissolution of cohabiting unions through marriage and 5) divorce of ever-married couples by employing cox proportional hazard models. figure 1 below shows the number of respondents analysed in each transition.5 regardless of the type of partnership, all unions are defi ned as co-residential unions lasting at least six months. the risk period starts with age 15 for the fi rst and second transitions. censoring is applied at the last interview date to those respondents who do not form a union. the date of cohabitation and marriage (ever-married respondents) are the onset of the risk period for third and last transition models, respectively. censored cases are those that have not experienced any dissolution at the last interview they participated in or on the date of the death of a partner. as a modelling strategy, in our cox proportional hazard models, we fi rst control for sex and birth cohort. model 2 adds education to model 1. finally, the last model controls for pregnancy and parity status of respondents. cohabitation outcomes and divorce events have additional controls on age at union formation and type of union. the use of a proportionality assumption that suggests a constant hazard ratio over time is critical for proper implementation of a cox model and required for accurate results. in this study, we use schoenfeld residuals to monitor the effects 5 excluded cases are those respondents who have their fi rst union before age 15 in the transition to the fi rst partnership formation (38 cases). the other excluded observations in the transition to marriage after cohabitation and divorce are those cases that event occurs at the same time at the beginning of the risk period (36 cases). • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören332 of covariate changes over time. in the case of variables violating proportionality assumptions in the standard cox model, the hazard ratios reported should be taken as average hazard ratios. in such instances, we also provide results from the stratifi ed and extended cox model, which are reported in the appendix (see table a.4, a.5, a.6 and a.7). in addition, we carried out robustness checks for both sexes for each transition using restricted samples. we analysed (1) transition to fi rst union excluding the fi rst generation immigrants who were married or cohabiting before migration, (2) transition to fi rst cohabitation excluding fi rst generation immigrants who were cohabiting before migration, (3) transition to fi rst marriage excluding fi rst generation immigrants who were married before migration, (4) transition to marriage after cohabitation excluding fi rst generation immigrants who experienced the transition before migration and (5) transition to divorce excluding fi rst generation immigrants who divorced before migration. we present them as robustness checks of standard cox models in the appendix tables a.9, a.10, a.11, a.12 and a.13. the multivariate results in the main text are reported without dividing analysis by sex, but separate analyses by males and females can be found in the appendix (see from table a.14 to a.23). in total, we include eight explanatory variables in the models, both time-fi xed and time-varying. these include: migration status; migration status of the respondent is a time-fi xed categorical variable with three groups: “natives” whose parents were born in western germany, “fi rst-generation turkish immigrants” born in türkiye and “second-generation turkish immigrants” born in western germany with at least one parent born in türkiye. natives are the reference category in our multivariate analysis. fig. 1: number of union transitions of pairfam data, 2008-2018 s in gl e 75 20 75 58 38 (e xc lu d ed b ef o re s ta rt ) stay single 2982 cohabitation 4027 separation 1225 stay cohabited/death of partner 884 marriage 1918 marriage 511 ever-married 2429 2435 6 (excluded before start) stay married/death of partner 2072 divorce 357 source: authors’ design based on pairfam data partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 333 sex of the respondent: this variable is used to analyse any different patterns related to gender in the formation and/or separation of a partnership. this is a timefi xed covariate having two levels; “male” (reference category) and “female”. birth cohort: there are three categories, those born between 1971-1973, 1981-1983 and 1991-1993. this variable is constant over time and aims to refl ect the variation of demographic behaviours across birth cohorts since they have completely different social, economic and demographic realities. education of respondents: this is a time-varying variable that focuses on the highest level of education completed. it is produced by using years of schooling and operationalised by giving reference to the 1997 international standard classifi cation of education (isced-97). there is an assumption that education starts at the age of 6 and continues without any break until reported completion. the fi rst level refers to 6 completed years of schooling and is categorised as “no or primary education”. while computing this reference category, those graduating from primary school and no education at all are combined since only 8 cases report no education before the event of interest occurs. “lower secondary”, “upper secondary” and “tertiary” are the other categories used to investigate the effect of education on timing and prevalence of event. each education level, respectively, refers to completed 10, 13 and 16 or more years of schooling. a similar classifi cation is done in isced-11 as presented in appendix 1.b of liu and kulu (2021). their classifi cation presents the cut-off points for years of schooling as 10.5, 13.5 and 16, where they also control for age when last observed in school. our thresholds are close to theirs but we only control for years of schooling. parity: this variable is operationalised as time-varying and computed by using the birth history generated dataset provided by pairfam called “biochild”. all biological births are those of the respondent. it has three categories: childless (reference category) and 1+ (having 1 or more children). the logic behind this division is that there is a limited number of cases reporting more than two children before forming or dissolving any union (see table a.1, a.2 and a.3). pregnancy: pregnancy is a time-varying variable that is adjusted as 7 months before the date of birth of the children and refers to two categories, not pregnant (reference category) and pregnant. for males, it is the pregnancy status of the partner. age at union formation: this is a categorical variable grouped under fi ve levels among those forming a partnership with the age of 15. age at union can take following values; 15-18, 19-22, 23-26, 27-30, 31+. those respondents who formed their union between age 19-22 is taken as the reference category. for the transition to marriage after cohabitation, this variable refers to the age at fi rst cohabitation. for the divorce model, age at union formation refers to the age at fi rst union, regardless of type of partnership. type of union: type of union is included in the divorce of ever-married couples to shed light on whether the type of fi rst partnership explains the divorce patterns of respondents. direct marriage and pre-marital cohabitation (reference category) are the two defi ned levels for this variable. • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören334 5 results 5.1 median age and duration for partnership trajectories below, table 3 provides descriptive results, namely median age and duration for partnership trajectories from kaplan-meier survival estimates. at the age of 25, half of the respondents have formed their fi rst partnership in pairfam data. earlier union formation is more evident among fi rst-generation immigrants compared to descendants and natives. on the other hand, the timing of fi rst partnership is similar for natives and second-generation immigrants. this pattern persists across the three groups when the analysis is divided into female and male. in line with previous studies, women tend to form any type of union earlier than men. the patterns of immigrant generations resemble each other once the type of union is considered. this harmony is highly prominent in the transition to fi rst cohabitation, whereas descendants show an obvious preference for direct marriage compared to their fi rst-generation counterparts. since less than half of tab. 3: median age and duration for partnership trajectories both men women first union native 25.25 26.83 23.66 1st generation 21.66 23.00 20.25 2nd generation 24.50 26.75 22.66 total 25.08 26.75 23.50 direct marriage native 1st generation 22.83 25.00 21.00 2nd generation 28.58 28.58 26.66 total cohabitation native 25.58 27.16 23.92 1st generation 32.00 30.67 34.25 2nd generation 30.00 33.00 29.83 total 25.75 27.33 24.08 marriage after cohabitation duration since cohabitation (year) native 4.42 4.42 4.42 1st generation 0.75 2.17 0.58 2nd generation 3.08 2.25 3.83 total 4.42 4.42 4.33 note: the event of divorce is not shown in the table. since less than half of the risk population get divorced, no median age can be calculated for this transition for any of the sub-groups. source: authors’ calculations based on pairfam data partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 335 the risk population chooses direct marriage, no median age can be calculated for this transition for the total population. it should be noted that the median age at fi rst cohabitation is about 5 years higher among turkish immigrants compared to natives. this is an interesting fi nding and may be related to the selectivity of this migrant group who prefer to cohabit. it is a fi nding that invites analysis in future studies. half of the cohabiting partners get married sooner than 4.4 years after cohabitation. the fi rst-generation turkish immigrants are the fastest group to advance their relationship into marriage, with an average of 50 percent getting married within 9 months. on the other hand, while male descendants more or less follow the patterns of fi rst-generation immigrants, female second-generation turkish immigrants prolong their period of cohabitation before getting married. natives, regardless of gender, seem to keep the duration of cohabitation at about 4.4 years before they form a conjugal family. 5.2 union formation timing and type of fi rst partnerships are profoundly correlated with the type of economic, social and demographic factors that an individual was born into. this section presents multivariate analyses (cox proportional hazard models) to investigate the position of fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants compared to natives. the analysis is based on respondents’ entry into their fi rst partnership, regardless of the type of union. respondents are at risk at the beginning of age 15 and followed until they form the fi rst union or until censoring occurs at the last interview they participated in before forming a partnership. table 4 shows the results from the cox proportional hazard model for the transition to fi rst union formations of direct marriage or cohabitation. in general, comparisons of immigrant generations and natives reveal compelling differences between the two groups. while fi rst-generation turkish immigrants have a 79 percent higher risk to form a union than the native population, descendants and natives are almost alike. these patterns persist when we control for respondent’s educational level. even though, in general, those pursuing higher education delay union formation longer than those respondents having a lower level of educational attainment, in our model, education does not explain differences among immigrants and natives. first-generation immigrants still have a higher hazard ratio than their children when compared to natives. in the full model, hazard ratios stay almost the same. the following regression models investigate whether and in which direction natives and immigrant generations differ in terms of their preferences for the type of fi rst entry into a union. the results assert systemic differences between immigrant generations and natives. the most important fi nding of this model is that the type of union is the primary force that generates and reinforces the contrast between german natives and turkish immigrants. table 5, the hazard of cohabitation for both sexes, illustrates dramatically different behaviours of migrant groups and natives specifi cally when controlled for sex and birth, education, and parity and pregnancy. as seen on the standard model, among cohabiting unions, • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören336 ta b . 4 : r el at iv e ha za rd o f fi r st u ni o n fo rm at io n m 1 m 2 m 3 v ar ia b le b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i n at iv e 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1s t g en er at io n 1. 79 0. 00 1. 57 2. 09 1. 65 0. 00 1. 4 4 1. 94 1. 63 0. 00 1. 40 1. 90 2n d g en er at io n 1. 11 0. 21 0. 94 1. 30 1. 06 0. 49 0. 90 1. 25 1. 06 0. 45 0. 90 1. 25 n o te : m o d el 1 c o nt ro lle d fo r s ex a nd b ir th c o ho rt . m o d el 2 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r e d uc at io na l l ev el . m o d el 3 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r p ar ity a nd p re gn an cy . s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a m 1 m 2 m 3 v ar ia b le b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i n at iv e 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1s t g en er at io n 0. 54 0. 00 0. 41 0. 71 0. 50 0. 00 0. 38 0. 66 0. 50 0. 00 0. 38 0. 65 2n d g en er at io n 0. 51 0. 00 0. 40 0. 65 0. 49 0. 00 0. 38 0. 62 0. 49 0. 00 0. 38 0. 62 ta b . 5 : r el at iv e ha za rd o f fi r st c o ha b it at io n n o te : m o d el 1 c o nt ro lle d fo r s ex a nd b ir th c o ho rt . m o d el 2 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r e d uc at io na l l ev el . m o d el 3 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r p ar ity a nd p re gn an cy . s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 337 the patterns of descendants largely resemble those of fi rst-generation immigrants. the risk level predicts that all turkish immigrant generations produce, adapt and sustain compatible behavioural trends. controlling for educational level, parity and pregnancy does not change hazard ratios signifi cantly. according to the third model, the fi rst and second generation have 50 percent and 49 percent lower risk of cohabitation than natives, respectively. this is not surprising since most native respondents prefer cohabiting with their partners, while only one-fi fth of turkish immigrants form cohabiting unions as their fi rst partnership (see table 2). the marriage model stands out as the most distinctive in the analyses, since this is rarely preferred by natives in the analysed age groups. additionally, fi rst partnership formation highly coincides with marriage among fi rst-generation turkish immigrants (see table 2). table 6 shows that while immigrant generations have a higher intensity of direct marriage, their preferences are not as consistent once they are in cohabitation. turkish immigrants have a 16.1 times higher hazard of marrying than that of natives. this risk level decreases to 11.6 times among descendants. when educational level, parity and pregnancy status of respondents are controlled, the intensity of direct marriage decreases among immigrants. in the fi nal model, fi rst-generation turkish immigrants have 13.7 times higher and second generation have 11.0 times higher marriage intensity compared to natives. when we look at other covariates (appendix table a.4, a.5 and a.6), the analysis shows that women enter into the fi rst union earlier and have a signifi cantly higher risk of direct marriage or cohabitation than their male counterparts. in line with the gradual retreat from marriage and increasing popularity of cohabiting unions over time, pathways to partnership formation vary across birth cohorts. the intensity of direct marriage is evident among older generations, whereas the younger generation prefers cohabiting unions as their fi rst partnership. pregnancy is another important variable increasing the hazard of direct marriage. 5.3 marriage after cohabitation until this point in the study, the results indicate that cohabitation is a highly preferred practice among native respondents but still rare across turkish immigrant generations in western germany. however, there are further questions to be answered about those respondents who cohabit in the fi rst place, such as “what comes after cohabitation?” once a cohabiting partnership is formed, couples may prefer either to proceed to marriage or to end the relationship through separation. secondly, duration of cohabitation indicates whether cohabitation is perceived as a long-term form of relationship or a waiting room for couples still indecisive about their future together. in this respect, natives and turkish immigrant generations may opt for a different path on what to do with the cohabiting union. table 7 presents the intensity of marriage after cohabitation. first-generation turkish immigrants have 2.10 times higher risk of marriage than their native counterparts on average. although the risk level is slightly lower among descendants, the intensity of marriage is 2.02 times higher than that of natives. including education in the model does not change risk levels much in the transition • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören338 m 1 m 2 m 3 v ar ia b le b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i n at iv e 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1s t g en er at io n 16 .1 0 0. 00 13 .1 3 19 .7 7 13 .9 7 0. 00 11 .1 1 17 .5 7 13 .7 4 0. 00 10 .9 1 17 .3 1 2n d g en er at io n 11 .5 6 0. 00 9. 04 14 .8 7 10 .8 2 0. 00 8. 43 13 .9 0 10 .9 5 0. 00 8. 53 14 .0 6 ta b . 6 : r el at iv e ha za rd o f fi r st m ar ri ag e n o te : m o d el 1 c o nt ro lle d fo r s ex a nd b ir th c o ho rt . m o d el 2 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r e d uc at io na l l ev el . m o d el 3 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r p ar ity a nd p re gn an cy . s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a ta b . 7 : r el at iv e ha za rd o f m ar ri ag e af te r co ha b it at io n m 1 m 2 m 3 v ar ia b le b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i n at iv e 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1s t g en er at io n 2. 10 0. 00 1. 53 2. 90 2. 05 0. 00 1. 47 2. 86 1. 82 0. 00 1. 31 2. 54 2n d g en er at io n 2. 02 0. 00 1. 46 2. 80 1. 93 0. 00 1. 39 2. 68 1. 65 0. 00 1. 19 2. 29 n o te : m o d el 1 c o nt ro lle d fo r se x, b ir th c o ho rt a nd a ge a t u ni o n fo rm at io n. m o d el 2 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r ed uc at io na l l ev el . m o d el 3 ad d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r p ar ity a nd p re gn an cy . s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 339 to marriage after cohabitation. the last model, which additionally controls for parity and pregnancy, indicates that marriage intensity is 1.8 times higher among fi rst generation turkish immigrants compared to natives, while this relative ratio is 1.65 among descendants. controlling for pregnancy is important as almost 20 percent of cohabited respondents are pregnant before marrying (see appendix table a.7 for results related to covariates). 5.4 divorce divorce is the fi nal transition examined in our analyses. respondents are followed from the time of marriage – either directly or after a cohabitation period – until a divorce event. censoring occurs at the date of a partner’s death or interview date for ongoing marriages. before that, it may be good to remember that natives in western germany prefer to delay marriage to later ages and, in most cases, they prefer a period of cohabitation. in addition, fi rst-generation turkish immigrants are less prone to practice divorce and descendants are still too young to proceed to higher-order unions, since the share of divorced individuals are lower among evermarried turkish immigrants (table 2). table 8 presents the estimates for the divorce of ever-married partnerships. the results show signifi cant differences among natives and turkish immigrants. the hazard of divorce among the fi rst generation is lower than their native counterparts where descendants follow a similar pattern with the fi rst-generation immigrants. the intensity of divorce slightly decreases when the educational composition of respondents is considered. in the last model, the hazard of divorce reaches approximately one third of the natives for both fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants. the hazard of divorce among the fi rst generation is 66 percent lower than their native counterparts. descendants follow a similar pattern, wherein the intensity of divorce is 0.36 of that of natives. with regard to the association of explanatory covariates; increasing levels of education do not seem to be highly correlated with a decreasing risk of union formation including all transitions (as in hannemann/kulu 2015; pailhé 2015). instead, regardless of the type of union, educational attainment may explain the relative delay in partnership formation. that is, highly educated people do not necessarily reject marriage or cohabitation, but because they spend longer periods in education, union formation occurs later in life than lesser-educated respondents (kalmijn 2007). thus, the aforementioned differences in partnership trajectories are not infl uenced by the human capital that education provides. pregnancy in all transitions except divorce increases the intensity of partnership formation. the effect of pregnancy and parity are consistent with the fi ndings of dissolution literature: couples are less likely to end a marriage with the existence of children (choi et al. 2020; dribe/lundh 2012; kaplan//herbst-debby 2017; milewski/ kulu 2014). of particular note, direct marriage is found to have an increased risk of divorce compared to previously cohabiting couples. this fi nding contrasts many studies in the literature and invites further investigation (see appendix table a.8). • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören340 ta b . 8 : r el at iv e ha za rd o f d iv o rc e o f e ve rm ar ri ed m 1 m 2 m 3 v ar ia b le b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i b et a p -v al u e c i n at iv e 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1. 00 . . . 1s t g en er at io n 0. 51 0. 00 0. 33 0. 78 0. 43 0. 00 0. 27 0. 68 0. 34 0. 00 0. 21 0. 56 2n d g en er at io n 0. 50 0. 02 0. 28 0. 90 0. 45 0. 01 0. 25 0. 81 0. 36 0. 00 0. 19 0. 67 n o te : m o d el 1 c o nt ro lle d fo r se x, b ir th c o ho rt a nd a ge a t u ni o n fo rm at io n. m o d el 2 a d d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r ed uc at io na l l ev el . m o d el 3 ad d iti o na lly c o nt ro lle d fo r p ar ity , p re gn an cy a nd ty p e o f u ni o n. s o ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ c al cu la tio ns b as ed o n p ai rf am d at a partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 341 5.5 robustness checks our robustness check results are presented in appendix tables a.9, a.10, a.11, a.12 and a.13. according to these results, our fi ndings are robust to sample restrictions, i.e., exclusion of fi rst-generation immigrants who experienced the event of interest before migration. one difference observed is the decline in hazard ratios of fi rstgeneration immigrants related to overall union formation, transition to cohabitation and transition to marriage. a decline in the hazard ratio of divorce also takes place with the restricted sample, although the difference is smaller. these fi ndings can be explained by the fact that marriage or cohabitation can take place as a reason for migration due to the need for family unifi cation. some individuals may tend to enter a union earlier to migrate to western germany afterwards. hence, excluding these cases may have lowered the hazard ratios of fi rst immigrants. however, the main conclusions derived do not change when analyses are applied to the restricted samples. 6 discussion and conclusion this study has investigated union formation and dissolution practices of fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants compared to natives in western germany. it addressed how fi rst-generation turkish immigrants and their descendants respond to the native patterns and it analysed the extent of convergence or divergence between generations. we also formulated four hypotheses, with two being alternatives to each other, based on established theoretical approaches. our fi ndings indicate that both the timing and incidence of union formation comply among descendants of turkish immigrants and natives in western germany, while fi rst-generation immigrants pursue a traditional early union formation pattern. firstgeneration immigrants also have a signifi cantly higher risk of a partnership than both natives and their descendants. descendants mostly share practices of the fi rst generation when it comes to cohabitation, but neither fi rstnor second-generation groups prefer cohabiting unions or postponing marriage to their early 30s. on the other hand, marriage practices of descendants indicate a relative divergence from fi rst-generation immigrants. traditional early direct marriage ceases, turkish descendants signifi cantly delay the decision to form a conjugal family and they have slightly less risk than fi rst-generation turkish immigrants. despite these fi ndings, however, the data cannot be interpreted as cohabitation replacing marriage preference for turkish immigrants in western germany. the dominance of the marriage institution is partly related to the partner choice of turkish immigrants. studies show that national homogamy is highly typical among turkish minorities in europe (constant et al. 2012; hannemann et al. 2018; milewski/ hamel 2010; soehl/yahirun 2011). choosing a turkish partner may intensify the risk of marriage and reproduce the traditional pattern. however, children of turkish immigrants are exposed to mainstream structure and culture from childhood onwards. contact with non-coethnic peers may postpone entry into the fi rst union • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören342 among second-generation turkish immigrants in germany (huschek et al. 2010). furthermore, these immigrants mostly form a conjugal family with another turkish descendant in germany rather than with a spouse from türkiye (gonzalez-ferrer 2006; hamel et al. 2012). overall, these results suggest that children of immigrants socialise into their family’s norms and values instead of mirroring native patterns in their transitions to fi rst marriage and cohabitation. as opposed to natives, marriage is still dominant over cohabitation as a fi rst choice among turkish immigrants in germany. one of the aims of this paper was to examine cohabitation outcomes among natives and immigrants. as descriptive results show, cohabitation is rare among turkish immigrants, while natives prefer it over direct marriage. this behaviour is not surprising since consensual union is a culturally disapproved phenomenon among turkish people. even though adolescent turkish immigrants see cohabitation as an alternative partnership formation, in reality, they abstain from consensual unions due to strong parental infl uence and low social acceptance (de valk/liefbroer 2007). therefore, turkish descendants still mostly reject the premarital sexual activity of females in the european context (hamel et al. 2012), as also suggested by the indicators in section 2. at fi rst glance, the fi ndings predict that immigrants and natives are two distinct groups in their preferences for type of cohabiting union. based on the ideal types of cohabitation conceptualised by heuveline and timberlake (2004), natives treat this type of partnership as “must-have stage” or “trial marriage”. on average, germandescendant respondents decide to form a conjugal family within 4.42 years after cohabitation. by contrast, and in line with naderi’s (2008) fi nding, among turkish immigrants, the fi rst generation tends to formalise their union within less than a year. the critical point here is that while three-fourths of fi rst-generation people marry their fi rst cohabiting partners, less than half of their descendants formalise their fi rst cohabiting union. second-generation turkish immigrants also prefer separating from a cohabiting partner more than natives (see table 2). in addition, female descendants stay in cohabiting unions signifi cantly longer than their parents and male counterparts. this may hint at a transformation regarding cohabitation among second-generation immigrants. in other words, the marginality of cohabiting unions seems to erode gradually for the female second generation. another possible explanation for this might be that, as pailhé (2015) suggests in the context of france, turkish second-generation female immigrants are a selected group that have individual characteristics that distinguish them from their male descendants and the fi rst generation. note that this study is unable to control for the origin of the partner. this characteristic might also be the motive behind longer cohabitation of female descendants. another aim of this study was to analyse the divorce practices of turkish immigrants as opposed to natives. as the second demographic transition indicates, divorce has an upward trend and marriage is weaker among the youngest generation who also have higher intensity than older generations in deciding to end a marriage. in line with other studies (milewski/kulu 2014), both female and male turkish immigrants have signifi cantly more stable marriages than natives. an explanation partnership transitions among turkish immigrants and their descendants ... • 343 for this practice may again be found in the partner choice of turkish immigrants and in the low divorce rate within the turkish population. native-immigrant marriages are found to be most fragile in any context due to socio-cultural distance between partners (choi et al. 2020; kaplan/herbst-debby 2017; milewski/kulu 2014; zhang/ van hook 2009). since the fi rst and second-generation immigrants form a union with a coethnic partner, contradicting social factors that can weaken the marriage are not common. thus, fi rst-generation turkish immigrants also transmit their preferences regarding the dissolution, which justifi es the socialisation hypothesis. it should be noted that in our analytical sample, the number of divorce events among fi rstand second-generation turkish immigrants were low and the results should be interpreted considering this situation. regarding our four hypotheses, our fi rst hypothesis, which expects difference in partnership patterns between migrants and natives, mostly holds true, except for the fi nding that second-generation immigrants resemble the native pattern in transition to the fi rst union (including both cohabitation and marriage). in other words, the socialisation hypothesis for fi rst-generation immigrants appears to hold, whereas it is not extended towards second generation immigrants in terms of fi rst union formation (including both marriage and cohabitation). nevertheless, the type of union reveals the actual distinction between natives and immigrants. when type of union is considered, our fi rst hypothesis holds for descendants of immigrants, too, supporting the cultural maintenance perspective. as suggested by our second hypothesis, the extent of the difference varies across partnership transitions. firstand second-generation immigrants have an about 50 percent lower hazard of cohabitation compared to natives, whereas the hazard of getting married is 13.7 and 11.0 times higher among fi rstand secondgeneration immigrants compared to natives, respectively. marriage intensity following cohabitation is also higher among turkish immigrants, where the difference is greater for fi rst-generation immigrants. finally, the divorce hazard is 66 percent and 64 percent lower among fi rstand second-generation immigrants compared to natives. overall, our results provide support for our third hypothesis (h3a) rather than the fourth related to second-generation immigrants, in that partnership transition of turkish immigrants’ descendants more closely resembles those of fi rst-generation immigrants compared to natives. this provides support for the cultural maintenance hypothesis or segmented assimilation theory. hence, the adaptation hypothesis for descendants of immigrants (hypothesis h3b) does not appear to hold, except in the transition to fi rst union (covering both cohabitation and marriage). the study at hand is not free of limitations. first, this investigation was unable to control for the selection and disruption hypotheses or their effects on immigrants’ union trajectories. addressing whether fi rst-generation immigrants are selected groups that have different characteristics than the turkish population requires comparable data that belongs to the society of origin. available data sources on turkish partnership practices lack cohabitation histories, which preclude comparing type of fi rst union. with some imagination, however, it is relatively fair to say that fi rst-generation turkish immigrants are not selected groups. in pairfam data, • müşerref erdoğan, ayşe abbasoğlu özgören344 90 percent of turkish fi rst-generation immigrant respondents were born between 1971-1983, corresponding to the 35-47 age group at the last wave of pairfam in 2018. the descriptive results show that the median age at fi rst marriage is 21 for the fi rstgeneration turkish female immigrants. according to the 2018 turkey demographic and health survey (2018 tdhs), the average median age at fi rst marriage is 21 among women aged between 35-49 (hacettepe university institute of population studies 2019). therefore, it seems that turkish society and turkish immigrants have similar patterns in terms of the timing of fi rst marriage. a further limitation of this study is that the disruption hypothesis is not controlled in the multivariate analysis. therefore, there is a question of whether immigrants might be affected by the immigration process and, as a result, struggle to adapt to the new partnership market in western germany. hence, the disruption stemming from immigration itself results in a decision to postpone union formation. however, when the median age at fi rst union is compared, the age gap between those starting a co-residential union before and after migration is minimal, respectively 21 and 21.33 (see appendix table a.24). these descriptive results roughly suggest almost no disruption. additionally, the data had some limitations when controlling for other socioeconomic or demographic factors that may contribute to the convergence process of immigrants. the employment history of immigrants, the religious affi liation of respondents, partner choice and educational attainment of father and mother are examples of factors that could not be included in our analysis. a high proportion of missing data and a lack of retrospective information on these covariates have led the authors to renounce using them as an explanatory variable in multivariate models in order to keep the analyses as accurate as possible. furthermore, parental infl uence, especially the impact on partner choice, should be considered extensively in analyses of future turkish generations. most surveys do not ask about “religious partnerships”, which 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van hook, jennifer 2009: marital dissolution among interracial couples. in: journal of marriage and the family 71,1: 95-107. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00582.x date of submission: 28.07.2021 date of acceptance: 12.05.2022 müşerref erdoğan (). groningen, netherlands. e-mail: erdoganmuserref93@gmail.com dr. ayşe abbasoğlu özgören. hacettepe university institute of population studies. ankara, türkiye. e-mail: ayse.ozgoren@hacettepe.edu.tr url: https://avesis.hacettepe.edu.tr/ayse.ozgoren published by federal institute for population research (bib) d-65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2022 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. ralina panova dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) alyson van raalte (rostock) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners: the importance of anchors’ survey experience in self-administered modes gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners: the importance of anchors’ survey experience in selfadministered modes* tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz abstract: dyadic surveys aim to interview pairs of respondents, such as partners in a relationship. in dyadic surveys, it is often necessary to obtain the anchors’ consent to contact their partners and invite them to a survey. if the survey is operated in self-administered modes, no interviewer is present to improve the consent rate, for example, by providing convincing arguments and additional information. to overcome the challenges posed by self-administered modes for dyadic surveys and to improve consent rates, it is important to identify aspects that positively infl uence the likelihood of anchors giving consent to contact their partners. ideally, these aspects are in the hands of the researchers, such as the survey design and aspects of the questionnaire. thus, in this study, we analyzed the relationship between anchors’ survey experience and their willingness to consent to surveying their partners in self-administered modes. based on data from the german family demography panel study (freda), we found that the anchors’ perceptions of the questionnaire as “interesting” or “too personal” were related to consent rates. these relationships were consistent across different survey modes and devices. effects of other aspects of the questionnaire, such as “important for science” and “diverse” varied between modes and devices. we concluded with practical recommendations for survey research and an outlook for future research. keywords: consent · dyadic survey · self-administered modes · panel survey · survey experience comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 281-306 (date of release: 06.07.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-12 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-12en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on “family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)”. • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz282 1 introduction dyadic surveys aim to interview pairs of respondents (barton et al. 2020). in many instances, dyadic surveys focus on partners in a relationship (spouse or intimate partner); other examples include friends (e.g., chow et al. 2013) or kinships such as parents and children (e.g., kalmijn/liefbroer 2011). depending on the sampling approach, different designs exist on how respondents are invited to participate in a dyadic survey (pasteels 2015). when relying on register-based samples, individuals are fi rst sampled and invited to participate in a survey. these target persons, hereafter referred to as “anchors”, are then asked for their consent to contact their partners. only if the anchors’ consent is obtained, the partners will be contacted and invited to participate in the survey as well. pasteels (2015) termed this approach a singular multi-actor design. in face-to-face mode, interviewers are present to conduct the anchor interview. interviewers can positively impact the anchors’ survey experience (cf. west/blom 2017) and, thus, possibly their willingness to consent to the additional interviewing of their partners or children (schröder et al. 2016). at best, the other household members are also present, so the interview can be conducted directly with a partner or child. if the person in question is not on-site or is preoccupied for other reasons, an appointment can be arranged. alternatively, the interviewer can leave the invitation letter and the questionnaire for the partner at the anchor’s home. in pairfam (“panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics”), for example, this approach has been successfully implemented (huinink et al. 2011). in self-administered modes, when no interviewers are involved, the process of inviting additional persons to a dyadic survey is different . anchors must fi rst obtain consent from their partners, for example, that they agree to be contacted by a survey institute. anchors must also provide their partners’ contact information (i.e., names and addresses), which is especially important, if the anchor and their partner live in separate households. only then survey invitations can be sent to partners living in the same or outside the anchors’ household. in the case of a selfadministered survey, therefore, it is even more challenging to obtain the anchors’ consent to survey their partners than in face-to-face studies, because there is no interviewer present to provide additional information about the benefi ts of the request and convince the anchors to agree to contact and invite their partners. surveying partners in self-administered dyadic surveys is a three-step process: first, an anchor person must provide consent to approach the partner with a survey invitation (consent); second, the anchor needs to provide valid contact information, so a partner can then be invited (invitation); and third, the partner must decide to participate in the survey (participation). the loss of partners is amplifi ed across these three steps of selection (starks et al. 2015). in our view, it is important to investigate each step separately, so one can disentangle and better understand the mechanisms at work. we argue that this will help us fi nd ways to increase the number of partners who can successfully be surveyed in self-administered modes. in our study, we focus on the consent step. having said that, we argue that further gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 283 research into the other two steps is warranted to obtain a complete picture of the process of realizing a partner interview in dyadic surveys. although much research exists on respondents’ survey consent (e.g., jenkins et al. 2006; singer 1993, 2003) or their consent to data linking with, for example, population registers, sensors, apps, or paradata (e.g., kunz/gummer 2020; sakshaug et al. 2012; sakshaug/kreuter 2012), research is still lacking regarding the process of anchors consenting for interviews of related persons (e.g., partners, children, parents, friends) in self-administered modes. we fi nd it reasonable that the decision about consent is different in a dyadic survey, because it is not about anchors agreeing to share their own data, but allowing contact with another person and potentially burdening them with the task of participating in a survey. unfortunately, previous research on consent in dyadic surveys has solely investigated face-toface settings with a focus on the role of interviewers in these consent situations (kalmijn/liefbroer 2011; schmiedeberg et al. 2016; schröder et al. 2012; schröder et al. 2016). to overcome the challenges posed by self-administered modes for dyadic surveys and to improve anchors’ consent to contact their partners, it is important to identify aspects of a survey that positively infl uence the likelihood of anchors giving consent. ideally, these aspects are in the hands of the survey researchers, such as the survey design and aspects of the questionnaire. the existing gap in research on anchors’ consent to contact their partners in self-administered dyadic surveys makes this a formidable challenge. currently, researchers do not know which design aspects to focus their attention and resources on and which aspects to test in experiments. experimental studies, especially when conducted with probabilitybased samples, can easily become laborious and costly. in the present study, we analyze the relationship between anchors’ survey experience and their willingness to consent to survey their partners in selfadministered dyadic surveys. we argue that how anchors experienced the survey themselves is a critical factor in their consent to contact their partners for a survey as well. thus, we assume that anchors who have had a positive experience participating in a survey are more likely to convince their partners to participate and give consent to invite them. a variety of aspects infl uence respondents’ survey experience. among those that are under the researchers’ control are the content of a questionnaire (e.g., silber et al. 2021), the inclusion of sensitive questions (e.g., tourangeau/yan 2007), or the length of a questionnaire (e.g., galesic/bosnjak 2009). even if these factors are the same for all respondents, the individual perception is likely to vary between them (e.g., respondents will differ in whether they perceive a questionnaire as interesting) (e.g., yan/williams 2022). however, aspects that vary across respondents and can also impact the survey experience are survey mode (de leeuw/berzelak 2016) and, in the case of web mode, the device used to complete the questionnaire (couper/peterson 2017). self-administered general population surveys are often designed as mixed-mode featuring web and paper mode (e.g., luijkx et al. 2021; wolf et al. 2021), so as not to introduce a coverage error for parts of the population who have no internet access or do not want to participate via the web (blom et al. 2017; cornesse/schaurer • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz284 2021). we follow the reasoning of previous studies on survey mode systems (e.g., struminskaya et al. 2015) which argue that data collection processes differ between modes. from the respondents’ perspective, this means that they experience the survey differently depending on the survey mode (i.e., whether they complete a web-based or paper-based questionnaire). when participating via the web mode, respondents can use different devices, including desktop pcs, laptops, tablets, or smartphones (gummer et al. 2023). depending on the type of device, the questions may differ in their presentation (e.g., horizontal or vertical scale alignment) and navigation (e.g., data entry by mouse click or fi nger tap), which in turn may also infl uence the respondents’ response behavior (couper/peterson 2017). to accommodate different device types and ensure a good survey experience, using a responsive questionnaire layout and adapting the layout to smaller screens is especially important (e.g., antoun et al. 2017; antoun et al. 2018; tourangeau et al. 2013). but even then, we expect the survey experience to vary depending on the device used. considering the different survey modes and device types, there are different ways or “channels” through which respondents can answer a survey. in selfadministered surveys, these include the web or paper mode. in addition, in the web mode, respondents can participate using a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. it remains an open question how survey experience relates to obtaining anchors’ consent to contact their partners in each channel. our study aims to understand better the relationship between the anchors’ survey experience and their likelihood of providing consent to invite their partners in selfadministered mixed-mode dyadic surveys, considering the multi-channel context of modern surveys. in our efforts, we focus on characteristics under the researcher’s control that can be used to improve survey design and optimize consent rates. our research questions are: 1. how does the anchors’ survey experience affect the likelihood of providing consent to invite their partners to a survey? 2. does the relationship between the anchors’ survey experience and providing consent differ between web and paper mode? 3. does the relationship between the anchors’ survey experience and providing consent differ between devices in the web mode? we relied on the german family demography panel study (freda), which is well-suited to answer our research questions. freda is designed as a multi-actor survey that includes anchors and their partners. it utilizes web and paper modes and asks respondents which device they used to complete the survey. in addition, the sample size is large enough to allow for subgroup analyses. the remainder of this article is structured as follows: in the next section, we describe our data, the measures we used, and our analytical methods. after gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 285 presenting our results, we close with concluding remarks, practical recommendations for survey research, and opportunities for future studies. 2 data and method 2.1 data we drew on the german family demography panel study (freda). freda is a german research data infrastructure for family research (hank et al. 2023; schneider et al. 2021). freda covers demography, sociology, economics, and psychology topics, such as processes and transitions in couples’ relationships, fertility and parenthood, economic situation, and attitudes. it also includes sensitive questions about respondents’ health, sex life, and sexual orientation. respondents are surveyed twice a year in self-administered mixed modes using web and paper questionnaires of 20-30 minutes. for the web mode, freda uses a responsive questionnaire layout that is optimized for small screens, which affects font or button sizes and question arrangement. in 2021, a new sample of panelists aged between 18 and 49 years was recruited for freda (freda-ggs sample). for this purpose, a probability-based sample was drawn from german municipalities’ population registers. the recruitment survey (w1r) was fi elded between the 7th of april and the 29th of june, 2021, and yielded an aapor rr2 of 34.92 percent (n=37,783). for w1r, a dedicated and short (10 minutes) recruitment questionnaire was used. 26,725 respondents provided their panel consent in w1r to be re-contacted for the subsequent wave w1a, which was fi elded between the 7th of july and the 22nd of september, 2021, using a questionnaire of 20-30 minutes. 22,048 respondents completed the w1a questionnaire, resulting in an aapor rr2 of 85.4 percent. in w1a, 16,857 anchors who reported currently having a partner were asked to provide consent to contact their partner. these anchors represent our sample cases on which our subsequent analyses are based on. we used data release version 2.0.0 of freda that included w1r and w1a data (bujard et al. 2023). 2.2 operationalization dependent variable as dependent variable, we used the anchors’ responses to the question on whether they allowed us to invite their partners to our survey and send them a questionnaire. we created a dummy variable indicating consent (0=no consent; 1=consent). the consent question was asked only of those anchors currently in a relationship. those without partners were coded as missing. if respondents did not answer the consent question, they were coded as missing as well, which was the case for 1.54 percent of the analysis sample. we conducted a missing data analysis to support this coding decision , using logistic regression • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz286 analysis with missing consent information as dependent variable and the variables we used in our later analyses as independent variables (see below). we found no statistically signifi cant effects for any of the variables. as we did not fi nd systematic differences between those respondents who answered the consent question and those who did not, we assumed that item nonresponse in the dependent variable did not impact our fi ndings. independent variables survey experience. the anchors’ survey experience was measured based on the self-report scale developed by kaczmirek et al. (2014). the scale was asked at the end of the questionnaire using a battery of 6 items on whether anchors considered the questionnaire as “interesting”, “diverse”, “important for science”, “long”, “diffi cult”, and “too personal”. for each item, we created a variable ranging from 0 (not at all agree) to 4 (completely agree). survey mode. we created a dummy variable indicating whether anchors completed the survey in paper or web mode (0=paper; 1=web). device type. relying on a self-reported question that was asked at the end of the web survey, we created a dummy variable indicating whether respondents used a device with a larger screen size (i.e., desktop, laptop, tablet, or others) or smaller screen size (i.e., smartphone) to complete the survey (0=no smartphone; 1=smartphone). control variables. we relied on a set of control variables that previous research had shown to affect participation decisions by potential respondents in panels or survey participation in general. we assumed that reasons that would discourage anchors from participating (again) in a survey might also be relevant to the anchors’ consent decision. our models covered various factors of participation (watson/ wooden 2009), including the socio-demographic background of anchors such as gender (behr et al. 2005; lepkowski/couper 2002), education (behr et al. 2005; wolf et al. 2021), and migration background (voorpostel/lipps 2011), the relevance of the survey topic (gummer/blumenstiel 2018; lepkowski/couper 2002), as well as how respondents were contacted and the infrastructure available to participate in the survey (watson/wooden 2009). in our models, we included gender (0=male; 1=female), age (18-25 (ref), 26-30, 31-40, 41+), education (low (ref), intermediate, high), satisfaction with relationship (rating scale, 0-10), urbanicity of the region of residency (rural (ref), small town, city), german language spoken at home (0=no; 1=yes), german citizenship (0=no; 1=yes), and cohabitation with a partner (0=no; 1=yes) as control variables. item nonresponse analysis. table 1 details descriptive statistics for the independent variables (survey experience and control variables) that we included in our analyses. to investigate the sample selection process in our study, we show descriptive statistics for three samples: (i) all anchors with partners, (ii) after listwise deletion of all cases with missing values in the dependent variable (see above), and (iii) after listwise deletion of all cases with missing values in the independent gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 287 ta b . 1 : s am p le s el ec tio n p ro ce ss a nd d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s o f s ub st an tiv e va ri ab le s a ll an ch o rs w it h p ar tn er s o m it ti n g m is si n g s in d ep en d en t a n al ys is s am p le va ri ab le v ar ia b le m ea n m in . m ax . n m ea n m in . m ax . n m ea n m in . m ax . n c o h en 's d s u rv ey e xp er ie n ce ... in te re st in g 2. 95 0 0 4 16 51 5 2. 95 1 0 4 16 43 7 2. 95 5 0 4 15 84 5 0. 14 3 ... d iv er se 2. 98 3 0 4 16 51 3 2. 98 3 0 4 16 43 6 2. 98 6 0 4 15 84 5 0. 11 4 ... im p o rt an t f o r sc ie n ce 2. 88 6 0 4 16 31 5 2. 88 7 0 4 16 23 9 2. 88 9 0 4 15 84 5 0. 12 8 … lo n g 2. 36 8 0 4 16 49 4 2. 36 7 0 4 16 41 7 2. 35 7 0 4 15 84 5 0. 24 4 … d if fi cu lt 0. 89 4 0 4 16 47 9 0. 89 4 0 4 16 40 2 0. 88 8 0 4 15 84 5 0. 20 4 … t o o p er so n al 2. 29 4 0 4 16 52 9 2. 29 2 0 4 16 45 0 2. 28 0 0 4 15 84 5 0. 26 8 fe m al e 0. 57 8 0 1 16 81 6 0. 57 8 0 1 16 55 7 0. 57 4 0 1 15 84 5 0. 16 2 a ge … 1 825 0. 14 5 0 1 16 85 0 0. 14 5 0 1 16 59 1 0. 14 7 0 1 15 84 5 0. 13 6 … 2 6 -3 0 0. 15 7 0 1 16 85 0 0. 15 7 0 1 16 59 1 0. 15 9 0 1 15 84 5 0. 08 2 … 3 140 0. 40 0 0 1 16 85 0 0. 40 0 0 1 16 59 1 0. 40 0 0 1 15 84 5 0. 00 8 … 4 1+ 0. 29 9 0 1 16 85 0 0. 29 8 0 1 16 59 1 0. 29 5 0 1 15 84 5 0. 16 1 ed u ca ti on … lo w 0. 08 2 0 1 16 75 7 0. 08 1 0 1 16 49 9 0. 07 9 0 1 15 84 5 0. 19 3 … in te rm ed ia te 0. 37 7 0 1 16 75 7 0. 37 6 0 1 16 49 9 0. 37 5 0 1 15 84 5 0. 03 6 … h ig h 0. 54 2 0 1 16 75 7 0. 54 3 0 1 16 49 9 0. 54 6 0 1 15 84 5 0. 14 1 re la ti o n sh ip s at is fa ct io n 8. 25 9 0 10 16 78 2 8. 26 1 0 10 16 52 8 8. 26 4 0 10 15 84 5 0. 04 3 u rb an ic it y … r u ra l 0. 22 9 0 1 16 85 7 0. 22 9 0 1 16 59 8 0. 22 8 0 1 15 84 5 0. 02 9 … s m al le r to w n 0. 37 6 0 1 16 85 7 0. 37 6 0 1 16 59 8 0. 37 6 0 1 15 84 5 0. 00 1 … c it y 0. 39 5 0 1 16 85 7 0. 39 5 0 1 16 59 8 0. 39 5 0 1 15 84 5 0. 02 4 g er m an a t h o m e 0. 93 2 0 1 16 80 3 0. 93 2 0 1 16 54 4 0. 93 6 0 1 15 84 5 0. 31 9 n o c it iz en sh ip 0. 05 8 0 1 16 81 6 0. 05 8 0 1 16 55 7 0. 05 7 0 1 15 84 5 0. 11 3 liv in g to g et h er 0. 83 3 0 1 16 84 1 0. 83 3 0 1 16 58 2 0. 83 2 0 1 15 84 5 0. 04 7 n o te : c o he n’ s d p re se nt ed a s ab so lu te v al ue s. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n fr ed a w 1r a nd w 1a • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz288 variables. we did not include information on survey mode and device type here, as these are subject to extensive additional robustness analyses (see section 2.3). in total, 16,857 anchors reported having a partner and were asked for consent to contact their partners. of these, 259 were coded as missing because they had not answered the consent question. in a further step, 782 cases were omitted from the analytical sample by listwise deletion due to missing values in the independent variables. in total, 10.08 percent of the sample was omitted due to item nonresponse. to gauge the potential impact of item nonresponse on our fi ndings, we fi rst compared mean values of all substantive variables between our analysis sample and the sample including all anchors with partners. for better comparability, we calculated cohen’s d as a measure of the strength of the differences. as we were not interested in directions of these differences, we used absolute cohen’s d values. with a minimum of 0.002 and a maximum of 0.32, with the exception of the maximum, all cohen’s d values remained within a range that can be considered as having no or small effects. thus, our missing data analyses indicated that listwise deletion had only a weak impact on the distributions of the independent variables we used in our analyses. thus, item nonresponse for the independent variables is unlikely to bias our analyses. 2.3 method models we fi tted logistic regressions with consent as the dependent variable to investigate our research questions. as independent variables, we included the six survey experience items and the control variables, whereby the latter will not be the subject of further interpretation. we computed individual models for each channel (i.e., survey modes and device types) to investigate the consent process in different channels. for instance, we computed separate models on consent for the paper mode and the web mode, as well as models for using a smartphone and not using a smartphone. for all models, we reported average marginal effects (ames). to further test the magnitude of the effects of survey experience on consent rates, we estimated predicted probabilities (with all other variables at their means) for those survey experience items for which we found signifi cant effects in the models. in addition to the separate models for each channel, we calculated two complete models relying on the full sample (i.e., not differentiating between modes) and all web participants (not differentiating between devices), respectively. the two models for survey modes and device types included the same variables as above and a dummy variable for mode or device, respectively. robustness checks we conducted robustness checks in which we used weighting to account for selfselection into modes and devices. we were interested in whether differences in the consent obtained from anchors differed in total between modes and devices gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 289 (i.e., a total effect). we were not primarily interested in identifying whether these differences stem from mode effects or self-selection into modes and devices. weighting for self-selection into survey modes. we utilized inverse probability weighting (ipw) to disentangle mode and self-selection effects. a recent illustration of ipw for the case of missing data is given by little et al. (2022). assumptions behind this approach have been discussed in prior research (gummer/roßmann 2019; kreuter/olson 2011; little/vartivarian 2005). to calculate the weights, we fi tted a logistic regression with mode choice as dependent variable and relevant independent variables. we selected variables that prior research (gummer/ struminskaya 2020; pforr/dannwolf 2017) had used to predict mode choice or that were relevant to the survey invitation process in freda: gender, region of residency, education, internet use, and contact strategy. mode choice propensities, based on the regression model, were then used as weighting factors. respondents likely to participate in their selected mode were weighted down, and those unlikely to participate in their selected mode were weighted up. as a robustness check of our analyses and to gain additional insights, we reran our regression models with consent as the dependent variable (see above) and used the weights to control for self-selection into survey modes. weighting for self-selection into devices. to disentangle the device and selfselection effects, we again utilized ipw. as before, we specifi ed a logistic regression with device use (0=no smartphone; 1=smartphone) as the dependent variable and included a set of relevant independent variables that prior research had used to predict device choice and mobile web accessibility (de bruijne/wijnant 2013; fuchs/ busse 2009; gummer et al. 2019; toepoel/lugtig 2014): gender, age, education, and urbanicity. device choice propensities obtained from the model were used as weighting factors. as device choice only applied to respondents in the web mode, we combined the mode choice and device choice weights. again, as a robustness check, we reran our regression models with consent as the dependent variable (see above) and used the weights to control for self-selection into devices in the web mode. 3 results overall, we found that 55.09 percent of the anchors who reported having a partner gave us consent to invite their partners to a survey. the consent rate signifi cantly differed between modes, with 58.00 percent in the web mode and 38.36 percent in the paper mode (χ²(1)=326.33, p<.000). when turning to the different devices used in the web mode, we found smaller but still signifi cant differences, with a consent rate of 60.28 percent for anchors completing the survey on a desktop/laptop/tablet/ other device and 56.18 percent for those using a smartphone (χ²(1)=24.23, p<.000). concerning our fi rst research question on the effect of the anchors’ survey experience on consent to invite their partners to a survey, figure 1 details the results of our logistic regression models (see table a1 in the appendix for full regression models). controlling for covariates, we found that selected aspects of • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz290 the anchors’ survey experience impacted whether consent was provided to invite their partners. in the web and paper mode, we found substantial and statistically signifi cant effects of whether anchors perceived the questionnaire as “interesting” or “too personal” on the likelihood of consent: the more interesting the anchors found the questionnaire, the more likely they were to give consent; the more the anchors perceived the questionnaire as too personal, the less likely they were to give consent. for the web mode but not the paper mode, we found an effect of how “important for science” and “long” the anchors perceived the questionnaire on the likelihood of providing consent: the more important anchors perceived the questionnaire, the higher the likelihood of consent. we found no signifi cant effects for the other aspects of the questionnaire (“diverse” and “diffi cult”) on the anchors’ consent to invite their partners – neither in web nor paper mode. the effects we obtained for the full sample were similar to those we found for the web model. consequently, we found a positive main effect for participating in the web mode for the complete model using the full sample. as figure 1, right side, illustrates, weighting for self-selection into modes yielded the same results as without using weights for the anchors’ perception of the questionnaire as “interesting” and “too personal” as well as “important for science” in the web mode. the effects of how “long” the questionnaire was perceived in the web mode disappeared when weighting, whereas we found effects of perceived diversity and length of the questionnaire in the paper mode. here, when weighting the effect of perceiving the questionnaire as “too personal” disappeared. in the paper mode, weighting also improved the model fi t (pseudo r²unweighted=0.08, pseudo r²weighted=0.38). these fi ndings highlight that the total effect of survey experience includes parts that stem from self-selection. turning back to the unweighted models that yield the total effects of survey experience, we investigated the magnitude of these effects on consent. figure 2 illustrates that in web and paper mode, the likelihood of consent could be changed by making the questionnaire more interesting and decreasing the respondents’ feeling of intrusiveness (based on unweighted models). a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “interesting” from “not at all” to “completely” (i.e., minimum to maximum) would result in an increase in the consent probability by 21.41 percentage points in the web mode and 22.06 percentage points in the paper mode. similarly, a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “too personal” from “completely” to “not at all” would increase the consent probability by 27.92 percentage points in the web mode and 22.06 percentage points in the paper mode. only in the web mode, a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “important for science” from “not at all” to “completely” would increase the consent probability by 7.62 percentage points. changing the perception of the questionnaire as “long” from “not at all” to “completely” would increase the consent probability by 3.58 percentage points. concerning our second research question on differences between modes, for the aspects with higher magnitude (“interesting” and “too personal”), the ames and predicted probabilities were surprisingly similar, given that in our fi rst descriptive analyses, the difference in consent rates between modes was 19.64 percentage points. the modes only differed concerning effects of whether anchors perceived gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 291 fig. 1: average marginal effects of regressions on consent to contact partner by modes, unweighted (top) and weighted for self-selection into modes (bottom) s ur ve y as se ss m en t c o nt ro l v ar ia b le s interesting diverse important for science long difficult too personal female 26-30 31-40 41+ intermediate high relationship satisfaction smaller town city german at home no citizenship living together web mode age, ref. 18-25 education, ref. low municipality, ref. rural -.8 -.7 -.6 -.5 -.4 -.3 -.2 -.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 average marginal effects mail mode web mode total unweighted s ur ve y as se ss m en t c o nt ro l v ar ia b le s interesting diverse important for science long difficult too personal female 26-30 31-40 41+ intermediate high relationship satisfaction smaller town city german at home no citizenship living together web mode age, ref. 18-25 education, ref. low municipality, ref. rural -.8 -.7 -.6 -.5 -.4 -.3 -.2 -.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 average marginal effects mail mode web mode total weighted source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz292 the survey as “important for science” and “long”. for these, however, our analyses of the predicted probabilities showed a comparatively small impact on the consent rates. thus, concerning our second research question on mode differences in the consent process, we can note that the relationship between survey experience and consent partly differed between modes, but the major effects remained similar. turning to our third research question on whether different devices resulted in different survey experiences for anchors and, thus, infl uenced the relationship between the anchors’ survey experience and consent, figure 3 depicts our devicespecifi c regression results (see table a2 in the appendix for full regression models). for both using a smartphone and not using a smartphone, we found effects of whether anchors perceived the survey as “interesting” and “too personal”; thus, replicating our previous fi ndings. for the aspects “important for science” and “diverse”, we found signifi cant effects depending on the device used to complete the survey. the more important the anchors perceived the questionnaire for science, the more likely they were to consent when not completing the survey on a smartphone. in contrast, the more diverse the anchors perceived the questionnaire, the more likely they were to consent when using a smartphone but not when using a different device. these differences remained even after controlling for self-selection into devices using fig. 2: predicted probabilities for survey experience aspects with signifi cant effects in web and paper mode 0. 2.4 .6. 81 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 interesting web mode 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 important for science 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 long 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 too personal 0. 2.4 .6. 81 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 interesting paper mode 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 too personal note: line = predicted probabilities, shaded area = 95% confi dence intervals, based on unweighted models. source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 293 fig. 3: average marginal effects of regressions on consent to contact partner by devices used in the web mode, unweighted (top) and weighted for self-selection into devices (bottom) s ur ve y as se ss m en t c o nt ro l v ar ia b le s interesting diverse important for science long difficult too personal female 26-30 31-40 41+ intermediate high relationship satisfaction smaller town city german at home no citizenship living together smartphone age, ref. 18-25 education, ref. low municipality, ref. rural -.3 -.2 -.1 0 .1 .2 .3 average marginal effects desktop/laptop smartphone total unweighted s ur ve y as se ss m en t c o nt ro l v ar ia b le s interesting diverse important for science long difficult too personal female 26-30 31-40 41+ intermediate high relationship satisfaction smaller town city german at home no citizenship living together smartphone age, ref. 18-25 education, ref. low municipality, ref. rural -.3 -.2 -.1 0 .1 .2 .3 average marginal effects desktop/laptop smartphone total weighted source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz294 weights (fig. 3, right side). when weighting, we found an effect of perceiving the questionnaire as “important for science” when using a smartphone. as before, figure 4 illustrates that consent rates can be changed by making the questionnaire more “interesting” and reducing the impression of a “too personal” questionnaire, irrespective of the device used to complete the survey. a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “interesting” from “not at all” to “completely” would result in an increase in the consent probability by 21.56 percentage points when using a smartphone and 21.86 percentage points when using another device. similarly, a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “too personal” from “completely” to “not at all” would increase the consent probability by 25.87 percentage points when using a smartphone and 30.00 percentage points when not using a smartphone. only when not utilizing a smartphone, a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “important for science” from “not at all” to “completely” would increase the consent probability by 8.33 percentage points. instead, when using a smartphone, a change in the perception of the questionnaire as “diverse” from “not at all” to “completely” would increase the consent probability by 8.16 percentage points. fig. 4: predicted probabilities for survey experience aspects with signifi cant effects when using a smartphone or no smartphone in the web mode 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 interesting no smartphone 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 important for science 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 too personal 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 interesting smartphone 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 diverse 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 p r( co ns en t) 0 1 2 3 4 too personal note: line = predicted probabilities, shaded area= 95% confi dence intervals, based on unweighted models. source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 295 concerning our third research question on device differences in the consent process, the relationship between survey experience and consent partly differed between devices, but the major effects remained similar. 4 discussion and conclusion with the present study, we sought to investigate the research gap on obtaining the anchors’ consent to invite their partners to participate in a dyadic survey in selfadministered mixed modes (web and paper). specifi cally, we set out to investigate the importance of six dimensions of the anchors’ survey experience (i.e., perceiving the questionnaire as diverse, interesting, important for science, long, diffi cult, or too personal) for obtaining their consent to invite their partners to a dyadic survey. in conclusion, our study shows that a positive survey experience on the part of the anchors increases the likelihood that we obtain the anchors’ consent to invite their partners, making dyadic surveys possible in the fi rst place. maximizing the consent rate is key to increasing the statistical power of dyadic analyses. in freda, 55.09 percent of those anchors with partners provided consent to invite their partners to a survey. across different channels of completing the survey (i.e., different survey modes and device types), we found that whether anchors perceived the questionnaire as “interesting” or “too personal” had an impact on the consent rates. in addition, regarding the anchors’ perception of the questionnaire as “important for science”, “long”, and “diverse”, we found that it depended on the channel used whether these aspects of survey experience impacted consent rates. regarding their magnitude and potential to change consent rates, our analyses yielded that whether anchors perceived the questionnaire as “interesting” or “too personal” had the greatest potential to affect consent. our fi ndings have implications for survey research and practice. first, our focus on the survey experience of anchors was motivated by the fact that this experience can at least indirectly be infl uenced by survey design. thus, it is in the hands of the researcher, for example, which survey modes are offered, whether a responsive questionnaire layout optimized for smartphones is used, what the main topics of the questionnaire are, how many questions are asked, and how many questions relate to sensitive topics. if researchers want to improve anchors’ consent rates in self-administered mixed-mode surveys, we recommend choosing content that respondents fi nd interesting and that relates to their background, regardless of which channels to participate in the survey are offered. in addition, researchers should refrain from asking sensitive questions in the questionnaire, or at least not too many of them. cognitive pretesting methods might yield insights on which topics and questions to include or exclude to achieve this goal. in this regard, our study provides fi rst insights that future research can utilize to effectively allocate its resources. experimental studies are needed to identify and develop elements of survey design that improve respondents’ survey experience and their perceptions of a survey as “interesting” and not “too personal”. our study suggests that changes • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz296 along these dimensions will most likely improve anchors’ consent rates to survey their partners in dyadic surveys. second, with our fi ndings on the relationship between survey experience and consent, we show an opportunity to employ an adaptive survey design (schouten et al. 2018; tourangeau et al. 2017) to increase consent rates among specifi c groups of respondents. such groups might include anchors that are underrepresented in a survey and for which obtaining low consent rates would mean that partnership data would be even more sparse in the fi nal data set (e.g., persons with migration background or low education). these groups could be specifi cally targeted with content they previously rated as interesting or with a limited amount of sensitive content to improve their survey experience. however, in this case, comparability issues due to question order effects and survey burden should be carefully considered. further, as stated above, we recommend using experimental designs to expand on our fi ndings to investigate the feasibility of adaptive survey design techniques. third, following the previous reasoning, dyadic data might be biased because specifi c couples are underrepresented in a survey. socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., education, income) cannot be changed; the survey experience of the anchor, however, can. consequently, it is possible to increase the likelihood of obtaining anchors’ consent to invite their partners and, thus, gather complete couple data. again, adaptive survey designs might target anchors at risk of not providing consent. such measures could increase sample balance and thus reduce bias (schouten et al. 2009; schouten et al. 2016). as always, our study is not without limitations that warrant further research. first, surveying the anchors’ partners in dyadic surveys is at least a three-step process that includes consent, invitation, and participation processes. our study focused on obtaining anchors’ consent as we see merit in investigating each step separately. this separation enabled us to focus on the role of the anchors’ survey experience on consent. when widening the scope, other factors come into play that need to be considered. for instance, considering the partners’ participation process, the information included in the invitation letter and the design of the contact method and materials can be assumed to impact the participation decision. yet, these factors will be of no relevance to the anchors’ consent decision that happened before inviting the partner. given the lack of research on participation of partners in dyadic surveys, we argue that as a starting point, it might be useful to investigate each step to learn about the specifi c mechanisms at play. for future research, we see merit in research that goes beyond our limited perspective and considers the complete three-step process. such research could investigate selection processes happening at each step, comparing each step’s relevance for obtaining net partner cases and how these steps might be related (e.g., spill-over effects). in such studies, an overarching theoretical framework should be developed and tested, including all steps and factors at the design, anchor, partner, and context levels. again, we encourage explorative studies to provide fi rst insights before tackling this complex multi-step process with subsequent experimental studies. gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 297 second, we focused on freda, a large-scale survey that allowed us to dive into detail and investigate different channels of participation, including different survey modes and devices in the web mode while controlling for a set of covariates. nevertheless, replication in different countries is warranted to test the generalizability of our results. furthermore, the target population of freda is relatively young (18 to 49 years), and consent processes might differ for older cohorts. third, utilizing freda enabled us to draw on a high-quality probability-based sample. yet, we were unable to implement an experimental study on consent. thus, our capability to make causal claims is limited. to cope with this challenge, we included control variables in our regression models, conducted missing data analyses, and performed extensive robustness checks for modes and devices. nevertheless, we cannot rule out the possibility of unobserved heterogeneity impacting our fi ndings. thus, we call for experimental studies that expand on our fi ndings and investigate the effects of specifi c survey design characteristics on anchors’ consent rates to survey their partners. it would be an interesting addition to experimentally vary key features of a questionnaire (e.g., content, diffi culty, length, number of sensitive questions) and of survey materials such as invitation letters (e.g., different reasons for participation, the credibility of mentioned survey providers) to study their relationship with providing consent. our study provides fi rst insights that can inform hypotheses and the experimental design of these future studies. the latter seems especially important when implementing it with a probability-based sample, which is likely expensive and limits the number of experimental groups that can be included. we investigated six survey experience dimensions. conducting a fullfactorial experiment with six independent design variations is undoubtedly beyond the ability of many researchers. our study suggests that design characteristics that affect how interesting and sensitive respondents perceive a survey should be investigated fi rst, thus, providing insights that may help to limit the complexity of subsequent experimental research. fourth, we used an ipw approach to disentangle self-selection into modes and devices from mode and device effects as a robustness check. as freda is a newly established panel survey and we drew on early waves, information to model both self-selection processes was relatively sparse. the success of ipw depends on these models. thus, we encourage further research that revisits our research questions with more data, more elaborate models, or with different analytical approaches. acknowledgements this work was funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) as part of freda (grant number 01uw2001b). • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz298 references antoun, christopher; couper, mick p.; conrad, frederick g. 2017: effects of mobile versus pc web on survey response quality: a crossover experiment in a probability web panel. in: public opinion quarterly 81,1: 280-306. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw088 antoun, christopher et al. 2018: 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drop-out? in: journal of offi cial statistics 27,2: 301-318. watson, nicole; wooden, mark 2009: identifying factors affecting longitudinal survey response. in: lynn, peter (ed.): methodology of longitudinal surveys. chichester: wiley: 157-182 west, brady t.; blom, annelies g. 2017: explaining interviewer effects: a research synthesis. in: journal of survey statistics and methodology 5,2: 175-211. https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smw024 wolf, christof et al. 2021: conducting general social surveys as self-administered mixed-mode surveys. in: public opinion quarterly 85,2: 623-648. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfab039 yan, ting; williams, douglas 2022: response burden – review and conceptual framework. in: journal of offi cial statistics 38,4: 939-961. https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2022-0041 date of submission: 27.10.2022 date of acceptance: 14.04.202 dr. tobias gummer (), dr. pablo christmann, dr. tanja kunz. gesis – leibniz institute for the social sciences. mannheim, germany. e-mail: tobias.gummer@gesis.org; pablo.christmann@gesis.org; tanja.kunz@gesis.org url: https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/tobias.gummer https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/pablo.christmann https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/tanja.kunz • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz302 appendix tab. a1: logistic regressions on consent to contact partner by modes web mail total unweighted weighted unweighted weighted unweighted weighted parameter coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) survey experience interesting 0.219*** 0.240*** 0.276** 1.461** 0.226*** 0.300** (0.032) (0.033) (0.084) (0.477) (0.030) (0.111) diverse 0.050 0.049 -0.032 -0.632* 0.038 -0.025 (0.030) (0.030) (0.075) (0.307) (0.028) (0.097) important for science 0.078** 0.084** 0.020 -0.274 0.072** 0.069 (0.026) (0.026) (0.064) (0.215) (0.024) (0.080) long -0.037* -0.027 -0.034 -0.724*** -0.039* -0.147** (0.018) (0.018) (0.043) (0.174) (0.017) (0.056) diffi cult 0.012 0.007 -0.007 -0.078 0.011 0.088 (0.022) (0.022) (0.052) (0.216) (0.020) (0.069) too personal -0.302*** -0.293*** -0.235*** -0.054 -0.291*** -0.228*** (0.019) (0.019) (0.046) (0.170) (0.017) (0.059) female -0.453*** -0.466*** -0.627*** 1.472*** -0.473*** -0.423*** (0.038) (0.038) (0.100) (0.407) (0.035) (0.121) age 18-25 ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. 26-30 -0.162* -0.196** -0.023 -4.881*** -0.147* -0.564* (0.072) (0.072) (0.187) (0.926) (0.067) (0.232) 31-40 -0.376*** -0.388*** -0.271 -1.647** -0.366*** -0.616** (0.065) (0.065) (0.163) (0.539) (0.060) (0.199) 41+ -0.825*** -0.826*** -0.746*** -3.256*** -0.818*** -1.262*** (0.067) (0.068) (0.170) (0.559) (0.063) (0.211) education low ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. intermediate -0.022 -0.079 -0.005 -2.069*** -0.036 -0.486* (0.075) (0.075) (0.157) (0.626) (0.067) (0.231) high 0.239** 0.171* -0.072 -0.535 0.180** -0.098 (0.073) (0.074) (0.160) (0.634) (0.067) (0.227) relationship satisfaction 0.085*** 0.073*** 0.046 -0.347** 0.079*** -0.033 (0.011) (0.011) (0.027) (0.117) (0.010) (0.035) urbanicity rural ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. smaller town 0.006 -0.030 0.239* -0.100 0.038 -0.177 (0.049) (0.049) (0.119) (0.411) (0.045) (0.154) city 0.080 0.053 0.124 -1.698*** 0.087 -0.300 (0.050) (0.051) (0.125) (0.442) (0.046) (0.157) gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 303 tab. a1: continuation note: coef = regression coeffi cient, se = standard error, p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a web mail total unweighted weighted unweighted weighted unweighted weighted parameter coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) german at home 0.025 0.046 0.346 0.746 0.052 0.154 (0.089) (0.089) (0.207) (1.297) (0.081) (0.281) no citizenship 0.205* 0.257** -0.254 -3.632** 0.162 -0.420 (0.094) (0.096) (0.255) (1.272) (0.086) (0.287) living together 1.023*** 1.004*** 1.107*** 1.631** 1.030*** 1.074*** (0.057) (0.058) (0.154) (0.530) (0.053) (0.191) web mode 0.813*** 1.175 *** (0.051) (0.123) intercept -0.949*** -0.901*** -1.629*** 2.840 -1.704*** -0.437 (0.189) (0.191) (0.469) (2.096) (0.179) (0.612) n 13,716 13,709 2,129 2,127 15,845 15,836 pseudo r² 0.084 0.082 0.076 0.382 0.092 0.134 • tobias gummer, pablo christmann, tanja kunz304 tab. a2: logistic regressions on consent to contact partner by device pc smartphone total unweighted weighted unweighted weighted unweighted weighted parameter coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) survey experience interesting 0.226*** 0.277*** 0.219*** 0.216*** 0.221*** 0.244*** (0.047) (0.048) (0.045) (0.046) (0.032) (0.033) diverse 0.020 -0.007 0.083* 0.112** 0.053 0.056 (0.044) (0.044) (0.041) (0.042) (0.030) (0.030) important for science 0.087* 0.101* 0.067 0.072* 0.076** 0.085** (0.039) (0.040) (0.035) (0.035) (0.026) (0.026) long -0.050 -0.045 -0.010 0.012 -0.030 -0.016 (0.027) (0.027) (0.025) (0.026) (0.018) (0.018) diffi cult 0.039 0.042 -0.016 -0.021 0.009 0.008 (0.032) (0.032) (0.029) (0.030) (0.022) (0.022) too personal -0.334*** -0.311*** -0.274*** -0.285*** -0.300*** -0.297*** (0.028) (0.028) (0.025) (0.026) (0.019) (0.019) female -0.362*** -0.379*** -0.498*** -0.506*** -0.435*** -0.445*** (0.056) (0.057) (0.052) (0.052) (0.038) (0.038) age 18-25 ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. 26-30 -0.141 -0.143 -0.205* -0.260** -0.168* -0.199** (0.114) (0.110) (0.093) (0.098) (0.072) (0.073) 31-40 -0.379*** -0.350*** -0.411*** -0.478*** -0.388*** -0.416*** (0.104) (0.100) (0.084) (0.088) (0.065) (0.066) 41+ -0.869*** -0.764*** -0.857*** -0.919*** -0.855*** -0.841*** (0.105) (0.103) (0.090) (0.092) (0.068) (0.069) education low ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. intermediate 0.191 -0.016 -0.157 -0.165 -0.032 -0.101 (0.123) (0.114) (0.095) (0.101) (0.075) (0.076) high 0.396*** 0.186 0.116 0.121 0.214** 0.145 (0.120) (0.112) (0.094) (0.099) (0.074) (0.074) relationship satisfaction 0.102*** 0.083*** 0.068*** 0.066*** 0.085*** 0.075*** (0.016) (0.016) (0.015) (0.015) (0.011) (0.011) urbanicity rural ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. ref. smaller town 0.023 -0.060 -0.004 -0.016 0.008 -0.038 (0.075) (0.073) (0.065) (0.067) (0.049) (0.050) city 0.028 -0.048 0.113 0.111 0.078 0.038 (0.075) (0.075) (0.068) (0.069) (0.050) (0.051) gaining consent to survey respondents’ partners • 305 tab. a2: continuation note: coef = regression coeffi cient, se = standard error, p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. source: own calculations based on freda w1r and w1a pc smartphone total unweighted weighted unweighted weighted unweighted weighted parameter coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) coeff (se) german at home -0.042 0.054 0.081 0.025 0.029 0.038 (0.135) (0.130) (0.120) (0.122) (0.089) (0.089) no citizenship 0.130 0.225 0.269* 0.256* 0.201* 0.232* (0.141) (0.140) (0.128) (0.131) (0.095) (0.095) living together 0.945*** 0.848*** 1.110*** 1.141*** 1.031*** 0.996*** (0.084) (0.085) (0.078) (0.080) (0.057) (0.058) device -0.154*** -0.122** (0.038) (0.037) intercept -0.944*** -0.806** -1.013*** -1.030*** -0.884*** -0.844*** (0.281) (0.274) (0.260) (0.267) (0.190) (0.191) n 6,288 6,285 7,421 7,417 13,709 13,702 pseudo r² 0.089 0.081 0.081 0.085 0.085 0.082 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey herbert brücker, andreas ette, markus m. grabka, yuliya kosyakova, wenke niehues, nina rother, c. katharina spieß, sabine zinn, martin bujard, adriana r. cardozo silva, jean philippe décieux, amrei maddox, nadja milewski, lenore sauer, sophia schmitz, silvia schwanhäuser, manuel siegert, hans steinhauer, kerstin tanis abstract: this study describes the fi rst wave of the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany, a unique panel dataset based on over 11,000 interviews conducted between august and october 2022. the aim of the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey is to provide a data-infrastructure for theorydriven and evidence-based research on various aspects of integration among ukrainian refugees in germany, the second most important destination country in the eu after poland, hosting over a million people who arrived in germany shortly after the russian invasion of ukraine. based on the survey, this study also provides fi rst insights into demographic, educational, linguistic, occupational, and social characteristics of this population. the analyses revealed that the refugee population comprised mostly young and educated individuals, with a signifi cant proportion of females without partners and female-headed separated families. while german language skills were limited, about half of ukrainian refugees had attended or were attending language courses. however, the integration process faced signifi cant challenges, as the participation of children in day-care was relatively low, and the self-reported life satisfaction was markedly below the average of the german population. the study highlights the need for targeted policy measures to address such issues. additionally, policies may aim at harnessing the high potential of the ukrainian refugees for the german labor market. given that a substantial proportion would like to stay in germany permanently, policymakers should take note of these fi ndings and aim to facilitate their long-term integration process to ensure that these refugees may thrive in germany. keywords: refugees · self-selection · family · education · labor market · integration · ukraine comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 395-424 (date of release: 08.08.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-16en2 • herbert brücker et al.396 1 background the russian invasion of ukraine has caused the largest displacement of people in europe since the end of world war ii. as of december 2022, 5.9 million ukrainians have been displaced internally. an additional 7.9 million sought refuge abroad (unhcr 2023). with approximately one million refugees germany became the second most important destination country for ukrainian citizens, after poland with about 1.6 million (unhcr 2023). the population of ukrainian citizens residing in germany increased sevenfold since the onset of the confl ict. it made up to 9.0 percent of the foreign population by the end of 2022 and 1.4 percent of the total resident population in the country. with the growing infl ux of refugees from middle eastern and north african countries (e.g., syria, afghanistan) in the last decade, research on fl ight and displacement has developed rapidly, particularly in germany (e.g., fitzgerald/ arar 2018; kogan/kalter 2020). it is now widely recognized that, for various reasons, refugees have poorer integration and participation opportunities than other immigrants. due to war and persecution, refugees often have limited time to prepare for migration, which is compounded by the host countries’ lack of (time for) preparation for sudden increases in refugee infl ux. refugees are more likely to be mentally or physically impaired due to traumatic events related to war, persecution, and fl eeing; and they face limited access to social networks and other important resources in the destination countries (e.g., brell et al. 2020; dustmann et al. 2017; kosyakova/kogan 2022). relatively restrictive housing, learning, work and mobility conditions during the asylum procedure and individual experiences of rejection and discrimination in the destination countries also reduce refugees’ chances for participation and integration (di saint pierre et al. 2015; hainmueller et al. 2016; kosyakova/brenzel 2020). family structure, including those left behind, and opportunities for family reunifi cation are important factors shaping integration processes and educational opportunities of children, adolescents, and adults (kraus et al. 2019; löbel/jacobsen 2021). this also stresses the importance of institutional daycare for children below school age and school access for school aged children (e.g., bujard et al. 2020; gambaro et al. 2020, 2021). the current infl ux of ukrainian refugees to germany differs from previous waves of refugees, compared, for example, to those from poland and iran in the late 1970s, romania and turkey in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as those from afghanistan, iraq, and syria since 2013 (e.g., brücker 2022; brücker et al. 2022). due to the general mobilization in ukraine and the travel ban for men of military age, the current refugee infl ux is mainly composed of women, children, and older people (bmi 2023). in contrast, the refugees arriving between 2013 and 2016 were mostly young men (brücker et al. 2020). moreover, the relatively new war situation and the uncertainty regarding the further course of the war and its outcome contributes to particularly high levels of uncertainty among refugees regarding their stay in germany and the possibility and intentions of returning. the institutional framework for the reception of ukrainian refugees in germany also differs fundamentally from that of previous refugees. firstly, ukrainians have had ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 397 the possibility of visa-free entry to germany and all other schengen countries since 2017. secondly, the activation of the “temporary protection directive” (2001/55/ec) by the european union (eu) has provided immediate legal and planning security. by waiving the asylum procedure and issuing a temporary residence permit until march 2024, this directive has expedited access to employment and integration opportunities. thirdly, unlike other refugees, ukrainians in germany were not required to stay in reception facilities designated for refugees and were not generally subject to distribution policies. these policies were, however, implemented for ukrainian refugees who relied on social benefi ts and public housing. fourthly, beginning june 2022, ukrainian refugees were eligible for basic social benefi ts under the code of social law ii (sozialgesetzbuch ii) instead of the asylum seekers benefi ts act (asylbewerberleistungsgesetz), resulting in higher benefi t rates and integration into the support structure of german job centers including access to language classes. these accompanying factors in the ukraine and germany have triggered not only demographic differences between ukrainian and other refugees, but also have an impact on their prospects for integration, highlighting the need for a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of ukrainian refugees. despite the urgent need for empirical research on ukrainian refugees, who fl ed their country following the russian invasion in february 2022, available data are scarce and often non-representative. existing studies have mostly relied on convenience samples collected at registration or support centers in the host countries (fra 2023; kohlenberger et al. 2022; pędziwiatr et al., 2022), on online surveys conducted via social media or other channels (e.g., panchenko 2022; pötzschke et al. 2022), or on qualitative interviews (kjeøy/tyldum 2022). for instance, a recent convenience sample conducted in poland and austria by kohlenberger et al. (2022) indicated that refugees from ukraine were predominantly highly educated women aged over 25, with a higher proportion in austria than in poland. following pędziwiatr et al. (2022), the overwhelming majority of partnered female refugees from ukraine lived in poland without their partners but with their children, implicating pronounced family separation within this refugee population. the european union agency for fundamental rights conducted an online survey in ten european countries, reporting that almost one third of respondents intended to return to ukraine after the war, while a similar proportion wanted to remain in the host country (fra 2023). while these studies have provided valuable insights into some aspects of self-selection of ukrainian refugees and family separation, their limitations lie in the lack of representativeness and the small sample size. thus, further research based on representative data is urgently needed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the situation of ukrainian refugees. given the defi cits described above, this study reports fi rst results from the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany, a panel survey conducted by the institute for employment research (iab), the federal institute for population research (bib), the research centre of the federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bamf-fz), and the socio-economic panel (soep) at the german institute for economic research (diw). the survey aimed to examine how the conditions of the war in ukraine and the institutional and legal frameworks • herbert brücker et al.398 governing refugee resettlement in germany shape the demographic and integration patterns of ukrainian refugees and their impact on society as a whole. the study’s results based on the fi rst wave of data collection provide valuable insights that can inform effective policies and programs aimed at facilitating the participation and integration of ukrainian refugees in germany, making it a solid basis for evidencebased decision-making in the context of refugee reception and integration. 2 data: iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany is based on a random sample of 811,000 ukrainian nationals who have sought protection in germany between the beginning of the russian invasion on february 24, 2022, and the beginning of june 2022. the sample was based on two available administrative registers in germany – the population register (einwohnermelderegister – emr) and the central register of foreigners (ausländerzentralregister – azr) – which have been used in similar studies in the past (e.g., babka von gostomski/pupeter 2008; brücker et al. 2017; duszczyk et al. 2023; ette et al. 2021). the combination of both registers allowed to rapidly construct a high-quality sampling base. for the sampling of ukrainian refugees in germany, a two-stage procedure was implemented. on the fi rst stage, 100 cities and counties across the 16 federal states in germany have been randomly drawn, considering daily updated information on the regional distribution of ukrainian refugees registered in the azr. the emr was utilized in the second stage. a gross sample of 48,000 ukrainian nationals aged between 18 and 70 years who fi rst registered in germany on or after february 24, 2022, was drawn.1 note that the majority of refugees who fl ed to germany between march and november 2022 were already registered in the azr at the time of sampling (81 percent). the registration was carried out by both immigration (of the municipalities and free cities – ausländerbehörde) and registration offi ces (einwohnermeldeämtern). due to the high number of individuals wanting to register, there were very likely delays on the part of the authorities. however, there is no reason to assume that this process resulted in systematic missing data. moreover, the azr fi gures were only used to form the clusters for the random sample and not for sampling the refugees themselves. this was done using a sample from the registration offi ces, which had a response rate of almost 100 percent at the gross level. 1 considering that a potential russian invasion was already becoming evident in early 2022, we made sure to include individuals who had departed from ukraine as early as january 2022 in our analyses. the restriction to individuals who entered germany starting from february 24, 2022, was based on the defi nition of our population, which we determined for the purpose of sampling. nonetheless, we replicated our analyses restricting our sample to those who departed after february, 24, 2022 (281 observations were dropped). our results were robust to this adjustment and are available upon request. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 399 the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany was conducted based on a push-to-web mixed-mode design that combined the advantages of postal recruitment with those of an online survey. this design has previously been used for other spatially mobile populations in germany (dillman 2017; ette et al. 2021; sakshaug et al. 2019). for this purpose, all 48,000 individuals in the gross sample were invited to participate in the survey online through a letter sent by postal mail. two weeks after the initial invitation, a postal reminder was sent to all non-respondents and provided the option of completing a paper questionnaire instead of the online questionnaire and returning it free of charge. the questionnaire was intentionally kept brief, with a median survey duration of 19.7 minutes among those participating online. the questionnaire covered a variety of topics, including education, employment, individual fi nancial situation in ukraine and germany, participation in integration measures, family situation and social contacts, intentions to stay in germany, accommodation, individual demands for help and assistance as well as the health situation of respondents and their children. the content of the questionnaire was based on the iab-bamf-soep survey of refugees in germany (brücker et al. 2016, 2017) and the german family demography panel study (freda) (bujard et al. 2022; schneider et al. 2021). a total of 11,763 persons took part in the survey, of whom 9,525 persons (81 percent of the net sample) participated online and 2,238 persons (19 percent of the net sample) by mail. the overall response rate was about 25 percent (aapor response rate 1), which is comparable to studies with similar research designs or target groups (cornesse et al. 2022; kroh et al. 2017; lynn 2020). the comparison of the distribution of key demographic characteristics of respondents with the distribution of all ukrainian refugees registered between february 24, 2022, and september 30, 2022, as known from the azr, revealed little evidence of systematic bias in the sample, indicating a high quality of the data. a special weighting compensated for the different participation behaviors in the various groups. the results of the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany can be generalized to ukrainian nationals who fl ed to germany during the initial months of the invasion. the data thus provides reliable evidence for this group.2 for the following analyses, we excluded respondents who reported to having left ukraine before 2022 or having entered germany before february 24, 2022. as a result, the original data was reduced to 10,818 observations. 2 the survey exclusively involved the participation of randomly selected individuals, excluding members of their households. however, it is crucial to emphasize that the data represent the entire population of displaced ukrainians in germany aged 18 to 70 years, which includes both the surveyed individuals and their household members who also had the chance to be drawn into the sample. • herbert brücker et al.400 3 results 3.1 reasons for fl eeing and the route to germany since the beginning of russian invasion of ukraine, a signifi cant number of ukrainian nationals has fl ed the country. as of november 2022, over one million ukrainian refugees have been registered in germany (unhcr 2023). the results of the iabbib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany show that almost all ukrainians who fl ed to germany reported that they left ukraine because of the war (96 percent). among further reasons for fl eeing ukraine, family context and personal networks were important triggers for 18 percent (e.g., they were sent by family), poor economic conditions were named by 10 percent. the fact that war and, thus, humanitarian reasons were among the main motives for fl eeing ukraine was also refl ected in the refugees’ last regions of residence within ukraine. numerous studies have demonstrated that violence in a region is a central driver of increased refugee movements from that region (e.g., aksoy/ poutvaara 2019; schon 2019). it is assumed that people living in regions where armed confl icts prevail are more likely to migrate than those living in more peaceful regions. in ukraine, as in other confl ict areas, the population is affected differently by the russian invasion, with armed confl icts primarily concentrated in larger cities and their surrounding areas (raleigh et al. 2010). particularly, after putin declared war or a “special military operation” in the early morning on february 24, 2022, the ukrainian government confi rmed airstrikes targeting military sites in kyiv, kharkiv, and dnipro, along with artillery fi re at the border. in the fi rst days, the ukrainian forces intensively held back russian advances on the ukrainian capital kyiv, while warning that the city might succumb in a matter of days (chance et al. 2022). in early april 2022, ukrainian resistance successfully compelled russian forces to retreat from northern parts of ukraine following intense fi ghts (reuters 2022). subsequently, the focus of the warfare shifted primarily to the eastern and southern regions of ukraine. by mid-summer 2022, russian forces had gained control over signifi cant portions of ukraine’s southern coastline and a larger area of the donbas region compared to the time before the invasion. accordingly, the proportion of ukrainian refugees in germany is higher from areas affected by armed confl ict. in absolute numbers, the majority of refugees arrived from eastern ukraine (32 percent), kyiv (19 percent) and southern ukraine (14 percent). relative to the population size in the 27 ukrainian regions, the majority of refugees arrived from the city of kyiv (5 percent) and the oblast (county) of kharkiv (4 percent), as well as the more western oblast (county) of chernivtsi (fig. 1). further analyses also show that people from more urban regions are more likely to seek protection abroad than those living in rural areas. same as the reasons for fl eeing, family factors and networks also played a major role for choosing germany as a destination country: overall, 60 percent of ukrainian refugees came to germany because their family members, friends and acquaintances already lived here. in addition to these family and network-related factors, specifi c characteristics attributed to germany also played a role. for ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 401 instance, 29 percent of the respondents cited respect for human rights as one of the reasons for choosing germany, another 12 percent cited the welcoming culture. state and structural features such as the german welfare system (22 percent), the german education system (12 percent) and the economic situation (10 percent) were further reasons mentioned by ukrainian refugees. about 18 percent reported having arrived in germany by chance. the vast majority of the sampled ukrainian refugees arrived with family members, friends, or acquaintances (80 percent), including 61 percent who arrived with members of their nuclear family (partners and in particular minor children). 3.2 (self-)selection among the refugee population focusing on demographic and human capital characteristics, ukrainian refugees in germany are highly selective compared to the average ukrainian population. following the information provided by the state statistics service of ukraine (2022), the median age of the refugees (28 years) was signifi cantly lower than that of the total ukrainian population (41 years as of january 1, 2021). the share of women was much higher than in the ukrainian population as a whole: women made up 68 percent of all refugees (54 percent of the whole population in ukraine) and 80 percent were between the ages of 18 and 70 (compared to 53 percent of the population in ukraine). the war also had and has comprehensive effects on partnerships and families in ukraine and on germany’s refugee population from ukraine. 54 percent of the adult refugees in germany were married, 26 percent were single, 16 percent were fig. 1: percentage of refugees compared to the population of the region of origin 2.2 5.0 0.9 2.2 0.6 0.9 0.0 0.6 share of refugees on the population in the region of origin, in % note: results are weighted by the total number of ukrainian refugees registered in germany by 31 may 2022. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022; state statistics service of ukraine 2022. • herbert brücker et al.402 divorced, and 5 percent were widowed. however, there are signifi cant differences in partnership status of male and female refugees. three thirds of female refugees lived in germany without a partner (34 percent of the female respondents reported that their partner lived abroad, 41 percent reported having no partner, table 1). almost half of the women (48 percent) lived with minor children in germany, but the majority of them had a partner living in ukraine or in a third country. among men, 6 percent had a partner living abroad, and 21 percent were single. only few of the male refugees lived in germany with minor children and no partner. ukrainian families with minors in germany were most prevalent in the age group 20 to 49 years. approximately 62 percent among the women in this age group had minor children in germany (table 1). around 11 percent of mothers with children under 18 years had at least one other child living abroad. the average educational level of ukrainian refugees in germany was signifi cantly higher than the average among the population in the country of origin but also higher than that of the german population (fig. 2): 72 percent of the refugees aged 20-70 years reported having tertiary, mostly academic, educational qualifi cations, compared to 50 percent of the total population of ukraine. among ukrainian refugees with tertiary education, 5 percent had a doctorate, 72 percent a master’s degree and 23 percent held a bachelor’s or other tertiary degree. these fi ndings tab. 1: family and household structure of female ukrainian refugees in germany, in percent women women (aged 18-70) (aged 20-49) with a spouse or partner in germany (de) 22 22 ... with minor children in de 12 16 ... without minor children in de 6 1 ... no children 5 5 spouse or partner abroad 34 39 ... with minor children in de 23 30 ... without minor children in de 6 2 ... no children 5 6 partnerless 41 38 ... with minor children in de 13 16 ... without minor children in de 11 3 ... no children 17 19 total with minor children in de 48 62 no information on the residence of child 2 and / or partner total 100 100 note: n = 10,999. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 403 thus confi rmed earlier studies on refugees in germany, which also demonstrated positive selection on education (birgier et al. 2018; kosyakova/kogan 2022). 3.3 health status people who fl ee because of violence or armed confl ict are usually exposed to high levels of psychological stress. in addition, fl ight is also often associated with physical stress, which can have a negative impact on the physical well-being and health of refugees (erim/brähler 2016; metzing et al. 2020). however, it is mainly the healthier people who leave their home country, while the sicker ones stay behind (e.g., markides/rote 2019). overall, 39 percent of adult ukrainian refugees rated their health as very good or good, only 10 percent as poor or very poor. among those who reported poor health, approximately half indicated a need for medical assistance. age, gender, educational level, and type of accommodation are signifi cantly correlated with fig. 2: education and qualifi cation of ukrainian refugees in germany compared to the ukrainian and german population, in percent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 primary / secondary education vocational education tertiary education 14 53 33 25 26 50 18 11 72 refugees from ukraine in germany population in ukraine population in germany note: harmonization of education and training qualifi cations is based on the international standard classifi cation of education (isced 2011). the analysis of education and qualifi cation levels is restricted to the population in the range 20-70 years because of postharmonization issues with the ukrainian labor force survey. n = 234,595. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022, the labor force survey ukraine 2021, and soepv37. • herbert brücker et al.404 refugees’ self-rated health, with those younger, male, those with higher education, and those living in private accommodation being more likely to rate their health as good or very good (fig. 3). in contrast, older refugees, female refugees, those with a low to medium level of education, and those living in shared accommodation were more likely to rate their health as poor. additionally, refugees whose children (all or some) have remained in ukraine were much more likely to report poor health than those who lived with their children in germany. these fi ndings are robust, even after accounting for gender and age (not shown here), albeit with smaller yet still statistically signifi cant differences between the groups. there is no evidence suggesting that refugees were selected based on subjective health status with respect to their partner’s place of residence. nevertheless, mental well-being of refugees who had a partner residing in ukraine at the time of the survey was notably inferior compared to those refugees whose partners were present in germany (5.7 versus 6.0 on an 11-point likert scale, see also the section on life satisfaction below). fig. 3: subjective health of adult ukrainian refugees, percentage with very good or good health 18-30 31-40 41-65 older than 65 women men low education moderate education high education shared accommodation private accommodation partner in germany partner in ukraine partnerless all children in germany all children abroad some children abroad childless 47 51 29 9 39 42 27 32 43 33 41 40 40 39 41 25 24 47 age gender accommodation partner education children note: n = 10,818. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 405 the majority of ukrainian parents (60 percent) reported that their oldest child3 living in germany had been happy in the past week (i.e., laughed a lot and had fun). nevertheless, 12 percent stated that their children “rarely” or “never” experienced such emotions (fig. 4). despite this, a comparison revealed that the psychological well-being of ukrainian children and adolescents who have fl ed to germany were signifi cantly below the representative reference and normative values of other children and adolescents living in germany across all age groups (e.g., ravenssieberer et al. 2007, 2008). 3.4 arrival in germany, housing, and intentions to stay ensuring swift legal certainty regarding residence status is crucial for both the process of arrival and refugees’ further integration (brücker et al. 2016). the results from the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany indicated that the application and granting of residence titles was relatively fast. within the fi rst month after arrival, 59 percent of refugees had applied for a residence permit. this share increased to 94 percent in the fi rst two months and reached almost 99 percent after six months of stay. at the time of the interview, 76 percent of ukrainian refugees had obtained a residence permit under section 24 of the residence act (aufenthg), i.e., the specifi c provision which implements 3 the psychological well-being of the eldest child in the household of a refugee parent in germany was surveyed. assessments were based on the four items of the kindl subscale (e.g., ravens-sieberer et al. 2007) of psychological well-being (fig. 3). by adding up the single items, we constructed a single value ranging from 0-100 by child age groups that are comparable to the existing literature. further analysis shows that the separation of family members, usually fathers, appears to be a particular stress factor which is refl ected in signifi cant lower values of psychological well-being for all age groups, while type of accommodation is not signifi cantly correlated with the well-being of children. fig. 4: psychological well-being of ukrainian children and adolescents, in percent … my child laughed a lot and had fun … my child did not feel like doing anything … my child felt alone … my child felt anxious or unsafe 1 11 28 47 13 16 36 30 16 2 35 25 27 12 2 26 34 28 11 1 never rarely sometimes often always in the last week... note: parental data on the kindlr question items “psychological well-being”. the population is all parents with at least one child aged 3 to 17 years in germany; asked about the well-being of the oldest child. n = 4,631-4,669. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. • herbert brücker et al.406 the “temporary protection directive” (2001/55/ec) of the eu into national law in germany and issues a temporary residence permit until march 4, 2024. among other things, this residence permit gives ukrainian refugees the opportunity to work in germany and to use various counselling and integration services. a further 18 percent obtained a provisional residence permit (fiktionsbescheinigung), which is issued to applicants pending the granting of a residence permit. only a few (2 percent) had another type of residence title or were staying in germany without a visa (3 percent). the majority of ukrainian refugees, thus, have legal security and certainty until march 4, 2024, which provides them with some time-horizon for planning. a large majority of ukrainian refugees felt welcome upon arrival in germany (33 percent “completely welcome”, and 43 percent “mostly welcome”). only a minority felt not at all or hardly welcome (7 percent). the feeling of being welcome was similarly strong among different groups. the housing situation is a key determinant for the social integration of all population groups (e.g., ager/strang 2008; baier/siegert 2018). at the same time, it may pose social and fi nancial challenges for the municipalities concerned: the high infl ux of refugees and their spatial concentration has caused great concern within the municipalities, states, and the federal government about settlement patterns and housing supply (mediendienst integration 2023). by the time of the survey, 74 percent were living in private apartments and houses, another 17 percent were in other accommodations, such as hotels and guesthouses, and only 9 percent lived in shared accommodation. of those in private accommodation, 60 percent were living alone or with family members who had also fl ed. one fourth lived with friends, acquaintances, or family members, who had already been living in germany before the russian invasion, and 15 percent lived with other persons (fig. 5). only 16 percent of ukrainian refugees reported to having been subject to distribution policies by german authorities. fig. 5: ukrainian refugees by type of accommodation, in percent 9 17 74 60 25 15 type of accommodation moved into somebody's place nobody family, friends or acquaintances other peopleshared accommodation other accommodation private apartment/house note: type of accommodation: n = 10,792, moving into an existing household: n = 7,821. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 407 settlement intentions and intended duration of stay are of central importance for both refugees’ own plans as well as the government’s planning and implementation of mediumand long-term support and integration measures. the survey results revealed a pronounced heterogeneity of the settlement intentions of ukrainian refugees, with 34 percent planning to stay in germany until the end of the war, of whom 81 percent intended to return to ukraine. permanent stay in germany was planned by 26 percent of ukrainian refugees, while 11 percent planned to stay for a fig. 6: ukrainian refugees’ intentions to stay in germany, in percent 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 in % total men women 18-30 31-40 41-65 66 years and older low/medium high west kyiv north center east south no partner in germany abroad no children all children in germany some children in ukraine all children in ukraine forever serveral years until the end of the war one year at most don't know c hi ld re n' s p la ce o f re si d en ce p ar tn er 's pl ac e o f re si d en ce r eg io n o fo ri gi n in u kr ai ne e d uc at io n a ge g en d er note: educational background was defi ned as follows: high: university degree (isced 5 and above), low / medium: no university degree (isced below 5). totals may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. n = 10,690-10,818. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. • herbert brücker et al.408 few years and 2 percent for a maximum of one year. around 27 percent remained uncertain and did not know yet how long they would like to stay in germany. women, older (66 years or older) and higher educated persons less frequently wanted to stay forever in germany than men, people younger than 66 years, and persons with lower or intermediate educational attainments (fig. 6). refugees who lived in kyiv or northern ukraine before fl eeing to germany, less often wanted to stay forever than ukrainians from other parts of the country. moreover, the shares of persons intending to stay permanently in germany was lowest among refugees whose partner lived abroad and highest among those whose partner also resided in germany. single adults took an intermediate position. among those groups with lower shares of individuals wanting to stay in germany forever, refugees more frequently wanted to stay until the end of the war. the other options (several years, one year at most, don’t know) were more evenly distributed across groups. 3.5 language profi ciency and participation in language courses german language skills are a key prerequisite for establishing contacts, gaining access to the labor market and education as well as for participation in the destination country at large (kosyakova et al. 2022; niehues et al. 2021). however, refugees have little to no time to build up destination-specifi c resources, such as language fig. 7: self-assessment of german profi ciency, in percent higher education low/medium education not employed employed 66 years and older 31-65 years 18-30 years men women total 83 14 4 82 14 4 86 12 2 71 20 9 86 12 3 94 5 1 72 16 12 85 13 3 86 12 2 81 14 5 low medium high note: german profi ciency is averaged across self-assessed competencies in the dimensions of speaking, reading, and writing. categories were created as follows: low: not at all and rather bad; medium: okay; and high: good and very good. educational background was defi ned as follows: high: university degree (isced 5 and above), low / medium: no university degree (isced below 5). totals may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. n = 10,769-10,815. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 409 skills, in advance of the fl ight (kosyakova/kogan 2022). it is not surprising, therefore, that the majority of ukrainian refugees – 83 percent – reported no or rather poor knowledge of the german language, 14 percent had average and 4 percent had good or very good german skills. predominantly well-educated, employed, and younger refugees rated their german language skills above average (fig. 7). slightly more than half of ukrainian refugees had attended or already completed a german language course at the time of the survey (51 percent). of these, 35 percent had attended or completed an integration or other state-funded language course, 15 percent had attended or completed a different language course and 1 percent had combined integration or other government-provisioned language courses with other courses. the participation in german language courses increased signifi cantly with the length of stay. while only 9 percent of ukrainian refugees were attending german language courses two months after arrival, this share increased to 33 percent after four months and to 49 percent after six months of stay (fig. 8). participation in language courses varied by settlement intentions, with those having intentions to fig. 8: inverted kaplan-meier estimation of language course participation by months since arrival in germany, in percent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 2 3 4 5 6 total uncertain intention to stay temporary intention to stay long-term intention to stay month since arrival in germany 2 25 38 47 57 1 8 18 27 33 41 2 9 23 34 43 51 2 22 33 41 49 9 10 in percent note: n = 10,128. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. • herbert brücker et al.410 stay in germany for longer periods showing higher participation/completion rates of german language courses than refugees rather intending a short stay. 3.6 daycare and school participation children and adolescents make up a signifi cant proportion of those seeking protection in germany (see section 3.2): almost every second ukrainian woman who fl ed to germany came with at least one minor child – among men, the fi gure was 44 percent. attending a daycare center or school is a fundamentally important component of integration and participation in german society for children and young people with a refugee background (e.g., wissenschaftlicher beirat für familienfragen 2016). it can also facilitate the social and labor market integration of parents, e.g., parents can attend language courses or pursue gainful employment during this time (e.g., gambaro et al. 2021). among ukrainian refugees living with one child in germany,4 22 percent of children under the age of three and 59 percent of children between the age of three and school-entry age attended a daycare center. children whose parents were either employed in germany or were attending a language or integration course signifi cantly more often attend daycare compared to children whose parents were neither employed nor participating in any language courses. moreover, a lack of support from partners or grandparents residing in germany also correlated with higher rates of daycare attendance. turning to school-aged children, the survey results revealed that 91 percent of refugee families had at least one child attending school in germany, with a high proportion of primary school children (41 percent). around a quarter of families had children in grammar and secondary schools and just under 10 percent in comprehensive schools. in just under a third of these families, the children attended special classes for refugee children, known as willkommensklassen in some german states. additionally, in 23 percent of the families, at least one child took online lessons from a ukrainian school. the use of ukrainian online lessons varied by the intentions to stay and the age of the child. most children used these online services in conjunction with their schooling in germany, with less than 3 percent exclusively relying on ukrainian online lessons. given that schooling is compulsory for children from the age of 6 up to the completion of eight or nine school years (depending on state regulations), the high enrollment rate of ukrainian refugee children in german schools is not surprising. 4 due to the survey specifi cities, statements on usage of daycare centers are only possible for refugees with one child in germany (53 percent of refugee families with underage children). this should be considered when interpreting the daycare rates. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 411 3.7 labor market integration compared to other migrant groups, refugees often face greater challenges in integrating into the destination countries’ labor markets due to their poor starting conditions in terms of language skills and lack of professional networks. therefore, labor market integration generally takes longer for refugees than for other migrant groups, particularly compared to migrants who arrived for job reasons (brell et al. 2020; kosyakova/kogan 2022). additionally, legal restrictions such as employment bans and uncertainty about the outcome of asylum procedures often delay their integration (hainmueller et al. 2016; kosyakova/brenzel 2020). however, in the case of ukrainian refugees, legal conditions were more favorable as they were not subject to employment bans and had a residence permit for at least the fi rst two years. nevertheless, the uncertainty surrounding the war in ukraine created signifi cant uncertainty regarding their intentions to stay and, consequently, their labor market integration. by the time of the survey, 17 percent of ukrainian refugees were employed in germany. further 78 percent expressed working aspirations, with 56 percent reporting that they defi nitely (56 percent) or probably (22 percent) would like to start working. of refugees with working aspiration, 26 percent wanted to start immediately, 57 percent in the next year and 16 percent in two to fi ve years. according to the survey results, 74 percent of non-employed ukrainian refugees were registered as unemployed and thus included in the support and placement infrastructure of the job centers. of this group, 21 percent had been actively seeking work in the four weeks prior to the survey. there were initially hardly any differences in employment rates between refugee men and women who had just arrived. however, an employment gender gap emerged over the duration of stay in germany: only 16 percent of women were employed six months after arrival, compared to 24 percent of men (fig. 9). the pattern of an increasing gender gap in the labor market participation of refugees has already been evident in recent years for previous refugee groups (kosyakova et al. 2022). among employed ukrainian refugees in germany, 83 percent were engaged in white-collar work (mainly with intellectual activities), 8 percent in blue-collar work (mainly with manual activities) and 8 percent were self-employed. the service sector accounted for 88 percent of employed refugees; 85 percent worked in this sector before coming to germany. moreover, of those employed, 30 percent had a job requiring a university degree, 19 percent had a job requiring higher specialist training (e.g., a vocational academy) and 22 percent held a job requiring a vocational training qualifi cation (fig. 10). just 29 percent worked in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. accordingly, 71 percent of ukrainian refugees worked in skilled or highly skilled occupations, which was, however, signifi cantly lower than the proportion who did so before arriving in germany (93 percent). figure 11 illustrates multivariate results for impact of socio-demographic factors on refugees’ employment probability based on the linear probability model with robust standard errors. the interaction effects between gender and children’s • herbert brücker et al.412 fig. 9: employment rates by sex and time since arrival, in percent of population in working age (18-64 years) 0 10 20 30 <= 3 4 5 >= 6 months since arrival 16 15 16 1717 11 15 16 14 24 22 24 men women total in percent note: gainful employment is defi ned as engaging in paid or self-employed activities. n = 10,076. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. fig. 10: job skill level of ukrainian refugees before and after immigration, in percent of the working population occupations with university education occupations with higher specialist training occupations with vocational training semi-skilled and unskilled workers 30 19 22 29 41 30 22 7 before immigration current note: occupations have been classifi ed in terms of the educational qualifi cations required for employment according to oesch (2006). before immigration: n = 8,091; after immigration: n = 1,346. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 413 daycare or school attendance imply that female refugees from ukraine are less likely to be employed than their male counterparts only if they are constrained by childcare responsibilities. in particular, the results from the interaction effects between gender and children’s childcare situation reveal that women living with their minor children were less likely to be employed than women without children, especially if their children did not attend daycare centers. conversely, for men there was no signifi cant correlation between the presence of children in the household and the likelihood of being employed (fig. 11). factors such as the educational level (university degree), previous work experience, previous residence in germany, knowledge of the german language, and living in private accommodation were all positively associated with employment probability. at the same time, being subject to distribution policies was negatively associated with employment chances for both sexes. further analyses suggest some gender-specifi c returns to education: for women, employment chances fig. 11: association of different characteristics of refugees and their employment status, average marginal effect in percentage points ** ** ** *** ** *** ** *** *** * *** *** female children in childcare facilities children not in childcare facilities children over 18 or abroad children in childcare facilities # female children not in childcare facilities # female children over 18 or abroad # female with vocational qualification university degree incl. doctorate other qualification employed before moving to germany previous residence in germany (very) good knowledge in german moved to germany for family reasons move back to ukraine move to another country unceratin (very) good health housing situation: private accommodation allocation of residence by authorities children's childcare situation: ref. no children interaction effects educational attainment, ref.: without vocational qualification intentions to stay: ref. permanently in germany -20 -10 0 10 20 30 average marginal effect in percentage points with 95% confidence interval note: linear regression model with huber-white sandwich estimator of the standard errors for women and men. the dots indicate the point estimate, and the dashes the limits of the confi dence interval at the 5 % level. other control variables are age, age squared, partner’s place of residence, months since arrival, months since arrival squared, spatial planning region, federal state, interview mode, and indicator variables for missing values. n = 10,076. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. • herbert brücker et al.414 increased signifi cantly if they had a university degree, and for men if they had a vocational qualifi cation. it is worth noting that ukrainian refugees aiming to return to ukraine or to move to another country were more likely to be employed than those with permanent settlement intentions in germany. this could be attributed to a desire to accumulate savings before returning to ukraine or to pursue employment opportunities in other countries. 3.8 needs for support and advice particularly in the initial phases after their arrival, newcomers often need support to fi nd their way around and to organize their lives in the new environment. this also became evident among ukrainian refugees, the clear majority of whom reported needs for support and guidance in at least one area (88 percent). the most frequently identifi ed areas of need were german language learning (49 percent) followed by job search (38 percent), healthcare access (33 percent), housing search (31 percent), recognition of educational and professional qualifi cations (31 percent), and ensuring fi nancial security or navigating government bureaucracy (26 percent) (fig. 12). at the time of the survey, 30 percent of ukrainian refugees had received consultation from the job centers or employment agencies. further 44 percent were aware of these resources but had not yet utilized them. refugees were less familiar with the migration counselling for adult immigrants (migrationsberatung für erwachsene zuwanderer, mbe), a government-funded counselling service aimed at aiding recently arrived immigrants in their linguistic, social, and professional fig. 12: needs for support and guidance of ukrainian refugees, in percent of all ukrainian refugees with at least one need reported learning german finding a job medical services finding accommodation recognition of qualifications financial security / dealing with authorities search for educational opportunities search for childcare legal advice regarding residents permits other 49 38 33 31 31 26 12 12 11 6 note: n = 10.591. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 415 integration. less than 5 percent had utilized this service and an additional 13 percent had heard of it. 3.9 social contacts settling in a new country and navigating a new society can be a daunting task. receiving support and assistance from family members, friends, and acquaintances is crucial for adapting and settling in (schacht 2018). establishing social relationships with members of the host society can be highly valuable as well, as they can provide information about the customs and structures specifi c to that country. previous research has highlighted the importance of meeting people from the host society for refugees to engage in social exchange and develop social relationships (schacht 2018; siegert 2021). by the time of the fi rst survey wave, half of the ukrainian refugees had spent time with non-family members from ukraine more than once a week, while almost one in ten had never done so. the frequency of spending time with other ukrainians who did not belong to the own family was slightly higher among middle-aged ukrainians (31-65 years) compared to younger (18-30 years) or older people (over 65 years). around 44 percent of ukrainian refugees had frequently spent time with germans, while 15 percent had never done so. factors such as a good knowledge of german, being employed or attending school, living in private accommodation, fig. 13: frequency of spending time with germans, in percent poor knowledge of german moderate knowledge of german good knowledge of german not placed in shared accommodation placed in shared accommodation unemployed employed or in school 66 years and older 31-65 years 18-30 years men women total 44 41 15 43 41 16 47 40 12 48 39 13 44 41 15 34 41 25 60 31 9 41 43 16 44 39 17 44 41 15 73 23 5 56 37 7 41 42 17 several times a week or daily once a week or less never note: totals may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. n = 10,591. source: own calculation based on the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey, 2022. • herbert brücker et al.416 and spending more time with other people from ukraine were positively associated with an increased contact frequency with germans (fig. 13). 3.10 life satisfaction the well-being of ukrainian refugees can be measured by their level of satisfaction with life in general (e.g., böhnke/kohler 2010). the average self-reported life satisfaction of ukrainian refugees was lower than that of the german resident population: using an 11-point likert scale, with 0 indicating complete dissatisfaction and 10 complete satisfaction, the mean value for refugees was 5.8. the comparative value for the population living in germany in 2020 was 7.5, based on the german socio-economic panel (soep). the refugees’ level of life satisfaction was found to be higher when they felt healthier, had better german language skills, spent more time with germans and felt more welcome upon their arrival in germany. refugees who intended to stay in germany permanently also reported higher levels of satisfaction compared to those who did not. 4 discussion and conclusions the course of the war in ukraine and the legal situation for refugees largely determined the structure of the refugee migration from ukraine. most refugees fl ed war and violence, with many arriving from the most affected areas. germany was a preferred destination particularly due to the presence of family, friends, and acquaintances. economic considerations played a certain role, but they were not the primary motivation for migration. the majority of adult refugees were women, many with young children and separated from their partners due to the war. adult refugees reported good health, but ukrainian children had lower levels of psychological well-being compared to other children in germany. additionally, ukrainian refugees were highly educated and predominantly worked in skilled occupations before fl eeing to germany. the activation of the “temporary protection directive” and the inclusion in the basic social security system under the code of social law ii (sozialgesetzbuch ii) provided certainty for future planning until march 4, 2024. these were favorable conditions for integration and participation, which have led to fi rst successes. the majority of ukrainian refugees resided in private accommodation, and half were attending or had already completed a language course. six months after arrival, 18 percent of working-age refugees were employed. in almost all families with schoolage children, the children actually attended a german school. many preschool-age children attended daycare centers, however, infants and toddlers much less – overall the attendance rates were much lower compared to german children. additionally, almost half of the refugees reported having frequently spent time with germans. the language programs and job placement services were widely used. the survey results implied that these services were central for ukrainian refugees’ integration and participation, suggesting that a more extensive development of these services ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 417 may be necessary. despite these positive developments, refugees exhibited a great need for support, particularly with learning german, fi nding a job, healthcare services, and the search for housing. against the overall favorable economic and social opportunities in germany, the results further highlighted a considerable negative impact of the war situation on refugees’ integration prospects. for instance, the life satisfaction among refugees was much lower than among the german resident population, especially among people who had been separated from their children or partners due to the war. the intentions of ukrainian refugees to stay in germany varied, with a quarter of them intending to stay permanently and another tenth planning to remain for several years and a substantial share being unsure. with the duration of the war, the proportion of refugees who plan to remain in germany permanently or for a longer period could increase. the uncertainty surrounding the war’s duration means that policy areas in germany must create favorable conditions for refugees’ participation in education, health systems, labor market, and society, while accounting for the high degree of uncertainty and heterogeneity in the intentions to stay. an important question for the future is whether temporary protection will be extended beyond march 4, 2024, as provided by eu law, or whether opportunities to stay in germany will be provided by other means. compared to the existing body of knowledge on other refugees, a fi rst appraisal of specifi c characteristic of ukraine refugees can be drawn. in contrast to refugees from syria and iraq, who arrived during the 2015/16 wave (brücker et al. 2016; puschmann et al. 2019), the 2022 arriving cohort of ukrainian refugees exhibited a signifi cantly higher proportion of females and, on average, possessed a higher level of education. our initial fi ndings suggest that ukrainian refugees tended to engage in language courses, school, and labor market integration at an earlier stage compared to syrian refugees in 2015/16. it is essential to emphasize that ukrainian refugees benefi tted from more favorable legal conditions, as they were exempt from the asylum procedure, employment bans, and were granted immediate residence permits for at least the initial two years. despite these differences, there are shared experiences between ukrainian refugees and those from the middle east in 2015/16. both groups commonly faced challenges such as family separation, numerous children being separated from one or both parents, the adverse impacts of the war situation, and low levels of life satisfaction. the extent to which policies, cultural factors, and socio-structural conditions infl uenced the experiences of ukrainian refugees in germany exceeds the scope of these initial cross-sectional fi ndings. moreover, it is important to consider that refugees who arrived in 2015/16 faced different circumstances at a distinct historical period in germany. consequently, a comprehensive and thorough analysis is inevitable to provide profound explanations for observed patterns. this area of research remains open for future investigations. overall, our study presented a differentiated picture of ukrainian refugees who arrived in germany in the fi rst half of 2022. favorable conditions such as broad access to support and language services were refl ected in initial positive developments, including participation in language courses, labor market integration, the accommodation of children in daycare and educational facilities, and fi nding • herbert brücker et al.418 housing. these initial developments offered an opportunity for further progress towards successful integration and participation in society. however, signifi cant challenges remain, particularly for those with long-term intentions to stay, such as improving language skills, transferring educational qualifi cations and work experiences, and addressing housing and issues for separated families through support services. the iab-bib/freda-bamf-soep survey on ukrainian refugees in germany is designed as a panel study, which enables researchers to monitor the refugees’ progress in terms of their living situations and integration over time, and to document the challenges they face along the way. this data may also help in the future to identify the numerous social, economic, and political tasks that need to be accomplished to improve participation and integration of those affected, and to develop practical solutions. in addition, the cawi mode allows to observe ukrainian refugees even after they might have moved back to ukraine or onwards to a third country. as the number of ukrainian refugees in europe is historically signifi cant, our prompt and representative assessment of their situation provided a substantial starting point for research on their integration and future migration decisions. for future research, it would be benefi cial to compare the situation of ukrainian refugees in germany to that of refugees in other countries that have also received large numbers of ukrainian refugees. such comparisons, accompanied by the examination of various policies and initiatives implemented in different countries to support the integration of ukrainian refugees, could provide valuable insights for other countries facing similar situations. acknowledgements the authors thank everyone who participated in the survey and infas (institut für angewandte sozialwissenschaft gmbh) for conducting the fi eldwork. the authors gratefully acknowledge support of the federal ministry of the interior and home affairs, the federal ministry of labor and social affairs, the federal ministry of education and research, the institute for employment research, the federal employment agency, the federal institute for population research, the federal offi ce for migration and refugees, and the german institute for economic research. brücker, kosyakova, and schwanhäuser greatfully acknowledge support within support of the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg german research foundation) within the project “longitudinal study of ukrainian refugees (suare).” refugee migration and labor market integration” (project number – 519020285). zinn acknowledges support within support of the dfg within the project “longitudinal study of ukrainian refugees (suare). data infrastructure, health and discrimination” (project number – 518967487). ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 419 references ager, alastair; strang, alison 2008: understanding integration: a 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2016: migration und familie. kindheit mit zuwanderungshintergrund. wiesbaden: springer vs. date of submission: 03.04.2023 date of acceptance: 16.06.2023 ukrainian refugees in germany: evidence from a large representative survey • 423 prof. dr. herbert brücker. institute for employment research (iab). nuremberg, germany. humboldt university of berlin, institute for empirical integration and migration research (bim). berlin, germany. e-mail: herbert.bruecker@iab.de url: https://iab.de/en/employee/br%c3%bccker-herbert/ dr. andreas ette, dr. jean philippe décieux, dr. nadja milewski, dr. lenore sauer, dr. sophia schmitz. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: andreas.ette@bib.bund.de; jean.decieux@bib.bund.de; nadja.milewski@bib.bund.de; lenore.sauer@bib.bund.de; sophia.schmitz@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/ette/ette.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/decieux/decieux.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/milewski/milewski.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/sauer/sauer.html https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/schmitz/schmitz.html dr. markus m. grabka, dr. adriana r. cardozo silva, dr. hans steinhauer. german institute for economic research (diw). berlin, germany. e-mail: mgrabka@diw.de; acardozosilva@diw.de; hwsteinhauer@diw.de url: https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.10780.en https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.826172.en https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.617914.en prof. dr. yuliya kosyakova (). institute for employment research (iab). nuremberg, germany. university of bamberg, bamberg, germany. e-mail: yuliya.kosyakova@iab.de; yuliya.kosyakova@uni-bamberg.de url: https://iab.de/en/employee/kosyakova-yuliya/ wenke niehues, dr. nina rother, dr. amrei maddox, dr. manuel siegert, dr. kerstin tanis. federal offi ce for migration and refugees (bamf-fz). nuremberg, germany. e-mail: wenke.niehues@bamf.bund.de; nina.rother@bamf.bund.de; amrei.maddox@bamf.bund.de; manuel.siegert@bamf.bund.de; kerstin.tanis@bamf.bund.de url: https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ niehues-wenke-person.html;jsessionid=3ac9e8f63a237c983151564537039860. intranet671?nn=282388 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ rother-nina-person.html?nn=282388 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ maddox-amrei-person.html;jsessionid=5da62556e790193721a5d90e270579c4. intranet671?nn=1083480 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ siegert-manuel-person.html;jsessionid=a31e300bef0c28d96d280871d04a9318. intranet672?nn=286224 https://www.bamf.de/shareddocs/struktur/personen/en/wissenschaftlichema/ tanis-kerstin-person.html;jsessionid=e1d46bf7a0139b2afb6186797bbe0672. intranet671?nn=282388 prof. dr. c. katharina spieß. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. johannes gutenberg university mainz. mainz, germany. e-mail: c.katharina.spiess@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/spiess/spiess.html • herbert brücker et al.424 prof. dr. sabine zinn. humboldt university berlin. german institute for economic research (diw). berlin, germany. e-mail: szinn@diw.de url: https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/en/institut-en/staff/staff/1693272 prof. dr. martin bujard. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. university heidelberg. heidelberg, germany. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/bujard/bujard.html dr. silvia schwanhäuser. institute for employment research (iab). nuremberg, germany. university of mannheim. mannheim, germany. e-mail: silvia.schwanhaeuser2@iab.de url: https://iab.de/en/employee/schwanh%c3%a4user-silvia/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) educational pairings and fertility across europe: how do the low-educated fare? educational pairings and fertility across europe: how do the low-educated fare? natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli abstract: recent research suggests that the fertility-education relationship may be mediated by the educational attainment of the partner, especially among the tertiary-educated. however, there are no studies focusing on the couple-educationfertility nexus among couples who achieved only basic educational attainment, even though resource pooling theory predicts differences in family formation by couples’ joint levels of socio-economic resources. we address this research gap and investigate how educational pairings among married and cohabiting partners relate to second and third birth transitions across 22 european countries, using data from the eu-silc (european union statistics on income and living conditions) panel and discrete time event history models. our fi ndings show signifi cantly lower second and third birth transition rates among homogamous low-educated couples compared to heterogamous couples with one lowand one medium or highly-educated partner in the nordic countries, but not across the rest of europe. however, couples with one or two low-educated partners have signifi cantly lower second birth rates compared with couples with two highly-educated partners in all european regions. keywords: fertility · education · couples · second birth · europe 1 introduction education is one of the most well-studied predictors of childbearing in high-income countries. while causal effects in the relationship between family formation and educational trajectories have proven challenging to assess (brand/davis 2011; stange 2011; nisén et al. 2013; impicciatore/tomatis 2020), it is well known that the obtainment of high levels of education has come hand in hand with the postponement of co-residential union formation, the postponement of parenthood, and increases in childlessness in many nations (martin 2000; gustafsson 2001; shang/weinberg 2013; miettinen et al. 2015). given education expansion and the continuously comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 533-554 (date of release: 13.12.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-19 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-19en5 • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli534 growing group of young adults who complete tertiary education, highly-educated women and men have taken centre stage as subjects of fertility-education research. however, this literature has focused much less on the childbearing behaviour of the lower-educated. this is unfortunate, as there are reasons to suspect that labour market conditions have evolved in recent decades in ways that are not favourable for the family lives of low-educated adults. individuals without college degrees have faced signifi cant declines in labour market opportunities, as the number of lowskilled manufacturing jobs has waned (autor 2014; international monetary fund 2018). moreover, not fi nishing secondary education is becoming less common across many high-income countries (eurostat 2021). in consequence, the group of the low-educated (defi ned as isced categories 1 and 2, which usually means 9 years of schooling or less) has become smaller and more selective (oecd 2011). this may be another reason for the observable changes in family formation patterns of this group. indeed, recent studies suggest that lower-educated individuals are increasingly displaying distinct family formation patterns, underscoring the need to learn more about their childbearing behaviour, and changes therein. for instance, low-educated men are now remaining childless more often than their more highlyeducated counterparts in finland and norway (nisén et al. 2014; kravdal/rindfuss 2008), while the incidence of early childbearing appears to have signifi cantly increased among recent cohorts of low-educated women across most of europe (raymo et al. 2015). in the nordic countries, in addition, a differential in completed family size is emerging between the lowerand the highly educated in recent birth cohorts: the lower-educuated tend to either remain childless or have a relatively high number of children, while having exactly two children is most common among those with tertiary education (jalovaara et al. 2021). moreover, an increasing number of studies indicates that the association between education and childbearing life courses can be contingent on the partner’s education (bagavos 2017; bueno/garcia-roman 2021; cooke 2004; corijn et al. 1996; dribe/stanfors 2010; nitsche 2014; nitsche et al. 2018; trimarchi/van bavel 2020). like the literature on individuals’ fertility, this still scarce but growing literature has focused on the highly-educated, including the only cross-nationally comparative study which examines the association between educational pairings and couples’ birth progressions in a wide array of european countries (nitsche et al. 2018). very little, however, is known about how the education of the partner may moderate childbearing behaviour among the low-educated. yet, from an economic perspective, joint educational resources may matter at least as much for birth progressions to them as to couples with higher degrees. indeed, one recent study of the finnish context demonstrates signifi cantly lower second birth rates among couples with two low-educated partners compared with heterogamous couples with one lowand one secondary-educated partner (nitsche et al. 2020). nonetheless, an overview of how both partners’ joint education relates to their childbearing behaviour among the lower-educated over a wider array of countries is lacking. the aim of this study is to investigate whether the coupling of two low-educated partners may be associated with distinct patterns of childbearing behaviour in a educational pairings and fertility across europe • 535 wide array of european nations. using data from the eu-silc panel study (european union statistics on income and living condition) from 22 european countries and discrete time event history models, we examine whether those couples with the lowest joint educational resources display differences in second and third (or higher) order birth transition rates compared with couples in which one of the two or both partners have achieved mediumor high (henceforth “higher”) educational attainment. we focus on second and subsequent birth progressions, because educational pairings have been shown to be signifi cantly associated with second and higher-order birth transitions among higher-educated couples across europe (nitsche et al. 2018). moreover, second and higher-order birth transitions often occur relatively close to the previous birth to the same parents, which makes the couple perspective particularly useful. despite increasing multi-partnered fertility, the large majority of second children in high-income countries are born to couples who continue childbearing after a fi rst birth together (guzzo 2014; kreyenfeld/heinzmartin 2015).1 in our analyses, we further differentiate the subset of heterogamous couples (in which one partner has achieved low and the other some type of higher education) into couples with a low-educated woman and a higher-educated man (hypergamous) and couples with a low-educated man and higher-educated woman (hypogamous). we group countries into four geographical areas (nordic, southern, western, and central-eastern europe) for ease of presentation and based on cultural and societal similarities between the countries in each cluster. 2 theoretical background past studies about the couple-education-fertility nexus have derived testable hypotheses from economic theories of the family. one important building block for hypothesis-building has been the concept of opportunity costs, which individuals face when they take time away from the labour market (happel et al. 1984; becker 2009). opportunity costs are particularly relevant for women, because women tend to take the large majority of childbearingand rearing-related employment breaks and are subjected to larger indirect earnings losses for care work than men (craig/ mullan 2011; carmichael/charles 2003). when lost work experience is factored in, women with high levels of education and skills face higher opportunity costs (england et al. 2016), which has further directed the research focus to the subgroup of couples with one or two tertiary-educated partners in studies on the role of the (male) partner’s resources for childbearing. nonetheless, economic considerations for childbearing, including incurred opportunity costs for employment breaks and lost income, are likely relevant for the childbearing behaviour of the lower-educated as well. 1 first birth transition rates also varied by educational pairing in previous studies, though mainly in terms of the age at which the fi rst birth occurs in the life course (nitsche et al. 2018). we also estimated fi rst birth transition rates by educational pairing among our lower-educated sample. these results are not shown, but are available from the authors upon request. • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli536 the new home economics approach, which originates from becker’s work in the early 1980s, suggested that partner role specialisation in labour market versus domestic work is the most effi cient system of family organisation (becker 2009). accordingly, birth rates would be expected to be highest among couples with specialised roles, such as hypergamous couples with a higher-educated man specializing in the labour market and a lower-educated woman specializing in unpaid domestic and childcare work (becker 2009). in contrast, resource pooling theory predicts higher birth rates among couples with higher levels of pooled socioeconomic resources. here, the joint resources may serve as a buffer against the economic insecurity of either partner and enable the family to invest more resources into domestic and childcare services, facilitating simultaneous childrearing and career-building (oppenheimer 1997). indeed, evidence from previous studies focusing on the highly-educated subset appears to support resource pooling theory, with several studies demonstrating that couples with two tertiary-educated partners tend to have the highest second and third birth rates across a range of high-income countries in the early 21st century (dribe/stanfors 2010; nitsche et al. 2018; nitsche et al. 2020; bueno/garcia-roman 2021). resource pooling, however, also seems relevant for second birth progressions among the lower-educated, at least in the finnish context (nitsche et al. 2020). thus, joint socio-economic resources and their implications for decision-making around childbearing may be important for couples of all educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, perhaps even more so for the lower-educated. precarious employment, unemployment, and low pay emerge as important predictors for postponed or forgone childbearing (modena/sabatini 2012; goldstein et al. 2013; busetta et al. 2019; vignoli et al. 2020; see alderotti et al. 2021 for a quantitative review) and have been tied to a lower number of expected children among young adults (brauner-otto/geist 2018). the pooling of resources in the couple may therefore be at least as important for childbearing decision-making among the lower-educated as it is for their higher-educated counterparts. moreover, motherhood wage penalties, as one element of opportunity costs, have been shown to be about equally large among lower-educated compared with higher-educated women (budig/hodges 2010; killewald/bearak 2014; england et al. 2016), implying that opportunity cost considerations related to childbearing, and by extension the pooling of resources, may be just as important for childbearing decision-making among lower-educated couples. 2.1 hypotheses following oppenheimer’s argument that the pooling of resources has become essential for families’ welfare, couples with at least one low-educated partner are socio-economically more vulnerable; likely even more so when both partners have a low level of education (oppenheimer 1988, 1994, 1997). therefore, fi rst, couples with two low-educated partners can be expected to display the lowest birth educational pairings and fertility across europe • 537 transition rates to second and third births, because they have the fewest resources at their disposal. in contrast, and second, role specialisation arguments imply that high opportunity costs for women’s care-related employment breaks could translate into lowest second and third birth rates for hypogamous couples, with a low-educated man and secondaryor tertiary-educated woman. this would apply specifi cally to couples in which the hypogamous educational pairing translates into a female breadwinner or main-earner arrangement (van bavel/klesment 2017). a third possible prediction emerges from the bargaining perspective (molm/ cook 1995; bittman et al. 2003). assuming an equal distribution of fertility desires across educational pairings, hypogamous couples with a higher-educated woman and a low-educated man may display the highest transition rates to second or third births, in the case that she can use her potentially stronger economic standing to negotiate for more support with childrearing with him. finally, the partners’ educational pairings may be less relevant for couples’ second or third birth progressions among lower-educated couples. two important non-monetary resources needed for childrearing are time and emotional energy (bianchi et al. 2004; hochschildt 1979; goldberg et al. 2002). low-skilled individuals face barriers in the labour market for career advancement (holzer 2000) and are more likely to work in occupations which offer fewer career advancement opportunities (barone et al. 2011; manzoni et al. 2014). in consequence, low-educated individuals may be faced with fewer “competing devotions,” such as simultaneous family formation and career-building, which often requires working over-time and high energy investments (blair-loy 2009; gauthier/de jong 2021). in consequence, the low-educated may have more time and emotional energy resources at their disposal, outside of regular work hours, to invest in childrearing. if educational pairing effects among tertiary-educated couples operate primarily via income effects which allow for time and energy compensation through the ability to purchase services (childcare, housework help, etc.), educational pairing effects may not be present among couples with one or two low-educated partners. 2.2 regional context the relation between educational pairings and progression to second and third births may be moderated by the social context of a given country. welfare policies offer people some fi nancial security and thus support them in realising their fertility desires even in adverse economic conditions. consequently, individuals living in countries with greater welfare support would be more likely to have a child despite turbulent economic conditions or a precarious labour market. besides family policies, labour market policies (such as unemployment benefi ts, assistance in job searches, and the level of employment protection) may also infl uence the relationship between educational pairings and fertility by affecting unemployment duration, opportunities for entering employment, and by providing fi nancial support in the case of unemployment (adserà 2004, 2005). finally, the incidence of women’s labour force participation and the gender division of labour may also affect the • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli538 relationship. in countries where women are less present in the labour market and where the division of labour is more traditional, low-educated women may consider their careers as less important than their male partners’ careers. among european countries, nordic countries are known for providing strong welfare support and for implementing active labour market policies that facilitate entry into employment (thévenon 2011). these countries are also characterised by high labour force participation among women and a more egalitarian division of household labour (altintas/sullivan 2016). western europe also provides strong fi nancial support for the unemployed and has elaborate family policies (thévenon 2011), but still lags behind the nordic countries when it comes to women’s labour force participation and gender equality in the household (steiber et al. 2016). finally, social assistance for families and the unemployed is least generous in southern europe and in the post-socialist countries of central and eastern europe (alderotti et al. 2021). the gender division of labour is heavily asymmetric, both in the east and the south, but women’s employment plays a substantially greater role in the former, as it constitutes an important income source for families (matysiak 2011). 3 data, sample and methodological strategy 3.1 data and sample we investigate how low educational attainment of the male partner, the female partner or both is associated with parity transitions using data from the eu-silc, an ongoing household panel that was launched in 2003 with nearly all eu member states participating by 2005. it provides a household roster and collects detailed information on all household members aged 16 and above. it is a rotational panel by design, meaning that it consists of four subsamples which are interviewed in parallel for four consecutive years (except for norway and france, where the observation period is 8 years), but each subsample enters the panel at a different point in time. we use eu-silc data for our study because it provides full household rosters, detailed information on educational attainment and enrolment of all household members, has a longitudinal panel design, covers a wide array of european countries, and is current and ongoing, thereby depicting the current family situation in europe. the data also has disadvantages, mainly the fairly short observation duration and the lack of retrospective information on fertility and partnership histories, as well as missing educational histories. we use data from the eu-silc release 2014 (covering data collected in years 2004-2012) and construct two analytic event history sub-samples, one for the transition to second births, and the other to third or higher order births. the eusilc does not provide information on non-resident children or previous dates of union formation and dissolutions. therefore, fertility histories were reconstructed from the information on household composition, relationship statuses within the households, and the birth years of their members. we limit our analysis to cohabiting and married couples involving women aged 18-35 for all three samples. educational pairings and fertility across europe • 539 the construction of fertility histories through the household roster implies the possibility of left-truncation. in other words, if children were born when their mothers were very young, they may already have left the parental home before their mother turned 35, which is especially likely among lower-educated individuals who tend to make the transition to parenthood earlier in the life course than individuals who obtain more education. our data does not allow us to take union duration or time since completing education into account, hence we cannot control for this selectivity in the analyses. we focus on continued childbearing, because educational pairing differences in fi rst births appear to relate primarily to birth timing (nitsche et al. 2018), which may yield less couple-level variation among the lower-educated, who, on average, have their children early in the adult life course (rindfuss/john 1983). also, birth rate differences between educational pairings appear to be most pronounced with respect to second births. the sample of couples exposed to second, third, or higher order birth risks consists of unions including a woman who meets the age conditions listed above and who were living with at least one child aged 5 or younger. the condition on the age of the child was introduced in order to exclude couples from the sample who were rather unlikely to give birth to another child, either because of their preferences, health conditions, or union quality. moreover, including longer birth intervals would make it more likely that the current partner is a new partner and not the biological parent of the older sibling(s) (kreyenfeld/heinz-martin 2015). this restriction excludes one-fi fth of second births and a little less than one-third of third births, as 80 percent of second births and 70 percent of thirds births observed in our pooled sample occurred within 5 years after the birth of the previous child. all couples were considered at risk for childbearing until that event occurred, until union disruption, or until the date of the exit from the panel, whichever came fi rst. both partners were allowed to re-enter the sample in case they formed another union during the panel. the eu-silc offers panel data for 30 european countries, 22 of which are included in our sample. we excluded data from spain and ireland due to nonresponse substitution conducted in these countries for households that dropped out, causing subsequent issues with representativeness (iacovou et al. 2012). in addition, we found unrealistically low numbers of births by exposure time in cyprus, malta, and romania when compared to the period tfr. we therefore excluded these countries from the sample as well. finally, we excluded bulgaria and lithuania, as these countries have particularly high attrition rates, which has been shown to bias fertility estimates based on the eu-silc (greulich/dasré 2017). we clustered the single-country samples into four sub-samples of country groups. our nordic country group includes denmark, finland, norway, and sweden; the western group comprises austria, belgium, france, luxembourg, the netherlands, and the uk; the southern group consists of greece, italy, and portugal; and the central-eastern european group includes the czech republic, estonia, croatia, hungary, latvia, poland, slovenia, and slovakia. • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli540 3.2 models and covariates 3.2.1 dependent process and models as our data are measured annually, we estimated discrete time event history models separately for the transitions to second and to third and higher-order births. couplelevel random effects were added to the models in order to account for the correlation across observation years on the couple level. we constructed indicator variables which measure the actual combinations of her and his educational attainment. in order to avoid the number of pairings becoming intractably large, we measured his and her education in three main groups: low, medium, and high. low education corresponds to the international standard classifi cation of education (isced) 0, 1, and 2 (i.e. lower secondary or second stage of basic education at most), medium education to isced 3 and 4 (i.e. upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary) and high education to isced 5 and 6 (fi rst and second stage of tertiary education). the three pairing categories which are of main interest for our analyses are those that include the low education levels, i.e. when both partners have low education (homogamous), when the woman has low education while the man has higher education (medium or high education, hypergamous), and when the man has low education while the woman has higher education (medium or high education, hypogamous). of the remaining categories, we only show results for couples with a) two partners with a medium level of education, as this is the most common pairing in many countries, and b) two highly educated partners, as this is the pairing with the highest second and subsequent birth transition rates across europe. 3.2.2 covariates the relationship between educational pairing and second and third (and higher parity) birth risks is estimated net of her and his enrolment in education, her age, the absolute difference between his and her age in years, marital status (married vs. cohabitation), year dummies to control for period effects, and country dummies to control for differences in birth rates between the single countries within the groupings. in the eu-silc, enrolment is defi ned as being currently enrolled in the formal education system, meaning either primary, secondary, or tertiary schooling. vocational training activities outside of the formal education system do not qualify as enrolment in this defi nition. educational attainment is measured as the highest isced level attained at the time of interview. we treat both educational enrolment and attainment as time-varying covariates and allow for entry in and exit from enrolment as well as educational upgrading of either partner. enrolment and attainment level are lagged by one year, as we are interested in the relative educational pairing at the time of conception. we furthermore control for the woman’s age at fi rst birth in order to account for time squeeze effects experienced by women who made the transition to the fi rst child at later ages, the age of the youngest child, and a squared term for the age of the youngest child. educational pairings and fertility across europe • 541 some limitations of our empirical approach should be mentioned at the outset. most importantly, our data provide only a snapshot of couples’ life courses and do not allow us to distinguish between timing and quantum effects. thus, we are unable to verify whether couples who did not have a (next) child within three years eventually had one later on. second, we are unable to control for a selection of certain couples into stable unions or parenthood. our fi ndings about the determinants of couples' second and third birth rates therefore do not allow conclusions about completed fertility. it is possible that couples of some educational pairings are less likely to separate than others, and hence have longer exposures to the “risk” of childbearing, so that elevated birth rates may be partly driven by higher union stability. 3.3 sample descriptive statistics tables 1a and 1b provide an overview of the number of couple-years and events by educational pairing and country cluster in our analytic sample. there is marked variation in the distribution of educational pairings across regional clusters. low educational attainment is widespread across southern europe, but not in the other clusters. in the southern european cluster, about half of the couples (meaning couple-years) at risk of second or third (or higher order) birth feature at least one partner with low education. this applies to only roughly 20 percent of coupleyears at risk in western europe, and to around 15 percent of couple-years at risk in northern and central-eastern europe (for time at risk of second births, distributions for third birth risks differ slightly). consequently, the number of birth events in our sample is small among couples with one low-educated partner in some of the clusters, particularly in the low-low educated pairing in the nordic countries for both second and third birth transitions. but this also applies to the number of third and higher-order birth events in the southern european cluster among heterogamous couples with one lowand one higher-educated partner. parity progressions to third and higher-order births are less frequent in southern european countries generally speaking, compared to other european countries (frejka 2008), which likely is a factor behind the lower number of third birth events in this cluster. results for the nordic countries and for third birth transitions in the southern european cluster thus need to be interpreted with caution. • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli542 tab. 1a: analytic sample second births educational pairing nordic western southern eastern both high exposure % 29.58 26.04 9.41 16.7 exposure years 905 1212 330 1270 events n 223 355 55 164 she high he medium exposure % 20.49 15.86 8.13 17.18 exposure years 627 738 285 1307 events n 157 167 47 123 she medium he high exposure % 7.81 9.05 4.51 5.96 exposure years 239 421 158 453 events n 47 98 25 42 both medium exposure % 27.65 29.03 30.54 46.01 exposure years 846 1351 1071 3500 events n 203 284 139 335 she low he higher exposure % 5.23 6.08 8.61 4.05 exposure years 160 283 302 308 events n 38 57 31 42 he low she higher exposure % 5.72 7.58 16.74 5.67 exposure years 175 353 587 431 events n 28 64 62 42 both low exposure % 3.53 6.36 22.07 4.44 exposure years 108 296 774 338 events n 11 57 96 23 source: eu-silc 2014 release, covering data collected from 2004 to 2012, own estimations educational pairings and fertility across europe • 543 4 results we illustrate our results by providing a series of fi gures that plot predicted birth probabilities by years elapsed since the birth of the previous child separately by country group and parity. figures 1 and 2 show the predicted second and third birth probabilities from our models for each educational pairing and for each year since the birth of the previous child, by parity and country cluster. using the nlcom command in stata 14, we estimated standard errors and 95 percent confi dence intervals around the predicted values, holding the values of the other covariates constant at tab. 1b: analytic sample third and higher-order births educational pairing nordic western southern eastern both high exposure t % 25.2 21.38 6.19 12.94 exposure years 1473 1720 230 1360 events n 79 129 9 47 she high he medium exposure t % 19.07 12.17 5.76 11.25 exposure years 1115 979 214 1182 events n 46 46 6 19 she medium he high exposure t % 8.52 8.7 4.55 5.53 exposure years 498 700 169 581 events n 28 40 4 15 both medium exposure t % 29.8 31.43 25.75 49.38 exposure years 1742 2528 957 5189 events n 85 115 25 87 she low he higher exposure t % 7.2 8.66 10.52 6.95 exposure years 421 697 391 730 events n 21 38 12 38 he low she higher exposure t % 6.69 7.52 16.01 6.46 exposure years 391 605 595 679 events n 30 40 18 24 both low exposure t % 3.52 10.13 31.23 7.49 exposure years 206 815 1161 787 events n 5 55 43 31 source: eu-silc 2014 release, covering data collected from 2004 to 2012, own estimations • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli544 their mean or modal values. the fi gures display the predicted birth probabilities and indicate graphically whether the predicted values of the shown educational pairing groups differ signifi cantly from the reference category: couples in which both partners have a low level of education. we chose not to display confi dence interval bands for easier readability; instead, the line type indicates whether the birth probability of the displayed educational pairing differs signifi cantly from that of the reference group. the threshold for statistical signifi cance was set at the 10 percent level (p-value <.10). the reference category we chose here are couples with two low-educated partners (the line for whom is always red and solid). solid lines for the other educational pairings indicate signifi cant differences to this reference category, while dotted lines mean that the difference in the predicted probabilities of this specifi c educational pairing and the reference group is statistically insignifi cant. figure 1 (panels a-d) shows the predicted second birth probabilities by years elapsed since the fi rst birth. in western, central-eastern, and southern europe, there are no signifi cant differences in parity progressions to second births between couples with two low-educated partners and couples with one low-educated partner and one with more education. however, such differences do appear to exist in the nordic countries. here, homogamous low-educated couples display signifi cantly lower predicted parity progressions to second births than couples with one loweducated partner only. however, couple-years at risk and the number of events for the low-educated groupings in the nordic countries are low, as the group of loweducated individuals is a rather small minority across north european countries, so case numbers may be too low for this result to be representative. a second result that stands out across the country groupings is that couples with either one or two low-educated partners display lower parity progressions to second births than couples with two highly-educated partners throughout. parity progressions to third births look similar to second birth transitions (figure 2 (panels a-d)). there are no signifi cant differences between the educational pairings involving one or two low-educated partners in southern europe. the nordic countries again display signifi cantly different third birth rates between the low-educated pairings. both types of couples involving only one lowand one higher-educated partner have accelerated progressions to third births, compared to homogamous low-educated couples, but these predictions are based on small case numbers. in the central and central-eastern european cluster, hypogamous unions with a low-educated man and a higher-educated woman have signifi cantly lower third birth rates than homogamous low educated couples do, but only in years 2-5 after the second birth. educational pairings and fertility across europe • 545 fig. 1: predicted second birth probabilites by educational pairing and country cluster 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 1st birth predicted probability of giving birth (a) nordic second births 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 1st birth predicted probability of giving birth (b) western second births 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 1st birth predicted probability of giving birth (c) southern second births 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 1st birth predicted probability of giving birth (d) centraland eastern second births both high both medium both low he low she higher she low he higher legend: “both high”: both are highly educated (homogamous); “both medium”: both are medium educated (homogamous); “both low”: both are low educated (homogamous); “he low she higher”: he has low education while she has higher education (medium or high education, hypogamous); “she low he higher”: she has low education while he has higher education (medium or high education, hypergamous). note: homogamous low educated couples serve as the reference category, they are always depicted as a solid red line. the remaining lines are solid if the difference in the birth probability between the represented pairing and the reference group is signifi cant at p<0.1; they are dotted if the difference is not signifi cant. source: eu-silc 2014 release, covering data collected from 2004 to 2012, own estimations • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli546 fig. 2: predicted third and higher order birth probabilities by educational pairing and country cluster 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 2nd birth predicted probability of giving birth (a) nordic birthsthird (+) 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 2nd birth predicted probability of giving birth (b) western birthsthird (+) 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 2nd birth predicted probability of giving birth (c) southern birthsthird (+) 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0 1 2 3 4 5 time since 2nd birth predicted probability of giving birth (d) centraland eastern birthsthird (+) she low he higherhe low she higherboth lowboth mediumboth high legend: “both high”: both are highly educated (homogamous); “both medium”: both are medium educated (homogamous); “both low”: both are low educated (homogamous); “he low she higher”: he has low education while she has higher education (medium or high education, hypogamous); “she low he higher”: she has low education while he has higher education (medium or high education, hypergamous). note: homogamous low educated couples serve as the reference category, they are always depicted as a solid red line. the remaining lines are solid if the difference in the birth probability between the represented pairing and the reference group is signifi cant at p<0.1; they are dotted if the difference is not signifi cant. source: eu-silc 2014 release, covering data collected from 2004 to 2012, own estimations educational pairings and fertility across europe • 547 5 discussion and conclusions previous research indicates that second and third birth rates vary systematically by couples’ educational pairings across a wide array of european regions, i.e. that the association between an individual’s level of education and their fertility trajectory can be contingent on the partner’s level of education. this literature has focused on couples with high levels of education (e.g. nitsche et al. 2018), leaving the question of whether birth rates among lower-educated individuals vary systematically by the education of the partner unaddressed. our study addressed this gap. we examined progression rates to second and third births by educational pairings among heterosexual couples with one or two low-educated partners, using data from the eu-silc on 22 countries, which we clustered into the four broader regions of the nordic countries and western, southern, and central-eastern europe. four main fi ndings emerged. first, apart from the nordic countries, there are no differences in second birth probabilities between couples with one and two low-educated partners across europe. the same pattern applies to third and higher parity births, the only exception being that hypogamous couples with a low-educated man and a highereducated woman have signifi cantly lower third birth probabilities in central-eastern europe than homogamous low-low educated couples. overall, these results do not support the resource pooling hypotheses, the gender role hypothesis, and the bargaining hypothesis for lower educated couples’ fertility behaviour in western and southern europe, and in central-eastern europe concerning second births. while we cannot measure any of the underlying mechanisms, our fi ndings hint at different dynamics, or more varied, less systematic dynamics with respect to couples’ educational pairings and second or third and higher-order births among lower-educated couples, compared to more highly-educated couples. in particular, resource pooling does not appear to play the same systematic role for lowereducated couples’ continued childbearing than studies suggest it does among more highly-educated couples (dribe/stanfors 2010; nitsche et al. 2018). however, our analyses do not contain information on income. it is possible that, on average, gains in earned income for an educational increase from low to medium education are less steep than gains from medium to tertiary education. this means that pooling effects might still emerge for couples whose heterogamous coupling of one low and one higher educated partner implies higher income gains. the same may apply to other resources which potentially accompany tertiary education, such as social networks, housing conditions, health, and access to a wider array of health services. in other words, resource pooling among couples with one low and one medium-educated partner may not have the same meaning, or may come with a larger variation in pooling gains compared to resource pooling among two tertiary-educated individuals. alternatively, couples with one or two low-educated individuals may not be in the same need of additional purchased services, which become affordable via resource pooing, in order to realise a second or third birth. if low-educated individuals have a greater availability of time and energy resources to invest into their children – for instance because their job demands bleed less into • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli548 their private lives – investments into private services may be needed less often to realise second and third childbearing. our study is limited in that it cannot address these potential mechanisms underlying the detected patterns. future research is needed to investigate these potential pathways with adequate data. second, the nordic countries stand out. here, we do fi nd some evidence for the resource pooling hypothesis among the lower-educated subset of couples. couples with the lowest joint human capital (i.e. low education for both) exhibit delayed or forgone progressions to second and third births in this country group, compared with couples in which one partner has low and the other has secondary or tertiary education. these fi ndings for the nordic country group support oppenheimer’s pooling argument: couples with the lowest joint human capital may be those facing the most constraints in making the decision for another child in the nordic countries. this is noteworthy, because the nordic countries generally provide high levels of welfare state transfers to families (gupta et al. 2008). however, we need to interpret these results with great caution, as they hinge upon the small number of couples with homogamous low education and a very small number of events in our data. nonetheless, they corroborate fi ndings from a recent study, drawn from large samples from finnish registers, which shows signifi cantly lower second birth transition rates for low-low-educated couples, compared with all other educational pairing types (nitsche et al. 2020). future research is needed to confi rm these patterns and investigate underlying reasons for these lowest second and higher order birth transition rates among homogamous low-educated couples in the nordic countries. future work should also take differences in union dissolution probabilities by educational pairing into account, which our study did not, representing a further limitation to interpreting our fi ndings. previous studies demonstrate differences in divorce and union dissolution risks by educational pairing. low-low-educated couples have the highest divorce risks (lyngstad 2004) in norway, and the highest risk to separate when cohabiting (mäenpää/jalovaara 2014) in finland. eventhistory estimates are sensitive to differences in exposure time, in other words, the signifi cantly lower birth rates among the low-low-educated pairings in the nordic countries may hinge on their particularly high union dissolution risks, because they are no longer at risk of having another child when they leave the estimation sample due to a union dissolution. third, hypogamous couples with a low-educated woman and a higher-educated man had slightly lower third birth probabilities than the homogamous low-loweducated couples in central and eastern europe. we cannot test whether this educational pairing translates into female breadwinner arrangements. however, female breadwinner arrangements are both more culturally accepted and signifi cantly more common across central-eastern european countries (haas et al. 2006). it is possible that female breadwinner couples among the lower-educated groups can afford a third child less often or not as soon as low-low-educated couples, because they rely on the woman’s income more heavily to sustain the family. the fourth and fi nal fi nding from our analyses is that couples with one or two low-educated partners have signifi cantly lower progressions to second births in all country clusters, and to third births in northern and western europe, compared to educational pairings and fertility across europe • 549 couples with two highly-educated partners. more research is needed to address whether these differences in birth rates between high-high and the other educational pairings are driven by differences in union stability across educational pairings; the availability of economic resources such as employment, employment security, and fi nancial well-being; or other resources which are acquired through or correlated with education, such as social capital and networks, health, access to health care services, and psychological-emotional resources, such as differences in stress management and confl ict resolution skills. further work is needed for the closer examination of these questions, and to disentangle quantum and timing effects, although this is diffi cult to assess methodologically and requires more detailed data featuring full fertility and partnership histories. acknowledgements the research leading to these results was supported with funding from the european union’s seventh framework programme (fp7/2007-2013) under the following grant agreements: 1) no. 627543 for coupfer/marie curie action (natalie nitsche), 2) erc grant agreement no. 312290 for the genderball project (jan van bavel), and 3) erc grant agreement no. 725961 for the eu-fer project (daniele vignoli). further support for this research was provided to natalie nitsche by the austrian science foundation (fwf) within the lise meitner programme under grant agreement m 2188-g16 and to anna matysiak by the polish national agency of academic exchange (nawa) under the polish returns 2019 programme. we are grateful to tymon słoczyński for his help at the early stages of this project. references adserà, alícia 2004: changing fertility rates in developed countries. the impact of labor market institutions. in: journal of population economics 17,1: 17-43. 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valentina; mattei, alessandra 2020: the impact of job uncertainty on fi rst-birth postponement. in: advances in life course research 45,100308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2019.100308 • natalie nitsche, anna matysiak, jan van bavel, daniele vignoli554 date of submission: 30.04.2021 date of acceptance: 13.10.2021 dr. natalie nitsche (). max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. e-mail: nitsche@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/about_us_6113/staff_directory_1899/natalie_ nitsche_3776 prof. dr. anna matysiak. university of warsaw. warsaw, poland. e-mail: amatysiak@wne.uw.edu.pl url: http://www.annamatysiak.com/ prof. dr. jan van bavel. university of leuven, centre for sociological research. leuven, belgium. e-mail: jan.vanbavel@kuleuven.be url: https://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00002662 prof. dr. daniele vignoli. university of florence. florence, italy. e-mail: daniele.vignoli@unifi .it url: www.danielevignoli.com published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants: a comparison of the destinations luxembourg and germany locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants: a comparison of the destinations luxembourg and germany* birgit glorius, birte nienaber abstract: in 2015 and 2016, the enormous increase in asylum seekers travelling along the balkan route confronted the member states of the european union with an exceptional pressure on national asylum systems. since then academic literature has revealed a reappraisal of the common european asylum system at regulative and policy implementation level, notably regarding the fair distribution of asylum seekers across member states and regions. yet we know very little about the locational choices of forced migrants or how those choices evolved and transformed during their journey. in this paper, we aim to shed light on those decision-making processes and (individual, subjective) locational choices based on the aspiration-ability model, drawing from a series of qualitative interviews with migrants held in luxembourg and germany in the context of the h2020 project ceaseval. we focus on the migrants’ journeys to their actual recipient countries, highlighting mobility trajectories from the moment of fi rst departure and on the process of decision-making regarding their choice of location. then, we examine further mobility aspirations, which may lead to secondary mobility within or out of the country of residence. in the concluding section, we discuss the consequences of our fi ndings for migration and asylum politics against the background of the “autonomy of migration” framework. keywords: forced migrants · locational choice · secondary migration · reception comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 143-164 (date of release: 11.04.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-06 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-06en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on "refugee migration to europe – challenges and potentials for cities and regions". • birgit glorius, birte nienaber144 1 introduction in 2015 and 2016, the european union faced a tremendous rise in third country citizens entering its outer borders to seek asylum. in spite of guiding principles of the common european asylum system such as the “fi rst country of arrival principle,” and partly due to political decisions and local authorities’ practices, the mobility of asylum seekers through europe demonstrated unprecedented dynamics. while scholars since then reappraised the common european asylum system at regulative and policy implementation level and refl ected on the “refugee crisis” from various disciplinary perspectives (lucassen 2018; piguet 2021), there is still little research about the locational choices of asylum-seeking migrants and how those choices evolve and transform during their journeys, and before and after status determination. one reason for this reticence is the long-time separation of mobility research and forced migration studies. since mobility research, notably under the new mobilities paradigm (sheller/urry 2006), primarily focused on the agency of migrants and voluntary forms of migration, international refugee research has resisted looking at forced migration from this perspective. there was a plausible reason for this, as the mobility of forced migrants was much more robust and much more infl uenced by violent border regimes. questions of migration control, human smuggling and protracted displacement seemed to be much more relevant for academic research. only recently have there been scholarly attempts to bridge the gap between voluntary and forced migration (piguet 2018; van hear et al. 2018), and mobility approaches are effectively being used to address the agency of forced migrants who, with their individual and autonomous movements, question and undermine the (im)mobilising forces of mobility regimes (de genova et al. 2018; schapendonk 2020; van hear et al. 2018). in the context of immobility regimes, such as residence obligations during and after status determination, questions of how to effectively regulate the stay of forced migrants at assigned residential locations move to the fore. but even regarding the question of forced migrants’ staying in a specifi c place, approaches to sedentariness have rarely been taken up in refugee research so far. both paradigms and lines of research make it possible to conceptually broaden mobility and immobility and to comprehensively contextualise social phenomena. the related questions of autonomy of migration (new mobilities paradigm) or the assumed seclusion of places, nations and societies (sedentarist paradigm) seem to be highly fruitful in dealing with refugee mobility and settlement (cresswell 2002; de genova et al. 2018). against the background of these considerations and based on empirical material concerning forced migrants’ trajectories to and through europe, we aim to shed light on decision-making processes during fi rst and secondary mobility and immobility by comparing forced migrants’ experiences in two european receiving countries: luxembourg and germany. our analysis focuses on asylum-seeking migrants’ mobility decisions, experiences and aspirations at two points in time: during the journey to the reception country and while staying in the reception country. we use a comparative framework to discuss individual locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 145 perspectives and experiences and to highlight convergences as well as divergences of experiences and reception conditions in the two case study countries. following the introduction, in section 2 we briefl y discuss approaches from mobility and migration research and how they could relate to the research topic of this paper. in section 3, we explain our research concept and methods. section 4 presents the results from our research in luxembourg and germany, fi rst reconstructing migrants’ trajectories and the development of locational choice and then analysing decision-making processes regarding secondary mobility. we wrap up the results in section 5 and in section 6, draw conclusions and provide an outlook of further research questions. 2 understanding locational choices of forced migrants while the motivation for migration and choice of location of migrants is a widely researched topic, forced migration is somewhat outside these considerations. however, even though forced migrants’ mobility is restricted in many stages of the migratory process, we cannot assume that their decision-making processes follow completely different mechanisms than those of voluntary migrants. notwithstanding their forced departure, migratory decisions of forced migrants are also embedded in and shaped by social, economic and political conditions, notably regarding mobilities after their initial relocation. this research gap may exist because, in the context of forced migration, other research topics, such as legal aspects and the effects on the development of border regimes (tazzioli 2018; zaun 2018), human smuggling (triandafyllidou/maroukis 2012) or staying in protracted situations of displacement (ferreira et al. 2020; etzold et al. 2019) seem to have greater relevance and political salience. regarding our endeavour to shed light on migration decision-making and locational choices of forced migrants in the context of secondary movement, we need to derive the specifi cs in the context of forced migration. we therefore revisit conceptual approaches that explain migratory decision-making and choice of location and structural constraints on the realisation of those choices from a social sciences perspective, stressing the impact of knowledge, social capital and subjectivity in decision-making. 2.1 migration decision-making and locational choice the decision whether to migrate or to stay put is a complex process that entails various stages. the aspiration-ability model (carling/schewel 2018) extricates migration decisions in two separate steps: the evaluation of migration as a potential course of action (aspiration) and the realisation of actual mobility or immobility at a given moment (ability). migration aspirations are shaped by individual attitudes and grounded on the evaluation of advantages and disadvantages of possible destinations compared with the actual place of residence. potential destinations are considered based on the local ideas and meanings attached to these places. • birgit glorius, birte nienaber146 the context of migration aspirations includes social norms and expectations about migrating or staying, opportunities for migration and the more general structural forces facilitating or constraining particular migration trajectories. mallett and hagen-zanker (2018) use the concept of “migration thresholds,” referring to a set of psychological barriers that individuals must overcome before selecting mobility as a course of action in the fi rst place (the “indifference threshold”), deciding on the means and direction of travel (the “trajectory threshold”) and prioritising particular destinations over others (the “locational threshold”). benezer and zetter (2014) highlight that “profoundly formative and transformative experience and a ‘lens’ on the newcomers’ social condition” (p. 302) are most important for the destination choice. the role of the individual and the group setting during the journey and its “life-changing meaning” (p. 303) frame the further decision-making and destination choice. the second aspect of the above model highlights the actual ability to migrate as a second crucial factor for migration decisions. it is based on a combination of individual characteristics and structural context conditions, such as the economic, social and political context of migration, but also migration policies and regulations that predefi ne ways for (ir)regular migration (carling/schewel 2018). regarding forced migrants, migration research stresses the non-linearity of migratory trajectories determined by external conditions and individual resources. this is the case in the context of protracted displacements when the living situation at the fi rst place of refuge stays somewhat provisional as forced migrants wait for an opportunity to relocate (brun 2015; grawert/mielke 2018), but also regarding the fragmentation of forced migrants’ journeys, interrupted by periods of immobility due to detention, waiting for further opportunities or earning money to pay human smugglers (hathat 2017; mallet/hagen-zanker 2018). after relocation or resettlement to a safe place, forced migrants may also re-evaluate their locational situation with current and future life aspirations and may decide to relocate again to better match individual life goals with the opportunity structure presented by the host country or region. in a study by kuschminder and koser (2016) on afghans in greece and turkey, the choice of secondary movement was based on experiences of abuse, poor living conditions, unemployment, unsuccessful migration attempts and a short length of stay in the country. the main destination countries were germany, sweden and austria as they are considered safe countries. however, more than in the case of voluntary migrants, the probability of forced migrants reaching their intended destination depends on external factors such as mobility restrictions imposed by destination and host countries policies. safouane (2019), in his study on forced migrants’ narratives of their fl ight to germany, found that the migration trajectory is also reproduced in his interviewees’ narrative structure, tracing an arc of fi rst increasing and then decreasing tension made up of a series of confl icts and actions before, during and after fl ight. this narrative structure highlights that “the journey does not end with the actual arrival in the destination country” (safouane 2019: 104). locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 147 2.2 the impact of social capital and knowledge on forced migration processes the impact of social capital on fuelling migration is well known and social capital concepts, combined with the transnational approach, are widely used for researching migration decision-making and migration trajectories (castles/miller 2009; faist 2000). social capital can be characterised as mutual support based on shared belonging to a specifi c social group, created by family ties, geographical ties, friendship or shared biographies. it is provided in the form of information, assistance or material support with the expectation that the investment will pay off in the future (bourdieu 1986: 21). in their research on refugees in lebanese refugee camps, uzelac et al. (2018) highlighted that social capital is the only form of capital “that can be created even in situations of relative vulnerability, and then exchanged for access to livelihoods or used in cost-saving measures or as a form of basic social insurance.” refugees in their study used social capital, notably within ethnic or kinship groups, to inform settlement choices and improve their livelihoods by sharing information and pooling resources (uzelac et al. 2018). the transnational aspect of social networks is important for forced migrants whose network members are globally displaced as they connect individual members to a transnational support and information network (al-ali 2001; belloni 2016). cultural capital, in terms of knowledge and skills, is crucial for preparing and carrying out a migratory project. while formalised knowledge such as language skills help people to quickly integrate into the destination society, informal knowledge is crucial for fi nding safe escape routes and overcoming mobility constraints such as border controls. however, knowledge acquisition may be highly selective and the quality and reliability of information about migration routes, destinations and relevant regulations, may be vague and incomplete (allen/eaton 2005; fiedler 2020; wall et al. 2017). regarding the instruments of information distribution, technologies such as social media and the smartphone as the primary tool for knowledge transfer recently became increasingly relevant for forced migration (european commission 2018; frouws et al. 2016). for example, dekker et al. (2018) showed that syrian asylumseeking migrants in the netherlands primarily relied on social media information from their existing social ties, which they received via their smartphones. the preferred information was based on personal experiences and they used various strategies to ensure the validity of the data. pandey and ilavarasan (2019: 331) studying afghan sikh refugees in new delhi, found that digital practices provided them with “relevant information and experiences of being refugees” and were thus as important as physical infrastructure for the well-being of refugees in the place of refuge. based on the above concepts from migration theory, our research interest focuses on the specifi cs of forced migrants’ choice of location, their aspirations and further mobility decisions. our analysis examines two points in time: during the journey and while staying in the reception country. as case study framework, we chose the reception countries of germany and luxembourg. while germany is a large country • birgit glorius, birte nienaber148 and a well-known destination for forced migrants, tiny luxembourg does not appear in forced migrants’ mental maps as a preferable migration destination. having conducted fi eldwork in both countries in the context of a broader, comparative research project (see section 3), we found it useful to compare migratory choices and experiences in germany and luxembourg following a comparative framework of “most different system, similar outcome” (berg-schlosser 2012: 6). we analyse the rationalisation of migrants’ decisions based on subjective knowledge, perceptions and lived experiences during the fi rst reception process. our goal is to understand the locational choice of forced migrants and to highlight mismatches between policy approaches that aim to regulate mobility and settlement processes of forced migrants and individual migratory decisions and trajectories. we understand these trajectories as being highly dependent both on migrants’ aspirations and on their ability to implement their mobility decisions against structural constraints based on individual agency and social capital. the comparative framework will allow us to unravel both migrants’ individual agency and structural frameworks and subjective imaginings about the place of residence. 3 data and methods the analysis is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with forced migrants (rejected asylum seekers, asylum seekers and refugees) in the countries of luxembourg and germany, which were carried out between may 2018 and april 2019 in the context of the research project ceaseval, fi nanced under the h2020 grant agreement no. 770037. as reception countries in the european union, luxembourg and germany exhibit major differences that are highlighted by a number of core data in table 1. while both are economically strong countries, major differences can be found in the countries’ size and population, the diversity of resident populations, the number of refugees, asylum applications and granted refugee status. what the table does not show is that among forced migrants travelling during 2014/2015, germany was well-known as a major refugee reception country, while luxembourg was barely known at all. by searching for convergences and divergences in the narratives of migrants located in those very different countries of reception, we aim to highlight similarities in forced migrants’ decision-making and mobility trajectories. questions asked concerned the journey of the migrants, their circumstances, border encounters, accommodation conditions, the locality and local context they lived in at the moment of the interview, working conditions and aspirations for secondary movement. in luxembourg, twelve interviews were conducted, eight of which with refugees, three with asylum seekers, one with a rejected asylum seeker; eight male, three female and one transgender interviewee. the interview partners came from syria, iraq, eritrea, gambia and sudan. the interviewees were located in different municipalities in the grand duchy of luxembourg. in germany, 15 interviews were conducted in various parts of the country, of which eight interviewees held protection status (refugee or subsidiary protection), locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 149 three were rejected asylum seekers, one was in the status determination process, one was residing illegally in germany, and two status could not be verifi ed during the interview; twelve interviewees were male and three were female. interviewees came mostly from syria, but also from afghanistan, iraq, morocco and libya. at the time of the interview, they had resided between two and three and a half years in germany. 4 results in this section, we will fi rst focus on the journey to the actual recipient country, highlighting the mobility trajectory from the moment of fi rst departure and the process of decision-making regarding the choice of location (4.1). then, we will turn to further mobility aspirations, which may lead to secondary mobility within or out of the country of residence. we consider that aspirations and constraints largely derive from a refl ection of the actual place utility but are also strongly shaped by policy frameworks (4.2). 4.1 locational choice of forced migrants in luxembourg and germany 4.1.1 migrants’ journeys to luxembourg: aspired and “accidental” destination the reason for leaving the home country is mainly the uncertainties in the home country – especially war situations. but there is also one case in the sample who was kidnapped from their home country and then started fl eeing from the destination to which the kidnappers brought them (lux4). the grand duchy of luxembourg is not the primary destination choice of several interviewed migrants. however, there are two main reasons for the asylum-seeking tab. 1: key data on luxembourg and germany regarding forced migration in 2018 (year of the interviews) luxembourg germany inhabitants 602,000 83,019,213 share of foreign inhabitants 47.84% 12.2% applicants/capita 0.004 0.002 main group of applicants eritrean syrian persons granted international protection 1,052 75,906 decisions taken 1,482 216,873 recognition rate 79.79% 35.00% source: emn germany/bamf 2019, ministry of family, integration and the greater region 2019, statec 2021, destatis 2021, authors’ calculation • birgit glorius, birte nienaber150 migrants and later acknowledged refugees to apply for asylum in luxembourg: family/friends already living in luxembourg or “by accident.” before coming to luxembourg, some of the interviewed migrants had informed themselves about luxembourg and chose luxembourg as their destination country. this was mainly because of family or friends. for example, a male refugee stated, “and actually i had a friend with me and they had a brother here in luxembourg. they know about it. then we decided to come to lux” (lux1). but some migrants chose luxembourg after comparing the different political systems and other information on the countries. for example, one migrant did not plan to go to luxembourg, but a friend recommended that he try to fi nd a country in the european union where the asylum procedure is faster than in belgium. “so he told me study all the areas. and choose the best country for your kids. so i checked online and i asked a lot of friends here and there. he recommended me to come luxembourg. so i studied about luxembourg and some other countries. and i checked fi rst the education for the kids, so it was so motivated. […] yeah, it was so far from other countries depending on education, languages and kids’ treatment. so we decided to come and next day we took the train and came here.” (lux10) the decision was also made based on job opportunities researched on the internet: “so who can speak 3 languages, can speak english. (…) i tried to convince my friend to come because he has the same education area like me, in accounting, and accounting is a very good knowledge to have in order to have a job in luxembourg.” (lux2) another reason the grand duchy of luxembourg was the aspired destination was the multicultural environment and the perception that the lower number of asylum seekers in luxembourg would make the whole asylum procedure more humane. “yes, that’s what i read in the internet. […] you should have a serious case. and that’s why i came here. i’m sorry, but i didn’t want to be a number. because when i thought about germany, i thought, i will be a number. […] i think i was right. because really there is diversity, there is multiculturalism in luxembourg. even if we talk about how we look like.” (lux8) there are also different ways to get to luxembourg. the majority came through the balkan route, taking a boat between turkey and greece. several changed their destination because they found that their preferred destination was not what they originally expected or they began following people they got to know during the journey. “while i was in germany, i asked one of my friends in sweden about luxembourg, ‘what do you think?’ ‘i don’t know, but i have a relative there.’ he provided me with his phone number. he gave me the address of a foyer [authors’ note: foyer is a luxembourgish word for reception facility]” (lux2). therefore, realising the situation in germany, the large number of new arrivals in germany and the long time he thought the asylum procedure would take, he decided to change his destination for asylum. however, other cases show that fl ight has many routes and pathways and that asylum might not even be the aspired tool for a residence permit. this variety of arrivals and status is shown in the following example of a female asylum applicant and her family. she came with a work permit as a self-employed person. her husband locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 151 joined her via family reunifi cation, her brother applied for asylum in luxembourg and her mother came as a visitor. when she lost her ability to work because she had to care for her mother, she could not apply as a salaried worker as this change of legal migration status (from self-employed to salary worker) is not allowed in luxembourg. “so we applied for asylum, all the family, all together.” (lux9) another group found themselves in luxembourg quite by accident. one asylum seeker, for example, was dropped off in luxembourg by smugglers who had been hired by his uncle to bring him to france. he had no say in the destination from the beginning, and then found himself not in france but in luxembourg. “he dropped me here, he told me actually, ‘you are in germany.’ the smuggler said ‘bye-bye, fi nished’ and left. but i found people from eritrea, i talked to them, ‘this is luxembourg, it is a good place also, you can ask asylum here.’” (lux4) 4.1.2 migrants’ journeys to germany: guided by transnational social networks and meta-narratives among the interviewees in germany, the common starting point was their forced departure from their country of origin or long-term residence. quite often, they fi rst fl ed to neighbouring countries such as turkey (syrians) or iran (afghans). facing diffi culties securing a living as a refugee in those countries and realising that the crisis in their countries of origin would not be solved any time soon, they decided to move on to europe. notably syrian refugees who were staying in turkey recalled discrimination on the labour market or on the housing market as a reason to move on: “i worked as a veterinarian. it was diffi cult to deal with the turks. some of them never paid me. and i was not entitled to offi cially work as a vet.” (ger10) “i saw no future there. i had no contact to turks. i had to live in an apartment with 10 or 20 people. we were all sub-tenants. we were abused, so to say.” (ger2) thus, their decision to move on resulted from detrimental conditions in the fi rst country of refuge and the main rationale was to secure better life perspectives for themselves and their families. for many of our interviewees, educational perspectives were important for their locational decision. they often received advice from persons in their transnational social networks who recommended that they move on and who emphasised germany as a possible destination. syrians in particular relied on such networks, which often contain more than 50 close relatives in countries all over the world, so that reliable fi rst-hand information is always available. respondent ger1 for example was advised by his brothers in germany to come to germany and not to move back to uae, where he spent his childhood and youth. they told him, “if you want to continue your master studies, you have to come to germany. if you want to work as a casual employee, you can go to uae.” ger1 chose to come to germany and he was close to completing his master degree at the time of the interview. respondent ger2 was also advised by a relative to move to germany. “he said, ‘ok, in germany you have a future, and you can do a vocational degree or study.’” • birgit glorius, birte nienaber152 other interviewees chose their destination country only during their fl ight, infl uenced by travel mates’ narratives or the advice of smugglers. as all our interviewees who travelled on the balkan route were organised in groups, those – sometimes irrational – fantasies of living conditions in destination countries developed as a collective “meta-narrative” based on objective knowledge, accounts of other migrants, but also rumours and exaggerations. since they are transmitted via personal networks, migrants stick to those meta-narratives, especially when they have no other reliable source at hand. for example, respondent ger3 from afghanistan, who knew relatively little about the world, as he concedes, adopted the meta-narrative of “alman” as a destination: “we don’t know many countries. that’s why we – also me – asked many people in greece: where can we go? (…) and they all said, ‘we are going – we don’t say ‘germany,’ but ‘alman’ – and then they all said, ‘we go alman,’ and then i said, ‘ok, so will i.’” respondent ger9 from libya was already in italy when he decided to move on to germany. other refugees told him that life as a refugee in germany is much better than in italy. “he said: ‘yes, come to germany. it is very good there.’ and then i went to germany.” among iraqis, finland and germany are favoured destinations, as metanarratives point to welcoming governments and good living conditions. that’s why respondent ger12 from iraq moved on to germany when her asylum application in finland was turned down. but at fi rst, she heard: “finland, all iraqis go to finland.” our interviewees’ experiences during and after their fl ight were also strongly infl uenced by the asylum regimes that opened up by far the greatest prospects of staying for syrian refugees, at least in the years 2015-2016, when more than 95 percent of syrian applicants received either refugee or subsidiary protection status (bamf 2016, 2017). the information that “merkel has opened the border” was present among the interviewees at this time, and in various narratives we learned that syrian citizenship is used as a code to achieve preferential treatment – in particular, an unconstrained onward journey. this practice can be found not only on the part of the refugees, but also among the representatives of the authorities of transit countries. for example, respondent ger10, who was travelling in a group of syrians and iraqis, reports on the encounter with a greek border offi cial: “i told him, ‘we are 32 people.’ he asked, ‘all from syria?’ i said, ‘from syria and iraq.’ – ‘the iraqis have passports?’ i said, ‘i don’t know.’ then he said, ‘then you are all syrians. so we avoid problems.’” although there were border controls, police operations, pushbacks and registrations, none of this discouraged our respondents regarding their mobility intentions, but rather mobilised efforts to circumvent mobility barriers. this is particularly true regarding the dublin regulation, which cannot be specifi cally named by any of the interview partners, but which is internalised as a scheme that demands action. for example, several interviewees report that they avoided identifi cation measures during the journey. likewise, several refugees were aware that their original choice of switzerland has a more rigid repatriation practice, so that for those whose fi ngerprints had been taken during the journey, switzerland was no longer targeted as a destination (respondent ger2). this scheme of action and the knowledge anchored in it refers to regional and country-of-origin-related selective locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 153 policy approaches during the observation period, even though our interviewees were not fully aware of the details. 4.2 locational aspirations and constraints after the reception procedure 4.2.1 arrival, reception and secondary mobility in luxembourg arriving in luxembourg, migrants who ask for asylum, for example in a police station or at the airport, are brought to a centre de primo accueil (initial reception centre) and then to the ministry to be registered, including fi ngerprints. after that procedure, they are brought to a shelter where they live during the asylum process. asylum seekers are moved around in the grand duchy of luxembourg according to a system. the cellule de relogement (rehousing unit), which is composed of representatives of different services of ona (social workers, reception centre managers, etc.), tries to match the applicants with the reception facilities based on their personal characteristics and the availability of the reception centres. the redistribution is not always decided well, as one interviewee remembered. although he was part of the opposition in his country, he was put together in a room with eleven migrants from his country who turned out to be supporters of the regime. “can you imagine if something happened. i don’t know, we have a kind of fi ghting let’s say. because i humiliated their leaders and then the social assistant say: look refugees, they are not civilised, they just fi ght each other. which is not the case. you put the victim with the […] oppressor in the same place.” (lux8) after becoming a benefi ciary of international protection, 43 percent of the former asylum seekers (directorate of immigration 2021) stay in the reception facility, as the housing market in luxembourg is costly and tight. one asylum seeker explains the locality of the shelter he is living in: “it is isolated a little bit, yes. exactly. because it has minimum number of residents.” (lux6) another benefi ciary of international protection had the same experience during the stay in a shelter: “yes, i remember when i was in [village 68], every day, i told you, every time i woke up at eight o’clock and go walk in the forest, at least for 2 hours because i felt like i am in a prison. even if it’s a nice place, i feel like in a prison. because i got stuck in this place, i’m just waiting, i don’t know how much.” (lux8) some migrants were initially brought to the fi rst reception centre in strassen or were transferred to a detention centre after a rejected asylum decision and then entered a series of relocations in the asylum housing system, depending on the utilised capacities and on personal reasons (like family status, country of origin, gender, etc.). “so i stayed in strassen for 20 days maybe and after that they supposed to move me to another camp for the integration classes. so it took about one month. (…) no, this was in [town 06]. and from [town 06] i have to go to a permanent place. and this is where i live now. it is in [village 21].” (lux6) however, there is also voluntary mobility inside luxembourg: after migrants are approved for international protection, they can seek housing outside the reception facilities. • birgit glorius, birte nienaber154 a benefi ciary of international protection with school children fi nally found housing in a small village. “yeah [village 81] is too small village. even the mayor is my neighbour. (…) he is also a good friend. it’s so small. so everybody knows everybody. that’s what i like. if i want to do something we get to go to the commune and they do it for me. because they know everything.” (lux11) however, the majority of migrants experience diffi culties in fi nding affordable housing that also suits their cultural and family needs. therefore, nearly half of the benefi ciaries of international protection stay in the reception facilities (directorate of immigration 2021). one benefi ciary of international protection with family (one child), for example, tried to fi nd himself a rented room without the help of an association or the like, but found his family and himself a rented room in a fl at with students. this housing arrangement gave his family even less privacy than before in the shelter, so he had to look for something else. he found both through people who offered help fi nding a fl at. “i had some friends here in lux. one of them could rent me a room […] and it was a very good price, i think it was 700 for an apartment of 70m2. […] the space was maybe like this living room, space enough, but we shared bathroom, kitchen with others, living room of the house was next to our sleeping room. they are students, they don’t have some commitment to get up every day. (…) so it was very annoying to stay here. and you know, my wife puts hijab, so it’s a bit diffi cult for her for moving freely and….” (lux2) after earning a salary, it was still diffi cult for this benefi ciary to fi nd housing as the housing prices were not affordable or cost nearly half of the earned salary. property-owners were also unwilling to rent them a fl at. in the end, he found a fl at through friends using his social capital. (lux2) secondary movement from luxembourg is mainly related to skills and for most not the target once they became aware of the advantages life in luxembourg can have (e.g. multiculturalism, job market). for example, some migrants consider french-speaking countries as possible destinations for secondary movements where they can study and then later return to luxembourg to work. “if i get accepted [into university] in lux, i will stay in luxembourg. i will see myself in lux, if not, i have to move. […] i think france or belgium, for study. then maybe i come back to work here, in luxembourg. i would like to work here in luxembourg, because they offered me, the place where i lived, i want to offer them something back.” (lux1) another asylum applicant taught himself english as he planned to move on to the united kingdom. “only if they give me a negative and i got an appeal and they give me another negative. […] i would try to go to the uk defi nitely. because this is the only place that i can go to. the only shelter. […] first of all, for language reasons and second of all, i have a lot of friends there. even if i got negative or something i can stay with them. […] i know in some point the british government they have to accept my application any way or another. i guess this is the only choice for me, to go to uk. you see, the language thing is not an obstacle for me.” (lux6) even though luxembourg was unknown to most migrants before their arrival, the incentive to move on is quite low. studies and friends were the only two reasons named in this research. however, several interviewees said that their aspiration to move on to germany, belgium, france or the united kingdom changed once they locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 155 realised the multilingual and multicultural environment of luxembourg and had good experiences with the local authorities – different from the experiences they might have had during their journey to luxembourg. 4.2.2 arrival, reception and secondary mobility in germany the asylum procedure in germany foresees an initial stay in a fi rst reception centre where the asylum application is prepared. distribution to the various fi rst reception facilities of the länder is made based on a distribution key (königsteiner schlüssel), which aims for a fair share. asylum-seeking migrants have no individual choice regarding their fi nal destination. after initiation of the asylum application, they are distributed to counties and municipalities in the relevant state (bundesland). according to changes to the asylum and reception laws in 2018, asylum seekers may also be obliged to stay in the region of fi rst reception for three years after status determination. this distribution policy means that the initial reception procedure has acute consequences for the further settlement process and locational choices of refugees. most of the respondents in our sample arrived in germany via munich main railway station where they came in contact with the authorities for the fi rst time. after initial registration and temporary emergency accommodation, they were distributed to other federal states. some interviewees initially undermined the distribution by not reporting at the border but continuing on to destinations within germany where they have relatives. only after several days of rest they reported to the authorities and faced the asylum procedure. ger1 for example, who took care of some unaccompanied minors on the route, fi rst brought those minors to their relatives in hamburg and then travelled to dresden, where his brother lives: “well, we stayed at my brother’s place for a week. we ate, we took showers. because it was, you know, a long journey. two weeks. it took two weeks maybe. and after that, my brother told us, ‘you have to go to the police. and you have to say that ‘i am seeking asylum.’” most interviewees were transferred various times during the fi rst reception phase, until they arrived at a temporary shelter where they stayed during the rest of the asylum procedure. often, interviewees have diffi culties remembering this period. they recall the type of accommodation or certain events, but not the place names where they were accommodated. “in munich, we went to the police. (…) the police took our fi ngerprints. we stayed there overnight, then a bus came and brought us somewhere. and then again … i don’t know where it was – then we lived near the border to switzerland for one month. i forgot the name of the village. we lived in a refugee home, but i forgot the name of the village. we lived in four or fi ve refugee homes. new refugee homes, new buses, new people, until we came here.” (ger4). it is striking that spatial proximity to relatives living in germany was never once considered in the distribution process (ger2, ger8). often, the procedural mobility decisions even appear antagonistic, as in the case of ger2, whose uncle lives in the black forest. while another family in his refugee group was sent to that very place, • birgit glorius, birte nienaber156 he ended up in a reception facility in the east of germany, almost 700 kilometres from his uncle. after several shorter stayovers and relocations, most respondents then stayed in a refugee accommodation for the large part of the status determination procedure. experiences were very striking depending on the location of these accommodations and the receptivity of the local population. as for group accommodations, most interviewees recalled that the cramped living situation and living together with other nationalities was exhausting. they report aggression among the inhabitants as well as deviant behaviour due to alcohol and drug abuse. for many, the time in the secondary reception accommodation was a time of confusion and waiting: “first of all, we did not understand what we ought to do. we had no school, nothing. i think six or seven months we were in [town 1] and [town 2]. (ger3) “ those who were able to relocate to an individual fl at during the asylum application process often report better integration opportunities due to more personal contacts with locals. “everyday somebody knocked at the door and brought something. (…) they also checked the apartment and noted what was missing. then they bought stuff for us, for example furniture, a carpet, kitchen stuff…” (ger11). but most of our interviewees had to spend a long time in the group accommodation and developed various coping strategies such as staying outside most of the day (ger12), sleeping at the house of friends or trying to convince authorities to relocate them to another (more civil) group accommodation (ger13). due to the huge amount of asylum applications in 2015 and 2016, procedures often took a long time.1 while some of our syrian respondents received their residence permit after a brief written hearing (ger11), one of the iraqi respondents waited 18 months for fi nalisation of her status determination procedure (ger12). after status determination, most interviewees stayed at the secondary place of reception as they had no other options, mostly due to residential restrictions or their reliance on social welfare. in these cases, relocation to another town, county or federal state depended on the discretionary decision of the foreigners or social authorities. notably, those who were granted only tolerated status in germany were subject to residence restrictions, so that they were obliged to commute several hours to their workplace and stay on in the undesirable atmosphere of a group accommodation (ger3, ger9). but those who received refugee status and had no residence restrictions sometimes also had diffi culty fi nding housing. as they were dependent on social welfare payments, at least at the beginning of their stay, they needed to fi nd a fl at that suited the criteria for social housing. they were not only confronted with a crowded housing market, but also with discrimination (ger11, ger13). while some found support in ethnic networks or among locals, others also 1 in the years 2015 and 2016, more than one million asylum applications were processed; due to this huge amount, the average duration of the asylum procedure increased from 7.9 months in 2015 to 13.2 months 2017, while the envisaged duration is three months (bamf 2016, 2017, 2018). locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 157 experienced fellow countrymen exploiting the situation and brokering fl ats for high commissions. whether asylum-seeking migrants moved to another region or country strongly depended on the regulatory framework (see above), but also on their assessment of whether their life goals could be achieved at the current place of residence. often, the social integration process at the place of residence kept migrants from moving on, mainly because of activities by volunteers and the feeling of being positively received by the social environment. several interviewees highlighted the welcoming atmosphere they experienced at their place of reception, which ensured assistance in all stages of the integration process. ger11, for example, was able to pass her high school exams with the support of volunteers: “there is a girl who comes every day to help me with school work. sometimes i call on my neighbour. or i meet people from (town 3), who are nice, and ask them to explain me my school work. they all were very nice. and that’s why i struggled so hard last year and reached my high school exam. finally!” (ger11) the evaluation of their current living situation in germany, further goals in life and the framework to reach their goals are also crucial factors in the decision whether to move on to another country. while some interviewees could imagine moving on or going back to their home country one day, most of our interviewees have no such intentions. their transnational social networks inform them about living conditions in other european countries, which brings them to the conclusion that moving on would bring no added value. an important factor is what has been achieved so far and what future ambitions they have for themselves and their families. germany is assessed positively regarding educational opportunities and the material quality of life (ger5, ger11). it is also clear that they would need to start all over with integration in case of secondary mobility, or, as interlocutor ger4 put it, he would fear becoming “a child” again: “other countries i cannot speak the language and i don’t know the culture. i didn’t want to be a child again. now, i was a kid, and i would again become a child for three years. i could not speak at all, had no contact. no, i don’t want to go through that again.” 5 discussion while section 4 provided empirically grounded, deep insights into forced migrants’ mobility trajectories, evaluations and aspirations in luxembourg and germany, this section will now take a comparative perspective and discuss the fi ndings in the light of selected approaches, notably the aspiration-ability model, the concept of migration thresholds, social capital theory and transnational theory. while those approaches, as we argued in section 2, are largely used in the context of migrations that are labelled as “voluntary,” our endeavour is to examine if they also offer explanatory power regarding secondary movements and locational choices of forced migrants. in the following, we will relate our fi ndings to those approaches, following the stages of our interviewees’ migration trajectories. • birgit glorius, birte nienaber158 as our data revealed, the decision to move on from the fi rst country of refuge was shaped to a large degree by detrimental economic conditions and the cognition of bad or worsening future prospects, which did not meet with migrants’ own aspirations for themselves and their families. both the aspiration-ability model and the concept of migration thresholds offer high explanatory value at this stage of the migration trajectory. social capital and transnational theory provide an adequate explanatory frame for the realisation of onward migration: the narratives on mobility trajectories to the reception country revealed that destination choices are strongly infl uenced by the availability of information and social capital embedded in transnational social networks. transnational social networks provide support before, during and after fl ight: they help to fi nd and fi nance smugglers, give information about escape routes and are also available during the arrival process. they are therefore an important determinant in the choice of the destination country and the ability to reach it. those who do not have transnational social networks based on kinship rely more on peer advice and meta-narratives that are produced, shared and reproduced during the journey. however, the quality of this information seems less valid than that transported through kinship networks. the interviews conducted in germany indicate a stratifi cation of migrants based on social capital (monetary resources, education, social networks) and nationality, the latter being related to varying prospects of being granted refugee status. thus, nationality can be perceived as a specifi c type of capital in this respect. for the alignment of relevant information with mobility and destination decisions during the journey, material aspects such as the availability of digital communication tools are crucial. digital information is used for navigating on the route and for making and changing decisions during the journey. again, transnational social networks play a major role in the availability of digital information, as their information is perceived as reliable. regarding the migrants’ choice of location, our data indicate the fl uidity and volatility of initial aspirations and the ability to reach the designated goal. the aspired destination can change depending on shifting social networks or additional information, but also as a consequence of incidents during the journey such as having been identifi ed by police forces, having found a group to travel with or having accepted smugglers’ services. while information and meta-narratives were rather prominent for the case of germany and other larger countries in europe, the small european country of luxembourg was less well (if at all) known before the journey, so that the destination choice appears quite accidental. however, once migrants arrived there and learned about the special characteristics of luxembourg, such as its multilingualism, manifold labour market options and high-quality educational system, it was perceived as an attractive location to raise children or form one’s own further career and thus as a good choice – or fate. in both countries, the initial reception foresees several mobility steps that are imposed upon asylum-seeking migrants without considering individual characteristics or choices. especially in the case of germany, those initial redistributions largely turn out to be decisions with long-term consequences as locational choice and secondary movements from the perspective of forced migrants • 159 recent changes in relevant laws and regulations impede moving to another place even after fi nalisation of the asylum procedure. but in both cases, the housing market also turns out to be a barrier for individual locational choices after status determination. social capital is needed to integrate in the housing sector and the local community. in both countries, further mobility steps are considered if individual aspirations, individual ability and local opportunities don’t match, while integration efforts are a strong incentive to stay put. notably in the german case, this fi nding can be connected to migrants’ refugee status. thus, a high proportion of migrants with poor status are involuntarily immobilised. while their mobility aspirations call for onward movement, searching for better opportunities, their poor status and policies related to their status prevent them from moving. 6 conclusion and outlook as this study aimed to show, forced migrants’ settlement choices and decisions regarding onward migration can be conceptualised by approaches originally implemented for the case of voluntary migration, notably the aspiration-ability approach, migration thresholds, social capital and transnational theory. however, forced departure and more substantial mobility constraints imposed by migration regimes, not only before or during, but also after fl ight constitute notable differences. moreover, we can show that mismatches between migrants’ mobility intentions – based on life aspirations, transnational social networks, experiences and selective knowledge – and restrictions imposed by migration and asylum governance, are evident in our research results. furthermore, it became clear that forced migration means a specifi c vulnerability compared to other types of migrants: there is a lack of preparation, there are mostly informal sources of destination country information and there is no free mobility after arrival, nor after fi nalisation of the asylum procedure. being aware of these differences could help to assess how reception procedures can be refi ned: by more tailored information about processes and destinations, resettlement programmes with prepared migrants and prepared municipalities who host migrants as recently explored by a pilot study in germany aiming to match migrants and receiving localities using an algorithm-based matching procedure.2 being aware of these mechanisms also allows us to predict considerable onward movements of migrants with refugee status, if life aspirations cannot be fulfi lled in the country of reception. a considerable increase in the numbers of syrians who received refugee status in greece and moved on to germany in 2021 highlights the relevance of this aspect (wipfl er 2021). even though this might not be desired or foreseen by the european mobility and asylum framework, theoretical approaches from migration research suggest that these movements – resulting from migration autonomy – cannot be fully contained by 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this difference remains signifi cant at the p<0.1 level but diminishes as we control for sociodemographic characteristics. when investigating the life satisfaction determinants of each group, we fi nd similarities among the three groups: being in good health and being able to make fi nancial ends meet are positively correlated with life satisfaction, while experiencing age-related discrimination is negatively correlated with life satisfaction. having a partner is only positively correlated with satisfaction for swiss natives, and religiosity is only positively correlated with satisfaction for stayers. the importance of this paper is threefold: 1) it investigates older migrants’ life satisfaction, an area of research that is underdeveloped, 2) it compares migrants to stayers, a comparison that is seldom found in the current literature but necessary to understand the implications of having a migratory background, and 3) it highlights the importance of policy interventions addressing the socioeconomic inequalities of older migrants. comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 457-492 (date of release: 21.08.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-18 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-18en4 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-18 • iuna dones458 keywords: life satisfaction · older migrants · migration studies · quantitative methodology 1 introduction migrants are a very heterogeneous group, but they have a similar goal that ties them together: they generally migrate to improve their own lives and that of their families. migration studies have for long focused on the objective consequences of migration, revealing that migration often results in ameliorated conditions, such as improved economic circumstances (nikolova/graham 2015), the possibility of sending remittances to the family in the country of origin (joarder et al. 2017), and better educational opportunities for children (zuccotti et al. 2017). however, it is only recently that researchers started studying migrants’ subjective evaluations of their lives. the importance of such focus is rooted in what graham (2009) calls the “paradox of happy peasants and miserable millionaires”, or the idea that people can lead an objectively good life but still be unhappy (and vice versa). this is because objective measures of well-being do not account for individual differences in the evaluation of objectively similar circumstances (hendriks/bartram 2019). in the case of migrants, migration can lead to signifi cant objective improvements, but it can also introduce an array of potentially momentous negative situations in their lives, ranging from separation from social networks in the country of origin, lower socioeconomic status in the destination country, discrimination (hendriks et al. 2018; hendriks/bartram 2019), and stress associated with cultural differences (tabor/ milfont 2011). these situations may in turn impact migrants’ life satisfaction. older migrants in particular may experience a series of compounded risks due to age-related issues, migration background (dowd/bengtson 1978), and an accumulation of disadvantaged situations throughout their lifetimes (norman 1985) that may impact their general life satisfaction. yet, they remain a notably underrepresented population in social science research (barbiano di belgiojoso et al. 2022; baykara-krumme/platt 2018). old age is typically a time when individuals retire or decrease the employment activity for which they fi rst migrated, and it is thus an important period to examine migrants’ material, health, and social conditions, and how these refl ect on their life satisfaction (baykara-krumme/platt 2018). the number of older migrants in european countries is growing (undesa 2020), and there is thus increased interest by the scientifi c community in their circumstances (baykara-krumme/platt 2018; bolzman et al. 2004; warnes et al. 2004). here, we focus on older persons in two countries, switzerland and italy. after world war ii, switzerland experienced a period of economic expansion and a shortage of local labor, especially of unskilled and semiskilled labor. this led to the establishment of a bilateral agreement with italy in 1948, which granted for a rotation model in which italian seasonal workers were allowed to work in switzerland for a limited period, before returning to italy. originally, this labor migration was seen as temporary, but in the 1960s this rotation model was given up, and migrants then life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 459 could settle in switzerland and could bring over their families (riaño/wastl-walter 2006). today, italians aged 65 and older comprise one of the largest groups of foreign resident population in switzerland (fso 2020b). our paper contributes to the literature on older migrant life satisfaction by comparing three groups of older adults: italian migrants in switzerland, swiss natives residing in switzerland, and italian stayers residing in italy. we aim to answer the following research questions: 1) are there differences in life satisfaction levels between italian migrants and swiss natives, and between italian migrants and italian stayers? and 2) what are the determinants of life satisfaction among each of these groups? in the next section, we present the theoretical and empirical literature on life satisfaction from which we formulate our hypotheses. we then present the data and our primary results, and discuss the fi ndings. 2 research on well-being as the world recovered from the physical, social, and psychological devastation brought about by world war ii, a new atmosphere arose: one that encouraged commitment to social welfare and a greater appreciation for the individual’s perceptions and viewpoints (keyes 2006). movements focused on the importance of personal meaning and concerns about life thus emerged, and subsequently subjective well-being developed as a scientifi c fi eld in the late 1950s when social scientists produced quality of life indicators to observe social change and improve social policy (keyes 2006). recent decades have consequently seen a shift in research from negative topics like poverty and illness, to more positive topics like well-being, and a shift from objective to subjective measures of well-being (bartram 2012). objective well-being is generally defi ned as “the degree that a life meets explicit standards of the good life, as assessed by an impartial outsider” (veenhoven 2000: 4), which is generally based on quantifi able indicators like income, health, living conditions, and so on. on the other hand, subjective well-being is defi ned as how people feel about and evaluate their lives, which includes “people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction” (diener et al. 1999: 277). these two variants of well-being are not always correlated, for a person may be in objectively good health but still feel bad (bartram 2012; veenhoven 2000). subjective well-being is further divided into two components: the emotional or affective component, and the cognitive component. the former relates to the extent to which a person experiences pleasant moods and emotions, while the latter relates to the degree to which a person positively evaluates the overall quality of his or her life, and this is commonly referred to as life satisfaction (veenhoven 2012; veenhoven/ehrhardt 1995). in this study, we focus on this latter component – life satisfaction. • iuna dones460 2.1 main factors contributing to life satisfaction why are people satisfi ed with their lives? two theoretical approaches have been proposed to explain individual differences in life satisfaction: the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. the fi rst focuses on the role of individual differences, such as personality traits in life satisfaction, while the second focuses on the role of social contexts, situations, and events in life satisfaction (erdogan et al. 2012; heller et al. 2004). in this paper, we adopt the latter perspective, for life satisfaction is linked to the resources individuals develop and access in their lives, to social norms, networks and relationships, and to the social context in which people live (helliwell/putnam 2004). more specifi cally, migration – which we will address in more detail below – impacts these sociodemographic characteristics by altering individuals’ networks, affecting their access to resources in the destination country and changing the social context in which they lead their lives. these changes may then infl uence life satisfaction (hendriks et al. 2018; hendriks/bartram 2019). research on general life satisfaction has shown that income positively correlates to life satisfaction, but only to a certain extent and in certain situations (bartram 2015; clark 2011; clark et al. 2008; de jong 2015; deaton 2008). richard easterlin (1974; easterlin/angelescu 2009) pointed out a paradox in the income-life satisfaction relationship: at one specifi c point in time and in one country, people with higher incomes are on average more satisfi ed with their lives. however, over time, life satisfaction does not increase as the country’s income increases. this is because generally, the life satisfaction gains derived from increases in income are not due to greater purchasing power, but due to an improvement in social status (bartram 2015; boyce et al. 2010; clark et al. 2008). social comparison thus plays a role, for if everyone’s income increases, there is no gain in social ranking, and thereby no gain in life satisfaction. another phenomenon that explains easterlin’s paradox is that of adaptation: over time, people get habituated to their level of income, so most of the life satisfaction gains from that initial increase disappear (clark et al. 2018, 2008). studies have also pointed out that higher levels of education (cheung/chan 2009; clark et al. 2018; salinas-jiménez et al. 2011), good health (clark et al. 2018; deaton 2008; helliwell 2003; helliwell/putnam 2004; kööts-ausmees/realo 2015), employment (clark et al. 2018), social capital like marriage and social networks (amati et al. 2018; elgar et al. 2011; helliwell/putnam 2004), and religiosity (amit 2010; clark et al. 2018; pargament 2002) are positively correlated to life satisfaction. on the other hand, discrimination is negatively correlated to life satisfaction (bălţătescu 2005; safi 2010). 2.2 life satisfaction among migrants migration can impact income by presenting migrants with better economic opportunities in the destination country, which can positively refl ect on their life satisfaction (bartram 2011; hendriks et al. 2018; nikolova/graham 2015). simultaneously, migrants may fi nd themselves in worse socioeconomic conditions than their peers in the host country (bartram 2011). over time, migrants may change life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 461 their reference group and may start comparing themselves to wealthier individuals in the host society (bartram 2011), which can have negative implications for their well-being (dumludag/gokdemir 2022). moreover, migration can disrupt social networks (arpino/de valk 2018; hendriks et al. 2018). separation from friends and family in the country of origin can result in feelings of loneliness (cela/fokkema 2017; fokkema/naderi 2013) and social isolation (hendriks et al. 2018), which are correlated to lower life satisfaction (ambrosetti/paparusso 2021; barbiano di belgiojoso et al. 2022). furthermore, having a migratory background can engender discrimination, which has been shown to have deleterious repercussions on migrant well-being (bălţătescu 2005; kirmanoğlu/başlevent 2014; safi 2010). migration can also infl uence health (gerritsen et al. 2013; lassetter/callister 2009). migrants are a self-selected group and are generally in better health than the native-born population, a phenomenon referred to as the “healthy migrant effect” (domnich et al. 2012; loi/hale 2019; sserwanja/ kawuki 2020). however, soon after their arrival in the destination country, migrants’ health begins to deteriorate due to the psychological, social and contextual shocks introduced by migration (domnich et al. 2012; loi/hale 2019; mcdonald/kennedy 2004; sserwanja/kawuki 2020; trappolini/giudici 2021). migrants’ health can also be impacted by their economic status, as migrants in unfavorable economic conditions report a worse health status compared to migrants in better economic situations (loi/hale 2019). given the complexity of migrants’ situations and the importance of these abovementioned factors in life satisfaction, the question arises, to what extent and under what circumstances are migrants better off because of migration? 2.2.1 the migrant-native comparison most studies on adult migrants show that, when comparing life satisfaction of international migrants to that of natives in the destination countries, migrants generally report lower levels than natives, even when accounting for sociodemographic covariates (arpino/de valk 2018; bartram 2011; hadjar/backes 2013; hendriks 2015; kirmanoğlu/başlevent 2014; safi 2010). this can be in part attributed to migrations’ disruptive effect on social relations (arpino/de valk 2018), the psycho-social shocks it induces (safi 2010), as well as migrants’ ability to integrate in the destination country (hadjar/backes 2013). safi (2010) investigated the disparities between fi rstand second-generation migrants and natives in 13 european countries, and found that second-generation migrants are just as dissatisfi ed as fi rst-generation migrants, and both groups report lower life satisfaction levels than natives. this demonstrates that migrants’ relative dissatisfaction in comparison to natives’ does not diminish over time and across generations. more specifi cally – and relevantly to this paper’s study population – she revealed that, although switzerland has one of the highest average life satisfaction levels, it is also one of the european countries in which migrants are the least satisfi ed with their lives. this may be due to perception of discrimination and feelings of unfairness. bartram (2011) focused on migrants in the united states and confi rmed • iuna dones462 safi ’s (2010) fi ndings on the migrant-native difference. arpino and de valk (2018) and hadjar and beckes (2013) further replicated this migrant-to-native discrepancy across european countries. furthermore, hadjar and beckes (2013) showed that the life satisfaction difference between migrants and natives is higher in countries with a high gross domestic product (gdp) and lower in countries with a higher migrant integration policy index (mipex), suggesting that integration-friendly policies are important to migrant well-being. there are also several studies that found different relationships between life satisfaction and migration status depending on the migration stream and time since migration. obućina (2013) showed that, in comparison to german natives, eastern european migrants in germany are more satisfi ed with their lives, while turkish-born migrants are less satisfi ed, highlighting the importance of taking into consideration migrants’ heterogeneity. moreover, some studies revealed that the disparity between native-born europeans and migrants does not diminish with time or across generations (amit 2010; kogan et al. 2018; safi 2010), while others found that this difference does diminish over generations (arpino/de valk 2018). furthermore, monteiro and haan’s (2022) research on migrants in canada found no difference between the life satisfaction of migrants and that of canadian natives when controlling for sociodemographic variables, and year of arrival in canada has no signifi cant effect on life satisfaction. the implications of having a migration background are therefore still unclear, and migration may infl uence life satisfaction differently for different populations. the literature referenced heretofore focuses on migrants of all ages, but there is a particular scarcity in research on the life satisfaction of older migrants (barbiano di belgiojoso et al. 2022; sand/gruber 2018). the few studies that exist concern people who left their country of origin at different points in their lives and are now aging in their country of destination, and they focus on different migration fl ows as well as different (older) age groups, making it diffi cult to concretely understand the relationship between migration and life satisfaction among this population. sand and gruber (2018) found that the difference in life satisfaction levels between older migrants and natives depends on region of origin. they focused on migrants and natives aged 50 and older in 11 european countries and revealed that migrants from northern and central europe have similar satisfaction levels as natives, while southern european, eastern european, and non-european migrants report signifi cantly lower levels than the native population, even after controlling for sociodemographic covariates. they also replicated hadjar and beckes’ (2013) fi ndings, namely that the migrant-native disparity is larger in countries with low mipex scores, one of which is switzerland; they confi rmed this result among adults aged 50 and over. on the other hand, research by calvo et al. (2019, 2017), focused on hispanics and natives aged 60 and older in the united states, showed that older hispanic migrants in the us report higher life satisfaction levels than both non-hispanic us natives and hispanics born in the us, which is in opposition to the majority of the literature comparing migrants and natives. the authors propose that hispanic migrants compare themselves with peers from their country of origin, which life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 463 explains their higher life satisfaction levels despite their lack of resources vis-à-vis those of us natives and us-born hispanics. another explanation is that hispanic migrants may have strong family support and certain cultural practices that benefi t their life satisfaction. even though most of the research comparing the life satisfaction of migrants to that of natives shows that migrants display lower life satisfaction levels, these studies often group migrants from several origin countries and migration streams. when differences in migration streams are taken into consideration, research points to more nuanced results, suggesting that the native to migrant comparison is much more complex and needs further investigation. this paper thus aims to add to the limited literature on the life satisfaction of older migrants by analyzing one specifi c migration stream: italian migrants who migrated to switzerland early in their lives and who are aging in place. this group of migrants moved to switzerland primarily between the 1950s and 1970s (wessendorf 2007), they generally occupied lower-skilled jobs than swiss natives, have lower education levels, report feeling socially isolated more often, and report a worse health status than natives (bolzman/vagni 2018). based on this and on the existing literature on the relationship between sociodemographic factors and life satisfaction, we expect: (h1a) on average, older italian migrants in switzerland have lower life satisfaction levels than older swiss natives. moreover, basing ourselves on the migrant-native life satisfaction gap stated in most research to date, and specifi cally on the fi ndings on the larger migrant-tonative disparity in countries with high gdp (hadjar/backes 2013) and low mipex scores like switzerland (hadjar/backes 2013; sand/gruber 2018), as well as the lower life satisfaction levels of migrants from southern european countries (sand/ gruber 2018), we hypothesize that: (h1b) older italian migrants in switzerland display lower life satisfaction levels than older swiss natives, even when accounting for sociodemographic characteristics. 2.2.2 the migrant-stayer comparison although comparing life satisfaction of migrants to that of natives is important, some researchers have criticized this comparison, arguing that migrants who move from countries with low life satisfaction levels to countries with higher life satisfaction levels may experience increases in life satisfaction, while remaining below natives’ satisfaction levels (bartram 2015). the migrant-native comparison thus does not allow for the measurement of change in life satisfaction, and longitudinal data would be optimal to measure this change. however, longitudinal data on international migrants are scarce, so to circumvent this issue, research has compared migrants to • iuna dones464 people in the country of origin who did not migrate, referred to as “stayers” (gruber/ sand 2022; hendriks 2015). hendriks and colleagues (2018) approached the migrant-stayer comparison by matching migrants with demographically similar people in their country of origin who wished to migrate, as well as with demographically similar stayers who had no such desire. they found that most migrants report higher life satisfaction levels post-migration, and that these levels tend to converge to those of natives in the country of destination, though remaining below that of natives. however, their research also demonstrated that for several migration streams, migrants’ life satisfaction did not improve following migration. erlinghagen (2011) also found that german migrants across europe show increased life satisfaction levels compared to german stayers. nikolova and graham (2015) and bartram (2013) presented similar results on the migrant-stayer gap, suggesting that migration does improve life satisfaction. yet, research by the international organization for migration (iom) found that the migrant-stayer comparison is more complex. according to the iom (2013), migrants who move towards or between developing countries become, in general, less satisfi ed with life. on the other hand, those who move to or between developed countries become more satisfi ed with life. once again, aforementioned studies focus mainly on younger, working-age migrants, and very few compare older migrants to stayers. baykara-krumme and platt (2018) revealed that older turkish labor migrants who are now aging in place in several european countries experience higher life satisfaction levels than stayers. gruber and sand (2022) similarly reported that migrants from less affl uent to more affl uent european countries are better off than stayers. despite these two similar results on older migrants, results on the life satisfaction of this population are still sparse, and due to the expanding number of older migrants in europe, there needs to be further research on their circumstances. notwithstanding the inconsistent results on the migrant-stayer comparison, considering the two studies focused on older migrants, we hypothesize that: (h2) older italian migrants in switzerland report higher life satisfaction levels than older italian stayers, even when accounting for sociodemographic variables. 2.2.3 differences in determinants of life satisfaction in view of the aforementioned studies on the relationship between various socioeconomic characteristics and life satisfaction, we expect similarities in the determinants of life satisfaction among migrants, natives, and stayers. we hypothesize that: (h3) being in good health is positively correlated with life satisfaction among all three groups. life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 465 (h4) better economic status is positively correlated with life satisfaction among all three groups. however, we also expect certain differences between the groups. a large part of older italian labor migrants in switzerland migrated for economic purposes (bolzman/vagni 2018). they migrated from regions of italy that lacked suffi cient economic opportunities, with the hopes of improving their circumstances (dones/ ciobanu 2022). they started their lives in switzerland in lower skilled jobs, and while a few of them were able to move to better socioeconomic positions, most remained in a lower socioeconomic class in comparison to swiss natives (bolzman/ vagni 2018). their aspirations for better economic conditions may therefore have gone unmet in the long term, and they may thereby assign more value to their fi nancial situation than natives and stayers, who did not embark on a migration journey to improve their economic circumstances. in support of this theory, a study on migrants in the united states revealed that the association between income and life satisfaction is stronger for migrants than for u.s. natives (bartram 2011). we therefore hypothesize that: (h5) financial situation has a greater association with the life satisfaction of migrants than natives. 3 data and methods 3.1 data this study draws on an original survey stemming from the project “ transnational ageing among older migrants and natives: a strategy to overcome vulnerability (transage)”, which collected data from four different populations in switzerland and italy, all aged 65 and older: a) swiss natives, born and residing in switzerland, b) italian international migrants, born in southern italy and residing in switzerland, c) italian non-migrants (from here on referred to as “stayers”), and d) italian internal migrants, born in southern italy and residing in northern italy. this paper focuses specifi cally on the fi rst three groups. swiss natives had to meet the following criteria: they had to be born in switzerland and had to have parents who were also born in switzerland. similarly, italian stayers had to be born in southern italy and had to have parents who were born in italy. italian international migrants had to be born in southern italy and had to have migrated to switzerland, where they now reside. we chose these populations for several reasons. first, italians are one of the largest foreign national groups aged 65 and older in switzerland (fso 2020a/b). second, a large part of older italians migrated to switzerland between the 1950s and 1970s for economic purposes or to reunite with family members who moved as labor migrants (bolzman et al. 2004; riaño/wastl-walter 2006; wessendorf 2007), and most came from regions of southern italy that lacked economic opportunities • iuna dones466 (wessendorf 2007). we thus group together migrants of a very specifi c migration stream. third, comparing migrants from the south of italy to stayers from the south of italy allows us to compare individuals who were socialized at a young age in the same place, during the same period, and who thus grew up in similar contexts. all the data were collected through two economic and social research institutes. the institute mis trend was responsible for the data collection in switzerland, while the institute demetra opinioni oversaw the data collection in italy. the sample for swiss natives and italian migrants residing in switzerland was obtained from the swiss federal statistical offi ce and given to mis trend. since almost 70 percent of the total italian resident population resides in six swiss cantons (fso 2018), data were collected in the following regions: zurich, bern, aargau, vaud, geneva, and ticino. the sample for italian residents was extracted from the italian national public telephone directory. demetra opinioni contacted the study participants through a method of random telephone calling. participants had to reside in the following areas of southern italy: abruzzo, basilicata, molise, campania, sicily, apulia, calabria, or sardinia. for the sample residing in switzerland, data were collected using two methods: online questionnaires and paper questionnaires, and these were fi lled out in either italian, french, or german. for the sample living in italy, data were collected through telephone interviews, and these were conducted in italian. it could be argued that the different data collection modes between switzerland and italy may have led to a certain level of social desirability bias: italian participants in italy, who were administered the telephone-based questionnaire, may have answered questions in a manner that may be seen as more desirable to the interviewer (krumpal 2013). although some research has found that participants tend to respond to subjective well-being questions less positively in web-mode or paper-mode in comparison to face-to-face mode (piccitto et al. 2022; zager kocjan et al. 2023), this difference does not seem to be universally true (hendriks et al. 2018). martin and lynn (2011), for instance, did not fi nd differences in questions on life satisfaction between face-to-face modes and other interview modes, such as web-based and telephone questionnaires. furthermore, research comparing paper/web and telephone survey modes, which are the ones used in our study, are scarce. to test for a social desirability bias in subjective well-being indicators, we therefore turned to the swiss household panel (shp), which is conducted largely by telephone, and compared the results of subjective well-being questions in the shp to results of the exact same variables in our swiss sample, collected by paper/web. we did not fi nd evidence of a social desirability bias, so we conclude that our two methods of data collection are indeed comparable. the process and results of this analysis are detailed in the appendix. each population sample was stratifi ed by age and gender. the data were collected between june and november 2020, between the fi rst and second wave of infections related to the covid-19 pandemic. in total, 2,354 older adults participated in the study, of which 689 are italian international migrants, 836 are swiss natives, and 829 are italian stayers. after eliminating missing values for all the dependent and life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 467 independent variables outlined in the next section, we arrive at an analytic sample of 1,655 observations, of which 447 are international italian migrants, 640 are swiss natives, and 567 are italian stayers. at this stage, we deem it important to note that the variable largely responsible for the restricted sample was the one indicating whether participants carried out a physically demanding job, detailed below. to ensure the robustness of our model, we carried out two sensitivity analyses without this variable and we conclude that sample size does not impact our results. sensitivity analyses are shown in tables a4 and a5 of the appendix. 3.2 measures 3.2.1 dependent variable the dependent variable for this study is life satisfaction, measured by the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al. 1985), a 5-item scale assessing the cognitive dimensions of subjective well-being, and one of the most frequently used scales in subjective well-being research (maddux 2018). the scale is composed of the following items: 1. in most ways my life is close to my ideal. 2. the conditions of my life are excellent. 3. i am satisfi ed with my life. 4. so far i have gotten the important things i want in life. 5. if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing. respondents were instructed to indicate their level of agreement with each item on a 7-point scale, ranging from “1=strongly disagree” to “7=strongly agree”. the answers for each item were then added to create an individual score, ranging from 5 to 35, and in the analysis life satisfaction is kept as a numerical variable. 3.2.2 independent variables the fi rst main predictor variable is migration status, which consists of the three categories of the three populations being studied: swiss natives, italian international migrants residing in switzerland, and italian stayers. along with the main independent variable, we also adjust for several other determinants of life satisfaction based on the existing literature (bartram 2013, 2012; hendriks/bartram 2019; paparusso 2019; safi 2010). the sociodemographic variables we include in our analyses are age, gender, level of education, fi nancial situation, relationship status, children, network size, self-rated health, and religiosity. we also control for risk attitudes, age-related discrimination, physically demanding job, and fi nally worry with covid-19 and covid-19 related deaths in the region of residence, given that our data were collected during the pandemic. age is kept as a continuous numerical variable, and gender as a dichotomous categorical variable. level of education is coded into three categories: “low”, “medium” and “high”. financial situation is measured with the question, “thinking • iuna dones468 of your household’s total income, including all the sources of income of all the members who contribute to it, how diffi cult or easy is it currently for your household to make ends meet?” the fi nal variable includes two answer categories: “easy” and “neither easy nor diffi cult/diffi cult”. we measure fi nancial situation in this way because our data contain too many missing values for the questions related to household income and household savings. relationship status is a dichotomous variable measuring whether the respondent has a partner. children is also a dichotomous variable, measuring whether the respondent has any children. network size is measured by asking respondents to list up to fi ve people who played an important role in their lives in the last 12 months, and these could be family members, friends, colleagues, or anyone else they deemed important (adapted from the question on family confi gurations of widmer et al. (2013), and (widmer 2016)). the fi nal variable is numerical, ranging from 0 to 5, and represents the total number of people that played an important role in the participant’s life. to measure self-rated health, we asked respondents to rate their general health on a 5-item likert scale with the following answer categories: “very good”, “good”, “average/so-so”, “bad” and “very bad”. we then recoded responses into two categories: “good”, which includes the fi rst two answer categories, and “average/ bad”, which includes the last three. to measure religiosity, we asked participants how often they pray. answer categories were “daily”, “at least once per week”, “at least once per month”, “less than that”, and “never”. we then created a dichotomous variable with “regularly” representing the fi rst three answer categories, and “not regularly” representing the last two. we control for risk attitude, as being relatively willing to take risks is associated with an increased probability of migrating (jaeger et al. 2010), and higher risk tolerance is associated with higher life satisfaction (baláž/valuš 2020). for this, we asked, “how do you see yourself: in general, are you a person who is risk taking or do you try to avoid risks? please answer on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means ‘risk avoiding’ and 10 means ‘taking risks’.” the fi nal variable is kept as numerical. age-related discrimination is measured by asking respondents how often in the previous 12 months they felt discriminated against or badly treated by anyone because of their age. answer categories were “never”, “rarely”, “sometimes,” and “often”. we recoded responses into two categories: “no”, which represents those who responded “never”, and “yes”, which includes the other answers. physically demanding job is evaluated with a dichotomous variable by asking respondents whether their current or last job was physically demanding. to measure covid-19-related worry, respondents were asked to rate their worry with the pandemic on an 11-point likert scale, and we kept this as a numerical variable. lastly, covid-19 related deaths in the region of residence indicates the total covid-19 deaths in the respondent’s region of residence per 100,000 citizens that occurred from the beginning of the pandemic until the respondent’s interview. to avoid daily variations, we use the weekly average. for the sample residing in italy, data for this variable come from offi cial data from the italian department of life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 469 civil protection and is published daily. for the sample residing in switzerland, the data come from the swiss federal offi ce of public health (ludwig-dehm et al. 2023). these two covid-19 variables are not shown in the fi nal regression models due to their non-signifi cance, but we deem it important to specify that we controlled for them, considering the period when the survey was conducted. when analyzing the life satisfaction determinants for each of the three groups, we also add three migrant-specifi c variables: discrimination due to origin, length of stay in switzerland, and satisfaction with the migration decision. origin-related discrimination is measured by asking migrants how often they felt discriminated or badly treated because of their origin in the previous twelve months. answer categories and recoding are the same as the variable indicating age-related discrimination. the resulting variable is dichotomous, with categories “no” (never) and “yes” (once or more). length of stay in switzerland is a numerical variable measuring how many years they have lived in switzerland. satisfaction with the migration decision is a numerical variable ranging from 0 (not at all satisfi ed) to 10 (completely satisfi ed). 3.3 statistical analyses to answer our fi rst research question, we rely on t-tests to compare the means of life satisfaction between the different populations. then, we compute a series of ordinary least squares (ols) regressions to estimate the relationship between life satisfaction and various independent variables (tab. 2). in model 1, we include only the main independent variable: migration status. in model 2, we include age, gender, and economic-related variables, such as making ends meet and level of education. in model 3, we include social network variables, such as relationship status, children, and network size. in model 4, we add health. in model 5 we include the remaining variables described above. we had also run a model with the variables related to covid-19, but this model is not shown, as it does not help further explain the dependent variable’s variance. we choose to iteratively add these variables to better understand which determinants better explain the difference in life satisfaction between the three study groups. we also ran a multicollinearity test to ensure that no two independent variables are strongly correlated. to answer our second research question, we compute an ols regression for each of the three populations, including all the variables included in the previous step, as well as the three migrant-specifi c variables described above. we report the standardized coeffi cients of all ols models in order to determine which variables have the largest association with life satisfaction within and between models. tables with unstandardized coeffi cients can be found in the appendix (tab. a2 and a3). • iuna dones470 4 results 4.1 description of the samples descriptive statistics of continuous and categorical variables are shown in table 1. in all three groups, there are slightly more men than women, but gender differences between groups are not statistically signifi cant. all three groups have a mean age of 74 with similar standard deviations. on other characteristics, the three groups are quite distinct. stayers for instance have a signifi cantly smaller network than both italian migrants and swiss natives. although this seems counter-intuitive, research has shown that individuals in southern european countries – including italy – report fewer people in their social networks, while switzerland is one of the countries that reports the highest average number of people in the network (tomini et al. 2016: 9). moreover, migrants have a signifi cantly lower educational level than both swiss natives and italian stayers, and swiss natives have higher educational levels than stayers. results also show that natives report being in better health than both migrants and stayers. natives also report praying less regularly than both other groups, while stayers pray the most among the three groups. in terms of family composition, we observe that a signifi cantly higher proportion of stayers does not have a partner in comparison to both migrants and natives, and that nearly all migrants in our sample (95.8 percent) have children, while there is a higher proportion of natives and stayers without children. we also observe that signifi cantly more migrants held physically demanding jobs in comparison to both natives and stayers. in terms of age-related discrimination, a higher proportion of swiss natives reports having experienced it during the year preceding the questionnaire in comparison to both migrants and stayers. in relation to migrant-specifi c variables, migrants in our sample have lived in switzerland for an average of 51.7 years (sd=11.0), with a median length of stay of 54 years (iqr=8.5). most of them do not report experiencing origin-related discrimination in the prior year. 4.2 differences in life satisfaction life satisfaction levels are generally high among all three groups, with migrants reporting a mean life satisfaction score of 26.4 (sd=5.8), stayers reporting a mean of 27.8 (sd=5.8) and natives reporting a mean of 28.2 (sd=4.9). however, there are signifi cant differences. an initial t-test shows that international italian migrants are signifi cantly less satisfi ed than both swiss natives and italian stayers (p<0.01), and no statistical difference exists between natives and stayers. these results confi rm hypothesis (h1a) on the lower mean levels of life satisfaction among migrants in comparison to natives, but also reject hypothesis (h2), which proposed that migrants would report higher life satisfaction levels than stayers in italy. at fi rst glance, this seems to demonstrate that migrants do not reap the benefi ts of migration, as opposed to what is shown in most of the literature life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 471 it al ia n m ig ra n ts s w is s n at iv es it al ia n s ta ye rs v ar ia b le m ea n o r n s d o r % m ea n o r n s d o r % m ea n o r n s d o r % li fe s at is fa ct io n a, b 26 .4 * 5. 8 28 .2 * 4. 9 27 .8 * 5. 8 a g e 74 .4 * 6. 3 74 .6 * 6. 5 74 .6 * 6. 9 n et w o rk s iz ea, c 3. 5* 1. 6 3. 7* 1. 6 1. 4* 1. 6 r is k at ti tu d ea, b , c 3. 2* 2. 8 5. 1* 2. 3 3. 8* 3. 3 c o v id -1 9 w o rr yb , c 7. 5* 2. 7 5. 7* 2. 7 7. 4* 3. 0 c o v id -1 9 d ea th s in r eg io n o f r es id en ce a, b , c 47 .8 * 34 .6 21 .1 * 23 .1 10 .5 * 8. 0 le n g th o f s ta y 51 .7 * 11 .0 s at is fa ct io n w it h m ig ra ti o n 8. 3* 1. 8 g en d er m al e 26 2 58 .6 37 6 58 .8 30 3 53 .4 fe m al e 18 5 41 .4 26 4 41 .2 26 4 46 .6 e d u ca ti o n a, b , c lo w 28 0 62 .6 47 7. 3 21 6 38 .1 m ed iu m 11 9 26 .6 34 4 53 .7 21 0 37 .0 h ig h 48 10 .7 24 9 38 .9 14 1 24 .9 m ak in g en d s m ee ta, b , c d if fi cu lt /n ei th er 32 6 72 .9 23 1 36 .1 30 4 53 .6 e as y 12 1 27 .1 40 9 63 .9 26 3 46 .4 h av in g a p ar tn er a, c n o 10 2 22 .8 13 2 20 .6 19 6 34 .6 y es 34 5 77 .2 50 8 79 .4 37 1 65 .4 h av in g a ch ild a, b n o 19 4. 3 97 15 .2 78 13 .8 y es 42 8 95 .7 54 3 84 .8 48 9 86 .2 h ea lt h b , c a ve ra g e/ b ad 23 1 51 .7 15 9 24 .8 31 4 55 .4 g o o d 21 6 48 .3 48 1 75 .2 25 3 4 4. 6 ta b . 1 : s am p le d es cr ip tiv e st at is tic s • iuna dones472 it al ia n m ig ra n ts s w is s n at iv es it al ia n s ta ye rs v ar ia b le m ea n o r n s d o r % m ea n o r n s d o r % m ea n o r n s d o r % p ra yi n g a, b , c n o t r eg u la rl y 18 1 40 .5 36 7 57 .3 14 4 25 .4 r eg u la rl y 26 6 59 .5 27 3 42 .7 42 3 74 .6 d em an d in g jo b a, b n o 19 9 4 4. 5 46 7 73 .0 39 1 69 .0 y es 24 8 55 .6 17 3 27 .0 17 6 31 .0 a g ere la te d d is cr im in at io n a, b , c n o 38 7 86 .6 51 0 79 .7 52 3 92 .2 y es 60 13 .4 13 0 20 .3 4 4 7. 8 o ri g in -r el at ed d is cr im in at io n n o 38 4 85 .9 y es 63 14 .1 n 4 47 64 0 56 7 ta b . 1 : c o n tin ua tio n a s ig ni fi c an t d iff er en ce b et w ee n m ig ra nt s an d s ta ye rs b s ig ni fi c an t d iff er en ce b et w ee n m ig ra nt s an d n at iv es c s ig ni fi c an t d iff er en ce b et w ee n na tiv es a nd s ta ye rs * a ri th m et ic m ea n (n um er ic v ar ia b le ) s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n tr an sa ge s ur ve y 20 20 life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 473 (bartram 2013; erlinghagen 2011; hendriks et al. 2018; nikolova/graham 2015). on the contrary, they seem worse off than both natives and stayers. however, table 2 shows that the difference between the life satisfaction of italian migrants and swiss natives is fully mediated by sociodemographic variables, thereby rejecting hypothesis (h1b) and suggesting that, when controlling for covariates known to correlate to life satisfaction, migrants are just as satisfi ed with their lives as natives. in contrast to our predictions in our second hypothesis, migrants are less satisfi ed than stayers, and the difference remains signifi cant at the p<0.1 level, even when accounting for all independent variables. however, the coeffi cient is quite small, especially considering that the life satisfaction score ranges from 5 to 35. results also show that making ends meet and being in good health are the factors that have the largest positive correlation with life satisfaction, while experiencing model 1: model 2: model 3: model 4: model 5: empty demographic social health additional & economic network determinants variables of ls italian migrants (ref:) swiss natives 0.166*** 0.061+ 0.061+ 0.015 0.020 italian stayers 0.127*** 0.073* 0.085* 0.105** 0.062+ age 0.041+ 0.059* 0.078** 0.079*** female (ref: male) 0.012 0.033 0.047+ 0.041+ making ends meet (ref: 0.244*** 0.241*** 0.218*** 0.198*** diffi cult/neither) education: medium (ref: low) 0.025 0.024 -0.001 -0.002 education: high 0.032 0.027 0.002 0.002 having a partner (ref: no) 0.081** 0.077** 0.070** child: no (ref: yes) 0.004 0.005 0.012 total network 0.004 0.007 -0.002 good health (ref: average/bad) 0.256*** 0.237*** praying regularly (ref: not 0.065** regularly) risk attitudes 0.051* physically demanding job -0.058* (ref: no) discrimination: age (ref: no) -0.150*** observations 1,654 1,654 1,654 1,654 1,654 adjusted r2 0.018 0.075 0.079 0.137 0.165 tab. 2: ols regression: determinants of life satisfaction; standardized coeffi cients + p<0.1; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: own calculations based on transage survey 2020 • iuna dones474 age-related discrimination has the largest negative correlation, and these results are in line with the life satisfaction literature (clark et al. 2018; deaton 2008; helliwell/putnam 2004; kööts-ausmees/realo 2015). furthermore, we observe that having a partner, praying regularly, and being more likely to take risks are positively associated with life satisfaction, while having had a physically demanding job is negatively correlated with life satisfaction. gender, education, having children, and network size are not related to life satisfaction. 4.3 determinants of life satisfaction by group since the three groups differ in composition from one another, we then looked at determinants of life satisfaction by group using ols regressions (tab. 3). the results show both similarities and differences among the three groups. consistently with the literature on life satisfaction (clark et al. 2018; deaton 2008; helliwell/putnam 2004; kahneman/deaton 2010), making ends meet and being in good health have the largest positive correlation with life satisfaction across groups, confi rming our third and fourth hypotheses. however, our fi fth hypothesis is rejected; fi nancial situation has a greater association with life satisfaction for swiss natives in comparison to both migrants and stayers. having experienced age-related discrimination has the largest negative correlation with life satisfaction across the three populations. however, we also tab. 3: determinants of life satisfaction by group, standardized coeffi cients migrants natives stayers age 0.082+ 0.090* 0.085+ female (ref: male) -0.093+ 0.110** 0.089* making ends meet (ref: diffi cult/neither) 0.161*** 0.251*** 0.146*** education: medium (ref: low) 0.031 -0.100 0.032 education: high -0.031 -0.044 0.015 having a partner (ref: no) 0.005 0.163*** 0.026 child: no (ref: yes) 0.046 0.027 -0.019 total network -0.014 0.048 -0.067 good health (ref: average/bad) 0.147*** 0.267*** 0.232*** praying regularly (ref: no) 0.038 0.053 0.096* risk attitudes 0.039 0.013 0.055 physically demanding job (ref: no) -0.049 -0.027 -0.056 discrimination: age (ref: no) -0.132** -0.107** -0.169*** discrimination: origin (ref: no) -0.060 length of stay in ch 0.007 satisfaction with migration 0.302*** observations 447 640 567 adjusted r2 0.240 0.221 0.121 + p<0.1; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001 source: own calculations based on transage survey 2020 life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 475 observe certain differences in life satisfaction determinants. italian migrant women have a slightly lower life satisfaction than migrant men, while women have slightly higher life satisfaction than men in the other two groups. praying regularly is positively correlated with life satisfaction only among stayers, while having a partner is positively correlated with life satisfaction only for swiss natives. finally, for migrants, length of stay and having experienced origin-related discrimination are not correlated to life satisfaction. this may be because most of our sample migrated a long time ago, and only a small percentage experienced origin-related discrimination. satisfaction with the migration decision is positively correlated to life satisfaction. 5 discussion national governments have started considering and adopting measures of subjective well-being to inform policy deliberations, and life satisfaction scales provide a valid and reliable assessment of subjective well-being (diener et al. 2013). studies on migrants’ life satisfaction are still in their early stages, and the life satisfaction of older migrants is a particularly underdeveloped fi eld of research. europe is experiencing a growing number of older migrants (ciobanu et al. 2017), and a large part of this population is comprised of individuals who moved at a young age to the industrial economies of central and north-west europe between the 1950s and 1970s, and are now ageing in place (ciobanu et al. 2017; king et al. 2017). throughout their lifetimes, they often encountered harsh working conditions, lived in deprived neighborhoods, suffered from worse health status than their native counterparts, and experienced discrimination (bolzman et al. 2004; ciobanu et al. 2017; king et al. 2017). these accumulated stressors can have negative implications for their well-being in later life, which presents a health care and welfare challenge for governments around europe (white 2006). nonetheless, they are a heterogeneous population: they come from different origin countries, have different cultural backgrounds, and vary in their ability to form networks and integrate in the host country (ciobanu et al. 2017; king et al. 2017). while existing research often groups migrants from different countries of origin (arpino/de valk 2018; calvo et al. 2017; monteiro/haan 2022), we focus on a very specifi c migration stream. this article thus aims to contribute to the scarce literature on older migrant well-being by 1) examining the difference in life satisfaction levels between three groups of older adults: italian migrants living in switzerland, swiss natives, and italian stayers living in italy, and 2) analyzing the differences in the determinants of life satisfaction across these three groups. our study produced somewhat unexpected results. italian older migrants report lower life satisfaction levels than swiss natives, which we anticipated, but this difference disappears once sociodemographic variables are considered. this outcome is in contrast to the majority of the research on migrants of all ages (arpino/de valk 2018; hadjar/backes 2013; hendriks 2015; hendriks et al. 2018; safi 2010), as well as certain studies on older migrants specifi cally (sand/gruber 2018). • iuna dones476 despite these contradictions, our results fall in line with the analyses by monteiro and haan (2022), who did not fi nd a difference in life satisfaction between migrants and natives in canada. older italian migrants also report slightly lower life satisfaction levels than stayers in the country of origin, contrary to our predictions and in opposition to the existing literature (baykara-krumme/platt 2018; gruber/sand 2022). however, a key distinction must be made between these cited studies and ours: italian migrants in switzerland are in a worse fi nancial situation than stayers, whereas in baykarakrumme and platt (2018) and gruber and sand’s (2022) research, migrants were economically better off than stayers. according to veenhoven’s (1995) livability theory, conditions that make an environment “livable” relate to life satisfaction. in other words, if human needs are met, life satisfaction increases. our measure of fi nancial situation encapsulates this factor of “livability” by asking respondents how easy or diffi cult it is to make ends meet. italian migrants in our sample are in fi nancially less “livable” circumstances, and this refl ects on their lower life satisfaction when compared to stayers. in fact, when socioeconomic variables are introduced in the analyses, the difference in life satisfaction decreases. the migrantstayer life satisfaction gap further diminishes as other sociodemographic variables are added to the analyses, and although it is rather small, it remains statistically signifi cant to the p<0.1 level. this difference could be attributed to festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, which argues that life satisfaction can be infl uenced by comparisons to others. the reference groups to which one compares him or herself can change, and migrants can compare themselves to both people in the country of origin, and people in their destination country (hendriks 2015). we postulate that the labor migrants in our research may, at least in part, compare themselves to their peers in italy who they may perceive as holding a higher socioeconomic status. unlike the migrant groups in other studies, who are fi nancially better off than stayers (baykara-krumme/platt 2018; gruber/sand 2022), italian labor migrants in switzerland may feel they were not able to fulfi ll the economic aspirations for which they migrated (bolzman/vagni 2018), leaving them in worse fi nancial conditions than their peers in italy. this perception may engender negative evaluations of their migration decision, thus having negative implications for their life satisfaction. our fi rst set of analyses suggest that migration in itself has little to no correlation to the life satisfaction of older migrants, it is rather sociodemographic characteristics, such as fi nancial situation and health, that most strongly relate to it. in comparison to previous studies on older migrants that focused on individuals who migrated at various points in their lives (calvo et al. 2017; hadjar/backes 2013), most of our respondents have lived in switzerland for many decades and thus have had the chance to adapt and integrate, so while the disruptive effect of migration may have infl uenced life satisfaction earlier in their life course, it no longer has a substantial relation to the way they evaluate their lives. at the same time, migration played a role in the opportunities and resources that italian migrants could access in switzerland. older italian migrants in switzerland moved as labor migrants into a country that provided them little possibility for vertical socio-economic mobility, and this lack life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 477 of opportunities has perpetuated itself throughout the life course (bolzman/vagni 2018; wessendorf 2007), leaving most italian labor migrants in lower socioeconomic conditions than swiss natives and thereby having important consequences for their life satisfaction. when looking at the determinants of life satisfaction of each of the three groups, for the most part, the three groups resemble each other. making ends meet and being in good health are the factors that most positively correlate to life satisfaction, while age-related discrimination negatively relates to it, which is in line with the existing literature (bartram 2015; clark et al. 2018; kang/kim 2022). however, being able to make ends meet has a greater relation to the dependent variable for natives than for migrants and stayers. contrary to our hypothesis and to bartram’s (2011) fi ndings, our results lead us to presume that swiss natives attribute more value to their fi nancial situation than migrants and stayers. research has shown that personal values act as mitigating factors in the relationship between income and life satisfaction, and that income plays a greater role in life satisfaction for individuals who hold materialistic values rather than for those who hold intrinsic ones (georgellis et al. 2009). we therefore deduce that the greater importance of fi nancial situation for swiss natives is related to their personal values. our results also show that, in the case of migrants, women report lower life satisfaction levels than men, while for natives and stayers, the relationship between being a woman and life satisfaction is positive. the literature on gender and life satisfaction has been largely inconsistent (batz-barbarich/tay 2018), but a study has found that southern european female migrants report signifi cantly lower wellbeing levels than males (gruber/sand 2022). this is possibly due to “gender-specifi c acculturative stress as a consequence of the migration decision that is usually taken by the male partner” (gruber/sand 2022: 980-981). in fact, a qualitative study focused on older italian migrants in switzerland revealed that italian women often described migration as a passive experience rather than something they actively decided to do (dones/ciobanu 2022). we therefore propose that italian women’s inactive choice in their migration decision plays a role in their life satisfaction. other determinants of life satisfaction differ across groups. family ties and social networks are not related to life satisfaction for migrants and stayers, while for swiss natives, having a partner is positively signifi cant. this might be due to the differing personal values of the groups and might refl ect the weight that natives assign to romantic relationships. praying regularly is positively related to life satisfaction only among stayers, which is consistent with studies showing that the religion-life satisfaction correlation is stronger in southern european countries than western europe (georgellis et al. 2009). these differences in determinants of life satisfaction, as well as the greater association between income and life satisfaction among swiss natives, underline the role that cultural background and personal values play in well-being. these fi ndings do not come without limitations. although life satisfaction is infl uenced by life events, health, and social relations (to name a few), research has found that about 30 percent of life satisfaction is determined by genes and personality traits (bartels 2015; røysamb et al. 2018). this means that a signifi cant • iuna dones478 degree of unobserved variance remains present. a way to circumvent this problem would be to control for personality traits; unfortunately, these data were not available in our dataset. furthermore, it would have been better for the swiss and italian data collection to have been carried out using the same survey methods. however, as outlined in the data and methods section, we did not fi nd support for the existence of a social vulnerability bias. moreover, interview mode has been found to have little to no effect in the association between sociodemographic variables and subjective wellbeing (piccitto et al. 2022; sarracino et al. 2017). for these reasons, we maintain the validity of our results. cross-sectional studies like this are limited in determining whether migrants gain life satisfaction as a result of migration, and longitudinal studies would be more adequate for analyzing the changes in life satisfaction throughout the migration trajectory. however, longitudinal studies following individuals preand postmigration are rare, and it has been argued that the inclusion of stayers in the country of origin provides a good benchmark for understanding the role of migration in life satisfaction (baykara-krumme/platt 2018; gruber/sand 2022; hendriks 2015). other methodological concerns relate to reverse causality and self-selection: migration may impact life satisfaction, but at the same time, those with lower levels of life satisfaction may be more likely to migrate (graham/markowitz 2011). moreover, migrants differ from stayers in terms of risk tolerance, wealth, and motivation (jaeger et al. 2010; nikolova/graham 2015). we cannot claim causality, as it can only be determined in experimental designs, nor can we fully exclude a self-selection effect. however, we control for risk tolerance to attempt to minimize it. lastly, our dataset does not include a variable identifying the specifi c reasons for migration of our participants. nonetheless, we base ourselves on the existing literature showing that italian adults who migrated to switzerland in the 1950s and 1970s – as is the case in most of our sample – migrated out of economic necessity or to reunite with their families who migrated as labor migrants (bolzman/vagni 2018; dones/ciobanu 2022; riaño/wastl-walter 2006; wessendorf 2007). this literature has documented the lack of socioeconomic opportunities this population encountered in switzerland, as we detail above, and it allows us to confi dently discuss our results within the context of this labor migration. 6 conclusion despite these limitations, our study reaches important conclusions on the life satisfaction of older migrants who have been living in the host country for decades. although having a migratory background itself has little to no relation to life satisfaction, older italian migrants in switzerland have lower average life satisfaction levels than both swiss natives and italian stayers. this is partially because they fi nd themselves in lower socioeconomic positions than both natives and stayers, and these socioeconomic disadvantages play an important role in their life satisfaction. life satisfaction in later life is expected to originate from the life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 479 opportunities to accumulate resources throughout the life course (calvo et al. 2019), but older italian migrants in switzerland have had less opportunities to accumulate such resources than the native population. this is likely due to path dependency, a concept that holds that “a position in the social space is defi ned by its structure of opportunities and constraints that leads or not to a further step in the life course that engenders new opportunities or new constraints” (bolzman/vagni 2018: 68). although some italian migrants were able to mobilize their resources and improve their socioeconomic standing, many italian labor migrants entered switzerland in low social positions that limited their opportunities for vertical socio-economic mobility (bolzman/vagni 2018). these disadvantages accumulated themselves throughout the life course, leaving italian migrants with limited chances to reduce their socioeconomic inequalities vis-à-vis swiss natives (bolzman/vagni 2018), which in turn had meaningful ramifi cations for migrants’ life satisfaction. our results call for policies to 1) address the socioeconomic inequalities faced by older migrants, and 2) support programs that promote socioeconomic opportunities for migrants of all ages to ensure the well-being of future older adults, regardless of migratory background. in an increasingly mobile world, our fi ndings on the different determinants of life satisfaction also urge for policymakers to 3) consider the diversity of the population in efforts to promote life satisfaction for all constituents. acknowledgements the author would like to thank professor ruxandra oana ciobanu for having provided the author with the possibility to carry out this study, and for her invaluable feedback at every stage of the research article. the author would also like to thank dr. sarah ludwig-dehm for the creation of the variable measuring covid-19-related deaths in the region of residence. additionally, the author would like to thank professor claudine burton-jeangros and professor n’dri paul konan for their feedback on this article. the transnational ageing dataset analyzed in this study is not yet available publicly. for now, it is available from ruxandra oana ciobanu (oana.ciobanu@ hetsl.ch) on reasonable request. the work for this paper was funded by the swiss national science foundation through the professorship 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benefi cial for migrants and their children?: comparing social mobility of turks in western europe, turks in turkey, and western european natives. in: international migration review 51,1: 97-126. https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12219 date of submission: 12.12.2022 date of acceptance: 29.06.2023 iuna dones (). university of applied sciences and arts western switzerland, faculty of social work (hetsl / hes-so), swiss centre of expertise in life course research, university of geneva. institute of sociological research (isr), university of geneva. geneva, switzerland. e-mail: iuna.dones@hetsl.ch url: https://www.hetsl.ch/cv/iuna-dones/ https://doi.org/10.1017/s0144686x04002296 https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830701541614 https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830600927708 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315581903 https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2013.771049 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01867-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12219 mailto:iuna.dones@hetsl.ch https://www.hetsl.ch/cv/iuna-dones/ life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 487 appendix testing for social desirability bias to address the issue of differing data collection methods and the possibility of a social desirability bias when measuring subjective well-being indicators, we turned to the swiss household panel (shp). it is a unique and nationally representative longitudinal study in switzerland that is mostly carried out through computerassisted telephone interviewing (tillmann et al. 2022). the shp includes fi ve subjective well-being variables that are identical to the ones included in the transage project, although these are not included in the main portion of this article. these fi ve variables concern satisfaction with the following life domains: 1) satisfaction with state of health, 2) satisfaction with leisure time activities, 3) satisfaction with personal, social, and family relationships, 4) satisfaction with accommodation, and 5) satisfaction with the fi nancial situation of the household. each of these is measured on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means not at all satisfi ed, and 10 means completely satisfi ed. since these measures of subjective well-being are strongly linked to life satisfaction (heller et al. 2004), they should respond to the introduction of a social desirability bias in the same way that life satisfaction questions would. if telephone interviewing leads to a social desirability bias, we would expect the mean of each of these variables to be signifi cantly greater among the shp sample than among the sample of swiss natives in the transage project. to test this, we took wave 22 of shp data collected between september 2020 and february 2021, which overlaps with the period of data collection done in the transage survey. to compare shp data to swiss natives in transage data, we restricted the shp sample to include only individuals who completed the survey by telephone, were 65 years old or older at the time of interview, have swiss nationality, have parents who also have swiss nationality, and live in the cantons of zurich, ticino, bern, aargau, vaud, or geneva. the resulting shp sample consists of 1,343 individuals. we then computed the mean of each aforementioned subjective well-being variable for the shp sample and for the transage sample and carried out a wilcoxon rank-sum test to test whether the difference between the two samples is statistically signifi cant. the results of this analysis are in table a1. although the difference between the samples is statistically signifi cant for four out of the fi ve variables, it does not support the social desirability bias hypothesis, as the shp sample, collected through telephone interviews, presents lower subjective well-being than the paper/web sample. we therefore maintain that our data collected in italy and switzerland are comparable due to the lack of evidence supporting the existence of a social desirability bias. • iuna dones488 tab. a1: social desirability bias testing: shp and transage subjective well-being variables variable shp mean transage mean p (n=1,343) (n=836) satisfaction health 7.617 (sd = 1.69) 7.966 (sd = 1.80) p < 0.01*** satisfaction leisure 8.44 (sd = 1.70) 8.40 (sd = 1.79) p = 0.89 satisfaction relationships 8.48 (sd = 1.35) 8.73 (sd = 1.43) p < 0.01*** satisfaction accommodation 8.82 (sd = 1.30) 9.06 (sd = 1.29) p < 0.01*** satisfaction fi nances 8.27 (sd = 1.70) 8.36 (sd = 1.88) p < 0.05** source: swiss household panel, 2020; transage survey 2020 life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 489 m o d el 1 : m o d el 2 : m o d el 3 : m o d el 4 : m o d el 5 : e m p ty d em o g ra p h ic & s o ci al n et w o rk h ea lt h a d d it io n al e co n o m ic d et er m in an ts va ri ab le s o f l s it al ia n m ig ra n ts (r ef .) s w is s n at iv es 1. 86 9* ** 0. 68 3+ 0. 68 4+ 0. 17 2 0. 22 0 it al ia n st ay er s 1. 46 6* ** 0. 84 9* 0. 98 6* 1. 21 7* * 0. 71 7+ a g e 0. 03 5+ 0. 04 9* 0. 06 5* * 0. 06 6* ** fe m al e (r ef : m al e) 0. 12 9 0. 36 4 0. 52 3+ 0. 45 9+ m ak in g en d s m ee t ( r ef : d if fi cu lt /n ei th er ) 2. 68 7* ** 2. 64 5* ** 2. 39 2* ** 2. 17 6* ** e d u ca ti o n: m ed iu m (r ef : lo w ) 0. 28 3 0. 27 0 -0 .0 10 -0 .0 28 e d u ca ti o n: h ig h 0. 39 4 0. 33 8 0. 02 3 0. 02 2 h av in g a p ar tn er (r ef : n o) 1. 01 9* * 0. 96 8* * 0. 87 3* * c h ild : n o (r ef : y es ) 0. 06 1 0. 09 4 0. 21 0 to ta l n et w o rk 0. 01 0 0. 02 1 -0 .0 06 g o o d h ea lt h (r ef : a ve ra g e/ b ad ) 2. 83 9* ** 2. 63 2* ** p ra yi n g re g u la rl y (r ef : n o t r eg u la rl y) 0. 72 8* * r is k at ti tu d es 0. 09 6* p hy si ca lly d em an d in g jo b (r ef : n o) -0 .6 67 * d is cr im in at io n: a g e (r ef : n o) -2 .3 56 ** * c o n st an t 26 .3 58 ** * 22 .8 92 ** * 20 .9 18 ** * 18 .4 69 ** * 18 .6 85 ** * o b se rv at io n s 1, 65 4 1, 65 4 1, 65 4 1, 65 4 1, 65 4 a d ju st ed r 2 0. 01 8 0. 07 5 0. 07 9 0. 13 7 0. 19 5 ta b . a 2: o ls r eg re ss io n: d et er m in an ts o f l ife s at is fa ct io n, u n st an d ar d iz ed c o ef fi c ie n ts + p < 0. 1; * p < 0. 05 ; ** p < 0. 01 ; ** * p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n tr an sa ge s ur ve y 20 20 • iuna dones490 tab. a3: determinants of life satisfaction by group, unstandardized coeffi cients migrants natives stayers age 0.075+ 0.067* 0.071+ female (ref: male) -1.088+ 1.094** 1.029* making ends meet (ref: diffi cult/neither) 2.087*** 2.556*** 1.680*** education: medium (ref: low) 0.410 -0.983 0.376 education: high -0.587 -0.440 0.194 having a partner (ref: no) 0.069 1.964*** 0.319 child: no (ref: yes) 1.326 0.369 -0.321 total network -0.051 0.149 -0.245 good health (ref: average/bad) 1.703*** 3.018*** 2.684*** praying regularly (ref: not regularly) 0.451 0.519 1.262* risk attitudes 0.082 0.028 0.098 physically demanding job (ref: no) -0.574 -0.295 -0.691 discrimination: age (ref: no) -2.229** -1.300** -3.640*** discrimination: origin (ref: no) -0.989 length of stay in switzerland 0.004 satisfaction with migration 0.982*** constant 11.732** 17.382*** 19.257*** observations 447 640 567 adjusted r2 0.240 0.221 0.121 source: own calculations based on transage survey 2020 life satisfaction among italian migrants, italian stayers, and swiss natives • 491 m o d el 1 : m o d el 2 : m o d el 3 : m o d el 4 : m o d el 5 : e m p ty d em o g ra p h ic s o ci al n et w o rk h ea lt h a d d it io n al & e co n o m ic d et er m in an ts va ri ab le s o f l s it al ia n m ig ra n ts (r ef .) s w is s n at iv es 1. 76 7* ** 0. 55 9 0. 55 1 0. 03 6 0. 18 6 it al ia n st ay er s 1. 39 9* ** 0. 74 5* 0. 92 1* 1. 10 4* * 0. 71 1+ a g e 0. 03 7+ 0. 05 2* * 0. 06 7* ** 0. 06 9* ** fe m al e (r ef : m al e) 0. 03 8 0. 26 2 0. 43 1 0. 37 1 m ak in g en d s m ee t ( r ef : d if fi cu lt /n ei th er ) 2. 76 1* ** 2. 71 7* ** 2. 47 1* ** 2. 32 6* ** e d u ca ti o n: m ed iu m (r ef : lo w ) 0. 25 8 0. 24 3 0. 01 9 0. 08 3 e d u ca ti o n: h ig h 0. 32 9 0. 26 9 -0 .0 07 0. 14 5 h av in g a p ar tn er (r ef : n o) 1. 02 2* * 0. 97 1* * 0. 88 5* * c h ild : n o (r ef : y es ) 0. 14 9 0. 15 6 0. 28 9 to ta l n et w o rk 0. 02 8 0. 03 7 0. 00 9 g o o d h ea lt h (r ef : a ve ra g e/ b ad ) 2. 72 5* ** 2. 55 6* ** p ra yi n g re g u la rl y (r ef : n o t r eg u la rl y) 0. 81 5* * r is k at ti tu d es 0. 09 6* d is cr im in at io n: a g e (r ef : n o) -2 .4 80 ** * c o n st an t 26 .3 58 ** * 22 .8 39 ** * 20 .7 83 ** * 18 .4 56 ** * 18 .1 04 ** * o b se rv at io n s 1, 77 1 1, 77 1 1, 77 1 1, 77 1 1, 77 1 a d ju st ed r 2 0. 01 7 0. 07 7 0. 08 1 0. 13 5 0. 16 3 ta b . a 4: s en si tiv it y an al ys is 1 w it ho u t p hy si ca lly d em an d in g jo b v ar ia b le , u n st an d ar d iz ed c o ef fi c ie n ts + p < 0. 1; * p < 0. 05 ; ** p < 0. 01 ; ** * p < 0. 00 1 s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n tr an sa ge s ur ve y 20 20 • iuna dones492 tab. a5: sensitivity analysis 2 without physically demanding job variable, unstandardized coeffi cients migrants natives stayers age 0.069+ 0.069** 0.077* female (ref: male) -1.097* 0.905* 1.014+ making ends meet (ref: diffi cult/neither) 2.218*** 2.724*** 1.687*** education: medium (ref: low) 0.528 -0.925 0.413 education: high -0.460 -0.499 0.320 having a partner (ref: no) 0.117 1.978*** 0.302 child: no (ref: yes) 1.057 0.482 -0.276 total network -0.089 0.163 -0.224 good health (ref: average/bad) 1.725*** 2.777*** 2.707*** praying regularly (ref: not regularly) 0.582 0.468 1.379* risk attitudes 0.068 0.026 0.109 discrimination: age (ref: no) -2.445** -1.351** -3.610*** discrimination: origin (ref: no) -1.283+ length of stay in ch 0.001 satisfaction with migration 0.928*** constant 12.664*** 17.234*** 18.358*** observations 503 697 571 adjusted r2 0.244 0.217 0.118 source: own calculations based on transage survey 2020 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911: updating ravenstein and the step-migration hypothesis the process of internal migration in england and wales, 18511911: updating ravenstein and the step-migration hypothesis* joseph day abstract: since their publication in 1885 and 1889 respectively, ravenstein’s laws of migration – which have since been summarised as eleven broad rules – have achieved something approaching universal acceptance (ravenstein 1885, 1889). while most of these laws have been tested and retested using data drawn from a range of countries and time periods – invariably reconfi rming the status of his hypotheses as “laws” – one hypothesis has been resistant to attempts to confi rm ravenstein’s interpretation; the so-called step-migration hypothesis. given the confl icting defi nitions of step-migration, this article fi rst recounts the historiography of the term and the subsequent reason why this paper has defi ned step-migration as a means by which individuals migrated, rather than a population-level phenomenon in which out-migrants are continually replaced by in-migrants. recent studies have invariably concluded that while step-migration may have been the predominant means by which migration occurred during periods of industrialisation in the past, it is no longer the process by which movement occurs in modern, post-industrial societies (plane et al. 2005). this article therefore critically re-evaluates the evidence upon which ravenstein based his laws. the census. whereas ravenstein used the published report of the 1881 census; the present study utilises the complete, individual-level manuscript census returns from 1851 to 1911. through an analysis of approximately 160 million lifetime migration paths, this paper draws two important conclusions. first, that most people’s migratory activity tended to be concentrated in a single move – usually upon leaving home – rather than in a series of steps over their lifetimes. this means the census – recording only individuals’ birthplace and location on census night – captures most people’s full migration histories, amplifying its value as a source for studying migration in the past. by fi rst identifying the age range in which migration occurred, this article argues that the similarity of the age profi le of migrants to those leaving home suggests they were one-and-thesame process. by then constructing synthetic cohorts and analysing the distances migrated by the population in each census between the mean ages of key lifecycle comparative population studies vol. 44 (2019): 447-496 (date of release: 08.06.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: 10.12765/cpos-2020-13en urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-13en0 * this article belongs to a special issue on “internal migration as a driver of regional population change in europe: updating ravenstein”. • joseph day448 events – leaving home, leaving service and entering marriage – it is demonstrated that very little migration occurred beyond the fi rst move. this is reiterated in a cohort analysis which shows very little change in the destinations of migrants between censuses. in order to search for evidence of migration post-marriage, mothers’ migration paths are reconstructed from those of their co-resident children. this similarly demonstrates that only a minority of mothers migrated during their childbearing years with the majority of migration occurring prior to the birth of their fi rst child. this article therefore shows that while 1851-1911 was not a period without migration, nor was it one of constant movement. rather, england and wales urbanised because the majority made a considered choice of destination once in their lives. this article therefore demonstrates that migration in steps was the exception rather than the rule and that the individual-level census returns are a valuable source of migration evidence between 1851 and 1911 and deserve far wider use. keywords: step-migration · internal migration · england and wales · nineteenth century · census 1 introduction in 1771, joseph shaw migrated 6 km to the village of dent from his rural home in garsdale where he was born in 1748. from there he moved to kendal in 1776, back to dent in 1777, before moving to dolphinholme in 1791, to milnthorpe in 1794 and fi nally to preston in 1795 where he remained until his death in 1823. his son benjamin on the other hand lived in the family home at dolphinholme where he stayed until he completed his apprenticeship before meeting his future wife in lancaster while looking for work, before settling in preston. there is no doubt that although joseph, who migrated in steps from the countryside to his fi nal – urban – destination, had the more interesting migration history, this paper will argue that it was in fact benjamin whose experience – though less interesting – was more common (crosby 1991). since ravenstein fi rst suggested the notion that migration proceeds in steps in his seminal 1885 and 1889 papers on migration, the step-migration hypothesis has been widely accepted in the literature. ravenstein (1885) characterised the process as when “…the inhabitants of the country immediately surrounding a town of rapid growth fl ock into it; the gaps thus left in the rural population are fi lled up by migrants from more remote districts, until the attractive force of one of our rapidly growing cities makes its infl uence felt, step by step, to the most remote corner of the kingdom.” however, the combined vagueness of ravenstein’s description and the heterogeneity of the data used to test it have resulted in a plethora of competing – and confl icting – defi nitions. did ravenstein mean that individuals migrated up the urban hierarchy throughout their lives or that each “step” – in-migrants fi lling the gaps left by out-migrants – consisted of distinct groups and that step-migration the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 449 was a phenomenon that occurred over generations which could only be observed in the aggregate? grigg clearly interpreted step-migration to have been the means by which individuals migrated, describing ravenstein’s hypothesis as one in which “migrants did not proceed directly to their destination but by a series of steps” (grigg 1977). conversely, others have described the step-migration hypothesis as one that is more akin to chain-migration in which populations tended towards towns and cities (champion 2019). but did ravenstein mean that migrants simply moved nearer towns? or that migrants moved up the urban hierarchy to progressively larger settlements? while the former – spatial stepwise migration – is generally accepted as being ravenstein’s own conception, others have argued that “hierarchical stepwise migration” where each step represents a progression up the urban hierarchy is a more useful way to conceptualise the process. however, as this latter conceptualisation removes the friction of distance inherent to ravenstein’s defi nition, step-migration now generally refers to moves that are both spatial and hierarchical (conway 1980). this however does not clarify whether the process of step-migration occurs at the level of the individual, within a single generation – intra-generational step-migration – or at a population level between generations – inter-generational stepmigration. conway (1980) recognised that the catch-all term of “step-migration” has continued to confl ate these two very different processes. in inter-generational stepmigration, individuals move from the village to a small town, their children move to larger towns and their children in turn move to cities (hägerstrand 1957; pryor 1969, 1975; skeldon 1977; harvey/riddell 1975) at each step, the “gaps” which out-migrants left are fi lled by in-migrants coming from further down the urban hierarchy. intra-generational step-migration by contrast is the process by which an individual migrates to the city from the countryside through a series of intermediate steps. in this conceptualisation, out-migrants are also replaced by in-migrants from further down the urban hierarchy and therefore, both interpretations could be consistent with ravenstein’s hypothesis as originally described. of the two however, inter-generational stepwise migration is the most problematic both conceptually and methodologically. conceptually, inter-generational stepwise migration has variously been described as “replacement migration”, “chain-migration”, “hierarchical migration”, “complex step migration” and “stage migration”, all of which describe a group of out-migrants being replaced by a group of in-migrants. conway (1980) describes this process as a “stage by stage pattern of aggregate-level migration fl ows through the urban hierarchy or across space towards the major urban centers [sic]”. conway makes the salient point that such a stage-by-stage progression of aggregate population fl ows may not be evidence of the population moving “towards” large towns and cities but rather, may simply be an artefact of an economy’s spatial structure. this is best illustrated by briefl y examining the currents of migration that ravenstein had reconstructed from the 1881 census in fi gure 1 and it does appear that migrants fl owed in “waves” towards london for example; from cornwall to devon, devon to dorset, dorset to wiltshire, wiltshire to berkshire and berkshire • joseph day450 to london. however, while it has been argued that step-migration presents itself as fl ows of net migration, step-migration is by no means the only – or even the most plausible – interpretation of net migration fl ows (conway 1980). for example, if – as is conceivable from fi gure 1 – migrants from rural south cambridgeshire fl ocked to the towns of adjacent north essex while migrants from south essex went to neighbouring london, this would appear – in county-level fl ows – as step-migration. however, it is more likely that this simply refl ects regional spatial economic structure if the towns of north essex offered the best prospects to migrants from south cambridgeshire given the perceived alternatives while london similarly represented the best opportunities to those from south essex. the consequence is that a random spatial pattern is erroneously interpreted as one that is ordered and fig. 1: ravenstein’s visualisation of migration fl ows source: ravenstein (1885) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 451 intentional (zhao/hahn 2014). however, potentially random patterns of net population fl ows could be distinguished from step-migration using longitudinal data. by record-linking migrants across censuses, the extent to which successive generations tended towards progressively larger towns could be quantifi ed. however, as it would it be a considerable undertaking to produce a large enough sample from record-linking the nineteenth-century censuses of england and wales to test this, this is not attempted here. it is therefore most conceptually satisfying to interpret ravenstein’s step-migration hypothesis as the “process of human spatial behaviour in which individuals or families embark on a migration path of acculturation which gradually takes them, by way of intermediate steps, from a traditional rural environment to the modern-urban environment” (conway 1980; hudson 1972; ravenstein 1885, 1889). while this article interprets step-migration as a phenomenon which occurs at the individual-level for conceptual and methodological reasons, it is not an intellectual history of the concept. indeed, it does not intrinsically matter which defi nition is “correct”. what matters is that multiple studies have interpreted step-migration as the process by which individuals progressively moved from the countryside to the towns and cities throughout their lifetime, and this defi nition has ramifi cations for the 1851-1911 censuses as a source of evidence for migration data (anderson 1971; gwynne/sill 1976; holderness 1970; llewellyn-smith 1902; mageean/pryce 1982; plane et al. 2005; pooley/d’cruze 1994; saville 1957; smith 1951; withers/watson 1991). indeed, as the census only recorded birthplace and location on census night, it misses any migratory “steps” that occurred in between. the census would not only then fail to accurately reconstruct individuals’ migration paths, but any attempt to identify the determinants of migration between individuals’ place of birth and place of residence would be artifi cial if no such move actually occurred. as the step-migration hypothesis casts doubt on the census as a source for patterns of migration, the hypothesis itself warrants rigorous testing (hinde 2004). although previous studies, either employing the aggregated published census reports or small samples drawn from the manuscript census returns have found little evidence of the process, the step-migration hypothesis has remained a touchstone for the analysis of migration in the past (anderson 1971; gwynne/sill 1976; holderness 1970; llewellyn-smith 1902; mageean/pryce 1982; plane et al. 2005; pooley/d’cruze 1994; saville 1957; smith 1951; withers/watson 1991). as grigg (1977) noted that “nineteenth-century migration will not be properly understood until the enumerators’ schedules for the century have been analysed” the present article utilises the complete, individual-level census returns for the years 1851-1861 and 1881-1911 – the 1871 returns are currently unavailable – to test the “step-bystep” hypothesis thanks to the i-cem (integrated census microdata) project (schürer 2019). however, that this paper fi nds no evidence of intra-generational step-migration has two signifi cant implications. first, it goes against the received wisdom that stepmigration was the process by which britain urbanised in the nineteenth century (plane et al. 2005). second – and perhaps more signifi cantly – it rebuts the assertion implicit to step-migration that lifetime migration paths taken from the census fails to • joseph day452 record the numerous intermediate moves which the step-migration hypothesis assumes them to have made (hinde 2004). the argument goes that, if migrants moved several times between their place of birth and their enumerated place of residence on census night, any attempt to causally connect the determinants of migrating with the socio-economic context of the two locations would be to incorrectly imply the transfer occurred in a single move. it also assumes that the socio-economic context as reconstructed from the cebs was an accurate refl ection of the circumstances in which the move occurred, even though the move might have occurred years prior to the census being taken (hinde 2004). this paper demonstrates that these reservations are misplaced. the majority of the population made only a single major move in their lives upon leaving either the parental home or – in the case of males born where farm service still predominated – upon leaving service. this makes it perfectly plausible to assume that individuals’ place of residence on census night is an adequate approximation of their fi rst destination upon leaving the parental home – as proxied by their place of birth – as well as infer a causal relationship between the socio-economic contexts of an individuals’ place of birth and place of enumeration on census night. therefore, by estimating the ages at which migrants both left home and left service, it is possible to estimate the age groups that had likely only left the parental home recently prior to census night. by then analysing the extent to which the destinations of different cohorts changed over time – as well as mothers’ whose migration paths are reconstructed from the birthplaces of their co-resident children – this article demonstrates that individuals’ place of birth and place of enumeration on census night were most likely connected by a single move, a move which the census captures. therefore, although this paper leaves room for the possibility that step-migration was a process of population transfers toward towns and cities at the aggregate level, it demonstrates fi rst and foremost that it decidedly was not a phenomenon that operated at the individual-level. this paper therefore represents a step towards restoring historians’ faith in the nineteenth-century censuses as a source for understanding the determinants of british urbanisation more fully. 2 data and methods by defi ning step-migration as the process by which individuals migrate up the urban hierarchy in short, progressive steps does at least have the advantage of making the process one that is readily identifi able, and which could exhibit itself in one of two ways. either it will present as an increase in the proportion of the population that become resident in larger and larger settlements over time – the “hierarchical stepwise migration” – as illustrated in fi gure 2 in which migrants move up the urban hierarchy, with most moving to the next level, or it will present spatially as migrants move towards towns and into their commuter belts, if not necessarily into the urban settlements themselves. ideally, individuals would be tracked across the censuses for evidence of migration throughout their lifetimes. however, as the integrated census microdata the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 453 (i-cem) on which this paper is based is not record-linked, the population cannot be tracked directly over time (schürer 2019). substituting for this, three distinct methods with which to measure step-migration are used; age-specifi c migration paths, cohort analysis and pseudo-longitudinal analysis. firstly, age-specifi c migration produces synthetic cohorts in which the age distribution of the population is treated as if it were a single cohort passing through time. this method suggests that most migrants were not making several progressive moves up the urban hierarchy over the life-course but were instead making a single move upon leaving home or – in the male case where farm service still predominated – upon leaving service. secondly, a cohort analysis that traces the cohort which had just left home in one census across subsequent censuses similarly demonstrates that there was very little change in the proportion that had moved “up” the urban hierarchy beyond the location they had migrated to upon leaving the parental home. finally, a pseudo-longitudinal analysis was conducted which reconstructs the migration paths of mothers through the birthplaces of their co-resident children. this analysis again corroborates the fi ndings of the fi rst two methods, showing that most migratory activity occurred prior to the birth of the eldest child, rather than continuing throughout the life-course, gradually moving up the urban hierarchy. using these methods, the intra-generational interpretation of step-migration should no longer be considered a “law”. (in addition to the present study see: plane et al. 2005; anderson 1971; mills/schürer 1996). fig. 2: a ravenstein-style migration system source: plane et al. (2005) • joseph day454 in order to analyse migration using census material, both individuals’ birthplace and place of residence on census night must be matched to a gis (geographical information system) and the urban hierarchy must be defi ned. while the methodology adopted to match individuals’ place of birth as transcribed to a gis will be comprehensively detailed in a forthcoming article, it is worth briefl y restating the method here. firstly, birthplace information in the original manuscript census returns was transcribed as text strings in the form parish / town | county | country in line with the original census instructions, with each fi eld being completed with as much – or as little – information as originally recorded. matching these strings to the gis was complicated by ambiguities in the birthplace strings; chiefl y misspellings, non-existent places, e.g. abbots langley | staffordshire | [blank] or strings that could refer to multiple places, e.g. newton | cambridgeshire | [blank]. despite errors and ambiguities, the core principle of the matching process was to believe that the birthplace individuals provided – however ambiguous – was a meaningful one. consequently, in order to match with a known location, the original birthplace string was changed as little as possible. for example, if an individual gave simply london | [blank] | [blank] as their place of birth or newton | cambridgeshire | [blank] individuals were matched to all the parishes to which they may have been referring. in these cases, all the parishes that were considered part of london, and all the parishes in cambridgeshire which included a settlement called “newton”, respectively. the algorithm matching birthplace strings to a gis is designed to fi nd the shortest known place name that matches the most characters in each word in the parish / town part of the birthplace string, with the fewest redundant characters. for example, s pancras | london | [blank] matches to both pancras, devon and st pancras, london on seven characters, “pancras”, with one redundant character, “s”. as “pancras” is shorter than “st pancras”, the fi rst parse of the algorithm matches the string to pancras, devon. in pre-processing, all strings were matched to a standardised version of the county as stated in the birthplace string. as the “stated” county for the string s pancras | london | [blank] was london, a second parse searches for the best match closer to london than devon, in both london and counties adjacent to it. the condition of matching to the shortest place name is removed in the second parse, so although s pancras matches both pancras, devon and st pancras, london on seven characters with one redundant character, st pancras, london is closer to the “stated” county than pancras, devon. the second parse therefore reallocates the match to st pancras, london. similarly, abbots langley | staffordshire | [blank] is matched to abbots langley, hertfordshire rather than abbots bromley, staffordshire. even though abbots bromley is the best match either in or adjacent to the county stated, it matches just six characters with seven redundant characters compared to abbots langley, hertfordshire which matches on thirteen characters with zero redundant characters. the results of this algorithm is compared to the results of one based on levenshtein distances, which match a string to a known place name that requires the fewest “edits” to the string to produce a match (schürer et al. 2015). where there is a confl ict between the places the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 455 which the two methods have matched a string to, precedence is given to the place that is closest to the county as stated in the string. as already outlined, the core principle underlying the matching process is the assumption that all birthplaces were intended to be meaningful. therefore, individuals are matched to all the parishes to which they may have been referring. for example, those whose birthplace string was appledore | [blank] | [blank] were matched to appledore in both kent and devon. however, if they were resident in kent they were unlikely to have been born in devon. therefore, rather than being matched to all possible birthplaces, individuals were matched to the parish which was the shortest distance from their parish of residence. in order to identify migration up and down the urban hierarchy, towns and cities were ordered by size and classifi ed into quintiles, grouping together urban settlements which combine to form 20 percent of the urban population of england and wales outside of london. a gis of these towns and cities was created from the dataset published by smith et al. (2018) and spatially matched to individuals’ parish of birth. london is categorised separately at the top of the urban hierarchy owing to its size. the number of towns and cities in each quintile and the labels used to describe them is summarised in table 1 and follow those in plane et al. (2005). micropolitans represent the smallest urban settlements and are therefore on the lowest rung of the urban hierarchy while london is at the top with “major metropolitans” just below it. the colour codes of each metropolitan area correspond to the colours in the appendix and indicates which urban classifi cation each settlement had been allocated and its population in each census year. as the manuscript census returns are cross-sectional, the following sections analyse migration at key life events; leaving home, leaving service and marriage. each of the following sections shows that the evidence is not consistent with the stepmigration thesis. firstly, migrants had a similar age profi le to those leaving home, suggesting that the two events were part of the same process, with most migratory activity concentrated in early adulthood rather than spread over the lifecycle as migrants moved up the urban hierarchy. secondly, rural migration to the towns and tab. 1: number of settlements in each urban classifi cation, england and wales 1851-1911 urban classifi cation 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 major metropolitan 3 3 4 4 4 5 aaa metropolitan 9 10 13 13 14 17 aa metropolitan 19 22 33 33 37 43 a metropolitan 39 46 66 70 86 100 micropolitanmicropolitan 81 90 146 187 224 238 total towns and cities 150 170 261 306 364 402 source: author’s calculations using data from smith et al. 2018 • joseph day456 cities is analysed and the extent to which servitude represented a migratory “step” migration is examined. here, whereas rural-born male farm servants only moved to the towns and cities upon leaving service, rural-born females tended to enter urban domestic service. however, rather than using the town in which they worked as stepping-stones to larger, more distant towns, they largely stayed there upon leaving service. thirdly, the extent to which the urban-born population moved up the urban hierarchy is considered. here the evidence suggests that migrants moving up the urban hierarchy were outweighed by the number moving down, resulting in no net upward migration amongst the urban-born. the last section conducts a pseudolongitudinal analysis by tracking mothers’ migration paths through the birthplaces of her co-resident children. this shows that the moves which occurred prior to the birth of the eldest co-resident child were the most signifi cant. when combined with the rest of the evidence presented in this article, individuals’ migration paths were clearly not stepwise, but rather, were concentrated in their fi rst, major move. 3 age profi le of migrants although the theory of step-migration has garnered widespread acceptance, it makes little sense in light of what else is known about the demographic history of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century england and wales. firstly, as ravenstein (1876) fi rst observed and others have replicated, the young and single were the most migratory. when this is put into the context of the age at leaving home, leaving service and then marriage, it represents a very small timeframe for stepmigration and the several moves towards ever-larger towns and cities to occur. table 2 shows the ages of leaving home, leaving service and marriage for males and females across england and wales between 1851 and 1911 (day 2018. see also: hajnal 1953; schürer 1989, 2003). this table shows that the gap between leaving home and marriage shrank from around 7.5 years to 6.5 years in the period between 1851 and 1911, despite a rising tab. 2: mean ages of key lifecycle transitions, england and wales, 1851-1911 year age at leaving home age at leaving service age at marriage male female male female male female 1851 19.2 17.8 22.5 22.9 26.7 25.7 1861 19.2 17.7 21.9 22.5 26.2 25.3 1871 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 1881 20.1 18.0 22.2 22.6 26.4 25.2 1891 20.5 18.6 22.7 23.1 26.9 25.8 1901 21.1 19.3 23.1 23.5 27.2 26.2 1911 21.6 19.7 23.8 23.7 27.6 26.3 source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 457 age at marriage as the age at leaving home increased by approximately two years for females and two and a half years for males, squeezing the mean number of years spent in service by around a year in both the male and female case. therefore, if – as has already been demonstrated in countless studies – young, unmarried men and women were by far the most migratory, the window of time they had to migrate up the urban hierarchy between leaving home and marriage was relatively limited (bowley 1914; hill 1925; hollingsworth 1970; llewellyn-smith 1902; ravenstein 1876). in order to demonstrate that migration was indeed compressed into a relatively narrow age window – largely between the ages of 15 and 24 – this article extends the method proposed by hinde (2004) and shows that migratory activity peaked in the 15-24 year-old age group throughout the period between 1851 and 1911 in england and wales. following the logic that net migration = (population(t+1) − populationt) − births − deaths), mortality rates nmx and survival probabilities npx are calculated in order to estimate intercensal age-specifi c net migration rates (newell 1988; hinde 1998). intercensal net migration fi gures were not calculated for the periods 1861-1871 or 1871-1881 as the 1871 mortality fi gures in the registrar-general’s decennial supplements did not distinguish between male and female deaths. the ageand sex-specifi c mortality rates across approximately 600 registrations districts (rds) between 1851 and 1911 were then used to estimate the population that survived the intervening decade in each of the approximately 2,000 registration sub-districts (rsds) into which the rds were sub-divided. each parish is a further sub-division of each rsd. details of the spatial units in which offi cial statistics were collected and their relationship to one another are fully described in satchell (2011). this approach narrows the window in which migration must have occurred to a ten-year period. in order to analyse the age groups in which migratory activity was concentrated, it would be useful to calculate the population turnover. this however requires being able to calculate the number of both in-migrants and out-migrants in each age group in each decade which is not possible from either the published census reports or the manuscript census returns. therefore, the usual formula for population turnover could not be used (dennett/stillwell 2008), and a “pseudo” measure of population turnover is used instead. in the formula below, di αs, oi αs and pi αs respectively, represent in-migration, out-migration and population of those in age group α and sex group s in area i. in this case, each area i represents each rsd. however, as the absolute number of inand out-migrants in each age group is unknown, the number of net inand out-migrants must substitute. therefore, for each age group, rsds were classifi ed according to whether there were net inmigrants or net out-migrants. for each age group in each intercensal period, the total net inand out-migrants across the rsds substitute for the absolute number of inand out-migrants – di αs and oi αs respectively – and are divided by the total population of that age group – pi αs – in much the same way as the formula above. • joseph day458 between 1881 and 1890, 327 of the 2,110 rsds made a net gain of 175,807 males aged 20-29 while 1,783 rsds made a net loss of 450,755 males in the same age bracket of a total population of 2,318,531. the discrepancy between the two fi gures is largely explained by net emigration (baines 1986). therefore; or more precisely, 270.2 per thousand. however, as fi gure 3 underestimates actual population turnover, they must be interpreted as being indicative only of migrants’ age structure for two reasons. firstly, as inand out-migration is calculated from net migration fi gures, the absolute number of both inand out-migrants is likely to be higher. secondly, as only those that moved between rsds are counted as migrants, those that migrated within an rsd are not included in these fi gures. despite these shortcomings, and despite clear differences in the volume of migratory activity between males and females and signifi cant changes over time, fi gure 3 demonstrates that there was an extremely clear age profi le to migratory activity. although male migration appears to have been concentrated in a far shorter age range compared to the female experience – whose migratory activity was a little more spread out over the age range – for both males and females, the 15-24 age group emerges as the age group in which most migration occurs. when this is compared to the age profi le at which the population either leaving the parental home or leaving service, it appears to exhibit an extremely similar age profi le which suggests that the process of leaving home and migrating were part of one-and-thesame process. figure 4 shows the year-on-year increase in the age-specifi c proportion of the population that were either no longer in the parental home or no longer in service. in 1881 for example, 48 percent of 21 year-old males had exited home or service compared to 56 percent of 22 year-olds. this is graphed as an 8 percent increase in the proportion leaving home at the age of 22. like fi gure 3, there are some noteworthy differences between the male and female experience. the female process of leaving home exhibits a rapid “take-off” from the age of 15 whereas the male process did not. however, what is clear is that the central 50 percent of the population – in all census years – were leaving home or service and becoming independent between the approximate ages of 20 and 29; the same age group in which migratory activity was concentrated. therefore, although fi gure 3 shows that migratory activity did not solely occur in the 20-29 year age group, fi gure 4 shows that nor did the leaving home process. rather, both sets of graphs illustrate that the age profi le of the leaving home process was largely coincident with the age profi le of migration. whereas fi gure 3 might previously have been interpreted as evidence that migration continued throughout the lifecycle – in support of the step-migration hypothesis – when it is combined with fi gure 4, it is perhaps more convincing to argue that moves later in the lifecycle are evidence of delayed fi rst moves from the parental home rather than multiple moves. this contradicts llewellyn-smith (1902), who interpreted a higher average age among migrants to london as being consistent with step-migration theory given that migrants would be older at the point of their fi nal migratory step to the city compared to their fi rst migratory step out of the countryside. while this is consistent with what would be expected if migration were indeed stepwise, in light of the evidence presented here, a more convincing interpretation might he that the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 459 migrants to london were simply delaying a fi rst move and giving themselves more time to save and accumulate the resources necessary for such a move (williams/ baláž 2012). this section has argued that if the step-migration hypothesis were true, these multiple steps would need to be completed within a relatively small window, contrafig. 3: age-specifi c pseudo population turnover, england and wales 1851-1911 population turnover (migrants per '000) 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 340 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 age (years) 1851-1861 1881-1891 1891-1901 1901-1911 population turnover (migrants per '000) 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 age (years) 1851-1861 1881-1891 1891-1901 1901-1911 source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) male female • joseph day460 dicting not only the evidence presented here and elsewhere, but also ravenstein’s “law” of migration that the young and unmarried that were the most migratory (ravenstein 1876). instead, leaving the parental home appears to have been the principal mechanism by which migration occurred, and that moves later in life are more likely to have been the product of leaving home later, rather than multiple stepwise % year-on-year increase 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 age (years) 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) fig. 4: year-on-year increase in % leaving home or service england and wales, 1851-1911 % year-on-year increase 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 age (years) 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 male female the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 461 moves. in order to clarify this process further, the remaining sections examine the extent to which other key life events; lifecycle service and marriage, represented “steps” in the step-migration hypothesis and whether any moves that were taken subsequent to leaving home were indeed stepwise moves up the urban hierarchy. the next section considers whether entering lifecycle service represented a fi rst migratory “step” up the urban hierarchy for male and female migrants or can instead be better described as “circulating” migration (kussmaul 1981). 4 leaving home and entering service: a fi rst “step”? before analysing age-specifi c migration paths, it is useful to acknowledge that in large parts of england and wales, lifecycle service was an important institution; men predominantly entering farm service while women mainly went into domestic service. therefore, did entering service represent the fi rst “step” in migrants’ journeys up the urban hierarchy? firstly, it is necessary to identify the population for whom service represented the “modal” experience upon leaving the parental home. figures 5 and 6 show the proportion of males in 1851 and 1911 that had entered service upon leaving home. this is estimated by fi rst calculating the male and female mean age at leaving home in each rsd in each census year (day 2018). those that were aged within two years of the mean age at leaving home and were not resident with parents approximate the population that had likely left home shortly before census night. the proportion of this group that were servants therefore serves as an estimate of the likelihood of entering service upon leaving home. although it is evident in the male case that the institution of service was in terminal decline throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and had all but disappeared from the south-east by 1911, farm service still played an important – if diminished – role in the rural labour market across wales, the south west of england, lincolnshire, the north and east yorkshire ridings and cumberland in 1911. in the female case in fi gures 7 and 8, service still predominated across england and wales throughout the period. despite straw-plaiting and lace-making in the home counties providing women with an alternative to domestic service until the industry was killed off by foreign competition, while textile employment in the north-west similarly gave women an alternative to lifecycle service, domestic service remained the principal route out of the parental home in nineteenth-century england and wales (you 2020). if leaving home was the fi rst step of many, one would expect evidence of additional moves. however, as the dataset used here is not record-linked and it is not possible to reconstruct individuals’ migration paths directly, fi gure 9 shows the average distances migrated by the time individuals had left home, left service or had married. like fi gures 5-8, this has been estimated by calculating the mean age at leaving home, leaving service and entering marriage – as in table 2 – for each rsd in each census year. only those that were aged within two years of the average age of leaving home/service/marriage and were not at home or in service were included in the measure. this was so it could be plausibly inferred they had only left home/ • joseph day462 left service/entered marriage recently prior to the census being taken and so were unlikely to have made any intermediate steps between birth and census night. figure 9 distinguishes between the distances travelled upon leaving home by those that entered service and those that did not. the “farm service” and “non-service” districts in fi gure 9 are defi ned as those rsds in which more/less than half of males became servants upon leaving home using the same methodology as fi gures 5-8, as males that entered service were overwhelmingly farm servants and the manuscript census returns rarely identify agricultural servants specifi cally. the differences are striking. males that left home fig. 5: estimated % of males entering service upon leaving home, england and wales 1851 % intervals < 5% 5% to 15% 15% to 25% 25% to 35% 35% to 45% 45% to 55% 55% to 65% 65% to 75% 75% to 85% 85% to 95% > 95% source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 463 to enter farm service were far and away the least migratory group, moving on average around 15 km from the parental home to enter service which is in stark contrast to the distance migrated by those that did not enter service. those that left home and did not enter service had migrated – on average – around the same distances as by the age at marriage, implying that the majority of those not entering service did not migrate beyond the move made at leaving home. once individuals left service however, the distances migrated increased dramatically. although the population at the age of leaving service also includes those that had never been in service; as this is not a record-linked dataset it is not possible to fig. 6: estimated % of males entering service upon leaving home, england and wales 1911 % intervals < 5% 5% to 15% 15% to 25% 25% to 35% 35% to 45% 45% to 55% 55% to 65% 65% to 75% 75% to 85% 85% to 95% > 95% source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day464 determine whether individuals had ever been servants prior to census night, the implication is clear. farm service simply delayed the moment in the lifecycle at which migration occurred rather than deterring it completely. like those that had not entered service however, former farm servants tended not to migrate any further between leaving service and entering marriage, indeed the average distance migrated from individuals’ birthplaces actually went down slightly between leaving service and marriage. this suggests that migrants were not moving in steps – making a series of small migratory steps towards ever-larger settlements at each lifecycle stage – but instead that they were making a single move at the point of either leaving fig. 7: estimated % of females entering service upon leaving home, england and wales 1851 % intervals < 5% 5% to 15% 15% to 25% 25% to 35% 35% to 45% 45% to 55% 55% to 65% 65% to 75% 75% to 85% 85% to 95% > 95% source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 465 home or leaving service. however, fi gure 9 also shows that there was at least some movement between leaving home and marriage in the female case. for most males on the other hand, the average distance migrated hardly increased between leaving home and marriage; any difference between the two largely being accounted for by farm service. so, was this extra distance migrated by females between leaving home and marriage evidence of step-migration – a substantial proportion of the population moving a relatively short distance up the urban hierarchy – or evidence of a small number becoming more migratory between lifecycle events? figure 10, however, shows that it was likely to be the latter. it shows that there was a signifi cant fig. 8: estimated % of females entering service upon leaving home, england and wales 1911 % intervals < 5% 5% to 15% 15% to 25% 25% to 35% 35% to 45% 45% to 55% 55% to 65% 65% to 75% 75% to 85% 85% to 95% > 95% source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day466 decline in the proportion of “non-movers” – those that migrated less than 1 km – between the ages of leaving home and marriage. this suggests that there was not necessarily stepwise migration – which would more likely have expressed itself as drop in the <1 km bracket and a proportional increase in the ≥100 km bracket as migrants moving out of one distance interval were replaced by those moving into it in a “wave-like” motion (redford 1926). instead, a signifi cant proportion of those that had not moved upon leaving home, suddenly did so upon marriage. consequently, rather than being evidence of step-migration – moving upon leaving home and then again upon marriage as is implied by fi gure 9, fi gure 10 shows that, although the majority moved upon leaving either home or farm service, a minority made no signifi cant move at either of these milestones, instead delaying any migration until they were married. therefore, rather than being evidence of multiple “stepwise” moves, closer scrutiny suggests the fi rst move was simply delayed. whereas fi gure 10 suggests that fi gure 9 was evidence of a small proportion migrating between leaving home and marriage rather than evidence of a more widespread secondary move, fi gure 11 demonstrates that whatever the mechanism, it did not translate into migration up the urban hierarchy. rather, the type of settlement they were in when they left home was the same type of settlement they were likely to be in upon getting married. although fi gure 11 could be masking a signifi cant volume of movement up and down the urban hierarchy between lifecycle events, the fig. 9: mean distance (km) migrated by the rural-born population at each lifecycle stage, england and wales 1851-1911 distance (km) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 female male female male non-service farm service exit home (enter service) exit home (not enter service) exit service marriage source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 467 point remains that there is no evidence of step-migration in the aggregate. indeed, if migrants had moved in a stepwise fashion, one would have expected an ever-larger proportion to be located in ever larger settlements at each successive lifecycle stage. this was evidently not the case; with the exception of males that move to the towns upon leaving service rather than leaving home. clearly then, a cross-sectional analysis of the data suggests that migrants tended to make a single move between leaving home and marriage. while males that entered farm service delayed their move to the towns and cities, those that did not made their primary move upon leaving home, and did not migrate again. similarly, a large proportion of females that did not enter service upon leaving home appear to have delayed migrating until marriage – fi gure 10 indicates that 20-30 percent between 1851 and 1911 had migrated less than 1 km from their birthplace upon leaving home, but dropped to half this by the time they married. while the evidence presented shows no evidence of step-migration, a cross-sectional study assumes that different cohorts had comparable experiences. it is useful therefore to try and follow the destinations of each cohort through the censuses in fi gure 12. figure 12 removes the effect of urbanisation infl ating the number of rural-urban migrants over time, towns and cities are defi ned by their boundaries as they existed in 1911 throughout the period 1851-1911. figure 12 therefore includes only those that were neither in service nor co-resident with their parents and who were aged within two years of the mean age at leaving service for their rsd of birth. for example, if the fig. 10: distances migrated by rural-born females leaving home (not into service) vs. marriage, england and wales 1851-1911 % of migrants 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 < 1 15 510 10 -2 0 30 -4 0 40 -6 0 60 -8 0 80 -1 00 1 00 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 exit home (not enter service) marriage source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day468 mean age of males leaving service in 1851 was 23, those that were neither at home nor in service between the ages of 21 and 25 in 1851 are included and form the same cohort as those aged 31 to 35 in 1861 that were similarly neither at home nor in service. broadly, the picture in fi gure 12 is one of notable similarity with that shown in fi gure 11. overall, there was very little change between the proportions of each cohort found in each settlement type between censuses which suggests a remarkable level of stability, confi rming the impression made in fi gures 9-11 that individuals tended to migrate only once in their lifetime. however, although a relatively minor increase; the proportion of the 1851 and 1861 female cohort migrating to a town or city increases from 30.0 percent to 41.7 percent between 1851 and 1911 and from 33.7 percent to 44.9 percent between 1861 and 1911 respectively. while most other changes in the period can be reasonably attributed to random fl uctuations, these increases necessitate a little explication. firstly, it is worth noting that no one type of urban settlement appears to have grown at the expense of another, but rather towns and cities from across the urban hierarchy attracted an ever-larger proportion of migrants from the countryside. if individuals’ migration paths were stepwise, one would expect larger towns to grow disproportionately faster than towns lower down the urban hierarchy. however, even if this pattern were a function of step-migration – migrants from the countryside relocating to a micropolitan and then those they displaced migrating further up the urban hierarchy and so on – an increase from 30 percent to 40 percent of the fig. 11: destinations of the rural-born at each lifecycle stage, england and wales, 1851-1911 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e (e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t h o m e (n o t e nt er s er vi ce ) e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 female male rural micropolitan a metropolitan aa metropolitan aaa metropolitan major metropolitan london source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 469 rural-born population migrating to towns represents only a quarter of all rural-urban migrants. the remaining three-quarters likely having not migrated beyond the moment they left home. secondly, around half of each cohort were still resident with their parents when aged at the “mean” age of leaving home. fast-forward ten years to the next census and around 85 percent had left home. although unavoidable in the absence of record-linked data, this age group now includes many that were not included in the fi rst cohort. if the two groups of “early” and “late” leavers had differing propensities to migrate to towns and cities, one would expect it would present itself in the manner shown in fi gure 12. however, as this dataset is not record-linked, it is not possible to identify the early and late leavers and their characteristics individually; otherwise the theory that rural-born females were more likely to migrate to towns and cities the later they left the parental home, could be tested. for the moment then, it does seem a plausible deduction, especially as it accords with the evidence presented in fi gures 3-4 which shows a remarkable congruence between the age profi les of migration with those of leaving home. this suggested that migration in later life was not necessarily evidence of step-migration, but perhaps a delayed exit from home instead. this section has argued that rural migrants – except males entering farm service – tended to go to towns and cities upon leaving home and that most migrants remained in the same town or city that they fi rst migrated to (gritt 2000). in addition, fig. 12: destinations of the rural-born population by cohorts upon leaving service in each census year, england and wales 1851-1911 (extent of towns/cities held constant throughout period at 1911 boundaries) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 91 19 01 19 11 19 01 19 11 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 91 19 01 19 11 19 01 19 11 1851 cohort 1861 cohort 1881 cohort 1891 cohort 1901 cohort 1851 cohort 1861 cohort 1881 cohort 1891 cohort 1901 cohort female male rural micropolitan a metropolitan aa metropolitan aaa metropolitan major metropolitan london source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day470 no group appears to have migrated up the urban hierarchy beyond their fi rst move. so, if rural-born migrants did not tend to migrate in steps, were the urban-born population more likely to continue moving “up” the urban hierarchy throughout their lifetime? 5 urban-born migrants the methodology used to identify the cohort in fi gure 12 is repeated in fi gure 13, which shows the proportion of the urban-born population that had either stayed in their hometown, moved to a town or city in the same urban classifi cation or had moved “up” or “down” the urban hierarchy. london-born migrants are excluded as they were at the top of the urban hierarchy and could therefore not move either “up” or “across”. it is striking that the pattern in in fi gure 13 mirrors that of fi gure 12. like the increase in the proportion of the 1851 and 1861 cohorts of migrating to towns and cities shown in fi gure 12 – a probable consequence of differing propensities between early and late leavers to migrate to towns and cities – the 1851 and 1861 urban-born cohorts similarly became marginally more likely to have moved up the urban hierarchy by 1881; from around 11 percent to 17 percent of the total. however, this should not distract from the principal observation that the modal experience was to stay in the same settlement in which one was born. it is also of note that each cohort became increasingly likely to move down the urban hierarchy over time. from 1851-1911 the urban-born population moving down the urban hierarchy increased from 22 percent to 32 percent of the total. although a relatively modest increase, it means that in the aggregate, the number migrating down the urban hierarchy always exceeded those migrating up. in terms of stepwise migration then, it appears that it was neither spatial – transferring individuals between settlements – nor hierarchically pushing the population up the urban hierarchy. given that fi gure 13 shows very little migration between census years in each cohort, the move migrants made upon leaving home must have been the most signifi cant move which individuals made in their lifetime. figure 14 clarifi es this and shows very little change in the proportion of the population that had migrated up or down the urban hierarchy between the mean ages of the key lifecycle events; leaving home, leaving service and entering marriage, implying that the overwhelming majority of the moves that did occur, occurred upon leaving home. like fi gure 13, fi gure 14 shows remarkable stability in the proportions of the population found in each settlement type across the three lifecycle stages, suggesting that for the majority, leaving the parental home was their sole migratory move. however, the observations made in both fi gures 13 and 14 which require greater exposition is the number of moves down the urban hierarchy, consistently outnumbering those moving up. of these downward moves, around 60 percent of them were to rural parishes and the distances travelled by these migrants tended to be shorter than the distances travelled by the upwardly mobile as is shown in fi gure 15. although the differences between distances travelled by upward and downwardly mobile migrants narrowed between 1851 and 1911 as urbanisation shrank the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 471 fig. 13: proportion of the urban-born population migrating across the urban hierarchy by cohorts upon leaving service in each census year, england and wales 1851-1911 (extent of towns/cities held constant throughout period at 1911 boundaries) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 91 19 01 19 11 19 01 19 11 18 51 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 61 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 81 18 91 19 01 19 11 18 91 19 01 19 11 19 01 19 11 1851 cohort 1861 cohort 1881 cohort 1891 cohort 1901 cohort 1851 cohort 1861 cohort 1881 cohort 1891 cohort 1901 cohort female male downward move same urban classification same town/city upward move source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) fig. 14: proportion of the urban-born population migrating across the urban hierarchy by lifecycle stage, england and wales 1851-1911 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e e xi t h o m e e xi t s er vi ce m ar ri ag e female male female male female male female male female male female male 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 downward move same urban classification same town/city upward move source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day472 the distances necessary to travel to towns and cities, half of the urban-born migrating down the urban hierarchy travelled less than 30 km in 1851, the median distance travelled by those moving up being 90 km. in a step-migration model, moves up the urban hierarchy are interpreted as upward social mobility in the absence of recordlinked data. however, were migrants being positively or negatively selected (long 2005) depending on whether they moved up or down the urban hierarchy? if highly skilled migrants were moving down the urban hierarchy to escape urban disamenities or take a promotion – clergymen migrating to the countryside to become parish priests for example – it would be disingenuous to describe them as downwardly mobile, as it would have represented a gainful move. figure 16 however, demonstrates that this was not the case, by comparing his-cam scores of individuals migrating both up and down the urban hierarchy by the distance migrated. his-cam scores measure social interaction and as such, are used as a means to stratify occupations from the highest to the lowest social class. as his-cam is measured on a continuous scale, it is a useful means to quickly identify the relationship between skilled/unskilled occupations and migration. the original scales were constructed from the social interactions derived from marriage registers in belgium, britain, canada, france, germany, the netherlands, and sweden; the “distance” between occupations being estimated from the number of butchers that married the daughters of bakers, for example. these distances were transformed and standardised onto a hierarchical scale between 0 and 100 where fig. 15: cumulative distance (km) migrated by urban-born migrants moving up/ down the urban hierarchy, england and wales 1851-1911 % 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 distance (km) downward move (1851) upward move (1851) downward move (1911) upward move (1911) source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 473 50 was the mean. the scales used on the 1851 and 1911 census data in fi gure 16 are the “early” and “late” series respectively, as when these scales are applied to individuals’ occupations, it produced a normal distribution around a mean of 50, indicating that the occupational stratifi cation in england and wales in this period is captured by these scales (lambert et al. 2013; prandy/bottero 2000; prandy/lambert 2003; stewart et al. 1973, 1980; van leeuwen et al. 2002). the his-cam scores were adjusted further, and fi gure 16 shows the his-cam scores of migrants as a proportion of the his-cam score of those that stayed in their place of birth. therefore, scores above/below 1 show migrants were more/less skilled than average in their rsd of birth. however, as the age profi le of migrants has been shown to be very different to the population at large, his-cam scores were age-standardised to remove the distorting effect of age. figure 16 shows that migrants moving up the urban hierarchy in both 1851 and 1911 made immediate gains compared to those that remained in their hometown. those that had moved to a larger town or city just 5 km away had higher his-cam scores than their counterparts who stayed. for men in both 1851 and 1911, migrating 25 km from their place of birth produced a his-cam score that was around 5 percent higher than those still in their hometown. by contrast, men that moved fig. 16: age-standardised his-cam scores of male migrants moving up vs. down the urban hierarchy relative to non-migrants, england and wales 1851-1911 adjusated his-cam score 0.97 0.98 0.99 1 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 distance (km) downward move (1851) upward move (1851) downward move (1911) upward move (1911) source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019); his-cam for early period, 1800 – c.1890 (used for 1851 census data) and his-cam for late period, c. 1890 – c.1938 (used for 1911 census data). version 1.3.1.e/l [http://www.camsis.stir.ac.uk/hiscam, november 2019] • joseph day474 less than 20 km down the urban hierarchy had lower his-cam scores than their counterparts that did not leave their place of birth. this suggests that while migrants that moved even a short distance to a larger town or city were more skilled, those that moved a short distance down the urban hierarchy – likely to outlying districts of the conurbation – did not primarily consist of skilled professionals looking to escape urban disamenities, but were instead the less skilled (williamson 1981). after 20 km, migrants travelling down the urban hierarchy made gains relative to the stayers, although these gains were less than those made by migrants going up the urban hierarchy. whereas step-migration implies that migration continuously moves individuals up the urban hierarchy given the opportunities in ever-larger towns, fi gure 16 demonstrates that individuals migrated wherever there were opportunities, leading to what may have appeared to anderson (1971) to have been “random” moves. what is clear however is that urbanisation was not a consequence of both ruraland urbanborn migrants fl owing up the urban hierarchy like “a cistern of water after the tap has been turned on” as ravenstein (1889) put it, but a function of the rural-born alone migrating to towns and cities in their fi rst – and often only – move. although at the national-level, urban-born migrants were making a net move down the urban hierarchy rather than up it, fi gure 17 shows that the propensity to move down was not uniform across the whole of the urban hierarchy. despite migrants from towns such as bury st edmunds having a greater capacity to move up the urban hierarchy compared to migrants from “major metropolitans” such as manchester – who could only migrate up the urban hierarchy by travelling to lonfig. 17: proportion of the urban-born population migrating across the urban hierarchy upon leaving service, england and wales 1851-1911 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 downward move same urban classification same town/city upward move source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 475 don – it is telling that migrants from bury st edmunds were still more likely to move down the urban hierarchy rather than up it. only those from the smallest urban “micropolitan” settlements were more likely to move up the urban hierarchy – 35 percent – rather than down – 20 percent. however, if a net move of 15 percent up the urban hierarchy by those that accounted for just 20 percent of the urban population is evidence of step migration, it is scant evidence indeed. this paper has so far utilised age-specifi c and cohort analyses to identify evidence of step-migration up to the point of marriage. therefore, in the fi nal part of this paper, section six reconstructs mothers’ migration paths from the birthplaces of their co-resident children to create a pseudo-longitudinal study to search for evidence of step-migration beyond the moment of marriage. 6 mother’s migration paths as it is not possible to match mothers to children that had left home, it would be misleading to analyse mothers’ migration paths using the birthplaces of her coresident children if several had already left. it is therefore necessary to identify the cohort most likely to have been co-resident with all her surviving children. using the 1911 – so-called “fertility” – census (garrett et al. 2001), fi gure 18 compares the number of co-resident children with the number of children ever born. this shows that the number of children born and the number of children co-resident began to diverge – as children left the parental home – when mothers reached around the age of 41. therefore, this paper will assume that mothers were still co-resident with all their children when they were aged between 36 and 45 as these ages are within half a standard deviation either side of the peak family size at the mothers’ age of 41. given that the census is decennial, it also makes sense to select a ten-year age cohort. however, it is necessary to confi rm that this age group is also appropriate for the 1851-1901 censuses. using the 1851-1901 censuses in fi gure 19 confi rms that each census year followed an almost identical pattern. the mean number of co-resident children peaks at around 3.75 when mothers were 41 years old in all census years. the 36-45 age group is therefore the most appropriate to identify those mothers most likely to be co-resident with all her children. figure 20 meanwhile visualises the number of children co-resident with their mother between 1851 and 1911. this shows that the modal number between 1851 and 1891 was three or four, declining to two by 1901. given that the modal number of children resident with mothers aged 36-45 was three across the period and the mean was 3.9, this paper will only consider the 1,143,013 ever-married mothers aged 36-45 between 1851 and 1911 that were coresident with three children. first then, table 3 outlines the average distances migrated by mothers in this age group from their own birthplace through the subsequent births of each of their three children through to their place of residence on census night. while the average distance migrated went up over time, individuals’ fi rst move was clearly the most signifi cant. from the 1851 census, individuals’ fi rst move placed them on average • joseph day476 25.8 km from their birthplace, rising to 38.9 km using data from the 1911 census. subsequent moves were only around a quarter of the distance travelled in the fi rst move and when analysed in conjunction with the distances which these moved placed migrants from their origin, these moves could have been circulating ones, fig. 18: number of children born to/co-resident with mothers, england and wales 1911 number of children 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 mothers' age (years) children ever born co-resident children source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) tab. 3: mean distance (km) migrated between mothers’ place of birth and place of residence on census night by way of the birthplaces of her coresident children, england and wales 1851-1911 move av. distance (km) between moves av. distance (km) from mothers’ birthplace 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 1 25.8 28.8 34.0 37.5 38.1 38.9 25.8 28.8 34.0 37.5 38.1 38.9 2 7.5 9.3 11.3 11.0 9.8 10.6 27.4 30.8 36.5 39.6 40.0 40.8 3 6.2 7.6 9.4 9.0 8.4 9.7 28.4 32.1 38.2 41.1 41.5 42.4 4 6.9 9.0 10.2 10.5 10.5 11.7 29.3 32.6 39.5 42.5 43.3 43.7 note: see text for explanation of the sample. move 1 refers to the move made between a mothers’ own place of birth and the birthplace of her eldest (fi rst) co-resident child. move 2 is the move between the fi rst and second child and move 3 the move between her second and third child. move 4 refers to the move that mothers made from the birthplace of her third child to her place of residence as reported on census night. source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 477 moving individuals within a locale rather than towards larger and larger settlements in a stepwise fashion (kussmaul 1981). for example, in 1891, mothers’ fourth move placed them just 5 km further from their parental home than they were at the birth of their fi rst child, even though between the birth of their fi rst, second and third child they moved 11.0, 9.0 and 10.5 km respectively. this observation could have been the consequence of one of two phenomena, neither of which suggests step-migration. either a large number made short-distance moves reminiscent of “circulating” migration (kussmaul 1981), or there were a few long-distance migrants. figure 21 shows it to have been the latter by illustrating the proportion of urban and rural-born mothers that moved up and down the urban hierarchy. this shows that migratory activity was concentrated prior to the birth of a fi rst child. as this paper is primarily concerned with step-migration and the extent to which migrants continued to move up the urban hierarchy, mothers are deemed to move up/down the urban hierarchy etc. relative to her previous location rather than relative to her birthplace as in previous charts. for example, if a mother was born in a rural settlefig. 19: number of children co-resident with mothers, england and wales 18511901 number of children 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 mothers' age (years) co-resident children (1851) co-resident children (1861) co-resident children (1881) co-resident children (1891) co-resident children (1901) source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day478 fig. 20: number of children co-resident with an ever-married mother aged 3645, england and wales 1851-1911 ment, gives birth to her fi rst child in london and her second child in watford, this will be interpreted as an upward fi rst move followed by a downward second move. overwhelmingly, both urbanand rural-born mothers were most likely to move up the urban hierarchy in their fi rst move. by 1911, 44.2 percent of rural-born mothers had moved up the urban hierarchy to a town or city while just 7.3 percent did so in their so-called second “move” between the births of their fi rst and second child. although the urban-born were generally less likely to move up the urban hierarchy, those that did, did so in the fi rst move; 13.9 percent of urban-born mothers moved up the urban hierarchy in their fi rst move in 1911 compared to just 5.3 percent doing so in their second. this compares to 79.2 percent that had not moved settlements between the births of their fi rst and second child. evidently, the fi rst move that both ruraland urban-born mothers made was the most signifi cant, as it appears to have placed them in their “fi nal” settlement or at least the settlement in which they were resident on census night. in order to demonstrate this more fully, fi gure 22 shows the proportion of mothers in the sample whose place of residence on census night was either the same as their place of birth or was the result of their fi rst, second, third or fourth move. if a migrants’ path was for example; hemel hempstead – watford – london – watford – watford, the “fi nal” move to watford would be deemed to have occurred in the third move rather than in the fi rst move given the intervening move to london. population 0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 number of children source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 479 figure 22 reinforces the interpretation of fi gure 21, demonstrating that twothirds of all mothers were in their place of residence on census night either because they were either born there or had made that move prior to the birth of her fi rst child. although there were some variations in the magnitude of this phenomenon by settlement type, for those that did move, the fi rst move was the most signifi cant across the urban hierarchy. from the 1851 census, 34.1 percent of rural-born mothers made the move to their fi nal destination in their fi rst move compared to the 1911 census, in which 38.5 percent had done so. although the fourth move also appears to have been important– certainly more so than the second or third move – this may at least in part have been a function of return migration. even so, it was a less signifi cant determinant of where mothers were resident on census night than the fi rst move. indeed, the signifi cance of the fi rst move can be further emphasised in fi gure 23, which measures the proportion of mothers within x km of their fi nal destination by the birth of their fi rst child. figure 23 shows that the distances that the population were from their “fi nal” destination by the time they had moved to their fi rst destination – the broken lines – had shrunk considerably relative to the distance from their birthplace – the unbroken lines. in 1881 for example, half of mothers were born 8 km or less from their “fi nal” destination. by the birth of their fi rst child however, half of mothers were within 1 km of where they were resident on census night. similarly, three-quarters of all mothers in the sample were born 43 km or less from where they were enumerated when the census was taken in 1881, but this had shrunk to just 8 km by fig. 21: proportion of mothers migrating across the urban hierarchy between the birthplaces of each co-resident child, england and wales 1851-1911 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 m o ve 1 m o ve 2 m o ve 3 m o ve 4 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 rural urban downward move same urban classification same settlement upward move note: see text for explanation of the sample source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day480 the time mothers had given birth to their fi rst child. it is therefore evident that on any measure, migrants’ fi rst move was by far the most signifi cant and that further moves were the exception rather than the rule. having demonstrated that there was little movement post-marriage and that instead the majority of migratory was concentrated in the period prior to the birth of a fi rst child, it seems to be an inescapable conclusion that migration was not stepwise at all, but should instead be characterised as having largely been the product of a single move. the fi nal section summarises these fi ndings. 7 conclusion this article has attempted to comprehensively demonstrate that step-migration was not the process by which england and wales urbanised, but instead, migration predominantly occurred in a single step; most commonly at the point of leaving the parental home, but occasionally delayed until leaving service or entering marriage. this fi nding demonstrates that the census is a more valuable source for the analysis of migration than previously thought, as the moves which historians supposed individuals made between their place of birth and place of residence on census night, did not occur in the majority of cases (hinde 2004). returning to the migrafig. 22: move in which mothers – sorted by birthplace type – migrated to the settlement in which she was resident in census night, england and wales 1851-1911 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al lo nd o n m aj o r m et ro po lit an a a a m et ro p o lit an a a m et ro p o lit an a m et ro p o lit an m ic ro po lit an r ur al 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 move 4 move 3 move 2 move 1 birthplace note: see text for explanation of the sample source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 481 tion history of joseph shaw, whose dramatic life inspired his son benjamin to write the family history, does not in hindsight appear to have been more typical – despite having been more interesting – than that of benjamin, who left home at 21, moved from dolphinholme to preston about 30 km south, and after fi nding a wife and a job, remained there until his death (crosby 1991). while such autobiographies, diaries and memoirs should not be ignored, as they are valuable sources which remind us of the daily struggles that the nineteenth-century “precariat” endured, and the decisions required to piece together an existence, the overemphasis on them distorts what the historian perceives to have been the typical experience (humphries 2010). instead, benjamin shaw, who left home at an average age, migrated an average distance to an average-sized town and remained in an average job until his death at an average age is just as worthy of our attention. while migration may have been a complex web of interdependent moves for some, this article has argued that while the decision to move may have been complex, requiring individuals to balance a host of competing interests, the decision itself was predominantly expressed as a single transfer, rather than several. for both rural and urban migrants, the majority moved upon leaving home, while those that went into farm service tended to migrate only a very short distance from the parental home initially, delaying their long-distance move until they had left service, at which point many migrated to the towns and cities. although a minority of females delayed migrating until the point of fig. 23: mothers’ distance (km) on census night between a) their own birthplace and b) the birthplace of their eldest co-resident child, england and wales 1851-1911 % 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 distance (km) 1851 (distance from birthplace) 1881 (distance from birthplace) 1911 (distance from birthplace) 1851 (distance from first destination) 1881 (distance from first destination) 1911 (distance from first destination note: see text for explanation of the sample source: author’s analysis based on data from uk data service sn 7481 (schürer 2019) • joseph day482 marriage, evidence from moves made by mothers – as reconstructed from the birthplaces of their co-resident children – has shown that as migration did not continue beyond marriage, individuals’ moves at the point of marriage did not represent the fi rst “step” of many. the absence of comprehensive, longitudinal historical data, combined with the appeal of qualitative evidence such as diaries and autobiographies from which migration paths have been reconstructed, (pooley/d’cruze 1994) has meant that the typical experience in the historical record is often at odds with the typical experience of the historical actors. in light of this, ravenstein’s stepwise hypothesis made sense. indeed, limited quantitative evidence allowed grigg (1977) to point out that the hypothesis would remain untested until the manuscript census returns were analysed. the census has – perhaps rightly – been treated with caution by historians of migration, suspicious that it missed the intermediate moves between individuals’ place of birth and their place of residence on census night, which individuals were hypothesised to have made. although some individuals clearly did move in steps, it does not seem to have been either widespread, or one that was assiduously pursued as a strategy to move up the urban hierarchy. rather, by demonstrating that on the whole, individuals did not migrate in steps, this article has shown that the step-migration hypothesis should yield to the single-step hypothesis in which the majority of migrants make a single move in their lifetime. it is hoped that this fi nding restores the faith of migration historians in the value of the manuscript census returns for reconstructing complete migration paths, without the need for laborious and time-consuming record-linkage. acknowledgements my thanks go to all my colleagues at the cambridge group for the history of population and social structure for their advice and ideas offered both informally and at more formal seminars while this paper was in progress. special thanks go to romola davenport who offered useful feedback and insights which i’m sure would have otherwise escaped me, as well as to kevin schürer with whom i worked closely while preparing the data analysed here. thanks also go to special issue guest editors philip rees and 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2020: women's labour force participation in nineteenth-century england and wales: evidence from the 1881 census enumerators’ books. in: economic history review 73,1: 106-133 [doi: 10.1111/ehr.12876]: zhao, jiaying; hahn, ulrike; osherson, daniel 2014: perception and identifi cation of random events. in: journal of experimental psychology 40,4, 1358-1371 [doi: 10.1037/ a0036816]. offi cial papers decennial supplement to registrar-general’s sixty-fi fth annual report [part i] bpp 1905 xviii [cd.2618] 1-731. supplement to registrar-general’s fifty-fi fth annual report. pt.i bpp 1895 xxiii pt [c.7769] 1-738. supplement to registrar-general’s seventy-fi fth annual report. part iii: registration summary tables, 1901-1910 bpp 1914-16 viii [cd.8002] 2-747. twenty-third annual report of the registrar-general (1860) bpp 1862 xvii (2977) 196-327. date of submission: 21.12.2019 date of acceptance: 20.04.2020 dr. joseph day (). university of bristol, school of geographical sciences. bristol, united kingdom. e-mail: joe.day@bristol.ac.uk url: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/geography/people/joseph-day/index.html the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 487 appendix urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 abercarn 14364 12607 16445 aberdare 14999 32299 35533 40917 43365 50830 abersychan 19906 22653 17768 24656 accrington 20063 30142 48491 57769 63777 67631 aldershot 16720 20155 16620 30974 35175 alfreton 11549 13885 15355 17505 19046 altrincham 16050 20807 30040 33298 annfield plain 11456 15007 arnold 11146 ashford 9693 13962 16410 13668 ashington 13956 24583 ashton-in-makerfield 13379 18687 21543 ashton-under-lyne 50808 53683 66732 64116 77180 84395 atherton 12602 15833 16211 18982 aylesbury 11048 bacup 24413 28261 26217 22505 22318 banbury 10154 12127 12823 12968 13523 bangor 11269 11236 barnet 11108 barnsley 14913 17890 29790 35427 41086 50614 barnstaple 8667 9990 11521 13613 13688 14485 barrow-in-furness 47259 51712 57586 63770 barry 13272 27030 33763 basingstoke 11540 bath 60286 58667 60888 64462 67918 70893 batley 14173 27505 28719 36425 36389 bedford 11693 13413 22965 33237 39837 44532 bedlington 14564 16996 18766 25440 bedwellty 22547 beeston 11336 belper 10082 10420 10934 11640 berwick 14867 13265 14599 13377 13437 13075 beverley 11455 12595 13183 13704 bexhill 12213 15330 bexley 10605 12918 15895 bilston 23527 24364 22730 23453 24034 25681 bingley 19284 15382 15801 birmingham & smethwick 258920 356572 570002 663864 813861 911097 bishop auckland 12246 15400 15477 20746 blackburn 50552 73300 106910 125193 131328 133052 blackpool 12711 24637 48608 60138 blaenavon 8499 10869 12010 blaydon 9073 11178 20148 31015 • joseph day488 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 blyth 12834 16710 23351 28280 bolsover 11214 bolton 71000 83024 116431 142005 168215 180851 boston 16662 14712 14937 17593 15667 16673 bournemouth & poole 28635 61512 59451 87611 bradford 125584 129922 215556 223604 260863 267769 brandon & byshottles 15573 17667 bridgwater 10960 12107 12704 13341 15209 16802 bridlington 12482 14868 brierley hill 34257 35767 36411 12042 12263 brighouse 20699 27125 21735 20460 brighton & hove 69673 87317 132295 148768 167222 179864 bristol 149913 169245 262501 296786 352514 373012 brownhills 2040 6525 12386 12921 burnley 27042 37984 63777 86480 97439 109364 burslem 19725 22327 28249 32767 47048 49361 burton-on-trent 14351 39407 46212 50386 48266 bury 25077 23554 51219 62320 58029 58648 bury st edmunds 13900 13318 16111 16630 16255 16785 buxton 13150 14138 caernarvon 11995 caerphilly 15835 32844 camberley 13673 camborne 12887 14056 13601 14700 14726 15829 cambridge 30631 28743 40896 44358 51738 57007 cannock 17125 20613 23974 28586 canterbury 18142 20457 21413 22301 24505 24809 cardiff 18777 39539 85914 133416 170110 191401 carlisle 25142 30632 39328 42035 49477 50767 carlton 10041 15581 carmarthen 10171 10514 10338 10025 10221 castleford 10530 14143 17386 23090 caterham 10841 chelmsford 11008 14888 18008 cheltenham 40374 45659 51423 50464 53245 53437 chertsey 11397 12762 13816 cheshunt 12292 12954 chester 26787 32391 40839 42666 45952 48369 chesterfield 11426 15845 24764 34275 27185 47647 chester-le-street 11753 14712 chichester 11357 12244 12591 chorley 12684 15013 19478 23087 26852 30315 cleator moor 10420 the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 489 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 cleckheaton 10653 11826 12524 12866 clitheroe 10192 10828 11414 12500 coalville 10613 15281 18285 colchester 19323 23697 28261 34392 38373 43452 colne 10313 14023 23000 25689 colwyn bay 12630 congleton 10520 12344 11116 10744 10707 11309 conisbrough 11219 16119 consett 12180 13330 17151 19562 coseley 36574 36860 38170 22834 coventry 44018 49076 52843 61801 75492 115084 cowes 14704 11848 14294 crewe 27264 32926 42074 46230 crompton 12901 13427 14750 crook 11096 11430 11471 12308 dalton-in-furness 13339 13300 13020 10763 darlaston 10590 12884 13563 14422 15395 17107 darlington 11650 15848 36311 39108 44511 55702 dartford 14510 11962 18644 23609 darwen 11702 16492 27626 31680 38212 40332 dawley 11013 deal 10806 12809 13456 15829 16642 denton 12711 13993 14934 16877 derby 42884 51049 83431 99313 113060 123410 dewsbury 19108 24386 40032 50067 49601 53351 doncaster 12052 17020 24868 31998 39293 48455 dover 22073 25617 30836 33918 43958 43645 dudley 37962 44951 46233 45724 48733 51079 durham 15249 20290 18221 15003 16094 19596 east barnet 10094 10780 east retford 11010 12340 13385 eastbourne 21595 34278 43344 51554 eastleigh 15247 ebbw vale 18672 3325 17401 27250 eccles 25994 35826 34369 41944 eckington, mosborough & renishaw 11094 12357 12895 12164 egham 10187 11895 12551 elland 10412 10676 ellesmere port 10253 enfield 12424 19104 31803 42738 56338 epsom 10915 19156 erith 13414 25296 27750 eston 14011 19823 20844 29559 • joseph day490 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 exeter 42011 39851 48391 52094 54704 59611 exmouth 10485 11962 falmouth 12131 14076 11789 13132 farnborough 11500 14199 farnham 6124 11321 farnworth 10625 13723 27961 31751 35143 37800 faversham 10660 11646 10806 featherstone 9817 11543 fenton 14136 17325 22742 25626 ferryhill 11822 fleetwood 12082 15875 folkestone 9674 19297 30293 39764 43446 friern barnet 11566 14924 frome 11916 11200 11181 11464 11057 10901 gainsborough 10979 14594 17660 20587 gelligaer 17242 35521 glossop 13414 14785 23550 24557 21526 21688 gloucester 24490 26175 37464 41689 47955 50035 goole 11187 15735 16576 20684 grantham 10870 11116 16210 17062 18313 20070 gravesend 21782 24626 32092 36094 40102 43534 grays, thurrock 12219 13834 15998 great harwood 12015 13815 great yarmouth 30879 34810 46159 48734 50704 55905 grimsby 11067 42963 56364 75716 96076 guildford 11645 18155 20400 23820 halifax 54682 59860 87130 101823 104936 101553 hanley 10573 33009 54285 62147 61599 66255 harrogate 11826 14691 28423 35666 harrow 16121 28997 hartlepool 13511 25876 45256 62532 82270 84567 harwich 10070 13622 haslingden 10109 14298 16030 18543 18719 hastings 16753 23375 44858 56225 65528 61145 heanor 12418 15289 hebburn & jarrow 37719 50858 20901 21763 heckmondwike 11514 14520 22039 23377 23439 23674 hemel hempstead 11264 12888 hemsworth 10173 hereford 11285 14065 17173 20122 21382 22568 hertford 10383 hetton-le-hole 11000 12757 13673 15678 heywood 13526 17248 22582 21037 25458 26697 the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 491 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 high wycombe 8320 16409 15542 20387 hinckley 11304 12837 hindley 14715 18973 23504 24100 hitchin 10788 12871 holyhead 10079 10636 horsham 9446 11314 horwich 12850 15084 16285 hounslow 11968 15533 22727 26273 30863 43313 hoylake & west kirby 11210 14029 hoyland nether 11006 12464 14638 hucknall 10023 13094 15250 15870 huddersfield 64013 72250 99369 111194 111187 121055 hyde 24038 24811 29737 31682 32766 33437 ilkeston 14122 19744 25384 31657 ipswich 31869 36991 49360 56012 64898 73932 jarrow 34295 33726 keighley 18259 18819 30395 36176 41564 43487 kendal 11829 12029 14280 14896 14183 14451 kettering 11095 19454 28653 29972 kidderminster 20852 13979 22299 28922 27745 27336 king's lynn 19355 16701 18539 18360 20288 20201 kingston-upon-hull 85742 99196 164051 205187 239886 279245 kingston-upon-thames 12290 20721 35724 47217 58350 68018 kirkby-in-ashfield 10318 15378 lancaster 15964 15880 23501 31038 40329 41410 langley park 10175 leeds 167459 192044 289641 359092 430431 448655 leek 11047 13003 14284 15484 16663 leicester 60612 68056 134323 169365 211579 227222 leigh 13707 16007 21734 28708 40001 44103 lewes 10815 10850 11238 11066 lincoln 17533 21090 37088 41448 49450 57285 littleborough 7891 8384 11166 11697 liverpool & birkenhead 430287 541431 773109 838905 980475 1092549 llandudno 10469 llanelli 15470 23933 28169 25617 32071 long eaton 13045 19207 longton 15149 16690 32112 35453 35815 37479 loughborough 11210 10830 14746 18357 21508 22990 louth 10748 10560 10691 10040 lowestoft 10736 19696 23398 33135 37886 luton 10648 15329 26140 32401 36404 52220 lye 10165 10976 11684 • joseph day492 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 macclesfield 41189 21493 39270 37758 34624 34797 maesteg 15012 24977 maidenhead 9781 12980 15219 maidstone 20740 23016 29623 33673 33516 35475 malden 12137 malvern 13391 13484 13324 manchester & salford 434525 518573 699396 799844 922278 1018640 mansfield 10667 10225 13653 15925 21445 36888 mansfield woodhouse 11015 margate 10099 10019 18226 21367 27141 30623 maryport 13667 11897 11418 medway towns 45787 55541 70839 88295 111679 126941 merthyr tydfil 46378 49794 48861 58080 69228 80990 mexborough 10430 14401 middlesbrough 19416 63141 83709 101201 109230 middleton 12548 14482 17600 19793 25178 27980 millom 10426 mirfield 15872 16841 11341 11712 morecambe 11798 12131 morley 18482 18725 21623 25774 mossley 2112 7278 13452 13205 mountain ash 18652 15795 30777 41881 nantyglo & blaina 13489 15395 nantyglo, blaina & abertillery 25913 21945 35415 neath 10347 11060 13720 17586 nelson 16725 31339 32816 39479 newark 11517 11676 14238 14571 14992 16408 newburn 10437 10781 newbury 10609 12957 11061 12107 newcastle & gateshead 125817 153567 240250 308979 365841 422995 newcastle-under-lyme 10290 12638 17493 18425 19914 20044 newmarket 10688 10482 newport (isle of wight) 12173 newport (monmouthshire) 19323 24756 40456 55858 67270 83691 newton abbot 10951 12451 13646 newton-le-willows 10580 12861 16699 18451 normanton 10234 12352 15032 northampton 26657 32813 59042 76921 87021 86780 northwich 8979 13886 18129 19575 20500 norwich 68195 74440 85684 100970 116162 123844 nottingham 94463 105372 186267 216756 246761 259904 nuneaton 11580 24996 37073 oakengates 7389 10906 11744 the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 493 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 ogmore 19907 16217 oldbury 11640 15703 18306 22697 25191 32232 oldham 59008 79819 136154 163975 165759 175782 ossett 10957 10984 12903 14078 oxford 28887 30992 46289 52994 57750 62424 padiham 9923 12205 13635 paignton 11241 panteg 9103 pembroke 10522 15071 13526 13925 15853 15673 penarth 11259 14228 15488 pendlebury 31947 35448 29949 33502 penzance 14622 9414 15146 16639 18098 19492 peterborough 12008 21964 26463 32315 38362 plymouth 102184 128262 140281 158197 193184 211671 pontefract 13136 15649 pontypridd 13368 39557 32316 43211 poole 12310 15438 27558 38885 port talbot 10389 12360 16567 25218 portland 10061 15199 17011 portsmouth 89034 117481 149603 184730 217017 270334 preston 69542 85298 97445 111589 117291 123666 pudsey 11603 12912 15459 17037 14907 14023 purley 11389 radcliffe 16267 34286 25368 25692 ramsbottom 13460 15740 15920 15146 ramsgate 14853 15152 23073 25150 27733 29603 rawmarsh 11983 14587 17185 rawtenstall 9891 10594 31053 30516 reading 21456 25045 47957 63238 77721 87884 redcar 10508 redditch 10396 12835 15463 redruth 10571 11504 10324 10451 10814 reigate 18662 22641 25993 28502 rhondda 45052 69685 113735 152781 rhymney 11138 ripley 10111 11848 risca 14149 rochdale 32260 41678 77760 80317 82623 91428 romford 10722 13656 16970 rotherham 13277 19000 36111 40663 54349 62483 rowley regis 14249 19785 27385 30791 34670 37000 royal leamington spa 15724 18768 25141 26103 26888 26984 royal tunbridge wells 10360 13601 24810 31292 31549 33888 • joseph day494 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 royton 10582 12568 14881 17069 rugby 11262 20339 26946 runcorn 10063 16251 21605 17729 18647 rushden 12453 13354 ryde 17160 16885 11043 10608 ryhope 11185 saddleworth 10461 13065 12320 12603 sale 11241 13878 17651 22278 salisbury 11360 12065 14297 17621 20871 21217 scarborough 12915 18377 30504 33776 38161 37201 scunthorpe 9023 15243 seaham harbour 10163 15757 sedgley 16527 sheerness 15964 15658 16111 18179 17487 sheffield 132759 193555 303151 357807 425105 468830 shildon 11759 13488 shipley 28468 30505 25573 27706 shirebrook 11116 shotton 12561 shrewsbury 21930 24569 27775 26967 29053 29432 sittingbourne 12075 13515 16029 15855 skipton 10376 11986 12977 slough 11453 14982 south elmsall 11445 south shields 28974 35239 56875 78391 102416 108647 southall 13200 26323 southampton 41426 53996 81014 102672 122829 129270 southend-on-sea 13242 33312 69035 southport 42468 55413 62280 69643 sowerby bridge 9172 11477 11350 spalding 10308 spennymoor 13772 13948 15067 14294 st albans 10876 12707 17802 18133 st helens 28042 37961 56872 68628 84410 96551 stafford 10839 14358 20322 21423 22749 27783 staleybridge 11053 27907 37038 38211 27673 26513 stanley 15576 13586 stapleford 11106 staveley 11420 12018 stockport 55235 59984 71359 88131 102295 137420 stockton-on-tees 11931 16613 52514 65342 72064 76866 stoke-on-trent 11118 17272 21621 30458 36218 stourbridge 12284 13573 15374 14891 16302 17312 the process of internal migration in england and wales, 1851-1911 • 495 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 stroud 11006 11255 13871 15020 14695 14678 sunderland 68753 87879 127751 141745 158623 168056 sutton 10334 13977 17223 21270 sutton coldfield 14264 20132 sutton-in-ashfield 10562 14862 21708 swansea 35233 45039 83395 98592 102702 136210 swindon 19904 36233 48373 54440 swinton 12217 13654 taunton 15745 14750 18351 18026 21087 22561 teddington 15874 14037 17847 tipton 24872 28870 30013 29314 30543 31756 tiverton 11144 10447 10462 10892 10382 10205 todmorden 17265 20287 23213 24103 25418 25404 tonbridge 17734 12736 14796 torquay 11474 19650 30737 32383 33625 38771 tredegar 34685 35628 18497 23601 trowbridge 11148 10487 11394 11901 11526 11815 truro 16377 17487 6294 14978 11562 11325 tunstall 11207 29675 30883 19492 22494 twickenham 12479 16027 20991 29367 tyldesley 12891 14843 15582 tynemouth 28799 33698 45621 44968 49623 58816 ulverston 10008 10015 10064 urmston 10250 12757 uxbridge 10374 wakefield 23057 24256 36923 40077 48256 51511 wallington 15742 29893 wallsend 32873 42275 34254 40734 walsall 27626 40602 64262 78377 86430 92115 walton-le-dale 10556 11271 12350 walton-on-thames 10329 12856 warrington 23342 26935 45239 54909 65276 79308 warwick 10973 10589 11800 11903 11889 11858 watford 15507 25921 29124 40939 wednesbury 14281 21968 24566 25347 26554 28103 wellingborough 13794 15068 18412 19753 wembley 10696 west bromwich 34591 41795 56295 59474 65175 70735 west houghton 11077 13339 15046 weston-super-mare 12884 15520 19048 23235 weymouth 10128 12038 14298 15399 19843 22324 whickham 12852 18332 whitby 10203 11137 13659 12598 11368 11139 • joseph day496 appendix: continuation urban settlement 1851 1861 1881 1891 1901 1911 whitehaven 19292 19535 20371 19733 19219 21313 whitley bay 11436 whittington 10344 whitworth 20844 widnes 24935 30011 33280 34441 wigan 40863 52794 77963 92668 103690 111186 willenhall 11931 17256 18461 19366 18515 18844 winchester 13442 14393 18668 19843 21339 23878 windsor & eton 14874 15073 21111 20972 23602 17759 wingate 10890 winsford 10041 10440 10382 10770 wisbech 10594 10822 woking 18349 24808 wolverhampton 49927 60860 89036 97353 110150 122246 wolverton 7384 wombwell 10942 13252 17536 worcester 27677 30561 42506 43504 46624 48011 workington 14361 23751 26143 25065 worksop 11625 12734 16112 20387 worsborough 10336 12750 worthing 12662 17622 21735 30305 wrexham 10939 12552 14966 18377 yeovil 10943 12057 13759 york 35456 43791 63911 70733 77914 82282 note: the populations of the towns and cities in this appendix are colour-coded to indicate their position in the urban hierarchy for each census year. the colours correspond to those used in table 1. for ease of reference: see section 2 for the method used to place towns and cities in the urban hierarchy. source: author’s calculations using data from smith et al. 2018 major metropolitan aaa metropolitan aa metropolitan a metropolitan micropolitan published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2019 managing editor prof. philip rees dr. katrin schiefer copy editor julia luther editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (vienna) peter preisendörfer (mainz) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers martin abraham (erlangen) laura bernardi (lausanne) hansjörg bucher (bonn) claudia diehl (konstanz) andreas diekmann (zurich) gabriele doblhammer-reiter (rostock) jürgen dorbritz (wiesbaden) anette eva fasang (berlin) e.-jürgen flöthmann (bielefeld) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) beat fux (salzburg) joshua goldstein (berkeley) sonja haug (regensburg) hill kulu (liverpool) aart c. liefbroer (the hague) kurt lüscher (konstanz) emma lundholm (umeå) nadja milewski (rostock) dimiter philipov (vienna) roland rau (rostock) tomáš sobotka (vienna) jeroen spijker (barcelona) olivier thévenon (paris) helga de valk (brussels) heike trappe (rostock) michael wagner (cologne) is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? empirical evidence from china is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? empirical evidence from china zhongwu li abstract: employing data from the china family panel studies (cfps), the paper empirically examines the relation between husband’s dominance in family affairs and wife’s marital satisfaction. while applying the ordinal probit model and ordinary least squares (ols) method, the paper fi nds that wife’s reported marital satisfaction is positively associated with her husband’s dominant role in family affairs. this conclusion remains valid after using an instrumental variable to deal with endogeneity and performing some robustness tests. some heterogeneities exist: the association is particularly prominent among those women who have traditional gender norms and are living in rural areas. these women tend to embrace the traditional gender ideology which stipulates that men are the masters of the family. keywords: dominance in family affairs · marital satisfaction · socio-economic reforms · traditional gender norms · china family panel studies 1 introduction with socio-economic reforms in 1978, e.g., the de-collectivisation of agriculture, the opening up of the country to foreign investment, and the nine-year compulsory education, chinese women have had more opportunities to work in the labour markets for the past 40 years. many women are now competing with their male counterparts for those jobs traditionally assigned to men. additionally, women participate in social and political activities proactively, making their voices heard by others. all of these developments enhance the agency and capability of chinese women greatly (macphail/dong 2007). under this social background, many women now tend to rid their well-being arising from being dependent on their husbands in order to fi nd a new form of well-being arising from being more independent (yu et al. 2019). in the family, women no longer simply embrace husbands’ decisions, but actively participate in the decision-making process to improve their own well-being. in the eyes of women, they are able to do whatever men do, thus, it is unacceptable comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 47-72 (date of release: 14.02.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-03 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-03en9 • zhongwu li48 that men’s ideas dominate in family affairs. so, given the above, wife’s marital satisfaction would be negatively affected in case of husband’s sole dominance in the family. in contrast to this, traditional social norms, especially gender norms remain infl uential in chinese society. such norms have been there for thousands of years, which stipulate the appropriate roles and behaviours of both men and women. in the domain of family, men are traditionally regarded as the breadwinners who take the responsibility of feeding family members, while women are affi liated to their husbands for assistance (gao 2003; xie 1994). correspondingly, men are granted the power over major family affairs, while women are required to accept their husbands’ decisions (wang et al. 2019). the gender-based role division infl uences women’s role orientation greatly, so that their expectations on husbands and themselves are increasingly in line with traditional gender norms (park/banchefsky 2019; yang/ gao 2021). in this situation, the increasing match between women’s expectations and traditional gender norms contributes to their marital satisfaction and stability. so, given traditional gender norms, women tend to fi nd their well-being in being dependent on their husbands contrary to the other form of well-being arising for women from greater independence from their husbands. consequently, wife’s marital satisfaction would increase in case of husband’s dominance in the family. both socio-economic reforms and traditional social norms jointly determine the relation between wife’s marital satisfaction and her husband’s dominance. on one side, under the infl uence of socio-economic reforms, many women not only question the idea of husband’s dominance in the family, but they also fi ght for their own participation in family affairs. so, in this constellation, husband’s dominance would negatively affect wife’s marital satisfaction. on the other side, under the infl uence of traditional social norms, many women not only accept the tradition of husband’s dominance in family affairs, but they also alienate those who deviate from such men-centered patriarchal traditions. so given this traditional constellation, husband’s dominance would instead enhance wife’s marital satisfaction. however, which factor exerts more infl uences in contemporary chinese society? so far, there has been no relevant studies on this specifi c topic. in previous research, marital satisfaction and its correlates have been investigated almost exclusively in western countries (bradbury et al. 2000). moreover, in terms of the relation between bargaining power and marital quality, several studies focused on western countries show some mixed results: some report that shared power in marriage is linked to the partners’ higher marital quality and lower attachment insecurity over time (leonhardt et al. 2020). but others report that bargaining power is not associated with the quality of marriage at all (sarantakos 2000). so, it needs some new evidence on the topic for further clarifi cation, especially, in terms of non-western countries. the contemporary china is a good case for the study given two competing forces are simultaneously infl uencing both power relations among couples and marital satisfaction. the remainder is arranged as follows. the second section reviews the previous literature and proposes the research hypotheses. data, variables, and descriptive statistics are displayed in the third section. in the fourth section econometric is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 49 analysis is carried out and interpreted. the last section discusses the fi ndings and concludes the study. 2 literature review and research hypothesis our study draws on the literature on intra-household bargaining power: the determinants and the outcomes of intra-household bargaining power. two research approaches are proposed to explain what determines one’s intra-household bargaining power. the fi rst is resource determinism, emphasising that the relative advantages in terms of education, occupation and income affects the position of family members (agarwal 1997). whoever has relative advantages in such resources as education, income and assets, holds stronger intra-household bargaining power, because the resources offer him/her more outside options in case of marriage dissolution. the second approach focusses on cultural norms emphasising that cultural background and institutional factors are important determinants of family decision-making outcomes (mabsout/van staveren 2010; van staveren/ode bode 2007). such cultural norms can affect one’s exit options, one’s bargaining agency, e.g., accepting male authority when women have formally equal rights (nikièma et al. 2008), one’s preferences, e.g., adapting to what is deemed proper for women (sen 1990), and one’s roles in the family, e.g., limiting what can and cannot be bargained over (cuesta 2006). consequently, cultural norms would infl uence one’s intra-household bargaining power, and even they will override the relative resources in determining one’s bargaining power in the family (e.g., goetz/gupta 1996; van staveren/ode bode 2007). meanwhile, previous research pointed out that bargaining power can directly or indirectly affect key personal outcomes, such as children’s health, education, family production decisions, marital violence, and women’s well-being (deere/doss 2006; luke/munshi 2011; panda/agarwal 2005). further, our study also draws on the literature of marital satisfaction. it is found that many factors are related to marital satisfaction across different societies. the following part will review the central variables that are predictors of marital satisfaction. gender: it is reported that women are less satisfi ed with their marriages compared to men (rostami et al. 2014). age: there is no clear association between age and marital satisfaction in the literature (schmitt et al. 2007). religiosity: a positive association between religiosity and marital satisfaction is found across different religious groups (fincham et al. 2011). duration of marriage: the literature shows either a negative or u-shaped relationship between marriage length and marital satisfaction (karney/bradbury 1995; kurdek 1999). number of children: some contradictory fi ndings are there in terms of the relation between the number of children and marital satisfaction (onyishi et al. 2012; twenge et al. 2003). education: level of education is found to be positively related to marital satisfaction (rouhbakhsh et al. 2019; stanley et al. 2006). economic status: low income or material hardship is associated with lower levels of marital satisfaction and stability (kurdek 1999). personality traits: it is found that neuroticism trait has a negative relationship with marital satisfaction, while conscientiousness trait has • zhongwu li50 a positive relationship with marital satisfaction (sayehmiri et al. 2020). moreover, the existing literature reveals that marital relationships are heavily infl uenced by culturally shaped norms, customs and expectations (berscheid 1995). so, studying the correlates and even determinants of marital satisfaction in some other cultures apart from western ones, would deliver new insights. based on relevant research approaches and social development in contemporary china, this paper proposes three research hypotheses for empirical investigation. according to social role theory (akerlof/kranton 2000; eagly/wood 2016), there are generally held expectations for ideal male and ideal female roles. such expectations, or social roles, are shaped by the values prevalent in a given society, which in turn are shaped by various social constraints. for thousands of years, chinese patriarchal society rules that men are the masters of the family, while women are subordinate to their counterpart men (luo/chui 2018). all major family affairs are controlled by the husbands, and women are required to abide by their husbands’ will. as an exchange, men bear the responsibility of feeding family members and winning reputation for the family. in the male-centered social system, women’s well-being is fully dependent on their husbands’ social and economic achievements (wang et al. 2019). as a survival strategy, women prefer to marry such men with higher socio-economic status and income (chen 2018). infl uenced by surrounding environments and family members, women also subconsciously believe in husband’s dominant role in family affairs. in marriage, such gender-based role division helps to form a harmonious relationship which improves women’s marital satisfaction. with deviation from the social role arrangement (e.g., men’s dominance in the family), both husbands’ and wives’ marital quality and marital stability might be hurt to some extent (park/banchefsky 2019). in contemporary china, women have made great achievements in various social and economic fi elds along with technological progress. many new ideas have permeated through the whole country, so, many women are open-minded to free themselves from old ideas and concepts (qi 2018; zheng et al. 2011). they not only challenge the men-centered patriarchal system, but also fi ght for more bargaining power for their own well-being in the family. overall, the socio-economic transition from a closed socialist economy to an open market economy lays the foundations for women to free their well-being from dependence on their husbands, psychologically and economically (yu et al. 2019). however, a series of research shows that unlike the trend of gender equality in many western societies, chinese families are evolving slowly to give women more space, but the traditional gender norms remain dominant in determining the roles of couples (ji/yeung 2014; yu/xie 2021). this is deeply refl ected in strong expectations regarding women’s marriage and child birth at a specifi c age, otherwise, external pressures are seriously imposed on those unmarried and childless women. once a single woman is approaching her 30s, her parents and relatives would worry about her marriage and family life. moreover, according to wang et al. (2019), many women heavily rely on their husbands’ political identity and social status for better well-being. also, most women tend to marry men with higher socio-economic status and income, and the phenomenon of hypergamy prevails across different regions (chen 2018). relative is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 51 to women, men’s employment status plays a more important role in the well-being of the couple (qian/qian 2015; zhang/tsang 2013). therefore, so far, traditional gender norms remain dominant in infl uencing personal social behaviours and role expectations. following the traditional gender division of labour, we might expect that there is more harmony and higher satisfaction in marriages. consequently, husband’s dominance in family affairs would improve his wife’s marital satisfaction, given the consistency of social role and behaviours. regarding this, we propose the fi rst hypothesis. h1: wife’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs. considering that there are huge differences across people and living regions, we believe some heterogeneities exist in the relation between wife’s marital satisfaction and husband’s dominance. among various heterogeneities, two of them deserve our detailed discussions, which can further strengthen the robustness of the conclusion. the fi rst one is personal gender ideology, as it directly affects wife’s attitudes towards her husband’s dominance. for a woman with traditional gender ideology, such as men being the masters of the family, her behaviours will bear the characteristics and imprints of such ideology (egan/perry 2001; nielson et al. 2020). the woman would subconsciously believe that it is her husband who should manage major family affairs. so, she tends to accept or even embrace the role arrangement of husband’s dominance in the family, despite possible welfare loss (endendijk et al. 2018; rittenour et al. 2014). moreover, she would oppose against any deviation from such arrangement by alienating even condemning such deviating behaviours. overall, the woman rarely questions the tradition of men’s dominance, and more, plays a supportive role in the family (turner/salemink 2015; valutanu 2012). therefore, her marital satisfaction will be improved if the role arrangement matches with her expectation of men’s dominant role in family affairs. based on this, we propose the second hypothesis. h2: the positive association between marital satisfaction and husbands’ dominant roles in family affairs is particularly evident among those women with traditional gender norms. the second one is living regions (urban vs rural) . women from rural and urban regions are fundamentally different in their decision making regarding family affairs (cheng 2019). it is possible that the positive impact of husband’s dominance only exists in rural families, but not in urban families. the rural-urban gap is large, and continues to amplify in educational, social, economic, and ideological aspects (meng/zhao 2019). in rural areas, women have been disadvantaged for a long period of time, given limited education and economic opportunities (xiao/asadullah 2020). the economic opportunities being more concentrated in urban areas, rural villagers have to depend on limited land for livelihood. given the physical advantages in farming, rural men naturally become heads of the family to control major family affairs. additionally, compared to urban areas, advanced ideas and thoughts are diffi cult to penetrate in the isolated rural areas, so, traditional gender norms remain infl uential there (song et al. 2021). consequently, rural women personally believe • zhongwu li52 that women’s subordinate status is normal, and compliance with this is essential to marital quality and stability. in this case, the marital satisfaction of rural women will be largely associated with their husbands’ dominant role in family affairs. based on this, we propose the third hypothesis. h3: the positive association between marital satisfaction and husbands’ dominant roles in family affairs is particularly evident among those women living in rural areas. 3 data, variables and descriptive statistics 3.1 data source the paper uses the nationally representative china family panel studies (cfps) for econometric analysis. the cfps is a longitudinal survey of chinese communities, families and individuals updated every two years. launched in 2010, it aims at collecting the latest information on china’s socio-economic, demographic, educational, and health changes (xie/lu 2015). the cfps is drawn through a stratifi ed three-stage sampling method, covering 14,798 households in 162 counties and 635 villages in 25 provinces in china. the cfps respondents are tracked through 2-year follow-up surveys, with an average response rate of 79 percent (xie/hu 2014). so far, the latest cfps survey has been updated in 2018, with a collection of some newly added variables. nevertheless, only the 2014 cfps survey contains the variables needed for the paper, such as marital satisfaction, dominant role in family affairs, gender role beliefs. even though the 2014 cfps survey has no advantages over later rounds of surveys in terms of timeliness, the paper identifi es further research needs. and thus, the fi ndings would lay the foundations for future search in related fi elds. given some control variables are missing in the 2014 cfps, we also use variables in the 2012 cfps adult and family relationship datasets in econometric estimations. meanwhile, to obtain a causal effect of husband’s dominance, the paper fi nds an instrumental variable in the 2010 cfps family relationship dataset. considering that husband’s dominance in family affairs is built based on marriage, we constrain the dataset to individuals in marriage. there remain 9,186 observations in the survey sample. after deleting the variables with missing values, non-response items and outliers, we fi nally get 7,240 observations for econometric analysis. according to our balance test, the variables used in the study have similar means and standard deviations between the analytical sample and the original sample.1 1 results of the balance test are not shown here but it is available on request. is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 53 3.2 variable selection the dependent variable is wife’s marital satisfaction (marital_satisfaction). it is assessed by the question of “to what extent are you satisfi ed with your current marriage?” the respondent can choose between 5 options: very dissatisfi ed, quite dissatisfi ed, neutral, quite satisfi ed, and very satisfi ed, with assigned values of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. a higher value indicates the wife has a higher level of marital satisfaction. the major independent variable is husband’s dominance in family affairs (husband_power). it is assessed by the question of “who plays a dominant role in fi ve important family matters”: household expenditure allocation (expenditure), household saving and investing (save_investment), house construction and purchase (house_purchase), children’s education (child_edcuation), and highpriced consumer goods purchase (high_priced_purchase). the variable is equal to 1 if the husband plays a dominant role in the specifi c family matter, 0 if it is negotiated together, and -1 if the wife plays a dominant role. each variable has the value of -1, 0 and 1. then, we sum the scores of the above fi ve sub-items to construct a comprehensive indicator, which refl ects the husband’s dominant power. the variable of husband_power ranges from -5 to 5, and a larger value indicates that the husband plays a more dominant role in major family affairs. however, the fi ve items are heterogeneous, which becomes particularly evident when referring to children’s education and household fi nancial affairs. to solve this issue, this paper also examines the fi ve aspects separately in the following econometric analysis. additionally, this paper controls for a series of potential confounding factors, which are associated with both husband’s dominance and wife’s marital satisfaction. they include individual characteristics of women, i.e., whether she lives in an urban area (urban, 1 if urban, 0 if rural), years of education (education), natural logarithm of annual income (income),2 age (age), age squared (age2), type of job (occupation, 0 if unemployed, 1 in case of an agriculture-related job, 2 if employed in companies, 3 in case of entrepreneurship and self-employment). in contemporary china, entrepreneurship and self-employment is the most valued occupation, and employment in companies is more valued than agriculture-related jobs, and unemployment is the least valued, so, occupation is an ordinal variable from the perspective of social prestige. considering that gender ideology may directly affect wife’s attitudes towards husband’s dominance and her perceived marital quality, wife’s gender ideology (gendernorm) is controlled in the model. it is assessed by the following four questions: “1. do you agree that men focus on the career and women focus on the family?” “2. do you agree that marrying well is better for women than fi nancial independence?” “3. do you agree that women should have children throughout their life?” “4. do you agree that men should do half of the housework?” the respondent has 5 options, for the fi rst three questions, with 1 representing strongly disagree and 5 representing strongly agree; for the last question, with 1 representing strongly agree and 5 representing strongly disagree. then, the scores 2 considering the zero point of annual income, income = log(1 + annual income). • zhongwu li54 for the above four questions are summed to construct a variable refl ecting attitude toward traditional gender norms. a higher value indicates more traditional gender role attitudes. additionally, non-cognitive ability (personality traits) is found to explain about 50 percent of individual differences in life satisfaction (diener 1984). so, non-cognitive ability measured by the big five personality traits in the cfps 2012 is further controlled. among them, neuroticism is assessed by the following four statements: “i feel depressed”, “i feel down”, “i feel scared”, “i feel sad”; agreeableness is assessed by the following two statements: “i don’t think people are nice to me”, “i don’t think people like me”; conscientiousness is assessed by the statement: “i have trouble concentrating when i am doing things.” for each statement, the respondent has 4 options: most of the time, often, sometimes, almost never with assigned values of 1, 2, 3, and 4. then, we sum the scores of all statements to construct a variable of non-cognitive ability (noncognitive). it ranges from 7 to 28, and a larger value indicates a stronger level of non-cognitive ability. meanwhile, a signifi cant spillover effect in individual well-being is found within the family (wang et al. 2019), so, some family-level factors are also controlled. they include educational difference (education_diff, the difference between years of education of husband versus wife), income difference (income_diff, the difference between husband’s annual income and wife’s annual income), non-cognitive ability difference (noncognitive_diff, the difference between husband’s non-cognitive ability and wife’s non-cognitive ability), husband’s type of job (s_occupation, same defi nition with occupation) and the family’s social status in local community (family_status, 1-5, a larger value indicates a higher family social status). considering regional differences, we further add provincial dummies to the model. 3.3 descriptive statistics table 1 lists the descriptive statistics of the main variables. the mean of marital_ satisfaction is 4.395, indicating that women in the sample are generally satisfi ed with their marriages. the mean of husband_power is 1.201, indicating that in most cases, the husband is the decision maker of important family affairs. for the mean value of 1.201 (with sd of 3.689), it is worrying that one could also conclude that in chinese society, husband’s dominant power is non-existent given the husband_ power ranges from -5 to 5. regarding this, we display the distribution of husband_ power in table 2. the percentage of husbands dominating in all the fi ve family matters is about 34.65 percent, which is twice larger than that of wives’ dominance (about 16.53 percent). so, it further indicates that the husband plays a dominate role in major family affairs in chinese society. for other sub-indicators of husband’s dominance, their mean values are greater than zero. it indicates that the husband also dominates in the fi ve specifi c family affairs. however, the mean of child_education is the smallest, but that of house_purchase is the largest, save_investment is the second largest. so, the husband has the greatest decision-making power in house purchase, then, saving and capital investment. however, the wife also actively participates in the children’s education despite husband’s dominance. additionally, 48.5 percent of the women live in urban areas. the average years of education are is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 55 about 6; the average age is about 49 years. in terms of gender difference, it is shown that men have more advantages in education, income, and non-cognitive ability variable n mean sd min p50 max marital_satisfaction 7,240 4.395 0.933 1 5 5 husband_power 7,240 1.201 3.689 -5 2 5 expenditure 7,240 0.229 0.890 -1 1 1 save_investment 7,240 0.274 0.876 -1 1 1 house_purchase 7,240 0.398 0.818 -1 1 1 child_education 7,240 0.072 0.912 -1 0 1 high_priced_purchase 7,240 0.228 0.883 -1 1 1 urban 7,240 0.485 0.500 0 0 1 education 7,240 6.157 4.891 0 6 22 income 7,240 3.287 4.065 0 0 12.61 noncognitive 7,240 24.830 3.151 7 26 28 occupation 7,240 1.143 0.890 0 1 3 gendernorm 7,240 14.00 2.542 4 14 20 age 7,240 48.94 13.39 19 49 89 education_diff 7,240 1.765 4.303 -16 0 16 income_diff 7,240 1.379 4.793 -12.61 0 12.35 noncognitive_diff 7,240 0.835 3.341 -18 0 20 s_occupation 7,240 1.458 0.879 0 1 3 family_status 7,240 3.193 0.947 1 3 5 tab. 1: summary statistics of key variables note: n: the number of observations, mean: mean value, sd: standard deviation, min: minimum value, p50: median value, max: maximum value. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012 tab. 2: distribution of husband_power husband_power frequency percent -5 1,197 16.53 -4 61 0.84 -3 359 4.96 -2 78 1.08 -1 441 6.09 0 834 11.52 1 628 8.67 2 153 2.11 3 799 11.04 4 181 2.50 5 2,509 34.65 source: own calculations based on cfps 2014 • zhongwu li56 than their counterpart women. these are roughly in line with the actual situation of chinese society in 2014,3 thus ensuring the representativeness of the sample, and laying a foundation for empirical analysis. 4 econometric analysis and interpretation 4.1 econometric model in order to examine the relation between husband’s dominance in family matters and his wife’s marital satisfaction, we take marital_satisfaction as the dependent variable and husband_power as the main independent variable to establish an econometric model as follows: marital_satisfactioni = β0 + β1 * husband_poweri + covariates *β3 + μi 1, marital_satisfactioni ≤ r1 2, r1 < marital_satisfactioni ≤ r2 marital_satisfactioni = 3, r2 < marital_satisfactioni ≤ r3 4, r3 < marital_satisfactioni ≤ r4 5, r4 < marital_satisfactioni among them, marital_satisfactioni is the latent variable of female marital satisfaction, r1, r2, r3, and r4 are the cut-off points, with r1 < r2 < r3 <r4, husband_ poweri is husband’s dominance in family affairs, covariates are control variables, and μi is a random error term. due to the ordinal feature of marital satisfaction, we mainly use an ordinal response model to estimate the parameters in formula (1). to enhance the robustness of the conclusion, we also use ordinary least squares (ols) as the baseline regression. in the ols regression, the estimated coeffi cient is the marginal effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. so, β1 in formula (1) is the parameter of interest to be estimated, that is, the coeffi cient of husband’s dominance in family affairs. similarly, for the fi ve subindicators refl ecting husband’s dominance in a specifi c family matter, we replace the independent variable of husband_poweri with expenditurei, save_investmenti, house_purchasei, child_edcuationi, and high_priced_purchasei to estimate the parameter of β1 accordingly. 4.2 baseline regression table 3 reports the ols and ordinal probit regression results. whether the covariates are controlled or not, the independent variable husband_power is positive at the * (1) * * * * * (2) * 3 according to the statistical yearbook in 2014 from the national bureau of statistics of china, retrieved from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/indexch.htm. is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 57 1 percent signifi cant level. it indicates that wife’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with her husband’s dominant role in family affairs. further, fi ve separate tab. 3: the impact of husband’s dominance in family affairs on wife’s marital satisfaction (1) (2) (3) (4) ols ols ordinal probit ordinal probit husband_power 0.018*** 0.015*** 0.023*** 0.019*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.004) urban 0.101*** 0.135*** (0.025) (0.033) education -0.001 -0.006 (0.003) (0.005) income 0.004 0.005 (0.003) (0.004) noncognitive 0.041*** 0.051*** (0.005) (0.006) occupation -0.000 0.001 (0.014) (0.019) gendernorm 0.027*** 0.043*** (0.005) (0.006) age -0.002 0.002 (0.005) (0.007) age2 0.000 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) education_diff 0.004 0.005 (0.003) (0.004) income_diff -0.003 -0.003 (0.003) (0.003) noncognitive_diff 0.006 0.008 (0.005) (0.006) s_occupation 0.025* 0.024 (0.015) (0.020) family_status 0.138*** 0.196*** (0.013) (0.017) provincial effect yes yes yes yes adj/pseudo r2 0.018 0.063 0.011 0.036 n 9,495 7,231 9,495 7,231 note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively, and number of observations is 7,231 due to 9 missing points in provincial dummies. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012 • zhongwu li58 analyses are performed for the fi ve sub-indicators in table 4. the results show that wife’s marital satisfaction remains positively associated with her husband’s dominance in household expenditure allocation, household saving and investing, house construction and purchase, children’s education, and high-priced consumer goods purchase. nevertheless, we fi nd that the coeffi cient in ols regression has the largest value in the aspect of household saving and investing, and the second largest value in the aspect of house construction and purchase. in chinese families, decisions on household fi nancial activities and house purchase are more infl uential compared to the other three family matters. so, the positive association between wife’s marital satisfaction and her husband’s dominance in family affairs is relatively stronger in traditionally male-dominant family affairs. from the above, the family power relation is an important determinant of wife’s marital satisfaction. in contemporary china, traditional gender norms remain dominant in deciding women’s marital quality, more broadly, women’s wellbeing. although socio-economic reforms have been greatly infl uencing people’s behaviours and attitudes towards gender roles, most women are unable to get rid of the gender norm constraints of men being the heads in chinese families (li 2022). instead, these women are inclined to support the idea that men are the backbones of the family, and women are subordinate to their counterpart men. so, hypothesis 1 that wife’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs is empirically confi rmed. tab. 4: the impact of husband’s dominance in fi ve dimensions of family matters on wife’s marital satisfaction five dimensions ols ordinal probit a: household expenditure allocation 0.051*** 0.068*** (0.013) (0.017) b: household saving and investing 0.059*** 0.081*** (0.013) (0.017) c: house construction and purchase 0.053*** 0.065*** (0.014) (0.018) d: children’s education 0.046*** 0.056*** (0.012) (0.016) e: high-priced consumer goods purchase 0.046*** 0.056*** (0.013) (0.017) note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively, the covariates controlled in the table are same with table 3. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012 is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 59 4.3 gender ideology and rural-urban differences to examine possible heterogeneities of the relation between husband’s dominance and wife’s marital satisfaction, we conduct some sub-sample regressions based on wife’s gender ideology and living regions. specifi cally, according to the 50 percent quantile of wife’s gender ideology (gendernorm), the full sample is divided into two sub-samples: less traditional women and more traditional women. when it is less than its 50 percent quantile value, a woman is classifi ed as less traditional. in contrast, when it is greater than its 50 percent quantile value, a woman is classifi ed as more traditional. similarly, according to women’s living regions, we divide the full sample into two sub-samples corresponding to rural areas and urban areas. table 5 displays sub-sample regression results by using both ordinal probit and ols methods. husband_power is signifi cantly positive at the 1 percent level in column (2), but insignifi cant in column (1). setting aside the signifi cance of husband_power, its coeffi cient approaches to zero in column (1). it means that the positive association of wife’s marital satisfaction with her husband’s dominance exists among those women with traditional gender ideology. however, for other women with modern gender ideology, their marital satisfaction is not associated with husbands’ dominance in family affairs. so, hypothesis 2 that the positive association between marital satisfaction and husbands’ dominant roles in family affairs is particularly evident among those women with traditional gender norms is empirically confi rmed.4 meanwhile, husband_power is signifi cantly positive in 4 when the sample is divided according to the mean value of gendernorm, it reaches the same conclusion. tab. 5: sub-sample regression according to gender ideology and rural-urban areas (1) (2) (3) (4) less traditional more traditional rural urban ordinal probit husband_power 0.007 0.027*** 0.026*** 0.012** (0.007) (0.005) (0.006) (0.006) ols husband_power 0.005 0.020*** 0.022*** 0.008* (0.005) (0.004) (0.005) (0.004) covariates yes yes yes yes provincial effect yes yes yes yes pseudo (adj) r2 0.040 (0.080) 0.037 (0.055) 0.041 (0.071) 0.034 (0.047) n 2,553 4,678 3,721 3,510 note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012 • zhongwu li60 both columns (3) and (4), but heterogeneities exist there. it passes the signifi cance test at the 1 percent level in column (3), but only at the 5 percent or even 10 percent level in column (4). moreover, the size of coeffi cient in column (3) is twice even thrice than that in column (4). it indicates that the positive association is much greater in rural areas than in urban areas. therefore, hypothesis 3 that the positive association between marital satisfaction and husbands’ dominant roles in family affairs is particularly evident among those women living in rural areas is confi rmed. 4.4 endogeneity problems the above results are generally based on correlation analysis; however, more meaningful fi ndings should be based on causal analysis. from correlation to causation, we have to remove possible endogeneity bias embedded in the econometric model. the endogeneity arises when an unobserved or omitted variable is confounding both independent and dependent variables. in our case, although a series of variables are controlled, there remain some unobservable confounding variables omitted in the model. failure to control for them might result in selfselection bias based on unobservables. the endogeneity also arises when there is a reversed relation from wife’s marital satisfaction to her husband’s dominance. in our case, a wife satisfi ed with her marriage may gain more self-confi dence, which can enhance her bargaining power in family affairs. thereby, husband’s dominant role in the family is challenged to some extent. to further address the endogeneity bias, we use an instrument-based approach to estimate the causal relation between husband’s dominance and wife’s marital satisfaction. before performing instrument variable regression, we fi rst use the lagged independent variable to alleviate the possible reversed relation issue. as a longitudinal survey, the cfps has advantages in collecting the variable of husband’s dominance continuously. if we substitute husband’s dominant role in family affairs in 2012 for husband_power in formula (1), the independent variable will appear before the dependent variable in time dimension. it can effectively solve the problem of reversed relation. huband’s dominance in 2012 (husband_power_2012) is assessed by the single question of “who decides the major family affairs?” it has the value of 1, if the respondent replies with husband, 0 if it is negotiated, -1 if it is the wife who decides. table 6 displays the regression results by using both ordinal probit and ols. consistent with the baseline regression, wife’s marital satisfaction remains positively associated with her husband’s dominant role in major family affairs. in performing instrumental variable regression, we need to fi nd a valid instrumental variable (iv) for the endogenous independent variable husband_ power. the iv should satisfy both correlation and exclusion conditions. first, the iv must be correlated with the endogenous variable; second, the iv must infl uence the dependent variable only through its impact on the endogenous variable. the second condition is also called exclusion restriction constraint. it locks other mechanisms through which the iv infl uences the dependent variable except the endogenous independent variable. the variation of iv will result in variation of the endogenous variable, which is like a seemingly exogenous shock to the dependent variable. is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 61 from this perspective, the iv approach aims at forming a quasi-natural experiment to evaluate the effect of exogenous policy shock. in this paper, we use genealogy culture (genealogy) as the instrument of husband’s dominance. it is assessed by the question of “whether your family has a family genealogy book or not?” in the cfps 2010 family dataset. it is assigned the value of 1 if the family has a genealogy book, otherwise it is 0. as to the validity of the instrumental variable, we explain it from two aspects as mentioned above. on the one hand, the genealogy culture has been there since feudal society in china, and it still exerts some infl uences in many areas today. family and clan rules are accompanied with genealogy culture, given the family genealogy book aims at maintaining the patriarchal system. in that system, it is told that everything is inherited from the patrilineal blood, so that women are often excluded from the genealogy book. those families owning family genealogy books tend to respect traditional notions. often, they believe that men should be the backbones of the family, while women should be inferior and subordinate to their counterpart men. this could enhance men’s dominant role in family affairs greatly. so, having a family genealogy book might be positively associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs. on the other hand, as a historical book recording the relationship under the same ancestry, for the family genealogy book it is diffi cult to directly infl uence wife’s marital satisfaction. therefore, it is a relatively exogenous instrumental variable in the equation of female marital satisfaction. however, it is worrying that genealogy culture may be associated with wife’s marital satisfaction by increasing wife’s tolerance toward her husband’s dominance. so, besides intrahousehold bargaining power, genealogy culture may also affect wife’s marital satisfaction through such channel as wife’s tolerance. this will violate the exclusion restriction condition. to cut off the channel of wife’s tolerance, the paper controls for wife’s tolerance toward husband’s dominance in the iv-based regression. the paper uses wife’s gender ideology as the proxy of wife’s tolerance toward husband’s dominance. a wife with traditional gender ideology tends to believe tab. 6: regression results considering the reversed relation (1) (2) ols ordinal probit husband_power_2012 0.068*** 0.080*** (0.016) (0.020) covariates no yes provincial effect yes yes adj/pseudo r2 0.062 0.036 n 7,231 7,231 note: marital_satisfaction is the dependent variable. robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012 • zhongwu li62 that women should be subordinate to their counterpart men, and men should be natural leaders in deciding major family matters. after some time, this idea could subconsciously increase wife’s tolerance toward husband’s dominance in family affairs. while controlling for wife’s gender ideology, table 7 shows that geneaology is not statistically signifi cant in wife’s marital satisfaction equation. so, the exogeneity of family genealogy book is further confi rmed. we use the two-stage least squares (2sls) method to estimate the causal effect of husband’s dominance on wife’s marital satisfaction. in the fi rst stage, the endogenous independent variable, husband_power is regressed on all of the exogenous variables in the model, including the excluded instrument, genealogy. the predicted values from the regressions are obtained: husband_poweri = genealogyi * θ + error. in the second stage, the regression of interest is estimated as usual, except that in this stage the endogenous independent variable is replaced with the predicted values from the fi rst stage: m_satisfactioni = husband_poweri * β + noise. the parameter of interest is β, which measures the impact of husband’s dominance on wife’s marital satisfaction. the iv-based regression results are displayed in table 8. the fi ndings are summarised as follows. first, corr(e1, e2), alternatively, corr(error, noise) is signifi cantly different from 0. it indicates that husband’s dominance is endogenous in the equation of wife’s marital satisfaction. so, it is necessary to apply the iv method to handle endogeneity bias. second, column (1) shows that genealogy is positively associated with husband_power, consistent with the expectation that genealogy culture is likely to enhance husband’s dominance in family affairs. moreover, the cragg-donald wald f value is greater than 10, indicating that the iv does not suffer weak instrument problem. third, column (2) shows that husband_ tab. 7: regression results of wife’s marital satisfaction on genealogy culture (1) (2) ols ordinal probit iv: genealogy 0.041 0.055 (0.028) (0.037) role 0.031*** 0.048*** (0.005) (0.006) covariates yes yes provincial effect yes yes adj/pseudo r2 0.061 0.036 n 6,864 6,864 note: the dependent variable is marital_satisfaction (wife’s marital satisfaction), genealogy is the instrumental variable, the covariates are the same as in table 3; the values in parentheses are the robust standard errors of the regression coeffi cient estimators; *p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012, 2010 is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 63 power is signifi cantly positive at the 1 percent level. so, wife’s marital satisfaction is again positively associated with her husband’s dominance in family affairs. additionally, we use fi ve sub-indicators of husband’s dominance as the independent variables for the iv-based estimations. table 9 shows that in all fi ve tab. 8: instrument variable regression (1) (2) first stage second stage husband_power 0.183** (0.085) genealogy 0.247** (0.108) covariates yes yes provincial effect yes yes cragg-donald wald f 24.580 corr(e1, e2) -0.593* n 6,864 6,864 note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012, 2010 tab. 9: instrumental variable regression by fi ve sub-indicators (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) expenditure 1.099*** (0.200) save_investment 0.695** (0.347) house_purchase 0.900** (0.368) child_education 0.831** (0.349) high_priced_purchase 0.704** (0.343) covariates yes yes yes yes yes provincial effect yes yes yes yes yes corr(e1, e2) -0.920*** -0.682** 0.710*** -0.696** -0.566* n 6,864 6,864 6,864 6,864 6,864 note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012, 2010 • zhongwu li64 models, husband’s dominance is positively related to his wife’s marital satisfaction. the main conclusion of this paper that wife’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs is again supported. therefore, the iv-based estimation results further confi rm the main conclusion of the paper. 4.5 robustness check to reduce the dependence on a single dependent variable, we also use wife’s life satisfaction as the dependent variable for robustness check. both marital satisfaction and life satisfaction are components of personal subjective wellbeing, and they are interrelated most of the time. in the cfps, life satisfaction (life_satisfaction) is measured by the question of “how satisfi ed are you with your life?” the respondent has 5 options: very unsatisfi ed, unsatisfi ed, neutral, satisfi ed, very satisfi ed, with assigned values of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. a larger value indicates the respondent has a higher level of life satisfaction. we also apply the iv-based regression for estimation of parameters of interest. table 10 displays the regression results. whether the husband_power or fi ve sub-indicators is used as the independent variable, husband’s dominance in family affairs positively affects wife’s life satisfaction. tab. 10: robustness check with wife's life satisfaction as the dependent variable (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) husband_power 0.174** (0.086) expenditure 1.083*** (0.231) save_investment 0.656* (0.343) house_purchase 0.876** (0.386) child_education 0.799** (0.354) high_priced_purchase 0.673* (0.347) covariates yes yes yes yes yes yes provincial effect yes yes yes yes yes yes corr(e1, e2) -0.575* -0.914*** -0.516* -0.665** -0.683** -0.539* n 6,864 6,864 6,864 6,864 6,864 6,864 note: robust standard error in parentheses, and *, ** and *** indicate signifi cance at the 10 percent, 5 percent and 1 percent levels respectively. source: own calculations based on cfps 2014, 2012, 2010 is wife’s marital satisfaction associated with husband’s dominance in family affairs? • 65 5 conclusion and discussion women’s well-being is an important topic because of the strategic role in socioeconomic development and human reproduction. among various types of wellbeing, female marital satisfaction has attracted unprecedented attentions among chinese governmental offi cials and scholars, in the backdrop of a rising proportion of divorce cases initiated by women. based on a series of previous literature (leonhardt et al. 2020; sarantakos 2000), the paper uses two competing forces as an experiment to explore the relation between family power arrangements and female marital satisfaction. the results show that wife’s marital satisfaction is positively associated with her husband’s dominance in family affairs. to reduce possible endogeneity bias, the paper employs an instrumental variable regression to estimate the causal effect of husband’s dominance on wife’s marital satisfaction. the iv-based results corroborate the conclusion. some heterogeneities exist: the positive association is much stronger among those women who have traditional gender ideology and are living in rural areas. these women hold traditional gender role beliefs of men being the masters of the family in spite of a huge socio-economic transition (li 2022). although china experienced socio-economic reforms, the traditional social structure and ideology remain intact. compared to urban areas, remote rural areas continue to follow traditional behaviours and life styles in contemporary china. in a closed community, rural villagers are taught and infl uenced by their parents and peers not to deviate from the traditional gender norms. the study has strong policy implications. first, pro-women social policies are needed. women are traditionally in a marginal position in chinese society, so that they have to rely on men for a better life. this dependence will lead women to develop traditional men-centered gender ideologies, which emphasise men’s dominance and women’s obedience. along with the socio-economic transition, women’s well-being and status have been better than ever before. in spite of great achievements, the gender gap between women and men remains to be narrowed in many aspects (qing 2020). in a market-based economy, women are often discriminated in the process of job application, given companies worry that women are more likely to retreat to the family after marriage and child birth (zhang et al. 2021). in women’s careers, they still face glass ceiling at top levels even if they are more capable than male counterparts, due to cultural constraints and work-family confl icts (de jonge 2014). all these institutional barriers might lead women to again appeal to men for higher socio-economic status and well-being. so, it is important for governmental departments to design related policies to remove the barriers which prevent women from fully utilising their potential. second, balanced regional development strategies are needed. the urban-rural gap is not narrowing, instead expanding in some regions (sicular et al. 2008; zhong et al. 2022). compared to urban places, rural villages have less economic opportunities because of the citycentered development policies. consequently, wife’s well-being is more associated with her husband’s dominance in rural areas than in urban areas. in less-developed rural areas, women are inclined to marry men with a higher socio-economic status to upgrade their family’s social status (chen 2018; wei/zhang 2016). after • zhongwu li66 marriage, women are confi ned to kitchen and trivial housework, and rely on their husbands for livelihood. this greatly restricts women’s agency and capability. so, the government should develop both urban and rural areas together, even prioritise rural developments. the paper has some interesting and insightful fi ndings, but there remain some limitations worth noting. first, the time effectiveness of the dataset is not ideal. the data used in this paper were collected in 2014, so, the empirical fi ndings might not refl ect the latest situation in china. it is possible that a positive relation is detected in 2014, but the positive relation disappears in 2022. however, this will not be a big concern, according to previous research, the traditional beliefs in chinese society have been evolving slowly (ji/yeung 2014; yu/xie 2021). second, it is diffi cult to detect a dynamic effect in a cross-sectional dataset. we control for a series of confounding factors, but some unobservable time-invariants are left to error terms. even though the iv method is applied to reduce such omitted-variable bias, we cannot see the dynamic relations between husband’s dominance and wife’s marital satisfaction. in the future, if panel data are available, we could not only remove time-invariant confounders, but also detect the dynamic relations across different years. third, there is a sample selection problem. female marital satisfaction is observable only if she is in marriage or cohabitation with her husband. for unmarried and divorced individuals, the variable is unavailable. in the regression, we want to estimate the effect of husband’s dominance on his wife’s marital satisfaction. however, due to unavailability of the dependent and independent variables, the analytical sample does not consider the case that women who cannot tolerate husband’s dominance, and report very low marital satisfaction may turn to divorce. this may lead to a sample selection bias. however, among the divorced cases, besides the reason of husband’s dominance which might cause divorces, there are also other reasons, such as personality differences. it is diffi cult to differentiate this reason from other reasons. so, the problem cannot be handled easily. nevertheless, we do not think it is a big concern to our main results. there are only 174 divorced cases in the survey sample, accounting for 1.15 percent in total observations. and we believe that the reason of husband’s dominance only accounts for a small proportion of divorced cases. based on the current study, we expect future research to be done focusing on china or other developing countries to further investigate gender roles and their meaning for family life. the results suggest that it is worth investigating the latest large-scale panel datasets for empirical analysis on the topic. in addition, future research could consider more heterogeneities between wife’s marital satisfaction and husband’s dominance in family affairs. this would further support the main assumption that traditional gender norms are overtaking the socio-economic transition in shaping married women’s well-being. furthermore, we may consider the relation between husband’s marital satisfaction and wife’s dominance in family affairs in future research. it is quite interesting and insightful to know about husband’s marital quality in the family, given it will indirectly infl uence wife’s marital quality. is wife’s marital satisfaction 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however, after starting childbearing they have a higher propensity than foreign women to have a second and third child. naturalisation and fertility are interlinked; women with children are more likely to naturalise than those without, which then boosts the average fertility of the swiss population. we confi rm that the standard tfr gives an infl ated impression of the ultimate (cohort) fertility of foreign nationals and under-estimates that of swiss women, and we describe how this happens. fundamentally, the tfr is a measure of childbearing intensity, not an accurate estimate of completed cohort fertility, especially for a mobile population. keywords: immigrant fertility · fertility of foreigners · tfr · cohort fertility · immigration · timing of childbearing · naturalisation · postponement comparative population studies vol. 45 (2020): 417-448 (date of release: 17.12.2020) federal institute for population research 2020 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-23 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2020-23en6 • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner418 1 introduction the purpose of this paper is to address a conundrum. whilst the period tfr of foreigners in switzerland has consistently been higher than for swiss nationals (0.5 children or more for most of the past three decades), the pattern is reversed from a cohort perspective: swiss women have more children than foreign women by the time they reach their late 30s. we have confi dence that both these measures are statistically robust, so how can the disparity between the period and cohort measures be reconciled? the methodology presented in this paper quantifi es the processes – births, inand out-migration and naturalisation – that determine the fertility of cohorts of women as they pass through their reproductive lives. the results of our analysis come very close to the cohort fertility observed in household register data and two recent fertility surveys. switzerland is a valuable case study because it has a large foreign population as well as excellent data sources. the structure of the paper is as follows. the literature review focuses on studies that have addressed the weaknesses in the tfr when used for non-native groups. the unique characteristics of switzerland and its evolving immigrant groups are then summarised, followed by a summary of the data sets used. we then describe the methodology used to tally the fertility of cohorts as they pass through their reproductive life. the elements of the calculation are discussed in more detail: births, immigration, emigration and naturalisation. we then compare the results of our cohort tracking with the fertility measures found in the household register and family and generations surveys. next, we summarise the processes which infl uence cohort fertility and address the fundamental weaknesses of the tfr and why it frequently does not indicate the ultimate number of children of foreign nationals. we conclude by discussing our results in the context of previous studies and make suggestions for which measures might better portray the fertility of native and non-native women. before launching into the body of the paper, we fi rst need to clarify the defi nition and characteristics of our population subgroups. • swiss national (or simply "swiss"): someone who holds swiss citizenship, either from having had at least one swiss parent or having naturalised. this may be in addition to other nationalities, as becoming swiss does not automatically (nowadays) preclude holding other nationalities. • foreign national: someone with citizenship(s) not including swiss nationality. • immigrant: anyone, of any age, arriving from abroad to live in switzerland. they may have lived in switzerland previously or even been born there, and may or may not have swiss nationality. the focus of this paper is the dichotomy between swiss and foreign nationals, as this is the main classifi cation used by the swiss federal statistical offi ce (sfso). however, there are several subsets within these two large groups: 1. swiss born in switzerland ("swiss born ch" for short). the majority of these women were swiss from birth; however, a small proportion were born to why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 419 parents with foreign nationality, so did not have the right to swiss nationality at birth but gained it later in life. in the 2000 census about 5 percent of women aged 15-45 in the "swiss born ch" category were in this category; in the 2018 family and generations survey (fgs) it was 9 percent. 2. swiss born abroad. this group also has two components: swiss from birth, having been born to at least one swiss parent (whilst living abroad); and immigrants who came to the country as foreigners (as children or adults) and subsequently naturalised. at age 15 half of this group were swiss from birth and half were naturalised; amongst women in their 40s, 90 percent were naturalised. 3. foreign national born in switzerland ("foreign born ch"). having been born to foreign parents, but then (often) having spent their childhood in switzerland, women in this group tend to take up swiss nationality in their "transition to adulthood" and "settling down" phase of life (and hence join group 1). as such, many in this group could be considered as "pre-naturalised". the rest may choose not to naturalise, either because they do not want to lose their existing nationality, or because they fi nd the naturalisation process too daunting or expensive. 4. foreign national born abroad. some come to switzerland as children with their parents, but the majority come as adults in their 20s and 30s. figure 1a shows these four sub-groups by age (15-49) in 2000 and 2018. in the period between these two years, the number of "swiss born ch" slightly declined in absolute terms (from 1.2m to 1.1m), and the "foreign born abroad" group rose signifi cantly (from 20 percent to 28 percent of this age group). more than one-third of women in their 30s were "foreign born abroad" in 2018. figure 1b shows the proportion of women, swiss and foreign, by whether they were born in switzerland or born abroad, by age. 2 literature review in demographic literature there have been numerous studies comparing "native" and "non-native" fertility. these non-specifi c terms may refer to migration status (born in or outside the country of study), nationality (the focus of this paper) or ethnicity (which can include secondor higher-generation migrants). this literature review focuses on specifi c aspects pertinent to our analysis: fi rst, why the period tfr can be misleading when interpreted as lifetime (cohort) fertility; second, the timing of migration in relation to fi rst birth and how this impacts the tfr measure; third, the duration of stay in the receiving country and its impact on the tfr; and fourth, the parity progression of migrants. finally, we give an overview of alternative ways to describe the fertility of immigrants that may be better than the standard tfr. we return to discuss these in the fi nal section of the paper. the standard measure of fertility, the total fertility rate (tfr), is a measure of the intensity of childbearing in a specifi c year (of the group of women in question); it only approximates ultimate fertility if the population (group) is stable, with no immigration, emigration, mortality or change in timing of childbearing. sobotka and • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner420 lutz (2010) heavily criticised its use because, although it is a simple measure, it often misrepresents cohort fertility and is easily misinterpreted by policy-makers. the distortions to the tfr caused by changes in timing of childbearing have been addressed extensively (the seminal paper on the defl ationary effect of postponement is bongaarts/feeney 1998); however, the distortions inherent in calculating the tfr of non-natives have received less attention. 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age swiss born ch swiss born abroad foreign born ch foreign born abroad 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age population of women in 2000 population of women in 2018 the dashed line on right graph shows the cohort that was 15 years old in 2000 fig. 1a: population of women aged 15-49 in 2000 (left) and 2018 (right) 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age born in switzerland born abroad 0 20 40 60 80 100 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age born in switzerland born abroad in percent in percent fig. 1b: proportion of women aged 15-49 born in switzerland or abroad in 2018, swiss nationals (left) and foreign nationals (right) source: census 2000, statpop 2018, swiss federal statistical offi ce why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 421 the reason the tfr fails to characterise immigrant fertility is because there is, commonly, a high intensity of childbearing (often fi rst births) in the years immediately after arrival in the new country following low fertility in the years preceding migration (ng/nault 1997; toulemon/mazuy 2004; andersson 2004; dubuc 2012; robards/berrington 2016; tønnessen 2020). this has been termed a “migration-specifi c tempo effect” (dubuc 2016). as outlined by sobotka and lutz (2010), the tfr for foreigners (as opposed to immigrants) is even more susceptible to distortion because women who stay longer in a country more often naturalise and are then no longer foreign nationals. therefore, the tfr of foreigners tends to relate only to women who have been in the country for a relatively short duration – after they arrive but before they naturalise, which is also a period of peak likelihood for starting a family. in technical terms, a high intensity of fi rst births infl ates the tfr1 (fi rst birth tfr) to values that can be higher than unity (one). in a stable population the complement of tfr1 (i.e. 1-tfr1) would be the proportion of women who remain childless; and so a value higher than one would make no sense in cohort terms. parrado (2011), for instance, found values of tfr1 for immigrants to the united states from mexico to be over 1.5 in the period 1990-2005. as the total fertility rate is the sum of fertility rates of all birth orders, then a "distorted" value for tfr1 will automatically lead to an unrealistically high overall tfr which does not refl ect the "true" (cohort) fertility of immigrants. because migration and childbearing are often closely interlinked, the average duration of stay of immigrants in the new country has a signifi cant impact on their tfr. the impact of change in average duration of stay, as well as other factors, has been analysed in detail to determine its relative importance on trends in the tfr of immigrants (tønnessen 2020). the likelihood and intensity of transition to second and third birth of non-natives have been the subject of several studies, with mixed results. in germany, milewski (2010) found immigrants transitioned to a second birth more frequently than native germans, even if they had already had a child pre-migration. however, for third births, this only held true for immigrants from turkey. in switzerland the opposite was found: the transition to second birth for migrants was less frequent and came after a longer interval than for swiss natives (rojas et al. 2018). berrington and stone (2017) found that parity progression to third and fourth children is quite high in the united kingdom for women from pakistan and bangladesh, although native british women also have higher proportions of threeand four-child families compared to many other european countries. in italy migrants from albania and morocco are more likely to have a second or third child compared to italian natives, but ukrainian immigrants are less likely to do so (impicciatore et al. 2020). what alternatives to the standard tfr to better describe migrant fertility have previously been proposed? using data for france toulemon and mazuy (2004) applied three methods to the large data set of the 1999 survey étude de l’histoire familiale: (1) an adjusted tfr, using estimated age-specifi c fertility rates which took into account the period of high childbearing soon after an immigrant arrives; (2) the "own children method" (cho et al. 1986, chapter viii) which reconstructs, for years • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner422 prior to the survey, the age-specifi c period fertility rates (asfrs) and hence tfrs which include pre-migration fertility; and (3) a novel methodology combining data on the fertility of immigrants at the time they arrived in france (by age of arrival) plus their fertility in subsequent years. they concluded that "true" immigrant fertility was somewhat higher than native fertility but signifi cantly less than the 0.7 excess implied by the standard tfr differential. using uk labour force survey data, dubuc (2009) compared two methodologies to describe fertility by ethnicity. she applied the child-woman ratio (cwr) and compared the results of this method with her refi ned reverse-survival own-child method, both methods including preand post-migration fertility for immigrant women. she found that the latter procedure, in particular, offers a reliable means of estimating fertility trends by ethnic and immigrant groups (dubuc 2009, 2016). several other studies have also used the “own children method” to compare native and immigrant fertility (krapf/kreyenfeld 2015; abbasi-shavazi/mcdonald 2002; wanner 2002; wanner/fei 2005). the general conclusion is that (high-fertility) immigrant populations approach the (low-fertility) norms of the host country after a period of time. to summarise, the standard tfr, by defi nition, only includes births to women already present in the country. some studies (e.g. the ones cited in the previous three paragraphs) include pre-migration fertility histories in their estimates of ultimate (cohort) fertility. this adjusts the numerator (births) in the tfr calculation. modifying the denominator (population of women aged 15-49) to include (commonly childless) migrants who have yet to arrive in the country has also been proposed as an alternative approach (burkimsher/rossier 2017). all approaches to assess non-native fertility are constrained by the availability of reliable data; birth registration (by nationality or country of birth) data are generally available (in many developed countries) and it is a priori assumed that these can give estimates of the relative fertility of native and non-native groups. however, neither the fertility of arriving migrants nor the distortions inherent in the migrationspecifi c tempo effect are commonly taken into account – and the impact on the tfr of the fertility of emigrants has never, to our knowledge, been integrated into fertility models (although toulemon/mazuy 2004 acknowledged this defi ciency). 3 the swiss context switzerland has one of the highest shares of foreigners in its population amongst european countries. it also has a history of compiling high-quality demographic statistics (calot 1998). over one quarter of the 2019 permanent resident population of 8.5 million are non-swiss; only luxembourg and liechtenstein have a higher percentage (eurostat 2020). from being a poor country with predominantly negative net migration through the 19th century and until 1930, switzerland transformed itself into a wealthy country with its population growing primarily from strong immigration (calot 1998). why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 423 prior to 1990 the main origin countries of immigrants were italy, spain and portugal. the country has a long-standing culture of welcoming refugees, e.g. from vietnam in the 1970s and eritrea in recent years; in the 1990s it experienced an infl ux of migrants from former yugoslavia. in december 2008 switzerland joined the schengen zone and, following that, more immigrants came from the new eu member states of eastern european. in recent years the diversity of source countries has increased, with highly educated non-europeans being a particular source of growth (d’amato et al. 2019), a pattern seen elsewhere in europe (e.g. the fig. 2: foreign female population aged 20-39 by nationality, 1995-2018 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 year german french italian other eu and efta other european non-europe oecd non-europe non-oecd .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 0 population other eu and efta: austria, belgium, bulgaria, croatia, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, greece, hungary, ireland, latvia, lithuania, luxembourg, netherlands, norway, poland, portugal, romania, slovakia, slovenia, sweden, spain, uk (and smaller countries) other european: albania, belarus, bosnia, kosovo, moldova, montenegro, north macedonia, russia, serbia, turkey, ukraine non-european oecd: australia, canada, chile, japan, mexico, new zealand, south korea, usa note: the kink from 2009-2010 refl ects the change from the petra database to the household register system of collecting population data (statpop). source: petra and statpop • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner424 uk; dubuc 2016). currently, more germans are arriving than have in the past, but fewer italians. figure 2 shows the evolution in the composition of the female foreign population of prime reproductive age (20-39) since 1995. a number of studies on the fertility of sub-populations in switzerland provide valuable background information for this study. already cited are calot (1998); wanner (2002); wanner/fei (2005); rojas et al. (2018) and d’amato et al. (2019). a comparison of childlessness, using the 2000 census data, indicated that women from many asian and anglo-saxon countries and germany had higher rates than those born in switzerland (of whom around 20 percent aged 40-70 were childless), whereas women from southern europe and the balkans were less likely to be childless (burkimsher/zeman 2017). immigrants from france and germany comprise a signifi cant and growing share of new arrivals and have characteristic fertility patterns. these are refl ected in the linguistic areas of switzerland: francophones enter motherhood earlier, whereas germanophones more often remain childless – but, if they have one child, they move on to a second more readily (ruckdeschel et al. 2018). the demography of foreigners in switzerland is the topic of two edited volumes of papers: wanner et al. (2012) includes chapters on fertility, naturalisation and emigration; steiner and wanner (2019) covers studies of "migrants and expats in switzerland". the interconnected timing and propensity of life events of migrants (partnership, marriage, migration, birth of fi rst and second child) compared to natives is investigated by gerber and burkimsher (forthcoming). extra-marital childbearing is relatively low but growing in switzerland. in 2019 26 percent of births were outside marriage. mixed marriages are very common. since 2000, only a half or fewer of all marriages have been between two partners of swiss nationality. in 2019 20 percent were between a swiss man and a foreign woman and 16 percent between a foreign man and a swiss woman. of the 16 percent of marriages that were between two partners of foreign nationality, 45 percent were between partners of different nationalities. the analyses in this paper compare women primarily by nationality; however, we should remember that many of their partners have a different origin. 4 data sources we summarise here the data sources cited in this paper and discuss their applicability for our study. a critique of their weaknesses is covered in section 6. 1. census of december 2000. this was the last comprehensive decennial census; since 2010 population registers have been used to supply information on population numbers in a more timely and cost-effective manner. however, the 2000 census provides a wealth of additional information not available in population registers which has been exploited in this paper: the number of biological children and their years of birth (up to the 5th or last); country of birth; nationality and (if applicable) year of naturalisation. however, it does not include the year an immigrant arrived in switzerland. 2. household register data (statpop) from 2010 onwards. this collates data on all households in switzerland with information on the age, sex, nationality why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 425 and country of birth of all co-residents (sfso 2016a). when people move to switzerland they are added to the register; when people leave they are recorded as emigrants. annual data on immigrants, emigrants and naturalisations by age and gender are published. statpop superseded the petra database, which collated information about foreign residents up to 2009 (sfso 2016b). 3. birth registration by age and, from 1971, whether the mother had swiss or foreign nationality (the bevnat database). since 2011 births can be linked to the statpop database and so the country of birth of the mother can be retrieved. from 1971 onwards, the sfso has published the tfr of swiss and foreign women and, from 2011, by both nationality and country of birth. 4. families and generations surveys (fgs) from 2013 and 2018 (sfso 2013). these are two similar cross-sectional surveys sampled to be representative of the population of switzerland; there are plans to repeat these every fi ve years. both surveys sampled almost 5000 women of reproductive age, over 20 percent of whom were foreign nationals. the fgs is similar in scope to the generations and gender survey, which has been carried out in twenty other (mostly) european countries. both fgs surveys include the year of immigration, but only the fgs 2013 includes the year of naturalisation. 5. migration-mobility survey (nccr on the move 2018). this survey sampled 7700 immigrants who had lived in switzerland for less than ten years. this data set includes the country of residence of the children of migrants, switzerland or abroad. 5 methodology the aim of our methodology is to estimate the average number of children of women by nationality (swiss and foreign) as they pass through their reproductive life. as we have comprehensive data from 1981-2018 on the numbers of women immigrating, emigrating and naturalising, as well as their births, then we can track the full reproductive lives (ages 15-49) for cohorts born 1966-1969. for younger cohorts, we have estimates of their fertility over a shorter time span. in the example calculation described below, we have chosen to follow the cohort born in 1979, who reached age 39 in 2018. after this age, around 0.1 children may be expected to be added to their average fertility from additional births at current fertility rates. although we use the word "track", we do not have individual-level data for the number of children through the life course of women; rather, we make assumptions on average fertility (by age) at the transition points of immigration, emigration and naturalisation. tables 1a and 1b show the elements and steps in the calculation for the 1979 cohort, who turned 15 in 1994. the mid-year population values are derived from the end-of-year population numbers as published by the sfso (e.g. the mid-year population of 15-year-olds in 1994 is the average of the population of 14-year-olds at the end of 1993 and 15-year-olds at the end of 1994). the inputs of births and children associated with migration and naturalisation are described in sub-sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3. • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner426 a g e m id -y ea r b ir th s im m ig ra n ts c h ild re n o f e m ig ra n ts c h ild re n o f n at u ra lic h ild re n o f in co m in g c u m u la ti ve c h ild re n / p o p u la ti o n < a > s w is s im m ig ra n ts s w is s em ig ra n ts sa ti o n s n at u ra lis in g ch ild re n ch ild re n w o m an s w is s n at io n al s < b > n at io n al s < c > w o m en < a > + < b > n at io n al s < d > < c > + < d > 19 94 15 30 28 4 1 68 0 68 0 13 5 0 1 1 0. 00 19 95 16 30 52 7 8 91 0 90 0 20 1 0 8 9 0. 00 19 96 17 30 75 2 26 10 5 0 12 0 0 23 4 0 26 35 0. 00 19 97 18 30 95 7 60 14 2 0 20 2 0 41 4 3 63 98 0. 00 19 98 19 31 26 7 17 2 21 5 2 30 9 0 40 7 2 17 6 27 5 0. 01 19 99 20 31 54 4 29 0 27 2 5 40 0 7 32 2 5 29 3 56 8 0. 02 20 00 21 31 76 5 47 1 38 0 11 51 6 13 33 2 9 47 8 10 46 0. 03 20 01 22 32 13 8 58 6 37 1 14 45 8 16 21 6 35 61 9 16 65 0. 05 20 02 23 32 45 7 75 7 38 1 16 43 5 18 28 3 10 3 85 9 25 23 0. 08 20 03 24 32 57 0 10 06 35 3 21 4 40 26 23 0 13 1 11 32 36 55 0. 11 20 04 25 32 67 5 13 94 33 6 23 47 3 37 23 6 18 2 15 62 52 17 0. 16 20 05 26 32 79 7 17 75 33 9 35 47 2 51 28 0 27 3 20 32 72 49 0. 22 20 06 27 32 97 9 22 03 36 9 49 50 8 74 35 4 41 8 25 96 98 45 0. 30 20 07 28 33 19 2 26 59 34 4 55 46 6 85 35 5 43 2 30 61 12 90 6 0. 39 20 08 29 33 43 4 31 86 31 6 63 39 2 91 38 8 48 6 36 4 4 16 54 9 0. 49 20 09 30 33 77 3 36 31 28 7 82 33 1 11 4 42 6 54 9 41 48 20 69 7 0. 61 20 10 31 34 14 4 39 98 27 8 10 6 29 1 11 2 38 7 51 2 45 04 25 20 2 0. 74 20 11 32 34 27 5 41 29 23 6 10 5 31 4 16 3 43 8 59 6 46 67 29 86 9 0. 87 20 12 33 34 36 7 41 94 21 8 11 9 26 5 15 8 34 2 48 6 46 40 34 50 9 1. 00 20 13 34 34 71 6 38 11 23 5 15 6 23 9 15 8 42 0 62 2 4 43 1 38 94 0 1. 12 20 14 35 35 12 5 36 88 19 3 14 3 25 4 19 3 43 7 67 3 43 11 43 25 1 1. 23 20 15 36 35 55 5 32 79 17 5 14 5 22 0 19 0 51 1 81 8 40 52 47 30 3 1. 33 20 16 37 36 03 7 26 72 16 8 15 7 18 9 17 0 53 9 89 5 35 54 50 85 7 1. 41 20 17 38 36 56 7 20 48 17 5 17 8 19 5 19 1 60 2 99 1 30 27 53 88 4 1. 47 20 18 39 37 10 0 16 26 14 6 14 6 17 1 15 6 53 8 87 8 24 95 56 37 9 1. 52 ta b . 1 a: c al cu la tio n ta b le t o t ra ck t he n um b er o f c hi ld re n o f t he 1 97 9 co ho rt o f w o m en , s w is s na tio na ls s o ur ce d at a fo r el em en ts in t ab le 1 a an d 1 b : a s p ub lis he d b y s fs o : po p ul at io n; b ir th s < a > ; im m ig ra nt s b y ag e an d n at io na lit y; e m ig ra nt s b y ag e an d n at io na lit y; n at ur al is at io ns c hi ld re n o f im m ig ra nt s/ em ig ra nt s, < b > a nd < c > : n um b er o f im m ig ra nt s/ em ig ra nt s m ul tip lie d b y m ea n fe rt ili ty a t th es e tr an si tio ns , b y ag e, a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5. 2 an d ta b ul at ed in t ab le 3 . c hi ld re n o f na tu ra lis in g w o m en : n um b er o f na tu ra lis in g w o m en m ul tip lie d b y fe rt ili ty r at es b y ag e at n at ur al is at io n, a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5. 3 an d ta b ul at ed in t ab le 3 . why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 427 ta b . 1 b: c al cu la tio n ta b le t o t ra ck t he n um b er o f c hi ld re n o f t he 1 97 9 co ho rt o f w o m en , f o re ig n na tio na ls a g e m id -y ea r b ir th s im m ig ra n ts c h ild re n o f e m ig ra n ts c h ild re n o f n at u ra lic h ild re n o f in co m in g c u m u la ti ve c h ild re n / p o p u la ti o n < a > fo re ig n im m ig ra n ts fo re ig n em ig ra n ts sa ti o n s n at u ra lis in g ch ild re n ch ild re n w o m an fo re ig n n at io n al s < b > n at io n al s < c > w o m en < a > + < b > n at io n al s < d > < c > -< d > 19 94 15 78 57 2 65 7 0 30 3 0 13 5 0 2 2 0. 00 19 95 16 80 82 7 72 8 0 36 2 0 20 1 0 7 9 0. 00 19 96 17 82 05 45 58 5 0 37 7 0 23 4 0 45 54 0. 01 19 97 18 81 79 12 2 81 0 8 50 7 5 41 4 3 12 2 17 6 0. 02 19 98 19 81 90 30 2 10 06 20 57 0 11 40 7 2 30 9 48 4 0. 06 19 99 20 84 21 56 4 12 69 38 65 0 19 32 2 5 57 7 10 62 0. 13 20 00 21 88 02 80 9 13 23 39 66 6 19 33 2 9 81 9 18 81 0. 21 20 01 22 93 82 97 6 16 89 77 75 8 34 21 6 35 98 4 28 65 0. 31 20 02 23 10 25 6 11 20 20 84 10 5 80 8 41 28 3 10 3 10 81 39 46 0. 38 20 03 24 11 21 3 12 96 20 55 13 8 78 1 52 23 0 13 1 12 51 51 97 0. 46 20 04 25 12 18 0 14 21 20 76 16 5 76 5 61 23 6 18 2 13 43 65 40 0. 54 20 05 26 13 15 8 15 02 20 23 19 5 72 9 70 28 0 27 3 13 53 78 93 0. 60 20 06 27 14 05 4 15 66 20 59 26 2 78 4 10 0 35 4 41 8 13 11 92 03 0. 65 20 07 28 15 19 7 16 47 27 22 4 46 79 2 13 0 35 5 43 2 15 32 10 73 5 0. 71 20 08 29 16 67 4 17 70 28 67 59 2 88 0 18 2 38 8 48 6 16 94 12 42 9 0. 75 20 09 30 17 93 6 18 80 23 56 61 8 81 0 21 3 42 6 54 9 17 37 14 16 7 0. 79 20 10 31 18 87 0 20 74 22 37 73 4 95 9 31 5 38 7 51 2 19 81 16 14 8 0. 86 20 11 32 19 70 1 21 30 20 67 83 4 88 2 35 6 43 8 59 6 20 12 18 16 0 0. 92 20 12 33 20 38 5 21 81 18 71 89 6 87 6 41 9 34 2 48 6 21 72 20 33 2 1. 00 20 13 34 20 91 3 21 05 18 65 99 5 88 8 47 4 42 0 62 2 20 05 22 33 7 1. 07 20 14 35 21 38 1 20 38 17 80 11 29 91 0 57 7 43 7 67 3 19 17 24 25 3 1. 13 20 15 36 21 68 8 19 88 15 73 11 26 83 7 59 9 51 1 81 8 16 97 25 95 1 1. 20 20 16 37 21 87 5 17 09 15 11 11 68 77 0 59 5 53 9 89 5 13 87 27 33 8 1. 25 20 17 38 21 90 2 14 26 12 81 10 34 79 8 64 4 60 2 99 1 82 5 28 16 3 1. 29 20 18 39 21 81 3 11 78 12 17 10 01 75 9 62 5 53 8 87 8 67 7 28 84 0 1. 32 s o ur ce d at a fo r el em en ts in t ab le 1 a an d 1 b : a s p ub lis he d b y s fs o : po p ul at io n; b ir th s < a > ; im m ig ra nt s b y ag e an d n at io na lit y; e m ig ra nt s b y ag e an d n at io na lit y; n at ur al is at io ns c hi ld re n o f im m ig ra nt s/ em ig ra nt s, < b > a nd < c > : n um b er o f im m ig ra nt s/ em ig ra nt s m ul tip lie d b y m ea n fe rt ili ty a t th es e tr an si tio ns , b y ag e, a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5. 2 an d ta b ul at ed in t ab le 3 . c hi ld re n o f na tu ra lis in g w o m en : n um b er o f na tu ra lis in g w o m en m ul tip lie d b y fe rt ili ty r at es b y ag e at n at ur al is at io n, a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5. 3 an d ta b ul at ed in t ab le 3 . • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner428 the cohort fertility calculation is straightforward. as shown in the fi nal three columns of tables 1a and 1b, we calculate the net number of children added from each source each year, and cumulate these. in the fi nal column we divide the cumulated children by the female population in that year. this column is the fertility curve of the 1979 cohort, and the fi nal number (bottom right of the table) is the estimated number of children for that cohort when they reached age 39 in 2018, i.e. their almost completed cohort fertility. figure 3 demonstrates how the calculated fertility for that cohort at age 39 is compiled from the relative inputs and outputs of births, immigration, emigration and naturalisation. how do these values for fertility through the reproductive period, calculated using our cohort tracking method, compare to the statpop values of co-residing children? statpop data are only available from 2011 onwards (so from age 32 upwards for our example cohort). a comparison of the results from the two data sets is shown in figure 4. three points should be highlighted. first, there is excellent agreement for the swiss population up to age 35. at higher ages, we would expect the statpop values to under-estimate actual fertility as children will then start to leave home. the observed divergence is as expected. second, statpop shows the fertility of foreign nationals to be about 0.07 children higher than the cohort tracking method at all ages. however, apart from this constant offset, the agreement is good (possible causes are discussed later in section 6). the third point to note is the crossover point between the fertility of swiss women and foreign women. for statpop this is at age 34.5; with cohort tracking it is at 33. analysing this phenomenon is one of the central aims of this paper and will be discussed at greater length in section 6; it is fundamental to understanding why the tfr inaccurately portrays the fertility of foreigners. fig. 3: the contribution of the 4 component elements to the fertility of swiss and foreign women aged 39 in 2018, relative to the respective subpopulations -1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 swiss nationals foreign nationals births children of immigrating women children of naturalising women children of emigrating women children per woman births children of immigrating women children of emigrating women children of naturalising women 1.52 1.32 source: see notes to tables 1a and 1b why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 429 5.1 births by nationality and country of birth of mother the four sub-populations of swiss and foreign women outlined in the introduction contribute differing proportions to the total births in switzerland. births to women in the "swiss born ch" category comprised 57 percent of total births in 2010, declining to 51 percent in 2018. meanwhile the proportion to "swiss born abroad" stayed quite steady at 8-9 percent. the proportion of births to women "foreign born abroad" rose from 35 percent to 39 percent between 2010 and 2017 before falling slightly to 38 percent in 2018, whilst births to "foreign born ch" remained steady at 3 percent. the four groups have different fertility behaviours, particularly in relation to timing, both age at fi rst birth and subsequent spacing between births. women who are "foreign born abroad" become mothers youngest (see fig. 5). by contrast, the age at fi rst birth of the "swiss born ch" group is almost two years later and is now approaching 31. the steady rise in mean age at fi rst birth ("postponement") seen since 1970 fi nally seems to be slowing. the rather young age for "swiss born abroad" (mostly naturalised immigrants), 28.5 rising to 29.5, suggests that many of these women have either immigrated to switzerland as children or married a swiss man and thus had a fast-track route to citizenship (see section 5.3 on naturalisation). fig. 4: average fertility of women born in 1979 from age 32 to 39 (2011-2018), swiss and foreign nationals 0.80 0.90 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 age swiss cohort tracking swiss statpop foreign cohort tracking foreign statpop children per woman source: statpop and cohort tracking methodology (see appendix) • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner430 5.2 immigration, emigration and fertility rates at those transitions the main infl ux of foreign women into switzerland starts at age 18, often for tertiary education or low-skilled service jobs. this is followed by even stronger in-migration, often for work (for the woman, her partner or both), or joining a partner; this peaks at age 26. strong immigration is partially balanced by emigration, which follows a similar age trajectory (see fig. 6). for swiss nationals their net balance is negative throughout the age range 15-49, with peak outfl ow at age 25. the household register, statpop, is our main data source on the number of children that women have when they immigrate or emigrate. for our cohort tracking calculations we used the average fertility rates by age from statpop for the years 2011-2017 (see table 3). there were no noticeable trends over this period. one weakness of the statpop data for estimating immigrant fertility is that the mother may arrive in the country before her children, or they may remain in the country of origin, especially if they are older, and this can lead to an under-estimate of the fertility of immigrating mothers. we know from the migration-mobility survey (nccr on the move 2018) that for women under 35, more than 90 percent of mothers arrive with their children; however, this drops to 85 percent for women aged 35-39, 70 percent for women 40-44, and just over half for women aged 45-49. we have used these values to apply a multiplicative coeffi cient to the statpop values to better estimate true fertility at immigration for foreign nationals (i.e. by multiplying the fertility rate calculated from statpop by the inverse of the proportions listed above). fig. 5: mean age at fi rst birth by nationality and country of birth of mother 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 year swiss born ch foreign born ch swiss born abroad foreign born abroad age at 1st birth source: own calculations using bevnat and statpop data why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 431 both the statpop data and the fgs of 2013 and 2018 show that the majority of migrants are, in fact, childless, whether they are arriving in or leaving the country (see table 2). as discussed in the literature review, entry into motherhood is commonly postponed before migration and then commences in the years shortly afterwards. we found this same behaviour with immigrants to switzerland (see fig. 7). we discuss the impact of this high post-arrival childbearing intensity on the tfr, and in particular on the tfr1, in section 8. statpop enumerates not only the number of children of immigrants and emigrants but split by whether or not they (already) hold swiss nationality. of note is that the fertility of foreign nationals is slightly higher on emigration than it is on immigration, comparing women of the same age. the opposite is the case for swiss nationals: their fertility is lower on emigration than on (re-)immigration. 5.3 naturalisation and fertility at naturalisation the methodology section showed that naturalisation potentially impacts the cohort fertility of swiss and foreign nationals, as there is, effectively, a transfer of associated children from the "foreign" tally to the "swiss" tally. in this section, we discuss the recent history of naturalisation legislation and how this links to family formation of women. we then describe how we estimate the fertility of women when they naturalise. the sfso publishes data for the number of men and women naturalising each year (see fig. 8). several important changes in the naturalisation rules have been fig. 6: number of women immigrating and emigrating by age, mean 2011-2017 -3.000 -2.000 -1.000 0 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age swiss national immigrants foreign national immigrants net change foreign net change swiss swiss national emigrants foreign national emigrants number of women source: statpop • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner432 made over the past decades. in the 1970s, women who had lost their swiss citizenship (because of marrying a non-swiss man, for instance) could regain it on request. up until the end of 1991, a foreign woman who married a swiss man automatically gained swiss nationality (and may thereby have lost her existing nationality); this statute was dropped with the introduction of a new law on citizenship. a foreign woman marrying a swiss man (and vice versa) can now apply for fast-track citizenship, although this still takes several years (swissinfo 2018). years spent in tab. 2: proportion childless in year of immigration and emigration by age group at immigration at emigration fgs 2013 fgs 2018 statpop statpop in % 20-24 93 93 96 97 25-29 87 81 90 89 30-34 82 41 75 70 35-39 51 13 60 53 source: fgs 2013 and fgs 2018, women who immigrated to switzerland over the age of 15 and aged <=49 note: the fgs 2018 under-sampled childless women and even applying appropriate weights does not fully compensate for this bias. source: fgs: women who immigrated in the previous ten years; statpop, mean 2011-2017 fig. 7: timing of fi rst birth with respect to year of immigration: percent by year who had a child within 10 years of immigrating 0 5 10 15 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 fgs 2013 fgs 2018 years before (-ve) or after (+ve) between immigration and birth of 1st child in percent 1st birth before immigration 1st birth after immigration why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 433 fig. 8: descriptive diagrams of naturalisation trends source: sfso 8a: number of women naturalising by age group, 1981-2018 8b: annual naturalisation rates of women by age (number of naturalisations/foreign population), selected years 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 year 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 women 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 age 1981 1988 1993 1998 2008 2018 in percent • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner434 switzerland in childhood count double towards gaining citizenship. the duration of time living in the country before being able to obtain citizenship by the standard route was reduced from twelve years to ten in january 2018 (sem 2018). one of the countries which, until recently, allowed only single citizenship was germany; however, since 2007, german women can hold dual citizenship of switzerland and germany, and many older german women living in switzerland have chosen to do so (swissinfo 2007). naturalisation has traditionally been part of the transition to adulthood and this remains the case for many children who were born or have spent most of their childhood in switzerland: the peak around age 18 is very marked (fig. 8b) and at this age almost all are childless. naturalisation and fertility are interlinked, as described in pecoraro (2012). to summarise, women with children commonly choose to naturalise when their duration of stay is long enough, whilst childless women have a slightly lower propensity to naturalise than mothers. we used two data sources to estimate the number of children that women have (on average, by age) at the time of their naturalisation. the 2000 census data includes the year of naturalisation, as well as the years of birth of all children. from this we can calculate the number of children a woman had in the year she naturalised. for the pre-census years 1981-2000, we averaged the fertility at naturalisation for four periods, with 1992 being a special year for the reason described above (see table 3). for the years after 2000 we used the fgs 2013 to calculate fertility at naturalisation; 347 women in the survey had become swiss since 2000 in their reproductive period (15-49). fertility at naturalisation is higher at all ages than fertility at immigration or emigration for the reasons described above. fertility at naturalisation has been rising over time, the main reason being that since 1991 women do not gain swiss citizenship on marrying a swiss man; they must wait at least six years, even when fast-tracked. 6 comparison of cohort fertility measures from different data sets the purpose of the methodology described in section 5 is to calculate the average fertility of co-existing cohorts – of swiss and foreign nationals – which can be compared with values obtained from other sources (census 2000, statpop, fgs 2013 and fgs 2018). the signifi cance of our methodology is that we understand the source of the inputs (births, immigration, emigration and naturalisation) whereas with other data sources we can only observe the differentials. this section presents the data and discusses the weaknesses of each data source. in the subsequent section, we summarise the processes that determine cohort fertility patterns of swiss and foreign nationals and then address the question of why the pattern we see in cohort fertility differentials is fundamentally different from that seen in the tfr. figure 9 shows the fertility of co-existing cohorts in the years when the census or survey was carried out. for the cohort tracking method the graph plotted is for the latest year for which we can calculate, 2018 (see the data tables in the appendix). why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 435 im m ig ra ti o n e m ig ra ti o n im m ig ra ti o n e m ig ra ti o n n at u ra lis at io n n at u ra lis at io n n at u ra lis at io n n at u ra lis at io n n at u ra lis at io n s w is s s w is s fo re ig n fo re ig n 19 81 -1 98 6 19 87 -1 99 1 19 92 19 93 -2 00 0 > 20 00 n at io n al s n at io n al s n at io n al s n at io n al s 15 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 16 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 17 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 18 0. 00 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 0. 03 0. 03 0. 00 0. 01 0. 00 19 0. 01 0. 00 0. 02 0. 00 0. 08 0. 11 0. 01 0. 01 0. 00 20 0. 02 0. 02 0. 03 0. 03 0. 13 0. 10 0. 01 0. 02 0. 00 21 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 16 0. 16 0. 03 0. 03 0. 08 22 0. 04 0. 03 0. 05 0. 05 0. 19 0. 16 0. 05 0. 04 0. 16 23 0. 04 0. 04 0. 05 0. 06 0. 21 0. 19 0. 22 0. 10 0. 36 24 0. 06 0. 06 0. 07 0. 08 0. 22 0. 20 0. 32 0. 17 0. 57 25 0. 07 0. 08 0. 08 0. 09 0. 24 0. 25 0. 30 0. 26 0. 77 26 0. 10 0. 11 0. 10 0. 12 0. 27 0. 30 0. 39 0. 43 0. 98 27 0. 13 0. 15 0. 13 0. 16 0. 31 0. 32 0. 49 0. 56 1. 18 28 0. 16 0. 18 0. 16 0. 18 0. 38 0. 36 0. 47 0. 76 1. 22 29 0. 20 0. 23 0. 21 0. 23 0. 45 0. 43 0. 50 0. 82 1. 25 30 0. 29 0. 34 0. 26 0. 32 0. 49 0. 49 0. 83 1. 06 1. 29 31 0. 38 0. 39 0. 33 0. 37 0. 58 0. 57 1. 00 1. 18 1. 32 32 0. 45 0. 52 0. 40 0. 47 0. 62 0. 58 1. 13 1. 27 1. 36 33 0. 54 0. 60 0. 48 0. 56 0. 79 0. 67 1. 18 1. 32 1. 42 34 0. 66 0. 66 0. 53 0. 68 0. 86 0. 76 1. 30 1. 50 1. 48 35 0. 74 0. 76 0. 63 0. 73 1. 00 0. 84 1. 28 1. 66 1. 54 36 0. 83 0. 86 0. 72 0. 83 1. 07 0. 92 1. 59 1. 60 1. 60 37 0. 94 0. 90 0. 77 0. 85 1. 19 1. 01 1. 61 1. 63 1. 66 38 1. 02 0. 98 0. 81 0. 89 1. 25 1. 04 1. 65 1. 77 1. 65 39 1. 00 0. 91 0. 82 0. 89 1. 23 1. 15 1. 63 1. 84 1. 63 40 0. 99 0. 89 0. 87 0. 91 1. 32 1. 21 1. 46 1. 75 1. 62 41 1. 03 0. 84 0. 87 0. 85 1. 4 4 1. 28 1. 49 1. 68 1. 60 42 0. 96 0. 81 0. 78 0. 83 1. 50 1. 30 1. 47 1. 82 1. 59 43 0. 93 0. 70 0. 78 0. 81 1. 57 1. 38 1. 72 1. 66 1. 56 4 4 0. 87 0. 63 0. 71 0. 67 1. 58 1. 30 1. 50 1. 71 1. 54 45 0. 69 0. 49 0. 67 0. 51 1. 4 4 1. 40 1. 53 1. 65 1. 51 46 0. 58 0. 38 0. 56 0. 47 1. 66 1. 39 1. 47 1. 70 1. 49 47 0. 47 0. 33 0. 46 0. 35 1. 57 1. 47 1. 36 1. 68 1. 46 48 0. 41 0. 25 0. 41 0. 29 1. 71 1. 36 1. 52 1. 68 1. 43 49 0. 33 0. 19 0. 34 0. 19 1. 48 1. 61 1. 36 1. 67 1. 40 ta b . 3 : fe rt ili ty a t i m m ig ra tio n, e m ig ra tio n an d n at ur al is at io n b y ag e s o ur ce : s ta t p o p f o r fe rt ili ty a t im m ig ra tio n/ em ig ra tio n; c en su s 20 00 f o r fe rt ili ty a t na tu ra lis at io n in 2 00 0 an d b ef o re ; fg s 2 01 3 fo r fe rt ili ty a t na tu ra lis at io n af te r 20 00 • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner436 fig. 9: cohort fertility of female swiss (red, bold line) and foreign nationals (turquoise, lighter) aged 20-49 in year(s) of observation 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 age swiss census 2000 foreign census 2000 census 2000 children per woman 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 age swiss statpop 2011-17 foreign statpop 2011-17 statpop, mean 2011-2017 children per woman fgs 2013 5-year rolling averages children per woman fgs 2018 5-year rolling averages children per woman 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 age swiss cohort tracking 2018 foreign cohort tracking 2018 cohort tracking methodology 2018 children per woman 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 age swiss fgs 2013 foreign fgs 2013 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 age swiss fgs 2018 foreign fgs 2018 source: own calculations based on sources as listed why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 437 the fi rst point to note is that there appears to have been a change in the swissforeign differential between the census in 2000 and 2011. in 2000, foreign women had higher fertility across all the reproductive ages compared to swiss nationals. however, since 2011, the four different data sources all point to the same conclusion: women of swiss nationality past their mid-30s have higher fertility than women of foreign nationality. the values for completed cohort fertility differ between the data sets, yet they all show this same crossover. for statpop the crossover occurs at age 35; with the fgs 2013 and fgs 2018 it is at age 33; and with our cohort tracking for 2018 it is at age 34. the second point to note is that the comparability between our cohort tracking results and statpop is particularly close, which gives us confi dence in our calculation process. it should be noted that the mean fertility by age was calculated for years 2011-2017 for the statpop values. no trends were discernible over that period for the fertility of swiss nationals nor of foreign women. we now discuss each data set in turn. the census data are almost comprehensive, although 4.5 percent of swiss women and 8.9 percent of foreign women aged 2039 did not respond to the question on their number of children. however, these data are now twenty years old; no comparable data set has been compiled since. it is interesting to note the convergence in the swiss-foreign fertility differentials between the ages of 35 and 39 in 2000. it would appear that although completed cohort fertility (ccf) of swiss nationals has fallen only slightly since then, from 1.7 to 1.6, the ccf of foreign nationals has fallen much more steeply. it should be noted that in the 1990s there was an infl ux of migrants driven by the wars in the balkans, fi rst serbians and croatians in the early 1990s, followed by kosovars in 1998/99. since then there has been an increase in the proportion of migrants who are highly skilled, as well as (and including) germans, both groups who tend to have lower fertility (see section 3 and fig. 2). the main weakness of the statpop values is that they take into account only children who are co-habiting with their mother. analysis is by household: if a household includes a female aged 20-39, then any child(ren) 15 or more years younger than her are considered to be hers. in germany a similar analytical method to ours was used with their mikrozensus: it was found that up to their late 30s the fertility of women assessed by co-residential children was very close to that reported by women on their biological children (krapf/kreyenfeld 2015). for this reason, we only include women up to age 39. foreign women are more likely to have their children leave soon after age 40 as, on average, they start childbearing at a younger age than swiss women do (fig. 5). there is a sharp increase in emigration from age 18 (of both swiss and foreign nationals), many of them leaving the parental home for higher education. the fgs 2013 data shows that 46 percent of women in their 40s and who immigrated at age 15 or above had an eldest child aged 18+; this compares to only 39 percent of swiss women of the same age born in switzerland. similar proportions were found in the fgs 2018 data: 42 percent of foreign women versus 38 percent of swiss women in their 40s had an adult child. another diffi culty when using the statpop database is analysing households in which there are two adult women living with children: as there is no registered • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner438 link between parents and their children, which woman might be the biological mother? we discount such cases. the sfso population numbers are higher for women in their early 20s than the statpop numbers used in our fertility analysis; 20 percent higher for swiss nationals and 30 percent for foreigners because of these complications. a priori we assume that the women in households that are analysed are representative of all women of that age, but this may not be the case. because childless women are more mobile, they can miss being registered and so the fertility of younger migrants may be over-estimated. de-registration upon emigration may not take place and so the household register may remain out-ofdate for some time. the downward kink from 2009-2010 in figure 2, when a change of population data sets took place, is evidence of this possibility. for the family and generation surveys of 2013 and 2018 the question is how representative they are. the fgs 2018 intentionally over-sampled women with children under the age of 13, yet applying weights to "boost" the sample of childless women can lead to distortions. unintentional over-sampling of women with children is a common problem of surveys, as they tend to be at home more often than childless women are (kreyenfeld et al. 2011). in our cohort tracking calculations, we estimate the average fertility by age at immigration, emigration and naturalisation. these estimates are prone to bias and may cause overor under-estimation which are likely to be compounded at older ages. the estimate of fertility at naturalisation is particularly tentative post-2000 and this could have a substantial impact on the fi nal estimates of cohort fertility by nationality. taking all these limitations into consideration, it is reassuring that the different data sets point to the same conclusion. although the fertility of foreign women in their 20s is higher than that of swiss nationals, by the late 30s the fertility of swiss nationals has overtaken that of foreign women. the next section details the processes that cause this crossover to happen. 7 the processes that affect cohort fertility this section summarises the differences in behaviour of the sub-groups of population that lead to the fertility patterns seen in the previous section. 1. foreign women born abroad tend to start childbearing at younger ages than swiss women born in switzerland (fig. 5); hence the fertility of foreign women is higher than that of swiss women up to the mid-30s (fig. 9). 2. swiss women born in switzerland, after starting childbearing later, have a higher propensity to have a second child after their fi rst and after a shorter duration (rojas et al. 2018). hence, swiss mothers have larger families than mothers of foreign nationality (section 8 and table 4). 3. the ongoing infl ux of low fertility (often childless) foreign women in their 30s "dilutes" the average fertility of foreign women at these ages (tables 2 and 3). 4. foreign women who naturalise have higher fertility than foreign women who do not (section 5.3, section 8, table 4 and pecoraro 2012). naturalisation has why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 439 the biggest impact on the net balance of "incoming" children at higher ages, effectively boosting the fertility of swiss women and reducing that of foreign women (table 1). 5. foreign emigrants have (slightly) higher fertility than foreign immigrants, whereas swiss nationals have slightly higher fertility at (re-)immigration than swiss women at emigration (section 5.2 and table 3). having described the difference in fertility of swiss and foreign women across the reproductive life course, and the processes leading to these differentials, we now tackle the question of why the tfr fails to accurately describe the fertility of foreign and immigrant women. 8 the standard tfr and a comparison with cohort fertility measures the sfso publishes the tfr of foreigners together with that of the swiss population (fig. 10), describing the tfr in their statistical digest as the "average number of children per woman" (sfso 2019). since 2011, the sfso has also provided the tfr by country of birth and nationality (table 4). from those published statistics the layman would assume that foreigners – and foreigners born abroad especially – have more children than swiss women do, and considerably more than the "swiss born in switzerland". yet this is misleading. section 6 of this paper demonstrated that cohorts of women with swiss nationality older than their mid-30s actually have higher fertility than those of foreign nationality: section 7 described how this happens. the tfr of foreign women has been quite stable since 2001, at around 1.87 (fig. 10), despite changes in their composition (fig. 2). for swiss nationals, it rose from a minimum value of 1.22 in 2001-2003 to 1.40 in 2009 and has remained quite stable since. because women aged 39 (the focus in our analyses) have passed through most of their reproductive life with quite stable age-specifi c fertility rates then, from a naïve perspective, we could expect the tfr would predict ultimate cohort fertility. however, postponement of childbearing has been steady and ongoing from 1970 until very recently and the associated distortion causes the tfr to under-estimate cohort fertility (bongaarts/feeney 1998), defl ating the overall tfr of switzerland by about 0.2 every year. in addition to the published tfrs, we have also been supplied with data on births by biological birth order. therefore we can calculate the tfr1 and deduce the fertility of mothers (women who have had at least one child, tfr/tfr1), and the synthetic childlessness rate (1-tfr1) (table 4). the tfr1, fi rst birth rate, is especially interesting as it points to the main weakness of the standard tfr. for foreign women the tfr1 is higher than one; the subgroup with the highest rate being for the “foreign born abroad”, a similar statistical quirk as found by parrado (2011) for mexican immigrants to the united states. however, the tfr1 is simply a measure of the intensity of having a fi rst birth, which, as we saw in figure 7, is particularly high in the years immediately after immigration to switzerland. • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner440 table 4 shows the important differences – and also an interesting similarity – between the tfr and cohort fertility measures. first, the differences. the tfr and tfr1 show signifi cantly higher values for foreign women than for swiss nationals. the tfr for subgroup "foreign born abroad" is over 0.5 children higher than for “swiss born ch" women. by contrast, looking at cohort fertility, swiss women aged about 39 have higher fertility than foreign women by an average of 0.2 children across the four data sets. the subgroup with the highest cohort fertility is "swiss born abroad", who are mostly naturalised immigrants (as discussed in section 5.3). the fertility of "foreign born abroad" women is signifi cantly lower: they can be considered mostly to be "pre-naturalised" immigrants. the childlessness section of table 4 shows a wide range of values between the two fgs rounds and statpop: the diffi culties of sampling and registering (and deregistering) childless women were discussed in section 6. the synthetic childless rate (1-tfr1) gives "impossible" negative values for the "foreign born abroad" subgroup. for swiss women, we see the opposite problem: it is excessively high. both are caused by tempo distortions: postponement defl ates the tfr1 whilst the migration tempo effect infl ates it. fig. 10: the standard tfr for swiss and foreign women, 1971-2018 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 year tfr foreign nationals tfr swiss nationals children per woman note: the sharp downward kink in the tfr of foreign women between 2000 and 2001 is because after 2000 births to asylum seekers and other temporary residents were no longer included in the statistics. source: sfso why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 441 s w is s fo re ig n s w is s b o rn s w is s b o rn fo re ig n b o rn fo re ig n b o rn a ll b o rn a ll b o rn c h ab ro ad c h ab ro ad in c h ab ro ad m ea n 20 11 -2 01 8 t fr (s fs o p u b lis h ed ) 1. 42 1. 86 1. 41 1. 54 1. 45 1. 94 1. 42 1. 84 t fr 1 (s ee n o te @ ) 0. 67 1. 02 0. 67 0. 67 0. 75 1. 06 0. 68 0. 96 c oh or t fe rt ili ty a g e ~ 39 fg s 2 01 3 m ea n ag es 3 741 1. 50 1. 35 1. 45 1. 81 1. 53 1. 34 1. 46 1. 46 fg s 2 01 8 m ea n ag es 3 741 1. 59 1. 38 1. 58 1. 63 1. 56 1. 36 1. 58 1. 4 4 s ta t p o p m ea n 20 11 -2 01 7 1. 4 4 1. 32 1. 42 1. 60 1. 28 1. 32 1. 41 1. 39 c o h o rt t ra ck in g 20 18 1. 52 1. 32 c h ild le ss n es s ag e ~ 39 1t fr 1 (h yp o th et ic al c h ild le ss n es s* ) 33 % -2 % 33 % 33 % 25 % -6 % 32 % 4% fg s 2 01 3 m ea n ag es 3 741 27 % 26 % 29 % 12 % 23 % 26 % 29 % 23 % fg s 2 01 8 m ea n ag es 3 741 22 % 26 % 24 % 14 % 29 % 25 % 24 % 22 % s ta t p o p m ea n 20 11 -2 01 7 29 % 29 % 31 % 20 % 31 % 29 % 31 % 26 % fe rt ili ty o f m o th er s at ~ 39 t fr /t fr 1 (f er ti lit y o f m o th er s@ ) 2. 13 1. 83 2. 10 2. 31 1. 94 1. 83 2. 09 1. 90 fg s 2 01 3 m ea n ag es 3 741 2. 03 1. 83 2. 03 2. 05 1. 97 1. 81 2. 03 1. 88 fg s 2 01 8 m ea n ag es 3 741 2. 04 1. 86 2. 08 1. 90 2. 21 1. 83 2. 08 1. 85 s ta t p o p m ea n 20 11 -2 01 7 2. 03 1. 86 2. 05 2. 02 1. 86 1. 86 2. 03 1. 90 ta b . 4 : p er io d a nd c o ho rt m ea su re s o f f er til it y h ig he st v al ue s o n ea ch li ne a re in g re en lo w es t v al ue s o n ea ch li ne a re in y el lo w @ t fr 1: c al cu la te d fr o m d at a su p p lie d b y s fs o o n b ir th s b y b ir th o rd er , a ge o f m o th er , n at io na lit y an d c o un tr y o f b ir th fo r 20 11 -2 01 7. * t he t fr 1 an d , t he re fo re , t he c al cu la tio n o f c hi ld le ss ne ss is s ub je ct to th e d is to rt io n o f t he m ig ra tio nsp ec ifi c te m p o e ff ec t. w ei gh ts h av e b ee n ap p lie d to th e fg s 2 01 3 an d 2 01 8 d at a s o ur ce : s fs o a nd o w n ca lc ul at io ns • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner442 the group with the lowest observed childlessness is the "swiss born abroad" ("post-naturalised") subgroup, yet their tfr1 is low. the likely explanation is that they commonly have had at least one child by the time they naturalise. we see remarkable agreement for four different estimates of the "fertility of mothers"; the synthetic measure (tfr/tfr1) and the three sets of observed values. in each of these cases the number of children of swiss mothers is higher than of foreign mothers. the subgroup of mothers with the lowest fertility is the "foreign born abroad" (the "pre-naturalised"). one fi nal observation: the differentials in cohort fertility by country of birth (fi nal two columns) are smaller than between nationality (fi rst two columns). in particular, average cohort fertility at age 39 is very similar for women born either in switzerland or abroad. however, the fertility of swiss-born mothers averages 0.16 children higher than for immigrant mothers, the reason being that the latter more often stop after having had one child. one of the primary weaknesses in calculating the standard tfr is the denominator used in the asfr calculation, the exposed population. in their country of origin, future migrants are in the denominator during the period when they are often childless; hence the tfr of that country is "defl ated". this is the case for any country with strong emigration of young adults, such as the eastern european countries. it is also the case for swiss nationals in switzerland as they have net out-migration throughout their reproductive life course (fig. 6). by contrast, in the arrival country they are only in the denominator for the most fertile period of their reproductive life (late 20s and early to mid-30s), and so their tfr in the receiving country is "infl ated" and the tfr in that country is boosted. 9 discussion and conclusions the purpose of this paper was to elucidate the processes that lead to the completed cohort fertility of women with swiss nationality being higher than that of foreign nationals, whilst the tfr of foreign women is substantially higher than that of swiss women. using a novel methodology that tracks the arrivals and departures of swiss and foreign women and their children to the "system", we enumerate the relative impact of births, immigration, emigration and naturalisation. this cohort tracking method also bypasses any distortion from postponement, a well-known problem of the standard tfr. our fi ndings support studies from other countries showing a high intensity of fi rst births in the years after migration, following low pre-migration fertility (ng/ nault 1997; toulemon/mazuy 2004; andersson 2004; dubuc 2012; robards/ berrington 2016; tønnessen 2020). our methodology does not take into account the duration of stay in switzerland, unlike toulemon and mazuy (2004). however, like toulemon and mazuy and dubuc (2009, 2012) pre-migration fertility is taken into account. the fertility of emigrants is also included in our calculations. we also enumerate the impact of naturalisation on the fertility of foreigners and swiss nationals, as hypothesized by sobotka and lutz (2010). as nationality (swiss/foreign) why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 443 is the dichotomy employed by the swiss statistical offi ce, it is important to take the signifi cant impact of naturalisation into account. the impact of foreigner fertility continues to be larger for switzerland than other european countries (sobotka 2008). from 2011-2018, it has boosted the overall tfr of the country by an average of 0.11 children per woman annually. the fertility curve by age of foreigners is bi-modal, as described in burkimsher (2017) and it is the early bulge of women in their 20s that boosts the country’s tfr, the cause being the high intensity of births commonly observed in the years following immigration. in several swiss cantons the number of babies born to foreigners exceeds the number born to swiss women. however, we wish to underline that this is not because foreigners have larger families than native swiss. in fact, the opposite is true, as demonstrated in this paper. berrington and stone (2017) deplored the problem of the media inciting prejudice by interpreting the higher tfr of immigrants (as published by national statistical offi ces) as indicating that they have large families. we propose that a better descriptor to publish would be the "fertility of mothers" – tfr/tfr1 – which we have shown corresponds much more closely to the observed cohort fertility of mothers. this measure has the advantage of mitigating the impact of any misestimates of the population and would be easier to implement than trying to correct the tfr for the migration-specifi c tempo effect (although it would depend on a country recording all births by biological birth order). it is particularly challenging to keep track of the highly mobile childless population, even in a country like switzerland with a comprehensive household registration system. the statistics published by the sfso generally dichotomise between swiss and foreign nationals. however, the country of birth of the mother would be a more precise basis for comparison, as it does not change through a person’s life (austria and sweden, for example, do this). we have found that the ultimate (cohort) fertility of women, whether born within or outside switzerland, is currently quite similar. childlessness is higher amongst swiss women, but swiss mothers have, on average, more children than foreign mothers. the standard tfr fails to describe this reality and can feed into a media narrative of prejudice against foreigners. acknowledgements the families and generations surveys (fgs) of 2013 and 2018 were carried out by the swiss federal statistical offi ce (sfso). funding for access to the fgs 2013 data and the 2000 census from the sfso was provided by the institut de sciences sociales des religions, university of lausanne. this publication benefi ted from the support of the swiss national centre of competence in research lives – overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives (nccr lives). access to the fgs 2018 data was made possible through lives. the lives project is fi nanced by the swiss national science foundation (grant number: 51nf40160590). the authors are grateful to the swiss national science foundation for its fi nancial assistance. the fi rst version of this paper was published online as a lives working paper 2018/73 entitled “who has more children in switzerland: swiss or foreign women? why the tfr is a misleading measure”. new data from statpop for the years 2015• marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner444 2017 has since become available, as have the results from the fgs 2018, and these have been incorporated into this paper. references abbasi-shavazi, mohammad jalal; mcdonald, peter 2002: a comparison of fertility patterns of european immigrants in australia with those in the countries of origin. in: genus 58,1: 53-76. andersson, gunnar 2004: 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steiner, ilka; wanner, philippe (eds.) 2019: migrants and expats: the swiss migration and mobility nexus. imiscoe research series. cham: springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05671-1 swissinfo 2007: german citizenship law to boost swiss expats [https://www.swissinfo. ch/eng/german-citizenship-law-to-boost-swiss-expats/6084376, 29.09.2020]. swissinfo 2018: becoming a citizen [https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/becoming-acitizen/29288376, 29.09.2020]. tønnessen, marianne 2020: declined total fertility rate among immigrants and the role of newly arrived women in norway. in: european journal of population 36: 547573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09541-0 toulemon, laurent; mazuy, magali 2004: comment prendre en compte l'âge à l'arrivée et la durée du séjour en france dans la mesure de la fécondité des immigrants. working paper 120. ined. wanner, philippe 2002: the demographic characteristics of immigrant populations in switzerland. in: haug, werner; compton, paul; courbage, youssef (eds.): the demographic characteristics of immigrant populations (population studies no. 38). council of europe: 419-496. wanner, philippe; fei, peng 2005: facteurs infl uençant le comportement reproductifs des suissesses et des suisses. offi ce fédéral de la statistique: neuchâtel. wanner, philippe et al. 2012: la démographie des étrangers en suisse. zürich/geneva: seismo. date of submission: 09.05.2019 date of acceptance: 13.11.2020 marion burkimsher, phd (). university of lausanne. lausanne, switzerland. e-mail: drmarionb@gmail.com, url: http://drmarionb.free.fr/resume clémentine rossier. associate professor. prof. philippe wanner. university of geneva. geneva, switzerland. e-mail: clementine.rossier@unige.ch, philippe.wanner@unige.ch url: https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/ideso/membres/rossier/ https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/ideso/membres/wanner/ why the standard tfr gives a misleading impression of the fertility of foreign women ... • 447 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: c o 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ili ty v al ue s fo r 20 18 : d ar ke r ce lls a re th e d at a p lo tt ed in f ig ur e 9. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns , a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5 m et ho d o lo gy • marion burkimsher, clémentine rossier, philippe wanner448 ta b . a 2: c o ho rt fe rt ili ty t ab le , f o re ig n na tio na ls 19 81 19 82 19 83 19 84 19 85 19 86 19 87 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 15 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 16 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 17 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 18 0. 03 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 04 0. 04 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 02 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 02 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 0. 01 19 0. 06 0. 05 0. 05 0. 06 0. 06 0. 07 0. 08 0. 09 0. 08 0. 07 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 05 0. 05 0. 05 0. 05 0. 05 0. 05 0. 04 0. 04 0. 04 0. 04 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 0. 03 20 0. 11 0. 10 0. 10 0. 11 0. 13 0. 14 0. 15 0. 15 0. 14 0. 13 0. 12 0. 12 0. 13 0. 13 0. 12 0. 12 0. 11 0. 12 0. 11 0. 11 0. 10 0. 09 0. 09 0. 08 0. 08 0. 07 0. 07 0. 07 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 06 0. 05 21 0. 17 0. 15 0. 17 0. 19 0. 21 0. 23 0. 24 0. 23 0. 22 0. 22 0. 21 0. 20 0. 22 0. 21 0. 20 0. 19 0. 18 0. 19 0. 18 0. 17 0. 16 0. 15 0. 14 0. 13 0. 13 0. 12 0. 11 0. 11 0. 10 0. 10 0. 10 0. 10 22 0. 25 0. 23 0. 26 0. 28 0. 31 0. 32 0. 33 0. 32 0. 32 0. 32 0. 32 0. 32 0. 32 0. 31 0. 28 0. 28 0. 26 0. 27 0. 25 0. 24 0. 23 0. 21 0. 20 0. 19 0. 19 0. 19 0. 16 0. 16 0. 16 0. 15 0. 16 23 0. 34 0. 32 0. 35 0. 38 0. 40 0. 41 0. 42 0. 43 0. 43 0. 44 0. 44 0. 42 0. 41 0. 38 0. 37 0. 36 0. 35 0. 35 0. 32 0. 31 0. 30 0. 28 0. 27 0. 25 0. 25 0. 25 0. 22 0. 22 0. 22 0. 21 24 0. 44 0. 43 0. 45 0. 47 0. 49 0. 50 0. 53 0. 54 0. 55 0. 55 0. 55 0. 50 0. 48 0. 46 0. 45 0. 43 0. 42 0. 42 0. 38 0. 36 0. 36 0. 34 0. 33 0. 31 0. 31 0. 30 0. 28 0. 28 0. 28 25 0. 53 0. 53 0. 54 0. 56 0. 58 0. 61 0. 64 0. 64 0. 66 0. 65 0. 62 0. 57 0. 55 0. 54 0. 52 0. 50 0. 49 0. 47 0. 43 0. 42 0. 43 0. 40 0. 40 0. 37 0. 37 0. 37 0. 34 0. 34 26 0. 63 0. 60 0. 63 0. 65 0. 68 0. 71 0. 75 0. 75 0. 75 0. 70 0. 68 0. 63 0. 61 0. 60 0. 58 0. 56 0. 53 0. 51 0. 49 0. 48 0. 48 0. 45 0. 45 0. 42 0. 42 0. 43 0. 40 27 0. 71 0. 69 0. 71 0. 74 0. 78 0. 81 0. 85 0. 83 0. 81 0. 75 0. 73 0. 69 0. 67 0. 65 0. 63 0. 59 0. 56 0. 56 0. 54 0. 53 0. 53 0. 51 0. 51 0. 48 0. 47 0. 49 28 0. 79 0. 78 0. 80 0. 85 0. 88 0. 90 0. 94 0. 88 0. 85 0. 80 0. 78 0. 75 0. 73 0. 71 0. 66 0. 63 0. 61 0. 62 0. 59 0. 59 0. 59 0. 56 0. 57 0. 54 0. 54 29 0. 87 0. 88 0. 91 0. 95 0. 98 0. 99 0. 99 0. 92 0. 90 0. 85 0. 84 0. 80 0. 78 0. 75 0. 70 0. 68 0. 67 0. 68 0. 65 0. 66 0. 65 0. 63 0. 64 0. 61 30 0. 97 0. 97 1. 00 1. 04 1. 06 1. 04 1. 03 0. 97 0. 95 0. 91 0. 89 0. 86 0. 83 0. 79 0. 76 0. 75 0. 74 0. 74 0. 73 0. 72 0. 72 0. 70 0. 71 31 1. 07 1. 06 1. 09 1. 12 1. 12 1. 09 1. 08 1. 02 1. 01 0. 98 0. 95 0. 90 0. 88 0. 86 0. 83 0. 82 0. 81 0. 82 0. 80 0. 80 0. 80 0. 79 32 1. 15 1. 16 1. 16 1. 19 1. 16 1. 14 1. 14 1. 08 1. 07 1. 04 1. 00 0. 95 0. 95 0. 92 0. 90 0. 89 0. 89 0. 90 0. 88 0. 88 0. 88 33 1. 23 1. 23 1. 22 1. 23 1. 21 1. 19 1. 20 1. 14 1. 13 1. 09 1. 05 1. 02 1. 01 1. 00 0. 97 0. 97 0. 96 0. 98 0. 96 0. 97 34 1. 29 1. 28 1. 26 1. 27 1. 27 1. 24 1. 25 1. 20 1. 18 1. 14 1. 11 1. 09 1. 07 1. 07 1. 04 1. 04 1. 03 1. 06 1. 05 35 1. 33 1. 31 1. 30 1. 32 1. 31 1. 29 1. 30 1. 25 1. 23 1. 20 1. 17 1. 15 1. 14 1. 13 1. 11 1. 11 1. 11 1. 14 36 1. 36 1. 35 1. 34 1. 36 1. 35 1. 34 1. 35 1. 28 1. 27 1. 25 1. 22 1. 21 1. 19 1. 20 1. 17 1. 18 1. 18 37 1. 39 1. 38 1. 37 1. 39 1. 39 1. 36 1. 37 1. 32 1. 32 1. 29 1. 27 1. 25 1. 24 1. 25 1. 23 1. 24 38 1. 41 1. 41 1. 39 1. 42 1. 42 1. 38 1. 41 1. 35 1. 35 1. 32 1. 31 1. 29 1. 28 1. 29 1. 27 39 1. 42 1. 42 1. 41 1. 43 1. 42 1. 40 1. 42 1. 38 1. 37 1. 35 1. 34 1. 32 1. 31 1. 32 40 1. 43 1. 43 1. 41 1. 43 1. 43 1. 42 1. 44 1. 39 1. 39 1. 37 1. 36 1. 34 1. 33 41 1. 44 1. 43 1. 40 1. 44 1. 43 1. 42 1. 45 1. 40 1. 40 1. 38 1. 37 1. 36 42 1. 42 1. 41 1. 40 1. 43 1. 42 1. 42 1. 45 1. 39 1. 40 1. 37 1. 38 43 1. 40 1. 40 1. 39 1. 43 1. 42 1. 41 1. 43 1. 38 1. 39 1. 37 44 1. 39 1. 39 1. 37 1. 41 1. 40 1. 39 1. 42 1. 37 1. 38 45 1. 37 1. 38 1. 35 1. 40 1. 38 1. 38 1. 40 1. 36 46 1. 35 1. 36 1. 34 1. 38 1. 36 1. 36 1. 39 47 1. 33 1. 33 1. 31 1. 36 1. 35 1. 35 48 1. 31 1. 32 1. 30 1. 34 1. 34 49 1. 29 1. 30 1. 28 1. 33 n o te : c el ls m ar ke d in tu rq uo is e in d ic at e th e 19 79 c o ho rt : d ar ke r ce lls a re th e d at a p lo tt ed in f ig ur e 4. c el ls m ar ke d in b lu e ar e th e se t o f c o ho rt fe rt ili ty v al ue s fo r 20 18 : d ar ke r ce lls a re th e d at a p lo tt ed in f ig ur e 9. s o ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns , a s d es cr ib ed in s ec tio n 5 m et ho d o lo gy published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2020 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (rostock) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years: proof of concept tests of the croham hypothesis cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years: proof of concept tests of the croham hypothesis* marc luy abstract: the recently presented croham hypothesis says (1) that longitudinal health domain-specific expansion and compression effects depend primarily on the health domains’ mortality risk and (2) that these effects exist equivalently in the cross-sectional context, affecting differences in healthy life years (hly) between populations and subpopulations with different levels of life expectancy (le). we test this hypothesis by analysing the association between le and unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 for a large number of subpopulations. the analyses are carried out for three health domains which are differently related to mortality: poor selfperceived health and strong activity limitation with comparatively high mortality, and chronic morbidity with comparatively low risk of dying. data on genderand subpopulation-specific prevalence of these health conditions are taken from the actual german health study 2012 (geda). les are estimated with the “longitudinal survival method”, using data of the german life expectancy survey. uly are estimated with the “sullivan method”. differences in uly between each subpopulation and the total population and between women and men for each subpopulation are decomposed into the effects caused by differences in health (“health effect”) and mortality (“mortality effect”) with the “nusselder/looman method”. the results confirm the croham hypothesis: we find a positive relationship between le and uly only for chronic morbidity, whereas this relationship is negative for poor selfperceived health and strong activity limitation. however, when the mortality effect is controlled for, we find a negative relationship between le and uly for all three health domains. the practical relevance of these findings is discussed using the example of the so-called “gender paradox” in health and mortality. we conclude that the croham hypothesis may describe an important determinant of life years spent with and without health impairment, and it may help to better understand and interpret trends and differentials in hly or uly based on cross-sectional data. comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 273-296 (date of release: 02.09.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-11 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-11en7 * this article belongs to a special issue on “levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity”. ** this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/659/417 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-11 • marc luy274 keywords: croham hypothesis · healthy life years · health impairment · life expectancy · gender paradox · fundamental cause hypothesis 1 introduction this paper is about the verification of the recently presented croham hypothesis on the complex association between life expectancy (le) and different indicators for healthy life years (hly) in the cross-sectional context, with croham being the abbreviation for “cross-sectional association between health and mortality” (luy 2021). empirical studies show that (sub)populations with higher le do spend more life years in good health than (sub)populations with lower le only for some indicators of health. for other health indicators, the association between le and hly does reverse and the (sub)populations with lower le spend more life years in good health (robine/michel 2004; zeng et al. 2017). these contrasting results are still not fully understood and lead to contradictory interpretations and conclusions regarding direction and causes of differences in hly. luy’s hypothesis not only provides an explanation for these varying results, it also states that hly estimations based on different health indicators ‒ which reflect different facets of health ‒ must lead to different directions in the association between le and hly. the croham hypothesis connects the cross-sectional association between health and mortality with the longitudinal association between le and hly in the context of the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate. this debate revolves around three theoretical scenarios: (1) longer lives are associated with more years spent in poor health, i.e., the “expansion of morbidity hypothesis” (gruenberg 1977), (2) longer lives are associated with a delay in the onset of health problems, i.e., the “compression of morbidity hypothesis” (fries 1980), and (3) there is a balanced relationship between health and longevity, i.e., the “dynamic equilibrium hypothesis” (manton 1982). a summary and extensive literature review of these three scenarios can be found in payne (2022). he describes the main idea behind the expansion of morbidity hypothesis as a shift in frailty over successive cohorts, as reductions in mortality ‒ as a consequence of medical advances ‒ let individuals with poor health more likely to survive longer than they would have in the past. in the opposing compression of morbidity framework, the reductions in mortality and improved health behaviours are thought to shift the age of onset of morbidity and disability more quickly than rises in le, thus compressing life years spent with health impairment towards the end of the life span. the dynamic equilibrium model lies between the pessimistic expansion and optimistic compression scenarios. it hypothesises that advances in medical technology and early diagnosis lead to earlier discovery and treatment of diseases, resulting in declining rates of disability and mortality but an increasing proportion of the population with chronic morbidity (payne 2022: 949-950). because most hly indicators are based on broad health indicators that combine different facets of health, the dynamic equilibrium model is cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 275 usually interpreted as resulting in a constant proportion of life years spent in poor health. empirical evidence provided support for each of these approaches, depending on the specific health domain considered (christensen et al. 2009). in particular, existing research suggests a postponement or stagnation of functional limitations and disabilities (bardenheier et al. 2016; crimmins 2015; freedman et al. 2016; payne 2022; shen/payne 2023), but an increase in morbidity defined by the presence of several biomarkers or physician-assessed health conditions and chronic diseases (beltránsánchez et al. 2016; crimmins 2015; crimmins/beltrán-sánchez 2011; crimmins et al. 2019; payne 2022; shen/payne 2023). these trends were confirmed in recent investigations of trends in hly in the population of germany from 2005 to 2019 (luy 2022, 2024b). using the three health indictors of the “minimum european health module” (mehm) included in the annual “european union statistics on income and living conditions” (eu-silc), the study found that trends in overall health (selfperceived health) follow the predictions of the compression scenario, whereas trends in chronic morbidity show a decline in line with the expansion scenario, and trends in disability (activity limitation) most closely match the prediction of the dynamic equilibrium model. naturally, the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate with its hypotheses and empirical investigations refers to longitudinal developments and time trends in health and longevity. luy (2021) assumed that the main cause for the contrasting observations of expansion effects on the one hand and compression effects on the other is the severity of the respective health domains, which is reflected in their risk of dying. he analysed the longitudinal mortality of individuals with health impairment according to the three mehm health domains and found that people with poor self-perceived health and activity limitations have higher mortality than people with chronic health problems (details about the definition and measurement of these health domains can be found in the data and methods section). he connected this observation with the trends in hly and concluded that compression effects can be found among those health domains which are more severely and thus more strongly linked to mortality, whereas expansion effects can be found among those health domains which are less severely and thus only weakly associated with mortality. according to luy (2021: 63), “the link between compression and expansion effects on the one hand side and the health-mortality-relationship on the other appears to be plausible” because “[t]he increase in le is a consequence of reduced mortality which results from ‒ besides reductions in incidence and fatality of specific diseases ‒ a postponement in the onset of these diseases, i.e., a reduction in prevalence. moreover, the likelihood of suffering longstanding illnesses increases with age, and therefore their prevalence increases with increasing le”. the central pillar of the croham hypothesis is the assumption that the associations between le and hly observed in the longitudinal context hold equivalently in a crosssectional context regarding differences between populations and subpopulations with different levels of mortality: higher le is associated with fewer life years spent with health impairments that are more closely related to mortality (such as functional • marc luy276 limitations and disabilities), but with more life years spent with health problems that are less closely related to mortality (such as chronic diseases). luy (2021) tested his hypothesis by comparing the hly of male and female catholic order members with their counterparts of the general population for the three health domains covered by the mehm: self-perceived health and activity limitations which are closer related to mortality, and chronic morbidity with a less strong link to mortality. an important element of his verification approach is the fact that order members’ advantage in le is larger among men than among women (luy 2002, 2003). in line with the croham hypothesis, he found that order members had the largest advantages when hly were estimated on the basis of life years spent without activity limitations and in good self-perceived health, and they were smallest or even negative for life years spent without chronic illness. moreover, all results were stronger among men, indicating the effect of the higher le surplus of monks against the general population. if the croham hypothesis were true, it would provide an important aspect for better understanding differentials in hly which are usually investigated on the basis of cross-sectional data. therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide two proof of concept tests that are closer to the conventional investigations of differentials in hly than luy’s (2021) quasi-experiment with religious people. first, we will analyse the relationship between le and hly for different health domains among a large number of subpopulations with higher and lower le levels compared to the total population, separately for men and women. second, we will examine the le-hly relationship for gender differences within these subpopulations. this additional examination increases the number of verification scenarios and extends the original test of the croham hypothesis by luy (2021) to include the gender differences in the general population. in contrast to luy (2021), we base our analyses on unhealthy life years (uly) because both phenomena considered here ‒ the expansion respective compression effects (jagger 2000) and the so-called “gender paradox” in health and longevity (di lego et al. 2020) ‒ refer primarily to the lifetime spent with health impairments. the croham hypothesis leads to two specific expectations for our proof of concept tests: 1. we find a positive relationship between le and uly across subpopulations and their gender differences only among those health domains with a weak link to mortality (hypothesis 1), and 2. this relationship reverses when the “mortality effect” inherent in the uly ‒ i.e., the fact that a higher total number of life years increases also the number of life years spent with health impairments ‒ is controlled for (hypothesis 2). before presenting the results, we will summarise the theoretical basis of the hypothesis in the next section, since it is still young and not yet widely known. this is followed by a description of the data and methods used in our study. the paper cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 277 ends with a discussion of the test results and the conclusions on the significance of the croham hypothesis. 2 theoretical basis of the croham hypothesis the transition of the above mentioned longitudinal links between severity of health domains and respective expansion and compression effects to the cross-sectional context builds, as second pillar of the croham hypothesis, on link and phelan’s (1995) “theory of fundamental social causes of disease” and is rooted in the observation that most health differentials within and between populations are caused primarily by social factors (bucciardini et al. 2019; marmot 2005), including gender differences in health and longevity (vallin 1995). notably, empirical evidence shows that socioeconomic status (ses) is not only one of the strongest determinants of morbidity and mortality (mirowsky/ross 2003). its association with health and longevity has also persisted over centuries, despite essential changes in the diseases and risk factors which have been assumed to be its central drivers (antonovsky 1967). the fundamental cause theory provides an explanation for this phenomenon. it states, in a nutshell, that the enduring association between ses and health results because ses embodies an array of flexibly usable resources ‒ such as money, knowledge, prestige, power, and beneficial social connections ‒ that protect health no matter what mechanisms are relevant at any given time (link/phelan 1995). these flexible resources operate at both individual and contextual levels. at the individual level, they can be conceptualised as “cause of causes” or “risk of risks” that shape individual health behaviours by influencing whether people know about, have access to, can afford and are motivated to engage in health-enhancing lifestyles to avoid risks and adopt protective strategies. examples include knowing about and asking for beneficial health procedures, quitting smoking, getting flu shots, wearing seat belts and driving a car with airbags, eating fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly and taking restful vacations. at the contextual level, flexible resources provide “add on” benefits through shaping access to advantaged neighbourhoods, high-status occupations and social networks that vary significantly in associated profiles of risk and protective factors (more details can be found in phelan et al. 2004, 2010). consequently, the theory states, whenever gains are made in the ability to control disease, people who are advantaged with respect to these resources will, on average, benefit more from new knowledge and health-enhancing capabilities (phelan/link 2005). as outlined by luy (2021), link and phelan’s fundamental cause approach includes also a “cross-sectional time effect” which constitutes the basis of the croham hypothesis: individuals who dispose more of the flexible resources are ‒ compared to those with fewer resources ‒ in a certain way ahead in time with regard to access and benefit from increasing knowledge and health-enhancing capabilities. from this new interpretation of the theory of fundamental causes follows that differences in period le represent a cross-sectional image of longitudinal developments. thus, varying le levels of different populations prevailing at the same time can be assumed • marc luy278 to root ‒ at least to some extent ‒ in the same mechanisms as varying levels of le of the same population prevailing at different times. this leads to luy’s central hypothesis: associations between levels of health and mortality which are prevalent in the longitudinal perspective exist equivalently in the cross-sectional context. in the longitudinal respective time trend perspective, the association between health and mortality explains the varying expansion and compression effects according to different health indicators. in the cross-sectional perspective, the association between health and mortality affects the comparison of populations with different levels of le, and consequently affect cross-sectional differences in the number of hly between them. 3 data and methods our test of the croham hypothesis requires a set of subpopulations with data that allow the estimation of le and uly. these are not available from one data source, so various survey and mortality data had to be used and linked for the analyses. the analytic strategy was to analyse the association between le and uly in as many subpopulations as possible. we estimate le and uly at age 50 for the year 2012 for 30 subgroups of the german population. starting at age 50 was chosen because the prevalence of health impairments is too low for the translation into life years spent with poor health below age 50. this holds in particular for our definition of poor health in the indicator for activity limitation (see below). the choice of the calendar year 2012 results from the selected survey for the health data. the decisive selection criterion was the high number of subpopulations for which an estimation of hly could be carried out. the subpopulations of this study are defined by education level (low, medium, high) according to the isced-97 scale (unesco 1996), net equivalent income (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th quartile), net household income (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th quartile), work status (manual workers, employees, public servants, self-employed workers), marital status (single, married, divorced, widowed), living arrangement (living alone, living together with other people), smoking (never smokers, ever smokers), alcohol consumption (never, rarely, frequently), and body weight measured by bmi (underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese). the joint analysis of these subpopulations leads to certain overlaps. some subpopulations will ‒ to some extent ‒ include the same individuals. this overlap of individuals across the subpopulations is however no limitation of the study but rather intended. the analysis of the association between le and uly requires a set of subpopulations that differ in le, but they do not have to be exclusive in terms of the composition of their members. we illustrate our approach to create the subgroups with a hypothetical survey sample in figure 1. the rectangular box at the top of the graph contains the entire sample of 36 fictive individuals. the different colours of the individuals represent the different levels of their le. each le group contains six individuals, which are numbered with the digits 1 to 6. the oval areas at the bottom of the graph contain four subpopulations drawn from the total sample, e.g., low education cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 279 (subpop. 1), employees (subpop. 2), married (subpop. 3) and never smokers (subpop. 4). from the colours of the respective members of the subgroups, it can be concluded that subpopulation 1 has the lowest le (predominantly black individuals) and subpopulation 4 the highest (predominantly green individuals). the le of subpopulations 2 and 3 most likely lies in between. in this way, we obtain subpopulations with different, partly overlapping compositions, and consequently different le. the additional estimation of the subpopulations’ uly enables us to analyse the statistical association between the subpopulations le and uly. uly for the subpopulations are estimated for the above mentioned three health domains covered by the mehm: self-perceived health, limitations in activities of daily living, and chronic morbidity. data on genderand subgroup-specific prevalence of these health conditions for age groups 50-54, 50-59, …, 80+ are taken from the actual german health study 2012 (geda), including 10,744 individuals aged 50 years and older (robert koch-institut 2014). self-perceived health reflects the self-assessment of a person’s overall health based on the question “how is your health in general?” with the five answer categories “very good”, “good”, “fair”, “poor”, and “very poor”. activity limitations are measured with the question “to what extent have you been permanently limited because of illness in your usual daily activities?” with the additional clarification “this means since at least half a year” and the three response options “strongly limited”, “limited but not strong”, and “not limited”. chronic morbidity is defined as the presence of longstanding health problems based on the question “do you have one or more longstanding chronic illnesses?” with the addition “chronic illnesses are longstanding illnesses that require permanent treatment and control, e.g., diabetes or heart diseases” and the two possible responses “yes” and “no” (all questions translated by the author from the german geda questionnaire). we define the “unhealthy” state as basis for fig. 1: graphic illustration of the study’s strategy to define the subpopulations from the total survey sample with different levels of life expectancy 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 4 6 5 4 1 2 3 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 total sample 5 1 3 3 1 4 4 2 4 6 5 2 subpop. 1 4 5 4 3 2 1 1 5 6 1 36 subpop. 4 5 6 1 1 3 14 3 5 subpop. 2 1 41 1 4 3 2 5 6 4 subpop. 3 3 note: the colours of the individuals represent the levels of life expectancy. assumed order of le levels from low to high: black, grey, yellow, brown, blue, green. source: own illustration • marc luy280 the estimation of uly by poor or very poor self-perceived health, strong limitations in activities of daily living, and the presence of longstanding health problems. le at age 50 for each subpopulation is estimated with the “longitudinal survival method” (lsm). the lsm is a technique to construct cross-sectional life tables on the basis of cohort-specific survival experiences from longitudinal survey data. the lsm translates these longitudinal survival experiences into a set of cross-sectional ageand gender-specific death rates. these death rates are then applied to a reference life table for a particular calendar year, resulting in period le estimates for this calendar year (a detailed description with a worked example can be found in luy et al. 2015). the ageand gender-specific death rates for the 30 subpopulations are derived from data of the western sample of the german life expectancy survey (les). the les is a panel that consists of two waves of interviews. the first wave was carried out between 1984 and 1986 and includes 8,474 individuals. a follow-up survey was carried out in 1998 together with the collection of information on non-respondents’ survival status including deceased. tests of the quality of the les mortality data revealed that the reflected survival of the les sample between 1984 and 1998 is representative for the mortality of the western german population (luy/di giulio 2005; luy et al. 2015; salzmann/bohk 2008). we used the total german population’s survival function for 2012 from the human mortality database (2016) as reference life table to obtain le estimates for the same year as for the available health data from the geda survey. the estimation of subpopulations’ le on the basis of les data assumes that the mortality patterns prevalent during the period 1984/86-1998 ‒ or more precisely the relative mortality differences between the subpopulations ‒ are also valid in the calendar year 2012. this assumption is suboptimal. however, it is the only way to estimate le for the considered subpopulations for the year 2012, because the les is the only dataset that allows such mortality estimations for the german population. uly at age 50 for each subpopulation are estimated with the “sullivan method” (sullivan 1971), combining the le estimates on the basis of the les with the age and gender-specific health prevalence values derived from the geda survey. finally, the differences in uly between each subpopulation and the total population and between women and men for each subpopulation are decomposed into the effects caused by differences in health (“health effect”) and mortality (“mortality effect”) with the method proposed by nusselder and looman (2004). this method is an extension of the decomposition method for le developed by arriaga (1984) for application to hly indicators estimated with the sullivan method. it quantifies the extent to which differences in the prevalence of good respective poor health and total mortality in each age group contribute to differences in hly respective uly between (sub)populations or calendar periods. 4 results the test of the croham hypothesis requires a set of subpopulations with different levels of le to analyse the statistical association with the subpopulations’ levels of cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 281 uly. tables 1 and 2 summarise the estimates for le at age 50 and uly at age 50 according to the three mehm health domains for men and women, respectively. le at age 50 for the total male population is 29.5 years, of which 3.2 years (10.8 percent) are spent with poor or very poor self-perceived health (sph), 5.5 years (18.5 percent) are spent with strong activity limitation (limit), and 15.5 years (52.7 percent) are spent with chronic morbidity (chron). across the subpopulations of men, the values for le(50) range between 23.2 years for widowed individuals and 34.0 years for never smokers. the values for uly vary for self-perceived health between 1.5 years (4.9 percent) among men of the highest net household income quartile and 5.8 years (20.5 percent) among obese men, for activity limitation between 3.5 years (11.2 percent) among men of the highest net household income quartile and 8.2 years (31.8 percent) among men who never drink alcohol, and for chronic morbidity between 12.6 years (54.2 percent) among widowed men and 18.8 years (66.7 percent) among the obese. note that the highest and lowest numbers of uly do not necessarily reflect the highest and lowest proportions of life years spent with health impairments. for instance, the lowest proportion of life years spent with chronic health problems can be found among public servants for whom the uly value of 13.9 years corresponds to 44.7 percent of their le at age 50 of 31.1 years. for the total female population, the estimated le at age 50 is 34.2 years. of those, 4.0 years (11.7 percent) are spent with poor or very poor self-perceived health, 6.6 years (19.1 percent) with strong limitation, and 18.9 years (55.1 percent) are spent with chronic illness. across the female subpopulations, the total number of life years, le(50), varies between 29.4 years for women with underweight to 39.5 years for self-employed workers. the life years spent with poor or very poor self-perceived health range between 1.4 years (3.9 percent of le at age 50) for women of the highest net equivalent income quartile and 7.3 years (24.9 percent) for women with underweight, and those spent with strong activity limitations range between 3.9 years (11.1 percent) for frequent alcohol consumers and 10.1 years (34.5 percent) for women with underweight. noteworthy, underweight women are the subpopulation that shows the lowest number of life years spent with chronic health problems with 16.0 years (54.5 percent), whereas the highest number of uly for chronic morbidity can be found among obese women with 22.9 years (69.6 percent). the lowest proportion of life years spent with chronic health problems is prevalent among women of the highest net equivalent income quartile whose uly value is 16.4 years, corresponding to 45.1 percent of their total le of 36.2 years. figure 2 shows the differences between the subpopulations and the total population in le (x-axes) and uly (y-axes) for life years spent in poor or very poor self-perceived health, with strong activity limitation, and with chronic morbidity. men and women are displayed in blue (left side) and red (right side), respectively. each dot of the graphs represents one subpopulation. among men, the dots placed furthest to the left on the x-axis represent the subgroup of widowed individuals whose le lies 6.3 years below the le of the total sample. this value remains the same in all three figures. what changes are the differences in uly to the total sample. for sph and limit, the widowed spend more life years in poor health, with the differences being +1.4 and +0.4 years, respectively. however, for chron the difference is negative • marc luy282 tab. 1: estimations of life expectancy (le) and unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 for three health indicators, various subpopulations, germany 2012, men uly(50) group indicator / subpopulation le(50) sph limit chron total population 29.5 3.2 5.5 15.5 education according to isced-97 low (isced 1-2) 26.8 4.1 7.8 16.4 medium (isced 3-4) 29.2 3.5 5.8 15.4 high (isced 5-6) 32.9 2.5 4.4 16.5 net equivalent income 1st quartile 28.2 4.5 7.0 16.2 2nd quartile 29.8 3.3 6.9 16.3 3rd quartile 29.1 2.4 3.8 14.4 4th quartile 30.9 1.9 3.8 14.8 household net income 1st quartile 27.1 5.1 7.5 16.0 2nd quartile 29.5 3.8 5.9 16.4 3rd quartile 30.7 3.0 5.7 15.9 4th quartile 31.7 1.5 3.5 15.2 work status manual workers 27.9 3.5 6.2 15.7 employees 30.9 3.3 5.6 16.4 public servants 31.1 2.6 4.9 13.9 self-employed workers 30.1 2.9 4.6 16.1 marital status married 29.8 3.2 5.6 15.7 unmarried 29.7 3.0 4.1 13.6 divorced 25.0 3.6 4.6 13.3 widowed 23.2 4.6 5.9 12.6 living arrangement single-person household 24.9 3.9 5.4 13.4 multi-person household 29.8 3.1 5.6 15.8 smoking never 34.0 2.4 4.8 16.5 ever 28.6 3.7 6.0 15.8 alcohol consumption never 25.8 5.5 8.2 16.0 rarely 30.3 3.2 5.8 16.7 frequently 29.5 2.3 4.3 14.3 body mass index normal weight 29.6 2.4 4.2 13.3 overweight 29.9 2.5 5.4 15.6 obese 28.1 5.8 7.9 18.8 source: own calculations with data from geda, les and hmd; for abbreviations see text. cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 283 tab. 2: estimates of life expectancy (le) and unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 for three health indicators, various subpopulations, germany 2012, women uly(50) group indicator / subpopulation le(50) sph limit chron total population 34.2 4.0 6.6 18.9 education according to isced-97 low (isced 1-2) 34.1 5.0 8.2 19.3 medium (isced 3-4) 34.2 3.5 6.3 19.1 high (isced 5-6) 37.7 3.2 4.8 18.8 net equivalent income 1st quartile 33.7 4.9 7.5 19.6 2nd quartile 34.6 3.7 6.9 19.3 3rd quartile 33.7 3.2 5.4 18.1 4th quartile 36.2 1.4 4.3 16.4 household net income 1st quartile 33.1 4.8 7.9 19.8 2nd quartile 34.2 3.4 5.2 18.1 3rd quartile 36.8 4.4 7.0 20.1 4th quartile 36.2 2.4 5.0 17.9 work status manual workers 33.0 4.6 8.0 19.2 employees 34.1 4.0 6.1 18.9 public servants 35.6 4.8 7.1 18.4 self-employed workers 39.5 1.7 4.6 18.8 marital status married 34.6 4.0 6.1 18.8 unmarried 33.1 5.7 5.6 19.7 divorced 31.2 4.7 6.8 18.9 widowed 34.3 4.1 8.1 19.1 living arrangement single-person household 34.3 4.7 8.1 20.2 multi-person household 34.4 4.2 5.9 18.6 smoking never 35.2 4.1 6.2 19.6 ever 32.4 3.5 7.0 16.7 alcohol consumption never 32.7 6.9 9.3 21.4 rarely 35.2 2.5 6.1 18.5 frequently 35.4 2.1 3.9 16.0 body mass index underweight 29.4 7.3 10.1 16.0 normal weight 35.3 3.1 5.3 16.2 overweight 33.3 3.2 5.9 19.3 obese 33.0 6.1 9.0 22.9 source: own calculations with data from geda, les and hmd; for abbreviations see text. • marc luy284 (-2.9 years), i.e., widowed men spend less years in poor health compared to the total sample of men. the dots placed furthest to the right of the x-axis refer to male never smokers whose le is 4.5 higher than the le of the total sample. the differences in uly between never smokers and the total sample are -0.8 years for sph, -0.7 years for limit, and +1.0 years for chron. among women, the dots placed furthest to the left of the x-axis refer to underweight individuals with a difference in le to the total female sample of -4.8 years, whereas those placed furthest to the right refer to the subpopulation of self-employed workers with a difference in le to the total sample of women of +5.3 years. the statistical relationship between le and uly across the subpopulations is illustrated by linear regression lines. figures 2(a) and 2(b) show that these relationships are negative for self-perceived health and global activity limitation, i.e., those health indicators that are more closely linked to mortality. the negative slope of the regression lines indicates that there is a tendency that subpopulations with higher le spend less years with health impairments, whereas those being disadvantaged in le spend more life years in poor health condition. this applies in a similar way to both men and women. however, the association between le and uly looks different when chronic morbidity is used, i.e., the health indicator that is only weakly linked to mortality (fig. 2c). among men, the linear relationship shows a positive direction. this indicates that an advantage in le is associated, in tendency, with a disadvantage in health, leading to more life years spent with chronic health problems. among women, this change in the relationship between le and uly is less clear. nonetheless, a difference between the health domains self-perceived health and global activity limitation on the one hand, and chronic morbidity on the other, is apparent as well. these results support luy’s assumption that the cross-sectional association between le and uly reflects the longitudinal association and that the mortality risk associated with the health domains plays an important role: higher le is ‒ in general ‒ associated with a lower number of life years spent in poor health for sph and limit, but ‒ in tendence ‒ with a higher number of impaired life years for chron. this is analysed in more detail in the next step by means of decomposition analysis. figure 3 illustrates the relationship between le and uly in an identical manner, but the uly differences between total population and subpopulations are decomposed into years caused by the health effect (blue dots for men, red dots for women) and those caused by the mortality effect (green dots). the detailed results of the decomposition analyses can be found in the appendix (table a1 for men and table a2 for women). note that health effects and mortality effects add up to the differences in uly shown in figure 2. the decomposition yields the same results for each of the three health dimensions and for both sexes. the mortality effect shows a positive association with le, i.e., the higher le the higher the mortality effect. this effect is strongest for chronic morbidity and weakest for self-perceived health (see green dots with corresponding regression lines in figs. 3a-c), i.e., the extent of the mortality effect corresponds to the number of uly. in other words: the larger the absolute difference in uly between the subpopulations and the total sample, the larger the mortality effect. when the life years spent with health impairments cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 285 fig. 2: differences between various subpopulations and the total population in life expectancy (le) and unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 for three health indicators, by gender, germany 2012 (a) poor or very poor self-perceived health (sph) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 uly le -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 le uly (b) strong activity limitations (limit) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 uly le -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 le uly (c) chronic morbidity (chron) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 le uly -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 le uly source: own calculations with data from geda, les and hmd; for abbreviations see text. • marc luy286 fig. 3: differences between various subpopulations and the total population in life expectancy (le) and unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 decomposed into health effect (he) and mortality effect (me) for three health indicators, by gender, germany 2012 (a) poor or very poor self-perceived health (sph) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 health effect mortality effect he/me le -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me (b) strong activity limitations (limit) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 health effect mortality effect he/me le -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me (c) chronic morbidity (chron) men women -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 -7.0 -3.5 0.0 3.5 7.0 health effect mortality effect he/me le -5.0 -2.5 0.0 2.5 5.0 -6.0 -3.0 0.0 3.0 6.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me source: own calculations with data from geda, les and hmd; for abbreviations see text. cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 287 are reduced to the pure health effect, the relationship with le is negative for all three health domains: the higher the le, the lower the health effect. this means that subpopulations with lower mortality (higher le) are on average in better health compared to subpopulations with higher mortality (lower le). this reveals that comparisons of the total number of life years spent with health impairments (uly) are biased by the mortality effect because a higher total number of life years (le) increases the total number of uly. this happens because gains in le in modern societies occur almost exclusively in the highest age groups, and these are the age groups in which the risk of onset increases for almost all kinds of health problems. this holds true in particular for chronic diseases or ‒ more general and in line with the croham hypothesis ‒ for health impairments with a low risk of dying. remarkably, the magnitude of the health effect, characterised by the slope of the regression lines, appears to be nearly identical in all six graphs of figure 3. most importantly, a comparison of the regression lines for the le-uly relationship in figure 2 and for the le-health effect relationship in figure 3 reveals that the association between le and life years spent with health impairments becomes notably stronger once the mortality effect is controlled for. all these findings confirm the core of the croham hypothesis that the extent of the mortality risk associated with a health domain is the main cause of the domain-specific cross-sectional compression and expansion effects which are reflected in the association between le and uly. figure 4 shows the same relationships for the gender differences in total life years and life years spent with health impairments within the subpopulations. those for the le-uly relationship are displayed in the left-hand graphs of figures 4(a)4(c), and those for the le-health effect respective mortality effect relationship are shown in the right-hand graphs. as to be expected, women outlive men in each of the subpopulations. consequently, all values for the gender difference in le are positive, ranging from a 1.2 years difference among never smokers (dots placed furthest to the left on the x-axis) to a difference of 11.0 years among widowed people (dots placed most on the right). the gender gaps in uly are smaller, ranging by 3.9 years for self-perceived health (-1.2 years among self-employed workers, 2.7 years among the never married), by 3.5 years for activity limitation (-0.7 years in the second lowest net household income quartile, 2.8 years among individuals who live alone), and by 5.8 years for chronic morbidity (1.0 years among ever smokers, 6.8 years among individuals who live alone). figures 4(a) and 4(b) show that most values for the gender differences in life years spent with poor or very poor self-perceived health and those spent with strong activity limitation are positive. this indicates that among most subpopulations, women also have a higher number of uly. for the gender differences in life years spent with chronic morbidity (fig. 4c), all values are positive, suggesting a general and larger disadvantage of women in chronic diseases than in the other two health domains. with respect to the relationships between the extents of gender differences in le and gender differences in uly for the three health domains, the regression lines show essentially the same picture as for the le-uly relationships of the differences between total population and subpopulations shown in figure 2. for self-perceived health, there is a tendency for an increased surplus in female le to be associated with • marc luy288 fig. 4: gender differences (women ‒ men) in life expectancy (le) versus unhealthy life years (uly) at age 50 for three health indicators in absolute years (left pane) and uly differences decomposed into health effect (he) and mortality effect (me) (right pane), various subpopulations, germany 2012 (a) poor or very poor self-perceived health (sph) difference in le/uly decomposition of uly -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 le uly (b) strong activity limitations (limit) difference in le/uly decomposition of uly (c) chronic morbidity (chron) difference in le/uly decomposition of uly -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 uly le -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 uly le -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 12.0 health effect mortality effect le he/me source: own calculations with data from geda, les and hmd; for abbreviations see text. cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 289 a lower disadvantage in uly (fig. 4a). at high levels of the female advantage in le, the disadvantage in uly seems to vanish or even turn into an advantage for women, i.e., a lower number of uly compared to men. the opposite holds true for chronic health problems where the regression line suggests that a higher female advantage in le is associated with a higher number of uly among women compared to men (fig. 4c). regarding activity limitations, the le-uly relationship lies somewhere in between with the regression line being close and almost parallel to the zero line (fig. 4b). the decomposition of gender differences in uly into the mortality effect and the health effect yields the same result as the decomposition analyses for the differences between male and female total and subpopulations shown in figure 3. the higher le of women leads to a higher number of uly compared to men, regardless of the health domain considered. the larger the female surplus in le, the larger the female surplus in uly (see green lines for the mortality effect in fig. 4a-4c). once the mortality effect is controlled for, the gender differences in the remaining health effects show an opposite association with gender differences in le, i.e., the female disadvantage in uly decreases with the extent of the female advantage in le and turns into a female advantage in uly at some level of le surplus. this holds true even for gender differences in life years spent with chronic morbidity (fig. 4c), where the absolute numbers of le and uly suggested a general female disadvantage in uly which increases with the extent of the female advantage in le. thus, also in the analyses of gender differences, the regression lines for the health effects of the three health domains show a similar slope. there are only variations with respect to the intersection of the linear regression lines with the zero line. this means that also the results for the gender differences in le and uly across the 30 subpopulations provide support for the croham hypothesis. 5 discussion and conclusions the aim of this paper is to test the croham hypothesis which states that the health domain-specific expansion and compression effects found in longitudinal analyses and time trends hold equivalently in the cross-sectional context with regard to differences between populations and subpopulations (luy 2021). according to this hypothesis, higher le is associated with fewer life years spent with health impairments that are more closely related to mortality (such as self-perceived health and activity limitation), but with more life years spent with health problems that are less closely related to mortality (such as chronic diseases). we tested the croham hypothesis by analysing the association between le and uly across 30 subgroups of the total population of germany. in line with the formulated expectations, we find a positive relationship between le and uly only for chronic morbidity, whereas this relationship is negative for self-perceived health and global activity limitation (h1 confirmed). however, when the mortality effect is controlled for, we find a negative relationship between le and uly (reduced to the pure health effect) for all three analysed health domains (h2 confirmed). this holds true for both test settings, the • marc luy290 variations in le and uly between the male and female subpopulations and for the variations in gender differences in le and uly among the subpopulations. thus, the presented results confirm the croham hypothesis: the longitudinal health domainspecific expansion and compression effects exist equivalently in a cross-sectional context, affecting differences in uly between subpopulations with higher and lower levels of le. we assessed the robustness of these results in a series of sensitivity analyses: we used the “cross-sectional average length of life” (cal) as introduced by brouard (1986) and guillot (2003) instead of conventional le as measure for longevity, we used smoothed instead of unsmoothed values for the age-specific prevalence of the three health indicators, and we smoothed the age-specific prevalence values by applying different smoothing techniques (splines and logit models with prevalence values of the geda sample as standard). none of these analyses led to different results and interpretations (data not shown but available on request). an issue worth mentioning is that the 30 subpopulations of this study are not independent of each other but overlap to varying degrees, i.e., some individuals are members of the same subpopulations. for instance, one person might belong to the subgroups of low education, second net equivalent income quartile, third net household income quartile, manual workers, married, multi-person household, ever smoker, frequent alcohol consumption and overweight. another one might be a member of the subpopulations high education, third net equivalent income quartile, third net household income quartile, public servants, married, multi-person household, ever smoker, rare alcohol consumption and overweight. thus, these two fictive individuals share memberships in the subpopulations of the group indicators net household income, marital status, living arrangement, smoking and body mass index, but not of the other group indicators education, net equivalent income, work status and alcohol consumption. as illustrated in figure 1, one could think of the sampling of our 30 subpopulations as drawing with replacement from the total population. the procedure results in 30 subpopulations which are differently composed and have different levels of le and uly. this is the decisive characteristic of the subpopulations for our experiment designed to test the croham hypothesis and therefore, their partly overlapping must not be seen as a limitation. another limitation of this study could be seen in the reduction to subpopulations from one country. the advantage of this restriction is, however, that typical problems in international comparative analyses or studies that combine data on self-assessments of health from different countries are eliminated, such as social and cultural differences between countries, different languages, different health systems, different surveying techniques, variations in the survey questions etc. (see e.g. luy et al. 2023). in addition, it is difficult to find data that allow the estimation of le and uly for such a high number of subpopulations as done in this study. nonetheless, additional tests of the croham hypothesis with data from other countries would be valuable and should be a target of future research. this would be important because the croham hypothesis is independent of a specific country context. this means that the postulated cross-sectional association between health and mortality which is reflected in the association between le and uly is supposed to be independent cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 291 of the characteristics of a specific society and the levels of le and uly. such factors might affect the extent of the le-uly relationship, but ‒ according to the croham hypothesis ‒ not its general existence and directions. nonetheless, it is important to emphasise that the described associations between le and uly might not apply to two specific subpopulations. for instance, male manual workers are disadvantaged against male public servants in both le and life years spent with chronic morbidity, i.e., they have a lower le (27.9 vs. 31.1 years) but a higher number of uly (15.7 vs. 13.9 years). in such cases, it is important to identify the factors that lead to such a strong health disadvantage for manual workers compared to civil servants that more than offset the overall tendency in the opposite direction. there are also group indicators which show the identical gradients in le and life years spent with chronic morbidity across their subgroups, e.g., marital status (see table 1). thus, individual comparisons that deviate from the general trend do not affect our main conclusion: the le-uly relationships found across the 30 subpopulations indicate that the croham effect described by luy (2021) actually exists and influences differences in uly. the found confirmation of the croham hypothesis is relevant because it might provide the key to a better understanding of still unexplained phenomena, such as the so-called “gender paradox” in health and longevity (di lego et al. 2019). the results presented in this paper suggest two factors that might help to disentangle these seemingly paradox gender differences described by lorber and moore (2002: 13) with the memorable sentence “women get sicker, but men die quicker”. first, there seems to be no general “gender paradox” that holds true for all kinds of health problems. with regard to self-perceived health and activity limitation, the gender differences in uly are close to zero with only a weak tendency towards a minor disadvantage for women. among the three mehm health domains, a higher number of life years spent with health impairments among women can be found only with regard to the chronic illnesses. moreover, our analysis of gender differences in le and uly across 30 subpopulations reveals that the extent of the disadvantage of women in life years spent with chronic morbidity corresponds, in tendency, to the level of their advantage in le. however, bringing us to the second factor, this effect reverses when the mortality effect inherent in women’s higher le is controlled for. the decomposition analyses reveal that the health effects, i.e., the gender differences in the absolute number of uly net of the effect caused by gender differences in mortality, are similar for all three health domains. in other words, the differences between the three health domains in the absolute number of uly and the different directions of their relationship to le are caused primarily by the gender differences in le. this finding suggests that the “longevity hypothesis” introduced by luy and minagawa (2014), saying that “women [do] suffer from worse health than men […] not in spite of living longer, but because they live longer” (luy/ minagawa 2014: 17), is indeed relevant for understanding the complex differences in uly between women and men. in sum, the croham hypothesis opens the view to a new perspective, namely that gender differences in health and longevity might not be as paradoxical as they appear but instead, they might be well explainable (see luy 2024a for a recent application of the croham hypothesis to the analysis of gender differences in uly in germany). • marc luy292 these thoughts about the gender paradox were intended to provide only a glimpse of the new possibilities created by the croham hypothesis for understanding and interpreting differentials in the uly. of course, this must not be understood as if this hypothesis could provide an explanation for everything. levels, trends and differentials in health and longevity are always the consequence of a complicated network of factors, and different factors can play different roles in different contexts. the croham hypothesis adds a new explanatory factor to this network that has not been considered so far in the cross-sectional context. it is definitely only one of many factors, but one that can play an important role in particular contexts as demonstrated in the context of the gender paradox. more tests and applications of the croham hypothesis should be done to test its generalisability. it may actually describe an important determinant of life years spent with and without health impairment and may 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_798-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37668-0_11 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2016.303089 https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm198007173030304 https://doi.org/10.2307/3349592 https://doi.org/10.1080/0032472032000061712 http://www.mortality.org http://www.humanmortality https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/29.2.93 https://doi.org/10.2307/2626958 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00647.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s00103-024-03877-7 • marc luy294 luy, marc 2024b: gesunde lebenserwartung: ein kritischer blick auf nutzen und potenziale des demographischen gesundheitsindikators. in: bundesgesundheitsblatt ‒ gesundheitsforschung ‒ gesundheitsschutz 67,5: 538-545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00103-024-03874-w luy, marc; di giulio, paola 2005: der einfluss von verhaltensweisen und lebensstilen auf die mortalitätsdifferenzen der geschlechter. in: gärtner, karla; grünheid, evelyn; luy, marc (eds.): lebensstile, lebensphasen, lebensqualität. interdisziplinäre analysen von gesundheit und sterblichkeit aus dem lebenserwartungssurvey des bib. schriftenreihe des bundesinstituts für bevölkerungsforschung 36. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften: 365-392. luy, marc; minagawa, yuka 2014: gender gaps ‒ life expectancy and proportion of life in poor health. in: health reports 25,12: 12-19. luy, marc et al. 2015: life expectancy by education, income and occupation in germany: estimations using the longitudinal survival method. in: comparative population studies 40,4: 399-436. http://dx.doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2015-16en luy, marc; di giulio, paola; minagawa, yuka 2023: the impact of interpersonal reporting heterogeneity on cross-country differences in healthy life years in europe. in: european journal of public health 33,6: 1060-1064. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad142 manton, kenneth g. 1982: changing concepts of morbidity and mortality in the elderly population. in: the milbank memorial fund quarterly/health and society 60,2: 183-244. 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disparities: a fundamental cause perspective. in: the journals of gerontology series b: psychological sciences and social sciences 60, special issue 2: s27-s33. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/60.special_issue_2.s27 phelan, jo c.; link, bruce g.; tehranifar, parisa 2010: social conditions as fundamental causes of health inequalities: theory, evidence, and policy implications. in: journal of health and social behavior 51,1 suppl: s28-s40. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383498 robert koch-institut 2014: daten und fakten: ergebnisse der studie ”gesundheit in deutschland aktuell 2012”. berichte zur gesundheitsberichterstattung des bundes. berlin: robert koch-institut. robine, jean-marie; michel, jean-pierre 2004: looking forward to a general theory on population aging. in: the journals of gerontology series a: biological sciences and medical sciences 59,6: m590-m597. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/59.6.m590 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00103-024-03874-w http://dx.doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2015-16en https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad142 https://doi.org/10.2307/3349767 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736 https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2004.0017 https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9938662 https://doi.org/10.1177/002214650404500303 https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/60.special_issue_2.s27 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383498 https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/59.6.m590 cross-sectional association between life expectancy and unhealthy life years • 295 salzmann, thomas; bohk, christina 2008: überprüfung der im rahmen des „lebenserwartungssurveys“ gemessenen sterblichkeit auf bevölkerungsrepräsentativität unter berücksichtigung rechtsund intervallzensierter ereignisse mit dem konzept „relative survival“. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 33,2: 121-152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12523-009-0008-3 shen, tianyu; payne, collin f. 2023: disability and morbidity among us birth cohorts, 19982018: a multidimensional test of dynamic equilibrium theory. in: ssm ‒ population health 24: 101528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101528 sullivan, daniel f. 1971: a single index of mortality and morbidity. in: hsmha-health reports 86,4: 347-354. https://doi.org/10.2307/4594169 unesco 1996: international standard classification of education isced 1997. montreal: unesco-uis. vallin, jacques 1995: can sex differentials in mortality be explained by socio-economic mortality differentials? in: lopez, alan d.; caselli, graziella; valkonen, tapani (eds.): adult mortality in developed countries: from description to explanation. oxford: clarendon press: 179-200. zeng, yi et al. 2017: survival, disabilities in activities of daily living, and physical and cognitive functioning among the oldest-old in china: a cohort study. in: the lancet 389,10079: 16191629. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(17)30548-2 date of submission: 04.09.2023 date of acceptance: 17.06.2024 prof. dr. marc luy (*). vienna institute of demography of the austrian academy of sciences (oeaw). e-mail: marc.luy@oeaw.ac.at url: https://www.marcluy.eu https://doi.org/10.1007/s12523-009-0008-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101528 https://doi.org/10.2307/4594169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736 mailto:marc.luy@oeaw.ac.at https://www.marcluy.eu published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de reflections on population studies in the age of ai editorial reflections on population studies in the age of ai* frans willekens abstract: in his editorial, former editor of comparative population studies (cpos) frans willekens reflects on the use of artificial intelligence (ai) in population studies. effective and responsible use of any tool requires a basic understanding of how it works, when it may be used, and when its use should be avoided. when this fundamental principle is observed, ai tools can enrich learning and research and help advance the frontiers of knowledge. epistemic integrity and accountability remain essential; the advent of ai does not diminish that core value. although generative ai is currently dominated by machine learning and relies on statistical inference to make predictions and generate content, rule-based ai, which dominated ai in the early days, is making a comeback. students of population should critically engage with the expanding landscape of ai systems and resist the tendency towards technological monoculture. they should cultivate substantive collaborations with computer scientists to develop domain-specific ai systems that fully prepare population studies − with demography at its core − for the era of ai. keywords: artificial intelligence (ai) · population studies · machine learning · cpos 1 introduction congratulations to comparative population studies (cpos)/zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb) and the federal institute for population research (bundesinstitut fur bevölkerungsforschung, bib) on the journal’s 50th anniversary. cpos has positioned itself as an international and interdisciplinary journal of population studies with a strong focus on comparative research. the editorials accompanying the 50th anniversary highlight the unique editorial process, the guiding principles and the strategic considerations that have shaped the journal. the strategic decisions comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): xxvii-xxxii (date of release: 17.12.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-17en * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-17 • frans willekensxxviii included the publication online, open access at no cost to authors and readers, publication of accepted articles as soon as they are ready (rolling publication model), and a publication support unparallelled by most other population studies journals. cpos has the comparative advantage of being a marvelous ecosystem of authors, reviewers, publisher and editorial staff (including language and technical editors) supporting the publication process from start to finish. previous editorials documented the impressive trajectory of cpos from its foundation in 1975 to the internationally recognised academic journal it is today. in a previous editorial, i had the opportunity to share my perspective on cpos (willekens et al. 2023). the journal’s transition to online publication reflects a recognition of the opportunities offered by digital innovation. today, artificial intelligence (ai) presents another transformative frontier. ai is the outcome of decades of curiosity-driven and mission-driven research in which scientists systematically analyzed biological, cognitive and social processes and used simulation to reproduce the processes in silico to enhance our understanding of how humans reason, learn and make decisions, how populations evolve and societies function and why they can derail. contemporary knowledge has advanced to a stage at which several cognitive functions can be simulated accurately or approximated with a high degree of reliability when supplied with sufficient high-quality data and appropriate statistical models and techniques. that knowledge is now used to build systems that exhibit cognitive capabilities that are traditionally associated with humans, such as reasoning and learning. in this editorial, i reflect on population studies in this new era. first, a few notes on ai. 2 ai ai is an interdisciplinary field of research in modelling and simulation aimed at building computational systems that perform tasks efficiently and effectively with minimal human intervention and in a variety of situations (russell/norvig 2022). ai systems are capable of reasoning and learning. two forms of reasoning are traditionally distinguished. the first is deductive reasoning, which applies formally defined logical rules (if … then) to propositions to derive conclusions that follow necessarily from them. consider the proposition “two individuals are siblings”. if the two individuals have at least one biological parent in common and the two individuals are not the same person (the logical rules), then the proposition is true. the second is inductive reasoning, which generalises from observations. generalisation may point to logical rules or causal dependencies, but can never be certain. the two forms of reasoning underly the two main paradigms in ai. symbolic or rule-based ai systems use primarily deductive reasoning, applying formally defined rules to known facts (data) to derive conclusions that logically follow (logical inference). it was the dominant paradigm in the early stages of ai from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. machine-learning (ml), which currently dominates ai, relies on inductive generalisation. ml uses statistical inference to identify and model patterns in data. inferring patterns from unstructured data without any reflections on population studies in the age of ai • xxix prior information is unsupervised learning, while inferring patterns in structured (e.g. tabular) data is supervised learning. machines or computational systems can also learn from examples (imitation learning) and the positive or negative feedback it receives (reinforcement learning). much of current research involves combinations of different learning paradigms (jordan/mitchell 2015: 258). since ml-based systems learn from statistical associations, they are sometimes referred to as statistical ai. learning from statistical associations is the dominant mode of learning in ai systems today. interestingly, learning from statistical associations is also the dominant mode of knowledge acquisition in population studies as we know it today, thanks to the user-friendly statistical software packages. the methods of statistical inference used in ml range from linear regression to hidden markov models to deep neural networks (dnns). a dnn is a neural network consisting of nodes (neurons) organised in multiple layers and connected by weighted edges (bishop/bishop 2023; russell/norvig 2022: chapter 22). deep neural networks learn multiple levels of increasingly abstract patterns from very large datasets, a process known as deep learning. the presence of multiple hidden layers confounds the information flow through the network. it explains why dnns are often designated as black boxes and criticised for lack of transparancy. for a more extensive introduction to ai systems and their use in academic research, see willekens (forthcoming). 3 population studies in the age of ai ai systems incorporate traditional software tools such as word processors, statistical packages, and search engines. effective and responsible use of any tool requires a basic understanding of how it works, when it may be used, and when its use should be avoided. ai systems, including large language models (llms), have built-in limitations. common limitations include hallucination, “out of distribution” (ood) prediction, prediction based on incomplete and defective data retrieved mainly through web-scraping, and the opaqueness of the dnn on which llms rely. these limitations have been documented and procedures exist for reducing their negative effects. except for hallucination, these limitations are familiar to most of us. population scientists have been trained to deal with data deficiencies, ood extrapolation and lack of transparency of the documentation of models and data. that expertise can be used to evaluate ai systems. a comparative analysis of ai systems reveals significant differences. for instance, my experience tells me that chatgpt1 is good at generating creative text that prioritises imagination, emotion, entertainment, and other ways to engage the reader, while google’s gemini2 is better in generating factual text that is objective, factual, accurate, up-to-date, and 1 https://chatgpt.com/ 2 https://gemini.google.com/app https://chatgpt.com/ https://gemini.google.com/app • frans willekensxxx verifiable. i propose a pragmatic approach to ai that seeks to capture its benefits while preventing unanticipated consequences. the approach stimulates critical thinking about ai, the role of modern technology in academic research, and the balance between innovation and preservation in our discipline. a particular useful subject of ai-related research concerns effective querying and prompting. the user’s prompt is a major factor in determining the response generated by an llm within its built-in constraints. since llms capture the meaning of words and sentences from their context (distributional semantics), it is crucial for users to augment a query with adequate context. for instance, asking chatgpt, gemini, microsoft copilot3 or any other chatbot for the definition of fertility, it will refer to fertility as the capacity to reproduce. it is the established definition in biology and medicine. in demography, the capacity to reproduce is denoted by the term “fecundity”. to get an accurate definition, the user should describe the context. in response to the following prompt “how is fertility defined in population studies?”, gemini responds: “in demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity.” it adds the source of that information, which is an advance relative to previous versions. the sources vary, however. they include wikipedia4, grokipedia5 and statistics canada6. in the query, the user may request the definition from a particular source. for instance, if the user wants the definition of fertility provided by the demographic dictionary demopaedia7 (developed by the french institute for demographic studies (ined8)), gemini will return the appropriate definition if it has access to the primary source or a secondary source that includes the demopaedia definition of fertility, e.g. lecture notes published online. the ability to design clear, concise, and effective prompts is increasingly recognised as a valuable skill. these skills should be part of any educational programme. prompting is essentially computer programming in a natural language. the more detailed the instructions, the better the response. users can write the prompt in any major language. the built-in natural language processing (nlp) module automatically translates the request. ai systems evolve very rapidly and consecutive releases may differ considerably. recent versions of chatbots include retrieval augmented generation (rag) extensions of llms. an llm-rag retrieves relevant external documents at inference time and uses the information as context to generate the text requested by the user. the prompt determines which documents are retrieved. the user may also attach documents to the prompt. since the introduction of rag, hallucination has 3 https://copilot.microsoft.com/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fertility#:~:text=demographers%20measure%20the%20fertility%20 rate,over%20a%20period%20of%20decades 5 https://grokipedia.com/page/fertility_factor_(demography) 6 https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/concepts/definitions/previous/prefertility 7 http://en-ii.demopaedia.org/wiki/fertility 8 https://www.ined.fr/fr/recherche/projets-recherche/s0518 https://copilot.microsoft.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fertility#:~:text=demographers%20measure%20the%20fertility%20 https://grokipedia.com/page/fertility_factor_ https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/concepts/definitions/previous/prefertility http://en-ii.demopaedia.org/wiki/fertility https://www.ined.fr/fr/recherche/projets-recherche/s0518 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fertility#:~:text=demographers%20measure%20the%20fertility%20rate,over%20a%20period%20of%20decades reflections on population studies in the age of ai • xxxi decreased markedly and responses are more up-to-date. users should recognise, however, that ai systems cannot access articles or books that are not available on the open web. the open web excludes documents and data that are published in print only or are published online but require payment or authentication. although an ai system may not have access to the full text of an article, it may have access to the abstract and secondary sources. the selective nature of the data ai systems rely on poses a major problem in scientific research. the resulting issues of bias and representation have much in common with the challenges encountered when social media data are used in population research (zagheni/weber 2015). some ai systems are designed to facilitate systematic literature reviews. aipowered search engines include consensus9, elicit10, scispace11 and perplexity12. the latter searches the web in real-time. each system is specialised in some aspects of a literature review. search engines use external llms for conversation, except google search which uses gemini for its ai overview. since the emergence of llmrag and ai-powered search engines, systematic literature reviews have proliferated at an unprecedented pace in some disciplines. in response, publication venues have begun to place restrictions on such reviews (see castelvecchi 2025). the usage of ai in academic research is transforming the research process, as well as the dissemination of results. students of population should critically engage with ai. they should explore the expanding landscape of ai systems and resist the tendency toward technological monoculture. the current ai systems used in academia are general-purpose systems. a natural evolution is toward specialisation, i.e. domain-specific ai systems. such an evolution is not only effective, but is also a guarantee that domain experts maintain control over ai systems. in this vision, population scientists need to cultivate substantive collaborations with computer scientists to develop ai systems embedded in population studies. in the ongoing transition from monolithic ai systems to modular ai systems (domain-specific ai or agentic ai), the design of a demographic ai agent or population studies ai agent would solidify the position of population studies in the age of ai. irrespective of whether or not a domain-specific ai system will be developed, a debate is required about population studies as a discipline in the age of ai. cpos may stimulate that debate in ways that uphold its initial (1975) mission to be an open forum for scientific debate of population issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. 9 https://consensus.app/ 10 https://elicit.com/ 11 https://scispace.com/ 12 https://www.perplexity.ai/ https://consensus.app/ https://elicit.com/ https://scispace.com/ https://www.perplexity.ai/ • frans willekensxxxii 4 final remarks editors of academic journals such as cpos are guardians of quality within the scholarly community. their role is central to ensuring that results of innovative research are disseminated and authors uphold established standards and practices, as part of our shared commitment to maintaining the independence, integrity, credibility and accountability of academic research. cpos, being a marvelous ecosystem of authors, reviewers, publisher and editorial staff supporting authors throughout the publication process, is well positioned to foster the advancement of population studies in the age of ai. i wish everyone involved every success in the years to come. references bishop, christopher m.; bishop, hugh 2023: deep learning: foundations and concepts. cham: springer nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45468-4 castelvecchi, davide 2025: preprint site arxiv is banning computer-science reviews: here’s why. in: nature, news article. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03664-7 jordan, michael i.; mitchell, tom m. 2015: machine learning: trends, perspectives, and prospects. in: science 349,6245: 255-260. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa8415 russell, stuart; norvig, peter 2022: artificial intelligence: a modern approach. 4th edition (global edition). harlow, uk: pearson education limited. willekens, frans forthcoming: population studies in the age of artificial intelligence. bib. working paper. wiesbaden: bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung. willekens, frans et al. 2023: the past, present and future of cpos. in: comparative population studies 48: i-vi. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-24 zagheni, emilio; weber, ingmar 2015: demographic research with non-representative internet data. in: international journal of manpower 36,1: 13-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijm-12-2014-0261 prof. dr. ir. frans willekens (*). honorary fellow at netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi). the hague, netherlands. emeritus professor of population studies at the university of groningen. netherlands. e-mail: willekens@nidi.nl url: https://nidi.nl/en/employees/frans-willekens/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45468-4 https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03664-7 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa8415 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-24 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijm-12-2014-0261 mailto:willekens@nidi.nl https://nidi.nl/en/employees/frans-willekens/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) should mama or papa work? variations in attitudes towards parental employment by country of origin and child age should mama or papa work?* variations in attitudes towards parental employment by country of origin and child age ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege abstract: employment among mothers has been rising in recent decades, although mothers of young children often work fewer hours than other women do. parallel to this trend, approval of maternal employment has increased, albeit not evenly across groups. however, differences in attitudes remain unexplored despite their importance for better understanding mothers’ labour market behaviour. meanwhile, the employment of fathers has remained stable and attitudes towards paternal employment do not differ as much as attitudes towards maternal employment do between socio-economic groups. this paper examines attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. it focuses on germany, drawing on data from the german family demography panel study (freda). the survey explicitly asks whether mothers and fathers should be in paid work, work part-time or full-time, presenting respondents with fi ctional family profi les that vary the youngest child’s age. unlike previous studies, the analysis compares the views of respondents with different origins: west germany, east germany, immigrants from different world regions, and second-generation migrants in west germany. the results highlight remarkable differences between respondents from west and east germany, with the former group displaying strong approval for part-time employment among mothers and fathers of very young children and the latter group reporting higher approval for full-time employment. immigrant groups are far from homogenous, holding different attitudes depending on their region of origin. taken together, the results offer a nuanced picture of attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. we discuss these fi ndings in relation to labour markets participation in germany. keywords: gender attitudes · maternal employment · paternal employment · east and west germany · migration background comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 339-368 (date of release: 17.07.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-14en0 * this article belongs to a special issue on “family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)”. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege340 1 introduction since 2000, maternal employment rates have been rising in germany, as in many other european countries. in 2020, 75 percent of mothers of children under age 18 were in employment. despite this upward trend, average working hours have been declining, with two-thirds of mothers working part-time; compared to only 35 percent of all women without children doing so (federal statistical offi ce 2022). even among mothers there is considerable heterogeneity in employment patterns by youngest child age, socio-economic characteristics, and region. for example, part-time employment is more prevalent among mothers in west germany than in east germany (e.g., barth et al. 2020). there are also considerable differences by migrant status and background: 53 percent of all mothers with a migration background and with children below the age of 18 are employed, compared to 76 percent of mothers without a migration background (bmfsfj 2020).1 while the reasons for these different employment patterns among mothers are complex and manifold, variation in attitudes toward maternal employment has been shown to play a major role (e.g., blau et al. 2020). paternal employment, on the other hand, has seen little variation over time in germany and elsewhere. the only exception is the rate of fathers taking parental leave, which has increased rapidly since the policy reform of 2007. however, this is only a small change in employment patterns, given that the average father only takes the two additional partner months and does not interrupt his employment for longer time periods. part-time employment among fathers remains rare (e.g., samtleben et al. 2019; brehm et al. 2022). given these rather stable patterns, attitudes towards paternal employment are rarely investigated; if so, they are analysed in combination with attitudes towards maternal employment (jacobs/gerson 2016; panova/buberennser 2016). cultural norms surrounding gender roles affect economic decisions such as labour supply and the division of care work within the household and, thus, are an important driver of gender gaps in the labour market.2 cultural norms and attitudes toward employment of mothers and fathers vary substantially not only between countries, but also between different socio-economic groups within countries. for example, several studies show that migrants from different countries of origin differ strongly in their views on gender roles (e.g., pessin/arpino 2018; kavli 2015). in the case of germany, large differences in attitudes toward gender roles also persist between east and west germany, hinting at the long-lasting effects of institutions and policies on cultural norms that refl ect these attitudes (see, among others, beblo/ görges 2018; jessen 2022; lippmann et al. 2020). 1 here the term “person with migration background” refers to the offi cial defi nition: “a person has a migration background if s/he or at least one of his/her parents did not acquire the german citizenship at birth” ( statistisches bundesamt 2017). 2 for germany, see lietzmann/frodermann (2021). giuliano (2020) provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on the effect of cultural norms on gender gaps in economic outcomes from different countries. should mama or papa work? • 341 in this paper, we investigate attitudes toward the employment of mothers and fathers in germany for native germans and migrants based on data from the fi rst wave of freda – the german family demography panel study, collected in 2021. in particular, we separately analyse these attitudes for native germans in east and west germany as well as for migrants from different countries of origin. importantly, we can analyse these attitudes in detail by age of the youngest child and can differentiate between part-time and full-time employment. among migrants, attitudes toward the employment of women in general (pessin/ arpino 2018) as well as the employment of mothers with young children (kavli 2015) differ strongly by country of origin and are highly correlated with cultural norms in the countries of origin. but migrants also differ by the duration of their residence in the host country: a study from norway, for example, shows that second-generation immigrants largely adopt the attitudes of norwegian natives toward maternal employment (kitterod/nadim 2020). for germany, several studies show that even more than three decades after reunifi cation, there are still noticeable differences in the attitudes toward maternal employment between east and west germany, among both men and women (e.g., barth et al. 2020). these attitudes are infl uenced by differences in the institutional frameworks for combining work and family life, such as day care or all-day schooling (e.g., zoch/schober 2018). in east germany, where social policies during the german democratic republic required and supported women’s employment, there are still more day care slots for children starting at age two and more afternoon care programs for elementary school children than in west germany (autor:innengruppe bildungsberichterstattung 2020). another reason for differences in attitudes toward maternal employment might be related to intergenerational links in gender attitudes or own experiences with working mothers (e.g. schmitz/spiess 2021). in this paper, we take advantage of how freda surveys attitudes towards maternal employment. beside using questions designed more than thirty years ago (halimi et al. 2018), freda includes more detailed and differentiated questions that better refl ect contemporary views on how parents should reconcile family responsibilities and paid employment, allowing for a more complete and insightful picture than other surveys. drawing on these more precise survey questions, we contribute to the existing literature in several ways. first, we describe and compare attitudes toward maternal employment for mothers of children of different age groups. while most research focuses on the employment of mothers of children at age two, our analysis can differentiate attitudes toward maternal employment by child age, ranging from age two through 18. second, we focus on attitudes toward maternal employment for natives of east and west germany as well as for immigrants from different countries of origin. moreover, we differentiate between fulland part-time employment. third, we complement these analyses with the description of attitudes toward the employment of fathers. in sum, we take a more comprehensive look at the attitudes toward more or less egalitarian family models. our results corroborate previous fi ndings by showing persisting differences in the attitudes toward maternal employment between east and west germany. these differences are most pronounced for children aged two. moreover, acceptance of • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege342 full-time employment of mothers is much higher in east than in west germany. among migrants, we fi nd signifi cant differences by country of origin: while the attitudes toward maternal employment of immigrants from western countries range between those of natives in east and west germany, immigrants from eastern european countries as well as from asia and africa (including turkey) have more traditional views, especially for mothers of young children. the views of secondgeneration immigrants range between those of fi rst-generation immigrants from asia and africa and those of west german natives. as for attitudes toward fathers, we fi nd that part-time employment when children are very young is more accepted in west germany than in east germany. among all investigated groups, acceptance of fathers with young children working part-time is highest among immigrants from western countries, followed by german natives and second-generation immigrants. immigrants from eastern european countries, asia, and africa show the lowest support for paternal part-time employment. 2 data our analysis uses the fi rst wave of the data from the german family demography panel study (freda) (see the editorial by bujard, hank and pollak in this special issue, bujard et al. 2023; hank 2023; schneider et al. 2021). the recruitment survey was carried out between april and june 2021. the fi rst interviews (wave 1a) took place in july 2021, with the second wave (1b) occurring a few months later, between november 2021 and january 2022. freda surveyed 38,044 people, 7,586 of them with paper-based questionnaires, and 30,458 through self-administered online interviews. freda interviewed a nationally representative sample of people resident in germany aged between 18 and 49 years. partners of main respondents, when available, were also asked to participate in the survey, but in this study we only rely on responses by the target person. for our analysis the following details are important. freda’s paper-based questionnaire, used by 20 percent of the sample, was only available in german. however, freda’s invitation letter offered participants the option to respond to the web-based questionnaire in turkish, russian, or arabic. among those answering the web-based questionnaire, less than one percent used a non-german option. the sample of immigrants will therefore underrepresent those with lower german language profi ciency, a point to which we will return when discussing the results. operationalisation of gender attitudes participants in freda reported their gender role attitudes in their second interview (wave 1b). freda includes a battery of standard gender role questions, making comparisons with other surveys rather straightforward. given our focus on attitudes toward maternal employment, we start by using participants’ agreement to the statement “a preschool child suffers if her or his mother works,” with ratings measured on a fi ve-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly should mama or papa work? • 343 agree). this question has been routinely used in surveys of attitudes towards maternal employment. in germany, prominent examples are the german family panel pairfam (panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics), in which freda is partly rooted (bujard et al. 2023) and the allbus survey (allgemeine bevölkerungsumfrage der sozialwissenschaften), which elicited attitudes towards maternal employment by using the statement “a young child will certainly suffer when his/her mother is in work” (for studies using this question based on allbus, see e.g. blohm/walter 2018; braun 2014; for the pairfam scales manual, see thönnissen et al. 2018). the international social survey programme (issp) also used very similar phrasing in its “family and changing gender roles” module (issp 1994, 2002, 2012). as noted by halimi et al. (2018), this type of instrument was designed decades ago, when mothers of young children were starting to enter the labour market, and surveys have kept using it to ensure consistency over time, missing out on more subtle attitudinal changes that may have occurred in the meantime. one innovative feature of freda is that, beside the standard question, it surveys respondents’ attitudes in relation to maternal employment by asking: “consider a family with a mother, father and 2 children where the youngest child is 2 years old. should the mother… • work full-time, or • work part-time, or • not work at all?” the sample was then randomly split into four groups and the same question was again asked, inserting different ages for the youngest child: 4, 8, 12, or 18 years. thus, these are different hypothetical scenarios which have no relation to the respondents’ family situation and the presence of children of different ages in their home. these questions result in fi ve three-fold categorical variables capturing whether mothers of 2-, 4-, 8-, 12-, and 18-year-olds should work full-time, part-time, or not at all. a further innovative aspect of freda is that it also asked the same two questions in relation to paternal employment, eliciting views not only on what mothers should do, but also on how much fathers should work, again covering different age scenarios in the second question. by combining the answers given for mothers and fathers, we are able to examine support for six different prevailing models of sharing paid work among parents: i) adult worker model: both mother and father should work full-time; ii) dual earner/ dual carer model: both mother and father should work part-time; iii) one-and-ahalf-earner model: father should work full-time and mother part-time; iv) one-anda-half-carer model: father should work part-time and mother should not be in paid work; v) male breadwinner model: father should work full-time and mother should not be in paid work; vi) residual category, including support for all other possible combinations. thus, besides examining attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment separately, we investigate what respondents believe to be the best combination at the household level. it is important to remember that these gender attitudes were collected during the second year of the covid-19 pandemic. there is evidence (e.g., huebener et al. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege344 2022) that gender attitudes among men became more egalitarian at the beginning of the pandemic, although this “effect” had largely faded by 2022. thus, for the interpretation of the results one should keep in mind that these measures, at least among men, might have a slight “covid bias.” operationalisation of subgroups to map differences in attitudes across groups with different backgrounds, we employ the following six categories to defi ne our subgroups. the rationale behind the defi nitions are the aforementioned differences in the regional infrastructure for combing work and family life, which infl uence attitudes and differences in the norms adults grew up with as children and adolescents. “east germany” includes respondents born in federal states that were part of the german democratic republic (gdr). “west germany” includes those born in federal states that were part of the federal republic of germany, including west berlin. both groups only comprise respondents with at least one german parent. an alternative defi nition based on where in germany respondents lived at the time of the survey was also used and produced almost identical results. “western countries” indicates that the respondent was born in one of the following regions: southern, western or northern europe, north america, or oceania. “eastern europe” includes all those born in an eastern european country, the balkan region and ex-soviet countries in central asia, such as kazakhstan. “africa and asia” comprises those born in the middle east, north africa, sub-saharan africa, and all other asian countries. importantly, this group includes immigrants from turkey. “second-generation migrants” are respondents with two foreign parents; note that this group was born in west germany, as we excluded a handful of cases of children of immigrants born in east germany. respondents born in latin american countries were excluded from the analysis because there were too few to be investigated as a distinct group. absent from our categorisation is the group that in germany is offi cially classifi ed as “with migration background”, which includes all those with at least one parent born without german citizenship (statistisches bundesamt 2017). analytical sample and empirical approach our analytical samples include observations with valid answers to the questions on maternal and paternal employment. participants in wave 1b of freda who did not report their views on parents’ employment comprise approximately 5 percent of the overall sample and were less likely than respondents to have children. there were no other noticeable differences by origin, education, age, or employment status. we present the results by splitting the sample by gender, as women are often found to hold more egalitarian attitudes than men. table s1 in the supplementary material details the sizes of the different subgroups. throughout the analyses we employ calibration weights provided with the data to adjust the data for different inclusion probabilities due to the survey sampling design and to reduce biases due to nonresponse. by using these weights, we should mama or papa work? • 345 ensure that freda data are representative of persons aged 18-49 years resident in germany (for more details, see freda 2023, section 5). we present our results graphically and report weighted probabilities, showing very similar results to the multivariate analyses included in the supplementary material. 3 results first, we examine attitudes toward maternal employment as captured by agreement with the statement “a pre-school child suffers if his or her mother works” (fig. 1). this is the question relied upon by most existing studies of attitudes towards maternal employment, and we use it here to give readers a point of reference against which to judge the more nuanced attitudinal measures on which we base most of the subsequent analysis. values range from one to fi ve, with higher values indicating stronger agreement. two things stand out: first, gender is confi rmed as an important determinant of attitudes toward maternal employment. within all groups, men are more likely to agree with the statement than women. this is in line with previous fi ndings, pointing to a higher level of traditionalism among men than among women (davis/greenstein 2009). the gender differences are substantial and statistically signifi cant, with the exception of immigrants from asia and africa. second, the graph also shows clear differences in attitudes between groups, which hold equally for men and women. people from east germany tend to disagree the most with the statement, refl ecting the historical patterns of widespread integration of mothers into the labour market (e.g., rosenfeld et al. 2004). average attitudes among women from west germany and western countries are almost identical, as they both disagree with the statement. by contrast, men from west germany and from western countries hold more traditional views, which again are very similar to one another. in contrast to those living in east germany, immigrants from eastern european countries express slightly more traditional attitudes. while this may be surprising given that the dual-earner model was a universal feature of socialist states before 1989, it can be explained by the prevalence of immigrants from more traditional countries within the ex-socialist bloc, such as poland (glass/ fodor 2007; fodor/balogh 2010), but also ethnically german immigrants from kazakhstan and russia (oecd 2017). responses from immigrants originating in africa and asia as well as second-generation immigrants in west germany show the highest agreement with the statement that pre-school children suffer if mothers work; this is especially the case among men from these two subgroups. a major problem in measuring attitudes with this item is that it is implicitly moulded on the “pure” male breadwinner model, which, although prevalent for several decades in many industrialised countries, is increasingly rare, as the majority of mothers in oecd countries now tend to be in waged work (oecd 2020). as patterns of employment among mothers vary greatly in their intensity and in relation to the age of the youngest child, attitudinal questions need to refl ect this • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege346 variety in order to be able to identify meaningful normative variations and to capture potential misalignments or differences across population groups, as we do here. as the next set of results illustrates, attitudes toward maternal employment are not monolithic, detached from differing children’s caring needs, or from employment demands. rather, attitudes toward maternal employment are highly differentiated and require the more nuanced measures used in the rest of the analyses. 3.1 attitudes toward maternal employment figures 2 and 3 report, for women and men respectively, attitudes toward maternal employment distinguishing across age of the youngest child along the horizontal axis and by the response options of full-time employment, part-time employment, or no employment altogether. results are reported in separate panels for each of the six respondent groups. each marker in the panel indicates the probability that a woman from a specifi c group, say west germany, would state that mothers whose youngest child is either two, four, eight, twelve, or eighteen should work full-time, part-time fig. 1: pre-school child suffers if mother works, by respondent country of origin and gender 1 (strongly disagree) 2 (rather disgree) 3 (neither) 4 (rather agree) 5 (stongly agree) m ea n eas t g erm an y wes t g erm an y wes ter n c ou ntr ies eas ter n e uro pe asia an d a fric a sec on d-g en era tio n m igr an ts country of origin female male note: the fi gure shows the gender attitudes for different countries of origin by gender. high values mean that a person agrees with the statement “a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works.” the vertical lines represent the 95% confi dence intervals. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. should mama or papa work? • 347 or not at all. the estimates obtained when controlling for additional characteristics such as age, education, employment status, and length of stay in germany were very similar, suggesting little heterogeneity within groups. the results of these models are reported in tables s2 and s3 in the online supplementary material. women’s attitudes starting from women’s attitudes (fig. 2), some broad commonalities across groups are immediately noticeable. first, within all groups, support for part-time employment is highest when the youngest child in the hypothetical scenario is two years old but declines as the child’s age is increased. whereas approximately 70 percent of women across all groups state that mothers of two-year-olds should work part-time, less than 40 percent say so of mothers of 18-year-olds. the mirror image of this downward trend is the increasing approval for full-time employment, which becomes the most supported working arrangement for mothers of 18-yearolds. the second commonality across groups is the relative unimportance of non-employment once the youngest child is four, with between 1 and 13 percent of female respondents affi rming that mothers of four-year-olds should not be in employment.3 while these broad patterns are shared across all groups, there are also important differences. these concern, fi rst, how much mothers should work when their youngest child is two. although part-time employment is invariably and by far the preferred option, nonemployment is supported by substantial proportions of women born in west germany (whether from immigrant or native families), as well as by women from eastern european countries, and from asia and africa, making it the second most upheld attitude within these groups with support ranging between 17 and 27 percent. expressed support for full-time employment also varies across groups, as indicated by the different starting points of the dark lines in the six panels. unsurprisingly, the highest support for full-time employment is found among women from east germany, with 27 percent of them stating that mothers of two-year-olds should work full-time, followed by women from western countries (20 percent). the result for women from east germany is in line with the pattern of uninterrupted full-time employment even among mothers of young children that was prevalent in the gdr (rosenfeld et al. 2004; hašková/klenner 2010). the second important difference across groups has to do with how favourable attitudes towards part-time over full-time employment evolve with the age of the youngest child, which is captured by the slopes of the full-time and part-time employment lines. here, the most striking contrast is the one between women from east germany and those from west germany. in east germany, the sample is split equally into two: 50 percent indicate that mothers of four-year-olds should work fulltime, and 49 percent indicate part-time. in contrast, in west germany, the difference 3 women from asia and africa display a higher approval for non-employment for mothers of fouryear-olds, but the estimate is fairly imprecise due to the small sample size. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege348 fig. 2: attitudes towards maternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child, by respondent country of origin (women) 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (a) east germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (b) west germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (c) western countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (d) eastern europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (e) asia and africa 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (f) second generation migrants (west germany) note: the fi gures show the attitudes towards maternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child. the vertical lines represent the 95% confi dence intervals. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. not employed part-time full-time amount mother should work should mama or papa work? • 349 in support of these two employment options is vast, with 75 percent stating that mothers of four years olds should work part-time, and only 21 percent backing fulltime employment. in west germany, it is only when the youngest child is 12 that support for full-time and part-time employment equalise, refl ecting a long-standing pattern with part-time employment as the way to meet care responsibilities while maintaining attachment to the labour market. each of the other groups exhibit a slightly different evolution of attitudes towards full-time employment. among women who migrated from eastern europe, there is a noticeable change in the level of endorsement of full-time employment between the scenario with the mother of a two-year-old (11 percent endorsement) and a four-year-old (38 percent). a similar shift in attitudes is visible among women from immigrant families in west germany. in both cases, the attitudinal questions about a generic “pre-school child” used in conventional surveys conceal this stark difference. with the exception of women in east germany, full-time employment becomes the preferred option only when the youngest child is set at 12, albeit estimates for some groups are less precise. the scenario with an 18-year-old elicits a clear endorsement (around 80 percent) for full-time employment across all groups, with the exception of women from asia and africa and western countries, who display a lower approval (around 60 percent) towards full-time employment for this scenario. men’s attitudes we now turn to attitudes toward maternal employment among men, again differentiated by the youngest child’s age in a hypothetical scenario displayed along the horizontal axis and by support for full-time employment, part-time employment, and no employment at all (fig. 3). the patterns are very similar to those reported for women, pointing to little difference in the views of men and women once more detailed questions on work and care arrangements are asked. two exceptions stand out in this overall similarity between genders. first, support for the idea that a mother of a two-year-old should not work at all is slightly higher among men than women. the difference is most visible among migrants from eastern europe, with 29 percent of men indicating mothers should not work (compared to only 17 percent of women). second, men appear to be less supportive of maternal part-time employment and more supportive of full-time employment than women. indeed, the dark blue lines tend to rise and light blue lines tend to decline more steeply than in figure 2. this is particularly noticeable in the case of respondents from east germany. almost 70 percent of men from east germany think mothers of eight-year-olds should work full-time, whereas only 55 percent of women think so. thus, it seems that views on what mothers should do also bear some consistency with patterns of actual employment among respondents, whereby men – who are less likely to be burdened by the “double-shift” – have slightly more favourable views of full-time employment than women do. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege350 fig. 3: attitudes towards maternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child, by respondent country of origin (men) 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (a) east germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (b) west germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (c) western countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (d) eastern europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (e) asia and africa 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (f) second generation migrants (west germany) note: the fi gures show the attitudes towards maternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child. the vertical lines represent the 95% confi dence intervals. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. not employed part-time full-time amount mother should work should mama or papa work? • 351 3.2 attitudes toward paternal employment so far, we have only examined views about how much mothers should work when their children are of different ages, without querying views on fathers’ employment patterns. it may be that the assumption that fathers work full-time has also eroded, more so for some groups than for others. it is this question that we now focus on. figures 4 and 5 report attitudes toward paternal employment among women and men, respectively. the graphs are organised in six panels, like the previous fi gures, differentiating along the youngest child’s age on the horizontal axis and by type of employment – full-time, part-time, and no employment. although we conducted the analyses separately, we here discuss the results from figures 4 and 5 together. we control for the same variables mentioned above. two patterns are common to all groups and to women and men alike. first, views that fathers should not be in employment are essentially completely absent. second, the notion that fathers should work full-time is held by the majority of respondents across all groups. differences emerge, however, in relation to part-time employment. at least onethird of women support the idea that fathers of two-year-olds should work parttime. the only exception is women from eastern europe, at 23 percent. among men, there are sizable differences across groups. among men from west germany and from western countries, between 30 and 39 percent state that fathers of twoyear-olds should work part-time. among all other groups, endorsement for paternal part-time employment is less common, hovering at around 20 percent. the support for paternal part-time employment tends to decline as the hypothetical child grows older, although never so rapidly as to become negligible. for example, even among men from east germany, one in seven thinks that fathers of eight-year-olds should work part-time. 3.3 attitudes towards combinations of maternal and paternal employment findings on attitudes towards paternal employment have revealed a fairly large approval of fathers working part-time when a child is very young, e.g., age two. we now focus on this family scenario, with a mother, father and two children, the youngest of whom is two years old, and report what combination of maternal and paternal employment respondents favour (fig. 6). we start with attitudes among women (fig. 6, panel a). attitudes in favour of the “male breadwinner model” are generally held by a minority in all groups, but they are most common among women from asia and africa, as one fourth of them indicate that mothers of two-year-olds should not be in employment while fathers should work full-time. this “traditional” division of labour is, by contrast, endorsed by only 12 percent of women in west germany and by 3 percent of those in east germany. attitudes in favour of the “oneand-a-half-earner model” are much more widespread, refl ecting actual patterns of employment whereby mothers work part-time and fathers full-time. but signifi cant differences across groups remain: whereas among women from east and west germany approval of the “one-and-a-half-earner model” is slightly below and above • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege352 fig. 4: attitudes towards paternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child, by respondent country of origin (women) 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (a) east germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (b) west germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (c) western countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (d) eastern europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (e) asia and africa 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (f) second generation migrants (west germany) note: the fi gures show the attitudes towards paternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child. the vertical lines represent the 95% confi dence intervals. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. not employed part-time full-time amount mother should work should mama or papa work? • 353 fig. 5: attitudes towards paternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child, by respondent country of origin (men) 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (a) east germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (b) west germany 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (c) western countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (d) eastern europe 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (e) asia and africa 0 20 40 60 80 100 pe rc en ta ge 2 4 8 12 18 age of youngest child (f) second generation migrants (west germany) note: the fi gures show the attitudes towards paternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child. the vertical lines represent the 95% confi dence intervals. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. not employed part-time full-time amount mother should work • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege354 the 40 percent mark respectively, among women from eastern europe, africa, and asia, the approval rate hovers around 50 percent. second-generation migrant women place between these groups, with 46 percent favouring this division of labour. the “adult worker” model represents a symmetric allocation of paid employment whereby both mothers and fathers work full-time. this model is endorsed by slightly more than a quarter of women from east germany, and only by a smaller minority fig. 6: attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment combined, for hypothetical parents of two-year-olds, by respondent country of origin 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 male breadwinner model 1,5 earner model adult worker model dual earner/dual carer model east germany west germany western countries eastern europe asia and africa second generation migrants 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 male breadwinner model 1,5 earner model adult worker model dual earner/dual carer model east germany west germany western countries eastern europe asia and africa second generation migrants (a) women (b) men note: the fi gures show the combined attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment, under the family scenario of parents with two children, the youngest of which is two years old. the male breadwinner model describes a division of labour whereby the mother is not employed and the father works full-time. in the 1,5-earner model, the mother works part-time and the father full-time. the adult worker model corresponds to both mother and father working full-time. the dual earner/dual carer model corresponds to both parents working part-time. the residual category includes all other answers and is not shown. categories with less than 30 observations are not shown in the graph. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. percentage percentage should mama or papa work? • 355 of women from west germany (9 percent) or eastern europe (12 percent). the “dual earner/dual carer” also exemplifi es a symmetric division of labour, not only between genders but also between care responsibilities and paid employment. this model is the second most favoured one by women from east and west germany, as well as by those from eastern european countries and second-generation migrant women. across models, women from western countries tend to exhibit very distinctive attitudes, with an especially high approval rate for the “dual earner/dual carer.” while this fi nding is interesting, it should be noted that this group is relatively small. overall, women from different geographical origins tend to share a fairly high support for the “one-and-a-halfearner model” but they vary in their support for more symmetric arrangements such as the “adult worker” model and the “dual earner/dual carer” model. men’s attitudes towards these different models mirror those of women fairly closely. among men, support for the “male breadwinner model” is also relatively higher among immigrant groups, in particular those from africa and asia, but also those from eastern europe and second-generation migrants (fig. 6, panel b), confi rming the higher prevalence of “traditional” attitudes among certain groups. by contrast, a distinctive feature of attitudes among men is their slightly higher support for the “adult worker” model relative to women. for example, among respondents from east germany, 34 percent of men favour full-time employment for both mothers and fathers of a two-year-old, against 26 percent of women. among men from africa and asia and those who are second-generation migrants, approval for the “adult worker model” is generally low (13 percent and 11 percent, respectively), but nonetheless higher than among women from those same groups, who show no support for such an allocation of paid employment. overall, whereas men are more inclined to favour a symmetric division of labour between the sexes whereby both parents work full-time, women express attitudes in favour of a model which is also symmetric in its time allocation between paid employment and care responsibilities, with both parents working part-time. 3.4 discussion overall, the detailed questions included in freda allow for a much more nuanced picture of attitudes toward maternal employment than is usually the case with other surveys, which rely on the conventional item “a pre-school child suffers if his or her mother works.” by presenting respondents with fi ctional families with children of different ages, the fi ndings from freda show important differences in attitudes which do not come to light when using the conventional question on a generic pre-school child and maternal employment status. the distinction between children aged two and those aged four is particularly crucial for at least two reasons. first, substantial proportions of men and women think mothers of two-year-olds should stay home. second, it allows us to isolate an age group – two-year-olds – who, since 2013, have the legal right to a place in a day care centre in germany. still, in contrast to their slightly older peers, the majority of two-year-olds in west germany do not attend, while the majority in east germany do (autor:innengruppe • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege356 bildungsberichterstattung 2020). furthermore, the distinction between younger and older children also reveals that attitudes toward employment remain highly gendered well after children enter school, in line with the high care needs of children in elementary school age (e.g., gambaro et al. 2019). another important feature of the data is that it allows us to differentiate between full-time and part-time employment. this is critical in a context such as west germany, where reducing employment hours has been a chief reconciliation strategy for mothers. indeed, when excluding toddlers, differences in attitudes toward maternal employment are best captured by views on part-time employment. against this highly differentiated picture, our analysis reveals remarkable differences between population groups with different geographical origins. yet the most prominent differences are not those between native germans and immigrants – rather, it is those between east and west germans. within the immigrant population, the distinction between different regions of origin carries important insights. one clear fi nding is the considerable heterogeneity between groups, indicating that there are divergent ideals of employment and care among immigrants. this latter point is perhaps most visible when looking at views about paternal employment. results signal the emergence of attitudes favouring a more symmetric division of labour, whereby fathers should also scale back employment hours. this result is especially clear in the case of respondents from west germany, where a more equally shared familism seems to be emerging alongside long-standing traditional gender norms. furthermore, results for second-generation migrants show that they mostly adapt to their west german peers, with the exception that they on average still have more traditional attitudes toward maternal employment when the child is two years old. all these differences are brought together in the fi nal set of analyses, which combines attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. the difference between respondents from west and east germany is captured by the substantial support for the “adult worker” model in east germany, with a quarter of women and a third of men saying that mothers and fathers of two-year-olds should both work full-time. in contrast, when respondents from west germany express support of a gender-symmetric division of labour, this tends to be the “dual earner/dual carer” model. however, differences between respondents from east and west germany are more marked among men than among women. for one thing, more men than women in east germany are in favour of full-time maternal employment, perhaps because they are less aware of the time demands that children bring or implicitly take a “double shift” of women into account (e.g. jessen 2022). for another, more men than women in west germany are in favour of the male breadwinner model. among migrant groups, with the exception of those from western countries, attitudes in favour of the traditional male-breadwinner model are still common, although almost half of respondents endorse the “one-and-a-half-earner” model with the father working full-time and the mother part-time. our analysis is not without limitations. first, migrants with a low profi ciency in the german language are likely to be underrepresented. by using weights that adjust for education and migration background, we partly address this issue, but our results can only be considered an accurate refl ection of attitudes among relatively should mama or papa work? • 357 integrated migrants. second, migrants are an extremely heterogenous group, and our grouping is rather coarse. however, we were able to differentiate between fi rst and second-generation migrants, and highlight important differences along macroregions of origin. 4 conclusion although the aggregate employment rate of mothers has been increasing in germany, there are still large differences by the age of the youngest child, region, and migration background. our analyses have uncovered how these differences in actual employment are also mirrored in differences in attitudes towards maternal employment. we examine the extent to which these attitudes vary by presenting respondents from different regions of origin with different hypothetical family scenarios. for mothers with young children, part-time work remains the most common pattern in all groups (see section 1). part-time employment is a recurrent theme in policy discussions about demographic change and the resulting tightness on the labour market. expanding the working hours of mothers is seen as a measure to counteract a shrinking labour force. however, a rather neglected topic in this context is the particularly low labour supply of mothers with migration backgrounds. activating this group’s labour market potential could be one way to alleviate the problem of a decreasing supply of labour. to assess the potential success of such activation strategies, it is important to have a clear understanding of attitudes toward maternal employment, among both migrant as well as non-migrant groups. the results of our empirical analysis shed light on the various differences in these attitudes: between women and men, between east and west germans, between immigrants and native germans, and between attitudes toward maternal and paternal employment according to the age of the child in question. while it appears that part-time employment is always, and by far, the preferred option, labour market inactivity remains favoured by a substantial proportion of women from west germany (whether from immigrant or native-born families) and by women from eastern european countries, asia, and africa, making it the second most common attitude combination within these groups when the child is younger than two. with the exception of women in east germany, full-time employment is not favoured until the youngest child is twelve years old; among east germans, this is already the case when the child is four. women from asia and africa are an exception, however, as they are more supportive of part-time employment for mothers, regardless of children’s age. as for men’s attitudes toward maternal employment, our results show that the majority of east german men believe that mothers of eight-year-old children should work full-time, while only half of women hold this view. from a policy perspective, our results show that the availability of day care for children before school age as well as afternoon care for elementary school children is important and necessary, because attitudes are in favour of mothers working. the entitlement to an after-school care place from 2025 seems to be a promising • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege358 measure to attract more mothers to the german labour market (see also gambaro et al. 2019; bach et al. 2020) as the provision of school lunches and after-school programs are necessary to enable even part-time work, once commuting times are taken into account. moreover, there is also a need for more all-day care slots in day care centres for toddlers and preschool children. up to now, the legal entitlement for a day care slot before school covers six hours only, which might not be enough to enable the employment of mothers and fathers. future studies will have to examine whether the expansion of day care services for primary school children will further change attitudes toward maternal employment in the same way that the provision of day care services for very young children resulted in greater approval for maternal employment (see e.g., zoch/ schober 2018; ellingsæter et al. 2017). immigrant women disapproving of maternal employment are of particular interest, as this group currently has the lowest labour force participation rate and a low attendance rate in day care, although they express a demand for higher attendances (bmfsfj 2020 and schmitz et al. 2023). a better availability and quality of day care could contribute to increase their attachment to and participation in the labour force (e.g., gambaro et al. 2021). while most opinion surveys have been slow to investigate views on fathers’ employment, we were able to test whether support for fathers working full-time remains universal. our results show that while the majority of respondents across all groups express the view that fathers should work full-time regardless of their children’s age, support for paternal part-time employment is sizable. for example, among men from west germany and other western countries, a substantial percentage believe that fathers of two-year-olds should work part-time. this needs to be considered by policy makers and employers when designing and implementing reconciliation measures. in sum, freda offers many possibilities for the analysis of gender norms among different groups of families. investigating attitudes about mothers’ and fathers’ employment, as we do here, can help illuminate underlying changes in cultural norms, and, importantly, can provide clues about how to craft work and family policies that garner public support. acknowledgements we would like to thank clara schäper, sophia schmitz and pia schober for helpful discussions. ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spieß and elena ziege are also grateful to 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(bib). wiesbaden, germany. university of tübingen, institute of sociology. tübingen, germany. e-mail: ludovica.gambaro@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/gambaro/gambaro.html prof. dr. c. katharina spiess. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. johannes gutenberg university mainz. mainz, germany. iza institute of labor economics. bonn, germany. e-mail: direktorin@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/spiess/spiess.html prof. dr. katharina wrohlich. diw berlin – german institute for economic research. berlin, germany. university of potsdam. potsdam, germany. iza institute of labor economics. bonn, germany. e-mail: kwrohlich@diw.de url: https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.10990.en elena ziege. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. johannes gutenberg university mainz. mainz, germany. e-mail: elena.ziege@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/ziege/ziege.html should mama or papa work? • 363 appendix tab. a1: number of observations per group 2 years 4 years 8 years 12 years 18 years women east germany 1,922 392 373 411 355 west germany 7,004 1,449 1,442 1,444 1,551 western countries 190 42 34 41 39 eastern europe 667 134 136 136 134 asia and africa 269 47 64 51 53 second generation migrants 423 92 101 75 88 men east germany 1,453 289 331 327 337 west germany 5,807 1,326 1,258 1,298 1,292 western countries 159 40 34 34 37 eastern europe 447 95 97 97 104 asia and africa 270 52 71 59 51 second generation migrants 373 100 83 83 77 source: freda (2021), own calculations. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege364 tab. a2: attitudes toward maternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child (by gender) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 2 years 4 years 8 years 12 years 18 years women country of origin (ref: native (west germany)) east germany 1.224*** 1.488*** 1.084*** 0.995*** 0.299 (0.087) (0.179) (0.187) (0.174) (0.218) western countries 0.592+ -0.378 -1.113+ -0.359 -0.965+ (0.330) (0.564) (0.604) (0.602) (0.570) eastern europe -0.010 0.203 -0.079 -0.149 -0.324 (0.206) (0.436) (0.432) (0.442) (0.397) asia and africa -0.462 -1.971** -0.629 -0.560 -1.436** (0.318) (0.687) (0.743) (0.722) (0.545) second generation migrants -0.565** 0.419 -0.810* -0.095 -0.161 (0.174) (0.398) (0.370) (0.385) (0.524) highest educational degree (ref: no degree) vocational degree 0.003 -0.359 -0.755*** -0.209 -0.168 (0.109) (0.250) (0.228) (0.220) (0.242) tertiary education 0.776*** 0.290 -0.034 0.145 0.202 (0.110) (0.236) (0.218) (0.219) (0.247) labour force status (ref: not employed) part-time 0.220* 0.129 -0.465* -0.184 -0.223 (0.111) (0.267) (0.234) (0.218) (0.251) full-time 0.738*** 1.058*** 0.875*** 0.842*** 0.733** (0.115) (0.253) (0.220) (0.219) (0.265) age -0.028** 0.017 -0.009 -0.022 0.006 (0.010) (0.024) (0.023) (0.022) (0.019) duration of stay in germany -0.003 -0.038+ -0.031 -0.020 -0.030+ (0.009) (0.022) (0.021) (0.020) (0.018) observations 10226 2129 2114 2128 2183 should mama or papa work? • 365 tab. a2: continuation (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 2 years 4 years 8 years 12 years 18 years men country of origin (ref: native (west germany)) east germany 1.374*** 1.363*** 1.206*** 1.355*** 0.324 (0.092) (0.194) (0.214) (0.231) (0.262) western countries 0.232 -1.176+ -1.019+ -0.178 -0.910 (0.312) (0.683) (0.612) (0.534) (0.793) eastern europe -0.638** -0.002 -1.176** 0.0920 -0.238 (0.227) (0.493) (0.401) (0.422) (0.426) asia and africa -0.652* -0.782 -1.625*** -0.335 -0.394 (0.303) (0.624) (0.431) (0.507) (0.697) second generation migrants -0.161 -0.145 0.0211 -0.160 -0.297 (0.165) (0.322) (0.344) (0.369) (0.454) highest educational degree (ref: no degree) vocational degree -0.008 -0.654** -0.089 -0.008 -0.060 (0.104) (0.206) (0.219) (0.212) (0.299) tertiary education 0.549*** -0.233 0.766*** 0.566** -0.060 (0.105) (0.211) (0.225) (0.209) (0.292) labour force status (ref: not employed) part-time 0.052 0.252 -0.060 -0.303 -0.369 (0.140) (0.294) (0.294) (0.304) (0.335) full-time 0.219+ 0.298 0.132 0.320 0.602* (0.125) (0.268) (0.245) (0.256) (0.296) age -0.003 0.027 0.040 -0.036* 0.015 (0.011) (0.023) (0.026) (0.018) (0.024) duration of stay in germany -0.017 -0.026 -0.068** -0.004 -0.033 (0.010) (0.020) (0.024) (0.017) (0.023) observations 8418 1888 1855 1875 1883 note: + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. standard errors in parentheses. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege366 tab. a3: attitudes toward paternal employment depending on the age of the youngest child (by gender) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 2 years 4 years 8 years 12 years 18 years women country of origin (ref: native (west germany)) east germany 0.053 0.133 0.222 0.216 -0.207 (0.078) (0.195) (0.209) (0.215) (0.294) western countries -0.543+ -0.979+ -0.248 -1.623* -0.439 (0.290) (0.532) (0.690) (0.759) (0.776) eastern europe 0.438* 0.204 -0.063 0.144 0.556 (0.206) (0.482) (0.484) (0.582) (0.665) asia and africa 0.182 0.391 -0.639 -0.632 -2.357*** (0.350) (0.688) (0.663) (0.708) (0.676) second generation migrants -0.067 0.439 -0.518 0.374 -0.451 (0.174) (0.450) (0.466) (0.490) (0.725) highest educational degree (ref: no degree) vocational degree 0.402*** 0.342 0.157 0.554+ 0.437 (0.100) (0.218) (0.270) (0.291) (0.354) tertiary education -0.471*** -0.424* -0.807*** -0.388 -0.425 (0.096) (0.208) (0.225) (0.263) (0.319) labour force status (ref: not employed) part-time -0.135 -0.244 -0.301 -0.350 -0.378 (0.098) (0.218) (0.243) (0.266) (0.309) full-time 0.236* 0.157 0.303 0.756** 0.709+ (0.097) (0.224) (0.244) (0.266) (0.389) age 0.036*** 0.046* 0.054* 0.010 0.058* (0.011) (0.022) (0.025) (0.024) (0.028) duration of stay in germany -0.012 -0.021 -0.047+ -0.018 -0.048+ (0.010) (0.020) (0.025) (0.022) (0.028) observations 10226 2129 2114 2128 2183 should mama or papa work? • 367 tab. a3: continuation (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 2 years 4 years 8 years 12 years 18 years men country of origin (ref: native (west germany)) east germany 0.201* 0.297 0.256 0.856** -0.854** (0.096) (0.234) (0.260) (0.275) (0.318) western countries -0.769* -0.995 -1.563* -0.435 -0.903 (0.311) (0.668) (0.719) (0.523) (0.968) eastern europe 0.335 0.733 0.473 -0.211 -0.450 (0.249) (0.587) (0.731) (0.662) (0.546) asia and africa 0.181 1.046 -0.598 0.588 -0.342 (0.380) (0.807) (0.645) (0.841) (0.860) second generation migrants 0.391* 0.562 -0.101 0.698 -0.661 (0.189) (0.379) (0.470) (0.470) (0.708) highest educational degree (ref: no degree) vocational degree 0.097 -0.093 -0.276 -0.117 0.116 (0.111) (0.258) (0.299) (0.292) (0.410) tertiary education -0.480*** -0.778** -0.318 -0.653* -0.458 (0.110) (0.259) (0.303) (0.277) (0.377) labour force status (ref: not employed) part-time -0.344* -0.337 -0.282 -0.707* -0.696+ (0.134) (0.285) (0.309) (0.340) (0.423) full-time 0.745*** 1.178*** 1.032*** 0.886** 0.869* (0.120) (0.268) (0.295) (0.320) (0.392) age 0.032* -0.006 0.027 0.009 0.019 (0.013) (0.029) (0.040) (0.023) (0.023) duration of stay in germany -0.024+ 0.002 -0.041 -0.017 -0.017 (0.012) (0.026) (0.038) (0.021) (0.020) observations 8334 1876 1845 1862 1871 note: + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. standard errors in parentheses. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. • ludovica gambaro, c. katharina spiess, katharina wrohlich, elena ziege368 fig. a1: attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment for parents of two-year-olds (a) women (b) men 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 male breadwinner model 1,5 earner model adult worker model dual earner/dual carer model 1,5 carer model residual category east germany west germany western countries eastern europe asia and africa second generation migrants 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 male breadwinner model 1,5 earner model adult worker model dual earner/dual carer model 1,5 carer model residual category east germany west germany western countries eastern europe asia and africa second generation migrants note: the fi gures show the attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment for parents of two-year-olds. adult worker model includes answers which state that the both parents should work full-time. dual carer/dual earner model are answers in which both parents should work part-time. the 1,5 earner model is a category in which the mother should work part-time and the father full-time, the 1,5 carer model that the mother should not work and the father should work part-time. the male breadwinner model describes a scenario in which the mother should not work and the father should work full-time. the residual category includes all other answers. due to small sample sizes, we cannot calculate valid numbers for some categories and therefore categories with less than 30 individuals are not shown in the graph. source: freda (2021), weighted, own calculations. percentage percentage published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel abstract: understanding the alignment of eastern european immigrants’ attitudes with those of their host societies in western europe is critical for exploring cultural convergence and divergence, particularly in the context of mass migration and freedom of movement within the european union (eu). this study examines the extent to which polish migrants’ attitudes towards non-marital family forms − cohabitation, divorce, and single motherhood − align with those of both their host (dutch) and sending (polish) societies, thereby increasing understanding of the challenges involved in cultural assimilation processes in europe. using data from the polish and netherlands generations and gender survey (ggs) and the families of poles in the netherlands (fpn) survey, we estimate a series of regression models to assess how nativity status influences attitudes towards non-marital family forms. we further examine the role of social integration indicators − such as dutch language proficiency and usage, post-migration education, and having a dutch partner − in shaping these attitudes among polish migrants. polish migrants show greater acceptance of cohabitation and divorce than polish non-migrants, although their attitudes regarding divorce are more aligned with those of dutch non-migrants than polish non-migrants. they exhibit less acceptance of single motherhood than both polish and dutch non-migrants, and these attitudes are not significantly influenced by social integration factors typically associated with host-country assimilation. our findings suggest that polish migrants’ attitudes towards non-marital family forms reflect a mix of assimilation and sui generis adaptation, combining elements of origin and host cultures with views shaped by the unique conditions of migration. this study advances the literature on migrant acculturation by identifying unique patterns of attitudes among polish migrants in the netherlands. it also suggests that migrants are at the forefront of cultural encounters, contributing to greater convergence on some, but not all, attitudes across eu member states. keywords: immigration · adaptation · non-marital family attitudes · poland · netherlands comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 265-300 (date of release: 28.10.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-15 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-15en http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-15 • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel266 1 introduction migration within europe has emerged as a key driver of cultural change, with migrants acting as vectors of cultural diffusion by absorbing, transmitting, and blending cultural norms (rapoport et al. 2020). these different processes – often framed as cultural assimilation, dissemination, or hybridization – shape whether migration fosters cultural convergence. when these processes are absent or limited, however, cultural divergence may persist or even deepen. nowhere is this tension between cultural convergence and divergence more pronounced than within the european union (eu), a political and cultural project that emphasizes shared values such as democracy and human rights, freedom, tolerance, and gender equality, yet encompasses societies with diverse historical, religious, and cultural legacies. while prior research (akaliyski et al. 2022) has primarily examined the extent to which officially declared eu values are accepted, this study shifts attention to attitudes regarding three non-marital family forms, namely cohabitation, divorce, and single motherhood. these attitudes are of interest not only because they represent crucial, yet underexplored, dimensions of cultural change within the eu, but also because they are associated with the second demographic transition (sdt), which views shifts towards values of post-materialism, individualism, and selfactualization as bringing about change in family-related behaviors and attitudes (cf. lesthaeghe 2014). the gender revolution, which refers to dramatic progress towards gender equality over the past 50 years, primarily in terms of women’s educational attainment and employment (england 2010; goldin 2006), has been viewed as an important driver of family-related trends associated with the second demographic transition (sobotka 2008: 211). using polish migrants in the netherlands as a case study, we ask two questions. first, how do attitudes towards non-marital family forms differ between firstgeneration polish immigrants living in the netherlands and non-migrants living in poland and the netherlands? second, do polish migrants’ attitudes towards nonmarital family forms vary by the extent to which they are an integral part of dutch society? our findings with regard to single motherhood challenge conventional models of assimilation and dissemination by demonstrating that the attitudes held by polish migrants are less accepting than those of both dutch and polish nonmigrants. while our analysis focuses only on three specific attitudes, the pattern for the single motherhood attitude suggests that migrants do not simply absorb or transmit attitudes from either their origin or host society. instead, they may develop a distinct cultural hybrid, holding some attitudes that draw upon either the origin or the host cultures and other attitudes that are shaped by the unique conditions of the migrant experience and do not prevail in either society. this novel insight complicates existing understandings of cultural convergence and divergence within europe, highlighting the dynamic role played by migrants in reshaping shared values and fostering integration. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 267 2 background the literature on migration as a channel of cultural diffusion identifies several mechanisms through which migrants act as agents of cultural exchange. these include the transmission of values and attitudes from migrants to the native population of the host society (“dissemination”; cf. giuliano/tabellini 2020), from migrants to their origin society (“cultural remittances”; see levitt 1998), or from the host society to migrants (“assimilation”; cf. abramitzky et al. 2014; fouka et al. 2022). this study focuses on the third mechanism, assimilation, which has often been linked in public discourse and policy debates to concerns about immigrants failing to adopt the host culture. these concerns may include fears of cultural dilution, loss of ethnic cohesion, or even so-called “ethnic replacement” within the host society (coleman 2006; rapoport et al. 2020). while our primary focus here is on the process of cultural assimilation, defined as the adoption by immigrants of the dominant society’s norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors (gordon 1964), we also consider how cultural assimilation may be related to social integration, the incorporation of immigrants into core social institutions, such as education, language, and marriage, and the social life of the host country (gordon 1964; alba/nee 2003). the literature on attitudinal change (bolzendahl/myers 2004; brooks/bolzendahl 2004), immigrant assimilation (fitzgerald et al. 2014; röder/lubbers 2016; röder/ mühlau 2014), and migrants’ family-related attitudes (de valk/liefbroer 2007; holland/de valk 2013; mussino/ortensi 2018) provide various explanations for individual differences in attitudes. one explanation, socialization, relies on exposurebased models of attitude formation to suggest that attitudes are shaped by one’s environment. according to this view, attitudes developed early in life through social institutions and personal experiences have a lasting impact on individuals (davis/ greenstein 2009; röder 2015). migrants often originate from more traditional (less individualistic), familistic societies where institutions, such as religion and family, socialize individuals to view non-marital family behaviors, such as divorce and cohabitation, as less acceptable or desirable (or as socially stigmatized) compared to traditional heterosexual marriage with its different and unequal roles for men and women (cf. de valk/liefbroer 2007; ferree 2010; ridgeway 2011; rumbaut/portes 2001). subsequently, migrants may be more reluctant to adopt attitudes prevailing in their host country (röder/mühlau 2014; su et al. 2010). a socialization explanation suggests that migrants’ pre-migration attitudes will persist after migration and remain aligned with those of non-migrants in the origin country. a second explanation, adaptation, also aligns with exposure-based models of attitude formation, in that life course transitions, including migration, expose individuals to new ideas and situations that can influence their attitudes. in the context of migration, individuals may increasingly abandon the dominant attitudes of their country of origin in favor of those of the destination country (alba/nee 1997). the extent to which cultural assimilation occurs may depend at least in part on the migrant’s level of social integration within the host country, which is shaped by several factors. research has shown that where migrants stay in the host country for longer, alignment with the host country’s attitudes is greater (fitzgerald et al. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel268 2014; röder 2015; röder/mühlau 2014). for example, fitzgerald et al. (2014) found that among eastern european immigrants relocating to western europe, longer periods of residency correlated with more tolerant views towards homosexuality, aligning with the prevalent attitudes in the host countries. this type of alignment may also be influenced by the age at which migration occurs, as suggested by röder and mühlau (2014). however, some research shows only modest effects of migration duration on attitudes (breidahl/larsen 2016) or effects for certain family-related attitudes but not others (williams et al. 2014). duration of residence alone may not fully capture the complexities of adaptation, as it does not account for the degree of interpersonal contact outside one’s ethnic group (huijnk et al. 2010; panicacci 2019). living in a host society for an extended period does not necessarily guarantee interaction with individuals who are not co-ethnic, as some migrants reside and work in co-ethnic neighborhoods or immigrant enclaves, limiting their exposure to differing perspectives (danzer/yaman 2013). interacting with native-born (nonmigrant) individuals can promote attitudinal change through social contact, a process that, in non-migrant populations, has been linked to more favorable views of non-traditional family behaviors, such as cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births, in some research (piotrowski et al. 2022; rindfuss et al. 2004). host language proficiency and usage, post-migration education, and having a native-born partner have also been identified as both outcomes and drivers of social integration (martinovic et al. 2009). however, disentangling these bi-directional relationships is challenging in cross-sectional research. two variants of the migrant adaptation perspective – namely classical (full) assimilation and hybrid assimilation – have been identified. the classical assimilation perspective (gordon 1964) views adaptation as a unidimensional process, where the influence of the culture of birth or upbringing gradually lessens for the migrant relative to the culture of the host country. however, this model has been criticized on various grounds (zhou/gonzalez 2019): (1) it assumes that the host society consists of a single dominant culture to which migrants must adapt; (2) it neglects structural constraints – such as ethnic and racial hierarchies – that can be barriers to assimilation; and (3) it assumes a unidirectional process that overlooks selective assimilation and cultural reaffirmation (i.e., holding onto traditions of one’s origin culture). these critiques have led to the development of the hybrid assimilation perspective. here, adaptation has been conceptualized as a bi(multi)dimensional (ryder et al. 2000), integrative (berry 1997, 2005), or transnational (erdal/oeppen 2013) process, suggesting that individuals can adopt elements of the new culture while retaining aspects of their heritage culture. for instance, parrado and flippen (2005) found that mexican immigrant women embraced certain u.s. cultural values regarding gender relations while simultaneously upholding traditional mexican values in that domain. another (overlooked) possibility is that migrants develop attitudes reflecting neither socialization nor adaptation as they navigate social, cultural, and political pressures in the host society. in the netherlands, this navigation has occurred amid intensifying demands for assimilation, reflecting a broader shift in european migration policy towards what vasta (2007) terms a “rhetoric of migrant responsibility,” and attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 269 what bonjour and duyvendak (2018) describe as the “civic integration turn.” although the netherlands has long been seen as tolerant – for example, welcoming religious refugees in the 17th century and embracing multicultural policies in the late 20th century – it has shifted in recent decades to a more assimilationist stance towards immigrants (albada et al. 2021; banting/kymlicka 2013). this shift – most notably following the 2015 refugee crisis – has fueled polarization in public opinion, with growing dissatisfaction over migration policy and increased pressure to take sides in contentious debates about immigrants (albada et al. 2021; scp 2019). against this backdrop, the figure of the “migrant with poor prospects” became central to dutch discourse around migrants’ “responsibility to integrate” (vasta 2007: 718) and civic integration policies. bonjour and duyvendak (2018) argue that this figure is racialized as culturally deficient, particularly with regard to gender and family norms, and framed as fundamentally “unassimilable.” while this framing primarily targets non-european migrants, some of its moral and economic dimensions extend to eu citizens. although poles are legally exempt from civic integration requirements in their capacity as eu nationals (bonjour/duyvendak 2018: 887), they have been variously depicted as low-skilled laborers who either displace native workers or defraud the dutch welfare system (mcginnity/gijsberts 2016), marking them as “poor prospects.” though their whiteness offers some protection against racialized exclusion, they remain subject to stigmatizing moral judgments. a more hostile climate toward polish migrants in the netherlands has emerged, fueled by media and political narratives. sensationalist terms like “polish invasion” and “polish tsunami” (mączka 2014: 196) and far-right initiatives such as the 2012 polenmeldpunt –a website launched by geert wilders’s party for freedom (pvv) encouraging the public to report problems with eastern european migrants – have contributed to their stigmatization (dutch news 2012). pszczółkowska (2024: 154) calls polenmeldpunt the “culmination of the anti-polish attitude,” though it also prompted some media sympathy for exploited polish workers. panel studies using waves of data collected in the months before and after the launch of the polenmeldpunt website support this narrative: polish migrants in the netherlands report rising experiences of discrimination and a weaker sense of belonging over time (gijsberts/lubbers 2015). compared with their counterparts in the uk, germany, and ireland, they face higher and increasing levels of both personal and perceived group discrimination (mcginnity/gijsberts 2016; 2018). dutch public opinion remains divided – 42 percent see immigrants as a burden, while 50 percent see them as a strength (gonzalez-barrera/connor 2019). together, these dynamics make the netherlands a particularly challenging sociopolitical context for polish migrants. this moral framing creates pressure on migrants to adopt values, attitudes, and beliefs that will deflect stigma away from their ethnic group. supporting this view, fleischmann and khoudja (2023) find that among recent immigrants in the netherlands, greater economic participation and endorsement of liberal-egalitarian values on gender, homosexuality, abortion, and divorce are linked to declining religiosity – suggesting that attitudes and beliefs shift in response to secularizing pressures. migrants may also respond to social and cultural pressures within the host • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel270 society by engaging in respectability politics − a strategy whereby marginalized groups adopt certain values, attitudes, and beliefs to secure moral legitimacy within the host society. originally used to describe african american women’s activism in the united states during the early twentieth century, the term has since been applied more broadly to immigrants navigating exclusion and scrutiny (dazey 2021). respectability politics can signal normative conformity and protect the group’s public image. for example, gooding’s (2018) research shows that afro-caribbeans in the united states, by emphasizing cultural differences, distinguish themselves strategically from african americans in order to resist stigma and elevate their perceived status. while the dynamics differ, the same logic applies to migrants in europe. among polish migrants in the netherlands, respectability politics may involve distancing from practices like divorce or single motherhood – behaviors perceived as morally questionable – despite rising acceptance over time to deflect stigma away from their ethnic group. as a result, migrants may hold attitudes towards non-marital family forms that are even more conservative than those that prevail in their origin society as a strategic adaptation to the moral surveillance of the host society (i.e., a sui generis pattern). 3 setting polish migrants in the netherlands offer a compelling case study for two main reasons. first, since joining the eu in 2004, poland has become a major source of migration within central and eastern europe (fihel/grabowska-lusinska 2014). as eu citizens, polish migrants benefit from freedom of movement, which sets them apart from non-eu migrants who face mandatory visa requirements (dagevos 2011). the influx of poles into the netherlands has surpassed traditional migrant groups, such as turks and moroccans (kleinepier et al. 2015). according to statistics netherlands (2018), there are approximately 135,000 first-generation polish immigrants living in the netherlands. polish migrants tend to be young (under 35), relatively welleducated, and proficient in foreign languages (chmielewska et al. 2018). economic motivations primarily drive their migration, and many do not plan to settle permanently. despite often being overqualified for the low-skilled jobs they take in construction, agriculture, or service industries, polish migrants earn higher wages than they would in poland (chmielewska et al. 2018; dagevos 2011; schothorst 2009). second, the cultural contexts of poland and the netherlands differ markedly, particularly in how they have experienced the second demographic transition (sdt). the sdt refers to a broader societal shift in advanced societies towards postmaterialist values, emphasizing individuality, gender equality, and self-actualization − accompanied by the rise of non-marital family forms such as cohabitation, divorce, and childbearing outside of marriage (cf. lesthaeghe 2014). however, scholars have questioned whether these changes unfold as a unified cultural package, arguing instead that their expression is shaped by institutional and historical context (brzozowska 2021; coleman 2004; zaidi/morgan 2017). this is especially true in attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 271 central and eastern europe, where the sdt has followed a distinct trajectory due to the legacy of communism and more conservative societal norms (sobotka 2008). poland, in particular, has been slower to adopt the family behaviors and liberal attitudes typical of western europe, earning itself the label of a “cultural laggard” (kotowska et al. 2008). deeply rooted in conservative catholic traditions and shaped by its post-communist transition, poland continues to trail traditionally protestant, capitalist countries like the netherlands in embracing values such as personal freedom, gender equality, and ethnic tolerance (akaliyski et al. 2022). these between-country cultural gaps are further accentuated by the uneven progress of the “gender revolution,” which has advanced more in the public sphere (e.g., women’s education and employment) than in the private sphere (e.g., the gendered division of household labor) (goldin 2006; england 2010). countries that embraced gender equality earlier, such as those in the nordic region, tend to exhibit more advanced sdt patterns (sobotka 2008). in contrast, in countries like poland (among others), traditional family norms remain more resilient, especially among less-educated groups (kalmijn 2007; furstenberg 2014). the result is a cultural disjuncture: while dutch society generally reflects progressive family norms and gender egalitarianism, polish migrants may bring more traditional attitudes shaped by poland’s slower sdt trajectory. these differences matter, as attitudes toward family life, men’s and women’s roles, and personal freedoms not only shape migrant adaptation but also reflect broader tensions in cultural convergence across the eu. polish migrants in the netherlands thus provide a critical case for examining how migrants navigate conflicting normative environments − and how such friction can both challenge integration and illuminate the barriers to cultural cohesion within europe. to illustrate how poland and the netherlands differ in their attitudes towards the non-marital family forms we study, as well as the broader context of polish immigration to the netherlands, we now turn to differences between the two settings in terms of alternatives to traditional marriage. begall et al. (2023) characterize poland and other eastern european countries (e.g., ukraine, the baltic states) as part of the “familistic class,” reflecting a family-centered ethos that emphasizes both genders’ involvement in domestic life while reinforcing the centrality of household tasks for women. polish society, for its part, remains relatively traditional, with rigid gender-differentiated roles and high societal value placed on marriage and children (kotowska et al. 2008; kraus et al. 2020; sobotka 2008; zygmunt 2017). nevertheless, studies have found a decline in support for traditional attitudes regarding gender and a rise in alternative frameworks, such as “egalitarian familism” (knight/brinton 2017) and the “flexibletraditionalist” model (shu et al. 2025). both characterize a growing acceptance of women’s paid employment, even when they have young children, while maintaining the expectation that women remain primarily responsible for domestic work and childcare. this dual expectation reflects a model that endorses women’s labor force participation without fully embracing gender equality. poles, like their counterparts in other central and eastern european countries, tend to evaluate changes in family formation more negatively than individuals in more secularized societies (kotowska et al. 2008). while non-traditional family forms, • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel272 such as cohabitation, are becoming more accepted, they are still less commonplace than in western europe (kraus et al. 2020; sobotka 2008). however, the extent of attitudinal change varies by family form. disapproval of cohabitation and divorce has declined in poland, and attitudes towards premarital sex and single parenthood have become notably more accepting (treas et al. 2014). however, from an institutional perspective, poland has been unsupportive of single motherhood, for which there is a low degree of social acceptance and limited welfare support (baranowska-rataj et al. 2014; kotowska et al. 2008; sobotka 2008), although there are indications that the situation may have improved more recently (berghammer et al. 2024; frericks et al. 2023). while post-communist poland has experienced some family changes similar to those observed elsewhere in europe − such as higher divorce rates, delayed marriage, lower fertility, and more out-of-wedlock births (krywult-albanska 2016; sobotka/ berghammer 2021) − socio-historical factors have contributed to family-related attitudes that differ from those in the netherlands. the netherlands has been a pioneer in the second demographic transition (sdt) in terms of rising cohabitation, delayed marriage and childbearing, and growing acceptance of diverse family forms (de valk/liefbroer 2007; sobotka/berghammer 2021). the netherlands is also characterized by a greater diversity of gender attitudes than is found in many other european countries, including poland, although egalitarian and “choice egalitarian” (i.e., emphasizing individual choice of work and family roles for both women and men) attitudes predominate (begall et al. 2023). although divorce acceptance has been rising across europe, the increase has been most pronounced in western europe, followed by post-communist countries and then post-soviet countries (fučík 2020). vidal and van damme (2024) describe the netherlands as an intermediate adopter of divorce, with divorce rates peaking in the 1980s, while poland is considered a laggard, with divorce diffusion and peak rates occurring more recently. additionally, the netherlands has undergone significant changes in family policy, such as legislation in 2009 encouraging joint custody of children following divorce, reflecting broader social acceptance of divorce and divorced fathers’ rights (koster/castro‑martín 2021; spijker et al. 2022) and a requirement that couples with children who decide to end their union (marital, civil partnership, or cohabiting) form a “parenting plan,” which is an agreement between the parents about the care and upbringing of their children intended to reduce family conflict and increase child well-being (but see bruijn et al. 2018). cohabitation is widely accepted and increasingly practiced in the netherlands, with most young adults either living independently or cohabiting with a partner for a period after leaving home (de valk/liefbroer 2007). this trend is part of a broader “de-standardization” of family life trajectories, where individual choices and preferences take precedence over traditional marriage norms (vidal/van damme 2024). while specific data on dutch attitudes towards single motherhood are limited, the netherlands’ emphasis on gender egalitarianism and support for female employment suggests a more accepting stance compared with more traditional societies. however, the high prevalence of part-time work among dutch women – nearly 60 percent, significantly above the oecd average for women – highlights the attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 273 persistent gender gap in labor market participation and economic outcomes (oecd 2019). single motherhood is relatively common among some immigrant groups in the netherlands, particularly women from suriname and the netherlands antilles, many of whom balance paid work with parenting responsibilities (de valk/liefbroer 2007). although the netherlands is often seen as accepting of diverse family forms (koops et al. 2012), single mothers – both dutch-born and migrant – still experience stigma, rooted in class and gender norms, in both overt and subtle ways (ypeij 2009). those single mothers reliant on welfare may face compounded stigma (chant 2009). despite reforms aimed at improving financial support for single parents (boer/jongen 2023), most single mothers continue to have relatively low incomes, regardless of their employment status (harkness 2022). research on the social attitudes of polish migrants in the netherlands remains limited, but existing studies suggest notable differences compared with poles residing in poland. for instance, polish migrants in the netherlands tend to hold more favorable attitudes towards homosexuality than their counterparts in poland, which has been attributed to selectivity (röder/lubbers 2015). however, over time, polish migrants’ attitudes towards homosexuality have become less favorable, potentially influenced by negative perceptions within their host country (röder/lubbers 2016). additionally, polish migrants in the netherlands report higher fertility intentions compared with non-migrants living in poland (mondal 2024). collectively, these findings suggest a unique migration adaptation pattern among poles, characterized by a complex interplay of attitudes and behaviors in the host society. 4 hypotheses given poland’s socially conservative and predominantly catholic background, polish non-migrants are expected to hold more traditional (less accepting) attitudes towards cohabitation, divorce, and single motherhood than dutch non-migrants. our hypotheses for polish migrants draw upon socialization and adaptation perspectives. however, due to the limitations of our cross-sectional data, we cannot directly examine migrants’ attitudes prior to migration and whether they change afterwards. the socialization hypothesis (h1) posits that if pre-migration socialization shapes attitudes, polish migrants will resemble polish non-migrants in their lower acceptance of all the non-marital family forms we examine, thereby distinguishing themselves from dutch non-migrants. the classical assimilation hypothesis (h2) posits that polish migrants’ attitudes towards all three non-marital family forms will fall between those of polish and dutch non-migrants or will align with dutch nonmigrants if full assimilation occurs. by extension, h2 suggests that greater social integration – a longer period of residence, having a dutch partner, greater dutch language proficiency and usage, and post-migration education in the netherlands – will be associated with acceptance of the three non-marital family forms we examine. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel274 the hybrid assimilation hypothesis (h3) suggests that polish migrants may align more closely with dutch non-migrants on some attitudes and more closely with polish non-migrants on others. this hypothesis requires a comparative analysis of multiple attitudes but does not specify which will align more with the host (dutch) or origin (polish) society. in contrast, the sui generis adaptation hypothesis (h4) proposes that polish migrants may develop distinct attitudes towards one or more non-marital family forms that diverge from those of both polish and dutch nonmigrants. while it is difficult to predict which, if any, of the three non-marital family forms will support sui generis adaptation, our expectation is that it is most likely to occur for attitudes towards divorce and single motherhood. these behaviors, while tolerated, are not necessarily seen as optimal (cf. ypeij 2009), and may be perceived as obstacles to full acceptance within the host society, potentially leading migrants to reject them. however, it remains unclear whether divorce and single motherhood face an equivalent level of social disapproval, suggesting that migrants may be more accepting of one than of the other. it is important to acknowledge that attitudinal differences may reflect selfselection, whereby migrants’ pre-existing attitudes influence their decision to migrate. however, due to a lack of data on pre-migration attitudes, we cannot directly test this effect. instead, we analyze polish migrants’ social integration (i.e., duration of residence, host language proficiency and usage, post-migration acquisition of education, and having a native-born partner) to strengthen the case for assimilation over selection. 5 methodology 5.1 data data are taken from wave 1 of the polish (2010-2011) and dutch (2002-2004) generations and gender survey (ggs), along with the families of poles in the netherlands (fpn) study (2014-2015), collected during a period of growing integration pressures and rising anti-polish sentiment. a key challenge stems from the fact that these data were collected at different time points, raising the possibility that observed attitudinal differences may reflect temporal discrepancies rather than actual differences in the assimilation experiences of polish migrants. to address this concern, we conducted a sensitivity analysis using a subsample of birth cohorts present across all three time periods to assess the robustness of our findings. additionally, we incorporated external data from the international social attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 275 survey programme (issp)1 to demonstrate stability over time in attitudes towards the behaviors we examine, particularly in the netherlands − the dataset with the largest temporal gap relative to the others. the ggs is part of the generations and gender programme (ggp), which is a crossnational study focusing on families in industrialized countries (for more information, see gauthier et al. 2018; vikat et al. 2007). the polish ggs covers the entire country and collected information from polish-speaking individuals aged 18-79 years. the data were obtained through a multistage sampling design, with enumerated census areas as the primary sampling units and dwellings as the second stage of selection. the national official register of territorial division of the country served as the sampling frame. stratified sampling was employed within provinces (voivodeships), and strata were delineated by municipalities (gminas), cities, or districts. to achieve a sample size of 20,000 individuals, 48,000 sampled addresses were visited. data were collected using paper-and-pencil interviews, resulting in 18,310 completed interviews and 1,677 partial interviews. the dutch ggs encompassed dutch-speaking individuals aged 18-79 years residing in private households throughout the netherlands. the sampling frame relied on residential address data obtained from a subsidiary of dutch mail (tpg post). a random sample of residential addresses (n = 40,000) was drawn, and data collection employed computer-assisted personal interviews and paper-and-pencil interviews. the initial non-response rate was 55.35 percent (12,104/21,869 eligible cases), resulting in 8,161 completed full-length interviews. the fpn survey, based on the ggs, is also a component of the generations and gender programme. the sampling frame for the fpn utilized dutch population registers (basisregistratie personen, brp). all newcomers intending to stay for longer than four months are required to register with their resident municipality, although not all comply. a simple random sample of names and addresses was drawn from statistics netherlands. the selection criteria included being born in poland to at least one polish parent, first-time registration with the brp between january 1, 2004, and august 2014, and aged 18-49 years at the time of the most recent registration (individuals aged 21-58 years were surveyed). data collection involved online surveys and computer-assisted personal interviews conducted in polish or dutch, depending on the respondent’s language skills and preference. the aim was to gather information from approximately 1,000 respondents, but a total of 1,131 completions were achieved. 1 the international social survey programme (issp), established in 1984, conducts annual surveys across 57 member nations, enabling cross-national and longitudinal comparisons. one key module, “family and changing gender roles,” has been replicated four times (1988, 1994, 2002, 2012), examining attitudes towards women’s employment, marriage, parenting, household roles, and workfamily conflict. the issp ensures high-quality, comparable data through a methodology committee that oversees areas including demography, non-response, and translation. more information can be found at https://issp.org/; for more information about the family and changing gender roles module specifically, see scholz et al. (2014). https://issp.org/ • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel276 5.2 analytical sample our analytical sample comprised polish migrants in the netherlands (n = 1,129), polish non-migrants in poland (n = 12,277), and dutch non-migrants in the netherlands (n = 5,132). we restricted the polish and dutch ggs samples to nonmigrants (i.e., native-born individuals) within the age range of the polish migrants in the netherlands sample (21-58 years). listwise deletion of cases missing information on the variables used in our analysis resulted in 3.3 percent of all respondents being excluded. most missing data originated from dependent variables (attitudes towards cohabitation, divorce, single motherhood) in the dutch ggs, with over 7.5 percent of those cases containing invalid data (i.e., listed as “no response/not applicable”). 6 measures and analytical approach to harmonize the fpn data with the polish and dutch ggs data, we created measures of our dependent variables based on the following survey questions, some of which have been used in prior cross-national studies (cf. hogendoorn/van den berg 2024; kreidl/žilinčíková 2021). these questions, despite being in different languages, adopted a similar wording in the three surveys: all three variables were assessed using a five-point likert scale (“least accepting,” “less accepting,” “neutral,” “more accepting,” and “most accepting”), where higher values indicated more accepting views. it is unclear from the question wording whether the single motherhood item pertains to a situation preceding a birth (e.g., a woman choosing to carry a pregnancy to term) or following a birth (e.g., dissolution of a union with the child’s father). additionally, the phrasing of the question implies that the woman is in the situation voluntarily. therefore, it is uncertain whether the responses received from individuals related to single motherhood itself or the absence of a relationship with a man. the divorce item also presents a doublebarreled question in that it asks about both the experience of divorce and the presence of children. our analysis has two parts. first, to assess mechanisms of adaptation (albeit indirectly), we examined how polish migrants in the netherlands compare with (generally more traditional) poles in poland and (generally less traditional) dutch in the netherlands. second, to assess the relationship between attitudes and measures variable literal question (from ggs core questionnaire) cohabitation “it is all right for an unmarried couple to live together even if they have no interest in marriage” divorce “it is all right for a couple with an unhappy marriage to get a divorce even if they have children” single motherhood “a woman can have a child as a single parent even if she doesn’t want to have a stable relationship with a man” attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 277 of social integration (for polish migrants only), we conducted analyses that included measures of dutch language proficiency and usage, post-migration education, duration of migration, and having a native-born (dutch) partner to predict attitudes. for both parts of the analysis, we use a series of ordered logit models, one for each non-familial attitude, collapsing the “least accepting” and “less accepting” categories of each attitudinal item (which had lower sample proportions), thereby giving us four response categories to aid in model estimation.2 in the full-sample analysis, our primary independent variable was nativity status, which was coded as dummy variables indicating whether a respondent was a polish non-migrant, a polish migrant in the netherlands (reference category), or a dutch non-migrant. we controlled for several socio-demographic variables shown to be associated with family-related attitudes (cf. hakovirta et al. 2021; kreidl/žilinčíková 2021; rijken/liefbroer 2012; röder/mühlau 2014), including sex (male = 1, female = 0); age (in years); marital status (dummy variables: never married, married [reference category], divorced or widowed); partnership (residential) status (dummy variables: co-resident partner [reference category], non-resident partner, no partner)3; ever divorced or cohabited (separate dummy variables); single parent (dummy variable); household size (count); number of children (dummy variables: no children [reference category], one child, two children, three or more children); employment status (dummy variables: employed [reference category], unemployed, student, other); and home ownership (a dummy variable proxy for wealth). we measured religious denomination as a set of dummy variables: catholic (reference category), protestant, 2 using brant tests, we assessed the parallel regression assumption for each model. we identified violations of this assumption, particularly in the analysis comparing the three subsamples (part i of the analysis, which used the full sample). substantively, violating this assumption implies that coefficient estimates for certain independent variables could vary across categories of the dependent variable. to address this violation, we employed generalized ordered logit models (see williams 2016) which relax the parallel regression assumption, and we estimated separate equations for different configurations of the dependent variable using a cumulative logit specification similar to an ordered logit regression. in part i, the coefficient estimates – although differing in magnitude – exhibited consistent patterns of direction and statistical significance compared with the ordered logit model. for part ii (migrant-only analysis), brant tests yielded inconclusive results, but the overall pattern was much like the results presented in the ordered logit model. consequently, violating the parallel regression assumption does not appear to undermine any of our key findings. 3 including the partnership (residential) status variable along with marital status resulted in minor collinearity issues. the “married” category exceeded the threshold for a high variance inflation factor, with a value of 5.72 (r-square of .8251, indicating that 82.5 percent of its variation is explained by the combination of other independent variables). as a sensitivity analysis, we estimated models excluding partnership status to eliminate the collinearity problem. we also excluded variables for ever divorced, ever cohabited, and single parenthood status to test for potential overadjustment. the results reflected those reported in our final analysis, except that the difference between polish migrants and dutch non-migrants in terms of their attitude towards divorce became non-significant. this aligns with the findings from our “cohort-specific approach” discussed below. therefore, except for this specific case, we believe that neither collinearity nor over-adjustment significantly affect our results. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel278 other (mostly orthodox christian and jehovah’s witnesses), and none.4 (although the data included measures of religious attendance, which can serve as a measure of religiosity, we had concerns about the quality of the measures and therefore did not use them.) in the analysis focused specifically on polish migrants, the main independent variables were measures of social integration: post-migration acquisition of education, duration of migration, having a native-born (dutch) partner, and dutch language proficiency and usage. post-migration education was measured as a dummy variable for any education acquired after migration that was based on the reported year of migration to the netherlands and the year of completing the highest level of education.5 migration duration, representing the number of years spent in the netherlands, was measured as a continuous variable. in contrast to the analysis using the full sample, where we distinguished between co-resident partners, non-resident partners, or no partners, in the migrant-only analysis, we categorized whether their partner was polish (reference category), dutch, another ethnicity, or if they had no partner. we utilized latent class analysis (lca) to construct a dutch language proficiency and usage measure that included the following: ordinal variables for assessing respondents’ abilities in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing the dutch language and for the frequency with which they watched polish television and dutch television; dummy variables for whether respondents attended dutch language classes and for the language in which the survey questionnaire was completed (polish = 1, dutch = 0); and variables for the language used with their boss, friends, neighbors, or partner (dummy variables for polish, dutch, english, or another language, or indicating non-applicability). descriptive statistics for the language variables used in the lca across the resulting classes, along with fit statistics for models varying the number of classes, are provided in the appendix. the identified classes effectively capture significant variation in dutch language proficiency and usage among polish migrants. class 4 represents the group with the highest proportion of individuals reporting good or very good understanding, speaking, reading, and writing skills in dutch. in contrast, class 1 exhibits the lowest level of dutch language proficiency and usage across these dimensions but a relatively high incidence of english language use by some people, with most respondents indicating poor or no dutch proficiency or usage. classes 2 and 3 fall between classes 1 and 4 in terms of dutch language proficiency and usage, with class 2 having less proficiency and usage than class 3. we label the classes, in order of 4 for the dutch non-migrant sample, we combined “none” with “no response/na” (~10.8 percent of cases), classing respondents who failed to designate a religious denomination as non-religious. about two-thirds of these cases did not have responses on our dependent variablesso they were dropped anyway. 5 if respondents reported completing their education in the same year as migrating to the netherlands, we used additional information on their reason for migration to assign codes. those indicating “education” as the reason were coded as 1 to indicate that they had received education in the netherlands, while all other cases were coded as 0. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 279 proficiency and usage as “least” (class 1), “mid-low” (class 2), “mid-high” (class 3), and “most” (class 4). figure 1 presents the percentage distributions of response categories for the cohabitation, divorce, and single motherhood attitudinal items across the three subsamples, namely polish non-migrants, polish migrants, and dutch non-migrants. the figure illustrates that polish migrants in the netherlands have cohabitation attitudes falling between those of polish and dutch non-migrants. approximately 9 percent of polish non-migrants hold the “most accepting” attitude, compared with fig. 1: distribution of non-marital family form attitudes, across nativity status 0 20 40 60 80 100 po lis h no nm ig ra nt s po lis h m ig ra nt s du tc h no nm ig ra nt s po lis h no nm ig ra nt s po lis h m ig ra nt s du tc h no nm ig ra nt s po lis h no nm ig ra nt s po lis h m ig ra nt s du tc h no nm ig ra nt s 4 18 22 46 9 3 4 13 45 36 22 3 27 65 1 10 22 56 10 4 4 20 50 23 3 7 22 44 24 2 12 26 50 9 5 11 30 40 15 1 6 24 51 17 least accepting less accepting neutral more accepting most accepting percent cohabitation divorce single motherhood n = 18,538 source: data from wave 1 of the polish and dutch generations and gender survey and families of poles in the netherlands. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel280 tab. 1: descriptive statistics for independent variables: full sample and by nativity status polish non-migrants polish migrants dutch non-migrants mean sd mean sd mean sd male 0.44 0.50 0.40 0.49 0.41 0.49 age (in years) 40.65 11.27 33.04 7.15 40.80 9.96 migration duration 5.46 3.26 highest level of education primary or below 0.09 0.29 0.03 0.18 0.04 0.20 secondary 0.66 0.47 0.70 0.46 0.58 0.49 tertiary 0.25 0.43 0.26 0.44 0.38 0.48 has post-migration education 0.07 0.26 dutch language proficiency and usage least 0.23 0.42 mid-low 0.25 0.43 mid-high 0.31 0.46 most 0.20 0.40 employment status employed 0.65 0.48 0.77 0.42 0.73 0.44 unemployed 0.10 0.31 0.07 0.26 0.04 0.19 student 0.03 0.18 0.02 0.14 0.03 0.16 other 0.22 0.41 0.14 0.34 0.20 0.40 marital status never married 0.24 0.43 0.45 0.50 0.33 0.47 married 0.65 0.48 0.44 0.50 0.56 0.50 divorced or widowed 0.11 0.31 0.11 0.31 0.12 0.32 partner status co-resident partner 0.68 0.47 0.77 0.42 0.69 0.46 non-resident partner 0.06 0.23 0.08 0.27 0.08 0.26 no partner 0.26 0.44 0.15 0.35 0.23 0.42 partner status (migrants) polish partner 0.69 0.46 dutch partner 0.11 0.32 partner other ethnicity 0.05 0.23 no partner 0.15 0.35 ever divorced 0.10 0.31 0.13 0.34 0.14 0.35 ever cohabited 0.09 0.29 0.19 0.39 0.27 0.44 single parent 0.08 0.27 0.03 0.18 0.06 0.23 religious denomination catholic 0.96 0.20 0.81 0.39 0.26 0.44 protestant 0.00 0.05 0.01 0.08 0.19 0.39 other 0.01 0.12 0.02 0.13 0.02 0.15 none 0.02 0.15 0.16 0.37 0.52 0.50 attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 281 36 percent of polish migrants and 65 percent of dutch non-migrants. polish migrants exhibit the highest acceptance of divorce, with 73 percent of polish migrants and approximately 66-68 percent of polish and dutch non-migrants respectively, falling into the “most accepting” and “more accepting” categories combined. for single motherhood, similar percentages of polish non-migrants and migrants are in the “most accepting” and “more accepting” categories combined (55-59 percent versus 68 percent of dutch non-migrants), but the percentage exhibiting a “least accepting” attitude is higher among polish migrants (5 percent) than it is for polish non-migrants and dutch non-migrants (approximately 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively). table 1 presents descriptive statistics for independent variables across nativity status groups, though we do not discuss these in detail for the sake of brevity. multivariable regression allows us to assess the impact of nativity status on attitudes towards non-marital family forms. the ordered logit regression results in table 2 align with the patterns shown in figure 1. polish non-migrants are the least accepting of cohabitation, followed by polish migrants, while dutch non-migrants are the most accepting − supporting the classical assimilation perspective. for divorce, polish migrants exhibit higher acceptance than both polish and dutch nonmigrants. similarly, polish migrants are less accepting of single motherhood than either group of non-migrants, which is consistent with sui generis adaptation. to test the robustness of our findings, we re-estimated all models using a restricted age range (21-35 years) to better align the age distributions of dutch and polish non-migrants with polish migrants. the results (available on request) remained broadly consistent with table 2, although the difference between polish migrants and dutch non-migrants on the divorce attitude became non-significant. we also re-estimated the models using only birth cohorts common across all three subsamples (1956-1985; n = 13,875; see table 3). since data collection years varied, age ranges differed: polish non-migrants were 24-55 years, polish migrants were 2958 years, and dutch non-migrants were 17-47 years. due to collinearity concerns, tab. 1: continuation polish non-migrants polish migrants dutch non-migrants mean sd mean sd mean sd number of children no children 0.26 0.44 0.46 0.50 0.35 0.48 1 child 0.24 0.42 0.30 0.46 0.14 0.35 2 children 0.33 0.47 0.17 0.38 0.33 0.47 3 or more children 0.18 0.39 0.07 0.26 0.18 0.38 homeowner 0.67 0.47 0.28 0.45 0.68 0.47 household size 3.27 1.50 2.75 1.23 2.72 1.38 n 12277 1129 5132 source: data from wave 1 of the polish and dutch generations and gender survey and families of poles in the netherlands. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel282 tab. 2: ordered logit regressions of attitudes towards non-marital family forms cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se variables sample polish migrants .ref .ref .ref polish -0.946*** 0.07 -0.263*** 0.07 0.245*** 0.06 dutch 1.828*** 0.08 -0.154* 0.07 0.578*** 0.07 male 0.125*** 0.03 -0.303*** 0.03 -0.312*** 0.03 age (in years) 0.022 0.01 0.049*** 0.01 0.056*** 0.01 age squared -0.001*** 0.00 -0.001*** 0.00 -0.001*** 0.00 highest level of education primary or below .ref .ref .ref secondary 0.097 0.06 0.156** 0.06 0.076 0.06 tertiary 0.397*** 0.06 0.289*** 0.06 0.090 0.06 employment status employed .ref .ref .ref unemployed 0.178*** 0.05 -0.011 0.05 0.088 0.05 student 0.190 0.10 -0.062 0.09 0.096 0.09 other -0.094* 0.04 -0.036 0.04 0.004 0.04 marital status married .ref .ref .ref never married 0.501*** 0.07 0.299*** 0.07 0.110 0.07 divorced or widowed 0.335*** 0.08 0.124 0.08 -0.046 0.08 partner status co-resident partner .ref .ref .ref non-resident partner -0.094 0.08 -0.049 0.08 0.077 0.08 no partner -0.432*** 0.07 -0.160* 0.07 -0.038 0.07 ever divorced 0.625*** 0.06 0.808*** 0.06 0.226*** 0.06 ever cohabited 0.703*** 0.06 0.283*** 0.06 0.250*** 0.05 single parent 0.172* 0.07 0.215** 0.07 0.418*** 0.07 religious denomination catholic .ref .ref .ref protestant -1.554*** 0.08 -0.588*** 0.07 -0.269*** 0.07 other -0.681*** 0.12 -0.285* 0.11 -0.673*** 0.11 none 0.572*** 0.06 0.520*** 0.05 0.336*** 0.05 household size -0.110*** 0.01 -0.058*** 0.01 -0.064*** 0.01 number of children no children .ref .ref .ref 1 child 0.275*** 0.06 0.185*** 0.05 0.221*** 0.05 2 children 0.132* 0.06 0.133* 0.06 0.118* 0.05 3 or more children -0.141* 0.07 -0.057 0.07 -0.022 0.07 homeowner -0.137*** 0.03 -0.015 0.03 -0.067* 0.03 attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 283 we controlled for age (and its square) but not birth cohort. the results confirm that polish migrants are less accepting of cohabitation than dutch non-migrants but more accepting than polish non-migrants, supporting a classical assimilation pattern. for single motherhood, polish migrants are less accepting than both nonmigrant groups, aligning with sui generis adaptation. however, differences in divorce attitudes between polish migrants and dutch non-migrants (as in the age-restricted analysis) were not statistically significant. this suggests that while polish migrants are more accepting of divorce than polish non-migrants, they do not differ from dutch non-migrants − consistent with classical (full) assimilation. to further investigate the discontinuity in data collection years for our three subsamples, we utilized data from the international social survey programme (issp) for the netherlands for 2002 and 2012, which were the only available years that covered our study period. to ensure comparability with our study, we restricted our analysis to individuals aged 21-58 years, matching the age range in our study. we examined attitudes towards cohabitation, divorce, and single parenthood across these years.6 figure 2 illustrates that there was minimal change in attitudes towards cohabitation and single parenthood over the 10-year period. however, tab. 2: continuation cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se cut points τ1 -2.376*** 0.27 -1.510*** 0.27 -0.744** 0.26 τ2 -1.283*** 0.27 -0.057 0.27 0.786** 0.26 τ3 1.279*** 0.27 2.594*** 0.27 3.375*** 0.26 n 18538 18538 18538 log likelihood -19811.32 -21361.49 -21882.33 aic 39678.63 42778.97 43820.65 bic 39897.80 42998.15 44039.82 * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 source: data from wave 1 of the polish and dutch generations and gender survey and families of poles in the netherlands. 6 the issp survey items are slightly different from those used in the ggs. the issp questions are as follows: “it is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married” (cohabitation); “divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can’t seem to work out their marriage problems” (divorce); and “one parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together” (single parenthood). beyond question wording, differences between the issp and ggs results may arise from two main factors: (1) in the issp data, we were unable to specifically analyze the native (non-migrant) population alone, which could impact the comparison; and (2) the sample sizes in the issp data are considerably smaller than the dutch ggs sample, which may affect the precision of estimates and potentially introduce sampling variability. • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel284 there was some decline in support for divorce over time, consistent with a trend towards “re-traditionalization” in this attitude, as noted in some of the literature (cf. kreyenfeld/trappe 2020). we posit that if we had used more recent dutch data in our full-sample analysis, the difference in attitudes towards divorce between polish migrants and dutch non-migrants would likely be more pronounced. nevertheless, due to inconsistent results for divorce across analyses (full-sample, age-restricted, and cohort-specific designs), we cannot assert that the difference in attitudes towards divorce between the dutch non-migrant and polish migrant subsamples reported in table 2 is robust. however, we have greater confidence in the results presented in table 2 for attitudes towards cohabitation and single motherhood, as they are unlikely to be merely an artifact of the time discontinuity across our subsamples, given the minimal change observed in these attitudes over time in the dutch issp data. fig. 2: percent distribution of non-marital family form attitudes, ages 21-58, in the netherlands in years 2002-2012 0 20 40 60 80 100 13 4 51 41 4 4 5 47 40 2 7 17 56 19 5 12 26 48 9 3 31 24 36 7 5 30 21 37 7 least accepting less accepting neutral more accepting most accepting percent cohabitation divorce single motherhood n = 1,581 2002 2012 2002 2012 2002 2012 source: 2002 and 2012 nl issp. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 285 tab. 3: ordered logit regressions of attitudes towards non-marital family forms (cohort design) cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se variables sample polish migrants .ref .ref .ref polish -0.989*** 0.08 -0.360*** 0.08 0.148* 0.07 dutch 1.726*** 0.09 -0.087 0.09 0.494*** 0.08 male 0.113** 0.04 -0.357*** 0.04 -0.317*** 0.03 age (in years) 0.068*** 0.02 0.062*** 0.02 0.049** 0.02 age squared -0.001*** 0.00 -0.001*** 0.00 -0.001** 0.00 highest level of education primary or below .ref .ref .ref secondary 0.024 0.07 0.142* 0.07 0.083 0.07 tertiary 0.338*** 0.07 0.294*** 0.07 0.067 0.07 employment status employed .ref .ref .ref unemployed 0.125* 0.06 0.019 0.06 0.126* 0.06 student 0.437** 0.15 0.076 0.13 0.333** 0.13 other -0.103* 0.05 -0.089 0.05 -0.038 0.05 marital status married .ref .ref .ref never married 0.518*** 0.09 0.303*** 0.08 0.162* 0.08 divorced or widowed 0.364*** 0.10 0.134 0.09 -0.025 0.09 partner status co-resident partner .ref .ref .ref non-resident partner -0.065 0.10 -0.064 0.09 0.048 0.09 no partner -0.393*** 0.08 -0.194* 0.08 -0.158* 0.08 ever divorced 0.667*** 0.08 0.905*** 0.08 0.229** 0.08 ever cohabited 0.731*** 0.07 0.229*** 0.06 0.168** 0.06 single parent 0.116 0.09 0.222** 0.09 0.489*** 0.09 religious denomination catholic .ref .ref .ref protestant -1.815*** 0.10 -0.801*** 0.09 -0.292*** 0.09 other -0.706*** 0.13 -0.412** 0.13 -0.757*** 0.13 none 0.545*** 0.07 0.465*** 0.06 0.319*** 0.06 household size -0.121*** 0.02 -0.065*** 0.02 -0.073*** 0.02 number of children no children .ref .ref .ref 1 child 0.301*** 0.06 0.173** 0.06 0.207*** 0.06 2 children 0.187** 0.07 0.167* 0.07 0.154* 0.07 3 or more children -0.025 0.08 -0.044 0.08 0.034 0.08 homeowner -0.135*** 0.04 -0.030 0.04 -0.054 0.04 • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel286 results for the control variables in tables 2 and 3 show that males are more accepting of cohabitation and females are more accepting of divorce and single motherhood.7 age has a curvilinear (inverted u-shaped) effect on acceptance (except for cohabitation in table 2). education is significantly (and positively) associated with cohabitation and divorce attitudes only. with few exceptions, acceptance of nonmarital family forms is higher among the never married (versus the married), those who have ever divorced (or been widowed), those who have ever cohabited, single parents, and those who have one or two children (versus none). acceptance of nonmarital family forms is generally lower among those without a partner (versus those with a coresident partner), those from larger households, and protestants and those of other religions (versus catholics), but acceptance is higher among those with no religious affiliation. table 4 presents ordered logit results for polish migrants’ attitudes towards non-marital family forms, incorporating social integration and control variables. the key finding is that social integration factors − dutch language proficiency and usage, migration duration, post-migration education, and having a dutch partner − are not significantly associated with attitudes towards single motherhood. for cohabitation, mid-low and mid-high dutch language proficiency and usage are negatively associated with acceptance (relative to the highest proficiency and usage group), while post-migration education is positively associated. this points to postmigration adaptation rather than pre-migration selection as a key mechanism, although, strictly speaking, selection cannot be ruled out entirely. regarding divorce tab. 3: continuation cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se cut points τ1 -1.773*** 0.39 -1.429*** 0.38 -1.127** 0.37 τ2 -0.666 0.39 0.025 0.38 0.419 0.37 τ3 1.927*** 0.39 2.700*** 0.38 3.025*** 0.37 n 13875 13875 13875 log likelihood -14717.95 -15850.36 -16285.90 aic 29491.91 31756.72 32627.79 bic 29702.97 31967.78 32838.85 *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 source: data from wave 1 of the polish and dutch generations and gender survey and families of poles in the netherlands. 7 we also tested interaction effects between sex and nativity status but generally found that males and females held similar views on the three non-marital family forms across nativity status, consistent with our main results. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 287 cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se variables dutch language proficiency and usage least -0.313 0.20 -0.571** 0.20 -0.135 0.19 mid-low -0.380* 0.19 -0.566** 0.19 -0.165 0.18 mid-high -0.378* 0.18 -0.334 0.18 -0.037 0.17 most .ref .ref .ref migration duration 0.015 0.02 -0.018 0.02 0.002 0.02 male 0.197 0.13 -0.268* 0.13 -0.047 0.13 age (in years) -0.005 0.01 0.025* 0.01 0.029** 0.01 highest level of education primary or below .ref .ref .ref secondary 0.107 0.32 0.150 0.33 0.387 0.33 tertiary 0.080 0.34 0.410 0.35 0.350 0.34 has post-migration education 0.683** 0.26 -0.168 0.24 0.062 0.24 employment status employed .ref .ref .ref unemployed 0.084 0.23 0.098 0.23 -0.136 0.22 student -0.525 0.41 -0.736 0.44 0.658 0.41 other -0.231 0.18 -0.034 0.18 -0.170 0.17 marital status married .ref .ref .ref never married 0.506*** 0.15 0.663*** 0.15 0.052 0.15 divorced or widowed 1.495*** 0.33 0.477 0.33 0.052 0.31 partner status polish partner .ref .ref .ref dutch partner -0.058 0.21 -0.446* 0.21 0.122 0.20 partner other ethnicity 0.200 0.28 -0.020 0.28 -0.062 0.25 no partner -0.360 0.20 -0.510** 0.19 -0.047 0.19 ever divorced -0.435 0.30 0.380 0.31 -0.182 0.29 ever cohabited 0.256 0.16 0.008 0.15 0.009 0.15 single parent -0.027 0.36 0.489 0.35 0.523 0.34 religious denomination catholic .ref .ref .ref protestant 0.231 0.67 -0.388 0.66 0.462 0.66 other -1.869*** 0.47 -1.239** 0.44 -1.048* 0.44 none 0.675*** 0.17 0.728*** 0.16 0.411** 0.15 household size -0.002 0.06 -0.012 0.05 -0.060 0.05 number of children no children .ref .ref .ref 1 child 0.165 0.16 -0.154 0.16 0.023 0.15 2 children -0.046 0.21 0.032 0.20 -0.054 0.20 3 or more children -0.260 0.29 -0.341 0.29 0.309 0.28 homeowner 0.235 0.14 0.143 0.14 0.005 0.14 tab. 4: ordered logit regressions of attitudes towards non-marital family forms (migrants only) • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel288 attitudes, low and mid-low dutch language proficiency and usage are negatively associated with acceptance. additionally, having a dutch partner (versus a polish one) is linked to lower acceptance of divorce, possibly reflecting a general effect of partnering rather than an effect of migration per se. notably, migration duration does not significantly affect any attitudes, indicating that simply residing in the host society is insufficient for cultural assimilation. 7 discussion and conclusion our study addresses the underexamined topic of attitudes towards divorce, cohabitation, and single motherhood − types of family behavior that have been linked to the second demographic transition and the gender revolution − among polish migrants, polish non-migrants, and dutch non-migrants. attitudinal differences between old and new eu member states have implications for cultural divergence across europe. by examining attitudes among polish migrants and polish and dutch non-migrants, this research contributes towards understanding the cultural dimensions of eu integration (or the lack thereof) and the role of eastern european migrants living in western europe as cultural agents. our use of multiple types of non-marital family attitudes also helps to understand the uneven adoption of the second demographic transition and its implications for migrant assimilation. our findings indicate that polish migrants in the netherlands are more accepting of divorce than polish non-migrants. however, differences between polish migrants and dutch non-migrants are not robust across all models, though some suggest greater adoption of dutch divorce attitudes than of cohabitation attitudes by polish migrants. for cohabitation, polish migrants’ views fall between those of polish and dutch non-migrants. these patterns align with the classical assimilation perspective, indicating that migrants adjust to hosttab. 4: continuation cohabitation divorce single motherhood β se β se β se cut points τ1 -2.474*** 0.56 -1.865*** 0.56 -0.543 0.53 τ2 -1.214* 0.55 -0.293 0.55 0.981 0.53 τ3 0.942 0.55 2.051*** 0.55 2.974*** 0.54 n 1129 1129 1129 log likelihood -1262.40 -1306.18 -1446.23 aic 2586.80 2674.36 2954.46 bic 2742.70 2830.26 3110.37 *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 source: data from wave 1 of the families of poles in the netherlands study. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 289 country norms and attitudes, albeit not uniformly − adaptation appears to be more complete for divorce than for cohabitation. while inconsistencies across our models caution against overinterpreting the divorce findings, our study underscores how migrant assimilation may contribute to more unified cultural attitudes for some family forms across member states. the shifts in attitudes towards both divorce and cohabitation may also signal alignment with core eu values, including gender equality. cohabitation, which offers greater freedom in union formation, is consistent with more egalitarian relationship dynamics (e.g., the division of household labor) and is often linked to more egalitarian gender norms (batalova/cohen 2002; domínguez‑folgueras 2013). as migrants adopt more accepting views on both divorce and cohabitation, this could signal the diffusion of gender-egalitarian attitudes across the eu, reinforcing the broader eu vision of gender equality and social inclusion. in contrast to the findings for divorce and cohabitation, polish migrants consistently expressed lower acceptance of single motherhood than both polish and dutch non-migrants − a pattern we interpret as sui generis adaptation. rather than signaling resistance to cultural change, this stance may reflect respectability politics, whereby migrants adopt conservative attitudes towards behaviors that are perceived as stigmatized or are associated with economic vulnerability. in a context marked by integration pressures, public hostility, and discrimination towards polish and other migrants, holding less favorable views of single motherhood may serve as a form of boundary management (cf. fleischmann/khoudja 2023): an effort to project responsibility and respectability and counter negative stereotypes about migrants as being dependent on welfare or lacking moral values. notably, unlike attitudes towards divorce or cohabitation, views on single motherhood were not significantly associated with indicators of social integration, such as dutch language proficiency, post-migration education, or having a dutch partner. this suggests that these views may be shaped less by exposure to host norms and prevailing attitudes and more by migrants’ strategic positioning within a stigmatizing social context and hostility towards “migrants with poor [integration] prospects” (bonjour/duyvendak 2018). the lower acceptance of single motherhood may also reflect the distinct symbolic and economic dimensions of this family form. like cohabitation and divorce, single motherhood represents an expansion of personal autonomy – particularly for women – but it also raises concerns about financial precarity and parenting norms. these concerns may be especially acute for migrants, who are more likely to face economic insecurity and discrimination. moreover, single motherhood may be seen as a more fundamental challenge to gendered family roles than divorce, which still preserves a two-parent model of childrearing (albeit across households). in this sense, polish migrants’ attitudes may reflect a strategic response to their social position in the netherlands, suggesting that migration-driven cultural change does not proceed uniformly across all domains of family life. although our findings are specific to polish migrants in the netherlands, we note that they may also apply to other eastern european migrants (e.g., romanians, another major migration group within the eu) moving to western european • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel290 countries following their country’s eu accession. however, we are more cautious about generalizing to non-eu migrants, given the different selection pressures and institutional barriers they face in migrating to the eu. our analysis had several limitations. first, the time periods covered by the three datasets did not align, with different years for each dataset. while our robustness checks yielded mostly similar results when analyzing the same birth cohorts across the datasets, there were some discrepancies, particularly regarding divorce attitudes among polish migrants and dutch non-migrants. we also found that support for cohabitation and single parenthood in the netherlands remained rather stable between 2002 and 2012 according to data from the issp, which helps mitigate concerns about survey timing discrepancies. we chose not to use more recent data from the netherlands ggs due to potential panel attrition bias8 and because attitudes towards single motherhood were not available in that wave. second, the survey items for single motherhood and divorce attitudes were worded in a way that combined multiple aspects of those family forms. thus, it was not possible to determine whether respondents were primarily considering the presence of children or the absence of a spouse/partner when answering the questions. however, we have no reason to believe that polish migrants’ reaction to the question wording would have differed from that of polish and dutch non-migrants, so the results are unlikely to be an artifact of varied interpretation of question wording but instead reflect actual differences in attitudes between the groups. nonetheless, attention should be paid to question wording when comparing our results with those of other studies. third, like many other studies, our data lack information on pre-migration attitudes, which makes it challenging to isolate selection mechanism(s). however, our analysis of factors related to social integration gives us some (albeit indirect) leverage in adjudicating pre-migration selection versus post-migration adaptation. having detailed data on pre-migration attitudes would be valuable in addressing this limitation. despite these limitations, our research expands understanding of migrant attitudes and adaptation, shedding light on the complexities of sociocultural changes and continuities among migrants. these findings underscore the need for further exploration of the diverse pathways and factors associated with migrant attitudes, thereby contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between migrants and their host and origin societies. our results also demonstrate the complexity of ideational processes among migrants (levitt/vertovec 2003; williams et al. 2014) and align with scholarship that questions the view of the second demographic transition theory (brzozowska 2021; coleman 2004; sobotka 2008; 8 panel attrition in the second (2007) round of the dutch ggs data is rather high: only about 58 percent of our analytical sample could be matched across waves. note that the temporal disjuncture across datasets would still be present even if we had used the more recent wave of dutch ggs data. it is worth noting that the distribution for the divorce and cohabitation attitudes in the second round of the dutch ggs for a sample of 21 to 58-year-olds looks very similar to the distributions for our analytical sample 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family formation processes in poland in the light of the concept of the second demographic transition. in: juszczyk-frelkiewicz, katarzyna; libor, grzegorz (eds.): contemporary family − comparative perspective. wydawnictwo uniwersytetu śląskiego. date of submission: 23.08.2024 date of acceptance: 03.09.2025 prof. dr. martin piotrowski (*), prof. dr. ann m. beutel. university of oklahoma. department of sociology. oklahoma, united states. e-mail: piotrow@ou.edu; ambeutel@ou.edu url: https://www.ou.edu/cas/soc/people/faculty/martin-piotrowski https://www.ou.edu/cas/soc/people/faculty/ann-beutel https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12972 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2007.17.14 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2013.830501 https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250x.2015.1112384 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053442 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022424 mailto:piotrow@ou.edu mailto:ambeutel@ou.edu https://www.ou.edu/cas/soc/people/faculty/martin-piotrowski https://www.ou.edu/cas/soc/people/faculty/ann-beutel • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel298 appendix tab. a1: fit statistics for model selection ll df aic bic 1 class -16152.51 28 32361.01 32501.83 2 classes -14143.02 53 28392.04 28658.58 3 classes -13471.23 78 27098.47 27490.74 4 classes -13248.27 103 26702.54 27220.54 source: data from wave 1 of the families of poles in the netherlands study. attitudes towards non-marital family forms among polish immigrants in the netherlands • 299 tab. a2: item responses (polish migrants only), by latent class class 1 class 2 class 3 class 4 in % dutch language proficiency understands not at all 0.24 0.00 0.00 0.00 not well 0.63 0.26 0.02 0.00 neither good nor bad 0.13 0.53 0.37 0.00 well 0.00 0.20 0.57 0.46 very well 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.53 speaks not at all 0.55 0.01 0.00 0.00 not well 0.45 0.60 0.11 0.00 neither good nor bad 0.00 0.36 0.60 0.02 well 0.00 0.02 0.29 0.65 very well 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.33 reads not at all 0.71 0.16 0.00 0.00 not well 0.27 0.71 0.05 0.00 neither good nor bad 0.02 0.13 0.64 0.01 well 0.00 0.01 0.29 0.58 very well 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.41 writes not at all 0.88 0.40 0.01 0.00 not well 0.12 0.59 0.31 0.00 neither good nor bad 0.00 0.01 0.59 0.18 well 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.60 very well 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.21 frequency watching polish tv every day 0.60 0.66 0.51 0.28 several times per week 0.12 0.10 0.13 0.09 once, twice per week 0.06 0.10 0.06 0.09 less often 0.09 0.05 0.09 0.12 never 0.13 0.08 0.20 0.42 frequency watching dutch tv every day 0.10 0.11 0.23 0.53 several times per week 0.08 0.14 0.22 0.19 once, twice per week 0.08 0.14 0.18 0.13 less often 0.22 0.24 0.20 0.08 never 0.53 0.37 0.17 0.07 language used with boss polish 0.15 0.05 0.03 0.01 dutch 0.04 0.47 0.57 0.78 english 0.60 0.38 0.23 0.08 other, no answer 0.20 0.10 0.18 0.12 • martin piotrowski, ann m. beutel300 tab. a2: continuation class 1 class 2 class 3 class 4 in % language used with friends polish 0.77 0.68 0.52 0.23 dutch 0.00 0.08 0.27 0.60 english 0.20 0.21 0.13 0.10 other, no answer 0.03 0.02 0.07 0.07 language used with neighbors polish 0.16 0.16 0.05 0.01 dutch 0.07 0.53 0.79 0.97 english 0.62 0.26 0.13 0.02 other, no answer 0.15 0.05 0.03 0.00 speakspolish with partner 0.73 0.83 0.75 0.45 took dutch language class 0.25 0.58 0.72 0.81 questionnaire taken in polish 0.82 0.84 0.82 0.65 n 265 283 350 231 source: data from wave 1 of the families of poles in the netherlands study. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) family research and demographic analysis (freda): evolution, framework, objectives, and design of “the german family demography panel study” family research and demographic analysis (freda): evolution, framework, objectives, and design of “the german family demography panel study” norbert f. schneider, martin bujard, christof wolf, tobias gummer, karsten hank, franz j. neyer abstract: this article introduces the evolution, framework, objectives, and design of the new data infrastructure “freda – the german family demography panel study”, which has been funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) since 2020. freda is rooted in the generation and gender survey (ggs) and the german family panel (pairfam). freda was initiated to facilitate research on family and demography by providing a comprehensive panel study allowing for international comparisons as well as dyadic analyses through a multiactor design. the survey covers major fi elds of family research, such as fertility behaviour, reproductive health, work-family confl ict, dyadic division of work, gender roles, intimate relations, separation and divorce, parenting and intergenerational relations, social inequalities, family attitudes, and well-being. freda interviews are conducted in a self-administered web-based (cawi) or paper-based (papi) manner. the infrastructure consists of two different samples. first, the new freda-ggs survey started in early 2021, with a wave 1 study population of individuals aged 18 to 49 years and their partners. second, the freda-pairfam survey will continue the 14-wave pairfam sample from 2022 onwards. the questionnaires of both samples will be harmonised as freda evolves. data accessibility, organisation, and future perspectives of the data infrastructure are described and discussed in the paper’s conclusions. keywords: family research · social demography · dyadic multi-actor design · ggs · pairfam · panel survey · data infrastructure comparative population studies vol. 46 (2021): 149-186 (date of release: 21.06.2021) federal institute for population research 2021 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-06 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2021-06en7 • norbert f. schneider et al.150 1 introduction – why is freda necessary? in highly developed countries, fundamental changes for families and their surrounding conditions are challenging family researchers and demographers (chambers 2012; esping-andersen 2009; goldscheider et al. 2015; schneider/ kreyenfeld 2021; seltzer et al. 2005). although the majority of babies are still more likely to be born to a mother-father married couple than to any other family type (smock/greenland 2010: 576), families in europe and worldwide are increasingly heterogeneous and have become a more complex phenomenon for at least nine related reasons: (1) individualisation processes have led to a growing diversity of intimate relationships and a deinstitutionalisation of partnership relations (chambers 2012; schneider 2012). family forms such as non-married families, singleparent families, patchwork families, same-sex families, and living apart together (lat) are increasing in almost all european countries. (2) in addition, processes of family development are increasingly diverse. concepts of family development and the life cycle (martin 2018) have become less applicable since intimate relationships, career entry, living together, marriage, and having children are optional, fl uid, and occur in diverse sequences; thus family behaviour and dynamics are changing. contemporary family dynamics are characterised by decreasing institutionalisation, a high diversity between social groups, and possibly processes of re-standardisation. (3) the emergence of medically assisted reproduction (mar) technology has made the fertility process more diverse (passet-wittig/bujard 2021), allowing new variants for third-party parenthood and a slightly longer “window of opportunity” for having children (habbema et al. 2015). (4) the gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015) has fundamentally changed women’s and (to a lesser degree; england 2010) men’s life courses as well as the way couples organise their careers, housework, care, and parenting. in some european countries, family policy has reacted to these changes with a paradigm shift from familialism to defamilialism (esping-andersen 2009). the concept of “defamilialism” means that in welfare states, the state and the market are increasingly performing tasks that were previously the family’s responsibility. (5) thereby, the relationship between family and society has changed, since the state now takes responsibility for care, in order to allow for the shift from the family as an institution to more individualistic patterns with greater gender equity. concerns about low and lowest low fertility in europe (kohler et al. 2002) and the perception of policy options to reconcile work and family (mcdonald 2002) have increased the visibility of family policy. in germany and several other european countries, there was a paradigm shift with new parental leave policies and a threefold increase in childcare slots since the early 2000s. (6) digitalisation has changed family and private lives in several ways, including family communication, the emergence of online dating, options for working from home, and time spent with children (danielsbacka et al. 20 20). (7) the spread of new normative patterns regarding education and parenthood have led to a signifi cant change in parent-child relationships and to the family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 151 emancipation of children. this has accelerated the transition to families with fewer children. heightened expectations of successful parenting and "good" parents have made the transition to parenthood more pre-suppositional and the consequences of parenting more palpable for parents (merkle/ wippermann 2008). (8) the family remains the most important institution for primary socialisation (e.g. grundmann 2021). everyday social practice in the family is highly different compared to social and peer groups. thereby, its societal importance and function varies over time, between societal groups and between cultures. the processes of socialisation are primarily infl uenced by changes in children’s and parents’ everyday lives, changes in intergenerational relationships, and changes in the interfaces between the family and other social institutions, namely school, childcare, and the labour market. (9) in particular, due to the limitations of the offi cial statistics, freda aims to improve empirical knowledge on multi-local families. multi-locality is a phenomenon of increasing importance for family life as a consequence of increased geographical mobility, divorce and closer intergenerational ties (as previously pursued by the pairfam project, huinink et al. 2011: 78). for cutting-edge research on these challenges, appropriate data is key. despite considerable progress in family and demographic research, the gap between data needs and existing data has increased over recent decades. this is especially true for germany. at the same time, there has been substantial progress in the area of data collection, with novel possibilities due to digitalisation and advances in survey infrastructures. however, these general infrastructures were only used for other topics, further increasing the gap between existing and potential data for family research. the hitherto existing data infrastructures for family and demography on younger generations are highly fragmented in germany, but also in europe. the generation and gender survey (ggs) is a well-established survey programme for family and demographic research that has been conducted in 19 countries (gauthier et al. 2018; vikat et al. 2007), providing representative data after weighting (fokkema et al. 2016). however, the three-year distance between panel waves is a problem for panel analyses and leads to a high attrition of respondents. therefore, only fi ve of the original 19 countries (until 2019) conducted more than two ggs waves. data for a second wave are currently available for 14 countries (www.ggp-i.org). another problem of the generation and gender programme was that some countries used questionnaires not completely comparable with the general template due to country-specifi c interests and circumstances. the german family panel pairfam (panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics) is a long-running annual panel study on partnership and family dynamics which follows a multi-actor design (huinink et al. 2011). despite the advantages of cohort designs for specifi c research questions, its focus on four birth cohorts (1971-73, 1981-83, 1991-93, and 2001-03) limits its representation of the general population and comparability with other studies. furthermore, substantively more focussed datasets, such as aid:a (walper et al. 2015) or “familienleitbilder” (diabaté et al. 2019; schneider et al. 2015), also offer relevant content for family research. however, they only have two or three waves, a lower number of respondents, and are only internationally comparable to a certain degree. • norbert f. schneider et al.152 the fragmentation in family and demographic research becomes apparent when contrasted to data infrastructures for other research areas and age groups. the german socio-economic panel study (soep) (goebel et al. 2019) and the national educational panel study (neps) (blossfeld et al. 2011) are examples of large-scale long-term annual surveys covering research areas such as income, wealth, and the labour market (soep) and education (neps). the survey of health, ageing and retirement in europe (share) has the advantage of strict international comparability and currently consists of seven waves for the areas health, socio-economic status, and family networks, but is focussed on the age group 50 and older (börsch-supan et al. 2005). at present, the ggp – and the ggs as its core content – is readjusting its procedures and restarting data collection efforts. these readjustments comprise the organisation and governance of the ggp, the survey modes, as well as a broadly renewed ggs questionnaire (gauthier et al. 2020) and a new data collecting strategy in the participating countries. with the end of the long-term funding of pairfam by the german research foundation (dfg) in 2022, the need and the possibility for starting a new family panel in germany has arisen. the basis of the panel is a questionnaire that is comparable with other countries as a ggs and also opens up the chance to continue pairfam as a long-term study. building on the experiences gained in the international ggs and in pairfam, the project “family research and demographic analysis” (freda) aims to solve the data fragmentation problem by integrating the new german ggs sample (fredaggs), which is comparable with several european countries, and the pairfam sample (freda-pairfam), with its rich body of longitudinal information from up to 14 previous waves of data collection. we thereby create a novel family-demographic panel covering the complete family development process for the ages 18-49, including partnership, fertility, parenting, and divorce, as well as contexts such as the labour market, mobility, health, and social networks. freda thus combines the advantages of a representative, large-scale long-term annual survey with an international comparison. a major characteristic of freda is the consistent implementation of a multi-actor design by interviewing as many partners as possible for all anchor persons. in the initial phase, the project will not collect information from other actors in the family, such as children or grandparents. “multi-actor” here means a dyadic multi-actor design. the selection of the contents of the measuring instruments is guided by the requirements of the life course paradigm (see below). in order to adequately collect life course data, the questionnaire combines well-established and innovative user-driven instruments and follows an interdisciplinary strategy by including content from sociology, demography, psychology, and economics, as well as elements from education and health. whereas freda-pairfam continues a successful long-run panel study, freda-ggs provides the opportunity of starting a fresh panel, allowing for the use of innovative survey design and data management methods. therefore, additional key features of freda are the use of mixed cawi/papi self-administered questionnaires, bi-annual data collection, and to the collection of geo-referenced data. this reference paper introduces the development, scope, and design of freda, including challenges of family and family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 153 social demography research and key features (section 2), the questionnaire and core research fi elds (section 3), survey design (section 4), data accessibility and the project’s organisational structure (section 5), and concludes by providing some further perspectives (section 6). 2 challenges of family and demographic research and key features of freda 2.1 objectives the main objective of freda is to cover the family development processes and the interaction of different life spheres such as partnership, parenting, gainful employment, and leisure activities during the life course in the ages from 18 to 49. freda aims to capture the current situation of family life and the above-mentioned changes for families and their surrounding conditions in depth – including family forms, family dynamics and behaviour, fertility, parenting, socialisation, separation and divorce, decision-making processes, changes in attitudes and gender norms, effects of policy, and digitalisation. the process of family development is embedded in the life course, both of which are complex and dynamic processes. therefore, a dynamic concept for explaining individual behaviour and decision-making during the life course is required as a basis for the construction of the survey instruments and for their openness. the aim of explaining family development in the life course is a demanding task not only for theory but also for data and methods, requiring the examination of individuals and family members for a longer period. longitudinal and biographical data that are appropriate for event history models and for sequence analyses are needed for the study of family trajectories, their timing and sequence, and patterns of family development. furthermore, freda is intended to enable comprehensive analyses of the mechanism of family behaviour in a multi-actor perspective. causes of outcomes of family dynamics, intergenerational bonds, life satisfaction, and family wellbeing are often the results of correlated individual and dyadic actions. this ideally requires data on all family members, such as partners, children, and grandparents. freda starts by systematically gathering information stemming from both partners independently. the functioning of a family, the subjective well-being of family members, and the processes of family development are strongly infl uenced by the societal role of the family as a social institution. in particular, the interrelationships of family and surrounding social institutions (childcare, education, work, and others) are of great importance here. freda has set itself the goal of collecting data on the changes in these interrelations in order to better understand family life and family development. finally, as a family-demographic infrastructure, freda pursues the goal of generating internationally comparable data which are equally suitable for improving theoretical and empirical scientifi c research, social reporting, and policy advice. • norbert f. schneider et al.154 2.2 life course perspective and panel data freda is guided by the life course paradigm, in which life spheres are seen as interwoven. changes in one sphere are embedded in, and have consequences for, the others (elder 1994). in the context of family, the life courses of family members are also linked with each other. therefore, the linked life paradigm also guides freda. in a recent work, bernardi et al. (2019) presented a further developed concept of life course as a complex set of interdependencies, which we use as the theoretical basis for freda. they name three main interdependencies (or “fi rst order interdependencies”: ibid: 3): the life history-related interdependence, the interdependence of life domains, and those across levels. the multilevel interdependence “connects individual action and behaviour over the life course …. with the life course of other people, social networks, and the ‘external’ societal opportunity structure” (ibid: 2). consequently, the life course can be seen as a “steady fl ow of an individual’s actions and experiences, which modify domainspecifi c biographical states and affect individual well-being over time” (ibid: 7). from this perspective the creation of a systematic connection between the life course paradigm, action theory, and event-related data is essential. another vital need is providing data that are appropriate for both theory testing and theory development, and that meet the high methodological requirements life course research presupposes. both are main concerns of freda. in this sense, freda follows a universal panel structure with annual interviews, wherein a specifi c set of questions will be asked every year in the same way. some questions are even asked twice a year. this frequency, which is higher than the three-year rhythm of ggs and partially higher than pairfam and soep, allows for identifying turning points or disruptions in trajectories due to decisions, partner behaviour, and external shocks (bernardi et al. 2019). furthermore, the fi rst wave of freda-ggs features a comprehensive set of biographical questions in order to capture central life course events occurring before the panel’s timeframe. 2.3 individual and dyadic decision-making decision-making processes in families and relationships are often dyadic. therefore, individual-level approaches and analyses typically are not suffi cient. at least two actors are involved in most family decisions, and outcomes are often the result of longer-term bargaining processes and compromises. dyadic negotiations and decision-making processes are integral parts of the life course paradigm, as the concept of linked lives shows (elder 1994). this is also refl ected in psychological theories on fertility behaviour (ajzen/klobas 2013; miller et al. 2004), sociological approaches (brehm/schneider 2019), as well as economic bargaining approaches (beblo 2001). the life course domains for children, work, and mobility have to be harmonised within couples to some degree. despite recent advances using pairfam data (bauer/kneip 2014; hudde/engelhardt 2020; johnson et al. 2019; stein/willen 2018), there is a clear research gap for dyadic analyses in family science and family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 155 demography, as these theoretical approaches are less often analysed. this is due to the lack of dyadic data, since many data infrastructures and panels only collect individual data. freda follows a multi-actor design to reduce this lack of information and collects data regarding the respondent’s partner every year. one challenge of dyadic data is that anchors have different partnerships throughout the life course and the few data sets that do include partners only consider the current partner. this does not allow for analysing the consequences of separation for both partners. therefore, freda also collects partner data in cases of separation for at least one additional wave, and aims to integrate new partners into the yearly surveys. 2.4 culture and structure: international comparison structural factors play a key role in rational choice approaches in family science, such as the economic theory of the family (becker 1981) or rational choice approaches in sociology, which challenge utility maximisation and highlight satisfaction, information, and frames (esser 2004; lindenberg 1985). in contrast, cultural approaches highlight roles, different family-specifi c norms; (schneider et al. 2015; for norms on being a “family” see lück/ruckdeschel 2018), and attitudes, such as the ideal number of children (testa 2012). cultural approaches and rational choice approaches should be further integrated – following boudon (2003: 17), “beliefs, actions, and attitudes should be treated as rational”. analyses of culture and structure benefi t from combining the micro and macro levels. macro level factors such as institutions, policies, the socio-structural composition of the population, economic change, and cultural change can infl uence individual and dyadic behaviours of families, and vice versa. the mechanisms and interdependencies of the macro-micro-macro-link (coleman 1990) are decisive in understanding the dynamic changes of families and societies. however, macro and micro approaches for studying families are often disparate, leading to a fragmentation of research. however, the life course paradigm uses a multi-level structure by highlighting the institutionalisation of the life course (kohli 2007) and specifying the connection of multilevel structure with time-related interdependencies and multiple domains (bernardi et al. 2019). cultural, social, political, and economic conditions infl uence one’s possible scope and course of action at different levels: at the macro level, for example, through demographic structure, regional contexts, economic framework conditions, infrastructure, and socio-political provisions. at the meso level, features of the social context such as social networks and institutional embedding in the labour market are signifi cant. finally, at the micro level, individual features of the household, partnerships, and family development are at play. these include biographical experiences and psychological dispositions of the individual, as well as individual and family resources such as time, money, education, social skills, and health (huinink/feldhaus 2008: 26f.). freda collects data for economic as well as structural and cultural factors. in order to analyse both micro and macro patterns, the international comparison • norbert f. schneider et al.156 is decisive. national panel data allow for case studies with individual-level data. however, the results of case studies for several research questions are fragmented, since they depend on the specifi c context of a country’s institutional setting (aisenbrey/fasang 2017). case studies of two or three countries are complex when aiming for a comparison using different data sets. even then, conclusions on the infl uence of macro factors such as policy effects on behaviour are limited. analyses of macro level data as conducted by oecd (thévenon/luci 2012) allow for comparing policies and institutions of twenty or thirty countries, but provide no information regarding the mechanism and processes of the individuals or dyads. internationally comparable micro level panel data facilitates the analysis of transitions and trajectories in life course, as well as comparisons against the background of different institutional country-specifi c contexts by applying systematic micro-macro links. however, such data are rare in family science, with the exception of the ggs round starting in the 2000s (vikat et al. 2007). freda has the advantage of being part of the internationally coordinated ggs surveys with the renewed ggs questionnaire (gauthier et al. 2020), allowing for analyses of germany to be compared to the cultural, institutional, and economic background of other european countries and for analyses of family diversity and of convergence or divergence in family changes across europe (schneider 2012). 2.5 combining survey data with regional data by geo-referencing cultural and structural factors not only differ between countries, but also within them. the cultural heritage of regions is longstanding (e.g. klüsener/goldstein 2016), especially regarding catholicism and protestantism as well as the differences between former east and west german states (schneider et al. 2012). in addition, structural regional opportunities such as labour markets, gdp, infrastructure, and housing strongly vary and are associated with different living conditions and fertility levels, to name only two consequences (bujard/scheller 2017). furthermore, the regional composition of the population regarding age, education, ethnicity (hank/ huinink 2015), and childcare coverage strongly vary on the district level and contribute to different labour force participation (zoch/hondralis 2017) and attitudes towards childcare for toddlers (zoch/schober 2018). freda will enable combining its survey data with contextual information for ecological analyses on different levels of aggregation and administrative units (for pairfam, see schmiedeberg 2015). freda will collaborate with the federal agency for cartography and geodesy (bkg) for geo-referencing. 2.6 enhancing multidisciplinary research: family science and social demography research on the family is generally fragmented across many disciplines; academic journals and concepts are related to family sociology, family demography, family economy, and so on, but the term “family science” – which we prefer in terms of multidisciplinarity – is rarely used. sociology and demography are often closely family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 157 related, a large proportion of publications in demographic journals come from sociologists, so this combined approach can be labelled “social demography” (hank/ kreyenfeld 2015). however, many psychological concepts are highly relevant for family science but are only occasionally used in demography or in family research. a few psychological concepts, such as the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) (ajzen 1991) or the traits-desire-intension-theory (miller et al. 2004), are used more frequently in demography. the tpb is and will remain a core theoretical foundation of the ggs. some family researchers use measurements such as life satisfaction (pavot/diener 2008) or simplifi ed indicators of the big five personality traits (oceanmodel); both of which are elements of pairfam, which seek to combine sociological and psychological research. in the longer term, family research should also aim to integrate epidemio-, bio-, physioand neurological research, at least to a basic degree. however, the exchange between family sociology and psychology remains limited. the economic approach to the family of the “chicago school” is well known (becker 1981), especially concepts such as opportunity costs (mincer 1963) and bargaining models (muthoo 1999). while the value of children approach (voc) (nauck 2014) is one example of connectivity between cultural and economic approaches, recent economic analyses of the family are often disparate. this is illustrated by the low degree of cross-citations between family demography, family economy, and family psychology. beyond the mentioned disciplines, educational science, political science, and public health are also relevant for analysing families. facilitating the integration of these diverse perspectives and countering fragmentation is one goal of freda. freda follows a multidisciplinary framework and includes sets of items from different disciplines, allowing for analyses of sociological, economic, psychological, and public health variables within one panel. thereby, freda aims to contribute to a more integrative family science (fasang et al. 2016). the description of further key features of freda related to its content and survey design is the focus of the two following sections. 3 questionnaire and core research fi elds 3.1 overview and comparability over several waves the guiding principle of the freda questionnaire – which follows a modularised design – is a mix of well-established scales, new items, and a permanently anchored process for innovation. for the initial panel wave (w1), the freda-ggs questionnaire is based on the german translation of the large-scale renewed international ggs questionnaire (gauthier et al. 2020), thus taking advantage of the readjustment of the ggs – a promising strategy since several european countries are planning to start a new data collection with a new sample and the renewed questionnaire around 2021. whereas most other countries participating in the ggs follow a three-year interval panel design, freda uses more frequent data collection with annual waves consisting of bi-annual interviews. the annual panel waves consist of repeated modules (a “core questionnaire” based on ggs items, which are for a • norbert f. schneider et al.158 signifi cant proportion harmonised with pairfam items), additional modules chosen from pairfam, as well as “open modules” (fig. 1). the questionnaires include questions that are repeated annually. this is important, since analyses with panel data are often based on event history analyses (blossfeld et al. 2019) or fi xed effect analyses (allison 2009). in soep, neps, and pairfam, the annually repeated part amounts to more than half of the questionnaire. the core questionnaire, featuring items comparable with the international ggs, records annual changes regarding family, work, mobility, and partnership biography, as well as attitudes and psychological items. several pairfam questions are identical to ggs questions in the core questionnaire, or at least comparable (see hiekel et al. 2015, for an exemple). these intersections speak to the high comparability of ggs and pairfam. similar items were carefully harmonised in order to achieve the best possible comparability (e.g. by translating the ggs to german) for their inclusion in freda’s core questionnaire. several existing pairfam modules were selected for follow-up waves of freda to deepen and expand the initial ggs questionnaire with psychological and sociological modules. furthermore, to refl ect new interests and innovative measurement approaches, freda will use open calls for questions from which so-called open modules will be created. for the purpose of international comparability, some ggs items which are not part of the freda core questionnaire will be asked every three years. moreover, due to the stability of some item batteries (such as the big five personality traits), a rotating design with constant intervals is used for these items. fig. 1: content of the freda-ggs-questionnaire for the fi rst fi ve waves source: own fi gure family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 159 the partner questionnaire contains comprehensive coverage of partners’ sociodemographic factors, life course events, and attitudes. therefore, those questions from the anchor questionnaire which are of interest for dyadic analyses and allow for systematic comparison are used. 3.2 wave 1: freda-ggs the ggs questionnaire (gauthier et al. 2020) is a well-known instrument fi rst developed in the early 2000s (vikat et al. 2007) and conducted in 20 countries between 2004 and 2020. for these countries, the ggs provides representative data. it has more than 4,500 registered users worldwide (fokkema et al. 2016; gauthier et al. 2018). the ggp conducted a realignment as part of the process for being recognised as an eu emerging project by 2017; and the ec-funded project evaluate, plan, initiate (ggp-epi) aimed to prepare the ggp to be part of the eu-recognised permanent european-based research infrastructures, such as share and european social survey (ess). a crucial part of this alignment is a completely new start of data collection with a revised questionnaire and the introduction of new survey modes. the basis of the technical alignment within ggp-epi was a pilot conducted by ggp and bib in germany, croatia, and portugal in 2018 (emery et al. 2019). it tested the questionnaire for both cawi and face-to-face interviews, which guided the process of making the questionnaire suitable for both modes and provided information for possible cuts. in november 2018, the ggs questionnaire task force suggested extensive changes for renewing the questionnaire to the ggp consortium board, which were improved and subsequently implemented and tested. thereby a considerable number of questions which showed high dropout rates in the ggp-epi pilot (emery et al. 2019), especially parts featuring the theory of planned behaviour and the network sections, were shortened. the strategy was to add new questions, in order to capture new developments in family research and demography, such as enhanced measures for migrants, fertility ideals, health, reproductive health, mobility, digitalisation, and attitudes towards gendered working hours (gauthier et al. 2020). in addition, some routings and categories were improved. the ggs is constructed for a repetition every three years in participating european (and several non-european) countries (ggp 2020). therefore, the fredaggs waves 1, 4, 7, and so on are primarily based on the international ggs rounds of data collection. these questionnaires are complemented by a few questions relevant for the german context such as parental leave and rent. additionally, wave 1 includes questions on the covid-19 pandemic. in the following, we introduce the sections of the ggs questionnaire in the context of current research. demography the demography section of the questionnaire contains socio-demographic measures such as age, origin, education, employment, housing, mobility, and – to some extent – migration and partnership biographies. in germany, the proportion of persons with a migration background has been increasing for decades: in 2019, • norbert f. schneider et al.160 the share of population with migration background was 26 percent, with almost one half being foreigners (48 percent) and the other (52 percent) having german citizenship (bib 2020). the shares are higher among the younger generations, which are covered in freda (bib 2020). family events and migration are interdependent in the life course (kulu/milewski 2007). migrant fertility patterns are shaped by processes of adaptation, socialisation, and disruption (baykara-krumme/milewski 2017), and there are compositional effects on fertility measures. there is an everincreasing relevance of research on diversity and the adaptation of attitudes and behaviour of fi rst and second migrant generations, but still a considerable lack of data on this topic. besides measuring the country of birth for the anchor, partner, and parents, the renewed ggs also measures languages usually spoken and plans of moving to another country. for representative studies, adequate coverage of people with migration experiences is a special challenge that is diffi cult to meet. freda tries to meet this challenge in part by offering questionnaires in german and three other languages (see section 4.1.). internal migration plays a key role for the distribution of the population. europe currently shows patterns of urbanisation as well as de-concentration (rowe et al. 2019). in the last decade in germany, families have increasingly moved to lowerdensity localities (stawarz/sander 2019). cohort fertility rates vary strongly within german counties (verwaltungskreise), which is substantially associated with urbanisation and the availability of spacious dwellings (bujard/scheller 2017). the questionnaire measures housing, past mobility patterns, and future mobility plans. furthermore, since digitalisation and media use – which are increasing during the covid-19 pandemic – are relevant for families (coyne et al. 2014), the questionnaire captures these items. the combination of measures on internal migration, sociodemography, housing, and media use with geo-referenced data is a promising option for future research and analyses. many life course decisions– such as starting a common household, marriage, having children and parenting – are made by couples. others are at least often shaped within relationships, such as working hours or attitudes. the processes of communication and disagreement within couples are central for fertility decisions (brehm/schneider 2019; miller et al. 2004). partnership quality and stability are shaped by skills and traits, situational factors, as well as communication styles (sillars et al. 2004). the combination of trivial daily events and interpersonal communication is decisive for the appraisal of stress in divorce (bodenmann et al. 2007). life satisfaction and partnership satisfaction are strongly related between intimate partners. it is know that one partner’s unemployment or stress in the workplace also infl uence the life satisfaction of the other partner (luhmann et al. 2014). therefore, the questionnaire captures comprehensive sociodemographic information about the current partner, but also factors such as partnership satisfaction, confl icts, agreement or disagreement on important topics, and patterns of communication. family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 161 life history since the onset of the second demographic transition (lesthaeghe 2010), marriage has been declining and cohabitation and non-marital parenthood has been increasing in most european countries. union formation, cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing are postponed, often to ages above 30 (sobotka/berghammer 2021). these family life histories are interrelated and also interact with other life domains such as education, work, and mobility. continuing diversity despite converging megatrends characterise the change and the current situation of the family in europe (schneider 2015). signifi cant differences can be observed not only between but also within countries. within germany, especially between east and west, there are substantial differences which are not only rooted in different political systems during the division of germany, but also have older historical causes (klüsener/ goldstein 2016). due to different degrees of religiosity, social structures, and quite diverse degrees of urbanisation and industrialisation, family patterns were and still are different. family forms have become increasingly complex since the 1960s, with a growing proportion of one-parent families, patchwork families, and stepparents (steinbach et al. 2016). voluntary childlessness within or without marriage is widely accepted and established throughout europe. social change in the context of individualisation and new partner market opportunities increase the chance of having a higher frequency of relationships within the life course and increases the probability of separation (rapp et al. 2015). as one consequence of this dynamic, the post-separation family has become more and more important. especially in case of parenthood, divorce does not mean the end of the family, but rather the transformation into a post-divorce family. little is known about family relationships after separation. for example, knowledge about the father-child relationship and its impact on the well-being of all family members in the years following separation is limited. previous studies have, however, shed light on the role of joint custody (köppen et al. 2018). the complexity of family dynamics poses challenges for measuring the diversity of family forms and of fertility. biological children, adopted children, and children from previous partners of both anchor and partner must be measured precisely in order to generate reliable data on family forms and social parenthood. fertility for decades, low and lowest-low fertility – with period total fertility rates (ptfr) below 1.5 – has been a phenomenon of several highly-developed countries in europe (kohler et al. 2002), as well as some east asian countries. persistently low fertility results in population aging and decline, both of which have severe consequences for pensions, health systems, the economy, labour markets, party systems, and society (bujard 2015). the fertility section is the most frequently analysed section in the ggs. plenty of research has used the theory of planned behaviour (ajzen 1991) to analyse child intentions, using the combination of behavioural, normative, and control beliefs (ajzen/klobas 2013) and focussing on a specifi c timespan (three • norbert f. schneider et al.162 years in the ggs) for “intentions in competing domains” (vikat et al. 2007). fertility intentions, and the failure to realise them, have been analysed in the context of family policies (billingsley/ferrarini 2014), post-communist fertility transitions (spéder/ kapitány 2014), residential mobility (vidal et al. 2017), and persistent joblessness (busetta et al. 2019). the ggs questionnaire covers fertility intentions in the next three years, necessary conditions, and anticipated effects on various aspects of life. the ggs measure of period and cohort fertility is accurate for the younger and middle-aged cohorts (vergauwen et al. 2015). the questionnaire captures the life history of previous partners and of anchors’ and partners’ adopted and biological children. there are different measures of “hypothetical fertility” such as intentions, norms, attitudes, and ideals (philipov/bernardi 2011). an overview of european surveys between 2005-2012 shows that around 60 percent of women aged 15-49 have an ideal family size of two children, refl ecting a persistent two-child norm (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). such norms limit the scope of economic approaches to fertility, because once a couple has fulfi lled a two-child ideal, policies or income lose relevance. however, a two-child norm does not result in ptfr of 2.0, since in modern societies the share of permanent childlessness is often around 15 or 20 percent (kreyenfeld/konietzka 2017). in germany, decomposition analyses show that the decline of large families (parity 3 or more) has a higher impact on the decrease of the cohort total fertility rates than increasing childlessness does (bujard/ sulak 2016). therefore, understanding changes of fertility ideals is decisive. fertility ideals change over ages and cohorts (testa 2012), and highly-educated women have higher life-time fertility intentions (testa 2014), resulting in a wider fertility gap for this group. the questionnaire askes for the personal and general ideal number of children, and captures the norms of a specifi c family size as perceived in society and the personal ideal. fertility behaviour and outcomes cannot simply be analysed by referring to ideals or planned behaviour; they rather depend on the physiological and medical ability to have children. medical infertility increases with age, especially for women; however, lifetime prevalence is rarely measured. in contrast, the self-perception of infertility, or more precisely of the inability to procreate, can be measured over the life course; it turns out to be a temporal phenomenon which is shaped by health, the life course itself, and socio-structural factors (passet-wittig et al. 2020). increasingly, the use of medically assisted reproduction (mar) is a relevant factor for fertility behaviour and outcomes (geyter et al. 2018). estimations show that mar has had the potential to almost neutralise the postponement effect on the increase of involuntary childlessness in recent decades (te velde et al. 2012). infertility, its perception, and infertility treatment often are associated with distress (greil et al. 2011). the questionnaire covers information on reproductive health, mar, sexual intercourse, contraception, and infertility perceptions for both anchor and partner. family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 163 division of housework it is well known that the previously equal division of housework often becomes unequal during the course of a relationship, especially after the birth of children or after marriage (nitsche/grunow 2016). inequalities in the division of household work are associated with perceptions of unfairness, especially in countries with gender equity institutions (greenstein 2009). the division of household chores follows a couple’s bargaining process, whereby attitudes and resources such as different earnings potentials are crucial (esping-andersen/schmitt 2020). the questionnaire records the division of several different tasks in the household and of childcare, an appraisal of fairness, and the decision-making process. some households outsource housework to cleaning services. childcare is also often provided outside the household, especially through public care infrastructure and social networks. institutional childcare and the expectation of informal care from grandparents can positively infl uence the transition to having a fi rst child (hank et al. 2004). against this background, the questionnaire measures the use of various childcare services and patterns of help within the network and kin. generations and well-being research suggests that adult intergenerational relationship quality is an important contributor to quality of life and enhanced well-being, as well as a precursor to the exchange of support and care. conversely, having distant or fractious relationships is associated with deleterious outcomes, such as greater depression, lower life satisfaction, increased health diffi culties, and earlier mortality (for a review, see steinbach/hank 2016). fully understanding the complexities of intergenerational relations requires theory regarding the dimensions that connect individuals across generations. the solidarity-confl ict paradigm proposed by bengtson and colleagues (bengtson et al. 2002) provides a useful conceptual scheme for mapping the emotions, behaviours, and norms that characterise these relationships. the questionnaire covers several core dimensions of this model, namely geographic proximity and frequency of contact (refl ecting the opportunity structure for intergenerational interaction; hank 2007), as well as the quality of respondents’ relationships with their parents (see hank et al. 2017 for an exemple using pairfam). instruments capturing further dimensions of the model were shifted to the second ggs wave scheduled for 2024 (that is, freda’s wave 4). work and income in the life course of young and middle-aged adults, work biographies and family trajectories are more or less intertwined with each other at the individual level as well as between partners (aisenbrey/fasang 2017). the division of gainful employment and family work between men and women still features severe differences and refl ects societal gender roles and task-sharing in the relationship. however, there are considerable differences among women regarding their preferences and needs • norbert f. schneider et al.164 concerning employment, family work, and responsibilities in family care (hakim 2003). social norms and expectations infl uence these preferences and the related behavioural patterns. european countries have been experiencing a decadeslong, sustained increase of female labour market participation. this development is associated with shifts in gender equality and family-oriented policies aiming to reconcile work and family; however, these changes remain ongoing (espingandersen 2009). beyond progress in reconciliation policies, work-family and familywork confl icts impair professional careers for many women. employment patterns are frequently “uneven and stalled” (damaske/frech 2016), as is the case for an increasing number of men in several western countries as well. in many countries in europe and around the world, short-term and irregular work arrangements are increasing, including fi xed-term contracts, temporary agency work, or part-time work. working irregularly is known as a risk factor for stress and life satisfaction; temporary work is often associated with a lower direct job satisfaction and lower life satisfaction due to poorer working conditions (aleksynska 2018). the social stratifi cation for irregular work is well-known, including by gender, age, education, and ethnic background (damaske/frech 2016). in the work-family context, job-related mobility has far-reaching consequences for family-related decisions, quality of life, and health (rüger et al. 2017). voluntariness and designability are most important factors for health and subjective well-being, and therefore also are important in family life and family development. the questionnaire covers information on occupation biographies, working hours, irregular work, commuting time, subjective stress measures concerning work, and other important risk factors of well-being. even in many european welfare states, up to one sixth of inhabitants are atrisk of poverty and in most countries, child poverty exceeds the overall proportion (atkinson/marlier 2010). social inequality and income poverty can be associated with disadvantages in health, social participation, societal inclusion, education, well-being, and housing (bradshaw/nieuwenhuis 2021). higher levels of inequality are associated with lower life satisfaction not only for poor, but also for middle class families, especially when they have economic worries (roth et al. 2017). for family life, child well-being and family-related decisions, earnings, and income including welfare state benefi ts are important factors. therefore, the questionnaire covers different kinds of household income, the subjective appraisal of affordable goods, and future expectations. attitudes family development and family-related decision-making are not only infl uenced by structural or economic factors – norms and attitudes are also of importance. attitudes often evolve during the life-long socialisation process, and can be changed by life course trajectories, such as the transition to parenthood. past research has shown that attitudes towards motherhood and fatherhood can be affected by this transition (buchler et al. 2017). however, it remains unclear whether attitudes infl uence the timing and probability of transitions and in which way transitions family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 165 infl uence attitudes. plenty of research has established that gender role attitudes infl uence behaviour (katz-wise et al. 2010), such as attitudes for fertility (arpino et al. 2015). individual attitudes can also be aggregated and used to measure broader norms, as shown by panova and buber-ennser (2016) for the pervasiveness of traditional views regarding parental employment for 14 countries with ggs data. however, discrepancies between attitudes towards gender roles and real behaviour can often be observed. because gender roles are changing and gender equality is increasingly accepted, social desirability is turning more and more important for the division of labour in the family. even in families in which at least one partner has traditional attitudes towards gender roles, non-traditional patterns of the division of labour can occur. therefore, the questionnaire covers broad attitudes regarding gender equality, as well as practical implementation, such as gendered beliefs towards ideal working hours. furthermore, attitudes towards fertility, parenting, and religiosity are asked. one goal is to get more information about the complex interplay of structural factors, the economic situation, cultural norms on family development, and especially on the transition to parenthood. covid-19 pandemic the covid-19 pandemic has challenged many survey research projects, including pairfam and freda-ggs (see gummer et al. 2020), which had to adjust fi eldwork procedures with respect to the changing situation. at the same time, covid-19 triggered a plethora of new data collection efforts, only some of which built upon ongoing studies with near real-time information on how the virus changed family life (see, for example, the study by hank and steinbach (2021) based on the pairfamcovid-19 survey, described in walper et al. 2020). consequently, the fredaggs baseline questionnaire includes questions on covid-19-specifi c concerns regarding health, the fi nancial situation, contact to other persons, and the appraisal of covid-19 policies. freda is therefore well-positioned to provide insights on the mediumand long-term consequences of the pandemic on family life, family development, fertility, and family well-being. in addition, more generally, freda’s panel design with bi-annual interviews allows for the analysis of such exogenous shocks’ and policies’ effects on work, partnerships, families, and health, because these spheres are continuously covered in the questionnaire (see above). 3.3 waves 2 and 3: freda-ggs core and psychological items derived from pairfam the survey instruments of waves 2, 3, 5 and 6 consist of core modules that allow for change measurements and are therefore repeated annually. additionally, user-driven open modules are included, as are modules taken from the current pairfam survey instruments that primarily address psychological topics: (1) partner relationship quality, (2) personality and self-concept, and (3) subjective well-being. this is intended to better examine the interplay between individual psychological • norbert f. schneider et al.166 characteristics and family development processes, living arrangements, and social and emotional well-being (gerstorf et al. 2013; neyer/asendorpf 2018). for example, life forms such as living in a partnership or as a single person can be seen as an expression of the fi t between personality and relationship (hagemeyer et al. 2015). partner relationship quality partner relationships are among the closest and most important relationships individuals can have in contemporary societies (neyer et al. 2011). the quality of partner relationships is a major predictor of relationship satisfaction and stability (proulx et al. 2017). based upon the assumption that good relationships are made of at least two persons, finn et al. (2020) showed that co-development between individual views and evaluations of partner relationships is a safe baseline for satisfi ed and long-lasting units (see also huston et al. 2001; schoebi et al. 2012). therefore, pairfam gathered a theoretically-informed set of indicators of relationship functioning that will be included in the freda panel study and which will be studied from the dyadic perspective of both partners. these are the fulfi lment of social needs (feelings of connectedness and intimacy), relationship satisfaction, commitment, and confl ict, providing a robust set of time-varying aspects of relationship functioning. personality personality is defi ned as a relatively stable set of characteristics concerning the typical way an individual person thinks, feels, and behaves across a wide variety of situations, including social relationships. in pairfam and freda, we focus on the big five taxonomy (comprising the personality traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) as one of the most prominent trait models (malouff et al. 2010). in addition, we study self-esteem as the central evaluative component of the self-concept, which is highly sensitive to relationship experiences (luciano/orth 2017). we assume that partners and family members need to negotiate how they can enact their personalities, pursue their goals, and fulfi l their needs within relationships via personality-relationship transactions (neyer/lehnart 2007). these transactional processes unfold over time and between both couple members, which is why it is crucial to assess them repeatedly in anchor and partner participants. for example, it has been shown that individual personality traits infl uence the relationship satisfaction of both partners (robins et al. 2000), and personality may change in response to relationship experiences (finn et al. 2015). well-being individual and relational well-being are generally viewed as important outcomes of relationship and family life (karney/bradbury 1995; reis et al. 2000). however, it is quite often overlooked that well-being may also in turn affect relationship and individual psychological functioning (neyer/asendorpf 2018). we therefore aim at family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 167 assessing various aspects of well-being continuously in pairfam and freda. among other factors, we focus on the loneliness that occurs when individuals perceive qualitative and quantitative features of their relationships as defi cient (mund et al. 2020). because loneliness is an important predictor of health problems, it is also important to study depressiveness as a central indicator of negative affect. both chronic loneliness and depressiveness represent crucial threats to life satisfaction, and conversely not feeling lonely and not experiencing negative affect are among the central pillars of a happy life. 4 survey design freda is one survey consisting of two samples: the new freda-ggs sample and the continued freda-pairfam sample. it is designed as a panel survey with bi-annual interviews conducted via self-administered mixed modes (online and postal) of the german general population between 18 and 49 years of age (and the four particular cohorts represented in the pairfam sample, see section 4.2). the freda-ggs sample starts in 2021 and will be refreshed every three years; the pairfam sample will be continued as “freda-pairfam” from 2022 onwards, following 14 waves from 2008-2022 (see fig. 2). we aim to interview anchor persons as well as their partners (if applicable). the general design principles of freda aim to ensure high panel stability, data quality, cost effi ciency, and inclusion of the offl ine population. regarding the latter, we acknowledge that a signifi cant part of the population either has no access to the internet or does prefer not to participate in surveys such as freda via the web. based on extensive experimentation in the european values study (evs) 2017 in germany, wolf et al. (2021) report that, if given the choice during the fi rst contact, roughly 80 percent of respondents decided to participate via a paper-based, mailed questionnaire. in this study, even when nudging respondents towards online participation by only providing a paper-based questionnaire with the third contact, a signifi cant share of participation via analogue mail remained – even for the younger cohorts. similar fi ndings in favour of providing an additional mailin option were reported for other european countries that participated in the evs experiments (luijkx et al. 2021). to not exclude these cases by design and, thus, risk a coverage bias by omitting the offl ine population and those preferring the physical questionnaire (e.g., blom et al. 2017; cornesse/schaurer 2021), the project team decided to use a mixed-mode design. by offering mixed modes we further aim at improving the survey experience by allowing respondents to participate in their preferred mode. previous research has shown that a positive survey experience increases the respondents’ likelihood of participating in subsequent panel waves (gummer/daikeler 2020; struminskaya 2014, chapter 4). 4.1 freda-ggs: the new sample the recruitment of freda-ggs will start in 2021 with a questionnaire specifi cally designed for recruitment purposes (w1r). in two subsequent waves in 2021 • norbert f. schneider et al.168 (w1a and w1b), the ggs instrument will be administered to respondents who were successfully recruited. every three years when the ggs questionnaire is reimplemented, a refreshment sample will be drawn. refreshing the panel serves two purposes. first, refreshments are intended to replace the respondents who have dropped out of the panel. even though other academic german mixed-mode panels reported promising retention rates (blom et al. 2015; bosnjak et al. 2018), a panel will always lose respondents over time, lowering the statistical power of the data. second, refreshing the panel serves the purpose of adding respondents from younger cohorts who were not eligible in prior sampling. the planned refreshments will thus enable researchers to use freda not only for analysing individual change, but also for investigating social change (firebaugh 2018; gummer 2015). sampling for the recruitment of freda, a probability-based sample of 100.000 respondents was drawn from german municipalities’ population registers. we refer to this sample as the freda-ggs sample. based on prior experiences with self-administered surveys in germany, we expect a response rate to w1r of around 30 percent. with respect to participation in subsequent panel waves, we assume the retention rates to converge to approximately 90 percent, similar to what gip and the gesis panel reported (blom et al. 2016). the sampling approach of freda was initially designed for a face-to-face survey with 320 sampling points, however, when the covid-19 pandemic struck, changes were made to the freda design (see below) and more addresses were drawn fig. 2: freda: planned design from 2021 to 2027 note: regular waves are bi-annual (a and b), whereas new samples are recruited via an additional short recruitment interview (r). source: own fi gure family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 169 from the selected municipalities to facilitate a large-scale mixed-mode survey. for the gross sample, individuals aged between 18 and 49 years and registered in the selected municipalities were selected. the sampling approach was designed to generate a self-weighting sample; thus, all gross sample cases had the same inclusion probability. we plan to use the same sampling procedure for future refreshment samples to ensure comparability between samples. design of w1r, w1a, and w1b three surveys are planned for freda in 2021. in april, the freda-ggs sample will be administered the questionnaire of w1r, i.e. the recruitment wave. here, respondents will be provided with a ten-minute questionnaire that collects basic information from the respondent and, most importantly, their panel consent (i.e., their consent to be re-interviewed in subsequent panel waves). the remainder of this short questionnaire features selected questions from freda deemed especially interesting for the general population. the aim of w1r is to achieve a high participation rate and willingness to participate in the panel itself. thus, in line with previous research on survey experience and panel attrition (e.g., gummer/daikeler 2020; struminskaya 2014), the questionnaire is designed to be short and interesting. respondents are contacted up to three times by mail and invited to complete in a web-based (link and password are provided) or a paper-based questionnaire (stamped return envelops are provided). while providing paper-based questionnaires to include the offl ine population and improve the survey experience, we nonetheless aim for a high share of participations via web-based questionnaires. in the web mode, responsive questionnaire design is used to facilitate the use of mobile devices. respondents who provided their consent to be contacted again during w1r are then invited for two additional surveys in 2021 (w1a, w1b). fieldwork for w1a is scheduled to start in july, w1b in october. the questionnaires of both surveys consist of the german-language version of the international ggs questionnaire that was split into two parts by the project team. the projected survey length is 25 minutes per survey. contacts, mode choice, and incentives are planned to be similar to w1r. as before, this approach was selected to ensure that respondents are not burdened with an overly lengthy survey, thus facilitating a positive and motivating survey experience. in addition to the german language versions of w1r, w1a and w1b, additional versions for the web-based questionnaire will be provided in arabic, turkish, and russian. the goal behind these additional efforts is to allow respondents with limited german skills to participate in the survey and thus mitigate a possible migration bias in the panel. design of w2a, w2b, and subsequent waves starting in 2022, freda will conduct bi-annual interviews among its active participants. active panellists include respondents who have completed w1r, • norbert f. schneider et al.170 consented to take part in re-interviews, and have not missed more than two consecutive interviews. those respondents who do not take part in two consecutive interviews (e.g., w2a and w2b) will no longer be considered active in the freda panel and thus will not receive further invitations to participate (i.e., they will drop out of the panel). in addition, panellists will only be surveyed up to the age of 55. whether and how these persons might continue to be surveyed is to be decided. the design of subsequent waves will be similar to the design of w1r, w1a, and w1b. we aim for an average length of 20-25 minutes per survey. respondents will be able to participate by completing web-based and paper-based questionnaires. they will be invited to participate in a wave up to three times by mail. once again, responsive questionnaire design will be used to facilitate the use of mobile devices when answering the freda questionnaire. incentives with the fi rst contact of each wave, each respondent will receive a 5€ unconditional incentive. the pre-paid incentive is included in the invitation letter sent to all respondents. this incentive strategy is used in w1r and the subsequent waves (w1a, w1b, w2a, etc.). in addition to the unconditional incentive, additional funds have been reserved to specifi cally incentivise respondents with lower likelihoods of participating in later waves of freda. starting w1b, based on their participation in w1r and w1a, respondents with a high likelihood of dropping out of the panel will be identifi ed and will receive additional incentives. this strategy aims at increasing the participation among respondents with high attrition probability and thus to reduce attrition bias. partner interviews freda is not limited to collecting information on the anchors, but also on their partners. therefore, beginning with w1a, those respondents who are currently in a relationship will be asked to provide contact information for their partners. these partners are then also invited to participate in freda surveys. partners receive questionnaires which are based on the anchor questionnaire, but are adapted and reduced to an approximate length of 20 minutes. nonetheless, the design of the partner survey is similar to the anchor survey. partners are invited up to three times by mail to participate in the self-administered mixed-mode surveys (weband paper-based questionnaires) and receive a 5€ unconditional incentive with each fi rst contact. the fi rst partner survey is conducted in parallel to w1a. starting in 2022, each regular wave of freda will also feature a partner survey. necessary adjustments due to covid-19 freda was initially planned to be fi elded in 2020 with a recruitment survey that featured the full-length 60-minute ggs questionnaire. the intention was to conduct the recruitment interview in-person. this approach aimed at a high recruitment rate family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 171 for the following panel waves and the inclusion of the offl ine population in freda. however, when the covid-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, the project team decided to halt preparations for data collection and postpone the fi eld start. since we expected that collecting high quality data by face-to-face interviews in 2021 would also be impaired by the covid-19 situation, data collection was switched to self-administered systems utilizing weband paper-based questionnaires. a detailed account of an early part of this process and the reasoning behind the decisions is given by gummer et al. (2020). similar discussions emerged in other renowned large-scale survey projects in germany and other countries (burton et al. 2020; sakshaug et al. 2020; sastry et al. 2020; scherpenzeel et al. 2020). the changes in the survey design were made to ensure that freda data collection could start in early 2021 and is affected as little as possible by covid-19 developments. guiding principles of the design changes were to replace the faceto-face mode by self-administered modes in a way that ensures the inclusion of the offl ine population, the achievement of high panel consent rates, as well as high data quality. by changing the design and fully committing to a more cost-effi cient selfadministered design, additional resources became available. these resources are used to mitigate important challenges panel surveys in germany are likely to face, namely a misrepresentation of migrants and selective attrition. the respective design decisions are described above. 4.2 freda-pairfam: continuing the 2008 panel with freda from 2022 the freda-pairfam sample originates from the dfg-funded long-term project “panel analysis of intimate relationships and family dynamics” (huinink et al. 2011). pairfam is an annual and currently 14-wave multi-actor panel study in germany covering a wide range of family-related topics. since 2008, pairfam has collected data from a probability-based sample (n=12,000) of the birth cohorts 1991-93, 198183, and 1971-73. with wave 4, the related study demodiff, with its east german supplemental sample, was integrated into pairfam (kreyenfeld et al. 2012). a new cohort (born 2001-03) and a sample refreshment for the two younger initial cohorts were added in wave 11 (brüderl et al. 2020). data are collected in annual waves as computer-assisted personal interviews (capi). the covid-19 pandemic necessitated a mode switch to computer-assisted telephone interviewing (cati) during the fi eldwork for wave 12 (gummer et al. 2020), which was supplemented by a web survey to collect information on family life during the covid-19 crisis (walper et al. 2020). wave 13 allowed for both faceto-face and telephone interviewing to react fl exibly to the highly dynamic situation during the pandemic. in regular waves, sensitive questions were administered onsite as computer-assisted self-interviews (casi) to ensure respondents’ privacy. in addition to the primary respondents ("anchors"), anchors’ partners and children aged 8 to 15 years are surveyed as well. partners receive a paper-based selfadministered questionnaire (papi), whereas children are interviewed via capi • norbert f. schneider et al.172 in the primary respondent’s home. moreover, in waves 2 through 8, the anchor respondent’s parents were also interviewed in papi mode. integration of the pairfam sample into freda the integration of the pairfam sample and content into freda (as “freda-pairfam” from wave 15 onwards) requires several substantial changes to previous procedures and will thus already start with the fi nal dfg-funded wave 14, which will be collected in autumn 2021: (a) changes in survey mode: • from wave 14, both anchor respondents and their partners can opt to be interviewed online (cawi) or with a paper-based questionnaire, instead of the previous procedure of capi for anchors and papi for secondary respondents. • due to the mode change, the duration of the interview (and thus the questionnaire programme) must be shortened substantially: wave 14 interviews are designed to take about 20-25 minutes (rather than currently one 60-minute interview). • note that pairfam includes a mode experiment in wave 14 to test whether there are differences in answers when data are collected online, by papi, or capi. for this purpose, face-to-face interviews of a random subsample of 1,000 respondents will be conducted, as in the previous waves. these capi interviews will be identical to the online survey fi elded for the main sample. (b) changes in the multi-actor design: • in addition to anchor respondents, only partners will be surveyed (as in freda-ggs). that is, pairfam will abandon the child interview in wave 14, as targeting young children in a mixed-mode survey has proven to be diffi cult (jäckle et al. 2015) . • moreover, as the focus of freda will mainly be partnershipand fertilityrelated issues, pairfam’s extensive parenting questionnaires will be shortened. related content that is relevant for freda will be shifted to the main anchor and partner surveys in wave 14. the guiding principle for the integration of pairfam into freda is the harmonisation of the questionnaire for both samples, freda-ggs and freda-pairfam. the pairfam questionnaire was shortened and adapted to the above-mentioned mode change after wave 12. since pairfam and ggs have similar research topics, there is a considerable overlap between both questionnaires. for the translation of the ggs questionnaire, the goal was to harmonise questions with pairfam if possible, in order to strengthen the comparability of german data and to continue pairfam under the roof of freda. despite the described modifi cations, main features of pairfam will remain unchanged by the transition to freda: • the questionnaire programme of pairfam, as far as it is relevant with regard to freda’s family-demographic focus, will be continued (in a harmonised form where necessary), and supplements freda’s core questionnaire modules. family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 173 • the data structure (including respondent identifi ers and variable names) will remain unchanged to ease merging information from freda-pairfam with prior waves of pairfam to be used as a long-term panel data set. • quality measures, data management, and documentation will continue at their high standard and the data will continue to be distributed via the gesis data archive. importantly, to facilitate knowledge transfer and enable a smooth, gradual transition from pairfam to freda-pairfam, christof wolf joined the pairfam council in 2020, linking the pairfam and freda project teams even more closely and contributing gesis’ survey methodological expertise. 5 data accessibility and organisational structure data accessibility a major goal of freda is to create a data infrastructure for the broadest possible scientifi c use. data from all waves are quickly processed and entered into the gesis data archive. users will be able to search for data via search engines and access metadata. the guiding principles in our data publication strategy are timely releases, transparency, and user-friendly documentation. freda aims for annual data releases. these releases will include the new data and updated documentation. datasets will be made available both for anchors and partners with identifi cation variables that enable examining the dyadic structure of the data. each data release is issued a persistent identifi er (doi) to ensure that freda data are fi ndable and can be properly cited in publications. the use of dois allows researchers to search for the exact version of freda data that was used in a publication and replicate published fi ndings. to ensure replication, the gesis data archive will provide access to all data releases of freda, not just the newest. to ease the use of freda data for substantive analyses, we aim at providing extensive documentation with each release. this documentation will include each wave’s questionnaire as well as detailed reports on the data collection efforts. the documentation of data collection will not only cover information on the methodology (sampling, modes, contact strategy) and outcome metrics such as response, retention, and drop-out rates, but also data quality indicators. with these additional indicators, we aim to equip researchers with the necessary tools to evaluate whether the data contain biases that might affect their analyses. freda data releases will include additional variables that convey information regarding data collection (e.g., dates of fi eldwork period, wave, mode) as well as weights – if required – to correct for quality issues (e.g., to correct for nonresponse or selectivity). these variables will be described in the supplemental documentation along with practical recommendations on how to use these weights. data will further be geo-referenced to enable linking with geospatial and contextual data. we aim to provide data access with as few barriers as possible. accordingly, freda data will be made available as a scientifi c use fi le in which sensitive data are • norbert f. schneider et al.174 aggregated. additional data sets with sensitive and more fi ne-grained data will be accessible in the secure data centre at gesis. here, users will be able to draw on the geo-referenced data and link contextual data with freda data. overall, the data publication strategy of freda meets the principles of fair data in that they are fi ndable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable (european commission 2016). in addition to the freda data hosted at gesis, the freda project will deliver the german ggs data (from waves 1, 4, etc.) to nidi for inclusion in the international ggs data set. organisational structure freda is a consortium consisting of the federal institute for population research (bib), gesis – leibniz institute for the social sciences, and the pairfam consortium (represented by the universities of cologne and jena). each of these three entities has two representatives in the board of project partners, that is, freda has six principal investigators (pis). the founding pis are the initiators of the proposal, namely norbert f. schneider (bib), martin bujard (bib), christof wolf (gesis), tobias gummer (gesis), karsten hank (university of cologne) and franz j. neyer (friedrich schiller university jena). the consortium was legally established by an agreement in 2020 (the idea for freda was originally born in 2015), and is coordinated at the bib. for the setup and consolidation phase, freda is funded by the federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) from 2020-2024. in the case of a successful interim evaluation, the federal ministry of the interior, building and community (bmi) intends to fund freda permanently through the bib’s budget from 2025 onwards. freda aims to provide a multidisciplinary scientifi c community with innovative, cross-nationally comparable panel data on family and demography in germany. in addition, freda aims to produce data that enable scientifi c analysis for policy advice. the composition of the freda council refl ects these intentions. the freda council consists of six scientists from different disciplines (survey methodology, demography, sociology, psychology, and economics). further members represent federal ministries; the federal ministry of education and research (bmbf), the german federal ministry of the interior, building and community (bmi), the federal ministry for family affairs, senior citizens, women, and youth (bmfsfj), the federal ministry of labour and social affairs (bmas), and the federal ministry of finance (bmf), who have a status as permanent guests and observers on the freda council. furthermore, the bib ensures the international comparability of freda by itself being a permanent member of the ggp consortium board, a member of the questionnaire task force, and by participating as a node on the operational level of ggp together with the coordinator, the netherlands interdisciplinary demographic institute (nidi), and the french national institute for demographic studies (ined). exchange with the scientifi c community as well as with policymakers and civil society is crucial for freda. therefore, an outreach team is part of the project and tasked with developing a communication strategy and ensuring knowledge transfer. the freda communication strategy features user conferences, user support, a family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 175 website (www.freda-panel.de), a newsletter, social media efforts, and continuous exchange with stakeholders. to cover the demands of policymakers, annual policy briefs and policy workshops are planned. to serve emerging needs of the scientifi c community, a call for open modules inviting new items for the freda questionnaire programme is open throughout the entire project. 6 conclusion and outlook freda – the german family demography panel study, aims to produce innovative data for family research as a collective good for the scientifi c community and for policy and society more generally. the core elements of freda are (1) representative data for the target population, (2) annual panels with bi-annual surveys, (3) a consistent multi-actor design, (4) international comparability, (5) the theory-based construction of survey instruments, (6) regional data enrichment, (7) multidisciplinarity, (8) the combination of well-established and new items in a modularised design of the questionnaire, and (9) permanent innovation through user-driven open modules. as the central data infrastructure for family demographic research in germany, freda makes fi ve primary contributions. (1) freda contributes to the further development of theoretical perspectives and their empirical implementation. the questionnaire construction strongly follows the life course paradigm. in order to analyse family development in the interdependent spheres of life and under the respective intraand extra-individual behavioural conditions, the survey instruments make use of core elements of decision-making and bargaining approaches. beyond ggs, which is essentially based on the theory of planned behaviour, freda aims not only to study the effect of attitudes on action, but also to make visible the emergence and change of these attitudes over the life course. freda continues the successful pairfam project, strengthens ggp, and goes beyond ggs by offering additional content and consistently applying the life course perspective. this is the case because annual panel waves allow for progression pattern analyses and event-analytical methods, enabling the identifi cation of causeeffect relationships (e.g., after events in the individual life course or after political reforms). (2) freda contributes to the advancement of survey methods. in particular, further experience with fi elding large-scale population surveys in self-administered modes will be gained. given the current nonresponse and survey cost challenges these surveys are facing (see, e.g., wolf et al. 2021), more insights on the matter are needed. freda will also provide evidence on the recruitment of a panel survey already using self-administered modes in the recruitment interview itself. we further expect that freda will help to advance methodological research on mixedmode surveys and especially on web survey methodology. furthermore, freda has several design features, made possible by the design changes in response to the challenges imposed by the covid-19 pandemic. these features include, for example, an adaptive survey design to increase participation among likely panel drop-outs with targeted incentives, as well as by providing questionnaires in multiple • norbert f. schneider et al.176 languages to mitigate the misrepresentation of migrants. we expect these design features of freda to provide further opportunities to advance methodological knowledge. (3) by consistently implementing partner interviews, new insights into the importance of dyadic decision-making processes is expected to be gained, as will experience regarding their improved empirical recording. (4) by continuing freda-pairfam, it will be possible to map long periods of the family development process – from its beginning to its later phases – based on differentiated data. (5) the international comparability of much of the data obtained in freda will considerably improve the possibilities for international comparative family research. the international comparative perspective in relation to other european countries will enable the analysis of peculiarities of the demographic situation in germany depending on context-specifi c social, political, and economic factors. we sincerely hope that freda will provide a solid data basis for the improvement of theories and methods, and for cutting-edge empirical research on family and social demography. acknowledgements funding of freda by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) under the grant numbers 01uw2001a, 01uw2001b, and 01uw2001c is gratefully acknowledged. we would like to thank the federal ministry of the interior, building and community (bmi) for making it possible in 2018 to fi nance the setup phase of the project by providing the prospect of institutionalised permanent funding for the project after a positive interim evaluation in 2024. we thank the reviewers for thoroughly reading this paper and providing useful comments. references aisenbrey, silke; fasang, anette 2017: the interplay of work and family trajectories over the life course: germany and the united states in comparison. in: american journal of sociology 122,5: 1448-1484. https://doi.org/10.1086/691128 ajzen, icek 1991: the theory of planned behavior. in: organizational behavior and human decision process 50,2: 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-t ajzen, icek; klobas, jane 2013: fertility intentions: an approach based on the theory of planned behavior. in: demographic research 29,8: 203-232. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2013.29.8 aleksynska, mariya 2018: temporary employment, work quality, and job satisfaction. in: journal of comparative economics 46,3: 722-735. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2018.07.004 allison, paul 2009: fixed effects regression models: quantitative applications in the social sciences 160. los angeles: sage publications. family research and demographic analysis (freda) • 177 arpino, bruno; esping-andersen, gøsta; pessin, léa 2015: how do changes in gender role attitudes towards female employment infl uence fertility? 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conducting general social surveys as self-administered mixed-mode surveys. in: public opinion quarterly. https://doi.org/10.7802/2150 zoch, gundula; hondralis, irina 2017: the expansion of low-cost, state-subsidized childcare availability and mothers’ return-to-work behaviour in east and west germany. in: european sociological review 33,5: 693-707. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcx068 zoch, gundula; schober, pia s. 2018: public child-care expansion and changing gender ideologies of parents in germany. in: journal of marriage and family 80,4: 1020-1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12486 date of submission: 12.02.2021 date of acceptance: 09.04.2021 prof. dr. norbert f. schneider (), pd. dr. martin bujard. federal institute for population research. wiesbaden, germany. e-mail: norbert.schneider@bib.bund.de, martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/schneider/schneider.html https://www.bib.bund.de/de/institut/mitarbeiter/bujard/bujard.html prof. dr. christof wolf, dr. tobias gummer. gesis leibniz institute for the social sciences. mannheim, germany. e-mail: christof.wolf@gesis.org, tobias.gummer@gesis.org url: https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/christof.wolf https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/tobias.gummer prof. dr. karsten hank. university of cologne, institute of sociology and social psychology (iss). cologne. germany. e-mail: hank@wiso.uni-koeln.de url: https://iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/h/prof-dr-karsten-hank prof. dr. franz j. neyer. university of jena, department of personality psychology and psychological assessment. jena. germany. e-mail: franz.neyer@uni-jena.de url: https://www.perpsy.uni-jena.de/en/team/prof_+dr_+franz+j_+neyer published by prof. dr. norbert f. schneider federal institute for population research d-65180 wiesbaden / germany 2021 managing editor prof. dr. johannes huinink dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board karsten hank (cologne) michaela kreyenfeld (berlin) marc luy (vienna) natalie nitsche (rostock) zsolt spéder (budapest) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) kieron barclay (rostock) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) tomas frejka (sanibel) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (duisburg) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway: an international comparison using freda and ggs-ii-data education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway: an international comparison using freda and ggs-ii-data* sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard abstract: in this study, we compare the intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway in 2020 and 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic. in a  rst step, we compare the intended number of children (including children born) in the newly available generations and gender survey round 2 (ggs-ii) and the german freda-ggs data. in a second step, we estimate the number of further intended children with multinomial logistic regression models. the results reveal considerable differences across the three countries. respondents in moldova plan to have rather large families (on average 3.3 children, including children born), whereas individuals in norway and germany intend to have 2.0 and 1.8 children, respectively. in the multinomial logistic regression analyses, we  nd differences in the association of educational level and fertility plans by gender and country. in germany, education is positively related to the intention to have further children. this pattern is more pronounced for women than for men. furthermore, this association is also found among norwegian men. in moldova, we  nd only weak evidence for this association. for norwegian women, education and the intention to have further children also seem to be unrelated. while most data about the intended number of children refer to the 2000s or earlier, we contribute to the literature by providing recent insights on the intended number of children in three european countries, including moldova, a country that is understudied in demographic research. keywords: parity intentions · intended family size · generation and gender survey · fertility · educational differences comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 589-628 (date of release: 17.10.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-22 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-22en4 * this article belongs to a special issue on “family research and demographic analysis – new insights from the german family demography panel study (freda)”. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard590 1 introduction the average educational attainment of young adults is increasing across oecd countries and the share of young adults who will enter university education before the age of 25 is currently expected to be around 50 percent (oecd 2021). results from the 2006 and 2011 eurobarometer surveys show that education is positively related with the intended number of children in eu 27 countries (testa 2014). however, the social context in which childbearing plans are formed might have changed in recent years. for example, younger birth cohorts, who experienced their childbearing years during and after the great recession of 2007-09, faced widespread economic uncertainty. such economic pressure has a negative effect on childbearing decisions (comolli et al. 2021; kreyenfeld 2015; vignoli et al. 2020). most recently, the covid-19 pandemic with its still unclear effects on fertility decisions (aassve et al. 2021) might have led to changes in the intended number of children. the aim of this study is to give an overview of the intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway in recent years (2020 and 2021) using data collected during the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, we analyse potential differences in the intended number of further children across educational groups. the selection of the three countries does not allow us to investigate the effect of contextual differences explicitly. our goal is more modest: we aim to provide a descriptive account of how many (further) children women and men aged 18-49 in three european countries intend to have. the results for these three countries might inform future research in other societies that are similar with regard to political institutions, economic development and fertility patterns. aligning with country groups used regularly in fertility research, germany represents the politically more conservative countries in western europe. in germany, the total fertility rate (tfr) was on a low but comparably stable level for decades (around 1.4 and 1.5). norway is a northern european country with a strong welfare state. after years of comparably high tfr, norway has witnessed a considerable decline in fertility in the last years with a tfr of 1.50 in 2021 (un population division data portal 2022c). moldova is situated in eastern europe and emerged as an independent state following the collapse of the soviet union in 1991. the moldovan economy relies heavily on agriculture and the gdp per capita is among the lowest in europe. in recent years, fertility has increased to a tfr of 1.81 in 2021 (un population division data portal 2022c). while germany and norway are often covered in comparative fertility research, the republic of moldova is studied only rarely. newly available data from the generations and gender survey (ggs-ii) enable us to compare the intended number of children in moldova with other countries. this paper answers three research questions: (1) what is the average intended number of children (including children born) in these three countries around 2020? (2) are individuals’ educational levels and intended number of further children correlated? (3) do we observe differences in this association between countries? our empirical analyses are based on round two of the generations and gender survey (ggs-ii). for germany, we use freda-ggs, the german contribution to education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 591 ggs-ii (hank et al. forthcoming). this allows us to bene t from the comparative design of freda within the international research infrastructure of the ggs. 2 background the intended number of children is one component in the complex decision-making process that precedes actual reproductive behaviour. a comparison of completed fertility of the cohorts born in the early 1970s and their intended number of children measured in the 1990s in the fertility and family surveys indicates that actual fertility is slightly lower than the previously intended number of children (beaujouan/ berghammer 2019). however, a person’s fertility intentions are indeed a predictor of their fertility behaviour both with regard to short-term intentions (kuhnt/trappe 2016) and to realised fertility by the end of a person’s reproductive period (guzzo 2022). demographers use a number of social psychological theories to explain the process of fertility decision making (see buber-ennser et al. 2023, for a short overview). an approach that explicitly considers child-number intentions is the traits-desires-intentions-behaviour framework formulated by miller and pasta (miller 2011; miller/pasta 1995). it models reproductive behaviours as the outcome of a motivational sequence. motivational dispositions (traits) cause desires. childnumber desires refer to the parity individuals want to achieve. however, such desires might be constrained by an individual’s situation, including partnership,  nancial circumstances and other life domains: the partner might have different childnumber desires, the person’s career aspirations might con ict with the demands of having the desired number of children, etc. the integration of one’s own desires, the perceived desires of relevant others and other situational constraints lead to the formation of concrete fertility intentions (miller/pasta 1995: 533). the authors distinguish between three types of intentions: the intention to have a child in the near future (childbearing intentions), the intention to have a certain number of children (child-number intentions), and the intention to have a child at a particular time in the future (child-timing intentions). these three types of intentions shape the actual reproductive behaviour of an individual. our study focuses on the intended number of children, i.e., the commitment to achieve a speci c number of children within a person’s reproductive phase, in addition to the number of children born. a person’s educational attainment can affect the intended number of children through different pathways. first, one might expect that highly educated individuals intend to have more children than those with lower levels of education, as they have higher lifetime earnings and thus can afford to have a higher number of children (becker 1981). moreover, from a gender perspective, highly educated women are more likely to have gender-equal partnerships in which the male partner contributes substantially to housework and childcare duties. this might encourage the desire for larger families (mills et al. 2008). a competing expectation would be that highlyeducated women intend to have fewer children than their less-educated peers. even if highly-educated women might desire larger families or a similar number of • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard592 children as lower educated women do (see e.g., berghammer et al. 2016) they might translate this into a lower intended number of children in order to avoid or reduce a potential motherhood penalty. indeed, evidence shows that wage losses associated with the presence of children is smaller the longer a woman postpones childbirth (taniguchi 1999). another reason for a lower intended number of children among highly-educated women is related to their generally higher wages. higher earnings lead to higher opportunity costs of childbearing (schultz 1969) and thus to a lower intended number of children. numerous studies have shown a nexus between education and actual fertility (e.g., beaujouan et al. 2016; nisén et al. 2021; perelli-harris et al. 2010; pötzsch et al. 2013). with regard to the intended number of children, prior research in western countries has mainly focused on women and shown mixed results. some studies  nd that highly-educated women do not plan to have fewer children than lesseducated women (hayford 2009; heiland et al. 2008; mills et al. 2008). by contrast, others  nd a positive educational gradient for the intended number of children (de wachter/neels 2011; guzzo 2022; testa 2014). less is known about the association between education and child number intentions in less economically developed countries. studies that use the moldovan ggs-ii data, the same source we use in our analyses,  nd only a small or no assoiation between respondents’ education levels and their fertility intentions (emery/koops 2022; nadaraia 2021). it must be noted, however, that these studies analysed the survey questions “do you want to have a child at all?” and “do you intend to have children in the next three years?”. results for other less developd countries indicate that highly-educated women want fewer children than those with lower education (alcaraz et al. 2022; nguyen/sukontamarn 2022). these studies use child number desires in their analyses, which refer to the number of children a person wishes to have without taking potential constraints into account. this differs conceptually from the intended number of children, which explicitly focuses on a realistic intention. 3 country contexts in germany, moldova and norway the three countries analysed in this study differ considerably in their fertility levels, economic development and the institutional and social settings (e.g., gender norms) in which childbearing decisions are formed. as indicators for actual fertility in the three countries, figure 1 gives an overview of the tfr and the mean age at  rst birth between 2000 and 2021. at the beginning of the millennium, the tfr in germany stood at 1.38 and increased to 1.53 in 2021. the increase in fertility observed in moldova was more pronounced, rising from 1.44 in 2002 to 1.81 in 2021. by contrast, the tfr in norway followed a different pattern. it was 1.85 in 2000, increased to 1.98 in 2009, but had declined to 1.5 by 2021. among the three countries studied in this paper, the tfr in 2021 was lowest in norway – which stands in strong contrast to the 1990s and 2000s, when fertility levels in norway were among the highest in europe. moreover, we observe a pronounced increase in mothers’ age at  rst birth in norway (from 27.3 years in 2000 and 29.8 years in 2020). in germany and education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 593 moldova, age at  rst birth also increased during these two decades (germany: from 27.1 to 30.5 years in 2021; moldova: from 21.8 to 25.2 years in 2019). apart from this increase in age at  rst motherhood, the transition to motherhood is notably much earlier in moldova than in the other two countries. clearly, a multitude of factors affect fertility behaviours. educational attainment and employment status in particular seem to be powerful socioeconomic determinants of fertility (balbo et al. 2013). apart from the individual level, macrolevel indicators are also associated with fertility. table 1 presents some national indicators that inform our country comparison. countries with high levels of female labour market participation generally have the highest fertility levels in europe (engelhardt et al. 2004). the compatibility of family life and employment, especially when children are young, seems to be key for fertility. in this regard, norway has a long tradition of policies to support working parents and gender equality fig. 1: tfr and mothers’ mean age at  rst birth in germany, moldova, norway and eu-19 countries, 2000-2021 source: total fertility rates (tfr) for germany, norway and moldova: un population division data portal (2022c); tfr for eu-19: eurostat (2023); women’s mean age at  rst birth (mab1) for germany 2000-2008: authors’ own calculations based on bujard/diabaté (2016); mab1 for germany 2009-2021: destatis (2021); mab1 for norway: human fertility database (2023); mab1 for moldova: unece statistical database (2020); mab1 for eu-19 2013-2020: eurostat (2023). notes: eu-19: austria, belgium, cyprus, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, ireland, italy, latvia, lithuania, luxembourg, malta, netherlands, portugal, slovakia, slovenia, spain. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard594 (ellingsæter/jensen 2019). parents in norway bene t from both a year of paid parental leave and from universal public childcare services. since the mid-2000s, germany has also modernised its family policy with a scandinavian-style parental leave scheme and by increasing the provision of public day-care for children under the age of three (krapf 2014). although the attendance rates for children under the age of three increased from 14 percent in 2006 to 34 percent in 2021, demand still exceeds supply (bmfsfj 2022). clearly, the situation of families in moldova differs greatly from that in high-income countries such as norway and germany. moldova is a middle-income country with an adjusted gdp per capita of �12,597 (see table 1). the share of children under age three attending day-care services was as low as 11.2 percent in 2019, compared to 35.0 in germany and 56.4 in norway (cf. table 1). moldovan mothers with young families often perceive work and family as being incompatible (chistruga-sînchevici 2020). tertiary education is widespread among norwegian women (58 percent of women in the 25-49 age group). in germany and moldova, around 30 percent of women attain tertiary education. tab. 1: macro-level indicators for germany, norway and moldova (2021 or latest available year) indicators germany norway moldova population (2021)a 83,408,555 5,403,021 3,061,507 gdp per capita (2017 �), adjusted to purchasing power (2021)b 46,844 58,134 12,597 median life expectancy at birth (2021)c 80.63 83.23 68.85 unemployment rate, % of total labour force (2021)d 3.54 4.99 3.96 female labour force participation rate, % of age group 15-64 (2019)e 74.73 75.61 44.83 childcare enrolment rate, % of age group 0-2 (2020) 35f 56g 11h female childlessness rate, % of age group 45-49 21i (2018) 13j (2015) 7k (2014) tertiary education, % of women, age group 25-49 32l (2019) 58m (2021) 31n (2021) tertiary education, % of men, age group 25-49 35l (2019) 40m (2021) 23n (2021) source: a un population division data portal (2022b); b world bank (2021), own calculations; c un population division data portal (2022a); d ilo (2021); e world bank (2019); f destatis (2020); g eurostat (2020); h statistica moldovei (2020); i destatis (2019); j own calculations based on data of the human fertility database (2023); knational bureau of statistics of the republic of moldova (2014); l destatis genesis-online (2023); m statistics norway (2023); n national bureau of statistics of the republic of moldova (2023). education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 595 4 data and methods our study is based on the generations and gender survey (ggs-ii, dommermuth et al. 2021; gauthier et al. 2020) and freda panel data, release v.2.0.0 (bujard et al. 2023). a detailed study description is presented by schneider et al. (2021). with regard to the questionnaire, freda (family research and demographic analysis) is fully comparable with ggs-ii. data were collected via different modes, however. responses were collected in a combination of paper-and-pencil questionnaires (papi) and computer-assisted web interviews (cawi) in germany, through faceto-face computer-assisted personal interviews (capi) in moldova and via cawi in norway. data collection took place during different phases of the covid-19 pandemic: in norway, it took place in november and december 2020, a time with considerable pandemic-related restrictions with a value of 60 on the oxford stringency index (hale et al. 2021), an index that records the strictness of coronavirus government policies on a 0-100 scale. as a reaction to a disrupted  eldwork process in the early covid-19 pandemic (gummer et al. 2020; schneider et al. 2021), freda wave 1 comprises three parts, namely a short recruitment interview in april/mai 2021 (w1r) and two subsequent questionnaires collected from july to mid-october 2021 (w1a) and in november and december 2021 (w1b). most variables used in this paper stem from w1r and w1a. the dependent variable – intended number of (further) children – was collected in w1a. during the data collection, the pandemic-related restrictions decreased in germany and reached oxford stringency index levels below 60 from august to october 2021 (hale et al. 2021). in moldova, data collection started in january 2020, was interrupted from april–june due to the pandemic and was resumed thereafter. the data collection mode was changed: face-to-face-interviews were carried out outside of buildings and with various protection measures (e.g., face masks and gloves). the  eld phase ended in december 2020 (cristei 2021). moldova was not covered in the oxford stringency index project. the response rate was 34.6 percent for w1r and 82.4 percent for w1a in germany. in moldova, the response rate was roughly 45 percent. in norway, it amounted to 33.5 percent (gauthier et al. 2020; ggp colectica 2022). for the german data, weights adjust for biases in various socio-demographic variables, such as sex, age and education (bujard et al. 2023). in moldova, weights adjust for sex and age. in norway, weights were developed and applied to address non-response biases, related especially to sex and education (dommermuth/lappegård 2021). we analyse women and men aged 18-49 at the time of the interview. after excluding respondents with missing information on biological children, further fertility intentions or of diverse genders, our samples comprise 17,602 individuals in germany, 3,746 in moldova and 3,322 in norway. this paper focuses on the intended number of (further) children. respondents were asked about short-term (within three years) and long-term (ever) fertility plans. those intending to have (further) children – either in the near future or later – were • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard596 asked: “how many (more) children – including biological and adoptive children1 – do you intend to have overall? [not including existing children]”. the intended number of children was derived by adding the number of children at the time of the interview (i.e., parity) to the number of further intended children. while we combined the information of children born and the number of (further) intended children in our descriptive analysis, we focus on the intended number of (further) children in the multinomial logistic regression analyses. the outcome variable can take the values zero, one, two, and three or more children. education2 is a central focus of this study. we differentiate between low (isced 0-2), medium (isced 3-4), and high (isced 5-8) levels of education. several standard socio-demographic control variables are taken into consideration, namely age, sex (female, male), parity3 (0, 1, 2, 3+), marital status (married, cohabiting, no partner), country of birth4 (born in the country of survey, born abroad), regions (urban, rural; in freda, small towns and suburbs are classi ed as urban; information about settlement size is not available in the norwegian ggs-ii data) and religiosity5 (low, medium, high). in sensitivity analyses, we further take into consideration stepchildren descending from the current partner6 (0, 1, 2+) and enrollment in education at the time of the interview (enrolled in education, not enrolled in education). in a  rst step, we provide the mean intended number of (further) children and the number of children born. the information is displayed for women and men by country, differentiated by age group (fig. 2). in a second step, we describe the mean intended number of children and intended parity distribution by education. finally, we present results of multinomial regression analyses for the number of further intended children. in our multiple regressions, we control for the number of children already born. multivariate analyses for the actual number of children 1 we cannot derive the numbers for intended adoptions from our data. in ggs-i wave 1, respondents were explicitly asked if they intend to adopt a child, apply for adoption or take a foster child in the near future. available data for 13 european countries reveal that at ages 18-50, less than two percent of people intended to do so (roughly one percent in germany and norway). overall,  gures differed by age and were higher for the 30-39 age group (2.2 percent). we therefore tentatively conclude that adoptions only play a minor role in analyses on the intended number of children. 2 education is measured via the international standard classi cation of education (isced). 3 parity includes biological children. adopted children are not included. in the selected countries, less than one percent of the respondents reported an adopted child (see table a1). 4 immigrants’ fertility often differs from natives’ fertility (e.g., kulu et al. 2017; krapf/wolf 2015). we are aware of different approaches to de ning migration backgrounds and therefore here use country of birth as a binary indicator only. numbers for different countries of origin are too small to allow for more detailed groupings. 5 religiosity is captured via the question “regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are? please express your religiosity on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 means ‘not at all religious’ and 10 means ‘very religious’.” following common practice (e.g., buber-ennser et al. 2018), we distinguished between low (0-2), medium (3-8) and high (9-10) levels of religiosity. 6 in addition, we provide the total number of stepchildren, including the current partnership and possible previous partners (table a1). we do not examine whether stepchildren are cohabiting or non-cohabiting. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 597 fig. 2: intended number of children, by age and country, 2020-2021 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al germany moldova norway number of children women 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al 18 -2 4 25 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 -3 9 40 -4 4 45 -4 9 t ot al children born further intented children germany moldova norway number of children men source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard598 are provided in the appendix. we provide average marginal effects (ame), which have the advantage of being comparable across models (best/wolf 2012). positive coef cients indicate that the corresponding group more often intended to have a speci c number of further children, negative coef cients indicate that the group less often intended to do so. as mentioned above, we conduct sensitivity analyses with regard to stepchildren as well as enrollment in education. the samples for germany and norway include slightly more women than men (table 2). the mean respondent age was 33-35 years. respondents substantially differed with regard to parity, education and marital status across the three countries. childlessness is pronounced in germany and norway (roughly 50 percent). in norway and moldova, between 12 and 15 percent of respondents had three or more children. the mean number of children born was comparably low in germany (0.9) and norway (1.1), and substantially higher in moldova (1.4). furthermore, in germany and moldova, the mean number of stepchildren within the current partnership was 0.1, while in norway it was 0.2 (table a1).7 the educational differences across the three countries are striking: large groups of german and norwegian respondents were highly educated (about one third and nearly half, respectively), compared to only one  fth in moldova. furthermore, moldova differs from germany and norway with a low proportion of cohabitating persons and few persons born abroad. moreover, the level of religiosity is considerably higher in moldova. concerning urbanity, germany has – as expected – a lower share of rural population (20 percent) than moldova does (59 percent). moreover, enrollment in any type of education is more frequent in germany and norway than in moldova. this group consists of young adults holding low or medium levels of education at the time of the interview. their further educational trajectories are unclear, but presumably they will achieve medium or high isced levels in the future. 5 descriptive results the differences in the intended number of children between the three countries are substantial: adding children born and further intended children, we  nd that respondents in germany and norway reported a comparably low average intended number of children, while in moldova, they clearly intended to have larger families (1.8; 2.0 and 3.3 children, respectively; see table 2 and figure 2). in germany and norway, the intended number of children is slightly lower for men than for women (table a2 in the appendix). however, in moldova, gender differences are pronounced, and the intended number of children is substantially lower among men than among women (3.1 versus 3.4 children). 7 the proportion of respondents with stepchildren slightly increases when stepchildren from possible previous partners are also taken into consideration. furthermore, few respondents had adopted one or more children (see table a1). education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 599 tab. 2: descriptive statistics, column percent germany moldova norway sex female 51% 50% 52% male 49% 50% 48% age 18-24 17% 17% 17% 25-29 14% 17% 15% 30-34 18% 22% 17% 35-39 17% 18% 15% 40-44 18% 15% 18% 45-49 17% 11% 18% mean age 34.7 years 33.3 years 34.7 years parity childless 51% 30% 46% 1 child 19% 22% 14% 2 children 22% 33% 28% 3+ children 8% 15% 12% mean number of children 0.9 children 1.4 children 1.1 children mean number of children among parents 1.8 children 2.0 children 2.0 children marital status married 45% 55% 32% cohabiting 32% 18% 42% no partner 23% 26% 25% missing information 0% 0% 1% education low (isced 0-2) 11% 48% 28% medium (isced 3-4) 51% 32% 24% high (isced 5-8) 31% 21% 47% missing information 7% 0% 1% country of birth born in country of survey 80% 98% 83% born abroad 20% 2% 17% missing 0% 0% 0% religiosity low 44% 4% 56% medium 35% 67% 27% high 4% 24% 3% missing information 17% 5% 14% region urban 80% 41% rural 20% 59% enrolled in education enrolled 13% 6% 17% not enrolled 87% 94% 83% • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard600 the intended numbers of children by age show that below age 30, the mean number of children born is low and the intended number of children is dominated by further intended children (cf. fig. 2). at age 40 and above, most respondents have completed family formation. in norway and germany, further fertility intentions of women in the early 40s are low and negligible in the late 40s, re ecting the lower biological chances of having a child in these ages. as a consequence of these biological chances, women age 40-49 in norway and germany adapt their child number intentions to the actual number of children they have. in both countries, this convergence of the intended and the actual number of children with increasing age is weaker for men age 40-49. in moldova, intentions for further childbearing are remarkably high for women in their 40s, which might indicate a lower awareness of reduced fecundity at these ages. a second reason for the high stated intention to have further children in this group might be the information campaigns about the ggs-ii in moldova, which stressed the aspect of family in the survey (personal communication with anne gauthier, director of the ggp, on 11 october 2022). a third problem that might contribute to an overestimation of the intended number of children is related to a possible misconception of the survey question. our additional analyses indicate that in moldova, some respondents might have included the children born when reporting their further intended number of children resulting in a comparably high number of children. nonetheless, this groups seems to be rather small (results available upon request). age patterns show remarkable differences across the three countries: child intentions are higher for older cohorts in norway and lower in germany. these trends might indicate a convergence of child intentions in the two countries among younger cohorts. such a convergence can also be found in the tfr in both countries in the last two decades. given that the number of children growing up with a stepparent is increasing (e.g., kleinschlömer/krapf 2023), we brie y examine stepchildren. as mentioned above, a non-negligible share of respondents had stepchildren through their current partner, who were either residing in the same household or living with the other tab. 2: continuation germany moldova norway intended number of children, including children born 0 children 15% 2% 13% 1 child 15% 7% 11% 2 children 48% 31% 49% 3 children 17% 23% 22% 4 or more children 5% 37% 5% mean intended number of children 1.8 children 3.3 children 2.0 children observations 17,602 3,746 3,322 source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany, 2021); weighted data. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 601 parent. as expected, stepchildren were rarely reported by young adults and more frequently by persons in their 30s and 40s, who are more likely to have experienced separation and re-partnering (fig. a1 in the appendix). norwegians living with a partner had 0.2 stepchildren on average and moldavans and germans had 0.1, see table a1 in the appendix. when taking into account the current and previous partners’ stepchildren, numbers slightly increase to 0.3 stepchildren in norway and to 0.2 in germany. adding stepchildren to biological children thus slightly increases the intended number of children. returning to biological children, descriptive analyses reveal different age patterns within the three countries (fig. 2). the intended number of children is rather stable and tends to decrease across age groups among women in norway (from 2.0 and 2.2 below age 30 to 1.9 at ages 40-49), whereas an increase is observed for older male cohorts (from 1.7 to 2.0). conversely, the intended number of children decreases with age in germany, from 2.0 (women) and 1.8 (men) in the early 20s to 1.6 for both sexes in the late 40s. in moldova, a hump shape is observed for both sexes. the intended numbers of children increase from 2.4 and 3.0 in the youngest age group to 3.5 and 4.0 between ages 25 and 39 and decrease thereafter to levels of 2.6 and 2.9 at ages 40-49. a differentiation by education reveals that the mean intended number of children decreases with higher levels of education among women in moldova and in germany (fig. 3 and table a2). this decrease is substantial in moldova, where less-educated women intended to have 3.6 children on average, as opposed to their highly-educated compatriots reporting 3.2 children. in germany, the differences are less pronounced: less-educated women intended to have 2.0 children, while at medium and high levels of education, the intended number of children was 1.7. meanwhile, child number intentions do not vary by education among norwegian women. for men, the educational pattern differs in the three countries. among german men, we  nd a u-shaped pattern with a somewhat higher intended number of children among those with lower and higher levels of education. a positive relationship between education and the intended number of children is visible for norwegian men, where less-educated men intended to have a lower number than their mediumor highly-educated peers (1.7 versus 2.0). a rather stable relationship is observed among moldovan men (from 3.07 to 3.15)8 (fig. 3). we gain further insights by looking at the parity distribution of the intended number of children (table a3 in the appendix). a life without own children was the plan of 16 percent of german respondents, while 18 percent intended to have one child. in norway, fewer persons intended to have no child or one child (13 percent and 11 percent). such plans were also less often observed in moldova, where overall only 9 percent of respondents intended to have less than two children. two biological children are by far the most preferred number of children in germany and norway, with roughly one in two persons indicating this number. fertility intentions 8 when rounded to one decimal, both values are 3.1 for the three educational groups, and minor differences become evident with numbers rounded to two decimals. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard602 of three or more children are widespread in moldova (60 percent) and less often reported in norway and in germany (27 and 19 percent, respectively). whereas women and men in germany have similar plans regarding intended parity, with only slightly more women intending higher parities, we  nd more pronounced gender differences in norway and moldova, where women more often intended to have larger families, especially in moldova. the previously described associations between education and mean intended number of children are partly re ected in the parity distributions (fig. 4). for example, the two-child norm is less relevant for less-educated women in germany (33 percent), of whom 36 percent intend to have three or more children. in contrast, only 18 percent of women with medium education and 16 percent of those with high education intended to have three or more children. for german men, these educational differences are similar. in moldova, highly-educated women intended to have fewer children than their lower-educated peers and the share of those intending to have four or more children was lower among women with high than women with low education. the same holds for the positive association among norwegian men, where the highly-educated intended to have more children and fig. 3: intended number of children by education, sex and country, 2020-2021 source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 603 fig. 4: intended number of children (including children born) by education, sex and country, 2020-2021 0 20 40 60 80 100 low medium high low medium high low medium high 31 33 25 11 34 48 15 3 32 51 13 3 7 25 24 44 8 27 24 41 10 30 23 37 27 41 24 8 23 49 21 7 20 52 23 4 germany moldova norway in % women 0 20 40 60 80 100 low medium high low medium high low medium high 33 39 22 7 38 46 12 3 28 55 14 3 11 36 22 32 10 34 22 33 8 33 23 36 33 47 16 4 24 48 20 7 20 53 24 3 less than 2 2 3 4 or more germany moldova norway in % men source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard604 more often four or more children. however, it turns out that despite almost no variation by educational level for the mean intended number of children among norwegian women and moldovan men, the underlying parity distributions differ. highly-educated norwegian women intend to have two or three children more often than those with low education (52 versus 41 percent). they are less likely to intend to have (a) less than two and (b) three or more children. furthermore, highly-educated moldovan men more often reported four or more children as their intended number. 6 multiple regression results in the multiple regression analyses, we focus on the number of further intended children as the outcome variable and control for the current parity.9 the outcome variable can take the values “no further child”, “one further child”, “two further children”, and “three (or more) further children”. table 3 (germany), table 4 (moldova) and table 5 (norway) show the results of our multinomial regression analyses for women and men. we calculate and show average marginal effects (ame). our key explanatory variable is education. however, before we present the associations with education, we want to emphasize that parity is – as expected – clearly the most important factor for further childbearing intentions. this is indicated by the effect size and statistical signi cance of the estimated ames, which are largest for parity. for example, for germany the ame for intending to have no further children is –0.297 (p<0.01) for women with one child and –0.296 (p<0.01) for men with one child. these values are interpreted as follows: among married german women, born in germany, with a low level of religiosity and a medium level of education, those with one child less often intended to have no further child than those with two children (29.7 percentage points). among men, the difference amounted to 29.6 percentage points (table 3). overall, only some ames for education turned out to be statistically signi cantly different from zero, when controlling for parity, age, marital status, country of birth, religiosity and region. we  nd the strongest evidence for the association of education and (further) intended number of children in germany. those with high education are more likely to intend to have two further children (and less likely to intend to have no further children) than those with medium and low education. among those with low education, the pattern is reversed: they are more likely to intend to have no (further) children and less likely to intend to have more than one (further) child. the patterns are more pronounced for women. for men with low education, the ame for intending to have no further children and for having three or more children are statistically insigni cant. 9 we refrain from analysing the combination of the number of children born and future childbearing plans (that we used in the descriptive analyses) because, for instance, respondents with children are by de nition never part of the category “child number intention = 0”. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 605 tab. 3: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of further intended children, average marginal effects, germany no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children women education (ref.=medium) low education 0.068*** -0.005 -0.047*** -0.017** high education -0.050*** 0.003 0.046*** 0.002 age age in years -0.058*** 0.060*** 0.012** -0.014*** (age in years)² 0.001*** -0.001*** -0.000*** 0.000* parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.378*** -0.000 0.287*** 0.091*** 1 child -0.297*** 0.196*** 0.088*** 0.013*** 3+ children -0.027 0.011 0.011 0.005 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.016* 0.011 0.012 -0.008 no partner 0.064*** -0.005 -0.048*** -0.011 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.026*** 0.016 -0.004 0.015 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.066*** 0.008 0.027*** 0.031*** high religiosity -0.087*** -0.003 -0.004 0.095*** region (ref.=rural) urban -0.019** 0.022*** -0.001 -0.002 observations: n=9,946 men education (ref.=medium) low education 0.008 0.033 -0.039** -0.002 high education -0.074*** 0.011 0.059*** 0.003 age age in years -0.038*** 0.030*** 0.009 -0.000 (age in years)² 0.001*** -0.000*** -0.000*** -0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.430*** 0.015 0.345*** 0.070*** 1 child -0.296*** 0.224*** 0.062*** 0.009 3+ children 0.050** -0.036** -0.014 0.001 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.034*** 0.003 0.021* 0.009 no partner 0.063*** -0.031*** -0.037*** 0.006 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.045*** 0.010 -0.005 0.039*** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.072*** 0.002 0.035*** 0.034*** high religiosity -0.109*** -0.014 0.006 0.118*** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.008 0.008 -0.021** 0.006 observations: n=7,656 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status, education, country of birth and religiosity are not shown. source: freda wave 1 (germany; 2021). • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard606 tab. 4: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of further intended children, average marginal effects, moldova no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children women education (ref.=medium) low education -0.008 0.001 -0.003 0.011 high education -0.014 -0.012 -0.030 0.056** age age in years 0.012 0.007 0.000 -0.019* (age in years)² 0.000 -0.000 -0.000 0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.152*** 0.118*** 0.149*** -0.115*** 1 child -0.138*** 0.122*** 0.171*** -0.155*** 3+ children 0.044* -0.013** -0.274*** 0.242*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.015 0.016 -0.001 -0.031 no partner 0.002 0.011 0.009 -0.023 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.110** 0.021 0.002 0.087 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.112* -0.035 0.090* 0.057 high religiosity -0.125* -0.022 0.092* 0.054 region (ref.=rural) urban 0.030* 0.004 0.020 -0.055*** observations: n=2,332 men education (ref.=medium) low education 0.000 0.018 -0.010 -0.008 high education -0.049* 0.022 -0.000 0.027 age age in years -0.004 0.008 -0.021* 0.017 (age in years)² 0.000* -0.000 0.000 -0.000** parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.083*** 0.078*** 0.230*** -0.225*** 1 child -0.049* 0.087*** 0.137*** -0.174*** 3+ children 0.033 -0.027** -0.303*** 0.297*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.042 0.044** -0.013 0.010 no partner -0.036 0.049*** -0.041 0.028 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad 0.008 -0.053* -0.102 0.148* religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.115** -0.031 0.049 0.097** high religiosity -0.104* -0.036 -0.005 0.145*** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.019 -0.002 0.020 -0.038 observations: n=1,414 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status, education and religiosity are not shown. source: ggs-ii moldova (2020). education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 607 tab. 5: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of further intended children, average marginal effects, norway no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children women education (ref.=medium) low education 0.036 -0.012 -0.028 0.004 high education -0.020 0.002 0.012 0.006 age age in years -0.088*** 0.070*** -0.019 0.037** (age in years)² 0.002*** -0.001*** 0.000 -0.001*** parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.322*** -0.067*** 0.290*** 0.100*** 1 child -0.274*** 0.166*** 0.110*** -0.002 3+ children 0.082** -0.035 -0.024 -0.024 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.011 0.016 0.011 -0.016 no partner 0.072*** -0.034* -0.022 -0.016 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.037* 0.010 0.043* -0.017 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.059*** 0.016 -0.007 0.051*** high religiosity -0.079* 0.060 -0.037 0.056 observations: n=2,001 men education (ref.=medium) low education 0.062** 0.022 -0.029 -0.055*** high education -0.050** 0.022 0.015 0.012 age age in years -0.060*** 0.041*** 0.020 -0.001 (age in years)² 0.001*** -0.001*** -0.000** -0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.416*** 0.007 0.308*** 0.102*** 1 child -0.326*** 0.150*** 0.165*** 0.012 3+ children 0.043 -0.028 -0.021* 0.006 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.097*** -0.009 0.109*** -0.004 no partner 0.037 -0.080*** 0.067* -0.024 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.048* 0.052** -0.002 -0.002 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.029 0.020 0.006 0.003 high religiosity -0.022 -0.067* -0.030 0.119* observations: n=1,321 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status, education and religiosity are not shown. source: ggs-ii norway (2020). • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard608 in the model for moldavan men, the estimated ame for intending to have no further children is -0.049 (p<0.1) for high education. this can be interpreted as follows: married and highly-educated men who were born in moldova who have a low level of religiosity, live in a rural area and who are fathers of two children, are 4.9 percentage points less likely to intend to have no further children than their peers who belong to the group that obtained medium education. results indicate that – when controlling for parity and further socio-demographic characteristics – highly-educated men more often intended to have further children. for moldovan women, we  nd that those with high education are more likely to belong to the group intending to have three (or more) children. in moldova, education seems to be unrelated to other categories of child number intentions. for norway, education is not relevant for further childbearing intentions among women; the estimated coef cients are not statistically signi cant (table 5). the statistically insigni cant but strong association (ame=0.036) for women with low education to intend to have no further children is in line with our descriptive  nding that in this country, less-educated women more often intend to have less than two children. for norwegian men, the pattern is different, and the educational differences derived from descriptive analyses among men in norway also become evident in the multiple regression analysis. for example, married men with low education who were born in norway, have low levels of religiosity and are fathers of two children, are 6.2 percentage points more likely to intend to have no further children than their peers who belong to the group of medium education and otherwise identical characteristics. highly-educated men with these characteristics are 5 percentage points less likely to intend to have no further children than medium educated ones. overall, the negative ames for highly-educated persons in the three countries for intending to have no further children re ect the later transition to parenthood and postponement of family formation of highly-educated persons. with regard to control variables, parity is most important for future childbearing plans, as mentioned above. furthermore, age, country of birth, religiosity, ruralurban environment as well as marital status are associated with higher intended numbers of children. for instance, persons reporting to be very religious more often intended to have further children than those with a low level of religiosity. individuals living in urban areas more often intended to have no further children than those in rural areas. women and men with a migration background were less likely to belong to the group without further childbearing plans than those born in the country of survey. sensitivity analyses for respondents living with a partner show that having stepchildren reduces the intention for further childbearing (table a4 in the appendix). in the reference groups (medium education, male, married, two children, born in country of birth, low religiosity, living in a rural region, current partner has no pre-union children), persons with one stepchild were six to ten percentage points more likely to intend to have no further children, and the difference was even more pronounced if the partner had two pre-union children. in addition, we restricted the analyses to the age group 25-49 years to reduce collinearity between age, being in education and the level of education (table a5 in the appendix). results education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 609 for education remained stable and became even more pronounced (e.g., among norwegian women). multiple regression analyses for the actual number of children indicate that in young and middle adulthood, age is the main determinant. furthermore, the association between education and the number of children was pronounced. for example, highly-educated individuals were more often childless than those with medium education (tables a6-a8 in the appendix). this is in line with prior research showing a postponement of family formation by those with higher levels of education (impicciatore/tomatis 2020). 7 discussion in this study, we analysed the intended number of children among 18-49 years old women and men in germany, moldova and norway in 2020 and 2021. our  ndings show that the intended number of children (including those already born) varies considerably by country. respondents in moldova intend to have 3.3 children on average, whereas in norway (2.0) and germany (1.8) the intended number of children is considerably smaller. the similar levels of the mean intended number of children in norway and in germany are consistent with similar levels of tfr in recent years, due to a remarkable decline in fertility rates in norway over the last decade (un population division data portal 2022c). in line with the two-child ideal (between 60 and 70 percent) in many european countries (sobotka/beaujouan 2014), our study shows that about half of the respondents in germany and norway intend to have two children. however, a considerable proportion of respondents report intentions above the two-child norm. individuals plan to have large families in moldova, where 60 percent of the respondents intended to have three or more children. in germany, 19 percent of respondents plan to have three or more children. among respondents in norway, 27 percent intend to have three or more children (cf. table a3). we were particularly interested in the association between educational attainment and the intended number of children. in multinomial logistic regression analyses, we distinguished between four groups, ranging from zero to three or more further children. our results indicate different patterns in the three countries. the association was negative among women and men in germany, which might re ect dif culties in reconciling childcare duties and employment. in norway, the pattern is gendered. education is negatively related to men’s intended number of further children. such a negative relationship is not observed among norwegian women. figures for the mean number of children are also similar across educational groups among women in norway, in line with  ndings based on cohort fertility (nisén et al. 2021). in norway, the availability of childcare facilities for children under three is high, which might help reconcile women’s career and family plans. in moldova, the multiple regression results indicate only a weak association between education and the intended number of further children. it seems that a high number of children (three or more) is intended among most moldovans, regardless of education. this is surprising, given that only 11 percent of children under age three use public childcare. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard610 furthermore, the regular support of family and friends with childcare seems to be moderate among moldovan families with children (20 percent, cf. sainsus 2022: 11). it seems that a large share of moldovan women drops out of the labour force, which is re ected in the comparably low female labour force participation rate of 44.8 percent (world bank 2019). our results indicate that this might also be the case for highly-educated women. our study contributes to the literature on child number intentions in several ways. first, we provide recent insights on the intended number of children in three european countries in 2020 and 2021. in norway and germany, the intended number of children is close to two, indicating that the two-child norm observed in many western countries persists (sobotka/beaujouan 2014). although our data do not allow us to analyse time trends in child number intentions, the seemingly stable preference for two children in germany and norway does not indicate strong reactions in fertility plans caused by economic and other external shocks. the covid-19 pandemic was one such dramatic shock and was associated with short-term fertility  uctuation in many european countries (bujard/andersson forthcoming; sobotka et al. 2023). however, in line with our  nding of child number intentions of around two in germany and norway, a recent study on austria shows that the long-term impact of the pandemic on family plans is modest (buber-ennser et al. 2023). for moldova, we are among the  rst to analyse child number intentions. most strikingly, although the tfr was low for many years, our study shows that moldovans intend to have large families, i.e., three or more children. overall, child number intentions might change in all three study countries with further threats to the economic and security situation in europe. uncertainties related to rising energy prices and living costs in europe following the russian invasion of ukraine might negatively affect individuals’ subjective view of the future, which might in turn affect fertility intentions (lappegård et al. 2022). uncertainties might be in particular relevant for moldova, which is commonly mentioned as a potential future target for russian invasion and received many more refugees per capita than other european countries. a second contribution of our study is the identi cation of country differences. there might be cultural and institutional variations that shape the intended number of children. our  ndings for these three analysed countries are partly transferable to others, e.g., the results for germany might be informative for the german-speaking countries, norway for the northern european countries and moldova for eastern european countries. as a third contribution, our analyses allow a comparison of germany with other european countries and shows the importance of the german freda data for family research at both the national and the international level. the data underlying our study stem from three different periods of the pandemic: (1) from the time when the  rst covid-19 cases were registered in europe and when societies experienced lockdowns and contact restrictions for the  rst time (moldova), (2) from the period shortly before and at the beginning of the second lockdowns education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 611 in europe (norway), and (3) from summer 2021 with low incidences10 (germany). therefore, we are not able to rule out the effects of the time-varying pandemic situations on differences between the three countries. for moldova, emery/koops (2022) compared data collected before and after the onset of the pandemic and showed that medium-term fertility intentions were not affected by the pandemic. however, their results indicated changes in short-term family planning. some of the data’s speci cities limit our study. regarding the quality of fertility data collected via cawi, the ggs-ii team estimated that fertility indicators for norway turned out to be consistent with population-based data, thus pointing towards no systematic deviations (jablonski et al. 2022). however, analyses on data from moldova hint towards an over-estimation of the intended number of children, mainly because of an under-estimation of childlessness. this might be due to the awareness campaigns about the ggs-ii in moldova, which stressed the aspect of a family survey and might have led to higher participation among respondents with children, and lower participation among childless persons. another reason for an overestimation of the number of (further) intended children in moldova might be that not all respondents understood that they should exclude children already born from their answer. moreover, this paper includes individuals in different stages of their life course, irrespective of their current partnership context and ignoring the couple perspective (corijn et al. 1996). this might lead to an overestimation of the ame of education: prior research indicates that the association of women’s education with completed fertility turned out to weaken after controlling for husbands’ characteristics (naz et al. 2006). moreover, with our cross-sectional data, we cannot analyse the impact of covid-19 and its restrictions on fertility intentions in the three countries. finally, the country differences might be biased by data collection at different times of the pandemic due to selection effects and response behavior to the adapted survey modes. in sum, our study highlights that the intended number of children varies considerably in european countries in 2020/2021. the results con rm the persistence of a two-child norm in germany and norway. we  nd intentions different from this norm among the majority of respondents in moldova, who largely intend to have three or more children. however, we also found the intention to have three or more children among 27 percent of respondents in norway. regarding education, we  nd the strongest association between educational attainment and the number of intended further children in germany and for norwegian men, and less so among moldovans. for norwegian women, we did not  nd any statistically signi cant association of education and intended number of further children. these country differences indicate that contextual and institutional factors are relevant for fertility plans. 10 as mentioned above, the german data underlying this study stem from two surveys (w1r and w1a). whereas basic socio-demographic characteristics were collected in recruitment interviews (w1r) carried out at the end of the second lockdown, fertility intentions were part of the w1a questionnaire, distributed in summer 2021. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard612 acknowledgements this paper uses data from the ggs-ii and freda; visit the ggp website (https:// www.ggp-i.org) or the freda website www.freda-panel.de for methodological details. funding of freda by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) under the grant numbers 01uw2001a, 01uw2001b, and 01uw2001c is gratefully acknowledged. we thank adrian greiner, inga laß, lidia gutu and elena ziege for their valuable help. references aassve, arnstein et al. 2021: early assessment of the relationship between the covid-19 pandemic and births in high-income countries. in: pnas 118,36: 1-3 . https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105709118 alcaraz, melissa; hayford, sarah r.; glick, jennifer e. 2022: desired fertility and educational aspirations: adolescent goals in rapidly changing social contexts. in: journal of marriage and family 84,1: 7-31. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12815 balbo, nicoletta; billari, francesco c.; mills, melinda 2013: fertility in advanced societies: a review of research / la fécondité dans les sociétés avancées: un examen des recherches. in: 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krapf (). state institute for family research at the university of bamberg. bamberg, germany. e-mail: sandra.krapf@ifb.uni-bamberg.de url: https://www.ifb.bayern.de/ueber/mitarbeiter/krapf.php dr. isabella buber-ennser. vienna institute of demography (oeaw), wittgenstein centre for demography and global human capital (iiasa, oeaw, university of vienna). vienna, austria. e-mail: isabella.buber@oeaw.ac.at url: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/people/staff/isabella-buber-ennser prof. dr. martin bujard. federal institute for population research (bib). wiesbaden, germany. heidelberg university, institute of medical psychology, medical faculty. heidelberg, germany. e-mail: martin.bujard@bib.bund.de url: https://www.bib.bund.de/en/institute/staff/bujard/bujard.html • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard618 appendix fig. a1: intended number of children, including previous children of current partner, by age and country, 2020-2021 source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 619 tab. a1: descriptive statistics on stepchildren and adopted children, column percent germany moldova norway previous children of current partner, if married or cohabiting 0 children 91% 92% 87% 1 child 6% 6% 6% 2+ children 3% 3% 7% mean number of stepchildren with current partner 0.1 children 0.1 children 0.2 children observations 14,135 2,815 2,512 stepchildren, including current and previous partnerships 0 children 89% 92% 87% 1 child 7% 5% 6% 2+ children 4% 3% 7% mean number of stepchildren 0.2 children 0.1 children 0.3 children adopted children with current partner 0 children 99.2% 99.7% 1 child 0.4% 0.2% 2+ children 0.3% 0.1% mean number of adopted children 0.014 children 0.004 children adopted children, including previous partnerships 0 children 99.2% 99.2% 99.7% 1 child 0.6% 0.5% 0.2% 2+ children 0.2% 0.3% 0.1% mean number of adopted children 0.012 children 0.014 children 0.004 children observations 17,602 3,746 3,322 source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard620 tab. a2: mean intended number of children, by education, sex and country, 2020-2021 women men total germany low education 2.0 1.9 1.9 medium education 1.7 1.6 1.7 high education 1.7 1.8 1.8 total 1.8 1.7 1.8 moldova low education 3.6 3.1 3.3 medium education 3.3 3.1 3.2 high education 3.2 3.1 3.2 total 3.4 3.1 3.3 norway low education 2.0 1.7 1.8 medium education 2.0 2.0 2.0 high education 2.0 2.0 2.0 total 2.0 1.9 2.0 remark: missing categories for education are not shown. source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 621 tab. a3: intended number of children, by sex and country, in percent women men total germany 0 children 16 17 16 1 child 17 18 18 2 children 48 48 47 3 children 15 14 15 4 or more children 5 4 4 total 100 100 100 moldova 0 children 2 3 2 1 child 6 7 7 2 children 27 35 31 3 children 24 22 23 4 or more children 42 33 37 total 100 100 100 norway 0 children 12 14 13 1 child 11 11 11 2 children 49 49 49 3 children 23 21 22 4 or more children 6 4 5 total 100 100 100 source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021); weighted data. • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard622 tab. a4: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of further intended children, average marginal effects; persons with coresiding partner no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children germany education (ref.=medium) low 0.049*** -0.003 -0.036*** -0.010 high -0.057*** 0.008 0.045*** 0.004 sex (ref.=male) female 0.038*** -0.010* -0.026*** -0.002 age age in years -0.046*** 0.042*** 0.012*** -0.009*** (age in years)² 0.001*** -0.001*** -0.000*** 0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.385*** -0.004 0.316*** 0.074*** 1 child -0.301*** 0.219*** 0.071*** 0.010** 3+ children 0.009 -0.013 0.000 0.004 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.022*** 0.009 0.016** -0.003 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.027*** 0.015* -0.003 0.015** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.060*** 0.007 0.025*** 0.028*** high religiosity -0.105*** -0.006 0.021 0.091*** region (ref.=rural) urban -0.007 0.015** -0.009 0.001 previous children of current partner (ref.=0) 1 stepchild -0.013 0.020 -0.048*** 0.041*** 2+ stepchildren 0.046*** -0.088*** -0.014 0.056*** observations: n=14,312 education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 623 tab. a4: continuation no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children moldova education (ref.=medium) low -0.003 -0.002 -0.003 0.008 high -0.014 -0.015 -0.040* 0.070*** sex (ref.=male) female 0.121*** 0.012 -0.034* -0.099*** age age in years 0.002 0.009* -0.003 -0.008 (age in years)² 0.000** -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.175*** 0.099*** 0.221*** -0.145*** 1 child -0.131*** 0.104*** 0.189*** -0.163*** 3+ children 0.031 -0.014** -0.277*** 0.260*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.021 0.022* 0.016 -0.018 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.058 0.009 -0.045 0.094 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.084 -0.024 0.016 0.092* high religiosity -0.088 -0.014 -0.002 0.103** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.036** 0.011 0.003 -0.051*** previous children of current partner (ref.=0) 1 stepchild 0.104*** -0.018 -0.122*** 0.037 2+ stepchildren 0.145*** 0.031 -0.175*** -0.001 observations: n=2,815 • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard624 tab. a4: continuation no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children norway education (ref.=medium) low 0.006 0.009 -0.009 -0.005 high -0.036** 0.023 0.003 0.010 sex (ref.=male) female 0.000 0.011 -0.004 -0.007 age age in years -0.075*** 0.069*** 0.009 -0.003 (age in years)² 0.001*** -0.001*** -0.000 -0.000 parity (ref.=2 children) 0 children -0.327*** -0.038* 0.277*** 0.089*** 1 child -0.301*** 0.189*** 0.110*** 0.002 3+ children 0.074*** -0.029 -0.025* -0.020** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting -0.040*** 0.016 0.043** -0.019 country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.047*** 0.028 0.042** -0.023* religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.040*** 0.013 0.012 0.015 high religiosity -0.043 0.029 -0.045 0.059 previous children of current partner (ref.=0) 1 stepchild 0.062* 0.006 -0.033 -0.035 2+ stepchildren 0.212*** -0.076*** -0.095** -0.041 observations: n=2,512 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for education and religiosity are not shown. source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021). education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 625 tab. a5: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of further intended children, average marginal effects; persons aged 25-49 years no further 1 further 2 further 3+ further child child children children germany women education (ref.=medium) low 0.055** -0.014 -0.055** 0.014 high -0.048*** 0.007 0.040*** 0.000 observations: n=8,368 men education (ref.=medium) low -0.012 -0.003 -0.021 0.035* high -0.076*** 0.015* 0.055*** 0.006 observations: n=6,440 moldova women education (ref.=medium) low -0.012 -0.004 0.001 0.015 high -0.016 -0.015 -0.024 0.055** observations: n=1,973 men education (ref.=medium) low 0.003 0.012 -0.020 0.005 high -0.053 0.017 -0.000 0.036 observations: n=1,164 norway women education (ref.=medium) low 0.001 -0.018 0.003 0.014 high -0.047* 0.002 0.023 0.022* observations: n=1,653 men education (ref.=medium) low 0.034 0.021 0.007 -0.062*** high -0.049* 0.024 0.050* -0.025 observations: n=1,107 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for education are not shown. controlled for age, age², parity, marital status country of birth, religiosity and region. source: ggs-ii norway (2020), ggs-ii moldova (2020), freda wave 1 (germany; 2021). • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard626 tab. a6: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of children born, average marginal effects, germany no child 1 child 2 children 3+ children women education (ref.=medium) low education 0.049** -0.024 -0.106*** 0.081*** high education -0.010 -0.029*** 0.042*** -0.003 age age in years -0.002 0.052*** -0.019*** -0.031*** (age in years)² 0.000** -0.001*** 0.000 0.000*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.108*** 0.056*** -0.081*** -0.083*** no partner 0.227*** 0.080*** -0.207*** -0.101*** country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.009 0.014 -0.035** 0.030** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.062*** -0.030*** 0.032*** 0.060*** high religiosity -0.059*** -0.073*** -0.056** 0.189*** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.013* 0.025*** -0.018 -0.020** observations: n=9,946 men education (ref.=medium) low education 0.034 0.005 -0.096*** 0.057*** high education -0.048*** -0.059*** 0.082*** 0.025*** age age in years 0.004 0.035*** -0.013** -0.026*** (age in years)² 0.000 -0.000*** -0.000 0.000*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.124*** 0.020* -0.069*** -0.075*** no partner 0.279*** 0.002 -0.182*** -0.099*** country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.020 -0.022* -0.037* 0.079*** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.061*** -0.037*** 0.036*** 0.062*** high religiosity -0.042* -0.108*** -0.073** 0.223*** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.014 0.017* -0.003 -0.028*** observations: n=7,656 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status and religiosity are not shown. source: freda wave 1 (germany; 2021). education and intended number of children in germany, moldova and norway • 627 tab. a7: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of children born, average marginal effects, moldova no child 1 child 2 children 3+ children women education (ref.=medium) low education 0.015 -0.063*** -0.028 0.077*** high education 0.067*** 0.027 -0.041 -0.053*** age age in years -0.065*** -0.056*** 0.046*** 0.075*** (age in years)² 0.001*** 0.001*** -0.001*** -0.001*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.191*** 0.023 -0.201*** -0.012 no partner 0.266*** -0.016 -0.209*** -0.041* country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad 0.000 -0.015 0.093 -0.078 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity 0.003 -0.045 0.196*** -0.153** high religiosity -0.007 -0.050 0.162** -0.105 region (ref.=rural) urban 0.054*** 0.054*** -0.000 -0.108*** observations: n=2,332 men education (ref.=medium) low education -0.035* 0.040* 0.001 -0.006 high education -0.000 0.089*** -0.045 -0.043* age age in years -0.049*** -0.013 0.014 0.049*** (age in years)² 0.000*** 0.000 -0.000 -0.001** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.296*** -0.010 -0.243*** -0.043* no partner 0.525*** -0.106*** -0.318*** -0.101*** country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad -0.042 0.068 0.089 -0.114*** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.081* 0.106*** -0.059 0.034 high religiosity -0.092** 0.102** -0.108* 0.097** region (ref.=rural) urban 0.046** -0.008 -0.010 -0.028 observations: n=1,414 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status and religiosity are not shown. source: ggs moldova (2020). • sandra krapf, isabella buber-ennser, martin bujard628 tab. a8: multinomial logistic regression, outcome: number of children born, average marginal effects, norway no child 1 child 2 children 3+ children women education (ref.=medium) low education -0.057** 0.054* -0.022 0.025 high education 0.036* -0.001 -0.024 -0.010 age age in years -0.128*** -0.009 0.089*** 0.048*** (age in years)² 0.001*** 0.000 -0.001*** -0.001*** marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.128*** 0.002 -0.038* -0.092*** no partner 0.339*** -0.020 -0.190*** -0.129*** country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad 0.049** 0.070*** -0.076*** -0.043*** religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.035** -0.034** 0.023 0.047*** high religiosity 0.076 -0.072** -0.132*** 0.128*** observations: n=2,001 men education (ref.=medium) low education -0.029 0.027 0.042 -0.041 high education 0.037 -0.018 0.016 -0.035 age age in years -0.088*** -0.005 0.048* 0.045* (age in years)² 0.001*** 0.000 -0.001 -0.000 marital status (ref.=married) cohabiting 0.148*** -0.006 -0.094*** -0.047** no partner 0.443*** -0.092*** -0.255*** -0.096*** country of birth (ref.=born in country of survey) born abroad 0.113*** -0.006 -0.108*** 0.001 religiosity (ref.=low) medium religiosity -0.006 0.019 -0.054** 0.041** high religiosity 0.037 -0.047 -0.021 0.032 observations: n=1,321 * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 remark: missing categories for marital status, education and religiosity are not shown. source: ggs norway (2020). published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a crosseuropean comparison* katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo abstract: ideations and intentions are important precursors of actual behaviour but are still understudied in the literature on the transition to adulthood. this article provides a descriptive overview of ideations and intentions about the timing of four key events in the transition to adulthood – exit from the parental home, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood – using cross-national representative data for 33 european countries from the generations and gender survey and european social survey. results show that ideations and intentions about the transition to adulthood are, like behaviours, gendered and display distinctive country differences. the analysis of age-graded ideations and intentions suggests a mismatch between the ideal and actual ages at which key events occur during the transition to adulthood. young people aged 18 to 34 in europe consider it ideal to start a non-marital cohabitation, marry, and become parents during their 20s but, on average, experience these events later than their ideal timeline. this mismatch is particularly pronounced among men and for the events of marriage and parenthood. keywords: europe · gender · ideal age · intentions · transition to adulthood · youth 1 introduction ideations and intentions are at the centre of an established line of family demographic research (billari et al. 2009, 2019; billari/liefbroer 2007; dommermuth et al. 2015; mencarini et al. 2015; schwanitz et al. 2021). the key premise is that demographic phenomena cannot be fully understood through an examination of actual behaviour alone. attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and expectations underlying people’s decision-making contribute to determining whether, how, and when demographic events occur during one’s life course. subjective views on the organisation of the comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 50 (2025): 205-238 (date of release: 07.10.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-13 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-13en * this article has an online appendix with supplementary material: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/668/442 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-13 • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo206 life course are often shaped by normative beliefs (such as perceived expectations and social pressures; ajzen 1991) or cultural scripts (such as the so-called age norms; billari/liefbroer 2007; liefbroer/billari 2010), which tend to differ across contexts and genders. while the concept of intention is well established in the literature – capturing the extent to which an individual is motivated to engage in a certain behaviour and has a plan for implementing this decision (ajzen 1991) – ideations have primarily been referred to as age norms in prior research and are typically measured through ideal ages or age deadlines for experiencing certain life events (e.g., aassve et al. 2013a; billari et al. 2011; billari/liefbroer 2007). hence, ideations refer to individuals’ opinions about when an event should be experienced, and, as such, reflect a societal norm (lazzari et al. 2024; liefbroer/billari 2010). we argue that especially during the transition to adulthood – a period replete with demographic milestones – cross-national comparisons of intentions and ideations provide insight into the contemporary context of demographic decision-making for european young adults. despite the common trend of a late, protracted, and complex transition to adulthood (billari/liefbroer 2010; sobotka/toulemon 2008; lesthaeghe 2020), significant crossnational and gender differences persist across europe. patterns in the transition to adulthood often follow a north-south gradient (reher 1998), marked by “earliestearly” behaviour in northern europe and “latest-late” behaviour in southern europe (billari 2004). gender also matters for the age stratification of key transitions like entering partnership and parenthood, with women typically experiencing these events earlier than men (billari/liefbroer 2010; ferraretto/vitali 2024; sobotka/ toulemon 2008). according to life course theory, institutional environments such as labour markets, welfare systems, policy environments, and long-term cultural factors (elder et al. 2003) shape opportunity structures in which the transition to adulthood takes place. the idea developed in this paper is that institutional and cultural environments also specifically impose age schedules according to which the transition to adulthood should unfold: ideal ages and intentions about key events are thus expected to vary substantially across european countries. in the literature, intentions and age norms are investigated almost exclusively within studies of fertility (beaujouan/berghammer 2019; billari et al. 2009, 2011; dommermuth et al. 2015; lazzari et al. 2024; mencarini et al. 2015; toulemon/testa 2005; vignoli et al. 2013), with few exceptions related to leaving the parental home (billari/liefbroer 2007; ferrari et al. 2014; schwanitz et al. 2021; tosi 2017). most of these studies are based on single countries and address either the determinants of intentions, the realisation of intentions, or the association between age norms and behaviours. subjective views on the timing of life-course events, specifically during the transition to adulthood, have rarely been studied in comparative perspective (for an exception: spéder et al. 2014). little is known about young adults’ age ideations and intentions regarding the unfolding of the transition to adulthood, particularly in relation to actual behaviour and cross-national gender comparisons. our contribution aims at closing these research gaps by providing a descriptive overview of ideal ages, age-graded intentions, and behaviours related to four key events in the transition to adulthood – first exit from the parental home, first cohabitation, first marriage, and parenthood – for women and men across european countries. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 207 2 theoretical background and state of research 2.1 conceptualising the transition to adulthood the transition to adulthood has been a core concept in family demography since the late 1970s, defined as a process encompassing the following life events: completing education, entering the labour market, leaving the parental home, forming stable unions, and becoming a parent (modell et al. 1976; hogan/astone 1986; furstenberg et al. 2005). these transitions, tied to psychological development, autonomy, and independence, serve as a heuristic framework of socially constructed markers of adulthood that vary across contexts (furstenberg et al. 2005; spéder et al. 2014). in europe, adulthood is loosely defined as occurring between ages 18 and 34, though its timing has become increasingly diverse and protracted in recent decades (billari/ liefbroer 2010; sobotka/toulemon 2008; lesthaeghe 2020). some scholars suggest this transition may extend further, potentially up to age 40, due to the postponement of key milestones such as union formation and parenthood (ferraretto/vitali 2024), though this remains speculative. 2.2 the role of ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood are closely related (hogan/ astone 1986; ajzen 1991; elder et al. 2003). ideations provide the framework through which young people conceptualise their transition to adulthood in relation to societal norms and ideal timetables. they encompass expectations, norms, and beliefs about what adulthood means and the timing and sequence of key milestones, shaping decision-making regarding life course events (neugarten et al. 1965; hogan/astone 1986; heckhausen 1999; elder et al. 2003). in demographic research, ideations are primarily studied through age norms and measured via ideal ages or age deadlines for experiencing certain events (liefbroer/billari 2010). in this way, ideations represent normative timetables reflecting individuals’ opinions about when a transition should occur and, as such, mirror broader societal norms (neugarten et al. 1965; lazzari et al. 2024; liefbroer/billari 2010). conversely, intentions represent strategic planning and decision-making regarding demographic milestones. in the theory of planned behavior (tpb; ajzen 1991), intentions serve as immediate determinants of behaviour and are shaped by three factors: behavioural beliefs (perceived positive or negative consequences of the transition), normative beliefs (perceived social expectations and pressures), and perceived behavioural control (factors influencing one’s ability to complete the transition). the idea that individuals engage in planful actions within a time frame aligns with key principles of life course theory such as “agency” and “timing of transitions” (elder et al. 2003). these principles emphasize how people shape their life trajectories while navigating the constraints and opportunities of their historical and social contexts. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo208 2.3 research gaps and study contributions ideations and intentions play a crucial role in shaping the transition to adulthood, influencing both when and whether individuals experience key life course events (e.g., billari et al. 2009, 2011; 2019; dommermuth et al. 2015; hofäcker/chaloupková 2014; lazzari et al. 2024; mencarini et al. 2015; schwanitz et al. 2021; toulemon/testa 2005; vignoli et al. 2013). existing studies also tend to emphasize gender differences in ideations and intentions (e.g., spéder et al. 2014). ideal ages and age deadlines for parenthood have increased over recent decades, but they remain lower for women than for men (lazzari et al. 2024). this pattern reflects observed behaviours, as women typically enter partnership and parenthood earlier than men (billari/ liefbroer 2010; sobotka/toulemon 2008). while the link between intentions and their realisation in behaviour concerning union formation, marriage, and parenthood differs little by gender (billari et al. 2019), intentions to leave the parental home are more strongly shaped by gendered subjective norms (schwanitz et al. 2021). despite strong empirical support for their role as precursors of demographic behaviour, large-scale comparative research on how ideations and intentions vary by gender and age across multiple life course dimensions in european countries remains scarce. examining these patterns across diverse national contexts is a necessary step toward better understanding cross-country differences in the degree to which young adults can translate their ideations and intentions into actual life-course transitions. cross-national differences in the transition to adulthood reflect variations in welfare regimes, economic conditions, labour markets, cultural factors, and policy support (buchmann/kriesi 2011; table a1). these, in turn, shape countryspecific opportunity structures and influence the timing of life course transitions. these differences often follow a north-south gradient: transitions occur earlier in northern and western europe – where youth support is more generous – and later in southern and eastern europe, where such support is weaker (reher 1998; billari 2004; buchmann/kriesi 2011). despite a general postponement of key life transitions across europe, this behavioural gradient has remained relatively stable over the past 60 years (billari/liefbroer 2010; ferraretto/vitali 2024; sobotka/toulemon 2008; lesthaeghe 2020). this stability strongly suggests that intentions and ideations follow a similar cross-national pattern. a related issue that warrants deeper empirical investigation across multiple life course dimensions is whether structural barriers – such as financial constraints, job insecurity, and insufficient policy support – prevent young adults from acting on their intentions and ideations. these barriers may delay or even hinder the attainment of key life milestones. to frame our analysis, we focus on four traditional markers of the transition to adulthood: first exit from the parental home, first cohabitation, first marriage, and parenthood. we examine these by gender to understand diverging patterns in ideal ages, intentions, and behaviours across a large number of european countries. from a life-course perspective, the four milestones are central to family formation, a key area of demographic research. we acknowledge excluding two other markers – finishing education and entering the labour market – due to data limitations (see section 3). however, finishing education and entering employment are often ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 209 subject to additional, institutionalised age timetables (e.g., compulsory schooling age), making them less self-directed compared to transitions like leaving home, cohabiting, marrying, or becoming a parent. 3 data we draw on data from two large-scale social surveys, the generations and gender survey (ggs, wave 1; generations and gender programme 2019) and the european social survey (ess; ess 2006, 2018). the ggs collects information on family demographic topics, including the transition to adulthood (gauthier et al. 2018). importantly, it includes questions on short-term (i.e., in the next three years) intentions to live independently from parents, to cohabit with a partner, to marry, and to have a child.1 the ess biannually collects information on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. rounds 3 and 9 feature a rotating module on the “timing of life” that includes questions about ideal ages to start living with a partner, to get married, and to become a parent and also about age deadlines, i.e., the age considered to be too old to experience certain transitions (billari et al. 2021). these questions were administered using a split-ballot design, meaning that respondents are randomly assigned to answer questions about ideal ages and age deadlines for either women or men, regardless of their own gender. respondents can indicate that they have no ideal age for a given event or are of the opinion that the event – such as cohabitation or marriage – should not be experienced at all. they can also choose the option “don’t know”. together, the two surveys cover 33 european countries (31 in the ess and up to 17 in the ggs; see table 1). from both surveys, we first select respondents aged 18-34. for each domain in the transition to adulthood – leaving the parental home, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood – we describe intentions and ideations by gender and country. we then focus on the ess data to compare ideations with the actual ages at which these events were experienced. these ages are reported retrospectively and measured in years, and we analyse them by gender and country. since not all respondents aged 18-34 have experienced each event by the time of the interview (i.e., rightcensoring), we estimate the age at event using kaplan-meier survival curves. in this analysis, respondents are considered at risk of experiencing each event starting at age 18. table 1 provides a detailed breakdown of the selection criteria for each subsample and measurement indicator. our goal in all operationalisations is ensuring cross-national comparability. all empirical analyses apply weights as provided by the ggs and ess to adjust for differential selection probabilities and population sizes across countries. 1 finishing education and entering the labour market (incl. gaining financial independence) are other standard markers of adulthood. we do not include them because intentions and ideal ages about these key events were not consistently covered in both surveys. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo210 se le ct io n cr ite ria to c om pu te … d et ai ls in te nt io n to … … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho ha ve th e in te nt io n ha ve n ot e xp er ie nc ed th e tr an sit io n … le av e th e rs w ho h av e ne ve r l ef t rs w ho li ve w ith p ar en ts w e co ns id er r s w ho c ur re nt ly li ve w ith th ei r p ar en t(s ) a nd w ho h av e ne ve r pa re nt al h om e th e pa re nt al h om e (a nd h av e ne ve r l ef t h om e le ft (a nd re tu rn ed to ) t he p ar en ta l h om e be fo re . fo r t he 1 st ti m e be fo re ) n c ou nt rie s = 1 3 in fo ur c ou nt rie s ( sw ed en , n et he rla nd s, es to ni a, a nd h un ga ry ) t he n in di vi du al s = 1 2, 21 6 n c ou nt rie s = 1 3 in te nt io n qu es tio n fo r l ea vi ng th e pa re nt al h om e fo r t he fi rs t t im e w as n ot n in di vi du al s = 1 2, 51 9 as ke d to r s. … c oh ab it fo r rs w ho h av e ne ve r rs w ho d o no t c oh ab it w e co ns id er r s w ho d o no t c ur re nt ly li ve w ith a p ar tn er o r s po us e th e 1s t t im e co ha bi te d (a nd h av e ne ve r c oh ab ite d (a nd h av e ne ve r d on e so b ef or e) . w ith a p ar tn er b ef or e) n c ou nt rie s = 9 in s ix c ou nt rie s ( g er m an y, h un ga ry , n or w ay , e st on ia , l ith ua ni a, a nd p ol an d) n in di vi du al s = 9 ,7 66 n c ou nt rie s = 9 th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as o nl y as ke d to r s w ith a n on -r es id en t p ar tn er ; n in di vi du al s = 1 0, 42 8 in it al y th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as o nl y as ke d to r s w ith ou t a ny p ar tn er ; an d in th e cz ec h re pu bl ic th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as n ot a sk ed a t a ll. h en ce , w e ex cl ud e th es e ei gh t c ou nt rie s b ec au se th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as n ot as ke d to a ll rs w ith ou t a c ore sid en t p ar tn er . … m ar ry fo r rs w ho h av e ne ve r b ee n rs w ho a re n ot m ar rie d w e co ns id er r s w ho a re n ot c ur re nt ly m ar rie d (a nd h av e ne ve r b ee n be fo re ). th e 1s t t im e m ar rie d (a nd h av e ne ve r b ee n m ar rie d be fo re ) in th re e co un tr ie s ( g er m an y, fr an ce , a nd l ith ua ni a) th e in te nt io n qu es tio n n c ou nt rie s = 7 w as o nl y as ke d to r s w ith a p ar tn er ; i n fiv e co un tr ie s ( n or w ay , c ze ch r ep ub lic , n in di vi du al s = 1 1, 73 1 n c ou nt rie s = 7 es to ni a, h un ga ry , a nd p ol an d) th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as o nl y as ke d to r s n in di vi du al s = 1 3, 15 7 w ith a c ore sid en t p ar tn er ; a nd in b el gi um th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as o nl y as ke d to r s w ith a n on -r es id en t p ar tn er . h en ce , w e ex cl ud e th es e ni ne co un tr ie s b ec au se th e in te nt io n qu es tio n w as n ot a sk ed to a ll rs w ith a nd w ith ou t a p ar tn er . ta b. 1 : d es cr ip tiv e in fo rm at io n of th e st ud y su bsa m pl es ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 211 ta b. 1 : co nt in ua tio n se le ct io n cr ite ria to c om pu te … d et ai ls in te nt io n to … … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho ha ve th e in te nt io n ha ve n ot e xp er ie nc ed th e tr an sit io n … h av e a ch ild le ss r s w ith a ch ild le ss r s w ith a p ar tn er w e co ns id er p ar tn er ed r s w ho d o no t h av e an y (b io lo gi ca l o r a do pt ed ) ch ild fo r t he pa rt ne r ch ild re n an d w he re e ith er o f t he p ar tn er s i s n ot c ur re nt ly p re gn an t. 1s t t im e n c ou nt rie s = 1 7 n c ou nt rie s = 1 7 n in di vi du al s = 1 3, 36 6 in a ll co un tr ie s t he in te nt io n qu es tio n w as o nl y as ke d to r s w ith a p ar tn er . n in di vi du al s = 1 2, 41 6 id ea l a ge to … … th e m ea n id ea l a ge … s ur vi va l c ur ve s … le av e th e rs a ge d 18 -3 4 w ho th e es s ac tu al ly a sk s a bo ut a n ag e de ad lin e: “a ft er w ha t a ge w ou ld y ou s ay pa re nt al h om e in di ca te a n um er ic a ge a w om an /m an is g en er al ly to o ol d to s til l b e liv in g w ith h er /h is pa re nt s? ”. fo r t he 1 st ti m e w e on ly c on sid er n um er ic a ns w er s – i. e. , a s pe ci fic a ge v al ue – a nd d o no t n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 in cl ud e an sw er s a s “ ne ve r t oo o ld ”. n in di vi du al s = 1 7,6 31 in th e ca lc ul at io n of m ea n ag e de ad lin es , g en de r r ef er s t o ge nd er o f t he s pl it ba llo t, no t o f r s. th is al so a pp lie s t o th e ca lc ul at io n of m ea n id ea l a ge s of th e ot he r e ve nt s. w e do n ot c al cu la te s ur vi va l c ur ve s t o th e ev en t o f l ea vi ng th e pa re nt al h om e be ca us e th ey c an no t b e co m pa re d w ith a ge d ea dl in es to e xp er ie nc e th e ev en t. … c oh ab it fo r rs a ge d 18 -3 4 w ho al l r s a ge d 18 -3 4 n on -n um er ic a ns w er s i nc lu de “n o id ea l a ge ” a nd “s ho ul d ne ve r l iv e w ith th e 1s t t im e in di ca te a n um er ic a ge pa rt ne r n ot m ar rie d to ”. n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 n in di vi du al s = 13 ,0 04 to c al cu la te s ur vi va l c ur ve s t o th e fir st c oh ab ita tio n w e on ly s el ec t r s w ho n in di vi du al s = 1 7, 36 9 co ha bi te d w ith a p ar tn er w ith ou t b ei ng m ar rie d. t hi s i s t o en su re • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo212 se le ct io n cr ite ria to c om pu te … d et ai ls in te nt io n to … … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho … th e pe rc en ta ge w ho ha ve th e in te nt io n ha ve n ot e xp er ie nc ed th e tr an sit io n co m pa ra bi lit y be tw ee n th e id ea l a ge a t n on m ar ita l c oh ab ita tio n an d th e ac tu al b eh av io ur . w e th us e xc lu de r s w ho s ta rt ed to c oh ab it an d go t m ar rie d in th e sa m e ca le nd ar y ea r. rs w ho e xp er ie nc e th e ev en t b ef or e ag e 18 o r w ith in va lid a ns w er s t o th e qu es tio n “h av e yo u ev er li ve d w ith a s po us e or p ar tn er fo r t hr ee m on th s or m or e” a re e xc lu de d fr om th e ca lc ul at io n of s ur vi va l c ur ve s. … m ar ry fo r rs a ge d 18 -3 4 w ho al l r s a ge d 18 -3 4 n on -n um er ic a ns w er s i nc lu de “n o id ea l a ge ” a nd “s ho ul d ne ve r g et m ar rie d” . th e 1s t t im e in di ca te a n um er ic a ge n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 rs w ho e xp er ie nc e th e ev en t b ef or e ag e 18 o r w ith in va lid a ns w er s t o th e n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 n in di vi du al s = 1 5, 03 4 qu es tio n “h av e yo u ev er b ee n m ar rie d” a re e xc lu de d fr om th e ca lc ul at io n of n in di vi du al s = 1 6, 76 2 su rv iv al c ur ve s. … h av e th e rs a ge d 18 -3 4 w ho al l r s a ge d 18 -3 4 n on -n um er ic a ns w er s i nc lu de “n o id ea l a ge ”. 1s t c hi ld in di ca te a n um er ic a ge n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 rs w ho e xp er ie nc e th e ev en t b ef or e ag e 18 o r w ith in va lid a ns w er s t o th e n c ou nt rie s = 3 1 n in di vi du al s = 1 5, 04 6 qu es tio n “h av e yo u ev er g iv en b irt h to /f at he re d a ch ild ” a re e xc lu de d fr om n in di vi du al s = 1 8, 45 0 th e ca lc ul at io n of s ur vi va l c ur ve s. ta b. 1 : co nt in ua tio n n ot e: t he g gs c on tri bu te s in fo rm at io n fo r u p to 1 7 co un tri es : n or w ay , s w ed en , a us tri a, b el gi um , g er m an y, f ra nc e, n et he rla nd s, bu lg ar ia , cz ec hi a, e st on ia , g eo rg ia , h un ga ry , l ith ua ni a, p ol an d, r om an ia , r us sia , a nd it al y. t he e ss c on tri bu te s i nf or m at io n fo r 3 1 co un tri es : n or w ay , sw ed en , d en m ar k, f in la nd , i ce la nd , a us tri a, b el gi um , g er m an y, f ra nc e, n et he rla nd s, sw itz er la nd , u ni te d ki ng do m , i re la nd , b ul ga ria , c ro at ia , cz ec hi a, e st on ia , h un ga ry , l ith ua ni a, l at vi a, p ol an d, r us sia , s er bi a, s lo ve ni a, s lo va ki a, u kr ai ne , c yp ru s, m on te ne gr o, it al y, p or tu ga l, an d sp ai n. rs = re sp on de nt s so ur ce : g gs w av e 1 (2 00 3– 20 10 ), es s ro un d 3 (2 00 6) a nd 9 (2 01 8) . o w n ca lc ul at io ns . ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 213 4 results 4.1 intentions to experience key transitions towards adulthood figure 1 compares the share of young adults intending to leave the parental home in the next three years by age, gender, and country with the corresponding share still living with parents using population pyramids. our results align with the existing comparative literature on home-leaving intentions (schwanitz et al. 2021) and behaviours (billari/liefbroer 2010). everywhere, the share of young adults living with parents declines with age but remains sizeable at age 34, especially for men in italy and eastern european countries. in norway, a large share of the few young adults still living with their parents past age 21 intend to leave home in the near future, and 100 percent of those aged 30+ (only men in our sample) plan to move out. germany and france show similar trends. however, caution is needed – particularly in norway and the western european countries, where those who remain at home at older ages are likely a selective group (e.g., youth with stronger family ties, health conditions, economic constraints, or cultural preferences for extended co-residence). this could introduce bias in the percentage intending to leave home either because the fewer, selected stayers are less inclined to leave or because they tend to overreport their intentions to leave home to conform to social norms (aassve et al. 2013a). in contrast, in countries such as bulgaria, italy, and poland, the share of older youth intending to leave home is considerably lower. here, explanations are found in a combination of cultural norms allowing extended co-residence with parents and of structural barriers such as “inhospitable” housing markets (aassve et al. 2002: 263) making residential independence particularly difficult. the pyramids also confirm that, compared to men, women have lower shares of co-residence with parents and higher shares of leaving-home intentions at all ages and across countries (schwanitz et al. 2021). gender differences are especially visible in georgia, followed by other eastern european countries. figure 2 compares the share of young adults intending to cohabit in the next three years by age, gender, and country with the corresponding share of young adults who have never co-resided before (either with a spouse or in a non-marital cohabitation). across countries, the percentage of men and women with short-term cohabiting intentions is generally lowest among the youngest youth aged 18 to 22. after age 22, countries broadly exhibit three distinct patterns in cohabitation intentions. first, in georgia and the netherlands – and to a lesser extent in bulgaria and romania – there is a positive age gradient, with intentions to cohabit increasing as age rises. second, france shows a stable pattern, where at least 50 percent of young adults consistently express an intention to cohabit across all ages after 22. third, in sweden, austria, and belgium cohabitation intentions noticeably decrease after age 30. this decline in cohabitation intentions among older young adults could indicate selection effects: those who have never cohabited by age 30+ may be a socially selective group with stronger personal, cultural, or structural reasons for avoiding cohabitation − such as a preference for singlehood, religious beliefs, or difficulty finding a partner. by age 30, many individuals who are inclined to cohabit • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo214 fig. 1: population pyramids showing the percentage of youth living with parents (dotted line) and the percentage intending to leave the parental home in the next three years (solid bar), by gender and country note: weighted percentages. source: ggs wave 1 (2003-2010). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 215 fig. 2: population pyramids showing the percentage of youth who never cohabited with a spouse or partner (dotted line) and the percentage intending to cohabit in the next three years (solid bar), by gender and country note: weighted percentages. source: ggs wave 1 (2003-2010). own calculations. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo216 have likely already done so. this is suggested by the negative age gradient in actual cohabitation behaviour, where cohabitation rates decrease with age among those who have never cohabited before – starting around age 25 or 26 in most countries. that most people (intend to) cohabit at some point in their lives confirms prior research (e.g., sobotka/toulemon 2008; billari/liefbroer 2010). whilst no gender differences in cohabitation intentions emerge from the present analysis, women tend to experience their first cohabitation earlier than men (sobotka/toulemon 2008). figure 3 compares the share of young adults intending to marry in the next three years by age, gender, and country with the corresponding share of never-married single young adults. in all countries, the share of never-married youth decreases with age, while the intention to marry increases with age. however, cross-national differences stand out. in sweden, austria, and the netherlands, the share of nevermarried single youth steadily decreases with age but remains as high as 50 percent by age 30+ for both men and women. in these countries, marriage intentions hardly exceed 50 percent, even among the older youth. by contrast, young adults in eastern european countries report the highest levels of short-term marriage intentions in the sample, visible already in the mid-20s. nearly 50 percent of respondents have marriage intentions in bulgaria and russia; this figure increases to around 75 percent in georgia and romania. in terms of actual marriage behaviour, the share of nevermarried single youth sharply decreases from age 25 onwards in all four eastern european countries, reflecting an early marriage pattern (sobotka/toulemon 2008). by age 34, the share of never-married individuals is lowest in romania and russia. at all ages, the share of never-married men exceeds that of never-married women in eastern european countries, whereas this gender difference is less pronounced in western countries. gender differences in marriage intentions are negligible in all countries. figure 4 compares the share of (childless) partnered young adults intending to have a first child in the next three years by age, gender, and country with the corresponding total share of childless partnered youth. across countries, the share of childless partnered youth is high until the early 20s and decreases with age: the few young people who are partnered at these young ages are a selected group, more likely to also be parents. the share of youth in partnership with no children between ages 32-34 is higher among women and men in austria, germany, italy, and belgium and lower in france and in eastern european countries (see also beaujouan/ berghammer 2019). there is an overall positive age gradient in the intention to have a first child. the increase in the share of young adults intending to have a child picks up around age 23-24 for women and somewhat later for men (roughly around age 25-27) in many, but not all, countries. after age 30, around 75 percent of childless young adults with a partner intend to have a child. germany has the lowest and georgia the highest shares of childless partnered youth intending to have a child. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 217 fig. 3: population pyramids showing the percentage of never-married youth (dotted line) and the percentage intending to marry in the next three years (solid bar), by gender and country note: weighted percentages. source: ggs wave 1 (2003-2010). own calculations. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo218 fig. 4: population pyramids showing the percentage of childless youth with a partner (dotted line) and the percentage partnered and intending to have a first child in the next three years (solid bar), by gender and country note: in estonia, the question about the intention to have a child was only asked of women 20 years and older, which is why only bars for women are depicted in figure 4. weighted percentages. source: ggs wave 1 (2003-2010). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 219 4.2 ideal ages in the transition to adulthood figure 5 shows the age deadlines for leaving the parental home and ideal ages for the first cohabitation, marriage, and child, by gender of the split ballot and country. age deadlines and ideal ages are expressed by respondents aged 18-34 in the two ess rounds (2006 and 2018). each panel separately indicates the percentage of respondents in each country reporting a non-numeric ideal age or age deadline (see table 1). the top-left panel in figure 5 on home-leaving age deadlines shows substantial cross-national variation. overall, age deadlines are youngest – at age 25 for women and 26 for men – in northern europe (e.g., finland, norway, sweden) and oldest – at age 32 and 34, respectively – in southern europe (e.g., italy, cyprus, spain), reflecting the established “earliest-early” vs. “latest-late” behavioural pattern of the transition to adulthood (billari 2004). eastern europe presents a mixed picture, with some countries mirroring northern europe (e.g., ukraine, russia) and others mirroring southern europe (e.g., montenegro, croatia, slovakia). gender differences in the perceived age deadline for leaving the parental home are negligible and do not align with actual behaviour, as women generally leave home earlier than men. in most southern and eastern european countries, relatively high shares of respondents, i.e., between 20 percent and 30 percent, say that one is never too old to co-reside with one’s own parents. the share is considerably lower (between 3 percent and 16 percent) in the remaining countries. the top-right panel in figure 5 shows patterns by gender and country in the ideal age to cohabit with an unmarried partner. again, the ideal age to cohabit is lowest – at age 19 for women and 20 for men – in northern europe (e.g., finland), and highest at age 25 and 27, respectively, in southern europe. similar to northern europe, some eastern european countries, such as russia and ukraine, present very low ideal ages, while others such as croatia, montenegro, and serbia resemble southern europe. the united kingdom shows young ideal ages to cohabit – perhaps reflecting that cohabitation at some point in the life course is a normative behaviour but also that cohabitation increasingly represents a prelude to marriage (and is thus experienced at younger ages) (beaujouan/ní bhrolcháin 2011). overall, ideal ages are higher for men compared to women. interestingly, in italy, austria, and czech republic more than 30 percent of respondents do not indicate a numeric answer, mostly stating that no ideal age for cohabitation exists, while in poland and ukraine 5 percent to 7 percent of respondents do not approve nonmarital cohabitation. the bottom-left panel in figure 5 shows patterns by gender and country in the ideal age to marry. unlike cohabitation ideations, northern europe does not constitute a homogenous group. finland is among the countries with the lowest ideal age for marriage, with the remaining nordic countries (norway, denmark, sweden, and iceland) showing slightly higher ideal ages – around age 26 for women and 27 for men. conversely, southern europe displays the oldest ideal ages for marriage –age 27 and 29, respectively – except for portugal, where they are considerably younger. eastern europe is heterogeneous also when considering ideal ages for marriage, reflecting the fact that marriage has been postponed more in czech republic and slovenia than in russia and ukraine (sobotka/toulemon 2008). • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo220 fig. 5: age deadlines and ideal ages (mean values) for experiencing transitions towards adulthood, by gender of the split ballot and country italy montenegro cyprus croatia spain slovakia hungary slovenia czechia serbia portugal bulgalria united kingdom iceland belgium ireland poland lithuania latvia france austria switzerland netherlands germany estonia sweden norway finland denmark russia ukraine italy cyprus croatia spain montenegro serbia slovenia czechia portugal netherlands hungary switzerland belgium ireland poland slovakia germany austria latvia norway lithuania bulgaria france denmark estonia sweden iceland united kingdom ukraine russia finland age too late to live with parents ideal age to cohabit female male ideal age to get married ideal age to become a parent italy cyprus czechia zwitzerland spain croatia iceland sweden austria slovenia denmark germany ireland netherlands norway montenegro france serbia belgium latvia hungary portugal slovakia estonia lithuania poland finland united kingdom bulgaria russia ukraine italy spain cyprus zwitzerland croatia czechia netherlands germany montenegro sweden hungary belgium slovenia serbia austria ireland denmark france norway portugal slovakia iceland lithuania latvia estonia finland united kingkom poland bulgaria russia ukraine 20 25 30 3520 25 30 35 age age note: weighted means and percentages. „non-numeric answers“ refers to the percentage of respondents in the sample reporting a non-numeric ideal age or age deadline by country. source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2018). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 221 in every country, ideal ages are higher for men compared to women. respondents who have not indicated a specific ideal age to get married are not against marriage but rather declare that no ideal age exists: this view is, again, most common in austria, italy, and czech republic. the bottom-right panel in figure 5 illustrates gender and country patterns in the ideal age for parenthood. except for portugal, southern europe again records the highest ideal ages for parenthood. for example, in italy, the ideal age is 28 for women and 30 for men. northern european countries show more variation, with finland reporting the lowest ideal age within this group. in eastern europe, the youngest ideal ages are found: 22 for women and 25 for men (in ukraine). gender differences follow the same pattern observed for cohabitation and marriage: in every country, it is considered ideal for women to become parents earlier than men. these differences are smaller in a few cases, such as denmark, iceland, and portugal. figures 6a-6b, 7a-7b, and 8a-8b show kaplan-meier survival curves for each event, alongside vertical lines indicating the mean ideal ages, disaggregated by gender and country. the point at which the survival curve intersects the 0.5 horizontal line represents the estimated median age at the event, accounting for right-censored observations. a match occurs when the survival curve crosses the 0.5 horizontal line at the same age considered ideal for men/women. if the crossing point is to the right of the vertical line, the event tends to occur later than the ideal age; if it is to the left of the vertical line, the event tends to occur earlier than the ideal age. for the event of leaving the parental home, information on age ideations is not available. we note, however, that age deadlines related to leaving the parental home always exceed estimated median ages at leaving home, although the (mis-)match between the two varies greatly across countries. for example, in italy, the estimated median age at leaving home is 29, compared to deadlines of 32.2 for women and 33.8 for men. in germany, the median ages are 21 and 22, while the deadline is much later at age 28. figures 6a and 6b show that young adults typically experience first cohabitation later than the age they consider ideal. the gap is especially pronounced in countries like italy or montenegro, where few individuals have cohabited by age 34, making it impossible to estimate a median age for this group. in eastern europe – e.g., serbia, poland, slovakia, and bulgaria – as well as in ireland and the uk, the gap remains substantial at around 6 years. in the remaining countries, the delay is smaller: about two years in switzerland and four years in spain and germany. the smallest mismatches between ideal and actual ages are found in the nordic countries. cohabitation patterns also vary: in ukraine or russia, confidence intervals are quite large due to the prevalence of direct marriage (see table 1 on selection criteria), while in western and northern europe, most respondents have cohabited by age 34. figures 7a and 7b reveal a similar mismatch between ideal and actual timing of first marriage: in most countries, marriage occurs significantly later than considered ideal. only russia, ukraine, and cyprus show a close alignment – mostly among men – where a relatively large proportion of young adults has married by age 34, as also suggested by the ggs data. in many countries (e.g., italy, czech republic, the netherlands, france, belgium), the proportion of young adults who are married by • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo222 fig. 6a: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to cohabitation and ideal ages for cohabitation, by gender and country note: the vertical lines represent mean ideal ages to experience the event: in blue (dashed) are ideal ages for women, in yellow ideal ages for men. countries are ordered from the biggest ideal age at event to the lowest. source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 223 fig. 6b: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to cohabitation and ideal ages for cohabitation, by gender and country source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo224 fig. 7a: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to marriage and ideal ages for marriage, by gender and country source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 225 fig. 7b: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to marriage and ideal ages for marriage, by gender and country source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo226 fig. 8a: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to the first child and ideal ages for first child, by gender and country source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 227 fig. 8b: kaplan-meier survival curves for the transition to the first child and ideal ages for first child, by gender and country source: ess round 3 (2006) and 9 (2019). own calculations. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo228 age 34 hardly reaches 50 percent, making it impossible to quantify the mismatch between behaviours and ideations, especially for men. among women, the mismatch varies: about four years in switzerland, seven years in sweden and spain, and up to nine years in the united kingdom. finally, the age at first birth generally exceeds the ideal age by a substantial amount, indicating that young women and men become parents much later than the age considered ideal to become mothers or fathers (fig. 8a and 8b). in late-fertility contexts such as italy, spain, croatia, and montenegro (fig. 8a), the proportion of young adults – especially men – who have had their first child by age 34 is below 50 percent. as a result, the survival curve does not cross the 0.5 line, making it impossible to assess the (mis-)match between behaviours and ideals for this age group. in a few countries – slovenia, ireland, portugal, and bulgaria – the ideal and actual ages to have first child align for women, though not for men. only in ukraine and russia, there is no mismatch for either gender. countries with lower ideal ages (fig. 8b) also tend to have a higher proportion of young adults who become parents by age 34, as indicated by steeper survival curves approximating zero. however, even in a context like finland, actual ages at first child exceed ideal ages: the median age at first child for women is 30, compared to an ideal age of 25. 5 conclusion the present study illustrates how ideal ages, age-graded intentions, and behaviours related to four key events in the transition to adulthood – first exit from the parental home, first cohabitation, first marriage, and parenthood – vary for women and men across european countries. it differs from previous studies in that we examine intentions to experience all four events and integrate the analysis of ideal ages with the analysis of actual ages at experiencing each event. consistent with prior research (e.g., aassve et al. 2013b; billari/liefbroer 2010), our descriptive findings highlight the overall positive age gradient of leaving home intentions in many countries: the intention to leave home increases with age. we can add, however, that around age 25, this gradient diminishes particularly in georgia, russia, and eastern european countries. contrastingly, young adults in norway, france, and germany across the age range 18–34 consistently express an intention to leave the parental home – in line with the argument that societies in north–western europe are more individualistic, with a greater emphasis on privacy and/or autonomy (reher 1998), and where institutional support for youth tends to be stronger (billari 2004; buchmann/kriesi 2011). in terms of first cohabitation intentions, our findings indicate that cohabitation is an established part of young adults’ life course, but the extent to which achieving this marker of the transition to adulthood is normative varies across countries. for instance, in russia, romania, and georgia, young adults’ life plans revolve (also) around marriage much more than in belgium or sweden. this is further underscored by the lower levels of acceptance of nonmarital cohabitation in some eastern european countries. linked to the wider demographic debate about the global spread of cohabitation (lesthaeghe 2020), ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 229 our findings illustrate persistent traditional patterns in the transition to adulthood particularly in eastern european countries. finally, intentions to have a first child are still pervasive in young adults’ life plans – contrasting, however, with the actual behaviour across countries. our findings on ideations demonstrate cross-national variation in ideal ages and age deadlines in the transition to adulthood, with italy consistently displaying the highest values in the sample – i.e., the preference for the latest-late transition to adulthood – and ukraine and russia the lowest values – i.e., indicating a preference for the earliest-early transition. the rest of eastern europe presents a mixed picture with some countries, e.g., croatia and montenegro, showing more similarities with southern europe (sobotka/toulemon 2008). nordic countries display a preference for earlier transitions, while german-speaking and anglo-saxon countries are in an intermediate position. cross-national gradients in life-course events are thus evident not only in actual behaviours (billari/liefbroer 2010), but also in ideations. second, in all european countries young women and men experience a mismatch between the ages they consider ideal to start living with a partner and become parents and the ages at which these events are actually experienced: the age at experiencing each of these events generally exceeds the ideal age – in the case of marriage and parenthood by a substantial amount. our results show that, while marriage and parenthood are now commonly experienced past age 30, young people in most european countries (except for russia and ukraine) consider it ideal to experience such transitions in the late 20s. the mismatch is largest in southern europe, particularly in italy – where less than 50 percent of young adults have experienced such events by age 34. a mismatch between ideal and actual ages for marriage and parenthood appears even in western and northern european countries. such ideation-realisation mismatches, well known in the fertility literature (e.g., beaujouan/berghammer 2019) but less studied for other markers of the transition to adulthood, suggest the existence of barriers and obstacles preventing youth to reach each milestone of the transition to adulthood at the age of their choosing. current evidence suggests that financial strain is a major factor behind failed aspirations to leave the parental home (eurofound 2024), while financial and housing constraints, unemployment or job insecurity, and the absence of a suitable partner contribute to underachieved fertility aspirations (unfpa 2025). more research is needed on the mismatch between intentions or ideations and actual outcomes, particularly regarding the causes of these mismatches, to better inform policy. third, because of gender differences in the actual timing of life events, men have a greater probability than women of experiencing marriage and parenthood much later than the age considered ideal. a possible explanation for this gendered pattern in the mistiming of marriage and parenthood is that societal expectations around financial stability before marriage weigh more heavily on men. if marriage – unlike non-marital cohabitation – is seen as requiring greater commitment and financial resources, and childbearing involves significant costs, men may be more inclined to delay family formation to pursue education or career goals. meanwhile, cultural shifts also play a role: although marriage retains symbolic value among youth (perelli• katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo230 harris et al. 2014) and intended childlessness remains rare (miettinen/szalma 2014), the timing and sequencing of these life events have become increasingly flexible and gendered. ideal ages vary between young men and women: across all countries and for all events (apart from leaving home, for which we only have an age deadline) ideal ages are earlier for women compared to men. that men tend to experience family-related events later than women is of course well documented (e.g., sobotka/toulemon 2008); it can, at least partly, be traced back to differences in adolescent development among boys and girls (perry/pauletti 2011) and may be reinforced by age heterogamy in couple formation. noteworthy, however, is how salient gender is as a structuring force for ideations also among young people, which contrasts somewhat with earlier conclusions about the universality of conceptions of adulthood (spéder et al. 2014), but aligns with findings that intentions to leave the parental home are more strongly shaped by gendered subjective norms (schwanitz et al. 2021). fourth, we note signs of ideal-age sequencing among the ideal ages on cohabitation, marriage, and first birth. thus, despite the de-standardisation of the transition to adulthood (billari/liefbroer 2010) and the increased family complexity including e.g., nonmarital childbearing (thomson 2014), “traditional” expectations about the ordering of family-domain events widely persist. we acknowledge some limitations and suggest needs for additional research. we consider both data sources – the ess and ggs – to have strong reliability and validity, making them valuable tools for cross-national comparisons. however, certain factors may still affect their precision and interpretation (poses et al. 2021). for instance, some age ideals might not mean the same thing across european countries, as people in different countries may view life stages or societal expectations differently, which can impact validity. another concern is potential bias in representativeness. whilst our sample data were weighted – following recommendations for both the ess and ggs to ensure that survey results reflect each participating country’s population and enable reliable cross-national comparisons – we cannot entirely rule out potential representational biases for intentions or age ideals, as population benchmarks for these variables are unavailable (fokkema et al. 2016). furthermore, cross-country comparisons of intentions and behaviours were complicated by differences in the ggs data collection (see table 1), resulting in varying country samples for each event. as a result, broader regional conclusions are based on selected “country representatives”. while we acknowledge that countries within regions – such as eastern europe – can show considerable internal diversity, we believe that including more countries per region would likely have refined, but not fundamentally changed, the overall patterns observed across northern, western, eastern, and southern europe. last, among respondents aged 18-34, ideations could be compared with actual behaviours only at the aggregate level, because a within-person comparison would have been biased by selection effects: union formation and parenthood have been postponed across birth cohorts (sobotka/toulemon 2008), leading to a small number of respondents having experienced the event by age 34 (hence providing information on the age at experiencing the event). while kaplan-meier estimates ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 231 allow to incorporate information on respondents who have not experienced the event by the time of the interview, future studies should use a larger age range to yield precise estimates of the age at union formation and parenthood (e.g., up to age 45, see ferraretto/vitali 2024). disentangling the causal link between ideations/ intentions and behaviour requires prospective panel data, which is currently unavailable. an alternative approach, as used by lazzari et al. (2024), compares ideations with observed event ages from external sources. however, this limits the ability to examine all transition-to-adulthood events within a broad comparative framework like the ess. we prioritised cross-national and gender differences, but ideations and intentions for family-related transitions likely vary along other social dimensions (e.g., by cohort or educational level). for example, cohort differences might have influenced our results, as respondents’ birth cohorts do not perfectly overlap across the two surveys. however, due to the relatively small sample of respondents aged 18-34 in both the ess and ggs (see the online appendix), it was not possible to adequately represent cross-country, gender, and cohort differences among young adults. our analyses therefore represent only a first step in understanding ideations and intentions as key determinants of demographic behaviour across europe. we hope that future research will more directly exploit possible heterogeneity in ideations and intentions. in sum, this paper provides a unique account of young adults’ family demographic decision-making. comparing intentions and ideations with actual behaviours is of paramount importance for understanding to what extent existing cross-national and gender differences in the timing of the transition to adulthood are driven by preferences and cultural norms, and to what extent they are instead linked to structural barriers that impede or postpone the realisation of one’s intention. while further research is necessary to reveal the mechanisms behind the association between intentions and ideations and actual behaviour, our results clearly show that young people continue to perceive it ideal to experience residential independence, union formation, and parenthood during their 20s, yet, a series of barriers and obstacles prevent them from becoming adults at the time of their choosing. acknowledgements the research of dr. katrin schwanitz was supported by the strategic research council (src) of the academy of finland, flux consortium (decision numbers: 345130 and 345131) and the invest research flagship (decision number: 320162). dr. francesco rampazzo was supported by the leverhulme research centres grant (rc-2018-003) for the leverhulme centre for demographic science. • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo232 references aassve, arnstein et al. 2002: leaving home: a comparative analysis of echp data. in: journal of european social policy 12,4: 259-276. https://doi.org/10.1177/a028430 aassve, arnstein; arpino, bruno; billari, francesco c. 2013a: age norms on leaving home: multilevel evidence from the european social survey. in: environment and planning a: economy and space 45,2: 383-401. https://doi.org/10.1068/a4563 aassve, arnstein; cottini, elena; vitali, agnese 2013b: youth prospects in a time of economic recession. in: demographic research 29: 949-962. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2013.29.36 ajzen, icek 1991: the theory of planned behavior. in: organizational behavior and human decision processes 50,2: 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-t beaujouan, éva; ní bhrolcháin, máire 2011: cohabitation and marriage in britain since the 1970s. in: population trends 145: 35-59. https://doi.org/10.1057/pt.2011.16 beaujouan, éva; berghammer, caroline 2019: the gap between lifetime fertility intentions and completed fertility in europe and the united states: a cohort approach. in: population research and policy review 38: 507-535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09516-3 billari, francesco c. 2004: becoming an adult in europe: a macro(/micro)-demographic perspective. in: demographic research 3: 15-44. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2004.s3.2 billari, francesco c.; liefbroer, aart c. 2007: should i stay or should i go? 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https://doi.org/10.2307/2807972 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2021.45.2 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2008.19.6 https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot100 https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716214531384 https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2016.1226374 https://doi.org/10.3917/popsoc.415.0001 https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1716 ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 235 date of submission: 01.11.2024 date of acceptance: 28.07.2025 dr. katrin schwanitz (*). university of turku, invest research flagship centre. turku, finland. tallinn university, estonian institute for population studies. tallinn, estonia. e-mail: katrin.schwanitz@utu.fi url: https://www.utu.fi/en/people/katrin-schwanitz dr. valeria ferraretto, prof. dr. agnese vitali. university of trento, department of sociology and social research. trento. italy. e-mail: valeria.ferraretto@unitn.it; agnese.vitali@unitn.it url: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0195034/curriculum https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0212776/curriculum dr. francesco rampazzo. university of manchester, department of social statistics. manchester, united kingdom. e-mail: francesco.rampazzo@manchester.ac.uk url: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/francesco.rampazzo mailto:katrin.schwanitz@utu.fi https://www.utu.fi/en/people/katrin-schwanitz mailto:valeria.ferraretto@unitn.it mailto:agnese.vitali@unitn.it https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0195034/curriculum https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0212776/curriculum mailto:francesco.rampazzo@manchester.ac.uk http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/francesco.rampazzo • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo236 a pp en di x ta b. a 1: po lic y in di ca to rs fo r t he c ou nt rie s i nc lu de d in th e st ud y co un tr y w el fa re re gi m ea pu bl ic s oc ia l g ov er nm en t sh ar e liv in g up pe r a ge li m it m in im um a ge sh ar e of n ee t sh ar e pr ot ec tio n ex pe nd itu re w ith p ar en ts o r fo r c hi ld b en efi t fo r b en efi t (% o f y ou th un em pl oy ed ex pe nd itu re on e du ca tio n be ne fit in g fr om th at p ro vi de s fr om s oc ia l po pu la tio n) g (% o f y ou th (% o f g d p) b (% o f g d p) c th e ho us eh ol d th e fa m ily c hi ld as sis ta nc ef la bo ur fo rc e) h in co m e al lo w an ce se (% o f y ou th ag ed 1 834 )d n or w ay so ci al -d em oc ra tic 21 .6 7. 2 20 .3 5. 8 9. 5 sw ed en so ci al -d em oc ra tic 25 .9 7.1 23 .8 un til fi ni sh in g 18 7. 3 21 .7 sc ho ol d en m ar k so ci al -d em oc ra tic 27 .6 7.7 17 .7 6. 5 11 .9 fi nl an d so ci al -d em oc ra tic 27 .7 6. 4 20 .3 15 8. 6 20 .1 ic el an d so ci al -d em oc ra tic 15 .8 7. 3 35 .7 5. 8 9. 8 au st ria co rp or at ist 26 .4 5. 4 44 .0 25 18 10 .9 10 .1 be lg iu m co rp or at ist 27 .4 6. 4 43 .2 25 16 10 .8 19 .6 g er m an y co rp or at ist 24 .4 4. 8 42 .1 25 7.6 9. 0 fr an ce co rp or at ist 29 .9 5. 4 34 .7 12 .7 22 .4 n et he rla nd s co rp or at ist 21 .4 5. 3 34 .5 18 4. 7 9. 9 sw itz er la nd co rp or at ist 18 .1 4. 9 39 .7 8. 4 8. 2 un ite d li be ra l 21 .0 5. 3 29 .4 20 14 .0 15 .7 ki ng do m ire la nd li be ra l 18 .4 4. 6 50 .5 13 .3 18 .2 bu lg ar ia po st co m m un ist 15 .6 4. 0 60 .4 20 18 .7 18 .6 eu ro pe an cr oa tia po st co m m un ist 19 .4 4. 1 45 .9 21 15 .1 31 .0 co ns er va tiv e cz ec hi a po st co m m un ist 18 .8 4. 3 50 .3 26 18 7. 8 13 .2 eu ro pe an es to ni a fo rm er -u ss r 15 .7 5. 1 41 .3 19 18 10 .8 16 .8 g eo rg ia po st -s ov ie t 8. 7 3.1 29 .4 34 .8 ideations and intentions in the transition to adulthood: a cross-european comparison • 237 ta b. a 1: co nt in ua tio n co un tr y w el fa re re gi m ea pu bl ic s oc ia l g ov er nm en t sh ar e liv in g up pe r a ge li m it m in im um a ge sh ar e of n ee t sh ar e pr ot ec tio n ex pe nd itu re w ith p ar en ts o r fo r c hi ld b en efi t fo r b en efi t (% o f y ou th un em pl oy ed ex pe nd itu re on e du ca tio n be ne fit in g fr om th at p ro vi de s fr om s oc ia l po pu la tio n) g (% o f y ou th (% o f g d p) b (% o f g d p) c th e ho us eh ol d th e fa m ily c hi ld as sis ta nc ef la bo ur fo rc e) h in co m e al lo w an ce se (% o f y ou th ag ed 1 834 )d h un ga ry po st co m m un ist 21 .1 4. 7 56 .6 20 12 .3 18 .8 eu ro pe an li th ua ni a fo rm er -u ss r 15 .0 4. 5 51 .4 18 9. 9 18 .5 la tv ia fo rm er -u ss r 14 .5 5. 0 52 .7 20 15 12 .1 19 .4 po la nd po st co m m un ist 19 .4 4. 9 59 .6 24 18 12 .2 20 .5 eu ro pe an ro m an ia po st co m m un ist 14 .5 3. 4 45 .3 un til fi ni sh in g 14 17 .4 20 .9 co ns er va tiv e sc ho ol ru ss ia po st -s ov ie t 14 .7 4. 1 13 .3 15 .9 se rb ia po st co m m un ist 21 .6 4. 0 68 .1 19 .3 40 .0 co ns er va tiv e sl ov en ia po st co m m un ist 22 .5 5. 2 63 .5 26 26 7. 8 14 .3 eu ro pe an sl ov ak ia po st co m m un ist 17 .5 3. 9 69 .5 25 18 12 .9 25 .0 eu ro pe an uk ra in e po st -s ov ie t 23 .7 5. 9 18 .7 18 .0 cy pr us m ed ite rr an ea n 19 .3 6. 3 54 .3 21 13 .6 20 .7 ita ly m ed ite rr an ea n 26 .8 4. 2 64 .2 26 19 .2 30 .7 m on te ne gr o po st co m m un ist 69 .9 18 .4 37 .4 co ns er va tiv e po rt ug al m ed ite rr an ea n 23 .4 5. 0 61 .5 24 10 .8 24 .6 sp ai n m ed ite rr an ea n 24 .2 4. 4 56 .8 21 14 .1 37 .5 • katrin schwanitz, valeria ferraretto, agnese vitali, francesco rampazzo238 n ot e: ‘’ i nd ic at es n o in fo rm at io n is av ai la bl e fo r t he re sp ec tiv e m ea su re . so ur ce : a es pi ng -a nd er se n 19 90 ; f en ge r 2 00 7; f er re ra 1 99 6; b + c g en er at io ns a nd g en de r c on te xt ua l d at ab as e. n et he rla nd s i nt er di sc ip lin ar y d em og ra ph ic in st itu te (d ist rib ut or ). re tri ev ed fr om : h ttp s:/ / w w w .g gp -i. or g/ da ta /g gp -c on te xt ua l-d at ab as e/ o n 25 /3 /2 02 5; d eu ro st at (i lc _lv ps 08 ), av er ag e 20 05 -2 02 1; e + f e ur of ou nd . r et rie ve d fro m : h ttp s:/ /f ra .e ur op a. eu /e n/ pu bl ic at io n/ 20 17 /m ap pi ng -m in im um -a ge -r eq ui re m en ts -c on ce rn in grig ht sch ild eu ; g w or ld b an k (s l.u em .n ee t. m e. zs ), av er ag e 20 05 -2 02 1; h w or ld b an k (s l.u em .1 52 4. zs ), av er ag e 20 05 -2 02 1 ta b. a 1: co nt in ua tio n https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://www.ggp-i.org/data/ggp-contextual-database/ https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements-concerning-rights-child-eu published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies* daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne abstract: following the fall of socialism in east and southeast europe, widespread destabilisation of living conditions was accompanied by immense skill and cost mismatches. both of these factors continue to contribute to substantial levels of brain drain, brain waste and de-skilling. we propose and discuss the migrationresilience nexus as a new paradigm that emphasises the instrumental dimension of movements and migrants’ agency in terms of the aspiration-capabilities framework. in this paper, we look at migration-specific contexts in two countries suffering from long-term emigration for different reasons. migratory movements, including emigration and circular and return migration, are interpreted as “tools for social resilience”. in many cases, migrants do not necessarily have the aspiration to migrate. nevertheless, they can do so when conditions in their individual situation, such as material income, individual well-being or family status, change. thus, in contrast to the few studies that have looked at migration and resilience so far, we focus on aspirations, decisions and movements as fundamental elements of a resilience strategy adopted by individuals to cope with permanent existential risk, constant harassment, socio-psychological stress or other threats. our analysis pursues a comparative empirical approach. to cover the broad scope of this phenomenon, we chose latvia and albania as the study’s examples. data on albania is gathered using qualitative methods, while a quantitative approach is adopted in latvia. keywords: migration · resilience · agency · albania · latvia comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 1-24 (date of release: 30.01.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-01 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-01en1 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-01 • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne2 1 introduction in their groundbreaking contribution to understanding international migration at the end of the millennium, massey et al. in 1998 stated their credo “development creates migration”. the authors aimed to point out that a global surplus in socioeconomic terms contributes to intensifying migratory movements. since then, the number of international migrants worldwide has increased from 173 million in the year 2000 to a pre-pandemic estimated figure of 281 million in 2020, representing 3.6 percent of the world’s total population (iom gmdac 2021). with a view to the transition contexts of eastern and southeastern europe, we can easily rearrange the aforementioned quotation and determine that transition creates migration. the dissolution of the eastern bloc contributed to a massive post-socialist mobilisation (fassmann/münz 2000, 2001) that continues in some countries to this day. the main drivers of this trend were the migrants’ search for employment and income in the face of massive socio-economic disparities, particularly between the global north and south. with this in mind, we will ask two questions about the contribution. firstly, and concerning transition contexts, to what extent does migration create development? as a result, the so-called migration-development nexus, an approach that underlines the relationship between migration and development due to transnationalism, emerges (see faist et al. 2011, among others). the assessments of the nexus so far range from migration as a “new development mantra” (kapur 2004) and a warning against another “round of enthusiasm” (faist 2008: 22) to the effects of migration in regions of origin. the positivistic and more critical assessments depend on changing phases of global development dynamics, including economic crises. what is interesting for our consideration in discussions like these is that migration is not understood solely as a problem but also as a resource, i.e. as part of a possible solution to a problem people face. secondly, and this is the central question for our considerations, the extent to which migration thus represents a means of social resilience must be clarified, as this would provide a new perspective for future analysis. the study will show that changes in individual living conditions – concerning material existence, family situation or personal well-being – stimulate migration. even if there is little aspiration towards mobility, people may often migrate (de haas 2021; carling/schewel 2018). in this respect, aspirations, decisions, decision-making and the characteristics of movements are central factors in the resilient strategies of individuals who use migration to counter permanent risks and uncertainty or other threats. the individual context of migration and migrants’ strategies are therefore the main focus of this study in empirical terms in order to develop a new perspective on the relationship between migration and resilience. with this aim in mind, we will first explain the conceptual and empirical approach in the paper, and then use findings from the examples considered to support the thesis of migration as a means of social resilience. taking these findings into account, the next part will provide further detail on the theoretical foundation. migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 3 2 the migration-resilience nexus as a new perspective adger (2000: 347) defines social resilience as “the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances resulting from social, political and environmental change”. a more differentiated definition distinguishes three dimensions, comprising coping capacities (the ability of actors to cope with crisis), adaptive capacities (the ability to valorise past experiences about future livelihood) and transformative capacities, i.e. the power “to craft sets of institutions that foster individual welfare and sustainable robustness towards future crises” (keck/ sakdapolrak 2013: 5). both studies, like many others, interpret social resilience using an actor-related (agent-based) approach and address the resilience of migrant groups after migration. in line with this, many scholars (see references in bourbeau 2018: 85) analyse how migrants adapt to the new situation following arrival with needs such as social integration, education and access to the labour and housing market. this shows that the topic of “resilience of migrants” is well established in relation to “a wide range of issues including social, economic and psychological stressors associated with settlement and integration process” (akbar/preston 2019: 11). last but not least, to broaden the range of very different perspectives on the view, the field of political science sees resilience as a “neoliberal form of governmentality that emphasises individual adaptability” (joseph 2013: 38). this “way of mobilising social agents” (joseph 2013: 38) leads to a more dynamic, agent-based reading of what resilience could be. revisiting the dimensions by keck/sakdapolrak (2013), actors in (post-socialist) transition societies have various options to cope with the crisis beyond migration. in contrast, the “adaptive capabilities” (keck/sakdapolrak 2013: 5) mentioned above are absent in the case of albania and “transformative capacities” are at best questionable in some countries of east and southeast europe, including both albania and latvia, at least as regards sustainable robustness in times of crises such as the pandemic or the war in ukraine. as part of theoretical reflections such as these, and based on our previous research (göler/krišjāne 2016) and our own current empirical studies (doka/göler forthcoming; apsite-berina et al. 2022), we propose adding a new approach by switching perspectives to understand migration as a kind of ‘a means to an end’. this new paradigm, the migration-resilience nexus, interprets migration as a ‘tool’ for social resilience, i.e. the strategy for solving an individual or collective problem. thus, it is an element of migrants’ agency, keeping in mind at the same time that “to be resilient is not to have eliminated vulnerability” (stark 2014: 68). we see the paradigm in line with de haas’s aspirations-capabilities framework, an approach that also emphasises “the instrumental (functional, means-to-an-end) dimension of migration [that] reflects the role of migration as a way to achieve other […] goals such as increased income, education, living standards or, in the case of refugees, personal safety” (de haas 2021: 21). in this perspective, migration is the reaction of individuals to personal threats and/or socio-economic instability. the latter is true for millions of inhabitants of east and southeast europe in subsequent times of societal and/or turbulent economic transition. in many cases, this meant a drastic destabilisation • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne4 of the living conditions in most parts of the former socialist world. often enough, for those affected, these processes were accompanied by a deterioration in quality of life, de-skilling and devaluation, marginalisation and a sense of having been left behind, and not least the loss of identity. all these aspects are related to the blind spot of migration studies, i.e. “psychosocial wellbeing” (vathi/king 2017), which also plays a prominent role in migration and decision-making. this was also true in the two countries we selected for our case studies, with all their similarities and differences described in the next section. 3 the conceptual and empirical approach in this section, our aim is to underline the migration-resilience nexus as a new perspective, using empirical evidence from research conducted in two spatial contexts from eastern europe’s periphery. our study refers to the baltic region and the western balkans or, more precisely, to latvia and albania. this enables us to view the migration-development nexus through the lens of both directions, i.e. emigration and return. from the conceptual point of view, this is a necessity for social resilience related to mobility. furthermore, we use the comparison and counterposition of experiences of migrants with different origins to better understand the compound consequences of movements in the short and long term. this means that we have included two countries with diverse economic, political and historical framing, an explanation of which is required. 3.1 the albanian migration society: from kurbet to asylum generally, every (human) geographic phenomenon in albania is connected to migration: the country is living with and from migration. for good reason, king (2005) labelled the country a “laboratory for migration studies”. albania is a “migration society” (göler 2017). migration culture is deeply rooted in albanian history, which can be seen if we go back to the 15th century and think about the “kurbet” when arbëresh (i.e. christian albanians) migrated to italy due to the expanding ottoman empire (rother 1968; hall 1994: 50). kurbet is still present in the albanian language and means living in exile or, respectively, diaspora (king 2005: 135), which is the norm rather than an exception. even the chosen path of consecutive self-isolation and stalinist socialism after the second world war, when all forms of migratory movement were tightly regulated by the state, could not alter this in any way. consequently, emigration was a repeated motive immediately after the end of communism and the lifting of mobility restrictions, when several thousands of migrants boarded the vessel vlora in 1991 during the so-called “exodus”, and, the post-1990 mass migration of albanians to italy and greece started (king 2005). migration is still a tool for social resilience in albania. one of the striking results of the census in 2011, two decades after opening the borders, was that almost half of the population had had a personal international migration experience (45.4 percent; world bank 2011). figure 1 shows that the exodus has continued unabated since migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 5 then. with fluctuating migration volumes, the annual balance was negative and amounted to another 246,000 people, equivalent to 8.7 percent of the country’s total population of around 2.8 million. according to official data from 2019, 1.64 million albanians (equivalent to 36 percent of the total number of albanian citizens) live abroad (exit news 2020). most emigrants stay in greece (677,000) and italy (523,000). other destinations are the united states, canada and germany. the main driver for emigration is the search for employment and income (83.7 percent). world bank data report annual remittances of an estimated usd 1.5 billion on this basis, equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) and substantially impacting the national economy. other non-economic motivations are family reunification (9 percent) and (mainly academic) education (3.5 percent). albania has remained a candidate for membership of the european union (eu) since 2014, while latvia has been a member since 2004, offering its citizens the privilege of full access to the eu labour market – one of the striking differences between both countries in terms of labour migration. 3.2 the case of latvia latvia, in the 21st century, is a country of emigration. the 20th century was characterised by a changing “migration landscape”, especially after the second world fig. 1: migration balance of albania 2011-2022 -60,000 -50,000 -40,000 -30,000 -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 year net migration immigration emigration source: data: instat 2020: 8; instat 2023 • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne6 war. it was described as forced migration when many refugees went to the west or were deported to siberia (hazans 2019) but massive immigration also took place. latvia was annexed to the soviet union during the second half of the 20th century and experienced four decades of constant immigration, mainly from the russian federation (krišjāne 2008; eglīte 2009). as a result, the dissolution of the soviet union provoked a significant wave of return migration in the early 1990s, followed by a substantial increase in migration movements and demographic change over the next 30 years (heleniak 2004; eglīte 2009; krišjāne et al. 2016; hazans 2019). net migration has constantly been negative since then. enlargement of the eu in 2004 significantly increased emigration from latvia, particularly during the 2009-12 economic downturn (see fig. 2). return migration by latvian nationals accounts for a sizeable portion of immigration flows, for example, 68.1 percent and 53.5 percent of all immigrants in 2013 and 2020 respectively (csbl 2022). significant modifications to migratory patterns were brought about in 2004 by latvia’s accession to membership of the eu. this created numerous options for migration, but the unrestricted movement of labour was particularly advantageous. at first, only the uk, ireland and sweden – three of the 15 so-called old eu member states (eu-15) – offered similar options to the new member states (eu-8). in 2011, germany and austria finally lifted limitations on latvia and the other eu-8 states. the 2008 global economic crisis had a significant impact on migration. as a result of the economic downturn, latvia’s gdp fell by 18 percent, and unemployment rose sharply in all regions of the country (martin 2009; smith/swain 2010). this, in turn, contributed to an increase in emigration. in the post-crisis period, migration volumes also stabilised as the economic situation improved (csbl 2022, see fig. 2). the uk and ireland were the primary destinations in the early years of eu enlargement. the uk began to take the lead during the global financial crisis, with fewer people travelling to ireland on account of the economic hardship that it was experiencing. as of may 2011, when work and residency permits for nationals of the eu-8 were no longer necessary, many latvians relocated to germany. although fig. 2: migration balance for latvia 2000-2021 -40,000 -30,000 -20,000 -10,000 0 10,000 20,000 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20 20 21 e m ig ra tio n im m ig ra tio n year 15-34 other age groups em ig ra tio n i m m ig ra tio n source: csbl 2022 migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 7 migrant flows to germany rose significantly post-crisis, the uk remained a key destination (göler et al. 2015; hazans 2019). furthermore, they increased in norway while decreasing again in ireland. this is a product of ireland’s strong social networks, which are seen as a source of support despite the country’s dismal economic position. individuals seeking a secure base are drawn to norway because of its independent financial stability and potential prosperity (sechi et al. 2021; zabko et al. 2019). the study’s further examination of the distribution of respondents found that it also accurately depicted the geographic location of migratory movements. 3.3 the comparative approach regardless of the diverse framing in albania and latvia, “international migration in the periods of transition and crisis” (göler et al. 2014) intensified at the start of the 1990s. since then, both countries have displayed a pattern of continuous outmigration. in fact, and this is the connecting bracket in our comparative analysis, both countries belong to those parts of the former socialist world which were massively affected by long-term outmigration in times of transition. this makes them interesting for geographic migration studies, as related effects such as a widespread diaspora, population decline, brain drain and “peripheralisation” (lulle 2019) seem comparable. the authors used this argument in an earlier migration-related comparative study on transnationalism and transregionalism (göler/krišjāne 2018). for good reason, lulle (2019) draws a similar balkan-baltic comparison with a focus on underlying peripheralisation processes at a later stage. thus, we consequently analyse how far migration patterns fit with the perspective of migration as a tool for social resilience by following hypotheses. first, after socialism, there were fewer limits on immigration, which increased mobility and occasionally perpetuated earlier migratory trends. second, emigration is a person’s reaction to the existential crises they encountered throughout the shift and an effort to improve their circumstances. third, migration may be used as a social resilience tactic under some conditions. migration as social resilience thus covers individual needs in the short and medium term. it may contribute to protecting the shortcomings of the labour market in the receiving context; vice versa, the nexus can lead to long-term development impulses through transnational lifestyles and possible return. research on the first component of the working hypothesis is best done using qualitative studies on albania’s transition, and on the second component using quantitative empirical data from latvia. at the same time, findings on the third component are derived from both parts of the study. this needs detailed explanations of research methods, which are given in the following section. 3.4 research methods the study uses a mixed methods approach. findings on albanian migration are gained through qualitative fieldwork in several research projects which started in 2006 (see göler 2017). these surveys are based on semi-structured in-depth interviews. during the study on migration and entrepreneurship in 2006, we gathered information on • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne8 a total of 34 companies and entrepreneurs (see göler 2007), while the study on return migration in 2012 contained 40 biographical interviews with returnees and addressed, additionally, relevant institutions in southern albania (see göler/doka 2015; göler 2017). the third study addressed asylum seekers from albania and kosovo who were temporarily housed in a refugee reception centre in bamberg (germany) in 2016. there, we conducted 20 qualitative interviews in the migrants’ native language. additionally, we had the chance to carry out another interview with a family that had returned from bamberg to elbasan (albania) in may 2016. in contrast, findings on the latvian case are gathered using a quantitative approach to investigate mainly the emigration motivations in the sense of migration as a tool for social resilience. evidence is based on a one-of-a-kind dataset, collected and analysed from an online internet poll of 2,567 latvian individuals living in five key destination countries, namely the united kingdom (uk), ireland, germany, sweden and norway. we utilised a customised data collection strategy to reach an appropriate target group. the survey took place in 2016 and was carried out on a latvian social media site (www.draugiem.lv) which serves as a well-known communication platform among latvian migrants. when the first survey was conducted in the uk to investigate latvian residents living abroad, it was done so in collaboration with draugiem.lv (apsite-berina 2013). the top 5 migration destinations were the subject of the second survey conducted in 2012. new question blocks have been added to each subsequent survey while potential bias has been recognised and the sample selection has been improved. participants for the survey were chosen based on the profile of the typical user in the destination country (including gender and age criteria relevant to each country). the data gained reflect the concentration of latvian immigrants in other countries, as their geographical location or ip address recognised registered social media site users at the time of the poll, and thus represents a significant source of information (mccollum/apsite-berina 2015; mccollum et al. 2017; sechi et al. 2021). the increasing availability of information and communications technology (ict) and the current state of human mobility are inextricably linked (kellerman 2012; de haas et al. 2019). the widespread use of ict expands the possibilities for more forms of international migration and adds a new dimension to migration research (oiarzabal/reips 2012; smith/king 2012; pötzschke/rinken 2022). sample size and selection vary depending on the general population: the possibility of bias in internet survey mode, which excludes non-internet users a priori, must be considered. in contrast to statistical data obtained at the macro level, primary and unique data from the survey have an advantage. they provide information about the participants’ motives for departure and reveal specific concerns not addressed by conventional statistics. the completed study sample totalled 2,567 people, including 1,028 latvians living in the uk, 500 in ireland, 500 in germany, 239 in sweden and 300 in norway. young people have typically accounted for a sizeable share of intra-eu migration. this is also the case with latvia. young adults (15-34 year-olds) form the group with the highest mobility (fig. 2; csbl 2022). the respondents’ ages range from 16 to 69 years, with the 16-34 years age group having the highest proportion of emigrants. http://www.draugiem.lv migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 9 the questionnaire was completed by 976 men and 1581 women (62 percent). two interconnected factors may explain the higher proportion of female respondents. women are not only more active users of digital social media platforms (hargittai 2003), but they are also more likely to be involved in the scientific investigation (galea/tracy 2007). 4 the case studies 4.1 voices from latvia: reaction to the economic crisis shifts from absorptive to transformative response migrants who have moved overseas must decide whether to stay or return to their native country. this query is relevant to both the life trajectory and future migration plan. social resilience is undeniable in demanding times and takes, according to dagdeviren and donoghue (2019), three primary forms. these are agentic responses to the economic crisis, each with a different temporal frame: absorptive, or coping capacities, in which people make short-term adjustments to deal with the shock of a sudden worsening of their circumstances, frequently at the expense of their wellbeing; adaptive capacities, where people make decisions to safeguard and stabilise their well-being over the long or medium term; and transformative capacities, when individuals alter their lives in ways that improve them and make them less susceptible over time. in their study, czaika et al. 2021 emphasise that “migration decisions are made at significant turning points in people’s lives, determine and are determined by longterm life trajectories, and bring lasting consequences for the decision-maker and people affected by the decisions” (czaika et al. 2021: 15f). in this sense, our data on latvian migration is exceptional for studying return intentions because they offer insight into migratory behaviour and are distinctive regarding migrant characteristics. the study asked questions relating to the respondents’ demographics, their socioeconomic standing, reasons for emigrating, advantages and particular livelihood aspects. respondents were asked to select three main reasons for emigrating to other european countries (fig. 3). the authors contend that emigration is a person’s attempt to improve their circumstances and respond to the existential crisis experienced throughout the shift to address the hypothesised question. the motivation for leaving was made explicit by indicating three key factors behind individuals’ decision to emigrate. latvian ex-pats most frequently cited low pay, a shortage of jobs at home, and an inability to make repayments as the main reasons they left. as seen in this figure, the inability to make daily payments and the lack of employability were mentioned as the main reasons by both migrant groups who intended to stay in or return to latvia. poor wages were regarded as the primary reason for both migrant groups, with family motives also playing a crucial role. uncertainty about the future is one of the factors that both migrant groups value differently (16 percent for potential returnees and 26 percent for persons staying abroad). differently valued opportunities for new experiences are also • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne10 mentioned more frequently (21 percent) by migrants who intend to return to latvia. unemployment has been mentioned more frequently by potential returnees as a reason for leaving. uncertainty about the future reflects the impact of the crisis on the migrant’s psychosocial well-being and is one of the reasons that discourages them from returning to their homeland. similarly, ķešāne (2019), through an analysis of postsoviet emigration from latvia towards the west, establishes the relevance of the inequality-emotion link in migration on the migration-emotion nexus (boccagni/ baldassar 2015). it marks both an absorptive, adaptive, and transformative response. respondents were asked to list the top three advantages of emigration. figure 4 demonstrates the numerous advantages of investing in human capital. both potential returnees and stayers mentioned that their ability to speak a new language had improved, and they had acquired new skills and knowledge. for potential returnees, earning money for a specific purpose is a decisive benefit (47 percent). this money could be used, for instance, to repay a loan. opportunities for professional development and new life experiences are also important (king et al. 2016). although earning money for a particular cause is an absorptive solution, it may also be a guarantee for a transformative one. fig. 3: reasons to leave latvia 0 10 20 30 40 in percent quality of education job loss failure to cover mortgage payments new experience uncertainty about future family reasons failure to cover monthly payments lack of employment prospects low level of income in latvia 28% 25% 24% 23% 16% 21% 13% 14% 3% 29% 28% 26% 25% 26% 15% 12% 11% 4% intend to stay abroadintend to return source: authors' own survey migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 11 a number of different family situations are also mentioned, with family matters becoming more essential attributes. besides having greatest relevance for young people, the aspiration to travel and seek out new experiences demonstrates the importance of transnational links between countries. these elements correspond to international migration traits (king 2012) and show that lifestyle migration has become more common in addition to economic and family migration (king 2018). polish immigrants had a similar experience, and non-economic causes are becoming more significant (janicka/kaczmarczyk 2016). in the context of return, we should also pay attention to psychosocial wellbeing, which underlines the importance of contacts, social and emotional harmony, and the individual experience (vathi/king 2017: 6). binary regression analysis was used to determine the degree to which the traits of potential return migrants differed from those of stayers (see table 1). the study’s model is based on the reasons for and advantages of migration for likely stayers and returnees. the model’s findings indicate that men are more likely than women to return to latvia. compared with other age groups, younger migrants (aged 16-24) may return more frequently. a partner in latvia increases a migrant’s likelihood of returning. fig. 4: benefits to be gained from a stay abroad 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent education new knowledge family abroad new profession earn money for a specific goal new friends improve language skills 61% 47% 47% 31% 14% 24% 11% 71% 54% 30% 33% 30% 17% 12% intend to stay abroadintend to return source: authors' own survey • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne12 tab. 1: comparison of characteristics among migrants’ intending to stay abroad (0) and those intending to return to latvia (1) variable b sig. gender (ref. women) men 0.326* age group (ref. 16-24 years) 25-44 years -0.447*** older than 45 years -0.556** family status (ref. single) have a partner in latvia 0.462** have a partner abroad 0.051 family type (ref. no children) have children in latvia 0.039 have children abroad -0.413 ** have children in latvia and abroad 0.756 education (ref. vocational) primary or lower -0.363 secondary 0.054 tertiary 0.107 period of emigration (ref. 2009-2012, crisis) pre-2009 (pre-crisis) -0.036 post-2012 (post-crisis) 0.356** place of residence in latvia (ref. urban areas) rural areas 0.068 place of residence abroad (ref. urban areas) rural areas 0.368*** countries (ref. uk) germany -0.731*** ireland 0.182 norway -0.138 sweden -0.356* employment abroad (ref. non-working/inactive) low-skilled worker 0.193 qualified worker -0.008 service sector worker -0.150 managers, professional -0.165 migration experience(ref. first migration) repeated migration 0.038 remittances (ref. not sending money) sending money 0.004 migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 13 the same applies to rural migrants, particular when compared with migrants living in urban areas. a comparison of destination countries clearly demonstrates that germany and sweden have lower return rates than the united kingdom. less likely to return are those who left due to unemployment, lack of employment prospects and low-income levels. on the other hand, there are no differences between those who cited a lack of prospects and those for whom migration is a repeated experience. comparing this with prior studies (krišjāne et al. 2016), it is unique. those who used to be jobless in latvia were also able to return because of significant increases in employment rates since the end of the economic crisis. nevertheless, low salaries deter people from returning to latvia. however, relatives and friends abroad may diminish the likelihood of returning to latvia. the possibility of leaving latvia can also increase with acquired language skills, new professional skills and education abroad. migrants who left during the crisis are more likely to return than those who left during the post-crisis period. according to the findings, post-crisis migrants appear to feel less obliged to stay abroad and the time spent variable b sig. motives behind moving abroad (ref. failure to cover monthly payments) job loss -0.409* failure to cover mortgage payments -0.269 low level of income -0. 638*** lack of employment prospects -0.465* family reasons -0.004 better quality of education 0.141 uncertainty/insecurity about the future -0.280 gain new experiences 0.346 other -0.307 experience abroad (ref. earned money for a specific goal) education abroad -1. 555*** new profession, qualification -0.941 *** benefits, new knowledge abroad -1.071*** learn language -1.220*** new friends -1.162*** new family -1.162*** other -0.046 constant -0.316 observations 2,567 nagelkerke r2 0.134 tab. 1: continuation note: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 source: own calculations • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne14 since the emigration may have had an influence; the longer a person stays abroad, the less likely they are to return. overall, migration motivations that are influenced by the economic context are driven by necessity; those who move to another country for a specific short-term goal or to save money for a particular purpose are more likely to return than those who benefit from new knowledge and skills abroad. psychological stress and future uncertainty affect crisis migrants more than other groups, thus illustrating the relationship between migration and social adaptability. a lack of employment prospects nevertheless means that there is less of a desire to return to latvia. the model results show that migration can be used as a tool for social resilience or as a response to a shock that demands swift action, thereby endorsing the earlier hypothesis. when someone loses his or her job or source of income, they cannot make daily or credit payments on time. the person decides to travel abroad as a result of this. the possibility of competitive pay and, consequently, the capacity to earn for a specific purpose, attract migrants. it supports the hypothesis that emigration is both a personal response to the crisis and a point of departure while looking for a short-term solution. additionally, migration is seen as a strategy to protect and stabilise their wellbeing in the medium or longer term. people look for better working conditions, career options, and prospects abroad because of low income, a lack of job opportunities, and worries about the future. the advancement of a migrant can be viewed as an investment in new knowledge and language learning that makes them better off in the longer term. 4.2 voices from albania: effects of three decades of a migrant society generally speaking, albanian emigrants are well integrated into the host countries, both economically and socially. however, the majority of emigrants continue to have a strong relation with their country of origin, whether through visiting relatives and friends during the summer holidays and attending family celebrations or ‘merely’ virtual contacts through social media. many albanian emigrants are actively embedded in transnational networks. that kind of mass emigration is often connected with complex back-and-forth movements and bears a high potential for an eventual return. in fact, albania is also a good example of migratory countermovements as a lot of migrants have returned in the past 30 years. the respective spatial and temporal context is decisive, not only as regards to form, intensity and direction, but also, and in particular, in terms of socio-economic effects. the returnees of the 2000s were able to take advantage of the windows of opportunities in albania, whereas the crisis migrants from greece and italy between 2010 and 2013 were confronted with problems on the labour market and challenges of reintegration, especially among the returning second generation. the same applies to those returning from the failed bid to seek asylum in germany in 2015/16, when many albanians left in order to follow the large number of refugees on their migration to europe. as far as resilience is concerned, return was often just the starting point migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 15 for a new migration project. below, we will draw on three examples to explain the shifting aspects of migration as a tool for social resilience in the case of albania. the summary of the first biographical example will give an impression not only of the highly volatile, liquid and elusive character of migration in the 1990s and 2000s but also of the economic effects in the sense of the migration-resilience-nexus of return in that period: the interviewee from vlorë is the co-owner of a medium-sized furniture company. his migration biography is a sequence of back-and-forth movements. after having earned a university diploma in engineering in the late 1980s, he worked in the state-owned oil industry for a short period but became unemployed following the fall of the socialist system. like many others, he began running an informal kiosk selling small goods. gradually, he started importing food and, later on, wooden chipboards. in 1997, he opened a bigger shop, which failed due to the riots in albania. two years later, in 1999, he began to trade internationally once more, specialising in furniture parts. in between all of these different activities, the interviewee reported several temporary yet limited periods of time spent abroad where he was mainly employed in construction in countries such as italy, spain and dubai. on returning to albania permanently, he invested the money that he had saved to set up his own company in 2003. the fact that the company still existed almost ten years later, when we repeated our visit, may indicate the success of that migration-based start-up. this previous study, based on entrepreneurs’ biographies, clearly showed that private financial transfers from abroad are crucial in the foundation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the service and secondary sectors (göler 2007). only one out of 34 entrepreneurs in that sample was not in a state of emigration prior to starting a business in albania. preparation for the foundation of a company usually comes in the form of a stay of up to ten or more years abroad, mainly in italy or greece. the first decade of the 21st century was a rather dynamic period for albania’s national economy, not least due to the mushrooming migration-based private entrepreneurship (returnees’ business), one of the characteristic elements of the nexus between migration and development. the determinism of entrepreneurship and migration is a rule in albania. migration, as described above, is a tool of social resilience in a dual respect: leaving home and seeking employment of any kind abroad is the reaction to critical living conditions following a change in system, while the decision to stay abroad – often in precarious working conditions with low wages and social deprivation – is made with a view to becoming self-employed upon returning at a later date. it is a truism that a migration project’s success or failure depends largely on the socio-spatial and temporal context. in our first example, the migrant was able to decide voluntarily the moment of return. back home, he was met by a rapidly evolving environment where he could contribute to the economic dynamism, together with many other returnees. in contrast, almost a decade later, a specific proportion of migration and return took place in less favourable circumstances, as our example below shows: • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne16 the interviewee had just returned to a village near himarë in southern albania. as was commonplace in the early 1990s, he had left for greece alone, but was followed by his wife and child after he had found a job. a daughter was born and the family moved into an apartment in athens and integrated into society. the son earned a university degree and our interviewee moved into a better professional position. in 2011, with the emergence of the financial crisis in greece, our interviewee accepted the compensation offered and returned alone to albania. the son was already working and remained in greece. the wife continued working in the service sector but had to accept several wage cuts due to the crisis. the striking argument as to why to stay for as long as possible, without spending too much of the savings before returning, was the daughter. she was born in greece, was still attending school and only spoke a little albanian. the parents wanted her to graduate from school so as to give her the chance of a brighter future abroad. the returnee himself, now in his mid-50s, runs a small-scale farm on his property in albania, like his ancestors did and like he himself did before emigrating. “with agriculture you always have something to eat and might have your livelihood, even if the crisis worsens,” he remarked, almost fatalistically, at the end of the interview. both migratory movements were required for economic reasons, but were also necessary for resilience. the first one was an expression of a profound existential crisis. in contrast, the second migration, in the form of a “split return” (carling/ erdal 2014: 6) associated with an emotional burden, is tantamount to returning for retirement and for the lower costs of living at the place of origin. this equates to a coping strategy to avoid the family spending too much of their savings. a third strategy of migration as an example of social resilience in post-socialist albania is related to the european “refugee crisis” around 2015, when migrants from western balkan countries made up around 25 percent of the total number of refugees in germany (bamf 2015: 8), but failed to meet the relevant criteria as set out in the geneva convention. 12.2 percent of the arrivals came from albania. many of the nearly 54,000 individuals came indirectly from greece and, to a lesser extent, italy, with a kind of stop-over in albania before arriving in germany. like our second interviewee, they were affected by the economic crisis in their previous destination countries, but in contrast, they had no resources to make a living in albania then. a case study from elbasan may serve to illustrate the problem briefly: the couple is in their late 40s and have three sons. one of the sons lives permanently in italy while the other two left to seek asylum in germany but were forced to return in april 2015. nevertheless, the parents moved to germany in may, where they spent a couple of months in bamberg. the main driver at the beginning was to be part of this mass movement. as asylum seekers, they received the request to leave in october, and they left the country on their own but made plans for re-entry simultaneously. “we only came to germany to work. we do not want social assistance. we came for economic reasons. we are dissatisfied here [in albania]. we liked it so much [in germany]. but next time, we want to pay more attention to the rules.” migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 17 in retrospect, the 2015 migration of albanians “into asylum” was potentially one of the biggest misunderstandings in the age of migration. with only a few exceptions, it was a desperate and often spontaneous but ultimately failed attempt to ascribe value to migration in terms of social resilience, following a common coping strategy established in the decades and centuries beforehand. most albanian asylum seekers found themselves back home a couple of months later, facing the same problems as before and thinking about another migration project, but this time with even more limited resources (see also king/gëdeshi 2021). these cases may confirm the thesis of returnees as potential future emigrants, as return in this particular context represents another stage in sequential migration biographies rather than a genuine prospect. at present, especially among younger people and those who have gained experience abroad (and there are many of them now!), the belief that one can ‘do one’s thing’ in albania seems to have been lost. statistical data from figure 1 show a sharp increase in emigration following a smooth interruption in 2021 due to the pandemic, and may underline the argument that the common pattern of migration is being perpetuated. between 2021 and 2022, the number of emigrants almost doubled. the decrease in inward migration at the same time indicates that albania does not offer an attractive environment for remigrants, especially if they have to establish a livelihood and earn a living there. this could be different in a few years’ time, when the returnees include retired people who may be able to live well on small pensions from abroad, given that the cost of living in the country is still relatively low. return migration could then once again become part of (return) migration as a tool for social resilience. 5 findings and discussion in the last 30 years, a broad range of demographic groups participated in emigration from latvia. emigration and working abroad have always been popular strategies employed by latvians, especially during economic crises and periods of instability (mccollum et al. 2017; hazans 2019). the example of latvia shows that migration as an immediate solution is considered to be a tool for social resilience. the same is true for albania, but with a slightly different background regarding two contextual factors. the first is the state of isolation during socialism, with the result that, despite a strong affinity towards migration, there was no experience of dealing with international migration during the 1990s. this led to spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes tragic migratory movements. it is no exaggeration to say that this was the re-birth of albanian emigration as a means of social resilience, now in the postcommunist transition crisis (göler 2017). we see a similarity of motives, symbols and narrations over the centuries, with the exception being a period of almost five decades of socialism during which migration was highly controlled. the second factor is the still unresolved status of eu membership and the subsequent limited freedom of movement and access to labour markets. both factors made albanian migrants one of the most vulnerable groups on the european migratory landscape. • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne18 through our short empirical sketches, we demonstrated the ability of migration systems to cope with internally and externally caused shocks, such as the economic downturn (lv) or the new freedom to travel (al), to re-organise during these processes in a novel and sometimes creative manner and, if necessary, to define a new social system which offers more stability. from an individual perspective, migration is a robust resource and one of the means with which people cope with the problems they face. our empirical findings show that this is true, especially under conditions of rapid change, when migration may serve as a part, albeit not the only part, of the solution in the short term. then, migration is an appropriate answer to uncertainty and threats. however, suppose we return to the general question of the degree to which migration creates development. in that case, the answer must be differentiated, especially if we think beyond macroeconomic factors such as wage gaps or remittances. from an economic point of view, migration definitely supports development in both countries of origin and destination. this positive assessment is put into perspective when we also consider the manifold social costs of migration, i.e. the intangible effects. the consequences of transnational lifestyles are complex and can be associated with high psychological stress and social costs resulting from family separation or lack of integration (see vathi/king 2017), even following an eventual return. one of the tailored social resilience solutions, especially in the short term, is one-way or, if necessary, repeated back-and-forth migration with shorter periods of time spent outside the country of origin. both of the systems analysed are characterised by a widespread multi-local social network in which migration, individual migration experiences and migration culture play a leading role. in our study, migrants are interpreted as agents of societal transformation, adapting social practices from different economic, social and cultural contexts. factors like social practices and social capital are becoming engrained in albania and latvia. all in all, this approach enables us to introduce the concept of social resilience into an agent-based interpretation of the consequences of migratory movements in both origin and host societies. such resilience as a performed social practice is based on various factors: experience, knowledge and other individual skills, as well as the personal capacities of the network participants. the hypothesis of migration as a tool for social resilience can be assumed to be a rule under conditions of uncertainty at the macro level and individual threats at the micro level, as the cases from albania and latvia clearly showed. acknowledgements the paper is based on 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in: südosteuropa-mitteilungen 55,1: 22-31. göler, daniel; krišjāne, zaiga 2016: elusive migration systems. shifting from transnationalism to transregionalism. in: domínguez-mujica, josefina (ed.): global change and human mobility. advances in geographical and environmental sciences. heidelberg/new york/ dordrecht/london: springer singapore: 25-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0050-8_2 göler, daniel; krišjāne, zaiga 2018: the variability of migration systems or: from transnationalism to transregionalism? experiences from latvia and albania. in: anastasova, ekaterina; toncheva, svetoslava (eds.): balkan and baltic states in united europe. histories, religions, and cultures ii. sofia: paradigma publishing house: 207-218. göler, daniel; krišjāne, zaiga; bērziņš, māris 2014: international migration in the periods of transition and crisis. the example of latvia. in: the baltic region 20,2: 75-85. https://doi.org/10.5922/2079-8555-2014-2-6 göler, daniel; krišjāne, zaiga; winkler, andreas 2015: letten in deutschland: liquide migration oder stabile zuwanderung? in: berichte: geographie und landeskunde 89,1: 73-89. hall, derek 1994: albania and the albanians. london/new york: pinter reference. hargittai, eszter 2003: how wide a web? inequalities in accessing information online. unpublished doctoral dissertation. princeton university: princeton, nj. hazans, mihails 2019: emigration from latvia: a brief history and driving forces in the twentyfirst century. in: kaša, rita; mieriņa, inta (eds.): the emigrant communities of latvia: national identity, transnational belonging, and diaspora politics. springer, cham: 35-68. heleniak, timothy 2004: migration of the russian diaspora after the breakup of the soviet union. in: journal of international affairs 57,2: 99-117. instat instituti i statistikave 2020: diaspora e shqipërise në shifra. tirana. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.471 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305694_1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2007.03.013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0050-8_2 https://doi.org/10.5922/2079-8555-2014-2-6 migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 21 instat instituti i statistikave 2023: number of emigration, immigration and net migration, 2018-2022. tirana in: https://www.instat.gov.al/en/ [https://www.instat.gov.al/en/ themes/demography-and-social-indicators/migration-and-migrant-integration/#tab2, 21.09.2023]. iom gmdac international organization for migration, global migration data analysis centre 2021: international migrant stocks. berlin. in: https://www.migrationdataportal.org/ 5.2.2021 [https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/international-migrant-stocks, 20.12.2021]. janicka, anna; kaczmarczyk, pawel 2016: mobilities in the crisis and post-crisis times: migration strategies of poles on the eu labour market. in: journal of ethnic and migration studies 42,10: 1693-1710. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2016.1162350 joseph, jonathan 2013: resilience as embedded neoliberalism: a governmentality approach. in: resilience: international policies, practices and discourses 1,1: 38-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2013.765741 kapur, devesh 2004: remittances: the new development mantra? g-24 discussion paper 29. new york/geneva: united nations. keck, markus; sakdapolrak, patrick 2013: what is social resilience? lessons learned and ways forward. in: erdkunde 67,1: 5-19. https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2013.01.02 kellerman, aharon 2012: potential mobilities. in: mobilities 7: 171-183. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.631817 ķešāne, iveta 2019: the lived experience of inequality and migration: emotions and meaning making among latvian emigrants. in: emotion, space and society 33: 100597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2019.100597 king, russel 2005: albania as a laboratory for the study of migration and development. in: journal of southern europe and the balkans 7,2: 133-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190500132880 king, russell 2012: geography and migration studies: retrospect and prospect. in: population, space and place 18,2: 134-153. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.685 king, russell 2018: theorising new european youth mobilities. in: population, space and place 24,1: e2117. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2117 king, russell; gëdeshi, ilir 2021: albanian returned asylum-seekers: failures, successes and what can be achieved in a short time. in: journal of balkan and near eastern studies 24,3: 479-502. https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2021.2015657 king, russell et al. 2016: eurocity london: a qualitative comparison of graduate migration from germany, italy and latvia. in: comparative migration studies 4,3: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-016-0023-1 krišjāne, zaiga 2008: from a receiving to a sending nation: latvia’s new role in the european migration pattern. in: humanities and social sciences: latvia 1,54: 72-89. krišjāne, zaiga; apsite-berina, elīna; bērziņš, māris 2016: circularity within the eu: the return intentions of latvian migrants. in: nadler, robert et al. (eds.): return migration and regional development in europe. new geographies of europe. london: palgrave macmillan: 215240. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57509-8_10 lulle, aija 2019: balkans and baltics: on migration as a factor of regional peripheralization. in: journal of balkan and near eastern studies 21,1: 27-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2018.1532684 martin, philip 2009: recession and migration: a new era for labor migration? in: international migration review 43,3: 671-691. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2009.00781.x https://www.instat.gov.al/en/ https://www.instat.gov.al/en/ https://www.migrationdataportal.org/ https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/international-migrant-stocks https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/international-migrant-stocks https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2016.1162350 https://doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2013.765741 https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2013.01.02 https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.631817 https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.631817 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2019.100597 https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190500132880 https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.685 https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2117 https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2021.2015657 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-016-0023-1 https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57509-8_10 https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2018.1532684 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2009.00781.x • daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne22 massey, douglas s et al. 1998: worlds in motion: understanding international migration at the end of the millennium. oxford: clarendon press. mccollum, david; apsite-berina, elina 2015: recruitment through migrant social networks from latvia to the united kingdom: motivations, processes and developments. in: migration letters 12,1: 50-66. https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v12i1.256 mccollum, david et al. 2017: overcoming the crisis: the changing profile and trajectories of latvian migrants. in: journal of ethnic and migration studies 43,9: 1508-1525. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2016.1232161 oiarzabal, pedro j.; reips, ulf-dietrich 2012: migration and diaspora in the age of information and communication technologies. in: journal of ethnic and migration studies 38,9: 13331490. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2012.698202 pötzschke, steffen; sebastian rinken 2022: migration research in a digitized world: using innovative technology to tackle methodological challenges. springer nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01319-5 rother, klaus 1968: die albaner in süditalien. in: mitteilung der österreichischen geographischen gesellschaft 110: 1-20. sechi, guido et al. 2021: the gender-specific examination of migration decision-making and remittance behavior among latvian emigrants. in: journal of baltic studies 52,3: 291-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2021.1931382 smith, adrian; swain, adam 2010: the global economic crisis, eastern europe, and the former soviet union: models of development and the contradictions of internationalization. in: eurasian geography and economics 51,1: 1-34. https://doi.org/10.2747/1539-7216.51.1.1 smith, darren p.; king, russell 2012: editorial introduction: re-making migration theory. in: population, space and place 18,2: 127-133. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.686 stark, david 2014: on resilience. in: social science 3,1: 60-70. https://doi.org/10.7916/d89k4883 vathi, zana; russell king 2017: return migration and psychosocial wellbeing: discourses, policy-making and outcomes for migrants and their families. london: taylor & francis. worldbank 2011: migration and remittances factbook 2011. washington. zabko, oksana; fangen, katrine; endresen, sylvi 2019: latvian migrants’ circular or permanent migration to norway: economic and social factors. in: nordic journal of migration research 9,1: 61-79. https://doi.org/10.2478/njmr-2019-0007 https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v12i1.256 https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v12i1.256 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2016.1232161 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2012.698202 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01319-5 https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2021.1931382 https://doi.org/10.2747/1539-7216.51.1.1 https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.686 https://doi.org/10.7916/d89k4883 https://doi.org/10.2478/njmr-2019-0007 migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies • 23 date of submission: 14.03.2022 date of acceptance: 21.11.2023 prof. dr. daniel göler (*). university of bamberg. bamberg, germany. e-mail: daniel.goeler@uni-bamberg.de. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0377-0724 url: https://www.uni-bamberg.de/migtrans/prof-dr-daniel-goeler/ prof. dr. zaiga krišjāne (*). university of latvia. riga, latvia. e-mail: zaiga.krisjane@lu.lv. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3422-1958 url: https://www.geo.lu.lv/par-mums/geografijas-nodala/cilveka-geografijaskatedra/zaiga-krisjane/ mailto:daniel.goeler@uni-bamberg.de https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0377-0724 https://www.uni-bamberg.de/migtrans/prof-dr-daniel-goeler/ mailto:zaiga.krisjane@lu.lv https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3422-1958 https://www.geo.lu.lv/par-mums/geografijas-nodala/cilveka-geografijas-katedra/ https://www.geo.lu.lv/par-mums/geografijas-nodala/cilveka-geografijas-katedra/zaiga-krisjane/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de how to write an article for comparative population studies editorial how to write an article for comparative population studies* philip h. rees abstract: this editorial is written by philip rees, professor emeritus in population geography at the university of leeds, uk, drawing on his experience as external editor for comparative population studies (cpos) in 2019 and as a writer of research papers for 6 decades. he spent a busy year of emails and reviews at his desk in leeds as part of the cpos editorial team, with visits to wiesbaden for editorial meetings. this experience was good preparation for the necessity of home working in 2020 and 2021 during the covid-19 pandemic. this article provides guidance for aspiring authors of cpos articles in preparing and revising a submission. the advice includes sticking precisely to the cpos guidance, writing clear and concise prose, being selective in your citations, focusing on originality and relevance, and responding in full to all issues raised by the reviewers of your paper. then you will be able to benefit from the online publication of your paper, avoiding the article charges levied by commercial publishers, rapid turnround, meticulous sub-editing, assistance if english is not your native language and wise advice from a succession of external guest editors. keywords: guidelines · citations · plagiarism · responses · review 1 introduction this editorial is a contribution to the 50th anniversary of the publication of the comparative population studies journal (cpos 2025). the journal has many advantages for publishing work in the field of demography and population research, for both early career and experienced researchers. the federal government of germany has an admirable policy of supporting research institutes of high quality, including the federal institute for population research (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung, bib, wiesbaden). bib publishes cpos. although the institute mainly focuses on comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): xi-xvi (date of release: 12.05.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-06 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-06en6 * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. • philip h. reesxii demographic developments in germany, bib encourages submissions from authors all over the globe. since 2019 cpos has appointed external editors both in germany and other countries to ensure scientific independence, transparency and scientific quality. cpos offers quick turnaround of submitted papers and their revisions, and, in this day of pressured research budgets, no article charges! cpos staff carry out meticulous sub-editing. help is available if english is not your native language. cpos is an online journal, which can be freely accessed by anyone interested in your research. this contributes to reducing an author’s carbon footprint and thus to the green energy transition, so vital in slowing down global warming and the extreme weather events which threaten lives and livelihoods. 2 general considerations so, what steps should an aspiring author take to prepare a submission to cpos? these steps are common to leading social science journals. your paper should be original, rigorous, interesting, and, if possible, relevant to current policy design which is affected by demographic factors. what does “comparative” mean in the journal title? it means authors are encouraged to include comparisons between different populations, distinguished by one or more of the dimensions of demographic enquiry such as sex, age, education and location, sub-national or international. if your work is based on survey data, the list of attributes will be much larger. 3 paying attention to the guidelines you should read guidelines very carefully. important elements to pay attention to are the word limit and the word equivalent assigned to tables and figures. there may be a limit to the number allowed. cpos sets a limit of 8,000 words (6,000 words for descriptive papers). however, cpos editors can be flexible if you need additional words, given publications are published online. extra space can be requested using a convincing argument (e.g. rees/lomax 2019). whereas a paper publisher incurs an extra cost for each page of an article, an online publisher’s costs are much smaller. libraries are increasingly adding only online publications because they have filled most of their shelf space. 4 word limits cpos guidelines recommend that the main text does not exceed 8,000 words (6,000 words in the case of descriptive papers). it is easy to get carried away and realise you are over the limit. don’t panic. a careful edit can reveal surplus words (such as too many adjectives) and texts can be shrunk without loss of meaning and gain in understanding for the reader. how to write an article for comparative population studies • xiii 5 role of the abstract and introduction the abstract is the most important part of your paper, because a good abstract will prompt a reader to tackle your full article. the abstract should cover aims, context, data, analysis, results and interpretation in clear prose in as few words as possible. it should be a micro version of all the ingredients of your paper not a ramble about the topic. i confess to checking current practice in demographic research published by the max planck institute for demographic research (mpidr), the leading german online competitor. choose the key words by designing terms that can be successfully searched. the introduction should do what “it says on the tin”. you should identify your topic, provide a set of aims and/or research questions, describe the general argument to be developed in the paper and list the contents of the sections of the paper that follows. the introduction should not be an excuse to launch into a review of prior literature on your topic or research question. that belongs to the review section which should follow. 6 plagiarism plagiarism involves copying text from other publications without citation and placement in quotations. this constitutes theft of copyrighted material and could mean you might lose your job. politicians world-wide seem to be prone to this misdemeanour. the problem can be solved by re-writing your text from notes on the material, citing the source and running the text through a plagiarism checker, of which there are many available online such as turnitin or grammarly. 7 self-plagiarism self-plagiarism is a lesser sin, for which eminent professors have been criticised. it is not good practice and will be detected using a plagiarism search engine. again, the solution is to read your previous work, make notes, close the file and write new text with suitable citations. check whether the journal requires you to withhold selfcitations until acceptance in order to avoid bias if your authorship is revealed. 8 review of the literature the literature review should cover the publications relevant to your topic but should also be informative. declaring a finding and then citing a long list of research papers is sub-optimal. which one does the busy reader go to for insight? do they all report the same finding? my preference is for a short sentence describing the relevant findings of each key reference. to help the reader, current practice should be to link the citation to the online version of the article, which the busy reader can easily • philip h. reesxiv access and read. sometimes it will be necessary to provide a specific page number where the finding you are describing can be found. when citing a book, this is essential and will save the reader valuable time. 9 responses to editors there are two keys to speedy passage through the submission and revision process: pay very careful attention to the cpos guidelines and take very seriously responses to reviewer and editor comments and requirements. i recommend an article by donovan (2005) with the title “how to alienate your editor”, which may shock you or provide a good laugh. 10 responses to reviewers take the comments of the reviewers seriously when preparing a response document. write your response after each point raised. do not dismiss it. if you think the reviewer’s comment or requirement is unreasonable, then make a strong case for not implementing. in a recent review, which covered the european locations of ancestors of the american cohort with immigrant origins, the author ignored my recommendations not to locate the mean ancestor location in the atlantic ocean but to instead add a map of europe showing their birth locations. this recommendation was ignored, on the grounds that it would involve too much extra work. this is not a good argument when you want to convince the reviewer. 11 contributions of each author citing the individual contribution of each author is a requirement of most scientific journals and is becoming more common among social science journals. in reviews of research achievements by funding bodies, such as the research excellence framework used by the uk research and innovation (ukri) funder this may become a required feature as team work and multiple authorship increases. cpos is happy to include such information in your research article. 12 publishing and referencing your data in your article, you may have used many data sources as input to your work and produced output data. the input data should be fully cited and referenced. the output data should be deposited in a safe repository for further use. any program code that you have written should also be deposited. examples of data repositories include academic data archives (e.g. uk data service 2025, wittgenstein centre 2025), and table builders produced by official statistics agencies (e.g. abs 2025; ons 2025). how to write an article for comparative population studies • xv code repositories, where you can place and describe novel software and data used in your analysis (github 2025; zenodo 2025) are also important. 13 use of supplementary or supporting information if you run out of words but still have lots of details or data that would be of interest, you can add extra information via these documents linked to your paper. cpos usually reviews these documents. 14 final remark i hope you find this editorial helps in preparing your submission of a research paper to cpos. the journal welcomes submissions at any time and is looking forward to your innovative research. references abs 2025: table builder. australian bureau of statistics [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/ microdata-tablebuilder/tablebuilder, 06.05.2025]. cpos (comparative population studies) 2025: submissions [https://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/about/submissions, 06.05.2025]. donovan, stephen k. 2005: how to alienate your editor: a practical guide for established authors. in: journal of scholarly publishing 36,4: 238-242. https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.36.4.238 github 2025: build and ship software on a single, collaborative platform [https://github.com/, 06.05.2025]. ons 2025: create a custom data set. office for national statistics [https://www.ons.gov.uk/ datasets/create, 06.05.2025]. rees, philip; lomax, nik 2019: ravenstein revisited: the analysis of migration, then and now. in: comparative population studies 44: 351-412. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2020-10 uk data service 2025: welcome to the uk data service [https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/, 06.05.2025]. wittgenstein centre 2025: wittgenstein centre human capital data explorer [https:// dataexplorer.wittgensteincentre.org/wcde-v3/, 06.05.2025]. zenodo 2025: eu open research repository [https://zenodo.org/, 06.05.2025]. prof. dr. philip h. rees (*). school of geography, university of leeds. leeds, united kingdom. e-mail: p.h.rees@leeds.ac.uk url: https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/geography/staff/1094/professor-philip-rees published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) social resources are associated with higher fertility intentions in contemporary finland social resources are associated with higher fertility intentions in contemporary finland alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch abstract: lower childbearing intentions can stem from a lack of social resources. however, not only actual but also perceived social support might signal that parents and parents-to-be will not be alone after having a child. using register and ggsfinland data from 2021-22, we investigate how emotional and instrumental support received from parents and other social network members, as well as a person’s subjective feeling that their social network is sufficient (measured as the absence of loneliness), are associated with fertility intentions. logistic regression models reveal that receiving instrumental support ‒ especially financial support ‒ from parents and other relatives (but not non-kin) is associated with higher childbearing intentions. not feeling lonely is also associated with higher childbearing intentions, particularly among individuals aged 26-30 years. gender and partnership status nuance these associations. we conclude that social resources ‒ indicated by both perceived and received support ‒ shape childbearing intentions for those approaching or in prime childbearing age. the lack of perceived social resources among young adults may contribute to relatively low fertility, even in a high-income country with generous family policies such as finland. keywords: fertility intentions · social support · social resource · loneliness · finland · ggs 1 introduction birth rates have been declining in most middleand high-income countries for over a decade (zeman et al. 2018). this includes countries with generous policy support for families such as the nordic countries and is occurring without obvious policyor economy-related reasons (comolli et al. 2021). to understand this ongoing fertility decline, scholars have therefore shifted their focus to examining non-material factors such as social trust (aassve et al. 2021), perceived (un)certainties (neyer et comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 81-116 (date of release: 10.04.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-04 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-04en9 • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch82 al. 2022), anticipation (huinink/kohli 2014) and narratives of the future (vignoli et al. 2020a, 2022; guetto et al. 2022), and life satisfaction (mencarini et al. 2018). the role of social support as a driver of fertility has also gained increasing scholarly attention (e.g., rossier/bernardi 2009; bühler/fratczak 2007; stulp/barrett 2021). in this study, we examine the relevance of social resources ‒ both received and perceived ‒ for childbearing intentions. the cooperative breeding hypothesis suggests that human mothers have always employed a wide range of support providers for raising children (hrdy 2005; sear/ coall 2011). cues of social support can therefore be important for the decision to reproduce: support from family members signals that parents and parents-to-be will not be left on their own but, instead, will have access to informal goods and services in parenthood. one’s own parents are assumed to be especially influential in this regard, due to their high interest in supporting their own offspring to reproduce. while the association between grandparental support and fertility intentions has been approached in some research (e.g., bühler/philipov 2005; tanskanen/rotkirch 2014; rutigliano/lozano 2022), less attention has been given to the support provided by other network members. bühler and philipov (2005) hypothesised that individuals are more likely to intend to have their first or another child if they perceive to have access to resources ‒ including social resources ‒ to handle the expected childbearing costs. accordingly, it can be assumed that individuals who perceive a deficit in their interpersonal relationships are less inclined to have children compared to those who feel wellconnected socially. to the best of our knowledge, the relationship between perceived social resources and childbearing intentions has not been previously investigated. this study uses recent data from finland, a country with a steeply declining total fertility rate despite having a generous welfare state, to examine the correlation between reported emotional and instrumental support received from both one’s own parents and other network members on the one hand and the intentions to have a child on the other. additionally, we investigate the associations between perceiving one’s social resources as sufficient ‒ measured as the absence of loneliness ‒ and childbearing intentions. since social resources, both received and perceived, are likely to be especially important around the time of childbearing decision-making, compared to outside of the age range of childbearing in the society, we also explore potential age differences in the effect1 of social resources on childbearing intentions. empirically, we employ logistic regression models and data from the first wave of the finnish generation and gender survey (ggs) collected in 2021-22 and linked to administrative registers from statistics finland. 1 the term “effect” is here used as a technical term to denote statistical associations, without implying causal relationships. social resources and fertility intentions • 83 2 theoretical background and hypotheses individuals’ life choices, including the decision to have a child, are often shaped by the interaction and exchange of resources with social network members (balbo/ barban 2020). individuals are assumed to make childbearing decisions considering the costs and benefits of parenthood (liefbroer 2005). a major increase in the cost of raising children ‒ both in terms of time and money ‒ has been documented in recent decades (dotti sani/treas 2016). parents wish what is best for their children and feel responsible for providing it (gauthier/de jong 2021). given that humans are cooperative breeders (hrdy 2005), receiving support reduces the perceived costs of parenthood by enabling couples, and women in particular, to share childcare with others and better combine paid work and family life (aassve et al. 2012; kaptijn et al. 2010; thomese/liefbroer 2013). therefore, both material and social network resources, including practical as well as emotional support, are likely to constitute key cues signalling whether the time to reproduce is right (sear/dickins 2010). earlier research has indeed found that more supportive network relationships are positively related to fertility intentions (e.g., bühler/philipov 2005; philipov et al. 2006; bühler/ fratczak 2007). arguably, childcare support could be more likely to influence the decision to have subsequent children than first-borns, since the provision of potential childcare by would-be grandparents or other network members to those who do not have children yet is not observable. however, research suggests that first-time parents also anticipate future levels of grandparental support by observing their parents’ characteristics and adjust their decision to enter parenthood accordingly (rutigliano 2020). individuals likely assume that if network members already provide social support, they will continue doing so once a child is born. theoretically, researchers mostly associate emotional support (e.g., comforting) and instrumental support (e.g., financial aid and household help) with fertility (bernardi/klärner 2014). while receiving support is one potential channel through which social networks may affect fertility intentions, the strength of ties to those who provide this support is a second channel (balbo/barban 2020). one’s own parents have the greatest evolutionary interest in investing in (grand-) children. studies from contemporary high-income societies have indeed shown that grandparents invest extensively in grandchildren (coall/hertwig 2010; sear/coall 2011; tanskanen et al. 2023). furthermore, good intergenerational relations predict fertility intentions (merz 2012). however, previous research on the associations between receiving support from parents and fertility intentions suggests mixed findings. a study of contemporary germany did not find any statistically significant associations between parental investments ‒ measured as number of contacts and financial and emotional support ‒ and adult sons’ and daughters’ intentions to have a first and a second child (tanskanen/danielsbacka 2021). in spain, receiving any grandparental support was associated with a positive and significant increase in fertility intentions for women, but not for men (rutigliano/lozano 2022). a study based on data from france, norway, bulgaria, and lithuania suggested that grandparental investment was correlated with increased childbearing intentions among mothers, but the • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch84 strength of the association varied by country, socioeconomic situation, and kin lineage (tanskanen/rotkirch 2014). although support from network members other than parents could also be associated with planning to have a child, this association has only been examined in conjunction with parental support. earlier research suggests that fertility intentions do correlate with strong ties with the more extended family, operationalised as the quality of family relationships in terms of emotional support, affective quality, closeness, reliability, and information exchange in important situations (merz 2012). receiving support from one’s larger family (parents and other relatives) is also positively associated with women’s intentions to have a second child (fiori 2011). not directly related to fertility planning, but pointing to the importance of network members beyond kin as providers of childcare support, a study by stulp and barrett (2021) shows that dutch women today not only tend to ask friends for help with childcare, but also speak with them about children to a greater extent than they do with kin. furthermore, friendship relations provide different types of social support that complement support from kin (amati et al. 2015). based on these findings, we broadly hypothesise that those who receive support from their network members, both parents and others, will be more likely to intend to have a first child or another child than those who do not (hypothesis 1). individuals may face a declining marginal utility of supportive network partners: at some point, each additional network partner provides support that is to some extent already provided by others (bühler/philipov 2005). however, past work has not identified the optimal number of supporters required for increasing the propensity of childbearing intentions. instead, scholars have assumed that intentions are shaped by the individual’s perception of having access to resources that are subjectively adequate to handle expected childbearing costs (bühler/philipov 2005). in a similar vein, schaffnit and sear (2017) showed that feeling supported may be more important than actual support for reproductive decision-making. the absence of loneliness described in the model of de jong gierveld and colleagues (de jong gierveld 1987; de jong gierveld et al. 2018) can be used as a proxy for individuals’ perception that their social resources are sufficient, whether in quality or in size. the model is based on the cognitive theoretical approach to loneliness, according to which loneliness reflects a mismatch between what individuals want in terms of interpersonal relations and what they have. applied to our research interest, the absence of loneliness indicates one’s satisfaction with social resources and expectations of enough support in the future (perlman/peplau 1981). we hypothesise that those who are satisfied with their social relations ‒ i.e., those who are not lonely ‒ will be more likely to intend to have a child than those who are lonely (hypothesis 2). most individuals in european countries (including around 93 percent of finns) recognise that there is an ideal age to become a parent and an age deadline for having children (lazzari et al. 2022). in finland, the median perceived ideal age of transition to parenthood is 27 years for women and 30 years for men, while 45 years is seen as the age deadline for motherhood and 55 years as the deadline for fatherhood (lazzari et al. 2022). in reality, the early thirties are the prime childbearing age: the social resources and fertility intentions • 85 median age at first birth for women in 2022 in finland was 30,1 years and 31,7 years for all births; 73 percent of all births were to mothers aged 20-34 while only around 5 percent of births were to mothers aged 40 or above (osf 2022). social resources are likely more important around the time of making decisions about childbearing, i.e., close to the time of ideal age for parenthood, than outside of the age range of childbearing norms. moreover, loneliness appears to peak at around age 30, which cannot be explained by known risk factors of loneliness such as contact frequency, number of friends, marital status, social engagement, and functional limitations (luhmann/hawkley 2016; victor/yang 2012). this peak in loneliness coincides with time of transition to parenthood, potentially affecting childbearing intentions. we hypothesise that the effect of receiving support (hypothesis 3a) and satisfaction with social relations (hypothesis 3b) on fertility intentions will vary by age and be the strongest around age 30. previous studies suggest that family composition, religiosity, and demographic and socio-economic characteristics relate to fertility intentions (see, for example, hashemzadeh et al. (2021); philipov et al. (2006); philipov/berghammer (2007); tanskanen/rotkirch (2014); rutigliano/lozano (2022)). we, therefore, include having a partner, having at least one child, number of siblings, religiousness, gender, age, educational attainment, employment status, country of birth, and urbanity of the place of residence as control variables in our statistical analyses to provide an adequate comparison of effect sizes. 3 fertility in the finnish context our research focuses on the context of finland, which has experienced a steeply declining total fertility rate ‒ from 1.87 in 2010 to 1.32 in 2022 (statistics finland 2023) ‒ with only a brief and temporary recovery in 2020-21 (nisén et al. 2022). a decrease in first births accounted for more than 75 percent of the decline in period fertility, followed by a 21 percent decrease in second and third births (hellstrand et al. 2020). the decline in births is only partly attributable to postponement of childbearing to later ages (hellstrand et al. 2020). additionally, the proportion of childless women at age 50 in finland has increased from 13.6 percent in 1989 to 19.6 percent in 2016 (roustaei et al. 2019). this trend is surprising given the country’s generous and extensive family policies. for decades now, finland has provided universal and paid parental leave until the child is about one year old, care leave until the child turns three, affordable public or private daycare, as well as monthly child benefits for children younger than 17 (österbacka/räsänen 2022). these family policies aim at increasing the wellbeing of children and their families, reducing the costs of having children, and, potentially, reducing the uncertainty related to childbearing. nonetheless, when examining self-reported reasons given by adults of reproductive age for currently not intending to have (more) children, savelieva and colleagues (2023) found that among three main factors behind these decisions ‒ uncertain life situation, lifestyle preferences, and completed fertility ‒ uncertainty emerged as the strongest factor. this uncertainty factor included dimensions such as • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch86 the perceived financial situation, ongoing higher education, and, importantly for our research, concerns regarding the arrangement of childcare and support from society. these findings highlight the relevance of social resources in understanding fertility intentions in the finnish context, making them an intriguing area of investigation. 4 data and methods 4.1 data selection to assess how social support is associated with childbearing, we use data from the first wave of the finnish generation and gender survey (ggs, see ggs https://www. ggp-i.org/ggs-round-ii/), linked to administrative records from statistics finland.2 the finnish ggs was collected as a web-based survey in 2021-22. the sample was obtained by means of a single random draw from the finnish population information system. ggs finland oversampled individuals in their reproductive age and swedish speakers, who additionally were stratified by region (for further information on ggs finland, see hägglund et al. (forthcoming)). the final sample includes information on 3,384 respondents aged 18-54 years. the response rate was at least 17.3 percent and higher for women, highly educated people, and non-immigrants. this pattern is in line with other social science surveys (for example, see hämäläinen et al. 2021). analyses of core socio-demographic and family characteristics, including employment, region, marital status (hägglund et al. forthcoming), as well as a set of well-established fertility indicators (leocádio et al. 2023; hägglund et al. forthcoming) revealed that the respondents, by and large, represent the target population. the distribution of childbearing intentions also corresponds with estimates from another representative study, namely the 2022 finnish family barometer (sorsa et al. 2023). we selected respondents aged 18-45 years because individuals older than 45 years are likely close to finalising their childbearing plans, resulting in 2,921 respondents. after excluding missing values on the dependent variable and the key explanatory variables, the final sample consists of 2,088 observations in models estimating an intention to have a first or another child within three years or ever. we use register information rather than participants’ survey answers for a set of control variables for two reasons. first, register data is more reliable. second, it enables us to avoid reducing our sample because of missing responses. the register information includes information about all respondents’ age, gender, number of children, education, employment status, immigration background, and urbanicity of the place of residence, mostly for 2020-21. missing information on survey items that were not available in the registers (such as religiosity and number of siblings) were included as an “unknown” category in all analyses. we also based the variable about partnership status on ggs data because register data has no 2 ggs-finland data linked to administrative registers is available at väestöliitto ry (the family federation of finland). https://www.ggp-i.org/ggs-round-ii/ https://www.ggp-i.org/ggs-round-ii/ social resources and fertility intentions • 87 information on partnerships where the partners do not cohabit. we decided not to impute information for our main dependent and explanatory variables. we lacked information for 2.1 percent of answers about fertility intentions, 16.6 percent of answers about at least one component of overall loneliness, and 18.1 percent of answers about at least one component of received support.3 to ensure the representativeness of the sample, first, all bias due to oversampling was corrected for. this was done simply by using inclusion probabilities in the sample: their inverse is the base weight. then, a total normalised weighting scheme was used to correct for non-responsiveness. this nonresponse correction is based on a probit model with two-way interactions of age, gender, region, number of children, and education. despite the relatively low overall response rate, the low proportion of missing values in the dependent variable combined with using carefully designed weights to correct nonresponse bias leads to estimates that are relatively reliable. to estimate the bias caused by listwise deletion, we include a sensitivity check where respondents with missing information for the main explanatory variables (receiving emotional and instrumental support as well as loneliness) were included with an “unknown” category. 4.2 measures our dependent variable indicates the intention to have a first or another child within three years or ever. the question wording is: do you intend to have a/another child during the next three years? and supposing you do not have a/another child during the next three years, do you intend to have any (more) children at all? we combined the answers to these two questions, so that respondents answering “definitely yes” or “probably yes” to either were classified as the presence of child intentions (1), while the answers “unsure”, “probably not”, and “definitely not” were classified as the absence of intentions to have a child (0 – the reference category). we also performed a sensitivity check distinguishing between individuals who intended to have a child (1), who were unsure about their intentions (2), and those who did not have childbearing intentions (0 – the reference category). 84 respondents were expecting a child at the time of the interview and were therefore excluded from the analyses on the intention to have a child. our main explanatory variables are emotional and instrumental support received from parents and others as well as satisfaction with existing social relations. because childless individuals ‒ who constitute more than 60 percent of our sample ‒ can only estimate potential help with childcare based on other types of aid and services they are receiving from their network, we created a single measure of instrumental support that combines financial support, help with household tasks, and childcare tasks. 3 not answering at least one of our questions of interest was more common for unmarried people, childless people, those born outside finland, and those whose employment status was inactive or unknown. • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch88 the ggs asks respondents to report emotional support by means of the following question: who are the people with whom you typically discuss important personal matters? instrumental support combined financial support (the original question was please think of the last 12 months. not counting any shared housing or shared food, have you [or your partner] received any financial or material gift from anyone inside or outside this household amounting to at least €250?), help with household tasks (over the last 12 months, have you received regular help with household tasks from people for whom these household chores are not their professional job?), and childcare tasks (over the last 12 months, have you received regular help with childcare from relatives or friends or other people for whom caring for children is not their primary occupation?). after each of these questions, respondents were asked to specify from whom they received each type of support. the options were partner; son; daughter; stepson; stepdaughter; mother; father; stepmother; stepfather; partner’s mother or stepmother; partner’s father or stepfather; grandparents (own or partner’s); grandchild; sister; brother; daughter’s partner; son’s partner; partner’s siblings; other relative; friend, acquaintance, neighbour, or colleague; and other nonrelative. we classified support into two categories: support received from parents and support from all other network members. the category “all others” included both family members and non-kin, but excluded partners. because we were interested in the effects of respondents’ own parents, parents-in-law were classified as “others” together with other family members and non-kin. as a result, we use four variables: (1) instrumental support from parents, (2) instrumental support from others, (3) emotional support from parents, and (4) emotional support from others. each of these variables had two categories: “did not receive support” (0 – the reference category) and “received support” (1). as a proxy for satisfaction with existing relations, we employed the absence of overall loneliness measured by the 6-item de jong gierveld loneliness scale (de jong gierveld/van tilburg 2006). two components of loneliness can be distinguished: emotional and social loneliness (de jong gierveld/van tilburg 2006). the former stems from situations in which expected intimacy has not been realised, for example, when a partner or a best friend is absent. the latter results from situations in which the number of existing relationships is smaller than desired, for instance, when one’s network of friends and colleagues is insufficient (de jong gierveld et al. 2018). we consider these differences in an auxiliary analysis. the items for social loneliness are: there are plenty of people i can rely on when i have problems; there are many people i can trust completely; and there are enough people that i feel close to. the emotional loneliness sub-scale was based on the items i miss having people around; i experience a general sense of emptiness; and often, i feel rejected. respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which these statements had applied to them recently (with the answers “yes”, “more or less”, “no”). responses indicating a certain feeling of loneliness are assigned a score of one loneliness point: if the response “more or less” or “yes” is given to a negatively formulated item or if the response “no” or “more or less” is given to a positively formulated item. under this procedure, the “more or less” answers are not considered to be neutral. the overall loneliness scale is based on all six items and produces scores ranging from 0 (“not lonely”) to 6 social resources and fertility intentions • 89 (“intensely lonely”). scores for overall loneliness were recoded into three categories: “severely lonely” with a score range of 5-6 (0 – the reference category), “moderately lonely” with a score range of 2-4 (1), and “not lonely” with a score range of 0-1 (2). emotional and social loneliness subscales produced scores ranging from 0 to 3. respondents were considered not lonely if the loneliness score of each type was equal to zero and lonely if the score exceeded zero (a score range 1-3). several known determinants of fertility intentions were used as control variables. in ggs, gender was recorded as male, female, and other. only 1.15 percent of people in our research sample selected the category “other”, and were too small a group to be analysed separately. thus, to ensure as many respondents for the analysis as possible, we distinguish between men (the reference category) and women as stated in register data. based on information on the years of birth, we distinguished between those at the age of 18-25, 26-30, 31-35 (the reference category), 36-40, and 41-45 years old. the measure of having both parents alive was deduced from the original questions is your biological mother still alive? and is your biological father still alive? in addition to the options “yes, still alive” and “no, not alive anymore,” respondents could select the following answers “i do not know whether she/he is still alive” or “i do not know anything.” the resulting variable included two categories: “at least one parent is not alive or known” (0 – the reference category) and “both parents are alive” (1). partnership status covers three categories: no partner (the reference category), with a partner but not living together, and with a partner and living together. we did not include relationship satisfaction because the majority (93 percent) were very satisfied with their spouses with little variation. we identified those who did not have children (the reference category) and those who had at least one child. in ggs, respondents were asked to report the numbers of their sisters and brothers including those who are deceased. the resulting variable included five categories: no siblings (the reference category); one, two, three or more siblings; and unknown. we distinguished between those who had and did not have higher education (the reference category) and controlled for whether a respondent was registered as employed (including self-employment), unemployed (the reference category), inactive or unknown (including those in education or training). the measure of religiousness was based on the question regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are? respondents were instructed to use a scale from 0 “not at all religious” to 10 “very religious”. religiosity was included as a variable with four categories: not at all religious (“0” – the reference category), somewhat religious (scores 1-5), religious (scores 6 and higher), and unknown. immigrant status indicated whether individuals were born in finland (the reference category) or another country. to account for urbanity of the place of residence, we used a classification offered by statistics finland that distinguishes between urban settlements and sparsely populated areas (the reference category). summary statistics for all independent variables are presented in table a1 in the appendix. • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch90 4.3 analytical strategy we use logistic regression models, with respondents as units of analysis. first, we present the models for all respondents with all explanatory and control variables, as well as a summary of the analysis of interaction effects between each explanatory variable and (i) parenthood status, (ii) gender, and (iii) partnership status coded as a dummy variable with the categories “has a partner” and “does not have a partner” (table 1). table a4 in the appendix shows the results of the models with each of our main explanatory variables and all control variables. second, we test the set of hypotheses about the interplay between receiving different types of social support and age (fig. 1) and loneliness and age (fig. 2). beyond the main analysis, several additional models were estimated and reported in a separate subsection. the results of models with interaction effects between our main explanatory variables and age separately among men, women, childless respondents, parents, unpartnered, and partnered respondents were reported next to the main results and, when meaningful, in the appendix. interactions with parenthood, gender, and partnership were presented because, based on previous literature (see, for example, rutigliano/lozano (2022)), the effects of receiving support might vary among these groups, but our sample size did not allow us to stratify the models by all these characteristics. to allow for the comparison between models and to facilitate interpretation, we present average marginal effects (ame) or predicted probabilities of the main explanatory variables (mood 2010). the estimates therefore are changes in the probability of expressing a childbearing intention in percentage points. 5 results 5.1 descriptive findings in our study sample, 778 respondents (37.3 percent) had at least one child and 1,310 respondents were childless. almost 40 percent intended to have a first or another child during the next three years or ever, while 43.1 percent did not and 17.8 percent were unsure. among those who intended to have a child, 83.2 percent were planning to have their first child and 16.8 percent were planning to have a second or subsequent child. receiving parental emotional support was reported by 58.6 percent, with higher likelihoods among women, those younger than 36, with less than 3 siblings, those living in urban areas, and religious respondents. almost 86 percent reported receiving emotional support from others, with higher likelihoods among women, those who were at least somewhat religious, and urban residents. around 43 percent of respondents received at least one type of instrumental support from their parents, with higher likelihoods among those aged 18-30, with at least one child, without siblings or with only one sibling, with higher education, inactive on the labour market but not unemployed, and born in finland. 36 percent said they social resources and fertility intentions • 91 received instrumental support from others, especially those who were younger than 36, married, and had at least one child. as for the shares of respondents receiving different types of instrumental support, 29.4 percent received financial support from their parents, 19.1 percent received this support from secondary family members, and 2.2 percent received it from non-kin; 10.6 percent of respondents received household help from their parents, 6.4 percent from secondary family members, and 2.2 percent from non-kin. among respondents who had at least one child, 32.8 percent received childcare help from their parents, almost 35 percent from other family members, and 10.7 percent from non-kin. regarding our proxy for being satisfied with one’s social relations, almost 29 percent were not lonely, around 48 percent reported moderate loneliness and slightly more than 23 percent of respondents reported severe loneliness. having a partner, being a parent, having higher education, being employed, and being born in finland increased the likelihood of feeling that one’s social connectedness was sufficient (relative to any level of loneliness). 5.2 main results we hypothesised that those who receive support would be more likely to express childbearing intentions (hypothesis 1). the main models show a positive effect of only receiving instrumental support from others on the likelihood of expressing intentions (ame = .051, p = .024, table 1). receiving instrumental support from others is here operationalised with a rather complex measure that combines both secondary family members and non-kin as well and different types of support (financial support, household help and childcare help; see above). therefore, we unpack it in an additional analysis (table a2 in the appendix), which indicates that only receiving financial support from family members was associated with higher childbearing intentions (ame = .071, p = .003 if supported by parents; ame = .115, p < .001 if supported by other family members). we also checked whether financial support from the partner’s parents mattered. models for partnered individuals presented in table a3 in the appendix indicate that receiving financial support from the partner’s parents is also associated with higher intentions (ame = .080, p = .022 in the model that adjusted only for this type of support and controls). when we further included receiving financial support from other secondary family members (other than the partner’s parents), the ame of receiving financial support from the partner’s parents decreased and equalled .065 (p = .073), while the ame for receiving financial support from other secondary family members equalled .110 (p = .002). a series of models with interaction effects between respondents’ parenthood status and receiving emotional and instrumental support from parents and others showed that the predicted probabilities of childbearing intentions were generally higher for those without children than for parents. however, within the groups of the childless and parents, receiving support made no significant difference in the predicted probability of expressing childbearing intentions. neither did we find any differences between those who received and did not receive support among men and women. however, partnership status shaped the association between • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch92 receiving instrumental support from others and childbearing intentions (fig. a1 in the appendix). this suggests that among individuals with a partner, those who received this type of support were more likely to intend to have a child than those who did not. in support of hypothesis 2, satisfaction with existing relations approximated by the absence of loneliness was associated with an increased likelihood of the intention to have a child (ame = 0.081, p = .009 for those not feeling lonely relative to severe loneliness). additional analyses separated out the effects of emotional and social loneliness on fertility intentions. the absence of social loneliness was associated with higher likelihood of expressing childbearing intentions (ame = .038, p = .091) while the absence of emotional loneliness was associated with a lower likelihood of expressing childbearing intentions (ame = -.063, p = .063), although both estimates were only statistically significant at the 10 percent level. models with interaction effects between (i) parenthood status and loneliness and (ii) gender and loneliness did not suggest that these two variables patterned the effects of loneliness on intentions. (fig. a1). the model with an interaction effect between partnership status and loneliness demonstrated that satisfaction with existing relations mattered only for partnered individuals’ fertility intentions. does loneliness explain the effect of receiving support, and does receiving support explain the effect of loneliness on fertility intentions? the positive effect of receiving instrumental support from others (table a4) persisted even when controlling for feelings of loneliness (table 1), and vice versa, the positive effect of not feeling lonely (table a4) persisted when modelling it together with received support (table 1). this suggests independent effects of receiving instrumental support from others and of being satisfied with existing social relations on fertility intentions. hypothesis 3a proposed that the effects of receiving support on fertility intentions would vary by age. we did not find support for this hypothesis when modelling the entire sample (fig. 1). when examining whether parenthood status, gender, or being partnered made a difference in the age interaction effects, we found no differences between parents and childless respondents. however, independent models for men and women revealed some variations (see fig. a2 in the appendix with meaningful interaction effects). receiving emotional support from others increased the likelihood of expressing childbearing intentions among 36-40-yearold women. among men at the age of 41-45 years, those who received instrumental support from others were less likely to intend to have a child than those who did not receive it. we also found variation in the independent models for unpartnered and partnered individuals (see fig. a3 in the appendix with meaningful interaction effects). among unpartnered individuals, receiving emotional support from others was associated with a higher likelihood of intending to have a child at the age of 26-30. among partnered individuals, receiving instrumental support from others was associated with a higher likelihood of intending to have a child in the youngest age group. hypothesis 3b proposed that the effect of satisfaction with existing social relations on fertility intentions would vary by age and be the strongest at around age 30, and social resources and fertility intentions • 93 tab. 1: full model: childbearing intentions, ames (ses) total meaningful interaction with parenthood status gender partnership status receiving emotional support from parents (ref.: no) yes 0.018 no no no (0.022) receiving instrumental support from parents (ref.: no) yes 0.018 no no no (0.023) receiving emotional support from others (ref.: no) yes -0.002 no no no (0.031) receiving instrumental support from others (ref.: no) among partnered yes 0.051* no no individuals only, those (0.024) who receive support are more likely to intend to have a child than those who do not loneliness (ref.: severely lonely) among partnered not lonely 0.081** no no individuals only, those who (0.031) are not lonely are more likely to intend to have a moderately lonely 0.035 child than the severely (0.027) lonely parental vital status (ref.: at least one parent is not alive or known) both parents alive 0.056† and known (0.031) age group (ref.: 31-35) 18-25 0.192** (0.046) 26-30 0.085* (0.041) 36-40 -0.173** (0.038) 41-45 -0.321*** (0.033) partnership status (ref.: unpartnered) with a partner, living 0.085** separately (0.034) with a partner, living 0.138** together (0.026) parenthood status (ref.: no children) at least one child -0.222** (0.031) • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch94 tab. 1: continuation total meaningful interaction with parenthood status gender partnership status gender (ref.: men) women -0.069** (0.022) number of siblings (ref.: no siblings) 1 0.057 (0.042) 2 0.064 (0.043) 3 and more 0.099* (0.044) unknown 0.189 (0.122) educational attainment: higher education (ref.: no) yes 0.052* (0.024) employment status (ref.: employed) unemployed -0.160** (0.046) inactive or unknown -0.034 (0.027) religiousness (ref.: not at all religious) somewhat religious 0.079** (0.025) religious: 6 and 0.084** higher (0.031) unknown 0.022 (0.058) country of birth (ref.: finland) other 0.086 (0.056) urbanisation of the place of residence (ref.: very rural) more urban -0.009 (0.043) n of observations 2,088 note: † p< 0.10, *p< 0.05, **p< 0.01. source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. social resources and fertility intentions • 95 was partially supported. the effect of loneliness is statistically significant at the age of 26-30 years, but not in other age groups (fig. 2). independent models for men and women, those with and without children as well as partnered and unpartnered individuals help to contextualise these age variations. among women, not feeling lonely matters at the age of 26-30, while for men, it matters in the age range of 3135 (fig. a4). in line with our previous findings on interaction between loneliness and partnership status, we found variations only for partnered individuals. within this group, the positive association between not feeling lonely and fertility intentions is statistically significant for the ages of 18-30 years (fig. a5). the control variables show results consistent with the findings of previous research. having a partner and, especially, living together with a partner, being younger than 31, having at least three siblings, having high educational attainment, and being religious were associated with a higher likelihood of intending to have a child. the following characteristics were associated with a lower likelihood of planning childbearing: being older than 35, already having at least one child, being a woman, and being unemployed or inactive in the labour market. fig. 1: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between receiving support and age emotional support from parents instrumental support from parents pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age age emotional support from others instrumental support from others pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age age support not given support given source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch96 5.3 auxiliary analyses to ensure the robustness of our results, we performed several auxiliary analyses. depression is known to be associated with a higher likelihood of not having children at all and having fewer children (golovina et al. 2023). as a sensitivity analysis, we therefore added depression ‒ approximated by feeling depressed often or almost all the time during the last week ‒ to the regression model to investigate whether it would explain the association between loneliness and fertility intentions. this reduced the effect of not feeling lonely (ame = .059, p = .071 versus ame = .081, p = .009 in the main model). feeling depressed was negatively associated with fertility intentions (ame = –.082, p = .006). we also ran a model interacting loneliness and depression: relative to individuals who reported neither loneliness (neither moderate nor severe) nor depression, those who reported only loneliness (ame = –.052, p = .037) and those who reported both conditions (ame = –.137, p < .001) were less likely to intend to have a child. these results imply that depression partly explains the association between being satisfied with existing social relations and fertility intentions. interestingly, the effect of receiving instrumental support from others remains when the proxy for depression is included (ame = .052, p = .029 versus ame = .051, p = .038 in the main model). because loneliness is associated with personality traits (vanhalst et al. 2013) and personality, in turn, relates to fertility via different pathways of fertility planning (berg et al. 2013), we also checked how including optimism as a control variable changed our results. self-reported optimism (how optimistic would you describe yourself on a scale of 1 to 5?) was positively associated with childbearing intentions (ame = .035, p = .005). a reduction of the effect of not feeling lonely after controlling for optimism fig. 2: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between loneliness and age pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age not lonely moderate lonely severe lonely source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. social resources and fertility intentions • 97 (ame = .061, p = .064 versus ame = .081, p = .009 in the main model) implies that this person-specific psychological predisposition also partly explains the association between being satisfied with existing social relations and fertility intentions. our other model includes an interaction between receiving support (“much support” which meant at least 2 out of 4 possible sources and types of support, or “little support” which meant 0-1 out of 4) and loneliness (“not feeling lonely” or “any level of loneliness”). the model shows that individuals who do not feel lonely and are supported are more likely to express childbearing intentions, compared to lonely people with little support. as another sensitivity check, we ran a multinomial logistic regression contrasting individuals (i) intending to have a child and (ii) unsure about their intentions with (iii) those who did not have childbearing intentions (the reference category). similarly to the main analysis, receiving instrumental support from others (ame = .051, p = .034) and not feeling lonely (ame = .082, p = .008) were associated with higher likelihoods of intending to have a child. receiving social support and being satisfied with existing social relations does not explain the differences between individuals who were unsure about their intentions and those who did not intend to have a child. the sample employed for the main model did not include individuals who had missing values for the main explanatory variables. we performed a sensitivity check, in which these missing values were coded as “unknown”. because the pairs of variables about instrumental and emotional support were based on the same questions (e.g., the variables “receiving emotional support from parents” and “receiving emotional support from others” were derived from the question who are the people with whom you typically discuss important personal matters?), they had commonly both had missing values and we, therefore, combined them into two variables. the resulting emotional and social support variables consisted of five categories: no support (the reference category), support received from parents only, support received from others only, support received from both, and unknown. the results did not deviate from the main model. receiving emotional support is not associated with the likelihood of expressing childbearing intentions. those who receive instrumental support from both parents and others (ame = .057, p = .032) and from others only (ame = .097, p = .006) were more likely to intend to have children than those who received no instrumental support. not feeling lonely was associated with higher childbearing intentions (ame = .094, p = .002). individuals with missing values for all three variables were not different from those without missing values in their fertility intentions. finally, we ran the main model without using sample weights, with the results being similar to those of the main analysis. 6 discussion and concluding remarks this study focuses on finland, where the total fertility rate was approximately 1.4 during the study period of 2021-22. it expands previous research on fertility and • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch98 receiving social support in several ways. first, it examines the distinction between support received from individuals’ own parents and support received from other network members. second, it investigates the role of the subjective perception of having sufficient social resources, in quality and in size, for childbearing intentions. third, it explores the age groups in which received and perceived social support are particularly influential in relation to childbearing plans. fourth and finally, we show the variation in these associations by partnership status. the results indicate that the associations between support and fertility intentions vary by the type of support, gender, and age. receiving emotional support from parents did not show a significant, positive association with fertility intentions, but receiving emotional support from others increased the likelihood of expressing childbearing intentions for 36-40-year-old women. as for instrumental support from parents, only receiving financial support from them related to higher intentions, while other forms of instrumental support did not. interestingly, receiving instrumental support from network members other than parents showed similar results. more detailed analyses indicate that financial support from secondary family members was mainly responsible for this association. interestingly, for 41-45-year-old men, receiving instrumental support from others was associated with a lower likelihood of having childbearing intentions, likely suggesting disadvantaged life circumstances requiring instrumental support that are not favourable for having (more) children. we expected stronger results for the relationship between parental support and childbearing intentions. the limited evidence of an association is partly in line with the results of tanskanen and rotkirch (2014), who did not find significant associations between fertility intentions of female respondents and childcare help from their mothers, and other studies finding weak or mixed results (e.g., tanskanen/ danielsbacka 2021). one possible explanation is that respondents may have understated the support they received from their parents (mothers in particular), considering it self-evident that this support is normally provided (tanskanen/ rotkirch 2014). another explanation could be that social support relates more to an overall social connectedness in the finnish context. since the structure of the life course has been de-institutionalised and de-standardised (macmillan 2005), individuals nowadays have more space for accommodating their interpretations of social reality when making decisions on key life events, such as having children and the timing of childbearing. facing similar structural conditions, people often interpret and respond to these conditions differently (vignoli et al. 2020b; lebano/jamieson 2020). one of the factors behind childbearing decisions in finland is a perceived uncertain life situation (savelieva et al. 2023). the feeling of having deficient personal networks is likely an integral part of social uncertainty, encompassing challenges in predicting the actions of others (vignoli et al. 2020a). we found a pronounced effect of being satisfied with social relations on childbearing intentions among women at the age of 26-30 and men at the age of 31-35, i.e., the mean age of transition to parenthood in finland which is 29.7 years for women and 31.6 years for men (statistics finland 2021). at this age, reproductive decisions seem to be more sensitive to social relations while social resources and fertility intentions • 99 towards the later stages of the reproductive lifespan, fertility intentions appear to be less related to feelings of social uncertainty. as expected, partnership status shaped the association between receiving support from others and childbearing intentions. among partnered individuals, receiving instrumental support from others was associated with a higher likelihood of intending to have a child at the age of 18-25. partnership status also altered the association between being satisfied with existing social relations and childbearing intentions: not feeling lonely mattered only for partnered individuals’ fertility intentions, and this positive association was statistically significant at the age of 18-30 years. having a partner is commonly an important prerequisite for planning to have a child (sturm et al. 2023). hence it is logical that social resources play a more important role when one of the key steps on the path to parenthood ‒ finding a partner ‒ is taken before individuals reach the typical age of childbearing in a society. we interpret the finding that receiving emotional support from others was associated with a higher likelihood of intending to have a child at the age of 26-30 among unpartnered individuals to suggest that for those who generally want to have children but do not have a partner yet, emotional support from the network is vital. low birth rates in high-income countries are increasingly being attributed to weaknesses in the social fabric rather than to economic adversity. the volume of cash transfers and services available to families with children in finland is substantial, given child benefits, parental leaves, and the fact that health care, early childhood education and schools are free. here, instrumental and financial support from parents is typically much smaller in monetary value. nevertheless, and interestingly, such support does play a role, with our results showing that social resources ‒ both perceived and received ‒ relate to childbearing intentions. this may point to the increasing costs of having children (dotti sani/treas 2016). however, we interpret the impact of support more as enabling (potential) parents to devote a high level of resources to their children and feel confident about contributions from others (gauthier/de jong 2021). of course, causality may also be reversed, in that couples who have moved to a new shared home and plan to have a child also receive more support from their family and friends in the first place. second, our research stresses the importance of subjective perceptions for contemporary childbearing. both factual support and people’s perceptions about their social relations need to be considered when studying fertility decisions in highincome societies. young adults who feel that their social networks are deficient may contribute to the low fertility rate in finland. policymakers could aim at not only adjusting social programmes to the growing costs of childrearing, but especially at enhancing the social connectedness of young people when introducing measures to support families. both loneliness and depression are related to lower intentions of having a child, which stresses the need for providing adequate mental health support to young adults. encouraging supportive relations within society rather than individualisation might be helpful for increasing fertility. we examine finland, a pro-egalitarian country (gauthier 1996) characterised by extensive formal support, but selective involvement of informal caregivers into • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch100 childcare. for example, grandparents often provide extensive care in addition to the public childcare system. grandparents’ propensity to provide occasional childcare has been found to be positively and significantly associated with their adult children’s fertility in pro-egalitarian systems (rutigliano 2020). theoretically, support from network members other than parents has the same function and can be another reason for having a child when individuals estimate the costs of parenthood. our results suggest that even when the welfare state provides both parents with a high level of assistance for raising children (kaarakainen et al. 2022), receiving financial support from family members still matters for fertility intentions. presumably, access to this extra financial support provides a sense of security that people find crucial when thinking about childbearing (savelieva et al. 2023). in countries with less extensive public services, the role of this support is likely even greater than in finland. our research has several limitations that should be acknowledged. first, while more and more web surveys are currently employed in family research due to their lower price and labour intensity relative to more traditional data collection methods, one of their main disadvantages that also appeared in our research is a low response rate (hägglund et al. forthcoming). the resulting relatively small sample limited our ability to examine how the effects of reported and perceived social resources vary by parity among men and women. when ggs data is available for all participating countries, future studies should clarify these nuances. second, we operationalised an individual’s feeling about their social resources using the concept of loneliness, which might also relate to other aspects of life. loneliness is partly explained by personality (vanhalst et al. 2013) which, in turn, is associated with fertility (berg et al. 2013). our additional analyses showed that optimism, as a person-specific psychological predispositions, partly explained the association between being satisfied with existing social relations and fertility intentions. additionally, not feeling lonely may be linked to overall life satisfaction, which has been found to increase the likelihood of childbearing, at least in low-fertility societies (parr 2010; mencarini et al. 2018). the relationship between loneliness and receiving support is likely more complex than captured in our study. on the one hand, those who do not receive support might feel lonely. on the other hand, social network members may adjust the amount of support they provide in response to recipients’ needs (coall et al. 2014; snopkowski/ sear 2015), perhaps including their loneliness, which implies that receiving more support might also reflect poor circumstances for having children. at the same time, lonely people might be less willing to ask for support. our additional analyses showed that the effects of loneliness and receiving support seem independent, but crosssectional datasets are not ideal for modelling these complex interdependencies. using longitudinal data or proper network data might be helpful in future studies. another complexity in modelling the relationship between loneliness and fertility intentions concerns associations between loneliness and depression (luo 2023) as well as loneliness and fertility (golovina et al. 2023). our attempt to account for this complexity meant adding a proxy for depression as a control. we showed that relative to individuals who felt neither depressed nor lonely, those who only felt social resources and fertility intentions • 101 lonely and those who reported both loneliness and depression were less likely to intend to have a child, implying that loneliness alone also matters for intentions. further research could explore the relationship between different aspects of mental health and fertility intentions. future studies should also investigate whether received and perceived social support relates to actual childbearing. because negative intentions might later be replaced by positive ones, a question arises: are those who receive support and feel satisfied with existing social relations more likely to revise their intentions and have a child than others? another prospect for future research stems from the context of our study: our research can be seen as a snapshot of the situation in finland during a later stage of the covid-19 pandemic. at the time the study was conducted, in the winter of 2021-22, there were no longer 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https://www.stat.fi/til/synt/2020/synt_2020_2021-04-23_tie_001_en.html https://stat.fi/index.html https://stat.fi/index.html https://stat.fi/tilasto/vamuu • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch106 zeman, kryštof et al. 2018: cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: decomposition using parity progression ratios. in: demographic research 38: 651-690. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2018.38.25 date of submission: 26.06.2023 date of acceptance: 29.01.2024 dr. alyona artamonova (*), tiia sorsa, dr. venla berg, prof. dr. anna rotkirch. population research institute, väestöliitto ‒ family federation of finland. helsinki, finland. e-mail: alyona.artamonova@vaestoliitto.fi, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7820-2150 tiia.sorsa@vaestoliitto.fi venla.berg@vaestoliitto.fi, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2773-4202 anna.rotkirch@vaestoliitto.fi, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9429-1499 url: https://www.vaestoliitto.fi/en/people/alyona-artamonova/ https://www.vaestoliitto.fi/en/people/tiia-sorsa/ https://www.vaestoliitto.fi/en/people/venla-berg/ https://www.vaestoliitto.fi/en/people/anna-rotkirch/ dr. anna erika hägglund. university of turku, invest research flagship centre. turku, finland. e-mail: anna.hagglund@utu.fi url: https://www.utu.fi/en/people/anna-hagglund mailto:alyona.artamonova@vaestoliitto.fi mailto:tiia.sorsa@vaestoliitto.fi mailto:venla.berg@vaestoliitto.fi mailto:anna.rotkirch@vaestoliitto.fi mailto:anna.hagglund@utu.fi social resources and fertility intentions • 107 appendix tab. a1: characteristics of the sample percentage expressing childbearing intentions no 60.92 yes 39.08 receiving emotional support from parents no 41.38 yes 58.62 receiving instrumental support from parents no 56.70 yes 43.30 receiving emotional support from others no 14.13 yes 85.87 receiving instrumental support from others no 64.18 yes 35.82 loneliness not lonely 28.93 moderately lonely 47.99 severely lonely 23.08 parental vital status both parents alive and known 83.91 at least one parent is not alive or known 16.09 age 18-25 25.57 26-30 19.40 31-35 19.30 36-40 19.49 41-45 16.24 partnership status unpartnered 27.06 with a partner, living separately 12.21 with a partner, living together 60.73 parenthood status no children 62.74 at least one child 37.26 gender man 39.56 woman 60.44 • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch108 tab. a1: continuation percentage number of siblings 0 7.04 1 35.68 2 31.85 3+ 24.09 unknown 1.34 educational attainment: higher education no 47.41 yes 52.59 employment status unemployed 5.70 inactive or unknown 21.70 employed 72.60 religiousness not at all religious 30.08 somewhat religious 44.97 religious 21.12 unknown 3.83 country of birth finland 95.79 other 4.21 urbanisation of the place of residence very rural 8.57 more urban 91.43 n of observations 2,088 source: author’s analysis based on ggs and finnish register data social resources and fertility intentions • 109 ta b. a 2: m ul tiv ar ia te re la tio ns b et w ee n re ce iv in g di ffe re nt ty pe s o f i ns tr um en ta l s up po rt a nd c hi ld be ar in g in te nt io ns , am es a nd s ta nd ar d er ro rs (s es ) fi na nc ia l s up po rt fr om h ou se ho ld h el p fr om ch ild ca re h el p fr om pa re nt s se co nd ar y n on -k in pa re nt s se co nd ar y n on -k in pa re nt s se co nd ar y n on -k in fa m ily fa m ily fa m ily re ce iv in g fin an ci al su pp or t f ro m p ar en ts (r ef .: n o) a ye s 0. 07 1* * (0 .0 24 ) re ce iv in g fin an ci al su pp or t f ro m se co nd ar y fa m ily m em be rs (r ef .: n o) a ye s 0. 11 5* * (0 .0 27 ) re ce iv in g fin an ci al su pp or t f ro m n on -k in (r ef .: n o) ye s -0 .0 08 (0 .0 71 ) re ce iv in g ho us eh ol d he lp fr om p ar en ts (r ef .: n o) ye s 0. 02 2 (0 .0 33 ) re ce iv in g ho us eh ol d he lp fr om se co nd ar y fa m ily m em be rs (r ef .: n o) ye s -0 .0 03 (0 .0 40 ) re ce iv in g ho us eh ol d he lp fr om n on -k in (r ef .: n o) ye s 0. 01 6 (0 .0 60 ) re ce iv in g ch ild ca re h el p fro m p ar en ts (r ef .: n o) ye s -0 .0 16 (0 .0 29 ) re ce iv in g ch ild ca re h el p fro m se co nd ar y fa m ily m em be rs (r ef .: n o) ye s -0 .0 38 (0 .0 28 ) re ce iv in g ch ild ca re h el p fro m n on -k in (r ef .: n o) ye s -0 .0 25 (0 .0 39 ) n o f o bs er va tio ns 2, 08 8 77 8b % o f i nd iv id ua ls re ce iv in g su pp or tc 29 .3 6 19 .11 2. 20 10 .6 3 6. 37 2. 25 32 .7 8 35 .9 9 10 .6 7 n ot e: † p< 0 .1 0, *p < 0. 05 , * *p < 0. 01 . a th e eff ec ts r em ai ne d st at ist ic al ly s ig ni fic an t at t he 5 p er ce nt le ve l w he n va ria bl es s uc h as “ em ot io na l s up po rt fro m p ar en ts ,” “e m ot io na l s up po rt fro m ot he rs ,” an d “lo ne lin es s” w er e in cl ud ed in th e m od el s. b o nl y in di vi du al s w ith a t l ea st o ne c hi ld w er e in cl ud ed in th es e m od el s. c pe rc en t o f 2 ,0 88 a nd 7 78 ob se rv at io ns , r es pe ct iv el y. so ur ce : au th or s’ an al ys is ba se d on g gs a nd f in ni sh re gi st er d at a. t he sa m e co nt ro l v ar ia bl es a s i n th e fu ll m od el (t ab le 1 ) w er e us ed . • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch110 tab. a3: multivariate relations between receiving different types of support from the partner’s parents and childbearing intentions, ames and standard errors (ses) receiving support from partner’s parents emotional financial household childcarea receiving emotional support from partner’s parents (ref.: no) yes -0.001 (0.040) receiving financial support from partner’s parents (ref.: no)b yes 0.080* (0.035) receiving household help from partner’s parents (ref.: no) yes -0.011 (0.062) receiving childcare help from partner’s parents (ref.: no) yes -0.044 (0.032) n of observations 1,523 729 % of individuals receiving supportc 7.68 11.56 2.36 26.75 note: † p< 0.10, *p< 0.05, **p< 0.01. only individuals who have a partner were included. a only individuals with at least one child were included in these models. if we include receiving financial support from other secondary family members (excluding the partner’s parents), the ame of receiving financial support from the partner’s parents decreases and equals 0.065 (p = 0.073), while the ame for receiving financial support from other secondary family members equals 0.110 (p = 0.002). b the effect remained statistically significant at the 5 percent level when variables such as “emotional support from parents,” “emotional support from others,” and “loneliness” were included into the model. c percent of 1,523 and 729 observations, respectively. source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. the same control variables as in the full model (table 1) were used. social resources and fertility intentions • 111 tab. a4: multivariate relations between receiving support, loneliness, and fertility intentions, ames and standard errors (ses) emotional instrumental emotional instrumental loneliness support from support from support from support from parents parents others others receiving emotional support from parents (ref.: no) yes 0.032 (0.022) receiving instrumental support from parents (ref.: no) yes 0.041† (0.022) receiving emotional support from others (ref.: no) yes 0.018 (0.031) receiving instrumental support from others (ref.: no) yes 0.059** (0.023) loneliness (ref.: severely lonely) not lonely 0.090** (0.030) moderately lonely 0.040 (0.026 ) n of observations 2,088 note: † p< 0.10, *p< 0.05, **p< 0.01. source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. the same control variables as in the full model (table 1) were used. • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch112 fig. a1: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between partnership status and (i) receiving instrumental support from others and (ii) loneliness partnership status and instrumental support from others partnership status and loneliness pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0 0 with a partner without a partner with a partner without a partner support not given support given not lonely moderate lonely severe lonely source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. social resources and fertility intentions • 113 fig. a2: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between receiving support and age among men and women men women emotional support from others no variations pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age instrumental support from others pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 no variations 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age support not given support given source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. • alyona artamonova, tiia sorsa, venla berg, anna erika hägglund, anna rotkirch114 fig. a3: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between support and age among those with and without a partner unpartnered partnered emotional support from others pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 no variations 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age instrumental support from others no variations pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age support not given support given source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. social resources and fertility intentions • 115 fig. a4: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between loneliness and age among men and women men women pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age age not lonely moderate lonely severe lonely source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. fig. a5: predicted probabilities and 95% cis of childbearing intentions: interaction between loneliness and age among those with and without a partner unpartnered partnered no variations pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ilit ie s 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 18–25 26–30 31–35 36–40 41–45 age not lonely moderate lonely severe lonely source: authors’ analysis based on ggs and finnish register data. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 interpreted within the aspirations/capabilities framework emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 interpreted within the aspirations/capabilities framework* agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk abstract: in the period of post-communist transition, central europe witnessed complex and multifaceted mobility processes; permanent outmigration, of an ethnic or labour-related nature, coexisted with temporary, seasonal, or crossborder movements and an increasing infl ux of foreigners. to study these complex processes, we have chosen to apply a holistic and comprehensive approach, rather than limit conceptual considerations to one theory of migration determinants. we focus on eleven post-communist countries that joined the european union (eu11) and on the period extending from around 1989, covering the eu’s eastward enlargement, to the present. the aim of this study is twofold: fi rst, we propose a general conceptual framework, based on the aspirations/capabilities approach, to present the main determinants of emigration from this part of the european continent. second, in relation to each determinant, we formulate research questions postulated by selected theories of international migration and present the evidence, based on existing empirical studies, that addresses these questions. the paper contributes to the literature by providing a broad interpretation of post-transition mobility and pointing to commonly overlooked explanatory factors. we highlight the importance of economic factors that have enhanced and directed the outward migration from the eu-11 to selected eu member states and selected economic sectors; in particular, as regards capabilities, these factors include the lifting of labour market restrictions, high demand in the secondary sector of labour markets, and the roles of migration networks and the migration industry. emphasis is also placed on aspirational factors, such as labour market failures and the substantial aspirational gap resulting from improvements in high educational attainment in the countries of origin. the aspirations/capabilities approach serves well as a general framework of migration determinants, but its explanatory power is enhanced by reference to other, more specifi c theories of migration. we show that a combination of the complementary approaches provides a more refi ned and in-depth picture of migration from the region. comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 629-656 (date of release: 23.10.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-23 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-23en0 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk630 keywords: migration theories · migration determinants · post-communist transition · central europe · european union 1 introduction a historical study on international migration during the communist era in poland was entitled “a country with no exit?”, with a signifi cant question mark at the end of the sentence (stola 2010). indeed, for more than three decades – from the 1950s to the mid-1980s – international mobility was highly regulated and restricted not only in poland but in all other communist countries of central europe (hereinafter ce), and only occasional waves of emigration for ethnic and/or political reasons and short-term commercial mobility behind the iron curtain justify the interrogative form of the book’s title. the change of political regime at the turn of the decade from the 1980s to 1990s released the migration potential that had been building up for so many years, and international mobility increased exponentially throughout the region. in the 1990s and early 2000s, international migration trends in ce countries remained highly diversifi ed, not only because each country had its peculiarities in terms of the scale and directions of mobility, but also because – and this is a point largely underestimated in existing research – the fi rst post-communist years were rich in different types of mobility, from cross-border commuting and petty trade to seasonal and short-term moves, to long-term migration for settlement purposes (iglicka/sword 1999; sert 2018). the latter included not only the typical labour migration but also the migration of ethnic minorities, who in most cases were not allowed to enter the countries of their ancestors throughout the (entire or late) communist period: germans in hungary, poland and romania; hungarians in romania; turks in bulgaria (gheorghiu 2005; guentcheva et al. 2003; korfalı/acar 2018; sandu et al. 2004). in turn, after the three baltic states became independent, a signifi cant part of the russian minority left those countries. in general, however, in all ce countries outfl ows have exceeded infl ows and net migration has remained negative, a situation that has only been exacerbated by the eastward enlargements of the european union in 2004, 2007 and 2013 and the subsequent opening of the labour markets in the western eu member states. interestingly, the post-enlargement outfl ow affected only a few ce countries, notably lithuania, poland and romania, and took the form of a large outfl ow that was concentrated in the fi rst few years after the eu enlargement (fic et al. 2016; kahanec et al. 2016; van mol/de valk 2016). recent years have seen a further turnaround in international migration trends in the region, with emigration becoming less frequent, immigration becoming an integral part of some eu-11 labour markets, and an unprecedented increase in infl ows from non-european countries. some eu-11 countries have started to record positive net migration, while the largest country in the region – poland – has for several years been the eu’s top issuer of fi rst residence permits to third-country nationals (górny/ kaczmarczyk 2019; kaczmarczyk et al. 2020; oecd 2021). emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 631 this paper aims to focus on the determinants of emigration from ce countries from 1989 to recent years and to interpret the results of existing studies in the light of theoretical approaches to international mobility.1 we focus on migration for employment purposes, which dominates other motives of international mobility. reference is made to several theories that are useful in explaining the determinants of outfl ow from the eu-11, as we believe that no single approach adequately explains the determinants of emigration from post-communist transition countries (and here we are in full agreement with massey et al. 1999). however, we suggest considering the aspirations/capabilities approach as an overarching conceptual framework to interpret migration-related post-2004 realities (czaika/vothknecht 2014; de haas 2021). in what follows, we present the main stipulations of migration theories and we incorporate them into the aspirations/capabilities approach. in the subsequent step, we theoretically investigate these stipulations and propose research questions that are adequate to the emigration from this region of europe that took place during the post-communist transition, concerning in particular 1) the main motives for emigration and 2) the factors that have determined the scale, direction and temporal pattern (permanent versus temporary) of emigration. we address these questions by presenting and discussing existing empirical studies that have been carried out for ce countries since the 1990s. we aim to contribute to the literature by providing a broad interpretation of post-2004 mobility and pointing to commonly overlooked explanatory factors. to this end, the proposed conceptual framework (aspirations/ capabilities approach) is particularly useful as it highlights the role of mobilityrelated aspirations and the aspiration gap. we begin by outlining the conceptual background to the analysis that will follow, in particular linking the aspirations/capabilities approach to the available theoretical frameworks. the next two sections examine capabilities and aspirations as explanatory factors. the fi nal section presents the conclusions to be drawn from the study. 2 conceptual background the determinants of migration have become the main topic of theoretical refl ection on the causes and mechanisms that intensify the spatial mobility of individuals, families and social groups (zlotnik 1998). the variety of forms of migration, from involuntary fl ows as a result of political events or natural disasters to migrations that gradually intensify in the context of demographic growth or economic development, to short-distance cross-border mobility, implies a rich spectrum of determinants operating at different social levels. moreover, migratory fl ows are the result of different motives and different external factors; there is no such thing as migration resulting solely from, for example, differences in wage levels between the 1 note, however, that a similar explanatory framework could be used with regard to immigration, with a much stronger focus on country-of-origin-related factors. • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk632 country of origin and the country of destination. similarly, there is no such thing as migration resulting solely from family commitments, undertaken in isolation from economic calculations or formal constraints associated with crossing borders and legalising residence. at the same time, however, migration theories are based on the conviction that it is possible to fi nd regularities in this diversity, for example when there are more migrations from less developed countries or regions to more developed countries or regions than in the opposite direction; when people who change their place of residence appear to have different demographic, social or cultural characteristics from the non-mobile population; or when certain migratory fl ows are characterised by different degrees of permanence, the importance of links with either the country of origin or with the diaspora (starting with the pioneering work of ernst g. ravenstein (1885), which paved the way for many others who have tried to interpret migration in terms of “laws”). these regularities provide the basis for the development of theoretical concepts which, through synthesis and their own conceptual “grids”, explain the causal factors of migration and make it possible to predict future mobility. following numerous authors (castles/miller 1993; de haas et al. 2019; hammar et al. 1997; massey 1990; massey et al. 1993, 1999), we postulate that migration should be seen as a complex socio-economic phenomenon that takes place in specifi c historical circumstances, and that holistic conceptual approaches should be used to explain territorial mobility. to this end, we refer to the aspirations/capabilities approach proposed by hein de haas (2021, 2010), who draws attention to the fact that most migration phenomena result from the complex function of aspirations and capabilities. for the sake of argument, it should be noted that de haas was inspired by jorgen carling (2002), who tried to explain the complexity of migration decisions in the case of cape verdeans and formulated the concept of “forced immobility”. in de haas’s approach, aspirations are a set of individual goals and feasible plans that have their structural sources (e.g. the socialisation process, education, cultural infl uences) but can also result from access to information. aspirations are not limited to economic aspects and can change over time. opportunities, in turn, can be defi ned through the prism of the freedom to pursue personal goals and make choices, which in practice translates into access to specifi c resources, such as fi nancial or social capital, that allow for the realisation of this agency. mathias czaika and marc vothknecht (2014) go one step further, conceptualising migration as a function of an individual’s capability for migration defi ned as a combination of two capacities: the capacity to aspire and the capacity to realise. in this approach, people are not merely income maximizers, but consider a variety of factors in their mobility decisions, including the aspirational gap, which is the difference between a person’s current level of wealth/lifestyle/occupational position and the level they aspire to. importantly, czaika and vothknecht (2014) have argued that aspirational capacity, which includes not only the ability to strive but also the knowledge of how to achieve a particular goal, can change over time and be inherited, but can also be a product of one’s social environment (e.g. college, family home). the aspiration gap that drives migration can arise both from changes in the sphere of possibilities to realise certain plans (e.g. less restrictive migration policies, emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 633 increase in individual competencies) and from growing aspirations and expectations; for example, due to the acquisition of a higher level of education. thanks to such a two-sided perspective, the aspirations/capabilities approach provides a suffi ciently comprehensive framework to encompass and organise the full range of migration determinants that have previously been studied separately in different theories of international mobility. for example, large disparities in income and living standards between the countries of central europe and destination countries have contributed to the emergence of labour migration potential; that is, groups of people aspiring to improve their well-being through labour migration (fig. 1). this motive for emigration is usually addressed by neoclassical economic theory. however, the emigration potential would never have been transformed into a massive permanent outfl ow if the ce countries had not become members of the european union (eu), which increased the migratory capabilities of the citizens of ce countries. this factor, explained by world systems theory, had an important impact on the pattern of emigration after the 2004, 2007 and 2013 eu enlargements: its scale, geographical directions and temporal character. obviously, enlargements have helped to reduce the costs of migration and, as such, have also been of interest to proponents of the neoclassical approach. indeed, each factor contributing to migration, such as the end of mobility restrictions in the enlarged eu, can be interpreted by more than one theoretical approach. in figure 1, we propose a catalogue of different determinants and factors that have shaped emigration from ce countries since 1989, as well as the migration theories that have been previously used to investigate each of them (brettel/hollifi eld 2022; de haas 2021; hammar et al. 1997; massey et al. 1993; zlotnik 1998). in the following, we present each of the listed theories together with empirical studies that have investigated these determinants of emigration from ce countries. by encompassing different motives for emigration and the structural factors that enable these motives to be realised, the theoretical approach proposed by de haas fig. 1: principal determinants of emigration from central europe after 1989 aspirations capabilities  income and living-standard disparities  end of mobility restrictions, the eu enlargement => neoclassical economic theory => world systems theory  improvement in education levels  labour demand in destination countries => neoclassical economic theory => theory of dual labour market  market failures and risk diversifi cation  migration networks => new economics of labour migration => social capital theory  increasing socio-economic inequalities  international recruitment => new economics of labour migration => migration industry approach source: own elaboration based on de haas’s (2010, 2021) aspirations/capabilities approach. • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk634 corresponds to our above-stated intention to study migration in a complex and holistic way. by no means do we claim that the aspirations/capabilities approach has better explanatory properties than any other migration theory. however, there is one important implication of the aspirations/capabilities approach that needs to be emphasised: aspirations provide a hitherto missing link between external (structural) conditions, their perception, and individual causation, the latter constituting a real possibility of fulfi lment of migration aspirations. 3 aspirations as determinants of ce emigration 3.1 income and living-standard disparities – the neoclassical economic theory as early as the late eighteenth century, adam smith (1776/2000) noted that income differentials provided an obvious basis for “arbitrage” in the form of labour mobility, while also writing about the unique resistance of man to movement. more than 150 years later, john hicks (1932) wrote that the main impetus for migration is a disparity in economic benefi ts, especially in wage levels. these statements sum up the neoclassical economic approach, which sees human simply as a mechanism for rebalancing labour markets. in fact, in the theory of foreign trade, the heckscherohlin-samuelson model concerns two countries with different endowments of labour and capital (samuelson 1953). the removal of trade barriers leads to economic specialisation and the exchange of goods between the countries, and the country that is better endowed with labour (relative to capital) will be characterised by low wage levels and will specialise in the production of labour-intensive goods, which will be exchanged for capital-intensive goods through foreign trade. in the long run, wage differentials between countries may even out through trade exchange alone. taking into account labour migration completes the picture: workers will move to countries offering higher wage levels, while capital will fl ow to places offering higher interest rates. thus, if the assumptions of the model are accepted, it turns out that three equivalent processes equalise wage inequalities at the global level: foreign trade, labour mobility and capital fl ows (direct investment). consequently, trade liberalisation can impact migration and, in particular, should signifi cantly reduce it. the relationships described by this general model become much more complex if we take into account aspects such as limited factor mobility, transport costs, differences in market structures, or technological progress. developers of contemporary macroeconomic models successfully incorporate these elements into their methodological approaches (van den berg/bodvarsson 2009), but their conclusions are in some cases opposite to those described above, for example when trade liberalisation generates additional migration fl ows. the neoclassical macroeconomic models accurately indicate the general direction of factor fl ows and successfully explain the scale of potential migration, but they fail to explain real migration processes for several reasons. first, neoclassical models assume that people are extremely mobile, which means that mobility becomes the easiest emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 635 way to redress inequalities on a global scale. second, the models ignore the costs and barriers to migration or limit the analysis to fi nancial costs. and third, the models overlook the fact that migration makes no sense without a demand for workers and ignore the importance of the demand for foreign labour. this approach instrumentalises mobile workers and focuses on the concept of market equilibrium, the absence of which is supposed to be the main causal factor of mobility. based on the implications of neoclassical economic theory, the obvious research questions about emigration from central europe are as follows: q1: were the income differentials (an aspirational factor) the main driver of emigration from the ce countries? q2: to what extent did emigration from the ce countries constitute an arbitrage between labour markets, leading to a levelling of the income and living-conditions disparities? q3: was the increase in capital fl ows between the “old” and “new” eu member states causally related, positively or negatively, to the increase in labour migration from the latter to the former? many empirical studies have addressed q1, highlighting the role of income differentials in the intensifi cation of labour migration from ce countries to (main) destinations, in particular the western part of the european continent (kahanec et al. 2009). at the micro-social level, the economic gains were even higher for migrants undertaking temporary mobility under bilateral agreements between the countries of origin and western countries (mansoor/quillin 2006). in this case, migrants’ earnings (and remittances) were spent in the country of origin and migrants benefi ted from the price-level differences. however, there are at least two phenomena which show that the relationship between income levels and labour mobility, as interpreted at the macroeconomic level, is not so straightforward. first, the scale of emigration continued to vary considerably during the period under review, with the czech republic, hungary and slovenia recording relatively low numbers of emigrants compared to other ce countries, despite similar wage levels and living standards in this region (górny/kaczmarczyk 2019). labour market imbalances related to the post-communist restructuring process in the sending countries, in particular occupational mismatches and unemployment levels, were found to be crucial in stimulating the emigration potential (kaczmarczyk/okólski 2008; kureková 2011; tyrowicz/van der velde 2018). second, similar differences in emigration levels were found in certain regions which are not necessarily the least developed, but which have intense traditions of labour mobility. this was particularly true for border regions with ethnic minorities, such as the western part of romania (anghel 2016; fox 2003) or poland (łukaniszyn-domaszewska/jończy 2021). last but not least, how risky it is to apply the basic neoclassical approach (and the wage-differential argument) to complex migration processes, particularly in the ce context, is illustrated by the seminal work of layard et al. (1992). • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk636 beyond the short-term effect, ce emigration has not contributed to a reduction in income levels in the destination countries and therefore has not constituted an arbitrage between the eu labour markets (q2) (bruecker et al. 2009; lemos/portes 2008). some effects have been observed for selected groups of the population: an apparent increase in income for the migrants themselves and their relatives receiving remittances (mansoor/quillin 2006), and a decrease in wages for medium-skilled workers, who are most exposed to increased competition in the labour markets of destination countries (blanchfl ower/shadforth 2009; bruecker et al. 2009). in the sending countries, the increase in incomes has been attributed to economic restructuring, rather than emigration (rutkowski 2007) and was relatively limited (holland et al. 2011). most studies show that convergence is relatively limited and should be attributed to factors other than cross-border mobility, and mainly to investment and structural change (alcidi 2019; galgoczi 2019). indeed, economic growth in the ce countries remained the main factor behind the increase in income levels, as it was also the main driver of capital fl ows between the “old” and “new” eu member states (q3). the increase in foreign direct investment (fdi) was observed long before the eu enlargements, already in the early 1990s, thanks to “the general perspective of improved circumstances” of investment (breitenfellner et al. 2008: 114). due to the structural and cohesion funds of the eu, the fdi even increased after the eu’s eastward enlargements (breuss et al. 2010), and remains unrelated to the labour migration from the “new” eu member states, at least in the short term. 3.2 improvement in education levels – the neoclassical economic theory at the micro level, neoclassical economic theory assumes that individuals make rational decisions about the allocation of scarce resources, to maximise their utility. individuals are expected to adopt a rational strategy of investing in their own human capital (education, training, etc.). extending the time spent learning and studying, and acquiring rare skills and competencies in demand on the labour market, serves to increase future earnings and the rate of return to education. in this interpretation, increasing individual human capital is an investment that primarily incurs costs in the present and yields benefi ts in the future. similarly, labour migration can be interpreted as a way of allocating human resources to increase their productivity. in the approach of human capital investment, based on the pioneering work of larry sjaastad (1962), each individual compares the benefi ts and costs (including non-fi nancial costs such as psychological stress) of working in the country of origin and abroad, considers the probabilities of certain events such as fi nding a job, being unemployed, being employed on a regular or irregular basis, and, based on his or her preferences for current and future consumption, undertakes labour migration whenever it is more profi table than not moving. this model has been criticised for several reasons, the main one being the assumption that individuals act in a highly individualistic and autonomous manner and do not take into account the preferences of their family members. moreover, in the basic version of this approach (and this is commonly quoted), migration does emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 637 not involve any costs or risks associated with fi nding a job, and individuals have access to perfect information about job opportunities abroad. nevertheless, in neoclassical economics, individuals are expected to compare their country of origin with other countries (international labour markets) and decide to migrate if the return on investment in human capital is higher abroad. the higher cost of education is therefore likely to lead to a search for the highest possible returns to education, which are mainly offered by highly developed countries. in the de haas-inspired framework, this translates into higher aspirations for individuals who have invested in their skills and competencies. the institutional transition to a capitalist economy has contributed to the emergence of new professions and jobs in the private sector that offer high returns to university degrees, foreign language skills and other competencies useful for working in an international environment. this, in turn, has led to a real revolution in terms of human capital formation: in the ce countries as a whole, according to the european labour force survey, the share of university graduates in the total population rose from 15 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2020. but as the number of highly educated people has increased in a relatively short period, especially among younger cohorts, so has the number of people potentially interested in labour migration. this leads us to the following research questions: q4: were highly educated people more likely to emigrate than those with lower levels of education? q5: was the rate of return to education higher abroad than in the country of origin? in the case of most ce countries, there was a clear pattern of positive selection of persons with tertiary education among emigrants, especially since the accession of these countries to the eu (drinkwater et al. 2009; eade et al. 2006; grabowskalusińska/okólski 2009; hazans/philips 2010; jakubiak 2015; kaczmarczyk/tyrowicz 2015; kahanec et al. 2009). in other words, even when controlling for the age structure of emigrants and non-migrants, the highly skilled were overrepresented in the group of emigrants compared to the total sending population. since the early post-accession years, this issue has been at the centre of academic debate and there is general agreement that the potential negative impact of such a brain drain depends on the structural circumstances of a particular sending country and the composition of the emigrants. theoretically, the emigration of highly educated or skilled individuals has a negative impact on labour supply and hence on the economic performance of a sending country. however, several studies have interpreted post-accession migration in the ce region as a result of the general labour market situation and an oversupply of educated professionals whose skills could not be matched with job offers in the sending countries (kahanec et al. 2009; white et al. 2018), while other research pointed to a very limited scale of (theoretically possible) brain gain (bruecker et al. 2009; kaczmarczyk/tyrowicz 2015; kaczmarczyk et al. 2020). • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk638 regarding the last point, a large number of studies showed that the rate of return to education abroad was not necessarily higher than in the countries of origin, mostly due to large mismatches between the skills of migrants and the occupational position they secured in the main destination countries (the phenomenon of brain waste). these mismatches were only partly due to the (poor) quality of education in countries of origin or the lack of transferability of skills between countries. rather, the available empirical studies point to the role of the structure of demand for foreign labour, which is heavily concentrated at the low-skilled end of the occupational hierarchy (bruecker et al. 2009). the so-called brain waste phenomenon has been confi rmed for the main destination countries, including the uk, germany, italy and norway (bruecker et al. 2009; galgoczi et al. 2009). importantly, postaccession migrants from ce countries seem to fare considerably worse in terms of skill-occupation matching than migrants from pre-enlargement cohorts and do not improve their labour market position despite gradually better language skills (kahanec/zimmermann 2016; voitchovsky 2014). moreover, these effects were the strongest for the best educated migrants (kaczmarczyk/tyrowicz 2015). thus, some authors (galgoczi et al. 2009) have argued that post-accession ce migrants are mainly attracted by absolute wage differentials and behave as typical wage earners who remain focused on accumulating savings or remittances. 3.3 market failures and risk diversifi cation – the new economics of labour migration the so-called new economics of labour migration (nelm), put forward by oded stark and david bloom (1985), challenged the individual nature of migration decisions. although based on microeconomics, the approach successfully deepened the understanding of contemporary migration by incorporating elements of social psychology, sociology and household theory. the authors argued that labour, as a factor of production, is different from other factors of production and therefore requires its own methods of analysis. furthermore, they argued that migration need not be permanent; on the contrary, temporary and circular movements are very common in the contemporary world; and fi nally, that people operate within social reference systems that should be considered not only as a context for migration decisions but also as a valuable aspect of interpretation. the authors of nelm focused on labour migration from less developed countries that are characterised by market failures; for example, in the absence of an insurance system against natural disasters or a welfare system that provides fair unemployment benefi ts, people depend solely on themselves and their family members. these market imperfections accumulate various types of uncertainty about production and consumption, which in turn leads people to diversify risk, primarily in terms of sources of income (stark/levhari 1982). the novelty of this approach lies in the consideration that individuals do not act in isolation, but take important social and economic decisions within larger groups, usually families or households. in less developed countries, labour remains the most valuable resource owned by households, and the allocation of labour can be an effective emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 639 diversifi cation measure to reduce the risk associated with daily income. individuals, guided by intuition, experience, or resources accumulated in social capital networks, make decisions that do not maximise their utility (as neoclassical economists would suggest), but that secure the interests of the whole household and minimise the level of risk associated with income. a direct expression of this type of motivation is the remittances sent by migrants to their families, which in many cases not only maintain the consumption level of the part of the household remaining in the country of origin but can also be a source of investment (amuedo-dorantes/pozo 2011, 2006; osili 2007). based on these considerations, the following research question can be formulated: q6: to what extent has international labour mobility from ce been a strategy for households to diversify risks related to income sources? at the country level, low social spending and inadequate welfare-state institutions in the countries of origin have been identifi ed as factors increasing the propensity to emigrate (kureková 2013). however, at the micro-social level, households’ risk diversifi cation strategies have not been the subject of any studies. nevertheless, the characteristics of some migratory fl ows, especially temporary ones, clearly point to labour market failures in the countries of origin. a study on the seasonal mobility of polish citizens to german agriculture, a fl ow that at its peak included 300,000 people per year, examined the economic strategies of temporary migrants who, in times of severe restructuring, labour market reforms, and high unemployment, combined the opportunities of temporary work abroad with life in the country of origin (fihel/ grabowska-lusińska 2014). the study showed that this type of migration usually involved one adult member of a household in poland and was repeated, once a year, for a relatively short period. such a strategy was used not only by unemployed or economically inactive household members, such as housewives raising small children, but also by fully employed persons in occupations such as farming, driving, and teaching, who migrated during annual holidays or unpaid leave. earnings from temporary employment in germany were not the main source of household income, but they secured the well-being of whole families. most of the available studies on ce show the complexity of the links between remittances and the development of the country of origin; on the one hand, there is evidence of a positive albeit small impact in terms of reducing inequalities, on the other hand, the structural and longterm impact is much more doubtful, mostly due to structural limitations at the point of origin (kaczmarczyk et al. 2020; vadean et al. 2019; vullnetari/king 2011). 3.4 increasing socioeconomic disparities – the new economics of labour migration one of the key concepts of the nelm is relative deprivation, which occurs when the utility of a given person depends not only on one’s income but also on the income of people belonging to a so-called reference group. the reference group includes relevant people with whom an individual makes comparisons, such as relatives, • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk640 neighbours, and local community members. increasing one’s income, for example through labour mobility, is a consequence of long-term dissatisfaction with one’s social position within the reference group and is aimed at changing this position (stark 1984, 1991). this approach is extremely useful for studying temporary labour mobility, which consists of engaging in economic activity abroad while maintaining a relatively stable reference group in the country of origin. such migrants are willing to work below their skills abroad as long as their position in the home reference group, as defi ned by income and consumption, remains high. moreover, temporary migration can be seen as a way of avoiding relative deprivation. while relative deprivation does not apply to all types of labour migration, this phenomenon explains mobility in countries where socioeconomic inequalities are increasing rapidly (czaika/de haas 2012). this was the case in the ce countries undergoing post-communist transition (izyumov 2010) where seasonal labour mobility provided an opportunity to earn higher incomes than in the place of living in a relatively short period. a corresponding research question is therefore proposed: q7: has the international labour mobility from ce countries been driven by increasing socio-economic disparities in the countries of origin? the empirical evidence is mixed in this regard. on the one hand, a study carried out for most countries in the world shows a weak and ambiguous effect of relative deprivation in countries of origin on actual emigration (czaika/de haas 2012). in a study of post-communist countries, emigration tended to decline throughout the pre-accession period, despite growing economic disparities between regions (fidrmuc 2004). however, this result may be explained by the temporary nature of the outfl ow from ce, which was suddenly triggered by institutional reforms, in particular the introduction of visa-free travel to european countries. on the other hand, increasing income disparities between regions in poland have been found to increase the propensity to emigrate, even when controlling for the absolute level of per capita income (stark et al. 2009). for several eu-11 countries, high levels of inequality were found to increase outfl ows to the “old” eu member states characterised by lower levels of inequality, although absolute levels of income were not controlled for (plotnikova/ulceluse 2022) and no single study allowed also for the proneness of the low socio-economic groups to undertake labour mobility. it is important to note that the case of ce and post-2004 migration illustrates the role of different levels of relative deprivation, as this phenomenon can relate not only to income as such, but also to social position, role in the occupational hierarchy, etc. many of these have been described as important parts of the aspiration gap, particularly for young migrants (grabowska 2019; grabowska et al. 2017; trevena 2013; white et al. 2018). emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 641 4 capabilities as determinants of ce emigration 4.1 end of mobility restrictions and the eu enlargement – world systems theory world systems theory emphasises the importance of the uneven development of economies and political systems, which perpetuates dependencies between countries and world regions. the author of the approach, immanuel wallerstein (2011), aimed to explore the origins and dynamics of capitalism as an economic system that has largely shaped our contemporary world. the concept of the world system refers to the international division of labour, which is relatively permanent, though of course not immutable, structure made up of core, semi-periphery and periphery. while the core plays a dominant economic and political role and seeks the subordination of other areas, the periphery supplies labour and raw materials and is also an important market for the core’s production. the semi-periphery, on the other hand, comprises all the entities that simultaneously “exploit” the periphery and are “exploited” by the core. the spread of capitalism from the core to other regions of the world has serious consequences for the functioning of pre-capitalist communities: it leads to the breakdown of traditional land tenure systems and consequently undermines previously developed ways of farming and securing livelihoods. the increased demand for labour in extractive industries, accompanied by the gradual displacement of people from the natural rural economy, leads to the formation and consolidation of labour markets. it also contributes to the disruption of traditional social and economic relations, uprooting and creating a potentially mobile population able, and sometimes forced, to seek livelihoods outside their place of origin. in a system of dependency, migration does not necessarily result from wage differentials, but rather from the dynamics of economic systems in which the core is characterised by a permanent surplus of labour demand and the periphery constitutes a natural reservoir of the workforce. for obvious reasons, differences in levels of development determine not only the direction and volume of fl ows but also their structure; that is, the skills and competencies of migrants: mobile inhabitants of the core are mainly specialists, whereas migrating inhabitants of the periphery are both unskilled workers who undertake employment that the citizens of the core are not interested in, and specialists who undertake jobs in accordance with their qualifi cations. the eastward eu enlargements and the integration of the ce countries into the core of the world system (i.e. the eu) have had far-reaching consequences for the ability of eu-11 nationals to move abroad. we therefore propose the following research question: q8: to what extent have the transitory labour market restrictions introduced during the eu enlargements determined the geographical directions of emigration from the eu-11? • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk642 several studies have shown that the timing of the transitional labour market restrictions, which was not identical in all “old” eu member states, infl uenced the geographical direction of fl ows. in the two decades that have passed since the fi rst eu enlargement (2004), the number of ce citizens has risen across the eu, but this increase was neither uniform nor proportional to the size of the labour markets (van mol/de valk 2016). in 2004, the massive outfl ow from the eu-11 was to ireland and the uk, the two out of three countries that did not introduce any transitory restrictions (fihel/okólski 2009; okólski/salt 2014). by attracting large numbers of highly skilled migrants eager to join the core of the global economy, these countries “won” the human capital, while others, such as germany, missed this opportunity (elsner/zimmermann 2016). the transitory restrictions disadvantaged the labour market performance of eu-11 migrants; in particular the employment rates and the extent to which employment matched the qualifi cations (garcía-gómez et al. 2021). at the same time, these institutional barriers did not prevent the presence of eu-11 workers who provided their services as self-employed or delegated employees. the case of the (removal of) restrictions on the labour market and its role in the migration after 2004 has been the subject of an analysis presented by paweł kaczmarczyk and marek okólski (2008). their argument is that structural mismatches in the pre-2004 period were responsible for a massive migration potential which, however, did not translate into real migration fl ows. it was only in the post-enlargement period that, for the fi rst time in polish history, migration became an option for expelling labour surpluses (crowding-out migration) and, in turn, reallocating labour resources in the domestic labour market. from today’s point of view, the take-up of this opportunity has been limited so far (kaczmarczyk et al. 2020). 4.2 labour demand in destination countries – theory of the dual labour market most theories explaining the determinants of international migration focus either on macro-structural factors that redress economic or demographic imbalances or on the motives of migrants to satisfy their needs. the approach put forward in the 1970s by peter doeringer and michael piore points to structural features of labour markets that make pure market mechanisms, as described by neoclassical economics, applicable only to part of the labour force: unskilled workers or those whose recruitment, training and retention costs are relatively low. a few years later, piore (1979) went one step further and postulated that the labour market should be viewed through a sectoral prism as a dual system consisting of two basic structural types: the primary and the secondary sector. the former is characterised by high wages, good working conditions, employment stability with ample opportunities for career advancement and, at the same time, clear rules of the game in the form of administrative procedures. the latter is characterised by low wages, unfavourable working conditions, low job stability with few opportunities for career advancement (e.g. dead-end jobs) and often no rules or procedures. such a picture of the labour market is simplistic and does not refl ect its complexity, but we could easily identify sectors featuring these characteristics: the primary sector including high emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 643 technologies and tech services, as well as public administration, or the secondary sector including the seasonal work sectors (agriculture, catering, hotels and restaurants), manual services (e.g. domestic services), and even the entire range of illegal activities. according to piore, employment in the primary sector should be the goal and ambition of most workers, except for those social groups for whom employment in the secondary sector is either a necessity (e.g. the least educated) or not part of a long-term career (young people, women, farmers). however, due to several factors (in particular the entry of women into the primary labour market, the trend towards longer education, and the gradual decline of farmers as a professional and social group), this situation began to change in the post-war period, resulting in a permanent shortage of labour supply in secondary sector jobs. employers sought to solve the problem by raising wages or trying to replace labour with capital (automation), but these were only moderately effective or even counterproductive. thus employers in most developed countries began to look for cheap labour in less developed countries (the periphery), which means, according to piore, that most contemporary labour migration is determined by the labour demand inherent in highly developed countries. moreover, much of it has its origins in institutionalised recruitment, in some cases initiated by government agencies. for migrants, the secondary sector is often the only employment option available, while the low wages and poor working conditions may still be far more favourable than in the (peripheral) countries of origin. in addition, as long as immigrants consider their stay in a highly developed country to be temporary, they are willing to accept jobs with low social prestige, at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. this is because such workers may treat work purely instrumentally; not as a mechanism for accumulating status and social capital, but only as a means of generating income that can be transferred to the country of origin and used there to establish social relations. based on the dual labour market theory, we propose the following research question: q9: in what way did the labour demand in the main destinations determine the scale and geographical directions of emigration from the eu-11? this research question has been investigated in many studies, especially concerning post-accession migration, which turned out to have more of a settlement character than previous fl ows. the existence of a secondary sector in the labour market of the united kingdom proved crucial in attracting large numbers of eu11 migrants who found employment mostly in low-skilled occupations and such sectors as production, manufacturing, retail trade and hospitality (drinkwater et al. 2009; holland et al. 2011; kahanec et al. 2009). the relatively favourable education structure among the migrants led to the phenomenon of brain waste (bruecker et al. 2009; kaczmarczyk/tyrowicz 2015). similarly, the secondary sectors in italy and spain and the widespread tolerance of irregular employment in these countries signifi cantly attracted romanian migrants long before romania’s accession to the eu (del boca/venturini 2016; peixoto et al. 2012). in the italian labour market, the main • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk644 employment sectors for ce migrants are construction, hospitality and household services (del boca/venturini 2016; holland et al. 2011). sweden, which, like the uk, did not introduce transitory labour market restrictions for eu nationals at the time of the 2004 eu enlargement, has not experienced signifi cant immigration, due to the absence or small size of their secondary sector of the labour market (fihel/okólski 2009). in a number of countries, the structure of demand (as well as the modes of recruitment) has been mainly responsible for specifi c forms of migration, i.e. highly masculinised seasonal labour mobility (engbersen et al. 2010; friberg 2012; friberg et al. 2014). 4.3 migration networks – social capital theory the application of social capital theory to migration research points to the role of social ties in facilitating and sustaining international mobility. so-called migration networks encompass social connections of migrants or migrants-to-be with relatives, acquaintances, neighbours, community members etc. who provide important information and resources, both material and non-material, throughout the migration (gurak/cases 1992). these ties can take different forms, from informal ties with family members and friends who have already settled abroad or know other migrants, to formal institutions, such as associations based in the countries of origin and destination. by providing key information on migration and employment opportunities, social networks reduce the risks associated with moving to another country and help migrants integrate with the host society. migration networks can also infl uence the decisions of those potentially interested in undertaking international mobility, thus consolidating fl ows between two or more countries and making migration a self-perpetuating process. in the age of modern transport and communication technologies, migration networks create so-called transnational social spaces (faist 2000) that link immigrant communities with their countries of origin and other countries. in addition, migrants’ networks can be seen and interpreted as a kind of social infrastructure that reduces the risks and limits the costs and thus makes mobility easier and more accessible (i.e. also less selective; guilmoto/sandron 2001). as migration networks are diffi cult to operationalise and quantify, most studies focus on the functional and contextual aspects of their functioning. therefore we propose the following research question in the context of post-communist ce countries: q10: in what ways have migration networks been useful for emigrants from the eu-11 countries? much of the research on this topic has focused on post-accession emigration from the eu-11, apparently due to the massive scale of the outfl ow and the growing interest in the phenomenon. however, pioneering ethnosurvey studies carried out in poland in the 1990s and the early 2000s should be cited fi rst. before the eastward enlargements of the eu, western european labour markets were restricted to ce citizens, but the visa-free travel agreement allowed them to stay in many european emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 645 countries for up to three months at a time. as a result, thousands of polish citizens seeking employment in western europe undertook temporary mobility and took up illegal employment, mainly in the construction or domestic service sectors. studies conducted in both the sending and host communities have shown that during that period of political transformation, strong migration networks had already developed, linking the polish periphery – small towns and villages in underdeveloped regions – with western european metropolises: berlin, brussels, london or vienna (jaźwińska/okólski 2001; kaczmarczyk/łukowski 2004). communities of temporary economic migrants emerged who regularly shuttled every few weeks between their homes in poland and work in western european capitals. in this case, the usefulness of migration networks was to circumvent the institutional barriers that existed in the pre-accession period in western european countries and to provide important information and resources related to employment in the informal economy. similar results were found for the pre-accession migration of romanian nationals going to spain: arriving under the guise of tourism, romanian citizens “overstayed” their tourist visas and took up irregular employment with the help of friends and relatives (serban/voicu 2010). migration networks helped new arrivals to circumvent restrictive immigration policies in spain (elrick/ciobanu 2009) and other southern european countries (ciobanu 2015), which became destinations for ce migrants due to their relatively high tolerance of irregular employment and the intense demand in the secondary sector of their labour markets. the functional aspect of migration networks has changed since the eu enlargements, as the citizens of eleven ce countries are no longer or only temporarily subject to labour market restrictions. migrants’ connections have become more diversifi ed and multifaceted, extending both within and across similar migrant groups (ryan et al. 2008) and into transnational social spheres (marcu 2022). they have been favouring economic and social integration of eu-11 emigrants into host societies (garapich 2008). networking activities have been benefi cial for different types of migrants, from highly mobile professionals (marcu 2022) to low-skilled people with poor skills in the language of the host society (pavličková/dayanandan 2015), but their use is still very much dependent on levels of trust towards compatriots (schwabe/węziak-białowolska 2022). moreover, despite the absence of labour market restrictions and the development of communication technologies, migration networks in the enlarged eu have remained a major channel through which employers search for migrant workers, whether highor low-skilled (mccollum et al. 2013; mccollum/apsite-berina 2015). a study of the outfl ow from latvia shows that these informal links between migrants, potential migrants and employers in destination countries shape the nature of the fl ows, in particular their geographical scope and temporal pattern (mccollum et al. 2013). this issue has been explored in depth in the context of the migration industry, which we present next. 4.4 international recruitment – migration industry approach when recruiting foreign workers, employers are not necessarily motivated by the lower reservation wages accepted by immigrants, but rather by their fl exibility • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk646 (caviedes 2010). this crucial feature relates to the immediate availability of migrants and their adaptation to labour demand in higher-income countries. labour demand changes with the seasons, economic cycles, and structural shifts, the latter creating pressing skill shortages. the study of latvian migrants cited above (mccollum et al. 2013) focused on their quick responsiveness to the needs of employers in the eu, needs expressed through migration networks and other channels, in particular institutions of the so-called migration industry. migration industry is another approach, alongside the theory of the dual labour market, that focuses on the demand for foreign labour as a driver of mobility. this approach emphasises the relevance of all private actors and organisations that profi t from the intermediation between migrants and their employers, and between the sending community and the receiving society (gammeltoft-hansen/sørensen 2013). this “infrastructure” includes, fi rst and foremost, recruitment agencies that match migrants or migrants-to-be with abundant employment opportunities abroad (cohen 2022). international recruitment by external agencies can be legitimate and mutually benefi cial, but it can also be exploitative, especially when the responsibility of employers towards workers is blurred by profi t-driven intermediaries (alberti et al. 2015). this relatively new area of research does not refer to any general social theory, but sophie cranston et al. (2018) distinguish three major strands of research, the fi rst of which, the structuralist approach, emphasises the interweaving of commercial intermediaries (brokers, recruiters, transporters, etc.) and informal actors (migration networks) – the former often emanating from the latter – in overcoming restrictive migration policies and border controls. second, the labour market approach focuses on the role of labour market agents: temporary work agencies, contractors, and recruiters, in channelling information and resources to address structural labour shortages. finally, the mobilities approach highlights migration as a process, a phenomenon of being “on the move”, and investigates how different actors and networks facilitate these fl exible forms of mobility and various transnational practices. paradoxically, despite the absence of labour market restrictions within the eu, the number of studies dedicated to the role of the migration industry in stimulating infl ows from the eu-11 countries has increased in recent years, but this may be due merely to the general growing interest in this area of research. nevertheless, the theory-driven research question would be as follows: q11: how has the migration industry affected emigration from the eu-11 countries? several studies have addressed this question by pointing to specifi c sectors of the labour market, such as care and domestic services, which require the intermediation of recruiters and temporary work agencies, mainly due to the dispersion of employers. the role of the migration industry proved to be crucial in initiating and channelling the outfl ow from the eu-11 countries, addressing skill mismatches and contributing to a more effi cient allocation of labour in germany (leiber et al. 2019), the netherlands (da roit/van bochove 2017; szytniewski/van der haar 2022), norway (friberg et al. 2014; žabko et al. 2018) and the uk (sporton 2013), emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 647 even in times of covid-19-related mobility restrictions (nowicka et al. 2021). other studies pointed to the practices and rhetoric of labour market actors that infl uence migrants’ identities (findlay et al. 2013; garapich 2008; hopkins 2017; mackenzie/ forde 2009): in general, the eu-11 migrants were perceived by employers as “good workers” with a strong work ethic, neat appearance, and diligence in performing their duties, contributing to the persistence of labour migration from central to western european countries. 5 conclusions in this paper, we have attempted to pose eleven theory-driven questions about the main determinants of the mobility and emigration from the eu-11 taking place since 1989 and to fi nd answers to these questions in existing empirical studies. the large body of research dedicated to examining the outfl ows from the eu-11 shows that while wage differentials remain an important aspirational driver of intra-eu labour mobility (q1), their impact is mediated by two other factors. first, the labour market imbalances in the sending countries, especially occupational mismatches and unemployment levels, have been leading migrants to adopt household-based strategies aimed at reducing risks related to income sources (q6). in addition, the high level of unemployment in the period before 2004 suggests that instead of referring to “raw” wages, we should rather look at expected wages, which also take into account the probability of fi nding a job. at the same time, growing socio-economic disparities in the countries of origin have not necessarily affected the willingness to migrate (q7). second, the traditions of labour mobility have created lasting links between countries that have enhanced the capability to undertake migration: before the eu eastward enlargements they served to circumvent immigration restrictions; today they contribute in a variety of ways to the better economic and social integration of migrants (q10). in the same way, the emerging migration industry has directed eu-11 nationals towards certain sectors of the labour market (q11), as in some eu countries the secondary labour market sector has attracted eu-11 migrants (q9) notwithstanding their relatively good competencies and skills (q4). thus the rate of return to education was not higher for all migrant groups in western european countries than in the eu-11, as most of the available jobs taken by migrants were low-skilled and low-paid (q5). finally, the schedules of the eu enlargements and the transitory labour market restrictions infl uenced the geographical directions of mobility, with countries without immigration barriers “winning” highly skilled migrants (q8). the levelling of the income and living conditions due to migration (q2) was observed mostly for migrants and selected groups in the host societies, while in countries of origin, the increase in wages was not related to migration (or related to a limited extent only). so far, no correlation between labour and capital fl ows (q3), which would indicate a substitution effect between the two, has been seen. the selection of factors underlying the outward migration from the eu-11 presented in this paper is simplifi ed and limited to what we consider to be the most • agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk648 important, and could be a subject of discussion. one can think of other factors that have encouraged eu-11 nationals to migrate for work, in particular the decreasing transport costs and the improved access to labour market information following the eu enlargement (a capability), which is perfectly explained by human capital theory, or the formation of a middle class integrated into the core of the world system (an aspiration), which is the subject of world systems theory. rather than enumerating all possible determinants of migration, however, we sought to test the explanatory power of the aspirations/capabilities approach, and we conclude that, while it serves well as a general framework, it also draws on other theories that focus on a single, selected factor underlying international mobility. such a framework will remain useful in explaining other migration-related phenomena that are becoming increasingly important in the eu-11, in particular the recurrent mobility of highlyskilled workers, return migration, and the infl ow of third-country nationals. importantly, the analysis presented shows the full complexity of post-2004 ce migration. despite the fact that most fl ows were for work reasons, they were driven by a variety of socio-economic factors. in view of this fact, as well as the great diversity of migration strategies/tactics, it should not be expected that this process could be easily explained and interpreted with reference to only one theoretical approach, and this applies in particular to the argument of wage differentials that is often invoked. the aspirations/capabilities approach emphasises the relevance of structural determinants of migration on the one hand, while on the other hand it believes that individual decisions are responsible for the selectivity of migration. the intermingling of these two perspectives overcomes, at least to some extent, the conceptual dichotomy between structures and agency as the main factor underlying international migration that is characteristic of other theories of migration (de haas et al. 2019). our study shows that the aspirations/capabilities framework has made it possible to illustrate the complexity of recent migration from ce and to highlight a large number of underlying factors. at the same time, the aspirations/capabilities framework is not ahistorical but highlights the role of specifi c circumstances, such as the post-communist transition to a capitalist economy and liberal political system, in increasing the aspiration gap and the propensity to migrate. as this is a review paper, there has been no attempt to do a dedicated empirical analysis of the issue. that would have revealed another limitation of the approach, in that many variables can be interpreted both as desired and as achieved. migration from ce is a continuously evolving process and its structure and patterns in the early 2020s are signifi cantly different from those of 20 years ago, i.e. around the time of eu enlargement. over the years, migration from the region has become more settlement-oriented and much more diverse in terms of its motives. moreover – and this would be an additional research challenge – most ce countries have already become net immigration areas, which in our opinion calls for an in-depth analysis of the link between emigration and immigration (which was beyond the scope of this paper). emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 • 649 statement of funding agnieszka fihel was supported by national science centre, poland (grant no. 2020/39/b/hs4/00885). references alberti, gabriella et al. 2015: understanding the connections between temporary employment agencies and 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davanzo 1978; greenwood 1997). there is a growing body of literature that explores the individual and contextual determinants comparative population studies vol. 47 (2022): 185-210 (date of release: 27.04.2022) federal institute for population research 2022 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2022-08 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-08en4 • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander186 of internal migration. typically, the decision to move over longer distances has been closely linked to economic and job-related factors, especially in the neoclassical literature (green 2018). however, the extent to which economic factors infl uence internal migration at the macro level is more diffi cult to determine than it is for international migration. this is, at least in part, due to the fact that regional economic disparities tend to be modest compared with international economic inequalities. the latter result in a global pattern of migration that is dominated by unidirectional fl ows from lower to higher income countries, whereas the spatial pattern of movement within countries tends to be much less unidirectional. the reunifi ed germany provides a unique setting for examining the economic drivers of internal migration. the reunifi cation of the former german democratic republic (gdr) and the federal republic of germany (frg) in 1990 brought political freedom but also economic disruption as well as high and persistent unemployment for east german citizens, resulting in profound east-west disparities. as a consequence, east germany experienced substantial outmigration to west germany in the decades following reunifi cation, which has massive long-lasting consequences on east germany’s demographic structure (leibert 2016; mai/ scharein 2009). the unique set of circumstances that characterised the reunifi ed germany in terms of strong regional disparities and substantial east-west migration has led to a sizeable literature on the topic, albeit one that is somewhat fragmented given its interdisciplinary nature. this makes it diffi cult to draw proper conclusions not only on the individual determinants but also with regard to the economic and noneconomic drivers of migration. the only review of the literature has been published in german by wolff (2006) about 15 years ago, so does not include the literature that has been published since. this paper aims to fi ll this gap by reviewing the existing literature and highlighting the insights derived from the past 30 years of research into east-west migration since the fall of the berlin wall. we clarify some misinterpretations and discrepancies in previous studies, identify research gaps, and suggest directions for future research into internal migration between east and west germany. the paper is structured as follows: by way of background, we fi rst briefl y summarise the historical developments that led to sizeable east-west migration, followed by a discussion of the different data sources that have been used in the literature. we then synthesise the fi ndings presented in the quantitative literature on individual-level determinants of migration between east and west germany. this is followed by a discussion of the contextual determinants, especially macroeconomic factors that drive east-west migration. in addition, we discuss the literature on migration from west to east germany, placing a special focus on migrants who return to the east. the fi nal section summarises the main fi ndings and describes directions for further research. 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 187 2 background to understand the drivers of east-west migration and how its intensity has changed over time, the migratory trends need to be placed in the wider historical and geopolitical context of germany since the late 1940s. in the decade following its foundation in 1949, the former gdr experienced considerable outmigration to the frg. with the erection of the berlin wall in summer 1961, however, migration to the west effectively came to an end (see becker et al. 2020; wendt 1995). as a consequence, migration fl ows between the gdr and the frg were negligible in the period 1961-1989 (grundmann 1998). in summer 1989, hungary was the fi rst eastern bloc country to open the border with its western neighbour austria, resulting in several thousand gdr citizens crossing the hungary-austria border to arrive in west germany. in october 1989, citizens throughout the gdr began demonstrating peacefully for free elections and a change of government, ultimately resulting in the fall of the berlin wall on 9 november, 1989 (rödder 2010). after the fall of the berlin wall in 1989, it was far from obvious that german reunifi cation would be achieved within a year. many east germans actually feared that the repressive gdr government would change its mind and close the border again. accordingly, people dissatisfi ed with the political situation in the gdr took advantage of the unexpected window of opportunity and moved to the west, mainly for political reasons (meck et al. 1992). as a result, sizable migration fl ows from the gdr to the frg occurred between november 1989 and march 1990 (grundmann 1998). the outfl ow decreased after democratic elections held in the east in march 1990 showed strong support for parties that were in favour of a timely reunifi cation with the west (akerlof et al. 1991; meck et al. 1992). in november 1989, the west german government had originally planned to accomplish reunifi cation within fi ve to ten years. among many other factors, the sizeable east-west migration fl ow and the fear that “two to three million east germans already had their bags packed“ (rödder 2010: 189) contributed to the implementation of an economic, social and monetary union as early as july 1990, followed by full political union in october 1990. in early 1990, it became apparent that the economic situation in east germany was much worse than previously expected among west german policy makers, and that labour productivity in east germany was substantially lower than in west germany (sleifer 2006; berentsen 1996; akerlof et al. 1991). the implementation of the currency union and the full integration of east germany into the western economic market in july 1990 meant that many formerly state-owned companies in east germany were not competitive on the western market. this resulted in declining industrial output in all major sectors and many fi rms in the east closing (akerlof et al. 1991). as a consequence, both unemployment and involuntary shorttime employment in east germany rose dramatically, while the number of new job vacancies plummeted (akerlof et al. 1991). unemployment in the east increased from offi cially zero in the gdr to more than 10 percent in 1991, double the rate in the west (burda/hunt 2001). in 1991, moreover, wage levels in east germany amounted to only 50 percent of west german wages, but converged quickly to reach nearly • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander188 75 percent in 1995. thereafter, wage increases stagnated and unemployment rates in east germany remained roughly double those of the west during the two decades following reunifi cation. since the early 2010s, unemployment rates have converged to the lower west german level, but labour market differences between east and west germany with regard to the rate of unemployment, wage level, and labour productivity are still visible today (krause 2019; belitz et al. 2019). the intensity of east-west migration has changed substantially over the period 1989-2020. figure 1 reveals that east germany experienced very large net migration losses in 1989 and 1990. it is estimated that nearly 400,000 east germans moved to the west in these years, whereas migration in the opposite direction was negligible (kempe 1999). in the following years, internal migration to the west decreased sharply and internal migration to the east increased considerably, but east germany continued to experience net migration losses. while the number of moves from west to east germany was remarkably stable at around 80,000-90,000 moves per year from 1992 onwards, internal migration from east to west germany varied strongly over time, and even reached a second peak in 2001 of more than 190,000 moves in one year. from 2001 to 2020, however, the number of moves from east to west declined consistently to about 90,000 moves. in 2017, the number of moves from east to west was exceeded by moves in the opposite direction, with east germany recording small net migration gains for the fi rst time since reunifi cation. modest net migration gains were also observed in the years 2018-2020. the minor peak in east-west migration in 2016 is attributed to high numbers of refugees, whose redistribution across germany was captured as internal migration in the population register. if only german citizens are considered, the turnaround in eastwest migration was achieved as early as 2014, with east germany experiencing modest net migration gains ever since (stawarz et al. 2020). 3 data the most widely used data sources for studying internal migration between east and west germany are administrative data on annual migration fl ows, individuallevel survey data derived from the german socio-economic panel (soep), and individual-level administrative data from the register of the german federal employment agency provided by the institute for employment research (iab). at the time of writing, the administrative macro level data provided by the german federal statistical offi ce and the statistical offi ces of the länder were available for the period 1991-2020. they capture all permanent and offi cially registered changes of address. the data are disaggregated by sex, citizenship (german and nongerman), and age group (under 18, 18-24, 25-29, 30-49, 50-64, and 65 and over). the administrative data only provide information on the total numbers of moves between east and west, with no information on the region of birth. therefore, return migrants who were born in the east, moved to the west and then returned to the east, cannot be identifi ed in these data. 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 189 the soep is a nationally representative household panel study fi rst conducted in 1984 in west germany. in june 1990, the soep was expanded to the east to cover former citizens of the gdr. in contrast to the administrative data, the soep contains a comprehensive set of variables that are relevant for researchers studying migration, such as education, social networks, and employment situation. based on its annual longitudinal design, it is also possible to follow individuals over time and to identify return migrants. the main downside of the soep is that its sample only contains a rather small number of east-west migrants (462 observations in the period 1990-2006), and even fewer individuals who returned to the east after migrating to the west (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; schneider et al. 2011). data provided by the institute for employment research (iab) contain individual information on age, gender, and education for a random sample of employees working in germany who are subject to social security contributions (in total around 30 million people representing roughly 56 percent of the working age population, see nadler 2016). the data do not cover self-employed individuals, retirees, and young adults who are enrolled in educational programmes, resulting in a bias fig. 1: number of migrations between east and west germany, 1989-2020 0 80,000 160,000 240,000 320,000 400,000 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019 year number of migrations east => west west =>east note: due to data limitations, berlin is excluded in the period 1991-2020, while east berlin is included in the fi gures for east germany and west berlin in the fi gures for west germany for the years 1989 and 1990. the high number of migrations in 1989-1990 is not driven by migration from east berlin to west germany (grundmann 1996, table 5). see last paragraph of chapter 3 for further details on the status of the formerly divided city of berlin. source: german federal statistical offi ce, own calculations • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander190 towards employed individuals of working age. furthermore, information about the situation of the household, like civil status or number and age of children, is not available. for the study of return migration, the integrated employment biographies (ieb) and its 2 percent sample of integrated labour market biographies (siab) have been used to follow individual migration trajectories over time from 1999 onwards. some other datasets have been used to study east-west migration in germany. one study used the german microcensus for the period 1991-2003. the german microcensus, which includes the german labour force survey (lfs), is a 1 percent random sample of the german population and contains a number of individual characteristics such as level of education and civil status. participation is mandatory by law and scientifi c use fi les are available as repeated cross-sections, making it impossible to follow individuals across multiple waves (fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln 2009). a recent study used a subsample of the german pension register which includes all women and men to have ever been included in the employment registers as of december 2015 (kreyenfeld/vatterrott 2018). the pension register contains detailed information on east-west residence patterns and therefore allows researchers to study return migration. in a similar way to the data provided by the iab, the german pension register data are biased towards employed individuals as young adults enrolled in educational programmes are not covered. finally, earlier studies also used smaller surveys and case studies that focus on individuals who migrated from or returned to case study areas in east germany. most prominent in this respect is a cross-sectional survey based on telephone interviews with around 1,000 young adults who migrated from the east german federal state of saxonyanhalt to west germany in the period 1998-2002 (friedrich/schultz 2005; schultz 2009; wiest et al. 2009). quantifying east-west migration in the years 1989 and 1990 is challenging given the inaccuracies in the offi cial statistics during times of (geo)political change. west german administrative data indicate the total number of moves from east to west and from west to east for these years, but no information on the age or sex of the migrants is available. only aggregated data derived from the residence department of the gdr (zentrales einwohnerregister berlin-biersdorf, zer) contain information on the age and sex of the east-west migrants and on the origin and destination states for the years 1989 and 1990 (see grundmann 1996). however, comparisons with the west german administrative data suggest that the zer data somewhat underestimate the extent of east-west migration following the collapse of the berlin wall. some insight into the motives, educational level, and civil status of these early movers is provided by a survey conducted among several thousand east-west migrants between october 1989 and march 1990 (meck et al. 1992). finally, it is worth mentioning that germany’s present capital berlin was divided between the gdr and the frg until reunifi cation, which introduces some data problems. as it is not possible to differentiate between east and west berlin in the administrative data from the year 2000 onwards, researchers studying migration between east and west germany typically exclude migration fl ows to and from berlin. excluding berlin is also recommended because it ignores moves between west berlin and its east german surrounding regions, which are attributed mainly 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 191 to (sub)urbanisation and not to conventional east-west migration (sander 2014; mai et al. 2007). in figure 1, however, migration to and from east and west berlin is included for the years 1989 and 1990, as for these years the administrative data are not disaggregated by federal states and only cover the total number of moves between east germany (including east berlin) and west germany (including west berlin). based on the zer data, grundmann (1996) estimates that 12 percent of all east-west migration fl ows in 1989 and 8 percent in 1990 originated from east berlin, indicating that the very high rates of 1989-1990 depicted in figure 1 are not driven by including migration from east berlin to west germany. 4 individual-level determinants of east-west migration the literature on individual migration drivers can be structured along fi ve main factors: age, sex, education, position in the labour market, and family and social networks. this section reviews each of these factors in turn. 4.1 age – large net migration losses among young adults in the 1990s and 2000s in 1989, the population of the gdr was on average about 2.5 years younger than that of the frg (grünheid/roloff 2000). following reunifi cation, a decreasing fertility rate in east germany (grünheid 2009; stauder/jäger 2019; kreyenfeld/vatterrott 2018) and age-selective migration to west germany resulted in a rapid ageing of east germany’s population (mai/scharein 2009; menning et al. 2010). today, east germany is one of the regions with the oldest populations in europe (kashnitsky/ schöley 2018). moreover, east germany’s population is on average several years older than the population of west germany (menning et al. 2010). east germany also recorded much lower levels of international immigration than the west (krause 2019), resulting in widespread population decline, especially in rural areas (berentsen 1996; prenzel 2017, chapter 2). young adults tend to be more mobile than other age groups, as they experience a range of life course transitions such as leaving home, entry into higher education, and entry into the labour market, which often trigger mobility (mai 2006; bernard et al. 2014). throughout the entire period of 1989-2020, rates of internal migration between east and west germany are clearly highest among young adults aged 18-29 years (mai 2006; stawarz et al. 2020; grundmann 1998). east germany experienced high net migration losses among young adults aged 18-29 years, children aged up to 17 years, and adults aged 30-49 years in the two decades following reunifi cation, whereas migration fl ows between east and west germany were balanced for those aged 50 and older from the mid-1990s onwards (stawarz et al. 2020). net migration losses among young adults aged 18-29 years actually • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander192 added up to 700,000 individuals across the entire period 1991-2020.1 however, in the sub-period 2010-2020, east germany’s net migration losses among the 18-29 age group amounted to only 80,000 (basically equivalent to the fi gure recorded for 1991 alone). this indicates that east-west migration of young adults has declined further in the last decade, resulting in only minor net losses for the east in this age group. among families and the elderly, east germany has begun to even experience small net migration gains. 4.2 sex – as many men as women left east germany, but female migrants were younger thirty years after reunifi cation, the demographic structure of rural east germany is not only characterised by an ageing population, but also by a pronounced shortage of young adult women (kröhnert/klingholz 2007; grünheid 2009; kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012; leibert 2016). rural east germany generally experiences heavily skewed sex ratios among young adults, with the number of women per 100 men in the 18-29 age group falling below 70 in certain areas (leibert 2016). this imbalanced sex structure is indicative of sex-selective migration among young adults, with females being much more likely to leave rural east germany than males. some authors attribute the signifi cant shortage of women in rural east germany to more women migrating from east to west germany in the aftermath of reunifi cation than men (kröhnert/klingholz 2007; kröhnert/vollmer 2012; melzer 2016). this conclusion, however, is based entirely on east germany’s higher net population losses among women than men, which were particularly pronounced in the 1990s (see fig. 2, upper part). the gross migration fl ows both from east to west and from west to east shown in the bottom part of figure 2, however, reveal that the extent to which women left east germany in the period 1991-2004 was similar to that for men, and that more men moved from east to west from 2005 onwards (stawarz et al. 2020; stauder 2018). the sex differences in net migration shown in the upper part of figure 2 are therefore the result of more men than women moving from west to east germany (see also fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; kühntopf/ stedtfeld 2012; scheffel 2012; herfert 2007; maretzke 1995; beck 2011). in other words, east germany experienced higher net migration losses among women in the decades after reunifi cation not because more women moved from east to west, but because fewer women moved from west to east. the sex differences in total fl ows between east and west germany disguise important variations in movement propensities by age. east-west migration tends to be female-dominated at the age of 18-24 years, and male-dominated at ages 2529 and 30-49 years (stauder 2018; kühntopf/stedtfeld 2012). east german women tend to migrate to the west earlier in the life course than east german men, but the latter catch up later, resulting in overall balanced outmigration rates for men 1 this number does not even include migration fl ows for the years 1989 and 1990. migration fl ows to and from berlin are not included. 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 193 fig. 2: net migration and total fl ows between east and west germany by sex, 1991-2020 -100.000 -75.000 -50.000 -25.000 0 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 20 10 20 12 20 14 20 16 20 18 20 20 year male female net migration by sex between east and west germany 0 30.000 60.000 90.000 120.000 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02 20 04 20 06 20 08 20 10 20 12 20 14 20 16 20 18 20 20 year east => west male east => west female west => east male west => east female total flows by sex between east and west germany note: not including berlin source: german federal statistical offi ce, own calculations • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander194 and women (stauder 2018). in the years 1989 and 1990, however, men aged 1849 years left east germany to a considerably higher extent than women. higher migration levels among adult women aged 18-24 years observed in the early 1990s might therefore be attributed to them following their pioneering partners who had successfully settled in the west (grundmann 1998; meck et al. 1992). even though the administrative data show that female migration to the west was similarly high, studies based on the soep generally fi nd that women born in the east were more likely to move to the west than men (i.e. fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln 2009; melzer/hinz 2019). there are two possible explanations for this fi nding. first, the administrative data may not capture the higher female eastwest migration intensities because they have been disguised by a large number of males returning to the west (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). second, this fi nding might be related to the undercoverage of internal migration for men in the soep (stauder 2018), generally resulting in higher internal migration estimates for women. in striking contrast to the soep-based studies, research using iab data found that east german men in the 1990s were signifi cantly more likely to move to west germany than women (brücker/trübswetter 2007). as the iab data are biased towards employed individuals above the age of 25, these fi ndings are not inconsistent with the results derived from the administrative data. 4.3 education – propensity to move to the west was higher among college graduates in migration theory, it is assumed that individuals with a higher level of educational attainment are more mobile than their less educated counterparts (sjaastad 1962; borjas 1987). in line with this assumption, soep studies conducted in the early 1990s found that east germans who had completed more years of education reported a higher intention to move to the west and were also more likely to realise this intention (büchel/schwarze 1994). nevertheless, in the period 1992-1997, it is estimated that east germany overall did not incur human capital losses through migration, as a large number of highly educated west german civil servants moved to east germany to take up positions in sectors not often required in the gdr, such as fi nance, insurance, and real estate (kempe 1999; kemper 2004). this changed during the second wave of emigration in the period 1998-2003, when east germany suffered human capital losses due to east-west migration being dominated by more highly educated young adults who moved to the west for vocational training and university studies (hunt 2000; kempe 2001; schneider 2005; schultz 2009; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; glorius 2010; beck 2011). in fact, it is estimated that east german college graduates were fi ve times as likely to migrate to west germany as those persons without a college degree (hunt 2006; fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln 2009). research based on data provided by the iab, in contrast, fi nds that educational level did not affect the migration decision of the working age population in the 1990s (brücker/trübswetter 2007; windzio 2007). as mentioned above, the iab data do not cover young college graduates who have been identifi ed as the typical east30 years of east-west migration in germany • 195 west migrants in studies based on the soep and the german microcensus (hunt 2006; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). accordingly, not fi nding an educational gradient based on the iab data might be attributed entirely to this selection bias, indicating that the fi ndings are not able to be generalised for the entire east-west migrant population. 4.4 position in the labour market – individual unemployment as a push factor in addition to educational reasons, labour market reasons were cited by most eastwest migrants interviewed in the 2000s as the main motive for moving (statistisches landesamt des freistaates sachsen 2003; schultz 2004, 2009). studies based on the soep for the period 1991-2012 support the notion that career-related and jobrelated factors mattered much more than non-economic reasons (stauder 2018). in line with these considerations, research shows that east germans who had lost their job and whose working hours had been involuntarily reduced were signifi cantly more likely to move to the west than their employed counterparts in the 1990s (hunt 2000; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; windzio 2007). as this was particularly true for those who had been laid off in the previous year, the fi ndings indicate that in particular those persons experiencing short spells of unemployment moved to the west. in addition, unemployment spells were more likely to make men move to the west than women (melzer 2013a). the impact of individual and household income on east-west migration is less clear than the impact of unemployment, as the literature uses different income measures and provides mixed evidence. whereas individual gross labour income and equivalised disposable household income do not have a signifi cant impact on east-west migration (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009), higher annual net household income and daily income are associated with an increased migration risk (windzio 2007; rainer/siedler 2009). these inconsistent fi ndings might indicate that the effect of household income on east-west migration is not linear but rather inversely u-shaped, meaning that a linear relationship incorrectly specifi es the analytical model (burda et al. 1998). in addition, income apparently affects men and women differently, as men with a higher defl ated monthly gross wage are more likely to migrate than women (melzer 2013a). accordingly, there is some support in the literature that labour market factors infl uence the migration behaviour of east german men to a greater degree than is the case for east german women. this conclusion is supported by the fi nding that east german women more frequently stated non-economic reasons for moving west than east german men, which is typically attributed to women following their male partner who had already found employment in the west (gerloff 2005; melzer 2013b; meck et al. 1992). as a result – and in contrast to their male partners – east german women tend not to benefi t from moving to the west in terms of individual income (nisic/melzer 2013). • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander196 4.5 family and social networks – having relatives in the west facilitates migration family-related factors and social networks play an important role in migration decisions (cooke 2008; thomas 2019; haug 2008). it is generally assumed that married individuals, families with children, and home owners are less likely to migrate and this fi nding also holds with regards to east-west migration after reunifi cation (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; melzer 2013a; rainer/siedler 2009; meck et al. 1992). having children below age 6, however, is not associated with a lower migration risk, indicating that east german parents with very young children are more fl exible when it comes to relocation than those with school-aged children (melzer 2013a). the second migration wave that peaked in 2001 was characterised by a higher share of married individuals than the fi rst wave, which might refl ect low expectations in terms of future economic convergence between east and west germany among those who were already in the labour force around the turn of the century (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). with regard to social networks, east germans who reported having relatives in west germany were more likely to migrate westward than those who did not have extended family members in the west. having colleagues in the west was not associated with an increased risk of moving, whereas the role of friends living in west germany is ambiguous, as studies fi nd both positive and insignifi cant effects on migration. finally, the stronger the ties with the local community in east germany, the lower the risk of moving to the west (rainer/siedler 2009; fuchs-schündeln/ schündeln 2009). strong networks and high levels of social embeddedness at the place of residence might even have deterred unemployed individuals in east germany from forming migration intentions and from actually moving (kley 2013). 5 contextual determinants of east-west migration the literature on contextual drivers has focused mostly on macroeconomic factors but also on regional disparities and distance moved, all of which we review in this section. 5.1 macroeconomic factors internal migration from east to west germany after reunifi cation is mainly attributed to the considerable economic and labour market differences between the former gdr and west germany. in the 1990s and the early 2000s, labour economists were particularly interested in the question as to whether the differences in the level of wages or unemployment were mainly responsible for the heightened migration from east to west germany. based on a survey conducted among east german workers in 1991, akerlof et al. (1991) concluded that only a small number of workers would migrate for higher wages and that the high unemployment rate in east germany was the main cause of migration to west germany (see also decressin 1994). based on 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 197 regional-level data, however, it has been demonstrated that the wage convergence between east and west germany in the fi rst half of the 1990s was an important factor in reducing emigration, whereas rising regional unemployment did not lead to higher levels of east-west migration (hunt 2000, 2006; burda/hunt 2001; alecke et al. 2009; windzio 2007). accordingly, in addition to huge west-east transfers and high levels of east-west commuting, it was the higher western wages that triggered east-west migration in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s (burda/hunt 2001; hunt 2006; alecke et al. 2009; parikh/van leuvensteijn 2003). the second migration wave that peaked in 2001 (see fig. 1) can therefore be largely attributed to the slowdown in the convergence of wages between east and west germany from the mid-1990s onwards (burda/hunt 2001). according to this line of argument, the second migration wave was dominated by east germans who had postponed migration in the fi rst half of the 1990s as they had been optimistic in their outlook regarding the economic development of east germany. once it became apparent to east german workers that economic development would continue to stall for several years at least, the second migration wave set in (burda/hunt 2001). at fi rst sight, it seems counterintuitive that individual unemployment is associated with increasing migration to the west, whereas regional unemployment rates are not. however, as discussed before, migration from east to west germany in the 1990s and 2000s was dominated by young adults who intended to pursue further education and labour market entry in the west. young adults are generally assumed to be more sensitive to origin wage levels, and relatively insensitive to origin unemployment (hunt 2006). as a consequence, the large number of young adult migrants aged 18-29, who were relatively unaffected by regional unemployment, meant that the impact of unemployment was generally insignifi cant. differentiating by age groups indeed demonstrates that those aged 30-49 were affected to a much greater degree by unemployment in their migration decision than those aged 18-24, indicating that young adults were much less sensitive to regional unemployment (goetzke/rave 2013; burda/hunt 2001). in addition, less-skilled individuals in general are affected by regional unemployment rates to a greater extent than highskilled individuals, whereas more highly qualifi ed individuals are more willing to move over greater distances (arntz 2010; arntz et al. 2014). these fi ndings suggest that mobility decisions are determined mostly by individual characteristics and labour market qualifi cations, and to a much lesser extent by macroeconomic factors (ganesch 2018). 5.2 geographical patterns and distance to west germany besides the city state of berlin, all other fi ve east german federal states followed the aggregated trends depicted in figure 1, and experienced high population losses through east-west migration in the 1990s and 2000s (fuchs/weyh 2016; heiland 2004). only the state of brandenburg, which benefi ts from its proximity to berlin, was less affected by east-west outmigration during the 2000s, and currently even experiences moderate net migration gains (stawarz/rosenbaum-feldbrügge 2020). a comparison of urban and rural areas reveals that industrial and urban centres in • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander198 particular, which had experienced substantial population growth in the gdr, faced massive population losses through internal migration after the collapse of the berlin wall (berentsen 1996; kemper 2004; grundmann 1996; gans 1995). in addition, internal migration in the 1990s and 2000s intensifi ed the population losses of rural east germany, which had already suffered from considerable outmigration to urban areas and particularly to east berlin in the gdr (schmidt/tittel 1990; wendt 1994, 1995). since the early 2000s, east german cities have become increasingly attractive destinations for highly-skilled migrants from the east and the west (ganesch 2018; buch et al. 2014). the east german countryside, however, continues to experience age-selective and gender-selective outmigration (leibert 2016). in the decades after reunifi cation, attractive destinations among east-west migrants were regions characterised by strong labour markets, such as the federal states of bavaria and baden-württemberg as well as the metropolitan areas of munich, hamburg, frankfurt, and stuttgart (glorius 2010; friedrich/schultz 2006; milbert/sturm 2016; maretzke 1995). during the years 1991-1995, however, districts located close to the former border between the fdr and gdr experienced the highest inward migration rates, indicating that early east-west migrants moved over shorter distances, perhaps because they preferred to stay close to their home region (schlömer 2004). this is also indicated by the fact that east-west migrants in general tend to move to federal states that are located close to their home states (heiland 2004; friedrich/schultz 2006; grundmann 1996; haas 2002; schlömer/ bucher 2001; wendt 1994). whereas the state-level pattern of movement suggests that distance moved was relatively short for east-west migration, the role of geographical distance to the former border as a determinant of east-west migration is theoretically ambiguous (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). on the one hand, greater migration distances tend to be associated with higher migration costs and lower migration intensities (sander 2014). on the other hand, individuals living closer to the border may consider daily or weekly commuting as a substitute for migration (rüger/sulak 2017; stawarz et al. 2021). indeed, studies using the soep found that east germans living closer to west germany in terms of distance and driving time were less likely to move to the west than those living further away (hunt 2000; fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; melzer 2013a; melzer/hinz 2019; melzer 2010). this indicates that commuting serves as an alternative to migration. a study using iab data, in contrast, fi nds that east german districts located at the former german border actually experienced the highest outmigration rates to west germany in the 2000s (fuchs/weyh 2015). in the east-west german context, the role of geographical distance therefore remains ambiguous not only from a theoretical but also from an empirical perspective. 6 return migration west-east return migrants are defi ned as east germans who return to east germany after having moved to the west. in the last two decades, a growing number of ngos and local community initiatives have aimed to alleviate the demographic change 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 199 that rural east germany faces by attracting former east-west migrants to return to the east (dienel et al. 2006; quéva 2018; scheffel 2012). so far, however, little research has been conducted on west-east return migration, and the literature that does exist is mostly based on regional case studies and surveys done in the late 2000s. 6.1 the extent of return migration to east germany estimating the volume of return migration to east germany is not straightforward as administrative data do not provide any information about former places of residence or the place of birth. in addition, the soep only includes a very small number of life trajectories of east german return migrants (schneider et al. 2011), and the iab data do not contain information about the places of residence before 1999 (fuchs/weyh 2015). due to these data limitations, in the early 2000s the german government was not even able to provide a rough estimate of how many people had returned to east germany after reunifi cation (deutscher bundestag 2004). based on the soep and the german pension registers, it is estimated that nearly 50 percent of the west-east migrants during the 1990s and the fi rst half of the 2000s were return migrants (beck 2004, 2011; kempe 2001; kreyenfeld/vatterrott 2018). assuming a share of 50 percent implies that more than 400,000 individuals returned to east germany in the period 1991-1999. however, the soep does not defi ne citizens of the former gdr as east germans who left east germany before the construction of the berlin wall in 1961, who fl ed from the gdr in the period 1961-1989, and who migrated between november 1989 and summer 1990. as a consequence, the soep calculations most certainly underestimate the share of return migrants among all west-east moves (beck 2004, 2011). a second indicator of interest is the share of east-west migrants who would return to the east. regional case studies conducted in the 2000s provide quite unambiguous evidence that around 60 percent of east germans living in the west expressed an intention to return (dienel et al. 2006; schultz 2009; statistisches landesamt des freistaates sachsen 2003; lang/nadler 2014). estimates of the share of actual return migrants based on longitudinal individual-level data, however, range from 32 percent (beck 2011) to 16 percent (fuchs/weyh 2016). accordingly, there appears to be a signifi cant gap between the intention to return and actually doing so, indicating a potential source for east german regions to attract return migrants and to regain human capital (matuschewski 2010). 6.2 the geographical pattern of return migration research based on iab data shows that most east german returnees in the period 2000-2010 moved back to their actual district of origin. return migration rates to rural east german districts bordering the former west germany are particularly high, a fi nding attributed to the shorter distances that commuters have to travel to the stronger west german labour market (fuchs/weyh 2015, 2016; nadler/wesling 2013; nadler 2017). those return migrants who did not move back to their home • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander200 region tended to prefer the city of berlin and its hinterland as well as the other larger east german cities (e.g. leipzig or dresden), given that they provide attractive employment opportunities (fuchs/weyh 2015; herfert 2009). smaller east german cities such as frankfurt (oder) or cottbus with less economic potential, as well as rural areas further away from the former german border, experienced lower return migration rates (nadler 2017; nadler/wesling 2013). 6.3 determinants of return migration previous research indicates that macroeconomic models explain the extent and direction of migration from east to west germany very well, but are less suited for west to east migration (wolff 2010). this is commonly attributed to the large share of return migrants (wolff 2010) who, in addition to citing economic considerations, often also mention non-occupational motives – such as living closer to one’s family and friends – for moving back to their region of origin (dienel et al. 2006; jain/ schmithals 2009; schmithals 2010; matuschewski 2010; lang/hämmerling 2013; schneider et al. 2011). that economic considerations are often not the predominant factor affecting the decision to move back to east germany is indirectly supported by research showing that most individuals who are employed on a continuous basis retain their labour market status, but earn lower wages than in west germany on average (fuchs/weyh 2015). nevertheless, economic integration in terms of occupational success, income gains, and time spent in the west generally decreases the intention and actual decision to return to the east (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009; nadler/wesling 2013; fuchs/weyh 2015; lang/hämmerling 2013; schneider et al. 2011; schultz 2004). correspondingly, return migration to east germany was particularly high among individuals who had recently lost their job and thus struggled to pursue a career in the west (fuchs-schündeln/schündeln 2009). lang and hämmerling (2013) argue that there are three major types of east-west return migrants. the fi rst type consists of individuals who often have a partner and children and who state family-related aspects as their main motive for moving back. the second type includes highly educated singles who returned primarily for economic reasons. the fi nal type consists of migrants who returned for a variety of motives, including both economic and personal reasons. as members of the third return migration type often did not feel socially accepted in the west and earn below average wages, there is some indication that these individuals returned because they did not succeed, either socially or economically, in the west. taken together, previous research indicates that return migrants to east germany are, to a certain extent, more heterogeneous than east-west migrants. this is mostly because both economic and non-economic motives have a considerable impact on the decision to return (lang/hämmerling 2013). accordingly, arguing that return migration to east germany is related above all to failure and unfulfi lled expectations in the destination region (i.e. schneider et al. 2011) largely ignores the highly complex nature of return migration to east germany and its underlying motives. 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 201 7 conclusions and potential directions for future research in this paper, we reviewed the literature on the individual and contextual determinants and drivers of migration between east and west germany, which were – and to a certain degree still are – characterised by strong economic disparities (belitz et al. 2019; krause 2019). given the scientifi c interest from disciplines such as economics, demography, sociology, and human geography in this unique setting for studying internal migration, the literature on the topic appears to be somewhat fragmented. the aim of this paper therefore was to provide a synthesis of the fi ndings derived from these disciplines so as to make it easier for the reader to draw proper conclusions on the economic and non-economic drivers of migration. overall, our literature review shows that east germans mainly behaved in line with basic principles derived from migration theory. young, single adults were most likely to migrate from east to west germany, whereas elderly individuals and parents of school-aged children were much less mobile. the existing literature paid little attention to the impact of family ties on east-west migration decision-making, but has shown that having relatives in west germany enhanced the migration risk, whereas stronger ties with the local community reduced it. on average, women migrated to the west earlier in the life course than men, but the latter catch up later, resulting in overall balanced outmigration rates for men and women. in general, highly educated individuals – college graduates especially – were more likely to migrate westwards than their less educated counterparts, which resulted in severe human capital losses for east germany, particularly around the turn of the century. in the fi rst years after reunifi cation, however, east germany’s human capital losses were less severe given the large number of highly educated west german civil servants who took up positions in sectors not often required in the gdr, such as fi nance, insurance, and real estate. on the regional level, our review indicates that east-west migration fl ows were mainly directed to areas with strong labour markets, and to regions located close to the migrants’ region of origin. in particular, wage differentials between east and west germany are identifi ed as the most prominent economic factor for westward migration; however, for persons aged 30-49 years and for those with lower levels of education, regional unemployment mattered too. industrial centres and rural areas in east germany suffered the most from east-west migration, whereas larger east german cities such as leipzig, dresden, and potsdam have been transformed since the 2000s into attractive destinations, including for west germans. most rural regions in the east, however, continue to experience net migration losses to the west, even 30 years on from reunifi cation. at a rough estimate, around 50 percent of the individuals who have moved from west to east germany since reunifi cation are returnees. compared to east-west migrants, return migrants tend to be motivated much less by economic factors and much more by family-related factors. in addition, there is a potential for east german regions to attract return migrants as many east-west migrants express an intention to move back to east germany. in this respect, one very important precondition is the availability of attractive jobs (fuchs/weyh 2016; statistisches landesamt des • matthias rosenbaum-feldbrügge, nico stawarz, nikola sander202 freistaates sachsen 2003) for which there is even some indication that returnees are willing to accept lower wages (fuchs/weyh 2015; schultz 2004, 2009; lang/ nadler 2014). nevertheless, more qualitative and quantitative research needs to be carried out into the individual determinants and motives of return migration as well as the economic and social outcomes after returning home. as far as the datasets used to study east-west migration are concerned, our review identifi ed that research based on the iab generates different results with regard to the impact of sex, education, and distance to the former internal border than those results derived from research based on the soep and administrative data. further research is therefore required to determine the consequences of the specifi c selection biases of the datasets when it comes to internal migration. due to its employee-restricted sample, it does not appear that the fi ndings from the iab data can be inferred for the entire population. researchers using the iab data and the german pension registers therefore have to be fully aware of selection biases when interpreting their results. our review identifi ed several other research gaps that prompt us to suggest potential directions for future research. first, the degree to which sex-selective migration between east and west germany on the one hand, and rural-urban migration within east germany on the other hand, caused the strong defi cit in young adult women in rural east germany remains unclear. previous research demonstrates that the migration intensity within east germany was constantly higher than the intensity of east-west migration in the period 1995-2010 (sander 2014; kempe et al. 2001). this indicates that the shortage of women in rural east german could be largely attributable to female rural-to-urban migration within east germany and not to east-west migration. second, due to the substantial changes in the collection of administrative data upon reunifi cation, little is known about the determinants of east-west migration in the years 1989 and 1990, the period with by far the highest number of outfl ows. historical demographic research could consider visiting the archives to collect and re-analyse data provided by the zer and other governmental sources in an effort to gain further insights into the determinants and motives of the pioneering migrants, focusing in particular on the infl uence of different networks on migration decisions. in this respect, another point of interest relates to the question of whether advocates and opponents of the gdr system employed different internal migration patterns in the early 1990s. for this purpose, one could draw on the soep, which in 2018 added survey items on the gdr past for the east german sample. these include questions regarding membership of the governing socialist unity party of germany (sed) and participation in the peaceful protests in 1989. finally, we suggest that further research be conducted into the individual-level consequences of east-west and west-east (return) migration on labour market, health and demographic outcomes. for this purpose, techniques such as sequence analysis could be applied to categorise internal migration trajectories. in summary, although considerable attention has been paid in the literature to migration between east and west germany, our review has identifi ed several open questions regarding 30 years of east-west migration in germany • 203 the nature, causes, and consequences of three decades of east-west migration in post-reunifi cation germany. list of abbreviations frg federal republic of germany gdr german democratic republic iab german institute for employment research ieb integrated employment biographies (provided by the iab) lfs german labour force survey sed socialist unity party of germany siab sample of integrated labour market biographies (provided by the iab) soep german socio-economic panel zer zentrales einwohnerregister berlin-biersdorf (central register of residence) references akerlof, george et al. 1991: east germany from the cold: the economic aftermath of currency union. brookings papers on economic activity 1: 1-105. alecke, björn; 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educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? regression decomposition analysis of changes in labour force participation at older ages in twenty-first century europe aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto abstract: this study investigates the contribution of educational expansion to changes in labour force participation among europeans aged 55-74 between 2000 and 2019, while accounting for changes in educational inequalities in labour market activity. we use data from the european union labour force survey (eu-lfs) for 26 countries and kitagawa-oaxaca-blinder decomposition methods to analyse the extent to which changes in the education structure may account for rises in labour force participation rates among older workers in these countries, and the degree to which returns to education have changed. overall, we found that educational expansion is positively associated with increases in labour force participation, albeit with substantial cross-country variation in the scale of this association. a driving factor was the decrease in the share of the population with low education levels, followed by an increase in the share of those with high education levels. while activity rates rose in most countries and among all levels of education, the largest increases were observed among people with a medium level of education. activity rates of low-educated older workers, especially women, grew at a substantially lower pace in some countries, exacerbating educational inequalities in labour force participation at older ages. the study suggests that educational expansion has been a driver of longer working lives in europe. however, it also indicates that changes in health, working conditions and age norms at the microlevel, as well as pension and labour market reforms at the macrolevel, can be assumed to have played a dominant role in countries where increases in labour force participation were the most significant. keywords: educational expansion · educational inequalities · population ageing · labour force participation · europe comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 49 (2024): 141-168 (date of release: 15.05.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-06 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-06en1 • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto142 1 introduction highly educated people are often in better health, enjoy better working conditions, have better opportunities to find work and earn higher incomes. as a result, they are often more able and willing to continue working until a later age than those with lower levels of education (riekhoff/kuitto 2022; turek/henkens 2023). consequently, as levels of education have steadily increased across cohorts around the world, so too has the potential of an ageing workforce to continue working longer. this should be good news for policymakers who, in times of ageing populations, aim for longer working lives in order to keep pension systems sustainable. in this regard, educational expansion can therefore be seen as an automated mechanism that extends working lives at low current cost. despite the logic behind the assumption that educational expansion contributes to longer working lives, there has been little research to quantify the relationship between changes in education levels on the one hand and increases in retirement ages or labour market participation in older age groups on the other. in a recent systematic review on the reasons behind increases in labour market exit ages in oecd countries, boissonneault et al. (2020) indeed identified changes in educational attainment as one of the main factors driving the trend towards longer working lives. however, they found only three studies to support this finding, one of which compared denmark, germany, and sweden (larsen/pedersen 2017), with the other two being conducted in the united states only (blau/goodstein 2010; schirle 2008). each of these studies used different methods to reach conclusions about the contribution made by changes in education to changes in exit ages. more crossnational, comparative and focused research on this topic is therefore needed. in the same systematic review, the authors identified 16 studies with evidence that changes to social security systems, and in particular pension systems, have contributed to the rise in labour market exit ages (boissonneault et al. 2020). in recent decades, social security reforms have been pivotal in reshaping the possibilities and incentives to continue working longer. however, studies across europe have shown that the impact of these reforms is often heterogeneous: not all groups in society may be affected in the same way and differentiation in employment effects can occur along gender and socioeconomic lines (ardito 2021; geyer/welteke 2021; rabaté/ rochut 2020; soosaar et al. 2021; staubli/zweimüller 2013). in some reforms, highly educated workers are the “low-hanging fruits”, whose exit behaviour is relatively easy to adjust; in other reforms, such as those closing early exit pathways, workers with low educational attainment may be affected to a greater degree (riekhoff et al. 2020). apart from the heterogeneous impact of pension reforms, there may be other reasons why labour market exit behaviour varies by level of education. as the share of the workforce with tertiary education rises, the “returns” to higher education, in terms of increased labour market exit ages, might diminish across time, thus reducing the educational gap in exit ages. furthermore, older workers with a lower level of education may be more vulnerable to the forces of deindustrialisation, globalisation, deregulation and economic shocks, leading them to become more prone to early educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 143 and involuntary exit (buchholz et al. 2009; mäcken et al. 2022; radl 2013). empirical evidence on these trends, however, is thus far mixed. country-specific factors are likely to play an important role: while in some countries educational inequalities in exit and retirement ages increased, they decreased in other countries (amilon/ larsen 2023; polvinen et al. 2022; riekhoff/kuitto 2022; rutledge 2018; turek et al. 2024). in short, while changes in the educational structure of the workforce may have contributed to increases in exit ages, the exit behaviour of groups with different levels of education may have also altered in various ways. however, there is little systematic empirical evidence of where, when, and by how much. the aim of this study is therefore to analyse the association between educational expansion and changes in labour force participation at older ages, while simultaneously investigating whether the returns to education in terms of exit behaviour have altered. it does so for a group of 26 european countries between the years 2000 and 2019, using harmonised labour force survey data and kitagawa-oaxaca-blinder (kob) regression decomposition methods. in this way, it aims to explore and describe the contributions of educational expansion and changes in educationally stratified exit behaviour to extending working lives after a period of 20 years systematically and comparatively across countries. the article is organised into several sections. section two, which follows, introduces the data and decomposition technique. the third section begins by describing trends in activity rates and education levels before going on to present the results of the decomposition analysis. the final section includes a discussion and conclusion. 2 data and methods 2.1 sample and variables the data for this study are drawn from the european union labour force survey (eu-lfs), and have been collected on a quarterly and annual basis in a harmonised way in all eu member states, countries in the european economic area (eea), and eu candidate member states since the early 1980s. the survey is conducted among a representative sample of individuals and includes a variety of questions about labour market status, type of employment, working hours, industry, occupation, and a set of sociodemographic background variables. we focus our analysis on 23 countries which are currently members of the eu,1 plus iceland, norway, and switzerland. we only included countries with sufficient sample sizes and information on individuals’ levels of education. the united kingdom was excluded due to large numbers of 1 austria, belgium, bulgaria, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, ireland, italy, latvia, lithuania, the netherlands, poland, portugal, romania, slovakia, slovenia, spain, and sweden. • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto144 missing values on the education variable. files for the second quarter of the year are used to optimise comparability in data collection between the years (eu-lfs 2023). data for the first quarter in 2000 are used for france only, due to missing data for the second quarter. the study compares labour force participation rates – or activity rates – in the 55-74 year age group between the years 2000 and 2019. the age interval of 55-74 is relevant, since 55 is the age at which workers often begin to be considered as “older workers”. furthermore, in the past at least, it was also the age at which they started to be at risk of early exit from the labour market. even while working lives are getting longer in many countries, most people have withdrawn from the labour market by the age of 75. the year 2000 is the first year for comparison for several reasons. at this time, the transition from having an “early exit culture” to a new paradigm of “extended working lives” was still in its infancy in many countries, or had not yet even begun (ebbinghaus/hofäcker 2013). in other words, the most substantial increases in labour force participation among older workers occurred after 2000. moreover, it was not until 1998-1999 that the eu-lfs introduced information about educational attainment in most countries. while data for 2020 and 2021 were available at the time of writing, we selected 2019 as the latest year in order to avoid the potential impact of covid-19 on the labour force participation rates of older individuals.2 by this time, the cohort born between 1926 and 1945 that was aged 55-74 in 2000 had been almost entirely replaced by the cohort born between 1945 and 1964. one should also bear in mind that the educational expansion referred to in this study took place somewhere between the 1940s and 1980s, when these cohorts presumably finished school. our dependent variable measures whether an individual was participating or, in other words, was active in the labour force in a given year. someone is considered active if they are employed, self-employed, or unemployed and actively seeking employment. when active, the dependent variable has the value one; if not, it is zero. not being active usually means being retired, a housemaker, or unemployed but not seeking a job. while the study focuses on activity rates, the appendix also present results for decomposition of employment rates (tables a4 and a5). employment rates differ from our main dependent variable of activity rates in that those who are unemployed but are seeking a job are excluded. we focus on activity rates because they approximate the distinction between being in the labour market and having exited the labour market more effectively than employment rates. moreover, as an indicator, they are less volatile to cyclical fluctuations in the economy, since people might be (temporarily) unemployed during an economic downturn but they will not exit the labour market permanently. nevertheless, the results for the decomposition of employment rates are very similar to those for the decomposition of activity rates. 2 however, in most countries, labour force participation rates of older individuals continued to increase moderately in the years 2020 and 2021 as well. we performed the same analysis for the year 2021 with very similar results (not reported). educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 145 the main independent variable is highest attained level of education. in eulfs, distinction between education levels is provided with three levels, based on the international standard classification of education (isced): low (maximum lower secondary education, isced 0-2), medium (upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education, isced 3-4), and high (tertiary education, isced 5 or higher). in the analysis, we additionally control for age. since eu-lfs only offers information on age in five-year intervals, age is a categorical variable with four values: ages 5559, 60-64, 65-69, and 70-74. 2.2 regression decomposition methods our analysis is based on decomposition techniques originally developed by kitagawa (1955), oaxaca (1973) and blinder (1973). the kitagawa-oaxaca-blinder (kob) technique allows separation into two parts: first, the difference in activity rates between 2000 and 2019 that is due to changes in the educational and age structure of the population (the endowments or the “explained part”), and second, the difference that is due to changes in the returns to education and age (the coefficients or the “unexplained part”). we apply twofold decompositions with the coefficients of 2019 as the reference group (jann 2008; oaxaca 1973). this means that: r̂ = (x̅ 2019 ‒ x̅ 2000)'ß̂ 2019 + x̅ '2000 (ß̂ 2019 ‒ ß̂ 2000) where r̂ is the expected change in activity rates between years 2000 and 2019, decomposed into the part e that is explained by differences between the population’s characteristics x̅ in 2019 and 2000 e = (x̅ 2019 ‒ x̅ 2000)'ß̂ 2019) and the unexplained part u that is due to changes in coefficients ß̂ between both years u = x̅ '2000 (ß̂ 2019 ‒ ß̂ 2000). in simple terms, the endowments component measures the difference in activity rates between 2019 and 2000 as if the population in 2000 had had the same educational and age composition as the population in 2019. the coefficients component measures the difference in activity rates as if the various levels of education and age groups in 2019 had had the same coefficients as in 2000. all models are estimated using the oaxaca command in stata (jann 2008). for each model by country and gender, coefficients of 2019 were selected as the reference group instead of the common option of using the coefficients from a pooled regression model. this was done because the sample sizes for both years tend to vary (see tables a1 and a2 in the appendix, columns 1 and 2), resulting in the largest group dominating the coefficients in the pooled model and driving the results (rowold et al. 2024). although it is possible to weigh the pooled coefficients • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto146 by the sample sizes, having the reference coefficients from one designated year should allow better comparability between the genders and countries. we estimate these linear regression decomposition models by gender, and for each of the 26 countries separately. given that our outcome variable is a binary variable with values zero and one, we estimate and decompose linear probability models. the advantage of linear probability models is that they are easy to interpret and allow comparison of coefficients across different samples (mood 2010). as a robustness check, we also estimated and decomposed the same models using logistic regression with the mvdcmp command in stata (powers et al. 2011). the overall results remain largely the same, with some minor deviations in selected countries (see tables a6 and a7 in the appendix). the models estimate means for activity in 2000 and 2019, as well as their differences. we multiply these means by 100 to obtain the activity rates in percentages. the differences between these values represent the percentage point changes in activity rates between 2000 and 2019. our results indicate the percentage of these changes that can be attributed to changes in endowments and coefficients. eu-lfs sampling weights are applied to account for selection probabilities. we use the option in jann’s oaxaca command in stata to normalise the categorical education and age variables, so that coefficients indicate deviations from the grand mean. this is done because the choice of the reference category alters the results (jann 2008). in presenting the results, we focus on the detailed explained and unexplained associations of education with the total changes in activity rates. this means that we estimate these associations for changes in each level of education. we also present the overall association of changes in educational composition and returns as percentages of the total change in activity rates. 3 results 3.1 descriptive analysis the countries in our sample started from very different levels of labour force participation at the turn of the millennium. however, a characteristic shared by all european countries is that the proportion of older workers between the ages of 55 and 74 who are participating actively in the labour market has increased substantially over the two decades (on average, by 10 percentage points among men and 15 percentage points among women; figure 1). while gender differences reflecting traditional patterns of women’s lower labour market participation in general have persisted, women’s activity rates in this age group have increased more than men’s. the greatest increases in labour market activity rates of older women have been recorded in the baltic and some of the central and eastern european (cee) countries, but also in germany and the netherlands. men’s activity rates have decreased slightly in iceland, ireland, portugal, and switzerland, where older men have already been actively involved in the labour market. activity rates have also increased only moderately in those countries that were hit hardest by the great recession, such educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 147 fig. 1: activity rates in 2000 and 2019, men and women aged 55-74 in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent austria belgium bulgaria czech republic denmark estonia finland france germany greece hungary iceland ireland italy latvia lithuania netherlands norway poland portugal romania slovakia slovenia spain sweden switzerland in percent 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 0 50 100 men women 2000 2019 in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent source: own calculations based on eu-lfs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto148 as among women in greece, iceland, and portugal. it is only in romania that we observe a greater decrease in activity rates for both genders. detailed activity rates for education groups by gender and country are provided in table a3 in the appendix. likewise, levels of education among older cohorts increased over time, although there are rather considerable cross-country differences in the educational composition (figures 2 and 3). overall, the share of low-educated persons among older workers decreased from about 56 percent on average in 2000 to 29 percent in 2019. at the same time, whereas only about 13 percent of those aged 55-74 had a high level of education in 2000, this share had increased to 23 percent two decades later. the patterns and trends for the medium level of education are more blurred though. on average, less than one third of older workers had a medium level of education in 2000, compared with nearly half in 2019. in many of the cee countries, the largest fall recorded among both men and women has been in the share of the low-educated population. the share of people with a high level of education, in turn, has increased most in spain, ireland, austria and greece for men, and in iceland, finland, estonia and denmark for women. the educational expansion of women in the age group under observation in our study has been remarkable; while the share of high-educated men exceeded that of high-educated women in 2000 in almost all countries (only in estonia, portugal and sweden were the shares almost the same), two decades later, women in the 5574 year age category are better educated in 12 of the 26 countries included in our analysis, most notably in estonia, sweden and latvia. 3.2 regression decomposition the first three columns of table 1 summarise the activity rates in 2000 and 2019 (same as in figure 1) and the changes therein. to give an indication of the measure to which education is associated with changes in activity rates, it also shows the percentage point changes attributable to the overall changes in the educational endowments in the population (column 4) and returns to education (column 5). figure 4 and figure 5 show the detailed contributions of education in the decompositions of the changes in activity rates for all countries and men and women, respectively. the countries are arranged by the magnitude of the percentage point changes in activity rates between 2000 and 2019 (indicated by the black dots). the darker colours indicate the contributions of changes in endowments and the lighter colours those of changes in coefficients. the white section encompasses the explained and unexplained parts due to age and the constant of the unexplained part. full details of the decomposition models can be found in tables a1 and a2 in the appendix. educational expansion (i.e. changes in educational endowments) is associated very closely with rises in activity rates in most countries, both among men and women. however, the size of the contributions varies substantially as well. percentages range from between one and six percent for danish, dutch and german men as well as greek men and women, to more than 50 percent among swiss and portuguese men as well as icelandic, polish and portuguese women (table 1, column 4). in educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 149 fig. 2: distribution of education levels in 2000 and 2019, men aged 55-74 in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent austria belgium bulgaria czech republic 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 denmark estonia finland france 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 germany greece hungary iceland 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 ireland italy latvia lithuania 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 netherlands norway poland portugal 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 romania slovakia slovenia spain 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 sweden switzerland 0 50 100 0 50 100 2000 2019 low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium highlow medium high source: own calculations based on eu-lfs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto150 fig. 3: distribution of education levels in 2000 and 2019, women aged 55-74 in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent in percent austria belgium bulgaria czech republic 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 denmark estonia finland france 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 germany greece hungary iceland 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 ireland italy latvia lithuania 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 netherlands norway poland portugal 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 romania slovakia slovenia spain 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100 sweden switzerland 0 50 100 0 50 100 2000 2019 low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium high low medium highlow medium high source: own calculations based on eu-lfs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 151 most countries, these percentages typically lie between 15 and 30 percent for men and between 15 and 35 percent for women. even in countries where activity rates remained stable or declined, such as in iceland, ireland (men), romania and portugal (men), educational expansion appears to have had an offsetting effect: the decline in activity rates in these countries would have been more severe if educational structures had not changed. overall, in countries where the changes in activity rates were greatest, such as in several cee countries as well as in germany and the netherlands, the relative contribution of educational expansion tended to be smaller. in these countries, the “other” part, in particular the unexplained part, played a more substantial role. in many of the countries where increases in activity rates were smaller, educational expansion played a relatively larger role. this can be seen among norwegian and swedish men, as well as among finnish, swedish, polish, portuguese and norwegian women. in all of these cases, with the exception of polish women, activity rates were already above the european average in 2000 to begin with. only in greece can a minor increase in activity rates be observed, together with a small share due to educational expansion. in most countries, the educational expansion effect is due mostly to the decline in the share of the population with a low level of education. this can be observed in figures 4 and 5 by the dark red colour in the bars and in tables a1 and a2 by the often sizeable and predominantly statistically significant coefficients in column 6. additionally, increases in the shares of the population with high education are associated with higher activity rates, although the size of this contribution varies more between countries than that of the contribution of low education (indicated in darker blue in figures 4 and 5 and presented in column 8 in tables a1 and a2). the role played by changes in the share of medium education is less clear. in many countries, the effect of the growing share of the population with medium education is negligible, while in some countries it is negative (indicated in dark grey in figures 4 and 5 and presented in column 7 in tables a1 and a2). the latter might be due to the normalisation of the categorical education variable. if, in 2019, those with medium education were less likely to be active than the average worker, an increase in the share of the population with medium education can be associated with a downward pressure on the activity rates. the degree to which changes in coefficients of education are associated with changes in activity rates is generally smaller than that of changes in the endowments of education (table 1, column 5). moreover, it is often negative, especially for those with low education (the lighter red parts of the bars in figures 4 and 5 and column 14 in tables a1 and a2 in the appendix). the estimates for the unexplained part of the change should be interpreted in relation to the constant of the unexplained part. this means that in countries like bulgaria, germany, greece, poland, slovenia, portugal, romania and switzerland for men and belgium, bulgaria, france, germany, greece, iceland, italy, the netherlands, poland, romania and slovenia for women, activity rates rose at a slower pace among the lower educated than among the overall population, or even declined (see also table a3 in the appendix). in these countries, educational inequalities in labour market activity at older ages appear to have increased, especially since activity rates for those with medium and high • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto152 m en w om en 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 co un tr y ac tiv ity ac tiv ity ch an ge in % d ue to % d ue to ac tiv ity ac tiv ity ch an ge in % d ue to % d ue to ra te ra te ac tiv ity ch an ge in ch an ge in ra te ra te ac tiv ity ch an ge in ch an ge in 20 00 20 19 ra te ed uc at io n ed uc at io n 20 00 20 19 ra te ed uc at io n ed uc at io n en do w m en ts co effi ci en ts en do w m en ts co effi ci en ts au st ria 28 .8 39 .8 +1 1. 0 24 .6 1. 7 11 .0 25 .8 +1 4. 9 22 .3 4. 0 be lg iu m 20 .6 34 .5 +1 3. 8 33 .5 -1 0. 3 8. 7 26 .2 +1 7. 5 28 .7 -1 9. 7 bu lg ar ia 23 .6 44 .4 +2 0. 7 19 .4 -8 .3 7. 6 33 .6 +2 6. 1 18 .2 -1 0. 8 cz ec h re pu bl ic 35 .9 47 .3 +1 1. 4 20 .7 11 .8 14 .0 33 .3 +1 9. 3 20 .2 1. 5 d en m ar k 38 .0 50 .7 +1 2. 7 5. 8 14 .0 24 .4 37 .4 +1 3. 0 17 .6 7.9 es to ni a 35 .8 54 .1 +1 8. 3 19 .0 7. 0 24 .9 51 .9 +2 7. 0 20 .7 -0 .7 fi nl an d 31 .0 42 .0 +1 1. 0 14 .3 1. 4 25 .5 37 .8 +1 2. 3 23 .9 2. 3 fr an ce 16 .4 32 .3 +1 6. 0 16 .4 -2 .1 12 .1 28 .4 +1 6. 3 16 .5 -5 .7 g er m an y 32 .0 52 .2 +2 0. 2 5. 3 4. 2 18 .0 42 .4 +2 4. 4 14 .2 -1 .1 g re ec e 33 .5 37 .1 +3 .6 3. 5 -6 7. 4 14 .1 20 .9 +6 .9 1.1 -1 8. 6 h un ga ry 18 .3 41 .3 +2 3. 0 26 .8 -1 .6 5. 9 24 .2 +1 8. 3 22 .9 2. 2 ic el an d 75 .2 71 .7 -3 .5 -4 9. 7 0. 7 52 .5 54 .1 +1 .6 43 5. 3 -4 51 .0 ire la nd 55 .0 51 .2 -3 .8 -4 3. 5 -5 4. 5 22 .0 36 .2 +1 4. 2 35 .0 11 .2 ita ly 26 .1 41 .4 +1 5. 3 23 .7 -1 .1 9. 3 26 .3 +1 6. 9 32 .2 -3 4. 5 la tv ia 35 .1 50 .9 +1 5. 8 26 .9 -6 .5 16 .7 46 .0 +2 9. 3 23 .5 1. 8 li th ua ni a 37 .3 54 .8 +1 7. 4 -4 .1 6. 6 20 .3 45 .4 +2 5. 1 11 .7 0. 3 n et he rla nd s 32 .6 53 .7 +2 1.1 5. 7 0. 9 15 .7 38 .5 +2 2. 8 13 .1 -5 .3 n or w ay 45 .8 51 .0 +5 .2 42 .1 6. 9 33 .7 42 .4 +8 .7 46 .0 7. 6 po la nd 27 .4 39 .0 +1 1. 5 26 .5 3. 7 14 .0 21 .2 +7 .2 62 .5 -3 7.7 po rt ug al 47 .3 47 .6 +0 .3 33 3. 7 -7 47 .6 29 .5 35 .5 +6 .0 51 .1 -1 84 .3 ro m an ia 52 .2 39 .9 -1 2. 3 20 .6 65 .4 42 .6 24 .1 -1 8. 4 9. 7 91 .6 sl ov ak ia 24 .8 41 .2 +1 6. 4 26 .0 0. 7 6. 3 33 .9 +2 7. 6 23 .4 4. 8 sl ov en ia 22 .5 33 .3 +1 0. 8 11 .8 3. 2 10 .4 23 .6 +1 3. 2 30 .7 -3 3. 8 sp ai n 30 .2 39 .5 +9 .3 23 .8 3. 3 10 .4 29 .9 +1 9. 5 19 .6 6. 3 sw ed en 45 .3 51 .2 +5 .9 21 .2 -1 .3 35 .6 45 .3 +9 .6 31 .3 4. 7 sw itz er la nd 55 .9 56 .1 +0 .2 93 3. 2 15 0. 6 32 .3 42 .9 +1 0. 6 36 .2 2. 0 ta b. 1 : ch an ge s i n ac tiv ity ra te s a nd th e pe rc en ta ge s t ha t c an b e at tri bu te d to c ha ng es in e du ca tio n en do w m en ts a nd co effi ci en ts , m en a nd w om en so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 153 -4 0 -3 0 -2 0 -1 0010203040 % change lo w e du ca tio n (e ) lo w e du ca tio n (c ) m ed iu m e du ca tio n (e ) m ed iu m e du ca tio n (c ) h ig h ed uc at io n (e ) h ig h ed uc at io n (c ) ag e (e +c ) + c on st an t ( c) to ta l c ha ng e ro man ia fi g. 4 : d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of c ha ng e in a ct iv ity ra te s b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9 am on g m en , i n pe rc en ta ge p oi nt s (e = e nd ow m en ts , c = c oe ffi ci en ts ) so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto154 fi g. 5 : d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of c ha ng e in a ct iv ity ra te s b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9 am on g w om en , i n pe rc en ta ge p oi nt s (e = e nd ow m en ts , c = c oe ffi ci en ts ) -3 0. 0 -2 0. 0 -1 0. 0 0. 0 10 .0 20 .0 30 .0 40 .0 % change lo w e du ca tio n (e ) lo w e du ca tio n (c ) m ed iu m e du ca tio n (e ) m ed iu m e du ca tio n (c ) h ig h ed uc at io n (e ) h ig h ed uc at io n (c ) ag e (e +c ) + c on st an t ( c) ro man ia to ta l c ha ng e so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 155 education grew to a greater extent in many of these countries. the returns to having a medium level of education increased in many countries (light grey in figures 4 and 5 column 15 in tables a1 and a2), often offsetting the negative compositional effect of medium education that was mentioned in the last paragraph. in other words, those with a medium level of education were more often active in the labour market in 2000 than in 2019 in most countries. the change in the returns to high education was less straightforward across countries (indicated in light blue in figures 4 and 5 and in column 16 in tables a1 and a2). whereas in some countries, a high level of education became increasingly associated with being active in the labour market (e.g. among bulgarian, romanian and swiss men, as well as among belgian, bulgarian, italian, polish, romanian and slovenian women), in other countries the rises in activity rates were slower than among the overall population (most notably for danish men, as well as for irish men and women). yet, in these cases, the contribution of the change in coefficients for high education remained small. while our focus is not on the contributions of changes in the age structure or the unexplained part that is not due to education, the detailed findings for these can be found in tables a1 and a2 in the appendix as well. given that most countries recorded an ageing of their populations between 2000 and 2019, changes in the age distributions in the samples – in particular the growth of the sizes of the older age groups – tended to put downward pressure on activity rates. however, we also observe that activity rates generally increased across all age brackets, but especially between the ages 60 and 64 for both men and women, as well as between ages 55 and 59 for women. 4 discussion and conclusions this study showed that educational expansion is associated with considerable increases in labour market participation rates among older workers in europe between 2000 and 2019. activity rates among the 55-74 age group rose in almost all european countries. increases were generally greater in those countries with lower activity rates in 2000 and, in particular, among women. among men, increases in labour force participation appear to have come mainly at the “tail-end” of working life, i.e. between the ages of 60 and 64, while increases among women can also be ascribed to greater labour market inflows and attachment in the younger cohorts. countries with relatively high rates of labour market participation in 2000, such as sweden, norway and switzerland, generally experienced smaller increases. another group with smaller increases or even decreases in activity rates consists of countries that were hit most severely by the great recession of 2008, including romania, iceland, ireland, greece, and portugal. at the same time, education levels rose in all countries. the share of low-educated individuals in particular fell, while the shares of those with medium and high education increased. among men, the association of educational expansion with increases in activity rates was estimated at between 15 and 30 percent, while for women, the corresponding figures were mostly between 15 and 35 percent. in most countries, • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto156 the largest factor appeared to be the decrease in the share of the low-educated population. increases in the share of highly educated persons were found to be associated with rises in activity rates as well, while the changes in the share of those with medium education showed mixed results. changes in education endowments should also be viewed in relation to the findings for changes in the coefficients of education. in some countries, the positive effect of the decline in the share of people with a low level of education seems partially or even completely offset by a reduction in the returns to low education. in other words, among a shrinking group of low-educated workers, activity rates rose at a slower pace or even declined. these results suggest that there is a risk that low-educated older workers, in particular women, are becoming increasingly marginalised in the labour market. for those with medium education, we found a somewhat opposite trend: in many countries, a growing group of medium-educated workers were more likely to be active. we found no cross-country evidence that returns to having a higher level of education decrease when the share of the highereducated in society increases. while the association of educational expansion with increases in labour market activity was substantial in most countries, the unexplained part due to age and unobserved variables was often larger, especially in countries that experienced large increases in activity rates. while we cannot be sure about what this unexplained part encompasses, it is safe to assume that in most countries it was related to pension reforms, including raises in the statutory retirement age, the closing of early exit pathways, and the introduction of financial incentives to retire later, as well as to changes in the labour market, norms for working longer and improvements in health and working conditions (kuitto/helmdag 2021; riekhoff 2023; riekhoff et al. 2020). although this study did not directly investigate the potentially heterogeneous effects of changes in pension systems and labour markets, the results suggest that educational inequalities in activity rates increased in several countries. it is also important here to note the role of the economic situation: in some of the countries hardest hit by the great recession in the late 2000s, there was particularly slow growth in activity rates among older workers with low education. this was visible even more than ten years after the onset of the economic crisis. this study has a few limitations. while it showed that educational expansion and inequalities play an important role in extending working lives, little can be concluded about the way in which education contributes to the chances and possibilities to be active in the labour force at older ages. some studies have found that education can have a direct effect on retirement ages, even despite the long period of time between entering and exiting the labour market (hardy 1984; venti/ wise 2015). most studies, however, emphasise that education usually sets the stage for subsequent opportunities in life and work, and that the impact of education on activity at older ages is mediated through, amongst other factors, occupational status, income, wealth, working conditions, and health (amilon/larsen 2023; komp et al. 2010; rohrbacher/hasselhorn 2022; thern et al. 2022; turek/henkens 2023). in particular, educational inequalities in health tend to increase with age (leopold 2018), making the possibilities for extending working lives more unequal as well. educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 157 while eu-lfs offers the possibility to analyse harmonised data for a great number of countries, it is strictly cross-sectional and does not allow for longitudinal analysis of events and changes across working lives. moreover, the information on education levels is aggregated to distinguish between only three different levels. the role of medium education and changes therein would require further scrutiny in particular. in some countries, intermediate education is often more generic and potentially has lost some of its value in labour markets where higher qualifications and specialised skills are increasingly required. in other countries, such as germany, medium education can include advanced vocational training programmes that offer the possibility of a steady and long career. finally, we were unable to specify the unexplained parts of the decompositions, with these parts often being substantial we assumed that changes in pension systems and labour markets play an important role there, but this will need further research with different data and methods. other economic and societal developments should not be ignored either. educational expansion is inextricably linked to transitions from largely industrial economies to post-industrial and knowledge economies, where the nature of work and working lives have changed and where education and skills are likely to play a different role these days than was the case two decades ago. additionally, this study was not able to take into account the impact of migration, as information on citizenship or country of birth is incomplete in eu-lfs for certain countries. many european countries have experienced large inflows of immigrants, potentially with diverse educational backgrounds. other countries in our study, especially the new eu member states, have witnessed large outflows of both highskilled and low-skilled workers. while these are often younger age groups, many of them might want to stay in their host countries as they grow older. therefore, it is only in future that the bulk of the effects stemming from migration will become apparent. although educational expansion was associated considerably with rises in labour force participation in almost all european countries, the assertion that educational expansion automatically extends working lives would be an oversimplification. additionally, since most of the people in our study are likely to have finished their education 50 years earlier, it is no longer something that can be affected by current policy. more research is needed to explore how we can now reap the benefits of past educational expansion to full effect. given that the labour market participation of women still lags behind that of men in many countries, the potential for activating older women would appear to be considerable. it is important to identify factors and policies across the life course that work as potential mediators and moderators as educational expansion of older workers in some countries – especially those where the share of the highly-educated has already grown to its limits – might slow down or come to a halt in the near future. additional possibilities to promote activity in older ages will need to be explored, while the vulnerable position of low-skilled older workers is a particular factor that should be given consideration. • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto158 acknowledgements this study is part of the research consortium “sustageable – economic and social sustainability across time and space in an ageing society” funded by the strategic research council of the academy of finland, funding decision number 345384. the authors would like to thank carla rowold for methodological advice and participants of the stream “challenges for ageing policies in turbulent times” at the 21st espanet conference in warsaw in september 2023 for helpful comments. references amilon, anna; 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market exit among men: the contribution of labor market marginalization measured across the working life. in: bmc public health 22,1: 1015. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13397-1 turek, konrad; henkens, kène 2023: social stratification of retirement transition. in: gangl, markus et al. (eds.): the oxford handbook of social stratification. oxford: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197539484.013.27 turek, konrad; henkens, kène; kalmijn, matthijs 2022: gender and educational inequalities in extending working lives: late-life employment trajectories across three decades in seven countries. in: work, aging and retirement 10,2: 100-122. https://doi.org/10.1093/workar/waac021 venti, steven; wise, david a. 2015: the long reach of education: early retirement. in: the journal of the economics of ageing 6: 133-148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeoa.2015.08.001 date of submission: 19.10.2023 date of acceptance: 03.04.2024 dr. aart-jan riekhoff (*), dr. kati kuitto. finnish centre for pensions. helsinki, finland. e-mail: arie.riekhoff@etk.fi; kati.kuitto@etk.fi url: https://www.etk.fi/en/contactinformation/arie-aart-jan-riekhoff/ https://www.etk.fi/en/contactinformation/kati-kuitto/ educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 161 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 n ac tiv ity ra te s ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 5, 71 2 4, 95 8 28 .8 39 .8 +1 1. 0* ** 1. 2* ** -0 .1 1. 6* ** -2 .6 ** * 0. 2* * -0 .3 -0 .2 -0 .7 0. 8 0. 1 2. 2* ** 3. 0* ** -1 .9 ** * -1 .7 ** * 9. 4* ** be lg iu m 2, 75 6 4, 83 2 20 .6 34 .5 +1 3. 8* ** 3. 2* ** -0 .2 1. 7* ** -0 .4 0. 1 0. 2 0. 1 -1 .9 0. 0 0. 4 3. 5* ** 1. 6* ** -2 .1 ** * -2 .2 ** * 9. 8* ** bu lg ar ia 6, 79 6 4, 75 8 23 .6 44 .4 +2 0. 7* ** 3. 8* ** -0 .5 0. 7* ** -0 .9 ** 0. 6* * -0 .0 0. 2 -2 .1 ** -0 .2 0. 6* * -0 .9 * 6. 7* ** -1 .1 ** -4 .0 ** * 17 .9 ** * cz ec h r. 6, 23 9 7, 02 2 35 .9 47 .3 +1 1. 4* ** 1. 7* ** -0 .0 0. 7* ** -3 .5 ** * 0. 4* * -1 .0 ** * -0 .4 -0 .5 1. 8* 0. 1 -0 .2 5. 4* ** -1 .9 ** * -2 .5 ** * 11 .5 ** * d en m ar k 1, 53 5 2, 71 9 38 .0 50 .7 +1 2. 7* ** 0. 3* * 0. 0 0. 4* * -2 .3 ** * -0 .2 -0 .1 -2 .7 ** * 0. 1 2. 6* * -0 .9 * -3 .3 ** * 4. 0* ** 0. 6 -1 .0 ** 15 .1 ** * es to ni a 39 0 76 2 35 .8 54 .1 +1 8. 3* ** 3. 1* * -0 .4 0. 8 0. 8 -0 .2 -0 .2 0. 7 1. 9 1. 2 -1 .8 -1 .4 2. 9 -0 .4 -0 .4 11 .7 ** * fi nl an d 2, 91 9 4, 09 9 31 .0 42 .0 +1 1. 0* ** 1. 3* ** -0 .4 ** 0. 7* ** -2 .9 ** * -0 .8 ** * -1 .2 ** * -2 .5 ** * 0. 3 0. 1 -0 .2 1. 9* ** 4. 3* ** -1 .1 ** * -2 .3 ** * 14 .0 ** * fr an ce 14 ,8 55 14 ,9 98 16 .4 32 .3 +1 6. 0* ** 1. 9* ** -0 .6 ** * 1. 3* ** 0. 5* -0 .0 0. 1 0. 2 -0 .6 0. 2 0. 0 2. 4* ** 3. 0* ** -2 .4 ** * -2 .8 ** * 12 .6 ** * g er m an y 31 ,9 39 14 ,5 72 32 .0 52 .2 +2 0. 2* ** 0. 6* ** -0 .0 * 0. 5* ** 0. 5* * -0 .7 ** * -0 .5 ** * 0. 1 -0 .6 ** * 1.1 ** * 0. 3 -1 .3 ** * 6. 7* ** -1 .0 ** * -2 .0 ** * 16 .5 ** * g re ec e 9, 13 1 7,7 72 33 .5 37 .1 +3 .6 ** * 0. 2 -0 .6 ** * 0. 6* ** 1. 4* ** -0 .1 0. 5* ** 0. 0 -3 .0 ** * 0. 5* 0. 1 0. 8* * 0. 4 -0 .3 -1 .0 ** * 4. 2* ** h un ga ry 8, 07 6 6, 20 4 18 .3 41 .3 +2 3. 0* ** 5. 7* ** -0 .1 0. 5* ** -2 .1 ** * 0. 8* ** -0 .4 0. 3 -0 .6 0. 3 -0 .1 3. 1* ** 6. 8* ** -4 .2 ** * -4 .1 ** * 17 .0 ** * ic el an d 37 3 49 4 75 .2 71 .7 -3 .5 1. 2 0. 2 0. 3 -0 .1 0. 8 0. 0 1.1 -1 .3 1. 4 -0 .1 -0 .1 0. 1 -0 .1 0. 1 -7 .1 * ire la nd 5, 79 3 3, 94 7 55 .0 51 .2 -3 .8 ** * 1.1 ** * 0. 3* 0. 3* -4 .1 ** * -1 .4 ** * -1 .5 ** * -3 .9 ** * 2. 4* * 0. 5 -0 .8 ** * 0. 9 1. 4* 0. 0 -0 .4 ** 1. 5 ita ly 18 ,5 04 18 ,0 30 26 .1 41 .4 +1 5. 3* ** 3. 0* ** -0 .2 ** 0. 9* ** -0 .3 -0 .3 ** * -0 .0 -1 .0 ** * -0 .5 0. 4* * -0 .1 3. 8* ** 1. 9* ** -1 .8 ** * -2 .7 ** * 12 .2 ** * la tv ia 1, 66 9 1, 08 4 35 .1 50 .9 +1 5. 8* ** 4. 1* ** -0 .8 0. 9* * 0. 4 -0 .1 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .9 -0 .7 0. 6 -0 .8 5. 6* ** -1 .6 -1 .4 * 10 .2 ** * li th ua ni a 69 0 1, 87 2 37 .3 54 .8 +1 7. 4* ** 2. 5 -2 .8 ** -0 .4 1. 6 0. 1 0. 5 0. 6 1. 6 -1 .2 0. 8 -0 .3 3. 4* * 0. 6 -2 .2 ** 12 .7 ** * n et he rla nd s 4, 49 4 13 ,6 99 32 .6 53 .7 +2 1.1 ** * 0. 6* ** 0. 0 0. 6* ** -1 .3 ** * -0 .1 -0 .2 -1 .2 * 0. 3 0. 1 -0 .2 -2 .0 ** * 6. 3* ** -0 .4 -2 .9 ** * 21 .5 ** * n or w ay 2, 21 3 2, 90 6 45 .8 51 .0 +5 .2 ** * 1. 2* ** 0. 0 1. 0* ** -1 .5 ** 0. 2 -0 .0 -1 .2 ** -0 .9 1. 2 0. 1 -1 .5 ** 1. 0 1. 8* * -1 .2 ** 5. 1* ** po la nd 4, 19 5 7,7 23 27 .4 39 .0 +1 1. 5* ** 3. 3* ** -0 .8 ** * 0. 5* ** 0. 7* 0. 4* * -0 .1 1. 5* ** -1 .5 * 2. 0* * -0 .1 3. 1* ** 3. 6* ** -3 .2 ** * -3 .2 ** * 5. 2* ** po rt ug al 4, 75 5 4, 78 9 47 .3 47 .6 +0 .3 0. 8* ** -0 .3 * 0. 7* ** 0. 6 -0 .1 0. 2 -0 .0 -2 .7 0. 0 0. 1 2. 6* ** -0 .2 -1 .4 ** -1 .1 ** 1. 2 ro m an ia 4, 65 6 7, 55 1 52 .2 39 .9 -1 2. 3* ** -1 .5 ** * -1 .0 ** 0. 0 0. 4 0. 1 -0 .3 0. 9* ** -1 2. 3* ** 3. 6* ** 0. 6* * 5. 1* ** 2. 0* ** -3 .7 ** * -3 .2 ** * -3 .0 ** * sl ov ak ia 2, 78 5 3, 19 1 24 .8 41 .2 +1 6. 4* ** 3. 5* ** -0 .2 0. 9* ** -0 .9 0. 3* * -0 .3 0. 9* * -1 .0 1. 0 0. 1 1. 2* 4. 5* ** -1 .7 ** * -2 .6 ** * 10 .6 ** * sl ov en ia 1, 74 6 1, 91 1 22 .5 33 .3 +1 0. 8* ** 1. 5* ** -0 .5 ** 0. 3 -0 .6 0. 0 -0 .4 0. 8* -3 .1 ** * 2. 8* * 0. 7 7. 5* ** 0. 7 -3 .7 ** * -3 .0 ** * 7. 8* ** sp ai n 16 ,9 54 19 ,15 8 30 .2 39 .5 +9 .3 ** * 1. 4* ** 0. 0 0. 8* ** 1. 7* ** 0. 4* ** 1. 2* ** 0. 6* ** 0. 4 0. 0 -0 .1 0. 4* 1. 2* ** -0 .8 ** * -0 .9 ** * 2. 8* ** sw ed en 1, 56 7 2, 96 4 45 .3 51 .2 +5 .9 ** 1. 0* * -0 .1 0. 4* * -2 .1 ** * -0 .2 -0 .3 -2 .0 ** -0 .4 0. 3 0. 0 -1 .3 * 3. 5* ** 0. 6 -2 .1 ** * 8. 7* ** sw itz er la nd 1, 93 0 4, 41 8 55 .9 56 .1 +0 .2 0. 9* ** 0. 0 1. 3* ** -2 .3 ** * 0. 3 -0 .4 -1 .2 ** -1 .5 ** -0 .4 2. 2* ** -1 .7 ** 1. 5* 0. 2 -0 .2 1. 6 a pp en di x ta b. a 1: d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of d iff er en ce s i n ac tiv ity ra te s b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9, m en n ot es : l = lo w , m = m ed iu m , h = h ig h, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 1 so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto162 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 n ac tiv ity ra te s ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 6, 61 7 5, 45 0 11 .0 25 .8 +1 4. 9* ** 2. 1* ** -0 .2 * 1. 4* ** -1 .7 ** * -0 .2 ** -0 .2 0. 4* -1 .2 1. 9* ** -0 .1 8. 2* ** -0 .6 * -2 .6 ** * -2 .8 ** * 10 .5 ** * be lg iu m 3, 19 7 5, 25 8 8. 7 26 .2 +1 7. 5* ** 3. 3* ** -0 .1 1. 8* ** 0. 3 0. 1* 0. 3 0. 5* -4 .0 ** * 0. 1 0. 5* * 5. 6* ** 1. 5* ** -3 .6 ** * -3 .6 ** * 14 .9 ** * bu lg ar ia 7, 91 0 5, 91 2 7. 6 33 .6 +2 6. 1* ** 3. 6* ** -0 .4 ** 1. 6* ** -2 .2 ** * 0. 1 -0 .5 ** -0 .6 * -3 .4 ** * 0. 0 0. 6* ** 8. 6* ** 3. 1* ** -4 .9 ** * -6 .0 ** * 26 .4 ** * cz ec h r. 7, 63 4 8, 14 5 14 .0 33 .3 +1 9. 3* ** 3. 4* ** -0 .6 ** * 1.1 ** * -3 .3 ** * -0 .0 -0 .4 ** -0 .5 * -0 .1 0. 5 0. 0 10 .2 ** * 0. 1 -3 .8 ** * -4 .5 ** * 17 .4 ** * d en m ar k 1, 64 5 2, 77 3 24 .4 37 .4 +1 3. 0* ** 1. 3* ** 0. 0 1. 0* ** -1 .0 0. 1 0. 9* -1 .8 ** 1. 5 -0 .2 -0 .3 0. 5 4. 1* ** -2 .0 ** * -2 .3 ** * 11 .2 ** * es to ni a 61 3 1, 02 2 24 .9 51 .9 +2 7. 0* ** 3. 5* * -0 .3 2. 4* ** 0. 8 -0 .2 -0 .7 1. 3 0. 1 -0 .8 0. 5 1.1 5. 0* ** -2 .3 * -3 .2 ** 19 .8 ** * fi nl an d 3, 32 7 4, 41 9 25 .5 37 .8 +1 2. 3* ** 1. 8* ** -0 .1 1. 2* ** -2 .4 ** * -1 .0 ** * -1 .4 ** * -2 .2 ** * 0. 4 0. 1 -0 .2 1. 3* * 5. 5* ** -1 .9 ** * -2 .7 ** * 13 .7 ** * fr an ce 17 ,2 95 16 ,9 76 12 .1 28 .4 +1 6. 3* ** 1. 9* ** -0 .2 * 1. 0* ** 0. 9* ** 0. 1* 0. 2 0. 6* ** -1 .3 ** 0. 4* * 0. 0 3. 0* ** 2. 3* ** -2 .7 ** * -3 .5 ** * 13 .6 ** * g er m an y 35 ,2 51 15 ,3 13 18 .0 42 .4 +2 4. 4* ** 2. 5* ** 0. 1 0. 9* ** 0. 9* ** -0 .2 ** -0 .4 ** * 0. 9* ** -1 .7 ** * 1. 4* ** 0. 1 0. 8* ** 7. 3* ** -2 .5 ** * -3 .6 ** * 18 .2 ** * g re ec e 10 ,0 53 8, 59 4 14 .1 20 .9 +6 .9 ** * 0. 2 -0 .9 ** * 0. 7* ** 0. 8* ** 0. 0 0. 5* ** -0 .1 -1 .4 0. 1 0. 0 2. 0* ** 0. 1 -1 .2 ** * -1 .5 ** * 7. 5* ** h un ga ry 11 ,13 6 8, 07 5 5. 9 24 .2 +1 8. 3* ** 3. 8* ** -0 .6 * 1.1 ** * -1 .5 ** * 0. 1 -0 .2 0. 3 0. 2 0. 4 -0 .2 7. 5* ** 0. 7* -4 .4 ** * -4 .5 ** * 15 .6 ** * ic el an d 38 9 52 9 52 .5 54 .1 +1 .6 4. 4* ** 0. 1 2. 5* ** 0. 2 0. 9 0. 2 1. 3 -8 .1 * 0. 1 0. 8 -0 .5 -0 .6 -0 .3 1. 2 -0 .5 ire la nd 6, 00 2 4, 08 5 22 .0 36 .2 +1 4. 2* ** 3. 2* ** 0. 2 1. 5* ** -2 .8 ** * -1 .2 ** * -1 .5 ** * -2 .5 ** * 1. 2 1. 2* ** -0 .9 ** * 4. 3* ** 4. 0* ** -1 .4 ** * -1 .2 ** * 10 .0 ** * ita ly 19 ,16 0 20 ,3 74 9. 3 26 .3 +1 6. 9* ** 4. 2* ** 0. 0 1. 3* ** -0 .1 -0 .2 ** -0 .1 -0 .4 ** * -6 .2 ** * 0. 1 0. 3* ** 3. 3* ** 3. 0* ** -2 .4 ** * -3 .0 ** * 17 .2 ** * la tv ia 2, 42 5 1, 64 2 16 .7 46 .0 +2 9. 3* ** 4. 7* ** -0 .3 2. 6* ** 0. 7 -0 .0 -0 .1 0. 7 -1 .4 2. 2 -0 .2 3. 6* ** 4. 5* ** -3 .4 ** * -4 .3 ** * 20 .1 ** * li th ua ni a 96 2 2, 65 5 20 .3 45 .4 +2 5. 1* ** 4. 7* * -2 .4 ** 0. 7* * 1.1 0. 3 0. 2 1.1 -0 .5 -0 .4 1. 0 2. 9* ** 5. 6* ** -3 .5 ** * -4 .7 ** * 19 .1 ** * n et he rla nd s 4, 07 8 12 ,7 43 15 .7 38 .5 +2 2. 8* ** 1. 9* ** 0. 0 1.1 ** * -0 .4 0. 0 -0 .2 0. 0 -1 .6 * 0. 2 0. 2 3. 0* ** 5. 1* ** -2 .6 ** * -4 .0 ** * 20 .2 ** * n or w ay 2, 24 3 2, 83 8 33 .7 42 .4 +8 .7 ** * 2. 1* ** 0. 0 1. 9* ** -0 .8 * 0. 2 -0 .0 -0 .4 0. 4 0. 6 -0 .3 -0 .3 1. 9* * 0. 3 -1 .6 ** * 4. 8* ** po la nd 5, 39 4 9, 82 6 14 .0 21 .2 +7 .2 ** * 4. 5* ** -1 .4 ** * 1. 4* ** 0. 4 -0 .1 * -0 .2 1. 0* ** -3 .3 ** * 0. 3 0. 3* 4. 5* ** -1 .3 ** * -2 .2 ** * -2 .7 ** * 6. 0* ** po rt ug al 5, 93 3 5, 67 2 29 .5 35 .5 +6 .0 ** * 2. 0* ** 0. 3 0. 8* ** 0. 8* -0 .0 0. 3 0. 1 -1 1. 3* ** 0. 2* 0. 0 3. 4* ** 0. 8 -2 .2 ** * -2 .5 ** * 13 .4 ** * ro m an ia 5, 63 8 8, 69 6 42 .6 24 .1 -1 8. 4* ** -0 .2 -1 .8 ** * 0. 2* ** -0 .2 -0 .0 -0 .2 0. 3* -1 9. 3* ** 2. 0* ** 0. 5* ** 4. 2* ** -1 .8 ** * -2 .6 ** * -1 .2 ** * 1. 8 sl ov ak ia 3, 48 1 3, 99 5 6. 3 33 .9 +2 7. 6* ** 5. 5* ** -0 .6 * 1. 5* ** -0 .8 0. 2* -0 .3 0. 8* * -0 .3 1. 8* * -0 .2 10 .3 ** * 1. 9* ** -4 .9 ** * -5 .2 ** * 17 .9 ** * sl ov en ia 1, 87 8 2, 05 8 10 .4 23 .6 +1 3. 2* ** 2. 8* ** -1 .0 ** * 2. 2* ** 0. 6 -0 .0 -0 .3 0. 7* -5 .5 ** * 0. 5 0. 6* * 7. 6* ** -1 .1 * -3 .9 ** * -3 .7 ** * 13 .6 ** * sp ai n 19 ,0 95 21 ,3 91 10 .4 29 .9 +1 9. 5* ** 2. 5* ** -0 .1 1. 4* ** 1. 6* ** 0. 3* ** 0. 8* ** 0. 8* ** 1. 3 -0 .1 0. 0 4. 3* ** 1. 9* ** -3 .7 ** * -3 .8 ** * 12 .1 ** * sw ed en 1, 70 0 3, 27 3 35 .6 45 .3 +9 .6 ** * 1. 6* ** -0 .0 1. 5* ** -1 .2 * -0 .1 -0 .2 -1 .1 0. 0 0. 9 -0 .5 -1 .1 * 3. 2* ** -1 .2 * -0 .7 8. 6* ** sw itz er la nd 2, 67 8 4, 62 6 32 .3 42 .9 +1 0. 6* ** 2. 2* ** 0. 0 1. 6* ** -1 .2 * 0. 3 0. 2 -0 .5 -0 .5 0. 7 0. 0 0. 8 2. 5* ** -0 .9 * -1 .8 ** * 7. 3* ** ta b. a 2: d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of d iff er en ce s i n ac tiv ity ra te s b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9, w om en n ot es : l = lo w , m = m ed iu m , h = h ig h, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 1 so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 163 ta b. a 3: la bo ur fo rc e pa rt ic ip at io n ra te s b y ge nd er , l ev el o f e du ca tio n, a nd y ea r m en w om en lo w e du ca tio n m ed iu m e du ca tio n h ig h ed uc at io n lo w e du ca tio n m ed iu m e du ca tio n h ig h ed uc at io n 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 20 00 20 19 au st ria 21 .6 27 .8 28 .1 36 .2 45 .3 53 .0 8. 6 15 .0 12 .0 26 .6 31 .5 41 .6 be lg iu m 14 .4 21 .0 24 .3 35 .9 41 .3 49 .9 6. 3 12 .8 11 .6 29 .4 21 .4 42 .9 bu lg ar ia 17 .2 29 .8 30 .9 44 .8 37 .1 60 .5 5. 0 18 .6 9. 5 32 .9 17 .7 49 .8 cz ec h re pu bl ic 19 .5 26 .2 36 .8 44 .7 52 .5 65 .7 5. 8 15 .3 17 .8 32 .8 40 .8 58 .6 d en m ar k 25 .4 43 .9 40 .1 51 .4 56 .3 56 .1 13 .1 25 .4 35 .9 39 .0 37 .0 46 .9 es to ni a 19 .3 31 .7 35 .7 54 .3 67 .5 68 .5 13 .4 29 .7 28 .7 46 .9 42 .6 63 .9 fi nl an d 25 .4 28 .8 30 .8 44 .0 44 .1 49 .2 18 .8 17 .9 28 .7 37 .9 40 .2 48 .9 fr an ce 11 .5 23 .7 19 .6 31 .9 33 .9 44 .5 9. 3 19 .4 15 .8 31 .1 28 .1 39 .3 g er m an y 23 .9 44 .4 29 .0 49 .6 43 .7 59 .4 11 .4 28 .2 20 .9 42 .7 34 .4 54 .5 g re ec e 33 .7 31 .7 28 .4 38 .6 41 .3 45 .6 14 .1 17 .6 11 .4 20 .9 22 .8 32 .6 h un ga ry 10 .9 25 .4 27 .8 42 .7 37 .9 51 .2 3.1 14 .4 9. 5 24 .8 25 .7 37 .8 ic el an d 72 .0 67 .8 76 .2 72 .8 85 .2 73 .6 49 .9 35 .7 57 .5 61 .0 68 .1 74 .6 ire la nd 49 .9 42 .3 62 .2 57 .6 70 .6 57 .6 16 .0 20 .9 27 .2 40 .9 47 .3 49 .5 ita ly 21 .8 31 .7 35 .6 49 .0 53 .2 62 .5 7. 2 14 .5 17 .5 38 .6 28 .0 52 .4 la tv ia 24 .4 25 .1 41 .6 51 .2 50 .8 62 .7 8. 8 18 .5 18 .2 42 .4 40 .6 62 .6 li th ua ni a 26 .4 34 .7 43 .4 52 .5 53 .1 67 .2 12 .3 17 .0 26 .3 39 .8 36 .6 63 .3 n et he rla nd s 23 .8 43 .4 35 .2 54 .1 44 .0 63 .4 11 .0 24 .7 20 .9 44 .8 30 .8 55 .9 n or w ay 34 .4 40 .6 46 .2 49 .1 61 .5 59 .9 20 .2 32 .2 38 .5 37 .9 59 .1 56 .3 po la nd 23 .0 21 .7 27 .2 39 .6 47 .6 53 .2 12 .0 6. 6 14 .6 20 .1 30 .6 41 .4 po rt ug al 46 .6 44 .1 50 .4 54 .1 60 .5 65 .2 29 .2 29 .2 24 .2 55 .4 40 .9 56 .1 ro m an ia 65 .0 37 .1 30 .0 41 .3 35 .0 38 .7 50 .6 22 .0 11 .0 24 .4 20 .5 34 .8 sl ov ak ia 9. 7 28 .5 30 .6 40 .0 43 .9 53 .6 1. 9 15 .3 10 .3 34 .4 38 .7 56 .4 sl ov en ia 23 .7 21 .0 17 .7 32 .0 35 .1 49 .3 12 .0 10 .8 5. 6 20 .7 21 .6 46 .5 sp ai n 27 .2 32 .2 40 .6 47 .6 49 .8 51 .1 8. 8 20 .9 24 .2 40 .4 31 .4 50 .6 sw ed en 38 .1 41 .9 48 .1 52 .9 56 .5 55 .9 24 .4 27 .0 39 .4 47 .0 55 .9 55 .7 sw itz er la nd 49 .2 44 .4 55 .7 51 .4 61 .2 65 .1 24 .2 30 .2 36 .8 41 .5 52 .1 57 .1 so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto164 em pl oy m en t r at es ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 27 .5 38 .4 10 .9 ** * 1. 3* ** -0 .0 1. 6* ** -2 .4 ** * 0. 2* * -0 .3 -0 .2 -1 .0 * 1. 4* 0. 1 2. 2* ** 2. 9* ** -1 .9 ** * -1 .7 ** * 8. 7* ** be lg iu m 20 .0 33 .0 13 .0 ** * 3. 1* ** -0 .2 1. 6* ** -0 .4 0. 1 0. 2 0. 1 -1 .6 0. 2 0. 3 3. 3* ** 1. 4* * -2 .0 ** * -2 .1 ** * 8. 9* ** bu lg ar ia 20 .9 42 .7 21 .8 ** * 4. 1* ** -0 .4 0. 8* ** -0 .9 ** 0. 6* * -0 .0 0. 2 -3 .0 ** * -0 .0 0. 7* ** 0. 1 6. 3* ** -1 .4 ** * -4 .2 ** * 19 .0 ** * cz ec h r. 34 .2 46 .6 12 .4 ** * 1. 8* ** -0 .0 0. 8* ** -3 .4 ** * 0. 4* * -1 .0 ** * -0 .4 -0 .6 * 2. 0* 0. 1 0. 5 5. 2* ** -2 .1 ** * -2 .6 ** * 11 .8 ** * d en m ar k 36 .5 49 .1 12 .6 ** * 0. 4* * -0 .0 0. 4* * -2 .2 ** * -0 .2 -0 .1 -2 .6 ** * -0 .2 2. 7* * -0 .8 * -3 .1 ** * 3. 8* ** 0. 6 -1 .0 ** 14 .8 ** * es to ni a 32 .0 51 .1 19 .1 ** * 2. 9* * -0 .8 0. 8 0. 7 -0 .2 -0 .2 0. 7 2. 9 -0 .2 -1 .4 -1 .2 3. 6* -0 .8 -0 .6 13 .0 ** * fi nl an d 28 .3 39 .0 10 .7 ** * 1. 4* ** -0 .4 ** 0. 7* ** -2 .7 ** * -0 .7 ** * -1 .1 ** * -2 .3 ** * 0. 2 0. 3 -0 .3 2. 6* ** 3. 2* ** -1 .1 ** -2 .2 ** * 13 .1 ** * fr an ce 15 .3 30 .3 15 .0 ** * 2. 0* ** -0 .5 ** * 1. 3* ** 0. 5* -0 .0 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .8 0. 3 0. 0 2. 4* ** 2. 6* ** -2 .2 ** * -2 .6 ** * 11 .7 ** * g er m an y 28 .5 50 .7 22 .3 ** * 0. 7* ** -0 .0 * 0. 5* ** 0. 5* * -0 .6 ** * -0 .5 ** * 0. 1 -0 .6 ** * 1. 3* ** 0. 2 0. 3 6. 0* ** -1 .5 ** * -2 .4 ** * 18 .2 ** * g re ec e 32 .5 32 .6 0. 1 0. 4* -0 .8 ** * 0. 9* ** 1. 2* ** -0 .1 0. 4* ** 0. 0 -3 .5 ** * 0. 3 0. 3 0. 1 0. 0 0. 1 -0 .3 1. 0 h un ga ry 17 .7 40 .2 22 .5 ** * 5. 8* ** -0 .0 0. 5* ** -2 .0 ** * 0. 8* ** -0 .4 0. 3 -0 .6 0. 4 -0 .1 3. 1* ** 6. 6* ** -4 .0 ** * -4 .0 ** * 16 .4 ** * ic el an d 74 .7 69 .9 -4 .8 1. 7* 0. 3 0. 5 -0 .1 0. 7 0. 0 1. 0 -2 .5 2. 1 -0 .0 -0 .3 -0 .5 0. 1 0. 5 -8 .3 ** ire la nd 53 .6 49 .3 -4 .3 ** * 1.1 ** * 0. 2 0. 3* -3 .8 ** * -1 .3 ** * -1 .4 ** * -3 .7 ** * 2. 7* * 0. 4 -0 .8 ** * 0. 7 1. 2* 0. 0 -0 .4 ** 0. 4 ita ly 25 .2 39 .2 14 .0 ** * 3. 2* ** -0 .2 * 0. 9* ** -0 .3 -0 .3 ** * -0 .0 -0 .9 ** * -0 .8 0. 4* * -0 .1 3. 3* ** 1. 9* ** -1 .6 ** * -2 .4 ** * 10 .9 ** * la tv ia 32 .2 47 .1 14 .9 ** * 4. 3* ** -0 .7 1. 0* * 0. 4 -0 .1 0. 1 0. 1 -1 .7 -0 .3 0. 7 -0 .3 4. 8* ** -1 .6 -1 .3 * 9. 7* ** li th ua ni a 33 .6 51 .7 18 .1 ** * 2. 6 -3 .2 ** -0 .5 1. 5 0. 1 0. 5 0. 6 2. 2 -1 .3 0. 5 0. 5 3. 0* 0. 5 -2 .5 ** * 13 .6 ** * n et he rla nd s 32 .1 51 .7 19 .6 ** * 0. 5* ** 0. 0 0. 6* ** -1 .3 ** * -0 .1 -0 .2 -1 .1 * 0. 4 0. 1 -0 .3 -1 .9 ** * 6. 0* ** -0 .6 -2 .6 ** * 20 .0 ** * n or w ay 45 .0 50 .1 5. 1* * 1. 2* ** 0. 0 1. 0* ** -1 .5 ** 0. 2 -0 .0 -1 .2 ** -0 .8 1.1 0. 1 -1 .6 ** 1. 0 1. 9* ** -1 .1 ** 5. 0* ** po la nd 25 .3 38 .1 12 .7 ** * 3. 4* ** -0 .7 ** 0. 5* ** 0. 7* 0. 4* * -0 .1 1. 4* ** -2 .1 ** -2 .2 ** * -0 .0 3. 4* ** 3. 4* ** -3 .3 ** * -3 .3 ** * 6. 8* ** po rt ug al 46 .1 45 .1 -0 .9 0. 8* ** -0 .4 ** 0. 7* ** 0. 5 -0 .1 0. 2 -0 .0 -2 .1 -0 .0 0. 1 2. 0* ** 0. 0 -1 .2 * -0 .9 * -0 .5 ro m an ia 51 .8 39 .1 -1 2. 6* ** -1 .5 ** * -1 .0 ** -0 .0 0. 4 0. 0 -0 .3 0. 9* ** -1 2. 2* ** 3. 6* ** 0. 6* * 5. 2* ** 1. 7* * -3 .6 ** * -3 .2 ** * -3 .3 * sl ov ak ia 21 .3 39 .7 18 .3 ** * 4. 0* ** -0 .1 1. 0* ** -0 .9 0. 3* * -0 .3 0. 9* * -1 .2 0. 7 0. 2 2. 8* ** 4. 0* ** -2 .1 ** * -2 .9 ** * 11 .7 ** * sl ov en ia 21 .4 32 .0 10 .6 ** * 1. 4* ** -0 .5 ** 0. 3 -0 .6 0. 0 -0 .4 0. 8* -3 .1 ** * 3. 1* * 0. 6 7. 8* ** 0. 3 -3 .6 ** * -3 .0 ** * 7. 5* ** sp ai n 27 .6 35 .0 7. 4* ** 1. 9* ** 0. 0 1. 0* ** 1. 5* ** 0. 3* ** 1. 0* ** 0. 6* ** -0 .2 0. 0 -0 .1 0. 2 0. 9* ** -0 .5 ** -0 .5 ** * 1. 3 sw ed en 42 .3 49 .0 6. 7* ** 1. 0* ** -0 .0 0. 4* * -1 .9 ** * -0 .2 -0 .2 -1 .9 ** -0 .3 0. 2 0. 0 -1 .0 3. 5* ** 0. 3 -2 .1 ** * 9. 1* ** sw itz er la nd 54 .4 54 .4 -0 .0 1. 0* ** -0 .0 1. 3* ** -2 .2 ** * 0. 3 -0 .4 -1 .1 ** -1 .3 * -0 .7 2. 0* ** -2 .1 ** 1. 6* 0. 3 -0 .2 1. 4 ta b. a 4: d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of d iff er en ce s i n em pl oy m en t r at es b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9, m en n ot es : l = lo w , m = m ed iu m , h = h ig h, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 1 so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 165 ta b. a 5: d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of d iff er en ce s i n em pl oy m en t r at es b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9, w om en em pl oy m en t r at es ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 10 .6 25 .2 14 .5 ** * 2. 1* ** -0 .2 ** 1. 4* ** -1 .6 ** * -0 .2 ** -0 .2 0. 3 -1 .0 1. 8* ** -0 .1 8. 0* ** -0 .5 * -2 .5 ** * -2 .8 ** * 10 .1 ** * be lg iu m 8. 5 25 .2 16 .7 ** * 3. 3* ** -0 .3 1. 8* ** 0. 3 0. 1 0. 3 0. 5 -4 .3 ** * 0. 2 0. 4* 5. 3* ** 1. 3* ** -3 .4 ** * -3 .5 ** * 14 .2 ** * bu lg ar ia 6. 8 32 .6 25 .8 ** * 4. 1* ** -0 .4 * 1. 7* ** -2 .0 ** * 0. 1 -0 .5 ** -0 .5 * -4 .3 ** * 0. 1 0. 7* ** 8. 4* ** 3. 0* ** -4 .8 ** * -5 .8 ** * 25 .9 ** * cz ec h r. 13 .3 32 .8 19 .5 ** * 3. 6* ** -0 .6 ** * 1. 2* ** -3 .2 ** * -0 .0 -0 .4 ** -0 .5 * -0 .6 0. 6 0. 0 10 .0 ** * 0. 2 -3 .8 ** * -4 .5 ** * 17 .4 ** * d en m ar k 23 .5 36 .6 13 .1 ** * 1. 2* ** 0. 1 1. 0* ** -1 .0 0. 1 0. 9* -1 .7 ** 1. 5 0. 0 -0 .4 0. 9 3. 6* ** -2 .0 ** * -2 .3 ** * 11 .2 ** * es to ni a 23 .7 50 .4 26 .7 ** * 3. 2* * -0 .6 2. 6* ** 0. 8 -0 .2 -0 .7 1. 3 1.1 -1 .3 0. 3 1. 6 4. 4* * -2 .4 * -3 .2 ** 19 .7 ** * fi nl an d 23 .3 36 .1 12 .8 ** * 1. 9* ** -0 .1 1. 3* ** -2 .3 ** * -1 .0 ** * -1 .3 ** * -2 .1 ** * 0. 4 0. 1 -0 .2 2. 0* ** 5. 0* ** -2 .0 ** * -2 .7 ** * 13 .8 ** * fr an ce 11 .3 26 .5 15 .2 ** * 1. 9* ** -0 .2 ** 1. 0* ** 0. 8* ** 0. 1* 0. 2 0. 6* ** -1 .4 ** 0. 4* 0. 0 2. 9* ** 2. 0* ** -2 .5 ** * -3 .2 ** * 12 .7 ** * g er m an y 15 .5 41 .4 25 .9 ** * 2. 6* ** 0. 0 1. 0* ** 0. 8* ** -0 .2 ** -0 .4 ** * 0. 9* ** -2 .0 ** * 1. 5* ** 0. 1 2. 2* ** 6. 6* ** -2 .9 ** * -4 .0 ** * 19 .9 ** * g re ec e 13 .5 17 .8 4. 2* ** 0. 3 -1 .0 ** * 0. 8* ** 0. 6* ** 0. 0 0. 4* ** -0 .1 -1 .4 0. 0 0. 1 1. 3* ** -0 .1 -0 .7 ** -0 .9 ** * 4. 9* ** h un ga ry 5. 9 23 .7 17 .8 ** * 3. 8* ** -0 .6 * 1.1 ** * -1 .5 ** * 0. 1 -0 .2 0. 3 0. 2 0. 4 -0 .2 7. 2* ** 0. 7* -4 .2 ** * -4 .3 ** * 15 .1 ** * ic el an d 50 .9 53 .5 2. 6 4. 2* ** 0. 0 2. 5* ** 0. 2 0. 9 0. 2 1. 3 -7 .3 * 0. 1 0. 7 -1 .0 -0 .3 0. 2 0. 9 0. 1 ire la nd 21 .5 34 .9 13 .4 ** * 3. 2* ** 0. 2 1. 5* ** -2 .7 ** * -1 .1 ** * -1 .4 ** * -2 .4 ** * 1. 0 1. 2* ** -0 .8 ** * 4. 1* ** 3. 6* ** -1 .3 ** * -1 .1 ** * 9. 4* ** ita ly 8. 9 25 .2 16 .3 ** * 4. 2* ** -0 .0 1. 3* ** -0 .1 -0 .1 ** -0 .1 -0 .4 ** * -6 .1 ** * 0. 0 0. 3* ** 3. 1* ** 2. 9* ** -2 .3 ** * -2 .8 ** * 16 .5 ** * la tv ia 16 .0 44 .2 28 .2 ** * 4. 8* ** -0 .2 2. 5* ** 0. 6 -0 .0 -0 .1 0. 7 -1 .9 2. 6* -0 .2 3. 1* ** 4. 5* ** -3 .1 ** * -4 .0 ** * 18 .9 ** * li th ua ni a 19 .5 42 .9 23 .4 ** * 5. 1* ** -2 .8 ** * 0. 8* * 1. 0 0. 3 0. 2 1. 0 -1 .2 -0 .4 1. 2 2. 5* * 5. 3* ** -3 .1 ** * -4 .3 ** * 17 .9 ** * n et he rla nd s 15 .4 37 .3 21 .8 ** * 1. 9* ** 0. 0 1.1 ** * -0 .4 0. 0 -0 .2 0. 0 -1 .7 * 0. 2 0. 2 2. 8* ** 4. 9* ** -2 .5 ** * -3 .8 ** * 19 .4 ** * n or w ay 33 .5 42 .1 8. 6* ** 2. 1* ** 0. 0 1. 8* ** -0 .8 * 0. 2 -0 .0 -0 .4 0. 4 0. 6 -0 .3 -0 .5 2. 0* ** 0. 3 -1 .6 ** * 4. 8* ** po la nd 12 .8 20 .9 8. 1* ** 4. 6* ** -1 .4 ** * 1. 5* ** 0. 4 -0 .1 * -0 .2 1. 0* ** -4 .2 ** * 0. 2 0. 4* * 4. 6* ** -1 .1 ** * -2 .3 ** * -2 .9 ** * 7. 6* ** po rt ug al 29 .0 33 .7 4. 6* ** 2. 0* ** 0. 1 1. 0* ** 0. 7* -0 .0 0. 3 0. 1 -1 0. 6* ** 0. 1* 0. 1 3. 1* ** 0. 6 -2 .1 ** * -2 .2 ** * 11 .5 ** * ro m an ia 42 .5 23 .8 -1 8. 7* ** -0 .2 -1 .8 ** * 0. 2* ** -0 .2 -0 .0 -0 .2 0. 3* -1 9. 2* ** 2. 0* ** 0. 5* ** 4. 1* ** -1 .8 ** * -2 .5 ** * -1 .2 ** 1. 3* ** sl ov ak ia 5. 7 32 .1 26 .4 ** * 6. 0* ** -0 .6 * 1. 6* ** -0 .7 0. 2* * -0 .3 0. 8* * -1 .0 1. 7* * -0 .1 9. 4* ** 1. 9* ** -4 .6 ** * -4 .9 ** * 17 .1 ** * sl ov en ia 10 .3 22 .4 12 .1 ** * 2. 8* ** -1 .0 ** * 2. 3* ** 0. 1 -0 .0 -0 .2 0. 7* -5 .6 ** * 0. 5 0. 6* * 7.1 ** * -1 .1 * -3 .6 ** * -3 .4 ** * 12 .5 ** * sp ai n 9. 3 25 .9 16 .6 ** * 2. 6* ** -0 .2 * 1. 7* ** 1. 4* ** 0. 2* ** 0. 7* ** 0. 7* ** 0. 9 -0 .1 0. 1 3. 7* ** 1. 4* ** -3 .1 ** * -3 .1 ** * 9. 7* ** sw ed en 34 .0 43 .5 9. 5* ** 1. 7* ** -0 .0 1. 5* ** -1 .2 * -0 .1 -0 .2 -1 .0 -0 .2 1.1 -0 .4 -1 .2 * 3. 3* ** -1 .2 * -0 .6 8. 2* ** sw itz er la nd 31 .6 41 .1 9. 5* ** 2. 2* ** -0 .0 1. 7* ** -1 .1 * 0. 3 0. 1 -0 .5 -0 .1 0. 5 -0 .0 0. 4 2. 4* ** -0 .8 -1 .6 ** * 6. 1* ** n ot es : l = lo w , m = m ed iu m , h = h ig h, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 1 so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs • aart-jan riekhoff, kati kuitto166 ac tiv ity ra te s ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 28 .8 39 .8 +1 1. 0* ** -0 .4 0. 0 -0 .4 0. 6 -0 .1 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .9 0. 9 0. 2 1. 5* 1. 8* * -1 .5 ** -0 .9 10 .0 ** * be lg iu m 20 .6 34 .5 +1 3. 8* ** 3. 0* ** -0 .2 1. 6* ** -0 .3 ** * 0. 2* ** 0. 2* ** 0. 1* ** -2 .3 * -0 .1 0. 7* 1. 4 -0 .0 -0 .4 -0 .7 10 .9 ** * bu lg ar ia 23 .6 44 .4 +2 0. 7* ** 3. 7* ** -0 .4 0. 7* ** -0 .8 ** * 0. 5* ** -0 .0 ** * 0. 2* ** -1 .4 -0 .3 0. 4* -1 .4 ** 4. 7* ** 0. 8 -3 .5 ** * 17 .5 ** * cz ec h r. 35 .9 47 .3 +1 1. 4* ** 3. 8* ** -0 .0 1. 6* ** -6 .1 ** * 0. 6* ** -1 .4 ** * -0 .8 ** * -0 .7 1. 8 0. 1 1.1 * 3. 0* ** -1 .6 ** * -1 .6 ** 11 .6 ** * d en m ar ka 38 .0 50 .7 +1 2. 7* ** 0. 5* ** -0 .0 0. 6* ** -1 .9 ** * -0 .1 ** * -2 .8 ** * 0. 5 2. 3* -1 .1 ** -2 .7 ** * 1. 3* 2. 0* 14 .1 ** * es to ni a 35 .8 54 .1 +1 8. 3* ** 3. 4* ** -0 .5 0. 9* ** 0. 8* ** -0 .2 ** * -0 .2 ** * 0. 7* ** 2. 6 0. 9 -2 .0 -2 .2 0. 5 -0 .2 1. 5 12 .1 ** * fi nl an d 31 .0 42 .0 +1 1. 0* ** 1. 7* ** -0 .5 ** 0. 9* ** -3 .0 ** * -0 .8 ** * -1 .0 ** * -2 .8 ** * -0 .0 0. 0 -0 .0 1. 7* 2. 3* * -0 .4 -1 .8 ** 14 .9 ** * fr an ce 16 .4 32 .3 +1 6. 0* ** 1. 9* ** -0 .5 ** * 1. 2* ** 0. 4* ** -0 .0 ** * 0. 1* ** 0. 1* ** 0. 1 0. 3 -0 .1 -0 .1 1. 2* ** -0 .2 0. 7 12 .3 ** * g er m an y 32 .0 52 .2 +2 0. 2* ** 0. 5* ** -0 .0 ** 0. 3* ** 0. 3* ** -0 .3 ** * -0 .3 ** * 0. 1* ** -0 .5 ** 1.1 ** 0. 2 -1 .4 ** * 2. 3* ** -0 .1 -0 .2 18 .3 ** * g re ec e 33 .5 37 .1 +3 .6 ** * 0. 2 -0 .8 ** * 0. 7* ** 1. 5* ** -0 .1 ** * 0. 3* ** 0. 0* ** 9. 4 -1 .4 -0 .4 -3 .4 -2 .5 -1 .1 7. 0 -5 .8 h un ga ry 18 .3 41 .3 +2 3. 0* ** 5. 2* ** -0 .1 0. 5* ** -1 .4 ** * 0. 6* ** -0 .3 ** * 0. 2* ** 0. 4 0. 2 -0 .2 0. 6 4. 6* ** -2 .2 ** * -2 .2 ** 17 .1 ** * ic el an d 75 .2 71 .7 -3 .5 1. 4* 0. 3 0. 4 -0 .1 ** * 0. 7* ** 0. 1* 0. 9* ** -0 .6 1.1 -0 .2 -1 .7 -0 .1 0. 7 0. 6 -7 .2 * ire la nd 55 .0 51 .2 -3 .8 ** * 1. 3* ** 0. 3* 0. 3* -4 .2 ** * -1 .3 ** * -1 .3 ** * -4 .2 ** * 2. 2* 0. 6 -0 .8 ** * 1. 3 0. 8 0. 1 -0 .5 * 1. 6 ita ly 26 .1 41 .4 +1 5. 3* ** 3. 2* ** -0 .3 ** 1. 0* ** -0 .3 ** * -0 .3 ** * -0 .0 ** * -1 .1 ** * -2 .3 ** 0. 4* 0. 0 3. 5* ** 0. 8* -0 .9 ** -2 .4 ** * 13 .9 ** * la tv ia 35 .1 50 .9 +1 5. 8* ** 4. 4* ** -0 .7 1. 0* ** 0. 4* ** -0 .1 ** * 0. 1* 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k, a ll in a ge g ro up 7 074 w er e in ac tiv e in 2 00 0, th er eb y pr ed ic tin g fa ilu re p er fe ct ly a nd a ut om at ic al ly o m itt in g th e va ria bl e in th e m od el . a s a re su lt, a ge g ro up s 6 569 a nd 7 074 w er e m er ge d to a llo w th e m od el to b e es tim at ed . so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs educational expansion as a driver of longer working lives? • 167 ac tiv ity ra te s ex pl ai ne d pa rt u ne xp la in ed p ar t ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p ed uc at io n ag e gr ou p co un tr y 20 00 20 19 ch an ge l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 l m h 55 -5 9 60 -6 4 65 -6 9 70 -7 4 co ns ta nt au st ria 11 .0 25 .8 +1 4. 9* ** 1. 3* ** -0 .1 0. 8* ** -0 .7 ** * 0. 1* ** -0 .1 ** * 0. 2* ** -2 .5 * 3. 0* ** -0 .1 4. 6* ** 0. 2 -1 .6 * -2 .0 11 .7 ** * be lg iu m 8. 7 26 .2 +1 7. 5* ** 3. 2* ** 0. 1 1. 6* ** 0. 2* ** 0. 3* ** 0. 2* ** 0. 6* ** -4 .8 * 0. 1 0. 6 3. 1* 2. 9* -0 .9 -5 .1 ** * 15 .3 ** * bu lg ar ia 7. 6 33 .6 +2 6. 1* ** 2. 9* ** 0. 1 1.1 ** * -1 .2 ** * 0. 1* ** -0 . 2 ** * -0 .4 ** * -2 .7 ** 0. 1 0. 4* 4. 4* ** 2. 6* ** -1 .9 ** * -4 .5 ** * 25 .5 ** * cz ec h r. 14 .0 33 .3 +1 9. 3* ** -1 .1 0. 1 -0 .3 0. 7 -0 .0 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .5 -0 .6 0. 1 6. 9* ** -0 .2 -2 .7 ** * -2 .7 ** * 19 .4 ** * d en m ar ka 24 .4 37 .4 +1 3. 0* ** 0. 7* 0. 0 0. 5* -0 .3 ** * 0. 0* * -0 .2 ** * 2. 1* -0 .3 -0 .4 -0 .7 0. 8 -0 .0 10 .9 ** * es to ni a 24 .9 51 .9 +2 7. 0* ** 3. 5* ** -0 .3 2. 4* ** 0. 7* ** -0 .2 ** * -0 .6 ** * 1. 2* ** 0. 9 -1 .2 0. 3 0. 5 2. 5 -2 .2 -0 .4 19 .8 ** * fi nl an d 25 .5 37 .8 +1 2. 3* ** 3. 4* ** -0 .0 2. 1* ** -2 .8 ** * -1 .3 ** * -1 .3 ** * -3 .0 ** * -0 .2 0. 2 -0 .1 -0 .1 1. 4* 0. 4 -1 .1 14 .9 ** * fr an ce 12 .1 28 .4 +1 6. 3* ** 1. 9* ** -0 .1 0. 9* ** 0. 7* ** 0. 1* ** 0. 1* ** 0. 7* ** -0 .8 * 0. 3* * -0 .0 -0 .3 0. 2 0. 4 -0 .2 12 .4 ** * g er m an y 18 .0 42 .4 +2 4. 4* ** 2. 4* ** 0. 1 0. 9* ** 0. 7* ** -0 .2 ** * -0 .3 ** * 0. 8* ** -0 .9 ** 1. 2* ** -0 .0 -1 .5 ** * 2. 6* ** 0. 1 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.1 0. 8* ** 0. 9* ** 0. 2* ** 0. 2* ** 1.1 ** * -0 .8 -0 .5 1. 3 2. 4* 4. 4* * -2 .9 * -3 .6 * 18 .5 ** * n et he rla nd s 15 .7 38 .5 +2 2. 8* ** 2. 0* ** 0. 0 1.1 ** * -0 .3 ** * 0. 0* ** -0 .2 ** * 0. 0* ** -0 .4 0. 1 0. 1 -0 .6 2. 7* * 0. 0 -1 .9 20 .3 ** * n or w ay 33 .7 42 .4 +8 .7 ** * 1. 7* ** 0. 0 1. 5* ** -0 .6 ** * 0. 2* ** -0 .0 ** * -0 .3 ** * 0. 6 0. 2 -0 .3 -1 .0 * -0 .1 -0 .1 1. 0 5. 9* ** po la nd 14 .0 21 .2 +7 .2 ** * 4. 3* ** -0 .4 * 1.1 ** * 0. 2* ** 0. 1* ** -0 .1 ** * 1. 0* ** 0. 8 -0 .1 -0 .1 -0 .4 -0 .0 0. 1 0. 5 0. 2 po rt ug al 29 .5 35 .5 +6 .0 ** * 2. 1* ** 0. 3 0. 8* ** 0. 8* ** -0 .0 ** * 0. 2* ** 0. 1* ** 10 .5 -0 .1 -0 .0 -3 .1 -1 .2 1. 4 3. 2 -8 .8 ro m an ia 42 .6 24 .1 -1 8. 4* ** -0 .4 -1 .9 ** * 0. 2* ** -0 .2 ** * 0. 0 -0 .2 ** * 0. 3* ** -2 0. 1* ** 2. 4* ** 0. 4* ** 4. 5* ** -0 .8 -3 .0 ** * -2 .0 ** * 2. 2 sl ov ak ia 6. 3 33 .9 +2 7. 6* ** 4. 7* ** -0 .1 1.1 ** * -0 .4 ** * 0. 3* ** -0 .2 ** * 0. 7* ** 2. 0 0. 3 -0 .2 * 2. 2* * 1. 7* -1 .5 -1 .9 18 .8 ** * sl ov en ia 10 .4 23 .6 +1 3. 2* ** 2. 9* ** -0 .7 * 2. 0* ** 0. 5* ** 0. 0* ** -0 .2 ** * 0. 8* ** 34 .9 -8 .7 -2 .5 -2 4. 7 -5 .5 14 .0 18 .9 -1 8. 5 sp ai n 10 .4 29 .9 +1 9. 5* ** 2. 3* ** -0 .0 1. 3* ** 1. 6* ** 0. 5* ** 0. 6* ** 1. 2* ** 2. 6* * -0 .1 -0 .0 1. 4* ** 0. 4 -1 .2 * -1 .1 9. 9* ** sw ed en 35 .6 45 .3 +9 .6 ** * 0. 8 -0 .0 0. 7 -0 .4 -0 .0 -0 .1 -0 .4 0. 0 0. 7 -0 .3 -1 .6 ** * -0 .3 -1 .4 ** 3. 1* ** 9. 1* ** sw itz er la nd 32 .3 42 .9 +1 0. 6* ** 2. 1* ** 0. 0 1. 5* ** -0 .9 ** * 0. 2* ** 0. 1* ** -0 .4 ** * -0 .8 0. 9 0. 0 0. 8 1. 2* -0 .5 -1 .2 7. 5* ** ta b. a 7: d et ai le d de co m po sit io n of d iff er en ce s i n la bo ur fo rc e pa rt ic ip at io n ra te s b et w ee n 20 00 a nd 2 01 9, w om en (lo gi st ic re gr es sio n) n ot es : l = lo w , m = m ed iu m , h = h ig h, * p < 0. 05 , * * p < 0 .0 1, ** * p < 0 .0 1. a i n d en m ar k, a ll in a ge g ro up 7 074 w er e in ac tiv e in 2 00 0, th er eb y pr ed ic tin g fa ilu re p er fe ct ly a nd a ut om at ic al ly o m itt in g th e va ria bl e in th e m od el . a s a re su lt, a ge g ro up s 6 569 a nd 7 074 w er e m er ge d to a llo w th e m od el to b e es tim at ed . so ur ce : o w n ca lc ul at io ns b as ed o n eu -l fs published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment abstract: gender revolution theory offers a compelling hypothesis about the role of gender equality in contemporary fertility dynamics, suggesting that a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid labour among couples will enhance childbearing. however, the empirical evidence supporting is weak. this study focuses on the division of labour and asks if couples in which the woman works full-time while also doing most of the housework have lower fertility intentions and parity progression. the study is set in estonia, which experienced an early transition to fulltime female employment, but also a prolonged period with a lack of egalitarianism in household work during the state socialist regime and afterwards. we use two family and fertility surveys conducted in the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, both with a register follow-up. applying ordinal and logistic regression models, we analyse both fertility intentions at the time of and actual childbearing in the five years following the surveys. we find that neither the fertility intentions nor the fertility behaviour of full-time employed women is higher in couples with a more equal division of housework, compared with couples in which the woman does most of the housework this finding applies regardless of parity. the conclusions are robust to a number of sensitivity analyses. the results call into question the relevance of division of labour as a factor in explaining socialist and post-socialist fertility behaviour. keywords: gender revolution · housework · childcare · fertility · estonia 1 introduction over the past three decades, the division of paid and unpaid work in the family has become a major topic in explaining fertility dynamics in wealthy countries (espingandersen/billari 2015; goldscheider et al. 2015; mcdonald 2000). in this context, goldscheider, bernhardt, and lappegård (2015) proposed a framework known as the gender revolution theory (grt), which posits that a lack of egalitarianism in the private sphere, such as an unequal division of domestic labour, is one key reason for relatively low levels of fertility. according to grt, in the context of widespread and normatively expected female labour market participation (the first stage of the comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 57-94 (date of release: 05.05.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-05 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-05en0 • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment58 revolution) and the opportunities that this offers for women, there must be a second stage of the revolution that effects changes in the domestic domain. to reduce women’s “second [work] shift” at home (hochschild/machung 1989), which, due to exhaustion, decreases the probability of having a (next) child, men are expected to increase their participation in daily unpaid domestic duties. as men’s involvement in the family increases, grt predicts an increase in childbearing, creating a u-shaped relationship between gender equality and fertility. analyses of individual-level data, testing the role of division of labour, have produced mixed results (for an overview, see leocádio et al. 2025; neyer et al. 2013; raybould/sear 2021). this calls for further attempts to address this question in different contexts. this paper focuses on estonia, a country offering an interesting setting in terms of grt. estonia experienced an early demographic transition, with the total fertility rate (tfr) reaching 2.1 in the late 1920s (gortfelder 2020). the soviet union annexed estonia during world war ii, leading to massive and multifaceted institutional changes (kasekamp 2010). importantly for our analysis, high female labour market participation became the norm in estonia earlier than in the west. by the 1990s, estonia had already had decades of experience with high female labour force participation (puur 2005, 1995). however, even as women participated massively in paid work, there was no parallel increase in men’s involvement in domestic duties (anderson/vöörmann 1996; haavio-mannila/kelam 1996; haaviomannila/rannik 1987). in other words, estonia had a prolonged period in which – applying the terms of the grt – the first stage of the gender revolution was more or less completed, but the second stage had not taken hold. to our knowledge, the existing literature contains only one article with a focus on eastern europe, combining data from five countries (fanelli/profeta 2021). this gap makes the present study a relevant addition to the analysis of fertility intentions and behaviour from a grt perspective. we use data from two comprehensive family surveys from the mid-1990s and 2000s to study how the division of paid and unpaid work in couples is associated with fertility in estonia. the survey data are supplemented with follow-up information from the population register. this allows us to compare fertility intentions stated at time of the survey and actual childbearing behaviour in the following years. 2 theoretical background and previous findings 2.1 theoretical background grt assumes a gendered division of work and family life into separate spheres as its initial state, emerging with industrialisation. paid work was done at a workplace and not at home. accordingly, men are mostly employed in the labour market, and women are left in charge of domestic duties (stanfors/goldscheider 2017). such a division is considered beneficial for childbearing (esping-andersen/billari 2015). in the micro-economic theoretical framework, this division of labour is supported by becker’s (1993: 30-53) idea of specialisation (men as breadwinners, women as division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 59 homemakers), which is also compatible with a relatively high level of fertility for a single family. this equilibrium is disrupted by the first stage of the gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015: 209-210), in which women enter the labour force and higher education en masse, as a precursor for eventually moving into professional occupations. in other words, gender equality emerges in the public sphere (mcdonald 2000). at the micro level, this development produces tensions, since there is a clear opportunity cost for a working woman being the main caregiver. if she indeed pursues full-time work and is still expected to do most of the household tasks and childcare, this increases stress and exhaustion (hochschild/machung 1989) and produces a motivation to limit the number of (additional) children and the care work associated with having (more) children. in other words, having (more) children is seen as incompatible with the many paid and unpaid duties. some of these conflicts between work and family can be reduced, according to grt, in the second stage of the gender revolution (goldscheider et al. 2015: 211), in which men become more active in domestic tasks. in this way, equality also emerges in the private sphere. thus, if a man increases his share in household and childcare tasks, this limits the stress and time demands of (potential) motherhood for a working woman. it also allows her to focus more on her work in terms of workhours and career development, thus decreasing the alternative cost of being a mother (torr/short 2004: 118). with an equitable sharing of tasks and responsibilities both at home and on the labour market, the grt framework would expect a greater willingness to have a (next) child compared to full-time working women whose partners do not contribute in the domestic sphere. grt theorists not only emphasise the couple and its division of labour as relevant for lowering the burden of women, but also point out the relevance of institutions with respect to daycare, parental leave, and labour market norms (esping-andersen/ billari 2015). in other words, the adjustment to full-time working women affects the social order more broadly. due to the inertia of norms and institutions, the adjustment takes place with a time lag, further contributing to low fertility. 2.2 previous findings more than twenty papers have used micro-level data to study the link between the division of domestic labour and fertility. this has been done both for fertility intentions as well as actual childbearing. overall, the literature does not give a clear answer as to whether the division of labour is more relevant for intentions or actual births. from a theoretical perspective, we may assume the association to be stronger for intentions, since behaviour also depends on other concerns that are not under the control of the individual, such as fecundity. the evidence in existing empirical studies is mixed (for a more detailed overview, see leocádio et al. 2025; neyer et al. 2013; raybould/sear 2021). in part, this variation may be driven by differences in how the main variables capturing the division of labour are constructed. these may be based on time use surveys, which present data on time spent on domestic duties in absolute or proportional terms (miettinen • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment60 et al. 2015). other surveys may ask for the overall or task-specific division of labour, which can then be summarised into an index (fanelli/profeta 2021). one explanation for the mixed results may be that some studies analyse the effects for childcare and other household tasks separately and not cumulatively. however, there is no clear answer which of the two is more important. for instance, cooke (2004) finds the division of childcare, but not housework, to be relevant in predicting second births and birth intentions, while suero (2023) finds the opposite. furthermore, we might expect the associations to differ with respect to parity. given the heightened burdens associated with the arrival of the first child, the nonegalitarian division of labour may be theoretically seen to be especially relevant for having or wanting to have a second child (buber-ennser 2003), and this is indeed the most researched parity progression in the available literature. however, the literature is not unanimous in its conclusions (dommermuth et al. 2017). needless to say, country context also matters for whether and to which extent the household division of labour affects fertility. as discussed, relevant contextual factors include female employment, the use of public childcare, and the cultural norms related to them. given that countries change in these aspects, the relationships may change over time as well. for spain, cooke (2009) did not find any association between the division of labour and second births with data from the 1990s, whereas suero (2023) did with data from 2018 and second birth intentions. grt is largely based on the experience of northern european societies, where egalitarianism in both the public and private spheres has been a political priority. micro-level evidence does give some support for the mechanisms underlined by grt. second births in sweden have been shown to be more likely if home management is equally shared (oláh 2003). for denmark, however, the father’s share of childcare does not correlate with the likelihood of a second birth (brodmann et al. 2007). the same is true for norway, and for both childcare and housework, although for couples with two children, an egalitarian division of housework is associated with a greater propensity to have a third child (dommermuth et al. 2017). in finland, a grt-congruent result was found with respect to time spent on household tasks by the woman and the occurrence of a second or third child, although the relationship was not linear (miettinen et al. 2015). goldscheider et al. (2013) paired actual division of labour with preferences for it, showing that consistently egalitarian couples had higher second birth propensity, although the same was not the case with first or third births. studies of german-speaking countries have mostly not supported grt. for germany, it has been shown that a greater share of childcare done by the father is related to a greater propensity to have a second child (cooke 2004). on the other hand, the same study did not find a similar result with respect to household tasks, but did find second births to be more probable in male-breadwinner, femalehousemaker families. for west germany, it has been shown that first-birth rates were higher among non-egalitarian couples (henz 2008). these results have been replicated using newer data, while underpinning that satisfaction with the division of labour, not the division itself, is tied to greater birth intensities (köppen/trappe division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 61 2019). conversely, in austria, satisfaction was not linked to greater second-birth propensity, but the division of tasks itself was (buber-ennser 2003). for the uk and us, it has been shown that an egalitarian division of tasks is associated with higher second-birth probability, although studies also find evidence of greater fertility among specialised couples (schober 2013; torr/short 2004). studies on australia have not found similar associations (craig/siminski 2011; luppi 2016). the empirical record is also mixed for southern europe. in spain, two studies have found no associations with second-birth likelihood (brodmann et al. 2007; cooke 2009), but one has found some non-linear effects for second-birth intentions (suero 2023). for italy, most studies have found working women’s domestic burden to be negatively associated with second-birth risks or intentions (cooke 2009; fiori 2011, mencarini/tanturri 2004; mills et al. 2008; pinnelli/fiori 2008). on the other hand, rinesi et al. (2011) did not find the contribution of the father to matter with respect to intentions or realisations. some studies have combined data from rather different countries. here, the results are also not clear. neyer et al. (2013) found that women with a more egalitarian division of labour profess to have greater second and third birth intentions, but this relationship did not hold with first births. aassve et al. (2015) focused on the connection between gender ideology and division of labour, finding that secondbirth propensity is higher among egalitarian couples, but that this did not apply to first or third births. riederer et al. (2019) found that couples with an egalitarian division of household tasks have greater firstand second-birth intentions, while this did not hold for third births and realisation regardless of parity. importantly for our analysis, only a single paper has so far focused exclusively on eastern europe. eastern europe offers an interesting context given the decadeslong prevalence of female employment and public childcare under state socialism. this sole article pooled data for five countries (bulgaria, czechia, hungary, poland, and russia) to increase the number of cases in the analysis (fanelli/profeta 2021) and indeed found that a higher involvement of fathers in housework is associated with a higher propensity of having a second child. 3 the estonian context estonia was among the countries that completed the fertility transition in the interwar years (gortfelder 2020; katus 1994). world war ii and the soviet occupation substantially altered estonia’s demographic development (sobotka 2011): unlike other countries that had completed the fertility transition before the onset of war, for example in northern and western europe, there was no baby boom in estonia, due to population loss, political violence, and the absence of a post-war increase in economic wellbeing (frejka 2017; klesment et al. 2010: 23-29). the tfr increased to around 2.1 only in the late 1960s, staying at this level until the collapse of state socialism in 1991. the societal transition led to an abrupt decline in the tfr, with a low point of 1.28 in 1998 and some subsequent improvement in the 21st century. • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment62 however, completed fertility shows that much of the change in tfr was due to postponement. socialist countries had an ideological commitment to female work, and indeed women’s labour force participation in the soviet union was higher than in capitalist countries (united nations 1991). especially during and after world war ii, which killed and maimed working-age men, there was a need for an expanded labour force (ofer/vinokur 1985; schuster 1971). in post-war estonia, the lack of working-age men was a profound problem (gortfelder/puur 2023; puur/uuet 2010). economic sovietisation brought about an abrupt transformation. the economy during independence between the world wars had been dominated by smallholding agriculture (norkus/markevičiūtė 2021). taking into account the work done in family farms and non-agricultural family enterprises, working-age female employment stood at 70 percent in the 1930s. the breadwinner-homemaker system was far from the norm in interwar estonia (puur 2005). the subsequent soviet emphasis on industrialisation created many jobs in urban areas and collective agriculture in the countryside (kasekamp 2010), making female employment more visible in employment statistics. unfortunately, we lack reliable employment data from this period, as the first post-war census in the soviet union was only held in 1959. it shows that in estonia, 75.4 percent of women aged 25-49 and 96 percent of men of the same age were employed. successive censuses showed that the sex gap almost disappeared, with female participation rising to above 90 percent (puur 2005, 1995). compared to their counterparts in different “first world” (i.e., capitalist and us-aligned) nations, estonian women in the 1960s on average worked 6-18 years more between the ages of 20 and 50, whereas in the 1980s the difference was 1-13 years (puur 1995). figure 1 shows employment rates by sex for years closer to our study period. these numbers are derived from standard labour force surveys (noorkõiv et al. 1998). the gap between male and female employment rates remains rather similar over time. however, the socialist system was not as egalitarian with respect to income. household income surveys show that from the 1950s-1980s, average female pay was around two-thirds that of men (klesment 2013). in the market system and in recent years, this gap has decreased in estonia (klesment 2019; orazem/vodopivec 2000), as has been the norm in other post-socialist societies (brainerd 2000). high female employment rates were supported by large investments in public childcare institutions. in estonia, the childcare enrolment rates of young children in childcare were high, at least from the 1970s onwards. the childcare enrolment rates of estonian 1-6-year-olds from 1980 onwards are shown in figure 2. childcare enrolment rates started to decline in the late 1980s, reaching their lowest level in the early 1990s. from the late 1990s onwards, childcare enrolment rates have again increased gradually. it is important to note that there were no major cutbacks in the provision and use of public childcare in estonia from the 1990s, as there were in a number of other former socialist states (frejka/gietel-basten 2016). or, to put it differently, there was no relevant drive to make estonian families more “traditional” in following the breadwinner-housewife model in the post-socialist years. high division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 63 female employment and the requisite supporting childcare institutions remained the norm. however, despite the stated soviet ideological goal of equality between the sexes (schuster 1971), high female employment was not accompanied by an equal division of labour when it came to household tasks. this can be seen in time-use surveys from the late soviet period in estonia (aedna/romppanen 1993): in the 1980s, working women spent about two hours less in paid work per week than working men did. however, women spent five hours more doing domestic work, partly due to a lack of modern domestic appliances that were widespread in western countries. another 2-3 hours were spent shopping – a very time-consuming activity in socialist societies struggling in the provision of even the most basic products. on the whole, women spent 6-7 hours more than men doing unpaid work and domestic tasks during the workweek. the gap increases to more than 20 hours when taking into account domestic tasks completed during the weekend. this means that, compared to women in western europe (united nations 1991), estonian women in the 1980s performed about 20-30 hours more paid and unpaid work in a week in total, although this is only a rough estimate due to different methodologies. the transition to a market economy also changed women’s work. first, the total weekly workload of estonian women (paid and unpaid) decreased significantly, and by 1999/2000 “only” exceeded western european women by 6-7 hours (eurostat fig. 1: employment rates for men and women aged 25-49 in estonia, 19892022 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 1989 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2022 year employment rate (%) women men source: labour force survey, statistics estonia database, table tt330 • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment64 2005). second, estonian women’s excess work hours relative to estonian men have also declined. this is shown in figure 3, which compares minutes spent on paid and unpaid domestic work for 25-44-year-olds, as recorded by time-use surveys using the standard international methods. due to differences in methodology, a precise comparison to the late soviet era cannot be made, but the sex gap has undoubtedly shrunk since the 1980s. still, gaps do remain, and in the 1999-2000 and 2009-2010 time use surveys, these gaps constituted more than an hour of extra time in a day. 4 hypotheses based on gender revolution theory, previous findings, and contextual information, we investigate the relationship between the division of labour between partners and expressed fertility intentions at the time of survey as well as realised childbirth in the years following the survey. we primarily examine full-time working women differentiated by their share of the burden in domestic duties. if women who are employed full-time also take care of most of the household tasks, this produces stress and exhaustion, inhibiting subsequent intended and realised childbearing. we test the following hypotheses. fig. 2: childcare enrolment rates for 1-6-year-olds in estonia, 1980-2022 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 year 2022 1-6 year-olds in daycare (%) source: administrative data, statistics estonia database, table ht01 division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 65 hypothesis 1 (h1) proposes that couples in which the woman works in a full position and performs most of the domestic duties will have a lower intention of having another child than couples in which the division of housework is equally divided. hypothesis 2 (h2) proposes the same with respect to having another child in the years following the survey. in the analysis, we separately cover progressions to the first, second, and third or higher parity, assuming there will be differences based on the number of existing children. hypothesis 3 (h3) articulates that a grt-expected relationship (egalitarian couples having higher fertility intentions) would be the strongest with respect to intending to have a second child due to the clear increase in domestic duties following the arrival of the first child. hypothesis 4 (h4) proposes the same for the actual birth of a second child. fig. 3: daily time spent on paid and unpaid work for men and women aged 25-44, estonia, 1999-2021 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 men women men women men women paid workhousehold, family time (min) 1999-2000 2009-2010 2019-2021 source: time use surveys, statistics estonia database, table ak022 • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment66 5 data, variables, and method 5.1 data we use two comprehensive, nationally representative surveys. the estonian fertility and family survey (ffs) was conducted in 1994 for women and 1997 for men (katus et al. 1999, 1995). the estonian gender and generations survey (ggs) was carried out in 2004-05 (katus et al. 2009). the samples were based on the previous census records and created with simple random sampling. the response rates were 85 percent for the female ffs, 81 percent for the male ffs, and 70 percent for the ggs. the main reason for merging data from both surveys as well as both sexes is to increase sample size. we use responses given by both sexes. altogether, the two surveys include data from 15,387 respondents. we successfully linked their data to the estonian population register based on names and birth dates for 15,201 respondents. those not linked are primarily short-term immigrants who had no demographic events recorded in the register while they lived in estonia. for this study, we limited the sample as follows. first, we included partnered respondents in couples in which the woman is aged 18-43, not currently pregnant, and not having problems with conception. this was done based on a question concerning contraception, since the explicit question on the ability to have children was asked only with respect to the respondent and not their partner. for couples with children, only those with children from the current partnership are included. additionally, we only use observations for which the number and main demographic characteristics (sex, year, and month of birth) of the children are identical in the survey and population register. finally, we require the respondents to survive for the five years following the survey. we cannot apply the same condition for the partners of the respondents, since we do not have their surnames, and thus cannot link them to the register. this procedure gave us a sample of 3,352 couples. we divided this into three subsamples based on the number of children at the time of the interview, since the main analysis is based on parity progression. in doing so, we exclude further couples, mostly due to the requirement that for couples with children, the youngest child at the time of the interview must be below the age of 11. this gives us the final analytical sample of 2,594 couples, of whom 497 are childless, 841 have one child, and 1,256 have 2-6 children at the time of the interview. 5.2 variables table 1 shows basic distributions for the variables used in the main analysis. the study uses two dependent variables – one concerning fertility intentions, and the other on fertility behaviour. the existing literature mostly analyses one or the other. we analyse both aspects separately, so this is not a study of fertility realisation. theoretically, we expect that being burdened directly affects fertility intentions (as opposed to ideals) and behaviour, but not the realisation of intentions. first, both surveys asked whether the respondent wanted to have a (next) child – no time limit was attached to this question in the estonian versions of ffs and division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 67 ggs. people could answer as follows: yes, definitely; yes, probably; no, probably; no, definitely. unsurprisingly, table 1 indicates that fertility intentions are highly dependent on the present number of children, with almost all childless respondents wanting to have a child, whereas only a minority of those with two or more children intend to have another birth. second, we study actual childbearing with the linked data from the population register. to be more precise, the behavioural dependent variable is a binary variable indicating if the survey respondent had a(nother) child in the five years (60 months) following the interview. table 1 shows that half of the childless respondents had a birth in this timeframe, as did a third of one-child respondents, and one tenth of those with two or more children. we faced a trade-off regarding the time limit for the behavioural variable. on the one hand, having a shorter observation period after the survey assures a greater accuracy of the main independent variable of interest (i.e., paid and unpaid working hours), since this may change over time, and indeed the partnership itself may end; and with the estonian population register, we cannot reliably capture unregistered cohabitation. on the other hand, a longer observation period gives us more births to observe, along with greater confidence that differences in fertility timing do not influence our conclusions, which aim to be about fertility quantum. indeed, we also tested a three-year limit similar to dommermuth et al. (2017); however, for couples in which the man performs most household tasks, we did not have any first births in this interval and the models became instable. on the whole, however, the conclusions drawn are the same as with the five-year limit. the main variable of interest is a combination of two variables. the main questionnaires for both surveys only include a measure of the overall household work division. the question simply asks whether the main burden of housework is borne by the respondent, their partner, or both equally, which we then recoded based on sex. the main variable of interest thus distinguishes couples in which the woman does more housework, the man does more housework, and couples where housework is shared equally. there is no separate question for childcare, and we assume that most respondents also consider activities involving children to be household tasks. the estonian ggs also had an extra drop-off questionnaire which included a number of questions on specific housework and childcare tasks, but given that this more detailed information is available only for one survey used in this study, it is only used for supplementary analyses. the main variable of interest interacts the overall housework division with the woman’s weekly hours spent in paid work, which we have categorised as 0-34 and 35+ hours – the latter being considered as full-time employment. hence, we have six categories for our main variable of interest. with respect to the theoretical expectations of grt, we are mostly concerned with comparing women who do most of the housework and work full-time, i.e., those with an elevated workload, with women who work full-time, but have an equal division of housework. some empirical work has emphasised the need to distinguish women based on the hours of work (miettinen et al. 2015; mills et al. 2008). • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment68 tab. 1: distribution of the variables used in the models by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ intention to have a (next) child yes, definitely 86,3 47,8 8,4 yes, probably 6,8 29,1 21,1 no, probably 1,6 9,0 20,0 no, definitely 5,2 14,0 50,6 a(nother) child in 5 years yes 49,7 35,0 9,9 no 50,3 65,0 90,1 housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 28,4 24,3 29,4 woman more and 0-34 hours 14,5 33,3 29,9 equally divided and 35+ hours 38,6 21,6 23,8 equally divided and 0-34 hours 13,3 16,6 13,7 man more and 35+ hours 3,4 2,4 2,2 man more and 0-34 hours 1,8 1,8 1,0 sex of the respondent female 59,2 62,0 65,0 male 40,8 38,0 35,0 survey ffs 32,4 55,8 61,6 ggs 67,6 44,2 38,4 age of the woman 18-24 43,9 29,9 5,4 25-29 29,8 37,1 22,2 30-34 13,5 23,8 37,6 35-43 12,9 9,2 34,8 type of partnership marriage 30,4 66,9 87,8 cohabitation 69,6 33,1 12,2 man works full-time yes 84,7 86,2 90,0 no 15,3 13,8 10,0 age of the previous child 0 16,6 7,8 1-2 27,3 21,2 3-6 34,4 39,6 7-10 21,6 31,4 sex composition of children male(s) 48,9 24,1 female(s) 51,1 18,9 both sexes 57,0 division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 69 table 1 shows that approximately one quarter of couples across the three parity progressions under study can be described as placing a “double burden” on the shoulders of women. when it comes to childless couples, more than one third of women work full-time and enjoy an egalitarian housework division; in couples with at least one child, this share is around one fifth, and among couples with two or more children, it is almost one quarter. we use several control variables in our models. given that we use responses of both men and women, we control for sex of the respondent. both surveys had a greater number of women than men in their gross samples; thus, approximately two thirds of couples under analysis are based on answers provided by women. the control for sex is also relevant given that men and women may differ in their understanding of what the housework division is. indeed, we do see a greater share of women than men in our analytical sample reporting women doing more housework. for childless couples, 43.9 percent of women and 41.4 percent of men judged the woman to be doing most of the housework. for couples with one child, these percentages were 59.9 and 53.8, and for couples with two or more children, it was 62.1 and 54.4. similarly, a binary control for survey (ffs or ggs) is included. for childless couples, the share of ggs respondents is higher, and for couples with children, the share of ggs respondents is lower. this difference can be mostly explained by a pronounced fertility postponement that started in estonia in the early 1990s (klesment 2010: 26-29). to model the subsequent childbearing of parents, we include variables on the age and sex (composition) of the previous child or children. for the parity progression from the second or higher birth to third or higher birth, the number of children at the time of the interview is added as a control variable. we also include a variable that controls for whether the couple was married or cohabiting at the time of the interview, whether the man works full-time, and the age of the youngest child. the age of the woman is also controlled for. we have refrained from using additional controls. first, we do not want to overburden the models given the limited numbers of observations. second, we do not want to control for variables that are also correlated with the main variable of interest; in other words, we do not want to overcontrol. however, in appendix 2, we tab. 1: continuation variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ number of children 2 73,8 3 20,4 4+ 5,8 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment70 present models with additional variables for the woman’s educational attainment, the man’s educational attainment, and the woman’s ethnicity. 5.3 method we structure the main models by parity following a common practice in the literature (e.g., neyer et al. 2013; dommermuth et al. 2017). as mentioned, we model both the fertility intentions (without a time limit) as well as actual fertility behaviour during the five years after the survey. for fertility intentions, the dependent variable has four categories with a clear order, meaning that we can use ordinal regression to study childbearing intentions, as it allows more information to be taken into account compared to dichotomising the dependent variable and using binary logistic regression. the assumption of ordinal regression is that the odds ratios derived from the model are the same across all categories of the dependent variable. for actual childbearing, we use standard logistic regression, given that the outcome is binary. for both sets of models, the results are given as odds ratios. in addition to the main analysis, we have fitted additional models, some of which are presented in the section on sensitivity checks and in online appendices. 6 results 6.1 childbearing intentions we first look at the modelling results for intentions to have a(nother) child at the time of the interview (table 2). the estimates are presented as odds ratios with values greater than one indicating higher, and values less than one lower intention to have a child compared to the reference group. thus, we interpret an odds ratio of, for example, 1.2 as a particular group having 1.2 times greater odds of indicating a definite rather than a probable intention, or a probable lack of intention, or a definite lack of intention to have a(nother) child. looking at the main variable of interest, almost no statistically significant group differences can be detected for any of the three subsamples. only for couples with two or more children we can see a lower odds ratio of intending to have another child for couples in which the woman works less than full-time (0-34 hours), but does perform most of the housework, which goes against the expectations drawn from grt. for the parity progression 1→2, we can see a result that takes the expected direction but is not statistically significant (p=0.168), which, given the relatively small number of observations, can also be, admittedly with caution, taken as meaningful. namely, for couples in which the woman is employed full-time and housework is shared equally, we can see an odds ratio consistent with the prediction of grt, i.e., an egalitarian housework division increasing childbearing intentions for couples with women employed full-time. however, the effect size itself is rather small. division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 71 tab. 2: results of ordinal regression for fertility intention by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 0.738 0.517 1.110 0.599 0.750 0.072 equally divided and 35+ hours 0.898 0.770 1.313 0.168 1.132 0.417 equally divided and 0-34 hours 1.086 0.881 1.064 0.794 1.014 0.944 man more and 35+ hours 1.290 0.816 0.909 0.826 0.613 0.276 man more and 0-34 hours 0.931 0.960 1.084 0.881 0.889 0.821 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.075 0.815 0.749 0.045 0.649 0.000 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.684 0.105 1.562 0.003 1.601 0.000 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.221 0.003 0.567 0.001 0.329 0.000 30-34 0.197 0.005 0.332 0.000 0.194 0.000 35-43 0.015 0.000 0.077 0.000 0.074 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 1.040 0.907 1.431 0.025 0.852 0.358 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 1.429 0.382 1.595 0.019 1.805 0.004 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.177 0.481 0.846 0.462 3-6 0.503 0.004 0.744 0.209 7-10 0.365 0.000 0.543 0.019 sex composition of children male(s) 1 1.204 0.178 female(s) 1.106 0.459 1.459 0.009 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.918 0.582 4+ 0.799 0.400 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.336 0.265 0.190 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment72 to summarise the main results in table 2, the estimated differences in fertility intentions between the less equitable couples (the woman does most of the housework in addition to working full-time) and the equitable couples (housework is shared equally and the woman works full-time) do not confirm the theoretical expectations based on the grt. we find no evidence to support either hypotheses 1 or 3. the results for the control variables are mostly in line with previous studies (puur et al. 2019). fertility intentions decline with the age of the woman. notably, being married is associated with higher intentions only for couples with one child at the time of the interview. this underscores the normalisation of cohabitation towards the end of the 20th century, which had already occurred by the time of the two surveys (puur et al. 2012). additionally, for higher-order parity progressions, not having boys increases subsequent childbearing intentions; this observation is less clear among couples who do not have girls. surprisingly, women’s birth intentions are lower than men’s if the couple already has children. ggs respondents who were parents at the time of the survey have higher intentions of having an additional birth than ffs respondents did – this can possibly be explained by the socio-economic improvements from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s in estonia. 6.2 actual childbearing table 3 presents the results of logistic regression models for actual fertility behaviour in the five-year period following both surveys. odds ratios greater than one indicate a higher propensity for having a(nother) child, while odds ratios less than one indicate a lower propensity. the estimated odds ratios for the difference between women who do more housework than their partners while working full-time and their counterparts who have egalitarian housework divisions consistently show no statistically significant difference in childbearing propensity. this also applies to one-child families. hence, we do not find support for hypotheses 2 and 4. additionally, among couples with children, those in which the woman is less burdened due to taking on less responsibility for housework and/or working less than full-time do not show a higher propensity for childbearing than the reference group does. for the progression from parity zero to one, we see that among couples in which the man performs more housework, the propensity for transition to parenthood is lower than for the reference group, regardless of the work hours of the woman. however, such couples, as table 1 shows, make up only 5 percent of the observations. we find some significant group differences for the estimates of control variables. respondents’ sex appears as a strong predictor of the progression to first birth. ggs respondents show higher parity progression across all three models, which can be explained by the increased fertility rates in the late 2000s due to improving socioeconomic conditions and the introduction of a generous parental leave system in 2004 (puur et al. 2023). the woman’s age is negatively associated with the propensity to have a(nother) child. the type of partnership is irrelevant with respect to further division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 73 tab. 3: results of logistic regression for childbearing by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 0.906 0.757 0.968 0.886 1.080 0.786 equally divided and 35+ hours 1.135 0.605 1.168 0.497 0.803 0.476 equally divided and 0-34 hours 0.697 0.284 1.247 0.404 1.064 0.855 man more and 35+ hours 0.275 0.024 0.887 0.832 1.040 0.960 man more and 0-34 hours 0.089 0.029 1.019 0.975 1.231 0.803 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.873 0.002 0.932 0.654 0.983 0.937 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.639 0.025 1.863 0.000 1.863 0.003 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.557 0.011 1.089 0.657 0.558 0.089 30-34 0.550 0.054 0.869 0.557 0.256 0.000 35-43 0.058 0.000 0.220 0.000 0.067 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 0.814 0.379 0.853 0.354 0.938 0.822 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 0.949 0.855 1.442 0.113 1.118 0.740 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.276 0.286 1.318 0.434 3-6 0.936 0.794 1.426 0.350 7-10 0.476 0.020 1.290 0.570 sex composition of children male(s) 1 0.942 0.814 female(s) 0.884 0.416 1.164 0.554 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.838 0.582 4+ 3.886 0.000 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.215 0.110 0.135 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment74 childbearing. this finding is in line with the early acceptance of cohabitation in estonia. the age of the previous child and the sex composition of children already born do not show significant associations with having an additional birth. for the progression to higher-order births, those with 4+ children at the time of interview have a much higher propensity for having another child than those with only two children. this is unsurprising given that parity progression ratios tend to increase at higher parities (andersson 2008). 6.3 sensitivity analysis to probe the robustness of our results, we conducted a number of sensitivity analyses which can be found in the appendices and are summarised here. first, in appendix 1, we used a different way to study the association between housework division and childbearing. we used the housework division as the main variable of interest, with women’s employment status added as a separate control. for intentions at higher parities, we find that respondents in couples who share an equal housework division have slightly higher intentions, though this is only marginally statistically significant (p=0.083). for actual childbearing, the same is true for the progression from first to second birth. as with the main models, the propensity of transition to parenthood is significantly lower for childless couples in which the man performs more household tasks. second, appendix 2 shows the results for models that are estimated for all parities combined. this is done for two reasons. first, parity-specific models may be constrained by the small number of couples under analysis and may thus hide statistically significant effects. second, such modelling would give us a more general picture of the relationship between the division of paid and unpaid labour in the family and fertility. the results given in appendix 2, however, are in line with the main models, and do not show the group differences we would expect based on grt. third, appendix 3 includes models using larger analytical samples in order to ease issues with statistical power. we have done this by easing the restriction criteria compared to the main models, as well as other supplemental analyses. the only noteworthy change occurs for the intentions model 1→2. in the main model, fulltime working women with an equal housework division showed a very marginally statistically significant result (or 1.313, p = 0.168). table a4 shows that with a larger analytical sample, the result is more pronounced (or 1.666, p = 0.005). fourth, fertility intentions are of course relevant for actual childbearing behaviour. hence, appendix 4 shows the results of logistic regression models for childbearing during the five years after the interview, with an additional binary control variable applied to indicate whether the respondent indicated an intention to have a(nother) child. these extra models do not change the conclusions drawn from the main results. fifth, we took a more detailed view of both housework and childcare division based on the ggs material and follow the approach used by dommermuth, hohmann-marriott, and lappegård, (2017). appendix 5 shows no statistically division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 75 significant support for the grt expectation. however, this is a high bar, given the very small number of observations. for childbearing intentions, we do see hints that couples with two or more children and with a smaller female housework share have elevated intentions for having an additional child. for actual childbearing, the results would point out that childless couples with a higher share of housework done by the woman as well as couples with one child and a higher share of childcare done by the woman have higher propensities to have a(nother) birth. for childless couples, the result is statistically significant. 7 conclusion and discussion this study has analysed the division of unpaid labour in the family as a factor for fertility intentions and childbearing in estonia. based on gender revolution theory (grt), equality in the division of housework and childcare is expected to be linked with higher fertility, resulting from gender equality in both the domestic and public spheres. estonian society is characterised by the early emergence of high female employment, which was both an important ideological goal and a reality during the period of state socialism. however, when it comes to participation in housework and childcare, men did not reciprocate and thus, as captured by time use surveys, women had to spend significantly more time doing unpaid work than men did. although men’s hours in paid employment were somewhat longer, women’s total working hours (paid and unpaid) were far higher. hence, the estonian situation under state socialism is comparable with the first stage of the gender revolution in the grt framework. our study period begins after the end of state socialism, using two comprehensive family and fertility surveys conducted in the 1990s and 2000s. we analyse the association between the division of household chores with both fertility intentions as well as fertility behaviour in the years following the surveys. the article’s conclusions are clear: in the main results and in the additional analyses, we do not find a positive association between the degree of division of domestic labour and fertility. that is, the results suggest that fertility intentions and outcomes are not higher among those who report more gender equal divisions of domestic duties, unlike what we would have expected based on the grt framework. comparing full-time employed women who have an equal division of labour at home with those who do more housework than their male partners, we find no sizeable or statistically significant differences, regardless of parity and fertility measure. we also ran supplementary models that support these conclusions, with one exception for intending to have a second child (appendix 3). this study has limitations. first, the measure of the division of household tasks used in the main models is rather crude. ideally, the more detailed questions on housework and childcare tasks of the ggs would have been used in the main analysis, but we were constrained by sample size. as discussed in the section on sensitivity analyses, using this more detailed information on housework and childcare did not produce different results (appendix 5). second, the division of housework is • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment76 only captured at the time of the interview. however, it may change over time, as might some control variables. for the analysis of actual childbearing following the interview, this presents a potential issue. moreover, some couples separated in the five years after the survey, which we are also unable to take into account. third, the data on housework division is only drawn from one partner – the other’s perception, as well as the “true” division, may be different. however, we have controlled for the sex of the respondent, which likely affects these perceptions. fourth, it can be argued that it is not the division itself that is important for fertility, but satisfaction with the division (neyer et al. 2013; köppen/trappe 2019). we have not touched on this question because such information is not available in our data. our results raise the question of whether we can expect grt-specific associations between housework division and fertility to function in the context of state socialism and its immediate aftermath. grt is based on the experiences of western, capitalist countries, and thus emphasises the aspirations of women, their subjective wellbeing, and alternative costs. under state socialism, the expansion of female labour market participation was driven by top-down policies. likewise, the transition to a market economy – our study period – was difficult, and thus female employment could be interpreted as being more about “survival” than “self-expression,” to use the terms by inglehart and welzel (2024). indeed, the results of values surveys have shown estonia in the 1990s and 2000s to have been dominated by survival values, which is associated with more difficult material circumstances and an uncertain socio-political climate (ainsaar/strenze 2019; inglehart 2018). the family surveys analysed here show that people in estonia did have survival/materialist reasons for childbearing, with half of respondents noting that receiving support at an old age is an important reason for having children (gortfelder/rahnu 2020). the existence of such views may weaken the effects of greater workloads as proposed by grt. in other words, economic hardship and the dominance of survival values may counteract the mechanisms of stress and opportunity costs. the other article that focuses on eastern europe on this topic (fanelli/profeta 2021) did find a limited, statistically significant effect with respect to having a second child. it used data gathered from 2004-2011, which might be a reason for this result. this would mean that economic progress and changes in values in more recent data make the finding that greater female workloads do inhibit childbearing more likely. however, we note again that the empirical support for grt expectations with micro-level data is weak in estonia, and previous literature has focused on a variety of contexts (neyer et al. 2013). additionally, at the macro level, the proposed association is not clearly visible (kolk 2019). even if some micro-level analyses have found statistically significant and theoretically expected results, the effect sizes are limited. in this sense, our findings do not diverge from the existing literature. division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 77 references aassve, arnstein et al. 2015: what is your couple type? gender ideology, housework sharing, and babies. in: demographic research 32,30: 835-858. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2015.32.30 aedna, elmar; romppanen, antti 1993: hours of work and time use. in: lugus, olev; pentti, vartia (eds.): estonia and finland : a retrospective socioeconomic comparison. helsinki: etla = the research institute of the 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appendix 1, we use housework division as the main variable of interest, and the woman’s employment status as a control. the modelling is done separate-ly for fertility intentions and behaviour. division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 83 tab. a1: results of ordinal regressions for fertility intention by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division woman more 1 1 1 equally divided 1.027 0.931 1.134 0.381 1.223 0.083 man more 1.279 0.775 0.925 0.817 0.807 0.526 woman works full time no 1 1 1 1 yes 1.095 0.792 1.009 0.955 1.221 0.125 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.103 0.749 0.749 0.045 0.649 0.000 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.685 0.105 1.580 0.002 1.592 0.000 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.217 0.002 0.571 0.003 0.330 0.000 30-34 0.195 0.005 0.336 0.000 0.195 0.000 35-43 0.015 0.000 0.076 0.000 0.074 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 1.041 0.903 1.425 0.027 0.853 0.359 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 1.399 0.410 1.635 0.012 1.795 0.004 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.196 0.437 0.838 0.435 3-6 0.508 0.005 0.746 0.211 7-10 0.371 0.000 0.541 0.018 sex composition of children male(s) 1 1.207 0.171 female(s) 1.100 0.484 1.467 0.008 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.917 0.576 4+ 0.807 0.421 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.334 0.263 0.189 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment84 tab. a2: results of logistic regressions for childbearing by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division woman more 1 1 1 equally divided 1.006 0.978 1.229 0.199 0.895 0.599 man more 0.210 0.002 0.965 0.929 1.098 0.869 woman works full time no 1 1 1 yes 1.379 0.155 0.987 0.943 1.108 0.759 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.876 0.002 0.931 0.652 0.988 0.956 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.613 0.029 1.857 0.000 1.856 0.004 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.568 0.014 1.085 0.669 0.557 0.087 30-34 0.555 0.058 0.868 0.551 0.257 0.000 35-43 0.057 0.000 0.220 0.000 0.067 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 0.812 0.373 0.854 0.357 0.939 0.824 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 0.968 0.908 1.436 0.115 1.108 0.759 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.272 0.292 1.299 0.457 3-6 0.936 0.797 1.415 0.358 7-10 0.475 0.020 1.277 0.584 sex composition of children male(s) 1 0.945 0.823 female(s) 0.885 0.422 1.174 0.532 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.844 0.598 4+ 3.926 0.000 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.214 0.110 0.135 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 85 appendix 2: models for all parities combined appendix 2 shows the results of models for all parities combined. these additional models aim to overcome the limitations of parity-specific models caused by the small number of respondents. tab. a3: results of ordinal regression for fertility intention and logistic regression for childbearing, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable intention childbearing or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 1.009 0.938 1.033 0.819 equally divided and 35+ hours 1.181 0.144 1.101 0.496 equally divided and 0-34 hours 1.213 0.150 1.095 0.585 man more and 35+ hours 0.815 0.469 0.541 0.096 man more and 0-34 hours 1.064 0.860 0.575 0.216 sex of the respondent male 1 1 female 0.738 0.000 1.167 0.145 survey ffs 1 1 ggs 1.722 0.000 1.812 0.000 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 25-29 0.353 0.000 0.805 0.091 30-34 0.182 0.000 0.493 0.000 35-43 0.051 0.000 0.104 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 cohabitation 1.218 0.063 0.906 0.414 man works full-time no 1 1 yes 1.718 0.000 1.184 0.274 number of existing children 0 1 1 1 0.152 0.000 0.585 0.000 2 0.037 0.000 0.175 0.000 3 0.037 0.000 0.137 0.000 4+ 0.031 0.000 0.619 0.172 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.528 0.284 n (couples) 2594 2594 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment86 appendix 3: models with a larger number of observations the main modelling was done with the restrictions discussed in section 4.1. given that our analytical samples are quite small, we relaxed some of the restrictions in order to be able to use more observations. more precisely, we removed the following restrictions for intentions: (1) successful link to register data, (2) number of children for the respondent equals 0-6, (3) all existing children were raised with the present partner, (4) all children are alive at the time of the interview, (5) the information on children is the same in the survey and register, and (6) the respondent did not die in the five years following the interview. for childbearing after the survey, we have to use (1) successful link to register data and (6) the respondent did not die in the five years following the interview. table a4 shows the results on childbearing intentions, table a5 the results on actual childbearing after the survey. the last line gives the number of cases in the models, which can be compared to the tables for the main models. we note that the analytical samples and thus the results are identical to the main model for 0→1 fertility behaviour. division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 87 tab. a4: results of ordinal regressions for fertility intention by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 0.678 0.383 1.070 0.704 0.798 0.085 equally divided and 35+ hours 0.792 0.506 1.666 0.005 1.175 0.204 equally divided and 0-34 hours 0.877 0.795 1.069 0.757 1.217 0.209 man more and 35+ hours 1.619 0.660 0.802 0.556 0.769 0.480 man more and 0-34 hours 0.921 0.954 1.215 0.699 1.584 0.283 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 0.912 0.767 0.793 0.074 0.690 0.000 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.527 0.156 1.549 0.001 1.543 0.000 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.240 0.002 0.613 0.004 0.363 0.000 30-34 0.194 0.003 0.343 0.000 0.216 0.000 35-43 0.017 0.000 0.081 0.000 0.083 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 1.025 0.936 1.544 0.001 1.309 0.018 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 1.716 0.150 1.648 0.005 1.482 0.009 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.196 0.412 1.102 0.592 3-6 0.530 0.006 1.021 0.910 7-10 0.348 0.000 0.788 0.240 sex composition of children male(s) 1 1.163 0.199 female(s) 1.130 0.322 1.563 0.000 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.878 0.272 4+ 0.592 0.003 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.329 0.241 0.162 n (couples) 535 1035 1875 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment88 tab. a5: results of logistic regressions for childbearing by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 0.906 0.757 0.912 0.662 1.121 0.617 equally divided and 35+ hours 1.135 0.605 1.290 0.225 0.909 0.694 equally divided and 0-34 hours 0.697 0.284 1.123 0.640 1.111 0.697 man more and 35+ hours 0.275 0.024 1.014 0.977 1.056 0.933 man more and 0-34 hours 0.089 0.029 0.914 0.879 1.878 0.871 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.873 0.002 0.921 0.583 0.972 0.869 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.639 0.025 1.918 0.000 2.222 0.000 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.557 0.011 1.086 0.644 0.676 0.196 30-34 0.550 0.054 0.780 0.264 0.348 0.001 35-43 0.058 0.000 0.188 0.000 0.103 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 0.814 0.379 0.861 0.333 1.322 0.134 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 0.949 0.855 1.372 0.141 1.058 0.822 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.378 0.146 1.444 0.205 3-6 0.972 0.905 1.796 0.052 7-10 0.606 0.079 1.394 0.349 sex composition of children male(s) 1 0.856 0.469 female(s) 0.905 0.487 1.259 0.270 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 1.024 0.915 4+ 2.306 0.003 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.215 0.106 0.128 n (couples) 497 959 1721 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 89 appendix 4: models for childbearing with an additional control for birth intention table a6 shows the results of the models on actual childbearing by adding a binary control variable on birth intentions to the main models. this binary variable is produced based on the birth intention question that was used as the dependent variable in the models for fertility intentions. to construct a binary variable, we grouped the answers for definitely and probably wanting or not wanting to have a(nother) birth. • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment90 tab. a6: results of logistic regressions for childbearing by parity, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p housework division × woman’s work hours woman more and 35+ hours 1 1 1 woman more and 0-34 hours 0.909 0.765 0.968 0.888 1.121 0.696 equally divided and 35+ hours 1.126 0.628 1.114 0.644 0.793 0.460 equally divided and 0-34 hours 0.689 0.269 1.229 0.443 1.008 0.981 man more and 35+ hours 0.271 0.023 0.799 0.697 1.133 0.875 man more and 0-34 hours 0.095 0.034 0.912 0.879 1.391 0.709 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 1.877 0.002 0.960 0.800 1.138 0.557 survey ffs 1 1 1 ggs 1.614 0.031 1.747 0.001 1.633 0.024 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.571 0.016 1.154 0.459 0.726 0.366 30-34 0.550 0.054 0.996 0.988 0.380 0.013 35-43 0.081 0.000 0.382 0.028 0.129 0.000 type of partnership marriage 1 1 1 cohabitation 0.819 0.394 0.816 0.241 1.006 0.983 man works full-time no 1 1 1 yes 0.946 0.847 1.323 0.234 0.923 0.815 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.249 0.336 1.201 0.610 3-6 1.048 0.857 1.367 0.419 7-10 0.561 0.075 1.385 0.474 sex composition of children male(s) 1 0.898 0.678 female(s) 0.854 0.305 1.103 0.712 both 1 number of children 2 1 3 0.834 0.580 4+ 4.383 0.000 childbearing intention no yes 2.682 0.157 3.327 0.000 3.664 0.000 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.221 0.151 0.192 n (couples) 497 841 1256 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 91 appendix 5: a more detailed view of housework and childcare tables a7 and a8 show the results of the models based on more detailed data on the division of work for different household and childcare tasks. we follow the example of dommermuth et al. (2017), who used a similar approach for analysing norwegian ggs and register data. we did not include this analysis as the main analysis due to the low sample sizes shown at the bottom of tables a7 and a8. dommermuth et al. (2017) used four questions each on household and childcare tasks. for household tasks, these were: (1) cooking, (2) dish washing, (3) grocery shopping, and (4) cleaning. for childcare tasks, these were: (1) dressing children, (2) putting children to bed, (3) staying at home with sick children, and (4) playing with children and/or taking part in leisure activities with them. the norwegian ggs gave respondents six answer categories (always respondent, usually respondent, equally, usually partner, always partner, someone else). the estonian ggs has four answer categories (mostly respondent, equally, mostly partner, someone else). this means that the construction of the main independent variables was slightly different than dommermuth et al. (2017), but we followed the same logic. we added up the responses given to produce indices. the index equals three if the woman did most of a specific task; two if the task was equally divided between the partners; and one if the man or someone else did most of the task. thus, the range of the indices was from 4-12, with the mode for both indices being the maximum. given this uneven distribution, the main variables of interest were coded as: woman heavily burdened (index 11-12), woman burdened (9-10), and other (4-8). given the small sample sizes, we only include some basic control variables. • mark gortfelder, allan puur, martin klesment92 tab. a7: results of ordinal regressions for parity-specific fertility intention, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p division of housework woman heavily burdened 1 1 1 woman burdened 0.571 0.291 1.096 0.751 1.233 0.373 woman less burdened 1.307 0.653 0.854 0.678 1.363 0.330 division of childcare woman heavily burdened 1 1 woman burdened 1.298 0.368 1.307 0.256 woman less burdened 1.089 0.824 0.758 0.405 woman’s work hours 0-34 1 1 1 35+ 0.883 0.807 0.504 0.022 1.677 0.042 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 2.062 0.097 1.443 0.142 0.639 0.038 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.240 0.041 0.240 0.001 0.368 0.083 30-34 0.246 0.087 0.212 0.001 0.224 0.010 35-43 0.018 0.000 0.038 0.000 0.082 0.000 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.539 0.315 0.913 0.805 3-6 0.784 0.582 0.594 0.191 7-10 0.603 0.305 0.339 0.014 number of children 2 1 3 0.685 0.183 4+ 0.647 0.384 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.303 0.283 0.202 n (couples) 227 245 341 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations division of labour, fertility intentions, and childbearing in estonia • 93 tab. a8: results of logistic regressions for childbearing by parity progression, couples with a woman aged 18-43 variable 0→1 1→2 2+→3+ or p or p or p division of housework woman heavily burdened 1 1 1 woman burdened 0.427 0.018 1.040 0.896 1.216 0.603 woman less burdened 0.368 0.008 0.823 0.631 0.410 0.186 division of childcare woman heavily burdened 1 1 woman burdened 0.637 0.135 1.067 0.870 woman less burdened 0.784 0.569 0.793 0.688 woman’s work hours 0-34 1 1 1 35+ 1.463 0.223 1.387 0.305 1.384 0.464 sex of the respondent male 1 1 1 female 2.269 0.004 1.318 0.303 0.904 0.785 age of the woman 18-24 1 1 1 25-29 0.838 0.580 0.845 0.632 0.505 0.316 30-34 0.527 0.131 1.027 0.949 0.155 0.010 35-43 0.059 0.000 0.204 0.012 0.037 0.000 age of the previous child 0 1 1 1-2 1.647 0.206 1.440 0.542 3-6 0.813 0.637 2.060 0.260 7-10 0.714 0.523 1.258 0.764 number of children 2 1 3 0.791 0.694 4+ 8.785 0.001 nagelkerke pseudo r2 0.214 0.106 0.201 n (couples) 227 245 341 source: estonian ffs and ggs, authors’ calculations published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures ari klængur jónsson abstract: iceland is one of the western countries that have experienced an unexpected fertility decrease in the 2010s. in this study, the aggregate icelandic fertility decline is dissected to explore which fertility components are the main drivers behind the decline since 2010 in order to better understand whether the development is associated with compositional changes or linked to changes such as increased propensities of childlessness and decreased propensities to have another child. as such, it contributes empirical evidence to ongoing theorisation within current fertility debates. official administrative register data are analysed by means of eventhistory analysis. findings are presented as parity-specific birth risks and in the form of kaplan-meier estimates of synthetic period-based cohorts of women and men progressing to parity one over calendar years. in terms of results, we find that the fertility decline was concentrated around first births, and the decline can principally be attributed to women under the age of thirty. propensities to remain childless have increased slightly since 2013, while there were no declines in the intensities to have a second and a third child. hence, the development in iceland appears to be driven by clear postponement of parenthood but not altered childbearing behaviour in terms of propensities to have a second and a third child. results do not necessary contradict theories under the umbrella of the gender-relations framework, but they highlight the importance of exploring other factors impacting the transition to parenthood, such as perceived global and welfare uncertainties. socioeconomic differentials in first-birth fertility and factors affecting postponement and ultimate childlessness should be explored further, as well as short-term developments in higher-order birth intensities during adverse circumstances, such as the 2008 economic crisis and the covid-19 pandemic, during which periods the third-birth intensities increased. keywords: fertility · fertility trends · iceland 1 introduction for roughly three decades, between 1980 and 2010, the total fertility rate (tfr) of iceland remained relatively high and stable. the tfr averaged around 2.1 children per woman and fluctuations in the rates were relatively small. icelandic fertility was comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 49 (2024): 169-180 (date of release: 03.06.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-07 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-07en7 • ari klængur jónsson170 among the highest in europe and the country surpassed the other nordic countries, denmark, finland, norway, and sweden, in terms of fertility outcomes (jónsson 2017). however, during the past decade, fertility has declined almost continuously from one year to the next, repeatedly reaching new historically low levels. in 2022 the tfr was 1.59 – a new all-time low for the country. prior to 2013, the relatively sturdy tfr of iceland had hardly dropped below 2.0: 1.93 was the previous lowest point in the mid-1980s and again in 2002 (statistics iceland 2023). while iceland is not an exception in this regard – i.e., fertility has declined in most developed countries since the great recession of 2008-2009 (matysiak et al. 2021; vignoli et al. 2020a) – this is nevertheless remarkable. in the words of vignoli and his colleagues (2020a: 1): “[c]ontemporary europe is facing a new fertility winter”; and iceland appears to be one of the countries that are freezing. in the case of iceland, we do not fully know whether this development is fuelled by compositional effects related to previous fertility and changes in parityspecific age schedules, or whether reasons are connected to changes in the underlying childbearing behaviour as such. as a fertility measurement, the tfr has shortcomings. the tfr does not account for parity or birth intervals, and thus, the actual group under exposure may be distorted (jónsson 2017; ní bhrolcháin 1987). to gain knowledge about the determinants behind the fertility development, we need to establish which fertility components are the main drivers behind the decline, i.e., whether the engine is fuelled by the postponement of becoming a parent; increased levels of childlessness; declining propensities to have a second and a third child; or if it is a full-fledged fertility decline, irrespective of birth order. different explanations may apply to each of these factors, depending on their contribution to the fertility decline. the main objective of this contribution is to provide insight into the trend of recent fertility decline by focusing on each of these fertility components using a period perspective. longitudinal administrative register data are analysed by means of event history techniques. as such it is an update of jónsson’s (2017) study covering the childbearing trends in iceland during 1982-2013. for the first time, we also provide information on parity-specific fertility behaviour of men in iceland. an in-depth analysis of icelandic childbearing trends advances our understanding of this intriguing development as well as contributes empirical evidence to ongoing theorisation within current fertility debates (see e.g., comolli et al. 2021; vignoli et al. 2020b). the icelandic saga is an interesting case-study, as the country is considered one of the forerunners of family-demographic change (hellstrand et al. 2021; jónsson 2021, 2020), and as such has the potential to provide novel insights that are relevant also for a broader contextual setting. 2 theoretical background to a large extent, the usual suspects in terms of explaining fertility change, such as fluctuations in the business cycle (sobotka et al. 2011; andersson 2000), reforms in family policies (duvander et al. 2019; jónsson 2018; andersson 2004), and development fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures • 171 in gender relations (goldscheider et al. 2015; mcdonald 2000), appear to be shooting blanks when it comes to providing insight into this recent development depicted by an almost universal drop in fertility. in iceland for instance, economic development was positive during most of the past decade (statistics iceland 2023), which, according to several studies, should have had an elevating effect on fertility – rather than the opposite (comolli 2017; sobotka et al. 2011; hoem 2000; andersson 2000). reforms in family policies were also made during this time; the parental leave was extended from nine months to twelve, and the cap on parental leave benefits was raised (alþingi 2020). however, a trend of increased fertility did not follow, contrary to what happened after a parental leave reform in iceland at the beginning of the 21st century (jónsson 2018). in relation to gender equality, iceland is considered the most gender-equal country in the world (world economic forum 2023), which should, from a theoretical perspective, result in a relatively high fertility (goldscheider et al. 2015; esping-andersen/billari 2015; mcdonald 2000). according to the gender-relations theoretical framework, social norms, attitudes, and social institutions need to promote and enforce gender equity within societies and enable people to reconcile work and family life, so that women do not need to choose between building a career and having children. for instance, goldscheider et al. (2015) argue that a gender revolution needs to materialise, which involves men and women to participate equally within the home sphere and to share the burden of family life for fertility to increase. in a similar vein, esping-andersen and billari (2015) conclude that gender egalitarian norms need to become dominant within societies and be supported by social institutions for a platform of elevated fertility to develop. mcdonald (2000, 2013) claims that modern fertility outcomes are directly related to how women perceive the actual opportunities they have to combine work and family life. gender egalitarian family policies must support parents so that women do not need to choose between having a family or a career. the nordic countries are among the most gender egalitarian societies in the world. also, they have implemented some of the most beneficial family policies in europe, such as generous parental leave programs and highly subsidised universal childcare systems, which are an integral part of the nordic welfare regime (korpi 2000). the combination of (the previously) relatively high fertility across the nordic region and high rates of labour-force participation among men and women have been attributed to their egalitarian and comprehensive welfare states (espingandersen et al. 2002; mcdonald 2000). in iceland, the duration of the parental leave is twelve months which is divided equally between the parents (while either parent can transfer six weeks of the leave to the other parent) (alþingi 2020). at the age of two, almost all children are enrolled into the preschool system (jónsson 2018). nevertheless, as is the case for the other nordic countries, which all have a similar family-policy setup, during the past decade, iceland has been experiencing its most severe fertility crisis in modern times – regardless of the country’s generous policies and their gender egalitarian emphasis. the total fertility rates of iceland, norway and finland are at an historic low, and the tfrs of denmark and sweden are close to the same mark (nordic statistics 2024). this poses certain challenges to researchers, not only because the ongoing fertility drop was unforeseen, but primarily because • ari klængur jónsson172 the contemporary theories did not predict the current situation in the nordics to unfold (vignoli et al. 2020a). since the 1980s, advocates of a second demographic transition have associated the weakening role of the family and declining fertility in developed countries with increased individualism and people’s growing need for self-fulfilment (lesthaeghe 2010). authors of the narrative framework on the other hand propose that in the aftermath of the great recession of 2008-2009, the recent “fertility winter” is connected to individuals’ subjective narratives of their future and the rise of diverse uncertainties in a highly globalised world (vignoli et al. 2020a/b). people, they argue, produce their own personal narratives of the future – always under certain levels of uncertainty – which again are embedded in social elements and their interactions. while fundamental uncertainty has always accompanied fertility decisions, the escalating speed of daily life, innovation and technological change, increased income inequality and volatile markets make it harder for individuals to imagine their future and choose between alternatives. these fictional narratives, or imaginative futures, are partially deducted from past experiences, but more importantly they are products of people’s current conditions and their expectations of future status (vignoli et al. 2020a/b). arriving from a similar explanatory standpoint, comolli et al. (2021) found that in the aftermath of the great recession, fertility response across countries, parities, ages, and educational groups was surprisingly uniform across the nordic region. rather than placing a strict focus on the potential effects of economic indicators in explaining subsequent fertility outcomes, such as gross domestic product growth rates and unemployment rates, the authors argue that we also need to consider the role of welfare states, their typology, and governmental reactions at the time of economic crisis. while welfare retrenchments might have an impact on period total fertility in the short term, taking into account what the authors refer to as individually perceived welfare and global uncertainties might provide us with better insight into the (at the time of the writing) ongoing fertility decline – not only in the nordic countries but in most other developed countries as well: “to view childbearing outcomes after a crisis from a broader perspective that incorporates economic and welfare state issues as well as individual perceptions of – economic, welfare, and global – uncertainties may help piece together the puzzles regarding post-crisis and current fertility declines.” (comolli et al. 2021: 497). 3 data and methods to fulfil the objectives of the study, we use longitudinal administrative register data from statistics iceland that cover the total population born in iceland at relevant ages for childbearing during the study period. we construct life-course histories of everyone residing in iceland during 1998-2022 and follow them between ages 15 and 46. by means of event-history analysis, we calculate the relative risks of giving birth to a first, second, and third child, standardised for age of men and women, and, where appropriate, duration from previous birth, using parity-specific, piecewise constant fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures • 173 exponential models, and depict them as annual indices of the force of fertility during a period of 25 years (cf. hoem 1993; andersson 1999; jónsson 2017). as such, the estimates are standardised period rates that reflect the childbearing behaviour of the relevant population at risk (ní bhrolcháin 1992; andersson 1999). we also provide kaplan-meier non-parametric estimates for synthetic period-based cohorts in their progressions to become a parent for women and men and, for women only, changes in birth spacing over the study period in terms of the progressions to a second and third child. combined, the analyses advance our knowledge about whether the fertility decline during the past decade was driven by compositional changes or if it was mainly related to changes in the underlying childbearing behaviour at different birth orders. to gain deeper context and detect potential changes that had begun already before our study period of interest, we start the observations in 1998 and thus provide a quarter-of-a-century long overview of icelandic fertility trends. for a detailed discussion about methodology see: hoem (1993); andersson (2000; 1999); and jónsson (2017). 3.1 variables in terms of first births, our main duration variable is the subject’s age. the time unit is measured in person-months and categorised into 31 single-year age groups (1545). childless individuals become exposed at age 15, and they enter the analysis in 1998 or the month they turn 15 – whichever comes last. the subjects are followed until they become a parent or are censored: i.e., if they emigrate, die, turn 46, or reach the end of the study period in december 31, 2022 – whichever comes first. when it comes to birth orders two and three, our subjects become exposed at the time of previous birth. parents enter the analyses at that time or in 1998, whichever comes last. the main duration variable is the age of the last-born child, measured in months from birth, and categorised into nine groups: 1-12 months; 13-24 months; 25-36 months; 37-48 months; 49-60 months; 61-72 months; 73-96 months; 97-120 months; and 121 months and more. the parent’s age is categorised into 12 groups. subjects are right-censored on the same grounds as for first births and left-censored if multiple births occurred the first/second time, parents were older than 45 when they had their last child or emigrated before having their first/second child. calendar year is included in 25 single-year categories (1998-2022) in figures 2, 3 and 4 and in five-year groups in figures 1 and 5: 1998-2002; 2003-2007; 2008-2012; 2013-2017; 2018-2022. observational spells that refer to periods before 1998 are excluded from the analyses (left-truncated). 3.2 results figure 1 shows kaplan-meier cumulative probability estimates of synthetic cohorts of childless men and women progressing to parity one before turning 46 by calendaryear groups. the figure depicts a postponement of parenthood during the full study period, as the estimates indicate that the age at which half of the men and women have progressed to parenthood increased by about three years between the first • ari klængur jónsson174 and last years of observation. the non-parametric estimates also demonstrate that the tendency of remaining childless became much stronger from 2013 onward, and more so for men than women. according to the estimates, approximately 11 percent of women and 17-18 percent of men were prone to stay childless at age 46 prior to 2013, but 14-15 percent and 25 percent respectively during 2013-2022. figure 2 displays first-birth risks relative to the year 2004. the estimates show that after a relatively stable period during 2002-2009, the first-birth intensities declined quite drastically between 2010 and 2016. from 2016 onward, the decline in first-birth rates seems to have come to a halt. figure 3 depicts this development in more detail. here, we use two separate models, one for ages 15-29 and another one for ages 30-45. as such, the estimates are only comparable within models and cannot tell absolute differences between the two categories in the propensity to become a parent. as figure 3 shows, the decline in the first-birth rate was mainly driven by decreasing first-birth intensities among people in the younger age bracket. this decline seems to have stopped in the period after 2016. however, during the covid-19 pandemic, with births occurring in 2022 in particular, we see a tendency of renewed decline. the estimates for secondand third-birth intensities in figure 4 are derived from two separate models and presented with risks relative to the year 2004 for each parity. the figure shows that during the past twenty years there has been no decline in second-birth intensities. in contrast, they have constantly been higher than what they were in 1998-2003, i.e., before a new parental leave legislation was fully implemented, and that was associated with shorter birth intervals (jónsson 2018). there was even a small peak in 2008-2010, around the time iceland was going through an economic crisis, and again in 2021-2022, i.e., during the pandemic. among women, the fluctuations in third-birth rates are much stronger, and not only moving in an upward direction. the culprit behind this is mainly the development during the economic crisis in 2008-2012, when third-birth rates were fig. 1: first-birth kaplan-meier cumulative probability estimates for iceland in 1998-2022, by age of women and men over calendar-year synthetic cohorts 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 age of woman 1998-2002 2003-2007 2008-2012 2013-2017 2018-2022 proportion of women progressing to parity one women 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 age of man 1998-2002 2003-2007 2008-2012 2013-2017 2018-2022 proportion of men progressing to parity one men source: icelandic register data, author’s calculations fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures • 175 higher than in most other years (see comolli et al. 2021; jónsson 2018). on average, however, between 2013-2022, the propensity to have a third child was similar to what it was prior to the economic recession, albeit with sizable variation. a peak occurred in 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic (fig. 4). we conclude with an analysis of the developments in birth spacing patterns between subsequent children for mothers only (fig. 5). the estimates are relative to the risks of women whose youngest child was in its second year in 1998-2002. for second births, we can detect a pattern where birth intervals get shorter and secondbirth intensities higher. when we examine the birth spacing patterns between second and third child, figure 5 suggests that the period during the economic crisis (2008-2012) was somewhat of an anomaly. the propensity to have a third child increased over all durations since the birth of the second child during this period, fig. 2: relative risks of first birth in iceland 1998-2022. standardised for age of women and men. rates are relative to first-birth rates in 2004 for each group (separate models) 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year relative risks of first birth women 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year relative risks of first birth men source: icelandic register data, author’s calculations fig. 3: relative risks of first birth in iceland 1998-2022. standardised for age of women and men, two age groups. rates are relative to first-birth rates in 2004 for each age group (separate models) 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year 15-29 30-45 relative risks of first birth women 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year 15-29 30-45 relative risks of first birth men source: icelandic register data, author’s calculations • ari klængur jónsson176 thus indicating not only changes in tempo but also in the quantum of childbearing. after this, third-birth fertility retracted to previous levels. 4 discussion the objective of this study was to dissect the icelandic childbearing trends and investigate whether the aggregate fertility decline during the past decade was related to compositional changes, previous childbearing history, or linked to changes such as increased propensities of childlessness and decreased propensities to have fig. 4: relative risks of second and third births in iceland 1998-2022. standardised for age of mother, age of father, and age of youngest child. rates are relative to the rates in 2004 for each birth order (separate models) 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year second-birth intensities third-birth intensities relative risks of second and third births women 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 199 8 199 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 201 0 201 1 201 2 201 3 201 4 201 5 201 6 201 7 201 8 201 9 202 0 202 1 202 2 year second-birth intensities third-birth intensities relative risks of second and third births men source: icelandic register data, author’s calculations fig. 5: secondand third-birth risks in iceland 1998-2022 by time since previous birth. standardised for age of mother. rates are relative to duration 13-24 months in 1998-2002 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 112 m on th s 13 -2 4 m on th s 25 -3 6 m on th s 37 -4 8 m on th s 49 -6 0 m on th s 61 -7 2 m on th s 73 -9 6 m on th s 97 -1 20 m on th s 12 1 m on th s or m or e age of firstborn 1998-2002 2003-2007 2008-2012 2013-2017 2018-2022 second-birth intensities 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 112 m on th s 13 -2 4 m on th s 25 -3 6 m on th s 37 -4 8 m on th s 49 -6 0 m on th s 61 -7 2 m on th s 73 -9 6 m on th s 97 -1 20 m on th s 12 1 m on th s or m or e age of secondborn 1998-2002 2003-2007 2008-2012 2013-2017 2018-2022 third-birth intensities source: icelandic register data, author’s calculations fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures • 177 another child. our analysis shows that the fertility development in iceland was entirely driven by a decline in the propensities to become a parent. this resembles what has also been found in sweden and finland (ohlsson-wijk/andersson 2022; hellstrand et al. 2022), i.e., that there were no or relatively weaker declines in the propensities to have a second and third child but a clear decline in the propensity to become a parent. in iceland, the first-birth intensities declined strongest during 2012-2016, and the decline can be attributed to women younger than thirty years. hence, contrary to the other nordic countries, we did not observe any declines in the first-birth risks among women in their 30s and 40s, suggesting that the decline in first-birth childbearing may be related more to fertility postponement than actual declines in the ultimate levels of becoming a parent. nevertheless, our kaplanmeier synthetic-cohort estimates indicate that the tendency of remaining childless increased slightly during 2013-2022. hellstrand et al. (2021) estimated that 26 percent of the aggregate fertility decline in iceland between 2010 and 2018 could be attributed to a decrease in the number of third births. our findings also show that the third-birth intensities declined compared to the economic-crisis period in 2008-2012. nevertheless, the third-birth risks among women during that period were exceptionally high, compared to the periods before and after the economic recession. in terms of second births, we find a pattern of steadily increasing birth rates, which was largely driven by a movement toward even shorter intervals between the first and second child. as for second births, we found higher levels of third births during the pandemic period, a pattern that has also been found in other nordic countries. our findings thus demonstrate that since 2010, iceland has not been experiencing a full-fledged fertility decline, as the drop in fertility was concentrated around first births. still today, about 85-90 percent of one-child mothers have a second child in iceland and more than half of two-child mothers have a third child (results not shown but available upon request). the stability in secondand third-birth intensities over a quarter-of-a-century in iceland indicate that the gender-relations framework still has considerable explanatory power, but that other factors, such as perceived welfare uncertainty as presented by comolli et al. (2021) might be affecting people’s commitment towards parenthood – regardless of the level of diffusion of gender egalitarian norms within societies. a potential explanation for why ultimate childlessness in iceland did not increase to the same extent as in the other nordic countries could be related to some kind of pathway dependency in terms of childbearing. historically, fertility of iceland has been higher and ultimate childlessness lower than that of the other nordic countries. in the 1980s and 1990s, the tfr of iceland remained relatively high in spite of family policies and governmental support aimed at families were less developed in iceland compared to the other nordic countries, while levels of female labour force participation were similar (jónsson 2018) – which could be regarded as evidence of more resilient childbearing intensities in iceland. currently, iceland has a similar policy set-up as the other nordic countries. nevertheless, it is remarkable how similar the childbearing trends during the past decade have been across these five countries – considering that iceland is • ari klængur jónsson178 an independent island some thousand kilometres away from the nearest coast of norway. as comolli et al. (2021) point out, the interplay of globalisation and new technologies, smartphones, and social media, in addition to elements of globalised pop culture, pandemics and wars, may increase perceived uncertainties, across national borders, and promote and influence shared ideas or distress that cannot be controlled locally or nationally. although our analysis is hardly equipped to make strong inferences in this regard, the concepts of global and welfare uncertainties could help to explain the drastic drop in first-birth fertility in iceland, as it happened parallel to similar developments in the other nordics, and elsewhere (cf. comolli et al. 2021). affected by some shared global uncertainties, people may come up with similar future-life narratives, irrespective of other contextual factors, discouraging them to become parents (cf. vignoli et al. 2020a). future research, with richer data, should investigate whether the recent evidence of increased childlessness in iceland is mainly a temporary phenomenon or rather part of a more long-term trend. it should also investigate how it is associated with socioeconomic status and, for example, whether it is more prominent among the less educated, as jalovaara and colleagues (2019) have found in the case of the other nordics. as a matter of fact, we do not know how educational attainment and first-birth fertility is related in iceland, opposite to what holds for the other nordic countries (comolli et al. 2021). finally, especially in terms of third births, researchers should explore why higher-order birth intensities appear to increase in the short-term in iceland during periods of very adverse circumstances, such as during the economic crisis of 2008 and the covid-19 pandemic, and the interplay of childbearing and the welfare system during these periods. acknowledgements gratitude goes to gunnar andersson for his helpful suggestions and to the icelandic research fund (grant no. 228294) for funding this work. i would also like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on how to improve the paper. references alþingi 2020: act no. 144/2020: lög um fæðingarog foreldraorlof [act on maternity/ paternity and parental leave no. 144/2020]. reykjavík: icelandic parliament. andersson, gunnar 1999: childbearing trends in sweden 1961-1997. in: european journal of population 15,1: 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1006145610780 andersson, gunnar 2000: the impact of labour-force participation on childbearing behaviour: pro-cyclical fertility in sweden during the 1980s and the 1990s. in: european journal of population 16,4: 293-333. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1006454909642 andersson, gunnar 2004: childbearing developments in denmark, norway, and sweden from the 1970s to the 1990s: a comparison. in: demographic research special collection 3,7: 155-176. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2004.s3.7 fertility decline in iceland, 2013-2022: trends and structures • 179 comolli, chiara ludovica 2017: the fertility response to the great recession in europe and the united states: structural economic conditions and perceived economic uncertainty. in: demographic research 36,51: 1549-1600. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2017.36.51 comolli, chiara ludovica et al. 2021: beyond the economic gaze: childbearing during and after recessions in the nordic countries. in: european journal of population 37: 473-520. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-020-09570-0 duvander, ann-zofie et ai. 2019: parental leave policies and continued childbearing in iceland, norway, and sweden. in: demographic research 40: 1501-1528. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2019.40.51 esping-andersen, gøsta et al. 2002: why we need a new welfare state. oxford: oxford university press. esping-andersen, gøsta; billari, francesco c. 2015: re-theorizing family demographics. in: population and development review 41,1: 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00024.x goldscheider, frances; bernhardt, eva; lappegård, trude 2015: the gender revolution: a framework for understanding changing family and demographic behaviour. in: population and development review 41,2: 207-239. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00045.x hellstrand, julia et al. 2021: not just later, but fewer: novel trends in cohort fertility in the nordic countries. in: demography 58,4: 1373-1399. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9373618 hellstrand, julia; nisén, jessica; myrskylä, mikko 2022: less partnering, less children, or both? 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a critique of the cohort approach to fertility. in: population and development review 18,4: 599-629. https://doi.org/10.2307/1973757 nordic statistics 2024: the statistical database of the nordic council [electronic resource]. copenhagen: the nordic council. ohlsson-wijk, sofi; andersson, gunnar 2022: disentangling the swedish fertility decline of the 2010s. in: demographic research 47,12: 345-358. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2022.47.12 sobotka, tomáš; skirbekk, vegard; philipov, dimiter 2011: economic recession and fertility in the developed world. in: population and development review 37,2: 267-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00411.x statistics iceland 2023: statistics iceland databank [electronic resource]. reykjavík: statistics iceland [https://hagstofa.is, 14.10.2023]. vignoli, daniele et al. 2020a: a reflection on economic uncertainty and fertility in europe: the narrative framework. in: genus 76,28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-020-00094-3 vignoli, daniele et al. 2020b: uncertainty and narratives of the future. a theoretical framework for contemporary fertility. in: schoen, robert (ed.): analysing contemporary fertility. cham: springer: 25-47. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48519-1_3 world economic forum 2023: global gender gap report 2023. geniva: world economic forum. date of submission: 05.01.2024 date of acceptance: 29.04.2024 dr. ari klængur jónsson (*). university of iceland. reykjavík, iceland. e-mail: arijonsson@hi.is url: https://english.hi.is/staff/arijonsson published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia* irina grossman, tom wilson abstract: practitioners seeking a suitable mortality model for forecasting population by age and sex are presented with many possible choices from the large and growing academic literature on mortality forecasting. despite this abundance, there is relatively little practical guidance on selecting the most appropriate models for their needs. this study evaluates the accuracy of mortality forecasting methods and provides guidance on model selection. the evaluation includes eight methods from the stmomo and demography r packages, and a benchmark extrapolative method based on the ediev (2008) model. we also consider the accuracy of simple combinations of individual methods. we evaluate models by preparing mortality ‘forecasts’ for australia for past periods using data obtained from the human mortality database. for each method, we created five sets of 30-year retrospective forecasts and evaluated the accuracy of the forecast mortality rates, life expectancies at birth, and life expectancy at age 65. we also evaluated the accuracy of mortality forecasts in terms of projected total deaths calculated using a pseudo-projection method. the age-period-cohort model from the stmomo r package, based on the cairns et al. (2009) implementation, was the standout performer in our evaluation, followed by the benchmark extrapolative method. this study presents a comprehensive evaluation of mortality forecasting methods using a variety of metrics, including a new way to evaluate mortality forecasts using a pseudo-projection method. we hope that this evaluation proves useful for practitioners looking to select a mortality forecasting method. keywords: forecasting · mortality forecasting methods · life expectancy · australia · pseudo-projection method comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 95-128 (date of release: 23.06.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-07 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-07en * this article has an online appendix with supplementary material url: https://www. comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/635/435. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-07 • irina grossman, tom wilson96 1 introduction mortality forecasts are an essential input to any cohort-component forecast of a population. mortality is nearly always the main demographic process affecting populations in the older age groups, and it is therefore particularly important that forecasts of older populations are as accurate as possible for applications including those related to pensions, health care, and aged care. an extensive and impressive body of academic literature on mortality forecasting methods has been developed over many decades (basellini et al. 2023; bengtsson/keilman 2019). for practitioners, however, the preparation of high quality mortality forecasts remains challenging. whilst an abundance of mortality forecasting models is described in the academic literature, there is limited guidance for practitioners on which models and tools are most appropriate for particular populations and which generate the most plausible and accurate forecasts. one of the most commonly used mortality forecasting models is the lee-carter method (lee/carter 1992), and there is a large body of work developing extensions to this model (basellini et al. 2023). several retrospective evaluations have shown that these lee-carter extensions perform better than the original model when forecasting death rates (bergeron-boucher/kjærgaard 2022; booth et al. 2006). other evaluations have compared the accuracy of the lee-carter method with other methods, such as the age-period-cohort (apc) model (osmond 1985), the cairns-blake-dowd (cbd) model (cairns et al. 2006), the renshawhaberman model (renshaw/haberman 2006), the coherent functional demographic model (cfdm: hyndman et al. 2013), and the plat model (plat 2009). devi fokeer and narsoo (2022) evaluated mortality forecast models for male mortality data from five countries and found that the renshaw-haberman, lee-carter and apc models performed best for 0-19-year-olds while the plat model performed well for other age groups. shang et al. (2011) evaluated ten variants and extensions of the lee-carter method using one-step ahead forecast errors on data from 14 countries. they found that the weighted hyndman-ullah method (hyndman/ullah 2007; shang et al. 2011) produced the most accurate point forecasts of male and female mortality rates and of female life expectancy at birth, whereas the lee-miller method (lee/miller 2001) performed best for male life expectancy at birth. the weighted hyndmanullah method performed best on the majority of datasets for female age-specific death rates (asdrs) and life expectancy, while the lee-miller method excelled for the majority of datasets for male life expectancy. shang et al. (2011) suggested the strong performance of the weighted hyndman-ullah method was linked to its emphasis on recent mortality trends in its forecasts. shang (2015) investigated model performance for forecasting male and female mortality rates and life expectancies for males and females in 20 countries and found that the cfdm model performed well for males. similarly, li (2022) evaluated the accuracy of traditional statistical models, machine learning models, and combinations thereof (ensemble models) for forecasting death rates and life expectancies of older us males. they found that a stacked neural network approach to combining a diverse group of base models produced the best forecast. a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 97 dowd et al. (2010) evaluated the accuracy and robustness of mortality forecasting methods using data for males aged 60-89 years in england and wales. they considered several metrics, including how well forecasts converged to actual mortality rates as forecast horizons decreased, forecast accuracy across a range of forecast horizons, and mortality probability density forecasts. model performance varied across metrics, with five models performing similarly (lee-carter, apc, cbd, and two variants of the cbd model). however, the renshaw–haberman model showed limited robustness in their evaluation. terblanche (2015) conducted an evaluation of mortality forecasting methods for australians aged 50-100 years of age and found the top performer to be the ediev method (ediev 2008). in the booth et al. (2006) evaluation of the lee-carter method and its extensions for mortality forecasting, the authors found that the original lee-carter method did not perform as well as its variants in terms of mean error in forecasted logged death rates. however, this difference did not translate to differences in terms of forecast life expectancy. in summary, the literature on mortality forecast evaluations demonstrates how results often vary by dataset, jump-off year, and evaluation metric. as discussed by dowd et al. (2010), mortality models can be used to produce a range of variables, including age-specific-mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, and survival rates. practitioners typically value criteria such as forecast accuracy, ease of implementation, accessibility of tools, computational efficiency, and the ability to generate forecasts across different horizons and demographic measures. ease of use is a significant criterion for practitioners, and a key component of this is the availability of established, validated, and accessible tools. by focusing on models implemented in popular r packages such as stmomo and demography, this study ensures that practitioners can readily adopt the methods evaluated here. such tools are not only user-friendly, but also widely supported within the demographic forecasting community, enhancing their practical utility. most evaluations focus on the accuracy of forecasts in terms of mortality rates or life expectancies. a key use case for mortality forecasts for demographers is in the production of accurate forecasts of population and deaths. however, relatively little work has been conducted to evaluate the accuracy of mortality forecasting models in terms of numbers of deaths, particularly for longer-term forecasts. a challenge in forecasting the number of deaths is that future exposures are unknown, and a robust population projection framework is often required alongside the mortality forecasting method. exposures are relatively accurate for past periods, and retrospective evaluations can be conducted to provide valuable insights into potential errors in forecasted deaths. recent years have seen substantial developments in mortality forecasting methods and in the tools available to practitioners to create forecasts. however, model selection guidance for practitioners producing and using mortality forecasts in real-world settings remains limited. the aim of this paper is to evaluate the accuracy of the methods available in two of the most popular r packages used for mortality forecasts, stmomo and demography, and simple combinations thereof, for forecasts of australian national mortality data. by evaluating methods that are readily accessible and widely used through these packages, we aim to provide practical guidance for practitioners seeking effective and implementable • irina grossman, tom wilson98 mortality forecasts. we use an extrapolative model, based on ediev’s (2008) work, as a benchmark. a comparison of forecast accuracy for age-specific mortality rates, life expectancies at birth, and life expectancies at age 65 are presented. we also develop and evaluate a new method to evaluate the accuracy of mortality forecasts in terms of total deaths generated through a pseudo-projection method (described later). in summary, the key research aims of this paper are to: 1) evaluate mortality forecast models for australia for up to 30 years out, 2) develop and evaluate a pseudo-projection method for evaluating forecasts in terms of projected numbers of deaths, and 3) provide guidance to practitioners. we generated retrospective mortality forecasts for australia over 30-year periods. the data, mortality models, and metrics are detailed in section 2, with code and data available at https://github.com/irigrossman/mortality_projection_ methods. section 3 presents the results of the evaluation, which are then discussed in section 4. concluding remarks are made in section 5. 2 methods 2.1 data age-specific death rates (asdrs) and age-specific populations-at-risk (exposures) data for males and females in australia from 1921–2020 for ages 0–110+ were downloaded from the human mortality database (hmd 2023) using the hmd.mx function from the r demography package (hyndman 2023). as the data at the highest ages was very sparse, we aggregated data for ages 105 years and above into 105+ groups for males and females separately. even with this aggregation, rates at the oldest ages were atypical due to small populations. atypical rates included 0s, rates greater than 1, infinite values, and undefined values (caused by division by 0). we employed a simple data cleaning procedure where values greater than 1 were set to 1. 0s, infinite, missing, and undefined values were replaced with the average of the surrounding values that were real numbers (up to 1 year before and after and up to 1 year older and younger – the smoothing window is smaller for edge cases). whilst there are more sophisticated methods for anomalous data, such as fitting models within a poisson framework, we selected this simple model to allow for consistency between models – as the model implementation functions handle these values differently (see online appendix a), and we wanted to ensure comparability across all models. asdrs may also be greater than 1; however, by capping at 1, we aimed to decrease potential errors when encountering extreme values, and to support interpretability across age groups. the cleaned data was used to fit the models and evaluate the forecasts. https://github.com/irigrossman/mortality_projection_ a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 99 input data used for the pseudo-projections (described below) consisted of forecast asdrs from each of the evaluated mortality models, actual births, and actual net overseas migration. births were obtained from abs historical population statistics (abs 2019) for most years and the abs online data explorer tool, https:// explore.data.abs.gov.au/, for recent years. age-sex-specific net overseas migration was calculated as residual cohort population change after accounting for deaths. population estimates by sex and single years of age for 1971 onwards were sourced from the abs publication ‘national state and territory population’ (abs 2023), while earlier populations were obtained from the australian demographic databank (smith 2009). 2.2 packages and forecasting models: an overview we evaluated methods available in the demography (hyndman 2023) and stmomo (villegas et al. 2018) software packages, two of the most popular r packages for mortality forecasts. demography includes a comprehensive set of functions to support data handling, demographic forecasting (including for fertility, migration, and mortality), forecast evaluation, visualisations, and life table functions (hyndman 2023). stmomo is specifically focused on mortality forecasting and provides functions to support the implementation of a wide range of stochastic mortality forecast models. both packages have significant flexibility in terms of how models are configured. where possible, we use the default values when using the methods. additionally, we created custom code for the extrapolative model (em) which we used as a benchmark. em is described in greater depth in the forecast methods section below. we evaluated nine individual mortality forecast models: the lee-carter model implemented in the demography package (lc_d, with ‘_d’ indicating the package), a modified version of it with automated base period selection (lc_dc, where the ‘c’ indicates this modification), the booth-maindonald-smith variant of the lee-carter model (bms), the coherent functional demographic model (cfdm), the lee-carter model implemented in the stmomo package (lc_s, with ‘_s’ indicating the package), the age-period-cohort model (apc), the cairns-blake-dowd model (cbd), the plat model, and em. we also considered three ensemble models. each of these is described further in the following. several methods available through the stmomo package were excluded from our evaluation, including the renshaw and haberman (2006) method due to known issues with its robustness (cairns et al. 2009). the m6, m7, and m8 forecast methods were also excluded (cairns et al. 2009) because they are better suited for higher ages rather than for the full age range (plat 2009) and we wanted to avoid an over-representation of models that are not suited for the full age range in our analysis. for each of the models, five sets of 30-year forecasts of asdrs were created with the following jump-off years: 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. forecast accuracy was evaluated at 1, 10, 20, and 30 years. we provided the full dataset, from 1921 up to each respective jump-off year, to all models. several models − including bms, lc_dc, and em − automatically select the optimal fitting period based on data https://explore.data.abs.gov.au/ https://explore.data.abs.gov.au/ • irina grossman, tom wilson100 characteristics, resulting in fitting periods that may vary across the five forecasts. including these models allows us to assess whether methods with adaptive fitting periods provide more accurate forecasts compared to those using a fixed fitting period. 2.3 the lee-carter model and its variants the lee-carter method and its variants are amongst the most popular models for producing forecasts of asdrs. the original model by lee and carter (1992) involves modelling the log asdr m as a function of age x and time t (equation 1): ln[mx,t] = ax + bxkt + εx,t the right-hand side of the equation features an age-specific constant ax, which models the age-specific general pattern of mortality, kt, which models the main time trend of mortality, and an age-specific constant bx which modifies kt, thereby capturing whether the mortality rate at age x will be greater or less than the main trend (booth et al. 2002). the error term relates to time-varying age-specific factors which are not otherwise captured by the model. a key benefit of the model is that it requires relatively few assumptions. however, it has several disadvantages. first, the lee-carter model does not consider cohort effects and may be a poor fit for datasets that display them (plat 2009). secondly, it considers asdrs to be perfectly correlated as the time index variable kt is shared by all the age groups; this only allows for uniform shifts in mortality over time to be modelled across all ages. we implemented several versions of the lee-carter model and its variants using both the demography and stmomo packages. the lca function was used to fit the lee-carter model to the base data using the demography package, with max. age set to 105. we examined two variants of this model: lc_d, which used default settings, and lc_dc, where chooseperiod was set to true to allow for automated fitting period selection using bai’s method, which is the default for the lca function. by default, the lca function sets the adjust parameter to dt, which scales the time component kt to match the total number of deaths. the lca function estimates model parameters using singular value decomposition (svd) of the log mortality rates (booth et al. 2003), consistent with the original lee-carter approach (lee/carter 1992). we also implemented the lee-carter model using the stmomo package (lc_s) using the lc function with preset defaults. we then used the fit function to fit the model to the base data. in contrast to the svd approach, the default stmomo implementation employs maximum likelihood estimation assuming that deaths follow a poisson distribution. other distribution variants can also be selected by the user (villegas et al. 2025). the forecast function was used to generate forecasts for both the demography and stmomo packages (hyndman et al. 2023; hyndman/ khandakar 2008). we also considered the booth-maindonald-smith (bms) methodology, an extension of the original lee-carter model proposed by booth et al. (2002). the bms (1) a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 101 model improves the fit of the base model by identifying the best-fitting period and adjusting kt to fit the age-specific distribution of deaths. we used the bms function in the demography package with max.age set to 105, keeping other parameters at their default values. the bms function is a wrapper for the lca function, with the adjust parameter set to dxt to fit kt to the age-specific distribution of deaths. the bms function will set the chooseperiod parameter to be true and the breakmethod parameter – which determines the method used to determine the optimal fitting period – to bms, which is based on the method by booth et al. (2002). while both lc_dc and bms involve automated fitting period selection, they differ in how the optimal periods are selected (bai’s method is the default of lca and the bms method is the default for bms). additionally, bms adjusts kt to match the age distribution of deaths, whilst, by default, the lc_d and lc_dc methods will set the adjust parameter to dt and fit kt to total deaths. thus, whilst both lc_dc and bms allow for automated base period selection, there are differences in how they are implemented, which leads to different results. 2.4 coherent functional demographic model the cfdm by hyndman et al. (2013) creates consistent forecasts for subpopulations (such as males and females), reducing the risk that forecasts for different subgroups diverge from each other. the method involves the calculation of the product and ratio of the smoothed asdrs of the subpopulations. for example, if the subpopulations of interest are males and females, as in this study, the product is the geometric mean of the smoothed male and female death rates (or the square root of the smoothed male death rates multiplied by the smoothed female death rates), whilst the ratio is the square root of the ratio of the smoothed death rates. the product and ratio are modelled using functional time series models, which decompose the product and ratio into a set of weighted basis functions, with weights given by time varying coefficients. these coefficients are then forecast separately using arima(p,q) models for the product and arma(p,q) or arfima(p,d,q) models for the ratio. the forecast coefficients are then multiplied by the basis functions, thereby creating forecast curves for the product and ratios into the future. each coefficient indicates the contribution of a basis function to the forecast death rate at each timepoint in the forecast horizon. the more basis functions included, the greater the potential complexity of the model. however, as more basis functions are included, there is a danger of the model overfitting the base period data. we implement the cfdm model using the coherentfdm function from the demography package. 2.5 the age-period-cohort model the age-period-cohort (apc) mortality model is widely used for modelling agespecific mortality rates as a function of age, period, and birth cohort and can be represented as: • irina grossman, tom wilson102 ln[mx,t] = αx + kt + γt − x where α, κ, and γ represent the age, period, and cohort effects on the logged mortality rate. in the stmomo implementation of the method, several constraints are implemented such that the period effect across the time periods is 0 and the average cohort effect is 0 with no obvious linear trend (villegas et al. 2018), based on the apc model implementation in cairns et al. (2009). 2.6 the cbd model the cbd mortality forecast model (cairns et al. 2006) can be expressed as: in equation 3, the logit of the mortality rate is modelled such that: • kt (1) captures the period effect, which represents general changes in mortality occurring across ages, and • kt (2) (x - x̄ ) captures the age-specific effect, allowing time-dependent changes in mortality rates to be age-specific. here, x represents the age being modelled at time t, and the mean age of the dataset is given by x̄ . the cbd model was designed primarily for modelling the 60+ mortality curve, relying on the assumption that cohort effects are linear for the logit transformed mortality rate. this assumption holds better for older ages than for younger ages. because of the substantial decline in mortality at older ages in australia, and given the popularity of the method, we felt that it was appropriate to include it as part of a comprehensive evaluation of available mortality forecasting methods. however, the results need to be interpreted with caution given that it is being applied outside its original design. additionally, due to this application outside its original design, the cbd method was excluded from the ensemble models described below. the cbd model typically models 1qx, the probability of someone exactly x years of age dying before reaching age x + 1. conversely, the other models evaluated in this paper model mx, the death rate, which is the ratio of the number of deaths occurring at age x during a year divided by the number of person-years lived during that year. however, qx and mx can be converted between each other as needed. to implement the cbd model, we define the model using the cbd function from stmomo. we transform the input data from mx to qx to using the central2initial function and use this transformed data to fit the cbd model. we then create the forecast using the forecast function. to allow comparisons with the other models, we convert the output to mx. as is common practice (e.g., thatcher et al. 1998), we approximate the death rates based on the probability of dying assuming a constant hazard within the age interval (i.e., exponential distribution): (2) logit�𝑞𝑞�,�� � �� � 𝑞𝑞�,� 1 � 𝑞𝑞�,� � � 𝜅𝜅� ��� � 𝜅𝜅� ��� �𝑥𝑥 � �̅�𝑥�  (3) a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 103 mx ≈ -ln(1 − qx) 2.7 the plat model the plat model was built on prior mortality forecast models, with the goals of building a relatively simple model, able to forecast mortality across the full age range, include a non-trivial correlation structure, and model the cohort effect (plat 2009). the formula for the plat model is: ln[mx,t] = αx + kt (1) + kt (2) (x − x̄ ) + kt (3) (x̄  − x)+ + γt − x the αx term represents the basic shape of the age-specific mortality curve from historical data. kt (1) models general changes in mortality that affect all ages. kt (2) (x − x̄ ) allows time dependent changes in mortality rates to vary by age, where x̄ is the mean age. kt (3) (x̄  − x)+ models age-specific dynamics in mortality rates for younger ages, where the superscript ‘+’ indicates that the term only applies when x is less than the mean age. the cohort effect is modelled with γ(t − x). to implement the plat model, we use the stmomo package to first define the plat model using the plat function, with the default parameters. then we fit it to the base data using the fit function and then use the forecast function to create the forecasts. 2.8 the extrapolative model (em) the ediev (2008) mortality forecasting method extrapolates logged death rates and applies a set of adjustments and constraints to produce sensible forecasts. optimal fitting periods are calculated for each age and sex group and long-term trajectories of mortality decline rates are estimated. convergence parameters bridge the past and long-term mortality rates. the ediev method was one of the top performers in terblanche’s (2015) evaluation of mortality forecasting methods for australia’s very elderly population. the original ediev method used absolute deviation to determine the optimal fitting period. terblanche (2015) proposed an ediev model variant that identifies the optimal fitting period by selecting the base period associated with the lowest r2 value from linear regression, arguing that deviations are more volatile, complicating the selection of a unique fitting period. in the terblanche (2015) evaluation, the two variants performed similarly, however, the r2 method performed marginally better in the rankings. the em method used here is strongly influenced by the r2 variant of the ediev method. it also incorporates important constraints that reflect demographic realities, ensuring that male asdrs are greater than or equal to female asdrs and that, after the age of 15 years, asdrs do not decrease with increasing age – the asdr of each successive age group is greater than or equal to that of the younger age group. this approach aligns with ediev’s (2008) method, which applies adjustments to ensure that forecasts are plausible and enhance the model’s robustness, particularly for extended forecast horizons. a brief description (4) (5) • irina grossman, tom wilson104 of the em method is provided here, with the code provided in the supplementary materials. 1) data preparation. input data was smoothed and asdrs were extended to age 110. the asdrs at age 110 were set to 0.8 for females and 0.9 for males, based on a twenty-year average of australian death rates at the highest ages. 2) linear models using optimal fitting periods. smoothed asdrs were logged, and linear models fitted to determine the optimal fitting periods for each age and sex group, defined by the lowest r2 value, with a minimum fitting period of 20 years. the intercepts and slopes of the models fitted to the calculated optimal fitting periods were used to create a set logged asdr projections without any adjustments. slope values were heavily smoothed across ages and adjustments were applied so that asdrs from age 15 years onwards did not decrease with increasing age. these heavily smoothed slope values are referred to as the ‘long-run slope values.’ 3) smoothing and adjustments to slope values. the jump-off year asdrs were smoothed to avoid a bumpy age profile in the final year of the base period. the long-run slope values were trended into the slope projections over 20 years and then smoothed. 4) projections with adjusted slope. first, the logged asdrs were projected again, this time using the logged and smoothed asdrs from the jump-off year and the adjusted and smoothed forecast slope values. these adjusted projections were more closely aligned with the long-run trends in mortality in the base data. taking the exponential of these projections generated a set of forecasted asdrs which incorporated the slope adjustment. to ensure a smooth transition from the historical (base) data to our forecasts, we applied a jump-off year adjustment to better align the forecasted asdrs with the historical data. the jump-off year adjusted forecasts were gradually merged with the slope-adjusted forecasted asdrs over a period of 50 years. this ensured a smooth transition from the adjusted initial asdrs to the long-term mortality rates, aligning the forecasts with the jump-off data and the expected future trends. 5) adjusting forecasted male asdrs. male and female asdrs were forecast separately. male asdrs were then adjusted to ensure they were always greater or equal to the corresponding female asdrs. 6) modifying forecast maximum age. while the forecasts extended to age 110 to incorporate calculated mortality rate determined for this age, forecasts were adjusted to age 105, which is the maximum age for this study due to data inconsistencies beyond this age. this was achieved by using life table calculations to aggregate death rates from ages 105 to 110+ into a 105+ category. 2.9 ensemble models the models selected for this study are known to perform variably across different datasets. ensemble models, which are combinations of individual models, may be more reliable. whilst ensemble models do not necessarily produce the best forecasts, they tend to produce fewer bad forecasts than individual models, a desirable property for demographic forecasting (grossman et al. 2022). whilst there a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 105 are many ways to combine forecasts, research has shown that the mean is a reliable and simple method (grossman et al. 2022) and was thus chosen for this study. we test three ensemble models: • d ensemble – an ensemble model created by taking the simple mean of three individual methods from the demography package: lee-carter, bms, and cfdm. • s ensemble – an ensemble model created by taking the simple mean of three individual methods from the stmomo package: lee-carter, apc, and plat. • u ensemble – an ensemble model created by taking the simple mean of five unique methods evaluated in this study: lee-carter (lc_d), cfdm, apc, plat, and em. 2.10 forecast evaluation measures at each forecast horizon, and for each model, the following metrics were used to evaluate forecast accuracy for asdrs: • the mean absolute error in forecast asdrs over all ages (maed). the maed for year y is given as the average of the absolute difference between the actual asdr (m) and the forecast asdr for year y across all age groups (x), expressed as: • the absolute error in forecasting life expectancies at birth and at age 65, e0 and e65 respectively. these metrics were calculated using the lifetable function in the demography package to create forecasted life tables and life expectancy forecasts, using the forecast asdrs. the absolute error in forecasting life expectancy at birth (aee(0)) is given in equation 7, which takes the absolute value of the difference between actual life expectancy at birth for year y and forecast life expectancy at birth for year y. similarly, equation 8 represents the calculation of the absolute error in the forecast life expectancy at age 65 (aee(65)). e0 and e65 are both measured in years, thereby giving us an easy-to-understand metric: aey e(0) = | actual e0,y − forecast e0,y | aey e(65) = | actual e65,y − forecast e65,y | 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀�� � 1 𝑛𝑛 � |𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹 𝑚𝑚�,� � 𝑀𝑀𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐴𝐴𝐹𝐹𝐴𝐴 𝑚𝑚�,�| � ���   (6) (7) (8) • irina grossman, tom wilson106 • absolute percentage error in projected total deaths (apey td). to evaluate performance in terms of total deaths, as calculated using the pseudo projection method (described below), we calculate the absolute percentage error in projected total deaths (equation 9). a percentage-based metric was selected because the population can change significantly over time, and it normalises errors relative to population size: for each metric, we calculate totm, which represents the average summed error across the five sets of projections with the different jump-off years, as defined by equation 10. we also present a central measure of forecast error, avm (equation 11), which is the average error across the forecast horizon, averaged over the forecasts with the different jump-off years. here, m denotes the specific error metric being aggregated. k is the number of forecasts considered for each model, set at five for this study to correspond to the five jump-off years, and h is the maximum forecast horizon. as an example, let us consider the process of calculating tote(0) and , the total and central errors for life expectancy at birth (e0), for two three-year forecasts by the same model, with jumpoff years y1 and y2. let us assume errors for years 1 to 3 are 0.5 years, 1.2 years and 1.3 years for the first forecast, and 0.2 years, 1.3 years, and 1.2 years for the second. thus, whilst by compiling and averaging errors from forecasts across multiple forecast periods and across the entire forecasting window, totm and avm serve as indicators of the model’s capacity to generate accurate forecasts over time and under different scenarios. 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴��� � � 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝐷𝐷 � � 𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐹𝐹𝐴𝐴 𝐷𝐷� 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝐷𝐷 � � � 100  (9) 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇� � 1 𝑘𝑘 � � ��,� � ��� � ���   (10) 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴� � 1 𝑘𝑘 � ∑ 𝐸𝐸�,� � ��� ℎ � ���   (11) 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇���� � 1 2 ��0.5 � 1.2 � 1.3� � �0.2 � 1.3 � 1.2�� � 1 2 �3 � 2.7� � 2.85 𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦  𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴���� � � � ��.���.���.� � � �.���.���.� � � � � � �1 � 0.9� � 0.95 𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦.  a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 107 2.11 pseudo-projection method a key contribution of this study is the introduction of the pseudo-projection method, which evaluates mortality ‘projections’ over past periods in terms of their impact on total deaths. the pseudo-projection method uses a standard cohortcomponent model (wilson/rees 2021) with forecast deaths, but observed historical data for fertility and migration. this substitution isolates the impact of mortality forecast errors on total deaths, allowing us to evaluate model performance for a key demographic outcome without interference from errors in fertility or migration. the term ‘pseudo’ reflects this deliberate replacement of actual deaths with forecast deaths, distinguishing the method from a full population projection. to calculate total deaths for the pseudo-projections, forecast asdrs are combined with observed births and observed net overseas migration to produce a population projection. the resulting total deaths represent what would have occurred if mortality had been forecast imperfectly, but fertility and migration had remained as observed. this method allows us to assess the implications of mortality forecast errors in terms of total deaths, providing a straightforward and intuitive measure which offers a practical evaluation tool for practitioners, particularly those using mortality forecasts to inform planning and decision-making. by linking forecast mortality rates to total deaths, the pseudo-projection method highlights that strong performance in traditional metrics does not necessarily translate to accuracy in key demographic outcomes. this evaluation underscores the importance of considering total deaths as an independent metric to assess the practical implications of mortality forecast errors. 3 results 3.1 mean absolute error for forecast asdrs over all ages table 1 presents the maed for males across the ages of 0-105, while table 2 presents equivalent results for females. for males, there were considerable differences between jump-off years. if we focus on the mean measures, the apc and plat models are the standout performers, particularly for longer forecast horizons. the em and the stmomo ensemble also performed well across horizons, while the leecarter models had higher errors overall. for females, little separates the forecast errors for shorter horizons. however, over longer horizons, the performance of the cfdm model was poor, whilst em, apc and the stmomo ensemble performed well. the latter three models were also the top performers in terms of the tot metric. the d ensemble model did not perform particularly well, nor did the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model (lc_s). figure 1 presents the average maed for different forecast horizons by sex, depicting how mean absolute errors in forecast asdrs change with time and between males and females. • irina grossman, tom wilson108 tab. 1: mean absolute forecast error of asdrs, across ages 0-105 for males jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year em lc_d lc_dc c fdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u point forecast errors after 1 year 1950 0.014 0.015 0.024 0.015 0.017 0.017 0.022 0.050 0.026 0.015 0.016 0.013 1960 0.014 0.027 0.026 0.010 0.019 0.019 0.015 0.036 0.021 0.019 0.010 0.008 1970 0.021 0.017 0.019 0.016 0.019 0.018 0.024 0.029 0.021 0.017 0.021 0.019 1980 0.013 0.060 0.012 0.010 0.025 0.017 0.015 0.019 0.014 0.028 0.014 0.015 1990 0.013 0.022 0.015 0.015 0.014 0.012 0.014 0.022 0.013 0.009 0.013 0.011 mean 0.015 0.028 0.019 0.013 0.019 0.016 0.018 0.031 0.019 0.018 0.015 0.013 point forecast errors after 10 years 1950 0.030 0.054 0.064 0.029 0.058 0.051 0.017 0.022 0.020 0.047 0.013 0.020 1960 0.016 0.061 0.053 0.031 0.047 0.046 0.018 0.019 0.024 0.046 0.017 0.020 1970 0.026 0.028 0.028 0.022 0.037 0.029 0.030 0.022 0.022 0.029 0.026 0.025 1980 0.013 0.093 0.011 0.012 0.044 0.028 0.014 0.014 0.015 0.049 0.017 0.026 1990 0.018 0.031 0.025 0.029 0.024 0.019 0.023 0.020 0.017 0.019 0.018 0.017 mean 0.021 0.053 0.036 0.025 0.042 0.035 0.020 0.020 0.020 0.038 0.018 0.022 point forecast errors after 20 years 1950 0.044 0.127 0.132 0.064 0.134 0.113 0.021 0.023 0.021 0.108 0.039 0.047 1960 0.022 0.123 0.099 0.054 0.097 0.092 0.021 0.032 0.016 0.091 0.036 0.042 1970 0.033 0.045 0.035 0.032 0.059 0.046 0.031 0.049 0.023 0.045 0.033 0.033 1980 0.022 0.113 0.035 0.025 0.043 0.023 0.020 0.022 0.020 0.052 0.017 0.021 1990 0.011 0.042 0.022 0.025 0.025 0.013 0.020 0.015 0.018 0.017 0.010 0.011 mean 0.027 0.090 0.064 0.040 0.072 0.057 0.023 0.028 0.020 0.063 0.027 0.031 point forecast errors after 30 years 1950 0.056 0.257 0.249 0.117 0.271 0.216 0.021 0.078 0.023 0.215 0.080 0.090 1960 0.027 0.199 0.149 0.075 0.156 0.144 0.017 0.069 0.016 0.143 0.053 0.062 1970 0.025 0.044 0.023 0.023 0.063 0.044 0.018 0.063 0.025 0.043 0.019 0.020 1980 0.016 0.165 0.029 0.017 0.065 0.036 0.016 0.046 0.017 0.080 0.014 0.035 1990 0.012 0.057 0.022 0.025 0.028 0.020 0.019 0.036 0.035 0.022 0.014 0.016 mean 0.027 0.144 0.094 0.051 0.117 0.092 0.018 0.058 0.023 0.101 0.036 0.045 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts totd 0.674 2.328 1.575 0.968 1.831 1.483 0.565 0.869 0.555 1.621 0.700 0.823 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 0.022 0.078 0.053 0.032 0.061 0.049 0.019 0.029 0.019 0.054 0.023 0.027 notes: point forecast errors refer to the difference between the actual and forecast values for specific years. point errors are reported for 1-, 10-, 20-, and 30-year forecast horizons, for each jump-off year. mean errors across jump-off years are presented for each of the evaluated forecast horizons. the tot metric is the average of the cumulative errors over the 30-year forecast horizon, for the five evaluated forecasts for the five jump-off years. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 109 – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). tab. 2: mean absolute forecast error of asdrs, across ages 0-105 for females jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year em lc_d lc_dc cfdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 0.020 0.013 0.012 0.013 0.013 0.016 0.018 0.053 0.015 0.013 0.015 0.013 1960 0.013 0.012 0.008 0.009 0.011 0.008 0.007 0.033 0.007 0.010 0.006 0.007 1970 0.013 0.014 0.014 0.013 0.014 0.014 0.016 0.027 0.013 0.014 0.014 0.013 1980 0.008 0.014 0.008 0.009 0.007 0.010 0.009 0.014 0.009 0.009 0.009 0.009 1990 0.008 0.008 0.009 0.009 0.009 0.007 0.006 0.013 0.005 0.008 0.006 0.007 mean 0.012 0.012 0.010 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.028 0.010 0.011 0.010 0.010 10-year forecast horizon 1950 0.031 0.054 0.053 0.072 0.053 0.050 0.023 0.015 0.027 0.060 0.033 0.041 1960 0.017 0.016 0.013 0.019 0.014 0.013 0.011 0.021 0.014 0.016 0.011 0.008 1970 0.012 0.023 0.011 0.023 0.023 0.018 0.019 0.010 0.006 0.023 0.013 0.016 1980 0.008 0.012 0.006 0.010 0.009 0.005 0.006 0.006 0.011 0.006 0.005 0.005 1990 0.011 0.012 0.017 0.020 0.018 0.013 0.017 0.013 0.021 0.016 0.016 0.015 mean 0.016 0.023 0.020 0.029 0.023 0.020 0.015 0.013 0.016 0.024 0.016 0.017 20-year forecast horizon 1950 0.019 0.056 0.054 0.092 0.055 0.050 0.011 0.020 0.010 0.068 0.018 0.033 1960 0.008 0.038 0.026 0.054 0.036 0.021 0.009 0.020 0.008 0.042 0.008 0.019 1970 0.008 0.025 0.014 0.030 0.025 0.018 0.012 0.028 0.012 0.027 0.007 0.013 1980 0.016 0.016 0.018 0.018 0.021 0.013 0.019 0.011 0.032 0.014 0.020 0.015 1990 0.009 0.012 0.017 0.021 0.019 0.011 0.021 0.008 0.029 0.016 0.019 0.016 mean 0.012 0.029 0.026 0.043 0.031 0.023 0.014 0.017 0.018 0.033 0.015 0.019 30-year forecast horizon 1950 0.035 0.100 0.096 0.163 0.098 0.091 0.012 0.073 0.012 0.120 0.037 0.064 1960 0.010 0.044 0.028 0.072 0.041 0.020 0.007 0.043 0.014 0.053 0.003 0.020 1970 0.013 0.022 0.026 0.031 0.022 0.017 0.008 0.044 0.031 0.025 0.013 0.010 1980 0.016 0.017 0.017 0.016 0.021 0.012 0.023 0.027 0.039 0.012 0.022 0.015 1990 0.007 0.013 0.015 0.020 0.017 0.010 0.021 0.026 0.031 0.014 0.018 0.013 mean 0.016 0.039 0.036 0.061 0.040 0.030 0.014 0.043 0.026 0.045 0.019 0.024 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts totd 0.380 0.758 0.658 1.039 0.768 0.590 0.391 0.644 0.500 0.819 0.410 0.488 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 0.013 0.025 0.022 0.035 0.026 0.020 0.013 0.021 0.017 0.027 0.014 0.016 notes: point forecast errors refer to the difference between the actual and forecast values for specific years. point errors are reported for 1-, 10-, 20-, and 30-year forecast horizons, for each jump-off year. mean errors across jump-off years are presented for each of the evaluated forecast horizons. the tot metric is the average of the cumulative errors over the 30-year • irina grossman, tom wilson110 3.2 error for forecast life expectancy at birth tables 3 and 4 present the absolute error in forecasting life expectancy at birth, aee(0), for males and females, respectively. actual life expectancies are presented in the lefthand columns of the tables. the aee(0) is presented for each model, each evaluated jump-off year, and forecast horizon. for males, the apc model is the forecast horizon, for the five evaluated forecasts for the five jump-off years. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). fig. 1: mean absolute error in forecast asdrs over all ages, averaged across models, by forecast horizon 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 1 5 10 20 30 forecast horizon (years) male female mae notes: the figure presents mean absolute error in forecast asdrs over all ages (maed), averaged across jump-off years and across models. error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the model errors. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 111 tab. 3: absolute error for life expectancy at birth forecasts for males jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year actual em lc_d lc_dc c fdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 66.08 0.60 0.48 0.57 0.85 0.58 0.62 0.74 0.41 0.70 0.63 0.69 0.67 1960 68.04 0.25 0.35 0.39 0.28 0.11 0.09 0.30 0.13 0.14 0.02 0.12 0.05 1970 68.25 0.58 1.25 1.43 0.24 0.35 0.37 0.32 0.87 0.71 0.62 0.47 0.63 1980 71.30 0.26 1.12 0.02 0.45 1.16 0.81 0.24 0.02 0.11 0.19 0.24 0.10 1990 74.48 0.77 0.45 0.25 0.67 0.20 0.71 0.08 0.23 0.39 0.15 0.40 0.30 mean 0.49 0.73 0.53 0.50 0.48 0.52 0.34 0.33 0.41 0.32 0.38 0.35 10-year forecast horizon 1950 67.95 0.06 0.06 0.43 0.73 0.03 0.10 0.88 0.73 0.55 0.23 0.50 0.40 1960 67.43 1.68 2.00 1.81 1.81 1.55 1.59 2.93 1.12 2.18 1.79 2.21 2.11 1970 71.09 2.42 3.26 4.23 1.78 2.38 2.40 1.53 3.27 2.66 2.48 2.20 2.34 1980 73.98 1.84 0.91 1.65 2.19 3.10 2.66 0.55 2.10 1.79 2.09 1.70 1.48 1990 76.95 1.15 1.14 0.82 1.73 0.26 2.16 0.44 2.11 1.89 1.07 1.53 1.29 mean 1.43 1.48 1.79 1.65 1.46 1.78 1.27 1.87 1.81 1.53 1.63 1.52 20-year forecast horizon 1950 67.43 1.68 1.61 0.87 2.59 1.70 1.79 3.93 0.28 2.56 1.96 2.72 2.44 1960 71.09 0.71 0.76 1.14 0.41 1.19 1.13 1.70 2.05 0.60 0.79 0.10 0.22 1970 73.98 4.31 5.38 7.09 3.44 4.53 4.55 2.46 5.81 5.19 4.47 4.12 4.20 1980 76.95 3.68 3.29 3.54 3.95 5.38 4.85 1.29 4.60 4.00 4.23 3.48 3.30 1990 79.80 1.97 3.12 1.76 2.89 0.77 4.00 0.86 4.46 3.89 2.34 3.04 2.63 mean 2.47 2.83 2.88 2.66 2.71 3.26 2.05 3.44 3.25 2.76 1.63 1.52 30-year forecast horizon 1950 71.09 0.92 1.15 2.17 0.02 1.08 0.97 3.00 3.10 0.26 0.76 0.43 0.01 1960 73.98 2.51 2.96 3.47 2.13 3.35 3.28 1.31 4.63 3.55 2.83 2.08 2.13 1970 76.95 6.43 7.70 10.03 5.38 6.90 6.91 3.37 8.56 8.40 6.68 6.40 6.37 1980 79.80 5.47 5.64 5.38 5.72 7.64 7.02 1.72 7.11 6.39 6.38 5.28 5.13 1990 81.62 1.96 4.13 1.83 3.07 0.54 4.87 0.08 5.88 5.03 2.73 3.66 3.09 mean 3.46 4.32 4.57 3.26 3.90 4.61 1.90 5.86 4.73 3.87 3.57 3.35 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts tote(0) 55.0 64.1 68.2 59.4 60.2 72.7 43.0 81.4 73.9 60.7 61.4 57.4 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 1.83 2.14 2.27 1.98 2.01 2.42 1.43 2.71 2.46 2.02 2.05 1.91 notes: actual life expectancies are presented in the second column from the left. if the jumpoff year is 1970 and the forecast horizon is 10 years, the relevant cell will show the estimated life expectancy at birth for 1980. the 12 rightmost columns present the absolute error in years of the life expectancy forecasts for the 12 evaluated models for each of the evaluated jump-off years and forecast horizons. the mean of the absolute errors across jump-off years for each evaluated forecast horizon are also presented. the tot metric is the average of the cumulative errors over the 30-year forecast horizon, for the five evaluated forecasts and the five jump-off years. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. • irina grossman, tom wilson112 abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). tab. 4: absolute error for life expectancy at birth forecasts for females jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year actual em lc_d lc_dc c fdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 71.59 0.23 0.37 0.40 0.17 0.28 0.31 0.18 0.19 0.38 0.16 0.29 0.20 1960 74.51 0.41 0.16 0.10 0.75 0.56 0.49 0.13 0.53 0.23 0.38 0.29 0.28 1970 74.89 0.42 0.40 0.55 0.71 0.61 0.57 0.18 0.82 0.53 0.57 0.43 0.45 1980 78.43 0.25 0.55 0.08 0.86 0.06 0.22 0.17 0.03 0.01 0.13 0.02 0.08 1990 80.50 0.60 0.21 0.16 0.51 0.13 0.29 0.01 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.21 mean 0.38 0.34 0.26 0.60 0.33 0.38 0.13 0.34 0.26 0.28 0.24 0.24 10-year forecast horizon 1950 74.05 0.92 0.57 0.72 1.78 0.65 0.60 0.13 1.72 0.08 1.01 0.27 0.71 1960 74.17 1.94 1.85 1.77 0.41 1.14 1.24 2.48 0.39 2.19 1.13 1.95 1.74 1970 78.22 2.28 2.58 2.71 3.29 2.77 2.70 1.45 3.74 2.08 2.88 2.10 2.36 1980 80.15 0.70 0.01 0.30 2.11 0.13 0.66 0.72 1.21 0.37 0.78 0.09 0.41 1990 82.27 0.49 0.39 0.12 1.26 0.13 0.79 0.51 1.47 0.03 0.53 0.14 0.38 mean 1.27 1.08 1.12 1.77 0.96 1.20 1.06 1.70 0.95 1.27 0.91 1.12 20-year forecast horizon 1950 74.17 0.18 0.65 0.36 0.79 0.59 0.67 2.34 1.53 1.46 0.14 1.45 0.71 1960 78.22 0.13 0.95 1.04 2.79 1.65 1.50 1.21 3.24 0.06 1.81 0.18 0.64 1970 80.15 2.72 3.39 3.45 4.48 3.57 3.45 0.80 5.36 2.55 3.82 2.38 2.90 1980 82.27 1.53 0.96 0.86 3.49 0.52 1.50 1.32 2.95 0.03 1.75 0.26 1.17 1990 84.20 0.50 1.14 0.20 1.90 0.27 1.42 1.30 3.02 0.52 0.97 0.37 0.70 mean 1.01 1.42 1.18 2.69 1.32 1.71 1.39 3.22 0.93 1.70 0.93 1.22 30-year forecast horizon 1950 78.22 2.85 2.31 2.72 3.92 2.37 2.26 1.13 5.47 1.67 2.88 1.07 2.09 1960 80.15 0.29 1.83 1.91 4.00 2.51 2.32 2.37 4.93 0.61 2.80 0.45 1.17 1970 82.27 3.47 4.53 4.49 5.94 4.70 4.54 0.06 7.30 4.50 5.07 3.33 4.00 1980 84.20 2.25 1.84 1.30 4.74 0.80 2.26 2.34 4.61 1.48 2.62 0.90 2.09 1990 85.69 0.26 1.57 0.02 2.14 0.67 1.72 2.70 4.25 1.67 1.11 0.60 0.92 mean 1.82 2.42 2.09 4.15 2.21 2.62 1.72 5.31 1.99 2.90 1.27 2.05 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts tot 31.4 35.2 32.0 67.5 32.0 38.8 33.9 76.8 26.6 42.5 22.2 30.3 avm 1.05 1.17 1.07 2.25 1.07 1.29 1.13 2.56 0.89 1.42 0.74 1.01 notes: actual life expectancies are presented in the second column from the left. if the jumpoff year is 1970 and the forecast horizon is 10 years, the relevant cell will show the estimated life expectancy at birth for 1980. the 12 rightmost columns present the absolute error in years a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 113 standout performer, with the difference particularly evident for the 30-year forecast horizon. when we consider the tot metric, em is the second-best performer and cfdm also performs reasonably well. conversely, cbd performs poorly. for females, of the life expectancy forecasts for the 12 evaluated models for each of the evaluated jump-off years and forecast horizons. the mean of the absolute errors across jump-off years for each evaluated forecast horizon are also presented. the tot metric is the average of the cumulative errors over the 30-year forecast horizon, for the five evaluated forecasts and the five jump-off years. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). fig. 2: mean absolute error in forecasted life expectancy at birth, averaged across models, by forecast horizon 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 4.50 5.00 1 5 10 20 30 forecast horizon (years) male female mean error (years) notes: this figure visualises the mean absolute error in forecasted life expectancy at birth, averaged across jump-off years and then across models. error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the model errors. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). • irina grossman, tom wilson114 when we consider the tot metric, the plat and em models were the top performers, whilst the cfdm and cbd models were the worst performers. the aee(0) is greater for males than for females, with similar variance in model performance (fig. 2). across the models and jump-off years, the average aee(0) for a 30-year forecast horizon increases from 1.60 years for a 10-year forecast horizon to 3.95 years for males and from 1.20 years for a 10-year forecast horizon to 2.55 years for a 30-year horizon. 3.3 error for forecasted life expectancy at age 65 tables 5 and 6 present the absolute error in life expectancy at age 65, aee(65), for males and females. actual life expectancies are presented in the lefthand columns, and the aee(65) is presented for each model, each evaluated jump-off year, and each forecast horizon. when we consider the tot metric, apc, em, lc_dc, and cfdm were the best performing models for males, whilst the apc, em, plat, and lc_dc models were the best performing methods for females. the aee(65) is greater for males than for females (fig. 3). the average errors across the models and jump-off years increases from 0.98 years for a 10-year forecast horizon to 3.16 years for a 30year forecast horizon for males, and from 0.85 years for a 10-year forecast horizon to 2.21 years for a 30-year horizon for females. 3.4 error for total projected deaths using the pseudo-projection method the results of our evaluation using the pseudo-projections method are presented in table 7. the totm metric is presented in the bottom row, whilst the absolute percentage errors between the actual and forecast number of total deaths is presented in the relevant cells for each of the models. the apc model was the top performer, particularly for the 20and 30-year forecast horizons. the em model was the second top performer according to the totm metric. if we consider the mean absolute percentage error in forecast total deaths using the pseudo-projection method across models and jump-off years, we find that it increases from 1.7 percent for a forecast horizon of 1 year, to 8.4 percent for a 10-year horizon, to 12.8 percent for a 20-year horizon, and to 17.7 percent for a 30-year horizon. 3.5 age-specific absolute errors in forecast asdrs the average absolute errors in the forecast asdrs for males and females after 10, 20 and 30 years are reported in appendices b1-b6. here, the average represents the mean value across the five forecasts produced for jump-off years 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. in each table, the top model is bolded for each age group, whilst the worst performing model is shown in red. the apc model does not perform particularly well for the younger age groups and has few top performances for any age group for the 10and 20-year forecast horizons. however, it performs very well relative to other models for age 50 and above for the 30-year forecast horizon. the em model performs well across the age groups for the 10-, 20-, and 30-year forecast a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 115 tab. 5: absolute error for life expectancy at age 65 forecasts for males jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year actual em lc_d lc_dc c fdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 12.10 0.22 0.20 0.12 0.31 0.20 0.21 0.04 1.24 0.10 0.24 0.12 0.17 1960 12.60 0.19 0.27 0.32 0.27 0.26 0.24 0.26 0.84 0.07 0.27 0.19 0.21 1970 12.47 0.34 0.17 0.12 0.06 0.18 0.19 0.61 0.28 0.38 0.14 0.40 0.32 1980 13.84 0.04 0.78 0.04 0.17 1.10 0.85 0.16 0.43 0.03 0.70 0.33 0.23 1990 15.45 0.47 0.73 0.14 0.27 0.13 0.83 0.25 0.20 0.21 0.38 0.43 0.39 mean 0.25 0.43 0.15 0.21 0.38 0.46 0.26 0.60 0.16 0.34 0.30 0.27 10-year forecast horizon 1950 12.51 0.21 0.23 0.38 0.12 0.23 0.21 0.02 0.24 0.19 0.12 0.14 0.11 1960 11.98 0.57 0.34 0.26 0.56 0.34 0.38 1.02 0.67 1.15 0.41 0.84 0.72 1970 13.76 1.56 1.46 1.41 1.10 1.48 1.49 1.21 1.70 1.14 1.35 1.29 1.30 1980 15.22 0.93 2.03 0.91 1.41 2.39 2.06 0.64 1.37 0.97 1.96 1.25 1.22 1990 17.05 0.97 1.96 0.71 1.15 0.42 2.00 0.69 1.65 1.75 1.21 1.51 1.33 mean 0.85 1.21 0.73 0.87 0.97 1.23 0.72 1.13 1.04 1.01 1.00 0.94 20-year forecast horizon 1950 11.98 0.41 0.26 0.05 0.77 0.26 0.30 1.58 0.73 0.85 0.43 0.90 0.76 1960 13.76 1.00 1.45 1.56 0.93 1.44 1.39 0.66 1.87 0.32 1.28 0.19 0.52 1970 15.22 2.90 2.94 2.87 2.29 2.97 2.97 1.63 3.84 2.22 2.74 2.29 2.41 1980 17.05 2.26 3.72 2.18 2.85 4.13 3.70 1.33 3.64 2.67 3.59 2.63 2.61 1990 19.01 1.80 3.52 1.56 2.16 0.99 3.49 1.03 3.87 3.59 2.29 2.82 2.51 mean 1.67 2.38 1.64 1.80 1.96 2.37 1.25 2.79 1.93 2.07 1.76 1.76 30-year forecast horizon 1950 13.76 1.23 1.55 1.83 0.90 1.55 1.49 1.59 3.37 0.24 1.34 0.14 0.54 1960 15.22 2.22 2.93 3.07 2.13 2.92 2.84 0.89 4.00 0.70 2.67 1.05 1.55 1970 17.05 4.58 4.79 4.70 3.87 4.82 4.82 2.35 6.29 4.36 4.51 3.91 4.04 1980 19.01 3.74 5.54 3.57 4.40 6.00 5.48 1.77 6.00 4.66 5.35 4.13 4.13 1990 20.57 2.27 4.67 2.04 2.72 1.23 4.57 0.65 5.67 5.21 3.01 3.79 3.33 mean 2.81 3.90 3.04 2.81 3.30 3.84 1.45 5.07 3.03 3.37 2.60 2.72 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts tot 37.7 55.6 38.5 39.0 45.7 55.4 26.6 65.4 43.0 47.0 39.5 39.0 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 1.3 1.9 1.3 1.3 1.5 1.8 0.9 2.2 1.4 1.6 1.3 1.3 notes: actual life expectancies are presented in the second column from the left. if the jumpoff year is 1970 and the forecast horizon is 10 years, then the relevant cell will show the estimated life expectancy at birth for 1980. the 12 rightmost columns present the absolute error in years of the life expectancy forecasts for the 12 evaluated models for each of the evaluated jump-off years and forecast horizons. the mean of the absolute errors across jumpoff years for each evaluated forecast horizon are also presented. tot is the average cumulative error over the five 30-year forecasts and is presented at the bottom of the table. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. • irina grossman, tom wilson116 abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). tab. 6: absolute error for life expectancy at age 65 forecasts for females jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year actual em lc_d lc_dc c fdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 14.66 0.11 0.07 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.08 0.19 0.99 0.12 0.02 0.13 0.08 1960 15.92 0.20 0.37 0.34 0.54 0.55 0.48 0.22 0.57 0.06 0.49 0.26 0.28 1970 16.17 0.32 0.47 0.40 0.51 0.53 0.46 0.57 0.16 0.28 0.50 0.44 0.43 1980 18.12 0.13 0.33 0.06 0.61 0.06 0.51 0.18 0.05 0.12 0.30 0.19 0.23 1990 19.32 0.46 0.32 0.07 0.39 0.07 0.43 0.20 0.27 0.03 0.26 0.20 0.27 mean 0.24 0.31 0.18 0.42 0.25 0.39 0.27 0.41 0.12 0.32 0.25 0.26 10-year forecast horizon 1950 15.76 0.82 0.78 0.84 1.23 0.80 0.76 0.26 1.21 0.28 0.94 0.44 0.69 1960 15.71 0.76 0.22 0.27 0.31 0.01 0.12 0.93 0.07 1.29 0.03 0.75 0.55 1970 18.02 1.54 1.97 1.78 2.28 2.03 1.93 1.50 2.63 0.75 2.09 1.42 1.63 1980 19.08 0.41 0.69 0.06 1.58 0.17 0.81 0.26 1.32 1.14 0.74 0.14 0.33 1990 20.57 0.56 0.90 0.16 1.07 0.01 0.94 0.11 1.71 0.73 0.68 0.07 0.38 mean 0.82 0.91 0.62 1.29 0.60 0.91 0.61 1.38 0.84 0.90 0.56 0.72 20-year forecast horizon 1950 15.71 0.58 0.48 0.58 1.10 0.49 0.43 0.93 2.20 0.65 0.69 0.35 0.16 1960 18.02 0.65 1.68 1.62 2.52 1.92 1.76 0.20 2.93 0.43 2.04 0.47 0.95 1970 19.08 1.89 2.65 2.32 3.22 2.72 2.56 0.88 4.29 0.08 2.87 1.29 1.86 1980 20.57 1.17 1.53 0.39 2.83 0.15 1.58 0.76 3.12 1.95 1.59 0.17 0.81 1990 21.92 0.63 1.51 0.24 1.61 0.07 1.46 0.88 3.23 1.57 1.06 0.16 0.42 mean 0.98 1.57 1.03 2.25 1.07 1.56 0.73 3.15 0.93 1.65 0.49 0.84 30-year forecast horizon 1950 18.02 2.70 2.53 2.68 3.30 2.55 2.46 0.40 5.38 0.75 2.80 1.05 1.92 1960 19.08 0.78 2.34 2.27 3.46 2.61 2.41 1.50 4.60 0.96 2.82 0.24 1.12 1970 20.57 2.66 3.77 3.30 4.58 3.84 3.64 0.12 6.32 0.11 4.07 1.52 2.51 1980 21.92 1.78 2.25 0.69 3.91 0.33 2.21 1.84 4.73 2.80 2.32 0.32 1.22 1990 23.21 0.71 2.09 0.30 2.05 0.17 1.95 2.11 4.69 1.98 1.42 0.31 0.52 mean 1.73 2.60 1.85 3.46 1.90 2.53 1.19 5.15 1.32 2.69 0.69 1.46 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts tot 25.9 38.3 26.2 55.1 28.7 38.4 19.6 72.8 25.2 40.2 13.4 22.1 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 0.9 1.3 0.9 1.8 1.0 1.3 0.7 2.4 0.8 1.3 0.4 0.7 a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 117 notes: actual life expectancies are presented in the second column from the left. if the jumpoff year is 1970 and the forecast horizon is 10 years, then the relevant cell will show the estimated life expectancy at birth for 1980. the 12 rightmost columns present the absolute error in years of the life expectancy forecasts for the 12 evaluated models for each of the evaluated jump-off years and forecast horizons. the mean of the absolute errors across jumpoff years for each evaluated forecast horizon are also presented. tot is the average cumulative error over the five 30-year forecasts and is presented at the bottom of the table. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). fig. 3: mean absolute error in forecasted life expectancy at age 65, averaged across models, by forecast horizon 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 1 5 10 20 30 forecast horizon (years) male female mean error (years) notes: this figure visualises the mean absolute error in forecasted life expectancy at age 65, which has been averaged across jump-off years and then across models. error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). • irina grossman, tom wilson118 tab. 7: absolute percentage error in projected total deaths using the pseudoprojection method jump-off demography stmomo ensemble models year em lc_d lc_dc cfdm bms lc_s apc cbd plat d s u 1-year forecast horizon 1950 2.71 2.83 2.55 2.50 2.83 3.07 3.56 1.40 3.25 2.72 3.29 2.97 1960 0.32 1.15 1.02 2.54 1.71 1.23 2.21 0.06 1.86 1.03 0.94 0.47 1970 0.09 1.41 1.69 0.48 0.08 0.16 0.04 2.45 0.51 0.34 0.11 0.27 1980 0.30 0.71 0.97 4.19 5.84 5.92 2.11 0.38 1.61 3.12 0.74 0.02 1990 4.18 0.84 0.29 3.23 0.71 5.29 0.71 1.87 0.14 1.13 1.58 1.54 mean 1.52 1.39 1.30 2.59 2.23 3.13 1.73 1.23 1.47 1.67 1.33 1.05 10-year forecast horizon 1950 1.61 0.76 2.26 1.43 0.72 0.40 5.37 11.39 2.83 0.99 2.56 0.83 1960 8.49 7.85 7.20 4.85 5.56 5.94 15.02 1.51 11.08 6.08 10.57 9.35 1970 16.07 18.95 20.90 16.88 17.51 17.34 7.38 29.65 14.38 17.79 13.16 14.85 1980 6.09 4.20 4.35 12.36 9.17 9.90 3.05 14.40 2.34 8.72 3.29 4.62 1990 5.45 9.13 3.91 11.40 1.02 12.65 0.68 19.64 8.19 7.32 7.37 7.16 mean 7.54 8.18 7.72 9.38 6.80 9.25 6.30 15.32 7.76 8.18 7.39 7.36 20-year forecast horizon 1950 4.28 4.84 2.61 4.28 4.89 5.23 17.61 6.04 9.73 4.64 10.64 7.92 1960 7.19 10.52 11.64 12.79 12.63 12.24 7.10 23.80 6.68 12.02 4.52 6.56 1970 16.60 21.21 24.79 18.97 19.74 19.55 1.84 32.20 19.01 20.02 13.97 15.98 1980 17.73 15.79 15.37 23.14 18.89 20.33 0.57 29.15 16.14 19.59 13.15 15.50 1990 5.99 13.57 5.79 13.47 1.56 16.09 2.60 26.29 15.18 9.89 10.39 9.84 mean 10.36 13.19 12.04 14.53 11.54 14.69 5.94 23.50 13.35 13.23 10.53 11.16 30-year forecast horizon 1950 13.66 13.67 16.60 14.17 13.62 13.26 10.14 24.98 10.92 13.87 5.61 9.32 1960 8.41 13.62 14.98 15.28 15.43 14.94 11.03 25.43 15.37 14.86 7.92 9.68 1970 25.14 31.28 36.01 29.05 29.91 29.61 4.00 41.12 38.87 30.17 25.66 26.97 1980 20.71 20.00 18.55 25.53 22.05 23.36 3.80 31.12 27.04 22.99 17.42 19.72 1990 3.19 14.19 3.48 11.09 1.31 15.60 9.40 26.12 22.16 8.59 11.38 9.80 mean 14.22 18.55 17.92 19.02 16.46 19.35 7.67 29.75 22.87 18.10 13.60 15.10 cumulative forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts tot 244.5 299.9 284.2 333.3 268.0 336.4 171.7 555.4 311.8 299.1 239.5 251.5 average forecast errors after 30 years, averaged over the five forecasts avm 8.2 10.0 9.5 11.1 8.9 11.2 5.7 18.5 10.4 10.0 8.0 8.4 notes: the 12 rightmost columns present the absolute percentage error in total deaths for the 12 evaluated models for each of the evaluated jump-off years and forecast horizons. the mean of the errors across jump-off years for each evaluated forecast horizon are also presented. tot is the average cumulative error over the five 30-year forecasts and is presented at the bottom of the table. the av metric is equal to the tot metric divided by the forecast horizon, providing a central measure of error across the forecast horizon. abbreviations: em – extrapolative smoothing model, lc_d – lee-carter model from the demography package, lc_dc lee-carter model from the demography package with automated base period selection, cfdm – coherent functional demographic model, lc_s a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 119 horizons for both males and females. cfdm performs poorly for older females (>50 years). asdrs for the 30-year forecast horizon, for the 1990 jump-off year are shown in figures 4, 5 and 6 for the apc, cfdm, and em models, respectively. cfdm exhibits atypical forecasts for the highest ages (fig. 5). when considering the forecasts at the highest ages (100+), as detailed in tables b1–b6, it is evident that some methods produced more sensible forecasts, such as the apc and em models. conversely, the cfdm and lee-carter models (lc_d and lc_s) often produced poor forecasts for the highest ages. – the stmomo implementation of the lee-carter model, apc – age-period-cohort model, cbd – cairns-blake-dowd model, plat – plat model, d – demography ensemble, s – stmomo ensemble, u – unique ensemble. source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023), abs data (2019, 2023) and the australian demographic data bank (smith 2009). fig. 4: forecast asdrs with the apc model for a 30-year forecast horizon, 1990 jump-off 0.000001 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 asdr age female 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 age male asdr apc actual source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). fig. 5: forecast asdrs with the cfdm model for a 30-year forecast horizon, 1990 jump-off 0.000001 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 asdr age female 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 asdr age male cfdmapc actual source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). • irina grossman, tom wilson120 4 discussion 4.1 model performance despite the variability of the results, there were three consistent findings: (1) the strong performance of the apc model, (2) the em method’s robustness, and (3) the poor performance of the cbd method when implemented across a full age range. the apc model’s ability to capture cohort effects, in addition to age and period effects, may be a key factor in its strong performance, particularly for longer horizons and older age groups. cohort-specific trends, such as health behaviours, medical advancements, and socio-economic factors, are important for understanding mortality trajectories. these cohort effects become more pronounced over longer forecast periods, aligning with the apc model’s theoretical strengths. conversely, dowd et al. (2010) found that the apc model performed similarly to other models for forecasting the mortality of older males in england and wales in an evaluation which considered the stability of the forecasts with shifting forecast horizons (dowd et al. 2010). devi fokeer and narsoo (2022) found that the apc model was most effective for ages 0-19, but performance was mixed for older ages for one year ahead mortality forecasts. in contrast, the plat model, which also includes cohort effects, but uses a more detailed age-specific framework than the apc model, did not perform as well, particularly in forecasting total deaths using the pseudo-projection method. specifically, the plat model struggled with forecasting mortality rates for females aged 22-58, which likely contributed to its higher mean error of 22.9 percent in total death projections across the five 30-year forecasts from different jump-off years. our research aligns with previous work that indicated that the em model was one of the best performers in an evaluation of the accuracy of forecasted asdrs for australian populations aged 50-100 (terblanche 2016). the em model’s robustness may be linked to its incorporation of demographic constraints, such as ensuring that asdrs do not decrease with increasing age after the age of 15 years, and that male asdrs remain higher than or equal to female asdrs. these assumptions fig. 6: forecast asdrs with the em model with a 30-year forecast horizon, 1990 jump-off 0.000001 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 asdr age female 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0 50 100 150 asdr age male em apc actual source: authors’ calculations based on hmd (2023). a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 121 enhance the model’s reliability, particularly for extended horizons, and align well with demographic realities. the em method has not been used widely and is rarely included in evaluations of mortality forecasting methods. the results of this study suggest that it would be worthwhile to consider it as a potential useful mortality forecasting method. next, we consider that one of the consistent findings of our study was the poor performance of the cbd method. this is not unexpected, given that the method was designed to be applied for older ages, both in terms of the data used to fit the model and the ages for which the mortality forecasts were created. practitioners should be aware that this method is not suitable for the full age range. compared to other models, the cfdm method performed better for males than for females, where it was among the poorest performers. the cfdm method forecasts male and female data together – as products and ratios. forecasts of male mortality generally have greater error than mortality forecasts for females. for example, in this study, the average error in forecast life expectancy at age 65, for a 30year forecast horizon, was 3.27 years for males compared to 2.39 years for females. the greater error in the male forecasts may increase the relative uncertainty of the female forecasts when using the cfdm method. these findings align with booth (2020), who observed that coherent mortality forecasting methods like cfdm may produce less accurate forecasts for lower-mortality populations when combined with higher-mortality populations. specifically, booth noted that when male and female mortality data are modelled together, forecasts for the lower-mortality group, typically females, can be negatively influenced by trends in the highermortality group. bergeron-boucher and kjærgaard (2022) also found that symmetric mean absolute percentage errors were generally greater for males than for females in an evaluation of the lee-carter method and its variants using mortality data from canada, denmark, italy, and sweden. shang (2015) found that forecast errors were greater for males than for females; however, the study found that cfdm produced relatively good forecasts of male mortality rates and suggested using cfdm as a benchmark method. it is important to note that the advantage of the cfdm method is not greater accuracy – rather, the method allows for the creation of coherent male and female mortality forecasts that do not diverge over longer forecast horizons. this is an important property given that mortality forecasts often need to be produced for longer horizons – even to 100 years (woods/dunstan 2014). we thus suggest that practitioners using the cfdm method be mindful that it may produce relatively poorer forecasts for females. similarly, practitioners should be aware that not only are male mortality rates typically higher than female mortality rates, but forecasts of male mortality are generally more inaccurate. ensemble models, whilst not always more accurate than individual models, tend to reduce the frequency of bad forecasts (grossman et al. 2022). however, li (2022) found that simple averaging did not outperform individual base models. in this study, the ensemble models performed better than most of their individual constituent models. whilst the s and u ensembles generally yielded robust results, the d ensemble did not perform particularly well, likely due to the inclusion of models with high errors (such as the cfdm model for females). these forecasts were notably different from those of the other individual models and could have • irina grossman, tom wilson122 been identified and removed from the ensembles if a trimmed ensemble approach had been implemented (see rayer et al. 2009). future research should consider this accessible combination method, which has the potential to improve ensemble model reliability for practitioners. 4.2 the pseudo-projection method for mortality forecast evaluation unlike the sex-specific metrics presented here, the pseudo-projection method evaluates total deaths, providing a single, aggregate measure that connects mortality rate errors to population-level outcomes. while metrics such as life expectancy and asdr errors highlight specific aspects of forecast performance, they do not fully capture the cumulative impact of mortality forecast errors on total deaths and thus older population forecasts, which are vital for planning in sectors such as healthcare and aged care. by offering this broader perspective, the pseudo-projection method complements traditional metrics and provides practitioners with actionable insights into the real-world implications of forecast errors. the pseudo-projection results revealed notable differences in forecast performance across methods. for example, over a 30-year horizon, the apc model consistently outperformed others, with a mean error in total deaths of 7.7 percent across five forecasts. this was substantially lower than the next best methods: the s ensemble (13.6 percent) and em (14.2 percent). the plat model performed poorly, with a mean error of 22.9 percent, a result not immediately evident from other metrics. for instance, plat’s asdr errors over the same horizon were comparable to better-performing methods, averaging 0.036 for females and 0.023 for males, while its life expectancy errors were similarly unremarkable. however, online appendix b6 reveals plat’s challenges with specific age groups − particularly females aged 22-58 − likely contributing to its weaker total death projections. this illustrates how errors in specific age groups can compound to influence aggregate outcomes, demonstrating the pseudo-projection method’s ability to identify issues that other metrics might overlook. these results also highlight the influence of male and female mortality on total deaths. although deaths for males and females are calculated separately, their contributions to total errors reflect underlying differences in mortality rates and population sizes, with male mortality rates typically exhibiting greater variability. the apc model’s strong performance across all metrics suggests it handles these dynamics particularly well, while plat’s high pseudo-projection errors underscore how even moderate asdr inaccuracies for key age groups can cascade into larger aggregate errors. future research could explore applying the pseudo-projection method to males and females separately, which may provide deeper insights into how sex-specific errors propagate to total deaths. such an approach could complement aggregate evaluations and further enhance the method’s value for practitioners. a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 123 5 conclusion this study evaluated nine individual and three ensemble mortality forecasting models by producing several retrospective forecasts for australia. results were evaluated in terms of errors in mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, life expectancy at age 65, and total numbers of deaths. a pseudo-projection method was used to evaluate mortality forecast accuracy in terms of total deaths. the methods evaluated in this study are implemented in widely used r packages (stmomo and demography), which offer robust, well-documented, and user-friendly implementations. these packages allow even complex models such as apc and cfdm to be readily applied in real-world settings, bridging the gap between academic research and practical applications. by focusing on methods available through these established r packages, we hope that our evaluation supports practitioners in selecting methods that are not only accurate but also accessible and practical. the code used to create our forecasts is also made available, including for the em model, which is not currently included in any of the popular r packages. in doing so, we hope to allow the findings of this paper to be relevant to practitioners. the main findings of the study are summarised here: • the apc model performed strongly in our evaluation, particularly for older ages and longer forecast horizons, across several metrics for both males and females. these results suggest that the apc model is well-suited for long-term mortality forecasts. practitioners may find the apc model a useful option for producing forecasts over extended horizons. • the cbd method performed poorly, emphasising that it should not be used outside of its intended use for older populations. • the inclusion of poor forecasts appeared to substantively decrease the accuracy of the ensemble models. further investigation of the use of trimmed methods with a wide range of base models could prove useful. • the em method produced reliable forecasts across all metrics. the robustness of the em model may be linked to its incorporation of demographic constraints, such as ensuring that asdrs do not decrease with age after the age of 15 years, and that male asdrs remain higher than or equal to female asdrs. these assumptions enhance its reliability, particularly for extended forecast horizons, and align with demographic realities. • errors in mortality forecasts tend to be greater for males than for females. • the use of methods which forecast male and female mortality rates together, such as cfdm, can contribute to relatively poorer performance • irina grossman, tom wilson124 for forecasts of female mortality due to the relatively larger errors in the male mortality forecasts. • the pseudo-projection method revealed significant differences in the error in total deaths generated by the best and worst performing methods over a 30-year forecast horizon (7.7 percent vs 29.8 percent), with the plat model amongst the weaker performers (22.9 percent). these issues were not immediately apparent from the other metrics, such as life expectancy or asdr errors. by linking forecast errors to their cumulative impact on total deaths, the pseudo-projection method provided a clearer understanding of how forecasting methods perform in practical applications, offering guidance for population projections and policy planning. • several methods resulted in 30-year errors of up to 20 percent in aggregate forecasts of total deaths when evaluated using the pseudoprojection method. this indicates that substantial errors can occur in longterm mortality forecasts, even at the national level, and such significant discrepancies in total death projections could have significant impacts on overall planning and policy decisions that rely on these figures. • the top performing methods for shorter forecast horizons were not necessarily the top performing methods for longer horizons. furthermore, there is often little separating the top methods for the shorter horizons. differences between methods become more evident with longer horizons. given that practitioners are often required to produce long-term mortality forecasts, where practical, longer forecast horizons are helpful when evaluating and developing mortality forecast methods. there are also several limitations that readers should consider in their interpretation of the results. first, our study focused on specific implementations of forecast models. however, these methods can be configured in many ways, and the specific configuration can impact performance. this is evident in the differences in the performance of the stmomo and demography package implementations of the leecarter method, as well as between the lc_d and lc_dc methods. we endeavoured to evaluate methods ‘off the shelf’ and to establish how they performed on raw data with minimal pre-processing. however, practitioners often employ additional techniques, such as smoothing and constraining, alongside forecasting methods. these steps can influence the results, and future evaluations should consider their impact on accuracy. our simple data preparation approach, which involved smoothing over zeros, nas, and infinite values, and limiting asdrs to a maximum of 1, may have influenced results. as the various model implementations have different approaches to handling such values (e.g., models implemented with stmomo functions assign zero weights to non-positive exposures and missing values), we selected a data preparation approach that prioritised interpretability and consistency across models. future a practitioner-oriented evaluation of mortality forecasting methods: the case of australia • 125 evaluations could explore alternative approaches to data preparation to further refine performance comparisons. we only conducted our evaluation for the australian context. for more generalisable recommendations, the methods need to be rigorously tested for long forecast horizons for multiple datasets. the outcomes of the evaluations will depend on the metrics chosen, and different metrics will support different use cases for the mortality forecasts. some users also require indicators of forecast uncertainty, such as prediction intervals. this paper focuses on point forecast accuracy, which is vital for practitioners, but further research is required to address uncertainty measures comprehensively, including through the application and evaluation of probabilistic forecasting methods. furthermore, practitioners will often consider features other than accuracy when selecting a forecasting method. these can include input data requirements, ease of application, and the coherence of male and female forecasts, amongst others. these practical considerations underscore the importance of ensuring forecast methods are not only accurate but also user-friendly and fit for purpose. however, there is often limited information available to researchers and package developers about how forecasts are used in practice and which aspects are most critical to users. bridging this gap will require greater collaboration between researchers, developers, and practitioners to ensure forecast methods align with real-world needs. by focusing this evaluation on methods that are readily available in robust, widely used r packages, we hope to have provided practitioners with a practical resource for selecting models that are not only accurate but also accessible and adaptable to real-world applications. acknowledgments this work was supported by the australian government through the australian research council’s linkage project funding scheme (project lp210200733). we would like to thank andres villegas ramirez for his help in the implementation of forecast models. kim dunstan kindly provided helpful comments on a draft of the paper. all errors and omissions remain the authors’ responsibility. references abs 2019: historical population [data set]. in: https://www.abs.gov.au/, 18.04.2019. 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haberman, steven 2006: a cohort-based extension to the lee-carter model for mortality reduction factors. in: insurance: mathematics and economics 38,3: 556-570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.insmatheco.2005.12.001 shang, han lin 2015: statistically tested comparisons of the accuracy of forecasting methods for age-specific and sex-specific mortality and life expectancy. in: population studies 69,3: 317-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2015.1074268 shang, han lin; booth, heather; hyndman, rob j. 2011: point and interval forecasts of mortality rates and life expectancy: a comparison of ten principal component methods. in: demographic research 25: 173-214. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2011.25.5 smith, leonard et al. 2009: the australian demographic data bank, 1901-2003: populations [data set]. canberra, act, australia: australian social science data archive, the australian national university. terblanche, wilma 2015: population estimates and projections for australia’s very elderly population at state and national level [phd thesis]. in: the university of queensland https:// core.ac.uk/ [https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43380972.pdf, 03.01.2024]. terblanche, wilma 2016: retrospective testing of mortality forecasting methods for the projection of very elderly populations in australia. in: journal of forecasting 35,8: 703-717. https://doi.org/10.1002/for.2404 thatcher, a. roger; kannisto, väinö; vaupel, james w. 1998: appendix a: definitions and approximations. in: the force of mortality at ages 80 to 120. odense university press [https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/books/monograph5/appenda.htm, 11.01.2024]. villegas, andrés; kaishev, vladimir; millossovich, pietro 2018: stmomo: an r package for stochastic mortality modeling. in: journal of statistical software 84,3: 1-38. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v084.i03 https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v027.i03 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0145-5 https://cran.r-project.org/ https://cran.r-project https://doi.org/10.2307/2290201 https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2001.0036 https://doi.org/10.1080/10920277.2022.2108453 https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/14.1.124 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.insmatheco.2009.08.006 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-009-9128-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.insmatheco.2005.12.001 https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2015.1074268 https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2011.25.5 https://core.ac.uk/ https://core.ac.uk/ https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43380972.pdf https://doi.org/10.1002/for.2404 https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/books/monograph5/appenda.htm https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v084.i03 • irina grossman, tom wilson128 villegas, andrés; millossovich, pietro; kaishev, vladimir 2025: stmomo: stochastic mortality modelling [r package reference manual]. comprehensive r archive network (cran) [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stmomo/stmomo.pdf, 14.04.2025]. wilson, tom; rees, philip 2021: a brief guide to producing a national population projection. in: australian population studies 5,1: 77-100. https://doi.org/10.37970/aps.v5i1.84 woods, carmel; dunstan, kim 2014: forecasting mortality in new zealand. in: https:// www.stats.govt.nz/ [https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/uploads/research/forecastingmortality-in-new-zealand-2014/forecasting-mortality-14-01-17feb14.pdf, 28.01.2024]. date of submission: 22.04.2024 date of acceptance: 17.04.2025 dr. irina grossman (*). rmit university, the university of melbourne. australia. e-mail: irina.grossman@rmit.edu.au; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5761-6194 url: https://www.rmit.edu.au/profiles/g/irina-grossman dr. tom wilson. advanced demographic modelling. melbourne, australia. e-mail: tom.demographer@protonmail.com; http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8812-7556 url: https://drtomwilson.com/ https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stmomo/stmomo.pdf https://doi.org/10.37970/aps.v5i1.84 ttps://www.stats.govt.nz/ ttps://www.stats.govt.nz/ https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/uploads/research/forecasting-mortality-in-new-zealand-2014/forecasting-mortality-14-01-17feb14.pdf https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/uploads/research/forecasting-mortality-in-new-zealand-2014/forecasting-mortality-14-01-17feb14.pdf https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/uploads/research/forecasting-mortality-in-new-zealand-2014/forecasting-mortality-14-01-17feb14.pdf mailto:irina.grossman@rmit.edu.au https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5761-6194 https://www.rmit.edu.au/profiles/g/irina-grossman mailto:tom.demographer@protonmail.com http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8812-7556 https://drtomwilson.com/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary* zsolt spéder abstract: our study examines how attitudes towards family and gender roles have changed since the ultimate collapse of communism in hungary. with respect to evaluating the effects of the regime change, it is important to note that hungary is unique in having pre-transition measures on attitudes from the international social survey program. in analyzing the nature of value shifts, an arithmetic method that decomposes the changes into population turnover and individual (period) components is used. according to the results, period effects  uctuated over the quarter of century, while the population turnover effects point continuously and clearly towards liberalization of family and gender-role attitudes. since the period effects were usually stronger, they shaped the  uctuating nature of overall change. namely, there is a clear trend towards re-traditionalization immediately following the regime change and liberalization thereafter, although there are also signs of continued support for traditional values. the series of repeated modules of the issp allowed us to examine a key premise of the second demographic transition (sdt) theory in the case of hungary. we concluded that the detected direction of the attitude change does not support the examined premise of the sdt. keywords: gender role · attitude change · regime change · second demographic transition theory 1 introduction it is a commonplace that in the time from 1989/1990 onwards, profound changes altered all aspects of life in the societies of post-communist countries. in a nutshell, a democratic system based on free elections and a market economy has replaced comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 741-770 (date of release: 20.12.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-29 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-29en0 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • zsolt spéder742 the command economies and one-party political systems (kornai 1992; offe 1994). are we witnessing equally profound changes in family life – more speci cally in values related to gender roles, and attitudes towards the family? institutional and structural changes have probably not left beliefs and ideas untouched, but there is also good reason to believe that people’s mindsets change little or only slowly in the short run (dahrendorf 1990). the aim of our analysis is to describe the changes in attitudes towards gender roles, family life, partnership forms and childbearing over a quarter of a century. furthermore, using a decomposition procedure we aim to identify the extent to which the changes can be linked to the political-economic regime change or to historical events (periods), and whether and to what extent population turnover played a role in the changes. since the 1970s, attitudes towards gender roles and family life in the usa and other western countries have been characterized by the powerful spread of the idea of gender equality, more liberal expectations regarding family life, and increasing tolerance towards atypical family forms (thornton/young-demarco 2001; scott 2006; brooks/bolzendahl 2004). however, after the turn of the millennium the tendency peaked (thornton/young-demarco 2001), and in fact, a reversal took place in the usa and some western european countries. a us study even proposes the “end of the gender revolution” (cotter et al. 2011), while a western european comparative analysis reveals a “conservative turn” in the 1990s (scott 2006). findings regarding post-communist countries are non-conclusive (chromkova manea/rabusic 2020). while several studies indicate a shift towards liberalization (rabusic 2001; voicu/tu s 2012; lee et al. 2007), there are others that reveal stable attitudes (schwartz et al. 2000), or a shift towards traditional gender-role expectations (spéder/kapitány 2014). research on attitudinal change has a tradition in its own right, but it is of particular relevance for demographic analysis. in his comprehensive review, van de kaa discussed cultural/ideational approaches as one of seven research traditions in the understanding of fertility development (van de kaa 1996). according to the most popular current theory, the second demographic transition (sdt) theory, value change is the driver of demographic behavior. values play a key role in the “developmental idealism” approach (thornton 2005), and they are also present in the “anomie” approach employed for understanding changes in the post-communist countries (philipov et al. 2006). nineteen country studies, published in the early 2000s as a special collection of the journal demographic research, edited by tomas frejka and jan hoem (frejka 2008; hoem 2008), discussed long-term trends in fertility using a similar structure and standard indicators. all but three of these studies, to a greater or lesser extent, have addressed the role of value change. of the 19 studies, 12 explicitly touch on sdt, and for 10 studies sdt theory was considered a relevant approach for understanding changes. two country studies (france, ukraine) conclude that sdt is not a suitable explanatory framework. this clearly underlines the fact that research on attitudinal and value change should be given more emphasis in population research than is currently the case (cf. liefbroer/billari 2010). a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 743 in this paper we will give a comprehensive and detailed answer to the question of how attitudes towards family and gender roles have changed in hungary during the quarter of a century since the end of the communist system and following the change of regime. this is made possible by the four available “family and changing gender roles” modules of the international social survey program (issp), which will be analysed using a method that is capable of differentiating between cohort and individual (period) effects (firebaugh 1997). we focus on hungary because data that allows a consistent comparison of the times before and after the regime change exists only in the case of this country. however, there are signs that our results can be generalized to other post-communist countries. first, a number of analyses have concluded that 40 years of political control and command economy have left their mark on the world of values (inglehart/baker 2000). furthermore, studies on attitudes towards gender roles in the family have concluded that attitudes in the former socialist countries are similar, well separated and still distinct from the general attitudes in western european countries (lück/ hofäcker 2003; harrison/fitzgerald 2010; chromkova manea/rabusic 2020). we do not deny, however, that there are differences within the former socialist countries (lück/hofäcker 2003) and that international comparisons of attitudes should be treated with great caution (van vlimmeren et al. 2017). still, we assume that the attitudinal footprints of the common structures, and the similar natures of structural and institutional changes, justify considering that the hungarian results may be relevant for, or generalizable to, some of the post-communist countries. we begin our analysis by giving an overview of theories about attitude change and highlighting the role of values and attitudes in the sdt theory and in its application for post-communist fertility transition. we also devote attention to some speci c contextual factors around the regime change that may have in uenced the directions of change in attitudes towards gender roles and family life. then follows a short description of the data and methods. the statistical analysis comprises two steps: descriptive statistics and the decomposition of the change into population turnover and individual effects. the summary section will discuss the results from the perspective of general attitudinal change as well as from the aspect of the relevance of demographic approaches. 2 approaches to understanding attitudinal change and the relevance of values for demographic analysis 2.1 general theories about attitude changes according to the relevant literature, three different avenues of thinking can be distinguished when considering change in attitudes towards gender roles and family arrangements (brooks/bolzendahl 2004; ross/sacker 2010). structural approaches claim that the attitudes of individuals are strongly connected to the social structure; to institutional arrangements. more speci cally, gender-role and family expectations are linked to employment structures and labor market relations • zsolt spéder744 as well to the existing family systems. a certain social status can only manifest itself if individuals can adapt to it; different social statuses strengthen certain attitudes while simultaneously weakening others. this approach is based on macroand micro-level research  ndings. macro-level analyses link gender-role attitude changes to the growing female participation in the labor market, educational expansion and the increasing proportion of women in higher education (cotter et al. 2011). micro-level analyses reveal that individuals with higher quali cations, women and especially employed women and people living in atypical partnership and family forms have more permissive attitudes and expectations towards gender roles and partnerships than the average. furthermore, interest-based approaches state that attitudes change because it is in the interest of the individual, whereas exposure-based explanations assume that attitudes change as a consequence of personal experiences and exposure to new circumstances (cf. voicu/tu s 2012). the second approach views attitudes towards gender roles and partnerships as an inherent element of a general value change, the mechanisms of which, following brooks and bolzendahl, can be described as ideological learning. this approach is supported by research  ndings that establish a close relationship between the liberalization of gender roles and the idea of equality and liberty (thornton/youngdemarco 2001), individualization and civic values (brooks/bolzendahl 2004: 112), or secularization (scott 2006). there are three aspects worth emphasizing. first, attitudes are interrelated and only change in conjunction with each other, but not separately. second, new attitudes will only spread if they are considered “more favorable” than the related “old” attitudes. finally, learning (the reproduction of attitudes) includes not only cognitive but also emotional elements, which helps people accept new attitudes. speci cally, gender-role equity is a result but also an element of the increasingly supported, commonly shared human rights values. that is, belief in human rights helped spread the idea of equal gender roles (brooks/ bolzendahl 2004). finally, according to approaches following the theory of cohort replacement delineated by inglehart in the silent revolution (1997), values change with the appearance of younger generations and the disappearance of older generations. this concept is based on two pillars. on the one hand, individuals establish their fundamental beliefs and value system by socialization, especially during what are called the formative years. during that period, adolescents are extremely sensitive and open to what is new; their basic values and attitudes are formed and consolidated through constantly re ecting on their social environment. on the other hand, there is no fundamental change in general values, beliefs and attitudes; that is, there is neither remarkable aging nor period effects in the later life course. (according to inglehart, the generation born and raised during the period of prosperity following the second world war, that never experienced any  nancial deprivation, will embrace and later advocate post-material values.) the theory suggests that attitudes towards gender roles and partnership forms shift with the emergence of open-minded adolescents and the disappearance of older cohorts with a traditional mind-set. however, the “scarcity hypothesis“ is also present from the outset in this approach (inglehart 1977: 22); namely that the actual circumstances, in particular a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 745 scarcity, are re ected in preferences, which allows to interpret period effects within the framework (inglehart 1985: 494 ff.). 2.2 value shift as a core element of second demographic transition (sdt) theory the sdt theory was developed to describe and understand the new forms of relationships (cohabitation, singleness) and changing childbearing practices (outof-wedlock births, low fertility) that increasingly diffused in the last third of the 20th century in western europe (van de kaa 1987, 2002; lesthaeghe 1995). the key element of the theory is that the driving force behind these changes is the shifts of values. speci cally, behavioral change is a consequence of the change in values that diffused and became actor-motivating in western europe beginning in the mid1960s. lesthaeghe stresses that in the sdt, “the major role is given to the ideational factors, and the dynamics of cultural shift” (lesthaeghe 2014: 1). the speci cities of value change were “borrowed” and are founded on established concepts in social science. first, according to aries, motivations for having children changed; “individualistic” motivations replaced classical “altruistic” childbearing motivations in the 1960s; young people have children if it  ts in with their life goals (aries 1980; van de kaa 2001). at the same time, the quality of the relationship replaced the “centrality of kids” in family life. secondly, in accordance with the works of edward shorter, new and free sexual behavior was spreading. lesthaeghe 1995 generalized the weakening of norms, and stresses that the essence of the change in values is the liberation from all forms of authority (family, kinship, church, norms) and the creation of individual autonomy. thirdly, drawing on maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the spread of higher order needs such as self-actualization is highlighted (lesthaeghe 1995). the spread of post-material values conceptualized and detailed by inglehart (1977) is integrated into the sdt. finally, although less strongly emphasized, the spread of the idea of gender equality is also noted, especially in later works (lesthaeghe 2010). in the latest “concise” summary, lesthaeghe sums up: “these new needs are centered on a triad: self-actualization in formulating goals, individual autonomy in choosing means, and a claim of recognition for their realization.” (lesthaeghe 2014: 3) the sdt has been somewhat modi ed and re ned over the past decades. structural conditions, the welfare state, and historical traditions have been “incorporated” in the explanation of new demographic behavior, although their role is often to explain the variation of behavior, but the theoretical role of value change has remained, namely “...cultural change ...as a necessary additional force with its own exogenous effects on demographic outcomes” (lesthaeghe 2010: 242). the results are not clear-cut when it comes to specifying the exact nature of value change assumed by the theory. the proponents of the sdt do not make explicit whether they link value shift to period or cohort change. according to our understanding, value change is seen as general, pervasive and linked to a speci c • zsolt spéder746 historical period, starting in the mid-1960s.1 the fact that in their empirical analyses the proponents of the sdt mostly interpret the change in attitudes of the whole population (van de kaa 1987: 5; 2001; lesthaeghe 1995: 28-29, 34 ff.) and that they rarely examine attitudes by birth cohort (e.g. van de kaa 2001) highlights their inclination to the period-related nature of value shifts. however, it is undeniable that in some places we  nd formulations referring to epochal, cohort and recursive (selection and adaptation) related value changes (lesthaeghe 2010: 242). in interpreting the fertility decline in formerly communist countries, lesthaeghe stressed the relevance of sdts as opposed to structural explanations, highlighting that cultural shifts also played a role in the transformation of demographic behavior (lesthaeghe 2010: 243). he assumes a historical effect by linking freedom of choice to political regime change (“similarly, the rise of individual autonomy and freedom of choice has legitimized the adoption of nontraditional living arrangements in a very short time” (lesthaeghe 2010: 243). although leshaeghe and surkyn’s research focused on the relationship between value orientations and partnership forms, a chapter of their paper reported on attitude change over time, using the european value survey data from 1990 and 1999 (leshaeghe/surkyn 2002). it reports that perceptions of the family have changed in the direction of tolerance, while there is little change in many other areas, such as trust in institutions, socialization values and identi cation orientations. there is no explicit formulation in the analysis of whether the value changes may be cohortor period-related. all in all, we conclude that the sdt interpretation of family formation and fertility changes in post-communist countries basically assumes a general period shift in values. there should be a separate paper to delineate and discuss criteria and aspects by which a theory is judged to be relevant, adequate or useful (cf. lesthaeghe 1997; graham 2021). that is beyond the scope of this paper. it is also out of scope to make a general evaluation of the sdt concept, as done by zaidi and morgan 2017. however, the present study is suitable to examine whether the value shifts assumed by the sdt theory could be the driver of fertility pattern change in hungary, speci cally in the hungarian post-communist fertility transition. according to our understanding, the relevance of the sdt theoretical model, also in the case of post-communist countries, can be corroborated if the following macroand micro-level criteria are valid simultaneously: (1a) there is a substantial macro-level shift in the value patterns; (1b) the direction of the shifts is towards non-conformity, tolerance, postmaterial values; (2) in general, but especially in the case of the formerly communist countries, the dominance of period effect as opposed to the population turnover effect is expected; 1 value change is described as an “epochal shift”, a shift from material to post-material values due to unprecedented economic growth and according to the maslowian hierarchy of needs (van de kaa 2001, 2002). a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 747 (3a) value orientations and attitudes play an independent (net) role in the choice of relationship form and in fertility behavior (micro-level criteria); (3b) the direction of attitudinal effects must  t in with, and not contradict, the direction of macro-level (2b) changes. with our analysis, which aims at exploring and analyzing the trends and changing nature of attitudes towards gender and family roles over a quarter of century, we can make a substantive contribution only to the  rst three (1a, 1b and 2) criteria. testing the last two criteria (3a and 3b) is not possible with the data used in the present analysis. such an analysis would require a panel survey with a wide range of questions to measure attitudes (cf. lesthaeghe/moors 2002). 3 the post-communist context: research results, processes, assumptions 3.1 review of relevant literature: ideational change in post-communist countries findings on attitudinal and value changes regarding post-communist countries are non-conclusive. while several studies indicate a shift towards liberalization, there are others that reveal stable attitudes or a shift towards traditional gender-role expectations. rabusic (2001) found that in the czech republic premarital sexual relationships and non-traditional partnership forms became more widely accepted after the change of regime. in romania the acceptance of a modern, egalitarian family model and female employment increased; however, general ideas (ideologies) about gender roles remained unchanged between 1993 and 2004 (voicu/tu s 2012). a shift towards supporting atypical partnership forms is also found in a hungarian qualitative empirical study, which focuses on the life goals of young generations before and after the political regime change (h. sass 2003). liberalization and increased tolerance were also apparent in eastern germany (lee et al. 2007). a comparative study of the baltic states and western and eastern germany revealed an obvious liberalization in the case of latvia (motiejünaité/höhne 2004). finally, using two waves of the european value survey, thornton and philipov (2009) showed a liberal shift in some family related attitudes in some countries between 1990 and 1999. shalom schwartz in the mid 1990s posed the question as to whether profound political regime change may in uence basic value orientations (schwartz et al. 2000). using his well known value-index, they compared value orientation of enrolled college students between 1989 and 1996 in three post-communist countries (poland, hungary, slovakia). the research concluded, somewhat unexpectedly, that the value system was almost “unaffected” by the change of regime (schwartz et al. 2000). using the two waves of the issp data collection in 1988 and 1994, tóth hypothesized that perhaps a re-familization was underway (tóth 1995). in an earlier analysis we stated that the assumption of overall liberalization does not apply to hungary (spéder/kapitány 2014); however we were cautious, since from three • zsolt spéder748 waves of data collection it was too early to draw any conclusions about tendencies. a comparative study on the baltic states found that family attitudes in estonia and lithuania shifted towards traditional family roles following the change of regime, and then reversed towards liberalization (motiejünaité/höhne 2004). all in all, research results about the tendencies of attitudes towards gender roles are mixed, and the share of cohort turnover and intra-individual (period-related) components in overall shifts are hardly considered. (only voicu and tu s (2012) separated the changes into population turnover and period effects, and stress the dominant role of the period effect towards tolerance after 1993.) 3.2 assumptions (hypotheses) based on key socio-political and structural changes keeping in mind the outlined theoretical approaches on attitude change, we highlight some political and structural changes in post-communist countries that may have brought shifts in gender and family role expectations. our aim is also to make assumptions on whether a shift in orientations may be a period effect, in uencing people from all walks of life, or may be operating by population turnover, or both mechanisms apply. from repression to freedom both the transition from single-party totalitarianism to parliamentary democracy and the change from a redistributing economy to a market economy promised the arrival and an ever-increasing degree of freedom that would replace repression. supposedly, freedom is not to be limited to politics or the economy, but would also affect other aspects of life, including gender relations and partnership forms. consequently, and in accordance with the ideological learning approach, norms and attitudes about unconventional family relationships become more and more tolerated. this may in uence the general population; i.e., all kinds of people, which corresponds to lesthaghe’s idea on the possible effects of regime change. however, a speci c realm of freedom, namely religious freedom, may not have encouraged further liberalization of family and gender-role expectations. it is widely known that the totalitarian regime supressed the civil sphere, which had dire consequences for religious institutions. under communism, both secularization and “forced secularization” were apparent. the change of regime brought freedom for the churches and, despite numerous obstacles, the potential for a religious revival (tomka/zulehner 2000). given the strong correlation between religion and beliefs about family (scott 2006), an increased appreciation of traditional family values was expected as a result of a religious revival. this counter move, the acknowledgement of the conventional family, may impact a speci c part of the population: the people associated with the church. although in different directions, both assumptions should have a period effect. the  rst would suggest a shift in attitudes towards liberalization after the regime change; the second, towards traditional beliefs (cf. table 1). a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 749 employment relations: legacies and structural changes gender relations in the labor market are critical for understanding gender roles, and are key aspects for structural approaches (c.f brooks/bolzendahl 2004). even an overview of the legacies of rapid expansion, and the continued high level of female employment under communism2 and its relationship to gender-role expectations would, require a separate analysis (cf. panayotova/bray eld 1997). the consequences regarding attitudes towards female employment (and gender roles), very simplistically, appear to be ambivalent. on the one hand, since female participation was “enforced” by extensive industrialization, it was full-time and poorly remunerated (berend 1996: 79 ff.). at the same time homemaking remained the responsibility of women, and attitudes toward employment and gender roles remained traditional (panayotova/bray eld 1997). on the other hand, it is undeniable that female employment provided a kind of autonomy and  nancial independence for women (pongrácz/molnár 1976). thus a signi cant, albeit minority group of women in employment considered female employment as important and supported it. the regime change brought abrupt changes: a sharp contraction of the labor market within a very short time (the number of people employed decreased by about 20 percent between 1991 and 1992) led to intensi ed competition in that market. a gendered adjustment would have been favored by males since it would have helped them to maintain their main earner position, but also by a section of women who were exhausted from the “double shifts”. consequently, according to the interest-based approach, increasing support for a move from the “dual earnerfemale carer” to the “male breadwinner” family model, with a shift towards more traditional gender-role attitudes, was not unexpected. however, the sectoral feature of the labor market contraction may have motivated stability or counter moves in gender-role expectations. work opportunities shrank mainly in the primary and secondary sectors, but not in the service sector. since the service sector had been dominated by female employment, participation in the labor market did not show a selection effect against women as a whole. the attitudinal consequences of this profound transformation of employment relations, if they are detectable, should be re ected in the period effects (cf. table 1). educational expansion structural approaches emphasize the increasing level of education of the population as being a driver of attitudinal change. the expected relation is clear: the more highly educated, the greater the shift of attitudes towards gender equity and towards the tolerance of atypical living arrangements. since educational expansion started in the late 1990s and gained momentum around the millennium: the participation in 2 for example, in 1970, when female employment in western europe was 46.4 percent, in hungary and poland it was 79.5 percent. at that time, the rate in northern europe (53.8 percent) was also far below that in the communist countries (kornai 1992: 207). • zsolt spéder750 ta b . 1 : s el ec te d p ro ce ss es a nd m ec h an is m s an d t he ir li ke ly e ff ec ts o n ch an gi ng a tt itu d es to w ar d s ge n d er a n d fa m ily ro le s le ge nd : “+ ” de no te s an e xp ec te d e ffe ct o f t he m ec ha ni sm o n va lu e ch an ge . s ou rc e: a ut h or ’s o w n el ab or at io n m ec h an is m s in d iv id u al ( p er io d ) ch an g e p o pu la ti o n t u rn o ve r ch an g e su p p o rt in g s h if t to w ar d s m o d er n iz at io n / tr ad it io na l v al ue s m o d er n iz at io n / tr ad it io na l v al ue s lib er al iz at io n lib er al iz at io n v al u e ch an ge s, id eo lo g ic al le ar n in g in cr ea se d f re ed om a s a co n se q ue n ce o f t h e + p o lit ic al r eg im e ch an g e p o ss ib ili ty o f r el ig io us r ev iv al s tr uc tu ra l m e ch an is m s in cr ea se d c o m p e tit io n o f g en d e rs in t he + la b o r m ar ke t s ta b ili ty a n d e xt en si o n o ft h e (f em al e do m in at ed ) + se rv ic e se ct o r e d u ca tio n al e xp an si o n + c oh o rt r ep la ce m en t g en er al te n d en ci es + s o ci al iz at io n d u ri ng e co n o m ic r e ce ss io n + a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 751 tertiary education more than tripled. the liberalizing effect of this change is expected to appear later and embedded in a cohort replacement mechanism. cohort replacement a feature of social change often emphasized by demographers is that the dominant driver of change is the entry of new cohorts and the exit and death of older cohorts (ryder 1964). it is generally assumed that the entering cohorts are more open and tolerant in their attitudes than older cohorts leaving society. accordingly, it is assumed that cohort replacement brings with it continuous liberalization of attitudes. to summarize, the change of the political, institutional and economic system was such a fundamental historic transformation that it was highly justi ed to expect a general period shift in values and attitudes as well as a parallel shift in views about gender roles and family. however, as we highlighted, the assumed nature (direction, depth, inclusiveness) of the shift was not straightforward. (see the assumed effects of the different mechanisms in table 1). the approach used in the next chapter makes it possible to study the nature of shifts in attitudes. it enables us to disentangle whether cohort replacement or the period effect played a more signi cant role in overall change. we will also be able to identify the direction of change, which will help to distinguish between more likely and less likely mechanisms shaping attitudes. however, this will not tell us whether and what kind of structural or cultural changes caused the shifts. 4 data and methods the international social survey program (issp) has included the “family and changing gender roles” module in its program since 1988. the module has been repeated three times since then (in 1994, 2002 and 2013), with the intention of surveying changes in attitudes towards gender roles and family relations.3 the fact that hungary is the only post-communist country where the module has been conducted during the communist time, clearly before the collapse of the communist system, and has been repeated three times thereafter, lends special signi cance to the analysis of the hungarian data. accordingly, using the issp module, it is only possible for hungary to measure family-related attitudes before the ultimate collapse of the communist system and to investigate the potential effect of the political and economic regime change on changes in family related attitudes. of course, several studies have analyzed certain waves of the hungarian data;4 however, to the best of 3 the last (4th) “family and changing gender role” module was due in 2012, but the hungarian  eldwork was done in the  rst half of 2013; therefore we indicated the year differently. the sample sizes (n=) of the hungarian surveys were 1737, 1494, 1023 and 1012 respectively. for more information on issp, see https://issp.org/. 4 for example, tóth 1995, dupcsik/tóth 2008, spéder 2003, blaskó 2006, rohr/spéder 2014. • zsolt spéder752 our knowledge, we are the  rst to analyze and interpret changing ideas about family and gender roles within a twenty- ve-year timeframe, and who aim to understand the effects of regime change using decomposition. the “family and changing gender roles” module of the issp covers a wide range of family and gender-role–related attitudes. altogether the 11 items below were included in all four waves of the survey (table 2). as a  rst step, general trends are presented using arithmetic means of the above scales, and then changes in arithmetic means will be decomposed. firebaugh developed an arithmetical method for analyzing repeated cross-sectional surveys, which makes it possible to determine whether changes over time depend on population replacement or on changes in individual attitudes (firebraugh 1992, 1997). more precisely, average change in opinions is a result of cohort replacement, individual, and joint effects; however, the joint effect can be distributed between population replacement and individual components. this approach enables us to calculate the extent to which the change in averages is the consequence of cohort replacement – that is, the fact that emerging younger cohorts have different attitudes than the disappearing older cohorts – or whether tab. 2: statements (items) measuring attitudes towards gender roles and partnership forms that were included in all four waves (1988, 1998, 2002, 2013) of the issp “family and changing gender roles” module 1 a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work. 2 a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works. (x) 3 all in all, family life suffers when the mother has a full-time job (x) 4 a job is all right, but what women really want is a home and children. (x) 5 being a housewife is just as ful lling as working for pay. (x) 6 both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income. 7 a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family. (x) 8 married people are generally happier than unmarried people. (x) 9 people who want children ought to get married. (x) 10 watching children grow up is life’s greatest joy. (x) 11 people who have never had children lead empty lives. (x) notes: the degree of agreement was measured on a  ve-point scale that ranged from strongly agree (5) through both agree and disagree (3) to strongly disagree (1). when interpreting responses we took lower values as re ecting support for traditional family and partnership forms, while a higher value stood for a modern attitude, supporting gender equality and the plurality of partnership forms. (responses were recoded in the case of items marked with an x). source: issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 753 the opinions of individuals change over time.5 firebaugh refers to the latter as “individual change” because it measures to what extent given individuals, as representing individuals of a society, change their opinion. since attitude changes occur over a given period, interpretations consider changes as closely relating to the social changes during the period; hence they can be considered period effects. notwithstanding, an ageing or life-cycle effect may not be fully eliminated from individual cases, but according to firebaugh (firebaugh 1992: 13) they are not reinforcing the individual and turnover effects.6 this technique has already been used successfully to assess changes in gender-role attitudes (firebaugh 1992; brewster/padavic 2000; voicu/tu s 2012; kraaykamp 2012). 5 results 5.1 general tendencies the three graphs below (fig. 1, 2 and 3) give an overview of twenty- ve-year-long trends by presenting the averages for the responses to each statement. (averages can be found in table a1 in the appendices.) as mentioned above, the acceptance or rejection of certain family roles are not presented based on responses to the original items, but they have been recoded. when recoding responses we took lower values as representing approval of the traditional family model; that is, a set of opinions that re ect support for the traditional division of gender roles: the preference for women in family roles, marriage as the desired partnership form and having children as an important life goal. high values indicate support for equal gender-role expectations or liberal family model, which includes the dual-earner partnership set-up, a favorable relation to female employment, and acceptance of cohabitation.7 looking at changes in average values over time, it is apparent, especially when comparing two consecutive survey rounds (years), that most of the changes went in the same direction (c.f. fig. 1-3). to make it easier to track changes, we have also created an indicator in the tradition of inglehart in which we ignore those who could not choose between agreement and disagreement. in table a2, we subtracted the 5 the basic premises of the method are that representative samples represent a given society well and that a repeated survey accurately reproduces changes in the characteristics and attitudes of a given society. 6 firebaugh (1992) also mentions that the study of changes in gender-role attitudes using panel data gave the same results. we did some robustness checks using linear regression models of attitude change on pooled data, and there were no ageing effects, but period effects remained. 7 in certain cases it is not obvious whether a response to a given statement indicates traditional or modern family ideals. we took having children as an important life goal as belonging to the traditional family model; however, this could undeniably be part of a modern family ideal as well. therefore, we must note that tendencies in changes – whether family-related attitudes have become more liberal – are more important in the present analysis. in this respect items can be categorized fairly well. • zsolt spéder754 proportion of those who hold conventional attitudes from the proportion who hold liberal attitudes, thus obtaining an indicator that is positive and increasing if liberal attitudes are in the majority or increasing, and negative and decreasing if support for traditional attitudes is in the majority or increasing. caution should be exercised in interpreting the level of this indicator, as the meaning of the answers may depend on the positive or negative formulation of a given item. in any case, this indicator gives a more clear insight on the direction of the change within a given attitude item. general shifts can be summarized as follows: 1) family attitudes for the period between 1988 and 1994, during the high time of societal transition and regime change, shifted towards increased support for the traditional family ideal. for 7 items of the 11, we can see an obvious decrease in average values, in two cases there is an increase, while there is no sizable change in the remaining two cases. fig. 1: changes in attitudes towards gender roles between 1988 and 2013 in hungary note: responses to certain items have been recoded so that lower values represent approval of the traditional family model and higher values indicate support for a modern or liberal family model. source: own calculation, issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 755 2) during the period from 1994 to 2002 we observe a change in the opposite direction compared to the previous period; a certain reversal and rearrangement of attitudes. average values increased in all cases; that is, opinions re ected a shift towards a more modern family ideal. 3) during the decade between 2002 and 2013 the support for a more modern family life and equity in gender relations continued to increase, although three attitudes/items showed a decrease (e.g. “a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.”). in some cases stagnation seems more likely; however, in the majority of cases (7 items), values indicate a shift towards modernization. there are two items where shifts differ from the others. first, the proportion of those who disagree with the statement “being a housewife is just as ful lling as fig. 2: changes in attitudes towards female employment between 1988 and 2013 in hungary note: responses to certain items have been recoded so that lower values represent approval of the traditional family model and higher values indicate support for a modern or liberal family model. source: own calculation, issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 • zsolt spéder756 working for pay” shows an increase at each interval; that is, the rejection of women being restricted to the role of a housewife has increased continuously. secondly, there is general and lasting support for the necessity of the “double earner” family; more precisely, there is increasing support for the idea that “both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income”. the general acceptance of the last statement may re ect the constraints of those living in needy material circumstances as much as the gender equality expectation regarding female employment. based on the descriptive statistics we may conclude that although there was a shift towards more traditional family ideals after the change of regime, support for gender equity and modern family relations increased later, and perhaps on the whole. however, a more nuanced conclusion can be drawn if we disentangle fig. 3: changes in attitudes towards family and marriage between 1988 and 2013 in hungary note: responses to certain items have been recoded so that lower values represent approval of the traditional family model and higher values indicate support for a modern or liberal family model. source: own calculation, issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 757 population turnover and individual change using glenn firebaugh’s arithmetic decomposition method. 5.2 decomposing change into population turnover and individual (period-related) effects firebaugh’s approach, as mentioned earlier, reveals the extent to which the change in averages is the consequence of cohort replacement – that is, the fact that appearing younger cohorts have different attitudes to the disappearing older ones – or whether it results from the changing opinion of individuals (firebaugh 1992, 1997). table 3 shows, for all the 11 attitude items and for all the three periods how far changes in average values are the result of population turnover and to what extent they can be attributed to individual change across periods. while the  rst three columns show the direction and the amount of change as a consequence of cohort replacement in average values, the next three columns show the direction and degree of changes in individual opinion in the given periods. a minus sign (-) signi es a shift towards traditional ideas ascribed to the given effect; an unmarked value, a shift toward liberal attitudes. the values of the two effects are comparable: if the absolute value ascribed to the population turnover is lower than that of individual change, then it had a weaker effect on the average change. for example: the average for the responses to the statement “a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works” decreased by -0.28 during the period between 1988 and 1994 (see table a1, second row). as for the directions in table 3, a negative intraindividual effect shows a shift towards traditional attitudes, whereas population replacement shifted towards liberal attitudes. as far as the size of the effects is concerned, values in table 3 show that the individual (period) effect was  ve times larger (-0.35) than the population turnover effect (0.07). together, the individual effect masked the population turnover effect. during the next period (1994-2002) the average increased by 0.29, of which 0.10 is related to cohort replacement and 0.19 to the individual/period component. both components shifted the average towards a more liberal direction, and once more, if at a lower size, individual effect was stronger. finally, in the last period, cohort replacement and period effects contributed to the overall 0.38 increase by 0.10 and 0.28, respectively. in table 3 we have highlighted all the numbers of the two components that contributed statistically signi cantly to the change in arithmetic means. positive values in italics and bold indicate a shift towards liberalization due to the given component, while negative values in bold indicate a shift towards supporting traditional family ideals. lastly, not highlighted values indicate that the effect was statistically not signi cant. it is encouraging that the majority of cells are highlighted and there is a clear pattern. changes in attitudes over time or just after the regime change are central in our investigation. taking into account the decomposed effects, we  nd that the individual change in most attitudes in the 1988-1994 period (table 3, column 4), was larger than the difference in arithmetic means between 1988 and 1994 (c.f. table • zsolt spéder758 a1). this is due to the constant positive population turnover effect in this period (table 3, column 1). it means that the population turnover effect weakened the overall conservative turn associated with the period effects. speci cally, for seven items we see a very strong, statistically signi cant conservative turn regarding individual effects (table 3, column 4). for two attitudes, the period effect points in the direction of liberalization. however, the population turnover effects in each item point towards liberalization, but their magnitude is far below the value of the tab. 3: the size and direction of population replacement and individual (period) effects in changes in family attitude averages, hungary (time periods 1988-94, 1994-2112, 2002-12) population replacement individual/period effect effect 1988199420021988199420021994 2002 2013 1994 2002 2013 a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work. 0.06 0.05 -0.03 0.15 0.32 -0.13 a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works. 0.07 0.10 0.10 -0.35 0.19 0.28 all in all, family life suffers when the mother has a full-time job. 0.08 0.10 0.12 -0.29 0.22 0.06 a job is all right, but what women really want is a home and children. 0.02 0.08 0.10 -0.19 0.23 0.06 being a housewife is just as ful lling as working for pay. 0.06 0.06 0.11 0.55 0.07 0.13 both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income. -0.01 0.01 0.01 0.06 0.07 -0.19 a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family. 0.03 0.14 0.06 -0.59 0.35 -0.23 married people are generally happier than unmarried people. 0.07 0.09 0.19 -0.30 0.08 0.22 people who want children ought to get married. 0.12 0.21 0.22 -0.02 0.21 -0.25 watching children grow up is life’s greatest joy. 0.01 0.04 0.08 -0.38 0.04 0.10 people who have never had children lead empty lives. 0.02 0.08 0.08 -0.23 0.16 0.12 notes: italics and bold: signi cant change towards liberalization; bold: signi cant change towards traditional/conventional attitudes; not marked: change not signi cant statistically (p>0.05). source: own calculations, issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 759 individual effects. on the whole, a clear “conservative turn” took place between 1988 and 1994, which was partly watered down by cohort replacement. the following period, from 1994 to 2002, can be basically considered a time of “reversal”. the pendulum swings back; for 9 items, there is a clear period effect towards liberalization. however, the reversal is not complete, since when only the period effects are compared, in 6 cases the values for the period 1994-2002 are smaller (table 3, column 5) than the values for the previous period (table 3, column 4). at the same time, for 4 items the degree of liberalization is larger than the rate of change in the previous period. on the whole, however, we can speak of a regression of the pendulum. when the effect of population turnover is also taken into account, the attitudes in 2002 were very close to those in 1988: the average value for 6 items was higher than in 1988, for 2 items the same and for 3 items lower than in 1988 (cf. table a1). during the decade from 2002 to 2013 the period effect is mixed: although liberalization seems to be dominant, in the case of two items there is a conservative shift, while in three cases there is no signi cant change. at the same time, the two items where we see a renewed “rebound” seem to be of crucial importance. there was a clear increase (0.23) in support for “a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family”, which could not be compensated by the 0.06 for population turnover. on the other hand, the support for the two-earner family model decreased: period effect -0.19, turnover effect 0.01. it is worth re ecting on three items in particular. there is no “conservative turn” during 1988 and 1994 or even later in relation to the statement “being a housewife is just as ful lling as working for pay.” rejection of the “exclusive housewife role” is not only increasingly high among new generations, but the opinion of older individuals also shows an increasing degree of disagreement. finally, the change in responses regarding two items related to family models, to the “double earner” and “male breadwinner” gender roles, seems to be contradictory. on the one hand there is high support, and relatively also the highest support, for the statement “both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income.” on the other hand, responses to the item “a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family” are volatile over time. (note that there is no  uctuation in population turnover effect: younger cohorts show consistently decreasing support for the “male breadwinner” model.) considering the tendencies of population turnover and individual effect, various tendencies could be identi ed. as far as the individual (period) effects, the majority of effects are signi cant (27 of the 33 cells are highlighted), and changes in the trends are both easily visible and vast (there are dominant shifts in each column). it can be concluded that after the change of regime a clear conservative shift took place in attitudes towards gender roles, which was followed by a slow but dominant reversal that lasted until the  nal period investigated. these developments indicate an increasing level of support towards liberal gender roles and alternative family • zsolt spéder760 forms following 1994; however we cannot exclude presence of shifts towards traditional attitudes in the time after the turn of the millennium.8 on the other hand, shifts attributable to cohort replacement are uniform and broad. all 33 cells of the  rst three columns are highlighted, and in 31 cases we found that cohort replacement led to an increase in averages: that is, the support for non-conventional family ideals and for more equity in gender roles. this coincides with theories that consider generational changes as having a signi cant impact on social changes (ryder 1964). this means that new generations growing up acquire and internalize more liberal ideas during their “formative years”, which functions as the “driving force” behind social changes (inglehart 1977). 6 discussion our analysis was intended to answer two questions. first we examined whether the profound political, institutional and structural changes since 1989/90 have been accompanied by changes in attitudes, speci cally in the area of gender-role expectations and family-related beliefs, and if so, whether historical events or cohort replacement – the latter always present in population development – had a decisive role in determining the nature of these changes. secondly, our analysis enabled us to examine a key element of sdt in hungary; namely, to what extent attitudinal shifts are consistent with the assumptions of sdt theory. we concluded that gender-role expectations were changing continuously over the quarter of a century examined, but the direction of change, contrary to expectations, has not been unidirectional. the changes most closely resemble a pendulum movement. during the period of regime change, a conservative turn could be clearly discerned. however, this turn has proved to be temporary, insofar as at the turn of the millennium (2002), almost a decade and a half after 1988, the general characteristics (mean) of attitudes were very similar to the characteristics of the time before the regime change (1988). thereafter, in the  rst decade of the new millennium, the modernization shift, the liberalization of attitudes, continued, but it was not comprehensive, and in some cases there was a re-return to traditional ideas. our results regarding the conservative turn due to the regime change stand in contrast with the results of several other analyses (voicu/tu s 2012; thornton/ philipov 2009). these analyses identi ed liberalization of gender-role attitudes and growing tolerance towards non-conformist partnership forms in the last decade of the last century in the post-communist countries. however, the  rst measurement 8 undoubtably, attitude change may be in uenced by other factors as well, which may be included in the pure cohort and period effects. of course educational expansion strengthens the uncontrolled cohort effect, yet we have to note that the effects of birth cohort remain signi cant when we analyse changes in attitudes using linear regression on the pooled data of consecutive survey waves. in that exercise, we included gender, educational attainment, family status and economic activity in the models. a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 761 date of these analyses was invariably after the regime change. to the best of our knowledge, the issp is the only data collection where measurements of genderrole attitudes in a post-communist country (hungary) are available for both preand post-regime-change dates. in light of this, we consider our  ndings valid. our results regarding changes measured in the 1994-2002 period are otherwise in line with the above results. in order to study the nature of the change, the trends of attitudinal averages were decomposed into two components: intra-individual (period) and population turnover (cohort) components, based on firebaugh’s method. comparing the magnitude of the two components for each attitudinal item in the respective periods, it became clear that the individual changes were in most cases clearly larger than the population turnover values, i.e. changes related to the historical events dominated the overall evolution of attitudes of the whole population. the change in individuals’ views, what we see as essentially period effect, has, however, clearly  uctuated over the twenty- ve years. there were both signi cant increases and decreases in the support for traditional gender roles and family model in 9 out of 11 items across the entire period.9 population turnover, the entry and exit of new and old cohorts respectively, brought about shifts towards liberalization, increasing support for the equality of gender roles, and increasing tolerance towards different partnership forms. due to the strength of the period effect, it was able to bounce along the averages over time. the population turnover effect was smaller but unidirectional, amplifying the period effects in some periods and dampening them in others. in order to examine the empirical evidence for sdt theory, we identi ed 5 criteria that we consider suf cient and at the same time necessary to see sdt theory as relevant for understanding the fertility transition in post-communist countries (cf. section 1.2). our analysis enables re ection regarding three criteria. first, it has been shown that there were substantial changes in gender-role expectations as a result of, or in parallel with, historical events. secondly, the direction of change in the  rst period of regime change is contrary to what the sdt theory assumes. although the sdt assumes growing support for gender equity, attitudinal shifts between 1988 and 1994 clearly pointed towards more traditional role expectations. thirdly, the period effects are larger, but at the same time, close to the regime change, they are opposite in direction to what was expected according to the sdt. it is a well-known fact, discussed in detail in the literature, that after regime change hungary and other post-communist countries were characterized by a rapid transformation of family formation, a rapid spread of cohabitation and a decline in fertility (frejka 2008; sobotka 2011; sobotka/toulemon 2008). (for an illustration, the relevant hungarian data can be found in table a3.) whether and how far the above behavioral and attitudinal changes at the macro level are related cannot be 9 this result is in accordance with our assumption that individual changes in opinion are mainly the result of period effects. it is inconceivable that the effect of ageing varies from period to period. • zsolt spéder762 analyzed using the issp data collection. but it may be possible to assess whether the measured attitudinal and behavioral changes point in the same direction. in our view, the spread of singleness, cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births is dif cult to reconcile with a macro-level conservative turn. on this basis, it is hard to imagine that changes in values motivated the behavioral changes in the period immediately after the regime change. therefore, according to the results of the analysis of gender and family role expectation trends, we cannot corroborate that value changes initiated or enabled by the regime change triggered the behavioral change. we have to concur with those skeptical views about the relevance of the sdt in the case of all post-communist countries (cf. rychterikova 2000; rotariu 2006; perelli-harris 2008; perelli-harris/gerber 2011). two objections may challenge our assessment of the relevance of sdt in countries, including hungary, where attitudes do not seem to be generally liberalized. first, it cannot be ruled out that liberal value orientations are playing an increasingly in uential role in behavioral shifts (in the rise of singleness, cohabitation, out-ofwedlock births) at the micro level, while society is undergoing a conservative shift at the macro level. yet the opposite assumption seems more plausible to us: we cannot attribute a decisive role to the attitudinal change (conservative turn) following the regime change in the spread of new demographic behavior. this is not to say that we neglect the role of values in family and fertility decision making, nor their in uence on the long-term development of fertility and partnership relations. it is not impossible that the structural conditions of the communist system (high female employment, intense internal migration, political atomization of society etc.; cf. spéder/kamarás 2008) heavily contributed to the erosion of certain norms. in this case, however, attitudinal and behavioral changes are perhaps more a consequence of structural change. secondly, it may be argued that we have misinterpreted sdt because it sees generational replacement as the vehicle for value change. our results are consistent with this, as the effects of generational turnover is present in all periods and clearly points towards a liberalization of attitudes. we do not deny this role, but the higher pace with which behavior spreads suggests other mechanisms (also) at work. furthermore, in this scenario it would be necessary to identify the speci c generations (cohorts) that triggered the changes. there are several limitations to our analysis. the issp data do not allow us to answer the question of the reasons for the conservative turn, nor for the reversal of opinion. we can perhaps be assured that the assumptions about liberalization (section 2.2), i.e. the liberalizing role of the generalization of freedom and its spillover into gender-role expectations, must be rejected. freedom and democracy have not “brought with them” further rapid liberalization of attitudes and ideas about family relations. we consider it likely that the pre-transition mode of gender division of labor (“double earner, female carer”) and the confrontation with the transformation of the labor market (contraction and competition) may have been decisive in the conservative turn. full-time housework alongside full employment, the “double burden”, may have made more traditional role expectations attractive to many women. for men, a conservative turn may have been a response to the a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 763 challenge of unprecedented intense competition in the labor market. however, these are all speculations; the issp data cannot be used to detect the reasons for the shifts, so we cannot test our hypotheses in a conventional manner. it is legitimate to ask to what extent the hungarian results are generelisable to the former socialist countries. the wider relevance is supported by the studies that drew attention to the processes of familization following the regime change (lobodzinska 1996; motiejünaité/höhne 2012). however, there are signi cant differences in the prevalence of post-materialist values among post-communist countries, although mainly in recent times (chromkova manea/rabusic 2020). we should therefore be cautious about straightforward generalization. the question is also often raised as to how well an item set on gender-role expectations developed in the late 1980s can reliably measure role expectations a quarter of a century later, or whether a given item has the same meaning in all countries and cultures (van vlimmeren et al. 2017). the standard answer to this question is that to measure change or invariance, it is essential to use the same measurement instrument. in the introduction, we raised the point that in analyzing fertility trends, we often refer to value change, to individualization, whether in scienti c studies, academic analyses or public life. all this requires a more systematic tracing of the nature of and changes in people’s attitudes, values and norms (cf. liefbroer/billari 2010). with our study we hope to have made a modest contribution to this task. references alwin, duane f.; 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moors, guy b. d.; gelissen, john p. t. m. 2017: clusters of cultures: diversity in meaning of family value and gender role items across europe. in: quality and quantity 51: 2737-2760. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-016-0422-2 voicu, malina; tu is, paula andreea 2012: trends in gender beliefs in romania: 19932008. in: current sociology 60,1: 61-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392111426648 zaidi, batool; morgan, s. philip 2017: the second demographic transition: a review and appraisal. in: annual review of sociology 43: 473-492. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053442 date of submission: 30.08.2022 date of acceptance: 03.11.2023 zsolt spéder (). hungarian demographic research institute. budapest, hungary. university of pécs, department of sociology. pécs, hungary. e-mail: speder@demogra a.hu url: http://www.demogra a.hu/en/staff-speder-zsolt • zsolt spéder768 appendix tab. a1: average values of responses to family and gender-role attitudes notes: the degree of agreement was measured on a  ve-point scale that ranged from strongly agree (5) through agree (4) neither agree nor disagree (3) and disagree (2) to strongly disagree (1). when interpreting responses we took higher values for equal gender relations, supporting female employment and non-conventional partnership forms, while a lower value stood for traditional gender roles, a male breadwinner family, and a conventional family (for the above reason values of response items were reversed which is marked by x). source: issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 1988 1994 2002 2013 consequences of female employment a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work. 3.27 3.48 3.84 3.67 a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works. (x) 2.21 1.93 2.22 2.59 all in all, family life suffers when the mother has a full-time job. (x) 2.42 2.21 2.55 2.70 gender role, employment a job is all right, but what women really want is a home and children. (x) 2.11 1.93 2.25 2.39 being a housewife is just as ful lling as working for pay. (x) 1.75 2.36 2.49 2.73 both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income. 4.03 4.08 4.18 3.98 a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family. (x) 2.88 2.32 2.81 2.64 attitude towards partnership forms and children married people are generally happier than unmarried people. (x) 2.53 2.30 2.47 2.88 people who want children ought to get married. (x) 2.38 2.49 2.92 2.88 watching children grow up is life’s greatest joy. (x) 1.60 1.23 1.32 1.50 people who have never had children lead empty lives. (x) 1.89 1.68 1.93 2.13 a quarter century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary • 769 tab. a2: percentage by which people supporting liberal gender roles outnumber people supporting conventional gender roles notes: the degree of agreement was measured on a  ve-point scale that ranged from strongly agree (5) through agree (4) and disagree (2) to strongly disagree (1). when interpreting responses we took lower values as re ecting support for traditional family and partnership forms, while a higher value stood for a modern attitude, supporting gender equality and the plurality of partnership forms. (responses were recoded in case of items noted by x). the numbers show the exceeding prevalence of liberal attitudes related to conventional attitudes, and the responses „neither agree nor disagree”(3) have been excluded. source: issp 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013 1988 1994 2002 2013 a working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work. 15.2 25.2 50.0 43.8 a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works. (x) -52.7 -61.6 -47.4 -25.9 all in all, family life suffers when the mother has a full-time job. (x) -39.2 -46.5 -28.0 -20.0 a job is all right, but what women really want is a home and children. (x) -64.8 -64.8 -49.5 -42.7 being a housewife is just as ful lling as working for pay. (x) -86.4 -39.7 -33.7 17.7 both the man and the woman should contribute to the household income. 77.2 63.2 67.9 66.5 a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and the family. (x) -4.0 -37.9 -10.2 -23.8 married people are generally happier than unmarried people. (x) -31.4 -39.4 -35.9 -10.0 people who want children ought to get married. (x) -32.6 -26.1 -3.0 -6.8 watching children grow up is life’s greatest joy. (x) -94.9 -96.7 -94.9 -91.7 people who have never had children lead empty lives. (x) -75.0 -73.1 -60.9 -55.7 • zsolt spéder770 tab. a3: trends of selected fertility and partnership indicators, 1988-2013, hungary source: + vital statistics, hcso; ++ census, hcso; +++ “turning points of the life course”, estimations, hdri year fertility indicators+ partnership status at age 24-29++ ratio of tfr ratio of nonmafb single, non-marital married cohabitation marital births living alone cohabitation as  rst partnership+++ 1988 1.79 11.9 23.10 1989 1.78 12.4 23.07 38.0 1990 1.84 13.1 22.99 18.93 4.08 76.99 1991 1.85 14.1 23.02 1992 1.76 15.6 23.08 1993 1.68 17.6 23.11 45.5 1994 1.64 19.4 23.22 1995 1.57 20.6 23.43 1996 1.45 22.6 23.70 1997 1.37 25.0 23.93 1998 1.33 26.6 24.29 65.5 1999 1.29 28.0 24.69 2000 1.33 29.0 25.02 2001 1.31 30.3 25.33 32.99 14.62 52.39 2002 1.31 31.3 25.70 2003 1.28 32.3 26.10 81.7 2004 1.28 34.0 26.54 2005 1.32 34.9 26.96 2006 1.35 35.6 27.29 2007 1.32 37.5 27.55 2008 1.35 39.5 27.70 90.4 2009 1.33 40.8 27.92 2010 1.26 40.8 28.23 2011 1.24 42.3 28.34 48.06 25.27 26.67 2012 1.34 44.5 28.29 2013 1.34 46.2 28.23 published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk rona geffen abstract: in recent decades, fluctuating unemployment rates and welfare state retrenchment have led to increased levels of economic insecurity in some countries. at the same time, cultural norms and family policies have become more genderegalitarian. while earlier research related these trends to the decline in the male breadwinner model, little is known about whether recent cohorts who entered adult life against the backdrop of a new socio-economic opportunity structure have established new configurations of household labour supply. using sequence analysis and cluster analyses across harmonised longitudinal data (gsoep, bhps and understanding society) for a sample of adults born between 1961 and 1973 in germany and the united kingdom (uk), this study introduces an innovative indicator of household labour supply types and new descriptive findings on the cohort replacement of household labour supply in these two countries. descriptive findings show that recent cohorts in both germany and the uk are forming more gender-egalitarian households, as reflected by the decline in the male breadwinner model as well as by the rise of 1.5-male breadwinner households in germany and dual-earner households in the uk. however, the proportion of single and low labour intensity households in recent cohorts has declined in the uk, while there has been no meaningful change in east germany and a strong increase in west germany. the evolution of household labour supply types can be attributed to the replacement of cohorts who entered adulthood and established their households under shifting socio-economic contexts and gender ideologies. keywords: household labour supply · cohort replacement · gender · welfare state · life course 1 background 1.1 cohort replacement of household labour supply the process of social change has long been the subject of academic attention in social science (firebaugh 1992; alwin/mccammon 2003; lesthaeghe 2010). a dominant comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 467-492 (date of release: 03.12.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-18 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-18en9 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-18 • rona geffen468 theory of social change is cohort replacement, where recent cohorts socialised in new historical conditions with new cultural identities (and thus ideologies) replace older cohorts (brooks/bolzendahl 2004; zoch 2021). in this paper, i argue that household labour supply has changed as the socio-economic conditions and normative contexts experienced by recent cohorts differed to those of preceding cohorts, implying that social change emerges. taking mayer’s (2004) approach of comparing different life course patterns across societies as a basis, i focus on the role of the broader opportunity structure, which includes the configuration of socioeconomic conditions and normative contexts rather than a single policy in shaping cohort replacement in household labour supply. in recent decades, household types have changed dramatically. the second demographic transition (sdt) since the mid-20th century, which refers to declining trends in fertility and mortality across the globe and the evolution towards more symmetrical gender norms (lesthaeghe 2010), together with educational expansion that provided women with better labour market opportunities, has increased women’s economic independence (ertl 2005; lesthaeghe 2010; stier/herzberg-druker 2017; steiber et al. 2016). since the late 1960s, nordic countries have introduced new family policies aimed at fostering both female labour force participation and birth rates and reducing the trade-off between family and career choices, leading to a better work-life balance (ostner/schmitt 2008). from the early 2000s, several other countries adopted gender-egalitarian family policies to equalise opportunities for men and women with a view to combining work and family responsibilities more effectively (finch 2008; zoch/schober 2018). during the sdt and the subsequent shift towards gender-egalitarian family policies, the male breadwinner model has eroded (björnberg/dahlgren 2008; lesthaeghe 2010; hook 2010; bünning 2015). at the same time, economic conditions have changed since the mid-1970s, with persistent fluctuations through the early 2000s across various countries. unemployment rates have fluctuated (kalleberg 2000; caldbick et al. 2014), welfare states have been retrenched, and the labour market has been deregulated, resulting in the proliferation of non-standard precarious employment,1 including parttime work (kalleberg 2000; kemmerling/oliver 2006; barbieri/scherer 2009). this type of employment has reduced the household labour supply, representing the labour available from household members (grotti/scherer 2014; nutz/gritti 2022), such as couples or singles.2 these trends imply that persons in mid-adulthood in recent cohorts established their households in a more gender-egalitarian and less economically secure opportunity structure compared with earlier cohorts. however, little is known to date from the literature about cohort replacement of types of household labour supply, especially in light of the socio-economic changes of recent 1 part-time and temporary employment are considered precarious because they are unpredictable and risky (kalleberg 2009). 2 households in which couples work full time are considered high work intensity households. in this paper, these households will be referred to as “dual full-time earners”. a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 469 decades. therefore, it remains an open question as to whether a cohort replacement of types of household labour supply has emerged. earlier research has documented different types of household labour supply in liberal societies. studies have examined the traditional gender division of labour, with a male breadwinner and female homemaker or secondary earner model, in bulgaria and germany in 2006 (hofäcker et al. 2013) and in east and west germany during the period from 1981-2005 for cohorts born between 1919-1971 (trappe et al. 2015). with the rise in women’s labour market participation (esping-andersen 2009) and the corresponding decline in the male breadwinner model (lewis 2001), studies have highlighted new forms of household types, such as dual earner and single households. this trend has been observed in the us, comparing 1970 with 1997 (jacobs/gerson 2001), in germany during the years 1991-92, 2001-02 and 2012-13 (deuflhard 2023), and in other european countries, comparing 2006 with 2018, for the cohorts born between 1930 and 1989 (van den berg/verbakel 2022). however, these studies focused on a static snapshot of household labour supply in a single year or multiple years, thereby underestimating the long-term development of household labour supply. to the best of my knowledge, only nutz and gritti (2022) have examined the different constellations of long-term employment trajectories within coupled households, using cohorts born between 1920 and1960 in germany and the uk. this study found that traditional gender divisions of labour resulted in greater within-couple wealth inequality in later life in west germany compared with the uk. however, no study so far has explored cohort replacement of household labour supply trajectories that includes both couples and single individuals. therefore, this paper contributes to the literature in two aspects: first, it provides descriptive analyses of cohort replacement in types of household labour supply trajectories. second, it focuses on both coupled and single households. this study focuses on germany and the uk as examples of conservative and liberal welfare states, respectively. these countries are particularly interesting cases when it comes to evaluating a cohort replacement in household labour supply because they represent different welfare states that have undergone socio-economic changes in recent decades. the socio-economic conditions and normative context are especially important for adults’ socialisation because, according to the impressionable years model, midadulthood is a particularly important life stage in which individuals experience dramatic life changes, such as social role formation, which stabilise and persist throughout their life course (alwin/mccammon 2003). describing the cohort replacement of household labour supply trajectories in mid-adulthood (ages 30-43) in cohorts born between 1961 and 1973 and who entered their early 30s during the period from 1991 to 2016 in various socio-economic contexts in germany and the uk, can therefore reveal whether a social change emerges. 1.2 welfare and family policy in germany and the uk esping-andersen (1999) classified welfare regimes by the degree to which their family policy adopts familialism or de-familialism approaches. while a familialism approach • rona geffen470 suggests that the family takes maximum responsibility for the family members, a de-familialism approach aims to reduce individual dependencies on the family by providing services and welfare via the state or the market. family policy classification was developed further in later studies (daly 2011; lohmann/zagel 2016; leitner 2003). leitner (2003) suggested the optional familialism approach, a combination of familialism and de-familialism, as it provides both public childcare and income to support care, which allows families to choose to care for their members. daly (2011) and lohmann and zagel (2016) replaced the term of de-familialism with individualisation, an approach that demonstrates choices, independence, and individualised identity in work and family lives for both genders. for example, the “adult worker model” supports individual rather than joint taxation and facilitates parents’ work-life balance by providing public childcare that frees up time in which they can then work. it also encourages active fatherhood and gender equality by incentivising shared parental leave by both spouses. however, daly (2011) argues that european countries that adopted the adult worker model have moved only halfway so far, as the dual-earner, gender-specialised model has been promoted rather than the individualised worker model. according to the impressionable years model (alwin/mccammon 2003), we can assume that welfare states and gender norms are particularly relevant in midadulthood because this period can be critical for socialising and stabilising roles. when making the transition to adulthood, welfare states and gender norms collectively shape social role incentives and, thus, household labour supply (geist 2005; león 2005; craig/mullan 2011). more specifically, in nordic social democracies where gender equity is actively encouraged (geist 2005) and free, high-quality public childcare, shared parental leave, regulated working hours, and income support for childcare are widely available (gornick/meyers 2004), the dual-full-time/ dual-carer model is more likely to be formed (geist 2005; craig/mullan 2011). in the conservative welfare state, traditional gender norms are actively supported by social policy; therefore, the unequal gender division of labour tends to be socialised and prominent (geist 2005). the liberal welfare state passively encourages gender equality by treating married women as individuals (geist 2005). however, childcare is provided on a private basis in most cases (león 2005); thus, rational choice in the form of cost-benefit considerations leads to either gender specialisation (ciccia/ bleijenbergh 2014) or sole female responsibility for housework (geist 2005). germany and the uk represent different types of welfare states with different degrees of famlialisation, de-familialisation or individualisation. traditionally, germany represents a conservative welfare state with a strong degree of familialism (esping-andersen 1999; leitner 2003). unified germany had strict labour market regulations and a generous social insurance-based welfare model with strong social protections for the unemployed and lower socio-economic groups (espingandersen 1990; gebel 2010). in this context, german households have been relatively secure in economic terms. however, unified german family policy has encouraged traditional gender norms and supported the traditional gender division of labour, for example, through the joint tax system, the limited supply of public childcare, and a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 471 long and generous parental leave for primary caregivers, mainly women (trzcinski 2000; steiner/wrohlich 2006). in contrast, the uk represents a liberal welfare state with a residual (noninterventionist) welfare policy, reflected by limited labour market regulation and modest income support for disadvantaged groups (esping-andersen 1999; gebel 2010). in this context, family policy is also liberal because parental leave is comparatively modest, and childcare for young children is largely provided by parttime day-care or by family members and relatives (esping-andersen 1999; thévenon 2011; ciccia/bleijenbergh 2014; banister/kerrane 2024). in this context, a rational choice in the form of cost-benefit considerations fosters the gendered division of labour. because part-time childcare receives only modest public financial support, the secondary earners, mainly women, are more likely to be the primary caregivers, leading to the traditional gendered division of labour in the 1.5-earner model (ciccia/bleijenbergh 2014). 1.3 socio-economic changes in germany and the uk both germany and the uk experienced major socio-economic changes during the period under study, namely from 1991 to 2016. in both countries, the second demographic transition that began in the mid-20th century was marked by the adoption of more gender-egalitarian norms and delays in family formation transitions (lesthaeghe 2010). for example, both societies exhibited a notable postponement of parenthood from as early as 1972 in west germany and the uk, and 1980 in east germany (sobotka 2004). moreover, since the 1990s, the expansion in educational options has not only increased women’s participation in higher education but also improved their labour market opportunities (ertl 2005; boliver 2011; devereux/fan 2011; becker/blossfeld 2021). furthermore, economic conditions, as well as welfare and family policies, have changed dramatically. following the reunification of east and west germany in 1991, the unemployment rate in germany rose, especially in the former east (rosenfeld et al. 2004). to boost employment, the hartz reforms were introduced in 2005 (kemmerling/bruttel 2006), reducing support for the unemployed while encouraging new types of work arrangements, such as mini jobs, temporary work, and self-employment (kemmerling/bruttel 2006; dingeldey 2007; ehlert 2012). during this period, persons in mid-adulthood are observed to live in low labour intensity households, where individuals and couples do not have fulltime work. at the same time, while parental leave was highly conservative, with the provision of a generous amount of leave (three years with two years of flat-rate benefits) from 1992 to 2000 (ziefle/gangl 2014), family policies have fostered optional familialism from 2001 onwards. this is reflected by a more individualised approach with the adoption of the adult-worker model. in 2001, greater benefits were given to parents who took less than one year of parental leave, and parents could choose to take the third year of leave any time between the child’s second and eighth birthday (ziefle/gangl 2014). moreover, public childcare was expanded in 2005, and since 2013 day-care places have become a legal right for children from the age of • rona geffen472 one (zoch/schober 2018). in addition, parental leave reforms in 2007 introduced earnings-related benefits with a replacement rate of 67 percent (subject to an upper limit of eur 1,800 per month), which included two months of leave reserved for the partner (ziefle/gangl 2014). these changes sought to increase women’s labour market participation and fathers’ involvement in childcare. however, despite the decline in the male breadwinner model, german family policy has remained relatively conservative because it still incentivises a main breadwinner and a parttime secondary earner model (also called the “1.5-earner model”), partly due to the unchanged joint tax system and limited childcare possibilities for young children (henninger et al. 2008; oecd 2021a/b). historically, east and west germany had different economic and family conditions. in east germany, high demand for manual labour required both men and women to work full-time before reunification (rosenfeld et al. 2004; zoch 2021). although there has been a convergence in adult gender attitudes and work patterns in east and west germany for people living under similar institutional contexts following reunification (rosenfeld et al. 2004; zoch/schober 2018), differences in the structural and normative context continue to exist. public childcare supply and attendance in east germany is still higher than in west germany (average childcare attendance is 52 percent in the former and 28 percent in the latter in 2016) (zoch 2020). moreover, gender ideologies were more egalitarian in the east than in the west before reunification (kleinschrot 2023), and this remained the case following reunification (zoch 2021). the british welfare state, too, has experienced major socio-economic changes. the unemployment rate rose in the early 1990s and then declined before increasing again sharply after the global financial crisis in 2008 (oecd 2020). however, since 1999, two years after the election of a labour government, welfare policy aimed at employment creation has become more generous. public expenditure on lowincome families and low-wage workers through in-work benefits3 has grown (blundell/hoynes 2004; finch 2008; gregg et al. 2009), reflecting greater social protection for households with non-standard, precarious labour market positions. however, welfare policy took a different direction with the reforms between 2010 and 2015. these reforms reduced spending on child and working-age benefits, leading to financial loss, especially among low-income households (beatty/fothergill 2018). in addition to these changes in welfare policy, british family policy has become more individualistic and gender-egalitarian, despite very minimal measures to this effect initially. for example, as of 2008, maternity leave was extended to 39 weeks (with paid leave covering 90 percent of employees’ wages for the first six weeks, followed by 33 weeks at a low statutory flat-rate payment). public childcare has also been expanded but remains dominated by part-time childcare provision. since 2003, fathers have been entitled to two weeks of paid leave, and since 2011, the 3 in-work benefits are work-dependent types of income supplement (blundell/hoynes 2004). a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 473 possibility of transferring untaken leave between partners has become more flexible (finch 2008; daly/scheiwe 2010; atkinson 2017; banister/kerrane 2024; gemma 2023). the uk social policy model adopted more elements from the “adult-worker model” logic. this approach may have increased the number of dual full-time earner households but, at the same time, partly maintained the 1.5-earner household model because some working tax credits were based on joint earnings. moreover, public childcare provision, while having been expanded, remained mostly part-time in nature. this policy therefore reduced work incentives for some secondary earners, primarily represented by women (lewis 2001; colette/norman 2012). 1.4 cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk: empirical expectations against this background, cohort replacement in household labour supply for the studied cohorts (1961-1973) is expected. however, different mechanisms might shape household types depending on the socio-economic context. in the liberal context of the uk, gender division of labour stems from mechanisms of rational choice of cost-benefit considerations among partners (becker 1981), mainly due to the modest provision of full-time public childcare (ciccia/bleijenbergh 2014). in the conservative context of germany, traditional gender norms shape policies that incentivise the gender division of labour (geist 2005). however, when economic insecurity rises, such as in cases of unemployment and welfare state retrenchment, a lack of job opportunities and welfare support should translate into work marginalisation (harsløf 2003), which drives an increase in households with low labour intensity and involves periods of non-standard employment or non-employment. however, when family policy becomes more gender-egalitarian, a normative change towards more equal gender roles is expected to take prominence (zoch/schober 2018). due to the hartz reforms of 2005, adults in east germany who were born in the late 1960s and early 1970s began their adulthood with more job opportunities but also with a greater supply of non-standard employment and lower levels of social protection than those born in the early 1960s. however, adults in west germany in more recent cohorts entered their 30s in a less economically secure context than their counterparts from earlier cohorts. therefore, due to work marginalisation, the proportion of households with low labour intensity is expected to be high and persistent across cohorts in east germany, and is expected to increase in west germany. in addition, although the two regions remained different in their genderegalitarian opportunity structures and gender attitudes following reunification in 1990 (zoch 2021), women’s employment patterns converged (rosenfeld et al. 2004). because family policy in unified germany has shifted strongly towards optional familialism since the early 2000s, while retaining the joint tax system, a rise in the proportion of 1.5-earner households in both german regions is expected, along with a decline in male breadwinner households in the west and dual full-time earner households in the east. the introduction of adult worker model elements, particularly the expansion of childcare and the earnings-related benefits with paternity quotas, • rona geffen474 should lead to a normative change in which women and men perceive greater choice in their work and family domains, respectively. compared with earlier cohorts, adults born in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the uk established their households during a period of greater welfare support that fostered employment and provided better social protection. consequently, the mechanism of work marginalisation should be less important, and thus the share of adults who live in households with low labour intensity is expected to decline across cohorts. it is important to note that the rise in unemployment rates after the economic crisis in 2008 and the liberalisation reforms between 2010 and 2015 should not have a strong impact on cohort replacement of household labour supply types among the cohorts studied, as these contextual changes occurred when the most recent cohort of adults was already in its late 30s, a stage when people’s social roles are more resistant to change (alwin/mccammon 2003). in addition, similar to germany, british adults in recent cohorts were socialised in a more genderegalitarian opportunity structure but where the options for combining work and family care remained limited compared with earlier cohorts who were socialised under a liberal policy with gender traditionalism. therefore, the proportion of male breadwinner households across cohorts should decline, and a normative change towards more gender-egalitarian norms may increase the proportion of dual fulltime earner households. however, the 1.5-earner household type should remain substantial and particularly prominent in cohorts born between 1964 and 1966, as gender specialisation based on rational choice becomes a dominant mechanism. adults in these cohorts entered their 30s after recovering from the deterioration in economic conditions and before the introduction of more gender-egalitarian family policy reforms. country differences in the mechanisms are also expected regarding the pace and patterns of household type changes. the rise in economic insecurity seems to be more continuous in west germany and remains high and persistent in east germany, while in the uk, economic insecurity was more dominant for the earliest cohort. thus, the work marginalisation mechanism should more continuously raise the proportion of households with low labour intensity in west germany compared with east germany and the uk. in sum, recent cohorts of adults in germany and the uk established their households in a different opportunity structure than earlier cohorts, potentially leading to cohort replacement of the types of household labour supply (see fig. 1 for the historical timeline and the expected cohort replacement of household labour supply for the studied birth cohorts). my hypotheses are as follows: h1: the male breadwinner household type is expected to decline in west germany and the uk h2: the 1.5-earner household type is expected to rise across cohorts in both german regions and to remain substantial across cohorts in the uk, with particular prominence among the cohort born between 1964 and 1966. h3: the dual full-time earner household type is expected to decline in east germany and to increase in the uk. a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 475 h4: the share of households with low labour intensity is expected to decline in the uk, rise continuously in west germany, and remain high in east germany. 2 data and method i used panel data from the german socio-economic panel (gsoep), the british household panel survey (bhps), and the understanding society databases. these annual longitudinal surveys allow us to follow the work histories of household member respondents. the gsoep survey started in 1984 in west germany, and since reunification in 1990, it has also included east germany (gsoep 2020). the bhps was conducted between 1991 and 2008; from 2009 onwards, part of the bhps sample has continued to be followed in the understanding society survey (taylor et al. 2010). for the current study, i selected respondents who participated in both the bhps and understanding society surveys. i harmonised the datasets from both countries to provide a comparable time frame for the sample population. the analysis is therefore limited to 1991-2016. the longitudinal data allowed me to track life trajectories on a sample of adults born between 1961 and 1973, from the ages of 30-43. i focused on 13 birth cohorts because the databases provide the maximum amount of information relevant to the study for these adults. focusing on 13 birth cohorts might show a limited overview of cohort replacement. however, covering the period during mid-adulthood across several birth cohorts, especially when contextual changes have occurred, allows fig. 1: historical timeline and the expected cohort replacement of household labour supply for the studied birth cohorts, 1991-2016 expected cohort replacement in households types decline: male breadwinner households (west germany) and dual full-time households (east germany) increase: 1.5-earner households low labour intensity households (west germany) persist in high level: low labour intensity households (east germany) expected cohort replacement in households types decline: male breadwinner households low labour intensity households increase: dual full-time households persist in high level: 1.5-earner households (especially dominant among cohorts 19641966) source: own design • rona geffen476 any new trends in cohort replacement of types of household labour supply to be revealed. i also limited the analysis to the age range of 30-43 in order to estimate how types of household labour supply are formed in mid-adulthood. i evaluated a cohort replacement of household labour supply types by comparing household types of adults across four groups of birth cohorts. table 1 shows the distribution of birth cohort groups in the sample. overall, the sample includes 3521 respondents in germany and 2663 in the uk. to measure types of household labour supply, i utilised several strategies. first, i created a new indicator of household labour supply types by using sequence analysis and cluster analysis (abbott 1995; abbott/tsay 2000; aisenbrey/fasang 2010) of the employment status of individuals aged 30-43, and their partners in cases where they lived together.4 sequence analysis allows us to understand social processes by estimating several transitions that people make over a long period of time (abbott 1995). it therefore allows us to follow trajectories of statuses over their life course while considering their sequences, duration, and timing. the advantage of using sequence analysis for the study’s research question is that it allows us to observe the extent to which household types change or remain stable over time and how they develop and evolve across cohorts. this technique is based on a distance matrix of optimal matching analysis (oma), which quantifies the number of operations necessary to transform one sequence into another (aisenbrey/fasang 2017). the minimum operation required is defined as the minimum cost. to prevent arbitrariness in the choice of cost, i set the cost of the deletion and insertion operation equal to 1 and used a data-driven approach that observes the frequency of transitions between operations (rohwer/poetter 2004; piccarreta/billari 2007). cluster analysis is a technique used to identify distinctive differences in life trajectories. it partitions sequences based on the degree of the similarities of the sequences within the group and the degree of the dissimilarities to sequences in another group (mcvicar/anyadike-danes 2002). i used a combination of the ward (hierarchical algorithms) and pam (partitioning around medoids) algorithms (studer tab. 1: distribution of birth cohort groups germany uk 1961-1963 20.02 19.79 1964-1966 33.39 27.04 1967-1969 28.89 25.57 1970-1973 16.80 27.60 n 3521 2663 source: bhps and understanding society, 1991-2016; gsoep, 1991-2016 4 for sequence and cluster analysis, i used the r package traminer (gabadinho et al. 2011). a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 477 2013). this method initialises the pam algorithm using hierarchical clustering. the main advantage of this combined method over using each algorithm separately is the possibility of maximising global criteria using medoids (as in the case of pam) but without choosing the starting point of the clusters’ number arbitrarily (as in the case of ward). i have therefore adopted this approach in this study. to have comparable clusters in germany and the uk across cohorts, i run sequence analysis and cluster analysis for a pooled sample that includes adults from all the studied cohorts in both countries. building on the idea of lewis, campbell, and huerta (2008), i categorised household labour supply using the employment status of individuals and their partners in the same household. however, i did not focus solely on the employment status of couples since contemporary household types include various living arrangements, such as singlehood. to create an indicator of household labour supply types for the sequence data, i used information on the employment status (part-time, full-time, or non-working) of individuals and partners living in the same household. however, because sequence analysis should include categories with sufficient observations, i minimised the number of categories by considering the gender of partners only when they live in the same household. table 2 shows the categories of employment constellations and their household types. i first coded the work status of individuals and their partners for each gender (e.g. a male with part-time work whose female partner works full-time). after creating these categories, i combined them for men and women sharing similar household contexts. i combined the same configuration represented by different respondents, for example, (1) a full-time working female respondent with a part-time working male partner, and (2) a part-time working male respondent with a full-time working female partner. in this way, the employment constellation and the gendered division of labour are captured so as to examine which household types exist. i also combined categories with few observations that shared similar theoretical meanings. for example, the categories in which women or men work part-time and their partner did not work were combined into the single category of “small jobs”. low labour intensity household refers to couples and individuals without full-time work; thus, it is considered for both coupled and single households. furthermore, i imputed economic status at the household level for individuals and their partners when observations were missing at some point, using multiple imputations based on demographic variables for the whole survey for a minimum of eight years.5 i also conducted a sensitivity analysis to check a category of missing values, and the results remained the same (available upon request). moreover, to account for sample attrition, i weighted the data based on the multiplication of 5 i imputed 31 percent of the person-year observations in the uk and 19 percent in germany. multiple imputations are based on age and include the prediction of missing values by demographic characteristics. a prediction of missing values for 2009 in the uk is also included because the bhps and the understanding society survey skipped this year. • rona geffen478 ta b. 2 : ca te go rie s o f e m pl oy m en t c on st el la tio n w ith in h ou se ho ld s ca te go ry d es cr ip tio n h ou se ho ld la bo ur s up pl y ty pe s 1 fu lltim e co up le co up le s i n w hi ch b ot h m en a nd w om en w or k fu lltim e d ua l f ul l-t im e ea rn er s 2 pa rt -t im e (f) & fu lltim e (m ) w om en w or k pa rt -t im e an d m en w or k fu llt im e 1. 5m al e br ea dw in ne rs 3 n on -w or ki ng (f ) & fu lltim e (m ) w om en d o no t w or k an d m en w or k fu lltim e m al e br ea dw in ne rs 4 fe m al e br ea dw in ne rs w om en w or k fu lltim e an d m en e ith er d o no t w or k or w or k pa rt -t im e fe m al e br ea dw in ne rs 5 sm al l j ob s m en o r w om en e ith er d o no t w or k or w or k pa rt -t im e co up le s w ith lo w la bo ur in te ns ity 6 n on -w or ki ng c ou pl e n ei th er m en n or w om en w or k co up le s w ith lo w la bo ur in te ns ity 7 fu lltim e & n o pa rt ne r m en o r w om en w or k fu lltim e an d do n ot h av e a pa rt ne r si ng le a nd s ta nd ar d ca re er s 8 pa rt ti m e & n o pa rt ne r m en o r w om en w or k pa rt -t im e an d do n ot h av e a pa rt ne r si ng le w ith lo w la bo ur in te ns ity 9 n on -w or ki ng & n o pa rt ne r m en o r w om en d o no t w or k an d do n ot h av e a pa rt ne r si ng le w ith lo w la bo ur in te ns ity so ur ce : ow n de sig n a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 479 the first observation with the cross-sectional weight of a person by the probability of non-participation in the survey during the observed period. this step provided a comparable weight that addressed the potential problem of panel attrition in both countries. finally, given that the aim of determining types of household labour supply is to focus on individual trajectories within the household context rather than on couples, the indicator captures people’s partnering and re-partnering with one or multiple partners. presenting descriptive findings on the evolution of household labour supply types in germany and the uk for cohorts born between 1961 and 1973 based on the new indicator allowed me to evaluate the trend of cohort replacement in household labour supply in light of the socio-economic changes in the two countries. despite adults in unified germany living under the same family policy during the period under observation, differences in economic conditions and in normative and institutional context remained following reunification. cohort replacement data in germany is therefore divided into east and west. 3 results which types of household labour supply have formed in germany and the uk? the evaluation criteria for the cluster analysis noted that, despite the r-squared measure suggesting solutions with two to three clusters because they demonstrated low levels of reduction in cluster discrepancy, the average silhouette width suggests a solution with five clusters. based on the combination of the ward (hierarchical algorithms) and pam (partitioning around medoids) algorithms, i chose the solution with five clusters because it provided more distinctive and informative clusters. other evaluation criteria, such as point biserial correlation (pbc), hubert’s gamma (hg), and hubert’s somers d (hgsd), also indicated that five clusters provided a suitable solution relative to other solutions (available upon request).6 figure 2 shows the sequence distribution and the relative sequence plots for the pooled datasets of germany and the uk. the former gives information on the density of each state within the clusters (billari/piccarreta 2005). the latter emphasises the trend of the sequences within each cluster, including the order and the timing of the states (fasang/liao 2014). the results indicate five types of household labour supply. the first is the “dual full-time earners” type, during which both partners held full-time work (8.54 out of 14 years of dual full-time earners), with some changes in work status among partners, especially at the beginning and the end of said period. this type of household labour supply presents a work symmetry, as both women and men work full-time. 6 additional robustness checks found that a solution with five clusters provided the most informative results when testing sequence and cluster analyses for each country separately, as well as for east germany. for west germany, a solution with six clusters emerged, splitting two relatively similar clusters which, in the main analysis, are considered as one theoretical cluster. in addition, when including an additional category, “dual part-time couple”, the findings remained unaltered (available upon request). • rona geffen480 fi g. 2 : pa tt er ns o f h ou se ho ld la bo ur su pp ly ty pe s se qu en ce d is tr ib ut io n pl ot re la tiv e se qu en ce p lo t ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 ag es 3 043 n ot es : a) t he re la tiv e se qu en ce p lo t ( fa sa ng /l ia o 20 14 ) p re se nt s t w o gr ap hs : t he g ra ph o n th e le ft pr es en ts se qu en ce m ed oi ds (k ), an d th e gr ap h on th e rig ht pr es en ts th e di ss im ila rit ie s i n th e m ed oi ds . b) r es ul ts fr om th e re la tiv e se qu en ce p lo t a re b as ed o n an l cs (l on ge st c om m on su bs eq ue nc e) d ist an ce m at rix w ith su bs tit ut io n co st s b as ed o n tra ns iti on ra te s w ith k =1 00 . g iv en th at so lo st an da rd c ar ee rs a nd so lo n on -s ta nd ar d ca re er s h ad fe w er th an 1 00 0 se qu en ce s, th ei r a na ly se s i nc lu de d k= 80 a nd k= 40 , r es pe ct iv el y. r es ul ts fr om th e re la tiv e se qu en ce p lo t w er e sig ni fic an t ( p < 0. 00 1) . so ur ce : b h ps a nd u nd er st an di ng s oc ie ty , 1 99 120 16 ; g so ep , 1 99 120 16 a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 481 the second type of household labour supply is the “1.5-male breadwinner” model (also called the 1.5-earner model). people in this cluster form a 1.5-male breadwinner household type in which women work part-time (7.90 out of 14 years of 1.5-male breadwinner). this type of household is switched mostly from the “dual full-time earners” or the “male breadwinner” households and remains so for the rest of the period under observation. the third type is the “male breadwinner” model, in which men work full-time, and women are mainly disconnected from the labour market and, in some cases, switch to part-time work in later stages of life (7.71 out of 14 years of male breadwinner). the final two types of households are “singlehood and standard careers” and “singlehood with low labour intensity”. in general, single individuals with standard careers have standard full-time jobs and lived without a partner during most of this period (8.38 out of 14 years of singlehood and standard career). some establish partnerships and go on to have various career trajectories in their households. people in this group exemplify the “individualisation” life course of independent people, who might prefer autonomy in their family lives and are willing to postpone creating partnerships or choose not to be in a partnership. finally, those who are “single with low labour intensity” experience marginality in both their careers and co-residential lives, as they spend long periods without partners and in non-standard positions, mainly non-working (6.41 out of 14 years of singlehood with low labour intensity). although some people in this cluster form “dual full-time earner” or “1.5-male breadwinner” households later in the period under observation, persons in this type of household have the lowest intensity of labour supply, as they mostly do not work and do not share their living arrangements with a partner. the next question is whether a cohort replacement in types of household labour supply emerges in light of socio-economic changes in germany and the uk. figure 3 depicts changes in the distribution of household labour supply types across birth cohorts. as expected from h1, the findings show a decline in the male breadwinner model not only in the uk and west germany, but also in east germany. instead, we see a rise in the 1.5-male breadwinner model in west and east germany. this household type remained substantial across cohorts in the uk, with a larger proportion in cohorts born between 1964 and 1966. these findings align with h2, which expected that a 1.5-earner household type would emerge in both german regions and remain significant, and particularly dominant for the second group of cohorts in the uk. moreover, as expected from h3, the proportion of dual full-time earner households increased in the uk and declined in east germany. however, it also declined in west germany, contrary to expectations. in germany and the uk, more gender-egalitarian family policies were introduced during the period under observation, weakening traditional gender norms in the process. why, then, did the transition to a more gender-egalitarian normative context in germany translate into an increase in the 1.5-male breadwinner model rather than a rise in the dual fulltime earner model, as happened in the uk? the increase in the 1.5-male breadwinner model and the decline in the dual fulltime earner model in both east and west germany corroborates the “half-way” shift • rona geffen482 to a more gender-egalitarian family policy, which resulted in a mix of conservative and gender-egalitarian family policy. the decline in the dual full-time earner model in east germany happened due to east german women’s employment patterns converging with those of west german women following reunification. however, this model remained relatively common in east germany because gender-egalitarian family policy prevailed before reunification (rosenfeld et al. 2004), and the supply of public childcare was relatively high to begin with and has remained higher than in the west (zoch 2020). in west germany, introducing new elements of the adult worker model led to the decline in the male breadwinner model, presumably due to the better work incentives for mothers (zoch/hondralis 2017). however, introducing the adult worker model with the existing joint tax system, generous parental leave, and low availability of public childcare7 (trzcinski 2000; steiner/wrohlich 2006), led to the rise in 1.5-male breadwinner households in west germany. in addition, worsening 7 full-time childcare attendance for under three-year-olds in west germany in 2016 was 13 percent (zoch 2020). fig. 3: household type by country and birth cohort, 1991-2016 east germany in percent west germany in percent uk in percent 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 1961-1963 1964-1966 1967-1969 1970-1973 birth cohort 6.7 8.2 9.1 5.9 9.5 13.7 16.8 19.4 24.5 17.5 14 7.4 21.5 23.3 26.6 34.8 37.8 37.4 33.6 32.4 dual full-time earners 1.5-male breadwinner male breadwinner single standard single and low labour intensity 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 1961-1963 1964-1966 1967-1969 1970-1973 birth cohort 2.7 2.4 5.2 4.7 11.8 13.9 14.4 16.7 31.4 30.3 23.2 17.7 33.6 36.4 39.8 45.2 20.5 17.1 17.4 15.7 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 1961-1963 1964-1966 1967-1969 1970-1973 birth cohort 8.8 6.1 7.8 4.4 14.1 16.1 14.9 12.8 22.5 17 16.6 14.2 26.9 30.3 27.9 28.927.8 30.5 32.9 39.7 source: bhps and understanding society, 1991-2016; gsoep, 1991-2016 a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 483 labour market opportunities for less educated women (konietzka/kreyenfeld 2010) may have led to a decline in the dual full-time earners model and contributed to the rise in 1.5-male breadwinner households. the timing also matters. while the rise in the 1.5-male breadwinner model steadily increases across birth cohorts in west germany, this type of household also increases across cohorts in east germany, with a particularly sharp increase in cohorts between 1970 and 1973. this trend seems to coincide with the decline in the dual full-time model and thus may represent a convergence with west german employment patterns among these cohorts. the single, standard-career household type has also grown in germany but declined slightly in the uk. this finding can be explained by the multiple equilibria theory (esping-andersen/billari 2015), which suggests that the transition to more gender egalitarianism involves normative confusion about gender roles with a lower level of commitment to family life, such as partnership. according to the theory, when women gain economic independence in societies that have not yet adopted gender-egalitarian norms, it creates normative confusion about women’s roles, which leads to normative uncertainty and translates to a lower level of family commitment, thereby increasing singlehood. in the final phase of the transition, when the population adjusts to gender-egalitarian norms, there is a decrease in normative confusion, a greater level of family commitment, and a decline in singlehood. given that the transition to gender egalitarianism in germany and the uk happened when attitudes regarding gender equity were more prominent in the latter country (81.15 percent) and less so in the former country (65.87 percent) between 2002 and 2014 (bellani et al. 2017), we can assume that the rise in single and standard career households in germany compared with the uk was a result of the normative confusion in east and west germany under the mixed conservative and gender-egalitarian family policies. east and west germany had re-traditionalisation and modernisation trends, respectively. while their gender attitudes converged after reunification, differences regarding maternal employment attitudes remained (zoch 2021), reflecting the ongoing change in gender norms in both regions and, consequently, the possible normative confusion that might lead to the rise in single and standard career households. in addition, as expected, a growing share of adults in recent cohorts in west germany live in low labour intensity households. this trend is reflected by an increase in the number of persons without a partner and who are non-working, corroborating the liberalisation of welfare policy in this context. however, the findings for east germany show a decline in the proportion of single and low labour intensity households from the third to the last cohort, probably due to the hartz reforms. nevertheless, there is only a slight decline when comparing the earliest cohorts with more recent cohorts. this proportion remained relatively high and was still higher than in west germany. in other words, despite the hartz reforms that aimed to strengthen employment (kemmerling/bruttel 2006), ultimately there is no meaningful decline in the share of single and low labour intensity households in east germany across cohorts. in west germany, however, there has even been a rise in low labour intensity households. this increase, contrary to expectations, was not • rona geffen484 fully continuous across cohorts. the rise of this household type is observed from the first to the last cohorts, but it is predominantly visible from the second (1964-1966) to the third cohort (1967-1969). while adults of the first cohorts were exposed to low levels of unemployment in their early 30s, followed by a rise in unemployment, the second and third cohorts were in their 30s when the unemployment rate was already high and continually increasing. this period of high and increasing unemployment occurred before the introduction of the hartz reforms, which may have only slightly decreased the share of households with low labour intensity in the last cohorts. in the uk, the share of adults in single and low labour intensity households was high in the earliest cohort before declining substantially. this trend can be explained by the rise in unemployment and the residual welfare policy in the uk in the early 1990s, which translated into few socially protected households among earlier cohorts. however, with the increased generosity of welfare benefits for low-income families and workers since 1999, which also targeted incentivising employment through inwork benefits (blundell/hoynes 2004), a decline in low labour intensity households in recent cohorts is observed, as expected. overall, these findings mostly align with h4, which suggests that a share of households with low labour intensity is expected to decline in the uk, rise in west germany, and remain high in east germany. 4 discussion adults in recent cohorts established their households in an opportunity structure with new forms of working and living arrangements (kemmerling/bruttel 2006; finch 2008; ziefle/gangl 2014; banister/kerrane 2024), reflecting a potential trend of cohort replacement in types of household labour supply. using longitudinal data with sequence and cluster analyses for samples of birth cohorts of adults in germany and the uk, this study provides a descriptive analysis of cohort replacement in types of household labour supply. understanding cohort replacement of living and working arrangements within households is important because it can shed light on the lives of adults in future generations. the results show a cohort replacement in the types of household labour supply in germany and the uk. while work and partnership statuses express relative stability during mid-adulthood, cohort change is reflected in the timing of the rise and decline of various household types. as these findings are descriptive results, the analysis did not include variables that explain this trend. however, one possible explanation is offered by the different social contexts across cohorts. in west germany, earlier cohorts of adults established their households in a more socially protected but also more conservative welfare state. thus, a low proportion of households with low labour intensity was observed, as reflected by single and low labour intensity households and a high proportion of male breadwinner households. those in recent cohorts, however, established their households in more mixed conservative and gender-egalitarian family policies. the results confirmed h1, which expected a decline in the male breadwinner model in west germany, but we also saw a decline in this model in east germany. instead, we see a rise in the share of the 1.5a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 485 male breadwinner household type in both east and west germany, as expected from h2. this trend can be explained by mechanisms of normative change followed by the shift towards more gender-egalitarian family policies. moreover, as expected from h3, we also see a decline in the dual full-time earner model in east germany. adults in these recent cohorts established their households during a period when welfare policies offered less social protection and work marginalisation was therefore greater, as reflected by an increasing share of single and low labour intensity households in west germany. in east germany, this household type remained relatively prevalent and hardly changed from the first to the last cohorts. these findings are in line with h4. interestingly, the findings also showed an increasing share of single and standard career households. in the uk, because adults in earlier cohorts began their early 30s with fewer job opportunities, weaker social protections, stronger traditional gender norms, and a gender-liberal family policy, we see that households with low labour intensity and male breadwinner households prevailed. however, recent cohorts of adults established their households in a context of greater social protection (with less work marginalisation) and mixed liberal and gender-egalitarian family policies (with more gender-egalitarian norms). this finding could explain why we see a decline in male breadwinner households, as expected from h1, and a decline in single and low labour intensity households, as expected from h4. instead, we see an increasing proportion of dual full-time earner households, as expected from h3. this trend might be explained by the mechanism of normative change as family policy has become more gender-egalitarian. the 1.5-earner household type remained substantial and particularly dominant in the 1964-1966 cohort, possibly due to rational choice of gender specialisation, as expected from h2. the study has some limitations that should be acknowledged. first, it focused on two types of welfare state that have seen dramatic socio-economic changes in recent decades. it would be fruitful to observe cohort replacement of types of household labour supply in different welfare states, such as the scandinavian model. furthermore, in the uk, adults of the cohorts included in the study were exposed to a rise in unemployment in 2008 and welfare state retrenchment reforms from 2010-2015. however, they were in their late 30s at that point and thus more resistant to change. given that the establishment of roles in mid-adulthood is argued to be the main mechanism explaining the cohort replacement of household labour supply types, the study did not capture how, from 2008 onwards, newer cohorts of adults in this life stage have formed their households in the context of a welfare state offering less social protection. this opens up additional research pathways for future study. finally, the study provides a descriptive analysis of cohort replacement in household labour supply. it would be fruitful to examine this process in future research using a more extensive longitudinal time framework that examines how life course sequences form after specific policies, including factors as potential explanations. despite these limitations, an important question raised by the findings is why there are differences between germany and the uk in the alternatives to the male breadwinner model, despite both countries establishing households amid more gender-egalitarian family policies. traditional male breadwinner households • rona geffen486 have been replaced by dual full-time earner households in the uk and 1.5-male breadwinner households in germany. a potential explanation for this difference is that, unlike in the uk, the worsening labour market opportunities for less educated women in west germany, along with strong gendered institutions, such as limited childcare availability, the joint tax system, and generous parental leave, continue to reinforce traditional gender roles and incentivise main-earner households. therefore, women in germany, mainly mothers, still have less opportunity for career mobility than men. policymakers should foster an individual tax system, increase public childcare, and encourage both spouses to share a moderate term of parental leave in an attempt to incentivise a more equal division of labour within households. furthermore, the findings show that the share of single and low labour intensity households increased in west germany and persisted in east germany from the first to the last cohorts, despite some decrease due to the hartz reforms that aimed to strengthen employment (kemmerling/bruttel 2006). it might be that the liberalisation of welfare policy designed to increase employment through nonstandard employment is insufficient when it comes to integrating those who are both single and are persistently unemployed. policy investment in education and training for this group, as well as efforts to coordinate their skills with labour market demands, could foster better labour market integration. the findings also have important policy implications for the uk. the cohort change in the uk revealed an increasing proportion of dual full-time earner households while 1.5-male breadwinner households persist and remain substantial. given that family policy in the uk provides modest support for combining work and family care, dual full-time earner partners might have less choice in caring for their children and tend to have more difficulty juggling responsibilities in work and family spheres, thereby experiencing strong work-family conflict. the 1.5-male breadwinner household type might provide a more flexible alternative for combining work with childcare, but unpaid work in the uk is predominantly undertaken by women (ciccia/ bleijenbergh 2014). to foster a better work-life balance and promote a more equal gender division of labour, a “dual earner/dual care” model, with less than full-time work, might be adopted. this model suggests that both parents share moderate earnings-related parental leave benefits, have access to high-quality early childhood education, reduce working hours, and receive income support during periods of care (crompton 2001; gornick/meyers 2004; morgan 2008). while dual full-time earner households are more prevalent in the uk than in germany, it seems that the recent shift in family policy in germany provides better conditions for adopting the “dual earner/dual care” model. interestingly, the male breadwinner model in germany was also replaced by increasing independence in both work and family life, as reflected by the growing share of single people with standard full-time careers. the transition to more gender egalitarianism in west germany and the return to traditionalism in east germany might involve normative confusion and uncertainty about gender roles, leading to a reduced willingness towards commitment and forming a partnership, especially among those with greater economic independence. while i did not include work a cohort replacement of household labour supply in germany and the uk • 487 and family attitudes in the analysis, i hope that my findings will stimulate further investigation into these issues. acknowledgements i would like to thank the cluster of excellence “contestations of the liberal script (scripts)” for supporting this work. this study developed as part of my phd project at the chair of social stratification and social policy at the goethe university. i am grateful for the valuable comments from markus gangl, anette fasang, haya stier, birgit becker, julian garritzmann, taylan acar, jan brülle, anna gerlach, agnes jäger, simon bienstman, carlotta giustozzi, svenja hense, kristina lindemann, eleonora vlach, ariane ophir as well as the 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mothers with different educational backgrounds. in: journal of european social policy 30,3: 370-385. https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928719892843 zoch, gundula 2021: thirty years after the fall of the berlin wall ‒ do east and west germans still differ in their attitudes to female employment and the division of housework? in: european sociological review 37,5: 731-750. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 zoch, gundula; hondralis, irina 2017: the expansion of low-cost, state subsidized childcare availability and mothers’ return-to-work behaviour in east and west germany. in: european sociological review 33,5: 693-707. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcx068 zoch, gundula; schober, pia s. 2018: public child-care expansion and changing gender ideologies of parents in germany. in: journal of marriage and family 80,4: 1020-1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12486 date of submission: 06.02.2024 date of acceptance: 01.10.2024 dr. rona geffen (*). goethe university. frankfurt a. m., germany. e-mail: geffen@soz.uni-frankfurt.de url: https://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/129638114/dr__rona_geffen https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1210-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.12682/lives.2296-1658.2013.24 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00390.x https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv015 https://doi.org/10.1080/135457000337651 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2021.100449 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcu056 https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928719892843 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab002 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcx068 https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12486 mailto:geffen@soz.uni-frankfurt.de https://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/129638114/dr__rona_geffen published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de editorial on the special issue “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences” editorial on the special issue “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”* pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk abstract: recent decades have seen major changes in the educational profiles of the populations of western industrialised countries, notably a sharp rise in educational attainment and a reversal of the gender gap in education. these trends are likely to have affected patterns of educational assortative mating and its consequences. in this editorial, we first review the empirical evidence on educational assortative mating patterns over the last two decades. specifically, we examine whether educational homogamy has increased among the highly educated, whether women are now less likely to marry upward across cohorts, and whether the rates of relative educational homogamy in populations have increased. we also examine the factors that explain trends and cross-country differences in educational homogamy. second, we review the consequences of educational homogamy for several important social outcomes, in particular partnership stability and union dissolution, fertility, and children’s educational attainment. is educational homogamy increasingly affecting these outcomes, and if so, in what ways and why? third, we identify research gaps regarding educational assortative mating and its consequences. the six empirical studies in this special issue attempt to fill some of these gaps. we briefly outline these studies and their main findings and point to implications for future research. keywords: assortative mating · educational homogamy · international comparison · absolute and relative homogamy · consequences of homogamy · fertility · union dissolution and divorce · inequality in educational outcomes 1 introduction “who mates with and marries whom?” is a classic question in sociology and demography (berent 1954; blau/duncan 1967; blossfeld/timm 2003; blossfeld 2009; comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 437-466 (date of release: 20.11.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-17en3 * this editorial has been peer reviewed. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-17 • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk438 hout 1982; kalmijn 1998; mare 1991; schwartz 2013; ultee/luijkx 1990). the question carries great importance because the rate of mating between individuals with the same socioeconomic and cultural characteristics – also known as homogamy or assortative mating – is both a measure of a society’s level of social cohesion and of social inequality (kalmijn 1998; mare 1991; schwartz/mare 2005). high rates of homogamy indicate strong social boundaries between groups and can lead to an erosion of social cohesion through reduced intergroup contact (kalmijn 1998) and to widening social divides – socially, economically, culturally, and politically (mclanahan 2004; norris/inglehart 2019; reckwitz 2019). high rates of socioeconomic homogamy signal low openness of a society’s social structure (berent 1954; blossfeld 2009; mare 2016; ultee/luijkx 1990) and can exacerbate social inequalities in current and future generations, for example, by affecting children’s education. in this special issue, we focus on changes and consequences of educational homogamy. we do so because patterns of educational homogamy have implications for many aspects of life, including couple stability, the division of paid and unpaid labour, fertility decisions, the reproduction of inequalities through couple formation, the distribution of resources between households, and health. in addition, patterns of educational homogamy are likely to have changed substantially in recent decades due to the educational expansion and gender gap reversals in education that have occurred in all western industrialised countries (diprete/buchmann 2013; esteve et al. 2016; grow/van bavel 2015; schofer/meyer 2005; van bavel et al. 2018). for example, educational expansion implies a greater likelihood of meeting and mating with higher-educated individuals, which should increase educational homogamy among higher-educated individuals and decrease educational homogamy among lower-educated individuals (grow/van bavel 2015; kalmijn 1998; katrňák/manea 2020). individuals’ preferences may also have changed as the supply of bettereducated partners has increased, raising the minimum level of education they seek in a partner (schwartz 2013). this special issue provides an updated picture of cross-national and crosstemporal educational homogamy and, following the call of schwartz (2013), new empirical evidence on the consequences of educational homogamy that are currently understudied. we focus on the consequences of educational homogamy for union dissolution and divorce, fertility, and educational outcomes for the next generation. before presenting the six studies on educational homogamy and its consequences contained in this special issue, we briefly review the state of the literature. based on this review, we identify research gaps regarding educational homogamy and its consequences. we then outline how the six studies fill some of these gaps. 2 patterns and trends in relative and absolute educational homogamy in this section, we first review the empirical evidence on patterns and trends in educational homogamy in western industrialised countries over the last two decades and then discuss the factors that are thought to be responsible for these patterns and changes. changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 439 2.1 relative educational homogamy stratification researchers have mainly focused on relative educational homogamy, i.e., educational assortative mating, holding constant the distribution of spouses’ education. scholars do this on the assumption that relative homogamy is a more appropriate indicator of social group distance and a society’s openness than absolute homogamy (i.e., the observed patterns of educational assortative mating), as the supply of marriage candidates strongly determines absolute homogamy (kalmijn 1998: 405; ultee/luijkx 1990). log-linear models are commonly used to study relative educational homogamy and its changes, as they allow the association between partners’ education to be analysed net of (changes in) the supply of marriage candidates (as measured by the educational distributions of men and women in marriage tables). studies show that educational groups at the top and bottom of the hierarchy are more closed than those in the middle (hendrickx 1994; kalmijn 1998: 409; katrňák/manea 2020; uunk et al. 1996). there is also a tendency for marriages to be relatively less common the further apart two educational groups are. according to kalmijn (1998: 409), the strongest status boundaries exist between university graduates and the lower educational groups. for our review of the empirical evidence on changes in relative educational homogamy before 2000, we rely mainly on kalmijn (1998). we then complement his review of trends with more recent evidence focusing on the 21st century. kalmijn (1998) concluded that the empirical evidence on trends in relative educational homogamy does not point in a single direction. for example, a comparative study by ultee and luijkx (1990) found that relative educational homogamy on the whole declined slightly in 18 industrialised countries between the second world war and the 1980s. however, the study found considerable variation in trends across countries, with three countries showing an increase, five showing a decrease, and the remaining ten showing no change. country-specific analyses revealed either a sharp increase in relative educational homogamy after the second world war (u.s., hungary, and germany), a slight increase (the netherlands), or stability (australia and france), but no decline (kalmijn 1998). conversely, in a large-scale cross-sectional comparison of 65 countries, smits, ultee and lammers (1998) found an inverted u-shaped association between relative educational homogamy and the level of economic development, indicating a decline in relative educational homogamy in the most developed societies. the largest cross-national comparative trend study of relative educational homogamy at the time, by smits, ultee and lammers (2000) for 60 countries, showed that relative educational homogamy had generally declined. however, the decline was small, related to the 1940s-1970s, and involved a comparison of only two points in time. moreover, the study showed considerable cross-country variation in the level of relative educational homogamy and its trends. smits (2003) also found a decline in relative educational homogamy among those with a secondary degree or higher education in 55 countries, but again used rather old data from the 1970s and 1980s. using more recent data from six european countries between 1990 and 2016 (sweden, the czech republic, slovakia, poland, hungary, and italy), katrňák • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk440 and manea (2020) also observed a trend towards weaker relative homogamy among those with tertiary education. however, they noted that relative homogamy became stronger among people from lower educational groups. these education-specific trends were quite similar across the countries analysed. 2.2 absolute educational homogamy although measures of relative educational homogamy may be better indicators of societies’ openness (kalmijn 1998: 405; ultee/luijkx 1990), measures of absolute educational homogamy (i.e., the observed patterns of educational assortative mating) are also important and informative. absolute educational homogamy affects several important social outcomes and has implications for social cohesion and socio-economic inequalities in current and future generations (leesch/skopek 2023; schwartz 2010, 2013). ultee and luijkx (1990) found that absolute educational homogamy declined after the second world war until the 1980s, but they also observed considerable cross-country variation in levels and trends. a more recent study by de hauw, grow and van bavel (2017) found little change in absolute educational homogamy across 28 european countries, covering the birth cohorts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. in contrast, katrňák and manea’s (2020) observed an increase in absolute educational homogamy in six european countries between 1990 and 2016. studies on absolute educational homogamy often distinguish between couples where the man is more educated than his partner (hypergamy) and couples where the woman is more educated than her partner (hypogamy). there have been several trend studies on educational hypergamy and hypogamy. mare (1991) observed a decline in hypergamy in the u.s. esteve, garcia-román and permanyer (2012) compared changes in hypergamy in 56 countries between the 1970s and 2000s, also finding a decrease. more recently, de hauw, grow and van bavel (2017) looked at 28 european countries, comparing respondents born in the 1950s and the 1970s, and documented a decline in hypergamy and an increase in hypogamy (de hauw et al. 2017: 456). de hauw, grow and van bavel (2017) also compared hypergamy and hypogamy with remaining single. they observed that in younger cohorts, highly educated women are increasingly more likely to marry downwards than to remain single, and medium-educated women are less likely to marry upwards. men, on the other hand, are not more likely to marry upwards and are more likely to remain single. erát (2021) confirms these findings using the same dataset but more refined cohort measures. similar conclusions on the decline of female hypergamy are reached by katrňák and manea (2020) for six european countries between 1990 and 2016 and by han (2022) for 34 developed and emerging countries between the 1960s and 2015. 2.3 drivers of variation in assortative mating mating behaviour is the result of a combination of factors (blossfeld 2009; kalmijn 1998; schwartz 2013). using mate selection theories, scholars have generally changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 441 emphasised three factors in mate selection: (a) the constraints or opportunities of the marriage market in which individuals seek a spouse (“the structural component”), (b) individuals’ preferences for certain characteristics in a spouse, and (c) the influence of the social group to which individuals belong (“third parties” and the family origin; for a more detailed review of theories and factors of assortative mating see kalmijn 1998 and schwartz 2013). comparative research on educational homogamy has rarely used micro-level theories of mate choice, and their drivers have not been extensively tested (but see han 2022; leesch/skopek 2023). one reason for this is that absolute homogamy patterns have been seen as less important for social stratification, and that marriage market constraints have largely been considered as something to “control for” rather than to focus on. another reason is that conventional survey data provide little insight into mate choice processes or the relevance of preferences. scholars investigating cross-temporal and cross-national variation in relative educational homogamy have mainly focused on factors affecting societal openness. ultee and luijkx (1990) found that a country’s social mobility and social democracy reduce the extent of relative educational homogamy. smits, ultee and lammers (1998) found that the level of economic development (inverted u-shape effect; see also smits et al. 2000), the degree of political democracy (negative effect), a country’s dominant religion, and the technological background of developing countries (mixed effects) affect relative educational homogamy. bouchet-valat (2018) also showed an effect of economic development (negative effect) on relative educational homogamy at the regional level, comparing 149 regions in 26 countries in the european union. domanski and przybysz (2007) documented that political democracy and post-communist status lowered relative educational homogamy among european countries, but found no effects of economic development and a country’s dominant religion. katrňák, fučík and luijkx (2012), in addition, demonstrated that a country’s intergenerational educational reproduction is positively associated with relative educational homogamy. nevertheless, a few comparative studies of educational homogamy highlight the importance of more immediate mate selection factors, derived from theories of mate selection. blau (1977; blau et al. 1982) was one of the first scholars to study the effects of marriage market constraints on homogamy patterns. he emphasised that the effects of these marriage market constraints, such as group size, sex ratio, and heterogeneity, were non-trivial and important. relative group size was negatively associated with outmarriage (e.g., for black outmarriage and occupational intermarriage), and a population’s heterogeneity was positively associated with intermarriage (e.g., racial intermarriage; blau et al. 1982). a recent cross-national comparative study by permanyer, esteve, and garcia (2019) studies the effect of such factors on educational homogamy, focusing on the effects of educational expansion, the reversal of the gender gap in education, and assortative mating on a country’s absolute educational homogamy. permanyer, esteve, and garcia (2019) found that the expansion of university education was the main driver of the increase in absolute educational homogamy, rather than the reversal of the gender gap in education, or assortative mating (which barely increased). leesch and skopek (2023), • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk442 comparing cohorts for ireland, also demonstrated that educational expansion, but not assortative mating, was responsible for the increase in educational homogamy. in addition, they found that changes in the educational gradient in marriage – more educated women are now more likely to marry or cohabit than less educated women – contributed in part to the increase in educational homogamy. this finding seems to support the role of marriage market opportunities for mate selection. on the other hand, educational expansion implies fewer opportunities for educational homogamy among the less educated, something which permanyer, esteve, and garcia (2019) did not investigate. the importance of marriage market constraints and the “logic of numbers” has also been emphasised in studies explaining differences in socioeconomic hypergamy and hypogamy across time and countries. drawing on blau’s (1977) macro-sociological ideas about the effects of gender imbalance, scholars have been interested in whether the reversal of the gender gap in education would lead to women marrying up less often and marrying down more often. erát (2021) finds evidence for this “squeeze” hypothesis, showing a strong negative correlation between a country’s female educational advantage and hypergamy. interestingly, this correlation was weaker for younger cohorts. han (2022) also supported this hypothesis in a large-scale cross-national comparison of educational hypogamy. however, han (2022) pointed to a possible alternative interpretation, namely that the extent of educational hypogamy could also be related to the economic empowerment of college-educated women, according to which economically successful women would be less attractive in marriage markets. he found an effect of economic empowerment even after controlling for the mating squeeze effect. in most countries, however, the empowerment effect was smaller than the squeeze effect. de hauw, grow and van bavel (2017) further supported the squeeze hypothesis with cross-national comparative data. highlighting the need to study assortative mating from a dynamic perspective, corti and scherer (2021) investigate the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of first intimate unions in germany (1985-2018). they integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating (de hauw et al. 2017) with a focus on mating dynamics and measures of the partner market over the life course (eckhard/stauder 2019). the results for germany show that the local education-specific mating squeeze influences partnership formation, timing, and educational sorting and that, in line with search theory (lewis/oppenheimer 2000), the mating squeeze decreases after the age of 30. this applies both to the risk of remaining single and to the risk of forming a hypogamous partnership. the effects of (gendered) educational expansion on mating patterns can also be interpreted in terms of changing preferences for educational homogamy, e.g., raising the minimum level of education that people seek in a partner (schwartz 2013). research on mate selection has rarely examined the influence of preferences and normative influences (such as peers or family) on mate choice (kalmijn 1998). this is largely because conventional survey data often do not include information on the processes of mate search or the relevance of preferences and norms. however, online changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 443 dating data and agent-based modelling are promising solutions to address some of these research gaps (grow/van bavel 2019), although findings from selected online dating samples may not be generalisable to broader populations (van bavel 2021). online dating data often include information about users’ partner preferences and the frequency of interactions. useful insights can also be gained from simulations. agent-based modelling allows researchers to make assumptions about structural constraints, preferences and norms, and to feed these into computer simulations along with empirical information (grow/van bavel 2019). these models can be used to test whether particular preference assumptions and structural constraints lead to observable empirical patterns of homogamy and whether different preference patterns can lead to similar outcomes (grow/van bavel 2019). the original contribution by uunk (2024) in this special issue adds to the literature on educational homogamy by providing updated information on trends and crossnational differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy in europe in total and by educational group. in addition, he investigates the effect of structural opportunities for mate selection by examining how various factors of the educational distribution of populations (e.g., educational expansion, heterogeneity, and gender symmetry) affect educational homogamy. 3 consequences of homogamy while patterns of educational assortative mating have been extensively studied, at least descriptively, the consequences of homogamy remain an under-studied topic in the literature. this special issue aims to address this shortcoming. patterns of educational homogamy and their change have implications for many aspects of life, including couple instability, the division of paid and unpaid labour (blossfeld/buchholz 2009; bonke/esping-andersen 2011; dechant/schulz 2014; england/srivastava 2013; greenstein 1996; grow et al. 2017; miller 2020; raley et al. 2012; theunis et al. 2018), fertility decisions (nitsche et al. 2018; trimarchi/van bavel 2020), the reproduction of inequalities through couple formation (mare/schwartz 2006; schwartz 2013), the distribution of resources between households (azollini et al. 2023; breen/salazar 2010, 2011; breen/andersen 2012; breen/ermisch 2017; cancian/schoeni 1998; grotti/ scherer 2016; grow/van bavel 2020; harkness 2013; klesment/van bavel 2017; lawrence/breen 2016; salverda et al. 2009; van bavel/klesment 2017), and health (abufhele et al. 2022; pesando 2022; potarca/rossier 2022; rauscher 2020). this issue covers empirical findings on three of these consequences: fertility, divorce, and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality. with the changes in educational homogamy described above – greater absolute educational homogamy among the higher-educated and smaller educational homogamy among the lowereducated (katrňák/manea 2020, see also uunk in this issue) – the consequences of educational pairings are expected to have undergone corresponding changes. hypogamy is particularly interesting from this perspective, as women’s educational levels continue to rise and couples in which the woman has a higher level of education violate traditional western gender norms. as hypogamy becomes more common • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk444 (schwartz/han 2014), this status inversion gets normalised, and consequently, some of the consequences previously associated with these partnerships may no longer be relevant (miller 2020). to underscore the need for this special issue, we also conducted a web of science (wos) search for the three consequences of educational homogamy that we study (divorce and separation, fertility, and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality). we used wos’s advanced search tool to search ssci-ranked journal articles published between 1980 and 2023 (see the appendix for information on the exact search algorithms). we then sifted through the results and selected the journal articles relevant to our special issue. in total, we found four articles on the consequences for fertility and seven articles each on the consequences for divorce and separation and on the consequences for the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality. although our literature search is by no means exhaustive, and these lists can be supplemented by publications not found by the search algorithm (which we discuss below), our search results underscore that the consequences of educational homogamy have been a neglected research topic for over 40 years. before reviewing existing studies in these areas, we provide a brief overview of how educational homogamy has been operationalised in the literature. 3.1 operationalising homogamy couples and family members are generally assumed to share the same living conditions and life chances, be interdependent, and benefit from family relationships (blossfeld/buchholz 2009; kalmijn 1998; sørensen 1994: 32-33). consequently, all members of a family share a unitary position in the stratification hierarchy. researchers have determined this social position either through a focus on (a) the (typically male) head of the household, as in the conventional approach of traditional class theory (goldthorpe 1983, 1984), or (b) the highest present position, as in the dominance approach (erikson 1984). although originally developed for social class measures, these approaches have also been applied to education or status measures to define a family’s position in society (sørensen 1994: 33). however, all these proposals do not take into account that each partner can make a significant contribution to the family that is either substitutive or complementary (becker 1993; oppenheimer 1994: 333-334). therefore, an individual-level approach (as opposed to a familylevel approach) has been proposed for analysing homogamy’s consequences for social outcomes (sørensen 1994). this approach, however, often falls short when considering the relative resources within the couple (grow/van bavel 2020; klesment/ van bavel 2017; van bavel/klesment 2017). for many outcomes, including resourcepooling and bargaining, both the level and the relative combination of resources among partners is important (oppenheimer 1994). taking into account sex-specific resources, the distinction of hyperor hypogamy has been proposed, depending on which of the two sexes has the higher level of the resource in question (becker 1993). in addition, for some research interests, it might be important to examine whether the consequences of couples’ resource combinations depend on their level (becker et al. 2018; blossfeld/buchholz 2009; mare 2016). although this reasoning changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 445 can, in principle, be applied to any resource, we focus on education in this special issue. these substantive and methodological issues of measuring social positions in terms of educational pairings have become more important over time because the composition of educational resources within couples has changed substantively given massive educational expansion in which women have caught up or even overtaken men in educational attainment (diprete/buchmann 2013). to account for the different resource combinations of couples, various operationalisations of homogamy and heterogamy (the latter of which is sometimes further differentiated into hypergamy and hypogamy) have been used in the literature (both for parental background and own partnership situation), and which measurement should be preferred depends on the research question and theoretical framework (eeckhaut et al. 2013). a methodological debate on the different operationalisations in the literature (for further information, see edwards 2002, eeckhaut et al. 2013 and luo 2022) is still underway (abufhele et al. 2022: 12). the first option is to construct difference scores (eeckhaut et al. 2013), based on metric measures of education. we can distinguish between (a) absolute difference scores, (b) squared difference scores and (c) algebraic difference scores (edwards 2002). the difference scores of options (a) and (b) only have positive values and can, therefore, only distinguish homogamy from heterogamy. option (c) can also have negative values and can differentiate homogamy from hypergamy and hypogamy. in all these measures, the distance in the education of both partners can be accounted for (eeckhaut et al. 2013). difference measures are also possible with categorical variables, distinguishing homogamy from hypergamy and hypogamy (eeckhaut et al. 2013). in this simple form, categorical difference measures do not contain information about the educational distance between partners. an advantage of difference measures is that they provide a straightforward method for examining the moderating role of high or low educational resources for homogamy and heterogamy. another option is to consider the main effects of both partners’ (or parents’) education and include an interaction term in the analysis models (bratsberg et al. 2023; eeckhaut et al. 2013; sørensen 1994: 41-42), which allows to model how the effects of the education of one partner depends on the education of the other partner (sørensen 1994). another possibility is to create compound measures that take into account various combinations of partner education (eeckhaut et al. 2013). if the main effects of partner education are also included in the analysis model, the compound measure is an interaction term (eeckhaut et al. 2013). if the main effects are not controlled for, the main effects of education are part of the compound measure (eeckhaut et al. 2013). a further option is to estimate a diagonal reference model (drm) or a mobility contrast model (mcm) (eeckhaut et al. 2013; luo 2022: 165; sørensen 1994: 41). in these models, homogamous couples are seen as the core of an educational group that is not influenced by any other educational group and this core is compared to educationally mixed groups (eeckhaut et al. 2013). the papers in this special issue use different operationalisations of resource combination: all contributions examine details in the relative distribution of resources; some not only account for level effects but also examine the relevance of relative resources according to the level of education. • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk446 3.2 homogamy, partnership stability, and divorce risk education and its pairing between partners can influence a couple’s stability in several ways. this is because education is an indicator of tastes, values, and attitudes, as well as of an individual’s labour market prospects and earning potential, and thus socioeconomic status. in general, education makes marriages more stable: marriages with at least one highly educated partner tend to be less prone to divorce (frimmel et al. 2013; härkönen/dronkers 2006; hogendoorn et al. 2022; theunis et al. 2018). traditionally, hypergamous couples were expected to have the highest marital stability, as specialisation in paid and domestic work increases the gains from marriage (becker et al. 1977). frimmel, halla and winter-ebner (2013) find support for this in austrian administrative data. at the same time, however, social and cultural similarity promotes consensus between partners on tastes and values and reduces potential conflict over divergent goals (kalmijn 2003; kalmijn et al. 2005). this suggests that homogamous couples are more stable than heterogamous couples. another factor contributing to union instability is social disapproval from families and peers, which is more likely to occur when social boundaries are crossed, especially in heterogamous unions. if a couple violates conventional norms, as is the case with hypogamous couples in western societies, social disapproval might become even more relevant. this also suggests that the distinction between hypergamous and hypogamous couples is important. unconventional combinations may be particularly unstable in contexts where gender equality is not (yet) promoted (cooke 2006; theunis et al. 2018; gonalons-pons/gangl 2021) and where unconventional, heterogamous combinations are least common (grow et al. 2017; schwartz/han 2014). several studies suggest that educational homogamy may contribute to partnership stability, but research on the impact of educational homogamy on partnership stability yields mixed results and suggests that the relationship between marital dissolution and the relative status of spouses is both historical and contextspecific (cooke 2006; gonalons-pons/gangl 2021). in their review study, wagner and weiss (2003) report no strong support for the idea that educational pairings are determinants of divorce risk in germany. kraft and neimann (2009) also find only limited support for the notion that educational homogamy increases marital stability in germany, while higher levels of education and religiosity do. however, women’s educational advantage (hypogamy) in germany is associated with a higher risk of union dissolution (arpino et al. 2022). fučík (2023) shows for the czech republic that homogamy as such does not lead to more stable partnerships. tzeng (1992) finds for first marriages in the united states (u.s.) that couples with heterogamous education and non-traditional work arrangements are at higher risk of marital instability. for austria, results suggest that hypogamous couples are most likely to divorce (frimmel et al. 2013). in finland (mäenpää/jalovaara 2014) and israel (kaplan/herbst 2015), homogamy reduces the risk of separation, but only for the highly educated. furthermore, extreme heterogamy increases the divorce risk in finland (mäenpää/ jalovaara 2014). schwartz and han (2014) and grow et al. (2017) document relevant changes in the educational matching and divorce risk in the u.s.: while marriages in changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 447 which the wives had an educational advantage were more likely to dissolve in the past, this is no longer the case for more recent marriage cohorts, as partnerships have become less “traditional” and more gender egalitarian. in line with this idea, schmid and wagner (2023) document corresponding changes for west germany and for younger cohorts: a less traditional division of labour is no longer associated with a higher divorce risk. grow et al. (2017) suggest that these changes in the consequences of homogamy are due to structural changes in the marriage market (the availability of alternative partners) rather than cultural changes. overall, it appears that as the social acceptance of hypogamous or homogamous educational pairings increases, the risk of union dissolution becomes more similar to other, more “traditional” combinations. the normative context has also proved relevant in other comparative studies on this topic. for example, gonalons-pons and gangl (2021) found that violations of the male-breadwinner norm were most strongly associated with marital dissolution in countries with more traditional gender cultures. in line with kalmijn (2003), the above results strongly support the social channels of union stability – i.e., the “cultural” similarity and social recognition – as well as the importance of contextual factors, including normative power relations. most of this literature has focused on marriage, although cohabitation is becoming increasingly relevant. in this special issue, the studies by mazzeo and colleagues (2024) on germany and by corti and colleagues (2024) on italy contribute to this area of research. 3.3 homogamy and fertility the relationship between partners’ educations and fertility is also complex and context-dependent. there is evidence that women’s higher education reduces the number of children (becker et al. 2012; chen/guo 2022; cygan-rehm/maeder 2013; kim 2016; ntoimo/mutanda 2017), mainly by postponing marriage and childbearing. monteiro da silva, campos de lima and ferreira (2022) show that changes in the educational combination of partners account for about one-third of the decline in cohort fertility in brazil. however, more recent findings in europe and the u.s. indicate that although highly educated individuals are having children later, they are having more children (nitsche et al. 2018). in contrast, decicca and krashinsky (2023) show for canada that education tends to “compress” fertility, leading to a higher likelihood of having at least one child, but a lower likelihood of having multiple children. indeed, education affects first births and parity progression differently. the literature suggests that there may be a trade-off between the quantity of children and the quality with which one can raise them (vargha/donehower 2019), which may be more relevant for the highly educated who have to accept higher costs of children to avoid downward social mobility (breen/goldthorpe 1997). at the contextual level, the nature of gender roles prevalent in a country (in terms of the equality of men and women in the private and public spheres) is likely to shape the relevance of education for family decisions. some authors argue that a reversal of the initial negative association between education and fertility will occur as gender equality progresses (goldscheider et al. 2015). • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk448 there are several channels linking education and its combination in partners to fertility. employment situation, occupation, and income are important mediators of this association. in many countries of the western world, women’s employment no longer seems to hinder fertility. in fact, the relationship has become positive (ahn/ mira 2002; kravdal/rindfuss 2008). an important channel related to educational attainment is the income effect, which facilitates the realisation of fertility desires by coping with costs. according to oppenheimer’s (1994) pooling of resources approach, highly educated couples have higher current and expected financial resources and security, which enables them to have more children. more recent literature attributes the higher fertility of more educated couples to a more equal division of gender roles in the household. regardless of their level of education, educational pairing could influence fertility through the quality and stability of their partnerships and through greater equality within the couple, including in the private sphere. in support of this hypothesis, assortative mating has been found to reduce the likelihood of reproductive failure in the u.s. (huber/fieder 2011). in the united kingdom (u.k.), educationally homogamous couples also show higher fertility regardless of social class assortative mating (krzyżanowska/mascie-taylor 2014). bauer and jacob (2010) show for germany that educationally homogamous couples are, on average, more likely to become parents than hypergamous couples and that a traditional education gap at the level of vocational education promotes parenthood. focusing on completed fertility in greece, bagavos (2017) documents that differences in fertility outcomes are largely the result of timing effects, except for low-educated partners, who also have higher completed fertility. thus, the detailed combination of partners’ education affects fertility progression. osiewalska (2017) reports that low-educated homogamous partners have the highest fertility (in france, bulgaria and austria), while highly educated homogamous partners postpone their first birth but do not differ in terms of their completed fertility. in a comparative study across european countries, nitsche and colleagues (2018) show that highly educated homogamous couples postpone the first birth in most european countries but have a high probability of second and third births. the authors also report that hypergamous couples with a highly educated man and a less educated woman have the lowest second birth transitions – a finding that contradicts the idea of specialisation in “new home economics” (becker 1993). osiewalska (2017) shows that hypogamy is associated with fewer children in bulgaria and austria, but not in france. a paper in this special issue by nitsche (2024) adds to this literature by examining first and second births in the u.s. 3.4 homogamy and the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality in the literature, few retrospective and prospective studies analyse the intergenerational transmission and reproduction of educational inequalities through parental homogamy. the retrospective approach examines the link between family background and children’s educational attainment starting from the children’s generation. however, changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 449 not many studies have examined the consequence of parental homogamy as a characteristic of family background. to date, to the best of our knowledge, only five country studies have analysed the association between parental homogamy and children’s educational outcomes, covering south korea (byun et al. 2020), the u.k. (gonzalez-sancho 2012), denmark (bingley et al. 2023) and the u.s. (beck/gonzálezsancho 2009; edwards/roff 2016). in addition, only one international comparative study has examined the association between parental homogamy/heterogamy and gender-specific educational outcomes across european countries (ortiz-gervasi 2021). theoretically, it is argued that children from educationally homogamous parents should have better educational opportunities due to the pooling of resources, greater agreement on parenting styles, and a lower risk of divorce of their parents. all the mentioned studies suggest that parental homogamy/heterogamy is important for children’s educational outcomes. however, little research has examined whether this association is moderated by parental education (byun et al. 2020). for example, the resource pooling argument expects a positive association between parental homogamy and children’s educational outcomes only when parents are highly educated. the retrospective study by blossfeld, katrňák, and chromková manea (2024) in this special issue helps to fill this gap in the literature and explores how parental homogamy affects children’s educational opportunities in different european countries and shows how this association is moderated by parental education. in the retrospective approach, the starting point for the analysis is a representative sample of children who are asked about their parents. duncan (1966) pointed out that the distribution of parents in retrospective studies does not represent a real distribution at a particular historical time because (1) parents have their children at different ages, (2) childless individuals are not part of the parent sample, and (3) parents may have multiple children and thus be overrepresented. however, duncan (1966) concluded that these objections are not problematic for the analysis of the direct transmission between parents’ and children’s education (such as parents’ influence on children’s school performance and educational decisions; boudon 1974). however, if one is interested in (1) the total effect and different pathways of an educational investment in a birth cohort on their offspring’s educational attainment (breen/ermisch 2017; lawrence/breen 2016) or (2) how distributions at one point in time are transformed into distributions of the next generation, intermediate demographic processes of social reproduction must be considered (maralani 2013; song/mare 2015). for example, higher education in a parental cohort may have consequences for mate choice, likelihood of marriage, and childbearing. in recent years, retrospective studies have been complemented by prospective studies. these prospective studies examine how educational mobility processes are mediated by demographic processes of social reproduction (hillmert 2013, 2015; maralani 2023; mare 1997; mare/maralani 2006; mare/schwartz 2006; skopek/leopold 2020). the focus is therefore shifting from social mobility to social reproduction, taking into account demographic processes (corti/scherer 2022). however, these analyses remain rare due to high data requirements, especially in an international • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk450 comparative perspective (breen/ermisch 2017; breen et al. 2019). the starting point for these analyses is a representative sample of respondents at a specific historical point in time who are asked about their descendants (song/mare 2015). these studies take into account that (1) not all members of a parental cohort contribute to intergenerational reproduction because they remain childless, and (2) some but not all studies collect information on all children of the respondents (song/ mare 2015). the prospective approach is interested in how individuals belonging to different social groups (typically defined by education) vary in the timing and level of marriage, divorce, remarriage, homogamy, fertility, parental and child survival, adoption, and migration (song/mare 2015), and therefore have different probabilities of having offspring. existing prospective research has mainly examined differences in assortative mating and fertility processes. as this special issue is concerned with the consequences of assortative mating, we will concentrate on this demographic channel of educational reproduction. studies from indonesia (mare/maralani 2006 2006), south korea (kye/mare 2012), the u.s. (song/mare 2017; lawrence/breen 2016), the u.k. (breen/ermisch 2017), norway (bratsberg et al. 2023), and germany (corti/scherer 2022; hillmert 2013, 2015) show that assortative mating is relevant, at least for the social reproduction of women (breen/ermisch 2017; corti/scherer 2022). however, assortative mating has become less relevant for the social reproduction of women in germany over time (corti/scherer 2022). for the u.s., maralani (2013) also finds black-white differences in the importance of assortative mating for the educational reproduction of women. a comparative paper by breen et al. (2019) on twelve countries (italy, germany, belgium, sweden, france, the netherlands, greece, the czech republic, denmark, spain, poland, and austria) suggests that assortative mating is important for educational reproduction. nevertheless, international comparative studies on the effects of parental homogamy on educational reproduction are still rare. the cross-national study by wittemann and yastrebov (2024) in this special issue fills a gap in the literature by extending the analysis to eastern european countries with a cohort comparison. 4 contributions and conclusions of this special issue 4.1 contributions this special issue, “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences,” presents six original studies. the contribution by uunk (2024) responds to the need for an upto-date, large-scale description of educational homogamy and an assessment of its drivers. the study “trends and cross-national differences in educational homogamy in europe: the role of educational composition” investigates changes in educational homogamy and extends previous findings by describing and explaining country and cohort differences in absolute and relative educational homogamy in europe by educational group, focusing on the role of educational composition characteristics. his aggregate-level regression analyses on 36 countries and five birth cohorts (1940-1989) from seven waves of the european social survey show that absolute changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 451 educational homogamy has decreased for less educated people and increased for more educated people, while relative educational homogamy has hardly changed. regression analyses of the cross-country cohort variation in educational homogamy show, in line with blau’s theory of structural opportunity effects on intermarriage (blau 1977; blau et al. 1982), that the population’s educational composition strongly affects rates of absolute educational homogamy. educational gender symmetry, educational income inequality, and educational reproduction increase rates of absolute educational homogamy, educational heterogeneity decreases these rates, and educational expansion increases absolute educational homogamy among the more educated. educational composition characteristics also affect rates of relative educational homogamy, but only in terms of gender symmetry and educational reproduction. the results suggest that further educational expansion may increase absolute educational homogamy among the better educated, but that the growing female advantage in education weakens absolute educational homogamy through opportunities for intermarriage. this first contribution is followed by studies focussing on the consequences of homogamy. research on the consequences of educational pairing remains limited, and a straightforward consideration of contextual factors is underdeveloped. four of the five studies adopt a comparative perspective, across cohorts, contexts, or both. the contribution by mazzeo et al. (2024) on union stability considers contextual variation in terms of within-german differences and changes over time, while the study by corti et al. (2024) focuses on cohort succession within italy. mazzeo, schwartz, scherer, and vitali, in their contribution “trends in women’s educational advantage and divorce in east and west germany”, use soep data to investigate how the relevance of educational pairing varies across contexts, comparing east and west germany across cohorts. the authors report a lower stability of educational hypogamous marriages in west germany, while this is not the case in east germany. their finding is consistent with the idea that higher gender equality in the east fosters stability of non-traditional educational pairings. the lack of significant cohort differences confirms that notable differences between east and west germany persist after reunification. in the contribution by corti, bellani, guarneri, and rinesi, “partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy: a cohort comparison”, the focus is not on educational homogamy but on age homogamy. using data from the families and social subjects survey, the authors examine the association between the relative age of spouses and the risk of divorce and its change over cohorts for italy, documenting a stability premium for hypergamous couples (men older), which, however, weakens for more recent marriage cohorts, as divorce risks also increase for these more traditional pairings. among the consequences of assortative mating, fertility behaviour has recently received increasing attention, but little is known about the relevance of educational homogamy and the relative resources between partners. focusing on the u.s., the paper “relative resources in couples and their childbearing behaviour in the u.s.” by nitsche (2024) provides insights into the variation in fertility patterns due to differences in bargaining over fertility within heterogamous and homogamous couples. the author shows that first births are not related to the relative education • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk452 of the partners, but highly educated homogamous couples have a higher risk of second births. interestingly, and in line with the idea of changing gender roles, relative income and gender-specific work arrangements show no association with childbearing. finally, the consequences of parental assortative mating for the intergenerational transmission of inequality are examined, which is also a largely under-researched topic. in this special issue, two complementary contributions, both of which compare european countries, are devoted to how parental homogamy and homophily are related to educational inequality in the next generation. a retrospective study by blossfeld, katrňák, and chromková manea (2024), “parental educational homogamy and children’s educational attainment in europe”, sheds light on how different constellations of parental educational pairings are related to their children’s educational outcomes for a large number of european countries and how this association is moderated by parental education. they find that parental homogamy increases the likelihood of children obtaining a tertiary degree in european countries. however, this association varies across countries. in addition, they show that parental homogamy increases the probability to obtain a tertiary degree particularly of children from higher educated families. in contrast, the study by wittemann and yastrebov (2024), “untangling the role of assortative mating in prospective educational mobility in twelve european countries”, takes a prospective approach and uses data from the generations and gender survey and a series of prospective datasets to examine how demographic mechanisms such as assortative mating and the related fertility behaviour contribute to the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality in twelve european countries. they find that fertility does not play a large role in the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality, but that parental homogamy does. overall, this special issue covers a wide range of geographical areas in europe and the us and each article addresses an understudied issue of homogamy. 4.2 conclusions notwithstanding the contributions in this special issue, future research needs to address a number of open points to improve our understanding of educational homogamy and its consequences. among the factors explaining patterns of assortative mating, changing structural opportunities and changing preferences figure prominently. direct measures of preferences are almost non-existent, and we still need a much better assessment of the role of different structural opportunities for educational homogamy – including institutional factors such as the selectivity of higher education institutions (uchikoshi 2022), residential segregation of educational groups (blau/schwartz 1984), and the overlap (“intersection”; blau 1977) between education and other socioeconomic and cultural factors. some recent proposals for assessing structural constraints regarding mating squeezes have been developed for germany (eckhard/stauder 2019), but have not yet been proposed in other contexts. in order to disentangle the relevance of preferences from structural constraints (mating squeeze), looking at dynamics over the lifecourse is indispensable (eckhard et al. 2015). partnership formation criteria and changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 453 their consequences may depend crucially on life course stages and previous experiences (corti/scherer 2021; oppenheimer 1994; van bavel 2021). however, most studies of assortative mating are static in nature, based on cross-sectional data, or concerned with documenting trends in assortative mating over time, ignoring the temporal dynamics over individuals’ life-courses (blossfeld 2009). while this may be appropriate when traditional and standardised life courses prevail (brückner/mayer 2005), patterns of family formation have become more complex for more recent cohorts (kalmijn et al. 2019; thomson 2014; van winkle 2018), making a longitudinal perspective essential. in addition, it would be important to examine the extent to which couples become more similar over the life course through imitation, similar lifestyles, and shared environments (versluys et al. 2021). we therefore hope to see more life course research on educational homogamy in the future. new opportunities to study micro-level processes of how individuals search for mates, what characteristics they look for, and how they interact with potential partners may also emerge given new data from online dating (skopek 2023). the emergence of dating websites and apps has radically changed how people find partners in recent years (rosenfeld 2018). for example, recent studies in the u.s. and switzerland show that online dating has become an increasingly more common way to find a partner (rosenfeld et al. 2019; potarca 2020). in switzerland, it is mainly dating apps that dominate (potarca 2020). these changes in opportunities for meeting a partner may have implications for changes in homogamy patterns and their consequences. for example, a pressing question for sociologists and demographers is whether online dating has increased or decreased assortative mating. this is still an under-researched topic, and more studies are needed in the future (lichter/qian 2019). on the one hand, it can be argued that online dating allows individuals to choose more effectively according to their preference for similarity (kalmijn 1998). on the other hand, online dating offers a larger pool of potential partners with different socioeconomic characteristics (schwartz 2013; the “romantic love hypothesis” of smits et al. 1998). for example, empirical studies for germany and italy show that individuals prefer similarly educated partners in online dating (arosio 2022; skopek et al. 2009, 2011). other studies for the u.s. and germany demonstrate that educational homogamy is lower via online platforms than via other intermediaries such as schools and friends (potarca 2017; thomas 2020). as the search processes and interaction behaviour of individuals in online dating are (often) collected and tracked without the user’s awareness, these data offer new opportunities to investigate mechanisms of assortative mating (skopek 2023). however, a major drawback (besides the general “big data” issues such as representativeness) is that online dating data is private and generally kept under lock and key by the providers, making it difficult for social scientists to gain access to this data (lichter/qian 2019; skopek 2023). in the future, increased and trusted collaboration between platform operators and researchers is needed to gain access to this valuable data on homogamy (skopek 2023). as we argued above, research on the consequences of educational pairing is still scarce, and we are only beginning to understand the contextual circumstances, such as normative settings, under which the consequences of particular pairings • pia blossfeld, stefani scherer, wilfred uunk454 change. normative (dis-)approval by third parties is usually cited as an explanation for the changing consequences of hypogamy, which seems to have lost its stability penalty for recent cohorts. however, there is also evidence that individuals who form hypogamous unions are (less so today) negatively selected on some other dimensions, such as age or earnings (chudnovskaya/kashyap 2020; qian 2017), suggesting that focusing on one trait is too reductive. considering the combination of various traits, such as education, occupation, age, or ethnic homo-/heterogamy, is extremely rare in the literature but would be crucial for understanding the mechanisms at play. whether and how different traits are traded off against each other is a classic interest of sociological research (voland/engel 1990). examples include richer men finding younger and more beautiful wives, lower educated men being more likely to mate women with a migration background than other education groups (vignoli et al. 2017), or racial intermarriages coming with status exchange (xie/dong 2021). however, this evidence has not often made its way into this research stream. the presence of important trade-offs could also mean that heterogamy on one trait increases homogamy on another trait. for instance, by “marrying up,” some women have managed to update on other dimensions, which in turn may lead to greater socioeconomic homogamy between partners (lichter/ qian 2019: 306). we hope to see more studies that simultaneously consider different dimensions of homogamy (education, occupation, age, etc.), to explore mating dynamics and the consequences of homogamy. most research on couple formation and stability takes a very traditional view of families, focusing mainly on heterosexual marriages. however, in all contexts, cohabitation without marriage has increased substantially, and children are often born out of wedlock. marriage, in turn, may have become more selective, leading to a partial view of the consequences of educational pairing. mazzeo et al. (2024) include some controls for cohabitation and show that the results do not depend on a change in the selectivity into marriage. in the 21st century, in many societies, marriage (and family formation) is no longer restricted to heterosexual couples, raising questions about the mechanisms and functioning of different types of families. future research will also need to pay more attention to same-sex couples, a category that is not easy to study with commonly available data (lichter/qian 2019: 315; schwartz 2013; van bavel 2021), although single studies make relevant contributions (see ciscato et al. (2020) for a recent example). changing partnership relationships, men’s and women’s educational and occupational choices, and educational and labour market institutions call for continued scholarly attention to intermarriage patterns and their consequences. acknowledgements the collaboration that led to this special issue benefitted from funding from the euregio mobility fund vi (2023/24) (project “edfamelife”). we also thank mingming li for his help with the wos search and the editorial team of comparative population studies for the opportunity to publish this special issue and their feedback on earlier changes in educational homogamy and its consequences • 455 drafts. in addition, we thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of each article in this special issue. references abufhele, alejandra; pesando, luca m.; castro t., andrés f. 2022: parental educational similarity and inequality implications for infant health in chile: evidence from administrative records, 1990-2015. in: research in social stratification and mobility 82,100736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2022.100736 ahn, namkee; mira, pedro 2002: a note on the changing relationship between fertility and female employment rates in developed countries. in: journal of population economics 15: 667-682. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001480100078 arosio, laura 2022: internet as a meeting place for spouses: online dating, homogamy and assortative mating in contemporary italy. in: european scientific journal, esj 11: 347-347. arpino, bruno; le moglie, marco; mencarini, letizia 2022: what tears couples apart: a machine learning analysis of union dissolution in germany. in: demography 59,1: 161-186. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9648346 azzollini, leo; breen, richard; nolan, brian 2023: from gender equality to household earnings equality: the role of women’s labour market outcomes across oecd countries. in: research in social stratification and mobility 86,100823. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2023.100823 bagavos, christos 2017: do different educational pairings lead to different fertility outcomes? a cohort perspective for the greek case. in: vienna yearbook of population research 15: 215-237. https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2017s215 bauer, gerrit; jacob, marita 2010: fertilitätsentscheidungen im partnerschaftskontext. in: kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und sozialpsychologie 62: 31-60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-010-0089-y beck, audrey; gonzález-sancho, carlos 2009: educational assortative mating and children’s school readiness. working paper #2009-05-ff. princeton: center for research on child wellbeing [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=4f70760e7 c9466032e49b447f3f2f1e27be6309b, accessed 04.06.2024]. becker, gary s. 1993: a treatise on the family: enlarged edition. cambridge: harvard university press. becker, gary s.; landes, elisabeth m.; michael, robert t. 1977: an economic analysis of marital instability. in: journal of political economy 85,6: 1141-1187. https://doi.org/10.1086/260631 becker, gary s. et al. 2018: a theory of intergenerational mobility. in: journal of political economy 126,s1: s7-s25. https://doi.org/10.1086/698759 becker, sascha o.; cinnirella, francesco; woessmann, ludger 2012: the effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 prussia. in: cliometrica 6: 29-44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-011-0061-8 berent, jerzy 1954: social mobility and marriage: a study of trends in england and wales. in: glass, david v. 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465 appendix we used the following search algorithms for our wos advanced literature search on the three consequences of educational homogamy, where ts stands for the search topic, py for the publication year and dt for document type. the and and or options are boolean operators. for fertility: ● ts= (homogamy and fertility) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (assortative mating and fertility) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article for separation and divorce: ● ts= (homogamy and divorce) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (assortative mating and divorce or assortative mating and separation) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (homogamy and separation) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article for the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality: ● ts= (homogamy and children’s education) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (homogamy and children’s educational achievement) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (homogamy and educational reproduction) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (assortative mating and educational inequality) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (parental homogamy and education) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article ● ts= (parental assortative mating and education) and py=(1980-2023) and dt= article date of submission: 16.01.2024 date of acceptance: 21.06.2024 dr. pia blossfeld, prof. dr. wilfred uunk. university of innsbruck. innsbruck, austria. e-mail: pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at; wilfred.uunk@uibk.ac.at url: https://piablossfeld.github.io/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-teamwilfred-uunk/ prof. dr. stefani scherer (*). university of trento, department of sociology and social research. trento, italy. e-mail: stefani.scherer@unitn.it url: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0029584/didattica mailto:pia.blossfeld@uibk.ac.at mailto:wilfred.uunk@uibk.ac.at https://piablossfeld.github.io/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/soziologie/studium/unser-institut/team/soziologie-team-wilfred-uunk/ mailto:stefani.scherer@unitn.it https://webapps.unitn.it/du/en/persona/per0029584/didattica published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de editorial on the special issue “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries” editorial on the special issue “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries” gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder 1 introduction in 2019, the organising committee of the annual meeting of the german society for demography (dgd) proposed a joint conference with the hungarian demographic research institute, the estonian demographic association, the czech society for demography, and the committee on demographic studies of the polish academy of sciences. the conference was to be hosted in 2020 by the center for demography and diversity at tu dresden, with the theme of “demography in central and eastern europe – demographic behaviour since 1990.” the aim was to revisit demographic changes and developments thirty years after the beginning of the social and political transformation process in central and eastern europe. a call for papers was issued, drawing many submissions from participating countries. the german research association (dfg) funded the conference with twelve sessions and additional keynote lectures. unfortunately, the event had to be cancelled just two days before it was due to take place because of the spread of sarscov2 and the first wave of covid-19 infections in germany. our work appeared to have been in vain until zsolt spéder came up with the idea of proposing a special issue to comparative population studies (cpos) on the topic of demographic developments in eastern and western europe after the transformation of socialist countries in 1989/90. the aim of this proposal was to (re-) evaluate the transformation from a theoretical and comparative perspective by providing a balanced view of the post-1989/90 transformation across all three demographic processes: family and fertility, mortality and health, and migration. this was achieved by incorporating the perspectives of eastern, central, and western european researchers, including research articles from both young and established scholars. after three years of intensive work, the special issue now comprises ten articles (see table 1) covering various topics in the research areas of family dynamics, life expectancy and health development, and international migration. it is a genuine testament to european cooperation and convergence in demographic research, even if convergence has not always occurred in the demographic processes we study. comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 117-140 (date of release: 14.05.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-05 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-05en5 • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder118 2 thirty years of transformation processes in eastern and western europe three decades ago, europe underwent a profound change: the former socialist countries bid farewell to totalitarian political systems and the redistributive economy based on state ownership and planning. moving towards a western european social model, most states established political systems based on competitiveness and democratic rules, reintroduced market economy based on private ownership open to the world market, and expressed a desire to belong to the european union, followed by successful accession of several countries. welfare state policies were also fundamentally reformed and labour markets deeply restructured, leading to rapidly growing economic opportunities but also uncertainties among the population. this “transition” affected all layers of society. however, not only eastern but also western europe may have changed in this process – influenced by high female labour force participation present in eastern countries, presence of a family formation pattern, and adopting values and norms regarding gender equality. social and regional differences in (healthy) life expectancy have increased, and international immigration has reached new highs. to what extent did the profound changes that took place in the early and mid-1990s and the considerable adjustments that have taken place since, created new conditions that have encouraged changes in demographic behaviour, and what kind of behaviours were favoured? before describing and discussing the papers in this issue of cpos, we will first outline the relevant processes of transition and ongoing change that provide the societal context for changing demographic behaviour. this provides context for interpreting the studies contained in the special issue. both the intense “revolutionary” period of transition and the slower but constantly reforming and transforming period that followed, and their aftermath, were characterised by unity and diversity. there was agreement both among political elites and the general population in post-communist countries on the main objectives of the transition. both essentially wished to follow western models (zapf 1996), but with differences in implementation and consequently in outcomes (stark 1991). furthermore, the goal of now making the countries that had escaped soviet domination full members of the european union was soon formulated and pursued. capitalism, but different: the transition to capitalism required the implementation of essentially identical steps in all countries. the means and institutional solutions to create an economy integrated by a market based on private property are well-known: free trade, market institutions, privatisation of state property, creation of capital markets, allowing foreign capital inflows, restructuring labour market regulation, and so on. consequently, the necessary steps resulted in integration into the world economy. the transition to capitalism is also a period of intensifying globalisation, and affected all post-socialist countries largely at the same ways. globalisation was spectacular in these consumer markets, with global producers and products – detergents such as persil, swiss watches and chocolate such as lindt, hamburgers and pizza, coca-cola, it products, and auto brands. etc. – rapidly becoming dominant demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 119 in all countries. accession to the european union has also pushed these countries towards the harmonisation of the institutions. integration meant introducing the same rules regarding capital and labour market apply across countries. however, the response to market universalism and globalisation and the resulting challenges has not always been uniform. in designing new institutional solutions, countries have followed different models and solutions proposed by the world bank and other expert groups, and have introduced them at different speeds. we know that there is no single western model – just think of the “varieties of capitalism” (hall/soskice 2001), different types of welfare states (esping-andersen 1990), or the diversity of education systems in europe (allmendinger/leibfried 2003). nor should we overlook the fact that the economies of socialist countries differed considerably in the way they functioned, their political freedoms, and the way their social systems were set up, resulting in path dependencies many years down the road. although all countries developed capitalist economies integrated into the world market, there were and are differences. bohle and greskovits (2019) distinguish four new types of capitalism considering six dimensions, including the degree of european institutional integration, the degree of market institutionalisation, the degree of foreign direct investment, the way in which social integration has taken place, and labour market regulation. these are “neoliberal capitalism” dominated by the unrestricted free market (the baltic countries), a socially “cushioned” “embedded neoliberal capitalism” (czech republic, hungary), “corporatism” with room for social negotiation (slovenia), and a “residual” category, which includes all other central eastern european (cee) countries. their categorisation is in perspective consistent with the results of the “varieties of capitalism” research programme established by hall and soskice (2001), which distinguished between “liberal market economies” and “coordinated market economies.” fundamental differences in the social care system, institutional arrangements: in transition, there were significant differences in the restructuring of the social care system from the outset. the engineers of the economic transformations largely agreed on the need to reduce social expenditures, since the decline in economic performance had led to a sharp decline in the income available for redistribution and became too great a burden on the economy (“premature welfare state”). at the outset, there was a significant difference, for instance, in the dominance of meanstesting services in the baltic countries and bismarckian (employment-related) services in the visegrád countries. for example, the measurements of pro-natalist or parental-leave policies were also not the same: during maternity leave in hungary, mothers were paid an earnings-related allowance, while in poland they received a flat support rate based on an income test (matysiak/szalma 2014). more recently, a high universal family allowance was introduced in poland to address the problem of low fertility, while in hungary, tax credits linked to earning capacity are expected to improve productivity. performance of economies, living conditions: as a result of the transformation, the economic performance (gdp) of the central eastern european countries has improved and converged related to the average performance of pre-accession countries of the eu (campos et al. 2019). the degree of convergence has of course • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder120 depended on the starting point and the speed of the transformation, but there is also a view that there has been little substantial convergence. ordinary citizens experienced the consequences of the transition to capitalism through their income positions, employment uncertainty, and through how they could make ends meet given needs and consumer supply. increasing income inequalities: furthermore, income inequalities have increased and societies have become polarised as a consequence of the transformation (tóth 2014). the increase in inequality was particularly striking in the early 1990s; the real incomes of the vast majority of populations declined during the period of “transformational recession,” living conditions deteriorated, and there were few winners and many losers of the transformation to market capitalism (rychard 1996). however, with the subsequent sharp rise in economic performance since the turn of the millennium, many people have been able to achieve advantageous social positions and high incomes. the gini coefficient measuring income inequality stood between 0.20 and 0.25 in the cee countries at the time of the transition to democracy; two decades later, due to the notable increase in inequality, especially in the baltic countries, we find values between 0.23 and 0.37 (tóth 2014). three mechanisms played a crucial role in this regard. first, the strong differentiation at the labour market, the differentiation of earnings alongside skills and abilities and human resources invested (heyns 2005). second, the emergence of and increase of capital income due to privatisation. third, changes in the extent (decline) and modalities of taxation and social redistribution have played a crucial role in the growth of inequality. meanwhile, income inequality in western european countries also rose significantly between 1990 and 2010 according to oecd data (oecd 2011). changing and segmented labour market conditions caused by globalisation, technological progress, and the rise in capital income have played a decisive role in this rising trend. at the same time, there is a tendency for inequality in cee countries to be lower on average than in western europe. nonetheless, the cee countries diverge in the ranking of inequality in the eu; while the czech republic has very low income inequality, poland and bulgaria have very high income inequality (oecd 2011; blanchet at al. 2019). fierce competition in the labour market: above all, the financial situation of households depends on the labour market position of its members and on social programmes. the transition radically changed labour market conditions from a labour-scarce, “full employment” over-demand market to a supply market with significant unemployment (kornai 1992). the opening of commodity markets and the operation of free trade devalued the performance of the centralised formerly socialist economies almost overnight. goods became unsaleable, necessitating cutbacks in factory output, a fall in real wages, and lay-offs. in short order, millions of jobs were lost and fierce competition for the remaining jobs began, continuing to this day. as a result, employment rates fell by double digits. although employment in the socialist countries before the transition, especially among women, was higher than in western countries, the decline in the period immediately after political transformation was reattained several decades later. demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 121 accumulated unmet demand and shrinking household resources: no less striking was the change in consumption. in a state-owned “shortage economy” (kornai 1980 1992) the consumption market was characterised by a constant shortage of goods in both quantity and quality. therefore, active informal trade was very common among the inhabitants of the former socialist countries (sik/wallace 1999). during the socialist period, household incomes – while low – could not be spent and had to be accumulated. the oversupply of western goods immediately after the transition, resulting from trade liberalisation, was able to meet the accumulated unmet demand, but quickly eroded the accumulated income. as a result of the contraction of the labour market, incomes fell or became highly differentiated, and although the supply market was untapped, financially backed demand diminished. most households had no disposable income, which likely was a disappointment for many (kornai 2006). róbert (1999) in his seminal paper “greeting the teeth” summarised the origin of the basic disappointment as ordinary people received freedom, but expected western levels of living from the regime change. accordingly, life satisfaction declined in parallel with the economic downturn for many years (easterlin 2009), taking a long time to increase once again after 2010 (vecerník/mysíková 2015). the persistence of ideas, beliefs and attitudes: the importance of dominant ideas, beliefs and attitudes cannot be neglected in the interpretation of demographic trends (van de kaa 1987; reher 1998; lesthaeghe/surkyn 1988). the profound changes of the 1990s, including the gains in political and personal freedom and the desire to follow the western life-style and economic model, suggested that attitudinal shifts towards individualisation and self-realisation were taking place. some early studies pointed in this direction (thornton/philipov 2009), while others pointed towards the stability of attitudes and the immutability of certain core values (schwartz et al. 2000). recent analyses show that westernised (post-material) values have only started to spread strongly among the eastern countries in the last decade (manea/rabušic 2020). comparing countries, strong differences between the former socialist countries remain (harrison/fitzgerald 2010; lück/hofäcker 2003; manea/rabušic 2020). analyses of the european values study show that at the turn of the millennium there was a deep divide between the populations of western and eastern european countries in terms of their values (hagenaars et al. 2003), concepts of social justice (arts et al. 2003), and attitudes towards gender roles (lück/hofäcker 2003). specifities of western countries are mainly related to welfare regimes (arts et al. 2003). we know that profound changes took place in all components of population dynamics following the 1989/90 political transitions (sobotka/fürnkranz-prskawetz 2020). life expectancy in eastern european countries has improved overall, but, with the exception of eastern germany, the difference to western countries has not narrowed. women’s age at first birth increased, and period fertility dropped. marriage, divorce, and non-marital childbearing behaviour also changed, albeit to varying degrees in the different countries. a pressing research question early on during the transition concerned the conditions under which family-related behaviour in the former socialist countries would start following “western” patterns. • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder122 au th or s re se ar ch q ue st io n( s) so ur ce (s) co un tr y( ie s) pe rio d( s) fe rt ili ty a nd p ar tn er sh ip bi lli ng sle y et a l. w he th er a nd to w ha t e xt en t d id g en er at io n an d g en de r s ur ve y, el ev en p os tso ci al ist c ou nt rie s 19 70 -2 01 0 th e po lit ic al -e co no m ic tr an sit io n h ar m on ise d h ist or ie s of 1 98 991 h av e an im m ed ia te im pa ct o n fa m ily d yn am ic s? za kh ar ov h av e fe rt ili ty p at te rn s c ha ng ed , vi ta l s ta tis tic s ru ss ia (a nd fu rt he r c ou nt rie s i n 19 90 -2 02 0 an d if so , h ow ? th e ap pe nd ix ) m ak ay h as th e ch an ge in p ai d pa re nt al g en er at io n an d g en de r s ur ve y, au st ria , f ra nc e, h un ga ry 19 60 -2 01 2 le av e re gu la tio ns (a nd th e ch ild be ar in g an d la bo ur m ar ke t ex pe rie nc e of tr an sit io n in ac tiv iti es d at a h un ga ry ) a ffe ct ed la bo ur m ar ke t en tr y af te r t he b irt h of a c hi ld ? sp éd er d oe s p op ul at io n tu rn ov er o r p er io d in te rn at io na l s oc ia l s ur ve y h un ga ry 19 88 -2 01 3 ch an ge d om in at e at tit ud in al pr og ra m , w av es 1 98 8, 1 99 4, ch an ge , a nd d o th es e ch an ge s 20 02 , 2 01 2 su pp or t t he a ss um pt io ns o f t he se co nd d em og ra ph ic t ra ns iti on th eo ry ? kl ei ns ch ro t ar e th er e co rr es po nd en ce s a nd /o r g er m an g en er al s oc ia l s ur ve y, fe de ra l r ep ub lic o f g er m an y 19 80 s co nfl ic ts b et w ee n sp ec ifi c so ci al 19 82 (g er m an y) ; w om en ’s (w es t g er m an y) a nd g er m an po lic y no rm s a nd p er so na l st ud y, 19 84 (e as t g er m an y) d em oc ra tic r ep ub lic (e as t at tit ud es ? g er m an y) m or ta lit y an d h ea lth ja sil io ni s e t a l. h as th er e be en a c on ve rg en ce in h um an m or ta lit y da ta ba se th re e ba lti c co un tr ie s ( es to ni a, 19 60 -2 02 2 lif e ex pe ct an cy b et w ee n th e fo rm er (2 02 2) la tv ia , l ith ua ni a) ; so ci al ist c ou nt rie s a nd th e eu -1 5? th e h um an c au se o f d ea th fo ur c en tr al e ur op ea n co un tr ie s 19 80 -2 02 2 d at ab as e (2 02 2) (c ze ch r ep ub lic , s lo va ki a, po la nd , h un ga ry ); w h o (2 02 2) eu -1 5 co un tr ie s 19 90 , 2 00 4, eu ro st at (2 02 2) 20 17 ta b. 1 : o ve rv ie w o f t he a rt ic le s i n th is sp ec ia l i ss ue demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 123 ta b. 1 : co nt in ua tio n au th or s re se ar ch q ue st io n( s) so ur ce (s) co un tr y( ie s) pe rio d( s) sa kk eu s e t a l. ca n lif eco ur se c irc um st an ce s sh ar e w av e 7, su pp le m en te d w ith 26 c ou nt rie s d iv id ed in to 1 3 20 17 /2 01 8 ex pl ai n th e pe rs ist en t h ea lth in fo rm at io n fr om w av e 5 ea st er n an d 13 w es te rn e ur op ea n di sa dv an ta ge o f t he e ld er ly e as te rn co un tr ie s eu ro pe an p op ul at io ns ? m ig ra tio n fi he l a nd d o ex ist in g th eo rie s h el p us ce nt ra l a nd e as te rn e ur op ea n ka cz m ar cz yk un de rs ta nd e as t/ w es t m ig ra tio n co un tr ie s flo w s? g öl er a nd h ow c an a sp ira tio ns , c ho ic es a nd al ba ni a: q ua lit at iv e se m i-s tr uc tu re d al ba ni a 20 06 kr išj ān e m ov em en ts , a s f un da m en ta l in te rv ie w s o f 3 4 co m pa ni es a nd el em en ts o f a n in di vi du al 's en tr ep re ne ur s re sil ie nc e st ra te gy , h el p to c op e w ith p er m an en t e xi st en tia l r isk , co ns ta nt h ar as sm en t, so ci ops yc ho lo gi ca l s tr es s o r o th er th re at s? al ba ni a: 4 0 bi og ra ph ic al in te rv ie w s 20 12 of p riv at e re tu rn ee s al ba ni a: 2 0 qu al ita tiv e in te rv ie w s o f 20 16 as yl um s ee ke rs in b am be rg (g er m an y) la tv ia : o nl in e su rv ey la tv ia 20 16 śl us ar cz yk w ha t s tr at eg ie s f or s ha pi ng fa m ily 31 in -d ep th fa ce -t ofa ce in te rv ie w s po la nd 20 13 -2 01 6 pr ac tic es h el pe d to m ai nt ai n fr om th e tr an sf am p ro je ct re la tio ns hi ps in th e ev er yd ay li ve s of tr an sn at io na l f am ili es b ef or e an d du rin g th e co vi d19 p an de m ic? te n re m ot e in te rv ie w s f ro m th e 20 21 “c ar e st ra te gi es d ur in g an d af te r th e pa nd em ic " p ro je ct • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder124 postponement that started and intensified after the political transition strongly pushed fertility to low levels, subsequently rebounded in the first decades of the 21st century, and now western and eastern europe can no longer be sharply divided. moreover, migration patterns within the eu were deeply influenced by the end of the cold war and even more so by eu accession. in how far can we accurately describe population developments in the former eastern european socialist countries as converging or diverging? are they adapting to the west, or are they rather path dependent on their previous histories? have the former socialist countries followed the same path since the early 1990s? did western european states adopt new norms and values (once) common in the east, and if so, to what extent? have the changes of the last 35 years given us new concepts resulting from the rapid changes in the eastern european reality, or are we simply trying to impose existing theories? the contributions in this volume cannot, of course, answer all these questions. however, we hope that the studies in this special issue will not only expand our knowledge of european and central eastern european differences, but also provide answers to these questions that can spark further research. 4 short summaries in the following, we summarise each article. when we issued the call for papers, we aimed for one overview article for each of the three demographic processes: partnership and fertility, mortality and health, and migration. for partnership and fertility, we provide our own brief overview of trends and theories, followed by the summaries of the in-depth studies. for the other two areas, we first present the overview articles on trends and theory, followed by the in-depth studies. fertility and partnership ‒ european convergence and increased diversity trends: general and profound forces drove fertility developments following the postsocialist political transitions (frejka/sobotka 2008). these include the plunge to a low after the end of state socialism, and the overcrowding and stagnation of the total fertility rate (tfr) around 1.4 at the turn of the millennium and thereafter the rise in the 2000s, although the rate of increase varied. of course, if we look more closely at fertility trends using specific indicators, we also find substantial differences between post-communist countries (billingsley/duntava 2015) – just as there are differences between german-speaking countries, the netherlands, and france in western europe. overall, however, fertility behaviour in the post-communist countries is well in line with european trends, as tfrs currently appear to be stabilising in the range of 1.5 to 1.8 (sobotka/fürnkranz-prskawetz 2020). heterogeneity in partnership behaviour, such as the prevalence of singleness, cohabitation, marriage among young people, or in divorce rates, was widespread in the countries of central and eastern europe then and now. however, western european countries are also diverse in this respect (perelli-harris/lyons-amos 2015; härkönen et al. 2020). overall, this demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 125 suggests that there are multiple drivers at work in couple relationships, that their intensity may vary across countries, and that further research is needed until we identify the sources of uniformity and heterogeneity. theories: there are a number of competing, though often complementary, explanations for the changes in fertility behaviour and couple relationships in postcommunist countries, which sobotka (2011) insightfully summarises. what we add here is to distinguish between the application of ready-made theories and those inspired by the post-communist situation. among the most popular explanations of the post-communist transformation are the classical theories, such as the economic or structuralist conceptions of fertility, which attribute the decline in fertility to the collapse of the economy (economic downturn, inflation, unemployment). the second demographic transition theory (sdt) and the theory of “developmental idealism” claim global validity and explain the shifts towards western values that have been set in motion by regime change and were sweeping through countries. the rapid emergence of contraceptives and their widespread availability is covered by the approach of the “contraceptive revolution”. the political transformations of the early 1990s led to the emergence of two further theoretical approaches, though they focus on different factors. first, he lowest-low fertility levels in southern and centraleastern europe motivated the theory of “postponement transition,” which attributes the emergence of low fertility to a diffusion process. postponement is understood as a response to socio-economic uncertainty that spreads through learning and social feedback mechanisms (kohler et al. 2002). second, the concept of “social anomie” adapts the sociological theory of émile durkheim and robert merton to understand demographic processes, emphasising the different paces of changing of ideas on the one hand (slow) and structural relations on the other (rapid), which postpones irreversible decisions (philipov 2003). while we cannot cover these theories in any greater depth here, we nonetheless affirm that they remain present in current interpretations. lastly, it is also worth considering frejka’s 2008 conclusion that the cause of the fertility decline in central and eastern europe is the transition from state socialism to market capitalism. in other words, he sees the socio-economic transformation as the “root cause” of the demographic transition (frejka 2008: 160). studies: the studies in this section add to an already diverse picture. billingsley, härkönen and hornung examine changes in the risk of four key markers of family dynamics relative to the transition-intensive years and find that the political transition had the strongest effect on the birth of a second child and the least on the propensity to divorce. comparing three european countries, makay shows that the reform of paid parental leave has had limited and differential effects on the transition to the labour market after childbearing and on the reconciliation of work and family life. both studies suggest that taking into account additional social circumstances would be beneficial for our analyses. zaharov concludes that the shift in fertility patterns in russia, mainly reflected in an increasing dispersion of the ultimate number of children (family size) and a slight decline in fertility levels, has continued despite population policy interventions. two further studies focus on the ideational context of family formation. comparing east and west germany in the 1980s, kleinschrot draws attention to the fact that in east germany, under conditions • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder126 of full employment, with widespread access to day care, and in a period of dominant ideology of female emancipation, a significant minority still believed that full-time maternal employment could harm child development. finally, in tracing the evolution of gender role expectations and attitudes towards the family in hungary, spéder points out that although population turnover indicates a spread of liberal attitudes, the growing support for traditional attitudes associated with individual (period) change indicates a re-familialisation. this runs counter to expectations based on theories of value change which propose that western values will gain ground. the sensitivity of family-related behaviors to economic and social turbulence in post-socialist countries, 1970-2010 sunnee billingsley, juho härkönen, maria hornung this study’s research question is whether and how the transitions from dictatorship to democracy and from planned to market economy affected four key events in family dynamics: marriage, the birth of first and second children, and divorce. the study draws upon parallel event history analyses of individual data from eleven post-socialist countries over a period of 40 years. the dependent variable is the risk of a key event occurring, and the main explanatory factor is the calendar year. the set of control variables is necessarily narrow: educational attainment and timevarying school and university enrolment. the authors expected a significant effect of the 1989/90 transitions on all key events. the results of the analyses are surprising; heterogeneous patterns emerge both regarding key events and countries, and on the existence and timing of the effects. the transition had the largest effect on the risk of having a second child, namely by reducing it. the risk of becoming a parent was stable in the 1990s and barely different from the reference value (1980), and then fell in several countries in the 2000s. however, it also increased in some countries. the effects are even more differentiated in the case of markers of partnership behaviour. against this background – as the authors point out – it would be a mistake to conclude that the 1990s transitions were not a powerful “juncture” that directly and indirectly induced shocks in family dynamics events, since many country analyses that include macroand micro-level control variables clearly show significant changes in risks three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition: how patterns of fertility are changing under an unstable demographic policy sergei v. zakharov drawing on the arsenal of canonical demographic indicators and exploiting their properties, this study provides a comprehensive picture of the trends in russian demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 127 fertility over the last half century, focusing on the time since 1989-91 and, within it, the period of pronatalist policies starting at 2007. it is instructive to present and interpret the period indicators and the completed fertility indicators and their modelled estimates in parallel, as sergei v. zakharov does, in order to get a picture of shortand long-term fertility movements. he assigns the increase in the total fertility rate between 1990 and 2015 to timing rather than quantum, i.e., the increase in completed fertility is minimal. there are only slight fluctuations in completed fertility; the downward trend is interrupted by the cohorts born in the 1980s, as their cfr has increased. the ctfr is expected to stabilise around 1.6-1.7. according to the modelling presented in the study, there has been a significant change in the ultimate number of children of cohorts 1955 and 1995 (forcasted). it is forcasted that childlessness doubling to 20 percent and about 20 percent of people will have three or more children. the share of oneand two-child families is estimated to be around 30 percent each. the article concludes that russian fertility patterns are developing towards western european trends, despite constantly changing social circumstances and policy reversals. the article is complemented by an extensive appendix that compares some of russia’s indicators with those of western and postsoviet countries. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary zsuzsanna makay this study examines the reconciliation of work and family life in france, austria, and hungary from a rarely studied perspective: entering the labour market after having had children. more broadly, the study analyses the consequences of policy interventions, since its basic question is to examine the effects of policy changes regarding the length and eligibility of paid parental leave. zsuzsanna makay provides a comprehensive and detailed picture of institutional changes for the three countries under examination. event history analysis is used to examine the timing and intensity of the return to work after childbirth, using country-specific policy periods as explanatory variables. there are significant differences in the return to the labour market in the three countries, with a very rapid return in france and a more protracted return in austria and hungary. institutional changes have only had an impact in specific circumstances. in austria, flexibility has allowed for earlier reentry, while in hungary the post-1989 transition was the key event making labour market entry more difficult. overall, women in all three countries have not adapted at the same manner to changes in parental leave policies. this is probably due to differences in access to childcare and different national perceptions and norms about the duration of parental involvement in their children’s development. • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder128 gender norms under socialism and capitalism: a historical examination of attitudes towards maternal employment in the german democratic republic and the federal republic of germany leonie kleinschrot going back to the period before the fall of the berlin wall, this article dusts off and analyses a east german dataset from 1984, lying dormant in a warehouse, and compares it with a west german welfare survey from the same period (1982). acknowledging the limitations of the east german survey (coverage of certain regions, biased sample by gender, mode of completion), the parallel analysis of the two datasets seeks to understand the extent to which attitudes towards women’s full-time employment were in line with the respective socio-political and institutional conditions of the period. in the gdr, the majority of survey respondents supported full-time employment if the mother had a young child. conversely, in the frg, almost the entire population agreed that “the child would suffer if the mother worked fulltime.” although the comparability of the results is limited, the study illustrates a phenomenon that social researchers have often observed in eastern europe, but rarely been able to demonstrate empirically: there were contradictions between ideology, existing institutions, and private opinions about them. namely, in the gdr, one-third of respondents did not support full-time employment for women with young children. it is also clear that the reconciliation of family responsibilities and work was a challenge not only in the capitalist economy, but also under state socialism, despite the widespread availability of childcare facilities. furthermore, the full employment of women (driven by expansive industrial development) was probably an economic necessity for a significant minority, without denying its overall emancipatory role for women. the analysis also shows that in east germany, there was congruity between preferences for work and support for women’s fulltime employment, while in west germany, preferences for children and support for female employment clashed. a quarter-century of change in family and gender-role attitudes in hungary zsolt spéder using data from the international social survey programme, this article examines a salient aspect of social change; the nature of ideational change from 1988 to 2013. gender role expectations, attitudes towards women’s employment and its family consequences, and support for marriage and family life with children are the immediate ideational context for the decision to family formation. the research question is whether and to what extent attitudes towards gender roles changed alongside the transition to democracy in hungary. it was a reasonable assumption that the transition from a soft dictatorship based on a one-party system to a new demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 129 political order based on freedom and choice would be accompanied by an increase in freedom and tolerance in all areas of life. the analysis is limited to a single country because preand post-transition measures of attitudes were only available for hungary. the analysis is based on an arithmetic decomposition of trends into population turnover and individual (period) change. while population turnover has trended towards liberalisation throughout the quarter century, the period effects associated with different periods have fluctuated. during periods of intense economic and political change, attitudes shifted towards traditional ideas, after which most attitudes returned to pre-transition levels and then shifted dominantly, but not exclusively, towards liberal attitudes. as the period effects were stronger than the population turnover effects throughout the period, the latter dominated the changes the article identifies. in the author’s view, the results contradict conceptual ideas that see the spread of western values as the driving force behind changes in demographic behaviour during and after the end of the cold war and the subsequent political transformations. mortality and health the mortality and health section consists of two complementary articles, the first by jasilionis et al. asking whether there has been a convergence in life expectancy between the former socialist countries and the eu-15 and, if so, when it occurred – was it before or after the fall of the berlin wall, and was it accelerated by eu accession? since social and economic convergence has always been an important dimension of european integration and eu enlargement, eu policies should be designed to help prospective and new member states catch up with eu living standards. the socalled beta convergence model assumes faster growth of initially poorer countries and regions, which allows them to eventually catch up with the richer countries and regions (forgó/jevcak 2015). however, as jasilionis et al. point out, previous attempts to identify the process of long-term convergence across member states and regions after the enlargements of the eu (mackenbach 2013; maynou et al. 2015; hrzic et al. 2020, 2021) did not find evidence of beta convergence. the second article, by sakkeus et al., takes a different look at a similar question, namely why there is a health stagnation among older eastern europeans, who at the age of 65 spend more than two-thirds of their remaining life expectancy with health limitations, compared to half of the years for western europeans. based on theories of life course epidemiology (ben-shlomo/kuh 2002; dannefer 2003; graham 2002; wang/kang 2019), they examine the difference in the cumulative effects of life course factors on the health of eastern and western europeans in three domains: self-rated health, disability and cognitive functioning. most importantly, they address the question of the timing of these life course factors. this may help us understand if and how current health policies aimed at promoting convergence may be able to compensate for differences in the life experiences of eastern and western europeans. • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder130 is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin this study explores the impact of two significant historical events ‒ the fall of the berlin wall in 1990 and european union (eu) enlargement in 2004 ‒ on the political, socioeconomic, and health trajectories of estonia, latvia, lithuania, the czech republic, slovakia, poland, and hungary in comparison to eu-15 countries. it explores whether beta convergence took place after eu enlargement in 2004 in terms of life expectancy at birth, cardiovascular disease, and external causes of death. the study finds that the fall of the berlin wall and subsequent political and societal transformations had positive effects on life expectancy in four central european countries, narrowing the longevity gap with the eu-15. in contrast, the three baltic countries experienced a socioeconomic crisis leading to a decline in life expectancy in the mid-1990s, with recovery occurring in the late 1990s. however, they maintained a significant life expectancy disadvantage compared to the eu15 for another decade. the findings emphasise that health improvements in the new eu member states began before 2004 and were influenced by factors such as legal and administrative reforms. economic assistance from eu structural funds and programs indirectly contributed to population health improvements, particularly in health care infrastructure and road safety. despite economic convergence, the study raises concerns about social and health disparities among the seven countries. lithuania and latvia, while achieving rapid gdp progress, still face challenges in social indicators. the study concludes that ongoing efforts are required to address cardiovascular diseases and external causes of death, especially in lagging countries, to achieve substantial progress in life expectancy convergence with the eu-15. the impact of external factors such as the covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical threats on future health conditions in the region adds uncertainties, showing the need for better monitoring and strengthening of health care and social systems. life-course factors and later life health in eastern and western europe luule sakkeus, katrin schwanitz, liili abuladze, uku rudissaar using data from the 7th wave of share, this study examines health outcomes in later life for eastern and western european respondents, focusing on self-rated health, disability and cognitive functioning. the authors examine several cumulative life course factors, emphasising the impact of disadvantaged socio-economic position on health outcomes. the findings suggest that eastern europeans experienced more negative life events than western europeans and that the persistence of disadvantage throughout life was associated with adverse health outcomes in later life. disadvantaged socioeconomic positions, hunger and discrimination against parents were the key factors contributing to significantly worse health outcomes. demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 131 most interestingly, however, a disadvantaged socioeconomic position in adulthood was more strongly associated with health outcomes than childhood position. a novel aspect of the study is the observation of cognitive functioning across a large number of european countries, showing better performance in eastern europe, especially in delayed recall. at the same time, eastern europeans experienced worse health in terms of self-rated health and disability. sakkeus et al. suggest that in eastern europe, due to past repression and conflict, mortality selection is still strong, so that fewer people with poor cognition survive to older ages than in western europe, where mortality is generally lower. another important aspect to explain the cognition advantage may be the subjective nature of the measures of self-rated health and disability used in the study, as opposed to the more objective cognitive measure. eastern europeans may underestimate their physical health. migration the migration section consists of three articles. the first, by fihel and kaczmarczyk, provides a theoretical foundation for the following two in-depth studies on international solidarity in the context of migration in poland (ślusarczyk), and on migration as a tool of social resilience in the diverse contexts of latvia and albania (göler/krišjāne). fihel and kaczmarczyk suggest considering the aspirations/ capabilities approach as an overarching conceptual framework for interpreting post-2004 migration (czaika/vothknecht 2014; haas 2021). the two in-depth studies, relying heavily on qualitative research and mixed-methods approaches, reflect the diversity of migration strategies and tactics. in doing so, they support the conclusion by fihel and kaczmarczyk that migration processes cannot be easily explained and interpreted with reference to only one theoretical approach, such as the widely used neoclassical economic theory of income and living-standard disparities (smith 1776, 2000; hicks 1932; van den berg/bodvarsson 2009). both the structural determinants of migration and individual decisions need to be taken into account when exploring the complexity of recent migration flows from central and eastern european countries. emigration from post-communist central europe after 1989 interpreted within the aspirations/capabilities framework agnieszka fihel, paweł kaczmarczyk in this article, the authors explore the determinants of mobility and emigration from the eu-11 countries since 1989, i.e., the eastern european enlargement countries. they pose eleven theory-driven questions and review answers in existing empirical studies. the research reveals that wage differentials remain a significant factor for intra-eu labour mobility, but their impact is influenced by labour market imbalances, occupational mismatches, and unemployment levels in sending countries. additionally, traditions of labour mobility and the emerging migration • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder132 industry shape migration patterns. the study emphasises that while socio-economic disparities in countries of origin do not necessarily affect the willingness to migrate, the aspirations/capabilities approach, which considers structural determinants and individual decisions, provides a comprehensive framework for understanding migration complexity. the paper highlights the evolving nature of migration from central and eastern europe, pointing out that the structure and patterns in the early 2020s differ significantly from those around the time of eu enlargement. the authors suggest that the aspirations/capabilities framework remains relevant, but that specific circumstances such as the post-communist transition and geopolitical changes play a crucial role in increasing the propensity to migrate. the study acknowledges the limitations of not conducting a dedicated empirical analysis and calls for further research to explore the evolving dynamics of migration, especially in the context of the shift from emigration to immigration in central and eastern european countries. intergenerational solidarity revisited: migrant families in the dilemma of providing family or elderly care in the context of the covid-19 pandemic and its challenges magdalena ślusarczyk this study employs qualitative and exploratory research methods to investigate the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the strategies of family and elderly care among polish transnational migrants. the study finds that while migration is fundamentally accepted in poland, there is a preference for family support through migrants and a strong tendency to avoid institutionalised elderly care. based on interviews conducted both before and during the pandemic, the findings indicate that migrants’ care intentions for their own elderly dependents have not fundamentally shifted, despite some temporary adjustments in strategies. the study identifies three key factors that influence the reluctance to redefine care strategies. first, the perception of time is crucial, as initial expectations of a short-term challenge evolved into an extended and uncertain period due to ongoing pandemic developments. second, proximity to destination countries, lower migration costs, and living within the european union or schengen countries contributed to a sustained belief in maintaining current visiting patterns, even with additional testing or quarantine measures. finally, the belief in the effectiveness of communication technologies, such as mobile phones and the internet, in facilitating remote care strategies remains strong. this belief has been further reinforced during the pandemic. according to ślusarczyk, “intentional unpredictability,” i.e., not ruling out any mobility outcome (staying, returning, or migrating to another country), is a dominant strategy among polish migrants. this strategy allows for flexibility in adapting to changing conditions without abandoning the migration project. demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 133 migration as a tool for social resilience: lessons from two case studies daniel göler, zaiga krišjāne the study examines the dynamics of emigration from latvia and albania over the past three decades, focusing on the role of migration as a strategy for social resilience. social resilience is defined by the authors as “a strategy for solving an individual or collective problem.” from this perspective, migration is the response of individuals to personal threats and/or socio-economic instability, the latter of which has been widespread in both countries in recent decades. emigration has historically been a popular choice for latvians, especially during economic crises, casting migration as an immediate solution and a tool for social resilience. similarly, the albanian experience reflects a revival of emigration as a means of social resilience during the post-communist transition crisis. the albanian case is different because of historical factors – including isolation during socialism – which led to spontaneous and chaotic migratory movements in the 1990s. in addition, the unresolved question of eu accession has limited freedom of movement and access to labour markets, making albanian migrants vulnerable. the article explores the concept of social resilience, viewing migrants as agents of social change who adopt social practices from different economic, social, and cultural contexts that then also become embedded in the societies of origin and destination. göler and krišjāne’s findings suggest that unidirectional or repeated migration with shorter episodes may be a tailor-made solution for social resilience in the short term. 5 discussion and remaining questions the articles in this special issue provide some answers to the four questions we posed at the beginning. we will start by covering the first two. 1. in how far can we accurately describe population developments in the former eastern european socialist countries as converging or diverging? are they adapting to the west, or are they rather path dependent on their previous histories? 2. have the former socialist countries followed the same path since the early 1990s? on convergence and path dependencies: the question of european convergence versus divergence, or perhaps the persistence of differences (i.e., path dependency), has been a constant focus of interest, and was of interest to the editors in formulating the call for a special issue as well. the articles published here shed some light on these questions, even though some may deal with very specific and focused topics. we also publish our assumptions and conclusions, synthesising the knowledge we have gained. • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder134 as far as fertility behaviour is concerned, we propose that countries have converged, but that differences in nuptiality are more likely to persist. contrary to the fertility bifurcation thesis that emerged a decade ago, western european countries are now closer to each other in terms of fertility levels than they were thirty years ago, and post-communist countries also seem to fall into the range between low and lowest-low fertility. we assume that the main drivers towards similarity are the increase in childlessness, the stagnation of fertility at parity three and above, and the increasing dominance of the two-earner family model. in this case, we should not speak of “catching up” with western europe, but of the emergence of a common european pattern. however, differences between the cee countries remain, but from a distance they seem to have followed a very similar path. nonetheless, the question remains whether very different welfare regimes and very different capitalisms really allow for the emergence of converging fertility behaviour. at the same time, we should stress the fact that there are significant regional (territorial and urban-rural) and social status (educational attainment, migrants and ethnic minorities) differences within each country. within europe, differences in marital status (singlehood, cohabitation, marriage; separation and divorce) are more pronounced. in terms of health and mortality, there seems to be a similar path for certain causes of death, such as external causes, and this path is converging towards the west. however, even more importantly, there seems to be a strong path dependency, especially for cardiovascular disease mortality, as well as for self-rated health, disability and cognitive function, which has led to very different health and mortality trends between the former socialist countries. a strong legacy of the past, with periods of crisis and stagnation, has led to very uneven starting conditions for the transformation process, and their repercussions for health and mortality continue to this day. this was exacerbated by country differences in the transition to capitalism, with intense competition in the labour market and shrinking household resources, differences in the health care system and differences in the adoption of healthy lifestyles. overall, this seems to have prevented convergence towards western levels of health and mortality and has also led to divergence within the former socialist countries, with clear leaders and laggards. this leads us to conclude that we need to abandon the idea that living together under a large political umbrella such as the european union will automatically lead to faster growth in health and life expectancy in initially poorer countries and regions, allowing them to eventually catch up with the richer countries and regions. a more nuanced understanding of the complex interrelationship between life course factors influencing health and mortality is needed for both eastern and western european states. in terms of migration, the political decision to open the borders in 1989/90 led to an immediate and steady increase in emigration from the former socialist countries. accession to the european union was another milestone; emigration to countries with a higher standard of living in the eu accelerated. the post-communist countries all became net emigration countries, but the degree of migration imbalances varied considerably between them. although this requires further study, post-communist countries have recently started to become attractive destinations for non-european demographic developments in eastern and western europe ... • 135 migrants, mainly due to rising incomes and the loss of the labour force as a result of migration. lessons learned: the question of convergence versus divergence requires comparisons across many countries (billingsley et al., jasolinie et al.). however, we frequently find that such comparisons across europe are necessarily limited in their use of indicators of exogenous factors (such as the economic, political, and social environment). alternatively, some of the studies in this volume (göler and krišjāne, makay) also shed light on the fact that a selection of a few societies and a closer examination of their specific circumstances can provide additional insights into the drivers of demographic behaviour. this also presupposes that country studies will continue to be essential for understanding family behaviour (kleinschrot, sluzarczyk, spéder). in addition, we believe that qualitative and mixed methods studies (göler and krišjāne, sluzarczyk) provide valuable insights, especially for less studied countries and topics. finally, we believe it is of the utmost importance that the voices of researchers who have actually experienced all facets of the transformation processes are heard, not only in describing the phenomenon, but also in developing new theoretical concepts. 3. did western european states adopt new norms and values (once) common in the east, and if so, to what extent? an open question: we also asked the rarely discussed, perhaps strange-sounding question above when we made the call. the reason, to put it very simply, was to bracket the idea of universal development, if only for a while. however, there was also a developmental fact rarely discussed explicitly: female employment in the socialist countries had been higher for decades, and the corresponding two-earner family model more widespread, than in western countries. it was assumed that at a time when female labour force participation and the two-earner family model were steadily increasing in western europe, the attitudes towards gender roles prevailing in the post-communist countries might be “attractive” to the western population. there is evidence that generational change is leading to similar shifts in western and eastern european countries, but there is also evidence that differences remain. we would therefore like to rephrase the question slightly and ask whether new norms and values have emerged in both western and eastern europe and whether both regions are converging towards them. the articles in this special issue do not provide an answer to this question, but it may be worthwhile to take it up in future research. 4. have the changes of the last 35 years given us new concepts resulting from the rapid changes in the eastern european reality, or are we simply trying to impose existing theories? on demographic concepts: from the point of view of the progress of science, it is perhaps interesting to ask whether the thorough examination of a new social reality and profound economic and social transformation has made it possible to develop new approaches and concepts, or whether it has primarily meant testing • gabriele doblhammer, zsolt spéder136 and adapting existing theoretical approaches. new interpretations have emerged (cf. the postponement transition, social anomie, neurodegeneration, and survival among the oldest-old), but we see that the prevailing approaches in demography, namely the economic view, the second demographic transition, beta convergence, mortality rectangularisation, compression versus expansion of morbidity, the dual labour market, etc. remain dominant. 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fertility are changing under an unstable demographic policy. in: comparative population studies 49: 25-54. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-02 zapf, wolfgang 1996: die modernisierungstheorie und unterschiedliche pfade der gesellschaftlichen entwicklung. in: leviathan 24,1: 63-77. prof. dr. gabriele doblhammer (*). university rostock, department of sociology and demography. rostock, germany. e-mail: gabriele.doblhammer@uni-rostock.de url: https://www.isd.uni-rostock.de/en/doblhammer/ prof. dr. zsolt spéder (*). hungarian demographic research institute. budapest, hungary. e-mail: speder@demografia.hu url: http://www.demografia.hu/en/staff-speder-zsolt published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review* chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin abstract: this article provides a systematic overview of the academic literature on the impact of ″refugee shocks“ – the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees – on host countries. a scoping review was conducted using google scholar in september 2022 to describe the literature, drawing on 4,576 effects from 123 quantitative studies with no restrictions on countries, year of publication, type of publication, or the reported topics. this broad scope acknowledges that refugee shocks potentially affect many areas of life. a synthesis was carried out by aggregating and using regression models. we find an increase in studies on refugee shocks after 2015 and that the most commonly studied shocks took place in the middle east and europe. about two-thirds of the effects concern economic outcomes in the host country, while few cover health or environmental outcomes. across topics, about half of the analyses indicate no statistically significant effect. studies generally report normatively positive effects on education and generally negative effects on wages and employment in the host country. refugee shocks tend to be associated with an increase in votes for the radical right. future studies should address refugee shocks beyond the western countries that are studied most closely and focus on understanding the dynamics of how different actors react to the arrival of refugees. keywords: migration · refugees · scoping review · economy · attitudes 1 introduction outbursts of political oppression, open conflict, war, or environmental disasters often lead to sudden large movements of refugees (becker/ferrara 2019; hein 1993), which may give the impression that levels of migration are increasing. in mid-2024, the un refugee agency unhcr estimated that 122.6 million people worldwide were forcibly comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): 301-322 (date of release: 15.12.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-16 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-16en * this article has an online appendix with supplementary material: https://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/cpos/article/view/712/446 http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-16 • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin302 displaced (unhcr 2025a). around two-thirds of all refugees came from just four countries: syria, venezuela, ukraine, and afghanistan. this involuntary movement of people across borders and within countries can have significant consequences for refugees and host populations, especially when refugees arrive suddenly and in large numbers (dustmann et al. 2019). comparing the european reactions to ukrainian refugees in 2022 and syrian refugees in 2015 (e.g., ly/boyd 2025), however, suggests that depending on the situation, public and institutional support can vary even though the consequences for the host country remain unknown at the moment when refugees arrive. the effect of migration on economies and societies are widely studied for voluntary migration by labor migrants (e.g., becker/ferrara 2019; caiumi/peri, 2024; peri 2016). however, we cannot simply extrapolate from labor migrants to the effect of refugees on host countries. forced migration means that refugees are driven away from their countries and do not primarily choose where they go based on economic considerations (collier 2013). the situation from which they depart means that refugees do not necessarily have the skills or experience to meet economic demand in host countries (borjas 2019; brücker et al. 2018; dustmann et al. 2017). from the perspective of the host countries, there is another essential difference in that refugees tend to arrive unexpectedly, not necessarily in sync with economic cycles and demand for labor, and they may come in comparatively large numbers. this is why the literature refers to “refugee (supply) shocks” (borjas/monras 2017). to what extent the effects on host countries vary between refugees and labor migrants remains an empirical question to which this review hopes to contribute by synthesizing what is known about the effects of refugee shocks on host societies more broadly. throughout the article, we refer to “refugees” and do not differentiate between asylum seekers and refugees because such a distinction can be superficial and blurry (hamlin 2021)1 and indeed does not apply to all contexts. for example, turkey only introduced its first asylum law in 2013 (unhcr 2025b). a refugee shock is defined by its unexpected occurrence and the large number of refugees arriving in a region, which has the potential to change the local economy, its infrastructure, and social services.2 a refugee shock can affect the host country in many domains, be it the economy and the labor market, housing, politics, schools, healthcare, or the environment. the effects can be beneficial or detrimental to the residents of the host country, depending on the context and on how policymakers and the rest of the population react to the shock. given adequate institutional 1 legally, a distinction is made between a person who has applied for protection but whose decision is pending (“asylum seeker”) and a person who has been granted refugee status (“refugee”). some jurisdictions limit their definition to the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees (commonly known as the geneva convention). asylum seekers may be rejected but still be provided subsidiary protection. beyond legal circles (e.g., in the media, policymaking, sociological scholarship, etc.), the two terms tend to be conflated and used inconsistently, with a tendency to use “refugees” as the umbrella term. 2 we could not identify a more precise definition, noting that “unexpected” and “large numbers” are open to interpretation. the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 303 capacity, countries can learn from prior shocks. however, the responses to the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 and the reactions to ukrainian refugees in 2022 arguably showed that european countries were ill-prepared for the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees in both instances (carrera et al. 2015; maurer et al. 2023). without proper management, perceptions of negative consequences and threats could predominate among the population, opening opportunities for rightwing populism that can undermine social cohesion and democratic governance and weaken economic development (fortunato/pecoraro 2022; funke et al. 2023; spittler 2018). historically, work on the effect of refugee shocks focused on the labor market, where an exogenous supply shock provides a strong case for testing relevant theories (peri 2016). the literature, however, has expanded its focus, and individual studies have analyzed the effect of refugee shocks in many dimensions (becker/ ferrara 2019; peri 2016). reflecting the many ways in which refugee shocks can affect host countries, these studies span disciplines across the social sciences, making an overview difficult because different (sub-)disciplines tend to focus on different outcomes. here we provide a scoping review − a systematic snapshot of the expanding literature on refugee shocks − to characterize what is known about refugee shocks and how they are studied in quantitative research. as a review of the literature, our approach is somewhat similar to verme and schuettler (2021), who reviewed 49 papers and collected 762 empirical results restricted to economic outcomes (wages, employment, prices) and household well-being. here, we take a much broader view and include a wider range of domains with the aim of understanding which factors the literature focuses on. this allows us to identify where research has concentrated and where gaps remain, reflecting both the diversification of recent studies and public concerns about potential negative effects beyond unemployment (özkan et al. 2025). verme and schuettler (2021) recently reviewed the effects of refugee shocks on the economy, showing that most estimated effects on native employment and wages are small and often indistinguishable from zero. when substantively meaningful effects can be observed, they tend to be negative for natives’ wages and employment − consistent with neoclassical theory (borjas/monras 2017; verme/ schuettler 2021). these effects are concentrated among young and informal workers who do not benefit from labor-market complementarity (caiumi/peri 2024). verme and schuettler (2021) also document short-run increases in food and rent prices, declines for labor-intensive products and services, and inconclusive evidence on household well-being. drawing on a comprehensive scoping review and systematic coding of existing quantitative studies on the effect of refugee shocks on host countries (see munn et al. 2018 on scoping reviews), we characterize the existing literature, identify the focus and broad directions of findings in existing work, and highlight questions that have to date largely been ignored. geographically, we find that most studies focus on the middle east and europe. even though the scope has increased, economic outcomes still dominate the literature. work on the political and social effects of refugee shocks is growing, whereas analyses of health and environmental • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin304 outcomes remain rare. around half the studies report no statistically detectable effect of refugee shocks on the host country and its population. overall, the effects of refugee shocks are heterogeneous, and we suggest that future work should focus on understanding the dynamics of how different actors react to the arrival of refugees to better understand how host countries can increase their resilience to refugee shocks. 2 data and methods a scoping review examines the size and nature of existing research using a predetermined sampling strategy (grant/booth 2009). the focus lies on characterizing the literature and what is known, rather than complete coverage of all studies, as is done in systematic reviews and meta-analyses (munn et al. 2018; petticrew/ roberts 2006). we followed guidelines originating in the medical sciences that are now widespread across disciplines to ensure transparent reporting, notably the prisma statement (tricco et al. 2018). the pico protocol is used to clearly state the search strategy and inclusion criteria (scientific research division 2022; population, intervention, control, outcome). following this terminology, we included all countries (population), all effects attributed to the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees (intervention, no control), and all reported topics (outcome). we chose this broad approach because it allows us to identify possible gaps in the literature, in the sense of topics and approaches that are absent or underrepresented in existing work. no restrictions were applied regarding geography, the year of publication, or the year of the shock. methodologically, we focused on quantitative studies because this facilitates summarizing and aggregating results systematically while also reducing the risk of bias to a limited extent (guyatt et al. 2008; lewin et al. 2018). given the similarity of methodological approaches and the reliance on an exogenous event, we refrained from individually assessing the risk of bias of each included study. relevant risks of bias would be selection biases, publication biases, non-representative samples, or unclear causal identification strategies. the use of register data or large population surveys means that most studies would fall in the same category if we used an established approach such as the grade criteria (guyatt et al. 2008). the search was conducted using google scholar in september 2022, which was chosen for its broad coverage and inclusion of so-called “gray literature” (e.g., research reports not published in academic journals, such as working papers). even though google scholar includes more “gray” literature than other databases, it typically fails to discover papers on personal websites and not all work is publicly available as download. we designed a protocol for the eligibility, identification, and screening of studies.3 according to the protocol, we searched for relevant studies 3 drafted before data collection, the protocol was not formally pre-registered (eligibility criteria, search strings). the coding scheme that is part of the protocol was adapted during the project as new domains emerged. the final protocol is archived alongside the replication materials: https://osf. io/ytu82. https://osf the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 305 for each keyword until we had two full pages of results on google scholar with no relevant papers. given that results are ranked by “relevance,” this approach mimics considerations of diminishing returns used by machine-learning-assisted approaches such as asreview (van de schoot et al. 2021). the search terms included in the protocol are shown in table 1. all search terms were entered without quotation marks.4 some search terms, such as “refugee supply shocks” or “refugee inflows impact host country,” yielded many relevant studies (i.e., few false positives among the first results), while others, such as “sudden arrival of refugees” or “refugee shock,” produced very few relevant studies (i.e., many false positives). as shown in figure 1, we screened 1,470 results in google scholar, of which 301 entries seemed relevant based on the title and the two preview lines provided. duplicates were removed. in a second step, we screened for ineligible studies using the abstract and full text. at this, stage we removed 104 non-quantitative studies, including purely qualitative studies and studies that simply claimed an effect without providing empirical evidence. during coding, we identified a further 73 studies that did not provide original evidence and one unfinished manuscript where we could not assess the evidence, leaving 123 relevant studies containing 4,576 individual effects. 4 as a robustness check for whether the focus on english-language publications leads to problematic omissions, we also used french search strings, another language widely used in the scientific community. the strings are: impact vagues de réfugiés, afflux de réfugiés impact, afflux de réfugiés impacts pour populations d’accueil, impact crise migratoire pour les pays d’accueil, choque de réfugiés impact. these additional searches mostly resulted in duplicates, suggesting that for the present topic, a focus on english-language studies does not mischaracterize the academic literature. tab. 1: keywords used in the search search strings refugee supply shocks sudden refugee crisis asylum seeker inflows refugee inflows impact host country refugee shock impact impact of refugee inflows sudden arrival of refugees refugee shock sudden refugee inflows sudden refugee waves unexpected refugee crisis unprecedented refugee crisis source: own design • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin306 using color codes in zotero (digital scholarship 2025), we identified the relevant information in the studies and coded it in a spreadsheet for further analysis. the predefined codebook variables and coding rules are listed in table 2.5 fig. 1: prisma flow chart of identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion for the scoping review id en tif ic at io n sc re en in g in cl ud ed identification of studies via databases records identified from google scholar (n=1470) records removed before screening (n=0) records screened (n=1470) records sought for retrieval (n=301) records assessed for eligibility (n=301) records included in review (n=123) records excluded (n=1169) records not retrieved (n=0) records excluded: not quantitative (n=104) no original evidence (n=73) unfinished manuscript (n=1) notes: 4,576 effects across 123 studies, covering both academic publications and gray literature (108 journal articles and preprints, 7 reports, 8 theses). the prisma framework is a reporting standard for evidence reviews that requires documenting each stage to clarify the scope of the evidence base and reduce selection bias. source: own design 5 the codebook also included variables that we later discarded because they turned out to be difficult to code, or where coding was unreliable, see online appendix 2 for reliability assessments. the variable on subgroups was not used in the analysis because it proved difficult to code/aggregate into broader categories, and we could not convince ourselves that we could provide a reliable indicator. the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 307 variable description notes year of shock calendar year of the refugee shock host country and country and world region world regions according to region receiving refugees inglehart and norris (2003) country and region of country and world region from world regions according to origin which refugees arrived inglehart and norris (2003) topic of study (outcome) main focus of study, inductively specific examples as an illustration: aggregated into economic, economic: gdp growth, unemployment environmental, health, political, rates of local workers, sales, profits social, and explicitly multi-topic environmental: land use, work in studies agriculture health: mortality rates, hospital admission, stated well-being, height of children political: voter turnout, vote shares for different political parties attitudes towards immigration, stated attachment to the country social: crime rates, intermarriage, participation in social activities period covered by the long-term > 5 years; notions of “short-term” and “long-term” data short-term ≤ 5 years are invariably vague; in the absence of better reasons, this coding decision was made to correspond to typical business cycles type of data administrative data (inclusive register data), sample data, or both subgroups (if any) effects on part of the population not used in the analysis (unreliable (e.g., women) aggregation, see online appendix 1) effect on host country a measurable effect is reported (yes, no) direction of effect positive, negative, neutral (no (statistical) clear difference from zero could be determined) direction of effect normative coding: beneficial vs. e.g., greater turnout = positive; (societal evaluation) harmful for society or workers lower wages = negative tab. 2: variables in the review and codebook source: own design • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin308 the protocol initially focused on objective effects, but at a later stage, we also coded the direction of effects from a broader societal perspective. for illustration, higher voter turnout is coded as normatively positive, whereas greater support for radical-right parties is coded as negative. for the purposes of the analysis, countries were grouped into regions. specifically, the 26 host countries in the data were grouped into eight different world regions (see inglehart/norris 2003). a few studies pooled information on several host countries. in one study, the countries were geographically dispersed, and it was impossible to group them into a single region. the same regional categories were used to classify the refugees’ country of origin. the topics of the studies were grouped into five different categories, one of which was generic, which includes assessments of multiple topics at the same time. the raw data and replication material for this review is available on osf. in terms of analysis, as is common for this kind of review, we largely rely on descriptive statistics to aggregate findings, which we carried out in r (r core team 2025). where linear regression models are used, we used the default priors in the r package rstanarm (these are weakly informative to moderately regularize and stabilize computation), with effects clustered in studies (goodrich et al. 2020). when exploring contextual effects, we used gdp per capita at constant 2015 us dollars and captured cultural distance with a simple approach based on the inglehartwelzel world cultural map 2023 (inglehart/welzel 2001; wvs 2023).6 3 results: research on the impact of refugee shocks when examining the effect of refugee shocks, a little more than half of the studies use exclusively administrative data, around a third combine administrative and sample data, and around one in five rely entirely on sample data (online appendix 2). the reliance on administrative data may limit the analysis because the number and kind of variables included in register data are limited compared to dedicated surveys. even though we can consider refugee shocks as natural experiments, and it could be argued that a simple comparison of means would be permissible (see dunning 2011; mcbee 2022), almost all the analyses use regression models of some kind. time and space the number of studies on refugee shocks has increased since 2015. in figure 2, we can see a noticeable increase in the number of publications, which include gray literature such as working papers and research reports. verme and schuettler (2021) reported a similar increase in publications in a narrower review focusing on economic outcomes. 6 a refugee shock was coded as “distant” when, on that map, the refugees were from a different region than the host country and “close” if they were from the same region. the regions were determined by inglehart and welzel based on traditional versus secular values on the one hand, and survival versus self-expression values on the other hand. these dimensions provide a two-dimensional space. the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 309 across the studies, the most commonly studied world regions are the middle east and europe (fig. 3). at the other end of the scale, our sample includes just one study set in asia and two in west africa. while these data do not differentiate the presence of refugee shocks from their being studied, we note that highand middle-income countries are much better studied than low-income countries are, even though many refugees move to low-income countries (unhcr 2022). within these world regions, some host countries are studied more than others (see online appendix 3 for specific countries). the largest number of studies covers turkey, followed (at a distance) by germany, jordan, and colombia. while refugee shocks do not occur in all countries, there is probably room for analyses of other host countries, although data availability may be a restricting factor. six studies cover multiple countries. the specific shock determines the country or region of origin of the refugees included in a study. in online appendix 4, we show that refugees from the middle east are most commonly studied. also notable is the category “multiple countries,” which typically refers to refugees from different regions who are considered jointly. it is beyond the scope of this review to assess to what extent each of these cases constitutes a veritable external shock, although we note that the nature of shocks is generally not well-defined (i.e., what constitutes “many” refugees and a “sudden” arrival). fig. 2: number of studies in the scoping review by year of publication 0 10 20 30 2010 2015 2020 year n um be r o f s tu di es notes: the trend line is loess-smoothed (local polynomial regression with the default span of 2/3). source: own calculation • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin310 in figure 4, we examine the extent to which the studied refugee shocks capture intra-regional migration, that is, refugees coming from the same world region as the host country. studies that group refugees from “multiple countries” are excluded. we can see that most of the studied refugee shocks concern intra-regional migration. in the figure, this is visible by connections that originate and end in the same region (compare abel/sander 2014; unhcr 2022). this pattern of shocks due to intraregional migration seems to characterize all but two regions. one of the exceptions is europe, where studies largely examine refugees from the middle east and, to a lesser degree, refugees from north africa. this may change in the near future as the recent arrival of ukrainian refugees is examined (see ruedin 2025). the other exception is north america as a host region, where studies examine refugees from south america and asia. refugees from central africa play only a small role in the shocks studied in east africa as a host region. another important aspect of studies on refugee shocks is when the shock took place, and the post-shock period that is examined. as we can see in figure 5, there are many more studies on recent refugee shocks, indicated by lines at the right edge of the rug plot at the bottom of the figure. the figure also shows the postshock period during or after which the effect is measured. in online appendix 5, we used a categorization into short-term effects (effects measured under six years after the shock) or long-term effects (measured six or more years after the shock). fig. 3: number of studies by world region of the host country 0 10 20 30 40 50 number of studies asia west africa north america east africa south america europe middle east notes: one study was counted multiple times because it contained multiple analyses of host countries in different world regions, resulting in 3 distinct entries. source: own calculation the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 311 a great majority of individual effects are short-term according to this classification. in figure 5, each horizontal line is an individual effect, with the lines are overlapping vertically to focus on the general trend. the longer the line representing an individual effect, the longer the studied post-shock period. topics and outcomes studied studies on the effect of refugee shocks on host countries cover different topics. here, we classify the topics into five broad categories, plus a category that accounts for studies with outcomes pertaining to multiple topics (table 3). about half the studies cover the effect of refugee shocks in economic terms. by contrast, there are hardly any studies that cover effects on health or the environment. social and political topics are covered to roughly the same degree, about 20 times. while many fig. 4: regions of origin and destination of refugees in the selected studies m id dl e ea st west afric a east africa central africa south am erica nor th amer ica asia europe north africa 0% 30 % 60 % 90 % 0% 30% 60% 90%0%30% 60% 90% 0% 30% 60% 90% 0% 60 % 30% 90 % 0% 30 % 60 % 90% 0% 30% 60% 90% 0% 30% 60% 90% 0% 30% 60% 90% notes: regions are displayed around the circle as equal-sized sectors with distinct colors. sectors are connected with arcs if there is a migration flow. the color of the arc is that of the region of origin. the size of the arc is proportional to number of studies. for instance, we can see that for the refugees covered in the studies who originate in the middle east (purple sector), most remain in the region. the smaller share of refugees from the middle east who migrate to europe (purple arc connecting the two world regions) constitutes a large part of the shocks in europe, as is visible in the large size of the purple arc when looking at the red sector (europe). source: own calculation • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin312 fig. 5: post-shock period 1920 year in di vi du al e ffe ct s d ra w n fro m st ud ie s 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 notes: the y-axis shows the post-shock time period under study in each individual effects drawn from the included studies of refugee shocks. excluded are individual effects for which we do not have information on the exact year of the shock, individual effects that account for multiple shocks spread across time, and studies for which short-term and long-term effects are included in the same model. source: own calculation tab. 3: topic of the studies (outcomes) number of studies economic 67 political 21 social 19 multi-topic 9 health 6 environmental 1 notes: the “multi-topic” category accounts for studies that include outcomes from multiple categories. source: own calculation the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 313 studies include multiple outcomes within a particular topic (e.g., unemployment, inflation, and wages), few studies take a comprehensive perspective and include outcomes across the different broad categories that we coded. a focus on specific outcomes strengthens the analysis in individual papers, but implies a single study will not provide a comprehensive picture of the range of effects refugee shocks can have. looking at the topics by region of the host country, we can see that depending on the region, the distribution of topics varies (see fig. 6). while economic aspects are generally dominant (in dark blue), we see clear variation across regions for the other topics. for example, in europe and the middle east, there is more diversity in the topics studied compared to the americas. political topics are mostly studied in europe (blue), whereas social topics are more common in north america (light blue). given the broad categories we use for regions and topics, we do not see a clear reason for these differences beyond data availability and researcher interest. when looking at outcomes at the level of individual effects, we can differentiate more detailed areas of interest than at the study level (fig. 7). the figure shows the nine most common areas of interest among a total of twelve categories that we coded (online appendix 7; not shown in the figure are the categories with fewer fig. 6: topic of studies by world region (n≥7 studies per region) 0 25 50 75 100 north america east africa south america europe middle east health multi-topic social political economic topic of the study percentage studies notes: excluded are studies that deal with multiple receiving regions or account for refugees from different world regions. studies are counted more than once if they address several pairs of host country and region of origin in separate analyses. for better visibility, we excluded the few studies with host countries in asia and west africa. see online appendix 6 for a full table. source: own calculation • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin314 than 100 effects: finances (e.g., personal wealth, disposable income), environment (e.g., land use, crop production), and social and political outcomes (e.g., activism, intermarriage). in line with the results at the study level, economic aspects are studied most frequently, notably (un-)employment, wages, and the economy more broadly (e.g., inflation, gdp, rental prices). we suspect that this order of effects studied reflects data availability rather than theoretical considerations. beyond economic outcomes, we observe studies on attitudes and voting most commonly. studies that include health are much less common, by comparison. effect of refugee shocks in this final section, we examine whether the studies found a statistically significant association between the refugee shock and outcomes in the host country for various topics, followed by an assessment of the direction of the effects (positive/ negative). all studies draw on the exogenous nature of the refugee shocks as a source for causal claims, but we did not assess to what extent causality is credible given the exact design of the studies. overall, a little more than half the analyses showed a statistically significant effect (online appendix 8). figure 8 shows the distribution across topics: the economy is the topic for which analyses most often find a statistically significant effect, followed by employment and attitudes/voting. fig. 7: topic of the effects (outcomes studied) 0 500 1,000 1,500 number of individual effects migration/population education health/welfare housing crimes/violence economy attitudes/voting wages employment notes: see online appendix 7 for a table including further categories with fewer than 100 effects. source: own calculation the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 315 education is the topic for which analyses least often identify a statistically significant effect.7 looking at the direction of effects, we cannot always determine whether the effect was normatively positive or negative for society at large or local workers. for instance, if non-extreme parties gained votes as a result of a refugee shock, we consider the normative consequences of the effect “undetermined.” figure 9 emphasizes that the kind of effect varies by outcome and that the absence of a substantial effect is widespread (i.e., the association is not significantly different from zero). depending on the topic, the category “undetermined” is important. notably, for the category of migration/population (e.g., population growth, birth rates) and for attitudes/voting (e.g., electoral success for certain non-extremist parties), we could not normatively assess the effect for society or workers. looking at the figure, we note that the largest share of positive effects is for the economy in general (e.g., gdp growth), and education (e.g., increased literacy rates). the largest share of negative effects is for employment, wages, attitudes/voting, the economy in general (which makes this category the most polarized), and health/welfare. fig. 8: statistically significant effects by topic notes: for better visibility, topics with fewer than 100 effects are excluded in this figure. source: own calculation 0 20 40 60 percentage of individual effects with a statistically significant effect migration/population education health/welfare housing crimes/violence economy attitudes/voting wages employment 7 online appendix 9 shows that analyses of long-term effects tend to be more likely to find a statistically significant effect than analyses focusing on short-term effects, which is likely a reflection of the topics and shocks measured. in our view, the correct interpretation is simply that both shortterm and long-term effects can be measured. • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin316 finally, we explored the role of economic and cultural contexts in shaping the effects of refugee shocks. we followed verme and schuettler (2021) in looking at the economic situation of the host country, considering gdp per capita following two intuitions. on the one hand, gdp per capita in a continuous way explores the assumption that richer countries will be better able to take action in reaction to refugee shocks. online appendix 10 finds no substantial differences for gdp per capita when measured in a continuous sense. on the other hand, considering levels of gdp per capita in a categorical way explores the argument by verme and schuettler (2021) that low levels of gdp per capita should also be associated with an ability to cope with refugee shocks because of international aid. online appendix 10 finds no substantially notable differences, with consistently large standard errors, to the extent that positive, negative, and null effects all seem equally plausible. an exception to this is that we can find more negative effects in high-income countries. we also examined the cultural distance between the refugees’ country of origin and the host country. here, online appendix 10 finds no clear association. we expected more negative results for attitudes and voting, but if anything, there is a tendency for fewer negative reactions when refugees are more distant. in sum, at the aggregate fig. 9: normative consequences of the effects 0 25 50 75 100 migration/population education health/welfare housing crimes/violence economy attitudes/voting wages employment negative not significant positive undetermined type of effect percentage of analyses notes: excluded for better visibility are topics with fewer than 100 effects. effects that cannot clearly be classified as normatively positive or negative overall were classified as “undetermined.” “not significant” refers to statistical significance. source: own calculation the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 317 level, we find no clear differences in the effect of refugee shocks on host countries depending on the context.8 4 discussion and conclusion this scoping review provides a description of the quantitative literature on the impact of refugee shocks on host countries, defined as the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees. by including outcomes from different domains, we characterize the literature beyond purely economic outcomes (cf. verme/schuettler 2021). at its most basic level, the review identified a large increase in studies on the effects of refugee shocks after 2015. most of the host countries studied in the reviewed literature are located in europe and the middle east, including south-south migration to some extent (unhcr 2025a), but coverage is far from equal across world regions. in most of the shocks studied, the refugees come from the same global region as the host country, and most analysis is carried out within half a decade of the shock, capturing relatively short-term effects. if there is one headline finding from this review, it is that there is no homogeneous effect of refugee shocks on host countries, and that there is important variance in all aspects considered. in the studies covered, economic outcomes were most common, followed by political and social ones. health and the environment are much less commonly examined. the choice of outcome studied varies by world region, which may reflect the availability of data or different interests across research groups that are not obvious from the outside. for a more profound understanding of social phenomena, it is important to include different perspectives (piccoli et al. 2023; smith 2021; vanyoro 2024), and future research should probably consider qualitative studies on the effects of refugee shocks for a deeper understanding of the processes leading to these outcomes. the combination of different kinds of evidence promises a better basis for identifying factors that can increase resilience to future refugee shocks. another important question is whether and where there is any indication of institutional learning and adaptation, whereby the experience of previous exposure to refugee shocks increases (or decreases) the ability (and willingness) to handle the arrival of large numbers of refugees in a short time (maurer et al. 2023). here, targeted studies tracing individual countries are needed, because institutional settings, legal provisions, and capacity vary beyond what a scoping analysis can consider. we find that many effects of refugee shocks on host countries are not statistically significant across both domains and regions (see also verme/schuettler 2021, who established this for wages and employment). looking at the different domains, we can observe that statistically significant effects are more likely normatively negative 8 future work may examine other indicators of the business cycle, such as the unemployment rate, gdp growth, or inflation rates via the consumer price index. this lies beyond the scope of this article, which is focused on characterizing the literature. • chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu, didier ruedin318 than positive. on the one hand, in this review, it is more common to find a negative effect in terms of employment, wages, or attitudes/voting behavior. on the other hand, when it comes to the economy overall − i.e., questions of economic growth − positive and negative effects seem balanced, and in the case of education, positive effects seem to dominate. while the finding that the effects of refugee shocks on host countries are not homogeneous may be unsurprising, the effect does not simply appear to be a function of host country wealth or cultural distance. more work on the context in which refugees arrive and on refugee characteristics is needed (see berinsky et al. 2023), but this should be done with research designs for this purpose rather than based on a scoping review that seeks to characterize the state of the literature (munn et al. 2018). in such an analysis, the focus should be narrower than what a scoping review provides. based on the present review, specific outcomes that seem promising are unemployment, wages, and support for radical-right parties (compare pecoraro et al. 2025). comparability across studies may pose a major challenge for other topics, notably for social and political outcomes. moreover, the number of published studies may be too low at this stage to draw entirely on existing quantitative work. a disciplined approach that includes qualitative studies could overcome the limited number of studies to some extent (fairfield/charman 2022). we also identified a need for studies that cover multiple topics at the same time, which will help us understand the effects of refugee shocks more generally. to the extent that it is feasible, comparative analyses may identify which countries or contexts are particularly resilient to refugee shocks, building on the theoretical sketch by verme and schuettler (2021) or work by borjas and monras (2017). understanding the effect of refugee shocks is useful for predicting the likely effect of future refugee movements on host countries, caused by ongoing conflicts, climate change, or other drivers of displacement that continue to shape our world. the context of shocks is a particularly informative lens because the sudden and largely exogenous nature of inflows creates clean time (pre/post) and place (exposed vs. non-exposed) contrasts and minimizes interference from gradual integration, assimilation, or selection processes, thereby separating effects linked to the arrival itself from those that develop later (gorodzeisky 2022; van heerden/ruedin 2019; laurence et al. 2022). to do so, however, and to meaningfully use the concept of a “shock” for understanding such effects, the concept itself needs unpacking, notably the aspects of “sudden” and “large” inflows, and how we define and implement them empirically. furthermore, the contexts surrounding specific refugee groups should be given individual attention, rather than studying “all” refugees in a given country. we also need a more precise understanding of shock dynamics from the perspective of incountry variation. refugee shocks are often concentrated in certain regions or cities and not evenly distributed across all areas (compare beerli et al. 2020). understanding dynamics also means tracing effects over time (turek et al. 2021), and considering how political actors play a role in framing some events as crises and mobilizing media coverage (bolet/foos 2024; carvalho et al. 2025; kelling/monroe 2023). this in the impact of refugee shocks on host countries: a scoping review • 319 turn affects policy, perceptions, and individual behavior, including areas outside the western countries that are studied most closely (smith 2021). acknowledgments we thank the reviewers for their comments and recommendations, marco pecoraro and bruno lanz for comments, philippe wanner and denise efionayi-mäder for encouragement, and the proofreader for the attention to detail. this research was supported by the swiss national science foundation project grant 200939, with additional support from the nccr on the move (grant 51nf40_205605). the funder had no influence in the review. the raw data and replication material will be made available on osf on publication. authors are listed by most junior first. didier ruedin designed the study; didier ruedin & chloé salathé created the protocol; chloé salathé searched data; chloé salathé & natalia c. malancu coded the articles (coder a); natalia c. malancu & didier ruedin searched additional data; chloé salathé, didier ruedin, natalia c. malancu analyzed the data; didier ruedin, chloé salathé, natalia c. malancu wrote the article; didier ruedin edited the article. we would like to thank julien beaud and niyousha hosseini niadshiran for support in verifying the reliability of the coding (coder b). references abel, guy j.; sander, nikola 2014: quantifying global international migration flows. in: science 343,6178: 1520-1522. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1248676 becker, sascha o.; ferrara, andreas 2019: consequences of forced migration: a survey of recent findings. in: labour economics 59: 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2019.02.007 beerli, andreas et al. 2020: the abolition of immigration restrictions and the performance of firms and workers: evidence from 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of neuchâtel. switzerland. e-mail: chloe.salathe@unine.ch dr. natalia c. malancu. university of neuchâtel. switzerland. e-mail: natalia.malancu@gmail.com prof. dr. didier ruedin (*). university of neuchâtel. switzerland. university of the witwatersrand. johannesburg, south africa. e-mail: didier.ruedin@unine.ch url: https://druedin.com/ https://www.unhcr https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017732692 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00287-7 https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2024.2387554 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102606 https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ mailto:chloe.salathe@unine.ch mailto:natalia.malancu@gmail.com mailto:didier.ruedin@unine.ch https://druedin.com/ published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de gender norms under socialism and capitalism: a historical examination of attitudes towards maternal employment in the german democratic republic and the federal republic of germany gender norms under socialism and capitalism: a historical examination of attitudes towards maternal employment in the german democratic republic and the federal republic of germany* leonie kleinschrot abstract: research on the federal republic of germany (frg) in the 1980s shows a high level of congruence between conservative social policy deterring mothers from employment and traditional societal gender norms. in contrast, little is known about whether people in the german democratic republic (gdr) agreed with the socialist idea of continuous full-time maternal employment. based on unexploited gdr data from 1984 and a description of contemporary social policy, this study examines attitudes towards maternal employment, whether they were related to individual preferences for work or children, and their congruence with the socialist policy. the same questions are examined for the frg using data from 1982. results for the gdr indicate that one third of respondents rejected the socialist idea of maternal full-time employment, with individual work preferences being decisive for respondents’ assessments. in the frg, there was a high degree of agreement with the gender norm of maternal non-employment, with this being dependent on individual preferences for children. these fi ndings complement post-reunifi cation evidence on east-west-differences in gender norms and provide insights into attitudes under eastern european state socialism. keywords: german democratic republic · socialism · gender norms · maternal employment comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 151-182 (date of release: 24.04.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-07 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-07en3 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • leonie kleinschrot152 1 introduction the employment participation and reproductive behaviour of women in the german democratic republic (gdr) and the former federal republic of germany (frg) differed substantially. women in the socialist gdr had children at an earlier age and were more frequently and extensively employed (goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). women in the capitalist frg, on the other hand, focused more on housework and childcare. these behavioural differences are often attributed to the political frameworks (pfau-effi nger/smidt 2011). while the gdr – which constantly sought to simultaneously compete with and demarcate itself from the west (trappe 1996) – pushed for the full integration of women into the labour force and provided for institutional childcare from the fi rst months of life, social policy in the frg strengthened the male-breadwinner model and the maternal provision of childcare, especially for young children (adler et al. 2016). this article adds to the knowledge about the stark differences regarding maternal labour force behaviour and respective policy in the two former states by investigating individual attitudes towards maternal employment. adopting a historical sociological perspective enables the prevailing gender norms to be examined in the former frg, and the extent to which they corresponded to the policy framework. west german survey data starting in the early 1980s show that social policy and cultural norms concerning maternal employment were largely consistent. for example, shortly before german reunifi cation in 1990, almost threequarters of respondents in the frg agreed with the statement that pre-school aged children are bound to suffer if their mothers go out to work (berth 2019). for the gdr, a similar investigation of gender norms has not yet been possible because the surveys developed in the west were only conducted in east germany after reunifi cation. this study addresses this research gap, as it aims to assess the congruence of gender norms and social policy in the gdr by analysing attitudes towards maternal employment and by describing the gdr’s socialist women’s policy. in detail, the study descriptively examines the data and applies logistic regressions to fi nd out which attitudes existed towards the employment of mothers with young children in gdr society, what role individual preferences for work or children played here, and to what extent these attitudes corresponded to the socialist idea of continuous full-time maternal employment. unexploited attitudinal data1 from the time of the gdr are used for these analyses. these data are from a survey (“women’s study”) conducted by the central institute for youth research (“zentralinstitut für jugendforschung”) in 1984. they offer a hitherto unexploited opportunity to analyse the attitudes of cohorts who were socialised in the gdr, were of reproductive age, and lived in the gdr at the time of the survey. however, the methodological 1 so far, the data have only been analysed descriptively in the context of project reports by the zij at the time of the gdr. an overview of the study reports that are accessible can be found on the gesis homepage: https://search.gesis.org/research_data/za6138?doi=10.4232/1.6138. gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 153 limitations of data collected by a politically controlled research institute in the gdr need to be considered. in addition, the results of an equivalent analysis addressing the same questions but using data from the frg in the early 1980s, the german general social survey (ggss) from 1982,2 are also presented. it should be noted that these two datasets do not allow a one-to-one comparison of the two former states. this study not only enhances german attitudinal research by including the period before reunifi cation, but it is also of interest to international discussions. first, it contributes to the comparatively scarce quantitative research on gender norms under socialist regimes in eastern europe (focusing on hungary, e.g. panayotova/ brayfi eld 1997; braun/scott 2009), and lays some groundwork for interpreting cultural developments after 1989. second, the survey data from the gdr allow for a period-specifi c examination of a socialist and a capitalist european state in the early 1980s. in addition, the article takes a step towards accessing the wealth of survey data collected by the central institute for youth research in the gdr during its almost 25 years of existence (friedrich 1991). in the next section, an outline of the theoretical background of the study is given, followed by a description of the social policy frameworks in the gdr and frg at the time of the surveys. in section 4, the current state of research, as well as the hypotheses for the analyses are presented. in section 5, the methodological approach is described. finally, the results are reported and discussed. 2 theoretical background in the literature, gender norms are understood as consensually defi ned and socially known beliefs and expectations concerning the behaviour of women and men within and outside the family (duncan/edwards 1997; pfau-effi nger/smidt 2011; grunow/ veltkamp 2016), e.g. beliefs about the extent to which men should participate in childcare or whether women should actively engage in politics. this study will be looking at one of the aspects of gender norms, namely beliefs concerning maternal employment. various mechanisms for the potential congruence of gender norms and social policy are theoretically discussed and, feminist literature in particular emphasises the complex interplay and continual mutual impacts of the two (pfau-effi nger 2005; kremer 2007). social policy refl ects and institutionalises the gender norms of a society, for instance, as demonstrated by the lack of institutional childcare for under 3-year-olds in the frg in the 1980s. since social policy instruments, according to this understanding, include consensual solutions to the motherhood-paid work arrangement, they function as an “institutional point of reference” (grunow/ veltkamp 2016: 12-13) for the appropriate employment behaviour of mothers (pfaueffi nger 2005; kremer 2007), and serve “as normative anchors” (gangl/ziefl e 2015: 2 since the relevant question was not asked in the ggss 1984, the 1982 wave is used. • leonie kleinschrot154 519) in forming individual preferences and attitudes towards work and children (sjöberg 2004). in this sense, social policy is embedded in and legitimised by the normative societal context, meaning that it may experience support or disapproval, for example in elections (raven et al. 2011). consequently, social policy is also assumed to be adapted in response to changing societal norms (svallfors 2010). at the same time, specifi c social policy instruments, such as the extensive supply of institutional day-care in the gdr, determine parents’ scope of action (sjöberg 2004). as a result of individuals’ experiences in role behaviour within this policy framework, they adapt their preferences accordingly. following exposure theory, greater exposure to a work-related setting, e.g. by being employed, will tend to increase mothers’ preferences for work (gangl/ziefl e 2015). in addition to individual experiences, “social multiplier effects” (gangl/ziefl e 2015: 519) can arise, as observing relevant others’ role behaviour, e.g. other mothers working, leads an individual to internalise this behaviour and shape its preferences accordingly. indeed, the gdr’s totalitarian regime even sought to actively harness the role of policy as a determinant of experiences and as a normative anchor. east german state socialism permeated social life and actively intervened in it. freedom of the press, of speech and of assembly, but also free elections and culture were subject to the hegemony of the state party (weber 2011). at the same time, there were areas, in which citizens could lead their “private” lives more or less autonomously, as long as they did not challenge the state’s monopoly on power (wolle 1998; lindenberger 2002; bauerkämper 2005). therefore, the question arises of how successful the gdr regime was in its endeavour to normatively shape society in terms of gender roles. this study tries to answer this broad question by looking at one part of it – i.e. attitudes towards maternal employment – in more detail. how experiences with gender roles can become crucial for individual attitudes and preferences is described by bielby and bielby (1989). they argue that actively fulfi lling family or work roles defi ned by gender norms leads to identifi cation with these roles, and to commitment to the life domains of family or work. the strength of commitment depends on the extent to which the gender role behaviour is meaningful and identity-forming for the individual. thus, commitments bind individuals to the gender norms of the society they live in (bielby 1992). if mothers are employed, identities in both domains emerge. and in a society with traditional gender norms, a confl ict arises, which forces mothers to trade off one domain against the other because they are expected to focus on care work. working fathers, on the other hand, do not experience an identity confl ict because their work identity coincides with the normative expectation of men as the family breadwinners. in a way, hakim (2002) argues the other way round, since she states that individual preferences for work or children are the main predictors of parents’ work and care behaviour. differentiating between women according to their preferences, leads to three ideal typical categories in any society (hakim 2002). first, adaptive women prefer to combine employment and children without giving absolute priority to either of the two. they therefore react strongly in their preferences to social and labour market policy. second, there are work-centred women, for whom employment or an equivalent activity in the public sphere (e.g. sport, politics) is most important to gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 155 their lives, and thus they arrange their family life around their work and are more responsive to opportunities than to policies. third, home-centred women prioritise children and the household and prefer not to work outside the home. this group is strongly responsive to social, but not to labour market policies. according to hakim (2002), men differ signifi cantly from women in their preferences, as they are very homogeneously work-centred – something that is also shaped by societal norms. even though an empirical disentanglement of the discussed mechanisms is beyond the scope of this paper and not possible with the data used here, the theoretical background on the complex interplay is important for understanding why not only gender role behaviour and social policy might be congruent, but also social policy and attitudes or preferences towards work and children. before the hypotheses for the analysis are derived in section 4, the social policy framework of both former states in the early 1980s will be described. 3 social policy in the frg and gdr this section presents both states’ social policies focusing on maternal employment at the time of data collection (“ggss” in 1982 and “women’s study” in 1984). the frg in 19823 in the frg, the policy framework of the conservative-corporatist welfare state not only supported the male-breadwinner model, but also conformed to the gender norm according to which women should prioritise childcare over employment, and children especially at a very young age need their mothers and the care only she can provide (schütze 1986; oechsle 1998; mcdonald 2000; pfau-effi nger 2004). for many years, the domestic responsibilities of married women were even prescribed by the marriage and family law in the frg. only in 1977 was this law reformed, removing the wife’s duty to maintain the household, and the husband’s de jure fi nal decision on his wife’s employment. while many kindergarten places for 3-6 year-olds were created before 1982, there were hardly any day-care places for under 3-year-olds or school-aged children. the tax and social security system favoured the male-breadwinner model. paid maternity leave for employed mothers consisted of just 14 weeks of full wage compensation, which could be followed by another four months in which 750 deutsche mark per month were paid, and child (sickness) benefi ts were available (helwig 1993; rosenfeld et al. 2004; leitner et al. 2008).4 women’s employment rates (51 percent in 1982) were considerably lower than those of men (83 percent) (statistisches bundesamt 1984: 96), and almost one third of employed women did not work in a full-time job of 40 hours per week, mainly for 3 the description for the frg is briefer than for the gdr, but see gerlach (2008) for a detailed description of individual family policy measures, and ostner (1993) and kolinsky (1989) for comprehensive overviews of social policy in the frg in the 1980s. 4 the paid parental leave (“erziehungsurlaub”) for all parents was only introduced in 1986. • leonie kleinschrot156 family reasons. mostly, part-time jobs involved less than 21 hours of work per week (statistisches bundesamt 1984: 97; rosenfeld et al. 2004). the male-breadwinner model, in which men were mainly responsible for paid work and women for care work, was the most frequent family model in the frg (rosenfeld et al. 2004). despite this, in the frg there were working mothers, mostly in part-time and often due to fi nancial reasons, but also because they did not want to leave the workplace (beckerschmidt 2010). in 1982, 36 percent of mothers whose youngest child was under six years of age were employed (statistisches bundesamt 1984: 103). nevertheless, maternal employment remained the exception if there were children under the age of three, not least because of the lack of institutional childcare for this age group. in 1982 only 26 245 places were available for under 3-year-olds, which amounted to a childcare rate of 2 percent (bundesminister für jugend familie, frauen und gesundheit 1986: 36). the gdr in 1984 the gdr state party regime followed “the marxist conviction that women’s emancipation requires their formal participation in the labor force” (adler/brayfi eld 1997: 248), so the socialist gender norm was that of a mother who worked fulltime throughout all phases of the family and who put her children (of any age) into institutional day-care (gysi/meyer 1993). theoretically, generous policies were put in place to enable formal gender equality, but in real life women came to be treated as “reproducers and producers” while men were seen only as “producers” (trappe 1996: 358). in fact, women remained primarily responsible for care work (rosenfeld et al. 2004; banaszak 2006; lee et al. 2007). although, since employment was regarded as crucial for emancipation, the regime did promote women’s employment for reasons of gender equality, economic motives were also at play, as women constituted an important resource for the socialist planned economy (trappe 1996). consequently, the gdr had one of the highest female employment rates5 in the world (lee et al. 2007), standing at 79 percent in 1984 (staatliche zentralverwaltung für statistik 1986), and at the same time, the total fertility rate of 1.7 was slightly higher than that of the frg (1.5 in 1982) (winkler 1990: 25; genesis online 2021). although women were almost as likely as men to be employed in the gdr, they more often held positions of lower responsibility, often below their qualifi cations, and were paid less than men6 (rosenfeld et al. 2004; banaszak 2006; lee et al. 2007). 5 the employment rates in the gdr and frg cannot be compared directly, as the defi nition of employed persons differed (in the gdr mothers on “baby year”, apprentices and employees of certain sectors, e.g. state security, were excluded), as did data collection (the gdr had full data collection via employers, whereas the frg statistics are based on surveys, partial and random sample collection and on secondary statistical collections). for details see fritz (2000). there is no information on maternal employment in the published statistical yearbooks of the gdr. however, this should not differ greatly from the female employment rate, since childlessness was very low (gysi/meyer 1993; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). 6 studies showed that the gender pay gap was quite similar in both states (rosenfeld et al. 2004). for the time of reunifi cation, szydlik (1994) calculated a gender pay gap of 18 percent in the frg and 15 percent in the gdr. gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 157 most employed women worked full-time, although part-time employment (which mostly meant working between 25 and 35 hours per week) was not entirely unusual (winkler 1990). the 27 percent of women not working the regular 43.75 hours per week (winkler 1990: 107) were mostly over 35, i.e. not mothers with young children, and worked less for health reasons, or because they were in their pre-retirement phase (winkler 1990; rosenfeld et al. 2004). one of the factors contributing to the high female employment rate was the high availability of day-care places, also for children under three years of age. in 1984, 330 812 young children attended day-care, which resulted in an offi cial childcare rate of 69 percent7 (staatliche zentralverwaltung für statistik 1986). further factors might have been that work avoidance was prosecuted by law and could even be punished by imprisonment, being employed was seen as a moral obligation in east german socialism, many social entitlements were connected to full-time employment, and often one wage alone was not suffi cient to support the family (trappe et al. 2015). in addition, women worked for self-affi rmation and fi nancial independence, in order to be part of social networks (the nationally-owned enterprises even offered leisure events, holiday trips etc.), and because work was considered a core value in life (gysi/meyer 1993; lindenberger 2002; leitner et al. 2008). as birth rates declined from the mid-1960s onwards, a wide range of policy measures were introduced to better support women in reconciling family and paid work (nickel 1998; leitner et al. 2008; trappe et al. 2015). public childcare was further expanded (children could enter from the age of fi ve months); mothers with two children were allowed to reduce their weekly working hours to 40 without a wage reduction; maternity leave with full wage compensation covered 26 weeks and could be followed by a well-compensated (50-90 percent) paid “baby year” (before 1986 only mothers with a second child were eligible); a birth bonus of 1 000 mark was paid; extra holidays and child (sickness) benefi ts were given to mothers; and mothers were entitled to one paid day off work per month for housework (winkler 1990; helwig 1993; schmidt 1996; nickel 1998). since gender equality (that was predominantly focused on employment) was “issued” by the male-dominated political leadership, in contrast to equality evolving from a feminist movement, nickel (1998: 26) speaks of “patriarchal equality” in the gdr. 4 literature review and hypotheses the numerous social policy instruments in the gdr and state socialist propaganda about the importance of employment – which had already been in place for 35 years by the time of the survey and thus had had a great impact on the respondents’ 7 the childcare rate was the ratio of children in day-care to those who were eligible for institutional care. thus, those children whose mothers were eligible for paid leave, e.g. during the “baby year”, were not taken into account. • leonie kleinschrot158 socialisation – can be expected to have functioned as a “normative anchor” (kremer 2007; gangl/ziefl e 2015; grunow/veltkamp 2016), and therefore to have set the norm of combining motherhood and full-time employment. the exposure to employment and institutional childcare might have also strengthened maternal preferences for full-time employment, which, since almost all mothers in the gdr were employed, could have been reinforced by a “social multiplier effect” (gangl/ ziefl e 2015). several empirical studies – e.g. using the available ggss waves from 1991 until now – show that over this time period, people in east germany were far less negative in their opinion about maternal employment than those in west germany (banaszak 2006; lee et al. 2007; bauernschuster/rainer 2012; ebner et al. 2020). in 2016, nearly 30 years after reunifi cation, east german women born between 1950 and the mid-1970s – who were primarily socialised in the gdr – are those who most often agree with the statement that a full-time working mother can usually have just as meaningful a relationship to their toddler as a mother who does not work (around 90 percent agreement), compared to the east cohorts born after 1975 (79 percent agreement), or west german cohorts born before 1950 (69 percent agreement), between 1950 and 1975 (63 percent), and after 1975 (58 percent) (barth et al. 2020). following the theoretical arguments and post-reunifi cation fi ndings, it is expected that the vast majority of people in the gdr supported the socialist idea of full-time maternal employment (hypothesis 1). referring to the same theoretical mechanisms (social policy as a normative anchor and social multiplier effects), the frg’s conservative-corporatist social policy, including the lack of institutional childcare and its tax and social security system that favoured the male-breadwinner model, could have supported the norm of maternal childcare. furthermore, the role experience of being a housewife, as well as the observation of other non-working mothers in the frg might have led individuals to adapt their attitudes accordingly. thus, it is expected that in the early 1980s people in the frg were more negative in their opinion about maternal employment than people in the gdr (hypothesis 2). since living up to gender norms in the gdr meant full-time employment for mothers, following identity formation theory (bielby/bielby 1989) one could expect that women in the gdr were strongly committed to both work and children. and in fact, studies show that shortly after reunifi cation and until recently, people in east germany had high preferences for children and work, and did not prioritise one over the other (braun et al. 1994; adler/brayfi eld 1997; arránz becker et al. 2010; beblo/görges 2018; görges 2021). this is particularly true for the oldest cohorts, who had experienced the social policy of the gdr regime (beblo/görges 2018; görges 2021). thus, it is expected, that people in the gdr with high preferences for work, had a higher likelihood of agreeing with the socialist idea of full-time maternal employment compared to those with low preferences for work (hypothesis 3a). with regard to preferences for children, it can be stated that female employment in the gdr was not affected by motherhood because of the extensive availability of institutional childcare and other reconciliation measures. therefore, no association between individual preferences for children and the likelihood of agreeing with fulltime maternal employment is expected (hypothesis 4a). due to the equally high gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 159 participation rates of men and women in the labour market, which was probably also accompanied by a high commitment to employment among women, it is expected that the association between the preferences for work and the likelihood of agreeing with mothers’ employment did not differ between women and men in the gdr (hypothesis 5a). in the frg, due to the high prevalence of traditional gender norms (lee et al. 2007) and the corresponding social policy framework supporting the male-breadwinner model, one could expect an identity confl ict for mothers who planned to work (bielby/bielby 1989), which would compel them to trade off children for work. thus, it is hypothesised that either people who had low preferences for work, or those who had high preferences for children, were more likely to agree that mothers with young children should not work (hypothesis 3b and 4b). however, a gender difference in the impact of preferences for children or work on attitudes towards maternal employment could be expected in the frg. empirically, it has been shown that women in the frg rate work as less important, and having children as more important to their lives than men (beblo/görges 2018; görges 2021). following the theoretical arguments on identity formation, men in the frg particularly emphasised their identity as the family breadwinner, and according to hakim (2002) could be categorised as “work-centred”. thus, regardless of whether they had high preferences for children or for work, they are expected to be more likely to agree that their female partners should not be employed, but should care for the children. in contrast, “work-centred” women would be expected to arrange their lives around employment (hakim 2002), and to be less likely to agree that small children suffer if their mothers work. however, if they were “home-centred” (hakim 2002) and had developed a strong family identity, it could be expected that they were more likely to agree to maternal non-employment to avoid a confl ict of identities. it is thus hypothesised that the impact of preferences for children or work on attitudes towards maternal employment differed by gender in the frg (hypothesis 5b). 5 method 5.1 sample and measures: gdr in the gdr, social science research was strictly politically controlled. representative studies were rare because an elaborate approval procedure at the highest political level was required, which interfered with research topics and survey instruments. the empirical studies were therefore mostly regionally confi ned so that only the subordinate political authorities had to be involved (brislinger et al. 1998). the data collection then took place independently, and predominantly in the form of paper-pencil surveys conducted anonymously in group settings (brislinger et al. 1998; griese 1991). even though respondents might not have had full confi dence in the promised anonymity, the surveys were also seen as an opportunity to • leonie kleinschrot160 express opinions without fear of consequences8 (see also griese 1991). besides, the questions of the 1984 “women’s study” were rather innocuous compared to those of other surveys, which asked, for example, about the personal evaluation of the socialist regime. even though the results of studies had to be kept secret and evaluated in line with political convictions, empirical research in the gdr followed western scientifi c standards (bertram 1997; brislinger et al. 1998; griese 1991). one of the two datasets used in this paper, the “women’s study” 1984, was conducted by the gdr’s central institute for youth research (zij) (zentralinstitut für jugendforschung, leipzig 1984).9 the zij existed from 1966 to 1989 in leipzig and undertook – mostly quantitative – social science research on the attitudes and living conditions of youths and young people (for example regarding work, family, education, sexuality or leisure) in the gdr. in its later phase, it additionally included a small working group on women’s studies (friedrich 1991). the zij “women’s study 1984” asked women and men about, among other things, their life planning, general goals in life, leisure activities, preferred ways of living, political opinions and attitudes, as well as behaviour relating to gender equality. the respondents answered the questionnaires partly at their workplace and partly at home. the sample came from the former districts of erfurt and karlmarx-stadt10 where respondents were approached via their workplace. the data are not representative of the population of the gdr as a whole, but consist of an initial sample of 1623 respondents who were between 18 and 37 years old. the following analyses only include respondents who gave information on their gender (n=112 missing values) and the dependent variable (n=192 missing). due to some further missing values, the fi nal sample consists of 1300 respondents, of whom 76 percent are female and 24 percent are male (see table 1). the overrepresentation of women needs to be taken into account when interpreting the results. the dependent variable for the gdr regression analyses is whether the respondent agreed with the socialist norm of full-time maternal employment. this is captured by respondents’ answers to the following question: “is it desirable to limit your own/a mother’s employment activity if children under three are part of the family?” the three answer options were “by all means”, “under certain circumstances only”, “not at all”. to construct the binary coded dependent variable, the last two answers are combined and coded as “1”. since mothers with at least two young children could reduce their working time to 40 hours per week on full pay, the answer option “under certain circumstances only” is also in line with the socialist idea of full-time maternal employment. the answer “by all means” indicates disagreement with full-time maternal employment with young children, as it prioritises childcare over employment. it is coded as “0”. 8 this assessment originates from dr uta schlegel, with whom we spoke in preparation for this paper on 17.12.2020. she was a former researcher and department head at the zij. 9 after the fall of the berlin wall, the majority of social science data collected in the gdr were checked, the content and methodology were specifi ed and were then archived for secondary analyses (brislinger et al. 1998). 10 karl-marx-stadt is now called chemnitz. gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 161 the two central explanatory variables refl ect respondents’ preferences for work or children, measured by the question: “indicate how important the life goals or areas of life mentioned are for you”. respondents rated the items from 1 = totally unimportant to 4 = very important. for the analyses, the variables were dichotomised by grouping the fi rst three response categories as not very important as an indication of low preference, and the last category as very important (high preference), since the vast majority of responses for these items fell into category four. tab. 1: descriptive statistics gdr 1984 frg 1982 mean / % sd mean / % sd agreement with the norm concerning maternal employment: no 36.5 17.8 yes 63.5 82.2 preferences for work: low 15.2 10.1 high 84.8 89.9 preferences for children: low 14.3 11.4 high 85.7 88.6 family status: single 13.0 41.7 lat/married, living apart 15.5 2.1 cohabiting 13.6 2.8 married 57.9 53.4 employment status: not employed n.a. 37.2 part-time 8.3 11.1 full-time 91.7 51.7 education: low 9.9 10.3 middle 76.9 62.2 high 13.2 27.5 age 24.3 3.5 27.8 5.5 gender: female 76.2 53.6 male 23.9 46.4 n 1300 1009 source: women’s study 1984, ggss 1982; own calculations • leonie kleinschrot162 the logistic regression models control for respondents’ gender, age, education, employment status, and family status, as several studies have shown that these factors are signifi cant predictors of attitudes towards maternal employment (alwin/ scott 1996; panayotova/brayfi eld 1997; bolzendahl/myers 2004; brooks/bolzendahl 2004). the problem of the limited cross-national comparability of educational qualifi cations has already been pointed out (e.g. hadjar/berger 2010; schneider 2016). here, the recommendation made by hadjar and berger (2010) of classifying education into three categories (low, middle, high) is followed (see appendix table 1). employment status was categorised by respondents as part-time or full-time, but their weekly working hours were not recorded. because respondents were recruited via their employers, the category “not employed” did not exist in the gdr data, which has to be kept in mind when interpreting the results. nevertheless, this does not substantially limit the data, since in the gdr, unemployment in the surveyed age group was almost non-existent. family status is coded into single, living-aparttogether (lat), cohabiting and married. 5.2 sample and measures: frg for the frg analyses, the dataset of the german general social survey cumulation 1980-1986 for the year 1982 is used (gesis – leibniz-institut für sozialwissenschaften 2002). the survey was conducted in west germany (including west berlin), and only persons with german citizenship were interviewed. the population from which the sample was drawn, consisted of all persons eligible to vote and living in private households. in the early ggss waves (1982-1992, 1998), the representative sample was generated through adm sample design with the selection stages 1) electoral districts, 2) households, 3) persons in households. since with this procedure, a respondent’s chance of selection depends on the size of the household, a weight should be applied for analyses at the individual level. in research practice, this requirement is usually not met because (un-)weighted results do not differ or do so only slightly (gesis – leibniz-institut für sozialwissenschaften 2021). this is also the case for this paper: the use of weighted data changes the results only marginally, thus the results presented are unweighted. in the 1982 ggss wave, 2991 persons initially took part. to ensure better comparability with the gdr sample, the frg sample is also adjusted to the age range of 18-37. the fi nal analytic sample for this paper comprises n=1009, of whom 54 percent are female and 46 percent are male respondents (see table 1). the dependent variable for the frg regression analyses is whether respondents agreed with the norm of maternal non-employment. it is operationalised by respondents’ agreement with the statement “a small child is bound to suffer if his or her mother goes out to work”11 on a four-point scale from “completely agree” to “completely disagree”. for comparability with the gdr analyses, the dependent 11 the english translations were taken from terwey/baumann (2013). gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 163 variable is also dichotomised. the two affi rmative response options are taken together and coded as “1”, which signifi es support for the idea that mothers with small children should not be employed. the two negative answer options are coded as “0”, meaning a person did not agree with the then prevailing norm concerning maternal employment. the two central explanatory variables are also the preferences for work and children. respondents answered the question, “the cards here list various spheres of life. we would like to know how important each of these spheres of life is for you”, on a seven-point scale with only the two endpoints headed “(1) unimportant” and “(7) very important”. for the analyses, as it was not made explicit what the middle category actually meant and “important” was given one additional rating (“very”) which “unimportant” did not receive, the variables are dichotomised by grouping 1 to 3 as unimportant, meaning low preferences and 4 to 7 as important, meaning high preferences. the same control variables as in the gdr analyses are included. for the employment status respondents’ self-categorisation12 as “not employed” (which includes unemployed, housewife, doing compulsory military/alternative community service, retired, at school/university/in training, not working for other reasons), “part-time” and “full-time” is used. family status is coded as “single”, “married but living separately” ,13 “cohabiting” and “married”. 5.3 analytical strategy binary logistic regression models are applied to agreement with the prevailing norm concerning maternal employment considering the preferences for work and children after controlling for gender, age, education, employment and family status. the models are estimated separately for each dataset, i.e. for each state. to be able to compare coeffi cients of the explanatory variables, average marginal effects (ame) are predicted, as ame are hardly affected by uncorrelated unobserved heterogeneity (mood 2010; wooldridge 2010). the question of whether there are differences between women and men is investigated by including interaction terms. for sensitivity analyses in both country models, the two main explanatory variables are also tested in separate models (see appendix table a2 and a3). however, the results do not differ from those reported below. to further test the robustness of the results, additional controls were included for the size of the community respondents lived in and the number of children they had, as individuals might differ in attitudes due to differing social environments concerning maternal employment rates (urban vs. rural), or role exposure experiences (parenthood vs. childlessness) (bolzendahl/myers 2004). however, including them in the frg analysis neither changes signifi cance levels and coeffi cient sizes, nor improves model fi t. including them in the gdr models results in better model fi ts and partly 12 weekly working hours were not surveyed in ggss 1982. 13 this category can represent lat relationships, but also separated couples that are still married. • leonie kleinschrot164 reveals signifi cant associations with the dependent variable. nevertheless, it was decided not to include community size and the number of children in the gdr regression analysis as the sample size would be dramatically reduced from 1300 observations to 786 or 871. 6 results 6.1 descriptive results on agreement with the prevailing norm concerning maternal employment in the gdr, 9 percent of the respondents thought that mothers with children under the age of three should not limit their employment, 55 percent thought they should only limit it under certain circumstances. thus, 64 percent agreed with the socialist idea of full-time working mothers (see table 1). this also means that more than one third (37 percent) of the respondents thought that a mother should by all means limit her employment activity if young children were part of the family (see table 1). when looking at the attitudes of different subgroups, it becomes clear that they were quite homogenous (see fig. 1). however, respondents in part-time and fulltime employment differed signifi cantly (p=0.000) in their attitudes towards full-time maternal employment, with 44 percent of the former and 65 percent of the latter agreeing with it. the small number of part-time employees has to be considered here. female and male respondents in the gdr neither differed signifi cantly in their attitudes towards maternal full-time employment (62 percent of women agreed and 67 percent of men), nor in their preferences for work or children. the majority of both female and male respondents had high preferences for work (84 percent of women and 87 percent of men), as well as for children (86 percent of women and 84 percent of men). in the frg, women and men differed signifi cantly in their preferences for work (p=0.003) or children (p=0.004). 87 percent of women and 93 percent of men rated work as important, and 91 percent of women rated having children as important compared to 85 percent of men. but men and women did not differ in their assessment of maternal employment. in the frg, 82 percent of the respondents completely agreed/tended to agree with negative consequences for young children if their mother went out to work, and only 18 percent tended to disagree/completely disagreed. thus, the vast majority endorsed the corresponding norm of maternal non-employment (see table 1). figure 2 shows that in the frg, the proportion of non-employed respondents who thought young children suffer because of their mother’s employment was signifi cantly greater (87 percent) than that of the parttime employed (75 percent, p=0.01) and that of the full-time employed (80 percent, p=0.04). summarising the descriptive fi ndings, it appears that around two thirds of respondents in the gdr agreed with the socialist norm of full-time maternal employment if there are children under the age of three in the family. yet, the fact that more than one third disagreed with this norm indicates greater heterogeneity in gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 165 attitudes than expected according to hypothesis 1. the second central descriptive fi nding is consistent with hypothesis 2: compared to respondents in the gdr, those in the frg more often evaluated maternal employment negatively and assumed that young children would suffer if their mothers were employed. 6.2 gdr: results on the relation between preferences for work or children and attitudes towards maternal employment the multivariate analyses examined whether agreeing with the maternal employment norm in the two states depended on the individual preferences for work or children (hakim 2002). due to the different data sets and measurements, the regression results of the two states cannot be compared directly. the infl uence of preferences for work or children can only be considered within the countries. logistic regression fig. 1: responses to the question: “is it desirable to limit your own/a mother’s employment activity if children under three are part of the family?”, in percent, gdr 1984 sex cohort 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent male female not at all under certain circumstances only by all means 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent 1947-50 1951-55 1956-60 1961-66 family status education 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent single lat cohabitation marriage 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent low middle high employment status 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent part-time full-time source: women’s study 1984, own calculations • leonie kleinschrot166 models are estimated for each state and the results are given as ame. in model 1, only the preferences for work and children are included, while model 2 additionally includes all control variables. to identify potential differences between women and men, interaction terms are also included. table 2 shows the results for the gdr. on average across all respondents, those who had high preferences for work had a higher probability (11 percentage points) of agreeing with the norm of full-time maternal employment with young children than those who rated work as not very important.14 this fi nding remained robust fig. 2: responses to the question: “a small child is bound to suffer if his or her mother goes out to work”, in percent, frg 1982 sex cohort 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent male female completely agree tend to agree tend to disagree completely disagree 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964 family status education 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent single married, living apart cohabitation marriage 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent low middle high employment status 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent not emloyed part-time full-time source: ggss 1982, own calculations 14 as mentioned above, the sample did not include people who were not employed. however, unemployment was – due to the reasons given previously – almost non-existent in the gdr in the age group considered, and the two variables “employment status” and “importance of career and work” were uncorrelated. gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 167 after including all control variables and is in line with hypothesis 3a. while the preferences for work were signifi cantly and substantially associated with agreeing with the norm of full-time maternal employment, preferences for children showed a non-signifi cant coeffi cient, as expected in hypothesis 4a. the interaction of the preferences for work and respondents’ gender, which was included in model 2, was signifi cant and tests confi rmed that the effect of the preferences for work among women differed signifi cantly from that of men. this tab. 2: agreement with the norm of full-time maternal employment, gdr 1984, average marginal effects model (1) (2) preferences for work (ref.: low) high 0.119** 0.110** (0.038) (0.038) preferences for children (ref.: low) high 0.054 0.067 (0.039) (0.040) sex (ref.: male) female -0.030 (0.032) age 0.001 (0.004) family status (ref.: single) married -0.023 (0.043) lat -0.039 (0.050) cohabiting 0.006 (0.051) education (ref.: low) middle -0.004 (0.045) high 0.011 (0.055) employment status (ref.: part-time) full-time 0.200*** (0.052) observations 1300 1300 pseudo r2 mf 0.007 0.019 note: standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: women’s study 1984, own calculations • leonie kleinschrot168 is in contrast to hypothesis 5a, which expected no difference. as can be seen in appendix figure a1, a signifi cant association between preferences for work and attitudes towards maternal employment was only found among women. for the gdr, it can be summarised that female respondents’ preferences for work (but not for children) were associated with their agreement with the socialist idea of full-time maternal employment with children under the age of three. in other words, women who placed high importance on being employed did not even see children as a reason for limiting their employment activity. 6.3 frg: results on the relation between preferences for work or children and attitudes towards maternal employment analyses of the frg data show that respondents’ preferences for work were not signifi cantly related to their attitudes towards maternal employment with young children, contradicting hypothesis 3b suggesting an association (see table 3). yet, the preferences for children were signifi cantly related to attitudes towards maternal employment, based on a comparatively powerful coeffi cient. on average across all respondents, those who had high preferences for children, had a higher probability (12 percentage points) of agreeing with the statement that young children suffer if their mothers work than those who had low preferences. this is in line with hypothesis 4b. to test whether the effect of the preferences for children differed signifi cantly between women and men, an interaction term with the respondents’ gender was integrated into the model. however, the interaction term was not signifi cant, and neither the models with and without the interaction term, nor the effect in the group of women and men differed signifi cantly (see appendix figure a2). thus, there was no signifi cant difference in the effect of the preferences for children between women and men, which is inconsistent with hypothesis 5b assuming gender differences. for the frg, it can be stated that respondents who had high preferences for children were more likely to agree with the norm that mothers of young children should not work. at the same time, the preferences for work were not relevant for their attitudes towards maternal employment. 7 discussion and conclusion this study fi rstly investigated the congruence of social policy and gender norms in the german democratic republic (gdr) by analysing the attitudes of 18-37-yearold respondents towards maternal employment, and describing socialist women’s policy. using previously unanalysed survey data, the “women’s study” from 1984, this study examined how gdr respondents viewed the employment of mothers with young children, whether this was related to individual preferences for work or children, and to what extent these attitudes were consistent with the socialist idea of continuous full-time maternal employment. secondly, a similar analysis was carried out with same-age respondents from the federal republic of germany (frg), using gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 169 the german general social survey from 1982. the results were presented side by side, and are now interpreted separately because it is not possible to directly compare the two former states on the basis of the datasets used. the study found that more than one third (37 percent) of the respondents in the gdr rejected the socialist idea of mothers with children under the age of tab. 3: agreement with the norm of maternal non-employment, frg 1982, average marginal effects model (1) (2) preferences for work (ref.: low) high -0.043 -0.036 (0.036) (0.038) preferences for children (ref.: low) high 0.114* 0.124* (0.045) (0.049) sex (ref.: male) female -0.042 (0.027) age 0.002 (0.003) family status (ref.: single) married -0.006 (0.030) lat 0.048 (0.073) cohabiting -0.039 (0.079) education (ref.: low) middle 0.037 (0.044) high 0.005 (0.049) employment status (ref.: part-time) full-time 0.046 (0.049) not employed 0.128** (0.047) observations 1009 1009 pseudo r2 mf 0.008 0.025 standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: ggss 1982, own calculations • leonie kleinschrot170 three working full-time. this proportion is surprising, since the gdr had already existed for 35 years at the time of the survey, and cohorts who grew up under east german state socialism were interviewed. furthermore, theories about social policy being a normative anchor, about the consequences of exposure to work-related environments, as well as arguments on social multiplier effects arising from high maternal labour force participation (pfau-effi nger 2005; kremer 2007; gangl/ziefl e 2015; grunow/veltkamp 2016), would have suggested a higher agreement with maternal full-time employment in the gdr. however, exposure to the double burden of paid and unpaid work that many mothers experienced, which was associated with time pressures and mental strain, may have promoted preferences for maternal non-employment (adler/brayfi eld 1997; nickel 1998; becker-schmidt 2010; adler et al. 2016). similarly, experience with day-care centres for under 3-year-olds ran by the socialist state might have reinforced maternal non-employment preferences, and with it the desire to raise children in the family according to the family’s own values rather than to socialist ideas. logistic regressions revealed that women in the gdr who had high preferences for work were substantially more likely to agree with full-time maternal employment with children under three years of age than those who rated work as not very important. this association could not be shown for men, which suggests that fulfi lling the socialist gender norm of being employed led to a high commitment to employment among women and led work to become identityforming (bielby/bielby 1989). this is in line with what other researchers (gysi/ meyer 1993; leitner et al. 2008) have already pointed out: employment was highly valued in the gdr, especially for emancipation. thus, women not only worked for fi nancial, but also for personal reasons like self-affi rmation. this and the second fi nding from the study, that individual preferences for children were not associated with attitudes towards full-time maternal employment, indicate a lack of confl ict between workand family-identities for mothers. thus, under the gdr’s framework of high availability and societal acceptance of institutional childcare for children of any age, women were not forced to trade off work against children or vice versa. this is also mirrored in the descriptive fi nding that women (just like men) had very high preferences for both paid work and children. the study’s fi nding that the vast majority of respondents in the frg had the opinion that children suffer if their mothers work supports the notion of social policy – in this case the conservative-corporatist policies supporting the male-breadwinner model and maternal childcare – simultaneously refl ecting societal gender norms, and functioning as a normative anchor (gangl/ziefl e 2015). that people in the frg in the 1980s had more negative attitudes towards maternal employment than their neighbours in the gdr strengthens the post-reunifi cation evidence on east-west differences in gender norms (e.g. pfau-effi nger 2005; bauernschuster/rainer 2012; ebner et al. 2020). regression analyses showed that in the frg, respondents who had high preferences for children were more likely to agree with maternal nonemployment, but attitudes towards maternal employment did not depend on preferences for work. these fi ndings can be interpreted in line with preference theory (hakim 2002) as well as identity formation theory (bielby/bielby 1989). firstly, preference theory categorises women in the frg as “home centred” and thus gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 171 expects them to prioritise family, which is also backed by the study’s fi nding that women in the frg placed more importance on children and less importance on paid work than men (see also beblo/görges 2018). secondly, identity formation theory (bielby/bielby 1989) argues that employment and child raising were confl icting identities for women in the frg which provoked an either/or decision between either being childless and employed or having children and not being employed (at least as long as they could fi nancially afford not to be employed) (braun et al. 1994; becker-schmidt 2010; goldstein/kreyenfeld 2011). thus, if women in the frg had a strong desire to work, they – due to the policy framework and societal gender norms – might have already ruled out becoming a mother, so that maternal employment was not something that was thought about. taken together, the fi ndings for both former states suggest congruence between social policy and gender norms at the time, but under the totalitarian regime in the gdr there was greater heterogeneity in attitudes towards maternal employment than expected. this insight cannot be gained by solely observing maternal employment rates, and it confi rms previous social-historical research showing the dialectical relationship between the regime and society in the gdr (wolle 1998; lindenberger 2002; bauerkämper 2005; jarausch 2012). moreover, it contributes to a more differentiated understanding of gender norms in a socialist east european state, and at the same time highlights the need to refl ect on the frequently applied western perspective – which assumes very high attitudinal conformity – in researching former socialist regimes in eastern europe. the study is limited by, fi rstly, the fact that a direct comparison between the frg and the gdr was not possible because the indicators for the (in-)dependent variables were measured using different scales and the items for the dependent variables were not identical in wording. secondly, whereas the frg sample was representative of the 18-37-year-old population, the sample in the gdr was recruited via employers in certain districts only and women were overrepresented. these data cannot claim to be representative of the gdr. nevertheless, it is a unique source for historical attitudinal research in a socialist east european state. thirdly, the “women’s study 1984” has to be treated with caution, as social science was strictly politically controlled. nevertheless, it would be enlightening if further research could make use of the unexploited data potential of the zij for more indepth analyses of the gdr, especially as contemporary witnesses of the study processes can still be consulted. the women’s study 1984, for example, also measured respondents’ division of housework and childcare as well as the degree of agreement with gendered responsibilities. future analyses of these aspects could provide a more comprehensive understanding of societal gender norms in the gdr, which were refl ected in both behaviour and attitudes. acknowledgements this study was conducted within a project funded by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg, german research foundation) – project number 434947732. • leonie kleinschrot172 i appreciate the helpful comments by the guest editors, anonymous reviewers and felix berth which contributed to signifi cant improvements in the manuscript. references adler, marina a.; brayfi eld, april 1997: women’s work values in unifi ed germany: regional differences as remnants of the past. in: work and occupations 24,2: 245266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888497024002006 adler, marina a.; lenz, karl; stöbel-richter, yve 2016: germany. in: adler, marina a.; lenz, karl (eds.): 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ddr 1945-1990. oldenbourg grundriss der geschichte 20. münchen: oldenbourg. winkler, gunnar (ed.) 1990: frauenreport ‚90. im auftrag der beauftragten des ministerrates für die gleichstellung von frauen und männern. berlin: verlag die wirtschaft. wolle, stefan 1998: die heile welt der diktatur. alltag und herrschaft in der ddr 19711989. berlin: links. wooldridge, jeffrey m. 2010: econometric analysis of cross section and panel data: mit press. zentralinstitut für jugendforschung, leipzig 1984: women‘s study 1984: gesis data archive, cologne. za6138 data fi le version 1.0.0. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.6138. date of submission: 14.12.2021 date of acceptance: 17.02.2023 leonie kleinschrot (). deutsches jugendinstitut münchen (dji), abteilung kinder und kinderbetreuung. munich, germany. e-mail: kleinschrot@dji.de url: https://www.dji.de/en/about-us/employees/detailview/mitarbeiter/leoniekleinschrot.html gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 177 a p p en d ix ta b . a 1: c la ss ifi ca tio n o f e d uc at io n c la ss ifi ca tio n fr g g d r c a s m in fo r an al ys is e d uc at io n v o ca tio na l e d uc at io n v o ca tio na l eq ui va le n t tr ai ni ng tr ai ni ng lo w e d u ca tio n n o s ch o o lle av in g w it h /w it h o u t t ra in in g / u p t o 7 th g ra d e w it h /w it h o u t 1a , 1 b, 1 c q ua lifi c at io n in te rn sh ip (s em i-) sk ill ed w o rk er q ua lifi c at io n lo w er s ec o n d ar y w it h o u t t ra in in g / 8t h /9 th g ra d e sc h o o l w it h o u t t ra in in g o r sc h o o l ( v o lk ss ch u le , in te rn sh ip le av in g sk ill ed w o rk er h au p ts ch ul e) q u al ifi ca tio n 8t h g ra d e w it h ap p re n tic es hi p m id d le e d u ca tio n lo w er s ec o n d ar y w it h ap p re n tic es hi p 9t h g ra d e w it h ap p re n tic es hi p 2a , 2 b sc h o o l s ec o n d ar y sc h o o l w it h /w it h o u t 10 th g ra d e (p o s w it h /w it h o u t ( se m i-) (m it tle re r ei fe , ap p re n tic es hi p g ra d u at io n1 ) o r sk ill ed w o rk er r ea ls ch ul e) 11 th g ra d e q u al ifi ca tio n h ig h ed u ca tio n a b it ur w it h /w it h o u t 12 th g ra d e w it h o r w it h o u t 2c , 3 a, 3 b ap p re n tic es hi p e o s 2 /a b it ur ap p re n tic es hi p u n iv er si ty o f a p p lie d te ch n ic al c o lle g e sc ie n ce s m as te r m as te r u n iv er si ty u n iv er si ty 1 p o s = p o ly te ch ni sc he o b er sc hu le . t he te nye ar “ po ly te ch ni sc he o b er sc hu le ” w ith c o m p ul so ry v o ca tio na l l es so ns w as in tr o d uc ed in th e g d r in 1 95 9 an d r ep la ce d th e p re vi o us e ig ht -y ea r sc ho o ls (s ch m id t 19 96 : 82 ). 2 e o s = e rw ei te rt e o b er sc hu le . s o ur ce : o w n ill us tr at io n b as ed o n h ad ja r/ b er ge r (2 01 0) • leonie kleinschrot178 tab. a2: agreement with the norm of full-time maternal employment, gdr 1984, average marginal effects, separate models model (1a) (2a) (3a) (4a) preferences for work (ref.: low) children (ref.: low) high 0.123** 0.116** 0.063 0.076 (0.098) (0.038) (0.039) (0.040) sex (ref.: male) female -0.025 -0.033 (0.032) (0.032) age 0.001 0.002 (0.004) (0.004) family status (ref.: single) married -0.008 -0.030 (0.042) (0.043) lat -0.033 -0.042 (0.050) (0.050) cohabiting 0.016 0.010 (0.051) (0.051) education (ref.: low) middle -0.002 -0.006 (0.046) (0.046) high 0.012 0.010 (0.055) (0.055) employment status (ref.: part-time) full-time 0.200*** 0.203*** (0.052) (0.052) observations 1300 1300 1300 1300 pseudo r2 mf 0.006 0.018 0.002 0.014 note: standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: women’s study 1984, own calculations gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 179 tab. a3: agreement with the norm of maternal non-employment, frg 1982, average marginal effects, separate models model (1b) (2b) (3b) (4b) preferences for work (ref.: low) children (ref.: low) high -0.024 -0.009 0.103 0.113* (0.038) (0.041) (0.043) (0.046) sex (ref.: male) female -0.039 -0.041 (0.027) (0.027) age 0.001 0.002 (0.003) (0.003) family status (ref.: single) married 0.019 -0.003 (0.030) (0.030) lat 0.064 0.051 (0.073) (0.073) cohabiting -0.015 -0.037 (0.077) (0.079) education (ref.: low) middle 0.035 0.035 (0.044) (0.043) high 0.003 0.002 (0.049) (0.048) employment status (ref.: part-time) not employed 0.127** 0.130** (0.050) (0.047) full-time 0.044 0.046 (0.050) (0.050) observations 1009 1009 1009 1009 pseudo r2 mf 0.0004 0.017 0.007 0.024 standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: ggss 1982, own calculations • leonie kleinschrot180 fig. a1: average marginal effects of preferences for work with 95% cis, gdr 1984 source: source: women’s study 1984, own calculations -0.2 0 0.2 male female sex effects on pr(agreement with norm) gender norms under socialism and capitalism • 181 fig. a2: average marginal effects of preferences for children with 95% cis, frg 1982 source: source: ggss 1982, own calculations 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 male female sex effects on pr(agreement with norm) published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) 50 years of communicating demographic and population research in germany editorial 50 years of communicating demographic and population research in germany* johannes huinink abstract: in his editorial, former cpos editor johannes huinink reflects on his personal experiences with the journal as author, advisory board member and editor. he emphasizes the importance of scholarly debates, efforts to include contributions from the global south, and shares his perspectives for the journal’s continued development and success. he focuses on both the zfb and cpos years. the zfb played a key role in re-establishing demography as a scientific discipline in germany. since its relaunch in 2010 as cpos, the journal has become an internationally recognized, english-language open-access platform with a strong focus on thematic special issues. keywords: demographic and population research · publishing strategies · cpos · zfb 1 introduction congratulations to cpos/zfb and its publisher, the federal institute for population research (bundesinstitut für bevölkerungsforschung, bib), on the journal’s 50th anniversary. in the first decades of its existence, the zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb) made a significant contribution to the reestablishment of demography as a scientific discipline in germany. today, comparative population studies (cpos) is an internationally recognized venue for demographic and population research. as someone who has personally benefited from the journal for over 40 years and who has been involved as an author, guest editor, advisory board member, and reviewer, i would like to thank all those who have contributed to the conception, development, and production of the journal over all these years. comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): xvii-xxii (date of release: 09.07.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-08 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-08en * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-08 • johannes huininkxviii 2 the zfb years (1975-2009) from 1975 onwards, the zfb, the predecessor of cpos, made important contributions to german demography. it helped the discipline regain a serious scientific reputation in our country after it had fallen into long-term disrepute due to its significant involvement in inhuman eugenic research and the racist and criminal politics in germany until the end of world war ii. as a sociologist by training, i was lucky enough to get a position as a researcher at the institute for population research and social policy (institut für bevölkerungsforschung und sozialpolitik, ibs) at the university of bielefeld in 1982. needing to improve my demographic expertise, i benefited from articles published in the zfb. in the years that followed, the zfb remained an important companion to my demographic research activities. in the 1980s and 1990s, i particularly appreciated the reports on recent demographic trends in germany which were published on a regular basis. in these years, i was also able to place several articles in zfb that marked major achievements of my demographic work on cohort and life-course analysis. one episode in particular is worth mentioning. i had left bielefeld for berlin to work at the max-planck-institute of human development, where i conducted research on fertility and family formation over the life course in east and west germany. using data from various waves of the german life course study, my colleague peter blossfeld and i were able to develop and test a new approach to analyzing the effects of women’s education and employment on starting a family. we published the first results of our study in the zfb in 1989 (blossfeld/huinink 1989), whereupon two of our colleagues, josef brüderl and thomas klein (1991), proposed a different approach and criticized our model considerably. we responded with an article in 1991 and were able to successfully demonstrate the validity of our model, which became the standard approach in this field of research (blossfeld et al. 1991). this admittedly would not have been possible if we had not had the opportunity to publish one version in the american journal of sociology (blossfeld/huinink 1991). “battles” regarding models was far too rare in the german publishing landscape back then and remain uncommon today. and so, the zfb offered a venue for the sort of ultimately productive dispute that would also benefit today’s research landscape. 3 the cpos years (2009-) on the initiative of norbert f. schneider, the director of the bib at the time, the journal was thoroughly reorganized in 2009/10, and zfb turned into cpos. initially published as a bilingual journal, cpos is today an open-access english-language journal solely run by the bib. the successful relaunch has been supported considerably by an active advisory board. among others, the members significantly supported the publication of at least one special issue (si) per year by suggesting relevant research topics and guest editors who work on these themes. 50 years of communicating demographic and population research in germany • xix not least due to the successful acquisition of thematically focused articles in special issues, cpos was quickly integrated into the developments in german demographic research at the time. two brief examples illustrate this direction. a 2011 special issue on “fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland” (vol. 36, 2-3; guest editors: tomas frejka, alexia prskawetz) gathered contributions by members of an interdisciplinary working group which was installed under the leadership of the berlin-brandenburg academy of sciences and humanities and the german national academy of sciences (leopoldina) to prepare a “state of the art” report on “a future with children – fertility and social development in germany, austria and switzerland” (frejka/prskawetz 2011). cpos also offered the opportunity to publish a special issue with articles introducing initial findings from the first waves of the long-term german family panel (pairfam), which i initiated with colleagues from sociology and psychology. this si was published in 2012 (vol. 37, 3-4; guestedited by me) (huinink 2012). in 2019, i was asked if i could imagine working as an external editor for cpos. although i was now retired, wanted to change my field of activity and enter the fine arts, i accepted. therefore, cpos is part of the reason why i still am in the scientific business. the year and a half (2020/2021) that i spent in this position was full of stimulating experiences. i very much enjoyed working with the competent colleagues in the editorial team and i have gained insights into the specifics of editing the journal. there are two observations which i would like to share. first, i would like to emphasize continuing to successfully and regularly publish special issues as a key strategic element for the future development of the journal. today, cpos is included in the emerging sources citation index (esci) and – quite wrongly – does not yet belong to the “premier league” of social science journals. this could come with a certain disadvantage in terms of perceived attractiveness in our impact factor-prone publication landscape. special issues provide a good way to enrich the annual volumes with contributions by renowned colleagues and further improve the visibility of the journal as an already well-established international demographic venue. besides their editorial work alongside the staff at the bib, the external managing editors are also expected to support organizing special issues or edit them themselves. together with josef brüderl, who was one of my co-pis in the german family panel during my time as cpos editor, i edited an si in 2021 dealing with the question of how the availability of longitudinal studies improved the “causal explanation” of demographic processes in empirical studies (vol. 46) (huinink/brüderl 2021). the second observation from my external editorship is that many articles were submitted that were thematically and informatively interesting, but could not be published as research articles according to the journal’s standards because of methodological, formal, or substantive issues. quite a few were written by colleagues from countries of the so-called “global south.” instead of a desk rejection, we returned sufficiently promising papers to the authors with recommendations on how to get them into a shape that allowed us to start the review process. this was an effortful procedure and/or often still did not end in successful publications with cpos. one idea, then, was to introduce a new category for articles of a more • johannes huininkxx descriptive nature which provide interesting information on “demographic trends around the globe.” the proposal was approved by the journal’s advisory board and we started the new category in 2021 with an initial invited paper (nitsche et al. 2021). today, two or three papers per volume are published in this category – so it seems to be working, even though the number of publications could be a bit higher and in my perception, the global south could be more strongly represented. in general, it would be desirable to attract more papers from these parts of the world, which in my opinion find their way into the established demographic journals too rarely. 4 concluding remarks i conclude by expressing my conviction that cpos – already a very productive part of the international demographic journal landscape – will continue its successful development. i wish everyone involved in its conception and publication every success in the years to come. references blossfeld, hans-peter; huinink, johannes 1989: the improvement of women’s occupational opportunities and their influence on the process of family formation. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 15,4: 383-404. blossfeld, hans-peter; huinink, johannes 1991: human capital investments or norms of role transition? how women's schooling and career affect the process of family formation. in: american journal of sociology 97,1: 143-168. blossfeld, hans-peter; huinink, johannes; rohwer, götz 1991: does the fact that women’s education level is getting ever higher really affect the process of family formation in a negative way? an answer to the critique by josef brüderl and thomas klein. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 17,3: 337-351. brüderl, josef; klein, thomas 1991: level of education and family formation: institutional versus level effect. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 17,3: 323-335. frejka, tomas; prskawetz, alexia 2011: editorial to the special issue “fertility dynamics in austria, germany and switzerland”. in: comparative population studies 36,2-3: 251-256. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2011-19 huinink, johannes 2012: editorial on the special issue “empirical analyses based on the german family panel (pairfam)”. in: comparative population studies 37,3-4: 313-326. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2012-09 huinink, johannes; brüderl, josef 2021: editorial on the special issue "the identification of causal mechanisms in demographic research". in: comparative population studies 46: 487-502. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-17 nitsche, natalie et al. 2021: educational pairings and fertility across europe: how do the loweducated fare? in: comparative population studies 46: 533-554. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-19 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2011-19 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2012-09 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-17 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2021-19 50 years of communicating demographic and population research in germany • xxi prof. dr. johannes huinink (*). university of bremen, socium research center on inequality and social policy. bremen, germany. e-mail: huinink@uni-bremen.de url: https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/johannes-huinink/en/? mailto:huinink@uni-bremen.de https://www.socium.uni-bremen.de/about-the-socium/members/johannes-huinink/en/? published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary* zsuzsanna makay abstract: this study focuses on changes in the length of paid parental leave in austria, france and hungary between the 1960s and the fi rst decade of the 2000s. its aim is to analyse to what extent extensions and reductions of the duration of paid parental leave affect mothers’ labour market entry after childbirth. for each country, periods according to the different policy reforms are analysed and data from the generations and gender survey are used to account for changes in mothers’ labour market entry. scholars have argued that too long periods of paid parental leave might act as work-reducing policy in that they hinder women’s labour market entry while short leaves have positive effects on labour market participation and wages. this phenomenon is studied in three countries with very different conciliation policies. results for austria show that the introduction of more fl exibility into the leave legislation in 2008 increased mothers’ relative risks of labour market entry especially among higher educated women. in france, the extension of paid leave for second born children in 1994 reduced labour market entry. we found however, no signifi cant effect of the 1986 reform for third children and the 2004 reform introducing a paid leave of six months for fi rst-born children. in hungary, labour market entry of mothers was infl uenced by structural changes which accompanied the political transition of 1989 and resulted in longer leave take up of mothers. labour market entry before the transition was more intensive than ever since that. keywords: parental leave · family policy · labour market entry after childbirth · policy reforms · work family conciliation comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 425-456 (date of release: 17.08.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-17 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-17en8 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-17 • zsuzsanna makay426 1 introduction parental leave policies have contradictory effects on women’s employment. on the one hand, long and paid parental leaves coupled with employment security make it possible for women to combine childrearing with employment. on the other hand, they prevent women from achieving high-paying jobs, since employers are reluctant to hire women who may leave the labour market for a longer period of time (mandel/ semyonov 2006). thus, generous welfare states, which make it possible for women to combine work and family life, can affect labour force participation of mothers in either a positive or a negative way, depending on the length of the leaves, the security of the employment and childcare arrangements. this so-called welfare state paradox has been demonstrated in different contexts and the importance of policies that “promote parental attachment to the labour force” (misra et al. 2011: 154) has been emphasised by several studies using aggregated data (misra et al. 2011; mun/jung 2018; thévenon 2011). the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of various changes in the length of paid parental leave (ppl) since the 1960s on women’s employment after childbirth in austria, france and hungary using individual data on employment and childbirth histories. several reforms of ppl took place in the last four decades in the three countries, and available data permits us to study how women’s post-birth employment changed with the subsequent reforms. we analyse in detail which factors infl uenced labour market entry after childbirth and how intensity of labour market entry has changed over time. thus, we investigate how the extension of ppl (which may operate as a work-reducing policy) and shortenings of ppl (which may act as a work-facilitating policy, while both effects may highly depend on other factors) affect mothers’ employment after childbirth. this cannot be studied without contextualising each reform and taking into account other aspects that infl uence the conciliation of family life and paid work (neyer/andersson 2008). so, the political transition of 1989 in hungary will be investigated, as well as other aspects of worklife balance policies (childcare availability, job security, etc.). the main contribution of this article is to show that changes in the length of parental leave by themselves have very small effect on the length of women’s non-employment after childbirth. conciliation strategies are indeed developed in the context of social norms, personal desires and structural possibilities, namely labour market situation and the availability of childcare facilities. 2 factors affecting labour force participation of mothers with young children the employment of mothers with young children has risen constantly over the last decades in the european countries. but it is highly dependent on the number and the age of the children and on structural factors, such as the availability of childcare, the prevalence of part-time work or leave policy benefi ts (bernhardt 1993; del boca paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 427 2002; hantrais 2004). indeed, there are important differences in family policies and in the manner the different states support mothers’ labour market participation. in an article published a decade ago, misra and colleagues (2011) spoke about the welfare-paradox concerning parental leave policies since these policies can help and prevent mothers’ employment and career advancement at the same time. namely, generous welfare policies assuring long parental leaves for mothers may decrease their labour force participation and wages. authors call these “work-reducing policies” since they encourage mothers to stay off work. work-facilitating policies, on the contrary, encourage women to take up work and support this decision with the possibility to resort to different childcare arrangements (misra et al. 2011). too long parental leave arrangements seem to have other side-effects as well. they may be responsible for discrimination against women in the labour market in that they offer job-protection to mothers which is offered neither to childless women nor to men (mandel/semyonov 2006). they also imply nonwage costs on fi rms since they have to deal with replacements and the uncertainty about the return of their employee. this effect is amplifi ed in the case of job protection since the position must constantly be available to the mother on leave (ruhm 1998). thus, employers may prefer to hire their workforce among people not benefi tting from this protection and neglect mothers’ application or that of women of childbearing age. generous welfare states may also create “sheltered” labour markets for mothers where their rights are protected and secured, most commonly in the public sector. in this regard, the state acts as an employer and guarantees access to this secured sector for mothers. this facilitates women’s labour force participation and the conciliation of work and childrearing. in the same context however, the private sector may be inaccessible for the protected group which creates labour market segregation with mothers having diffi culties of entering valuable elite positions. indeed, these are not compatible with their family roles which in return affects their wages and career opportunities negatively. moreover, it has negative implications for gender egalitarianism on the labour market and in the family sphere (bianchi et al. 1999; mandel/semyonov 2006; thévenon 2011) so, different welfare regimes promote mothers in the labour market differently. the length of paid parental leave is one aspect of mothers’ labour force participation, which should neither be too short nor too long in order to promote labour market participation and equal wages. several scholars have established estimations concerning the “optimal” length of parental leave. based on aggregated data in 16 european countries over the period 1970 to 2010 and taking into account labour force participation and wages, they came to the conclusion that the optimal length of paid parental leave is between 20 weeks and 30 weeks. any extension of the leave only has minimal impact on participation rates, while it decreases wages and causes occupational segregation. the negative effects are especially visible among women in high-level occupations (akgunduz/plantenga 2013; bianchi et al. 1999; ruhm 1998). it cannot be denied however that longer leaves have been found to have a positive effect on the health and the development of children as well as on fertility (lalive/zweimüller 2009; ruhm 2004, 2000). • zsuzsanna makay428 it is not only policies that shape mothers’ employment after childbirth, but also personal values and attitudes. according to socialisation theory, women’s employment decisions are driven by their preferences and feelings which are partly determined by socialisation (blair-loy 2003). as stated by kremer, care is crucial for women since it shapes their identity. so, women’s decisions concerning work are often made in the context of care which means that if mothers do not work, this is because they do not want to; they prefer to care. however, “ideals of care” differ according to welfare states which are shaped by diverse cultural dimensions (kremer 2007). at the same time, values may not only differ between countries, but also within countries, even though the main characteristics and preoccupations of women – namely the effort to conciliate work and family life – may be the same (hakim 1999). indeed, women see career and family as competing goals, which are not compatible since both require whole devotion. qualitative interviews with highly educated mothers showed that they do not even challenge to combine the two spheres but rather resign to having children and giving up their career after childbirth (blair-loy 2003). the incompatibility of career and motherhood was also emphasised recently in a study conducted among polish women, which found that even though women were very much motivated to work for pay, they found a professional career too demanding to be combined with childrearing (matysiak/ mynarska 2021). the tendency to challenge the conciliation of work and family may be lower in countries where the male-breadwinner model is prevalent and where social norms expect mothers to care for their children. opinions concerning mothers and fathers respective roles are decisive from this point of view, and they are especially conservative in hungary where 80 percent of individuals of reproductive age agree that “a pre-school child suffers, if his/her mother works”, while in austria and france this is around 50 percent (panova/buber-ennser 2016). the availability and the quality of childcare is an important factor of mothers’ labour market participation, since it decreases the opportunity costs of childrearing. however, studies analysing this effect among mothers of children below the age of three years show mixed results (neuberger et al. 2022). some studies found a positive correlation between the availability of childcare and labour market decisions (brewer et al. 2022; del boca 2002), while in germany for example, scholars came to the conclusion, that the increase of subsidised childcare after 2008 raised maternal participation rates only modestly. furthermore, it could not be concluded that the lack of childcare accounted for low participation rates of mothers with children below three (bick 2016). another study, conducted in germany as well, showed positive effects but only in west germany and after the birth of a second child (zoch/hondralis 2017). in japan, an important reform of childcare availability increased women’s labour market entry, but the effect was mainly visible among women who were strongly attached to their job and thus had the highest probability to use childcare (yamaguchi et al. 2018; zhang/managi 2021). paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 429 parental leave in the three countries of austria, france and hungary was modifi ed several times in the last decades. in the following, we look at differences and similarities between the three countries and examine ppl reforms. 3 parental leave and women’s employment in austria, france and hungary even though austria and france both belong to the ‘conservative-corporatist’ welfare regime in esping-andersen’s typology of welfare regimes (espingandersen 1990), they are very different in what concerns family policy, labour force participation of mothers or the availability of external childcare. hungary, as a post-socialist country also differs in several aspects, despite the fact that in an attempt to incorporate post-communist countries into the classical typology of the welfare regimes, it has been demonstrated, that these countries mostly resemble the conservative-corporatist group, even though they are characterised by a lower level of governmental programmes and social assistance (fenger 2007). still, low female participation, reliance upon social contributions instead of taxes, moderate income redistributions, and rather high levels of unemployment are typical in esping-andersen’s conservative-corporatist group as well as in central-european countries. while in western europe, it was mainly after the 1970s that women’s labour force participation increased rapidly, in eastern europe this happened earlier, since communist ideology encouraged women’s employment, and the labour market needed their workforce. therefore, childcare facilities were developed and the family impact of childrearing on labour force participation during the following decades was smaller than in several western european countries (van der lippe/ van dijk 2002). in hungary, a fi rst paid childcare leave of three years was introduced in the 1960s, and women extensively made use of it throughout the following forty years. indeed, the majority of mothers left the labour market after childbirth for several years to care at home for their children (inglot 2008; lafont 2001; massey et al. 1995). this incorporated the idea into the hungarian society that at least until the age of three years, mothers’ have to take care of their children themselves. this norm has persisted far beyond the political transition of 1989 and still, in 2022, prompts the great majority of women to take a leave of several years after childbirth (hasková et al. 2012; makay 2018). the historical background was different in austria and france, where women entered the labour market in response to the development of the service sector and following major changes in women’s social status (prskawetz et al. 2008). in france, parental leave benefi ts and childcare facilities were developed parallel to the rise in women’s participation, while in austria, because of the lack of childcare arrangements, part-time work became a strategy of work-family conciliation. as a result, parental leave benefi ts and the labour force participation of mothers with young children vary considerably between the three countries. so do childcare policies, and this results in very different post-employment patterns. in 2005, only • zsuzsanna makay430 6.6 percent of children below the age of three years were enrolled in early childhood education and care services in hungary, while this was 44 percent in france. in austria, where we have data for the year 2010, 12.5 percent of children were in this situation.1 different developments concerning parental leave benefi ts resulted in these contrasts, and we will look at these in more detail country by country. 3.1 austria austria has had a strongly familialistic family policy until the last decade, characterised by a gendered division of work and care, a male breadwinner model and a conservative ideology (blum 2010; neyer 2010; valarino et al. 2018). the fi rst paid parental leave was introduced in 1961 and until 1990, its maximal duration was 12 months (blum 2010). the benefi t was employment related and dependent on former income. in 1990, the duration of the leave was extended to 2 years, and fathers became eligible to take the leave. because of strict eligibility criteria, however, very few fathers did so. in 1995, the leave was shortened again and a “fathers’ quota” was introduced: parents could only take the whole 24 months of the leave, if the father took at least six months. the major change occurred, however, not in fathers’ participation (which changed very little), but in work requirements needed for automatic renewal of parental leave eligibility which had an important effect on fertility timing (lalive/zweimüller 2009). in 2002, a universal childcare allowance was introduced which was independent of previous employment. it could be claimed for a maximum of 30 months, completed by six months for the second parent. job protection however remained for 24 months only. in 2008, a more fl exible model was introduced with different choices concerning the length of paid leave and the amount received: 30+6 months for the second parent with 436 eur/month, 20+4 months with 624 eur/month or 15+3 months with 800 eur/month. in 2009, the fi rst option was the most popular among austrian families. in 2010, two additional short options were introduced with the aim to encourage women to enter the labour market sooner and thus reduce the opportunity costs of childbearing. the different options could also be combined with labour market participation and additional earnings, even though with limited amounts (rille-pfeiffer 2011). the reforms of the austrian parental leave system during the fi rst decade of the 2000s are seen as a “muddled modernisation”, since the system was complemented with new elements which were added to the existing ones without major shift towards better work-life balance or gender equality (blum 2010; buber-ennser 2015). indeed, despite the reforms, the lack of substantial development of childcare facilities before the mid-2000s made it very diffi cult for women to conciliate employment with childrearing and left the gendered aspect of the system mostly unchanged (auer/welte 2009; leibetseder 2013). the enrolment in external childcare of children below age three was only 11.8 percent in 20072 and important regional differences 1 oecd family database. 2 it increased rapidly afterwards: 23.3 percent in 2013 and 25.5 percent in 2017 (buber-ennser 2015; mauerer 2018). paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 431 persisted with variable opening hours making it diffi cult for both parents to work full-time (buber-ennser 2015). indeed, part-time work became one of the main conciliation strategies of work and family in austria which is largely adopted among lower and higher educated mothers and is used as a long-time arrangement of conciliation (riederer/berghammer 2020). this is coupled among families with preschool children with the return of a “modernised” male breadwinner model where the mother works part-time and the father full-time (berghammer 2014). 3.2 france in france, women’s employment rates began to rise in the 1970s and increased steadily since then, reaching relatively high rates in the 2000s compared to other european countries (fig. 1). maternal employment rates were also relatively high: even with a child below the age of three, more than half of the mothers were in employment in 2005. indeed, compared to the other two countries, france stands out with a benefi t system that supports mothers’ quick return to the labour market after childbirth, a widely available childcare system and social norms that accept external childcare for children from a very young age (salles et al. 2010; toulemon et al. 2008). maternity and parental leave benefi ts were developed in the second half of the 20th century. a paid maternity leave of 16 weeks was introduced in 1978 and extended later to 26 weeks for third or higher order births (odul-asorey 2013). a paid parental leave of three years was introduced in 1985 for families having three children or more which was extended to second-born children in 1994 with relatively modest replacement rates, but with the possibility to take the leave on a part-time basis (collombet 2016). this reform negatively affected labour market participation of mothers, since participation rates decreased to levels of the beginning of the 1980s. it was mainly low educated mothers and mothers in precarious working situations who resigned from paid work after a second birth. the reform also drastically increased leave take-up after third births, especially among women who left the labour market after a second birth. besides, 98 percent of benefi ciaries were women, and interruptions negatively affected their income after their re-entry into the labour market (afsa 1996; lequien 2012; piketty 2005). in 2004, a parental leave of six months was introduced for fi rst births, which resulted in shorter career interruptions, but its wage penalties for mothers are visible until two years after their return to the labour market (joseph et al. 2012). parental leave benefi ts in france were always related to employment with relatively strict requirements. for being eligible for paid parental leave during six months after a fi rst birth, mothers have to be on the labour market for two years before the birth, and requirements are not less strict for higher order births (even though they take into account eventual periods off employment because of a previous birth). at the same time, diverse forms of external childcare arrangements are available and several benefi ts enable families to combine childrearing and employment (toulemon et al. 2008). • zsuzsanna makay432 3.3 hungary in hungary, as in other socialist countries, women began to enter the labour market in large numbers from the beginning of the 1960s. socialist ideology saw labour force participation as gender egalitarianism and encouraged women to take up work outside of the family sphere. in addition, the massive industrialisation required a large number of workers, and men as well as women were mainly employed in heavy industry factories. compared to western countries, labour force participation of women was already high: 71 percent of women aged 18-54 were active in 1972 and 80 percent in 1987 (abraham/kezdi 2000). most women were eligible for parental leave and parental leave benefi ts. in the middle of the 1960s, a fi rst paid parental leave of three years was introduced. the leave was very popular among the mothers who suffered from a “double shift”: after their long working-day, they had to do the vast majority of the child-related tasks themselves, since fathers’ involvement was not very common. around 44.4 percent of mothers having a child younger than two years old were on childcare leave in 1970. in 1980, 68.8 percent were in this situation, while this number increased to 73.2 percent in 1987 (központi statisztikai hivatal 1989). a second parental leave benefi t was introduced in 1984, which was income related and could be claimed for two years. nurseries were developed for children under the age of three years, and kindergarten from the age of three was almost universally accessible on a full-time basis. after the change of the political regime in 1989, parental leave benefi ts remained unchanged, but the economy underwent drastic changes with privatisation, large drop in gdp, high unemployment rates and structural transformations (kertesi/köllő 2002). in addition, the number of places in nurseries for children under the age of three fell drastically: 64,000 places were available in 1980, 50,000 in 1990 and only 25,000 in 2000 (központi statisztikai hivatal 2012). in 1995, the “bokros package” was introduced and meant important restrictions in public spending, the cut of social and family benefi ts, the introduction of tuition fees in higher education and other restrictive measures (ilonszki/kurtan 1996). parental leave benefi ts became means-tested, their duration was shortened to a maximum of two years instead of three, and the more generous benefi t introduced in 1984 was abolished. poverty rates increased drastically and birth rates dropped: in 1996, the total fertility rate decreased for the fi rst time to under 1.5 in hungary. in 1998, a new government was elected and most of the restrictive measures were withdrawn. paid parental leave was reformed: a fl at rate benefi t could be claimed during three years without previous employment requirements and a higher, income-related benefi t could be claimed until the second birthday of a child for women (and men) who worked prior to childbirth. this parental leave system persisted until 2008 . paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 433 4 data and methods 4.1 data we use the fi rst two waves of the generations and gender survey (ggs round 1): a longitudinal, representative survey on social and demographic topics conducted in the three countries in the 2000s. the same questionnaire was used during data collection in the three countries and data were harmonised and are freely available on the ggp website.3 in austria, wave 1 was conducted between september 2008 and february 2009 among 5,000 men and women aged 18-45, while wave 2 was conducted four years later among the same respondents (age range 22-49). the sample was refreshed, but the new respondents are not in the harmonised ggs data fi le. 78 percent of fi rst-wave respondents answered at the second wave. in both waves, a computerassisted (capi) face to face interview method was used.4 capi was also used in france, where the fi rst wave took place in 2005 among 10,079 persons aged 18-79 and the second wave in 2008 among the same persons, with a second response rate of 88 percent. in hungary, the fi rst wave took place at the end of 2004 and the fig. 1: labour force participation rate of women aged 15-64 years, % 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1960 1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2005 austria france hungary source: international labour organization. https://www.ilo.org/shinyapps/bulkexplorer38/ ?lang=en&segment=indicator&id=eap_dwap_sex_age_rt_a 3 https://www.ggp-i.org/ 4 https://ggp.colectica.org/item/int.ggp/cddfada5-819d-4f02-8d62-df2e3c3a1220/2 https://www.ilo.org/shinyapps/bulkexplorer38/ https://www.ggp-i.org/ https://ggp.colectica.org/item/int.ggp/cddfada5-819d-4f02-8d62-df2e3c3a1220/2 • zsuzsanna makay434 fi rst months of 2005 among men and women aged 21-78 and the second wave at the end of 2008 and the fi rst months of 2009 among the same respondents. 13,540 people answered in the fi rst wave and 10,641 in the second. at both waves a paper and pencil questionnaire was used by the interviewer. the questionnaire included the complete fertility history of the respondents, including month and year of birth of each child ever born, and the information was updated in the second wave. thus, births that occurred between the two waves are also recorded. besides, during the second wave, retrospective employment histories were collected since the age of 16 of the respondents. employment history was collected by asking respondents to take into account activities that lasted at least three months. a distinction was made between 12 different types of activities which we grouped into periods of “employment” (defi ned as employed and selfemployed) and non-employment (student, helping family member, unemployed, retired, in military or social service, homemaker, maternity leave, parental leave, care leave, ill or disabled for a long time or permanently, other status).5 there are some statuses which could also have fi t into the “employed” category, such as helping family member in military service. these, however, concerned less than 2 percent of the women, and it seemed more relevant to take a strict defi nition of employment. we linked these employment and non-employment spells to the fertility histories of the respondents and thus constructed an event history database with all births where the exact birthdate of the child was known (month and year) and where the employment history of the mother included information of her prebirth employment status and her activity after birth. the focus of the present study is on employment or non-employment after childbirth, that means, from the date of birth of the child until his/her age of 40 months. the cut-off period of 40 months was chosen, because in the three countries, the maximum length of paid (and unpaid) parental leave is 36 months.6 running our analysis until a length of 40 months permits us to see how women using the maximal length of parental leave enter the labour market after a prolonged absence. since we study leave take-up directly after childbirth (it may only include maternity leave for some respondents) only women are included in the analysis. pre-birth employment is defi ned as employment (employed or self-employed) during the 12-months period before the birth of the child. since only activity spells lasting at least three months were recorded, our criterion was to have an employment spell during the 12 months. this spell could begin earlier than 12 months before the birth or during this 12-month period, and end at any time before the birth of the child. in some cases where women worked during the whole pregnancy and took only a very short leave afterwards, we do not have any interruption in the 5 see the second wave questionnaire for more details http://www.ggp-i.org/sites/default/fi les/ questionnaires/ggs_wave2_questionnaire_v.2.0.pdf and the study profi le gauthier et al. (2018). 6 except for hungary, where since 1993, women having at least three children can prolong the leave until the 8th birthday of the youngest child. http://www.ggp-i.org/sites/default/fi paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 435 employment spell. these women are treated as having taken only a three months maternity leave period after birth. background variables include basic demographic information about the mother: her age, highest level of education (at the time of the fi rst interview), marital status (at the time of the current birth), pre-birth employment (if the mother worked or not), the birth order of the child. detailed information on the sample and the distribution of the background variables can be found in table 1. different periods were constructed in the three countries in order to analyse the effects of parental leave reforms on labour market entry after childbirth. in austria, a paid parental leave of one year was available for employed mothers during our so-called period 1 (1981-1990). this was extended to 2 years afterwards (period 2: tab. 1: sample description austria france hungary n % n % n % period1 period 1 206 13.2 2439 48.4 283 13.2 period 2 392 22.2 1029 19.7 668 31.4 period 3 640 31.7 1203 21.2 414 18.7 period 4 456 22.9 519 10.7 869 36.7 period 5 183 10.0 marital status at the time of birth married 1241 68.0 3465 69.2 1913 85.3 not married 636 32.0 1725 30.8 321 14.7 highest level of education at the time of the interview lower secondary or lower 254 16.4 1787 38.2 473 22.1 upper secondary 1012 51.1 1957 37.2 1149 50.7 post-secondary or higher 611 32.5 1446 24.6 612 27.2 birth order first child 979 53.3 2462 46.7 1036 45.6 second child 680 34.9 1750 33.1 831 37.7 third or higher order child 218 11.7 978 20.2 367 16.7 activity before / during the pregnancy worked 775 56.9 3525 65.4 1023 45.1 did not work 1102 43.1 1665 34.6 1211 54.9 competing events (outcome) entered work 492 26.8 3286 60.5 815 37.2 new childbirth 367 19.9 910 18.9 656 29.9 censored 1018 53.4 994 20.6 763 32.9 mean age (years) 27.2 27.9 26.3 n 1877 5190 2234 1 see the description of the periods after the table and table 2 for more details. source: generations and gender survey wave 1 and wave 2. percentages are weighted. • zsuzsanna makay436 1991-1995). in 1996, the paid leave for mothers was shortened to 1.5 years, so period 3 stretches from 1996 to 2002. that year, the leave was extended to 30 months with the three months of “father’s quota” and the paid leave became universal, independent of previous employment (period 4: 2003-2007). in austria, we have a fi fth period (2008-2012) to account for the introduction of the new fl exible form of parental leave. in france, period 1 goes from 1960 to 1985 where no paid leave was available after maternity leave. the introduction of a paid leave of three years after a third birth marks the second period (1986-1994). the leave was extended to second children (period 3: 1995-2004). a paid parental leave of six months was introduced for fi rst-born children in 2005 (period 4: 2005-2008). in hungary, the fi rst period (1965-1987) marks the socialist decades where two kinds of leave (of two and of three years) were available for previously working mothers. the years of the political-economic transition mark the next period where parental leave benefi ts remained unchanged but the labour market was highly affected by the political and economic transition and the number of nursery places decreased (1988-1994). the austerity years of the bokros package described above mark period 3 (1995-1998). during the last period (period 4: 1999-2008), parental leave was made universal and extended again to a maximum of three years. the different periods in the three countries are summarised in table 2. 4.2 methods we analyse labour force participation after childbirth and build event history models, where the dependent variable is the incidence of labour market entry. we measure time to entry on a discrete scale, starting our observation at the birth of the child (month and year) and ending when the mother enters labour market or 40 months after childbirth at the latest. labour market entry after childbirth is likely to be infl uenced by further fertility plans (fahlén 2013), since many women take advantage of parental leave benefi ts to have several children without entering or re-entering the labour market after birth. in addition, in the three countries, average birth intervals between fi rst and second, second and third births are below three years, thus our analysis has to take into account the possibility of a new childbirth during the observation period. we decided to treat a second childbirth during the observations time as a “competitive” event meaning that a mother can only experience either labour market entry or a new childbirth during the maximum observation period of 40 months, but not both events. indeed, in the competitive risks models, after experiencing one event, the mother is no longer at risk of experiencing the other event. thus, we construct cause-specifi c hazard models which show the instantaneous risk of failure from one of our main cause, namely labour market entry. for this purpose, we use the “stcrreg” command in stata and show in the output the subhazard ratios (shr) which are the exponentiated regression coeffi cients. we also compute cumulative incidence functions (cif) from the subhazard ratios to visualise the results of the competing-risks regression (cleves et al. 2016). paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 437 ta b . 2 : t im e p er io d s ta ke n in to a cc o un t i n th e th re e co un tr ie s p e r io d 1 p e r io d 2 p e r io d 3 p e r io d 4 p e r io d 5 a u s t r ia 19 81 -1 99 0 19 91 -1 99 5 19 96 -2 00 2 20 03 -2 00 7 2 00 820 12 p l 1 ye ar p ai d p ar en ta l p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve fo r p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f 3 0 fl ex ib le p ai d p ar en ta l le av e fo r m o th er s ex te n d ed t o 2 y ea rs m o th er s sh o rt en ed t o m o n th s + 6 m o n th s le av e w it h 3 o p ti o n s 1. 5 ye ar s + 6 m o n th s "f at h er s q u o ta " "f at h er s q u o ta " e lig ib ili ty p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d u n iv er sa l u n iv er sa l p ar en ts p ar en ts p ar en ts fr a n c e 19 60 -1 98 5 19 86 -1 99 4 19 95 -2 00 4 20 05 -2 00 8 p l n o p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve ; p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f 3 p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f 6 m at er n it y le av e o f ye ar s af te r th ir d o r 3 ye ar s af te r m o n th s af te r fi rs t b ir th s 16 w ee ks h ig h er o rd er b ir th s se co n d b ir th s e lig ib ili ty p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d m o th er s p ar en ts p ar en ts p ar en ts h u n g a r y 19 65 -1 98 7 19 88 -1 99 4 19 95 -1 99 8 19 99 -2 00 8 p l p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f p ai d p ar en ta l l ea ve o f 3 ye ar s 3 ye ar s 2 ye ar s 3 ye ar s e lig ib ili ty p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d m ea n s te st ed a n d u n iv er sa l m o th er s m o th er s p re vi o u sl y em p lo ye d p ar en ts s o ur ce : o w n d es ig n • zsuzsanna makay438 a mother can have several children, and this had to be taken into account in the analysis. since we observe mothers labour market behaviour via their children, we had to account for the fact that the observations (this means the children themselves) were not completely independent. for this reason, we added the vce (cluster) option in the regressions, which adjusted the standard errors of the estimated parameters to account for the possible correlations. data are weighted using the variable bweight of the ggs dataset. 5 hypothesis labour market entry after the birth of a child is expected to be more intensive in france than in austria and hungary, since in the latter countries, a paid parental leave of at least two years can already be taken after the birth of the fi rst child, and childcare for children under the age of one year is less developed than in france (h1). in line with the literature, we expect that due to their work-reducing effect, parental leave extensions directly and negatively affect labour market participation. this may be visible in austria after 1991, when paid parental leave was extended to two years instead of one year and in 2003-2007, when it was prolonged to 30+6 months (h2_at). and in hungary after 1999, when ppl became a universal right (h2_hu). in france, ppl depends on the number of children, so the work-reducing effect may vary according to birth order, since the extension of 1986 concerned third born children and that of 1994 second born children. a work reducing effect may also be visible after 2005, when a six-month paid leave was introduced after a fi rst birth (h2_fr). in austria, the introduction of fl exibility into the ppl system in 2008 may have facilitated the conciliation and was likely to accelerate labour market entry (h3). in hungary, structural changes may be more important than in the other two countries. the political and economic transition coupled with high unemployment was likely to reduce labour market entry after 1989. parental leave benefi ts remained unaffected by the transition, and a three-year paid leave could be claimed after a birth (h4). background characteristics may infl uence mothers’ labour force participation in the three countries. we look at education, since higher educated women’s human capital is more negatively affected by prolonged inactivity (bernhardt 1993). so, we assume that education is an important predictor of the intensity of labour market entry after the birth of a child (h5). mothers who worked before the birth are in general more likely to return quickly to the labour market, since they are more attached to it. moreover, in the three countries, job security is guaranteed during parental leave (only during 24 months in austria), so these mothers do not have to spend time until fi nding a new job. they may enter labour market more quickly after childbirth than women who did not work before the birth (h6). paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 439 6 results 6.1 descriptive results the cumulative incidence functions show that mothers in france enter the labour market much quicker after childbirth than austrian and hungarian mothers. in france, 43 percent enter the labour market after three months, which in most cases marks the end of maternity leave, and half of them work when the child is six months old. afterwards however, labour market entry slows down and the majority of women who stayed at home do not enter the labour market before the child turns three. 40 months after birth around one third of the french mothers are not working (fig. 2). in both austria and hungary, labour market entry after childbirth is less intensive, and in both countries, participation is rare in the fi rst six months. after this, austrian mothers slowly begin to take up work, but it is only after 16 months that the proportion of women already on the labour market reaches 10 percent. in hungary, this happens much later, only at the second birthday of the child. in austria, more than one fi fth of women enter the labour market around the second birthday of the child, and labour market entry increases in an accelerated manner afterwards. in fig. 2: intensity of labour market entry after childbirth in austria, france and hungary 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months austria france hungary 1 .75 .5 .25 0 cumulative incidence functions. source: own calculations based on the generations and gender survey. • zsuzsanna makay440 hungary, the labour market-entry is mainly concentrated around the third birthday of the child. at the end of the observation period, less than half of hungarian and austrian mothers have taken up work. as described above, we consider a next childbirth as a competing risk of entering employment. thus, women who have a new child are no longer at risk of labour market-entry. cumulative incidence rates for a subsequent childbirth show that in austria and hungary, almost 25 percent of women have a next child within 40 months without entering the labour market between the two births. in france, this proportion is 12 percent, since women are more likely to enter the labour market rapidly after childbirth. they may quit it again for a next birth (fig. 3). 6.2 results of the regression models regression models were performed separately for the three countries in order to be able to incorporate the different time periods. all results are weighted. austria compared to the years 1981 to 1990, women who had a child between 2008 and 2012 were more than two times more likely to enter the labour market while controlling for background characteristics (fig. 4). indeed, their subhazard ratio is increased signifi cantly with relatively large confi dence intervals which is probably due to the lower sample size of this group. labour market entry is not signifi cantly different at the other periods. married women are less likely to take up a job than non-married women. their subhazard ratio is decreased by 17 percent. birth order does not have any effect on employment after birth in austria. the risk of highly educated women is however increased by 44 percent compared to low educated. having worked before the birth matters as well: those mothers who had a job see their risk increased by 2.8. in austria, younger women are a bit more likely to take up work after childbirth: a oneyear increase in age slightly reduces the relative risks. fig. 3: cumulative incidence of labour market entry and the birth of a next child 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time_comp austria cum. inc. work cum. inc. childbirth france hungary 1 .75 .5 .25 0 1 .75 .5 .25 0 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 1 .75 .5 .25 0 time_comp 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time_comp source: own calculations based on the generations and gender survey. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 441 when we look at the interaction of education and period, we see that in austria, compared to medium educated women, only highly educated mothers see their labour market entry risks increased at period 5, while there is no signifi cant change among women with medium or lower education. we see this result in figure 5, where only the two signifi cant interaction effects are presented. it becomes evident that the effect of education has changed its meaning over the last decades. compared to the 1981-1990 period, where higher educated women entered the labour market less likely than medium educated ones (their risk was reduced by 52 percent), this changed radically and they had a 2.4 times higher risk to do so in 2008-2012. in the latter period, more than 75 percent of women entered the labour market in the 40 months after birth while there were only 25 percent to do so in the 1980s . interaction effects of the periods and pre-birth employment show that the latter signifi cantly infl uences post-birth employment at every period (fig. 6). in 19811990, women who worked before the birth were four times more likely to enter employment after birth than those who were not working. this effect decreased somewhat in 1991-1995, where labour market entry of working mothers decreased a bit while that of non-working mothers did not change signifi cantly. between 1996 and 2002, participation of women who have worked during the pregnancy increased fig. 4: subhazard ratios for labour market entry in austria (with 95% ci) 1981-1990 (ref) 1991-1995 1996-2002 2003-2007 2008-2012 not married (ref) married low (ref) middle high first child (ref) second child third child or more no (ref) yes age^2 period marital status level of education birth order worked before the birth 0 1 2 3 4 subhazard ratios red dots mark signifi cant effects (p<0.10). source: own calculations based on the generations and gender survey. • zsuzsanna makay442 again to their level of the 1980s, but decreased thereafter between 2003 and 2007 where pl entitlement became universal. this change of the legislation negatively affected labour market entry of both working and non-working mothers. after the introduction of a more fl exible parental leave system in 2008 however, there was a sharp increase in job take-up among mothers who have worked before the birth of the child. fig. 5: competing risks regression of labour market entry in austria according to highest level of education and periods 0 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1981-1990 middle educated (ref.) 1981-1990 highly educated 2008-2012 highly educated .25 .5 .75 1 cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. only signifi cant results are shown. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 443 france in france, there was not much change in the relative labour market entry risks since 1960. compared to the reference period of 1960-1985, there is only signifi cant change between 1986-1994 when relative risks were increased by 11 percent (fig. 7). marital status and age do not infl uence labour market entry, while the other variables are signifi cant. relative risks decrease with the number of children. after a second birth, the risk is decreased by 23 percent, while it is 37 percent lower after a third or a higher order birth. working status in the 12 months before the birth is a very important predictor of post-birth employment in france, since women who worked at the beginning of the pregnancy are almost nine times more likely to take up work after childbirth. interaction effects show, however, that the importance of pre-birth employment has somewhat decreased over the last decades. while in 1960-1985, working women were 14 times more likely to enter the labour market after birth than inactive women, the difference of the risk decreased to 13 times in the 2005-2008 period. at the mean time, job-entry of women who did not work before childbirth already increased (fi gures available on request). fig. 6: competing-risks regression of labour market entry in austria according to labour force participation before the birth and periods 0 .25 .5 .75 1 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1981-1990 didn't work (ref.) 1981-1990 worked 1991-1995 worked 1996-2002 worked 2003-2007 didn't work 2003-2007 worked 2008-2012 worked cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. only signifi cant results are shown. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. • zsuzsanna makay444 interaction effects show that while highly educated mothers take-up a job more often after childbirth, their labour market entry risks have somewhat decreased between 2005-2008 compared to the fi rst two periods (1960-1980 and 1986-1994). concerning very low and medium educated mothers, there is now signifi cant change over the last decades figure 8. we look more attentively at interactions with birth order, since in france the length of ppl depends on the number of children (as mentioned in the country description). to see the effect of the extension of ppl to third birth in 1986, we compared these to third order births in the previous period. results show that there is no signifi cant effect of the reform despite the fact that mothers entered the labour market somewhat more rapidly after a third birth in 1986-1994 than in the previous period (fig. 9, panel a). the extension of ppl to second-born children in 1994, however, reduced mothers’ labour market entry by 28 percent compared to second children born between 1986 and 1994, and the cumulative incidence curves show that labour-market entry was slowed down in an important manner during the whole observation period of 40 months after childbirth (fig. 9, panel b). fig. 7: subhazard ratios for labour market entry in france (with 95% ci) 1960-1985 (ref) 1986-1994 1995-2004 2005-2008 not married (ref) married low (ref) middle high first child (ref) second child third child or more no (ref) yes age^2 period marital status level of education birth order worked during pregnancy 0 2 4 6 8 10 subhazard ratios red dots mark signifi cant effects (p<0.10). source: own calculations based on the generations and gender survey. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 445 fig. 8: competing risks regression of labour market entry in france according to highest level of education and periods 0 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1960-1985 low educated 1960-1980 middle educated (ref.) 1960-1980 highly educated 1986-1994 highly educated 1995-2004 highly educated 2005-2008 highly educated .25 .5 .75 1 cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. only signifi cant results are shown. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. fig. 9: competing-risks regression of labour market entry in france after a third, a second and a fi rst child at different periods panel a 0 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months panel b 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1986-1994 2nd child 1995-2004 2nd child panel c 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months .25 .5 .75 1 0 .25 .5 .75 1 0 .25 .5 .75 1 cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. only the results of the middle panel are signifi cant. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. • zsuzsanna makay446 the third reform of ppl was the introduction of a six-month leave for the fi rst child in 2004, and compared to the previous period, this reform did not affect labour market entry of fi rst-child mothers (fig. 9, panel c). hungary compared to the years of state socialism (1965-1987 in our analysis), labour market entry after childbirth was less common in hungary at every period until the 2010s. (fig. 10). between 1988 and 1994 and 1995-1998, the risk was reduced by around 40 percent, while between 1999-2008 it was reduced by 30 percent compared to the years preceding the political transition. labour market entry is also signifi cantly infl uenced by all covariates in hungary except for marital status. birth order has an unexpected effect. compared to fi rst children, labour market entry is more common among women having a second child (and less common among those having a third or higher order birth). this may be the effect of a strong two-child norm in hungary and of a norm of timing, according to which most second-born children arrive in the three years after the fi rst child. our competitive-risks models took into account the fact that either of the two events (a fig. 10: subhazard ratios for labour market entry in hungary (with 95% ci) 1965-1987 (ref) 1988-1994 1995-1998 1999-2008 not married (ref) married low (ref) middle high first child (ref) second child third child or more no (ref) yes age^2 period marital status level of education birth order worked before/during pregnancy 0 1 2 3 4 subhazard ratios red dots mark signifi cant effects (p<0.10). source: own calculations based on the generations and gender survey. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 447 new childbirth or labour-market entry) can arrive but not both. still, by looking only at the labour-market entry risks for women who did not have a next child within 40 months, those having had a second child enter the labour market more rapidly than those having had a fi rst child. this result is somewhat puzzling. we tend to think that mothers with a fi rst child stay at home and wait for the next pregnancy which has not yet occurred while those of a second child who are less likely to plan a third one may speed up labour market entry. women who have worked in the 12 months before the birth of a child are more likely to enter the labour market: their risk is increased by 41 percent compared to women who have not worked. the effect is less pronounced than in france and in austria. women having medium or high education levels are more likely to work after childbirth. the risk for women with a middle level of education is two times higher, while in the case of highly educated women the risk is almost three times higher compared to low educated women. age is signifi cant, but only has a slight effect . the interaction between the periods and highest level of education shows that in hungary, education level always was an important predictor of labour market entry (fig. 11). however, even by controlling for the other variables, it remains evident that fig. 11: competing-risks regression of labour market entry in hungary according to highest level of education and periods cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. only signifi cant results are shown. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1965-1987 low educated 1965-1987 middle educated (ref.) 1988-1994 low educated 1988-1994 middle educated 1995-1998 low educated 1995-1998 middle educated 1999-2008 low educated 1999-2008 middle educated 0 .25 .5 .75 1 • zsuzsanna makay448 labour market entry has decreased since the political transition and this for both low educated women and for women who have completed secondary education, while there is no signifi cant effect for higher educated women. for middle educated women, it was mainly the years of transition (1988-1994) that negatively affected their labour market entry, which decreased by 46 percent. it slightly increased afterwards. low educated women’s labour market entry was affected both by the transition and by the economic restrictions during the 1990s: their job-entry was lower in the second half of the 1990s than during the transition years. no signifi cant effect was found among highly educated mothers . pre-birth employment affects post-birth employment, and compared to the early years of 1965-1987, non-working mothers’ labour market entry has signifi cantly decreased at every period by around 55 percent. the same is true for mothers who worked before the pregnancy. their probability of entering the labour market has decreased during the transition years and in the period of austerity between 1995 and 1998 (fig. 12). 7 conclusion and discussion using the retrospective employment histories and fertility histories in the generations and gender survey, the aim of this article was to account for the effect of the extensions and reductions of paid parental leave periods on labour market entry after childbirth in austria, france and hungary. scholars have indeed argued that too long periods of paid parental leave act as work-reducing policies in that fig. 12: competing-risks regression of labour market entry in hungary according to labour force participation before the birth and periods cumulated incidence functions based on the exponentiated regression coeffi cients (subhazard ratios) of the interaction terms. source: own calculations based the generations and gender survey. women who didn't work before/during the pregnancy 0 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months women who worked before/during the pregnancy 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 time since birth in months 1965-1987 1988-1994 1995-1998 1999-2008 .25 .5 1 .75 0 .25 .5 1 .75 paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 449 they hinder women’s labour market entry, what contributes to wage penalty and to labour market segregation. since the 1960s, paid parental leave was extended several times in the three countries, which differ considerably regarding work-family conciliation: differences are visible in parental leave regulations, the social norms regarding mothers’ employment and the availability of external childcare. they are also diverse regarding their historical background, with hungary having transitioned from a socialist country to a democratic regime during the observation period. results have shown that labour market entry after childbirth is much more intensive in france than in the other two countries (h1 confi rmed) which was what we expected. results concerning the changes of ppl and our other hypothesis are less obvious. in austria the extension of ppl to 2 years in 1991 and to 30+6 months in 2003 did not signifi cantly affect labour market entry compared to the 1980s, which means that women’s time spent at home with their child after a birth did not signifi cantly increase (h2_at rejected). indeed, in austria, the one year ppl did not mean that mothers took up work after the fi rst birthday of their child in the 1980s, they already stayed at home longer (leitner 2014). the fact that the results were not signifi cant in the regression models means that the extension of the ppl was in line with mothers’ desire to prolong childcare at home since leave preferences favour a long leave in austria (valarino et al. 2018). our results are in contradiction with previous ones, since it had been shown that the extension negatively infl uenced the return to work. our descriptive fi ndings showed the same result (available on request), while the effect disappeared in the regression model. this may be because of the different time frame and methodology: our dataset compares the period 1981-1991 to the next one, instead of comparing the months before and after the reform. besides, we control for several background variables, which were unavailable in the austrian social security database used by lalive and zweimüller who focused mainly on fi rst births (lalive/zweimüller 2009). in hungary, the ppl reform of 1999 did not have a signifi cant negative effect on labour market entry, since subhazard ratios increased compared to the previous period (h2_hu rejected). with this reform, the three-year ppl was introduced again in hungary, and the previous employment requirements were abolished. the explanation of the lack of a signifi cant effect may be similar to that in austria: independently of the reforms, the majority of women already took a leave of around three years and so the reform did not introduce signifi cant changes. they mostly continued to stay at home for a longer period after childbirth. in france, ppl reforms were changed differently according to the number of children. among the three reforms studied, the 1994 reform (which introduced a leave of three years for second-born children) negatively and signifi cantly affected labour market entry of mothers. their subhazard ratios were reduced by 28 percent compared to the period 1960-1985 (h2_fr partly confi rmed). this confi rms the results of previous studies (afsa 1996; piketty 2005). the other two french reforms were not found to signifi cantly reduce mothers’ labour market entry. the reform of 2004 concerning fi rst children may be without effect, because of the relatively • zsuzsanna makay450 low income replacement of the benefi t and the possibility to take it on a part-time basis. social norms that favour mothers’ quick return to the labour market and the availability of childcare facilities may lead mothers to resume work rapidly after a fi rst birth. the introduction of a more fl exible ppl system in austria led to more intensive labour market entries after 2008, since subhazard ratios were increased by 2.4 compared to the reference period of 1981-1990, but also compared to the period 2003-2007 (h3_confi rmed). the development of childcare facilities after 2008 made it possible for women to enter the labour market more rapidly, and according to our results, this has mainly accelerated highly educated women’s entry into paid work. they may enter the labour market on a part-time basis, since this pattern became their main conciliation strategy over the last decades (riederer/berghammer 2020) we address the question of whether the parenthood effect on employment has declined. by following synthetic cohorts of mothers and childless women up to retirement age, we can study both the short-term and long-term consequences of having a child. we consider employment participation as well as working time and also perform analyses by educational level. our study is based on the austrian microcensus, conducted between 1986 and 2016, and uses descriptive methods, logistic regression models, and decomposition analysis. the results show that the increase in the proportion of part-time work has led to a declining work volume of mothers with young children, despite employment rates of mothers having increased across cohorts. return to the workplace is progressively concentrated when the child is 3-5 years old, but the parenthood effect has become weaker only from the time children enter school. part-time employment is primarily adopted (at least with younger children. in hungary, labour market entry was less intensive after the political transition of 1989, a period characterised by high unemployment rates, the closure of nurseries and other economic constraints. ppl legislation did not change during the fi rst years of the transition, still mothers’ labour market entry was hindered (h4 confi rmed). indeed, ppl was not able to compensate for the impact of economic and political crisis, since unemployment and inactivity were important predictors of poverty which considerably affected families with children (gábos/szívós 2002). so, even without modifi cation in the legislation, labour market entry of mothers was made signifi cantly more diffi cult by structural changes. women of all levels of education were concerned and our results show that labour market entry since 1988 has never reached the levels of the years before the political transition. on the one hand, this may be due to the fact that the social norm of the caring mother is now defi nitely widespread in the society, and women do not see themselves entering the labour market before their child turns two or three years old. on the other hand, the post-socialist decades were characterised by the security of employment, which disappeared after the transition. women did not have many personal choices, but the majority of them was in employment, and their return to the labour market was assured by the socialist ideology of full employment. this job security guaranteed by the state disappeared after the transition to market economy and made labour market-entry after childbirth more uncertain. paid parental leave reforms and mothers’ employment in austria, france and hungary • 451 the importance of education and of a previous job for an accelerated labour market entry was confi rmed by our results (h5 and h6 confi rmed). in austria, the importance of education has risen over the last decades, and it is mainly highly educated mothers who benefi t from fl exibility and are better able to conciliate work and family life, at least after the second birthday of the child. in france, it is mainly low educated women who exit the labour market for a longer time, and this negative effect has increased in 2005-2008. a previous job speeds up labour market entry, and this effect has increased in austria over the last decades. our study has some limitations. first, they rely on employment data collected retrospectively, so some of the information on the exact length of employment and non-employment periods may be biased. second, childbirth and labour market participation around the time of birth is highly dependent on structural circumstances, both on the macro level (e.g. employment or unemployment rates) and the micro level (e.g. personal situation on the labour market, individual eligibility to paid parental leave or its replacement rates). our data and the already high complexity of our analysis did not make it possible to account for additional structural factors, which would be worth to study in a more detailed manner. finally, we could not include the very important changes that the three countries underwent over the last decades into our analysis, namely the educational expansion, the overall rise in women’s employment rates and the changing transformation of parenthood and gender attitudes (goldscheider 2000). still, our results show the important interrelation between ppl and other structural and social factors. indeed, reforms of ppl do not seem to affect mothers’ labour market choices by themselves, neither in a negative way, nor in a positive way, if social norms are not ready to cope with new behaviour and if the lack of childcare facilities do not make it possible to better conciliate work and family life. this means, that in very conservative settings where mothers would like to care for their children themselves, even the effect of fl exible policies is limited on the short run. however, a slight increase towards earlier labour market entry may be achieved if mothers are attached to the labour market, which is mainly the case among highly educated mothers. on the long run, social norms may positively infl uence labour market participation during early childhood. in a less conservative setting, such as in france, where mothers are attached to the labour market and childcare facilities are available, small changes – e.g. the introduction of a leave of six months – do not reduce labour market participation. however, the introduction of a leave of three years decreased mothers paid work, which means that it acted as a work-reducing policy. in france, this negative effect mainly concerned low-educated mothers and contributed to their prolonged absence from paid work. these results show the importance of weighing up the pros and the cons before every reform regarding the length of ppl, which has to be done in line with other contextual and structural settings in order to avoid 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https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxx020 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.140833 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2018.09.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eap.2020.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcx068 • zsuzsanna makay456 date of submission: 02.08.2022 date of acceptance: 15.05.2023 dr. zsuzsanna makay (). hungarian demographic research institute. budapest, hungary. e-mail: makay@demografi a.hu url: https://www.demografi a.hu/en/staff-makay-zsuzsanna https://www.demografia.hu/en/staff-makay-zsuzsanna published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de fertility intentions across five decades in norway fertility intentions across five decades in norway lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik abstract: fertility intentions are strong predictors of future childbearing at both individual and aggregate levels, reflecting cultural norms and values around family formation and childbearing. given the recent decline in fertility across western industrialized societies, research on fertility intentions has become increasingly important. in particular, falling birth rates in the nordic countries − traditionally held up as exemplars of modern family policies that balance work and parenthood − raise the question of whether women of childbearing age have experienced a shift in values related to family and childbearing. using comparable survey data on norwegian women aged 18 to 44 over five decades (1977, 1988, 2003, 2007, and 2020), we examine trends in fertility intentions. we consider short-term fertility intentions, defined as positive intentions to have a(nother) child within the next three to four years, as well as general fertility intentions, defined as positive intentions to have a(nother) child regardless of timing. we compare changes over the study period across demographic (age, parenthood, and partnership statuses) and socioeconomic (employment and education) groups. our results reveal a gradual shift in shortterm fertility intentions toward older age groups, reflecting changes in age-specific fertility rates and rising levels of childlessness. by 2020, both short-term and general fertility intentions had declined to their lowest levels over the study period − a trend that persisted even after controlling for key background characteristics. from 2007 to 2020, we observe a consistent decline in both types of fertility intentions across all sociodemographic groups. the decline in short-term fertility intentions began earlier among young women, childless women, women in education, and women without a co-residential partner − groups previously identified as experiencing sharper fertility declines after 2010 in the nordic countries. the early and uniform downturn across key subgroups suggests that changing family values and life-course expectations may be driving the recent fertility decline. keywords: fertility intentions · desired family size · fertility · norway · social change comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 50 (2025): 129-152 (date of release: 19.08.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-09 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-09en http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-09 • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik130 1 introduction 1.1 background fertility intentions shape reproductive behavior and, ultimately, demographic trends (bachrach/morgan 2013; brehm/schneider 2019). understanding how fertility intentions change over time is crucial for demographers and policymakers alike, since these intentions may both forecast future fertility levels and may reveal shifts in cultural norms and societal values surrounding childbearing. analyzing them offers a window into evolving fertility norms, as childbearing decisions are always affected by a society’s normative climate. in this context, fertility norms refer to prevailing societal beliefs regarding childbearing, including the circumstances under which having children is considered appropriate or desirable. fertility intentions, in contrast, are defined as an individual’s conscious commitment to achieving a childbearing-related goal, often in a specific timeframe (miller 2011). fertility intentions differ from fertility desires, which are broader reflections toward having children or a preferred number of children, without necessarily entailing a concrete plan or commitment to act (miller/pasta 1995). fertility intentions are among the strongest predictors of future childbearing, both at the individual and aggregate levels (bachrach/morgan 2013; harknett/ hartnett 2014). yet, in most contemporary societies, mean intended family size is higher than measured cohort fertility, a discrepancy known as the fertility gap (beaujouan/berghammer 2019). conventional thinking has explained this gap with variation in societal norms, but critics have pointed out that this may be an ecological fallacy: it compares achieved cohort fertility with intended or ideal family sizes rather than with individual reproductive intentions and behavior (philipov/bernardi 2011). nevertheless, studies linking fertility intentions with reproductive outcomes on the individual level find that intentions are not always realized (for an overview, see brehm/schneider 2019). a proportion of births occur without being intended, whether due to contraceptive failure or limited access to abortion. conversely, not all positive fertility intentions lead to births, e.g., due to difficulties in finding (or keeping) a partner, difficulties in conceiving, or other obstacles. regarding different measures of fertility intentions, research also shows that negative fertility intentions are generally a strong predictor of not having (more) children on the individual level (kuhnt/trappe 2016). positive fertility intentions, on the other hand, have a higher predictive power for subsequent childbirths when they are framed within a specified and reasonable timeframe (dommermuth et al. 2015; miller/pasta 1995; philipov 2009; schoen et al. 1999). in this context, intentions to have a(nother) child within the next three to four years are defined as short-term fertility intentions (fahlén 2013; kuhnt/trappe 2016; schoen et al. 1999). short-term fertility intentions differ from general fertility intentions, based on questions with a longer or undefined timeframe (e.g., lifetime fertility intentions). while general fertility intentions are less predictive, they nonetheless capture intentions about family size and prevailing family norms. by studying both short-term and general fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 131 fertility intentions, we can evaluate both the immediate readiness to become a parent and longer lifetime family aspirations shaping overall fertility trends. fertility intentions express individual aspirations and they change with societal conditions. tracking their development over time can provide valuable insights into changing fertility norms. this is particularly important given the recent declines in fertility, which is also occurring in the nordic countries despite long being recognized for maintaining high fertility alongside high female labor force participation rates and modern family policies (luci-greulich/thévenon 2013). economic and policyrelated reasons cannot fully explain this ongoing fertility decline (ohlsson-wijk/ anderssson 2022; oecd 2023). lutz (2020) argues that decreasing total fertility and lower cohort fertility may be driven more by shifting attitudes toward family life and childbearing than by purely economic constraints. this includes broader cultural shifts toward individualism and self-realization, as described in theories of the second demographic transition (lesthaeghe 2010). conventional measures of family values, such as ideal family size, may not fully capture these changes. in their comprehensive analysis of ideal family size in europe from 1979 to 2012, sobotka/ beaujouan (2014) found that the two-child ideal persisted even as fertility rates declined and completed fertility fell to around 1.6 children in some countries. their results also show a rising share of respondents preferring childfree ideals − a trend that recent studies suggest has accelerated further (see luppi et al. 2024 for italy and pew research center 2024 for the u.s.). thus, fertility norms may evolve even as average stated child-number ideals remain stable. to date, few studies have examined the link between changing fertility norms and declining fertility observed since the late 2000s. for example, riederer et al. (2024) found a significant decline in austrian women’s fertility desires from 1986 to 2021 − measured by asking whether and how many children they desire to have at any point in their future life. likewise, luppi et al. (2024) reported that from 2012 to 2022 an increasing proportion of young italian adults neither desired (“if you had no constraints or impediments of any kind, how many children would you want to have in total?”) nor expected (“realistically, how many children do you expect to have in your life?”) to have children. in the united states, hartnett/gemmill (2020) found a decline in the total intended number of children − based on questions in which respondents were asked whether they intended to have any more children and, if so, how many more − from 2.26 in 2006-2010 to 2.16 in 2013-2017. this parallels a decline in u.s. total fertility, from 2.12 in 2007 to 1.73 in 2018. more recent data indicate that a growing share of childless u.s. adults say they are unlikely to ever have children, with many simply stating, “i just don’t want to have children” as their main reason (pew research center 2024). a comparable trend has been observed in finland, where cross-sectional surveys from 2007 to 2018 reveal a decline in personal ideal family size, largely driven by an increase in child-free ideals (golvina et al. 2024). in sweden, a comparison of shortterm fertility intentions in 2012 and 2021 suggests that weaker intentions reflect a deeper shift in reproductive decision-making rather than a temporary reaction to economic uncertainty (neyer et al. 2024). • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik132 while these national snapshots offer valuable insights into recent trends, only a longer observation period can show whether changes in fertility intentions reflect enduring changes in family norms or merely short-term reactions. for example, in the nordic countries, total fertility was comparatively high until 2009 but then fell to historic lows over the next 15 years. sweden’s drop in short-term fertility intentions from 2012 to 2021 (neyer et al. 2024) aligns with this decline, but without comparable data from earlier years it remains unclear whether intentions were unusually elevated in 2012 or were already on a downward path. moreover, the prevalence and strength of fertility intentions vary with age over the life course, fluctuating in relation to parity, education, employment, and partnership status. positive fertility intentions tend to be associated with a younger age and lower parity, while negative intentions are often linked to having reached one’s desired family size or facing social or economic constraints (fahlén 2013; krapf et al. 2023; llorente-marrón et al. 2022; mencarini et al. 2015). men and women in co-residential unions are more likely to hold positive fertility intentions than those without a co-residential partner (dommermuth et al. 2011; régnier-loilier/vignoli 2011). because a stable and certain income is usually a prerequisite for starting a family, employment tends to be positively associated with fertility intentions − especially in welfare states that offer paid-parental leave to those employed prior to childbirth (dommermuth et al. 2011). the link between employment and fertility intentions also varies by sex, parity, and level of education (fahlén 2013). even when these empirical studies are taken into account, we know little about how the prevalence of fertility intentions evolved within key sociodemographic subgroups over time. 1.2 our contribution in this study, we examine changes in fertility intentions using comparable crosssectional survey data on norwegian women spanning five decades, which includes information on the time frame of those intentions. against the backdrop of the fertility decline that began in norway in 2010, our first goal is to chart trends in two measures of fertility intentions: short-term fertility intentions (within 3-4 years) and general fertility intentions. our second goal is to compare how these fertility intentions have evolved from 1977 to 2020 across age groups, parenthood and partnership status, employment, and education. by focusing on both long-term trends and recent shifts across sociodemographic strata, we aim to deepen our understanding of the complex interplay between fertility intentions and demographic change, and how different groups have evolved over time. using both general and short-term fertility intentions provides a more comprehensive view of fertility norms. 1.3 fertility in norway in 1975, total fertility in norway fell to 1.98 − dipping below replacement level for the first time − and continued to decline to 1.66 in 1984 (see fig. 1). from the mid-1980s to 1990, total fertility rebounded to 1.93. over the next two decades, norwegian fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 133 fertility remained relatively stable compared to other european regions, ranging from 1.75 in 2002 to 1.98 in 2009. since 2010, total fertility declined continuously until 2023 (with the exception of 2021, which is directly linked to the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, see lappegård et al. 2024), hitting new historic lows with 1.71 in 2016 and 1.40 in 2023. figure 1 shows that women’s age at first birth increased from 23.5 years in 1975 to 30.3 years in 2023. 2 data, measures and methods 2.1 data from five social surveys from norway we use data from five large surveys conducted in norway: (i) the fertility survey 1977 (fs 1977) (statistics norway 1977), (ii) the family and fertility survey (ffs 1988) (statistics norway 1988), (iii) the survey on future plans, family and partnerships 2003 (fp 2003) (statistics norway 2003), (iv) the generations and gender survey i 2007 (ggs-i 2007) (lappegård/veenstra 2010) and (v) the generations and gender survey ii 2020 (ggs-ii 2020), which is based on a new sample drawn from the population register (dommermuth et al. 2021). across these five surveys, the conditions and methods for survey data collection have changed markedly. the surveys selected fig. 1: total fertility and mean age at first birth. women, norway, 1975-2023 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 19 75 19 77 19 79 19 81 19 83 19 85 19 87 19 89 19 91 19 93 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 20 03 20 05 20 07 20 09 20 11 20 13 20 15 20 17 20 19 20 21 20 23 year total fertility age at first birth total fertility mean age at first birth source: statistics norway 2024a/b. • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik134 for this study therefore differ somewhat in their sampling frames and survey modes, and they achieved varying response rates among female respondents (see table a1 in the appendix). in 1977 and 1988, data were collected through face-to-face interviews, with response rates of 82 percent and 81 percent, respectively. the fp 2003 was conducted as a self-administered postal survey, with a response rate of 69 percent. data for the ggs-i 2007 were collected via telephone interviews (response rate: 78 percent). for the ggs-ii 2020, respondents were invited via e-mail and text message to complete a web survey in november and december 2020, with a response rate of 41 percent. we aim to maximize comparability across survey years. first, we restricted our sample to women, as the fs 1977 only included women and the ffs 1988 only surveyed men from two individual birth cohorts. second, we selected respondents aged 18 to 44 at the time of the interview, capturing the typical childbearing ages for women. third, we applied post-stratification weights to all five surveys, based on the technical guidelines for the ggp-ii (gauthier et al. 2024). the weights adjust for population figures by age, gender, region, level of education, and marital status at the year of each survey, and were applied in all descriptive analyses. fourth, we constructed three indicators for fertility intentions, as described in the following section. 2.2 measures of fertility intentions in all five surveys, respondents were asked comparable questions regarding their fertility intentions. figure 2 displays the questions and response categories (grey boxes) in the order in which they appear in each survey. in the fs 1977, ffs 1988, and fp 2003, respondents were first asked the following question: “do you intend to have a(nother) child?” response categories were “yes,” “no,” or “don’t know.” respondents who expressed positive fertility intentions (i.e., answered “yes”) were thereafter routed to the follow-up question: “when do you approximately intend to have your first/next child?” with the following response categories: “within a year”, “1-2 years”, “3-4 years”, “5 years or more”, and “have not made such a plan”. in the ggs-i 2007, respondents were first asked whether they “intend to have a(nother) child now” and then − regardless of their answer to the first question − whether they “intend to have a(nother) child within the next three years.” both questions offered three answering options (“yes”, “don’t know” and “no”). those answering “no” or “don’t know” to the second question were routed to a follow-up question: “supposing you do not have a(nother) child during the next three years, do you intend to have any (more) children at all?” with similar response categories. in the ggs-ii 2020, all respondents were first asked whether they “intend to have a(nother) child within the next three years”, and immediately afterward, “supposing you do not have a(nother) child during the next three years, do you intend to have any (more) children at all?” for both questions, respondents could answer using a five-point scale (“definitely not”, “probably not”, “unsure”, “probably yes,” and “definitely yes”) or alternatively choose “don’t’ know”. this variation in question order and response options may affect how fertility intentions and their timing are captured in these surveys. it should also be noted fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 135 that in the computer-assisted telephone interviews of the ggs-i 2007, interviewers were to offer only “yes” and “no” as response options, with “don’t know” used only when a respondent explicitly expressed uncertainty. as documented in table a2 in the appendix, this likely explains the lower proportion of respondents answering “don’t know” in the ggs-i 2007 (about 5 percent) compared to the other surveys (which ranged from 11 to 15 percent). to harmonize responses, we collapsed the answering categories “no” and “don’t know” and focus on positive fertility intentions versus the absence of positive intentions. next, we constructed two indicators of fertility intentions, each represented by a dummy variable (see the blue-framed boxes in fig. 2). the first variable − general fertility intentions − captures any positive intention to have a child. in the first three surveys, anyone who answered positively to the initial question was coded 1, regardless of their later time-frame response. in the two later surveys, anyone who answered positively to one or more of the fertility-intention questions was coded 1 (see fig .2). the second variable − short-term fertility intentions − captures intentions to have a child within three to four years. in the first three surveys, this includes the first three response categories of the second question. in the ggs-i 2007, it comprises women who reported intending to have a(nother) child now and/or within three years (about 7 percent intended “now” but not “within three years”). in the ggs-ii 2020, it includes anyone who answered positively to the question about having a child within three years (about 75 percent of these also answered positively to the subsequent question to intend to have a(nother) child at all). fig. 2: questions on fertility intentions in the five surveys source: authors’ own visualization. • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik136 2.3 control variables as described above, the prevalence of fertility intentions varies across the life course, and previous results highlight the importance of age, parenthood status, time since the last birth, and union status (llorente-marrón et al. 2022). education and employment status are further important factors affecting the development of fertility intentions (berrington/pattaro 2014; fahlén 2013). comparable measures for these characteristics are available in all five surveys, and we operationalized the following demographic variables: first, women’s age in the survey year was grouped into four categories: 18-24, 25-29, 30-34, and 35-44 years. second, we made a variable measuring parenthood status by combining the number of children and the age of the youngest child. this variable has the following five categories: childless; one child below 6 years; one child aged 6 years or older; two children, with the youngest below 6 years; and two children, both aged 6 years or older. third, we included union status, distinguishing between women with no co-residential partner, those who were cohabiting, and those who were married. finally, we included two variables measuring women’s socioeconomic status at the time of each survey. the first captures their highest level of education, categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary education. the second measures employment status based on the woman’s main activity, distinguishing between those who were employed, in education, or in the “other” category (including early retiree/work-disabled, homemaker, unemployed, or other). table a1 in the appendix provides a descriptive overview over all measures and their distribution across the five surveys. 2.4 analytical approach the main goal of our study is to describe changes in the prevalence of fertility intentions among women of childbearing age in norway over the past five decades. we also consider the time frame of fertility intentions, since theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence suggest that short-term intentions are more likely to be realized than general fertility intentions are. first, we describe the proportion of women with general and short-term fertility intentions. because age-specific fertility rates changed markedly over our study period, we split our data into four age groups to track how fertility intentions evolved over time. second, we use the two fertility intention indicators as dependent variables in logistic regression models. our main models test whether the prevalence of general and short-term fertility intentions shifts significantly over time, controlling for all covariates. we then add interaction terms between survey year and each covariate to assess subgroup-specific trends. from these interactions, we derive predicted probabilities, which we plot by survey year to highlight changes over time and to facilitate interpretation. fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 137 3 results 3.1 a descriptive overview of fertility intentions 1977-2020 overall, 46 percent of women across the five surveys reported general fertility intentions (see table a2 in the appendix). this proportion varies across surveys, ranging from around 41 percent in 2003 to over 51 percent in 2007, without a clear trend. overall, about 30 percent of respondents reported short-term fertility intentions, peaking at 34 percent in 1988 followed by a stepwise decline to 24 percent in 2020. rising mean age at first birth (see fig. 1 in section 1.3) and the corresponding changes in age-specific birth rates characterize childbearing during our observation period. thus, figure 3 displays the prevalence of general and short-term fertility intentions and the absence thereof by age group in each survey. the upper red part shows women without positive fertility intentions, while the entire blue block (dark and light blue) encompasses women with general fertility intentions. within that block, dark blue indicates short-term fertility intentions, and light blue indicates fertility intentions with a longer or unspecified timeframe. the figure also shows the proportion of childless female respondents within each age group (black dots). the prevalence of positive fertility intentions is highest among the youngest women (18-24). in the first four surveys, almost 9 out of 10 women aged 18-24 intended to have a child. this share fell to about 75 percent in 2020. short-time intentions began to decline even earlier in this young age group. over 50 percent of young women held short-term fertility intentions in 1977 and 1988, but this dropped by more than 10 percentage points in each subsequent survey, to under 16 percent in 2020. among women aged 25-29, short-term fertility intentions rose from 42 percent in 1977 to 60 percent in 2003, while general fertility intentions (with a longer or no specified time frame) increased throughout the study period. however, as the prevalence of short-term intentions decreased after 2003 in this age group, the proportion of women with general fertility intentions in 2020 is lower than in the two preceding surveys. among women aged 30 years or older, relatively few held general or short-term fertility intentions in 1977 and 1988. this is not surprising, given that most of them were by then mothers and may already have achieved their fertility goals by the time they turned 30 or 35. in the surveys conducted after the turn of the millennium, the proportion of childless women in the two older age groups increased. we also find a higher proportion of women holding fertility intentions, especially shortterm fertility intentions. this indicates that not only age-specific fertility rates, but also fertility plans, have shifted from younger to older age groups. although the proportion of childless women was highest in 2020 across all age groups (including nearly 80 percent among women aged 25-29 and 19 percent among those aged 35-44), we do not observe a corresponding increase in fertility intentions. instead, there was a decline in general and short-term fertility intentions in 2020 compared to 2007. • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik138 3.2 regression results for fertility intentions from 1977-2020 we then tested whether shifts in the prevalence of fertility intentions remain significant after adjusting for age, parenthood and partnership status, highest level of education, and main activity. full model results for the two outcomes, general fertility intentions (m1) and short-term fertility intentions (m2), are presented in table 1. to aid interpretation, we calculated predicted probabilities based on these models. figure 4 displays these results for general fertility intentions (lefthand panel), and short-term fertility intentions (righthand panel) by survey years, while holding all covariates constant. overall, the probability of general fertility intentions was significantly lower in 1977 and 2020 than in the other survey years, with the lowest level in 2020 (see the lefthand panel of fig. 4). the likelihood for short-term fertility intentions was also at its lowest in 2020 (see the righthand panel of fig. 4). the prevalence of such intentions remained largely stable in the years prior to 2020. fig. 3: fertility intentions and childless respondents by age groups and survey year, in percent 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 short-term fertility intentions general fertility intentions no fertility intentions 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 porportion without children 18-24 25-29 30-34 35-44 age groups and survey year percent source: authors’ own calculations. fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 139 3.3 the changing importance of age and parenthood status we then investigated the impact of the independent variables on both measures of fertility intentions and the degree to which their influence varied over time. the latter was achieved by including an interaction term between each control variable and the survey year in the models predicting general and short-term intentions, respectively. the results from these two interaction models are presented as predicted probabilities in figure 5 (age × year and parenthood status × year) and tab. 1: logistic regression coefficients and standard errors for two measures of fertility intentions general fertility short-term fertility intentions (m1) intentions (m2) estimate se estimate se survey year (ref. 1977) 1988 0.31*** 0.07 0.07 0.06 2003 0.45*** 0.08 0.05 0.08 2007 0.76*** 0.08 -0.07 0.07 2020 -0.22* 0.09 -0.71*** 0.09 age at interview (ref 18-24 years) 25-29 years -0.96*** 0.08 0.25*** 0.06 30-34 years -1.85*** 0.09 -0.26** 0.08 35-44 years -3.49*** 0.10 -1.61*** 0.09 parenthood status (ref. no children) one child, <6 years 0.24** 0.09 0.65*** 0.07 one child, 6+ years -1.09*** 0.11 -0.89*** 0.11 two or more children, youngest <6 years -2.16*** 0.08 -1.93*** 0.08 two or more children, youngest 6+ years -2.74*** 0.12 -2.76*** 0.12 union status (ref. not in a co-residential union) cohabiting 0.59*** 0.07 1.20*** 0.06 married 0.45*** 0.08 1.15*** 0.07 main activity (ref. employed) in education -0.11 0.08 -0.71*** 0.06 other -0.19** 0.07 -0.22** 0.07 highest education (ref. primary education) secondary education 0.11 0.07 0.09 0.06 tertiary education 0.44*** 0.08 0.46*** 0.07 intercept 1.65 0.09 -0.51 0.08 pseudo r2 0.46 0.27 n 14,159 14,159 note: †p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. source: authors’ own calculations. • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik140 figure 6 (union status × year, employments status × year, and education level × year). main effects for the independent variables are shown in model 1 (general fertility intentions) and model 2 (short-term fertility intentions) of table 1. starting with age, we found that the likelihood for general fertility intentions decreased with increased age (see model 1 in table 1). as shown in panel a of figure 5, this pattern remained stable across time, but with decreasing differences among those under age 35. in the three surveys after the turn of the millennium, the predicted probabilities of holding general fertility intentions declined stepwise for the youngest age group, while they increased for the two older age groups. across all age groups, we found significantly lower levels of general fertility intentions in 2020 compared to 2007. turning to the variance of short-term fertility intentions by age, those aged 2529 years were overall more likely to hold such intentions compared to the other age groups (see model 2, table 1). regarding changes over time (see panel b of fig. 5), short-term fertility intentions have continuously declined in the youngest age group, which had the highest levels in 1977. they were surpassed by those aged 25-29 from 1988 onward and by those aged 30-34 from 2003 onward. until 2007, short-term fertility intentions increased most among women aged 30 and older. from 2007 to 2020, short-term fertility intentions decreased across all age groups, with the decline not being statistically significant at the 5 percent level among those aged 30-34. fig. 4: predicted probabilities of general fertility intentions and short-term fertility intentions by survey year .15 .2 .25 .3 .35 .4 .45 .5 .55 pr ob ab ili ty 1977 1988 2003 2007 2020 survey year general fertility intentions 1977 1988 2003 2007 2020 survey year short-term fertility intentions note: both models were adjusted for age, parenthood status, partnership status, main activity, and highest level of education. source: authors’ own calculations. fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 141 fi g. 5 : pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ili tie s f or tw o m ea su re s o f f er til ity in te nt io ns , b y ag e an d pa re nt ho od s ta tu s. 95 % c on fid en ce in te rv al s 0.2.4.6.8 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r 18 -2 4 ye ar s 25 -2 9 ye ar s 30 -3 4 ye ar s 35 -4 4 ye ar s ag e 0.2.4.6.8 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r ch ild le ss 1, < 6 y ea rs 1, 6 + ye ar s 2+ , < 6 y ea rs 2+ , 6 + ye ar s pa re nt ho od st at us pa ne l a : g en er al fe rti lit y in te nt io ns 0.2.4.6.8 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r 18 -2 4 ye ar s 25 -2 9 ye ar s 30 -3 4 ye ar s 35 -4 4 ye ar s ag e 0.2.4.6.8 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r ch ild le ss 1, < 6 y ea rs 1, 6 + ye ar s 2+ , < 6 y ea rs 2+ , 6 + ye ar s pa re nt ho od st at us pa ne l b : s ho rtte rm fe rti lit y in te nt io ns so ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ o w n ca lc ul at io ns . • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik142 fi g. 6 : pr ed ic te d pr ob ab ili tie s f or tw o m ea su re s o f f er til ity in te nt io ns , b y un io n st at us , e m pl oy m en t s ta tu s a nd ed uc at io n le ve l .2.3.4.5.6 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r si ng le co ha bi tin g m ar rie d un io n st at us .2.3.4.5.6 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r em pl oy ed st ud en t o th er em pl oy m en t s ta tu s .2.3.4.5.6 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r pr im ar y se co nd ar y te rti ar y ed uc at io n le ve l pa ne l a : g en er al fe rti lit y in te nt io ns .1.2.3.4.5 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r si ng le co ha bi tin g m ar rie d un io n st at us .1.2.3.4.5 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r em pl oy ed st ud en t o th er em pl oy m en t s ta tu s .1.2.3.4.5 probability 19 77 19 88 20 03 20 07 20 20 su rv ey y ea r pr im ar y se co nd ar y te rti ar y ed uc at io n le ve l pa ne l b : s ho rtte rm fe rti lit y in te nt io ns so ur ce : a ut ho rs ’ o w n ca lc ul at io ns . fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 143 next, we assess the impact of parenthood status, including the number of children and the age of the youngest child. as shown in table 1, parenthood status had a similar main effect on both measures of fertility intentions: women with one young child below school age were significantly more likely to hold general and short-term fertility intentions than childless women (reference group). in contrast, all further categories of mothers were less likely than childless women to express general (model 1) and short-term fertility intentions (model 2). despite this overall similarity, we found differences over time in the association between parenthood status and our two measures of fertility intentions. first, from 1977 to 2007, general fertility intentions increased among one-child mothers and, to some extent, among mothers with several children, while no clear trend was observed among childless women (see panel a in fig. 5). next, the likelihood of holding general fertility intentions declined across all categories of parenthood status from 2007 to 2020. regarding short-term fertility intentions, panel b in figure 5 shows a decline in probabilities from 1988 onwards among childless women, while they increased among women with one older child until 2007, before declining significantly in 2020. among women with one younger child and mothers with at least two children, short-term fertility intentions remained relatively stable across the entire observation period, with only a non-significant decrease in 2020 compared to 2007. 3.4 the roles of union status, employment, and education as shown in table 1, cohabiting and married women were significantly more likely to hold both types of fertility intentions compared to women without a co-residential partner. however, the predicted probabilities for union status by survey year in figure 6 show no significant changes over time in fertility intentions between cohabiting and married women in the norwegian context. those without a co-residential partner were specifically less likely to hold short-term fertility intentions (panel b in fig. 6), while the difference was less pronounced (though still significant in most survey years) when general fertility intentions served as the outcome variable (panel a in fig. 6). for both dependent variables, fertility intentions were lower in 2020 than in 2007, with this decline being significant across all union status categories, except for married women regarding short-term fertility intentions. turning to the variable assessing the impact of one’s main activity on fertility intentions, women in the category “others” (which includes homemakers and the unemployed) were less likely to express general fertility intentions (model 1 in table 1) or short-term fertility intentions (model 2 in table 1) than the reference group of employed women. in addition, women in education were less likely to hold short-term fertility intentions than employed women. among students, short-term fertility intentions declined continuously since 1988 (see panel b in fig. 6), and in 2020, students were also less likely to hold general fertility intentions (see panel a in fig. 6). overall, we observe significantly lower levels for both types of fertility intentions across all subcategories of “main activity” in 2020 compared to 2007. regarding the highest level of education, women with a tertiary education were more likely to express both kinds of fertility intentions than those with secondary • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik144 or primary education, with no significant difference between the two latter groups (see model 1 and model 2 in table 1). general fertility intentions (panel a in fig. 6) increased across all educational groups from 1977 to 2007, while for short-term fertility intentions this was only true for those with tertiary education, and only until 2003 (panel b in fig. 6). in addition, we observe a significant downward shift in 2020 compared to 2007 across all educational groups for both types of fertility intentions (fig. 6). 3.5 robustness checks we conducted two main robustness checks. first, we included the constructed poststratification weight in our regression models for both dependent variables, but this did not lead to any significant changes in our results (analyses available on request). second, one may argue that an upper age limit of 44 years is too high when studying fertility intentions, as the possibility to conceive declines at the end of the reproductive period and relatively few women give birth after turning 40. thus, we re-ran regressions on both types of fertility intentions using a restricted sample only with respondents younger than forty. this also did not lead to substantial differences in our results (analyses available on request). 4 discussion this study examined the prevalence of positive fertility intentions in norway over the past fifty years. drawing on comparable survey data from 1977, 1988, 2003, 2007, and 2020 covering a period with fertility rates fluctuating between 1.48 and 1.98, we document substantial changes in fertility intentions. at first glance, the proportion of women with general fertility intentions appears relatively stable, with over 40 percent of women aged 18-44 reporting that they intend to have a(nother) child at both the beginning and end of the observation period (i.e., 1977 and 2020). however, distinguishing general and short-term fertility intentions in our descriptive analysis reveals a more nuanced picture. in 1977, more than 8 in 10 young women (aged 18-24) expressed general fertility intentions and more than 5 in 10 reported short-term intentions. by 2020, the proportion with general fertility intentions was clearly below 80 percent for the first time and short-term fertility intentions had dropped to only 16 percent in this youngest age group. while the proportion of women with general fertility intentions increased in older age groups until 2007, we observed a shift in 2020 across all age groups, marking the lowest levels of fertility intentions observed in our study. this overall pattern was to be expected, as the fertility schedule has shifted markedly to higher ages over the nearly 50-year period we examine. to unpack these trends, we estimated two sets of regression models − one for general fertility intentions and another for short-term fertility intentions. our analysis focused on changes in the observation period and thus allowed the associations to vary over time. results from our main model indicated no significant change fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 145 in short-term fertility intentions across the first four surveys. however, predicted probabilities of holding short-term fertility intentions were somewhat lower in 2007 compared to earlier surveys (1977, 1988, and 2003). more strikingly, early signs of a significant decline in short-term fertility intentions emerged among specific subgroups − particularly young women, childless women, women in education, and women without a co-residential partner − even as total fertility in norway was increasing. these patterns align with evidence that the fertility decline in norway after 2009 stems from postponed or forgone first births (hellstrand et al. 2021), and a steep decline in age-specific birth rates among younger women (hart et al. 2015). the rising proportion of women in education (statistics norway 2024c) and the growing importance of employment stability for first birth transitions after 2009 in norway (dommermuth/lappegård 2017) and sweden (ohlsson-wijk/andersson 2022) provide further context for our finding of lower fertility intentions among women in education. partnership dynamics may also play a role. previous research highlights that living in a co-residential union strongly predicts fertility intentions (balbo et al. 2013). additionally, evidence from finland suggests that cohorts born in the 1990s or later have been delaying partnership formation (rahnu/jalovaara 2023). over the study period, there has been a steady increase in the share of norwegians living alone. currently, one in five individuals lives alone, and more than one in four women in their 30s to mid-40s live without a partner (bergsvik/wiik 2025). our results confirm that women without a co-residential partner were increasingly unlikely to hold short-term fertility intentions, suggesting that shifts in relationship formation patterns and union dynamics may contribute to the overall decline in such intentions. one of the key motivations for this study was to see if changes in fertility intentions could signal changing fertility norms. recent results point towards evolving fertility preferences, with a growing acceptance of child-free lifestyles (luppi et al. 2024; pew research center 2024) and increasing recognition of smaller or childless families as legitimate family forms, particularly in societies experiencing persistent fertility declines (aassve et al. 2024). by comparing the prevalence of fertility intentions over a longer period, our study provides deeper insights into these evolving fertility norms: our findings reveal substantially lower levels of fertility intentions in 2020 compared to similar surveys in the 1970s, 1980s, and the first decade of the new millennium. short-term fertility intentions, compared to general fertility intentions, are more strongly tied to individual life circumstances and thus may respond to social and economic constraints more quickly. the decline in these intentions − especially among childless women and younger individuals − suggests a growing hesitation toward early parenthood. this aligns with the second demographic transition theory, which emphasizes individualization and self-realization as key factors influencing childbearing, with scandinavian countries as forerunners of this development (lesthaeghe 2010). a recent study comparing how uncertainty and self-realization shape fertility intentions differently in norway and italy suggests that especially in norway self-realization influences childbearing decisions (bazzani et al. 2025). • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik146 compared to short-term intentions, general fertility intentions are more strongly anchored in enduring cultural norms about childbearing. despite variations in total fertility in norway, our main model indicated an overall increase of general fertility intentions from 1977 to 2007. this may reflect the high value of children in norwegian society. that we now observe a decline in both measures of fertility intentions in 2020 suggests a broader shift towards lower fertility norms in norway. taken together, our findings reinforce the idea that tracking fertility intentions over time can provide early signals of changing fertility norms − including variations across specific subgroups − before these shifts are reflected in actual birth rates or completed cohort fertility. several limitations merit attention. first, the ggs-ii 2020 was conducted in november and december 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic, which may have affected fertility intentions. we have no information on whether respondents changed their fertility intentions due to the covid-19 pandemic, nor do we have data comparing intentions before and after the onset of the pandemic in norway. in moldova, the ggs-ii was conducted partially before and partially after the outbreak of the pandemic, allowing emery/koops (2022) to rigorously test whether this led to significant changes in the prevalence of intentions of having a(nother) child in the next three years. their results reveal no differences in such short-term fertility intentions of respondents preand post-outbreak. retrospective studies from other european countries report no changes in family plans (buber-ennser et al. 2024 for austria) or short-term fertility intentions (miaci et al. 2024 for italy) due to the pandemic. regarding actual fertility, the first phase of the pandemic could even be linked to an increase in births in norway (lappegård et al. 2024), leading to a temporary increase in total fertility in 2021 (see fig. 1). thus, we conclude that the covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to have biased our findings. second, while the surveys used in this study provide valuable insights into long-term trends, differences in survey mode and response rates may introduce biases. notably, the fifth survey (ggs-ii 2020) had a lower response rate, with particularly low participation among individuals with lower educational attainment (dommermuth et al. 2021). since our results indicate that lower-educated women tend to have lower levels of fertility intentions, the decline in fertility intentions observed in 2020 may even be underestimated. additionally, while we focus on positive fertility intentions, our dataset includes responses of “don’t know” (and “unsure” in the latest survey). the proportion of uncertain responses has varied over time, but due to some variances in survey mode and questions, these categories with uncertainty are not directly comparable across surveys. future work should further explore shifts in reproductive uncertainty as a potential indicator of societal changes. despite these caveats, our study contributes to the debates on whether declining fertility is driven more strongly by structural constraints or changing norms. the decline in fertility intentions − particularly among younger women − suggests that fertility may remain low even if economic conditions improve, highlighting the role of broader socio-cultural factors − such as work-family compatibility and individual life course preferences. policies and practices that improve work-family compatibility and diverse lifestyles may help younger people convert their family desires into more fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 147 concrete fertility intentions. future research should assess whether the patterns found here replicate in other contexts, whether declining fertility intentions translate into further reductions in actual 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https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2020.deb06 mencarini, letizia; vignoli, daniele; gottard, anna 2015: fertility intentions and outcomes: implementing the theory of planned behavior with graphical models. in: advances in life course research 23: 14-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2014.12.004 miaci, elenora; guetto, raffaele; vignoli, daniele 2024: fertility intentions in italy during the covid-19 pandemic. evidence from the familydemic survey. in: rivista italiana di economia demografia e statistica, vol. lxxviiii-1: 231-242. https://doi.org/10.71014/sieds.v78i1.274 miller, warren b. 2011: differences between fertility desires and intentions: implications for theory, research and policy. in: vienna yearbook of population research 9,1: 75-98. https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2011s75 miller, warren b.; pasta, david j. 1995: behavioral intentions: which ones predict fertility behavior in married couples? in: journal of applied social psychology 25,6: 530-555. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1995.tb01766.x neyer, gerda; lai, weiwen; andersson, gunnar 2024: not only births, but also intentions: the decline of fertility intentions in sweden in the 2010s. in: stockholm research reports in demography. https://doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.26927029.v1 oecd 2023: exploring norway’s fertility, work, and family policy trends. paris, oecd publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/f0c7bddf-en ohlsson-wijk, sofi; andersson, gunnar 2022: disentangling the swedish fertility decline of the 2010s. in: demographic research 47,12: 345-358. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2022.47.12 pew research center 2024: the experiences of u.s. adults who don’t have children. pew research center, washington [https://pewrsr.ch/3ynijup, 26.05.2025]. philipov, dimiter 2009: fertility intentions and outcomes: the role of policies to close the gap. in: european journal of population 25,4: 355-361. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-009-9202-1 philipov, dimiter; bernardi, laura 2011: concepts and operationalisation of reproductive decisions implementation in austria, germany and switzerland. in: comparative population studies 36,2-3: 495-530. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2011-14 rahnu, leen; jalovaara, marika 2023: partnership dynamics and entry into parenthood: comparison of finnish birth cohorts 1969-2000. in: advances in life course research 56: 100548. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2023.100548 régnier-loilier, arnaud; vignoli, daniele 2011: fertility intentions and obstacles to their realization in france and italy. in: population 66,2: 361-390. riederer, bernhard; setz, ingrid; buber-ennser, isabella 2024: urban-rural differences in the desired number of children in austria 1986-2021. in: österreichische zeitschrift für soziologie 49,3: 331-356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-024-00578-y schoen, robert et al. 1999: do fertility intentions affect fertility behavior? in: journal of marriage and the family 61,3: 790-799. https://doi.org/10.2307/353578 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-013-9295-4 https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ukqnx https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2020.deb06 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2014.12.004 https://doi.org/10.71014/sieds.v78i1.274 https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2011s75 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1995.tb01766.x https://doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.26927029.v1 https://doi.org/10.1787/f0c7bddf-en https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2022.47.12 https://pewrsr.ch/3ynijup https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-009-9202-1 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2011-14 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2023.100548 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-024-00578-y https://doi.org/10.2307/353578 • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik150 sobotka, tomáš; beaujouan, éva 2014: two is best? the persistence of a two-child family ideal in europe. in: population and development review 40,3: 391-419. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00691.x statistics norway 1977: fertility survey 1977. https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0022-v3 statistics norway 1981: fruktbarhetsundersøkelse 1977. fertility survey 1977. norges offisielle statistikk b197. oslo: statistics norway. statistics norway 1988: family and occupation survey 1988. https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0195-1-v1 statistics norway 1991: familieog yrkesundersøkelsen 1988. family and occupation survey 1988. norges offisielle statistikk b959. oslo: statistics norway. statistics norway 2003: survey on future plans, family and marriage 2003. https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0816-v2 statistics norway 2024a: statbank table 04232: total fertility rate, women, 1968-2023. in: https://www.ssb.no/en [https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10089585, 26.05.2025]. statistics norway 2024b: statbank table 07872: mothers’ age at first birth, 1975-2023. in: https://www.ssb.no/en [https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10101647, 26.05.2025]. statistics norway 2024c: statbank table 08921: educational attainment of the population [https://www.ssb.no/en https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10101611, 26.05.2025]. wiecek, carsten 2003: undersøkelse om fremtidsplaner, familie og samliv. dokumentasjonsrapport [survey on future plans, family and partnerships]. in: notater 2003/51. oslo: statistics norway. date of submission: 01.11.2024 date of acceptance: 30.5.2025 dr. lars dommermuth (*), dr. kenneth aarskaug wiik. statistics norway. oslo, norway. e-mail: lars.dommermuth@ssb.no; kennethaarskaug.wiik@ssb.no url: https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte/lars-dommermuth https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte/kenneth-aarskaug-wiik prof. dr. torkild hovde lyngstad. university of oslo, department of sociology and human geography. oslo, norway. e-mail: t.h.lyngstad@sosgeo.uio.no url: https://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/people/aca/torkildl/ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00691.x https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0022-v3 https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0195-1-v1 https://doi.org/10.18712/nsd-nsd0816-v2 https://www.ssb.no/en https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10089585 https://www.ssb.no/en https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10101647 https://www.ssb.no/en https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10101611 mailto:lars.dommermuth@ssb.no mailto:kennethaarskaug.wiik@ssb.no https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte/lars-dommermuth https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte/kenneth-aarskaug-wiik mailto:t.h.lyngstad@sosgeo.uio.no https://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/people/aca/torkildl/ fertility intentions across five decades in norway • 151 a pp en di x ta b. a 1: o ve rv ie w o ve r t he su rv ey s fe rt ili ty s ur ve y 19 77 fa m ily a nd o cc up at io n su rv ey o n fu tu re p la ns , g en er at io ns a nd g en er at io ns a nd (f s 19 77 )* su rv ey 1 98 8 fa m ily a nd p ar tn er g en de r s ur ve y i 2 00 7 g en de r s ur ve y ii (f fs 1 98 8) * sh ip s 2 00 3 (f p 20 03 )* (g gs 2 00 7) * 20 20 (g gs 2 02 0) * sa m pl in g fra m e po pu la tio n re gi st er . po pu la tio n re gi st er . po pu la tio n re gi st er . po pu la tio n re gi st er a nd po pu la tio n re gi st er . an d sa m pl in g tw ost ag e sa m pl in g tw ost ag e sa m pl in g st ra ta b y se x. a t l ea st re sp on de nt s t o pr era nd om s el ec tio n pr oc ed ur e pr oc ed ur e w ith 1 02 pr oc ed ur e w ith 1 02 on e of th e re sp on vi ou s s ur ve y fo r o ld er am on g w om en a nd re gi on al s tr at a an d re gi on al s tr at a an d de nt s’ pa re nt s w as ag e. s tr at a al on g m en a ge d 18 -5 4 ye ar s. ra nd om s el ec tio n of ra nd om s el ec tio n bo rn in n or w ay . ge nd er , a ge , g eo gr aw om en a ge d 18 -4 4 am on g w om en b or n in ra nd om s el ec tio n ph ic al re gi on , c en tr al iw ith in e ac h st ra tu m . 19 45 , 1 95 0, 1 95 5, 1 96 0, am on g w om en a ge d ty , w om en a nd m en 19 68 , a nd m en b or n in 20 -4 4 ye ar s a nd m en ag ed 1 879 y ea rs . 19 45 a nd 1 96 0 w ith in ag ed 2 347 y ea rs . ea ch s tr at um . su rv ey m od e fa ce -t ofa ce fa ce -t ofa ce se lfad m in ist er ed co m pu te ras sis te d se lfad m in ist er ed in te rv ie w s. in te rv ie w s. po st al s ur ve y. te le ph on e in te rv ie w . co m pu te ras sis te d w eb in te rv ie w s. g ro ss s am pl e 5, 04 7 w om en 6, 90 7 (4 ,9 33 w om en 9, 98 2 (4 ,8 52 w om en 24 ,8 30 (1 2, 46 6 w om en 15 ,0 00 (7 ,2 96 w om en an d 1, 97 4 m en ) i n th e an d 5, 13 0 m en ). an d 12 ,3 64 m en ). an d 7,7 04 m en ). se le ct ed c oh or ts . n et s am pl e 4, 13 7 5, 26 2 (4 ,0 19 w om en 6, 31 7 (3 ,3 47 w om en 14 ,8 92 (7 ,5 47 w om en 5, 37 4 (3 ,0 10 w om en an d 1, 54 3 m en ). an d 2, 97 0 m en ). an d 7, 34 5 m en ). an d 2, 36 4 m en ). re sp on se ra te 82 % 81 % a m on g w om en . 69 % a m on g w om en . 78 % a m on g w om en . 41 % a m on g w om en . n w om en in s el ec te d 4, 13 7 4, 01 9 3, 34 7 3, 63 7 2, 14 1 ag e gr ou p (1 844 y ea rs ) n a na ly tic al s am pl e* * 3, 46 3 3, 20 2 2, 71 0 2, 96 3 1, 82 1 * fo r f ur th er d oc um en ta tio n se e: s ta tis tic s n or w ay 1 98 1 (f s 19 77 ); st at ist ics n or w ay 1 99 1 (f fs 1 98 8) , w ie ce k 20 03 (f p 20 03 ); la pp eg år d/ ve en st ra 2 01 0 (g gs 2 00 7) ; d om m er m ut h/ la pp eg år d 20 21 (g gs 2 02 0) ** ex cl ud in g th e fo llo w in g re sp on de nt s ( i) pr eg na nt a t t he ti m e of th e in te rv ie w , ( ii) re sp on de nt s s ta tin g no t t o be a bl e to h av e a( no th er ) ch ild (i ii) re sp on de nt s w ith m iss in g va lu es fo r a ny o f t he in cl ud ed v ar ia bl es in th e st ud y (s ee ta bl e 1) . • lars dommermuth, torkild hovde lyngstad, kenneth aarskaug wiik152 tab. a2: descriptive statistics of the sample and measures, percentages (weighted results) fs ffs fp ggs-i ggs-ii 1977 1988 2003 2007 2020 all fertility intentions general fertility intentions 43.0 48.1 41.3 51.3 46.6 46.1 short-term fertility intentions* 30.7 33.7 29.5 29.1 23.2 29.9 no fertility intentions 57.0 51.9 58.7 48.8 53.4 53.9 don’t know* 15.6 11.2 14.2 5.1 14.8 11.9 age at interview 18-24 years 32.1 32.1 15.5 23.8 28.0 27.0 25-29 years 22.6 21.3 18.9 19.2 19.5 20.6 30-34 years 20.5 18.5 21.0 19.8 19.1 19.8 35-44 years 24.9 28.1 44.6 37.3 33.5 32.7 parenthood status no children 30.6 36.5 38.9 44.3 57.0 39.5 one child, <6 years 13.1 13.6 9.8 10.1 8.0 11.4 one child, 6+ years 5.2 6.6 6.5 5.6 4.5 5.7 two or more children, youngest <6 years 27.1 21.1 20.3 20.6 16.3 21.8 two or more children, youngest 6+years 24.1 22.3 24.6 19.6 14.2 21.6 union status not in a co-residential union 30.6 31.3 32.8 41.1 42.5 34.9 cohabiting 3.8 18.4 29.6 26.8 32.3 20.0 married 65.6 50.3 37.5 32.1 25.3 45.2 main activity employed 64.0 73.7 69.5 71.5 65.2 69.0 in education 8.5 8.9 15.6 18.9 25.7 14.1 other 27.5 17.4 14.9 9.6 9.1 16.9 highest level of education primary education 34.0 16.9 29.6 21.2 19.6 24.8 secondary education 49.8 59.2 33.7 40.4 28.7 44.6 tertiary education 16.3 23.9 36.7 38.5 51.7 30.6 n (unweighted) 3,463 3,202 2,710 2,963 1,821 14,159 * “short-term fertility intentions“ are part of “general fertility intentions“, while “don’t know“ is part of “no fertility intentions“. published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de reflections on cpos: a journey across five decades editorial reflections on cpos: a journey across five decades* michaela kreyenfeld abstract: in this editorial, michaela kreyenfeld, former board member, author and reviewer, reflects on her own experiences with and the evolution and significance of comparative population studies (cpos), formerly zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft (zfb), highlighting its role as a dedicated, rigorous platform for demographic and population research. cpos embraces core demographic topics as well as interdisciplinary approaches, exemplified for example by seminal works on fertility, demographic transitions, and sociological theory. valued for fairness, accessibility, and intellectual integrity, cpos offers a respected venue for both emerging and established scholars. keywords: demographic and population research · interdisciplinary approaches · cpos · zfb 1 a personal journey with cpos/zfb cpos or its predecessor zfb was one of the first journals i ever published in. back in 2002, i had just completed my phd and was incredibly proud to see my work in print. the article i published was a spin-off from a methodological background analysis of my phd thesis. it was a technical demographic study on parity-specific fertility in germany. frankly, i doubt i could have published it elsewhere, but cpos/ zfb offered a welcoming and intellectually rigorous home. roughly ten years later, i returned to the same topic and again published in cpos − this time, it became one of the journal’s most frequently downloaded publication (kreyenfeld et al. 2011). in both cases, the work focused on a core demographic topic − somewhat technical and data-driven − and cpos was uniquely suited to recognize its value and provide a platform for its dissemination. comparative population studies vol. 50 (2025): xxiii-xxvi (date of release: 15.09.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-11 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-11en * this article belongs to a series celebrating the journal's 50th anniversary. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-11 • michaela kreyenfeldxxiv 2 core demography and interdisciplinary approaches cpos has long offered a valuable niche: a journal dedicated to specialized demographic topics while embracing the full breadth of demographic and population research. it informs readers about important and timely demographic trends (see, e.g., zur nieden/sommer 2016) and engages with complex issues surrounding demographic indicators such as the wicked issue of tempo effects in period indicators (e.g., luy/pötzsch 2011; feeney 2011). but cpos does more than cover the core of demography; it also approaches demographic questions through the lenses of adjacent disciplines such as sociology, geography, political science and in some cases economics, human geography and public health. a notable example is the sociological work by brehm and schneider (2019), which provides a deeply theoretical conceptualization of fertility behaviour. a paper that must also be mentioned in respect to theoretical significance is certainly ron lesthaeghe’s seminal 1992 article “der zweite demographische übergang in den westlichen ländern: eine deutung,” published when cpos was still known as zfb. this article introduced the foundational theoretical concept of the “second demographic transition” (sdt) to a germanspeaking audience. engagement with this theoretical framework continues at cpos, most recently through sergei zakharov’s work on the sdt in russia (zakharov 2024). here, it is heartening to see that cpos transcends political borders and conflicts through its scholarship. 3 major transitions: from print to digital and german to english two major shifts have shaped the evolution of cpos: the move from print to digital publishing, and the transition to english-only publications. the digital transition was inevitable and a “no-brainer.” the shift to english was more difficult, undertaken with a heavier heart. for a short period, the journal experimented with bilingual publications. i published during this phase and remember it vividly − writing the same article in both german and english felt like writing two distinct papers. had translation tools using artificial intelligence (ai) been as advanced as they are now, cpos might have continued a bilingual approach. but maintaining dual-language publishing became unsustainable back then. with that change, cpos inevitably lost part of its “german-only” readership − probably in particular those working in local statistical offices, who are more concerned with issues of regional demography and planning. it may also be that some demographic topics more specific to germany are no longer submitted. this was a bit of a “grain of salt” in the overall reasonable decision which opened the door to a broader international audience and to the opportunity of becoming an internationally recognized academic journal. the renaming of the journal from zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft to comparative population studies symbolized this shift. the word “comparative” in the title signaled a commitment to international perspectives and though international submissions were slow at first, they have grown steadily. however, other comparative perspectives are also very welcome such as comparisons across time, across countries, across the reflections on cpos: a journey across five decades • xxv life course, across social and demographic groups (see willekens et al. 2023). today, cpos is well-recognized among the established international demographic journals. 4 expanding perspectives with initiatives such as demographic trends around the globe, cpos has opened a new chapter − actively seeking to include (descriptive) studies from countries of the global south and to attract scholars from these regions. while the ambition is clear, the realization has proven more challenging. many of the initial publications under this new initiative have still been authored by european scholars or have focused on european topics. however, the journal is gradually evolving, with increasing contributions from scholars in asia (see, e.g., kye 2023) and africa (musizvingoza et al. 2023). progress toward becoming a truly global platform has been incremental, but the intent is evident. cpos is well-positioned to fill a crucial niche that many other “western” demographic journals have yet to fully address. the future holds promise for exciting new publications that reflect the manifold demographic realities of the world and the insights of great demographic minds across all continents. 5 so, why publish in cpos? cpos is a down-to-earth journal − accessible, fair, and committed to quality. it does not select papers based on the reputation of the author, nor their institution, but on the merit of the work. junior scholars are given the same opportunity as senior researchers, provided they deliver rigorous, thoughtful contributions. in this way, cpos truly upholds values of honesty, fairness, and intellectual integrity, resisting the commercial pressures that shape much of academic publishing today. there are no publication fees, no open access charges − an important stance in an era where predatory journals are on the rise. cpos maintains the highest standards of peer review and editorial quality. its global initiative, demographic trends around the globe, is not just a slogan but a genuine effort to expand representation and inclusion in demographic scholarship. of course, there are more prestigious demographic journals internationally that enable authors to gain greater recognition among their peers and accumulate more points in their institution’s tenure track evaluation systems. but cpos is on an upward trajectory, steadily positioning itself among the leading demographic journals. currently, cpos ranks among the q2 demographic journals (according to clarivate’s journal impact ranking). it stands out for its integrity, its inclusiveness, and its commitment to the core values of scholarship. for demographic scholars who care about substance, fairness, and global engagement, it offers a respected platform. publishing in cpos means contributing to a 50-year tradition of committed and solid demographic scholarship − and to a journal that remains agile and responsive to a changing academic environment. happy birthday, cpos! • michaela kreyenfeldxxvi references brehm, uta; schneider, norbert f. 2019: towards a comprehensive understanding of fertility: the model of dyadic pathways. in: comparative population studies 44: 3-36. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2019-01 feeney, griffith 2011: mortality tempo: a guide for the skeptic. in: comparative population studies 35,3: 483-496. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-12 kreyenfeld, michaela et al. 2011: order-specific fertility rates for germany: estimates from perinatal statistics for the period 2001–2008. in: comparative population studies 35,2: 207224. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-06 kye, bongoh 2023: excess mortality during the covid-19 pandemic in south korea. in: comparative population studies 48. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-26 lesthaeghe, ron 1992: der zweite demographische übergang in den westlichen ländern: eine deutung. in: zeitschrift für bevölkerungswissenschaft 18,3: 313-354. luy, marc; pötzsch, olga 2011: estimates of the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate in western and eastern germany, 1955-2008. in: comparative population studies 35,3: 605-636. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-14 musizvingoza, ronald et al. 2023: trends and determinants of birth registration completeness in zimbabwe, 2005-2015. in: comparative population studies 48: 1-18. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-01 nieden, felix zur; sommer, bettina 2016: life expectancy in germany based on the 2011 census: was the healthy migrant effect merely an artefact? in: comparative population studies 41,2: 145-174. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2016-05 willekens, frans et al. 2023: the past, present and future of cpos. in: comparative population studies 48: i-vi. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-24 zakharov, sergei v. 2024: three decades on russia’s path of the second demographic transition: how patterns of fertility are changing under an unstable demographic policy. in: comparative population studies 49: 25-54. https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-02 prof. dr. michaela kreyenfeld (*). hertie school. berlin, germany. e-mail: kreyenfeld@hertie-school.org url: https://www.hertie-school.org/en/who-we-are/profile/person/kreyenfeld https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2019-01 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-12 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-06 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-26 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2010-14 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-01 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2016-05 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-24 https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-02 mailto:kreyenfeld@hertie-school.org https://www.hertie-school.org/en/who-we-are/profile/person/kreyenfeld published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union?* domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin abstract: the fall of the berlin wall in 1990 and eu enlargement in 2004 are two major political events in the recent history of the central and eastern european region. by systematically comparing the changes and differences in life expectancy at birth between the seven new member countries from central and eastern europe and more advanced countries of the eu-15, this article attempts to identify the vanguards and laggards in the health convergence process before and after the 2004 eu enlargement. the results of decomposition analysis highlight the changing patterns of ageand cause-speci c contributions to the differences in life expectancy. finally, we focus on the variations in the progress in reducing the burden of cardiovascular diseases and external causes of death, which were known to be responsible for the long-term mortality crisis during the period of communist rule. our  ndings suggest that the collapse of the communist regimes led to immediate positive changes in the central european countries. at the same time, health disadvantages persisted and even worsened in the baltic countries. later on, joining the eu in 2004 was not accompanied by immediate systematic convergence of life expectancy. however, very rapid progress in the initially worst performing baltic countries after 2007 and especially during the 2010s, may suggest a delayed positive impact of eu enlargement leading to decreasing longevity disadvantage. the convergence process after 2004 was generally slower in the initially betterperforming four central european countries. despite these country-speci c variations, czechia, poland, and, especially, estonia remain clear health vanguards in the region. further progress requires much more systematic efforts to combat cardiovascular diseases and the persisting burden of excess male mortality at adult working ages. keywords: european union · enlargement · life expectancy · mortality · convergence comparative population studies vol. 48 (2023): 523-552 (date of release: 19.09.2023) federal institute for population research 2023 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2023-20 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2023-20en2 * this article belongs to a special issue on “demographic developments in eastern and western europe before and after the transformation of socialist countries”. • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin524 1 introduction the  rst of may 2004 marked an important date in european union history when seven post-communist countries from central and eastern europe (cee) joined the union alongside slovenia, malta, and cyprus. the seven cee countries share many common features related to political, socioeconomic, and demographic developments during the periods of communist rule, post-communist transition, and while preparing for and entering the eu. the three baltic countries (estonia, latvia, and lithuania) were part of the soviet union. czechia and slovakia (forming czechoslovakia until 1992), poland, and hungary were tied with the ussr within the warsaw pact political-military bloc. between the end of the 1940s and the fall of communism in 1989-1990, all seven countries maintained authoritarian one-party political systems and centrally planned economies. although highly centralised health systems functioning under this political regime were effective in combatting infectious diseases and ensuring a rapid increase in life expectancy during the  rst two post-war decades, they could not ensure further health improvement by reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases (meslé 2004). lack of progress or even worsening in cardiovascular mortality was one of the major reasons for stagnation or increasing mortality in the cee region (meslé 2004; zatonski et al. 1998). this unfavourable trend contrasted with steady life expectancy improvements in western europe, where since the 1970s, the “cardiovascular revolution” was the major contributor to life expectancy progress (meslé 2004). by the end of the 1980s, the life expectancy gap between the western and eastern bloc countries reached 7-10 years. the health crisis observed in the eastern bloc was especially pronounced among males with substantial excess mortality at adult working ages with a predominant role of alcohol-related and external causes of death (meslé 2004). the fall of communism in the late 1980s was followed by a political and socioeconomic transition that brought substantial challenges for the whole cee region, especially for the countries of the former ussr, including the three baltic republics. in the  rst half of the 1990s, it resulted in a vast socioeconomic crisis in estonia, latvia, and lithuania, which coincided with a deepening health crisis with life expectancies reaching the lowest values since the end of the 1950s (meslé 2004; jasilionis et al. 2011). although economic progress accelerated in the early 2000s, life expectancy improvements were slower and uneven (jasilionis et al. 2011). socioeconomic and health trends were more favourable and sustainable in the four central european countries (rychtarikova 2004). one of the common components of the political and socioeconomic transformations observed in the seven countries in the 1990s and early 2000s was their orientation towards european integration. during 1997-2002 all seven countries were invited to start negotiations to join the eu, which were successfully completed by of cial entry to the union in may 2004. the negotiation process involved implementing the eu rules and laws in national legislation and meeting speci c political, social, and economic criteria. social and economic convergence has always been an important dimension of european integration and enlargement is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 525 policies, promoting the advantages of eu membership to candidate countries and highlighting perspectives of catching up with eu living standards. this model is primarily based on the so-called beta-convergence model assuming faster growth of initially poorer countries and regions, which allows them to eventually catch up with the more af uent countries and regions (forgó/jevčák 2015). the convergence model was successful among the 15 member states (eu-15, including the uk), showing notable declines in economic, social, and health disparities. although health systems mainly remain the responsibility of the individual member states, health dimensions, including life expectancy and cause-speci c mortality, have been increasingly considered for assessing the convergence process of the eu countries. health and health inequalities within and across the eu countries have become essential in monitoring social cohesion and sustainable growth. however, it is dif cult to assess to what extent the eu accession may contribute to health trends in the new member states because many structural changes (including in their health care systems) began before they joined the eu. the enlargement process started well beyond just one accession year and involved a long-term and complex negotiation process and related membership support programmes. several studies attempted to identify the longevity convergence process across member states and regions following the enlargements of the european union (mackenbach 2013; maynou et al. 2015; hrzic et al. 2020, 2021). for example, hrzic et al. (2020) found that a) new member states (after 2004) with initially higher mortality showed faster progress than those with lower initial mortality conditions, and b) this trend did not lead to mortality convergence at the eu level. similarly, another study relying on regional data found no signi cant short-term effect on mortality convergence between the “new” and “old” eu members (hrzic et al. 2021). by systematically comparing the differences in life expectancy at birth between the seven new member countries and more advanced countries of the eu-15, this article attempts to identify the vanguards and laggards in the health convergence process before and after 2004 eu enlargement. the study also explores variations in the progress of reducing the burden of cardiovascular diseases and external causes of death, which were known to be responsible for the long-term mortality crisis during the period of communist rule. 2 life expectancy trends before and after eu enlargement in 2004: moving towards a convergence? it is often suggested that many common features of mortality patterns in most of the central and eastern european region are inherited from a long-term mortality crisis during the period of communist rule (meslé 2004). despite some similarities in the directions of life expectancy trends before the fall of the berlin wall, further changes went in remarkably different directions in the countries of the former ussr and central european countries of the socialist warsaw bloc. the differences in both • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin526 life expectancy levels and trends are quite visible when comparing two aggregates among newcomers: baltic countries vs central european countries.1 figure 1 reveals several observations. firstly, this  gure illustrates the origins and development of the east-west life expectancy divide in europe. until the start of life expectancy stagnation in the early 1970s, baltic females maintained a longevity advantage over both the eu-15 and central european countries. central european females had lower life expectancy levels in the 1960s, but did not experience pronounced stagnation. female life expectancy in this region continued to increase, but progress was slower than in the eu-15 countries. unlike females, after almost catching up with the eu-15 in the mid-1960s, males in the central european and baltic regions experienced marked longevity declines. this worsening trend was much more pronounced in the baltic countries, especially in the 1970s and the  rst half of the 1980s. however, baltic male life expectancy suddenly rebounded following gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign in the mid-1980s (meslé 2004). as a result of these contradictory changes and  uctuations in the 1980s, male and female life expectancy in the central european and baltic countries temporarily converged to very similar levels in 1990. secondly, we can also observe that the fall of communism coincided with the beginning of long-term and systematic progress in central europe. by contrast, a massive drop in life expectancy was observed in the baltic countries in the  rst half of the 1990s (fig. 1). the subsequent improvement in the baltic countries was interrupted by a short-term stagnation or worsening life expectancy during 2000-2007. these contradictory trends led to a notable increase in life expectancy disparity between the two regions jumping from 1 year in 1990 to 4 years in 2014 for males. among females, the slight advantage of baltic females disappeared, leading to a gap of about one year in favour of central european females in 2014. however, progress during 2014-2019 was faster in baltic countries leading to diminishing the gap between them and the central european countries to 2.4 and 0.5 years for males and females, respectively. because the life expectancy decrease during 20192021 was more pronounced in the central european countries, the baltic countries managed further to reduce this longevity gap (fig. 1). it is also interesting to assess the performance of the two regions compared to the eu before the 2004 enlargement (eu-15).2 despite some  uctuations, the life expectancy disadvantage of the baltic and central european countries was steadily increasing throughout the 1970s and 1980s, reaching 7-8 years for males and 4.3-4.6 years for females in 1990 (fig. 1). between 1990 and 2004, this gap increased further 1 baltic countries: estonia, latvia, lithuania. central european countries: czech republic, slovakia, poland, and hungary. 2 on 30 april 2004, before the enlargement, the eu included 15 countries: france (since 1957), netherlands (since 1957), the uk (since 1973), ireland (since 1973), belgium (since 1957), germany (since 1957 (west germany until 1990), luxembourg (since 1957), italy (since 1957), denmark (since 1973), greece (since 1981), spain (since 1986), portugal (since 1986), sweden (since 1995), finland (since 1995), and austria (since 1995). the united kingdom of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020. is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 527 fig. 1: male and female life expectancy at birth in the baltic countries, central european countries, and the eu-15*, 1960-2021 note: life expectancy for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022. • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin528 for the baltic countries (up to 10.6 years for males and 5.3 years for females) but slightly decreased for the central european countries (down to 6.1 years for males and 3.7 years for females). during 2004-2019, the longevity gap between them and the eu-15 decreased in all seven countries, but this progress was faster in the initially worst performing baltic region. in 2019, baltic and central european females were in the same position regarding the life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15 (3.7 years). at the same time, the gap among males was still higher for the baltic countries (8.1 vs 6.1 years). provisional life expectancy estimates show that life expectancy declined during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 (islam et al. 2021) and, especially in 2021, was more pronounced in the central and eastern european countries leading to the increasing gap between them and the eu-15 (fig. 1). figure 1, showing aggregated  gures for the two regions, conceals important speci cities of individual countries and variations in life expectancy at birth within each region (fig. 2). for example, czechia experienced some gradual improvements in the 1980s, unlike hungary, slovakia, and poland. during the same period, lithuanian females were above all six other eastern and central european countries, whereas hungarian females were the lowest. however, the most signi cant variations and inter-country differences can be observed during the 1990s and 2000s. the maximal inter-country gap in male life expectancy at birth in 1990 was 3.4 years, whereas the corresponding difference for females was only 1.6 years. in 1990, the highest male life expectancies were observed for czechia and slovakia, whereas the lowest  gures were found for latvia and estonia. when compared to the eu-15, the disadvantage in male life expectancy at birth across the seven countries ranged from a low of about  ve years for czech males to 6-9 years in the remaining countries, with hungary, estonia, and latvia taking the worst position (8-9 years versus the eu-15). in the  rst half of the 1990s, which were marked by enormous political and socioeconomic transformation, diversity in life expectancy trends increased. between 1990 and 1994, the maximal life expectancy gap between the seven countries almost tripled for males (reaching 10.8 years) and doubled for females (4.4 years). the widening of inter-country differences in life expectancy was primarily due to an impressive decrease among the baltic population (and at a much smaller scale in hungarian males), which contrasted with notable health improvements in czechia, slovakia, poland, and in hungarian females. except for polish and hungarian females, life expectancy gains in these countries were more pronounced than in the eu-15 (fig. 2). consequently, the longevity disadvantage compared to the latter countries started declining in czechia, poland, and slovakia. these  rst signs of life expectancy convergence towards the eu-15 levels coincided with the increasing disadvantage of the three baltic countries. during this period, the male life expectancy gap with the eu-15 reached 12, 13, and 15 years in lithuania, estonia, and latvia, respectively. although the three baltic countries enjoyed rapid health recovery during the second half of the 1990s, life expectancy at birth remained well below the pretransitional levels. health improvements slowed down among slovak males. at the same time, in czechia (both sexes), poland (both sexes), hungary (both sexes), and is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 529 fig. 2: male and female life expectancy at birth in seven selected new eu member countries and the eu-15, 1960-2021 note: life expectancy for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022. • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin530 slovakia (females), progress resumed at about the same pace as in the early 1990s (fig. 2). consequently, the life expectancy gap with the eu-15 declined in all countries except slovakia. despite the reduction in this gap, the longevity disadvantage of baltic and hungarian males remained huge, ranging from about 8 years in hungary and lithuania to 10-11 years in estonia and latvia. between 2000 and 2004, positive health changes observed among males in the second half of the 1990s slowed down in most countries under study. strikingly, lithuanian males even experienced a notable decline in life expectancy. consequently, the male life expectancy gap with the eu-15 either remained at about the same level as in 2000 or increased further (in lithuania). at the same time, signi cant life expectancy gains were observed for females in estonia and poland. these improvements exceeded those observed in the eu-15 and contributed to further diminishing female life expectancy disadvantage (from 5.2 to 3.7 years in estonia and from 3.6 to 3.3 years in poland). the gap remained almost at the same level in czechia and hungary, whereas it increased in lithuania, latvia, and slovakia. at the time of enlargement in 2004, latvian males and females had the lowest life expectancy at birth (65.6 and 76.0 years, respectively). among the seven newcomers, the highest indicators were observed for czech males (72.6 years) and czech and polish females (79.2 years). for males, estonia and lithuania showed a slightly better situation than latvia, whereas slovakia, poland, and hungary took intermediate positions between the baltic countries and the leading czechia. the male life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15 ranged from 4-6 years for czechia and poland to 10-11 years for the three baltic countries. on the female side, there was no such big divide between the baltic and central european region countries. the life expectancy disadvantage was about 3 years for poland and czechia and 5-7 years for the remaining countries. on average, all seven new member states showed greater health gains during the  fteen years after joining the eu (2004-2019) than the eu-15 (fig. 2). between 2004 and 2019, the most remarkable life expectancy gains were observed in estonia (7.7 years for males and 4.7 years for females). the second largest improvements in life expectancy concerned latvian and lithuanian males (5.3 and 5.2 years). progress was the smallest among polish and czech males (3.4 and 3.8 years) and hungarian and polish females (2.6 and 2.7 years). the higher life expectancy gains in the seven new eu members allowed them to reduce their life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15. the most remarkable progress in convergence was observed in estonia, cutting down the longevity gap by almost 45 percent for males (from 10.0 to 5.6 years) and even more for females (from 4.6 to 2.0 years). all other countries showed smaller-scale convergence. meanwhile, there was almost no improvement for polish males and only a little progress for hungarian females. in 2019, the male life expectancy disadvantage ranged from a low of 3.6 and 5.6 years in czechia and estonia to a high of 8.5 and 9.1 years in lithuania and latvia. the corresponding  gures for females ranged from 2.0 and 2.6 years for estonia and czechia to 4.7 and 5.1 years for latvia and hungary. fifteen years after joining the eu, czechia remained a clear leader in male life expectancy (76.4 years) among the newcomers. with about 5 years less than is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 531 czechia, latvia and lithuania were still in the worst position. the only signi cant change in the ranking of the seven countries concerns estonian males, for whom life expectancy levels overcame those observed in hungary, poland, and slovakia. for females, the picture was much less systematic. in 2019, a clear leader in female life expectancy was estonia (82.7 years), followed by czechia and poland, both showing a life expectancy of about 82 years. the lowest female life expectancy was observed in hungary and latvia (79.7 and 80.0 years), whereas lithuania and slovakia maintained a moderate advantage over these two countries. in total, despite some signs of longevity convergence with the eu-15 after 2004, the speed of progress varied a great deal across the seven countries. a clear leader in the speed of convergence was estonia in overcoming central europe (despite starting from a lower position). the question remains whether this convergence process was directly associated with eu enlargement because the central european countries and (partially) estonia had already seen longevity improvements before 2004. however, the progress in lithuania and latvia accelerating in the 2010s suggests possible delayed effects. 3 changes in ageand cause-speci c mortality and their contributions to life expectancy improvement before and after the 2004 eu enlargement this section examines changes in the ageand cause-speci c contributions to the total gap in life expectancy at birth between the seven countries under study and the eu-15. the  rst sub-section describes annual infant, adult, and old-age mortality trends. the second sub-section provides an overview of dynamics in mortality due to cardiovascular diseases and external causes of death, two principal causes of death responsible for long-term health stagnation and mortality crises in the cee region. finally, the third sub-section discusses changes in the most important age groups and causes of death responsible for the total life expectancy gap between the seven cee countries and the eu-15. 3.1 trends and differences in infant, adult, and old age mortality before and after 2004 figure 3 suggests that all seven countries achieved considerable progress in reducing infant mortality and substantially reduced the gap with the eu-15. by the end of the period covered, some successful countries such as czechia and estonia outperformed the eu-15. despite some variations in the timing and speed of the progress, the remaining  ve cee countries also showed a systematic convergence towards the eu-15 levels, especially during the period 2004-2019. during the 1980s, the most signi cant disadvantage in infant mortality was observed in hungary, poland, and slovakia, whereas the remaining four countries showed only moderate excess infant mortality rates (50 percent or less). international comparisons in infant mortality can be biased by differences in de nitions of infant deaths and • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin532 live births (gourbin/masuy-stroobant 1993, 1995). eu-15 and central european countries theoretically apply the who de nition during the period. in the three baltic countries, this international de nition was introduced in the early 1990s (anderson/silver 1986; meslé 2004). consequently, a sudden increase in the rates, showing a jump up to 2.5-3 times, was observed in the three countries. therefore, it is very probable that baltic infant mortality rates were already comparable to those of central europe before 1991. beginning in the mid-1990s, excess infant mortality started declining in all seven countries (fig. 3). czechia was a clear vanguard in this process, catching up and outperforming the eu-15 at the end of the 1990s. estonia showed an even more rapid decline in infant mortality and, by the end of the 2000s, reached both the levels of czechia and the eu-15. despite being the laggards at the beginning of the 1990s, latvia and lithuania experienced remarkable progress during 2004-2019, outperforming slovakia, poland, and hungary. meanwhile, slower improvements and even stagnation in infant mortality in slovakia during 2009-2019 led to this fig. 3: infant mortality rates for seven new members and the eu-15*, 19802019 note: infant mortality rates for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022. is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 533 country holding the worst positions at the end of the period covered. compared to the eu-15, infant mortality in slovakia remained about 60 percent higher, whereas the corresponding disadvantage in poland was close to 20 percent. excess mortality at adult working ages was considered one of the primary reasons for long-term stagnation or even downward trends in life expectancy in the majority of the former communist countries (meslé 2004). figure 4 illustrates that, according to the data for the 1980s, the seven countries showed quite similar levels of adult mortality exceeding the levels of the eu-15 by 1.4-2.3 times for males and 1.4-1.9 times for females. czechia was the best-performing country for both sexes, whereas the highest mortality was observed for latvia (males) and hungary (females). during the  rst half of the 1990s, by contrast, the three baltic countries and (to a lesser extent) hungary experienced adult mortality increases with notable reductions in poland, slovakia, and (especially) czechia. compared to the eu-15, the excess mortality in estonia, latvia, lithuania, and, to a lesser extent, in hungary suddenly increased, reaching 2.6-4.0 times for males and 2.0-2.5 times for females in 1994. at the same time, this disadvantage remained at about the same level in the three other central european countries. however, thanks to substantial progress during the second half of the 1990s, the three baltic countries managed to reduce their excess adult mortality (by about 15 percent in estonia and lithuania and about 25 percent in latvia). by contrast, the remaining countries maintained the same disadvantage versus the eu-15 as observed in 1990. at the time of the 2004 eu enlargement, the three baltic countries and hungary showed about 2.5-3.0 times higher mortality than in the eu-15, whereas the corresponding disadvantage for females was 1.8-2.2 times. the gap was much smaller for the three remaining countries: it ranged from 1.6 times for czech males to 2 times for slovak and polish males. the corresponding gaps for females in these countries varied from 1.3 to 1.5 times. from there, during the past  fteen years (2004-2019), adult mortality trends in the seven cee countries showed substantial variations (fig. 4). the most inconsistent changes were in latvia and lithuania, where adult mortality worsened sharply until 2007 and decreased rapidly (with a temporary slowdown in the  rst half of the 2010s). estonia experienced more systematic progress, catching up with poland and slovakia and overcoming hungary. after 2007, hungary also signi cantly improved, but at a slower pace than estonia. meanwhile, estonian females overcame poland and slovakia and converged with the lowest mortality observed in czechia. finally, slowdowns in mortality reductions were observed in hungary and latvia at the end of the period covered. since 2004, the most impressive convergence in adult mortality towards the level of the eu-15 was observed in estonia, cutting the excess mortality by about one-third (from 2.9 to 1.9 times) for males and from 1.8 to 1.3 times for females. by contrast, there was almost no reduction in the relative mortality gap compared with the eu-15 in poland and slovakia and only a little progress in the remaining countries. in 2019, excess male mortality was still around 1.9-2.7 times greater in all countries except czechia (1.4 times). the corresponding relative disadvantage • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin534 fig. 4: standardised death rates for the ages 25-64 comparing seven new members to the eu-15, 1980-2019 note: standardised death rates for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022. 100 1,000 10,000 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 year estonia latvia lithuania czech republic slovak republic poland hungary eu-15* standardised death rate (per 100 thousand) males fall of communism 2004 eu enlargement 100 1,000 10,000 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 year standardised death rate (per 100 thousand) females fall of communism 2004 eu enlargement is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 535 among females ranged from 1.2-1.4 times in czechia, estonia, slovakia, and poland to 1.6-1.8 times in lithuania, latvia, and hungary. during the period of communist rule, old age mortality had a relatively minor impact on life expectancy changes, especially for males (meslé 2004). the measurement of the impact of old age mortality was further complicated by data quality problems leading to implausible mortality patterns, such as strikingly high female and male life expectancy at age 65 in lithuania, persisting up to the early 1990s (fig. 5). the situation changed in the 1990s and 2000s when older ages played an increasingly important role in both temporal changes and inter-country differences in mortality. the country-speci c trajectories of changes in life expectancy at age 65 differ from those for infant and adult mortality (fig. 5). czechia, starting from the lowest level in 1990 and showing gradual initial progress, appeared among the leading countries in 2019. at the same time, slovakia (both sexes) and lithuania (males), which showed the highest life expectancy at age 65 at the beginning, landed in the worst positions at the end of the period. despite some stagnation during the 2000s, lithuanian females, who had the same initial advantage, remained in the middle between the worst and best-performing countries. furthermore, assuming that old age mortality (at least until the end of the 1980s) was underestimated, real progress was probably even more sizeable. poland, showing quite systematic increases in life expectancy at age 65 since 1990, experienced some stagnation during 2016-2018. during 2004-2019 exceptional progress in life expectancy at age 65 was observed in estonia, reaching the best female position among the seven countries. among males, estonia and slovakia were the only countries with longevity gains exceeding those in the eu-15. among females, all countries except hungary showed greater longevity increases. in particular, estonian females had almost two times greater gains than the eu-15 countries (2.9 vs 1.5 years). overall progress was the smallest in lithuania and hungary. in 2004, the gap in life expectancy at age 65 among males varied between a low of 2.7 years in czechia to a high of 4.5 years in latvia. czechia also maintained the same (but still the smallest) gap in 2019. at the same time, estonia was the only country achieving quite a substantial reduction of the disadvantage (from 3.9 to 3.3 years). by contrast, there was an increase in the longevity gap in latvia, lithuania, poland, and hungary. the highest life expectancy disadvantages were in hungary (4.2 years), lithuania (4.2 years), and latvia (4.7 years). the changes were quite different among females, with all countries (except hungary) showing at least a slight decrease in the longevity gap. the most impressive convergence was observed in estonia, showing a drop from 2.8 years in 2004 to 1.4 years in 2019. substantial progress in closing the gap also occurred among latvian, czech, and slovak females. hungarian females showed a slight increase in disadvantage, reaching the worst position in 2019 (3.7 years). age-speci c analyses suggest that all countries achieved systematic convergence only in infant mortality. following eu enlargement in 2004, further progress in reducing mortality gaps at adult working ages was relatively small. the • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin536 fig. 5: life expectancy at age 65 years in seven new members and the eu-15*, 1980-2019 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 year estonia latvia lithuania czech republic slovak republic poland hungary eu-15* life expectancy at 65 years males fall of communism 2004 eu enlargement 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 19 80 19 85 19 90 19 95 20 00 20 05 20 10 20 15 20 20 year life expectancy at 65 years females fall of communism 2004 eu enlargement note: life expectancy for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 eu member states, including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022. is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 537 only exception concerns estonia, which achieved more noticeable improvements and converged with the eu-15. however, despite this trend, estonia (with latvia and lithuania) maintained very high male mortality at these ages (2-3 times exceeding mortality in the eu-15) until the end of the covered period. between 2004 and 2019, signi cant progress was achieved in reducing the longevity gap for females (except in hungary) in old age. by contrast, no signi cant signs of convergence were observed for males (except estonia). 3.2 changes in mortality due to cardiovascular diseases and external causes of death one of the key determinants explaining the east-west mortality divide is related to the failure of former communist cee countries to complete the second stage of health transition, which is related to combatting human-made and degenerative (primarily cardiovascular) diseases (meslé 1991, 2004). while the so-called “cardiovascular revolution” of the 1970s fuelled further regular life expectancy increases in western countries, former communist countries were unable to reduce the burden of cardiovascular mortality, which led to long-term stagnation or even a decrease in life expectancy in the region. figure 6 indicates that during the 1980s, the disadvantage in cvd mortality compared with the eu-15 increased in almost all seven cee countries. the early 1990s brought another increase in cvd mortality divergence. sudden worsening and considerable  uctuations in cardiovascular mortality in the three baltic countries led to a rapid and sizeable increase in the mortality disadvantage compared with the eu-15 (fig. 6). at the same time, thanks to continuous improvements in cardiovascular mortality (almost at the same pace as in the eu15), the four central european countries did not see any further widening of the mortality gap. the  rst half of the 2000s marked the continuation of mortality reductions in czechia and poland and a gradual start of progress among females in estonia. however, even in these three successful countries, this progress was not faster than in the eu-15. at the same time, a lack of progress (stagnation) or even some growth in cardiovascular mortality was observed in lithuania, latvia, slovakia, and hungary. consequently, the mortality disadvantage versus the eu-15 increased in almost all countries, reaching 2.6-3.3 times for the baltic males and 2.4 times for hungary and slovakia (fig. 6). among females, an increase in mortality disadvantage was observed in latvia (from 2.5 to 2.9 times), lithuania (from 2.1 to 2.4 times), slovakia (from 2.2 to 2.4 times), and hungary (from 2.1 to 2.3 times). during the same period, the corresponding gap remained almost constant only for czechia and poland. like in the mid-1990s, this period was marked by growth in disparities between the seven countries (fig. 6). during 2004-2019, most of the seven countries achieved signi cant but still very uneven success in reducing cardiovascular mortality (fig. 6). among males, overall mortality decreases ranged from 27-32 percent in hungary and lithuania to 4147 percent in the remaining countries. during this period, estonian females achieved • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin538 fig. 6: standardised death rates for cardiovascular diseases in seven new member states and eu-15*, 1980-2019 note: standardised death rates (sdr) for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). due to the limited availability of data on causes of death, the eu-15* series ended in 2017. source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022; the human cause of death database 2022; who 2022 is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 539 the most impressive progress in reducing the gap between them and the eu-15 and almost caught up with czechia and poland (fig. 6). czechia (both sexes) and poland (females) maintained their leading positions with the lowest cardiovascular mortality among the seven countries. according to the  gures for 2017, the relative mortality disadvantage versus the eu-15 remained very high, exceeding two times in all countries (except the polish females showing a ratio of 1.9 times). the highest mortality excess of 2.8-3.5 times was observed in lithuania, latvia, and hungary. furthermore, mortality disparity within the seven new member states increased, especially between the bestperforming czechia and the laggards latvia and lithuania. it can be concluded that progress in the convergence of cardiovascular mortality towards the levels of the eu-15 has been quite uneven in time and across the seven countries. soon after the fall of the berlin wall, positive changes almost immediately occurred in the central european countries, whereas the three baltic countries saw a rapidly worsening situation. it seems that the preparatory stage of entering the eu in 2004 did not produce any positive effect on convergence. despite the continuation (four central european countries) and onset (baltic countries) of progress in reducing cvd mortality after 2004, all seven countries did not achieve signi cant convergence towards the levels observed in the eu-15. strikingly, the relative mortality disadvantages compared with the eu-15 even slightly increased in the worst performing countries (latvia (females), lithuania (both sexes), and hungary (both sexes)). external causes of death were also important components of the long-term mortality crisis during the period of communist rule, especially in the countries of the former ussr (shkolnikov et al. 2004; meslé 2004). these causes of death were mainly responsible for the excess premature mortality, primarily affecting males at working ages (meslé 2004). male mortality due to external causes of death varied in the 1980s and (especially) the early 1990s (fig. 7). between 1990 and 2004, the three baltic countries showed remarkably similar levels and changes in external cause mortality. a deep socioeconomic crisis related to the rapid transition to a market economy in the  rst half of the 1990s led to a rapid increase in mortality in these countries and a recordlevel gap in male mortality (5-6 times compared with the eu-15). the subsequent partial improvement in mortality during 1995-1998 and further stagnation led to the most disadvantaged positions of the three countries in the enlarged eu in 2004 (meslé 2004; jasilionis et al. 2011). compared with the eu-15, the disadvantage in male mortality due to external causes of death ranged from 4.1 and 4.2 times in estonia and latvia to a striking 4.8 times in lithuania. during the same period, about two times smaller but persisting gaps (about 1.7-2 times) remained at about the same level in czechia, slovakia, and poland (fig. 8). hungary was the only country showing a moderate decrease in relative disadvantage (from 2.6 times in 1990 to 2.2 times in 2004). unlike prior years, 2004-2019 saw much more rapid improvements. the declines in excess external mortality compared with the eu-15 can be observed in all countries (fig. 7). however, the progress was quite uneven. for example, during • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin540 2004-2007, mortality increased in lithuania, leading to the record (5.7 times) excess compared with the eu-15. despite a signi cant improvement, disadvantages in external causes remained very pronounced in all countries, ranging from 1.6-1.7 times for the four central european countries to 2.2 times in estonia and 2.8 and 3.3 times in latvia and lithuania, respectively. the trends in excess external-cause mortality in seven countries point to several facts. first, the fall of communist regimes and subsequent transition to a market economy in three baltic countries led to a vast mortality crisis re ected by violent mortality. in the central european countries, similar political and socioeconomic changes had smaller, neutral, or even negative impacts (leading to diminishing their excess mortality compared with the eu-15). at the same time, entering the european union in 2004 coincided with a temporal growth in mortality excess in latvia and lithuania. however, no immediate signi cant changes in the gap were observed in the four central european countries. the potential effect of entering the eu in 2004 fig. 7: standardised male death rates for external causes of death in seven new member states and eu-15*, 1980-2019 note: standardised death rates (sdr) for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020). due to the limited availability of data on causes of death, the eu-15* series ended in 2017. source: the human mortality database 2022; eurostat 2022; the human cause of death database 2022; who 2022. is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 541 may be observed for the three baltic countries showing a more rapid decline of the gap between them and the eu-15 from 2007 onwards. 3.3 ageand cause-speci c contributions to the differences in life expectancy between the seven new eu member states and eu-15 figures 8 and 9 illustrate temporal changes in ageand cause-speci c contributions to the total life expectancy gap between each of the seven new member states and the eu-15 in 1990, 2004, and 2017 (the latest available data on causes of death for all eu-15 countries). the seven countries are ranked according to the size of the male and female life expectancy gap in 2017. figure 8 shows that between 1990 and 2004, in latvia, lithuania, estonia, and hungary the total male life expectancy gap between them and the eu-15 increased. the gap remained at the same level in slovakia and decreased in czechia and poland. the most signi cant increase in the life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15 was observed in the three baltic countries, especially lithuania. between 2004 and 2017, male life expectancy gaps decreased in all countries under study. the most notable reductions occurred in estonia, showing a decrease of 4.2 years for males and 2.9 years for females. the life expectancy convergence towards the eu-15 was also notable for latvian males and females (a decrease of 1.6 and 2.0 years) and lithuanian males (a decrease of 1.6 years). by contrast, the remaining countries saw only a moderate decline. the decomposition results show that mortality differences at adult working ages (25-64) played a major role in explaining the total gap in male life expectancy at birth between the seven countries and the eu-15 (fig. 8). although between 1990 and 2004, all countries except estonia and latvia saw reductions in the relative importance of these ages, their contributions remained very high, ranging from 47 percent in czechia to 68 percent in lithuania. the next period (2004-2017) was associated with a further decline in the role of adult ages. however, the contributions still constituted at least 50 percent for all countries except czechia (36 percent) and slovakia (45 percent). at the same time, the male life expectancy gap between the seven countries and the eu-15 became more dependent on mortality differences at old ages (65 and over). although this share systematically grew in all seven countries, this increase was especially pronounced in czechia and slovakia, where the corresponding shares exceeded 50 percent in 2017 (fig. 8). in 2017, the contributions of old age ranged from 38 percent in latvia and lithuania to 62 percent in czechia. in addition, the contributions of the mortality differences at younger ages (0 and 1-24 years) were far less signi cant and (in most cases) showed a declining trend. figure 9 shows that between 1990 and 2004, the female life expectancy gap between czechia, poland, estonia, and hungary and the eu-15 decreased. this progress was uneven across countries, with the most signi cant decrease in the gap in poland and czechia (by 0.8 years). at the same time, the difference increased by about 1.3 years in latvia and lithuania. during the following period between 2004 and 2017, the most pronounced decline (almost by three years) in the life • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin542 expectancy gap was observed in estonia. much more modest progress in reducing the disadvantage compared with the eu-15 occurred in the remaining countries, especially hungary. compared to males, both patterns and the changes in the contributions of different age groups to the total difference in female life expectancy at birth were different. in 1990, the biggest contributions came from mortality differences in the age group 65+ (fig. 8). among all countries, only in lithuania was the percentage of this age group smaller than 50 percent. by 2017, the shares of this age group increased further, ranging from 58-59 percent in baltic countries to 87 percent in czechia. despite some decreases, the shares of contributions to mortality differences at adult ages (25-64 years) remained substantial (explaining at least one-third of the difference in life expectancy) throughout the period in all countries except slovakia and czechia, showing 26 percent and 16 percent contributions of this age group in 2017. figure 9 provides further details about the major causes of death responsible for the male and female life expectancy gap between each of the seven countries and the eu-15. as expected, in all countries, the most important contribution to the gap came from differences in cardiovascular mortality. however, the size of contributions and directions of their changes varied by country and sex. according to the data for males in 1990, the shares of these causes of death in all countries except czechia varied from 46 to 54 percent, whereas the contribution in czechia was higher (64 percent). by 2004, the contributions of cvd slightly increased in latvia, czechia, slovakia, and hungary and diminished in lithuania, estonia, and poland. between 2004 and 2017, the relative (%) shares of cvd increased again in all countries except slovakia and poland. in 2017, this share ranged from a low of 44 percent in poland to a high of 69 percent in czechia. despite its decreasing role, external causes of death remained the second important cause for the male life expectancy gap between the three baltic countries and the eu-15. meanwhile, in central european countries, external causes of death became less important than neoplasms in 2004 or even in 1990 in the case of czechia. the remaining causes, apart from digestive system diseases in lithuania, hungary, czechia, and slovakia, had a much smaller impact. increasing contributions of cardiovascular diseases were also observed for females (fig. 9). for almost all countries under study, neoplasms were the second most important group of causes of death, positively contributing to the gap between them and the eu-15. the only exception concerns lithuanian and latvian females showing higher shares of external causes of death. the absolute and relative contributions of cancers increased in time in all countries except czechia. the absolute contribution of neoplasms increased especially in hungary, exceeding one year in 2004 and 2017. the observed pattern of cause-speci c contributions showing negative impacts of infectious, respiratory, and other (remaining) causes of death should be interpreted with caution as they may indicate a possible in uence of differences in coding practices and other speci c problems related to the cause of death data (especially in the oldest age groups) (danilova et al. 2021). the is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 543 redistribution of ill-de ned causes of death (including senility) did not improve or signi cantly change the decomposition results. fig. 8: age-speci c contributions to the differences in life expectancy between the seven new member states and eu-15, 1990, 2004 and 2017 note: a) life expectancy for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004), including the united kingdom (of cially withdrew from the eu on 31 january 2020); b) countries are ranked according to the size of male and female life expectancy gap in 2017, respectively. source: the human mortality database 2022. • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin544 age and cause decompositions suggest that the life expectancy disadvantages in baltic and central european countries were mainly driven by excess mortality at adult working ages for males and higher mortality at ages above 65 years for females. fig. 9: cause-speci c contributions to the differences in life expectancy between the seven new member states and eu-15, 1990, 2004 and 2017 note: a) life expectancy for eu-15* refers to the weighted average of 15 “old” eu member states (as of 30 april 2004); b) countries are ranked according to the size of male and female life expectancy gap in 2017. source: the human mortality database 2022; the human cause of death database 2022; who 2022. is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 545 although this general pattern remained unchanged after 2004, the importance of old ages increased, whereas the share of adult working ages decreased. higher cardiovascular mortality for both sexes and notable excess mortality due to external causes for males remained the main cause-speci c contributors. 4 discussion two major events (the fall of the berlin wall in 1990 and eu enlargement in 2004) in the recent history of the central and eastern european countries made huge and multidimensional impacts on their political and socioeconomic trajectories. due to the complex nature of these changes, the exact effects of these two events on the trends in population health are hardly identi able. this study describes the consequences of these two political events in the context of life expectancy convergence of the seven new eu member countries towards the levels observed in the “old” eu member countries (eu-15). our study suggests that both political events can be associated with countryspeci c life expectancy trends in very speci c ways. firstly, the fall of the berlin wall led to positive changes in life expectancy in the four central european countries, allowing them to maintain the same level or even slightly decrease the longevity gap between them and the eu-15. on the contrary, the three baltic countries experienced an abrupt socioeconomic crisis, leading to record decreases in life expectancy in the mid-1990s. despite a recovery in the second half of the 1990s, the three countries maintained a vast life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15 for another decade or even more. secondly, the process of accession to the eu in 2004 did not produce immediate effects on reducing the life expectancy disadvantage. we assume that this accession process included two periods a) preceding the accession (the negotiation process including the adoption of eu laws and implementing necessary reforms) and b) the short period following the accession. both periods did not witness any onset of systematic convergence of life expectancy towards the eu-15 levels. only subsequent rapid progress in the initially worst-performing baltic countries suggests a delayed positive impact of eu enlargement leading to decreasing longevity disadvantage in the 2010s. meanwhile, the convergence trend after 2004 was slower in the initially better-performing four central european countries. despite some signs of slowdown in the speed of improvements, czechia remained a prominent leader in male life expectancy in the region. at the same time, the most impressive progress in the speed of convergence during 2004-2019 was observed among estonian females, who managed to cut their life expectancy disadvantage compared with the eu-15 by about 45 percent in  fteen years. among females, these two countries and poland continued leading the way, reaching life expectancy levels of about 82 years and even above in 2019. this success contrasts with various and often uneven trajectories in the remaining four countries, especially among males. lithuanian and latvian males maintained substantially lower life expectancy despite their rapid recent progress. • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin546 country-speci c differences in the life expectancy gap versus the eu-15 are even more pronounced when considering patterns of ageand cause-speci c contributions. the longevity disadvantage of the seven countries has become increasingly dependent on mortality at older ages and cardiovascular diseases. however, for most countries (especially latvia and lithuania), excess male mortality at adult ages and external causes of death also play decisive roles. the variations in the magnitude of longevity improvements are related to the contradictory changes in mortality due to the leading causes of death (cardiovascular diseases (for both sexes) and external causes of death (for males)). for example, estonia’s most rapid health improvement was more related to the important reductions in cardiovascular mortality than relatively moderate achievements in combatting external deaths. after 2004, with the only exception of estonia, none of the remaining countries achieved a pronounced convergence towards the eu-15 levels in mortality due to cardiovascular diseases. however, the magnitude of the remaining mortality disadvantage was still enormous (around two times or more). although almost all (especially baltic) countries showed progress in reducing their mortality disadvantage for external causes of death, the gap between them and the eu-15 remained unacceptably high. due to numerous inconsistencies and inter-country variations, interpreting the overall longevity progress in the seven countries is not straightforward. the main challenge concerns associating the observed changes with the effect of eu enlargement. the complex enlargement process and subsequent effects cannot be attributed to a single year. according to eu regulations, to become a member state of the union each country completes a set of formal steps starting with a formal application. after the application is approved, the country receives candidate status and enters a negotiation stage to harmonise their national laws and economies to the respective eu legislations and norms. after these negotiations, the candidate country is ready to become a formal european union member state. pre-accession and negotiation processes also involve various eu programmes aimed at building administrative capacities and technical support (e.g., phare programmes). it is also important to note that the pre-accession process started earlier (in 1998) in the three leading countries (czechia, estonia, and poland) and hungary. latvia, lithuania, and slovakia entered the accession negotiations with a two-year delay. finally, the 15-year period of 2004-2019 is too short to observe the direct effects of eu accession bene ts on the aggregated health indicators such as life expectancy. it should be mentioned that the eu’s role in health is very fragmented and mainly falls under the responsibility of the individual member states. however, the eu contributes to population health indirectly via social cohesion and other social policy programmes. the success of individual new member countries is also very dependent on the initial conditions preceding the accession in 2004. the  ndings of our study suggest that czechia, poland, and (more recently) estonia are clear vanguards in the health convergence process towards the eu-15. despite recent deceleration in the speed of progress, czechia has been the most successful country, maintaining steady life expectancy improvements since the late 1980s (fihel/pechholdová 2017). at the same time, estonia, which started from is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 547 the worst position in the early 1990s, showed the most impressive longevity gains between 2004 and 2019. finally, polish females (but not males) were exchanging the leading position with czechia in the 2000s and formed the leading group with estonia and czechia in the 2010s. since 2017, estonian females have taken the lead in life expectancy regarding the level and pace of improvement. these three vanguard countries differ in the timing and ageand cause-speci c patterns of life expectancy improvements. this suggests that there are important differences in the initial conditions and determinants of health progress. firstly, poland and czechia experienced far less dramatic socioeconomic and structural changes in the early 1990s, which also obviously concerned the maintenance and effectiveness of health systems, including the access to and delivery of medical care. secondly, estonia (like latvia and lithuania) inherited speci c problems, including a vast burden of external diseases leading to enormous excess mortality at adult working ages. these problems were much less pronounced in the central european countries, especially czechia. following the economic crisis of the early 1990s, sudden growth in external deaths and deterioration in cardiovascular mortality in estonia predetermined an enormous decrease in estonian life expectancy in the mid-1990s. this mortality crisis was responsible for the sudden growth in the health disadvantage of estonia compared to czechia and poland. the early 1990s marked the breakthrough in cardiovascular mortality trends in poland, whereas more systematic progress in estonia gradually started in the late 1990s (meslé 2004; zatonski et al. 1998, 2008; bandosz et al. 2012; grigoriev et al. 2014). it has been suggested that initial progress in combatting cardiovascular diseases in czechia was more related to improvements in medical treatments, such as the growing use of cardiovascular drugs and invasive heart surgeries. by contrast, fewer positive changes occurred in lifestyle-related major cardiovascular risk factors, including alcohol consumption, smoking, diet, and cholesterol (rychtarikova 2004). other authors claim that improved lifestyle-related factors played a more important role than medical treatments. for example, it was estimated that more than 50 percent of the reduction in mortality due to ischaemic heart diseases in poland between 1991 and 2005 was related to favourable changes in health behaviour-related factors, while the corresponding contribution of medical treatments was about 33 percent (bandosz et al. 2012). at the same time, health surveys for estonia indicate that despite some positive changes, including important reductions in smoking among males and the near disappearance of the use of animal fat for cooking, there was no progress in reducing many cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high alcohol consumption, smoking among females, and low physical activity (tekkel et al. 2007). estonia also maintained clear leadership in the baltic region and among former communist countries in the speed and implementation of reforms in its health care sector, especially in building family-doctor-based primary care, modernising and optimising the secondary and tertiary health care sectors, and introducing effective health insurance (habicht et al. 2018; fidler et al. 2007; dobrev et al. 2008). most of the aforementioned changes in estonia and other successful new eu member states started well before eu accession in 2004. therefore, further health improvements and subsequent life expectancy convergences towards the • domantas jasilionis, france meslé, jacques vallin548 eu-15 can be considered a continuation of the prior positive mortality trends. however, as in the case of the political-administrative convergence of the eu’s new member states, a pre-accession period of harmonisation and implementation of numerous administrative eu requirements in the national laws may have had indirect (via legal and administrative reforms) positive consequences on population health (greer 2006). during the second half of the 2000s, the new eu member states started receiving substantial direct economic assistance via eu structural funds and other eu programmes (forgó/jevčák 2015). once again, their positive effects on population health can often be detected only indirectly, for example via improvements in health care infrastructure or road safety. such indirect effects also concern the requirement to harmonise excise taxes for alcohol and tobacco (i.e., gradually increase to the eu required levels), which led to signi cant increases in the prices of these harmful products in all countries (eurostat 2022). combined with important national incentives combatting alcohol consumption, these measures helped to achieve radical reductions in adult deaths in the three baltic countries (jasilionis et al. 2011; štelemėkas et al. 2021). despite a robust economic convergence towards eu-15 levels, it is dif cult to predict the further success of individual countries in achieving similar progress in reducing their disadvantages in life expectancy at birth. by 2019, the seven countries became even more diverse according to social and health criteria. it is worrying that lithuania and latvia, achieving the most rapid progress in the gdp convergence to the eu average, remained in the worst positions according to most social indicators (highest social exclusion, poverty, and income inequality) (eurostat 2022). furthermore, the relative shares of government expenditures for social protection and health in these two countries also remained among the lowest in the eu (eurostat 2022). the observed signs of convergence of life expectancy to the levels of the eu15 countries can be interpreted in the framework of the convergence-divergence framework explaining the process of health transition (frenk et al. 1991; meslé/ vallin 2002; vallin/meslé 2004). this framework suggests that each important breakthrough in population health leads to increasing disparities between and even within countries (vallin/meslé 2004). the most striking example of such divergence in developed countries concerns the east-west mortality divide due to the failure of the former communist countries to follow the success of western countries in combatting the leading cardiovascular diseases (“cardiovascular revolution”) observed in the 1970s (meslé 2004). however, the health transition theory also provides some optimism, suggesting that the divergence phase will eventually be over, leading to subsequent convergence in life expectancy trends (meslé/vallin 2002; vallin/meslé 2004). in this context, converging trends in life expectancy and improvements in cardiovascular mortality among the seven new eu member countries look promising. however, only estonia managed to signi cantly outperform the eu-15 in the pace of reductions in cardiovascular mortality. by contrast, the other leading countries (czechia and poland) did not achieve such a pace of progress. thus, the majority of the countries maintained sizeable disadvantages in cardiovascular mortality. the further substantial progress in is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 549 catching up with more advanced countries of the eu-15 still requires much more systematic efforts and resources directed towards combatting cardiovascular diseases and ensuring effective prevention of external causes of death, especially for the laggard countries. the success of estonia offers grounds for some optimism, suggesting that radical and thoughtful reforms in the health care system combined with appropriate inter-sectorial policy measures are an appropriate solution even during economic uncertainty. however, this will be a dif cult and complex task considering the magnitude of the remaining health disadvantage. covid-19 pandemics, emerging geopolitical threats and their possible consequences for socioeconomic and health conditions in the region create even more uncertainties for the future. higher life expectancy losses in the seven countries during 2020-2021 also contributed to a new increase in divergence of life expectancy between them and 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2015: health inequalities in the european union: an empirical analysis of the dynamics of regional differences. in: the european journal of health economics 16: 543-559. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-014-0609-1 meslé, france 1991: la mortalité dans les pays d’europe de l’est. in: population 46,3: 599-650. https://doi.org/10.2307/1533408 meslé, france 2004: mortality in central and eastern europe: long-term trends and recent upturns. in: demographic research (special collection) 2,3: 45-70. https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/demres.2004.s2.3 meslé, france; vallin, jacques 2002: mortality in europe: the divergence between east and west. in: population (english selection) 57,1: 157-198. https://doi.org/10.2307/3246630 rychtarikova, jitka 2004: the case of the czech republic: determinants of the recent favourable turnover in mortality. in: demographic research (special collection) 2: 105-138. https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/demres.2004.s2.5 shkolnikov, vladimir m. et al. 2004: mortality reversal in russia: the story so far. in: hygiea internationalis 4,1: 29-80. https://doi.org/10.3384/hygiea.1403-8668.044129 štelemėkas, mindaugas et al. 2021: alcohol control policy measures and all-cause mortality in lithuania: an interrupted time-series analysis. in: addiction 116,10: 26732684. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15470 is east-west life expectancy gap narrowing in the enlarged european union? • 551 tekkel, mare; veideman, tatjana; rahu, mati 2007: health behavior among estonian adult population, 2006. tallinn: national institute for health development. the human cause of death database 2022: in: https://www.causesofdeath.org, 04.06.2022. the human mortality database 2022: in: https://www.mortality.org, 01.08.2022. vallin, jacques; meslé, france 2004: convergences and divergences in mortality: a new approach of health transition. in: demographic research (special collection) 2,2: 11-44. https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/demres.2004.s2.2 who 2022: who mortality database. in: https://www.who.int/. url: https://www.who. int/data/data-collection-tools/who-mortality-database, 21.08.2022. zatonski, witold a.; campos, hannia; willett, walter 2008: rapid declines in coronary heart disease mortality in eastern europe are associated with increased consumption of oils rich in alpha-linolenic acid. in: european journal of epidemiology 23,1: 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-007-9195-1 zatonski, witold a.; mcmichael, anthony j.; powles, john w. 1998: ecological study of reasons for sharp decline in mortality from ischaemic heart disease in poland since 1991. in: bmj 316: 1047-1051. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.316.7137.1047 date of submission: 14.12.2022 date of acceptance: 02.06.2023 domantas jasilionis(). max planck institute for demographic research. rostock, germany. vytautas magnus university. kaunas, lithuania. e-mail: jasilionis@demogr.mpg.de url: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/about_us_6113/staff_directory_1899/domantas_ jasilionis_894 france meslé, jacques vallin. institut national d’études démographiques (ined). paris, france. e-mail: mesle@ined.fr; vallin@ined.fr url: https://www.ined.fr/en/research/researchers/meslé+france https://www.ined.fr/en/research/researchers/vallin+jacques published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2023 editor prof. frans willekens managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientifi c advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (rostock) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) roland rau (rostock) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) heike trappe (rostock) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison* giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi abstract: among the factors related to marital disruption, age assortative mating (who marries whom in terms of age) has received less attention than others. in this study, we study the association between partners’ age difference and marital disruption in italy, a late-comer country in divorce legislation and highly conservative in its culture and institutions. we also show how this association varies across marriage cohorts. we employ data from “families, social subjects and life cycle” (fss), collected in 2016 by the italian national institute of statistics (istat). we analyse microlevel retrospective information on first-marriage histories between the 1970s and the 1990s through an event-history approach. results show that age hypogamous couples (where the woman is older than the man) have a higher likelihood of marital disruption compared to couples where the wife is the same age or younger than her husband. however, this higher risk reduces among the youngest cohorts. we discuss the possible drivers of this change in light of cultural changes that occurred in recent decades. keywords: age assortative mating · marital disruption · italy · age hypogamy 1 introduction patterns of union formation have been historically dominated by hypergamy (england et al. 2016), a condition in which women generally partner with men who are potential good providers (for example, men with a high educational level), and men favour younger, domestic-oriented, and “beautiful” women (esteve et al. 2012). recently, relevant changes in the traditional patterns of union formation have taken place. for instance, considering partners’ educational attainment, educational hypergamy has been substituted by a growing number of couples in which the female partner is more educated than the man (see esteve et al. 2012; van bavel et al. 2018). comparative population studies vol. 49 (2024): 337-370 (date of release: 07.10.2024) federal institute for population research 2024 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-14 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2024-14en5 * this article belongs to a special issue on “changes in educational homogamy and its consequences”. http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2024-14 • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi338 this pattern has been observed not only in terms of education but also considering differences in partners’ ages. literature refers to age homogamous couples when partners are of similar age, age hypergamy when the man is older, and age hypogamy when the woman is older. age hypergamy has been – and still is – the dominant age pairing in western societies; however, age homogamous couples have been increasing since the end of the 19th century, whereas age hypogamous couples remain a small but substantial and potentially increasing phenomenon. empirical studies on the evolution of partners’ age differences have mostly focused on its determinants (van de putte et al. 2009), but the potentially farreaching consequences of age assortative mating patterns are an important issue to examine. our interest focuses on one specific outcome, namely marital disruption.1 couple instability impacts several spheres of human life, having legal, emotional, social, health and financial consequences (braver/lamb 2013). as such, the analysis of the relationship between partners’ age differences and marital instability deserves attention. it has been found that age heterogamous couples are more likely to separate and/or divorce than homogamous couples (frimmel et al. 2013; lee/mckinnish 2018; bernardi/martinez-pastor 2011; chan/halpin 2002), with age hypogamous couples being those with higher risk of dissolution. however, these studies suffer from at least two relevant limitations. first, in most studies partners’ age difference is treated as one of the numerous covariates in modelling divorce risks – without justifying the adjustment set (see kohler et al. 2024). as such, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of partners’ age gap from others – such as partners’ educational assortative mating. a second limitation is the static nature of the analyses, which do not account for changes in the assortative matching process. according to some scholars, partner choice processes have changed in recent decades, with individual qualities rather than social roles gaining ground in defining mate selection (goldscheider et al. 2009). this might be accompanied by potential consequences for the relationship related to partners’ age difference and marital stability. in this paper, we overcome these two limitations by studying trends in the relationship between partners’ age difference and marital disruption. we do this for a country, italy, which is often depicted as particularly traditional in terms of gender norms compared to other european countries. as such, the italian case represents an interesting case due to the low level of secularisation and the historically low incidence of divorce that characterises italian society (rosina/fraboni 2004; de-rose et al. 2008). as for trends in age assortative mating, during the 20th century italy followed a similar pattern to other western countries (bonarini 2017; giuliani 2019). a rise both in age homogamy – the largely prevalent category – and in age hypogamy has taken place, counterbalanced by a decrease in age hypergamy, although to a lesser extent than in other countries. as for marital disruption, several studies have focused on its 1 we use legal separation as the moment that marks the break-up of the marriage (see section 3.1, data and sample selection). partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 339 macro (castiglioni/dalla-zuanna 2008; guarneri et al. 2021) and micro determinants (de-rose 1992; de-rose/di cesare 2007; salvini/vignoli 2011), but to the best of our knowledge no studies for italy have addressed the relationship between age assortative mating and marital dissolution. nevertheless, the country represents an intriguing case for its strong traditional familyhood (esping-andersen 1990: 27). italy was one of the late-comers among western countries in the legislation on divorce, which was established in 1970, and at least up to the 2010s remained one of the western countries with the most stringent legislation (iversen et al. 2005). moreover, the incidence of marital disruption has remained low compared to other european countries. this has been interpreted in the light of the dominance of the roman catholic church and the strong influence of family on individual choices, together with a low level of social protection in case of separation or divorce (reher 1998). also, italian institutions and culture are still highly conservative in terms of gender roles and gender equity (impicciatore/billari 2012). however, some studies have shown that separation and divorce have become more common, with less educated individuals reducing the initial gap with higher educated (e.g. salvini/vignoli 2011). the rest of the paper is structured as follows. first, we present a review of the literature and the research hypotheses. then, we present our empirical results and, finally, we discuss our results. 2 literature review and research hypotheses 2.1 age assortative mating: determinants and trends several disciplines take an interest in how partners’ characteristics combine, given the crucial consequences in several domains, from evolutionary processes (e.g., buss 1989) to long-term trends in economic inequality (e.g., breen/salazar 2011). assortative mating has been studied considering an array of characteristics such as educational level (blossfeld/timm 2003; uunk 2024), personality traits (glicksohn/ golan 2001), religion (mcclendon 2016), ethnicity (qian/lichter 2007), income (greenwood et al. 2014). among the others, the study of age assortative mating has been recognised as a relevant dimension to investigate not only as a resource/constraint in the marriage market (atkinson/glass 1985; banks/arnold 2001; van poppel et al. 2001; qian/lichter 2007; england/mcclintock 2009; van de putte et al. 2009; bozon 1990; de-rose 1992; blossfeld/timm 2003; de-rose/di cesare 2003) but also because of its impact on union formation dynamics and relationship quality (e.g. kalmijn 1991). broadly speaking, the term age homogamy refers to couples in which partners are of similar age, age hypergamy when the man is older, and age hypogamy when the woman is older, with year-thresholds varying among studies and contexts. the thresholds to define each category are not univocal in the literature. their identification depends on theoretical reasons and contexts analysed. as a direct result, trends of the prevalence of hypergamy, hypogamy and homogamy in partners’ age difference change according to the operational definition applied. • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi340 as for observed trends, men are on average 3-4 years older than their female partners. biological explanations emphasise men’s preferences for younger, fertile women and women’s preferences for older and better-resourced men (e.g. buss 1989). others consider preferences for older men in heterosexual couples to be the consequence of desires that are socially constructed and reinforced (presser 1975). the conventional status-exchange approach tends to predict a prevalence of age hypergamy between heterosexual couples; age can be a trait that individuals are willing to trade in the partner market. for women, young age is often linked to physical attractiveness to the extent to which standards of beauty that favour youthful looks are spread in society (england/mcclintock 2009). accordingly, women might be willing to trade their youth and physical attractiveness with potential male partners’ resources in terms of education, income, or social status, which are likely to increase over the life course – and thus with age.2 according to this approach, age hypogamy should be less desirable compared to other couple age pairings as older women are considered to be less attractive (öberg/tornstam 1999). the dominance of age hypergamous couples is not universal, and there is substantial variation in contexts and times (e.g. buss et al. 1990). in western countries, partners’ ages are getting more and more similar as a result of different social factors. the process of educational expansion has resulted in individuals spending more time with peers of the same age, thus structurally favouring not only educational homogamy but also age similarity (bernardi 2003). moreover, the weakening of the economic foundation of marriage makes individuals less oriented toward an instrumental marriage. this in turn favours partnerships based on feelings of companionship and shared interests, which are more common between partners of similar age (skopek et al. 2011; van de putte et al. 2009). the similarity in age can facilitate a common lifestyle and reduce conflicts in daily interaction routines because partners of the same birth cohorts are more likely to share life experiences, tastes, and values (skopek et al. 2011). age similarity can also be associated with a higher level of equality and intimacy within the couple (van de putte et al. 2009). moreover, literature on dating apps shows that couples who met online, where age is an explicit criterion that individuals may set in their search, are closer in age to those who met offline. this could be considered evidence of age preferences towards assortativity (potarca 2020; thomas 2020). scholars have recently shown that the changing patterns of age differences have additionally led to an increase of age hypogamous couples. this has been related to two social phenomena that are underway. the first is the diffusion of values such as self-expression and self-determination. the weakening of traditional norms related to family and intimate relationships results in the individualisation of partners’ search criteria, with an increase in non-normative patterns of age difference (kolk 2015). on the other hand, women are achieving higher levels of education, which represents a signal of women’s career opportunities and potential earnings. thus, they could 2 as highlighted in studies of the partner search (skopek et al. 2011; corti/scherer 2021), there are continuous adaptation and interaction between preferences and constraints over the life course. partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 341 exchange marketable resources with others they might lack, such as youth. this perspective is also known as the empowerment hypothesis (giuliani 2020) and can be interpreted as a nontraditional version of the classical status exchange theory.3 2.2 a societal perspective on partners’ age difference and marital disruption: new patterns and research hypotheses recently, there has been an interest in the link between age assortative mating and couple stability and marital dissolution. the age pairing of partners is often considered a proxy of their similarity and an indicator of the potential quality of the relationship (van de putte et al. 2009), which in turn might influence its stability. broadly speaking, it has been found that age heterogamous couples are more likely to separate and/or divorce than age homogamous couples (frimmel et al. 2013; lee/mckinnish 2018; bernardi/martinez-pastor 2011; chan/halpin 2002), thus supporting the idea that age similarity enhances relationship quality. there has been less attention to the potential differences in the likelihood of union disruption between age hypergamous and hypogamous couples. a perspective focused on the mere difference between partners’ ages would suggest no difference, but some theoretical perspectives expect that there may be. the first refers to the home economics framework. according to this perspective, a basic rationale for marriage lies in the maximisation of partners’ utility, which is grounded in task specialisation and skill complementarities (becker 1991). in traditional societies, men tend to prefer younger women, who supposedly are less labour-market oriented, whereas women tend to prefer older men, who potentially have a higher income. to the extent to which marriage returns increase with higher spousal skill complementarities and task specialisation (parsons 1949), age hypergamy should represent the best insurance against marital disruption. the second – and similar – perspective is called status exchange. as in the case of home economics, this approach predicts a higher stability premium for age hypergamous couples.4 it suggests that marriage is an exchange of valuable resources between a male and a female for utility maximisation. an exchange of a wife’s young age with a husband’s social status is likely to rely on an exchange between a female’s housework/reproductive ability and a male’s work ability. there are theoretical frameworks that deal with the consequences of age hypogamy for marital dissolution. one is the so-called double standard of ageism, which predicts that age hypogamous couples are more at risk of union disruption (e.g. cain 1993). according to this framework, women’s beauty standards are strictly related to their age. therefore, young women are more successful in the marriage market. 3 higher levels of female education might not necessarily imply greater levels of singlehood for women (bellani et al. 2017). researchers have reported a greater diffusion of hypogamous couples – also in terms of age (coles/francesconi 2011). 4 while in principle gender-neutral (as in the case of home economics), empirical applications of the theory usually assume a gendered nature of the exchange. • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi342 considering the popularity of labels such as milfs, cougars, and the like (alarie 2019), this wording attached to mature women suggests the presence of social stigma toward age hypogamous couples. scholars showed that age hypogamous couples are often considered less normatively acceptable and promising than hypergamous ones (banks/arnold 2001; derenski/landsburg 1981; cowan 1984; hartnett et al. 1981) and thus they can be socially sanctioned in various ways. individuals in unconventional pairings might react out of fear of being stigmatised (proulx et al. 2006; warren 1996; alarie 2018), and thus feel less committed to the romantic relationship, making it less stable. one could argue, however, that members of unconventional couples might feel more engaged in their relationship because they are less inclined to embrace normative principles or as a reaction to such stigma (trimarchi/van bavel 2017). this might lead to strengthening partners’ linkages, decreasing the risk of union dissolution (lehmiller/agnew 2008). some studies have highlighted a higher risk of marital instability for age hypogamous couples, although with some differences across national contexts: in the netherlands men are more likely to initiate a divorce when they are the younger partner (kalmijn/poortman 2006). a similar conclusion is valid for canada (gentleman/park 1994), turkey (caarls/de valk 2018), and australia (kippen et al. 2013). to the best of our knowledge, the contribution of england and colleagues (2016) on the us case is the only one that does not find such a pattern. in the light of such theoretical reasonings and empirical evidence, we formulate our first hypothesis: hypothesis 1 – age hypogamous couples have a higher likelihood of marital disruption than age homogamous or age hypergamous couples. there are reasons to believe that the gradient linking partners’ age gap and divorce has changed over time. the higher participation of women in the labour market has empowered their economic autonomy. thus, marriage is increasingly losing its traditional economic foundation, no longer representing a stage of life through which women gain independence from their parents or an obstacle to slip out of an unhappy relationship (see oppenheimer 1997 for a discussion). this might undermine the traditional advantage of age hypergamous couples in terms of stability premium. moreover, women’s increasing economic attractivity might weaken the traditional status-exchange mechanism in which the man trades his economic position as women and men are becoming more similar in this regard across cohorts. as a consequence, female empowerment might enable women to exchange their socio-economic status for men’s valuable resources that are not strictly market-related – for instance with respect to male participation in unpaid work arrangements (bellani et al. 2017) or physical attractiveness (mcclintock 2014). thus, according to the gender-neutral version of exchange theory, women might also strive to form an (age) hypogamous union. moreover, changes in cultural norms might play a role. scholars identify shifts towards post-materialistic values and individualistic attitudes linked to the postmodernist variant of the second demographic transition theory as direct causes of the rise of non-traditional family forms (lesthaeghe 1983, 1995, 2014; van de kaa 2001). as a result, the context around marriage has notably changed as well, partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 343 as attitudes towards divorce and non-marital living have become more forgiving (cherlin 1992; thornton 1989). recently, kolk (2015) observed an association between the diffusion of post-modernist values and the growing spread of less conventional couples in terms of age pairing. norms regarding sexuality and intimate relationships have changed as well (kamen 2000; montemurro/siefken 2014; bellani/ esping-andersen 2020), with women nowadays experiencing more social and sexual freedom compared to older generations. this might undermine the social sanctions attached to age hypogamous couples, which have been traditionally stigmatised as deviant from the normative age pairing. thus, the risk of divorce attached to age hypogamous couples might decrease across birth cohorts (e.g. lee/mckinnish 2018). all these considerations lead us to formulate our second research hypothesis: hypothesis 2 – the positive effect of age hypogamy on marital disruption decreases across cohorts 3 empirical strategy 3.1 data and sample selection we use data from the “families, social subjects and life cycle” (fss) survey, which was conducted in 2016 by the italian national institute of statistics (istat) by interviewing nearly 25,000 individuals aged 18 years and over representing the resident population in households in italy. the survey provides a wide range of information on family structure, demographic and social characteristics of the households and life course trajectories. it includes retrospective questions on union formation and disruption. the respondent also provides some relevant information on other (present or former) cohabiting members of the household. we consider legal separation rather than divorce as the moment that marks the break-up of the marriage. this choice has been adopted in previous studies on marital instability in italy (castiglioni/della zuanna 2008; impicciatore/billari 2012; guarneri et al. 2021). moreover, legal separation is a prerequisite to obtain a divorce, and not all separations end in divorce; for these reasons, we consider legal separation a more accurate indicator of marital disruption than divorce. our analysis is restricted to first marriages. from an operational point of view, relevant information about higher-order marriages among remarried individuals and cohabitations that did not end in marriage is missing.5 furthermore, second marriages are still extremely scarce in italy, especially among older cohorts. 5 the missing information is the age and the educational level of higher-order partners in case of separation. • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi344 we first select individuals who were married from december 1970, when divorce was introduced.6 we select individuals aged between 18 and 40 at the time of the marriage, because after that age the likelihood of getting married substantially falls in our data, especially for older cohorts. respondents aged 69 or older at the time of the interview are completely right censored to avoid possible bias due to differential mortality. moreover, we follow marital history for a time window of 15 years, or at the last available interview (due to separation or death). these restrictions produced a final sample of 7,938 respondents who had been married at least once at the time of the interview (and are at risk of experiencing marital disruption), of which about 9.1 percent (n=720) subsequently ended in dissolution. 3.2 variables event: a marriage was considered to have ended if the respondent stated it in the questionnaire and if the date of separation or divorce was provided. in case of divorce, the respondent should provide not only the date of divorce but also the date of legal separation (our target variable). unfortunately, this was not always the case. the date of legal separation was missing for 272 cases (27.6 percent) among first marriages that ended in divorce. to make our analysis more robust, we imputed the missing values on the date of legal separation, with the cold-deck method (andridge/little 2010). we used information from another record (referred to as the “donor”) of a different source, to impute the date of legal separation when not available in the fss survey. in our case, the auxiliary data source used was administrative data of all the divorces that occurred in italy in the period of analysis, in which the date of legal separation was provided. the donor is randomly selected from a pool of marriages with the same set of characteristics (year of marriage, year of divorce). within records that share the same year of marriage and divorce, the closest unit to the missing value for wedding rite (civil or religious ceremony), geographical area, and year of birth of each spouse is used as the donor of the year of legal separation. after imputation, both the distances between marriage and separation and between separation and divorce are consistent with those calculated from administrative register data. explanatory variable: our main explanatory variable is the age gap between partners. age is recorded for all individuals present in the de facto household at the time of the interview. consequently, the age of the ex-spouse is not collected directly. we measured the age difference between spouses (and ex-spouses) using information on the exact age of both partners at the time of the engagement or at the beginning of the relationship. this information was in fact available both for intact first marriages at the time of the interview and for those no longer in existence. 6 legal separation was possible before that moment, but it was very rare (saresella 2017). only after the introduction of divorce did legal separation become more widespread as it was the necessary step in marriage dissolution. partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 345 as for the definition of age assortative mating, we coded the categories as: (1) hypergamy (when the husband is older by more than 4 years); (2) hypogamy (when the wife is older than the husband); (3) homogamy (when the spouses are the same age or the husband is older by between one and four years). the reasoning behind this operationalisation is twofold. first, according to new home economics and the status exchange perspectives, we made the difference between men and women great enough to capture the exchange dimension (men’s higher earnings for women’s age). moreover, in our sample the median age difference between partners is around 3 years (dribe/nystedt 2017). second, in a traditional and gender unequal country such as italy age hypogamy represents a highly unconventional couple pairing (giuliani 2019); for this reason, we decided to consider age hypogamous all couples in which the woman is older, regardless of the age gap. we are aware that results might differ according to the thresholds selected. to test the robustness of our results, we performed sensitivity analyses using alternative age differences criteria (see section 4.3 and appendix, table a2a and a2b). moderating variables. the marriage cohort represents a moderator in our analysis. we identify three marriage cohorts covering marriages that occurred between 19701979, 1980-1989, and 1990-1999. the reduced number of events (n=720) prevents us from further enriching the analysis. still, this categorisation allows us to compare groups of couples entering into a marriage in different historical periods. the first group includes partners who married in the 1970s, a decade characterised by scarcity of marital disruption and strong support for couple specialisation. at the same time, they represent the vanguards having the right to divorce. the second refers to the cohort of marriages that occurred during the 1980s, a decade when the opportunity costs of entering a conventional breadwinning-homemaker marriage for women decreased (due to the higher participation of women in the labour market). the last category refers to the 1990s when a sharp decrease in support for gender traditionalism occurred (knight/brinton 2017) as well as a significant increase in gender parity within couples (e.g. guiso/zaccaria 2023). selecting three marriage cohorts (and not more) allows us to parsimoniously study the historical trend of the partners’ age gradient of divorce in italy. we consider other variables that previous studies have identified as explananda of age assortative mating and union disruption (see matysiak et al. 2014). we include in our model as controls the level of educational attainment of the respondent coded in three categories (compulsory secondary education or less, upper secondary education, and university education). some studies found that, for the case of italy and the cohorts we are analysing, the level of education influences union disruption (härkönen/dronkers 2006; salvini/vignoli 2011). moreover, as previous studies have shown, education is a crucial factor in explaining age assortativity (e.g. saardchom/ lemaire 2005). in our data, we observe an association between the level of education and the propensity to marry someone younger/older. descriptive statistics suggest that highly educated women are less likely to be in a hypergamous couple compared to their lower educated counterparts (26.62 percent versus 36.1 percent, the difference is statistically significant). • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi346 we control for the woman’s age at marriage (in linear and squared form), since studies have shown that early marriages tend to be more fragile (impicciatore/billari 2012). moreover, given the lower likelihood of younger women forming hypogamous couples, this control depurates from such influence. we also add to our model a control for the sex of the respondent, given the potential gender bias in reporting one’s and partner’s age (adams 1980). as measures of the level of secularisation of the couple and the context in which they live we considered: premarital cohabitation (impicciatore/billari 2012), region of residence (salvini/vignoli 2011; castiglioni/dalla zuanna 2008), and marriage rite (religious or not) (de-rose et al. 2008; guarneri et al. 2021). we also control for being italian or not at the time of the interview. additionally, we introduce a categorical variable identifying the duration of the marriage (less than or equal to three years, between four and seven years, and between seven and fifteen years) as statistical tests suggest, the risk of separation appears constant within each category of duration, but they vary across such categories. we also provide robustness checks with duration in years. we omit other controls associated with marital disruption but not with partners’ age gap, such as home ownership and fertility outcomes, which do not act as confounders (see kohler et al. 2024 for an in-depth analysis). our final sample is composed of 7,894 couples 3.3 model specification we estimate the relative risk of first marriage disruption using logistic regression in a discrete-time event history analysis setting, given that the explanatory variables are measured annually (allison 1982). it allows us to account for the fact that marital separation dates are measured discretely. completed spells are measured by the duration in years between the date of marriage and the date of legal separation. right-censored spells are defined by the duration between the date of marriage and 15 years of marriage duration for those marriages that have not ended in a disruption or between the date of marriage and the date of the death of a spouse. 4 results we divide the empirical section into two parts. in the first, we will test the association between partners’ age gap and the relative risk of legal separation (hypothesis 1). we will then test whether the association has changed across marriage cohorts (hypothesis 2). figure 1 shows how the distribution of partners’ age gap has changed across marriage cohorts. about half of couple observations belong to the category of homogamous in all three marriage cohorts considered. the most prevalent type of heterogamous couple is represented by hypergamous couples. we observe, however, an increase in both hypogamous and homogamous couples and therefore a decrease in hypergamous couples across marriage cohorts. among marriages partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 347 taking place during the 1970s, 36 percent were hypergamous, falling to about 30 percent for the cohort of the 1990s. in table 1 we can see higher propensities of marital disruption between hypogamous couples (11.43 percent of marriages end with legal separation) and lower between hypergamous couples (8.93 percent). differences in the likelihood of separation between hypogamous and hypergamous couples are statistically significant. table 1 also presents descriptive statistics of the explanatory and control variables for all married couples cohorts considered in the analyses (see the graphical representation of kaplan meier survival rates in the appendix, fig. a1). table 2 shows the log-odds of our discrete-time event history models with robust standard errors at the couple level. in model 1 (m1), we control for the age of the wife at marriage (with linear and quadratic terms), gender of the respondent, marriage cohort, whether the union started with cohabitation or not (cohabitation before marriage vs. direct marriage), and duration of the marriage. we then complement the baseline specification with a step-wise approach, by adding other controls. in model 2 (m2) table 2 we add to the models the following controls: region of residence, marriage ritual, italian citizenship as well as respondent’s level of education. we find that the likelihood of a break-up in both models is higher for hypogamous compared to hypergamous couples. to ease interpretation, we present in figure 2 the average marginal effects (ame), calculated from m2 of table 2. we can observe that the average marginal effect related to the category of age hypogamy is positive and statistically significant. the difference in the likelihood of marital separation between hypogamous and fig. 1: distribution of age pairings by marriage cohorts 0 20 40 60 80 100 in percent 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 36.0 9.8 54.2 33.4 10.3 56.3 30.0 12.5 57.5 age hypergamy age hypogamy age homogamy source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi348 hypergamous couples is approximately 0.020 percentage points (p<.01). for age homogamous couples a smaller value (and not statistically significant) is found. in model 3 (m3) of table 2 we include an interaction between partners’ age gap and marriage cohort. in model 4 (m4) of table 2 we estimate our model using yearly discrete time intervals. finally, in model 5 (m5) of table 2 we control for the duration of the partnership also considering the years of cohabitation – for those partners who cohabited before the marriage. tab. 1: rate of marital disruption by sample characteristics source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. % separated partners’ age difference hypergamy 8.93 hypogamy 11.43 homogamy 8.80 marriage cohort 1970-1979 5.14 1980-1989 8.99 1990-1999 12.99 gender of the respondent male 8.69 female 9.50 cohabitation before marriage no 8.05 yes 22.60 woman’s age at marriage (mean and standard deviation) 24.26 (4.56) respondent’s educational level primary 6.89 secondary 10.44 tertiary 13.46 area of residence north 11.46 centre 11.84 south 5.37 marriage ritual not religious ritual 17.77 religious ritual 8.02 citizenship italian 8.67 foreigner 19.09 n 7,894 partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 349 to ease the interpretation of the results reported in table 2, we present both ame (fig. 3) and predicted probabilities with 95 percent confidence intervals for pairwise comparison (fig. 4) based on m3 of table 3. in figure 3, we can see that hypogamous couples married in the 1970s experienced a higher likelihood of separation compared to hypergamous couples. we observe that this is no longer the case for couples who married in the 1990s. similar conclusions are mirrored for homogamous couples when compared to tab. 2: discrete-time event history logistic regression results for marital disruption note: basic controls are duration of the marriage, pre-marital cohabitation, wife’s age and its squared term, respondent’s sex. additional controls to the basic model are region of residence, marriage ritual, italian citizenship, respondent’s level of education. robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. (m1) (m2) (m3) (m4) (m5) husband-wife age pairing (ref: age hypergamy) age hypogamy .323** .362*** 1.025*** .948*** .949*** (.132) (.133) (.321) (.321) (.321) age homogamy .05 .023 .343 .369 .375* (.086) (.087) (.225) (.225) (.225) marriage cohort (ref.: i cohort) 1980-1989 .614*** .575*** .879*** .886*** .877*** (.112) (.113) (.219) (.218) (.219) 1990-1999 .993*** .971*** 1.303*** 1.347*** 1.354*** (.117) (.119) (.224) (.222) (.222) age hypogamy*1980-1989 -.664* -.585 -.593 (.372) (.372) (.374) age hypogamy*1990-1999 -.861** -.846** -.841** (.368) (.368) (.367) age homogamy*1980-1989 -.375 -.332 -.339 (.26) (.26) (.26) age homogamy*1990-1999 -.372 -.411 -.418 (.258) (.257) (.257) constant -4.754*** -3.002*** -2.997*** -5.816*** -4.282 (.986) (1.047) (1.057) (1.035) (1.01) spells 120783 120783 120783 120783 120006 number of clusters 7,894 7,894 7,894 7,894 7,894 pseudo r2 .022 .039 .039 .027 .022 basic controls yes yes yes yes yes additional controls no yes yes no no duration categories yes yes yes no no duration yearly no no no yes no duration categories, years of cohabitation included no no no no yes • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi350 hypergamous couples even if statistical significance is not reached. more specifically, figure 4 displays the predicted probability of marital disruption by marriage cohort and categories of partners’ age gap. it is evident that for marriages of the 1970s the probability of marital disruption was lower across all the categories of partners’ age gap, but with sharp differences between categories. the probability was about 2.5 per thousand for hypergamous couples, 5.2 per thousand for hypogamous couples, and about 3.3 per thousand for homogamous couples. in the 1990s cohort, we see an overall increase in the probability of marital disruption for all the categories of partners’ age gap. we do not observe, however, any relevant difference in the probability of marital disruption between those categories. the predicted probability for hypergamous couples was about 9.0 per thousand, for hypogamous couples about 9.4 per thousand, and for homogamous couples about 8.2 per thousand. as such, any statistically significant difference in the (predicted) probability of marital disruption is found across categories of partners’ age gap for the marriages that took place during the 1990s. however, beyond comparing ames or predicted probabilities across models, it is essential to test whether differences across different model specifications are significant (mize et al. 2019). for example, we explore whether the association fig. 2: average marginal effects of marital disruption by partners’ age pairing (ref. age hypergamy). ames retrieved from model 2, table 2 age hypogamy age homogamy .004 .003 .002 .001 0 ame source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 351 between the likelihood of marital disruption and a partner’s age gap and its variation across marriage cohorts is different across models. to explore whether the association between age pairings changes over cohorts we compute seemingly unrelated estimations and we calculate the average discrete change (adc) from logit specifications of table 2, m3-m5. employing this methodological approach, the comparison of coefficients from different models of discrete-time event history analysis is suitable. these results are reported in table a1. this table shows the average discrete change for four models (m1-m3 table a1). more specifically, in panel 1 of table a1 we report whether the coefficients of interest change their magnitude across models. overall, we can observe that adcs are consistent with the models we reported in the main text (m3-m5 table 2). this means that the association between partners’ age gap and divorce differs across marriage cohorts as in the main models. in panel b of table a1, we report comparison of models reported in the main text (m3-m5 of table 2 that correspond to m1-m3 in table a2). we proceed by comparing the models in pairs. we do not observe a significant reduction in the magnitude of the association of interest. due to these results, we are more confident about the empirical findings we report. fig. 3: average marginal effects of marital disruption by partners’ age gap and marriage cohorts (ref. age hypergamy). ames retrieved from model 3, table 2 19 70 -19 79 19 80 -19 89 19 90 -19 99 19 70 -19 79 19 80 -19 89 19 90 -19 99 age hypogamy age homogamy .008 .006 .004 .002 0 ame source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi352 5 robustness checks 5.1 age thresholds we consider more fine-grained time intervals of partners’ age differences in order to stress the sensitivity of our main results. in one robustness check, the explanatory variable takes six values, whether husband minus wife age is (1) +2 or +3 (the is the most numerous category), (2) lower than -2, (3) -2 or -1, (4) 0 or +1, (5) +4 or +5, (6) higher than 5. as reported in appendix, table a2a, the substantive meaning of the results reported for the main models does not change. similar conclusions are achieved when our partners’ age difference is differently operationalised, as reported in table a2b. subtracting the wife’s age from the husband’s, we identify four categories, 1) higher than 4; 2) lower than 0; 3) 0 or +1; 4) +2, +3 or +4 (table a2b). 5.2 partner’s level of education to further stress the robustness of results, in additional models, we consider the level of education of the partners at the time of the engagement (see impicciatore/ billari 2012) based on an earlier wave of the same survey. fig. 4: adjusted predicted probabilities of marital disruption by partners’ age gap and marriage cohorts. retrieved from model 3, table 2 .002 .004 .006 .008 .01 .012 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 marriage cohort age hypergamy age hypogamy age homogamy predicted probability source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 353 it is important to note that marriage in italy is usually considered the last step in a process of commitment that began long before. in fact, after a first phase of a “private” relationship (berrington et al. 2015), couples commonly experience an engagement period characterised by an extensive phase of latap (living-aparttogether-at-parents), a sort of lat partnership before marriage and that makes couples socially visible (bernardi/oppo 2008). engagement, the premise for a lifelong relationship, is considered a prominent passage (partly institutionalised) through which the couple is recognised by important parts of society. in this sense, engagement in italy signals a very high level of commitment (arosio 2008). thus, the selection of the future spouse is likely to be based on his/her characteristics at the time of the engagement. however, we must acknowledge that it might underestimate the educational attainment of individuals who become engaged at very young ages. as reported in appendix, table a3, despite the inclusion of control variables related to partners’ educational level at engagement as well age assortative mating, we observe that these findings are consistent with those reported in the main models.7 5.3 selection into marriage to address the issue of potential biases due to selection into marriage, we simultaneously model the risk of separation and the likelihood of having married. we adopt a solution proposed by heckman (1976) to tackle sample selection bias in the case of binary outcomes. the application of this method requires one or more instrumental variables that influence the probability of being married but have no direct effect on the outcome under study, i.e. the likelihood of marital separation. we estimate models with the exclusion restriction. we use as a key instrumental variable – that is included in the selection equation but not in the outcome equation – a proxy of the so-called shotgun marriage (see bernardi/martínez-pastor 2011). the variable identifies whether or not marriage took place during the female partner’s pregnancy. we observe that about 5 percent of couples’ female partners have a pregnancy without being married (at least in our sample). we tested whether this variable influences the risk of marital disruption, finding that it does not. in appendix, table a3, regression estimates are reported. the results are substantially the same as those reported in the main models. we observe an increase in the likelihood of marriage disruption for all the categories over time (and its equalisation across categories) that is not due to sample selection into marriage. 7 we provide different specifications of partners’ educational level. in m1 table a3 we control for the educational attainment of the respondent at the moment of engagement, in m2 for the level of education of the partner, in m3 of both partners and in m4 educational assortative mating. • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi354 6 summary and conclusions we studied the association between partners’ age differences and marital instability in italy and its evolution across marriage cohorts using italian fss survey data, a particularly rich survey covering many aspects of the life cycle of individuals. we provide two main contributions to the literature. first, we apply an innovative methodological approach to overcome non-response problems using an external source. in our case, we imputed the year of separation – when missing – using administrative data of all legal separations registered in italy relative to all marriages taking place from 1970 to 1999. such an approach might be helpful for researchers dealing with missing data in surveys that can be reduced with the use of external data sources. second, we provide the first empirical investigation of trends of marital disruption according to age assortative mating pairing in italy. we found a decreasing disadvantage for hypogamous couples in marital instability; hypogamous couples were those with the higher likelihood of marital disruption among marriages taking place in the 1970s, but they are equally as likely to divorce as other age pairings among marriage cohorts from the following decades (1980s and 1990s). thus, our research hypotheses were confirmed. the shift in the association of age hypergamy and marital disruption appears to be consistent with those theoretical frameworks predicting a decrease in the relative stability premium for conventional couples. the reasons behind such evidence can be several and open the road for further research. a possible explanation can be based on the second demographic transition theory, which emphasises the role played by shifts in ideas and attitudes to explain the diffusion of new family patterns. these orientations include women’s emancipation and self-realisation, thus favouring the idea that age hypogamy might become less rare. moreover, our results make the case in favour of the decreasing importance of women’s traditional attributes such as physical attractiveness and reproductive value for couple stability. as such, our results might be driven by the fact that other characteristics, such as men’s companionship or involvement in domestic work (dykstra/poortman 2010), are growing more valuable, partly replacing traditional elements of partners’ exchange process. thus, our empirical findings are consistent with the perspective of decreasing marital premia for hypergamous couples explained by a surge of partners’ attention to equality in the private sphere and intimate relationships (e.g. esping-andersen/billari 2015; mazzeo et al. 2024). in particular, partners of homogamous and hypogamous couples might be more likely to share equally (paid and) unpaid work, increasing marital gains. in this sense, the male adaptation to new gender roles is likely to lag in hypergamous couples compared to other pairings (mazzeo et al. 2024). this, in turn, might affect marital stability. and this is also supported by our empirical evidence on age assortative mating, showing a significant increase in the likelihood of divorce across marriage cohorts for age hypergamous couples. besides cultural changes, women’s increasing economic attractiveness might play a stabilising role. as they gain places in the educational system and the labour partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 355 market, the traditional status-exchange hypothesis, in which men trade their economic position for other characteristics such as beauty and youthfulness, seems to weaken across time, leading to other dynamics that might influence both partner choice and the stability of the relationship. finally, selection into age hypogamous couples might have changed across time; as for other social phenomena, unconventional or counter-normative behaviours were first adopted by selected forerunners and later become more widespread in the general population. measuring the extent to which this might have an impact on differences in the likelihood of marital disruption is a question for further research. future studies might disentangle these relevant factors focusing on the mechanisms mentioned above. it is worth analysing further the decreasing effect of age homogamy on marital instability. from a theoretical point of view, scholars can provide multifaceted perspectives that consider marriage patterns arising from new social forces and cultural orientations. social scientists recently showed that in western societies a growing number of individuals do not wish to have children (guzzo/hayford 2023). the change in family ideals might impact age assortative mating as biological differences in reproduction capacity are increasingly not seen as barriers to partnership. in the same vein, the spread of medically assisted reproduction and invitro procedures can be seen as instruments that can transform traditional partners’ exchange in the marriage market. moreover, in light of the increasing rates of repartnering, a shift of the analyses on higher-order marriages (or cohabitations) appears very promising. an additional area for further research could be a comparison of the italian case with other countries. italy is an interesting case study because of its traditional culture and rather unequal gender roles and ideology. potentially, this may have made for a large effect of age hypogamy on marital dissolution, and its slow change across time. further research should address the comparison with secularised and gender-egalitarian countries. acknowledgements daniela bellani, antonella guarneri and francesca rinesi acknowledge the financial 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barcelona, spain. e-mail: gcorti@ced.uab.es url: https://ced.cat/en/directori/giulia-corti/ dr. daniela bellani. università cattolica del sacro cuore. milan, italy. e-mail: daniela.bellani@unicatt.it url: https://publires.unicatt.it/en/persons/daniela-bellani dr. antonella guarneri, dr. francesca rinesi. italian national institute of statistics. rome, italy. e-mail: guarneri@istat.it; rinesi@istat.it url: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/antonella-guarneri https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/francesca-rinesi-2023709646 the opinions, views, and thoughts expressed by the authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, or views of istat. the institution does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, or validity of any information presented by the authors. warren, carol a. b. 1996: older women, younger men: self and stigma in age-discrepant relationships. in: clinical sociology review 14,1: 65-86. date of submission: 31.10.2023 date of acceptance: 15.07.2024 mailto:gcorti@ced.uab.es https://ced.cat/en/directori/giulia-corti/ mailto:daniela.bellani@unicatt.it https://publires.unicatt.it/en/persons/daniela-bellani mailto:guarneri@istat.it mailto:rinesi@istat.it https://www.researchgate.net/profile/antonella-guarneri https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/francesca-rinesi-2023709646 partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 363 appendix fig. a1: kaplan-meier survival functions of surviving marriage of marriages by marriage cohorts and age pairings source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi364 tab. a1: association between partner’s age gap and marital disruption using average discrete changes from binary logit model (m1) (m2) (m3) panel a: average discrete change (adc) ref.: age hypergamy age hypogamy 1970-1979 .005** .005** .005** (.002) (.002) (.002) 1980-1989 .002 .002 .002 (.002) (.002) (.002) 1990-1999 .001 .001 001 (.002) (.002) (.002) age homogamy 1970-1979 .001 .001 .001 (.001) (.001) (.001) 1980-1989 -.000 -.000 -.000 (.001) (.001) (.001) 1990-1999 .000 .000 .000 (.001) (.001) (.001) basic controls yes yes yes additional controls yes yes no duration categories yes no no duration yearly no yes no duration categories, years of cohabitation included no no yes panel b: cross-model differences adc model 1 ‒ adc model 2 0.617 (0.118) adc model 2 ‒ adc model 3 -0.227 (0.079) adc model 1 ‒ adc model 3 0.390 (0.097) note: panel a of table a1: average discrete changes (adc) within the same models are calculated to obtain the difference between the adjusted predictive of being in a hyper/ homogamous couple and the adjusted predictive of being in hypergamous couple. panel b of table a1: we use differences of adcs across different models to provide a direct test of what the inclusion of a certain variable adds to the explanatory power of a certain model. robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 365 tab. a2a: discrete-time event history logistic regression results for marital disruption. alternative measure of age pairing (m1) (m2) (m3) husband-wife age gap categories [+2 or +3= ref cat] <-2 .404** -.365 -.271 (.183) (.73) (.736) -2 or -1 .126 .859*** 1.003*** (.159) (.322) (.323) 0 or +1 .042 .013 .021 (.109) (.269) (.271) +4 or +5 -.274** -.229 -.189 (.12) (.276) (.276) >+5 -.131 -.307 -.294 (.111) (.282) (.282) marriage cohort (ref.: 1970-1979) 1980-1989 .624*** .511** .475** (.112) (.214) (.215) 1990-1999 1.014*** 1.138*** 1.136*** (.117) (.209) (.21) >-2 years *1980-1989 1.105 1.045 (.782) (.79) >-2 years *1990-1999 .601 .53 (.775) (.783) -2 or -1 years *1980-1989 -.69* -.793* (.413) (.415) -2 or -1 years *1990-1999 -1.088*** -1.219*** (.405) (.408) 0 or +1 years *1980-1989 .236 .178 (.32) (.322) 0 or +1 years *1990-1999 -.14 -.193 (.314) (.315) +4 or +5 years *1980-1989 .064 .023 (.336) (.336) +4 or +5 years *1990-1999 -.161 -.179 (.326) (.326) >+5 years *1980-1989 .338 .368 (.33) (.331) >+5 years *1990-1999 .088 .003 (.325) (.327) • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi366 tab. a2a: continuation (m1) (m2) (m3) constant -4.317*** -4.164*** -2.117* (1.038) (1.055) (1.118) spells 120783 120783 120783 number of clusters 7,894 7,894 7,894 basic controls yes yes yes additional controls no no yes duration categories yes yes yes note: robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. basic controls are duration of the marriage, pre-marital cohabitation, wife’s age and its squared term, respondent’s sex. additional controls to the basic model are region of residence, marriage ritual, italian citizenship, respondent’s level of education. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 367 tab. a2b: discrete-time event history logistic regression results for marital disruption. alternative measure of age pairing note: robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. basic controls are duration of the marriage, pre-marital cohabitation, wife’s age and its squared term, respondent’s sex. additional controls are region of residence, marriage ritual, italian citizenship, respondent’s level of education. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. (m1) (m2) (m3) husband-wife age gap categories [>4= ref cat] <0 .334** .961*** 1.035*** (.133) (.321) (.321) +2 or +3 or +4 -.007 .369 .345 (.094) (.239) (.239) 0 or +1 .151 .384 .35 (.109) (.283) (.284) marriage cohort (ref.: 1970-1979) 1980-1989 .617*** .891*** .883*** (.112) (.219) (.219) 1990-1999 .998*** 1.359*** 1.312*** (.117) (.222) (.224) <0 * ii cohort -.586 -.666* (.372) (.372) <0 * iii cohort -.852** -.867** (.368) (.369) +2 or +3 or +4*1980-1989 -.45 -.48* (.282) (.282) +2 or +3 or +4*1990-1999 -.443 -.388 (.277) (.278) 0 or +1*1980-1989 -.149 -.215 (.323) (.323) 0 or +1*1990-1999 -.372 -.355 (.32) (.321) constant -4.589*** -4.588*** -2.871*** (.994) (1.007) (1.065) spells 120783 120783 120783 number of clusters 7,894 7,894 7,894 basic controls yes yes yes additional controls no no yes duration categories yes yes yes • giulia corti, daniela bellani, antonella guarneri, francesca rinesi368 note: basic controls are duration of the marriage, pre-marital cohabitation, wife’s age and its squared term, respondent’s sex. additional controls to the basic model are region of residence, marriage ritual, italian citizenship. robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat 2016). own elaborations. tab. a3: discrete-time event history logistic regression results for marital disruption, controlling for educational level of partners at engagement (m1) (m2) (m3) (m4) husband-wife age pairing (ref: age hypergamy) age hypogamy 1.075*** 1.052*** 1.083*** .977*** (.323) (.323) (.323) (.302) age homogamy .342 .318 .333 .268 (.231) (.231) (.231) (.207) marriage cohort (ref.: 1970-1979) 1980-1989 .857*** .861*** .841*** .686*** (.224) (.223) (.224) (.183) 1990-1999 1.254*** 1.207*** 1.208*** 1.048*** (.227) (.227) (.228) (.189) age hypogamy*1980-1989 -.748** -.783** -.767** -.519 (.379) (.379) (.38) (.353) age hypogamy*1990-1999 -.930** -.973*** -.970*** -.659* (.369) (.37) (.37) (.351) age homogamy*1980-1989 -.281 -.296 -.277 -.089 (.267) (.266) (.267) (.241) age homogamy*1990-1999 -.286 -.249 -.251 .02 (.261) (.261) (.261) (.238) constant -2.997 -2.479 -2.379 -2.733** (1.068) (1.074) (1.09) (1.211) pseudo r2 .035 .037 .037 .040 basic controls yes yes yes yes additional controls yes yes yes yes female partner’s educational level at engagement yes no yes yes male partner’s educational level at engagement no yes yes yes educational homogamy no no no yes duration categories yes yes yes yes partners’ age difference and marital dissolution in italy. a cohort comparison • 369 tab. a4: probit model for marital disruption, controlling for selection robust standard errors in parenthesis, *** p<.01, ** p<.05, * p<.1. source: “families, social subjects and life cycle” (istat, 2016). own elaborations. (m1) (m2) husband-wife age gap (ref: hypergamy) hypogamy .715** .714** (.283) (.283) homogamy .335 .333 (.215) (.215) marriage cohort (ref.: 1970-1979) 1980-1989 .444** .441** (.216) (.216) 1990-1999 .645*** .644*** (.22) (.22) hypogamy*1980-1989 -.316 -.317 (.32) (.32) hypogamy*1990-1999 -.552* -.553* (.315) (.315) homogamy*1980-1989 -.283 -.281 (.241) (.241) homogamy*1990-1999 -.318 -.318 (.237) (.237) constant -.624 -.555 (.647) (.642) heckman correction no yes published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany managing publisher dr. nikola sander 2024 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) karsten hank (cologne) ridhi kashyap (oxford) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) rainer wehrhahn (kiel) comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) board of reviewers bruno arpino (barcelona) laura bernardi (lausanne) gabriele doblhammer (rostock) anette eva fasang (berlin) michael feldhaus (oldenburg) alexia fürnkranz-prskawetz (vienna) birgit glorius (chemnitz) fanny janssen (groningen) frank kalter (mannheim) stefanie kley (hamburg) bernhard köppen (koblenz) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) hill kulu (st andrews) nadja milewski (wiesbaden) thorsten schneider (leipzig) tomas sobotka (vienna) jeroen j. a. spijker (barcelona) helga de valk (the hague) sergi vidal (barcelona) michael wagner (cologne) mailto:cpos@bib.bund.de http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková abstract: cross-border reproductive care (cbrc) represents a growing component of assisted reproductive technologies (art), particularly in europe. this article presents a descriptive, register-based analysis of cbrc in czechia, focusing on the volume of art cycles, the countries of origin of patients, and treatment types in comparison with domestic patients. we analysed 176,588 art cycles recorded in the czech national registry of assisted reproduction (nrar) between 2016 and 2019. patients were classified by country of residence, nationality, and insurance status. descriptive statistics were used to identify patterns in terms of patient characteristics and treatment choices. the analysis was contextualised with reference to national art legislation in selected source countries. the findings revealed that nearly 40 percent of art cycles in czechia are attributable to cbrc, making the country one of europe’s leading destinations for cross-border fertility treatment. the largest groups of cbrc patients are from germany, italy, slovakia, the uk, france, serbia, ireland, and hungary. women who seek cbrc in czechia are significantly older than their czech counterparts, with a modal age of 41 years compared to 38 years, respectively, for ivf/icsi cycles and 43 years compared to 38 years, respectively, for cycles in which a woman receives donated eggs. moreover, the treatment preferences of cbrc patients differ markedly: they are more likely to undergo frozen embryo transfer (fet) cycles (37 percent vs. 30 percent among czech patients) and egg receipt (oor) cycles (32 percent vs. 3 percent among czech patients). the study provides a unique, data-driven perspective on the dynamics of crossborder reproductive care in czechia, drawing on comprehensive national registry data. by identifying key source countries and differences in treatment preferences, it highlights czechia’s growing role in the european reproductive care landscape and sheds light on how legal, demographic, and economic conditions shape crossborder patient mobility in europe. keywords: assisted reproduction · cross-border reproductive care · availability of art · egg donation · czechia comparative population studies ‒ demographic trends around the globe vol. 50 (2025): 183-204 (date of release: 16.09.2025) federal institute for population research 2025 url: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de doi: https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-12 urn: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2025-12en http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de https://doi.org/10.12765/cpos-2025-12 • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková184 1 introduction as a consequence of fertility postponement, which has represented the prevailing trend of economically advanced countries over the last several decades (frejka 2017; frejka et al. 2008), the time available for reproduction has been significantly shortened, and the risk of infertility has increased given that the probability of natural conception decreases with increasing age (baird et al. 2005; crawford/steiner 2015). the world health organization (who) classifies infertility as a disease of the female or male reproductive system – defined by the inability to achieve pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse – requiring appropriate investigation and treatment (who 2020). infertility treatment via assisted reproductive technology (art), a widely used method for infertile persons to realise their reproductive intentions , has resulted in the birth of more than 10 million children worldwide (eshre 2022). access to art is regulated by legislation in a number of countries and the differing degree of availability is seen as a major reason why many infertile couples and individuals seek infertility treatment abroad (präg/mills 2017a; salama et al. 2018). pennings (2009) describes the significant diversity of art legislation across europe as a “legal mosaicism”. although most countries base their legislation on broadly shared ethical principles such as the value of life, child welfare, and clinical safety, there is significant divergence in how they rank these values. as a result, national policies often diverge or are even in conflict. for instance, while some countries restrict the number of embryos transferred so as to reduce health risks, others (e.g. germany and italy) impose stricter limits on embryo manipulation due to the elevated moral status assigned to embryos in vitro, even at the cost of an increased risk of multiple gestation (pennings 2009). the process of providing fertility services to patients who travel outside their home country for treatment is referred to as cross-border reproductive care (cbrc) (dostálová/güell 2022; eshre 2017). the factors that contribute to cbrc are very diverse and encompass many different desires and motivations (martin 2016). “push” factors include restrictive policies in certain countries that prohibit or limit access to specific art interventions, long waiting times to start fertility treatment (usually due to a lack of gamete donors), previous treatment failure, or the risk of stigma in the patient’s home country (dostálová/güell 2022; jacobson 2020; präg/mills 2017a). inhorn/patrizio (2009) mention also the desire of infertile couples and persons to protect their privacy as one of the “push” factors for cbrc, since infertility treatment is often a psychologically challenging and sensitive issue. conversely, “pull” factors include permissive policies, cheaper treatment, safe high-quality medical care, and a high success rate of art (dostálová/güell 2022; jacobson 2020; salama et al. 2018). while the push and pull model provides a useful framework, it only partially captures the complexity of patient decision-making. factors such as language, cultural proximity, clinic branding and preferences related to ethnicity and kinship also play an important role, as highlighted in recent qualitative research (knecht et al. 2012; präg/mills 2017b). cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 185 although cbrc has become increasingly important in europe over the last few years and the number of people seeking fertility treatment abroad is increasing steadily, no reliable data is available on the exact extent of this relatively new phenomenon (salama et al. 2018). a 2006 survey of art registries in 18 countries estimated that cbrc may account for up to 10 percent of all initiated ivf and icsi cycles (collins/cook 2010). shenfield et al. (2010) estimated the extent of cbrc in 2008 and 2009 in six european countries (belgium, czechia, denmark, switzerland, slovenia, and spain) at 11,000 to 14,000 patients and 24,000 to 30,000 cycles per year. however, given the dynamic nature of the art sector, these results provide only a very approximate indication of the volume and nature of cross-border reproductive care today. czechia, together with spain, belgium, and denmark have been identified in many studies as the principal cbrc destination countries in europe (e.g. pennings et al. 2009; shenfield et al. 2010; bergmann 2011; speier 2011; rozée gomez/de la rochebrochard 2013; adrian/kroløkke 2018; salama et al. 2018; dostálová/güell 2022). moreover, czechia evinced the highest art uptake rate of these countries in 2019, i.e. over 3.6 thousand cycles per million population (smeenk et al. 2023). the aim of this article is, therefore, to analyse the current numbers and characteristics of women who receive cbrc in czechia and to contribute to the overall understanding of the cbrc phenomenon. this study is based on the quantitative analysis of individuallevel register data covering all art cycles conducted in czechia. rather than aiming to capture the personal experiences and motivational factors of patients, it attempts to identify empirical patterns in terms of the uptake of cross-border treatment. the specific aims are to a) identify the source countries of those who receive cbrc in czechia, b) determine the differences in the use of art between women from czechia and foreign women who undertake cbrc in czechia, c) identify the differences in the types of art used by women from various countries, and d) discuss the factors that cause the significant differences in art uptake. the key contribution of the paper concerns the use of unique anonymised individual level data on all art cycles initiated in czechia. the article benefits from the obligatory full reporting of art cycles initiated in czechia in 2016, which allowed the identification of cycles undergone by women who are not residents of czechia (ihis cr 2022). the article focuses on the period 2016-2019, prior to the covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of anti-pandemic restrictive measures that affected both travel and the provision of medical services. 1.1 art in czechia – regulation and conditions czechia is one of the few european countries that recorded a significant increase in art use immediately following the introduction of art legislation and registration in 1997 (kocourková et al. 2023). importantly, czechia was also the first country in the former eastern bloc to achieve a successful ivf birth, with the first “test tube baby” being born in 1982 (chmel/čekal 2020). this early development laid the foundations for a strong clinical tradition and the normalisation of ivf within czech society. • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková186 in czechia, live births following art accounted for more than 3.5 percent of all the country’s live births in 2017-2020 (kocourková et al. 2023). the internationally reported proportion of 5.5 percent (wyns et al. 2022) of art births in czechia overestimates the impact of art on the number of births in the country due to the inclusion of women who receive cross-border reproductive care. the high uptake of art is also reflected in the increase in the number of assisted reproduction centres, of which there are currently 48 in czechia, the highest number in europe proportional to population (ihis cr 2022; kocourková et al. 2023). liberal legislation allowing all art interventions plays an important role in this respect, as do the availability of suitable gamete donors (with the condition of anonymity), the high quality of medical care and the low cost of art. one ivf cycle with the application of the woman’s own eggs usually costs between 2,400 and 3,000 eur (kocourková et al. 2023). art can only be performed in czechia following the submission of a written request from the woman and the man, and the woman must be no older than 49 years. art has been accessible to unmarried heterosexual couples since 2006 (act no. 227/2006 coll.). although single women and homosexual couples remain legally excluded from infertility treatment, a number of qualitative studies have shown that this condition can be circumvented since the woman is not obliged to register the man who provided consent for art at the clinic as the father of the child following the birth. therefore, lesbian and single women also undergo art, while gay men use surrogacy, which is not regulated in czechia (hašková 2022; hašková/sloboda 2018). gametes can only be donated anonymously, and the donor must be over 18 years of age and no older than 35 years of age for egg donors and 40 years for sperm donors (řežábek 2014). the 1997 act introduced health insurance coverage for up to three ivf cycles for women aged 22-39, and from the age of 18 for women with bilateral fallopian tube obstruction (act no. 48/1997 coll.). three ivf cycles with embryo transfer have been covered since 2012, and if only one embryo was transferred in the first two cycles, a fourth cycle is also covered (ghic cr 2022; kocourková et al. 2015). following an amendment to legislation, the age limit in czechia for the reimbursement of ivf from the public health insurance system was raised by one year to 40 years from 1 january 2022; however, the age limit of 39 years was valid for the whole of the period considered by this study. 2 data and methods we employed a set of anonymised individual-level data on all art cycles as reported in the national registry of assisted reproduction (nrar), which is administered by the institute of health information and statistics of the czech republic (ihis cr). a total of 176,588 art cycles initiated in czechia between 2016 and 2019 were included in the analysis. the reporting of data on art cycles has been mandatory for all reproductive centres since 2006. however, only since 2016 has it been possible to track cbrc reliably following the expansion of the information collected to include cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 187 the country of current residence and the nationality of the women. the registry distinguishes six main types of art cycles: • ivf/icsi cycle: a cycle involving in vitro fertilisation, either via conventional ivf or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (icsi). the resulting embryos belong to the couple that request their creation, regardless of whether their own or donated gametes (eggs or sperm) are used. • fet cycle (frozen embryo transfer): a cycle in which previously frozen embryos from an earlier ivf cycle are thawed and transferred. • ed cycle (egg donation): a cycle in which a woman donates her eggs to another couple. the donor’s cycle is recorded separately and concludes with the number of eggs retrieved. • oor cycle (oocyte/egg receipt): a cycle in which a woman receives donated eggs. • emr cycle (embryo receipt): a cycle in which a woman receives an embryo that was originally created for the treatment of another couple but later donated. • freez cycle: a cycle intended for the preservation of fertility via the freezing of eggs or embryos without immediate transfer (ihis cr 2022). each art cycle in the registry includes both mandatory and optional data fields. the mandatory data, which ensures full coverage and validity, include the woman’s nationality, country of residence, type of cycle, and whether the cycle was covered by czech public health insurance. optional data comprises data that is not legally required and which may be inconsistently reported. of this data, the variable “completed age of the woman” was included in the analysis since it was available for all the cases reported. other optional fields − such as whether a clinical pregnancy was achieved or whether the woman had been pregnant previously − were excluded due to their irrelevance to the aims of the research. the variables employed allowed for a total of 176,588 observations, with no missing data. in order to distinguish between domestic and cross-border art cycles, we applied three key variables available in the nrar dataset: the woman’s country of residence and nationality, and whether the cycle was covered by czech public health insurance. the variable for insurance coverage refers specifically to eligibility for statutory coverage, which applies to czech residents under the age of 39.1 for the purposes of this analysis, a cycle was classified as cbrc only if all three of the following conditions were met simultaneously: (1) the woman’s country of residence was outside czechia, (2) she was not a czech citizen, and (3) the cycle was not covered by czech public health insurance. this strict definition was adopted so as to ensure a high level of certainty when identifying cross-border cases. women who met at least one of the following criteria − residing in czechia, holding czech citizenship, or being covered by public insurance − were classified as domestic patients (hereinafter referred to as “natives”). all three of the classification variables 1 the public health insurance system in czechia covered a maximum of 4 ivf cycles up to the woman’s 39th birthday. • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková188 were complete for the entire dataset; thus, no cases had to be excluded due to missing information. the country from which the woman arrived in czechia for infertility treatment was identified based on the “country of current residence of the woman” variable. the analysis focused on those countries from which most women arrived for cbrc and which, together, accounted for three-quarters of the total volume of cbrc provided in czechia. the art cycles were analysed separately for natives and other women seeking cbrc with descriptive statistics. the differences in the uptake of art were examined in terms of both age and country of residence. the second part of the analysis places the data on cbrc in czechia into the context of legislative and other conditions governing the provision of infertility treatment in all the countries studied. 3 results 3.1 identification of the source countries of cbrc provided in czechia between 2016 and 2019, a total of 176,588 art cycles were initiated in czechia. the maximum number was recorded in 2019 (46,580 cycles). the proportion of cycles undergone by women seeking cbrc increased from 36.5 percent in 2016 to 38.3 percent in 2019. almost 30 percent of cbrc in czechia between 2016-2019 was provided for women whose registered current residence was in germany (table 1). in terms of the total volume of reproductive care provided in czechia, every tenth art cycle was provided for women resident in germany. italy was the second most important source country for cbrc in czechia with a share of more than 10 percent of cbrc and 4 percent of the total volume of art performed in czechia. the other countries included in the ranking evinced lower, though still significant, proportions of cbrc: order country number of cycles proportion of cbrc proportion of all cycles cycles (%) initiated in czechia (%) 1. germany 19,736 29.9 11.2 2. italy 6,890 10.4 3.9 3. slovakia 5,071 7.7 2.9 4. united kingdom 4,486 6.8 2.5 5. france 4,410 6.7 2.5 6. serbia 4,171 6.3 2.4 7. ireland 2,931 4.4 1.7 8. hungary 2,219 3.4 1.3 tab. 1: countries with the highest proportions of cbrc provided in czechia by number and proportion of art cycles of total cbrc and total art care provided, 2016-2019 source: nrar 2016-2019, authors’ calculations cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 189 slovakia (7.7 percent of total cbrc), the uk (6.8 percent), france (6.7 percent), serbia (6.3 percent), ireland (4.4 percent), and hungary (3.4 percent) (table 1). other source countries, not considered to be major source countries for the purposes of this article, each accounted for less than 3 percent of cbrc in czechia in 2016-2019. they included the usa and the european countries of austria, romania, switzerland, poland, and croatia. fig. 1: intensity of cbrc in czechia and art uptake in the source countries, 2019 de sk fr it ukie rs cz hu number of art cycles per million women of reproductive age (15–49 years) in 2019 0 200100 km share of cycles of women seeking cbrc from the given country of the total number of cbrc cycles performed in czechia in 2019 de less than 6.00 % 6.00–7.99 % 8.00–9.99 % 10.00 % and more underestimated number of art cycles other countries less than 2,000 cycles 2,000–4,999 cycles 5,000–7,999 cycles 8,000–11,999 cycles 12,000 cycles and more note: data for four countries on the number of art cycles per one million women aged 15-49 is underestimated since not all art centres report data to the national registry. in germany, data is available from 133 of 139 art centres; in hungary 11 of 14 centres; in ireland 2 of 9 centres; and in serbia 6 of 18 centres. source: nrar 2016-2019, smeenk et al. (2023), authors’ calculations • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková190 the intensity of cbrc from the perspective of czechia as a destination country and the use of art in the source countries (defined as the number of art cycles initiated per one million women aged 15-49) in 2019 is shown in figure 1. in comparison to czechia, with over 16,000 art cycles initiated per one million women of reproductive age, all the other countries evinced less intense uptake of art in 2019. specifically, france recorded over 8,000 art cycles per one million women of reproductive age, while italy and germany each reported over 6,000 cycles. utilisation in slovakia and the united kingdom was even lower, with just over 4,000 art cycles per one million women of reproductive age. however, the data for germany was slightly underestimated since only 133 of a total of 139 german art centres provided the necessary data (smeenk et al. 2023). similarly, data from some other countries including hungary, ireland, and serbia was also underreported due to incomplete submissions from art centres (smeenk et al. 2023). 3.2 cbrc in czechia by the age of women and type of art cycle the art cycle structure differed markedly between natives and women seeking cbrc (fig. 2) during the period studied. for natives, the highest proportion of cycles initiated in 2016-2019 related to ivf/icsi cycles (41 percent) with fresh transfer, followed by frozen embryo transfer (fet, 30 percent) and egg donation (20 percent). in contrast, women who sought cbrc most often chose fet cycles (37 percent) and cycles involving the receipt of donated eggs (32 percent), which together accounted for the majority of cycles initiated with respect to cbrc in czechia. fig. 2: structure of art cycles by the type of cycle performed in czechia in 2016–2019 ivf/icsi 41 fet 30 ed 20 oor 3 emr 1 freez 5 % % % % % % ivf/icsi 23 fet 37 oor 32 emr 3 freez 5 % % % % % natives women seeking cbrc ed 0% source: nrar 2016-2019, authors’ calculations cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 191 since age is a key factor in infertility treatment, figure 3 shows the distribution of ivf/icsi and fet cycles initiated in czechia by the age of the women between 2016 and 2019. natives generally underwent ivf/icsi at younger ages, with a modal age of 38, which reflected the public health insurance age limit of 39; their uptake rate dropped sharply after this age. in contrast, women seeking cbrc had a modal age of 41 at the initiation of the treatment. in addition, the age structure with concern to fet cycles differed markedly. fet uptake by natives tended to be concentrated at younger ages, with a bi-modal distribution of 35 and 38 years and a steep decline after 39, whereas fet cycles peaked at 43 years for cbrc patients, with the highest uptake occurring after the age of 40. between 2016 and 2019, egg donation (ed) in czechia relied predominantly on native women as donors, typically at younger ages, due to the legal donor age limit of 35 (fig. 4). ed cycles refer to procedures undertaken by women who donate their eggs and do not include the recipients of donated eggs. as foreign women almost never act as donors in the czech art system, the number of ed cycles among cbrc patients is negligible. in contrast, egg receipt (oor) cycles were predominantly initiated for cbrc patients, mainly at older ages, peaking at the age of 43 (2,100 cycles). regarding fig. 3: number of ivf/icsi and fet cycles initiated in czechia by the age of the woman; natives and women seeking cbrc, 2016-2019 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 age ivf/csi – natives ivf/csi – women seeking cbrc fet – natives fet – women seeking cbrc number of cycles source: nrar 2016-2019, authors’ calculations • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková192 number of ed, oor and emr cycles initiated in czechia by the age of the woman, natives and women seeking cbrc, 2016-2019 natives, oor cycles were less frequent and occurred earlier, with a modal age of 38, thus reflecting public insurance eligibility rules. embryo receipt (emr) cycles were also mainly received by cbrc patients, with a peak of 180 cycles at the age of 41. figure 5 shows the structure of art cycles in czechia according to the cbrc source countries and the type of cycle that women from these countries underwent in czechia in 2016-2019. the structure of the cycles initiated by women from slovakia was most similar to that of natives, with ivf/icsi (47 percent) and fet (40 percent) cycles dominating. the proportion of ivf/icsi cycles initiated by women from serbia, ireland, and the uk was lower, just one third of those performed for natives, while egg receipt cycles (oor) were initiated significantly more frequently, accounting for one-quarter to one-third of cycles initiated by women from these countries. the women who received art in czechia via third-party reproduction originated principally from italy and france (fig. 5, right side of the graph). egg-receipt (oor) cycles constituted the dominant proportion of cycles for women from france (58 percent), italy and hungary (both 41 percent). moreover, concerning women from italy, every tenth cycle initiated in czechia comprised embryo receipt cycles (emr cycle, 10 percent). therefore, more than half of cycles performed for women from france and italy consisted of third-party reproduction. fig. 4: number of ed, oor and emr cycles initiated in czechia by the age of the woman, natives and women seeking cbrc, 2016-2019 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 age ed (egg donation) – natives ed (egg donation) – women seeking cbrc oor (egg receipt) – natives oor (egg receipt) – women seeking cbrc emr (embryo receipt) – natives emr (embryo receipt) – women seeking cbrc number of cycles source: nrar 2016-2019, authors’ calculations cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 193 3.3 legislation and art funding in the countries studied the uptake of art and, thus, the intensity of cbrc, is largely influenced by the regulation of art in the home country. with the exception of ireland, as of 2021 all the countries studied had passed legislation regulating the use of art (fe/epf 2021). in ireland, the legal framework remains limited to non-binding ethical guidelines issued by the irish medical council. the creation of human life for experimental purposes and cloning is prohibited, and clinics are not required to report treatment outcomes or publish success rate statistics (mcdermott et al. 2022). of the countries studied, czechia, germany, italy, the united kingdom, france, and hungary have introduced national art registers. only germany, slovakia, and the uk have introduced national donor registers (fe/epf 2021). table 2 provides information on access to ivf/icsi using own and donated gametes or embryos for all the countries studied in 2019. the uk had the most liberal legislation and allowed ivf/icsi with donated sperm, eggs or embryos, and donated gametes (the application of donated sperm and eggs at the same time) irrespective of the sexual orientation or marital status of patients. in contrast, germany had in place relatively strict art regulations in 2019. it did not allow egg donation; therefore ivf/icsi using donated eggs was illegal in germany at the time. access to ivf/icsi with donated gametes was banned in france fig. 5: structure of art cycles in czechia by cbrc source country and type of art cycle, 2016-2019 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 czechia slovakia serbia ireland united kingdom germany hungary italy france 41% 30% 20% 3%0% 5% 47% 40% 0% 9% 1%3% 33% 37% 0% 26% 0%4% 31% 28% 0% 28% 3% 9% 31% 32% 0% 30% 4% 3% 24% 38% 0% 30% 2% 5% 20% 36% 0% 41% 2%2% 7% 34% 0% 41% 10% 8% 5% 35% 0% 58% 1%1% ivf/icsi fet ed oor emr freez in percent source: nrar 2016-2019, authors’ calculations • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková194 ac ce ss to iv f/ ic si a nd e m br yo d on at io n cz ec hi a g er m an y ita ly sl ov ak ia uk fr an ce se rb ia ire la nd h un ga ry w ith o w n ga m et es h et er os ex ua l c ou pl es ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s w ith sp er m d on at io n h et er os ex ua l c ou pl es ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s fe m al e co up le s n o ye s n o n o ye s n o * n o ye s n o m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o n o n o si ng le w om en n o ye s n o n o ye s n o * ye s ye s ye s w ith e gg d on at io n h et er os ex ua l c ou pl es ye s n o ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s fe m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o * n o ye s n o m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o n o n o si ng le w om en n o n o n o n o ye s n o * n o ye s ye s w ith g am et es d on at io n (d on at ed e gg s a nd sp er m a t t he sa m e tim e) h et er os ex ua l c ou pl es ye s n o ye s ye s ye s n o n o ye s ye s fe m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o ye s n o m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o n o n o si ng le w om en n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o ye s ye s w ith e m br yo d on at io n h et er os ex ua l c ou pl es ye s ye s n o ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s ye s fe m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o * n o ye s n o m al e co up le s n o n o n o n o ye s n o n o n o n o si ng le w om en n o n o n o n o ye s n o * ye s ye s n o ta b. 2 : le ga l c on di tio ns fo r a cc es s t o iv f/ ic si a nd e m br yo d on at io n in c ze ch ia a nd in th e co ns id er ed c br c co un tri es in 20 19 * th e bi oe th ic s l aw , w hi ch a llo w s l es bi an c ou pl es a nd si ng le w om en to u nd er go iv f/ ic si , h as b ee n in fo rc e in f ra nc e sin ce 2 02 1. so ur ce : c al ha zjo rg e et a l. (2 02 0) , f e/ ep f (2 02 1) , a ut ho rs ’ d es ig n cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 195 and serbia in 2019, although sperm and egg donation was legal in both countries. embryo donation, and therefore the transfer of donated embryos, was prohibited in italy in 2019. regarding the restriction of access to art to selected groups of people, only heterosexual couples were allowed to undergo art in 2016-2019 in czechia, italy, and slovakia. in france, art was made available only to lesbian couples and single women in 2021 following the adoption of the bioethics act (library of congress 2021). thus, art was available only to heterosexual couples in france during the study period. the uk, where art was available to single women and lesbian couples, as well as gay couples during the period under study, was the exception in terms of legislation. ireland also had relatively liberal legislation; in addition to heterosexual couples, single women and lesbian couples had access to ivf/icsi. due to the egg donation ban, single women and lesbian couples in germany could only benefit from ivf or icsi using donated sperm in 2016-2019. art was also available to single women in serbia and hungary during the reporting period. the public funding of art varies considerably across the countries considered and directly affects access to treatment (table 3). in 2019, all the countries studied except ireland provided at least partial public coverage for infertility treatment, though under differing eligibility rules. in most countries, up to three art cycles were funded; czechia covered a fourth provided only single embryo transfers were used, while hungary financed up to five cycles. strict age limits applied in germany and czechia (up to 39 years), whereas slovakia applied no age cap, and italy allowed reimbursement up to the age of 46. tab. 3: public funding for art and indicative prices for self-payers in czechia and the cbrc source countries studied, 2019 country all available maximum number of age limit for funding ivf cycle price for treatment covered? art cycles financed for women (in years) self-payers (in eur) czechia no 3* <39** 2,800 germany yes 3 <39 3,500 italy yes 3 <46 6,000 slovakia no 3 none 2,300 uk no *** *** 7,000 france yes 4 <43 4,200 serbia yes 3 <42 2,700 ireland / / / 5,200 hungary yes 5 <45 3,300 * if single embryo transfers were performed in the first two cycles, 4 cycles are covered; ** valid as of 2019, from 2022 the age limit was increased to 40 years; *** according to a nice decision. the prices quoted are indicative only and valid as of 2022; they refer to an ivf cycle with embryo transfer (i.e. without donated sperm or eggs). source: calhaz-jorge et al. (2020), wiecki (2023), authors’ design • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková196 treatment costs for self-paying patients also varied. the lowest prices for one ivf cycle (without donor gametes) were identified for slovakia, czechia and serbia (eur 2.3-2.8k), while the highest were identified for italy, the uk and ireland. 4 discussion czechia has established itself as one of the main destinations for cbrc in europe. nearly 40 percent of the total art provided in the country is attributable to women seeking infertility treatment outside their home country. germany (30 percent of all cbrc), followed by italy (10 percent), slovakia (8 percent), the uk (7 percent), france (7 percent), serbia (6 percent), ireland (4 percent) and hungary (3 percent) were identified as the main source countries for cbrc provision in czechia in 20162019; together, these countries accounted for 75 percent of the total volume of cbrc provided in the country. the results are thus partly consistent with those of an older study by shenfield et al. (2010), who identified germany, the uk, france, and italy as the main countries in terms of cbrc provided in czechia in 2008-2009. a decade later, slovakia, serbia, ireland, and hungary had also become important source countries for the reproductive care sector in czechia. therefore, one of the most important contributions of this paper concerns the identification of central and eastern european countries as important sources of cbrc in the european context. women who undergo cbrc in czechia are on average significantly older than natives and generally select different types of treatment compared to their czech counterparts. the main factors that attract foreign patients include the legal and economic conditions that support the recruitment of egg donors under an anonymous framework, the absence of legislative barriers, the high quality of medical care, the relatively lower cost of treatment, and easy geographical and cultural accessibility. trends generally concerning the use of art in czechia are influenced significantly by the provision of cbrc. the increase in the use of art up to 2019 was the result of growing interest from natives and from women seeking cbrc, whose proportion on art use in czechia increased from 36 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2019. our results on the increasing attractiveness of czechia as a cbrc destination country are in line with those of the ihis cr (2021), which documents the increasing interest of foreign women in infertility treatment in czechia as evidenced by the growth in the number of art centres in the country (ihis cr 2022). a comparison of the volume of cbrc provided in czechia with other cbrc target countries is difficult since only old estimates based on patient follow-up are available. for example, it was reported that approximately 2,000 foreign patients sought fertility treatment in belgium in 2007, which represented approx. 15 percent to 20 percent of all patients (pennings et al. 2009). however, no up-to-date detailed data on cbrc is currently available on european countries. one of the most important structural differences between natives and women seeking cbrc concerns their distinctly different age structures. foreign women who undergo infertility treatment in czechia are significantly older across all treatment cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 197 methods. while the majority of natives use art before the age of 40, constrained by the age limit for the reimbursement of certain types of treatment by the health insurance system, the use of art by women seeking cbrc increases after the age of 40 years and peaks at around 44 years. thus, it is likely that some women choose to seek fertility treatment in czechia based on previous treatment failure or after exhausting/losing eligibility for art funding from public health insurance in their home country (dostálová/güell 2022; präg/mills 2017a). the availability of the full range of treatment methods and the relatively low cost of art compared to other european countries comprise two of the most important factors in terms of the attractiveness of czechia for infertility treatment and the combination of favourable factors overall renders czechia attractive for patients from abroad (donchin 2010). additionally, czech clinics enjoy a competitive advantage on the european market for these services. many provide high-quality care and boast high success rates (salama et al. 2018). moreover, targeted marketing campaigns and specialised art centres with foreign language speakers who assist in the organisation of treatment specifically targeted to foreign patients reduces potential barriers to treatment for foreigners. in this regard, the cbrc assisted reproduction segment is very much a successful business (patrizio et al. 2022). the highest proportion (30 percent) of cbrc in czechia between 2016-2019 was provided for women with a registered current residence in germany. one of the most important factors in the choice of czechia as a destination for infertility treatment for german women concerns the fact that germany bans egg donation. although the research indicates that the acceptance of treatment using donated eggs is relatively low among germans, one in ten women who are in principle open to medical procedures for achieving a biological child would consider this treatment (haug/ milewski 2018). czechia is preferred due to the availability of donated eggs (calhazjorge et al. 2020; dostálová/güell 2022), as confirmed by the high proportion of oor and fet cycles performed in general in the cbrc sector, particularly for german women. a further important factor in the choice of czechia for german women seeking cbrc most likely concerns the geographical and/or cultural proximity of the two countries as noted by bergmann (2011) or präg/mills (2017b). legislative conditions regarding access to certain treatment options in the source country may additionally explain the attractiveness of czechia for women from italy, france, and hungary. the cryopreservation of embryos, and therefore embryo donation/reception, is prohibited in italy (calhaz-jorge et al. 2020). italian women seeking cbrc are more likely to undergo embryo receipt cycles (10 percent of art cycles were for italian women) in czechia than women from other countries. furthermore, italians generally opt for the oor and fet methods, as do women from germany. the choice of czechia may also be related to the fact that it is a more secularised country than italy; in this respect szalma/djundeva (2020) or haug/ milewski (2018) point out the link between religiosity and negative social attitudes to art. the structure of the art cycles selected by women from france further points to a preference for donated egg cycles. rozée gomez/de la rochebrochard (2013) identified french cbrc patients primarily as same-sex couples, single women who • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková198 are not eligible for art in france2 and heterosexual couples that seek egg donation due to the extremely limited access to egg donation in france. while rozée gomez/ de la rochebrochard (2013) originally identified greece, belgium, and spain as primary destinations, our data indicates a growing preference for czechia, including for third-party treatment approaches such as egg and embryo donation. in this context, it is important to consider not only legal accessibility but also the economic conditions that shape oocyte donation practices. while the availability of anonymous donation in czechia remains a central pull factor, the financial dimension deserves further attention. compared to countries such as the uk, where only limited compensation is available, czech clinics offer higher remuneration despite lower national income levels (dostálová/güell 2022; ventruba et al. 2021). this most likely contributes to the greater availability of donor eggs and the overall success in terms of recruiting donors. notably, czechia lacked a national donor register during the study period, and no significant political initiatives towards tighter regulation appear to have emerged since. feminist scholars have long drawn attention to the fact that egg donation, as a physically demanding procedure, is often undertaken primarily for financial compensation rather than altruistic motives (vertommen et al. 2022). although some of the countries studied allow egg donation, they face a shortage of donors due to non-anonymous donation conditions. the uk provides a good example, where according to wyns et al. (2022) patients have to wait several months to start any treatment requiring donated sperm or donated eggs. in contrast, czech art centres had no shortage of donors between 2016-2019, due most probably to the anonymity of donation, which renders it impossible to reveal the identity of the donor to potential offspring. this factor was likely driving up to one-third of the cycles initiated by uk patients opting for the acceptance of donated eggs in the studied period. non-anonymous donation is also allowed in ireland, whereas hungary has a mixed anonymous and non-anonymous donation system, where the egg donor must be a relative of the recipient, while the sperm donor remains anonymous (calhazjorge et al. 2020). however, the condition of a family relationship with the egg donor significantly limits the potential for hungarian women to undergo donated egg treatment (szalma/takács 2022). as a result, 40 percent of cycles commenced by hungarian women in czechia comprise donated egg receipt cycles. women who travel for treatment from slovakia demonstrate the most similar patterns of art use compared to natives. although the foreign literature does not mention slovakia as a source country, it accounted for almost 8 percent of the cbrc provided in czechia between 2016 and 2019. according to fe/epf (2021), slovakia does not maintain an art activity register; therefore, no data on art use is available. although slovakia lags behind czechia in terms of art centre capacity, slovak women do not seek cbrc in czechia due to restrictive regulations at home. the 2 france’s bioethics law allows lesbian couples and single women to undergo ivf/icsi since 2021. this did not apply during the study period. cross-border reproductive care in czechia: insights from national registry data • 199 countries do not differ in their art policies (calhaz-jorge et al. 2020), as evidenced by the similarity in the structure of the art cycles chosen (most frequently ivf/icsi and fet cycles). the probable reasons for the choice of czechia as a destination country for slovaks concern the cultural proximity of the two countries, which, until 1992, formed a single state, the absence of a language barrier and the high quantity of personal ties between their respective residents. the availability of individual anonymised data provided a unique opportunity for the detailed analysis of cbrc provided in czechia both from the point of view of the structural differences between the patients as a whole and through the identification of key source cbrc countries. this article shows that czechia is one of the most important countries in europe in terms of the volume of cbrc provided. in addition to the countries traditionally mentioned in studies of cross-border infertility treatment, we discovered that a significant proportion of women travel from slovakia, serbia, and hungary, expanding on earlier findings regarding crossborder cbrc in czechia. in addition, we highlighted the significant extent to which the legislative regulations relating to infertility treatment in the source countries influence the type of treatment that women who receive treatment abroad require. the older age structure of foreign patients indicates that cbrc in czechia is often seen as a final option following the failure of treatment in the home country. the data employed in this analysis have limitations. the data reported to the national registry concerns cycles rather than patients. thus, if a woman underwent multiple art cycles in one year, she is listed more than once in the register (ihis cr 2022). the absence of a unique indicator for patients from abroad renders it impossible to link data per cycle to individual women. hence, the available data does not allow for monitoring whether and in what volume women seeking cbrc return to czechia repeatedly, or whether and how the treatment methods they use change. moreover, due to the structure of the register, the analysis lacks information on patients’ personal, cultural, and economic motivations, as well as on the characteristics of donors or outcomes beyond cycle-level indicators. these limitations prevent extrapolation to patient decision-making processes or the conditions under which reproductive materials and labour are mobilised. despite these limitations, the study provides the first large-scale, registry-based analysis of cross-border reproductive care in czechia. it contributes to a better understanding of the demographic and regulatory drivers of patient mobility and reveals how czechia has become a key reproductive care destination for diverse groups of foreign patients within europe. authors’ contributions conceptualisation and design of the research: j. kocourková, a. volejníková and a. šťastná. data acquisition: j. kocourková and a. šťastná. methodology: a. volejníková, j. kocourková and a. šťastná. formal analysis: a. volejníková. interpretation of the data and writing of the original draft: a. volejníková. writing-reviewing and editing: a. šťastná and j. kocourková. manuscript revision for important intellectual content: • adéla volejníková, anna šťastná, jiřina kocourková200 a. volejníková, j. kocourková and a. šťastná. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. acknowledgements this paper was supported by the czech science foundation (no. 21-31691s) through the “demographic consequences of assisted reproduction in czechia” project, and by the npo “systemic risk institute”, ref. number lx22npo5101, funded by the european union – next generation eu (ministry of education, youth and sports, npo: exceles). we also thank our colleague dr. luděk šídlo for drawing the cartogram. references adrian, stine willum; 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anna.stastna@natur.cuni.cz; jirina.kocourkova@natur.cuni.cz url: https://natur.cuni.cz/en/person?poid=1319131731007552 https://natur.cuni.cz/en/person?poid=1138547077345181 https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-ofdemography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkovaappointed-professor mailto:adela.volejnikova@natur.cuni.cz mailto:anna.stastna@natur.cuni.cz mailto:jirina.kocourkova@natur.cuni.cz https://natur.cuni.cz/en/person?poid=1319131731007552 https://natur.cuni.cz/en/person?poid=1138547077345181 https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-of-demography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkova-appointed-professor https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-of-demography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkova-appointed-professor https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-of-demography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkova-appointed-professor https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-of-demography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkova-appointed-professor https://natur.cuni.cz/en/geography/departments-and-work-places/department-of-demography-and-geodemography/about-department/news/8118-jirina-kocourkova-appointed-professor published by federal institute for population research (bib) 65180 wiesbaden / germany 2025 editor prof. dr. roland rau prof. dr. heike trappe managing editor dr. katrin schiefer editorial assistant beatriz feiler-fuchs wiebke hamann layout beatriz feiler-fuchs e-mail: cpos@bib.bund.de comparative population studies www.comparativepopulationstudies.de issn: 1869-8980 (print) – 1869-8999 (internet) scientific advisory board kieron barclay (stockholm) ridhi kashyap (oxford) anne-kristin kuhnt (rostock) mathias lerch (lausanne) eleonora mussino (stockholm) natalie nitsche (canberra) alyson van raalte (rostock) pia s. schober (tübingen) sergi vidal (barcelona) rainer wehrhahn (kiel)